This blog started off by focussing on NZ's smaller 3rd level airlines, past and present. It has evolved to trying to present some record of NZ's domestic airline operations and some of the larger charter operators, interesting NZ international airliner movements and photos I have taken around the country. Comments, corrections or contributions are welcome, Steve - westland831@gmail.com , . Hope in a Darkening Age... news, comment, arts, ecology, wisdom, obsessions, the past, the future... "THE END OF ALL INTELLIGENT ANALYSIS IS TO CLEAR THE WAY FOR SYNTHESIS."--H.G. Wells. "It's always a leap into the unknown future to write anything."--Margaret Atwood "Be kind, be useful, be fearless."--President Barack Obama. BWC.jpg Beaverton Police has been awarded a $150K grant by the federal government for its two-year Body Worn Camera pilot program. Police invite the public to give opinions at two open houses on Jan. 21 and Feb. 18. (BPD) Beaverton Police Department will host two public open houses on Jan. 21 and Feb. 18 to gather community opinion on their newly formed Body-Worn Camera Program. The forums begin 5 p.m. each night at police department headquarters, 4755 S.W. Griffith Drive. Beaverton has been awarded a $150,000 two-year U.S. Department of Justice grant to buy 100 cameras. This program will be a pilot program for other law enforcement agencies. The pilot program includes community engagement, developing policy and procedures, testing and obtaining equipment and evaluation. Upon completion of the two years, Beaverton Police will then forward its findings and best practices to the Justice Department as part of the grant, according to Officer Mike Rowe, Beaverton Police spokesman. For more information, contact Michelle Herrold in BPD administration at 503-526-2264. -- Roger Gregory Twitter: @washcoaide 503-294-5962 Adam Karjalainen A man shot and killed over the weekend by Beaverton police died of a gunshot wound to his torso, the state medical examiner's office said Tuesday. Adam Karjalainen, 44, was shot more than once during the encounter Saturday, said Dr. Christopher Young, who preformed the autopsy. Young declined to say where else Karjalainen was wounded. Beaverton police have said Karjalainen was armed during the confrontation and officers shot him after he ignored commands to drop his weapon and moved toward police. The department hasn't released what kind of weapon Karjalainen had. The shooting occurred just before 7:30 a.m. outside the Murrayhill Park apartments, off Southwest Murray Boulevard, said Officer Mike Rowe, a Beaverton police spokesman. The same morning, officers already had responded at least twice to the apartment where Karjalainen was staying to check out reports of disturbances. Police first arrived shortly after 1:15 a.m. after receiving a call about a dispute between roommates, Rowe said. They left about an hour later after speaking with Karjalainen and determining no crime had occurred. At that time, Rowe said, officers didn't know Karjalainen had a warrant for his arrest on a probation violation. Rowe said officers ran his name through dispatch during the first call, but a dispatcher apparently didn't see the warrant. Just before 4:55 a.m., police were called back to the apartment after Karjalainen's roommate reported that he had forced his way into the apartment. During that call, police didn't make contact with Karjalainen, Rowe said, but they learned he was wanted. Police cleared that call about 5:45 a.m. Officers arrived again at the apartment at 7:12 a.m. and encountered Karjalainen with the weapon outside, Rowe said. Officers fired on him at 7:27 a.m. when Karjalainen moved toward them with the weapon, police said. Karjalainen was taken to a hospital, where he died hours later. Police haven't said how many shots were fired or how many officers were involved. The Washington County Major Crimes Team is investigating. Court records show Karjalainen was arrested after a March 2014 domestic violence dispute. He pleaded guilty seven months later to a misdemeanor charge of menacing and was sentenced to five years of probation. Prosecutors dropped two felony charges he faced, attempted arson and unlawful use of a weapon. In July, a judge issued a probation violation warrant for Karjalainen's arrest. Molly Young of The Oregonian/OregonLive contributed to this report. -- Rebecca Woolington 503-294-4049; @rwoolington Like many other downtown Portland businesspeople, Barry Menashe wishes there weren't so many homeless people on the streets. "We have a problem with people sleeping on our steps," said Menashe, head of Menashe Properties. "That's the business side. "But there's also a human side." And the human side especially hits home for Menashe, 62, who has spent 40 years in the real estate business. Two of Menashe's four siblings - a brother and a sister - suffered from mental illness and were on and off Portland-area streets for years. They both died in their 50s. "This is a problem that's been bothering me personally for many years," he said. So he and his son - Jordan, 28, who is Menashe's business partner - decided to do something about it. A new shelter for homeless men opened Monday evening in one of Menashe's buildings, the Washington Center at 401 S.W. Fourth Ave. In a deal with Portland City Hall and nonprofit Transition Projects, Menashe donated part of the building's second floor for use as a safe place for homeless men to sleep and store their belongings over at least the next six months. The Portland Business Alliance also helped make the deal happen, Menashe said. Transition Projects will operate the shelter using funds made available when Mayor Charlie Hales and the Portland City Council declared a housing emergency. A shelter for women and couples at the Jerome F. Sears Army Reserve Center opened on Thanksgiving under the same program. "Hopefully, we save some lives," Menashe said, adding that there is no "catch" - his business isn't benefitting financially from the deal. One night last year, more than 3,800 people in Multnomah County met the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development's definition of homelessness, according to a study commissioned by the city, county and other groups. Nearly 1,900 of them were unsheltered, 872 were in emergency shelters and 1,042 were in transitional housing. An additional 12,500 were doubled up for economic reasons. The plan for the new shelter came together partly because of timing. For nearly 20 years, the Portland English Language Academy leased the space until the school recently relocated to the Lloyd District. The academy moved out just in time to establish the shelter while the weather remains cold and wet. "The stars aligned," Menashe said. About 100 men were off the rainy streets Monday night and using the shelter, said Roma Peyser, development director at Transition Projects. The shelter has space for as many as 149, according to Menashe. The shelter provides a blanket, coffee, tea, games, books and a common area, Peyser said. The men slept on mats that were laid side-by-side on the floor. It will open at 7 p.m. daily and close at 6:30 a.m. Jordan Menashe was the key player in getting the deal done with City Hall, his father said. "I'm so proud of my son, who made it happen, and quickly," Menashe said. Jordan Menashe said he's "not sure it's even been done before." He acknowledged that not all the business owners in the area are thrilled with the idea but pointed out that every person who stays at the shelter is one less person sleeping in a doorway. "If this goes well, we're already thinking about another location," Jordan Menashe said. Both father and son commended the city for moving quickly to prepare the shelter. Menashe Properties purchased the building in June 2014 for $9 million, records show. With vacancy rates in downtown Portland's commercial real estate market at historic lows, the company certainly could have commanded competitive rent in the second-floor space. The company's portfolio includes the Wilcox Building on Southwest Sixth Avenue and the Portland Police Block on Southwest Oak Street. And Menashe recently entered the Seattle market, closing a $26.5 million acquisition on a suburban office campus in Kent in a deal announced Tuesday. Menashe and his son still aren't sure about the future of the space beyond the next six months. In the meantime, Danny McClain hopes the shelter will provide him the stability to save enough money for a new home. A part-time employee at a cleaning-services company, McClain has stayed out of jail for the last four years, he said, after a drug conviction for heroin. "I'm pretty healthy," McClain said on Monday night. "I'm happy I'm not living that lifestyle anymore." But he has bounced between homeless shelters and unsafe apartments, he said. He wants to one day be able to host his daughter, who now stays with McClain's parents, at an apartment of his own. "I've been praying for something better," he said before he entered the new shelter for the first time. "And things are getting better now." -- Luke Hammill lhammill@oregonian.com 503-294-4029 @lucashammill ate-oh-ate.jpg Pork belly saimin -- Hawaii's take on ramen -- at East Burnside's Ate-Oh-Ate. (Michael Russell, The Oregonian) Ate-Oh-Ate, the casual Hawaiian spot from the meat-loving trio behind Laurelhurst Market steakhouse, will open its second location in Southeast Portland, according to co-owner Ben Dyer. The second restaurant will serve a slimmed down menu of the Ate-Oh-Ate's most popular dishes, plus more draft beer and cocktails, from an under-construction storefront on Southeast Woodstock Boulevard. "We have always been very excited about embracing our neighborhoods and we are looking forward to being a part of our new community," Dyer wrote in an email. In addition to Ate-Oh-Ate, Dyer and partners Jason Owens and David Kreifels own Laurelhurst Market, Simpatica Dining Hall and Reverend's BBQ. Last year, East Burnside's original Ate-Oh-Ate appeared on our inaugural guide to Portland's 101 best restaurants, landing at No. 87. Here's what we had to say last year: Go at lunch and you're likely to find a half-dozen construction workers tucking into sloppy-good plates of kalua pig, spicy chicken wings or loco moco -- savory burger patties draped with two nicely fried eggs -- fortified by creamy mac salad and two-scoop rice. This ain't health food. Then again, when we have a craving for plate lunch, done right, we often end up hanging here at this East Burnside storefront, with its surf decor and breezy reggae tunes. The burger is tasty. So are the meaty, St. Louis-cuts ribs, grilled hard and tossed in a sweet kal-bi sauce, hard charred and wonderfully juicy. There's butter mochi and Spam musubi, if that's your thing, and saimin, the island spin on ramen, here with a dark broth, curly yellow noodles perfectly rendered slabs of pork belly. It all goes pretty well with a cool mai tai or frosty pina colada. If you don't like Ate-Oh-Ate, you probably don't like Hawaiian food. Look for Ate-Oh-Ate's new location to open in new construction at Southeast Woodstock Boulevard and 52nd Street this spring. The original restaurant is at 2454 E. Burnside St. More information at ate-oh-ate.com. -- Michael Russell Oregon's first* Chick-fil-A is set to open this spring in Hillsboro. The restaurant, which will be the first of nearly a dozen locations across the greater Portland area, will open in Tanasbourne at 2865 N.W. Town Center Dr. on March 17, according to Chick-fil-A's website. A second location, at the Clackamas Promenade, 12520 S.E. 93rd Ave., is supposed to open shortly after the Tanasbourne restaurant, though no announcements have been made about an opening date. The Clackamas and Hillsboro restaurants buildings will both be LEED-certified, Don Ikeler, Chick-fil-A's west region director of restaurant development, told The Oregonian in November. Both will feature small indoor play areas for kids. Past renderings have also shown drive-thrus and small outdoor eating areas at each restaurant. The restaurants will host their usual festivities on opening day: free Chick-fil-A for a year for the first 100 people in line, Joel Sigmon, a west region business consultant for Chick-fil-A, told The Oregonian last year. *Chick-fil-A used to have restaurants at Clackamas Town Center and Lloyd Center, but those locations are no longer open. The mall locations shuttered in 1995 and 2003, respectively -- mostly due to supply chain problems. Chick-fil-A will be located at 2865 N.W. Town Center Dr., Hillsboro and will open March 17. -- Samantha Bakall sbakall@oregonian.com Follow @sambakall Note: I am still on the fence about her, I need to hear more of her views on Israel, she once made anti-Israel remarks but she has since ... Gods of Egypt For Free Original Title : Gods of Egypt Gods of Egypt Movie title in your country : Gods of Egypt Gods of Egypt Year of movie : 2016 2016 Genres of movie : Fantasy, Adventure, Fantasy, Adventure, Status of movie : In Production In Production Release date of movie : 2016-02-26 2016-02-26 Companies of movie : Summit Entertainment, Mystery Clock Cinema, Thunder Road Pictures, Summit Entertainment, Mystery Clock Cinema, Thunder Road Pictures, Countries of movie : United States of America, United States of America, Language of movie : English, English, Durationof movie : 95 Min 95 Min Average vote of movie : 6 6 Youtube ID of movie : p6IyoJP-UMs p6IyoJP-UMs Translation of movie : EN,ZH,ES,PT,FR,EL,NL,HU,RO, EN,ZH,ES,PT,FR,EL,NL,HU,RO, Cast of movie : Gerard Butler ( Set ) Nikolaj Coster-Waldau ( Horus ) Brenton Thwaites ( Bek ) Geoffrey Rush ( Ra ) Elodie Yung ( Hathor ) Courtney Eaton ( Zaya ) Chadwick Boseman ( Thoth ) Rufus Sewell ( Urshu ) Abbey Lee ( Anat ) Bryan Brown ( ) Bruce Spence ( ) Emma Booth ( ) Alexander England ( ) Rachael Blake ( ) Goran D. 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He spent three-and-a-half years honing his sushi skills in Japan, but in another life, he could have been a comedian as he keeps jokes coming, while welcoming each guest as a long-time friend.In the age of the celebrity chef, he brings the one thing to the table that others have forgotten in recent years, hospitality. He leaves guests feeling good, and that positive vibe carries over to the entire experience.The restaurant has a decent sized izakaya menu, but its the sushi that stands out, and the chefs $75 per person omakase menu is a good place to start for those game to try anything. At any rate, it will lift you out of ahi mode to try many other types of fish.Considering that, squeezing in between others reservations, I had an hour to complete this menu of chefs selections, Murayama put out 10 selections at a rate of one selection about every 6 minutes. Thats some speedy work. The type and number of selections vary with availability of fish and shellfish, and perhaps your enthusiasm level. If youre gushing over every dish, chef may just want to keep the praise coming.Costwise, this broke down to $7.50 per selection. If you were to go the a la carte route for sushi, the range is $5 for tako, $8 for hamachi, ikura or scallop, up to $20 for ootoro and $27 for black tiger prawns. Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in your country. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to your market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism. By Tiemoko Diallo and Adama Diarra BAMAKO (Reuters) - Gunmen killed three gendarmes in an overnight ambush near a town in central Mali, the defence ministry said on Wednesday, confirming the latest in a growing wave of attacks that risk spilling over into Mali's West African neighbours. However, U.N. and French officials vigorously denied a claim by Islamist militant group Ansar Dine to have conducted two other lethal attacks on their convoys in the northern Kidal region since January 15. The identities of the assailants in the central Mali attack were not immediately known. However a Malian army source, who asked not to be named, said that fighters from the Massina Liberation Front (FLM), another militant group based in the area, were believed to have been behind the attack near the town of Mopti. He said three or four gendarmes were killed in the raid. Mali's army and a 10,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force (MINUSMA) are frequently targeted in attack by militants. Strikes on France's better-equipped regional counter-terror force Barkhane are less frequent. The attack near the town of Mopti comes as an Islamist insurgency intensifies in Mali and spreads across West Africa into areas previously considered outside the sphere of operations of militants. Multiple jihadist groups are based in Mali's vast and lawless desert north, with some degree of cooperation between them. During a short-lived alliance with Tuareg rebels, they briefly seized northern cities in 2012 but were scattered by French forces a year later. In a sign of their resurgence, 30 people were killed and dozens of others were wounded last week in an attack on a hotel and restaurant in Burkina Faso's capital Ouagadougou, carried out by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Both AQIM and FLM claimed responsibility for a similar attack on a luxury hotel in the capital Bamako on Nov. 20 which killed 20 people. The Malian government is trying to implement a peace deal with two secular Tuareg-led armed groups Coordination of Azawad Movements (CMA) and Platform based in northern Mali, in talks being held in Algiers this week. The peace deal was agreed last June but its implementation has stalled amid mutual recriminations between signatories, delaying efforts to tackle the resurgent jihadists. In a sign of persisting tension, the two Tuareg-led armed groups issued a joint statement accusing the Malian army of "massacring locals" near Timbuktu last week in a "serious, unprecedented act since the signing of the deal that imperils timid advances made so far". A Malian army spokesman was not immediately available for comment although officials have previously denied the allegations. (Additional reporting by Souleymane Ag Anara in Niamey and Marine Pennetier in Paris; Writing by Edward McAllister and Emma Farge; Editing by Richard Balmforth) ERBIL, Iraq (Reuters) - Kurdish forces have bulldozed, blown up and burned down thousands of Arab homes across northern Iraq in what may constitute a war crime, human rights watchdog Amnesty International said in a report published on Wednesday. Amnesty said it found evidence of a "concerted campaign" by the Kurds to uproot Arab communities in revenge for their perceived support of Islamic State, which seized control of about one third of Iraq in the summer of 2014. Kurdish peshmerga forces have since driven the insurgents back in the north of Iraq with the help of air strikes from a U.S.-led coalition, expanding their control to include ethnically mixed territories they claim as their own. ?KRG (Kurdistan Regional Government) forces appear to be spearheading a concerted campaign to forcibly displace Arab communities by destroying entire villages in areas they have recaptured from IS (Islamic State) in northern Iraq," Amnesty?s Donatella Rovera said. "The forced displacement of civilians and the deliberate destruction of homes and property without military justification, may amount to war crimes." The report, based on field investigation in 13 villages and towns, and testimony gathered from more than 100 witnesses, also includes satellite imagery showing large-scale destruction of homes in Nineveh, Kirkuk and Diyala provinces. Arabs who fled their homes have also been barred by Kurdish forces from returning to areas recaptured from Islamic State, Amnesty said. Dindar Zebari, the head of the KRG's committee to respond to international reports, said the damage documented by Amnesty was a result of fighting between the peshmerga and Islamic State militants, as well as air strikes and booby-traps left behind by the militants. As for the forced displacement of Arabs, Zebari said the coalition had requested civilians be kept away from areas close to the front line, and that Kurds too were prevented from returning to some recaptured villages for their own safety. Zebari said that the Kurdistan region has accommodated 700,000 Arabs fleeing violence in the rest of the country. Amnesty urged the coalition to ensure that any assistance provided to the KRG was not fuelling abuses, which it described as an attempt to reverse the Arabisation campaign conducted under Saddam Hussein when thousands of Kurds were uprooted. The coalition's Baghdad-based spokesman U.S. Army Colonel Steve Warren told reporters he could not comment on Amnesty's findings because they were still being reviewed, but that such issues were taken very seriously. "We?re here to prevent these types of actions and to prevent those with power from taking revenge against those without. These types of actions if left unchecked ultimately hurt the fight against Daesh (Islamic State)". (Reporting by Isabel Coles, additional reporting by Stephen Kalin in Baghdad) David McClain Democratic candidate for the 98th House, Geoff Malicoat, told the Daily news that Gov. Rick Snyder missed an opportunity during his State of the State message Tuesday night. Gov. Snyder squandered an opportunity to begin to heal the wounds his administrations short-sighted policies have inflicted upon our state. In the same breath that he claimed to take full responsibility he began to rattle off other agencies and people that were responsible for poisoning the children of Flint. Only a politician can claim to take responsibility, yet dodge the consequences, Malicoat said. The Dow Chemical Co. announced Tuesday it is contributing to both short and long-term relief efforts for flooding along the Mississippi River in Missouri. Dow is donating to the American Red Cross for immediate disaster assistance to help operate shelters, serve meals, distribute relief supplies and provide comfort items for those in need. In addition, Dow is providing funds to the United Way of Greater St. Louis to provide longer term support for housing and appliance repairs to return to safe, sanitary and secure conditions, ongoing counseling, behavioral health, and case management. Midland residents may have another location to purchase their produce and grocery needs as a site plan for a new Kroger store at Jefferson Avenue and Joe Mann Boulevard makes its way to the Planning Commission. Site Plan No. 343 was submitted to the city by LSG Engineers and Surveyors on behalf of The Kroger Co. of Michigan. The site plan, for the 124,942-square-foot building also shows a fuel station in addition to the marketplace, with the building facing east towards Jefferson. Brad Kaye, assistant city manager for development services, said that while the site plan is on the agenda to be discussed at the commissions meeting on Jan. 26, the public hearing process would likely not start until February. It is definitely going to be bigger, at least double, Kaye said when asked about the difference in size between the site plans building space and the current Kroger at 2808 Ashman St. Theyve been looking around for a period of time for a location that meets their needs. The current Kroger does not have a fuel station, and Kroger officials have been contacted to learn if the current location will stand if the site plan is approved for a new Kroger. Kaye said the site plans were submitted in late December, and required the petitioner to do a traffic impact analysis because of the heavy traffic already recorded in the area. During the Midland City Councils planning retreat last Saturday, the topic of traffic in the mall area and possible solutions were discussed at length. City Engineer Brian McManus and Kaye both talked about the logistics of the area developing and the impact on motorists. Kaye showed a map of the site plan, and talked members of city council through the logistics of the property. The new Kroger would be to the south of Chemical Bank, with the intent to align the Kroger property with that lot and both businesses share a driveway out to Joe Mann. The new Kroger would also have driveway access to Jefferson Avenue, which the fuel station would be placed next to, and connect to a driveway for the nearby ATMs. A cell tower on the site would stay in place during construction, along with the roadway created to access it. Kaye said he was told the new Kroger would utilize new methods of delivery, such as a pick-up lane for customers who order their groceries ahead of time. McManus said the Michigan Department of Transportation is re-estimating traffic projections on Eastman Avenue and along Joe Mann Boulevard, in addition to the petitioners traffic study near the proposed site of the new Kroger. It wont be on that agenda until we can complete that review properly, we are sitting down with them to talk about that, Kaye said about when the site plan may be scheduled to allow for public input through the Planning Commission. Its in the process of being considered. The property for the proposed site plan is zoned regional commercial district and allows for grocery stores, Kaye added. Because it is a site plan and not a conditional land use, the site plan would be approved if the petitioners submit factual information on time to the city. The next Planning Commission meeting is scheduled at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 26 at the Council Chambers of City Hall, 333 W. Ellsworth St. Canine advocate Joey should be well fed while assisting children after the Midland County Prosecutors office received a grant from the Midland Area Community Foundation. The $10,000 grant will keep the one and a half year old chocolate labrador ready to calm young children as they testify in court. We believe this will cover (our projected budget) for five years, said County Prosecutor J. Dee Brooks. We pay for the food out of the grant. We set it up so there would be no expense to the county. Commissioners unanimously approved the request, 6-0 at Tuesdays board meeting. Commissioner Al Kloha, R-1st District, was absent. The experience the county has had with the canine advocacy program has really been fantastic, said Rich Keenan, R-4th District. The children really, really take to Joey. He very much calms them down. The grant will also cover initial expenses such as veterinarian, equipment and activity coloring books for the children, which explain the core process and introduce children to the system. We also have some stuffed animals (the children) receive after they testify as a little remembrance of Joey, Brooks said. Joey has been trained to go with small children as a support and comfort when they are required to testify in various criminal and family court matters. Its been very well received. I havent had anybody that has any complaints or issues with it, Brooks said. The prosecutors office was pleasantly surprised by the amount as the original request was for significantly less. We had actually asked for $5,000 which we thought would at least cover the first few years of the program. I was approached by the MACF early on in the process and they indicated it was something that they wanted to support, Brooks said. Any unspent funds after five years must be returned to the MACF. Joey is privately owned by Assistant Prosecutor Atea Duso. We set it up that way so it wouldnt be a county owned asset. Atea is the primary caretaker of Joey and takes care of him when he is not at the office. I want to make sure she is reimbursed for direct expenses, Brooks said. The following list includes reports from the Midland County Sheriffs Office and the Midland Police Department. Sunday, Jan. 17 2:56 a.m. Deputies were called to a traffic accident at South McGruder and West Stewart roads, and found the driver suffering from minor injuries near the scene. The driver, who was suspected of drunken driving, was taken to the emergency room for treatment. A report is being sent to the prosecutors office for review. Saturday, Jan. 16 1:01 a.m. An Ingersoll Township man, 32, reported someone used his debit card to make purchases of $788.12 without his permission. 2:44 a.m. Deputies were called to a traffic crash at Gordonville and 4 Mile roads, and found the driver and passenger had left the scene. The investigation remains open. 4:14 a.m. An Ingersoll Township woman, 31, is suspected of drunken driving after a crash in Mount Haley Township. She was taken to the emergency room after complaining of pain, and a report is being sent to the prosecutor for review. 6:23 a.m. A Merrill woman, 19, was arrested for drunken driving after she drove into a Lincoln Township ditch. 9:37 a.m. Police investigated an assault in the 3800 block of Bay City Road. 3:58 p.m. A 52-year-old woman was stopped in Lee Township for speeding and arrested for driving while her license was suspended. 5 p.m. A motorist was arrested at Bay City and South Saginaw roads for drunken driving. 5:16 p.m. Police investigated a felonious assault at West Buttles and Jerome streets. 7:41 p.m. A Homer Township woman, 50, reported someone used her credit card information without her permission to make a purchase totaling $375 in Ohio. 8:29 p.m. A motorist was arrested at Jefferson Avenue and North Street for driving on a suspended license. 10:16 p.m. A deputy was sent to the emergency room for a report of possible child abuse after a 6-month-old infant was brought in with a leg broken in two different places. 11:36 p.m. Police responded to a report of domestic violence at a Scott Street address. Friday, Jan. 15 7:01 p.m. Police investigated a case of retail fraud in the 900 block of Joe Mann Boulevard. 7:43 p.m. A Warren Township male, 17, reported a fraud involving a computer software update advertised in a pop-up window. A $200 transaction fee was pending when the teen immediately called his bank, where he was informed the transaction was a fraud. 8:20 p.m. A motorist was arrested at McDonald and East Buttles streets for driving on a suspended license. 10:29 p.m. Police were called to a Wooden Shoe Drive address to investigate a case of domestic assault and child abuse. 11:03 p.m. Police made arrests for disorderly conduct as well as resisting and obstructing police in the 400 block of Delft Drive. Headquarters Pacific Air Forces released today the results of its investigation into a mishap involving the death of an Airman which occurred April 5, 2015, at Kadena Air Base, Japan. Gen. Lori J. Robinson, Pacific Air Forces commander, directed a ground accident investigation into the accident involving Airman 1st Class Kelly Tomfohrde who fell from her fifth story lodging room during a deployment to Kadena, according to a Pacific Air Forces ground accident investigation report. A1C Tomfohrde was killed as a result of blunt force trauma injuries, consistent with a high fall. Tomfohrde was a traditional guardsman with the 115th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron, 115th Fighter Wing, Wisconsin Air National Guard, stationed at Truax Field, Madison, Wisconsin. She deployed with the 176th Expeditionary Aircraft Maintenance Unit as part of a Theater Security Package to augment airpower for PACAF. For more information, contact the 115th Fighter Wings Public Affairs Office at (608) 245-4395 Monday through Friday. For a copy of the Ground Accident Investigation Board executive summary, visit: http://www.pacaf.af.mil/Info.aspx . This is the second article in a series focusing on and recognizing the 'Dirty Jobs' done by Airmen of the 374th Civil Engineer Squadron. From keeping the flightline mission ready to maintaining the roads and sidewalks, the behind scenes work done by a small group of Airmen known as the 'Dirt Boys' keeps Yokota's mission going. The 374th Civil Engineer Squadron pavement and equipment shop understand aircraft operations depend on their ability to ensure the flightline remains fully operational. "Our number one job is to maintain the airfield," said Master Sgt. Frank Uecker, 374th CES pavements and equipment shop section chief. "Through heavy rain, hail or snowfall, ensuring that the airlifting mission here at Yokota is not infringed on is why we're here." Cement spalls are the most notable obstacle the 'Dirt Boys' face when working to keep. A spall is broken up, flaked, or pitted concrete. Environmental factors stress the concrete, causing it to become damaged and often creating spalls. "Removing the small breaks as soon as they appear on the airfield is key part of our preventative maintenance practices," said Senior Airman Richard Mora, 374th CES pavements and equipment apprentice. Additional preventative maintenance practices include clearing storm drains to prevent the runoff of rain or melted snow from flooding the airfield, removing weakened trees that threatened structures, and cutting grass. "Nobody would ever think that cutting the grass would be an important task to accomplish," Mora said. "However, doing so prevents birds from nesting as well from grass from becoming overgrown and roaming onto runways." The pavements and equipment shop also works to eliminate foreign object debris from the airfield. "Whether it is propeller or jet engines, aircraft on the airfield have the potential to suck in FOD," Uecker said. "By eliminating FOD, we prevent unnecessary wear and tear to the engines." From shovels and jackhammers to cranes and bulldozers, the duties of the 'Dirt Boys' require them to be experts of a wide assortment of machinery. Their expertise allows the shop to assist other shops and squadrons around base. "We assist any and everyone on base that needs a helping hand," Mora said. "From helping the heating and ventilation shop install a unit to supporting the maintainers with our cranes to hoist an engine, we do it all. Mora admitted that the most challenging part of his duties was staying up to date of job knowledge. "You have to be knowledgeable and have a hunger to learn if you want to be successful," Mora said. "You can't doze off or get sidetracked. People's lives can't afford it. From pedestrians and traffic to the Airman standing next to you, their safety and yours depends on your awareness." It is clear that the 'Dirt Boys' have earned their nickname. From repairing cement spalls on Yokota's airfield to sawing down trees that may pose a threat to structures around base, their dirt covered uniform at the end of the day is a small sacrifice to ensuring Yokota's mission is not negatively impacted. BEIRUT (Reuters) - Around 4,000 people returned to a neighbourhood in the south of Syrian capital Damascus on Wednesday as part of a local ceasefire agreed more than a year ago, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The Syrian state news agency said 500 families had returned to the al-Qadam neighbourhood, where a ceasefire between the government and insurgents was agreed in August 2014. One of the conditions was that residents should be allowed to return to their homes after infrastructure had been rebuilt. The truce had called for the complete withdrawal of the Syrian army from the district, with army checkpoints at its entrances only. The Observatory said their return had nothing to do with a separate agreement by which members of the Islamic State group and their families were due to leave the same district on Wednesday. This has yet to happen. The Syrian government has made numerous local ceasefire agreements over the course of the five-year-long conflict. (Reporting by Lisa Barrington; Editing by Andrew Heavens) With a population of over 14 million, Dhaka, Bangladesh, is one of the most densely populated cities in the world. Each year, its population grows with increased urbanization and opportunity. Its crowded streets are often chocked with vehicles and people, leaving very little open space. Urban development continues to occur, with buildings regularly increasing in height and new structures popping up overnight. To make things even more challenging, Dhaka sits in a location vulnerable to earthquake. The Madhupur Fault sits just to the north of the city, and has a historical record of seismic activity. According to a 2009 study by the Comprehensive Disaster Management Programme, a "worst-case scenario" 7.5 magnitude earthquake along this fault could take place, leaving more than 100,000 people dead in Bangladesh. Some 400,000 buildings in the country's three largest cities - Dhaka, Chittagong and Sylhet -- could be damaged "beyond repair." Knowing this vulnerability, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), in support of the U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM) worked with officials from the Bangladesh Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief and the Department of Disaster Management to develop a debris management plan for Dhaka City. "The plan is designed to assist the Government of Bangladesh to have a set of procedures and processes in place to support post-disaster cleanup in the city," said Sean Dowling, lead USACE contributor to the Dhaka City Debris Plan. According to Dowling, who is a civil emergency planner for USACE-Pacific Ocean Division, "The plan has been under development since 2013, and has featured multiple iterations and updates that incorporate lessons-learned from around the world, including recent debris clearance experience from the April 25, 2015 earthquake in Nepal." "We met with so many experts in Bangladesh, and their knowledge and insight has made this plan possible," he said. During the development of the debris plan, USACE worked closely with the U.S. Embassy's Office of Defense Cooperation and the U.S. Agency for International Development. First, the team gathered as much information it could about traditional debris practices in Dhaka City, as well as historical debris planning from previous earthquakes around the world. The team then visited with Government of Bangladesh stakeholders, the Bangladesh military, international organizations and non-government organizations to understand context, challenges, and previous debris planning efforts. The team and their Bangladesh counterparts prepared a draft plan, which was reviewed and edited by the Government of Bangladesh. The team's efforts were then coupled with the United Nations Development Programme, which had been tasked to develop similar debris plans for Chittagong and Sylhet. The final versions of the initial debris plans were turned over in November 2015 to the Government of Bangladesh. USACE incorporated many of its domestic experiences from the United States, and coupled this with international experience to prepare the plan. "A lot of hard work went into this effort, but there is always more work to be done, said Dowling. "A plan is never really complete--It needs to be tested and modified continuously to be effective." As the plan moves forward, it will be used to support Bangladesh's existing Standing Order on Disasters and Disaster Management Plan. The debris plan, which was funded by USPACOM, is one of many USACE efforts in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region to build partner capacity. GUAM -- The relative quiet of a small neighborhood in Guam at night in is broken by a loud explosion. The concussive bang is soon followed by the small pop of gunfire. It doesnt take long for camouflaged men to appear out of one of the buildings, clearly escorting someone. They rapidly load up into waiting vehicles and leave, any sign they were there disappearing in the silence of the night. Reconnaissance Marines and sailors with Maritime Raid Force, 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, conducted training on Guam, Jan. 11-17, as part of Realistic Urban Training Exercise. RUTEX is a high-intensity, close-quarter battle training exercise conducted in an actual urban environment to provide a high degree of realism to the training. The exercise is part of the MRFs pre-deployment training before their upcoming deployment with the MEU. RUTEX is a work-up exercise where theyre testing how well the MRF does as a whole, said 2nd Lt. Jay Parales, the security element platoon commander with Battalion Landing Team 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, 31st MEU, currently attached to the MRF. If you imagine a work up being a crawl - walk - run, then this is leaning into the walk and slightly into a jog. The MRF is made of three different elements: the Amphibious Reconnaissance Platoon, Force Reconnaissance Platoon and the security element. They all have a specific role in the MRF and one cannot function without the other successfully. The ARP went out before everyone else and started to survey the area, said Parales, a native of Seattle. With the information that the ARP provides, we use it to create plans and terrain models. The Marines began to build the terrain models immediately after arriving in Guam. The terrain models are large, simple maps of the area and layout of the buildings the Marines will be operating in. They create the terrain models with items like chalk, cardboard, tape and paint and they use them to go through rehearsals and to familiarize the Marines with their objectives. With the three different elements working together - the FRP, ARP and the security element - we all have to internally rehearse our role in the mission, said Parales. Then we have to rehearse how were all going to sync together and link up and leave together. After the Marines go through their final rehearsal, they load up their gear and begin their mission. The MRF conducted two raids during RUTEX, both to capture simulated high-value targets located in different urban areas. With all of the information the FRP and security element received from the ARP, they could began their assaults. RUTEX brings everyone together and makes us work together to accomplish the mission, said Staff Sgt. Nicholas Weber, the special equipment non-commissioned officer for the FRP. For both raids, the FRP Marines flew into the objective on two UH-60 Black Hawks, fast-roped to the ground. Explosive charges were then used to make an entrance into the building the targets were located in. Marines then rushed in and engaged any enemies they came across while searching for their target. While the FRP is conducting actions on the objective, the security element is setting up a security cordon around the area. Blocking positions are used to keep anyone from coming in or out, and they have an extra team of Marines on hand to act as a reserve if the main effort needs it. The security element has a two part mission the outer cordon and the inner cordon, said Parales. The outer cordon is in charge of the blocking position with the vehicles and the security outside of the objective. The second mission for the security element is they follow the FRP directly into their objective. Once the mission is complete, the security element acts as the extraction force, bringing everyone back for debriefing. The debrief is almost as important as the missions themselves, giving everyone a chance to go over what they did well and what they still need to improve on. RUTEX really helps us to work together and fine tune our abilities to successfully complete a mission, no matter what it is, said Weber, a native of Live Oak, California. Were training on what we could possibly do in real life and now everyone knows what they need to work on and what they have down. Switch to the dark mode that's kinder on your eyes at night time. Switch to the light mode that's kinder on your eyes at day time. Dear Abby: I live in Israel, and for the past five years I've been having an affair with a great guy I'll call Yuri. I married very young to a man who is kind and very Orthodox. I love my children and grandchildren. Yuri thinks we should leave our spouses and make a fresh start. (I'm not Orthodox and neither is he.) I am afraid if I do, I may lose my children and grandchildren. On the other hand, I can't survive without Yuri. I have always had lovers since I discovered how Orthodox my husband is -- it's a survival thing. I am going nuts. What should I do? -- IN TURMOIL IN ISRAEL Dear In Turmoil: Consider VERY carefully what a new life with Yuri will cost you, because it's going to be emotionally expensive. Right now you are part of a community, with standing in that community. If you leave it, all of that will be gone, and you will likely be shunned. While running away with your lover may seem romantic, I would be very surprised if it didn't spell the end of your relationship with your children and grandchildren. A decision like this should not be taken lightly; it needs to be made rationally. If you are "going nuts," you are NOT thinking rationally, so please, discuss this with a counselor more familiar with Orthodox custom than I. Dear Abby: My ex sent our children letters from prison. I didn't give them the letters because he was abusive. In one of them he asked our daughter to forgive him and not punish him forever. Abby, her father had abused her, and he's asking for her to stop punishing HIM? She was going to kill herself because of what he did to her. My daughter went through several years of intense counseling and still battles depression, so there is no way I'll permit him to have contact with her or my other children. I have had no contact with him since we split up several years ago. My lawyer mailed the divorce papers and that was that. Should I write him a letter and tell him what I think? -- NOWHERE IN TEXAS Dear Nowhere: No, your lawyer should. One of the hallmarks of abusers is that they tend to blame their victims for their actions. The statement in your ex's letter accusing your daughter of "punishing him" with her silence is troubling. She's under no obligation to forgive her abuser. When he is finally released from prison, one of the conditions may be that he must have no contact with minors. And if by then your children are no longer minors, one can only hope that they have become mature enough to protect themselves emotionally -- and physically, if necessary -- from their father. FLICK LITE. Our latest listings, as offered by the readers and your own resident Lite Boy: Best burnout Just after the Christmas rush where you bought for newborns at Bloomingtons Babies R Us store, the i in the stores overhead sign burned out and, presto! -- just in time for Valentines Day -- its now a Babes R Us store! Newest reason to never trust 'auto-correct In correspondence with media in Central Illinois, one area nursing home made a mistake recently in a news release, corrected it in a follow-up email and then meant to write, "We apologize for any inconvenience." Unfortunately, it came out -- "We apologize for any incontinence." Latest greatest obit When John Francis Oakey, of Bloomington, died recently at age 80, his death notice included this: John was a member of St. Mary's Catholic Church who sang loudly, if not well, in the choir." Best Name Club Dr. Payne. Thats William D. Payne, an orthopedist in Springfield. Sue Necessary. Shes an emergency room nurse as OSF St. Joseph Medical Center in Bloomington. Dr. Lawrence Brain. Hes a doctor of psychiatry in Bethesda, Md. Dick Strong. Hes a lawyer in Nashville, Tenn. OK, uh, now what? If you should use one of the mens restrooms at the Super Wal-Mart on West Market Street in Bloomington and come to the conclusion the restroom needs service, umm -- you're probably going to smile at the next predicament you face. "I guess that's one way to cut down on complaints," says Tom Parrent, of Normal, who snapped a photo. Latest greatest bumper snicker Spotted along East Washington Street in Bloomington: "I FARM. YOU EAT. Newest questionable acronym winner In a recent employment ad was an opening for a Management Information System Manager that, from that point on, was referred to as simply a MIS manager. Weve known a few of those. Best place to get both stoned and pregnant If on the website of Fox and Hounds, the popular downtown Bloomington spa, and looking under "Our Services," it reads: "30 Minute Stone Massage, $67 and up... "45 Min Deep Tissue Massage, $59 and up... "45 Min Pregnancy, $62 and up..." If lusting after a pregnancy that would last only 45 minutes, we checked, by the way. No such luck. That's how long the massage for pregnant women lasts, they tell us. Three More Fun Places To Visit, If Only For Their Names (As offered by the readers:) Fanny, W.V. Gnaw Bone, Ind. Wahoo, Neb. Latest example of a questionable product name Mike Flood of Normal was looking through a display of drill bits made by a leading and obviously patriotic manufacturer of such -- Vermont American. Then he saw this: "Made In China." Got an item for Lite? Send to: Flick Lite, 301 W. Washington St., Bloomington, 61702, or by e-mail, or on his Facebook page. Our January board of contributors: Roxane Lyons, Chenoa; Karen Stalions, Lincoln; Rhea Mabis-Sloneker, Danvers; Mike Stanton, Gretchen Meyer, Joe Culpepper, Jerry Turley, Ruthie Cobb and Jan Cavallo, Bloomington; Tom Parrent, Mike Flood, Eve Chandler and Cathy Ferme, Normal. BLOOMINGTON Wednesday should be the only day this week when motorists have a dicier commute as the National Weather Service says there is no more snow in the forecast. The Twin Cities saw more snow than expected overnight, as between 3 and 4 inches fell in the area, but there are no reports of school or other cancellations. But for the rest of the week, while temperatures are expected to remain below freezing before climbing to 35 degrees on Sunday, there is no precipitation in the forecast. Major streets and roads were cleared or clearing of snow by noon and the lack of wind is making driving easier. "There will be snow to clear and there could be some ice because of cold temperatures we're expecting, but it shouldn't be a particularly difficult commute Wednesday morning," said National Weather Service meteorologist Daryl Onton late Tuesday night, after snow began falling about 8 p.m. By morning well still be plowing all of the major roads, so please allow for extra time to get to work, added Bloomington Public Works Director Jim Karch. There are no parking bans in effect in either Bloomington or Normal and there is no more snow in the forecast this week, said NWS. The intersection of Market and Evans is closed until further notice for emergency repair of a collapsed sewer. The weather service's hazardous weather outlook issued late Tuesday night for Central Illinois called for less snow, from 1 to 3 inches, and winds of less than 10 mph. Areas to the north of Bloomington-Normal could see a little bit less snow, and areas to the south, a little more, Onton said. "Because the snow is expected to be fluffy and light there could still be a little bit of blowing and drifting, but it's not suppose to be a major factor," Onton said. Area police reported no hazardous driving conditions or serious accidents late Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning, but there were the usual scattered reports of cars sliding off the sides of the road. BLOOMINGTON In his first comments as McLean County Board chairman, John McIntyre said he doesn't plan to do anything drastic to restore public trust in the board despite federal fraud charges against his predecessor. "A lot of people in this county do have confidence in us," McIntyre said. "If (board members) sit down with people and talk and communicate and respond to their questions, I feel confident we will move forward." The board voted unanimously Tuesday morning to make McIntyre, a District 5 Republican, its next chairman. He succeeds Matt Sorensen, who resigned Jan. 12 after the unsealing of a federal indictment accusing him of defrauding State Farm of more than $400,000 in unearned consulting fees. The charges relate to his work as an independent business consultant, not a County Board member. State's Attorney Jason Chambers said the county is "having an independent review done from an outside source" to determine if Sorensen acted appropriately during his time in government. Sorensen, a District 2 Republican, spent 21 years on the County Board, including eight as chairman. "Because it is a pending matter, it would not be appropriate for me to give any details other than that," Chambers said. McIntyre reiterated his opinion that the allegations against Sorensen are unrelated to his work in government. Paul Segobiano, a District 8 Democrat, agreed in his statement nominating McIntyre as chairman. "For the past eight years, this County Board has been led by an honest and dedicated member. ... He's going under some personal situations right now that have absolutely nothing to do with county government," Segobiano said. "We applaud his leadership, and it's time to move on." After McIntyre was elected, District 7 Republican Rich Buchanan said the unanimous vote showed the board would "support you, advise you, comfort you when you need it." Segobiano added the board would "give you hell when you need it." McIntyre said his highest priority is to keep the county's previous initiatives running smoothly, including its goals of expanding mental health services and keeping taxes down. He said Jim Soeldner, who was elected vice chairman on Tuesday, will be invaluable. "Our future won't change that much," said McIntyre, who has served on the board since 2008. He was elected vice chairman in 2012 and serves on the executive and justice committees. Soeldner also has served on the board since 2008 and serves as chairman of the transportation committee and on the executive committee. McIntyre also reviewed the application process for filling Sorensen's board seat. McIntyre will appoint an interim board member Feb. 16 to represent District 2 until the seat is filled in the November election. Applicants should be District 2 Republicans who are not registered sex offenders. The county administrator's office will take applications though noon Feb. 4, and the board's executive committee will interview candidates Feb. 9. Despite his resignation, Sorensen will appear on the ballot for the seat in the March 15 primary. Four write-in candidates Diane Benjamin of Ellsworth, Scott Murphy of Downs, Garth Nicholas of Heyworth and Mike Sumner of Downs have filed to oppose him. Sorensen has not commented on whether he'll try to win back the seat. Since the indictment was unsealed Jan. 4, he has appeared publicly only once: to plead not guilty Wednesday in Chicago. His resignation on Jan. 12 was submitted as a letter to the board. District 1 Republican Don Cavallini, District 4 Republican Mark Johnson and District 6 Democrat Paul Finch did not attend Tuesday's meeting. DECATUR While some are excited for the prospect of a casino in Decatur, the City Council isn't taking up the matter just yet. Mayor Julie Moore Wolfe said the council plans to consider the possibility as part of a larger evaluation of gambling in the city, a discussion that's not likely to occur until March or April. I know there is a real push to get support from the city on the idea of a casino, but we're going to do our homework first, she said. Two former Argosy Gaming Co. executives, Joe Uram and Jeff Roberts, said earlier this month they would like to develop a casino in the Decatur Conference Center and Hotel. The developers planned to seek the councils support as they petition state lawmakers to include Decatur among sites considered for a new casino license. Illinois currently authorizes 10 casinos, and legislative efforts to include several other cities, including Chicago, have been ongoing for years. Developers say a casino, with an estimated 400 to 600 gaming positions, could generate an estimated $2 million to $3 million in revenue for the city and add as many as 200 jobs. But not everyone is in favor of the idea. Several local business owners said they worry about a casino hurting them, as their profits rely heavily on money from video gambling machines. Some religious groups are raising moral concerns, saying the negative affects of gambling outweigh any short-term benefits. In 2012, when the council voted to allow video gambling machines, the mayor said council saw the move partly as a way to help local businesses and taverns that were struggling. Curlys co-owner Bill Miller and other local tavern owners said the video gambling machines provide all the profit for their businesses. The ban on smoking and increased enforcement of DUI laws have both hurt bars, he said. The machines provided a way to recover lost margins. Others reject the casino development as part of a larger opposition to gambling, which they see as detrimental to the overall health of the community. The Rev. Kathy King-Nobles, co-pastor of First United Methodist Church, said all area United Methodist pastors agree with that position. She cited research that shows every dollar of revenue created by gambling results in $3 spent on social costs, such as crime, addiction and social welfare programs. PPC to Present Former CEO David Scheible of Graphic Packaging with Highest Honor Jan. 20, 2016 (Press Release) - The Paperboard Packaging Council will honor David W. Scheible, retiring Chairman and former CEO of Graphic Packaging International, with the Robert T. Gair Award at PPC's upcoming Spring Outlook & Strategies Conference, April 27-29, 2016 in Miami, FL. Named after the man whose ingenuity and innovation gave birth to the modern folding carton industry, the Robert T. Gair Award is PPC's highest honor and is reserved for individuals who have made significant and lasting contributions to the paperboard packaging industry. Scheible joined Graphic Packaging Corp. as Chief Operating Officer in 1999. His knowledge, leadership, and business acumen were soon recognized and he was promoted to President and Chief Executive Officer in 2007. He was appointed to the Board of Directors of Graphic Packaging Holding Company upon its formation in 2007 and was then named Chairman of the Board in 2013. Under Scheible's leadership, Graphic Packaging concentrated resources on the folding carton segment and divested assets that did not fit into the core business, all while increasing profits and making major debt reductions. Throughout his career, Scheible has recognized PPC as a key resource and has encouraged his staff's involvement in the association. Representatives from GPI have not only served on the Board and on many committees, but also as Board Chair. GPI is also a dedicated participant in PPC's programming: they have educated more than 60,000 children about sustainability through PPC's TICCIT program, and also submit multiple entries into the annual Carton Competition. Scheible even gave a highly regarded keynote address at PPC's 2014 Fall Meeting. In its 87 year history, PPC has only given 18 Gair Awards, so it is quite the achievement to be nominated, said Ben Markens, President of PPC. Only the most committed and exemplary individuals can receive the awardthose who have left an indelible mark not only on the industry but also on PPC as well as their own communities. Without a doubt, David Scheible fits the bill. Scheible's influence extends well beyond the paperboard packaging industry. He serves on the board of the Cancer Treatment Centers of America and is actively involved in the Atlanta area Chamber of Commerce, the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education, and the Learn4Life initiative. It is an honor to be chosen to receive PPC's Robert T. Gair Award, said Scheible. The paperboard packaging industry is an exciting, challenging, and rewarding space, and I'm glad to have made a positive impact on the business as well as the people we serve. The Gair Award ceremony will be the centerpiece of PPC's Spring Outlook and Strategies Conference in April 2016. There, CEOs and other industry leaders will honor Scheible's outstanding achievement at a formal dinner and program. For additional information about the Robert T. Gair Award, visit paperbox.org/gairform. For information about the conference, visit paperbox.org/spring. Now in its 86th year, PPC is the leading industry association serving suppliers and converters of all forms of paperboard packaging. To learn more, please visit: paperbox.org. SOURCE: Paperboard Packaging Council (PPC) Chelsea Handler, host of the late night E! Talk show, felt betrayed after comedian Heather McDonald released statements to the press that she "100 percent lived in fear" when she was still working for Handler. The 40-year old TV host aired her side of the story during an appearance on Howard Stern's Sirius XM radio show. In a report by TMZ, Handler said that when she came to know that McDonald was actually selling stories about her to a gossip magazine, she immediately severed her ties with the latter. Handler further alleged that McDonald sold those stories so that the magazine would post her photos. "I just thought it was a betrayal ... I wasn't paranoid, I just withdrew from that whole social scene - I withdrew from her," Handler said. She further categorized her statement by saying that she would not hang out with McDonald or wish to be alone with her. On one hand, the 45-year old McDonald said that while she considers Handler as a good person, she does not agree with the manner that Handler treats relationships, People reported. McDonald said that, "I lived in fear, 100 percent lived in fear." "I enjoyed my time there, I was happy, but I mean something would happen and my heart would be beating and I would be like, 'Is this it?' - you know? And then somehow I just managed to keep surviving," stated McDonald. Since McDonald was a good writer for the show, Handler continued her employment despite knowledge of the alleged betrayal. According to Handler, "I could have fired her. I did not fire her. She had a job for four more years. I never hung out with her personally again. So I hope she was living in fear." Handler was quick to add, "It's not an internment camp. If you're living in that much fear, go get another job." Aside from the "living in fear" comment made by McDonald, she also called Handler as a "boss from hell," according to a report made by Radar Online. With the way things are going, this would not spell the end to the feud between Handler and McDonald. This service applies to you if your subscription has not yet expired on our old site. You will have continued access until your subscription expires; then you will need to purchase an ongoing subscription through our new system. Please contact the Parsons Sun office at (620) 421-2000 if you have any questions Iraq suffered one of its deadliest days in recent memory, when at least fifty-one people lost their lives in a series of terrorist attacks in Baghdad and two other towns on January 11. ISIL has claimed responsibility. At least 18 people were killed and 50 wounded in an assault on Jawaher mall in the predominately Shia Muslim al-Jadida district in Baghdad. According to Iraqi officials, a group of gunmen broke into the mall after detonating a car bomb and carrying out a suicide attack at the entrance. Several attackers were reportedly killed and four were arrested. On the same day, at least 23 people were killed and some 50 injured in two bombings in the Iraqi town of Muqdadiya, 80 km northeast of Baghdad. The first was a suicide attack inside a casino, the second consisted of a car bomb detonated out on the street during rush hour. The United States condemns the barbaric acts of terrorism committed in Iraq for which ISIL has claimed responsibility. These attacks once again display the utter disregard ISIL has for the lives of innocent civilians. The United States stands united with the people of Iraq as they confront the scourge of violent extremism. In recent weeks, Iraqi forces with American support pushed ISIL out of the key city of Ramadi, the capital of Iraqs Anbar Province. It is the biggest population center to date that the terrorist group has lost control of. The United States remains committed to working with Prime Minister al-Abadi, the Iraqi Security Forces, and the Coalition partners to support Iraqi-led efforts to degrade and destroy ISIL. Spanish band Hinds are coming back to the States for a short tour in promotion of their debut album, Leave Me Alone which was released on Jan. 8 via Mom + Pop. If you havent heard these girls, its a fuzzy garage band feel thats contrasted by a downright endearing presence. Seriously, Hinds is as #squadgoals as it gets. Watch below to see what you could witness in person if you head to their shows. Then if youre interested (which trust me, you will be), check out the tour dates below. Hinds March 2016 U.S. Tour 9 New York City, N.Y. @ Bowery Ballroom 10 District of Columbia @ U Street Music Hall 15-20 Austin, Texas @ SXSW 22 Denver, Colo. @ Lost Lake Lounge 24 Boise, Idaho @ Treefort Music Festival 26 Portland, Ore. @ Holocene 27 Seattle, Wash. @ Sunset Tavern 29 San Francisco, Calif. @ The Rickshaw Shop You can purchase tickets on Friday here. Back in 2014 we posted a report titled "Apple Blocked by the Indian Government to Open Apple Stores." Then in early 2015 we reported that Foxconn was rumored to be opening an iPhone plant in India, a move that could help open the door for Apple being allowed to open their own retails stores in that country. Apple's CEO Tim Cook met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in San Jose California in late September 2015 where they reportedly talked about Apple manufacturing in India, Apple Pay and more. Today, India's Economic Times is reporting that Apple is once again filing an application with department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) for permission to open their own Apple Stores in India. Confirming the development, DIPP Secretary Amitabh Kant said, "We have just received Apple's proposal. We are examining it." Apple's move stems from the government's liberalization of foreign direct investment rules on single-brand retail in November, which included relaxing mandatory local procurement condition for high-tech companies which we covered in previous reports. It's clear that Cook's meeting with India's Prime Minister in September opened the door for the changes made in November by the Indian Government. As we noted last September, "India Could be Apple's Next Mass Market." About Making Comments on our Site: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit any comments. Comments are reviewed daily from 4am to 6pm PST and sporadically over the weekend. Re/code reports this afternoon that Australian born internet entrepreneur "Ben Keighran, who joined Apple four years ago when it bought a startup he co-founded, says he is leaving soon and eventually intends to start something new. Keighran added the he wants to do more than create a killer product and in fact wants to own his own iconic company. Keighran said he spent the last three years overseeing the look and feel of the software on the new Apple TV. Some may applaud that while others not. for more on this, read the full Re/code report. YAPYAP is a new Patently Apple chicklet-styled condensed news segment. It is specifically designed to provide our fan base with additional news, opinions (pro and con), reviews and other sorts of interesting Apple-centric stories from around the blogosphere. About Comments: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit any comments made on our site. That, by the way, is the hashtag coming into use in Germany for comments on the current refugee/migrant situation. And, yes, as much as there have been multiple reports of German authorities sweeping crimes by refugee-migrants under the rug, this seems very much to be in the past. Not only are German politicians pushing Merkel very hard to fix this, both within and from outside her coalition, but the German press is reporting on the situation quite vigorously. For regular updates, check out dw.com for English news, or the English reporting at Spiegel.de. For instance, right now the top story at Der Spiegel is Merkels Last Stand? Chancellor Running Out of Time on Refugee Issue, which suggests, as the headline implies, that Merkels hold on power is shaky unless she comes up with effective solutions ASAP. At the same time, the focus has turned to migrants from North Africa Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, three countries to which Germany had previously been unable to deport rejected aslyum-claimants. Under discussion are two changes: declaring these countries as safe countries to which individuals can automatically be returned, and putting pressure on these countries, which had been refusing to accept individuals who lacked passports, by threatening them will loss of foreign aid. (Both links are to DW, in English.) Why the focus on these countries? Partly because its a quick fix. The question of what to do with the much larger number of refugees from Sryia and Iraq is much more difficult. But the other reason is that the perpetrators of the Silvesternacht attacks were predominantly North African, not Middle Eastern. And the petty thieves and pickpocketers whove established themselves around the Cologne train station are North African, as well as the similar criminals in Duesseldorf, and these are not new arrivals but made there way to Germany from France, Spain, and Italy over the last three or four years. So, to be sure, these people need to be dealt with. But at the same time it isnt rational to imagine that its only a matter of North Africans. It defies reason to say that its pure coincidence that the groping/molestation attacks occurred simultaneous to the massive number of new arrivals but are unconnected to them. And it worries me that German politicians will confine their measures to this narrower issue and declare the problem solved. Separately, with respect to the pool that had previously banned migrant men due to groping incidents, the city has now issued a statement: The cancellation is not the result of pressure from the medias response, but rather follows intensive discussions with refugees on how they should treat women with respect, regardless of whether they have a migration background or not, the statement said. Bornheim said last week it wanted social workers to teach asylum seekers at shelters in the area about gender equality and the need to respect women, adding that the city was not prepared to compromise on German cultural norms. Once our social workers tell us that they have received the message, well terminate the measure, said Markus Schnapka, head of Bornheims social welfare office. Once again, it is hard to believe that all thats needed is a bit of teaching. In any case, though, it does seem as if there has been a true turning point. These issues arent getting swept under the rug any longer. The recent furore in the Anglican Communion has highlighted yet again the real division in world Christianity. I have analyzed it here. The division is between Christian who, for want of a better term might be called historic Christians and those who are progressive Christians. The historic Christians believe their religion is revealed by God in the person of his Son Jesus Christ, and that the Scriptures are the primary witness of that revelation. They believe the church is the embodiment of the risen Lord Jesus in the world and that his mission to seek and to save that which is lost is still valid and vital. Historic Christians believe in the supernatural life of the Church and expect God to be at work in the world and in their lives. Progressive Christians believe their religion is a historical accident of circumstances and people, that Jesus Christ is, at best, a divinely inspired teacher, that the Scriptures are flawed human documents influenced by paganism and that the church is a body of spiritually minded people who wish to bring peace and justice to all and make the world a better place. I realize that I paint with broad strokes, but the essential divide is recognizable, and believers on both sides should admit that historic and progressive Christians exist within all denominations. The real divide in Christianity is no longer Protestant and Catholic, but progressive and historic. When I say divide I should say battle because both sides are locked in an interminable and unresolvable battle. Interminable because neither side will yield and unresolvable because the divisions extend the the theological and philosophical roots of both aspects. However, it is true to look at the dynamic of progressive Christianity and see that by the end of this century it will have either died out or ceased to be Christianity. At this time modernism still wears Christian clothes in the mainstream Protestant churches and in parts of the Catholic Church. This cannot last much longer for ten very simple reasons: 1. Modernists deny supernaturalism and therefore they are not really religious. Now by religion I mean a transacton with the supernatural. Religion (whether it is primitive people jumping around a campfire or a Solemn High Mass in a Catholic Cathedral) is about an interchange with the other world. It is about salvation of souls, redemption of sin, heaven, hell damnation, the afterlife, angels and demons and all that stuff. Progressives dont deal in all that. For them religion is a matter of fighting for equal rights, making the world a better place, being kind to everyone and spirituality. It doesnt take very long for people to realize that you dont have to go to church for that. So people stop going, and that eventually means the death of progressive Christianity. The first generation of progressive Christians will attend church regularly. The second will attend church sometimes. The third almost never. The fourth and fifth will not see any need for worship. They will conclude that if religion is no more than good works, then the religious ritual is redundantand they would be right. 2. Progressive religion is essentially individualist and not communal. Each person makes up his own mind about matters. Therefore when it comes to religion the fissiparous nature of progressive religion will become more and more acute. Individuals with firm opinions will form ever smaller and more passionate groups with like minded people and the smaller the groups, the more they will eventually wither and die. Progressive Christianity is also subjective and sentimentalist. It eschews doctrine and favors individual spirituality and sentimental responses to doctrines and moral issues. It is not long, therefore, before the individualist and sentimentalist inclinations drive a person from a church that is dogmatic and demanding. Modernists will prefer their own spirituality and emotional experiences to any sort of formal, corporate religious commitment. Thus the modern admission, Im interested in spritituality but not religion. When this attitude prevails, modernist religion dies because its devotees dont see the point of belonging and believing. 4. Progressive Christianity is historically revisionist. They re-write history according to their prejudices. In religious terms this means they are cut off from tradition. They are therefore cut off from the life-stream of real religion. As they cut themselves off from the tradition they will only have the latest religious gimmick, fad or adaptation to contemporary culture. Such an ephemeral attitude cannot provide for long term sustained religious longevity. Religion thrives as a tradition is nurtured and expanded through the years. A religion that destroys tradition therefore destroys itself. 5. Progressive Christianity is based on out of date Biblical scholarship. The cynicism, fashionable doubt and dismissal of the reliability of the Bible is based on rationalist Biblical scholarship that is now well past its sell by date. The archeological, textual and historical discoveries of the last century are making the assumptions of the early twentieth century Protestant Biblical critics look quaint. New, younger Biblical scholars are using the same critical methods of analysis and research to show that the Bible is much more historical than the old German guys thought. The house of cards that is modernist Biblical scholarship is tumbling down and will continue to do so. They progressive Christian will then be left with either a return to historic Christianity or will be looking for the exit door with nothing left of his faith at all. Continue Reading Image Creative Commons High school world religions curricula should not only focus on a religions texts, doctrines, and rituals, but also on how the different religions are practiced today. In a recent essay for Routledge Research in Education and Religion, Dr. Henry Goldschmidt, Director of Education Programs at the Interfaith Center of New York, argues that teachers can promote an understanding of religious diversity through the study of each religions contemporary politics, culture, and public discourse. Some historians and religious scholars refer to this focus on current practice as the study of lived religion. The slide below that Dr. Goldschmidt developed for a webinar compares the Lived Religion model to the World Religion curriculum. Activities that promote the lived religion curriculum include site visits to local houses of worship, and the inclusion of novels, films, and memoirs that deal with religion. In addition, Goldschmidt suggests that students might research the religious diversity of their school, or visit a museum exhibiting religious themes. Dr. Goldschmidt teaches the Lived Religion model to both teachers and students at the Interfaith Center of New York (ICNY). This summer, for example, hes offering a three-week workshop at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. It includes site visits, discussions, lectures and reading. Applications are due March 1st and stipends are available from The National Endowment for the Humanities Patna: Janata Dal U legislator Sarfaraz Alam, the son of controversial Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Mohammed Taslimuddin, a day after being booked for allegedly abusing a couple in Dibrugarh-bound Rajdhani Express on Saturday, denied even being on that train saying he was the victim of a vast conspiracy hatched by his opponents. "I was not traveling by that train on that date. This whole thing is a conspiracy by my political enemies to malign my image. I appeal to the media to question the couple. How can I misbehave or abuse the couple when I was not even in that train?" Alam, who has a checkered past like his father, said. As reported, Indrapal Singh Bedi, who was traveling with his wife on the 12423 Delhi-Guwahati Rajdhani Express last Saturday, filed a complaint against the JD-U legislator and his bodyguard with the GRP at Patna Junction alleging the two, in inebriated condition, used abusive and vulgar language against him and his wife. He also accused the legislator of misbehaving with his wife while also saying that Alam and his bodyguard were traveling without valid railway tickets. On Tuesday, JD-U national General Secretary K. C. Tyagi and spokesperson Neeraj Kumar came to the defense of Alam saying based on the evidence already available, it appeared the charges against the legislator were made up but maintained that the law would take its own course and justice would be served one way or the other. Meanwhile, despite claims of good law and order condition in Bihar by the likes of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Deputy Chief Minister Tejaswi Yadav, a woman doctor in Patna on Tuesday lodged a complaint with the police after receiving a call with the caller demanding Rs. 5 lakh from her in extortion money or face dire consequences. Dr. Raj Kishore Prasad, the husband of the doctor, has lodged an FIR with the Alamganj police station. Patna Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Manu Maharaj confirmed the incident saying attempts were being made to apprehend the criminals. American Released From Iran Says He Feels 'Alive For First Time' 01/20/16 Source: RFE/RL Former U.S. marine Amir Hekmati who was released by Iran over the weekend says he feels lucky to be free again. "I feel really lucky. I feel alive for the first time," Hekmati said on January 19 in his first public comments since his release. Germany -- Amir Hekmati (centre), flanked by U.S. Congressman Dan Kildee (L) and brother-in-law Ramy Kurdi, speaks with media in Landstuhl, January 19, 2016 for the first time since his release. Hekmati,32, spoke to reporters outside the U.S. military's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany where he and two other freed Americans are undergoing medical evaluations. Hekmati and four other Iranian-Americans were released in a prisoner swap over the weekend. Iran announced their release on January 16 on the same day as international sanctions on Tehran were lifted. "As soon as we got out of Iranian air space, the champagne bottles were popped, "Hekmati said. Hekmati who spent more than 4 years in a prison in Iran, said the news of his release came as a surprise. "I was at a point where I had just sort of accepted the fact that I was going to be spending 10 years in prison," he said. Hekmati was arrested in August 2011 on espionage charges dismissed by his family. He was originally sentenced to death. An appeal court later commuted the sentence to a 10-year jail term. He was reportedly held in solitary confinement and subjected to psychological torture. Hekmati did not provide details about his time in prison. He said that his military training helped him withstand the pressure he faced. Under the prisoner swap deal, the United States on January 16 offered clemency to seven Iranians, six of whom are dual U.S.-Iranian citizens, who had been convicted or are pending trial in the United States. The prisoner swap took place after 14 months of confidential discussions in Switzerland. Based on reporting by AP, NBC and AFP Copyright (c) 2016 RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. www.rferl.org US firms can do Iran business via EU 01/20/16 Source: Press TV The recent lifting of the economic sanctions against Iran has already started a rush among international corporations to start to set their feet in the country's vast consumer market of around 80 million. While the European enterprises may be the first to benefit from the opening of Iran's doors to the world, some are speculating that US corporations can also venture into the Iranian market through their EU offshoots. The US is keeping most of its sanctions on Iran in place. That means US citizens and businesses still can't do business in Iran, said CNNMoney in a report. The sanctions that were dropped over the weekend were mostly to allow non-US citizens and businesses the ability to head to Iran without fear of American penalties. "This will make American firms the biggest loser of the nuclear deal," Majid Rafizadeh, a Middle East scholar at Harvard, told CNNMoney. Nevertheless, the deal does allow the US to import Iranian carpets, caviar and pistachios. On the flip side, the US can also now export commercial planes to Iran, which should be a boost to Boeing, the report added. Medicines and some consumer technology products are also allowed to be exported, although most businesses need a waiver from the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control before they ship anything to Iran. Still, American titans like McDonald's or Apple are left in a very awkward place by the deal, the CNNMoney added. But it emphasized that the doors to US enterprises for entering the Iranian market is not completely closed. "If a company like Apple or HP wants to get involved with Iran, it would have to do it with their foreign subsidiaries," explains Patrick Clawson, research director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. But even then, "they have to establish a very clear line so their foreign subsidiaries aren't reporting to any American national." In short, Americans can't be involved in the decision making or business deals. "This whole issue is going to be a big compliance headache," Farhad Alavi of the Akrivis Law Group has told CNNMoney. Analysts Watch Iran's Post-sanctions Relationship with Neighbors 01/20/16 By Heather Murdock, VOA Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, left, presents a draft of the country's new budget and sixth development plan to the parliament speaker in an open session of parliament, in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 17, 2016. (source: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, left, presents a draft of the country's new budget and sixth development plan to the parliament speaker in an open session of parliament, in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 17, 2016.(source: Islamic Republic News Agency CAIRO- Now that international sanctions against Iran have been lifted, the Islamic Republic's relations with its neighbors, in particular Saudi Arabia, are being closely watched. Saudi Arabia, the dominant Sunni country in the region, is particularly on edge as Shi'ite-led Iran prepares to rejoin the world economy, said Gulf State Analytics founder Giorgio Cafiero. Sanctions relief is expected to release $100 billion worth of frozen assets back into the Islamic Republic's sagging economy. The financial windfall is considered one of the premier achievements of the current reformist government. Iran's central bank on Tuesday said it already sees $32 billion unfrozen, and industries like oil and air travel have resumed international business. Over the course of the nuclear negotiations that led to sanctions relief in exchange for a scaled-back nuclear program in Iran, the kingdom has been increasingly suspicious of U.S.-Iran relations, Cafiero said. Saudi Arabia views increased cooperation between the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama and Iran as a threat to U.S.-Saudi relations. "The Saudi leadership views the Obama administration's diplomatic overtures to Tehran as nothing short of betrayal," he said, "and as a major setback to Riyadh's geostrategic interests in the Middle East." Saudi Arabia's recent execution of a prominent Shi'ite cleric signals that the kingdom does not intend to take this setback lightly, according to Cafiero. The execution prompted an attack on the Saudi embassy in Iran and a subsequent severing of diplomatic ties between the two regional giants. "The Saudis' execution of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr was intended to send a message not only to a domestic audience, but also to Washington," he said. "Put simply, Saudi Arabia will seek to counter Iran's expanded influence on its own terms." Zero sum game Iran and Saudi Arabia are often described as being perpetually at odds because both countries view their relationship as a zero sum game. This means they view any economic or geopolitical win from one side as an equal loss for the other. Iran, however, is suffering under a deep recession brought on not only by sanctions, but by corruption and poor management, according to economists, and it could be years before the average Iranian feels the benefit of sanctions relief. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Tuesday that sanctions relief marked the beginning of a "difficult road" for his country as it re-enters the global economy. "Today is just the start for an innocent human who was kept chained unjustly by the hands and feet for 12 years," he said. "Sanctions are gone, but there is a long way between sanctions and development." JCPOA Implementation: A new season in Iran's economy President Hassan Rouhani addresses a conference of entrepreneurs in Tehran on January 19, 2016. (source: President Hassan Rouhani addresses a conference of entrepreneurs in Tehran on January 19, 2016.(source: Islamic Republic News Agency Rouhani's remarks come two days after the United States imposed new sanctions against the country's ballistic missile program. The new sanctions may partially be an attempt to allay fears among Gulf countries, said Theodore Karasik, Gulf State Analytics' Dubai-based senior adviser. But, he added, they may not be enough to quiet the increasingly tense region. "This move is a nod toward the [Gulf Cooperation Council] and their concern about the Islamic Republic's capabilities in this arena," he added. "However, the sanctions are only targeting a few firms and individuals." Better ties with West In the case of the Iran nuclear deal, one of the major "wins" for Iran is increased cooperation with Western nations, evidenced not just by the deal, but by diplomatic successes that followed, according to Reza Marashi, research director at the National Iranian American Council. The swift release of 10 U.S. sailors who the United States said had mistakenly entered Iranian waters and the release of several Americans from Iranian jails in a prisoner swap are both a result of the diplomatic channels opened through the nuclear agreement, he said. "I think it's a result of both sides deciding to use the diplomatic channel that the nuclear deal created to resolve other problems of mutual concern," Marashi said, adding, "Hopefully, this trend will continue." The trend, however, is fragile. Some hail the deal as one that will prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon in the near future and potentially rescue its economy, but it has also angered many other people. "Such progress achieved on diplomatic fronts is not irreversible," Cafiero said. "There are political factions in both Washington and Tehran that oppose diplomacy and prefer a confrontational relationship." And for those on the Iranian side who prefer confrontation, new sanctions can be held up as proof of Western treachery. Iranian leaders have already condemned the sanctions, saying they are illegitimate and will not impact the country's ballistic missile program. Additionally, the United States will have a new president next year, and Obama's overtures toward Iran have been highly controversial inside the country, according to Camelia Entekhabifard, an Iranian author and news commentator. After 35 years without formal diplomatic ties, she said, "it doesn't look like Iran and the next U.S. government have plans to normalize the relations." Iran: Is the "leader's call" to the opposition to participate in the elections serious? 01/20/16 By Sohrab Mobasheri (source: Radio Zamaneh) Ayatollah Khamenei, Irans Supreme Leader On Saturday January 9, Ayatollah Khamenei, Irans Supreme Leader, spoke about the approaching parliamentary and Assembly of Experts elections, saying: As in the past, we urge that even those who do not believe in the regime or the leadership should come and vote. He was referring to similar statements he made in 2013 in the lead-up to the presidential elections. On January 9, he said: All-inclusive participation in the elections will contribute to the stability and strength of the Islamic system, the continuity of security, the credibility and legitimacy of the regime on the international scene and the imposing stature of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the eyes of enemies. This raises the question of why someone who is against the regime would want to strengthen it by participating in the elections. There is also still the question of whether Iranians in exile could or should actually engage in even discussing the elections, which elect representatives inside the country, or if that should be left to Iranians living in Iran. Healthy and Free Elections This article has a different concern and that is the general question of which conditions are required to have elections be an effective tool to impose the will of the people and maintain democratic control over power. This could, therefore, be a response to the recent statements of the leader of the Islamic Republic and a query about why he would expect those he addresses to take him seriously. Many things can be emptied of their content, leaving only a shell. Elections can be named as one of those things. The reform and evolution of political systems over centuries to transform elections into an efficient mechanism to reflect the will of the people have resulted in public acceptance of certain measures and criteria, and disregard for the latter is often aimed at eviscerating elections of their content. The most obvious criteria for the elections are clearly related to their transparency, which means real votes have to be counted without any manipulation. Unfortunately, under the Islamic Republic, the necessary guidelines to make sure ballot boxes are filled with real votes have never been in place. Mohammad Maleki, who in 1979 was close to the interim government that ran the first Islamic Republic referendum, writes: I was in charge of the Tajrish Shohada Hospital polling station in the March 1979 Referendum. Around noon, one of the local boys who was also a relative of mine (an educated fellow and teacher at one of Shemiran high schools) rushed into the polling station to vote. When I asked for his ID, he just laughed and said, Get out of here! I have already voted in more than 10 polling station so far. In the Islamic Republic, the only control over making sure each person gets one vote is by way of a stamp on a page of the birth certificate, and no one checks how many birth certificates are being carried by each person, nor is there any safeguard against duplicated birth certificates. There has been continued criticism of the Islamic Republic for failing to compile voters lists after 37 years. An organization can easily compromise the health of an election by systematically sending its people to certain polling stations to cast ballots. Regional voter registration could easily prevent such actions. Voter registration, voter compliance with the actual registration list and the actual vote count should all be carried out under the supervision of representatives from all political parties, including the opposition. Iran has rejected international supervision of the voting process, which is a commonly acceptable way of guaranteeing the health of elections. However, even the foregoing conditions cannot guarantee fair and free elections. Free elections can only be realized in a country where people are not imprisoned for political activity and there is freedom of media and speech. The contribution of big money in election campaigns should be fully regulated and transparent. There should be freedom of assembly. And most importantly, the right to run in the elections should not arbitrarily withdrawn. Response to Islamic Republic Leaders Invitation The supervisory control of the Guardian Council prevents free and fair elections in Iran. Those who want to run in the elections must be found eligible by the Guardian Council, and the council has clearly stated that it looks at political criteria, including the individuals position regarding the election protests of 2009. This means that anyone who does not subscribe to the condemnatory language and stance of the establishment regarding the election protests of 2009 and its leaders will be disqualified from running in the elections. Under the leadership of Ayatollah Khamenei, Iranian elections, which have failed since the beginning to meet internationally recognized standards, have deteriorated even further since his Guardian Council appointees have progressively reduced the set of citizens eligible to run in the elections. Never mind the rejected dissidents; in the last presidential election, even Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of the Islamic Republic founders, was found ineligible to run. As long as the Islamic Republic refuses to take any real steps toward guaranteeing fair and free elections, its invitations to the opposition to participate in the elections will not be taken seriously. Even the opposition groups that feel compelled to take part in the elections to maintain the countrys stability in a war-torn region will begin having doubts about the possible stability that an election lacking the accepted standards of freedom and fairness could yield. Iran cannot have stability so long as a large portion of its citizens is excluded from the centres of power and decision-making. The 37 years of Islamic Republic experience is a testimony to that. The best 2-in-1 laptop 2022: our picks of the best convertible laptops These are the best 2-in-1 laptops you can buy right now Facebook is expanding its presence on Tor with experimental support for Android devices via a tool developed in part by an intern. The social network in October 2014 launched a Tor-friendly version of its website, allowing folks to access a more stable version of the service. Now, Facebook is rolling out Android support over the next few days. To get started, visit the Google Play store(Opens in a new window) or Orbot F-Droid repository(Opens in a new window) to download Orbot: Proxy with Tor. Orbot lets mobile phone users to access the Web, IM, and email without being monitored or blocked by their carrier, Tor explains(Opens in a new window) on its website. "We're releasing this feature over the next few days to seek feedback which will help us create a great experience for using Facebook over Tor on Android," the company wrote in a blog post(Opens in a new window). Once installed, navigate to Facebook's App Settings menu to enable the function via a new preference switch. Excited? Thank Will Shackleton, former Facebook intern and current computer science student at the University of Cambridge. The developer behind apps like Network Spoofer, DroidPad, and Bright Day is also responsible for bringing Tor to the Android platform. Tor did not immediately respond to PCMag's request for comment. But a spokeswoman told Reuters(Opens in a new window) that Android support goes a long way in helping to expand the anonymous network. "Everybody in the world needs more privacy online and almost everybody is on Facebook," she told the news site. "This will allow people to choose whether to share their location or not. For some people, this is convenience. For others it is lifesaving." Don't hold your breath, though, for iOS compatibility; Tor has no plans to support Facebook's app on Apple iDevices, Reuters reported. (Opens in a new window) A free network of tunnels for routing Web requests and page downloads, Tor makes it impossible for the site you access to figure out who you are. It was once an acronym for "The Onion Router," the implication being that it offers many layers of security. Learning is no longer confined to the classroom. With Google's new Expeditions Pioneer Program(Opens in a new window), students can take field trips to Asia, Australia, and the U.K. from their desks. Today, the tech titan introduced two more locations(Opens in a new window) to its growing list: London's Buckingham Palace and Australia's Great Barrier Reef. Schoolchildren around the world can explore the world's largest coral reef system from the comfort of dry land in a new experience designed and produced by Sir David Attenborough (pictured) and Alchemy VR. The broadcaster and naturalist guides viewers through the warm tropical waters off the coast of Oz to discover what a clown fish looks like and how it feels to be surrounded by a school of young snapper fish. "The Great Barrier Reef is a wonder of the natural world and I've been fantastically privileged to visit twice," Attenborough said in a statement. "Through virtual reality, I'm lucky enough to be able to share my experiences with audiences of all ages to allow them to explore and learn about these diverse ecosystems in a more immersive way." Since the Expeditions Pioneer Program launched in September, more than 500,000 students have tried it out. And while many request future trips to far-flung locations, there is one spot people long to visit: Buckingham Palace. In partnership with the Royal Collection Trust, Google is releasing an Expedition of the famous estate, chock full of historical facts and extravagant trappings. But you don't have to pull a Billy Madison just to see the royal residence: The Palace also produced a YouTube 360 video(Opens in a new window), so anyone with a smartphone (or Web browser) can take a private tour with the paintings curator. Today also marks the launch of a beta version of the Google Expeditions app for select schools that sign up to participate. The app is available to download on Android phones and tablets, for use in class. The Expeditions Pioneer Program is currently visiting schools and organizations in the U.S., Sweden, and Canada; more regions will be added through the school year. The fastest public Wi-Fi we've ever seen hit the streets of New York this week, and it torches Starbucks's Google-provided free Wi-Fi. It's an amazing benefit for anyone traveling to New York, and potentially an even greater one for New York residents. I went and tested them today. The first of supposedly 7,500 LinkNYC kiosks started to broadcast Wi-Fi yesterday along 3rd Avenue in Manhattan, for about a half-mile above 14th Street. CityBridge, a Qualcomm-backed consortium, has pledged to build 510 kiosks by July, and 7,500 by 2020. Although, given delays(Opens in a new window) in other New York infrastructure projects, I'd take that second date with a big grain of salt. The kiosks are all wired with gigabit fiber and a Vonage VoIP phone in the front for free, global calling, all of which is paid for via giant advertising panels on the side. There are also two USB charging ports under the phone panel, and the phone's tablet face can also be used for maps and Web browsing, LinkNYC says. For now, the tablets aren't turned on, and the only thing you get is Wi-Fi. But the Wi-Fi is really good. The most impressive thing is the range. I tested two kiosks, at 20th Street and 16th Street. (Interestingly, the kiosks are often installed in pairs across the street from each other.) The 20th Street kiosk had a usable range of a little less than 200 feet, which is amazing. The 16th Street kiosk was usable to about 125 feet, still pretty impressive for public Wi-Fi. Logging into the kiosks is simple. You don't need to create a username and password, although you have to enter your email address for mailings. Once you've entered your email address, you have the option to install a Hotspot 2.0 trusted network profile for recent iPhones, which enables a secure auto-login from there on out. I strongly suggest doing so. Everyone else just has to go through the portal page to log in. The speeds crush other local free Wi-Fi providers. One of the kiosks was just outside a Starbucks, so I could sit in the Starbucks and compare them. The Starbucks Wi-Fi was clearly capped to about 15Mbps down and 2Mbps up; I got very flat, similar results on repeated Ookla speed tests. The LinkNYC connection averaged 245Mbps down and 209Mbps up in the same location. And that Starbucks, which was pretty empty, outpaced other free Wi-Fi businesses I tested. In a nearby Dunkin Donuts, the cap was at 10Mbps down and 2Mbps up. In a much busier Starbucks, with many people using mobile devices, average speeds were down to 7.4Mbps down and 0.4Mbps up as the network was congested. The LinkNYC kiosk at 20th Street, meanwhile, offered 93Mbps down even 100 feet away. That's amazing. Obviously, speeds will slow down once there are more people on the network, but it looks like these kiosks have plenty of headroom. The range is important because it makes LinkNYC far more useful than it first appears. You don't have to be standing near a pillar to be connected; you can be in a nearby business, or (here's where things get interesting) a nearby home. LinkNYC probably won't replace mobile LTE networks, although its network is dense enough in Manhattan that many locals may be able to step down on their data plans. But if it can reach into apartment building windows, it may offer an alternative for low-income New Yorkers, and others who have felt betrayed as Verizon has failed on its promise to install FiOS citywide. The company has a full privacy policy(Opens in a new window) online, which is pretty standard ISP stuff. LinkNYC says the first 510 kiosks will go up 3rd Avenue and 8th Avenue from 14th Street, and also be placed in "northern Manhattan," the South Bronx, Jamaica Queens, along Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn and near the Staten Island Ferry on the Staten Island side. You can follow the installations on Twitter @linkNYC(Opens in a new window). Microsoft plans to donate US$1 billion in cloud services over three years to nongovernmental organizations and researchers, in a bid to provide access to these services to communities that cant afford them. The donation by Microsoft, the size of which has been calculated at fair market value, could also bring long-term business benefits, as it would help the company win over a number of potential long-term users to its cloud platform. Among the questions being asked at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland is how to make the benefits of cloud technology available universally rather than let only wealthy societies have access to the data, intelligence, analytics and insights that come from cloud computing, wrote Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in a blog post Tuesday. The new Microsoft Philanthropies arm of the company, set up last month, will provide nonprofits with the full suite of Microsoft cloud services, including Microsoft Azure, so that NGOs can run applications and make use of computing and storage power, CRM Online to manage relationships with donors and beneficiaries, and the Enterprise Mobility Suite to manage all of their devices, applications, and data. Microsoft aims to address 70,000 NGOs through one or more of its cloud offerings by the end of 2017 and will focus on serving even more groups after that every year, Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith wrote in a blog post. In 2016 alone, the company expects to donate close to $350 million in cloud services to nonprofits, according to Smith. The other leg of the Microsoft program is the expansion by 50 percent of donations for its current Microsoft Azure for Research program, which has so far provided free cloud computing resources for over 600 research projects on six continents. Microsoft is also planning to donate cloud services combined with last-mile connectivity for underserved communities around the world. The company is focused on using TV white spaces, which are unused portions of wireless spectrum in the frequency bands generally used for television, for last-mile connectivity. Microsoft has been pushing its cloud services around the world, including setting up data centers in some countries to meet local government requirements that data should be stored locally. Philanthropy efforts by tech companies have, however, been viewed with skepticism, as they are seen as secretly promoting business agendas. Facebooks Free Basics, a program to provide select Internet services including Facebook to users without data charges, has been criticized in India as a way to promote the social networking platform. Microsofts program to use TV white spaces for connectivity has also been criticized by the Indian mobile industry, which is demanding that the white spaces should be auctioned rather than given free. A kidnapping investigation has ended with a 7-year-old Highland girl safely back with her parents and her 63-year-old grandmother behind bars thanks, in part, to a good Samaritan, say San Bernardino County sheriffs officials. Teresa Arias was arrested Wednesday, Jan. 20, and booked into West Valley Detention Center in Fontana for investigation of kidnapping. Her bail is $1 million. She and young Jasmine Jazzie Felix were found in Pomona. The girls parents had left the child in the care of her grandmother on Tuesday while they went to work, investigators said in a written statement. When the parents returned home, Jasmine and Arias werent there. About an hour later, Arias called the girls parents, telling them she took the child and was never going to bring her back, the news release said. Investigators suspected that the grandmother may have traveled to Pomona to get bus fare to her home in Madera. Arias does not have a car, so investigators thought shed likely be using public transportation. She has been staying with her family in Highland since November. A few hours after going public with details of the case, Highland detectives learned that Arias had been seen near Indian Hill Boulevard and Kingsley Avenue in Pomona. About the same time, the childs parents distributed fliers in Pomona and left one flier at Samos Burgers, 701 S. Garey Ave. When owner George Tsakanias spotted the flier, he realized that the woman and child had been at the restaurant earlier that day. Tsakanias began to drive the area and located them at an apartment complex along the 500 block of East Phillips Boulevard, according to the sheriffs statement. Tsakanias lost sight of (them) and immediately called Pomona police. Pomona officers found the grandmother and child walking along Phillips Boulevard near Garey Avenue, detained them, and called Highland detectives. The child was returned to her family. California Department of Fish and Wildlife officials will not investigate the death of a tiger cub that was found wandering streets in the Hemet area in September. The 6-month old cub died after receiving surgery at the Lions, Tigers & Bears exotic animal sanctuary in Alpline, facility officials announced Tuesday, Jan. 19. Fish and Wildlife spokesman Andrew Hughan said the agency previously stopped investigating how the animal ended up in Hemet and will not investigate the surgery practices of Lions, Tigers & Bears. Deaths during medical procedures happen, and we have nothing but respect for them, they do the highest quality work, Hughan said. The Bengal-Siberian cub was in bad shape prior to entering the facility, Hughan said. A woman on Sept. 3 turned the malnourished, declawed tiger into the Ramona Humane Society, which turned him over to the California Department of Fish & Wildlife. Hughan said the animals death is a tragic reminder of why tigers dont belong in homes especially homes in Southern California. Thats why people should not posses lions, tigers and bears at their homes, Hughan said. Theyre not qualified to take care of exotic species. A propaganda magazine put out by ISIS praises the San Bernardino shooters as martyrs defiantly terrorizing the crusaders in their own stronghold. The latest issue of the online Dabiq magazine applauds the Dec. 2 terrorist attack and shooters Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, a Redlands couple killed in a gun battle with police that day. Thats what we expect from an apocalyptic death cult like ISIS, said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino. The magazines 13th issue, which appears in English and other languages, dedicates its two-page foreword to the attack against non-Muslims in San Bernardino, using a derogatory Arabic term for them. MORE: All the latest developments related to the San Bernardino shooting The piece states the way Farook answered the Khilafahs call to strike the crusaders in their own lands was unique because rather than carrying out jihad alone, he did the attack with his wife. The magazine also seeks to recruit more terrorists by shaming them, stating Malik was willing to attack when many men arent. ISIS has described the mass shooting that killed 14 people as inspired rather than orchestrated by the group. The group revels in any attack they direct or inspire against the West, Levin said Tuesday, Jan. 19. The magazine is used for sophisticated, online recruitment and propaganda by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, he added. The magazines editorialists write that they hope the couples sacrifices, which included leaving behind their infant daughter, would inspire Muslims in America, Europe and Australia to their cause. ISIS prefers terrorism on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001, and the Paris attacks, but do-it-yourself terrorism on a smaller scale serves as a recruiting tool, Levin said. Theyd much rather have more coordinated mass attacks, he said. In the meantime, theyre happy to kill lower numbers of people and still remain relevant. Contact the writer: 951-368-9444 or shurt@pressenterprise.com SACRAMENTO Californians would be limited to buying a maximum of one rifle or shotgun each month under newly proposed legislation. It would be the same limit currently in place for handguns. Democratic Assemblyman Miguel Santiago of Los Angeles says his AB1674 responds to Californians purchasing more long guns than handguns in the last decade. Currently, anyone can buy as many rifles or shotguns as they want at any time. According to federal charges against Enrique Marquez Jr. of Riverside, Marquez made false statements when obtaining each of the semiautomatic rifles used in the Dec. 2 massacre in San Bernardino. Those weapons were purchased more than a month apart, on Nov. 14, 2011, and Feb. 22, 2012. Meanwhile, Democratic Sen. Richard Pan of Sacramento introduced SB877. It would require the Department of Public Health to collect data on violent deaths in the state, including gun deaths. Other lawmakers last week introduced two bills aimed at closing a legal loophole that allows firearms manufacturers to include bullet buttons that let rifle owners rapidly exchange empty ammunition magazines for full ones. Construction of a San Bernardino clinic and health care trade school is nearly complete, bringing a vision for low-cost medical care and training closer to reality. County and state officials toured Loma Linda University Healths facility the Loma Linda University Health-San Bernardino campus Tuesday, Jan. 19. The facility, at 250 S. G St., includes San Manuel Gateway College and is being built by Loma Linda University Health. The college will function like a trade school for people looking for jobs such as nursing or dental assistants. Construction on the San Bernardino clinic and college began in late 2014, and was made possible by a $10 million donation by the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians. Dr. Richard Hart, president of Loma Linda University Health, led a tour of the 152,000-square-foot facility Tuesday afternoon. Officials hope to will serve low-income people without health care in the area, Hart said. Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Redlands, joined, along with San Bernardino City Unified School District Superintendent Dale Marsden and several representatives of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians. Winding through hallways lined with scaffolding, exposed ventilation ducts and electrical wire, Hart and project managers explained the clinics dual purposes as a treatment center and educational hub. The $68 million project, expected to open in July, will be one of the few places physicians will train alongside trade students and teenagers in a a certificate program, Hart said. To be successful in this field, you have to have the cognitive knowledge and practical skills, Hart said inside a lab where computer-controlled manikins will soon simulate heart attacks and strokes. This type of clinical exposure will cement the learning. Roughly 80 percent of the building will be devoted to clinic use, while the rest will be used for educational programs for youths. There are plans for a community dental program, pharmacy, cadaver lab and operation room simulators. A restaurant on the ground floor will offer locals a place to grab a bite. Inside an unfinished room with exposed vents and metal framework, San Manuel Gateway Colleges new Executive Director Arwyn Wild said the room will benefit the community. There will be graduate student presentations on prenatal care, diabetes and cooking classes. The public will feel very invited, warm, and welcome. Hospital officials expect more than 250 students will complete programs during the facilitys first year. The goal is to make the programs affordable for students through grants and scholarships, hospital officials said. Contact the writer: 951-368-9644, poneill@pressenterprise.com, @PE_PatrickO An 18-year-old San Bernardino woman accused of stabbing her boyfriend to death Jan. 11 pleaded not guilty to a murder charge in her first court appearance Tuesday, Jan. 19, in San Bernardino County Superior Court, according to court records. Tips from the public led police to arrest Nakasia James at an apartment complex in Hemet on Sunday, Jan. 17, according to San Bernardino police. The day after Dorian Powell, 21, of San Bernardino, was fatally wounded on Central Avenue, a Facebook account using the name Nakasia Macc James wrote in a post that she stabbed her boyfriend in a fight, Didnt think I would hurt him, but he died. A police spokesman previously said it would be impossible to prove that James made the post herself. This week the Temecula Valley Unified School District is holding the first in a series of community meetings on a plan to transition to by-trustee election areas for its governing board. Currently, the five-member TVUSD school board is elected at-large. The first of three meetings for the purpose of gathering community input is 6 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 20, at Bella Vista Middle School, 31650 Browning Street. Future community meetings are scheduled for Feb. 4 at Vail Ranch Middle School and Feb. 10 at Temecula Middle School. Information: www.tvusd.k12.ca.us. Hemet Unified School District Superintendent Barry Kayrell, who has spent 41 years in education, will retire at the end of June, it was announced at the school board meeting Tuesday, Jan. 19. Barry has been an outstanding leader for Hemet Unified, Governing Board President Jim Smith said in a written Hemet Unified School District statement. We will miss his breadth of knowledge, experience, humor and wise counsel. Kayrell, 63, became Hemet school districts superintendent Sept. 11, 2012. It was the second time he applied for the position. After 40-plus years, its time, Kayrell said Wednesday. Theres always a starting point, a middle and the end. This is the end. Kayrell said hes leaving at an exciting time for education, with the Local Control and Accountability Plan changing how schools are funded by the state. The LCAP is kind of a breath of fresh air, giving us local autonomy to prioritize our budget, he said. Its been energizing. During his tenure, Kayrell faced particularly tough negotiations with Hemet teachers. In November 2014, the teachers issued a no-confidence vote. Billy Valenzuela, president of the Hemet Teachers Association, credited Kayrell with steering Hemet Unified out of tough economic times. We know that we have not seen eye-to-eye with him in the past, but understand that much of that had to do with disagreements about economic forecasts, not necessarily personal animosity, Valenzuela said. A search firm will be hired to find Kayrells replacement. A proposal will be sent out in a few days, according to the district release. Prior to his time in Hemet, he served as superintendent at Beaumont Unified School District for seven years. Among the challenges he faced in Hemet was the districts size: its more than twice the size of Beaumonts. Kayrell has also served as assistant superintendent of human resources for the Perris Union High School District, as superintendent in Oroville in Northern California, as a teacher and as a community day school director. Ontario police released a sketch Wednesday, Jan. 20, of the man accused of grabbing a 14-year-old girl and attempting to remove her clothing on Chaffey High School grounds Saturday. Officers have also been canvassing neighborhoods near Chaffey High School to see if anyone spotted the man, who is described as a Hispanic adult in his late 30s, early 40s with black hair, brown eyes and a patchy beard. He stands about 5-foot-10 and weighs about 200 pounds. The high schools surveillance footage captured the man grabbing the 14-year-old girl while she was leaving a school event. He dragged her behind some bushes and attempted to remove her clothing, according to an Ontario Police Department news release. The girl broke free and ran away while the man chased her, the news release said. School employees saw the girl running and came to her aid as the suspect turned around and ran away. Anyone with information about the incident is asked to call Ontario detectives at 909-395-2764 or 909-395-2001. Information can also be reported anonymously at 1-800-78-CRIME (27463) or www.wetip.com. Good news for teachers looking for work in the Inland Empire. The Corona-Norco Unified School District is hiring for the 2016-17 school year, and officials will be hosting a job fair from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 30, at the JFK Middle College High School at 1951 Third St., Norco. With roughly 53,000 students, Corona-Norco is the ninth largest district in California. It consists of 31 elementary schools, eight middle schools, five high schools, and several other alternative schools across Corona, Norco and Eastvale. The district is expanding rapidly, and teachers are needed for a variety of age groups. Anyone who is fully credentialed by July 1 is encouraged to apply online at EdJoin.org and attend the job fair, said Deputy Superintendent of Human Resources Samuel Buenrostro. Contact the writer: 951-368-9644, poneill@pressenterprise.com, @PE_PatrickO Gov. Jerry Browns annual State of the State address, to be delivered in Sacramento on Thursday, comes as California enjoys financial stability, with tax revenue projected to come in $3.6 billion above prior expectations. But while the massive shortfalls from the Great Recession are over, state lawmakers still face a costly to-do list that includes finding a way to address a $59 billion road-repair backlog and a June 30 deadline to fix a Medi-Cal issue, which, if unaddressed, could cost the state $1 billion in federal funding. The states tax on managed-care health plans is set to expire because it doesnt comply with the Affordable Care Act. The governors press office Tuesday declined to release details of Browns speech. Transportation and Medi-Cal were the subject of separate special legislative sessions called by the governor. But nothing has come out of either session. Browns proposed state budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1 attempts to address both issues. The governor wants to spend $36 billion over 10 years to maintain and repair highways and allocate $13.5 billion for local roads, funded in part by a new $65-per-vehicle highway user fee. To close the Medi-Cal funding gap, Brown is proposing a broader three-year tax on managed-care health plans. The governor maintains the new tax plan will be a net reduction in taxes paid by the health care industry. But the new Medi-Cal tax and the highway user fee could be tough sells in the Legislature, where Republicans have said they wont support any new taxes. Democrats lack the two-thirds majority needed to pass tax increases without GOP help. Brown, a Democrat, also faces pressure from members of his own party to spend money on various causes. Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, is leading a group of senators who want to spend $2 billion to house the homeless. Brown has said the state must avoid new ongoing spending commitments and sock money away for when the next recession hits. Climate change could be mentioned in the State of the State address, which will be given to a joint session of the Assembly and Senate. The governor, who attended a global climate change conference in Paris late last year, suffered a setback in October when a landmark climate change bill was stripped of provisions that would have cut petroleum use by vehicles in half by 2030. In his budget, Brown wants to use money from the cap-and-trade program to fund measures intended to reduce auto emissions that contribute to global warming. Members of the Inland delegation to Sacramento have different ideas for what they want the governor to talk about during his speech. Assemblywoman Cheryl Brown, D-San Bernardino, wants more money for seniors who receive supplemental security income and disability benefits. When the recession hit, money for those beneficiaries went into the states general fund, said Cheryl Brown, who is not related to the governor. Thats still going on, and everyone else has recovered, she said. They cant buy their food. They cant buy their medicine. Assemblyman Jose Medina, D-Riverside, wants the governor to address higher education. News that UC enrollment of in-state students is dropping is troubling, said Medina, who chairs the Assemblys higher education committee. Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez, R-Lake Elsinore, said she hopes Brown discusses paying more for transportation infrastructure without raising taxes. With California in a long-term drought, the governor also should talk about building more water storage facilities, she said. Contact the writer: 951-368-9547 or jhorseman@pressenterprise.com The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) is the oldest and most visited gallery in Oz. The gallery hosts some legit international and local artists, including Andy Warhol an exhibit going on RN and should check out A.S.A.P. if you havent already! An awesome opening has come up for a Senior Web Designer (MELB) to join and lead the web team into the way of the future of the NGV website. To be suited for the role, the right side of your brain will be a little more switched on than most, as youll be responsible for creative ideas, concepts, design and development of the NGV website and other digital aspects like web apps and interactive exhibition displays. If youre a master of multimedia platforms, consider yourself a genius of the design world, and appreciate le arts, then shoot through your CV HERE! ASOS is one of the most visited/favourited/frothed-on fashion platforms, helping the world dress a little better. ASOS are on the hunt for some Aussie based tertiary students to act as ASOS On Campus Student Insiders (AUS). To fit the ASOS Insider prereqs, youre gonna already have to be the go-to person in your group for any fashion and lyf(style) advice. You will be expected to always be across all the current trendz and have some immaculate style yaself. As an Insider, youll be curating fashion and lifestyle based content in a tone that rings true with your mates. Did we mention youll be provided with fully paid training from the ASOS editorial, social and marketing teams?! With a side of a personal ASOS discount code to help you feel better about dat overflowing shopping cart. If you wanna work for one of the most successful online farshun platforms, and youre able to conjure up some social media zingers, then do not delay and apply HERE! News Corp Australia is the nations largest media company operating over 150 household name brands across all-of-the platforms, including The Australian, news.com.au and of course NT News! A sweet gig has arisen for one news profesh to join the team as the Deputy Head of Production (DAR)! This freshly made role will see the ideal candidate assisting with production, page layout and quality assurance of content within the NT News and Sunday Territorian. If youre a potential for this dream job, youll need to have an eye for newsworthy content, as well as have a proactive attitude, cause youll be assisting the Head of Production with planning and execution of special project lift outs. If youre an experienced editor with a solid background in layouts and news production, and youre all about those innovative, collaborative and creative vibes then get amongst it and apply HERE! Dentsu Mitchell is one of Ozs leading media agencies and is part of the Dentsu Aegis Network, a global marketing and comms agency of over 30,000 peeps. A rad opportunity has arisen for a Client Service Manager (ACT) to join the ambitious team. As a Client Service Manager, youll be primarily providing support to the Client Service Director to develop and implement innovative media strategies, as well as implement the planning and buying of those strategies, for a cray array of clients. So, if you already have some stellar media planning/buying experience under your belt, and youre keen-beans on joining a strategic and collaborative team, then shoot your CV through HERE! oOh! Media specializes in providing its crazy portfolio of clientz with unmissable creative media solutions, connecting with consumers while they are away from home. oOh! has the largest digital advertising network in Australia to create effective-as-fuck impact for brands, and specializes in all the platforms you could think of, including big ass billboards, experiential marketing and out of home advertising. A wicked opp has arisen for an Editor (SYD) to join the oOh! Media editorial guys in their North Syd HQ. To be perf for the role, youll need to have some solid experience in the digital publishing realm (3 years +), and be comfy working under multiple hats, including a writer or editor. You will be a chill individual, who isnt frazzled by constructive criticism, and is able to implement style guides easily. And most importantly, youll need to be into all things small business and lifestyle! If this sounds like your cup o joe, then get to it and apply HERE. All deets courtesy of Pedestrian Jobs. Dont let your dream job slip you by Love your work! Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and get yourself signed up to our Daily Job Alerts. PEDESTRIAN.TV has partnered with CommBank because theyre in the business of highlighting the unsung, spectacular people making Australia great. The Australian of the Year Awards work to celebrate truly exceptional citizens, as well as give them a platform to further their causes. CommBank have been supporting these awards for over 35 years, and this support prompted them to kick-start the Australian of the Day initiative. They sent eight young photographers, one from each state and territory, to unearth everyday people making our nation the fantastic place that it is. We spoke to Peter Drew, the street artist behind the Real Australians Say Welcome posters and nominee for South Australias Young Australian of the Year, about the success of his campaign. Hes one of the many people making a real difference in Australia as are those showcased through the Australian of the Day initiative. To read more feel-good stories of everyday Australians doing extraordinary things, head to the Australian of the Day website HERE. Having a look back at 2015, Peter Drews Real Australians Say Welcome campaign sure did make us, as a country, take a good look at ourselves. Weve covered his work a few times in the past (because its a brilliant idea and warrants a fair-share of amplification), but this time we wanted to give him a big, fat, congrats on being nominated for South Australias Young Australian of the Year. Peter had been using street art as a means to question our national identity and views towards immigration prior to launching the Real Australians Say Welcome campaign. To extend upon this work, he used the crowd-funding site Pozible to garner financial support in order to make the Real Australians Say Welcome project come to fruition an assignment that saw 1,000 posters erected all around Australia over the course of three months. The messaging of the posters was both reactionary to the language of Boat People at the time, as well as inspired by Australias national anthem. There are 150 members in the House of Representatives and 76 in the Senate how many of them actually know the words to our national anthem? Ill be quizzing everyone of them that I meet next week in Canberra #realaustralianssaywelcome A photo posted by Peter Drew (@peterdrewarts) on Jun 11, 2015 at 4:59pm PDT The second verse of the national anthem has some great lines, particularly weve boundless plains to share. An even better part though, is the line, with courage let us all combine. That notion that its natural to feel fear or be confronted by people who are different, but that it takes courage to overcome and accept that, says Peter. In terms of the campaigns messaging, that of Real Australians Say Welcome, Peter wanted its expression to be as clear as possible. It was as direct and as simple as I could make it, he says. I figured the key to it was not asking people, asking Australians, to think about asylum seekers but asking Australians to think about what it means to be Australian how our decisions and the way we treat others is affecting our identity. The project is really about being proud of one of the best parts of this country. The idea of expressing Australian pride has been tainted. I think a lot of Australians want to take that back and celebrate and defend multiculturalism. Using street art as a way to communicate the idea of acceptance has been an effective one for Peter, and not only in terms of increasing engagement with the project. Peter spoke with asylum seekers while he hung the posters, as well people opposed to immigration finding that most nay-sayers walked away with more compassion after talking to him. If theres a space thats owned by all people, then surely thats the best space to communicate with people. It came as no surprise to us that Peter was nominated for his home states Young Australian of the Year award in 2015. He was pleased to not be named the winner, expressing that others were more deserving and stating that he was thankful to have the opportunity to further the message of his campaign. Accolades are sort of embarrassing with a project like mine Id prepared myself for the criticism but when people start to reward you it feels very uncomfortable. Do yoself a favour and keep up to date with all of Peters great work through his website HERE, Facebook HERE and Instagram HERE. Peters done some beyond decent stuff, and so have the others profiled by CommBanks Australian of the Day series. If you would like to read more feel-good tales then check out our coverage of top-shelf people in NSW (HERE), NT (HERE), QLD (HERE), WA (HERE), SA (HERE), TAS (HERE) and VIC (HERE) theyre pretty darn good, if we do say ourselves. If that doesnt quench your thirst for all the feels, head over to the AOTD website HERE. Sultan Ahmad Shah Scholarship 2016. Thinking about to further your studies at Limkokwing University of Creative Technology? This scholarship should be the best for you. This year, Sultan of Pahang, Sultan Ahmad Shah grants scholarships to students who are doing their diploma and undergraduate studies in Limkokwing University. It was reported that about 10 million Ringgit is allocated for this scholarship and this scholarship is aimed to help underprivileged students to pursue their tertiary studies. Deadline When to submit your Sultan Ahmad Shah Scholarship application? Submit your application before or on Apr 25, 2016 Criteria The followings are the most important criteria to apply for this scholarship. You must be:- a. Malaysian citizen b. Financially needy Amount Not specified. Preferred Discipline Education Music Art Business Administration Communication How to Apply Applicants are required to write an application letter to Limkokwing University or call 03-8317 8923 or write an application email to [email protected] Contact Info Call +603 8317 8888 Limkokwing University of Creative Technology Inovasi 1-1 Jalan Teknokrat 1/1 63000, Cyberjaya, Selangor Malaysia. For more and up-to-date info about Sultan Ahmad Shah Scholarship, please contact the scholarship provider directly. capitol 1 0708 dcg 24513.jpg The Pennsylvania state Capitol building dome in Harrisburg. Dan Gleiter, The Patriot-News (DAN GLEITER, THE PATRIOT-NEWS) The leader of a Rhode Island church says she has a permit to use a marijuana-derived oil during a prayer and healing ceremony in the state Capitol Rotunda on Monday. Anne Armstrong of The Healing Church says the oil is a "sacrament" used for religious anointing purposes and is protected by the Constitutional right to religious freedom. Based on her description of how she makes it, it seems similar to oils and products sought by Pennsylvania residents and legislators pushing to legalize medical marijuana, also known as medical cannabis. Armstrong provided a copy of the email she said she used to request a permit for the Rotunda event from the state Department of General Services, and which states the church will use "cannabis." Asked on Wednesday if there are any limits on the church's use of cannabis during Monday's event, department spokesman Troy Thompson said he would have to check on that. Armstrong says the purpose of the ceremony is to support the effort to legalize medical marijuana in Pennsylvania. She described the event as "an emergency measure to stand up for the kids in the gap as the legislature messes around." The effort to legalize medical marijuana in Pennsylvania includes many parents of children with severe seizures which can't be well-controlled with available drugs, and others who say they or loved ones needs new treatments for conditions including cancer, chronic pain and PTSD. One of the parents, Latricia Bentch of Swatara Township, said on Wednesday, "I want to make it crystal clear we do not work with this group and we do not believe in their messaging." Christy Billet, the leader of another Pennsylvania group involved in the push for medical marijuana, said "I think they're pretty much trying to get arrested and make it into a media spectacle." Billet added, "I can't disrespect what anyone is trying to do to help us ... Do I worry this is going to hurt the cause? Yes." Supporters have endured a long and frustrating push for medical marijuana in Pennsylvania. Polls show strong public support, the state Senate overwhelmingly approved a legalization bill, and Gov. Tom Wolf has promised to sign a bill. But the bill has run into a roadblock in the state House, where many members say it has enough votes to pass, but where a small group of influential members have succeeded in halting progress. Armstrong said the Rhode Island group's effort is timed to "grease the skids" and provide prayer support in advance of a rally to be held the next day, on Tuesday, by Pennsylvania-based medical marijuana supporters. Bentch said the Tuesday rally by Pennsylvania supporters is intended to tell state House members "to quit their stall tactics ... We've been working for eight months now while they've just had a complete lack of compassion for this cause. We're sick of all the excuses." Pennsylvania medical marijuana supporters have contended with legislators who fear medical marijuana will be diverted for recreational use, or serve as a "gateway" to other drugs." They stress that their effort is about obtaining a new medical option for the sick, and has nothing to do with recreational use of marijuana. Bentch she is angered by what she considers an insinuation by the Rhode Island group that Pennsylvania supporters are failing in their push to legalize medical marijuana. "They don't have anything to lose. I have everything to lose," said Bentch, whose daughter has severe seizures. Armstrong says she is a deaconess in The Healing Church. She argues the Bible includes many references to cannabis -- she regards marijuana as a sacrilegious word and won't say it -- and that God gave cannabis to humans as a gift to be used for things including healing. Medical cannabis is legal in Rhode Island. A few years ago, Armstrong, 55, ran as a write-in candidate for governor of Rhode Island. She received national attention after posting a campaign video that shows her smoking cannabis and stating "Yes, I do smoke cannabis, and yes, I do inhale." Last year, Armstrong obtained a permit to hold a "cannabis-related" religious ceremony at a park in Rhode Island. But the park later stated the permit didn't allow activity that would violate laws including the Controlled Substances Act, according to The Providence Journal. After Armstrong and another church member, Alan Gordon, were arrested for using cannabis in the park, they filed a complaint that was dismissed by a federal judge. Armstrong said the Pennsylvania event will include an opportunity for people in need of healing to be anointed with the cannabis-derived oil. "We're not going to be smoking cannabis in the state House. Certainly, I don't think it's a good idea to smoke around children and we're anticipating that some children will come ... This is not a demonstration about fighting for your right to party," she said. She added, "Our purpose is to be educational. We hope not to be confrontational." commissioners.jpeg Dauphin County Board of Commissioners agreed to file a suit to recover missing 911 fees from telephone companies. (File photo) Dauphin County Board of Commissioners approved a suit against roughly 22 telephone companies to recoup an underpayment of $29.6 million to 911 services. Dauphin County's suit will kick off "a rolling crescendo" of suits in at least a dozen counties in Pennsylvania over the next several weeks, as other boards of commissioners seek to recover the underpaid dollars, said Tim Carson of Dilworth Paxson LLP. The commissioners signed with Phone Recovery Services and Dilworth Paxson in July to recover millions in underpayments. The $29.6 million was underpaid over a six-year period. In Pennsylvania, 911 operations are funded in part by the phone calls residents make. State law requires telephone companies to find out how many lines a business or residence has and charge appropriate 911 assessment fees. Companies that have more than 10 land or cell lines are often not charged correctly, according Carson. Large commercial accounts are not charged correctly because those accounts tend to be the most competitive, Carson said. Some will shave off 911 fees entirely; some will bundle lines so that 29 separate lines would be billed as one. Counties in Alabama kicked off a nationwide movement to recover these missing fees. "In the time in which these funds were not being collected, the taxpayers were paying for it," noted Commissioner Jeff Haste. Delaware County, which was the first in Pennsylvania to file suit, has been a battleground between the telephone companies and government, Carson said, though the suit is moving forward. Each county that has signed on with Dilworth Paxson and Phone Recovery Services will file a separate suit to recover the missing funds. It's unclear how much the counties will recover in the suit. "Twenty-nine-point-six million dollars -- if we even get half of that, that's a huge amount of money coming into our budget," said Commissioner Mike Pries. Unless money is recovered in the suit, the commissioners won't pay for the legal services. The total amount paid to Dilworth Paxson and Phone Recovery Services for their work would be no more than 40 percent of the money recouped by the county. Cumberland County approved a similar contract and agreed to file suit as well to recover $6.7 million in missing 911 fees. | 21 2001 7084 Harrisburg Pike Now partially-demolished and its permanent fate in question, the former James Bell Tavern at 7084 Carlisle Pike was the site of a meeting where some say the chain of events leading to the adoption of the Bill of Rights was set. (Provided by Christine Musser) This post was updated at 6:31 p.m. to reflect a telephone interview with Triple Crown Corp. CEO Mark DiSanto. The developers who earlier this month started razing an old tavern site where historians say the fight for the American Bill of Rights gained essential momentum contend, essentially, they had no idea of the site's historical significance. Now, Triple Crown Corp. CEO Mark DiSanto says, his company is making a good faith effort to try to address community concerns about potentially losing that history, and he left the door open to a preservation / restoration effort. But, he added, there has to be a balance. "We're very interested in the historic aspect," DiSanto said Wednesday. "But we're trying to understand how all that can be done while addressing our own private enterprise concerns... There is no understanding at this point." The Lower Paxton Twp.-based firm said in a statement earlier this week that, as part of its application for demolition of the property at 7084 Carlisle Pike, it did look for historical designations for the building that began life as the James Bell Tavern. It found nothing to raise any red flags. Nor, the firm said, had its principals ever become aware of the property's historical significance during reviews of multiple prior land development plans for adjacent Carlisle Pike properties it owned in Silver Spring and Middlesex townships. Talks between the company and Silver Spring township officials are continuing about the property's immediate future. But Triple Crown's statement is clear about one thing: Don't expect a gift. "Demanding that ownership repair and give this property to a governmental or historical preservation group at the sole cost of an individual owner is in direct opposition of what the Bill of Rights stand for," the company said. The issue erupted two weeks ago, when someone familiar with the building's origins spotted the demolition in progress and notified Christine Musser, who published a pictorial history of the township last year. Musser, who at the time also was not familiar with the so-called Stoney Ridge meeting of anti-federalists there on July 3, 1788, brought the matter to the attention of township officials, and the demolition was suspended. Subsequent staff reviews showed the tavern - best-known to most present-day passers-by as a computer store or used car lot - was never listed Silver Spring's map of cultural features and historic buildings. A 1992 review of the site by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission found that it "appeared" to meet criteria for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. But it appears no formal nomination ever followed. Here's what Musser and other local historians shared about the tavern this month: On July 3, 1788, with pending ratification of the new federal constitution at hand, a group of Cumberland Countians led by Robert Whitehill, Benjamin Blythe and others met at the site and declared the need for changes in the document before they could accept it. (The year before, while trying to delay Pennsylvania's own ratification vote in Philadelphia, Whitehill actually laid out a set of 14 proposed changes that included specific provisions including guarantees of freedom of religion, freedom of speech, the right to trial by jury and the right to bear arms.) Whitehill lost his argument in 1787, but he may have won his war. As more states ratified the constitution over the succeeding months, the Cumberland group called for a convention of leaders from around the state later that summer to peacefully press for amendments to the constitution, or consider other options as "shall be necessary for the security of religion and liberty." It was an important call, said local historian Jeff Wood, that sent a clear message to the Virginia planters and New England businessmen who had framed the parent document that the new nation was going to have a real problem on its hands in the frontier if some accommodations weren't made for personal rights. Deeply suspicious of the new federal powers, "these (men) were strong voices from the frontier who were speaking for the people... and they wanted something to point to in the document," Wood said. At the follow-up meeting in Harrisburg later that summer, the Pennsylvanians - by now in league with allies from other states - essentially agreed to support the new Constitution with the understanding that amendments enshrining personal and other liberties would be added. While many documents from that meeting so many years ago are preserved and Whitehill's home at 1903 Market Street, Camp Hill has a PHMC marker, the Bell Tavern was pretty much left to fend for itself over the centuries. In that time, that stretch of Route 11 between Carlisle and the West Shore has become a major thoroughfare with cars and trucks streaming to and from the Pennsylvania Turnpike and Interstate 81. Triple Crown said it acquired the tavern property about a year ago in a foreclosure process. DiSanto said Wednesday the company has no specific plans for the lot. It had, however, determined that for the size of the lot, roughly three acres, the existing building was "totally obsolete for any kind of reasonable commercial use," DiSanto said. "We were just preparing (the site) for re-use." PennLive's attempts to reach Silver Spring Twp. Manager Theresa Eberly for further updates on the township's role in the discussions were not successful Wednesday. Gov. Tom Wolf on Tuesday announced new rules for current and future methane emissions from Pennsylvania's oil and gas industry. "It's a new way forward that protects our environment," he said during a Facebook town hall meeting. As California is currently in a state of emergency as more than 100,000 pounds of methane pollute the air each hour amid one of the biggest leaks in U.S. history, the Wolf administration is taking proactive steps to protect public health. Methane is the main component of natural gas and is cited by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a greenhouse gas that warms the climate more than carbon, causing a bevy of health problems. According to the National Institutes of Health, methane reduces the oxygen supply and can lead to headaches, dizziness, weakness, nausea, vomiting and loss of coordination. Wolf's plan aims to protect the environment, reduce climate change and help the state's oil and gas operators reduce waste. The details of his four-point plan are outlined at the end of this report and will be explained in further detail during a webinar 11:30 a.m. Wednesday. "These are commonsense steps that Pennsylvania can take to protect our air and reduce waste for industry," Wolf said. "The best companies understand the business case for reducing methane leaks, as what doesn't leak into the atmosphere can be used for energy production." But industry trade groups say emissions are already being reduced and Wolf's action is another costly regulatory step for an industry facing the worst oil bust since the 1980s. The new methane rules are the latest in a series of regulatory actions taken by the Wolf administration since a PennLive investigation showed the state failed to protect the environment during the Marcellus Shale boom. The new Democratic governor and his Department of Environmental Protection chief have been working to correct the mistakes of the past, giving life to the new Office of Environmental Justice, moving forward with revamped Chapter 78 regulations and firing the former director of the Citizens Advisory Board. The board is tasked with making sure state residents' constitutional right to clean air and water is protected. Wolf and DEP Secretary John Quigley have taken just about every step they can without approval from the Legislature, which is unlikely in the Republican-controlled House and Senate. "History has shown that the Pennsylvania gas industry can't be trusted to police itself; that's why regulating air pollution from oil and gas activity is so necessary," Joseph Otis Minott, executive director and chief counsel of Clean Air Council, said in a press release. "Strong rules that require operators to reduce air pollution leaks at both new and existing facilities will help spur the health benefits that Pennsylvania families deserve." Some environmentalists say these steps, while encouraging, aren't enough and the governor should put a moratorium on drilling. Wolf does not support a moratorium. He did run on a severance tax, which was largely supported by Pennsylvanians, according to polls. But it was a no-go in the House and Senate, which are led by some of the biggest recipients of Marcellus Shale money. Here is the Wolf administration's four-point plan for reducing methane emissions: Steele Elementary School file photo Harrisburg School District is embarking on an enrollment study as officials consider the possibility of reopening Steele Elementary School. In this file photo, Hamilton elementary school students Cashanay Roland (left), and Zaire Battle play in the playground in front of Steele School in Harrisburg. (The Patriot-News/file) Harrisburg School District is doing its homework as it considers the possibility of reopening an elementary school that's been shuttered for several years. Interim Chief Financial Officer Bill Gretton said, while the school board hasn't made a final decision on reopening Steele Elementary School, district officials have been discussing it. Gretton said the district, which is currently "maxed out" on its elementary space, has seen an increase in elementary school students. Reopening the school would reduce students' walking distance and provide space to expand pre-kindergarten programs. To help determine whether to reopen the building, the school board on Tuesday approved a contract of up to $16,000 with the Pennsylvania Economy League to provide reports on K-12 district enrollment projections 10 years out. In its study, the organization would review items including population trends, birth patterns, migration patterns, historical public school enrollment trends, and housing data, according to its proposal to that district. The district would receive a preliminary report within six to eight weeks and a final report by next October, Gretton said. Harrisburg Superintendent Sybil Knight-Burney confirmed that, if the preliminary study supported the reopening of Steele Elementary, she would expect a board vote on the matter very soon after that. Students who previously would have attended Steele Elementary now go to Benjamin Franklin Elementary School, and there's been concerns that some elementary students are walking too far to the school, Knight-Burney said. She said reopening Steele Elementary -- which would house pre-kindergarten to fourth grade students -- would shorten that walking distance and reduce class sizes in both schools. Gretton said three pre-kindergarten classes currently in Camp Curtin would also move to Steele Elementary. But, Gretton said during the school board's Jan. 11 Budget, Finance, and Facilities Committee meeting, that if the district decided to reopen Steele Elementary, it would need to be sure of that within the next couple of months since the building would need renovations and upgrades. On Tuesday, Gretton said that the building, which has been closed for about six years, has sustained roof damage and some vandalism, and renovations probably would cost roughly between $400,000 and $500,000. He said the district already is doing some preliminary work now -- making sure the piping and electric are "solid." If Steele Elementary re-opened, it wouldn't be the first in the district to do so in recent years. Gretton said Hamilton Elementary School on Sixth Street reopened this year and now houses an alternative education program. Lincoln Elementary, which also was closed for some time, now houses the district's administrative offices and Cougar Academy, the district's cyber school service. Meteorologists can't seem to agree on how much snow is expected to hit central Pennsylvania on Friday and Saturday. The storm's current path would move it through central Pennsylvania over the next couple days bringing with it between 6 inches and 2 feet of snow. The snowstorm -- which is expected to hit the midstate on Friday -- will be the first real winter weather for the region. Below are the weather predictions, made Wednesday prior to 3:30 p.m., from a number of meteorologists for central Pennsylvania. Click the links to see updated forecasts from each meteorologist. National Weather Service National Weather Service Meteorologist Craig Evanego said they have not yet released snow accumulation estimates but expect to when the storm gets closer. Evanego said "Significant snowfall is possible. With the heaviest amounts expected to fall across southern Pennsylvania." AccuWeather AccuWeather Meteorologist Dan Pydynowski said the developing storm will bring a 'major snowstorm and blizzard to parts of the mid-Atlantic and Northeast will begin to strengthen as it taps into moisture from the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday." AccuWeather snowfall maps show that central Pennsylvania could get between 1 and 12 inches, depending on where the storm track moves. WGAL Meteorologist Christine Ferreira at WGAL said Wednesday morning that there was a 10 percent chance for 6 inches of snow or less, 30 percent for 6 to 12 inches, 40 percent for 12 to 18 inches and 20 percent for more than 18 inches. "I think it's pretty safe to say most of the viewing area is going to pick up a foot of snow from this storm system," Ferreira said. ABC27 ABC27 Meteorologist Brett Thackara did not give a snow accumulation prediction during his Wednesday afternoon forecast. However, Thackara did say that snow develops after 6 p.m. on Friday moving from southwest to northeast. On Saturday, snow could be falling at a rate of 1 inch per hour. "This is going to be a good snowstorm for most of our viewing area," he said. WPMT FOX43 Meteorologist Andrea Michaels for WPMT FOX43 left her snow accumulations vague Wednesday. Instead of providing numbers, Michaels explained where snow would fall depending on the low pressure system and the developing storm track. "[The low pressure system will] really give some cities across the eastern seaboard a good chance at some pretty decent snowfall amounts -- we could be talking about feet in some spots," Michaels said. CBS 21 Meteorologist Chris Nallan in the CBS 21 said Wednesday that the winter storm for late Friday that will likely continue through the day Saturday. CBS 21 is predicting that a 'significant snowfall' of 6 inches or over is likely on Friday and Saturday. pa-teen-pleads-guilty-in-fatal-shooting-allentown-pa.JPG In a fatal shooting that all began with a derogatory remark to an ex-girlfriend, the admitted trigger-man in the case, 18-year-old Tyreek Aziz Muldrow of Allentown, Pa., will have the next 40 to 80 years in prison to think about whether any of it was worth the price after pleading guilty Tuesday. Above, a scene from the May 28 incident in Allentown, Pa. (Mike Nester via LehighValleyLive.com) It all began with a derogatory remark to an ex-girlfriend, shouted from the window of a passing car. It would end with a fatal shooting that has changed at least two lives. Now, the admitted shooter in the case, 18-year-old Tyreek Aziz Muldrow of Allentown, Pa., will have the next 40 to 80 years in prison to think about whether any of it was worth the price. This, after the teen pleaded guilty to third-degree murder and attempted homicide Tuesday morning in Lehigh County, our sister website, LehighValleyLive.com reports. Judge Robert Steinberg then sentenced Muldrow to 40 to 80 years in state prison. Background from LehighValleyLive: Police said on May 28, Muldrow was a passenger in a vehicle driving in Allentown when he made a derogatory comment to his ex-girlfriend Saindra Maisonet. This, as Maisonet was walking with Tymel Kenney. After the 18-year-old Maisonet commented back, Muldrow got out of the vehicle and argued with Kenney before opening fire, shooting Kenney multiple times. Kenney, 20, of Wilmington, Delaware, died a short time later. Maisonet was also grazed in the shooting. Muldrow was arrested about an hour later. Max Baer Kevin Dougherty Supreme Court justices Max Baer, left, and Kevin Dougherty, right, were reportedly the recipients of offensive emails. (File photos) Two sitting members of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court received offensive emails as part of a chain that has implicated numerous state officials, according to a Philadelphia Inquirer report. A review of evidence in the case against a third member of the state's highest appellate court, the suspended J. Michael Eakin, reportedly showed the additional emails. It was unclear how the Inquirer gained access to the evidence. According to the Inquirer report, Max Baer and Kevin Dougherty received 10 and three of the emails, respectively. For example, both were recipients of an email critical of illegal immigrants and the free services they receive. Neither received pornographic images. Baer, 68, is a Democrat and former deputy attorney general. He was first elected to the court in 2003 and is currently in his final term due to the age restriction on judges. Dougherty, a 53-year-old Democrat, was seated earlier this month after winning last year's judicial race. According to the report, Dougherty received the emails while he was the Philadelphia Family Court's top judge. The offensive emails circulating between defense attorneys, judges, prosecutors and other federal, state and local officials first came to light in 2014. They were reportedly discovered during the course of Attorney General Kathleen Kane's review of her predecessors' handling of the Jerry Sandusky child molestation investigation. An initial release that year prompted the suspension and subsequent retirement of Justice Seamus McCaffery, a Democrat. Last year, as Kane battled criminal charges and her own suspension, the attorney general brought forward more emails involving Eakin, a Republican. Those emails prompted charges by the Judicial Conduct Board. The next step in Eakin's case is a pre-trial conference on Thursday. According to the Inquirer, several other former justices received a single email as part of the exchange. Former Chief Justice Ron Castille, who retired at the end of 2014, told the Inquirer that he asked McCaffery not to send him any more emails. Castille also reportedly warned his colleagues about sending such emails. Marcellus Shale gas extraction in northern Pennsylvania A Seneca Resources drilling rig completes the fourth of six wells at a Marcellus Shale gas well pad in Shippen Township, Cameron County. (Dan Gleiter | dgleiter@pennlive.) By Gretchen Dahlkemper Last month I spent nearly two weeks in Paris where, on behalf of Moms Clean Air Force's 600,000 members, I joined colleagues and partners advocating for a strong Paris agreement that will usher in a healthy and safe future for our children by combatting climate change. What a disappointing contrast I found in my return to Pennsylvania. Despite unprecedented momentum to tackle climate change on a global scale, back home our leaders in Harrisburg snuck a provision in a budget bill that that would seriously jeopardize our children's health and continue the long-standing tradition of putting the profits of polluters over the health of our children. This year's Fiscal Code bill, a piece of budget-related legislation,,scuttles the public process and transparency for regulations that defend our kids' health and calls into question the hope for a vibrant clean energy future. One of the United States' first major steps to tackling climate pollution lies in America's Clean Power Plan. The Fiscal Code, which serves as an instruction manual for spending the money in the state's General Fund budget, gives the General Assembly the power to hold up the Department of Environmental Protection's compliance with America's Clean Power Plan. This would delay the development of Pennsylvania's plan to reduce pollution, while playing politics with our planet and our children's health. The legislation, which is now before the state Senate, would also prohibit the state Environmental Quality Board from adopting much-needed and long overdue modernizations of Pennsylvania's oil and gas drilling standards. The Senate should reject the bill so that Pennsylvania can stay on track to submit a clean air plan that works for Pennsylvanians, instead of playing the polluter's dangerous game of delay and obstructions. Thousands of Pennsylvanians across the Commonwealth have urged the state to submit a plan on time - not doing so could jeopardize public health and climate protections while opening the door for a plan dictated by Washington instead of one that's crafted in a timely way right here at home. We now have the power to enact solutions to combat climate change and Pennsylvania must join the rest of the world and set a roadmap on how to do it. Pennsylvania must reject the politics of obstruction and work swiftly to develop a state plan for compliance with America's Clean Power Plan that capitalizes on the state's strong renewable energy and energy efficiency resources, and set strong standards to reduce methane emissions from the oil & gas industry. The message is loud and clear - the transformation of our energy system from dirty, dangerous fossil fuels to cheap, clean renewable energy is irreversible. By protecting a dying coal industry and ignoring the worldwide shift away from fossil fuels to clean energy solutions, Pennsylvania leaders are setting us up to fail. Our families deserve better. Pennsylvania's children deserve the economic opportunities and health benefits associated with a sustainable, renewable energy economy. Some 195 counties across the globe have agreed to take action on climate change. Will our leaders in Harrisburg put the families and communities of their state first and join them? Gretchen Dahlkemper, of Philadelphia, is the national Field Manager of Moms Clean Air Force, an environmental advocacy group. Readers may email her at gdahlkemper@momscleanairforce.org Death Row at SCI Greene The Senate Appropriations Committee approved a supplemental appropriations for the Department of Corrections to ensure it has the money to keep State Correctional Institution Greene and other state prisons operational through June 30. (File photo/PennLive/Dan Gleiter) Hoping to eliminate any possibility of state prisons closing due to lack of funding, the state Senate has advanced a bill to provide funding to ensure these correctional facilities remain operational through the end of June. The Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday voted in a near-party line vote of 18-8 to approve a $939.4 million supplemental appropriation for the Department of Corrections. This would be in addition to the nearly $1.3 billion for the corrections department included in the $23.4 billion general fund budget that Gov. Tom Wolf enacted on Dec. 29 mostly to prevent schools from closing. Wolf used his line-item veto authority to eliminate a half-year's funding for the corrections department to gain leverage with lawmakers in his quest for a larger investment in education than that budget plan included. But Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, R-Centre County, said that decision has left the corrections department in a position where it could run out of money either later this month or early next. "Obviously we cannot have the Department of Corrections close," Corman said. "I hope we can get this through as quick as possible so we can avert having a crisis on our hands." The appropriations supplement, which the Senate could vote on as early as Monday, would bring the corrections department's funding up to the $2.2 billion the House and Senate agreed to back in June. But not all lawmakers were in agreement that the state prisons might close without this additional money. Senate Democratic Leader Jay Costa of Allegheny County said his conversations with the Wolf Administration indicated that it had no intention of closing down the prisons. He said the Fair Labor Standards Act along with other court cases support invoking the health, safety and welfare provisions in the state constitution to allow the corrections department to continue to be funded despite what its appropriation is. Beyond that, Costa said he didn't consider the supplemental appropriations to be the appropriate way to finishing up work on the state budget. "We all know we need to get back to the table and not approach it in a piecemeal way," Costa said. But Corman said there is a separate institutional concern over whether the state treasurer has the authority to appropriate money beyond what was appropriated in the general fund budget. "From a precedent setting point of view, how far are we going to expand that definition," Corman said. "Are we allowed to keep the schools open? Certainly you could make a case that if schools have to close, that there's a health and safety issue there." He urged the committee to "do this the correct way so we can protect our institutional ability to appropriate" money to the department. A spokesman for Wolf put the blame on the Republican-controlled General Assembly for creating this fiscal dilemma in the first place by sending the governor what he called an unbalanced budget that he left him "no choice but to exercise his constitutional authority to line-item veto to ensure current revenues cover expenses." Wolf spokesman Jeff Sheridan confirmed Costa's comment about the administration's view that corrections is a mandatory expense that even if it lacks a full year's funding, services would have to be provided. "Corrections facilities will continue to function," Sheridan said. "It is time for Republican leaders to return to the table and finish work on the bipartisan budget the four caucuses and the governor agreed to in November. This piecemeal approach is not fiscally responsible budgeting." Wolf met with Senate Republican leaders on Tuesday to renew discussions on finishing work on the 2015-16 budget. Still, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Pat Browne, R-Lehigh County, said "It's not worth taking a risk that there's a possibility that money wouldn't be distributed to maintain the Department of Corrections." Two Democrats joined the Republicans on the committee in supporting the supplemental appropriations: Sens. Rob Teplitz of Dauphin County and John Blake of Lackawanna County. Teplitz said he doesn't like the piecemeal approach to budgeting either but "I also think that there is nothing to be gained by holding up the corrections money given that item in and of itself is non-controversial." While he supports the governor's call for a larger investment in public education, Teplitz said, "I felt that this was the responsible thing." FILE- In this Feb. 8, 2015, file photo, pianist Chick Corea accepts the award for best improvised jazz solo for Fingerprints at the 57th annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles. Newport Jazz Festival producer George Wein announced the lineup on Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016. Corea, who turns 75 this summer, will be celebrating the milestone with his all-star trio at the nation's oldest jazz festival. (Photo by John Shearer/Invision/AP, File) This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 18 years and 38,000 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. Protesters raising placards with photos of U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken shout slogans during a rally demanding a restart of peace talks between two Koreas and six-party talks in front of the Foreign Ministry in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. Blinken is in Seoul following a weekend's trilateral meeting by U.S., South Korea and Japan in Tokyo over North Korea's recent nuclear test. The letters on the sign at right read: "We want the United States and South Korea to restart peace talks." (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon) We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on! Go to form Feds: Enbridge can stop some crack inspections on Straits oil pipelines U.S. DOJ agrees that the inspections delayed would identify cracks that do not pose a risk to the pipeline under the Straits of Mackinac. PDVSA - Chinese loans to be investigated by Congress We want to know the real state of PDVSA's books," Elias Matta, an opposition lawmaker and vice president of the energy and oil commission, told Reuters . CARACAS Petroleumworld.com 01 20 2016 Venezuela's new opposition-led Congress plans to investigate state-run oil company PDVSA's financial health and hefty Chinese loans, a lawmaker said on Tuesday. The OPEC member country depends on oil for nearly all of its export revenue. With the political opposition in control of the National Assembly since this month, rivals of leftist President Nicolas Maduro want to use their new perch to push for greater transparency and accountability at PDVSA. "We want to know the real state of PDVSA's books," Elias Matta, an opposition lawmaker and vice president of the energy and oil commission, told Reuters on the sidelines of the National Assembly. "The country wants to know how the money from the Chinese funds were spent. We also want to investigate what the real cost of production is. And why haven't they done the output increases they talked about so much? We're going to have a lot of work in this commission," he added with a smile. Venezuela has received some $50 billion in financing from China through an arrangement under which it repays loans in shipments of crude and fuel. The financing, whose fine print is not disclosed, has been a crucial boost to the South American country, especially as the price of its heavy-oil crude slumps, aggravating a cash crunch and potentially grazing a break-even point in production. That comes on top of what the U.S. Energy Information Administration figures show is falling or stagnating output in Venezuela, which has the world's largest oil reserves, for around a decade. Disputing these figures, Venezuela says it is shoring up production thanks to the heavy-crude-rich Orinoco region, countering natural declines in its mature fields. Since September 2014, PDVSA has been led by Eulogio del Pino, a Stanford-educated engineer perceived to be trying to reform the Caracas-based company critics say has become bloated. "I think at some point the president of PDVSA will have to come to the Assembly and the commission so we can resolve some important issues," added Matta, who hails from the traditional oil-producing state of Zulia, on the border with Colombia. Congress may also seek to call in Rafael Ramirez, who presided over PDVSA for a decade and is now Venezuela's envoy to the United Nations in New York, according to Matta. "We want a healthy oil industry, an oil industry that can generate the income we so badly need right now," he added before slipping into the legislative session. So, according to some riders, SEPTA trains can be hard on the ears. Last week I covered a community meeting in Elkins Park that gave riders a chance to vent. One complaint that came up was how loud train horns are. After the meeting I got a little more information about what dictates how loud horns have to be. Federal regulations are enforced by the Northeast Operating Rules Advisory Committee, said Andrew Busch SEPTA spokesman. Horns have to be between 96 and 110 decibels, a standard that takes into account the dense development in our region. There are also regulations that define when a train should honk. The horn needs to sound 15 to 20 seconds before the train arrives at a grade crossing, an area when road and rail intersect. They are also required to sound a short blast of noise if they see anything on the tracks. If it's an animal, a deer or cat, a sharp report from the horn usually scares it away. Trains are actually not required to honk the horn when approaching a station, Busch said, unless train staff notice a person standing too near the edge of a platform. After my story ran I got an email from one rider whose also felt SEPTA was assaulting his hearing. Todd Cohen, of Northeast Philadelphia, said he has big complaints about PA systems on regional rail. "The majority of the time I ride the regional rail cars, the conductors blast, and I mean BLAST, their announcements throughout the trains," he wrote in an email last week. "I have noise cancelling headphones and even with the volume all the way up I can still hear it." SEPTA responded by saying this was a complaint they hadn't heard before. "It's not something we're aware of as an issue or a sore point with customers," Busch said. "We do test those every day before the trains go out to make sure they're operating at an appropriate level." *** After this blog posted Busch asked to amend his statement, ssying he may have misstated. "We get some complaints about the announcements being too loud," he said, "others from passengers who have difficulty hearing the announcements, and there are also complaints about other issues customers experience with the announcements." *** I don't ride regional rail often enough to have noticed the volume problem, and I've heard the opposite complaints, that the announcements aren't loud enough or consistent enough, and that riders worry about missing their stops as a result. What's your experience been? Are the PA systems blowing your ears out, or are you listening for even a hint of your stop being called. Any experiences you want to share, comment below or email me at jlaughlin@phillynews.com. " " In theory, were only a few decades away from digital versions of ourselves. e-crow/iStockphoto Dmitry Itskov predicts that in the year 2045, humans will be able to back themselves up to the cloud. Yep, he believes you'll be able to create a digital version of your human consciousness, stored in a synthetic brain and an artificial host. Itskov, a Russian entrepreneur, media mogul and billionaire, plans to live forever and he plans to take all of us along for the ages, as holograms. His project, called the 2045 Initiative, is named for the year he predicts he'll complete the final milestone in digitizing human consciousness. While substrate-independent minds (mind-uploading) may be a new reality to the next generation, the human desire for immortality certainly isn't. Advertisement Look as far back as the third century B.C.E., when the ancient Chinese credited mercury as the secret to immortality. It's believed that the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, ingested high levels of mercury in pursuit of everlasting life. He died of mercury poisoning at age 39. Travel forward to the current day and meet Martine Rothblatt, a telecommunications lawyer, executive and the founder of both Sirius XM satellite radio and the biotech firm United Therapeutics, who believes that death is not certain; it's optional. Rothblatt is a transhumanist who founded the Terasem Movement. And she worries about the rights of your not-yet-created cyber-you, your immortal avatar that knows everything you know. Think of it not like a simulation but rather an emulation of you; your cyber-consciousness. Let's go back to Dimitry Itskov. Before personal (and affordable) lifelike avatars can be developed, the structure of the human brain needs to be mapped, and neural structures, connections and their functions need to be deciphered. Electrical signals need to be translated into code, and hardware developed to run, well, the everlasting you. Itskov's overall project to do just that is outlined in four phases. He's spent millions on the plan, called the Avatar Project, which operates under the umbrella of the 2045 Initiative. Developing a robot that's controlled by a human brain is Avatar A, the first of the four phases. Avatar B involves transplanting a human brain into a synthetic body. The contents of a biological brain will be uploaded into a synthetic one in Avatar C. The final piece of the Avatar Project, Avatar D, relies on emulation: replacing the biological body and brain with a hologram, or other avatar, that hosts a digital version of our human consciousness. Istkov hasn't invested only in his own project. He's also given funding to Carboncopies.org, founded by neuroscientist Randal Koene in 2012. Even back in 2007, before the nonprofit was officially formed, a small group of similarly minded, Koene-led transhumanism advocates began to actively pursue the idea of digital immortality. The group began to frame the idea of whole-brain emulation, as well as outline the major tasks that would need solutions before emulating a human brain could become a reality. This includes mapping the structure of the brain, deciphering neural connections and their functions, and developing both the software and hardware to host you, immortal, in the silicon of a computer chip. Also in 2012, Google launched the Google Brain project, an in-house research project focused on machine learning. (Machines will need to learn to effectively be you, after all.) For the field tests, a pair of diesel generators powered the drill. Zacny said it consumed an average of about 100 watts of power, fluctuating between 50 and 250 watts, depending on the composition of the gypsum. A spacecraft on Mars, of course, wouldn't run on diesel. It would likely use a nuclear-powered radioisotope thermoelectric generator, or RTG. The Curiosity rover's RTG originally charged the spacecraft's batteries at a rate of about 110 watts. "So you're hitting the energies and powers that can be supplied by a Curiosity-sized power system," Zacny said. NASA has taken an interest in the Planetary Deep Drill. The project was awarded funding by the agency's Planetary Science and Technology through Analog Research program, PSTAR. Scientists from NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory attended the USG field test, including Rohit Bhartia, the deputy principal investigator of SHERLOC, an ultraviolet light spectrometer that will fly on the Mars 2020 rover. SHERLOC will be used to search for organics and other signs of past life on Mars. Bhartia is working with Honeybee to miniaturize a version of SHERLOC to fit inside the Planetary Deep Drill. To do that, the shoebox-sized instrument will need to slim down. "When we go into a bore hole, we have to get kind of skinny," Bhartia said. "So we have to effectively unfold the optics to fit into a linear structure." His team created a similar instrument that was installed on a drill that tunneled a kilometer beneath the ocean floor. Bhartia said the instrument was re-shaped to fit into a narrow, six-foot-long cylinder. SHERLOC works by shining an ultraviolet light at a material, which causes the material to shed photons. Those photons can be analyzed to detect organics and reveal the material's mineralogical composition. A direct detection of organics beneath the surface of Mars or an icy moon would be an important discovery in the search for past and present life beyond Earth. But since organics can also be formed by non-biological processes, scientists wouldnt be able to confirm the existence of life with a single data point. "On Earth, it's a different question," Bhartia said. "It's easier to tell, because we know what life on Earth looks like. We don't know what life looks like on other planets. The Honeybee team plans to head back to the gypsum quarry for more testing this fall. If things go well, theyll take the drill to Greenland for more ambitious field tests on actual frozen terrain in 2017. Aug. 4 Austin Anthony Durham, 23, of Spring Creek was sentenced by Acting Elko Justice of the Peace Barbara J. Nethery to pay $800; serve two days in jail, with credit for two days served; complete: DUI school and counseling, a victim impact panel and six AA meetings; and maintain a no alcohol clause; after pleading guilty to DUI of alcohol and or drugs. Sept. 3 Ty J. Nakaideneh, 24, of Mesa, Arizona, was sentenced by Elko Justice of the Peace Mason Simons to pay $900 and serve 32 days in jail, suspended for two years on the following conditions: serve two days in jail, with credit for two days served; completion of DUI school and counseling, a victim impact panel and 52 AA meetings; and maintain good conduct and no alcohol or drugs clauses; after pleading guilty to DUI of alcohol and or drugs. Oct. 13 Melissa Louanne Lucas, 33, a transient, was sentenced by Elko Justice of the Peace Mason Simons to pay $355 and serve 10 days in jail, suspended for one year on the following conditions: maintain good conduct, no new arrests and no drugs or alcohol causes; after pleading guilty to battery. Oct. 22 Samuel Steven Sterling, 38, of Spring Creek was sentenced by Elko Justice of the Peace Mason Simons to pay $995, to be transferred from bail leaving a balance of $1,015; and serve 12 days in jail, suspended for one year on the following conditions: pay $280.75 in restitution; complete 48 hours of community service and maintain a good conduct clause; after being found guilty of torturing, injuring, abandoning or starving animals and reckless driving willful or wanton disregard of safety of person or property. Oct. 29 Luis Alberto Tovar, 20, of Battle Mountain was sentenced by Elko Justice of the Peace Mason Simons to pay $355; after pleading guilty to committing or maintaining a public nuisance. Nov. 5 Justin Thomas Ruckdaschel, 24, of Elko was sentenced by Acting Elko Justice of the Peace Brian Boatman to pay $245, transferred from cash bail; after pleading no contest to failure to drive carefully or prudently. Nov. 6 The charges of possession of a controlled substance not for the purpose of sale and conspiracy to possess a controlled substance against Debra Palmer-Long, 32, of Henderson were dismissed with prejudice by Elko Justice of the Peace Mason Simons. Nov. 20 Kimberly D. Sevy, 59, of Elko was sentenced by Elko Justice of the Peace Mason Simons to pay $550; after pleading guilty to injury to other property and disturbing the peace. Nebraska Lawmakers Defeat Bill That Would Have Classified Poker as Game of Skill January 20, 2016 Chad Holloway Executive Editor U.S. Last week, Nebraska lawmakers shot down a bill that would have classified poker as a game of skill. According to the Associated Press, the bill, which was sponsored by sponsor Sen. Tyson Larson of ONeill, was debated for the maximum allowance of six hours and only received 16 of the needed 33 votes that would have settled the debate and forced a vote on the bill. We hear a lot about property tax relief, limited government and the state not getting involved. If we care about those issues, heres an outside-the-box opportunity to show that we take these things seriously, said Sen. Larson. We can help our local communities and their fundraising efforts. I think this is chance. Im not willing to bet Nebraskas future on expanded gambling. Sen. Larson's bill sought to classify poker as a game of skill rather than a game of chance, which are banned by the state constitution. Unfortunately, many other Senators did not agree and argued that gambling expansion in any form would ultimately hurt the state. Were going into very dangerous territory here by slowly and surely peeling away that which makes us great, said Sen. Lydia Brasch of Bancroft. I think this is chance. Im not willing to bet Nebraskas future on expanded gambling. Meanwhile, Sen. Jim Smith of Papillion believed the bill would be ineffective in helping reduce property taxes: Its similar to saying Im going to lose weight and Im going to be better fit in the new year by eating a box of doughnuts every day. Interestingly, Sen. Ken Schilz of Ogallala supported the bill, pointing out Nebraska offers both Powerball or Keno. The state is happy and the communities are happy to take that money because it does good things for the community, he said. And we shouldnt forget that. Finally, Sen. Larson opted to file a motion to reconsider that vote as many senators were absent during the debate. I think that they all deserve the chance to listen and make their own decision on the amendment, he concluded. For more information, visit cbcgamingreports.com. Want to stay atop all the latest in the poker world? If so, make sure to get PokerNews updates on your social media outlets. Follow us on Twitter and find us on both Facebook and Google+! Sharelines Last week, Nebraska lawmakers shot down a bill that would have classified poker as a game of skill. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Flint, Michigan Mayor Dr. Karen Weaver told reporters that Hillary Clinton is the only presidential candidate in either party who has reached out to her about the water crisis in her city. Mayor Weaver was asked if she was satisfied with the Clinton and Sanders responses on the Flint water crisis. Dr. Weaver answered: What Sen. Sanders said was that the governor should step down, and a lot of people said that the governor should step down. And a lot of people said that the governor should step down, and Im going to continue saying what Ive been saying. We want people held accountable. I cant wait for the investigation to show us who knew what, and when they knew things. We do want some accountability, but what Hillary Clinton has done. She has actually been the only, the only candidate whether were talking Democratic or Republican to reach out and talk with us about what can I do. What kind of help do you need? Heres what I see going on. The call was organized by the Clinton campaign, and Mayor Weaver is a supporter of Hillary Clinton. However, it is surprising that the Sanders campaign has not reached out to the mayor. This is a crisis that deserves more than one Saturday morning issued a press release calling on Gov. Snyder to resign. It would be nice to see more action from the Sanders side in response to hundreds of children being poisoned in Flint. Earlier in the call, Weaver said, when Sec. Clinton talked about it in the debate, it really, you know if you thought we had a national spotlight on it, her statement added a spotlight, so I was really glad to have her step up and speak out about whats going on in the city of Flint. The fact that Clinton beat Sanders to punch on Flint during the last Democratic presidential debate suggested the savviness of a candidate who is thinking beyond Iowa and New Hampshire. At the end of the day, the people of Flint have been poisoned by the governor of their own state. It is time for the country to come together to help and demand answers from Gov. Snyder and his administration. Earlier this month the Nevada Supreme Court heard arguments on procedural matters in a case that seeks to have declared unconstitutional the states practice of handing out gifts to businesses that agree to operate in Nevada and create jobs. The plaintiff in the case is Michael Little, owner of a company that converts recycled landscape trimmings into biomass, a renewable energy source. The suit grew out of the fact the Governors Office of Economic Development (GOED) gave $1.2 million to one of his competitors, SolarCity, a company that installs solar panels. That was part of a $10 million Catalyst Fund. The suit claims the gift to SolarCity violates the Gift Clause of the state Constitution, which prohibits the state donating or loaning money to any company. Little is represented by Center for Justice and Constitutional Litigation (CJCL), a division of the Nevada Policy Research Institute. Joseph Becker, chief legal officer and director of the CJCL, said he is pleased the state Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments on whether Little has standing as a taxpayer to pursue the lawsuit. It seemed to me the court was very sympathetic to our plight, and that is that absent taxpayer standing its very difficult to keep a state government within its constitutional constraints, Becker said in a recent interview. Forty-six states have at least some form of taxpayer standing, three explicitly have rejected taxpayer standing, and one state, up until now, has no taxpayer standing jurisprudence whatsoever, according to legal scholars, and that state, of course, is the very one in which we find ourselves. Given the nature of the questions, Im optimistic that they see this as problem and theyre willing to address it. A ruling giving Little standing as a taxpayer would send the case back to district court to be heard on its merits. Becker explained that CJCL is in the business of trying to set precedent that serves the public interest, and having the Supreme Court say a taxpayer has standing to challenge unconstitutional tax expenditures is very important. The Supreme Court hearing gave Becker the chance to point out to the court the fact that the voters have on three occasions rejected attempts to amend the state Constitution and remove the Gift Clause in 1992, 1996 and again in 2000 by wide majorities. Gift clauses started appearing in state constitutions in the mid-1800s after state governments in the East invested heavily in private companies building infrastructure such as canals and railroads that went bust. The states of Indiana, Illinois and Michigan were bankrupted as a result. The Nevada Constitution specifically states: The State shall not donate or loan money, or its credit, subscribe to or be, interested in the Stock of any company, association, or corporation, except corporations formed for educational or charitable purposes. We needed a vote of the people to change the Constitution, which never happened, but now suddenly its OK for the state to do something that up until now, even they insisted, would take a constitutional amendment, Becker said bemusedly. I tried to make that point and I think did, noting the justices asked for citations about the balloting. Becker also noted the very timeliness of the case in light of the fact SolarCity, after drawing $400,000 of its allocated $1.2 million, announced just before Christmas that it is ceasing new operations in Nevada and laying off 550 employees after the state Public Utilities Commission drastically increased the connection fees for solar panel owners and slashed the amount paid for solar power uploaded to the grid. Becker noted his organization has been arguing all along that the reason these Gift Clause provisions were put in Western constitutions is because of the experience of those bankrupted Eastern states, where taxpayers found themselves having to bail out government spending boondoggles that benefited some private party that was somehow friendly with the people in office. I pointed out to the court that this is exactly the kind of problem that this provision was intended to prevent and the voters didnt want that changed, the attorney said. It is the courts job to protect against the tyranny of the majority, but here were protecting against the power elite. Pure cronyism. Portfolio English Edition's premium content is available only for subscribers Learn about the hottest news of the day, along with immediate follow-up analyses and 1000's of exclusive articles with full access to the premium content. Register and apply for a 14 days free trial period. A state board has fined DFL Sen. Matt Schmit's campaign committee $856 for fundraising violations with the threat of $2,568 in additional fines if the error happens again before Jan. 1, 2017. The Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board posted the conciliation agreement with Schmit on its website on Tuesday. According to the agreement, the Schmit for Senate Campaign accepted $2,975 from registered lobbyists and $6,500 from political committees or political funds during the 2013-2014 fundraising cycle. Those donations exceed the $6,000 donation limit for state Senate candidates from special sources. Jeff Sigurdson, the board's assistant executive director, said there is a math error in the agreement and it should have stated that the campaign improperly accepted $3,475 as opposed to $3,425. He said an amended conciliation report will need to be filed. In an interview, Schmit said the error happened after his campaign accidentally deposited several contributions received at a fundraiser that were meant for Senate District 21 DFL. The improperly accepted campaign donations were returned. "We take campaign finance regulations very seriously and the minute we realized there had been an inadvertent error back in 2014, we notified the campaign finance board, met with the executive director personally and were eager to sign a conciliation agreement to put the issue behind us, Schmit said. ADVERTISEMENT As part of the agreement, Schmit and the campaign agreed to begin using the board's campaign finance reporter software for its 2015 year-end report. They also agreed to make sure the committee's treasurer reviews all contributions made to within 60 days of receipt, run compliance reports after contributions are entered to identify and possible errors and update the campaign finance reporter software when needed. An initial fine of $856.25 was levied against the campaign and due 30 days after the agreement was signed on Oct. 26, 2015. The remaining $2,568.75 penalty will be stayed until Jan. 1, 2017, provided the committee doesn't violate the campaign donation limit again. The recent news that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management sold a Colorado rancher nearly 1,800 wild horses that illegally went to slaughter highlights the fact that our nation is doing a poor job by these animals at the taxpayers expense. In this one case alone, it has been conservatively calculated that $2.82 million was wasted on roundups, transportation and feeding of the horses that ultimately went to slaughter. BLM even spent an additional $140,000 to transport the horses to a rancher who sold them for a large profit to the kill buyer. Clearly, slaughter is neither a legal nor feasible management solution. Its also not supported by most Americans. A poll by the American Society of the Preservation and Cruelty to Animals shows that 80 percent of citizens oppose this practice. A more humane and economical approach is managing horses in the field with already available fertility control vaccine: native PZP (Porcine Zona Pellucida) vaccine. This option costs less, is not harmful to horses and can reduce and even eliminate the need for cruel and expensive roundups. Unfortunately, in most management areas, horses are still rounded up and removed. Some are adopted but thousands are kept in holding pens at taxpayer expense. This entire system costs an estimated $75 million annually. However, some but not enough areas are doing better. These areas, including a few operated by the BLM, are working to reduce and eliminate the need for roundups by controlling populations with fertility control. Examples include Assateague National Park in Maryland, the Pryor Mountain horses in Wyoming, and others. Here in the Southwest there are multiple tribes using this proven fertility control method recommended by the National Academy of Sciences. One such tribe in New Mexico has been working closely with the Wild Horse Observers Association and the Science and Conservation Center in Montana. New Mexico passed the Wild Horse Observers Associations protective wild horse legislation, which specifically calls for the use of PZP to manage New Mexicos wild horses. This bill passed unanimously minus 1. Also in Placitas a community of 6,000 a recent independent poll commissioned by the association showed that 85.7 percent of the people want to preserve their wild horses and to manage them with native PZP. Clearly, humane management based on science is supported by much of the public. It may also ultimately lead to fewer or no roundups and a huge reduction in wasted government spending. We just need more agencies and wildlife managers to embrace this alternative. This slaughter scandal is a wake-up call for the feds to do the right thing manage horses effectively, feasibly and humanely. Last month, writing about the possible role of Bill Clintons sex scandals in this years presidential campaign, I said: There are dozens of lines of attack against Hillary Clinton, nearly all of which will resonate with folks who already dislike her. The trick for the GOP nominee will be to select the handful that are likely resonate with other voters. Im not certain what these lines of attack are, but Im pretty sure the matter Bill Clintons sex scandals isnt among them. It seems, however, that there is a group of other voters i.e., ones not predisposed against Hillary for whom the Clinton sex scandals have resonance. That group is young radical feminists. For them, according to this report in the New York Times, what resonates is Hillarys role in attacking women who spoke out against her husbands behavior towards them. They tend, it seems, to agree with Donald Trump who says that Hillary was not a victim; she was an enabler some of these women have been destroyed, and Hillary worked with her husband to accomplish their destruction. For young feminists, this isnt old news. Many of them are learning the details for the first time. And although one can say that to raise the matter now is to relitigate it (to use one of President Obamas favorite dodges), the litigation occurs under a new set of rules. Hillary Clinton herself articulated the new rules when she wrote on twitter: Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported. This is in line with the way many feminists want sexual harassment claims to be handled on college campuses consider the accused guilty until proven innocent and shield the accuser from questions about her behavior. Perhaps Clinton had repressed the sordid episodes surrounding her husbands sexcapades, including her vicious response to his victims. If so, its easy to understand why. Who would want to remember calling Bills accusers floozies, bimbos and stalkers, and narcissistic loony tunes? Who would want to remember saying of Connie Hamzy, one of the first women to come forward during Bill Clintons 1992 campaign, we have to destroy her, as as George Stephanopoulos recalls Hillary insisting? Who would want to remember the accusers at all? However, many young feminists find Hillarys attacks on Bills accusers at least as offensive as old moralists like me did at the time. According to the Times, Lena Dunham told guests at a posh New York City dinner party that she was disturbed by how the Clintons and their allies discredited women who said they had had sexual encounters with or been sexually assaulted by former President Bill Clinton. Similarly, again according to the New York Times, Alexis Isabel Moncada, the 17-year-old founder of Feminist Culture, a popular blog, has said: I heard [Bill Clinton] sexually harassed people and she worked to cover it up. A lot of girls in my age group are huge feminists, and we dont react well to that. Does this mean that Hillarys role as enabler will play a meaningful role in the 2016 election, after all? I doubt it. The militant young feminists who want those who accuse men of sexual misconduct to be believed almost unconditionally arent going to vote for Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, or (except perhaps in small numbers) Marco Rubio. (Nor, in their position, would I). Indeed, Lena Dunham, through a spokesperson, says shes fully supportive of Hillarys candidacy and claims that her remarks at the posh dinner party have been mischaracterized. If the Democrats had a strong alternative to Hillary, then perhaps her attacks on victims of sexual misconduct would make a difference. Perhaps Bernie Sanders will prove to be such an alternative. But even in this scenario, the feminist desire to have a liberal woman become president will likely override concerns about Hillarys role as a sexual predators enabler. Just as Hillary enabled Bill to become president, most hard-core feminists, including young ones, are quite willing to enable her. They will maintain their credibility as feminists by complaining about Hillary to friends at dinner parties, or maybe even in an occasional op-ed, not by voting against her. The organisers of the NollywoodWeek Paris Film Festival (www.NollywoodWeek.com) have today launched the call for submissions for the 4th edition of one of Europes leading film festivals and the biggest celebration of Nollywood in France each year. The 4th edition which will be held at the Cinema lArlequin in Paris, France, from June 2-5, 2016, will feature a more diverse film selection, more events and more audience surprises. We are excited about this years edition of NollywoodWeek which is growing into a global model and promises to be even bigger and better, says co-founder Serge Noukoue. In just three years this unique film festival has already made its mark with some noteworthy achievements: 24 Nigerian films translated into French and screened in Paris Over 20 Nollywood actors, directors and producers hosted in the city of lights Partnerships, acquisitions and co-production deals for people active in the industry Over 5500 attendees over the past 3 years. The co-founders Serge Noukoue and Nadira Shakur are now looking forward to accommodating the growing audience size especially as the festival gains attention from surrounding European countries. Every year we receive festival goers from various countries outside of France and we want this to continue. This festival has become THE festival to watch the best of Nollywood in Europe and this year will not disappoint! stated Shakur. NollywoodWeek Paris has also raised the profile of an industry that was stigmatized by enforcing a very strict film selection process which only allows top quality works to be in the official selection. We want the terms NollywoodWeek and Quality to be synonymous in peoples minds, said Executive Director, Serge Noukoue. The festival also helps the directors get a real feel for their audience and through the Public Choice Award, we can really measure the audiences preferences. More than ever, NollywoodWeek Paris remains committed to providing Nigerian filmmakers a platform to showcase their work. Film submissions have opened allowing any Nigerian film-maker to submit their short or feature film to the festival for a chance to be screened in Paris. The deadline for submission is February 12, 2016. The official selection will be announced in March 2016. Launched in May 2013, NollywoodWeek Paris (www.NollywoodWeek.com) is the leading film festival showcasing Nigerian cinema in Europe. The NollywoodWeek Paris Film Festival promotes quality Nigerian films, fosters partnerships within the industry and contributes to the overall development and growth of one of Nigerias biggest cultural exports. The sestival is organized and hosted by the French association Okada Media Ghanaian workers across the country, mainly in the public sector, on Wednesday staged demonstrations in the various regional capitals, against increases in utility rates and fuel prices. A report from Accra said thousands of workers, clad in red and black dresses, were also demanding the withdrawal of a new tax law passed by parliament late 2015, which put extra taxes on petroleum products. The demonstrators, led by the Trades Union Congress (TUC), held placards some of which read, How can this be a better Ghana if our children cannot go to school. It also read that Mr President, have compassion for Ghanaians, Reduce utility and taxes, Reverse taxes and Give us a living wage. The report said the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission late last year increased the electricity rate by 59.2 per cent, while water tariff was also increased 67.2 per cent. It said further that prices of petroleum products went up by some 28 per cent in the first week of January, although fares have remained the same. Producers and distributors of electricity had argued strongly that they needed higher rates to recover cost. They said it had become imperative, especially as production of electricity now was mainly through thermal sources, gas and fuel, which are far more expensive than the hydro. They noted that the levels of water in the three main dams, which have installed capacity of about 1,600 megawatts, are critically low because of low rains. Ghana, which went through excruciating load shedding from 2012, now has some relief as production was about matching demand and many areas had not gone off since Christmas last year. But a huge chunk of production is by independent power producers who have signed agreements for rates that have to be paid by government, a source said. The state-owned Ghana Water Company also says it wants higher rates to recover cost else production will be affected, he said. A TUC member said on condition of anonymity that they turned down an offer to reduce rates of water and electricity because they did not meet its demand. He said government has stuck to the fuel levies saying it needs revenue in a country where the tax net was very small. The official said public sector workers now guzzle more than 50 per cent of the tax revenue, which was a source of worry for the government. He said the demonstration is expected to be followed by a nationwide strike on January 21 and 22. The government, which began a programme with the International Monetary Fund, IMF, last year, has been watching its expenditure closely and has promised to stick to its budget and not to cave in to demands although this is an election year. Political parties are cashing in on the situation as they condemn the killer increases in fuel prices and utility tariff. (PANA/NAN) There was panic among corrupt incumbent and former government officials Tuesday after news filtered in that President Muhammadu Buhari has signed agreements with the United Arab Emirate on repatriation of stolen funds and extradition of culpable officials. The Mutual Legal Assistance on Criminal and Commercial Matters, which will allow the UAE government return monies hidden or invested in banks and real estates in the country, was among a series of other bilateral agreements signed by the Presidents delegation, which was in the country for the World Energy Forum. Other agreements signed with the government of that country included: Avoidance of Double Taxation Agreement, Agreement on Trade Promotion and Protection, Judicial Agreements on Extradition, Transfer of Sentenced Persons. PREMIUM TIMES learnt that three of these agreements the Judicial Agreement on Extradition, Transfer of Sentenced Persons and Mutual Legal Assistance on Criminal and Commercial Matters are particularly giving those who may have hidden their ill-gotten wealth in the country a lot of worries. According to multiple security sources, as the news of the signing of the agreements broke, some ex-officials started making frantic efforts to either escape from that country or relocate their slush funds out of the reach of the government. The UAE has become a Mecca for Nigerias wealthy who are drawn by the expensive high rise properties, glitzy malls and ritzy hotels in the oil-rich country. A security source who has been investigating the pattern of Nigerias investment in the country told PREMIUM TIMES that at least $200 billion allegedly stolen from the countrys treasury by former government officials is believed to have been stashed in banks and invested in properties in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, two of UAEs most prominent cities. With the signing of the agreements the government can now actively demand the repatriation of funds hidden in the country by convicted former officials as well as demand the extradition of other Nigerian fugitives residing in the country. Before now, the UAE was a fortress of some sort for corrupt government officials escaping justice at home. In 2010, one of Nigerias most notorious money launderers, James Ibori, the former Governor of Delta State, as the heat over his money laundering cases in court became unbearable, ran to seek refuge in Dubai before he was extradited to the United Kingdom, where he was also wanted for fraud. On April 17, 2012, Mr. Ibori was sentenced to 13 years by the Southwark Crown Court in London. The former chairman of the Pension Reform Task Team, Abdulrasheed Maina, who is wanted for allegedly stealing N2.8 billion is believed to be hiding in Dubai. Several illicit transactions done on his behalf have been traced to the city, investigators said. Earlier in the month, the Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC), put out an order for the arrest of the former Comptroller of the Nigerian Customs Service, Abdullahi Dikko, who is being investigated for fraud. According to the EFCC, Mr Dikko is believed to be hiding in Dubai. Presidency insiders said Mr. Buhari considers the agreement with the UAE as a major joker in his anti-corruption war. There is abundance intelligence that a substantial chunk of Nigerias stolen wealth is the Emirate, with a number of fugitives hiding there, the source said. With this agreement, they can now be made to face justice, and their loot recovered. The presidency sees this as a major achievement. The process for the agreements had been on for months but the presidency was able to keep it under wraps so as not to tip off the criminals. Another top government official, who asked not to be named because of the sensitive nature of the matter, said with the agreement, Mr. Buhari was now set to share intelligence with the UAE authorities on Nigerian fugitives hiding there and Nigerias ill-gotten wealth stashed there. The acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Ibrahim Magu, has reiterated that the commission will not disobey any court order in the course of its anti-corruption war. Mr. Magu said this on Tuesday in Abuja at a meeting with journalists. He said that media cooperation was critical to keeping Nigerians informed of happenings in the commission. The EFCC boss further added that media support was also needed to fight corruption in the country. The fight against corruption is not about me or EFCC; its about the entity called Nigeria and every one of us. Mr. Magu was appointed the commission`s boss on November 9 by President Muhammadu Buhari. He was an Assistant Commissioner of Police before taking over from ex-chair, Ibrahim Lamorde. The Lagos State Governor, Akinwunmi Ambode, has welcomed with joy and enthusiasm the admission of Lagos State as the sixth member of the Odua Group, describing it as a major landmark in the effort of the South-Western States of Nigeria towards regional integration. In a statement issued on Wednesday by the States Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Steve Ayorinde, Governor Ambode said he believes the drive towards regionally integrating South West of Nigeria cannot be effectively pursued if all the States in the region do not combine their resources, work together and maximize their comparative advantages in order to build a strong regional infrastructural and social links amongst the States. Governor Ambode said Lagos joining the Odua Group is a priority for his administration. He observes that with its huge population, its vibrant economic base and its being the centre of economic and business activities in Nigeria, Lagos is uniquely placed to contribute to the development and growth of the Odua Investment Company Limited (OIC), the investment arm of the group, as well as the integration of South West Nigeria in general. The governor expresses his gratitude to the group for the decision and looks forward to his government working with those of other States in the group towards the betterment and development of South West of Nigeria and its people, Mr. Ayorinde said. The statement added that Governor Ambode wishes to seize this opportunity to thank the Odua Group for all that it has done and thank his colleagues in the five South-West States for extending the hand of fellowship to Lagos State. The decision to admit Lagos State as the sixth member of the Odua Group was taken at the end of a meeting of the five governors of Oyo, Ondo, Ogun, Osun and Ekiti States in Ibadan on Tuesday, thereby ending four years of debate amongst the previous five owner states over whether Lagos State should be admitted into the group. Over 300 Nigerians currently studying in Constanta Maritime University, Romania, on the scholarship of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, are facing threat of expulsion from the institution over the alleged refusal of the agency to pay their school fees and other sundry allowances. Investigation by PREMIUM TIMES showed that the young Nigerians have not been able to offset their fees thereby drawing the anger of the officials of the institution who have repeatedly threatened to send them back to Nigeria. Each of the students, who are studying engineering, navigation and naval transport, pays a total of 5,720 (N1.23m by international exchange rate of 216). The break down shows that each of them pays 4,500 as school fees; 300 as feeding allowance; 400 Euros for accommodation; 220 as stipends and 300 as winter allowance. While the feeding, accommodation and stipends are paid monthly, the school fees and winter allowance are paid once a year. The affected students are in their first, second and third year in the university. One of the students, who pleaded anonymity for fear of being victimised, told this newspaper that the school authorities have threatened to send them back to Nigeria if NIMASA does not pay the fees and allowances by January 31. We are stranded, confused and cannot concentrate on our studies based on the unfortunate news of expulsion unleashed to them by the school, he said. The school has said that if by 30th of January the school fees are not paid it has no option than to return us back home. He said the institutions officials have been trying to contact NIMASA to resolve the matter but no positive response from the agency concerning the future of the students in the school. He pleaded with the Federal Ministries of Transport and Education as well as the Senate and House of Representatives Committees on Transport to intervene for the sake of these young Nigerians who are eager to contribute their quarter towards national development. Efforts by this newspaper to reach the institution by mail and telephone were not successful. When contacted, the NIMASA spokesperson, Lamin Tumaka, declined comments, saying she was yet to be briefed on such matter. However, a senior official of NIMASA, who refused to speak officially because she was not authorised to do so, attributed the delay in paying the fees and allowances to the challenges the agency was facing. The official however assured that the matter was being addressed and that the students would be paid soon. Im sure you know the challenges NIMASA is facing; we are trying to sort things out, she told PREMIUM TIMES Tuesday. We have an acting director general and you know other issues like the TSA (Treasury Single Account) and others. But we have commenced processing of their payment. NIMASA had sent over 2,500 young Nigerians on scholarship to reputable institutions in the United Kingdom, Egypt, Romania, India and The Philippines to study marine engineering, naval architecture and nautical sciences under the Nigerian Seafarers Development Programme. In 2015, hundreds of the youth studying in Philippines were sent out of their classrooms over the alleged inability of the agency to pay their tuition fees and other sundry payments for their upkeep. However, the then Director General of NIMASA, Patrick Akpobolokemi, had denied the reports of the students ordeal. He said, The students are studying to become marine engineers, naval architects and nautical scientists. This has gone on successfully. We were taken aback by the recent media publications on nonpayment of the students fees, which we believe may have been sponsored. For the avoidance of doubts, no student of the NSDP programme has been sent out of school for fees and none will be sent out because all fees have been paid by NIMASA till date. The former DG, who is currently facing trial for alleged corruption, said in the next five years, Nigeria would have produced a sizeable number of qualified seafarers, satisfying local demands and also earning scarce foreign exchange from working on board foreign ships. WELLS A head-on collision on a snow-covered, dirt road resulted in the death of a Wells woman. Around noon Friday, the vehicles crashed at the top of a hill on Metropolis Road north of Wells, said Undersheriff Clair Morris. William and Lana Gibbs, both 65, of Wells were in a 2012 Ford Expedition. Lana Gibbs was pronounced dead at the scene, said Morris. She was taken to Burns Funeral Home. William Gibbs was transported to a hospital in Idaho. Mac Crome, 34, of Deeth was driving a government registered truck and is believed to be a government trapper, explained Morris. He was treated and released at Northeastern Nevada Regional Hospital. In addition to the sheriffs department, Nevada Highway Patrol responded and is in the process of reconstructing the crash. The cause has not been determined at this time. Both vehicles are impounded as the investigation is ongoing. Morris called the crash a perfect storm, because they couldnt have hit any more squarely. He added the occupants did not see each other until the collision occurred. The Federal Government said Tuesday that Lassa fever has claimed 63 lives out of 212 suspected cases reported from 62 local government areas in affected states. The Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, confirmed this at the emergency National Council of Health meeting in Abuja on the outbreak of the disease. Mr. Adewole listed the 17 affected states as Bauchi, Niger, Taraba, Kano, Rivers, Oyo, Ondo, Edo, Plateau, Gombe, Nasarawa, Lagos, Delta, Ekiti, Ebonyi, Zamfara and Kogi as well as the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). He said there is high level of denial and conspiracy across some states, adding that health managers should not deceive executives by their pretence and silence. The minister described the denial of Ebonyi to report five suspected cases and one death as conspiracy of denial. He said every state should consider itself at risk and put measures to contain and prevent the disease. Mr. Adewole said the federal government would maintain high level of alert all year round to celebrate Lassa fever obituary next year. With the resources available we will collectively eliminate the disease in Nigeria soon. We have special facilities around us and we have adequate human resource to address the challenge. We will strengthen the Primary Health Care Centres across the country to enhance the surveillance mechanism, he said. The minister said 5,000 Primary Health Care centres would be activated before the end of 2016. A committee had already been set up to map out health care centres across the country would benefit from the programme. At least one primary health care centre will be functional in a ward, said Mr. Adewole. In a related development, the minister announced that six most affected states will have Lassa fever diagnostic centres. He said the states are Niger, Nasarawa, Taraba, Plateau, Bauchi and Ondo states. This is in addition to the six existing Lassa fever treatment centres. According to him, the centres are Lassa fever Treatment Centre, Irrua, Edo; University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital, Maiduguri, Borno; Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital, Kano. Others are Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), University College Hospital Ibadan, and the National Centre for Disease Control, Asokoro, Abuja. (NAN) The two chambers of the Nigerian bi-cameral legislature, the Senate and the House of Representatives, have commenced debate on the 2016 appropriation bill proposed by President Muhammadu Buhari. The debate commenced Wednesday at the plenaries of the two chambers of the National Assembly, after the adoption of Mr. Buharis request to amend the budget. Leading debate at the Senate, Leader, Ali Ndume, noted that the draft appropriation bill was unique and a budget of change. He expressed confidence that the budget would be the pivotal means to the change promised by Mr. Buhari-led All-Progressives Congress government. Mr. Ndume then presented details of the N6.08 trillion budget. Of the N6.8 trillion, N351.4 billion is for statutory transfers, N1.5 trillion for debt service, N2.6 trillion for non-debt recurrent expenditure, while N1.8 trillion is for contribution to the Development Fund for Capital Expenditure. These details were also presented at the House of Representatives plenary by Leader Femi Gbajabiamila, who described the budget as historical and epic. Epic and historical because it is a budget that is coming at the advent of a historically low oil price and on the heels of a receding economy like never before, Mr. Gbajabiamila said. Epic and historical because it is perhaps the first really all-inclusive budget that seeks to carry all Nigerians along the rich, the not-so- rich, the poor, the not-so-poor and the vulnerable. It is an epic budget because it is a budget based on the internationally acclaimed zero-based budgeting system where every kobo has been newly justified by the MDAs It is trite economic principle and economy 101 that when there is a downturn in the economy, you rejig or stimulate the economy by pumping more money into it, he added. As expected, the budget debate divided Senators along party lines. Eyinnaya Abaribe (PDP-Abia State) noted that the budget was predicated on $38 per barrel of crude oil which now sells at $28. Therefore, this budget is dead on arrival, he said, urging the Presidency to withdraw the budget and go back to the drawing board. Like Mr. Abaribe, Suleiman Adokwe (PDP-Nasarawa State) was also critical of the borrowing proposal which is almost 50 per cent of the expected revenue to fund the budget. But Ahmed Lawan (APC-Yobe State) countered the PDP Senators. He said the budget was not dependent on oil revenue, noting that just over 800 billion is expected from oil sales. Mr. Lawan therefore argued that sliding oil price would not affect the feasibility of the budget and hailed Mr. Buhari for moving Nigeria away from oil dependency for the first time. He also said stealing of our patrimony by the previous PDP administrations necessitated the huge borrowing. At both chambers, the debate continues tomorrow. The Edo State governor, Adams Oshiomhole, has backed Tuesdays handcuffing of Olisa Metuh, the national publicity secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, as he appeared before a court, saying there was nothing wrong with restraining Mr. Metuh. Speaking during a meeting with the new council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, Edo State, in Benin, Tuesday, the governor said if those accused of lesser crimes are handcuffed and paraded by the police and get no sympathy from the public, Mr. Metuh and others, accused of diverting huge public funds, should not have sympathy. Here is a transcript of the governors remarks, according to his spokesperson, Peter Okhiria. I want to appeal to the media to join President Buhari in fighting the anti-corruption war because if we dont, and we allow these people to harass the president to silence, all of us are in trouble. I saw some headlines querying why should Metuh be in handcuffs. If people who steal he-goats, dried grass cutters are in handcuffs; I have been to the police station several times and I see young men who rob not more than N500,000 naira in handcuffs, they are paraded and made to seat on the floor. Why should certain set of criminals be treated as if they are not suspected criminals and serious crimes at that? When you all reported lavishly how under the former president, the former defense chief set up a military tribunal to try soldiers who ran away from battle field and they were condemned to death, it was only Femi Falana who was consistent in fighting their case. Those are Nigerians who were to be killed for running away because they couldnt confront a Boko Haram that was well armed while they were asked to go and fight with their bare hands and we were told that weapons, ammunitions and everything had been provided. When Borno Governor said, look, our Armed Forces are fighting with bare hands, he was told to shut up. Now it is clear from current revelations that the money that would have been used to arm these young men who joined the army with pride and who on a good day have the courage to fight not only at home but abroad, but because they didnt have arms, they ran away. They were sentenced to death. Thanks to Buhari, some have been commuted now to various terms of imprisonment which I applaud and I think even that one should further be reviewed, they should summit their uniform but remain free people. Now, those who shared that money, this is not the usual security money, this is special appropriation to fight Boko Haram, $2.1 billion, people just shared it, everybody was using their son, co-opting young children into this while other peoples children were sentenced to death. And anybody who partakes in that and they put him in handcuffs, they say, why should he be in handcuff because he is an elite and the media will report it without also showing us pictures of some Nigerians whose fathers are not known, but are not less Nigerian than any of us, who are always not only in handcuffs but are put on the floor in various police stations and paraded even before they are charged to court and we all look at them and turn to the next pictures, it doesnt attract a commentary. Why should some criminals just be celebrated even when we all can feel the amount of damage, the consequences of their rascality on our collective wellbeing. I think the media should support the President. This is not President Buharis fight, and you know he had reminded us that if we dont kill corruption, it will kill us. Now corruption is fighting back. A Federal High Court in Abuja on Wednesday ordered the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu, to be transferred to Kuje prison in Abuja, pending the determination of the charge against him. Mr. Kanu is facing a six-count charge of treasonable felony, along with two others, David Nwawusi, and Benjamin Madubugwu. He was also charged for allegedly maintaining an unlawful organisation, and for illegal possession of firearms. At the opening of session Wednesday, Mr. Kanus counsel, Vincent Obeta, prayed the court to allow his client be taken to Kuje prison for ease of access to him. The counsel to the federal government, and deputy director of prosecution, Office of the Attorney General of the Federation, Mohammed Diri, however asked the court to allow Mr. Kanus continued detention by the SSS for ease of delivery to court sittings. In his ruling, the judge, James Itsoho, agreed with Mr. Obeta, and ordered Mr. Kanu taken to Kuje prison, pending the termination of his bail application on January 25. Mr. Kanu, who was arrested by the SSS as he returned to Nigeria, has been in detention since October. Calls for his release led to demonstrations in several south east states. Mr. Kanu was re-arraigned at the court on December 18, barely 24 hours after the same court, led by Justice Adeniyi Ademola, discharged him unconditionally, of all initial charges levelled against him. The judge had in that ruling faulted the action of the State Security Service in detaining Mr. Kanu for over two months, without trial. The judge later stood down from the case after Mr. Kanu passed a vote of no confidence on him. The death toll of Lassa fever has risen to four in Plateau State, with the most recent case occurring at the Jos University Teaching Hospital, JUTH, on Tuesday. A medical personnel handling Lassa fever patients at the hospital said on Wednesday that a victim died in the early hours of Tuesday. He noted that a few people infected with suspected Lassa fever at the hospital were responding to treatment. PREMIUM TIMES gathered that one person had earlier died in Mangu, while two others died at an undisclosed hospital in Joson Saturday. Meanwhile, the chairman of the Plateau State chapter of Medical and Health Workers Union of Nigeria, Badung Dalyop, advised the medical personnel handling the cases to adopt safety measures to avoid being infected. Commenting on the death toll, Mr. Dalyop however differed on the number, saying only two persons had been confirmed dead from Lassa fever. The statistics given by the Ministry of Health indicates that as at last count, two persons died of Lassa fever in the state. My general advice to all health workers concerning Lassa fever cases is that before they attend to any patient, they must ensure that safety measures are put in place by kitting themselves. Every case is a suspicion case, until proven otherwise through medical examinations, he said. Speaking on measures already taken by the government to curtail spread of the disease in the state, he said health personnel had been retrained to properly handle the suspicious cases. Here in Plateau State, there has been training workshops for health personnel, particularly for directors of primary healthcare, health educators and other officers had been retrained to handle the disease. This is aimed at avoiding epidemic situation, he said. The expert also advised the general public to strictly observe preventive measures by avoiding consumption of contaminated food and preventing rodents from gaining access to grains. The Plateau State commissioner for Health, Kuden Kamshak, had recently said five out of the 17 local government council areas of Plateau State were affected by the disease. An Akure High Court on Wednesday found two persons guilty of the murder of former vice chancellor of the Federal University of Technology, Akure, Albert Ilemobade. The court said two former domestic staff of Mr. Ilemobade, Daniel Itah Efiong and Babatunde Olayemi, are to die by hanging for the gruesome murder and robbing of the 79-year-old professor. The court, presided over by Justice William Olamide, found the two men guilty of a three-count charge of conspiracy to murder, murder and robbery. The prosecution successfully proved that the two accused persons strangled the former VC to death at his residence in Ijapo Estate, Akure, Ondo State, on June 21, 2015. The offence, according to prosecution, was contrary to and punishable under Section 324 of the Criminal Code Cap.37 Vol. 1 Laws of Ondo State of Nigeria 2006. The prosecution, led by the state director of public prosecution, Adejoke Adeyemi-Tuki, called four witnesses and tendered several exhibits during the prosecution. The charges read: That you Daniel Ita Effiong and Olayemi Bamitale on the 21st June 2015 at about 9pm at No. 1 Ikere Street Ijapo Estate commit felony to wit: murder and thereby committed an offence contrary to and punishable under section 324 of the Criminal Code Cap.37 Vol.1 Laws of Ondo State of Nigeria 2006. That you Daniel Ita Effiong and Olayemi Bamitale on the same date, time and place in the aforementioned magisterial district did kill one Professor Albert Adeoye Ilemobade by jointly strangled him to death and thereby committed an offence contrary to section 316 and punishable under section 319 of Criminal Code Cap.37 Vol.1 Laws of Ondo State of Nigeria 2006. That you Daniel Ita Effiong and Olayemi Bamitale on the same date, time and place in the aforementioned magisterial district did conspire together to commit felony to wit: robbery and thereby committed an offence contrary to and punishable under section 403A of the Criminal Code Cap.37 Vol.1 Laws of Ondo State of Nigeria 2006. That you Daniel Ita Effiong and Olayemi Bamitale on the same date, time and place in the aforementioned magisterial district did rob one late Professor Albert Adeoye Ilemobade Rav 4 Jeep 2008 model with registration number Lagos GGE-589-CF valued yet unknown and the sum of seven thousand naira property of late Professor Albert Adeoye Ilemobade and thereby committed an offence contrary to and punishable under section 401 of the Criminal Code Cap.37 Vol.1 Laws of Ondo State of Nigeria 2006. In his ruling, Justice William Olamide held that the prosecution was able to establish and prove their case beyond reasonable doubt and to the satisfaction of the court. The accused persons were callous, wicked and inconsiderate when they decided to slew out life of an elderly person over his property. Against this backdrop, the accused persons do not deserve the sympathy or mercy of this court, the judge said. Law must take its cause and this will serve as a deterrent to other. The accused persons are hereby sentenced to death by hanging. May God have mercy on your souls. Pedro Almodovar during the masterclass at Madrids Circulo de Bellas Artes. BERNARDO PEREZ What is the secret of the Pedro Almodovar style? The answer, the Spanish director has revealed, lies in a bar of chocolate and the cards of Hollywood stars inside each one that accompanied his teatimes in Francos Spain. In a recent masterclass organized by infrastructure and renewable energy company Acciona in Madrid, the filmmaker reflected on his origins, how he became interested in movies, his passions and his way of working in the run-up to the release of his 20th film, Julieta. The crime pages are a great source of material. Reality gives you the first line, the second one you then write More than 600 people queued for four hours to attend the session, which began with Almodovar talking about his childhood and the discovery of his vocation. I always knew I wanted to belong to cinema, he told the packed hall. Even before I was 10, my family lived in La Mancha and we ate bread and chocolate. Those bars had cards of Hollywood movie stars inside. It was my first greasy, unctuous contact with a universe that obviously wasnt from La Mancha. I wanted to get away from the street where I was born and work with those stars. I began to see films in the open air during the summers at Madrigalejo [Caceres province] where we moved to, and remember films projected on a white wall, the corners of which we children urinated against. Those smells of chocolate and piss are mixed in my memory. Strangely, that wasnt the only mention of urine made by the double Oscar winner: In an interview with a foreign media outlet, my mother said to my shame, because I had to translate it into English that she was in labor for three days and that the first thing I did after she gave birth to me was to pee, and that it shot across the room to the curtains. Thats how it all began. A chocolate bar and the origins of Almodovars cinema Video: The trailer for Almodovars new film, Julieta (in Spanish). Almodovar also remembered how he initially thought that actors did everything in films. But then I discovered that there was somebody behind the camera, and decided that was who I wanted to be. Fellini, Welles, Antonioni, part of neo-realism. I came to Madrid as soon as I left school. And so I saw films at the Filmoteca [a movie theater specializing in classic film cycles] in a more ordered fashion. Working at Telefonica I was able to buy a super 8 camera and I began making my own little films. I traveled to London, I was influenced by US underground cinema from the late 1960s, as well as British film, then Free Cinema, the French New Wave. At my altar are Hitchcock, because he is the father of cinema, Bunuel, Berlanga. And then a huge choir: Lang, Melville, Bergman, Chabrol I am a huge movie fan. And I dont want to forget the new Spanish cinema of the 1960s, when we were kidnapped by the dictator. La tia Tula, The Hunt, El verdugo, El extrano viaje and El mundo sigue Almodovar was more melancholic when he came to talk about cinemas declining importance over the course of his lifetime. The movies were a kind of parallel world, almost celestial Spain had to try escaping in whatever way it could. And one way was the movies. For me, filming was more than a dream, it was something visceral. The social impact was stronger in those days. There are many reasons: Spain, us, weve changed. Today the internet and the new technologies rule. The way we used to watch movies came from the power of hypnosis, the immersion in parallel worlds that went beyond the talent of the film. Now screens are smaller. This devalues the cinematographic product. Video: The trailer for The Skin I Live In. Where does he find his stories? The method is to be awake. The crime pages are a great source. Reality gives you the first line, the second one you then write. But he doesnt look for ideas. Almost every day I get up thinking somebody should make a movie about this or that. But that doesnt mean I have to be the one to do so. I am clear about my ideology. But Im not able to make social cinema. Three years ago I was determined to do something about the Civil War era told through a pathologist, and its written, but Im not happy with it. Im not able to impose ideas. Films speak about when they are made, independently of the wishes of whoever makes them. There are no explicit messages in my films, but there is moral autonomy and freedom. The director avoided discussing his new film, Julieta (previously known as Silencio), other than saying that it is about the pain of missing somebody. Its not a tragedy per se, but its about the disappearance of the main character, and its then as though she never existed. Its mysterious and painful. I show how one lives with an absence. Podemoss number two official Inigo Errejon (right). Ballesteros (EFE) One of the biggest hurdles to a potential governing alliance between Spains Socialist Party (PSOE) and Podemos has been cleared. The anti-austerity party and its three associates in Valencia, Galicia and Catalonia have finally agreed to integrate into a single parliamentary group, rather than seek four separate delegations. Podemoss regional partners had, until now, demanded a separate presence in Spains Congress, a petition that, if granted, would have meant greater subsidies and a bigger representation on house committees. Compromis, the Valencian party that ran in tandem with Podemos, decided to reject the deal and file a separate request for a group of its own But other parties in the lower house rejected this demand, pointing to internal regulations that state that deputies cannot create separate groups if at the time of the election, they belonged to political entities that did not compete against each other for votes. The deal came shortly before the deadline to file the petitions for congressional groups on Tuesday. But four deputies for Compromis, the Valencian party that ran in tandem with Podemos at the December 20 election, decided to reject the deal and file a separate request for a group of its own. This means that the Podemos group in Congress will have 65 representatives, rather than the 69 originally attributed to the anti-austerity party after the election. Compromis deputy Joan Baldovi acknowledged that its alliance with Podemos was broken, but insisted that any other choice would have meant betraying its own electorate. We kept our promise to Valencian voters, he said. Podemoss decision to accept a single congressional group eliminates one of the hurdles in the way of an alliance with the Socialists. The latters leader, Pedro Sanchez, is aiming for a coalition of progressive forces to form an alternative government to the conservative Popular Party (PP), which won the most seats at the election (123). But other sticking points remain, not least of which is Podemoss support for a referendum on self-rule in Catalonia an option that the Socialist Party has so far rejected as energetically as the PP. Inigo Errejon, the number two official at Podemos, warned that despite the recent deal, Sanchez should not take it for granted that he will find support for a bid to the prime ministers office. If he wants to be prime minister of Spain, the first thing he needs to do is explain what for, and maybe he will find some form of support, he said. Following an inconclusive election in which no party achieved a sufficiently significant majority to form a government, Spains parties have been scrambling to strike deals that will allow them to take power and avert new elections. Acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, of the PP, will seek reinstatement at the upcoming investiture vote, but has few chances of being successful as his party fell short of the 176 seats required for a congressional majority. English version by Susana Urra. By PrintWeek Team All eyes are on the Awards Night of the 12th edition of the PrintWeek Awards to be held at the Grand Hyatt (Santacruz East, Mumbai) on 2 Nov... 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. By: Community Hospital Contact Stanton Viaduc - HospitalPortal.net ***@hospitalportal.net 866-580-7700 Stanton Viaduc -HospitalPortal.net866-580-7700 End -- Community Hospital in McCook, Nebraska has been awarded the Best Hospital Intranet Solution Award from eHealthcare Leadership Awards , a leading awards program that recognizes the best websites, digital communications, and business improvement initiatives of a wide range of healthcare organizations. Professionals from many areas of healthcare volunteer to judge eHealthcare Leadership Awards Nominees websites and digital communications. The base framework that the award-winning Intranet uses for proper functionality is provided by HospitalPortal.net.Effective communication is at the heart of any healthcare facility. The primary focus at HospitalPortal.net is to improve communication between hospital staff members so they can focus on what they do bestpatient care. The unique Intranet portal system at HospitalPortal.net has paved the way for Community Hospital to earn the Best Hospital Intranet Solution Award from eHealthcare Leadership Awards. We recognized the need to redesign our intranet communication tool that would allow us to share information and documents and collaborate across multiple locations quickly and easily. After researching Intranet products, we felt like HospitalPortal.net s Intranet system offered us the most complete solution for our communication needs with little additional customization. Their many years of experience working with rural hospitals was reassuring as well and it made selecting their product an easy choice. We are really proud of our Intranet and are grateful for this recognition,shared Lori Beeby, Information Systems Director at Community Hospital.The award was presented for, Best Overall Intranet. Factors considered include delivery of strong healthcare content, interactivity, medical care support, integration with the organizations operations, as well as strength of Web design and ease of navigation.The HospitalPortal.net designers have worked diligently to create a comprehensive, out-of-the-box system that allows hospitals and healthcare providers to streamline workflow, decrease manual and paper processes, and improve communications and interactions at every level. Our solutions are used by over 175 hospitals around the US, and we couldnt be happier that Community Hospital and our Intranet product were recognized for this digital healthcare award. The marketing and technical departments at Community Hospital are the ones to be saluted as they brought our tools to life within their organization,said Albert Jurkiewicz, CEO of HospitalPortal.net. HospitalPortal.net s Intranet Content Management System helps hospitals to improve workplace communication, automate processes, and streamline workflow for policies and procedures providing a complete audit trail and version control on documents. Their solution gives employees quick, easy access to important information that are vital to the day-to-day operations of any sized healthcare organization like rural hospitals, critical care facilities, University medical centers, specialized clinics, and more. Students learning Arabic at Delbarton School in New Jersey are Practicing Their Language Skills by Swapping Video Messages with Peers in Nablus, West Bank, using Level Up Villages Global Communication Platform 1 2 3 Delbarton students in NJ launch an Arabic language exchange with peers in Nablus Delbarton students in NJ launch an Arabic language exchange with peers in Nablus Delbarton students in NJ launch an Arabic language exchange with peers in Nablus End -- Level Up Village (LUV), a provider of pioneering global STEAM (STEM + arts) programs, today announced the launch of its first Arabic language and cultural exchange. Upper School students taking Arabic as their foreign language at Delbarton School in Morristown, New Jersey, are practicing their language and listening skills by exchanging video messages with Palestinian students at Pioneers Baccalaureate School in Nablus, West Bank.This Arabic language and culture exchange represents an exciting, new application for Level Up Villages global communication platform, which we developed to provide seamless, one-on-one collaboration between students from around the world, said Amy McCooe, Co-Founder, Level Up Village. We are experiencing phenomenal demand for our global STEAM courses, as well as our newer offerings as schools seek innovative new ways to provide authentic learning opportunities in order to develop global citizenship.Over a five-week period, students at Delbarton School will exchange a series of video messages in Arabic with individual partner students in Nablus, West Bank. They will discuss topics such as sports, food, hobbies, travel, family life, school routines, career aspirations and daily life in their respective countries.The experience of communicating with native speakers allows us at the very least to strengthen language skillsbut much more importantly, it provides us with the opportunity to use the linguistic tools we have been developing,said Zach Tabor, Arabic teacher at Delbarton School. Engagement on both a cultural and individual level allows not only for greater understanding, but also for experience in building and maintaining individual relationshipswhich are ultimately what connect people even in a globalized world.The Delbarton students, who are in their second year of studying Arabic, prepared for the exchange by devoting considerable time to practicing their Arabic conversational skills. They also read articles, watched videos and held discussions on the histories of various Arab cultures.I think any young man from Delbarton who has the opportunity to have a conversation (or several) with another young person in the West Bank willI hopebecome quickly aware that as humans, we arent all that different from each other, and that the issues we hear so much about often have many sides to them, said Dan Pieraccini, Director of Global Programs at Delbarton School. When we come to know one another as humans, yes, the concerns of the world become less black and white, but we also exercise our muscles for compassion, understanding and curiosity from the atrophy of our comfort zones.Now in 100 U.S. schools, Level Up Village empowers students to make a difference through one-to-one collaboration on real-world problems together with Global Partner students in 23 countries. U.S. school partners directly sponsor global education in developing countries through LUVs Take a Class, Give a Class model: a portion of the tuition is used to deliver the same class to students at one of LUVs Global Partner organizations.Read more about the Arabic language & culture exchange here on the Level Up Village blog. Schools interested in introducing a Level Up Village foreign language and culture exchange in Arabic or Spanish should contact Galia@levelupvillage.com Level Up Village (LUV) delivers pioneering Global STEAM (STEM + Arts) enrichment courses that promote design thinking and one-to-one collaboration on real-world problems between K-9 students in the U.S. and partner students in developing countries. Launched in 2012, LUV runs courses during school, after-school and in the summer at nearly 100 U.S. schools in 15 states, with over 30 Global Partner organizations in 23 countries. More information is available at levelupvillage.com Delbarton is a school for boys in grades 7 through 12. Led by the Benedictine monks of St. Marys Abbey, Delbarton is located in Morristown, New Jersey, three miles west of the historic Morristown Green. The schools stated mission is to build character, pursue excellence and develop leadership.Media Contacts:Andrea ShermanPR, Level Up VillageNeesha RahimCo-Founder, Level Up Village neesha@levelupvillage.com (646) 242-6529Jessica FiddesDirector of Communications, Delbarton Schooljfiddes@delbarton.orgNote to editors recent press about Level Up Village: The Offshore Racing Association and Bell's Beer Bayview Mackinac Race announce the use of the Offshore Racing Rule for the Cove Island Course. By: Offshore Racing Association Offshore Racing Association Contact Bjorn Johnson ***@offshoreracingassociation.org Photo: https://www.prlog.org/ 12526096/1 Bjorn Johnson End -- The Bayview Yacht Club Mackinac Race Authority announced today that the Notice of Race (NOR) has been published and race registration is open for the 2016 Bells Beer Bayview Mackinac Race. With this NOR comes the use of the Offshore Racing Rule (ORR) for the Cove Island Course.The Offshore Racing Association (ORA) and the ORR are excited to have been chosen by the Mackinac Race Authority and confirmed by the Bayview Yacht Club Officers as the rule of choice for the Cove Island Course. , said Bjorn Johnson, ORA Executive Director. Mackinac Race Authority (MRA) Chairman Commodore Tom Meier added, .The Offshore Racing Rule is used in such classic races as the TransPac Race, Newport Bermuda Race, Chicago Mackinac Race, Pacific Cup, Puerto Vallarta Race, Rolex Big Boat, MEXORC, SoCal 300 and many other important offshore races. According to Kyle Burleson, 2016 Mack Race Chairman, .Bayview Yacht Club, founded in 1915, is widely regarded as the premier sailing club in Michigan and the Midwest. Located on the Detroit River near the mouth of Lake St. Clair, it has been hosting the Bayview Mackinac Race since 1925 and has more than 1,000 members. The Offshore Racing Association (ORA) founded in 2006, is the owner and developer of the Offshore Racing Rule (ORR), High Performance Rule (HPR) and Offshore Racing Rule-easy (ORR-ez).For more information on the Bells Beer Bayview Mackinac, please contact the Race Chair at: mack_chair@byc.com . For more information on ORA and its handicap systems, please visit the ORA website Media Contact Jenn McDaniel pr@thursdaynetwork.org 443-842-1487 Jenn McDaniel443-842-1487 End -- January 20, 2016Media Contact:Jennifer McDanielPublic Relations ChairThursday Network|Greater Washington Urban League443.842.1487pr@thursdaynetwork.orgThursday Network presentsJoin Week 2016WASHINGTON (January 18, 2016) From January 17-23rd, Thursday Network (TN) will join with all National Urban League Young Professionals chapters across the country in celebrating membership. TN will host a week of volunteer, development and social activities to showcase the organization including a Martin Luther King, Jr. Blanket & Toiletries drive at New Bethel Baptist Church located at 1739 9th St NW, Washington, District of Columbia 20001This year's theme is The Movement Starts With You and all young professionals are invited to participate. This years Join Week line up includes a Know Your Rights School Lunch at Anacostia High School, professional development seminar with guest speaker and branding expert Talaya Waller, and the release of our digital magazine, Thursday Network News at Stonefish Lounge.The schedule of events is as follows:Sunday, January 17: Join Week Kick-Off: Tour of Frederick Douglass Museum in HIghland Beach, MD3200 Wayman Avenue, Highland Beach, MD 2140311 a.m.. 5 p.m. - Lunch to follow after the tourMonday, January 18: 16th Annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Blanket & Toiletries DriveNew Bethel Baptist Church - 1739 9th St NW, Washington, DC 2000110 a.m. 2 p.m.*RSVP AND DONATE TO THE DRIVE AT Thursday Network MLK Day of Service ( https://2016mlktoiletrydrive.splashthat.com/ )*Tuesday, January 19: Join Week Open HouseGreater Washington Urban League - 2901 14th St NW, Washington, DC 200097-8:30 p.m.Wednesday, January 20:Know Your Rights School LunchAnacostia High School 1601 16th St SE, Washington, DC 2002011 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.Wednesday, January 20: Thursday Network News Digital Magazine Launch PartyStonefish Lounge 1708 L St NW, Washington, DC 200366:30 p.m. - 9 p.m.Thursday, January 21:Revitalizing Your Personal Brand in 2016 Professional Development SeminarGreater Washington Urban League 2901 14th St NW Washington, D.C. 200096:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.Friday, January 22: Join Week: Thats How I Roll Bowling ChallengeAMF Laurel Lanes - 15013 Baltimore Avenue Laurel, Maryland 207077 p.m. - 10 p.m.Saturday, January 23rd: Join Week Finale: Empowerment WorkshopSoutheast Neighborhood Library - 403 7th St SE Washington, D.C. 200091 p.m. - 3 p.m.For more details about Join Week 2016 and to register for events please visit TN Join Week 2016 ( https://tnjoinweek2016.splashthat.com/ ). For more information about Thursday Network please visit www.thursdaynetwork.org.,-30-Thursday Network (TN) is the young professionalsauxiliary of the Greater Washington Urban League and the Washington, D.C. Chapter of the National Urban League Young Professionals. Founded in 1992, Thursday Network's mission is to provide a forum for young professionals, ages 21 40, to assist the Greater Washington Urban League in achieving its goals and to focus their efforts on community service and foster personal and professional development, social consciousness, civic engagement, and economic empowerment. Sean Connery and his wife Micheline inside their Marbella home in 1995. ALVARO CANOVAS (GETTY) In the late 1970s, Sean Connery became a resident of Marbella. The Scottish actor and his wife Micheline settled down in Casa Malibu, a property located between the southern resorts Golden Mile and Puerto Banus. Back then, the area was still practically undeveloped. The Connerys had discovered the Costa del Sol during its golden days, when Marbella was an international meeting point for high societys idle classes. The Connerys love story with Marbella began to fade when Mayor Jesus Gil began an aggressive development drive The estate had been previously owned by the Spanish writer and filmmaker Edgar Neville, and there are photographs showing the happy-looking couple enjoying their home on the coast of Malaga. But their love story with Marbella began to fade when the late Jesus Gil became mayor in 1991 and began an aggressive development drive in the city. Seeking to flee the invasion, the couple put their home up for sale in the late 1990s and moved to the Bahamas, where they now reside. Connery shaving inside the bathroom of his Marbella home in September 1983. Corbis The man who became world famous as James Bond was annoyed by the increase in the number of neighbors all around Casa Malibu, which affected his privacy. At an ongoing trial over dubious rezoning procedures and tax fraud in connection with a 72-unit apartment complex that went up where Casa Malibu once stood, this fact was called up on Tuesday by Juan Antonio Roca, a former Marbella city planning official and the mastermind behind a massive corruption scandal known as the Malaya case. Neither Sean Connery nor his wife are charged with any crimes in this case. But Micheline is facing a separate trial over alleged tax fraud that could get her a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence. These people are not going to see me in my underpants, I am leaving Marbella, the actor apparently once said, according to Roca. On another occasion, he allegedly told former mayor Jesus Gil that I will not have the neighbors see me in my underwear. One of the exhibits at the trial was a photograph showing Casa Malibu still standing, but flanked by two apartment blocks. The talks to get the property rezoned for higher-density construction were held between Roca and the Connerys lawyer in Marbella, Hector Diaz-Bastien, who has refused to testify in the case. Luxury apartments on the site where Casa Malibu once stood. cordon press It took three years to obtain the actor and his wifes version of events. The examining judge in Marbella was forced to open up a parallel investigation in order to proceed with the case against Micheline Connery. The case against the actor was shelved in February 2014, after Connery, then 83, sent in a sworn statement from the Bahamas asserting that he had played no role in the rezoning talks or in the sale of the apartments that were built on the property. His wife, who was in charge of running the couples affairs especially those involving the company Malibu S. A. said her husband never got involved in company matters. Her statement said she had given their lawyer orders to do what was necessary to secure a zoning status for their property similar to the one next door. At the Malaga courthouse, the case is referred to by investigators as Goldfinger. English version by Susana Urra. By: Kara Dolan. Contact Royal Neighbors of America ***@royalneighbors.org Royal Neighbors of America End -- Parents may have an untapped resource available to them regarding college tuition for their college-bound children scholarships from companies or organizations where they already do business.Royal Neighbors of America, one of the nations largest, women-led life insurers with a 120-year-old philanthropic mission of neighbor-helping-neighbor, offers thousands of dollars in scholarships each year to its members. The scholarship application process is currently underway and continues through March 1, 2016.The traditional scholarships are geared toward graduating high school students, but there are also non-traditional scholarship opportunities for members of all ages.The different types of scholarships include: Making a Difference Scholarship:Ten, four-year renewable grants worth up to $8,000 ($2,000 each year) are awarded annually to help Royal Neighbors members who are graduating high school seniors earn a degree at an accredited college or university directly following graduation. Making a Difference Leader: A four-year renewable scholarship worth up to $20,000 ($5,000 each year) is awarded annually to the most outstanding female high school senior from the pool of qualified Making a Difference applicants. New Horizons Scholarship:Ten non-renewable grants of up to $5,000 each year are awarded annually to help members age 18 and older who have previously graduated from high school pursue a degree at an accredited college or university. New Horizons Leader Scholarship:One, four-year renewable scholarship worth up to $20,000 ($5,000 each year) is awarded annually to the most outstanding female from the pool of qualified New Horizons applicants. Life Enrichment Scholarship:Five non-renewable grants of up to $500 are awarded annually to members age 18 and older who have previously graduated from high school and who have a desire to continue their education through short-term courses to provide training for semi-professional occupations in business and industry or programs to provide skilled training.Royal Neighbors has a long tradition of empowering women and actively promotes the importance of obtaining a college education. The organizations website offers blogs about tips for paying for college, stories about past scholarship winners, as well as an online calculator to help estimate the cost of tuition http://www.royalneighbors.org/ your-money-and- your-life/calculators/ college-calculator Since its creation in 1961, the Royal Neighbors of America Scholarship Program has awarded nearly $5 million to its members to assist with the costs of continuing education. Details about the program are located at www.royalneighbors.org Royal Neighbors of America, one of the nations largest women-led insurers, empowers women to meet the needs of their families with annuities and life insurance products such as whole life, simplified issue, and universal life.Member benefits are provided at the discretion of Royal Neighbors of America and are not available in all states. They are not part of any insurance or annuity contract and are not guaranteed. Royal Neighbors is licensed in 43 states and the District of Columbia and not all products are available in all states.Royal Neighbors was founded in 1895 and is headquartered in Rock Island, IL, with a branch office in Mesa, AZ. For more information, visit www.royaleighbors.org or call Sally Marks at 480-970-2521.(END)EM2015-219 By: We Care Manatee Contact Grapevine Communications - Shelby Isaacson ***@grapeinc.com Grapevine Communications - Shelby Isaacson End -- We Care Manatee (WCM) a non-profit organization committed to addressing the healthcare needs of low-income, uninsured residents of ManateeCounty is proud to announce the appointment of Victoria Kasdan, RN, MPH, as Executive Director.I am elated about the opportunity to work alongside compassionate medical professionals who provide such a vital service for our community, said Kasdan. We Care Manatee is a source of life-changing programs delivered by people who truly care. My goal is to continue the growth and reach of this special organization.A graduate of the University of Illinois with a Bachelor of Science in nursing and a masters degree in public health management, Kasdan earned her RN diploma from Cook County School of Nursing. Her resume includes more than 20 years of executive planning, administration, patient advocacy and health care experience in both the non-profit and for-profit sectors. She also brings an extensive background in cardio-thoracic ICU nursing and pharmaceutical and medical device marketing. Prior to joining WCM, Kasdan served a sales account executive at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota and vice president/account executive at HealthPlan Services.An active part of the community, Kasdan is a member of the Masala Giving Circle, a clinic RN volunteer and member of a fundraising committee for Turning Points, a volunteer and event fundraiser for SPARCC, and was a recent special event fundraising co-chair with the Boys and Girls Club of Manatee County.For more information on We Care Manatee, please visit www.WeCareManatee.org or call 941-755-3952.We Care Manatee was founded by the Manatee County Medical Society in 1999 to address the increasing need of uninsured residents to be seen and treated by a medical specialist. The non-profit organization works with more than 100 ManateeCounty physicians, who donate their time and services to provide much-needed medical treatment for local residents. Through their efforts, the programs offered by the non-profit include Free Primary Care, Pharmaceutical Assistance, Specialty Physician Referrals, Breast Health & Wellness, and Vasectomy Procedures. We Care Manatee physicians have provided over $8 million in donated care to patients who would otherwise go without. The organization's status as a 501c3 charitable nonprofit organization allows donations that are tax deductible to the fullest extend allowed by law. For information, contact Info@WeCareManatee.org Grapevine Communications provides full-service advertising, marketing and public relations services to clients nationwide. The firm is the most award-winning advertising agency in Sarasota, Florida, and the surrounding areas. Recent accolades include the 2015 Greater Good Philanthropy Award Small Business by Biz(941) Magazine, the 2014 Small Business of the Year by the Manatee Chamber of Commerce; the 2015 & 2014 Best Marketing/PR Agency by SRQ Magazine readers; and the 2010 Small Business of the Year by the Sarasota Chamber of Commerce. For more information on Grapevine Communications, contact Shelby Isaacson (Shelby@grapeinc.com)at 941-351-0024 or visit the website at www.grapeinc.com By: Renfro Foods Media Contact Jane Cohen, jc@interstargroup.com jc@interstargroup.com Jane Cohen, jc@interstargroup.com End -- Bill Renfro, CEO Emeritus and Jack Renfro, COO Emeritus of 76-year-old family business Renfro Foods, were inducted into the Specialty Foods Associations Hall of Fame on Jan. 18. The event took place during the annual Winter Fancy Food Shows Hall of Fame Ceremony and Leadership Awards at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. They were inducted along with 46 other food industry pioneers who helped build the specialty food industry.The Halls Mission is to honor individuals whose accomplishments, impact, contributions, innovations, and successes within the specialty food industry deserve praise and recognition.Both Bill and Jack grew up in the family business that was founded in 1940 by their parents, George and Arthurine Renfro. As CEO, Bill managed the sales, accounting, purchasing and corporate strategy functions of the business. Jack, as COO, handled the manufacturing, maintenance, shipping and receiving aspects of the business and oversaw the companys strategic plant expansions. Both, after a half-century of running the company, now consult and advise.We are humbled and honored to be recognized with this honor, said Bill Renfro, who was previously inducted into the Texas Food Processors Hall of Fame in 1992. Its an honor to continue the vision and legacy of our parents, added Jack Renfro.Renfro Foods is a third generation family business founded 76 years ago in Fort Worth, Texas, as a packaged spices and pepper sauce business. It later expanded to include syrup, jellies, preserves and chow chow, and then salsa. Today Renfro Foods is known for its innovative line of award-winning Mrs. Renfro's salsas, which come with a simple and tasty recipe right on the label. In addition to salsa, Renfro Foods manufactures a variety of sauces and relishes, including 33 Mrs. Renfro's products distributed through leading supermarkets, gourmet foods stores and gift shops in all 50 states, Canada, the Caribbean, England, Scotland, Spain, Australia, and South Korea. For more information, please visit www.renfrofoods.com , and connect with us on Facebook ( http://www.facebook.com/ pages/Mrs-Renfros- Gourmet-Salsa/ 6... ) (Mrs. Renfro's Gourmet Salsas), Twitter @mrsrenfros), Instagram (mrsrenfros), YouTube (Mrs. Renfro's), and Pinterest (mrsrenfros)Established in 1952 in New York, the Specialty Food Association is a not-for-profit trade association providing its members the tools, knowledge and connections to support a thriving specialty food marketplace. Contact Atlantic Biologicals' Marketing Department ***@atlanticbiologicals.com Atlantic Biologicals' Marketing Department End -- Atlantic Biologicals, a premier national distributor of pharmaceuticals and unit dose products in the United States and Puerto Rico, is pleased to announce that this year marks the 10anniversary of the company providing unit dose products.In 2006, Atlantic Biologicals began repackaging unit dose products as a result of increasing requests by hospital pharmacy buyers for a solution to the sudden new challenge of bedside scanning requirements. One decade later, Atlantic Biologicals is an industry leader in unit dose repackaging and offers a comprehensive portfolio of ready to use liquid cups and oral syringes, ointment syringes, solids, and powders. In recognition of this milestone, Allison Riley, Director of Sales, stated, Customer service has always been our guiding principle as a pharmaceutical distributor. As the need for unit dose products increases in the marketplace, so does our commitment to supplying pharmacies with products offering budget savings, efficiencies, risk aversion, and convenience. Our ever-growing portfolio, along with a dedication to our customers needs, fortifies our position in the marketplace.Founded in 1999, Atlantic Biologicals is a comprehensive provider of healthcare solutions. The company is a premier distributor of brand, generic and critical care pharmaceuticals. Their corporate headquarters are strategically located in South Florida. Additional distribution centers are located throughout the country. Atlantic Biologicals offers expedited service throughout the contiguous United States and Hawaiian Islands. For more information, please visit www.atlanticbiologicals.com or call 305-690-4233. CEO of eWranglers LLC, Stephen Zetzer, will be featured on Moving America Forward, hosted by William Shatner. By: Moving America Forward Doug Llewelyn & Stephen Zetzer on the set of MAF. Contact Lisa Monroe (Media Department) ***@movingamericaforward.tv Lisa Monroe (Media Department) End -- Nationally recognized television show, Moving America Forward is pleased to introduce Stephen M. Zetzer, CEO and founder eWranglers LLC a Montana firm focused on the Information Security needs of small businesses. Mr. Zetzer was interviewed at the Los Angeles Moving America Forward news studio by William Shatner and Doug Llewelyn. eWarnglers enables their clients to stop worrying about their technology problems and refocus their time and energy on what really matters growing their business. In the evolution of cyber-attacks, we started from those that caused annoyance to people, then we moved to those that would disrupt network and services on organizations. We are in the era of attacks where most information is exposed. Credit card information is being stolen and companies now are anticipating the worst. A long list of loyal clients know that they can depend on eWranglers for IT services thanks to their superior technology solutions, round-the-clock technical support and their entire team of experts that will always be there to serve them.In America there is still a lack of cyber security awareness, and more powerful threats are emerging daily. Nation states and sophisticated organized crime are increasingly behind cyber-attacks. Products addressing a single particular risk provide small businesses with a false sense of security and regulators are becoming fed up with routine cyber security breaches and handing down bigger fines and punitive damages. eWranglers offers a package to clients of essential cyber security hardware, software and services tailored to their small business.With over 20 years of experience securing businesses online, Mr. Zetzers experience includes enterprise level network infrastructure and security consulting through IBM Global Services and other firms. He was also a team leader on successful global projects for AT&T, Lucent Technologies, TCI(now Comcast,) and JD Edwards (now Oracle,) among others. Mr. Zetzer also has experience providing information security training to private sector, military and healthcare clients and has published 2 books covering IT and cyber security best practices for small businesses.A graduate of the Indiana University Kelly School of Business, Stephen holds the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) credential. The CISSP is considered by many in the industry to be the highest level certification available. In the 1990s, Stephen was among the first Microsoft Certified Systems Engineers, of which there are tens of thousands today.Tune inonto watch Stephen Zetzer discuss with William Shatner and Doug Llewellyn how in our connected world new business opportunities arise constantly, but so do new threats in the form of increasingly sophisticated cyber-attacks that can have serious impact on a companys core business.Passionate about cyber security technology, Mr. Zetzer was honored with the Moving America Forward Award for helping his clients protect their information from crippling cyber-attacks. For more information on eWranglers LLC please visit http://ewranglersbts.com Laurent A. Voivenel, CEO of HMH- Hospitality Management Holdings addressed the Global Hospitality Summit in Dubai with a special End -- Laurent A. Voivenel, CEO of HMH- Hospitality Management Holdings addressed the Global Hospitality Summit in Dubai with a special presentation on 'Reshaping Luxury Hospitality to Welcome & Win Over New Generation of Guests' . Organised by Marcus Evans from 18-19 January, the two-day premium forum was attended by leading hotel experts and developers who exchanged key business insights from the industry.In his presentation, stressing on 'new luxury being all about simplicity' Laurent said, "New generation of luxury travellers simply desire an elevated experience and one that makes them feel good. They seek a hotel that is steeped in simplicity, refinement, sophistication, good taste and restraint, but is at the same time, just as striking and glamorous. The next generation of wealthy travelers want a room experience closer to home. Therefore, hotels would have to rethink luxury. Moving away from glitz Luxury hotels would need to focus on creating casual, individual atmospheres that are far removed from the standard hotel ambiance".Commenting on the luxury hotel sector in the Middle East Laurent stated, "Over the past decade, the Middle East has established itself as the next frontier in luxury travel for the affluent. Marrying innovation with tradition, the region continues to grow as a top luxury destination with 44% of its existing inventory of hotels in luxury and upper upscale category. There are 694 hotels with 188,817 rooms in the Middle East and Africa development pipeline - majority of which will open before 2020. Therefore, when it comes to luxury everyone knows the stakes are huge. Like all hoteliers, we at HMH have been pondering over What will it take to lure new generation of luxury travelers?' given 40% of our existing inventory of hotels is in luxury segment."Laurent believes 'bling' will not be enough to please new generation of luxury travellers. He stressed, "People are moving away from the bling factor. A pillow menu, gold-plated bathroom fixtures and plush rooms will not be able to woo the next generation of the world's wealthiest clientele. Their expectations are different and much harder to please. The new generation has grown up in the age of technology, social media, instant access, the proliferation of global consumer brands, affluence and conspicuous consumption - hence they crave an alternative to traditional luxury hotels. Therefore, it is time for our industry to evolve and adapt".According to Laurent intuitive technology designed to anticipate the needs and desires of guests will play a key role in delivering new levels of service. Technology is a huge priority for next generation travelers as it continues to change the rules of our industry like never before. Hotels will also have to know more about their customers. And concierge services will have to advance to new levels, delivering on the demands of guests long before they arrive. Most importantly people will continue to be the asset of luxury and therefore service and staff training will be more than ever critical for our industry".The global luxury hospitality sector is valued at an estimated $164.4 billion and is expected to increase to $195.27 billion by 2021.Luxury travelers are growing at an unprecedented rate. By 2022, there will be 4,076 billionaires in the world. The number of super rich people valued at more than $30m in the Middle East will soar to more than 7,300, including 203 billionaires, by 2022.The number of HNWIs in the Middle East will grow by 58 percent between 2012 and 2022, faster than the global average of 50% but well behind the emerging economic regions of Asia (88%), Latin America (88%) and Africa (69%).Founded in 2003 in Dubai, HMH Hospitality Management Holdings is a fully-integrated hotel management company that prides itself on being the first hotel chain in the Middle East to offer halal-friendly, alcohol-free safe environment. It provides hotel owners and developers a broad spectrum of comprehensive management solutions with five distinct, yet complementary, hotel brands catering to varied market segments from budget to luxury. These include The Ajman Palace Hotel, Coral Hotels & Resorts, Corp Hotels, EWA Hotel Apartments and ECOS Hotels. Through its dynamic operation and strategic expansion in the Middle East and North Africa, HMH has been successful in unlocking a world of opportunities while creating value for its stakeholders, associates, staff members and customers. Its existing portfolio features superb properties located in some of the most desirable destinations across the MENA region, as well as a healthy pipeline of hotels under development. By: FundingPost Contact Scott Kelly, Regional Manager of Funding Post scott@fundingpost.com 480-206-3435 ***@blackdogpromotions.com 480-206-3435 Scott Kelly, Regional Manager of Funding Postscott@fundingpost.com 480-206-3435480-206-3435 End -- FundingPost announced that they are hosting a Las Vegas Angel Investing/Venture Capital Roundtable.The Las Vegas FundingPost Roundtable will be held onAt the roundtable, early-stage investors will be sharing their wisdom, as well as their money. Funding Post, the host of numerous Venture Capital Events nationwide, is bridging the gap between investors and entrepreneurs.The event will be a fantastic opportunity to solidify and test out elevator pitches, network with more than 100 entrepreneurs and investors, and find out what it takes to raise capital for early stage companies.Regional Manager of FundingPost, Scott Kelly, commented, We are thrilled to host this event at the Innevation Center. Nevada has a great entrepreneur ecosystem and we look forward to showcasing many of the states best companies to investors from throughout the country.Like all FundingPost events, the Las Vegas roundtable is expected to not only sell out, but also lead to many success stories. The significance of the Las Vegas conference is to educate entrepreneurs on raising capital, growing their businesses, and helping the local economy build the companies of the future.Entrepreneurs, startups, investors can register online via http://www.fundingpost.com/ breakfast/reg1.asp? event=353 Vendor and event sponsorships are also available. For more information contact Scott Kelly at scott@fundingpost.com or 480-206-3435###For over 13 Years, FundingPost has worked to bring entrepreneurs together with leading investors worldwide. Through our successful Venture Capital Events in 23 cities, Venture Guide Publications and magazine, and our online Venture Exchange, FundingPost has had the opportunity to work with thousands of Angels, Family Offices, Corporate Investors, Private Equity and Venture Capital Funds representing over $110 Billion. For more information, visit: www.FundingPost.comFundingPost announced that they are hosting a Las Vegas Angel Investing/Venture Capital Roundtable. A combination of factors including Peterboroughs booming population and local house price growth point to Peterborough being a future property investment hotspot. By: Belvoir Peterborough Contact Grace Harper, Belvoir Peterborough ***@belvoir.co.uk Grace Harper, Belvoir Peterborough End -- Peterborough is currently being transformed thanks to a 1 billion regeneration program that is now underway. Key developments such as Gateway Peterborough and Fletton Quays will bring new housing, leisure facilities and employment opportunities to the city.Peterboroughs regeneration will include an improved rail link to London, bringing the journey time down to 39 minutes, by 2019. As the cost of living in London becomes increasingly unrealistic and transport links along the East Cost mainline improve, more people will look to live further away for cheaper housing and a better standard of living.Peterborough is the UKs second fastest growing city just behind Milton Keynes. Peterborough City Council estimates between now and 2031 the population will increase 21.7%. The population increase is due to a mixture of a high birth rate and migration. Peterboroughs regeneration is likely to attract more people as the citys image improves and people relocate for employment opportunities.For property investors, Peterborough is a winning destination because it combines reasonable house prices with high demand for rental property. The average house price in Peterborough currently stands at 167,000, which is 42% less than the national average house price 288,000.Buying investment property now means that investors will benefit from realistic property prices and healthy rental yields but they may also benefit in the long term from capital appreciation. According to the latest report from RICS, house prices in the East of England are predicted to rise 8% in 2016; faster than any other UK region.A current concern of investors is the 3% stamp duty surcharge which will come into affect this April. Considering the average priced property in Peterborough is 167,000, the new stamp duty will add an extra 5,000 to the upfront capital used to invest. This will have an impact on investors initial cash flow and could deter people from investing in more expensive properties.Local property specialists, Belvoir dont think investors should be out off by the new stamp duty:On a property worth 160,000, the extra stamp duty would reduce the gross yield from 5.7% to 5.5% so the overall impact of this change is low. Said Luke Clarke, Buy to Let advisor at Belvoir Peterborough. Investors should also consider the bigger picture; demand for rental property is only going to grow and property prices should continue to rise.With exciting regeneration bringing new opportunities and a growing population, theres no doubt Peterborough is a city to watch in the future. Belvoir Peterborough is hosting an Investment Seminar on 27January which will explore the development of the city in depth. For more information visit http://www.belvoir.co.uk/ peterborough- property-workshops- p6738 FLATE & FloridaMakes, two nationally recognized Florida-based organizations are developing a partnership to help support the current and next generation of skilled workers for the Florida's growing high-tech manufacturing sector. By: FLATE & FloridaMakes Contact Marilyn Barger, Ph.D. 813.253-7838 (FLATE) Joyce Johannson, 407.450-7206 (FM) barger@fl-ate.org (813) 253-7838 Marilyn Barger, Ph.D. 813.253-7838 (FLATE)Joyce Johannson, 407.450-7206 (FM)(813) 253-7838 End -- ORLANDO, FL & Tampa, FL Two nationally recognized Florida organizations one that works directly with manufacturers and one that develops manufacturing and advanced technical education frameworks and curricula -- are developing a concerted partnership to help support the current and next generation of skilled workers for the states growing high tech manufacturing sector.In a signed Memorandum of Understanding, FloridaMakes, part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Manufacturing Extension Partnership, and the Florida Advanced Technological Education Center (FLATE), a National Science Foundation Regional Center of Excellence, outlined actions aimed at furthering the market knowledge of current and future skills needed by Florida manufacturers, and using that knowledge to enhance educational curricula, as well as further the understanding by educators, students and parents of the career opportunities provided by the manufacturing sector.FloridaMakes is a very important partner for FLATE, said Professor Richard Gilbert, College of Engineering at the University of South Florida and member of FLATEs Leadership Team. Their network of business advisors are working directly with manufacturers and the regional manufacturing associations throughout Florida. This unique insight into the current and future skills needed by Florida manufacturers will help FLATE bring the Florida College Systems manufacturing curriculum more closely aligned with manufacturersneeds.As part of the memorandum of understanding, FloridaMakes and FLATE will also work together to design and deliver informational webinars for manufacturers and the educational community statewide, support student opportunities to connect with and learn about manufacturing through plant tours and other events during MFG Day and Month, provide access to FLATEs Advanced Manufacturing Production e-book, an interactive tool with videos and hyperlinks designed for students, and collaborate on bringing additional resources to Floridas State and Community College network statewide.Florida ranks 5in the nation for high-tech employment and is home to close to 19,000 manufacturers developing products ranging from aerospace products to semiconductors, boats and more.In order for our manufacturing sector to prosper, it is critical to cultivate and engage a technically skilled workforce for Floridas present and future, said Kevin Carr, FloridaMakes CEO. As a National Science Foundation Center of Excellence, FLATE is a nationally recognized leader in technical education. This collaboration between FLATE and FloridaMakes will support individual manufacturers, lead to high paying careers for students, and contribute to the states overall manufacturing and economic ecosystem.FLATE and FloridaMakes expect to launch their first collaborative webinars later this year. For information about FloridaMakes visit www.floridamakes.com or call (407) 450-7206. For information on FLATE visit www.fl-ate.org or contact Dr. Marilyn Barger, Principal Investigator and Executive Director of FLATE at barger@fl-ate.org, (813) 259-6578 or Dr. Richard Gilbert, Professor of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering at the University of South Florida at gilbert@usf.edu, (813) 974-2139.FLATE is a National Science Foundation Regional Center of Excellence, committed to ensuring Florida has a well-prepared workforce for advanced and emerging technologies. Created in 2004, FLATE is one of 39 Advanced Technological Education Centers in the United States funded by the National Science Foundation focused on improving science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education and training to meet the needs of American advanced technology industries. For more information visit www.fl-ate.org.FloridaMakes is a statewide service created by manufacturers, for manufacturers, and builds on the solid foundation of Floridas network of regional manufacturing associations. FloridaMakes supports the growth, competitive ability and profitability of Floridas nearly 19,000 manufacturers. Services are customized to meet the needs and opportunities of individual companies based on an enterprise assessment, and include process improvement, business growth and innovation, supply chain optimization, product development, adoption of best practices and appropriate advanced technologies, sustainability, market expansion and other services. Part of the National Institute of Standards and Technologys (NIST) Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership, FloridaMakes provides access to national and local public and private resources. FloridaMakes operates with support from the State of Florida, NIST and Floridas manufacturers. Visit http://www.floridamakes.com for more information. George Brown College introduces new off-campus housing service. By: Places4Students.com Contact Places4Students ***@places4students.com Places4Students End --has partnered with Places4Students.com, the company specializing in providing academic institutions with off-campus housing solutions. Places4Students.com is introducing a new and improved rental property listing service for students, landlords and members of the George Brown College community.Places4Students.com will simplify the process for students to search for off-campus housing accommodations near the colleges campuses. All student services are, including rental property searches, student sublet postings and roommate profile listings. Students can conveniently view up-to-date rental property listings and/or search for roommates online or via a mobile app (available for both Apple and Android devices), 24/7. The system is very simple to use!Landlords and property managers can utilize Places4Students.com to advertise their rental propertiesto the George Brown College community. There are many benefits for property owners, including competitive advertising rates, a user-friendly system, tracking of results, a safe and secure website, detailed listings to describe each property, live customer support (toll-free) and much more! Banner ads are also available for companies who wish to promote their services to students.Rental property listings include a map showing the propertys proximity to the college, amenity icons showcasing what is available with the rental, up to 24 property photos, floor plans, leasing details, plus a lengthy description field. Students can utilize the Quick or Smart Search functions which enable them to filter listings by newly posted, rental rate, type of accommodation, lease period, occupancy date and preferred features.The Student Life Team of George Brown College is pleased to be partnering with Places4Students to enhance our off campus housing services. Most importantly, we are confident this partnership will provide our students with an incredibly effective and user-friendly tool to assist them in securing accommodations best suited for their off campus housing needs, said Joe Stapleton, Manager, Student Life with George Brown College.For more information, please contact 1-866-766-0767, admin@places4students.com or visit George Brown Colleges Off-Campus Housing webpage at http://www.georgebrown.ca/ housing El Chapo Guzman in his cell. Loret de Mola There is perhaps no other man in the world who is now more heavily guarded than Joaquin El Chapo Guzman. The Sinaloa cartel leader, who was recaptured earlier this month, is watched by security cameras 24 hours a day. He sleeps in a different cell each night and the dogs who help guard him are also his food tasters. The controls at the El Altiplano prison outside Mexico City are so tight that even the security officers have their own guards watching over them. El Chapo is being kept at the same maximum security facility from which he escaped on July 11 by fleeing through a tunnel dug underneath his cell. The Mexican government is aware that if the notorious drug lord escapes again it would be a serious political blow The Mexican government is aware that if the notorious drug lord escapes again he has already fled on two prior occasions it would be a serious political blow that could lead to the downfall of President Enrique Pena Nieto. El Chapo, who is wanted in the United States, has always gotten his way. His appetite for freedom has been described in various psychological reports and his casual manner of bribing officials is legendary. El Chapo is now under a draconian system, with continued surveillance without any blind spots dogs, reinforced ground, etc, said Alejandro Hope, former Mexican intelligence agency director. But it is evident that he is going to do all he can to undermine those obstacles. In 2001, Guzman escaped from the Puente Grande prison by hiding inside a laundry cart. Sixty-two prison officials, who were paid off, were charged for helping him escape. He survived on the run for eight years, living the life of a rich drug kingpin. In February 2014, he was captured in the Pacific resort city of Mazatlan and taken to El Altiplano. His thirst for freedom has been described in various psychological reports With the help of prison authorities and a group of engineers on the outside, El Chapo again fled on July 11 of last year through a hole underneath his shower stall that led to the long tunnel. There are some in the Mexican government who believe that El Chapo would be better guarded in a US penitentiary. Guzman is wanted in at least six federal court jurisdictions in the United States. But the extradition process, which is being challenged by his lawyers, is expected to be a long judicial battle that could take at least a year. Until then, all measures are being taken to ensure that El Chapos cell cannot be penetrated from the outside: it is a cell inside another cell, according to a presidential spokesman. According to sources, the failures that contributed to El Chapos escape last July have been corrected. He is no longer kept in one cell and visits are no longer permitted. The extradition process, which is being challenged by his lawyers, is expected to be a long judicial battle that could take at least a year To avoid any burrowing underneath his cells, workers have placed reinforced steel fences in the ground. A new underground alarm system has also been installed suspiciously, the previous alarm did not go off when El Chapo escaped in July. During El Chapos first five days at El Altiplano, after he was captured on January 8, he was moved between seven different cells. When he is allowed to move about inside the prison, he is always handcuffed and accompanied by guard dogs who also serve as his food tasters to prevent anyone from poisoning him. About a thousand new security cameras have been installed to monitor his movements and in the maximum security area there are also thermal sensors. The guards who approach him have security cameras in their helmets. An elite team of about 35 officers is in charge of monitoring El Chapos movements, according to sources. A number of inmates have been relocated to help security. Specialists believe that the chances of another escape are almost nil at this time. But they also know that as time passes security becomes more lax. No one doubts that El Chapo is already drawing up his next plan. He fears extradition, knows El Altiplano prison well, and knows how to pay off officials. English version by Martin Delfin. Race Scheduled for May 14, The Last Dance theme announced. By: The Dock at Crayon Cove Media Contact kate@getpushing.com End -- The annual Naples tradition, the Great Dock Canoe Race (GDCR), will celebrate its 40th and Final community event on Saturday, May 14, 2016. What started in the Spring of 1977 as an end-of-season celebration of The Dock at Crayton Coves inaugural year, now draws thousands of spectators by land and bay to watch competitors participate in canoe races in various categories such as; ambitious amateurs, truly tenacious, and practically professionals. A parade of theme-decorated canoes is also a crowd favorite.This event has become a Naples tradition among the community and it will be bittersweet to host the finale, stated Vin DePasquale, founder of The Dock at Crayton Cove, Riverwalk at Tin City and the GDCR. People of all ages, residents and visitors alike, tell us how much they look forward to this each year and how wonderful it is that were able to support a great cause.Each year, the GDCR has a theme, which serves as the inspiration for the decorated canoes that compete for the best-dressed $1,000 prize. This year, the theme will be The Last Dance evoking the disco era in which the GDCR was first launched (1977) and coincidentally a famous 1970s Donna Summer song. The poster artwork for the 40th and Final Great Dock Canoe Race is designed by local artist, Jeff Fessenden. Participants of the GDCR will create their best 1970s interpretation of the theme in their canoe designs and costumes. Long-time emcee, Vin DePasquale, will be joined for the fourth year by co-emcee Jerry Conti and State Representative Kathleen Passidomo will serve as grand marshal.An important element of the GDCR is the $5,000 grant awarded to a worthy childrens charity each year. This years beneficiary will be NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Funds raised from the GDCR will be used to provide mental health screenings and education for local children dealing with mental health issues. Each year NAMI is able to help 16,000 local community members, 90 percent of whom are below the poverty level.Founded and sponsored by The Dock at Crayton Cove, the 2016 Race is co-sponsored by Riverwalk at Tin City. Confirmed sponsors so far are Lutgert Companies/Lutgert Insurance/Premier Sothebys International Realty and Childs and Childs Dentistry (co-sponsors VIP Sprint), Pure Florida (Practically Professionals race), Wiegold One Hour Air Conditioning & Heating (Ambitious Amateurs race), Naples Extreme Family Fun Spot (safety boats) and Bleu Provence as the Canoe Crew sponsor. Hyatt House Naples will be sponsoring the trolley shuttle and long-time supporter, Renda Broadcasting, will once again be the media sponsor. The City of Naples also is a generous long-time sponsor of the GDCR.Theme boats will parade around Crayton Cove starting at 11:00 a.m. The Race is then run in three heats. First up at 11:45 a.m. is the Tippycanoe VIP Sprint, which features canoes paddled by principals of local organizations in a madcap dash through a 700-yard course. Two traditional races follow on the full three-mile course; handicaps for the Male-Female teams (two minutes) and Female-Female teams (four minutes) lend extra excitement to these two races.The Practically Professionals race (competing for the Overall Trophy) sets off at 12:45 p.m., about 15 minutes before the Ambitious Amateurs race (competing for medals), Next Generation race (12-17 year olds and parent/guardian, competing for trophies), and the Truly Tenacious race (both canoeists 65 or above, competing for medals). This means some contra-flow, as teams pass each other racing in opposite directions - and quite probably some wild stories to tell once everyones back over the finish line.Trophies or ribbons are awarded to winners of both heats and to three Next Generation and three Truly Tenacious teams. An award added in 2013 honors the late Joe Klimas, co-emcee for the first 36 years The Joe Klimas Keep On Paddling Award for family sportsmanship will be presented to one lucky Next Generation Team. The Broken Paddle Award honors the late Chuck Bruce, first winner of the award and a great contributor to the GDCR over the years. It recognizes the team that finishes the race while overcoming a significant obstacle thus the Broken Paddle moniker. Winnersnames are hand-painted and added to the permanent collection at The Dock at Crayton Cove. Originally the provenance of the late Jerry Vallez, who painted the Races first 36 years of broken paddles, this year local artist Natalie Guess will be picking up the brush again for this time-honored tradition of paddle painting.Please visit GreatDockCanoeRace.com for more information on the GDCR. The Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community was delighted to hear an endorsement today from the United Kingdoms Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan, during her Ministerial Speech and Keynote on the opening day of BETT 2016. Contact Penny Murray ***@a4l.org Penny Murray End -- Since March 2015, the Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community has been working with the Department for Education (DfE) on open standards principles and data exchange, and the recognition provided today by the Education Minister endorses the Communitys efforts, not only within the United Kingdom but internationally.Rt Hon Nicky Morgan MP, Secretary of State for Education and Minister for Women and EqualitiesThe Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community is thrilled to support the data collection work being undertaken by the Department for Education in the United Kingdom states Larry Fruth, PhD, Executive Director/CEO, A4L Community. We are delighted that open standards are now recognized as the key to ensuring that seamless and secure data sharing reduces the data burden on the education marketplace, and ultimately assists in the safeguarding of our learners no matter where they reside!This statement of support by UK government educational leadership adds to the Statement of Intent for SIF adoption in Australia made by the National Schools Interoperability Program (NSIP) Steering Group. NSIP developed the Statement of Intent on behalf of Australias State and Territory Education Departments and the non-government school sectors representative bodies, which agreed to support the SIF Specifications as their preferred method for data exchange in the Australian schools sector.The full transcript can be found on the UK Department for Educations website here: https://www.gov.uk/ government/speeches/ nicky-morgan- bett-show-2016 The Access 4 Learning (A4L) Community, previously the SIF Association, is a unique, non-profit collaboration composed of schools, districts, local authorities, states, US and International Ministries of Education, software vendors and consultants who collectively address all aspects of learning information management and access to support learning. The A4L Community is Powered by SIF Specifications as its major technical tool to allow for this management and access simply, securely and in a scalable, standard way regardless of the platform hosting those applications. The Access 4 Learning Community has united these education technology end users and providers in an unprecedented effort to give teachers more time to do what they do best: teach. For further information, visit http://www.A4L.org BETT is Europes largest educational technology show, with an estimated 35,000 visitors over 4 days. The annual event provides an opportunity to experiment with the latest technology, hear from educational leaders in the industry, and meet educators, solution providers and your peers. For more information, please visit www.bettshow.com EDMONTON, Alberta, January 19, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Alberta Investment Management Corporation ("AIMCo") is pleased to announce the acquisition of a minority ownership stake in the holding company of DFG Investment Advisers ("DFG"). DFG is a New York-based asset management firm specializing in structured and alternative credit products. DFG's team has multifaceted expertise in structured credit and leveraged corporate debt markets, and a shared investment philosophy centered on fundamental analysis, risk management and active portfolio monitoring. The firm currently serves an institutional client base in North America and Asia and is expanding its global clientele. AIMCo's collaboration with DFG spans more than six years, first initiated as part of AIMCo's Fixed Income strategy in 2009. Since that time, the relationship has grown to include investments in a range of strategies across public markets, with an emphasis on DFG's deep expertise in alternative credit products. "DFG is a trusted manager that has provided AIMCo with strong performance and comprehensive analytical support. DFG's commitment to their clients aligns with AIMCo's values and approach to investing. I am pleased that this transaction will deepen the relationship between the two organizations," stated Dale MacMaster, AIMCo's Chief Investment Officer. Peter Pontikes, AIMCo's Senior Vice President of Public Equities, noted, "DFG's unique expertise in structured and alternative credit products positions them well to capitalize on opportunities that have arisen due to recent regulatory changes." Volkan Kurtas, DFG's Founder and Managing Partner, commented, "We at DFG are thrilled to be partnering with AIMCo, an internationally respected pension and endowment institutional asset manager. DFG's culture and values are integral to our approach to investing, a perspective and approach that is shared with AIMCo. As investors, both AIMCo and DFG appreciate the privilege of managing our respective clients' funds, and together we will continue to strive to add value." The terms of the transaction were not disclosed. About Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo) AIMCo is one of Canada's largest and most diversified institutional investment managers with more than $85 billion of assets under management. AIMCo was established on January 1, 2008 with a mandate to provide superior long-term investment results for its clients. AIMCo operates at arms-length from the Government of Alberta and invests globally on behalf of 27 pension, endowment and government funds in the Province of Alberta. About DFG Investment Advisers, Inc. DFG is a New York-based asset management firm focused on alternative credit strategies. As of November 30, 2015, the firm managed approximately $2.0 billion in corporate and structured credit assets via commingled funds, separate accounts and collateralized loan obligations (CLO) vehicles. Media Contacts: Alberta Investment Management Corporation, Denes Nemeth, Corporate Communication, O: +1-780-392-3857, M: +1-780-932-4013, E: denes.nemeth@aimco.alberta.ca; DFG Investment Advisers, Liz Bruce, Fitzroy Communications, O: +1-212-498-9197, E: lb@fitzroypr.com SOURCE Alberta Investment Management Corp. VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Jan. 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Silver Wheaton Corp. ("Silver Wheaton" or the "Company") (TSX:SLW) (NYSE:SLW) is providing an update on certain matters relating to the ongoing dispute with the Canada Revenue Agency (the "CRA"). On January 8, 2016, Silver Wheaton filed a Notice of Appeal with the Tax Court of Canada, electing to pursue resolution of the matters relating to the Notices of Reassessment issued by the CRA for the 2005-2010 taxation years through a judicial court process rather than continue to pursue the CRA's internal appeals process. This decision was made in accordance with Silver Wheaton's right to appeal directly to the Tax Court of Canada 91 days after the date of filing a notice of objection. "We remain confident in, and we intend to vigorously defend, our business structure. We believe that we have complied with Canadian tax law and feel that the court process, rather than the CRA appeals process, will provide the most expeditious avenue for the resolution of this matter," said Randy Smallwood, President and Chief Executive Officer of Silver Wheaton. "Through this entire process, we continue to believe in the strong underlying value of our shares and continue to be active under our normal course issuer bid program in buying back our shares," he added. On January 19, 2016, subsequent to filing the Notice of Appeal, Silver Wheaton received correspondence advising that the CRA would be commencing an audit of the Company's international transactions covering the 2011-2013 taxation years. It is important to note that the correspondence received is not a proposal or notice of reassessment and the Company is not in a position to determine what, if any, position the CRA will take in respect of the 2011-2013 taxation years. However, if the CRA were to take a position similar to that underlying the Notices of Reassessment for the 2005-2010 taxation years, the Company estimates that the CRA could assert that taxes payable in Canada would increase for the 2011-2013 taxation years by approximately US$310 million. Taxation years subsequent to 2013 also remain open to audit by the CRA. The timing of the court process for the 2005-2010 taxation years and the audit of the 2011-2013 taxation years is uncertain; however, management intends to vigorously defend any challenge to the Company's tax filing positions. CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD LOOKING-STATEMENTS The information contained herein contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements, which are all statements other than statements of historical fact, include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to Silver Wheaton's confidence in its business structure, Silver Wheaton's appeal to the Tax Court of Canada, response to any future reassessments, the potential reassessment of Silver Wheaton's 2011-2013 tax filings by the CRA as a result of the audit of those years, the potential reassessment of Silver Wheaton's future tax filings, Silver Wheaton's position relating to the current or any future dispute with the CRA, the estimate of future potential taxes, penalties and interest that may be payable to the CRA, the impact of taxes, penalties and interest payable to the CRA, Silver Wheaton's defense of reassessments issued by the CRA, Silver Wheaton's view of its tax filing positions, possible audits for taxation years subsequent to 2013, Silver Wheaton's intention to file future tax returns in a manner consistent with previous filings, the length of time it would take to resolve the dispute with the CRA in the court process, any future reassessments or an objection to any reassessment, Silver Wheaton's ability to post security for amounts sought by the CRA under any notices of reassessment, and assessments of the impact and resolution of various legal and tax matters, including proceedings before the courts. Generally, these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "projects", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", "potential", or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved". Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of Silver Wheaton to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including but not limited to: differences in the interpretation or application of tax laws and regulations or accounting policies and rules, Silver Wheaton's interpretation of, or compliance with, tax laws, and regulations or accounting policies and rules is found to be incorrect, Silver Wheaton's operations or ability to enter into precious metal purchase agreements is materially impacted as a result of any reassessment, any challenge by the CRA of Silver Wheaton's tax filings is successful and the potential negative impact to Silver Wheaton's previous and future tax filings, the tax impact to Silver Wheaton's business operations is materially different than currently contemplated, any court process and any reassessment of Silver Wheaton's tax filings and the continuation or timing of any such process is outside Silver Wheaton's control, any requirement to pay reassessed tax, interest and penalties will have an adverse impact on the financial position of Silver Wheaton, litigation risk associated with the challenge to Silver Wheaton's tax filings, risks related to claims and legal proceedings against Silver Wheaton, changes to tax legislation and administrative policies, as well as those factors discussed in the section entitled "Description of the Business Risk Factors" in Silver Wheaton's Annual Information Form and the additional risks identified under "Risks and Uncertainties" in Management's Discussion and Analysis for the period ended June 30, 2015, both available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and in Silver Wheaton's Form 40-F and Form 6-K filed August 11, 2015, both on file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington, D.C. Forward-looking statements are based on assumptions management believes to be reasonable, including but not limited to: expectations regarding the resolution of legal and tax matters, that Silver Wheaton will be successful in challenging any reassessment by CRA, that Silver Wheaton has properly considered the application of Canadian tax law to its structure and operations, that Silver Wheaton may be permitted to post security for amounts sought by the CRA under any notices of reassessment, that Silver Wheaton has filed its tax returns and paid applicable taxes in compliance with Canadian tax law, that Silver Wheaton will not change its operations as a result of any proposal, reassessment or dispute, that Silver Wheaton's ability to enter into new precious metal purchase agreements will not be impacted by any reassessment, expectations and assumptions concerning prevailing tax laws and any future potential amount that could be assessed as additional tax, penalties and interest by the CRA, that any foreign subsidiary income would be subject to the same tax calculations as Silver Wheaton's Canadian income. Although Silver Wheaton has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause results, level of activity, performance or achievements not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate and even if events or results described in the forward-looking statements are realized or substantially realized, there can be no assurance that they will have the expected consequences to, or effects on, Silver Wheaton. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and are cautioned that actual outcomes may vary. The forward-looking statements included herein for the purpose of providing investors with information to assist them in understanding Silver Wheaton's expected performance and may not be appropriate for other purposes. Any forward looking statement speaks only as of the date on which it is made. Silver Wheaton does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that are included or incorporated by reference herein, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. This release contains references to United States dollars and Canadian dollars. All amounts payable to CRA are payable in Canadian dollars. All dollar amounts referenced, unless otherwise indicated, are expressed in United States dollars. For further information: Patrick Drouin, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations, Silver Wheaton Corp., Tel: 1-800-380-8687, Email: info@silverwheaton.com, Website: www.silverwheaton.com Related Links http://www.silverwheaton.com SOURCE Silver Wheaton Corp. Morocco to become new industrial platform serving customers in the EMEA region TANGIER, Morocco, Jan. 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- TE Connectivity Ltd. (NYSE: TEL) (TE), a world leader in connectivity, today officially opened its first manufacturing plant in the Tangier Free Trade Zone and in Africa. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160120/324077LOGO The inauguration of the new cable assembly plant is an important milestone in TE's strategic partnership with the Moroccan government to join the automotive ecosystem. The collaboration is part of the government's strategic industrialization and acceleration program which has established the automotive sector as one of its top priorities for growth. With the support of the Ministry of Industry team and the Tangier Mediterranean Special Agency (TMSA), TE established the facility and started operations in less than one year. "Today's celebration marks the integration of TE Connectivity within the cabling ecosystem. We are very pleased to welcome TE to the region and we look forward to further expanding our strategic partnership," said Mr. Moulay Hafid Elalamy, Minister of Industry, Trade, Investment and Digital Economy. "TE's investments are in line with the objectives set by the Industrial Acceleration Plan. These investments are an important step for the development of the automotive industry in Morocco. They will generate new jobs, and foster both a greater integration of the sector and the replacement of imports. They will also create opportunities for local partners and suppliers." Exclusively focused on special purpose cable assemblies, TE's new Morocco site manufactures products for automotive applications and serves the growing needs of Automotive customers in the greater Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region. "Opening manufacturing operations in Morocco will create new business opportunities for TE and enable us to generate a new level of extraordinary customer experience, bringing production closer to our customer base within Tangier," said Mr. John Pryce, senior vice president and general manager, Automotive EMEA. "Our investment allows us to enhance our role as a strategic partner in the Moroccan Automotive industry." The timely establishment of the project was enabled by an exceptional level of commitment and support from both the government authorities and the Tangier Free Zone office teams. "The Tangier-Med industrial platform is supporting the expansion of the Automotive ecosystem in Tangier. With its innovative solutions, TE is a great addition to our community and benefits from excellent infrastructure as well as a highly educated workforce and business mindset in Morocco," said Mr. Mehdi Tazi, Director for TMSA Industrial Platforms. ABOUT TE CONNECTIVITY TE Connectivity (NYSE: TEL) is a $12 billion global technology leader. Our connectivity and sensor solutions are essential in today's increasingly connected world. We collaborate with engineers to transform their concepts into creations redefining what's possible using intelligent, efficient and high-performing TE products and solutions proven in harsh environments. Our 72,000 people, including over 7,000 engineers, partner with customers in close to 150 countries across a wide range of industries. We believe EVERY CONNECTION COUNTS www.TE.com. TE Connectivity, TE, TE connectivity (logo) and EVERY CONNECTION COUNTS are trademarks of the TE Connectivity Ltd. family of companies. Related Links http://www.TE.com SOURCE TE Connectivity More information Los tuneles que no existian en Puebla It was a legend that was often told at the dinner table or during discussions in bars. Under the city of Puebla, there was a network of tunnels connecting churches with ancient buildings, and they were used as escape routes by Mexican revolutionaries during the war. But there had never been any trace of these secret passageways, not even a map to prove their existence, until now. A network of 10 kilometers of underground roads built in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries have been found in the center of the city. Local government officials have now begun to study them with the aim of shedding some light on their history. There had never been any trace of these secret passageways, not even a map, until now The first indications of their existence were seen in a series of 19th-century maps that belonged to a family in the area. But the real proof came in 2014, when workers accidentally found part of an underground structure during an urban remodeling project. Little by little the semi-circular vaults of the canals were discovered underneath the earth, and their almost perfect symmetry was revealed. We never thought that they would be like this, says Sergio Vergara, the manager of Pueblas historic center. I have never seen anything like this in all my career. Preliminary studies show that the tunnels were constructed after the city was founded in 1531. Puebla was one of the first cities settled during the Spanish colonial era, and became an important center for the Catholic clergy. Real proof came in 2014 when workers accidentally found part of an underground structure during an urban remodeling project The underground passageways were built during the next two centuries at the same time as the majority of churches, monasteries and the other emblematic buildings in the city, such as City Hall and the Cathedral. The subterranean roads served principally so that that Catholic Churchs treasures could be discreetly transported from one place to another. The passageways feature different architectural styles, reflecting the time of the construction. So far, 15 different archway systems built to support the structures have been found. For example, builders used a type of cement composition made with stone chips and other materials to fashion a half-way arch. It was precision work, say Vergara. Throughout all these years, the structures have resisted the weight of the buildings, water systems, earthquakes and the traffic above ground. The entrance to the first of nine tunnels called the Puerta de Zaragoza will be opened to visitors in February. It is located in Xanenetla neighborhood, in the northeast of the city. The vaults there at one time measured 8.5 meters in height and ran across for about four kilometers from the San Francisco River to Fort Guadalupe, which was built on a hill to protect the city from attacks. The subterranean roads served principally so that that Catholic Churchs treasures could be discreetly transported from one place to another The details support the theory that the underground passage was used to transport weapons, ammunition and soldiers during the now-commemorated battle that took place on May 5, 1862 when Mexicans repelled an invasion of French soldiers sent by Napoleon III. The tunnels were also used to attack the French on different fronts at the time of the invasion. My grandfather use to tell me these stories and had personally seen some of the tunnels, says Puebla Mayor Antonio Gali. He said, I saw Porfirio Diaz [a Mexican revolutionary who later became president], who crossed on horseback, and wagons would pass through the vaults in the city. After the 1910 Mexican Revolution, the tunnels were forgotten but they lived on thanks to stories of the past. With so many years of history I cant imagine why no one took the time to try to find them, says Mayor Gali. English version by Martin Delfin. DUBLIN, January 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/nr3mw4/the_us_education) has announced the addition of the "The US Education Industry Report: 2015 Edition" report to their offering. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130307/600769 ) The U.S. Education Industry analyzes the current prevailing condition of the industry along with its major segments including Pre-K, K-12, Post-Secondary and Corporate Training. The U.S. market along with specific dependence on other countries for growth including China, India, France and Germany is being discussed in the report. The major trends, growth drivers as well as issues being faced by the industry are being presented in this report. The major players in the industry are being profiled, along with their key financials and strategies for growth. The education industry of the U.S. has undergone several changes over the past few years and continues to invite significant spending by the public. The overall growth of the industry will be driven by rising responsiveness of people towards the benefits of early education, rising awareness of the advantages of higher education and growing demand for online teaching methods. The major trends in the industry include growth of educational content and technology, rising demand for digital textbooks, high penetration rate for U.S. post-secondary education sector, students shift towards online education and students dependence on family for higher education funding. The major growth drivers include increasing work participation of women in the U.S., rising post-secondary enrollment rates in the U.S and growing merger and acquisition activities in the industry. However, growth of the market is hindered by several factors including declining population of children under five years of age and legal and regulatory issues. Key Topics Covered: 1. Introduction 2. The U.S. Education Industry Analysis 3. Market Dynamic 4. Competitive Landscape 5. Company Profiles - Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company - John Wiley and Sons Company - K12 Inc. - Scholastic Corporation For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/nr3mw4/the_us_education About Research and Markets: Research and Markets is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends. Media Contact: Laura Wood +353-1-481-1716 press@researchandmarkets.net SOURCE Research and Markets NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- 365 Connect, a leading provider of award-winning marketing, leasing, and resident technology platforms for the multifamily housing industry announced today that its founder and CEO, Kerry W. Kirby, was featured for the fifth year in the row in the Silicon Bayou 100 List as one of the most influential leaders in technology and entrepreneurship in Louisiana. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160119/323954LOGO The Silicon Bayou 100 List, published by Silicon Bayou News, recognizes the most active and influential entrepreneurs and technology innovators in Louisiana today. This prestigious accolade recognizes Kirby's commitment, creativity, and dedication to progress technology, mentor startups, and support of the technology community in the New Orleans area. His considerable achievements have made him a stand out in the Silicon Bayou 100 List alongside celebrities and other influencers across the state. Kirby stated, "I am proud to be a part of the technology community and honored to be recognized for my leadership and technology innovations in my home state. Together, we are setting an example that great technology is being created right here in Louisiana as we are becoming the hub for creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation." Kirby is an entrepreneur, technology innovator, and the founder of New Orleans-based 365 Connect, an award-winning technology provider that boasts a deep understanding of the housing process. A renowned speaker, author, and media expert on technology, Kirby has published numerous articles, case studies, and is a contributor to several nationally published books on real estate and technology. Kirby has been a guest lecturer, featured speaker, and panelist at numerous universities, national conferences, and events. Known for his passion to foster the next generation of technology innovators, Kirby is one of the most notable supporters of technology and educational events in the New Orleans area. He has been featured on the BBC Digital Planet program, NPR News and various media outlets, and has led 365 Connect to receive a vast array of national and international technology awards including the Louisiana Governor's Technology Award. Louisiana, known as the Silicon Bayou, is rapidly becoming a place where entrepreneurs, technology developers, innovators, and venture capitalists are making great strides in modern technology, according to Kirby. "The state government, economic development groups, universities, start-up accelerators, and many more are supporting entrepreneurship and high growth companies here like never before. Our future has never been brighter, and I am excited to be a part of it." About Silicon Bayou News: Silicon Bayou News is the leading technology media property in Louisiana reaching tens of thousands of visitors and drawing more than 145,000 page-views per month from all 50 states and over 100 countries. Our audience includes tech enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, brands and corporations, early adopters, social media enthusiasts, marketing, PR and advertising agencies, Web 2.0 fanatics and business and technology journalists. Our long term goal at Silicon Bayou Newsis to foster and support a connected and vibrant community of entrepreneurs and creatives on the Silicon Bayou and shout about good things happening for the whole world to hear. For more information visit: www.SiliconBayouNews.com About 365 Connect, LLC: 365 Connect is a leading provider of award-winning marketing, leasing, and resident technology platforms for the multifamily housing industry. Delivering a fully-integrated solution that eliminates redundant marketing efforts, simplifies transactions, and provides services after the lease is signed, the 365 Connect Platform interfaces with a variety of third-party applications to streamline operations and enhance user experiences. Powering the resident lifecycle since 2003, 365 Connect delivers game-changing results for its clients and the residents they serve by remaining laser-focused on connecting people with where they live. Explore: www.365connect.com SOURCE 365 Connect ST. LOUIS, Jan. 20, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A multi-state, bipartisan Congressional delegation letter opposing revisions to the Missouri River Master Manual says that if finalized, the plan could have "significant negative impacts on landowners and stakeholders throughout the entire Missouri River basin." The letter, coordinated by Senator Roy Blunt (R- MO) and Congressman Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO 3rd Dist.) and joined by Missouri River Basin delegates from Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota and Missouri, was sent to the Honorable Jo-Ellen Darcy, Assistant Secretary of the Army (Civil Works), on December 18, 2015. The letter expresses concerns with current proposed alternatives for the Missouri River Recovery Program Management Plan (Management Plan), stating that the alternatives could require a revision of the Missouri River Main stem Reservoir System Master Water Control Manual (Master Manual). The letter is being applauded by the American Waterways Operators (AWO) and the Coalition to Protect the Missouri River (CPR). Many Missouri River Basin states and stakeholders believe it is not in their best interest for the Master Manual to be revised in any manner. AWO and CPR note that it is rare to have the bipartisan agreement of the Upper and Lower Basin states on such issues. Lynn Muench, AWO Senior Vice President Regional Advocacy and CPR Board Chair stated, "AWO and CPR thank the Missouri River Basin's senators and representatives for their continued efforts to protect the quality of life for the citizens of the basin. River operations through the current Master Manual provide for flood protection, Missouri and Mississippi River navigation flows plus recreation, thermal power and drinking water needs." According to the letter, "The proposed alternatives call for significant changes to the operation of the mainstem reservoir system including alterations to the spring pulse, addition of a fall pulse, and addition of a low summer flow. These actions could threaten water supply for municipal use and agricultural irrigation, create difficulties for controlling flood risks, eliminate the navigation season, and reduce recreational opportunities. In short, revising the Master Manual to adhere exclusively to a single purpose would be to the detriment of the other authorized purposes." The letter further states, "While we understand the desire to consider a comprehensive set of alternatives, such alternatives should be guided by the best available science, should seek to minimize risks to stakeholders, and should be constrained by the guidelines set out in the current Master Manual. "Due to our concerns regarding the current process, we strongly urge the Corps [of Engineers] and [U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service] to only pursue a management plan that would not necessitate a revision of the Master Manual or incur damaging impacts to stakeholders and landowners." Four of the latest six proposed alternatives in the Management Plan would require Master Manual revisions to implement recovery actions for the threatened interior least tern and piping plover and the endangered pallid sturgeon. The Management Plan alternatives under consideration are of such a magnitude that both Upper and Lower Basin stakeholders are concerned with the potential adverse impacts that could occur particularly to flood control, navigation, recreation and agriculture. The letter with its signatories and in its entirety can be downloaded at http://ow.ly/Wcbpq. About the American Waterways Operators The American Waterways Operators is the national trade association representing the tugboat, towboat and barge industry, which operates on the rivers, the Great Lakes, and along the coasts and in the harbors of the United States. Barge transportation serves the nation as the safest, most environmentally friendly and most economical mode of freight transportation. For more information about AWO, please visit www.americanwaterways.com. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160113/321977LOGO SOURCE American Waterways Operators Related Links http://www.americanwaterways.com PHILADELPHIA, Jan. 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Editage, a leader in English-language editing, translation, publication support, and education services, today announced a collaboration with Axios Review, an independent peer review service. Through this partnership, customers of Editage and Axios Review can access discounted serviceshigh-quality editing and translation services from Editage, and peer review services from Axios Reviewfor manuscripts in the fields of evolutionary and ecological research. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160119/323496LOGO Tim Vines, Managing Editor and Director of Axios Review, which was founded with the goal of improving the efficiency of the peer review system, said: "A partnership with Editage makes perfect sense: once Editage has ensured that the manuscript is in the best possible shape in terms of language and structure, we at Axios Review can use our rigorous peer review process to give the authors sound feedback and find the best-fit journal for the manuscript. Having a journal express interest greatly increases the likelihood that the paper will be accepted for publication, and we've found that about 80% of our referred papers get accepted for journal publication. We look forward to helping Editage authors efficiently publish their work in the best possible journals." Donald Samulack, PhD, President, U.S. Operations of Editage, states, "Editage has always sought to provide end-to-end author support services, and this partnership with Axios is a natural step in that direction. The scholarly community, especially Asian authors attempting to publish their scholarly works in English-language SCI-indexed Western journals, stands to benefit greatly from this collaboration. These services tie together a seamless and responsible process from authorship to publication, so that a researcher is not alone in trying to navigate the complexities of the system and publish in a suitable journal." About Axios Review (http://axiosreview.org | @AxiosReview on Twitter) Axios Review is an independent peer review service for evolution and ecology. We help authors efficiently publish their papers in the best possible journal. Authors send in their manuscript along with four suggested target journals. A highly experienced academic editor then guides the paper through external peer review. Detailed feedback is given on both the manuscript and its suitability for the suggested journals. Axios Review then finds out which of these journals is interested in having the paper submitted. This process largely eliminates rejections on the grounds of scope or novelty. About 80% of our referred papers get accepted for journal publication, with many of them (~50%) not requiring further peer review. About Editage (www.editage.com | @Editage on Twitter) Editage is the flagship brand of Cactus Communications (CACTUS), recognized worldwide in publishing and academic communities. Editage aims to help scholars break through the confines of geography and language, to bridge the gap between authors and peer-reviewed journals, and to accelerate the process of publishing high-quality research. Apart from working with individual researchers, Editage partners with publishers, journals, academic societies, and pharmaceutical companies worldwide to help them create compelling, high-quality scientific communications. Editage is also dedicated to author education through its comprehensive author resources site Editage Insights. Contact: Donald Samulack, President, U.S. Operations of Editage +1 (877) 334-8243 SOURCE Editage Insights Related Links https://www.editage.com NEW YORK, Jan. 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Flat World Education, a leading provider of digital learning content and technology, and Knewton, the world's leading adaptive learning company, today announced a partnership that will enable Flat World to meet the increasing needs of college students in North America with affordable, high-quality adaptive course solutions. The new personalized course offerings build on Flat World's large content portfolio and learning technology to improve student engagement and outcomes. The course solutions offer diverse instructional content, built-in remediation, a large assessment pool, and access to a broad array of student performance data. "Students and faculty are looking for educational options that take advantage of growing technological capabilities," said Christopher Etesse, CEO of Flat World. "Together we are at the forefront of providing a more personalized and engaging educational experience for students, at an affordable price." This partnership addresses serious challenges facing higher education across the globe, from access to attrition. As more students enter post-secondary schooling with varying needs and budgets, student persistence and success is declining while costs keep climbing. Increasingly stretched institutions, many of which are seeing less and less state funding, can use these courses to serve more students, improve outcomes, and lower costs. "We are excited to partner with Flat World to bring these next-generation products to market," said Jose Ferreira, founder and CEO of Knewton. "These new course solutions include Knewton's full adaptive feature set, which will add up to measurably improved outcomes." Knewton has delivered more than 15 billion personalized recommendations to over 10 million students on every continent except Antarctica. About Flat World Education Founded in 2007, Flat World is an education technology company that partners with colleges and universities to improve learning outcomes through personalized educational experiences. Led by education and technology veterans, Flat World's services and products include digital learning content, adaptive and personalized courseware, and a comprehensive cloud-based SaaS platform for competency-based education. Across its business, Flat World focuses on enabling its partners to offer flexible and measurable tools that are centered on the needs of students. Backed by Bertelsmann BDMI and Bessemer Venture Partners, among others, Flat World works with over 2,200 colleges and universities, and serves over 250,000 students annually. To learn more, visit www.flatworld.com. About Knewton With Knewton, every student gets a more personal learning experience. Teachers, schools, and education companies around the world use Knewton to power digital course materials that dynamically adapt to each student's unique needs. Knewton provides students with tailored recommendations for exactly what to study, teachers with analytics to better support each student, and publishers with content insights to develop more effective digital products. Knewton was founded in 2008 and has offices in New York City, London, Sao Paulo, and Tokyo. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150824/260689LOGO SOURCE Knewton Related Links http://www.knewton.com MILWAUKEE, Jan. 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- ManpowerGroup (NYSE: MAN), the world's workforce expert, today hosted the Wisconsin LGBT Chamber of Commerce 's 2nd Annual LGBT Business Diversity Summit at its global headquarters in Milwaukee. ManpowerGroup Elevate, the company's LGBT business resource group, was this year's presenting sponsor. During the event, attendees had the chance to network with other business professionals from around the state, participate in business breakout sessions and hear about the importance of diversity in the workplace from keynote speaker Chris Courtemanche, LGBT Community Outreach Program Manager for the Central Intelligence Agency. Representatives from Wisconsin's 10 largest companies supported the event, along with many leading employers from throughout southeastern Wisconsin. "The Wisconsin LGBT Chamber is extremely thankful for ManpowerGroup's sponsorship of today's LGBT Business Diversity Summit," said Jason Rae, executive director, Wisconsin LGBT Chamber of Commerce. "Because of their continued support, we were able to bring together more than 150 business owners and corporate professionals from around the state to give them the tools and resources they need to be even more successful. ManpowerGroup has shown a deep commitment to engaging and supporting a diverse business community in Wisconsin and today's Summit was just another example of that. We could not do the work we do without having strong corporate partners like ManpowerGroup." "When all employees feel empowered to be their best selves in the workplace, everyone wins," said Michail Takach, ManpowerGroup Elevate founder and chair. "In partnership with the Wisconsin LGBT Chamber of Commerce and Workplace Alliance, ManpowerGroup has been a forerunner in creating inclusive workplace culture based on trust, confidence and honesty. We are honored to join representatives of Wisconsin's leading companies, as well as national agencies, in building a better world of work for LGBT+ individuals." To learn more about ManpowerGroup's dedication to diversity in the workplace, click here. About the Wisconsin LGBT Chamber of Commerce The Wisconsin LGBT Chamber of Commerce is an organization of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and LGBT-allied businesses, corporations and professionals throughout the state of Wisconsin. It offers networking opportunities, business development efforts within the LGBT community, and educational programming to its members. The organization has more than 350 members from around the state. More information can be found online at: www.wislgbtchamber.com. About ManpowerGroup ManpowerGroup (NYSE: MAN) is the world's workforce expert, creating innovative workforce solutions for more than 65 years. As workforce experts, we connect more than 600,000 people to meaningful work across a wide range of skills and industries every day. Through our ManpowerGroup family of brands Manpower, Experis, Right Management and ManpowerGroup Solutions we help more than 400,000 clients in 80 countries and territories address their critical talent needs, providing comprehensive solutions to resource, manage and develop talent. In 2015, ManpowerGroup was named one of the World's Most Ethical Companies for the fifth consecutive year and one of Fortune's Most Admired Companies, confirming our position as the most trusted and admired brand in the industry. See how ManpowerGroup makes powering the world of work humanly possible: www.manpowergroup.com. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110330/CG73938LOGO-a SOURCE ManpowerGroup Related Links http://www.manpowergroup.com DENVER, Jan. 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- RE/MAX, LLC will launch its new ad campaign at the end of the month. Created by the real estate franchisor's lead advertising agency Camp + King, the "Sign of a RE/MAX Agent" campaign focuses on the true value that a RE/MAX agent offers throughout the home buying experience from concept to close. The colorful 2016 campaign is anchored by four 30-second TV commercials that feature a behind-the-scenes look at what RE/MAX agents do to ensure a positive experience the hustle, the staging, the open house, the leap of faith, the offer. RE/MAX, LLC & Camp + King "The challenge every day for real estate agents is conveying their value and then delivering the results buyers and sellers are looking for and nobody meets the challenge better than RE/MAX agents," said Adam Contos, RE/MAX Chief Operating Officer. "We wanted our new ads to tell this story in a whole new way, and we found just the right agency to pull it off." Camp + King filmed the "Sign of a RE/MAX Agent" spots on location in Los Angeles with famed music video director and photographer Autumn de Wilde. She aspired to show the heart and character of real estate agents through the commercials' unique production style. "RE/MAX agents are dedicated to making the home buying and selling process as frictionless as possible for their clients," said Jamie King, Camp + King Founder & CEO. "As such, much of what they do happens behind the scenes we wanted to celebrate these moments and bring them to life." The 2016 national ad campaign will run throughout the calendar year starting February 15; print and radio will begin the same month as well. Agents in participating RE/MAX regions will also have access to a variety of customizable assets for use in multiple formats: TV, radio, print, out-of-home, digital and social. To view the "Sign of a RE/MAX Agent" anthem spot, visit the RE/MAX YouTube channel https://youtu.be/OOxMFvBB-Uw. About the RE/MAX Network: RE/MAX was founded in 1973 by Dave and Gail Liniger, with an innovative, entrepreneurial culture affording its agents and franchisees the flexibility to operate their businesses with great independence. Over 100,000 agents provide RE/MAX a global reach of nearly 100 countries. Nobody sells more real estate than RE/MAX, when measured by residential transaction sides. RE/MAX, LLC, one of the world's leading franchisors of real estate brokerage services, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of RMCO, LLC, which is controlled and managed by RE/MAX Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:RMAX). With a passion for the communities in which its agents live and work, RE/MAX is proud to have raised more than $150 million for Children's Miracle Network Hospitals and other charities. For more information about RE/MAX, to search home listings or find an agent in your community, please visit www.remax.com. For the latest news about RE/MAX, please visit www.remax.com/newsroom. About Camp + King: Camp + King (C+K) is a Havas-aligned creative agency launched by Roger Camp and Jamie King in February 2011. In 2015, Advertising Age honored C+K as one of the top agencies in the west. Based in San Francisco, the agency is dedicated to making brands more Conversationworthy. C+K boasts an impressive client list, which includes YouTube, RE/MAX, Energizer, Dish Network's Sling TV, Del Taco and the Hershey Company's Scharffen Berger brand. For more details, visit camp-king.com. Video - https://youtu.be/OOxMFvBB-Uw Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130930/LA87949LOGO SOURCE RE/MAX, LLC Related Links http://www.remax.com SIOUX FALLS, S.D., Jan. 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- South Dakota State University's College of Nursing and CareSpan USA Inc. announced that the CareSpan Virtual Clinic has been selected to train new generations of nurse practitioners in digital health care delivery. This initiative helps to address shortages of primary health-care providers in remote and rural parts of the United States where nurses play a key role. The College of Nursing, which is now in its 81st year, is nationally recognized as a center of excellence for nursing education and leadership. CareSpan is the first online digital health care delivery system that meets the standards of an in-person exam by integrating patient-provider video telepresence, vital signs capture, medical images, heart/breathing sounds, ECG, e-prescribing, real-time specialist consultations, informed consents and electronic health records within a familiar clinical workflow. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160119/323791 "Nurses are able to serve in expanded primary care roles due to a variety of factors," said Dean Nancy L. Fahrenwald. "A collaborative system like CareSpan is not only ideal for patient care because it is rich with medical information but also allows providers and students to realistically train within a complete interactive online exam rather than just within a rudimentary video conference. CareSpan is the only telemedicine system we have seen to date with these advanced clinical features." "We are excited to be supporting the excellent nursing program at South Dakota State University and look forward to helping a new generation of nurses utilize digital medicine in remote care delivery," said Dr. Terry Knapp, Chief Medical Officer of CareSpan. "We believe that nurses graduating SDSU with digital health skills and familiarity with the CareSpan platform will transform access to care, achieve greatly improved outcomes and become extremely valuable assets to health care systems around the world." JoEllen Koerner, senior vice president of clinical quality at CareSpan and former president of the American Organization of Nurse Executives, said "The initiative at SDSU with CareSpan is part of a critically important trend that enables nurses to meet the health needs of underserved communities regardless of time or distance. Overcoming these barriers with a complete online care delivery platform will help nurses achieve their full potential as professionals." CareSpan will be integrated into the SDSU College of Nursing curriculum in early 2016 and will allow simulated patient exams to occur between nursing students, patient "presenters" and instructors. Complete video screen captures of these simulated exams will allow review and discussion of care delivery methods and approaches using digital health technologies. The College expects that the program will be particularly attractive to nursing program candidates from Native American reservations seeking opportunities to work in health care. About CareSpanUSA Inc. CareSpan is the only digital health-care system that meets and exceeds the standards of an in-person exam for care delivered over the Internet. Physicians and other providers enjoy lower operational costs, greater flexibility in clinician utilization and increased access to new patients. Insurers benefit from lower total care delivery costs with better case management. For patients, it's access to high quality health care that is affordable and fulfills their expectation of care continuity regardless of their location. Visit www.carespanhealth.com for more information. About South Dakota State University Founded in 1881, South Dakota State University is the state's Morrill Act land-grant institution as well as its largest, most comprehensive school of higher education. SDSU confers degrees from six different colleges representing more than 175 majors, minors and specializations. The institution also offers 33 master's degree programs, 15 Ph.D. and two professional programs. The work of the university is carried out on a residential campus in Brookings, at sites in Sioux Falls, Pierre and Rapid City, and through SDSU Extension offices and Agricultural Experiment Station research sites across the state. About the South Dakota State University College of Nursing The College of Nursing promotes a combination of lecture and hands-on experiences that teaches students to practice nursing with expertise, professionalism and a passion for helping others. It bases lecture curriculum on the meta-paradigm of nursing, which includes the concepts of client, health, environment and nursing. Students also receive a variety of hands-on learning experiences with in-simulation laboratories and clinical requirements. In addition, research opportunities are available for both undergraduate and graduate students. The program has an 80-plus year history of delivering a well-rounded, quality nursing education and its baccalaureate, master's and DNP programs are accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education. For more information, visit http://www.sdstate.edu/nurs/. SOURCE CareSpan Related Links http://www.carespanhealth.com Triana Martinez at the trial over the murder of Leon politician Isabel Carrasco. J. CASARES (AFP) Triana Martinez, the daughter of the woman who has confessed to shooting dead a politician in cold blood in 2014, on Wednesday told a jury that she had nothing to do with the crime despite the evidence against her. I told mom not to do it, I told her that I knew she was doing it for my sake, but not to get herself into that kind of trouble; I didnt want to kill Isabel Carrasco, she said Wednesday inside the Leon courthouse where the trial is taking place. Isabel Carrasco, a Popular Party (PP) politician who wielded considerable power in Leon, was gunned down in broad daylight on May 12, 2014 on a footbridge over the river that runs through the city. A retired policeman witnessed the crime and followed the shooter, leading to the arrest of Montserrat Gonzalez, her daughter Triana and the latters friend Raquel Gago, a local policewoman who allegedly concealed the murder weapon. She kissed me on the mouth, she came on to me, and I felt bad, I felt scared - Triana Martinez While the prosecution believes that mother and daughter planned the crime for months, Montserrat Gonzalez, 56, has told the jury that she was solely responsible. She has also shown no contrition, saying she had to kill Carrasco because of the way she was persecuting her daughter Triana professionally and personally. In January 2012, when [Prime Minister Mariano] Rajoy decided to keep her [Isabel Carrasco] as PP leader in the province, I decided that I would kill her, said Gonzalez on Tuesday. My daughter was in very bad shape, and Isabel Carrasco was going to keep making her life miserable. It was either my daughter or her. I have no regrets. I am convinced that if I hadnt done it, I would have ended up going to my own daughters funeral. Montserrat Gonzalez, who has confessed to killing Isabel Carrasco in May 2012. J. Casares (EFE) In court on Wednesday, her daughter Triana, 36, revealed that the 59-year-old Carrasco hurt her professionally and financially after the latters sexual advances during the Christmas holidays of 2010 got nowhere. This refusal by Triana, a telecommunications engineer, allegedly cost her a position that had been created specifically for her at the provincial council by Carrasco. The position was created for me and it was meant for me, but because I didnt want to sleep with her, she made sure that someone else got the post, she told the court. The allegations of sexual harassment are a new development in a case where it remains unclear why both families, who were once close, suddenly grew apart. A controversial woman L. G. / J. A. R. / J. J. G. Isabel Carrasco was a controversial figure who was routinely in the spotlight for her outspoken statements. In 2011 the conservative politician was accused by the Socialist Party in Leon of misappropriating public funds for personal use. An investigation conducted by EL PAIS found her to be holding 12 jobs simultaneously, many of them symbolic roles, which brought her income of around 160,000 in 2010. Triana Martinez, who was a member of the Leon Popular Party, was included on the PPs slate for the municipal elections in Astorga in 2007, but was not elected councilor. That same year she began working in the Provincial Council of Leon as a telecommunications engineer, providing advisory work on matters related to high-speed internet and digital terrestrial television. After her position was eliminated by Carrasco, she became involved in a legal dispute with her former employer, who claimed she owed 6,500 in wages that were erroneously paid to her. A court settled in the councils favor. She kissed me on the mouth, she came on to me, and I felt bad, I felt scared, said Triana. She tried to touch me, she grabbed me from behind so I couldnt break free. I managed to get up and said I wanted to leave, and she said no problem, but to think it over, because the [engineering] position had already been officially advertised, and if I stayed I had a lot to gain and very little to lose. This story, which the prosecution rejects as false, was apparently known to Trianas mother but nobody else because, she said, she felt ashamed to talk about it. Also on Wednesday, the jury heard testimony from the policewoman Raquel Gago, who denied having helped her friend conceal the handbag containing the murder weapon, as the prosecution claims. I certainly did not agree to let her leave it there [inside Gagos car], I dont know why Triana made that decision; all I know is that ever since that happened, Ive had no life to speak of, she told the prosecutor. The prosecution wants all three defendants to serve 23 years for murder, assaulting an authority figure and possession of firearms. English version by Susana Urra. Travelers at the Adolfo Suarez Madrid-Barajas International Airport. EFE Spains population has dropped for the third consecutive year, partly due to continued rise of the number of immigrants leaving the country. On January 1, 2015 Spain had 146,959 fewer people than it did on the same day the year before, according to data released on Wednesday by the National Statistics Institute (INE) based on information from municipal rolls. These latest figures reveal that Spains population stands at 46,624,382 people. The drop in the number of foreigners resident in the country by close to 300,000 is one reason for Spains falling population. Spurred by the economic crisis, many foreigners have returned to their home countries or moved to other nations. Those who have stayed, and have been granted Spanish nationality, now fall in the category of Spaniards registered on the municipal rolls, which increased by 0.35% or 146,884 people over 2014. According to preliminary figures released by the INE in June of last year, 205,870 people were granted citizenship in 2014. Of the 4.7 million foreigners living in Spain, around 2.6 million come from countries outside the European Union. But their numbers have also dropped by 377,000 over 2014. In Spain, a person dies every 69 seconds while a child is born every 86 seconds But the other 2.1 million residents from EU countries increased their presence in Spain in 2014 by 82,000 compared to the previous year. Romanians and Moroccans continue to make up the biggest foreign communities in Spain. One out of five foreigners living in Spain is from either Morocco or Romania. Because more than half are under the age of 40, these nationals are helping to contribute to replacing Spains own aging population. The number of births in 2014 outpaced the number of deaths by 31,678, but this was the lowest such figure seen since 2000. INE officials are predicting that 2015 will see more deaths than births in Spain for the first time since the Civil War (1936-1939). In Spain, a person dies every 69 seconds while a child is born every 86 seconds. That means there will be 19,268 more deaths than births recorded in 2015, statistics experts predict. They also estimate that Spain will lose about a million people over the next 15 years and that by 2063 there will be 330,423 more deaths than births. INE experts predict that by 2063 there will be 330,423 more deaths than births The number of deaths will not drop, explains Pau Miret, a researcher at the Center for Demographic Studies in Barcelona. The generations that reach very advanced ages are growing larger each time and those that reach the reproduction age are dropping. Besides the decline in population, the main challenge will be aging. The average age of Spains population will not stop rising for various reasons. First, Spaniards typically branch off from their families later in life than other Europeans. The average age is 28.9 years. This prevents them from starting their own families any earlier. Spanish women are having their first child at around age 31.8 and the median number of children born to each woman is 1.32 while in the rest of Europe it is 2.1. The rate of dependency the proportion of people over the age of 65 compared to those between the ages of 25 and 65 will continue to rise because of falling birthrates, says Jose Garcia Montalve, an economics professor at Pompeu Fabra University. This will complicate the sustainability of the pensions system even if the unemployment rate is reduced. Everything will depend on the hypothetical improvement of productivity. English version by Martin Delfin. Five regions in New Zealand saw median sales prices hit a new record high but overall the median price nationals fell by 1% in June, the latest real estate index shows. The median sales price now stands at $500,000 with the Waikato/Bay of Plenty region recorded its fifth record median sale price for 2016, reaching $438,000, while the median price in Auckland reaching $821,000. The data from the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand (REINZ) also shows that Northland recorded a new record median of $360,000, while Otago reached $295,000 and Central Otago Lakes hit $730,050. The index figures reveal that sales fell 13% month on month which is in line with the general trend at this time of the year although an increase of 6% was recorded in June 2015. Although the onset of winter means that June is generally a quieter month for the real estate market, there has been no let-up in the rate of price increases across the country, with five regions recording new record median prices, said REINZ spokesperson Bryan Thomson. Although there is much discussion about the housing market and increasing new build supply, the fact remains that the vast majority of the supply comes from the sale of existing properties, he added. The data also reveals a rapid declines in the volume of properties available for sale right across the country, with a number of regions, such as Wellington and Hawkes Bay, recording very low levels of properties for sale. Thomson pointed out that while Auckland continues to be the largest single region, its influence on the national picture is waning due to its own weaker sales and strong growth in sales in other regions, particularly Waikato/Bay of Plenty and Northland. Aucklands peak share of national sales was 39.7% in January 2014, however, its share is now just over 33.8%. Over the same period Waikato/Bay of Plentys share of national sales has increased from 14.3% to 19.0%. A breakdown of the figures shows that Central Otago Lakes recorded the largest percentage increase in median price compared to June 2015, at 42%, followed by Waikato/Bay of Plenty at 26% and Otago at 19%. The number of properties available for sale across all regions in New Zealand has continued to fall between June 2015 and June 2016. Wellington has the fewest properties for sale with just over seven weeks of supply, closely followed by Hawkes Bay with nine weeks supply and Auckland with just under 10 weeks of supply. The number of days to sell has only improved by three days at the national level over the past 12 months, although the regions have seen some significant improvements with nine regions seeing a decrease of 20% or more in the number of days to sell. Auckland was the only region to see a lengthening of the number of days to sell over the past 12 months. Between June 2015 and June 2016, the number of homes sold for more than $1 million increased by one third. The proportion of sales of homes under $600,000 has declined from 66.4% to 60.6%, a drop of 5.8%. The proportion of sales of homes under $400,000 declined by 6.1% year on year. This recertification demonstrates the commitment that Siskin Enterprises, Inc. and PermaPlate have to their customers and to the continual improvement of the automotive industry. Siskin Enterprises, Inc., is proud to announce that it has obtained ISO 9001:2008 recertification. Originally certified in November 2014, the company continues to meet the standards for packaging, sale, distribution and administration of aftermarket automotive protection products. This recertification demonstrates the commitment that Siskin Enterprises, Inc. and PermaPlate have to their customers and to the continual improvement of the automotive industry. It is important for our partners to know that our internal processes are geared toward consistently delivering superior products and end user customer service on a day-in-day-out basis, says Willard Nisson, CEO of Siskin Enterprises, Inc. Siskin Enterprises, Inc. has long espoused a culture of growth and continuous improvement. We are pleased to have achieved this important milestone which will help us achieve our mission of delivering world-class products and service to our customers well into the future, says Bret Milne, Vice President of Operations. Certification to ISO 9001 requires an accredited third party auditor to review the companys quality management system to ensure that it complies with the elements of the ISO standard and that it can consistently deliver products and services that meet the needs of its customers. Siskin Enterprises, Inc., headquartered in Salt Lake City, UT, is an industry leader in the manufacturing of automotive appearance protection products and in the delivery of world class warranty administration services to the automotive industry. Siskin Enterprises, Inc. is the manufacturer of PermaPlate branded products which are sold through participating auto dealerships throughout the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. Autism Society of North Carolina logo ...An individual with autism will be an adult much longer than they are a child. This conference provides information that will be helpful for self-advocates, parents and other caregivers, and professionals. The Autism Society of North Carolina (ASNC) will hold its 2016 annual conference March 11-12 in Charlotte, NC. This years theme is Autism Through the Ages. The two-day event will feature acclaimed speakers, including Dr. Peter Girolami of the Kennedy Krieger Institute and Dr. Geri Dawson from the Duke Center for Autism and Brain Development. Speakers will focus on sleep and feeding issues, Early Start Denver Model treatment, transitioning to adulthood, securing dependents futures, social skills training, keeping loved ones safe, and creating accepting communities. Dr. Aleck Myers, ASNC Clinical Services Director and chairman of the conference planning committee, said, We recognize that an individual with autism will be an adult much longer than they are a child. This conference provides information that will be helpful for self-advocates, parents and other caregivers, and professionals so that they are better equipped to plan for and provide what is needed. Self-advocates, families affected by autism, and professionals in the autism field will also have the opportunity to network, learn more about available resources, meet with a variety of businesses that support the autism community, and earn continuing education credits. To register or for more information, please visit the ASNC website at http://www.autismsociety-nc.org/conference. Through Feb. 10, participants will receive early-bird rates for registration. A special room rate at the conference site, the Hilton University Place, is available through Feb. 16. Conference schedule: Dr. Girolami will kick off the conference on Friday, March 11, with Sleep and Feeding Issues in Kids and Adults with Autism: Creating Successful Outcomes, providing practical action steps to address these challenges. Also on Friday, Dr. Dawson will return to the conference for a second year with Early Start Denver Model: The Science and Theory Behind the Treatment. Dr. Dawson co-created Early Start, an evidence-based practice that can be used by all caregivers and professionals. Dr. Davlantis will expand on Dr. Dawsons talk by discussing Clinical Applications and Practical Strategies for Implementation. On Saturday, March 12, Dr. Laura Klinger from the TEACCH Autism Program will present Making the Transition from High School to Adulthood a Positive Experience. Dr. Klinger has published research on this topic, and with more than 14,000 students with ASD in NC public schools, achieving successful transitions is an increasingly important issue. Also Saturday, conference attendees will have the opportunity to choose from concurrent presentations. Topics will include: Making the Transition from High School to Adulthood a Positive Experience Your Dependent with Special Needs: Making Their Future More Secure Social Skills Programming: Practical Strategies Creating Accepting Communities: What One Person Can Do Staying Safe: What You Need to Know The final session of the day is a keynote titled What Matters Most: Transition Planning and Meaningful Preparation for Life by self-advocate Tom Iland, a Certified Public Accountant from California. Iland will inspire attendees as he explains how he has overcome challenges and achieved many life goals. Sponsors of the annual conference include MetLife Center for Special Needs Planning and the NC Council on Developmental Disabilities. Charlotte AHEC is the educational partner. For specific information about continuing education unit credits or for more information on the conference schedule and exhibitors, please visit http://www.autismsociety-nc.org/conference. Background: Ticomix, Inc., parent company to Aptris, announces today that Steven J. Horvath has joined the company as Vice President of Advisory Services. He brings to Aptris more than twenty-five years of successful technology, consulting, and business operations leadership, which will greatly enhance Aptris' ability to expand as a Preferred Solutions Provider for ServiceNow. Steve has held executive positions with such organizations as ServiceMaster, Turner Construction, and Xerox, where he led the global deployment of ServiceNow for the McDonalds Corporation. Most recently, he was the Chief Technology Officer and Practice Lead for Linium, guiding their professional services and managed services teams. At Aptris, Steve will serve as part of the senior leadership team delivering ServiceNow implementation and process improvement services. His insights into business strategy, service delivery, and team alignment, along with his broad industry relationships, will be key factors in the companys continued expansion, underscored by nearly 100 percent year-over-year growth in recent months. We are excited to have Steve join our team, said Ticomix/Aptris CEO, Tim Ancona. Im confident that his experience with building world-class service and delivery models, combined with his team focus and passion for delivering customer value will help us take Aptris to new levels of success. About Ticomix Ticomix provides technology solutions to businesses by fusing best practices with award-winning technologies in the areas of networking, data backup/recovery, customer relationship management, service desk management and a host of other customized software and hardware solutions. Ticomix also sells and supports leading technology brands such as Microsoft, VMWare, Nimble, ServiceNow and SugarCRM, and Cisco. They are headquartered in Rockford, IL, with offices in D.C., Florida, New York and Wisconsin. For more information call 815-847-3400. About Aptris Aptris brings together more than 16 years' experience in process consulting, training and implementation of leading IT Service Management solutions such as ServiceNow. Aptris helps its 400+ clients raise the bar for world-class Service Management solutions, delivering smarter processes and smarter tools. Aptris is a ServiceNow Preferred Solutions Partner. Greatist (http://www.greatist.com), the leading wellness site for millennials is turning traditional media on its head by bringing a positive voice to health and wellness, eschewing the traditional prescriptive tone and unrealistic goal-oriented narrative that exists amongst health magazines. On a mission to give everyone a healthy attitude, Greatist announced today closing $4.5 million in Series A funding led by Floodgate, with participation from Strauss Zelnick, Andy Russell, John Gardner, and David Pecker. Previous investors including RiverPark Ventures, Vayner/RSE, Jon Miller, Ramit Sethi, and Chris Hughes also participated. This round brings their total funding to date to $8 million. With added support from great investors, Greatist is positioned to accelerate our growth, product development, and innovation, Flanzraich said. Theres a growing number of next-generation media companies building business with a long-term, brand-first perspective. Weve never been better positioned to create this generations defining health living brand and business. Were excited to be the go-to resource shaping healthy attitude today and even more excited about the genuine brand trust that builds for us to help people more tomorrow. Since its launch, Greatist has undergone rapid growth as the core audience amplifies 250 percent year-over-year. The company attracts an average of 10 million readers per month 50 percent driven by organic search, and less than 25 percent from social networks with the remaining from nearly two million email subscribers. Greatist emphasizes quality over quantity by rigorously vetting all content by their Expert Network and citing every fact, empowering readers to find a healthy lifestyle that works for them. In an unusual turn for new media startups, Greatist has also reached profitability in less than four years, primarily through innovative premium content sponsorship campaigns with some of the worlds most recognizable health food and fitness brands including KIND, Fitbit, Oscar Health, Thrive Market, Bai, and others. Greatists unbelievable momentum is built upon an unwavering commitment to building brand trust with its core audience. Greatist is poised to be the go-to source for this generation to become better versions of themselves as a next generation platform that blends content, community and commerce, said Ann Miura-Ko, Partner at Floodgate Fund. I grew up struggling with my weight and traditional media brands made me feel worse, not better, said Derek Flanzraich, Greatist founder and CEO. There's a huge generational shift happening -- health and wellness is no longer the point, but just a part of living a better, longer, happier life. This generation has been aching for a brand that captures this healthy attitude, this movement of what's good for you in an authentic, empowering, actionable way. The right mindset is the only way you ever really stick to anything healthy. So that's not only why we're building Greatist, but also why its so important. About Greatist Greatist is a rapidly growing, award-winning media company on a mission to give everyone a healthy attitude. Founded by CEO Derek Flanzraich, Greatist publishes evidence-backed content with an authentic voice, establishing itself as a deeply trusted lifestyle authority for a loyal community of millions. Greatist empowers its readers, brand partners, and employees to embrace our slogan, and love whats good for you. Launched in 2011, Greatist is headquartered in New York City. Find more at Greatist.com. Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference will take place at Hotel Palomar in Phoenix, Arizona on April 17-19, 2016. Catalyst was created to provide our attendees with an environment that allows for true and honest conversations about important issues including gender diversity in the workplace and how we can better support girls in tech. - Adriana Gascoigne, CEO Girls in Tech, an organization focused on the empowerment, entrepreneurship, engagement, and education of women in technology, is proud to announce the fourth annual Catalyst Conference, a three-day event designed to celebrate women in this new age of innovation. The event will take place at Hotel Palomar in Phoenix, Arizona on April 17-19, 2016. The Catalyst Conference was created to provide our attendees with an environment that allows for true and honest conversations about important issues including gender diversity in the workplace and how we can better support girls in tech. said Adriana Gascoigne, Founder and CEO of Girls in Tech. We look forward to hosting another great group of attendees with a solid lineup of workshops and conversations in Phoenix in April. The Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference will include inspiring keynotes from female leaders, as well as multi-media presentations and networking events. The conference also offers attendees exciting discussion and sage advice on innovation and technology, and will provide them with a platform to exchange ideas, connect with other influential women, and create lasting business relationships that could have considerable impact on the technology industry at large. As an advocate for innovation in government, I know how valuable it is to collaborate with techies outside my organization, said Laura Williams, Catalyst speaker and eDiplomacy Officer, United States Department of State. Im looking forward to connecting with the women of Girls in Tech, hearing their stories, learning from their perspectives, and brainstorming new ideas. There are more than two dozen speakers confirmed for this years event, including: Amy Bunszel, Vice President, AutoCAD Products, Autodesk Leah Busque, Founder & CEO, TaskRabbit Sandy Carter, Social Business Evangelist & General Manager, Cloud Ecosystem & Developers, IBM Mercedes De Luca, COO, Basecamp Debra Jensen, CIO, Charlotte Russe Rashmi Kumar, Vice President of Information Technology, McKesson Fran Maier, Founder & Chair of the Board, TRUSTe and co-founder of Match.com Monique Morrow, CTO, New Frontiers Engineering, Cisco Systems, Inc. Cheryl Porro, Senior Vice President, Technology & Products, Salesforce Kara Swisher, Executive Editor & Co-Founder, Re/Code Jennifer Tejada, President & CEO of Keynote Kristen Wolberg, Vice President of Technology, PayPal Featured discussion topics include: Fueling the She-Economy: Why It Matters Building Your Brand, Networking, and Showcasing You Practical Product Marketing: Engaging your Customers to Drive Advocacy and Growth Diversity and Inclusion: Leveraging The Butterfly Effect What it Takes to Build a Great Company: Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make That No One Talks About How the Accelerated Learning Model is Helping to Alter the Gender Disparity in the Technology Workforce This is the second year that Girls in Tech has held their flagship event in Phoenix, acknowledging the areas potential to harness and support women as they pursue tech and entrepreneurial endeavors. Were excited to welcome the Girls in Tech Catalyst Conference back to downtown for the second year in a row, said Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton. Some of the worlds most innovative women in technology will come together in Phoenix to empower other women to lead and succeed in this critical field. Catalyst Conference is sponsored by Automattic, IBM, H&R Block Small Business, Wells Fargo, Axosoft, Infusionsoft, City of Phoenix and Downtown Phoenix, Inc. Athena Alliance is also a proud partner for the event. Television and radio show host Kym McNicholas will emcee the event. For more information about speakers and schedule of events and to register to attend, please visit: http://girlsintech.org/events/the-catalyst-conference-2016/. About Girls in Tech Girls in Tech (GIT) is a global non-profit focused on the engagement, education and empowerment of influential women in technology and entrepreneurship. Our goal is to promote the growth and success of entrepreneurial and innovative women in the technology space. Created in February 2007, Girls in Tech was founded by Adriana Gascoigne, and was born out of a need to provide a place for women to cultivate ideas around their careers and business concepts involving technology and entrepreneurship. Girls in Tech is headquartered in San Francisco, CA and has multiple chapters around the world, including North America, Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and South America. Girls in Tech offers a variety of initiatives for women and girls to enhance their professional aspirations. Our programs include Catalyst Conference, Lady Pitch Night Competitions, GIT M (Mentorship Program), GIT Hackathons, Bootcamps, XChange, GIT WORK, Global Classroom, and many more. How to Build a Tiny House It's our pleasure to share reliable information on how to build a tiny house With interest in tiny homes growing all the time, it's only natural people with a DIY do it yourself spirit would be exploring and experimenting with putting them together, themselves. Fortunately, thanks to Upper Valley Tiny Homes based out of Utah, the information on how to build a tiny house is not only available, but will also become much more simple to locate. Recently, the company announced they will be adding a how to build a tiny house section on their popular website, which will act as an archive for the growing number of videos the company has released on the subject. The tiny home community has responded with enthusiasm to the news. It's our pleasure to share reliable information on how to build a tiny house, commented a spokesperson from Upper Valley Tiny Homes. There's many things to consider and no one wants to waste time, energy or money on putting together something that's not liveable or go over budget due to simple mistakes that can be avoided. We're here to help. According to the company, the archive will feature not only old videos produced by the company on the subject of building a tiny home, but will also be updated with new videos as time and demand permits. The experts at Upper Valley Tiny Homes are always ready to answer a good question and welcome feedback from their peers and others interested in knowing how to build a tiny house. Spencer T. Kuvin, Esq., of the Law Offices of Craig Goldenfarb, P.A., has been named by South Florida Legal Guide as a Top Lawyer in Personal Injury and Wrongful Death for Floridas southern region for 2016. Mr. Kuvin is the Director of Litigation and Lead Trial Attorney for the mid-sized personal injury law firm Law Offices of Craig Goldenfarb, P.A., in West Palm Beach, Florida. Mr. Kuvin has been with the firm in this role since 2013. This year marks the third year in a row Spencer Kuvin has been named as a Top Lawyer in the famed publication. The South Florida Legal Guide uses an original, proprietary peer-nomination process to validate which lawyers appear in the directory, which is then published in print and digital formats, and distributed throughout South Florida. The Guide is a publication by lawyers, for lawyers. Mr. Kuvin appreciates the inclusion, as it serves as an acknowledgement by his peers of his lifes work. There are more than 30,000 lawyers in South Florida alone, says Spencer Kuvin, so to be recognized as one of only a couple hundred, in a pool that is vast and full of accomplished and excellent lawyers, is truly an honor. Several lawyers from personal injury firms in Palm Beach County, in addition to Spencer Kuvin, were also selected for inclusion into the member directory for 2016. Those firms include Searcy, Denney, Scarola, Barnhart, & Shipley; Clark, Fountain, La Vista, Prather, Keen, & Littky-Rubin; and Lytal, Reiter, Smith, Ivey, & Fronrath. Mr. Kuvin came to national media prominence in 2015 by representing sexual assault victim Chloe Goins in her pursuit of justice against her attacker, disgraced comedian Bill Cosby. Mr. Kuvin is Board Certified in Civil Trial by the Florida Bar, a distinction awarded to Florida lawyers who demonstrate excellence in ethics and the practice of law. Only about 3% of lawyers in Florida earn Board Certification during their career. Spencer Kuvin graduated from Stetson University School of Law, joining the Florida Bar in 1995. He has been practicing personal injury law for the entirety of his career. Mr. Kuvin was born and raised in Miami, Florida, and currently practices in West Palm Beach, Florida. His full professional biography can be found on the firm's website. Among Mr. Kuvins personal injury practice areas are representing the interests of victims of automobile accident negligence, premises liability, wrongful death, nursing home neglect and abuse, and sexual assault and abuse. About the Law Offices of Craig Goldenfarb, P.A. The Law Offices of Craig Goldenfarb, P.A. is a plaintiff personal injury law firm in West Palm Beach, representing victims of auto accidents, slip and falls, nursing home abuse, wrongful death, and heart attacks in public places. If you or someone you know has been the victim of negligence, call 1-800-GOLD-LAW. Tutors International A more cost effective option would be to sponsor places for the highest achievers at private schools or match them with a private tutor to nurture their individual needs and talents outside of the classroom. Tutors International, global provider of exceptional private tutors, welcomes the call for increased opportunities for talented students, but believes there are more cost-effective solutions. Following calls for education secretary Nicky Morgan to open a number of highly-academic schools for gifted state students [1], questions remain to be raised regarding the financial practicalities of such a move and what the selection process would entail. Adam Caller, who founded Tutors International in 1999, said of the proposal: More provision needs to be made for high-performing students in our state schools. However, we need to seriously consider how to go about determining who gets a place in these proposed new schools. In some schools, as part of the current Gifted and Talented program, the top 20 students are automatically put forward. Unless there is a way to accurately differentiate the highly able from the rest in the state sector, they just wont get the same exposure to opportunity afforded to children in the private sector. Key advantages to the proposed new system, put forward by former Government advisor, James Frayne [2], include a broad curriculum and an intake of just 60 students per year. Such an undertaking, however, would require considerable time and investment in new resources that are already available elsewhere. There are also concerns that such a move would pull education back in the direction of the old grammar school system. Mr Caller commented: Rather than building new schools, a more cost effective option would be to sponsor places for the highest achievers at private schools that already have the necessary resources and experience or, better still, match them with a private tutor to nurture their individual needs and talents outside of the classroom. Regardless of ability, we know that not all students are able to perform at their best in a traditional classroom environment. Increased one-to-one attention and the ability to learn at their own pace, according to their own interests, has the potential to bring out the best of their abilities. Tutors International has placed tutors with students of all abilities, with some spectacular results, seeing tutored students repeatedly place in some of the top universities in the world. Some of these students have been tutored part-time, alongside their conventional classroom studies, and others have excelled in full-time home schooling. For more information on the services offered by Tutors International and for advice on home schooling, wherever you are in the world, visit tutors-international.com. Tutors can browse the latest vacancies and submit an application by visiting tutors-international.net. References [1] Open super-selective schools to extend elite education into state sector, says former Gove adviser. http://schoolsweek.co.uk/open-super-selective-schools-to-extend-elite-education-into-state-sector-says-former-gove-adviser/ Freddie Whittaker. Schools Week. January 2016 [2] http://www.totalpolitics.com/opinion/454901/lets-roll-out-elitism-in-education-so-poor-children-benefit-too.thtml, James Frayne, Total Politics, Lets roll out elitism in education so poor children benefit too, 4 January 2016 About Tutors International Tutors International is a worldwide organization providing experienced private tutors to work with children of all ages and nationalities. Tutors are available for full-time tutoring positions, for major support and tutoring outside school hours, or for home-schooling. Tutors International provide provide a bespoke service to find the right tutor that suits the child's needs and aspirations, and if a live-in tutor is required, it is essential that the assigned tutor is the right match for the family and fits in the environment. Tutors International was founded by Adam Caller who has tutored students of all ages. He has received specialist training in dyslexia and Attention Deficit Disorder and is very sensitive to children's educational difficulties. He has now turned this expertise to recruiting, training and placing other tutors to help families. Tutors International, the leading provider of full-time private tutors, voiced its support following an order by Education Secretary, Nicky Morgan, in December [1] for a review of unregistered schools, amid radicalisation fears. The Government estimates that between 20,000 and 50,000 children in the UK receive their education outside of a traditional classroom, however, it is currently unable to pinpoint an exact figure. Parents in the UK are not, currently, obliged to inform their local authority that their children are being home schooled. Tutors International has stressed in the past the importance of registering home schooled students, in order to ensure that their human rights are being met and that they receive a balanced curriculum. Adam Caller, who founded of Tutors International in 1999, said of the renewed call: Under the UNs Universal Declaration of Human rights, everyone is entitled to an education. The system in the UK is highly flexible, which is of great benefit to students with needs and circumstances that the traditional school system cannot accommodate, but also means that there is no requirement for parents to inform the government as to what curriculum their children are being taught. Whether parents make the decision to home school for religious or philosophical reasons, every child has the right to receive a balanced and inclusive curriculum. This renewed scrutiny on unregistered schools emerged after it was revealed that some were promoting extremist ideologies and this concern is now being extended to include home-schooled children and their parents. Tutors International has a long history of placing exceptional private tutors with home schooled children in a variety of circumstances and has seen superb results. Mr Caller is keen to reassure any parents feeling threatened by new registration proposals, and added: Its understandable that parents are wary, but no proposed registration process is going to force families to have their child sit exams or dictate how curriculum is delivered. The main concern here is that students are receiving a well-rounded view of the world in which they live. There needs to be a consultation process between local authorities and parents as to what core education every child should receive. Tutors International is looking into ways to make qualified tutors available to families who may need support and guidance in meeting any new registration requirements, including additional support for students with dyslexia, ADHD and other specific educational needs. For more information on Tutors International and the services it offers for homeschooling families, visit tutors-international.com. References: [1] Nicky Morgan orders review on home schooling amid fears of children having minds poisoned by radicalised parents [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/nicky-morgan-orders-review-on-home-schooling-amid-fears-children-having-minds-poisoned-by-a6779886.html Tom McTague. The Independent. December 2015. About Tutors International Tutors International is a worldwide organization providing experienced private tutors to work with children of all ages and nationalities. Tutors are available for full-time tutoring positions, for major support and tutoring outside school hours, or for home-schooling. Tutors International provide provide a bespoke service to find the right tutor that suits the child's needs and aspirations, and if a live-in tutor is required, it is essential that the assigned tutor is the right match for the family and fits in the environment. Tutors International was founded by Adam Caller who has tutored students of all ages. He has received specialist training in dyslexia and Attention Deficit Disorder and is very sensitive to children's educational difficulties. He has now turned this expertise to recruiting, training and placing other tutors to help families. Dr. Melissa Drake is joining Dr. Duncan Turner as an OB-GYN at Turner Medical Arts in Santa Barbara. Turner Medical Arts patient-centric focus is perfect for the obstetric care I practice, since each woman is unique and deserves personalized attention for her healthand the health of her baby. Duncan Turner, MD, built Turner Medical Arts on a foundation of expert care, professionalism, compassion, modern techniques and technology, andabove alla commitment to always putting the needs and safety of his patients first. This drive to always offer the best in obstetrics and gynecology to Santa Barbara-area women led him to welcome a new doctor, Melissa Drake, MD, to the practice in December 2015. Dr. Drake comes to Turner Medical Arts from George Washington University in Washington, DC, where she served as a resident physician from 2011 to 2015. While working in the nations capital, her patients included diplomats and major governmental power-players, as well as immigrants from South and Central American countries, but she never lost her belief that each and every person she treated deserved the best possible care she could give. Dr. Drake studied both obstetrics and gynecology, and her education and experience include modern birthing techniques, as well as such non-medicated methods as hypno-birthing, water-assisted births, and more. Since no two births are the same, and a variety of situations requiring immediate attention can arise throughout a womans pregnancy, Dr. Drake also underwent extensive training to gain insight and experience in helping with pregnancies deemed higher risk due to high-blood-pressure conditions such as preeclampsia, multiple babies (such as twins, triplets, or more), intrauterine growth restriction, diabetes, cervical insufficiency, kidney or liver disease in the mother, prior C-sections or other surgeries, and more. Dr. Drake is also well versed in gynecology techniques, from hysteroscopy and other office based procedures to surgeries for cervical, uterine, and other cancers. In her gynecology training, she focused on laparoscopic surgery. Over and above her medical experience and specific focus on obstetrics and gynecology is her drive to give women the opportunity to learn about their own bodies and how to take charge of their own health, empowering them to take control. Turner Medical Arts offers a number of options related to obstetrics and gynecology, including standard gynecological care, hormone replacement therapy, breast health services, weight management help, and skin care. The practice recently added the FDA-approved, minimally invasive MonaLisa Touch to its menu of services, providing vaginal rejuvenation to women suffering from dryness, irritation, and discomfort due to hormonal shifts. To learn more about Dr. Melissa Drake, Dr. Duncan Turner, and the care and services they offer to women seeking obstetrics and gynecology at Santa Barbaras Turner Medical Arts, call 805-962-1957 or visit turnermedicalarts.com. Phoenix Capital Group, LLC provided working capital solutions to 184 new clients in 31 states across the country, representing $38,310,000 in approved credit facilities during 2015. Phoenix Capital Group is nationally known and has been providing tailor-made financial solutions, primarily in the transportation industry for small-to-medium sized fleets, since 2001. The company maintains its headquarters in Scottsdale, with offices in Missouri, Texas, and Tennessee. Product offerings include, but are not limited to, accounts receivable financing, equipment financing, and fuel cards. Mystical Aria: Seeking the Gallion Queen, According to branding specialist David Thalberg, Many compare Guthries novel to the endearing kid-meets-alien theme in Steven Spielbergs 'E.T.' On February 8th, author Jean Neff Guthrie, resident of the metro Atlanta area, releases "Mystical Aria: Seeking the Gallion Queen," a young adult science-fiction novel about a psychic girl who entices spiritually advanced aliens to visit her in Virginia Beach. A 2013 HuffPost/YouGov poll reported that 50 percent of Americans surveyed believe in some form of life on other planets. Among them, 45 percent said that aliens have visited Earth. According to branding specialist David Thalberg, Many compare Guthries novel to the endearing kid-meets-alien theme in Steven Spielbergs 'E.T.' Guthrie, fifty-two, touches the hearts of youths and adults with a fantasy about a twelve-year-old girl and good aliens who teach believing in yourself, seeking peaceful outcomes, and healing through forgiveness. In Guthries novel, psychic tween Aria Vanir of Virginia Beach trusts only her mother with the knowledge of her visions until she connects with technically and spiritually advanced aliens, the Gallions. Then Aria confides in her best friend, Tommy Manger. His unexpected doubts and anger threaten to end their friendship. Nashata, Queen Supreme of the Gallions, leads a diplomatic mission to make peaceful contact with Aria, the only human she trusts with the secrets of her people. When the Gallions beam Aria, Tommy, and Arias tomboyish fifteen-year-old sister, Jackie, aboard their superspaceship, Arias mother makes a bold move to save her daughters. None of them realize that the Navy has sent Arias SEAL father, William, on a mission to capture the Gallions or destroy their superspaceship. Worse, William has no idea hes putting his daughters in harms way. Can Aria succeed in her quest to meet the queen in person, despite the fears and disbeliefs of those closest to her? Can William forgive himself and seek peace with the aliens? Guthrie graduated from Pulaski County High School, class of 82 salutatorian, in Dublin, Virginia. She earned a BS in Dairy Science from Virginia Tech (86) and a MS in Mass Communications from Virginia Commonwealth University (93). A member of Project Management Institute, Guthrie has been certified as a Project Management Professional and ScrumMaster. In 2014, she was awarded Most Influential Champion by the Technology Association of Georgia. Guthries first published poem, Prison Walls, appeared in America at the Millenniumthe Best Poems and Poets of the 20th Century. Her poem Baler Twine, written in honor of her fathers seventy-fifth birthday, won a National Cattlemens Magazine contest and was published in its March, 2001, edition. Guthrie lives in Smyrna, Georgia, where she writes sequels in the #MysticalAria series and works as an information technology program management consultant. Mystical Aria: Seeking the Gallion Queen releases Feb 8 on Amazon.com. Discounts, freebies, and announcements are available with VIP Access through http://www.JeanNeffGuthrie.com. For more information and to schedule an interview, contact Guthrie at 678.467.8835 or info(at)JeanNeffGuthrie.com. Mystical Aria: Seeking the Gallion Queen, According to branding specialist, David Thalberg, Many compare Guthries novel to the endearing kid-meets-alien theme in Steven Spielbergs 'E.T.' A 2013 HuffPost/YouGov poll reported that 50 percent of Americans surveyed believe in some form of life on other planets. Among them, 45 percent said that aliens have visited Earth. On February 8th, author Jean Neff Guthrie, native of Virginia, releases "Mystical Aria: Seeking the Gallion Queen," a young adult science-fiction novel about a psychic girl who entices spiritually advanced aliens to visit her in Virginia Beach. According to branding specialist, David Thalberg, Many compare Guthries novel to the endearing kid-meets-alien theme in Steven Spielbergs 'E.T.' Guthrie, fifty-two, touches the hearts of youths and adults with a fantasy about a twelve-year-old girl and good aliens who teach believing in yourself, seeking peaceful outcomes, and healing through forgiveness. In Guthries novel, psychic tween Aria Vanir, of Virginia Beach, trusts only her mother with the knowledge of her visions until she connects with technically and spiritually advanced aliens, the Gallions. Then Aria confides in her best friend, Tommy Manger. His unexpected doubts and anger threaten to end their friendship. Nashata, Queen Supreme of the Gallions, leads a diplomatic mission to make peaceful contact with Aria, the only human she trusts with the secrets of her people. When the Gallions beam Aria, Tommy, and Arias tomboyish fifteen-year-old sister, Jackie, aboard their superspaceship, Arias mother makes a bold move to save her daughters. None of them realize that the Navy has sent Arias SEAL father, William, on a mission to capture the Gallions or destroy their superspaceship. Worse, William has no idea hes putting his daughters in harms way. Can Aria succeed in her quest to meet the queen in person, despite the fears and disbeliefs of those closest to her? Can William forgive himself and seek peace with the aliens? Guthrie graduated from Pulaski County High School, class of 82 salutatorian, in Dublin, Virginia. She earned a BS in Dairy Science from Virginia Tech (86) and a MS in Mass Communications from Virginia Commonwealth University (93). A member of Project Management Institute, Guthrie has been certified as a Project Management Professional and Scrum Master. In 2014, she was awarded Most Influential Champion by the Technology Association of Georgia. Guthries first published poem, Prison Walls, appeared in America at the Millenniumthe Best Poems and Poets of the 20th Century. Her poem Baler Twine, written in honor of her fathers seventy-fifth birthday, won a National Cattlemens Magazine contest and was published in its March, 2001, edition. Guthrie lives in Smyrna, Georgia, where she writes sequels in the #MysticalAria series and works as an information technology program management consultant. Mystical Aria: Seeking the Gallion Queen releases February 8th on Amazon.com. Discounts, freebies, and announcements are available with VIP Access through http://www.JeanNeffGuthrie.com. For more information and to schedule an interview, contact Guthrie at 678.467.8835 or info(at)JeanNeffGuthrie(dot)com. Holiday Inn Express & Suites New Braunfels The New Braunfels market is a great fit for the Holiday Inn Express brand due to its convenient location near Schlitterbahn Waterpark, downtown New Bruanfels, and Historic Gruene. We look forward to providing our guests with a great value. Baywood Hotels, one of the nations leading hotel companies, today announces the opening of a new 87-room Holiday Inn Express & Suites in New Braunfels, Texas. The hotel will be the areas first Holiday Inn Express location. The hotel has hired employees, ranging from Director of Sales to Housekeeping, contributing to the local economy. Jennifer Gribble, Vice President, Holiday Inn Express Brand, The Americas, IHG said: "Holiday Inn Express hotels offer guests a great nights rest while helping them be productive on the go, and this hotel is the smart choice for people traveling to New Braunfels, TX. We are proud to welcome the Holiday Inn Express & Suites New Braunfels hotel to our portfolio of more than 2,350 properties worldwide. The Holiday Inn Express brand is the smart choice for travelers seeking a hotel that will help them rest and go while staying productive, delivering exactly what they need and nothing they dont. The more than 2,300 Holiday Inn Express hotels worldwide offer a simple and efficient stay through the uncomplicated yet personal service travelers expect from the brand. The property offers a variety of amenities such as free WiFi, free parking, 24-hour business center, guest laundry facility, microwave and fridge in all the suites, outdoor pool, fitness center, 24-hour front desk, etc. The complimentary Express Start breakfast bar offers a full range of breakfast items, and now features healthy breakfast items, including Chobani yogurt, whole wheat English muffins, Special K cereal with red berries, new oatmeal flavors in cups, and a toppings bar - for yogurt, cereal and pancakes. Additionally, the breakfast bar continues to offer a rotation of egg and meat selections, biscuits, fruit, the brand's proprietary cinnamon roll and Smart Roast coffee. Mr. Nick Naik, President said: The New Braunfels market is a great fit for the Holiday Inn Express brand due to its convenient location near Schlitterbahn Waterpark, downtown New Braunfels, and historic Gruene. We look forward to providing our guests with unmatched comfort and convenience at a great value. The property will features the brand's recently-introduced "Formula Blue" design direction, which was developed to meet the evolving needs of a savvy Smart Traveler who are looking for a hotel with personality and an experience that is expedient and dynamic. The updated design includes features such as an open lobby and "great room" area for social or business gatherings; re-designed case goods; and a headboard that minimizes noise transfer between rooms. Located at 1436, IH-35 N, New Braunfels, TX 78130, The Holiday Inn Express New Braunfels, Texas hotel is owned and managed by Baywood Hotels, and operates various other IHG hotels in the United States. The Holiday Inn Express brand is part of IHGs diverse family of brands in nearly 100 countries and territories. The scale and diversity of the IHG family of brands means that its hotels can meet guests needs whatever the occasion whether an overnight getaway, a business trip, a family celebration or a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Reservations can be made by calling 1-877-650-6452 or by going to IHG.com/HolidayInnExpress. The Holiday Inn Express brand participates in IHGs hotel rewards program, IHG Rewards Club. The industrys first and largest hotel rewards program is free, and guests can enroll at IHGRewardsClub.com, by downloading the IHG App, by calling 1-888-211-9874 or by inquiring at the front desk of any of IHGs more than 4,900 hotels worldwide. The hotel also participates in IHG Green Engage and offers unique programs to ensure sustainability. ### About Baywood Hotels Established in 1975, Baywood Hotels, Inc. is a fast-growing and privately-owned hospitality management company, operating over $800 million in assets and employing over 1,000 associates nationwide. The company is headquartered in Greenbelt, Maryland, and has regional offices in Chantilly, VA, Miami, FL and San Antonio, TX. In each of its regions, the private hotel ownership company is consistently recognized as an innovative leader in the hotel industry, focusing on product concept and development and the outstanding management of its assets. The focused vision, strong values and aggressive long-range strategy of Baywood Hotels has helped the company develop reputable and well-branded hotels in areas where Baywood has competitive expertise and partnerships. Baywood Hotels portfolio includes well-known brands, such as Marriott, Hilton and InterContinental Hotels Group, as well as several independent brands. Baywood Hotels employs over 1,000 associates nationwide. Turkey was First Country to Recognize The Armenian Genocide -- in 1918 By Harut Sassounian Publisher, The California Courier www.TheCaliforniaCourier.com The Armenian Genocide is rarely discussed in the Turkish Parliament; and even rarer are statements calling for its recognition. On January 14, 2016, two of the three recently elected Armenian members of the Turkish Parliament boldly dared to raise the issue of the Armenian Genocide in their parliamentary remarks. Selina Dogan, representing the opposition Kemalist CHP Party (Republican Peoples Party), made the following statement in Parliament: Since this issue concerns not only Armenians but also Turkey, therefore, it should be raised in the Turkish Parliament and not in other parliaments. Otherwise, on every April 24, we will continue making trite statements and hastily rid this topic from our minds. I am convinced that none of us is interested in doing so. I would like to remind you that during a 2015 public rally in Erzurum, the Prime Minister clearly stated that the deportation is a Crime against Humanity. Garo Paylan, representing the Kurdish opposition HDP Party, then took the floor and also spoke about the Armenian Genocide: One hundred years ago the Armenian people were uprooted and exterminated by a decision of the State. My family -- grandfather and his family -- also suffered from these events. My grandfather was orphaned, having lost both parents. I am from the generation of orphans and leftovers of the sword, living in this land. My race is massacred. As Paylan was speaking, several members of Parliament shouted in disapproval. Baki Shimshek, member of the ultra-nationalist opposition MHP Party, warned: We are in the Turkish National Assembly. No one can say that genocide was committed. Such rudeness is unacceptable! Although this was an unusual discussion, it was not the first time that affirmative statements were made in the Turkish Parliament on the Armenian Genocide. In November 2014, Sebahat Tuncel of HDP Party proposed a resolution condemning the Armenian Genocide. Tuncel urged Pres. Erdogan to come to the Parliament to acknowledge and apologize for the Armenian Genocide and other mass crimes. The resolution also asked Erdogan to repeat his apology publicly at one of the sites of mass killings, and declare April 24 as an official Day of Mourning. In addition, the Parliament was requested to form a Truth Commission and make public all documents in state archives pertaining to these mass crimes. Finally, the proposed resolution sought moral and material restitution for descendants of the victims. Not surprisingly, Tuncels resolution was quickly suppressed, never to see the light of day again! As I reported over a year ago, Tuncels proposal was not the first time that a resolution was submitted to the Turkish Parliament to recognize the Armenian Genocide. On November 4, 1918, the newly-constituted Ottoman Turkish Parliament discussed at length the crimes committed by the Young Turk Government, after a motion was presented stating: A population of one million people guilty of nothing except belonging to the Armenian nation were massacred and exterminated, including even women and children. In response, Minister of Interior Ali Fethi Okyar declared: It is the intention of the government to cure every single injustice done up until now, as far as the means allow, to make possible the return to their homes of those sent into exile, and to compensate for their material loss as far as possible. As a result of this motion, a Parliamentary Investigative Committee was set up to collect all relevant documents describing the actions of those responsible for what was then called, Armenian deportations and massacres. The evidence was turned over to the Turkish Military Tribunal and those found guilty were hanged or given lengthy prison sentences. In addition to this parliamentary motion, we need to recall the words of Kemal Ataturk, first President of the Republic of Turkey, who was quoted by the Los Angeles Examiner on August 1, 1926, as stating: These leftovers from the former Young Turk Party who should have been made to account for the lives of millions of our Christian subjects who were ruthlessly driven en masse from their homes and massacred. The combination of the 1918 Parliamentary motion, the guilty verdicts of the Turkish Military Tribunals, and the damning words of President Kemal Ataturk qualify Turkey as the first country that recognized the Armenian Genocide! Consequently, rather than seeking recognition of the Armenian Genocide by Turkey, Armenians should demand restitution for all their losses, as promised 98 years ago by Minister of Interior Fethi Okyar! TaxTalent, the career and leadership development portal for tax professionals announced the launch of TaxJobs.com, a niche job board connecting employers with top tax professionals. The original TaxTalent job board, which has operated since 1999 will be replaced by the new TaxJobs brand and the newly developed platform. TaxJobs will remain integrated in TaxTalent as part of the overall membership experience. According to Tony Santiago, president of TaxTalent and founder of TaxJobs, the job board focuses on employers that choose to market their open tax positions themselves and want to target and engage the harder-to-reach, passive tax candidates an audience that rarely responds to generic job ads. TaxJobs is unlike any other medium for capturing more qualified tax professionals, says Santiago. We know, based on market demand, that active tax candidates make up the minority of the tax population so we have developed TaxJobs as a leading-edge source that attracts and engages the more highly valued, passive tax audience. TaxJobs reaches the passive talent pool in four unique ways: 1. Guiding employers on writing more effective candidate-focused job ads targeted to the tax audience. 2. Leveraging a proprietary talent database of over 100,000 tax professionals. 3. Syndicating job ads to tax associations, social media networks and a tax job agent system that tax professionals opt-in for private notifications about open tax opportunities. 4. Providing guidance on improving the candidate pre-application experience to engage passive candidates. The majority of passive tax professionals would entertain certain career opportunities if they could access the data confidentially. They also must have their questions answered about the position before they have to apply, says Santiago. Making strategic shifts in how employers communicate and treat candidates yields better results. TaxJobs offers employers a 60 day job posting for $495 with a no-risk offer for job ads that meet a certified benchmark of quality. TaxJobs also connects clients to its sister brand TaxBridgeStaffing where employers can quickly retain top tax consultants on an interim basis. This offering closes critical workload gaps while open tax positions are still being filled. This solution provides time for tax employers to find top quality candidates, reduce turnover by preventing current staff/work overload as well as fostering knowledge transfer. About TaxJobs.com TaxJobs is a niche job board for the tax profession that provides unparalleled tax candidate penetration and highly improved response rates. For more information, visit http://www.TaxJobs.com. TaxJobs is part of the Family of Tax Brands. Caring for a person suffering from Alzheimers disease or dementia is never easy. Even harder is making the decision to have someone else care for them. Its important to know theyll be in good hands. Edgewood LifeCare Community in North Andover, MA, was recently certified by the Hearthstone Foundation as a Center of Excellence for the third year in a row. Edgewood is one of only ten Hearthstone-certified Centers of Excellence in the U.S., and the only one in New England. According to its website, Hearthstones mission is to create a life worth living for those with cognitive challenges by enriching lives and offering hope. Hearthstones approach to care and treatment is based on years of clinical experience and an understanding of the neuroscience of the brain. At the core of its philosophy is reaching people through their deeply-etched emotional memories; focusing on the heart by creating positive, fulfilling experiences for residents; paying close attention to each residents health; and creating a supportive physical environment. When Edgewood Life Care Community adopted the Hearthstone approach, every member of the staff from directors and nurses to maintenance technicians was trained in Hearthstone methods. Training is ongoing and, each year, the community goes through a review and inspection process to earn Center of Excellence certification a goal they have achieved every year. Betty Landy, a licensed social worker by profession, and a volunteer at Edgewood, observes, People are treated with beautiful respect by all Edgewood staff. Their tone of voice is gentle and caring, and they respect each individuals privacy. Ive heard from family members who say we really know how to connect with residents at a higher level, says Heidi Moran, Director of Activities at Edgewoods Meadows Health Center, where the program is located. The training and tools help me find new ways to communicate with residents and help them succeed in their activities. Residents open up and are happier and more relaxed than they would be if we didnt employ this philosophy. Landy adds, The staff are very aware of each residents strengths. There may be a loss of memory in one area, but the staff will engage residents in areas where their strengths remain. With activities designed to take advantage of individuals strengths, residents can feel they have contributed to the activities and conversations. Edgewoods Center of Excellence certification will remain in effect through 2016. To learn more about memory support services at Edgewood LifeCare Community, visit the website at EdgewoodRC.com. Edgewood LifeCare Community (EdgewoodRC.com) is a non-profit Life Care Community offering Independent Living, Lifestyle Assistance, Memory Care, and Skilled Nursing Care on an 80-acre campus adjoining conservation land and Lake Cochichewick in North Andover, MA. The Hearthstone Foundation is a Massachusetts-based, internationally recognized organization dedicated to making a difference for people suffering from Alzheimers disease, dementia and other cognitive issues. For more information, visit TheHearth.org. __________________________________________________ CONTACT: Kathleen DAmico Marketing Director Edgewood Retirement Community, Inc. Telephone: (978) 738-401 Email: damicokathleen(at)EdgewoodRC(dot)com Website: EdgewoodRC.com END ### From Left to Right: Nicole Hayward, CMO, and Helene Kidary, VP Channel Sales of OnSIP Cloud PBX provider OnSIP today announced recent additions in the companys management team to meet the needs of the growing business. Nicole Hayward was appointed Chief Marketing Officer and Helene Kidary as Vice President Channel Sales. OnSIP is very excited to announce Nicoles promotion and Helenes hiring, said OnSIP CEO Michael Oeth. OnSIP has had a long relationship with Women in the Channel, of which both Nicole and Helene are members. We are proud to showcase such accomplished women in high level executive roles within our company. Oeth and Hayward both participated in the panel Gender Diversity Pays Off: Grow Your Business with Female Leadership at CVx ChannelVision Expo 2015 in Anaheim, CA. Women in the Channel (WiC), is a professional nonprofit organization supporting women in revenue generating roles in the telecom and data industries. In addition to now serving as members of the WiC Board, Hayward has also chaired the WiC Technology Committee for 3 years, and Kidary was appointed to Chair of the Membership Committee last year. Hayward has been with OnSIP since 2010, leading the company through a rebrand in 2012. During her tenure, OnSIP has grown to over 45,000 customers and been named a Gartner Cool Vendor in Unified Communications and a Pipeline Innovation Awards Finalist in 2015. The company has also won American Business (Stevie) Awards in 2012, 2013, and 2015 in various categories. Prior to OnSIP, she worked at Bootsoft Inc. (now Modus Associates LLC) and L'Oreal USA in management and engineering capacities. Hayward holds a B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering and a B.S. in Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University. Helene J Kidary is an accomplished business leader and serial entrepreneur working in the telecom and technology space for 20 years. Kidary joins OnSIP after holding the position Executive Vice President of VoIPX International Inc, a cloud-based VoIP provider. I am absolutely thrilled to be working with the highly talented and skilled team at OnSIP, said Kidary. They have a proven track record in the industry, and together we will boost our competitiveness through increased sales proficiencies, as we collaborate on new ways to bolster and maximize our business partners relationships with their customers. Kidary has held executive positions serving as President of Tandem Transit LLC; Chief Executive Officer and Founder of VOX Group International (acquired in 2012); Chief Operating Officer for Gorilla Mobile; EVP Network Operations at Telco Group that sold to Leucadia; VP of International Services at STAR Telecom; and VP Operations PT-1 Communications. She chaired the NewCo Integration Committee in a $1.2B merge with STAR Telecom and PT-1 Communications. Kidary was certified by Bellcores TEC Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. in Telecommunications December 1998 and graduated with an Honors B.S. degree from Hofstra University May 1988. About OnSIP Founded in 2004, OnSIP is a leading provider of real-time communications (RTC) services to over 45,000 businesses. OnSIP Hosted VoIP customers enjoy the benefits of an on-demand phone system without the traditional high cost, burden, and inflexibility. The company also offers a cloud platform and simple APIs for developers to rapidly and affordably build RTC applications of their own. For more information, visit https://www.onsip.com. Eldorado Stone sponsors Responsive Home outside Las Vegas. Adding stone veneer to the exterior of the home elevates the design and adds value to the investment of purchasing a home two key areas of interest for millennial homebuyers, said Ramsay Hawfield, Vice President of Marketing and Product Development. Eldorado Stone, leading manufacturer of the worlds most believable architectural stone veneer, showcases its newest products during Design and Construction Week 2016 in Las Vegas. Three profiles will be featured as an integral design component in two concept homes of the Responsive Home project. The project, sponsored by BUILDER Magazine and Hanley Wood, is designed by millennials, for millennials. Adding stone veneer to the exterior of the home elevates the design and adds value to the investment of purchasing a home two key areas of interest for millennial homebuyers, said Ramsay Hawfield, Vice President of Marketing and Product Development at Eldorado Stone. As authenticity, customization and personalization are some of the most significant home purchasing considerations for millennial homebuyers, Eldorado Stone provides an all-inclusive solution for home builders. TWEET THIS: Authentic #StoneVeneer from @EldoradoStone on display at the @ResponsiveHome during @IBSVegas. http://bit.ly/1kNcusT There is intrinsic value in coming home to a place you love. Eldorado Stone offers a level of authenticity and beauty that is unsurpassed in the industry by handcrafting its stone and brick veneer, added Hawfield. The concept homes showcase three Eldorado Stone profiles: European Ledge, a profile that presents the perfect fusion of old-world stonework and modern design through weather-worn surface contours and precision-cut stone; LedgeCut33, a profile that creates an authentic variable stacked stone texture; and Cut Coarse Stone, a profile that is reminiscent of a saw-cut Turkish Limestone in a muted palette indicative of natural limestone variegation. To learn more information about the stone veneer profiles, please visit eldoradostone.com. To set up an interview with Ramsay Hawfield, please contact Brenda Forman at 916-285-9835. About Eldorado Stone Eldorado Stone, LLC is headquartered in San Marcos, Calif. It is a subsidiary of Headwaters Incorporated (NYSE:HW), a world leader in creating value through innovative advancements in the utilization of natural resources. Eldorado Stone offers a full line of interior and exterior products that elevate architecture and design, including stone and brick veneer, fireplace surrounds, fire bowls and a full Eldorado Outdoor collection. The company currently operates manufacturing facilities in several states with regional distribution centers across the U.S. For more information and to view a gallery of beautiful installations, visit http://www.eldoradostone.com or call 1 800-925-1491 for a free catalog. Ntiva, Inc. announces the recent acquisition of Domintex Inc. United by a common business culture and client driven focus, Domintex has been acquired by Ntiva. This acquisition brings in top talent, an established consumer base, and strengthens Ntivas market presence as a leading Washington DC area managed services provider. Ntivas Founder and CEO, Steven Freidkin, commented We were not actively looking to acquire an organization. Our focus was, and will always be, to attract, grow and retain the best talent. We were very fortunate to have the stars align and this opportunity come to fruition, adding great new talent to our team. We are confident this will lead to a stronger team that will yield further growth for our clients and our company. The entire Domintex team has joined Ntiva and brings extensive experience working with several technologies and vendors which include; Microsoft Server platforms, Office 365, VMware, Dell, and EqualLogic. In addition, Domintexs focus and experience with specific industry verticals further enhances Ntiva s depth by gaining additional specialists in healthcare and associations. Domintex, Inc. formerly known as Alexandria Networks was founded in 2007 by Michael Miller. During Michaels 18-year career in technology, he held several positions with various organizations including several associations. These experiences cultivated his ideas for providing quality IT services to associations and small to mid-size businesses without the high fees of other area IT consulting firms. About Ntiva Ntiva is a people-focused, full-service IT provider. From day-to-day managed support to long-term strategic planning, Ntiva delivers flexible and affordable technology solutions that are customized for each clients' unique business requirements. Released today on BOB Questions: Quizzes for all books on the North Carolina School Library Media Association (NCSLMA) Elementary Grades Battle of the Books list, Quizzes for all books on the Florida Sunshine State Young Readers Award (SSYRA) grades 3-5 book list, and Quizzes for all books on the Oregon Battle of the Books (OBOB) grades 3-5 list. BOB Questions is the first app for the iPhone and the iPad to help students dominate their Battle of the Books contests, and it is now available on the Apple App Store. BOB Questions provides an entertaining and encouraging way for students to prepare for their Battle of the Books contests (teams compete against each other in face-to-face quiz-show style battles to determine who has the deepest understanding of their books). In the contests, students read a selection of books - usually a mix between classic literature and newer award-winning books. With BOB Questions, the students are able to quiz themselves and other teams on their knowledge of the books to help them prepare for their battles. The BOB Questions quizzes are meant to be a bit irreverent and fun. Students get encouragement when they demonstrate knowledge, and often odd and humorous remarks when they miss a question. The app itself is free and comes preloaded with 16 free quizzes. Additional quizzes are available with an in-app purchase of $1.99. Please visit http://www.bobquestions.com for more information or https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bob-questions/id930786919/ to try out the app itself. For More Information: If you would like more information about BOB Questions, please contact Bob Cooper at info@bobquestions.com. About BOB Questions: BOB Questions was created by two parents who have helped their kids study for their battles - and have watched truly great, intense, heart-stopping battles over the years and two librarians who are the parents of avid readers. We found that there was little, and often very scattered, information available to help our kids get ready for their battles. We decided to x that, by creating a fun and challenging app to help kids get ready for their next Battle of the Books. Our Mission: We believe in great literature. We believe in making the learning process fun. With BOB Questions, we are trying to bring the two together with a fun and interesting app that both encourages and challenges students to prep for their battles and to be introduced to some great literature along the way. Border Security 2016 Border Security 2016 will devote a day to discussing the potential resolutions and difficulties of the current migrant crisis - SMi Group Border Security 2016 will devote a day to discussing the potential resolutions and difficulties of the current migrant crisis. Sessions will be delivered by key organisations, who will also be participating in interactive panel discussions. Recent additions to the unrivalled speaker line up for 2016 include Laurent Muschel, Director for Migration and Protection, DG Home Affairs, European Commission, who will be presenting on Day One of the Conference with "The Future of the European Border Management". Joining European Commission in the 2016 speaker line-up and addressing the migrant crises will be Italian Navy General Staff, Italian Coast Guard Headquarters, Frontex, EU Naval Force, Guardia Civil, French National Police, Portuguese Navy and many more. Border Security 2016 delegates, will also discuss the critical challenges faced at sea, land and air borders and how technology solutions can further strengthen borders and improve efficiency. For more information or to download the full agenda, please visit the event website http://www.bordersec.com/prweb Running alongside the event will be two pre-conference workshops. Workshop A entitled Migration, Borders Control and Human Rights will be led by Giuseppe Cataldi, Chair, Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence on Migrants' Rights in the Mediterranean and Workshop B entitled Biometrics for Border Control: Impact of Immigration and the Mobile Society will be led by Max Snijder, Co-Founder, European Association for Biometrics. The latest attendees for Border Security 2016 include: Netherlands National Police, Royal Gibraltar Police, Maritime Police, Portugal, Federal Judicial Police (Belgium), EAASP, SAP, Sagem, Globavia, German Embassy in Italy and many more Border Security 2016 is sponsored by FLIR Systems, Crossmatch, SITA and Vancouver Airport Authority. For sponsorship enquiries please contact Sadia Malick on +44 (0) 207 827 6748 or email smalick(at)smi-online(dot)co(dot)uk For delegate enquiries please contact James Hitchen on +44 (0) 207 827 6054 or email jhitchen(at)smi-online(dot)co(dot)uk 9th annual Border Security Conference 17-18 February 2016, Rome, Italy http://www.bordersec.com/prweb Contact e-mail: jrotar(at)smi-online(dot)co(dot)uk Contact tel: +44 (0) 207 827 6054 ---- END ---- About SMi Group: Established since 1993, the SMi Group is a global event-production company that specializes in Business-to-Business Conferences, Workshops, Masterclasses and online Communities. We create and deliver events in the Defence, Security, Energy, Utilities, Finance and Pharmaceutical industries. We pride ourselves on having access to the worlds most forward thinking opinion leaders and visionaries, allowing us to bring our communities together to Learn, Engage, Share and Network. More information can be found at http://www.smi-online.co.uk Knowing which physical and emotional needs might cause these behaviors, and how to ease the discomfort and calm the person in distress are vital skills for Assisted Living and Memory Care professionals." - JoAnn Westbrook Continuing to meet the needs of Assisted Living professionals, Pines of Sarasota Education and Training Institute is partnering with world-renowned dementia expert Teepa Snow and certified Assisted Living CORE Trainer Tom Campbell for an engaging 2-hour webinar about Challenging Behaviors & Sexuality in Assisted Living Dementia Care Communities on February 19, 2016, at 2pm EST. Attendees will webinar learn which physical and emotional needs may be causing challenging situations, how to ease the discomfort and calm the person in distress. In addition, attendees will receive valuable tips and advice on how to address sexually-related behaviors in an Assisted Living community. Professional care providers often struggle with unexpected and difficult behaviors that can occur if a person is living with Alzheimers, Lewy Body, Frontotemporal or another form of dementia, JoAnn Westbrook, Director of Education, explains. Knowing which physical and emotional needs might cause these behaviors, and how to ease the discomfort and calm the person in distress are vital skills for Assisted Living and Memory Care professionals. Were honored to be able to partner with Teepa Snow and Tom Campbell on this project, and help care providers worldwide ease their often daily struggles. The webinar will take place on Friday, February 19, 2016,from 2-4pm EST. A recording of this webinar will be available at http://www.PinesEducation.org at a later time. Pease visit http://www.pinesofsarasota.org/webinar to register. Fees are $49 per attendee, which includes 2 CEUs for Florida-licensed NHAs, LPNs, RNs, CNAs & ARNPs. Out of state or non-licensed attendees will receive a Certificate of Completion to turn into their respective organizations. For more information about the webinar please visit http://www.pinesofsarasota.org/webinar or call JoAnn Westbrook at (941) 309-5760. ### About Pines of Sarasota Education & Training Institute: Pines of Sarasota Education & Training Institute is the educational department of not-for-profit Pines of Sarasota Rehabilitation and Senior Care Community, providing cutting-edge, specialized education, outreach programs, support, and resources to family members and geriatric caregivers. About Pines of Sarasota: Pines of Sarasota Rehabilitation and Senior Care Community provides excellent and compassionate inpatient/outpatient rehabilitation services, skilled nursing, memory care, assisted living as well as educational programs for seniors and their families in order to help enhance their quality of life. Pines of Sarasota Rehabilitation and Senior Care Community epitomizes innovative initiatives including; an on-campus child care and learning center which fosters intergenerational interaction and learning; Falls Prevention Programs which help minimize the risk of falling and; a comprehensive Volunteer Program that supports every aspect of campus life. Pines of Sarasota Rehabilitation and Senior Care Community is a not-for-profit organization that leads the way in holistic senior care. About Teepa Snow: Teepa Snow is a dementia expert who trains and consults for healthcare professionals and families privately. As a certified Occupational Therapist, Teepa has the unique medical perspective on how the brain controls our body and our behaviors giving her the perfect medical degree to explain how a brain disease like dementia affects a person. Teepa Snow is a dementia expert who trains and consults for healthcare professionals and families privately. For more information visit http://www.teepasnow.com. About Tom Campbell: Tom Campbell, a Florida DOEA approved trainer, has provided education and professional support to ALFs throughout our state for many years. He is a recognized authority on Florida ALF Regulations and on ALF law and rule. His experience includes hands on administration of ALFs, consulting and training. Learn more about Tom Campbell at http://www.tomcampbellalftrainer.com. HA&W, LLP announced today that, through its ComplianceSuccess Program, the firm has been named a trusted partner by Conestoga Title Insurance Company (Conestoga) offering cost-effective ALTA Best Practices benchmarking, testing and reporting options to Conestoga title agents. Through its ComplianceSuccess Program, HA&W was the first CPA firm in the nation to perform ALTA Best Practices compliance benchmarking, readiness and reporting services across all seven ALTA Best Practices pillars. The program offers independent third-party attestation using CPA professional standards, which provide the greatest level of assurance available to banks. Banks have historically looked to CPA attestation to mitigate business risk, which can be applied to independent title agents to ensure compliance with ALTA Best Practices. Conestoga Title Insurance Company is one of the most trusted names in the title insurance industry, providing the real estate, legal and financial communities with reliable title insurance since 1973. Conestogas dedication to quality, along with a focus on excellence, has earned it a Financial Stability Rating of A Prime, Unsurpassed and a Commercial Real Estate Recommendation of Strongly Recommended by Demotech, Inc., a leading industry analyst that specializes in rating title companies. Conestoga does not compete with its agents for business,Its focus has always been to support and provide exceptional service to its agent and attorney partners within its geographical footprint. Conestoga is licensed to do business in 14 states and is concentrated on growing its attorney and title agent network in the territories of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, New Jersey and Delaware. As an established name in the title industry, Conestoga sought third-party compliance partners that too have a long history of providing high-quality, personalized service to clients, said John Nikolaus, president of Conestoga Title Insurance Company. HA&Ws ComplianceSuccess Program offers our clients some of the most sophisticated and effective tools available today to ensure compliance with ALTA Best Practices. The road to compliance is a big investment and title agents want confidence that their compliance report will be accepted by their lenders, said Lee Fields, managing director of HA&Ws ComplianceSuccess Program. Conestoga agents can be rest assured that their attestation report from HA&W will be accepted by their lenders, providing a high level of assurance. For more information about HA&Ws ComplianceSuccess Program, visit http://www.compliancesuccess.com or call 1-844-848-6529. About HA&Ws ComplianceSuccess Program: Working with hundreds of companies nationwide on ALTA Best Practices testing and reporting, HA&W, LLP is the leading CPA firm in the nation to provide ALTA Best Practices compliance benchmarking, readiness and certification reporting through its ComplianceSuccess Program. The program provides independent third-party assurance using CPA professional standards on attestation reporting, trusted by banking and financial institutions. Our fast track approach will assess your current level of compliance and provide you with a remediation plan in five business days. Our process delivers the best price point to achieve compliance, offering complete compliance benchmarking and reporting across all seven ALTA Best Practices Pillars. To ensure our ComplianceSuccess Program is in lock step with industry standards and requirements, HA&W is actively involved at the highest level with ALTA, the AICPA, underwriters and most important, our clients. The Law Firm For Workers The positioning was borne from the deep understanding and respect that the firm has for all working men and women. D4 Creative, one of Philadelphias top advertising and branding agencies, is proud to announce the launch of a multi-platform branding campaign for the Philadelphia regions most respected and experienced workers' compensation law firm, Martin Law. Almost a year in the making, workers from all walks of life and from all over the region will come to know Martin Law as The Law Firm for Workers, through TV spots, out-of-home, print, radio, and online. We had successfully raised the bar on regional law firm advertising with the award-winning work we did for their competitor, so we literally had to outthink and outdo ourselves, said Kurt Shore, D4 President. After meeting the partners and the people at Martin Law, we realized we had been playing for the wrong team. The Martin folks were the real deal- genuine, incredibly hard-working, respected by their peers, and sincerely passionate about helping all workers to be treated and compensated fairly after suffering a work-related injury. Suzanne Hatfield, D4s CEO who led the discovery and strategy team added, It became clear from many face-to-face conversations that their peers on both sides of the courtroom- including their adversaries- have utmost respect and admiration for Martin Law. The simple yet powerful the law firm for workers positioning was borne from the deep understanding and respect that the firm has for all working men and women. Rich Wakefield, D4 Executive Creative Director, and his creative team translated the core values that differentiates Martin Law from the pack into a powerful execution where the imagery, copy, art direction and music are all carefully woven together to portray the passion and respect that Martin Law has for all workers. "Even the newly designed website features the workers throughout the site, rather than the standard law firm partner photography so prevalent in this category," said Wakefield. George Martin, founding partner of Martin Law commented, We are very happy with the way that D4 has captured who we are and what we do, and presented that in a way which distinguishes us from our competitors. D4 worked with nationally known photographers and videographers for the campaign. The highly emotive original music for the broadcast elements were written and scored by D4s own award-winning music composer-producer, Kurt Shore. Other team members included: Creative Director and Copywriter, Bob Seabert; User Interface Designer/Art Director, Chris Sandman; Art Director, Rohan Woodward; Video Editor, Chi Hwan Moon; Designer, Kyle Telman; Staff Video Producer, Sarah Schatzinger; VP of Account Services, Sara Stuard; Chief Strategy Officer, Michael Snyder; VP of Digital Services, Justin Stauffer; and Lead Programmer, Jill Fox. Check out the website here and the spot here. About D4 Creative D4 is one of the regions most successful creative and branding advertising agencies and is located in the Manayunk section of Philadelphia. The agency is a certified Woman/Minority Business Enterprise (WMBE). Unique to the region, D4 combines a full complement of strategic, creative, design, digital and interactive, social media, and SEO/SEM/PPC professionals surrounded by robust in-house video editing, motion graphics, post-production, and audio suites. D4s clients include McKesson, KNEX, Cure Auto, Martin Law, Unilife, Metrocast/Harron Communications, Harris Tea, Gate 1 Travel, My Alarm Center, Acme-Hardesty, Sandia Laboratories, and Frontier Communications. For more information, visit our website. About Martin Law With sixteen attorneys and five offices in Bristol, Allentown, Reading, Malvern and Philadelphia, Martin Law is one of the largest firms in Pennsylvania of its kind, focusing solely on Workers' Compensation, Social Security Disability, Long Term Disability and Veterans' Benefits. http://paworkinjury.com SUBSCRIBERS OF UCOMS ALL TIME BEST OFFER TO ENJOY ADDITIONAL BENEFITS Armenia-Azerbaijan: EU sets up monitoring capacity along the international borders PACE co-rapporteurs on Armenia concerned by reports of alleged war crimes or inhuman treatment perpetrated by Azerbaijans armed forces There is still 35% gender pay gap: Sona Ghazaryan Global Finance Names Ameriabank the Safest Bank in Armenia Mikayel and Karen Vardanyans provided 136 million AMD support for the overhaul of the Myasnikyan statue, which was in unsafe state of disrepair Believe me, as a representative of a country which uses the Schengen system very often, it is quite important. Vardanyan I really look forward to having answers from the Azerbaijani side for these alleged gross human rights violations: Secretary General I call on Armenian and Azerbaijani parliamentarians to use this Assembly as an agora of opportunities President Tiny Kox UCOMS SPECIAL OFFER OF THE UNLIMITED INTERNET IS NOW TERMLESS There is no place for the death penalty in a State that respects human rights: PACE General Rapporteur EU and CoE call on two Member States that have not yet acceded to this Protocol Armenia and Azerbaijan to do so without delay An urgent debate requested on "The military hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan". UCOM AND PES-PES CONTINUE COOPERATION WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF EDUCATIONAL PROJECT The statement of the meeting between Prime Minister Pashinyan, President Aliyev, President Macron and President Michel of October 6, 2022 Largest Corporate Bond Program at the Securities Market of Armenia Completed Successfully Google Ad The statement of the Defender on the video of the execution of Armenian PoWs by the Azerbaijani armed forces LEVEL UP ONLY FOR STUDENTS: UCOM OFFERS X2 AND X3 MORE INTERNET STATEMENT BY SECRETARY ANTONY J. BLINKEN This criminal act is another proof that the Armenophobia policy. Tatoyan Nikol Pashinyan, Nancy Pelosi discuss a number of issues related to the Armenian-American agenda and regional developments Delegation by Nancy Pelosi Accompanied by Alen Simonyan Visits Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi Arrives in Yerevan Armenian Revytech, global technology leader SAP and financial services software specialist SAP Fioneer sign a cooperation agreement With 120 million drams donated by Mikael Vardanyan, the defenders of the homeland will be treated in a new building OSCE Chairman-in-Office and OSCE Secretary General call for immediate cessation of hostilities along Armenia-Azerbaijan border Statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Artsakh USA Embassy Message for U.S. Citizens ANCA Issues National Call to Action to Stop Taxpayer Funding of Aliyevs Aggression Our review of failures and near-failures in the global car industry reveals that operational effectiveness matters, but in itself is insufficient in explaining whether firms live or die Intense pressures in the global automotive industry could explain why Volkswagen was driven to cheat emissions tests, according to a new book published this month. Academics from Said Business School, University of Oxford and University of Edinburgh Business School argue the scandal is the latest in a series of car industry crises to stem from a perfect storm of challenging conditions. Based on a historical analysis of manufacturers performance, Professors Matthias Holweg and Nick Oliver say long term overcapacity in the industry results in low margins for many carmakers. Combined with the sectors vulnerability to swings of the economic cycle, this means auto companies are prone to periodically dip in and out of crisis. As demonstrated in the failures of car firms including Saab and Rover, the research shows that competence in designing and manufacturing cars, although a necessary condition for survival, may no longer be sufficient to guarantee it. The study concludes that resilience in the auto industry stems from four factors: Efficient operations to provide a competitive offering in the marketplace Sufficient production volumes to provide economies of scale (or, failing this, a strong enough brand to command premium prices that allow economic operation at lower volumes) Market reach in terms of presence in a) a range of markets to offset the effects of recession in any one market and b) in rapidly growing markets where margins are usually higher Support of powerful stakeholders committed to the continued operation of the firm, who provide support and concessions during troughs when all other measures have failed Based on the analysis, Holweg and Oliver argue the most resilient car companies in the world are likely to be Hyundai, Toyota, Honda and General Motors. Meanwhile, PSA and Fiat-Chrysler appear most susceptible to crisis. Professor Holweg said: How to succeed in the global automotive industry has been a subject of extensive research over the years. The general conclusion has been, become more efficient, and you will succeed. Our review of failures and near-failures in the global car industry reveals that operational effectiveness matters, but in itself is insufficient in explaining whether firms live or die. Professor Oliver said: In the case of VW, its corporate objective of becoming the largest car maker in the world created huge pressures within the company and demanded a dramatic increase in its sales in North America. VWs strategy to achieve this was clean diesel, but this had to be executed within a tight envelope of engine power, emissions standards, and fuel economy. Something had to give, and in VWs case what gave was the integrity between emission testing and on-the-road performance. All car companies face these kind of pressures but most do not respond by gaming the system so blatantly. The findings are published in a new book Crisis, Resilience and Survival Lessons from the global auto industry by Professor Holweg and Professor Oliver, which charts the evolution of the global automotive industry. Focusing on lessons from the 40 or so companies that design, build and sell cars, the book examines the pressures and challenges facing the industry as well as approaches to management and organisation that have evolved to address these challenges. For more information and additional resources visit the books website: http://crisisresiliencesurvival.com/ To speak to Professor Holweg or Professor Oliver please contact the press office: Jonaid Jilani, Press Officer, Said Business School Tel: +44 (0)1865 614678, Mob: +44 (0)7860 259996 Email: jonaid.jilani(at)sbs.ox.ac.uk Derek Main, PR Manager, University of Edinburgh Business School Tel: +44 (0)131 651 5310, Mob: +44 (0)7702 312523 Email: derek.main(at)ed.ac.uk Notes to editors About the authors Professor Matthias Holweg, Said Business School http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/community/people/matthias-holweg Professor Nick Oliver, Edinburgh University Business School http://www.business-school.ed.ac.uk/about/people/503/Nick/Oliver About Said Business School Said Business School at the University of Oxford blends the best of new and old. We are a vibrant and innovative business school, but yet deeply embedded in an 800 year old world-class university. We create programmes and ideas that have global impact. We educate people for successful business careers, and as a community seek to tackle world-scale problems. We deliver cutting-edge programmes and ground-breaking research that transform individuals, organisations, business practice, and society. We seek to be a world-class business school community, embedded in a world-class University, tackling world-scale problems. About University of Edinburgh Business School The University of Edinburgh was founded in 1582 and is one of the world's leading universities. The Business School has provided business education for nearly 100 years. Today it offers undergraduate, postgraduate and executive education programmes and provides a platform for research, discussion and debate on a wide range of business issues. As one of the leading business schools in Europe, the School comprises of an international student body representing more than 88 countries. ENDS Jeff Bell, Vice President of National Accounts Its an honor to be part of a company who is truly revolutionizing safe patient handling and caregiver safety. LINET is proud to announce the addition of Jeff Bell to its leadership team. Mr. Bell, who most recently served as Chief Sales Officer for Amerinet, joins the LINET team as Vice President of National Accounts. In this role, Mr. Bell will be responsible for driving continued growth of LINETs strategic customer base, including GPOs and IDNs. LINETs strong leadership and commitment to innovation were very important factors for me when deciding to join the team. Its an honor to be part of a company who is truly revolutionizing safe patient handling and caregiver safety, stated Mr. Bell. Mr. Bell is an accomplished healthcare executive with more than 25 years of senior level sales experience, having delivered double-digit sales growth in each of his previous roles. He also brings strong and extensive relationships with him as he joins the team. Mr. Bell is coming to LINET as the company continues to experience significant growth in the American market. Greg Zenko, Vice President of Sales for LINET, added, LINETs incredible success over the last five years has allowed us to attract world-class talent like Jeff Bell. Having Jeff join the team further enforces our commitment to our GPO and IDN partners as we continue to gain market share by introducing innovative solutions aimed at improving the patient experience while keeping nurses safe. About LINET Founded in 1990, LINET is an international leader in healthcare technology with patient beds installed in over 100 countries. LINET offers a new and unique approach to the hospital bed market. LINET manufacturers innovative beds for the ICU and Medical-Surgical environments that promote patient and nurse safety, facilitate early mobilization, assist in better adherence to turning schedules, improve pain management and help reduce infection rates. Our products also come with an unprecedented 5-year warranty. The companys U.S. headquarters is based in Charlotte, NC. Please visit http://www.linetamericas.com for more information. University of Cincinnati, Lindner College of Business Campaign - FUSIONWRX Tom Flottman, President of Flottman Company, Working with the University of Cincinnati, Lindner College of Business has enable FUSIONWRX to establish itself as an industry leader for marketing communication, engagement and activation. The Print Services & Distribution Association (PSDA) selected FUSIONWRX, a Flottman Company, as the 2015 PEAK Awards Grand Award winner in the Category of Best Cross-Media Marketing Campaign for a Client. PSDAs PEAK Awards program recognizes excellence in marketing services and print by promoting projects that display innovation, quality and deliver a high return on investment. This year there was a record number of entries in each of the twelve categories but only one was awarded the Grand Award. FUSIONWRX received this prestigious award for its entry UC Top Business School Multi-Channel Campaign. This project was produced with the University of Cincinnati, Lindner College of Business Marketing Department in an effort to achieve eligibility into the 2015 Bloomberg Businessweek Best Business School Rankings. (http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-best-business-schools) The program included events, emails and direct mail components that motivated UC Business School alumni and current students to complete a survey on the request of Bloomberg. Having this project recognized by the Print Services & Distribution Association is an honor, said Tom Flottman, President of Flottman Company, Working with the University of Cincinnati, Lindner College of Business has enable FUSIONWRX to establish itself as an industry leader for marketing communication, engagement and activation. This is the second award that this project, the University of Cincinnati, Lindner College of Business and FUSIONWRX has received; also being honored as a top Integrated Marketing Campaign by the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) earlier this year. This award winning campaign and the entire award recipients are featured online at PSDA.org and in PS Magazine - November/December edition which is on newsstands now. ### About FUSIONWRX FUSIONWRX is a marketing activation, client engagement and public relations agency that helps brands connect with their clients delivering the right message, via the right channels at the right time. We evoke passion and excitement that motivates your audience to act. FUSIONWRX is a division of Flottman Company. Learn more at: http://www.FUSIONWRX.com About the Print Services & Distribution Association The Print Services & Distribution Association (PSDA) is the exclusive non-profit professional association dedicated to enhancing the success of the distributor channel for business communications, including print, marketing and related services. PSDA is the oldest and largest nonprofit association in the industry our members include distributors, trade printers, suppliers and technology partners working together to provide differentiated solutions to end user customers. PSDA members comprise a broad network of supply chain partners representing nearly 1,000 companies and more than 10,000 active participants who account for more than $5 billion in combined annual sales. Learn more about PSDA at http://www.psda.org. Lucas Group These well-earned promotions demonstrate their dedication to their recruiting practice as well as Lucas Groups focus on career growth opportunities and ongoing professional development. North Americas leader in executive recruiting, Lucas Group, recently promoted five of its Associates for their outstanding performances. Our growth and success is driven through noteworthy achievements by our Associates, said Andi Jennings, President and CEO of Lucas Group. Among the many who contribute, these five individuals have recently been recognized as stand-out performers evidenced by their career growth and promotion. The following individuals have been promoted to the positions listed below: Lauren BerkstresserExecutive Senior Partner, Contract Solutions; Denver Will ElliottSenior Partner, Accounting & Finance; Dallas Angela TurkSenior Partner, Sales & Marketing; Chicago Tyrone BroxtonSenior Executive Search Consultant, HR; Atlanta Ansley TuckerSenior Executive Search Consultant, Legal; Atlanta Lucas Group recruiters work with leading employers and top-level professionals to make strategic placements that benefit both parties. Across all major functionalities including Accounting & Finance, Human Resources, Information Technology, Legal, Sales & Marketing, Manufacturing and Military Transition, Lucas Group Associates work to find ideal matches that lead to long-term partnerships. Since 1970, the organization has been building a strong team of Associates who find business and career solutions for clients and candidates alike. Lucas Group is thriving because of the success and service of our Associates, said Jennings. These well-earned promotions demonstrate their dedication to their recruiting practice as well as Lucas Groups focus on career growth opportunities and ongoing professional development. Career growth is an integral component of the culture at Lucas Group. With clearly-defined markers and outlined career path trajectories, Lucas Group ensures its Associates stay on a track to successboth within the firm and in the industry. Associates are provided with the tools and resources necessary to grow and learn in a collaborative, collegial environment. Lucas Groups more than 300 recruiters are located throughout the U.S., offering a broad, national footprint combined with expert, localized search. In addition to its commitment to building careers, Lucas Group boasts the industrys most sophisticated and robust onboarding process, which includes mentoring by seasoned recruiters, sales playbooks and thought leadership initiatives. About Lucas Group Lucas Group is North Americas premier executive search firm. Since 1970, our culture and methodologies have driven superior results. We assist clients ranging in size from small to medium-sized businesses to Fortune 500 companies find transcendent, executive talent; candidates fully realize their ambitions; and associates find professional success. To learn more, please visit Lucas Group at http://www.lucasgroup.com and connect with us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Soldiers provide freedom to me and my family everyday and I want to help them achieve the financial freedom they deserve. Veterans gain access to one hundred and fifty six video segments on Selling Basics, Understanding the Buyer and 100 Ways to Stay Motivated. These foundational programs allow a veteran to set the building blocks to establish their entrepreneurial journey or expand on an already successful career. With on-demand, 24/7 access, a veteran can train any time, day or night, to build up their hustle muscle and take their sales game to the next level. Business News Daily lists Sales and Marketing in the Top 10 best jobs for veterans, but training on Cardone University isnt limited to salespeople. Customer service, information technology, production, distribution and logistics, accounting, research and development, and human resources careers can all benefit from the training provided on this platform. Although Grant Cardone never served in the military himself, he has the utmost respect for them and has continued to show his appreciation through free seminars and events to benefit them. He has spoken at Fort Benning and at the Pentagon with American Dream U and even traveled to Colombia to speak with Military Generals at the Bogota Polytechnic University. He understands the need in todays world to help vets transition back to civilian life. "I love speaking to soldiers because they truly understand what it means to do WHATEVER it takes to accomplish a target. Soldiers provide freedom to me and my family everyday and I want to help them achieve the financial freedom they deserve." Grant Cardone Cardone University was released in 2010 as a practical and efficient tool to help entrepreneurs hone their skills to dominate whatever market they work in. The biggest problem for a soldier transitioning to civilian life is the sudden loss of highly structured leadership in day-to-day activities and living a regimented lifestyle. Grants message and training on Cardone University fills that void with daily training, succinct testing and a highly accessible platform. 48% of U.S. veterans are unemployed. With over 130,000 U.S. troops transitioning out of the military in 2015, and 2 out of 3 of those vets finding it difficult to transition back to civilian life, any interested U.S. member of the military should visit http://www.cardoneuniversity.com/vets to take advantage of Grant Cardones offer. About Grant Cardone: Grant Cardone is a business strategist, marketing and branding expert, the leading international sales expert in the world and best-selling author of five books. Cardone owns multiple companies; Cardone Training Technologies , Inc., Cardone Group (a software and technology business), Grant Cardone TV (online media network--GrantCardoneTV.com), and Cardone Acquisitions, a national real estate company which currently owns over 3,500 units throughout the United States. Cardone is the world's top sales training expert with the most viewed online sales training site in the world today with over 1500 segments of content used by companies like Ashley, Aflac, All State, Google, MIT, Inside Sales, Udemy, Chrysler, Toyota, Morgan Stanley, T-Mobile, AT&T, Sprint, Fran Tarkenton Companies and thousands more. You can follow Cardone on Twitter @GrantCardone or visit http://www.GrantCardone.com For further press information on Grant Cardone please contact Vaughn Reynolds: Vaughn Reynolds Public Relations Vaughn(at)GrantCardone.com Cardone Training Technologies, Inc Phone: 310.777.0255 Fax: 310.777.0256 Web: http://www.grantcardone.com Rosana Winarto, Director of Events--Hyatt Regency Denver Greg Leonard, General Manager of Hyatt Regency Denver at Colorado Convention Center, announces the appointment of Rosana Winarto as the hotels Director of Events. Born in Indonesia, Winarto was schooled at the Institute Hotelier Cesar Ritz in Switzerland and graduated Cum Laude from Florida International University. She joined Hyatt in 2003 as Event Planning Manager at Hyatt Regency Orange County. Winarto worked through the ranks of Hyatts Events division at properties that include Grand Hyatt San Francisco, Hyatt Regency Indian Wells Resort and Spa, Hyatt Regency Long Beach, Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach and Hyatt Regency Irvine. Most recently, she was the Director of Events at Hyatt Regency Orlando International Airport. In her new position at Hyatt Regency Denver, Winarto oversees meetings and events taking place in its 60,600 square feet of recently renovated downtown Denver conference space, along with a staff of 15 event experts as well as the events and culinary teams that service as many as 1,200 events a year in addition to conventions and meetings. About Hyatt Regency Denver With 1,100 newly redesigned accommodations, Hyatt Regency Denver at Colorado Convention Center is one of the regions largest hotels. Standing 36 stories high, sleek and contemporary in design, it is adjacent to the Colorado Convention Center and just one block from the 16th Street Mall pedestrian promenade. The recently completed guest room refresh is designed with a decor that captures the essence of being where the mountains meet the plains. With special emphasis on state-of-the-art technology, each accommodation features the convenience of LCD Smart 46 inch televisions and free high-speed Internet along with comfortable work stations. A 6,700 square foot fitness center features windows overlooking the 14th Street Theater District and includes Spa Universaire, an indoor lap-pool and outdoor sun deck and whirlpool. In addition to Altitude Restaurant, Hyatt Regency Denver provides two lounges: Strata Bar located in the lobby and the 27th floor Peaks Lounge, windowed on three sides, captures sweeping views of the Rocky Mountains. Peaks Lounge is also available for meetings during the day. Reservations for Hyatt Regency Denver may be made by calling toll-free (800) 233-1234 or by visiting the hotels website at DenverRegency.Hyatt.com. To contact the Events office, call (303) 486-4444 or e-mail dencc.rfp(at)hyatt(dot)com. Cove Firebowl The three fire tables all cover a wide range of styles and sizes. The Outdoor GreatRoom Company is pleased to announce three newly designed fire tables for 2016. The three fire tables all cover a wide range of styles and sizes. All will be on display at the International Builders Show in Las Vegas, NV, January 19-21. The Vintage Fire Table is a mix of real wood and faux-wood distressed tile. This shabby-chic square gas fire table adds a pop of color with its tile top and 24x24 Honey-Glow Brown Crystal Fire burner. The Sierra Linear Fire Table is a new twist on an Outdoor GreatRoom Company favorite product. The faux stacked stone base and durable Mocha Supercast top with 12x24 burner are a customer favorite and are both featured in the new linear base and top design. The Cove Firebowl features a stunning 30 burner in a modern concrete base. This Firebowl is made of Natural Grey finish Supercast Concrete and is compatible with a natural gas line or house LP tank. FEATURES: All three are available to order now Stainless steel UL Listed Crystal Fire Burners Sierra Linear and Vintage fit 20 lb. LP tank in base Sierra Linear and Cove made from durable Supercast Concrete Made in USA ABOUT THE OUTDOOR GREATROOM COMPANY The Outdoor GreatRoom Company (OGC) manufactures unique, upscale products with design appeal for indoor and outdoor living spaces. Products include gas fire pits and gas fire pit tables, pergolas, outdoor kitchen islands, outdoor gas fireplaces, indoor electric fireplaces, grills, outdoor patio furniture and accessories. Visit http://www.outdoorrooms.com for more information. Lilly Ledbetter, the Womens Equality Activist responsible for the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, has been confirmed as the keynote speaker for the 2016 annual conference of WTS International, the association for the professional advancement of women in transportation. Every year as we plan for the WTS Annual Conference, we seek to partner with an individual that resonates with our mission. Ms. Ledbetter exemplifies our associations guiding principles of diversity, inclusion, and commitment to ethical leadership, integrity, and respect for all, said Marcia Ferranto, WTS CEO and President. We take pride in knowing that we are helping to build the worlds infrastructure and shaping future generations of transportation leaders. Working toward equality in the transportation workforce is what drives our membersLilly Ledbetter will certainly propel them even further as she addresses them this May in Austin. The Annual Conference is WTS Internationals flagship event. It attracts more than 600 corporate and governmental industry leaders worldwide, including executives, CEOs, government administrators, and leading engineering authorities. Attendees at the conference gather to network, discuss the state of the worlds transportation infrastructure, strategize on advancing professionally through glass ceilings, and explore the local citys successful municipal and private transportation and traffic projects. For the full duration of this years Austin conference, private corporations, public agencies, and government officials invested in every transportation mode will exhibit, present, learn and network. Lilly Ledbetter is an author, lecturer, editor, and feminist activist. In 1979, Lilly Ledbetter was hired as a supervisor at a Goodyear tire plant in Gadsden, Alabama. She worked tirelessly and was often praised by Goodyear for her fine work. Ledbetter eventually became aware that she wasnt being compensated as much as her male counterparts towards the end of her career. After retiring from Goodyear in 1998, she sued the company for paying her significantly less than her male counterparts. The lawsuit ultimately reached the Supreme Court, which denied her claim because she did not file suit 180 days from her first pay check even though she said she didn't know it at the time. Successively, the 111th United States Congress passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009 to relax the timeliness requirements for the filing of a discrimination suit so long as any act of discrimination, including receipt of a paycheck that reflects a past act of discrimination, occurs within the 180 day period of limitations. For more information about the WTS Annual Conference, visit https://www.wtsinternational.org/networking/annual-conference. *** WTS International and WTS Foundation, headquartered in Washington, DC, is an international organization dedicated to the advancement of women in the transportation industry. With more than 6,000 members, WTS is turning the glass ceiling into a career portal through its professional programs, networking opportunities, and unparalleled access to industry and government leaders. WTS Foundation has provided more than $1 million in scholarships to deserving women throughout the transportation industry, supporting the next generation of transportation professionals and advancing the principles of WTS. WTS is committed to advancing women in transportation through expanding existing scholarship opportunities to women pursuing transportation-related degrees, providing and promoting more educational opportunities and career development to advance women in transportation, and publishing research related to advancing women in transportation. More information can be found at http://www.WTSinternational.org From 7 to 8:30 p.m. on Feb. 2, Saint Thomas Episcopal School (STE) will host a symposium tackling learning challenges specific to boys. Recent research shows that boys, when compared to girls, oftentimes lag behind in reading and literacy, are more often diagnosed with learning disabilities, are more frequently disciplined, are less involved in school activities, and are beginning to be outpaced in degrees, salaries, and leadership. This symposium, entitled Understanding Boys, will feature representatives from the Tennessee-based private boys school, The McCallie School. Using the most up-to-date research and 80 years of collective experience raising boys, they will equip parents, educators, and other attendees with research, best practices, and practical ideas for helping boys thrive in school and beyond. Thoughtful educators are always the best educators, and that means they are thinking of the students as they design the experience, as opposed fitting the kids into the lesson plan. The best way to think of the kids is to learn as much as you can about helping them. We really care about the education of all students, but at McCallie, our main focus is boys, said Troy Kemp, associate headmaster at The McCallie School. Weve done these presentations in about six different cities, and people always leave inspired and empowered to change the trends by doing a little homework. Were looking forward to presenting at STE because of how much their parents and faculty care about the students. Were thrilled to host this powerful, important symposium for our community, said STE Headmaster Michael Cusack. Their past symposiums have been very impactful in other communities, and we hope many people in ours will come out to this event and learn something new. The event is open to the public, with no admission fees, and will take place in Saint Thomas Episcopal Church, located at 4900 Jackwood St. in Meyerland. About Saint Thomas Episcopal Church: Established in 1955, Saint Thomas Episcopal School (STE) is a private, pre-K through 12 college preparatory school that believes in nurturing the minds and spirits of its students through classical and Christ-centered instruction. With stimulating academics, vibrant visual and performing art programs, and an emphasis on college readiness, graduates leave Saint Thomas well-prepared for the rigors of higher education and a productive life beyond STE. For more information, please visit stes.org or call 713.666.3111. Our partnership augments the goal of streamlining eTMF processes and management, which in turn helps these companies improve clinical trial operations and compliance, said Laurie Halloran, founder, president and CEO of Halloran Consulting. Halloran Consulting Group, Inc. (Halloran), a national consultancy that works with global life science companies to optimize development and performance, today announced a collaboration with LMK Clinical Research Consulting (LMK), an industry document management services provider, to enhance and streamline Trial Master File (TMF) management and processes for pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and clinical trial sites across the U.S. Trial Master File (TMF) documents are critical in supporting compliance with clinical trial regulations and Good Clinical Practices (GCPs). They require disciplined document management, organization, and indexing and often are a major cause of negative findings in a regulatory inspection if not well managed. One of Hallorans services is transitioning life science companies operating models from a paper TMF to a fully electronic TMF (eTMF). LMK provides expertise to ensure the plans and processes are in place to maintain compliance according to exacting standards. The partnership augments Hallorans eTMF management platform by adding LMKs capabilities and experience in document management and process support. LMKs expertise compliments Hallorans services and technical expertise on eTMF solutions and implementation, said Laurie Halloran, founder, president and CEO of Halloran Consulting. Our partnership augments the goal of streamlining eTMF processes and management, which in turn helps these companies improve clinical trial operations and compliance. "At LMK, we believe that the Trial Master File is the foundation of every clinical trial. Our partnership with Halloran allows LMK to support their clients in building a stronger, stable foundation by providing well trained, experienced resources and sustainable processes, said Sholeh Ehdaivand, president and CEO of LMK Clinical Research Consulting. Hallorans service offerings and our processes and people are a complimentary fit and will benefit small, mid-size and large companies alike. As a trusted advisor in technology consulting, Halloran is constantly monitoring the market of solutions and service providers, assembling a network of partnerships that can execute on the technology strategies we develop in collaboration with our customers, said Mark Vermette, Hallorans leading Principal Consultant in technology adoption. Our expertise allows us to develop personalized technology roadmaps for our customers, in support of business goals, service partner strategy and organizational maturity. Halloran seeks out the right partnerships to succeed in executing those technology roadmaps. About Halloran Consulting Group Halloran is a management consulting firm that partners with life science companies to optimize their development. Halloran works with industry organizations of all types, including biotech, pharma, medical device, and service providers, to identify gaps and implement solutions to achieve excellence in regulatory, quality, and clinical development. Halloran is certified by the Womens Business Enterprise National Council as a woman-owned business. For more information, please visit http://www.hallorancg.com. About LMK Clinical Research Consulting LMK Clinical Research Consulting, LLC (LMK), is a Functional Service Provider of Trial Master File (TMF) consulting and TMF services. LMK is known in the life sciences industry as a trusted leader for our dedication, quality solutions and expert services in TMF. LMK is certified by the Womens Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) as a certified woman owned business. For more information about LMK, please visit http://www.lmkclinicalresearch.com. PACE President regrets Russian parliaments decision not to participate in the work of the Assembly in 2016 Russian delegation will not take part in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) winter session. PACE President Anne Brasseu expressed her regret over Russia's decision not to participate in the winter session which opens in Strasbourg on January 25. Yesterday I received a letter from the Chair of the Council Federation and the Chair of the State Duma informing me of the decision of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation not to submit the credentials of the Russian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in time for the opening of the 2016 Assembly session on 25 January, said Anne Brasseur. I regret this decision. The consequence is that, in accordance with Article 25 of the Statute of the Council of Europe and Rule 6 of the Rules of Procedure of the Parliamentary Assembly, there will be no delegation of the Russian Federation taking part in the work of the Assembly throughout 2016, or at least until the next parliamentary elections take place in Russia, she said. A letter, signed by the speakers of the Russian parliament houses about the fact that the credentials of the Russian delegation [to PACE] for 2016 will be requested later, is being forwarded to PACE President Anne Brasseur. We are missing the January session," Leonid Slutsky, the chairman of the Russian parliament low chamber's committee on Eurasian integration said earlier this week. Slutsky added that Russia would return to Strasbourg only on equal terms and only if the return of the delegation's powers is guaranteed. According to the lawmaker, despite the fact that the situation remains complicated, Moscow is likely to return to participating in PACE sessions later this year. In 2014, PACE adopted a resolution, under which the Russian delegation was deprived of the right to vote and the right to be represented in the governing structures of PACE for a year, the resolution has been later prolonged for another year. The measures were introduced in response to Moscow's alleged involvement in the Ukraine crisis. From 3D printing to medical imaging software, the newest residents of the University City Science Centers Port business incubator are developing the next generation of healthcare and technology solutions. ConquerAb, Immunome, and Orange Maker are each occupying lab and office space at 3624 Market Street while Keosys has taken office space at 3711 Market Street. Spun out of MIT with IP licensed from Thomas Jefferson University, Immunome is a biotechnology company with a growing pipeline of cancer immunotherapy candidates designed to work by stimulating the bodys immune system. Immunomes proprietary RealMAb technology enables the simultaneous discovery of novel cancer antigens, molecules that causes the immune system to produce antibodies, and the native human antibodies that target those antigens and neutralize them. Originally established in Los Angles by a Drexel alumnus, Orange Maker has established an East Coast research lab here in Philadelphia. The company has created a unique process and is formulating advanced materials for professional grade 3D printing applications which enable continuous high-resolution printing, rather than the traditional layer-by-layer approach. Orange Maker was a member at ic@3401 where the company continued to leverage its relationship with Drexel University. Orange Maker participated in a six-month lab on-boarding program, receiving guidance from Drexel and the Science Center to help the company meet specific milestones before signing on as an official Port resident in January 2016. Keosys Medical Imaging, a graduate of the Science Centers Digital Health Accelerator, provides innovative medical imaging solutions for multisite clinical trials and telemedicine. Headquartered in France, Keosys has become a European leader in Imaging Data Management Systems and advanced medical imaging software. Keosys is participating in the Science Centers Global Soft Landing Program which leverages the assets and resources of the Science Center and the Greater Philadelphia entrepreneurial community to help global companies establish a foothold in the regions life sciences and technology markets. ConquerAb is addressing undesirable immune responses to protein-based therapies. ConquerAb includes consulting services and a proprietary technology platform, with medical device development opportunities. The Science Centers Port business incubator helps emerging life sciences, physical sciences, and digital technology companies operate and grow through a suite of related programs and facilities. The Port provides coworking spaces, cubicles, fully furnished offices, and wet and dry labs directly in the heart of the Science Centers legacy campus at uCity Square. Beyond the physical infrastructure, Port residents are immediately plugged in to a rich network of resources where they can access the programs, the people and the support that can help grow their businesses. Port resident companies raised more than $150 million in private capital from 2009-2014. About the Science Center The University City Science Center is a dynamic hub for innovation, and entrepreneurship and technology development in the Greater Philadelphia region. It provides business incubation, programming, lab and office facilities, and support services for entrepreneurs, start-ups, and growing and established companies. Since it was founded in 1963, graduate organizations and current residents of the University City Science Centers Port business incubators have created more than 15,000 jobs that remain in the Greater Philadelphia region today and contribute more than $9 billion to the regional economy annually. The Science Center is leveraging its history as the nations oldest and largest urban research park as it joins forces with Wexford Science + Technology, a BioMed Realty company, to expand its footprint and rebrand its physical campus as uCity Square a true mixed-use community of ingenuity. For more information about the Science Center, go to ucscreview.org. 1900s French Empire Ebonized Cabinet Castle Antiques announces the launch of the Black & Gold Collection. This collection is the first of the many new collections Castle has planned for 2016. The Black and Gold collection came about for Castle because the technique of ebonizing furniture is age old and it looks fantastic with the gilted bronze ornamentation. These pieces are absolute stand outs. They can be used as a single one-of-a-kind piece in a room, or they can also take on an updated look to mix and match with any type of furniture style in a home. Now officially available, The Black & Gold collection pieces are comprised of French and European styles dating from the Louis XV, Louis XVI, Regency and Empire periods. The pieces are refinished with black lacquer; it makes the gold ornamentation pop beautifully hence the Black & Gold collection. Ebonizing originated in the 16th century and was popularized in the late 19th century. Castle Antiques is reviving the ebonized look in 2016. This collection is meant to be paired or mixed with metal finishes and colors, such as gold, silver and bronze, which are the new trends for 2016. Established in 1975, Castle Antiques originally started as wholesaler to other antique dealers across the United States. They expanded operations and began catering to interior designers, large design firms and private collectors. Castle Antiques is in the process of expanding online operations in 2016. They are the largest family-owned antique dealer on the west coast, and maintain a 35,000 square ft. showroom full of rare and one of a kind pieces imported from Europe. Over the years, Castle has evolved into a full service fine antique furniture repair, upholstery and restoration shop, offering an unparalleled level of excellence and craftsmanship. The International Sleep Products Association (ISPA) announces its largest EXPO in history! At this years record-breaking exposition, the world's only trade show exclusively for the mattress industry, more than 221 exhibitors from 23 countries are expected to showcase their products and services on over 133,000 square feet of the floor space from March 9-12 at the Orange County Convention Center South in Orlando, Florida. These results reflect exhibitors confidence in both the mattress sector, as well as the benefits they can achieve from participating in ISPA EXPO, with its long-standing reputation as the leading venue for mattress industry suppliers and buyers, noted ISPA president Ryan Trainer. Ive been attending EXPO for over 40 years. There is no other event where we can connect directly with so many of our industry colleagues and partners and see the latest machinery, supplies and services we need to run our business, said Bob Naboicheck, president of Gold Bond Mattress Co. ISPA also offers timely and high-quality educational seminars. I walk away from every EXPO with new ideas, knowledge about the latest trends and many valuable contacts. ISPA EXPO also offers relevant educational sessions designed to provide business insights for attendees across every sector of the mattress industry. Networking events, including a Welcome Reception, ISPA Womens Network Reception, Happy Hour on the Show Floor and the ISPA Industry Breakfast featuring nationally syndicated columnist and author Greg Schwem, will provide opportunities for attendees to engage with business partners and colleagues from around the globe. More information about ISPA EXPO 2016, including registration and exhibit space, is available at http://www.ISPAEXPO.com. Members of the press should contact Jasmine Wood at jwood(at)sleepproducts(dot)org to receive complimentary registration. ### Established in 1915, the International Sleep Products Association (ISPA) is dedicated to protecting and enhancing the growth, profitability and stature of the mattress industry. As the industrys trade organization, ISPA is the voice of the mattress industry, representing nearly 700 mattress manufacturers and suppliers throughout the world. ISPA provides a wide range of services that benefit its membership. These include exclusive industry surveys and statistics, advocacy support, educational offerings, the industrys ISPA EXPO trade show, safety research through its Sleep Products Safety Council, consumer research and education through its Better Sleep Council, BedTimes and Sleep Savvy publications, and more. To learn more, visit http://www.sleepproducts.org or contact info(at)sleepproducts(dot)org. ### Can I get high-quality healthcare for less if I move overseas? As healthcare costs and complexity in the U.S. continue to spiral upward, more and more retirees are asking, Can I get high-quality healthcare for less if I move overseas? The simple answer is yes. The Healthcare category of the 2016 International Living Global Retirement Index ranks the healthcare systems of the 23 most popular retirement locations abroad. Criteria include costs for procedures, availability and cost of public and private insurance, and quality. Based on these criteria, the top four countries in the Healthcare category for 2016 are Malaysia, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Panama. The full report on the four best countries in the world for healthcare can be read here: "4 Countries with the Best Healthcare in the World". Malaysia: Medical Tourism is Booming Widespread cheaper air travel, mounting healthcare costs in developed countries, and long waiting lists have all contributed to an explosion of medical tourism to Malaysia. Quality is high numerous hospitals in Penang and Kuala Lumpur are among Southeast Asias first recipients of the United States prestigious Joint Commission International (JCI) certification. Seen as the gold standard for healthcare service providers around the world, Malaysia has no less than eight JCI-accredited hospitals. Most doctors in Malaysia are either trained or have done their postgraduate studies in the U.K. or the U.S. and speak English fluently. In addition, both Penang and Kuala Lumpur are serviced by airlines from around the world. Both cities have an excess of reasonably priced hotel rooms, and both cities have a reliable public transportation system. Colombia: Where Health is Valued Colombians are justifiably proud of their healthcare system. In major cities like Medellin, Bogota, Bucaramanga, and Manizales, there are well-staffed, high-tech clinics in every neighborhood. And every city boasts several state-of-the-art hospitalsmany with affiliations to big-name hospitals in the U.S. Most of the healthcare professionals who staff these outstanding medical centers studied or did residencies in the U.S., Canada, or Europe, and many speak excellent English. In the last global assessment index by the World Health Organization (WHO), Colombias healthcare system ranked at number 22 out of 191 countriesthe highest ranking of all Latin American countries and well ahead of Canada (#30) and the U.S. (#38). In 2008, Colombias constitutional court ruled that health is a fundamental human right. And costs for both healthcare and health coverage plans are low. Simply put, Colombia values health. In the U.S. the cost for knee replacement surgery is $30,000 to $50,000. In Colombia, cost is about $10,000. A dental crown or a root canal that costs $1,000 in the U.S. will cost just $300 in Colombia. For a government health plan, a retiree will pay a flat rate of 12% of their incomesuch as a pension or Social Security benefits. Supplemental health coverage for two people is available for under $400 a year. Plans dont limit use, have no age restrictions or pre-existing condition exclusions, and can be used when traveling to other Latin American destinations. Costa Rica: Low-Cost, High-Quality Healthcare The top-notch but low-cost medical care available in Costa Rica is a huge draw for retired expats and also makes it one of the worlds top destinations for medical tourism. There are two healthcare systems operating in Costa Rica side-by-side. The public system, called La Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social (commonly called the Caja), is available to Costa Rican citizens and legal residents, including expats. In fact, residents are required to join Caja. The monthly fee (for the applicant and dependent spouse) is 7% to 11% of reported monthly income. After that care is free doctors visits, prescriptions, testing, therapy, surgeries, emergency careits all covered. In general, expats report good results with the Caja system. But there are some issues, including wait times for non-emergency procedures. The private system is fast and efficientand cost effective. Prices are a fraction of the cost of the U.S., so even paying cash is affordable. A doctors visit is $50; $80 to $100 for a specialist. Ultrasounds will run $75. Surgeries are a half to a third of the cost in the U.S. But its not necessary to pay out of pocket. International insurance, Costa Rican insurance, and some U.S. policies are accepted at the major private hospitals. And patients can mix and match private and public care. For example, patients can see a private specialist doctor but get a prescription filled for free at a Caja pharmacy. In both systems, doctors often speak English (although nurses and administrators probably wont), physicians are trained in all the latest techniques, the facilities have modern technology, and the bedside manner is outstanding. Panama: Accessible and Affordable Healthcare Panama also has a public and a private healthcare system, and for most expats and retirees, the private facilities will be more familiar and comfortable since they generally have better services and equipment, and more staff. Even the top-notch private providers in the countrys capital are affordable, with fees and medical costs at a fraction of those in North America. The major facilities are located in Panama City, and several are affiliated with U.S. institutionsPunta Pacifica Hospital is a Johns-Hopkins affiliate. The city of David in western Panama offers two full-service private hospitals along with numerous clinics. Many Panamanian doctors and medical professionals have had some training in the U.S. or Canada, so they do speak and understand English. This is more common in Panama City, and support staff may speak only Spanish. Most medications in Panama are available without a prescription, saving you the time and cost of an unnecessary doctors visit (the exceptions are antibiotics, controlled substances, and some pain medications). Resident retireesincluding those with a Pensionado Visareceive a 20% discount on all medications, medical services, and fees. Health insurance options have various types of coverage, the most affordable being a local plan that provides limited coverage within Panama and pays 50% to 70% of most medical expenses for a monthly premium of about $145 for a couple in their 60s. More extensive plans are available from larger insurance companies in Panama, with correspondingly higher premiums. InternationalLiving.coms 2016 Global Retirement Index is the most comprehensive yet. The full report on the four best countries in the world for healthcare can be read here: "4 Countries with the Best Healthcare in the World". Editor's Note: Members of the media have full permission to reproduce the articles linked above once credit is given to InternationalLiving.com. Media Contact: For information about InternationalLiving.com content republishing, available source material or to book an interview for radio, TV or print with one of our experts, contact Associate Editor Carol Barron, 772-678-0287 (US), CBarron@InternationalLiving.com or visit the Media Center. For automatic updates on the most current stories, follow International Living Media on Twitter. For 35 years, InternationalLiving.com has been the leading authority for anyone looking for global retirement or relocation opportunities. Through its monthly magazine and related e-letters, extensive website, podcasts, online bookstore, and events held around the world, InternationalLiving.com provides information and services to help its readers live better, travel farther, have more fun, save more money, and find better business opportunities when they expand their world beyond their own shores. InternationalLiving.com has more than 200 correspondents traveling the globe, investigating the best opportunities for travel, retirement, real estate, and investment. Our customers already depend on us to get fast, reliable quotes for their structured settlements, but in 2016 we want to be able to do more for them. StarStarCash has built a reputation as a leading online settlement company, but this January, 2016, the company is getting ready to roll out an expanded range of financial products for its customers. The new StarStarCash mobile app is approaching its launch date, and the company wants interested customers to register to receive updates ahead of the official launch later in Q1. "We like to say that StarStarCash is 'like a bank, but better,' and we have a lot of exciting new projects in the works to really accomplish that mission in 2016," said Fred Greene, StarStarCash's Director of Marketing. In a phone interview, Greene also said the company is in discussions to finalize a strategic technical partnership with one of the leading online personal lenders in the industry. This technical partnership will allow the company to add exciting new features to their mobile app, **CASH. As of January 8, 2016, the app was in the final stages of development and beta testing, and the app is set to launch at the end of Q1 2016. Once open to the public, the **CASH app will allow users to receive automated quotes for their structured settlements in seconds. In addition, Greene said the company is in discussion with a credit card company, and they hope to roll out new credit card offerings when the app launches. In addition to new technical upgrades and the mobile app, Greene said the company is working hard on expanding its financial products to include personal loans and auto loans, with a tentative launch date of Q2 or Q3. "Our customers already depend on us to get fast, reliable quotes for their structured settlements, but in 2016 we want to be able to do more for them. The app is very nearly ready for its launch date, and once it's ready clients will be able to get quotes on structured settlements, personal loans, structured settlement payment solutions, pre-settlement cash advances, and helpful tips on saving and budgeting," Greene said. About StarStarCash StarStarCash App takes the hassle out of getting cash now. Users can download the app and receive a cash advance for their settlements, annuity cash, or a cash rewards card. StarStarCash (**Cash) is "like a bank, only better." To learn more about how it all works, visit starstarcash.com. Aleisha Jaeger, Construction Director, Gilbane Building Company Downtown Chicago Office "We are honored to continue building our Chicago team and have Aleisha join Gilbane Building Company, said Adam Jelen, Gilbane Building Company Senior Vice President and Division Leader. Aleisha Jaeger recently joined Gilbane BuiGilbane lding Companys downtown Chicago office as a Construction Director, bringing with her over 15 years of experience in construction services, operations and client relationships. Ms. Jaeger has extensive experience planning, implementing and overseeing all phases of complex construction projects. She has been involved in nearly $1 billion in construction, consisting of six million SF of projects internationally. Her work includes the successful management of design and construction teams in nearly all product types from industrial, manufacturing, pork processing, oil and gas and food to office, retail/mixed use, higher education, and government sectors. With her diverse construction and operations background, Aleisha brings a unique understanding of master planning and facility management concepts for operational efficiency to clients. She has significant construction, business development and marketing experience in US and Mexico, which includes the international implementation of U.S. business and construction best practices. For us it is about building the best people, relationships and the Chicago community. People and passion make the difference. We are honored to continue building our Chicago team and have Aleisha join Gilbane Building Company, said Adam Jelen, Gilbane Building Company Senior Vice President and Division Leader. Jaeger is a graduate of Marquette University with a B.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering. She is actively involved in community organizations and is strong supporter of the advancement of women in construction or other more non-traditional careers. She is an active member of Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW) Chicago, participating on both the Membership and CREW Careers Committees. She is also in her second year as a mentor in the Marquette University Mentor/Mentee program, which pairs young engineering students with professionals over the course of a year. She has also participated in several speaking events and panels throughout her career on topics related to advocacy for diversity in construction. About Gilbane Building Company Gilbane provides a full slate of construction and facilities-related services from preconstruction planning and integrated consulting capabilities to comprehensive construction management, close-out and facility management services for clients across various markets. Founded in 1873 and still a privately held, family-owned company, Gilbane has more than 50 office locations around the world. For more information, visit http://www.gilbaneco.com. Gilbane has two permanent offices located in Chicago, as well as an extensive knowledge of the Chicagoland market including construction processes, area subcontractors/suppliers, local M/WBE contractors, and familiarity with Chicago jurisdictional authorities. With 38 years of success in the highly competitive Chicagoland market, Gilbane is committed to continuing the strong tradition of excellence in the Chicago construction industry. Were proud to bring Christian J. Knutson on board to continue to build our top-quality professional development training library for design and construction professionals. RedVector, the leader in eLearning and workforce training solutions for the architecture, engineering, construction, industrial and facility management industries, has teamed up with presenter Christian J. Knutson, P.E., PMP, to continue a series of video-based professional development courses for AEC professionals. The AEC Success online course series aims to help engineers and other AEC professionals improve business development and sales skills, become better decision-makers, and improve time management skills. Today, a lack of soft skills has been cited as a major contributor to engineering project failuresindustry studies put the failure rate somewhere between 40% and 70%, according to the Association for Talent Development (atd). Its no wonder that AEC firms ranked training and education as one of their top business development tactics for 2016 (at 41.8%), according to a Building Design + Construction (BD+C) Survey. Were proud to bring Christian J. Knutson on board to continue to build our top-quality professional development training library for design and construction professionals, said Bobby Person, RedVector Product Director. Through these courses, our mission is to advance and develop careers and improve project success rates. RedVectors New AEC Success Courses Are as Follows: AEC Success: Effective Decision Making AEC Success: Time Management and Billable Hours AEC Success: Business Development and Sales About Christian J. Knutson Christian J. Knutson, P.E., PMP, has 21 years of experience in leadership, management, engineering and international relations earned from a career in the U.S. Air Force serving locations across the globe. Over his career, Knutson developed the soft skills required to effectively lead teams and organizations of 3 to 600 people while delivering value to clients with high-stakes missions. He is also the author of The Engineer Leader, a recognized blog on leadership and life success for engineers and project professionals. About RedVector RedVector sets the standard for excellence in online continuing education and training for the architecture, engineering, construction (AEC), industrial and facility management industries and holds nearly 100 state and national accreditations. RedVector offers individual courses as well as large-scale corporate training solutions featuring customizable and easily accessible online universities with a full range of tracking and reporting features. With an online library exceeding 2,250 courses authored by more than 100 subject matter experts, RedVector serves professionals and organizations in all 50 states. The recipient of numerous community honors and industry awards, RedVector was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Tampa, Florida. For more information, call 1-866-546-1212 or visit http://www.RedVector.com. Kensi Mays Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie LLP has named Kensi Mays, a University of Denver second-year law student, recipient of the 2016 Michael D. Nosler Scholarship The Michael D. Nosler scholarship was established in 2006 to honor past managing partner Mike Nosler, who was committed to diversity in the legal profession and supported the firms commitment to making the legal profession more diverse, inclusive and reflective of the communities it serves. The Michael D. Nosler Scholarship is awarded annually to a talented and diverse second-year law student from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law or the University of Colorado School of Law. Additionally, the scholarship program provides a unique learning experience that develops and enhances the recipients legal writing skills and provides exposure to the private law firm environment and the real-world practice of law. As a second-year law student at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, Mays will complete a paid clerkship this semester in the Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie Denver office, and upon completing the clerkship, she will receive a $10,000 scholarship to help pay for her third year of law school. Mays is president and secretary of the Black Law Students Association (BLSA) at DU, and works with the Dean of Institutional Diversity and Inclusiveness and the Career Development and Opportunities Office to promote and encourage diversity in judicial internships and clerkships among students and graduates. She also volunteers with the Denver Urban Debate League and Partners for Mentoring Youth, emphasizing her interested in nurturing academic, personal and professional development primarily for disadvantaged and at-risk youth. Kensi is a great addition to our team at Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie. She is not only smart and motivated, but also embodies the principles of professionalism and commitment to improving the legal profession that are at the heart of the Nosler Scholarship, noted Tami Goodlette, a partner and member of the firms the Diversity Committee. Mays earned her B.A. in Sociology and Political Science from Colorado State University, where she was on the Deans List, received the Academic Achievement Award, served as secretary of the Black Student Alliance, volunteered with Project Progress and Sisters Involved in the Community, and a member of the CSU track team. About Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie LLP Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie is built on the strengths of legacy firms Lewis Roca Rothgerber and Christie, Parker & Hale, providing clients across a wide range of industries with representation in litigation, intellectual property, business transactions, gaming, government relations and other practice areas. With approximately 300 attorneys, Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie offices are located in Albuquerque, Colorado Springs, Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Orange County, Phoenix, Reno, Silicon Valley and Tucson. IT admins pose the biggest security risk to organizations, according to a global survey of security professionals from endpoint security software company Avecto. Avecto surveyed 247 IT and security professionals in the US, UK, and EMEA for their views on the state of security within their respective organizations. Collectively, respondents found that IT admins posed the most risk (22%), while disgruntled workers (20%) and C-level executives (18%) took the next two positions. However, IT professionals in the US named disgruntled workers (24%) as posing the biggest threat to company security, while respondents from the UK considered the C-suite (26%) as the cause for the most concern. Mark Austin, co-founder and co-CEO at Avecto said: The range of workers identified from chief execs to IT admins shows the breadth and depth of risk every organization has to deal with when it comes to security. The geographical differences here are also interesting, with Snowdons impact in the US perhaps more keenly felt there than elsewhere in the world. When it comes to board engagement with security, 34% of respondents claimed that security is a concern but not a priority, while less than two-thirds of respondents believe security is a top concern among the leadership within their organisations. Offering the most disparity between regions, the trade-off between security and freedom was a hot topic among IT and security professionals. EMEA saw a nearly even split between security and freedom, with 56% believing security should come first, with 44% prioritising productivity. Conversely, both US and UK respondents place more value in security (84% and 77% respectively), while only 16% of US and 23% of UK professionals see user productivity as more important. Mark continued: Getting the right balance between security and freedom has been an ongoing problem, as vendors have tried to create products that dont interfere with business-as-usual. Global organizations will need to address this divergence to align values and strategy around best security practices, solutions, user productivity and freedom. ENDS Media contact: Rosemarie Esposito, Hotwire PR 646.738.8964 avecto(at)hotwirepr.com About this survey Avecto surveyed 247 IT and security professionals attending Gartner Barcelona, Gartner London, McAfee FOCUS and McAfee London conferences in 2015. The geographical split for respondents was as follows: EMEA = 71 UK = 96 USA = 80 About Avecto Avecto is a global software company specializing in endpoint security. Its unique Defendpoint software makes prevention possible, integrating three proactive technologies to stop malware at the endpoint. This innovative software protects over 8 million endpoints across the worlds most recognisable brands. Avecto promotes a balance of security + freedom, focusing on a positive user experience across every software implementation. AC Business Media logo While many media companies we compete with are for sale or are cutting programs, content, people or circulation, were growing, investing in our technology and people, and looking for new opportunities to add to ACBMs robust portfolio. At a time when the fate of some business-to-business media companies is uncertain, AC Business Media, headquartered in Fort Atkinson, Wis., celebrated numerous accomplishments since coming under new ownership in the second half of 2014. Purchased in August 2014 from Cygnus Business Media, AC Business Media owns a portfolio of recognized brands in heavy construction, asphalt, concrete, paving, rental, sustainability, manufacturing, OEM product development, logistics and supply chain markets. The company delivers timely, relevant content to its audiences through its state-of-the-art digital properties, trade shows, videos, magazines, webinars and newsletters and provides advertisers the data, analytics and ability to reach their target audience. Were in growth and investment mode, explained AC Business Medias owners Carl Wistreich and Anil Narang. While many media companies we compete with are for sale or are cutting programs, content, people or circulation, were growing, investing in our technology and people, and looking for new opportunities to add to ACBMs robust portfolio. Going from a private equity/financial institutional ownership back to a family-owned business has allowed us to focus on long-term values that will serve our clients better now and long into the future. Wistreich pointed to several measures of the companys success: 76% increase in attendees for the 2015 National Pavement Expo held in Nashville Addition of a national concrete polishing and staining conference, augmenting its Concrete Contractor and Polishing Contractor brands Invested heavily in technology with the purchase of a Business Enterprise System and data analytic tools. Strengthened its already very strong team with key hires in numerous areas including digital advertising and analytics, digital design and administration, trade show management and administration, content, circulation and sales 17% increase in e-newsletter audience 22% increase in the average open rate for its e-newsletters Three 2015 Tabbie awards recognizing its B2B website, use of social media, and editorial design excellence. Also, Kris Flitcroft, the company's EVP was awarded Folios Top Women In Media recognition. More than these measures, theres also the excitement and momentum were building with our clients, Wistreich emphasized. Our advertisers have given us opportunities to launch video campaigns that have gone viral, create innovative and targeted digital campaigns, unique print advertising campaigns, announce new products, and overall create an industry buzz for them. AC Business Media encompasses: Construction Network, anchored by ForConstructionPros.com and comprising six print and digital brands: Asphalt Contractor, Concrete Contractor, Equipment Today, Pavement Maintenance & Reconstruction, Rental and Sustainable Construction OEM Off-Highway and OEMOffHighway.com Supply Chain Network with Food Logistics, FoodLogistics.com, Supply & Demand Chain Executive and SDCExec.com. Each of the brands addresses social media independently on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest and YouTube. About AC Business Media AC Business Media is a business-to-business media company with a portfolio of renowned brands in heavy construction, asphalt, concrete, paving, rental, sustainability, manufacturing, logistics and supply chain markets. The company vision is to continue providing industry-leading content to its audiences through cutting-edge digital properties and print publications and to provide advertisers the analytics and ability to reach the audience they want through its brands. Two more deaths in two days: Minister says 'flu situation stabilizes' (video) Armenias Minister of Health Armen Muradyan does not know yet whether winter holidays in schools and kindergartens will be extended again or not. He says the decision will be made on Friday, taking into account the available indicators. The situation with flu and less severe respiratory viruses in the republic has bettered. About 99 percent of the patients have been discharged from hospitals without any health problems, Mr Muradyan said today. Since the outbreak of the H1N1 virus, commonly known as swine flu, 18 people have died in Armenia because of complications. Two of them died in the past two days. Seven patients diagnosed with pneumonia continue receiving treatment in hospitals. Ninety-four of the 124 pregnant women remain under the care of doctors. A total of 1066 children were getting treatment at inpatient clinics of the republic and 170 have been discharged already, the Minister added. Speaking about Tamiflu, an antiviral medication used in fighting swine flu, Mr Muradyan once again assured everyone that the medication has always been available free of charge both in hospitals and clinics. He added that all patients who needed the medicine received it with a prescription from a doctor. Speaking about the import of the medicine, the minister said, Any company that has a license can sign a contract with a manufacturer and import the product. There is not a monopoly in the pharmaceutical field. These people our our neighbors, our employees, our customers Texas Land & Cattle, which has become a dining staple in North Texas over the years, cares about its neighbors and the community. Several tornadoes touched down as part of a powerful storm in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area on December 26, 2015, leaving destruction and tragedy in its wake. Texas Land & Cattle has announced that all of its restaurants in the DFW Metroplex area will give 15 percent of net sales toward tornado relief funds for the week of Friday, January 15 - Friday, January 22. The tornadoes affected so many families here in North Texas, and they are still in need of help, said Texas Land & Cattle COO Tim Dungan. These people are our neighbors, our employees, our customers. We wanted to do something to give back and hopefully make a difference in helping them get back on their feet. The Dallas Stars partnered with Texas Land & Cattle to help get the word out among its fans and followers. The entire crew at Texas Land & Cattle is all about being a part of the community, said former Stars goalie Marty Turco. Wed like to encourage everyone to come in, enjoy a great meal, and help make a difference for fellow North Texans affected by the tornadoes. Texas Land & Cattle has eight locations in the Metroplex area Arlington, Bedford, Fairview, Frisco, Garland, Richardson, and two in Dallas. All are participating in the tornado relief effort, which runs through Friday, January 22. OpenSPR-XT - Affordable and Automated Surface Plasmon Resonance Nicoya Lifesciences, a leader in label-free molecular analysis, announced today its newest product, OpenSPR-XT - a fully automated molecular analysis instrument based on the highly successful OpenSPR instrument. The release of OpenSPR-XT will provide life sciences researchers from academia to industry with a high throughput SPR solution that is affordable for every lab. The OpenSPR line of surface plasmon resonance instruments uses proprietary nanotechnology based sensors to provide high quality molecular interaction data at a fraction of the cost of traditional SPR instruments. By combining this technology with robust and user friendly automation, OpenSPR-XT saves time, reduces errors, and improves data quality and repeatability. This product provides critical data needed by life sciences researchers, such as binding kinetics, affinity, and specificity of proteins, antibodies, nucleic acids, small molecules and more. Ryan Denomme, Nicoyas CEO, said: The launch of OpenSPR-XT addresses a major gap in the market. Most researchers could not afford to have a fully automated SPR solution in their own labs they had to rely on costly outsourcing or using an inconvenient central lab facility. Now they can have a powerful, high throughput instrument in their own lab, which will help accelerate new discoveries in fields like biotherapeutics. This product is a result of the feedback we have received from our customers, and will allow us to meet the growing demand for high throughput molecular analysis while continuing to remain the most affordable solution on the market. The company officially launched OpenSPR-XT at Peptalk 2016: The Protein Science Week in San Diego. More information can be found at http://www.nicoyalife.com/opensprXT. West Monroe Partners, a full-service North American business and technology consultancy, today announced Bill Duffy has joined the firm as a director in its Workforce Optimization practice, based in the firms Chicago office. He has more than 25 years of experience leading complex operational improvement programs for manufacturing and heavy process industry organizations. Duffys extensive experience includes operations and strategy leadership; global manufacturing operations excellence from the shop floor to the supply chain; business performance transformation and productivity improvement; commercial, pricing, and sales force effectiveness; operational analysis and due diligence; and global and multi-site project management. His clients have included leaders in the manufacturing, energy, utilities, chemicals, natural resources, industrial and building products, and other sectors. Bill Duffy is a strong leader, mentor, and advocate for his clients success, said Doug Armstrong, West Monroe Partners Chicago office leader. He has an exceptional track record for rallying organizations around improvement challenges and helping clients develop sustainable capabilities for managing complex change. Duffy joins West Monroe Partners from Evolve Partners LLP, a North American business improvement and operations excellence implementation consultancy for which he was a vice president and member of the Executive Leadership team. His previous experience includes consulting roles with BearingPoint, Celerant Consulting, and Deloitte & Touche, as well as nearly a decade of business unit management experience with Illinois Tool Works Deltar/Impro division. As an engineer who happens to do consulting, I was particularly impressed with West Monroe Partners approach to blending the science of engineering with the art of people to deliver tangible productivity and business performance improvements, said Duffy. I look forward to bringing my experience and industry perspectives to help the firm continue build on its leadership position in the workforce optimization arena. Duffy earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Marquette University and a Master of Business Administration degree with specialization in Finance and International Business from Loyola University Chicago. He is a certified Lean and Six Sigma Black Belt. About West Monroe Partners West Monroe is a progressive business and technology consulting firm that partners with dynamic organizations to re-imagine, build, and operate their businesses at peak performance. Our team of more than 700 professionals is comprised of an uncommon blend of business consultants and deep technologists. This unique combination of expertise enables us to design, develop, implement, and run strategic business and technology solutions that yield a dramatic commercial impact on our clients' profitability and performance. For more information, please visit http://www.westmonroepartners.com. Paragon Software Group, the technology leader in data security and data management solutions, announces the release of Paragon Snapshot for Mac OS X, the industrys first snapshot technology that allows users to create block-level archives of OS X volumes. With Paragon Snapshot for Mac OS X, incremental backups contain only the blocks that have changed instead of the entire file, the way traditional backup and archive software work. The technology is available for licensing to developers who publish backup software, as well as providers who specialize in disaster recovery. On OS X, traditional backup archives are created at the file level by Apples built-in Time Machine and other third-party software that work in a similar fashion. Paragon Snapshot for Mac is the only technology that allows users to create block-level archives of OS X volumes. Recovery from images made with Paragon Snapshot for Mac are at least four times faster than restoring from existing Time Machine backups. Compared to file-level backups, the software with integrated Paragon Snapshot for Mac OS X technology will also provide a higher compression rate for archived files. Among other advantages, Paragon Snapshot for Mac works 100 percent online while OS X is running, requiring no system restart or reboot. With this Snapshot technology in place, incremental backups will be smaller, because the block-level imaging stores only the blocks that have changed. Once integrated, Paragon Snapshot will prove invaluable for Mac owners, providing them with an option to elevate and accelerate backup routines. When disaster strikes, Paragon Snapshot for Mac enables hassle-free recovery from snapshot-based backup archives, which is significantly more efficient than recovering from file-level backups. Just like the companys industry-proven, cross-platform Universal File System Driver, Paragon Snapshot for Mac OS X supports all file systems, even those not natively supported by OS X (e.g., Windows NTFS and Linux ExtFS). Even more, being installed on the lower level than a file system, the utility can take snapshots of disks without a file system at all. It means that a third-party developer using Paragons Snapshot technology to work with unformatted disks (e.g. with deleted volumes, etc.) can develop new approaches to address users needs. Paragon Snapshot for Mac allows you to: o quickly and easily back up running applications and system-locked files; o create RAW disk images; o image any type of volume, including Windows NTFS or Linux ExtFS-formatted partitions Why Paragon Snapshot for Mac? Mac computers have become increasingly popular in content development and other business segments where data loss can be a nightmare. Retrieval of data, multimedia, and system files can be a very risky task. The majority of current OS X backup solutions work at the file level. As a result, such backup archives contain all files at different moments of time, so their states may differ. Users may not be even aware of such concerns, and continue changing files that reside within a group. Compared to sector-level, snapshot-based images, file-based backups do not guarantee consistency for a group of files. By comparison, the advantage of a snapshot is that the image-based backup contains changes made at the very moment the snapshot is taken, so all associated files in the group are in the same state. Paragon Snapshot for Mac package includes a single-license SDK for both OEMs and ISVs who may want to build their backup or other software solutions. Benchmark tests have shown that system restores from a snapshot-based backup take considerably less time than the same recovery from file-based backups. This ensures shorter downtime and quicker access to the required data, which is absolutely critical for businesses and end users alike. When it comes to incremental backup, recovery from a snapshot-based image of a typical OS X workstation of Paragon Softwares QA engineers ran two to four times faster compared to a recovery from a file-based backup; this difference becomes particularly noticeable with larger archives. System requirements: Supports Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and later, including the latest OS X 10.11 El Capitan. White paper: http://download.paragon-software.com/doc/Snapshot_for_Mac_White_Paper.pdf Availability: Paragon Snapshot for Mac OS X is available for licensing. Paragon Software provides flexible licensing packages for independent software developers as well as large disaster recovery solution vendors. For more details about the new technology and evaluation options, please contact technology@paragon-software.com or call: US: 1-888-347-5462 UK: 44-800-047-0957 Germany: 49-(0)-761-59018-201 About Paragon Software Group: Paragon Software Group is an innovative software developer focused on two dynamic growth markets. The company's comprehensive product line for the data storage market addresses the needs of data security, storage and management for PCs, servers and networks. A second portfolio of products focuses on mobile productivity applications for handheld devices. Founded in 1994, Paragon Software has offices in the USA, Germany, Japan, Poland and Russia, delivering its solutions to consumers, small business and enterprise clients worldwide through a network of Value Added Resellers, distributors and OEMs as well as online through the company website. Paragon Software provides technology to a host of world-class companies and partners including Belkin, Bosch, Cisco, D-Link, Dell, Toshiba, HP, Western Digital Corp., ASUS, Seagate, LG Electronics, Logitech, Buffalo, Acer, EMC/Iomega, Siemens, Lenovo, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia and ZTE. For more information please visit the company website at http://www.paragon-software.com. Photo download: http://www.kcomm.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Meggitt-MDSI-Calvert-Visit.jpg While touring Meggitt Defense Systems in Irvine, Calif., U.S. Congressman Ken Calvert (l.) views the AH-64s Combo-PAK, 30mm ammunition magazine with host Charles Panasewicz (r.), Senior Vice President of Business Development. U.S. Congressman Ken Calvert (CA-42) Tours Meggitt Defense Systems in Irvine, California IRVINE, Calif. U.S. Congressman Ken Calvert, representing Californias 42nd district, visited and toured the Meggitt Defense Systems operation in Irvine, Calif., on Tues., Jan. 19, 2016. Meggitt Defense Systems is a leading provider of ammunition handling, environmental control, target, radar-based projectile scoring and airborne countermeasure systems. The unit comprises complete turnkey/in-house capabilities for the development, production, test and support of these complex subsystems. As part of Congressman Calverts visit, he met with Meggitt officials from around the world gathered at the Irvine facility for a corporate-wide defense forum. Discussion included Meggitt Defense Systems integral participation in cutting-edge technology programs such as the Electromagnetic Rail Gun and Stryker 30mm Upgun. Additional engagements include continuing production and logistics support of major DOD programs of record such as the M1A2 Abrams, P-8 Poseidon, F/A-18 Super Hornet, AH-64 Apache, AH-1W/Z Super Cobra, MH-60R/S Seahawk and M1128 Stryker Mobile Gun System as well as numerous international allied programs including the UK Ajax, UK Warrior, Canadian LAV and ALQ-211 EW Pod. Southern Californians have a proud history of making important contributions to our national security, noted Congressman Calvert. The employees at Meggitt are clearly carrying on this tradition by developing the technology and tools our military relies upon. Meggitt Defense Systems employs approximately 250 area professionals as a key generator of a high-quality, high-paying, high-tech workforce growing to meet customer needs as well as supporting a large base of small-business subcontractors and suppliers in Southern California. We were very pleased and honored to host Congressman Calvert and bring him up to date on the mission-critical work we are doing here in Irvine and other Meggitt units around the world, said Charles Panasewicz, Senior Vice President of Meggitt Defense Systems. Stable year-to-year DOD planning and budgeting are the foundation of the role we proudly play in creating high-quality jobs and providing revenue for other businesses in the region. Congressman Calvert currently serves on the House Appropriations Committee where he is Chairman of the Interior and the Environment Subcommittee as well as a member of the Defense Subcommittee and the Energy and Water Subcommittee. In addition, he was selected to serve as Chairman of the California Republican Delegation. For information on Meggitt Defense Systems, visit http://www.meggittdefense.com. About Meggitt Defense Systems Headquartered in Irvine, Calif., Meggitt Defense Systems, Inc., is a subsidiary of Meggitt PLC specializing in the design, development and production of ammunition handling systems, radar and digital processing systems, and environmental control systems. Meggitt Defense Systems products are in use on virtually all U.S. military training ranges and on many of the worlds leading military platforms, including the Abrams main battle tank, the Stryker Mobile Gun System, the F-16 Falcon, the F/A-18 Hornet, the AC-130 Spooky Gunship, the AH-64 Apache Attack Helicopter, the AH-1 Cobra Helicopter and many others. http://www.meggittdefense.com About Meggitt PLC Headquartered in the UK, Meggitt PLC is a global engineering group specialising in extreme environment components and smart sub-systems for aerospace, defence and energy markets. Some 10,000 people are employed across manufacturing facilities in Asia, Europe and North America and regional bases in Brazil, India and the Middle East. http://www.meggitt.com resized bbb logo From the moment the question is popped until the day the I dos are exchanged, brides and grooms-to-be have plenty of planning to do. Better Business Bureau wanted to help make wedding planning as easy as possible by creating bbbweddinghelp.com, a one-stop wedding resource microsite. Weddings can be expensive and stressful for everyone involved, and BBB wants to help make wedding planning as easy as possible with this new wedding microsite. In 2015, there were 3,233 combined inquiries about all types of businesses involved in planning a wedding, and BBB is a go-to source for information. By starting with BBB, brides and grooms can hopefully avoid any big catastrophes that may put a damper on their special day. This is prime time for engagements and planning for the big day, so BBB wanted to provide a helpful resource for couples who are looking for tips and trusted resources for all aspects of wedding planning. BBB has information on where and how to start planning your special day, along with Accredited Businesses that you can trust to help the process run smoothly, all found at bbbweddinghelp.com. BBBs microsite also provides budgeting tips and average pricing so that you can compare and know what to expect when looking for everything from your gown to a DJ. To start with trusted vendors for your wedding day, make sure you visit bbbweddinghelp.com. For more information, follow BBB on Facebook, Twitter, or at bbb.org. About BBB For more than 100 years, Better Business Bureau has been helping people find businesses, brands and charities they can trust. In 2014, people turned to BBB more than 165 million times for BBB Business Reviews on more than 4.7 million businesses and Charity Reports on 11,000 charities, all available for free at bbb.org. BBB Serving Central Ohio was founded in 1921 and serving 21 counties in Ohio, is one of 112 local, independent BBBs across North America. Dickinson Wright PLLC is pleased to announce that Attorney James (Jim) Fisher has joined the firms Grand Rapids office as Of Counsel. Prior to joining Dickinson Wright, Mr. Fisher was at Law Weathers and before that he served as Chief Judge for the Barry County Trial Court. Mr. Fishers practice involves alternative dispute resolution including mediation and arbitration cases. He has successfully mediated cases involving divorce, valuation of closely-held businesses, medical and legal malpractice, personal injury and wrongful death, construction and real estate claims, and estate disputes. In the last four years, Mr. Fisher has mediated approximately 200 cases that have resulted in a high percentage of successful settlements. Mr. Fisher is the Chair of the Michigan Indigent Defense Commission, a commission that was created in 2014 from legislation recommended by Governor Rick Snyders Indigent Defense Advisory Commission. The Commission is mandated to adopt minimum standards for indigent defense systems throughout the state, recommend best practices to local courts, and fund grants to improve these services throughout the state. Mr. Fisher is on the Board of Directors of Hastings City Bank and a former board member of the Michigan Judges Association, Pennock Hospital, the YMCA of Barry County, and the Kiwanis Club of Hastings. He was a consultant to the Michigan Supreme Court and is the recipient of the 2012 Michael Franck Professional Responsibility Award for leading Michigans Indigent Defense Advisory Commission. Mr. Fisher received his B.S. from Kettering University and his J.D. from Wayne State University School of Law. About Dickinson Wright PLLC Dickinson Wright PLLC is a general practice business law firm with more than 400 attorneys among more than 40 practice areas. Headquartered in Detroit and founded in 1878, the firm has fifteen offices, including six in Michigan (Detroit, Troy, Ann Arbor, Lansing, Grand Rapids, and Saginaw) and eight other domestic offices in Columbus, Ohio; Lexington, Ky.; Las Vegas, Nev.; Nashville, Tenn. (2); Phoenix, Ariz.; Reno, Nev.; and Washington, D.C. The firms Canada office is located in Toronto. The firm offers clients a distinctive combination of superb client service and exceptional quality. Dickinson Wright lawyers are known for delivering commercially-oriented advice on sophisticated transactions and have a remarkable record of wins in high-stakes litigation. Dickinson Wright lawyers are regularly cited by Chambers, Best Lawyers, Super Lawyers, and other leading independent law firm evaluating organizations. The school is looking forward to having someone as well seasoned, passionate, and qualified as Mrs. Rivero join the already well established and dynamic department. As of January 11, 2016, Riviera Preparatory School is happy to announce that they have expanded the school's counseling department with the appointment of Mrs. Danielle Rivero. Mrs. Rivero is a veteran educator with an extensive background as a counselor and a college adviser. As a graduate from the University of Miami, with degrees in Sociology, Criminology, and Psychology, Mrs. Rivero has counseled students on the matters of college admissions and financial assistance for over a decade. Riviera Day School was first established in 1950. Over the years, it has expanded and is now home to preschool and kindergarten through fifth grade. It is now known as Coral Gables, Florida's oldest independent school system. In more recent years, Riviera Schools has placed an added emphasis on academic growth and excellence. In 2011, Riviera Preparatory School expanded, adding a 10-acre campus to serve high school and middle school students. This location is just four miles away from the Day School campus. Since the 2011 expansion, the school has been hard at work trying to evolve internally as well. Riviera Schools is now focusing on improving the counseling department, with the goals of helping all students get into the college of their dreams and to continue striving for academic excellence. To that end, the school is looking forward to having someone as well seasoned, passionate, and qualified as Mrs. Rivero join the already well established and dynamic department. Associate Director Peter Cohen stated, "Experience as an academic and career counselor at Westminster Christian School, assistant director of Undergraduate Education at Florida International University, and director of Student Services at Everest Institute provided Mrs. Rivero with a wealth of experience, enthusiasm, creativity, and the ability to relate to and assist students from a wide variety of social and educational backgrounds." About Riviera Schools Riviera Schools provide a unique educational setting for children that helps them develop as educated leaders while challenging them to explore their various talents. Rivera Schools has cutting edge technology for students to engage with, as well as an academic honors program for qualified students. To learn more, visit http://www.rivieraschools.com. Our goal is to provide the highest quality of care and lowest wait times, the same as we do in the Cherry Creek location; we want to offer the same quality of service in the new clinic. As of the first week of January 2016, AFC Urgent Care Denver is in the final stages of preparation and on target for the grand opening of a new clinic, AFC Urgent Care Denver East, on January 20, 2016. The new clinic is located at 1295 Colorado Boulevard in Denver, Colorado, just east of downtown Denver. AFC Urgent Care Denver's new clinic will offer the same services available to visitors at their original location, AFC Urgent Care Cherry Creek. Both of the urgent care centers can take care of most illnesses, acute injuries, lacerations, and more. The new clinic will also have the capacity to perform x-rays and laboratory testing on-site. "It's very busy, everybody is very excited. Our staff is excited, our providers are excited, and our Medical Director Dr. Johnny Shen is going to work at both clinics, both at Cherry Creek and the new Denver location," said the company's COO Shideh Kerman. "Our goal is to provide the highest quality of care and lowest wait times, the same as we do in the Cherry Creek location; we want to offer the same quality of service in the new clinic." In addition to the grand opening, the clinic's other goal for the first quarter of 2016 is to start offering online scheduling for incoming urgent care patients. Additionally, the clinic plans to hire more providers and to focus on further improving the quality of service offered to patients at their twin urgent care facilities. Kerman added, "We improved our services in 2015, and our goal in 2016 is to improve and get even better at providing our wide range of medical services for our patients." About AFC Urgent Care Denver AFC Urgent Care Denver is offering family care, x-rays, lab testing, flu shots, sinus pain care, physical exams and more. Patients visiting AFC Urgent Care Denver can get quality medical assistance and treatment for common illnesses without having to experience the long wait times and costly bills of an ER visit. To learn more, visit afcurgentcaredenver.com. Brookhaven Retreat LLC, a unique residential treatment facility exclusively for women with emotional and mental health challenges, and/or substance abuse issues hosted a therapeutic outing to The Beck Cultural Exchange and Hobby Lobby on Saturday, Jan. 16. The Beck Cultural Exchange is dedicated to collecting, preserving and exhibiting artifacts and other evidence of contributions relating to the history and culture of African-Americans in East Tennessee and America. They also provide the community with learning, teaching and educational experiences. The cultural center was established by friends of James and Ethel Beck, who left their fortune to their friends to commemorate their lives. Clients were treated to this historic community treasure as a recreational outing taken weekly as part of The Lily Program, a 90-day voluntary residential program offered exclusively at Brookhaven Retreat. Such outings help women overcome depression, trauma, anxiety, personality disorders, and substance dependence among other diagnoses, by providing exposure therapy. An exhibit at the museum, "The Lives and Times of James and Ethel Beck, includes photographs of the Becks and their friends as well as photographs of their cars and real estate. Also, included in the collection is a picture of the Becks visiting at the home of their friend Dr. W.E.B DuBois in 1939. Two of the most glamorous and influential members of the African American community in Knoxville during the 1920s to 1960s, James and Ethel were the last people to live in the Beck mansion before James died in 1969 and Ethel died in 1970. Founder of Brookhaven Retreat, Jacqueline Dawes, says, Exposure therapy is designed to offer a break from traditional therapy for a fresh approach. This kind of therapy is meant to be expansive and fun, although aspects of it may present challenges in one way or another. Its important for clients to get out into the world during the process of therapy and exercise the skills theyre learning. Art therapy is also an enjoyable aspect of the recovery program at Brookhaven Retreat, which is designed to engage different parts of the brain and therefore, summon images from the unconscious, such as buried thoughts, fears and desires, even dreams that have been repressed. About Brookhaven Retreat (DO NOT ALTER STANDARD ON OUR PRESS RELEASES) Brookhaven Retreat is a women's treatment center nestled on a naturally beautiful 48-acre site secluded in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. It has helped hundreds of women across the United States overcome depression, trauma, anxiety, substance use and a range of other behavioral health challenges. Brookhavens Founder, Jacqueline Dawes, has predicated its gender-specific treatment on healing emotional breakage for women. In this way, she has established a sanctuary and a place where women can feel safe, secure and cared for by a staff of highly trained professionals. Darrell receives the award for Best Contribution to Continuity and Resilience at CIR Awards 2013 I am looking forward to working with more of Cobalts EMEA customers and being part of such a dynamic company. These are exciting times for Cobalt and the Industry. Cobalt, the award-winning Business Continuity Solution Provider, continues its global expansion with the appointment of the highly experienced Implementation Manager Darrell Durrant. Darrell joined Cobalt in January to head the EMEA Implementation team. Darrell has more than seven years business continuity experience, which he gained through a variety of challenging positions in the acclaimed European Business Continuity and Critical Communication Platform provider, Vocal. Darrells management and project development experience was instrumental during the acquisition of Vocal by Everbridge in 2014, with the migration of clients from iModus to the Everbridge suite. Darrells expertise played a key role in the implementation of Vocals iModus platform as part of the Cross-sector Safety and Security Communications partnerships (CSSC) objective to ensure London stayed safe and secure during the events of 2012; from the lead up to the Queens Diamond Jubilee celebrations, through to the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Under his leadership, his team created and delivered a unique communications platform, bringing Londons public and private sectors together to share information and resources and work in complete partnership for the first time. Darrell says Im genuinely excited to join Cobalt as they expand from their North American operations across EMEA. After working in the critical communication market for a long time and managing over 1000 implementations Im looking forward to the taking this experience and delivering enterprise wide BC, DRP and IT solutions. The product suite is excellent, and my role as the Implementation Manager is made so much easier by quality products. I am looking forward to working with more of Cobalts EMEA customers and being part of such a dynamic company. These are exciting times for Cobalt and the Industry. Cobalt has proved itself more than capable of keeping ahead of its competitors and is one of only four companies to have been awarded the honour of entry into the BCI Hall of Fame. The company has extended its global presence by opening its new EMEA office in the UK. Jean-Francois Plante, Founder and CEO commented Recruiting Darrell is a real win for Cobalt and our customers. I would think there are very few people in the industry with his level of experience, knowledge and dedication to customer success. The market place itself is ever evolving, and the challenge for those of us providing solutions is to not only keep up with that fast-paced evolution but also to be innovative and ahead of our competitors. Having someone of Darrells calibre managing the technical delivery of our products ensures that the customer expectations are not only met but exceeded. Given the sense of urgency that came out of the talks in Paris, we wanted to quickly provide an outlet for these critical conversations to continue, said Convetit Founder, Tom OMalley. Maven, the worlds first knowledge discovery platform, and Convetit, a hi-velocity research and innovation tool, today announce the findings of their latest co-hosted Virtual ThinkTank. The engagement brought together experts from around the world to assess the outcomes of last months COP21 Climate Summit in Paris. Leading energy scientists, sustainability experts, industry thought-leaders, and policy officials in related fields put their minds together to debate the climate goals set at COP21, their feasibility, and anticipated effect on the US energy industry. In the week following the Paris Climate Conference, Maven and Convetit launched the Virtual ThinkTank via Convetits proprietary collaboration and innovation platform. The engagement kicked off with a thorough review of the outcomes of COP21 with reactions falling across the spectrum. Some participants touted COP21 as a magnificent achievement, while others highlighted the shortcomings and ambiguities of the pledges made at the conference. Next, participants weighed in on the conferences impact on the US energy industry. Participants identified and debated the possible technological game-changers for decarbonizing the future. Lively debate continued around the clock, and focused primarily on forecasting future trends in the energy industry in the new era of energy distribution and conservation. Responses to the COP21 agreement ranged considerably, but ultimately highlighted the gap between greenhouse gas reduction needs and the commitments made at the conference. As country level INDCs (Intended Nationally Determined Contributions) will not lead to regulatory penalties for those who do not meet their targets, fulfilling COP21 goals will take courageous acts of leadership at all levels. The private sector may be best positioned to drive these solutions and the business case is compelling. There is no silver bullet to achieve the goals established at the conference, but rather a cocktail of solutions needed from several sources. Given the sense of urgency that came out of the talks in Paris, we wanted to quickly provide an outlet for these critical conversations to continue, said Convetit CEO, Tom OMalley. It is exciting for us to watch our tool be leveraged to bring together experts to debate a topic that affects us all. Convetit engaged Mavens Global Knowledge Marketplace to source industry experts from around the world involved with clean technology, sustainability, as well as environmental and energy policy. The online engagement was co-facilitated by Ripudaman Malhotra, co-author of A Cubic Mile of Oil, Rene DeConing, Strategic Insights Lead in the Oil & Gas Industry, Bill Baue, Corporate Sustainability Architect, and Dr. Raj Thamotheram, CEO of Preventable Surprises. ThinkTank participants included: Michael Dutschke, Chairman, Global Conservation Standard Garratt Hasenstab, Chief Executive Officer, The Mountain Life Companies Eric Corey Freed, Vice President, Global Outreach, International Living Future Institute Andrew Winston, Author, The Big Pivot & Green to Gold, Adviser/Speaker Tabare Curras, International Expert on Energy Economics Mark Trexler, Climate Risk Knowledge Broker, The Climatographers Alison Wise, Clean Tech & Innovation, Executive/Strategist The intended outcome of the discussion was to gain unique, balanced perspectives on the outcomes of the COP21 accord during a pivotal moment for both climate and energy. With that goal in mind, all stakeholders in this engagement plan to leverage the wealth of information and analysis that was produced during the three-day symposium as well as cross-industry connections that were made during the engagement. More than 100 pages of material and key findings of the discussion were captured in an overview infographic (attached), and will be disbursed across strategic media channels and made publicly available. The full post-COP21 engagement, including summaries and infographics outlining key insights, may be found here. Organizations and members of the media interested in utilizing the content should contact efree(at)maven.co or tiffany(at)convetit.com for publishing details. Virtual ThinkTanks are a fantastic tool for convening qualified experts in disparate locations for meaningful discourse on important topics, said Maven co-founder and CEO Wyatt Nordstrom. Maven and our Knowledge Marketplace participants were thrilled to work with Convetit on this effort. About Convetit Convetit is a Palo Alto-based start-up revolutionizing traditional research. Through its platform, Convetit offers a fast and repeatable practice of innovation, allowing companies to gain the insights they need in weeks instead of months. About Maven Maven makes you smarter. Maven has built the fastest and easiest way to connect and consult with knowledgeable people all over the world. Created by three technology industry veterans who were tired of making critical business decisions with imperfect expertise (knowing somebody out there could help them if they could just find them quickly and consult with them), Maven delivers expertise on demand to professionals in every industry and powers knowledge networks for some of the worlds largest companies. # # # HR West is on a dramatic growth trajectory, seeing a broader audience than ever before for human capital management contentChina Gorman joins at a perfect time as a valued and important influence on the Advisory Council. The San Francisco Bay Area is home to the worlds most innovative companies. Practicing HR in this region requires skills beyond the ordinary and a level of sophistication regarding human resources management not found in other parts of the world. In keeping with its 2016 HR West conferenc e theme, HR in the Most Innovative Place on Earth, NCHRA is proud to announce the addition of HR innovator and futurist China Gorman to its all new Advisory Council. Gorman joins an impressive lineup of thought leaders and accomplished executives to weigh in on the direction of the Northern California Human Resources Association and the annual HR West conference. China Gorman is a successful global business executive in the competitive Human Capital Management (HCM) sector. A true innovator and futurist for the HR industry, she is a sought after consultant, speaker and writer. Gorman brings the CEO perspective to the challenge of building cultures of humanity for top performance and innovation and strengthening the business impact of Human Resources. Well known for her tenure as CEO of the Great Place to Work Institute and as COO and interim CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), Gorman currently works with HCM organizations all over the world to enhance their brands and go-to-market strategies. She also serves on the Executive Committee of the Board of Jobs for Americas Graduates, as well as the Advisory Boards of RiseSmart, Inc., the Workforce Institute at Kronos, and chairs the Globoforce WorkHuman Advisory Board. Gorman is the author of the popular blog Data Point Tuesday and is published and frequently quoted in the media, including Fortune, TLNT, Huffington Post, Inc. Magazine, Fast Company, U.S. News & World Report and many others. At this phase in NCHRAs 55-year history, HR West is on a dramatic growth trajectory, seeing a broader audience than ever before for human capital management contentChina Gorman joins at a perfect time as a valued and important influence on the Advisory Council, says Greg Morton, NCHRA CEO. HR West is a unique opportunity for business leaders to come together, learn from each other and discover new ways to evolve their workplace and the overall employee experience, said China Gorman. Im thrilled to join the NCHRA Advisory Board just before HR West 2016 and to counsel this organization at an exciting time during its growth to help it harness rampant innovation in this space, Gorman commented. For further information about China Gorman, visit chinagorman.com. To receive $75 off an HR West 2016 registration, visit http://pages.nchra.org/Data-Point-Tuesday.html. About HR West Produced by NCHRA, HR West: HR in the Most Innovative Place on Earth is the premier HR conference on the West Coast. More than 80 concurrent sessions (most for HR recertification credit) and special tracks for executives, HR & technology, startups and small business, plus evergreen topics like employment law, benefits and talent management will be offered March 7-9, 2016. Visit HRWest.org and follow #HRWest16 and #GoHRWest on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. About NCHRA - The Northern California HR Association, one of the nations largest HR associations, has been advancing organizations through human resources since 1960. Delivering over 200 programs annually, the association is dedicated to connecting human resources professionals with practice resources, leading California-specific training, legal and legislative developments, quality service providers, and each otherforming career-long networks and partnerships. Student/parent error rates drop by over 30% when using Dynamic Forms. Next Gen Web Solutions, provider of efficiency solutions for student administration processes, announced today that Edfinancial, a leader in student loan servicing, has selected Dynamic Forms as a preferred electronic submission solution for its Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) verification services. Dynamic Forms provides accuracy and security at a critical step for completion of our verification services process, said Judith Witherspoon, Senior Vice President and National Director of Sales and Marketing for Edfinancial Services. This product dramatically simplifies the process of gathering verification data from students and parents. Student/parent error rates drop by over 30% when using Dynamic Forms. Dynamic Forms was developed in 2007 by Next Gen Web Solutions which serves over 350 clients nationally. Higher education institutions have created more than 4.1 million forms for loan requests, student applications, program enrollment, employment, and many other processes. Key features of Dynamic Forms for school administrators include: Intuitive form creation for non-technical users Multiple electronic signatures for workflows that require authorizations Document attachment capability Integration with School Information Systems (SIS) for validation of student information and pre-filling of form fields Online payment capabilities Viewable history of forms for tracking by school administrators Campus-wide single license for creation of unlimited forms We are thrilled to be working with Edfinancial to bring truly innovative solutions to this verification marketspace. Edfinancial is a company that is committed to outstanding service for school administrators, improving student experiences and enhancing success rates, said Jim Grace, COO of Next Gen Web Solutions and General Manager of Dynamic Forms. About Edfinancial Services Edfinancial Services provides exceptional customer-driven products and services. Based on client feedback and leveraging core competencies, we have created streamlined processes and higher education services specifically designed with schools in mind - such as call center capabilities, financial aid process outsourcing, and default prevention services. Perpetual motion is our constant state. We are absolutely driven to excel on behalf of our stakeholders - borrowers, schools, businesses, and state and federal agencies. We stay ahead of the technology curve in higher education. We anticipate new trends and respond with products that improve operational efficiencies and compliance and enhance the customer service experience for students. For more information, visit http://www.edfinancial.com/HES/home About Next Gen Web Solutions Next Gen brings accuracy, compliance, speed and security to school administrative processes that help students support their education. Our web and mobile software solutions enable administrators to efficiently manage forms, scholarships, employment, timesheets and other specialized online processes that require signed authorizations and interactions with student information. Serving more than 350 higher education institutions across the country, we continuously strive to set ourselves apart through a deep understanding of the workflows that power student success-driven institutions. For more information on Dynamic Forms, Scholarship Manager, JobX, or TimesheetX, visit http://www.ngwebsolutions.com We are truly touched by the large numbers of hungry people in our community. Second Harvest can provide 50 meals out of a $10 contribution...This is exactly why we started our Community Program to help local people in need on a grassroots level. Serving families of the greater Savannah area, Rountree Brady Insurance Agency celebrates the beginning of the latest charity campaign in their community involvement program. Americas Second Harvest of Coastal Georgia serves countless hungry residents in southeast Georgia. In the spirit of neighbors helping neighbors in times of crisis, the agency is appealing to members of the compassionate community to help by contributing at: http://www.helpendhunger.org/how-to-help-make-a-donation/. Americas Second Harvest of Coastal Georgia was established in 1981 with a mission to feed the areas hungry by distributing nutritious food to nonprofit agencies, as well as to at-risk children, the elderly and the disabled. Georgia has one of the highest rates of food insecurity in the nation, with 64% of the states children going hungry every day. Serving as a food safety net for tens of thousands of residents, last year Second Harvest provided more than 8.1 million meals, in the form of more than 9.6 million pounds of food, to local people who otherwise would have gone hungry. Almost half of those they serve are choosing between buying food and paying utilities and/or rent; a third must choose between food and medical needs. We are truly touched by the large numbers of hungry people in our community, stated Mickey Rountree, principal of Rountree Brady Insurance Agency. And its so easy to help! Second Harvest can provide 50 meals out of a $10 contribution; $25 will provide 125 meals. This is exactly why we started our Community Program to help local people in need on a grassroots level. The team at Rountree Brady is hard at work mobilizing support for Americas Second Harvest of Coastal Georgia. To help achieve their goal of $500, the agencys network of professional and personal contacts are invited to actively participate not only contributing financially, but also by helping spread the word to others in their own circles of influence. The initiative is also spotlighted in their monthly magazine, which is delivered to thousands of households in the greater Savannah area. The electronic flipbook version of the current issue of Our Hometown magazine may be accessed here: http://www.rountreebradyinsurance.com/Our-Hometown-Magazine_41. Readers wishing to help Second Harvest provide food and hope to hungry neighbors may visit: http://www.rountreebradyinsurance.com/Fighting-Hunger-Feeding-Hope_19_community_cause to learn more. Rountree Brady will acknowledge all those who donate a minimum of $5 in a future issue of Our Hometown magazine. Putting their money where their mouth is, the agency has also pledged to donate $10 to the campaign for each and every referral they receive for an insurance quote, with no purchase necessary. Rountree Brady Insurance Agency will continue to research new worthwhile opportunities to support the local community, promising to unveil a new campaign every few months. Concerned members of the community may also submit information on groups, families or individuals to be considered for future initiatives here: http://www.rountreebradyinsurance.com/Add-Community-Cause_47. Selected submissions will be contacted by a representative of Rountree Bradys Community Program. More information regarding past causes supported by the agency may be found at: http://www.rountreebradyinsurance.com/community-cause. To learn more about Second Harvest of Coastal Georgia, visit: http://www.helpendhunger.org/. About Rountree Brady Insurance Agency A full service, award-winning firm serving the greater Savannah community, Rountree Brady has one simple mission: to provide the finest insurance and financial products in the industry, while delivering consistently superior service. Mickey Rountree and his dedicated team of caring professionals focus on helping clients to protect the things which are most important to them (their families, homes, cars and more) and in developing strategies to fulfill long-term financial goals. An expert at Rountree Brady Insurance Agency may be reached by calling 912-356-3815. More information on the products and services they offer may be found at: http://www.rountreebradyinsurance.com/. If you are new to iQ you can schedule a demo and learn more about this opportunity. PSFK iQ - Where Innovators Turn for Research. Our professional-grade research platform is designed specifically for Retail and CX leaders who want to know whats next. Whether youre staying current on trends or need a real-time research partner to help you get ahead, count on PSFK iQ to deliver the info you need to make your next move. SUBSCRIBERS OF UCOMS ALL TIME BEST OFFER TO ENJOY ADDITIONAL BENEFITS Armenia-Azerbaijan: EU sets up monitoring capacity along the international borders PACE co-rapporteurs on Armenia concerned by reports of alleged war crimes or inhuman treatment perpetrated by Azerbaijans armed forces There is still 35% gender pay gap: Sona Ghazaryan Google Ad Global Finance Names Ameriabank the Safest Bank in Armenia Mikayel and Karen Vardanyans provided 136 million AMD support for the overhaul of the Myasnikyan statue, which was in unsafe state of disrepair Believe me, as a representative of a country which uses the Schengen system very often, it is quite important. Vardanyan I really look forward to having answers from the Azerbaijani side for these alleged gross human rights violations: Secretary General I call on Armenian and Azerbaijani parliamentarians to use this Assembly as an agora of opportunities President Tiny Kox UCOMS SPECIAL OFFER OF THE UNLIMITED INTERNET IS NOW TERMLESS There is no place for the death penalty in a State that respects human rights: PACE General Rapporteur EU and CoE call on two Member States that have not yet acceded to this Protocol Armenia and Azerbaijan to do so without delay An urgent debate requested on "The military hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan". UCOM AND PES-PES CONTINUE COOPERATION WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF EDUCATIONAL PROJECT The statement of the meeting between Prime Minister Pashinyan, President Aliyev, President Macron and President Michel of October 6, 2022 Largest Corporate Bond Program at the Securities Market of Armenia Completed Successfully Google Ad The statement of the Defender on the video of the execution of Armenian PoWs by the Azerbaijani armed forces LEVEL UP ONLY FOR STUDENTS: UCOM OFFERS X2 AND X3 MORE INTERNET STATEMENT BY SECRETARY ANTONY J. BLINKEN This criminal act is another proof that the Armenophobia policy. Tatoyan Nikol Pashinyan, Nancy Pelosi discuss a number of issues related to the Armenian-American agenda and regional developments Delegation by Nancy Pelosi Accompanied by Alen Simonyan Visits Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi Arrives in Yerevan Armenian Revytech, global technology leader SAP and financial services software specialist SAP Fioneer sign a cooperation agreement With 120 million drams donated by Mikael Vardanyan, the defenders of the homeland will be treated in a new building OSCE Chairman-in-Office and OSCE Secretary General call for immediate cessation of hostilities along Armenia-Azerbaijan border Statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Artsakh USA Embassy Message for U.S. Citizens ANCA Issues National Call to Action to Stop Taxpayer Funding of Aliyevs Aggression US Embassy regrets Karen Andreasyans decision to step down as Ombudsman The US Embassy in Armenia regrets Karen Andreasyans decision to step down as Armenias Human Rights Ombudsman and expresses readiness to work with the new Ombudsman. In a statement issued on January 20 the Embassy said, We note with regret Karen Andreasyans decision to step down as Armenias Human Rights Ombudsman. He has been a tireless and effective champion for those who were defenseless; those who feared their voices might be silenced if they voiced unpopular messages; and any Armenian who fought for his or her rights as a citizen to be respected. We wish him the greatest success in his future endeavors. He will remain a friend, colleague, and contact of the U.S. Embassy and the U.S. Government. Mr. Andreasyans work was buttressed by the professionalism and dedication of the staff at the Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman. One of Mr. Andreasyans lasting legacies will undoubtedly be the expansion of the number, and the quality, of staff at this invaluable Armenian institution, which we trust will continue to serve the best interests of the Armenian public under his successor. We are committed to maintaining our close cooperation and partnership with the Office and its staff on issues related to the protection of human rights in Armenia. We look forward to working with the new Human Rights Ombudsman. The United States remains dedicated to working with the Armenian Government and our Armenian partners to advance the cause of democratic development and human rights in Armenia. Our ultimate goal has been, and will remain, a democratic and prosperous Armenia, living in security and peace with its neighbors. Manga publisher and anime distributor Viz Media has reached separate agreements with two major retail chains: Walmart and Best Buy. With Walmart, Viz has struck a deal to significantly expand the number of titles it sells through the chain. Its agreement with Best Buy will see to it that its titles are available, for the first time, in the retailer. Walmart will now feature four of Vizs most popular seriesTokyo Ghoul, Pokeman, One Punch Man and the new Naruto one-shotsin more than 2,000 of its location across the country. The deal will ensure that more Viz titles are consistently available in more Walmart stores. At Best Buy, Viz will now be selling three titlestwo Naruto titles and an Assassination Classroom titlepackaged with their anime tie-ins. The titles will be featured in floor displays in 687 Best Buy stores around the country. Kevin Hamric, Viz senior director of sales and marketing, said the Walmart deal marks the beginning of an effort to convince the national retailer to once again maintain a dedicated graphic novel section. Hamric explained that the retailer had a dedicated comics section years ago but "shrank it" over the years to include only a few bestsellers from a handful of publishers. The publisher's new deal with Walmart, Hamric went on, came after the retailer's officials noticed that U.S. manga sales have recently rebounded. Hamric also credited the deal, in part, to a recent social media campaign Viz mounted that urged manga fans who don't live near a bookstore to go to Walmart for certain Viz titles. The campaign, Hamric said, helped drive Viz sales at the retail chain. Viz sales at Walmart stores during the 2015 holiday season were up 50% over the same period in 2014, Hamric said. He did note, though, that in 2015 Walmart offered more Viz titles than the year before. 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"Can I Do It? Leasing Land on a Tight Margin" will be held 1-4 p.m. Feb. 16 at the Clarion Hotel and Conference Center, 2480 Jonathon Moore Pike in Columbus, Indiana. "As crop cost per acre continues to outweigh the revenue per acre, farmers are finding themselves facing tight margins that may not allow them to continue to pay high land rent," said Jenna Nees, an Extension educator in Putnam County. "This financial situation provides farmers with the chance to re-evaluate what land they are currently renting, rental prices and even the type of lease they decide to use." The seminar will cover: * Calculating the lease amount in cash and valuing the property. * Long-term decisions regarding cash rent. * Flexible leases as cash rent alternative. * How to communicate with landowners for optimal relationships. * Legal aspects of leases. Registration fee is $15 for those who are registered for the Midwest Women in Agriculture Conference and $20 for all others. To register, contact Kelly Heckaman at 574-372-2340. Writer: Megan Tarter, metarter@purdue.edu Source: Jenna Nees, 765-653-8411, smith535@purdue.edu Agricultural Communications: (765) 494-2722; Keith Robinson, robins89@purdue.edu Agriculture News Page A tremendous play revealing romantic love is a luxury some people in the world simply cannot afford says Liz Vercoe Related link Dembe (Fiston Barek) and Joe (Sule Rimi) in The Rolling Stone by Chris Urch The Rolling Stone runs until 20th February; 2 hours. For tickets (numbered seats are now offered), concessions and under-30s reduced prices Orange Tree Theatre Box Office: 020 8940 3633 Sign up for email newsletters from ActonW3.com, BrentfordTW8.com, ChiswickW4.com, EalingToday.co.uk, FulhamSW6.com HammersmithToday.co.uk, PutneySW15.com, ShepherdsBushW12.com, WandsworthSW18.com and WimbledonSW19.com Some time ago on holiday in Botswana, an American lady at dinner with us and local guides mentioned, in passing, a marriage between two men. Later one of the young guides, wide eyed and clearly plucking up courage, asked, "Is it OK to talk about homosexuality in your countries? Are you not offended? Here it is illegal." Being gay in Botswana meant you could be imprisoned for up to 14 years. This last piece of information is to be gleaned from a world map of laws at the centre of the programme of The Rolling Stone, Chris Urch's second play and here as a co-production with the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester. The map also shows that in Uganda, where the play is set, the penalty is even worse 14 years to life. That's the official penalty, but this play is set in 2010 when a local Ugandan newspaper called The Rolling Stone stirred up murderous religious fervour and self-righteous violence against gay and lesbian people by outing them in the paper, hundreds at a time. For three months, before it was closed by a courageous legal action, it published photographs, names and addresses on the slightest evidence and linked these people with paedophilia and terrorism. The play opens in a modern African church, cleverly hinted at by designer Joanna Scotcher using swathes of blue velvet beneath the Orange Tree balcony and place-setting gospel music from musical director James Fortune. Soon we meet two men out on a lake, talking about the starry night sky and comfortably learning about each other. Julian Moore-Cook plays Sam, a half-Irish, half-Ugandan doctor who is over from Derry, possibly seeking to understand more about himself. Outwardly he is muscular and strong but captures the inner vulnerability of never really fitting in, anywhere. Fiston Barek plays his friend and soon to be lover Dembe, a slight, almost spindly man with a fearless innocence and joyful smile that comes from feeling loved and at home. His is a performance you can't take your eyes from. Dembe's lawyer father has recently died leaving him and his twin sister Wummie (Faith Omole) to finish their studies at medical school and their big brother Joe (Sule Rimi) hoping to be made Pastor of the local church. The cast is completed by haughty hip-rolling Mama (Jo Martin), their motherly but social-ladder-climbing neighbour, and her daughter Naome (Faith Alabi), who has mysteriously stopped speaking. Disturbingly Mama hopes Joe can cast out whichever demons have possessed Naomi, "in the name of Jesus". So here we are, in the oppressive Ugandan heat, at the crossroad of science and reason and magical thought or, if you wish, blind belief. And everything gets put to the test by the sudden attack on homosexuals. It's a witch hunt that can't even be challenged; quite the opposite, in fact, for it demands denunciations from those who want to stay untainted. Writer Urch, director Ellen McDougall and this really tremendous group of actors convincingly show us what it is to be a mere human in fear for your life and livelihood and, through poverty, have nowhere to run. It took six years just to get the church built on a bit of waste ground and as Mama says bitterly, "We are standing on neglect". In those circumstances what seems the best option at the time may be the worst with hindsight. But the worst option at the time might mean there is no future in which to have hindsight. The sweet understanding between the voiceless Naome and honest Dembe, the bitterness of Wummie in being forced from hope, and the agony for an ambitious pastor in discovering his congregation has a dangerously hardline take on Godliness, keep audiences on the edge of their seat. In the world they create for us love, as most of us know it, is a luxury. And yet somehow, despite these helpless lives, as crushable as ants, this play is ultimately a story of hope that goodness will prevail. Liz Vercoe Images: Manuel Harlan. January 20, 2016 An Illinois appellate court in November affirmed the former Bolingbrook police officer's murder conviction and sentence in the 2004 death of Kathleen Savio, whose body was found in her suburban Chicago home's bathtub. The court upheld Peterson's 38-year sentence, meaning he won't be paroled until 2047. In their appeal filed Tuesday, Peterson's lawyers argue he was denied a fair trial due to the use of so-called hearsay statements, as well as other alleged critical errors, during court proceedings in Will County. Peterson is scheduled to stand trial on charges he solicited an inmate to kill Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow, who prosecuted the Savio case. ROCK ISLAND -- A Wal-Mart superstore still is scheduled to be built in the city, Rock Island Mayor Dennis Pauley said in Tuesday's annual state of the city address. Addressing the Rock Island Rotary and Kiwanis clubs at the Quad Cities Botanical Center, Mayor Pauley said questions about the project have arisen since Wal-Mart announced last week it was closing 269 stores, including 154 in the U.S. "Yes, they're closing a lot of stores, but they are express stores that are very small," Mayor Pauley said. "At the end of the article (last week), it said they will continue to build superstores. Ours is to be a superstore." Rock Island has spent about $15 million on the Wal-Mart project, the mayor has said. City officials expect to recoup $4.5 million from the sale of the site while creating new sales tax and jobs. In October, the city council approved selling the Watch Tower Plaza site to Wal-Mart's development arm for $4.5 million. The agreement includes a 180-day feasibility period during which Wal-Mart can cancel the deal for any reason. "The project is still online," Mayor Pauley said. "There is nothing saying the project is dead. "About three or four weeks ago, Wal-Mart had their surveyors in from Chicago," he said. "You can see the stakes out there with little flags on top. The project is right on target. "We're just waiting for Wal-Mart to come to us and tell us when they're going to begin," he said. "The ball is in their court. We can't push them." Mayor Pauley on Tuesday also announced Chad and Nieko Summers plan to open a Healthy Harvest Urban Farms grocery store by April at 1616 2nd Ave. They also have a Healthy Harvest store at 3900 Archer Drive in East Moline. The mayor said the store will offer the downtown's growing population grocery items and fresh produce grown within 50 miles of the store. The Summers have signed a lease with Renaissance Rock Island, a nonprofit, public-private partnership in the city, for part of the former Goldman family block. The most recent business in the site was Tita's Linens by Claudia. Chad Summers said their East Moline store, opened in the spring of 2014, has been very successful, and they intend to continue running it. "We sell fresh produce -- everything from a healthy perspective," he said. "If it is meat, it is grass-fed from local farms, pasture-raised chickens. It's top-of-the-line food with healthier choices. "Our prices are a lot lower," he said. "The whole thing is we're trying to grow a local food system that continues to get stronger." Mayor Pauley also said Rock Island is starting 2016 with a balanced budget and a strong AA2 bond rating that is much better than the state's. He said 2015 was an exciting year for economic development, including a $12 million Hill and Valley facility at 320 44th St. that retained 140 jobs and is expected to soon add 24 more. The mayor also cited UnityPoint Health's $65 million emergency room and heart center that opened in March 2015. ROCK ISLAND -- The Rock Island County Board voted Tuesday to cap the possible bond issuance for the courthouse annex project at $28 million. The annex would let the county shift operations from the old county courthouse adjacent to the justice center at 3rd Avenue and 15th Street in Rock Island. County officials contend the old courthouse is rundown and no longer meets minimum standards for Illinois courts. The plan can be accomplished with no tax increase, using a levy already in place for the justice center and avoiding a tax referendum, according to 14th Judicial Circuit Chief Judge Walter Braud. Tuesday's 22-2 vote means the county can issue up to $28 million worth of bonds in support of the project. Board members Don Johnston, D-Moline, and Bob Westpfahl, R-Milan, voted against the measure, which also included setting a Feb. 16 public hearing on the matter during the board's monthly meeting, board chairman Ken "Moose" Maranda said. More details about the proposal will be presented then, county administrator Dave Ross said. Judge Braud said the current plan for the annex would cost about $30 million. Since the bonds will be the primary revenue source for the project, planners are looking for ways to trim to match the bond cap. A previous plan for a $72 million, 125,000-square-foot courthouse and renovating the county office building was rejected in 2013 when the Rock Island County Board voted against a referendum on the proposal. In other business Tuesday, the board approved a tax anticipation warrant that lets the county pay bills for Hope Creek Care Center in East Moline using a $500,000 internal loan the county will pay off with property tax revenue when it begins to arrive. The vote was unanimous, with board member Rodney Simmer, R-Rock Island, not present. NORWALK, Iowa (AP) Donald Trump brandished the endorsement of conservative Republican firebrand Sarah Palin at an Iowa rally Wednesday in the increasingly intense 2016 GOP presidential sweepstakes. "We're almost at the finish line," Trump said Wednesday, where he implored his supporters to be sure to cast their vote at the lead-off Feb. 1 caucus. The billionaire businessman touted Palin's support, as well as some setbacks facing his main rival, Sen. Ted Cruz, describing Tuesday as "a good day for Trump." But Palin, who was expected to campaign alongside her new political ally Wednesday, was a no show at the Iowa rally. A campaign spokeswoman did not immediately respond to questions about why she was not in attendance. Palin, the former governor of Alaska and 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee, erupted onto the stage in Ames, Iowa, Tuesday, announcing her support for Trump and echoing his campaign's mantra that it's time to "Make America Great Again." "No more pussy-footing around," Palin told a fired-up crowd. The endorsement comes as Trump is locked in a dead heat with Cruz in Iowa. The two have been ramping up their attacks against one another as the Feb. 1 caucuses have neared. In the statement announcing the endorsement, Trump's campaign described Palin as a conservative who "helped launch the careers of several key future leaders of the Republican Party and conservative movement." The statement also quoted Cruz as once saying he "would not be in the United States Senate were it not for Gov. Sarah Palin. ... She can pick winners." Campaigning in New Hampshire, Cruz said, "Regardless of what Sarah intends to do in 2016, I will remain a big, big fan of Sarah Palin." Palin endorsed Cruz in his 2012 Senate race and said as recently as last month that he and Trump were both in her top tier of candidates, making the endorsement a symbolic blow to Cruz. Earlier Tuesday, Cruz faced another blow to his efforts in Iowa, after the state's Republican Gov. Terry Branstad said at a renewable fuels conference near Des Moines that Iowans should reject Cruz because he supports phasing out the fuel standard. Asked if he wants to see Cruz defeated in Iowa, Branstad responded: "Yes." Palin's endorsement speech combining the folksy charm and everywoman appeal that initially made her a GOP superstar with defiant taunting of a "busted" GOP establishment that she slammed for counting both Trump and herself out. Palin offered her full-throated support for Trump and slammed President Barack Obama as the "capitulator in chief." Trump, she said, would be a commander in chief who would "let our warriors do their job and go kick ISIS' ass!" She also took aim at the Republican establishment for "attacking their own front-runner" and offered a challenge to those who have suggested that Trump, whose positions on issues like gun control and abortion rights have shifted over the years, isn't conservative enough. "Oh my goodness gracious. What the heck would the establishment know about conservativism?" she said. "Who are they to tell us that we're not conservative enough? ... Give me a break." Trump, whose team had been touting a major, surprise announcement, praised Palin as "a friend, and a high-quality person whom I have great respect for" in a statement. "We're going to give' em hell," he said after her speech. Palin will also be joining Trump at two events Wednesday, including a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Palin was a virtual newcomer to the national political arena when 2008 GOP presidential nominee John McCain named her as his running mate. She has since risen to prominence as one of the most outspoken conservatives in the party. She signed on as a Fox News commentator after resigning as Alaska's governor in 2010, a job she held until last year. Trump and Palin did not discuss how the endorsement had come about, but Trump's national political director, Michael Glassner, previously worked for her. Trump said earlier Tuesday that he doesn't typically put much stock in endorsements, but said of this one, "I think it could very well result in votes." GOP consultant Kevin Madden said the timing will likely help Trump crowd out Cruz's message as the Iowa caucuses approach. "I think it helps Trump overwhelm the news cycle with Trump coverage at a critical time," he said. Madden also said Palin's support could help shield Trump from charges that his past positions make him too liberal to be the GOP nominee, "giving Trump some rhetorical cover from a conservative validator in the eyes of many grassroots conservatives." The event came a day after Palin's oldest son, Track, was arrested in a domestic violence case in which his girlfriend told police she was afraid he would shoot himself with a rifle. Track Palin was charged with assault, interfering with the report of a domestic violence crime and possessing a weapon while intoxicated in connection with the incident. Meng Brings NASA Astronaut To Queens On October 17, U.S. Rep. Grace Meng (D-Queens) brought NASA astronaut Dr. Jonny Kim to Queens where he met and spoke with students at Francis... Celebrating Columbus The Federation of Italian-American Organizations of Queens (FIAO) held their annual Columbus Day parade in Astoria, on Saturday, October 8, during Italian Heritage Month. The... Russo-Elling Mourned More than 300 first responders lined up on Thursday night to honor FDNY EMT Lt. Alison Russo-Elling, as her body was placed into a waiting... Hot 100 Returning to #1 on the Hot 100 this week is Duke Dumonts Ocean Drive, moving up from #2 after hitting the top spot late last year. Justin Bieber takes a new peak withLove Yourself at #2 up from #5. Snakehips breaks into the Top 10 at #7 from #26 with All My Friends featuring Tinashe & Chance The Rapper. The Weeknds In The Night and Taylor Swifts Out Of The Woods both move into the Top 10 at #9 from #11 and #10 from #13 respectively. Elle Kings Exs & Ohs makes plenty of progress at #17 from #54, as does Alessia Caras Here at #19 from #37. Fleur Easts Sax makes it to a new high point at #25 from #44. Mashd N Kutcher come close to hitting most moved this week as My Sunshine moves to #27 from #63, however, that title goes to Zara Larssons Lush Life at #16 from #66, a move of 50 places. Jonas Blues cover of Fast Car takes the highest debut this week at #23 with the next closest entry being Tobtoks rendition of Fast Car featuring River at #39. Charlie Puths One Call Away re-enters at #45 with Jess & Matts Nothing Mattersdebuting close behind at #50. ARIA Singles Bieber holds #1 with Love Yourself for a sixth week now, leading ahead of Jonas Blues Fast Car featuring Dakota, which now sits at a new peak of #2 up from #4. Snakehips Gold-selling All My Friends featuring Tinashe & Chance The Rapper also sees a new peak at #3 up from #6. Zara Larsson breaks into the Top 10 with Lush Life landing at #8 from #15, as Alessia Cara just misses out on the bracket at #12 from #19. Fleur East scores the highest debut on the Singles chart with Sax entering at #25, just ahead of Mashd N Kutchers My Sunshine, which debuts at #26. ARIA Albums The late David Bowie debuts at #1 on the ARIA Albums chart this week with latest album Blackstar. His 25 th solo studio album, released on his 69 th birthday hits #1 following a huge spike in sales after the news of his passing last week. It marks Bowies first #1 on the ARIA charts ever, though Scary Monsters and Lets Dance were #1 in Australia before the ARIA Charts existed. The news of Bowies death also sees twelve other albums of his move into the Top 50, most notably Nothing Has Changed (The Best Of David Bowie) at #3, Best Of Bowieat #9 and The Best Of David Bowie 1969/1974 at #14. At #6 this week is the debut of Adam Brand and the Outlaws self-titled album, the first release by Brand with his new group. Straight Outta Comptons soundtrack enters at #15 and marks the last notable new entry into the chart. Click here to view all this weeks charts, including our HOT100 national airplay (by genre & state), iTunes, Spotify, Shazam, ARIA, AIR & AMRAP. Singles To Radio Returning to #1 on the Hot 100 this week is Duke Dumonts Ocean Drive, moving up from #2 after hitting the top spot late last year. Justin Bieber takes a new peak withLove Yourself at #2 up from #5. Snakehips breaks into the Top 10 at #7 from #26 with All My Friends featuring Tinashe & Chance The Rapper. The Weeknds In The Night and Taylor Swifts Out Of The Woods both move into the Top 10 at #9 from #11 and #10 from #13 respectively. Elle Kings Exs & Ohs makes plenty of progress at #17 from #54, as does Alessia Caras Here at #19 from #37. Fleur Easts Sax makes it to a new high point at #25 from #44. Mashd N Kutcher come close to hitting most moved this week as My Sunshine moves to #27 from #63, however, that title goes to Zara Larssons Lush Life at #16 from #66, a move of 50 places. Jonas Blues cover of Fast Car takes the highest debut this week at #23 with the next closest entry being Tobtoks rendition of Fast Car featuring River at #39. Charlie Puths One Call Away re-enters at #45 with Jess & Matts Nothing Mattersdebuting close behind at #50. Singles To Radio Jack Garratt / Breathe Life / UMA Kid Ink ft. Fetty Wap / Promise / SME Twenty One Pilots / Stressed Out / WMA Nathan Sykes / Over And Over Again / MUSHROOM Siege / Crunk / MOS/UMA Most Added Twenty One Pilots / Stressed Out / WMA Flo Rida / My House / ATL/WMA The Chain Smokers / Roses / SME Sia / Cheap Thrills / INERTIA Selena Gomez / Hands To Myself / UMA ARIA Singles Bieber holds #1 with Love Yourself for a sixth week now, leading ahead of Jonas Blues Fast Car featuring Dakota, which now sits at a new peak of #2 up from #4. Snakehips Gold-selling All My Friends featuring Tinashe & Chance The Rapper also sees a new peak at #3 up from #6. Zara Larsson breaks into the Top 10 with Lush Life landing at #8 from #15, as Alessia Cara just misses out on the bracket at #12 from #19. Fleur East scores the highest debut on the Singles chart with Sax entering at #25, just ahead of Mashd N Kutchers My Sunshine, which debuts at #26. ARIA Albums The late David Bowie debuts at #1 on the ARIA Albums chart this week with latest album Blackstar. His 25 th solo studio album, released on his 69 th birthday hits #1 following a huge spike in sales after the news of his passing last week. It marks Bowies first #1 on the ARIA charts ever, though Scary Monsters and Lets Dance were #1 in Australia before the ARIA Charts existed. The news of Bowies death also sees twelve other albums of his move into the Top 50, most notably Nothing Has Changed (The Best Of David Bowie) at #3, Best Of Bowieat #9 and The Best Of David Bowie 1969/1974 at #14. At #6 this week is the debut of Adam Brand and the Outlaws self-titled album, the first release by Brand with his new group. Straight Outta Comptons soundtrack enters at #15 and marks the last notable new entry into the chart. Click here to view all this weeks charts, including our HOT100 national airplay (by genre & state), iTunes, Spotify, Shazam, ARIA, AIR & AMRAP. However, the market is maturing. Regulators and infrastructure managers have adapted to the multi-operator scenario; incumbent operators have begun to realise competition can grow the market for everyone, responding to the newcomers with service innovations; and most of the early operators are still there today, which means there is increasing management experience of how to run an open-access business effectively. This year at least two new operators will enter the German market. Locomore is pioneering the use of crowdfunding to finance a Stuttgart - Berlin service, which is due to begin in September. Locomore refers to the initiative as "crowd ticketing" - each backer of the crowdfunding campaign will effectively be purchasing a ticket which can be used flexibly without restriction on its services. This cooperative structure totally changes the relationship between operator and passenger, who also stand to benefit directly from the venture's commercial success. By December 14, Locomore had secured 283,175 towards its 460,000 target with 47 days of the campaign remaining. In addition, the company has raised 150,000 from other sources and expects to obtain a further 60,000 in loans. Another start-up, DerSchnellzug, plans to launch services from Stuttgart to Hamburg via Wurzburg, Hannover and Bremen, a route not currently served by DB. HKX expanded its network on December 15 when it extended selected Hamburg - Cologne trains to serve Bonn, Koblenz, and Frankfurt. Elsewhere in Europe, the prospects look good. In Austria, Westbahn has increased capacity on its Vienna - Salzburg services, and is planning to extend some trains west to Innsbruck, while in Italy NTV has restructured its debts, increased its capital, and ordered eight Pendolino trains from Alstom to expand its network and increase frequencies on existing routes. A new long-term track-access agreement has enabled Britain's Hull Trains to order five new bi-mode trains from Hitachi Rail Europe for its London - Hull services while in August the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) approved an application by Arriva subsidiary Alliance Rail Holdings for a new open-access inter-city service from London to Blackpool North. This is all positive, but there are still challenges. The extent of market opening varies between countries and so do infrastructure access charges - a major consideration for start-ups and a factor which often puts rail at an immediate disadvantage compared with other modes such as long-distance buses. The shortage of suitable rolling stock - and the time it takes to get new trains into service - capacity constraints, and finding skilled staff are also factors. The Fourth Railway Package will lay the foundations for further liberalisation and should make life easier for new entrants. However European legislation alone will not guarantee on-rail competition and commitment is needed at a national level to achieve success. Infrastructure charges, which represent a big chunk of costs, need to reflect rail's superior environmental performance - why should rail pay a higher proportion of its infrastructure costs if it generates lower carbon emissions than other modes? A more progressive attitude to infrastructure charging is needed to spread the benefits of open-access across the continent. Chinese manufacturers' desire to improve the speed and reliability of exports by up to 20 days compared with sea, and reduce costs by up to 65% compared with air, is driving this trend along with the Chinese government's "One Belt One Road" strategy to increase western trade from industrialising inland cities. Since the trial of the inaugural service between Beijing and Hamburg in 2008, 15 Chinese cities now boast a regular European railfreight service, with many others served by block trains. According to data compiled by the International Union for Road-Rail Combined Transport (UIRR), railfreight traffic between China and Germany reached 1.6 million tonne-km in 2014, and UIRR says it expects growth of 20, 30 or even 40% in the next few years. Indeed intermodal traffic using the Trans-Siberian railway between China and Russia rose by 89% in the first nine months of 2015, and some carriers say they expect triple digit growth; DB Schenker, DHL, Geodis Wilson, Gefco and UPS are all key players and many have added new services in 2015, with further additions expected in 2016. Such impressive growth follows the addition of less-than-container loads (LCL) as well as relaxation of tariffs and improvements to customs procedures; Russian Railways (RZD) says the rate for 40 foot containers to and from China fell by 42% in 2014, a condition that was retained in 2015. The rate for 20 foot containers fell by 50%. "Rail between Asia and Europe is now a very reliable service and we have no challenges with customs or security," says Mr Charles Kaufmann, DHL Global Forwarding's CEO for North Asia and head of value-added services for Asia Pacific. "We use transit documents so the containers don't need to be cleared until they reach the EU." Improvements in rail infrastructure on the region's key corridors are also critical and Russian Railways' (RZD) president Mr Oleg Belozerov says RZD will continue to enhance its eastern infrastructure so "the transport of goods along the Trans-Siberian is reliable, fast, and cheap for our customers." Attract traffic Railways in central Asia are engaged in similar infrastructure enhancement schemes as they look to attract traffic. The Asian Development Bank says it is supporting the 10 members of the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation programme to develop six multimodal transport corridors to improve links with each other and rest of the world. Even Korail says it is keen to join the east-west freight party by reintroducing services on the inter-Korean railway, and supporting RZD's efforts to build a new port at Rason, North Korea. These improvements will increase the ability of carriers to offer combinations of sea-rail and rail-air freight to their customers from more locations. However, the precarious political situation on the Korean peninsula shows the fragility of these plans, and highlights the region's instability, particularly Russia's seemingly deteriorating relationship with the west. It also puts the problem of eastbound freight under the spotlight. While volumes on these routes are growing - DB Schenker increased its Hamburg - Wuhan service to five days per week from one in 2015 - many containers are still returning to China empty, with Russia's current restriction on European food imports hindering shippers' ability to close the gap. Political events in 2015 may not have affected demand. However, long-term stability is a concern, which makes predictions about future prospects almost futile. The railfreight sector and businesses may appear optimistic heading into 2016, but in reality they are quietly holding their breath. Following a letter submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice in which Canadian Pacific accused several Class I railroads of joining forces to put a stop to its pursuit of Norfolk Southern, the railroad on Jan. 20, 2016 issued a white paper, The Opportunity to Alleviate Congestion in Chicago, arguing that its proposed combination with NS will alleviate congestion in the key rail hub of Chicago, where gridlock in the winter of 2013-14 hobbled the industry for months and threatened to hinder the U.S. economic recovery. Following is the full text of the white paper. A PDF version can be downloaded by clicking HERE. The status quo is not an option for North American rail Canadian Pacific (CP) has proposed a transformational merger with Norfolk Southern Corp. (NS) that would enhance competition and create new markets and options for customers across North America. This transaction would also alleviate congestion in the key rail hub of Chicago, where gridlock in the winter of 2013-14 hobbled the industry for months and threatened to hinder the U.S. economic recovery. A CP-NS combined network would have a meaningful, lasting impact on Chicago congestion for the clear benefit of customers, competitors and the broader economy. A CP-NS combination would reduce congestion and create capacity in Chicago by: Providing options to shift traffic to alternative routings, which would also serve to relieve pressure across the network. Making operational improvements to a switching carrier and moving processing interchanges within Chicago to underutilized hubs outside the city. Identifying a number of other opportunities for operational improvements in train and routing management. Chicago is a Capacity-Constrained Major Railway Hub Chicago is the most critical freight hub within North Americas rail system where the threat of gridlock is constant and rooted in the status quo. In 2014, roughly 25% of all rail freight traffic traveled through Chicago[1] where six major Class I freight railroads connect. According to the recently released Amtrak Chicago Gateway Blue Ribbon Panel Report, Chicago is also the most important hub in Amtraks national network.[2] Additionally, more than 700 weekday Metra commuter rail trains operate in the Chicago area.[3] Today, this hub is a chokepoint for rail freight and passenger traffic as capacity in the region is constrained. On a good day, it takes a train on average 30 hours to get through Chicago about the same amount of time it takes the same train to travel from Chicago to the East Coast.[4] But, in this constrained environment, surges in freight volumes, severe weather and other adverse events can quickly lead to significant disruption, and that disruption can impact the national economy. We learned this lesson in the winter of 2013-2014, when a bumper grain crop and prolonged, extreme weather conditions collided to create gridlock that impacted the entire North American rail system for several months. With freight volumes expected to double by 2025[5], this is a problem that must be addressed now. Otherwise, the next Chicago rail crisis is inevitable.[6] The Amtrak Blue Ribbon Panel issued a call to action with a stark warning: If aggressive action is not taken now to address what may well be our countrys most significant transportation bottleneck, the adverse national, regional and local impacts on passenger and freight rail transportation, and on the economy, will be enormous.[7] No Easy Fix There is neither an easy nor inexpensive fix. With so many stakeholders, it is difficult to gain alignment and reach consensus on improvement initiatives, especially since most solutions are costly, complicated and impact different stakeholders in different ways. Despite best efforts to address congestion in Chicago, programs such as the Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency Program (CREATE) have fallen far short. Among other problems, CREATE lacks funding.[8] Even fully funded, CREATE on its own cannot do enough to avert future gridlock. Much more must be done. CP is Focused on Improving Chicago In 2014, approximately 22% of all CPs traffic traveled through Chicago, and roughly 47% of all of CPs interchange traffic interchanged in the city. Even when things are functioning smoothly in Chicago, it serves as a chokepoint. Shippers have complained that it takes 48 hours for a train to get from LA to Chicago and then another 30 hours to travel across the city.[9] The time to get through Chicago translates into higher inventory and equipment costs for the entire supply chain, and additional delays due to surge volumes or inclement weather can substantially increase these negative impacts and costs. Consequently, when problems arise in Chicago, as they did in 2013-14, customers across the network pay a higher price. The importance of a fluid Chicago to the North American rail industry as a whole means it is critical to be proactive in finding solutions before the next significant gridlock situation occurs. As delays occur, customers typically will request additional cars to make up for the slower cycle times.[10] However, adding more cars is often the wrong thing to do. It is like adding cars to a highway during rush hour: It exacerbates the congestion and prolongs the disruption. A CP-NS combination provides both the flexibility to avoid Chicago and the ability to improve operations in Chicago, which will be of enormous benefit to CP and NS customers. A more efficient Chicago lowers costs, improves service and, in turn, enables our customers to be more productive and more competitive. Positive Impact of Transaction Encompasses More Than CP-NS A CP-NS combination would also have a much broader impact by opening up capacity for other carriers and improving operational efficiency within Chicago. Furthermore, even if some carriers continue to insist on a Chicago interchange, notwithstanding the alternative locations that a CP-NS combination makes possible, the option to shift traffic to these alternative routings temporarily provides a critical safety valve that can relieve pressure across the network. As a result, the national rail network would be more robust and resilient. Claims that a CP-NS combination would have a minimal impact on Chicago or even exacerbate the problem are unfounded. While CP does not yet have access to relevant NS data to evaluate the full magnitude of the impact a merger could have on Chicago, preliminary analysis shows that it is substantial and positive. In the North American rail industry, there is complete agreement on the need to reduce, not add to, the more than 13.5 million railcars that pass through Chicago annually. A CP-NS combination would be a positive step forward in reducing this traffic and alleviating congestion in Chicago. However, the impact on Chicago of a CP-NS combination is not just about current NS and CP traffic in isolation. Both railways interchange with other railways in the city and a combined network allows both run-through and bypass options for this other traffic, thereby removing processing and duplicate interchanges within the city. Direct routes from eastern Canada and the northeast U.S. to Kansas City or St. Louis and intermediate interchanges open up new scenarios and reduce dependency on Chicago. Thus, we are confident that once we are able to review NS data, we will be able to identify even more opportunities to unlock additional capacity in Chicago. Bypass Congested Chicago Yards on the Belt Railway of Chicago (BRC) and Indiana Harbor Belt (IHB) Railway BRC and IHB act as the middle men in Chicago for rail freight. The interchange between Class Is of a substantial amount of Chicago traffic is handled by these two railroads, which operate on capacity-constrained routes and yards. A combined CP-NS entity will be the majority owner of the IHB, which would put it in a position to make much needed improvements in the operational efficiency of this switching carrier while ensuring that IHB switches all carriers on a neutral and non-discriminatory basis. Further, rather than stopping in BRC and IHB yards for processing, a combined CP-NS will be able to build trains elsewhere and bypass yards in Chicago for interchange with other Class I railroads at underutilized hubs outside of Chicago. This reduces congestion and creates much needed capacity for all carriers on the BRC and IHB. Specific Opportunities to Alleviate Congestion in Chicago CP has identified the following opportunities in the combined network that would help reduce congestion in Chicago and expects to identify additional opportunities once it obtains access to NS data: Manifest Trains A manifest train is made up of cars, or blocks of cars, with multiple origins and/or destinations. Manifest trains require a considerable amount of switching as cars from multiple origins must be assembled together in blocks by destination, and those blocks must then be joined with other cars or blocks of cars headed in the same direction to form a train. Today, much of the blocking of CPs manifest traffic is performed at CPs Bensenville Yard in Chicago and interchanged over the BRC. With a CP-NS combination, CP could capitalize on blocking activities performed at NS Yard in Elkhart, IN. Current CP traffic could be added to manifest trains that could then run straight through or bypass Chicago entirely. Blocking for westbound traffic that CP currently interchanges with other western carriers could similarly shift to Elkhart and run through or avoid Chicago. For example, CP could block traffic from eastern Canada and northeast U.S. into Elkhart, adding to manifest trains that operate into Union Pacifics (UP) yards at North Platte, NE, Proviso, IL and Pine Bluff, AR. Automotive Trains CP serves automotive plants in Ontario and must interchange much of this traffic in Chicago. Loaded automotive racks (rail cars used to move automobiles), from the plants headed west are interchanged in Chicago with either the UP or Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF). When an automotive customer requests empty automotive racks, CP gets the majority of those racks from other carriers in Chicago. A CP-NS combination would provide the option to interchange loaded traffic at St. Louis, Kansas City, and at intermediate interchanges south of Chicago. In addition, it would allow for sourcing of empty automobile racks from locations other than Chicago, enabling more efficient and reliable handling and routing of this equipment, while reducing congestion in Chicago. Intermodal Trains CP has two intermodal train departures per day from one terminal in Chicago involving 10 destination terminals. NS has upwards of 18 departures per day out of four Chicago intermodal terminals connecting to 34 destination terminals in the south and east. A CP-NS combination provides options to consolidate or to use more efficient routings for at least some of this traffic. For example, westbound CP intermodal traffic that CP today terminates on the west side of Chicago could move via Buffalo into NS 47th Street intermodal terminal, eliminating the cross town move through Chicago. Quad Cities[11] CP currently must route eastbound Quad Cities traffic through Chicago. By utilizing NS connections in western Illinois extending into Iowa, a combined CP-NS may be able to route that traffic more efficiently and bypass Chicago without a circuitous backhaul to Kansas City. Kansas City and Detroit CP traffic that originates in eastern Canada and northeastern U.S. that is currently routed via Chicago could be routed more efficiently through Detroit to Kansas City for interchange with other carriers. The traffic would bypass Chicago and save approximately 73 route miles.[12] Westbound CP traffic received at Kansas City could be handled similarly. St. Louis Eastbound manifest grain and occasional potash trains that originate in the northern plain states or in western Canada could avoid an intermediate handling on the BRC by moving directly to Elkhart and then down into St. Louis where they could be interchanged with the UP or with the river barges. Buffalo CP believes that Buffalo is an underutilized gateway to the northeast that could be used to route manifest, intermodal and unit trains that are currently routed through Chicago. This could include Croxton, NJ and Elizabeth Marine Terminal, NJ intermodal traffic as well as traffic from western Canada. CP traffic that now is routed over Lake Erie could be routed over the shorter route south of the lakes and eliminate two border crossings. Proposed Transaction will Positively Address Congestion Issues in Chicago A combined CP-NS network will reduce congestion in Chicago and free up capacity for other railways. By diverting hand-offs between railways to underutilized hubs outside the city and reducing processing in yards within the city, there is a real opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to address the congestion in Chicago while significantly improving service for diverted traffic. The result is a stronger and more resilient rail network better able to avoid and recover from future service disruptions. [1] http://business.financialpost.com/welcome-to-chokepoint-usa, By Kristine Owram, November 18, 2015 [2] Report of the Amtrak Chicago Gateway Blue Ribbon Panel at 10 (October 2015) (Amtrak Report). [3] Id. at 12. [4] Id. at 35. [5] Illinois Section American Society of Civil Engineers, Rail 2014 Report Card for Illinois Infrastructure, April 2014, http://www.isasce.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/2014-Illinois-Rail-Final-Report.pdf [6] Amtrak Report at 7 . [7] Id. at 45. [8] Amtrak Report at 18. [9] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/08/us/chicago-train-congestion-slows-whole-country.html?_r=0, By John Schwartz, May 7, 2012 [10] The amount of equipment (cars and locomotives) needed to move a given volume in a given time is a function of train speed. Slower train speeds require more equipment to move the same volume. Consider a trainset that normally makes four roundtrips in a month. If the trainset is able to make only two roundtrips due to system congestion, another trainset would be required in order to move the same volume. [11] Davenport and Bettendorf, IA and Rock Island, Moline and East Moline, IL. [12] Comparison of NS route Kansas City to Detroit via NS Springfield-Ft Wayne-Butler (717.7 Miles) vs. CP route Kansas City to Detroit via CPRS via Sabula-Bensenville-Elkhart (790.8 Miles). Welcome to Railway Gazette. This website uses cookies to improve your experience. By continuing to browse this site you are agreeing to our use of these cookies. You can learn more about the cookies we use here. OK Prisa's newspaper El Pais is launching a complete news video suite for smart TVs designed by Fractal Media. The smart TV platform intends to strengthen El Pais' presence in the audiovisual sector, looking to transform the newspaper into an almost linear TV channel. Through the launch, Prisa group, which renounced TV after selling its share in Cuatro and Canal+, is targeting video consumers with a new scenario.The app, which is initially available for Samsung models from 2015 and later, will also launch an LG version soon. The platform will stream news content as well as various video blogs.We have completed a smart TV development in record time for El Pais, which is a milestone for our company, said Pablo Varela, managing director, Fractal Media Video is key for any online media. It's not only about YouTube, it's about controlling the business with your own, efficient technology, able to arrive on any screen, especially smart TVs, and ready to build a standalone business.According to figures from the Interactive Advertising Bureau ( IAB ), there are six million smart TVs in Spain, 1.5 million of which are connected. The high online consumption habits of the Spanish have driven HBO to set Spain as the next country in which to launch its standalone streaming platform. Before the end of the year, HBO will launch in Spain a similar service to HBO Go (the Americas) or HBO Nordic (Northern Europe), increasing competition in a market that has just seen the arrival of Netflix The plans were revealed by Richard Pepler, HBO's CEO in an interview with Bloomberg. We follow the money, we're making a determination of where we think the most profits lie.As a result, HBO will retain exclusive rights to its shows, meaning that pay-TV platforms won't be licensed to show hits like Game of Thrones. Once the current distribution deals expire, fans will only be able to watch HBO programming on the streaming platform in the country.In Spain, about three in four people have high speed Internet access and nearly half subscribe to broadband but not pay-TV. Spanish residents showed high awareness of HBO, said Simon Sutton, HBO's president of international content distribution. And he left the door open for new launches: Spain is not the first and Spain is not the last.The announcement indicates HBO's intention to become a serious content provider through mobile and connected platforms. 2016 will also be the year of HBO Gos expansion in Latin America - the service is already available in Colombia and Mexico The move will also affect Spain's video-on-demand (VOD) and over-the-top (OTT) markets. With growing, but low, consumption of pay-streaming platforms, the market has been said to be undeveloped . However, Netflix launched three months ago and national services as Wuaki.tv, Filmin or Yomvi have been operating in the country for over two years. Cris Abrego and Charlie Corwin have had oversight of Latin American operations added to their North American responsibilities for Endemol Shine Group. The two will now serve as co-chairmen, Endemol Shine Americas, while continuing in their roles as co-CEOs of Endemol Shine North America. The two executives, who are based in Los Angeles, report to Sophie Turner Laing, CEO of Endemol Shine Group."Alongside strong ratings and new pick-ups in scripted, non-scripted and digital, Charlie and Cris's first year leading Endemol Shine North America as a combined business has seen significant success in the US Hispanic market and Mexico, said Turner Laing. This creates a solid foundation for greater collaboration throughout the Americas under their guidance, and having them in these expanded roles will help further leverage our strengths across these key markets.Since being named co-chairmen and co-CEOs of Endemol Shine North America in October 2014, the two executives have overseen the integration of the Endemol USA and Shine America teams, creating new scripted, unscripted and Latino divisions. Over the last year, the company has produced nearly 1,000 hours of programming across 30 networks including FOXs and CBSs top-rated 2015 summer series MasterChef and Big Brother, and Bravos No 1 series, The Real Housewives of Atlanta.Charlie and I feel like were building something very special here in North America," Abrego said. "The integration process is behind us, the team is in place and we have a lot of momentum across many of our divisions. And we're now looking forward to working with our colleagues in Latin America to expand upon their successes in the region."In the Hispanic market, Endemol Shine Latino just launched Gran Hermano on Telemundo, the first Spanish-language version of Big Brother to air in the US. It also recently produced initial seasons of both Big Brother and MasterChef in Mexico. Later this year, Endemol Shine Latino will produce its first scripted series, El Vato, for NBCUniverso.Corwin added: "I'm thrilled to continue working with Cris and our extremely talented team. It's clearly an exciting time in our industry and Endemol Shine is uniquely positioned to excel in this rapidly changing environment both locally and globally. We are focused on offering talent, brands and broadcasters a new studio model for a new paradigm." The Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA) has appointed long-time Comcast vet Charles Cerino as its first full-time, paid president. The growth of the market worldwide, ongoing technology development and enhancement, and the overall progress and evolution of the Alliance required a full-time president, the industry group said. He will continue to promote the MoCA technology among operators worldwide, serve as spokesman, engage current members, recruit new members and generally manage the Alliance on a day-to-day basis.Cerino has been president of the Alliance since 2007, while also serving as board representative for Comcast. Going forward, he will continue to sit on the board as an independent representative unaffiliated with any company.The board realised that the organisation required the attention of an actively engaged president and that the best person for the job was already in place, said William Beals, vice president at MoCA I am honoured by the boards decision, and look forward to interacting with our members and operators as we continue to evolve the technology and set our sights higher and faster worldwide, said Cerino. We anticipate an exciting year for the Alliance. The progress on our next generation specifications will solidify our position in home networking for years to come.Cerino joined Comcast in 1978 as a system engineer helping to build a cable infrastructure in the Philadelphia suburbs. During his time at Comcast, he held system, region and corporate engineering positions, and was instrumental in launching Comcast's cable modem service. Cerino was also active in the Delaware Valley Chapter of the SCTE, serving as a founder, board member and president. He received his bachelor's degree from Temple University.The Alliance recently announced that MoCA 2.0 field tests in the US demonstrate better than 400Mbps net data rates. Ex-construction boss at Vostochny Cosmodrome to stay under house arrest till mid-March MOSCOW, January 20 (RAPSI) A court in Vladivistok has extended until mid-March the house arrest of Viktor Grebnev, former chief executive of TMK (Pacific Bridge Building Company), a contractor in the Vostochny Cosmodrome project, RIA Novosti reported Wednesday. According to investigators, from 2012 to the fall of 2014, Grebnev knowingly signed contracts of guarantee that were unprofitable for TMK, thereby embezzling over 288 million rubles ($3.7 million). He also signed several contracts that caused TMK over 130 million rubles ($1.7 million) in losses. TMK said it failed to pay 96 million rubles ($1.2 million) in wages to workers because of the alleged embezzlement. Investigators claim that Grebnev used the money to buy yachts and a mansion. He was released on bail of 1 million rubles ($13,000) in April. Last February, the Federal Service of Labor and Employment revealed the failure to distribute over 30.5 million rubles ($389,000) to 1,262 TMK employees working at the cosmodrome. Also, in December 2014, the company was ordered to pay over 61 million rubles ($777,200) of the debt to its staff. The construction of the space center, due to become Russia's main launch site, began in 2012. The facility is planned to be completed in 2016. The first manned mission is scheduled for 2018. Russian Defense Ministry ex-official to remain in jail on corruption charges MOSCOW, January 20 (RAPSI) The Moscow City Court on Wednesday upheld the detention of former head of Russian Defense Ministrys department of government contract audit, who stands charged with attempting to take a grand bribe, RAPSI reports from the courtroom. Dmitriy Nedobor will remain in jail until March 15. A bribery case was launched against an organized group involving the Defense Ministry officials from the department of government contract audit. Alleged accomplices of Nedobor, Gennady Bauman and Irina Kuznetsova, have been arrested along with him and placed in custody. Their detention was extended until March 15 as well. The department of government contract audit conducts expertize of government contracts expenses, sets their prices, analyzes the prices of the bought equipment. Nedobor, 38, reportedly became a head of the department in January, 2015. Before that he was an employee of the Finance Ministry where he worked for ten years. Nedobor held a position of a head deputy at the military contract budget policy department. Iran and Saudi Arabia are locked in two grim proxy wars -- one in Syria, and the other in Yemen. And in recent days, the long-running hostility between these two regional powers has blazed higher still. The Saudis executed a Shiite cleric for his role in fomenting the insurgency in the Kingdom's Eastern Province -- the heart of its oil industry. Iran sides with the insurgents, and Tehran has virulently condemned Riyadh for executing the cleric. Angry mobs in Iran sacked two Saudi diplomatic posts there, and the Saudis believe that Iranian authorities were complicit in the attacks. In response, Riyadh severed diplomatic and trade ties with Iran. Allied monarchies in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have Followed the Saudi lead, relaxing in varying measure their ties to Tehran. From a U.S. standpoint, this conflict raises a critical issue: how to prevent Iran from expanding its control of the vast oil reserves in the Persian Gulf. In 2014, GCC members produced nearly one-quarter of the world's crude oil, and they held more than one-third of all proven reserves. Iranian control over even a portion of this wealth could alter the regional balance of power. The Islamic Republic has shown itself to be an implacable foe of U.S. interests, while Saudi Arabia is a longtime U.S. ally. Logically, then, Washington should oppose any shift toward Iran in the balance of power in the Gulf. Yet Obama, rather than supporting the Saudis, responded to the current crisis with a renewed call for liberal change in Saudi Arabia. This response doubtless reflects the President's strained relationship with the Saudi monarchy. It also reprises a recurring theme in Washington's approach to the Mideast-North Africa (MENA) region -- its demand that the region's governments adopt liberal reforms. But this effort too often yields highly unwelcome results. President George W. Bush's plan to oust the Iraqi Baathists led to a government that hovers between being a failed state and becoming a puppet of Tehran. Libya remains immersed in the anarchy into which NATO's aerial bombardment plunged it. The Arab Spring ignited civil war in Syria and Iraq, and in doing so, it spawned the Islamic State group and greatly worsened the chaos in Yemen. The regime that finally emerged in Egypt is both less secure and less pro-American than that run by former President Hosni Mubarak, whom the Arab Spring deposed. Finally, as pockets of anarchy have proliferated, regional powers have increasingly relied on identity politics to fill the resulting power vacuums. In the process, they have further fanned the flames of sectarian conflict. Hopes that democracy will soon take hold are almost certainly vain. Securely democratic states typically rest on economies that feature complex and interdependent exchanges across internal social boundaries. Such exchanges knit society together. They also raise the expected costs to any group of resorting to violence within their country's borders. But no Muslim-majority MENA economy is structured in this way. The oil-exporting states may be wealthy, but oil exports do not create the kind of complex internal linkages required to incubate stable democracies. Instead, MENA states maintain order through robust armed forces and strong security services. They also use welfare programs, bloated public sector bureaucracies, and pervasive cronyism to buy the support of groups that might otherwise resort to violence. With so many of their resources diverted to conflict control, these states have limited opportunity to foster the economic progress from which more interdependent economies might emerge. Some leading scholars dub this conundrum the violence trap, and MENA states have no obvious way of escaping it. Efforts to graft liberal institutions onto societies caught in this trap quickly weaken the existing props of domestic order. As repression crumbles, for example, angry publics are apt to target their unrest at domestic cronyism and at the security services. But pervasive cronyism and the security apparatus are mainstays of public order. In the short run, there is nothing to replace them. Plainly, the United States is not going to stabilize the Persian Gulf by turning the Gulf monarchies into liberal states. Of course, these states may benefit from adopting some prudent liberal reforms. And Saudi institutions both political and economic are evolving. Obama appears to believe that Washington can guide this process better than Riyadh. But the historical record of his and his predecessor's efforts in this regard testify forcefully to the contrary. And clinging so tenaciously to this failed approach bespeaks ideology -- not statecraft. Pyongyang's latest nuclear test is another reminder of the seemingly intractable "problem" of North Korea. The country's pursuit of nuclear weapons has apparently been unstoppable. First quietly in the 1980s but lately rather overtly, North Korea has proceeded with its weapons program despite sanctions, isolation, military threats, and attempts at engagement and reconciliation. At a time when the United States is moving toward normalizing relations with Cuba and extolling "historic progress through diplomacy" with Iran, U.S. relations with North Korea are increasingly anachronistic. But Pyongyang's conventional military capability, its often-convoluted relations with its neighbors and the United States, and the ambiguous examples of other states' paths to developing or abandoning nuclear weapons have made "solving" the North Korean problem a complex challenge indeed. The North Korean Problem Aside from a general agreement on the need for multilateral talks and a desire for a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula, there are few other aspects of North Korean policy on which China, Russia, Japan, South Korea and the United States agree. Within each of these countries, there are strongly conflicting opinions regarding any North Korean policy that limits national, much less international, consensus. Even simply defining the North Korean problem is often difficult. Is it about the pursuit and possible proliferation of weapons of mass destruction? About the security of South Korea in the face of the North's conventional threat? Is it Pyongyang's so-called provocative behavior as a disruptor of regional stability? Is it a question of human rights, global economic access or the legitimacy of the Kim dynasty, or some combination of these issues? Domestic political considerations as much as international security concerns determine various countries' policies toward Pyongyang. And the North Korean leadership is adept at exploiting these internal and international differences. The result is that despite being tiny, constrained by international sanctions and surrounded by some of the largest military powers in the world, North Korea can still manipulate its neighbors' fears and disagreements to preserve its regime by whatever means it sees as necessary to ensure its survival. This leaves debate over past and future policies toward North Korea far from resolved. In the United States, equally erudite (and at times equally naive) arguments can be, and often are, made for and against each of the basic policy options for dealing with Pyongyang: engagement, isolation, threat or direct military action. Sanctions and attempts at international isolation may have slowed North Korea's nuclear and missile development, but they have clearly not stopped these programs. And after several decades, they appear no closer to crippling the North Korean government. Previous attempts at reconciliation and engagement have had very mixed results. While at times they have slowed North Korea's weapons of mass destruction programs, they have also perhaps granted Pyongyang the space to advance its research and preparations toward a nuclear and missile capability while distracting the world with dialogue. Threats of military action have done little to dissuade the North's nuclear and conventional weapons development, or its occasional clashes with South Korea. Such threats may have even increased Pyongyang's desire to pursue nuclear weapons - first as something to trade for security assurances, and later as a deterrent themselves. Calls for military strikes on North Korea to slow or end its nuclear and missile programs have been frequent. But they have just as frequently been dismissed because of the North's proximity to Seoul and even to Japan, questions over the immediate cost versus potential long-term benefit of such actions, and questions over just how China would respond. No Easy Answers And so the question continues to arise, what to do about North Korea? There is no easy answer, and certainly none that would satisfy all political factions in the United States, much less in each of the other immediately concerned countries. We are frequently asked what we would recommend. Stratfor traditionally has not made policy prescriptions. This has been to preserve at least some sense of objective observation and to avoid tainting our analysis and forecasts with what we may "want" to see as opposed to how things are actually developing. Moreover, policy prescription can quickly move to advocacy. Though that is a necessary role for many organizations, our role is based on the principle of providing the information necessary to make informed decisions but not asserting which is the "right" decision. Find a great selection of commercial real estate, manufactured homes, timeshares and more for Sale Buy real estate. Find a great selection of commercial real estate, manufactured homes, timeshares and more for Sale in US and Canada. Search Real Estate Property details: Omegatimeshare Store Increase traffic to your listing with Auctiva's FREE Scrolling Gallery. KONA COAST RESORT II BIANNUAL TIMESHARE FOR SALE!! KAILUA-KONA, HAWAII *FREE TIME SHARE OFFER BELOW* Kona Coast Resort II Kona Coast Resort's spacious, fully furnished villas are tastefully decorated with soothing Hawaiian accents, and include a full kitchen and all of the comforts of home. As you step out onto your private lanai, feel the tropical breezes and take in the wonder of it all. Amidst the ... Price: $ 2 Seller State of Residence: Texas State/Province: Hawaii City: Kailua Kona Zip/Postal Code: 96740 Number of Bedrooms: 1 Location: 967**, Kailua Kona, Hawaii You will be redirected to eBay Nearby 1 , We're sorry, this article is not currently available New "Top Gear" host Chris Evans recently showed signs of experiencing car sickness while filming a segment of the BBC show in California. ADVERTISEMENT Photos of the British celebrity bent over the side the the road next to an Audi R8 V10 vehicle, in which he was filming with new co-host Sabine Schmitz, were published in various U.K. tabloids over the weekend. Several reports say the 49-year-old host was seen throwing up after exiting the car, which was filming on a Monterey, Calif. racetrack. "It would be unfair to expect him to be perfect right from the word 'go,'" a source said to The Sun. "But how can someone who gets car sick possibly host 'Top Gear?'" The statement echoes the sentiments of many fans on social media, some of whom have criticized Evans since he was named former host Jeremy Clarkson's replacement for the hit BBC show last year. Sweden's housing market was predicted to cool down for 2016, but experts have been giving contrasting views about this. Based from the figures released recently, Swedish home sellers rarely asked below-asking-price for the properties compared to the last five years. The country has been practicing the kind of below-asking-price for the house which the sellers are offering to buyers for a number of years. However, this has been rare in the last three years where it dropped to 50 per cent according to the figures released this week. Booli, the online largest property marketplaces in Sweden, revealed that around 17.3 percent of the properties went for less than sellers hoped compared to the 8.7 percent last year. "It was an exceptional year for housing where prices increased dramatically in many parts of the country during the year," Josephine Linghamma, marketing manager for Booli.se, said. She added, "The share of reduced-price apartments [falling] and shorter advertising times are a natural consequence of this." The latest records on home properties advertising stated that even the length of time with which these properties are advertised reduced to just 17 days in total, which actually dropped 16 days of the total time in Gothenburg. Thus, the national average for advertising times is just 25 days. Per-Arne Sandegren, head of analysis for Marklarstatistik, the Swedish agency for real estate agent sales measurement, said, "The best thermometer will be in late January and February when it usually picks up ... it is very still cheap to borrow money and there is a sabotage of housing and a big demand still." Sandegren previously explained that even during Christmas last year, the housing market was very low. But for him, this is normal. "I would say that this part of the year, in the beginning of Christmas season it's quite normal that the market slows down a bit," he mentioned. With his statements, does this means Sweden's housing pricing crisis is just the outcomes of the last Christmas season or it would be like this all throughout the year? If this would continue, there will be a lot of consequences to observe from the country. First observation will be the changes on sellers' manner of selling and the buyers' choosing attitude on properties. Second will be the shortened advertising times of the home properties which obviously affects the agencies in this business. The right-wing Cuban-American and Tea Party Senator, Marco Rubio, of the State of Florida is the child of poor Cuban immigrants who fled Cuba. Mr. Rubio grew up poor in the sunshine state. Federal indictment shows that his relatives were heavily involved in narcotics trafficking. According to the Observer, when Rubio entered politics, he started making big money with the help of intimate friends. It happened during the time when he became Florida House majority leader in early 2003. Based on financial disclosure forms, his income was tripled from $122,000 to $330,000. His income rose again in 2008, when he became Florida House Speaker in November 2006. Florida allows politicians to simultaneously hold public office or work as "consultants" which made him work for the powerhouse lobbying firm of Broad and Cassell, which is the reason why his income eventually increased. Rubio was also making money on real estate deals. His first house in West Miami that he bought for $175,000 in 2003 was bought by Nora Cereceda in 2007 for $380,000 cash, netting him a huge profit of about $205,000. His second profitable real estate deal involves his current Coral Gables residence that he bought for $550,00 in December 2005, which he only put 10 percent down on, and got a $495,000 mortgage. More than a month later, he took out a $135,000 home equity loan on the property, as reported by Slate. When Rubio was so broke, he and his wife moved into his mother-in-law's West Miami home so they could save on rent. But they quickly recovered and bought a 1,200-square-foot residence in 2003 with a no-money-down loan. Rubio and his wife realized that the 1,200 square feet was not enough for their growing family, and they bought a 2,600-square-foot home with a pool for $550,000. This time, they put 10 percent down--only to quickly see the home appraised for $735,000. The couple quickly took out $135,000 on a home equity line. Like the rest of the world, Russia's economy is feeling the pinch of low oil prices. On top of Western economic sactions received by Russia when Crimea was annexed to the country from Ukraine in Mach 2014 and low oil prices (at below $30 a barrel), its economy has been struggling more says, International Business Times (IBT). A local report made by The Moscow Times, which came out Tuesday said that an almost 30 percent drop was recorded in Moscow's housing market last year. Coincidentally, it was the same day the International Monetary Fund (IMF) downgraded its economic forecast for Russia. It is a double whammy. Moscow once had a booming real estate market but a considerable slow down has been felt due to Kremlin's plans for long-term low oil prices. Last year, more than 113,000 aparments, excluding newly built ones have been sold in the capital but it is way below compared to 162,000 units the year before, IBT, based on a report released by another newspaper, Vedomosti. In addition, even the sector for new buildings was below the expected outcome, compared with 2014, apartments sold in 2015 was down by 18 percent. Meanwhile, the Ruble is also on its all-time low rate against the Euro. Moscow, once part of the elite list of the most expensive cities to live in has dived from rank 9 to 50th, with the Ruble spiraling down. According to Reuters, Russia's economy would contract by one percent in the next year based on IMF's forecast. The previous prediction was 0.6 percent contraction. It was done in the last quarter last year when the oil was still priced above $40 a barrel. Russia's 2016 budget to oil prices this year is $50 a barrel bit to balance the budget, the prices will need to go above $80 a barrel accroding to the country's Finance Minister, IBT concludes. Summer classes got you down? Sweating profusely on North Campus? Need a place where you can unwind with an adult beverage? Dont worry, weve all been there. Luckily, though, Athens during the summertime doesnt just mean oppressively humid days and an influx of townie activity it means a whole new world of day (and, for the more politically correct, night) drinking possibilities. In response to various reports of racism and discrimination in downtown Athens, organizers plan to hold an anti-discrimination rally and march on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day at City Hall. The rally will show support for a proposed ordinance that would attempt to combat discrimination at local downtown businesses. SHARE By David Benda of the Redding Record Searchlight Friday was the deadline to apply to fill the seat of retiring Economic Development Corp. of Shasta County President Mark Lascelles. There is no shortage of candidates, said Steven Williams, heading up the EDC committee to find Lascelles' replacement. "There are a number of applications from a wide variety of individuals, local and out of the area," Williams said. Williams declined to say how many people applied. Next up for the EDC will be going over the applications and whittling them to the number of people it wants to interview for the position. Williams hopes to get that done within the next few weeks. He also declined to say how many people will be interviewed. Lascelles announced last fall he would retire sometime this year. He has led the organization for more than five years after a career as a real estate broker. He believes the time is right as he wants to spend more time with family. Lascelles has vowed to stay with the EDC until the group finds his successor. Williams said the EDC is still on target to hire a new president by the summer. A native of New Zealand, Lascelles in September 2010 succeeded Greg O'Sullivan, who resigned in April 2010 after two years on the job. O'Sullivan had replaced Jim Zauher, who had been the EDC's president for nearly 20 years before he took the job as Redding's economic development director, a position that has since been eliminated by the city. The EDC was established in 1958. Williams said they are looking for somebody with a dynamic personality like Lascelles, who he says has been a good spokesman for the organization and has worked hard to improve Shasta County's economy. Williams said it will be important for the new president to understand the importance of facilities such as the Shasta Venture HUB, a business incubator that opened in September under Lascelles' guidance. "We need to make sure they are a good fit and can provide oversight of the entrepreneurial center (Shasta Venture HUB)," Williams said. John Corrick is the facilities manager for Fresenius Medical Care, which distributes artificial kidneys and dialysis products from its center in the Shasta Gateway Industrial Park in Shasta Lake. SHARE Fresenius Medical Care distributes its product from local facility By David Benda of the Redding Record Searchlight Kidney dialysis is a $10 billion business, and the world's largest player in the industry has found Shasta County. Fresenius Medical Care opened its northwest distribution center in the Shasta Gateway Industrial Park in Shasta Lake last fall. The 77,000-square-foot plant, across the street from fiberglass manufacturer Knauf Insulation, has 30 employees. Out of Shasta Lake, Fresenius distributes dialyzers (artificial kidneys) and all the solutions used in dialysis treatments. Product in Shasta Lake is shipped as far south as the San Francisco Bay area and as far north as Seattle. There is no manufacturing done in Shasta Lake. "Besides the distribution center's geographic location, which allows us to serve our customers in the Pacific Northwest, Shasta Lake was ideal because of the Enterprise Zone program," said John Corrick, who manages the Fresenius Medical plant. "The program offered hiring tax credits and incentives." Of the 30 employees, about 25 were hired out of Shasta County. Corrick, who came from Benicia, and a handful of others were transferred. Kevin King, Fresenius' vice president of supply chain management, wouldn't say what workers in Shasta Lake make. He said employees are offered medical and dental coverage and a 401(k) retirement plan. King and other community leaders celebrated Fresenius' arrival in Shasta Lake with a ceremony at the plant last week. The Shasta Lake plant was built by Spartan Logistics, which has built other Fresenius facilities in the United States. Fresenius has signed a 20-year lease with Spartan Logistics in Shasta Lake. Fresenius operates a similar facility in Apple Valley, which Spartan Logistics also built. Globally, Fresenius employs more than 56,000 people. Through its network of some 2,200 dialysis clinics, Fresenius provides treatments to about 170,000 patients around the world. Fresenius Medical Care North America is based in Massachusetts and is a subsidiary of Fresenius Medical Care AG & Co. of Bad Homburg, Germany. Knauf Insulation, which opened in the industrial park in 2002, also is based in Germany. In Shasta Lake, Fresenius expects to serve about 1,200 clients, many of which will be dialysis centers that the firm owns and operates. The commercial kidney dialysis industry includes about 3,200 dialysis centers that take in a combined $10 billion, according to business resource site Hoovers.com. The industry pretty much consists of four companies that operate more than 70 percent of the centers. Dialysis machines are made by companies such as Fresenius, Baxter and DaVita. King said Fresenius Medical Care hasn't been affected by the economic downturn. "We don't see cyclical spikes,"King said. Fresenius reported $717 million in net income last year, a 34 percent year-over-year increase. The public company is scheduled to report its 2008 first-quarter earnings April 30. The stock (FMS) was trading around $52 a share late last week on the New York Stock Exchange. The 52-week high is $57.95 a share. While Fresenius doesn't have immediate plans to expand, King said the Shasta Lake plant was built so it can accommodate any growth. Today, the plant runs one shift and operates 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, King said. In November, Fresenius acquired Renal Solutions Inc. for $190 million. Renal Solutions is an innovator in sorbent technology, which purifies tap water to dialysate quality and allows dialysate to be regenerated. The merger was billed as a potential boom for kidney dialysis home therapy and products market, which Fresenius estimates could grow to $4 billion within the next 10 years. Reporter David Benda can be reached at 225-8219 or at dbenda@redding.com. SHARE By Nathan Solis of the Redding Record Searchlight Shasta County will consider a ban on medical cannabis delivery services for unincorporated areas, along with the adoption of zoning permits for growing medical marijuana in code approved structures. Planning Commissioners will consider amendments to the county's existing medical marijuana zoning ordinances in a special meeting on Thursday, where Director of Resource Management Richard Simon will present a revised draft ordinance. If approved, the draft will go to the Shasta County Board of Supervisors for adoption in the coming weeks, where supervisors will also set a renewal fee for the permit process. The ordinance would require growers to take out two-year home cultivation permits, with a renewal option, accompanied by an application and renewal fee. The county forbids any outdoor grows, but will allow people to grow a limited amount of medical marijuana in outbuildings built to certain specifications. The county's move to revise its ordinance comes as state legislators approved a trio of bills, referred to as the Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act, that overhaul the medical cannabis industry in California. One concern for counties across the state is a March deadline that defaults counties to the state's laws unless a county explicitly puts in place its own ordinances. Assemblyman Jim Wood, D-Healdsburg, author of Assembly Bill 21, has stated the deadline would be changed sometime by next month, but Shasta County is taking the initiative in updating its ordinance. Hezekiah Allen, executive director with the California Growers Association, said more than a few counties are rolling out prohibitions on services and ordinances related to medical marijuana. "I think that the act was monumental, but we've certainly seen a wave of local governments respond to that deadline. We feel the ban ultimately will not solve a county's problem," Allen said, remarking whether or not the deadline remains, many counties feel rushed to make their decisions sooner rather than later. Betty Cunningham, with the local anti-drug group Chemical People, thinks the county is playing catch-up with the rest of the state. Cunningham said each county should beef up its laws now in particular by banning delivery services. "If you look across the rest of the state, we're not unusual. There are places that do not have delivery/dispensary regulations in place. The county is starting to take note of that," Cunningham said. Anderson City Council recently updated its own zoning ordinance with an amendment explicitly prohibiting delivery services. The Shasta County Planning Commission meets 2 p.m. Thursday at the Board of Supervisors' Chambers, 1450 Court St. in Redding. Andreas Fuhrmann/Record Searchlight Redding Fire Department personnel investigate a fire that happened early Tuesday morning in the 200 block of Woodhill Drive. SHARE Andreas Fuhrmann/Record Searchlight Redding Fire Department personnel investigate a fire that happened early Tuesday morning in the 200 block of Woodhill Drive. Fire destroyed the two-story home. By Staff Reports One person died and two children injured in one of two fires early Tuesday morning in Shasta County. A person was found dead after a fire destroyed a home near the Darrah Springs State Fish Hatchery on Wildcat Road. Two children, ages 5 and 8, received second-degree burns, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. One of the children was flown to a Sacramento-area hospital for treatment after initially being taken to Mercy Medical Center in Redding, according to Capt. Dave Chapman with Cal Fire. The other child is being treated at Mercy. The fire broke out around 1:45 a.m. Tuesday on the property owned by the fish hatchery. Firefighters contained it in about an hour, according to Cal Fire. Later Tuesday morning, Chapman said that firefighters were searching for a woman who lived at the home. Cal Fire officials did not say whether the body found belonged to the missing woman. The cause of the fire has not been determined, Chapman said. A second fire broke out at a home around 2:40 a.m. in Redding in the 200 block of Woodhill Drive. Redding Fire Department Deputy Chief Cullen Kreider said the home's four occupants safely got out of the house with the family dog, although a cat remains missing. Kreider said the cause of that second-alarm blaze also remains under investigation. He said the two-story home was engulfed in flames when firefighters arrived and it initially appears the fire started in the garage and spread to the home. He said the home's working smoke detectors alerted the occupants to the fire. The optimism of corporate India stands out amidst a gloomy outlook for the global economy in the next 12 months. Almost two-thirds of Indian CEOs (64 per cent) are confident of their company's growth prospects over the next 12 months, with 78 per cent expecting to maintain the momentum over the next three years. According to PwC's annual CEO Survey, compared with the 2015 levels, India Inc's buoyancy is up two points for the next 12 months and seven points for the next three years. In sharp contrast, average global growth prospects for the next 12 months and the next three years are 35 per cent and 49 per cent, respectively. About 1,400 CEOs were interviewed for PwC's 'Redefining business success in a changing world' survey, results of which were unveiled ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos. The optimism of corporate India stands out amidst a gloomy outlook for the global economy in the next 12 months. Globally, just over a quarter (27 per cent) of CEOs think growth will improve over the next 12 months, compared to 37 per cent in 2015. About 23 per cent global corporate honchos think growth prospects will worsen. The levels of optimism among North American CEOs (16 per cent) is half that of the most optimistic regions (Western Europe 33 per cent and West Asia 34 per cent). Almost a third of China's CEOs (33 per cent) believe global economic growth will slow down in 2016. Contrary to this trend, three-fourth Indian CEOs (75 per cent) said there are more growth opportunities for their company today, than three years ago. Asked to name countries that are most important to them in the next 12 months, 54 per cent Indian CEOs chose the United States, 29 per cent opted for China, while 23 per cent said the United Kingdom. Commenting on the India findings of the report, Deepak Kapoor, chairman, PwC India, noted that recent policy reforms, consequent pickup in investments and the government's aim to boost infrastructure are uplifting companies' confidence. "However, the CEO community continues to be concerned by lack of infrastructure and over-regulation," Kapoor added. In keeping with their business optimism, 55 per cent Indian CEOs said they plan to enter into a new strategic alliance or joint venture, as against global average of 49 per cent. As many as 70 per cent Indian CEOs plan to hire more in the next 12 months. According to the survey, the top three potential economic and policy threats highlighted by Indian CEOs were inadequate basic infrastructure, exchange rate volatility and over-regulation. For 81 per cent of Indian CEOs, availability of key skills was among the biggest business threats, followed by speed of technological change (79 per cent), and corruption (78 per cent). Globally, CEOs see more threats to their businesses than three years ago with heightened concerns around geopolitics, exchange rate volatility and cyber security. However, over-regulation continues to be the top threat for the fourth year in a row. Indian bosses don't expect much from the government on a stable tax system or mitigating income inequality. Responding to changing stakeholder expectations, top executives across the world are changing how they define and manage risks. Nearly nine of every ten CEOs are changing the way they use technology as well as manage brand, marketing and communications. The survey notes that the confidence level among Indian CEOs remains higher than the global average Image: A labourer pushes a hand cart loaded with sacks of rice at a wholesale market in Kolkata. Photograph: Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters India has emerged as one of the five most promising markets for businesses globally as it offers one of the best opportunities for both domestic as well as global companies, says a survey. According to the annual global chief executive officer survey of consultancy giant PricewaterhouseCoopers released in Dabos at the WEF Annual Meeting, the top five markets considered as most important for overall growth prospects by the respondents are USA, China, Germany, the UK and India. Image: A man in a Spider-Man costume hangs upside down from digital cross walk signs in Times Square during Halloween, in New York. Photograph: Adrees Latif/Reuters "India, which has continued to do well under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pro-business government, is now among CEOs' five most promising overseas markets," said the survey which covered 1,409 CEOs spread across 83 countries. It further notes that the confidence level among Indian CEOs remains higher than the global average although they have also become less confident since last year about the growth prospects of their own companies. Image: An investor points to an electronic board showing stock information as he speaks to another investor, at a brokerage house in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, China, November 19, 2015. Photograph: China Daily/Files/Reuters As per the findings, CEOs are less optimistic about prospects this year and those who think global growth would improve over the next 12 months have declined to 27 per cent from 37 per cent seen in 2015. Further, those who think the situation would worsen have increased to 23 per cent from 17 per cent. "Against this tide of pessimism, CEOs in India (64 per cent), Spain (54 per cent) and Romania (50 per cent) stand out as more optimistic," it said. Image: Hat designer Fiona Bennett and her assistants in Bennett's studio at Potsdamer Street in Berlin, Germany. Photograph: Thomas Peter/Reuters PwC India Chairman Deepak Kapoor said CEOs in India have given strong indication of general uplift in sentiments by showing much more confidence than their global counterparts when it comes to revenue growth for their companies. "Recent policy reforms and a consequent pick up in investment and the government's aim to boost infrastructure are also playing a role in boosting CEO confidence," he noted. Image: Traffic on the road and the Thames passes the Houses of Parliament in London. Photograph: Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters However, Kapoor said the CEO community continues to be concerned by lack of infrastructure and over-regulation. As many as 90 per cent of the Indian CEOs cited inadequate basic infrastructure as a major threat and 80 per cent mentioned exchange rate volatility and 77 per cent cited over-regulation. "Of business threats, 81 per cent stated availability of key skills, 79 per cent stated speed of technological change, 78 per cent stated bribery and corruption," the survey said. Image: Tourists stroll along Barcelona's harbour. Photograph: Gustau Nacarino/Reuters "With India as the fastest growing large economy in the world, it offers one of the best opportunities for both Indian and global companies in a world that is still coming to terms with a slower growth paradigm and increasing geopolitical uncertainty," he added. With respect to the global economy, 39 per cent of Indian executives expect an improvement whereas the global average is 27 per cent. Around 75 per cent of Indian CEOs believe there are more growth opportunities for their companies today than three years ago. Image: A woman rides her bicycle past Romania's National Library in Bucharest. Photograph: Bogdan Cristel/Reuters About countries most important for their companies' growth in the next one year, 54 per cent said it was the US while 29 per cent respondents mentioned China and 23 per cent went for the UK. As many as 56 per cent of the Indian executives plan to implement a cost-reduction initiative over the next 12 months while 70 per cent anticipate increase in head count during the same period. When it comes to disruptive trends in their industry most likely to transform wider stakeholder expectations over the next five years, 80 per cent of the respondents cited technological advances followed by demographic shifts (64 per cent) and shift in global economic power (55 per cent). About 64 per cent of Indian CEOs felt the government had been ineffective in achieving greater income equality. About 51 per cent thought that the government had been ineffective in reducing environmental impacts as well as in achieving a clearly understood, stable and effective tax system. "Ninety-three per cent of Indian CEOs agree that tax is a business cost that needs to be efficiently managed like any other business cost. . . 87 per cent agree that a stable tax system is more important than low rates of tax," it said. Around 81 per cent agreed that reducing administrative burden of tax is as beneficial as reducing tax rates. With 79 per cent of CEOs concerned about over-regulation, it remains the biggest concern and is followed by geopolitical uncertainty. The latter comes at a time when terror attacks are increasing and touching every part of the world, many linked to the heightened conflict in Iraq and Syria. "Global conflicts are also connected to anxieties about social instability and readiness to respond to crises, named by 65 per cent and 61 per cent of CEOs, respectively. "Cyber security is also a worry for 61 per cent of CEOs, representing as it does (pose) threats to both national and commercial interests," the survey said. As many as 66 per cent of the CEOs see more threats for their companies than it was three years ago, the report said. DIPP Secretary Amitabh Kant said if the brand ambassador said India is intolerant, he surely is not working as brand ambassador. Image: Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Aamir Khan. Photograph, courtesy: Press Information Bureau Actor Aamir Khan damaged 'brand India' while being the brand ambassador of the celebrated 'Incredible India' campaign, a senior official said. Defending the exit of Khan from the campaign, Secretary, department of industrial policy and promotion (DIPP), Amitabh Kant said the actor, by terming India an 'intolerant country', worked against his role as that of a brand ambassador. "A brand ambassador promotes a brand. People will come to India and tourist flow will increase only if the brand ambassador of 'Incredible India' promotes the country as 'incredible'," Kant said. "But if the brand ambassador says India is intolerant, he surely is not working as brand ambassador," Kant said. "The brand ambassador must be the best person for promoting and marketing India, he cannot be the destroyer of the brand," he said while replying to a query on removal of Khan from the campaign, without taking the actor's name. Khan had late last year stirred a controversy after he expressed "alarm and despondency" over rising instances of intolerance in the country in the past few months and said that his wife (Kiran Rao) even asked if they should move out of India as she feared for the safety of their children. Kant, who was involved in conceptualising Incredible India campaign in 2002 in his capacity as joint secretary, Ministry of Tourism, today tweeted, "Being a Brand Ambassador imposes responsibilities. U can't run down what u're promoting. That's damaging d brand." Khan actively promoted Indian tourism for a decade as the brand ambassador. Union Tourism Minister Mahesh Sharma had said Aamir had a contract with advertising firm McCann Erickson and not the government for the campaign. "Since the contract with the agency is no more, automatically the arrangement with the actor no longer exists," Sharma had said. Take this poll and let us know your opinion. Despite all the incentives, the start-ups mega event fell short of expectations The governments start-up action plan has kindled hopes of the young and restless entrepreneurial community in the country. Several game changing measures including a three-year tax holiday and exemptions from provisions of some cost-escalating laws have been introduced. There were some rehashes from the ease of business campaign such as insolvency law, easier registration process etc, and some Pranab Mukherjee era Budget dinosaurs such as state-run venture funds getting some start-up lipstick. Despite all the incentives, the start-ups mega event fell short of expectations. At least, people involved in discussions with the government and regulators feel so. In a mail, an ISpirt representative said only 11-12 of the 34 problem areas that need policy and regulatory changes by the ministry of corporate affairs, Reserve of Bank of India, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion and other bodies have been addressed. There are promises on another dozen; the rest have not been touched at all on the working Saturday. As long as all are not addressed, in all likelihood, many start-ups will continue to be domiciled outside India. That is not good for the stock markets and local investors here. Companies domiciled outside India are likely to get listed in overseas markets and small investors are unlikely to get access to these new-age wealth creators. This is the reason why despite several relaxations in the initial public offering framework by the Securities and Exchange Board of India, not many tech start-ups have gone for listing locally. This, in turn, beats the point of whatever sops that have been announced and raises disturbing questions. If a majority of start-ups are going to be in Singapore, who is going to exploit these thousands of crores of worth of incentives? There are enough fly-by-nights who can tailor their outfits to suit government conditionalities, swallow the sops, and vanish. Let us not hope all the safeguards such as certification by investors and government panels work well. The numbers given by people involved in discussions with government suggest that about 75 per cent of the start-ups that received funding were domiciled in Singapore, up from about half the year before. The elephant in the room, which not many are very open about, here is the foreign direct investment (FDI) policy. It is no secret in the start-up world that people are getting domiciled abroad not because they are disqualified from bidding for government procurement contracts due to some random tender conditions. They are there to circumvent policy restrictions that dont allow FDI in business to consumer (B2C) retail. It is well documented how they do it. And, much to the embarrassment of the government, came reports of DIPP telling the court that the policy was unambiguous and it was for investigative arms to probe violations and act against violators. Subsequent incredible spins put on how other parts of the submission supported e-commerce players helped confuse people for the time being and contained critics from going berserk ahead of the marquee event. It is surprising that the only people who dont seem to understand these structures are the investigative agencies that have to act against the violations. Several probes began, but have gone nowhere. But, doubts continue to linger. The ambivalent submissions by DIPP betrays the governments strategy to play a dangerous double game of banning FDI in B2C, but not cracking down on violators. The options before the government seem limited. As much as it wants to woo start-ups, Modi and his party - sometimes dubbed as Baniya party - cannot afford to alienate its core constituency by fully opening up retail. More so, when its at the mercy of a combative 10, Janpath to pass Bills in the Upper House. Thus, the double game looks all set to continue. As long as it does, even if all the 33 other demands and more are met, start-ups will continue their own little double game: start up in India, stand up in Singapore. Image: A man walks past a mural on a building in the South of Market (SoMA) neighborhood in San Francisco, California. Photograph: Robert Galbraith/Reuters 'I had seen Waqt, starring Balraj Sahniji, and I can never forget it. There is a happy family and an earthquake later, everything is gone.' 'That movie got stuck in my head. How one man loses his entire family and becomes a pauper. The same thing happens in Airlift.' Akshay Kumar, and his lovely leading lady Nimrat Kaur discuss their latest film. While his wife Twinkle Khanna is known for her wicked sense of humour, Akshay Kumar isn't far behind. No wonder, it's always a delight to interact with the Khiladi Kumar. Akshay was in a cheerful mood during the promotional interviews of his film Airlift. But instead of answering questions, the actor decided to ask some of his own. In the picture: Akshay Kumar and Nimrat Kaur take a selfie. Photograph: Nimrat Kaur/ Instagram. 'Pehle ye bataiye ki Airlift kya hain?' he asked the media. When reporters wondered if roles were reversed, AK quipped: 'Aur kya?' Then, he turned to a reporter closest to him and asked: 'Kya tahalne aaye ho? If youve come here, you must know something.' After grilling the media, Akshay Kumar finally decided to take the questions. His gorgeous co-star Nimrat Kaur joined in the interaction. Patcy N/Rediff.com took notes. What is Airlift all about? Akshay Kumar: Airlift is based on a true story. The most amazing part of this story was that it was hidden from all of us. Did you ever read about India bringing back 1,70,000 Indians (from Kuwait)? It's listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for the biggest airlift evacuation ever done by any country. Even I was surprised to hear of this when I met them (some of the evacuees). Their experience was unbelievable. Just imagine, you are a billionaire and suddenly Saddam Hussain attacks and there is nothing left. The Kuwait dinar is reduced to a zero value. You have no money left. The stories were unbelievable. I cannot talk much about my character but he is still alive and is a big businessman today. He still lives in Kuwait? Did you meet him? Yes, he is in Kuwait. I havent met him but my director (Raja Krishna Menon) and others have met him. How old were you when this incident took place? Akshay: This happened in 1990, but why would you ask my age? I would like to know what you were doing during that period. Akshay: For me, the war had just started. I entered the (film) industry in 1990. I was unaffected by what was happening that time. But there are so many videos of it; people running (for safety). I think every family should take their children for this movie; the entire episode should be in text books. When they talk about history, they dont mention this. There is a political reason for that. Actually, during that time, we were very close to Saddam and so, we wanted to keep a low profile. That's why the whole thing was hidden. Nimrat Kaur: Yes, there were only two or three obscure articles in the newspapers. That's it. (Akshay interrupts to say there was only one article). It is amazing how even I did not know about this event despite being someone who has grown up fairly aware of what was happening. Akshay: Imagine if it had happened today! In Yemen, some thousand people were saved and it was all over the news. But I dont know how they managed this (to keep such a large scale evacuation a secret). How did you get this information if it was such a secret? Nikhil Advani, producer, pipes in: (Director) Raja Menons uncle Sunny Mathew was one of the refugees. He told him the story. It suited the Americans not to talk about this because they had stopped entering and coming out of Kuwait. They just shut the press; nobody was allowed to speak about the 1,70,000 people, who were left behind to fend for themselves. Now that you have made the movie, aren't you facing any objections? Akshay: Its okay now. Nimrat: The political situation in India was different then. The alliances were different. They dont exist anymore. Akshay, your character looks very demanding. Did you do any homework for it? I did nothing; just grew my beard. When you read a script like this, you know you don't have to go to Kuwait, nor do you have to tell someone to do a bombing, so that you can feel it. When you read the script, you just feel it. You get into their shoes and realise what they must have felt. I had seen Waqt, starring Balraj Sahniji, and I can never forget it. There is a happy family and an earthquake later, everything is gone. That movie got stuck in my head. How one man loses his entire family and becomes a pauper. The same thing happens in this film. A lot of people lost their lives. The biggest trouble was that when Iraqis attacked, they were killing a lot of Kuwaitis. They used to come to an Indian (locality) and ask the people if they were Indians or Kuwaitis. They would ask them for passports for identifications. But when you go to work outside, you cannot keep the passports with you. You had to give it to your boss. And when there was no passport, they used to kill. So how did we prove that we were Indians? How do songs fit in such a serious subject? Nimrat: The song takes place before all this happens. Akshay: It was just before the attacks. That night, there was a party, even in real life. How challenging was the shoot? Akshay: We were very lucky that we got to shoot the film in Ras al-Khaimah (United Arab Emirates). It's near Dubai, and looks like Kuwait. Nimrat: Yes, it is literally stuck in the 1990s. You dont have to change anything. There is nothing in the name of modern signage or anything and so it naturally lends to the story well. Did you pick up the local language? Akshay: I speak a little Arabic but it is a very hard language. It was not easy for me. So when they gave me the lines, I had to memorise them. If you ask me to repeat it now, I won't be able to. Tell us about your character, Ranjit Katyal. Akshay: There were three or four people who took the initiative to get the people out from Kuwait into Jordan and from there, to India but we have got all the stories together and made it one mans story. But the man I play was actually there and he was the main guy. He was a multimillionaire and though he lost everything at that time, he has become a multimillionaire again and lives in Kuwait. Is Airlift similar to Hollywood film Argo? Akshay: I have not seen Argo but I did heard people saying it is similar. But it cant be, ours is a real story. So how can we copy the story? Nimrat: I have seen Argo and the two stories are very different. Argo was a very small operation. Airlift is a human drama, and people had to face trials and tribulations. It's not like this man figured it out in one shot, and it was a success. There were a lot of disappointments. They tried many different things that did not work out. Its a constant back and forth of are we going to make it or not? Are we going to get killed? Im sure people must have thought what's going to happen because they were rendered homeless and jobless. They didn't have money. Their identity was lost overnight. People were just running, looking for food and shelter. Just the basic necessities were a challenge. There were no bathrooms. It took about 488 flights and some 58 days to bring them back. Akshay, off late you are doing stories about unsung heroes, like this one. Any other real life heroes you want to bring to the big screen? There are many such characters. Like now, I am doing a film with Neeraj Pandeyji called Rustom. But we shall talk about it later. Nimrat, after The Lunchbox why did it take so long to sign your next film? I was away for half a year filming Homeland. When I came back, the scripts did not come at the right time. Its just a matter of chance. I didn't plan to give myself a two year gap. How was the experience of working with a star like Akshay Kumar? Nimrat: I have not felt -- even for a second -- that I was working with a huge star. Akshay: She has done a Hollywood film, so who is the bigger star, her or me? We would say Nimratji, please... Nimrat: See this is what I come on the set for. Ive been so lucky from day one that I did not feel that I was working with someone whose films I have watched... Akshay: (interrupts) ...from childhood. Nimrat: I was actually going to say that (laughs). Akshay: It doesnt matter. Nimrat: We used to have those GK quizzes on Bollywood (when we were kids) and one of the questions would be: 'Akshay Kumar ka sahi naam kya hai?' (laughs). Akshay: So tell me my mothers name. Nimrat: Youve havent told me that; how would I know? Akshay: It's in the producers credits. Aruna Bhatia. Nimrat: Correct. Akshay, what do you enjoy more -- action or comedy? I enjoy everything. I am comfortable with comedy as well as action. But a challenge is much more enjoyable, like this movie. It was a challenging role. Rustom is a challenging role. In Houseful 3, the role is very comfortable. Nimrat, you have worked with Irrfan Khan in The Lunchbox. How different was it working with Akshay Kumar? Nimrat: To be honest, I did not work with Irrfanji. I have worked with Akshayji. Akshay: (Interrupts) Unko sirf lunch bheja (referring to the film The Lunchbox). Nimrat: Unko sirf chittiyan bheji aur khana bheja (laughs). Thats about it. So Ive worked only with Akshay. Akshay: You didnt shoot even for one day with him? Nimrat: Not even one day. There was one cafe scene where we were sitting tables apart but we were not even in the same shot. So how was Akshay as a co-star? I was very intimidated before I met him because in your mind, you know he is such a big star and working for so many years. I was thinking how confident would he be with a newcomer. So I was very unsure and hoping that I am not in a situation where I did not know how to find myself. But right from the start, there were no formalities with him. He is one of the most wonderful and easy people I have met. How will China deal with Taiwan's first woman president? Srikanth Kondapalli explains the significance of a historic election. IMAGE: Democratic Progressive Party Chairperson and Taiwan's next President Tsai Ing-wen greets supporters after her victory at party headquarters in Taipei. Photograph: Pichi Chuang/Reuters Much according to predictions, the Taiwanese people voted overwhelmingly for the pan-Green camp under the Democratic Progressive Party candidate Dr Tsai Ing-wen in the presidential elections on this island of over 23 million people and almost a third of the size of Arunachal Pradesh. Dr Tsai, who lost to Dr Ma Ying-jeou in 2012 by less than a million votes, defeated Dr Chu Liluan by over three million votes. She won over 56 per cent of polled votes, which is the highest majority in Taiwan elections since 1996. This democratic upsurge has several long-term implications. Firstly, the Taiwanese voters have, for the first time, elected a woman President, a record which most mature democracies like Japan, the United States may envy. Even in China, where gender equality was publicised as 'women hold half the sky,' no women candidate has ever made it to the top Politburo Standing Committee level for the past six decades. This is a special moment for the Taiwanese people -- who enjoy a high degree of gender equality. Secondly, the Taiwanese have also demonstrated that their 'new democracy', which evolved in the 1990s, is vibrant and has an intense but orderly reflection of competitive politics. With the massive mandate, the more radical and iconoclastic New Power Party can jostle with the more conservative People's First Party over issues like stability across the straits and reunification concerns, livelihood, rights of the indigenous peoples and gender and trans-gender equality and environmental concerns. Relations with China While the China factor and cross-strait relations were one of the enduring debates in the elections, the people of Taiwan 'stood up' for their own destinies. In 1995, China lobbed missiles across the Taiwan Straits to intimidate the electorate; the 2005 anti-secession law provided teeth to Beijing to use all powers at its disposal to silence Taipei and the number of China's military exercises increased during President Chen Shui-bian's rule between 2000 and 2008. The recent meeting between then Taiwan president Ma Ying-jeou and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Singapore on the '1992 Consensus' and Xi's 'one family' idea, also did not cut much ice. Relations with China have always troubled the Taiwanese people throughout their history since Zheng Chenggong and his son Zheng Jing's rule in the 17thcentury. Dr Tsai will also be under tremendous pressure in the coming years on this issue, although the people seem to be on her side. China under pressure? The democratic upsurge in Taiwan may also discomfort China, whose peripheries one by one have begun experimenting with democracy. As the people of Mongolia, Tibet, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau enthusiastically plunged into the democratic experiment, old political establishments are facing mounting ideological challenges to their political legitimacy. Anti-incumbency also at work The massive mandate, both in the presidential and legislature elections, to the DPP indicates the growing resentment against the policies of the ruling Kuomintang. The revision of textbooks to inculcate 'One China' sentiments, a declining economy (with a growth rate of about one per cent last year), rising unemployment and cost of living (despite an election promise of '6-3-3' -- 6 per cent growth rate, $30,000 per capita income and under 3 per cent unemployment) and 23 trade deals and closer economic integration with China have alienated many young Taiwanese voters from the KMT. KMT leaders Lien Chen and Ma Ying-jeou met with the Chinese top brass recently. Zhang Zhijun, head of Beijing's Taiwan Affairs Office, became the first minister from China to visit Taiwan in June 2014. These meetings resulted in some dissonance in Taiwan's political spectrum. Of course, the KMT is not down and out. As the Grand Old Party of Taiwan, it controls crucial economic, political and military levers where the DPP had only made a peripheral entry during its tenure between 2000 and 2008. The clash between the two main political entities promises to be intense, if not nasty. Relations with India While the mainstream political parties in the last two decades have exhibited some interest towards India in 'Go South' policy, President-elect Dr Tsai Ing-wen has prioritised India and Southeast Asian countries as her focal areas in expanding economic ties, given the recent rises in growth prospects in these countries. She had visited New Delhi earlier and has a first-hand knowledge of the affairs. India and Taiwan have been discussing free trade area proposals for sometime and attempting to harmonise items of trade. Taiwanese major IT firm Foxconn has already expressed an interest in the Indian market. If India reciprocates with the same vigour, there will be mutual benefits. Unlike his predecessors, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for the first time during his visit to Japan in 2014, gave a clarion call for support to democracies abroad. New Delhi was previously satisfied with democracy taking roots in South Asia. Apart from increasing its contributions to the United Nations Democracy Fund and actively engaging the Indian Diaspora abroad, the new Indian postures have not yet acquired concrete departures. The massive mandate in Taiwan adds a new dimension and a new challenge of readjustments to the Indian diplomatic postures in the Indo-Pacific region in the coming years. Srikanth Kondapalli is Professor of Chinese Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. 'It is a great misfortune that the Nehruvian Stalinists of India have colluded with the grand project of demeaning and destroying Sanskrit.' 'Today, the number of Sanskritists in India is low, and falling,' says Rajeev Srinivasan. The outsider point of view sees Sanskrit as a 'dead language', of the same order as Latin or old Greek, which are museum pieces, as their cultures have been digested into the prevailing Western culture, says Rajeev Srinivasan. Photograph published only for representational purpose, kind courtesy Kalvakuntla Chandrashekar Rao/Facebook. 'The destruction of culture has become an instrument of terror, in a global strategy to undermine societies, propagate intolerance and erase memories.' --Irina Bokova, director-general, UNESCO Irina Bokova wrote this in reference to the visible destruction of heritage sites in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya ('Terrorists are destroying our cultural heritage. It's time to fight back,' World Economic Forum Global Agenda, January 18, 2016), where she also talked about the #unite4heritage campaign, launched last year. She had three suggestions: Prevent trafficking in objects, reinforce preventive actions, and strengthen international cooperation. The wholesale rape and pillage of Mesopotamian sites, and earlier of Bamiyan, are clearly catastrophes of the first order. The irony, though, is that a subtle but equally malign destruction of Indic heritage has been going on virtually unnoticed for a few centuries, although it has accelerated in scale, ruthlessness and effectiveness in the recent past. Rajiv Malhotra, well known for articulating the civilisational attack on India by malevolent Western forces, concentrates on the topic of language in his latest book, The Battle for Sanskrit, for, he suggests, Sanskrit is the prize for the deracination project. Rajiv Malhotra was a lone voice in the wilderness for some time, but I am delighted that he has gained a dedicated following. I am glad to have played a small part in bringing him to the attention of the Indian reader with my piece on Rediff.com: Fear of Engineering in 2002. Since then, in a series of penetrating books, he has turned around and analysed Western scholars as anthropological specimens, exactly the way they analyse us. Needless to say, that has not endeared him to them. In 2002, the concerns expressed, about obscure American academics, may have seemed abstruse, but in the fullness of time they have become life-and-death issues for Indian civilisation. It is not a coincidence that we are seeing withering attacks on Hindu culture via, say, Jallikattu and Sabarimala. Malhotra has devoted himself for the last 20 years to analysing Western academia in its continuous attempts to do two things: First, using an 'etic' or outsider perspective, and second, 'digesting' the tradition. The etic point of view sees Sanskrit as a 'dead language,' of the same order as Latin or old Greek, which are museum pieces, as their cultures have been digested into the prevailing Western culture, even though there is much incongruence. This, Malhotra notes, is not true of Mandarin, Persian or Arabic (and I would add Hebrew too), which are treated as living languages worthy of respect and accommodation. In the etic perspective, the spiritual aspect of the ancient language and culture has been completely erased -- and so the Greek and Roman religious traditions have been turned into pure 'mythology' (while, asymmetrically, Western mythology is 'scripture'). The more secular aspects have been mined and digested and expropriated by the West. Thus, 'pagan' Greek and Roman thoughts have been discreetly assimilated into Semitic thought, although the pagan and Semitic world-views are like chalk and cheese. Orientalism 2.0 proponents want the same fate for Sanskrit -- it should be shorn of all religious and spiritual meaning, and it should be turned into a source of ideas that can be mined, digested, and appropriated by the dominant Western hegemonic narrative. In other words, in short order, the Hindu tradition should be erased, and anything useful (yoga, meditation, Ayurveda, mathematics, etc) should end up being 'owned' by the West. In this enterprise, the academics are as one with the Christian fundamentalists, especially those such as the conversion-focused (and spectacularly Orwellian-named) USCIRF. They have already succeeded in several parts of India. The academics thus form a dangerous alliance with churches, either wittingly or not. Those of us in the 'emic' or insider tradition, Rajiv Malhotra suggests, are unable to stand up to this withering assault spearheaded by professors from famous universities such as Harvard or Columbia. Interestingly, the locus of Orientalism has moved from Britain to the US. It was European Orientalists such as William Jones and Max Mueller who created the canonical English interpretations of Sanskrit texts that are accepted as infallible even today. Their successors include Michael Witzel of Harvard and Wendy Doniger of Chicago, as well as the entire RISA (Religions in South Asia) group of academics. Malhotra calls them 'American Orientalists' who use social sciences fads such as postmodernism that are completely alien to the Sanskrit worldview. They are qualitatively different from the Europeans, partly because they are more subtle: For instance, they have co-opted the Nehruvian Stalinists of India, who have pretensions to nationalism. Even though the Orientalism that Edward Said and others spoke about has been discredited, and the rights of Muslims to provide their own narrative conceded, the same is not true of Hindus and Sanskrit. It is a great misfortune that, unlike nationalistic Arabs, the Nehruvian Stalinists of India have colluded with the grand project of demeaning and destroying Sanskrit. Today, the number of Sanskritists in India is low, and falling. I was startled by an anecdote recounted by Michel Danino quoting the late manuscriptologist K V Sarma (he curated the canonical Aryabhatiya). When a copy of the Arthashastra (it had been considered lost, and was only known through references by others) was unearthed by accident in 1904, there was a Ramasastry who could read it. Now there are a few who still can. But in 50 years, there will probably be nobody in India who can read a newly discovered old manuscript. Some American Orientalist will be called in, who will give it all the colouring of his or her Western biases. A few years ago, I remember the ICHR said the classical languages of India were, drum roll, Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic! Of course, not Pali and Tamil. The Sri Sankara Sanskrit University had a leftist extremist as VC. Neither he, nor Romila Thapar, 'eminent historian' of ancient India, knows Sanskrit! JNU, at least until recently, did not have a Sanskrit department. The neglect, and active hostility, have been startling. Nehru thought Hinduism and Tibetan Buddhism were outdated. The fact that so few Hindus know Sanskrit, except the dwindling few who have chosen the traditional path of mathas and spirituality and learning sadhana under a Master, means that we are gullible. For instance, it is now widely alleged by missionaries that Prajapati, the Lord of Creation, is actually Jesus. They will quote verses from the Bhavishya Purana to substantiate this. Since most of us have no idea of the authenticity of that Purana or the specific verses, and have no way of disputing the Sanskrit translation they produce, we are forced to accept this hilarious, and possibly even (if we had that concept, blasphemous) equivalence. In general, this is the problem Malhotra is attempting to address in his book: Who has adhikara (authority)? As of now, the American Orientalists are attempting to -- with, alas, considerable success -- take on that mantle. Hindus are unable to fend off their claims, partly, as Malhotra explains, they fall into several categories: Traditionalists who do not understand the mala fide intentions or the jargon of the American Orientalists and are therefore unable to do a purva-paksha (analysing their arguments prior to debate); Genuine scholars who are so enmeshed in the Western system that they find it hard to take a stand; Sepoys who are happy with the crumbs that they can get; Committed Leftists who are delighted to collaborate in the 'breaking-India' project; and finally Well-meaning Indians, including tech billionaires, who, while wanting to support Sanskrit, end up being hoodwinked into supporting these very same malign American Orientalists. It is just such an effort that prompted Malhotra to write this book: The Sringeri Math, a major centre of Sanskrit learning set up by Adi Sankara, to give its imprimatur to Columbia University for a project to be headed by one Professor Sheldon Pollock. By doing his due diligence, Malhotra shows that Pollock with his 'liberation philology' is a dangerous adversary. At least in my reading, he is the Dr Jekyll-Mr Hyde doppelganger of the corrosive and foul-mouthed Wendy Doniger. Pollock uses the turgid disciplines of post-modernism and other social sciences to deconstruct, and most importantly, rob Sanskrit of its spirituality and its universality. To be fair, Pollock does advertise his intentions. One of Pollock's important works is titled The Death of Sanskrit, and Malhotra in his purva-paksha identifies several memes that Pollock uses frequently, and that analysis forms the bulk of the book. Malhotra goes on to provide suitable counters to them. Decoupling Sanskrit and its shastras from the Vedas Politicising kavyas (literature) and decoupling them from the Vedas Interpreting the Ramayana as a project for propagating Vedic social oppression (the ideas in the itihasa instil hierarchical thinking) Rise of the pan-Asian Sanskrit cosmopolitan (only after Buddhism arose did Sanskrit become formalised and written down) Death of Sanskrit and the rise of the vernaculars Dangerous impact of Sanskrit on Western thoughts (that the 'Aryan' business was imported by Germans from Sanskrit). Malhotra raises an interesting question about Pollock: Is he 'too big to challenge?' Personally, I don't think so. Let him debate and win, as Malhotra seems to be saying. Besides, Pollock may well be on thin ice based on faulty chronology: His conjecture that Sanskrit was purely oral before the Buddhists was probably plain wrong. Intriguingly for a classical scholar, Pollock is explicitly political: Malhotra shows that he has been a signatory to a number of petitions against, for instance, Prime Minister Narendra Modi. And some of his former students in India are now explicitly anti-Hindu. The book is not a personal attack on Pollock, as he is merely the archetype of the American Orientalist. On the other hand, it throws light on the convergence of destructive influences that motivate the beast, including the Church's efforts to completely convert India (as seen in the Joshua Project and Project Thessalonica), the lefts efforts to wipe out Hinduism, and the West's efforts to contain India. It is perhaps no coincidence that the Pollockian effort to paint Sanskrit as inherently casteist and without value before Buddhism (although the Buddhist canon is written in Pali) is coeval with the British left's efforts to declare caste as an artifact explicitly punishable by law. Nor is it separate from the efforts to secularise and undermine Ganesha Puja, Durga Puja, the Sabarimala pilgrimage, Navaratri, and in fact everything Hindu. This is an important book; for any Indian, and particularly any Hindu who is concerned about the Indian Grand Narrative, the possible loss of control over Sanskrit is a tragedy. At the moment it is an avoidable tragedy, but only if there is a concerted effort on our part. It is nothing short of an act of terrorism, if you believe the UNESCO director-general, and this book is an attempt at preventive action. The Battle for Sanskrit: Is Sanskrit Political or Sacred? Oppressive or Liberating? Dead or Alive?, By Rajiv Malhotra, Harper Collins Publishers India 2016, Hardback, Rs 699. IMAGE: Richa Singh with her supporters after winning the students' union election. Photograph: PTI 'The ABVP is openly doing goondagardi in universities across India.' 'You tell me without support, can the ABVP do these things? They are only doing these things because the central government is supporting them.' The politics over the death of a student on a Hyderabad campus is now spreading to Allahabad, it appears. When Richa Singh, president of the Allahabad University Students Union, invited journalist Siddharth Varadarajan -- the editor of The Wire Web site -- for a seminar she was shocked as the Bharatiya Janata Party's student wing, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, opposed it. The ABVP did not allow Varadarajan to speak at the seminar, 'Democracy, media and freedom of expression' because in their shocking opinion the former editor of The Hindu newspaper was anti-national and a Naxalite. Richa Singh spoke to Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com about the episode. Why was the seminar with Mr Varadarajan cancelled? The ABVP opposed the talk on our campus. They said they would not allow Mr Varadarajan to enter. We have four union office-bearers who are from the ABVP. I am the only one who is not. They called Mr Varadarajan anti-national and a Naxalite. They pressurised the vice-chancellor, and therefore the programme was cancelled. We decided to do the programme at the students' union hall where we do not need any permission. However when we reached there, the ABVP guys got a religious leader and conducted a pravachan (so our programme got cancelled again). What was the reason that you wanted Mr Varadarajan to visit Allahabad University? He is a well-known journalist. We wanted to know more about freedom of speech. If we want to clear our thoughts by inviting a senior media personality, what is wrong in it? Do you feel the ABVP is doing goondagardi at universities? The ABVP is openly doing goondagardi in universities across India. At present I am sitting outside the vice-chancellor's office with Mr Varadarajan and the ABVP guys have surrounded the office and are behaving badly. Do you feel there is any connection between what happened to Rohith Vemula at Hyderabad and this incident at Allahabad University? Of course, both are connected. The university administration in Hyderabad intervened because of politics and Rohith committed suicide. In the same way, central universities across India are facing the same pressures. Do you feel local BJP MPs support the ABVP cause at universities and the central government is involved in this? You tell me without support, can the ABVP do these things? They are only doing these things because the central government is supporting them. They are doing this because they know that no action will be taken. Allahabad is in Uttar Pradesh and law and order is a state subject. So why are you blaming the BJP for this? The state government is outside the university. Inside the university, the administration is run by the central government. The decisions concerning the university are taken by the central government. Did you feel threatened by the ABVP? They openly threatened me in front of the vice-chancellor. They told me they would not allow me to enter the university. They didn't like me (a woman) being elected president of the Allahabad University Students Union as this happened for the first time in 128 years. They say that earlier you opposed BJP MP Yogi Adityanath's entry into the university. You tell me, how can they call Yogi Adityanath for the inauguration of the students union? For Adityanath they needed my okay, which I didn't give, but the other four ABVP members bypassed my authority. Adityanath is a controversial man. He speaks against women and Muslims. As president I have to take care of the sentiments of every student and therefore I opposed his entry. This programme with Mr Varadarajan was academic. The ABVP guys call religious leaders regularly to the university, but we never object, though that too is dangerous. The ABVP knows Mr Varadarajan has anti-Narendra Modi views. Is that why they opposed his presence at thre seminar? I have heard Mr Varadarajan say anti-Congress things too. Just to say he is anti-Modi is a very biased thing. In our country, people have the freedom of speech. They did not allow us to conduct a programme with Mr Varadarajan, but religious leader Shantanu Maharaj's programme was conducted instead. If we have political differences, then it does not mean we need to resort to violence? Can't we have a peaceful debate? Maybe they are angry because you opposed Yogi Adityanath's presence... How can you say that? Adityanath's programme was different and this is different. They have no connection with each other. If you check the details of Yogi Adityanath's programme, then you will find out that the entire Allahabad University was festooned with saffron flags during the event. Do you have any political leanings? No. I am an independent candidate. I am neither left nor right. I have no political connection and therefore I am facing problems. I have been elected to solve students' problems and I am trying to do that. Do you feel the ABVP's bullying will spread all over India? In Hyderabad they started and now they have targeted Allahabad University. They are creating circumstances that students are forced to commit suicide. I want to appeal to Modi that he should restrict such things. Modi is India's prime minister, and not that of the ABVP. 'If you are a slave, nobody has any problem. The conflict starts when you question and ask for equal rights.' IMAGE: The grieving mother of Rohith Vemula, the doctorate student at the Hyderabad Central University who committed suicide. Kancha Ilaiah, a Professor and Director at the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy at the Maulana Azad National Urdu University in Hyderabad, is a well-known Dalit rights activist. Professor Ilaiah -- the author of books like Why I am not a Hindu, God As Political Philosopher: Buddha's Challenge to Brahminism, A Hollow Shell, The State and Repressive Culture -- spoke to Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com about the suicide of Rohith Vemmula, the research scholar at the Hyderabad Central University, a death that has shocked the nation. How would you look at the tragic suicide of Rohith Vemmula? As the suicide of a bright research scholar or the suicide of a Dalit student? Rohith was an outstanding research scholar and a merit student. He is also a Dalit. So naturally, he is both, a research scholar and a Dalit research scholar at that. Rohith was a member of an independent students association called the Ambedkar Students Association, which helps in the academic and intellectual improvement of all Dalit students. They organise seminars, meetings, etc. A lot of very bright scholars emerge from the association. The problem of discrimination is an issue at all the universities, but at Hyderabad University, these students are fighting the issue. From 1993 onwards, they had been fighting for equal guide-ship, equal time bound payment for research scholars, etc. They also take up a lot of national and international issues and debate on them. This is also a trend among Dalit tribal scholars and even the OBCs are doing that now. The Ambedkar Students Association is the best intellectual Dalit organisation among students in India. Has the discrimination anything to do with the ASA and the issues that they debate on? This association has a lot of debates with the opposition, the ABVP (The Baharatiya Janata Party's student wing, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad), RSS (the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) and Hindutva as they organise lectures and seminars on many issues like the role of Hinduism, atheism, the role of the BJP, RSS and other Hindu organisations, untouchability and poverty. The ABVP, the BJP and the RSS are the main opponents of this organisation. They (members of the Ambedkar Students Association) are the poorest of the poor while most of the teachers are from the upper castes. Among the teachers, there are many BJP and RSS supporters and they discriminate more because they believe in the caste system, untouchability, etc. So their (members of the Ambedkar Students Association) confrontation with the teachers is becoming more and more. The Congress is more of a middle rung group. The Left sometimes sympathise and sometimes collaborate. Many years ago, you also had an university education. Did you have to face discrimination then? Is it more so today? Of course. I studied at Osmania University and there was huge discrimination. Teachers discriminated, in supervisor allotment there was discrimination, in giving marks they discriminated, in paying scholarship there was discrimination. To protect against these kinds of discrimination, we have an association. Because of the collective strength of the association, we came out with degrees. Now, in Osmania University, there is a huge SC/ST students group and they cannot discriminate because the organisation is very powerful. So teachers also don't risk that. In Hyderabad University, there are a lot of discriminating elements. A lot of Dalit and tribal students come here and because of discrimination, many commit suicide here. But the association takes up these issues. But more and more Dalit scholars are coming and they are very good. When you are really good, you argue and ask for your rights. If you are a slave, nobody has any problem. The conflict starts when you question and ask for equal rights. The Ambedkar Students Association is one of its kind in the country which is intellectually very strong. It is said that members of the association had a meeting in support of Yakub Memon and against his hanging. Do you consider this anti-national like their detractors allege? The Yakub Memon issue was discussed and debated even on television. These students also had a meeting and they debated the issue. What is anti-national about debating an issue? The (Union Labour) minister (Bandaru) Dattatreya wrote a letter to the HRD ministry in which he characterised the association as anti-national and called them extremists. Did he find any weapons or bombs in their rooms to call them extremists? How do they become extremists? This is the only a Dalit organisation and all its members are Dalits. On the other hand, these people carry trishuls! When they organised a meeting to discuss the Yakub Memon issue, the ABVP went and disturbed the event. The ABVP as an organisation never organises any event to discuss national issues, or poverty or international events or any intellectual subject. They only have festivals on campuses. If some other organisation has an intellectual discussion, they go and disturb. Tell me, if a ruling party's students wing does this, how will democracy function? How will the PM's Make in India succeed without intellectuals? I have not come across a good research scholar from the ABVP while you see great intellectual depth in these Dalit students. By involving himself, do you feel Minister Dattatreya is in a way responsible for Rohith's suicide? What else? How can an intellectual boy tolerate this kind of discrimination? This is your vice-chancellor, this is your ministry and you got him suspended. His fellowship was not released for 7 months when his mother was starving. Does anyone know what he was going through? So, you feel he was driven to suicide by the minister, the VC and the university? Absolutely. The HRD ministry too. What was the need to write so many letters against these boys? Was there a murder on the campus? Were there weapons in their rooms? It was only a scuffle and in every university, you will have students fighting. Do you feel it became ugly because the BJP is ruling at the Centre? They involve themselves in every small student issue, write letters complaining and when they have their own appointed VCs, what do you expect them to do? From his Facebook posts, it is clear that Rohith had a great sense of humour... Yes, he wanted to be a science writer. Underneath the humour, there was a boy who was sensitive and helpless about his family's poverty. When his mother was starving, he was not able to help as his supervisor did not clear his fellowship for many months. Do these people not get their salaries on the first of every month? These are very sensitive economic issues. Even now, there are four more students who are punished like Rohith. What was the big crime that these boys committed to treat them like this? If not for the collective strength of the association, most Dalit students would have died of depression. Compared to these Dalit students, most of the ABVP members are either landlords' children, or businessmen's children or even from political families. Do you feel the prime minister, by remaining silent, has been unfair to the boy? He has not uttered a word. He has not even sent a representative to meet his (Rohith's) mother. He also has a 90-year-old mother. Do these people who always talk about mother, Bharat Mata etc do not understand the feelings of this mother? How can the prime minister be so indifferent? Even the minister who wrote the letter does not have the courtesy to see the mother. If something like this has happened to a black student in the US, Obama would have immediately come out and spoken. I am sure he would have cried in public. That is how you value a human being. Every political party is trying to secure political mileage from the suicide... I don't see anything wrong in it. Let the political parties come and talk about the issue. If they do not take it up, how will the country know and how will it not become an issue? All of them are going to see the mother except the BJP, TRS (the Telangana Rashtriya Samithi) and TDP (Telugu Desam Party). There is nothing wrong in it. Without politicising it, this issue will not get resolved. Today, there was a debate about whether Rohith was a Dalit or not. I feel this is absolutely criminal. Is it human to ask for his caste certificate now? Look at the upper caste mind! How can society give Rohith justice? Whenever I read the letters written by Rohith, tears roll down my eyes. He wrote that pardon my enemies. I can only compare him with Jesus Christ. He will become a symbol for the educational reform in this country. I feel his mother has given a gift to the nation. The Central Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday came under a scathing attack from a Delhi court which directed it to return documents sought by the Delhi government seized during recent raids on the office of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwals principal secretary, saying the agency 'cannot be clothed with divine powers' to flout its own rules. "The CBI cannot retain the documents in the garb of the argument that investigation is in progress without whispering the fact in what manner they are related to the present case (against principal secretary Rajendra Kumar)," Special CBI Judge Ajay Kumar Jain said. "The acceptance of vague reasons like investigation is still in progress implies that CBI is recognised with unbridled power to investigate even in violation of the relevant laws and regulations," he said. "The seizure of the present documents in question is in utter violation to the clause 14.19 of the CBI manual. Needless to say, clauses of CBI manual are binding upon the CBI," the judge said. Directing the agency to return the documents as sought by the Delhi government, he said any recognition of absolute immunity and unlimited powers will tantamount to recognition of 'divine power' which no authority on earth can enjoy. The court said that the CBI manual is binding upon the agency and in the garb of argument that the investigation is in progress, it cannot seize documents which are not related to the case. The judge said if the CBI is not able to disclose the reason why they want to retain these documents, then they have no right to keep them. "The CBI utterly failed to disclose the reasons of retention of the documents in its reply as well as during the arguments before the court. The CBI was unable to show any relation of these seized documents with present investigation," the court said. The court in its 36-page order said proceedings initiated by the CBI against public servants appear to be in 'haste' as no preliminary inquiry was carried out. "In this scenario, when the public servant while discharging his official duty misuses power and when there is no direct allegation of pecuniary advantage, then some sort of preliminary inquiry is required. However in present case, the FIR is registered on oral information. Thus, the proceedings initiated by the CBI appear to be in haste," it said. The judge said the CBI 'in the garb of the search warrant, cannot seize the documents which are not in any way related to the case and the documents seized in this manner is clearly an abuse of power'. "Using of that power by court cannot be held to be interference in the investigation, that is why the apex court has held that if the police transgresses the circumscribed limits, and improperly and illegally exercising its investigatory power in breach of any statutory provision then court on being approached by the aggrieved person can redress the same," it further said, adding the court had all powers to refrain the CBI from abusing its authority during the search. The court, however, rejected the prayer of the Delhi government for stringent action against the CBI officials who have seized the documents in alleged violation of the provisions of the CBI manual, saying it was devoid of merits. Disposing of the application, the court said if the CBI required any of the released documents during the probe, it was at liberty to seize it back in accordance with law. It said the CBI was, however, at liberty to retain photocopies of these documents and directed the Delhi government to depute a responsible officer to sign and stamp on those photocopies to avoid any dispute. It also directed the Delhi government to maintain the sanctity of the original documents released by CBI and said the agency was also at liberty to inspect the original papers any point of time by visiting the applicant's office. The court observed that even after a month of the probe, the CBI has failed to say how these documents were related to the allegations against Rajendra Kumar or other accused, while the Delhi government has shown that the papers were in no way connected with the case. The court said when certain power is given to an authority to do something, it includes such incidental or implied powers to ensure that it is done properly. "Therefore the analogy is clear that if the search warrants were issued by this court then this court has also the power that they should be executed properly and the CBI is not at liberty to abuse it or act arbitrarily," it said. "There could be an argument in favour of the CBI that investigation is still is infancy therefore, the CBI at this stage cannot predict the outcome. However, this argument will not hold in present circumstances when the CBI even could not tell after one month of investigation that how these documents are related to the allegations against accused Rajendra Kumar or other accused persons," the court said. Regarding the CBI's contention that there could be forgery of these documents if these are returned, it said this argument on its face appears baseless considering the nature of documents i.e. diaries or the files. "Even otherwise any kind of forgery in these documents do not relate to the present investigation," the judge said. He said there is no dispute that courts have no power to interfere in the probe, neither can it give direction in what manner the police should conduct investigation. Meanwhile, Kejriwal demanded an explanation from the Prime Ministers Office for the raid at Delhi Secretariat on the ground that it reports to the PM. Lashing out at CBI, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia even demanded an apology from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, alleging that the politically-motivated action was carried out at his behest to defame the Chief Ministers Office. Sources said the Delhi government is contemplating to move court seeking 'strict action' against the CBI officers who were part of the raid at the Delhi Secretariat on December 15. Union Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani has made a 'wrong statement' regarding the protests in HyderabadCentralUniversity over the suicide of a Dalit scholar and the ongoing row in the institution, student leaders spearheading the agitation claimed on Wednesday. "We would like refute each and every point," a leader of the agitating students said. The students held consultations after Irani addressed a press conference in New Delhi. He said the Dalit and student movements have come together in the university following the alleged suicide of Rohith Vemula. The minister mentioned that an executive council in the university had Dalit representatives but the body only had a co-opted SC member, he said. On Irani's statement that a Congress leader (MP V Hanumantha Rao) had also written on issues concerning the university, he said the minister should direct the university to implement the SC and ST sub-plan. The minister stated that the suicide note of Rohith was the only document made available to her but the deceased had written to the vice chancellor earlier, he said. The issues should not be made a Bharatiya Janata Party versus Congress issue as it is an issue of Rohiths suicide and human rights, he said. The minister described the punishment given to the student as lenient but social boycott and institutional murder cannot be lenient, the student leader said. The students demanded the arrest of all those figuring in the FIR including vice chancellor Appa Rao Podile. The protesting students also burnt an effigy of the minister inside the campus. Meanwhile, Hanumantha Rao hit back at Irani saying the young Dalit student would not have taken his life had the HRD ministry taken appropriate steps on his letter. The minister (Smriti Irani) had received my letter in November 2014 itself. (But) She did not bother about my letter all these days. What were she and the government doing all these days? She remembered my letter only when (Union minister Bandaru) Dattatreya also wrote a letter. Had the government acted on my letter, Rohith would not have taken such an extreme step, Rao, a Rajya Sabha MP, said. Dismissing allegations that a letter written by him to Union HRD ministry led to the suspension of the five scholars, Dattatreya sought to clarify that he merely forwarded a representation given to him by the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad. Apart from being a Union minister, I am also an elected member of Parliament from Secunderabad constituency. Since my entry into politics in 80s, I have always been a leader connected to masses and to all sections of the society on a daily basis, whether or not in any positions of power. Taking representations from common people, constituents and forwarding it to concerned ministries is what I consider my earnest responsibility by being an elected peoples representative, the Union minister said in a statement. Expressing deep shock over the scholars demise, Dattatreya said he would have forwarded the representation in the same way had they been given by any student groups. My role was only limited to forwarding these two representations. I would have happily forwarded representations of any other student body, if they had approached me, he said hoping that the matter now will rest with this clarification. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal will visit the University of Hyderabad on Thursday to meet the students and family members of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula who committed suicide. Kejriwal, who was scheduled to visit Bengaluru for undergoing naturopathy treatment for his chronic cough on January 22 for ten days, has deferred his visit and will now go there on January 27. "The Chief Minister will visit the University of Hyderabad on Thursday to meet the students and the family members of the Dalit scholar who committed suicide," said sources in the Delhi government. Aam Aadmi Party leaders Ashish Khetan and Ashish Talwar on Wednesday reached Hydrabad to meet protesting students. Kejriwal had demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi sack Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani, Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya and apologise to the nation over the suicide by the Dalit student, questioning their 'interference' in the internal affairs of the institution. Rohith, a PhD scholar, who committed suicide on Sunday night, was among the five research scholars who were suspended by the University in August last year over an alleged assault case. They were also kept out of the hostel. The issue took a political turn with allegations that the extreme step taken by Rohith was a result of discrimination against dalit students at the behest of Dattatreya, following his letter to Irani, seeking action against their 'anti-national acts'. Meanwhile, Kejriwal will go to Bengaluru for undergoing naturopathy treatment for his chronic cough on January 27 for ten days instead of January 22. Protests intensified at the Hyderabad Central University on Wednesday over the alleged suicide of a Dalit research scholar even as more politicians headed to the campus, demanding resignation of Union minister Smriti Irani. Under attack, the university Vice Chancellor claimed there had been no pressure from Union ministers or the human resource development ministry to act against the youth but offered to facilitate talks to restore peace on the campus. Students shout slogans against VC during a protest at HCU Campus. Photograph: PTI Communist Party of India-Marxist general secretary Sitaram Yechury, spokesperson of Trinamool Congress Derek OBrien and YSR Congress president Y S Jaganmohan Reddy interacted with the students, who have been on warpath demanding justice for 26-year-old Vemula Rohith Chakravarthi who was found hanging in his hostel room on Sunday. Police took into preventive custody some activists of the pro-CPI All India Students Federation when they tried to hold a demonstration near the residence of Union Minister of State for Labour and Employment Bandaru Dattatreya, who has been accused of being responsible for the death. Yechury said the incidents in the HCU are part of a larger issue of Bharatiya Janata Partys alleged game of turning the country into a Hindu Rashtra and demanded the resignation of HRD Minister Smriti Irani and an independent inquiry into the incident. It is part of the larger issue of intolerance. Intolerance is also part of the larger issue. The larger issue is transform this secular, democratic, republic of India as our Constitution says, into what they want, a rabidly intolerant fascistic Hindu Rashtra. That is the larger game, the CPI-M leader alleged while talking to reporters. We are saying let there be an independent inquiry. It could be judicial, non-judicial, but something which is not foisted by the same minister who has through her pressure created this situation and the unfortunate suicide. So let that be there and all those who are part of this conspiracy, I would call, its a criminal conspiracy, according to the new law we passed in Parliament, they must be tried according to the criminal offence, he said. The HRD minister has to go, Yechury said. He also said that his party would represent to the president, who is the visitor of the university, and ask him on what basis the HCU was conferred the best university award by him last year. He said his party MP from Kerala, T N Seema, has written to the President saying that it is not morally tenable for her to continue as a member of the court of the university in the prevailing situation unless the vice chancellor is dismissed by the court. Students protesting over the death of Rohit Vemula, a doctarate student at the Hyderabad Central University, in Bengaluru. Photograph: Shailendra Bhojak/PTI Trinamool Congress MP Derek O'Brien on Wednesday said his party would coordinate with other parties in supporting the students agitating against the Hyderabad Central University authorities in the aftermath of the alleged suicide of a Dalit student and ongoing row that has followed. This is the fight for justice versus injustice. This is intolerance. There is documentary evidence from whatever we have seen that clearly points to pressure, ruthless kind of pressure. Parliament is closed now but we will bring Parliament here, he said. O'Brien, who was speaking in the HCU where he met the protesting students and expressed solidarity with them, said Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal would come to the HCU on Thursday, followed by the visit of a Janata Dal-United delegation. The Delhi CM is coming down and we are coordinating with all the political parties. The boys want the support. We said we will help them to coordinate with all the parties who want to come here. More will come, he said. Addressing the protesting students, he said political leaders would support the agitation to be led by the students. The National Democratic Alliance government talked about 'digital India' but what happened in the HCU is divisive India, he claimed. "This country has always prided itself in inclusion but now, we are making it, it is either my way or no way. On one side, his government talks about digital India. Digital India be gone, it is 'divisive India," he said. The TMC MP supported the students' demands, including compensation to the family of the Dalit student Vemula Rohit Chakravarthi, and providing a job to his family. The incident has snowballed into a major row with BJPs rivals wading into it and demanding the removal of Irani and Dattatreya, accusing them of being responsible for the death. The agitating students are demanding resignation of Dattatreya, removal of Vice Chancellor Rao, Rs five crore compensation to Rohits family and employment to a member of his family, besides revocation of suspension of four students. Rallying under the banner of Joint Action Committee for Social Justice, the protestors alleged that the five students were suspended following a written communication by Dattatreya to the Union HRD ministry. However, dismissing allegations against him, Dattatreya had earlier said, Anti-social, anti-national activities were going on in the university. Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad activists were beaten up. At that time, ABVP gave a representation. I orwarded the representation to the ministry (of HRD). I dont know what action they did. BJP or I have nothing to do with the incident. Striking a conciliatory note, the vice chancellor offered to facilitate talks with the students to understand their concern and resolve matters in an amicable manner. In an appeal, he said, We are all saddened by the tragic incident in which we have lost the life of one bright student Vemula Rohit Chakravarthi. Let us also join together in sharing the grief with his family members. We also have to note and learn the ways and means to avoid such incidents on our campus. Let us pledge to give our time and thought process to prevent recurrence of such incidents that disturb the peace on the campus, he said. As this semester is a shortened semester and we have a hectic schedule ahead, let us not miss out on class work, research and administrative work from today. It is appealed to all members of the university to put all our heads together and learn to work in this crisis situation, Rao said. It is further appealed that a group of senior faculty colleagues and dean, students welfare, need to engage in discussions with the students to understand their concerns, resolve matters in an amicable manner and also to pre-empt such issues of the students in future, Rao added. A suicide bomber struck a minibus near the Russian embassy in downtown Kabul on Wednesday, killing four people in the latest deadly attack in the Afghan capital. The attack also left 24 people wounded, though it was not immediately clear if the embassy was the intended target, Afghanistans Interior Ministry said. No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack, which comes just two days after a second round of a four-country meeting in Kabul aimed at reviving talks with the Taliban. "A suicide attacker rammed into a civilian minibus on Darul Aman road and there have been casualties," said Kabuls deputy police chief Sayed Gul Agha Rohani. The road links downtown Kabul to the historic war-damaged DarulamanPalace, built by Afghan King Amanullah Khan. The loud explosion sent a plume of smoke rising in the sky, with ambulances and firefighters rushing to the scene which was littered with charred debris. Delegates from Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States convened in the Afghan capital Monday for a one-day meeting seeking a negotiated end to the 14-year Taliban insurgency. The Taliban has stepped up attacks on government and foreign targets in Afghanistan this winter, when fighting usually abates, underscoring a worsening security situation. Observers say the intensifying insurgency highlights a push by the militants to seize more territory in an attempt to wrangle greater concessions during talks. Image: Firefighters inspect the wreckage of a bus was hit by a suicide bomb attack in Kabul, Afghanistan on Wednesday. Photograph: Omar Sobhani/Reuters One person, who is suspected to be associated with a terror outfit, has been detained and three of his associates are being questioned by a team of Delhi Polices Special Cell at Roorkee in Uttarakhand. The detained suspect, identified as one Akhlaq, is likely to be brought to Delhi by Wednesday and produced before a court. The suspects are believed to have been planning an attack at the ongoing Ardh Kumbh Mela in Haridwar, a police source said. The Special Cell tracked down the suspects in a joint operation with a central intelligence agency and they are conducting search operations throughout Uttarakhand, the source said. The detained suspect is also being questioned in connection with the recent terror attack at Punjabs Pathankot as he is believed to have links with terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed, the source said. On Monday, the Special Cell of the Delhi police had arrested a person with suspected al-Qaeda links from Nuh town in Haryana's Mewat district. In a joint operation with a central intelligence agency, two persons were apprehended from there, of which one was arrested by the Special Cell, senior officials claimed. The Border Security Forces camel contingent will continue to march in the ceremonial Republic Day parade on Rajpath in New Delhi after all. In an afterthought, the contingent of camels caparisoned in rich bridal attire and silver bracelets jingling has been finally called in to march down the Rajpath, keeping alive the 66-year-old tradition of the countrys main parade on January 26. With less than a week to go for the national event, the iconic contingent on Wednesday took part in dress rehearsals for the first time after it was made to skip the same exercise on January 17 and 18. The four-footed contingent, colourfully bedecked, is a major attraction at the parade every year. Officials said the Border Security Force authorities were informed on Tuesday evening by the Ministry of Defence to mobilise their squad and participate in the drill at the Rajpath on Wednesday morning. "The camel contingent on Wednesday participated in the dress rehearsals for the first time. The squad has been in New Delhi for the last about three months but no intimation for participating in the rehearsals for January 26 parade were made earlier. It skipped the scheduled and notified rehearsals held on January 17 and 18," the officials said. The 90-camel contingent, 54 with troops and the rest with band personnel, first became part of this national festival celebration in 1976 after it replaced a similar squad of the army which had been participating in the Republic Day parade since it first took place in 1950. The BSF is the only force in the country to have these majestic and elegantly dressed four-legged animals for both operational and ceremonial duties. They are used by BSF personnel for patrolling along the Thar desert running along the Indo-Pak International Border in Rajasthan. The contingent had been the intrinsic part of the parade at the Rajpath every January 26. "The contingent has been practising at other facilities till now and it can surely give its best by putting its best foot forward in the last few days before January 26," officials said. According to tradition, the lead camel contingent on Republic Day showcases smartly dressed and with large-moustaches and armed BSF border guards, the second follows with bandsmen in beautiful multi-colour dresses on the back of the camels playing martial music. "The camel contingent may also now be included in the Beating the Retreat ceremony to be held on January 29 where they stand on the ramparts of the North and South Blocks on Raisina Hill," officials said. A former United States Navy SEAL who claims he shot Osama bin Laden has allegedly turned over a photograph he took of the terror leaders corpse and is under investigation over his supposed business links to a military equipment supplier, sources claim. Matthew Bissonnette turned over a hard drive that contained the photo to US investigators in exchange for an agreement that he wouldnt be prosecuted for unlawfully possessing classified material, according to the The Intercept. Bissonnette had been under investigation for allegedly revealing classified information in his book about the incident, No Easy Day. The US government has never released images of bin Ladens body and says the Al Qaeda leader was buried at sea shortly after the raid. US President Barack Obama has cited national security risks and said the United States should not brandish trophies of its victory. Bin Laden was killed in May 2011 when SEALs stormed his hideaway in Abbottabad, Pakistan. UNHCR warns against perilous Horn of Africa sea crossings as 92,000 reach Yemen in 2015, 36 already drowned this year Publisher UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Publication Date 19 January 2016 Cite as UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), UNHCR warns against perilous Horn of Africa sea crossings as 92,000 reach Yemen in 2015, 36 already drowned this year, 19 January 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/569e346b683b.html [accessed 20 October 2022] Latest data on sea arrivals in Yemen shows that despite the ongoing conflict some 92,446 people arrived by boat there in 2015. This is one of the highest annual totals of the past decade. A full two thirds arrived since March 2015 when the conflict began. With 95 deaths reported, 2015 is the second deadliest year recorded to date. In view of this, and the loss of 36 lives in an incident on 8 January this year, UNHCR is today reiterating its warning to people contemplating the crossing over the dangers of this journey. UNHCR began systematic recording of arrivals in Yemen in 2006. To date, only 2011 (103,154) and 2012 (107,532) have seen higher arrivals of Ethiopians and Somalis in Yemen than there were in 2015. Almost 90 per cent (82,268) of last year's arrivals were from Ethiopia. UNHCR Somalia and partners have been working with the international community and Somali authorities to improve political, security and socio-economic conditions in Somalia, as well as actively pursuing durable solutions for refugees, returnees and people who are internally displaced. These efforts aim at providing an alternative to Somalis to undertaking perilous sea journeys to Yemen. The number of Somalis who made the journey to Yemen last year compares to a high of just over 33,000 in 2008. Nonetheless, the overall figures are disturbing. People continue to arrive despite unprecedented escalated internal conflict in Yemen and tragically more people continue to lose their lives trying to cross the sea in overcrowded, unseaworthy boats. Most of the arrivals in 2015 were along the Arabian Sea coast rather than the Red Sea coast where in previous years the majority of arrivals were recorded and where smuggling and trafficking networks have been active. Since the escalation of the conflict in March 2015, some of the most intense conflict has centred in Taizz governorate along the Red Sea coast which may offer an explanation for the change in travel routes. UNHCR's partners continue to patrol the coast and provide shelter, food and medical care for those rescued at sea or arriving by their own means. People seeking international protection are referred to UNHCR offices in country. As a result of the ongoing conflict along the Red Sea coast UNHCR's partner had to temporarily close its transit centre and adjacent clinic in Bab-el-Mandab. Many new arrivals are misinformed about the severity of the conflict, believe that the situation has become relatively calm in some of the southern governorates, or are following rumours of improved access into neighbouring Gulf countries. New arrivals face movement restrictions in Yemen, and there have been reports of some being caught in the conflict and killed. There are now fewer income opportunities and available services, and organized gangs and smugglers continue to operate along the Red Sea coast. UNHCR and partners in the Horn of Africa counsel would-be crossers about the inherent dangers of the journey, the realities of the situation on the ground in Yemen and the asylum and assistance options available to them. Conflict continues to rage in the country and Yemenis are bearing the brunt with over 2.5 million people now internally displaced. Despite severely restricted humanitarian access and security constraints, UNHCR reached over 280,000 internally displaced Yemenis with essential household items and shelter material in 2015. Yemen is also host to over 266,000 refugees, of which some 250,000 are Somali. Meanwhile, over 168,000 people have fled Yemen to neighbouring countries since March. The latest UNHCR Yemen arrivals infographic covering 2012 to 2015 is attached. The total number of arrivals in previous years was: 2006 (25,898), 2007 (29,360), 2008 (50,091), 2009 (77,802), 2010 (53,382) and 2011 (103,154). UNHCR struggles to help tens of thousands newly displaced by Boko Haram in Niger Publisher UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Publication Date 19 January 2016 Cite as UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), UNHCR struggles to help tens of thousands newly displaced by Boko Haram in Niger, 19 January 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/569e350375c.html [accessed 20 October 2022] UNHCR and its partners are struggling to help an estimated 100,000 people newly displaced in recent weeks in south-east Niger's Diffa region by attacks launched by Nigeria's Boko Haram insurgency group. Our team in Niger describes the situation as very serious with acute shortages of shelter and non-food items for the displaced. These include local villagers, internally displaced people from Niger, people who have been displaced several times and Nigerian refugees who were staying with host families or in sites for the displaced in a 10 to 30-kilometre belt of land between the River Komadougou and Niger's Route National No.1. Some 170 villages have been left empty in the Diffa region. UNHCR is redirecting available resources to meet the urgent shelter and other assistance and calls on donors for extra support to help this vulnerable population. The officials expect more to flee the volatile border area when the dry season returns in a matter of weeks and Nigerian military operations resume in the area. The newly displaced have sought shelter alongside Niger's National Route No. 1, which links the capital Niamey to the east of the country. The Niger army has not been able to ensure protection for villages and displacement sites because they are spread over a wide area and attacks usually come at night. Many of the newly displaced have sought shelter at Kouble, which is located some 910 kilometres east of Niamey on National Route No. 1 and normally has a population of just 300. A UNHCR team visited last week and found a mixed population of Nigerian refugees, local villagers, internally displaced people. The local government had recently conducted a provisional registration at Kouble and put the number of displaced who have arrived there since November 2015 at more than 10,000 people from 20 villages, including Nigerian refugees who have fled their homes since 2013. In Kouble, like elsewhere on a 100-kilometre stretch of Route No. 1, people are living in makeshift shelters alongside the highway. Newly arrived families have few sanitation facilities and have to walk far to fetch water from distribution points. Our partner, Medecins Sans Frontieres, is providing health care and sanitation but needs more support. And many children are unable to attend school. While the World Food Programme is currently meeting food demand in the Diffa region, there is urgent need for other assistance, particularly adequate shelter. Help is needed urgently and UNHCR has offered to conduct a more comprehensive registration that will make it easier to determine needs, especially as many refugees and locals have been displaced several times in recent months and may have been counted twice or not at all. Providing assistance and shelter is all the more difficult because people are living in spontaneous sites rather than in a camp environment, where security is tighter and access to water, health care and sanitation facilities is easier. At present, UNHCR and its partners are facing difficulties coping with the needs. The conflict in north-east Nigeria has forced more than 220,300 people to find refuge in neighbouring countries since 2013, including 138,300 in Niger (Nigerian and Niger nationals), 61,000 in Cameroon, and 14,100 in Chad. Over 2.2 million people are also internally displaced, mainly in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states. In Niger, insurgent incursions had displaced an estimated 50,000 people within the country. UNHCR's Niger operation is 49 per cent funded with US$24.9 million received against overall requirements of US$51 million. Iran's Overtures to Tajik Opposition Expose Deep-Seated Grievances Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Fozil Mashrab Publication Date 15 January 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 10 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Iran's Overtures to Tajik Opposition Expose Deep-Seated Grievances, 15 January 2016, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 10, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/569f3f164.html [accessed 20 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Link to original story on Jamestown website In December 2015, Iran invited Tajikistan's opposition leader, Muhiddin Kabiri, to attend a conference on Islam. The invitation extended to Kabiri, who is accused of allegedly masterminding an unsuccessful armed mutiny back home, unsettled the authorities in Dushanbe, which led to Tajikistan's government summoning the Iranian ambassador to register its strong protest (Khovar.tj, December 30, 2015). According to the statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Tajikistan, Ambassador Hujatullo Fagoni was told that the participation in the "Islamic Unity" conference of "the former head of an extremist and terrorist [sic] Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan Muhiddin Kabiri," who faces criminal charges in Tajikistan and is wanted by Interpol, was unacceptable. This conference was held on December 27, 2015, in Tehran. The statement concluded that "such an attitude to enemies of the state and people of Tajikistan could have a negative impact on bilateral relations of the Republic of Tajikistan and the Islamic Republic of Iran" (Mfa.tj, December 29, 2015). Despite the expression of strong protest by Tajikistan's government, Kabiri met to exchange compliments with the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which was widely covered in the Iranian press (Catotoday.org, December 31, 2015). The government in Dushanbe banned the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) in late September 2015. The IRPT had commanded a substantial following inside the country and among more than one million Tajikistani migrant workers in Russia. In particular, the government accused the IRPT's leadership of organizing an unsuccessful armed mutiny, on September 4, by General Abduhalim Nazarzoda, who was serving at that time as the first deputy minister of defense of Tajikistan (see EDM, September 11, 23, 2015). The globe-trotting IRPT leader, Muhiddin Kabiri, in exile in Turkey since parliamentary elections in Tajikistan in March 2015, has denied any involvement in the deadly September 4 clashes and continues to assert that the authorities are using the incident as an excuse to wipe out the IRPT. The United States government has also expressed its concern over the banning of Tajikistan's main opposition party (Ng.ru, September 18, 2015; Dushanbe.usembassy.gov, October 8, 2015). In early December 2015, the chief of Tajikistan's State Committee of National Security, Saymumin Yatimov, wrote an article published in several government newspapers, in which he referred to Muhiddin Kabiri and the late General Abduhalim Nazarzoda as "toys in the hands of foreign countries," but he did not name any specific country. According to Yatimov, "geopolitical players want to present the treacherous actions of some groups and individuals as solely domestic issues. Thus, certain countries pursue their geopolitical interests" (Avesta.tj, December 17, 2015). Tajikistan is generally considered Iran's closest partner in Central Asia due to their linguistic, cultural and historical ties. The Tajik language is a dialect of Persian. Moreover, Iran was the first country to recognize Tajikistan's independence and to open its embassy in Dushanbe. Former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad once described the relationship between the two states as "one spirit in two bodies" (Atimes.com, March 30, 2012). However, under current President Hassan Rouhani, all the romance in the relationship came to an end, especially after authorities in Tehran arrested Iranian businessman Babak Zanjani, who was helping the government of then-president Ahmadinejad sell Iranian oil abroad while bypassing Western sanctions. According to Iranian officials, Zanjani owns an investment bank, a transport company, an airliner and other valuable assets in Tajikistan worth $600 million. And while in custody, Zanjani claimed that the missing $2.25 billion that he still owes to the government of Iran from the sale of Iranian oil is deposited with the National Bank of Tajikistan (News.tj, January 27, 2015). Dushanbe denied that Zanjani ever made any investments or held any assets in Tajikistan. The chairman of the National Bank of Tajikistan dismissed as ridiculous any attempts to link the bank to any financial dealings with the Iranian businessman. But Iran maintains that Zanjani had valuable assets in Tajikistan, and Tehran demands that Tajikistani authorities hand these assets over to the Iranian government in order to compensate for the economic damages caused by Zanjani's business activities (News.tj, June 17, 2015; see EDM, January 20, 2014). Bilateral relations are also tense because Tajik political elites continue to blame Iran for instigating the destructive civil war that took place in Tajikistan in the 1990s. Thus, the various infrastructure projects the Iranian government undertook in Tajikistan since the end of the civil war, such as building tunnels, roads, hospitals, schools and hydro-electric power stations, were viewed by Tajikistanis as "compensation for the enormous damage" inflicted on the country during the civil war (Paruskg.info, January 1). Various mutual grievances have, therefore, continuously existed between the two countries. But in the latest diplomatic scuffle, involving IRPT leader Kabiri, neither side seems ready to back down quite so easily. Perhaps, the general mood in Dushanbe after this past December's row with Tehran is best demonstrated by the indignant expressions of displeasure by Tajikistan's Grand Mufti Saidmukarram Abduqodirzoda during Friday prayers on New Year's Day. Specifically, Abduqodirzoda declared that, by inviting Kabiri to Tehran and arranging for him to meet with the Iranian leader, the government of Iran was openly showing its disrespect to the government and the people of Tajikistan. He went on to accuse Iran of supporting the enemies of Tajikistan and called the Islamic Republic "the accomplice of the traitors" (Ca-news.info, January 2). Furthermore, on January 2, just as Iran's relations with Saudi Arabia, its regional nemesis, reached a serious crisis point spurred by the Saudi government's execution of a Shia cleric, Tajikistan's President Emomali Rakhmon traveled to Riyadh. WikiLeaks has revealed that, in the past, Tajikistan's leadership made overtures to Saudi Arabia and promised to restrict its ties with Iran "if other sources of financial support become available, especially from the kingdom" (The New York Times, July 16, 2015). Though the timing of his trip was almost certainly a coincidence, Rakhmon nevertheless poured grease on the fire by hailing Saudi Arabia as an important partner of Tajikistan in the Middle East (President.tj, January 2). In the broader context, these kinds of "stabs in the back" are nothing new in Central Asian politics; eventually, in such cases, each of the countries involved were able to overcome their grievances in order to return to more pragmatic relations. Similar incidents happened in Uzbekistani-Turkish, Kazakhstani-Russian and Kyrgyzstani-Belarusian relations in recent history, when one side hosted or refused to extradite the so-called "enemies of the state" of the other country. But what makes the current row between Tajikistan and Iran stand out from these is the emotional nature of the dispute, given the closeness of the two peoples. Sometimes family feuds can last longer and be more bitter than fights between strangers. Copyright notice: 2010 The Jamestown Foundation Circassian Activists Protest Deportation of Circassians With Turkish Citizenship Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Valery Dzutsati Publication Date 18 January 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 11 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Circassian Activists Protest Deportation of Circassians With Turkish Citizenship, 18 January 2016, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 11, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/569f400f4.html [accessed 20 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Link to original story on Jamestown website The Russian government has started targeting Circassians from Turkey who have settled in the North Caucasus, angering local Circassians. Even the well-known Russian loyalist Asker Sokht, a Circassian activist from Krasnodar region, raised the alarm, saying that Circassian settlers from Turkey in Kabardino-Balkaria have started receiving letters from the Russian Federal Migration Service officially annulling their legal residence in the Russian Federation. Sokht called these attempts "another mass deportation of Circassians from their historical homeland." He added that "under made-up pretext and taking advantage of the tense Russian-Turkish relations, [some forces] are making an attempt to deport en masse Circassian compatriots who have for years lived in Russia back to Turkey." Sokht called on the republican authorities in Kabardino-Balkaria and the federal authorities in Moscow to stop the campaign of deportations (Yuga.ru, January 14), as if the campaign was started by someone other than the authorities themselves. Russian-Turkish relations soured last November after Turkey downed a Russian warplane that was bombing anti-government forces in Syria. The Turkish authorities said that the Russian plane was downed after it crossed into Turkish airspace. An anti-Turkish public campaign followed in Russia, with President Putin vowing to punish Turkey and issuing two decrees imposing sanctions on the country, including an end to the visa free regime and import/export operations between the two countries as well as restriction on the activities of Turkish businesses. Ironically, Russia is so dependent on Turkish construction and some other companies-especially since the West imposed sanctions over Ukraine-that the Russian government is now preparing to backtrack and lift sanctions against select Turkish firms (Deutsche Welle-Russian service, January 15). The history of Circassian settlers from Turkey in the North Caucasus dates back to the 19th century, when the Russian Empire expanded in several directions, conquering and destroying states and nations. When the Russian imperial armies dealt the final blow to Circassian forces near what is now the city of Sochi on the Black Sea, the Russian authorities quickly set out to alter the ethnic map of the area. The Circassian population that remained was deported to the Ottoman Empire, many were starved to death and only a minority was allowed to stay in their homeland. After the end of the Cold War, some Circassians from Turkey started returning to their historical homeland in the North Caucasus. Hundreds resettled in Kabardino-Balkaria and Adygea, but the authorities never made the process easy for Circassians who wished to return. On January 14, the Federation of Caucasian Organizations of Turkey (KAFFED) said it was calling for an extraordinary conference of the International Circassian Association (ICA), an organization created by the Russian security services in the early 1990s, which sought to regulate ties between foreign Circassian diaspora groups and Circassians in the North Caucasus. KAFFED said it was alarmed by the mounting problems of Circassian returnees from Turkey in the North Caucasus, who are facing increased pressure connected to deteriorating Russian-Turkish relations (Caucasreview.com, January 15). However, the ICA itself has been criticized by many Circassian activists for its complacency and lack of will to defend Circassian interests. Hence, "an extraordinary meeting" of ICA is unlikely to change the situation. According to the Russian Federal Migration Service (FBS) in Kabardino-Balkaria, 90 Turkish citizens currently have temporary residence permits and 104 Turkish citizens have permanent residence permits. In 2015, the FMS registered 936 new arrivals from Turkey and removed 859 from their registry. The authorities claim that only 7 out of 26 people who had their residency permits annulled were ethnic Circassians. The authorities accused the Circassian repatriates of violating the rules of registration (propiska), which are notoriously hard to navigate even for native Russians citizens. The returnees reportedly were not living at the addresses where they were registered. Registration in Russia is not simply about notifying the authorities where one resides, but about receiving permission to reside at a specific place, and the process of receiving such permission is rife with corruption. Valery Khatazhukov, a rights activist from Kabardino-Balkaria, called on the governor of the republic, Yuri Kokov, to stop the deportation of Circassian returnees from Turkey, but the governor did not respond (Kavkazsky Uzel, January 15). Meanwhile, Russian experts put Kabardino-Balkaria at the bottom of the list of Russian regions ranked by their overall stability. Experts note the low investment activity in the republic, the continuing campaign of public killings, and the slump in investment in human capital (Onkavkaz.com, January 14). Circassian activists themselves note that many of the Circassian refugees from Syria who made it to Russia and the North Caucasus eventually chose to emigrate to Europe or at least try to do so rather than remain in the region. The activists say it is an alarming sign for Kabardino-Balkaria and other Circassian-populated republics that their compatriots prefer Europe to their own homeland. Out of the estimated 3,000 Circassian Syrians who arrived in Russia, 40 percent, or about 1,200 individuals, continued on to Europe (Ekhokavkaza, January 15). Given the current conditions, with life in the North Caucasus not an attractive option even for many Circassian refugees from Syria, the Turkish Circassians are not being deported because there is an overflow of refugees. Instead, it appears that the Russian authorities are using the deterioration in relations with Turkey to settle scores with Circassian activists, who have pushed for the return of willing Circassians to their historical homeland in the North Caucasus. Copyright notice: 2010 The Jamestown Foundation Azerbaijan: Trapped Between Two Fault Lines Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Zaur Shiriyev Publication Date 19 January 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 12 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Azerbaijan: Trapped Between Two Fault Lines, 19 January 2016, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 12, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/569f437a4.html [accessed 20 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Link to original story on Jamestown website The deterioration of Turkey-Russia ties on the one hand and Iran-Saudi Arabia relations on the other have been a major source of worry for the Azerbaijani authorities over the past year. The leadership officially acknowledged this concern last week (January 10) (APA, January 10). However, these are two different types of crisis, each posing different challenges for Azerbaijan. The breakdown of Turkish-Russian relations took place in late November 2015, after the downing of a Russian jet that had violated Turkey's airspace. Initially, Baku thought that the rupture of relations would be relatively brief, and that a diplomatic solution could be found quickly. But the severity of the damage became clear when Russian authorities introduced sanctions against Turkey. Initially, Baku proposed to mediate a reconciliation (Contact.az, November 26, 2015). This offer-given that a miscommunication was clearly not the source of the Russian-Turkish dispute-effectively signaled a declaration of "neutrality" by the Azerbaijani authorities. Baku's need to make such a gesture was driven by Russia's political leverage over Azerbaijan as well as a desire to remain in Moscow's good graces, particularly while Azerbaijan's relations with the West had been deteriorating. But when it came to Turkey, the Azerbaijani government understood that more was needed; Ankara has certain expectations of Baku due to their bilateral strategic relationship and all that it entails. Thus, despite its attempted statement of neutrality, Azerbaijan took some measures to support Turkey. After Russia obstructed Turkish trucks transiting Russian territory to reach Kazakhstan and other Central Asian countries, Azerbaijan agreed to provide an alternative route. According to the International Transporters Association (UND), Turkish vehicles can use the Caspian Corridor from Azerbaijan to Turkmenistan (Haberler.com, November 29, 2015). Moreover, since the crisis with Russia, Turkey wants to accelerate the work on the Trans-Anatolian natural gas pipeline (TANAP) project by moving the completion date up to 2018 (Daily Sabah, December 3, 2015), seeing TANAP as an alternative to dependency on Russian gas. But in reality, even once this pipeline is operational, Azerbaijan would be providing a maximum of 25 percent of Turkey's annual natural gas demand (up from the current 12 percent). Russia, on the other hand, provides 55 percent of Turkey's gas imports (VOA, December 14, 2015). Azerbaijani gas can be at best an additional resource, but not a viable alternative to Russian supplies. Behind the political rhetoric, Baku's real concern lies in the security sector. Years of high-level Russian-Turkish cooperation largely precluded Moscow from openly criticizing simultaneous growing military ties between Ankara and Baku. The two Turkic neighbors have conducted a half-dozen joint military exercises since 2013, and the level of military involvement is increasing year-on-year (APA, January 16, 2015). Crucially, in the context of Turkish-Azerbaijani military cooperation, Moscow for years seemed to have basically disregarded the fact that Turkey is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)-a fact that, in contrast, never goes unnoticed in any instances of Georgia's cooperation with member states of the Alliance. The Saudi Arabia-Iran confrontation represents an entirely different threat to the government in Baku. For a long time, Azerbaijan's relations with Saudi Arabia did not extend into the strategic realm, except when Riyadh would back Baku's position on the Karabakh conflict, diplomatically support Azerbaijan's territorial integrity, or refuse to initiate relations with Armenia (Turkishweekly.net, April 8, 2009). But since the new King Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud came to power, the Saudis have changed their strategy toward a number of countries, including Azerbaijan. In a growing effort to contain Iran, Saudi Arabia has essentially used its financial resources in recent years to buy loyalty from other states in the region (Trend, May 19, 2014). Due to the decline in oil prices, Azerbaijan has greatly stepped up its search for foreign investments, especially from countries willing to overlook domestic human rights issues. Thus, the number of high-level visits from Azerbaijan to Saudi Arabia has increased in the last year. The early challenge that Azerbaijan faced in its relationship with Saudi Arabia was the Iranian question. In contrast to the pre-2013 period, Baku wanted to avoid damaging its relations with Tehran by joining forces with anyone pursuing an openly anti-Iran campaign. Therefore, Azerbaijan took small steps in building its relations with Saudi Arabia-such as joining Saudi-led anti-terrorism activities that excluded Iran and its allies. Because Tehran did not openly display dissatisfaction, Baku joined the Islamic coalition against terrorism, which was initiated by Riyadh (TASS, December 15, 2015). However, after the open confrontation between Iran and Saudi Arabia, following the Kingdom's execution of Shia religious leader Nimr al-Nimr, Azerbaijan has retreated on this front. Meanwhile, Iran under President Hassan Rouhani has changed its rhetoric and sought to develop relations with Azerbaijan. One of the key issues for Baku is ensuring Iran's silence on Azerbaijan's domestic issues, specifically when it comes to the Azerbaijani government's domestic response to Islamist extremists or pro-Iranian Shia religious figures-all issues to which Tehran had previously reacted aggressively. Thus, in late November 2015, a police operation in Nardaran, a village near the capital Baku known for its religious conservatism, resulted in the arrest of a number of Shia Muslims (Iwpr.net, November 30, 2015). But in a show of political pragmatism, Tehran did not officially condemn this, calling it an internal matter for Baku (Trend, December 1, 2015). The price for Iran's silence is Azerbaijan's acceleration of work on a cooperation agreement to coordinate the Azerbaijani railway network with the Iranian ITC North-South railway (Contact.az, December 9, 2015). Furthermore, since the suspension of international sanctions, Iran's role in the wider Middle East is now in flux-Tehran is increasing its share in several regional foreign oil and gas projects. In addition, it may become involved in the development of the Shah Deniz gas condensate field in Azerbaijan's sector of the Caspian Sea, with Azerbaijani gas pipelines serving as an alternative export route for Iranian gas to European markets in the long term. From these perspectives, bilateral relations with both Saudi Arabia and Iran offer opportunities that are in Azerbaijani national interests, but Tehran and Riyadh's current confrontation limits Baku's ability to maximize these avenues. Essentially, Azerbaijan is stuck in the middle of two regional crises. The effect of this is exacerbated by the domestic economic situation: following the decline in oil prices, the country has been forced to devalue its currency, leading to protests against price hikes in several regions (Turan, January 12). Under these conditions, the Russian-Turkish and Iranian-Saudi fault lines pose additional problems, requiring Azerbaijan to act with extreme caution. Copyright notice: 2010 The Jamestown Foundation Is It Too Early to Write off the Caucasus Emirate? Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Mairbek Vatchagaev Publication Date 14 January 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 9 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Is It Too Early to Write off the Caucasus Emirate?, 14 January 2016, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 9, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/569f43ef4.html [accessed 20 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Link to original story on Jamestown website With the start of a new year, the situation involving the militarized Islamic jamaat of Kabarda, Balkaria and Karachai (KBK), which operates in two North Caucasian republics, Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachaevo-Cherkessia, remains unclear. When Caucasus Emirate (CE) militants started to switch allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) en masse in 2015, the KBK jamaat could not decide which camp it belonged to. The IS proclaimed the establishment of a province (velayat) on the territories of Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan and Kabardino-Balkaria. Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, spokesperson for self-proclaimed caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, made the announcement (Gazeta.ru, July 24, 2015). Al-Baghdadi appointed Abu Muhammad Kadarsky (Rustam Asilderov) as valiy (ruler) of the velayat (Infochechen.com, July 23, 2015). Asilderov had previously headed the Dagestani part of the CE. The prospects of the CE looked dim, since many observers thought all of its members would eventually join the IS. That, however, did not happen-or, more precisely, attempts to revive the CE continue. The KBK's amir, Salim (Zalim Shebzukhov), who was affiliated with the Caucasus Emirate and officially declared dead, unexpectedly reemerged in an audio recording posted on YouTube at the end of December 2015 (YouTube, December 28, 2015). In the seven-minute address to his supporters, Shebzukhov asked them to excuse him for not clarifying the situation with the split of the KBK jamaat into supporters of the CE and the IS. Shebzukhov claimed that many of those who pledged allegiance to the IS were actually prepared to join him, but were killed in special operations. He reproached those who left the CE in favor of the IS and promised that CE would be restored and that those who left it would regret their decision. It was a strange address by a rebel amir who was reportedly killed in a special operation in Nalchik back in April 2015 (Kavkazsky Uzel, April 16, 2015). Even though the authorities reported Shebzukhov's death multiple times, his silence since April 2015 still appears to be quite strange, especially given the ongoing dispute between the CE and IS. Some of Shebzukhov's former associates who know him personally and joined the IS immediately responded to his call, saying that he should also join the IS rather than returning to the CE (Justpaste.it, January 7). The first indication that Shebzukhov was alive came in August 2015, when an IS member named Shakh Shakhov called on him via the Internet to recognize the IS and join the organization (YouTube, August 31, 2015). Since IS members in Kabardino-Balkaria suffered significant losses in November 2015, including the killing of their leader, Robert Zangishiev (Rosbalt, November 22, 2015), Shebzukhov's position has strengthened. Another surprising development in the KBK jamaat was tied to Karachaevo-Cherkessia. The KBK formally includes the Karachaevo-Cherkessian jamaat, but the latter essentially disappeared after powerful blows by the Russian security forces in 2007-2009. A joint jamaat of Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachaevo-Cherkessia, the KBK appeared in response to the de-facto elimination of the Karachaevo-Cherkessian jamaat. Despite many years of tranquility, on December 24, 2015, the authorities, in a surprise move, introduced a counterterrorist operation regime in the Adyge-Khabl and Prikubansky districts of Karachaevo-Cherkessia and the northern part of the capital, Cherkessk (Rosbalt, December 24, 2015). Government forces killed three suspected militants, reportedly while trying to arrest them. This is a signal that the Karachaevo-Cherkessian jamaat still exists and they may have created their own cell within the structure of the KBK jamaat. If the slain militants were affiliated with Shebzukhov, the latter will take credit for the revival of the Karachaevo-Cherkessian militancy and members of the IS will have to take him into consideration. At this point, it is hard to believe the CE will revive, because six months have passed since the last leader of the organization, Amir Abu Usman Gimrinsky (Magomed Suleimanov), was killed (Lifenews.ru, August 11, 2015). However, external actors are also interested in keeping the CE alive, especially those who are fighting under the CE's banner in Syria. The amir of the "Caucasus Emirate" group in Syria, Salaudin Shishani (Paizulla Margoshvili), is one of those commanders who have refused to pledge allegiance to anyone other than the CE. In October 2015, Russian media extensively reported on the death of the leader of the "Caucasus Emirate" in Syria (Lenta.ru, October 22, 2015), but for some reason no Russian media outlet mentioned the name of the group's leader. Amir Salahuddin Shishani, along with his deputy, Abdul Karim Krymsky, recently left Jaish al-Muhajireen wal-Ansar and created their own group. Salahudin Shishani created his own battalion, which he calls "the Caucasus Emirate in Syria," and his militants wear a uniform with the symbols of the CE (sword and shahada). The actions of Amir Salahuddin and some figures in Istanbul, such as Akhmad Umarov, the brother of former CE leader Doku Umarov, do not allow the CE to disappear completely. The increased activities of the KBK militants at the end of 2015, therefore, seem to signify the revival of the jamaat, which may potentially destabilize the situation in that part of the North Caucasus. It appears that the CE cannot yet be discounted and will likely reappear in the news. Copyright notice: 2010 The Jamestown Foundation Plahotniuc Reshuffles Moldova's Parliament, Claims Prime Minister's Post Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Vladimir Socor Publication Date 14 January 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 9 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Plahotniuc Reshuffles Moldova's Parliament, Claims Prime Minister's Post, 14 January 2016, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 9, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/569f444a4.html [accessed 20 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Link to original story on Jamestown website Moldova's wealthiest businessman and shadowy politician, Vladimir Plahotniuc, finally stepped into the limelight on January 13 and announced his candidacy for the post of prime minister (Unimedia, IPN, January 13). Almost overnight, he assembled a heterogeneous collection of satellite parties and splinter factions to ensure parliamentary confirmation of a Plahotniuc-led government. The prime minister's post, long held by the Liberal-Democrat Party, is vacant since October, when Plahotniuc's party and its allies had prime minister Valeriu Strelet removed and his predecessor Vlad Filat jailed. With key positions in the judiciary and law enforcement already controlled by his appointees (see EDM, January 12), Plahotniuc has now come up with a legislative majority, as a base from which to take over the executive power. Accomplishing this third step would completely destroy the separation of powers in the state, bringing Moldova's showcase "European orientation" to an abrupt end. Moldova's presidential institution is weak by constitutional design. President Nicolae Timofti was expected to forward Plahotniuc's candidacy as prime minister for approval by the parliamentary majority, provided that this majority was "formally constituted" and committed to a specific candidate for the prime minister's post. Plahotniuc's Democratic Party concocted this parliamentary majority in two quick moves, on December 21 and January 11: first move on the left, next move on the right. The party's figurehead leader, Marian Lupu, acted as negotiator in both stages. Until December 2015, the Democratic Party held only 19 seats in the 101-member parliament. Informally, however, it controlled or influenced many additional deputies, individually or in groups. This led to widespread assumptions in Chisinau that "kompromat" (judicial dossiers) and "borsetka" (cash briefcase)-that post-Soviet combination of threats and incentives-was at work. In order to claim the prime minister's post, however, the Democratic Party had to muster its parliamentary allies into an outright majority of at least 51 deputies, and institutionalize that majority. All the way to January 13, the Democratic Party's propaganda encouraged speculation over three possible nominees for prime minister: Plahotniuc, Lupu, or Parliament Chairman Andrian Candu. The party emphasized the latter two possibilities, mindful of Plahotniuc's deeply negative image domestically and internationally; but nevertheless, the party seemed to condition the public to the possibility of Plahotniuc being ultimately nominated. Those bandwagoning with the Democratic Party were willing to accept any of those three possible nominees for prime minister, and not only for prospective material rewards. The fellow-travelers were anxious to avoid pre-term parliamentary elections. Under the Constitution (as currently interpreted), the head of state must dissolve the parliament and call new elections, if parliament fails to approve the government by the deadline of January 14. Communists, Liberals, and some of the Liberal-Democrats were certain of defeat in any pre-term elections, and therefore anxious to avoid the legislature's dissolution. These groups, wholly or in part, banded together into a government-forming majority under the Democratic Party's control. It is indicative of the extent of the Democratic Party's dominance that no negotiations were held over posts in a new government. No negotiations were held in a coalition format either. The Democratic Party-mainly Lupu fronting for Plahotniuc-talked with each group on a bilateral basis. Each group promised to support any Democratic Party nominee for prime minister. And they agreed to discuss government posts only after this new majority would have endorsed that prime minister and the head of state would have officially mandated him. On December 21, Plahotniuc announced that 14 Communist parliamentary deputies (out of that party's 21) would join the Democratic Party in a "Social-Democrat Platform for Moldova," for common actions in the parliament. In a founding statement on December 24, the two groups described the Platform as the nucleus of an evolving parliamentary majority, specifically to nominate a prime minister and ensure parliamentary approval of the new government. With this, Plahotniuc's party could officially control 34 parliamentary seats (20 Democrats and 14 Communist defectors) out of 101 parliamentary seats. This move was not surprising as such; only its creative shape came as a surprise. The two parties had been discussing a possible merger for some time, to provide life support for the Communist Party and harness its votes behind the Democratic Party. Seven Communist deputies, including the party's leader and former head of state, Vladimir Voronin, did not go for this deal, but neither did they condemn it (Infotag, Unimedia, December 21-25, 2015). On January 10, Mihai Ghimpu's Liberal Party announced that it would support any Democratic Party nominee for prime minister. This move was not a surprise either. The Liberals had acted all along as the Democratic Party's ally against the Liberal-Democrats in the nominal coalition government (which is formally still in office). However, the "right-wing" Liberal leaders feared a backlash from their own voters, if the party joined forces with the Communist Party in a Plahotniuc-sponsored alliance. As soon as this Communist group was re-branded as Social-Democrat, however, the Liberal leaders felt somewhat at ease to join that parliamentary bloc. This move added 13 votes, for a total of 47 to support the Democratic Party's nominee as prime minister. Two additional, "unaffiliated" deputies increased that number to 49, two short of the 51 necessary in the 101-seat chamber (Unimedia, Agora, January 9-13). The bandwagon effect finally broke up the Liberal-Democrat Party, Plahotniuc's main target all along. On January 11, seven deputies from this party announced that they would endorse "any" Democratic Party nominee for prime minister. This move left the Liberal-Democrat group under Strelet with only 12 parliamentary seats, including that of the imprisoned Filat. The defectors aimed (like all the other elements in this new majority) to avoid pre-term elections and preserve their seats. But they also hoped to "negotiate" some rewards for their last-minute move, which lifted Plahotniuc's bloc to 56, surpassing the simple majority of 51 (Ziarul National, Infotag, January 10-13). Given his predilection for operating covertly, Plahotniuc had generally been expected to designate a proxy as prime minister for a transitional period; a better educated frontman, one who could at least converse with the West. Plahotniuc's decision to step forward himself, however, indicated a surge of confidence in a smooth takeover of power. It also conveyed a bluff-type threat to ignore the West, if the latter would opposed, or interfered with, Plahotniuc's takeover of power. Copyright notice: 2010 The Jamestown Foundation Growing Threat of Russian Influence in Georgian Army Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Giorgi Menabde Publication Date 14 January 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 9 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Growing Threat of Russian Influence in Georgian Army, 14 January 2016, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 9, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/569f44af4.html [accessed 20 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Link to original story on Jamestown website Since the Bucharest summit of April 2008, when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) pledged that Georgia (and Ukraine) "will become members of NATO" (Summitbucharest.ro, April 3, 2008), the South Caucasus country has achieved a number of important milestones on its path to closer integration with the Alliance. Among the most recent have been the "Substantial Package of Cooperation," which Georgia was granted by NATO at the organization's 2014 Wales summit; the opening of the NATO-Georgia Joint Training and Evaluation Center (JTEC) in 2015 (Civil Georgia, August 27, 2015); as well as the signing of a contract with Alliance-member France for the purchase of a high-tech anti-aircraft system last June (see EDM, June 29, 2015). And though few believe Georgia will receive a Membership Action Plan from NATO at the upcoming Warsaw summit later this year, Georgian experts and politicians like parliamentarian Viktor Dolidze expect even deeper cooperation between Tbilisi and the Alliance after Warsaw (Author's interview, December 26, 2015). Despite these successes, some military officers intimately familiar with the situation in the Georgian army are convinced that the "exterior facade" is hiding serious faults. And these concealed problems may undermine the transformation of the Georgian armed forces, prevent the military's achievement of NATO standards, as well as derail Tbilisi's multi-year efforts to increase the compatibility of the its army with the militaries of Alliance member countries. Moreover, the risk of significant infiltration of the Georgian armed forces by the Russian security services could further block the military reforms started by Georgia's pro-Western former president, Mikheil Saakashvili. Members of the Atlantic Council of Georgia Batu Kutelia and Zurab Agladze believe these risks have pronouncedly increased after the change of government in Georgia following the 2012 parliamentary elections. Soon after coming to power, the Georgian Dream coalition dismissed many of those army officers who received their education in the West. This was done under the pretext that these military personnel supported former president Saakashvili and his team, Agladze has noted, and they were largely replaced by previously dismissed Soviet- and Russian-era officers (Author's interview, December 18, 2015). Batu Kutelia, who headed the Georgian Foreign Intelligence Service between 2004 and 2005, told this author, on December 18, 2015, that the Soviet- and Russian-trained army officers tend to lack the skills-such as knowledge of English-to work with NATO countries. But even more dangerous "is the fact that many of them received their education in Russia. Some even served in the Soviet and Russian armies. While I served on the National Security Council of Georgia [2011-2013] under president Saakashvili, the new minister from the Georgian Dream coalition took over the Ministry of Defense and requested the reinstatement of 27 former Soviet and Russian officers in their military ranks," Kutelia asserted. These individuals included the commander of a reconnaissance battalion as well as officers who served in the armed forces of the Soviet Union and Russia in the Baltic countries. "There is a risk that [while serving in the Georgian military] they are still cooperating with the Russian security services and will not only hand over important national security information to Moscow, but will also intimidate and curb the influence of the officers educated in the West, including the United States, thereby increasing the net Russian influence in the Georgian army. The pro-Western officers have been forced to compromise their values in order to avoid dismissal from the army," Kutelia warned. According to the former security official, the current Georgian leadership ignores the principles of "personnel management" and has no coherent armed forces policy, which simplifies the Russian security services' task of influencing the reform processes in the Georgian army, from within or from the outside. According to Kutelia, it is no coincidence that some former officers who were dismissed during the reforms in the previous decade have now acquired informal influence, even though they occupy no positions in the military. Notably, he pointed to the example of the former commander of the Georgian National Guard, General Koba Kobaladze, who was accused of preparing a coup, but now is a deputy of the Tbilisi City Council from the Georgian Dream coalition (Kavkazsky Uzel, May 18, 2009). "The turn of the army back to the Soviet model started after the absolutely unacceptable statement of the former prime minister Irakly Garibashvili [November 2013-December 2015], who said that he intended to dismiss all officers from the army who joined the armed forces during Saakashvili's presidency," Kutelia reminded (Author's interview, December 18, 2015). Zurab Agladze, who served as the commander of the Georgian ground forces between 2007 and 2009, regards "clans and nepotism" in the army as a destructive problem that returned with the reinstatement of the "Soviet generation" of officers. "In the NATO member countries, the government spends 50 percent of the defense budget on the maintenance and supplies of the troops. The other 50 percent is spent on the development of the army. Currently, the Ministry of Defense of Georgia provides almost no military training, it does not acquire new weapons systems. They do not even have blank cartridges for military exercises; they expend the old stocks. At the same time, the bureaucracy has grown tremendously. Already 2-3 times more people serve on the Georgian General Staff than in the general staffs of the NATO countries of comparable size," he said (Author's interview, December 18, 2015). The existence of two parallel coordinating structures for defense and security-the National Security Council under the president and the Council for Crises Management under the prime minister-is another serious problem that complicates the cooperation of the Georgian armed forces with NATO. According to Kutelia, "This creates confusion even when making operational decisions, to say nothing of the implementation of a general defense policy." Parallel coordinating structures for defense and security also preclude a coherent policy on the development of the armed forces, making it difficult to decide on proper equipment procurement and budgeting. "Buying a small number of anti-aircraft missiles and radars in France will remain only a face-saving, one-time act when the government lacks a strategy and vision for the army's development," Kutelia argued (Author's interview, December 18, 2015). Both Kutelia and Agladze believe that despite some mistakes made by the authorities during the Saakashvili era, the period from 2004 until the Russian invasion on August 7, 2008, saw the most successful reforms of the Georgian army. Not only did Georgia's government spend substantial funds toward this end, but even more importantly, it had a clear goal-achieving military-to-military compatibility with NATO members and boosting the number of Western-educated officers in the armed forces. But now, it seems, this process has stopped and, in some aspects, has even been reversed. This may increase the existential risks for the country, which is fighting to preserve its independence and achieve integration into Euro-Atlantic structures. Copyright notice: 2010 The Jamestown Foundation Security Services May Be Threatening Official Clergy in North Ossetia Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Mairbek Vatchagaev Publication Date 15 January 2016 Citation / Document Symbol North Caucasus Analysis Volume: 17 Issue: 1 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Security Services May Be Threatening Official Clergy in North Ossetia, 15 January 2016, North Caucasus Analysis Volume: 17 Issue: 1, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/569f45044.html [accessed 20 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Link to original story on Jamestown website The Ossetians in North Ossetia-Alania have primarily been Christian for the past millennium, but some are Muslim. In a majority of cases, the Digors, an Ossetian subethnic group, are associated with Islam. The Muslim community in the republic was weakened when a large portion of Muslim Ossetians left their homeland for the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century (Darial-online.ru, 2008). The dismantlement of the Soviet Union and the overall revival of Islam across the entire post-Soviet space did not pass North Ossetia-Alania by. In 1994, the Spiritual Board of Muslims of North Ossetia-Alania was officially established. Today, 25 mosques and 27 Muslim organizations operate in the republic. While Muslims comprise only about a quarter of the population of North Ossetia-Alania, the republican Muslim community publishes the Golos Islama newspaper (Islamosetia.ru, December 2015), holds competitions of Koran readers (Islamosetia.ru, January 9) and engages in other activities similar to Muslim communities in regions where Muslims comprise the majority. Five years ago, the Russian public's attention was riveted to the Muslim community of North Ossetia after the republic's former young mufti, Ali Yevteyev, who was an ethnic Russian but a native of the republic, admitted in a May 2, 2010, interview that in the mid-1990s he met Ibn al-Khattab, the Saudi-born militant of Circassian background who founded the military training camps for rebels in Chechnya in the 1990s. Yevteyev also said that he personally knew the leaders of the armed opposition of Kabardino-Balkaria and had learned from them (Portal-credo.ru, May 13, 2010). Even though Yevteyev spoke of his past in the interview, people in Russia and North Ossetia perceived his words as being quite aggressive. Perhaps, Yevteyev's remarks would not have been seen as hostile had the Islamist underground movement not tried to engage the Ossetian Muslims in their struggle, and even established a separate Velayat Ossetia. Yevteyev was forced to resign in May 2010 after a year and a half in his position, and later moved to Egypt. Hajimurat Gatsalov replaced Yevteyev as North Ossetia's mufti (Ekhokavkaza.com, July 16, 2010). The authorities agreed upon the choice of the mufti. After the scandalous behavior of Yevteyev, the republican authorities did everything in their power to ensure that an experienced man oversees the activities of the Muslims in the republic. People realized that the mufti, who had no formal religious education (Gatsalov has a diploma from a local agricultural college), would be a nominal mufti. Muslims in the republic nonetheless held Gatsalovin in high esteem because of what he did to return the former Shia mosque of Vladikavkaz to the Muslim community, but as a Sunni mosque. During the Soviet period, the Shia mosque was converted into a planetarium. Gatsalov did not cause trouble either for the police or for the authorities, but needed deputies with religious education in order to have influence on young Muslims. However, some forces-probably people in the Russian security services-apparently did not like that. In December 2012, the North Ossetian mufti's deputy, Ibragim Dudarov, was killed (Gazeta.ru, December 27, 2012). A year and a half later, on August 2014, the man who replaced Dudarov, Rasul Gamzatov, was also killed (Rg.ru, August 18, 2014). Mufti Gatsalov could not hide his emotions at the time, saying that he believed the same people who had killed Dudarov also killed Gamzatov. It is not surprising that both slain deputies of the mufti were well-trained Muslim preachers who were popular among the youth. After the death of the two deputy muftis, fears rose about the safety of the mufti himself. A website affiliated with the police posted a warning that "perhaps, it is time to kill [literally: 'feed with lead'] Gatsalov." Gatsalov publicly complained about the threats, but his adversaries became even more hostile in response. According to the mufti, he received an email on January 5 demanding that he resign for reasons of health. If Gatsalov did not obey or attempted to leave the republic, the authors of the email said, they would pursue and kill him (Kavtoday.ru, January 9). On January 11, Gatsalov filed an official complaint with the authorities about the death threats. The Muslim cleric stated that "there is no radicalization in the republic, but the fight with Islam still goes on. No one has investigated the killings of my deputies and so on" (Kavpolit.com, January 8). Thus, the republican mufti admitted that some forces in North Ossetia are trying to hold back the development of Islam in the republic. The website that launched the attack on the mufti published materials aimed at undermining his reputation. In particular, they accused him of being a Wahhabi, admiring the ousted Yevteyev, being friends with jihadists, embezzling funds, etc. (Kavkazpress.ru, January 12). In reality, the material against Gatsalov published by the controversial website only indicates that its authors have nothing significant that would allow them to launch criminal investigation against him and undermine his reputation among the Muslims of republic. It is hard to predict how the attacks by anonymous forces in the republican government against Gatsalov will end, but the story indicates who is behind the murders of Muslim clerics in the North Caucasus: indeed, not all of the murders of Muslim clerics should be attributed to the militants, because the security services sometimes operate under the guise of militants, especially when they want to eliminate unwanted individuals. Copyright notice: 2010 The Jamestown Foundation Putin Hands Oil and Gas Company to Chechen Authorities Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Valery Dzutsati Publication Date 11 January 2016 Citation / Document Symbol North Caucasus Analysis Volume: 17 Issue: 1 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Putin Hands Oil and Gas Company to Chechen Authorities, 11 January 2016, North Caucasus Analysis Volume: 17 Issue: 1, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/569f46014.html [accessed 20 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Link to original story on Jamestown website At the end of December, President Vladimir Putin unexpectedly ordered his cabinet to transfer the ownership of a large oil and gas company in Chechnya, Chechenneftekhimprom, from federal control to that of the Chechen government. According to the newspaper Kommersant, Chechnya's head, Ramzan Kadyrov, made this request of Putin in a letter dated last December 3. Kadyrov said that the owner of the company, Russian state monopoly Rosneft, which is currently headed by one of Putin's closest associates Igor Sechin, was not using the Chechen enterprise to its full potential. Before this, Chechen authorities had tried unsuccessfully for years to gain control over the oil and gas industry in the republic (Kommersant.ru, December 23, 2015). The Kremlin has apparently been quite wary of the possibility official Grozny would use the republic's oil resources to increase its independence from the central government. The change must have come after Moscow realized that its ability to provide finances to the regional authorities in the North Caucasus and, in particular, to the Chechen authorities, which are most dependent on Moscow, had significantly dwindled. Also, the Russian authorities may believe either that they fully control Ramzan Kadyrov and can trust him with the resources of the republic, or they have no other choice but to try and assuage the Chechen governor, who is facing inevitable financial hurdles. Even back in 2013, much better times financially, Kadyrov did not hesitate to criticize Sechin-owned Rosneft. Kadyrov accused Rosneft of mismanaging its resources in Chechnya. Kadyrov said Rosneft did not pay local taxes while cutting its oil production and workforce in the republic. In 2011, Rosneft extracted 804,000 tons of oil in Chechnya, but that figure dropped to 640,000 tons in 2012 (Kommersant, April 17, 2013) and to 450,000 tons in 2014 down. Overall extraction in the republic fell eight-fold over the past six years, and Kadyrov seems to believe that Rosneft had deliberately reduced extraction (Kommersant.ru, December 23, 2015). Oil production in Chechnya dates back a century. In the 1970s-1980s, Chechnya still was a major supplier of oil products for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), but the drop in oil production was exacerbated by the two successive Russian-Chechen wars and a lack of investment. Chechnya's current oil reserves are estimated at a relatively modest 60 million tons, so the Chechen authorities primarily want to build a large oil refinery that would be able to refine one million tons of oil per year and bring the republic substantial revenues (Kommersant.ru, December 23, 2015). In addition, the Chechen authorities stated that they had plans to build a battery-producing plant jointly with a South Korean company Kokam on the territory that Rosneft controls. The project would have provided over 2,000 jobs for republican residents and open up other prospects (Kavkazkaya Politika, December 26, 2015). However, in the current financial and political environment foreign investment in Chechnya is hardly conceivable. Many Russian observers have expressed concern that Chechnya is gradually drifting toward de-facto independence from Russia. Kadyrov has set up what is essentially a personal dictatorship in Chechnya, which is only formally a part of the Russian Federation, but in reality lives according to its own rules and laws, which are more peculiar and inhumane than in the rest of Russia. In his latest outburst of fury, Kadyrov punished two people who have criticized him via the Internet. Aishat Inaeva of Nadterechny Chechnya's district complained about extortion of money by Kadyrov government officials and the lavish lifestyle of Kadyrov himself, after which the Chechen ruler publicly shamed her on republican TV. Another critic of Kadyrov, Adam Dikaev, posted a video on Instagram, in which he criticized the Kremlin-backed Chechen leader for his showy love for Putin, given the hardships that Putin's regime had inflicted on the Chechen people. Kadyrov's people seized Dikaev and forced him to run in his underwear in the street singing paeans to Putin. Further, when Chechens in Europe staged public protests, Kadyrov threatened to retaliate against relatives of the protesters living in Chechnya. Another critic of Kadyrov's government, Khizir Yezhiev, a professor of economics at Chechen State University, was even unluckier: he was reportedly kidnapped on December 19 and found dead on December 31. According to International Crisis Group expert Varvara Pakhomenko, the logic of the unprecedented pressure on critics of Kadyrov and the Russian government is that Kadyrov received a mandate from the Kremlin to rule the republic with an iron fist on one condition-that no information leak out of Chechnya. Internet critics break this information vacuum and thus Kadyrov's contract with Putin, which infuriates the Chechen ruler (Ekhokavkaza.com, January 7). Unfortunately for Chechnya, Putin not only uses Kadyrov to silence critics of Russia in the republic, but also to demonstrate how wild and unruly the Chechens are. In this sense, the more peculiar the punishments Kadyrov invents, the crueler they are, the better he serves the Kremlin's purpose of showing the backwardness of Chechnya and the necessity of having an enlightened king like Putin ruling over these wild beasts. It is therefore no wonder that Putin is so fond of Kadyrov and willing to fulfill nearly all his demands. Few individuals could rival Kadyrov in his grotesque brutality, which not only crushes the spirit of Chechens, but also subjects them to the mockery inside Russia and beyond. Copyright notice: 2010 The Jamestown Foundation After the Election: The Future of Cross-Strait Relations Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Willy Lam Publication Date 12 January 2016 Citation / Document Symbol China Brief Volume: 16 Issue: 1 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, After the Election: The Future of Cross-Strait Relations, 12 January 2016, China Brief Volume: 16 Issue: 1, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/569f46634.html [accessed 20 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Link to original story on Jamestown website Barring an upset of momentous proportions, Taiwan's opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is expected to defeat the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) or Nationalist Party, during presidential elections scheduled for January 16. The latest polls by the popular Taiwanese TV station TVBS show the DPP candidate and party chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen, leading her KMT counterpart, Eric Chu, by at least ten percentage points (TVBS [Taipei], December 27, 2015). The DPP is also tipped to pick up a substantial number of seats in the Legislative Yuan, Taiwan's parliament (China Post [Taipei], December 26, 2015; Taipei Times, November 29, 2015). For international observers, the big question is what strategies the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership headed by President Xi Jinping will adopt to prevent a rollback of cross-Strait reconciliation attained during the two four-year terms of out-going President Ma Ying-jeou. Also in the spotlight are the mainland-related policies of both Tsai and Chu, who is expected to remain KMT Chairman even if he were to lose the presidential contest. Beijing's Taiwan policy is being formulated by the CCP Central Leading Group on Taiwan Affairs (CLGTA), whose Leader is President and General Secretary Xi and whose Vice-Leader is Chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), Yu Zhengsheng. While there is speculation that the CLGTA may call a National Taiwan Work Meeting (NTWM) after the presidential election, much of Beijing's future measures to promote national reunification can be divined from the work meeting that was convened in January of 2015. In the preceding months, Taiwan had held major elections and was reeling from a popular political movement. The NTWM was called when it had become obvious that the KMT was losing its popularity in Taiwan. During major municipal and county-level elections held in November 2014, the DPP won 13 seats versus six for the KMT. Of the six cities and counties won by the KMT, only New Taipei City-where incumbent mayor Eric Chu won by less than two percentage points-is considered a major KMT political stronghold. Earlier that year, the student-led campaign Sunflower Movement prevented the KMT from passing the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement (CSSTA) Pact in the Legislative Yuan (BBC Chinese, November 28, 2014; South China Morning Post, March 28, 2014). If a similar Leading Group meeting is called in response to this year's election, its recommendations will be deemed to have immense significance for the mainland's interactions with Taiwan's new leadership. In his speech to the NTWM, Yu Zhengsheng, who is also a member of the Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC), laid down several policies that were geared toward promoting cross-Strait economic synergy and integration. "We must push forward economic integration, and promote the overall blueprint of the cooperation of the production [structures and capacities] across the Strait," he said. Specific measures included enhancing the participation of Taiwan businesses in free trade zones and other development areas in Fuzhou and Pingtan, Fujian Province, and in Kunshan, Jiangsu Province. Yu and other Leading Group members also cited the need to boost preferential policies, particularly for mainland-based Taiwanese manufacturers which had been hit by steep increases in labor, land and other costs (Huaxia.com [Beijing], February 3, 2015; Xinhua, January 27, 2015). President Xi reiterated the "economics first" principle while meeting Eric Chu in Beijing last May. The Chinese leader indicated that mainland-Taiwan "economic integration is beneficial toward mutual profits and win-win [scenarios]," adding that "this principle should not be disrupted under any circumstances." Xi also tried to win over young people in Taiwan by urging that "youth from both sides of the Taiwan Strait should become good friends and good partners in jointly fighting [for a better future]" (People's Daily, November 7, 2015; Xinhua, May 5, 2015). Concurrently, the CLGTA leadership is increasing economic inducements for the sanzhongyiqing () sectors, a reference to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), low- and medium-income groups, residents in central and southern Taiwan, as well as Taiwanese youth in general. For example, young unemployed Taiwanese are encouraged to find work in cities along China's prosperous eastern coast. Chinese importers are also urged to buy more agricultural and aquatic products from rural areas in central and particularly southern Taiwan counties, which happen to be the traditional strongholds of DPP supporters. These moves complement decade-long efforts by mainland-based, state-owned and private firms from a wide range of industries to establish substantial footholds on the self-ruled island (Global Times, May 4, 2015; China News Service, January 28, 2015). In contrast to the "economics card," Beijing realizes that political agendas will have to wait. While it is no secret that Chinese leaders from Jiang Zemin onward have committed to starting "political talks" with Taiwan-meaning negotiations that would lead up to unification-as early as possible, even as ambitious a leader as Xi Jinping realizes that the prospects for a politically-oriented dialogue with Taiwan leaders are low in the near term. And even though Xi's unexpected decision to hold a summit with President Ma in Singapore last November was motivated by political considerations, the history-making tete-a-tete had a relatively limited goal of ensuring that the "one China principle" (known as the "1992 Consensus" in Taiwan), which underpins eight years of cordial relations across the Strait, would not be rolled back should the DDP triumph on January 16. While Xi sought to appeal to the political sensitivities of KMT supporters in Taiwan by using the familiar "blood is thicker than water" proverb, he also wanted to show DPP supporters that Taiwanese people as well as the Taiwanese economy-stand to lose if the next ruling party were to jettison the "1992 Consensus" (People's Daily, November 8, 2015; CCTV, November 7, 2015). The CCP leadership, will, however, not give up the "military option" in pursuit of national reunification. The Xi leadership will continue to brandish the stick of a "war of liberation" to go along with the "carrot" of economic inducements. Despite signs of a thaw in the Taiwan Strait, both mainland and Taiwan authorities conduct annual war games aimed at each other. When Ma asked Xi during their Singapore conclave to remove the estimated 1,500 short- and medium-range missiles targeted at Taiwan, the Chinese leader did not give a direct answer (South China Morning Post, November 10, 2015; Channel News Asia, November 8, 2015). Moreover, thanks to ongoing restructuring of the command-and-control mechanisms within the PLA, which involves much-enhanced synchronization between the personnel and hardware of the Naval, Air Force and missile forces, Beijing's ability to take over Taiwan by force is believed to be improving (Phoenix TV, December 24, 2015; People's Daily, December 22, 2015). How will the Tsai Ing-Wen administration react to the CCP's multi-pronged tactics? A former professor at National Taiwan University who specialized in international law, Tsai was credited with helping to coin the liangguolun ("two countries theory"; ) when she was the cross-Strait affairs adviser to former president Lee Teng-hui. The liangguolun-which refers to the fact that Taiwan is as legitimate a country as mainland China-was one reason behind the wargames conducted by the PLA just off the Taiwan coast during presidential elections in 1995 and 1996. Yet Tsai, who served as Minister of the Mainland Affairs Council during the DDP administration of former president Chen Shui-bian, has in the past few years toned down her rhetoric about mainland issues (United Daily News, December 26, 2015; Apple Daily [Hong Kong], December 25, 2015). This was most clearly demonstrated during her visit to Washington D.C. last June, when her main message to U.S. President Barack Obama's administration was that she was committed to "maintaining the status quo of the Taiwan Strait." Tsai noted in a speech at a Washington think tank that she favored the peaceful and stable development of cross-Strait ties "in accordance with the will of the Taiwanese people and the existing Republic of China constitutional order" (China Post, June 6, 2015; Taipei Times, June 5, 2015). In the last few weeks of the presidential campaign, Tsai has characterized her mainland policy as "promoting communication, no provocations and no accidents." She said in a Christmas Day presidential debate that if elected, the DPP "would do our best to seek ways [forward] that could be accepted by both Taiwan and the mainland." "We will not be provocative, and hope the two sides can sit down and talk in a rational manner," she added (Hong Kong Economic Times, December 28, 2015; Taiwan.cn [Beijing], December 25, 2015). However, the biggest challenge facing Tsai is not missiles from the mainland, but rather China's unprecedented outbound foreign direct investment (OFDI) game plan-or at least that part of the overseas investment strategy that is meant to render the island even more dependent on the mainland economy. Tsai has made no secret of the fact that DPP supporters fear Taiwan's economy would be swallowed up by the onslaught of "mainland money." As she put it last month: "Taiwanese people fear that Chinese enterprises are using state money to get into Taiwan so as to break up and then control Taiwan's independent industrial structure" (Ming Pao [Hong Kong], December 26, 2015; Channel News Asia, December 26, 2015). Recent attempts by the state-owned chip-maker and IT giant, Tsinghua Unigroup, to shell out $2 billion for substantial stakes in two Taiwan chip-packaging companies, Silicon Precision Industries Co. (SPIL) and ChipMOS Technologies Inc., have raised eyebrows in business and political circles on the island, particularly owing to the fact that several big-name Taiwan chipmakers have already relocated to Shanghai and other areas. Tsinghua Unigroup's gambit has been interpreted as a part of an attempt by the mainland to hollow out the Taiwanese high-tech sector (Liberty Times [Taipei], December 12, 2015; United Daily News [Taipei], December 12, 2015). It is true that mainland capital has in the past few years targeted important economic fields in Taiwan ranging from banks to media groups. Yet efforts by Chinese high-tech firms to at least partially control chip-makers-thereby making a dent in Taiwan's so-called "Silicon Shield"-have aroused the most concern due to the fact that this sector has long been one of Taiwan's truly globally competitive industries (Global Times, December 7, 2015; Taipei Times, June 5, 2015). As of the end of 2015, Tsinghua Unigroup is awaiting the approval of the Taiwan government as well as that of shareholders of affected companies. Charting a New Path? In the event of a KMT win, the path forward is less certain, as the KMT's policies toward the mainland seem to be in flux. KMT authorities were forced to drop their presidential candidate, Legislative Yuan Vice-Chairman Hung Hsiu-Chu, at an acrimonious party conference last October because of the perception that she was too "pro-mainland" (BBC Chinese, October 15, 2015; Theinitium.com [Hong Kong], October 7, 2015). Moreover, the appearance of KMT Honorary Chairman Lien Chan in Beijing's military parade marking the 70th anniversary of the Chinese victory in World War II ignited so much indignation among the general public that even President Ma and other prominent KMT politicians dissociated themselves from Lien's perceived kowtowing to the CCP (BBC Chinese, September 5, 2015; Theinitium.com [Hong Kong], August 30, 2015). This would constrain a KMT President's ability to follow President Ma's much closer relationship with the mainland. Irrespective of how well Chu does at the polls in less than a week, it is likely that the KMT will avoid provocative statements regarding closer political ties between the mainland and Taiwan. Chu and his colleagues, however, will continue to insist that the future of GDP growth in Taiwan depends on a continuation of cross-Strait economic interactions-in addition to academic, culture and people-to-people interchanges. The KMT-and the CCP-seem confident that rational demonstrations of the win-win scenarios that have accrued from outgoing President Ma's friendly mainland policies the past eight years will enable Taiwan's oldest ruling party to triumph again in four years. Conclusion In light of the diffusion of cross-Strait tension since the pro-mainland KMT became the ruling party in 2000, Taiwan's significance as a player in the Asia-Pacific geopolitical theatre seems to have faded somewhat from the global limelight. Beijing's vehement protest against Washington's recent sale of $1.83 billion's worth of frigates and other hardware to Taiwan testifies to the CCP leadership's worry that the self-ruled island could become a pawn in America's perceived "anti-China containment policy" (Radio Free Asia, December 18, 2015; Apple Daily, November 26, 2015). The likely ascendancy of the DPP in Taiwanese politics could prod the Xi Jinping leadership into adopting tougher tactics to thwart "Taiwanese independence" including the re-brandishing of the "military liberation" card. Beijing could also take stronger measures against what it perceives to be Washington's efforts to scupper China's emergence as the unchallenged regional superpower. On the shoulders of the future Taiwanese president falls the complicated task of maintaining the island's economic growth while at the same time defusing tension with China and ensuring American support. Dr. Willy Wo-Lap Lam is a Senior Fellow at The Jamestown Foundation. He is an Adjunct Professor at the Center for China Studies, the History Department and the Program of Master's in Global Political Economy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is the author of five books on China, including "Chinese Politics in the Xi Jinping Era: Renaissance, Reform, or Retrogression?" Copyright notice: 2010 The Jamestown Foundation The 13th Five-Year Plan: A New Chapter in China's Maritime Transformation Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Ryan D. Martinson Publication Date 12 January 2016 Citation / Document Symbol China Brief Volume: 16 Issue: 1 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, The 13th Five-Year Plan: A New Chapter in China's Maritime Transformation, 12 January 2016, China Brief Volume: 16 Issue: 1, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/569f473f4.html [accessed 20 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Link to original story on Jamestown website Taiwan's presidential election is slowly but surely approaching its end, entering the last week before voters cast their ballots on January 16, 2016. Taiwanese elections are rarely uneventful, and this time they promise quite a shake-up of the domestic political environment. The leading opposition party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), is poised to comfortably win the presidential elections and possibly even a legislative majority during the concurrent legislative races for the first time in the country's democratic history. Since Beijing's attempt to influence elections by force in 1996, a possible change of the ruling party in Taiwan has always drawn special attention to Taipei's complex relationship with Beijing. Moreover, the most recent iterations of Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense' (MND) annual report on the People's Liberation Army (104) and biannual National Defense Report (104) re-emphasized a claim made two years ago that by 2020 the People's Liberation Army (PLA) will acquire sufficient capabilities to use force against Taiwan and prevent third party intervention. [1] The key take away from the MND's reports is not so much the exact year, as the fact of continuous force build-up by China that defense planners will have to address with limited resources at their disposal. As the primary existential threat to Taiwan's independence, China's military is a constant in Taiwan's defense planning and is the main factor underpinning defense policymaking of the new administration. However, this has not guaranteed that defense issues are high on the election campaign agendas. A rare exception was the DPP's defense policy briefing at the end of October, during which the party endorsed the plan to develop a 1,500-ton submarine and announced the proposal to establish an Information Communication Electronic Warfare Force in 2019 as part of the DPP's ten-year defense policy plan (United Daily News, October 29, 2015; Taipei Times, October 30, 2015). Based on Kuomintang's presidential candidate, Eric Chu's presentations on December 25 and the first presidential debate on December 27, he would largely follow Ma's defense policies (Liberty Times, December 26, 2015; ETToday, October 27, 2015). Irrespective of the winner, the new administration will inherit a challenging defense agenda underscored by increasing Chinese military capability and the will to impose it on Taiwan. But that is only part of the problem. Whoever replaces President Ma Ying-jeou will have to deal with a number of enduring problems from Ma's and previous presidents' administrations. Troubled Transformation Chief among the pressing issues is the unfinished transition of the military to an all-volunteer force (AVF), which President Ma announced during his election campaign in 2008 and had attempted to accomplish by 2014 (United Daily News, January 22, 2015). The decision to move toward a volunteer force was made in 2005 following the conclusion of the Military Service Overall Review Taskforce ()-several years before Ma made the AVF transition the backbone of his defense policy platform in 2008 (Awakening News Network [], March 30, 2015). Twenty years of downsizing has seen Taiwan's military shrink from just below 500,000 in 1994, to a projected 190,000-170,000 men and women by 2019, a leaner force better suited for the requirements of modern warfare according to defense planners (Central News Agency, August 26, 2015). The essence of the AVF transition is to replace conscripts with career soldiers. But downsizing does not address the AVF project's woes. The final implementation date has been moved back from 2014 to 2015, and then to 2017 (Taipei Times, September 13, 2013). The whole process has been plagued by dismal recruitment figures, leaving much doubt over the future of the program (Focus Taiwan, August 26, 2015; Taipei Times, August 27, 2015). Moreover, the quality of the recruits also left much to be desired (United Daily News, October 12, 2015). The new president will have to decide whether to continue with the plan as envisioned by Ma, or implement changes, possibly keeping the current mix of mandatory conscription and volunteer force. Even though the transition to the AVF has been somewhat controversial, a reversion to a conscription-based force is not possible due to Taiwan's declining birth rate and the greater demand on technical skills of new recruits-a consequence of the ever-increasing technological sophistication of modern weapons and communications (Apple Daily [Taiwan], August 27, 2015). Lack of recruits for the all-volunteer force is not the only problem. A closely related issue is Taiwan's relatively low defense spending. Like the KMT in 2007, the DPP in 2015 is promising to raise spending levels from just above 2 percent of GDP to 3 percent (Apple Daily [Taiwan], September 2, 2007). [2] Also like the KMT after it took power, the DPP will be hard pressed to fulfil its election pledge especially if it will require cuts elsewhere such as energy and fuel subsidies. The total sum allocated to defense spending tells only part of the story. Equally important is the structure of the spending. In 2008, Ma has promised an allocation ratio of 4:3:3 between personnel expenses, maintenance, and acquisition and research and development (R&D). Last year, Taiwan came close to the "golden ratio" with personnel expenses at 44.8 percent, maintenance costs at 23.1 percent, and R&D and acquisitions at 30.6 percent (China Times, September 5, 2014). However, it is unrealistic to sustain this allocation without increasing the size of the budget. For example, maintenance costs jump in cycles between the purchase of spare parts for several years ahead; as weapons inventories age, maintenance costs are bound to rise. Moreover, the AVF transition is going to put further pressure on the budget that is already stretched thin. The military, which has benefited from "cheap labor" provided by skilled conscripts in the areas of maintenance and medical services, will need to offer competitive salaries for new recruits and experienced officers alike. It is clear that the next government will have to take bold steps if it is serious about addressing its defense needs via Taiwan's indigenous arms industry. Otherwise, with personnel and maintenance costs on the rise, the R&D and acquisition portion of the budget will suffer. Acquisition and Personnel Issues Under the broader category of arms procurement issues are Taiwan's nascent indigenous submarine program and the difficulty in acquiring new fighter jets for Taiwan's air force (Republic of China Air Force, ROCAF) (China Brief, March 30, 2012). These issues also illuminate Taiwan's relative dependence on U.S. arms sales and connect it to the necessity of a greater defense budget. Taiwan's submarine program alone offers an uphill struggle for the incoming president. The next few years will be critical for addressing the requirements needed to undertake this project, with which domestic shipbuilders have little technical experience and scarce human resources to offer. The submarine program is one of several projects pursued by Taiwan that seek to address its defense needs which have been constrained by limited access to foreign military sales. "Innovative and asymmetric" (/) measures are meant to help Taiwan to re-define the military balance across the Strait by providing a new form of credible deterrence (United Daily News, October 6). [3] Effort on the part of the domestic arms industry is indispensable in this pursuit. The DPP, as the likely winner of the 2016 elections, appears to grasp the necessity of greater investment in the defense industry, and it dedicated the last of its 12 Defense Blue Papers entirely to redevelopment of an indigenous defense industry. [4] Together with sales of diesel-electric submarines, acquisition of new fighter jets is another recurring feature of Taipei's defense procurement process. ROCAF has not obtained a new fighter jet since buying the Mirage 2000-5 Ei/Di and the F-16A/B Block 20 from France and the U.S., respectively, in early 1990s. The next generation fighter the ROCAF brass want-the F-35-will not be available in the foreseeable future (Now News, August 19, 2014). Since the upcoming tender for the new jet trainer, scheduled for 2017 and the upgrade programs for the F-16 and the F-CK-1 will consume a significant share of the budget allocated for the air force, Taiwan's ability to attain qualitative superiority or even maintain technological parity through equipment, is an unrealistic prospect (China Times, September 27, 2015; United Daily News, October 22, 2015; ETToday, December 4, 2015). Taiwan's next president will have to decide whether to focus on domestic fighter development, re-focus on the longer-term availability of the F-35, or perhaps even scale back the fleet of combat aircraft, and put emphasis on area-denial counter-measures in the form of modern surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems. However, Taiwan's diminishing ability to maintain control of the airspace is not just a matter of replacing old hardware with new. In addition to an aging fleet, ROCAF effectiveness as a fighting force has also been severely hampered by a serious shortage of pilots, the eroding qualitative advantage vis-a-vis the PLA Air Force (PLAAF), and the vulnerability presented by relatively small number of primary airbases. [5] While most ROCAF pilots are well trained, with a higher than NATO standard of 180 flying hours per year, the deteriorating economic situation in Taiwan has forced the government to cut back on bonuses and other incentives, which resulted in a net loss of experienced pilots (China Times, January 8, 2014). As a result, the ROCAF has a dismal ratio of qualified pilots per plane (pilot-to-cockpit ratio) of less than 1.5 pilots per plane (China Times, September 1, 2008). This means that wartime sortie generation would be gradually hampered as pilots become exhausted from one mission to the next without the possibility of relief. These exhausted pilots would be up against newer Chinese J-11s, J-10s and Russian-built Su-30s. In addition to future additions to the PLAAF's inventory, PRC pilots are getting more time in the air. PLAAF pilots' average flight hours have been gradually increasing from 6 or 8 hours per month to 12, with pilots from its frontline regiments () reaching 180 annual hours in recent years (Liberty Times, October 23, 2008; China Review News [], January 13, 2014). Consequently, the qualitative advantage that the ROCAF enjoyed for the past few decades is rapidly shrinking. A potential solution to ROCAF woes could be gleaned from U.S. Naval War College professor William S. Murray's controversial Porcupine strategy proposal. [6] Through hardened C4ISR and the efficient integration of both the Air Defense Missile Command and the Air Defense Artillery Command, Taiwan could conceivably reach a higher cost/benefit ratio in the fight for control of the skies over Taiwan. Problems facing such an approach are numerous, not the least being the number of scandals and low morale that have plagued the Air Defense Missile Command-allegedly one of the reasons behind the command's separation from the Air Force (Apple Daily [Taiwan], March 1, 2015; Liberty Times, April 9, 2015; Central News Agency, November 4, 2015; Now News, March 23, 2012). However the MND is considering the reintegration of these two commands under the air force again in the near future and that should pave the right way toward an efficient integrated air defense system that could lessen the load for the active fighter complements (United Daily News, May 2, 2014). Conclusion According to Taiwan MND estimates, the PLA will be able to field a maximum force of 410,000 troops for an amphibious landing on Taiwan, consisting of 30 infantry and four armored divisions. An invasion force of this size would necessitate a minimum force level of 192,500, with a 92,500-strong army and 50,000-strong air force and navy, respectively (Apple Daily [Taiwan], August 27, 2015). With Taiwan's birthrate significantly below the replacement rate, at 1.07 percent, the complete transition to an AVF would require the adoption of a more professional reserve component, not unlike the Active Guard Reserve (AGR) of the U.S. Army in order to supplement the shortage of experienced personnel (ETToday, October 12, 2015). The most severe issues hampering the effectiveness of the ROCAF are low numbers of pilots and the difficulty in acquiring combat aircraft. Numerous concerns, including budget cuts that resulted in less training and insufficient protection in the form of hangers and bunkers also put the survivability of the fighter fleet in question (Liberty Times, October 23, 2008; Liberty Times, October 25, 2015). [7] Therefore, a shift toward a SAM-based area-denial approach may help relieve the air force's struggle for air parity across the Strait, provided that the integration of the Air Defense Missile Command () and Air Defense Artillery Command () could be achieved in an efficient manner. What will be required from the incoming administration is the political will to make the necessary steps, which start, but by no means end, with an increase of defense spending, even if it would mean alienating voters. This is no small feat for a government that derives its mandate to govern from democratic elections. However, what is at stake is not an election loss four years later, but the ability to stand up to Beijing's demands and preserve Taiwan's de facto sovereignty against the backdrop of a deteriorating security environment. Michal Thim is a Research Fellow at the Prague-based think-tank Association for International Affairs, a member of CIMSEC, and an Asia-Pacific Desk Contributing Analyst for Wikistrat, currently working toward postgraduate research degree in the Taiwan Studies Program at the China Policy Institute (CPI), University of Nottingham. He has been published in The Diplomat, The National Interest and The Strategist, among others. Liao Yen-Fan is a Taipei-based analyst for the Cyber Security firm Team T5, specializing in cyber security, air power and the Taiwanese military. He has previously written for The Diplomat and Strategic Vision for Taiwan Security. Notes: 1. The 2013 National Defense Report (102) states that "The PRC plans to build comprehensive capabilities for using military force against Taiwan by 2020. In the future, the PRC will continue to use joint operations as the basic form of operations, and aims to effectively prevent foreign forces from intervening in its operations against Taiwan, posing a growing threat." The complete collection of English versions of National Defense Report (1992-2015) can be found on the author's blog Taiwan in Perspective, 2. The DPP's Blue Defense Paper No. 1 states: "budget deficiency in recent years has already seriously affected military acquisition and readiness. The administration should increase the defense budget at once. We will set a 3 percent of GDP level as the goal of the annual defense budget and significantly increase acquisition expenditure when the DPP returns to power." DPP's Defense Agenda (), Democratic Progressive Party, June 2013 . 3. The term can be found in the latest iteration of National Defense Report (104) 2013 Quadrennial Defense Review . 4. Preparing the Development of Indigenous Defense Industry (), Democratic Progressive Party, May 2015 . The entire collection of DPP Defense Blue Papers can be accessed at . 5. Liao Yen-Fan, "F-35B Lightning II, Is it right for ROCAF?," Strategic Vision, Vol. 3 No. 16 or http://taiwan-in-perspective.com/2014/08/21/top-gun-a-case-of-f-35-for-taiwan-guest-post/; The ROCAF's order of battle is available as an infographic on the author's blog "Taiwan in Perspective" or at CIGeography . 6. Murray argued, in 2008, that Taiwan should focus on infrastructure hardening and redundancy instead of pursuing high-profile advanced weapon purchases from the U.S. His proposal found some audience in Taiwan as there were certain similarities drawn with Ma Ying-jeou's "Hard ROC" () plan. William S. Murray, "Revisiting Taiwan's Defense Strategy," Naval War College Review, Vol. 61, No. 3 < https://www.usnwc.edu/getattachment/ae650b06-a5e4-4b64-b4fd-2bcc8665c399/Revisiting-Taiwan-s-Defense-Strategy---William-S--.aspx>. 7. According to the Liberty Times report, the Control Yuan () has, for the second time in five years, pointed out that the Air Force was negligent in providing sufficient protective hangars for its fighter fleet. ROCAF officials acknowledged the insufficient protection offered by the current system but claimed that a solution has already been found, albeit a classified one. On the other hand, Taiwan has been highly regarded for its Rapid Runway Repair (RRR) capability. See Ian Easton, Able Archer: Taiwan Defense Strategy in an Age of Precision Strike, Project 2049 Institute, September 2014, pp. 17-18 and 52-53 . Copyright notice: 2010 The Jamestown Foundation Neither Turkmenistan nor Tajikistan Seen Able to Resist Islamic State Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Paul Goble Publication Date 12 January 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 7 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Neither Turkmenistan nor Tajikistan Seen Able to Resist Islamic State, 12 January 2016, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 7, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/569f477c4.html [accessed 20 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Link to original story on Jamestown website Neither Turkmenistan, which has maintained a policy of strict neutrality since the 1990s, nor Tajikistan, which hosts a Russian military base on its territory, has a military force capable of resisting incursions by the Islamic State (IS), the Taliban or other militant forces emanating from Afghanistan. And unless something changes inside these countries or between them and their potential supporters abroad, it is entirely possible that the Islamic State will establish new beachheads in Central Asia. The situation in Turkmenistan is especially dire, although Ashgabat's domestic control of the media has meant that few have taken note of the impending disaster. Some analysts have called attention to the nature of the frontier region between Turkmenistan and Afghanistan-its enormous gas fields along the Afghan border make this area an especially likely target (Centrasia.ru, January 8). But there have been few stories about the disastrous security situation within the country and especially about the disintegration of its military in the face of challenges. In recent weeks, some extremely troubling reports have been leaking out of Turkmenistan. Earlier this month, a small group of Taliban fighters attacked a Turkmenistani border post. Some of the Turkmen soldiers deserted with their weapons and others joined the Taliban forces. As a result, the Taliban group moved deeper into the country, taking prisoners and demanding tribute. Ashgabat has tried to keep this quiet, but as Orazly Amanmyratov of Centrasia.ru points out, there have been too many such attacks and news about them is now beginning to appear abroad (Centrasia.ru, January 8). He suggests that there would be even more such stories except for one thing: many Turkmenistani border force commanders have been negotiating with the Taliban so that the two sides can continue to live next to each other-in much the same way that the first president of Turkmenistan achieved an armistice with the Taliban a decade ago. Unfortunately, the Turkmen analyst says, the Taliban are increasingly feeling their strength, while the IS forces in the region have little or no interest in negotiating when they believe they can achieve what they want by force. "In contrast to the Taliban," Amanmyratov writes, the IS forces "are more pragmatic and are not going to be satisfied with a little if they think they can get everything. And under this 'everything,' " he says, "they have in mind the possibility of establishing their control over Turkmenistan's gas fields," much as they have done over the oil fields in Iraq. Ashgabat is counting on conflicts between the Taliban and the Islamic State to prevent this from happening, "but the experience of Afghanistan shows that whatever differences there are between the two groups, they are able to reach agreement and unite against a common enemy" (Centrasia.ru, January 8). Turkmenistan's government may have concluded that it has no choice but to negotiate. It has no foreign allies, and its military and other security forces are riddled with corruption and extremely weak. Young male citizens in this isolationist Central Asian republic are now paying up to $10,000 not to serve in the army; and in one district alone, over the past five years, 2,400 young men have avoided service. In response to the growing threat, Ashgabat has eliminated most deferments, raised the upper age for the draft, and boosted pay. But this is almost certainly too little too late. On the one hand, corruption has penetrated the military, thus reducing its effectiveness as a force; and on the other, all the ills of the Soviet military-including dedovshchina (systematic hazing of newer recruits by older soldiers and officers)-have not only survived but intensified, making the army more of a prison than a force. Indeed, Amanmyratov says, Turkmenistan's army is prepared only for "capitulation." The situation in Tajikistan is not much better. While it does have the backing of Moscow in the form of a Russian military base on its territory, Dushanbe's army today is "small, poorly trained and badly armed," according to Tajik analyst Khurshed Asliddin. And the forces across the Afghan border are just as ready to exploit the situation, although because of topography and the absence of huge gas fields, Tajikistan is perhaps a less tempting target for them (Centrasia.ru, January 8). Tajikistan's army numbers approximately 15,000. Its weapons are leftovers from Soviet times. The country lacks any air force to speak of, and the fighting spirt of the officers and men has been largely destroyed by corruption and the legacies of the civil war, which ravaged the country in the 1990s. In fact, Asliddin argues, today "Tajikistan is the weakest link among the countries having common borders with Afghanistan" (Centrasia.ru, January 8). The presence of a Russian military base, with between 5,000 and 7,500 uniformed personnel and more modern weapons, might appear to counterbalance the negative situation of Tajikistan's own forces. But Asliddin says that may not be the case. On the one hand, because of the collapse of the economy there and the return of Central Asian guest workers from Russia, many in Tajikistan view the Russian troops as occupiers rather than allies, something that reduces their utility as a defense force. And on the other, Moscow may have its own reasons, including budgetary ones, for avoiding any military action there. Consequently, Tajikistan too is very much at risk. The growing proliferation of alarming articles like the ones cited here may be intended to force Ashgabat and Dushanbe to seek help abroad-from Russia in the first instance. But if that does not happen and if no one else comes to their aid, the possibility that the Islamic State could make significant land gains in one or both is likely over the next few months. Copyright notice: 2010 The Jamestown Foundation Plahotniuc's Power Base in Moldova: Allies and Instruments (Part Two) Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Vladimir Socor Publication Date 12 January 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 7 Related Document(s) Plahotniuc's Power Base in Moldova: Allies and Instruments (Part One) Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Plahotniuc's Power Base in Moldova: Allies and Instruments (Part Two), 12 January 2016, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 7, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/569f48304.html [accessed 20 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Link to original story on Jamestown website Moldovan billionaire Vladimir Plahotniuc, the de facto head of the Democratic Party of Moldova, has, over the past year, built up a strong power base under the "pro-Europe" coalition government's cover. To achieve this, he has amassed a wide range of instruments and is gaining additional ones as well. Besides short-term and long-term political alliances, the manipulation of legislative mechanisms, as well as the control over law enforcement (see Part One in EDM, January 12), Plahotniuc's power instruments currently at his disposal include: The "kompromat state." Moldova's law enforcement bodies (Prosecutor General's Office, the militarized Anti-Corruption Center, and others-see Part One) are widely believed to be collecting compromising materials (kompromats) on government officials and politicians, rendering many of them vulnerable to political blackmail. Even if such surveillance is not blanket, but selective, it constitutes a political instrument, looming in the background and activated as necessary against Plahotniuc's opponents. This is a milder version of the Russian or Ukrainian "kompromat state," whereby collecting such materials is not an anti-corruption activity, but rather a political activity to neutralize rivals or corral allies through carefully timed disclosures. In Moldova's case, kompromats are publicized, or hinted at, on an ad hoc basis by Plahotniuc's television channels (see below) or his temporary ally Renato Usatii. Such cases can take center-stage in Chisinau from time to time, but happen in obscurity in the countryside all the time ahead of elections. When the Prosecutor-General descended on the parliament to request the lifting of Filat's immunity, the vote was quick, without questions asked, amid palpable fears that most deputies could end up in a similar situation (see EDM, October 19, 2015). Media conglomerate. "General Media Group" is Plahotniuc's fully owned holding, which includes four television channels with country-wide coverage (Prime, Publika, Channel 3, Channel 4), alongside three radio channels and other media assets. Media Group does not, as a rule, propagandize for Plahotniuc personally, but rather against his opponents. Plahotniuc remains a shadowy figure and has one of the most negative ratings (trust-mistrust) among all Moldovan politicians. Media Group controls an estimated 70 percent of the country's media market; and thanks to financial power, it employs trolls in large numbers relative to the local media scene. Economic and financial levers. Under the coalition agreement to divide government posts, Plahotniuc's Democratic Party controls the Ministry of the Economy and, de facto or with its allies, most of the regulatory and market-oversight agencies (the customs service is a notable exception). That situation enables Plahotniuc's core group and allied interests to control financial flows and policy decisions in lucrative economic sectors. Energy, the trade in metals, telecommunications, as well as the bakery industry are known to be so controlled. Moldova's National Bank belongs in the Liberal Party's quota of politically controlled institutions, but the Bank is known to have passed under Plahotniuc's influence de facto. This was confirmed on September 21, 2015, when Plahotniuc and his relative, Parliament Chairman Andrian Candu, directed National Bank Governor Dorin Dragutanu and his deputy to resign literally overnight, thus blocking the International Monetary Fund's scheduled visit and a possible move to unfreeze Moldova-IMF relations (Unimedia, Infotag, September 21, 22, 2015). Following their resignations, Candu launched a search for replacing those two officials, only to claim soon that the search had failed, so that Dragutanu and his deputy remain in their posts at the National Bank thanks to Plahotniuc's and Candu's protection. The Bank (along with the other relevant institutions) has failed to detect or explain the billion-dollar theft from Moldova's banking system (see EDM, January 11). Local administrations. Plahotniuc's Democratic Party and its main rival, the Liberal-Democrat Party, finished head-to-head in the elections for local councils that were held country-wide in June 2015. Contrary to these parties' pre-election agreement, the Democratic Party made post-election alliances with other parties' councilors in numerous districts and towns, ensuring the election of Democratic mayors instead of Liberal-Democrat ones in many districts and towns. The local alliances had been supposed to mirror the governing alliance in Chisinau, but the Democratic Party scuttled that alliance at the local levels in June, presaging its scuttling in Chisinau in October, when the Democratic Party and its new allies joined forces to arrest Vlad Filat and remove then-prime minister Valeriu Strelet. Meanwhile, those maneuvers at local levels have established a significant advantage for the Democratic Party in the next parliamentary elections. Constitutional Court. This court's six justices are appointed by quotas of the three governing parties. The quotas guarantee a majority of four justices from the Democratic and Liberal parties, out of six. Moreover, the Court's chairman Alexandru Tanase, originally delegated by the Liberal-Democrats, has since become a political player in his own right. Meanwhile the remaining seat (the sixth), "belonging" to the Liberal-Democrat quota, remains vacant because the other two parties are blocking the rival party's nomination. On December 29, 2015, the Constitutional Court ruled that President Nicolae Timofti is obligated to accept a nominee for the vacant post of prime minister who would be presented to him by a constituted majority of the parliament's deputies (51 out of 101). Plahotniuc was at that moment personally assembling such a majority using his parliamentary allies, including the Communists with their decisive 21 votes. And it was a group of 14 Communists, now officially on Plahotniuc's "Social-Democrat Platform" (see above), who petitioned the Court urgently for this ruling. President Timofti is now heavily pressured to rubber-stamp that nominee before January 14, 2016 (Unimedia, Ziarul National, December 30, 2015; January 7, 2016). Government posts not yet under the Democratic Party's control are the Prime Minister's post and the Ministry of Internal Affairs (numerically the largest law enforcement body with an estimated 25,000 employees). These posts were all along in Filat and Strelet's Liberal-Democrat Party's quota. Plahotniuc seeks to wrest these posts for his Democratic Party. This was one of the motivations for triggering the government crisis in October 2015. Copyright notice: 2010 The Jamestown Foundation Plahotniuc's Power Base in Moldova: Allies and Instruments (Part One) Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Vladimir Socor Publication Date 12 January 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 7 Related Document(s) Plahotniuc's Power Base in Moldova: Allies and Instruments (Part Two) Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Plahotniuc's Power Base in Moldova: Allies and Instruments (Part One), 12 January 2016, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 7, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/569f48834.html [accessed 20 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Link to original story on Jamestown website The political influence of billionaire businessman Vladimir Plahotniuc expanded seemingly unstoppably in Moldova's state institutions and political system during the year just past (see EDM, October 19, 2015; November 3, 4, 19, 20, 2015; January 11, 2016). At the turn of 2015-2016, Plahotniuc moved to designate either himself or a nominee of his own for the vacant post of prime minister, in a controlled coalition. The climactic moment is expected in the second week of January 2016. Plahotniuc is the Democratic Party's de facto leader, while the party's official head, Marian Lupu, represents Plahotniuc in inter-party negotiations (Plahotniuc would intervene openly in make-or-break situations). Although he has a minority party under his direct control (only the fourth-largest parliamentary party, following the November 2014 elections), Plahotniuc is a masterful political operator, apparently equaling his financial mastery. He has now moved close to completing a process of state capture, maximizing his political influence through tactical alliances with other groups, and subduing his remaining opponents through political control of key law enforcement bodies. Plahotniuc built up his power base under the "pro-Europe" coalition government's cover, amassing a wide range of instruments and gaining additional ones during 2015. Power instruments currently at his disposal include: Long-term political alliances. Plahotniuc's Democratic Party and Mihai Ghimpu's smaller Liberal Party have operated a real coalition within the nominal coalition, undermining three consecutive Liberal-Democrat prime ministers (Vlad Filat, Iurie Leanca, Valeriu Strelet). The Liberal-Democrats with their European reform agenda were the main obstacle to Plahotniuc's unlimited ambitions, hence Plahotniuc decided to reduce that party to an obedient rump. Ghimpu coalesced with Plahotniuc to destroy the Liberal-Democrats because these held firmly the political center-right, confining Ghimpu's party to a niche on the far right (Moldovan definition of Romanian irredentism). Following the removal of Strelet in October 2015, the interim prime minister is the health minister Gheorghe Brega from the Liberal Party, a benign figurehead. Short-tem "situational" alliances. Outside the nominal pro-Europe alliance, Plahotniuc's party operates ad hoc parliamentary alliances and combinations with the Communist and Socialist parties. He has enlisted these parties for crucial parliamentary votes, e.g. the removal (2013) and arrest (2015) of Filat, removal of Strelet (October 2015), or blocking Liberal-Democrats' initiatives to release certain law enforcement agencies from subordination to the Parliament. That formal subordination provides cover for Plahotniuc's de facto control of those agencies (see below), thanks to his ability to manipulate the Parliament itself. Manipulation of parliamentary processes. The Parliament's chairmanship was allocated to Plahotniuc's Democratic Party by agreement among the coalition's parties. The Parliament's chairman since January 2015, Andrian Candu, is Plahotniuc's own godson. Their Democratic Party has an informal deal with the Communist Party since February 2015 that has added 20 Communist votes to the Democratic Party's 19 votes, Ghimpu's 13 votes, and 4 "unaffiliated" deputies lured from other parties, including former prime minister "Iurie Leanca's group" of 3 defectors from Filat's party. All these amount to a Plahotniuc-controlled majority in the 101-seat parliament. This majority can be employed flexibly as needed. On December 21, 2015, Plahotniuc personally formed a "Social-Democrat Platform" of his own parliamentary group with 14 of the Communist deputies (Infotag, IPN, December 21, 22, 2015). Ghimpu's party and Leanca's group can, in turn, abstain from some votes, if they feel uncomfortable voting alongside Communists; in that case the Socialist Party would contribute their own 24 parliamentary votes to provide a "situational" majority (see above). Control of law enforcement bodies. The governing coalition's founding agreement had allocated top posts in certain law enforcement institutions to the Democratic Party. As a result, Plahotniuc's appointees control the Anti-Corruption Center (a militarized agency), the Prosecutor General's Office with its various branches, the National Commission for Integrity (supposedly it investigates conflicts of interest that involve state officials), and a governmental telecommunications and data center. The Democratic Party also controls parts of the court system, and it took over the Justice Ministry through a government reshuffle in 2015. These institutions have done little about Moldova's rampant corruption, but have selectively targeted the Liberal-Democrat Party. They raided then-prime minister Filat's offices and home in 2013, threatening with arrest and prosecution to force his dismissal; they "leaked" audio and video materials of dubious authenticity or legality, purporting to incriminate Liberal-Democrat ministers and other officials during 2013-2015; they hold several of Filat's relatives in jail since 2014, and Filat himself since October 2015, on charges that the prosecutors have shifted several times since then. Copyright notice: 2010 The Jamestown Foundation Russia's 2015 National Security Strategy Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Roger McDermott Publication Date 12 January 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 7 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Russia's 2015 National Security Strategy, 12 January 2016, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 7, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/569f49584.html [accessed 20 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Link to original story on Jamestown website Russia's new National Security Strategy (NSS), signed into law by President Vladimir Putin on December 31, 2015, marks the culmination of a long process in deteriorating relations between Moscow and Washington and in how the Russian security elite perceives the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The security document itself must be assessed in this context, as well as with the understanding of how and why the new strategy was formulated. The Kremlin explicitly denoting the United States and NATO as threats to Russia's security has longer-term implications concerning the limits of future cooperation (see EDM, January 4, 5, 7). According to Russian law, the NSS must be updated every six years. As the previous version was signed by then-president Dmitry Medvedev on May 12, 2009, the new NSS had to be completed by the end of 2015 (Vesti, October 22, 2015). Drafting the NSS is conducted under the Russian Security Council (SC). The first signs of its activity occurred in February and March 2015, following the United States releasing its own 2015 NSS. The SC was clearly working toward revising the Russian NSS throughout the year: reportedly, Putin officially ordered its adjustment on July 3, 2015. Putin told the SC that Russia must implement systemic measures to respond to the changing situation in the world. By October 2015, the SC Press Service confirmed that the council's interdepartmental commission for strategic planning had reviewed the NSS. Two months of tinkering followed before the draft NSS was sent to Putin, who, in turn, delayed signing it into law until the last day of 2015 (RBK, December 31, 2015). Earlier, the Russian SC met in March 2015 to review the US NSS. The main conclusion was that the US document is inherently "anti-Russian" with its repeated references to "Russian aggression." Predictably, Moscow objected to the interpretation of the Ukraine crisis as outlined in the US NSS. Dmitry Peskov, the Presidential Press Secretary, said that "all threats to Russia's national security will be considered and dealt with and, if necessary, be amended in the founding documents." Moreover, the SC believed the US NSS is rooted in promoting Washington's "global hegemony" and essentially keeping Russia down. Its members also considered the alleged US role in promoting "color revolutions" and concluded that Russia's new NSS should reciprocate but not copy the American strategy (Vzglyad, March 26, 2015). In May 2015, SC Secretary Nikolai Patrushev confirmed that work was underway to update the NSS and the doctrine of information security. Patrushev played a prominent public role in the process, and his critical remarks regarding US policy and NATO expansion were clear signals concerning the tone to be framed within the 2015 Russian NSS (Rossiyskaya Gazeta, December 22, 2015). Patrushev further justified the underlying need to revise the NSS: "This is due to the emergence of new military dangers and threats. These manifestations can be seen in the events of the 'Arab Spring' in Syria and Iraq, the situation in Ukraine and around it. There is a tendency of displacement of military dangers and threats in the information field. In the struggle for their interests, leading countries in the world have used indirect action, using the protest potential of the population, radical and extremist organizations, private military companies," Patrushev explained (Grani.ru, December 31, 2015). The 2015 NSS contains a great deal that portrays the US and NATO in negative terms and is frequently contradictory. The 2009 version includes reference to the US and NATO and therefore there is continuity between these documents; however, the 2015 NSS is more openly critical. Although the drafting took place in 2015 against a background of the Ukraine crisis, the document's overall views are well known in Russian security circles. The 2015 NSS accuses Western powers of flouting international law and setting out to intervene in a number of countries to change their regimes, consequently spawning terrorism (Islamic State) and destabilizing the international security environment. Nevertheless, the NSS offers commitment to arms control, nuclear deterrence and international security frameworks and recognizes the importance of US-Russia relations (Vedomosti, December 31, 2015). It also offers cooperation with NATO, but on Moscow's terms. The NSS blames the US and the European Union for the Ukraine crisis; in particular, it paints the EuroMaidan events as a Western-sponsored "color revolution" and a potential threat to Russia's security. The document's section on "national defense" makes no reference to "reform." While the accusation that the US is constructing "military-biological" laboratories in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) betrays paranoia and heightened anti-Americanism (Kremlin.ru, December 31, 2015). In early December, NATO offered membership to Montenegro, and Russian media coverage stayed focused on the "threat" to Russia of Alliance enlargement. The 2015 NSS notes, "The defining factor in relations with NATO remains the unacceptability to the Russian Federation of the Alliance's increase in military activity and the proximity of its military infrastructure to Russia's borders, the creation of a missile defense system and attempts to assume global functions in breach of international law." But it adds: Russia "is ready to develop relations with NATO on the basis of equality to strengthen overall security in the Euro-Atlantic region. The depth and substance of these relations will be determined by the Alliance's willingness to take into account the Russian Federation's legitimate interests in its military-political planning and to respect international law" (Kremlin.ru, December 31, 2015). On the role of the US, it states: "Russia is growing stronger against a backdrop of new threats to national security that are complex and interrelated. The Russian Federation's pursuit of an independent foreign and domestic policy is leading to countermoves by the USA and its allies as they attempt to maintain their domination in global affairs. Their policy of restraining Russia takes the form of exerting pressure through political, economic, military and information means." And also includes: "The Russian Federation is interested in building a fully-fledged partnership with the US on the basis of coincidence of interests, including economic, and with account for the key influence of Russian-American relations on the international situation in general. Vital areas of such a partnership remain the improvement of international treaty mechanisms for arms control, strengthening of confidence-building measures, solutions to non-proliferation issues with weapons of mass destruction, expansion of cooperation against terrorism, and settlement of regional conflicts" (Kremlin.ru, December 31, 2015). Thus, the 2015 NSS presents a familiar Russian security interpretation of Western interventions in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, which had destabilizing impacts, while offering little concrete response (Politrussia, January 6, 2016; Rossiyskaya Gazeta, December 22, 2015). Copyright notice: 2010 The Jamestown Foundation Cheaper Oil Price Pushes Kazakhstan Toward Limited Economic and Political Reforms Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Alexander Kim Publication Date 13 January 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 8 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Cheaper Oil Price Pushes Kazakhstan Toward Limited Economic and Political Reforms, 13 January 2016, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 8, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/569f49a64.html [accessed 20 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Link to original story on Jamestown website With the global oil price dropping to below $40 per barrel and the tenge showing the worst performance among the world's currencies in a year (Nur.kz, December 19, 2015), Kazakhstan is hastily adjusting to the dramatic change in market conditions by returning to more liberal policies and reducing state ownership across the economy. In early January 2016, Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev published a new article entitled, "Plan of the Nation-A Path to the Kazakhstani Dream" (Ak Orda, January 6, 2016). The article announces the start, as of January 1, of the practical implementation of the "Plan of the Nation"-Nazarbayev's new reform package, described as "100 steps to implement 5 institutional reforms." In 2015, Kazakhstan's parliament approved amendments to 59 laws to set up a more favorable environment to do business, reduce bureaucracy, reform the state's civil service, implement transport projects, and develop a non-oil-based economy. "The development of the state requires that a number of state functions-which amount to almost 4,500 by now-should be transferred to a competitive environment," Nazarbayev writes in his article. In addition, starting this year, local self-governing bodies will receive more powers. Furthermore, the state's role in the economy will be reduced. In particular, the government is offering for sale its stakes in core economic assets: within four years, 65 large companies, including state oil firm KazMunayGaz, flagship carrier Air Astana, telecommunications giant Kazakhtelecom, state railways firm Kazakhstan Temir Zholy, mining company Tau-Ken Samruk, electricity producer Samruk-Energy, and uranium miner Kazatomprom, will be sold through public share offers (Tengrinews, January 6). Kazakhstan faces new and serious challenges that combine an alarmingly quick drop in the price of oil as well as the ensuing brisk economic contraction. According to estimates, the state budget foresees a quadruple contraction of taxes from oil companies if the oil price stays at $40 per barrel (OpenAsia, December 15, 2015). Additionally, Kazakhstan's economy, which is closely tied to Russia's, has been negatively affected by the geopolitical tensions and resulting sanctions stemming from Moscow's ongoing standoff with the West. The Kazakhstani budget is now supported by loans from international financial institutions, including a $1 billion loan from the World Bank for the First Fiscal Management and Resilience Programmatic Development Policy Financing Project (World Bank, November 3, 2015) and a $1 billion loan from the Asian Development Bank's Countercyclical Support Facility (ADB, August 21, 2015). Heavy state ownership of large domestic enterprises has done little good for the Kazakhstani economy, according to a recent report by the Agency for Civil Service Affairs and Anti-Corruption (ACSAAC). In fact, state-owned companies in Kazakhstan have become more inclined to conceal their real financial reports. According to ACSAAC's estimates for 2015, the number of "opaque" state companies increased by a third, and their borrowing from the banks rose by 500 percent (Nomad.su, December 8, 2015). State oil champion KazMunayGas alone has an outstanding debt of $18 billion, despite years of high oil prices prior to 2014 (Kapital.kz, October 12, 2015). President Nazarbayev's rhetoric notwithstanding, his newly announced government plan in practice falls short of drastically reducing state control over both the economic and political spheres. Notably, potential investors will only be offered stakes in debt-burdened companies, while the rest will be reorganized to form new "compact holdings," according to Nazarbayev. In addition, new state structures are going to be formed, including the state corporation "Government for Citizens," tasked with providing state services on a consolidated basis, as well as the creation of the Ministry of Civil Service, which will include the recently set up National Anti-Corruption Bureau (Ak Orda, January 6). The 100 Step Plan was hastily prepared to address the worsening external economic environment Kazakhstan was finding itself, and it became a main element of Nazarbayev's reelection campaign in 2015. But it still seems to lack a true reformist approach. The head of state has become the main public advocate on anti-crisis measures. His January 6 "Plan of the Nation" article is his fifth public statement on this subject as of the end of last November. He has also delivered a speech on the same topic at the extended government session on November 19, spoke on reforms during his Annual Nation's Address on November 30, talked about these issues at a ceremony launching 18 new industrial projects on December 11, as well as gave an extended interview about it on December 13. In all his appearances and writings, Nazarbayev, who is widely associated with Kazakhstan's preceding years of remarkable growth, has sought to reassure the worried public about their country's economic sustainability and state capacities to address the new challenges. Although the government remains a target for public criticism regarding corruption, inefficient policies, and excessive spending, the president unambiguously supports his government and declines to make any specific personnel changes. Rather, Nazarbayev points to the relative youth of his ministers as an asset in implementing Kazakhstan's complex state infrastructure and industrialization program known as "Nurly Jol" (the New Economic Policy) (Zakon.kz, December 13, 2015). Despite gloomy economic forecasts, the government in Astana has prepared for several difficult scenarios-even for oil falling to $20 per barrel-and does not believe that the current challenges will destabilize the political regime in Kazakhstan (Gazeta.ru, December 14, 2015). However, optimistic tones have noticeably dropped out of the government's narratives: "We have even more difficult roads ahead of us, than in the past. History cannot be a chronology of only victories," Nazarbayev has noted (Zakon.kz, December 15, 2015). Moreover, Prime Minister Karim Masimov has admitted that Kazakhstan missed an important opportunity to restructure the economy and the state when oil markets were at their peak. In November last year, he stated: "at a time when [oil] prices are high and there is a lot of money available, it is almost impossible to exercise reforms, since one can address any problem with money, and a desire to implement reforms diminishes" (365info.kz, November 13, 2015). It remains to be seen whether Kazakhstan's authorities will be more dynamic in pushing through needed reforms at a time when oil prices are bottoming out. Copyright notice: 2010 The Jamestown Foundation Russia's Muslims Increasingly Critical of Moscow's Actions in the Middle East Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Valery Dzutsati Publication Date 13 January 2016 Citation / Document Symbol North Caucasus Analysis Volume: 17 Issue: 1 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Russia's Muslims Increasingly Critical of Moscow's Actions in the Middle East, 13 January 2016, North Caucasus Analysis Volume: 17 Issue: 1, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/569f49ee4.html [accessed 20 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Link to original story on Jamestown website Russia's Muslims are slowly realizing that they have a voice in the country's foreign policy in the Middle East. President Vladimir Putin unexpectedly launched a military campaign in Syria in the fall of 2015, apparently giving little consideration to Russia's Muslim population. Indeed, Moscow threw its lot in with the Shiite part of the Muslim world in the Middle East, while the vast majority of the Russian Muslims belong to the Sunni branch of Islam. An estimated 15-20 million Muslims live in Russia, but they have largely been complacent about what Russia does in the Middle East. The indifference of Russian Muslims has been explained in part by Moscow's broad support of Muslim Palestinians in their struggle with Israel, which satisfied the Muslim population of the Russian Federation to some extent. Also Russia allied itself with Iran and Turkey and had neutral relations with the rest of the Middle East. Putin's surprise intervention in Syria forced Moscow to take sides in the centuries-old divisions in the Muslim world, and Russian Muslims are now becoming much more aware of Russian policies in this important and relatively nearby region. The recent row between Shiite-majority Iran and Sunni-majority Saudi Arabia has divided Russian Muslims to such an extent that even the most reliable and vocal supporters of Kremlin policy in the Middle East among the North Caucasian governors became unusually cautious. Chechen ruler Ramzan Kadyrov stated that he was not taking sides in the conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia, announcing via his Instagram account that the two sides should negotiate and reach a compromise in order to avoid "a real war and global catastrophe." Dagestan's governor, Ramazan Abdulatipov, also avoided taking sides, saying that "both Shiite and Sunni are Muslims and live in Dagestan. Conflict between them is out of the question. When one side declares the other infidels it is ignorance and foolishness. Politicians make use of this." Abdulatipov leaned slightly toward supporting Iran more than Saudi Arabia, while at the same time claiming the United States has a role in fueling conflict between the two Middle Eastern powers (Onkavkaz.com, January 7). In the Middle East, the Kremlin has used the services of Kadyrov, who has made numerous visits to the countries of the region. Having acquired substantial foreign policy expertise in the Middle East, which is quite unusual for a regional governor in Russia, Kadyrov appeared to be more diplomatic in his response to the Middle Eastern crisis than Abdulatipov. Chechnya's governor tried to remain neutral, which would allow him to be positively received in Sunni countries, while also avoiding antagonizing Iran, which is an official Russian ally. Russian Muslims must now make up their minds about more than simply the recent tensions between the Shiite and Sunni worlds. Putin's intervention in Syria baffled many Russians, but Russian Muslims were probably affected the most, especially given that Moscow is backing the regime of the Alawite minority against the Sunni rebels. Tatar analyst Abdulla Rinat Mukhametov wrote that even though Russian Muslims are still grappling with what is going on in the Middle East, the percentage of those criticizing Russian actions is far higher among the Muslims than any other social group in Russia. According to Mukhametov, while the top Muslim clerics have tried to capitalize on the support they provide for Russian policies, mid-level Muslim clerics and ordinary Muslims have been much more reluctant to speak publicly about Moscow's involvement in the Middle East. Some Muslims remain affected by Russian propaganda that argues Putin is fighting the US and defending "traditional values," but others are quite critical of the Russian government and express their opinion openly on social networks and the Internet. Mukhametov asserts that the Russian authorities realize that they will not be able to control the country's Muslim population using only a few puppet Muslim officials, and are becoming concerned about that. The Tatar analyst warned that some forces in the Middle East, such as Iran and Syria, would actually like to draw Russia into the complicated world of conflicts and intrigues in the region, but the risks are quite high for Moscow. Chances are high that Putin's gamble in Syria will fail, and then the entire paradigm of establishing closer relations with the Muslim world that was declared by Putin back in 2003 will fail, with highly negative consequences for Russia (Golosislama.com, December 17, 2015). The attitudes of Russian Muslims toward the war in Syria stand out even more in contrast to the Russian Orthodox Church's support for the war. Patriarch Kirill of Moscow recently endorsed Russia's involvement in the Middle East, saying: "Since this war is defensive, it is just" (Rbc.ru, January 9). Earlier, Vladimir Putin justified Russia's air campaign in Syria as a cheap way of performing military drills that would not affect Russian budget in a significant way (Kremlin.ru, December 17). The statements by the Russian president and Russian Orthodox Church indicate the disconnect between the interests of many Russian Muslims and those of the Russian establishment. This divergence is likely to play a role in how the relationship between the government and the country's growing Muslim community evolves in the near future. Copyright notice: 2010 The Jamestown Foundation Moldova Ungoverned, Close to State Failure Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Vladimir Socor Publication Date 11 January 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 6 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Moldova Ungoverned, Close to State Failure, 11 January 2016, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 6, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/569f4a944.html [accessed 20 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Link to original story on Jamestown website Literally in the final days of 2015, a new political constellation has emerged on the center-right of Moldova's party spectrum that might yet open a way out from state failure. But such a rescue, while still possible, requires a certain time for organizational work. For now, Moldova stands at a crossroads with three directions in sight, each of them a shortcut toward some form of state failure: either 1) outright collapse of governance, or 2) takeover ("state capture") by the financial-political operator Vladimir Plahotniuc, or 3) snap elections, which pro-Russia parties would win against the governing Alliance for European Integration. Moldova had five governments (five cabinets of ministers under as many prime ministers) during the calendar year 2015. Most of this time the governments held an interim status, lacking authority to initiate legislation or to negotiate with Western partners. The European Union's Association Agreement with Moldova had been signed in June 2014, but no serious work has been done to implement it to date. For failing to adjust to EU standards, Moldovan agricultural exports to the economic bloc fell far short of the market quotas open to Moldova by the EU-Moldova trade agreement (IPN, January 8). Plahotniuc and his allies, uninterested in the European agenda, focused on subduing or destroying the Liberal-Democrat Party, the only committed pro-Western party in the nominal coalition government. The Liberal-Democrat prime ministers Chiril Gaburici and Valeriu Strelet were, one after the other, forced out, as were several ministers from that same party. Plahotniuc's appointees in the law enforcement system orchestrated the unlawful detention of Liberal-Democrat Party leader Vlad Filat. The institutional chaos and the economy's collapse (see below) boosted the ratings and self-confidence of two upstart pro-Russia parties: Igor Dodon's Socialists and Renato Usatii's Our Party. They overtook the senescent Communist Party, are agitating for pre-term elections, and look set to win such elections if these are rushed. At least $ 1billion, equivalent to 15 percent of Moldova's annual gross domestic product (GDP), disappeared from the banking system, apparently stolen by anonymous shareholders, with the state authorities' connivance. The theft necessitated re-capitalization through new state debts at taxpayers' expense. This triggered chain reactions by depreciating the national currency, raising consumer goods prices and energy tariffs across the board, while the GDP dropped by 2 percent in 2015. Since mid-year, the government has practically been running on empty, without a valid state budget; and no budget is being discussed for 2016. No new foreign investments were made in 2015. Moldova's exports declined by 16 percent, and imports declined by 25 percent in 2015, compared with 2014 (IPN, January 7, 2016). The European Union, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and other international lenders and donors have suspended all programs with Moldova, pending clarification of the financial crimes and political situation in the country. Separately from this case, investigations are apparently under way in Russia and the West (not in Moldova) regarding billions of dollars laundered from Russia through Moldovan banks to the West. Failing governance and political chaos under the "European Integration" label has discredited the governing coalition, its component parties, the parliamentary system of government, and the European Union's brand in Moldova. Support for the country's European orientation fell dramatically, being overtaken by ill-informed sympathies for the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union in the opinion polls. The three "pro-Europe" governing parties dropped to, or below, the 6 percent parliamentary threshold in the polls. Plahotniuc's party seems nevertheless poised to emerge stronger, thanks to its financial resources and skilful tactical alliances. Those trends, under way for several years, accelerated in 2015 in the direction of state collapse. Meanwhile the Liberal-Democrats, until 2015 the sole pro-Western party in government, largest pro-Western group in parliament, and strongest political force in the country, has lost its funding as a result of Filat's arrest. It must now choose either joining the new center-right parties or, alternatively, the breakup and satellization of its remnant in a Plahotniuc-controlled government. Those new center-right parties can inherit the European agenda in Moldova. Whether Plahotniuc's own coalition takes over power, or-in the other scenario-pro-Russia parties win pre-term elections, the emerging pro-Western parties will find themselves in the opposition either way, and will have to win elections next time. Moldova's pro-Western groups have been looking to the European Union and the United States for clear guidance in this situation; but the Western messages seem couched in generalities, apparently loath to "interfere," and hesitant to encourage pro-Western forces in ways understandable to them and the public at large. The guidance being awaited is to assist Moldova's pro-Western parties aiming for pre-term parliamentary elections in the second half of 2016. This advice would be effective only if its dispensed on a timetable that would allow the new center-right parties (see above) to prepare their campaigns. If properly organized and timed, pre-term parliamentary elections would be the only way to forestall those aforementioned three varieties of state failure. Copyright notice: 2010 The Jamestown Foundation The Islamic State and Salafism Gained Ground in North Caucasus Last Year Publisher Jamestown Foundation Publication Date 7 January 2016 Citation / Document Symbol North Caucasus Analysis Volume: 17 Issue: 1 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, The Islamic State and Salafism Gained Ground in North Caucasus Last Year, 7 January 2016, North Caucasus Analysis Volume: 17 Issue: 1, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/569f4ec14.html [accessed 20 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Link to original story on Jamestown website Events in the North Caucasus in 2015 showed that the insurgency in the region continued to decline-a trend first noted in 2011. No official figures on insurgent violence are yet available, but they are likely to be about 50 percent lower than in 2014. For example, in 2014, there were 525 victims of the armed conflict in the North Caucasus-341 killed and 184 wounded (Kavkazsky Uzel, January 31, 2015). The figures for 2015 are likely to be around 260 victims-about 200 killed and 50 wounded. The first thing worth noting is that in 2014 the ratio of the killed to the wounded was about 2 to 1. In 2015, the ratio of killed to wounded is likely to be about 4 to 1. Thus, government forces were more likely to kill militants instead of arresting them in 2015 than during the previous year. According to the Federal Security Service (FSB), government forces killed 156 militants across Russia, including 36 leaders of the criminal groups, in 2015. Among them were leaders of the so-called Caucasus Emirate. Russian government forces killed 20 out of the 26 insurgent leaders who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) (Kavtoday.ru, December 20, 2015). The distribution of the casualties across the North Caucasus was about the same in 2015 as in previous years. Dagestan had the greatest number of insurgency-related deaths, followed by Kabardino-Balkaria, Chechnya and Ingushetia. Karachaevo-Cherkessia, Adygea and Stavropol experienced some violence, but those isolated incidents had little effect on the situation in the region. There was a significant slump in the activities of the armed Islamic militancy in the North Caucasus in 2015 compared to previous years. Government forces scored significant wins, killing two former amirs of the Caucasus Emirate-Ali Abu-Muhammad (Aliaskhab Kebekov) and Abu Usman Gimrinsky (Magomed Suleimanov). The security services also managed to kill the leader of the insurgency in Ingushetia, Amir Muhammad (Beslan Makhauri), and the leader of the insurgency in Kabardino-Balkaria, Abdulla (Robert Zankishiev), who was the amir of Kabarda, Balkaria and Karachay. Another important development in the North Caucasus in 2015 was the change that took place within the armed Islamist underground movement. The process of switching sides from the Caucasus Emirate to the Islamic State among the jamaats of the region was practically completed by the summer of 2015, when the amir of the Chechen jamaat, Khamzat (Aslan Byutukaev), and the amir of Ingushetia, Muhammad (Beslan Makhauri), pledged allegiance to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (Kavkazsky Uzel, June 23, 2015). The jamaats of Dagestan and Kabardino-Balkaria switched to the Islamic State even earlier than those of Chechnya and Ingushetia. The Islamic State's recognition of affiliates within the Islamic underground movement in the North Caucasus is an important development, because the North Caucasian rebels have for the first time become part of an international terrorist organization. These changes, however, have not yet had an impact on the situation in the region, with the exception of several shootings in Dagestan that the Islamic State claimed responsibility for (Lifenews.ru, December 31, 2015). Indeed, the Islamic State's presence in the North Caucasus was hardly noticeable in 2015. At the same time, Russian authorities are concerned about the outflow of Russian citizens traveling to the Middle East to join the Islamic State. Officials in Moscow realize that the situation in the North Caucasus could deteriorate after Russians who joined the Islamic State return home. Vladimir Putin announced large military exercises in the North Caucasus in 2016 that will drill Russian troops on how to defend the Russian border from a possible invasion by radicals from the south (Gazeta.ru, January 1, 2016). Yet another important development in 2015 was the government's assault on human rights organizations across Russia and in the North Caucasus. The office of the joint mobile group of the Committee against Torture in Grozny was the target of an arson attack, while rights activists themselves, including Taita Yunusova, Yelena Milashina and others, were the targets of pressure and threats. The government tried to discredit the rights activist Magomed Mutsolgov in Ingushetia. The authorities declared certain organizations that received foreign funding to be "foreign agents," including Mashr, Fond Mira na Yuge i Severnom Kavkaze, Pravozashchitny Tsentr Chechenskoy Respubliki, and the Memorial organization along with its branches in the republics of the North Caucasus. The Chechen authorities openly engaged in surveillance of the Internet and threatened their critics. Kadyrov's government has used intimidation and humiliation to shield itself and the Russian government from growing criticism (Kavkazsky Uzel, January 1, 2016). Multiple indicators that Salafists in the region are growing stronger suggest the situation there is worsening. The Islamic State's ideology is finding support among students and intelligentsia unhappy about the government's crude pressure on believers who do not adhere to Sufism, the traditional brand of Islam in the North Caucasus. Government attempts to take over mosques that are under Salafist control could provoke clashes between the Salafists and the majority Sufi population in the northeastern Caucasus. The modest attempts by radicals to form new cells in Karachaevo-Cherkessia could eventually result in the resumption of the armed Islamist underground movement in the republic (Kavkazsky Uzel, December 24, 2015). The insurgency in Karachaevo-Cherkessia was quite strong prior to 2007, and the republic still has a strong Salafist tradition. Thus, the two main developments in the North Caucasus last year included the replacement of the Caucasus Emirate's radical ideology with the even more radical ideology of the Islamic State as well as a campaign of intimidation by the government against human rights activists. Still, it is hard to tell how the situation in the North Caucasus will unfold, given that external developments will have a great impact on the region. Copyright notice: 2010 The Jamestown Foundation Georgia's Ruling Coalition Delivers Coup de Grace to Salvage Its Electoral Support Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Vasili Rukhadze Publication Date 7 January 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 4 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Georgia's Ruling Coalition Delivers Coup de Grace to Salvage Its Electoral Support, 7 January 2016, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 4, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/569f4f104.html [accessed 20 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Link to original story on Jamestown website On December 23, Irakli Garibashvili resigned from his post as prime minister of Georgia (Channel 1 TV, Rustavi 2 TV, Imedi TV, December 23, 2015). The decision came as a surprise to Georgian society since, just two days earlier, Prime Minister Garibashvili boasted that his government was highly successful (Rezonansi, December 24, 2015). His statement was hardly believable against the background of Georgia's profound economic crisis and continued geopolitical vulnerabilities. Nevertheless, a head of government who so publicly praises his cabinet is rarely expected to resign so abruptly. No less puzzling was the stated cause of the resignation. As Garibashvili declared, for Georgia's young democracy it was of huge importance what kind of examples they (Georgian politicians) set for future generations. "Official posts are temporary, God and homeland are eternal. Therefore today I took a decision to leave the post of prime minister," Garibashvili announced on the day he was stepping down (Civil Georgia, December 23, 2015). However, the prime minister never explained why he felt a need to set this example now. Moreover, he gave no hints until that point that he had been contemplating a decision of such political magnitude. The overwhelming belief is that Georgian billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, a former prime minister (2012-2013) and the founder of the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) coalition, was behind the ouster of his former protege, Garibashvili, discarding him with ease when the political circumstances demanded it (Rustavi 2, December 2, 2015). With the November 2016 parliamentary elections less than a year away, GD's position is shaky at best. Its popularity stands at a mere 14 percent, as the devaluation of the Georgian lari since early 2015 sent hundreds of thousands more Georgians into poverty, and nepotism and oversized financial bonuses, assigned to high- and medium-ranking bureaucrats, added to the anger of the disappointed and impoverished public (NDI, August 2015). Evidently, GD needed a scapegoat on which the ruling team could blame all of its blunders. Subsequently, it cut short the ineffective prime minister's tenure in a bid to save Ivanishvili's party and give it a chance to win in the upcoming elections. The founder of Georgian Dream strongly objected that he had anything to do with Garibashvili's resignation. As he stated, it was Garibashvili's personal decision, and he (Ivanishvili) had "no means and mechanisms to force him to resign" (Vestnik Kavkaza, December 31, 2015). He even dubiously praised Garibashvili for leaving the post "at the peak of his successful tenure" as prime minister (News.ge, December 30, 2015). With Garibashvili safely out of the way, the Georgian parliament quickly confirmed Giorgi Kvirikashvili, who served as foreign minister since September 2015, to head the government (Businesscontact.ge, December 30, 2015). Kvirikashvili leaves an impression of a balanced, respectable manager, who looks quite professional compared to his 32-year-old predecessor. However, it is difficult to imagine him as an independent political figure capable of leading the country according to his own political vision. Just like Garibashvili, Kvirikashvili also lacks his own political base-a political party-something which is an absolute necessity for a politician and a ruler to keep power in a country like Georgia. Thus, Kvirikashvili will most likely be entirely dependent on GD's parliamentary majority, which itself is controlled by Bidzina Ivanishvili. Overall, the replacement of the head of government increasingly looks like little more than a cosmetic measure, an illusion of positive change during this election cycle. Notably, the new prime minister has not replaced a single cabinet member (except for filling the foreign minister's seat, left vacant by him). The parliament, thus, approved a new government that was essentially unchanged (1tv.ge, December 30, 2015). Had the ruling coalition aimed at fundamental changes-rather than just the illusion of such-it would have introduced sweeping cadre swaps within the cabinet to revamp the government's entire policy direction. The irony is that this step might actually work for Georgian Dream. With the United National Movement (UNM) still widely unpopular and other mainstream opposition parties struggling in the polls, the change of prime minister could, in fact, create the sense of much-needed renewal and fresh expectations among the Georgian public, at least for the next 9-10 months, in time for the upcoming election season. This is not to say that GD will find it easy to win the parliamentary elections in November. It still faces an uphill battle to this end. However, Garibashvili's resignation certainly provides an opening to the ruling coalition to repackage and remarket itself. Overall, this coming year promises plenty of drama and political spectacle but probably little policy substance as Georgia's increasingly dysfunctional political elites vie for power. For now, it seems that GD already has a good head start in this direction. However, as the election campaign enters full swing, others will seek to boost their profile as well. Copyright notice: 2010 The Jamestown Foundation Al-Shabaab Recruitment from Kenyan Universities Alarms Officials Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Sunguta West Publication Date 7 January 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Terrorism Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 1 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Al-Shabaab Recruitment from Kenyan Universities Alarms Officials, 7 January 2016, Terrorism Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 1, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/569f4fb24.html [accessed 20 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Link to original story on Jamestown website Al-Shabaab, the Somalia-based Islamist militant organization, is still actively recruiting from neighboring Kenya even as the group suffers major setbacks in southern Somalia. Underpinning the group's notable success in recruitment is the radicalization and indoctrination of young men in order to prepare them for the battle in Somalia and beyond (The Standard, November 5, 2015). This trend has clear implications for efforts to tackle al-Shabaab in Somalia, as well as for Kenya's own internal security. The methods and aims driving al-Shabaab recruitment have changed in response to the combat theater in which the actors operate (The Star, November 2, 2015). Initially, recruitment targeted desperate slum youths in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi and the port city of Mombasa, but the tactics and the individuals they prey on has since changed. According to officials in Kenya's National Security Intelligence Service (NSIS), the militants are increasingly luring well-educated university students to the group, thereby penetrating institutions of higher learning with recruitment, training and indoctrination efforts (Daily Nation, June 29, 2015). Like the slum youths al-Shabaab previously targeted, students and recent graduates are been offered money, jobs and opportunity. Typically, such opportunities include a $700 per month salary, upkeep for their families, and a list of economic and spiritual benefits, which have led many educated individuals to accept al-Shabaab's offer. Reports indicate that al-Shabaab may be seeking the development of chemical weapons to employ in East Africa. Perhaps for this reason, recruits with science background - such as chemical, electrical, and mechanical engineering - have reportedly been a priority (Intelligence Brief, May 24, 2015; The Star, November 2, 2015). Although the recruitment process has netted young people from all parts of Kenya, the majority are from Muslim-dominant regions in the country's northeastern territory (Intelligence Briefs, May 25, 2015). The recruits' presence in the militant group has been put on display by its propaganda videos, which feature fighters speaking a Kenyan Kiswahili dialect (Daily Nation, November 1, 2015). In April, Kenyan security agencies learned firsthand the impact of educated Kenyan recruits after it was revealed that one of the Garissa University College attackers was a prior University of Nairobi (UON) law student. The attack killed 148 people, primarily university students in Garissa, a town often cited as the gateway to Kenya's northern districts. Abdirahim Mohammad Abdullahi, the former student behind the attack - killed by Special Forces during an operation to retake the university - was a privileged son of a chief in Mandera (Kenya Today, April 25, 2015). Abdullahi had graduated in 2013 and worked for a local bank as an advisor before joining the ranks of al-Shabaab. He became the second university student to die while carrying out an attack on behalf of al-Shabaab. Another university graduate died by suicide bomb in 2014 in an al-Shabaab raid on a police station in Nairobi. That attacker, Abdul Hajira, had disappeared for a year before reappearing to complete his studies in a Bachelors of Commerce degree (Citizen TV, August 2, 2015). Student recruits like Abdullahi are believed to be under the wing of Sheikh Ahmad Iman Ali, an engineer recently declared the supreme leader of al-Shabaab's Kenyan branch. Ali, a former student of the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT), additionally heads video production within al-Shabaab (Wardheernews, December 14, 2015). Based in Somalia since 2009, Ali's recruitment efforts are believed to target not only students, but also deprived individuals in the Majengo slums in Nairobi where he grew up. Shabaab recruiters like Ali are recruiting street children between ages 12 and 16 residing in the coastal region. The children tend to be "easy targets," as they often lack fundamental human needs, such as housing, clothing and food, which the group promises to provide in return for membership. Al-Shabaab also offers them a sense of family, purpose and belonging (Daily Nation, November 1, 2015). In August, security agencies named the top al-Shabaab members responsible for recruiting Kenyans; they included the aforementioned Ali, as well as Abdifatah Abubakar Ahmad and Ramadan Hamisi Kufungwa. The latter two are leaders of the Jeshi la Ayman ('Army of Ayman'), a group formed by the militants to increase the number of attacks in Kenya. They have also participated in some large attacks in Kenya's coastal region, where they reportedly focus many of their recruiting efforts (Tuko, August 17, 2015). Recently, however, divisions between foreign fighters and ethnic Somalis have escalated, threatening to tear apart the militant force. This infighting is exacerbating the pressure on the group coming from increasingly effective operations in Somalia by the African Union's African Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). In particular, the loss of strategic towns and key revenue sources in Somalia due to AMISON actions have left the group looking weak and disjointed. An additional cause of the divisions within the group has been whether the organization and its various, diverse sub-factions should pledge allegiance to the Islamic State or remain loyal to al-Qaeda (Intelligence Brief, April 27, 2015). Since the emergence of the Islamic State, foreign fighters in al-Shabaab have pushed to strengthen links with the group. These fighters are convinced that linking themselves with Islamic State would raise al-Shabaab's status to that of a global jihadist group, as opposed to its current profile as a regional heavyweight. The rift between foreign recruits and the more locally-focused ethnic Somalis that comprise al-Shabaab appeared to widen in October with international media reporting that a faction led by the formerly UK-based Abdul Qadir Mumin had pledged its loyalty to the Islamic State (Tuko, October 23, 2015). These developments have put foreign al-Shabaab fighters on a collision course with native Somali fighters who, though loyal to al-Qaeda, see the current battle partially in nationalistic terms; it is away to liberate the country from foreign influence. Indeed, al-Shabaab has constantly emphasized its allegiance to al-Qaeda in spite of personnel changes in both groups. Al-Shabaab's previous leader, Mukhtar Abu Zubair, pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri after the death of Osama bin Laden in 2012. Abu Ubaidah made a point of renewing al-Shabaab's allegiance to al-Qaeda under his leadership 2014 after his promotion (Daily Nation, September 17, 2014). Even with tumultuous internal politics, recruitment by al-Shabaab's leaders have continued to be successful. In particular, the presence of Kenyan foreign fighters has accelerated the recruitment of new individuals from Kenya, bringing on board both Somali and non-Somali speakers and expanding the organization's reach. So far, the group has been keen to use Kenyans to attack their country. Al-Shabaab has sought to target since the 2011 invasion of Southern Somalia by the Kenya Defense Forces (KDF), which dealt a heavy blow to the group's previously strong presence in that region. In spite of the apparent influx of Kenyan fighters into al-Shabaab, there is a notable flow of individuals departing the group, as well. In the last few months, 700 al-Shabaab members are believed to have left the group and returned to Kenya (The Star, November 4, 2015). Many have sought to take advantage of a government amnesty program announced in April after the Garissa University college attack, while others have returned on their own accord after promises made by al-Shabaab recruiters were not kept. Many foreign fighters returned with amputated limbs, head injuries and other significant bodily harm. Al-Shabaab has unquestionably penetrated Kenya's institutions of higher learning, radicalizing and recruiting students. The government's poor monitoring of these institutions has directly impacted the success of such efforts, and Kenya should prioritize the issue. Until the country takes a proactive stance on the outflow of foreign fighters from its country and into the ranks of al-Shabaab, Kenya risks losing highly trained, educated students to the appeal of a terrorist organization and, as seen in the Garissa University College attack, knowledgeable students may be able to carry out more complex, effective attacks. Sunguta West is an independent journalist based in Nairobi. Copyright notice: 2010 The Jamestown Foundation Unrest in Northern Afghanistan Heralds Regional Threats Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Abubakar Siddique Publication Date 7 January 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Terrorism Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 1 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Unrest in Northern Afghanistan Heralds Regional Threats, 7 January 2016, Terrorism Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 1, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/569f501c4.html [accessed 20 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Link to original story on Jamestown website By carrying out the biggest offensive in 14 years in previously peaceful northern Afghanistan, the Taliban is once again threatening Afghan stability and the survival of the country's current political system. This offensive heralds the return of fugitive Central Asian and Russian jihadists to their homelands. This poses an expanding threat to Russia and its Central Asian allies, particularly as Moscow deepens its involvement in the Syrian war with the stated goal of crippling the jihadists' abilities to threaten Russia and its interests. What Went Wrong While the brief capture of Kunduz by the Taliban in late September made headlines and put Afghanistan back on the Western radar, the Afghan insurgents and their Central Asian militant allies have been building up their presence in the region since 2009. The Taliban began plotting to return to northern Afghanistan soon after President Barack Obama announced that year a surge of US troops to "disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan." Faced with military pressure in their strongholds in southern and eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistani border, the Taliban decided to open new fronts in the north. This effort was aided by militants affiliated with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). As early as October 2010, senior Afghan officials were raising concerns that these fighters were seeking to establish bases in the region. "The problem of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan truly exists," said Shaida Mohammad Abdali, deputy national security adviser under Afghan President Hamid Karzai. "They are instrumental in bringing insecurity to the north" (RFE/RL, December 8, 2010). The IMU's return to Afghanistan's northern provinces, which border Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, was the result of a symbiotic relationship between the IMU and the Taliban. The Sunni Muslim militants of the IMU had assisted a Taliban campaign to win broader influence among the Uzbek, Turkmen and Tajik communities in Afghanistan's north. These communities had largely shunned joining the predominantly Pashtun Taliban during the 1990s, when the hardline movement gained control of most of northern Afghanistan in a series of long and brutal battles. In turn, the Taliban helped the IMU set up sanctuaries in the remote northern regions, providing the IMU with a platform to recruit militants and launch attacks in the five predominantly Muslim former Soviet republics of Central Asia. (RFE/RL , December 8, 2010). In recent months, however, the Taliban has turned against the IMU, as part of its broader effort to distance itself from more global jihadist groups. In particular, in an unusual step, it published a report outlining its efforts against the group, and there are even unconfirmed reports that IMU leader, Usmon Ghazi, was killed by the Afghan Taliban in November (RFE/RL, November 30, 2015). Central Asian militants were familiar with northern Afghanistan, as many of them found shelter in the region as a result of being driven out of their home countries in the late 1990s. As the Taliban regime crumbled under US bombing in late 2001, these militants fled to Pakistan along with their Taliban allies. For the next 13 years, thousands of Central Asian militants sheltered in and operated out of Pakistan's northwestern Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). After years of taking part in fighting and launching attacks in conjunction with the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaeda, the Central Asian militants were finally pushed out of FATA and into Afghanistan by a large-scale Pakistani military operation launched in June 2014. The Pakistani offensive forced the Central Asian militants to abandon their last FATA sanctuary in the region's North Waziristan district. However, these events coincided with a major political and military transition that was underway in Afghanistan. For most of 2014, Afghan elites bickered over power-sharing following a disputed presidential election. Afghan forces, meanwhile, were struggling to fill security gaps left by NATO troops, who had announced they were ending all combat operations in Afghanistan by the end of 2014. Expanding Insurgency Afghanistan's mountainous northeastern province of Badakhshan, which borders Tajikistan, Pakistan and China, was particularly vulnerable to assault by the Taliban, the IMU and Central Asian militants; these groups rapidly seized territory there and even set up training camps. In October 2014, Noor Aqa Naderi, the district governor of Badakhshan's remote Jurm district, said that only 25,000 of the region's 100,000 residents lived in government-controlled areas, with the rest living in militant-controlled zones. "If this lasts until spring, when the snow melts and movement between mountain communities becomes easier, some other Badakhshan districts might fall into insurgent hands," he warned (RFE/RL, October 3, 2014). Indeed, the spring of 2015 saw unprecedented violence across northeastern Afghanistan. The insurgents overran Jurm in early April, and Badakhshan's Yumgan district was seized in May (RFE/RL, May 21, 2015). The heaviest fighting, however, took place in the province of Kunduz. By the end of April, a multi-pronged Taliban offensive saw rapid insurgent gains around the provincial capital city, Kunduz (Radio Free Afghanistan, April 28, 2015). In subsequent months, the Taliban and its Central Asian militant allies would go on to seize the Chardara and Dasht-e Archi districts surrounding Kunduz, practically putting the city of 300,000 residents under siege. In August, lawmaker Ghulam Rabbani predicted the Taliban would capture the provincial capital after the summer harvest (RFE/RL, August 11, 2015). In a major embarrassment to the government, the city temporarily fell to the Taliban on September 28. The government re-established its control over the city in a matter of weeks, but its hold remains tenuous as insurgents continue to sit on key territory around the province. During the summer months, the Taliban offensive expanded to provinces along Afghanistan's largely unprotected north-western border with Turkmenistan. The Taliban and its Central Asian militant allies carried out a series of attacks and captured large chunks of territory in Jowzjan, Faryab, and Badghis provinces. By August, an estimated 3,000 insurgent fighters had captured hundreds of villages in four Faryab districts: Almar, Qaisar, Ghormach, and Pashtun Kot. The losses prompted Afghanistan's First Vice President, Abdul Rashid Dostum, to rush to the region in July to personally supervise a counter-offensive. Dostum, a former warlord, was worried he was losing his power base in the Uzbek-majority provinces of Faryab and Jowzjan. The violence displaced more than 30,000 civilians in Faryab alone, while hundreds of thousands of residents were displaced elsewhere across northern Afghanistan (RFE/RL, August 20, 2015). By the fall of 2015, the Taliban had succeeded in launching attacks in all eight northern and western Afghan provinces bordering Central Asian states. Thousands of battle-hardened Central Asian fighters have been a major factor in the northern Afghanistan insurgency. As these militants fled Afghanistan in late 2001, they were organized in a single organization, the IMU. Today, the IMU has suffered severe setbacks. However, Afghan officials estimate that the number of Central Asian fighters ranges between 5,000 and 7,000, with their loyalties split among the IMU, the Islamic Jihad Union and Jammat Ansarullah (RFE/RL, May 12, 2015). In a video released in August, IMU leader Usmon Ghazi pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (RFE/RL, August 6, 2015). Earlier, the IMU had criticized the Taliban and questioned the prolonged disappearance of its founding leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar. At least one Uzbek commander has joined a Taliban splinter group in the southern Afghan province of Zabul. The Taliban has been pushing back against emerging Islamic State-aligned groups in Afghanistan, including against Central Asian militants who have pledged their loyalty to it. That said, such disagreements have not affected the overall cooperative relationship between the Taliban and Central Asian fighters. Afghan Worries and Weaknesses Afghan officials are deeply worried about the invasion of foreign militants in northern Afghanistan. In a late October interview, President Ashraf Ghani's national security advisor, Hanif Atmar, called the influx "unprecedented" and said the Central Asian fighters had changed the battlefield dynamic. "A majority of these foreign terrorists that were chased out of Waziristan arrived in northern and northeastern province of our country this year," he said. "Most of them are from Central Asia, Russia and China and they are trying to get close to the borders of those countries. Their aim is to carve sanctuaries close to those countries. This is why it is important for them to be in the provinces of Kunduz, Badakhshan and Faryab in the first place. This is why we faced unprecedented pressure from the enemy in these three provinces" (1TV Kabul, October 28, 2015). Afghanistan's Deputy Foreign Minister Hekmat Khalil Karzai said some 1,300 foreign militants had participated in the temporary capture of Kunduz in September. "These foreign fighters came from Pakistan, Tajikistan, China and various other [Central Asia] countries," he said on November 15. He added that the end objective for these groups is not to control Afghanistan, but to use the country as a base to extend their regional and global influence (VOA, November 15, 2015). Due to a variety of systemic factors, the Afghan government has been too weak to organize an effective military response to the insurgent threat in the north. The absence of a comprehensive NATO air cover has also allowed the militants to maneuver virtually at will, conquering villages and holding territory. "The foreign forces had an advanced air force that reacted immediately [to insurgent attacks]. [But] we don't even have an organized air force," noted Atmar, the Afghan national security advisor (1TV Kabul, October 28, 2015). He added that more than 352,000 Army and police forces and 30,000 local police are spread across 365 districts in 34 provinces, and these forces must also guard thousands of kilometers of border. "During the past year we have attempted to extract most of our best police and military units from a defensive position and are organizing them to go on the offensive," he said in October. Long-running disputes among Afghan factions, particularly in northern provinces, over land, water and control of roads have been exacerbated by disputes over appointments to government and security leadership positions. Indeed, many senior leaders in the Afghan national unity government have a decades-long history of leading factional fighting in northern Afghanistan. Their patronage of hastily created pro-government militias has led to accusations of abuse, with many of these militias regarded by local populations as marauding predators, as opposed to forces committed to fighting insurgents and protecting civilians (RFE/RL, September 29, 2015). Lukewarm Cooperation The increasing insecurity in northern Afghanistan, and the roles played there by fighters from Central Asian states, has major implications for Kabul's relations with Afghanistan's northern neighbors. The situation has particularly alarmed Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, which share more than 2,000 kilometers of border with provinces in northern and western Afghanistan. While Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have tried to strengthen their defenses and border controls, Turkmenistan's response has seemed somewhat ambivalent. Russia, meanwhile, appears to consider Central Asian countries to be part of its backyard a quarter century after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Soon after launching Moscow's new intervention in the Syrian war, ostensibly aimed at preventing militants fighting in Syria from turning their guns on Russia, President Vladimir Putin cited what he called the "deteriorating" security situation in Afghanistan. "There is an increase in the real danger of terrorist and extremist groups entering nations that neighbor Afghanistan, and the threat is made worse by the fact that in addition to the well-known organizations, the influence of the so-called Islamic State has also spread to Afghanistan," Putin said in September. He was speaking to a meeting of the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which also includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan (Kremlin, September 15, 2015). After the fall of Kunduz, Moscow announced plans to send more troops to its base in Tajikistan. The plan calls for the number of soldiers to be increased from 5,900 to 9,000 by 2020. Moscow also says it will dispatch a helicopter unit to its Ayni airbase in Tajikistan, near the Afghan border (Afghanistan Today, October 30, 2015). CSTO head Nikolai Bordyuzha said the close proximity of Kunduz to CSTO borders has alarmed the alliance. "We see these events as a real threat to stability and security in the region," he said. The CSTO has pledged to create a rapid reaction force of up to 70,000 troops, capable of deploying to flash points within 72 hours. In 2015, Moscow conducted military drills that aimed at "containing" a conflict in Central Asia (RFE/RL, October 5, 2015). Complicating the picture, however, are contradictory and unconfirmed reports of some form of Russian contact with the Taliban to forge a covert alliance against the Islamic State. The Taliban have denied this, but Russian officials are adamant that they are actively in contract with the Taliban (RFE/RL, December 27, 2015). Meanwhile, Russia and Central Asian nations have offered little direct support to Kabul. Moscow has hosted Abdul Rashid Dostum, the Soviet-trained warlord who became Afghan first vice president, but it is not clear whether Moscow is ready to deliver the Mi-35 attack helicopters that Kabul seeks to bolster its counterinsurgency operations. Atmar, the Afghan national security advisor, has suggested that the Afghan administration has received only a lukewarm response from Russia to Kabul's proposals to create a regional alliance to combat terrorism and drug-trafficking, which the two sides regard as common threats. "[Russia] always [says] that they will cooperate," Atmar said. "We are thankful for their good intentions, but we are concerned about the speed with which they are moving" (1TV Kabul, October 28, 2015). Abubakar Siddique is the editor of RFE/RL's Gandhara website. He is the author of The Pashtun Question: The Unresolved Key to the Future of Pakistan and Afghanistan (London: Hurst and Company, 2014). Copyright notice: 2010 The Jamestown Foundation Pakistan-based Militants Launch Unusual Attack On Indian Airbase Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author James Brandon Publication Date 7 January 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Terrorism Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 1 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Pakistan-based Militants Launch Unusual Attack On Indian Airbase, 7 January 2016, Terrorism Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 1, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/569f508f4.html [accessed 20 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Link to original story on Jamestown website On January 2, Pakistan-based militants launched one of their most high-profile and significant attacks on India in recent years. Militants attacked Pathankot Air Force Station, located in northeast India, 20 miles from the border with Pakistan (New India Express, January 6). The attack involved six heavily armed gunmen who successfully infiltrated the highly-defended base in the early hours of the morning, disguised in Indian military uniforms. Patrolling guards intercepted them in a forested area within the base, sparking a shootout that killed four militants. The two remaining militants were unaccounted for within the base for almost 50 hours before being killed as a result of an intensive military operation involving attack helicopters. In total, seven members of the security forces were killed. Although the attackers apparently attempted to target Indian military helicopters and jets at the base, none were successfully attacked or damaged (India Today, January 4). However, Indian media has been critical of the time needed by the military to neutralize attackers in a relatively confined area of an airbase (The Hindu, January 4). The United Jihad Council (UJC), a Kashmir-focused umbrella organization for a number of militant groups claimed credit for the attack, which it attributed to its so-called 'Highway Squad' (The Hindu, January 4). The UJC includes organizations such as the hardline Islamist Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed. Local Indian media quoted security sources as saying that the UJC claim may have been intended to 'indigenise' the attack in the hopes of distancing attackers from Pakistan and diverting attention from any Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed involvement (NDTV, January 4). The ultimate directors and planners of the attack remain unknown. The UJC and many of its consistent member groups are known to have close links to the Pakistan security services, particularly its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency. It is therefore plausible that planning for the attack involved members of the Pakistan security establishment opposed to the recent rapprochement between Pakistan's civilian government and India. The Indian response to the incident was characterized by a series of missteps. In the first instance, a day before the attack, the gunmen hijacked a car driven by a plainclothes police superintendent. The police viewed the incident as criminally motivated, despite the police superintendent alleging that the attackers had been heavily armed and had made calls to Pakistan in Urdu (Zee News, January 5). Then, the policeman's cook - who was also abducted in the incident - was reportedly beaten by policemen who refused to believe his story (The Hindu, January 4). The attack on Pathankot airbase shows that Pakistan-based jihadists remain capable of carrying out plots in India. The attack also raises questions over the ability of the Indian military to protect even high profile military targets, both preventing such attacks from being successfully executed and acting decisively once such attacks are underway. Copyright notice: 2010 The Jamestown Foundation Fresh Militant Violence in Philippines Illustrates Continuing Jihadist Presence Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author James Brandon Publication Date 7 January 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Terrorism Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 1 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Fresh Militant Violence in Philippines Illustrates Continuing Jihadist Presence, 7 January 2016, Terrorism Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 1, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/569f50e34.html [accessed 20 October 2022] Disclaimer This is not a UNHCR publication. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. Link to original story on Jamestown website Armed members of Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) kidnapped and killed nine Christian farmers in the southern Philippines island of Mindanao on December 24 (Manila Bulletin, December 27, 2015). On the same day, also in Mindanao, BIFF militants attacked Pigcawayan town using a range of weapons including 40mm mortars (The Standard [Philippines], January 2). The military was able to repulse the attack, leaving six militants and one official dead. The militants simultaneously launched at least two other largely unsuccessful attacks in the villages of Shariff Aguak and Linantangan; the latter attack reportedly involved up to 50 militants (Ibid). The attacks underline Mindanao's status as a center of Islamist militant activity, despite many years of counter-insurgency work by the Philippines government in conjunction with the U.S. The BIFF, which conducted the latest attacks, is a hardline splinter group of the Mindanao Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), a more secular Muslim militant group. BIFF separated from MILF in 2008 after the latter reached an agreement with the government. The MILF and BIFF sporadically cooperate, however, as shown in the 'Mamasapano incident' in January 2015; the incident occurred in the form of a clash between members of these militant groups and the military, killing leading militant Zulkifli bin Hir as well as 44 members of the Philippines special forces (Rappler, February 3, 2015). Although the early 2015 Mamasapano clash disrupted government attempts to reach a political agreement with MILF in the hopes of ending longstanding separatist violence, the group has carried out few significant attacks in recent months (Inquirer, January 3). MILF has continued, however, to publicly push for the government to grant greater autonomy to the predominantly Muslim Bangsamoro region of western Mindanao, arguing that this is necessary to undercut popular support for more hardline separatist and Islamist groups (Philippines Star, December 24, 2015). The latest BIFF attacks show that the Islamist groups remains active and willing to target both civilians and troops in Mindanao province. Unrelated violence in the Philippines involving al-Qaeda-affiliated Abu Sayyaf, which follows a global jihadist agenda unlike the relatively parochial BIFF and MILF, has also occurred during the last month. In particular, government troops launched raids against Abu Sayyaf in the isolated Sulu region, the group's main stronghold, located to the south of Mindanao. Following five days of fighting, the government said that it had killed 26 Abu Sayyaf militants, mainly in and around Al Barka town, with three soldiers also reported to have been killed (Inquirer, December 20, 2015). If true, these losses are a significant setback for the group, which is believed to have only several hundred active fighters. Among those reportedly killed was a Malaysian bomb-maker by the name of Mohammed Najib, also known as Abu Anas, alleged to be one of the group's key technical experts (The Star [Malaysia], December 17, 2015). According to Malaysian security sources cited by local media, 37-year-old Najib had a degree in electrical engineering from University of Malaya (UM) and was believed to have joined Abu Sayyaf in 2014. Najib has, however, more recently sworn his allegiance to the Islamic State, and reportedly has helped Malaysians travel to the Middle East to join the group (Ibid). On January 4, soldiers disrupted what was potentially an Abu Sayyaf attempt to kidnap 26 locals in Ungkaya Baku, Basilan, where the organization has a known presence. The soldiers intercepted a bus full of passengers that gunmen had earlier commandeered at gunpoint (Philippines Star, January 4). Later that day, government forces claimed to have arrested a wanted militant known as Junni Jamala in Patikul town, Sulu (Philippines Star, January 4). The authorities said that the individual was believed to have been involved in an Abu Sayyaf unit specializing in assassinations. The government's decision to take the fight to Abu Sayyaf on their "home turf" may indicate an increased tempo of counter-insurgency operations in the coming year. Copyright notice: 2010 The Jamestown Foundation The mother of a newborn found dead Monday in a south Abilene home was arrested Tuesday afternoon after being released from the hospital. Her boyfriend previously had been arrested in connection with the baby's death. Amber Craker, 18, and Damian Cate, 22, have been charged with first-degree felony murder and second-degree felony tampering with/fabricating physical evidence with intent to impair a human corpse. They remain in the Taylor County Jail in lieu of bail bonds totaling $300,000 each. According to a search warrant affidavit sought by Sgt. Jason Haak of the Abilene Police Department, police were contacted about 8:30 a.m. Monday by a staff member at Hendrick Medical Center alerting them about a patient who "the doctor believed may have delivered a baby" and later "dumped" the newborn. The document was signed by 104th District Judge Lee Hamilton Detectives went to both the hospital and the patient's residence in the 400 block of South 25th Street, where a person at the home gave consent to a search, according to police. After no child was located, police halted the search to obtain the search warrant. Officers, however, did find the following: a sheet in the washer with "fresh blood," a towel also in the washer covered in "still wet blood," "blood on the laundry room floor, the southwest bedroom floor, and "a knife with blood on it" on the bedroom floor. Upon their return to the residence, detectives reported finding tissue remains in the sewer. Police also reported finding "blood on the bathtub, a sock with blood on it and tissue with blood on it." The newborn's body eventually was located in the trash, according to police. Police said there was visible trauma to the body of the newborn, which appeared to be born alive. Justice of the Peace Mike McAuliffe pronounced the infant dead at 7:10 p.m. Monday and ordered the body sent to Tarrant County for autopsy. Police said other evidence collected included a placenta; a trash can with blood evidence; clothing with suspected blood evidence; a plunger; bedding; a pillow with suspected blood evidence; a knife; scissors; shoes; a laptop; a cellphone; and a mop head. At the hospital, Craker told police that she gave birth to the child in the bedroom and "tried to flush the baby down the toilet" at around 1 a.m. Monday, according to the search warrant. Craker reportedly had told a family member that "she felt something release from her stomach." When someone asked what was going on, she reportedly replied, "nothing and that this had happened before." Cate and others then accompanied Craker to the hospital after she passed out in the kitchen. Dr. Preston Alexander, an OB-GYN, reportedly told police that he believes Craker had "a full-term delivery" of the 6-pound baby. The patient reportedly said she did not know she was pregnant and that the bleeding was a result of her cutting "herself with a razor while shaving," according to the search warrant. Cate later reportedly said he saw Craker's father using "tongs" to remove flesh from inside Amber and that he didn't know what they did with the baby afterward, according to the search warrant. Police spokesman Rick Tomlin said he had no knowledge of any similar incidents occurring in Abilene. Additional arrests are possible in the case, police said. Twitter: ARN_Titus Abilene area leaders are prepared to meet the challenges at their feet in 2016 while still building on the gains obtained throughout last year, they said at the State of the City address Tuesday morning. For the city, that means pushing forward with the $80.7 million bond issue approved by voters in May, said Mayor Norm Archibald in his ninth annual State of the City speech. The city initiated the first phase of the bond issue in 2015 by bidding out design work for the projects, such as the family aquatic center expected to open by Memorial Day 2017. The first phase includes $23 million of the total bond and spans all nine propositions, from streets to sidewalks to splash pads, Archibald said. All bond projects will be completed in phases over the course of three to five years, he said. The next big project the city is working on is a downtown hotel that would complement the Civic Center, Archibald said. Ideally, it would increase the center's meeting space and provide plenty of room for guests to stay in the heart of the city. For the county, the next year will be spent contending with the state's new open carry law, which went into effect Jan. 1. County Judge Downing Bolls said the county decided to ban firearms from the entire courthouse, despite Attorney General Ken Paxton's opinion stating that handguns are allowed in multipurpose courthouses. He said the law did not specify how guns would be carried inside courthouses. 'Courthouses are terrible places to bring a gun,' he said. The Texas Office of Court Administration tracks court security incidents statewide that happen in or around a building that houses a court. From September 2013 through August 2014, the OCA received 132 incident reports, Bolls said. Of those reports, 38 described events in which someone tried to bring a weapon into a courthouse, according to the report. Bolls said he expected the county to be sued at some point and to resolve the ambiguity in the law by going through the court system. The good news is that the county will be free of debt this year, Bolls said. But the Taylor County Expo Center is in need of upgrades, which may require the county to issue more debt, he said. The Expo Center generates about $30 million in revenue for the city a year, he said. Abilene ISD Superintendent David Young and Wylie Superintendent Joey Light also spoke at the State of the City address. Young said Holland Medical High School won't be bringing freshmen students next school year because of space restraints at Hardin-Simmons University where the school is housed. CHARLESTON, S.C. Hillary Clinton wrapped herself so tightly in President Obama's mantle at Sunday night's debate that it was a wonder she could walk off the stage. She lauded the Affordable Care Act to the heavens, rejecting the notion that it left too many Americans still without health insurance. She defended Obama's initiatives to rein in Wall Street, dismissing contentions that they did not go far enough. She highlighted his success in seizing Syria's chemical weapons. She praised the way he "led us out of the Great Recession." And she attacked her chief rival for the Democratic nomination, independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, for allegedly being insufficiently loyal to the president. "Senator Sanders called him weak, disappointing," she said. "He even, in 2011, publicly sought someone to run in a primary against President Obama." There was considerable irony in all of this. Eight years ago, the primary fight here between Clinton and Obama was bitter and tinged with racial overtones. This year, with the possibility that Sanders could win both Iowa and New Hampshire, Clinton is counting on South Carolina's large African-American population to serve as a firewall. If there is anything not to like about the Obama legacy, apparently she hasn't heard of it. Sanders made the case that he has been, and remains, a supporter of the president. And he turned the tables, putting Clinton very much on the defensive when the subject turned to Wall Street excesses. "I don't mean to just point the finger at you," he said, pointing his finger at Clinton, "you've received over $600,000 in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs in one year." Clinton's response that "hedge-fund billionaires" are running ads against her and that "I'm the one they don't want to be up against" -- probably failed to convince many listeners that she is more antagonistic toward Wall Street than Sanders, who frequently rails about all the executives who need to be sent to prison. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, the third candidate on the Gaillard Center stage, delivered a performance that was smooth, knowledgeable and, as things now stand, irrelevant. Focus was on the contest between the two leaders in the polls, Clinton and Sanders, who offer Democrats a clear choice: evolution or revolution. The difference is evident in the two candidates' positions on health care. Clinton proposes building on the foundation of Obamacare, the Children's Health Insurance Program, Medicaid and Medicare to further expand coverage. Sanders advocates a new single-payer system, akin to those in other major industrialized countries, that would be truly universal and provide health care as a right. Clinton recalled that in the fight over passage of the Obamacare legislation, efforts to include even one "public option" -- government-run plan had to be abandoned. To "start over again, pushing our country back into that kind of a contentious debate, I think is the wrong direction," she said. In other words, let's have evolutionary change. Sanders noted that there are still 29 million Americans without health insurance. He argued that a single-payer system, which he describes as "Medicare for all," would not only provide coverage for everyone but also dramatically reduce medical costs. He said the issue is "whether we have the guts to stand up to the private insurance companies and all of their money, and the pharmaceutical industry. That's what this debate should be about." Translation: We need a political revolution. On issue after issue, Clinton proposes incremental solutions that take into account our political system as it is: sharply divided along ideological lines and warped by gerrymandering and virtually unfettered campaign contributions. Sanders proposes dramatic solutions that will only be possible when power is wrested from "big money" interests that refuse to do "what the American people want them to." In that sense, Democrats are being asked to make a classic heads-vs.-hearts decision. With Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, Clinton would ordinarily have a huge advantage. Given what's happening in the GOP campaign, however, this doesn't much look like an ordinary election cycle. Sanders got a couple of the biggest cheers Sunday night, but for most of the evening the crowd seemed to be on Clinton's side. In interviews afterward, several South Carolina political veterans predicted that Clinton would win the primary here, perhaps comfortably. But the loyal Democrats I spoke with also wished there was more passion in Clinton's appeal to go along with the pragmatism. To convince people to eat their vegetables this year, you might have to add a little hot sauce. Email Eugene Robinson at eugenerobinson@washpost.com. Our hearts go out to families, friends and those who served with the missing Marines in Hawaii. Last year, tragedy struck home, when a Dyess Air Force Base C-130 crashed on takeoff at an airfield in Afghanistan. The four-man Dyess crew perished, along with others on the plane and two on the ground. It was shocking news. We noted then that not all casualties come at the hands of the enemy. Training to defend our country, while most days routine, carries risk. When duty calls, our military cannot wait for the weather to clear or the wind to abate or the day to warm up or for either light or dark. Or a day when everyone is good to go. And so, training is done in all kinds of situations because our military must be ready to react despite the conditions. On Friday, a witness saw two helicopters each carrying six disappear in the ocean off the Hawaiian coast after apparently colliding during a nighttime training exercise. The missing Marines are stationed at Kaneohe Bay, which is on the opposite side of Oahu as Pearl Harbor, Hickam Air Force Base and the Army's Schofield Barracks. News of the C-130 crash and deaths came all at once. In Hawaii, a search for the Marines was conducted, adding to the agony as faint hope remained there were survivors. Two Marines, Maj. Shawn M. Campbell and Cpl. Matthew Drown, are from Texas Campbell from College Station and Drown from Spring. This brings the sad news closer to home. Having just dealt with tragedy in Abilene, we better understand the heartbreak that others now are trying to accept as the news unfolds. It's cause, again, to appreciate what our service men and women give for their country. Daejeon, Republic of Korea, January 18, 2016The 1974 American disaster film Towering Inferno depicted well the earnest struggles of firefighters engaged in ending a fire at a 138-story skyscraper. To this day, fires at high-rise buildings are considered one of the most dangerous disasters. Skyscraper fires are particularly difficult to contain because of their ability to spread rapidly in high-occupant density spaces and the challenge of fighting fires in the buildings complex vertical structure. Accessibility to skyscrapers at the time of the fire is limited, and it is hard to assess the initial situation. A research team at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) led by Professor Hyun Myung of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department developed an unmanned aerial vehicle, named the Fireproof Aerial RObot System (FAROS), which detects fires in skyscrapers, searches the inside of the building, and transfers data in real time from fire scenes to the ground station. As an extended version of Climbing Aerial RObot System (CAROS) that was created in 2014 by the research team, the FAROS can also fly and climb walls. The FAROS, whose movements rely on a quadrotor system, can freely change its flight mode into a spiders crawling on walls, and vice versa, facilitating unimpeded navigation in the labyrinth of narrow spaces filled with debris and rubble inside the blazing building. The drone estimates its pose by utilizing a 2-D laser scanner, an altimeter, and an Inertia Measurement Unit sensor to navigate autonomously. With the localization result and using a thermal-imaging camera to recognize objects or people inside a building, the FAROS can also detect and find the fire-ignition point by employing dedicated image-processing technology. The FAROS is fireproof and flame-retardant. The drones body is covered with aramid fibers to protect its electric and mechanical components from the direct effects of the flame. The aramid fiber skin also has a buffer of air underneath it, and a thermoelectric cooling system based on the Peltier effect to help maintain the air layer within a specific temperature range. The research team demonstrated the feasibility of the localization system and wall-climbing mechanism in a smoky indoor environment. The fireproof test showed that the drone could endure the heat of over 1,000 Celsius from butane gas and ethanol aerosol flames for over one minute. Professor Myung said, As cities become more crowded with skyscrapers and super structures, fire incidents in these high-rise buildings are life-threatening massive disasters. The FAROS can be aptly deployed to the disaster site at an early stage of such incidents to minimize the damage and maximize the safety and efficiency of rescue mission. The research team has recently started to enhance the performance of the fireproof design for the exteroceptive sensors including a 2-D laser scanner and a thermal-imaging camera because those sensors could be more exposed to fire than other inside sensors and electric components. This research was funded by the KAIST Initiative for Disaster Studies and the KAIST Institute. Media Contact: Lan Yoon Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) Tel. +82-42-350-2294, +82-10-2539-4303 (cell phone) [email protected] www.kaist.edu Advertisement - Continue Reading Below This just in... Authorities examine timber found in a complex of a concession zone operated by a Chinese company in Roluos commune, Sambo district, in northeastern Cambodia's Kratie province, Jan. 18, 2016. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has set up a committee to stop the smuggling of timber across the border to Vietnam and warned that he will remove the governor of the southeastern province that serves as the main gateway for the logs if he and a local district official fail to curb the illegal activities. Hun Sen on Friday appointed National Military Police Commander Sao Sokha to head up the 10-member committee called the Coalition Committee for Forest Crime Prevention to crack down on illegal timber smuggling into neighboring Vietnam. Hun Sen also ordered the closure of Cambodia-Vietnam border checkpoints to prevent timber transports, according to information on the Facebook page of Information Minister Khieu Kanharith. So far, Sao Sokha has ordered technical teams to find the perpetrators of forest crimes in northeastern Cambodias Kratie province after a group of more than 100 authorities from different agencies raided a Chinese companys timber warehouse this week and found more than 3,000 cubic meters (106,000 cubic feet) of wood. Police also found three illegal logging sites in Mondulkiri provinces Keo Seima district, where thousands of cubic meters of timber were piled high, as well as sites in Kratie provinces Sambor district, The Phnom Penh Post reported Tuesday. Military police officials have been deployed to major border crossings and checkpoints in Mondulkiri, Ratanakiri, Kratie and Prey Veng provinces, to stop the movement of both legal and illegal timber, the report said. The prime minister also said he would dismiss Prach Chan, governor of Tbong Khmum province in southeastern Cambodia, if he and Memot district governor Cheng Bunara did not take action to prevent the illegal transport of Cambodian timber to Vietnam. Hun Sen specifically singled out two wealthy businessmen Soeng Sam Ol and Lim Bunna as the reported leaders of timber smuggling rings in Tbong Khmums Memot district, The Phnom Penh Post reported, citing government spokesman Phay Siphan. The two have smuggled wood to Vietnam without government permission, he said. Prach Chan, a member of the ruling Cambodian Peoples Party (CPP), said Friday that Hun Sens order to close the border crossings through which logs are illegally transported to Vietnam was the correct action to take and that provincial authorities would step up their enforcement of measures to prevent of forest crimes. Now, it is his order, Prach Chan said. He will set up a committee to take strict measures [against forest crimes], and I am prepared to implement them effectively. Prach Chan used to receive praise from Hun Sen for his work and leadership when he was governor of northwestern Cambodias Battambang province. The government had appointed him first governor of newly formed Tbong Khmum province in January 2014, although he did not take up his position until later that year. Destruction continues Ouch Leng, director of Cambodias Human Rights Task Force, however, expressed pessimism about the measures, pointing out that although Hun Sen had issued similar threats and warnings before, the destruction of Cambodias forests has continued. It is a kind of show, so that he can collect the votes, Ouch Leng said. [It gives the perception that] he is making efforts to protect the forest, when in fact the results that we have received have not reflected what he has said. Chhun Vutha, chief of Memot commune, expressed support for the governments measures, but said he had little faith in Hun Sen, who used to promise to cut off his own head if he could not bring forest crimes under control. Residents of Memot district and civil society activists say although the crackdown on those who operate warehouses and illegally transport timber in Tbong Khmum province is a positive measure, they are concerned about a lack of transparency. Some people in the districts Dar commune have requested that authorities, including those on the newly created committee, share details about their operations with the public to prevent collusion between authorities and smugglers. One resident, Thoeun Vutha, told RFAs Khmer Service that the governments measures would only be effective in the short term and that timber trafficking would continue after the crackdown grows quiet. The committee conducting the inspection operations can cover them for only a short period of time because the transparency [of their actions] will not outpace the conspiracy practices of authorities at any level, he said. RFA contacted Prach Chan for comment on Tuesday, but he said he was busy in a meeting. Neang Suvath, provincial coordinator for the domestic rights group Adhoc, said people cannot trust the government officials involved in implementing the crackdown unless they are completely honest about their operations. Authorities should publicly reveal the identities of timber traders and smugglers and show reports indicating the locations of warehouses they raid, he said. Cambodia has one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world, largely due to illegal logging. A report issued last year by the U.K. environmental rights group Global Witness found that government and military officials collude with businessmen to illegally cut and transport Cambodian timber mainly to China. Reported by Sokheng Saut for RFAs Khmer Service. Translated by Pagnawath Kuhn. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin. At least three people were killed and dozens more injured after fire and several massive explosions tore through a fireworks factory in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangxi on Wednesday, Chinese state media said on Wednesday. Video of the explosions showed several fireballs bursting into the sky near Jiangxi's Shangrao city, with people exclaiming each time the blasts rocked the building they were in, amid sounds of smashing glass. A local resident surnamed Huang was in the area at the time of the blasts. "The noise was really, really loud," he said. "I thought it was a typhoon; all the glass was tinkling down, shattering, so I thought it was a very strong wind." "You could hear it for 30 or 40 kilometers all around. People started to scatter as soon as the first blast went off," Huang said. "[This area] produces fireworks, and this happened before when I was a kid, but it wasn't as big as that," Huang said. 'Terrifying' An official who answered the phone at the Yangkou township government offices on Wednesday said local officials are currently investigating the cause of the blasts. "The accident is still being investigated, but I don't know the details myself," the official said. "Twenty-one people have been rescued, which is the latest information to be released," the official said. Photos of the damage sent by local residents to RFA showed shattered windows and shop shutters buckled inwards by the force of the blasts, while the official Xinhua news agency published aerial photos showing an area of factory razed to the ground and still wreathed in smoke. The blasts came after fire started in warehouses belonging to the Hongsheng fireworks factory near Yangkou township in the Guangfeng district of Shangrao shortly after midnight, in the early hours of Wednesday morning, official media reported. Online accounts of the blast said it was "like an earthquake" and "terrifying." Numbers unclear One post said government reports that only four people were missing were "ridiculous." "I heard that more than 100 people were doing overtime in the factory at the time," the tweet said, although RFA was unable to confirm the report. The Yangkou official said the area is home to around 30 fireworks factories. But he denied online reports that the factory was full of workers hurrying last-minute orders ahead of Chinese New Year next month, when firecrackers mark the passing of the old year and good fortune in the new year. "I don't think so," the official said. "If they were rushing an order, then the place would have been full of lots of workers, but there weren't any there last night." Asked about the reports of more than 100 workers, the official said: "That is a rumor. It's highly unlikely there would be so many people there. [However,] there were likely some staff who needed to be on-site." The blasts prompted local authorities to evacuate more than 1,000 local residents, and caused damage to nearby buildings, China Radio International reported on its website. Executives detained Several Hongsheng company executives have been detained as authorities investigate the cause of the blasts, which happened when most of the workers were off-site, it quoted Guangfeng official Yan Xiangao as saying. At least 160 people died on Aug. 12 when massive explosions ripped through a hazardous chemicals warehouse in the port area of Tianjin, destroying residential buildings near the epicenter and shattering glass up to five kilometers (three miles) away. Just days later, at least nine people were injured after a blast ripped through a chemical plant in Zibo city, in the eastern province of Shandong, starting a fire at the Shandong Runxing Chemical Technology Co. The ruling Chinese Communist Party had ordered nationwide safety checks at all hazardous materials and nuclear facilities in the wake of the Tianjin disaster. It also launched a crackdown on online "rumor-mongering," ordering the country's tightly controlled media outlets to stick to officially approved news stories on similar events. Reported by Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie. Myanmars Union Election Commission has released a list of military officers named to serve in the countrys next parliament, which will convene next month following a landslide victory in national polls in November by the National League for Democracy (NLD). The list, which was made public on Tuesday, includes 110 high-ranking officers who will be seated in the parliaments Pyithu Hluttaw, or upper house, 56 named to serve in the Amyothar Hluttaw, or lower house, and 220 named to serve in the countrys regional assemblies. Among those selected as MPs by Myanmars military chief Min Aung Hlaing is Brig. Gen. Thein Naing, son-in-law of former junta chief Gen. Than Shwe, who will serve in the regional assembly for Yangon, the countrys commercial capital. For the first time, two major generals have also been named to the listthe highest-ranking officers yet to serve in the countrys national legislature. The NLD now holds a majority of seats in parliament and will select the country's next president. Under the terms of a 2008 military-drafted constitution, though, military officers continue to hold 25 percent of the legislatures seats through appointment, giving them veto power over all constitutional amendments. NLD party leader Aung San Suu Kyi herself is barred from the post of president by a provision in the constitution that excludes from the presidency anyone married to a foreign-born spouse or whose children hold foreign passports. Her late husband was British, as are her sons. The new parliament is scheduled to convene on Feb. 1, Myanmars Irrawaddy newspaper said in a Jan. 19 report. 'Opposition group' Commenting on the number of senior-ranking officers now slated to serve as MPs, one observer commented that with the newly elected NLD now holding a majority in parliament, Myanmars military MPs will for the first time be functioning as an opposition group. They will be closely watching the ruling party and act as an opposition group for the next five years, political analyst Kyaw Linn Oo told RFAs Myanmar Service. In selecting senior officers to serve in parliament, the top military must have considered the need for its MPs to act in a unified and disciplined way in discussions and while passing various bills, Kyaw Linn Oo said. Higher-ranking officers will be more responsive to the commands of the top echelon, agreed Kyaw Zeya, an NLD MP-elect and retired lieutenant colonel in the countrys military, also speaking to RFA. In my view, a major would be more responsive than a captain, just as a brigadier would be more responsive than a major, he said. And with the NLD now holding more seats in parliament and forming the countrys next government, criticisms and discussions of the militarys role in national politics may be expected in coming sessions, Ye Tun, an elected lawmaker for Chaungzon Township in the Mon State Assembly, said. It could be that more knowledgeable and educated officers will be needed to rebuff them, he said. 'Routine meeting' Myanmars military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) meanwhile held the first meeting of its central executive committee (CEC) since its defeat in the polls last year, gathering on Tuesday in the capital Naypyidaw. It was just a routine meeting of the top CEC members, committee member U Tint Zaw told RFA, dismissing rumors circulating in Myanmar that parliamentary speaker Shwe Mann and other top officials had been ousted from the party. As a political party, we always have reviews and discussions of the partys performance in recent elections. We also discussed organizational and recruiting matters, he said. Reported by Way Mar Tun and Zin Mar Win for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Richard Finney. Tightened security measures in a Tibetan-populated county of northwestern Chinas Qinghai province are discouraging local efforts to promote the study of the Tibetan language, with many area residents taking classes in secret due to fear of arrest, sources said. A heightened Chinese police presence starting at the beginning of the year, and described by one source as intrusive, has now shut down public workshops in Pema (in Chinese, Banma) county in the Golog (Guoluo) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, a local source told RFAs Tibetan Service. In the restrictive climate this year, many of our annual Tibetan language workshops could not be held, and in some townships the Tibetan language studies programs are running in secret, RFAs source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. For the last seven years, the Save the Language Associationa voluntary initiative among local Tibetanshas organized a month-long intensive Tibetan language studies program for students of all ages, but set up to coincide with winter vacation in area schools. Recent public statements by Chinese officials have led many to believe that such study groups could be deemed illegal associations if they are discovered, though, leading to fears of detention or arrest, the source said. Movements restricted The movements of Tibetans in Pema county are also now being severely restricted, and families who own photos of exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama are afraid to take them out in public to be reframed, he said. Monasteries in the area now need special permits from local authorities if they want to hold mass prayer gatherings or conduct other public religious activities," he added. Two years ago, Chinese authorities in Pema county demanded that area monasteries and residents pledge loyalty to the ruling Chinese Communist Party and began to impose strict controls on the registration of monks and on information flows out of the region, sources said in earlier reports. Language rights have become a particular focus for Tibetan efforts to reassert national identity in recent years, with Chinese authorities frequently closing language classes taught outside the state-controlled education system and Tibetan students protesting against the use of textbooks written in Chinese. In May 2014, authorities in Qinghais Golog (Guoluo) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture moved to close a school catering to Tibetan nomad children, saying that its operation had interfered with government plans to move the nomads off their pastoral lands, sources said. And in April, officials blocked a move to hold a traditional Tibetan language competition in a Tibetan-populated county in neighboring Sichuan, citing concerns over the political implications of the event. Reported by Kunsang Tenzin for RFAs Tibetan Service. Translated by Dorjee Damdul. Written in English by Richard Finney. BAKU -- Azerbaijan is commemorating the victims of a totalitarian crackdown by Soviet troops on January 20, 1990, that dispersed a crowd of anti-Kremlin protesters in Baku. According to Azerbaijani officials, 137 protesters were killed during the crackdown. Another 744 were wounded and 841 were arrested. The tragic event, known as "Black January," has been marked in Azerbaijan each year since the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991. At noon on January 20, a minute of silence was held across the country. All national flags were being flown at half-staff. Authorities also have increased security in Baku for the anniversary. Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev visited the Alley of Martyrs, which honors the victims of the Soviet crackdown. Aliyev also laid flowers on an eternal flame that honors the memory of all of Azerbaijan's citizens who have lost their lives for the country, including soldiers as well as anti-Soviet demonstrators. A reporter with the Persian Service of the BBC says she was prevented from flying to the United States because she was born in Iran. The journalist, Rana Rahimpour, wrote on Twitter on January 19 that she was turned away from her flight at London's Heathrow airport because of a new regulation under which European Union citizens who are dual nationals of Iran, Iraq, Syria, or Sudan, or traveled to those countries in the past five years, need to apply for a visa. Rahimpour said she was planning to visit relatives in New Jersey. The new visa restrictions passed last month in the wake of terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, have been criticized by some Iranians and others as discriminatory. Rahimpour, who was born in Iran, has a British passport. She described the new rules as very unfair. To be treated differently from other British citizens because of my Iranian heritage is very distressing, she was quoted as saying. Based on reporting by Politico, The New York Times, and the BBC Making outrageous and palpably untrue assertions has long been Chechen Republic head Ramzan Kadyrov's stock-in-trade, and because he is arguably one of the most powerful men in Russia, few people have dared to publicly take issue with him for fear of ending up "disappeared" (meaning abducted in broad daylight by unidentified gunmen, after which all trace of them is lost) or dead. That impunity is now in the balance, however, in light of Kadyrov's statement last week in which he accused unnamed members of Russia's extraparliamentary opposition of trying at the behest of their alleged paymasters in Western intelligence services to use the current unfavorable economic situation to undermine domestic stability in Russia. Kadyrov declared that such persons "should be treated as enemies of the people, as traitors." Those epithets from the darkest years of the Stalinist terror are irrevocably associated in the minds of the older generation of Russians with show trials, executions, and draconian prison camp sentences. Kadyrov said such people should be brought to trial for their "subversive activity." That statement elicited negative reactions across the Russian Federation. Human rights ombudsman Ella Pamfilova was quoted as commenting that such statements are a disservice to President Vladimir Putin and reflect badly on the country as a whole. Maksim Reznik, a member of St. Petersburg's parliament, has addressed a formal request to the federal Prosecutor-General's Office to pronounce on whether Kadyrov's statement contains "a public call for extremist activity." Reznik noted that, in 1995, Russia's Constitutional Court ruled unconstitutional Article 64 of the Soviet-era Criminal Code under which people were sentenced as "enemies of the people." He further called for access to the Chechen government website that posted the summary of Kadyrov's address to be restricted. Russian State Duma speaker Sergei Naryshkin described the altercation between Kadyrov and his critics as "unpleasant," stressing that the Duma should set an example for dialogue between various political forces and that he personally "has always stood for open and respectful political dialogue." Konstantin Senchenko, a businessman and member of the Krasnoyarsk legislature, responded with an ad hominem attack in which he accused Kadyrov of having brought shame on Russia and discrediting the titles of academician and Hero of Russia. Kadyrov publicly construed Senchenko's comment in a telephone conversation that he should perhaps not have resorted to such language as an apology. Meanwhile, the informal Congress of the Intelligentsia formed in March 2014 to protest Russia's annexation of Crimea has launched a petition calling for Kadyrov to resign immediately. Signatories include human rights campaigners Lyudmila Alekseyeva, Svetlana Gannushkina, Committee Against Torture head Igor Kalyapin, and Lev Ponomaryov. Chechnya's human rights ombudsman Nurdi Nukhadjiyev responded that, insofar as Kadyrov was elected in an open ballot, only the Chechen people have the right to demand his removal as republic head. Kadyrov, for his part, retaliated by implying, in an article published in Izvestia, that the initiators of the petition are the victims of "mass psychosis" and are in need of psychiatric treatment. Kadyrov further advocated that the prosecutor's office should investigate statements by those officials who speak out in support of, or call for dialogue with, the "jackals" who "call for violence" and "dream of the destruction of our state." The presidential Human Rights Council, too, is toying with the possibility of asking Putin to remove Kadyrov, according to its deputy chairman Yevgeny Bobrov. Bobrov said Kadyrov's statements, and similar pronouncements by his subordinates, including parliament speaker Magomed Daudov, will be subjected to linguistic analysis to determine whether they are extremist and/or unconstitutional. At the same time, Bobrov acknowledged that "reinforced concrete evidence" would be needed to substantiate any formal demand for Kadyrov's dismissal. Any such evaluations would risk being rejected out of hand as subjective. There has been no formal comment to date from the Kremlin on the controversy, although the daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta on January 18 quoted an unnamed "source close to the presidential administration" as saying that Kadyrov, "as the head of a federation subject, should be more responsible in his choice of words." Whether President Putin will feel constrained to utter an anodyne rebuke is questionable, especially if the Human Rights Council decides against asking Putin to dismiss Kadyrov. True, on one previous occasion Putin was forced to acknowledge that Kadyrov had overstepped the mark. Asked by journalist Kseniya Sobchak from the TV station Dozhd during his annual press conference in December 2014 to comment on whether Kadyrov's orders to torch the homes of the families of the young fighters who had attacked Grozny two weeks earlier were unconstitutional, Putin stressed: "In Russia, everyone must abide by the laws of the country. No one considered guilty until he has been sentenced by a court." At the same time, Putin said that Kadyrov's "emotional" outburst was understandable in light of the casualties the Chechen police incurred during the fighting. Since then, however, Kadyrov has scored at least one notable victory, pushing through the Russian parliament a new law, which he has described as"a triumph of justice," barring Russian courts from designating passages from Holy Scripture extremist. The rationale for that law was a ruling handed down in August 2015 by a court in Yuzhno-Sakahlinsk in Russia's Far East, and which Kadyrov promptly appealed, designating two ayats from the Koran as "extremist." Kadyrov may also have obstructed the investigation into the February 2015 assassination of Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov. Every such success in redefining what in today's Russia is politically possible only serves to strengthen Kadyrov's conviction that he is above and beyond reproach, and thus to impel him to utter ever more outrageous and offensive denunciations of anyone who incurs his disapproval. He boasted on January 18 in an Instagram post that those oppositionists who were the target of his criticism "will be unable to do anythingagainst me personally." At the end of the day, the Kadyrov phenomenon is one of Putin's making, and only he can decide how to handle it. Kadyrov's second term in office expires in two months' time, but the chances he will not be reelected for a third term are minimal. Apart from his role as commander of what amounts to Putin's private army, he serves a further valuable purpose. As Konstantin Kalachov of the Politic Experts' Group told Nezavisimaya Gazeta, like Liberal Democratic Party of Russia Chairman Vladimir Zhirinovsky in the 1990s, Kadyrov is the mouthpiece for a specific faction within the Russian elite, and in that capacity he "says things that everyone thinks, but no one can put into words" because they are not politically correct. Former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati who was released by Iran over the weekend says he feels lucky to be free again. "I feel really lucky. I feel alive for the first time," Hekmati said on January 19 in his first public comments since his release. Hekmati, 32, spoke to reporters outside the U.S. military's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, where he and two other freed Americans are undergoing medical evaluations. Hekmati and four other Iranian-Americans were released in a prisoner swap over the weekend. Iran announced their release on January 16 on the same day as international sanctions on Tehran were lifted. "As soon as we got out of Iranian air space, the Champagne bottles were popped," Hekmati said. Hekmati, who spent more than four years in a prison in Iran, said the news of his release came as a surprise. I was at a point where I had just sort of accepted the fact that I was going to be spending 10 years in prison," he said. Hekmati was arrested in August 2011 on espionage charges that were denied by his family as. He was originally sentenced to death. An appeals court later commuted the sentence to a 10-year jail term. He was reportedly held in solitary confinement and subjected to psychological torture. Hekmati did not provide details about his time in prison. He said that his military training helped him withstand the pressure he faced. Under the prisoner swap deal, the United States on January 16 offered clemency to seven Iranians, six of whom are dual U.S.-Iranian citizens, who had been convicted or were awaiting trial in the United States. The prisoner swap took place after 14 months of confidential discussions in Switzerland. With reporting by AP, NBC, and AFP Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has condemned the attack on Saudi Arabias Embassy in Tehran in early January, saying it was "very bad" and "wrong." Khamenei equated the assault to an attack against both Iran and Islam. Khameneis remarks were published on his website on January 20 in response to violence at several Saudi diplomatic buildings in Iran that followed Saudi Arabias execution on January 2 of Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. Hard-line protesters responded in Tehran by storming the Saudi Embassy, setting fires there and throwing papers on the roof. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Sudan broke all ties with Iran after the violence. The United Arab Emirates downgraded its relations and Kuwait recalled its ambassador to Iran. Earlier in January, Khamenei said Saudi officials should have no doubt there will be divine vengeance for Nimrs death. Irans government had called the attack suspicious and in favor of Saudi Arabias policies. Based on reporting by AP, Reuters, and AFP Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has repeated Tehrans criticism of fresh U.S. sanctions over Irans ballistic missile program, calling the sanctions illegal and justifying Tehrans recent missile tests as self defense. Zarif made the remarks on January 20 during an interview with the Associated Press in Davos, Switzerland, where he is expected to take part in a World Economic Forum debate that focuses on Iran. The United States on January 17 announced fresh sanctions against 11 individuals and entities involved in Irans ballistic-missile program in response to missile tests by Tehran in October and November. The sanctions came just a day after the United States, the European Union, and the United Nations lifted nuclear-related sanctions against Tehran under Irans nuclear deal with world powers. A team of United Nations experts determined that Irans missile tests violated a 2010 UN Security Council resolution because the missiles were capable of carrying nuclear warheads more than 500 kilometers. Based on reporting by AP and Reuters Kurdish forces have destroyed thousands of homes in villages and towns in northern Iraq in an apparent attempt to uproot Arab communities, Amnesty International says in a new report. "Peshmerga forces from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Kurdish militias in northern Iraq have bulldozed, blown up, and burned down thousands of homes in...Arab communities in revenge for their perceived support for the so-called Islamic State (IS), the rights group said on January 19. Amnesty International said the destruction took place after Kurdish forces recaptured areas from the extremist Islamic State group. Arab residents who fled their homes are also barred by Kurdish forces from returning to recaptured areas, Amnesty said. The London-based rights group added it had gathered evidence from more than 100 eyewitnesses and victims of forced displacement. The forced displacement of civilians and the deliberate destruction of homes and property without military justification may amount to war crimes, said Amnesty Internationals adviser Donatella Rovera, who carried out the field research in northern Iraq. With reporting by AFP The extremist group Islamic State (IS) has enslaved an estimated 3,500 people, including women and children, in Iraq, a United Nations report said. The reported issued on January 19 said that the extremist group is responsible for actions that may "amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide. IS continued to subject women and children to sexual violence, particularly in the form of sexual slavery, the report by the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights states. The report said that Iraqi security forces and allied groups including Kurdish Peshmerga fighters have also killed and kidnapped civilians. "Some of these incidents may have been reprisals against persons perceived to support or be associated with [Islamic State]," it added. The report said at least 18,802 civilians were killed in violence in Iraq from January 2014 to October 2015 and 36,245 civilians were wounded. The UN said the report is based on testimony obtained directly from the victims, survivors, or witnesses of human rights violations. With reporting by Reuters Russian President Vladimir Putin has introduced martial law in four of Ukraine's regions, parts of which are under the control of Russian troops, as Ukrainian forces continue liberating occupied territories in the country's east despite another barrage of air attacks across the country. Putin said at an online session of the Security Council on October 19 that he signed a decree declaring martial law in Ukraine's Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhya -- all of which Russia illegally annexed last month. Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's ongoing invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, Russian protests, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war, click here. He didnt immediately describe the steps that would be taken under martial law but said his order was effective starting at midnight on October 20. His decree gives law enforcement agencies three days to submit specific proposals. The package of moves, which come nearly eight months into the war launched by the Kremlin in late February, marked the latest escalation by Putin to counter a series of defeats to Ukrainian forces since the start of September. By extending the decree to regions beyond Ukraine, the move ensures that more Russians, already angered by a military mobilization announced last month, will more deeply feel the consequences of the war in their own lives. Mykhaylo Podolyak, an adviser to the Ukrainian presidential office's head, called Putin's move "a pseudo-legalization of looting of Ukrainians' property." "This does not change anything for Ukraine: We continue the liberation and deoccupation of our territories," Podolyak tweeted shortly after Putin announced martial law in the four Ukrainian regions. U.S. President Joe Biden, speaking at the White House, said Putin is trying to get Ukraine to give up. "I think that Vladimir Putin finds himself in an incredible difficult position and what it reflects to me is it seems his only tool available to him is to brutalize the individual citizens in Ukraineto try to intimidate them into capitulating. They are not going to do that," Biden said. U.S. State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel said earlier the declaration of martial law was a desperate tactic and any claim by Russia over the regions was "illegitimate." Putin's move came as the Russia-installed leader of Ukraine's southern Kherson region said the evacuation has started of tens of thousands of civilians and Moscow-appointed officials in the face of a Ukrainian military advance. Vladimir Saldo said 50,000-60,000 civilians would leave four towns on the west bank of the Dnieper River in an "organized, gradual displacement" over the next five or six days. All of the Moscow-installed administration in the city of Kherson would evacuate, too, Saldo said. Russian television showed footage of a number of people queuing for boats on the Dnieper River bank although it was not immediately clear how many were leaving. The forced transfer or deportation of the civilian population by an occupying power from the territory under its control is considered a war crime. Saldo's statements came after General Sergei Surovikin, the new commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, said the situation in the southern city of Kherson is "difficult" and residents facing Ukrainian bombardment are to be evacuated. WATCH: Ukrainian forces first got their hands on FH70 155-millimeter howitzers courtesy of Italy in May and received training in Estonia. RFE/RL journalists met with a frontline FH70 crew and watched them in action against Russian forces. "The Russian Army will above all ensure the safe evacuation of the population" of Kherson, Surovikin said. But Kyiv on October 19 accused Russia of staging a propaganda show in an attempt to "scare" the Kherson residents. "Russians are trying to scare the people of Kherson with fake messages about the shelling of the city by our army and are also staging a propaganda show with evacuation," the Ukrainian president's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, wrote on Telegram. Kherson was the first big city to fall to the Russian forces in February after the start of Moscow's unprovoked invasion, but Ukrainian forces have been steadily retaking nearby territory in recent weeks. They have pushed as far as 30 kilometers south along the Dnieper River, threatening to trap Russian troops. Meanwhile, fresh explosions were heard in Kyiv and other areas on October 19, with a missile strike hitting a major thermal power station in the city of Burshtyn in western Ukraine. The coal-fired Burshtyn plant in the region of Ivano-Frankivsk, which supplies electricity to three western regions and to five million consumers, was hit and on fire, according to Svytlana Onysshchuk, the regional governor. There were no casualties in the strike at the plant, which was hit by four missiles nine days earlier as well. Serhiy Borzov, governor of the Vinnytsya region in western Ukraine, said Russia had also carried out attacks on energy facilities in his region. Russian bombardment also cut power and water in some parts of Enerhodar in the Zaporizhzhya region on October 19, said Dmytro Orlov, the mayor of the southern city located near the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant that's been a flashpoint of the nearly eight-month conflict. A power plant in Kryviy Rih, a city in south-central Ukraine, was also seriously damaged by Russian shelling, leaving villages, towns, and a city district without electricity, the regional governor reported. Russian forces also targeted Ukraine's southern Mykolayiv region again with kamikaze drones early on October 19. The Ukrainian military's southern command said in a statement on October 19 that its forces shot down 12 drones overnight. More than a week of air attacks has destroyed almost one-third of Ukraine's power stations and cut electricity in more than 1,000 settlements. With Ukraine gaining momentum in the war that is now nearly eight months old, European lawmakers on October 19 recognized the country's "brave" citizens by awarding them the 2022 Sakharov Prize. "This award is for those Ukrainians fighting on the ground. For those who have been forced to flee. For those who have lost relatives and friends. For all those who stand up and fight for what they believe in. I know that the brave people of Ukraine will not give up and neither will we," European Parliament President Roberta Metsola said in the statement. The annual prize is named after the Soviet physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov and was established in 1988 by the European parliament to honor individuals and organizations defending human rights and fundamental freedoms. With reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP At least seven people have been killed in Kabul after a suicide bomber struck a minibus carrying employees of the prominent Afghan news network Tolo TV. The bombing, the first major attack on a media organization in Afghanistan, came just months after the Taliban declared Tolo TV -- which includes a number of television, online, and radio outlets -- a legitimate "military target." No group has claimed responsibility. The Interior Ministry said in a statement that at least 25 people were injured in the bombing, which comes amid a wave of violence and an international push to revive peace talks with the Taliban. Kabul police chief Abdul Rahman Rahimi, speaking to journalists at the scene, said "a suicide bomber driving a [Toyota] Corolla car attacked a vehicle owned by Kaboora Production in this area. Kaboora Production is affiliated with Tolo TV, which condemned the attack in an official statement. Tolo News, another affiliate, reported that the vehicle was carrying 30 Kaboora Production staff members. Khapalwak Safi, deputy managing editor at Tolo News, told RFE/RL that a "number of Tolo staff have been killed and wounded," without offering any other details. "The enemy of peace and Afghan people have martyred my colleagues," Fawad Aman, a well-known Tolo News anchor, wrote on his Facebook page. "Such cowardly attacks will not deter us from exposing the truth." The bombing took place near the Russian Embassy in west Kabul, and the building suffered minor damage. The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement, however, that no Russian staffers were injured. The ministry said security measures would be increased. In October, the Taliban issued a statement labeling the privately run Tolo News a "propaganda network." Tolo News is a popular, outspoken independent television station that is often critical of the Taliban. The news channel is part of the larger Tolo TV network, which was launched in 2004 amid international efforts to develop free media in Afghanistan. The Taliban explained that its move was in direct response to commercial networks' coverage of the situation in Kunduz Province; specifically, their reports of Taliban fighters allegedly raping women at a female hostel in the northern city of Kunduz, which the militants seized on September 28. The Taliban denied the reports. The January 20 bombing comes as a blow to Afghanistan's media development, which is often cited as one of the biggest achievements of the past decade. Under Taliban rule, all forms of music and television were banned, including independently reported news. Under the Taliban regime there was only state-owned radio, the Taliban's Voice of Shari'a, which was dominated by calls to prayer and religious teachings. Afghanistan is ranked as low as 122 out of 180 in the World Press Freedom Index, a gauge of media freedom compiled by the group Reporters Without Borders. The attack on Tolo News staff is the latest in a spate of suicide attacks in the Afghan capital. Since the start of the new year, Kabul has been hit by at least six bomb attacks. With reporting by AFP, AP, and Reuters Militants have stormed a university in northwestern Pakistan, shooting students in their sleep during an assault that left at least 20 people dead and more than 50 others wounded. The early morning attack in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province revived memories of a December 2014 assault on an army-run school in the provincial capital, Peshawar, in which 144 students and staff were killed. The alleged mastermind of the 2014 attack claimed that his splinter group of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Pakistan's Taliban, was responsible for the January 20 assault on Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, 17 kilometers northeast of Peshawar. A TTP spokesman condemned the attack as un-Islamic. Intense gunfire and several explosions were heard as security guards fought the attackers, who apparently climbed over a university wall under cover of thick winter fog. Regional police chief Saeed Wazir said most of the student victims were shot dead at a hostel for boys on the campus. At least one university teacher was also among the dead. The army said it had concluded operations to clear the Bacha Khan University campus six hours after the attack began and that four gunmen were killed. It was unclear whether the death toll included the four militants. WATCH: More than 20 people were killed and more were injured when militants attacked a university in Pakistan's northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province. Attackers stormed the Bacha Khan University campus in Charsadda. (Reuters) In a statement, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said his government was "determined and resolved in our commitment to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland." The violence comes as Pakistani military forces continue a campaign against Pakistani Taliban and other militants in tribal areas neighboring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province and Afghanistan. According to Fazal Haq, a student from the university's department of geology, students were still lying in their beds in the hostel when the attackers struck. "They were knocking on each door and whoever opened the door, they shot him," Haq told RFE/RL. "Most of our friends were shot while they were sleeping in their beds." "We were so much scared and took shelter under the beds, but the army came too late almost after an hour. Police also came late. Our security was very weak," he added. An RFE/RL correspondent, speaking from the scene of the attack, said there were indications that students tried desperately to flee when the assault began. "I saw a lot of blood on the floor of four-five rooms and there were broken windows," the correspondent said. "The beds and the students' belongings were scattered in some places, which showed that they ran to escape the shooting. There were also bullet marks on the corridor walls." "Police usually come [to the university] in the morning for security with their vehicle and they were usually on main gate, but I couldn't see them today," assistant professor Abbas Ali told RFE/RL. "Maybe, the police were supposed to come later." Umar Mansoor, a TTP splinter group commander who authorities believe was behind the December 2014 school attack in Peshawar, said the attack on Bacha Khan University was a response to a military offensive against militants in Pakistan's tribal areas. He said four suicide attackers from the group were involved. Muhammad Khorasani, a spokesman for the TTPs central leadership, condemned the attack in an e-mail sent to RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal. He said the group does not target civilian schools. "TTP strongly condemns today's attack and disassociates itself completely from this un-Islamic attack," Khorasani also said on Twitter. Bacha Khan University, established in 2012, is named after Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, also known as Bacha Khan, the leader of a nonviolent Pashtun movement. The attack occurred on the 28th anniversary of his death. In the 1930s, Khan launched the Khudai Khidmatgar Movement (Servants of God) to reform the stagnant Pashtun society and to mobilize Pashtuns to struggle for their rights against British imperial rule in the Indian subcontinent through peaceful agitation. Fazli Rahim Marwat, vice chancellor at the university, told RFE/RL that about 3,000 students are enrolled at the school. He said the university also employs about 600 teachers and staff. The violence comes as Pakistani military forces continue a campaign against Pakistani Taliban and other militants in tribal areas neighboring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province and Afghanistan. With reporting by Reuters, AP, AFP, and dpa Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, better known as Bacha Khan, advocated for the rights of his fellow Pashtuns in the British Raj in the early 20th century. Focusing on frontier regions of what is today northwest Pakistan, he eschewed violence and advocated peaceful means of protest against British rule. The Muslim activist's work earned him the moniker "Frontier Gandhi" -- a nod to his Hindu counterpart and close friend Mahatma Gandhi. But while Gandhis peaceful protests against the British garnered him global fame as a pioneer of nonviolent resistance, few outside the region have likely ever heard of Bacha Khan, or King of Chiefs" in Pashto. "I was shocked at how we in the West know nothing about Bacha Khan," says Human Rights Watch's Peter Bouckaert. "We learned about Gandhi in school. Almost everybody in the United States and Europe has seen the movies about Gandhi and the role he played in the nonviolence movement and then as an inspiration for Martin Luther King and others." Bouckaert told RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal in 2011 that he first learned about Bacha Khan in 2001, when, while sifting through some pictures at the home of a friend, he saw a photo of Gandhi standing next to a bearded man. His host then told him the story of the independence activist and his importance in the Pashtun community. "As I learned more about Bacha Khan, I realized he was as important and as courageous a figure as Gandhi was," Bouckaert says. "He played an important role not only in the struggle for nonviolence, but also in the struggle against extremism." WATCH: A clip from The Frontier Gandhi: Badshah Khan, A Torch For Peace by director T.C. McLuhan: Bacha Khan was born on February 6, 1890, in the Peshawar Valley of British India. The son of a feudal lord, Bacha Khan advocated for social justice, including land reforms, from an early age. In 1929, he founded his seminal Khudai Khidmatgar, or Servants of God movement, to push for Pashtun rights and against British rule. It attracted not only many followers but soon the attention of British authorities, who cracked down on the organization and its members. After the partition of British India in 1947, Bacha Khan pledged his allegiance to the newly formed Dominion of Pakistan. His demand for an autonomous "Pashtunistan" got him into trouble with local authorities, and he faced arrest several times between 1948 and 1956. He died on January 20, 1988, under house arrest in Peshawar, Pakistan. He was buried at his home in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. Thousands traveled through the Khyber Pass from Peshawar to Jalalabad to attend the ceremony, which was marred by two bomb explosions, killing 15 people. Those who remember Bacha Khan speak only in superlatives of his impact on Pashtun society. B.R. Singh, a former senior Indian civil servant, told RFE/RL in 2011 of a visit by Gandhi to the frontier regions, where he met with the leaders of Khan's Khudai Khidmatgar movement. "Gandhi asked them: 'What would you do if tomorrow Bacha Khan turns violent?' Now, such was the impact that Bacha Khan had created that they replied, 'We would remain nonviolent.'" "Certainly the Pashtuns had a reputation for violence, yet it is remarkable that Bacha Khan was able to bring about a peaceful transformation, and the Pashtun people followed him. He made them commit themselves to nonviolence," Singh recalls. Russian President Vladimir Putin has an unexpected offer for European Jews subjected to what he describes as rampant persecution in the West -- move to Russia. "They can come to us," he told a delegation of the European Jewish Congress (EJC) in Moscow on January 19. "They left the Soviet Union. Let them return." Jews in Europe are "trying to hide their ethnicity," he continued, saying that some of them were "afraid of wearing a yarmulke in public." Putin was responding to remarks by the head of the EJC, Russian-born Viatcheslav Moshe Kantor, who warned that anti-Semitism in Europe had reached World War II levels and that "Jews are fleeing once-prosperous Europe." European countries, in particular France, have seen a number of high-profile anti-Semitic attacks in recent years, including a deadly hostage-taking in a Paris kosher market two days after a shooting rampage at the satirical Charlie Hebdo magazine in January 2015. But while the pro-Kremlin broadcaster RT praised Putin for offering "refuge" to European Jews "as a rising wave of anti-Semitic attacks engulfs Europe," his remarks have met with a good deal of skepticism considering Russia's own spotty track record in fighting hate crimes. Authorities in Russia's remote Jewish Autonomous Oblast, which lies close to the Pacific coast on the border with China, have been quick to back Putin's proposal. Governor Aleksandr Levintal has already extended a warm welcome to all Jews fleeing from Europe. The prospect of relocating to Russia, let alone to the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, appears unlikely to appeal to many European Jews. Most of those who hail from former Soviet republics came to Europe in the late 1980s and the early 1990s, and have long assimilated into their adopted countries. "Vladimir Putin's offer was perhaps well-meaning, but personally I'm absolutely not interested," says Diana, a Moscow native who now lives in Paris. "I've lived in France for more than 20 years. I love France and I feel like a French citizen." Despite recent attacks against Jews in France, Diana, a finance specialist, says reports of unbridled anti-Semitism are greatly exaggerated. "I have never felt threatened or suffered from anti-Semitism in France," she says. "I have no intention of leaving France; it's not more dangerous here than in Israel, Russia, or elsewhere." Putin's proposal has generated a lively debate online, with many commentators pointing out that while Europe's Jewish community has indeed been targeted by a number of attacks in recent years, anti-Semitism has long been on the rise in Russia, too. "Nationalists with clubs assault a train passenger in New Moscow," reads another sarcastic comment, referring to an apparently racially motivated incident reported in Russian media this month. "Jews, come to us." According to Israeli authorities, nearly 5,000 Russians of Jewish descent moved to Israel in 2014 -- more than double than in any of the previous 16 years. Energy independence appears to be a long way away for Kyrgyzstan. As expected, Kyrgyzstan's parliament has revoked an agreement with Russia to construct hydropower plants. The move officially ends a deal that in reality was going nowhere, but it leaves Kyrgyzstan with bleak prospects for harnessing the country's huge hydropower potential. The decision was made at a January 20 session of parliament but it was clear since late December that the agreement would be canceled. Kyrgyz Deputy Economy Minister Aybek Kaliev returned from a December 21 bilateral meeting with Russian officials in Moscow and reported that, due to the "unfavorable economic situation" in Russia, it would be impossible for Russian companies Inter RAO and RusHydro to complete their shares of Kyrgyzstan's ambitious hydropower project. Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambaev followed by saying on December 24 that "the reality is such that today, unfortunately, our Russian friends will not be able to implement these projects." "This is going to be the case for a long time," he said, adding that "we need to find a new partner." Kyrgyzstan's Cabinet of Ministers on December 31 approved revoking the deal and just days later Prime Minister Temir Sariev urged parliament to quickly take the necessary steps to break the agreement. The agreement for the hydropower projects was signed during Russian President Vladimir Putin's 2012 visit to Kyrgyzstan. Inter RAO was tasked with constructing the $3 billion Kambar-Ata-1 facility with a capacity of some 1,860 MW and RusHydro to build the four smaller hydropower plants (HPP) with a combined output of some 237.7 MW and a cost of some $727 million. Inter RAO said as early as 2013 it would not have funds to cover construction of Kambar-Ata-1. However, the timing of all this could not be worse for Kyrgyzstan. In late December, as Kyrgyz officials were mulling the cancelation of the agreement with Russia, one of the four turbines at the massive Toktogul reservoir broke down. The Soviet-era Toktogul reservoir is the largest power plant in Kyrgyzstan with a capacity to generate some 1,200 megawatts, about 40 percent of the country's electricity needs. Shortly after the first turbine stopped operating on December 22, two more turbines failed. Prime Minister Sariev visited Toktogul and said it was clear the hydropower facility was in need of repair and upgrades. "It should have been done 15 years ago," Sariev said. "The cables, which are damaged now, have been used for more than 40 years instead of the recommended 25 years." Clearly, the Kambar-Ata-1 HPP and Naryn cascade are vital projects for Kyrgyzstan. When speaking in December about Russia's inability to finance the hydropower projects, Sariev was undaunted. "We will think of attracting other investors," he said. "There are plenty of them." Despite Sariev's optimism, however, it is unclear who these potential investors might be. China has been mentioned, but as Central Asia specialist Casey Michel mentioned in a recent article, "the likelihood of...Beijing supplanting Moscow in financing the projects, at least in the immediate future, remains low." Very low indeed. China has invested heavily in Central Asian infrastructure projects during the last decade, but nearly all of these projects serve to export energy resources, goods, and materials to China. A domestic hydropower project meant to benefit Kyrgyzstan would not be a project high on the list of Chinese investments. Additionally, RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service, known locally as Azattyk, reports that another deputy economy minister, Nurlan Sadykov, has said Kyrgyzstan should repay the $37 million Russia already spent on the Kambar-Ata and Naryn cascade projects, though he didn't say where Kyrgyzstan's cash-strapped government would get that money. Kyrgyzstan has moved in recent years to break its dependence on gas supplies from Uzbekistan, especially since those supplies were often suspended by Tashkent due to Bishkek's inability to pay on time. Instead Kyrgyzstan imports some electricity from neighboring Kazakhstan and in recent years has also imported electricity from Tajikistan. Kyrgyzstan has also increased the use of coal-based thermal power plants, but must import some coal to fill its needs. Kyrgyzstan has been hoping to be energy independent for years, but with the cancelation of the hydropower agreement with Russia that wait might now go on for a decade or more. RFE/RL Kyrgyz Service director Venera Djumataeva contributed to this report MOSCOW -- Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman has played down Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov's statements threatening Kremlin critics, issuing what Russian government opponents called a dangerous endorsement. Dmitry Peskov's remarks on January 20, the first Kremlin comment since Kadyrov and his allies launched a barrage of hostile rhetoric targeting Russian liberals last week, suggested that Putin was unlikely to rein in the regional leader who critics say enjoys impunity for his words and actions. Putin has remained silent amid a growing controversy over statements, articles, and Internet posts that liberal opposition politicians, activists, and journalists say constitute threats to their lives -- and critics of Kadyrov say are bringing shame upon Russia. On January 15, Kadyrov called opponents of Putin "enemies of the people" and U.S. stooges who should be prosecuted. In an article in the prominent newspaper Izvestia on January 19, he said they were "jackals" who must be punished in order to "save" Russia. Casting himself as a "foot soldier of Vladimir Putin," Kadyrov also lashed out at Internet TV station Dozhd and Ekho Moskvy radio -- one of a series of statements by the Chechen head and his entourage that have prompted a presenter at the station to appeal to Putin to protect media outlets under threat. And an ally who is speaker of Chechnya's parliament posted a photo of Kadyrov with an angry dog straining on its leash and said its "fangs are itching" to get at opposition figures. In comments to the Interfax news agency, Peskov warned against "aggravating" the situation and said that Kadyrov was only talking about what he called "nonsystemic" opposition figures who are "outside the legitimate political arena" and are prepared to break the law to achieve their goals. It is "necessary to calmly read what has been said," Peskov was quoted as saying. He said he had not read statements concerning Dozhd and Ekho Moskvy. Far from reassuring Kadyrov's targets, the Kremlin spokesman's remarks had the opposite effect. Ilya Yashin, an opposition leader who has been singled out by Kadyrov, protested that Peskov's statement sends a signal of tacit approval and would embolden the Chechen strongman. He rejected Peskov's suggestion that Kadyrov's words could not be seen as a threat to opposition figures who abide by the law. "It's obvious that Ramzan Kadyrov's statements are not addressed to those who break the law, but in general to critics of the existing regime," Interfax quoted Yashin as saying. "The Kremlin understands perfectly well what he meant. The president is expressing support for the head of Chechnya through his press secretary, which will lead to harsher words and action by Kadyrov." Critics of Kadyrov accuse him of overseeing widespread human rights abuses in Chechnya, and suspect he has had opponents killed both inside Russia and abroad, which he denies. Relatives of Boris Nemtsov, an opposition leader and Putin foe who was shot dead on a bridge near the Kremlin in February 2015, want Kadyrov questioned over the assassination. Opposition figures such as former tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who spent a decade in prison and now lives in Europe, suspect Putin is encouraging Kadyrov to threaten the opposition because he is worried that a deepening economic crisis will erode political support ahead of parliamentary elections in September. Likening Kadyrov to Putin's "house pet" in a blog post on January 19, Khodorkovsky wrote: "Keep your dangerous pets in their cage or prepare for the consequences." Kadyrov has shown no sign of backing off. Late on January 19, Adam Delimkhanov -- a Russian parliament deputy and close Kadyrov ally -- posted a video of himself and other men standing on the next bridge over from the one where Nemtsov was killed, chanting "Kadyrov is the rock of Russia, Allah Akhbar!" The authorities in Chechnya, the North Caucasus region Kadyrov has headed since 2007, are planning a demonstration of support for him on January 22 in Grozny, the capital. A year ago, Kadyrov held a rally attended by hundreds of thousands of Chechens at which speakers criticized caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad and vilified the West. The rally was one of several reflections of what critics of Putin say is a xenophobic atmosphere that was whipped up by the Kremlin and permeated Russia ahead of Nemtov's killing. The governor of Russia's Far East Jewish Autonomous Region says the area is "ready" to house Jews from Europe who are facing anti-Semitism. Aleksandr Levintal said his region "will welcome Jews from European countries, where they may face attacks by anti-Semitic elements." Levintal also called his region "the first officially established Jewish statehood." Levintal's remarks come a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin called on Jews to return to Russia. In Moscow on January 19, Putin told the head of the European Jewish Congress, Moshe Kantor, that he had seen reports saying European Jews were scared to wear a yarmulke, the traditional Jewish skull cap, in public. Putin told Kantor, "They can come to us. They left the Soviet Union. Let them return." The Jewish Autonomous Region was established by the Soviet government in 1934 in a part of southeastern Siberia that borders China. In 1948, the Jewish population there peaked at 30,000 -- a quarter of the region's total population. By 2010, out of 180,000 residents in the region, only about 1,600 were of Jewish ancestry. Based on reporting by TASS and Interfax Russia's currency has slumped to a record low, trading at 82 rubles per U.S. dollar and 89.55 per euro. The ruble's previous all-time low was 80.10 per dollar in December 2014. The declining value of the ruble comes as global oil prices continued to fall, trading on January 20 at around some $27.45 per barrel and even briefly going under $27 per barrel. The ruble also is under pressure from economic sanctions that the West has imposed against Russia in response to its support for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. World oil prices plunged after Iran announced a few days ago that it would begin producing hundreds of thousands of barrels per day in an already oversupplied market. Based on reports by Reuters, AFP, Bloomberg, and Interfax When Russian psychologist Pyotr Lyubchenkov started receiving telephone threats and was detained by the police for 10 days after posting several online comments denouncing Moscow's support of separatists in eastern Ukraine, he knew it was time to leave. In June 2014, he fled Russia for what he thought would be a better, safer life in Ukraine. But a year and a half later, his successive applications for political asylum have all been rejected and the Ukrainian authorities are now seeking to extradite him to Russia. Lyubchenkov, who faces prison on extremism charges in his home country, has a word of warning for other embattled Russian opposition activists. "I strongly advise them against traveling to Ukraine and asking for political asylum," he said in a telephone interview from Odesa. "If you are in danger, you had better ask another country. Ukraine is not a safe place for refugees from Russia. Amid a deepening Kremlin crackdown on dissent, more than 200 Russians who have fallen afoul of the authorities in their country have fled to Ukraine since the beginning of 2014, according to the Ukrainian State Migration Service. Only a handful have been granted political asylum or other forms of protection by Ukrainian authorities. For the rest, the apparent freedoms gained since the pro-democracy Maidan protests in Kyiv toppled Ukraine's Moscow-backed President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 remain elusive. Ukraine's migration service insists that its screening procedure for asylum applications is fair and impartial. "We are open," spokesman Serhiy Hunko told RFE/RL. "If it is the applicants wish, we are ready to consider each case together with the United Nations' refugee agency and human rights organizations, and to listen to the opinion of independent experts." Some local rights groups are nonetheless alarmed by the massive legal hurdles facing Russian political emigres in Ukraine. "It is unacceptable to not provide asylum for people facing persecution for peaceful opposition activities in their own country," the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group said last week on its website. "Incredibly, given the ongoing imprisonment of [Nadia] Savchenko, [Oleh] Sentsov, Oleksandr Kolchenko, and other Ukrainians, as well as long sentences passed on Russians for peaceful protest, the Migration Service is still claiming that Russia is a democratic country to which activists can be returned," it added. Prisoner Of Conscience Russian opposition activist Vyacheslav Martynov, who fled to the northeastern city of Kharkiv in 2014, is among the lucky few. After a protracted legal battle, he was finally granted special protection by Ukrainian authorities several weeks ago. Martynov landed in hot water with Russian authorities after attempting to organize a rally demanding broader autonomy for the part of southern Russia known as the Kuban together with Lyubchenkov and a third activist, Darya Polyudova. The three were briefly detained, placed on a terrorist watch list, and charged with extremism. Polyudova, who chose to stay in Russia, was sentenced to two years in prison in December 2015 on charges of "calling for Russia's territorial integrity infringement" -- a sentence that sparked an outcry from rights groups around the world. Russia's leading Russian rights organization, Memorial, has since declared Polyudova a prisoner of conscience. If sent back to Russia, Lyubchenkov risks a similar fate. Several weeks ago, Russian prosecutors officially asked Ukraine to extradite him at the behest of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB). He says he is now hiding from prosecutors in Odesa, who issued a warrant for his arrest in mid-December. "Odesa prosecutors are trying to arrest me and hand me over to Russia because I called for the Kuban to join Ukraine," he said. "This is how absurd the situation is." Like Martynov, Lyubchenkov has won several court appeals overturning earlier decisions by migration authorities to deny him political asylum. But under Ukrainian law, judges cannot force migration authorities to deliver asylum status, only to reconsider applications. Olga Kurnosova, another Russian opposition activist who is trying to rebuild her life in Ukraine, attributes the Migration Service's reluctance to help Kremlin critics to what she says is the large number of Moscow sympathizers still serving in its ranks since Yanukovych's ouster. "The migration service has not undergone any lustration," she said. "People there already served under Yanukovych and they are doing their jobs dishonestly, just like they did under Yanukovych." Up to 25 wind turbines would pose a presumed hazard to aircraft navigation from their perch atop North Mountain, the Federal Aviation Administration has determined. The turbines, proposed to stand up to 549 feet tall on top of a Botetourt County ridgeline, would exceed the FAAs obstruction standards and create an adverse physical or electromagnetic interference effect upon navigable airspace, the agency found after a preliminary study. However, the finding may not be a severe setback for Apex Clean Energy, a renewable energy company that wants to build the states first commercial wind farm north of Eagle Rock. At Apexs request, the FAA has agreed to conduct a more detailed study. The FAA is charged with evaluating how any structure over 200 feet tall including buildings, cellphone towers and wind turbines might impact aircraft passing overhead and arriving or departing from nearby airports. Any structure higher than 499 feet is presumed to be a hazard, according to FAA spokeswoman Arlene Salac. But with a formal aeronautical study now under way, Apex officials are hoping that additional information will lead the FAA to reconsider its presumption of risk. Apex spokesman Kevin Chandler pointed to part of a written public notice from the FAA that states the turbines would have no effect on any existing or proposed arrival, departure or en route instrument flight rules (IFR) operations or procedures. The Rocky Forge wind farms proposed location is about 17 nautical miles southeast of Ingalls Field in Hot Springs, the nearest public airport. As part of its ongoing study, the FAA is taking public comments through Feb. 10. Comments must be relevant to the effect the structure would have on aviation, a public notice on the agencys website states. At up to 449 feet, the turbines would be taller than those at other wind farms. A project in West Virginia has windmills that stand 388 feet tall. A proposal for Poor Mountain in Roanoke County, later withdrawn by the developer, called for 443-foot-tall turbines. If Apexs proposal does not ultimately satisfy the FAA, options would include moving some of the turbine sites or reducing their proposed heights to 499 feet or less. Since Apex announced its plans a year ago, scattered opposition to the wind farm has consisted mostly of concerns about what the turbines would look like, the sounds they would make, and the impact they would have on the pristine woodland of northern Botetourt County. Last week, the countys planning commission recommended approval of a special exception permit that Apex is seeking for the project. The Botetourt County Board of Supervisors is expected to consider the matter Jan. 26. In addition to getting approval from the county and the FAA, Apex also must obtain permission from the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, which is expected to take a close look at the turbines impact on the flora and fauna of North Mountain. Apex has said it hopes to have the wind farm running by the end of next year. The ongoing study by the FAA, which could take several months, is not expected to impact that timeline, Chandler said. The longer this goes on, the better the story for reporters, not for Republicans. Its a week today since Republicans threw reporters out of the Virginia Senate, exiling them to the gallery. A vote to reopen the floor to the press its being pushed by Sen. Tom Garrett, R-Buckingham, an ebullient tormentor of the Republican leadership had been expected Tuesday but was delayed. Thats because the Republican responsible for banishing the journalists, Senate Majority Leader Tommy Norment of James City, will meet today with colleagues, Senate staff and reporters on a possible solution. For another day, then, the unflattering news stories, columns and editorials will continue. And the freshly affirmed Republican majority that expected to talk in part, via the press about controlling state spending, resisting a Medicaid-financed expansion of Obamacare and affirming gun rights, instead, is forced to defend making it more difficult for the press to do its job. This entire episode could have been a hiccup. It became Norments humiliation, brought on by hubris. It is now a headache for the entire Republican caucus, some of whose members, if not downright hostile to reporters, know little about dealing with them. This is a lousy time to be a press skills-challenged Republican. How do you explain resisting transparency in government when you dont know how to explain? If you dont play the game, you cant complain about the rules Earl Butz, agriculture secretary under President Gerald Ford, said that in 1974 when asked about Pope Paul VIs opposition to birth control as a remedy to world hunger. Butz, who was politically incorrect before anyone had heard the term, said the pontiffs stance was meaningless since as a celibate man he opposed contraception under any circumstances. Butzs quip it actually came out, He no play-a da game, he no make-a da rules centered on sexual relations. But it could also apply to press relations. Politicians and government officials who grumble the loudest about press coverage often are those who refuse to engage reporters. Sometimes, they cant talk to the press because the boss wont allow it. Sometimes, its because communications are the responsibility of a flack, who to ensure consistency in messaging may opt for a generic, one-quote-fits-all approach. Sometimes, its because a politician or government official fears the press, regarding it as a menacing nuisance. Talking to a reporter isnt difficult. Not talking to a reporter is hazardous. A gratuitous no-comment when the press got the boot Jan. 13, Norment vowed to say that a lot during the 2016 General Assembly can be deadly. By refusing to talk to the press, a politician or government official should only expect the worst. If youre not participating in the narrative, you risk becoming it, having led reporters and, by extension, the public to believe you have something to hide. This needlessly elevates tensions. Reporters push harder. Subjects go to ground. What could be happy symbiosis becomes bitter paralysis. It doesnt have to be that way. The rules of engagement Before talking with the press, establish the conditions under which you are talking. Sometimes, this has to be negotiated. Theres nothing wrong with that. It can go a long way toward minimizing misunderstandings and laying the foundation for a productive working relationship. Reporters and the people they cover dont have to be friends. They can be friendly. It can make a big difference in a difficult situation downrange. Are you on the record? In other words, everything you say can and will be used perhaps against you by your adversaries. At a formal news conference or a Q-and-A after a public event, everything a politician or official utters is understood to be on the record. Typically, thats why press sessions are held. The people who stage them have something specific to say to a target audience, be it voters or taxpayers. And those doing the talking want to be fully identified. Are you on background? This means that, by agreement between reporter and source, the information disclosed by the source will not be directly attributed to him or her; that he or she will not be identified by name. However, the reporter will still require attribution something that conveys to readers, listeners or viewers that the person doing the talking, while not identified, knows what he or she is talking about. This, too, is usually negotiated. Most journalists would prefer a description that speaks to the sources knowledge of a topic and its complexities. For example, a senior administration official, an adviser to the campaign, or members of the Republican caucus. People speaking on background have an agenda. Thats OK. Its important that reporter and source understand what the agenda might be. In the initial flap over the Norment-led press purge, Republican senators spoke on background not just to signal to the public that an attempt would be made to reverse it, but to prevent negotiations within the caucus from becoming a shoving match among headline hogs. Are you off the record? This is often mistaken for background. They could not be more different. Information obtained off the record cannot be put in the public domain under any circumstances unless the reporter gets it from other sources, either on background or on the record. However, information that a reporter receives off the record can be used to fashion informed questions for other sources, whose answers just may pull a story together. Sometimes and this happens other sources, unbidden, supply information initially obtained off the record. Theres nothing lost in a reporter circling back to the original source if or when a reporter pins down, for publication or broadcast, the initial tip. Think of it as a good will-generating, professional courtesy. Its a lesson some reporters learn the hard way by unnecessarily alienating otherwise-productive sources. Publish your own newspaper and see who reads it A former colleague would say this on occasion to people he covered who insisted they could communicate their message the way they preferred by bypassing the press or openly playing favorites among reporters. Its a lot easier in the era of social media. And the state Capitol has become a hive of bloggers, tweeters, Instagram-ers, and Snapchat-ers. Some of them are reporters, a lot are lobbyists, many of them are politicians. But social media has become part of the story. Rare these days is the political story that doesnt include a reference to what a candidate or prominent party figure is saying to his or her online audience. It was through Twitter, for example, that the Virginia political press picked up that Ken Cuccinelli, the defeated Republican candidate for governor in 2013 and a favorite of conservative activists, was poised to endorse Ted Cruz for the partys presidential nomination. And it was through their posts on Facebook that Tommy Norment, inviting constituents to his new digs in the General Assembly Building, learned that some of them were ticked off over his preemptive assault on the press. Four North Carolina men have been arrested on charges of stealing thousands of pieces of U.S. mail containing checks and documents last week from businesses in the Hanover County Industrial Air Park, and federal authorities are investigating their activities in neighboring states along the East Coast. We do believe this group had traveled through several states, at least on the East Coast, with the intent to steal mail, Mike Romano, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, said Wednesday. Currently thats what were working through right now, to determine if any other reports of mail theft to our other divisions can be tied to this group. Hanover deputies arrested the men after observing them pilfer mail in the Hanover Industrial Air Park, which is easily accessible from Interstate 95, said Hanover Sheriffs Office Sgt. Christopher Stem. They were hitting as many mailboxes as they could on certain roads within the air park, specifically in the area of Leadbetter Road and Air Park Road, Stem said. The thieves took U.S. Postal Service-delivered mail normal envelope-sized (mail) containing checks, business documents and other correspondence. Stem said thousands of pieces of mail were believed taken Jan. 14, and so far 10 victims have been identified. There could be some other victims out there that havent come forward, that were expecting certain mail or dont know if their mail that was going out has been compromised, Stem said. Investigators are uncertain whether any of the stolen checks has been successfully cashed. We do know that some have been altered, though, he said. Police believe the suspects targeted the air park because of its easy access from I-95 and the concentrated number of businesses that operate there. This is not the first time theyve come here, Stem said. We know weve had the same type of incidents, whether it was this group or other groups, targeting the air park. They get off 95, have easy access, and get right back on 95. Stem said investigators are continuing to recover stolen mail and are assisting the Postal Inspection Service in identifying other potential victims from Maryland to North Carolina. It could be beyond that, Stem said. Romano said the Postal Inspection Service will pursue federal mail theft charges against the four men. The offense carries a punishment of up to five years in federal prison for each count charged. The agency takes such offenses very seriously, and if we can obtain federal prosecution, we will, he said. The suspects were identified as Marcus Manley, 28; Ahjuwon Owens, 30; Cecil Johnson, 31; and Antoine Ackin, 31, all of the Fayetteville, N.C., area. Police said Johnson had ties to Southside Virginia, and online court records list a Colonial Heights address. The men have been charged with multiple counts of petit larceny, grand larceny and possession of stolen bank notes. Owens, Johnson and Ackin are being held in the Pamunkey Regional Jail. Stem said the men were arrested after deputies just happened to observe the suspects as mail was being stolen Jan. 14. They are scheduled to appear March 15 on the charges in Hanover General District Court. Anyone who believes they may have been a victim of mail theft in Hanover can call the Sheriffs Office at (804) 365-6140. Virginias top economic official said Wednesday that a failed taxpayer-funded business deal in Appomattox County will be reviewed for possible fraud. After being called to speak to the Senate Finance Committee, Secretary of Commerce and Trade Maurice Jones said its possible an external fraud investigation will be initiated over the Lindenburg Industry LLC project, in which $1.4 million in public funds were paid to a Chinese-owned company that never delivered on promises of a new factory. Jones was asked if the matter has already been referred to the Virginia State police or the FBI. Jones answered that he could not say with certainty, and said theres no ongoing external investigation. But the issue of fraud is one that were going to definitely pursue, Jones said. Michael Kelly, a spokesman for Attorney General Mark R. Herring, would not say if the matter has been referred to the state police or the FBI, saying conversations between Jones and the attorney generals office fall under attorney-client privilege. A recent investigation into the deal by The Roanoke Times found that state officials failed to properly vet the company, which submitted a North Carolina address where the company was never located and produced a website with misleading information, before agreeing to give out public incentives. The state has asked for the money back, but Jones said Wednesday that may be a tall order. My initial opinion is this will be an uphill battle to recover all $1.4 million, Jones said. We are going to aggressively pursue full recovery. Jones apologized to the panel, saying he should have asked tougher questions. He also said he and the Virginia Economic Development Partnership gave too much weight to the companys willingness to pay cash to purchase a former furniture plant in Appomattox and took the advice of a reputable consulting firm. We took comfort in those facts. We took too much comfort in those facts, said Jones, who suggested the failed project is an outlier and defended the states overall track record. The reason why this happened was human error on our part. Mr. Secretary, I appreciate your candor and the euphemism of human error, which probably could be characterized in a little stronger terms, said Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment Jr., R-James City. Senate Minority Leader Richard L. Saslaw, D-Fairfax, drew a contrast between the level of interest in the Appomattox deal and the hundreds of millions of dollars the state spent on the U.S. 460 project, a 75-mile expressway between Petersburg and Suffolk that was never built. And not a single person sitting up on this panel asked one lousy question, Saslaw said. In which situation was the state worse off? It looks like nothing was found at this location. Maybe try a search? 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To help celebrate Martin Luther King Day, U.S. Cellular and the Boys & Girls Clubs in Southwest Virginia are kicking off the ninth annual Black History Month Art Contest, which honors the many contributions of African-Americans and encourages young people to learn more about these current and historic influencers. Boys & Girls Club members are encouraged to research and learn more about African-American role models and their important contributions to society. They are then invited to create and submit an original 8.5-by-11 portrait representing the figure of their choice using any art medium from any point in history, including present day. "Once again, we are looking forward to seeing the great art projects from the Boys & Girls Club members. The level of creativity and talent is always amazing, said Nathan Waddell, director of sales for U.S. Cellular in the Mid-South. U.S. Cellulars commitment to education gives us the opportunity to partner with organizations here in Roanoke, Christiansburg and across the country. This contest showcases the creativity and talents of our kids as they honor African-American leaders while celebrating our rich history of diversity. The top 10 finalists entries will be chosen by a panel from the Southwest Boys & Girls Club and then displayed at local U.S. Cellular stores. The public is invited to view and vote on the artwork from Feb. 1 to Feb. 29, and the top three artists as determined by the number of votes will receive prizes: $150 for third place, $200 for second place and $500 for first place. Our kids get excited and start asking about the contest every year, and they always learn something new as they are researching, said Laurie Gibbons, chief professional officer of the Boys & Girls Clubs. "You never know which project may inspire and have a life-long impact on one of our members." To vote (starting Feb. 1), visit the following U.S. Cellular stores: Roanoke Valley View, U.S. Cellular 4760 Valley View Blvd # 30, Roanoke, VA 24012 (540) 362-9774 Roanoke - Electric Road, U.S. Cellular 3260 Electric Road Suite 503, Roanoke, VA 24018 (540) 725-5887 Christiansburg U.S. Cellular 103 Conston Ave, Christiansburg, VA 24073 (540) 382-2656 Salem U.S. Cellular 1420 West Main Street, Salem, VA 24153 (540) 375-6760 Submitted by Melissa Watkins CHRISTIANSBURG The scheduled switch in Montgomery County Public Schools start times has many citizens and some board members troubled. During a more than five-hour county school board meeting that crept into Wednesday morning, a flurry of concerns were raised over the implementation of the new times and the process by which they were decided. The night that began with a standing-room-only crowd and close to two hours of public protest over the change ended with far fewer people and even less resolve. The board is scheduled to continue discussions on the time change at its Feb. 2 meeting. A total of 43 people spoke in protest of the decision, which is set to swap the elementary and secondary start times in August. This is not a solution. Its recklessness, Marya Barlow of Blacksburg told the board. The decision, which was passed 4-3 in April, was prompted by research showing that teen brain development makes it harder for them to go to sleep and arise early and was met with steady opposition in the months that followed. Much of that protest, and again Tuesday, centered on a perceived lack of concern over the negative impact the change might have on the younger students. We are trading the problem of sleep-deprived adolescents for sleep-deprived elementary students, said Cindy Rosenbaum, a fourth-grade teacher who was also named the countys 2015 Teacher of the Year. Others voiced concerns over increased child care availability and costs, potential dangers for younger children waiting for buses during early morning hours and a loss of time for after-school activities for secondary students. Many speakers were members of the Facebook group Parents Who Want to be Heard, which launched shortly after the April decision and has more than 1,500 members. During the boards Jan. 5 meeting, one of the groups founders, Lori Roop, presented the board with a petition she said was signed by 1,033 people who did not want the time change. Tuesday, group member Dana Lacy presented the board with a 24-page compromise regarding the situation. The document proposes adjusting back the secondary start times to 8:10 a.m. for middle schools, 8:20 a.m. for high schools and 9:10 for elementary schools. Later in the meeting the workgroups assigned to plan for the implementation of the new school times presented their progress, which raised even more concerns for some board members. Im listening to you alls presentation, and its a cookie cutter. ... It looks great on paper, but it is not the reality, board member Penny Franklin said. Specifically Franklin said she was concerned that while the switch would mean fewer total students catching the bus in the hours prior to sunrise, those students would now be some of the countys youngest. Franklin, along with former chair Joey Lyons and board member Jamie Bond, voted in opposition of the switch in April. The work group suggested children wear reflectors, use the buddy system and neighborhoods take turns watching students as ways to increase safety. Some of our kids dont live in neighborhoods and quite frankly in the neighborhoods they live in, there might not be a responsible adult, Franklin said. At one point newly elected Montgomery County Sheriff Hank Partin offered to speak about security concerns, but was not allowed to talk due to board policy. He was invited to give a presentation at the February meeting. Another major concern that arose was the availability of enough day cares to provide for an assumed influx of younger students who would now get out of school an hour earlier. The lack of centers in Christiansburg especially was an issue for new Superintendent Mark Miear who said busing students to centers out of their school zones could be problematic. Miear and all board members agreed the issue needed to be further researched. Just last week the county sent home a survey to assess the need for child care of middle-school-age students. The need for more information led some board members to question how the decision to switch the times was made and why such issues were ignored in the process. Help me understand why all these questions werent asked [when] we made the decision, well not me, but the board made the decision. These are all the questions I asked then and now were at the door saying, Well OK, this doesnt look so good, Bond said. Lyons also questioned the overall motive behind the switch. My perception and the perception Im hearing in the community is that were making this change so that Blacksburg High School will get a couple of points on tests, Lyons said. Newly elected board member Connie Froggatt took issue with the idea the change was strictly for academic purposes, saying the research indicated it would benefit the overall health of secondary students. I expect this to benefit some of our students struggling the most, she said. Newly elected board member Mark Cherbaka and newly elected chair Gunin Kiran both said they still believed the change was the right thing to do, but would welcome working to tweak it. Moving forward, Franklin said she hoped the current board would take a more transparent approach and work more with those who oppose the change than had the previous board. Franklin said even as a board member she felt the decision was made somewhat secretly and felt left out because it was its predetermined and expedited nature. Its very easy, again, to put this on paper and say do this, do this, do that. ... Its not reality, and we have made a terrible mistake by doing this as quickly as we have and not getting the information, she said. BOONES MILL When she woke up Wednesday morning, Doris Brown Kirk thanked the Lord. He had given her not just another day, but another birthday. And not just any birthday. Wednesday marked Kirks 100th birthday. Kirk, also known as Mema, went to Boones Mill Elementary School on Wednesday morning to celebrate her 100th birthday with first grade teacher Beth Hudsons class. Kirk is Hudsons grandmother. The celebration was a surprise for Kirk. The 100th birthday is, after all, quite a milestone, Hudson said. Youre not kidding, Kirk replied. Shes always enjoyed celebrating her birthday, Kirk said, but acknowledged that this one was particularly significant. I never dreamed of living to have this many, she said. Kirk spoke with Hudsons students, 90-some years her junior, about how things have changed in the 100 years that shes been alive. The students made cards for Kirk, and sang her three different happy birthday songs. When she went to school, all of the different grade levels were together in one classroom, which Kirk estimated was smaller than Hudsons. And school started at first grade. There was no kindergarten. When it was cold outside, they used a wooden stove to keep warm. There were no school buses back then, so Kirk walked to school, a little over 2 miles. When it was too muddy, shed enlist the help of a horse. She still remembers the first time she ever saw a car. It was a Ford automobile. One hundred years seems like an impossibly long amount of time for a first-grader. It showed in some of the students questions. One asked what color the grass was when Kirk was young. The grass has always been green, honey, Kirk answered. Hudson asked the kids what they thought Kirk did to live such a long life. She prayed, one student suggested. She brushed her teeth, another offered. Those were good guesses, Hudson said, but the answer was that she got her exercise by taking regular walks. Kirk said that for years she walked three to four days a week, unless the weather was bad. The students have been talking a lot about the number 100, with the 100th day of the school year coming up on Friday (assuming its not a snow day). Hudson thought it would be appropriate to invite her grandmother to celebrate her birthday with the class and talk about what life was like 100 years ago. Kirk also brought along a photograph of herself as a young girl, probably at age 5 or 6. In the picture, shes wearing clothes made by her mother. There wasnt such a thing as going out to the store and buying clothes back then, Kirk said. Her mother was a seamstress, and made Kirks clothes as long as she lived. As Hudson pulled a music video up for the kids to sing along to on her white interactive board, she asked her grandmother if shed had anything similar in school. We had one, but it was black and we wrote on it with chalk, Kirk said. The kids explained to Kirk how the interactive board, which responds to a special pen or wand, works. Its a great big TV, grandma, Hudson said. The centenarian doesnt know if shell see another birthday. But if she doesnt, Kirk said, she knows itll be because shes in a better place. That, Kirk said, is how she thinks about life. RICHMOND Todd Haymore, Gov. Terry McAuliffes secretary of agriculture and forestry, announced Tuesday that he will not run for the seat of retiring Rep. Robert Hurt, R-Pittsylvania County. Haymores decision not to seek the Democratic nomination removes another potential high-profile opponent for Sen. Tom Garrett, R-Buckingham County, who is seeking the Republican nomination. Sen. Bill Stanley, R-Franklin County, who holds Hurts old state Senate seat, previously said he would not seek the Republican nomination. Businessman Jim McKelvey is also seeking the GOP nod in the 5th. Although the messages and analysis I received were overwhelmingly positive, the timing for taking on such an opportunity, which would include a move, is not right for me and my family, Haymore said in a statement. I have three young daughters who love their school and are thriving in it, along with a supportive wife who enjoys a successful legal career. Haymore also said he enjoys his work as secretary of agriculture and forestry. A move back home and a run for Congress just isnt in the cards at this time, he said. Hurt, first elected in 2010, surprised many when he recently announced that he will not seek a fourth term representing the sprawling district that extends from the North Carolina line, through Southside and the Virginia Piedmont and into Northern Virginia. Haymore, who served in his current post under Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell and was reappointed by Democrat McAuliffe, was born in Danville and grew up on his grandparents farm in Pittsylvania County. He has been an aide to former Rep. L.F. Payne, D-Pittsylvania County and has worked in the tobacco industry. But his family now lives in Henrico County. Haymore said the outreach he received from across the political spectrum indicates that the citizens of the 5th District desire a congressman of the same character as my friend, Robert [Hurt], one who will rise above partisan politics; seek input from all sides and look to build bridges with others to solve problems. RICHMOND A House of Delegates committee passed a bill Tuesday that would give Virginia legislators oversight of the states implementation of a sweeping federal energy plan aimed at fighting climate change, despite a state environmental officials warning that the legislation could cause significant delays. The bill, which passed the House Commerce and Labor Committee on a 14-6 party line vote, would give the General Assembly approval over state plans to regulate carbon dioxide emissions under the Clean Power Plan, the carbon-reducing program championed by President Barack Obama. House Republicans have highlighted the measure, House Bill 2, as a key piece of their 2016 agenda, while Gov. Terry McAuliffe, whose administration opposes the bill, has said hell veto efforts to limit the states ability to react to climate change. The Clean Power Plan, which aims to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by 32 percent by 2030, is being challenged in court by several states. McAuliffe and Attorney General Mark Herring have supported it, pointing to rising sea levels and flooding in coastal Virginia. Republicans on the committee argued that because the plan could realign the states energy industry in ways that could lead to higher electricity bills and further job losses in the coal industry, state lawmakers should have the power to shape policy as a way of shielding their constituents from potential harm. Given the magnitude of the decision, I think its imperative that we are all on record, said Israel OQuinn, R-Bristol, the bills chief patron. Because I think that sooner rather than later, we are all going to have our phones rung off the hook by people who are particularly upset about how high their utility rates have skyrocketed. David Paylor, director of the states Department of Environmental Quality, told the committee the state has to present an initial compliance plan to the Environmental Protection Agency by September, then has two years to refine it. With any delay, we run the risk of actually having the federal government run the program instead of the state, Paylor said. We are taking a risk that we lose all control of how this works in the future, echoed Del. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond. Several Republican legislators pressed Paylor about whether the states current plans would lead to further shrinkage in the coal industry, which had multiple representatives at the meeting speaking in favor of the oversight bill. In and of itself, we do not believe so, Paylor said. There may be some market decisions that would lead to that. Del. Mark Keam, D-Fairfax County, said that no matter how the state proceeds, the end result will still have to comply with EPA rules. Ultimately, arent we just waiting for the final results to be the same and were just looking for different ways to take potshots at the process?, Keam said. Del. Jackson Miller, R-Manassas, suggested delay isnt necessarily a bad thing. Is that not better for the poorest Virginians who would have to pay much higher rates? Miller said. The committee also voted unanimously to move forward House Bill 52, aimed at reforming the sale of structured settlements to better protect people entitled to annual payments as a result of a court case. The settlements can be transferred to businesses, which has led lawmakers to seek ways to ensure that recipients arent taken advantage of. The bill would require applications for such sales to be filed in the payees home locality rather than in another court, require the payee to appear in person at the court hearing and require purchasers to submit information on their track record with prior transactions. The rise of outsider candidates such as Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, reveals Americans frustration with government that has been escalating for years, Giuliani said. He said the declining approval ratings of Congress should make it no surprise. I think theyve actually come to the point where they blame it on both parties, he said of American voters. When a person like a Trump comes along or, to some extent Cruz, who has made himself sort of an outsider [candidate], I think its very appealing. That is a real sentiment that is very, very powerful, very strong. Though he has been an unapologetic critic of President Barack Obama, Giuliani said he believes the president has an appreciation of the dangers of cyberattacks. And he called the president a good man, an honest man I just think on policies hes mostly wrong. 3) New Yorks P-Tech 9-14 schools. During Gov. Andrew M. Cuomos first year in Albany, he launched a pilot program in Brooklyn to create a six-year program to graduate underserved students with high school and associates diplomas in computer systems technology. The first Pathways in Technology Early College High Schools students graduated in 2015. Three were offered jobs with IBM, while the others plan to pursue bachelors degrees. With initial major sponsorship from IBM and a partnership with City University of New York, the program model has already been replicated in 32 schools across New York and in two more states. 4) South Carolinas teachers for rural schools. At Speaker Paul D. Ryans anti-poverty forum in Columbia, S.C. this month, Gov. Nikki Haley shared her experience visiting her childrens high-performing public schools in Columbia and then visiting decrepit, crumbling schools in rural South Carolina. She called the disparity immoral and announced her plan to both improve teacher quality in poor, rural school districts, where teachers often leave after two years or fewer for more successful suburban schools or to exit the profession altogether. Haleys plan would offer free college tuition to any graduating high school senior who commits to teach for eight years in one of South Carolinas rural districts with chronically high turnover rates. The loan forgiveness would be converted to pay raises and other incentives for more seasoned teachers or those who make a shorter, but still substantial commitment. 5) West Virginias jobs programs. Democratic Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin has proposed a series of initiatives to help West Virginia deal with the states major coal-related job losses and get people back to work in new industries.One of the more innovative proposals is the Small Business Assistance Act, his bill to allow people who have recently been laid off and are receiving unemployment benefits to continue to receive them while they start a small business and invest in it. Tomblin announced the idea during his State of the State, and will work to get it passed through the legislature this session. Because 96 percent of the employers in West Virginia already small businesses, its a small idea that could have big results. Five years ago, Ted Cruz and I met to discuss his strategy for his first statewide run for office. We both took as a given that his road to electoral victory was as an outsider in the slow-to-adapt, establishment-oriented Texas Republican Party. He wanted to rely on grass-roots campaigning to leapfrog the arcane traditional process that rewarded Texas Republicans who wait their turn for the blessing of the party elite. But back then, this meant something very different from what it means in the age of Donald Trump. And to be honest, Im not sure the Cruz I knew then could have reached the Senate, as he did in 2012, let alone contend seriously for the GOP presidential nomination. Congress and the Obama administration appear united in a push to help self-driving cars hit the roads as technology advances are bringing the concept closer to reality. But with the election year cutting into Congress work schedule and the administration preparing to hand off the torch in 2017, how much can actually be done related to the issue? Remarks from federal officials suggest that while Washington wants to help move the needle, states will have to lead policy to get cars driving themselves on U.S. roads. You know, its an announcement meant, I think, in an election year to generate some excitement, but other than saying theres going to be this large infusion of money, it doesnt really change anything, said Mary Missy Cummings, a professor at Duke University who does research on autonomous vehicles. Because the states themselves have been doing this all this time. It is not a bad thing for us, that the route known as the Goldene Strae or the Golden Road as we will get to know it- has escaped the attention of so many. It has been spared being overrun by hordes of tourists and as you will discover the POLICE are on duty at a troubled school following a large fight between dozens of pupils. A 15-year-old boy was taken to hospital after troubled flared at Clifton School, which is in special measures. Officers were called at 2.30pm on Monday to reports of an altercation between pupils. The school was now investigating and being provided with support by police this week, a spokesman said. He added: No complaints of assault have been received by police and the school is investigating the matter. Officers are providing support to the school and there will be an increased police presence in the local area in the coming days. Read more on this story in Fridays Advertiser. A new UN report says violence suffered by civilians in Iraq at the hands of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant' (ISIL) remains staggering. The report released Tuesday details the severe and extensive impact on civilians of the ongoing conflict in Iraq, with at least 18,802 civilians killed and another 36,245 wounded between 1 January 2014 and 31 October 2015. Another 3.2 million people have been internally displaced since January 2014, including more than a million children of school age. About half of these deaths took place in Baghdad. The report, compiled by the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), is based largely on testimony obtained directly from the victims, survivors or witnesses of violations of international human rights or international humanitarian law, including interviews with internally displaced people. "The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) continues to commit systematic and widespread violence and abuses of international human rights law and humanitarian law. These acts may, in some instances, amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide," the report states. "During the reporting period, ISIL killed and abducted scores of civilians, often in a targeted manner. Victims include those perceived to be opposed to ISIL ideology and rule; persons affiliated with the Government, such as former Iraqi security forces (ISF), police officers, former public officials and electoral workers; professionals, such as doctors and lawyers; journalists; and tribal and religious leaders. Others have been abducted and/or killed on the pretext of aiding or providing information to Government security forces. Many have been subjected to adjudication by ISIL self-appointed courts which, in addition to ordering the murder of countless people, have imposed grim punishments such as stoning and amputations." The report details numerous examples of killings by ISIL in gruesome public spectacles, including by shooting, beheading, bulldozing, burning alive and throwing people off the top of buildings. There are also reports of the murder of child soldiers who fled fighting on the frontlines in Anbar. Information received and verified suggests that between 800 and 900 children in Mosul had been abducted by ISIL for religious education and military training. "ISIL continued to subject women and children to sexual violence, particularly in the form of sexual slavery," the report states. Concerning reports have been received of unlawful killings and abductions perpetrated by some elements associated with pro-Government forces, it also says. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Political News Biotie Therapies Corp. (BITI) announced Tuesday morning that it has agreed to be acquired by Acorda Therapeutics (ACOR) for approximately $363 million. Biotie Therapies gapped open dramatically higher Tuesday, but was range-bound throughout the session. Shares finished with a gain of 11.42 at $24.62 on strong volume. The stock closed challenging its all-time high, trading at a 7-month high. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News Anglo American plc (AAUKY.PK,AAL.L) said that it has entered into a Share Sale Agreement with Batchfire Resources Pty Ltd to sell its 100% interest in the Callide thermal coal mine in Queensland, Australia. The transaction will be effected via a sale of shares in the subsidiary companies holding Anglo American's interest in Callide. The transaction remains subject to several conditions precedent, and its terms are confidential. Callide consists of an open pit thermal coal mine and associated processing infrastructure that produced 7.6 Mt of coal in 2014 (and 5.6 Mt in the first nine months of 2015), the majority of which (4.7 Mt in 2014) was sold to two adjacent power stations under long term contracts. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News Regional lender KeyCorp (KEY) is scheduled to release its fourth-quarter results before the bell on Thursday, January 21. The consensus analysts' estimate from Thomson Reuters calls for earnings of $0.28 per share and revenues of $1.09 billion for the quarter. Catalysts - Positive Operating Leverage - Compelling Combination With First Niagara - Maintains Strong Capital Position - Remains Focused On Risk Management Full-year 2015 net interest income growth is expected to be in the low single digit range, and non-interest income in line with its outlook for mid-single digit growth. October 30, 2015, KeyCorp announced a definitive agreement to acquire First Niagara Financial Group (FNFG) in a cash and stock transaction for total consideration valued at about $4.1 billion. First Niagara shareholders will receive 0.68 KeyCorp shares and $2.30 in cash for each First Niagara common share. The per share consideration is valued at $11.40 per share. KeyCorp expects the acquisition to be accretive to earnings per share in 2017, excluding one-time charges, and expects the transaction to deliver an attractive Internal Rate of Return of approximately 15%. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2016. First Niagara, headquartered in Buffalo, N.Y., has $39 billion in assets and $29 billion in deposits and 394 banking offices in New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Massachusetts. The company's combination with First Niagara is believed to benefit the clients, communities, employees and shareholders, and create a high performing regional bank. With this acquisition, Key will be the leading bank in Upstate New York with a strong presence across the North East, Midwest and Pacific Northwest. KeyCorp said its dividend will continue for the next two quarters at the current $0.075 per share then increase to $0.085 cents per share in the second quarter of 2016 as originally included in its 2015 plan. The just bygone quarter demonstrated the successful execution of the company's model, which has allowed it to continue to add and expand client relationships and to grow revenue. Capital remains a strength of the company with a common equity Tier 1 ratio of 10.5%. In the third quarter, KeyCorp repurchased $123 million of common stock. KeyCorp's third-quarter profit rose 18% from last year, reflecting strength in its core fee-based businesses that was partly offset by an increase in provision for credit losses. Earnings per share missed analysts' expectations by a penny, while revenues beat their estimates. Net income attributable to KeyCorp was $213 million or $0.25 per share, up from $180 million or $0.21 per share in the year-ago period. During the latest quarter, Key incurred costs of $19 million or $0.01 per share related to a pension settlement charge. Earnings per share from continuing operations rose to $0.26 from $0.23 last year. On average, 32 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected earnings of $0.27 per share. Analysts' estimates typically exclude certain special items. Total revenue increased 7% to $1.07 billion from $998 million last year and beat analysts' consensus estimate of $1.05 billion for the quarter. Net interest income on a taxable-equivalent basis rose 3% from last year to $598 million, as higher earning asset balances offset lower earning asset yields. Non-interest income grew 13% to $470 million due to strength in Key's core fee-based businesses, which included a full-quarter impact of the September 2014 Pacific Crest Securities acquisition. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News The son of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin has been arrested on domestic-violence and weapon charges after he allegedly battered his girlfriend during an argument. Track Palin, a U.S. army veteran, has been charged with assault, interfering with the reporting of domestic violence, and possessing a gun while intoxicated. According to police officials in Wasilla, Alaska, Track's girlfriend Jordan Loewe called 911 to report that he had punched her in the face and that he had a firearm. His girlfriend was concerned that he would take his own life with an AR-15 rifle, the Alaska Dispatch News reports. The alleged assault reportedly took place at Sarah Palin's home, but the former VP candidate was in Iowa to endorse Donald Trump for president at the time of the incident. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Political News .. 893 893 . . A first-of-its-kind journey along India and Pakistan border What binds the two most talked about nations - India and Pakistan together? What makes the I give my consent to Sakshi Post to be in touch with me via email for the purpose of event marketing and corporate communications. Privacy Policy SNc Channels: Search About Salem-News.com Jan-19-2016 23:14 TweetFollow @OregonNews Saudi Arabia Suspect in Revenge Attacks Against Iran Investigators in Iran say they have also uncovered terrorist plots against Iranian embassies in other countries. Iran Embassy in Yemeni Capital of Sana'a after attack. Courtesy: en.alalam.ir (SALEM, Ore.) - When the Saudi government executed Shiite Muslim scholar Nimr al-Nimr for objecting, along with a number of other Saudi citizens, to the country's discriminatory policies, an International and regional wave of opposition formed against the regime's leaders. Iran's government has increasingly condemned the Saudi regime's methods and manners while exposing the real face of Saudi leaders and officials to the whole world, with Muslims at the top of the list. Iran sent out a worldwide call and protested against Saudi Arabias divisive double standards and policies in the region that intensify conflict between Muslims. The other hot button topic is open support for ISIS that keeps flowing in. In a direct act of retaliation, Saudi Arabia broke off diplomatic ties with Iran when Iranians protested in front of the Saudi embassy in Tehran. The Saudi government then instructed other Arab countries to cut diplomatic ties with Iran in a collective effort to undermine its political front. This Saudi effort was not broadly welcomed by other countries though, and the Saudi government had to plan new strategies. One of the more recent glaring suspicions was the rocket attack on the Iranian embassy in Sana'a on 07 January 2016. RT reports that, "The Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen says it will investigate the accusation." Brigadier General Ahmed Asseri, a spokesman for the coalition, told Reuters that, "... coalition jets carried out heavy airstrikes in Sana'a on Wednesday night, targeting missile launchers used by the Houthi militia." In their article, published the day after the embassy attack, RT wrote about the dark cloud following the Saudi war against Yemen, "The coalition has been heavily criticized for the way it conducts its airstrikes, and was accused of attacking a center for the blind in Yemen on Tuesday. It was also blamed for hitting a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Sanaa in December." Investigators in Iran say they have also uncovered terrorist plots against Iranian embassies in other countries. The terrorist explosions near the Iranian embassy in Turkey are another suspected act of the Saudi government. It seems fair to ask why Saudi Arabia continues violating international law with its continual support of terrorists who follow the Wahhabi teachings so prevalent there. _________________________________________ Foreign-affairs | Human-rights | Military | Business | Most Commented on Articles for January 18, 2016 | Articles for January 19, 2016 | Articles for January 20, 2016 Judge denies conspiracy-laden effort to stop Kansas ballot drop boxes A federal judge in Kansas Wednesday denied a conspiracy-laden effort to stop the use of ballot drop boxes and electronic voting machines. 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United Arab Emirates United Kingdom of Great Britain & N. Ireland Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe By Peggy Kelly Santa Paula News The Board of Supervisors unanimously agreed Tuesday to accept a $26 million state grant to build a medical and mental health unit at Todd Road Jail, but it is still about $30 million short of the projected actual cost. The proposed 64-bed medical unit could not be reduced to be cost effective Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean told supervisors who added the caveat to their approval that the rest of the funding must be found. The proposed expansion has been a controversial one in Santa Paula: the previous City Council formally registered their opposition to the addition to the jail, located west of the city. That stance was reversed by a majority of present council, which last year cited their lack of concern with Santa Paula being identified as a jail town and noted they would deal with issues such as water later in the process if money is ever found to fund the expansion. The jail, first opened in the mid-1990s with a planned build-out of 2,100 beds, currently has beds for 840 inmates. Dean told supervisors Tuesday that a smaller medical-mental health unit is not just a matter of funds but rather, We have to have it, due to the number of inmates requiring specialized care. According to his staff report, inmate population (roughly 100 inmates) has been diagnosed with severe and persistent mental illness, requiring specialized care and housing. A higher number of inmates are taking some form of psychotropic medication. By Peggy Kelly Santa Paula News Southern California Edison continues to be in business to provide energies although there have been changes that are gradually shrinking the utility giant, those attending a recent Sunrise Santa Paula meeting learned. Also, a representative of the Santa Paula Society of the Arts noted the benefits to the business community during the annual art show. The breakfast meeting, held at Cafe Flight 126, is sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce, which also acted as the host. Rudy Gonzales, longtime SCE veteran, told the crowd that he is now the Region Manager replacing Nancy Williams, who formerly served the area and is now retired. Im covering her area now, and although Gonzales said, You probably wont see much of me but if theres a need give me a call SCE he noted, Operates differently than before, and the advent of solar, wind and other power sources means We envision a future where we are the alternate energy Leonardo Trebels, a SCE technical specialist who handles engineering and design solutions, said because of infrastructure needs and other overhead costs generating electricity has become much more expensive. Gonzales suggested that consumers whether business or residential visit the SCE website, www.sce.com to learn more about rates, energy efficiency tips, rebate programs, services and emergency preparedness. Help Children in Syria and Its Refugee Children Around the World For children in Syria who were struggling before the COVID-19 pandemic, things have only gotten worse. After 11 years of conflict and displacement, 13.4 million people, including 5 million children, are in need of humanitarian assistance amid ongoing violence and displacement. As the pandemic continues, Syrian refugee families are being pushed even further into poverty. As boys drop out of school to help their families survive, they face an increased risk of exploitation by armed groups. Girls in Syria face a high risk of child trafficking and sexual exploitation, including child marriage. Syrian children need support more than ever. Dont let them suffer a lifetime of war. Atlanta, GA -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/20/2016 -- WHO: Georgia Association for Women Lawyers & Creative Internet Authority WHAT: Conference - The Leader Within WHEN Jan. 22, 2016 WHERE: State Bar of Georgia, 104 Marietta St., Atlanta INFORMATION: 404-496-5358 IMPORTANT: Attorneys can receive 3 CLE credits for attending COST: $20 members/$25 members for CLE credit. $50 non members/$65 non-members for CLE credit A conference for attorneys in Georgia is planned for Jan. 22 at the State Bar offices in Atlanta. The event for the Georgia Association for Women Lawyers (GAWL) is co-sponsored by Creative Internet Authority (CIA), a legal marketing and technology company in metro Atlanta. Creative Internet Authority is providing breakfast and lunch for the event and those who attend. "We were asked what we could do to help with this event. Since it starts at 8 a.m. with registration and will go until 1 p.m., we decided meals are the best thing we could do. If the attorneys are going to give up most of a day to come to the seminars, they shouldn't have to be hungry while they listen," said Montina Portis, president and founder of Creative Internet Authority. Pre-ordering meals is required so GAWL can have an accurate head count. GAWL approached Ms. Portis and her firm about the sponsorship because of Creative Internet Authority's work and reputation in the metro Atlanta legal community. Since starting the company, Ms. Portis has moved into larger offices and just added more staff. "We're thankful GAWL has asked us to be a sponsor. We look forward to giving back to a profession that is giving us so much," she said. FEATURED SPEAKER Mrs. Portis is featured speaker as well. She will conduct the "7 RULES OF MARKETING: HOW TO STAND OUT FROM YOUR PEERS" seminar in the conference in the 9 a.m. Breakout B session. She will speak on the rules of marketing and how to ethically and effectively market your firm or skill set using marketing strategies that work. "Getting involved in public service is about giving back, paying it forward and being a good steward of what you have been entrusted with," Ms. Portis said. "You have the power within you to make changes. The people looking for you need to be able to find you. You have the ability to fight for them. You can do what needs to be done and your prospective clients need to be able to find you and make a decision to invest in your services." CLE CREDITS The conference will offer three CLE credits for those attending. Admission is $20 for GAWL members, $25 if CLE is included. Non member tickets are $50, $65 if CLE is included. Tickets and meal reservations are available at https://www.gawl.org/events/the-leader-within. For more information about CIA and its mission, visit http://www.creativeinternetauthority.com. For more information about GAWL, visit http://www.GAWL.org. About Creative Internet Authority Creative Internet Authority is a full-service marketing agency that works exclusively within the legal profession to help lawyers and law firms attract more clients, generate more referrals and make more money. About GAWL Founded in 1928, the Georgia Association for Women Lawyers (GAWL) proudly serves the diverse interests of women lawyers in Georgia. GAWL has been pioneering for women lawyers for over 85 years, enhancing the welfare and development of women lawyers and supporting their interests. Media Contact: Creative Internet Authority, LLC 760 Old Roswell Road Suite 220 Roswell, GA 30076 678-435-9373 Montina Portis, CEO Email: montina@creativeinternetauthority.com Url: http://creativeinternetauthority.com Pune, Maharastra -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/20/2016 -- The global market is currently in its fourth year of surplus of natural rubber. The excess supply situation has caused stocks to pile high and prices are falling steadily. It is expected that global surplus by the year 2020 will be approximately 1 million tons of natural rubber and 3 million tons of synthetic rubber.World demand for natural rubber, which is primarily used to manufacture tires, is cooling down due to the economic downturn in China. Asia accounts for 93% of the world natural rubber production with Thailand being the largest producer followed by Indonesia and Vietnam. Other large rubber producers in the region include India, China and Malaysia. Complete report available at http://www.marketreportsonline.com/442401.html. China is the world's largest consumer of natural rubber followed by India and the United States. Increasing consumption of tyres and industrial rubber products is expected to boost the global demand for natural rubbers. Indonesia is the second largest rubber producer globally behind Thailand. While the industry is faced with challenges such as low production and poor infrastructure, growing rubber demand from developing economies is expected to boost the market in 2015. Indonesia is the second largest natural rubber producer globally. The industry is currently experiencing oversupply with demand having slowed down particularly from China which is the largest buyer of rubber in the world. Sumatra is the key natural rubber producing area in Indonesia accounting for two-thirds of the rubber latex harvested followed by Kalimantan, Sulawesi and Java. 85% of the rubber producers are smallholders and they contribute 81% to the national output. Actively supporting the sector, the International Rubber Consortium, which is a body representing rubber producers Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia, has recently recommended the commodity not be sold at the current low prices. Inquire for a discount on this Indonesia Rubber Market report at http://www.marketreportsonline.com/contacts/discount.php?name=442401. Key Reasons to Buy This Rubber Market Report: The report 'Assessment of Indonesia's Rubber Industry Analysis 2015'highlights key dynamics ofIndonesia's rubber sector. The potential of the sector has been investigated along with key challenges.The current market scenario and future prospects of the sector has also been studied. The report contains profiles of key players including Bridgestone Corp, Michelin, Goodyear, Continental A.G. and Sumitomo Rubber Industries Ltd.The report contains latest verbatim of industry experts. Purchase a copy of this Indonesia rubber market research report at USD 1000 (Single User License) http://www.marketreportsonline.com/contacts/purchase.php?name=442401. Table of Contents 1. Global Rubber Industry 1.1 Overview 1.2 Market Statistics & Performance 1.3 Drivers 1.4 Challenges 1.5 Outlook 2. Indonesia Rubber Industry 2.1 Overview 2.2 Market Statistics 2.2.1 Production 2.2.2 Consumption 2.2.3 Export 2.3 Indonesia Rubber Gloves Industry 2.4 Drivers 2.5 Challenges 2.6 Outlook 3. Competitive Landscape 3.1 Bridgestone Corp 3.2 Michelin 3.3 Goodyear 3.4 Continental A.G. 3.5 Sumitomo Rubber Industries Ltd. 4. List of Charts and Graphs 4.1 World Rubber Production (2004-2014, '000 tonnes) 4.2 World Rubber Consumption (2004-2014, '000 tonnes) 4.3 Country Wise Largest Natural Rubber Consumers (2013, '000 tonnes) 4.4 Country Wise Largest Natural Rubber Consumers (2013, '000 tonnes) 4.5 World's Largest Exporters of Natural Rubber 2014 4.6 Indonesia Natural Rubber Production (2009-2014, 000 tonnes) 4.7 Indonesia Rubber Export (2010-2015E, million tonnes) 5. Research Methodology Explore more related reports on chemicals market at http://www.marketreportsonline.com/cat/chemicals-market-research.html. About MarketReportsOnline MarketReportsOnline comprises of an online library of 2,50,000 reports and in-depth market research studies of over 5000+ micro markets. We provide 24/7 online and offline support to our customers. Get in touch with us for your needs of market research reports. Sofia, Bulgaria -- (SBWIRE) -- 01/20/2016 -- Propy, an innovator in app-based real estate sales, is pleased to announce in conjunction with Martin Luther King Day celebrations that it is initiating a program to install solar panels in low-income neighborhoods. Martin Luther King, Jr. changed the world and strived for humanity and the advancement of human rights. His example has inspired Propy's vision to help families cutting their energy costs using solar power. Spearheading this effort is Samantha DeBianchi, a famous real estate broker from the reality show Million Dollar Listing on Bravo TV. She is also an ambassador and advisor for the real estate mobile app Propy in the US. The solarize program details are still being developed, but the team led by co-founders Natalia Karayaneva, Eva Otanke and several policy makers, hopes to launch the details about the initiative by Earth Day 2016 with a pilot project in a neighborhood in the US. "Propy has all the potential to be an unicorn in real estate sales" comments the CFO of the company Maria Angelova, former CFO of BNP Pariba in Bulgaria. The distinctive feature of the company is its environmental strategy. 1% of the company's revenue will be used to improve the energy efficiency in low-income areas. This was announced by the CSO Eva Otanke, the co-founder of Propy enrolling Ms in Sustainable Urban Development in the University of Oxford. All the houses and apartments listed will be evaluated from 1 to 10 on a scale of ecological compatibility. Propy is the only real estate app which will allow each home listing to have information about air pollution, public transportation, school access, walkability, noise, crime rate, building quality, and heating cost levels; all within a unique innovative Sustainability Score. This will encourage people to pay more attention to additional values of their homes. About Propy Propy is founded by Oxford grads from Europe and winners of a Bulgarian Hackaton. For the first time, the new app will feature a marketplace created for international homebuyers which will enable them to browse properties from all over the world - from New York and San Francisco to Dubai and Malaysia. It also engages brokers to show their activities and buyers to write reviews about viewings. Propy provides all information both in Mandarin and English and allows users to see which brokers checked-in the properties available for sale. One of the founders of Propy, Natalia Karayaneva, is a real estate developer that has built a number of award-winning condos for foreign investors in Europe. As a top expert in the area of real estate and sustainability, she has dreamed of creating such a platform. Along with a recent study of Sustainable Urban Development in the University of Oxford, she developed the sustainability assessment approach for real estate, which was supported by developers and green building certifications providers. Yes, Propy's team has a dream: a single app to connect home buyers and sellers in global cities and make an impact for sustainable housing. The mission is to increase the transparency on the real estate market and help the market players to pay higher attention to sustainability. Join the team's ideas on facebook page. A public health emergency is causing 3.3 million premature deaths a year more than malaria and HIV combined. But the culprit isnt a disease pandemic: its the toxic air polluting the worlds major cities. In Indias capital Delhi, the situation is so desperate that the authorities recently trialled a scheme in which drivers could only use their cars on alternate days. Delhi is the worlds most polluted city, with levels of fine particulates a staggering ten times greater than the WHOs recommended limit, and India is home to 13 of the worlds 20 most polluted cities. But this isnt just an Indian problem. In 2014, the WHO estimated that half the worlds urban population live where air pollution is more than 2.5 times the recommended limit. [1] When it releases updated air pollution data for 2,000 global cities next month, it will reveal that a bleak picture has got even worse. The impacts are severe: not only does pollution damage the environment and contribute to climate change, it also increases the incidence of respiratory diseases such as asthma, and causes strokes and heart attacks. As for solutions, academic research and media coverage largely focus on government action. Indeed, the inclusion of air quality standards in the new Sustainable Development Goals will hopefully encourage countries and local authorities to develop new policies. But the onus isnt just on governments: the private sector must also act to cut emissions. Industrial growth is a major driver of the crisis, particularly in rapidly industrialising countries across the global South. This is where most of the worlds urban population growth is taking place, with young people relocating from villages to cities in search of work. Multinationals now commonly accept they have an obligation to minimise their environmental damage, by reporting on emissions and taking steps to reduce energy use or green their energy supply. But these efforts are usually confined to factory operations and office buildings that come under a firms direct control. Its time multinationals went further, and took greater responsibility for their subcontracting the firms who transport their goods and equipment, for example. Businesses should include estimates of the environmental impact of these activities in company sustainability reports and offer financial incentives to contractors who use clean fuels. Similarly, companies that transport staff to and from work could provide clean-energy vehicles or, where clean public transit is available, offer incentives to those employees who elect to use it. Finally, companies could relocate operations from over-polluted urban areas to rural ones where people are in need of employment. The combination of emissions from expanding factories and the transport pollution generated by population growth has made developing megacities notorious. In Delhi, industrial pollution and transport combine with underlying geography a landlocked megacity with poor ventilation to produce lingering smog. [2,3] In Beijing, pollution is driven largely by industrial coal burning, while in Latin American cities such as Mexico City and Santiago, transport is the major culprit. [4] Since companies congregate in urban areas to take advantage of existing transport and power infrastructure, as well as the availability of skilled labour, relocation would require substantial public investment in rural infrastructure and education of rural workers. But given that the huge health bill will carry on rising if we continue to fail to act, its an investment well worth making and we urgently need to show companies and governments data that demonstrates just how costly inaction will be. Thanks to robotic gliders, South African researchers are making gains in ocean R&D, writes Munyaradzi Makoni. Eddies circular currents of water move deep water nutrients to the surface, but their overall effect on the Southern Ocean and the earths changing climate is barely understood. The Southern Ocean, also called the Antarctic Ocean or the Austral Ocean, has high species abundance and diversity, making common and highly specialised species thrive [1]. Sailing the seas for longer periods has become inadequate to help scientists in South Africa unravel the underlying mysteries. But thanks to robotic gliders, the Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observatory (SOCCO) researchers under the South Africas Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) are observing the oceans physical processes, studying their impacts on carbon dioxide exchange between the atmosphere and ocean, and the growth of phytoplankton microscopic algae that live on the ocean surface. These cutting-edge robotic gliders will shape the future of marine research and environmental monitoring of the Southern Ocean and South African waters, says Sebastiaan Swart, a principal scientist with the CSIR. The data may reveal how human activity is changing the planet, he hopes. The Southern Ocean accounts for 50 per cent of all carbon dioxide absorbed by the oceans, Sandy Thomalla, a CSIR senior researcher, writes in SOCCO bulletin. [2] These cutting-edge robotic gliders will shape the future of marine research and environmental monitoring of the Southern Ocean and South African waters. Sebastiaan Swart, South Africas Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) For Swart, sensitivity of the Southern Ocean to climate change is a prime concern because the creatures living there are susceptible to minor environmental shifts, possibly leading to large changes in global ocean currents. Our one [of] research gaps that we hope to address with these gliders, in conjunction with satellites and computer models, is better understanding the role of small-scale features such as ocean eddies and currents and short term events [storms] on the overall state of the ocean, Swart says. Before glider technology was available, he says, measuring these forms of features and variability were impossible investigations from research ships and satellite data alone were not enough. Diving new depths September 2012 marked the first Southern Ocean glider deployments near the remote Gough Island, about 2000 kilometres south west of Cape Town. Gliders collected and sent data back from one of the worlds harshest environments directly to scientists at CSIR for six months. Satellite communications were remotely used to control the location and depth of the robots, according to Swart and colleagues, in an article published in the South African Journal of Science in 2012. [3] Since then, Swart says, additional long-endurance robotics experiments have taken place on an annual basis. Enhancing our understanding of how the Southern Ocean works and interacts with climate today will leave us in a position to better mitigate the effects of climate change tomorrow, he says. The robotic gliders fleet totals nine and could increase to match growing needs of the global researchers. Four surface wave gliders ride the ocean surface measuring CO, acidity, among other surface ocean physical variables. Five profiling gliders can dive to a maximum depth of one kilometre below the ocean surface, Stewart tells SciDev.Net. When deployed, the gliders tweet data to scientists in Cape Town where it is stored, analysed and eventually made available to the global researchers, explains Swart. CSIR researchers combine analysis of data from surface wave and profiling gliders by pairing them together while deployed in the ocean, providing a complete picture of changes in the water, he adds. Tailor-made technology The gliders are manufactured in the United States, but modified in South Africa through adding and building new sensors to suit local needs, and maintained by the CSIR-led South Africa Marine Engineering and Robotics Centre (SAMERC), and a marine technology company, Sea Technology Services. Swart, one of South Africas architects of robotic ocean glider programme, values imparting expertise in using the ocean gliders to engineering students at SAMERC by South African marine engineers. He says students gain, unique and advanced skills, which can be expanded across the rest of the continent as they complete their in-service at the centre. Yearly young black South African engineers are trained to use this advanced ocean technology, particularly the use of robots and scientific sensors, he says, adding are young marine scientists have been graduating from the countrys universities. Each year, the gliders are sent out to collect more data from the severe Southern Ocean environment, Swart told SciDev.Net at the beginning of the fourth Southern Ocean robotics experiment in October last year. Four gliders were deployed from the SA Agulhas II, South Africas Antarctic research vessel, in the frigid and stormy winter sea. Ocean prediction is an initial condition problem, so if we can improve our ocean state estimate at the nowcast stage, then we improve our forecast skill for tomorrow. Bjorn Backeberg, University of Cape Town We hope these gliders will continue making measurements until late summer in 2016 or approximately a year in total, he says. Marjolaine Krug, a senior CSIR researcher with the Ecosystem Earth Observation group, led a six-week experiment offshore of Port Elizabeth the site of a strong current along South Africas east coast in April 2015, demonstrating the tough possibility for the gliders to navigate and collect data in areas dominated by strong currents. Boosting ocean research Ocean models must be combined with ocean observations in order to limit model errors at the nowcast [short-term weather forecast] stage to provide a better estimate of the ocean state, says Bjorn Backeberg, an oceanographer and a co-director of South Africa-based University of Cape Towns Nansen-Tutu Centre for Marine Environmental Research. Ocean prediction is an initial condition problem, so if we can improve our ocean state estimate at the nowcast stage, then we improve our forecast skill for tomorrow. Backeberg adds that historical reliance on measurements gathered by ships to obtain data on the ocean interior was incredibly expensive due to the large running costs of the ships. He explains that robots are cheaper at collecting data in severe ocean conditions, and depending on battery power gliders can collect high-resolution information for up to six months and provide consistent data throughout the year. Moreover, a ship at sea for three months is much more expensive and observations generally more sporadic in both space and time. Hiring the research vessel, SA Agulhas II costs approximately 300,000 rand (about US$18,000) a day. A deployed glider daily costs far less about 3,000 rand (about US$181). The future of marine conservation? According to Backeberg the information collected by these robots now provides a vital component to understanding of fish stock health, fish migration and distribution patterns, although some challenges remain. [The gliders] rely on acoustic [sound] measurements to estimate fish stock sizes, but acoustic measurements are unable to tell you what type of fish is being monitored, he says, noting that ship measurements and stock assessment trawls are required to help researchers address this challenge. Still, Backeberg backs the use of unmanned robots as an important component of future marine conservation to monitor the ocean in combination with existing methods, such as ship surveys and satellite measurements. Huge economic benefits promise exists Efforts to improve ocean governance and resource management through technology will be able to feed directly into South Africas initiative to unlock the potential of its blue economy, dubbed Operation Phakisa, Swart says. President Jacob Zuma of South Africa launched the Phakisa programme in October 2014 to maximise the enormous economic potential of oceans while preserving them. Zuma said ocean activity contributed 54 billion rand (about US$3.2 million) to South Africas economy and accounted for about 316,000 jobs in 2010. [4]Swart sees successful glider research missions potentially leading to economic growth.Gliders are a key part of unlocking the wealth of our ocean blue economy. They can assist in understanding the ocean, protecting and managing its resources, and manage disasters and pollution, he says.Disclaimer: Internews Environmental Journalism Network sponsored Munyaradzi Makoni to write this article.This piece was produced by SciDev.Nets Sub-Saharan Africa English desk. The year 2015 may have been the hottest on record. After a year of extremes, including a strangely warm December, the NOAA has ranged 2015 as the warmest to date. "2015 was by far the record year in all of the temperature datasets that are based on the instrumental and surface data," said Gavin Schmidt, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at NASA, in an interview with The Washington Post. "It really underlines the fact that the planet really is still warming, there is no change in the long term global warming rate, and we know why that is." In fact, U.S. data suggests that 2015 broke the temperature record by the widest margin ever recorded. However, this wasn't much of a surprise. The Met Office predicted that 2015 would be between .52 and .76 above the long-term average. The actual temperature came in near the top end of that forecast. "Looking ahead, 2016 looks like it's also going to be another warm year and that's associated with the fact that human influence on the climate through greenhouse gas emissions has pushed us into new territory," said Peter Stott from the British meteorological organization's Hadley research center, in an interview with BBC News. Nine of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred this century. With the latest recordings, it's more important than ever to take steps to help curtail warming in the future. Even a small increase in temperature has major implications for our planet, from melting ice at the poles to increased chances for extreme droughts and floods like those seen across the U.S. last year. Related Articles Warmer Oceans May Create Superstorms in the Future with 80 Percent More Destructive Power Fires Did Not Create Major Landscape Changes, Study Reveals For more great science stories and general news, please visit our sister site, Headlines and Global News (HNGN). Barring state agencies from interacting with refugees will hurt law-enforcement efforts, S.C. Law Enforcement Division chief Mark Keel told state senators Tuesday. The senators are considering two proposals that would restrict refugee resettlement in South Carolina. One bill would bar state agencies from interacting with refugees in South Carolina. Keel said that ban would limit the ability of law enforcement to learn who the refugees are and where they are located. The federal government does not provide information about refugees to state law enforcement, he added. The Senate panels chairman, Lee Bright, R-Spartanburg, said senators will address Keels concern by amending the proposal. However, others testified the Senate proposals are unneeded. The systems to provide for the safe resettlement of refugees already are in place, Ted Goins, president of Lutheran Services Carolinas, wrote in a letter to the senators. That group has assisted 1,500 refugees over the past 10 years, none of which has been charged with a crime, he added. Goins said the resettlement program has a sophisticated, multi-layered approach to vetting refugees before they enter the United States. Refugees now in South Carolina already have been screened by the U.S. State Department and Homeland Security, as well as the FBI, Goins said. Senators did not take any action on the refugee proposals Tuesday but will continue hearing testimony. Cassie Cope: 803-771-8657, @cassielcope COLUMBIA, S.C. A Senate committee unanimously agreed on Wednesday that interim South Carolina Department of Transportation Secretary Christy Hall should hold the job permanently, and forwarded its recommendation to the full Senate. But the Senate right now can't agree on much else about South Carolina roads. For a second year, business leaders, drivers who have hit a growing number of potholes, and the House are clamoring for the Senate to pass a roads bill. The proposal passed last year by the House is at the top of the Senate's calendar. But every day this session, senators have carried the bill over. Senate President Hugh Leatherman has ordered four Democratic senators and four Republicans to talk behind closed doors to come up with a solution. Gov. Nikki Haley has said she will back any deal that includes more money for roads even through an increased gas tax; an equal tax cut, likely on income taxes; and restructuring of the board that runs the DOT. Most lawmakers agree all three items are necessary to get something passed. "Is there any consensus on anything? I'll tell you what, the answer so far is it is all over the book," said Sen. Ray Cleary, R-Murrells Inlet, who is helping a Democrat run the bipartisan group and who has been given the task for years of getting road funding reform through the Senate. That was evident at Wednesday's Senate Transportation Committee meeting. Several senators praised Hall's work so far at DOT. She was leading the agency during October's historic floods that closed more than 500 state roads and bridges. Senators said her employees worked tirelessly to fix highways and kept them up to date, so they could talk to their constituents. But all that unanimity faded after voting to send Hall's appointment to the full Senate, which will almost certainly give her the job next week. The committee then took up a bill to change the way the DOT Commission is appointed. Under the bill, the governor would pick nine commissioners from around the state instead of having legislators appoint one member from each of the state's seven congressional districts, plus an at-large pick from the governor. Transportation Committee Chairman Sen. Larry Grooms asked the committee to approve the bill so that some sort of restructuring plan could be sent to the Senate floor. He said lawmakers could alter the plan later. Instead, the committee sent the bill back to a subcommittee. Sen. Thomas McElveen, D-Sumter, didn't like the congressional district idea, saying the same commissioner shouldn't be responsible for the two-lane Interstate 85 bottleneck near Gaffney and widening U.S. 521 nearly 140 miles away linking Sumter to Interstate 20. He suggested a bigger board with less area to cover geographically. Sen. Chip Campsen said in theory, the congressional district idea was best because they are drawn to be even in population. "But maybe we should just abolish the whole thing. I might be for that too," said Campsen, R-Isle of Palms. All that arguing was without addressing thornier issues over money whether to raise the gas tax and how much and where and how much to cut taxes. There were even disputes about which senators were included in an eight-member group conducting closed-door road negotiations. Grooms, R-Charleston, wondered why he wasn't on it; he said few in the Statehouse know more about state roads and the governance of DOT than him. "It is kind of odd I wasn't asked to do that," he said. "There are always reasons for things. It could be there are some people who don't want a solution." ___ Follow Jeffrey Collins on Twitter at http://twitter.com/JSCollinsAP. His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/jeffrey-collins The new office forms one of three global hubs covering that cover along with similar hubs in Europe and the US. Speaking at a ceremony for the opening of its new Singapore office, Inmarsat ceo Rupert Pearce, described it as a step change for the company in the Lion City. He said last year Inmarsats Singapore office grew by 25% and similar growth is expected this year. As a regional hub all the logistics for installing Inmarsat systems onboard vessels across Asia will be run from Singapore. Ronald Spithout, president of Inmarsat Maritime told Seatrade Maritime News that 50% of its maritime business is in Asia, in part driven by the shipbuilding industry in Korea, Japan and China and installations of systems on newbuildings. The first quarter of this year will see the launch of Inmarsats Global Xpress service for the shipping industry after the successful launch of the third satellite and this is expected to drive further growth. Singapore has been Inmarsats Asia Pacific headquarters since 2008. Through this facility, we are confirming our on-going commitment to Singapore as the base for our regional operations, Pearce said. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 2016-12 The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that Susan Nash, Associate Director in the Division of Investment Management, will leave the agency at the end of January. Ms. Nash has been a key architect of disclosure policy for mutual funds and other investment companies, and has led the divisions oversight of variable annuity and variable life insurance products. Susans judgment, dedication, and commitment to excellence have substantially contributed to the Division of Investment Management, said David Grim, Director of the Division of Investment Management. In particular, Susans tireless work to enhance disclosure has significantly helped Americas investors. Ms. Nash has played an instrumental role in many of the SECs disclosure policy initiatives for mutual funds and other investment companies, including the mutual fund summary prospectus, improvements to fee and performance disclosures, electronic document delivery, harmonization of SEC and Commodity Futures Trading Commission requirements for dual registrants, tailored disclosure requirements for variable life insurance, and implementation of Sarbanes-Oxley Act requirements. Most recently, Ms. Nash has played a leadership role in the SEC staffs active engagement with the Financial Stability Oversight Council in the analysis of potential financial stability risks posed by asset management activities and products. It has been my privilege for many years to serve as a member of the SECs staff as we have worked to protect investors; maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets; and facilitate capital formation, said Ms. Nash. I am especially proud of the hard work that our dedicated and talented team in the division undertakes every day to improve the information provided to mutual fund and variable annuity investors who rely on these products to fund their retirement, childrens education, and other critical financial needs. Ms. Nash previously served in a number of positions in the Division of Investment Management, including Assistant Director in the Office of Insurance Products and Senior Adviser to the Director. She joined the SECs Office of General Counsel in 1989 and served as counsel to former Chairman Richard C. Breeden before joining the Division of Investment Management in 1993. Ms. Nash is a recipient of the SECs Arthur F. Matthews Award, recognizing sustained demonstrated creativity in applying federal securities laws for the benefit of investors, as well as the SECs Law and Policy, Capital Markets, and Regulatory Simplification Awards. Before joining the SEC, Ms. Nash was in private practice in Washington, D.C. She received her bachelors degree from the University of Notre Dame, masters degree from the University of Chicago, and law degree from Harvard Law School. Californians should be outraged that, once again, individuals with developmental disabilities and their families are being shortchanged in Gov. Jerry Browns budget. The governor has proposed a tax on health plans that could generate funds for the developmental disability system, but passage is uncertain and the revenue is far from adequate to restore the $1 billion in funding cuts since 2008. With a $3.6 billion surplus factored into the budget, the money is available to restore the $1.1 billion in funding for services and support desperately needed for individuals with developmental disabilities. Obviously, people with developmental disabilities are not a priority for Brown. The proposed 2016-17 state budget earmarks $80 million for one year to fund a couple of minimally used programs, but it does nothing to address the needs of more than 90 percent of Californians with such developmental disabilities as autism, cerebral palsy and Down syndrome who receive support and services not included in the governors proposal. The governor is being disingenuous by coupling any relief to those with developmental disabilities with a new tax that has little likelihood of passing in the Assembly. Health plans have nothing to do with underfunded services for this population. California spends less than any other state to support individuals with developmental disabilities. Reimbursement rates for caregivers and service providers have been frozen since 1996, while at the same time the cost of living across the state has increased. According to the governors own Department of Developmental Services, nearly 25,000 state and local support and service providers in California have closed since 2011. At this rate, there will be no providers supporting children with special needs and disabilities in the state by 2025. If California does not implement an across-the-board 10 percent restoration of funding in 2016, an estimated 302,000 children, youth and adults with developmental disabilities will lose crucial services. These include: Developmental screenings, critical early intervention services, school readiness programs, inclusive preschools, special educational programs or physical, speech and occupational therapies. Day-to-day support for adults such as transportation, vocational assessment and training, supported-living programs, job coaching, job placement, courses in social skills, educational enrichment, personal health, safety, and community involvement. Training for parents on how to care for their child. Support groups, peer-to-peer support networks, mentor programs, educational programs and developmental care resources will evaporate. We are proud that we have been able to provide services to thousands of people in the community in spite of state budget cuts and freezes over the past two decades. However, the state needs to act now. We support a 10 percent across-the-board restoration of funding, and 5 percent annual increases to address the incredibly high cost of living in California and to account for 10 percent growth in the number of individuals needing services. As the states economy improved, we hoped to see a commitment from our elected officials to restore and stabilize services. We ask that the governor and our legislators work together to rescue the failing state system, which since 1977 has promised to serve those with developmental disabilities. We should all be embarrassed that the richest state in the nation is last in support of individuals with developmental disabilities. Change will come only with an outcry from the public. Please help us continue our mission of empowering people with special needs to achieve their full potential. Tweet @JerryBrownGov. Use #MakeJerryCare. Bryan Neider is CEO of Gatepath, a Bay Area nonprofit serving children, youth and adults with special needs and disabilities for 95 years. Jenni Moran is the executive director of Desert Haven Enterprises, a nonprofit organization that serves nearly 600 people with developmental disabilities in northern Los Angeles County. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 Courtesy Letterform Archive Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Courtesy Letterform Archive Show More Show Less 3 of 3 San Francisco Center for the Books Without Type: The Dynamism of Handmade Letters arrives this week, in praise of hand lettering in its many creative manifestations, with pieces from the Letterform Archive, a new Potrero Hill design library. Pulling from the nonprofits 15,000-plus artifacts, Letterform curator Rob Saunders and collections associate Kate Robinson have selected works that range across time and geography from a 15th century Flemish Book of Hours page by a meticulous unknown artist to the 1980s-era Stream Joy by Toko Shinoda, which finds its flow between calligraphy and abstraction. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 Courtesy Brian Gross Fine Art Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Courtesy Brian Gross Fine Art Show More Show Less 3 of 3 One can make out hints of the man behind the late Bay Area artist Leo Valledors paintings, now on exhibit in Color Space at Brian Gross Fine Art. The rhythmic rat-a-tat repetition of electric-hued zigzags in his 1967 Current embodies the jazz that rang through the Fillmore district, where the San Francisco native was born and raised. The red, white, blue and yellow geometric forms of A.I.R. (Artist in Residence) evoke a deconstructed flag of the Philippines a reflection of Valledor's heritage. Valledor died in 1989, but the optical verve of his work continues to resonate. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The second victim killed in Tuesdays rollover bus crash in San Jose was identified Wednesday as a 76-year-old Salinas woman, officials said, and the driver of the Greyhound coach told investigators he was fatigued at the time of the crash, but not asleep as some witnesses previously reported. Maria De Jesus Ortiz Velasquez was one of two women killed when they were ejected from a Greyhound bus that crashed during a heavy rainstorm around 6:40 a.m. in the northbound lanes of Highway 101 near the Highway 85 flyover, the California Highway Patrol said. The bus landed on its right side straddling the center concrete median barrier. Ortiz was on the bus heading first to San Francisco, with plans to travel later to Salinas to meet one of her daughters, 45-year-old Norma Ivarra. Ivarra heard about the crash from one of her co-workers Tuesday and, unable to contact her mother, spent the afternoon calling authorities and going from hospital to hospital in the San Jose area searching for her. Also killed in the crash was Fely Olivera, 51, who had moved to San Francisco from the Philippines a few months ago to be closer to her son, Antonio, and was returning from Los Angeles on Tuesday, where she had been visiting two of her other children. More for you 2 dead, at least 13 hurt in bus crash on Highway 101 in San Jose Antonio Olivera, a patient care assistant at UCSF Medical Center, spent three hours waiting for his mother at the Greyhound station in San Francisco on Tuesday morning after she didnt show up as expected. He said he spoke to her by phone while she was on her way north, but he was unable to reach her after the crash. CHP officials later broke the news to him. Crash during storm Both women died of injuries suffered when they were ejected from the bus. The bus crashed during a heavy rainstorm, the CHP said. It appeared the bus first struck the center divider about 30 feet from the Highway 101-Highway 85 split, where it rolled onto the median. It was unclear what caused the crash, but one passenger said the driver, identified by the CHP as Gary Bonslater, 58, had pulled over prior to the wreck complaining of tiredness. An earlier report from the CHP incorrectly stated Bonslaters age as 22. The bus driver fell asleep. He pulled over 5 miles back to catch himself, but he didnt have any energy, the passenger, who was not identified, told reporters at the scene. Bonslater said he was fatigued but was awake at the time of the crash. He told investigators he had stopped in Gilroy to let off a few passengers and had gotten coffee, said Officer Chris Miceli, a CHP spokesman. The driver told investigators he fully remembered the bus ramming into impact attenuator barrels before it rolled over the median. The next thing he knew, Miceli said, Bonslater came to with the bus on its side. He suffered minor injuries in the crash. At least nine of the 21 people aboard the bus were taken to hospitals with injuries, including an 8-year-old who was sent to an emergency room as a precaution. A Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority bus was used to transport passengers with lesser injuries from the crash site. CHP officials said that the cause of the crash is being probed by the agencys Multidisciplinary Accident Investigation Team, which is called in for major incidents. A spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board said the agency had dispatched a team to investigate the crash. We will be fully cooperating with local authorities as the investigation progresses, said Lanesha Gipson, a Greyhound spokeswoman. At a news conference in Gilroy on Wednesday, Jennifer Morrison, lead investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, said a team from the agency will be working over the coming days, in concert with the CHP, to try to determine what caused the crash. They will be looking at everything from roadway conditions to mechanical failure to human error. She said the bus was equipped with seat belts and a camera had been recovered, though it was unclear whether it captured any footage of what led to the crash. Time between shifts Federal regulations require drivers to take at least eight hours off after working a 10-hour shift, Gipson said, but Greyhound requires drivers to take nine hours off. On a weekly basis, drivers are allowed to work no more than 60 hours in any seven-day period, provided the carrier doesnt operate every day of the week, according to the Motor Carrier Safety Administration. If the carrier does operate every day of the week, drivers can work no more than 70 hours in any eight-day period. Greyhound did not immediately respond to questions on how many hours Bonsalter had worked in the week before the crash. Last month, regulators issued a final ruling requiring the use of electronic logging devices to keep track of commercial drivers hours, as opposed to paper logs, which have been in use since the 1930s. This is a win for all motorists on our nations roadways, Scott Darling, acting administrator of the agency, said in a statement. Employing technology to ensure that commercial drivers comply with federal hours-of-service rules will prevent crashes and save lives. Fatal bus crashes have been on the rise in California in recent years, with four in 2010, one in 2011, four in 2012, 11 in 2013 and 17 in 2014, according to the most recent data available from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. It was not clear how many of those fatalities involved Greyhound buses. Kale Williams and Jenna Lyons are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. E-mail: kwilliams@sfchronicle.com , jlyons@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfkale, @JennaJourno This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A San Mateo state senator is renewing his effort to have the $500 fine for "California stop" red-light violations reduced to a sum that low-income people can afford. Sen. Jerry Hill thinks the current punishment for the slow, rolling right-hand turns doesn't fit the crime. He introduced legislation last week that would cut the fine in half. In California, a red-light violation costs a driver about $500, by far the highest fine in the nation, according to the traffic-watch site TheNewspaper.com. The fine is a whopping $540 in Hill's district in San Mateo County. In most states, it's around $100. "Many people are making $3,000 a month, $2,500 and when you take taxes, their net take-home pay, this is over a fourth of what they take home," Hill told ABC 7. In 2014, Redflex Traffic System, which administers the red-light camera ticketing program for the city of San Mateo, issued 4,462 tickets worth $2.4 million, according to TheNewspaper. Sixty-three percent of these tickets went to drivers who made "California stops," also known as "Hollywood stops." The exorbitant fine can make drivers reluctant to make even legal right-hand turns at red-light camera intersections, causing traffic to back up behind them. Would you trust a camera to recognize that you came to full stop before turning? This isn't the first time Hill has tackled the fine in the Legislature. A bill authored as an assemblyman passed in 2010, but then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed it, arguing a reduced fine would send the wrong message to drivers about traffic safety. State Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, took a cut at the issue in 2013, writing a bill to prohibit use of the camera tickets merely to raise revenue, and to make it easier to fight them in court. But Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed it. "There are accuracy issues, privacy issues and due process issues with these tickets," Simitian told the Chronicle's Kevin Fagan. "The trouble is that more and more cities depend on this for revenue." Simitian does not advocate that red-light cameras should be eliminated, saying they do have a safety value. "I just don't think the current system gives the public a fair shake," he said. The state Department of Finance estimated in 2014 that red-light cameras bring in more than $80 million annually to the state and $50 million to cities and counties. Three railcars carrying contaminated sulfuric acid derailed Wednesday morning in Martinez, but they were intact and none of the material leaked, a county hazardous materials official said. While authorities said the incident posed no harm to surrounding communities, Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia called it a near miss, and said it raised questions about rail safety. Had any of the sulfuric acid leaked, it could have caused real harm, he said. Rail travel goes through a number of neighborhoods in this community, including my own, and this could have been much worse. Around 7:30 a.m., the Union Pacific cars left the track along Marina Vista Avenue under the Interstate 680 overpass near the Benicia Bridge, said Amanda Ackerman, a hazardous materials specialist with the Contra Costa County Department of Public Health. Crews from the countys hazardous materials team responded and examined the cars, one of which appeared to be nearly on its side. All of the cars looked to be intact, and there was no indication any material had seeped out, Ackerman said. The tracks where the derailment occurred are owned by Eco Services, a sulfuric acid supplier and regeneration facility, but Union Pacific dispatched its own crews to the scene to assist, said Francisco Castillo, a company spokesman. The cars were delivering spent sulfuric acid, which was laden with contaminated hydrocarbon, to Eco Services. The contaminated acid can be flammable as well as corrosive because of the hydrocarbons, but Ackerman said the derailment did not endanger surrounding communities because no leaks occurred. Luckily, there havent been any spills, everything appears to be safe and we havent had to call for any action on the part of the community members in the area, she said. The cause of the derailment was under investigation, Castillo said. Cranes were brought in Wednesday afternoon to right the upended railcars and remove them from the area. Kale Williams is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: kwilliams@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfkale City Hall was unusually quiet Tuesday as it stirred from a three-day weekend. But behind the scenes a series of power plays were unfurling between Supervisor Jane Kim and Mayor Ed Lee as the 5 p.m. deadline to put certain measures on the June ballot neared. The mayor and his staff were unhappy with a proposed Charter amendment by Kim to give the Board of Supervisors the authority to increase the minimum percentage of below-market-rate units that must be included in new development projects. Thats because they were already working on the same goal, although on a longer time frame and with a number of stakeholders Kim is not part of that group. So what do you do when you both want the same thing more affordable housing but have different ideas about how much and how to get there? And then theres the question of who gets the credit. In City Hall, the politicians duke it out with competing ballot measures they can use as bargaining chips in later negotiations. And those measures are revealed to the other side just minutes before the Department of Elections is about to close. So at 4:24 p.m., the mayors deputy chief of staff, Jason Elliott, walked into the Department of Elections to drop off the mayors ballot measure, intended in part to undercut Kims initiative. Four minutes later, Kims aide, April Veneracion, walked into the Department of Elections to submit a counterstrike to the mayors measure, which Kim had gotten wind of earlier in the day. Ill show you mine if you show me yours, Elliott told Veneracion. And then they huddled over the dueling measures to see who had outplayed the other. Heres what they were looking at: At least 25% affordable Kims initiative would give the Board of Supervisors the power to determine how much affordable housing new developments must provide. But it would set a floor of 25 percent. Thats to say, even if the board were to fiddle with the numbers, it could never go below 25 percent. The mayors measure also says the supervisors get the power to set the percentage. But instead of mandating a 25 percent floor the mayors office criticizes that number as arbitrary it says the city controller and Planning Department should figure out the best percentage and then forward legislation to the Board of Supervisors based on that analysis, perhaps on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis. Room for negotiations While Tuesday was the deadline to get the measures on the June ballot, there is still room for negotiations, and either side could also pull its measure by March 4. Indeed, thats just what Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who supports Kims measure, has in mind. Hopefully, we can all work this out, he said. But that wasnt the only gamesmanship going on Tuesday. Supervisor Scott Wiener also turned to the June ballot as a bargaining chip in his efforts to get an ordinance passed that would make projects that are 100 percent affordable exempt from the conditional use approval process. Developments are subject to a conditional use vetting to show that they are necessary and desirable. Wiener says eliminating that process could speed up the creation of 100 percent affordable developments by three to six months. But the legislation only got through the Planning Commission last month on a 3-3 vote, in part because of concern that it would shortcut the publics right to comment. Behind the scenes, Wiener believes it had less to do with the legislation than a desire to prevent him from scoring a legislative victory in his upcoming election for state Senate against Kim. Political gamesmanship Either way, he is nervous the legislation will stall at the Board of Supervisors because the progressives have a 6-5 majority. By putting the measure on the June ballot, hes telling his colleagues to pass the ordinance or have him campaign on a feel-good measure that voters are likely to pass. Wiener has made no secret that putting the measure on the June ballot is all part of the political game. My strong preference is to pass it at the Board of Supervisors, he said. Emily Green is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: egreen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @emilytgreen This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Mayor Ed Lee has followed through on his pledge to veto legislation that would allow bicyclists to roll through stop signs instead of coming to a full stop. In a letter to the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, Lee wrote that the ordinance does not promote balanced public safety for all the diverse users of our streets; rather, it trades safety for convenience. Therefore, this is not a policy I can allow this city to endorse. The mayors veto puts an end, at least for now, to legislation that generated strong feelings on both sides. It passed the Board of Supervisors on a 6-5 vote last week, but eight votes would be needed to override the mayors veto. The legislation sought to make ticketing bicyclists who roll through stop signs the lowest priority for San Francisco police. It would have permitted bicyclists to treat a stop sign as a yield sign and ride through without stopping, at a speed 6 mph or less, if they decided it was safe. It was championed by Supervisor John Avalos, who described it as a common-sense measure that would force the police to spend time on more pressing priorities. Critics countered that it endangered peoples lives. Emily Green Senate sniping: We knew the state Senate race between Supervisors Scott Wiener and Jane Kim was going to get good and it has. The Wiener camp commissioned a poll that surprise, surprise shows Wiener off to a fast start. The poll, conducted by EMC Research, surveyed 600 voters in the state Senate district last month and found that 39 percent said theyll vote for Wiener. Twenty-four percent said theyll vote for Kim, and 4 percent said theyll vote for little-known Republican challenger David Carlos Salaverry. The rest said theyre undecided. The poll also showed that 58 percent of voters know who Wiener is, but just 39 percent know Kim. When asked whether being a strong leader and being effective and getting things done better describe Wiener or Kim, respondents were twice as likely to say Wiener. I think Supervisor Kim has a huge gulf to bridge, said Maggie Muir, Wieners campaign manager. I think she got a late start in her fundraising, and her endorsements certainly carry less weight. Kims big endorsements include former state Sen. John Burton, former Assemblyman Tom Ammiano and Public Defender Jeff Adachi. Wieners include U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, state Attorney General Kamala Harris and state Sen. Mark Leno. Eric Jaye, Kims campaign manager, said the Wiener camp sounds like the Hillary Clinton campaign. Its, Vote for me because Im going to win. This has been his entire campaign all along, which is to claim that hes inevitable, Jaye said. Clearly, we beg to differ. Jaye said that on the issue that matters most to San Franciscans affordability Kim is the clear top choice, and that will translate to more support as the race draws closer. The two will probably face off twice under Californias top two voting system the June primary and the November election. But, wait, if Wiener is the Hillary Clinton of the race, is Kim the Bernie Sanders? Asked that question, Jaye laughed and quickly changed the subject. Heather Knight Development rules: Developers in San Francisco would save time and money under new state guidelines that would change traffic studies required for projects in dense, transit-rich environments. The governors office of Planning and Research announced a proposal to streamline the California Environmental Quality Act review process for projects that boost public transportation, walking and biking, and reduce the need for traveling long distances by car. What could that mean for builders developing a 300-unit housing complex in San Francisco? Savings of as much as six months and $200,000. These new rules help remove a quirk of California environmental law that made it harder to build projects that improve air quality and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, said Ken Alex, director of the Planning and Research office. The changes, which are being made possible by a recent state Senate bill, would mean that developers of urban infill projects would no longer have to study how a development would impact automobile traffic. Under current CEQA rules, car traffic is considered an environmental impact that must be mitigated often by building more and wider roads, which leads to more traffic and increased greenhouse gas emissions. Instead, proposed developments would still be scrutinized for issues like traffic conflicts, pedestrian safety and transit accessibility, but developers would no longer have to pay expensive consultants to do time-consuming car counts, according to Sarah Jones, who heads up environmental planning for the city. The San Francisco Planning Commission will consider the rule changes in February and they could be in place later this year. Well use this new approach to help support trends towards more compact growth, said Steve Heminger, executive director of the Bay Area Metropolitan Transportation Commission. Transportation planner Jeffrey Tumlin, a principal with San Franciscos Nelson/Nygaard, said the current system has been great for us transportation consultants, but bad for California. The new guidelines will likely mean fewer 200-page traffic analysis technical appendices that no one other than lawyers read, he said. J.K. Dineen J.K. Dineen, Emily Green and Heather Knight are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. E-mail: cityinsider@sfchronicle.com, jkdineen@sfchronicle.com, egreen@sfchronicle.com, hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfcityinsider, @SFjkdineen, @emilytgreen, @hknightSF The 25 people arrested after Mondays blockade of the Bay Bridges westbound lanes were out of custody Tuesday, and San Francisco prosecutors said it could be several weeks before they decide on whether to file charges. The Black Lives Matter demonstrators, seeking to bring attention to police shootings and rapid gentrification on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, parked cars in the five lanes on Monday afternoon and then chained the cars together, causing a big backup into the East Bay. They were arrested within about 30 minutes on suspicion of public nuisance, unlawful assembly and obstructing free passage. In a second step this month to position itself for on-demand ride-hailing, General Motors has acquired the technology and assets of Sidecar Technologies, the San Francisco ride-hailing service that shut down at the end of last year. On Jan. 4, GM announced an investment of $500 million in Lyft, the second-largest provider of on-demand rides after Uber. Dan Ammann, GM president, will join Lyfts board of directors. GM has also filed a patent application to use the name Maven for software connecting vehicle drivers and passengers and for coordinating transportation services. GM will hire more than a dozen Sidecar employees, including Jahan Khanna, its co-founder and chief technology officer. Sunil Paul, another Sidecar co-founder and CEO, will not join GM. GM spokesman Vijay Iyer said, Were happy we were able to garner interest from a number of their team members, particularly in the San Francisco area. It shows they feel that what were working on is relevant from an urban mobility perspective. Despite backing from Google Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Richard Branson, Sidecar struggled to compete with Uber and Lyft. Sidecar was only able to raise $35 million in funding, according to CrunchBase. In contrast, Uber has raised $6.6 billion, while Lyft has raised $1.3 billion. State Farm to fill gaps Drivers for Uber and Lyft soon will have a new option for auto insurance. State Farm said it will offer polices in California starting March 21 to cover people who drive their personal cars for hire. Although the ride companies provide $1 million liability coverage while drivers are carrying paying passengers or en route to pick them up, coverage amounts are lower while drivers are awaiting ride requests. Uber and Lyft polices may not cover damage to a drivers car or injuries to a driver during that time, known as Period 1, State Farm said. The insurer said its new endorsements would let drivers opt for liability, comprehensive and collision coverage. Rates will vary depending on coverage and other factors, but State Farm described it as cost-effective. Farmers Insurance also offers an add-on policy for ride-hailing drivers, while MetroMile offers coverage just for Uber drivers. Media Univision buys stake in Onion The Spanish-language broadcaster Univision is buying a stake in the owner of satirical website the Onion, in what may be considered a serious grab for young viewers. Onion CEO Mike McAvoy said in a memo to employees that Univision had acquired a good chunk of Onion Inc. and may acquire the remainder down the line. Once solely comedic enterprises have earned younger audiences who rely on them as a news source. Univision says it sees comedy as crucial in covering news for young people. Univision said Tuesday that it is a minority investor. It will have oversight of the Onion but the site will operate independently. Onion scuttled its print version in 2013. Cybersecurity Giuliani changes firms Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is joining international law firm Greenberg Traurig to chair its cybersecurity and crisis-management practice. Giuliani is leaving Houston law firm Bracewell & Giuliani, which will rename itself Bracewell. In 2005, Giuliani helped open a New York office for the firm. Greenberg Traurig said Tuesday that Giuliani will work with its government-regulatory, cybersecurity and data-privacy lawyers. Giuliani was mayor of New York from 1994 to 2001. He ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. Chronicle Staff and News Services Top tweet The Christmas presents are flattering, ladies, but the FBI has a warrant. #AndIHaveAGirl Thats from Edward Snowden, the former CIA worker and government contractor suspected of copying classified information, who has attracted all sorts of fan art, including some that isnt exactly G-rated. Not childs play Amnesty International released a report Monday accusing Apple, Samsung, Microsoft and other tech and car companies of indirectly employing children as young as 7 in the sourcing of minerals like cobalt. Cobalt ore gets turned into lithium-ion batteries, which power everything from mobile phones to laptops to electric cars. In a statement to TechCrunch, Apple said: Underage labor is never tolerated in our supply chain, and we are proud to have led the industry in pioneering new safeguards. Hot now Facebooks Oculus virtual reality platform will have an office in Pittsburgh, VentureBeat says. It quotes a spokeswoman as saying Oculus has leased an office thats dedicated to Oculus Research. The Daily Briefing is compiled from San Francisco Chronicle staff and news services. See more items and links at www.sfgate.com. Twitter: @techchronicle This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate When the Powerball jackpot hit almost $1.6 billion last week, lines at the Grocery Express in Old Greenwich were out the door. The business sold 44,000 Powerball tickets to lottery hopefuls, and while it wasnt the billion dollar jackpot, one of those tickets made Stamford resident Lucrecia Veloz a millionaire. Veloz stepped forward this week to claim the second of three Connecticut prizes worth $1 million for the Jan. 13 Powerball drawing, the same drawing in which three winners hit the $1.6 billion jackpot in California, Florida and Tennessee. Veloz declined Tuesday to comment on the win, but is listed as a winner by the Connecticut Lottery Corporation at ctlottery.org. The winning numbers that day were 4, 8, 19, 27, 34 and Powerball 10. Velozs ticket missed the Powerball but matched the first five numbers. According to the Connecticut Lottery Corporation, 350,629 prize-winning Powerball tickets were sold in the state for that day. Glen Scali, general manager at the Old Greenwich gas station and convenience store, said hes glad the money went to one of his customers. You always hear about the winners in other places but its nice when you find out it was one of yours, Scali said. I was happy hear it went to someone local. Scali found out about the win Tuesday, the same day a representative from the Connecticut Lottery stopped by to drop off a sign letting customers know the business sold a winning $10,000 ticket in November. Our rep didnt even know yet that wed sold a $1 million winner, Scali said. I didnt even know yet, so that was pretty cool. The Grocery Express will receive a $2,500 check from the Connecticut Lottery Corporation for selling the ticket. Scali said hes unsure what the money will be used for, but said he might throw a party for his employees. The Grocery Express has a lot of regular customers, Scali said, but Veloz isnt one he knows. Im hoping to see the winner come back, wed like to meet them, Scali said. I know they dont want a lot of publicity but it would be great if they could at least stop in and put a face to a name for us. Id love that. The other $1 million winner from the Jan. 13 drawing to come forward is New London resident Andrew Norberg. The third still-unclaimed $1 million-winning ticket was sold in Hartford County, according to the Connecticut Lottery. The current Powerball Powerplay jackpot is an estimated $50 million, a $31.8 million cash value. Online electronic tax filing service TaxAct alerted 780 Californians that their accounts had been accessed by outsiders presumably thieves trying to steal personal information and obtain user tax refunds. Those accounts may have contained names, Social Security numbers, addresses, drivers license numbers and bank account information, said the subsidiarys Bellevue, Wash., parent, Blucora Inc. They were reportedly among 9,000 that were frozen as a result of the issue. TaxAct sent affected users a letter informing them that the outsiders got in between Nov. 10 and Dec. 4. The California Attorney Generals office posted the letter on its website. The company wrote that it believes the third party used username and password combinations obtained from sources outside of our own system to gain access. Spokeswoman Shaunna Morgan said that it froze accounts after noticing suspicious activity. The number of Californians impacted was very low, and the attacker did not gain access to income tax returns for the vast majority of the suspended accounts, she said. We routinely monitor our systems for any patterns of behavior that may indicate fraud could occur. As a result of those existing processes we identified the issue early and prevented any further data from being compromised. The outside activity serves as an early warning sign of a popular scheme executed around tax season: Stolen Identity Refund Fraud. It involves crooks stealing an individuals personally identifiable information and filing a tax return on his or her behalf. As a result, taxpayers face long delays in receiving their money and the federal government is on the hook for the fraudulent payments. Victims waited an average of 278 days for returns between October 2012 and September 2013, according to a report on 100 affected accounts from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. In 2013, the IRS estimates that it paid out more than $5.2 billion in bogus returns. Last year, Intuit, the maker of tax-filing service TurboTax, weathered a flurry of accusations stemming from that type of illegal activity. First from states attorneys general and then from whistle-blowers who criticized the Mountain View company for not sufficiently protecting users from such intrusions. In February, Intuit briefly halted its state tax filing services. After that, the company enabled two-factor authentication. That method gives customers the option to sign in using both a one-time code sent to their phone and a separate password helping to ensure that legitimate users are the only ones who could access their accounts. Sean Sposito is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: ssposito@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @seansposito Twitter experienced global disruptions Tuesday that prevented many of its 300 million users from staying connected or from logging on to the social network in the first place. The company cited a technical problem in a recent code change as the cause of the problems, which began around 3 a.m. EST and prevented many users from sharing updates on their smartphones, computers and other mobile devices. About 1 p.m., the company said it had reversed the change, which fixed the issue. Twitter declined to specify how many of its users were affected. Thank you for your patience, Twitter said in a status update. Although the disruptions were among the most extensive the company has encountered, Twitter is not the only popular social network to have faced technical problems. Facebook, whose users now number more than 1.5 billion worldwide, has also had a spate of shutdowns during the last 18 months, though often the problems have been corrected within hours. Because Twitter is an important news source, as well as a popular sounding board, the shutdowns disrupted the global conversation. When other technology and media companies have faced similar problems in the past, people have often turned to Twitter to vent their frustrations an outlet unavailable this time because the platform itself was the cause of the problem. Thanks for noticing, read a brief note that appeared on users Twitter pages when the website had problems loading. Were going to fix it up and have things back to normal soon. The hashtag #TwitterDown started to trend on the site when it was working, as well as on its rival Facebook, where people playfully mocked Twitters disruptions. Apt song for the #TwitterDown crises we are facing at the moment, Paul Lee Lotter, a Facebook user from South Africa, said in a post that included a link to the Led Zeppelin song Communication Breakdown. Twitter has been facing growing investor anger since its blockbuster initial public offering in 2013. The companys stock has lost almost a quarter of its value in the last month, reflecting criticisms of the way Jack Dorsey, the Twitter co-founder who recently returned to become its chief executive, is running the platform. That includes experiments to introduce a longer form of tweet, in what would be a move away from the simple design that the service was originally founded on. Dorsey has also tried to broaden Twitters appeal, a problem the company has struggled with for years, much to the consternation of its investors. And while Facebook has found increasing success with its advertising, analysts remain skeptical that Twitter can match its larger competitors track record of attracting millions of dollars in ads from big international companies like Coca-Cola, Ford and General Electric. Bill Hutchinson A Petaluma couple was found dead in their home Tuesday afternoon in what police believe may have been a murder-suicide, authorities said. Around 12:30 p.m., officers responded to a call to the home of Harold and Bertha Coombes, ages 86 and 83, respectively, at the Petaluma Estates Mobile Home Park on North McDowell Boulevard, said Sgt. Ed Crosby, a police spokesman. Stephanie Wright Hession In downtown Oakland, a historic property offers a glimpse into a bygone era. Strolling through the grand entrance of Preservation Park, with its ornate metal arch and twin stone pillars, reveals clusters of grand Victorian homes. Anchoring its central plaza is the Latham-Ducel fountain, a cast iron creation topped with Diana, goddess of the hunt, moon and childbirth. Made by the Val d-Osne foundry from a design by J.J. Ducel & Fils, the fountain once graced the estate of the Lathams, a prominent Oakland family who bought it on trip to Paris in the late 19th century. Nearby, wooden park benches and palm trees create a tranquil setting, and a set of steps leads to the Pavilion, a trellised bandstand where many couples have exchanged vows. The park strives to emulate the Victorian neighborhood that once thrived here in the 1870s. Over time, it fell into disrepair, and during the 1970s, the construction of Interstate 980 and planned redevelopment jeopardized the historic homes. Through the formation of a public and private partnership, the city saved 15 homes and one building. These included five that still exist on their original sites and others moved from various parts of Oakland. Since refurbished, today they house offices, meeting and social spaces and serve as a hub for culturally, environmentally and socially focused nonprofit organizations and businesses. In the 1970s, when Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth made their introductions at the Rhode Island School of Design, they were very intent on becoming well-known artists. They got their wish, but not as they expected. Frantz and Weymouth met at the renowned Providence design school at a time when both were aspiring artists of the oil-on-canvas variety. Instead, the multitalented couple who eventually married, came to live in Fairfield and had two sons became professional musicians, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002. Their lives have been extraordinary and successful as members of the Talking Heads and as founders of the Tom Tom Club Weymouth noted for her wizardry on bass guitar and Frantz for his drum and percussion work. (Self-taught for the most part, Frantz, 64, is considered by many as among the greatest rock drummers of all time.) And now were enjoying the fruits of our labor, said Frantz, laughing, during a recent telephone chat. More Information Fairfield Theatre Co. Warehouse, 170 Sanford St., Fairfield. Saturday, Jan. 23. Doors open at 7 p.m., show at 8. General admission $95. Seating is on a limited first-come, first-served basis. All others will stand. 203-259-1036, fairfieldtheatre.org See More Collapse By that he means lots of globe-trotting for pleasure to such spots as Morocco, New Orleans, Barcelona and Frances Brittany region, in which Weymouths heritage is rooted. They also have the leisure to perform for causes and organizations they support. One of those causes is the nonprofit Fairfield Theatre Co., which for one night only will reunite the Tom Tom Club for a We Built the Warehouse party. The Tom Tom Club has not performed together for about two years as members became more involved in diverse projects. But on Saturday, Jan. 23, the gang comes together again, with Weymouth on guitar and vocals; Frantz on drums and vocals; Victoria Palagy on vocals and guitar; Bruce Martin on keyboards, percussion and vocals and Pablo Martin on guitar. The couples son Robin, also known as Kid Ginseng, will be responsible for turntables and samples. Frantz said the Tom Tom Club will perform our most well-known hits Genius of Love and Wordy Rappinghood as well as a couple of Talking Heads hits, including Psycho Killer and Take Me to the River. Weve had such a good rapport with FTC over the years, performing there (in the 250-seat StageOne) many times. Were honored that weve been asked to officially christen the recently completed open-space Warehouse, which can accommodate about 640 seats, depending on the concert. Tina and I have been in Fairfield for about 30 years, and we remember a time when downtown Fairfield offered virtually nothing at night. Now we have lots of restaurants and a great venue like the FTC, which is positive for the town and the region. By helping out, we can do good for the community, good for FTC and good for ourselves, he added. On Saturday, Feb. 6, Frantz and Weymouth will return to the FTC to perform with other local musicians at a fundraiser for the Kennedy Centers programs that help those with disabilities and special needs. In an announcement, FTC said that in order to complete the Warehouse, the theater and the community worked together to raise funds and made history. The party is an opportunity for us to come together with all of you who shared the vision and provided the financial backbone for this amazing performing arts venue. It is also an opportunity to celebrate with the Tom Tom Club, whose members have become an integral part of the FTC family and community over the years, thus turning this celebration into an epic party. pasboros@ctpost.com; Twitter: @PhyllisASBoros The last time we heard from maverick Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero, a Russian suffering from Werdnig-Hoffman disorder had volunteered for and been accepted to have his head removed from his troubled body and patched onto a donor body. Yes: In April, a person volunteered to have Canavero perform a radical and total head-transplant. Canavero is now back in the news with claims that a Chinese doctor has removed the head from one monkey and sown it onto the body of another, and it lived for 20 hours until they euthanized it. Oh, and now he's come looking for money, too ... Canavero not the monkey. "It's important that people stop thinking this is impossible. This is absolutely possible and we're working towards it," he told New Scientist. The magazine added that "Trinh Hong Son, director of the Vietnam-Germany Hospital in Hanoi, Vietnam, offered to host the procedure." "I'm asking today Russian billionaires and also foreign billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, who is already sponsoring much of this life extension research, and this is certainly about extending life, to finance, to bankroll the first head transplant in Russia on Valery Spiridonov," Canavero told RT news. "To save Valery Spiridonov we need Russia to help us." Bit o history While a human head transplant would be a very unique moment in human history, it wouldnt be the first time a primate has been through it. Heres a good recap by the New Scientist magazine: The first successful head transplant, in which one head was replaced by another, was carried out in 1970. A team led by Robert White at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio, transplanted the head of one monkey onto the body of another. They didnt attempt to join the spinal cords, though, so the monkey couldnt move its body, but it was able to breathe with artificial assistance. The monkey lived for nine days until its immune system rejected the head. Although few head transplants have been carried out since, many of the surgical procedures involved have progressed. I think we are now at a point when the technical aspects are all feasible, says Canavero. The key to the procedure will be gluing the two spinal cords back together, and I doubt super-glue will do the job. But, the good doctor says, there is a substance out there that can do it. Canavero suggests applying a combination of polyethylene glycol, a chemical shown to be effective in getting nerve tissue to bond, with electric muscle stimulation treatment to promote enough growth to connect the pathways that allow signals to travel back and forth between the brain and body, The Washington Post writes. Here's the step-by-step procedure as described in a scientific report in the Surgical Neurology International journal (don't try this at home): The sharp severance of the cervical cords (donor's and recipient's), with its attendant minimal tissue damage The exploitation of the gray matter internuncial sensori-motor "highway" rebridged by sprouting connections between the two reapposed cord stumps. This could also explain the partial motor recovery in a paraplegic patient submitted to implantation of olfactory ensheathing glia and peripheral nerve bridges: A 2-mm bridge of remaining cord matter might have allowed gray matter axons to reconnect the two ends The bridging as per point 2 above is accelerated by electrical SCS straddling the fusion point The application of "fusogens/sealants": Sealants "seal" the thin layer of injured cells in the gray matter, both neuronal, glial and vascular, with little expected scarring; simultaneously they fuse a certain number of axons in the white matter. Risks? ... uh ... insanity caused by a whole new set of chemicals rushing into your brain from a stranger's body ... and, well, catastrophic biological failure, AKA death. But, hey, Valeri Spiridonov figures he's doomed anyway. So, what the hell. Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook. If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Darkness and light make an uneasy truce for a 14th year at the San Francisco Film Noir Festival, and the 25 classic films unspooling (yes, in 35mm) during its 10 days at the Castro Theatre have an intriguing theme: the obsessions and agonies of artists in an often unforgiving world. Start with photographer L.B. Jeffries (James Stewart), a man so obsessed with the thrill of capturing the perfect image that he keeps his trusty camera by his side, even as hes laid up with a broken leg and his only vantage point is his cramped Rear Window. Alfred Hitchcocks 1954 masterpiece opens Noir City 14 on Friday, Jan. 22, as part of an unusual program. Not only is the film not generally considered noir, the movie that plays after it on the double feature 1992s The Public Eye, starring Joe Pesci as a 1940s crime photographer is not even from the classic noir era. That signals an adventurous program of films that have what Noir City producer, host and co-programmer Eddie Muller calls trace elements of noir. For example, a zowie double feature on Tuesday, Jan. 26, with the 1945 version of Oscar Wildes The Picture of Dorian Gray, featuring an astounding exercise in narcissism by Hurd Hatfield, paired with the rarely seen Corridor of Mirrors, a 1947 British film about an artist (Eric Portman) luring a young woman into an obsession with the past. Perhaps the most visually over-the-top film in the festival (young director Terence Young, later to direct Sean Connery Bond films, was influenced by Jean Cocteau), Corridor also has a glimpse of the future: the film debut of Christopher Lee. Or two Hollywood films screening on Jan. 29 that seem to hate Hollywood (but you know they love it): Vincente Minnellis outstanding 1952 tale of driven, obsessed producer Kirk Douglas, aptly titled The Bad and the Beautiful, and Robert Aldrichs adaptation of the Clifford Odets play The Big Knife, with A-list actor Jack Palance agonizing over selling his soul for another seven-year contract. Even noir-inspired foreign films from the 1950s get a night the Film Noir Foundation restoration of Argentinas Bitter Stems, paired on Saturday, Jan. 23, with Swedens The Girl With Hyacinths, a film much admired by Ingmar Bergman. Of course, theres plenty of traditional noir as well Lucille Ball sleuthing in The Dark Corner (Jan. 23), the great Laird Cregar in underrated John Brahms The Lodger, and Joan Bennett fleecing Edward G. Robinson in Fritz Langs Scarlet Street (the latter two part of an afternoon triple feature on Jan. 30). Perhaps the best night is Monday, Jan. 25, a black-and-white Humphrey Bogart double feature that is second-billed by Bogie as a wife-murdering painter in The Two Mrs. Carrolls (one of them being Barbara Stanwyck). The first film, Nicholas Rays In a Lonely Place, is something really special. Bogart is a Hollywood screenwriter with an anger management problem. When a young woman last seen at his apartment turns up dead, hes the prime suspect. The woman across the way (Gloria Grahame) is a possible alibi, but when they fall in love, will the cloud of suspicion and his inner demons destroy the budding romance? Its a noir, but its also a rich, complex, emotionally mature story about relationships. Bogart and Grahame were never better. The perfect movie for a lonely Monday night; if theres any justice in this El Nino season, the streets will be wet and empty as you exit the theater. Noir City 14 runs through Jan. 31 at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro St., S.F. (415) 621-6121. www.noircity.com. Also this weekend: Restorations of Toshiya Fujitas two 1970s Lady Snowblood films, starring the incomparable Meiko Kaji, which were the primary inspiration for Quentin Tarantinos Kill Bill films (1:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 24, at the Alamo Drafthouse New Mission, 2550 Mission St., S.F. (415) 549-5959, www.drafthouse.com); Mel Brooks classic Western parody Blazing Saddles (midnight Friday and Saturday, Jan. 22-23, at the Clay Theatre, 2261 Fillmore St., S.F., (415) 561-9921, www.landmarktheatres.com). G. Allen Johnson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: ajohnson@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BRfilmsAllen LANSING, Mich. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder asked President Obama on Wednesday to reconsider his denial of a federal disaster declaration to address the drinking water crisis in Flint, saying its severity poses an imminent and long-term threat to residents. Obama declared an emergency qualifying the city for $5 million. The president said he would be beside himself if his childrens health were put at risk. He said he met with Flints Mayor Karen Weaver the day before and promised federal help. I told her we are going to have her back and all the people of Flints back as they work their way through this terrible tragedy, he said. But Obama determined it is not a disaster based on the legal requirement that such additional relief is intended for natural events, fires, floods or explosions. Snyder had estimated a need for up to $95 million over a year. In his appeal letter, Snyder called the decision a narrow reading and likened the crisis to a flood, given that qualities within the water, over a long term, ... damaged the citys infrastructure in ways that were not immediately or easily detectable. This disaster is a natural catastrophe in the sense that lead contamination into water is a natural process. He said the state and city cannot meet all the needs of Flint residents. He again painted a bleak picture of the city and said the economic injury from the crisis is significant. Snyder said the disaster will lead to years, potentially decades of health problems and economic losses as well as infrastructure repairs that neither the city, county or state have the capacity to conduct. The second-term Republican, who devoted his annual State of the State speech Tuesday night to the emergency in Flint, released more than 270 pages of his e-mails related to the Flint water crisis. The e-mails were posted Wednesday on his website, www.michigan.gov/snyder. Flints water became contaminated with too much lead when the city switched its water source in 2014 as a cost-cutting measure while under state financial management. Im sorry most of all that I let you down, Snyder, whose administration is engulfed in criticism, said in address, as hundreds of protesters demonstrated outside the Capitol. You deserve better. You deserve accountability. You deserve to know that the buck stops here with me. Most of all, you deserve to know the truth, and I have a responsibility to tell the truth. The lead which can lead to behavior problems and learning disabilities in children and kidney ailments in adults has left Flint residents unable to drink unfiltered tap water. The National Guard, state employees, local authorities and volunteers have been distributing lead tests, filters and bottled water. Snyder aides pledged that by the end of the week officials would visit every household in Flint to ensure they have water filters. 1 Health overhaul challenge: The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected another challenge to President Obamas health care overhaul. The justices on Tuesday left in place lower-court rulings that dismissed a lawsuit against the national health care law. The suit argues that the law violates the provision of the Constitution that requires tax-raising bills to originate in the House of Representatives. The court has twice turned back major challenges to the law, in opinions written by Chief Justice John Roberts in 2012 and in June. The court also has allowed family-owned businesses with religious objections to opt out of paying for contraceptives for women covered under their health plans. 2 Abortion law rejected: The U.S. Supreme Court refused Tuesday to revive an Arkansas law that would have banned abortions after the 12th week of pregnancy if doctors can detect a fetal heartbeat. Federal judges had called the law inconsistent with Supreme Court rulings that generally tie restrictions to the fetus viability, not the presence of a heartbeat. In striking down the Arkansas law in 2014, U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright said it was unconstitutional and violated the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision that legalized abortion until the time a fetus could viably survive outside the womb. A fetus is generally considered viable at 22 to 24 weeks. BETTENDORF, Iowa Under pressure to emerge as the Republican mainstreams presidential contender, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is increasingly relying on a national strategy as he lowers expectations for Februarys primary contests. Hes betting big that Republican voters across the political spectrum will ultimately coalesce behind his candidacy in the state-by-state slog for delegates his team envisions for the months ahead. Its a strategy fraught with risk for Rubio, who is still fighting to break out among the pack of candidates looking up at New York billionaire Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. The outsider favorites are dominating in Iowa less than two weeks before the states leadoff caucuses. For now at least, Rubio, a first-term senator, is embracing a patient approach that goes well beyond the four states with contests in February: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. Rubio in recent days has cast himself as a passionate evangelical conservative, a national security hawk, an empathizer of immigrants in the country illegally, and someone who can bring new voters to the Republican Party. This, as he jabs at Trump, Cruz and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, yet works to capture the anger and frustration that fuel their candidacies. I wont be able to appeal to everybody on everything, Rubio said on Monday. I want to get enough delegates to be the nominee. But thats exactly the theme he projected as he campaigned through Iowa this week before a trip to New Hampshire, where he hopes to rise from a cluster of so-called establishment alternatives to Trump and Cruz. Too often, I think, as Republicans we have a bad choice, said Iowa state Sen. Jack Whitver, Rubios state campaign chairman, introducing him at one of his many Iowa stops this week. The choice, he said, is often between the establishment, moderate person that everyone says can win the election, or we have a true consistent conservative that everyone says cant win the election. This year we dont have to make that choice, he said. This year, we can have it all. Given Jeb Bushs continued struggles, some major Republican donors and elected officials see Rubio as their partys best candidate to defeat the leading Democrat, Hillary Clinton, in this falls general election. But in a year when voters appear to be rejecting insiders, Rubio has struggled to tap the antiestablishment anger, putting him behind Cruz and Trump with time running out before the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses. The U.S. Supreme Court took on what could be the most far-reaching immigration case in its history Tuesday, agreeing to decide whether President Obama was authorized to forgo deportation of more than 4 million unauthorized migrants most of them the parents of U.S. citizens or legal residents, and at least one-fourth of them in California. In at least a short-term victory for the Obama administration and immigrant-rights advocates, the justices granted review of a lower-court ruling in a lawsuit by Texas and 25 other Republican-led states that has blocked nationwide enforcement of Obamas order. Denying review of the case would have guaranteed that Obamas order could not take effect before the presidents term ends a year from now. If the court upholds his order, in a ruling due by the end of June, implementation could begin this year though it would almost certainly end if any of the leading Republican candidates, who have joined in denouncing the order, were elected president. Harris weighs in Today is a great day for California and the entire nation, state Attorney General Kamala Harris said, in what may have been a premature celebration. She said Obamas program would bring law-abiding immigrant families out of the shadows, boost our economy, and make communities safer. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement that Obama had exceeded his authority when he unilaterally sought to grant lawful presence to more than 4 million unauthorized aliens. The court should recognize, Paxton said, that Obama cannot rewrite congressional laws and circumvent the peoples representatives. With immigration legislation bottled up in Congress, Obama issued his executive order in November 2014. It would grant a three-year reprieve from deportation to parents of U.S. citizens or legal residents if the parents had no serious criminal records and allow them to apply for work permits. It would also expand an earlier program halting deportation of immigrants who were brought to the United States illegally as children. The high court in 2012 struck down most of an Arizona law imposing state criminal penalties on unauthorized immigrants, ruling that only the federal government can enforce immigration laws. In the current case, by contrast, states contend they are being unfairly and illegally burdened by executive orders on immigration that Congress never authorized. A conservative panel of the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled, first, that Texas was impacted by the orders giving it legal standing to sue because it would spend several million dollars on drivers licenses for the immigrants. The court then said Obama had illegally announced his orders without advance notice and public comment, a process that could have delayed them by two years. Finally, the court said the president lacked legal authority to suspend deportation of an entire group of immigrants. Legal commentators said the issues have implications that extend well beyond this case. If a state can sue over any federal policy that might increase its costs, said Stephen Legomsky, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis and former chief counsel for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, states might also challenge federal orders expanding eligibility for military service, since the states would have to pay more in veterans benefits. And states that followed federal standards for taxable income could contest Internal Revenue Service decisions that favored taxpayers, he said. It is a recipe for paralysis, Legomsky said. If the court finds that states have standing to sue, it would then decide whether Obamas orders were general statements of public policy, which can be carried out without advance notice and public comment, or specific legal directives. The final and perhaps most important question is whether the presidents undisputed authority to decide which unauthorized immigrants to deport a consequence of Congress failing to provide enough funds to deport all of them allows him to exempt an entire category of immigrants. The courts decision could redefine the balance of power between Congress and the president, said Stephen Yale-Loehr, a Cornell University law professor and author of a 21-volume treatise on immigration law. He said a ruling against Obama on the issue might also affect his executive orders on guns and the environment. Past precedents Legomsky said Obama has stressed that his immigration orders would be applied case-by-case, trying to show that he was following established standards of discretionary review. Legomsky also said past presidents have also exempted large groups from deportation for example, George H.W. Bush, whose Family Fairness program spared hundreds of thousands of spouses and children of newly legalized immigrants. Congress didnt raise an eyebrow, Legomsky said. Nobody ever challenged it. Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @egelko This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate "We're giving the powerful a taste of what it means to be powerless and perhaps they'll do right by us. We're not about making things comfortable for people. There's a lot of things we experience as black folks on a daily basis. Our well being is disrupted all the time." That was one of nearly 2,000 comments that I got (Monday) about the protest that shut down the Bay Bridge. It's an interesting debate to me. I always wonder whether a protest like that is effective. Or does it just make people mad, and make them NOT want to support the protester's cause? Most of the comments I got were from people who were angry. One person said: "I firmly believe that black lives matter, but I can't understand what they hope to accomplish with this. There has to be something more productive they could be doing. Or am I missing something?" And another person wrote: "When black on black crime goes down, when more black men begin taking care of the children that they create, maybe then black lives will matter more. It seems like black lives don't matter a whole lot to some blacks." On the other hand there was this: "We don't care if it piss people off anymore. How do you think we feel we have to live with that everyday so just because we're talking about how Black Lives matter and we're bringing attention to black lives." I'm curious how many people actually know what the protest was about. Here's a direct quote from what the protesters sent out: Over the last few years, we have seen San Francisco and Oakland destroyed by police murders, rising housing costs, rapid gentrification, and apathetic city officials. Last year, we saw dozens of police murders throughout the Bay Area; since June of 2015 in Oakland alone there have been eight Black men murdered by police. Historically, our people have had to take drastic and dramatic measures to highlight the systemic abuses that harm our communities. ----Black.Seed Their issues are very clear. But I still wonder if shutting down the Bay Bridge is the best way to accomplish their goals. What do you think? Frank Somerville is a contributor to SFGATE and anchors the 5, 6, and 10 p.m. news on KTVU. Judith Sheindlin the sharp-tongued star of the hit TV court show, "Judge Judy" is not a U.S. Supreme Court judge. This is, however, news to nearly 10 percent of college graduates surveyed in August 2015 who believed that Judge Judy serves on the nation's highest court. In a dire-sounding report titled, "A Crisis in Civic Education," written by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), today's youth is in a "civics recession" of dire proportions. "Survey after survey shows that recent college graduates are alarmingly ignorant of America's history and heritage," ACTA wrote in its report. "They cannot identify the term lengths of members of Congress, the substance of the First Amendment, or the origin of the separation of powers. "They do not know the Father of the Constitution, and nearly 10% say that Judith Sheindlin 'Judge Judy' is on the Supreme Court." Yikes. (The Father of the Constitution is James Madison, by the way.) Using the term "abysmal" to describe the results of the poll, ACTA reported that almost 40 percent of college graduates did not know that Congress could declare war, and more than half did not know how citizens could amend the Constitution. The poll results were released this month, along with the questions that were asked all drawn from high school civics classes. The results are based on 1,000 interviews with adults and college graduates, ages 18 and older. Here's how the incriminating "Judge Judy" question was asked: Which of the following people serves on the U.S. Supreme Court? a. Elena Kagan b. Lawrence Warren Pierce c. John Kerry d. Judith Sheindlin e. Refused The students chose Kagan at 61.6 percent, Pierce at 21.7 percent and Kerry at 5.5 percent while 9.6 percent of the students selected Sheindlin as their answer. (If you're wondering how many refused to answer the question: 1.6 percent) The knowledge-shaming did come with a point, however, and ACTA argued that colleges and universities should require at least one course in "the history of America, the workings of its free institutions, and the core documents that illuminate our principles of government." To read the test with a full breakdown of the results, click here. NEW MILFORD Three grants soon will help one agency increase its staff to better combat the areas growing heroin epidemic. The Midwestern Connecticut Council on Alcoholisms New Milford outpatient clinic received $22,500 in grants to improve the facilitys opiate treatment. Union Savings Bank and the Dirk Foundation each gave $10,000, and Cowles Foundation gave $2,500. The heroin epidemic has been sweeping across the state, and New Milford has been hit particularly hard, said MCCA president and CEO Joe Sullivan. MCCA is pleased to receive this funding to treat those individuals struggling with opiate addiction. These funds will help us to increase staffing in our outpatient facility in New Milford at a critical time. The New Milford facility comprises five staff members, including a program director, three clinicians and an administrative supervisor. A third clinician was hired, and a recovery support specialist will soon join the staff to collaborate with local hospitals in getting clients into treatment. Heroin-related deaths have skyrocketed in Connecticut from 174 in 2012 to 325 in 2014, according to a report by the state medical examiner. Nationwide, heroin-related deaths nearly tripled from 2002 to 2013, according to the federal National Vital Statistics System. Two Americans die each day of overdoses, according to NVSS. Three people were arrested in New Milford in 2015 for heroin sales that led to the fatal overdoses of two young residents. Christopher DeFino, 25, was found dead in his bedroom at his parents home in June, and Robin Thibodeau, 27, died in his parents home in September. Both men died from heroin overdoses, according to the states medical examiner. The deaths were the latest in a series of drug-related overdoses that claimed the lives of New Milford residents in recent years. Eight people died of opiate overdoses in 2013, including four where heroin was a factor, according to data provided by the states Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Four more New Milford heroin-related deaths occurred in 2014 and four others were charged with heroin sales. The state is expected to release 2015 statistics in February. About 80 percent of our clients in intensive outpatient groups are opiate dependent, and 45 percent of our overall clients are being treated for opiates, said Rick Dable, program director for MCCAs New Milford outpatient clinic that serves 73 clients at its facility at 50 Bridge St. New Milford Police have been trained to use and are carrying Narcan, which can immediately reverse an opiate overdose. Police Chief Shawn Boyne lauded the MCCA donors for taking action to address the towns drug epidemic. This looks like a positive step to seeing a very necessary service is available in our community, Boyne said. Mayor David Gronbach said the grants are a step in the right direction. What I would like to see is more of a coordinated, comprehensive way of addressing the problem with a number of different agencies, Gronbach said. The grants are a great thing and will help MCCA in our community. But what Im working on is coordinating our efforts to address the problem. MCCA is one of the largest providers of substance abuse treatment in Connecticut and has been actively involved with New Milfords Substance Abuse Prevention Council. Over the past four months, MCCA and the council co-sponsored two Narcan trainings. Conducted by Joanne Montgomery from the AIDS Project of Greater Danbury, the trainings were free and open to the public. Each attendee was given a free Narcan kit. All of the MCCA staff have been trained to administer Narcan. The staff is also trained to provide the community with information on prevention and intervention resources. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Police spent hours searching a San Mateo neighborhood for a burglary suspect prowling through the area early Wednesday, prompting gunfire from one officer who officials said was nearly run down by a getaway car driven by the thiefs accomplice. After more than 4 hours of searching, officers suspended the hunt and lifted a shelter-in-place order for surrounding residents shortly before 7 a.m. Police said both burglary suspects were taken into custody, one at the scene and the other in San Bruno, where he had been driven in a taxi. One of the suspects, identified as Maria King, 31, of San Bruno, was nabbed after a homeowner on Green Oak Court called police around 2:45 a.m., reporting that prowlers with flashlights were breaking into a home on the small and usually quiet residential street. When police got to the scene, they spotted King rummaging through a car, San Mateo police said. A K-9 officer and his dog approached the woman and ordered her to freeze, but she ran to another car, jumped in and started to drive off, police said. As the officer approached the front of the fleeing car, King allegedly turned sharply toward him and the police dog in an apparent attempt to run them over, police said. The officer opened fire but missed the woman, who soon gave up and was taken into custody, police said. Neither the officer nor the woman were injured. Meanwhile, police set up a perimeter and began searching for a second burglary suspect in the neighborhood around West Hillsdale Boulevard. Residents in the area were told to shelter in place while police searched for the man. Around 8 a.m., police tracked down the suspect, Saliq Calloway, 22, in San Bruno, where he was taken into custody with the help of San Bruno police. Officers suspect Calloway got to San Bruno by hailing a cab. King was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder, burglary, conspiracy, driving with a suspended license while under the influence of narcotics, resisting arrest and petty theft. Calloway was arrested on suspicion of burglary, conspiracy and two outstanding warrants for narcotics. Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: esernoffsky@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @EvanSernoffsky STAMFORD A city man was allegedly caught trying to throw his gun into Mill River as police served a search warrant on him in connection with charges he stabbed a woman on Stamfords West Side earlier this month. But Jordan Young, 19, didnt know his own strength. Standing in his boxer shorts on the balcony of his West Forest Lawn Avenue apartment next to the river - with police watching - Young pegged the semiautomatic pistol right over the river and onto the far bank, where the weapon containing six slugs in the magazine and one in the chamber was seized by police. Capt. Richard Conklin said Young is the suspect in the Jan. 11 stabbing of a young woman on Hillhurst Avenue. At the time he was already out on parole after being convicted of robbing a pizza delivery man. At first the woman, who was stabbed in both hips and upper right arm, told police that several men in dark clothing jumped her and stabbed her on upper Spruce Street, and she did not know who they were. But three days later she went to police headquarters and made another statement, saying that she was actually on nearby Hillhurst Avenue when she felt a punch to her right lower back rib area. She turned around and noticed two black males, and immediately recognized Jordan Young, according to Youngs arrest affidavit. She said she was stabbed a few more times and while the knife was puncturing her skin, she heard Young say, I hope you die. After getting away from Jordan and his accomplice, she phoned a friend who brought her to Stamford Hospital. The woman explained that Young has bothered her brother in the past and the stabbing may have been retribution for an incident when she stabbed Young on November 21. She said Young came up to her and punched her in the chest that day, and, thinking he was going to beat her like he has done in the past, she used the knife to protect herself and escape from Young, the affidavit said. Conklin said the woman may have been fearful that Young was going to hurt her after police were sent to the hospital to investigate the Jan. 11 stabbing, and so made up the story about several men in dark clothing attacking her. Conklin said police obtained an arrest warrant for Young, who was sentenced to two years in jail for pistol whipping and robbing a pizza delivery man in Stamford in February 2014. When they went to serve the warrant, Young opened the door, saw it was the police and slammed the door shut again. He then ran up to the second-floor balcony and tried to get rid of the gun, which he is not allowed to have because he is a convicted felon. He was charged with first-degree assault for the stabbing and criminal possession of a firearm and interfering with police. He was held on a $175,000 bond, but his parole officer remanded him to custody making the bond issue moot. jnickerson@scni.com; stamfordadvocate.com/policereports Editors note: Following is a statement issued by First Selectman Michael Tetreau in the aftermath of last weeks decision by General Electric to move its corporate headquarters from Fairfield to Boston. General Electric has announced that it is moving its headquarters to Boston. Background: GE is a $130 billion high-tech global industrial company, one that is transforming industry with software-defined machines and solutions. While corporate taxes have been the main focal point of discussion over the last six months, GE has been considering both the location and composition of its headquarters for more than three years. GEs stated goal has been that it wants to be at the center of the ecosystem that shares its aspiration. Relocating its headquarters to Boston fulfills this aspiration. GE will also be modifying the composition of the employees at its new headquarters. The current headquarters has 800 employees both corporate and administrative. Only 200 of the corporate staff will be moving to Boston. The remaining 600 administrative personnel will be placed in operations throughout the company. GE will be adding 600 digital industrial product managers, designers and developers to its new Boston headquarters. GEs intended target date to complete its move from the Fairfield campus is 2018. In order to facilitate and offset the cost of the move, GE will be selling its offices in Fairfield and at Rockefeller Center in New York City. GE has announced that some employees will begin being relocated to Boston this summer. Concerns: The GE announcement understandably raises concerns with residents and businesses in our town. The primary concern I hear is the effect of GEs move on property taxes. Residents should note that GE is scheduled to pay the town $1.6 million in property taxes in fiscal year 2016-17. This amount will not change in the short or mid-term. This payment is due regardless of whether GE or someone else owns the property. The total amount of property taxes collected by the town does not change this move. This will not change the amount other taxpayers owe. A second concern I hear is the effect on the local real estate market. GEs 800 Fairfield employees reside throughout Fairfield County. The Town does not know the exact number of employees who live in Fairfield. While the 200 employees being relocated to Boston will most likely be selling their homes in the near future, we do not know the decisions for the remaining 600 employees. The phasing of the move should help minimize the impact on Fairfields local real estate market and the Fairfield County real estate market overall. A third concern I hear is the effect on local businesses. While the departure in the near term of the 200 employees is disappointing, the 68-acre Fairfield campus was built for more than 800 employees. The long-term effect on the local economy could be positive should a company with more employees occupy the site. Next Steps: I have met with state and regional economic development groups as well as our local economic development team. We are exploring options and preparing plans for moving forward. I am planning to meet with GE next week to follow-up on details and discuss how we can work together to minimize the impact on Fairfield. Fairfield is in the best financial shape in our history. We have a triple-A rating, our pension fund is fully funded, we have strong reserves, a 95 percent commercial business occupancy rate, an award-winning school district and significant economic development underway. Fairfields Strategic Plan, which is soon to been initiated for the town, will help us plan for the years ahead. The 68-acre campus, along with all of Fairfields charm and amenities and the sites proximity to major transportation hubs, makes the property an ideal location for another company or developer. There are many more questions to be answered. I will keep everyone updated as we move forward together. Visit www.fairfieldct.org/ge for more information on the GE move, including answers to frequently asked questions. Ukraine has filed an application for an increased gas supply from Slovakia in the amount of 37.04 million cubic meters (mcm) for January 20. The order for January 1-5 was 18.8 mcm per day, whereas it was between 11.4 mcm and 13.5 mcm for January 6-13, and it grew to 26.7-27.6 mcm for January 14-15, and further to 22.7-33.8 mcm for January 16-18, according to Slovakia's gas transport system operator Eustream. Ukrainian gas transport system operator PJSC Ukrtransgaz reported in turn that the amount of gas taken from the country's gas storage facilities grew to 90.5 mcm on January 18 compared to 71.3-75.9 mcm on January 14-17. Ukraine had 12.157 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas in underground storage facilities as of January 18, 2016, whereas gas stocks stored underground as of January 15, 2015, stood at 10.081 bcm. Ukrtransgaz also reported an increase in natural gas transit shipments via the Ukrainian gas transport system: 3.7 bcm was pumped on January 1-18, 2016, which was 1.4 times up on the same period last year (2.6 bcm). Daily transit shipments via Ukraine as of Wednesday morning stood at 217 mcm, which was 1.6 times year-over-year. As was reported, Ukraine daily imported from 29.7 mcm to 41.2 mcm from Slovakia on January 1-31, 2015. NJSC Naftogaz Ukrainy contracted 1.7 bcm of European gas for December 2015-March 2016, having agreed to buy it from Noble Clean Fuels Limited, Engie SA, Axpo Trading AG, E.ON Global Commodities SE and Eni Trading & Shipping SpA for funds lent by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Following tenders, the price of the contracted gas was fixed between $188 and $211 per 1,000 cubic meters. At the same time, the price of Russian gas which Russia's OAO Gazprom offers Ukraine for the first quarter of 2016 is about $212 per 1,000 cubic meters. Naftogaz CEO Andriy Kobolev said earlier that the diversification of gas supplies and gas shipments from Europe had let Ukraine switch to the commercial format of gas purchases from Russia, which now depend on the offered price. Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk has announced that the Ukrainian government will decide on Wednesday on the extension of the embargo imposed on some Russian commodities as of January 10 to more than 70 types of other commodities originating from Russia. "Today more than 70 types of commodities originating from Russia will be added to the original list of the Russian-made goods subject to Ukraine's embargo," he said at a Cabinet meeting in Kyiv on Wednesday. "These are our measures to counter Russian aggression, and we will continue to protect our domestic market," he said. As was reported, the Ukrainian government enforced an embargo on some products from Russia on January 10 until at least August 5, 2016, in response to a ban on the shipments of Ukrainian foods to Russia as of January 1, 2016. This is stipulated in Ukrainian Cabinet resolution No. 1147 dated December 30, 2015. Embargoed are imports of certain Russian foods, namely meat, fish, a number of dairy products, all kinds of processed cheese, coffee, tea, food mixtures, pastry, rolls and breads, baby foods, pastas, sauces; taste improvers and spices, beer, ethyl alcohol, vodka, dog food, and filtered cigarettes. Banned are also potassium chloride containing a portion of potassium, insecticides, fungicides, herbicides, chemicals to prevent sprouting and plant growth regulators, rodenticides, synthetic coatings for sausage-like products, equipment for railways or tramway tracks, and diesel-electric locomotives. Sean Gallup/Getty Images(FLINT, Mich.) -- President Obama met with Karen Weaver, the mayor of Flint, Michigan, to discuss the city's ongoing water crisis, the White House said Tuesday. "The President heard firsthand how the residents of Flint are dealing with the ongoing public health crisis, and the challenges that still exist for the city, its residents, and the business community," the White House said. "The President reiterated that his Administration will continue to support state and local officials in their response." Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Weaver had met earlier in the day with White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett. The White House has designated Nicole Laurie, assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), to coordinate the federal response to the Flint situation, according to Earnest. The crisis originated in 2014 when Flint switched its water source from the Detroit supply to the Flint River to save money. The move was intended as a temporary measure until a new water line to Lake Huron could be built, but improperly treated water from the Flint River caused lead to leach from the pipes, officials said. On Saturday, the president declared a state of emergency in Flint, a declaration requested by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder on Thursday. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) now has the authority to provide up to $5 million in federal aid for residents for the next 90 days. President Obama is scheduled to travel to Detroit on Wednesday but will not stop in Flint during his trip, Earnest said. HHS announced Lurie will meet with state and local officials in Flint this week. Copyright 2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk has said that the Cabinet of Ministers started an internal investigation regarding a bogus firm, which won a tender for UAH 480 million of the so-called "Kyoto money" and asked the National Anti-Corruption Agency to investigate the matter. "At the end of the year, we decided on the need for an honest transparent and public tender to buy energy-saving elements for street lighting so that we could have quality outdoor lighting all over the country... The state-owned company Ukrainian Environmental Investments has announced a tender for UAH 480 million of budget money... The tender was won by a company called Agrotechbud. On December 30 of last year the government issued a resolution to make an advance payment to the Agrotechbud company in the amount of 75% of UAH 480 million, that is, to make a pre-payment of UAH 400 million to this company for the purchase of new energy-efficient lighting elements. I did not sign the decree," Yatseniuk said at a meeting of the Cabinet in Kyiv on Wednesday. According to him, on December 30 it was reported that Agrotechbud, which won the tender, was registered in a residential apartment, had never been engaged in any of the activities stated in the application documents for the tender, and the director and owner of the company had been replaced a few days before the tender, and the new director was a man who's residential address was in Donetsk. "I instructed the state financial inspection to check the tender. As the result, the State Fiscal Service reported that the business entity was a sham, the director was a sham, the founders, who allegedly signed the protocol in order to participate in this tender, gave evidence that no protocols were signed, and UAH 400 million were to be stolen," Yatseniuk said. "The State Fiscal Service launched criminal proceedings, the Cabinet of Ministers began an internal investigation... Based on materials that have been prepared by the State Fiscal Service during the internal investigation, the Cabinet has asked the National Anti-Corruption Bureau to launch criminal proceedings and to bring to justice all those responsible starting with the officials of the Ecology and Natural Resources Ministry and ending with each and every official who participated in the scheme in which the tender was won by a bogus company with the intention to steal UAH 480 million from the state budget," Yatseniuk said. He also stressed that the government would provide all the necessary materials. The construction of a pipeline for connecting Henichesk (Kherson region) to the main gas transportation system (GTS) of Ukraine would cost UAH 400 million, therefore a better solution is to transfer the city consumers to other energy sources, Minister of Energy and Coal Industry of Ukraine Volodymyr Demchyshyn has said at a press conference in Kyiv. "There are many solutions, namely compression of gas, it is possible to build a pipeline of 80 km and spend UAH 400 million - this is also an option. And we can transfer a number of state-owned enterprises to solid fuel boilers and reduce consumption to the limit, which is admissible," he said. The minister complained that the local authorities do not hurry to do anything to reduce the peak consumption of gas. Ukraine is ready to consider the issue of raising tariffs for Russian gas transit through its territory in the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce, Ukrainian Minister of Energy and Coal Industry Volodymyr Demchyshyn has stated. "You know that the venue is Stockholm. Everything is clear," he told reporters after a cabinet meeting, asked what will happen if Russia's Gazprom does not agree with the terms of Ukraine on this issue. Ukrainian Minister of Agricultural Policy and Food Oleksiy Pavlenko has stated Ukraine found no salmonella in eggs supplied to Israel. "Today at 12:00 I had a meeting with producers, at which it was clearly stated that salmonella bacterium have not been found. Now we are waiting for the results from the Israeli side," the minister told reporters after a government meeting in Kyiv. As reported, on January 20, 2016 the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of Israel, following the ban on eggs imports from Ukraine, prohibited eggs imports from Spain, its major supplier of these goods. Naftogaz Ukrainy has offered PJSC Ukrnafta assistance in recovering debtor indebtedness for future payments to the budget. According to a Naftogaz letter, the text of which has been sent to Interfax-Ukraine, the relevant initiative is undertaken with the purpose to execute decree No. 1597/0/1-16 of Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk dated January 18. At the same time, Naftogaz said if Ukrnafta is interested in receiving assistance it has to provide a list of its debtors (with the complete information on the amount, terms, causes of debtor indebtedness), as well as information on the measures taken to recover the debts. Ukrnafta's debt to the national budget is UAH 10.2 billion. At the same time, debtor indebtedness to Ukrnafta exceeds UAH 18 billion. SACRAMENTO Bay Area lawmakers prompted by a rash of tour bus accidents are pushing legislation aimed at increasing oversight and improving safety standards for sightseeing fleets. This is a huge concern, said Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, who will join lawmakers at City Hall in San Francisco on Wednesday to highlight three proposals. We have a lot of tourism in our state. We want to encourage that. We want people to come and have a safe and enjoyable experience. At the same time, we want to ensure that pedestrians can walk the streets without fear that they will be run over by a tour bus. AB1677, which Ting introduced Tuesday, would direct the California Highway Patrol to work with counties and cities to create local inspection programs for tour bus companies that could supplement state inspections. AB1574 by Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, would require the California Public Utilities Commission to check with the Department of Motor Vehicles in order to identify buses unknown to regulators, often called ghost buses. SB812 by Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, would require the CHP to inspect tour buses more frequently and would require inspections to be random to ensure companies arent gaming the system. The bill would also require buses purchased out of state to be inspected before they can be used in California. Currently, the PUC oversees the CHP inspections of tour buses. Each year, a sample of a companys fleet are inspected to ensure they are registered, the driver is properly licensed and the vehicle is operating safely. A City Sightseeing bus that crashed Nov. 13 at Union Square was never registered or inspected in California after it was modified out of state and put in service last year. Twenty people were injured in the crash. The operator of the bus failed a surprise post-accident inspection. This issue is not new, Ting said. We are working to augment what the PUC is doing. We know the PUC doesnt have the resources to do every inspection we need them to do for those localities that this means a lot to, like San Francisco and other choice destinations. We want to ensure local governments can take control and do further inspections of these buses. Melody Gutierrez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: mgutierrez@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @MelodyGutierrez (Inside Science) -- Endangered African elephants may have an unlikely ally to protect them from ivory poachers and extinction: long dead mammoths. Two Canadian economists, in a presentation at the American Economic Association meeting this month in San Francisco, said that unearthed tusks from mammoths frozen in the Arctic 20,000-40,000 years ago may save as many as 50,000 elephants from poachers each year, almost as many as were slaughtered the year before trade in ivory became illegal in 1990. John Boyce, an economist at the University of Calgary and his graduate student, Naima Farah, reported that 34,000 African elephants are killed every year out of a population estimated at the Elephant Database as less than 680,000, and the number might have been 85,000 a year without the 88 tons of mammoth tusks exported from Russia annually. That additional stock of ivory, they said, may be contributing to saving elephants from extinction. The animals need the help. According to the National Geographic Society, there were 26 million elephants in Africa in 1800. That number was cut in half by 1900. By 1989, it had plummeted to around 600,000. Pressure from around the world led to a ban on ivory trading the following year, implemented by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, and the elephant population began to recover, growing to about 1 million individuals over the next 10 years. But in two separate incidents in 1999 and 2008, under pressure from some African countries, CITES allowed those nations to put stores of confiscated ivory on the market. The result, the Society said, was catastrophic. It created a legal trade in ivory, a loophole poachers ran through. At the rate of the current slaughter, the African elephant is likely doomed as a species. The world is unlikely to run out of mammoth tusks, the researchers said. The number of mammoths still encased in permafrost in Siberia may total as many as 10 million, Farah said. Each has two tusks, and each tusk has from 20-100 pounds of ivory. As the permafrost melts, more carcasses appear. Often, it is just bones and tusks, but many carcasses have been almost complete. They are mostly in Siberia, where collecting ivory has become a cottage industry that somewhat resembles the Mexican drug trade with gangs fighting over the carcasses. The total amount of ivory in the Arctic adds up to tens of thousands of tons. If each measure of mammoth ivory replaced the demand to deliver an equal amount of ivory from a newly killed elephant, that' would be enough to save tens of millions of elephants over time. However, the quality of the mammoth tusks varies, said Daniel Fisher, a paleontologist at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Mammoth tusks have been buried a long time and could have weathered over the years. In small pieces, elephant ivory and mammoth ivory are indistinguishable, but in large pieces or whole tusks, mammoth ivory is more yellowish and has more cracks, Farah said. "The biggest consumers are in China and Hong Kong," Farah said. In China ivory is treated as wealth. It is carved for decorations and used in some folk medicine. (Hong Kong announced last week it would phase out ivory sales.) Mammoths were about the size of modern elephants and were related, splitting genetically from a common ancestor about 6 million years ago, said Fisher. The males weighed 5 tons, the females 3.5 to 4. They were most distinguished from modern elephants by curved tusks and their shaggy coats. Newborn mammoth babies weighed more than 200 pounds and grew rapidly. Why they became extinct is a matter of controversy among scientists. Some say it was climate change -- mostly warming -- that did it. Others say it was human hunting, and some say it was both. Fisher said he won't take sides, but hunting seems to be the most proven, he said. Fisher is skeptical of the influence mammoth tusks have on the ivory market. There will always be a market for ivory, he said, and the people making money for selling ivory don't care where it comes from. Others have also argued that selling stocks of ivory captured from poachers in places like South Africa would also destroy the market for illegal elephant ivory, but Fisher says the poachers don't play by the rules. They don't have access to the stores, but do have access to automatic weapons and ammunition needed to kill elephants. If there is money to be made, someone will do what's necessary to make it, he said. Even if the market were suddenly flooded with ivory and the price dropped precipitously, there would still be a market for ivory. The existence of the market encourages poaching. That's why Fisher believes the trade in mammoth ivory does not discourage elephant poaching. "Just by increasing access to ivory you support the market in the long term, and the market long term will always lead to the death of elephants," he said. "It's too easy just to shoot elephants." Meanwhile, scientists who study mammoths want to get their hands on more tusks. The tusks contain DNA and information about the lives of the animals, what they ate, and where they roamed. "The tusks contain archives of their lives," he said. Meanwhile, the trade in mammoth tusks has become a violent black market that has altered the lives of people in Siberia who now hunt mammoth carcasses instead of living their traditional life styles. There have been gangs, murder and bribery, Fisher added. Three years ago he learned the leader of one of the groups he traveled with in Siberia looking for mammoths to study was dead, poisoned by a mammoth tusk trader. Joel Shurkin is a freelance writer in Baltimore. He was former science writer at the Philadelphia Inquirer and was part of the team that won a Pulitzer Prize for covering Three Mile Island. He has nine published books and is working on a tenth. He has taught journalism at Stanford University, the University of California at Santa Cruz and the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He tweets at @shurkin. Reprinted with permission from Inside Science, an editorially independent news product of the American Institute of Physics, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing, promoting and serving the physical sciences. PARIS Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Wednesday that defense ministers from France and five other nations have agreed to intensify the campaign against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, and that the coalition will work together to fill the military requirements as the fight unfolds over the coming months. Speaking at a news conference with Frances Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, Carter said there was broad agreement on a coordinated plan to battle Islamic State over the next year and take back key cities in Iraq and Syria from the militants. We agreed that we all must do more, Carter said shortly after a working lunch with Le Drian and defense ministers from France, Australia, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Carter also announced that the 26 nations in the anti-Islamic State coalition, as well as Iraq, will meet in Brussels next month to continue the talks. Carter urged the coalition to seize the opportunity now to hasten the Islamic State groups defeat. The U.S. has mapped out a coordinated campaign against Islamic State over the next year, and Carter laid out the plans to the ministers during the meeting, which was co-hosted by France. Because Daesh is retreating and we have managed to affect its resources in the ground, it is the moment to increase our collective forces with a coherent military strategy, Le Drian said, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State. Carter has said he wouldnt hesitate to challenge the core nations to do more in the fight in the coming year. The defense ministers also discussed plans to retake two major cities in Iraq and Syria that serve as power centers for Islamic State. The coalition wants to help Iraqi and Kurdish peshmerga forces retake Mosul in northern Iraq and to assist the Syrian moderate forces in ousting Islamic State militants from Raqqa, Syria, the groups self-proclaimed capital. Raqqa and Mosul must be won back, Le Drian said, adding that it can only succeed if the coalition supports the local forces on the ground in Iraq and Syria. U.S. military leaders say the coalition is gaining ground on Islamic State. And they are hoping that the six core nations can encourage others to contribute. While European nations have been heavily involved, the U.S. would like to see more direct military contributions both equipment and training from Arab and Asian countries. Arab nations joined the coalitions air strike campaign early on, but their participation has waned a bit over time, particularly as the fight between Saudi Arabia and Iran-backed rebels in Yemen has increased. Before the meeting began, British Defense Minister Michael Fallon said Wednesday that the Islamic State group is now under pressure and the goal of the gathering was to identify how we can tighten the noose around the head of the snake. After two years (and some change) away from Santa Fe, Paula Poundstone is set to arrive for another show at the Lensic Performing Arts Center on Feb. 4. SFR caught her on the phone for a brief interview about writing stand-up and the showbiz journey from her home in Los Angeles. SFR: How'd you get your start doing stand-up? Paula Poundstone: I started doing open mic nights in Boston in 1979. And I was lucky enough to be 19 years old when that, sort of resurgence of, you know, stand-up comedy started taking place. There were a bunch of cities that started having open mic nights right around the same time, and I've never understood why. There was some sort of werewolf-type pull or something. I mean, obviously stand-up comedy has been around since we've come out of the cave. I worked in Boston for maybe a year or so before I took a Greyhound bus around the country to see what clubs were like in different cities. How has the business changed since you started? I haven't worked clubs in years, thank goodness. I work mostly theaters and mostly by myself, really, because I'm selfish. I have such a great audience, and I have no desire to share even a minute with them with someone else. I have a pretty isolated view. I don't know how it is now, but there was a period of time that some comics told me that to do open mic that you had to pay, or you had to bring audience members with you, neither of which could I ever have done. You've said no two of your shows are ever the same. How does that affect your writing process? Writing is a strong word for what I do. I try to be constantly infusing new material in my act. Largely, the reason no two shows are the same is my favorite part is just talking to the audience. I start it off by asking, "Where you from, what do you do for a living," and little biographies emerge. On a good night (and I like to think that some of them are), probably about a third of the stuff that's said is because of the audience that's there. And therefore, no two shows are the same. Part of that came [about] because I couldn't memorize stuff. I just, I would get so nervous when I would get on stage that everything that I had prepared, that I had planned to say, would fly right out of my head. And then I would be stuck working the room. Originally, I felt this was a big liability and a really bad thing. And eventually, it dawned on me that it was really where the heart and soul of the night lie, where the sort of excitement and fun was. When I was living in San Francisco, when I was first starting out and working there, I worked behind the counter at a little club called The Other Cafe. It was only there for six years. I worked behind the counter in the mornings mostly, and I would hear the waitresses complain about the comics, even the open mic comics, who had every reason to be bad. They would say, "Oh my God, we have to listen to the same stuff day after day." I really wanted to have an act that wouldn't trouble the waitresses. How do you deal with hecklers? I never get hecklers. It's been years since somebody just shouted something out. I often get somebody that just wants to join in. But it never seems like a hostile gesture. I also don't work in clubs; there's generally not a whole lot of alcohol where I am, although it's possible. The drunk are the best and the worst audience. They are. Yeah mostly the worst. I'll tell you, when I quit drinking, a lot of times I was still mostly [working] in clubs. It was like a temperance lecture every night. Sometimes you feel like you're missing something, and maybe it would be good to have a drink. Work in a club with people drinking, you don't hold that thought for very long. Instead you go, "Oh thank God. Oh my God, I looked like that." What's been your biggest challenge? You know, I'm not, like, a big huge star. I don't think I could do my parenting job [if I was a big huge star]. The job that I do is so much fun, and God knows I have no other skills. I don't know that it feels challenging. I honestly feel pretty lucky. Paula Poundstone 7:30 pm Thursday, Feb. 4. $36-$46 Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W San Francisco St. 988-1234 Santa Fe Reporter New Mexico's Gov. Susana Martinez emerged from her spider hole of post-pizza-party depression and embarrassment on Tuesday, delivering a nearly hourlong State of the State Address before a packed House gallery, kicking off the 52nd legislative session in the Roundhouse. The speech was heavy on protecting the people, putting away dangerous criminals for longer periods of time, ratcheting up penalties for DWI offenders, improving education and helping familiesalways the cornerstone of conservative Republican principles. It was also self-congratulatory, in typical, anti-tax GOP fashion, in which Martinez, a Republican now entering her sixth year in office, claimed New Mexico stands on firm fiscal ground, without having to raise taxes or bail out the government on the backs of hard-working families. Only once did Martinez refer to campaign finance reform, saying it was time to shut the "revolving door" between lobbyists and legislators. But there was no mention of cleaning up corruption or establishing an independent ethics committee in New Mexico's citizen Legislature, which meets only once a year, in this case for a 30-day stretch to balance a $6 billion budget. Such a subject was the elephant in the room, in which Martinez stars, front and center, as the subject of a federal probe over campaign funds during her first run for governor, a shell game that followed on the heels of of Martinez's own version of running the government through private email, drawing comparisons to Hillary Clinton's private email accounts. Instead, the 56-year-old Martinez, an El Paso, Texas, native and former New Mexico prosecutor, deferred to what she knows best in her 45-minute deliverance: telling harrowing tales of police officers shot dead in the streets of Rio Rancho and Albuquerque during traffic stops by repeat offendersfor purposes of bail reform in the state. "Call them boomerang thugs, turnstile thugs, whatever," Martinez said. "We have vicious, heinous criminals among us who are willing to take the lives of our greatest heroes and who have no business being out on the streets." Democrats immediately threw political counterpunches after the speech, including Debra Haaland, chairwoman for the Democratic Party of New Mexico, summing it up as "the same old rosy picture that she paints, and nothing really jibes with reality, and her policies have not changed since she entered office." Meanwhile, outside the Roundhouse, just hours before her speech, protesters wearing evil-looking masks held a satirical "pizza party" to impeach Martinez, with their name-calling upstaging the humorous spirit of the party. She is nothing short of "a tyrant," they said, and her policies, from pro drilling to the anti-regulation attitude she wields, only serves to help big corporations while ignoring the "little people" of New Mexico. Protesters rallied outside the Roundhouse to mark the first day of the legislative session. (Thomas Ragan) The pizza, of course, was a clear allusion to the holiday party gone awry in the second week of December, in which Martinez lied to responding Santa Fe police officers and demanded emergency dispatch give her the name of the person who called in to complain about the ruckus on the fourth floor of the Eldorado Hotel during an after-party holiday party. She also told dispatchers the people in the room were eating pizza, not drinking beer and throwing bottles off the balcony. Protesters, who included former Santa Fe City Council candidate Jeff Green, say they've drafted a resolution calling for Martinez's impeachment for "high crimes, corruption and malfeasance," and while the movement could turn out to be more symbolic than substantial, emotions still ran high, even if they were choreographed, the megaphone passed around like some joint. "The Constitution says 'We the people, by the people, for the people,'" shouted Albuquerque resident Dinah Vargas, as a crowd gathered and ate pizza and state police officers looked on. "The Constitution doesn't say, 'We the government, for the government, for contracts and contractors and dirty money that's shoved under the table.'" Not to be undone, pro-immigrant rights groups, including Somos Un Pueblo Unido, created a semblance of a human chain on the other side of the capitol, condemning Martinez for trying to strip undocumented residents of their driver's licenses, stoking fear by falsely claiming the law lures criminals and leads to human trafficking while deliberately conflating the issue with the Real ID Act. But for Martinez, whose social slip-ups may have lost her any sort of chance at a national post, the speech she gave could be her last attempt to save face. So she tugged at the heartstrings of her Republican-controlled House, mentioning, by name, victims whose lives have been cut short by drunken drivers. She talked about supporting curfews in certain communities that are being terrorized by crime, expounded on closing the legal loopholes in which child pornography suspects receive little, if any punishment, and laid bare her plan to invest millions of dollars in early childhood programs and improve reading among the state's elementary school students. "No child is un-teachable," she said. "I will never give up on any kid." She was full of unoriginal ideas that have long stood the political test of timelike encouraging more parental involvement by granting employees a leave so that they could attend parent-teacher conferences, echoing the notion that education begins in the home. And she patted herself on the back for loosening regulations that have led to an eight-day turnaround in the state's ability to distribute drilling permits to the oil and gas industry, then countered in the next breath that the state has levied and collected more fines from polluters than any other administration in state history. There is a middle ground, she insisted, between protecting the public health and the environment while making a buck off the land in a state where the oil and gas industry ranks fourth in the nation. "We must never be so arrogant or naive to forget that businesses can be located anywhere in the world," she said. "Whether we like it or not, whether it makes us comfortable or not, we are in a high-stakes daily competition with other states and other countries. It's our job to make New Mexico more welcoming, more predictable for job creators, and we've come a long way in doing so, largely by focusing on the fundamentals to better compete." Joe Kabourek, executive director of the Democratic Party of New Mexico, was ready with a counter too: "The one thing we didn't hear about is the public's lacks of trust in its leaders. From a federal investigation to an elected official doing time in jail, scandals have been nonstop for Gov. Martinez and her administration. It's time she breaks her silence and speaks frankly about the problems and finds solutions." Santa Fe Reporter Ukrenergo warns about mass distribution of emails with BlackEnergy virus on its behalf NJSC Ukrenergo has warned that emails infected with the BlackEnergy virus have been sent out to Ukrainian energy companies on its behalf. "Hackers have been sending out numerous fake emails on behalf of state-run NJSC Ukrenergo on the rescheduling of public debates on the plan of the development of the integrated power grids. The emails have got an attachment allegedly with the said draft plan, which is most likely infected with the BlackEnergy virus," the press service said. Ukrenergo once again stressed that the company is not engaged in the mass distribution of emails. "The Ukrainian division of the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) has been informed about the incident," Ukrenergo said. As was reported, three regional power distribution companies in Ukraine have earlier reported power outages due to the damage done by BlackEnergy. After watching a series of opening day ceremonies, then listening to pat-on-the-back introductions and to Gov. Susana Martinez lengthy state of the state speech, legislators are finally getting to work. Up next, theyll see how their ideas fare in the session that lasts until March 18 and promises to tackle ethics and campaign finance reform, along with the balancing the state budget. They're also entering an arena where already a number of proposals seek to address what federal officials say is the state's noncompliance with the Real ID Act. The big drama is for the state's thousands of undocumented residents. Many of them have been driving legally in the Land of Enchantment but living illegally in the US. The next month could prove pivotal in the highly politicized debate that has had a real effect, not just on the undocumented but on citizens alike. Up until a few weeks ago, no one knew whether they'd be able to use their New Mexico driver's licenses to board airlines or even enter a federal courthouse. The situation isn't as urgent as it was around Christmas, in light of the federal government's recent two-year extension, in which it made clear that our licenses would still be valid for airplanes, provided travel is within the US. But their use at federal facilities is still flapping in the wind. Sandia National Laboratories and White Sands Missile Range have turned license-wielding civilians back at their gates, and while Los Alamos National Laboratories is still accepting state IDs for visitors, they could just as easily follow suit. Which is why Rep. Stephanie Garcia Richard, D-Los Alamos, says she wants to solve the problem now. She's introduced a bill to grant the Taxation and Revenue Department the immediate right to distribute Real ID-compliant licenses to those who qualify, via the state Motor Vehicle Department. "It's now or never," says Garcia Richard, some of whose constituents work at the lab as contractors and use their current state driver's licenses to gain entry. They're waiting for the hammer to drop at any moment, federal reprieve or not. "We just don't know what's going to happen next." So with my newfound freedom, I decide to pay a visit to Los Alamos National Laboratory, which put an end to World War II with its atom bomb. Today, in addition to weapons projects, scientists there study everything from groundwater to water on Mars. As I drive up the hill, I think about wildfires that have crept onto the lab property twice in the last two decades and how much everyone freaks out. The last thing you want is fire on the mountain. That, or a jihadist bomb. After about a half-hour's drive from Santa Fe, I stop such musings as I come to a row of gates in front of LANL off NM Hwy. 501, a place I expected to resemble a future Trump checkpoint along the US-Mexico border. I saunter right in, without even having to show any form of ID. And I'm driving a beat-up pickup with a large tinted camper shell. But the guard waves me through. He forgets to ask me for an ID. I think I sidetracked him by telling him I was with the media and I was hoping to talk to someone in public affairs, but nobody was expecting me. In his willingness to help, he just forgot. He tells me to report the Otowi Building. I park, walk downstairs, leave public affairs a message by dialing them from the reception desk there, wait about 15 minutes for a callback, and then scram. But on the way out, I decide to use the restrooms on the second floor. Then I notice there's a cafeteria. Closed, dammit. But the back patio isn't, nor were the mountains, so I walk outside and took them in. It's hard to shut down the southern tail of the Rockies, ID or no ID. And of course, there are signs everywhere that proclaim I'm under video surveillance, the logic always mystifying me, informing the very evildoers that they're being watched. Kevin Roark, a spokesman with the lab, later tells me via email that the Otowi Building and the J Robert Oppenheimer Study Center are open to the public. But he cautioned that all visitors need to let LANL know they're coming, something I didn't do, and that they need to be escorted at all times, something I wasn't, and that they can't be wandering around the grounds, which I kind of did but just a little, inside an isolated area. Technically, he says, visitors could be cited for trespassing, if they're not there on official business, which I was. My point isn't to make LANL look bad, or me, for that matter. The good news is I'm a US citizen, and both my parents were born on US soil, and my mother gave birth to me on the South Side of Chicago, her water breaking on the brand-new living room carpet, which makes me a terrorist in my own right. But it also qualifies me for the US presidency more than Ted Cruz, at least at the moment. So if I'm elected, I'd get rid of the Real ID Act and, since we're already being watched, put Big Brother to use by monitoring the Internet, which is often the source for homegrown radicalization. Leave the states and their citizens alone. There are reasons why only 22 states so far have met federal standards and the rest are still working on them: It's complicated. What's more, quite a few states disagree with the Real ID Act on principle, because the information on their residents will soon be shared in a national database. And there's a reason why a dozen states allow their undocumented residents to legally drive: because it was the only solution in the absence of US Congress passing comprehensive immigration reform, which would have made all things uniform. Now such weighty decisions are in the hands of the legislators in the Roundhouse, where Gov. Martinez, a Republican, has been hell-bent on repealing the state's rules on driver's licenses for those lacking proof of US citizenship. And, already, in addition to Garcia Richard's bill, three other ID proposals have been introduced in the House. Santa Fe Reporter New Zealand's housing market continued to strengthen in December, with several regions hitting new record prices, while Auckland lagged behind following restrictions to curb activity in the country's largest city. The country's median dwelling price for December was $465,000, 1.2 percent ahead of November and 3.3 percent up on December 2014, the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand said in its monthly release of home sales data. Excluding Auckland, the median price hit a new record of $379,000. Auckland's property market has showed some signs of slowing after the Reserve Bank and the government last year introduced new measures to quell the risk from a housing bubble, as migrants and investors competed for a shortage of housing stock. While Auckland house prices advanced in the past two months, the latest $770,000 median price is just short of the record $771,000 set in September. Meanwhile, prices outside of Auckland have continued to strengthen, with five areas setting new record median prices in the latest month. Regional markets, particularly Northland, Waikato/Bay of Plenty, Hawkes Bay and Central Otago Lakes are now setting the pace for the New Zealand real estate market, with Auckland, in a relative sense, now in the middle of the pack," said REINZ chief executive Colleen Milne. "In addition to the four regions already noted, Wellington, Manawatu /Wanganui and Otago are also seeing positive movements in days to sell and median prices," she said. "This breadth of the improvement across New Zealand suggests that there is more is at play than just an Auckland halo effect, although that has contributed in the northern regions. Some 7,313 dwellings were sold across New Zealand in December, down 9.1 percent from November although 3.5 percent ahead of December 2014. In Auckland, the volume of sales dropped 12 percent from November and 19 percent from the year-earlier month. Auckland now accounts for just 51 percent of national auctions, down from 75 percent a year earlier. The central bank introduced Auckland-specific lending restrictions covering loan-to-value ratios in November last year, while the government's more stringent enforcement of taxing speculators' capital gains began in October. "The decline in sales volume in Auckland, while noticeable, is likely transitory as the region gets to grips with the new LVR rules for investors, although the median price continues to firm," Milne said. BusinessDesk.co.nz Comments from our readers No comments yet Add your comment: Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process. Related News: Air New Zealand Limited Retail Bond Offer Books Close Spark welcomes C-band spectrum allocation AIA - 2022 Annual Meeting Chair & Chief Executive Addresses MOVE Completes Purchase of Vessel for Trans-Tasman Service Heartland to purchase Challenger Bank in Australia, and provides lending growth update October 20th Morning Report VTL - Director Resignation - Reg Barrett Infratil 2022 Sydney Investor Day Rua Bioscience Confirms First International Order AIA - Auckland Airport considers retail bond offer Fonterra Cooperative Group is widely expected to cut its forecast milk payout for this season after prices dipped at a second successive GlobalDairyTrade auction this month. The GDT price index fell 1.4 percent at last night's auction, following a 1.6 percent decline at the previous fortnightly auction. The average price for whole milk powder slid 0.5 percent to US$2,188 a tonne, still short of the US$3,000 a tonne for whole milk powder that Fonterra has said is needed to support its current forecast for the 2015/16 season of $4.60 per kilogram of milk solids. Expectations for Fonterra's payout currently range between $4.10/kgMS-$4.60/kgMS, according to a BusinessDesk survey of agricultural economists and dairy market analysts. Most have turned more pessimistic about the current season's prospects following the latest auctions, and all except one of the estimates is below Fonterra's current forecast. Fonterra has previously said its forecast was dependent on global dairy prices rising in the first half of this year. That's so far failed to happen, with supply continuing to exceed demand. "Our overriding view is that strong growth in global milk supply combined with subdued demand from China, is likely to keep a lid on prices for much of this year," Westpac Banking Corp senior economist Anne Boniface said in a note, where she reduced her estimate for the current season to $4.20/kgMS from $4.50/kgMS. While the latest auction wasn't as weak as feared, dairy prices over January have still been weaker than the bank had pencilled in its forecasts, Boniface said. The previous forecast "was based on the potential for an El Nino induced drought to impact on New Zealand milk production. But after decent rainfall in many parts of the country so far this year, the risk of a severe drought appears to be receding," she said. "As we get further past the peak production period, even if dry weather set in now, overall milk production would be less at risk." Open Country Dairy, the country's second-largest dairy processor, last week reduced its milk payout by 30 cents to an average price of between $4.00-$4.30/kgMS. ASB Bank rural economist Nathan Penny also trimmed his forecast for the current season to $4.10/kgMS from $4.60/kgMS. Given that more than 60 percent of this season's volumes are already sold, Penny said the benefits of any pick up in prices are now likely to accrue next season, when he is picking a payout of $6.50/kgMS. Dairy products are New Zealand's largest commodity export and lower global prices are putting pressure on the nation's dairy farmers, weighing on the outlook for economic growth and putting dairy sector debt on the Reserve Bank's radar as a growing risk to financial stability. Federated Farmers also joined the chorus of concern about Fonterra's milk payout today, saying it's looking increasingly out of reach after the latest auction. "It is still possible that a sudden upswing in prices could get us there, but wed need to see some very large increases in the next couple of months to reach the $4.60 mark," said the organisation's dairy chair Andrew Hoggard. "Even that is a fairly poor payout for most farmers, and falling below that is just going to ramp up the pressure on the dairy industry and those that support it." BusinessDesk.co.nz Comments from our readers No comments yet Add your comment: Your name: Your email: Not displayed to the public Comment: Comments to Sharechat go through an approval process. Comments which are defamatory, abusive or in some way deemed inappropriate will not be approved. It is allowable to use some form of non-de-plume for your name, however we recommend real email addresses are used. Comments from free email addresses such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc may not be approved. Anti-spam verification: Type the text you see in the image into the field below. You are asked to do this in order to verify that this enquiry is not being performed by an automated process. Related News: Air New Zealand Limited Retail Bond Offer Books Close Spark welcomes C-band spectrum allocation AIA - 2022 Annual Meeting Chair & Chief Executive Addresses MOVE Completes Purchase of Vessel for Trans-Tasman Service Heartland to purchase Challenger Bank in Australia, and provides lending growth update October 20th Morning Report VTL - Director Resignation - Reg Barrett Infratil 2022 Sydney Investor Day Rua Bioscience Confirms First International Order AIA - Auckland Airport considers retail bond offer Ukrainian Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, who is now visiting Davos, Switzerland, has met with Director General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Irina Bokova to discuss the protection of the Chersonesus Taurica historical monument, which is located in the occupied Crimea. "Honored to meet Irina Bokova last night, Director General of UNESCO. We talked about the role of UNESCO is protecting cultural heritage sights in Ukraine, including Khersones (Chersonesus) in illegally annexed Crimea," Jaresko wrote on her Facebook on Wednesday. She also said that they "brainstormed a bit about how to increase UN engagement in Ukraine beyond its current activities." "In particular, we discussed some of the UN education/connectivity efforts that could be adapted for Ukraine as well. Ms. Bokova's experience in working on Bulgaria's European integration provides helpful insights for Ukraine's journey today," Jaresko added. The lawyers of Ukrainian female pilot Nadia Savchenko, who is charged with involvement in the killing of Russian journalists, plan to finish with the presentation of the evidence in January, lawyer Mark Feygin told Interfax on Wednesday. "We have the evidence, which we're to present this or next week. There also will be witnesses and experts. After that, we'll wait for mutual debates and a verdict," he said. Feygin added that the oral statements of the parties might be held in early February 2016, after which a court will schedule the date of announcement of the verdict, which could be passed the same month, the lawyer said. He also reported that Savchenko had lost a weight a lot in the result of a hunger strike she went in December. According to earlier reports, Savchenko went on hunger strike until the end of the trial of her case during a court hearing held in the Donetsky City Court on December 17. According to Russian investigators, Ukrainian Armed Forces officer Savchenko was at the base of the Aidar battalion near the village of Metallist in the Slovyanoserbsk district of Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine on June 17, where she was conducting secret surveillance and correcting artillery fire targeting a checkpoint of militants from the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic (LPR), as well as civilians sheltering there, among them were three journalists of Russia's VGTRK broadcaster. Two Russian reporters Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin were killed in the attack. Savchenko denies all charges. Savchenko has been held in Russian custody since July 2014. On Thursday, January 21, at 11.00, the press center of the Interfax-Ukraine news agency will host a press conference entitled "One Year since Separation Line was Established. Has Pass System Achieved its Goal?". The participants will include coordinator for legal matters at the "Vostok-SOS: City Liberation" Levon Azizian, Coordinator of the Vostok-SOS (East-SOS) Kostiantyn Reutsky, legal analyst of the All-Ukrainian Charity Foundation 'Right to Protection' Suleiman Mamutov (8/5A Reitarska Street). Accreditation by phone (095) 629 1277. On Thursday, January 21, at 12.30 the press center of the Interfax-Ukraine news agency will host a press conference entitled "Presentation of Monitoring on Violence Against Participants of Rallies: Do Russian Ultra-Right Forces Boss in Kyiv Downtown?" Participants: sociologist, deputy director of the Center of Social and Labor Research Volodymyr Ischenko; human rights activist, director and manager of the monitoring project on the right for mass gatherings of the Republic Institute Volodymyr Chemerys; editor-in-chief of Spilne magazine; victim of the attack committed by nationalists on January 19, 2016 Artem Tydva; human rights activist, historian of Altera NGO (participant of the events at Zhovten cinema on January 19, 2016) Ihor Paniuta (8/5-A Reitarska Street). Additional information by phone: 38(050) 380 1035. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Despite the skyrocketing arrests and new programs aimed at treatment and overdose prevention, the heroin epidemic has yet to cease ravaging lives across the borough. And the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released some chilling numbers on the increase of heroin-related deaths in the United States. Their data included several graphs using a U.S. map showing death rates for drug poisoning on a national level by year, age, sex, race and ethnicity; on an age-adjusted state level arranged by year and per 100,000 population, and on an age-adjusted county level arranged by year and per 100,000 population. More than 47,000 people, equivalent to roughly 125 Americans daily, have died from using heroin in 2014 -- averaging 15 per 100,000 versus the nine per 100,000 in 2003, according to statistics from the CDC. STATEN ISLAND TRAGEDIES Falling right in line with the explosion of heroin deaths per year: Staten Island. In 2003, Richmond County was home to nearly 453,000 people, and averaging anywhere from 8 to 10 deaths by heroin per 100,000. While increasing in population by only 20,000 in 2014, the deaths by heroin have nearly doubled; with a population of 473,000, and averaging anywhere from 14 to 16 deaths per 100,000. The state of New York has also felt the heat from heroin use; from totaling 923 deaths based on a 19.1 million population in 2003, to totaling 2,300 deaths based on a 19.7 million population in 2014. Deaths from heroin overdoses have begun reaching similar heights to that of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) epidemic, which spanned the late 1980s to early 1990s, The New York Times reported. Robert Anderson, the CDC's chief of mortality statistics, told the Times that the death by HIV hit its peak in 1995 and was mainly an urban problem -- but according to the statistics of 2014's drug overdose deaths, the heroin epidemic is showing similar signs to the HIV epidemic while surpassing its peaks and cutting across rural-urban boundaries. With black market painkillers now harder to find, many opiate addicts turned to heroin, a cheaper and more widely available alternative. Over the past two years, there have been repeated reports of "bad batches" cut with unknown chemicals that can lead to fatal or near-fatal reactions when used. In fact, two borough residents at the center of a sweeping heroin conspiracy were caught on wiretap laughing about the bad reaction their customers had to their product, Brooklyn prosecutors allege. Powerful batches of high-quality heroin flooded the borough's streets, claiming more lives on the Island -- 42 in 2014 -- than anywhere else in the city. An internal NYPD report revealed that arrests where heroin was involved rose about 30 percent on Staten Island, to more than 650 in 2015, up from roughly 500 the previous year -- averaging daily, nearly two people arrested with heroin. Island NYPD officers have also saved dozens of lives using naloxone -- 18 in 2015, and 21 in the previous year. Staten Island District Attorney Michael E. McMahon, who took office this year, has vowed to address the troubling drug epidemic. "It's unfortunate to say, but virtually no one who lives here has been left untouched by this crisis," said a spokesman for McMahon. "With that said, District Attorney Michael E. McMahon is committed to putting his prosecutors on the front lines of this fight, joining with the brave men and women of the NYPD and working together to put the dealers behind bars." Further concern from SILIVE.com readers was raised after a South Shore family was busted and authorities alleged a raid of the family's Eltingville home turned up a stash of heroin. All five family members were hit with drug charges after detectives found a supply of heroin in the house, which authorities say was most likely going to be sold on the street, court papers allege. "We're in the middle of a crisis ... it's not the kind of problem you can fix with arrests," said NYPD Chief Edward Delatorre, Commanding Officer of Staten Island. The larger issue, he noted, has to do with the families of addicts not tackling the issue head-on. Legislature 5 Things FILE - In this file photo taken Nov. 19, 2015, students and other advocates of charter schools rally at the Capitol in Olympia, Wash. Lawmakers return to the Capitol on Monday, Jan. 11, 2016, with hopes of finishing this year's 60-day legislative session on time, and education funding will be the forefront issue. (AP Photo/Rachel La Corte, File) (Rachel La Corte) ALBANY, N.Y. -- Hundreds of charter school students and parents from New York City have rallied at the state Capitol in what has become an annual event to push for greater funding. Speakers at Wednesday's rally said they'll push lawmakers to increase funding for charters, which they say are a useful and innovative alternative to traditional public schools when given the appropriate resources. Charter advocates say the institutions are underfunded when compared to regular public schools and they want lawmakers to support Gov. Andrew Cuomo's call for more equitable distribution of resources. Advocates of traditional public schools say charters can't serve all students and say the state must focus on increasing funds to high-need public schools in poor districts. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- He brutally stabbed him 22 times, and then tried to skip town, prosecutors allege. But the Great Kills construction worker accused of knifing a Staten Island father as the dying man's toddler sat in the car claimed it was self-defense and he had planned to turn himself in to authorities about a day after his capture. Richard Gambale, 41, was arraigned Tuesday in Criminal Court in St. George for murdering Anthony Perretti, 43, of Bay Terrace, last week in a Rossville industrial park. Judge Raja Rajeswari ordered Gambale remanded without bail after prosecutors said the suspect had planned to leave New York -- he had an "obvious desire to flee," said Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Celia. When police apprehended Gambale driving his girlfriend's car in Manhattan on Monday, he had a suitcase full of clothes, nearly $3,000 cash, his passport, five cell phones and three driver's licenses with "minor variations," she said. Gambale's lawyer, Vincent J. Romano, said his client was defending himself from Perretti when he fatally stabbed him multiple times in the chest last Thursday. About 18 members of Gambale's family sat in the courtroom during the suspect's arraignment to show their support, including an ex-girlfriend of the victim who claimed Perretti had threatened to kill her when they were dating about two years ago. "He was a very vicious, vindictive person and he was always out to get what he wanted no matter who it affected or what the circumstances were," she said, declining to give her name. Gambale's lawyer said that Perretti had harassed his client for years, and, in October, had threatened to shoot him in the face after chasing him with a knife outside a bagel shop in New Dorp. The lawyer said Gambale hadn't reported the incident to police because he did not want to agitate Perretti further. Perretti, who fatally stabbed a bouncer in an upstate nightclub in 1995, had violated parole three times, including driving while intoxicated, said Romano. He had also been a suspect in a stabbing at Pulse Gentlemen's Club, according to Romano. Prosecutors said Gambale was on federal probation at the time of the stabbing for charges of conspiracy to import MDMA. On the day he was killed, Perretti had chased the suspect's Black Mercedes down Arthur Kill Road in his car, blocking Gambale in at the construction company yard where he worked on Industrial Loop East, Romano said. Police said Perretti was arguing with Gambale over finances. The dispute turned physical when Perretti reached for a metal fence pole on the ground and hit Gambale multiple times, according to Romano. That's when Gambale took out his work knife and stabbed Perretti, fleeing the scene in his Mercedes after instructing a co-worker to call police, Romano said. Officers found Perretti's three-year old son in the dead dad's car, uninjured, police said. "Based on the facts and circumstances of this case, I think this is a classic case of self-defense," Romano said. After the judge denied the lawyer's request to set bail at $250,000, Gambale's family filed out of the courtroom, angry over the decision. "If somebody hits you with a pipe, are you going to protect yourself?" the suspect's father, Ralph Gambale asked. China to Expand Investor Team for Local Government Bonds in 2016 It's being reported that China is expected to expand the investor team for local government bonds this year. The report quoted an official with China's Ministry of Finance saying that the government is working to allow more participants in the program. It's expected that bonds will be issued to raise money from social insurance funds, corporate annuities, and housing provident funds. In May last year, the Ministry of Finance proposed expanding the investor scope for special bonds, and encouraging institutional and individual investors to put money into local government bonds. Currently, branches of national commercial banks and local financial institutions are major investors for local government bonds. For more on this topic, CRI's Bob Jones spoke with John Ross, senior fellow with the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University. Blasts from a firework factory rocked in Shangrao city in Yangkou County, east Chinas Jiangxi Province, after midnight on January 20, 2016. Fire fighters and armed police are at scene for rescue. Four having been confirmed missing, while at least other four have been injured. The nearby neighborhood is reported could feel the quake when the blasts occured. Houses were severely damaged, and windows were smashed. The sound of fire crackers is constantly heard. By clicking Agree, you consent to Slates Terms of Service and Privacy Policy and the use of technologies such as cookies by Slate and our partners to deliver relevant advertising on our iOS app to personalize content and perform site analytics. Please see our Privacy Policy for more information about our use of data, your rights, and how to withdraw consent. Agree Hong Lei, spokesperson of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is on a regular press conference on Jan.19, 2016. (Photo from official website of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs) China is on high alert against Japan's attempt to poke its nose in the issue of the South China Sea, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said in response to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's latest interview with Financial Times on Jan.19. In his recent interview with the Financial Times, Abe said that Japan harbors very strong concerns over China's building of islands in the South China Sea and development of resources in the East China Sea. He called on the international community to raise its voice against this. China's oil and gas development activities in the East China Sea are all conducted in undisputed waters under the jurisdiction of China. They are within the realm of China's sovereign right, Hong Lei, spokesperson of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said on the regular press conference on Tuesday. Hong mentioned that China has indisputable sovereignty over the Nansha Islands and their adjacent waters. Construction by China on relevant islands and reefs of the Nansha Islands falls within China's sovereignty. It is legitimate, reasonable and justified. Japan once snatched from China islands in the South China Sea during the Second World War. The Chinese government retrieved them after the War. Japan should reflect upon rather than forget what it has done during the aggression, act and speak cautiously on issues concerning the East China Sea and the South China Sea, Hong said. Hong urged that Japan should make more efforts to increase mutual trust with its neighbors and promote regional peace and stability instead of sowing discord. From Tuesday to Saturday, Chinese President Xi Jinping is making his first state visit in 2016 to three Middle Eastern countries - Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran. This is also Xi's first visit to the Middle East since he assumed the presidency in 2013. Saudi Arabia has not had a Chinese president on its turf for seven years, Egypt for 12 years, and Iran for 14 years. Illustration: Liu Rui/GT The selection of the three countries is well-considered. They each play their own role in China's Middle East policy. Saudi Arabia, since it controls Mecca and Medina, the birthplace of Islam, wields decisive political and religious heft in the Arab world. Besides, as China's largest supplier of crude oil, Riyadh maintains a close and mutually beneficial relationship with Beijing. Although the country is troubled by declining oil prices and geopolitical spats, Saudi Arabia has revealed greater potential for development after King Salman succeeded the throne last year. China values Saudi Arabia's leverage in the Arab world, and seeks extensive economic cooperation in the future. Iran, located at the crossroads of China's " the Belt and Road " initiative, has established and preserved robust trade ties with China, the largest import destination of Iran, despite severe economic sanctions imposed by the US. However, since the historic nuclear reconciliation was reached, the lifting of sanctions will give Iran a major impetus to economic takeoff. China expects to take the chance and ramp up the bilateral ties up to a higher notch. Egypt, haunted by political and social problems since former president Hosni Mubarak was ousted in mass protests in 2011, has just regained stability after Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was sworn into office as Egyptian president in 2014. Desperate for an all-out recovery, Egypt needs solid partnerships to boost its economy, especially in terms of infrastructure, manufacturing, funds and technologies. As Egypt's largest trade partner since 2014, China is trustworthy. China is trying to introduce its top-notch capability for infrastructure construction into the international market through the " the Belt and Road " initiative, which Egypt can rely on to meet its own huge needs. Plus, the Arab League is headquartered in Cairo, and Egypt was the first Arab and African country that recognized the People's Republic of China. The traditional friendship and the outlook for multifaceted economic cooperation will herald more substantial bilateral ties. Xi's visit to the three countries sends out a signal that China's involvement in the Middle East has no exterior motives other than economic reciprocity and political goodwill. Recent years have seen China tuning its Middle East policy to be more engaged. It is commensurate with China's expanding role in international platforms, where Beijing will and should assume more responsibilities. As for the Middle East, a global hotspot, Beijing is trying to find its niche to be a constructive player. China is employing a more proactive approach, other than simply relying on multilateral mechanisms such as the UN Security Council like it always does, to nourishing all-party trust in the Middle East. That is why earlier this month, Beijing invited representatives from the Syrian government and opposition to come to China for peace talks. Unlike some other major powers which have rival interests in the Middle East, China considers this region not only as a lifeline of energy and a market for economic cooperation, but also a platform where it can be a responsible global player to generate peace and stability. In stark contrast with other major powers, China has a good reputation in the Middle East for its impartial position in regional affairs, constructive contribution to regional balance, and active response to multi-party needs. China sticks to three principles of involvement, not intervention, in the Middle East. First, Beijing won't be militarily engaged; Second, it won't impose its own values and thoughts on Middle Eastern countries; Third, China maintains impartiality between conflicting sides. Sticking to these principles gives China leeway to avoid being embroiled in the deep mire of the Middle East, which means China can skillfully help reconcile different appeals and mediate between multiple stakeholders. Since the leadership shift in 2013, Xi has visited almost every major part of the world. This Middle East visit makes China's all-round diplomacy a complete picture. By gaining more initiative in the region, China will shape its role as a contributor, helping the Middle East to restore peace and stability. The author is former Chinese ambassador to Iran and the United Arab Emirates. (Source: Global Times and Peoples Daily) Weinberg was clearly puzzled by the governor's action [or lack thereof], telling a Star-Ledger reporter that the veto is "a little mystifying because by his pocket vetoing of this legislation he keeps the current law on the books, which is much more stringent." Think globally, inform locally; "In Alberta, we have the capacity for 1,463 Mw of wind, and we gather that over a huge area," he said, noting wind energy production is gathered from an area the size of The Netherlands in southern Alberta. Often, wind generation is only able to hit an average of 30 per cent of capacity due to periods where it slips below the five per cent threshold (considered to be zero output). That instability in power levels is a major issue for supplying power to Albertans. In contrast, the Sheerness generating station near Hanna has a capacity of 780 Mw. "It provides more electricity than all the wind turbines in Alberta," Schaupmeyer said, adding coal generation also has stable output. Illustration: Liu Rui/GT China and Egypt established diplomatic ties in 1956. Egypt became the first African and Arab country to acknowledge China after the foundation of the PRC in 1949. With 2016 marking the 60th anniversary of the bilateral diplomatic ties, Chinese President Xi Jinping embarks on his trip to Egypt Tuesday. Cairo-Beijing relationship will see the best period of development in history. Cairo is actively seeking for cooperation with Beijing in railway, aviation and new energy. Egypt is also expecting to make use of the "One Belt, One Road" initiative to meet mutual demands and be complementary in industries. It is worth mentioning that Beijing's "One Belt, One Road" initiative and the Suez Canal Area Development Project share a number of similarities. The "One Belt, One Road" initiative is becoming a significant bond linking China-Egypt economic cooperation. After the New Suez Canal is put into use in 2015, the Egyptian government plans to upgrade ports, embark on infrastructure projects and establish industrial parks in the Suez Canal region. The New Suez Canal will not only play an important role in global shipping, but also help attract foreign investments and promote regional industrial upgrading. This will be a significant opportunity for China. The Executive Director of Egypt TEDA Investment Company Wei Jianqing, who is responsible for the operations management of cooperation zone, considers that the China-Egypt Suez Economic and Trade Cooperation Zone, which is adjacent to the Suez Canal and only two kilometers away from Egypt's third largest port Ain Sukhna, is not only a meeting-point of the "Silk Road Economic Belt" and the "21st Century Maritime Silk Road," but also a golden junction of the "One Belt, One Road" initiative and the Suez Canal Area Development Project. The zone is a gateway for China-Egypt economic and trade cooperation. Wei is not overstating things. By the end of 2014, the starting area of 1.34 square kilometers was completed, attracting 62 enterprises and more than $900 million in investment. The construction work in the 6-square kilometer-expansion area will be launched soon. A number of large Chinese enterprises have already signed the agreements to settle in the zone. The governor of Suez, Ahmed Helmi Fathi, says that the zone has reflected the joint will of Egyptians and Chinese to cooperate. With the joint efforts of both Egyptian and Chinese governments and entrepreneurs, the future of the zone will be bright. The bilateral trade volume between Cairo and Beijing has reached $11.6 billion in 2014. China is now the largest trading partner of Egypt. Chinese direct investment in non-financial fields to Egypt has reached $97.51 million, with a year-on-year growth of 86 percent. The rapid growth of Cairo-Beijing economic ties is closely linked to the improvement of the bilateral political relations. The two sides have carried out intense top-level exchanges since the establishment of the diplomatic ties on May 30, 1956. The Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, since coming into office in 2014, has attached great importance to developing friendly relations with Beijing. China was the first Asian nation that Sisi officially visited as president. The political foundation for bilateral cooperation has become more solid after the joint statement on Chinese-Egyptian comprehensive strategic partnership was signed in December 2014. Some argue that while Sisi's China visit has started a new era in China-Egypt relationship, Xi's trip will be a milestone in the development of China-Egypt friendship. Despite the long distance, Egyptians are eager to know more about China. Ain Shams University was the first to teach Chinese in 1957. So far, 10 universities including Cairo University and Suez Canal University have launched Chinese language departments. Confucius Institutes were established in Cairo University and Suez Canal University in 2008 as well. A China-Egypt Culture Year will be held in 2016. Beijing will organize nearly 40 cultural activities in cities including Cairo, Luxor and Aswan. These activities will introduce Chinese traditional culture as well as its modern cultural achievements to Egypt. The 2016 China-Egypt Culture Year is significant in deepening bilateral comprehensive strategic partnership, promoting people-to-people friendship and facilitating cultural exchanges of the two civilizations. The author is an Egypt-based correspondent with People's Daily. Source: Global Times and Peoples Daily Thank you for visiting the Daily Journal. Please purchase an Enhanced Subscription to continue reading. To continue, please log in, or sign up for a new account. We offer one free story view per month. If you register for an account, you will get two additional story views. After those three total views, we ask that you support us with a subscription. A subscription to our digital content is so much more than just access to our valuable content. It means youre helping to support a local community institution that has, from its very start, supported the betterment of our society. Thank you very much! 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At least 19 people were killed and over 50 others injured when an unknown number of gunmen stormed a university in Pakistan's northwestern district of Charsadda on Wednesday morning, said hospital sources and officials. (Xinhua/Ahmad Sidique) CHARSADDA, Jan. 20, 2016 -- Photo taken by a mobile phone shows rescuers and police officials gather outside the gate of Bacha Khan University following an attack in northwest Pakistan's Charsadda, Jan. 20, 2016. At least 19 people were killed and over 50 others injured when an unknown number of gunmen stormed a university in Pakistan's northwestern district of Charsadda on Wednesday morning, said hospital sources and officials. (Xinhua/Ahmad Sidique) ISLAMABAD, Jan. 20 (Xinhua) -- A splinter group of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan(TTP) on Wednesday claimed responsibility for the attack on a university in the country's northwest district of Charsadda, which has reportedly killed 19 people and wounded over 50 others. Local Urdu TV channel Waqt News quoted Umar Mansoor, a commander of the Geedar group of TTP, as saying that they had sent four men for the attack. Mansoor said the attack was carried out in response to the Pakistani army's ongoing operations against militants in the country's northwest tribal areas. However, Muhammad Khorasani, the spokesman of TTP, denied any involvement in the attack. He told local media Express Tribune in an email that "The TTP and its leader Maulana Fazalullah have nothing to do with the attack." "We consider these youth studying in non-military educational institutes as our future, they are Muslims and their protection is our responsibility," he said, adding that "Those people who used the name of the Taliban in the attack will be tried in sharia courts." Pakistani army spokesman Asim Saleem Bajwa confirmed on his twitter account that four attackers had been killed in the operation launched by the security forces following the attack. Local media reported that the university attacked had been cleared and the search operation for other possible attackers hiding in the nearby areas had also been completed. Army Chief General Raheel Sharif paid a visit to the attacked university after the conclusion of the operation. The attack took place on Wednesday morning when a ceremony was being held to observe the anniversary of the late Bacha Khan, a famous political leader of the country, of whom the university is named after, according to Fazal Raheem, the vice chancellor of the Bacha Khan University. Large contingent of security forces, including army, police and paramilitary forces Frontier Corps, were dispatched to the university shortly after the attack was reported. Three army helicopters were also deployed to monitor the operation, said army sources. Fierce firing and at least 10 blasts were heard in the campus following the attack, said eyewitnesses. Medical Superintendent of District Headquarters Hospital in Charsadda, said the hospital had received 19 bodies of the attack victims. Shah Farman, minister for public health engineering of the country's northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, where Charsadda district falls under its jurisdiction, confirmed that over 50 others were injured in the attack. The vice chancellor of the university said the killed include one professor from the chemistry department of the university, two female students, four security guards and one policeman. All the attack victims have been shifted to District Headquarters Hospital in Charsadda as some of the seriously wounded people have been referred to the hospital in the neighbouring city of Peshawar, capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Many victims received head and chest bullet wounds, said hospital sources, adding some of the injured remained in critical condition and the death toll might further rise. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif strongly condemned the attack and was closely following the development of the incident while on a foreign tour, said the PM Office in a statement. All the educational institutions in Charsadda have been closed until the end of the month in the wake of the attack. A three-day mourning over the attack victims has been announced by the the government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modiand the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan have also condemned the attack. Wednesday's attack reminded people of a brutal attack launched by Taliban militants on an army-run public school in Peshawar on Dec. 16, 2014, which killed 150 people including 140 school children and 10 staff members.the end of the month in the wake of the attack. A three-day mourning over the attack victims has been announced by the the government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modiand the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan have also condemned the attack. Wednesday's attack reminded people of a brutal attack launched by Taliban militants on an army-run public school in Peshawar on Dec. 16, 2014, which killed 150 people including 140 school children and 10 staff members. Virgin Australia will target the lucrative business and government traveller market when it begins offering international flights from Canberra to Singapore and Wellington in a code-sharing agreement with its partner Singapore Airlines. Virgin boss John Borghetti flew to Canberra on Wednesday to join Singapore Airlines' chief executive Goh Choon Phong at a formal announcement of the flights, plans for which were reported first in The Australian Financial Review's Rear Window column last week. Virgin Australia chief executive John Borghetti has found a way to boost the airline's lucrative business with corporate and government travellers. Credit:Philip Gostelow Singapore Airlines, one of the largest shareholders in Virgin, will begin four weekly flights with a Boeing 777-200 aircraft from September. The Singapore-Canberra flights, which will continue to Wellington, are the first international services Canberra Airport has secured after a long-running campaign with government backing. "I can think of no better partner than Singapore Airlines, with its reputation for quality and excellence, to be the first to set Canberra Airport on this historic course," Canberra Airport chairman and owner Terry Snow said. Wake up and smell the coffee, Australia. The latte-sipping residents of inner-city Sydney and Melbourne may be proud of our growing reputation as a "caffeination", but the data tells a vastly different story. Australia ranks a lowly 42nd in the world in terms of per capita coffee consumption, even after the boom of the past two decades. Australians consume just 3 kilograms of coffee each per year, only marginally higher than the tea-obsessed United Kingdom (2.8kg), according to the latest data. Restaurant and cafe jobs around Sydney are being advertised with pay rates as low as $10 an hour despite growing outrage over the underpayment of workers, especially of foreign students. Following allegations that Mamak restaurant underpaid international students and visa-holding staff more than $87,000, Fairfax Media has found, in a quick search on Gumtree, job advertisements with wages under the award rate if paid to an adult. Mamak attracts large crowds, but has not escaped the attention of the Fair Work Ombudsman. A cafe offered $10-15 an hour for full-time kitchen and waiter positions; a sushi shop offered $13 an hour for a 40 hours+ a week waiter job; and a CBD cafe on Market Street offered $15 an hour for a 30 hour+ a week kitchen hand position. While such rates are legal for junior staff, Nina Khairina from the Council of International Students Australia said foreign workers were applying for and obtaining similar positions with similar rates, not knowing they should be getting paid more. Former prime minister Tony Abbott told supporters in his local Forestville branch that he was leaning towards staying in politics more than a month ago. Fairfax Media has been told by people who attended the pre-Christmas drinks for rank and file supporters that Mr Abbott and his wife Margie, who is a member of the branch, both attended the meeting and were in good spirits. One Abbott supporter who attended the event said that Mr Abbott "certainly gave the indication that he thought he wanted to continue to make a contribution to Australia and the best way of doing it was as an MP". South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill has reportedly apologised to the husband of a dead British man whose same-sex marriage is not recognised under Australian law. Marco Bulmer-Rizzi had appealed to the UK and Australian governments to intervene after "outright discrimination" by Australian authorities which deemed his same-sex marriage null and void. David and Marco Bulmer-Rizzi were on their honeymoon in Adelaide when David was killed in a fall. Credit:Facebook His husband David Bulmer-Rizzi, 32, died suddenly on Saturday after falling down stairs and cracking his skull at a friend's home while the newlyweds honeymooned in Adelaide. Under South Australian law, Mr Bulmer-Rizzi has not had final say in any of the decisions around his husband's death because his marriage is not recognised in the state. Instead, David Bulmer-Rizzi's death certificate states "never married". Mr Bulmer-Rizzi told BuzzFeed News on Wednesday that Mr Weatherill had phoned him directly and in the course of the 10-minute conversation, apologised for what happened, told him he would work on ways to change the legislation and eventually provide him with a new death certificate. Many of the dead were apparently shot in the head execution-style, TV footage showed. An ambulance transports the body of a victim while Pakistani troops gather at the main gate of Bacha Khan University in Charsadda town. Credit:AP The militants, using the cover of thick, wintry fog, scaled the walls of the university on Wednesday morning before entering buildings and opening fire on students and teachers in classrooms and hostels, police said. Students told media they saw several young men wielding AK-47 guns storming the university housing where many students were sleeping. Pakistani volunteers rush an injured man to hospital after the attack. Credit:AP "They came from behind and there was a big commotion," an unnamed male student told a news channel from a hospital bed in Charsadda's District Hospital. "We were told by teachers to leave immediately. Some people hid in bathrooms." Thirty five of the wounded remain in hospital, a local police official said late on Wednesday. Pakistani family members wait outside a local hospital where injured students were taken. Credit:AP "All students have been evacuated from the hostels, but militants are still hiding in different parts of the university and some students and staff are stuck inside," Deputy Inspector General Saeed Wazir said earlier. Television footage showed soldiers entering the campus as ambulances lined up outside the main gate and anxious parents consoled each other. Police and emergency personnel outside Bacha Khan University, the scene of a shooting on Wednesday in Charsadda, Pakistan. Credit:Dunya/WAQAT Asim Bajwa, the army spokesman, took to Twitter to provide live updates of the operations. The gunmen attacked as the university prepared to host a poetry recital on Wednesday afternoon to commemorate the death anniversary of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a popular ethnic Pashtun independence activist after whom the university is named. Members of the student wing of Pakistani religious group Jamaat-e-Islami chant slogans during a demonstration to condemn the attack. Credit:AP Vice Chancellor Fazal Rahim told reporters that the university teaches over 3000 students and was hosting an additional 600 visitors for the poetry recital. Shabir Khan, a lecturer in the English department, said he was about to leave the hostel for the department when firing began. Security forces outside Bacha Khan University after the attack. Credit:Dunya "Most of the students and staff were in classes when the firing began," Khan said. "I have no idea about what's going on but I heard one security official talking on the phone to someone and said many people had been killed and injured." Contradicting claims Explosions were heard after gunmen stormed Bacha Khan University in Charsadda. Credit:Dunya Umar Mansoor, a senior Pakistani Taliban commander involved in the December 2014 attack on the army school in Peshawar, claimed responsibility for the Charsadda assault and said it involved four of his men. He told Reuters by telephone the university was targeted because it was a government institution that supported the army. However, later in the day, official Taliban spokesman Muhammad Khorasani issued a written statement disassociating the militants from the attack, calling it un-Islamic. "Youth who are studying in non-military institutions, we consider them as builders of the future nation and we consider their safety and protection our duty," the statement said. The reason for the conflicting claims was not immediately clear. While the Taliban leadership is fractured, Mansoor is believed to remain loyal to central leader Mullah Fazlullah. The Pakistani Taliban are fighting to topple the government and install a strict interpretation of Islamic law. They are loosely allied with the Afghan Taliban who ruled most of Afghanistan until they were overthrown by US-backed military action in 2001. By afternoon on Wednesday, the military said all four gunmen had been killed. "The operation is over and the university has been cleared," Pakistan army spokesman General Asim Bajwa said. A security official close to the operation said he had seen the four gunmen's bodies riddled with bullets. He said none of the gunmen was wearing a suicide vest, but they carried guns and grenades. Rumours of attack Television footage showed military vehicles packed with soldiers driving into the campus as helicopters buzzed overhead and ambulances lined up outside the main gate while anxious parents consoled each other. Several schools had closed early at the weekend around Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, after rumours circulated of a possible attack. On Tuesday a suicide bomber blew himself up close to a police checkpoint in north-western Pakistan, killing at least 10 people and wounding more than 20, officials said. Pakistan, which has suffered from years of jihadist militant violence, has killed and arrested hundreds of suspected militants under a major crackdown launched afterwards. His sleep is fractured, but he says he doesn't dream. Aldi is an orphan. He lives with his grandmother, Atik Sarmini, who weeps silently by the bedroom doorframe of her tiny, airless house, and worries about the medical bills. Workers clean up the spot outside Starbucks in central Jakarta where militants were killed. Credit:AP Dr Musyafak, the head of Jakarta Police medical and health division, assures her the government will take care of the bills. Ms Sarmini hears Aldi crying in his sleep: "Oh my God, Oh my God". "He jumps every time the door bangs," she says. Starbucks in central Jakarta. Aldi replays the event in his mind. It was 10.40am on a Thursday: the Starbucks cafe at the base of the Skyline building was buzzing as usual. Oddly Thamrin road outside the cafe normally one of Jakarta's most congested thoroughfares was quieter than usual. Now Aldi is glad about that. If it was busier more could have been killed. One of the suspected terrorists during the fatal attack in Jakarta on in January. Credit:AP When the bomb went off the cafe filled with smoke and screams. Aldi struggled up and dragged three bodies out of the cafe. "I'm not the only who wanted to be saved," he says. Aldi insists he is not afraid and wants to return to his job at Starbucks. He is grateful for the #KamiTidakTakut (We are not afraid) social media campaign that sprung up after the attacks. "It means we are not afraid of terrorists," he says. It was only after viewing the CCTV footage later, that traffic police officer Suhadi realised how imperilled his life had been. The gunmen were thirty metres away from him. He had clearly been in their sights. At the time Mr Suhadi had been trying to call an ambulance while simultaneously trying to stop traffic heading towards the Sarinah shopping mall. "They were not afraid, they even tried to come closer to the site," he marvelled. "If I was not a police officer I would stay away. These people were just looking, like it was a performance." A man, who Mr Suhadi now believes was the eighth victim of the attacks, Rais Karna, warned him that there were many victims at Starbucks. Mr Suhadi was facing the famous Hotel Indonesia roundabout. He saw a colleague duck and instinctively copied him. The bullet hit Mr Karna. "Because of the gunshot I tried to run away and tell people to disperse," Mr Suhadi said. "I felt heat on my back and thought I might have been shot but I just kept running," Suhadi said. People were shouting: "There is blood on your back!" The bullet had lodged in his side. Eventually a motorcyclist took Mr Suhadi to hospital. He was paranoid the terrorists were continuing to chase him, even ordering a nurse to hide his uniform. It was only when officers from the forensic division arrived that Mr Suhadi felt safe. Mr Suhadi's wife, Sri Rejeki, is due to give birth next month. The family understand the risks of his job, Mr Suhadi says. "I am not afraid. I earn a living from doing this job, my happiness comes from this job. It is just a risk of doing this job." Of the 28 wounded in the attacks, nine are still in hospital. One Bangkok Bank employee Rais Karna died of gunshot wounds to his head on Saturday night. He was in a coma when admitted to hospital after Thursday's attacks and never recovered. Dr Musyafak believes the loss of life could have been greater were it not for a carefully orchestrated police strategy to send the victims to eight different hospitals. "Someone's life and death is the hands of God but if they had been in one hospital medical staff would have had too much work to do," Dr Musyafak said. Should more Australian high schools have "visual arts" in their title? That is the question being posed by federal Arts Minister Mitch Fifield. He took over the portfolio four months ago in the ministerial reshuffle following Malcolm Turnbull's overthrow of Tony Abbott. Arts Minister Mitch Fifield was at the National Gallery of Australia on Wednesday to open the national visual art education conference. Senator Fifield was at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra on Wednesday to open the national visual art education conference. He said some schools were established as centres of excellence, and specialised in disciplines, such as agriculture, the performing arts and rural studies. DAMASCUS, Jan. 20 -- At least 3,000 people have been killed in Russian airstrikes in Syria since Sept. 30 of last year, a Syrian monitor group reported on Wednesday. The airstrikes killed a total of 1,015 civilians, including 238 children under 18, 640 men and 137 women, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Additionally, the UK-based monitoring group said the strikes killed 893 militants with the Islamic State (IS) group and 1,141 others from various jihadi groups, including the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front. The officials in Syria or Russia have yet to comment on the death toll. The Russian air force has been backing the Syrian ground force with airstrikes since last September. Government officials in Syria said the strikes were effective in curbing the expansion of the radical groups in the war-torn country. Singapore Airlines is pleased that Virgin Australia is improving its financial performance, but it has yet to decide whether it will boost its stake in the Australian carrier to 25.9 per cent to equal the other major airline shareholders, Air New Zealand and Etihad Airways. Singapore Airlines has a 22.8 per cent stake in Virgin and a seat on its board. Singapore Airlines chief executive Goh Choon Phong says the carrier will look for more opportunities to grow in Australia. Credit:Karleen Minney "We have [Foreign Investment Review Board] approval up to 25.9 per cent," Singapore Airlines chief executive Goh Choon Phong told The Australian Financial Review during a visit to Canberra on Wednesday to announce the launch of direct services from the national capital to Singapore from September. "Whether or not we increase to that level is something we will decide along the way." His comments marked the first time Singapore Airlines has revealed its approvals for a 25.9 per cent stake, the carrier having previously declined to state how high it is permitted to raise its stake in Virgin. Woolworths has managed to offend the whole of Tasmania with its latest promotional blunder a patriotic, navy blue and red cap emblazoned with a map of Australia without our southernmost state. South Australian company Forewell supplied the cap for Woolworths' Australia Day promotion but somehow the major mistake went unnoticed until a customer pointed it out to the embattled supermarket chain on social media. The offending Australia Day hat sold by Woolworths. Credit:Courtesy of Seven News Forewell did not return calls to Fairfax Media. A red-faced Woolworths pulled the special order of about 20,000 caps off its shelves yesterday, supermarket insiders blaming the supplier for the blunder. A restructure of one of the supermarket teams at Woolworths Bella Vista head office has sparked fears over job losses coming just days after the chain called it quits on Masters, leaving 7000 employees at the hardware chain facing an uncertain future. The "Stores Transformation team in its current form will be removed...and will be consolidated into a smaller store-led transformation team," the statement from Woolworths on the move said. Staff at Woolworths HQ are spooked by an internal restructure just days after the retailer called it quits on Masters. Credit:ccummins@fairfaxmedia.com.au The statement did not foreshadow any job losses but employees are nervous the changes could lead to a downsizing of the current team given the decision this week to cut its losses on the troubled Masters hardware business. The restructure also affects a number of senior personnel, including Woolworths head of petrol and convenience, Michael James, who has been appointed director of stores replacing John Eales, who plans to retire. Unlike nearly every other advanced economy during the past 25 years, Australia has not had a recession. Not since the short, sharp Keating recession of 1990-91. Our defences against a recession are now threadbare, in large part because the protection provided by the Great Growth Wall of China has been breached. In the eyes of global market analysts, Australia's 25 years of benefit from the Chinese economic miracle has rendered Australia an economic colony of China. The correction on the ASX can be traced directly to Beijing. Credit:Bloomberg Hence the nine per cent hit to the value of the Australian stock market during the last two weeks, and the fierce 20 per cent correction in the past eight months. The global market treats the Australian Stock Exchange as an adjunct of China's economic fortunes. The correction on the ASX can be traced directly to Beijing. What is remarkable is the extent to which the Chinese government has replicated the error which triggered the global financial crisis of 2007-08. An Australian couple, Ken and Jocelyn Elliott, dedicate their lives to bringing medical services to a remote region of the West African state of Burkina Faso. Starting with nothing, they build a 120-bed hospital that provides the only surgical services to a population of some 2 million. It takes them 40 years. Then, in their 80s, they are kidnapped rounded up by armed men, hustled over the Malian border and into the vast reaches of the Sahara desert. Why would anyone do that? The answer is money. As Rukmini Callimachi of the New York Times revealed in a series of articles published in 2014, Islamist groups operating in north-west Africa have created a lucrative industry over more than a decade, kidnapping the citizens of wealthy countries for ransom. From their first, fumbling efforts in 2003 to the sophisticated operation they run today, groups like al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) have steadily raised their demands. The payment of 5 million in 2003 secured the release of 14 European hostages. In October 2013, four employees of the French nuclear company Areva were released after three years in captivity; according to Callimachi, who quotes among her sources the US Department of Treasury, the ransom was 30 million or about $12 million a head. No matter which way you look at it, the process of flipping a business in 12 months and making $500 million while putting 3300 jobs on the line doesnt feel right. It might be legal but that doesnt always mean it is right. Theres an ethical gulf which deserves community discussion. Dick Smith electronics stores have been through a private equity "transformation" process. Starting out as stores for electronics geeks, the real Dick Smith sold his business to Woolworths who promptly turned it into something different a general consumer electronics store which ultimately struggled in an ultra-competitive and rapidly changing retail market. At the end of 2012 the business was identified as a turnaround opportunity by a private equity firm. While the sale price was $115 million, they only paid somewhere between $10-20 million with their own money, depending on which reports you believe. What this means, in general terms, is that private equity firms often use the full range of accounting policies and valuation techniques available to them to dress up a business to look as appealing as it possibly can for a share market listing. Mutton dressed up as lamb, and exit as quickly as possible. In the case of Dick Smith, the IPO was successfully completed at the end of 2013. The investment of $20 million turned into a business with a market capitalisation of $520 million. Half a century on, Wallaces daughter Peggy says Trump is, if anything, more extreme. Yet, astoundingly, he remains the Republican frontrunner, a success for which many credit his adept media manipulation, especially social media. (Trump tweets personally, complete with caps-lock and spelling errors. Cynics note that this is entirely strategised by 29-year-old Justin McConney, who has grown Trumps Twitter following to 5.7 million. But still it lends Trump an air of authenticity that suits both his real man positioning and his demographic.) Yet theres another, more sinister possibility. Perhaps Trump is popular not despite his relentless hate-peddling and Islamophobia, but because of them. Perhaps Trumps cartoon conception of goodies and baddies is precisely what appeals. This is where ignorance matters. Were familiar with IS faux-religious propaganda, but propaganda is also Trumps weapon-of-choice, and propaganda always calls to ignorance. Dog-whistle politics needs biddable puppies. When Trump insists we should have a lotta systems to track all Muslims in America; when he answers the question when can we get rid of Muslims? by saying were gonna be lookin at that and plenty of other things; when he plays the natural born issue, or insists that Mexican immigrants are criminals, drug-traffickers and rapists, or that thousands of New Jersey-ites cheered the 9/11 attacks, or supports the attackers of a Black Lives Matter protester at one of his rallies, he plays deliberately to the un-nuanced world view of ignorance. When he quips I dont like losers; when he tells cheering audiences the press are liars, theyre terrible people or politicians are weak and incompetent or that he would bomb the shit out of" IS, ring them with troops and send Exxon in to take their oil when he says I would do things that would be so tough I dont know that theyd even be around to come to the table this, too, is propaganda. Yet Trump claims gold-class religious credentials. His own book is his second all-time favourite because, naturally, the Bible is top. I have a very great relationship with God, he told CNN. I have a very great relationship with evangelicals. He doesnt ask Gods forgiveness, he explains, because he doesnt need it. I am good. I dont do a lotta things that are bad. Theres a dangerous chosen-people-ism here. The 2015 American Values survey (tellingly titled Anxiety, Nostalgia and Mistrust) showed that 62 per cent of Americans believe God gave America a special role in human history. The same survey showed that most US Christians think Islam is incompatible with American values, including 73 per cent of white evangelical Protestants, 63 per cent of white mainline Protestants and 55 per cent of black Protestants (compared with only 40 per cent of non-Christian Americans). Similarly, 72 per cent of all white Christians (evangelicals, Protestants and Catholics) believe that police killings of African American men are isolated incidents, not part of some broader pattern. American Christians, it seems, are much happier to tolerate their own intolerance than other peoples. As theologian and activist Jim Wallis notes, If white Christians acted more Christian than white, black parents would have less to fear for their children. IS, of course, displays similar religious intolerance, with equally scant foundation and more extreme expression. Both religions, Islam and Christianity, have a fine tradition of reverence for education, yet both, now, seem in danger of relinquishing this in favour of a world ruled by fear, hatred, unreason and untruth. The appeal of Trumps stark us-and-them-ism suggests a populace besieged by danger on all sides. In fact, says the Washington Post, the cross-border flow from Mexico has fallen by 75 per cent since 2000, much of that during the Obama years. At the same time, Muslim refugees are often the very same civilians who face the indiscriminate violence and cruel injustice in lands controlled by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. (Source: China Daily/Wang Xiaoying) President Xi Jinping started his first tour of the Middle East on Tuesday, during which he will visit Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran. After fully assuming the country's leadership in March 2013, Xi has visited many countries, which signify China's increasingly maturing all-round diplomacy. And that is precisely why Xi's visit to the Middle East, which is also his first foreign tour in 2016, has acquired additional importance. The visit, to begin with, highlights the strategic importance of the Middle East for China's Belt and Road Initiative. The initiative, comprising the Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, is aimed at creating a community of shared economic dividends and destiny along both the routes. The Middle East, which is a bridge between China and Europe, is a vital link in the success of the initiative. Besides, the Middle East has about 60 percent of the world's energy reserves and encircles the most important shipping route. The importance of the Gulf of Aden, the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz for the global economy is often compared with that of a throat for a human body. In addition, the Middle East has a lot of potential to deepen cooperation with China. Middle East countries in general have economic structures that are complementary to that of China's. For example, the Middle East lags behind in infrastructure and manufacturing industries but has huge oil reserves while China is just the opposite. Therefore, China needs the Middle East to secure its energy supplies and implement its strategic projects. Moreover, since the Middle East is important for the rest of the world too, any volatility in the region will have a global impact, including on China. China is committed to strengthening its energy and industrial cooperation with Middle East countries, and since Iran and Saudi Arabia both are major energy suppliers for China, some new oil agreements with them can be expected during Xi's visit. Egypt may not be as rich in energy resources, but it has a population of 80 million. And since youths account for quite a high percentage of that population, the country's growth potential is high. All the three countries on Xi's itinerary have huge demands for infrastructure construction, such as railways, expressways and power stations. And China can help them meet these demands both in the short and long terms. That's partly why Xi is paying a visit to the Middle East at a time when Iran and Saudi Arabia are involved in a diplomatic row, which started when Riyadh arrested and executed Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr on charges of terrorism. However, the political row between Teheran and Riyadh is not expected to influence their separate friendly ties with China. China enjoys a unique advantage in the Middle East, because unlike other powers it has never sought to portray itself like an empire. It treats Middle East countries as equal partners instead of imposing its own logic upon them, which allows it to play a bigger role in helping prevent regional disputes from escalating into major conflicts, if not settling them for good. The author is former Chinese ambassador to Iran and an expert in Middle Eastern studies. The article is an excerpt from his interview with China Daily's Zhang Zhouxiang. Where the magic happens: Andrew Bovell: The Alchemy of Collaboration. Ed. Amanda Duthie. Credit:Jason Steger The best tribute essays do more than just celebrate: they capture the complex dynamics of artistic collaboration and candidly address the tensions and rewards of collective endeavours. Patricia Cornelius worked with Andrew Bovell in the Melbourne Workers Theatre and recalls how the trust developed meant they could "cut the crap and talk about each other's work honestly and helpfully". The most important lesson Bovell taught Christos Tsiolkas goes to the heart of how artists conduct themselves as human beings. "The work is central, but the work is not an end in itself. How we behave within our collaborations, how we integrate our lovers, our children and families and friends into the worlds we inhabit as artistic people, how we ensure that we don't dishonour and betray these other equally important worlds, must be a measure of how successful we are in our chosen vocation." Farewell to the World: A History of Suicide Story of friendship and co-operation: The Love of Strangers by Nile Green. Credit:Jason Steger MARZIO BARBAGLI In the interest of promoting an informed debate, here are some of the complaints the bureau actually received: Lee Lin Chin starred in a controversial commercial to promote lamb on Australia Day. I am vegan. Do I need to say more? I am vegan for ethical reasons. Animals die for meat consumption. Ashley Madison no one dies. Big difference. Please ban. I think all vegetarians and vegans are offended by this ad because it is saying that we are 'unAustralian' and 'lack spirit' by refusing to eat a damn dead animal that we have hearts for. Lambassador Sam Kekovich in the 2016 Australia Day lamb ad. My children were at a friend's house and saw this ad, and came home terrified someone was going to come and torch our living room because we're vegan. Ever since the campaign came out, people are being even more rude and constantly making fun of vegans and now that this is a national campaign, it's even worse. I feel like the ad makes the public feel like it's OK to be horrible towards vegans and make derogatory comments. Promotes violence against vegans by suggesting that torching a vegan's home is amusing; the inference being that people who choose compassion for animals over the mass slaughter of innocent baby animals are somehow un-Australian, + therefore deserve to be ridiculed, + violated. If it were a vegan ad promoting the same ideology towards meat-eaters, would it be acceptable? Watch Cowspiracy. It's available on Netflix. This already peddles the broad generalisation that vegans are somehow cowering (no pun intended) or overtly non-confrontational hippies. It is discriminatory to vegans. The problem is the assumption on behalf of the advertiser, that violent acts of terrorism, against anyone who thinks differently to the mainstream, is an appropriate subject for making jokes and for marketing products. Portraying torching someone's home and belongings for being different, is equivalent to terrorism. It's just not funny. Many are already fearful of terrorism, and then an advertisement like this appears on our screens. As a Vegan, I am already bullied by many in society and this advertisement promotes active violence against Vegans! In these troubling times of terrorism and rural fires firstly I find it a bit concerning and insensitive that fire is made into comedy. It promotes property damage, break and enter, violence, terrorism, kidnapping, bullying, peer group pressure tactics, etc. This is not what I believe is 'Australian' and do not think these topics are a 'harmless' joke. This sends a message saying that veganism is wrong and non-acceptable. My children are now frightened our house is going to be set on fire on Australia Day. How can you allow such an advert. This is wrong. It's a meat ad. Leave the vegans out of it. Here's what the bureau had to say: "The Board noted that the overall tone and theme of the advertisement is intended to be humorous and considered that the advertisement did not depict material that discriminated against or vilified any person or section of the community. "The Board first considered whether the advertisement is suggestive of terrorism. In the Board's view, most members of the community would understand this advertisement to be a humorous take on movies such as James Bond and Austin Powers-style movies in particular through the use of Lee Lin Chin in the main character role. "In the Board's view the advertisement is unlikely to be viewed as depicting or condoning terrorist behaviour and that the level of action and implied violence is not inappropriate for the likely audience. "The use of the tagline or phrase Operation Boomerang ... is not a reference to Indigenous Australians, but is meant as a reference to something which is to be returned. Nationals leader Warren Truss has backed sweeping changes to the charter and board structure of the ABC, while calling for the public broadcaster to be forced to air television news services in regional areas as well as radio broadcasts. Mr Truss, currently serving as acting prime minister, also said he would push for local content requirements for commercial television networks to be included as part of a forthcoming deregulation of the media sector. Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss will announce his retirement. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Communications Minister Mitch Fifield is preparing changes to media ownership regulations, which is likely to include scrapping the 75 per cent "reach" rule for television broadcasters and the "two out of three" rule banning companies from owning a television network, radio station and newspaper in the same market. Abolishing the reach rule would allow major television networks to take over regional broadcasters and create national networks. Nationals MPs are pushing for a new "local presence" requirement to be introduced for regional broadcasters to ensure they continue filming news stories in their local communities. The idea has alarmed some regional TV networks, which see it as overly onerous. Attorney-General George Brandis is challenging a tribunal's ruling that his office reconsider a request from shadow attorney-general Mark Dreyfus for access to his ministerial diary. The Administrative Appeals Tribunal last year ruled that the way Senator Brandis had refused to release his ministerial diary went against the purpose of the Freedom of Information Act to "facilitate and promote public access to information", and if this was allowed, "the intentions of Parliament ... would be thwarted", Justice Jayne Jagot said. A spokeswoman for Senator Brandis confirmed on Wednesday that he had instructed the Australian Government Solicitor to appeal the decision in the Federal Court, saying the tribunal's findings had "wide-ranging implications for the FOI system." "Accordingly, it is in the public interest that there be judicial clarification of how the FOI system operates," she said. When asked why the company made its announcement so soon after declaring it wouldn't, a spokesman said: "No real comment on this point. Obviously with such a decision, all possibilities are explored before making a decision to close a magazine, and we don't make rushed decision based on media speculation." Just five days after dismissing rumours of its closure as "pure speculation" and insisting no announcement would be made in the "near future" Bauer closed the magazine. In 2013, the staff of Cleo and sister magazine Dolly aimed at teen girls were merged to reduce costs. Lucy Cousins, who edits both titles, will step down from her role. The spokesman said Cousins' future with the company has not been decided. Bauer is currently in "consultation with affected employees", he said. Over the years: Cleo magazine. Cleo launched by former Australian of the Year Ita Buttrose in 1972 recorded a circulation slump of more than 20 per cent at the end of 2015, to just 42,200 print copies. Stablemate Cosmoplitan dropped 15 per cent to 77,000. Bauer also revealed cuts to Dolly, which it will now publish six times a year instead of 12. Dolly's circulation dropped almost 20 per cent to 40,500 copies at the end of last year. (The company says reports of Dolly's closure are incorrect.) Cleo became hugely popular under Buttrose's editorship for its frank sex advice, male centrefolds, sealed sections, its coverage of political and social issues, and for publishing popular writers including Germaine Greer and Norman Mailer. There's a new craze going around where women are putting herb balls in their vaginas to "detox" their wombs from health issues and basically, bad spirits. Embrace Pangaea, the holistic company behind Herbal Womb Detox Pearls, claim their wholly natural products can help cure or reduce a whole range of ailments including, "bacteria vaginosis, yeast infections, endometriosis, infertility, vagina pain, excess bleeding, vaginal dryness, polycystic ovarian syndrome or fibroids". There's a new craze going around where women are putting herb balls into their vaginas to "detox" their wombs from health issues and basically, bad spirits. Credit:Getty It also says their $22 each satchel of ancient herb balls that contain motherwort, cnidium monnieri, angelica, borneol, rhizoma assist to "cleanse the womb and return it to a balanced state". An impassioned plea by more than 900 Australian academics for the government to release children from detention centres has been dismissed by a former government frontbencher as being "a sad disassociation from practical considerations". The academics wrote to the government before Christmas, and again on Monday night, urging the government to free children detained in Australia and on Nauru as a matter of urgency. "Look, I'm #1 on the Liberal's Tasmanian Senate ticket: I don't need to care about what the Australian public think." Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Signatories included experts on child psychology, human rights, public policy and the law, from universities across the country. "We are concerned about the serious deleterious effect this [detention] has on the physical and psychological welfare of children, who in effect are being punished in the absence of guilt on their part of any kind and outside the normal legal, child protection and welfare frameworks within which their situation should more properly and appropriately be addressed," the academics wrote. Victor Bebawi started work at Defence's Moorebank installation in south-west Sydney in late 2011 but within months, sparks were flying between him and another, unnamed, bureaucrat. But the Fair Work Commission has ruled that the Defence Department staffer is not entitled to extra payments to cover the long commute to central Sydney. The process to draw up the Australia Day and Queen's Birthday honours lists is cumbersome, onerous and biased. Credit:Louie Douvis A public servant moved from his job over a toxic relationship with a colleague launched legal action against his department, demanding extra travel money to commute to his new workplace. By May the following year the workplace situation had become so bad that the two men had to sit down for a "facilitated conversation" with the help of a "fairness and resolution practitioner." But it did not work, with the facilitator despairing that the two men could patch things up and advising the department that the relationship between Mr Bebawi and the other public servant, known to the commission simply as Mr S, was "very toxic and is probably beyond repair". In September, Mr Bebawi was told by his supervisor that he was to be moved to the Defence Plaza Sydney in the city's CBD, with the department saying the move would be good for his career, allowing him to undertake a "body of higher priority work" and be mentored by experienced team managers. It was also acknowledged that the situation with Mr S needed to be resolved. Two days later Mr Bebawi lodged a complaint of "unacceptable behaviour" against his boss, alleging that he was being "targeted for relocation". Five senior British police officers begin work this week reviewing the actions of NSW police during the deadly Lindt Cafe siege, ahead of the inquest's final hearings. The British team, which recently landed in Sydney, will examine witness statements, forensic evidence and CCTV footage before reporting to State Coroner Michael Barnes. British police officers will review the conduct of NSW officers who dealt with the Lindt Cafe siege. Credit:AP The adequacy of the police response is one of the final questions to be addressed by the inquest into the deaths of cafe manager Tori Johnson, patron Katrina Dawson and gunman Man Haron Monis. A car-theft racket is targeting Audi owners in Sydney's north by breaking into the prestigious vehicles and stealing an emergency spare key the owners have left in the glove box. Police said there had been 11 separate incidents within 24 hours in the city's northern suburbs of Audis being broken into, where thieves smash a window and then take the spare key. Newer Audi models come equipped with a plastic spare key for emergency use. The key can be used to manually unlock the doors and start the car. Harbourside crime manager, Detective Inspector Mike Birley, said the Audi-related thefts were becoming something of a trend. "It's easy for them to take the spare sets of keys from the cars and then potentially come and steal the cars later on," said Detective Inspector Birley. A Brisbane man has managed to take his childhood toy and turn it into a hobby which has boomed on Instagram, one little yellow figure at a time. Matt Green, a 29-year-old project manager for a Brisbane website design and digital marketing company, has had a love for Lego ever since he was a little boy. Matt Green has been uploading images of lego mini figures to Instagram for over six months. Credit:Matt Green "I have always loved Lego, growing up for birthdays and Christmas I would always ask for Lego," Mr Green said. "As I got older, playing with Lego slowed down, I had it as part of my collection." Police have given up hope of finding a missing British backpacker alive as friends say they feel horrible for "egging on" the 30-year-old to jump off the William Jolly Bridge. Long-term traveller Dale Rehr took a running jump off the bridge on Sunday evening after drinking with three other men at a nearby backpackers, resurfacing once before sinking under the surface of the Brisbane River. He still hadn't been seen on Wednesday morning, two-and-a-half days after his disappearance. A water police boat continued to trawl the river between the bridge and St Lucia but a police spokesman confirmed officers were treating the search as a recovery operation. Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate has warned bikies will re-enter the Gold Coast drug market by stealth if a review of Queensland's anti-bikie laws gave them the sniff of a chance. Gold Coast crime figures show a major decline in prostitution offences and a big increase in drug offences - reflecting a heavy police emphasis - although the rate stabilised at around 150 charges per month in 2015. Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate says "don't water down anti-bike legislation". Cr Tate called a media conference on Wednesday morning to urge the Queensland Government not to "water down" the previous government's anti-bikie legislation. "They'd be saying, 'look guys, we are back in business, let's re-establish'," Cr Tate said on Wednesday. Does your employer make a special effort to farewell departing staff or do good people leave with barely any recognition because nobody can be bothered to organise an event? I considered why so many companies botch staff farewells after hearing from a few friends who have recently resigned. When asked if a farewell was planned, each shrugged their shoulders and accepted nothing was being done to recognise their efforts. Farewell events used to be rollicking affairs. Credit:iStock Deep down, they are feeling hurt because their employer could not care less. With their job tenures ranging from four to 20 years, one might have expected a farewell lunch or even a short speech and gift for the long-serving employee. My guess is their well-meaning colleagues will organise a token lunch, probably where everybody pays for themselves and no executives attend or speeches are made. And that good people will leave with little recognition for their hard work and commitment. The skeletal remains of a group of hunter-gatherers killed in a brutal slaughter 10,000 years ago has been uncovered, with scientists believing it is the oldest known example of human warfare. The remains of 27 people, including six children and eight women, were found on the border of an ancient lagoon at Nataruk, near Lake Turkana in Kenya, in 2012. This skeleton of a man with "multiple lesions on the front and left side of the skull, consistent with wounds from a blunt implement, such as a club". Credit:Marta Mirazon Lahr Ten of the 12 complete skeletons excavated appeared to have been of people killed violently with crushing blows to the skull and fatal arrow wounds. Several others appear to have died with their hands and feet bound, the scientists said. A former principal who had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl student - conduct a magistrate labelled "morally repugnant" - has been spared jail a second time, this time for breaching a court order. The man, 56, who cannot be named, maintained a sexual relationship with the girl for almost three months in 2013, after he had been sacked by a Christian school in a Melbourne suburb for sending the girl inappropriate text messages while he was principal. The man was last year spared jail over the sexual relationship, and fronted Melbourne Magistrates Court on Wednesday to plead guilty to breaching a court order. The girl and her parents had an intervention order taken out against the former principal in March 2013, which banned any communication between the pair. But despite being the father of teenage children himself, the man maintained a sexual relationship with the girl and also sent her a constant flow of text messages and emails, according to documents tendered to the court. Victorian hospitals are responsible for ensuring their computer systems are safe from cyber attacks and viruses, Health Minister Jill Hennessy said in the wake of crippling virus which hit one of Melbourne's biggest hospitals. On Monday a computer virus hit Royal Melbourne Hospital computers, throwing pathology and radiology departments into chaos and forcing the hospital to send major trauma patients to other hospitals. Health minister Jill Hennessy says Victorian hospitals need to ensure their computer systems are up-to-date and virus-free. Credit:Michele Mossop The virus attack has exposed the use of out-dated operational systems and prompted renewed calls for greater investment in hospitals' information technology systems. Mr Haning, the subcontractor who reported on and felled the tree, is listed on his business ArborPlus' website simply as having "more than 25 years' industry experience". Mr Haning has no relevant qualifications listed on professional documents, his LinkedIn account or his business' website. Mr Haning's LinkedIn profile lists him as a self-employed pastor with a 1984 diploma in theology from Perth Bible College. He declined to clarify his qualifications to WAtoday.com.au. His report said he assessed the tree using criteria on the City of Cockburn website, but what he listed was parts of documents, which the city said in no way outlined its policy or procedures and were related to three unrelated school sites. The city confirmed that though complaints about beehives on Main Roads-owned land would be redirected to Main Roads, the usual process would be to send someone to remove the hive not the tree. Indeed, the resident who complained told WAtoday that when he contacted the city, staff gave him the name of a preferred bee removal service to pass on to Main Roads, which he did, never expecting the tree to be cut down. City of Cockburn Mayor Logan Howlett said if trees were considered for removal standard practice was to commission an arborist to produce a report for review. If the removal was of a sensitive nature, "such as involving a significant tree estimated to be hundreds of years old as in this case" the city would also get a second opinion. The process would normally take two to three weeks rather than a few days. Mayor Howlett said MRWA needed to review its policies, as the report supplied by its contractor lacked basic information such as property number and land ownership; assessment terms and method; detailed description (for example, height, trunk diameter, specific measurements from structural elements, canopy form, structural form, foundations); identification and location of diseases and pests; an official recommendation; references, including liability; and the arborist's signature and qualifications). An independent arborist report now commissioned by the City of Cockburn has said risk to public health from bee colonies may have increased in the short term as a result of the felling; that no significant targets were located in the drop zone of the tree and the risk to persons or property as a result of its age and status were negligible; that surrounding trees were damaged in the felling; and that though the tree was affected by dieback and previous termite colonies, its condition from ground to a height of four metres was in fact good. "The City will be seeking a full explanation from Main Roads WA and their contractors," the Mayor said. Main Roads spokesman Dean Roberts said though it was unlawful to clear native vegetation without a permit, Main Roads was exempted from getting a permit because of a regulation allowing clearing in "non-environmentally sensitive areas" for the purpose of "preventing imminent danger to human life or health". He did not clarify why the area was considered "non-environmentally sensitive" when a 2015 government press statement had described the location's "environmental sensitivities". The subcontractor's report was dated January 14, after the tree was felled. Despite this Mr Roberts said Main Roads did receive the report or a "summary" of it on January 11, before the tree was felled. "On this basis, and in consideration of concerns raised by local residents, a Main Roads officer authorised the work," he said. Mr Roberts did not specify when asked if government departments required contracted or subcontracted arborists to have minimum qualifications. "The arborist had advised he had "31 years' experience in the industry including 30 years of emergency response insurance work so he [had] extensive experience regarding the potential for tree limbs falling." He said Main Roads contractor Colliers International had subcontracted Westland Works which had in turn subcontracted Mr Haning. Mr Roberts said Mr Haning had undertaken a tree risk assessment "in the form of a visual inspection" that determined there was an immediate risk of a large branch shearing off causing either death or serious injury. Arbor Carbon forest pathologist and qualified tree risk assessor Paul Barber, an adjunct associate professor at Murdoch University, visited the felled jarrah and disagreed. He said while the tree had dead wood in the crown, it did not meet the criteria for removal using either of the two internationally recognised tree risk assessment methods. He said the tree's base was structurally sound and measurements of its length proved that if it failed at ground level it would not directly impact the nearby path, fence or bus stop. It was located within a rarely used bushland corridor. Dr Barber also said the tree had major ecological value given the rarity of "king jarrahs" on the Swan Coastal Plain, and given its ability to provide nesting habitat. Arbor Centre's Rob Bodenstaff said there was now an onus on the public and private sector to target recommended minimum competence levels when obtaining tree advice. "The days of Joe Bloggs the tree lopper providing advice for authorities have gone," he said. "There are people who are well qualified." South Metropolitan MLC Lynn MacLaren has written to Environment Minister Albert Jacob and Transport Minister Dean Nalder to seek more answers. New York: The United Nations has revealed details of the "staggering civilian death toll in Iraq" over the past two years and estimated some 3500 Iraqis continue to be held captive as "slaves", since the Islamic State's insurgency flared at the beginning of 2014. In a new report this week, the UN said the jihadists' captives included many women and girls from the persecuted Yazidi sect who have been abducted and forced into sexual slavery. Australian Kenneth Horton, 35, from Mittagong plays at sunset in Taji, Iraq. Australian troops are training Iraqi soldiers for the fight against the so-called Islamic State. Credit:Gary Ramage The report found nearly 19,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in the last two years, while some 3.2 million Iraqis have been displaced. Compiled jointly by the UN mission in Iraq and its Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the report details myriad abuses and atrocities that have ravaged the country in recent years. From January 1, 2014, to the end of last October, the world body recorded at least 55,047 civilian casualties in Iraq: 18,802 killed and 36,245 wounded. State security organs and public security departments have busted an illegal group which attempted to endanger China's national security in the name of defending human rights. Several suspects including a man from Sweden were detained, Xinhua News Agency reported on Tuesday. Investigations showed that Peter Dahlin from Sweden and Wang Quanzhang, previously a lawyer at a law firm in Beijing, jointly established an agency called Joint Development Institute Limited in Hong Kong in August 2009. They carried out activities in China in the name of providing aid for those in need of help while defending rights, without registering and reporting to the Chinese government. In this way, they tried to avoid governmental supervision of their activities and their use of funds. Xinhua said Dahlin's group has been receiving financial support from seven overseas organizations. During the past several years, the group set up more than 10 so-called legal aid centers, trained several illegal lawyers without license and ignited petitioners' hatred toward the Chinese government. The group took advantage of these people to collect negative information about China in different fields and aspects. By distorting, exaggerating information and making up facts, the agency provided so-called "human right reports" to organizations overseas. Security departments said other suspects of the group detained, including a man surnamed Wang and a man surnamed Xing, confessed that Dahlin's group received a total 10 million yuan ($1.5 million) from overseas organizations, trying to discredit China and disturb the social order of the country. Dahlin was detained on Jan 3 and received residential surveillance. On Saturday, he was allowed to meet staff from the Swedish Embassy to China. The case remains under further investigation. Chicago: American billionaire philanthropist Jennifer Pritzker has donated $US2 million ($2.9 million) to a Canadian university to establish a chair of transgender studies, believed to be the only such research position in global academia. The funding for the University of Victoria in British Columbia comes from Pritzker's Tawani Foundation. Half of the money will support the chair position for five years, and the other half is pledged to match other donations to the program. Jennifer Pritzker, billionaire investor and philanthropist, and retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel. Credit:Equality Illinois Aaron Devor, a sociology professor who has studied transgender issues for three decades, was named inaugural chair. "Far too many trans and gender-nonconforming people still live in poverty and fear," Dr Devor said in a statement. "As the inaugural chair, I will act as a resource locally and internationally for those needing information for their own research or for policy development, as well as building linkages between community-based and academic scholars working in transgender studies." Washington: There is nothing surprising about the political marriage of Donald Trump and Sarah Palin. Indeed ever since Trump gave up flirting with a political career and joined the race it was almost inevitable. The two populists occupy the same political space, exciting the angry white working and middle class base that has been most wounded by the economic upheavals of free trade agreements and great recession. To do this they appeal to anxieties and even hatreds. It is a simple but effective trip. In 2008 as Senator John McCain, an aging war hero and lion of the GOP, saw his campaign flag against young African American senator Barack Obama, he turned to Palin to harness the energy of this wing of his party. "I am greatly honoured to receive Sarah's endorsement," Trump said, announcing the support of the former Alaska governor and former running mate of Senator John McCain in his 2008 bid for the White House. "She's tough and smart and just a great woman": Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Sarah Palin. Credit:Bloomberg It gives the billionaire businessman a potential boost with some voters less than two weeks before voting begins with the Iowa caucuses. "She is a friend and a high-quality person whom I have great respect for. I am proud to have her support." Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin speaking American. Credit:AP Ms Palin is scheduled to appear with Mr Trump at a rally at an agricultural centre at the Iowa State University and will also join him at two events on Wednesday, including a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The endorsement comes less than two weeks ahead of the critical lead-off Iowa caucus, where Mr Trump is locked in a dead heat with Texas Senator Ted Cruz. The Trump campaign described Ms Palin as a conservative who "helped launch the careers of several key future leaders of the Republican Party and conservative movement". For full functionality of this site it is necessary to enable JavaScript. Here are the instructions how to enable JavaScript in your web browser PHILIPSBURG:--- On Tuesday, January 19th at approximately 09.00 a.m. the Lieutenant-General Harry van den Brink, Commander of the Koninklijke Marechaussee, who is presently on a working to the island-countries within the Kingdom of the Netherlands met with the Police Chief Commissioner Carl John and his management team at the Philipsburg Police Station. The visit was to discuss the present working cooperation between the two entities and also how to further strengthen this cooperation for the future. The discussions lasted for approximately 45 minutes and were very informative. Both Commander van den Brink and Commissioner John were happy with the outcome of the discussions and look forward to future meetings for follow-up discussions. AMSTERDAM/ PHILIPSBURG:--- On Tuesday afternoon Prime Minister of St. Maarten William Marlin accompanied by the Minister Pleni-Potentiary in The Hague, Mrs. Henrietta York-Doran, paid a visit to the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Mr. Mark Rutte. Following the discussions Prime Minister Marlin said the discussions were brief but intense. Both Prime Ministers talked about integrity issues, the Integrity Chamber, support for the Public Prosecutors Office and the Police. On Wednesday the Prime Minister will hold talks with Minister of Kingdom Relations, Mr. Ronald Plasterk and on Thursday PM Marlin will meet the Vice Chairman of the Council of State, Mr. Piet Hein Donner. GREAT BAY(DCOMM):--- The Collective Preventive Services (CPS), a government department under the Ministry of Public Health, Social Development and Labour, met on Tuesday morning regarding the Zika Virus Disease. CPS has increased its level of alertness based on current development in the Americas and will scale up activities in the coming days and weeks. These activities include meeting with stakeholders to plan additional measures and provide information about current developments in the Americas; meetings with French St. Martin and Anguilla public health officials; increased public awareness activities (via social media, government website, radio and TV talk shows, press releases, government information page, distribution of information to schools etc.); and increased vector controls. At the moment for Sint Maarten, no confirmed cases have been reported. CPS already has a working arrangement with St. Maarten Laboratory Services (SLS) where it concerns the collection of samples for investigation that would then be sent to the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA) for further detail analysis. Zika virus is a member of the Flaviviridae family and is transmitted to humans by mosquitoes. It is related to other pathogenic vector borne flaviviruses including dengue, chickungunya, West-Nile and Japanese encephalitis viruses but produces a comparatively mild disease in humans. The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) in its latest epidemiological alert has listed 18 countries and territories in the Americas that have confirmed autochthonous circulation of the Zika virus in 2015 and 2016. These countries are: Brazil, Barbados, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Saint Martin, Suriname, and Venezuela. Between November 2015 and January 2016, local transmission of the virus was detected in 14 new countries and territories. CPS is therefore advising travellers especially pregnant women - to take necessary preventive measures when abroad and to report upon their return to their family physician if they experience flu-like symptoms. The main clinical symptoms in patients are mild fever, conjunctivitis, transient arthritis/arthralgia (mainly in the smaller joints of the hands and feet) and maculo-papular rash (that often starts on the face and then spreads throughout the body), and general malaise. In general the disease symptoms are mild and short-lasting (2-7 days). There is no vaccine or preventive drug available To reduce the risk of contracting Zika virus infection - as for the other mosquito-borne infections - travelers and those at home should minimize the exposure to mosquito bites by taking the following preventive measures: 1. Use of anti-mosquito devices (insecticide-treated bed nets, coils, smudge pots, spray, repellents) and wearing long sleeves and pants with long legs, especially during the hours of highest mosquito activity (morning and late afternoon); light colored clothing. Mosquito repellent based on a 30% DEET concentration is recommended; 2. Before using repellents, pregnant women and children under the age of 12 years should consult a physician or pharmacist; Dengue fever, zika and chikungunya are transmitted by the female vector Aedes Aegypti mosquito. The Aedes Aegypti mosquito is distinguished by its markings. The body of the mosquito has alternate black and white horizontal stripes. The Aedes Aegypti mosquito lays her eggs in clear (clean) stagnant water. Within eight days the mosquito can complete its life cycle from egg, to larvae to pupae and to adult mosquito. Persons are also requested to keep their homes, yards, neighborhoods and work environment free from potential mosquito breeding sites. If residents come across areas with a large mosquito population, they should notify CPS. CPS first alerted the community about the Zika virus last October and has been advising on a monthly basis on mosquito elimination measures and providing updates related to Zika. An increase in the mosquito population puts residents and visitors at risk. For information about dengue fever, zika and chikungunya prevention measures, you can call CPS 542-2078 or 542-3003. AMSTERDAM/PHILIPSBURG:--- On Wednesday morning, Prime Minister William Marlin continued his visits in The Hague when he met with Minister of Interior and Kingdom Relations, Mr. Ronald Plasterk. The Prime Minister was again accompanied by St. Maarten's Minister Pleni-Potentiary, Mrs. Henrietta Doran-York. The discussions were fruitful and views were exchanged on issues such as the financial situation of the country, the Integrity Chamber, making it possible for students abroad to vote and electoral reform. Earlier in the week both Ministers had met for dinner at the Hilton Hotel in The Hague. PHILIPSBURG:--- Five School Managers of the public education schools on St.Maarten visited their counterparts on the French side this morning. "It truly was a unique learning experience as it enabled us to see first hand how primary education is established on the French side," remarked Stuart Johnson School Manager of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Primary School. "History was surely made today and barriers broken as this type of working visit has never been done in the past where corperation was sought in this regard within education," Johnson added. The other public school managers that participated in this special working visit was School Manager Sonia Parotte-Warner of the Oranje Primary School, School Manager Esther Jeffers-Connor of the Ruby Labega Primary School, School Manager Alice Samuel of the Leonard Connor Primary School and Adjunct School Manager Sandra Mathew-White of Marie Genevieve De Weever Primary School. The working visit included a lengthy discussion and site visit with Director Ms. Carel Rita of Nina Duverly School as well as a complete site visit of Nina Diverly with Director Prudent Joselyne. "Key structures found within the two French primary educational institutions which grabbed our attention was the overall cleanliness, the front entrance procedure, the autistic classrooms, the library and canteen facilities," Johnson said. The site visit was arranged with special appreciation to Ms. Francillette Joelle who is a Professor for specialized schools at Emile Choisy. "I deeply appreciate the immediate positive response I got for this working visit and thank our counterparts deeply for their transparency in our discussions," Johnson concluded. RIYADH, Jan. 19 -- China and Saudi Arabia agreed to lift their bilateral ties to a comprehensive strategic partnership on Tuesday, eyeing more industrial capacity cooperation. The two countries signed a Memorandum of Understanding in industrial capacity cooperation after Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud held talks with visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping. The document also said they will jointly pursue the China-proposed "Belt and Road" initiative. "I believe it will deepen the mutual strategic trust, lead to greater achievements in our mutually beneficial cooperation, and help facilitate and broaden our shared interests in international and regional affairs," Xi said on the upgrading of the bilateral ties. The King said that the two peoples will benefit from the elevated ties and that Saudi Arabia supports the "Belt and Road" initiative. The "Belt and Road" initiative refers to the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road, proposals put forward by Xi in 2013 to boost interconnectivity and regional development. The Chinese president arrived in Saudi Arabia Tuesday on the first stop of his three-nation tour of the Middle East, as the world's second-largest economy seeks closer political and economic ties with the region. It is the first state visit by a Chinese head of state to Saudi Arabia in seven years. Xi will also travel to Egypt and Iran on his first overseas visit this year that lasts from Jan. 19 to 23. The two leaders agreed to boost strategic communication, maximize the synergy of their development plans, build a stable long-term energy cooperation, and promote dialogues between the civilizations. They also pledged to build the China-initiated Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank into a win-win financing platform whereby regional interconnectivity can receive a boost. The two leaders said they appreciate the progress made in the China-Gulf Cooperation Council Free Trade Area talks, and agreed that the free trade area should be established as early as possible. The two countries signed a slew of cooperation deals after the talks between their leaders, covering sectors such as energy, communications, environment, culture, aerospace, science and technology. The Chinese president was awarded the King Abdulaziz Medal by Salman, the highest order in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is China's biggest global supplier of crude oil and its biggest trading partner in West Asia and Africa. In 2013, China became the biggest trading partner of Saudi Arabia for the first time. Two-way trade reached 69.1 billion U.S. dollars in 2014, growing by 230 times over that of 1990 when the two countries established diplomatic ties. >>>Related Xis Saudi Arabia visit to deepen bilateral ties: Saudi editor Chinese President Xi Jinpings state visit to Saudi Arabia will significantly deepen bilateral ties in politics, economy, society and culture, Salman Aldossary, editor-in-chief of Asharq Al-Awsat, a major Saudi Arabian newspaper, told the Peoples Daily on the eve of Xis Middle East trip. Presidents Xis key remarks on Chinas relations with Middle East and Arab countries Chinese President Xi Jinping will pay a state visit to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran from January 19-23. Xi has delivered a series of important remarks on the relationship between China and the Middle East and Arab countries, which is of great significance in promoting the Middle East peace process and pushing forward Chinas relations with these countries. Xis Middle East Visit Comes at Right Time: Analysts Chinese President Xi Jinping kicks off his Middle East trip on Jan 19. As Chinas first diplomatic event in 2016, analysts believe that it comes at the right time. China to Blaze New Trail in Middle East Diplomacy China will blaze a new trail featuring respect and win-win results in engaging in Middle East affairs, said a commentary published on the People's Daily Tuesday. ChatWork Secures $12.5M to Fuel Greater Global Expansion SAN FRANCISCO, CA (Marketwired) 01/19/16 , Asias leading business , today announced that it secured $12.5M in Series B funding from JAFCO and other investors to further enhance the product and spur additional use in the U.S., Europe and Latin America. ChatWork helps teams within 86,000 companies from 204 countries and regions increase engagement and work better together without depending on email. We are proud to make one of our biggest investments by JAFCO SV4, our latest flagship fund, in ChatWork, said Keisuke Miyoshi, a board member of JAFCO Co. Ltd., the largest and most prestigious venture capital firm in Japan. Given ChatWorks proven success, we believe they are uniquely positioned to accelerate their global expansion and further innovate business chat for the future of work. With ChatWork, coworkers and outside clients, freelancers and business partners benefit from this faster, more modern way of working that allows them to meet on common ground, bond over a shared coffee cup emoji and become stronger teams. The daily onslaught of email is replaced by real-time chat messages. Back-to-back meetings are eliminated by having quick video chats. Buried file attachments and sticky note to-dos become contextually organized by project or topic. ChatWork transforms the way colleagues work together with an all-in-one app designed for speed, collaboration and teamwork, without all the usual drama, said ChatWork CEO and Founder Toshi Yamamoto. As businesses expand globally, teams need to work together across different locations, time zones, cultures, languages and generations. With our Series B funding, were excited to accelerate our market growth in the U.S. and Western countries and help businesses build a more humanized work culture and excel in our global economy. is a group chat app that helps over 86,000 companies across 204 countries and regions communicate, collaborate and increase productivity. The , available in five languages, includes secure messaging, video chat, task management and file sharing functionality. Founded in 2011, ChatWork is Asias No. 1 business chat app and is based in Osaka, Japan with employees located in Asia and the U.S. For more information, visit , the and follow ChatWork on , , and . Chat App @Chatwork_en raises $12.5M Series B to help teams succeed in global economy: bit.ly/CW_Funding : Brook Terran Blast PR for ChatWork 805-570-3309 Find the nuggets in real time:?Mediatranslator? for financial markets Todays world is a global marketplace, driven by the multimedia internet. Especially in the financial sector, broadcasts of financial news include very valuable information and need to be available to financial analysts with very short time delay. Financial news frequently includes audio data from mixed sources and they are often available in various languages. Therefore, there is a growing demand for on-the-fly media transcription and translation. Until now there has been no real-time video translation available. The Gap will be closed Thanks to the new EUREKA project ?Mediatranslator?, this gap will be closed in the near future: The speech technology companies EML European Media Laboratory and Lexifone will develop a first-of-kind real-time video translator that is linguistically optimized for the financial sector. The project is financially supported by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) and the Israeli Ministry of Economy and Industry. ?Mediatranslator? is a project within the framework of the EUREKA research initiative. Neural networks and Machine learning for speech recognition and translation ?With neural networks and machine learning tools we will integrate transcription and translation technologies for a new product portfolio?, says Dr. Siegfried Kunzmann, R & D manager at EML. ?The project includes new technologies by tightly combining speech transcription with translation, and a language adaptation to the financial sector?, adds Dr. Ike Sagie, CTO of Lexifone. At the end of the project in March 2017, the partners plan to present a ready-to-sell-product that will help financial analysts to find the nuggets in the daily stream of media data using their smartphones. Both companies hold a distinguished record in speech technologies. EML develops speech recognition technologies to convert speech-to-text for speech & media analytics, media & lecture transcription, messaging & search, automotive and on-board, voice control and transcription solutions. Lexifone offers automatic voice translation of telephone conversations to connect those who do not speak the same language. Lexifone supports 15 languages, 24 dialects and calls to over 100 countries. Since 2015, EML and Lexifone have been strategic partners. In the future EML and Lexifone will use the ?Mediatranslator? tools to expand their solution portfolio to further business sectors. For further information, please contact: Dr. Peter Saueressig Public Relations EML European Media Laboratory GmbH Schloss-Wolfsbrunnenweg 35 D-69118 Heidelberg Phone: +49-6221-533245 E-mail: saueressig@eml.org Twitter: @EMLVoice EML European Media Laboratory GmbH (EML), Heidelberg / Germany EML European Media Laboratory is a private IT enterprise established by Klaus Tschira, one of the founders of SAP. EML develops speech recognition technologies which automatically convert speech-to-text for speech and media analytics, media and lecture transcription, voice messaging, voice search, automotive and on-board, voice control and transcription solutions. www.eml.org Lexifone Communication Systems Ltd, Haifa / Israel Lexifone is the worlds only privately-held automated technology for in-call translation. Lexifone translates outgoing and incoming calls in 15 different languages on any landline or mobile phone. Both sides of the call simply speak their language and Lexifone will translate both ends of the conversation in real time. Lexifone also supports a 3rd party developer SDK. The company is headquartered in Haifa, Israel with a sales office in Rochester, NY, USA. www.lexifone.net EUREKA EUREKA is a European research initiative with the goal of motivating cross-border co-operation between industry and research institutions in the area of technological research and development. The initiative aims at concentrating the existing potential of specialists, know-how, research facilities, and financial resources in Europe in order to make more efficient use of all these elements. In this way, EUREKA contributes to the competitiveness of European industry on the world marketplace. http://www.eurekanetwork.org/ EML European Media Laboratory (Germany) is a private IT enterprise established by Klaus Tschira, one of the founders of SAP. EML develops speech recognition technologies which automatically convert speech-to-text for speech and media analytics, media and lecture transcription, voice messaging, voice search, automotive and on-board, voice control and transcription solutions. www.eml.org 2815 Bathurst St, Toronto, Real Estate Agent David Soberano Joins with Re/Max As part of [David Soberano](http://www.davidsoberano.com/)s ongoing effort to improve the brokerage services offered to clients, the 2815 Bathurst St-based real estate agent has moved to a new brokerage firm, Re/Max Realtron Realty. Re/Max Realtron Realty is known for its The elite professionals at RE/MAX Realtron Realty believe true success comes from elevating the expectations of others. When it is possible to help people achieve more than they ever thought possible, good things always follow., Since 1985, this simple philosophy has continued to fuel the growth of RE/MAX Realtron Realty and It comes from never settling for ordinary when extraordinary is always within reach. And its a result of always focusing on future growth instead of dwelling on past accomplishments. throughout the industry, with a history of serving its clients well. Indeed, these are the defining qualities of Torontos premier real estate company. The hundreds of highly motivated professionals who comprise RE/MAX Realtron strive for more in everything they do, which is why they are proud to Elevate Expectations when it comes to buying or selling real estate throughout Greater Toronto. David Soberano Specializing in residential, commercial, investment and industrial real estate. David Soberano areas of expertise include Central Toronto, Thornhill, Richmond Hill, Lawrence Park and Vaughan. consistently enhancing skills and keeping up to date with technology through seminars and continuing education in order to provide unsurpassed service is primary goal. Full details about the change can be viewed on the website: http://www.davidsoberano.com/ David Soberano spoke highly of the change in brokerage firms, saying A good real estate agent doesnt disappear once the closing papers are signed. This new partnership will provide services for new home buyers, second home buyers, commercial places for rent and condo buyers in particular, but all people who need brokerage services are welcome. All those with questions are invited to get in touch with David Soberano via the website, http://www.davidsoberano.com/. Posted by knortham on 1/20/16 Categorized as News Round Up Lisa Gwyther is a member: Tar Heel: Lisa Gwyther is a one-woman support team for families dealing with Alzheimers The News-Observer Lisa Gwyther had no inkling that she would spend her career supporting families affected by Alzheimers when she started as a social worker at Duke Medical Center in the late 1970s. The national Alzheimers Association hadnt yet formed, and awareness of the disease, which causes severe dementia and has no known cure, was minimal. But when she met families dealing with Alzheimers, Gwyther started chipping away at the myriad of problems they faced starting support groups, a newsletter and a 24-hour hotline while also helping to connect families across the state with needed resources. In the process, she became a national expert on the topic and has been active in local, state and national efforts to provide care for Alzheimers patients and their families. Matt Epperson is a member: Op-Ed Contributor: Where Police Violence Encounters Mental Illness The New York Times [Matthew Epperson is an assistant professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration.] NEARLY 20 years ago, I was a social worker in a county jail where I first began to understand just how frequently the police deal with people with mental illnesses. Run-ins with the police were a regular occurrence for many of my clients, with officers often knowing them by name. They were overwhelmingly poor, and poor people with mental illnesses are also likely to experience homelessness and substance abuse issues that place them at increased risk of police contact and incarceration. Evelyn Tomaszewski is mentioned: Homelessness and HIV/AIDS: Challenges abound in LGBT community Q-Notes As the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) states in their report HIV/AIDS and Homelessness, authored by Evelyn P. Tomaszewski, Studies indicate that the prevalence of HIV among homeless people is as high as 20 percent, with some subgroups having much higher burdens of disease. More than 160 school social workers to be hired in Nevada The Tampa Tribune State officials have awarded $5.6 million in grants to hire more than 160 social workers and mental health professionals in Nevada schools. The awards are part of a broad anti-bullying initiative coordinated by Nevadas new Office for a Safe and Respectful Learning Environment. Eleven districts and six charter schools received funding. Students were recently surveyed on the health of their school climate, and awards were based in part on which schools needed the most intervention. Mississippi Fights to Keep Control of Its Beleaguered Child Welfare System The New York Times More than a decade later, after a 2008 settlement and an admission by the state in July that it had never complied with the requirements, Mississippi is now trying to avoid becoming the first state to have its child welfare system put in receivership and an outside group hired to run it. And at a time when 19 states are facing system-wide lawsuits that claim high rates of abuse and neglect of children and serious foster home shortages, Mississippi has become a case study in just how long and egregiously a state system meant to protect children can continue with substandard care that is out of compliance with a court order. Edward Harper is a member: After holidays is good time to check on aging family members The Daily Times [Maryville, TN] Blount Memorial Hospital licensed clinical social worker Edward Harper says because of this, the post-holiday months of January and February can become the season of caregivers. After those family visits around Thanksgiving and Christmas, January becomes a time of phone calls, texts and emails between siblings or parents and children to discuss the things they observed and experienced over the holidays, Harper said. These conversations are important because theyre an attempt to reach an understanding and consensus about the abilities of parents or elder family members, consider if there is a need for assistance and discuss how the perceived need could be approached. Caregiving in its early stages is a progressive response to a sensing of need, which can be a confusing process. To offer care can feel like an intrusive or disrespectful act of interfering with the independence of the parents or an impaired relative. It also can feel threatening when knowing that any offer of care or assistance could be met with admonishment and anger, he explained. CAIRO, Jan. 20 -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday hailed the historic friendship and fruitful cooperation between China and Egypt and called for greater concerted efforts to promote bilateral ties. In his dedication to a special issue of the China Today magazine's Arabic edition, Xi noted that over the past 60 years China and Egypt have maintained sound and steady development of bilateral relations and "set a model for China-Arab and China-Africa relations as well as for South-South cooperation." Since ancient times, the people of China and Egypt, both among the world's oldest civilizations, have carried out friendly exchanges and promoted mutual understanding through the land and maritime Silk Roads, Xi noted, recalling that Egypt was the first Arab and African nation to establish diplomatic ties with the People's Republic of China. Noting that the two sides agreed in 2014 to build a comprehensive strategic partnership, Xi emphasized that China always treats and promotes its relationship with Egypt from a strategic and long-term perspective. "We are ready to work with the Egyptian side to carry forward our traditional friendship, learn from each other, and deepen our practical cooperation in various fields under the Belt and Road Initiative, so as to let our people share development benefits and enjoy a better life," Xi added. The special issue was dedicated to the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Egypt, and released in Cairo on Wednesday before Xi arrives for a state visit to the Arab country. Xi's Egyptian counterpart, President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, also offered a dedication to the magazine, in which he extended his warm welcome for Xi's visit. "Egypt treasures its close ties with China," he wrote in the message, expressing the hope that bilateral relations will enjoy continuous and sound development in various fields. Cairo will actively respond to Xi's call for reviving the Silk Roads, and welcomes more Chinese investment in its building of a"new Egypt," added the president. Egypt will work with China to achieve common interests and future development, which will also benefit the entire humanity, al-Sisi wrote. The Arab edition of China Today has been published by China International Publishing Group since 1964. It is the only Arab-language comprehensive monthly magazine in China. >>>Related: Closer partnership as "Belt and Road" meets Suez Canal corridor Two great civilizations, one boasting the Great Wall while the other the Pyramids and both linked by the ancient Silk Road, are finding new opportunities to join hands for development. Here's what IndyStar investigation of worker safety amid pandemic found Factory workers that make up the backbone of Indiana's economy told a similar story: Managers pressured employees to show up even when they were sick. At 9 a.m. on Jan. 18, in front of the People's Procuratorate in Guang'an, southwest China's Sichuan province, a row of bailiffs and many media representatives were waiting for a police car to arrive. In that car was Yi Tuke, 61, a fugitive official who evaded capture for 14 years, and who is finally being brought to justice. On April 8, 2002, Yi, former Deputy Secretary General, director of the Municipal Transportation Bureau of Guang'an, chose to abscond during the period in which he was under review on suspicion of bribery. Fourteen years later, persuaded by his family, he chose to give himself up. Fourteen years ago, right after Yi was transferred to Guang'an municipal government, Guang'an City People's Procuratorate filed an investigation on Yi. That very day, on April 1, 2002, the Commission for Discipline of Guang'an announced that Yi was under disciplinary review on suspicion of taking bribes. "It was very complicated. Someone deliberately spread some bad information on me and tried to harm me," Yi said when he was asked the reason for his flight. Yi said this was the biggest turning point in his life. With the help of friends, he took the train from Guang'an to Beijing. "I can clearly remember: it was April 8, 2002," said Yi. To avoid being found, Yi cut off contact with friends and family. He has traveled to a lot of places over the years, including Beijing, Shanghai, Shandong, Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangdong, Guangzhou and Chongqing. Chongqing was the city where Yi spent the longest time during his fugitive years. He stayed there for about one year. To make a living, Yi did odd jobs, such as selling newspapers and collecting waste. Yi said that besides lacking material comforts, he also suffered spiritually. Without family and friends, he was lonely and could talk to nobody. Yi finally decided to give himself up. He hopes to get leniency. "Over the years, I truly regretted my choice to abscond," Yi said. "Yi is the third fugitive official captured in Guang'an city, and also the one with highest level, who hid for the longest time14 years!" said Sun Kun, officer in the Anti-Corruption Bureau of the procuratorate of Guang'an. Chinese President Xi Jinping will pay a state visit to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran from January 19-23. Xi has delivered a series of important remarks on the relationship between China and the Middle East and Arab countries, which is of great significance in promoting the Middle East peace process and pushing forward Chinas relations with these countries. Chinese President Xi Jinping (C) attends a welcoming ceremony held by Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (L, front) for him before their talks in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Jan. 19, 2016. Xi arrived here on Tuesday for a state visit to Saudi Arabia, the first stop of his three-nation tour of the Middle East. (Xinhua/Ju Peng) 1. All nations in Middle East are equally entitled to life and development. The Middle East is beset by war and undergoing social unrest by now. Peace, stability and development are the common aspirations of countries in the Middle East. Resolving disputes through political means is a strategic option that is in the interests of all sides concerned. All nations in Middle East, including Israel, are equally entitled to life and development. Only when the legitimate rights of all countries are ensured, and all countries respect each other's concerns, can there be permanent peace and stability in the region. Said Xi when meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Beijing on May 9, 2013. 2. China supports a nuclear-free Gulf. The Gulf region and Middle East situation has a global impact and all members in the region share responsibility for safeguarding Gulf security and stability. China has always backed the just cause of the Palestinian people and will continue to facilitate peace talks. China supports a nuclear-free Gulf and will continue to promote a long-term, comprehensive and proper solution to the Iranian nuclear issue. Said Xi when meeting with Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, who is also the deputy premier and minister of defense, in Beijing on March 13, 2014. 3. China and Arab states should carry forward the Silk Road spirit. Chinese President Xi Jinping delivers a keynote speech on the relations and cooperation between China and Arab states at the opening ceremony of the Sixth Ministerial Conference of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum (CASCF) in Beijing, capital of China, June 5, 2014. (Xinhua/Ju Peng) For thousands of years, the Silk Road carried the spirit of peace and cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, learning from each other, mutual benefits and win-win results, which is passed on generation after generation. The people of China and the Arab world support each other in the battle of defending national dignity and sovereignty, help each other in realizing national rejuvenation, learn from each other in deepening cultural exchanges and promoting the prosperity of national cultures. Carrying forward the Silk Road spirit is to facilitate mutual learning among civilizations. Carrying forward the Silk Road spirit is to adhere to win-win cooperation. Carrying forward the Silk Road spirit is to advocate dialogue and peace. Said Xi when addressing the opening of the Sixth Ministerial Conference of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum in Beijing on June 5, 2014. 4. China and Arab states should make joint efforts in building the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road together. China and Arab states learned about and made friends with each other through the Silk Road, which makes them natural partners in building the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st century Maritime Silk Road together. In building the "One Belt and One Road" together, China and the Arab states need to adhere to the principle of building jointly through consultation to meet the interests of all. China and the Arab states need to be both ambitious and down-to-earth. China and the Arab states need to rely on and promote their traditional friendship. Said Xi at the opening ceremony of the Sixth Ministerial Conference of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum in Beijing on June 5, 2014. 5. China opposes any discrimination and prejudice about specific ethnic group or religion. No human civilization is superior to others. Equal exchanges make human civilization rich and colorful, just like the matching of different colors leads to greater beauty and the combination of different music instruments creates harmony and peace. China will unswervingly support Arab countries in maintaining their national culture and tradition, and oppose any discrimination and prejudice toward specific ethnic group or religion. We should make joint efforts in calling for civilization and tolerance, and preventing extremist forces and thought from creating a fault line among different civilization. Said Xi when addressing the opening ceremony of the Sixth Ministerial Conference of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum in Beijing on June 5, 2014. Suburban schools grow slightly, or lose less than state average Numbers from the state Department of Public Instruction show that in suburban Milwaukee, about 27 school districts grew last year, or lost fewer students than average. Welcome to SwanseaOnline - your home for the best news, sports and what's on coverage of the city. Never miss a Swansea story with our daily newsletter Sign up to comment on our stories here Follow us on Facebook and Twitter | Swansea City news | Ospreys news | InYourArea SYDNEY, Jan. 13 (People's Daily Online) According to Australian Bureau of Statistics' latest data, the number of Chinese visitors to Australia has achieved one million milestones in the last 12 months ended November 30, 2015. Australia's Chinese visitor numbers increased 21.6% to 1,001,200, in the past year. Lower Australian dollars, comfortable weather, exotic sceneries and higher reputation of travelling experiences all contribute to the nation's attraction for Chinese visitors. Meanwhile, Chinese visitors' consumption capacity is far beyond Australia's expectation. In the past year, spending of visitors from China increased 43% to AU$7.7 billion, which already outnumbered Australian government's initial estimate. Australian Federal Tourism and international Education Minister Richard Colbeck pointed out that China has become "a vitally important market for Australia's tourism industry growth". An increasing number of Australian tourism operators, hotels and retailers are providing products and services customized for Chinese visitors to gain market shares in the Chinese tourism market. Tian in court (Photo/Newssc.org) A doctor surnamed Tian, who gave a teenager sex reassignment surgery without parental consent, faced charges of intentional assault at Wuhou District People's Court in Chengdu, southwest China's Sichuan province on Tuesday morning. 15-year-old Xiao Yuan (a pseudonym) wanted to have a sex reassignment operation. To do this, he traveled alone to Chengdu from his hometown in central China's Henan province on May 22, 2015, unbeknownst to his parents. Tian was an intern at a medical beauty clinic in Chengdu's Wuhou District at that time. He had not yet obtained a physician's license when he performed the operation to remove Xiao Yuan's testicles, inflicting the teenager with second-degree injuries. When Xiao Yuan returned home, his father learned about the operation and went to Chengdu to report the case to the local police. On Jan. 19, the defendant, Tian, pleaded guilty in court, and paid 650,000 yuan to the victim in compensation. The court will soon fix a date for its verdict. Male cos-players put on make-up before performance. (File/Photo) Before the surgery, 15-year-old Xiao Yuan had set up a cartoon studio together with his friends. He was disgusted with his male identity and, due to a strong inner desire to become a real woman, he frequently performed costumed role-playing. According to Tian, he got in touch with Xiao through QQ, an online messaging service, and told Xiao Yuan that he could do a testicular removal surgery. The two then agreed to do the operation in Chengdu. When Xiao Yuan arrived in Chengdu, Tian took him to the Korean beauty clinic, which was located in Wuhou District. Per Tian's request, Xiao Yuan signed a disclaimer and gave a copy of his identity card. Tian did not care that Xiao was born in 2000, and therefore only 15 years old. They went ahead with the surgery without obtaining consent from Xiaos guardians. Xiao Yuan's father reported the case to the Wuhou public security bureau on June 22, 2015. Police immediately summoned the legal representativein this case Lee, Tian's wife. Wuhou District Procuratorate approved Tians arrest on suspicion of intentional injury on Sept. 2, 2015. The Wuhou Korean beauty clinics were shut down by the Wuhou District Health Bureau on the same day. Tian said that he had performed the sex reassignment operation on several people before. Some of them provided ID while others did not. Tian said, "I did not know Xiao Yuan was only 15 years old until I was arrested." Tian and his wife have paid a total of 650,000 yuan in compensation and received Criminal Understanding from Xiao Yuan's family. The court will soon fix a date for its verdict. Optimization Are you frustrated with a slow pc or a hard disk not performing as it should? Try SLOW-PCfighter to speed up boot time on a slow PC, or try a free scan of FULL-DISKfighter to recover space on a full disk. The latest offering is DRIVERfighter to update your driver updater. Get complete PC optimization and extend the life of your PC with these must-have software tools. Young filmmaker Simone Wendel, who also happens to be a distant relative of the Trumps, made a documentary film about her hometown in 2014 called the "Kings of Kallstadt" that explored its most famous native sons. In addition to the Trumps, the billionaire Heinz ketchup family also hails from the village. During the making of her film, Wendel traveled to New York to interview Trump. The billionaire apparently knew very little about his family's past and said he had never visited the village. After the war, he said his family claimed for a long time to have come from Sweden. But Trump did say in Wendel's film, "I love Kallstadt." Many residents of Kallstadt have familial links to the Trumps. And some fear those links could become a burden if the Republican politician's vulgar remarks draw unwanted attention, particularly from rival villages. It is typical for the region that villages make fun of each other, and the surrounding settlements accuse people from Kallstadt of being braggarts. Residents are not happy that Trump is not exactly disproving that image. "He's full of hot air," says one sales woman at a local butcher shop. "It doesn't fit with who we are," says another woman walking her dog. Of Trump's election campaign, vintner Weisenborn says it's "not something you always have to be proud of." There is one man in town, though, who sees things a bit differently. Adolf Sauer, a 75-year-old with a mustache and white hair, lives just outside the village with his wife. Pewter plates are hung on the walls and a heavy oak cabinet stands in the corner. Sauer explains that he, too, has emigrants in his family. Even though they aren't related to the presidential candidate, Sauer says he likes the Trump story. He then holds a book in his hand that an American friend gave to him: "Crippled America," written by Trump. Sauer isn't planning on reading it because he doesn't speak any English. But he still likes the idea that someone with a bit of Kallstadt in his blood is living the glamorous life in America, despite all Trump's escapades. After all, when people in Kallstadt do things, they tend to do them with great commitment, Sauer says. It's hardly surprising, he says, that some will find fame as a result. Finally, he adds, "I hope that Donald Trump becomes America's boss." The critically-acclaimed new Showtime drama BILLIONS had the best series debut performance ever for a Showtime original series with 2.99 million views to date for its premiere. BILLIONS was sampled early acrossplatforms to Showtime subscribers, delivering 1.6 million views prior to its Sunday night debut on SHOWTIME, the most ever for a Showtime series. On Sunday night, BILLIONS delivered 1.4 million viewers on the Network. The prior record holder was RAY DONOVAN (with 2.91 million views including linear premiere night and advance sampling on subscriber platforms in 2013)."It's a testament to the timeliness of the subject matter, the power of its stars and the brilliance of the show creators that BILLIONS has had such a big start," said David Nevins, President and CEO, Showtime Networks Inc. "I can't wait for our subscribers to experience how this season unfolds."BILLIONS, which stars Oscar nominee and Emmy and Golden Globe winner Paul Giamatti (John Adams) and Emmy and Golden Globe winner Damian Lewis (Homeland), airs Sundays at 10 p.m. ET/PT. A bold, contemporary new drama series BILLIONS melds the worlds of ultra-wealth, influence and corruption as personified in two highly ambitious opposing figures: hard-charging, blue-blooded, politically connected U.S. Attorney Chuck Rhoades (Giamatti) and brilliant, calculating, blue-collar billionaire hedge fund king, Bobby "Axe" Axelrod (Lewis). Set amongst the Machiavellian machinations of New York City power politics and finance, BILLIONS weaves a complex, intricate narrative featuring a high-stakes game of predator-versus-prey. Maggie Siff, Malin Akerman, Toby Leonard Moore, David Costabile and Condola Rashad also star. BILLIONS is created, written and executive produced by Brian Koppelman and David Levien (Ocean's Thirteen, Rounders), and Andrew Ross Sorkin (Too Big To Fail). The pilot was directed by acclaimed director Neil Burger (The Illusionist, Divergent), who also serves as an executive producer on the first two episodes. For more information about BILLIONS, visit http://s.sho.com/BillionsOnShowtime, follow on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, and join the conversation using #Billions. A special sneak peek of the second episode of BILLIONS is available now on demand, on Showtime ANYTIME and the Showtime streaming service. Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) meets with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in Jakarta, capital of Indonesia, April 23, 2015. (Xinhua/Zhang Duo) Chinese President Xi Jinpings state visit to Iran will significantly boost ties between the two born partners, an Iranian scholar told the Peoples Daily, adding that the two nations need each other in their development. Xi kicked off his three-nation Mideast trip on January 19, and Iran will be his third stop. Describing the two nations as born partners, Sayed Mohammad Marandi, dean of Faculty of World Studies from the University of Tehran, said that Chinas attention on Middle Eastern affairs has grown in recent years. He explained that conflicts among nations and threats from extremist forces now intertwine in the region, situated at the junction of Europe, Asia and Africa, composing a complicated arena. In this context, Iran, as one of the most influential nations in the region, is willing to boost its political and economic ties with China. Recalling their decades-long friendship, the scholar said that thanks to its rich resources, large population and harmonious relationship with neighbors, Iran means a huge market for China. He added that with abundant oil and gas resources, Iran has the ability to upturn the global economic landscape once it returns to the energy market. If Iran transports its oil and gas through Central Asia rather than the Persian Gulf, their collaboration will also benefit other economies along the route, he stressed, explaining that a spillover of cooperation in politics, economy and culture can be generated from this. Marandi called on Iran to deepen economic and trade ties with China, saying that the worlds second largest economy will be its best partner. Hailing the China-initiated Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the scholar noted that it greatly complements current international financial order by bringing dividends to all Asian people. He hoped the bank would offer support in Sino-Iranian cooperation projects such as resource development and infrastructure construction. Bilateral economic and trade cooperation should still be further boosted, according to Marandi. He also urged more people-to-people contacts and closer exchanges in media and academia. (Source: Peoples Daily) New Girl - Episode 5.3 - Review: "Jury Duty" In this episode of New Girl , Jess is summoned for jury duty while Nick contends with an oblivious Cece after she moves most of her belongings into the loft. "I guess I'll just talk to Cece and tel her she's a disgusting beast because I'm the man of the house." I totally understood where Nick was coming from; Cece did not sign the roommate agreement and did not care about throwing her clothes all over the loft. I am always fearful during a new move if you have to use Craigslist to find a roommate because there is only so much vetting you can do before you decide on a roommate and pray to God that they're not crazy or passive aggressive. Meanwhile, Jess meets a lawyer, guest star John Cho, who believes in the American judicial system just like Jess. The problem is the principal shattered his hip and the acting principal job is hers if she can get out of jury duty. Schmidt decides the only way to settle the feud with Cece and Nick is for her to sign the roommate agreement outlining the agreements and adjusted pay rates for violating the agreement. At the same time, Winston is just trying to cover his tracks after accidentally hammering the hammer into the wall when he failed to hang a painting of dogs playing poker. To make matters worse, the entire siding on the wall completely falls apart. "There, I banged the thing." To Jess' dismay, she is chosen for jury duty and due to the sensitive nature of the case, will be sequestered aka Megan Fox is coming. In the end, Cece decides to sign the roommate agreement so that Schmidt will leave the denim barn, literally a outlet of only denim. I thought the endgame with Nick and Cece was sweet; there are always growing pains when change occurs, especially when it's your living situation. The best thing the gang has going for them is just that; they are a gang that has each others' backs even when they don't agree on every situation that may come up. With Jess leaving, she wrote down helpful advice for the gang to follow while she's on "jury duty." The advice ending with "I know everything" was a nice way to leave the gang with and I'm excited to see the addition of Megan Fox. How Nick, Schmidt, Winston, and of course Cece deal with having her in the loft will make for an interesting set of episodes. I imagine the usual girl-on-girl animosity, but they could completely surprise us and have Megan Fox be just like Jess or completely against the stereotype she usually plays. Time will tell when Megan Fox arrives in the loft during Episode 6. Comment below with your thoughts on the episode and tune into New Girl Tuesday's at 8/7 central. The 11th edition of Meat Expo China, the leading international trade exhibition for Chinas meat industry, ended on a high note. The show was held from 25 27 November 2015 at the Shanghai New International Expo Center and represented a successful inaugural joint partnership between the two organisers, Messe Frankfurt (Shanghai) Co Ltd and the Circulation Industry Promotion Center (CIPC) of the Ministry of Commerce of the Peoples Republic of China. Over its three-day run, the show attracted 108 companies from 5 countries and regions to showcase the latest slaughtering, meat processing and packaging technologies and equipment as well as high-quality meat and meat-based products. The exhibitors occupied 12,600 sqm of exhibition space and welcomed 5,088 visitors from 37 countries and regions, including Australia, Argentina, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mongolia, Russia, Spain, South Africa and the United States. Mr Richard Li, General Manager of Messe Frankfurt (Shanghai) Co Ltd, commented: The organisers combined efforts to put on the Meat Expo China 2015 were a success. Utilising our widely recognised expertise in fair management, we set out to elevate this well-regarded domestic show into a comprehensive global event. Overall, I am pleased with the results and believe the shows international footprint will continue to grow for years to come. CIPCs Deputy Director, Mr Zhou Qiang, was also positive about the joint collaboration. He revealed next years plan and explained: The advantageous cooperation with Messe Frankfurt not only made the 2015 show more professional and adaptive to the market, but it also raised the shows brand value. In 2016, in addition to co-organising Meat Expo China, we will extend the collaboration to IFFA in Frankfurt, Germany for Chinese exhibitor recruitment. We trust that the synergies between IFFA and Meat Expo China will be mutually beneficial and ultimately boost industry development in China. Fair reinforced as a gateway into Chinas meat and meat processing market Due to the Chinese governments stricter regulations on food safety and hygiene, slaughterhouses, butchering facilities and meat processers are encouraged to invest in higher technologies, automated machinery and more cost-effective management systems. For many suppliers, particularly those from overseas, Meat Expo China serves as a springboard for tapping the huge meat market in China. Watanabe Foodmach Sales (Shanghai) Co Ltd made its first appearance at the 2015 fair. The Japanese-funded company showcased its latest remodelled version, the Chop-cutter Vortex, of a renowned frozen meat slicer which operates at extremely high speeds and accuracy. Mr Wang Ping, the firms Deputy General Manager, said: We were invited by Messe Frankfurt and we think the show is a good platform to advertise our machinery and brand to the Chinese market. We feel positive about the market growth in China despite the recent slowdown of the economy. Our sales in China are doing well and we see great potential in the market since the demand for high-quality machinery remains high. This was reflected at the fair and many buyers were looking for high-performance equipment and showed interest in our displays. Another first-time exhibitor, E.K. Prima Exports Hong Kong Ltd, is an exporter of frozen meats from India. Mr Nirose P.M., General Manager of the company, shared: Meat Expo China marks our first step into the Chinese market. We are attracted to Messe Frankfurts international profile and we are pleased with the accessibility of Shanghai as a business hub. The response we have received from many international buyers and distributors from places such as Belgium, Germany and the US has been satisfying. Of course, there were a great deal of Chinese buyers too! This fair has offered us an excellent opportunity to expand our customer base. Jiaxing Expro Industrial Co Ltd also made its debut at Meat Expo China 2015. Ms Vicky Wang, Vice Manager of Oversea Sales for the enterprise, mentioned: We have been exhibiting at IFFA since 2001 and now we join Meat Expo China to support Messe Frankfurts efforts in facilitating local industry advancement. Besides a variety of meat processing machines like mixers and mincers, we also brought our state-of-the-art washers and accessories in response to the increased demand for more hygienic equipment in China. At the fair, we were delighted to have reached a number of professional buyers from both inside and outside China who were knowledgeable and mostly our target clients. The fair has been very productive. Returning exhibitor, Jiangsu Yurun Meat Industry Group Co Ltd, is a leading frozen meat supplier in China. Mr Lu Jian, Brand Director for the industry giant, shared: We have been supporting Meat Expo China for over a decade. It is a must-attend event for us because we can always see existing and potential clients at the fair. We believe that through our continuous participation, we can effectively strengthen our brand image and introduce new products to our target buyers. The fair is also an important channel for us to learn about buyers and customers demands. Vice-chair of the SCF, Russell Smith, said, The Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs Richard Lochhead pledged that 25% of payments would be implemented before Christmas with money hitting bank accounts before the New Year. If anyone is getting paid it certainly does not appear to be crofters. Our survey of members indicated that only about 1% had received any money by mid-January. Mr Smith continued, Not only are crofters not getting paid, nearly half of our respondents had not received a letter illustrating what they could expect. This is a ludicrous state of affairs; how is a person to plan for their enterprise if they are left in the dark as to what they may get paid? And there is discontent in those who did receive an illustration of what their payments may be, with some taking a cut. But what is an illustration? There is no indication as to what level of confidence we can have in the figures given. In a press statement the Cabinet Secretary apportioned blame for the delays in part to the three regions and associated headage scheme asked for by industry. With a career spanning more than 25 years, Julie has been singled out for the George Hedley Memorial Award recognising individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to the sheep industry. Julie says: It was a great honour to have even been nominated for this prestigious award, and to be informed I have now won is just so exciting. To win an award for being involved with something that I have a great passion for is even more special. I must thank my family and the many sheep farming families whose help and support over the last 25 years has enabled me to achieve what I have. Born into a farming family, sheep have always been a passion for Julie. Be it breeding, showing or promoting sheep, she has dedicated much of her life to the industry and will step down as NSA Northern Region Manager after 27 years service in February. Phil Stocker, NSA Chief Executive, says: The effect of Julies work is clear to see. She will leave her beloved NSA Northern Region with a host of dedicated and enthusiastic sheep farmers who have witnessed many changes and challenges over the years. These challenges will continue and I have no doubt our farmers will adapt and continue as a prosperous sheep production region that is vitally important to the UK industry. Julies passion was evident when she began her career in the sheep sector shortly after she left school, taking the lead in unofficially promoting the North of England Mule breed. From there she was asked to take on the role of Oxford Down Sheep Breeders Association Secretary and, in 1991, Suffolk Sheep Society Promotion Officer. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Amy and Tom Barnouw saw a hole in the market. There were plenty of healthier juice drinks aimed at adults, and no shortage of products pitched toward babies. But the teenage demographic was left out. The Fairfield couple launched Planet Fuel Beverage Co. to help fill that niche. We like the notion of going back to basics, Amy Barnouw said. We dont think fruit juice is bad; its a great choice. Thats why its been around forever. But the high sugar content of 100 percent juices on the market, to say nothing of the juice-like products marketed to young people, left them searching for a better option. Barnouw said they turned to a tactic used when their children were younger adding some water to soften the sugar jolt that straight-on fruit juice can provide. The company, whose products came on the market in 2014, is running a crowd-funding campaign to expand its manufacturing and distribution operation, as well as add a new flavor and redesign the labeling. But while the company grows, Barnouw said, it will stay true to its principles. We want to maintain our commitment to a premium, organic, GMO-free product, she said. Its healthy, and it also has to be great tasting. And the company got a boost this month from the release of new federal guidelines that urge people to limit their sugar intake. It basically reinforces exactly what weve been doing as a brand, Barnouw said. Theres no question that sugar consumption in this country is a real problem, and we need to take every opportunity to lower those levels. Planet Fuel comes in two varieties organic apple grape and organic cherry lemonade. A third, organic mango pear lime, is in the works. The products are sold at markets and stores around Fairfield County and beyond, including at Chefs Table, The Pantry and Village Bagels, all in downtown Fairfield. The company is also looking to schools for possible distribution, and has talked with officials in Bridgeport and elsewhere about stocking the juice. Amy Barnouw is the companys only full-time employee, though the company hopes to ramp up in coming years. She spent a number of years working for environmental nonprofits, where she said she learned the impact that corporate dollars can have on a cause. That eventually led her and her husband to launch what she calls a mission-driven business. This is about connecting young people to the power of their own choices, she said. They can find something thats good for themselves and good for the planet. Planet Fuel is not alone in offering diluted juice aimed at young people, with Honest Kids, owned by The Coca-Cola Co., offering a popular alternative of its own. One difference, Barnouw said, is the packaging. Honest Kids comes in a pouch, with Planet Fuel coming in an 8.4-ounce slim can, which Barnouw called soda-esque. The kids love it, she said. The product meets an important need, she said. Were not serving flavored water, she said. It still tastes like juice, but with a fraction of the sugar. And no one complains there isnt enough flavor. hbailey@ctpost.com; 203-330-6233; @hughsbailey This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate When Geoff Walsky opened the Fairfield County Antique & Design Center with the Leclerc Contemporary art gallery, he knew the concept was great. He also knew he wasnt an expert in fine art. At the same time, Isabella Garrucho, president and founder of her 20-year-old international art consulting company Isabella Garrucho Fine Art, had never had a gallery of her own. I went to one of Geoffreys openings and I fell in love with his integrity, Garrucho said. I asked if he had a curator and he didnt and weve been working together ever since. Now the pair is celebrating the opening of a new boutique Greenwich location of the Norwalk-based antique center and art gallery after almost a year in business together. Located at 45 East Putnam Avenue in Greenwich, the new branch of the Fairfield County Antique & Design Center with Isabella Garrucho Fine Art will feature mid-century modern furniture and contemporary art. None of the furniture pieces are reproductions mid-century modern is defined as being from the 1950s and 60s, Walsky said and the gallery will only feature well-known artists. Its what you would see on Madmen, Walsky said. The furniture includes designer names such as Knoll, Eames, Milo Baughman, Paul Evans, Warren Platner and Eero Saarinen, and the contemporary art at the new store includes pieces by Willem de Kooning, Paul Manes, Terry O'Neil, Bert Stern, Won Lee, Jim Perry and Masaaki Noda. We find this era of furniture to be extremely popular, Walsky said. Theres a lot of places recreating it and here our pieces look brand new but theyre all original. We find as people get older they go back to what they recognize, what they grew up with. So weve got a lot of hipsters appreciating this style again. Whats neat is true antiques are becoming less in style and this new generation of the wealthy arent interested in older antiques because theyre starting families and its not practical. They still like the vintage feel but its a little more modern. A grand opening celebration for the boutique gallery will be held from 6-8:30 p.m. Jan. 29 and feature guest of honor Paul Manes, whose work has been featured in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Solomon Guggenheim Museum. Some of Manes work is currently on display and for sale at Fairfield County Antique and Design in Greenwich. Greenwich Chamber of Commerce President Marcia OKane said shes thrilled the new gallery and antique store has joined the Greenwich small business world. Its a unique concept in that its providing art and furniture, OKane said. It certainly ensures theyll have unique and ever changing inventory and it certainly represents high-end quality merchandise. Our chamber likes to support small startup businesses like this because they have such a unique offering to the public. While vastly different than the SOHO-inspired 20,000 square foot antique and art center at 19 Willard Road in Norwalk, the smaller Greenwich space will offer consultations and services to the companys Greenwich client base and the walk-in store with rotating art and furniture will be open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sundays. We knew we wanted to open a satellite location here because many of our clients are in Greenwich and theres a very sophisticated base of fine art and antique collectors, Walsky said. It seemed like a great fit." KKrasselt@scni.com; 203-625-4411; Twitter: @kaitlynkrasselt STAMFORD- A defense team strategy to smother its fire experts findings backfired after a Stamford judge on Tuesday threatened to keep the man from testifying at an arson trial set to begin later this week. At the trial for Anthony Manousos, 35, a Stamford landlord accused of setting his Highland Road apartment building on fire knowing that a tenant was inside, defense attorneys Frank DiScala and Michael Skiber had arranged to call fire expert Michael K. Higgins to the stand. Higgins, a Massachusetts based expert with 35-year experience in the field and according to his own history has worked with the FBI and developed the most advanced method of extracting accelerants from arson samples, disagrees that the case was an arson. At a hearing Tuesday before Judge Gary White where Higgins was supposed to attend, but was a no-show, DiScala said that Higgins does not believe that the fire was set by human hands at all. This, despite the fact that identical burnt wooden matchsticks were found at the scene and in Manousos possession and a State police dog confirmed accelerants were on his clothes and the hallway foyer where the fire started stunk of gasoline, police say. But the problem is, Senior Assistant States Attorney Paul Ferencek says, DiScala and Skiber are being less than forthcoming with Higgins analysis and are refusing to tell him how their fire expert came up with his theory of the fire. Ferencek said that when the trial begins Thursday, he wants to understand Higgins analysis in order to competently cross examine him on the stand, especially because Higgins testimony is at odds with his experts from the State Fire Marshalls office and the Stamford Fire Department, who say the fire was an arson. As Ferencek said to White, he did not want see Higgins on the stand and himself left with my mouth hanging open listening to his testimony for the first time and wondering how to cross examine him. At a hearing last week where Ferencek brought up the issue, DiScala said that it wasnt his job to advance the states case by giving up the defense strategy to the case. DiScala said that there were many questions he has about the Stamford Fire Department and State Fire Marshalls facts of the fire as they see them, but he wasnt asking for any more information. DiScala said that he had given Ferencek everything he was entitled to. DiScala and Skiber have already argued that the matchstick evidence, as well as the hoody smelling of gasoline that Manousos, of Norwalk, was wearing when he was stopped by a police officer seconds after the fire call was made 300 feet away from his burning apartment building on Dec. 3, 2014, should be suppressed because the search was illegal. Manousos car was found parked nearby containing a five-gallon container of gasoline and pump sprayer containing Coleman camp fuel. But White ruled against the motions, saying that the police officer had reasonable suspicion to stop and search Manousos and the evidence will be presented to a jury. When Ferencek complained last week that DiScala hadnt fulfilled his end of the bargain of the discovery process whereby the prosecution and defense make their files available in order to help ensure a fairer trial, White immediately agreed. Without missing a beat, the judge ordered DiScala to produce Higgins Tuesday morning at the Stamford courthouse so Ferencek would be able to put his questions to their expert in person. But on Tuesday morning, DiScala said Higgins had a very busy schedule and even with five days notice he was unable to make the trip to the fourth floor witness stand. White accused DiScala of refusing to bring Higgins to Stamford. As a result, White said that he would either prohibit Higgins from taking the stand or limit his testimony to those subjects that have been covered in enough detail to Ferencek. Profitability is undoubtedly the most important aspect of running a business. Almost all entrepreneurs recognize this when they first launch their business, yet most find that their business models evolve as they grow, making it difficult to grow profits consistently. Related: 9 Factors That Helped Me Make My First $1M in Profits As a result, many entrepreneurs find themselves in a race to the bottom, as they begin to focus on using revenues to keep up with expenses, instead of produce profits. The sobering reality is that cash-flow management plays a critical role in the sustainability of any business. In fact, an estimated 90 percent of small businesses fail due to cash-flow problems. And since most business owners arent CPAs, they often have trouble figuring out how to create a sound business model. To get to the bottom of this issue, I sat down to interview Michael Michalowicz, a serial entrepreneur and the founder of Profit First, who argued that cash-flow problems result from flaws in generally accepted accounting principles. His insights, outlined below, can help entrepreneurs boost their profitability and bottom line. The No. 1 mistake that hurts business profits Interestingly, Michalowicz said that accounting may be viewed as an indicator of a business owners decision-making acumen -- or lack thereof. However, the equations governing the rules of accounting themselves offer little insight for entrepreneurs trying to make their businesses successful. Instead, Michalowicz said he believed that entrepreneurs need to change their approach in order to develop profitable companies. The basic rule of accounting states that net assets are the sum of liabilities and owners equity. This doesnt hold much significance for business owners, because it doesnt show how the owners equity is grown. The obvious answer is that businesses which generate profits grow their assets, which in turn, builds their equity (provided they arent taking on an unsustainable level of debt). When you start to break things down this way, even the least financially adept entrepreneur sees the point. Unfortunately, he or she also finds that boosting profitability is much more complicated than simply understanding this principle. The mistake that entrepreneurs often make is to focus on building profits by boosting sales. Related: Maximize Profits by Using These 3 P's In theory, this makes sense. However, many business owners fail to recognize that higher sales result in higher expenses. Some of those expenses are immediately obvious. Variable expenses, such as the materials needed to create the products, are clearly going to rise with sales. But other expenses can grow as well; increasing sales usually requires spending more on marketing, labor and efforts to penetrate markets that arent as likely to be profitable. As a result, many entrepreneurs find that their profit margins contract as sales rise. If the situation gets out of hand, they may eventually find themselves losing money, as expenses grow faster than sales. Michalowiczs advice on improving profitability Michalowicz cautioned that many business owners start by focusing on boosting sales and then seeing what profit they can earn afterward. They may realize large profits from a few great sales, but growth will be inconsistent. This can be disheartening for entrepreneurs who want to create a profitable business model. To combat this effect, he suggested a different approach. Rather than placing the emphasis on sales growth as a means to profitability, entrepreneurs should focus on profits first. They should set a minimum threshold for profits and focus on the sales that will help them consistently grow those profits. A pattern of moderate, consistent profits is much more worthwhile over the long term than hit-or-miss profits from a few home runs. Profit is your No. 1 priority While all business owners recognize that earning a profit is the ultimate goal, their actions dont always reflect that understanding. In addition to focusing on growing sales over boosting profits, they often make a number of other mistakes. One of these, according to Michalowicz, is zeroing-in on paying off debts before the business becomes profitable. Being in debt can understandably be scary -- especially if the company isnt lucrative yet. However, entrepreneurs who use their revenues to pay down debts too soon often fail to understand the opportunity cost of doing this. What they dont realize is that the revenue theyre generating is necessary to build momentum, to put the company in the black. To avoid this issue, Michalowicz recommended appointing someone to hold you accountable for making the organization financially successful. In his own case, that person was his accountant. Obviously, a business partner or mentor could also work but might may fall victim to the same fallacies -- especially if he or she gets trapped in the day-to-day needs of running the business. Accountants may not be known for their personalities, but they can be lifesavers for struggling entrepreneurs. To help other business owners avoid the problems described above, Michalowicz formed Profit First Professionals. This group is a team of more three dozen accountants and other professionals who help businesses focus on profitability. Whether or not these particular professionals make up part of your business team, be sure to include somebody on your team who can help you hone in on your profit margins. Related: How to Figure Out Your Margins Related: Profit First's Founder Reveals the No. 1 Mistake That Hurts Profits Don't Try to Maximize Growth and Profitability at the Same Time. It's Impossible. How to Be the Taylor Swift of Your Facebook Feed Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved China-Saudi Arabia economic and trade ties draw more attention as Chinese President Xi Jinping kicked off his state visit to the Middle East country on January 19. Analysts believed besides their energy cooperation, China can lend a helping hand as Saudi Arabia seeks to diversify its energy-dominated economy. China and Saudi Arabia have been deepening their economic and trade ties since they established diplomatic ties in 1990. In recent years, Saudi Arabia and other resource-abundant Gulf Region countries began to seek multiple sources of income to reduce economic reliance on the oil industry. Chinese and local staff of the Saudi Arabian branch of China Communications Construction Company Ltd. talk at a stormwater drainage project site in Jeddah, the countrys port city, on February 12, 2015. Amid the background, 160 China-funded companies covering railway, telecommunications and power have invested in Saudi Arabia. YASREF, a 10-billion-dollar refinery invested by Saudi Aramco and Chinas Sinopec, is one example. Highly dependent on export of crude oil, the Saudi economy is susceptible to the fluctuations of oil price. The country, therefore, has been seeking to diversify its economy to reduce risks, explained Wu Bingbing, member of the Center for China-Arab States Cooperation Forum Studies, adding that the refinery industry is more resilient to price fluctuation. The expert also expected a promising prospect for new energy cooperation, pointing out that the Middle East country has a thirst for new energy such as nuclear power, where China can offer its expertise. This photo is taken at a symposium between Chinese and Saudi youth on Chinas proposal to build the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road held in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, on December 3, 2015. Saudi Arabia has also been Chinas top crude oil supplier as well as its largest trade partner in West Asia and Africa for years, while China is the Middle East nations second largest trade partner. Hailing their energy cooperation as an important backup of Sino-Saudi ties, Wu said that Saudi Arabia contributed 16 percent of Chinas imported oil. It is of strategic importance, he added. Wu Sike, former Chinese Special Envoy on the Middle East Issue and Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, agreed that as major energy producer and consumer respectively, the two countries need each other. Their energy cooperation will also promote cooperation in other fields, he added. Data showed that China became Saudi Arabias largest trade partner in 2013 for the first time. Their two-way trade amounted to $69.1 billion in 2014, over 230 times more than that in 1990. (Source: People's Daily) Perhaps it was fate that an industrial gases company would become the canary in the coalmine but when Praxair abandoned its plans last year for a new Danbury headquarters in favor of the newly available GE Capital building on the citys east side, it may have been a sign of things to come. With Fairfield developer Kleban Properties setting its sights on General Electrics headquarters campus as the conglomerate plans its move to Boston, the future of GE Capitals other Fairfield County properties is an open question in commercial real estate circles. Uncertainty prevails despite a GE spokesmans statement Wednesday that GE has no expectation to move the Norwalk office of GE Capital Aviation Services or GE Energy Financial Services in Stamford to be closer to the units they support in Cincinnati and Atlanta. As much as the headquarters announcement cemented GEs skepticism on Connecticut, the questions about GE Capital stem from the parent companys decision last year to sell its treasury unit offices at 201 High Ridge Road in Stamford and take out a three-year lease on the building, a short span in commercial real estate given a typical 18-month time frame necessary to complete a lease. Our employees (in treasury) have been told they will stay in Fairfield County, not necessarily in that building - hence the short lease, GE spokeswoman Sue Bishop wrote in an emailed response to a Hearst query. After CEO Jeff Immelt indicated last week that GE had been considering its headquarters location and functions as far back as 2012, the company is now moving fast, promising an advanced guard of headquarters personnel in Boston by this summer. GE has indicated 200 corporate jobs will move to Boston, without specifying the fate of 600 additional jobs in Fairfield or the thinking behind exponentially condensing its headquarters headcount. According to spokesman Seth Martin, GE plans to keep its corporate training center in Crotonville, N.Y., despite the distance it is putting between that facility and its future headquarters. If GEs headquarters has remained the center of the conglomerates universe since 1974 when the company moved into the 600,000 square-foot facility under then-CEO Reginald Jones, its other local offices have made just as much of an impact, with the company currently occupying 1.7 million square feet of space for some 5,700 people. But that workforce was built up over a decade as GE Capital had its ups and downs under Immelt before hitting the auction block last year. The financial services unit in 2007 moved more than 350 commercial and real estate finance spacialists from its Stamford headquarters to The Towers complex in Norwalk at 901 Main Avenue just off the Merritt Parkway. Xerox followed suit into The Towers, and GE Capital took over that companys former Stamford headquarters at 800 Long Ridge Road, which serves today as the main office of GE Energy Financial Services. GE Asset Management (GEAM), which had 1600 Summer Street in downtown Stamford, is in limbo as GE looks for a buyer of that unit. With Blackstone Group, Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo among several companies that have bought pieces of GE Capital, none have yet to comment publicly on plans for the offices they are inheriting in Norwalk, with GE itself retaining GE Capital Aviation Services that relocated late last year from Stamford to 201 Merritt 7 in Norwalk. GE late last year renewed its lease in The Towers complex, with the option of being able to sublease the space to the new owners of GE Capital units or other companies if those offices are moved elsewhere. If The Towers and Merritt 7 complexes have drawn no small number of prominent tenants out of Stamford, to include Diageo, FactSet Research, the Financial Accounting Standards Board, Frontier Communications, GE Capital and Xerox, there is precedent for companies leaving that locus for points west or north. As GE Capital mushroomed in Norwalk, it displaced the drug market research giant IMS Health, which decamped north to Danbury, while Peppers & Rogers Group established offices in Stamford. Fairfields economic development chief Mark Barnhart told Hearst on Wednesday that Kleban is the lone prospective buyer that he is aware of for GEs 70-acre campus. Michael Gordon, executive managing director in the Stamford office of Colliers International, is among the local brokers who see GEs Fairfield headquarters as a candidate for repurposing, whether residential, retail or medical. Gordon said there has been no definitive word in real estate circles on the future of GE Capital facilities in Norwalk and Stamford, save for expectations that jobs will quietly be moved or otherwise evaporate as companies consolidate parts of GE Capital they have acquired in the past year. Its part of a larger trend away from the larger corporate campuses, Gordon said. The expectations are for a gradual shrink. Alex.Soule@scni.com; 203-964-2236; www.twitter.com/casoulman T he destruction wrought to newsprint by the digital revolution is nowhere more obvious than at Britains regional and local newspapers. Month by month throughout the past 15 years, the news emanating from publishers, both major and minor, has been unrelentingly dire. Advertising revenue has fallen. Sales have been in steep decline. Staff numbers have been drastically reduced. Profits have been made along the way but the margins have reduced considerably. An industry that enjoyed a prolonged financial boom has gone into reverse and, though no chief executive would dare to say so openly, it is now all about managing decline as prudently as possible. The corporate story told in public by the largest companies, such as Trinity Mirror, Newsquest and Johnston Press, is one of harnessing the power of the internet to make a transition from print to online. Publishers therefore point to the increased audience on their websites, taking care to argue that they are reaching far more people than they ever did in print. But the storys subtext is anything but a happy one because of the financial reality digital advertising revenue doesnt come close to print ad revenue. And it has become painfully clear that it never will. So publishers have had to cut costs to maintain profitability. At the same time, they have been experimenting with a range of online innovations in the hope of coming across the magic formula that will transform their industry. The most recent news from the Big Three publishers shows just how difficult it is to make that work. By far the most dramatic decision is that of Johnston Press to dispose of some of its 200-plus newspaper titles in order to pay down its debt. It could well engender further industry consolidation, with the acquisitive Trinity Mirror as a possible buyer. In October, Trinity paid 220 million to take over another large group, Local World, and its chief executive, Simon Fox, clearly sees a virtue in size. He has also shown himself willing to try out new ideas. Some, like his copy of BuzzFeed, failed. But he knows that right now its a case of innovate or die. He is even contemplating the launch of a national newspaper. But one of his companys notions to improve editorial output, by setting individual online traffic targets for its journalists, ran into stiff opposition. It was not the first staff rebellion against digital demands, and I accept that the proposal had its merits, but it does imply that journalists are kicking back against the pace and scale of change. Similarly, Newsquests cost-saving decision to create centralised production hubs in Newport, South Wales, and Weymouth has not proved as efficient as hoped. The companys editors have not been thrilled with the headline-writing skills of sub-editors located many miles away who lack relevant local knowledge. I would guess that this particular problem will gradually be solved by sensible compromise. What it indicates, however, is the way local papers are moving ever further from their audiences. In a digital world, where everyone is a click or two away from everyone else and everything they want, it is easy to forget the virtues of maintaining a local presence. Publishers may have no economic alternative but to cut and run, but they do so at their peril. Roy Greenslade is Professor of Journalism, City University London, and writes a blog for The Guardian B eleaguered miner BHP Billitons dividend payout was hanging by a thread today as the firm counted the cost of a bleak outlook for global commodities prices and Brazils worst-ever mining disaster. BHP has not cut its dividend since 1988, but boss Andrew Mackenzie dropped the biggest hint yet that the knife is being sharpened as he pledged to protect the firms credit rating. In this environment, we are...committed to protecting our strong balance sheet so we have the financial flexibility to manage further volatility, he said. The City hammered the companys shares, sending them spinning 6% or 38.5p lower to 588.6p at the bottom of the FTSE 100. BHP said that Novembers dam burst in Brazil which killed 17 people and caused huge environmental damage would cut its ore output by 10 million tonnes to 237 million tonnes this year. The firm has yet to put a potential cost on the disaster but warned of up to $450 million (318 million) in costs due to redundancies and closures at its US shale busines. It wrote a mammoth $7.2 billion off the value of the business last week. Average prices for BHPs commodities have slumped by up to 51% in the past six months, with crude oil worst hit. Investec analyst Hunter Hillcoat said: We have taken the view that BHP Billiton will need to reduce its progressive dividend policy and have assumed a future payout based on sustainable cash flows. A US buyer is paying 132.5 million for the London headquarters of The Economist Group, home to the magazine loved by the business elite, the Evening Standard can reveal. It is selling the long leasehold of the Economist Plaza in the heart of St Jamess, where the publication has been since the 1960s, as part of changes announced last August. The company said it would buy back 182 million of shares in the business from former Financial Times owner Pearson. Exor, owned by Italys Agnelli family, agreed to buy shares worth 287 million. It added the purchase would be part-funded by the property sale and new offices would be found. Agent JLL was tasked with finding a buyer and US property investor Tishman Speyer swooped. Tishman also owns Sainsburys headquarters near Chancery Lane Tube station and is believed to be poised to buy the three buildings comprising offices, shops and car parking spaces. The Economist could move out within 18 months if the deal goes through. Any refurbishment would need consent from the freeholder, The Crown Estate. All parties declined to comment. T he scene: a dinner of business grandees, media folk and policy princelings at Scotts in Mayfair not a place widely associated with revolutionary activity. Conversational fare was a fretful account of the lack of trust in institutions, business and politics in the wake of PR firm Edelmans trust barometer, an annual survey of public attitudes. These anxieties always break just before the jet-setters head off to Davos for the World Economic Forum, a high-altitude worry-fest. But the mood in London has a particular quirk to it linked to the rise of Soft Corbynism among people who are usually rather more pragmatic than his political core. A new Softy Tendency features souls who are not adherents of the more outre positions of the Left but flirt selectively with them. There was an intriguing outbreak of this in Robert Pestons reasoning about why his new ITV political show will venture outside the mainstream. You meet mothers from middle-class backgrounds who you wouldnt necessarily think of as being hard-Left, who say they have more in common with the Corbyn agenda than youd expect, explained Pesto. This is what comes of shopping in Crouch End, Robert. Last night a major food retailer told me that he thought Corbyn would win a landslide if the election was tomorrow, while an elegant publisher chided us all for not knowing what is going on out there. It is the essence of Soft Corbynism to assume that the rest of society has not noticed something that is startlingly apparent to you. Many households are rather surprised to find themselves shifting from Lib- Dem/Green/Labour majorities in this direction. Their teenagers or perpetually at-home students are very often in the vanguard of new members who elected Corbyn. A lot are genuinely motivated by addressing social injustice, laced with a fashionable frisson for telling the Olds that capitalism is just so last century. The political logic of this is a bit mysterious. If there is a vast movement for the election of government from the far Left it showed itself oddly when Labour edged Leftwards twice once after Tony Blair stepped down and again when Ed Miliband was elected leader and still found itself facing a thumping Tory majority. And if my retail friend is right and an election produces a Jezza landslide, some of us would offer to eat our hats and his entire stock of out-of-date pet food. But the Softy Tendency has time on its side. Lets see what happens, says my most pro-Jeremy friend when there is a hiccup over Trident, resignation or a messy reshuffle. Across the living room glowers her implacably New Labour spouse, hissing, I know jolly well what is going to happen when should I tell her? You can attribute these quarrels to the crisis of capitalism (again), boredom with dreary political tribes or a pan-European surge of new forces, from Podemos to Syriza. Or you might, more prosaically, catch a whiff of Londons love of the new and exciting. Camp Corbyn sees a march of the middle classes, finally coming on board with the placard wavers. But do they know how febrile the Softy Tendency is? To the barricades, via Waitrose with those Boden cashmere socks to keep out the chill, is the battlecry. Aux Armes, Softies. @annemcelvoy is senior editor at the Economist T he level of tiny pollution particles in the London air so-called PM2.5 particulates is dangerous enough to account for more than 3,000 deaths a year. Yesterday a spike of a similar particulate pollution reached very high 10/10 level in Upper Thames Street, which has been recorded just three times in the past two years. The death toll attributable to these pollutants is not as bad as in 2010 but it suggests the Mayors clean air measures have not solved the problem, part of which is attributable to diesel exhausts. The Mayors aim at present is to establish a clean air zone in 2020 with stringent emissions restrictions, but that seems an unduly remote date given present levels of pollution. The real problem is that the tiny particulates are small enough to penetrate human lungs and invisible to the naked eye: were we to see particulate pollution the way previous generations could see smog, the issue might by now be resolved. The other problem is that air pollution by definition is no respecter of borders or city boundaries according to a report published on behalf of the Mayor, nearly half the health effects from air pollution are caused from toxins from outside London, some from abroad. That still leaves much pollution that it is within our power to remedy. City Hall should be considering bringing forward the timetable for the implementation of the clean air zone. The congestion charge could be levied on cars in proportion to the pollution they cause, though this would complicate its administration. Certainly parliament should consider levying a tax on diesel vehicles to take account of particulate pollution. The trouble is, many people bought diesel cars precisely because they thought they were greener than petrol ones. Meanwhile, people are continuing to die from bad air. The least we can do is to adopt the traditional method of dealing with pollution: plant more trees. Slavery on our doorstep When Home Secretary Theresa May successfully carried the Modern Slavery Act through parliament last year, she described the phenomenon of human trafficking as an affront to the dignity and humanity of every one of us. It is, then, excellent news that the Act is now being enforced and four men who trafficked vulnerable Roma women from Slovakia have been given a prevention order by a London judge. The four members of the gang responsible have already been imprisoned for the offence, whereby the women were passed on to Pakistani or Indian men as sham brides, or forced into prostitution or subjected to rape. Now the judge has imposed prevention orders which ban them in the future from carrying other peoples passports, arranging travel for other people and entering the area from which they procured the women. The Act has been criticised by civil liberties groups as insufficient, but it is an important start. It is a scandal that people are held in servitude in modern Britain, from domestic servants to prostitutes. Implementing the Act sends the message that we take this problem seriously. Eton of the east The results achieved by sixth-formers at the London Academy of Excellence in Newham are inspirational. John Weeks, the schools headmaster, whom we interview today, hits the nail on the head when he says that the key for many students is to raise aspirations. The LAE, which is free to attend, benefits from partnerships with top fee-paying schools and receives financial backing from the corporate sector, which tops up its primary funding from government. It may be a model for the future. T hink it through from my perspective. You are the Prime Minister, with a majority of 18 ... You have three Right-wing members of the Cabinet who actually resign. What happens in the parliamentary party? .... We dont want another three bastards out there. Those familiar words are John Majors, an angry aside caught on tape in 1993 at the height of the Eurosceptic rebellion over Maastricht. The three Cabinet members described so disobligingly were assumed to be Peter Lilley, Michael Portillo and John Redwood (who went on to challenge Major for the leadership). Twenty-three years on, as the EU referendum draws closer, David Cameron faces a comparable moment, as he weighs up the likely behaviour of his senior colleagues in the months ahead. The question posed by those already at work in the In camp is not which Cabinet members are likely to campaign for a Brexit (the list is expected to include Iain Duncan Smith, Chris Grayling, Priti Patel, John Whittingdale and Theresa Villiers). What vexes the fledgling campaign to stay in the EU is the prospective behaviour of Boris Johnson and Theresa May: in the words of one Westminster insider, they are the only players who could change the weather. True enough. Boris has the popular appeal to make the Out campaign blossom with optimism and good cheer, ridding it at a stroke of its negative, wintry disposition. May, on the other hand, would bring the authority of a great office of state to the Brexit campaign. Both politicians are taken seriously within the Tory tribe as prospective successors to Cameron. Small wonder that their every move is being scrutinised so closely. Seasoned Boris-watchers (or Bozzologists) admit that his behaviour is presently inscrutable. Those I have spoken to incline just to the view that he will decide eventually to stick with the In camp, though without much conviction. As for the Home Secretary, she too faces the choice of a lifetime. Those around her insist that her position has not shifted a jot: she will wait and see what deal the PM squeezes from our EU partners and then decide how to proceed. This has been her consistent answer to questions about the referendum, and is technically compatible with the Governments policy on EU membership. This much we must allow the Home Secretary. That said, it would be idle to deny that her conduct has marked her out from the other occupants of the great offices of state. The PM and George Osborne tend ever more clearly to call openly for Britain to remain in the EU. Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, who once said he would vote to leave if the current terms of membership remained in place, now says he cant envisage campaigning for a Brexit. Only the Home Secretary sticks fully to the wait and see wording, as if reading from cue cards. By this stage of the talks which Cameron wants to conclude next month one might expect so senior a minister, while leaving the Governments options open in theory, to exude confidence that progress has been made and that the PM would get the job done. Instead, she has remained pointedly dispassionate. As she told the BBC in November: I say lets do this renegotiation, lets see what reform we can bring about as a result of that renegotiation and then put it to the British people. Naturally, as a politician of her experience knows, this does nothing to dissuade speculation that she is indeed open to offers, and would consider very seriously leading the Out campaign. 'If May is serious about taking on the boys for the top job, she should give the Out camp a wide berth' This would indeed be a sensation: May is the longest-serving Home Secretary of modern times, and has undoubtedly given the Home Office back much of its self-respect. In the 1975 referendum, the No campaign boasted nobody more senior than Tony Benn, the Industry Secretary, and Barbara Castle, the Social Services Secretary. It lacked the governing gravitas of the Yes campaign. In contrast, Mays presence at the helm of the Out army this time around could transform its prospects at a stroke. Yet she would be unwise to sign up. At last years party conference she wooed the Tory rank-and-file by suggesting that the EUs freedom of movement rules should be renegotiated. But one does not have to dig deep in the Home Secretarys policymaking past to find her speaking in very different tones as a supporter of the EU. In July 2013, for instance, she made a strong defence in the Commons of European law and order measures: If we had to negotiate separate bilateral agreements with all 27 other member states, why does my honourable friend think they would work any better than the [European] arrest warrant? Indeed, this arrest warrant has been one of the great causes of her years at the Home Office. So what changed? Never underestimate the role of destiny in politics. In 2010 May was startled to be given such a senior brief. Since then she has become incrementally persuaded that she has what it takes to succeed Cameron. Like Boris, she knows her leadership prospects are intimately entangled with her conduct in the EU referendum. But if she is serious about taking on the boys for the top job, she should give the Out camp a wide berth. As Michael Heseltine used to say as he prepared his challenge to Margaret Thatcher, most contenders only have one bullet in the chamber. If May aligns herself with the Out movement, she will be handing the gun to others and inviting them to do as they please with her accrued political capital. So if her head has indeed been turned by the flattery of the Brexit crew, it should be turned back and fast. This whole story need not have a nasty ending but if senior Tories think Cameron is ready to suffer the indignities heaped upon Major by his colleagues, they have a brutal shock in store. T he London Air Fair has returned to the capital for the 28th time, this year held at the Business Design Centre in Islington. The fair, which is dedicated to modern British and contemporary art, comprises of talks, tours, performances, paintings and sculptures. Among the displays are Colin Davidson's portrait of Angela Merkel, a subversive sculpture of Baroness Thatcher by Marcus Harvey and a portrait of Amy Winehouse made of corks, shot gun cartridges and mouse traps. The Jerwood Gallery in Hastings is this years official partner gallery. They have provided some of their most important works for the four day fair, including pieces from the likes of Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson, John Piper, John Tunnard and Christopher Wood. One of the larger exhibits is Photo50, which this year features 50 images exploring the relationship between men and women, titled Feminine Masculine: On the Struggle and Fascination of Dealing with the Other Sex. Its subject is presented with a female narrative voice and largely features work from contemporary female artists. It is loosely inspired byJean-Luc Godards 1966 film Masculin Feminin. Another highlight is Dialogues, which sees guest curator Natasha Hoare present work from around the globe, including pieces from galleries in Berlin, Antwerp and Rotterdam. The Evening Standards art and exhibitions critic, Ben Luke, will chair a panel of artists, gallerists, policy makers and studio managers as they discuss whether London is pricing out artists from the capital, and what this means for the art world at large. The fair, which began Jan 20 and will run until Sunday Jan 24, is being held at the Business Design Centre in Islington. For more information visit londonartfair.co.uk Follow David Ellis on Twitter @dvh_ellis Follow Going Out on Facebook and on Twitter @ESgoingout Review at a glance T he endless lists of music tips for 2016 may be an exercise in bet-hedging there has to be one arena filler among the dozens of new names being flung around by Spotify, MTV, the Brits and so on but certain round-ups cannot be ignored. Radio 1s Future Festival, broadcast live and filmed for the iPlayer, is an annual gig so forward-thinking that it featured Jack Garratt a year before everyone else said he was a star. James Bay, Royal Blood and Sam Smith have also graced the tiny Maida Vale stages, so there must be big things in store for at least some of this years eight guests. The three-hour show was a broad mix. There was fun, noisy grunge from the North-Easts VANT, complete with American accent, all the way to old school hip hop beats from rapper Loyle Carner and gentle acoustic balladry from Billie Marten. If there was an overriding theme, it was youth. Marten is a mature-sounding 16. Raging Welsh indie band Pretty Vicious looked foetal enough for her to be their mother. Guernsey producer Mura Masa also seemed far too fresh of face to be conjuring such exotic electronic sounds, while the wall of voices that was rough-and-ready rap crew Section Boyz seemed designed to repel anyone out of their teens. The real highlights were two unique voices: the high, feline tones of NAO, and the powerful soul of the extraordinary Rationale, who belatedly snatched my vote as the man to make the biggest impact in 2016. If he doesnt end up being heard and loved by millions, were doing this tips thing all wrong. Follow Going Out on Facebook and on Twitter @ESgoingout Review at a glance A maluna is Cirque du Soleils 33rd production and marks the 20th anniversary of the companys relationship with the Royal Albert Hall. It delivers just what fans have come to expect a technically complex and often dazzling display of acrobatic excellence. The title hints at the influence of the moon and maternity, and the story combines elements of Shakespeare mainly The Tempest with familiar myths. Set on an enchanted island ruled by Amanda Zidows cello-playing queen, it centres on the coming-of-age of Iuliia Mykhailovas rebellious Miranda (who at one point contorts herself astonishingly in a vast bowl of water). Exposed for the first time to male company, she quickly falls for Romeo (Evgeny Kurkin). But their passion is threatened by Viktor Kees sinister Cali, a hybrid of human and lizard who has known her since she was a child and seems disturbingly proud of his swishing tail. While theres a more intelligible narrative than usual, nobody leaves a Cirque show raving about the subtleties of the plot. Instead spectacle is the key, as we witness performers mixing extreme gymnastics and exhibitionism. Here some of the strongest sections are the least elaborate especially when a so-called Balance Goddess manipulates palm fronds, which she picks up with her toes, to make a giant ribbed sculpture. This isnt as beautiful or dreamily magical as previous Cirque shows Ive seen. Theres some dismally unfunny clowning, and the celebration of Girl Power is confusingly half-hearted. But the aerial wizardry is intoxicating. Until March 6, Royal Albert Hall (020 7589 8212, royalalberthall.com) Follow Going Out on Facebook and on Twitter @ESgoingout Review at a glance T ime is running out. An old man waits out his final days, and in the centre of the stage a huge jar of sand tips upside down, grains streaming out. The countdown has begun. This sand-timer is the centrepiece of a fantastic set, easily the best thing about Expiry Date, a circus-theatre-dance show by Belgian company BabaFish. A Heath Robinson-esque contraption fills the stage with levers and pulleys and wooden towers, all set to collapse in an elaborate game of dominoes. Like life, once its set in motion, the only sure thing is that it will come to an end. Its a profound beginning to a show that doesnt fulfil its promise. Three performers play figments of the old mans memories a wedding, a party which all seem to end in yabbering arguments or physical violence. No wonder hes dying alone. Director Anna Nilsson plays, at one point, the disease that may be eating away at our protagonist, her acrobats body warping and mutating, before moving into a hypnotic handstanding solo. Thats a great scene, but other ideas here arent fully realised. They dont have the gravity or insight to do justice to a life. Until January 23, Barbican Pit (020 7638 8891, barbican.org.uk) Follow Going Out on Facebook and on Twitter @ESgoingout Y ou made a New Year's resolution to join the gym, but you're already bored of pounding the treadmill. Sound familiar? Then 2016 is the year to try your hand - or trainer-clad feet - at trail running. It's the adventurous way to get your running mojo back and involves training on stony, grassy or muddy tracks through hilly terrain and woodland. It's set to be one of this year's biggest fitness trends, with Londoners swapping the concrete jungle for a run on the wild side. As well as being good for your fitness levels, new research shows that trail running also has a positive impact on your mental wellbeing. Health psychologist Dr Eric Brymer says: Physical activity in green spaces can promote positive experiences such as: intensified sensory perception, a feeling of union with nature and a renewed sense of awakening. Here are nine reasons why you should give it a go: 1. Reconnect with nature We're increasingly alienated from the natural world, which affects our psychological health and can cause 'nature-deficit disorder'. You can counter this by exercising in green spaces. Dr Bymer says: "The simple pleasure of connecting to the natural world and realizing youre part of something bigger can put you in an optimal frame of mind". 2. Improve your physical health When trail running, you have to adapt quickly to different and uneven terrain, which strengthens and tones the abdominal muscles, as well as the lower back. This is because you tend to lift your feet higher to cope with the terrain, and the body activates stabilising muscles for better balance. Your inner and outer thigh muscles are also used for movement and balance, as well as your feet and ankles. You'll find your stamina and fitness levels improve - and the softer terrain is better for your joints. You can be yourself when you're trail running... 3. Emotional weight loss Forget about burning calories, how about shedding weight off your mind? A recent survey revealed that more than 40 per cent of trail runners see it as a form of therapy, seeing the sport as helping ot release negative emotions such as stress and melancholy. Muddy Shoes 4. Mindfulness Unlike when you're on the treadmill - where you mind can be anywhere - trail running forces you to pay attention to what is going on in the present. This means that trail running is mindful by default. Instead of switching off at the gym, you're switching onto the beauty around you, says mindful runner Dan Lawson. 5. Youre more likely to stick to trail running It's easy to tire of jogging along the same roads. It's easier to stick to outdoor physical actitivies like trail running due to the varying scenery and factors such as weather and light. No two runs will be the same. 6. No barriers! Gym-goers tend to find excuses not to exercise - whether it's tiredness, expense or a lack of motivation - but with trail running, there are no barriers at all. Green exercise in inclement weather can even have long-term wellbeing benefits as you'' lhave a more exhilarating engagement with your surroundings. 7. Non-judgmental environment Unlike the gym, nature is a non-judgemental environment. Research from the This Girl Can campaign revealed that women actively avoid environments that make them feel uncomfortable because they fear they'll be judged. While trail running, you can be yourself while you get fit. 20 Instagrams for fitness motivation 1 /26 20 Instagrams for fitness motivation Fitness on Toast Yoga Girl Tracy Anderson Hannah Bronfman Amanda Bisk Ballet Beautiful Two Bad Bodies Nicole Winhoffer Lunges and Lycra Joe Wicks Jen Selter Base Body Babes Natalie Uhling Patrick Beach Lorna Jane Active My Name is Jessamyn Marie Purvis Richard Tidmarsh Tone It Up Kayla Itsines 8. Explore your surroundings Google your local London running clubs to find trails in your area. Or, professional trail runner Joscelin Lowden recommends finding a decent-sized park, logging onto Strava and searching for runs other people have completed in that park. 9. Meet new people While some of you might prefer to rn solo, there's a huge community of friendly runners in London ready to welcome and share in your experiences. For more expert advice and useful information on trail running please visit: sportsshoes.com/trail/trail-running Follow us on Twitter @eslifeandstyle and sign up to our newsletter here. I n his orange-walled office overlooking the Olympic Park, the headmaster of the London Academy of Excellence (LAE) John Weeks is talking with understated pride about his pupils. Theres a sixth former who might turn down his Cambridge offer to read English at Harvard. His mother is a dinner lady who didnt go to university and he shares a room with his sister. Another student came out as bisexual in an assembly hosted by the LGBT society today I was proud of her, says Weeks. The mood at LAE is upbeat this week eight students were offered places at Oxford and Cambridge universities, leading to LAE being called the Eton of the East End. Thats not bad for a free school in one of the poorest boroughs in Britain. Gordonstoun, where fees are 30,000 a year, only had one pupil accepted to Oxbridge, while at Bedales it was three. The key here has been raising aspirations, says Weeks, 37. Our sixth formers arent from privileged backgrounds but they want to be lawyers, doctors or engineers. It is a genuine case of social mobility. So how has he done it? Im shown to his office by two boys in immaculate suits Weeks believes little things such as tucking your shirt in and having a tidy school make a difference to aspiration and a girl wearing a headscarf and drinking a McDonalds milkshake holds the door for me. Quotes from suffragist Millicent Fawcett are on the wall as well as pictures of students accepted by Manchester and Warwick universities. LAE is only three years old, as Weeks repeatedly tells me, but it already has an excellent reputation, with 2,000 applications for 200 places in September. To secure a place, pupils must have five A grades at GCSE. Cream of the crop: seven of the eight LAE pupils accepted by Oxford or Cambridge It was founded in collaboration with seven fee-paying schools Brighton College, Caterham, Eton, City of London School, Forest, Highgate and University College School to provide education akin to the one you would get at those schools. The idea came from a partnership between Brighton College and Kingsford Community School in Newham, which is for 11- to 16-year-olds. Back then there were no sixth forms in the area that provided an academic pathway into top universities, so Brighton offered two full scholarships to Kingsford pupils, funded by HSBC. But there were lots of other pupils who had the ability to do A-levels that would get them into good universities and no provision for that. Staff from partner schools are governors at LAE and two teachers from Eton also teach here. HSBC gives LAE 500,000 each year, which Weeks says is crucial. The money we get from the Department for Education covers our teaching but thats about it. All the extras that make independent schools so successful come from the HSBC funding. Should the Department for Education give more money to schools? I know this school would be very different if we didnt have HSBCs support. Wed probably pay teachers by the hour so they would just come in for lessons. As it is they are here all day, sometimes until 6pm, and able to focus on every child. Id like to see the Government saying this can be done in other parts of London and the country. Id be delighted to set up another LAE. Weeks believes in commitment and structure, informed by the packed days at independent schools. Its a full day here, not like at traditional sixth form colleges where you come in for lessons and go home. LAE offers A-levels in 12 subjects, the ones which universities say are the best preparation for study on competitive courses, but there are also activities youd get at an Eton or Brighton everybody does sport on Tuesday and on Fridays we have an outreach programme where pupils go back to the schools theyve come from and help. Thursday is for clubs and activities and theres a lecture programme on Wednesdays. Our sixth formers arent from privileged backgrounds but they want to be lawyers, doctors or engineers" says Weeks / Matt Writtle Last year students successfully lobbied the school to open longer. Many of them dont have space to work at home so lots stay until 7pm to study. Teachers are the ones who raise expectations, not accepting that three Cs is a good set of A-levels but telling pupils they must drive for three As. How can these teachers be supported, especially when there is talk of a recruitment crisis with corporate-style perks being offered as encouragement to stay in the profession? We havent had a problem recruiting, says Weeks. A third of our teachers have Oxbridge degrees, another third have firsts from Russell Group universities they find our links with partner schools attractive, our head of English liaises almost daily with the head of English at Eton. There are enough good teachers [to fill both the state and private sector] but we could have more partnerships. Salaries at LAE roughly match this sort of school in this area, not excessively high but they are competitive. Being a free school means flexibility with the curriculum and recruitment. We have teachers without qualifications. We train them and that means we can take people with spark. In some cases where free schools havent worked, the make-up of the governing body hasnt been right. LAE was criticised last year when a number of pupils left after not getting three C grades at AS level and Weeks is unapologetic about this. We have a hurdle. Pupils come with five As at GCSE so three Cs at AS is reasonable. We do have a couple of sixth formers each year who have been lazy. Obviously if there are particular circumstances we take them into account but these pupils have a wonderful opportunity. Were asking them to work hard for two years, if they dont maybe we are not the place for them. A number restarted Year 12, others had chosen the wrong subjects. Weeks sees the school as part of the community and has appointed a teacher to widen participation at secondary schools. If were going to be a vehicle of social mobility we have to look at engaging younger pupils. Theres an agenda with white British boys not achieving as much as they should and thats one area where were going to try and focus our energies. It has improved. London is leading the country, with pupils on free school meals here more likely to go to university than better off students outside the capital. Ten years ago we wouldnt have been able to fill LAE because there wouldnt have been that many pupils securing five A grades at GCSE. The key in London has been raising aspirations. And its a delight to work somewhere with such an array of cultures and inclusion. Bengali is the biggest language spoken at home by our pupils, others speak Urdu, Arabic, Italian and many other languages. Often sixth formers will be the first in their families to go to university. There is a fear of the unknown but its being broken down. Im excited about the next 10 years when our students become top politicians or lawyers. On LAEs exchanges with partner schools, Eton boys swap leafy Windsor for the streets of Newham. Theres a bit of teasing about Eton being posh but its nice for Eton pupils to see a different part of the world and gain perspective. And the grand surrounds of Eton help prepare our pupils not to be overwhelmed when they visit Oxbridge. HSBC gives LAE 500,000 each year, which Weeks says is crucial / Matt Writtle Weeks came to LAE in June 2014, after the original head, Robert Wilne, took a job advising the Government on maths teaching. He went to Cranbrook Grammar School in Kent, studied economics at Durham and taught at Brighton College for 14 years. My mums a teacher and I always wanted to be one. He lives in Sussex with his wife, also a teacher, and their 19-month-old son. A picture of Brighton College hangs on his office wall but he doesnt miss it. The hardest difference is that some sixth formers have more challenging pastoral situations than youd find at an independent school. That makes me all the more passionate about providing an environment where anybody can flourish. Would he go down the route of Ofsted chief Sir Michael Wilshaw, moving from running a school to the Government? Im happy here, theres still lots to achieve. The most popular subjects are maths and science. We have slightly more girls than boys and sent more than 70 girls on to STEM-related degrees last year, bucking the national trend. Weeks is excited about changes to the curriculum, where exams at the end of Year 12 will be replaced with one assessment at the end of Year 13. At the moment the whole summer term is taken up by revision and exams for Year 12, now well get almost a whole extra term of teaching. Testing has a role, theres a motivating power to having an exam at the end of the course. Meanwhile, Ofsted has always been fair and the move to a lighter touch is right, not visiting schools for extended periods when they have strong exam results and have been classified outstanding. Next year, he would like 10 to 15 of his pupils to be accepted into Oxbridge, and for more to apply abroad. After all, 79 Eton pupils went to Oxbridge in 2015, in a year group of 272. We want to continue to top the national league tables and reach our full potential. Follow Susannah Butter on Twitter: @susannahbutter P olice have stepped up patrols after a fifth girl was targeted by a bogus police officer trying to abduct young schoolgirls in north London. The latest incident happened in Hornsey during the school run on Tuesday, Scotland Yard said. Detectives said a man approached the girl at about 8am before attempting to convince her he was a police officer. It comes after four allegations of near identical incidents in the same area between 7.50am and 9am on Monday. Four girls aged 11-14 were approached in difference locations. All have been spoken to by police and their schools have been informed, the force said. Officers are also carrying reassurance patrols in the area. The incidents are being treated by police as attempted abduction. None of the girls were injured. Police described the fake officer as black, aged between 20 and 30 and of medium build. He wore a jacket with the hood up and is said to have short dark hair. He was not wearing uniform but apparently identified himself as a police officer. Chief Inspector Jude Beehag-Fisher, from Haringey Borough, said: "It would be unusual for police officers in plain clothes not to identify themselves by showing a warrant card, and members of the public are entitle to ask to see one. "Any child approached by someone in the street, in similar circumstances to these incidents, that are not shown any identification that they the person is a police officer, should get away from them as quickly as possible, they should shout for help and make sure they tell a parent, teacher or other person in authority as soon as possible. In an emergency always dial 999." Contact police on 101 with any information. A n east London council could be prosecuted for corporate manslaughter after a five-year-old girl died in a playground zip wire accident, an inquest hearing heard. Alexia Walenkaki suffered severe injuries when a tree the wire was attached to collapsed in Mile End Park. A pre-inquest review at St Pancras Coroner's Court heard an investigation by the Metropolitan Police's Serious Crime and Homicide Command is continuing and manslaughter charges may be brought against Tower Hamlets council. Detective Inspector Craig Bradley told senior coroner Mary Hassell more expert evidence is being gathered. He said: "We are in the process of investigating the possibility of corporate manslaughter or gross negligence. Police were called just after 5.30pm on July 17 and attended the scene with the London Ambulance Service, finding Alexia in cardiac arrest. She was taken to the Royal London Hospital but died at 6.43pm that evening. The tree trunk was decayed and one expert has compiled a report on its state, the court heard. Mr Bradley said: "We have had to contact another expert in relation to the trunk concerning the level of the decay in the tree and whether it would have been visible in an inspection or not." At the time of Alexia's death a joint investigation was launched by the Metropolitan Police and the Health and Safety Executive. Once the Crown Prosecution Service has received the second expert's report it is likely to make a decision on whether to bring a prosecution for corporate manslaughter. The play area in Mile End Park where the tragedy happened (Picture: Glenn Copus) / Glenn Copus If it decides not to bring charges, the investigation will be passed to the Health and Safety Executive, the court heard. Mark Scoggins, for Tower Hamlets, told the hearing a corporate manslaughter charge was not appropriate. He said: "That requires that at a very serious level there have been gross failings high up the senior management chain." Mr Scoggins added: "The issue is literally down on the ground, it is difficult to see how senior managers up the chain could have knowledge of that." The coroner asked for witness statements to be collected from council workers who planned the maintenance schedule of the park and the person doing the maintenance. An inquest with a jury is due to start on April 11 but will be adjourned if a criminal prosecution is brought. A n Uber driver has been jailed for 18 months after sexually assaulting a young woman in his car. Aliriza Kurt, of Blackstock Road, Finsbury Park, picked up the victim from Brixton Tube station at 11.15pm on May 8 last year. The 24-year-old victim got in to the car and during the journey, Kurt, 42, leaned across and touched her, asking her are you comfortable with this? The woman escaped the vehicle and was able to call the police. Kurt was arrested at 3.50am the following day. He was today sentenced to 18 months in prison after being found guilty at Inner London Crown Court and was made the subject of an indefinite Sexual Harm Prevention Order. Under the order, Kurt is not allowed to have females, except family members, in any vehicle driven by him and cannot apply to be or work as a private hire vehicle driver in England and Wales. He also had his car seized and will be placed on the Sex Offenders Register for 10 years. Siwan Hayward, Transport for Londons deputy director of enforcement and on-street operations, said: This victims bravery in reporting this offence to the police has helped put this sex offender behind bars, preventing him from preying on any other vulnerable women. Our TfL funded resources within the MPS Cab Enforcement Unit work every week to apprehend those who commit cab related sexual offences, and we will continue to work with the police to push for the strongest convictions available to stop incidents like this happening again. If you ever experience unwanted sexual behaviour, report it to the police; you will always be taken seriously and the incident will be fully investigated. An Uber spokesperson said: As soon as we learned about this shocking incident we immediately stopped this licensed private hire driver from using the Uber app and offered our full assistance to both the police and the passenger. "We welcome this conviction." A private Muslim school has failed its Ofsted inspection after the watchdog found books promoting extreme views, including stoning people to death, in its library. Inspectors uncovered three texts at Jamiatul Ummah School in Tower Hamlets which promoted illegal punishments and inequality of women, according to their report. Staff failed to be sufficiently vigilant over inappropriate material and the books could unwittingly promot[e] extreme views, it added. The school said the texts had been removed and the library shut while it audits material. It is the schools third failed inspection since October 2014, shortly before Osfsted chief Sir Michael Wilshaw identified it as one of six independent Islamic teaching institutions in Tower Hamlets at which more than 1,000 pupils were said to be at serious risk. Jamiatul Ummah, in Shadwell, costs 3,400 a year to attend and teaches 158 pupils aged 11 to 16. The report found no evidence of radicalisation and said pupils present well-informed and positive views about the role of British Muslims and their responsibilities. But not all the risks associated with extremist views and radicalisation have been identified or addressed. The school is connected to a mosque where Abdul Hadi Arwani, above, preached The report, published this month, stated: During a very brief tour of the library inspectors found three books that undermine the active promotion of the rule of British law and respect for other people. The books promote inequality of women and punishments including stoning to death which are illegal in Britain and do not reflect the schools ethos of tolerance and integration. Although current students do not have access to the inappropriate material, past students did for some time. Jamiatul Ummah is connected to the Darul Ummah Mosque, where Syrian-born preacher Sheikh Abdul Hadi Arwani, who was found shot dead in his car in Wembley last April, was once billed as a preacher. The mosque and school are run by Dawatul Islam UK & Eire, which says it is one of the foremost Muslim organisations in the UK and a founding member and affiliate of The Muslim Council of Britain. Jamiatul Ummah said: We recognise the concerns raised by Ofsted in respect of three books in the library. Ofsted recognised the content does not reflect the schools ethos of tolerance and integration. Nevertheless, we are auditing all materials. The library will stay shut until the audit is completed. The Department for Education said: We will consider the report along with other inspections in Tower Hamlets. If the schools are still not found to be meeting the required standards, they could face removal from the Register of Independent Schools. A busy north London Tube station was evacuated today after a discarded mobile phone charger sparked a security scare. Passengers were cleared from Finsbury Park station just before midday. Police said they had been called to the scene after reports of a suspicious item at the station. The incident sparked major delays on the Victoria lines, which runs through the station. Transport for London said the line ran with severe delays for almost an hour after the incident, but a good service has since resumed. A British Transport Police spokesman said: We were called at 11.45 to reports of a suspicious item. The item turned out to be non-suspicious - it was a mobile phone charger that had been discarded. It comes after a busy junction in Camden was closed after an iPhone charger sparked a security alert last week. W ealthy Lononders have a rare opportunity to make a patch of prime real estate their own after a mansion in one of the capital's most exclusive streets went on the market. The luxuriant four-bedroom home in Kensington's Victoria Road is up for grabs - but only to house-hunters with 8million to spare. The street, a short walk from Hyde Park and close to the shops of Kensington High Street, is valued as one of the most expensive in the UK. Its luxury houses attract an average asking price of 8m, and the last home to be sold there went for an eye-watering 13m. But this is the first property to be put on the market since 2013, raising the prospect of a major bidding war. Inside the luxury home in Kensington (Black Sea Estates) Potential buyers will be welcomed into the mansion's grand entrance hall measuring more than 3,000sqft in size, before being shown around the home's four floors. The property is now being marketed by specialist luxury agents Black Sea Estates. Richard Chiti, from the company, told the Daily Mail:Houses dont come up for sale that often. In fact, they are few and far between. So when they do come up for sale we have huge interest. We have a number of applicants who register with us who only want that patch. On the upper two floors are the four bedrooms and four bathrooms, with an additional terrace off the master suite. The house for sale is based on the "better" side of the street at the more desirable, quieter end, its sellers added. K ings College London today launched an urgent investigation after a student society meeting was allegedly attacked by protesters. Police were called to the university on Tuesday after students from the KCL and LSE Israeli societies arranged for politician Ami Ayalon to visit as a guest speaker. Mr Ayalon is an Israeli peace activist and was once a director of the Israel Security Agency. According to students, the event was marred by violence after windows were reportedly smashed, chairs thrown and one woman claimed she was assaulted. Witnesses reported the meeting had to be stopped and the building evacuated as police were called to the scene. Writing on her Facebook page, Esther Endfield said the disturbance was caused by dozens of students from the KCL Action Palestine group. She wrote: Protests by KCL action Palestine at this event was inevitable but it was never inevitable that it would turn violent, not to the point that I have just reported being assaulted to the police. When did I become so unsafe in one of the global universities in the world that we can no longer hold an event without being scared for our safety. In a statement, the university said an investigation was under way. It said: Universities create environments in which debate from all sides on issues of political, scientific, moral, ethical and religious significance is possible, and Kings is no exception. The safety of our students, staff and the general public is paramount to us and we are committed to acting as a responsible organisation. Professor Ed Byrne, President & Principal, has appointed Ian Creagh, Head of Administration and College Secretary, to conduct an urgent investigation of the events around last nights talk to establish what happened and what action might need to be taken as a consequence. Professor Byrne will also be writing to students to remind them that violent protest is totally unacceptable and that we expect them to be tolerant and respectful of others views and opinions. Police were called to the university after 5pm on Tuesday. A police spokesman said: Officers from Westminster are investigating an allegation of assault and criminal damage at a protest. "Officers attended and found that a small number of those protesting had gained access to the building where they continued their protest. The demonstration concluded at approximately 6.45pm. "A 20-year-old woman reported she had been struck on the hand by a protestor. No injuries were caused. It was also reported that damage had been caused to a door. No arrests were made." T raffic wardens could be phased out under new plans expected to be announced by the Home Secretary. Theresa May is to set out a proposal to replace them with an army of unpaid police volunteers, according to reports. The formal role of traffic warden is expected to be abolished as part of a plan that will see unpaid police volunteers' powers extended to issuing fixed-penalty notices, and detaining suspects for up to 30 minutes while a uniformed constable arrives. The plan will be included as part of changes to the Home Secretary's policing and crime bill, aimed at freeing up uniformed police officers' time. Mrs May said: We want to help forces to create a more flexible workforce, bring in new skills and free up officers time to focus on the jobs only they can carry out. "At the same time, we want to encourage those with skills in particular demand, such as those with specialist IT or accountancy skills, to work alongside police officers to investigate cyber or financial crime, and help officers and staff fight crime more widely. Numbers of wardens have been falling since the decriminalisation of parking enforcement in the 1990s. In 2007, there were 1000 traffic wardens, but that has been slashed to just 18 as they were replaced by staff working for private firms. Shadow Home Secretary Andy Burnham said: The simple truth is that communities cant rely on a part-time police force. We have already seen thousands of police and civilian jobs lost and there are more on the way. Traffic wardens were introduced in 1961 to the capital as help for the public to find parking spaces. T he spectacular sea of ceramic poppies at the Tower of London is in global demand, according to a museum boss. More than five million visitors saw the poppies, commemorating the First World War, when they were at the London landmark. Officially called Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, the sculpture was created by ceramic artist Paul Cummins and designer Tom Piper. Now requests have come in from New Zealand and Australia to have the installation shipped over for exhibitions, the director general of the Imperial War Museums (IWM), Diane Lees, has said. She said the piece will be on display at the IWM until the end of the official war commemoration period, and then it will enter the museum's collections. "But we're already getting loan requests. At the moment there are requests in from New Zealand, possibly Australia, to take some or all of the poppies on tour," she told the Press Association. She added: "I'm not quite sure they realise how big they are." Ms Lees said they are the one thing that people will remember for "years and years and years as symbolic of the nation's engagement with the First World War centenary". She added: "So it's such a fabulous asset, and of course because it was a global war then there is global demand for any country that's adopted the poppy to be a part of it." Ms Lees said a new version of it could be created that would make touring less difficult, and said she hoped lots of people will continue to see it when the centenary is over. Any potential tours overseas would not take place until 2019, she added. Meanwhile, the poppy sculpture Weeping Window from the installation is already making its way to other parts of the UK. It was announced on Wednesday that it will go on display in Orkney from April 22 to June 12 to commemorate 100 years since the Battle of Jutland as part of the 14-18 NOW programme of events. This visit is part of an expanded UK-wide tour, and the sculptures - Wave and Weeping Window - will also be presented in Lincoln Castle, Caernarfon Castle and the Black Watch Museum, Perth. Artist Cummins said he never thought his work would become such a phenomenon. Asked if it inspires his current and future creations, he told the Press Association: "I'm not going to ever try and compete with it. I'm trying something different all the time." He said he cannot let things get "stagnant", adding that this is what is good about the UK tour as it is responded to differently each place it goes. Mr Cummins said the piece of art belongs to everyone and is all about the stories behind it. A merica, Britain and other nations must strike harder at the head of the snake to destroy Islamic State, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said today. At a meeting of defence chiefs in Paris, the Cabinet minister was due to call for air strikes to be stepped up to degrade the terror organisations key infrastructure and supply lines. RAF planes have so far this week carried out a series of raids targeting the Islamist fanatics in Iraq. Typhoon jets used Paveway bombs to attack an IS mortar team and a group of militants armed with rocket-propelled grenades yesterday as Iraqi troops cleared Ramadi, in the western Anbar province, of the militants. A Reaper fired Hellfire missiles to destroy a group of terrorist vehicles, including a fuel tanker. British planes also attacked IS fighters near Haditha and Mosul and Mr Fallon is urging more strikes against Islamic State in Syria. Now the campaign is moving into a new phase where we aim to systematically dismantle Daeshs (IS) structure and capabilities, he said. That means striking harder at the head of the snake, with an increased focus on infrastructure, lines of communication and supply routes. He added that Britain is increasingly disturbed by Russian air strikes on moderate opposition forces and reportedly civilians in Syria. The casualty total keeps climbing. We have estimates of several hundred civilians killed through the use of unguided munitions on civilian areas and opposition groups fighting Assad, he said. Propping up the Assad regime is simply prolonging the agony. US Secretary of State John Kerry was due to meet his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Zurich, Switzerland, for talks to resolve differences with Moscow on who is eligible to join UN-mediated peace talks for Syria due to begin next week. Meanwhile, it was confirmed that the oldest Christian monastery in Iraq, St. Elijahs of Mosul, had been completedly destroyed by IS. T ory MPs today warned David Cameron to defeat moves to create a refugee free-for-all in Europe or risk massive defeat in the EU referendum. Brussels officials want to abolish a convention that stops migrants who reach the EU from claiming asylum in any country they like. One proposal would issue quotas for asylum seekers based on countries economic wealth. No 10 today said Mr Cameron would resist the ideas and reaffirmed the UK opt-out from the borderless EU area and its migration rules. But officials fear the reforms could be pushed through. The battle could not come at a worse time for the Prime Minister, who is hoping to stage an In-Out referendum this summer, with some polls showing the outcome in the balance. Former Cabinet minister John Redwood, who backs the Leave campaign, said: The UK cannot possibly live with a change in these rules. It will be a good test of how much influence Mr Cameron has in the negotiations. It is a good reason to leave to control our borders. Anyone might think Brussels is backing the Leave side. Current rules prevent thousands of refugees each year from gaining the right to settle in the UK by claiming asylum here. Instead, under the Dublin Regulation, they must seek asylum status in the first EU country they reach. However, the system has come under unprecedented strain from the flood of migrants crossing the Mediterranean. A European Commission spokesman said: As announced last September, the Commission will set out a reform of the Dublin system, with proposals due by March. The revision will aim at ensuring a fairer distribution system. In Davos Mr Cameron will deliver a keynote speech on Britains role in the EU tomorrow. A Tory spokesman said: The Dublin Regulation is a vital tool in our ability to manage asylum claims. A fresh rift opened today at the top of Labour after Hilary Benn contradicted Jeremy Corbyns idea of holding talks with IS terrorists. It means an alleged truce between the men engineered as part of Mr Corbyns first reshuffle barely lasted two weeks before their differences spilled into public. Mr Benns flat rejection of talks with the terror group follows Mr Corbyns suggestion that IS has strong points and that a back channel should be opened to the group. Shadow foreign secretary Mr Benn dismissed the idea of talks with IS at a think-tank event. He said: I dont think theres much to negotiate with Daesh about, unless someones going to take a different view. There are times where groups like that have to be defeated. Mr Benn previously rallied Labour MPs to support RAF air strikes on IS in a speech to the Commons in December, angering Mr Corbyn who opposed military action in Syria. The dispute led to speculation Mr Benn would be sacked but he kept his job following reports of a reshuffle deal that he would not publicly oppose Mr Corbyn. Mr Benns latest comments come after Mr Corbyn compared the group to the IRA and Taliban, adding that ministers had kept a back channel to both. Mr Corbyn told the BBC: There has to be a route through somewhere. A lot of the commanders in Isil particularly in Iraq, but also in Syria are actually former officers in the Iraqi army. AMERICA, Britain and other nations must strike harder to destroy IS, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said today. At a meeting in Paris, he was due to call for air strikes to be stepped up to degrade the groups key infrastructure and supply lines. He added Britain is increasingly disturbed by Russian air strikes on moderate opposition forces and reportedly civilians in Syria. A BBC journalist claims she was prevented from boarding a plane to the US because of her dual British-Iranian nationality. Rana Rahimpour, 33, was due to fly from Heathrow to New Jersey on Tuesday with her two-year-old daughter and two cousins for a surprise visit for her nephews sixth birthday. But the group were told at the airport they would be unable to board the flight. Ms Rahimpour, a BBC World Service reporter, said her application for an Esta - the waiver system which allows tourists entry to the US for 90 days without a visa - was pending after she applied on Friday. But the Esta was never approved. When she got to the airport, officials said her application had been denied. The journalist said she was refused entry because of tightened regulations passed in US Congress last month. British tourists can apply for an Esta if they are planning to spend less than 90 days in the country, but new rules mean British-Iranians are ineligible because of their dual citizenship. On Tuesday she tweeted: Three days after lifting Iran sanctions, US denied Esta/visa waivers for me and another two British citizens [because] we have Iranian nationality too. She told the Standard she planned to visit her brother in New Jersey with her family to surprise her nephew at his birthday party. She said: It has been quite a tearful day. I just think it is completely unfair and it is going to affect so many Iranians in this country. We have lost 2,000 in tickets and now we are back at our home in London. I was going to surprise my brother. I was told by officials in Washington that it would not be a problem. We are in a position where new legislation has been passed but this hasnt been communicated to the embassies. Previously, some dual nationals could visit the US for 90 days without a visa but they must now obtain one after rules were tightened. The restrictions were introduced last month as part of the Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention bill. It means visitors who have spent time in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Sudan in the past five years cannot travel to the US without a visa, as well as tourists who hold dual citizenship with those countries. The legislation sparked anger from some Iranian-Americans who complained of being treated as second-class citizens. Dr Firouz Naderi, a leading scientist, said the American-Iranian community was dismayed by the bill. He told the Guardian: They believe this was an unjust act, to attach Iranians under the label of, We need to scrutinise people coming here if theyre of Iranian background, to be vigilant on the issue of terrorism because they rightly point out: show us the last time there was a single act of terrorism initiated by an Iranian citizen. Basically, there isnt any". A Conservative MP has criticised a proposed ban on poppers during a debate in the House of Commons and admitted he is a user of the drug. Crispin Blunt, MP for Reigate, said he was astonished at proposals to outlaw the drug, popular with gay men, under the Psychoactive Substances Bill. He spoke in Parliament today after Labour asked for poppers to be exempt from the legislation, created to ban legal recreational drugs. However, the amendment was rejected after 309 to 228 MPs voted against the move. Mr Blunt, who came out as gay in 2010, said: There are sometimes that something is proposed which becomes personal to you and you realise the government is about to do something fantastically stupid and in those circumstances one has a duty to speak up. I use poppers. I out myself as a user of poppers. I am astonished to find it (the government) is proposing it to be banned and frankly so would many other gay men." Mr Blunt, uncle to Hollywood actress Emily Blunt, added a ban would bring the whole law into disrepute and warned it could drive supply underground into the hands of criminals. He later told BBC Radio 4s PM programme he had never suffered any adverse effects from using the drug and said there was no evidence to suggest it posed a danger. He said: "I think it was the most powerful argument to make and I didn't want to be a hypocrite." Under the new legislation, personal possession of poppers will not be criminalised but there would be a blanket ban on their production, supply and importation. Police would be authorised to shut down any websites selling the drug online. The ban will be enacted in April. A top vet has warned dog owners to stop throwing sticks for their pets after a rise of horrific injuries. Grace Webster, the president of the British Veterinary Association in Scotland, said: Throwing sticks for your dog can be dangerous and lead to horrific injuries that can be very distressing for both you and your dog, such as causing cuts to their mouths and tongues or, as in this case, getting the stick lodged in their throat. The warning came after a collie called Maya got a four inch stick wedged in her throat in Scotland. Owners are being advised to throw safer alternatives such as balls or Frisbees to avoid injury. Sarah Stevenson, of Bishopbriggs Veterinary Centre in Glasgow treated Maya after she punctured her tongue so severely that it displaced her larynx. The vet has noticed a rise in the number of dogs admitted with injuries from sticks. Stick injuries may not be initially obvious and may cause long term problems, she told The Times. The most common injury happens when a dog attempts to pick up a stick at speed, forcing it down their gullet or under their tongue. Robin Hargreaves, former president of the British Veterinary Association, has previously campaigned for owners to be advised against throwing sticks. Not everyone backed the advice, however. Ben Fogle, the TV presenter, told The Times it sounded like health and safety gone mad. He said: "Use your common sense. Accidents can happen. I wouldnt throw a whole branch, but a stick is a time honoured, natural way of playing outside with your dog. T he family of three victims of the Glasgow bin lorry crash have launched a bid for a private prosecution of driver Harry Clarke. Six people died when the out of control vehicle crashed in Queen Street just days before Christmas in 2014. A Fatal Accident Inquiry (FAI) held last year heard Mr Clarke, who lost consciousness at the wheel, had a history of health issues including a previous blackout while at the wheel of a stationary bus in 2010. The inquiry also heard Mr Clarke had not disclosed his medical background to his employers or the DVLA. The Crown Office previously said there was insufficient evidence in law to raise criminal proceedings against Mr Clarke but the families of the victims disagree. During the FAI, it was revealed that some families intended to launch a private prosecution if the Crown Office would not take action. Lawyers for the family of Jack and Lorraine Sweeney and their granddaughter Erin McQuade have confirmed a Bill for Criminal Letters has been sent to the Crown Office and they hope it will lead to a private prosecution. It is hoped the Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland QC agrees to pursue the case, but lawyers said it can still continue and be ruled on by High Court judges without his approval. A statement from the Sweeney and McQuade family lawyer said: "Paul Kavanagh, Gildeas solicitors, intimates on behalf of the relatives of Jack and Lorraine Sweeney and Erin McQuade that a Bill for Criminal Letters was delivered to the Lord Advocate today. "We have sought the concurrence of the Lord Advocate and look forward to receiving a response within seven days. "This is the initial process that the family hope ultimately will lead to the prosecution of Henry (Harry) Clarke in the criminal courts." A spokesman for the Crown Office said: "The Lord Advocate has received a Bill of Criminal Letters and will give it due consideration. "The Crown position on this will be made clear to the families and the court when appropriate." Last month, Mr Mulholland insisted it would have been "wrong" to prosecute Mr Clarke. He said he knew the decision not to charge the 58-year-old was "not a popular one", adding he was aware of the feelings of the victims' families on the matter. The sheriff who oversaw the FAI ruled that the accident might have been prevented if the driver had "told the truth" about his history of blackouts. Sheriff John Beckett QC found Mr Clarke "repeatedly lied in order to gain and retain jobs and licences", and "deliberately concealed relevant information from the DVLA". Stephenie Tait, Jacqueline Morton and Gillian Ewing also died in the tragedy which was marked with a memorial service in Glasgow last month. Additional reporting by Press Association. C olumnist Katie Hopkins caused further outrage today by saying Donald Trumps proposed ban on Muslims entering the country would be a good idea for everybody. Ms Hopkins was speaking on radio station LBC following Sarah Palins decision to back Trumps bid for the White House. Host Nick Ferrari suggested the Republican candidates proposed ban on Muslims was farcical, but Ms Hopkins hit back: Well, it was a temporary ban in the light of 16 people being gunned down. And I think in a vacuum of anybody doing anything and Obama finally wiggling out later saying 'Muslims are quite good at sports', I think they needed someone to stand there and be bold and that's what Donald did. She went on: "I think it wouldn't hurt for everybody to have a temporary ban while we work out what the hell is going on given that we have people blowing themselves up in suicide jackets." And she also slammed the campaign to ban the businessman from entering the UK after MPs debated the idea in Parliament this week, with one politician branding him a wazzock. Ms Hopkins said: We have a real man and all we can do here in the UK, and we should hang our heads in shame, is spend three hours in the House of Commons debating whether we should ban Trump. You know, I think its us that need to look at ourselves and question where is the UK going, not where is Trump going. Her comments were met with uproar on Twitter by some listeners who branded her comments disgusting. How about banning Katie Hopkins from LBC? wrote Sue Alexander. In December, Mr Trump praised the controversial writer as a respected columnist when she defended his claim that parts of London are so radicalised that police were scared to go there. A group of teenagers will attend a London conference aimed at improving self confidence among young people. High street retailer Boots is holding a think tank for teenagers on Saturday aimed at "empowering teens to help teens" with issues surrounding body image, weight and wellbeing of their peers. It is part of a campaign by the chemist to promote the health and wellbeing of teenagers. They carried out a study which found 41 per cent of teenage girls worry about what friends say about them behind their back, and half of young boys and girls aged 11-17 worry about their skin. 19 per cent of teens would describe their social media profile as a true reflection of who they are and how they feel, the study also found. However the study found most teenagers do have predominantly positive views, with most considering themselves to be healthy, friendly, kind and honest. Clinical psychologist, professor Tanya Byron said: "Most of our teens manage to hold onto a positive view of themselves despite the challenges of the adolescent years. F our men who tricked impoverished Slovakian women into coming to Britain to sell them as brides in sham marriages have been given the first slavery and trafficking prevention orders to be handed out by a London judge. The orders were imposed under the Modern Slavery Act 2015 after the Old Bailey heard horrific accounts of the suffering of the gangs victims. One was raped by her potential husband in London so badly that she was left in danger of bleeding to death. Another was told that she would be given work as a fruit-picker but was forced into prostitution before being sold to an Indian man for 3,000. The men Tibor Suchy, Igor Boros and brothers Jozef and Roman Ziga have already been jailed and are in Belmarsh prison. Each of them will now be placed under further restrictions on their release. These include a ban on travelling into Britain with any person outside their immediate family or arranging travel for others. They will also be banned from possessing passports or other identity documents of other people, and be required to register their address in Britain if they live here in the future. And in a further unprecedented restriction the gang will be barred from the Lunik 9 district of Kosice in Slovakia from which they brought their victims to Britain. The Slovakian authorities have agreed to monitor this ban and to notify prosecutors here if the men fail to comply. Imposing the orders, Judge Michael Topolski said that each of the gang was at risk of committing another such offence and that curbs were needed to protect the public from slavery or human trafficking-related harm. Damaris Lakin, the Crown Prosecution Service lawyer responsible for obtaining the orders, said the victims were all vulnerable Slovak women many from poverty-stricken backgrounds who were forced to marry Indian or Pakistani men. She added: These orders demonstrate our commitment to working with police not just to prosecute individuals who commit these crimes, but to ensure there are measures in place to prevent them reoffending on their release. We aim to protect vulnerable women from being trafficked and exploited in this way and this reinforces our commitment to stamping out attempts to bypass immigration laws. Three of the gang given the new orders Roman Ziga, 26, Jozef Ziga, 28, and Igor Boros, 43 were found guilty at the Old Bailey in August last year of trafficking four women from Slovakia into Britain. The Ziga brothers were each jailed for six and a half years, while Boros was given a three-and-a-half-year sentence. Suchy, 29, had admitted trafficking one of the women and was convicted after a trial of trafficking the three other victims. He has been jailed for 10 years. Suchys wife Viktoria Sanova, 29, and Rene Sana, 31, were also convicted of taking part in trafficking as part of the gang. Judge Topolski said that Suchy, the Ziga brothers and Boros had a well organised and well established operation that had deliberately targeted extremely poor Roma women. At the Old Bailey last year, prosecutor Riel Karmy-Jones said: Once in the UK, arrangements would be made for the women to be shown to men to decide if they would suit their needs, if they were sufficient as a wife. If they were, money would change hands, if not they would be shown to other men or put to work in a different way. One woman who fell prey to this group of people, including the defendants, was recruited by Jozef Ziga in Slovakia in January 2013. She was told she would be given work as a fruit-packer, but once in the UK was forced to work as a prostitute and then sold to an Indian man for 3,000. Ms Karmy-Jones continued: Another was from a good background, but was a girl with some mental health issues that led to her having a breakdown. She fell in with a man who was involved with the traffickers and encouraged her to use drugs he also introduced her to the Ziga brothers and through them she was brought to London and handed over to Tibor Suchy.Her ID card was taken and she was eventually passed to an Indian or a Pakistani man she was not abused but the expectation plainly was that she would become his wife; she managed to run away before this could happen. Any breach of a slavery and trafficking prevention order is a criminal offence which carries a potential jail term of up to five years. The only other occasion when such an order has been imposed was after a successful prosecution in Warrington last year. J ulian Assange will be questioned by Swedish authorities over rape and assault allegations against two women in the next few days, it was revealed today. Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa told reporters at a briefing the WikiLeaks founder will answer questions by prosecutors at the countrys British embassy in Knightsbridge. Assange, an Australian citizen, has not left the London embassy since 2012 when he sought refuge to avoid extradition to Sweden. He said he fears he will be extradited to America where he could be put on trial over WikiLeaks publication of classified military documents five years ago. The information leak was one of the biggest in US history. Ecuadors foreign minister Ricardo Patino said the country had accepted a request by Sweden to interrogate Assange. However, he accused Swedish judicial authorities of a lack of respect by sending a questionnaire with some sections crossed out by hand. A new version has been requested before the case can proceed. Additional reporting by Reuters S arah Palin has endorsed Donald Trumps presidential bid in a tub-thumping speech, claiming his presidency would kick ISIS ass and there would be no more pussyfootin around. At a campaign rally in Iowa, the billionaire looked on as the former Alaska governor asked her audience: Are you ready to stump for Trump? Ms Palin, a favourite of the Republicans Right-wing Tea Party faction, and vice-presidential candidate in 2008, said she was proud to lend her support to the tycoon. She added: Are you ready for a commander-in-chief who will let our warriors do their job and go kick ISIS ass? Ready for someone who will secure our borders, to secure our jobs, and to secure our homes? Hes from private sector, not a politician. Can I get a hallelujah?. Hand in hand: Sarah Palin and Donald Trump / AP In a speech packed with bizarre phrasing and colourful images, she launched attacks on Barack Obama a weak-kneed, capitulator-in-chief who would soon be packing up his hopey-changey stuff and the Republican establishment for wearing political correctness kind of like a suicide vest. She contrasted them with conservative Republicans: Right wingin, bitter clingin, proud clingers of our guns, our god, and our religions, and our Constitution. Mr Trump said he was greatly honoured to receive her endorsement, adding: She is a friend, and a high-quality person whom I have great respect for. The businessman, currently leading the Republican field, will hope Ms Palin can boost his support in the Iowa caucus on February 1, the first contest in the race to select a presidential candidate. Since running alongside John McCain in the 2008 election she has been a TV commentator and remains well-liked among many grassroots Republicans. Like Mr Trump she has been on reality TV and has a big social media presence, with 4.5 million Facebook followers. It is not clear whether she has a chance of being Mr Trump running mate should he win the nomination. She has previously said she would be happy to be his energy secretary if he became president. Meanhwhile the billionaire brushed off the House of Commons debate over whether he should be banned from Britain, saying: I am honoured by the tremendous support in the UK - by the way people have stuck up for me. S arah Palins oldest son has been arrested for allegedly punching his girlfriend and brandishing an assault rifle at the former Alaska governors home. Track Palin, 26, was charged with assault, interfering with the report of a domestic violence crime and possessing a weapon while intoxicated following the incident in Wasilla, Alaska, on Monday night, according to a police affidavit. The New York Daily News reported that Track allegedly punched his girlfriend in the eye, kicked her in the knee and then held an AR-15 assault rifle near his head. The female victim, 22, had bruising and swelling around her left eye and claimed that Track threw her phone down the driveway when she tried to call police. Outspoken: Sarah Palin The Palin familys lawyer, John Tiemessen, declined to comment on the matter other than to say that respect for the familys privacy is appreciated as Track receives the help that he and many of our returning veterans need. Track Palin spent a year deployed in Iraq with the Army, after he enlisted on the sixth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. A n actor who plays the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants character Squidward Tentacles has been arrested on suspicion of drink-driving. Rodger Bumpass, 64, was detained by police in California, on Friday evening after officers were called to a residential address in Burbank. The Los Angeles Times reported Bumpass was leaning against a blue PT Cruiser which had been stopped in the middle of the road. A police spokesman told the newspaper when officers approached the voice actor, he walked away and nearly fell. Bumpass failed a roadside breath test, police said, and he was found to be more than double the legal limit. Police records show Bumpass was arrested at 11.19pm on January 15 and released the following morning on a 10,560 [$15,000] bail. He is due to appear in court next month. B ollywood actress Sunny Leone has been praised for the dignified way she handled an interviewer who appeared to blame her for Indias surge in viewing pornography. Leone, 34, was interviewed by Bhupendra Chaubey for his CNN-IBN's talk show, The Hot Seat when questions turned to her previous career as an adult entertainer. Chaubey asked if Leone had any regrets which appeared to be a cue for the actress to apologise for her career. Leone said not reaching her mother in time before she died was her biggest regret, but Chaubey continued: Do you not sometimes get affected by the fact that your past, your past that you were this 'porn queen', will continue to haunt you? Or maybe continue to pull you back? The veteran journalist also appeared to blame Leone for the increasing number of people watching porn in India. He asked: "In the last four years, according to statistics which have been put up by Porn Hub, since you have come into the national mainstream cinema, the number of people watching porn in India have also, in a proportionate manner, increased substantially to a degree that we are the largest consumer of porn. "Is there any correlation?" Thank you!! I feel this really needs to be said right now! Thank you and love you everyone for your support!! #SunnyLeone Posted by Sunny Leone on Tuesday, 19 January 2016 He went on to address the fears of some people who believe they could be corrupted simply by watching Leone in a film. "I am thinking am I being morally corrupted if I am interviewing you?" he asked. Leone replied: "I can leave if you want me to." Following the 20 minute interview, Leone has been inundated with support, and a video she posted thanking her fans has been viewed over 800,000 times in less than 24 hours. Bollywood actor Aamir Khan who Chaubey said would not work with Leone because of her previous career also tweeted his support for the actress: I think Sunny conductd herself wid a lot of grace & dignity.I wish I cud hav said the same abt the interviewer (1/2) Sunny,I wil b happy 2 wrk wid u.I hav absolutely no problems wid ur "past", as the interviewer puts it.Stay http://blessed.Love .a.2/2. I think Sunny conductd herself wid a lot of grace & dignity.I wish I cud hav said the same abt the interviewer (1/2) https://t.co/TDDHOlbOUL Aamir Khan (@aamir_khan) January 20, 2016 Sunny,I wil b happy 2 wrk wid u.I hav absolutely no problems wid ur "past", as the interviewer puts it.Stay https://t.co/jX4V3wULJ8.a.2/2 Aamir Khan (@aamir_khan) January 20, 2016 Leone rose to fame after starring on Big Boss Indias version of Big Brother. She is married to film producer Daniel Weber. C olin Firth has paid a touching tribute to Alan Rickman, saying he was in awe of the late actor. Firth, 55 who starred alongside Rickman in films including Love Actually praised the actor for looking out for people and offering wisdom over actor-y advice. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter he said: Ive always been a little bit in awe of Alan because hes always been incredibly solicitous of me. I wasnt long out of drama school when I first met him. I was quite green and unsure of myself. He seemed to have an instinct for people who were in need of guidance of some kind. This is something I noticed in him in all the contact Ive had with him over 30 years. He looked out for people. Alan Rickman's Most Iconic Film Roles Alan Rickman - in pictures 1 /21 Alan Rickman - in pictures Alan Rickman as Professor Snape in Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire Alan Rickman at 14th Marrakech International Film festival, Marrakesh, Morocco in 2014 Rex Alan Rickman in Die Hard Rex Alan Rickman and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio in Robin Hood : Prince of Thieves Alan Rickman and Johnny Depp in 'Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street' Emma Thompson and Alan Rickman in 'Judas Kiss' - 1998 Rex Kate Winslet with Alan Rickman at 'A Little Chaos' film premiere, Toronto International Film Festival, Canada Rex Juliet Stevenson and Alan Rickman in Truly, Madly, Deeply Alan Rickman at 44th Giffoni Film Festival in Italy Rex Heike Makatsch and Alan Rickman in Love Actually Emma Thompson with Alan Rickman in Sense And Sensibility, Alan Rickman and his wife Rima Horton at Goodwood Festival in 2015 Rex Alan Rickman in Galaxy Quest Alan Rickman at the 1996 EMMY Awards in Pasedena Getty Images Alan Rickman at 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2' Film Premiere, New York, America in 2011 Rex Alan Rickman pictured in London on 08 Dec 2008 Rex Firth explained how the pair had run into each other on a number of occasions, and that he eventually found himself turning to Rickman for acting advice. I played Valmont in Milos Formans adaptation of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, he said. I called Alan to talk to him about his experience playing the role. I remember him saying, Playing it can have a strange effect on a person. Kate Winslet on Alan Rickman He finished: "There are some people you didnt know how much they meant to you until you miss them, and I think Alan is one of those people. "He wasnt a person I expected to see on a daily basis, but I didnt realise how important it was to me to have Alan there until we got the news. It was devastating. You run into people and they all seem to have some story about what Alan meant to them." Firth is the latest star to pay tribute to Rickman who died, aged 69, on January 14 following a battle with cancer. Emma Thompson described him as a "friend" and "ultimate ally" while Sir Ian McKellen deemed him "a super-active spirit, questing and achieving, a super-hero". M r Selfridge actor Jeremy Piven has told how he still gets starstruck saying that he bombarded Clive Owen with questions when he spotted him in a New York restaurant and that speaking to Helen Mirren was like meeting royalty. The LA-based actor and producer, who made London his second home while filming the ITV series in which he plays Harry Selfridge, said he is so hooked on Steven Soderbergh-directed drama The Knick that when he saw its star Owen sitting in the restaurant he had to speak to him. The 50-year-old actor told ES Magazine, in an interview to be published tomorrow: I had a bunch of questions. We werent sat next to each other, just awkwardly sitting on opposite tables, but he was gracious enough to answer them. Piven, who was in TV series Entourage, also admitted he has a professional crush on Mirren. He said: She always delivers and shes kind of ageless. I met her backstage at the Emmys, where we were both lucky enough to have hardware in our hands, and I was gushing and telling her how great she was. It was like meeting royalty, even though shes so down to earth. I curtsied at one point. Best TV Moments 2015 1 /26 Best TV Moments 2015 Katie Price won Celebrity Big Brother Katie Price proved shes still the queen of reality TV after beating Perez Hilton, Katie Hopkins, and Michelle Visage to become the winner of Celebrity Big Brother 15 We found out who killed Lucy in EastEnders EastEnders biggest storyline of the year was a mystery that had the soap nations viewers hooked who killed Lucy Beale? The answer: young Bobby Beale. Not so cherubic after all, eh? Poldark sauced up the BBC Aidan Turner became an instant hit across the nation as a new, slightly spiced-up adaptation of Winston Grahams Poldark novels commanded a huge audience. To look at this picture, we have no idea why Clarkson left Top Gear (and joined Amazon) If one word dominated the first half of 2015, it was fracas. Jeremy Clarkson assaulted a Top Gear producer and was kicked off the show. Hes returning in 2016 with Richard Hammond and James May for a new motoring show on Amazon Prime Amazon James Corden took over The Late Late Show Proving all the haters wrong, James Corden has soared on US TV as the host of the Late Late Show. His Carpool Karaoke segment has become a huge hit, and played a significant role in Justin Biebers image overhaul Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images Chris Pratt nailed the TOWIE accent Chris Pratt built on the success of Guardians of the Galaxy with the years biggest film Jurassic World (well, until Star Wars came out). He debuted his hilariously accurate TOWIE accent when he appeared on the Graham Norton show Mad Men came to an end One of the most celebrated US TV dramas of all time came to a close, as Mad Men bowed out. The finale was well-received by the majority of critics Jules O'Dwyer and Matisse won Britain's Got Talent Jules ODwyer and her dog Matisse were an instant hit with the public for their hilarious and sweet acting and dance routines, going on to win Britains Got Talent though their fame was mired slightly by the stunt dog controversy that saw the show's producers get a slapped wrist from Ofsted The Night's King shook up Game of Throne Game of Thrones continued to be a juggernaut with some of its most shocking moments yet. The stakes were well and truly raised in an episode which saw the Nights Watch and the Wildlings attacked by the Army of the Dead and the big bad Nights King Olly Murs and Caroline Flack took over The X Factor It was all change on The X Factor this year for better and worse. Host Dermot OLeary stepped down, with Olly Murs and Caroline Flack taking over presenting duties Anthony Harvey/Getty Images Coronation Street went live Corrie made the brave move of doing a live episode, focusing on the Platts ongoing feud with Callum Logan. It all went smoothly, and even rival soap EastEnders wished the cast good luck Vicki Michelle was glassed on CBB: Bit on the Side The drama on the summer of Celebrity Big Brother wasnt just contained to the house Bit On The Side was forced to dramatically cut the live feed after a huge row in the guest panel. A thrown glass resulted in Vicki Michelle being injured in the crossfire and taken to hospital Nadiya won the Bake Off 2015 was the year that the Great British Bake Off proved that it was far, far more than just a baking competition. The journey of winner Nadiya Hussain captured the nation and her win even made Mary Berry cry BBC/Love Productions/Mark Bourdillon Terry Wogan missed Children in Need for the first time Due to illness, Terry Wogan was unable to host Children in Need for the first time ever. Luckily Dermot OLeary, no longer on X Factor duties, was on hand to step in at the last minute Piers Morgan joined Good Morning Britain The man you love (and love to hate), loves that you love (and love to hate) him. Piers Morgan joined Good Morning Britain as a permanent fixture, and has already caused controversy a-plenty with his flirty manner and tough interviews style Clara Oswald left Doctor Who Doctor Whos best series in years saw a dramatic end for companion Clara Oswald, who paid the price when she got caught up in the schemes of immortal girl Ashildr. Actress Jenna Coleman is now gearing up to play a young Queen Victoria in ITVs new big drama series Vicky Pattison was crowned Queen of the Jungle on I'm A Celebrity Howay! Geordie Shore star Vicky Pattison did a fantastic job of rewriting her bolshy image as she emerged a funny, kind, and loveable reality TV star in the Im A Celeb jungle Nigel Wright/ITV/REX Louisa Johnson won The X Factor Louisa Johnson might have won the X Factor but she didnt quite steal the nations hearts, as her debut single only reached #9 in the charts Peep Show ended - for ever Channel 4s cult sitcom went out with a belter of a final series. Of course Mark and Jez didnt get a true happy ending theyre stuck together always, as the camera cut away from the shows trademark point-of-view shots and saw the pair slumped on the sofas in their Croydon flat. Goodbye, El Dude Brothers Downton Abbey closed its doors The end of an era Downton Abbey finally came to a close with one last Christmas special which (SPOILER ALERT) saw happy endings all round. Phew! Mr Selfridge is on ITV at 9pm on Friday. N atalie Dormer has defended the nude scenes of her early career as she swaps cult supporting roles for her first lead part in a film. The actress rose to fame as Anne Boleyn in The Tudors, before playing armed rebel Cressida in The Hunger Games and manipulative queen Margaery Tyrell in Game Of Thrones. Now she is the star of The Forest, a psychological thriller released next month. She told ES Magazine: It means the work has paid off. First things first, I can pay the bills doing the job I love my 16-year-old self would be very content with that. But, of course, your ambitions change. Playing the part: Dormer as Margaery Tyrell in Game Of Thrones / HBO Ive had the responsibility of carrying projects on stage and TV, so it was the next thing I had my eyes on, to prove I could do it on film. The Forest tells the story of Dormers character Sara, who flies to Japan to trace her missing twin. She ends up in the ancient forest of Aokigahara, a notorious suicide spot, where she starts to lose her sanity. Period drama: Dormer with Jonathan Rhys Meyers in The Tudors / BBC / SONY Dormer, 33, studied at Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in South Kensington before winning her role in The Tudors. The show, which starred Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Henry VIII, was renowned for its nude scenes. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 Premiere In Los Angeles 1 /9 The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 Premiere In Los Angeles Help! Jennifer Lawrence gets caught in the wind as she arrives at The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 premiere in Los Angeles Michael Buckner/Variety/REX Wind in her hair Jennifer Lawrence uses the wind to her advantage as she works the red carpet Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP Got the looks Liam Hemsworth sends pulses racing as he arrives at the star-studded event AFP/Robyn Beck Making an appearance Actor Donald Sutherland - who plays President Coriolanus Snow, the leader of Panem - wraps up for the Los Angeles event AFP/Robyn Beck Earning her fashion stripes Actors Woody Harrelson and Elizabeth Banks fool around on the red carpet AFP/Mark Ralston Show stopper Actress Natalie Dormer makes sure to stand out as she arrives in a show stopping grey gown with metallic prints Jason Merritt/Getty Love triangle Liam Hemsworth, Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson - whose characters are caught up in a love triangle in the final film - show there are no hard feelings off screen Mark Davis/Getty She said: When I started my career, I was grateful to get the job. People would say, The Tudors was so hyper-sexualised, why on earth would you make that decision? Well, I made the decision because I was unemployed. I didnt know what The Tudors was going to be, I didnt have all 10 scripts; Id just got a job, for f***s sake. Dormer, who lives in south-west London with her director fiance Anthony Byrne, has learned to navigate the industry but said sex was an essential part of art. She added: Theres plenty of male nudity in Game Of Thrones, too. Sex is part of life, ergo its part of art. If youre representing real life, then you will represent sex. She said the strong female characters in The Hunger Games, which also stars Jennifer Lawrence, had been a game-changer for the industry. The money men now know that its not going to damage their revenue to have a fully fleshed-out, three-dimensional female in the lead, she said. Like, hello, guys? It doesnt hurt to write for 50 per cent of the population. But, you know, its not just the film industry. Its a society problem we just have the platform to talk about it in our industry. M ark Ruffalo and Michael Keaton hit the red carpet in London for the premiere of critically-acclaimed new film Spotlight. Representing the A-list ensemble cast, which includes Rachel McAdams and John Slattery, the pair were joined by Stanley Tucci at Curzon Mayfair on Wednesday night. While the film opened in November in the US, it is only just hitting screens in Europe, fresh off the back of its success at the Critics Choice Awards. Michael Keaton and Boston Globe journalist Walter Robinson / Dave Benett Spotlight, directed by Tom McCathy, picked up the Best Picture prize at the ceremony and is now being pegged as an Oscars frontrunner. Speaking at the premiere, Ruffalo admitted that he supported the Oscars boycott over lack of ethnic diversity in this year's acting categories. The Oscars diversity problem explained He told the Press Association: I think its terrible. And I have a lot of sympathy for it (the boycott) and I completely understand why people are protesting. They have to. Ive been really struggling with it myself because I do a lot with Black Lives Matter and Im really struggling because I would in essence probably really seriously think about joining them. TODO: define component type brightcove Except Im in a movie thats representing a whole other group of disenfranchised people who have no voice in the world and this movie means so much to them. And so I totally get it and I support them but I have to demur and I have to stand up for the people I have to stand up for, he added. The film, about a team of investigative journalists at the Boston Globe who uncover a child abuse ring, has just been nominated for Best Picture at the forthcoming Academy Awards. Ruffalo has also picked up a nomination for Best Supporting Actor, while Rachel McAdams has been given a Supporting Actress nod. LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) Lawmakers unveiled a new plan Tuesday to cover the so-called Medicaid gap population in Nebraska while opponents made clear that the proposal faces a steep uphill slog. Supporters hailed the latest bill as a bipartisan, business-friendly approach to cover an estimated 77,000 childless, low-income adults. Three previous attempts to expand Medicaid coverage under the federal health care law have failed because of conservative opposition. The new bill would use federal Medicaid dollars to buy private health coverage for residents without access to an employer-sponsored plan, and would pay a worker's share of premiums if an employer does offer coverage. People deemed medically frail would receive coverage through the state's current Medicaid program. Sen. John McCollister of Omaha, the bill's leading sponsor, said it would help the state economy by pumping an estimated $2 billion into the state economy, providing new health care jobs and helping the uninsured become more healthy and productive. "Those states that expand Medicaid will have an economic tail wind versus those that don't," said McCollister, a Republican. It also would create a program to refer new enrollees to optional job-training and education programs, in hopes of weaning them off of public benefits. "We feel this is an extremely important new component to help people transition out of their dependence," said Sen. Kathy Campbell of Lincoln, a leading co-sponsor. Campbell said the bill encourages personal responsibility and makes use of employer-sponsored coverage when it's available, reducing the cost to the state. Even so, opponents said they had at least 19 of the Legislature's 49 votes more than the 17 required to block the bill with a filibuster. Fifteen of those lawmakers stood with a leading opposition think tank Tuesday morning during a news conference to criticize the new bill. "Every single conservative in the Legislature opposes Medicaid expansion," said Sen. Bill Kintner of Papillion. Jim Vokal, the CEO of the Omaha-based Platte Institute for Economic Research, said similar legislation adopted in Arkansas resulted in far greater enrollment and expense for the state than initially predicted. Vokal argued that the new proposal would extend benefits to able-bodied adults when the program has traditionally been used for poor children, pregnant women, seniors and people with disabilities. Nebraska is one of 19 primarily conservative states that have rejected efforts to expand Medicaid, the health care program for the poor and disabled. Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia have agreed to the expansion, and governors of three non-expansion states South Dakota, Virginia and Wyoming are now advocating it in their latest budget proposals. The Nebraska plan would cover an estimated 77,000 childless adults whose incomes are too high to qualify for regular Medicaid but too low to receive tax subsidies available through the federal health care exchange. The coverage gap exists because tax subsidies are only available to people with household incomes between 100 percent and 400 percent of the federal poverty level. The Affordable Care Act doesn't provide the subsidies for people who make less than that because the law originally required all states to expand Medicaid, which would have covered that population and made the subsidies unnecessary. But in 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the federal government can't punish states that don't expand Medicaid. Among those in the gap is Sarah Parker of Lincoln, who said she worked full-time until her father was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2011. Parker said she now works part-time without coverage so she can care for her father, while her medical bills have mounted. A recent eight-day stint in the hospital is pushing her toward bankruptcy. "I don't need an entitlement program," Parker said. "But I do need a little help." Western Nebraska Community Colleges Student Veterans Organization will host a Blue Star Flag Ceremony in honor of Derrick Perkins on Thursday, Jan. 21. The event will take place at 8:45 a.m. in front of WNCCs main campus building. Perkins, who is originally from Mitchell, is an active member of the Wyoming Air National Guard and is stationed at Kandahar Airbase in Afghanistan in support of Operation Freedoms Sentinel. Since 2001, Perkins has been deployed four times. He is a current student at WNCC and plans to resume classes next fall to continue in the nursing pre-professional program. The raising of the Blue Star Flag will be flown to recognize and honor Perkins for his service. The flag is an official banner authorized by the Department of Defense for display by families who have members serving in the Armed Forces during any period of war. Selling homemade wares on Etsy is no longer a hobby or just an extra stream of income for many creative people, with more than a quarter of Australian sellers turning the platform into their sole occupation. Two thirds of this group consider their Etsy store to be a business, even though in Australia Etsy sellers have an average weekly income under $800. Read more: The secret sauce behind 11 of Etsys top sellers These findings form part of a new report released by Etsy Australia dubbed the new face of creative entrepreneurship, which surveyed a sample 770 Australian Etsy sellers from December 4 to January 5. According to the survey, 94% of Etsy sellers in Australia are female and they are twice as likely to be under 35 compared to other Australian business owners. Many sellers are also parents with children at home. The majority of sellers are city based (73%) and 67% are university educated. Sellers are self-starters and majority run their businesses without additional financial help, with less than 1% of sellers taking out a business loan. Helen Souness, managing director for Etsy in Australia and Asia, said in a statement the report is the first of its kind for the Australian branch of Etsy. Whats clear from this report is our sellers desire to run businesses on their own terms and in ways that support their creative and professional goals, she said. Since arriving onto the scene in 2005, Etsy has grown to host more than 1.5 million active Etsy sellers globally. Etsy is appealing for many sellers for its quick and affordable listings, with lprices starting from 20c a piece, and success stories like the husband and wife who turned 30c into $5000 in four months. Sellers also are very collaborative in building their business with networking, offering advice and being part of online support groups or Etsy teams. Melbourne Etsy seller Petina Walker is the leader of one such support network, The Australian Press and PR team, which offers help and advice to help Australian and New Zealand Etsy sellers get more press. She supports herself working full-time running her two Etsy shops Pepper Ink and Geek Ink, both of which produce niche custom temporary tattoos for grownups. Pepper Ink was launched in 2012 and focuses on artistic vintage and custom designs, whilst Geek Ink allows shoppers to embrace their fandom with Doctor Who, Harry Potter and Star Wars tattoos. Her co-founder Francesco Fazzini told SmartCompany Etsy helps sellers of handcrafted items find their customers. Customers go to Etsy to find unique and beautifully designed products so our kind of customer is already shopping there, he says. Working relentlessly out of their Fitzroy studio has seen these creative entrepreneurs turn over more than $110k last year from their Etsy businesses. I love all things handmade and community and have always wanted to work for myself. Etsy was the obvious answer for a unique business like ours as it already brings buyers from all over the world, he says. The majority of our customers are international and they would never have found us with a bricks-and-mortar store in Melbourne. The report proposes an Etsy economy that offers an alternative approach to traditional retail models. Sellers reported being focused on keeping their businesses at a manageable scale, with close to three quarters of sellers not looking to employ any more people and not considering taking out a loan to expand. Fazzini says the storytelling and community feel of Etsy, combined with its ease of use, make it a winner for Pepper Ink. (Customers) want personal touches and to know the stories of our business, he says. Not being techy at all its also easy to set up shop compared to building your own website. You also have a great community with other sellers supporting and cheering each other on. | By Dinushi Dias Generation Entrepreneur founders Victor Zhang and Alex Luo are planning to expand their Initiate 48 hackathons so more students can be empowered with the possibilities of entrepreneurship. The pair put on a hackathon over the weekend which saw 150 students from schools in Sydney, Melbourne and New Zealand create 17 startups in 48 hours. The excitement levels were exceptionally high when students realised they could actually change the world and make a difference, Zhang tells StartupSmart. Zhang and Luo broke out of institutional learning and started running classes to educate peers on entrepreneurship before launching into the Initate 48 hackathon series when they were in Year 11. We are a team of volunteer high school graduates and students, Zhang says. Weve learned a lot more by engaging in extracurricular activities in the real world than from a textbook. On a mission to build a new generation of influencers, innovators and change-makers, Initiate 48 has now gained backing from the likes of Fishburners, Coder Factory and General Assembly. Sydney startup accelerator BlueChilli hosted the recent Initiate 48 hackathon. The atmosphere was by far one of the loudest and most exciting, Zhang says. Students were able to create and present projects to a judging panel including BlueChilli CEO Sebastien Eckersley-Maslin, Sydney Seed Fund partner Garry Visontay and Foundation for Young Australians executive director Andrew Brough, who flew in from Melbourne for the event. The hackathon resulted in a 14-year-old winning the top prize for GameAlly, a social network connecting gamers with similar interests. He experienced a problem and built a solution, Zhang says. In addition to pitching for a $20,000 investment, Zhang says the winning student gets three months free co-working space at Fishburners, Coder Factory coding workshops and more. Designed to leverage the fearless spirit and ambition of young people, Zhang says the buzz of their hackathon leaves a lasting imprint on those who attend. Weve had students send us thousand word essays on how Initiate 48 has changed their life, he says. Initiate 48 is also working to increase the diversity of students that participate. [Last weekend, it was] about 60% girls to 40% boys, Im not sure why but I think there is a change happening, he says. Zhang and his team are meeting this week to discuss plans to run more Initiate 48 hackathons. We want to empower more high school kids to live differently, he says. Theyre less inhibited and not scared to have a bit of fun. Follow StartupSmart on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. | By Dinushi Dias A Melbourne delivery startup has big plans to grow tenfold after securing a $600,000 funding round and bringing on board another high-profile strategic advisor. YourGrocer, an e-commerce platform enabling same-day delivery of goods to consumers from independent retailers, grocers, butchers, bakers and delis, has welcomed Menulog investor Michael Doubinski to its advisory team which already includes the founders of Envato. Advisors assemble Forming this dream-team of advisors involved little touch points along the way, YourGrocer chief executive Morgan Ranieri says. Ranieri says he decided to approach Menulog investor Michael Doubinski after reading a story about him online. I read he had invested in another startup like us in an article by StartupSmart actually, he tells StartupSmart. Realising that Doubinskis background with Menulog and similar startups could provide them with invaluable support in scaling YourGrocer, Ranieri decided to approach him directly. I reached out to him with a cold message on LinkedIn, he says. Within a couple of months and further discussions, Doubinski was on board. Prior to this, YourGrocer brought on Envato founders Collis and Cyan Taeed following a meet between Collis and Ranieri at a StartupVictoria event. I caught up with him with no real agenda but to get advice, and we really connected, he says. Rapid growth YourGrocer, founded by Ranieri, Francisco Trindade and Bandith Nhephis, has scaled quickly in the last 12 months. Our customer base has grown from 10 to 80 shops, Ranieri says. Their reach has also expanded from 20 to more than 100 suburbs across Melbourne. Ranieri credits a lot of their growth and product development to their users. Were really lucky to have a lot of really passionate customers, he says. Many of who work in creative tech spaces and have provided them practical feedback to improve their website and services, Ranieri says. YourGrocer is now close to linking with all of Melbournes major grocer markets including Queen Victoria, Prahran and South Melbourne. They are also in talks with Dandenong Market. Our main goal now is to grow the size of our market by 10 times, Ranieri says. YourGrocer hopes to scale up its shop and customer acquisition by growing its platform from 80 to 500 shops. They are also looking to expand into cities across Australia. With plans to launch in Sydney soon, Ranieri says they have commenced the search for a Sydney manager to help them build traction interstate. We are keen to talk with anyone whos really interested in leading our setup in Sydney, he says. Follow StartupSmart on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. While you may have heard about the research and development (R&D) tax incentive the Australian Governments tax incentive to encourage innovation you may be unsure how to apply for the incentive, or... This page may have been moved, deleted, or is otherwise unavailable. To help you find what you are looking for: Enter Search Term(s): Still cant find what youre looking for? Send us a message using our contact us form. To report a broken link or other problems with the website, please include the URL. Thank you for visiting state.gov. Countries & Areas Search for country or area A Afghanistan Albania Algeria Andorra Angola Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Australia Austria Azerbaijan B Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brazil Brunei Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burma Burundi C Cabo Verde Cambodia Cameroon Canada Central African Republic Chad Chile China Colombia Comoros Costa Rica Cote dIvoire Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czechia D Democratic Republic of the Congo Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic E Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Eswatini Ethiopia F Fiji Finland France G Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Greece Grenada Guatemala Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana H Haiti Holy See Honduras Hungary I Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Israel Italy J Jamaica Japan Jordan K Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati Kosovo Kuwait Kyrgyzstan L Laos Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg M Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Marshall Islands Mauritania Mauritius Mexico Micronesia Moldova Monaco Mongolia Montenegro Morocco Mozambique N Namibia Nauru Nepal Netherlands New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria North Korea North Macedonia Norway O Oman P Pakistan Palau Palestinian Territories Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Q Qatar R Republic of the Congo Romania Russia Rwanda S Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Samoa San Marino Sao Tome and Principe Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia South Africa South Korea South Sudan Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Sweden Switzerland Syria T Taiwan Tajikistan Tanzania Thailand Timor-Leste Togo Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Tuvalu U Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom Uruguay Uzbekistan V Vanuatu Venezuela Vietnam Y Yemen Z Zambia Zimbabwe Tuesday, 19 January 2016 22:43:30 (GMT+3) | San Diego In a letter to customers Monday, Gerdau announced that effective with shipments as of February 1, 2016, it will increase published prices for merchant bar products by $1.50 cwt. ($30/nt or $33/mt). The company will also raise published prices for beam products by $1.00 cwt. ($20/nt or $22/mt), also effective February 1. Wednesday, 20 January 2016 16:55:49 (GMT+3) | Istanbul Prices in the local Turkish merchant bar market have remained unchanged, excluding Karabuk region, as compared to price levels in the SteelOrbis report dated January 14, while demand has remained at low level. In the local Turkish market, merchant bar prices depending on size, thickness and region are at the following levels: Equal Angle Prices: Region Prices (TRY/mt) Price change (TRY/mt) 14.01.2016 Denizli Region (30-100 mm) 1,180-1,200 ($387-394/mt) - 0 Karabuk Region (30-100mm) 1,090-1,100 ($358-361/mt) 30 Iskenderun Region (30-100 mm) 1,070-1,080 ($351-354/mt) - 0 Izmir Region (30-100 mm) 1,150-1,170 ($377-384/mt) - 0 Flat Bar Prices: Region Prices (TRY/mt) Price change (TRY/mt) 14.01.2016 Denizli Region (30-100 mm) 1,210-1,230 ($397-404/mt) - 0 Karabuk Region (30-100mm) 1,120-1,130 ($368-371/mt) 30 Iskenderun Region (30-100 mm) 1,100-1,110 ($361-364/mt) - 0 Izmir Region (30-100 mm) 1,180-1,200 ($387-394/mt) - 0 NPI-NPU Prices: Region Prices (TRY/mt) Price change (TRY/mt) 14.01.2016 Denizli Region (30-100 mm) 1,180-1,200 ($387-394/mt) - 0 Karabuk Region (30-100 mm) 1,090-1,100 ($358-361/mt) 30 Iskenderun Region (30-100 mm) 1,070-1,080 ($351-354/mt) - 0 Izmir Region (30-50 mm) 1,150-1,170 ($377-384/mt) - 0 All prices are ex-works, on actual weight basis, for January shipment and excluding VAT. : It should be considered that offers below the prices ranges in question may be available, depending on the buyer and on the method of payment. Mackinac Island The weather has been up and down this past week. We had some very nice days, and other were cold,... Outdoors This Week in the Eastern U.P. I know its fall, but, for some reason, the white stuff has started falling already and frost is covering my... West Mackinac Thats all folks, the fall fashion show is over and Mother Natures winter wardrobe is waiting in the wings. In... So you want to be a data scientist. Well, you don't really want to be a data scientist, but it sits at the top of so many "best jobs" rankings that you've begun to seriously consider dusting off the math textbook that used to give you panic attacks. As Glassdoor releases its "25 best jobs for 2016" rankings, among a host of "best jobs" lists that organizations trot out this time of year, there's data scientist, at No. 1, up from No. 9 last year, pushing out physician's assistant from last year's top spot to No. 7 this year. Just what makes something a "best job" is a value judgment that causes some people to shrug off such lists the way they do the best colleges rankings. At Glassdoor, a job review site based in the San Francisco Bay Area, the ranking uses three equally weighted factors: median annual base salary, number of job openings and career opportunities as rated by the site's users, which can mean anything from chance of promotion to access to a mentorship program. Only jobs with at least 75 salary reports and 75 career opportunity scores were considered. The jobs on the list this year pay between $69,000 (for technical account manager) and $135,000 (software development manager). Other organizations analyze jobs differently. CareerBuilder, which released its hottest jobs for 2016 last month, partnered with Economic Modeling Specialists to determine where the number of job ads companies post each month outpaces the number of people they actually hire, and coupled that with job growth and salary, to come up with two lists: those that typically require a college degree and those that don't. The lists, which are not ranked, include registered nurses and accountants in the first category and truck drivers and surgical technologists in the second. Scott Dobroski, career trends analyst at Glassdoor, said the site has done various surveys asking people what is important to them in making a job decision, and those three themes earning potential, availability and development opportunity consistently appear at the top of the list. Other lists take into account things like flexibility or office environment, but Dobroski said that while such quality-of-life issues are certainly important, they tend to depend more on the company than the job itself. Gillian Steele, executive director of the career center at DePaul University, said the center doesn't pay much attention to the lists. They can be helpful to let students know what areas are in demand, and if students express interest in health care or finance, the lists can help steer them to occupations within those fields that are particularly in-demand and well-paid. The risk of the lists is that students lured by a comfortable salary could go down the wrong path and discover they don't like it and be disappointed that the entry-level salary is not quite so impressive, or that they have to work 90 hours a week to earn it. "More important is that they're thinking through a career that's a good fit for them," Steele said. She added: "This (list) ends up speaking to parents. They say, look at what you can earn. Then you start to see people put under pressure to do certain things." That tech and health care present some of the greatest job opportunities is no surprise, but Dobroski pointed out more nuanced findings to help inform a person's job search. First, he said, the "deep tech" jobs that occupy 10 of the slots on the list, from data scientist at No. 1 to software architect at No. 25, are not only available at traditional tech companies but across industries. "Everyone from REI to Wal-Mart to Costco has an online and mobile Web presence these days," Dobroski said. Second, he said, an emphasis on finance jobs including tax manager at No. 2, audit manager at No. 10 and finance manager at No. 16 could reflect that companies are investing heavily in bolstering those divisions after the recession revealed they can't afford weaknesses. Third, employers seem to be re-staffing roles that got cut during the economic downturn, including human resources manager at No. 6, marketing manager at No. 14 and business development manager at No. 17, as they seek to grow the business. And there are newer job titles that are making their first appearance on the list. Strategy manager, at No. 19, helps companies make sense of the vast amounts of data they are accumulating in the digital age to help shape business decisions. Engagement manager, at No. 4, a more sophisticated evolution of a client support role, manages relationships with clients from the start to the finish of a project, using data and surveys to track performance to measure satisfaction. And if you really want to be a data scientist, it's not totally out of reach even for those with no experience in the field, Dobroski said. "You can take a coding or data science boot camp, and in six months, you can acquire the basic skills," he said, adding that the starting salary is $70,000 to $80,000 and the median $116,000. "If you know even a little bit, that goes a long way." It isn't quite so easy to land a data scientist job at Chicago-based Uptake, which currently has about a dozen such positions open. The predictive analytics software company, which has grown to more than 300 employees since it was founded in 2014, works with companies such as Caterpillar to collect sensor information from its heavy machinery to help predict when equipment will fail or need repairs. Adam McElhinney, director of data science at Uptake, said he prefers to hire people with a doctorate or master's degree in quantitative science. Most of the people he has hired come from academia, where they worked as professors or researchers, and some have software engineering backgrounds. The job typically involves four phases: examining how to solve a problem, understanding and gathering data, performing modeling or analysis on that data, and turning that analysis into some kind of production, such as computer code or a report. Some positions are spent almost entirely at the keyboard developing mathematical models, and others require more client interaction. In addition to an academic background, McElhinney looks for excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to translate complex topics into lay terms. A six-month boot camp could ready some people for the job, especially if they already work as Web developers or in tech-heavy areas, but "my personal opinion is it would be really hard if you had no technical background," he said. For people with math panic, perhaps it's better to leave the textbook dusty. TierPoint LLC, the Town and Country-based hosting and cloud computer company, is continuing its string of acquisitions by reaching agreement to acquire Cosentry. Included in the deal is Cosentrys data center in downtown St. Louis. Cosentry, based in Omaha, Neb., operates nine data centers in the Midwest. Terms of the deal, expected to close in March, were not disclosed. TierPoint is led by Charter Communications co-founder Jerry Kent. Cosentry will become a subsidiary of TierPoint and operate under the TierPoint brand. After the deal closes, private equity firm TA Associates will become an investor in TierPoint, joining RedBird Capital Partners, Cequel III, Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, the Stephens Group, JZ Advisers and Thompson Street Capital Partners. Cosentry is an excellent company with great people and this acquisition gives us a significant, strategic advantage in key Midwest markets, where there is an increasing demand for data center services, Kent, TierPoints chairman and chief executive, said in a statement. Were also extremely pleased that a leader like TA Associates, with a long and rich history of smart investments, has chosen to become a significant investor in TierPoint. Cosentrys chief executive, Brad Hokamp, said the acquisition would benefit Cosentry customers. Executives of TA Associates and RedBird Capital said in statements they are pleased with their investment. Under Jerrys leadership, the original TierPoint platform has been transformed through several key acquisitions and continued organic growth across its nationwide facilities base, said Gerry Cardinale, RedBird Capitals founder and managing partner. When the acquisition is completed, TierPoint will operate 38 data centers in 24 markets and have more than 6,000 customers. In October, TierPoint announced a $575 million cash deal for the data center business of Windstream, a telecommunication company based in Little Rock, Ark. TierPoint acquired a Florida data center last summer and six data centers in the Northeast in December 2014. Kent said in May he planned to concentrate on TierPoint after announcing a deal to sell Suddenlink Communications, the cable company he led after leaving Charter, to Altice SA of Luxembourg. Before its acquisition by Cosentry in 2013, the St. Louis data center at 1111 Olive Street was the headquarters of Xiolink. Late Monday evening, dealing with the controversy over the 20-out-of-20 whiteness ratio in this years Oscar-nominated performers, Academy for Motion Picture Arts and Sciences president Cheryl Boone Isaacs issued a statement of regret and, within that, a statement of intention. While we celebrate their extraordinary achievements, wrote Boone Isaacs, the first African-American president in the academys history, I am both heartbroken and frustrated about the lack of inclusion. This is a difficult but important conversation, and its time for big changes. The Academy is taking dramatic steps to alter the makeup of our membership. In the coming days and weeks we will conduct a review of our membership recruitment in order to bring about much-needed diversity in our 2016 class and beyond. She added, the mandate is inclusion in all of its facets: gender, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation. We have been here before with the Oscars. Last year, in fact. The Academy Awards handed out a year ago also confined itself to a list of actresses and actors, in lead and supporting ranks, reflecting a monolithically white talent roster. Its not a matter of implementing some kind of unofficial quota. Its a matter of recognizing whats there, in front of the academys face. Its talent going unrecognized, from Idris Elba in Beasts of No Nation on down. Many of us have our particular examples of head-smacking Oscar nomination exclusions in front of and behind the camera. Last year it was certifiably ignorant for Ava DuVernay, director of Selma, not to receive an Oscar nomination. This year it was certifiably ignorant for Ryan Coogler, director of Creed, not to receive an Oscar nomination. It was certifiably ignorant for Michael B. Jordan, giving a sturdy, old-fashioned star performance, not to receive a best actor nod for Creed. And while I have problems with Straight Outta Compton, it sends an amusingly clueless message to nominate only white folks from Compton (for screenplay) and from Creed (Sylvester Stallone, a prime candidate for the best supporting actor prize). Spike Lee declared Monday that he would boycott the Oscars this year. So did Jada Pinkett Smith, whose husband, Will Smith, stars in Concussion and didnt get the nomination some think he deserved. Decades from now, maybe itll be easier to discuss the Oscars without breaking everything down by ethnicity and gender. Well only need to change the entire makeup of the academy membership, not to mention the power structure of the film industry, for that to happen. Last week Straight Outta Compton and Ride Along 2 producer Will Packer wrote this on Facebook: The academys voting record is only part of the issue. These films/performances and the scripts that drive them often go into development YEARS before they are released and thus in Oscar contention. We need more content produced by, written by, directed by and featuring filmmakers and actors of color being given the greenlight. ... We need them to start moving forward this year so in 2019 there are quality projects in contention. Packer added: Its a complete embarrassment to say that the heights of cinematic achievement have only been reached by white people. I repeat its embarrassing. Packer was right: It bears repeating. In 2012 the Los Angeles Times published a story revealing what many already knew in their bones, and from the pattern of nominees over the years. Based on a sample of nearly 90 percent of the 6,000-plus academy members, the Times concluded that more than 90 percent of voters were white and more than 70 percent were male. Even so, what gives? Even a mass of solidly entrenched older white males should be able to recognize talent on the order of Coogler. Earlier this month, accepting the LA Film Critics Associations New Generation Award, the Creed director noted that it wouldnt hurt whats left of the critical community to diversify its own ranks. He said he appreciated the critical response to his work and that in this world of Rotten Tomatoes and clickbait, strong, independent critical voices are more valuable than ever. But he challenged those in attendance to find the diversity ... find the next Justin Chang, referring to Varietys chief film critic. Academy President Boone Isaacs was right to express her frustration with the nominations this year. Now comes the hard work. Now its up to her to make sure the academy membership one year, five years, a decade from now goes beyond the pale. But it starts with the studios. ST. LOUIS COUNTY Terry Lee Simmons was sentenced to life in prison last week for murdering his friend in 2013 on a Ferguson street. Simmons had been upset with his friend for not firing any shots during a drive-by shooting the day before, prosecutors alleged. Simmons pleaded guilty last fall in the death of his friend, Quinton Luckett. On Friday, Simmons was sentenced to life in prison for second-degree murder. In addition to the murder charge, Simmons also had pleaded guilty in November of additional felonies: first-degree robbery, armed criminal action and drug possession with intent to distribute. Prosecutors say Simmons was sentenced to life in prison for the robbery and armed criminal action, and 15 years for the drug crimes. He also was sentenced to seven years for a third drug charge. All of the sentences will run concurrently. Simmons, 32, of the 6300 block of Washington Avenue, fatally shot Luckett in the head on Nov. 9, 2013. Luckett was found in a pool of blood that night in the 200 block of South Barat Avenue in Ferguson. Luckett was 28. He had lived in the 6300 block of Evergreen Boulevard in Berkeley. Prosecutors say Simmons and Luckett had been involved in a drive-by shooting the day before, but Luckett didn't shoot during the crime. Simmons was angry and later killed Luckett, according to prosecutors. Simmons was never charged in the drive-by, prosecutors said. The other charges stem from other crimes. ST. LOUIS A federal trial that could radically alter elections in the Ferguson-Florissant School District ended Tuesday, but any resolution of the case is still months away. The ACLU, on behalf of the NAACP and three residents, claims that the district is violating the Voting Rights Act with at-large elections. They say blacks are underrepresented on the school board in a district where nearly 80 percent of the students are black. They blame historical discrimination as well as present-day circumstances, Tony Rothert, legal director of the ACLU, said. Not all students, schools and parts of the district are represented equally, Rothert said. Cindy Ormsby, a lawyer for the district, said that board members represent the entire district border to border and favor at-large elections as the best way to achieve proportional representation for blacks. And she said that in 2013, blacks represented 51 percent of the voting age population, and she expected that number to be even higher now. Ormsby said, ... Its self-evident that they have an equal opportunity to elect the candidates of their choice. Ormsby accused the ACLU and the NAACP of attacking the district for simply complying with the state of Missouris election laws. The trial was held in front of U.S. District Judge Rodney Sippel, not a jury, which allowed for some freewheeling discussion during closing arguments Tuesday. At times, Sippel stopped lawyers to challenge their conclusions and ask his own questions. Whatever we do here is going to be real and based on whats really going on, he said at one point. He also worried whether, in a district where the black voting population was increasing, he might institutionalize a remedy that would have the eventual effect of preserving white majorities. He asked lawyers whether remedies in other cases had a sunset date. At the end of the hearing, Sippel gave litigants until April 8 to file post-hearing briefs and their proposals on how he should rule. They will then have until April 22 to respond to the filings. The case may have broader impacts, as at-large elections are enshrined in state law, and Sippel pointed out that there are a lot of school districts in north St. Louis County. Why is Ferguson-Florissant unique? he asked. ST. LOUIS A man was fatally shot in the neck Monday night in an alley near Bellefontaine Cemetery. Another man who got into a shootout with the killer was shot in the head, but survived. Police say the killing may be connected to heroin found in the victim's car, found in an alley behind the 5000 block of West Florissant Avenue. The alley runs behind the Ujamaa Community Center in the Mark Twain Neighborhood. Antoine Bland, 21, of the 1500 block of Eton Lane, was found dead at about 9:25 p.m. Monday. The second victim, 22, was being treated at a hospital for his gunshot wounds and was stable. The victim who survived had been among three men in a car driven by Bland. They went to West Florissant Avenue to meet two men. Bland got out of the car and was shot to death. The killer jumped into the driver's seat to leave, with the three passengers still seated in the car, police said. The 22-year-old passenger grabbed a gun and exchanged shots with the killer, police said. The 22-year-old passenger was hit in the head and buttocks. He is expected to survive. The killer ran off, according to authorities, and police say they don't know if the he was hit in the shootout. They did not have a detailed description of the man. Police found heroin in the car. The other two passengers in the car, also men in their 20s, were uninjured. Cieera Davis, 29, who lives on Ruskin Avenue down the street from the scene, said she heard a loud boom and several shots. She heard a man screaming for help. Then, she heard a knock on her door and another man yelling for help. She and her next-door neighbor, Michael Shannon, 29, at first thought the man had been shot because he was limping, but he said he was healing from a previously broken leg. The man told them he had been with the other two victims when they were shot but he got away. The man said the shooter or shooters were coming after him. They called the police and flagged a patrol car down when it arrived. "I was scared," Davis said. Shannon, a single dad who has full custody of his two young children, stood at the scene nearly two hours after the incident, still reeling from what had happened. He worried about his kids and his nephew and nieces who also live with him. "I'm used to it. By being here it's an everyday thing," he said. "Something's gotta be done, man. It's gotta start with us." WASHINGTON St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson told the U.S. Conference of Mayors on Wednesday that his citys courts needed to steer gun-crime offenders toward jobs, education and substance abuse treatment to help them avoid offending again. We have to get at those issues if we are going to get at violence, Dotson said during a forum on reducing violence and strengthening police-community trust during the mayors annual gathering here. St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay and Dotson came for an 84th annual winter meeting that is heavily overlaid with violence, strife and protest in major cities stemming from rising gun violence and police-involved shootings. Joining Dotson on the panel was Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, whose handling of a fatal shooting by a police officer has led to calls for his resignation. Protesters, some of them holding signs calling for Emanuel to resign, interrupted a news conference led by Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, whose city has also been marked by protests and police trials over the death of a man in police custody. But the panel, which included Dotson, Emanuel, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu and National Urban League President Marc Morial avoided getting into the specific case in Chicago: the fatal shooting of black teenager Laquan McDonald by white police officer Jason Van Dyke. A Chicago prosecutor has charged Van Dyke with murder, but the calls for Emanuel to resign have escalated. None of that came up in the session, as the panelists instead focused on the need to improve police and community relations, to target repeat offenders, and to step up programs to keep children in school and provide summer jobs. Dotson said some of St. Louis challenges it had 188 murders last year, 179 committed with firearms came from an urban-rural split in the state. He said municipalities should have more power to enforce their own gun laws. We have a state that has incredibly liberal gun laws, he told a ballroom full of mayors, their staff and corporate sponsors of the three-day conference. They are controlled by people that dont live in the urban centers. They (pass) legislation to get re-elected. We are left with the proliferation of guns. He said his office was pushing for an armed offender docket in St. Louis courts to track the successes, to become experts in dealing with individuals that are in a cycle of violence, that dont have the education, have substance issues. Become experts in that. Morial said part of the problem facing cities was that an organized element of drugs and gangs now operates across many cities, much as organized crime did starting in the 1930s, and that only a few major police departments had the sophistication and budgets to infiltrate them. He and the others on the panel called for more cooperation with the FBI and Drug Enforcement Agency, and for more money for summer jobs and early education programs. But a Congress that has just forged a contentious budget agreement, and is now facing a higher-than-estimated deficit this fiscal year, is not in a spending mode. Landrieu said the first step to dealing with rising violence and gun deaths was to admit the problem exists. You have to run to the fire on this, said the New Orleans mayor, whose police department has operated under multiple agreements with the federal Department of Justice to improve policing. It should be clear to everybody in this room that something has gone wrong in America. At the moment, we have dust-ups all over the country. Those are not just one-offs. Dotson told the conference that the St. Louis police department was about 36 percent black, compared with a population that is 50 percent African-American. Make a long-term commitment to diversity and give them the tools and the training, Dotson said, when asked about his police advice to other cities. He said that his office received 300,000 calls to 911 every year, and that every one of those has the potential to be a Michael Brown or Eric Garner, a reference to the deaths of two black men in encounters with police in Ferguson and in New York, in 2014. Dotson drew one of the sessions few applause lines when he said: We have to look at the communities that we serve and be committed to it, and realize that it is a small number of people that commit the crimes, and focus on the people that commit the crimes, and not the race. Slay said Dotson was on the panel because the St. Louis chief had gained a reputation around the country as an expert on community policing and reform. He said he and Dotson had traveled to Sacramento, Calif.; Little Rock, Ark.; and Washington to talk about the citys police policies. WASHINGTON St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay met with members of the Missouri congressional delegation this week as a decision on where a new National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency facility will be built draws near. The mayor met separately with Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-St. Louis, and their staffs while Slay was in town for the annual U.S. Conference of Mayors. Robert Cardillo, the NGAs chief, is set to announce his recommendation for the NGAs new western headquarters March 25, with a final decision expected a month later. Officially, four sites are being considered two in St. Louis County, one near the old Pruitt-Igoe site in St. Louis and one near Scott Air Force Base in Illinois. The site selection process began almost 18 months ago, and Missouri politicians agree that the St. Louis site is one of two being considered, along with Scott. The headquarters are currently in the city near the Anheuser-Busch brewery, but the agency says it needs updated space. The St. Louis-area congressional delegation has been split on its lobbying for the sites, with those in Missouri saying the St. Louis site would be best, and Illinois members pushing the site near Scott Air Force Base. More than a decade ago, the Pentagon recommended a move from its current location south of downtown to near Scott to save money. But Slay said he believes the St. Louis site has obvious advantages. He met with the delegation, he said, to make sure they were in accord as they made final pitches for the St. Louis location. "It is important to them to keep these jobs in Missouri and the city of St. Louis," Slay said. The facility employs roughly 3,000, and Blunt said he has interacted with NGA employees through his role as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He said the building would cost about $1 billion to construct, with far greater economic impact from the service economy that would be built in that area. Construction could start in May no matter which site is chosen. "We are building a facility that one of the main goals will be to attract a workforce that will want to be there and want to commit themselves to working there," Blunt said, stressing the "proximity to downtown living" as an appeal of the St. Louis location. While here, Slay also picked up an award from the Scotts Miracle Grow Company for the city's efforts to bolster the monarch butterfly population. Slay is also expected to speak about the city's efforts to plant milkweed and establish a monarch preserve during a mayors' conference session about the environment Thursday morning. JEFFERSON CITY The Missouri House on Wednesday gave first-round approval to a resolution that would ask voters to amend the state constitution to require voters show photo identification before casting a ballot. If passed by voters, a bill, which also gained initial approval Wednesday, would dictate how the constitutional amendment would be enforced. The House debated the proposals for a tense two hours, during which Republicans argued that the bill was to protect elections against voter impersonation fraud. Democrats spoke against the proposal, saying that many constituents don't possess IDs or a birth certificate needed to acquire an ID. They said that students and elderly African Americans born in the South would be especially impacted by the bill's passage. Some Democrats said the proposals hearken back to the South's racist Jim Crow laws, which were used historically to suppress the black vote. A lot of people were hurt, and a lot of people died to get in to vote, said Rep. Joe Adams, D-University City. And here we are debating, well, well just create these voter ID laws.' At one point, Rep. Brandon Ellington, D-Kansas City, offered an amendment that would include the words voter suppression in the title of the resolution. That amendment was voted down 112-42. Republicans argued that the measure is nothing more than an attempt to stamp out voter impersonation fraud at the polls. I think that in this day and time that everyone has a photo ID, said Rep. Tony Dugger, R-Hartville and sponsor of the resolution. Those who dont, I think that we can provide a route in which that they would still be able to vote so that were not disenfranchising any voter in this state. He added, I think this process will bring integrity to our election process. Rep. Justin Alferman, R-Hermann, said that fears that voters would be disenfranchised were exaggerated. The bill states that, if the Legislature appropriates funds, the cost to acquire birth certificates would be covered by the state. If no funds are appropriated, then the amendment would not be enforced. But Democrats countered that voters would still have to acquire a photo ID within three days after an election. For many people born out-of-state without a birth certificate, it would take longer to acquire the birth certificate. By then, the provisional ballot the person cast would not be counted, they said. Democrats offered hypothetical examples of those who would not be able to vote. Rep. Rochelle Walton-Gray, D-Black Jack, said that many black seniors, born in the South, dont have access to their birth certificates, and if they do, they are likely to contain inaccuracies. Now those persons are going to be denied because they dont have the source documents to get a photo ID, she said. The resolution and bill still have to gain final approval from the House before advancing. The Senate held a hearing on two similar measures Tuesday, but the proposal has yet to advance out of committee. In the past, photo voter ID proposals have passed the House but have died in the Senate. JEFFERSON CITY A Senate panel on Tuesday heard testimony on a proposal that would require voters to show a photo ID at the polls. The measure is similar to a proposal passed out of committee in the House. The bill and a separate resolution, if passed, would pose the question to voters this year in the form of a proposed constitutional amendment. In 2006, the state Supreme Court struck down a photo voter ID law, saying it infringed on the rights of voters. Sen. Will Kraus, R-Lees Summit, is sponsoring the bill and accompanying resolution in the Senate. Kraus is running for secretary of state. Republicans argue that voter fraud is a real threat that could tip the balance of elections. In the state of Missouri, without an ID, its pretty easy to get somebody elses utility bill and say, Hi Im Bob Jones, Im here to vote, Kraus said. But Democrats argue that voter photo ID proposals which have been tossed around in the Legislature for the last decade amount to a veiled attempt at disenfranchising voters. They cite hypothetical examples of elderly people having to spend weeks trying to get birth certificates so that they can get an ID. And under the proposal, students wouldnt be able to present their student IDs, even though they might not have a regular drivers license. John Scott, chief of staff for Secretary of State Jason Kander, a Democrat, testified that the bill would have one of the most restrictive photo ID requirements in the country. That really is what this committee is being asked to do, Scott said, weaken voter rights provisions that are in the constitution to allow for the most restrictive, arguably, piece of photo ID in the country." The Senate committee took no vote at the Tuesday hearing. A House committee passed a similar bill and resolution last week. Those measures are scheduled to be debated Wednesday on the House floor. JEFFERSON CITY Abortion opponent Sam Lee fears a scenario where a parent first learns of his or her daughters abortion through a phone call from the emergency room. What if the child had an adverse reaction to medication used during the abortion, Lee asked, or suffered from heavy bleeding because of a botched procedure? Thats why Lee, president of Campaign Life Missouri, told a House committee Tuesday hes in favor of both parents knowing if their minor child is seeking an abortion. Parents have the right and obligation to know whats going on with their children, particularly when theyre making a life-changing decision, Lee said. The House Committee on Children and Families heard testimony Tuesday on a measure, sponsored by Rep. Rocky Miller, R-Lake Ozark, that would require the parent of a daughter younger than 18 seeking an abortion to notify in writing the other custodial parent or guardian of the abortion. Under current law, a physician must get informed written consent from one parent or guardian. There would be some exceptions to this change, such as a parent or guardian who is a sex offender or has been found guilty of child abuse. Despite the exceptions, abortion rights proponents argue this change could put a young womans life in danger. MEvie Mead, Missouri director of organizing for Planned Parenthood, said not all teenagers come from homes where they can speak openly with both parents. They could be facing violent or abusive relationships, she said, and can trust only one parent with knowledge about an unplanned pregnancy. She also noted that, in the case of incest, this new law could force the teen to notify her rapist about the pregnancy and the subsequent abortion. I dont think this bill would do anything to further the health and safety of teens in state, Mead said. It could put them in danger. But Miller said he didnt introduce this measure to put young women in harms way. I just think it would be healthier for the minor child in a lot of cases if both parents were aware of whats going on and can talk about it, he said. Miller tried and failed last year to pass this measure, but it could have a better chance this year as the 2016 election approaches and Republican lawmakers continue to investigate allegations that Planned Parenthood sold fetal tissue. Planned Parenthood has vehemently denied these allegations and Attorney General Chris Koster, a Democrat running for governor this year, found no evidence of wrongdoing in Missouri. Republicans have filed a number of abortion-related measures this year. This is the first abortion measure to get airing in the House. The committee did not vote on the measure Tuesday. The bill is House Bill 1370. Three St. Clair County judges can remain as candidates in the upcoming Democratic primary, the Illinois State Board of Elections effectively allowed in a 4-4 vote Wednesday. A board spokesman said the tie vote means the judges can continue running in the regular partisan elections, unless appeals courts disagree. The vote was on a motion to adopt a recommendation that the judges don't have to face the 60 percent voter threshold of a retention referendum. The tie vote means the motion fails, the spokesman said, leaving the judges on the Democratic primary ballot. Jim Tenuto, assistant executive director of the state board, said the four members who voted against the examiner's recommendation believe the judges should face retention. Belleville City Clerk Dallas Cook, who filed a complaint with the state election board challenging the judges' strategy, attended the meeting in Chicago. He said he was heartened by the sentiments of the four members who believed the judges need to stick with retention. He said he will file an appeal with the Circuit Court, probably in Sangamon County (Springfield). He has until Monday to do so. "The opponents (on the board) said it is the clear intent of the state constitution that sitting judges have no other option but retention," said Cook, a Republican candidate for St. Clair County circuit clerk. Original Story BELLEVILLE Is a judge acting unethically if he maneuvers to keep his job by choosing to run in a partisan election, thus avoiding the higher vote threshold required for retention in a nonpartisan vote? A small band of sign-waving protesters who marched outside the St. Clair County Building here Tuesday morning made that complaint. The protesters, spurred by local Republican leaders, oppose the strategy of Circuit Judges John Baricevic, Robert Haida and Robert LeChien. They made plans to resign their posts and run in a partisan election to get them back, which requires only a majority vote. Otherwise, they would have to file for retention the standard route for Illinois circuit judges to stay on the bench which requires approval of 60 percent of the voters. The Illinois State Board of Elections is to meet Wednesday in Chicago to consider a formal complaint by Belleville City Clerk Dallas Cook, a Republican, who wants the board to force the three judges to seek retention. Cook also is seeking to unseat Circuit Clerk Kahalah Clay, a Democrat. Both face no opposition in their respective party primaries on March 15. Cook was one of the dozen demonstrators who stood on the steps of the county building in 20-degree chill. Mary Thurman, secretary of the county GOP, praised Cook for filing his complaint with the election board. She accused the judges of trying to deceive the public. What they are doing is absolutely unethical. Inside his courtroom a short time later, Baricevic, the circuits chief judge, said he, Haida and LeChien are absolutely convinced that our action is legal and ethical. The state election board is set to vote during its meeting, which begins at 10:30 a.m. Working in the judges favor is that a hearing examiner, lawyer David Herman, of Springfield, has recommended that the board reject Cooks complaint. Heres how the situation unfolds: Circuit judges in Illinois are first elected as partisan candidates, then typically seek retention every six years a system similar to one used by sitting judges in St. Louis and St. Louis County. Illinois circuit judges keep their jobs by getting at least 60 percent approval. Baricevic, Haida and LeChien submitted resignations that would not be effective until Dec. 4, 2016, and then filed as candidates in the March Democratic primary for the coming vacancies in the jobs they still perform. None has opposition for party nomination, and no Republican has filed to challenge Haida. If Baricevic and LeChien defeat GOP opponents on Nov. 8, all three would return to the bench two days after their resignations took effect. Baricevic presumably faces Republican attorney Ronald Duebbert of Belleville. County Associate Judge Laninya Cason filed to be LeChiens Republican opponent. In 2006, former Circuit Judge Lloyd Cueto followed the same strategy and kept his job by winning as a Democratic candidate with a 56 percent voter majority less than what retention would have required. Cook noted Cuetos move, complaining in Tuesdays protest: It happened before and nobody stopped it. If this has to go to the Illinois Supreme Court, thats where we will take it. If the judges prevail Wednesday, Cook will have until Monday to file an appeal with the Circuit Court in Belleville. PAST SCANDAL LOOMS Both sides say the scandal involving former judges Michael Cook and Joe Christ looms over the judicial elections. Christ, a new associate judge, died of a cocaine overdose on March 10, 2013, at Judge Cooks family hunting lodge. Judge Cook later was sentenced to two years in federal prison for possession of heroin and for being a drug user in possession of a firearm. (Dallas Cook said he is not related to Judge Cook.) Thurman said during the rally Tuesday that the three judges fear voter outrage over the scandal. Baricevic said the scandal does figure into their thinking, but not for the reason Thurman expressed. Baricevic said Dallas Cook and others, including local radio personality Bob Romanik, have promised vigorous campaigns to unseat the judges. Citing state Supreme Court rules on judicial conduct, Baricevic said he and his colleagues would be unable to defend themselves from smear campaigns if they sought retention. Retentions used to be low-key events, he said. Then the Chamber of Commerce began dumping money on campaigns against Democratic judges. If we run for retention, we cant talk about it. That inability to respond would result in a reduction of votes. Certainly we are concerned. We like our jobs. In pleadings to the state election board, Dallas Cook and the three judges cited the Illinois Constitution. Cook said the retention system was designed to replace partisan politics in keeping or ousting sitting judges. Its section on the state judiciary outlines how judges may seek retention and how vacancies are filled by general election or appointment. The judges note the constitution says they may seek retention. In his report to the state board, Herman writes, Given a permissive reading of the term may, (the constitution) is interpreted to mean that although a sitting judge may file a declaration of candidacy to succeed himself, he is not required to. Herman also notes there is no prohibition against a sitting judge seeking election to a judgeship. Thus, he endorses their strategy as legal. A meeting set for Wednesday evening about the summer closure of Beaumont-Antire Road along Interstate 44 in the High Ridge/Eureka area has been canceled. The Missouri Department of Transportation had planned to give details of the project, which will shut down the road for up to 45 days. But the open-house meeting was to be held in the Rockwood Administrative Center Annex in Eureka and Rockwood is among the long list of districts to call off classes Wednesday after the region received two to three inches of snow. MoDOT intends to reschedule the meeting within the next few weeks. A roughly 1-mile stretch of Beaumont-Antire Road is set to close sometime after Memorial Day. Crews will rip up the road and put down new base rock and pavement along the stretch between the Interstate 44 interchange and Bussen Road. A few thousand cars a day travel on that section of road. MoDOT will use a detour so people can still get to the Beaumont Scout Reservation, which includes Camp Grizzly, Cub World, Camp May and the Nagel Explorer Base, as well as the Jay Henges Shooting Range, which is under the umbrella of the Missouri Department of Conservation. LONDON MARKET CLOSE: Stocks pull back as pressure on BoE to hike rates Wednesday, October 19, 2022 - 17:20 The optimism in equity markets in London faded on Wednesday, with stocks pulled back as consumer inflation in the UK was hotter than expected. The FTSE 100 index closed down 11.75 points, or 0.2%, at 6,924.99. The FTSE 250 ended down a heftier 281.76 points, or 1.6%, at 17,247.55. The AIM All-Share lost 9.51 points, or 1.2%, at 785.97. The Cboe UK 100 closed 0.2% lower at 692.60, the Cboe UK 250 fell 1.5% to 14,806.44, and the Cboe Small Companies closed 0.7% lower at 12,369.96. In European equities on Wednesday afternoon, the CAC 40 in Paris lost 0.4%, and the DAX 40 in Frankfurt gave back 0.2%. The pound fell to $1.1242 Wednesday evening from $1.1291 late Tuesday. New data showed consumer inflation in the UK was shoved back into double digits in September, which turns the spotlight firmly onto the Bank of England. The consumer price index rose by 10.1% in September from a year before, according to the Office for National Statistics. The inflation rate picked up from 9.9% in August and returned to the same rate as recorded in July. The latest figure came in marginally hotter-than-expected, with a reading of 10% expected, according to FXStreet. AJ Bell's Danni Hewson said stretching household budgets to cover the "basic necessities of life has become harder and harder". "Cutbacks have already been made. Big name brands ditched for value lines in the weekly food shop, thermostats have been dialled down, non-essential journeys put off or abandoned altogether," she continued. "The fact that food and energy costs were the main drivers for September Wellesbourne Airfield The Pottertons worker of 30 years was volunteered for the post by his late wife Eileen and initially was assistant mace bearer. This entailed carrying the ceremonial mace in front of the Mayor of Warwick at all official events, rain or shine. Derek also saw service with the Royal Navy in Korea, Malaya and the Far East and because of this, is Chairman of the Royal Naval Association in Warwick. He has also volunteered at the Iris Lees Day Centre. President of the Warwick Rotary Club, Jon Wassall presented Derek with his award which includes a cheque for a charity of his choice and expressed his admiration for his service to the community of Warwick. Wellesbourne Airfield Kate Brunner QC, prosecuting, has told the jury a 999 call was made from Mr Cornets home at shortly after 11pm, and paramedics arrived to find him lying bleeding on the patio. Edward Cornet had been stabbed three times in his chest and the knife had gone into his heart and, despite the efforts of the paramedics, he died later that night. The jury heard there was no dispute it was Merrilees, whose girlfriend had made the 999 call, who had stabbed Mr Cornet with a kitchen knife which was found in a flower bed. The issue was expected to be whether he had done so in defence of himself or another following what neighbours described as a heated argument between the two men. On the second day of the trial consultant forensic toxicologist Simon Elliott said he was provided with a sample of Merrilees blood, which had been taken some time after his arrest, and was asked to back-calculate what his alcohol level would have been at the time of the stabbing. He confirmed that, in doing so, he had to make certain assumptions, including that there had been no drinking immediately before the sample was taken, and that all the alcohol consumed had been absorbed into the body, which he said takes about an hour. And Mr Elliott told the jury: The result was that the concentration at approximately 11.12pm would have been 180ml per decilitre. The legal limit for driving is 80. He confirmed that there was no evidence that either Merrilees or Mr Cornet had consumed drugs apart from those administered to the victim by medics. Asked about Mr Cornets alcohol level he said he was given samples of urine and the vitreous humour from his eye, from which he obtained readings of 110 and 89 respectively. We can conclude that alcohol has been consumed at some point prior to death. But the evidence given to us was that there had been a blood transfusion, which can cause complications in relation to the analysis of blood. Mr Elliott said it was not possible to back-calculate from post mortem samples. Miss Brunner asked him: Given what you know about the treatment, and that he had been given 21 units of blood, are you able to say whether his blood/alcohol concentration was likely to be lower or higher? Mr Elliott said the reading he obtained from the urine would equate to a reading of 83 in blood, which was just over the legal drink-driving limit, but that it was likely to have been higher at the time he was stabbed. Jane Bickerstaff QC, defending, put to him: Would you agree that the best evidence as to how affected someone was by alcohol at a particular time may well be from people who saw them and dealt with them at the time? Mr Elliott agreed. She pointed out that as well as a blood transfusion, Mr Cornet had been put on a saline drip, commenting: So effectively hes having 21 units of his blood, with alcohol in it, replaced with clean blood, and the saline to replace lost fluid. If for a couple of hours prior to his death he was on a drip, thats going to filter through his body and start filling his bladder. So you could not even begin to guess how much alcohol he had in his system at the time of the incident. Again Mr Elliott agreed. The trial continues. Wellesbourne Airfield Mr Holofcener, who is also a playwright as well as a sculptor, and he would like to have his work of art unveiled in Bancroft Gardens on his 90th birthday on 23rd February. He proposes to travel from America with his family to attend the event. At a special meeting on Monday Stratford District Councils ruling cabinet will be asked to accept Mr Holofceners offer. This week Mr Holocener said: The Shakespeare project began in 2011 with a commission from a London group planning to erect a theatre in Shoreditch, modelled after the original Burbage Theatre. I was to place the Bard seated on a bench. However, I completed a maquette with Shakespeare not seated but with one foot on a bench, welcoming visitors to his theatre. Sadly, the theatre project never reached fruition, but I decided to proceed with the life-size portrait. This is the second Shakespeare statue suggested for Stratford this year. The other, by James Butler RA, has been proposed to be erected on the roundabout at the top of Bridge Street. - This story was been updated on Thursday, 21st January, as it originally wrongly said Mr Holofcener would be charging Stratford District Council a fee to keep his statue in place beyond this year. Editor. Wellesbourne Airfield He told the Herald: In the last three and a half years Stratford District Council has spent over 2 million on planning appeals, most of which went on planning applications refused against the advice of its own officers. It includes over 1.4 million on lawyers and consultants fees, and over 600,000 on costs awarded against the council to developers who have appealed successfully to the government against the councils decisions. To put that in a financial context, council tax - which raises just over 6 million annually for the district - could be reduced by over ten per cent if the council behaved more responsibly when making planning decisions. He conceded that it was the job of a planning committee to make decisions which might sometimes not accord with the advice it had been given. However, when the decision is clearly against national or local policy (agreed by the council itself) which its officers are paid to interpret, then in all likelihood an ensuing appeal will be lost and the costs paid by the local taxpayer, he said. Since 2012-13 there have been only three cases where the officers recommendation to give approval have been overturned by planning committees and the decisions subsequently upheld by government inspectors, compared with at least 13 cases where the government inspector has backed the officers advice to grant permission, overturning the committees decision in the process. The council has clearly got the balance wrong. Mr Deegan added: The strong suspicion is that planning committees in Stratford are simply playing to the gallery when local opponents of development turn up at meetings to object to a planning application, without any real basis for an objection. The easy populist option for a committee is then to refuse the application, knowing full well that its decision is likely to be overturned on appeal at a cost to the local taxpayer. The council needs to change its ways to avoid unnecessary costs in the future, and to play fair with applicants seeking approval for entirely justifiable development proposals - but that may require a level of bravery we dont currently witness. Responding to Mr Deegans criticisms, Cllr Chris Saint (Cons, Shipston North), the leader the district council, said: Each case is judged on its merits and decisions are made in line with the strength of the case. While we are disappointed in not winning more appeals, we must remember that democracy means that members of the council take decisions that reflect the will of the people that elect them. We are defending our communities and that comes with a cost and sometimes we lose. The title of worlds most luxurious cruise ship may need to be updated to ships as Regent Seven Seas Cruises announced today plans for an extensive, $125 million fleet-wide refurbishment program. Beginning with Seven Seas Navigator this spring, the public spaces and suites to be refurbished will feature the same elegant style and indisputable attention to detail famously featured on Seven Seas Explorer, providing guests with a consistent look-and-feel, no matter which Regent Seven Seas Cruises ship they choose to sail. The two-year $125 million investment includes significant renovations of most public spaces along with a complete redesign of all categories of suites. Seven Seas Navigator, the lines most intimate ship carrying just 490-guests, will be the first to receive this luxurious upgrade, followed by Seven Seas Voyager in late 2016 and Seven Seas Mariner in the spring of 2017. Seven Seas Navigator will emerge essentially a brand new ship following the upcoming dry dock, with all suite categories, all lounges, the library, casino, boutiques, reception area, and signature restaurants Compass Rose and La Veranda having recently been completely renovated. Seven Seas Navigator is one of our most beloved ships, so its fitting that she is the first to undergo this extraordinary refurbishment, said Jason Montague, president and chief operating officer for Regent Seven Seas Cruises. These renovations will bring a new level of elegance to the Regent Seven Seas Cruises fleet, strengthening our position as the undisputed leader in luxury cruising, operating the most luxurious ships at sea. The refurbishments on Seven Seas Navigator comprise the first phase of the $125 million renovation project. The ships renovations will commence when it enters dry dock in Marseille, France on March 31. The project will be completed by April 13, when the ship embarks on the 10-night Flawless French Riviera voyage from Barcelona to Rome, with calls across Spain, France, Monaco and Italy. Some highlights of the upcoming Seven Seas Navigator refurbishment include: Navigator Suite: The spacious Navigator Suite will be updated with a fresh new design, featuring a crisp and elegant look. The bedroom features the new custom-made Elite Slumber Bed, dressed in luxurious 100% cotton sateen bedding. In both the bedroom and living room, an ebony-black wooden vanity with white marble top stretches the length of the room, harmonizing beautifully with the sultry green and yellow accent furniture, draperies and new carpeting. The spacious Navigator Suite will be updated with a fresh new design, featuring a crisp and elegant look. The bedroom features the new custom-made Elite Slumber Bed, dressed in luxurious 100% cotton sateen bedding. In both the bedroom and living room, an ebony-black wooden vanity with white marble top stretches the length of the room, harmonizing beautifully with the sultry green and yellow accent furniture, draperies and new carpeting. Penthouse, Concierge and Deluxe Suites: The largest collection of suites onboard the ship will receive a luxurious new look. The contemporary design accentuates the spaciousness of the suites. A stunning padded leather headboard supports the Elite Slumber Bed in the bedroom and the sitting area features a plush sofa with a stylish accent table and new artwork. The largest collection of suites onboard the ship will receive a luxurious new look. The contemporary design accentuates the spaciousness of the suites. A stunning padded leather headboard supports the Elite Slumber Bed in the bedroom and the sitting area features a plush sofa with a stylish accent table and new artwork. Reception Area: Guests first exposure to the renovations will take place in the completely-redesigned reception area, where contemporary and classical design elements seamlessly meet. Marble inlay flooring replete with a compass-like design and polished stone walls with metal inlays guides guests to the dark wooden reception desk. Illuminating the reception area is a gypsum diamond cut lighting fixture embedded in the oval alabaster ceiling, evoking stylish elegance. Guests first exposure to the renovations will take place in the completely-redesigned reception area, where contemporary and classical design elements seamlessly meet. Marble inlay flooring replete with a compass-like design and polished stone walls with metal inlays guides guests to the dark wooden reception desk. Illuminating the reception area is a gypsum diamond cut lighting fixture embedded in the oval alabaster ceiling, evoking stylish elegance. Compass Rose : The ships flagship restaurant will be grander and more resplendent than ever before. Throughout the spacious, 384-seat dining room are subtle geometric patterns underscored by silver leaf, pewter and antique bronze elements. A beautifully ornate silver-leaf feature wall highlights one end of the dining room, while oversized windows run along both sides of the restaurant to provide incredible ocean vistas. Grand crystal chandeliers are enhanced by recessed ceiling lights, providing a dramatic dining experience for guests seated at intimate tables ringed by sleek leather chairs adorned with swirls of celestial blue fabric. : The ships flagship restaurant will be grander and more resplendent than ever before. Throughout the spacious, 384-seat dining room are subtle geometric patterns underscored by silver leaf, pewter and antique bronze elements. A beautifully ornate silver-leaf feature wall highlights one end of the dining room, while oversized windows run along both sides of the restaurant to provide incredible ocean vistas. Grand crystal chandeliers are enhanced by recessed ceiling lights, providing a dramatic dining experience for guests seated at intimate tables ringed by sleek leather chairs adorned with swirls of celestial blue fabric. La Veranda : Effortlessly chic, La Veranda will feature a fresh and airy design that is accentuated by a wealth of natural light from floor-to-ceiling windows that encircle the restaurant. Guests can enjoy casual indoor and al fresco dining with incredible ocean views, and dine from a delectable buffet for breakfast and lunch. Each evening, the restaurant transforms into an elegant fine dining restaurant, Sette Mari La Veranda, for dinner. : Effortlessly chic, La Veranda will feature a fresh and airy design that is accentuated by a wealth of natural light from floor-to-ceiling windows that encircle the restaurant. Guests can enjoy casual indoor and al fresco dining with incredible ocean views, and dine from a delectable buffet for breakfast and lunch. Each evening, the restaurant transforms into an elegant fine dining restaurant, Sette Mari La Veranda, for dinner. Galileo Lounge : True to its name, the Galileo Lounge on Deck 11 conveys a celestial feel, beginning with its tempered glass double-door entrance trimmed with an abstract design reminiscent of the solar system and featuring a decorative sun-shaped handle. That theme extends inside the 132-seat cocktail lounge, where a night-black oval-shaped ceiling twinkling with fiber-optic stars overlooks the inlaid wooden dance floor. Guests can be immersed in the action, or retreat to high-backed wing chairs that line the rooms windows. : True to its name, the Galileo Lounge on Deck 11 conveys a celestial feel, beginning with its tempered glass double-door entrance trimmed with an abstract design reminiscent of the solar system and featuring a decorative sun-shaped handle. That theme extends inside the 132-seat cocktail lounge, where a night-black oval-shaped ceiling twinkling with fiber-optic stars overlooks the inlaid wooden dance floor. Guests can be immersed in the action, or retreat to high-backed wing chairs that line the rooms windows. Navigator Lounge / Coffee Connection : By day, these intimate Deck 6 venues connected by a central walkway are bathed in natural light from a bank of windows overlooking the sea. The new design and furnishings enhance that airy look, with cream-colored fabrics on chairs and draperies, and white marble topped tables with hammered copper accents. By night, the Navigator Lounge transforms into a small night club, with a Steinway piano as the centerpiece. Adding to the elegance are leather-wrapped columns with a copper-topped capital and dark wooden base. : By day, these intimate Deck 6 venues connected by a central walkway are bathed in natural light from a bank of windows overlooking the sea. The new design and furnishings enhance that airy look, with cream-colored fabrics on chairs and draperies, and white marble topped tables with hammered copper accents. By night, the Navigator Lounge transforms into a small night club, with a Steinway piano as the centerpiece. Adding to the elegance are leather-wrapped columns with a copper-topped capital and dark wooden base. Library: The bright yet intimate library exudes comfort and charm. From its faux fireplace to cream-colored sofas resting atop a glistening marble floor, the room is reminiscent of a library found in a residential estate home. Ringing the room are dark wood book shelves encased in glass, while a glistening, copper-adorned chandelier serves as the rooms glistening centerpiece. Its the ideal spot for reading and quiet reflection. Following the dry dock, Seven Seas Navigator will spend the summer traversing the Mediterranean and late fall in South Africa. In 2017, Seven Seas Navigator will offer Navigate the World, Regent Seven Seas Cruises first world cruise in six years. Beginning and ending in Miami, the cruise will circumnavigate the globe in 128 nights, calling on six continents, 31 countries, 62 distinct ports and exploring 29 UNESCO World Heritage sites. (Updated - January 20, 2016 5:31 PM EST) Sarepta Therapeutics (NASDAQ: SRPT) FDA Panel Postponed Due to Weather UPDATED INFORMATION (as of 1/20/16) : The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is postponing the meeting of the Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drugs Advisory Committee scheduled for January 22, 2016. The postponement is due to inclement weather forecasted for the Washington, DC area. A future meeting date will be announced in the Federal Register. ORIGINAL INFORMATION Center Date Time Location CDER January 22, 2016 8:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. FDA White Oak Campus 10903 New Hampshire Avenue Building 31 Conference Center The Great Room (Rm. 1503) Silver Spring, Maryland Agenda The committee will discuss new drug application 206488, eteplirsen injection for intravenous infusion, sponsored by Sarepta Therapeutics, Inc., for the treatment of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) in patients who have a confirmed mutation of the DMD gene that is amenable to exon 51 skipping. Meeting Materials FDA intends to make background material available to the public no later than 2 business days before the meeting. If FDA is unable to post the background material on its Web site prior to the meeting, the background material will be made publicly available at the location of the advisory committee meeting, and the background material will be posted on FDAs Web site after the meeting. Background material is available at: 2016 Meeting Materials, Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drugs Advisory Committee Public Participation Information Interested persons may present data, information, or views, orally or in writing, on issues pending before the committee. Written submissions may be made to the contact person on or before January 7, 2016. Oral presentations from the public will be scheduled between approximately 12:40 p.m. to 2:40 p.m. on January 22, 2016. Those individuals interested in making formal oral presentations should notify the contact person and submit a brief statement of the general nature of the evidence or arguments they wish to present, the names and addresses of proposed participants, and an indication of the approximate time requested to make their presentation on or before December 29, 2015. Time allotted for each presentation may be limited. If the number of registrants requesting to speak is greater than can be reasonably accommodated during the scheduled open public hearing session, FDA may conduct a lottery to determine the speakers for the scheduled open public hearing session. The contact person will notify interested persons regarding their request to speak by December 30, 2015. Webcast Information CDER plans to provide a free of charge, live webcast of the January 22, 2016 meeting of the Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drugs Advisory Committee. While CDER is working to make webcasts available to the public for all advisory committee meetings held at the White Oak campus, there are instances where the webcast transmission is not successful; staff will work to re-establish the transmission as soon as possible. Further information regarding the webcast, including the web address for the webcast, will be made available at least 2 days in advance of the meeting at the following website: 2016 Meeting Materials, Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drugs Advisory Committee CDER plans to post archived webcasts after the meeting, however, in cases where transmission was not successful, archived webcasts will not be available. You've probably heard of a dead cat bounce, but have you ever heard of a dead bird bounce? Look at the chart of Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) today to see one in action. Trading down as much as 7% earlier despite rumors in the market that Rupert Murdoch's News Corp was buying a stake, shares notably strengthen at the time when the market was at its weakest. Share momentum continued with the stock moving up as much as 14% before fading part of the move. Shares are now trading up 5% to $17.58 with a day range of $15.48-$19.04. The rumors is unlikely the reason for the rally (it has also now been denied). The reason for the rally is likely an activist or other hedge fund began an aggressive accumulation of the stock on the washout... at least that's what the action points to. As StreetInsider said earlier this month, the company is ripe for an activist investor that could push the company into a sale. Accuris Networks Wi-Fi Server Platform Simplifies Wi-Fi Service Delivery, Connects Cobalt to Mobile Data Networks Worldwide DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Cobalt Networks, a provider of Wi-Fi wireless broadband services in the Caribbean, is deploying the Accuris Networks Wi-Fi Server platform to enable Cobalts Wi-Fi networks to provide in-bound roaming for its mobile customers. With the platform, Cobalt is able to offer seamless, carrier-grade Wi-Fi network capacity for data roaming and domestic data offload services. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160120006407/en/ A woman using Wi-Fi service in the Caribbean (Photo: Business Wire) Accuris Networks is a leader in enabling Wi-Fi roaming and hub services for Wi-Fi network providers and mobile network operators. With the Accuris Wi-Fi Server platform, service providers can quickly interconnect with other Wi-Fi providers and mobile operators to enable low-cost access to data services while subscribers are traveling as well as domestic data offload. Cobalt chose the Accuris Wi-Fi Server platform because it is already in use by leading Wi-Fi roaming providers like AT&T, China Mobile International and Emirates Data Clearing House to support mobile data roaming services, said Paul A. Moore, Chairman & CEO of Cobalt Holdings. The platform gives us access to data roaming services today, including value-added services such as Wi-Fi calling, secure Wi-Fi roaming and domestic offload capabilities. In addition to the services provided by the Accuris Wi-Fi Server platform, by connecting to the Accuris hub service, Cobalt can now support and offload any mobile operator or Wi-Fi provider also connected to the hub. With the Accuris Networks platform, Cobalt Networks can offer people a quality mobile data experience with capabilities such as: Smartphones connect automatically with SIM-based authentication. Tablets and laptops connect through a branded captive portal system. Multiple service plans include time-based pricing (day, week pass), usage based pricing (gigabytes), as well as complimentary affinity-based programs. Support is provided for Wi-Fi calling and texting services from home mobile providers. The platform seamlessly leverages Wi-Fi for local network offload services. Cobalt is aggressively deploying Caribbean island countries with carrier-grade Wi-Fi to take advantage of people traveling to the region to avoid high roaming charges. With a planned fiber-based backbone and the latest Wi-Fi access, Cobalt is a provider of wireless broadband networks in marquee resorts, hotels and venues across the Caribbean. Global mobile data roaming is projected to exceed $50 billion in 2019, and Cobalt is meeting this opportunity with high-capacity, high-performance access networks that delivers a quality mobile Internet experience to people living in and visiting the Caribbean, said Rick Applegate, chief revenue officer for Accuris Networks. About Cobalt Holdings Cobalt Holdings, Inc. is a privately held wireless broadband development Company, with headquarters in Lake Bluff, Illinois. The Company is launching the first exclusive software-defined 4G /LTE and Wi-Fi wireless broadband networks in targeted markets in the Caribbean Region, including Cuba. The Company is acquiring strategic wireless spectrum, operating licenses and fiber-optic connectivity as part of a continued business development initiative to provide seamless wireless broadband coverage to enterprises, tourists, cruise ship passengers and crews, and local businesses, including major destination resorts throughout the Caribbean. The Companys longer-term strategy for the region includes owning and operating key undersea fiber-optic networks, including the goal of deploying a fiber-optic cable between the U.S. and Cuba, as well as between the U.S. and other islands/destinations. For more information, go to: www.cobaltholdings.net. About Accuris Networks Accuris Networks helps service providers monetize the connectivity between networks. Accuris solutions enable subscribers to move seamlessly and securely between LTE, GSM, Wi-Fi, IPX and fixed networks while ensuring a superior quality of experience. Accuris Networks is a trusted supplier to blue-chip operators around the world including AT&T, Bell Canada, China Mobile, EDCH, Mobily, Telefonica and more. Visit us at www.accuris-networks.com or tweet @AccurisNetworks. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160120006407/en/ For Accuris Networks Steve Shaw, +353 (1) 881 8700 Vice President, Marketing [email protected] or For Cobalt Holdings, Inc. Phil Allen, +1 303-898-0625 Investor Relations & Corporate Communications [email protected] Source: Accuris Networks MIDDLETOWN, Conn., Jan. 20, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- PAS Technologies Inc. (www.pas-technologies.com) announced that its Hillsboro, Ohio facility was named a finalist in the 2015 IndustryWeek Best Plants Awards competition. PAS is a specialized provider of cost-effective original equipment manufacturing (OEM) and maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) products, services and solutions for the commercial and military aerospace, industrial gas turbine, and oil and gas markets. The PAS Hillsboro, Ohio facility is one of the countrys premier manufacturers of OEM aircraft engine-ready parts and a provider of MRO special processes and services for commercial and military aircraft engine components. The facility repairs and rebuilds engine components to OEM specifications, saving aircraft owners and operators a significant amount of money over the purchase of new components. The IndustryWeek annual salute to outstanding North American manufacturing facilities serves two purposes: to recognize plants that are on the leading edge of efforts to increase competitiveness, enhance customer satisfaction, and create stimulating and rewarding work environments; and to encourage other manufacturing managers and work teams to emulate the honorees by adopting world-class practices, technologies, and improvement strategies. Entrants are judged against a number of exacting criteria, including whether they have made a comprehensive effort to achieve world-class manufacturing capability. PAS Hillsboro was among 20 manufacturing operations that comprise the 2015 slate of IndustryWeek Best Plants finalists. According to IndustryWeek, the finalists demonstrate admirable manufacturing performance metrics, as well as practices that exhibit a comprehensive focus on continuous improvement and customer satisfaction. The Hillsboro operation is a proven supplier of choice, driving world-class performance and delivering operational excellence, having undergone a dynamic transformation during the past three years. The facility expanded its footprint by 70 percent, increased its number of processes to include the OEM of compressor rear frames and turbine airfoils as well as improved the quality of existing processes and output. Further, the facility has improved significantly on a number of key business metrics including on-time delivery, first-pass yield, customer rejection rates, safety, and customer satisfaction. PAS was not among the winners announced by IndustryWeek on January 19, 2016. The winners of the 2015 Best Plants Award will be honored at the 2016 IndustryWeek Manufacturing & Technology Conference and Expo, scheduled for May 3-5, 2016 in Chicago, Illinois. While our Hillsboro, Ohio facility did not win an IndustryWeek Best Plant Award for 2015, we are pleased to have our facility selected as a finalist for this prestigious accreditationand especially honored to be included with such extraordinary companies in the manufacturing sector, said Thomas C. Hutton, Chief Executive Officer of PAS Technologies. As the premier provider of OEM engine-ready parts and MRO special processes and services, PAS Hillsboro is a proven supplier of choice, driving world-class performance and trusted to deliver operational excellence. PAS Technologies Inc. (www.pas-technologies.com) is a privately held corporation and operates globally in six locations including Hillsboro, Ohio; Kansas City, Missouri; Phoenix, Arizona; Manchester, Connecticut; Singapore; and Romania. The company specializes in providing cost-effective OEM and MRO solutions for the aerospace, oil and gas, and Industrial Gas Turbine markets. By using innovative and proprietary high-technology processes, along with solutions licensed from OEMs, the company provides great value to its customers. PAS specializes in working with customers whose components are exposed to high wear, high heat, and corrosive environments. Media Contact: Randi Edwards PAS Technologies Inc. Phone +1.860.704.6422 [email protected] Source: PAS Technologies Inc. NEW YORK, Jan. 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Below are experts from the ProfNet network that are available to discuss timely issues in your coverage area. You can also submit a query to the hundreds of thousands of experts in our network it's easy and free! Just fill out the query form to get started: http://prn.to/alertswire. EXPERT ROUNDUP Supreme Court to Rule on Obama's Immigration Plan EXPERT ALERTS 40th Anniversary of Buckley v. Valeo MEDIA JOBS Staff Writer Miami New Times (FL) Managing Editor Las Vegas Review-Journal (NV) Research Reporter/Editor, Journalist's Resource, Harvard (MA) OTHER NEWS & RESOURCES Tips for Pushing Your Creativity in 2016 Grammar Hammer: Six Words to Banish in 2016 Media Insider: HuffPost Video Refocuses, Drone Journalism, More EXPERT ROUNDUP: Supreme Court to Rule on Obama's Immigration Plan Following are experts who can discuss the Supreme Court's plan to rule on Obama's immigration actions: Gordon QuanImmigration LawyerQuan Law Group, PLLC, Houston"The fact that the Supreme Court has elected to take the case in such a rapid manner shows great interest. Their request to focus on the 'take care' clause indicates that they question the standing the states have presented based on damages that these states would suffer. At the heart of the case is the power of the executive branch to interpret enforcement of federal immigration law. Legal precedents have deferred this authority exclusively to the executive branch. This case tests that authority's limits. One might question whether Judge Hanen was correct in issuing his injunction. But he never ruled on the constitutionality of the executive orders, but only issued an injunction because he did not want the 'toothpaste out of the tube' without a full hearing."Quan is a nationally respected immigration lawyer who has practiced immigration law for 30 years. He is Board Certified in Immigration and Nationality Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, is Chambers rated, and hosts a weekly radio show on immigration law.Contact: Mary Flood, [email protected] Jeffrey A. SegalDistinguished Professor of Political Science, College of Arts and SciencesStony Brook University"The president has discretion as to how scarce law-enforcement resources are used. Choosing not to use such resources to deport parents of U.S. citizens should be within the judgment of the president and not the judiciary."Segal is chair of the political science department and a prominent scholar in the field of law and judicial politics, best known for his Supreme Court expertise. His areas of interest include Supreme Court decision making and the nomination/confirmation of Supreme Court justices. He has co-authored more than 60 articles and seven books on the law, judicial processes, and related subjects. He is available to discuss the Supreme Court, issues surrounding the ruling on Obama's immigration plan, judicial politics, law, and the courts.Contact: Kristy Godette, [email protected] Lori A FloresAssistant Professor of HistoryStony Brook University"What the Supreme Court would determine in the coming months is whether President Obama acted within the bounds of his authority to expand the 2012 DACA program (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), which offers temporary protection from deportation to young people who had no say or power over their migration to this country as children. DACA has allowed these youth to become hardworking and brilliant students -- some of whom I have worked with as a professor -- and to keep contributing to this nation and society. DAPA, the program that Obama would like to extend to these youths' parents, will likewise humanely absorb those immigrant parents who are already here and working in various industries across the United States. What Obama tried to perform though his executive order was not blanket amnesty -- his ruling applies to very specific groups of migrants who are already contributing to our nation through their presence, work, and study (and already, undocumented immigrants have paid billions in taxes). Obama's executive order on immigration was not unconstitutional -- other presidents, including Ronald Reagan (who applied protection to Nicaraguan exiles) and George W. Bush (who did the same for Salvadoran migrants), have done the same. I hope the Supreme Court comes to the conclusion that Obama did not act outside his bounds of authority, but took action that would relieve decades of Congressional gridlock over immigration and acknowledge the historical truth that the United States has been made and shaped by the presence of immigrants."Flores' research and writing focus on Latino life, labor, and politics, particularly when it comes to Mexican Americans, immigration, the U.S.-Mexico border region, and California. She is an expert on the Bracero Program and Mexican guestworkers, the Farmworker rights movement both before and after Cesar Chavez, undocumented immigration, and the working and social relationships between different groups of Latinos. Her other interests are gender, civil rights, and global borderlands history. She is available to discuss immigration, the Supreme Court and Obama's immigration plan, and the U.S.-Mexico border region.Contact: Kristy Godette, [email protected] Victor D. Nieblas PradisPresidentAmerican Immigration Lawyers AssociationPradis practices immigration law in Southern California, where he focuses on DACA, deportation defense, Federal Court litigation, consular abroad processing, immigrant and non-immigrant visas, waivers and appellate work. He graduated from Loyola Law School in 1995 and serves as an adjunct professor of law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. Pradis is the guest legal commentator for several local news broadcasts, including "MundoFox Noticias 22" in Los Angeles, Univision's "Primera Edicion," and MundoFox National News. Nieblas has also hosted a cable television show named "Inmigracion 411," where he provides answers to viewer questions and is recognized as an immigration expert. He is also regularly quoted in major national print media and often appears on national news broadcasts discussing immigration law. He is based in City of Industry, Calif., and is fluent in English and Spanish.Website: http://www.aila.org/content/default.aspx?bc=41451Contact: Belle Woods, [email protected], or George Tzamaras, [email protected] Mustafa TameezManaging DirectorOutreach StrategistsTameez is a national security expert who has consulted for the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. State Department and National Counter-Terrorism Center. He approaches immigration issues from a national security perspective. He has made more than 400 media appearances on MSNBC, Fox and ABC News in Houston, and NPR. He has also been quoted on numerous occasions by The New York Times, Washington Post, and The Guardian.ProfNet Profile: http://www.profnetconnect.com/mitameezContact: Timothy M. Lankford, [email protected] Angela M. BanksProfessor of LawCollege of William and MaryBanks specializes in immigration law, human rights law and contracts. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School, where she served on the Harvard Law Review and the Harvard International Law Journal. Prior to law school, Banks studied at the University of Oxford Centre for Socio-Legal Studies as a Marshall Scholar, where she earned a Master of Letters in Sociology. Prior to joining the faculty, Banks was the Reginald F. Lewis Fellow for Law Teaching at Harvard Law School. She has also served as a legal advisor to Judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald at the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal; an associate at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering in Washington, D.C.; and as law clerk for Judge Carlos F. Lucero of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. Banks received her B.A. in sociology, summa cum laude, from Spelman College.Bio: http://law2.wm.edu/faculty/bios/fulltime/ambank.phpContact: Justin K. Thomas, [email protected] EXPERT ALERTS: 40th Anniversary of Buckley v. ValeoJoel GoraProfessor of LawBrooklyn Law SchoolJan. 30 is the 40th anniversary of Buckley v. Valeo, the Supreme Court case that struck down key pieces of Congress' post-Watergate money in politics reforms, and set the structure of modern campaign finance law. Gora, one of the country's most renowned authorities in the fields of campaign finance law and First Amendment rights, was one of the ACLU lawyers on the case: "Though imperfect in some ways, the decision in Buckley v. Valeo was a landmark of political freedom in its refusal to sanction plenary government control over the very political processes by which government is chosen and held accountable."Gora is the author of "Better Parties, Better Government: A Realistic Program for Campaign Finance Reform" (AEI Press, 2009; with P.J. Wallison) and "The Right to Protest: The Basic ACLU Guide to Free Expression" (Southern Illinois University Press, 1991; with others). Articles he has written include "The Legacy of Buckley v. Valeo," 2 Election Law Journal 55 (2003) and "Buckley v. Valeo: A Landmark of Political Freedom," 33 Akron Law Review 7 (1999). He is based in New York City.Bio: https://www.brooklaw.edu/faculty/directory/facultymember/biography?id=joel.gora&category=ArticlesWebsite: www.brooklaw.eduContact: John Mackin, [email protected] **************** MEDIA JOBS: Following are links to job listings for staff and freelance writers, editors and producers. You can view these and more job listings on our Job Board: https://prnmedia.prnewswire.com/community/jobs/ Staff Writer Miami New Times (FL) Managing Editor Las Vegas Review-Journal (NV) Research Reporter/Editor, Journalist's Resource - Harvard (MA) ***************** OTHER NEWS & RESOURCES: Following are links to other news and resources we think you might find useful. If you have an item you think other reporters would be interested in and would like us to include in a future alert, please drop us a line. TIPS FOR PUSHING YOUR CREATIVITY IN 2016. Think you're not the creative type? Think again! Creativity is an essential part of problem-solving and becoming memorable to our readers. We recently held a Twitter Q&A with creativity and innovation expert Laura Ryan, president and founder of LAMA Innovation, where she explains the difference between creativity and innovation, tips on how to produce better and bolder ideas, and creativity trends we can expect in 2016: http://prn.to/1RMJ9M9 GRAMMAR HAMMER: SIX WORDS TO BANISH IN 2016. Lake Superior State University released its 41st annual list of words they feel should be banished. PR pros and writers weigh in each year and give their lists of the top 10-15 words and phrases they are weary of reading or hearing. Here's our take: http://prn.to/1OoAs6u MEDIA INSIDER: HUFFPOST VIDEO REFOCUSES, DRONE JOURNALISM, MORE. Media Insider is a roundup of journalism, blogging and freelancing stories from the week. In this week's edition: a big pivot for HuffPost Video; eight ways media outlets marked David Bowie's life and death; why 2016 could be a breakout year for drone journalism; and more: http://bit.ly/1n0wj1s **************** PROFNET is an exclusive service of PR Newswire. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150604/220954 To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/profnet-experts-available-on-obamas-immigration-plan-political-reform-300207195.html SOURCE ProfNet Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) negotiator Joaquin Gomez speaks to the media in Havana, Cuba January 13, 2016. REUTERS/Enrique de la Osa By Nelson Acosta HAVANA (Reuters) - Colombia's government and leftist FARC rebels agreed on Tuesday to ask the United Nations Security Council to help monitor and verify a rebel disarmament should the two sides reach a final peace deal to end their 50-year-old war. "We have decided to request the Security Council of the U.N. to establish as of now such a political mission with unarmed observers for a period of 12 months," the two sides said in a joint statement read in Havana, the site of peace talks for the past three years. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said last year he would make such a request of the United Nations. The rebels' willingness to make the request jointly with the government is a sign of progress as the two sides aim to reach a comprehensive peace agreement before a March 23 deadline that negotiators set last year. The Colombians asked that the U.N. body be made up of representatives from Latin American and Caribbean countries. The international monitors would verify a bilateral ceasefire, preside over the FARC's disarmament, settle any disputes and make recommendations. If needed, international participation could be extended for another year, the statement said. "We think this is good news today, transcendental news," said Humberto de la Calle, the government's chief negotiator. Rebel negotiator Ivan Marquez called the agreement a "strong signal." "Peace in Colombia is possible," Marquez said. Santos, who staked his 2014 re-election on the peace talks, has been urgently pressing for a deal to end Latin America's longest war, which has killed 220,000 and displaced millions since 1964. His government and guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) reached a breakthrough on Sept. 23, when they set a six-month deadline for a final agreement, but the FARC has been hedging, indicating March 23 was unrealistic. The talks appeared to regain momentum as Cuban President Raul Castro met with negotiators from both sides on Sunday. Rebel leaders also traveled to Colombia last week to brief combatants in the mountains and jungles. The final agenda point to be negotiated is on reaching a definitive bilateral ceasefire. They have already reached partial agreements on justice, land reform, combating drug trafficking and legalizing the FARC as a political party. Any comprehensive agreement would be placed before Colombian voters for approval. (Reporting by Nelson Acosta; editing by Daniel Trotta, Andrew Hay and Richard Chang) By Timothy Gardner WASHINGTON (Reuters) - For U.S. oilfield services companies suffering the worst revenue slump in decades it would at first seem like a lifeline: The lifting of sanctions on Iran by six world powers reopened the door for their foreign units to return to the OPEC member that needs help to develop its oil reserves. Iran, home to the world's fourth largest crude reserves, is embarking on a $185 billion effort to revive oil and gas projects by 2020 after sanctions halved the country's oil exports and led to neglect of its energy infrastructure. A drop in crude oil prices to 13-year lows has brought drilling come almost to a standstill nearly everywhere else in the world, creating rare commercial prospects for non-U.S. companies such as Saipem, an oilfield subsidiary of Italian major Eni (NYSE: ENI) and Shell , which have already expressed an interest in returning. Yet major U.S. oilfield firms such as Schlumberger Ltd (NYSE: SLB), the worlds largest, and Weatherford International (NYSE: WFT) said they were not pursuing Iran business for now, partly because a complex web of sanctions remained that Washington linked to its allegations of Tehran's support for terrorism and human rights abuses. After the international group known as the P5+1 removed sanctions on Saturday as part of a deal for Tehran to curb its nuclear ambitions, the U.S. Treasury Department issued a general license allowing foreign-based subsidiaries of U.S. companies to trade with Iran for the first time since 2012. But the U.S. government has fined both Weatherford and Schlumberger in the past two years for violating sanctions on Iran and other countries. In 2013 Weatherford agreed to pay $253 million and last year Schlumberger agreed to pay more than $237 million. "You would expect U.S. companies in highly enforced industries like the oil and financial sectors to be initially reluctant," to return to Iran, "until they see more of how the situation plays out, said Ginger Faulk, a lawyer who advises companies on sanctions at Baker Botts. The new Treasury license comes with several strings attached. U.S. citizens, for example, are not allowed to deal with Iran even if they are working with a foreign based affiliate, while more than 225 Iran-linked persons and entities, many of whom control major pieces of Iran's infrastructure, are still off limits by Washington. "Having a truly independent foreign affiliate is harder than it sounds and many companies have found that it is difficult to keep personnel, equipment and operations segregated to the degree that the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Asset Control requires," said Josh Zive, a lawyer at Bracewell, who advises energy companies on sanctions. In addition, companies are hesitant to move in during an election year in the United States, lawyers said. Republican presidential candidates have been critical of Democratic President Barack Obama's nuclear deal with Iran and the next president could potentially remove the general license soon into the first term. "A change in administration means there is potential for stranded investments if there is a policy change," said Zive. He said having those opportunities cut off before they become profitable could become very risky." Weatherford spokeswoman Karen David-Green said the company "currently has no plans to commence operations in Iran of any kind or through any affiliates." When asked if Schlumberger would return to Iran, spokesman Joao Felix said not now. "In the event the U.S. government does materially ease sanctions on Iran, we will evaluate going back in at that time." Three other oilfield service companies, Halliburton (NYSE: HAL), Cameron International (NYSE: CAM) and National Oilwell Varco (NYSE: NOV), did not immediately comment when asked about Iran, in contrast with European oil companies that were quick to express their interest both before and after the deal. Part of the difficulty for U.S. companies in Iran is knowing which supply chains to deal with. Iran's biggest construction firm, Khatam al-Anbiya, and Tidewater Middle East Co, a major port operator in Iran that owns the primary port terminal, remain on Washington's blacklist for their ownership by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. U.S. officials have said that anyone doing business with these banned entities risked incurring harsh penalties. Furthermore, companies that decided to put foreign-based units in Iran would have to publicly declare their actions, which could open them up to political scrutiny. "I think there is going to be very little appetite by U.S. firms to push the envelope. You could pretty easily see one or more congressional committees calling executives up to explain why their foreign sub decided to deal with Iran," said a U.S. compliance official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic. (Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Soyoung Kim and Grant McCool) Workers queue for lunch in front of a poster-size photo of the first alien resident card of former company Chief Executive Dov Charney at the American Apparel factory in downtown Los Angeles, in this October 17, 2008 file photo. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/Fi By Tom Hals WILMINGTON, Del. (Reuters) - American Apparel's chief executive told a bankruptcy judge on Wednesday the retailer could become embroiled in drawn-out litigation if it accepted a takeover bid being championed by its founder and former CEO Dov Charney. Los Angeles-based American Apparel Inc, known for its "Made in the U.S.A" fashion and sexually charged advertising, joined other teen-focused retailers by filing for bankruptcy in October due to changing shopping habits. The company is seeking court approval of a bankruptcy exit plan backed by a group of hedge funds. Charney has objected and is trying to convince the judge a takeover backed by competing investment funds, Hagan Capital Group and Silver Creek Capital Partners, is a better deal. Last week, the company's board rejected the $300 million takeover bid involving Charney. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Brendan Shannon in Wilmington, Delaware, must decide if the hedge fund-backed plan, which has the support of a committee of the company's creditors, is fair and feasible. CEO Paula Schneider said the support of hedge funds that hold its bonds, including Monarch Alternative Capital, was the most critical factor in determining the best way to end the bankruptcy. She said the support of American Apparel's bondholders was paramount. "The affiliation with Dov Charney was not a problem," Schneider testified. Charney's attorney, Steven Kortanek, repeatedly challenged the way the company's investment banker from Moelis, Robert Flachs, reviewed the Charney-Hagan bid. The judge later called the line of questioning "effective." Charney founded American Apparel in 1989, but was fired in December 2014 for allegedly misusing company funds and failing to stop a subordinate from defaming former employees. He has denied the allegations. Schneider told the court that when she joined a year ago, she found a company without cash, long-term planning or proper structure. "There was no org chart. Seventy people told me they had reported to Dov Charney." American Apparel has not been profitable since 2009 and the company blamed its bankruptcy in part on the cost of lawsuits linked to Charney's volatile tenure at the helm. Charney scribbled on a legal pad throughout the hearing and regularly passed folded notes to his attorney. He was expected to take the stand on Wednesday, but his testimony was pushed to Thursday. "I'm anxious," Charney told Reuters at the hearing. "I put a lot of years into this company." (Addition reporting by Tracy Rucinski in Chicago; Editing by Andrew Hay, Jonathan Oatis and Dan Grebler) Can Dundar, editor-in-chief of the Cumhuriyet newspaper (R), is seen during a press freedom march in central Istanbul, Turkey, October 3, 2015. REUTERS/Murad Sezer By Gulsen Solaker ANKARA (Reuters) - Two jailed Turkish editors, accused of spying and helping a terrorist group, have told Reuters in a faxed message from prison that their arrest was designed to send a warning to journalists. Can Dundar, editor-in-chief of the left-wing Cumhuriyet newspaper, and its senior editor Erdem Gul were arrested on Nov. 26 over the publication of footage purporting to show the state intelligence agency helping send weapons to Syria. The issue of Turkey's involvement in Syria is particularly sensitive as the NATO member comes under pressure to take a more active role in the fight against Islamic State militants there. President Tayyip Erdogan has cast the newspaper's coverage as part of a bid to undermine Turkey's standing on the world stage. "Our arrest is a clear message aimed at the press, saying: 'Don't write.' This is a direct drive at self-censorship," the two journalists said in a handwritten fax, cleared by a prison committee that reads inmates' correspondence. A senior government official denied there was any political agenda behind the investigation and said it was purely a legal matter. "There is an open breach of law. Such criticism of the government is unacceptable," the official said. The detention of the two journalists sparked protests in Turkey as well as condemnation from U.S. and European Union officials, concerned that Erdogan and the government are silencing critical voices and exerting too much influence over courts after winning an outright majority in a Nov. 1 election. Erdogan is a vital partner for both Washington and the EU in efforts to combat Islamic State, end Syria's civil war and curb the flow of migrants and refugees to Europe, all factors that may prompt foreign governments to pull their punches over his human rights record. Gul and Dundar, who is also a popular documentary filmmaker, are accused of espionage and aiding a terrorist group. They insist their arrest had no legal basis. "HEAVY PRICE" Cumhuriyet, one of Turkey's oldest newspapers and affiliated with parliament's secular opposition, published photos, videos and a story in May which it said showed intelligence officials transporting arms to Syria in trucks, allegedly to opposition fighters. Erdogan has said the trucks, which were stopped that day by soldiers near the city of Adana en route to the Syrian border, belonged to the intelligence agency. He has said prosecutors had no authority to order the trucks be searched, and that they acted as part of a plot to discredit the Turkish government. At the time, he vowed Cumhuriyet "would pay a heavy price. I won't let go of this." Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who succeeded Erdogan as leader of the governing AK Party, has said a court should try Dundar and Gul for threatening Turkey's strategic interests but that they should not be jailed ahead of that trial. However, they remain in prison some 80 km (50 miles) west of Istanbul, with no indictment or trial date set. "In a country with imprisoned journalists, the media is already under heavy pressure to self-censor. This ... poses a mortal danger for the whole country," the pair said in their faxed statement, dated Jan. 10, in response to written questions from Reuters submitted through their lawyer. The fax was signed by Gul, but the lawyer, Tora Pekin, said he had written on behalf of both journalists. The delay in receiving the response was due to prison rules that allow inmates to send faxes only three days a week, Pekin said. Turkey has about a dozen journalists serving sentences or in pre-trial detention. According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, only China, Egypt, Iran and Eritrea have more. They are mostly leftists, Kurds or members of a religious order led by Fethullah Gulen, a U.S.-based preacher sought by police on terrorism charges in connection with stories his followers ran in papers and TV channels close to the movement. The government says they are all in prison for promoting terrorism or engaging in anti-state activities rather than simply for their journalistic work. Erdogan said in 2014 Turkey has the "world's freest press" because it tolerates insults, defamation and racism, including against him and his family. The two editors were held in solitary confinement for 40 days before being moved to the same prison ward, they said. "Because we think our arrests are not legal but political, it is difficult to guess how long it will last. Our arrests are in themselves a violation of the current law." Their lawyer said the Justice Ministry has blocked applications by more than 100 journalists, as well as foreign officials and non-governmental organizations, to visit them. Only their lawyers, family members and lawmakers are allowed to see the men. Government officials say their detention is a matter for the judiciary, not a political affair, and that as such they cannot intervene. (Writing by Ayla Jean Yackley; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Mark Trevelyan) A pro-democracy demonstrator burns a letter next to pictures of missing staff members of a publishing house and a bookstore, including Gui Minhai, a China-born Swedish national who is the owner of Mighty Current, Cheung Jiping, the business manager of th By Donny Kwok and Anne Marie Roantree HONG KONG (Reuters) - One of Hong Kong's staunchest pro-Beijing lawmakers said a bookseller's tearful confession on state television to a hit-and-run accident more than a decade ago in China is unlikely to appease public concerns that he may have been abducted. The Sunday evening broadcast on China Central Television ended months of mystery over the fate of Gui Minhai, a naturalized Swedish citizen, after he was last seen in October outside his apartment in the Thai seaside town of Pattaya. In the strongest statement yet by anyone in Hong Kong's pro-China camp, Legislative Council President Jasper Tsang said the taped confession by Gui was not enough. "The China Central Television (CCTV) report did not seem to be able to calm the public. As the case drags on, there will be more speculation," Tsang said late on Monday. He said if more details did not come to light, the Hong Kong government should seek assistance from the central government in Beijing. CCTV could not be reached for comment. Since late last year, four other associates of the Hong Kong-based publisher that specializes in selling and publishing gossipy political books on China's Communist Party leaders have been unaccounted for. Hong Kong police confirmed late on Monday that they had been advised by authorities in China's southern Guangdong province that one of them, British passport holder Lee Bo, was in the mainland. Police said Guangdong officials also sent them a letter from Lee addressed to the Hong Kong government, and that Lee's wife confirmed the writing was his. Police said it was similar to one he purportedly sent to his wife in which he said he "voluntarily" went to the mainland. INTERNATIONAL CONCERNS The disappearances have prompted fears that mainland Chinese authorities may be using shadowy tactics that erode the "one country, two systems" formula under which Hong Kong has been governed since its return to China from British rule in 1997. "We should not speculate and criticisms should be based on fact," Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying said on Tuesday. "I and SAR government are also very concerned about the case." Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said on Tuesday that he had nothing more to add about Gui's case as Chinese media had already given a "rather detailed" report on his case. On Lee's case, he said he "did not understand" it. Hong Kong was returned to China with a guarantee that it would have greater freedoms and separate laws from the mainland for 50 years. The publishers' books are banned on the mainland, although they are popular with Chinese tourists in Hong Kong. "We will continue to raise this case at the highest levels," a British Foreign and Commonwealth Office's spokesperson said in an email response to Reuters, referring to Lee. Sweden and the United States have also expressed concern at the disappearances. Some observers, including journalists and commentators, highlighted on social media what they believed were discrepancies in the state media reports on Gui, including what appeared to be changes in the color of his undershirt in the course of the CCTV footage. Gui Minhai's daughter Angela said Swedish authorities had told her there was no record of her father leaving Thailand, and that staff at his condominium said he had just returned from grocery shopping when he went missing. "I still think he was abducted," said Angela Gui, 21, in a telephone interview from Britain, where she is studying. (Reporting by Donny Kwok and Anne Marie Roantree; Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in BEIJING, Patpicha Tanakasempipat and Simon Webb in BANGKOK; Writing by Clare Baldwin; Editing by Ryan Woo) DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Ukraine plans soon to launch a fresh diplomatic initiative to recover the Crimean peninsula from Russia which annexed it in 2014, Finance Minister Natalia Yaresko told Reuters on Wednesday. "We don't agree that Crimea has gone. This will be the year we really begin pressing forward on a process to return Crimea," Yaresko said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. Russia seized the Black Sea peninsula in March 2014 in a military operation denounced by the West, which imposed retaliatory sanctions to punish Moscow that remain in place. More recently Ukraine cut power supplies to the region and its president, Petro Poroshenko, said power would be restored if Crimea were recognized as part of Ukraine. However, Russia has given no sign that it would ever consider returning Crimea, which has a majority ethnic Russian population and holds a special place in Russian history and culture. Last month Moscow issued a new banknote dedicated to Crimea. Yaresko said Ukraine aimed to create a forum along the lines of the so-called Geneva format, a body that included Russia, Ukraine, the European Union and the United States and operated briefly in 2014. Russia has ruled out reviving the forum. "We are looking to establish something bigger than the Geneva format to begin dialogue on how to return Crimea to Ukraine," Yaresko said. Some legal experts believe Ukraine can successfully use Crimea's annexation as a lever against Russia if Moscow carries out its threat to take Kiev to a British court over non-payment of a $3 billion debt Yaresko declined to comment on that possibility. (Reporting by Sujata Rao; Editing by Gareth Jones) UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION Washington, D.C. 20549 FORM 8-K CURRENT REPORT Pursuant to Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 Date of Report (Date of the earliest event reported): January 19, 2016 GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY (Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter) New York 001-00035 14-0689340 (State or other jurisdiction of incorporation) (Commission File Number) (I.R.S. Employer Identification No.) 3135 Easton Turnpike, Fairfield, Connecticut 06828-0001 (Address of principal executive offices) (Zip Code) 203-373-2211 (Registrants telephone number, including area code) Not Applicable (Former name or former address, if changed since last report) Check the appropriate box below if the Form 8-K filing is intended to simultaneously satisfy the filing obligation of the registrant under any of the following provisions: x Written communications pursuant to Rule 425 under the Securities Act (17 CFR 230.425) Soliciting material pursuant to Rule 14a-12 under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.14a-12) Pre-commencement communications pursuant to Rule 14d-2(b) under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.14d-2(b)) Pre-commencement communications pursuant to Rule 13e-4(c) under the Exchange Act (17 CFR 240.13e-4(c)) Item 3.03 Material Modification to Rights of Security Holders. The information contained in Items 5.03 and 8.01 is incorporated by reference herein. Item 5.03 Amendments to Articles of Incorporation or Bylaws; Change in Fiscal Year. On January 20, 2016, General Electric Company (GE) issued 5,694,493 shares of its 5.00% Fixed-to-Floating Rate Non-Cumulative Perpetual Preferred Stock, Series D, par value $1.00 per share, with a liquidation preference of $1,000 per share (the New GE Preferred Stock). The New GE Preferred Stock was issued in connection with GEs offer to exchange (the Exchange Offer), on a one-for-one basis, the New GE Preferred Stock for its issued and outstanding series of preferred stock, consisting of its (i) 4.00% Fixed-to-Floating Rate Non-Cumulative Perpetual Preferred Stock, Series A, par value $1.00 per share, with a liquidation preference of $1,000 per share (the Series A Preferred Stock), (ii) 4.10% Fixed-to-Floating Rate Non-Cumulative Perpetual Preferred Stock, Series B, par value $1.00 per share, with a liquidation preference of $1,000 per share (the Series B Preferred Stock) and (iii) 4.20% Fixed-to-Floating Rate Non-Cumulative Perpetual Preferred Stock, Series C, par value $1.00 per share, with a liquidation preference of $1,000 per share (the Series C Preferred Stock, and together with the Series A Preferred Stock and the Series B Preferred Stock, the Old Preferred Stock). The terms of the New GE Preferred Stock are more fully described in the Certificate of Amendment (the Certificate of Amendment) to GEs restated Certificate of Incorporation (as amended, the Certificate of Incorporation). A copy of the Certificate of Amendment is included as Exhibit 3.1 hereto and is incorporated by reference herein. The Certificate of Amendment, which was filed on January 19, 2016 with the Secretary of State of the State of New York, amends GEs Certificate of Incorporation to fix the rights, powers, designations, preferences, qualifications, limitations and restrictions, among other things, relating to the New GE Preferred Stock. The New GE Preferred Stock will not be convertible into, or exchangeable for, shares of any other class or series of stock or other securities of GE. The New GE Preferred Stock is also a perpetual equity security. As such, the New GE Preferred Stock has no maturity or mandatory redemption date and is not redeemable at the option of investors. However, the New GE Preferred Stock may be redeemed by GE, to the extent of legally available funds, at its option, either in whole or in part, on any dividend payment date on or after January 21, 2021, at a redemption price equal to $1,000 per share, plus any declared and unpaid dividends, without accumulation of any undeclared dividends. The New GE Preferred Stock will rank senior to GEs common stock but will not have any voting rights. However, if GE fails to pay, or declare and set apart for payment, dividends on outstanding shares of preferred stock (whether Old Preferred Stock or New GE Preferred Stock) for three semi-annual or six quarterly dividend periods, whether or not consecutive, the holders of New GE Preferred Stock and all series of any other parity preferred stock upon which equivalent voting rights have been conferred shall have the right, voting as a class, to elect two members of the Board of Directors of GE to hold office for a term of one year. 1 Subject to certain exceptions, so long as any shares of New GE Preferred Stock remains outstanding, no dividend or distribution may be declared or paid on the shares of GEs common stock or any other class or series of junior stock, and no common stock or any other class or series of junior or parity stock may be purchased, redeemed or otherwise acquired for consideration by GE or any of its subsidiaries unless the full dividends for the preceding dividend period on all outstanding shares of New GE Preferred Stock have been declared and paid or declared and a sum sufficient for the payment thereof has been set aside. The terms of the New GE Preferred Stock also provide that GE may not, absent an amendment to GEs Certificate of Incorporation, issue any class or series of capital stock that, by its terms, expressly provides that it ranks senior to New GE Preferred Stock with respect to the payment of dividends or distributions of assets upon liquidation, dissolution or winding up of GE. Such an amendment to GEs Certificate of Incorporation would, under the New York Business Corporation Law, require the consent of the holders of a majority of the common stock voting separately as a class and the holders of a majority of the New GE Preferred Stock voting together as a class with any other series of preferred stock entitled to vote thereon. Item 8.01 Other Events. On January 20, 2016, GE announced the completion of the Exchange Offer. A copy of the press release announcing the completion of the Exchange Offer is attached as Exhibit 99.1 to this report and is incorporated herein by reference. Based on the final count by the exchange agent, Computershare Trust Company, N.A., the final results of the Exchange Offer are as follows: 5,694,493 shares (95.8%) of Old Preferred Stock tendered and accepted 2,686,760 shares (96.7%) of shares of Series A Preferred Stock tendered and accepted 2,008,376 shares (96.9%) of shares of Series B Preferred Stock tendered and accepted 999,357 shares (91.3%) of shares of Series C Preferred Stock tendered and accepted In connection with the issuance of New GE Preferred Stock, the Certificate of Amendment is being filed herewith and shall be incorporated by reference into the registration statement on Form S-4 (SEC File No. 333-208604), as amended, which became effective on January 15, 2016. Item 9.01 Financial Statements and Exhibits. (d) Exhibits: The following exhibits are filed herewith: Exhibit 3.1 Certificate of Amendment to GEs Certificate of Incorporation with respect to the New GE Preferred Stock, dated January 19, 2016. Exhibit 99.1 Press Release by General Electric Company, dated January 20, 2016. 2 SIGNATURES Pursuant to the requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, the registrant has duly caused this report to be signed on its behalf by the undersigned hereunto duly authorized. GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY Date: January 20, 2016 By: /s/ Daniel C. Janki Name: Daniel C. Janki Title: Senior Vice President and Treasurer Exhibit 3.1 CERTIFICATE OF AMENDMENT OF THE CERTIFICATE OF INCORPORATION OF GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY UNDER SECTION 805 OF THE BUSINESS CORPORATION LAW OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK FIRST: The name of the corporation is General Electric Company; SECOND: The corporation was incorporated by special act of the New York Legislature, Chapter 323, Laws of 1892, effective April 15, 1892; THIRD: The Certificate of Incorporation of the corporation is amended to add a new Section 3.B.(4) thereof as authorized by subparagraph 12 of Section 801 of the Business Corporation Law of the State of New York stating the number, designation, relative rights, preferences, and limitations of the shares of a series of preferred stock of the corporation as fixed by the corporations Board of Directors, which new Section 3.B.(4) shall read in its entirety as follows: (4) Series D of Preferred Stock (a) Designation . A series of preferred stock designated the Fixed-to-Floating Rate Non-Cumulative Perpetual Preferred Stock, Series D (hereinafter called Series D) is established and the authorized number of shares that shall constitute such series is 5,944,250 shares, $1.00 par value per share and having a liquidation preference of $1,000 per share. Such number of shares of Series D may be increased or decreased by resolution of the Board of Directors (or a duly authorized committee thereof); provided, however, that no decrease shall reduce the number of shares of Series D to less than the number of shares of Series D then issued and outstanding plus the number of shares of Series D issuable upon exercise of outstanding rights, options or warrants or upon conversion of outstanding securities issued by the corporation. The original issue date of the shares of Series D shall be January 20, 2016. Any outstanding shares of Series D that are redeemed, purchased or otherwise acquired by the corporation shall be cancelled and shall revert to authorized but unissued shares of preferred stock undesignated as to series. (b) Ranking . The shares of Series D shall rank: (i) senior, with respect to the payment of dividends and distributions of assets upon liquidation, dissolution or winding up, to the common stock and to any other class or series of capital stock of the corporation now or hereafter authorized, issued or outstanding that, by its terms, expressly provides that it ranks junior to the shares of Series D with respect to the payment of dividends and distributions of assets upon liquidation, dissolution or winding up of the corporation, as the case may be (collectively, such common and such other capital stock, Junior Securities); and (ii) on a parity, with respect to the payment of dividends and distributions of assets upon liquidation, dissolution or winding up, with any other class or series of capital stock of the corporation now or hereafter authorized, issued or outstanding that, by its terms, does not expressly provide that it ranks junior to the shares of Series D with respect to the payment of dividends and distributions of assets upon liquidation, dissolution or winding up of the corporation, as the case may be (collectively, such other capital stock, Parity Securities). The Series D shall rank on a parity, with respect to the payment of dividends and distributions of assets upon liquidation, dissolution or winding up, with each series of preferred stock issued by the corporation prior to the original issue date of the Series D. The corporation may authorize and issue additional shares of Junior Securities and Parity Securities without the consent of the holders of the shares of Series D. The corporation may not issue any class or series of capital stock of the corporation that, by its terms, expressly provides that it ranks senior to the shares of Series D with respect to the payment of dividends or distributions of assets upon liquidation, dissolution or winding up of the corporation, as the case may be. (c) Dividends . (i) Holders of the shares of Series D will be entitled to receive, when, as and if declared by the Board of Directors (or a duly authorized committee thereof), out of assets legally available for the payment of dividends, non-cumulative cash dividends based on the liquidation preference of the Series D at a rate equal to: (1) 5.00% per annum for each semi-annual dividend period from and including the original issue date to, but excluding, January 21, 2021 (the Series D Fixed Rate Period); and (2) three-month LIBOR plus a spread of 3.33% per annum, for each quarterly dividend period from and including January 21, 2021 to, but not including, the redemption date of the Series D, if any (the Series D Floating Rate Period). In the event the corporation issues additional shares of Series D after the original issue date, any dividends on such additional shares shall accrue from the issue date of such additional shares. References to the accrual (or similar terms) of dividends on the Series D refer only to the determination of the amount of such dividend and do not imply that any right to a dividend arises prior to the date on which a dividend is declared. 2 (ii) When, as and if declared by the Board of Directors (or a duly authorized committee thereof), dividends will be payable on Series D on the following dates (each such date, a dividend payment date): (1) during the Series D Fixed Rate Period, dividends will be payable semi-annually, in arrears, on June 15 and December 15 of each year, beginning on June 15, 2016 (provided that the final semi-annual dividend period during the Series D Fixed Rate Period will be from December 15, 2020 to, but excluding, January 21, 2021 and the final dividend payment date with respect to the Series D Fixed Rate Period will be January 21, 2021); and (2) during the Series D Floating Rate Period, dividends will be payable quarterly, in arrears, on March 15, June 15, September 15 and December 15 of each year, beginning on March 15, 2021. The initial quarterly dividend period during the Series D Floating Rate Period will be from January 21, 2021 to, but excluding, March 15, 2021. In the event that any dividend payment date during the Series D Fixed Rate Period on which dividends would otherwise be payable is not a Business Day, the dividend payment date will be postponed to the next day that is a Business Day, without any adjustment to the dividend amount. In the event that any dividend payment date during the Series D Floating Rate Period on which dividends would otherwise be payable is not a Business Day, the dividend payment date will be postponed to the next day that is a Business Day and dividends will accrue to, but exclude, the date dividends are paid. However, if the postponement would cause the dividend payment date to fall in the next calendar month during the Series D Floating Rate Period, the dividend payment date will instead be brought forward to the immediately preceding Business Day. A Business Day means any weekday that is not a legal holiday in New York, New York and that is not a day on which banking institutions in New York, New York are authorized or required by law or regulation to be closed. (iii) Dividends will be payable to holders of record of the shares of Series D as they appear on the corporations stock register on the applicable record date, which shall be the 15th calendar day before the applicable dividend payment date, or such other record date, no earlier than 30 calendar days before the applicable dividend payment date, as shall be fixed by the Board of Directors (or a duly authorized committee thereof). (iv) A dividend period is the period from and including a dividend payment date to, but excluding, the next dividend payment date (without giving effect during the Series D Fixed Rate Period to any adjustment of the dividend payment date because any such date is not a Business Day), except that the initial dividend period during the Series D Fixed Rate Period will commence on and include the original issue date of the Series D. Dividends payable on the Series D for the Series D Fixed Rate Period will be computed on the basis of a 360-day year consisting of twelve 30-day months. Dividends payable on the Series D for the Series D Floating Rate Period will be computed based on the actual number of days in a dividend period and a 360- day year. Dollar amounts resulting from that calculation will be rounded to the nearest cent, with one-half cent being rounded upward. Dividends on the Series D will cease to accrue on the redemption date, if any, unless the corporation defaults in the redemption (which would include a default in the payment of the redemption price) of the shares of Series D called for redemption. 3 (v) The dividend rate for each dividend period in the Series D Floating Rate Period will be determined by the calculation agent using three-month LIBOR as in effect on the second London banking day prior to the beginning of the dividend period, which date is the dividend determination date for the dividend period. The calculation agent then will add the spread of 3.33% per annum to the three-month LIBOR as determined on the dividend determination date. Absent manifest error, the calculation agents determination of the dividend rate for a dividend period for the Series D will be binding and conclusive on the holders of shares of Series D, the transfer agent and the corporation. The calculation agent will notify the corporation of each determination of the dividend rate and will make the dividend rate available to any stockholder upon request. A London banking day is any day on which dealings in deposits in U.S. dollars are transacted in the London interbank market. The calculation agent means, at any time, the person or entity appointed by the corporation and serving as such agent at such time. The corporation may terminate any such appointment and may appoint a successor agent at any time and from time to time, provided that the corporation shall use its best efforts to ensure that there is, at all relevant times when any shares of Series D are outstanding, a person or entity appointed and serving as such agent. The calculation agent may be a person or entity affiliated with the corporation. The term three-month LIBOR means the London interbank offered rate for deposits in U.S. dollars having an index maturity of three months in amounts of at least $1,000,000, as that rate appears on Reuters screen page LIBOR01 (or its equivalent on Bloomberg) at approximately 11:00 a.m., London time, on the relevant dividend determination date. If no offered rate appears on Reuters screen page LIBOR01 on the relevant dividend determination date at approximately 11:00 a.m., London time, the corporation will select four major banks in the London interbank market and will request each of their principal London offices to provide a quotation of the rate at which three-month deposits in U.S. dollars in amounts of at least $1,000,000 are offered by it to prime banks in the London interbank market, on that date and at that time, that is representative of single transactions at that time. The corporation shall notify the calculation agent of the quotations. If at least two quotations are provided, three-month LIBOR will be the arithmetic average (rounded upward, if necessary, to the nearest .00001 of 1%) of the quotations provided. Otherwise, the corporation will select three major banks in New York City and will request each of them to provide a quotation of the rate offered by it at approximately 11:00 a.m., New York City time, on the dividend determination date for loans in U.S. dollars to leading European banks having an index maturity of three months for the applicable dividend period in an amount of at least $1,000,000 that is representative of single transactions at that time. If three quotations are provided to the calculation agent by the corporation, three-month LIBOR will be the arithmetic average (rounded upward, if necessary, to the nearest .00001 of 1%) of the quotations provided. Otherwise, three-month LIBOR for the next dividend period will be equal to three-month LIBOR in effect for the then-current dividend period. (vi) Dividends on the Series D will not be cumulative and will not be mandatory. If the Board of Directors (or a duly authorized committee thereof) does not declare a dividend on the Series D in respect of a dividend period, then no dividend shall be deemed to have accrued for such dividend period, be payable on the applicable dividend payment date or be 4 cumulative, and the corporation will have no obligation to pay any dividend for that dividend period, whether or not the Board of Directors (or a duly authorized committee thereof) declares a dividend for any future dividend period on the Series D or on any other series of the corporations preferred stock or common stock. (vii) While the Series D remains outstanding, unless, in each case, the full dividends for the preceding dividend period on all outstanding shares of Series D have been declared and paid or declared and a sum sufficient for the payment thereof has been set aside: (1) no dividend shall be declared or paid or set aside for payment and no distribution shall be declared or made or set aside for payment on any Junior Securities (other than (i) a dividend payable solely in Junior Securities or (ii) any dividend in connection with the implementation of a stockholders rights plan, or the redemption, repurchase or exchange of any rights under any such plan); (2) no shares of Junior Securities shall be purchased, redeemed or otherwise acquired for consideration by the corporation, directly or indirectly (nor shall any monies be paid to or made available for a sinking fund for the redemption of any such securities by the corporation) (other than (i) as a result of a reclassification of Junior Securities for or into other Junior Securities, (ii) the exchange or conversion of one share of Junior Securities for or into another share of Junior Securities, (iii) through the use of the proceeds of a substantially contemporaneous sale of other shares of Junior Securities, (iv) purchases, redemptions or other acquisitions of shares of Junior Securities in connection with any employment contract, benefit plan or other similar arrangement with or for the benefit of employees, officers, directors or consultants, (v) purchases of shares of Junior Securities pursuant to a contractually binding requirement to buy Junior Securities existing prior to the preceding dividend period, including under a contractually binding stock repurchase plan, or (vi) the purchase of fractional interests in shares of Junior Securities pursuant to the conversion or exchange provisions of such stock or the security being converted or exchanged); and (3) no shares of Parity Securities shall be purchased, redeemed or otherwise acquired for consideration by the corporation, directly or indirectly (other than (i) pursuant to offers to purchase all, or a pro rata portion, of the Series D and such Parity Securities; (ii) by conversion into or exchange for Junior Securities; (iii) as a result of a reclassification of Parity Securities for or into other Parity Securities; (iv) through the use of the proceeds of a substantially contemporaneous sale of other shares of Parity Securities; (v) purchases, redemptions or other acquisitions of shares of the Parity Securities in connection with any employment contract, benefit plan or other similar arrangement with or for the benefit of employees, officers, directors or consultants; or (vi) the purchase of fractional interests in shares of Parity Securities pursuant to the conversion or exchange provisions of such stock or the security being converted or exchanged). For the avoidance of doubt, nothing in this paragraph (vii) shall limit the corporation from taking any of the actions set forth in this paragraph (vii) after the original issue date of the Series D and prior to the first dividend payment date. 5 (viii) When dividends are not paid in full upon the shares of Series D and any Parity Securities, all dividends declared upon shares of Series D and any Parity Securities will be declared on a proportional basis so that the ratio of dividends to be declared on any Series D for the then-current dividend period to dividends to be declared on any Parity Securities is the same as the ratio of accrued but undeclared dividends on the Series D for the then-current dividend period to accrued but undeclared dividends, including any accumulations in the case of Parity Securities that accrue cumulative dividends, on any Parity Securities. (ix) Subject to the foregoing, and not otherwise, dividends (payable in cash, stock or otherwise), as may be determined by the Board of Directors (or a duly authorized committee thereof), may be declared and paid on the corporations Junior Securities and the corporations Parity Securities from time to time out of any assets legally available for such payment, and the holders of shares of Series D shall not be entitled to participate in any such dividend. (d) Liquidation . (i) Upon any liquidation, dissolution or winding up of the business and affairs of the corporation, either voluntarily or involuntarily, holders of shares of Series D are entitled to receive a liquidating distribution of $1,000 per share, plus any declared and unpaid dividends, without accumulation of any undeclared dividends, out of assets of the corporation available for distribution to stockholders before the corporation makes any distribution of assets to the holders of the corporations Junior Securities. Distributions will be made only to the extent of the corporations assets that are available after satisfaction of all liabilities to creditors and subject to the rights of holders of any securities ranking senior to the Series D and pro rata as to the Series D and any other shares of the corporations stock ranking equally as to such distribution. Holders of shares of Series D will not be entitled to any other amounts from the corporation after they have received their full liquidating distribution. (ii) In any such distribution, if the assets of the corporation are not sufficient to pay the liquidation preferences plus declared and unpaid dividends in full to all holders of shares of Series D and all holders of any Parity Securities, the amounts paid to the holders of shares of Series D and any Parity Securities will be paid pro rata in accordance with the respective aggregate liquidating distribution owed to those holders. If the liquidation preference plus declared and unpaid dividends has been paid in full to all holders of shares of Series D and any Parity Securities, the holders of the corporations Junior Securities shall be entitled to receive all remaining assets of the corporation according to their respective rights and preferences. (iii) For purposes of this section, the merger or consolidation of the corporation with any other entity, including a merger or consolidation in which the holders of shares of Series D receive cash, securities or property for their shares, or the sale, lease or exchange of all or substantially all of the assets of the corporation for cash, securities or other property, shall not constitute a liquidation, dissolution or winding up of the business and affairs of the corporation. (e) Redemption . (i) The Series D is perpetual and has no maturity date. The Series D is not subject to any mandatory redemption, sinking fund or other similar provisions. The corporation may redeem, to the extent of lawfully available funds, the Series D, at the option of the corporation, in whole or in part, from time to time, on any dividend payment date on or after January 21, 2021, at a redemption price equal to $1,000 per share, plus any declared and unpaid dividends, without accumulation of any undeclared dividends. 6 (ii) If shares of Series D are to be redeemed, the notice of redemption shall be given by first class mail to the holders of record of the shares of Series D to be redeemed, mailed not less than 30 days nor more than 60 days prior to the date fixed for redemption thereof ( provided that, if such shares of Series D are held in book-entry form through The Depository Trust Company, or DTC, the corporation may give such notice in any manner permitted by DTC). Each notice of redemption will include a statement setting forth: (i) the redemption date; (ii) the number of shares of Series D to be redeemed and, if less than all the shares held by the holder are to be redeemed, the number of such shares of Series D to be redeemed from the holder; (iii) the redemption price; (iv) the place or places where the certificates evidencing shares of Series D are to be surrendered for payment of the redemption price; and (v) that dividends on the shares to be redeemed will cease to accrue on the redemption date. If notice of redemption of any shares of Series D has been duly given and if the funds necessary for such redemption have been irrevocably set aside by the corporation for the benefit of the holders of any shares of Series D so called for redemption, then, on and after the redemption date, dividends will cease to accrue on such shares of Series D, such shares of Series D shall no longer be deemed outstanding and all rights of the holders of such shares will terminate, except the right to receive the redemption price plus any declared and unpaid dividends without accumulation of any undeclared dividends. (iii) In case of any redemption of only part of the shares of Series D at the time outstanding, the shares to be redeemed shall be selected either pro rata, by lot or in such other manner as the corporation may determine to be equitable. Subject to the provisions hereof, the Board of Directors (or a duly authorized committee thereof) shall have full power and authority to prescribe the terms and conditions upon which shares of Series D shall be redeemed from time to time. (iv) The holders of the shares of Series D do not have the right to require the redemption or purchase by the corporation of any of the shares of Series D. (f) Voting Rights . (i) Except as provided below or as expressly required by law, the holders of shares of Series D shall have no voting power, and no right to vote on any matter at any time, either as a separate series or class or together with any other series or class of shares of capital stock, and shall not be entitled to call a meeting of such holders for any purpose, nor shall they be entitled to participate in any meeting of the holders of the corporations common stock. (ii) Each share of Series D will have one vote whenever it is entitled to voting rights. If the corporation redeems or calls for redemption all outstanding shares of Series D and irrevocably deposits in trust sufficient funds to effect such redemption, the shares of Series D will not be deemed outstanding for the purpose of voting and the voting provisions with respect to the Series D shall not apply. (iii) If the corporation fails to pay, or declare and set apart for payment, dividends on outstanding shares of Series D or any other series of preferred stock upon which equivalent voting rights have been conferred for three semi-annual or six quarterly dividend periods, whether or not consecutive, the number of directors of the corporation shall 7 automatically be increased by two at the corporations first annual meeting of shareholders held thereafter, and shall remain increased until continuous noncumulative dividends for at least one year on all outstanding shares of Series D and any other series of preferred stock upon which equivalent voting rights have been conferred shall have been paid, or declared and set apart for payment, in full. At such annual meeting, the holders of the shares of Series D and all series of other preferred stock upon which equivalent voting rights have been conferred, shall have the right, voting as a class, to elect such two additional members of the Board of Directors to hold office for a term of one year. Upon the payments, or the declarations and setting apart for payments, in full, of continuous noncumulative dividends for at least one year on all outstanding shares of Series D and any other series of preferred stock upon which equivalent voting rights have been conferred, the terms of the two additional directors so elected shall forthwith terminate, and the number of directors shall automatically be reduced by two, and such voting right of the holders of shares of Series D and such other series of preferred stock upon which equivalent voting rights have been conferred shall cease, subject to increase in the number of directors as described above and to revesting of such voting right in the event of each and every additional failure in the payment of dividends for three semi-annual or six quarterly dividend periods, whether or not consecutive, as described above. The holders of shares of Series D, together with holders of shares of other preferred stock entitled to elect members of the Board of Directors, voting together as a class, may remove and replace (without cause) either of the members of the Board of Directors they elected. If the office of either such member of the Board of Directors becomes vacant for any reason other than removal, the remaining member of the Board of Directors elected in accordance with this paragraph (iii) may choose a successor who will hold office for the unexpired term of the vacant office. (iv) For purposes of the voting rights provided under Section 804 or any other provision of Article 8 (or any successor provision) of the New York Business Corporation Law, the granting of additional voting rights to holders of shares of Series D shall be deemed to not adversely affect the rights of the holders of shares of Series D and shall be permitted without the consent or vote of any such holders. (g) Conversion Rights . The Series D will not be convertible into, or exchangeable for, shares of any other class or series of stock or other securities of the corporation. (h) Preemptive Rights . The holders of shares of Series D will have no preemptive rights with respect to any shares of the corporations capital stock or any of its other securities convertible into or carrying rights or options to purchase any such capital stock. (i) Purchase . The corporation may purchase and sell the Series D from time to time to such extent, in such manner, and upon such terms as the Board of Directors (or any duly authorized committee thereof) may determine. (j) Defined terms . Terms defined in this Section 3.B.(4) shall have such meaning when used in this Section 3.B.(4) only. 8 FOURTH: The amendment of the Certificate of Incorporation as set forth herein was authorized by the Board of Directors of the corporation in accordance with Section 502(d) of the Business Corporation Law of the State of New York. [Signature Page Follows] 9 IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the corporation has caused this Certificate of Amendment of the Certificate of Incorporation to be executed by a duly authorized officer as of the 19th day of January, 2016. GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY By: /s/ Christoph Pereira Name: Christoph Pereira Title: Authorized Person [Signature Page to GEs Certificate of Amendment of the Certificate of Incorporation] CERTIFICATE OF AMENDMENT OF THE CERTIFICATE OF INCORPORATION OF GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY UNDER SECTION 805 OF THE BUSINESS CORPORATION LAW Filed by: Corey Chivers, Esq. (Name) c/o Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, 767 Fifth Avenue (Mailing address) New York, NY 10153 (City, State and ZIP code) Exhibit 99.1 GE Announces Exchange Offer Results 95.8 % of Old Preferred Stock tendered in the Exchange Offer FAIRFIELD, Conn. January 20, 2015 General Electric Company (GE) (NYSE: GE) today announced the final results of its completed offer to exchange, on a one-for-one basis, new 5.00% Fixed-to-Floating Rate Non-Cumulative Perpetual Preferred Stock, Series D, $1.00 par value, with a liquidation preference of $1,000 per share (CUSIP No. 369604 BQ5) (the New Preferred Stock) for its existing three series of preferred stock, consisting of its: 4.00% Fixed-to-Floating Rate Non-Cumulative Perpetual Preferred Stock, Series A, $1.00 par value, with a liquidation preference of $1,000 per share (CUSIP No. 369604 BM4) (the Series A Preferred Stock); 4.10% Fixed-to-Floating Rate Non-Cumulative Perpetual Preferred Stock, Series B, $1.00 par value, with a liquidation preference of $1,000 per share (CUSIP No. 369604 BN2) (the Series B Preferred Stock); and 4.20% Fixed-to-Floating Rate Non-Cumulative Perpetual Preferred Stock, Series C, $1.00 par value, with a liquidation preference of $1,000 per share (CUSIP No. 369604 BP7) (the Series C Preferred Stock, and together with the Series A Preferred Stock and the Series B Preferred Stock, the Old Preferred Stock). The exchange offer expired at 12:00 midnight, New York City time, at the end of the day on January 19, 2016. On January 20, 2016, GE will issue 5,694,493 shares of its New Preferred Stock. GE accepted each share of its Old Preferred Stock that was validly tendered and not validly withdrawn, as described below. In addition, each holder of GEs Series A Preferred Stock will receive a cash payment of $10.00 per share of Series A Preferred Stock tendered by such holder and accepted in the exchange offer, and each holder of GEs Series B Preferred Stock will receive a cash payment of $5.00 per share of Series B Preferred Stock tendered by such holder and accepted in the exchange offer. Furthermore, participating holders tendering shares of Old Preferred Stock will also receive a cash payment equivalent to a dividend accruing at the 5.00% per annum fixed rate of the New Preferred Stock from December 15, 2015 to January 19, 2016. Based on the final count by the exchange agent, Computershare Trust Company, N.A., the final results of the exchange offer are as follows: 5,694,493 shares (95.8%) of Old Preferred Stock tendered and accepted 2,686,760 shares (96.7%) of shares of Series A Preferred Stock tendered and accepted 2,008,376 shares (96.9%) of shares of Series B Preferred Stock tendered and accepted 999,357 shares (91.3%) of shares of Series C Preferred Stock tendered and accepted The settlement date for the exchange offer is expected to be January 20, 2016. Advisors BofA Merrill Lynch served as the dealer manager for the exchange offer. Georgeson, Inc. served as the information agent for the exchange offer. About GE GE (NYSE: GE) is a global digital industrial company, transforming industry with software-defined machines and solutions that are connected, responsive and predictive. GE is organized around a global exchange of knowledge, the GE Store, through which each business shares and accesses the same technology, markets, structure and intellect. Each invention further fuels innovation and application across our industrial sectors. With people, services, technology and scale, GE delivers better outcomes for customers by speaking the language of industry. www.ge.com. Investor Contact: Matt Cribbins, (203) 373-2424, [email protected] Media Contacts: GE: Seth Martin, (203) 572-3567, [email protected] GE Capital: Susan Bishop, (203) 750-5362, [email protected] ------ Additional Information and Where to Find It The terms and conditions of the exchange offer are more fully described in a registration statement on Form S-4, which includes a Prospectus, and a Schedule TO, each previously filed by GE with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC), in each case as amended. The Prospectus contains important information about the exchange offer, GE and related matters, and GE delivered the Prospectus to holders of Old Preferred Stock. Holders of Old Preferred Stock may obtain the Prospectus, and other related documents filed with the SEC, at the SECs Public Reference Room, located at 100 F Street, N.E., Washington, D.C. 20549, and will be able to obtain information on the operation of the Public Reference Room by calling the SEC at 1-800-SEC-0330. 2 Holders of Old Preferred Stock may also obtain copies of the Prospectus, and other documents filed with the SEC, by mail from the SEC at the above address, at prescribed rates. The SEC also maintains a website that contains reports, proxy statements and other information that GE files electronically with the SEC and that may be obtained for free. The address of that website is http://www.sec.gov. Holders of Old Preferred Stock will also be able to obtain a copy of the Prospectus by clicking on the appropriate link on that website. GE has retained Georgeson, Inc. as the information agent for the exchange offer. If you have any questions about the terms of the exchange offer, you may contact the information agent at (800) 676-0098 (toll-free in the United States) or (781) 575-2137 (international). Forward-Looking Statements This communication contains forward-looking statementsthat is, statements related to future, not past, events. In this context, forward-looking statements often contain words such as expect, anticipate, intend, plan, believe, seek, see, will, would, or target. Forward-looking statements by their nature address matters that are, to different degrees, uncertain, such as statements about the consummation of the exchange offer. Uncertainties that could cause our actual results to be materially different than those expressed in our forward-looking statements include the failure or inability to consummate the exchange offer in a timely manner or at all, the failure or inability to make or take any filing or other action required to consummate the exchange offer in a timely manner or at all, and changes in market conditions. These or other uncertainties may cause our actual future results to be materially different from those expressed in our forward-looking statements. 3 Former All Black and MP Grahame Thorne has reportedly apologised for setting up a fake email. Former All Black Grahame Thorne has reportedly apologised to a bankrupt property developer for setting up the email address, "pr....henderson@vodafone.com" and bombarding him with emails. The handwritten apology, seen by Queenstown's Mountain Scene newspaper, showed Thorne apologising to Christchurch bankrupt David Henderson as part of a settlement, after a judge told them to "grow up". "I, Grahame Thorne, hereby unreservedly apologise to David Henderson for creating the email address pr....henderson@vodafone.com and for sending emails from that address and for any distress caused," NZME reported the note as saying. KIRK HARGREAVES/FAIRFAX NZ Bankrupt Christchurch property developer David Henderson. Their squabble reached the Christchurch District Court on Monday after Henderson and Canterbury businessman Ian Hyndman sought a restraining order against Thorne, a former MP, to stop him sending abusive emails. READ MORE: 'Grow up' message from judge in civil case After hearing two hours of evidence, Judge Raoul Neave told the men it was "really at the level of 13-year-old schoolgirls sending notes around the class". Following a lunch break, Thorne's lawyer said he had agreed not to contact Henderson nor Hyndman, other than through lawyers, for three years. Other terms of the settlement were confidential. Primary Industries Minister Nathan Guy has announced much of the South Island will remain under drought classification until the end of June. A North Canterbury farmer has stressed the need for his peers to look after their mental health, after the Government extended drought status for the South Island on Wednesday. Minister for Primary Industries Nathan Guy announced extra funding of up to $150,000 would go to local Rural Support Trusts, with $40,000 set aside for the North Canterbury trust. Guy has been a regular visitor to the North Canterbury hotspot, where farmers are struggling with the prolonged drought after culling stock and bringing in extra feed. This is the third time Guy has extended the medium adverse event classification for the drought. STACY SQUIRES/FAIRFAX NZ North Canterbury farmers in the clutches of drought have learned of the latest support package. Weka Pass farmer Richard Murchison said the announcement did not make a "huge difference" to his personal situation but the funding boost for the North Canterbury Rural Support Trust was "the big one". READ MORE: * Good start to year for drought-hit farmers but more rain needed * Rain at the right time for northern maize growers * North Canterbury drought recovery years away Drought took a huge mental toll on farmers, he said. "It wouldn't be hard to tip over the edge. "If we hadn't had the support from the Rural Support Trust and things it would not have surprised me to have heard of a couple of suicides. "The stress levels can get to be enormous when you've got no feed around, you're buying it in, you've maybe got rid of all your stock and you know that you're going to have to replace that one day. "You really do get under the hammer," Murchison said. "The fact that they [the Government] are continuing to acknowledge the issue is continuing despite the rain that we've had [and] support for the Rural Support Trust is the big one." Recent rain had been a "great boost". "You've got to keep yourself mentally healthy, which means that, at times, you've got to put the farms to one side even if it's only half an hour for a swim." Mike Satterthwaite, who farms near Rotherham, said the drought was the "worst prolonged dry period I've ever seen". "The real benefit to us will on tax relief or tax deferral ... That's the only tangible benefit that will come out of it," he said. Marlborough, Canterbury and parts of Otago were classified as a medium-scale event in February last year. They had received little rainfall for more than a year, Guy said. "Recent rain has brought some relief and a great morale boost. After more than a year of drought, any rain is welcome, and in some areas it has triggered small amounts of growth. However what these farms really need is good consistent follow-up rain to bring soil moisture levels closer to normal, as it has been dry for so long." Guy said farmers in the regions were used to drought and had been well prepared to deal with this summer's additional El Nino effect. He said it was pleasing to see the Hurunui Water Project could now begin planning and building after a High Court ruling last month. It had received about $2 million in Government funding so far. The official drought period was due to expire on February 15 and was extended to June because of widespread dry conditions. The extra $150,000 means about $350,000 has gone towards supporting the work of the Rural Support Trusts. Farmers also have access to IRD flexibility for tax payments during the drought. Rural support trust leaders have been working closely with farmers to monitor their well being and directing them to relief assistance as well as organising community events and one-on-one mentoring. Farmers needing more support are being urged to call their local rural support trust on 0800 787 254, and Federated Farmers is operating a drought feedline on 0800 376 844. "Many rural people can be reluctant to ask for help, but they need to know there is support," said Guy. "As well as Rural Support Trusts, Inland Revenue can offer flexibility with tax obligations and there are options such as Rural Assistance Payments for those facing extreme hardship." Other regions now ''setting the pace'' for housing market, REINZ says. Other parts of the country have overtaken Auckland as growth engines of the housing market, the latest real estate industry figures show. New record median prices were set in Waikato/Bay of Plenty, Hawke's Bay, Wellington, Nelson/Marlborough and Otago as the market strengthened in December, according to the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand (REINZ). As usual, house sales dipped ahead of Christmas, falling 9 per cent on the previous month, although it was up 3.5 per cent a year earlier. Prices did not pause for breath, however, with the national median house price climbing to $465,000, up 1.2 per cent on the previous month and.3.3 per cent on the previous year. READ MORE: * Million-dollar towns that may surprise you * NZ's cheapest and most expensive homes In Auckland, house prices edged up less than a per cent on the previous month to $770,00 as investors digested new tax rules and regulation, although they were up 13.6 per cent for the year. Excluding Auckland, house prices hit a record $379,000, up 8 per cent on a year ago. Pricey houses were particularly in demand, with sales in the $1 million-plus category rising 20 per cent over the year. Real Estate Institute chief executive Colleen Milne said sales outside Auckland were clearly picking up, rising 17.5 per cent on the previous December, and the spillover effect from Auckland did not explain it all. "Regional markets, particularly Northland, Waikato/Bay of Plenty, Hawkes Bay and Central Otago Lakes are now setting the pace for the New Zealand real estate market, with Auckland, in a relative sense, now in the middle of the pack," Milne said. She thought the decline in sales in Auckland would be "transitory" as investors got to grips with the new rules, but other regions had stolen the show with "noticeable" price increase, big drops in inventory and days to sell. "This breadth of the improvement across New Zealand suggests that there is more is at play than just an Auckland 'halo effect', although that has contributed in the northern regions." Kim Mundy, an economist with ASB, said the housing market was certainly healthy, particularly given the fall in days to sell. But she also did not count the Auckland market out. On a seasonally adjusted basis, Auckland sales had picked up. It was "too soon to say" whether the pick-up would be sustained, however. Northland was the strongest real estate market in the country, with sales were up 39 per cent and prices up 20 per cent on a year ago. Agents reported a surge in demand for coastal properties, and houses on the market had dropped "significantly," Milne said. Waikato/Bay of Plenty was the next busiest region in December, with sales up 30 per cent on a year ago and prices up 11 per cent. Gisborne, Rotorua and Taupo were all particularly active, and there were signs that first-home buyers were now striking competition, according to REINZ regional director, Philip Searle. "Aucklanders continue to feature strongly across the region, particularly in Hamilton and Tauranga," he said. In Hawkes Bay prices were up 13.3 per cent, hitting a new median high, and sales were up 26.3 per cent, as demand rose across the price range. Both the Taranaki and Manawatu markets saw large lifts in sales, but prices were more moderate, up 1.1 and 4.3 per cent respectively. In Wellington, sales rose 18.4 per cent, a welcome sign that the Capital's flat market was coming back to life. Prices were up 5.1 per cent, hitting a new high of $436,000. REINZ's Wellington director Euon Murrell said that although sales dipped in December, the market was still strong and there was "plenty of activity from all buyers groups". After a strong few years, Canterbury/Westland prices were up a respectable 5.3 per cent for the year but prices were flat, as first-time buyers held out for a better deal in the New Year. But further south, the housing market was chugging along nicely. Central Otago Lakes had the highest annual increase in the country, with prices up 20.4 per cent, while Southland's prices rose 13.9 per cent and Otago's rose 11.7 per cent. Sales in all three regions were strong, particularly with first-time buyers in Otago, and a shortage of listings in Central Otago. Most of the sales growth in Central Otago was coming from other parts of the region not Queenstown, Milne added. It has been decided a father who abused his son should not be deported to Samoa, for the sake of his children. A father who served jail time for fracturing his baby's skull, leg and ribs has been granted a stay of deportation to remain with his family. Romeo Misipati, who was released from prison last year after serving one year of a two-year sentence for grievous bodily harm and ill-treatment of a child, has won an immigration case against deportation to Samoa. The Immigration and Protection Tribunal in Auckland decided in September that Misipati, in his early 30s, should remain in New Zealand with his wife and four children. In its decision, released on Tuesday, the tribunal decided it was in the public interest for the father-of-four to remain in New Zealand and be reintegrated into the family home. READ MORE: * NZ deports almost 500 criminals "The separation of the appellant from his partner of nearly a decade and from his four young children is clearly a humanitarian circumstance," the tribunal said. "To deport the appellant would be to remove from four young children a parent who is now willing, and becoming properly equipped, to fulfil his parental responsibilities. Deportation would compound rather than ameliorate the negative impact upon the children of the appellant's offending. "The tribunal is satisfied that it would be unjust and unduly harsh to the children for the appellant to be deported from New Zealand." In making its decision, the tribunal noted that Misipati had completed anger management and parenting courses since his arrest in 2013. Despite being diagnosed as remaining a "moderate" risk to reoffend, both a clinical psychologist employed to analyse Misipati and a Child, Youth and Family manager agreed the best outcome for the family would be for the father to remain in south Auckland - for the sake of his children. "The family members include four children under the age of seven, for each of whom the presence of a positive male role model is of fundamental importance to their emotional development," the tribunal decision said. "The evidence of [the psychologist] and [CYF] was that it is in the best interests of the children that they remain in New Zealand, in the care of both parents." Misipati's wife was "exhausted" from the demands of their four young children, with child care costs, school commitments, loan repayments and full-time employment consuming her time and resources as a solo parent while Misipati was in prison. She would not consider returning to Samoa as she wanted her children to remain in New Zealand where she could provide them a better life. The tribunal also noted that Misipati would be afforded better therapy in New Zealand than he would in Samoa, where there was a chance his children would have to join him if he was deported. "If returned, he would be unable to continue to make progress in addressing the factors that led to his offending. He would likely lose the benefit of the intervention he has experienced to date. "He may fall back into past habits, subjecting the children to corporal punishment." With the right management and familial reintegration, though, his family could benefit from his presence. "If [Misipati] continues to engage appropriately with the therapeutic programme proposed, there is every reason to believe that he would become that positive role model," the tribunal noted. As such, the tribunal suspended his deportation liability. However, if he were to commit an imprisonable crime within the next five years, that would be revoked and he would be deported. The Trustpower TECT Rescue Helicopter at the rescue scene. An incoming tide forced three runners up a precarious eastern Bay of Plenty ridge where they became stuck and had to be winched off. The trio, from a family visiting the area of Ohope, were trapped for three hours on Wednesday. They were running from Ohope beach to Whakatane when the incoming tide forced them off the lower rock track. SUPPLIED A farmer was on this quad bike when it rolled, inflicting serious injuries on the man. They took the higher ridge line but became stuck, the Trustpower TECT Rescue Helicopter said in a statement. The helicopter was dispatched to Kohi Point in the Whakatane heads about midday. "All three runners were winched to safety using the Port of Tauranga rescue winch," pilot Liam Brettkelly said. "No one was injured." The winch equipped helicopter was used due to the rugged and steep terrain. Later on Wednesday the rescue helicopter was called to a rural property in Te Puke. A 28-year-old farmer was riding his quad bike moving stock when the quad bike rolled. "The quad bike rolled backwards over a bank resulting in head and back injuries to the farmer," Brettkelly said. He was airlifted to Tauranga Hospital in a serious condition. Photographer Geoff Walker outside the High Court during a judicial review regarding his photos of the Carterton Balloon tragedy. There are reports he has been arrested in Uganda. A Wairarapa photographer has been released from a Ugandan jail after spending 14 hours in a small concrete room with six other people. Geoff Walker, the man who photographed the Carterton hot air balloon tragedy unfolding in 2012, posted on Facebook that we was "out now" on Thursday morning (NZ time). "I am fine, just a little tired," he posted about 2am. Facebook Geoff Walker lets his Facebook friends know he's safe. His comments were in response to posts by his Facebook friends on Wednesday that he had been arrested in Uganda for taking pictures of army barracks. Walker told Radio New Zealand had been out taking pictures of a sunset and had realised a building in the background was a barracks. READ MORE: * Balloon crash photographer Geoff Walker arrested in Uganda * Hot air balloon crash near Carterton kills 11 * Carterton balloon crash: Let her death not be in vain * Parents of Carterton Balloon victim criticise police, coroner * Carterton balloon deaths 'entirely preventable' - coroner "I jumped back on the motorcycle and these army people came running out and they said 'you're not allowed to take photos of our barracks.' "And I said 'sorry I didn't realise it was barracks,' there were no fences, no signs, no nothing." He was kept in a small concrete room with six other people at a police station for about 14 hours. "I wouldn't say I was scared, in fact I was smiling a lot and I was confident it was going to work out," he said. "A lot of things go through your mind, this is like a movie, all these sorts of things, how long could I be here? What sort of things are going to go on, not having any watch or idea of time or the procedures that are going to happen. There wasn't a lot of talking at all. Long-time friend and Wellington city councillor Simon Woolf said on Wednesday that Walker was in Uganda creating awareness of poverty. Walker, who has over 35 years' experience in the trade, had been seriously affected by witnessing the Wairarapa balloon tragedy, and a legal struggle over publication of his photos, he said. He was on the ground when the hot air balloon carrying 11 people hit a powerline over Carterton, killing all those on board. Walker has said previously that he went to Uganda in 2012 to escape his memories of the balloon tragedy, and had dedicated his time to assisting the small village of Ludok, including arranging goods such as clothing to be donated from New Zealand. An inmate is in hospital with serious injures after being attacked with a broom in Christchurch Men's Prison, a union leader says. The injured prisoner was believed to be Michael Scott Holdem. Emergency services were called to the prison, off West Coast Rd near Templeton, about 9am on Thursday. A St John Ambulance spokesman said a man, aged in his 30s, was transported to Christchurch Hospital. He was in a serious but stable condition. Corrections Association industrial officer Beven Hanlon said the prisoner was hit from behind with a broom in what was believed to be a gang-related attack. READ MORE: * Bashed inmate Benton Parata lay undiscovered for 40 minutes * Christchurch Men's Prison inmate kicked guard in the head * Christchurch Men's Prison gang bashing admitted "That prisoner's now in hospital and is now in a very serious condition," Hanlon said. In 1999, Holdem was jailed for eight years for living off the prostitution earnings of a 14-year-old, having sex with her, and administering morphine. The girl developed hepatitis C due to Holdem and another man's actions. In 2009, three years were added to his jail term after he tried to get his mother to smuggle drugs to him in prison. In April, he admitted having unlawful possession of a shotgun. Thursday's attack prevented a prisoner, charged with assault and breaching a protection order, from appearing via video link in the Christchurch District Court. It was understood he was the attacker. The case was remanded to February. Detective Elliot Western said police were investigating an assault involving two prisoners. The alleged attacker was yet to be formally interviewed. Christchurch Men's Prison director John Roper confirmed an inmate had been assaulted by another inmate. "Corrections manages some of New Zealand's most difficult and challenging citizens. Violence in prison is not tolerated and any prisoners who use violence will be held to account." In the six months between January and June last year, there were 67 assaults at the prison. Two were considered serious. Inmate Benton Parata died after he was bashed in his cell on March 25. Department of Corrections figures showed 40 assaults during the six month period were not serious, and 25 were non-injury. Hanlon was supportive of a recent Corrections decision to kit out staff with stab-proof vests. He believed it would help officers intervene in attacks. He wanted to see the department go further and allow prison officers to wear pepper spray on their hips for further protection. Corrections figures show there were 38 "serious" prisoner-on-prisoner assaults in New Zealand prisons during the 2014/15 financial year, including eight at Christchurch Men's. There were nine "serious" prisoner-on-staff assaults the same year, one of which was at Christchurch Men's. Prisoners deemed to be at risk of violence could be segregated from the mainstream prison population for their safety and security. Prisoners could ask to be placed on voluntary segregation if they felt they were at risk from other prisoners, Corrections acting national commissioner Jeanette Burns said. An internal misconduct system meant if a prisoner pleaded or was found guilty of misconduct, they were disciplined in a fair, just and humane manner, she said. Lara Casalotti, 24, has Acute Myeloid Leukaemia. Her family are appealing for a bone marrow donor. The family of a London woman diagnosed with leukaemia hope a bone marrow donor can be found in New Zealand. Twenty-four-year-old Lara Casalotti has acute myeloid leukaemia, a cancer that affects cells found in bone marrow that form new blood cells. Because she is of mixed race - half Thai, half Italian - she is more likely to find a donor here than in her home country. Sebastian Casalotti said although his sister is undergoing chemotherapy, her best chance of survival is a bone marrow transplant. So the family has launched an international campaign to find a donor, but their focus is on Australasia. And while they hope to help Lara, they also hope to help other minority sufferers. SUPPLIED Twenty-four-year-old Lara Casalotti with her mum, Supanya, who's Thai, and her dad, Stefano, who's Italian. "When Lara was diagnosed, it was a horrible shock," he said. "She had minor symptoms - muscle pain and shortness of breath - but nothing you could pin down as cancer, definitely not in someone her age." READ MORE: * Angela Sunkel loses battle against leukaemia * Leukaemia boy Chace needs a miracle A bone marrow donor and the recipient must be a close genetic match based on tissue type. Close family members are most likely to match. But Lara's Thai/Italian makes it more difficult to find a donor. Those most likely to match are Asian and Asian-mixed race, mixed Asian-European, and Polynesian or mixed Asian-Polynesian. "When launching this campaign, we didn't want to think about just helping Lara. As a global community, we can all help each other," Sebastian said. "Lara's not the type of person to have her face out there, but she realised she could make a difference to a lot of people. "Every family should have the assurance that a donor will be found for their loved one, because the donation process is so simple." In 2012, Hamilton toddler Chace Topperwien died from leukemia at the age of three. He needed a bone marrow transplant, but no matching Maori donor could be found. And in 2014, Angela Sunkel died after a four year battle with chronic myelomonocytic leukaemia. Her efforts to raise $1.3 million for a second stem cell transplant in Seattle meant she became a well-known figure in the Waikato and received support from people who never knew her. The need for more donors of mixed ethnicity is a message echoed by the New Zealand Blood Service. Donor recruiter Nephi Arthur said compared to the European database of donors, minority donors, including Maori and Polynesian, are lacking. "We have 275 Asians donors on our registry, with only 15 who are Thai," he said. "There are only 7000 Maori and 1500 Pacific Islanders, with 1200 of those being Samoan. "Yet we can access over 18 million European donors around the world." Arthur said because of an antibody produced by females, only males can donate bone marrow. "Often people are quite apprehensive to donate because they're put off by how complex or painful they think it may be - but it's just like giving blood. "We give them a drug and it brings out the cells from the bones to the bloodstream in three days. "The old way was we used to drill into the hip bones and take it out of the middle of the hip bones." Arthur said recruiters are in desperate need of donors from minority groups and encouraged men aged 18 to 40 to donate. Siblings have a one in four chance of being a bone marrow match, but the Casalotti family had prepared for the likelihood they would not be that fortunate. "What was really impressive as a family was that we could see if I was a match, but prepared everything in the likely situation that I wouldn't be," said Sebastian Casalotti. The family has since discovered he isn't a match. "We all knew that this would be a negative period, but Lara really wanted to bring something positive out of it. "What we're trying to stress is that people need to sign up immediately because there are delays in testing. It's not one of those things you can wait for - people need to be signing up now." To join the New Zealand Bone Marrow Donor Registry, you need to meet the criteria to give blood. If people would like to make an appointment to give blood, call 0800 448 325. Cambridge's Missy Browne is the captain of the New Zealand women's polo team that will face England in Cambridge in February. Cambridge is set to host an international polo match between New Zealand and England. Captain of the New Zealand team, Missy Browne, lives in Cambridge. She said last year's international ladies match was held as a curtain-raiser at a Kihikihi event last year. This year it will be a colts game, but the ladies match proved so popular they have decided to run it anyway - just at a different venue. "We hope it will bring a lot more people to the polo grounds and get more people interested," she said. At the moment the Cambridge Polo Club has about 15 members, with younger ones coming through. The women playing for New Zealand in the match have been selected as Missy Browne, Renn Erceg, Emma Calder and Maddy Rankin. Polo is played in seven minute chukkas (quarters) and riders will often have a different horse per chukka. Browne will ride four of hers on the day. "The men usually have six horses, but for international they have to have at least eight horses," she said. Browne said that to encourage people to come to the event, Harcourts, the main sponsors of the event, planned to transport bus loads of people from Otorohanga and Te Awamutu. The ladies event is to be held at the Cambridge Polo Grounds on Sunday February 14. The weekend before that (Saturday February 6) a men's international match will be held in Kihikihi at the Rosetown Holden International Day at the Nga Rakau Polo Grounds. They will play a team visiting from Argentina, Capilla de Senor. The New Zealand men playing are John Paul Clarkin (captain) from Cambridge, Thomas Hunt, Glen Sherriff and Jimmy Wood. Christchurch rowers are training in an effluent-filled Avon River. Christchurch rowers are up effluent creek. The region's crews are unhappy about having to train with sewers emptying out into the Avon River but in the absence of other facilities, have no option other to row through. Rowing New Zealand president John Wylie, who is based in Christchurch, said the situation was "disgusting". ANNA PRICE/FAIRFAX NZ Rowing New Zealand president John Wylie says is is "disgusting" that Christchurch rowers train in the Avon River, which has sewage streaming into it. An Environment Canterbury (ECan) report released in December found Kerrs Reach, where the rowers train, and the Heathcote River's Catherine St site were polluted by human faeces while at a base flow level. READ MORE: Avon amongst most polluted Other river area's had human faeces travelling through after high rainfall and often exceeded recreational guidelines during base flows, the report found. "Rowers are seeing [sewage] all the time. We have no option but to go out in it," Wylie said. "I shudder to think of what they have to put up with." Rowers were a hardy bunch and it was not the elitist sport people made it out to be, Wylie said. Though they had been forced to put up with a lot since the earthquakes, he said. McGregor Best, a 15-year-old rower for Shirley Boys' High School, has seen a lot of pollution while training on the river, including doors, a fridge and half a couch. "It smells really bad in some places," he said. Canterbury Rowing Club captain Michael Petherick was not able to single out one particular area of the Avon where the effluent was spilling out. "It moves around as infrastructure works are happening," he said. "We usually get emails warning us there is going to be an outflow." Although it was not particularly nice to see the sewage floating about as they rowed, it had not had any detrimental effects on the rowers. "We haven't had any problems with people getting sick." Although the pollution problem had increased since the earthquakes, Petherick said it was nothing new. "The Avon has always been polluted. It's never been somewhere you would go and have a swim." ECan monitoring and compliance area leader David Noakes said the regional council was "very aware of faecal contamination in the Avon River". He urged anyone that saw effluent in the river to contact ECan. Noakes believed effluent getting into the river was due to infrastructure issues, including the state of pipes in the city, which fell to the city council to fix. Christchurch City Council waters and waste manager John Mackiesaid the council was unaware of any sewage spillages into the Avon. "Overflows are rare and when notified of problems we respond quickly to fix them," he said. If people were aware of an issue, they should contact the council, Mackie said. Architects will be consulted with a view to making the eastern stretch of Fairlie's Main St look more "European". Big changes are afoot on Fairlie's Main St, with a major development planned and several businesses set to fill empty holes in the South Canterbury town. Works were being planned to take advantage of a booming tourist market congregating on the hugely successful Fairlie Bakehouse, said Fairlie dairy farmer Kieran Guiney, whose family owns a big chunk of Main St. Architects would be consulted with a view to making part of the street look more "European", Guiney said. BEV BELL/FACEBOOK Queues stretch out the door of the Fairlie Bakehouse. "We're going to keep the post office but we will be expanding that whole area and developing it into a more attractive block for locals and tourists," Guiney said. READ MORE: * Queues out the door for pies * Property values jump in Mackenzie * Million dollar homes on the rise "Obviously the Bakehouse is looking to expand, it's getting tight in there now and we're wanting to do the development with it." Long-standing business L and L Hardware will be the latest to cease trading in their Main St building at the end of the month. It will join giftwares store Ooh-Lala and Paca Shack - which is starting its retail outlet afresh on its 10.5-hectare alpaca farm on the west side of town - as others to leave Main St in the past month. Interested stakeholders met to discuss the recent Main St departures at a meeting in Fairlie on Tuesday night but they might not have too much to worry about. Boutique clothing shop Mint would remain in the block, while a New Zealand souvenirs shop was another that would move in to the new development, he said. Across the road, the empty space left by the closure of Kai and Thai will be soon be replaced by a Chinese restaurant and takeaway. A spokesman for Jack's Chinese Takeaway in Geraldine, which owns the building, said the food would be modelled on their Geraldine takeaway, with fish and chips also on the menu. Work had started on the building but they had to wait for the cook they had hired to arrive before they could open, the spokesman said. "It should be very soon. Once we get a cook it will be easy to open," he said. Real estate agent Ward Humphrey said a new tenant had been found for the Paca Shack's building and the tenants should be moved in sometime in February. He did not want to say what the business was that had bought the tenancy. Fairlie Community Board chairman Owen Hunter said he knew of another "significant" business that was about to confirm it was coming to town. Main St was in a transition period but the shops would be filled again as operators began to see the success of places like the Fairlie Bakehouse, Hunter said. "It's far from a ghost town at the moment." The submerged body of a fisherman was discovered by tourists in the water off the Coromandel shoreline on overnight. Senior Sergeant Aaron Fraser says at this stage, its still unclear how the 41-year-old Thames mans body came to be in the water near the Waikawau Reserve boat ramp, just north of Tapu. A tour to White Island has departed as normal this morning aboard the vessel PeeJay IV following the loss of PeeJay V on Monday afternoon. White Island Tours marketing manager and spokesperson, Patrick OSullivan says investigations by Maritime New Zealand and the Transport Accident Investigation Commission are continuing, but there has been no requirement for operations to be suspended at any time. January 20, 2016: "Batman v Superman" Heroes Featured on Famous Monsters of Filmland Cover The March/April, 2016 issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine features "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" cast members Henry Cavill, Ben Affleck, and Gal Gadot on the cover as the superhero trinity of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman respectively. In addition to the cover, the magazine also features an indepth interview on the highly anticipated film with director Zack Snyder who also discusses his work on such other upcoming DC Comics films as "Justice League: Part 1," "Wonder Woman," and "The Flash". Check out the awesome new cover below: "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" premieres nationwide and at select IMAX locations on March 25th, 2016. JOHNSON CITY, Tenn. A group of East Tennessee State University business students, under the guidance of accountancy faculty member Dr. Anthony Masino, will offer free tax preparation assistance again this year through the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) Program. The student volunteers will be available on five Saturdays - Feb. 6 and 20, March 5 and 19, and April 2 from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. in the third floor computer lab, room 318, in Sam Wilson Hall, located on campus at 200 Ross Drive. As an approved VITA location, the ETSU group will assist taxpayers who had $54,000 or less in income during tax year 2015 and need assistance in preparing their own tax returns. ETSU students, staff, faculty and the general public are invited to participate. In addition to free basic income tax return preparation and electronic filing, volunteers will inform taxpayers about special tax credits, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit, and Credit for the Elderly or the Disabled. Taxpayers can visit the ETSU VITA website and an IRS-certified volunteer will guide them through the tax return process. Those who wish to have their tax return prepared at a ETSU VITA session should bring with them: >> Proof of identification government issued picture ID >> Social Security Cards for the taxpayer, spouse and any dependents on the tax return >> Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) assignment letter for the taxpayer, spouse and dependents >> Proof of foreign status, if applying for an ITIN >> Birth dates for the taxpayer, spouse and dependents on the tax return >> Wage and earning statement(s) from all employers, including any W-2, W-2G 1099-R, 1099-Misc. >> Interest and dividend statements from banks (Form 1099) >> A copy of last years federal and state returns, if available >> Proof of bank account routing numbers and account numbers for direct deposit, such as a blank check >> Total paid to daycare provider(s) and the daycare providers tax identifying number (the providers Social Security Number or business Employer Identification Number), if appropriate >> To file taxes electronically on a married-filing-joint tax return, both spouses must be present to sign the required forms Last year, more than 30 graduate and undergraduate students successfully completed IRS certification requirements in order to volunteer. Those volunteers were able to prepare and assist members of the public with over 100 tax returns. For further information, contact Masino at 423-439-4432 or Masino@etsu.edu. For disability accommodations, call the ETSU Office of Disability Services at 423-439-8346. SmartAsset, a New York financial technology company, recently released its second annual study on the Best Places to Get a Mortgage. Indian River County cracked the list at number 10 in Florida, up from its rank of 21 in 2015. Best mortgage market is the overall ranking of the easiest places to get a mortgage with the lowest cost. There are 67 counties in Florida. The study determines the top markets by comparing the likelihood of mortgage approval by county, in addition to mortgage rates, average five-year borrowing costs and property taxes. Brevard County ranked 37, Martin County came in at 41 and St. Lucie County ranked 45 in best mortgage markets in Florida. Indian River County also ranked third in loan funding rate, at 63.29 percent. Loan funding rate is based on the percentage of submitted mortgage applications successfully approved for a loan. St. Lucie County ranked 11th, Martin County came in at No. 12 and Brevard County ranked 14th in loan funding rate. SHARE By News Release VERO BEACH Indian River County to participate in 'Give Kids a Smile' In recognition of the American Dental Association's Give Kids a Smile program, Florida Department of Health in Indian River County, in collaboration with Seaside Smiles Pediatric Dentistry and other local dentists, will be offering free dentistry services to children ages 5-12 during Indian River County's sixth annual Give Kids a Smile event. Free dental screenings will be offered by appointment only 8 a.m.-noon Feb. 4 at Seaside Smiles Pediatric Dentistry, 3725 12th Court, Suite B, Vero Beach. Patients determined to need treatment will be scheduled an appointment for 8 a.m.-noon Feb. 5 or 8 a.m.-noon Feb. 6 at the health department, 1900 27th St., Vero Beach. For more information or to schedule an appointment, call 772-562-6880. Free dental screenings and treatment, if needed, will be offered by appointment only 8 a.m.-noon Feb. 6 at the health department, 1900 27th St., Vero Beach. Children must be Indian River County residents for an appointment at this location. For more information, or to schedule your child for an appointment with the Health Department, call 772-794-7435. STOCK PHOTO Gavel. SHARE Judge Cynthia Cox Kate Hill By Paul Ivice Circuit Judge Cynthia Cox will receive the 2016 Distinguished Judicial Service Award, which honors outstanding and sustained service to the public, especially as it relates to support of pro bono legal services. Breaking a five-year stranglehold by the 13th Circuit in Hillsborough County, Cox is the first judge in eastern or Central Florida to win the award in its 12-year history. Cox is also the seventh female judge selected. The award will be presented by Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Jorge Labarga at a ceremony Jan. 28 in Tallahassee. Cox, who was first elected to the 19th Circuit bench in 1996, was honored earlier that year with the Bar President's Pro Bono Service Award for the 19th Circuit while still an attorney with a solo practice in Vero Beach. Among her projects since becoming a judge are helping to establish mental health courts in St. Lucie and Indian River counties, creating and training attorneys for a rotating guardian ad litem system, and helping to initiate shared parenting by divorced couples rather than custody and visitation. "I believe prisoners have visitation; children have parents," Cox said of the need for parental time-sharing. "I wanted to be a judge to make a difference, to make the system better," Cox said. "In every division I have been assigned to, I look for ways to improve the process. "My challenge is for all judges to help improve the process," she said. "It does need improvement now and then." Cox said her reassignment this year to felony court from the civil division "makes it easier to do mental health court because I don't have as many jury trials." PRO BONO SERVICE AWARD Kate Hill, a sole practitioner in family law in Vero Beach, was selected for this year's award in the 19th Circuit. A native of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Hill started her legal career in 1990 with five years as a prosecutor in the 19th Circuit State Attorney Office after earning her law degree at the University of Miami. Hill reported more than 200 hours of pro bono work in 2015 more than any other lawyer with Florida Rural Legal Services, which covers Indian River County. The services she provides for low-income people include dissolutions of marriage, shared-parenting plans, child support and other related matters of family law. Those hours do not include additional pro bono time she spends on her own, or the countless hours spent volunteering in the community, the Bar's news release states. "I think it's important to keep at least one pro bono case active all the time," Hill said. The Bar annually gives the pro bono service award to one attorney from each of the state's 20 circuits and one Florida Bar member practicing outside the state. Only one judge from among nearly 1,000 in the state gets the Distinguished Judicial Service Award, though only four were nominated, the same number as last year, Florida Bar spokesman Mark Hohmeister said. Cox's nomination was submitted by the Indian River County Bar Association without her participation or knowledge. "Since Judge Cox has taken the bench in 1997, she has been the epitome of improvement of justice," the county bar association stated on its nomination. "She has continuously dedicated her extra time to improve the judicial system for both litigants and attorneys. No matter which division she has served, Judge Cox has always found innovative and creative ways to provide better access to the judicial system and a more efficient procedure." SHARE Traffic is backed up on southbound I-95 north of State Road 60 on Wednesday after a vehicle carrier caught on fire, shows the traffic camera at mile marker 153.5 about 1 p.m. (FDOT) By Staff Report INDIAN RIVER COUNTY A vehicle carrier caught fire Wednesday morning on Interstate 95, stalling traffic for several hours in the southbound lanes north of State Road 60, the Florida Department of Transportation said. Indian River County Fire Rescue responded to the blaze, which was reported about 10 a.m. near mile marker 150, about 3 miles north of S.R. 60. One lane reopened by noon and all lanes had reopened by 2 p.m., FDOT said. No cause was available Wednesday for the fire. Lake Okeechobee, including the C-44 Canal reservoir in Martin County, is shown in this picture. (FILE PHOTO) SHARE By Isadora Rangel of TCPalm TALLAHASSEE With a controversial water policy bill headed to Gov. Rick Scott's desk, some are now focusing on finding enough money in the state budget to enforce the new law and to carry on restoration projects. Environmentalists and Senate President-elect Joe Negron, R-Stuart, will lobby for more money for Everglades restoration, conservation land acquisitions, water farming and more employees to inspect whether farmers are complying with regulations established in the bill. After four years in the making, the legislation cleared the House and Senate last week and changes water regulation for the entire state. It also changes how farm runoff pollution into Lake Okeechobee is regulated, from a permitting program requiring farmers meet certain standards to a cleanup up plan that requires them to follow "best management practices," such as reducing fertilizer use and changing irrigation practices. Scott is expected to sign the bill Thursday. Some environmentalists, led by the Sierra Club, say the bill relaxes the law instead of cracking down on farmers. Others, such as Audubon Florida, say lawmakers made progress compared to last year's version by adding that best management practices must be enforced and changed if they aren't working. Much of the success of the bill will depend on whether state agencies have enough money to enforce best management practices. Cleaning up waterways such as the St. Lucie River and Indian River Lagoon also will depend on the implementation of Amendment 1, the water and land conservation measure voters approved in 2014. Environmentalists filed two pending lawsuits that say the Legislature violated voters' will by using more than $200 million of the money available last year to pay for agency overhead costs. The amendment mandates one-third of real estate transaction tax revenue be used to buy, restore and improve land and water resources. Here's a wish list of environmental projects: More inspectors: The Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services is asking the Legislature to allocate money for eight new positions at its agricultural water policy division, which implements the best management practices and performs inspections. Water farming: Scott vetoed more than $27 million last year to pay farmers to hold water on their land that otherwise would end up polluting estuaries. This year, Negron is seeking about $13 million $5.5 million of which would be recurring for 10 years for the Caulkins Citrus Co. farm in Indiantown, which pumps water from the C-44 Canal. The money will expand the project from 414 acres to 3,000 acres and will hold 30 billion gallons of water per year when completed, Negron said. Everglades: The river of grass could get a guaranteed source of money for the next 19 years through a bill filed by Negron and Rep. Gayle Harrell. House Speaker Steve Crisafulli is backing the legislation that requires $200 million, or 25 percent whichever is smallest of Amendment 1 money be used for Everglades restoration with an emphasis on projects that reduce Lake O discharges into the St. Lucie River. The amendment expires in 2035. Florida Forever: Audubon Florida wants at least $25 million be used to buy land for parks and habitat conservation under the program. The Legislature gave only $17.4 million last year, far from the roughly $300 million the program used to get annually before the economic recession and the $155 million Amendment 1 sponsors asked. Family Rural Lands: Under this program, the state pays ranchers to not allow their land to be developed, therefore preserving Florida's natural rural landscape. Environmentalists want at least $25 million, an increase from the $15 million allocated in 2015. Land purchases: The state needs to buy land to implement projects to restore wetlands and the Kissimmee River to slow down water that flows into Lake Okeechobee. Audubon wants $25 million. Springs: The water bill establishes a cleanup plan for polluted springs, a milestone for lawmaker who have been trying for year to pass legislation to address the issue. Environmentalists want at least $50 million. The Legislature gave $45 million last year. Follow Isadora Rangel, Arek Sarkissian and Tampa news partner Jeff Schweers for updates on all the legislative action. Tweets about from:IsadoraRangel2 OR from:ArekSarkissian OR from:jeffschweersTBO By Lucas Daprile of TCPalm ABOUT THIS STORY Wealthy political donors use legal loopholes to obscure their identity while skirting state campaign contribution caps. That can increase their influence over politicians they help get elected. Gov. Rick Scott and the Treasure Coasts three senators and five representatives have benefited from these loopholes by at least $343,000 in their last races. Florida, though known for its government in the sunshine open records laws, is not among the states trying to close the loophole. Gov. Rick Scott and Treasure Coast state lawmakers have accepted thousands of dollars through legal campaign finance loopholes that allow donors to obscure their identity while skirting contribution limits. These back doors allow wealthy corporations, business owners and even political committees to donate through multiple, affiliated organizations further linking their political influence to their economic firepower. The so-called "LLC Loophole" and "bundling" practices are less transparent ways to give because donors are required to disclose only their business names and addresses, not the owners' names. They could more easily write one big check to a no-cap political committee that supports their favorite candidate. It's nearly impossible to pinpoint exactly how much money flowed through these loopholes that's the point but a Treasure Coast Newspapers investigation uncovered at least $343,000 in LLC Loophole donations alone in Scott's and local legislators' last elections. Some states have passed laws to close the LLC Loophole and one even sued a candidate, who paid a hefty fine to settle but not Florida, otherwise known for its robust "government in the sunshine" open records laws. LLC LOOPHOLE Scott's 2014 campaign, for example, received at least $55,704 from the same medical investment mogul with a history of political involvement. Steven Scott, no relation to the governor, gave more than 18 times the $3,000 cap for gubernatorial races through the LLC Loophole without his name appearing once. Fifteen of Steven Scott's companies each penned a $3,000 check, all received on March 22 from the same Boca Raton address. Three more of his companies gave $3,000 each, also on March 22, but from a Fort Lauderdale address. To top it off, Steven Scott himself donated $1,704 worth of food and beverages for a gubernatorial campaign event. Of the businesses Steven Scott gave through, most but not all, were limited liability companies. LLCs have the same donation limit as a person or company: $3,000 for gubernatorial races and $1,000 for legislative races. "If somebody wants to give more than that contribution limit, all they have to do is go out and set up some LLCs, then give the maximum amount," said Ben Wilcox, research director for Integrity Florida, a nonpartisan, nonprofit government watchdog group. Steven Scott did not return several calls seeking comment about his donations and Gov. Scott's office would not comment, referring questions to his PAC spokesman. TRANSPARENCY Treasure Coast Newspapers detected about 50 people who made multiple donations through their LLCs to Scott or local legislators in their last election. The actual amount is likely higher than $342,900 because some LLC Loophole donations do not show the telltale signs a Treasure Coast Newspapers investigation used to search for them: organizing a database to find multiple donations, usually the maximum amount, to the same candidate on the same day from the same address. If an LLC is registered in Florida, it's possible to research a state corporation business database to determine the owner. But if the money comes from a donor in another state, it can be much harder to track, even impossible if that state doesn't have a similar resource. A mix of LLCs and other types of companies from Buffalo, New York, for example, gave 20 checks to Sen. Joe Negron's 2013 campaign. They showed the same day, same address and same maximum amount, which at the time was $500. Six of those companies showed up in New York's corporation business database and eight showed up on Florida's sunbiz.org, but six did not show up in either. Negron said he wouldn't call such donations a "loophole," and said there is nothing wrong with accepting money from "legal entities that make legal contributions." "It's very frustrating," Wilcox said, "because the original intent of campaign financing is: 'Who gave it? Who got it?' We've structured a system where that's very hard to determine now." BUNDLING Businesses also can give through multiple subsidiaries that aren't necessarily LLCs. The Walt Disney Co., for example, often uses this "bundling" practice by giving through The Magic Kingdom Inc., The Celebration Co., Disney Destinations LLC, Disney Gift Card Services Inc. and many others. Disney and its subsidiaries have given Scott and local legislators at least $100,500 through nine subsidiaries since 2010. Disney declined to comment on its donations. Political committees also use bundling to skirt caps by donating through their subcommittees or regional committees. Though they can accept unlimited donations, political committees are bound by the same caps as LLCs and individuals. Negron's 2014 general election campaign, for example, received a combined $4,000 from four political committees representing the anesthesiology industry. Anesthesiology PAC gave Negron the maximum $1,000, as did each of its three subcommittees, which are funded almost entirely by the main committee and named Anesthesiology Leadership Council 1, 2 and 3. While some political committees are tied to industries like anesthesiology, others are tied directly to a candidate, such as Scott's Let's Get to Work. Donors can further maximize their influence by giving to both. In 2014, U.S. Sugar Corp. gave Scott a combined $12,000 through its main corporation and three subsidiaries, plus several checks totaling $226,462 to Let's Get to Work. REFORM Though most donations come from business owners who set up LLCs and subsidiaries for legitimate tax and legal purposes, Florida law does not protect against dummy companies set up solely to contribute to political campaigns, according to an August report from the LeRoy Collins Institute, which Wilcox co-authored. "If funders were determined to evade the candidate contribution limits, they could easily set up multiple shell corporations or other entities and make the maximum contribution allowed for each of them," the report said. LCC creation requires three pages of paperwork and a $125 setup fee. To keep an LLC active requires an annual corporate report and a $138.75 fee. Sen. Thad Altman, a Rockledge Republican, is among those who say reform is needed. "I think we should have a cap on what can be given, and the cap should apply to everyone equally," Altman said, calling current laws "disenfranchising" and "alienating" to the general public. He gave few details of how he would change the system, but said, "what I think is important is we at least need to start the dialogue." Asked if he will continue to take LLC Loophole donations, Altman said, "Absolutely, as long as they are legal. If it's legal, that means your opponent is going to be taking those. To be competitive, you gotta be able to match dollar for dollar," he said. "So I don't fault anyone for taking a contribution that's legal." Rep. Debbie Mayfield, an Indian River County Republican who received $4,000 through Robert Stork's four LLCs in 2013, defended the practice. "If the intent is to have LLCs as shell companies just for the purpose of funneling campaign money through, that's wrong," Mayfield said. "As long as they're legitimate businesses, why would you not take those donations?" Mayfield said business owners like Stork, of Vero Beach, who she knows personally, may own LLCs in different industries with different needs. Stork's companies are in the aviation, investment and real estate industries, state records show. He did not respond to several calls seeking comment. "There's various interests within those various businesses," Mayfield said. "They should be able to make contributions through those businesses." Indeed, lobbyists are often middlemen for LLC Loophole contributions, Altman and Mayfield acknowledged. For campaign finance purposes, Florida considers a "person" to be "an individual or a corporation, association, firm, partnership, joint venture, joint stock company, club, organization, estate, trust, business trust, syndicate or other combination of individuals having collective capacity." Under Florida's definition, political parties and political committees are also considered "persons." "There are states that only allow contributions from people," Wilcox said. "I think Florida should consider something along those lines." Some states have taken different tacks to crack down on the LLC Loophole in recent years. INTERACTIVE MAP | Click icons to see what a few other states have done to crack down on the LLC Loophole. POLL | Who should be able to give to political candidates? Check all that apply: Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 20 Trend: President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has met with Prime Minister of the Republic of Turkey Ahmet Davutoglu in Davos. The development of Azerbaijani-Turkish friendly and brotherly relations in all areas was hailed during the meeting. They stressed the importance of regular high-level meetings in terms of the expansion of cooperation. The significance of joint participation of Azerbaijan and Turkey in international events was emphasized. The Turkish Prime Minister extended greetings of President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the head of state. President Ilham Aliyev thanked for the greetings of the Turkish head of state, and asked the Prime Minister to extend his greetings to Recep Tayyip Erdogan. They discussed the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, expansion of economic cooperation, and other issues of mutual interest. Ed Massey's a hard guy to draw out. I visited him last week at Indian River State College's main campus in Fort Pierce for two reasons. First, I'd never seen the school, though I'd read a lot about it, and I wanted to get a firsthand look. Massey took me on the grand tour, and I was suitably impressed. Which led into the second reason for my visit. Indian River State College, and other Florida colleges, are likely to find themselves in the legislative crosshairs again this year, if (or when) state Sen. Joe Negron, a Republican from the Treasure Coast, reintroduces legislation to limit the growth of four-year programs at community colleges. Negron is on a mission to make Florida's universities great, and as part of that, he said the state needs to do away with "unnecessary duplication." Florida's universities already offer plenty of four-year degrees, so the expansion of four-year programs at community colleges IRSC now offers 17 four-year baccalaureate degrees amounts to "mission creep," Negron says. And he seems to think the community colleges are stealing good students away from the universities. Several times during my campus tour, I tried to draw Massey out on the issue. Come on, what do you REALLY think of Negron's argument? Ever the diplomat, Massey demurred well, he has to work with the Legislature, after all. But at one point, Massey said, simply, "I'm for education. I'm for more education." Negron might see that as self-serving. But I'd argue that it instead serves the Treasure Coast pretty well. And rather than limiting it, we ought to be encouraging more of it. Indian River State College appears to be thriving. And in part because it is, the Treasure Coast, our economy, is thriving. The growth of four-year programs at IRSC and other community colleges hasn't happened in a vacuum. Programs were added in response to need the need of local employers for qualified employees. In other cases, Massey told me, programs were added in anticipation of need that is, if the Treasure Coast wants to attract certain types of employers or industry, it needs to have workers trained and capable of doing the job. For example, the college added a Bachelor of Science degree in biology/biotechnology in 2010. Students have interned at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies research facilities that need skilled workers. And students who earn a four-year degree in health care management or nursing fill key positions at regional hospitals and health care systems. Without these programs that train local people for local jobs, how do those jobs get filled? Maybe the jobs don't come here in the first place. And maybe the region's economy suffers because of it. The beauty, and that's the right word, of what IRSC has done is in its flexibility, it's ability to adapt to the needs of both employers and students in this community. Nearly half of IRSC students are "nontraditional," aged 24-44. They're not packing a bag and heading to Florida State to further or finish their education. They are here. The jobs they either hold or aspire to hold are here. And according to IRSC statistics, 86 percent of students who graduate with a baccalaureate degree are employed immediately. Indeed, more than 150 businesses, government agencies and schools right here on the Treasure Coast have provided letters of support for IRSC's baccalaureate programs. Students get jobs. Employers get qualified employees. The economy grows. And we want to place limits on this? Are we nuts? You know what? Negron's right. This is "mission creep" what's happening at Indian River State College is beyond the scope of what its founders and state leaders envisioned. But we ought to be thankful for it rather than treating it as a usurpation. During my campus tour last week, Massey offered one other sly editorial comment. We were in the Kight Center for Emerging Technologies, home to the college's Digital Media Institute, Robotics/Photonics Institute and Cybersecurity Institute. I mentioned I'd been on university campuses that weren't this sophisticated. "Do you think this facility is capable of hosting a baccalaureate program?" Massey asked. The answer was "obviously." But then, I guess it isn't obvious to everyone. Tom Gale, Exhibit Sponsor The Gale Foundation; John Kelly, President Florida Atlantic University SHARE FAU Harbor Branch supporter Tom Gale, The Gale Foundation The Johnson Sea Link II submersible is on display for a limited time. Donations from the community allow Harbor Branch to construct innovative ocean exploration technology and forward revolutionary research. Funding from The Gale Foundation and other donors enable the FAU Harbor Branch Foundation to fund a research project involving the purchase of a Waveglider, which uses both wave-powered and stored solar energy to navigate ocean conditions (doldrums, high currents, and hurricanes/cyclones) previously too challenging or costly to operate. FAU Harbor Branchs network of remote-controlled sensors in the St. Lucie Estuary disseminates real-time information, available online to anyone at FAU.Loboviz.com. These sensors measure temperature, salinity, depth (to measure tidal fluctuations), turbidity (particles), water color, dissolved oxygen, pH (a measure of acidity), nitrate, phosphate, and chlorophyll fluorescence (for algal chlorophyll in the water). By Virginia Blossom Tom Gale has been passionate about the ocean since he was a small boy playing on the beach at his family home in Palm Beach. Since then, the pull of the ocean has tugged at his heart a heart grounded in generations of commitment to philanthropy. As a trustee of The Gale Foundation, established in the 1990s through funds from his great-grandmother's estate, he has merged his passions for ocean conservation and philanthropy. He supports programs related to human welfare and the environment throughout the country, but it is his support of organizations like Florida Atlantic University(FAU) Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute that ignite his greatest enthusiasm. An engineer by trade, Tom discovered FAU Harbor Branch while researching universities and institutions in the state of Florida that were taking innovative, results-oriented approaches to ocean science, particularly as they related to coral reef conservation. In working through the lengthy list of organizations meeting that criteria, he came across the work of Dr. Fraser Dalgleish and his colleagues at FAU Harbor Branch. Their work in LiDAR imaging resonated with him and he began to fund their undertakings. Tom's relationship with FAU Harbor Branch has grown throughout the years and his expertise in engineering has made him a valuable volunteer with the Ocean Engineering and Technology team, both in the lab and in the field. His interests have expanded from coral reef imaging research to data collection platforms for a variety of research projects across the institute. It isn't unusual to see Tom an affable, approachable gentleman with sea-blue eyes and a ready smile sitting in the cafe after a trip in the field, talking shop with scientists and researchers. Apropos then that he chose to provide the funding for the first exhibit in the new gallery at the FAU Harbor Branch Ocean Discovery Visitor's Center, an exhibit highlighting the important role of technology in ocean exploration. "It is a privilege to be the custodian and agent of the philanthropic vision of my family through The Gale Foundation," said Tom, "and I am very proud to be able to support the researchers at FAU Harbor Branch as they work to find solutions to some of the world's most pressing conservation issues." SHARE Patty M. Vero Beach Hector M. Vero Beach Pedro M. Vero Beach Sarah L. Vero Beach Hector M. Vero Beach I lived in Vero Lake Estates for many years, and then I moved over [beachside], and I find that I love the place. We come in in November and stay here till March. We have a good time we love the place. I don't know if [the statistic's] true or not. It sounds more like politics to me. It's hard to tell. I stand in the middle of everything. Everything is a circle. Everything in moderation. harjeev Senior - BHPian Join Date: May 2006 Location: New Delhi Posts: 1,896 Thanked: 282 Times View My Garage The Red Devil makes way for the Silver Fox - My 2008 Suzuki Grand Vitara Hello Everyone, Well, this might be my 5th or 6th ownership thread on Teambhp. Almost all the other vehicles (for which the threads were opened) have been sold and am keeping just the Toyota Land Cruiser which I definitely plan to keep in my Garage. My Landcruiser Thread This thread is about a vehicle which is my most recent acquisition. Well let me start from the beginning. I had purchased and restored a Maruti Gypsy in 2010. This vehicle itself had quite a story behind it. Bought in 1998, sold in 2001/2 again bought in 2010. This vehicle was painstakingly restored in the beginning of 2011 and since that time I had it in my possession giving me trouble free ownership experience. Never went for any serious off-roading in the Gypsy other than some sand bashing and that too just a couple of times during the initial years. Since the day I got the Gypsy restored, it was regularly serviced at proper intervals of 5K Kms or every 1 year whichever came earlier. Now this thing happened. Last service for the Gypsy was done in Feb'15 at 97xx Kms. Almost 1 year having passed since the last service and checkup I decided to get the vehicle serviced and this is when I was in for a surprise. In the last 11 months I'd driven the vehicle for just 500 Kms. The vehicle was simply not being used and when that happens the condition of the vehicle starts to deteriorate. This 500 Kms too was driven by my drivers who are under instructions to drive it once in a week or two around the colony so that the brakes don't get jammed, the oil, coolant keeps circulating, and any issues that might comeup are attended too and sorted at once. So I began thinking, when the vehicle isn't being used, why not sell it off and buy something which would be used by everyone in the family hense the thought process and search began. Lots of options came to my mind like buying a new premium hatch, or a 2nd hand Toyota Corolla, Elantra and the likes. But in my heart I wasn't totally convinced of selling off a 4x4 and buying a sedan or a hatch. It just didn't gel and never convinced me. Here's a picture of my Gypsy During this time when all this was going on in my head, what happened was, I went to Bikaner in mid Dec'15 with a friend in his vehicle. We were travelling in his 2008 Maruti Suzuki Grand Vitara. He had picked up the vehicle in Jan'15. The vehicle was simply perfect. Simply no squeaks, no road noise, much better than a hatch or a sedan, decent pickup and fantastic confidence inspiring breaking ability. On the way back, I drove the vehicle back to Delhi from Bikaner and I was floored. Even after having done 80-90K Kms the engine was extremely responsive to the touch of the accelerator. Hense my search and research for the Grand Vitara began. Here's a picture of the vehicle which started it all. Once back in Delhi I began pouring over threads on TeamBHP and ended up reading Sharat's Thread in just a matter of 2 days. I don't know how much I grasped but did grasp this much that The vehicle is trouble free Maruti Suzuki Reliability Parts aren't cheap but not that expensive either Normal Service cost is under 10 grands each 10K Kms Not a hardcore offroad vehicle but having decent Off-Road capability with a Low Ratio Gearbox Parts availability is not an issue but not available over the counter like other vehicles. However already having experience with maintaining my Landcruiser since the past 5 years for which again parts are a bit hard to come by this wasn't an issue at all. Excellent Pickup (do remember the other SUV I have is a diesel Toyota Landcruiser) Excellent Braking even from triple digit speeds So all in all it ticked all the right check boxes. Now the best part was I didn't even need to search for a vehicle. One of my relatives was selling his Grand Vitara which he bought second hand in 2012. At that time the ODO meter read 36,xxx Kms and the current reading was 45,8xx Kms. He didn't drive the vehicle much as all other vehicles in his house are Diesels and this vehicle usually took a backseat and moreover this 10K Kms which he drove was mostly on the highways. As soon as I was back in Delhi I spoke to my relative and requested him to send pictures of the vehicle on Whatspap. This is what he sent. The above pictures have been clicked by my relative and belong to him. The idea to buy this vehicle was pitched to everyone in the family and everyone agreed with just one caveat. "THE GYPSY NEEDS TO GO FIRST." This wasn't a problem as mentally I had already made up my mind to sell the Gypsy and buy the Vitara. Till this point I hadn't driven this Vitara and just saw it once in 2012 when my relative bought it. So I placed an advertisement on social media on 11thJan'16 and the Gypsy was sold in just a couple of days. The price which the Gypsy exchanged hands was 205K. Funny thing happened during this transaction, actually those staying in Delhi would find it so. My Gypsy was an EVEN numbered vehicle and the Vitara ODD. I received the down payment on an ODD day (13thJan'16) with a promise from the buyer of the Gypsy that the entire amount would be paid the next day(14thJan'16). Now the deal having being done and vehicle being sold, I wanted to get the the Vitara home at any cost and I knew in my heart that either I go and get it today(13thJan'16, ODD Day) as next day being EVEN I wouldn't be able to go and take delivery of the Vitara as the it is ODD numbered and can't be driven on EVEN days, further knowing myself, I wouldn't be at ease till the time I get the vehicle home. It was already late in the evening on the 13thJan'16 and as it was the festival of Lohri in Northern India I was busy during the evening with family functions and so was my relative. So those 2 nights were again spent reading Samurai's thread and just trying to spend time. At one point in time, for a moment, I even contemplated paying the fine and driving it home the next day but thank god good sense prevailed. So the day after being Friday (15thJan'16) the entire schedule for the day was cleared, all work forgotten and I was off to see and get the vehicle home. Do remember that by this time I haven't physically seen the vehicle in over 4 years, never driven it and no idea on the condition. I reach his home at noon and as soon as the greetings exchanged without sitting demand the keys to the Grand Vitara. Once inside the vehicle this is the 1st picture I snap. ODO Meter reads 45,818 Took it for a small test drive and the vehicle was just perfect. No body rattles, very responsive, all the buttons, knobs, Aircon working. There is a small playground near his house so I took it there to check the 4x4 for engaging and disengaging the HIGH & LOW RATIO and was glad that it was working as well. Took me a little time to understand the working of the 4x4 knob as the Clutch and Brake need to be pressed simultaneously to engage and disengage but a quick call to my friend, the one who implanted the bug in me, and quickly got the hang of it. Snapped a couple of pics while testing. Came back, discussed on the price and the vehicle was mine in a matter of minutes. Advantages which this particular vehicle had Tyres replaces about 2-3K kms back to Bridgestone Duellers HTS 235/70/R16. Hense a long life ahead. Even by a conservative estimate these saved me 30K. Clutch changed 4K kms back. Saving of 15-20K atleast. New Battery in Jan'15 Saving 4K Changed the upholstery 5 months back. Saving 10K Now the best Part. When the vehicle was bought in 2012, it was transferred in my company's name, which meant no need to transfer it again, I'm already the registered 2nd owner. The vehicle is Nov'08 and the full insurance was renewed in Nov'15 for 12K. So as its not to be transferred I retain the insurance and no expense for insurance for the next 10 months. Saving 10K. ODOmeter reading is Genuine 46K Kms, non accidental and no claim on insurance. Later got it checked up at MASS (Maruti Authorised Service) as well and there has been no BodyShop work done on the vehicle, Ever. Saved atleast 5K on Dealer commission. So optimistically speaking saved atleast 75K of immediate or near term expenses over and above the cost of the vehicle. As they say "A Known Devil Is Better Than An Unknown Angel" and I know for sure that I haven't got a Devil. So all in all the PROS really outweigh the CONS, if they arise. So finally we agreed at a price 380K. In my mind the transaction goes like this. Sold an early 1998 manufactured vehicle and purchased one manufactured in late 2008. So got a 10 almost 11 year newer vehicle Had to spend just 175K from my pocket to get a premium vehicle. No installments No Loans If one deducts the 75K of savings (read above) the amount comes to 100K which is not bad at all. I was prepared to buy either a new hatch or a 2nd hand D Segment Sedan. The Vitara definitely beats both of them hands down. Known history of the vehicle. Serviced at MASS (Maruti Authorised Service) till 31K kms (by the 1st owner as my relative bought it at 36K Kms) then then for sure I know it was service twice at a Neighborhood Garage as told to me by the seller. Sold a vehicle which no one used to drive for one which anyone in the family could and would drive. Sold a vehicle as basic as a jeep with no comfort and safety features to a premium compact SUV with safety features like Airbags and ABS power-steering, etc. The vehicle might not be as peppy at the Vitara 2.4 liter version which came in later but it definitely serves my purpose as a city commuter and occasional highway vehicle. The vehicle might not be as fuel efficient as one might want it to be. But even if it returns 8+KMpL, I'll be more than happy with it. So here is the story behind me getting my hands behind the Grand Vitara. The plan for now is to get it serviced at Motorcraft Sahibabad, change all the fluids (Engine Oil, Brake Oil, Gearbox Transfer Case & Differential Oil, Coolant, Power Steering Fluid, etc,) Air, Oil and Aircon Filters to start with. This is the same workshop where Sudev sir takes his Vitara. In addition to this I'll be getting it check for parts like suspension, steering linkages, brake pad, disc conditions etc. I've already driven it for 300 Kms over the weekend and will be sharing my initial experience in the next couple of post along with the service and checkup experience. Took the vehicle to Motorcraft Sahibabad for a general checkup and 1st detailed service. Jobs Requested Complete Service Engine Oil & Oil Filter Change Powersteering Fluid Change Brake Fluid Change Coolant Change Air Filter change Aircon Filter Change All Lights & Bulbs Check Gear Box, Transfer Case Oil and Differential Oil Change Brake Pad Clean Check & Replace, if necessary Drum Brake Check and & Replace, if necessary Suspension Inspect Engine Mounting Check Gearbox Mounting Check I was there at the workshop at 12 noon and they straightaway sent the vehicle for washing first. This was done on my request as being a Saturday I didn't want to get the work done and then keep waiting for the vehicle to be washed. The vehicle was washed around 2.30PM (they had lunch time in between) and then the work on the vehicle started. I was there at the workshop till 6pm and the work done that day was Engine Oil and Oil Filter Replaced. (changed oil to full Synthetic 5W50 on the recommendation of my friend who's the GM of Motorcraft, though it says 0W40 on the Bill) Coolant Replaced Brake Fluid Replaced Power Steering Fluid Replaced Front Left and Rear Left Power window switches changed Spark Plugs Replaced Full Servicing & Checking Brake Pads and Rear Drums Cleaned Air Filter Cleaned. Wanted to get it changed but wasn't in stock AirCon Filter cleaned. Again this wasn't in stock. Work which couldn't be done owing to non availability of parts and observations are Brake Pads need replacement. Parts weren't in stock. Have been ordered Both Front Left and Right lower Arms need to be replaced. They still have a life for the next 8-10K kms so not replacing at the present time. Jumping Rod Bush need replacement. Parts weren't in stock. Have been ordered. Gear Oil Transfer Case and Differential Oil not in Stock.Has been ordered. Water Pump Belt needs to be replaced. Parts weren't in stock. Have been ordered. Air Con Filter needs to be changed. Parts weren't in stock. Have been ordered. Air Filter Element needs to be changed. Parts weren't in stock. Have been ordered. Will keep the stock filter, not going in for K&N at the present time. Both Engine Mounting needs to be changed. Parts weren't in stock. Have been ordered. Link Rod needs to be replaced. Parts weren't in stock. Have been ordered. Arrestor Bearing (no idea what this is) needs to be changed. Parts weren't in stock. Have been ordered. Rest the vehicle/ engine seems to be in the perfect condition as per the Service Advisor. Most of the above parts which have gone bad have done so with regards to the age of the vehicle. The most expensive parts in the above list are the Brake Pads 6K, Engine Mountings 10K for both, and Suspension Arms 10-11K each. The rest of the parts are pretty cheap. I've decided to get all the parts replaced and leave the Front suspension arms for later. Attaching a copy of the bill and the picture I clicked of the observation remarks written by the Service Advisor by hand on his notepad. Snapped some pictures of the interiors of the vehicle. Attended a small Time Speed Distance (TSD) Rally on Sunday and drove the vehicle for over 200 Kms during the event and after driving it for 300 odd Kms in total after buying, I'm sharing my experiences. Please do note that I've been driving a Toyota Landcruiser since he past 5+ years and more or less my comparison is on those lines. Driving Experience/ Comfort/ Things I like and Dislike The vehicle is simply a pleasure to drive in the city and on the highway. The pickup is great and so is the breaking efficiency. Even while driving in the 4th and 5th Gear, provided one is in the right RPM Band, one doesn't need to downshift whereas in my Diesel Landcruiser I need to downshift to the 3rd to again take it back to cruising speeds on the highways. Pleasure of driving a Petrol The vehicle is very stable at high speeds on the highways. One doesn't need to even think twice before overtaking, just one/ two downshift and you're good. The vehicle is basically vibration free. While standing at Red Lights I have to literally look at the RPM meter to see when its started or shut off on its own. The noise cancellation when the windows are shut is very good. The Music system leaves something to be desired. No plans to change it at the present time. I just wished they'd provided atleast an AUX input. Searching the market for attachments that could enable this. Cornering is very nice, much better controlled compared to the Landcruiser. I guess this has to do with the shorter height of the Vitara compared to the Landcruiser. The riding position is much better than a Car. However the eye level is still lower than what one would expect from a typical SUV. The driving position and seating is very comfortable. Though I drove it for just 4-5 odd hours didn't feel any tiredness. My arms started aching after a while but later learnt that the steering wheel can be adjusted up and down and once I adjusted it for my driving style it was great. Its a nice little compact SUV for a small family. Can very comfortably seat 4 and might even seat 5 but that's it. The boot space is very decent. I reckon that it can easily take 2 or even 3 full sized bags with ease. I love the placement of the spare tyre. Its easy to remove and put it back on. Doesn't involve the hassle of lowering the spare like than in an Innova and the Landcruiser. I like that the information display shows the outside temperature, time and the Fuel Efficiency (Rolling and Average). Though I've set it to OFF as I kept staring at it every couple of moments. Over the weekend while driving for the TSD event we had to drive over some unpaved and bad to very bad roads. The vehicle handles unpaved roads very well. However only when there were no roads with big craters I found that I had to slow down much more than I typically do in my Landcruiser. I am in no way saying that the suspension is not good. On the contrary its very good. Just that maybe the weight of the vehicle is half of that of the Landcruiser and the suspension and shockers have not been designed to handle the kind of abuse that the Landcruiser can take. I fully understand that its not a fair comparison but comparison to the Landcruiser is the only basis I have. Maybe over time when I've driven it more, I'll change my mind over this. The Tyres installed though are Highway Terrain and I intend to keep them. REASONS One I don't want to spend unnecessary cash and Second for my use (city, highway and occasional hills) I think that they'll do just fine. Thanks Guys PS: All the pics have been clicked by me except where mentioned Grand Vitara Ownership ThreadHello Everyone,Well, this might be my 5th or 6th ownership thread on Teambhp. Almost all the other vehicleshave been sold and am keeping just the Toyota Land Cruiser which I definitely plan to keep in my Garage.This thread is about a vehicle which is my most recent acquisition. Well let me start from the beginning. I had purchased and restored a Maruti Gypsy in 2010. This vehicle itself had quite a story behind it. Bought in 1998, sold in 2001/2 again bought in 2010. This vehicle was painstakingly restored in the beginning of 2011 and since that time I had it in my possession giving me trouble free ownership experience. Never went for any serious off-roading in the Gypsy other than some sand bashing and that too just a couple of times during the initial years. Since the day I got the Gypsy restored, it was regularly serviced at proper intervals of 5K Kms or every 1 year whichever came earlier.Now this thing happened. Last service for the Gypsy was done in Feb'15 at 97xx Kms. Almost 1 year having passed since the last service and checkup I decided to get the vehicle serviced and this is when I was in for a surprise. In the last 11 months I'd driven the vehicle for just 500 Kms. The vehicle was simply not being used and when that happens the condition of the vehicle starts to deteriorate. This 500 Kms too was driven by my drivers who are under instructions to drive it once in a week or two around the colony so that the brakes don't get jammed, the oil, coolant keeps circulating, and any issues that might comeup are attended too and sorted at once.So I began thinking, when the vehicle isn't being used, why not sell it off and buy something which would be used by everyone in the family hense the thought process and search began. Lots of options came to my mind like buying a new premium hatch, or a 2nd hand Toyota Corolla, Elantra and the likes. But in my heart I wasn't totally convinced of selling off a 4x4 and buying a sedan or a hatch. It just didn't gel and never convinced me.Here's a picture of my GypsyDuring this time when all this was going on in my head, what happened was, I went to Bikaner in mid Dec'15 with a friend in his vehicle. We were travelling in his 2008 Maruti Suzuki Grand Vitara. He had picked up the vehicle in Jan'15. The vehicle was simply perfect. Simply no squeaks, no road noise, much better than a hatch or a sedan, decent pickup and fantastic confidence inspiring breaking ability. On the way back, I drove the vehicle back to Delhi from Bikaner and I was floored. Even after having done 80-90K Kms the engine was extremely responsive to the touch of the accelerator. Hense my search and research for the Grand Vitara began.Here's a picture of the vehicle which started it all.Once back in Delhi I began pouring over threads on TeamBHP and ended up reading Sharat's Thread in just a matter of 2 days. I don't know how much I grasped but did grasp this much thatSo all in all it ticked all the right check boxes.Now the best part was I didn't even need to search for a vehicle. One of my relatives was selling his Grand Vitara which he bought second hand in 2012. At that time the ODO meter read 36,xxx Kms and the current reading was 45,8xx Kms. He didn't drive the vehicle much as all other vehicles in his house are Diesels and this vehicle usually took a backseat and moreover this 10K Kms which he drove was mostly on the highways.As soon as I was back in Delhi I spoke to my relative and requested him to send pictures of the vehicle on Whatspap. This is what he sent.The idea to buy this vehicle was pitched to everyone in the family and everyone agreed with just one caveat.This wasn't a problem as mentally I had already made up my mind to sell the Gypsy and buy the Vitara. Till this point I hadn't driven this Vitara and just saw it once in 2012 when my relative bought it.So I placed an advertisement on social media on 11thJan'16 and the Gypsy was sold in just a couple of days. The price which the Gypsy exchanged hands was 205K.Funny thing happened during this transaction, actually those staying in Delhi would find it so. My Gypsy was an EVEN numbered vehicle and the Vitara ODD. I received the down payment on an ODD day (13thJan'16) with a promise from the buyer of the Gypsy that the entire amount would be paid the next day(14thJan'16). Now the deal having being done and vehicle being sold, I wanted to get the the Vitara home at any cost and I knew in my heart that either I go and get it today(13thJan'16, ODD Day) as next day being EVEN I wouldn't be able to go and take delivery of the Vitara as the it is ODD numbered and can't be driven on EVEN days, further knowing myself, I wouldn't be at ease till the time I get the vehicle home. It was already late in the evening on the 13thJan'16 and as it was the festival ofin Northern India I was busy during the evening with family functions and so was my relative. So those 2 nights were again spent reading Samurai's thread and just trying to spend time. At one point in time, for a moment, I even contemplated paying the fine and driving it home the next day but thank god good sense prevailed.So the day after being Friday (15thJan'16) the entire schedule for the day was cleared, all work forgotten and I was off to see and get the vehicle home. Do remember that by this time I haven't physically seen the vehicle in over 4 years, never driven it and no idea on the condition. I reach his home at noon and as soon as the greetings exchanged without sitting demand the keys to the Grand Vitara.Once inside the vehicle this is the 1st picture I snap.Took it for a small test drive and the vehicle was just perfect. No body rattles, very responsive, all the buttons, knobs, Aircon working. There is a small playground near his house so I took it there to check the 4x4 for engaging and disengaging the HIGH & LOW RATIO and was glad that it was working as well. Took me a little time to understand the working of the 4x4 knob as the Clutch and Brake need to be pressed simultaneously to engage and disengage but a quick call to my friend, the one who implanted the bug in me, and quickly got the hang of it.Snapped a couple of pics while testing.Came back, discussed on the price and the vehicle was mine in a matter of minutes.Advantages which this particular vehicle hadSo optimistically speakingof immediate or near term expenses over and above the cost of the vehicle.As they say "A Known Devil Is Better Than An Unknown Angel" and I know for sure that I haven't got a Devil. So all in all the PROS really outweigh the CONS, if they arise.So finally we agreed at a price 380K.In my mind the transaction goes like this.So here is the story behind me getting my hands behind the Grand Vitara. The plan for now is to get it serviced at Motorcraft Sahibabad, change all the fluids (Engine Oil, Brake Oil, Gearbox Transfer Case & Differential Oil, Coolant, Power Steering Fluid, etc,) Air, Oil and Aircon Filters to start with. This is the same workshop where Sudev sir takes his Vitara. In addition to this I'll be getting it check for parts like suspension, steering linkages, brake pad, disc conditions etc.I've already driven it for 300 Kms over the weekend and will be sharing my initial experience in the next couple of post along with the service and checkup experience.Took the vehicle to Motorcraft Sahibabad for a general checkup and 1st detailed service.Jobs RequestedI was there at the workshop at 12 noon and they straightaway sent the vehicle for washing first. This was done on my request as being a Saturday I didn't want to get the work done and then keep waiting for the vehicle to be washed. The vehicle was washed around 2.30PMand then the work on the vehicle started.I was there at the workshop till 6pm and the work done that day wasWork which couldn't be done owing to non availability of parts and observations areRest the vehicle/ engine seems to be in the perfect condition as per the Service Advisor. Most of the above parts which have gone bad have done so with regards to the age of the vehicle. The most expensive parts in the above list are the Brake Pads 6K, Engine Mountings 10K for both, and Suspension Arms 10-11K each. The rest of the parts are pretty cheap. I've decided to get all the parts replaced and leave the Front suspension arms for later.Attaching a copy of the bill and the picture I clicked of the observation remarks written by the Service Advisor by hand on his notepad.Snapped some pictures of the interiors of the vehicle.Attended a small Time Speed DistanceRally on Sunday and drove the vehicle for over 200 Kms during the event and after driving it for 300 odd Kms in total after buying, I'm sharing my experiences. Please do note that I've been driving a Toyota Landcruiser since he past 5+ years and more or less my comparison is on those lines.Thanks Guys Last edited by harjeev : 19th January 2016 at 15:02 . Jeroen Distinguished - BHPian Join Date: Oct 2012 Location: Delhi Posts: 6,790 Thanked: 34,571 Times View My Garage The Dutch Navy Museum The Dutch have always had a navy. And in past times it has accomplished some truly amazing feats. What with all the world trading the Dutch have always been doing, our various battles with the British and the Spanish. Of course, the Dutch navy played an important role in our colonial times as well, Not a very good role, but then again, colonialism never is in whatever context a good thing as far as I am concerned. Never the less, the Dutch do know a thing or two when it comes to shipping be it for commercial/merchant and or naval (warfare) operations. I have visited the Dutch Navy Museum several times when our children were still small. It hasnt changed that much. It is located in Den Helder which is also the home port of the Dutch Navy. Its various buildings, ships and exhibits are in fact on the Navy premises. And anywhere in Den Helder you can see the Navy ships towering over the houses. The navy has its head quarters here and also various yards, workshops, warehouses, schooling facilities etc. Here some very general information on the current Dutch Navy: https://www.defensie.nl/english/organisation/navy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Netherlands_Navy The Dutch navy was one of the navies that from pretty early on invested in a submarine service. It was the Dutch who introduced the three cylinder submarine as opposed to the common, to date, one cylinder submarine. http://www.dutchsubmarines.com/rd/r&..._submarine.htm The Dutch Navy Museum most appealing display is an old three cylinder submarine that has been laid up and is open to the public. Its the old Tonijn" (Tuna) See The Tonijn is placed next to the main museum building. And yes, that is a torpedo sticking out of one of its forwarded looking torpedo tubes. Here a view of the stern arrangement And here the tower with periscope, snorkel, radar and various antennas. The railing are non original. They are put up for the publics safety, we dont want anybody falling off! So lets go inside! These are the forward torpedo tubes. You can see the propellor of the torpedo in the top starboard (right) hand tube. That is the one that is sticking out on the outside. The orange suit is one of the escape suits, that would allow sailors to escape from a sunken sub. From this position we turn 180 degrees and this is what we see. The forward torpedo room is actually a fairly large compartment. For no other reason this is also where they store the torpedos and where part of the crew sleeps. Walking further towards the central control room we first pass the sonar room. Two guys used to sit on that little red bench. Next we get into the central control room. Just below the tower. Well, room is to ambitious a term. Everywhere in this sub it is crammed. Im 1.96m tall and I kept bumping my head on all sorts of stuff. I used to work on oceangoing tugs and supply vessels and they are also cramped. But these subs give a whole new meaning to the word cramped. This here is the actual steering position. They control the rudder with the handle bar you see. The diesel engines by means of those two round levers, telegraphs they are called on ships. The telegraph would signal to the engine control room what speed the engine should run and whether it should go forward of reverse. You will see something similar in the engine control room further on. In the middle the rudder indicator. Next in the central control room, the periscope! There are actually two periscopes. Used for different purposes, different size as well. This one is still in perfect working order and the magnification is phenomenal. They have blocked its full turning. You would have been able to see right into peoples home. They have restricted it to overlook the harbour and navy establishment only In all submarines of this age there are valves everywhere. All sorts of valves for all sorts of purposes and functions. These control the air going to the ballast tanks. Air in pushes the water out and the sub rises! Some more valves and you can see two flow/volume meters as well. Cant quite remember what systems these are. In the merchant navy we always had all the different systems colour coded. E.g. brown diesel, green salt water, blue potable water, yellow club oil, red fire fighting etc. So the colour of the valve handle would immediately tell you what system you were working on. Still the central control room, here is the control station for the for and aft dive planes. More or less in the middle of the panel a huge depth meter. Two sailors would sit here side by side, one controlling the forward and one controlling the aft dive planes. No automation on these subs whatsoever. So diving, running underwater, surfacing is all done by operating the rudder, the dive planes, the engines (speed) and by adjusting the ballast. How much rudder, how much ballast is needed is very much an art as a science. Driving these subs wasnt easy, took real team effort and a well tuned crew. This diving station is located on the port side of the sub. More or less below the tower. on the exact other side, starboard is this pane. Various valves and also some control lights. In some navies this panel is known as the Christmas trees. It shows the status of every hold and or opening in the submarine. Before the sub could dive all hold, hatches and panels had to be closed and the Christmas trees would be reported GREEN. Here is the central position in the control room with the main periscope in the middle. Radar to the left. Walking further aft we get to the engine control room. Again, no automation, everything is done by hand. Two sets of diesel control and two sets of generator controls. And see if you can spot the telegraphs, connected to the steering position in the main control room. In these three cylinder subs, each engine/generator and battery bank was installed in a separate cylinder. The complete accommodation with the torpedo rooms, control rooms etc was mounted on top of the two cylinders containing the propulsion system. The main consideration for these three over one cylinder was safety. The idea being you could flood one of the two propulsion cylinders and still keep going. Not sure if that was ever put to test. What is does do, make the accommodation and control room very cramped compared to a sub of the same outside dimension with one cylinder. Here we are in the aft part of the sub. Four aft torpedo tubes. Similar arrangement as the bow torpedo. And when we turn 180, i.e. facing towards the bow, we see more bunks. All these subs had the practice of hot-bunking. Meaning each bunk got shared between 2-3 persons. So you always got into a hot bunk. Only the captain has his own, minute, cabin and bunk, right next door to the main control room. So we have seen the sub, lets head back into the main museum building. Its a fairly small affair, but an excellent lay-out. Got a little cinema where they show some great navy films. They have all sorts of things on display, from uniforms to sextants, from ship models to fire arms and just about everything in between. I particularly like the models so I have taken a selection of some of these models. They are not that easy to photograph. The museum is dark with lots of flood lights on the models that are mounted in glass vitrines. Great for regular visitors, not so great if you are an amateur photograph like me. But this is one of the few museums that lets you use your tripod! And with a polariser filter to get rid of the worst of the glare I took a few nice shots. In random order, some Dutch navy models: Here is another item always associate with navy and subs: The museum has three old navy ships moored next to the museum. It was absolutely pouring by the time I got there, so I did spend to much time on them. Here a few shots. There is also a separate exhibition in a separate building on the more recent missions of the Dutch Navy. It deals with among other the action against piracy near Somalia. Pretty impressive stuff. There is one exhibit which I think is pretty unique. They have take the complete superstructure of an old decommissioned destroyer and put it onshore and its main gun turret. You can go inside to get a feel for it. Walk across the bridge and you can even climb all the way into that huge radar dome! The windows on the bridge have been replaced by monitors and it shows the destroyer steaming through some very heavy stormy seas. Pitching and rolling heavily. Very well done and very disorientating. I have been on many pitching and rolling ships and I start to lean in automatically. That will actually make you fall over, as this is one ship that doesnt move! Den Helder is about an hours drive from Amsterdam. All the way north. If you are interested in seeing the Dutch navy this is a nice outing. As I said the museum is right on the navy ship yard and you get a good view of the harbour, you can see all ships. There is also a pretty busy supply operation, fishing and recreational shipping.There are other museums as well with a nautical theme, the Dutch Life boat association has its museum here as well. So always lots to see and do. And on nice day you can also visit the beach. The best place to have a coffee or lunch is at restaurant t veerhuis Lands End http://www.veerhuislandsend.nl its 500 meters from the entrance to the museum. It overlooks the harbour entrance, right next door to the ferry to Texel. Always ships coming and going. Jeroen It appears we have several members who apart from cars, are also interested in military and navy items. Recently I visited my home country the Netherlands and I visited the Dutch Navy Museum. Took some pictures I thought I would share.The Dutch have always had a navy. And in past times it has accomplished some truly amazing feats. What with all the world trading the Dutch have always been doing, our various battles with the British and the Spanish. Of course, the Dutch navy played an important role in our colonial times as well, Not a very good role, but then again, colonialism never is in whatever context a good thing as far as I am concerned.Never the less, the Dutch do know a thing or two when it comes to shipping be it for commercial/merchant and or naval (warfare) operations.I have visited the Dutch Navy Museum several times when our children were still small. It hasnt changed that much. It is located in Den Helder which is also the home port of the Dutch Navy. Its various buildings, ships and exhibits are in fact on the Navy premises. And anywhere in Den Helder you can see the Navy ships towering over the houses. The navy has its head quarters here and also various yards, workshops, warehouses, schooling facilities etc.Here some very general information on the current Dutch Navy:The Dutch navy was one of the navies that from pretty early on invested in a submarine service. It was the Dutch who introduced the three cylinder submarine as opposed to the common, to date, one cylinder submarine.The Dutch Navy Museum most appealing display is an old three cylinder submarine that has been laid up and is open to the public.Its the old Tonijn" (Tuna)See http://www.dutchsubmarines.com/class...ijn_potvis.htm The Tonijn is placed next to the main museum building.And yes, that is a torpedo sticking out of one of its forwarded looking torpedo tubes.Here a view of the stern arrangementAnd here the tower with periscope, snorkel, radar and various antennas. The railing are non original. They are put up for the publics safety, we dont want anybody falling off!So lets go inside!These are the forward torpedo tubes. You can see the propellor of the torpedo in the top starboard (right) hand tube. That is the one that is sticking out on the outside. The orange suit is one of the escape suits, that would allow sailors to escape from a sunken sub.From this position we turn 180 degrees and this is what we see. The forward torpedo room is actually a fairly large compartment. For no other reason this is also where they store the torpedos and where part of the crew sleeps.Walking further towards the central control room we first pass the sonar room. Two guys used to sit on that little red bench.Next we get into the central control room. Just below the tower. Well, room is to ambitious a term. Everywhere in this sub it is crammed. Im 1.96m tall and I kept bumping my head on all sorts of stuff. I used to work on oceangoing tugs and supply vessels and they are also cramped. But these subs give a whole new meaning to the word cramped.This here is the actual steering position. They control the rudder with the handle bar you see. The diesel engines by means of those two round levers, telegraphs they are called on ships. The telegraph would signal to the engine control room what speed the engine should run and whether it should go forward of reverse. You will see something similar in the engine control room further on. In the middle the rudder indicator.Next in the central control room, the periscope! There are actually two periscopes. Used for different purposes, different size as well. This one is still in perfect working order and the magnification is phenomenal. They have blocked its full turning. You would have been able to see right into peoples home. They have restricted it to overlook the harbour and navy establishment onlyIn all submarines of this age there are valves everywhere. All sorts of valves for all sorts of purposes and functions. These control the air going to the ballast tanks. Air in pushes the water out and the sub rises!Some more valves and you can see two flow/volume meters as well. Cant quite remember what systems these are. In the merchant navy we always had all the different systems colour coded. E.g. brown diesel, green salt water, blue potable water, yellow club oil, red fire fighting etc.So the colour of the valve handle would immediately tell you what system you were working on.Still the central control room, here is the control station for the for and aft dive planes. More or less in the middle of the panel a huge depth meter. Two sailors would sit here side by side, one controlling the forward and one controlling the aft dive planes.No automation on these subs whatsoever. So diving, running underwater, surfacing is all done by operating the rudder, the dive planes, the engines (speed) and by adjusting the ballast. How much rudder, how much ballast is needed is very much an art as a science. Driving these subs wasnt easy, took real team effort and a well tuned crew.This diving station is located on the port side of the sub. More or less below the tower. on the exact other side, starboard is this pane. Various valves and also some control lights. In some navies this panel is known as the Christmas trees. It shows the status of every hold and or opening in the submarine. Before the sub could dive all hold, hatches and panels had to be closed and the Christmas trees would be reported GREEN.Here is the central position in the control room with the main periscope in the middle. Radar to the left.Walking further aft we get to the engine control room. Again, no automation, everything is done by hand. Two sets of diesel control and two sets of generator controls. And see if you can spot the telegraphs, connected to the steering position in the main control room.In these three cylinder subs, each engine/generator and battery bank was installed in a separate cylinder. The complete accommodation with the torpedo rooms, control rooms etc was mounted on top of the two cylinders containing the propulsion system. The main consideration for these three over one cylinder was safety. The idea being you could flood one of the two propulsion cylinders and still keep going. Not sure if that was ever put to test. What is does do, make the accommodation and control room very cramped compared to a sub of the same outside dimension with one cylinder.Here we are in the aft part of the sub. Four aft torpedo tubes. Similar arrangement as the bow torpedo.And when we turn 180, i.e. facing towards the bow, we see more bunks. All these subs had the practice of hot-bunking. Meaning each bunk got shared between 2-3 persons. So you always got into a hot bunk. Only the captain has his own, minute, cabin and bunk, right next door to the main control room.So we have seen the sub, lets head back into the main museum building. Its a fairly small affair, but an excellent lay-out. Got a little cinema where they show some great navy films. They have all sorts of things on display, from uniforms to sextants, from ship models to fire arms and just about everything in between.I particularly like the models so I have taken a selection of some of these models. They are not that easy to photograph. The museum is dark with lots of flood lights on the models that are mounted in glass vitrines. Great for regular visitors, not so great if you are an amateur photograph like me. But this is one of the few museums that lets you use your tripod! And with a polariser filter to get rid of the worst of the glare I took a few nice shots. In random order, some Dutch navy models:Here is another item always associate with navy and subs:The museum has three old navy ships moored next to the museum. It was absolutely pouring by the time I got there, so I did spend to much time on them. Here a few shots.There is also a separate exhibition in a separate building on the more recent missions of the Dutch Navy. It deals with among other the action against piracy near Somalia. Pretty impressive stuff.There is one exhibit which I think is pretty unique. They have take the complete superstructure of an old decommissioned destroyer and put it onshore and its main gun turret. You can go inside to get a feel for it. Walk across the bridge and you can even climb all the way into that huge radar dome! The windows on the bridge have been replaced by monitors and it shows the destroyer steaming through some very heavy stormy seas. Pitching and rolling heavily. Very well done and very disorientating. I have been on many pitching and rolling ships and I start to lean in automatically. That will actually make you fall over, as this is one ship that doesnt move!Den Helder is about an hours drive from Amsterdam. All the way north. If you are interested in seeing the Dutch navy this is a nice outing. As I said the museum is right on the navy ship yard and you get a good view of the harbour, you can see all ships. There is also a pretty busy supply operation, fishing and recreational shipping.There are other museums as well with a nautical theme, the Dutch Life boat association has its museum here as well.So always lots to see and do. And on nice day you can also visit the beach.The best place to have a coffee or lunch is at restaurant t veerhuis Lands Endits 500 meters from the entrance to the museum. It overlooks the harbour entrance, right next door to the ferry to Texel. Always ships coming and going.Jeroen Last edited by aah78 : 20th January 2016 at 05:03 . Reason: Pictures inserted in-line. SpaceX this week failed in its third attempt to land a rocket on an ocean platform. The company has landed a reusable rocket successfully on land, but it has stepped up its efforts to land at sea. The latest attempt, though not successful, was a step forward, SpaceX said. It began at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The Falcon 9 rocket was supposed to deliver its payload, its primary objective, and then land on a drone ship out in the Pacific Ocean. The rocket stuck the landing, touching down within 4 feet of the ships center, but it touched down too hard and broke a leg as a result. Maybe Next Time While the landing was not a success, the rocket suffered much less damage this time around. Its a step closer to an ocean landing, and the folks at Space Florida are confident SpaceX will get it right, said Dale Ketcham, chief of strategic alliances forSpace Florida. It is harder to do than the success they recently achieved at [Cape Canaveral], and that was far from easy, he told TechNewsWorld. This effort will continue to drive down the costs of expanding the Earth-bound economy out into the solar system. With the energy and resources available out there to feed this economy, we might be able to give Mother Earth a break, Ketcham said. A sea landing isnt necessary, but it could be helpful. If recovery can be achieved at sea, then more boosters can be returned to service, thus again lowering costs for all, he said. Sea landings are more suitable for rockets returning at higher velocities, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said. Many payloads on SpaceXs manifest will require different orbits, which will make it harder to return boosters, Ketcham noted. Meet Jason-3 The rocket boosted its payload the Jason-3, or Joint Altimetry Satellite Oceanography Network, satellite into orbit without issue. The satellite will beam down atmospheric data gathered from measuring sea levels to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA, French space agency Centre National dEtudes Spatiales, and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, according to SpaceX. It will aid in forecasting the intensity of hurricanes, El Nio, La Nia, surface waves, and tides and currents for commercial ships. Researchers also will use the satellite to model coastal areas to aid efforts to preserve reefs and other marine animals. Room for Space The commercial spaceflight industry has been fighting for the right kind of attention, the type that doesnt tip trade secrets or undermine investor confidence. The fact that leading businesses and executives are behind the current push into space is generally good news, said Charles King, principal analyst for Pund-IT. Theyre replaced the often turgid bureaucracy of NASA with an entrepreneurial energy that has delivered on a number of once-unimagined achievements, including making the running of supplies to the International Space Station a viable business, he told TechNewsWorld. While they make for some stunning YouTube clips, developments in space exploration are more than a marvel of modern science. They create new ways to help us understand life back on Earth, King noted. As it becomes increasingly common and affordable, it will also inspire in a broad range of new commercial products and services, he said. Another reason to get behind the commercial space flight industry is because it reflects who we are as a society, King added. The space-aimed efforts of the 1950s, 60s, 70s and 80s reflected a broader sense of national purpose and visionary optimism, he said. That seems to be in short supply today, replaced by the melodramatic dumbassery of small-minded politicians and science-phobes. Dubai, UAE, January 20, 2016: The Cisco 2016 Annual Security Report released today, which examines threat intelligence and cybersecurity trends, reveals that only 45 percent of organizations worldwide are confident in their security posture as todays attackers launch more sophisticated, bold and resilient campaigns. While executives may be uncertain about their security strength, 92 percent of them agree that regulators and investors will expect companies to manage cybersecurity risk exposure. These leaders are increasing measures to secure their organizations future, particularly as they digitize their operations. The report highlights the challenges businesses face due to the rapid advancements of attackers. Hackers increasingly tap into legitimate resources to launch effective campaigns for profit-gain. Additionally, direct attacks by cybercriminals, leveraging ransomware alone, put $34 million a year per campaign into their hands. These miscreants continue to operate unconstrained by regulatory barriers. Businesses are up against security challenges that inhibit their ability to detect, mitigate and recover from common and professional cyberattacks. Aging infrastructure and outdated organizational structure and practices are putting them at risk. The study sounds a global call-to-arms for greater collaboration and investment in the processes, technologies and people to protect against industrialized adversaries. Top Research Findings Decreasing confidence, increasing transparency: Less than half of businesses surveyed were confident in their ability to determine the scope of a network compromise and to remediate damage. But, an overwhelming majority of finance and line-of-business executives agreed that regulators and investors expect companies to provide greater transparency on future cybersecurity risk. This points to security as a growing boardroom concern. Less than half of businesses surveyed were confident in their ability to determine the scope of a network compromise and to remediate damage. But, an overwhelming majority of finance and line-of-business executives agreed that regulators and investors expect companies to provide greater transparency on future cybersecurity risk. This points to security as a growing boardroom concern. Aging infrastructure: Between 2014 and 2015, the number of organizations that said their security infrastructure was up-to-date dropped by 10 percent. The survey discovered that 92 percent of Internet devices are running known vulnerabilities. Thirty-one percent of all devices analyzed are no longer supported or maintained by the vendor. Between 2014 and 2015, the number of organizations that said their security infrastructure was up-to-date dropped by 10 percent. The survey discovered that 92 percent of Internet devices are running known vulnerabilities. Thirty-one percent of all devices analyzed are no longer supported or maintained by the vendor. SMBs as a potential weak link: As more enterprises look closely at their supply chain and small business partnerships, they are finding that these organizations use fewer threat defense tools and processes. For example, from 2014 to 2015 the number of SMBs that used web security dropped more than 10 percent. This indicates potential risk to enterprises due to structural weaknesses. As more enterprises look closely at their supply chain and small business partnerships, they are finding that these organizations use fewer threat defense tools and processes. For example, from 2014 to 2015 the number of SMBs that used web security dropped more than 10 percent. This indicates potential risk to enterprises due to structural weaknesses. Outsourcing on the rise : As part of a trend to address the talent shortage, enterprises of all sizes are realizing the value of outsourcing services to balance their security portfolios. This includes consulting, security auditing and incident response. SMBs, which often lack resources for an effective security posture, are improving their security approach, in part, by outsourcing, which is up to 23 percent in 2015 over 14 percent the previous year. : As part of a trend to address the talent shortage, enterprises of all sizes are realizing the value of outsourcing services to balance their security portfolios. This includes consulting, security auditing and incident response. SMBs, which often lack resources for an effective security posture, are improving their security approach, in part, by outsourcing, which is up to 23 percent in 2015 over 14 percent the previous year. Shifting server activity: Online criminals have shifted to compromised servers, such as those for WordPress, to support their attacks, leveraging social media platforms for nefarious purposes. For example, the number of WordPress domains used by criminals grew 221 percent between February and October 2015. Online criminals have shifted to compromised servers, such as those for WordPress, to support their attacks, leveraging social media platforms for nefarious purposes. For example, the number of WordPress domains used by criminals grew 221 percent between February and October 2015. Browser-based data leakage: While often viewed by security teams as a low-level threat, malicious browser extensions have been a potential source of major data leaks, affecting more than 85 percent of organizations. Adware, malvertising, and even common websites or obituary columns have led to breaches for those who do not regularly update their software. While often viewed by security teams as a low-level threat, malicious browser extensions have been a potential source of major data leaks, affecting more than 85 percent of organizations. Adware, malvertising, and even common websites or obituary columns have led to breaches for those who do not regularly update their software. The DNS blind spot: Nearly 92 percent of known bad malware was found to use DNS as a key capability. This is frequently a security blind spot as security teams and DNS experts typically work in different IT groups within a company and dont interact frequently. Nearly 92 percent of known bad malware was found to use DNS as a key capability. This is frequently a security blind spot as security teams and DNS experts typically work in different IT groups within a company and dont interact frequently. Time to detection faster : The industry estimate for time to detection of a cybercrime is an unacceptable 100 to 200 days. Cisco has further reduced this figure from 46 to 17.5 hours, since the 2015 Cisco Midyear Security Report was released. Shrinking the time to detection has been shown to minimize cyberattack damage, lowering risk and impact to customers and infrastructures worldwide. : The industry estimate for time to detection of a cybercrime is an unacceptable 100 to 200 days. Cisco has further reduced this figure from 46 to 17.5 hours, since the 2015 Cisco Midyear Security Report was released. Shrinking the time to detection has been shown to minimize cyberattack damage, lowering risk and impact to customers and infrastructures worldwide. Trust matters: With organizations increasingly adopting digitization strategies for their operations, the combined volume of data, devices, sensors, and services are creating new needs for transparency, trustworthiness, and accountability for customers. Technuter.com News Service Most smartphones are offered in your choice of black or white bezel. Regardless of which you choose, you've no doubt noticed a series of small black "dots" near the top earpiece (they stand out like a sore thumb on white-faced phones). Among them is a proximity sensor used to turn the screen off when conducting a voice call. Aside from being an eye sore (at least, to people that heavily value the aesthetics of their phone), traditional proximity sensors take up valuable real estate and somewhat dictate the design of a handset. No more, says Elliptic Labs. The Norwegian startup says it has developed software called Beauty that uses a phone's existing speaker and microphone to pull off the same effect. Specifically, the company's solution sends out small waves of sound from the earpiece and listens for a reflection using the microphone. Elliptic Labs CEO Laila Danielsen said their software-only solution replaces and outperforms optical hardware sensors, beautifies design, reduces cost and frees up physical space inside mobile devices. The company said it is working directly with OEMs to integrate its ultrasound proximity software into phones sold this year. Unfortunately, Elliptic Labs didn't specify which manufacturers it is working with but said it has agreements in place with five smartphone makers (two of them being global brands). Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 20 Trend: President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has met with Vice Chairman of Lazard Europe Mathieu Pigasse in Davos. President Ilham Aliyev highly praised cooperation between Azerbaijan and Lazard Europe. The head of state said there was good potential for developing this cooperation even further. The Vice Chairman of Lazard Europe, which is Azerbaijan`s financial adviser on the Southern Gas Corridor project, hailed Azerbaijan`s rating. Mathieu Pigasse said the reforms carried out in Azerbaijan had a positive impact on the country`s image, adding that this expands its opportunities for attracting additional financial resources. They discussed business relations between Azerbaijan and Lazard Europe, as well as opportunities for cooperation in other areas. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has announced that the company will donate cloud computing resources worth $1 billion to nongovernmental organizations over the next three years, in a bid to bring the benefits of the technology to those who can't afford it. The donation, the size of which has been calculated at fair market value, will come from the recently formed Microsoft Philanthropies and will provide free or discounted cloud services such as Azure, Office 365, PowerBI and CRM Online to around 70,000 nonprofits worldwide by the end of 2017. "Microsoft is empowering mission-driven organizations around the planet with a donation of cloud computing services --- the most transformative technologies of our generation," said Nadella. "Now more than 70,000 organizations will have access to technology that will help them solve our greatest societal challenges and ultimately improve the human condition and drive new growth equally." For the second part of its commitment, Microsoft plans on expanding access to cloud resources for faculty research in universities. There are currently over 600 projects benefiting from the Microsoft Azure for Research program, which grants free Azure storage and computing resources to university researchers. Microsoft Philanthropies is set to expand the program by 50 percent. "We know from experience that this program can make a critical difference for researchers in universities," Microsoft's President and Chief Legal Officer, Brad Smith, wrote in a separate blog post. "From protecting forests in Brazil to fighting wildfires in Greece, and from developing new medicines in the United Kingdom to modeling flood risks in Texas, dedicated university researchers have used Microsoft Azure to advance their cutting-edge research projects," The third element of this new initiative will see Microsoft combine access to these donated services with "investments in new, low-cost last-mile Internet access technologies and community training." Specifically, this will mean extra funding for projects that bring online access to underserved communities. One example is the TV White Spaces project, which utilizes unused portions of wireless spectrum in the frequency bands generally used for television. The company plans to support at least 20 similar projects in 15 countries by the end of 2017. Much in the same way that Facebook Free Basics has come under criticism in India for being a way to promote the social network, there are those questioning just how much business Microsoft will ultimately get out of this philanthropic gesture. Once someone uses one of their donated services, the chances are that they'll stick with it after the initial free program runs out. The seemingly everlasting Samsung versus Apple patent case took another turn today, after a federal court banned the Korean company from selling some of its smartphones in the US. The handsets in question are so old, however, that most aren't even on the market anymore. Judge Lucy Koh of the US District Court for the Northern District of California granted an injunction against the Samsung devices that have features that infringe on Apple's patents. These include slide-to-unlock, quick links, and automatic word correction. Judge Koh ruled that the permanent injunction would come into effect 30 days after the entry of the order. The devices banned from sale in the US include: * Samsung Admire * Samsung Galaxy Nexus * Samsung Galaxy Note * Samsung Galaxy Note 2 * Samsung Galaxy S II * Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket * Samsung Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch * Samsung Galaxy S III * Samsung Stratosphere The order also bans any "software or code capable of implementing any Infringing Feature, and/or any feature not more than colorably different therefrom." Judge Koh ruled in August 2014 that the $199.6 million Apple gained from Samsung for patent infringement was sufficient, and refused to grant the Cupertino company's request to ban the handsets. But the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit disagreed, and remanded the case back to the lower court for further proceedings. "The court finds that Apple will suffer irreparable harm if Samsung continues to use its use of the infringing features, that monetary damages cannot adequately compensate Apple for this resulting irreparable harm, and that the balance of equities and public interest favor entry of a permanent injunction," Koh wrote in her filing. Seeing as nearly all of the handsets are no longer sold in the US, Apple's victory is more symbolic than anything else. Samsung has made its thoughts clear on the matter: "We are very disappointed," a Samsung spokesperson told Bloomberg's South Korea bureau in a statement. "While this will not impact American consumers, it is another example of Apple abusing the judicial system to create bad legal precedent, which can harm consumer choice for generations to come." Many large tech firms are concerned that the Apple vs Samsung patent battle will open the way for more patent trolls to file lawsuits. It was reported yesterday that a number of Silicon Valley's largest firms, as well as many nonprofit organizations, have voiced their support for Samsung by filing friend of the court briefs in the Supreme Court case. They are asking for design patents to be defined more accurately and damages for patent infringement to be limited. Apple stores are certainly popular; you can find them in over 480 locations across 18 countries. But one area that surprisingly lacks any of the Cupertino company's retail outlets is India. Now, however, it looks like that's about to change, as Apple has confirmed it's filed a request with the Indian government to bring its stores to the world's second-most-populated country. There are quite a few Apple stores across the Asian continent; it already has 31 outlets in China and others in Japan and Hong Kong. But it has up until now ignored India, preferring to sell its products through a franchised network of 'Apple shops' - small outlets designed by Apple that are found within the stores of third-party retailers such as Vodafone. "Apple has been rather cold to India for the past several decades," Arvind Singhal, chairman and managing director at consulting firm Technopak, told Forbes. "There was practically no interest from Apple in India. Even the product pricing in India was ridiculously high and Apple customers in India were getting their products from overseas and the company didn't care." Apple is increasingly looking to extend its reach into developing markets, especially after analysists predicted a downturn in iPhone sales this year - an area that makes up about two-thirds of the company's income. The same analysists say that overall smartphone sales in many locations, especially the once booming Chinese sector, are plateauing. Apple will be hoping that opening its own-brand stores in India will help generate extra revenue in a country that has already brought in over $1 billion in sales for the company in the year ending March 2015. One of the biggest sticking points for Apple was the government rule that required foreign-owned shops in India to source 30 percent of their wares locally within three years of their initial investment. But in November, this requirement was relaxed for companies selling 'state of the art' or 'cutting edge' technology, paving the way for Apple's stores and its Chinese-made products to enter the country. One obstacle Apple has previously faced in India is the premium cost of its devices. The country's smartphone market is dominated by cheap Android handsets costing as little as $20. As a basic iPhone 6s costs around $852 in New Delhi, and the average Indian national income is around $1500, an Apple smartphone can certainly be considered a luxury item. But these new Apple stores will no doubt introduce more payment installment and buyback schemes, as well as discounts on older model iPhones, meaning that billion dollar sales figure is likely to continue growing. A court in California ordered Samsung to stop selling select smartphones in the United States. These devices are believed to infringe on three Apple patents. It appears that the Apple v. Samsung war over patents is far from over, but the Cupertino brand's victory this time seems to be a tad small. The Samsung devices that are now banned are relatively outdated compared with the smartphones that the South Korea-based company has released a few years ago. The list includes Admire, Galaxy Nexus, Galaxy Note, Galaxy Note 2, Galaxy S2, Galaxy S2 Epic 4G Touch, Galaxy S2 Skyrocket, Galaxy S3 and Stratosphere. It's also worth mentioning that Samsung doesn't even sell most of these devices that the court banned in the United States anymore. Meanwhile, the patents that Apple says that Samsung infringed include one for the "slide to unlock" feature, one for predictive text and one for autocorrect. What this means is that Apple didn't exactly get something big out of the matter, where an additional win on its lawyers' track record is the only considerable outcome. As a testament to that, Florian Mueller of FOSS Patents gives his two cents regarding the incident. "Samsung can still provide the functionality by simply avoiding the implementation it used in its oldest products," he says. What's more, Jung Dong Joon of SU Intellectual Property in Seoul chimed in along the same lines. "The latest move will only have a minimal impact on Samsung's mobile business because most of the models to be banned are too old, while it gave Apple more negotiating power when it comes to patents," he says. On the other hand, Samsung says that it's "very disappointed" of Apple's actions. The company notes that it won't have an impact on American consumers, but it is a case of Apple "abusing the judicial system to create bad legal precedent." Apple seems relentless in hounding Samsung for patent infringement, as it recently claimed in another case that the latter should pay $180 million more than the court ordered. The patents involved in this case include include patents for the bezel, application icons and the front display. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A team of experts discovered ancient Buddhist caves at Mumbai National Park in India. They found a total of seven caves that they assume to be at least 2,000-years old. The caves are possibly dated between the 1st century B.C. and 5t to 6th century A.D. The caves served as shelters for monks, dubbed as Buddhist "viharas", thousands of years ago. One of the caves houses the remains of a "harmika", a stupa's top railing. A team composed of researchers from the Centre of Archeology, Department of Ancient Indian Culture, Sathaye College and Mumbai University, first discovered five of the seven caves in February 2015. "The newly discovered caves may have been older than the Kanheri Caves as they were simpler in form and they lacked water cisterns, which are found in the more evolved architecture of Kanheri," said Suraj Pandit, the one who led the team. "Moreover, we found monolithic tools which were prevalent in the 1st century BC. The absence of water cisterns also indicate that monks lived there in the monsoon," he added. The researchers discovered the seven new caves not by accident, but as a result of a comprehensive survey of the area. To be able to find these ancient caves, the team studied documentary topography and water resources. Ancient people constructed most of viharas near sources of water. Aside from that, they also studied Pali texts, which describe caves in the area of Rajgir, Bihar. The researchers studied areas and texts for three months. They began their exploration as soon as the forest department gave their permission. Two forest guards helped the team in exploring caves. "There were caves on either side of the waterfall - three on one side and two on the other. It was very clear these were excavated from the natural rock," Pandit recalled. "The smooth curve, the plastering, the door beams, the benches to sleep on, were all indications that these were man-made caves," he added. The team found five caves. After a day, another team of a magazine editor and a student of Buddhism at Sathaye College, found two more caves. Mugdha Karnik, head of Mumbai University's Centre for Extra-Mural Studies said that many people do not know the history and culture of the country. He believes that such discoveries will help people learn about their heritage and in turn, protect these structures from destruction posed by industrialization and construction of new buildings. Photo: Ting Chen | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. OnePlus, the self-proclaimed "small fish in a very big pond" of smartphone manufacturers, has a new deal to draw in more customers. Famous for its lineup of "flagship killers" that aimed to offer high-end devices at rock bottom prices, OnePlus has somewhat struggled to stick to customers as newer, more affordable high-end devices have also been released by its competitors. Devices from the likes of Motorola, Huawei, and other Chinese manufacturers are slowly taking away some of the limelight that OnePlus has been known for. As a result, the Oppo-owned company (Oppo is another Chinese smartphone maker with handsets that offer more budget-friendly phones) is making a big deal of it's newest offer: free standard shipping. Naturally, there are conditions to the deal. Free standard shipping only applies to orders via the OnePlus.net store and only on orders that amount to at least $100. That means new owners of the OnePlus One, OnePlus 2, and the OnePlus X have a bit more money to spend on cases and accessories. Existing owners of any of the aforementioned OnePlus models will need to purchase a ton of accessories to avail of OnePlus' latest offer. Their best bet is to team up with friends or similarly located users in the OnePlus forums to buy a bunch of cases, backs and other accessories together. In addition, different locations get different thresholds to avail of the discount. U.S. buyers have to cash out at least $100, Canadians $150, Europeans 100 Euro, etc. The full list of the threshold for varying currencies is as follows: USD: 100 CAD: 150 EUR: 100 CZK: 2,500 DKK: 700 HUF: 30,000 PLN: 400 SEK: 850 GBP: 60 HKD: 800 OnePlus' past promotions weren't as lackluster as this one. In 2014, the company decided to hold a "Smash the Past" campaign where users destroy their old phones on video to get OnePlus' first device, the OnePlus One, for just $1. Unfortunately, the instructions weren't too clear as unselected users accidentally destroyed their phones for nothing. Worse yet was OnePlus "Ladies First" campaign that allowed female buyers to get their invites first by drawing the OnePlus logo on their bodies and then post photo of themselves, and share it in OnePlus' forums. Naturally, the initiative backfired after a few short hours and the company blamed it on "rogue" employees. This latest OnePlus' deal shouldn't rock any boats like the ones above did, but they may not get as much praise as they'd expect either for free shipping on their $200-300 phones. At least they offer the promotion globally instead of select locations. Now that'd be much more praiseworthy. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. LG's flagship smartphone - the LG G5 - may launch at the 2016 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which will start Feb. 22. LG announced and released the LG G4 in April 2015. The phone packs top-end features that have attracted millions of customers worldwide. Now the company seems all set to launch the successor of the LG G4. LG G5 Launch At The MWC LG did not launch the LG G4 at the MWC 2015. However, the smartphone maker has already sent out an official press invites for an event a day before the official beginning of the MWC 2016, which makes the launch of the LG G5 highly likely. "A day ahead of the official opening of the MWC, LG plans to unveil a new flagship mobile via a press event," says an unnamed LG executive. LG is also very optimistic that its upcoming smartphone will give stiff competition to rivals, especially Samsung's upcoming Galaxy S7. "The unveiling of LG's new flagship handset was delayed months after the release of the new Samsung flagship handset," added the LG executive. "But this year will be different. LG Electronics is ready to take on Samsung." LG G5 Hardware Rumors LG has not confirmed any details of the LG G5, but there are numerous rumors circling the tech industry about the upcoming LG device. Display - The LG G5 may sport a 5.5-inch or a 5.6-inch True HD IPS flexible touchscreen. The handset is expected to feature a 4K display resolution of 3,840 x 2,160 pixels, which is currently found only in a limited number of smartphones, for example, the Sony Xperia Z5. However, 4K displays are expected to be a standard in all top-end mobile phones to be launched in 2016. Processor And RAM - LG used a Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 processor in the LG G4 due to over-heating issues with the Snapdragon 810 processor. However, some rumors suggest that the latest Snapdragon 820 chipset and 4 GB of RAM will power the LG G5. Storage - The LG G5 may be available in 32 GB, 64 GB and 128 GB internal memory options. The flagship will still have a microSD card slot to enable storage expansion. Eye Scanner - Security of smartphones has become a great issue for handset owners. Fingerprint scanner has become a commonplace in many top-end smartphones. However, the LG G4 does not have a fingerprint scanner. LG is reported to be working with a Korean technology firm called IRIENCE, which specializes in eye-scanning technology. Rumors claim that IRIENCE will provide the eye scanner to be used in the G5, which will be able to scan the user's eye from a distance of 50 centimeters (19.69 inches). Users are widely using fingerprint scanners to unlock phones and to make mobile payments. If rumors are true, then the LG G5 will be the first to come with an eye scanner; however, it remains to be seen if the technology will become as widely used as fingerprint scanners and sensors on mobile devices. Design - LG is also said to be working on enhancing the design of its next-gen flagship smartphone. The LG G5 may have a full-metal case, which will bring a premium feel to the device. The leaked design of the LG G5, which shows that the mobile device will have a removal section that will allow replacing the battery. Camera - LG is speculated to beef up the rear-facing camera of the LG G5 to 20 megapixels, which will allow users to take high-quality images. Battery - The LG G5 is estimated to get power from a large 4,000 mAh battery, which is one of the biggest found in existing phones. Price And Availability LG is swift in releasing handsets soon after they are unveiled. If the LG G5 is launched at MWC 2016, then users can expect the smartphone to hit the shelves even in late February or March this year. A top-end smartphone normally has a premium price. The LG G5, which is rumored to pack in high-end features, is expected to bear a steep price tag of about $900. However, customers should wait till LG officially confirms the cost of the handset. Mobile Payment Platform Mobile payments are gaining traction and Apple and Samsung have already launched their mobile payment platform. Another report says that LG is developing its own mobile payment platform and is already in talks with card companies to launch its mobile payment service. "We will sign a deal with some of the country's major card companies before officially launching our mobile payment platform," says an LG official. However, details of the mobile payment service, name of the service and expected launch remains unknown. LG may announce the service along with the LG G5 at the MWC 2016. Photo: Karlis Dambrans | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Realizing that your precious Apple gadgets are lost or stolen can be a devastating experience, but a woman's testimony shows that the "Find my Phone" app can be your best friend in such circumstances. The woman, who recently shared her story on MacRumors' forum under unsername "Txcallahan," explains. As she was on her way to work, she noticed that both her Macbook Pro and her iPad were missing from her bag. After checking whether or not her son had her gadgets, she concluded that they must have disappeared from her car while it was parked. As Txcallahan notes, even if her Macbook was password-protected, the iPad was unlocked when it disappeared from her possession. What is more, she had purchased the iPad through her wireless carrier, which gave her a brilliant idea. She logged into her AT&T account and observed that the mobile data usage on her iPad had increased during the last day. This meant that the person who took the device used it to stream content on it. Since Txcallahan had the "Find my phone" app installed, she immediately reported the iPad as lost. "Find my phone" is an app that tracks a device whenever it goes online, and it did so in the woman's case. With the pinpointed address in hand, she was able to get the phone number from the place where her iPad was detected by the app. She decided not to call the number herself and instead turned to the police in order to investigate. Txcallahan's enthusiasm dropped to a halt when the cops informed her about legal procedures. Apparently, the residents from the address have to invite the police officers inside, meaning, they cannot search the place just because an app claims that a device is inside. However, she agreed to go with the policemen and check things out. She waited for the policemen to return, remaining parked a few houses down the road. At first, she was dismayed as it seemed that the officers found nothing, but then one of the policemen asked her if the Macbook and iPad that he carried were hers. According to her recollection, she burst into tears of joy and gratitude, hugging the policeman. She further points out that thanks to the "Find my phone" app, she was able to retrieve her items only three hours after she noticed their disappearance. Pointing out that she read about other cases that were less happy than her own, she highly recommends mobile device users to install the "Find my phone" app. It is not the first time when the app proves to be helpful for law enforcement officers and regular users alike. Not long ago, a woman found the body of her deceased husband by using the GPS location from the application. Last year, a Canadian teenager used the app to track his stolen device in Ontario. Sadly, he was shot dead by the thieves while trying to retrieve his device. In another case, two British women managed to apprehend a bag thief thanks to the use of "Find my phone" app, as the police responded with great delay. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Apple just scored a U.S. sales ban on some Samsung software, which means that some Galaxy devices using that software will no longer be available on the market. The sales ban covers a number of Samsung Galaxy devices that were found to infringe on Apple's patents, but this may sound worse than it actually is for Samsung fans. The devices that will no longer be available for purchase are not new flagships or anything of sort, they're merely some older smartphones that were already gone from the market in most part. Here are the Samsung Galaxy devices you can't buy anymore, following Apple's new win: Samsung Galaxy Nexus Samsung Galaxy Note Samsung Galaxy Note 2 Samsung Galaxy S2 Samsung Galaxy S2 Epic 4G Touch Samsung Galaxy S2 Skyrocket Samsung Galaxy S3 Samsung Admire Samsung Stratosphere These devices will no longer be on sale as a result of the latest round of the ever-growing Apple vs. Samsung patent war. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh sided with Apple, granting Cupertino a motion for permanent injunction against Samsung devices that use technology covered by patents Samsung infringed. As Foss Patents blogger Florian Mueller points out, however, Apple's latest victory is mainly a symbolic win, as the ruling affects only software found on older Samsung smartphones. The Samsung Galaxy S3 is the most recent smartphone on that list, and it's already pretty old. The handset made its debut back in 2012 and proved to be a great hit for Samsung, but a slew of newer Galaxy flagships have since flooded the market and left the Galaxy S3 in the dust. Moreover, most of the devices on the list are not even in Samsung's U.S. portfolio anymore, as the OEM stopped selling them a while ago. Nevertheless, Apple fought long and hard to score this small victory. Back in May 2014, Apple won a $119.6 million jury verdict against Samsung, as the jury ruled that the South Korean OEM had infringed on several Apple patents. Apple moved to include these fringed-upon patents in its injunction request. While Apple wanted the court to ban Samsung's devices that infringed said patents, however, Judge Koh rejected Apple's bid in August 2014, ruling that monetary damages should suffice to settle the issue. The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit then disagreed with Koh's aforementioned ruling and sided with Apple, ruling that Samsung should have indeed been banned from using patented features it infringed on. This new ruling finally gives Apple a long-awaited sales ban on Samsung Galaxy smartphones, just not on new ones. Simply put, it's mainly a symbolic win for Apple and it should not affect Samsung's sales. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Apple recently let app developers know that the prices of apps and in-app purchases will go up in a number of countries to compensate for variations in the currency rate. Specifically, iOS users from Israel, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, Mexico and Russia will pay more when they visit the Apple Store. The price for subscription services for countries on the list will get adjusted as well. Apple clients should know that in South Africa and Russia they must subscribe manually for the subscription services, at the new price. There are no subscription services available in Israel at the moment, meaning the country's users will be unaffected. Subscribers from the other four countries will get a notification before the current subscription runs out, allowing them to cancel their service or make a new one at the actualized rate. According to an email sent by Apple to developers worldwide, other minor modifications to tariffs are in store. Canada and New Zealand will see the introduction of low price tiers, namely Alternate Price Tier A and Alternate Prier Tier B. The offers help developers work with smaller items, such as In-App Purchases. Markets from developing countries have very affordable prices for alternate tiers at the equivalent of 20 cents USD. Customers of the App Store will pay the same amount of money in Romania, although the country changes its VAT from 24% to 20%. The difference will not go into Apple's accounts, which means that developers will have the most to gain from the tax reduction. Even before the App Store increased its prices to match the new currency rates, Apple's online app market was way ahead of competition when looking at gross income. For example, the App Store's revenue was as much as 80 percent larger than Google's Play Store in the third quarter of 2015. The profitable trend will immensely benefit Apple Inc., who had a 70 percent advantage at the end of the second quarter. The current wave of price increases is effective in the next 72 hours, which should encourage some of the readers to stock up on apps and in-app purchases right now. Here is Apple's full list of new pricings [pdf]. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 20 Trend: Vice-President of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation Leyla Aliyeva visited a nursing home for the war and labor disabled in Bilgah, Baku Jan. 19. Leyla Aliyeva met with the people living in the nursing home, and talked with them at a dinner table. The people living in the nursing home thanked President Ilham Aliyev and his wife Mehriban Aliyeva for the conditions created for them. The nursing home for the war and labor disabled in Bilgah was commissioned in 1960s. Azerbaijan's national leader Heydar Aliyev visited the nursing home in 1998. President Ilham Aliyev and his wife Mehriban Aliyeva attended the opening of a new block of the nursing home in 2013. Some 207 people live there. Leyla Aliyeva watched a performance by the people living in the nursing home, who played on different musical instruments. On behalf of the people, who live there, Habib Gambarov thanked President Ilham Aliyev and President of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation Mehriban Aliyeva for the conditions created for them. Leyla Aliyeva also toured the rooms of the nursing home. Your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man might not be so spider-like after all. A team of researchers at the University of Cambridge has concluded that, even in the most fictive of universes, Spider-Man's powers would be scientifically-impossible. In fact, Spider-Man might not be much of an insect at all the study points to his super powers being categorically amphibious rather than arachnoid. The impossibility factor has to do with the ratio of body surface covered by adhesive padding (the function commonly referred to as his ability to "cling") and his actual size. "As animals increase in size, the amount of body surface area per volume decreases," said David Labonte, a professor at University of Cambridge's Department of Zoology, in an official statement released by the university. "This poses a problem for larger climbing species because, when they are bigger and heavier, they need more sticking power to be able to adhere to vertical or inverted surfaces, but they have comparatively less body surface available to cover with sticky footpads." The team came up with this ratio by observing a sample of mites and noting that their subjects utilized roughly 200 times less of their sticky surface areas than geckos. After comparing 225 species, they then surmised that an arachnid-like human would need roughly 40 percent of their surface area to have velcro-like capabilities, far more than Spider-Man's hands and feet and if the adhesive area was only contained to those particular extremities, they would be wildly disproportionate in size. "If a human, for example, wanted to climb up a wall the way a gecko does, we'd need impractically large sticky feet and shoes in European size 145 or U.S. size 114," explained Walter Federle, a senior member of the scientific team. From there, the scientists also deduced that the animal most equitable to both Spidey's sticky abilities in both size ratio and performance is the gecko. There is, however, a workaround: the research team found that, throughout the natural course of evolution, animals that couldn't make their hands and feet bigger could instead make their sticky pads even stickier. "We found that tree frogs have switched to this second option of making pads stickier rather than bigger," said Christofer Clemente, another scientist who was part of the study. "It's remarkable that we see two different evolutionary solutions to the problem of getting big and sticking to walls." So, what does this mean for our favorited web-headed wall-crawler? Peter Parker's super alter-ego could be able to feasibly stick to walls, but only with some synthetic man-made scientific enhancement. Does someone smell a Marvel/DC crossover featuring Bruce Wayne or Christopher Nolan's Lucious Fox? Via: Engadget 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. NASA is no stranger to crowdsourcing, and its latest project involves asking members of the public to help it design what it's calling the Astrobee a robot that will fly around on the International Space Station. More specifically, NASA wants people to help design a robotic arm for the robot, which it will use to interact with the space station and the environment therein. If you're interested in helping out, you can register at the Freelancer.com posting. This isn't the first free-flying robot NASA has put on the ISS. In fact, such robots have been there since 2006 as part of NASA's Spheres project. The Astrobee will basically roam around the ISS cabin and use its sensors to inspect the station or use its cameras to film the astronauts working aboard the station. It's important to note that NASA is working on its own design for the robotic arm, but it wants to see what other people can come up with as well. The contest is already open for entries, and participants have to register by filling out a survey that explores their academic merit and how much time they can devote to the project. Eventually, NASA will select 30 people to go on to complete the given task. Each will get $10, along with a finalized breakdown of everything they need to give to NASA at the end of the project. The finalists who fulfill these requirements will get $100 each, but there's no word just yet on how much money the winner will get. It's also not certain if NASA will actually implement any of the winning designs. Previously, NASA ran a number of competitions on Freelancer, including one asking users to create smartwatch apps that astronauts could use on the ISS and for logo designs for various new projects. Via: The Verge 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Families of patients dying of cancer prefer end-of-life care in a hospice for their loved ones with treatment focused on providing comfort over a hospital's intensive care unit and its aggressive treatments, a new study finds. Their perceptions of better end-of-life care involved earlier hospice enrollment, avoidance of ICU admissions within a month of death and the death occurring outside the hospital, study researchers found. While patients with advanced-stage cancer are often treated with aggressive medical care as life ebbs, there is increasing evidence such intrusive treatments do not result in better quality of life, better outcomes or satisfactory caregiver bereavement, they report in their study appearing in JAMA. When dying patients experienced at least three days of hospice care devoted to comfort and sustaining quality of life, 59 percent of patients' families expressed a feeling that the treatment offered was excellent, the study found. In comparison, only 43 percent of families of patients who received little or no hospice-based care had the same feeling about their treatment. Similarly, families of patients who were admitted to an ICU for the last month of life only thought the treatment offered was excellent 45 percent of the time, the researchers say. The findings are a clear indication of what families would prefer, they suggest. "Interventions should focus more on increasing early hospice enrollment and decreasing ICU admissions and hospital deaths," says lead study author Dr. Alexi Wright of Harvard Medical School and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. "The best way to do this is to encourage patients, physicians and family members to talk about their end-of-life wishes," Wright suggests. For their study, the researchers used information gathered during interviews with families of Medicare patients with advanced-stage lung or colorectal cancer after the patients' death. It was conducted as part of the Cancer Care Outcomes Research and Surveillance study. Medical experts said that if a family and/or patient considers hospice care preferable to more aggressive hospital treatment, it should be communicated to doctors or caregivers as soon as possible. "Don't wait for someone to suggest hospice," urges Dr. David Casarett, head of palliative care for Penn Medicine in Philadelphia. "By the time that a doctor thinks about hospice as an option, and suggests it, it's often too late." A hospice or home hospice care may be better at providing pain or symptom management along with spiritual and emotional support, he says. "Hospice is very good at providing that sort of support and is designed to help people remain in their homes," says Casarett. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. For tech companies, one of the best ways to understand how their product responds on mobile is to actually use it. That just makes sense, right? Its also why one Google executive spent much of the last year almost exclusively on smartphones. According to an interview with Search Engine Land, Amit Singhal senior vice president of search at Google spent over a year using smartphones more or less exclusively. While admitting to a few sessions at a desktop to write significantly lengthy emails when required, Singhal claims to have nothing with a keyboard at home these days. I think its been close to a year or so where Im living on cell phones, Search Engine Land quotes Singhal as saying. I admit that when I have to type long work emails, yes, I do go to a browser because typing long emails is hard still. But I largely live on these things. So, what model does Googles Amit Singhal rely on to get all his work done, then? Two models, actually: a Galaxy S6 Edge and an iPhone 6 Plus. By his own account, Singhal spends between six and seven hours a day in meetings, and he doesnt carry around a laptop or tablet. So, its not like he has to work too terribly hard at actively avoiding a regular computer at his job. As the number of mobile users continues to creep increasingly upward, more and more effort is being spent trying to better understand how they use Web services in contrast to those navigating something closer to a traditional browser-on-computer setup. Some of that involves studying facts and figures obtained thanks to usage statistics, but first-hand experience is invaluable as well. Singhal, for example, has come to realize just how troublesome trying to copy and paste something can be on mobile calling the entire interaction painful at one point. He is certainly not wrong. Maybe something good really will come out of his little experiment. Via: Mashable Photo: Joi Ito | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Cancer has affected the world tremendously yet no exact cure has been developed. To come up with a possible solution, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden vows to speed up U.S. approval of promising cancer drug combinations. On Tuesday, Biden said at the World Economic Forum meeting of international cancer experts in Davos, Switzerland that current scientific and technological efforts are at an "inflection point." With this, he would move to hasten government approval of cancer cocktail drugs as his contribution to America's new drive to cure cancer "once and for all." Biden said he already had a meeting with three big pharmaceutical firms and the head of the U.S. FDA in his home. All parties agreed to work more to develop breakthrough cancer drug combinations. "The head of the FDA made a commitment that everybody would move much more rapidly in approving combinations," said Biden. Another good thing is that all three companies expressed their willingness to engage in a "different way of doing business" to guarantee the simultaneous testing of the drugs from different firms as soon as possible, he added. Cancer specialists are specifically looking forward to this development. They are excited by the promise of new cancer medicines, which studies have proven to work well if combined with other drugs. For U.S. National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, the new immunotherapy drug is "breathtaking." As experts learn more about the genetic properties that induce cancer cell growth, combination cancer drug therapy is placed more firmly at the center of battling tumors. Such great promise entails a slow process thus hindering patients from getting the treatment at once. The therapy also comes with an expensive price. As per estimates, immunotherapy drugs like these can cost more than $100,000 annually per patient. In President Barack Obama's latest and last State of the Union address, he envisioned America to be the country that cures cancer once and for all. However, scientific critics expressed their doubts about this claim, questioning the extremely simplified approach to the fatal disease. Biden, who lost his son to brain cancer in 2015, was appointed by Obama to lead this ambitious initiative. He acknowledged that it is not going to be easy, even saying that he is not naive to think that a cure for every type of cancer would be available in the near term. Photo: Marc Nozell | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Arthropods, which are invertebrates that include insects, spiders, mites, centipedes and others, are fascinating creatures, and they might as well be your new roommate. A new study in the United States revealed that you have about more than 100 tiny, ancient creepy-crawling companions inside your house. Your place is also the home to friendly-neigborhood spiders, house centipedes, harmless book lice and others. Guests Inside The Standard American Home Under a program called "Arthropods of Our Homes," a team of scientists combed through 50 houses in Raleigh, North Carolina between May and October. The group's study is thought to be the first ever investigation to count and evaluate the biodiversity of arthropods in American homes. The team - comprising of experts from North Carolina State University, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and the California Academy of Sciences (CAS) - went room by room, collecting all the arthropods they could retrieve, whether alive or dead. Scientists discovered that the dwellings they examined were inhabited by 579 various types of arthropods. They also found that the standard American home is host to an average of about 100 arthropod species. Here are some of the anthropods that the team collected. 1. Ground Beetles: These insects often prefer to roam outside, but they often wander into houses to look for prey. Below is a false bombadier beetle that the team photographed. 2. Little Black Ants: The team found a search party of little black ants on a couch. The little black ants were huddled on top of the food they discovered. 3. Dust Mites: These arthropods feed on organic debris such as shed skin cells. They often live in carpets, beds and even on people. 4. Cobweb Spiders: The most common arthropod they collected were the cob-web spiders. These creatures were found in 65 percent of the homes. 5. Tiny wasp: One fascinating find that the team photographed was an extremely tiny wasp. This wasp was only about 1 millimeter long, or about 0.039 inches. We really can't help but think of two particular superheroes who are associated with shrinking powers and insects. 6. House centipede: A house centipede typically has 15 pairs of legs. They are one of the most common arthropods in existence. 7. Carpet Beetles: These arthropods feed on clothing, carpet fibers and dead insects. Peaceful Cohabitants And Accidental Visitors Entomologist Matt Bertone, lead author of the paper featured in the journal Peerj, said that even though they gathered a remarkable number of arthropods, they do not want people to think that all of these species are actually living in everybody's homes. "Many of the arthropods we found had clearly wandered in from outdoors, been brought in on cut flowers or were otherwise accidentally introduced," said Bertone. Because most of the arthropods are not equipped to dwell in our homes, they typically die pretty fast, Bertone said. For instance, gall midges were found in all 50 homes, but these millimeter-long flies eat outdoor plants and cannot live indoors. Bertone said the majority of arthropods they found were not pest species but were either peaceful cohabitants or accidental visitors. Cobweb spiders are more likely to be the former, while midges and leafhoppers belong to the latter. Our Homes Are Not Sterile Environments Meanwhile, one surprising finding that the team acquired was that only five in 554 rooms they checked did not contain any arthropods. "I never thought I'd see such biology in homes that were clean, not filled with junk, just normal homes," said Bertone. "My hope is that this doesn't freak people out but people need to know their houses aren't sterile environments." Bertone said we share our space with many different species, but most of them are harmless. "The fact that you don't know they're there only highlights how little we interact with them," he said. Study co-author Michelle Trautwein of CAS said their findings are only a glimpse into the arthropod species in our homes and that further research needs to be done to understand the matter. "These insights give us the opportunity delve down into some exciting scientific questions," said Trautwein. "Now that we have a better idea of which species are most common in homes, we can focus on studying them." Bertone and his colleagues' next step is to assess how the structure of a home, its outdoor surroundings and the behavior of the human residents affect the biodiversity of arthropods in the home. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Chile has joined its fellow Latin American nations in accepting medical marijuana. On Tuesday, Jan. 19, the largest medical marijuana farm in Latin America was formally inaugurated in a small Chilean town. The 6,900-stalk farm is located in Colbun, which is 170 miles south of Chile's capital, Santiago. The organizers say they hope to sow about 1.65 tons of marijuana between March and May 2016. With such harvest, the plantation may help treat about 4,000 patients from all across Chile. The project will be organized by Daya Foundation, a local non-profit organization. Project leaders are set to collaborate with different laboratories and academic institutions to create therapies for pain, cancer, epilepsy and other medical conditions using cannabis. Chile has been very conservative about using medical marijuana. The government has long been opposing the idea of creating the farm, delaying approvals and causing problems for the organizers. The latest developments, however, mark changes in Chilean perspectives. Foundation head Ana Maria Gazmuri says people's opinions are shifting in the traditionally conservative nation. "This farm will further permit people to see for themselves the reality of the plant, and what its uses are," she says. As a result of the turns of opinions, Chile now joins the rest of the Latin American community in making medical marijuana a part of its health care system. In 2013, Uruguay became the first nation in the world to legalize the production, sale and intake of medical marijuana. In November 2015, the Mexican court permitted limited cultivation of the cannabis plant in their country. Most recently, Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos signed a decree legalizing medical marijuana in December 2015. Medical marijuana is actually the term used for the whole unprocessed plant. This means that medical marijuana makers use only the basic extracts of the plant to treat a variety of clinical signs and symptoms. In U.S., the actual marijuana plant has not been approved as a medicine. However, the agency has approved two pill-form medications containing cannabinoids, which can be found in marijuana. Experts think further research may lead to the development of more drugs. Given that the marijuana plant contains beneficial chemicals, some people are calling for its legalization for medical purposes. In the U.S., more and more states have approved medical marijuana. Photo: Don Graham | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The 21st century could be the last one for humans, warns a senior astronomer. The vast scientific advancements may someday take a toll on humans with alien species to replace them by 2100. Seth Shostak of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute in Mountain View, California argues that designer babies and artificial intelligence (AI) will lead to the creation of a new dominant species. The advancements in the two fields may lead to the emergence of "alien species" in the next century. On Jan. 15, 2016, Shostak wrote a post titled, "Could This Be Humanity's Last Century?" which is a less-than-sunny concept about Earth and humanity's fate in the coming century, as shaped by happenings in the past millennium. "But what about the 21st century? What will your kids and grandkids do that will still be important a thousand years from now?" he argued. He added that his argument is not about the numerous threats present today such as climate change or terrorism. Shostak mentioned three things that can happen in the next 100 years. First, he talked about people's understanding of DNA sequences and the molecular level of biology. With advancements in science, technology and medicine, scientists in the future may be able to cure diseases that are deemed incurable today. "But our efforts won't be limited to merely fixing ourselves; we'll also opt for improvement. You may hesitate to endorse designer babies, but hot-rodding our children is as much on the horizon as the morning sun," Shostak said referring to biotechnology and gene editing. Re-engineering future children will transform them into something different from humans in many aspects like how dogs are from gray wolves after domestication. The second development he mentioned is human expansion into outer space to explore other resources. Scarce resources like metals and minerals can be extracted from asteroids and humans may soon establish settlements on Mars or the Moon. "The third thing you can expect before the year 2100 is the development of generalized artificial intelligence," Shostak said. He believed that the rise of artificial intelligence will be the biggest influence on the future of humanity. Machines of the future will not just play games in computers but can do more than that. These machines can perform the thinking on behalf of humans. The development of AI is more than just improving future children but entails substituting them with engineered successors. Humans may rely on AI to do the work for them. With scientific advancements like these, the Homo sapiens that walked the Earth for 50,000 years might be unrecognizable in the next 100 years. He added that these changes may not happen in this century but it may happen in the next 1,000 years. Photo: Jeff Keyzer | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Many well-loved fairy tales predate the Bible, Greek and Roman myths, and many current European languages and world religions, a new study has found. The Brothers Grimm collected fairy tales back in the 19th century, but it appears that these stories date back not only hundreds, but even thousands of years. There is even a possibility that they have influenced the Bible, Greek and Roman mythological writings, and other works of religion. Study co-author and anthropology professor Jamshid Tehrani from Durham University said that stories of Rumpelstiltskin, Beauty and the Beast, and Jack and the Beanstalk have likely existed before numerous modern European languages did. That includes languages like English, German, French, and Russian. [They] would have originally been told in a now extinct ancestral language from which those tongues evolved," Tehrani explained, adding that they are estimating about 4,000 to 6,000 years old. Tehrani and study co-author Sara Graca da Silva, a folklorist from the New University of Lisbon, probed whether 275 Indo-European fairy tales tended to be spread among closely tied population groups than more distantly related ones. They looked at how and whether the tale-sharing could be determined by the geographical proximity of the populations and how closely similar their languages are. The process that separated the effects of tales moving between neighboring segments from tales inherited from common ancestral segments narrowed the focus to 76 tales, whose movement could be explained through common heritage. The researchers then put the 76 stories into a so-called family tree of Indo-European tongues to gauge how far back the stories go a mathematical technique used by biologists to reconstruct how genetically transferred traits evolve. The Smith and the Devil where a blacksmith sells his soul to the devil in exchange for the ability to weld materials together, but eventually tricks him emerged as one of the oldest tales and has been traced back 6,000 years to the Indo-European languages Bronze Age predecessors. Beauty and the Beast and Rumpelstiltskin were traced back 4,000 years, even though they were written down in the 17th and 18th centuries. Jack and the Beanstalk, on the other hand, appeared to be from about 5,000 years past. They are older than the English language and would have been first told in one that is now extinct, added Dr. Tehrani in a separate interview. The findings, according to him, agree with the argument of Wilhelm Grimm that the traditional German tales that he and his brother Jacob collected and first saw print in 1812 were rooted in ancient cultures. Many scholars did not agree with Wilhelms hypothesis. The findings were published in the journal Royal Society Open Science. Photo: Raelene Gutierrez | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) urged medical manufacturers to tighten their cybersecurity. Manufacturers were instructed to regularly supervise medical devices as well as act on the cybersecurity threats as part of their company's post-market product investigation. The health agency also required the manufacturers to send a corresponding report about their findings. The FDA urged the manufacturers to create in-house teams and programs that would analyze cybersecurity risks and threats related to their products. Medical devices such as heart pacemakers and pumps are linked to hospital networks and the Internet. They can easily be hacked, compromising their effectivity and safety. The threat also puts stored sensitive and private data at risk. "Proactively addressing cybersecurity risks in medical devices reduces the patient safety impact and the overall risk to public health," wrote the FDA in the issued guidance. In July 2015, health providers received an FDA warning about Hospira's Symbiq Infusion System. Due to cybersecurity issues, health providers were advised to stop using the medical product. Several medical devices manufacturers raised concerns that FDA keeps them from rendering small modifications or "patches" in the software and other product applications as these could affect the use of previously FDA-approved products. However, the recent FDA guidance noted that these patches can be done without obliging manufacturers to notify to the agency. Manufactures, however, are required to inform the FDA if the cybersecurity threat can potentially lead to serious health effects or death. According to the FDA guidance, manufacturers will not be required to report issues to the federal agency if they notify the consumers and fix the issue within 30 days after identifying the threat. The same goes for manufacturers that extend the information to other companies in order to prevent any cybersecurity threats that could arise. The FDA guidance will be further discussed during a cybersecurity workshop called "Moving Forward: Collaborative Approaches to Medical Device Cybersecurity," set on Jan. 20 to 21 at the health agency's Silver Spring, Maryland headquarters. The document is open to the public for comments for 90 days. Dr. Suzanne Schwartz from FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health added that by working openly and collaboratively in a trusted environment, patient safety will be best protected and the community can prevent cybersecurity threats from causing harm. Schwartz is the Center's acting director of emergency preparedness /operations and medical countermeasures. Photo: Ervins Strauhmanis | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 20 Trend: On the day of national mourning today on Jan. 20, the movement of traffic and pedestrians was stopped for a minute, to honor the victims of the January 20 tragedy. A minute of silence was followed by horns of ships in the Bay of Baku, metro cars and railway trains. On the night of January 19-20, 1990, 137 people were killed, 744 civilians were injured, and 841 people were illegally arrested. The Soviet troops that entered Baku, destroyed 200 apartments and houses, 80 cars, including ambulances, and a large number of private and public property. Android 6.0 Marshmallow is making its way to more devices, including some carrier versions of the HTC One M9 in Canada. The latest version of Android became available for the general public in late 2015, and it's slowly making its way to more non-Nexus devices. HTC is among the first OEMs to move forward with its Marshmallow rollout plans, and it continues to make progress in this regard. Just a few days ago, HTC's Mo Versi took to Twitter to announce that Android 6.0 Marshmallow was headed to a few carrier versions of its One M9 in Canada. That announcement prompted various user questions and brought more good news in response, including a confirmation that the Sprint HTC One M8 would get a taste of Marshmallow this week. We have no news on whether Sprint has already started the rollout, but the HTC One M9 in Canada did indeed get the new update. Just as Mo Versi promised, Android 6.0 Marshmallow went live for HTC One M9 owners on Sasktel, Wind Mobile, Videotron, and Rogers, bringing a slew of neat features and improvements. The new Android 6.0 Marshmallow brings the much-touted Doze feature that improves the embedded power management, while also allowing the system to suspend certain applications that are only rarely used. Doze shuts down power-draining features the device would otherwise keep running even when it's idle, thus notably improving battery life. For instance, Doze will suspend AutoSync, location sensors and others such when the device is idle and untouched, and will reactivate them once the user picks up the device and starts using it. With Android 6.0 Marshmallow, users can now also finely tune app permissions, gaining more control over what data to hand over to applications. This option is now embedded into the OS itself, putting more power in users' hands. Another great feature of the latest Android version is Google Now on Tap, which brings neat improvements over the simple Google Now assistant. Google Now on Tap offers more detailed information based on the contents of the screen, which can be of great help in a number of situations. To get a better idea of what's on the table, check out the top 5 Android 6.0 Marshmallow features that proved to be the most popular. As expected, HTC has also included some generic performance improvements and bug fixes, while also giving its camera app a nice refresh. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Volkswagen CEO Matthias Mueller's visit to the United States didn't go too well last week. He didn't leave the country with an agreement or resoultion with Environmental Protection Agency head Gina McCarthy for how to execute the recall of nearly 600,000 diesel cars in the U.S. affected by the automaker's emissions scandal. Still mired in the trudge of that crisis, VW took a step in hoping to smooth over relations in the U.S. by appointing Hinrich J. Woebcken as its new North American chief Tuesday. He'll be responsible for the company's cars in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, effective April 1, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. With the hire, Volkswagen of America CEO Michael Horn will maintain his position. Woebcken, 55, is a former BMW AG executive who worked closely with VW's brand CEO Herbert Diess, as reported by the Journal. The news comes after Mueller's disappointing trip to the U.S. "The U.S. trip was not very satisfactory. Everybody knows that, including Mr. Mueller," a source close to VW's supervisory board told the Journal. That being said, Mueller's position as VW's CEO is not in danger, despite rumored reports that the embattled brand was considering relieving him of his duties over the weekend. "Mr. Mueller's position was never in doubt," a spokesperson with the automaker told the Journal on Tuesday. It might be a good thing that Woebcken doesn't officially take to his newly-appointed post until April 1, considering he'll have to time to help the company come up with a better proposal to make nearly 600,000 faulty diesel vehicles comply with U.S. emissions regulations. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. AfterShock Comics announced a distribution agreement today that will make its slate of titles available on both Comixology and Amazons Kindle Store. AfterShock is making a name for itself by touting edgy, new titles from top industry talent, including Garth Ennis, Paul Jenkins, Brian Azzarello, Marguerite Bennett, David Hine, Amanda Conner, Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Jordan. Starting today, fans have greater access than ever before to AfterShocks titles, such as Replica, InSeXts, SuperZero, Dreaming Eagles and American Monster. Since our official launch less than a year ago, AfterShock has experienced incredible traction and acclaim through our inaugural titles from some of the industrys most celebrated creators, AfterShock editor-in-chief Mike Marts said in a press release. Were extremely proud of our growing content library and excited to offer AfterShocks current and future titles to a much wider audience through this partnership with comiXology and Kindle. We believe that AfterShock Comics is doing great things with their expanding line-up of original titles from top comics creators, so were thrilled to share these hot new series with our avid comiXology and Kindle comics fans, ComiXologys co-founder and CEO, David Steinberger said. From suburban suspense and WWII aerial adventures to sci-fi detective stories, Victorian erotic horror and more, AfterShock Comics has an incredibly diverse line-up of comics that were sure has something for everyone to enjoy! Starting today, fans can log on to Comixology or Amazons Kindle Store and pick up the following AfterShock titles: American Monster #1 Replica #1-2 InSeXts #1-2 SuperZero #1-2 Dreaming Eagles #1 More titles will follow, with Strayer #1 available on January 27. AfterShock also announced a new book by writer Mark Waid (Daredevil, Kingdom Come) called Captain Kid, which "tells the story of a middle-aged comics fan who transofmrs into a teen super-hero. If it happened to you, would you ever change back?" The book is being co-written by Tom Peyer and is set for a summer release date. You can find out more about AfterShock Comics on the publishers official website. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Just before the New Year, the U.S. Air Force announced that it's allowing enlisted personnel to pilot drones for the first time ever. The thought behind the newly-installed rule was that there's an increased demand for drones due to the rising rates of terrorist threats and that it was also due to budget cuts and potential layoffs facing the U.S. military. In addition, allowing enlisted personnel to fly drones would take some pressure off the Air Force's drone crews. Well, let's hope the Air Force guides drones safer than they did last year. That's because, a Washington Post investigative report found that 20 large Air Force drones were destroyed or suffered at least $2 million in damages via accidents sustained in 2015 the worst year for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) crashing in the Air Force's history. Within that, what's very concerning is the Air Force's newest, most-sophisticated drone, the Reaper, actually powered the surge of drone accidents last year. That's a major problem, considering that particular drone is being counted on for airstrikes and surveillance against al-Qaeda and the Islamic State amongst its enemy military groups. In documents obtained by the Post, the Reaper was revealed to have suffered sudden electrical failures that caused it to loser power in flight, sending the 5,000-pound drone crash down from the sky. The Post's investigation found that issue to be a faulty starter-generator, but couldn't uncover what's causing it. In 2015 alone, 10 Reaper drones were either destroyed or damaged, marking at least double the amount than in any prior year, Air Force safety data informed the Post. Within that, the number of Reaper accidents per 100,000 hours flown more than doubled that of 2014. Lt. Gen. Robert P. Otto, the Air Force's deputy chief of staff for intelligence/surveillance, told the Post that the Air Force is actively looking to pinpoint the exact cause of the crashes. "We're looking closely at that to determine what is the core issue there," Otto said. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. While the likes of Nest smart thermostats are great, one of their main issues is that they are often simply mounted in the hallway and don't measure temperatures in various rooms. That's an issue that a new startup called Flair is trying to fix, having released a smart vent system that is designed to control temperatures across all rooms, rather than relying on settings from one thermostat. "It can figure out the differential, and if you want this room when you're in it to be more comfortable, take that differential into account and adjust the master thermostat," said Flair co-founder Daniel Myers in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle. Flair itself is offering $40 smart vents as well as $60 individual room controllers, which are available straight from the company's website. One of the great things about Flair is that doesn't have to work alone. In fact, it's an open platform, and at launch will play well with a range of systems, including Nest, Honeywell Lyric, Honeywell Wi-Fi and Ecobee. It will also work with smart home systems including Philips Hue, Wink, SmartThings and Control4. Those who don't have a central heating and cooling system obviously won't need the smart vents, but can still use the system. The controller, which is a small puck, will act as the brain of the system, and can connect to devices through Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or even through its IR blaster. The puck is able to use geofencing with the user's phone as well as the Android or iOS app to set the temperature when users come and go into different rooms. It uses Bluetooth on the user's phone to know when they're in a particular room, meaning that users can create more comprehensive profiles, rather than simply being able to set "home" or "away." The system is also reportedly able to distinguish between different users and their particular settings, so it can change temperatures based on who is in the room. As mentioned, you can head to the Flair website to order the system for yourself. Via: CNET 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Car marketing in Japan is a little different from here in the states. Whereas our car commercials can often be outlandish, bizarre or even feature classic anime characters, there are lines American car companies aren't willing to cross. Turning the various parts of the car you are trying to sell into anime girls is one of those lines. That's exactly what Toyota has done for a new Japanese Prius commercial, and it's interesting, to say the least. For example, have you ever wondered what a Prius motor would look like as an anime girl? If you have, you may want to consult a physician, but if you haven't, you can watch the video below to see what she (it?) would look like. Same applies to the car's "double wishbone suspension" and its "high rigidity body." Also, its "triangular silhouette?" Okay, this is making me kind of uncomfortable. You get the idea. Of course, personifying products as anime characters isn't exactly new in Japan. In fact, it happens quite frequently. From fast food to Internet browsers, Japanese companies (or the Japanese arms of American companies) use anime to appeal to the manga reading and anime watching youth of the country. It's why we assume Ford has been using Dragon Ball Z, one of the most popular anime here in the States and one that many twenty-somethings grew up with, in several of its recent advertisements. Apparently, anime sells. However, that doesn't make it any less weird for everybody involved. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. 13 Year-Old Boy Saves Friends In Exploding Hoverboard Incident Thanks to the quick thinking of 13-year-old Jibril Muhammed Faris that saved the lives of two young children after a hoverboard exploded. Three children were nearly killed after a hoverboard exploded and set fire to a house in Bradford, West Yorkshire. Jibril said he was playing at his nine-year-old friend Tony Chiems house in St Marys Drive, Wyke, when the board set on fire while charging. The hoverboard had been recently plugged into the socket to charge but once it was removed it began to smoke and eventually caught fire. All of a sudden all of this white smoke started coming out of the segway board. Then all of a sudden it explodes and goes boom. My first instinct was to get everyone out alive. There was so much fire and smoke, he said. As smoke filled the room and the flames grew bigger, Jibril managed to first rescue his friends eight-year-old sister Karen Chiem, who suffered an injury to her foot, from the blaze to the safety of the upstairs bedroom. He attempted to get out of the front door but the smoke prevented Jibril from being able to find the key to open the door, forcing him to go upstairs. He then went back into the blaze-hit room to find his friend Tony and take him to the bedroom where his sister was. He then called 999 and followed instructions given by operators and put blankets to cover the bottom of the bedroom door so the smoke would not come through. I was about to smash the window open but then the mum came upstairs and managed to open the door, Jibril said. Meanwhile, the Chiem childrens mother, Thu Thi Tram, entered the house and led the trio out through the front door. While doing so, Thu suffered burns to her ear. Her husband, Ving Hung Chiem, also sustained a burn to his head as he tried to put the fire out himself before West Yorkshire Fire Service arrived. Thu, her husband and the kids had to be treated for shock and smoke inhalation at Bradford Royal Infirmary. The fire came after thousands of hoverboards were seized and some airlines banned them over fire concerns. Jibrils father Tariq Majid has hailed his teenage son a hero after he helped rescue the other children. I am very proud of my son, said the 45-year-old. The fire service said to me your son is a hero. His actions saved those childrens lives. They could have all died in this fire. I remember arriving at the house. I had no idea what had happened or if my son was alive. I could not quite believe what was going on. I am just happy everyone was all right. My son is quite a strong character but he has been really shaken by this. He had even contemplated jumping out the window and was going to get the others to jump and he was going to catch them. Jibril was very brave. The living room of the house was gutted by the fire and the rest of the property heavily smoke-logged. The family has been forced to live with relatives. Following the fire, Mr Majid has called the Costco branch in Leeds, where the Chiam family bought the hoverboard back in November. He says the manager told him that the particular hoverboard had been recalled and letters had been sent out. Mr Majid has told them that he wants Costco to cease selling the hoverboard and says they are looking at taking legal action. He said: You hear about incidents with these hoverboards in the news but no matter what you read, it only hits home when it happens to you. They are innovative and I have had a go on one myself so I know how fun they can be. We just need to make sure that these things are safe. Jibril said it had been charging in the living room and they simple removed it from the socket and it started to smoke before catching fire. They could have been killed. I know all the children believed they were going to die in the fire and still have nightmares. Jibril is waking up during the night and screaming. He said his life flashed before his eyes. Local fire station manager Mark Helliwell said: The children were in the living room when they saw smoke coming from the hoverboard and within seconds it suddenly exploded into flames. This must have been quite a scary experience for them. The teenagers quick-thinking actions are certainly commendable. The likely cause of the fire was the overheating of the hoverboards lithium batteries said the fire service. The importers of some models of hoverboards insist their products are safe and compliant with UK and European laws. To ensure that the hoverboard purchased are safe, National Trading Standards advises anyone to use its for the same. Apple and Microsoft using batteries made with cobalt mined by 7-year-old children A new report by Amnesty International reveals that child labor is being used in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to mine cobalt, a mineral used in lithium-ion batteries found in devices from Apple, Samsung, Sony, Microsoft and car manufacturers Daimler and Volkswagen. 50% of the worlds cobalt is mined from the DRC. UNICEF estimates that 40,000 children are working in the mines located in the DRC. It has been found out that children as young as seven years old are working in cobalt mines to collect the material thats then being used for the manufacturing of lithium-ion batteries. Even though the involved companies do not necessarily work with the same battery supplier, the cobalt provider is ultimately the same Congo Dongfang Mining (CDM), a subsidiary of Chinese firm Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt Ltd, also known as Huayou Cobalt. The report says that local traders buy cobalt from areas with child labor and sell it to Huayou Cobalt, who then processes and sells the cobalt to three battery component manufacturers Toda Hunan Shanshen New Material, Tianjin Bamo Technology and L&F Material. They in turn sell it to battery makers who then supply the batteries with this cobalt to technology companies like Apple and Samsung. Amnesty claims that the company often employ children for as little as 2 dollars per day. It also does not protect employees from the obvious hazards created by working in mines. A working day has at least 12 hours, but some 14-year-olds told Amnesty that there were cases when they had to work up to 24 hours. Since September 2014, around 80 people have died in cobalt mines in Congo, but the organization says that the death toll could be even higher as the company does not register every victim and sometimes covers up such incidents. Bodies are usually left buried in the rubble, Amnesty claims. Amnesty International spoke with 87 current and former cobalt miners, of which 17 of them were children. I would spend 24 hours down in the tunnels. I arrived in the morning and would leave the following morning I had to relieve myself down in the tunnels My foster mother planned to send me to school, but my foster father was against it, he exploited me by making me work in the mine, one child was quoted as saying. Samsung has on record stated that it has a zero tolerance policy when it comes to child labor, and routinely checks its supply chain. If a violation of child labor is found, contracts with suppliers who use child labor will be immediately terminated, Samsung said in a statement. Sony also released a statement which said that it is working with suppliers to address human rights and labor issues. This is what Microsoft had to say, Tracing metals such as cobalt up through multiple layers of our supply chain is extremely complex. Tracking the origin of the cobalt metal in [the different compounds used in Microsoft products] to the precise mining area is extremely challenging. Due to our supply chain complexity and the in-region co-mingling of materials, we are unable to say with absolute assurance that any or none of our cobalt sources can be traced to ore mined in the Katanga region. To create such a tracing mechanism would require a large degree of vertical and cross-industry collaboration. For its part, Apple made a statement to the BBC stating that Underage labor is never tolerated in our supply chain and we are proud to have led the industry in pioneering new safeguards. We are currently evaluating dozens of different materials, including cobalt, in order to identify labor and environmental risks as well as opportunities for Apple to bring about effective, scalable and sustainable change. As we gain a better understanding of the challenges associated with cobalt we believe our work in the African Great Lakes region and Indonesia will serve as important guides for creating lasting solutions. Every year Apple releases a Supplier Responsibility Progress Report that discloses information discovered in audits of its suppliers around the world. When a supplier is found in violation of underage hiring policies, Apple forces the company to pay the employee to return home, finance an education selected by the underaged employee or their family, continue to pay out wages and offer them a job when they turn of legal working age. Last year, the company dropped four smelters from its supply chain after they refused a conflict-free audit. In 2014, Apple was put under fire in a BBC documentary that showed the negative working environment of Apples supply chain. Following the accusations, Tim Cook said he was deeply offended by the allegations and that Apple is continuously working to improve working conditions. You can check out Amnesty Internationals full investigation here (PDF), with more statements to come from involved companies. Net Neutrality Standoff Escalates As TRAI Hauls Facebook Over the Coals Even as the Parliamentary panel on net neutrality is set to meet next week, the ongoing war between Facebook and TRAI has started intensifying. Social networking giant Facebook has alleged that someone at the Telecom Regulatory Authority of Indias (TRAI) office has blocked emails from its websites through which people shared their views on differential pricing for data services, a key issue of net neutrality. In a startling series of e-mail exchanges made public on January 19, the regulatory body delivered a scathing indictment of Facebooks lobbying practices, accusing the company of converting the regulators consultation process into a crudely majoritarian and orchestrated opinion poll and wilfully disregarding its request to better inform Facebooks users. After TRAI circulated a consultation paper on regulatory framework for differential pricing, Facebook has launched a public campaign to defend its free Internet platform Free Basics, through which it aims to provide free access to select websites and applications. The social media has launched a massive campaign to gather support in its favour, as it apprehends that the regulator may ban its Free Basics platform, which allows access to some applications and websites. In a letter to the regulator, Facebook has said that despite clear and timely efforts by millions of Indians to send their comments, someone with access to designated TRAI email account appears to have blocked receipt of all emails from Facebook to that TRAI account, reports the sources. The letter written by Ankhi Das, Facebooks Public Policy Director for India, states that Specifically, our inquiry revealed that on December 17 05:51:53 GMT, an individual took action that blocked Facebook from delivering any additional emails to [email protected] This appears to have been accomplished by unsubscribing from receiving all further emails from Facebook, effectively requesting that Facebook cease delivering emails to the address. This action prevented the Facebook system from sending further responsive emails to TRAI. The last date for public comments on TRAI paper was earlier December 30, which was later extended to January 7. As per TRAI data, it has received around 24 lakh comments till January 7. In response, TRAI has made public a series of mail exchanges with Facebook in which it has slammed the social media site. In response to Dass letter, which is dated January 13, TRAIs Joint Adviser K.V. Sebastian points out that if the regulatory body had been informed right away, it could have taken steps to correct the error. In his reply, Sebastian writes If this were indeed the case, TRAI should have been informed immediately for appropriate steps to be taken. In fact, a similar instance of user complaint regarding the non-functioning of an email address during the response period for this Consultation paper was brought to the notice of TRAI by individual stakeholders and the situation was immediately rectified. It is surprising that it took over 25 days for you to inform TRAI of this. Sebastian further points out that in the spirit of ensuring that all points are heard, which TRAI made clear to Facebook in a meeting on January 14, the regulator will take into account all relevant responses that are made available to it; including ones that Facebook handed over to TRAI on a pen-drive on January 14. Releasing number of responses received through facebookmail.com and supportfreebasics.in, TRAI has said that it received only 1.89 million, while Facebooks claimed the number to be more than 11 million supporting its plan to make parts of the Internet available for free under Free Basics. This is first ever consultation paper on which TRAI has received maximum comments from people. An enquiry of a record 24 lakh comments, as disclosed by TRAI to its consultation paper on differential pricing for data services, shows that 18.94 lakh replies are in support of Free Basics, of which 13.5 lakh views are through supportfreebasics.in and without the senders individual e-mail IDs, while further 5.44 lakh comments have come from facebookmail.com. On the other hand, the Net Neutrality campaigners have submitted 4.84 lakh comments through forums like Save the Internet. Besides, there are also comments from telecom and Internet service providers, industry bodies and individuals. Telecome operators such as Airtel, Vodafone, Idea, Reliance Communications and their respective associations, have supported differential pricing for data services, while Internet service providers have opposed the plan. For the growth of data service, price differentiation for data services can be allowed, operators have submitted. Nasscom said issues concerning differential pricing for data services need careful consideration because of their possible impact on net neutrality. On the other hand, the IT industry body said data plans offered by telecom companies to the consumer have to be neutral between their own and competing Internet platforms and services. By the end of 2015, the top 10 data breaches impacted over 160 million customer records and destroyed more than 3 trillion dollars of market value. Gone are the days when the responsibility and impact of security could be relegated deep within locked rooms filled with glowing computer screens. The consistent and silent failure of security technologies has placed us in a world where in order to change outcomes, security decisions must be central to business strategy. Cyber security is among the most pressing challenges of our time. Its time for a holistic approach that addresses the human factors, the brand and reputation risks, and the financial damage caused by these incidents. Human There was a moment when companies believed their users were protected within a strong perimeter. That no longer exists. In a mobile-first, cloud-first world, employees work on corporate applications and access sensitive data from on-premises and cloud-based systems using every type of device. This is a business choice made to improve productivity and achieve efficiency. While there is an immense opportunity for enterprises and individuals to derive personal and professional value from todays connected technologies, the fact remains that humans enable 97 percent of breaches. This is the human element that business leaders must grapple with. Those who have the authority and ability to take action must foresee the risks and challenges that the individuals pose while avoiding a reflexive reaction to hold the same individuals hostage to a host of ineffective educational programs, subtle and overt reprimands and limited capabilities. If an organization fails to address cyber security as a business issue it is creating a disconnect that drives a lower rate of attack recognition, as evidenced by Verizons findings. The result is also collateral damage in the form of confusion and uncertainty rather than a unified understanding of how to approach cyber security response and preparation for the next attack. If cyber security were simply an IT problem, implementing new layers of security would be enough to solve the problem. No form of data encryption, no firewall policy, no iron-spiked wall of cyber defense safeguards can account for the carefully orchestrated human cooperation that must take place to secure an organization. Tangible Financial Damage There are four ways data breaches impact an organization financially: The tangible costs for addressing the damage and improving the overall security posture Regulatory and other fines to be paid post-breach Punitive or economic liability toward any end consumers who are affected by these breaches Associated market losses that typically occur when news of these events becomes public Companies must focus on the tangible costs they incur repairing damage from a breach. Target spent $162 million between 2013 and 2014 to clean up the aftermath of its data breach. Additionally, companies often must pay fines to regulatory bodies. Cox Communications must pay $595,000 to The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in fines related to the cable providers data breach. Third, breached companies are often responsible for punitive or economic liability toward customers who suffer as a result of the breach. Experian, the entity responsible for the T-Mobile data breach, offered customers two free years of its ProtectMyID service typically a $15.95 monthly subscription. Finally, many companies market caps fall immediately after a cybersecurity breach. TalkTalks, the small telecom service provider, stock traded down 30 percent after news of their data breach broke. Oren Falkowitz, Area 1 Security Breaches Damage the Brand In October this year it became public that hackers had stolen personal information from around 15 million T-Mobile customers over the course of two years. Since the breach T-Mobiles CEO has issued an apology and the company has dedicated resources to developing breach-related FAQ and resources pages for customers. Three United States senators found the breach important enough they issued a letter to T-Mobile and Experian. The two companies are currently embroiled in a number of class-action lawsuits related to the breach. Consumers surveyed revealed they would shop less frequently at a retailer after a data breach. Worse, 85 percent would tell others about their experience after a retailers data breach a sign that brand image problems do not stop with those directly affected. Companies must climb a steep hill to repair their brand after cyberattacks jeopardize customer information. Enlisting IT to patch the cracks in the cyber defense wall may help ensure future breaches do not occur. But ITs network patches will not repair consumer perception of the company in question. The notion that cyber security is a business problem may only just be an annoying voice in the back of executives heads. For many it is still an issue to silo off into a dark corner, to sweep away under ITs rug. But there is a human reason, a brand reason, a financial reason cyber security is and must continue to be a company-wide mandate, from the C-suite all the way down. There will always be new threats and new attacks against businesses. Yet companies can take actions today to address security concerns and improve their security postures. These actions, when holistic in nature and led as central to the business, can protect the individual people, shore up company brand reputation and mitigate the resulting financial impact felt as the result of a cyberattack. Edited by Kyle Piscioniere Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 20 By Samir Ali - Trend: Lawyers of Azerbaijani journalist Khadija Ismayilova have no information whether the lawyer of Armenian descent Amal Clooney will be defending their client, the journalist's lawyer Fakhraddin Mehdiyev told Trend Jan. 20. He said that there is no information on this matter yet. "I cannot say how accurate this information is," said Mehdiyev. "International human rights organizations protect Khadija Ismayilova, keep her case under control. Perhaps Amal Clooney, the lawyer of Armenian descent, is also a member of these organizations. However, I don't have specific information whether there was an agreement between Ismayilova and Amal Clooney." Another lawyer of Ismayilova, Fariz Namazli said that, he too, learned about it from the press. "Next week I will meet with Ismayilova and inquire about this matter," said the lawyer. "If I learn something concrete, I will report this to the public." Amal Clooney, a lawyer and the wife of the Hollywood star George Clooney, said in an interview with NBC that she will defend the rights of Khadija Ismayilova before the European Court of Human Rights. Amal Clooney earlier represented Armenia in the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Dogu Perincek against Switzerland, Armenia and France regarding criminalization of denying the "Armenian Genocide". Ismayilova was charged under the articles 179.3.2 (large-scale misappropriation and embezzlement), 192.2.2 (illegal entrepreneurship), 213.1 (tax evasion) and 308.2 (abuse of official duties) under the Criminal Code of Azerbaijan. A cassational appeal was made against the verdict, but the Baku Court of Appeal upheld the decision of the first instance court. A 40 anos de Malvinas "Revisar el pasado es pensar el futuro". La frase de la presidenta de Telam, Bernarda Llorente, resume el espiritu del documental coproducido entre la agencia de noticias y el canal publico de TV sobre la cobertura que los medios de comunicacion hicieron del conflicto, plagada de censura y mentiras. Una autocritica necesaria para mirar hacia adelante en un (ya viejo) contexto de fake news y negocio informativo. Today EU countries agreed on a Commission proposal to invest 217 million in key trans-European energy infrastructure projects, mainly in Central and South Eastern Europe. In total, 15 projects were selected following a call for proposals under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), an EU funding programme for infrastructure. The selected projects will increase energy security and help end the isolation of Member States from EU-wide energy networks, European Commission website reported. They will also contribute to the completion of a European energy market and the integration of renewables into the electricity grid. The European Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy Miguel Arias Canete said: "Today, we are targeting those regions in Europe that need it the most. With this funding we will help secure supplies and fully integrate Europe's energy market by connecting networks across Europe. We must press ahead with the modernisation of our energy networks to bring any country still isolated into the European energy market. Modern energy networks are also crucial for ensuring efficient use of our energy resources and therefore key to reaching our climate goals." In the gas sector, the allocated grants will cover, among others, studies for modernising the Bulgarian gas transmission network which will improve the possibilities for the transport of gas in the region, notably for the benefit of Greece, Romania, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Turkey. Funding will also be allocated to studies on the Midcat project which will help eliminate infrastructure bottlenecks between the Iberian Peninsula and France, and connect gas supplies from Algeria and Spanish LNG terminals with the rest of Europe. The interconnector linking gas networks in Romania, Bulgaria, Austria and Hungary will also get EU funding. This is an important development for the EU gas market as this will allow gas from the Caspian region and other potential sources, including LNG, to reach Central Europe. The development of electricity infrastructure will also benefit from CEF financial assistance. This includes environmental and engineering design studies for the Germany-Denmark interconnection which will help supply Nordic electricity to Central Europe. Of the 15 proposals selected for funding, nine are in the gas sector (financial aid worth 207 million) and six in electricity sector (10 million); 13 relate to studies, such as environmental impact assessments (29 million), and two to construction works (188 million). The European Commission proposal to select these projects was supported by the CEF Coordination Committee, which consists of representatives from all EU countries. Later this month the Commission will formally adopt the list of proposals which will receive financial assistance under CEF Energy. Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Jan. 20 By Demir Azizov- Trend: The Sixth round of the Uzbek-US political consultations was held in Washington on January 19, 2016, the message on the Uzbek foreign ministry's website said Jan. 20. A delegation of Uzbekistan led by Foreign Minister Abdulaziz Kamilov participated in the sixth round of the Uzbek-US political consultations. According to the Uzbekistan's Foreign Ministry, Abdulaziz Kamilov met with US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Nisha Desai Biswal and the sides exchanged views on topical issues of bilateral agenda. The sides discussed the results of cooperation for period after the fifth round of political consultations in December 2014 in Tashkent, and state and prospects of cooperation in political, trade-economic, cultural, humanitarian and other spheres. While discussing international issues, special attention was paid to development of situation in Afghanistan and regional issues. The Annual Bilateral Consultations, which were established in 2009, are a structured policy dialogue designed to build mutual trust and advance our common agenda and opportunities for cooperation across the full range of bilateral and regional issues. The US looks forward to broadening and deepening its relationship with Uzbekistan on the basis of these candid and constructive conversations. Not only was 2015 the warmest worldwide since 1880, it shattered the previous record held in 2014 by the widest margin ever observed, said the report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. I want us to complete the Single Market. Tearing down the barriers to trade and enterprise between 28 different countries will massively benefit British businesses. Since the establishment of the single market, inward investment has increased faster in both the UK and EU - than the US and the rest of the World. But in too many areas the single market remains incomplete. Tehran, Iran, January 20 By Mehdi Sepahvand -- Trend: Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh is going to travel to Oman on January 21. This will make Zanganeh's first foreign trip after the removal of sanctions against Iran, SHANA news agency reported January 20. Meeting the kingdom's oil officials, Zanganeh will follow up on existing contracts and talk over future cooperation prospects. Iran is looking forward to greater economic ties with other countries after it was freed from sanctions as a comprehensive deal with six world powers came into force on January 16. Muscat has been avid to receive gas from Iran. In 2014, Oman signed a contract for the import of 28 million cubic meters of gas per day from Iran. Part of the gas will be consumed by Oman and the rest will turn into LNG and exported on behalf of Iran. On September 21, Tehran and Muscat signed a contract to stretch a gas pipeline from Iran to Oman as a necessary step to realize the gas export deal. Oman is the second largest trade partner of Iran among Persian Gulf littoral states. Tehran, Iran, January 20 By Mehdi Sepahvand -- Trend: For the first time in five years, an Iran Air plane fueled up at Paris Orly Airport and was able to reach Tehran without having to stop for fuel on the way. As the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is put into practice, Iranian airplanes are now freed from a restriction to receive fuel in Paris, IRIB news agency reported January 20. Iranian airplanes had been denied fuel in Paris since 2011 due to economic sanctions the West had imposed on Iran on allegations of suspicious nuclear activities. In a joint statement on Jan. 16, the EU's High Representative Federica Mogherini and Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif announced the implementation of the JCPOA and the removal of economic sanctions on Iran. According to the statement, EU has confirmed that legal framework, providing for lifting of its nuclear-related economic and financial sanctions, is effective. Baku, Azerbaijan, Jan. 20 By Khalid Kazimov - Trend: After releasing US inmates held in Tehran, the US government agreed to unblock Iran's frozen assets, a top Iranian commander said. "The Removal of sanctions on Iran's Bank Sepah and reclaiming of $1.7 m of Iran's frozen assets after 36 years did not have anything to do with the nuclear talks. They simply were the prices that US paid for releasing its spies," Fars news agency quoted Commander of Iran's Basij (volunteer) Force Brig-Gen Mohammad Reza Naqdi as saying Jan. 20. On 16 January and a couple hours before the official announcement of the expected implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran released four Iranian-American inmates including the Washington Post's journalist Jason Rezaian in prisoner swap. In addition to Rezaian, Nosratollah Khosravi, Saeed Abedini, Amir Hekmati were released as part of the prisoner swap. Later an American student, Matthew Trevithick, was also released. In a joint statement on Jan. 16, the EU's High Representative Federica Mogherini and Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif announced the implementation of the JCPOA and the removal of economic sanctions on Iran. According to the statement, EU has confirmed that legal framework, providing for lifting of its nuclear-related economic and financial sanctions, is effective. Iran regrets that its neighbors seek conflict and tensions, thereby undermining stability and order in the region, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Wednesday. "We regret the fact that some in our region continue to see conflict and tension as a possibility for them to engage in policies that have proven counterproductive and in fact destructive of regional stability and global order," Zarif told a press conference on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The minister expressed hope that everyone would start "listening to the voice of reason and engages in common struggle that we all need against the common enemy." He also noted that Iran proved last year that diplomacy worked, and the reaching of Iran deal was the best example of this. "We have moved from a very difficult period in our history and shown that we can make diplomacy work through engagement and mutual respect and based on attempting to see to see the interest of everybody and see the interest of everybody either imposing or accepting submission," Zarif said, stressing that the Iran deal was a big victory for diplomacy. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was agreed last July by Iran and six world powers - Russia, the United States, China, France, Britain, and Germany - to guarantee the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. The European Union, the United Nations and partially the United States lifted Saturday their sanctions against the Islamic Republic after the International Atomic Energy Agency verified Tehran's compliance with the nuclear agreement. The work on joint projects should start shortly after the lifting of international sanctions against Iran, the ambassador added. "I hope that 2016 will be the year of implementation of various projects that were initiated and launched in 2015," Sanaei said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 television. Sanaei said that Russia was experienced and had privilege in a number of projects due to be implemented in Iran, especially in projects related to the rail industry and nuclear power. Sanaei also said Iran welcomed the presence of Russian companies on its territory. In November, Moscow and Tehran discussed a number of transport projects worth over $25 billion that could involve large Russian companies. On Wednesday, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) raised Venezuela's growth projection to 12 percent by 2022 and 5 percent next year. | Read More Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the post-sanction era provides unique chances for the world to enter new phases of cooperation with Iran, IRNA reported. Addressing a session on social entrepreneurship in the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday evening, he outlined Iran's views on major economic and political issues and answered to questions posed to him by participants who were mainly big industrial names and economic activists. The foreign minister elaborated on Iran's unique strategic position in the region as well as the world both in political and economic terms and focused on the investment opportunities opening up in Iran after the implementation of Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCOA). Zarif and Presidential Chief of Staff Mohammad Nahavandian who accompanied the foreign minister in the event were well received in Davos, as demands for meeting with them were far from anticipation. It was the first visit by the two Iranian high-ranking officials to Davos since the implementation of JCPOA (January 16), they were expected to be warmly welcomed but their reception was beyond expectations. Davos annual meeting slated for January 20-23 will discuss various issues including migrants from the areas battered by terrorism, severe decline in oil prices, terrorist attacks in different countries and climate changes. Over 2,500 people including state leaders, non-governmental organizations and commercial institutes from around the world will participate in the upcoming event. Nahavandian too outlined Iran's policies and facilities for absorbing investments and promoting sustainable economic interaction with foreign investors. A media outlet associated with Islamic State on Tuesday released a eulogy for "Jihadi John", a member of the militant group who won global notoriety for his filmed executions of hostages, Reuters reported with the reference to the monitoring organization SITE. The militant, who was identified as Mohammed Emwazi, a British citizen of Arab origin, was described in Islamic State's Dabiq magazine by his nickname in the group of "Abu Muharib al-Muhajir". The U.S. military said in November it was "reasonably certain" it had killed him in a drone strike. Congress leading the change in Old City: Shabbir Ali Hyderabad, Jan 20 (INN): Leader of Opposition in Telangana Legislative Council Mohammed Ali Shabbir has accused the MIM leadership of deliberately neglecting the backwardness in the Old City of Hyderabad. Addressing a series of corner meetings in Doodh Bowli, Ghansi Bazar, Pathergatti and Puranapul divisions here on Wednesday, Shabbir Ali said despite having the flexible policy of aligning with the party-in-power, the MIM leadership never bothered about resolving the problems being faced by the people in the Old City. "MIM leaders have turned into millionaires during the last few decades. But the people who voted them to power are still poor with most of them working as vendors, auto drivers or daily wages earners," he said. Shabbir Ali said MIM leaders objected to every move which was aimed at development of Old City. "Right from expansion of roads to Metro Rail in the Old City, MIM objected to every developmental project. They never wanted economic prosperity of people living in this part of the city. Government schools and colleges were systematically closed. Urdu schools were also neglected and closed. All public hospitals, including famous Charminar Hospital, were put to neglect. They even failed to regularise the services of Mecca Masjid employees and the staff does not even get their salaries on time. They wanted every hand in the Old City to move with a begging bowl. The concept of accountability never existed and they used force to suppress any kind of criticism or opposition," he said. However, he said that the Congress party's entry has triggered a new wave of change in Old City. The Congress leader listed out various measures taken by the previous Congress Government for the development of Muslim community. He said 4% Muslim reservation has benefitted nearly 10 lakh socially and economically backward Muslims. Thousands of students benefitted from the scholarship and Fee Reimbursement schemes. He said that the Congress Government supported modernisation of Madarsas and also distributed computers. He slammed the TRS Government for not honouring the promise of 12% Muslim reservation. He said except for making fake promises, the TRS Government did not nothing concrete for the Muslim community. Shabbir Ali appealed to the people to support and strengthen the Congress party across the country. He said only Congress was capable of fighting the rising tide of communalism and intolerance in the country. He said it was intolerance and fundamentalism that drove Rohit Vemula, a Dalit scholar to suicide in University of Hyderabad. He said that the BJP Government at the Centre was openly promoting hatred. Citing an instance, he said one of the accused in Ajmer bomb blast case was invited as Chief Guest in a Gujarat University. While distorting history, Mahatma Gandhi's assassin Godse is being projected as a hero. He saluted those who are fighting against this growing intolerance. He said poets, authors and other eminent personalities including Ashok Vajpeyi, Nayantara Sehgal, etc., have returned their awards to protest against the government's failure to stop rising intolerance in the country. The Congress rally and street corner meetings were attended by thousands of people. Unprecedented crowd was witnessed at several places, especially in areas around Charminar. Congress candidates Meraj Mohammed (Doodh Bowli), Mohammed Ghouse (Purana Pul), Mohd Sohail (Shalibanda) and other leaders including GHCC Minorities Department chairman Shaik Abdullah Sohail, Telangana Youth Congress president Anil Kumar Yadav, GHCC General Secretary Syed Nizamuddin and other senior leaders addressed the meetings. They were given warm reception by the local residents and garlanded them at several places. The rally went on for almost seven hours passing through lanes and by-lanes of the Old City. News Posted: 20 January, 2016 Tata Sons proposes iconic investment in AP Hyderabad, Jan 20 (INN): Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu on Wednesday met with Cyrus Mistry, Chairman, Tata Sons, who proposed to make an iconic investment in the State. The Chief Minister had a series of meetings and interactions on Day 2 of Davos Summit. The Sri Lankan Prime Minister, Sri Ranil Wickramasinghe, during his meeting, invited the Chief Minister for dinner during his stay in Davos to have a detailed meeting. Naidu and Mistry discussed possible areas of collaboration in the state. During their interaction, Cyrus Mistry proposed to make an iconic investment in Andhra Pradesh. During the interaction, the Tata Sons Chairman recollected his association with the state and talked about his love for Andhra food and culture. News Posted: 20 January, 2016 KPMG to partner with AP for coastal development Hyderabad, Jan 20 (INN): Jurgen van Breukelen, Chairman, KPMG Netherlands and Richard Rekhy, KPMG India Head held discussions with the Chief Minister on incorporating Netherlands' experience of coastal development in Andhra Pradesh. During the meeting it has been suggested that an idea bank needs to be created so that every society can implement the best ideas that are incubated. The Chief Minister also enquired into effective waysto make Andhra Pradesh an export oriented hub of manufacturing. In this regard, the Andhra Pradesh government and KPMG global will work out a mechanism to achieve desired results in these sectors. NUS to help AP become a knowledge/education hub The Chief Minister held a meeting with Prof Kishore Mehbubani of the National University of Singapore (NUS), who assured the university's assistance in transforming Andhra Pradesh into a knowledge/education hub.'We are looking at partnerships and collaborations with top 20 universities in the world,' the CM added. The meeting also discussed how the NUS can provide inputs to Andhra Pradesh on public policy, ease of doing business, competitiveness advantage. Given that Andhra Pradesh aims to be one of the best states in the world, the Chief Minister said, the state needs advice and guidance at policy level. Naidu meets Sri Lanka PM, invites CM to dinner Later, the Chief Minister participated in the session 'A New Climate for Doing Business'. During the session, he met Sri Lanka Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasingheand and Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake. The Prime Minister expressed his interest in exploring tourism opportunities in Andhra Pradesh and invited the Chief Minister for dinner during his stay in Davos to have a detailed meeting. Nestle CEO Paul Bulke met the Chief Minister and evinced interest on investing in the dairy and food processing sector. He spoke about the possibilities of exploring Araku coffee and cocoa plantations. The Chief Minister briefed Bulke the agrarian profile of the state and various opportunities in the field of agriculture, food processing and milk production. Princess Astrid of Belgium greeted the Chief Minister. The Chief Minister also interacted with students from Stanford University. Cambridge to partner with AP to study areas of mutual cooperation Prof Sir LeszekBorysiewicz, Vice chancellor of Cambridge University called on the Chief Minister. He informed the Chief Minster that he has identified 18 scholars from Cambridge University who will perform a quick study to identify the areas of mutual cooperation between Andhra Pradesh and Cambridge University. The Chief Minister said that the state government wants to partner with Cambridge University in its effort to become a knowledge state and education hub. Explaining on the abundance of resources and skilled power the state has, he said Andhra Pradesh is the best suited destination for innovation and entrepreneurship. CM asks Srei Intl to present plan to create equipment banks In a meeting with HamanthKanoria, MD of Srei International, that Chief Minister asked Kanoria to develop a plan for creating an equipment bank for infrastructure and manufacturing sectors. News Posted: 20 January, 2016 Pawan Injured On Film Sets There will be no end for the rumours on Power star Pawan Kalyan. Latest is that Pawan left to Singapore for meeting AP chief minister Chandrababu Naidu. From past few hours there were rumours in web media about pawan's secret trip. The reports said that Pawan has decided to have break from his upcoming entertainer Sardar Gabbar Singh shooting and headed to Singapore. Pawan's surprise Singapore visit comes in the wake of AP CM holding conversations with Singapore government. But seems there was no truth in the rumours. According to reports Power star was injured in the film sets of Sardar and he was advised to take rest by the doctors. His leg was sprained while performing a risky stunt and the shoot has been stopped from the last two days. Fans are disappointed with the latest developments. The film was supposed to be released during sankranthi but it got postponed due to delays. Going by the latest happenings now summer release is also in doubts. News Posted: 20 January, 2016 The F-35 program is expected to cost $1.5 trillion over its 55-year lifespan, making it the most expensive US weapons program, Sputnik reported. "In February or early March, a combat-coded F-35A from the 34th Fighter Squadron at Hill AFB [Air Force Base] will release an inert, laser-guided bomb at the nearby Utah Test and Training Range," Flight Global reported on Tuesday. If the test is successful, it will be a "monumental achievement" for the multinational F-35 program, which Lockheed Martin has been prime contractor on since it was awarded the US Air Force's Joint Strike Fighter contract in 2001, the online report noted. "A stealthy, jet-powered combat aircraft is nothing if it cannot put weapons on a target, and this GBU-12 Paveway II release will be a moment of truth for the conventional A-model, which until now only released weapons in development and operational testing," Flight Global said. The F-35 jets are designed to operate in formation so the squadron will begin practicing "four-ship" combat tactics in March, where four airborne F-35s will train together, the report explained. Since 2013 when President Xi Jinping first outlined the One Belt One Road initiative, it has attracted a huge amount of attention in the business community. But little is known about what it means in concrete, commercial terms, whether within or beyond China. One Belt One Road (OBOR) is an initiative which aims to improve and create new trade routes, links and business opportunities with China, passing through more than 60 countries along the way, across Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. It is also described as a sort of upgraded version of the original Silk Road, established more than 2,000 years ago : a vast network of trade routes that promoted exchange between Asia, Africa, and Europe. Chinas new OBOR is touted as reviving the same concept, and thus as supporting global economic growth. Gordon French, group general manager and head of global banking and markets at HSBC, estimates China will initially provide some US$240 billion to finance the first phase of the project. Hong Kong tipped as the financial hub for Chinas One Belt, One Road Initiative Hong Kong is seen as the most likely financial center to recycle savings from China and provide resources for the gigantic OBOR project. As Chinas Belt and Road Initiative will strengthen economic cooperation in the vast regions of Asia, Africa and Europe, this huge infrastructure development is likely to open up a wealth of opportunities for a great number of countries and regions. Last month, Xi outlined plans to direct as much as US$123 billion to construct roads, railways, ports and pipelines in more than 60 countries. Thailand has recently sought closer relations with China, such as in defense procurement and infrastructure development. Just last week, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-Ocha used his absolute power to hasten a delayed US$5.2 billion high-speed rail joint venture with China. He later rejected criticism that he overrode due process and said the order was in the nations best interests. Economic benefits for Asean countries During the Panel Discussion on Prospects for ASEAN, Chinas Belt and Road Initiative came under scrutiny. More than 70 per cent (70.9%) of participants believe that the Initiative will bring significant economic benefits to most, if not all, ASEAN countries. But for the time being, the global financial community is increasingly focused on Chinas growth slowdown, seen as the biggest factor likely to impact Asias development. Cooperative initiatives such as Chinas Belt and Road Initiative, TPP and RCEP only accounted for 27% of the vote in an instant poll among participants at the AFF summit, against 44.8% for the slower growth trajectory in the Chinese economy. Right now there is a lot of concern about the short-term performance of the Chinese economy, but the One Belt One Road brings a long-term perspective with better infrastructure, investment and economic development. said yesterday Professor K C Chan, Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury (HKSAR) during a briefing with journalists One Belt, or One Road ? Just to be clear : the Belt is actually designed to be a road, but the Road is actually a sea route In short, the One Belt component t is a land route designed to connect China with Central Asia, Eastern and Western Europe. It will link China with the Mediterranean Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Middle East, South Asia and South-East Asia The oddly named One Road component is a sort of 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road that runs from China east coast to Europe passing through the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. Hong Kong aims to become a super-connector for the One Belt One Road plan The China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) will play an important role in financing the One Belt, One Road. But the resources of the new institution wont be sufficient to fund the massive investment of this pharaonic development. This is the main reason why Hong Kong aspires to fulfill the role of a super-connector between the Mainland and the a population that covers two-fifths of the worlds land mass and is host to some 60 per cent of the worlds population. According to DBS chief executive Piyush Gupta, the Belt and Road initiative, could be a game changer not unlike what the US did with the Marshall Plan after the Second World War. His words were echoed by Laura Cha, chairman of the Financial Services Development Council, who also believes Hong Kong will have an important role to play. According to Mrs Chan, Hong Kong is well positioned to provide Mainland enterprises that are going global with financial and other professional services to support their international investment. The legendary Hoan Kiem Turtle and 11 other turtle species should receive enhanced protection in order to ensure their survival, delegates agreed at a CITES conference held in Bangkok from March 3-14. CITES, formally known as Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, is an international agreement between 178 member governments aimed at protecting wild animals and plants threatened by the international trade of the animals or their body parts. Education for Nature Vietnam (ENV), a local NGO, announced on its website on March 14 that the Rafetus swinhoei species, which the Hoan Kiem Turtle is believed to belong to, has been transferred from CITES's Appendix III to Appendix II. Under the convention, Appendix II lists species whose international trade must be strictly regulated to avoid creating conditions which are "incompatible with their survival," although such species are not necessarily on the brink of extinction. Appendix III lists animals which are protected under the laws of a member country that forbids or restricts their exploitation. The cooperation of other member nations is sought in controlling the trade of Appendix III species. Rafetus swinhoei is a giant soft-shell turtle species of which there are only four that remain alive two in both Vietnam and China. One of the four lives in Hanoi's Hoan Kiem Lake. According to a widely popular Vietnamese legend, the turtle is a manifestation of the turtle god that reclaimed from the Le Loi Emperor a magic sword that Dragon King had loaned him to help him repel Chinese invaders. The sacred turtle has recently sparked a debate between Vietnamese researchers and Ha Dinh Duc, an associate professor of biology and Hoan Kiem Turtle expert, who last January recommended that Hanoi authorities lodge an application for national treasure status for the creature. Many scientists and officials feel it does not meet criteria stipulated in the Vietnam's Cultural Heritage Law. Under Vietnamese rules, an object must be original, have a unique appearance and relate to an important historical event or the career of a distinguished national hero in order to be considered a national treasure. Apart from Hoan Kiem Turtle, three other turtle species including Geoemyda spengleri (black-breasted leaf turtle), Palea steindachneri (wattle-necked soft-shell turtle) and Sacalia quadriocellata (four-eyed turtle) were also transferred to Appendix II from Appendix III. The big-headed turtle (Platysternon megacephalum) was upgraded from Appendix II to Appendix I, wherein CITES lists all species threatened with extinction and bans their international trade except in authorized circumstances. Southeast Asia's leaf turtle (Cyclemys oldhamii) and Eastern black-bridged leaf turtle (Cyclemys pulchristriata), previously unlisted, had their names included in Appendix II. Five others, the Indochinese box and keeled-box turtles; the Chinese three-striped box and yellow-headed temple turtles; and the Vietnamese pond turtle, listed in Appendix II may not be traded commercially. The newly upgraded listings represent an important advancement in the control of the trade in Vietnamese freshwater turtles and tortoises, which face multiple dangers including hunting and trading as food, traditional medicine and pets. Cultural researchers are turning their back on an associate professor who insists the legendary turtle of Hoan Kiem Lake should be classified as a national treasure Members of a rescue team stand around a giant freshwater turtle after successfully capturing it in Hanoi's Hoan Kiem Lake in 2011. Ha Dinh Duc, an associate professor in Hanoi, suggested recently that local authorities have the Hoan Kiem Turtle recognized as a national treasure. For centuries, Vietnamese people have been paying their respects to the giant soft-shell turtle that lives in Hanoi's Hoan Kiem Lake, many of them believing it to be the manifestation of Kim Qui, otherwise known as the Golden Turtle God. This deity is believed to have helped Vietnam repel its Chinese enemies. These days, the legend most commonly associated with the turtle dates back to the 15th century when The Dragon King gave a sword to Le Loi that helped him defeat the powerful Chinese Ming invaders. Le Loi went on to become first Emperor of the Later Le Dynasty (1428-1788). On the one year anniversary of the victory, Le Loi saw a giant turtle surface on Luc Thuy Lake as he rode in his boat near the Thang Long Citadel. According to the legend, the turtle snatched the sword from him and dove into the water. Believing that the Dragon King had sent the animal to reclaim the magical weapon, Emperor Le Loi renamed the lake Hoan Kiem (Lake of the Returned Sword) to commemorate the event. In January, Ha Dinh Duc, 73, an associate professor of biology, recommended that Hanoi authorities lodge an application for national treasure status for the Hoan Kiem Turtle. The professor was referring to both the live turtle living in the lake today, which is one of four remaining members of the extremely rare Rafetus swinhoei turtle species worldwide, and its stuffed cousin on display inside the lake's inlet Ngoc Son Temple. Duc believes the turtle has real "human value." Under Vietnam's Cultural Heritage Law, in order for an object to be considered a national treasure, it must be original, have a unique appearance and relate to an important historical event or the career of a distinguished national hero. However, many scientists and officials think the Hoan Kiem Turtle simply does not meet those criteria. A member of the National Heritage Council requesting anonymity told Vietweek that the turtle alive in the lake and the stuffed one in the temple were not around during Emperor Le Loi's time, adding that the turtle should only be recognized as an endangered animal not a national treasure. Professor Ngo Duc Thinh, another member of the heritage council, said: "The turtle in the lake and the taxidermal turtle do not directly relate to Emperor Le Loi," adding that the story about the king's receiving and returning of the sword is a myth meant to encourage the Vietnamese people during times of war or natural disasters. "Of course the legend makes use of historical facts, but it will never be history." Two women observe the stuffed version of the legendary turtle on display inside Ngoc Son Temple, located in Hoan Kiem Temple on an inlet of Hoan Kiem Lake in Hanoi. Tran Lam Bien, a Vietnamese culture researcher, said the story of the sword did not originate during Le Loi's time and was made up by later generations. So it cannot be said that the Hoan Kiem Turtle has any connection to any important event or national hero. "We have to forget this," said Bien, referring to the notion that the turtle be considered for recognition as a national treasure. But Duc is not dissuaded. "It [the Turtle] is an original entity. It relates to the legend of Emperor Le Loi's returning the sword he used to drive off the invaders and regain independence for Dai Viet [an old name of Vietnam during the 15th century]. "It is a legend, but it bears spiritual and cultural value. I must say it is totally unique," he said, adding that the Hoan Kiem Turtle "really deserves" the national treasure status. According to Duc, heritage researchers should consider whether the turtle might qualify as a national treasure, and that they should remain open to the idea in the course of their research, instead of "rigidly" adhering to the criteria. RELATED CONTENT Sacred turtle returned to Hanoi lake Hanoi lake giant turtle may be a new species Lake legend spawns mystery creature But experts in the field still did not buy into it. Professor Luu Tran Tieu, Chairman of the National Heritage Council, told news website VnExpress that he also disagreed with Duc. "We have established criteria for national treasures so [we] cannot change them at our will." A university in the northwest of Pakistan has come under attack by armed militants, and at least seven people have been killed, with a further 20 injured, an official told CNN. It's not yet clear how many of the dead are attackers and how many are civilians but the death toll is expected to rise. Gunfire and explosions were heard Wednesday morning local time from within Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, northwestern Pakistan, CNN reported. There are still dead inside and the operation is ongoing, Bilal Faizi, a local emergency service spokesman told CNN. Lt. Gen. Asim Bajwa, an army spokesperson, said on Twitter that four attackers had been killed and that government troops had resumed control of all buildings and rooftops. There have so far been no claims of responsibility. Two of the university attackers have been killed by security forces, Saeed Khan Wazir, Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Police, of the Mardan Range region told CNN. There are fears that the remaining attacker or attackers are holding hostages within the campus grounds. Pakistan Army soldiers have entered the university, according to Geo News, citing a reporter on the scene. University faculty, administrative staff and students are in the university grounds. Five injured people have so far been evacuated from the campus, the report states, but none of the 3,000 students and 600 guests on the university campus have been injured, according to Pakistani media, citing an audio message released by Fazal Rahim Marwat, vice-chancellor of Bacha Khan University. "Security forces are present on site and are combating the terrorists in a gunfight, but as yet are not sure how many terrorists are holed up inside the university," Geo News reported A heavy contingent of officers is currently taking part in an operation against at least three suspected militants, who are reportedly hiding out in different parts of the campus. Bajwa, the army spokesperson, earlier tweeted that the attackers have been contained within two blocks of the university and operations are ongoing, and also said on Twitter that the Army was conducting air surveillance above the university. A new departure and arrival lounge will cost $25 million, paid for by Canberra Airport. It is part of a $32 million investment by the business, which said it would offer more if other airlines followed and offered international flights, too. Construction of a new customs and arrivals area inside the Canberra terminal will begin within weeks. The cost of customs and immigration staff is paid for by taxpayers. Mr Goh said the service reflected the close ties between the three countries and came as the result of a robust business case. "We do bring in very competitive pricing and we do want to encourage traffic and to develop the market so pricing will reflect that we want to make it a success," he said. "What we do whenever we introduce a new route is we recognise the need to develop it. We are here for the long term, we're not ones to do ad-hoc and then get out of the market. The ultimate aim is to grow our traffic and make it a success here." Westpac may not have followed responsible lending rules when it used automated processes to assess customer applications for credit card limit increases, the corporate watchdog says. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission on Wednesday revealed concerns that Westpac had failed to directly inquire about some credit card customers' income and job status when they were applying for a limit increase. Westpac failed to adequately inquire about the income and employment of customers seeking credit card limit increases. Credit:Louise Kennerley It said this failure to make reasonable enquiries about customers seeking credit was not consistent with responsible lending laws. In response to these concerns, the country's second-biggest bank has changed its processes and launched a review program that may pay refunds to consumers who are in financial difficulty after having credit limits increased. One in five people is consuming nearly three quarters of the alcohol sold in Australia, according to a report that claims the alcohol industry is dependent on risky drinkers. The Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education has called for a boycott on public health researchers working with the alcohol industry due to what it believes is a vested commercial interest in ensuring that problem drinkers continue to drink at risky levels. Its report is based on a July analysis by the Centre for Alcohol Policy Research, which broke down the distribution of alcohol consumption in Australia, according to national surveys. That analysis showed that alcohol consumption declined between 2001 and 2013 among all but the heaviest drinkers, who were consuming an ever greater proportion of beverages sold in Australia. Workers install an exhibit area of Dongfeng Peugeot at the 2006 China International Automobile Science and Technology (S&T) Exhibition in Wuhan, Hubei Province, on May 26, 2006. (Photo : Getty Images) Dongfeng Motor Corp. has appointed Vice President Ouyang Jie as its new president, filling in the post two months after Chinas second largest automaker ousted former president Zhu Fushou for suspected graft, Automotive News China posted on Tuesday. Advertisement The state-owned firm previously tapped Li Shaozu, an executive director, as its authorized representative after Zhu's ouster. Ouyang, 59, has served as vice president at Dongfeng since 2003. He was previously head of Dongfeng's parts supply business division. In November, the Communist Party's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, China's anti-corruption watchdog, announced Zhu of being "suspected of having seriously violated [the party's] disciplines." Zhu, 53, was ranked as the second highest executive at Dongfeng, next only to the company chairman, Zhu Yanfeng. He joined the company in 1994 as vice general manager of Dongfeng's automotive wheel subsidiary, and was promoted to general manager in 2008. The commission has yet to release further details regarding Zhu's case. He is the third senior executive at Dongfeng being investigated of corruption. The other two officials are Ren Yong, vice president of Dongfeng's joint venture with Japanese auto giant Nissan, and Fan Zhong, former vice secretary of the Chinese Communist Party's unit at Dongfeng. The investigations are part of an anti-corruption drive spearheaded by President Xi Jinping in 2013. Several senior officials at another state-owned automaker, FAW Group Corp., including its chairman Xu Jianyi, have been sacked or imprisoned. Based in Xiangyang in central China's Hebei Province, Dongfeng manufactures trucks and passenger vehicles. Aside from Nissan, it also has joint ventures with various international auto manufacturers including PSA Peugeot Citroen, Honda Motor Co., Kia Motors Corp. and Renault SA. Dongfeng and FAW are the the oldest state-owned automakers in China, and are also the leading manufacturers of trucks in the country. Archeologists have been at the site since the police excavation started on Monday morning. Credit:Justin McManus "While the human remains are yet to be formally identified, detectives believe they are that of missing man Terrence Blewitt," she said. Archeologists have been at the site since the police excavation started on Monday morning. About 4000 cubic metres of soil has been shifted in the search of the site, which was a scrapyard until about 2006. Credit:Justin McManus The human remains were found about three metres below the surface. The excavation had been a "slow and painful" process, with the 30-tonne excavator used in the initial dig now replaced by hand searches. The 30-tonne excavator used in the initial dig now replaced by hand searches Credit:Justin McManus About 4000 cubic metres of soil has been shifted in the search of the site, which was a scrapyard until about 2006. The scrapyard was subsequently covered with landfill. The site's former owner, who has has died of natural causes, may be implicated in the dumping of bodies on the site, Detective Inspector Gustke said. "The current owner of the property has no connection to the investigation." It is not believed Blewitt was killed at the Pelmet Crescent site, which is in an industrial estate. Ms Grindley said a search was generated by police intelligence and information received by the investigating members. Archaeologists have joined the police search for the remains of Terrence Blewitt. Credit:Justin McManus Detectives are hoping the search will also provide further evidence in relation to Kinniburgh's murder, she said, though Detective Inspector Gustke would not confirm what evidence had so far come to light. The investigation has been the longest murder probe conducted by Purana. "Purana Taskforce investigators have taken hundreds of statements and interviewed hundreds of people during these investigations," Detective Inspector Gustke said. The reward of $100,000 offered for information about Kinniburgh's murder had not been a factor. "Organised crime has a wall of silence that sometimes takes many years to penetrate," Detective Inspector Gustke said. "That wall of silence is only broken down by individuals in the community, so we do ask for people that may have seen Terrence Blewitt in early 2004 to please come forward." Detective Inspector Gustke said the investigation has been complex and protracted. "We owe it to the family and friends of any victim of crime to investigate and do our very best to bring out some justice for them, and that's what we are hoping to achieve with this discovery." Detective Inspector Gustke said he had been in contact with Blewitt's family about the discovery. "I feel for Mr Blewitt's family ... and friends and loved ones," he said. Police are expected to remain at the site for several days, but Detective Inspector Gustke said they were concerned about an impending downpour forecast for Friday that could hamper their efforts. Gangland hit Kinniburgh, 63, had parked his car and was walking to his two-storey house on December 13, 2003, when he was gunned down. He was a lifelong friend of Judy Moran and her former husband Lewis. Mick Gatto was a pallbearer at his funeral. Kinniburgh was considered an influential standover man, who had convictions for dishonesty, bribery, possession of firearms, resisting arrest and assaulting police. Kinniburgh was implicated by a coroner in 2002, along with Jason Moran, in the death of gangster Alphonse Gangitano in 1998. Williams, bashed to death in Barwon Prison in 2010, always denied any connection to the Kinniburgh murder. "My conscience is clear," Williams told The Age less than 48 hours after the killing. "I've never met him and I've never heard a bad thing said about him. I have nothing to profit from his death. It's a mystery to me." In mid-2013, police seized a blue Hyundai Excel which had been linked to the slaying of Kinniburgh and Blewitt. On the day the car was seized in Alexandra, a $100,000 reward for information regarding Kinniburgh's murder was announced. Police charged Stephen John Asling with Kinniburgh's killing in November. Blewitt has not been seen since he was spotted walking towards a similar car on April 12, 2004, in Melton. A similar car had reportedly been seen leaving Belmont Avenue in Kew shortly after Kinniburgh was shot. Career criminal Blewitt specialised in armoured car robberies. In the mid-1980s, he was jailed in Sydney after shooting a cash-in-transit security guard. In 1994 he was part of a home invasion and attempted armed robbery in which a young Coffs Harbour couple were terrorised in their bedroom at gunpoint. Sydney security guard Robert Jones was killed by Blewitt in 1995. Washington: The US Environmental Protection Agency said on Tuesday it was reviewing its handling of a crisis over lead-contaminated drinking water in the Michigan city of Flint and acknowledged it did not respond fast enough. "Our first priority is to make sure the water in Flint is safe, but we also must look at what the agency could have done differently," the agency said. An EPA spokeswoman confirmed the agency believed it did not act fast enough to address the problem. Criticism of the state and federal response has grown in recent days over the crisis in Flint, a financially strapped city of just under 100,000 residents about 100 km northwest of Detroit. Donna Faull fears the invisible juggernaut she grapples with every day will soon win. Time is running out for the Ngunnawal mother to curb the progression of her multiple sclerosis and avoid spending the rest of her life in a wheelchair. Donna Faull, who has multiple sclerosis, is trying to raise enough money to head overseas for stem cell treatment. Credit:Elesa Kurtz The disease has chipped away at her independence since her diagnosis in 2011 and the second-stage drug which slowed its spread for three years stopped working six months ago. Her hopes now hinge on an aggressive and controversial treatment overseas but her partner of 30 years, Tim Daly admits time is not on their side. Ten chief executive Paul Anderson has warned Parliament against imposing "onerous and non-commercial obligations" on regional television networks as the debate over local news provision heats up in Canberra. Earlier, Nationals leader Warren Truss underlined his party's desire for local content requirements on commercial free-to-air networks to be included as part of looming changes to media ownership laws. Ten chief executive Paul Anderson: 'All involved in this debate want the same thing: to maintain a vibrant and diverse Australian media sector.' Credit:Ben Rushton Mr Anderson who runs the third-placed metropolitan network and whose billionaire shareholders include Lachlan Murdoch, James Packer and Gina Rinehart said he understood the nervousness about regional news and that he expected the government's forthcoming package will contain "reasonable safeguards to address that". However, he added: "We are also confident that regional MPs fully understand it would not make sense to deregulate regional broadcasters so they can compete, only to then lock them into onerous and non-commercial obligations that online competitors will never have to worry about. Chinas current barriers were placed for three reasons, according to Gao Xiang, spokesman of the administration. (Photo : Getty Images) To attract top foreign talent to work at Chinese research institutions, colleges and universities, the government is mulling the removal of several career barriers, a move that will create more opportunities for highly qualified foreigners, according to a report by China Daily. Advertisement "We will encourage establishing a recruitment mechanism within research institutions, colleges and universities that will take job applications from around the world," said Zhang Jiang Guo, director of the State Administration of Foreign Expert Affairs. Zhang believes that this easing of regulations will increase China's attractiveness among global talent in the next five years. "We will also draft a regulation to guide foreign experts to participate in national science and technology programs, as well as being leaders of important research projects." Zhang added, "We will also encourage foreign experts to participate in the selection of China's science and technology awards equally with their Chinese colleagues." China's current barriers were placed for three reasons, according to Gao Xiang, spokesman of the administration. These reasons are lack of transparency in current policies, limitations created by bureaucracy, and the Chinese language barrier. "In the past, some jobs in China could only be taken by Chinese employees within their own system. Some research projects were not open for applications from foreign talents," said Gao. "There have been some changes in certain research institutes for universities, yet it is not a formalized government policy--not to mention that many foreign talents have little understanding of the changes." Furthermore, the Chinese language barrier proves to be a tough obstacle to overcome among foreign talent. "In China, even if some foreign talents can apply for research project funds, they must submit papers in China. This is a disadvantage for them," said Gao. Ralf Altmeyer, a German virologist working at the Helmholtz Institute of Biotechnology at Shandong University, suggested that an English version of application forms must be made available. The Queensland commodities sector is facing unprecedented hardship in the wake of the boom that sustained much of the Australian economy in the 2000s, the head of the state's peak resources body says. Queensland Resources Council chief executive Michael Roche said on Wednesday challenges facing the sector threatened a 60,000-strong workforce that had already been slashed by about 25 per cent in two years. "I've been chief executive of the Queensland Resources Council for 10 years and I've never seen it like this," he said. "People who have been in the industry for 30 or 40 years tell me these are some of the most difficult conditions facing our industry. At what point must political parties take responsibility for the failings of their predecessors (and their predecessors predecessors)? In this rapid-fire age of consumer politics, I reckon they get about about a year if they're lucky before the excuses start to sound pretty feeble. It may be unfair, and politicians can moan about it all they like, but that's just the reality. People move on quickly; voters expect problems to be fixed and promises to be kept. Which means Daniel Andrews will return to work from his summer hiatus on Australia Day facing some hairy issues. Forget factionalism, union malfeasance or lame attempts by opposition MPs to throw stones in Parliament. Andrews' biggest problems lie elsewhere, stemming from years of under-investment by successive governments and the various entities they employ. A well-crafted trifle, Chen Sicheng's action-comedy Detective Chinatown plays like the first instalment of an envisaged series. There are, in fact, two detectives, mismatched along conventional lines. Qin Feng (Liu Haoran) is a stuttering Sherlock Holmes enthusiast with a photographic memory and the manner of a well-bred schoolboy. His distant cousin Tang Ren (Wang Baoquiang, jabbering like Kevin Hart) is a manic hustler who works for the police but seems to spend most of his time playing mahjong. Both men are Chinese, but the film is set in Bangkok, where (as we eventually learn) Tang was forced to flee after a scandal in his native village. Just as Qin comes to visit, Tang is caught up in a robbery gone wrong. With both cops and gangsters on their trail, the pair have less than a week to solve a murder and hunt down a missing stash of gold, aided only by Qin's gift for deduction and Tang's willingness to hit his enemies in the crotch. Filmed in widescreen, Detective Chinatown has a clean, bright, geometrical look which, rather like the 21 Jump Street movies, invites us to compare and contrast the heroes, setting them side by side at every turn. Chen doesn't try to give us anything more than a tourist's view of the setting canals, tuk-tuks, seedy nightclubs but he does appear to take the term "local colour" literally, with touches of hot pink and purple sprinkled throughout. A few of the flourishes suggest a pleasure in style for its own sake, notably a brawl in a darkened hospital filmed in a single lateral tracking shot. Actress Janet Hubert, who played Aunt Viv in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, has reignited an old feud with Will Smith in the wake of the Academy Awards controversy. In a video posted to YouTube on Wednesday, the 60-year-old criticised Smith's wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, and her campaign against the Oscars, describing the couple as selfish. Janet Hubert played Aunt Viv on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air for three years and had a long-running feud with Smith. "For you to ask other black actresses and actors to jeopardise their career and their standing in a town that you know damn well - you don't do that," she said. Worldwide it was the biggest single of 2015 and now its creator has re-recorded a classical take using the work of six young unknown musicians who posted cover versions on YouTube. Uptown Funk, by Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars, was as perfect a marriage of pop and soul as you could imagine in 2015 - and the global public rewarded them for it. The song topped the charts in dozens of countries, including the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom. Still from the making of Mark Ronson - Uptown Funk PricelessSurprises Cover. Credit:Mastercard UK It was also covered many times over, by major recording artists and by fans of varying musical ability and published on YouTube. Ronson hand-picked six of the best unknowns - Anna Shields and Blair Crichton, the Ayoub Sisters, Ross Campbell and John Atkins. They were invited to London's famous Abbey Road Studios and told they were playing their versions on camera for a documentary about Ronson. Tony Abbott is not plotting a return to the prime ministership and suggestions to the contrary are "fanciful", according to his spokesman. Mr Abbott has not yet announced whether he will stand again for his seat of Warringah, though there is growing expectation in Liberal ranks that he will run again. The Daily Telegraph claimed on Wednesday the former prime minister turned humble backbencher was being urged by his former chief of staff, Peta Credlin, to stand again for Parliament in the hope of returning to the Lodge one day. In 2006, then senator (and now vice-president) Joe Biden and foreign policy expert Leslie Gelb suggested a federalist system, as allowed by the Iraqi constitution, with three distinct states for the major sectarian groups. This would maintain central government in Baghdad, where oil revenue is distributed and decisions on foreign policy, trade and the military are made while regional governments would have dominion over education and other areas. The idea of this "soft partition" - which won the support of the US Senate the following year - is that these regions would be satisfied with the level of autonomy and stay unified in one country. And while Biden and Gelb specifically criticised the idea of a full partition creating separate countries, a setting they warned the country was heading towards anyway, this even more controversial idea now attracts attention as well. The status quo The prediction that the region was heading for de facto partition has, according to many experts, become reality. Professor Amin Saikal, director of the ANU's Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, says that the "territorial contours" of Iraq (and Syria) have already changed. "If you look at Iraq, it has become three distinct entities," Professor Saikal argues. There is the territory still controlled by the formal, Shiite-dominated government of prime minister Haider al-Abadi in the east and south-east, which includes the majority of the Iraq's oil reserves. There are the Kurds, with 20 per cent of the population, who have established a relatively autonomous state in the north defended by their Peshmerga, a sub-national militia. In recent years, the regional government has both solidified control of its territory and expanded to include valuable oil fields. In the west and north-west, Sunni extremists Islamic State are in control. As long as they survive across Syria and Iraq, it is difficult to say how the borders will settle. "In some ways, you already have the partition of Iraq. It is already divided but whether it should be transformed into a formal division is a different story altogether," Professor Saikal said. Expanded to include Syria, the whole notion becomes even more complex. The Assad regime in Syria now has control over less than a third of its country, with Islamic State and other rebel fighters dominating the rest. The Iranians and Russians are heavily involved and back the government in Damascus. Support and criticism Professor Saikal and Dr Rodger Shanahan of the Lowy Institute and ANU National Security College agree that the idea doesn't attract much backing. "There's not much appetite among countries in the region for partition. Turkey's not going to support it, Iran's not going to support it, the Syrian government's not going to support it and the Iraqi government's not going to support it," Dr Shanahan says. Turkey is particularly opposed to the Kurds in northern Iraq (and Syria) having their own sovereign state on their southern border. The Turkish government has been engaged in conflict with their own Kurdish separatists and fear an independent Kurdistan would be an inspiration or set a precedent for them. With their own Kurd minority, the Iranian government have similar concerns and also have close ties with the central government in Baghdad. The idea of a partition also does not attract support from the majority of Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis. Really, it can only be found among the Iraqi Kurds, some Western politicians and Israel to an extent. In the north of Iraq, the Kurds have always desired an independent state or, at the very least, extensive autonomy. In many ways, they have already achieved this. The Israeli government have stated their support for an independent Kurdistan. They have close military and intelligence ties to the regional government and are happy to see Arab regimes weakened. Bob Bowker, former Australian ambassador to Jordan, Egypt and Syria, says he has "deep reservations" about the partition even being on the table. "I think there would be an effort of ethnic cleansing and also we would see militia-dominated rule emerge in these areas, probably dominated by Islamist elements whose rule would be highly regressive for women and minorities," Dr Bowker told ABC radio on Wednesday. Aside from traditional Chinese cultural events, related gifts and products will also be put on display on luxury ships, according to Shang Jixiang, the museums director. (Photo : www.royalcaribbean.com) In order to increase its international promotion efforts, The Palace Museum in Beijing will host an array of traditional cultural events in luxury cruises operated by Royal Caribbean International, according to a report by China Daily. Advertisement Aside from traditional Chinese cultural events, related gifts and products will also be put on display on luxury ships, according to Shang Jixiang, the museum's director. Experts on Chinese culture and more will also be invited to give guest lectures about the Palace Museum's history, collections, and to instill an overall appreciation of Chinese art. The museum's new plan will first be implemented on the Ovation of the Seas, Royal Caribbean's new ship. Launched in the United Kingdom in April last year, the Ovation of the Seas will be based in Tianjin starting June. Museum officials are not worried about declining visitor numbers. In fact, the number of Palace Museum guests have doubled in the past two decades. With only half of the museum's collection on public display, Shan said that the museum wants to promote its treasures to an even wider audience. Staging shows and cultural events aboard luxury cruise lines is one way to boost interest. "The cooperation is a win-win situation for everyone, as it means more audiences around the world can be introduced to Chinese culture while on board," Shan said in an interview with China Daily. For Royal Caribbean, the joint project with the Palace Museum is more than just a mere promotion. According to Liu Zinan, the company's president for China and North Asia, it will help cultural development, which it hopes will be carried out on the whole fleet. "We are sure the museum's culture will be welcomed on board, judging by the response already to lectures given on Quantum of the Seas by our staff last year," said Liu. Australians working in Britain may not be able to stay there indefinitely if they are on a lower income, under new rules due to kick in this year. The changes, which take effect from April, will mean non-European workers will have to earn at least 35,000 ($72,000) a year to be allowed to settle in the UK for longer than six years. Australians at a pub in London. The visa move, which was first flagged in 2012, will apply to those outside the European Economic Zone in a bid to "break the link" between working and staying permanently in Britain. It follows a Cameron government push to reduce migration numbers, with estimates the numbers of non-European skilled workers settling in Britain each year would drop from 60,000 to 20,000 under the change. A Sydney father who was shot dead during a confrontation with police at Quakers Hill police station has been remembered by a relative as a man who loved his family and "put everyone before himself". David Petersen, from Quakers Hill, walked into the police station on Lalor Road just after 10.30am on Tuesday and allegedly threatened officers with a large kitchen knife and started yelling incomprehensibly. A senior police officer shot Mr Petersen, a New Zealand-born father aged in his 40s, once in the shoulder, in front of other officers and a 12-year-old boy who was at the station. A witness said CPR was performed on the injured man, but he died at the scene. A missing British backpacker was concerned about jumping into the Brisbane River just a week before he was last seen diving from the William Jolly Bridge to his likely death, his former boss said. Dale Rehr, 30, started work earlier this month with IT and security company Forum Group and spent last week with its National Security Manager, Jake Meredith. Mr Meredith recalled his employee witnessed others jumping into the Brisbane River and said he did not "want to get in any trouble" while in Australia by following suit. Another backpacker, who said he was with Mr Rehr on the bridge when he jumped on Sunday night, insisted it was the missing man's decision to make the leap. An alleged former Bandido will front court in Brisbane on Wednesday, charged over an alleged million-dollar property fraud. Queensland's Crime and Corruption Commission has alleged the 29-year-old Sunnybank Hills man borrowed $1 million from a bank to build townhouses, which the body will allege did not exist, and to refinance an existing loan. Operation Juliet Wave targeted organised crime among former members and associates of the Centro Chapter of the Bandidos. The CCC said the man falsified pre-sale contracts for the townhouses to secure the loan, as well as other financial documents. The man is scheduled to appear in Brisbane Magistrates Court on Wednesday, charged with fraud. One in eight Queensland bikies has "disassociated" from his gang, allowing him to meet with other criminals beyond the reach of anti-bikie legislation, latest police intelligence reveals. Among the state's 882 bikies, the trend is most noticeable in the Bandidos, where 28 (or 20 per cent) of its 139 members have "disassociated" from the club. The Palaszczuk government is still unable to answer key questions about its proposed changes to the Newman bikie legislation. Police allege it is a form of going underground to avoid detection. An alleged former Bandido fronted court in Brisbane on Wednesday, charged over an alleged million-dollar property fraud. A firebug went on an arson spree around Melbourne's north on Wednesday night, lighting five separate grass and scrub fires. The fires were lit within an hour and within one kilometre of each other around Dallas, Westmeadows and Broadmeadows. The Crib Point fire was the work of a suspected arsonist. Credit:Keith Pakenham Firefighters were called to the first fire at 9.39pm on Dallas Drive in Dallas. No sooner had they arrived they received another call for a fire on Raleigh Street, Westmeadows. At 10.04pm a fire started on Hepburn Street, Dallas. Roberta Williams wants access to the prison computer of her slain ex-husband Carl, which contains letters he wrote to underworld figures and family members. Ms Williams has made a court bid to access the computer, which police are planning to oppose because of the sensitive nature of some of the documents it contains. Carl and Roberta Williams at the scene of a gangland murder in 2004. Credit:Angela Wylie It is understood a forensic audit of the computer conducted by police uncovered dozens of letters, including some sent to Roberta and his daughter Dhakota, and others meant only for the eyes of fellow gangsters. Ms Williams' application to access the computer will be decided in Melbourne Magistrates' Court later this month. The supplier of a defective hoverboard that caught fire earlier this month, gutting a home in Melbourne's northern suburbs, could be fined thousands of dollars. Energy Safe Victoria (ESV) confirmed it will consider enforcement action against TCB Contracting, the NSW company that sold the faulty balancing scooter online to Strathmore man Ash Ibraheim. Ash Ibraheim and his family escaped with their lives after their house was razed by fire, believed to have been caused by a recharging hoverboard. Credit:Justin McManus Mr Ibraheim bought five hoverboards from the Sydney supplier for his children for Christmas, but one sparked a fire that destroyed his house on January 4. ESV said the charger did not meet electrical safety standards. TCB Contracting sold 30 of the hoverboards in December, 27 which were purchased online via Gumtree. All the hoverboards sold online have now been returned but three sold via a pop-up toy shop in the Casula Mall in NSW are yet to be recovered. Family and friends of Whorouly woman Karen Chetcuti will be lighting candles on Friday night in memory of the mother-of-two who was allegedly murdered in Victoria's north east last week. "Light a Candle for Karen", organised by friend Carol Roadknight, encouraged those that knew the 49-year-old - as well as those affected by her death - to light a candle for her at 7.20pm on Friday. Whorouly woman and mother-of-two Karen Chetcuti was allegedly murdered. The time holds significance as the last confirmed sighting of Ms Chetcuti last Tuesday when she left the Whorouly Hotel. Her body was found by police six days later more than 40 kilometres away at Lake Buffalo. Ms Roadknight encourages participants to take a photo of the candle they light for Ms Chetcuti and post it on the 'R.I,P Karen Chetcuti' Facebook page. Multiple firebugs are on the loose on the Mornington Peninsula, with the local community on edge after several small fires were lit in quick succession. Crib Point, on the eastern side of the Peninsula, has been hit by small fires three times in the past two weeks. The aftermath of Monday's Crib Point fire. Police believe the blaze was started deliberately. Credit:Keith Pakenham One of those blazes blew up into a major emergency, burning down one house and damaging another on Monday. Another fire was lit on Tuesday in the same area, but was quickly extinguished. There had been another fire in the same area a week earlier. China Reports Two New Outbreaks Of Bird Flu (Photo : Getty Images) Owners and users of drones could no longer use the device to take photographs of wildlife at the scenic Qinghai Lake, the largest inland lake in China. The ban, made by the lake's administrator, was caused by a public outcry after a local daily reported that use of the drone scared sleeping swans. Advertisement The drone flew only a few centimeters away from the heads of the sleeping bird, causing the swans to fly away shocked. The incident scared the avian that the number of swans dramatically dipped after that, reported Xihai Metropolis Daily. Smartdrone reported that almost 300 swans were perched on the lake's Quanwan Bay when one photographer used a drone to take pictures. In the ensuing online debate, some people blamed DJI, maker of drones that are easy to maneuver. But Yin Yuping, commentator of Nanning Radio, pointed out that the threat to the birds comes from people, not drones. Although He Yubang, director of the Qinghai Lake National Reserve Administration, debunked the Xihai report that the incident caused the decline in number of swans, which he blamed on weather and climate change, he nevertheless agreed that the use of drones disturb local wildlife. The administration then posted warnings in the area that the photographers must keep a distance of 500 meters away from the animals. Found in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the lake hosts over 100,000 birds such as swans, gulls, ducks and geese. He stressed that the birds are also very sensitive to the cold and winter weather that keeps on changing. Birds scarred by drones are especially vulnerable during the mating season which could result in the birds failing to tend their eggs. To ensure photographers and visitors comply with the new rules, the administration deployed more patrols around the lake. The patrols would not only watch out for drones but also visitors who use the horns in their vehicles and firecrackers to scare the birds and take good photos of the avian in mid-air flight. A teenager who went on a two-year crime spree and racked almost 150 offences, including robbing a 92-year-old grandmother, was sentenced to 12 months in a youth detention centre. The boy, now aged 15, who cannot be named for legal reasons, pleaded guilty to almost all of the 148 charges, including theft of a motor vehicle, unlawful assault, criminal damage and unlicensed driving. Teen offender's two-year-crime spree has landed him in youth detention. A children's court heard, in one incident last year, the teenager grabbed a 92-year-old woman walking her dog in a "bear hug" before searching her pockets for her car keys. He and a co-accused then stole the woman's car and drove off to continue to commit offences, the court heard. Jerusalem: Israeli investigators have busted a ring of travel agency officials they say are suspected of price fixing for school trips to Nazi death camp sites in Poland, police said. Nine people were arrested, spokeswoman Luba Samri said on Tuesday, from various travel agencies suspected of colluding during a government tender to fix prices to prevent competition for Poland trips. Lawyers for the suspects, six of them agency executives, according to Israeli media, could not be reached for comment or did not respond to requests for comment. 'Work Sets You Free': the main entrance to the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz Birkenau, in Oswiecim, southern Poland. About 30,000 Israeli high-school students go on organised week-long trips to Poland every year. A group of travel agencies have been arrested for alleged price fixing for the school trips. Credit:AP About 30,000 Israeli high-school students go on organised week-long trips to Poland every year, according to the Israeli Education Ministry, where they visit old Nazi death camps, remnants of Jewish communities destroyed in the Holocaust, and other sites. The Education Ministry sees the trips as a way of preserving the memory of the Holocaust among young generations. They are often cited by those who attend as a powerful, emotional journey providing some idea of the horrors to which victims of Nazi Germany were subjected during World War Two. Baghdad: Three Americans who have gone missing in Iraq were probably kidnapped from a Baghdad apartment, security officials and local news reports say. The apartment may have been the home of an Iraqi colleague who is also believed to have been abducted. The abduction of three Americans is the latest in a series of brazen high-profile kidnappings undermining confidence in the Iraqi government's ability to control state-sanctioned Shiite militias that have grown in strength as Iraqi security forces battle the Islamic State group. Iraqi security forces deploy in Baghdad, Iraq on Monday. Credit:Khalid Mohammed News of the Americans' disappearance emerged late on Sunday but officials said they were probably taken two days earlier in Dora, a sprawling suburb in the southern part of the capital that has a mixed population of Sunni and Shiite Muslims as well as some Christians. US and Iraqi officials were scrambling on Monday to find the missing Americans. Officials said no group had come forward to take responsibility for abducting them. Kidnappings for ransom by criminal gangs are common in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq, but so are politically motivated abductions. Beijing: A Swedish rights activist detained in China under suspicion of endangering state security was the second Swedish citizen to be paraded on state television this week making an apology and apparent confession. Peter Dahlin, 35, is the co-founder of the Chinese Urgent Action Working Group, a non-governmental organisation which provides training for lawyers and legal aid. He was detained at Beijing's international airport on January 3 while preparing to board a flight en route to Thailand, and is now under residential surveillance. His girlfriend, a Chinese national, has also been missing since the day he was detained. Peter Dahlin on China's CCTV "confessing". The eight-minute news report, aired late on Tuesday on state broadcaster CCTV, is the latest in a spate of televised confessions popularised under President Xi Jinping, but condemned by international rights groups for circumventing due legal process and the possibility of testimony being obtained under duress. "I've violated Chinese law through my activities here, I've caused harm to the Chinese government," Mr Dahlin, sporting a light beard and dressed in a grey sweater, said in the televised confession. "I've caused hurt to the Chinese people, I apologise sincerely for this." We were as stunned as you to find out this morning that Bette Midler would be returning to Broadway in Jerry Herman's classic musical Hello, Dolly! When a superstar of this magnitude comes back to the stage, you've got no choice but to find the perfect cast to match. Here are the costars we think will ensure that Dolly'll never go away again. Billy Crystal Horace Vandergelder ( David Gordon) He's been playing "crotchety" since Harry met Sally, so bitter widower Horace Vandergelder feels like a natural next step in Crystal's career. Plus, he and Midler have already played co-grandparents so their chemistry is primed and ready for Broadway. Santino Fontana Cornelius Hackl ( David Gordon) Santino Fontana became Broadway royalty as Prince Topher in Cinderella, but recently, on the CW's Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, he's proven he can be equally charming as a regular Joe like Hackl (albeit one with plenty of dapper dream-sequence dances). Fontana is also lovable enough to pull off lying to his date one day and planning their future together the next. Andrew Keenan-Bolger Barnaby Tucker ( David Gordon) Andrew Keenan-Bolger is so well known on Broadway for his perennial youthfulness that he will soon be coming back to the Great White Way as a man who literally can't age. But before he goes into Tuck Everlasting, we'd like to recruit him for the role of innocent shop boy Barnaby Tucker. I mean holy cabooses! you only have to watch about five minutes of the movie to figure out that this is one of the many roles Keenan-Bolger was born to play. Ruthie Ann Miles Irene Molloy ( David Gordon) Playing Imelda Marcos in Here Lies Love, Ruthie Ann Miles got used to having eligible bachelors fawn over her onstage. But one thing she didn't do as First Lady of the Philippines was pick up after her man. That's why she's much better suited for lovable Cornelius Hackl, who will bring her the sweet things in life. It's the kind of love she deserves after being jerked around by the King of Siam in The King and I though Tony Awards do heal all wounds. Ryann Redmond Minnie Fay ( Tristan Fuge) Ryann Redmond first won our hearts as socially awkward high-schooler Bridget in Bring It On The Musical and continued to charm us in If/Then and off-Broadway's Gigantic. Barnaby Tucker couldn't ask for a sweeter Minnie Fay, and imagining her cuddling up to Andrew Keenan-Bolger, we couldn't ask for a cuter couple. Jared Grimes Ambrose Kemper ( David Gordon) In the 1969 film version of Hello, Dolly!, Tommy Tune played the struggling young artist, head-over-heels for Ermengarde. And no one does head-over-heels quite like Tommy Tune. That's why we decided to cast another formidable dancer to live up to Tommy's legacy. So far, Jared Grimes exclusively showed off his dancing chops in Broadway's After Midnight, but the performance left us hungry for more. Tracee Chimo Ermengarde ( David Gordon) Ermengarde is best known for her general weepiness, so we've decided to hand the role to Broadway chameleon Tracee Chimo, who can give us the tears but with a few more layers. In the recent revival of The Heidi Chronicles alone she went from militant lesbian to Montana women's-collective resident to pregnant magazine editor to talk-show host and now in Broadway's Noises Off, in which she stars as Poppy, the mousey lovelorn stage manager. If anyone can give Ermengarde some oomph, it's Chimo. Maurice Hines Band Leader ( David Gordon) No one could ever match Louis Armstrong's raspy rendition of the title song "Hello, Dolly," but since Maurice Hines began Tappin' Thru Life at New World Stages, he's brought some of that Golden Age charm back to the City. Sure, it's not in the stage production, but who wouldn't love to see him and Bette duet in front of a big ol' jazz band? That alone is worth the price of a Broadway ticket. Alcantara Interiors In The Spotlight At 2016 Detroit Auto Show DETROIT - January 19, 2016: Alcantara, a premium Italian-crafted automotive interior material, is featured on more than 20 new cars introduced in Detroit at this month's North American International Auto Show. From the luxurious all-new Lincoln Continental to the sporty Porsche Boxster, auto makers from around the world chose Alcantara to lend an added touch of luxury and sporty appeal to their new-model introductions in Detroit. Lincoln made an artful statement with its use of Alcantara in the all-new Continental,most notable on the headliner and seats, which feature a perforated letter "L." Lincoln maintains its distinctive look in the Black Label series of the Lincoln MKZ and MKX with Alcantara as well. Porsche offered Alcantara on the steering wheel, gearbox and seat centers of its GT4. The material also was featured on its Spyder Boxster, Macan, Panamera, Targa and on the world premiere of the 911 Turbo andTurbo S. Audi fitted the door panels of the A4 allroad in Alcantara. The world premiere of the Audi H-Tron Quattro concept vehicle took advantage of Alcantara with distinctive yellow stitching on seats and door panels. Dodge added flair to interior door panels across its sporty Viper lineup with a distinctive embossed flag motif in Alcantara, and BMW incorporated Alcantara into the armrests and on the steering wheels of its M3 models and on the headliner of its X6M. Mazda's 2016 MX5 Speedster concept vehicle featured distinctive SPARCO seats using an embossed gray and black pattern designed and crafted by Alcantara. And Hyundai unveiled its premium-brand Genesis with the Vision G Coupe concept vehicle in Detroit with its steering wheel and pillars featuring Alcantara treatments. Acura offered Alcantara in black on the seats of the new NSX. And Alfa Romeo showed off its Giulia Quadrifoglio, making its North American debut in Detroit, with Alcantara on its seats and steering wheel. Lexus added the LC500 with caramel-colored Alcantara seats, door panels and headliners to the list of vehicles making their world premieres in the Motor City as well. And finally Scion used black Alcantara with a distinctive embroidered logo on the seats and dashboard of its newest rear-drive FR-S. Alcantara S.p.A. - www.alcantara.com Founded in 1972, Alcantara represents a prime example of Italian-produced quality. As registered trademark of Alcantara S.p.A. and result of a unique and proprietary technology, Alcantara is a highly innovative material, offering an unrivalled combination of sensory, aesthetic and functional qualities. Thanks to its extraordinary versatility, Alcantara is the choice of leading brands in a number of application fields: fashion and accessories, automotive, interior design and home decor, consumer-electronics. These features, together with a serious and certified commitment in terms of sustainability, make Alcantara a true icon of contemporary lifestyle: the lifestyle of those who want to fully enjoy their everyday life, respecting the environment. FARMINGTON HILLS, MI -- January 20, 2016: Mercedes-Benz Financial Services USA LLC is pleased to announce that Mary Hughes has been appointed Director of Human Resources and Administrative Services, overseeing Human Resources strategy and operations for the company's Americas Region, which includes the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. In addition, Bobbye Sweat joins Mercedes-Benz Financial Services as the Diversity and Inclusion Manager, a newly created role supporting the company's U.S. Operations. Hughes is a member of the company's regional executive team and the human resources global leadership team. Previously, she was a Senior Manager of Human Resources, responsible for human resources operations at all Americas region-based locations. Hughes joined the company in 1998 as a Strategic Business Analyst. She has held several positions of leadership during her career, including: Senior Manager of Brand Controlling; Senior Manager of Business Integration and Excellence; Senior Manager of Client Services and Senior Manager of Operations in Canada. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Finance and Economics from Lake Superior State University in Sault Sainte Marie, Mich. "Having served in leadership roles in many core functions within our business, Mary brings a deep understanding of our organization to her new role," said Peter Zieringer, President and CEO. "With her depth of experience and strategic mindset, I am confident that she will do an outstanding job leading the human resources strategy for the Americas Region." Sweat, a native of Dallas, brings eight years of diversity and inclusion leadership experience to Mercedes-Benz Financial Services. In her previous role, she was the Senior Manager of Diversity and Inclusion with J.C. Penney Co. Prior to that, she was the Associate Director of Diversity and Inclusion with AT&T Inc. Sweat holds a bachelor's degree in business administration from the University of Arkansas in Pine Bluff, Ark. and a Master of Business Administration from City University in Washington in Seattle. She is also a Certified Diversity Professional, earning her certificate from DTUI.com in California. "Cultivating a culture of empowerment and inclusion is one of our core values and has been a long-time focus for our company," added Zieringer. "Bobbye brings a wealth of experience to this new role, which will enable us to further expand our strategic focus on diversity and inclusion to continue to enhance our workplace, attract and retain top talent, and leverage broad perspectives to best serve the needs of our diverse dealer and customer base." Zhang left China to study conducting courses in the United States at age 25. While there, she was surprised to know that most of the things she learned in China werent taught elsewhere. (Photo : The Telegraph) BBC Orchestras the National Orchestra of Wales just appointed its first female guest conductor, Chinese-born Xian Zhang. Xian hopes that this will encourage other orchestras to appoint more female conductors in the industry, according to a report by China Daily. Advertisement "Someone has to make a start. In fact, in China, female conducting is not a new phenomenon. A lot of conducting teachers are female," Zhang said in an interview with China Daily. With the growth of orchestral culture in China, appointing female conductors can help curb the demand for conductors. Zhang also encourages conductors from other parts of the world to explore opportunities in China. "It's important to explore the world but China is such a great market to be in to make music," she said. Zhang left China to study conducting courses in the United States at age 25. While there, she was surprised to know that most of the things she learned in China weren't taught elsewhere. "Education in China for conducting is at a very compelling level. I didn't realize at that point how much I had learned compared to other students in America. Students who are learning conducting in China now should realize how fortunate they are," Zhang said. With her training in Beijing, Zhang was able to build her foundation and further her skills in the U.S. She had to come up with her own methods, however, and gained real orchestra experience by conducting twice a week. After completing her education, Zhang went on to become the music director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. In 2009, she also fulfilled the same post, this time for the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verde in Italy. Her tight schedule and numerous commitments have placed her among a BBC Music poll's list of 150 busiest conductors in the world. SBD Calls INRIX Off-Street Parking the 'Clear Winner' in U.S. and Europe Independent real-world testing graded INRIX significantly more accurate in critical parking attributes; INRIX on-street parking service continues leadership, grows to over 40 cities globally MORE INFO The Best Car Research and Buyer's Guide KIRKLAND, WA and ANN ARBOR, MI -- January 20, 2016: INRIX, Inc., a leading provider of real-time traffic information and driver services worldwide, today announced the results of an independent off-street parking benchmark study. SBD, a global automotive technology research firm, concluded that ParkMe, an INRIX company, beat Parkopedia in data accuracy across the core attribute categories in five key cities in the U.S. and Germany. Overall, ParkMe was 12 percent more accurate than Parkopedia across a set of core attributes that are essential to automakers for customer satisfaction. Most important, ParkMe was 23 percent more accurate providing the precise entrance location to parking lots as compared to Parkopedia. ParkMe was the "clear winner" across parking attributes including pricing information accuracy (91 percent versus 81 percent) and correct parking lot operating hours (87 percent versus 83 percent). "INRIX has always strived to have the most complete and reliable dynamic driver services worldwide," said Steve Banfield, chief marketing officer of INRIX. "SBD has confirmed what we were already very confident in that ParkMe has the most accurate parking service in the industry, which ultimately leads to very happy drivers." ParkMe, acquired by INRIX in September 2015, has built the world's most comprehensive parking database that includes more than 29 million confirmed spaces in over 90,000 accessible locations spanning 4,000 cities in 64 countries. ParkMe only displays publicly accessible, non-restricted lots, including both free and fee parking locations, unlike Parkopedia, which also displays restricted-access lots. By excluding restricted lots from its worldwide dataset, consumers using ParkMe are not misrouted to locations that are unavailable to the general public. SBD's ground-truth assessment looked at 488 random parking lots in November 2015 across Berlin, Munich and Stuttgart in Germany, as well as Boston and San Francisco in the United States. SBD sent trained data collectors to evaluate on-site attributes lot by lot (backed by photographic evidence), then compared the field results to published information on respective ParkMe and Parkopedia websites. From the findings, SBD assessed overall accuracy scores, and scores per attribute, lot and city. SBD was compensated for collecting the data, but the assessments and scoring were completed on an objective and independent basis. "SBD's off-street parking study tells a very compelling story about the quality of ParkMe's coverage in the U.S. and Europe," said Mark St. Andrew, senior connected car analyst at SBD North America and the study's author. "These results reinforce the importance of automotive OEMs and service providers focusing on the end-to-end experience for consumers, the foundation of which is starting with the most accurate data possible." In a smart parking market growing at 28 percent annually and expected to be worth more than $3 billion over the next decade,1 INRIX has also made significant innovations and investments to its on-street parking service to provide the best quality and coverage. Today, INRIX also announced a new licensing agreement with Parknav to expand its on-street parking services to more than 20 German cities, bringing its total coverage to over 40 cities worldwide. Parknav uses machine learning, big data and predictive analytics to determine what streets will have open parking in real-time. The solution works on all road types and covers all on-street parking categories including free, metered and permit parking. BMW will be the first automaker to include INRIX's breakthrough service into its ConnectedDrive cars. To view SBD's Global Parking Lot Benchmarking Assessment, please go here. Automakers, mobile app providers and government agencies interested in learning more about INRIX's on- and off-street parking services can register for a Webinar scheduled for Tuesday, February 2, 2016 at 7:00am PT / 4:00pm CET. The Millionth Kangoo Rolls out of Renault's Maubeuge Plant Renaults Maubeuge plant in Northern France has produced its millionth second-generation Kangoo The future owner of the millionth Kangoo will be a retail customer in Japan Over 3.2 million Kangoos built since 1998 MORE INFO The Best Car Research and Buyer's Guide MAUBEUGE -- January 20, 2016: Renaults Maubeuge plant has produced its millionth second-generation Kangoo. Initially released in 1998 and then redesigned in 2007, the Kangoo is available in a choice of three sizes the Kangoo Compact, Kangoo Express and Kangoo Maxi as well as an electric version, the Kangoo Z.E. Since launching in 1998, over 3.2 million first- and second-generation Kangoos have been produced. Jose Martin Vega, Director, Renault Maubeuge commented: Kangoo continues to appeal to a diverse clientele of both business and retail customers in all its markets. Our entire plant is proud to celebrate this new production landmark, which confirms our ability to meet customer expectations in terms of quality and lead times. Renaults entire range of light commercial vehicles is made in France. The Trafic and Master vans are manufactured at the Groups Sandouville and Batilly plants, respectively, illustrating the know-how and competitiveness of its French production sites. The Maubeuge facility also produces the Mercedes-Benz Citan for Renaults partner, Daimler. Renault UKs van sales increased significantly in 2015 to 25,458 vehicles up 39.5 per cent compared to 2014 and significantly outpaced the UK van market which grew by of 15.5 per cent. Renault van full-year market share stood at 6.7 per cent up 1.2 percentage points on 2014. Jeep Brand Records Best Year Ever in the EMEA Region Third consecutive year of sales growth Sales tripled in the region in the last six years Second only to the NAFTA region, EMEA currently represents 10 percent of Jeep global sales Fastest-growing brand in Europe and EFTA (source: ACEA data) Italy, Germany, UK, France and Spain recorded best year ever Renegade is the main driver of Jeep growth in the region MORE INFO Jeep Research and Buyer's Guide Guide TURIN, ITALY -- January 19, 2016: In 2015, the Jeep brand set its all-time sales record in the EMEA region (Europe, Middle East, Africa) with 117,620 units sold and volumes up by 55.7 percent in comparison with 2014. After 26 months of uninterrupted year-over-year growth achieved through December, Jeep ended 2015 reporting its third consecutive year of commercial success and confirming the brands momentum and customer appreciation in the region. Since 2009, Jeep sales have tripled in EMEA, with the region currently ranking second in terms of volume after North America, with a share of 10 percent of the brands global sales (compared with 7 percent in 2014). In Europe (EU28 + EFTA), Jeep was the fastest-growing automotive brand recording a 132.2 percent increase* in a year that also saw the best performance ever in terms of volume for the European market with 88,200 registrations and a 113 percent increase compared with 2014. Several EMEA countries recorded their best sales year ever in 2015. In Italy, the top-selling country in the region, Jeep set its all-time record with sales almost tripled in comparison with 2014 and with Jeep being the fastest-growing automotive brand in the country. Recording a total of 14,995 new registrations, Jeep achieved its best annual result also in Germany with sales up by almost 42.6 percent versus 2014. The UK sold more Jeep vehicles in one year than in the four years of 2011 to 2014 combined, recording a growth of 176.1 percent, compared with 2014 sales. 2015 was the UKs best year ever, with Jeep being the fastest-growing car brand in the market last year. In France, Jeep also recorded its best ever full-year sales performance with an increase of 208.5 percent (8,585 units) versus 2014, mainly driven by Renegade. Also, in Spain, Jeep closed 2015 as the fastest-growing brand in the automotive sector (205.4 percent) and set its all-time annual sales record. During the 12 months of 2015, more Jeep vehicles were sold in the Spanish market than in the previous three years (2012-2014) combined. At product level, Renegade led the brands EMEA results last year with more than 54,800 units sold and accounting for 49.8 percent of total Jeep sales in the region. With more than 200,000 units manufactured to date at the renewed FCA Melfi Plant in Basilicata (Italy), Renegades success in terms of sales and appreciation by the public was awarded by several accolades during the year, including: "New Car of the Year 2015," Quattroruote (Italy), January 2015 "Best SUV of 2015," Coches.net (Spain), March 2015 "4x4 of the Year 2015," 4x4 Magazine (France), May 2015 SUV of the year 2015, 4x4 Tout-Terrain Magazine (France), June 2015 "4x4 of the Year 2016," 4x4 Magazine (UK), December 2015 Car of the Year 2016, awarded by a panel of specialized motoring journalists in Greece With 28,159 units sold, the flagship Grand Cherokee made an important contribution to the brands commercial success, accounting for almost 24 percent (23.9 percent precisely) of total 2015 sales and being the second best-selling Jeep model in the region. Jeep Cherokee significantly increased its performance versus 2014, while the iconic Wrangler confirmed its steady performance with 14,109 units sold. 2016 Volvo S60 T5 Inscription Chicagoland Review By Larry Nutson 2016 Volvo S60 T5 Inscription By Larry Nutson Senior Editor and Bureau Chief Chicago Bureau The Auto Channel Swedens Volvo Car Company has been around since 1927. In recent times it has gone from being owned by Ford from 2000 to 2010 to now being owned by Geely Automobile of China. Noteworthy is that Volvo continues to be highly regarded as the bench-mark brand for overall traffic safety for its vehicle driver and passengers. Its European roots remain very strong. Sporty and sophisticated is how I view Volvo cars. In the U.S., Volvo offers a selection of luxury sedan, wagon and crossover SUV models. The S60 sedan occupies the entry into the Volvo model range priced at $34,150 for a front-wheel drive version. For 2016, Volvo has expanded the S60 model range with the introduction of the all-new premium Inscription models. For the first time customers have a choice of the popular standard length S60 lineup or new Inscription with its three-inch stretch in wheelbase that delivers a class-leading (so says Volvo) 36.5 inches of legroom for rear seat passengers. Thats three inches greater than the standard wheelbase models. The S60 Inscription comes in front-wheel or all-wheel drive and in Premier or Platinum trims. Prices start at $38,900 for FWD and $40,400 for AWD. I recently had some Chicagoland drive time in the FWD Inscription equipped with the Platinum trim that added $3,000 to the price. This S60 Inscription also had the Climate Package ($1,300), Park Assist Pilot with BLIS Package ($1,425), and Metallic Paint ($560). Add in the $940 Destination charge and the whole deal rang up at $45,925. No doubt you have heard all the conversation about autonomous or self-driving cars. Were probably about ten years away from a car that drives itself down the road. But right now today we have many available features that do things for the driver and help to make driving safer. On the S60 Inscription the Technology Package features many semi-autonomous features. Among them is Cyclist Detection with Pedestrian Detection with Full Auto Brake. This system will brake for you if you dont. Active High Beam automatically switches the headlights to low beam when opposite traffic is detected. Road Sign Information displays traffic speed signs for the driver on the instrument cluster based on the Forward Looking Camera. The package also offers Adaptive Cruise Control with Queue Assist, Collision Warning with Full Auto Brake, Distance Alert, Driver Alert Control, Lane Departure Warning with T5 AWD and T6 R-Design, and Lane Keeping Aid with Drive-E models. I used the adaptive cruise control with lane keeping on a 100 mile highway jaunt. The cruise control operated very smoothly, and not at all aggressively, to maintain a safe distance from a vehicle ahead. Slowing of the S60 and re-accelerating is very smooth. I was surprised at the lane keeping aid not only for how well it kept me in lane, even on a curve, but for how long it let the car drive without my hands on the steering wheel. Impressive. Park Assist Pilot, a semi-automatic parallel parking aid is optional for Drive-E models and requires the available Blind Spot Information Package Package. Utilizing front and rear park-assist sensors and operational at speeds up to 18 mph, the system will identify an appropriate sized parking space and guide the driver through step-by-step instructions. The car will automatically control the steering function while the driver controls the brakes and transmission. I used this on the Volvo and it worked as I expected. Ive experienced it on other make cars and it certainly is a god-send for anyone who lives in or visits a crowded city and is not adept at parallel parking. The optional Climate Package provides heated front and rear seats as well as the steering wheel. You can set up the system to turn them on automatically when outside temps are low. Indeed very nice to have on a cold Midwest winter day. One of my favorite big-city features is a power-fold function to the outside mirrors. The Volvo had these which helps to save those mirrors from being hit by a passing large truck when parked on a narrow city street. Powering the S60 Inscription is a 240HP 2.0-L turbo four-cylinder engine mated to an eight-speed automatic on FWD models. AWD models have a 250HP 2.5-L turbo five-cylinder engine mated to a six-speed automatic. The S60 I drove delivered very quick acceleration, as well as very good highway merging and passing-power. Volvo say acceleration from stop to 60 mph is in 6.0 seconds (6.6 seconds on AWD models). Low fuel consumption is still important, even with the low gasoline prices we enjoy today. EPA test fuel economy rating for the S60 FWD is 29mpg combined or 3.4 gallons per 100 miles, with 25 city mpg and 37 highway mpg. On my 100 mile each-way interstate road trip I got 32 mpg, moving along in my spirited driving style on a very low-traffic highway. EPA ratings for the AWD S60 Inscription are lower at 23 mpg combined, with 20 city mpg and 29 highway mpg. Fuel consumption often takes a big hit with AWD, so carefully weigh if you really need it. Often, FWD plus the added use of winter tires all around will do very well, and then you dont suffer the gas mileage loss in the warmer months. By the way, the S60 engine is ULEV II-certified, that is, a Ultra Low Emission Vehicle. Along with being green, driving an S60 might get you a better parking spot if you work in a LEED certified building that provides designated closer-in parking for employees who drive low emission vehicles. Theres a stop/start system that shuts the engine off at routine traffic stops. It worked fine in my view, but if its not to your liking you can turn the feature off. Generally, no matter what the make of car, when creeping along in stop and go highway traffic it can be a bit annoying. I was pleasantly surprised to see in the specs that the S60 is rated to tow up to 3500 pounds. The trunk has 12 cuft of space; not bad. I liked the trunk-mounted pop-up grocery bag holder. The release to fold the rear seats is very conveniently located top-mounted right inside the trunk lid. More Volvo S60 information and specifications can be found at www.volvocars.com/us. Look here at the Volvo Buyers Guide for comparative information S60 Vs. other luxury sedans. For me the best part of this Volvo S60 is the interior. There is lots of comfort along with high quality in materials, fit and finish. The layout and accessibility of controls, switches and buttons is easy to see and use. Seats are supportive and offer a good range of adjustment and the long wheelbase provides for good legroom. Its like your home, you should like it from the outside but most important is the inside where you spend all your time. Lastly, Ill mention that the S60 Inscription is built in China. Based on the car I drove its very much a Volvo. I dont see this as an issue. We have cars on the U.S. market that are assembled in many different countries. Carmakers today know that no matter where a car is produced it must live up to the promise of the brand. 2016 Larry Nutson, the Chicago Car Guy The Most Valuable Volvo Research Information Anywhere! Former KMT chairman Eric Chu said that the party needs to look within in order to win back voters. (Photo : Getty Images) The chairman of Taiwans Kuomintang (KMT) party stepped down on Monday following the partys defeat in the islands elections, the Global Times reported. Outgoing KMT chairman Eric Chu formally announced to the party's central standing committee that he would hand over the party's affairs to the acting chairwoman, Huang Ming-hui, the local press reported on Monday. Advertisement "As party chairman I have let everybody down," a visibly distraught Chu said in a prepared statement. "I will never forget that the KMT lost the power to govern under my chairmanship." Chu said Huang will assume his responsibilities and prepare for the election of the new KMT chairman, which will take place after the Lunar New Year. He also shared his expectations on the next party leader, saying that the chairman must propose major reforms that reflect support from both the public and party members. "The KMT has to establish this kind of tradition; the leader must take responsibility," Chu said, adding that he will reflect on the general conditions and other factors that accounted for the party's loss at the polls. Chu said he will return to his post as mayor of New Taipei, from which he took a temporary leave in October to tend to his presidential run, and apologized for delays in the governance of city affairs caused by his absence. Yao Chiang-lin, a member of KMT's Central Standing Committee, said that the party is in a quandary and needs someone with experience to lead it. Some analysts say the party should focus on gaining the support of young people. Taiwan's younger generation is abandoning the KMT, Tang Shao-cheng, a scholar at the Institute of International Relations of National Chengchi University in Taipei, told the Global Times. Taiwan's national elections saw a record-low turnout of 66.27 percent on Saturday, with the KMT suffering its worst defeat in history. Former U.S, Deputy Secretary of State William Burns met with outgoing Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou and his successor Tsai Ing-wen on Monday. In response, China's foreign ministry expressed concern over the planned visit of the U.S. envoy, according to the Xinhua News Agency. "We urge the U.S. side to do more things conducive to the stable development of China-U.S. relations and the peaceful development of relations across the Taiwan Straits, not vice versa," foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said. 18th century mansion hotel invests 1m in upgrades OPERATOR QHotels is investing 1.1m in the refurbishment of the 18th century mansion hotel and spa, Oulton Hall. The company said it will be investing in technology at this luxury Leeds site to accommodate business as well as leisure guests. As well as an update to the furnishings and decor in the hotel, the upgrades include improved wifi, laptop safes, and bedside USB charging points in bedrooms. It is part of a 50m investment in the QHotels sites, which the business announced last year. The company, founded in 2003 with just two hotels, is this year expected to break the 200m turnover mark for the first time. Following a stellar year in which QHotels is already 12% ahead of last years figures, founders Michael Purtill and Ian Goulding are making an investment in the rooms as well as conference and events spaces. Claire Steven, general manager of Oulton Hall, said: To continue to offer the very best experience for our guests, its important that were not only listening to our customers but taking their feedback on board to evolve and enhance the facilities at Oulton Hall. The refurbishment will benefit all the different types of guests we welcome, from hotel and spa leisure guests to business travellers and those attending conferences and events. Leeds-based QHotels owns Oulton Hall and 25 other hotels across the UK, including The Queens in Leeds and Aldwark Manor near York. In the U.S., campaigns against bullying have gone a long way to reduce cases. (Photo : Facebook) Three Chinese students attending high school in southern California are set to serve time in prison due to bullying for kidnapping and assaulting a female classmate, as reported by China Daily. On Jan. 5, Zhai Yunyao, Yang Yuhan and Zhang Xinlei settled on a plea deal with prosecutors, preventing the case from going to trial. Advertisement The three Chinese students, all 19 years old, pleaded no contest to criminal charges of kidnapping and assault. Zhai, the case's prime culprit, will face 13 years in prison, while Yang and Zhang will face 10 years and 6 years, respectively, according the Los Angeles Times. The three will be deported back to China at the conclusion of their sentence. The bullying case, which was reported in March 2014, became a media sensation in China. The victim, a female classmate surnamed Liu, testified that she was taken to a park, stripped, kicked, slapped and burned using cigarettes. She claimed the incident lasted over five hours. According to one of the defendants' attorneys, the plea deal was the best resolution as going to trial would carry too many risks. Prosecutors agreed to drop the torture charge if the plea deal were accepted. The three students were reportedly shocked upon learning that what they did was a felony in the United States that could lead to a life sentence. For them, it was a "prank" that would result in demerit points from their school at worst. A parent of one of the students was also detained for attempting to slip one of the prosecutors a bribe in an effort to make them drop the case. In China, bullies rarely receive the punishment that they deserve, despite the fact that bullying is not rare in the country. Bullying cases have even made the headlines, and some perpetrators have even uploaded their misdeeds online. In cases where there is no severe physical harm, bullies in China are only ever punished with criticism from their schools. Chinese parents often trivialize bullying incidents, seeing them as small fights between their children. A volunteer for Ben Carson's campaign, 25-year-old Braden Joplin, has died after a van crash on Tuesday. Carson suspended his campaign earlier in the day after two other volunteers and a campaign employee were injured in the car accident in Iowa. According to the campaign, three passengers are being treated at a local hospital, and Joplin was transported to a trauma center in Omaha, Nebraska, for much more serious injuries. Carson traveled to Omaha to join the family of the volunteer being transported there. The other passengers in the van were released from the hospital after being treated for their injuries. Recognizing speculation can run rampant at times like these, fortunately we have a leader in Dr. Carson who has dealt with life-and-death challenges his entire career, communications director Larry Ross told The Daily Beast after the crash took place. As such, we are following his lead and only sharing information we know to be true, and will provide additional details as available and appropriate. After hearing the news of Joplin's passing, Ross said Carson's campaign would also be suspended tomorrow. No determination has been made beyond that, he said. In Omaha, as Carson visited with Joplins family, he expressed the profound loss of the bright, young man. One of the precious few joys of campaigning is the privilege of meeting bright young men and women who are so enthusiastic about their country that they will freely give of their time and energy to work on its behalf, Carson said in a statement provided to The Daily Beast. America lost one of those bright young men today. I had the privilege of knowing Braden Joplin personally, and am filled with a deep and profound sadness at his passing. While we mourn this profound loss, I am thankful that our other campaign colleagues, Drew McCall, Aaron Ohnemus and Ryan Patrick Shellooe, have all been treated and released from the hospital. He went on to praise volunteers like Joplin as unsung heroes of the political process. Even after more than 30 years experience counseling parents and family members in the most difficult of times, it never gets easier, Carson said. But I find solace in the knowledge of Gods redeeming grace, and I pray that Bradens family finds comfort in the mercy of the Lord. Across America today, I ask everyone to take a moment to reflect on the preciousness of life and remember and honor the memory of Braden Joplin. Candidates on both sides of the aisle mourned the loss of Joplin as well, including Bernie Sanders, who said, Young volunteers like Braden Joplin are the heart and soul of the democratic process. Our thoughts and prayers are with him and his family. Praying for the family of the young Ben Carson volunteer, Braden Joplin, who was killed in a tragic car crash in IA. A life taken too soon, Jeb Bush tweeted. Carson is tentatively scheduled to visit Iowa this weekend as he fights to keep afloat ahead of the Feb. 1 caucus. Qualcomm will start production of its custom chips for China next year (Photo : www.telecomlead.com) Qualcomm and Chinese province Guizhou declared their plans for a mutual venture to manufacture chips for server systems, which was done last Sunday at a Beijing ceremony. It is the latest step that American company's high-stakes strategy will move beyond offering semiconductors for mobile phones. Advertisement Qualcomm claims that as per investment arm, the company will own 45 percent of the venture, while the remaining 55 percent is from the province. Together, they will make a financial contribution proportional to such ownership stakes and furnish an initial funding of nearly $280 million. The coalition followed steps done by Chinese companies and government officials to create a larger domestic semiconductor industry. The mutual venture also serves the role done by Chinese policy makers to make Guizhou an advanced hub for cloud computing. It should help the country in its economic transformations. Many Chinese companies assemble as much as many electronic devices, but several of its chips especially those that control the key functions are innovated and produced abroad. China wholly relies on American-made chips for its servers, and the purposes of computers used in back-office functions and running websites. Santa Clara-based Intel accounts over 90 percent of its server chips are utilized for these chores. There have been a number of companies trying to break into the market by innovating chips that use technology licensed by ARM Holdings PLC, which is the controlling standard in mobile phones. So far, the biggest advocates of ARM-based servers Qualcomm has initially announced its plans to join the market in November 2014 but haven't really shipped a product. The company however had signed a Memorandum of Understanding last May 2015 with Guizhou province to install a chip company there. It hasn't unveiled a plan as to who jointly owns the venture. That declaration took place during a huge data conference arranged by the Guizhou government. Many top executives of high-tech companies, including Uber Technologies Inc., Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, and Qualcomm Inc. as well as senior Chinese policy makers, attended the occasion. Teen Lobbying Day turned really weird on Monday at the Washington State capitol in Olympia when a Republican lawmaker began interrogating a group of teenagers about their virginity. The eastern Washington high school kids, part of a teen council chapter of Planned Parenthood, were meeting with state Rep. Mary Dye, a Republican from Pomeroy, Garfield County, as part of the nonprofit organizations Teen Lobbying Day. The high schoolers were there to push for legislation to expand insurance coverage for contraception. Dye then turned the tables on the pro-choice teens, asking them if they were virgins, according to their chaperone, Rachel Todd, a Planned Parenthood education specialist. According to Todd and the students, it was a bizarre and awkward experience. As well as asking if the students were virgins, Dye also reportedly suggested that one of them was not. After she made the statement about virginity, all of my teens looked at me, Todd told The Seattle Times. And I said, You dont have to answer that. You dont have to answer that. Shortly thereafter, Dyes office released a statement apologizing for interrogating the teenagers about their virginity or lack thereof. I shared with them that I did not support the issues they were advocating for, Dye wrote. Following a conversation they initiated on birth control for teenagers, I talked about the empowerment of women and making good choicesopinions shaped by my mother and being a mother of three daughters, she continued. In hindsight, a few of the thoughts I shared, while well-intended, may have come across as more motherly than what they would expect from their state representative. If anything I said offended them or made them feel uncomfortable, I apologize. Todd described the encounter as so incredibly disrespectful and inappropriate, and at least one of the students she accompanied thought the motherly advice bordered on crazy. It seemed kind of insane for her to say that, especially on the record, to constituents, said 18-year-old Alex Rubino, pointing out that the Republican lawmakers sex tip came completely unprompted and unsolicited. I talked to the teens right after they got out of [the meeting]they were shaken, Erik Houser, a spokesman for Planned Parenthoods advocacy arm in Washington State, told The Daily Beast . (Houser was at the state capitol on Monday with them, and various other student lobbying teams.) This was not a normal experience. This was not OK, he continued. [The students] were not laughing at first. They definitely got more of a sense of humor about it later in the day, but at first they were just at a loss of how to process it. I mean, this is their elected representative. And they never expected any of this would happen. Houser also said that though Dye issued her statement in The Seattle Times, she has not reached out to anybody involved. She has not apologized to the teens, she has not apologized to Planned Parenthood, he said. Dye, a longtime GOP activist who filled the vacated 9th District House seat last year, has many talents beyond discomfiting politically engaged teenagers. She has operated a 3,000-acre wheat farm with her husband, and was active in the Save Our Dams campaign, a movement opposing efforts to breach federal dams on the Snake River. (She and her husband even managed to enlist then-presidential candidate George W. Bush into the cause.) She also served in the Peace Corps in Thailand back in the mid-80s. I truly believe that the bigger the government, the smaller the citizen, Dye says. I will be a vocal advocate for limited, but effective government, speaking out against any and all government overreach. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding whether or not grilling teen constituents about their sexual history counts as a form of overreach. Failed reality-television star Sarah Palin joined former reality-television star Donald Trump in Ames, Iowa, on Tuesday evening, not for a taping of Celebrity Apprentice or a casting for Dancing With the Stars, but to endorse him as the next president of the United States. Dressed in a black overcoat and blue tie, the GOP frontrunner walked onstage at Iowa State University and gripped the lectern stamped with his name. Wow, look at the press out there! They must think that a big events gonna happen today, he said. Wow! Thats a lotits like the Academy Awards! He freestyled for 30 minutes, about his poll numbers and how Big League he wins, before welcoming a bedazzled Palin with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. He called her a spectacular person and said her endorsement was very special to me. Trump stood off to her left and looked on as she spoke, his arms dangling awkwardly at his sides. He smirked. Heads are spinning, Palin began. This is gonna be so much fun! Searching for meaning in this spectacle is like trying to find enlightenment in the ball pit at Chuck E. Cheese. And the jokes, well, they write themselves but theyre not very funny, which, in a sense, is the key to Trumps success in the Republican primaryand, perhaps, life in general. Trump persists because he defies parody. He, like Palin, is in on the joke that is his public persona. The difference is hes better at telling it than any lowly scribe or comedian. And he tells it not with a device as obvious as self-deprecation but with subtlety in his every decision, minor or Yuge, in his official capacity as The Frontrunner for the Republican Presidential Nomination. Which is where Palin comes in. No more pussyfooting around! she shouted. Hes going rogue left and right, man, thats why hes doing so well! Once governor of Alaska, Palins own road to caricature began when she joined Trump foe John McCains 2008 presidential campaign as his running mate. Her tinny-voiced performance as a vice-presidential candidate was, at turns, erratic and self-destructive. By Election Day, it was difficult to distinguish between the real Palin and the version of her performed by Tina Fey on Saturday Night Live. For a time after McCains defeat, Palin enjoyed her status as an in-demand conservative star, too rogue to be tamed by the establishment elite. But her shtick, complete with props like Big Gulps and Dr. Seuss books, seemed to grow tired. TLC canceled her reality show, Sarah Palins Alaska, after just one season. Palin sightings on cable news occurred with less and less frequency. A CBS News poll from January 2015 found that 59 percent of Republicans didnt want her to run for president in this election. To borrow a phrase from The Donald, Palin is a loserbut a potentially useful one, like conspiracy-monger Alex Jones, who was welcomed into Trumps orbit in December. Trump associates with sideshows and freaks as if to run on hot coals before the American public and media, who are left covered in sludge and scratching their heads. Unlike almost every politician before him, he is never tainted by these associations. No failed governor or tinfoil hat-wearing radio host or white supremacist making robocalls on his behalf can reflect poorly on his character, perhaps because we suspect he has none. Trump befriended Palin before his formal foray into Republican politics began. In 2011, they were photographed eating pizza together in New York Citywith forks. In August, Palin interviewed Trump, by webcam, for the right-wing One America News Network. He told her he liked her and her family so much. There is overlap among their lackeys, too. Trump political director Michael Glassner previously served as chief of staff to Palins political action committee, and Trumps spokeswoman, Katrina Pierson, was endorsed by Palin in 2014 when she ran for Congress in Texas. Roger Stone, a longtime Trump confidant who worked on the campaign until August, said Trump only stands to gain from Palins public embrace. She is popular with evangelicals who dominate the process, he told me. Also blots out sun for [Ted] Cruz. At the very least, Trump loses nothing after Tuesdays Big Show. At most, he starves Cruzhis central rivalof much-needed media coverage with two weeks to spare until the Iowa caucus. Unlike his other threats, like Ben Carson, Cruz has proved impervious to Trumps put-downs. Despite weeks of Trump questioning Cruzs citizenship, Cruz has hardly moved an inch in the Iowa polls, where he was beating Trump as recently as two weeks ago. As of this writing, Trump stands just a percentage point above Cruz in the Real Clear Politics polling average in the state. Aiding Trumps cause is Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, who, sparring with Cruz over ethanol, said Tuesday that he hopes the Texas senator is defeated. As surreal as Tuesdays performance felt at times, it was guided by a certain logic. Even Palin, who flailed her sequined arms in the air for the crowd, equal parts pep and menace in her voice, sounded a nuanced battle cry. You ready for a commander and chief who will do their job and go kick ISIS ass? she screamed at one point. But then she explained her plight, and the plight of all Trump true believers. Trumps candidacy: It has exposed not just that tragic ramifications of that betrayal of the transformation of our country, but too, he has exposed the complicity on both sides of the aisle that has enabled it, OK? she said. Hes been able to tear the veil off this idea of the system, how the system really works. In Trump, Palin sees a leaderone who wont be pushed off to the corner like she was. We need someone new who has the power and is in the position to bust up that establishment, she said. She complained that establishment Republicans are as much to blame as the Democrats, and in their effort to thwart Trump, they have maligned all of conservative America. Funny, hahanot funny, she said, seemingly out of nowhere. But now what theyre doing is whaling on Trump and his Trumpeters, Well, theyre not conservative enoughOh my goodness gracious, what the heck would the establishment know about conservatism? She said she, Trump, and those like them were right-winging, bitter-clinging, proud clingers of our guns, our god, and our religions, and our Constitution. Doggone right were angry, she said. Justifiably so! She said Trump could be trusted because he builds things, he builds big things, things that touch the sky, big infrastructure, things that put people to work. And when President Obama leaves office, she said, she hopes he heads back to Chicago. Hell be able to look up and there, over his head, he will be able to see that shining, towering Trump Tower. Yes, Barack, he built that and that says a lot! Iowa, you say a lot being here tonight supporting the right man who will allow you to Make America Great Again! A battle is brewing in Battle Creek, Michigan, where residents are less than pleased that an archbishop accused of covering up a sex-abuse scandal has now embraced a second calling as a pastor in their town. John Clayton Nienstedt served as the Archbishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis for seven years but resigned this June, shortly after a prosecutor announced criminal charges and a civil suit against the archdiocese for allegedly covering up child sex abuse. Now Nienstedt has taken up a new post in Michigan, filling in for a sick old friend at St. Philips Roman Catholic Church. A spokesperson for the Kalamazoo diocese told local papers that the arrangement between the archbishop and Father John Fleckenstein, who is ill, is just a simple agreement between friends. But detractors worry that the archbishops controversial past is getting a free pass. Jennifer Haselberger served as Chancellor for Canonical Affairs in the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis. She was also the person who revealed how the archdiocese allegedly hid sex-abuse allegations. Haselberger finds it plausible that Nienstedt and Fleckenstein didnt expect the blowback in Battle Creek. [Nienstedt] doesnt always have the most full perspective on things, she said. I can totally see this priest and this archbishop thinking, Whats the big deal? He clearly doesnt see himself in the same light as the majority of us do, Haselberger said. In a church bulletin, Fleckenstein announced Nienstedts arrival nonchalantly. [O]ver the next few months I envision times that I will need assistance either for health reasons or that I may complete a couple of major projects for the Diocese in my role as Episcopal Vicar for Education, Fleckenstein wrote. Archbishop John Nienstedt, retired Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Minneapolis/St. Paul will be joining us to assist in various pastoral ministries during this time. He will celebrate some of the weekend and weekday Masses, visit the sick in the hospital, visit the sick and homebound, and celebrate Mass for the nursing home and assisted living facilities. Fleckenstein added that he expects Nienstedt, whom hes known for 20 years, to move on in about six months. But attorneys who represent alleged victims of priest sex abuse were not so generous in their assessment of the archbishop. For him to be ordered to another parish is the same sad story thats been playing out for 30 years, attorney Jeff Anderson told The Daily Beast. Its something they claim to have turned the page on, but time and time again theyre repeating the same pattern. The entire nations Roman Catholic child sexual abuse scandal just moved to Battle Creek, Patrick Wall, a priest and monk-turned-lawyer, told Michigan Live. Charges filed by prosecutors allege that while Nienstadt was archbishop, the archdiocese ignored repeated abuse complaints against a priest who was convicted of molesting two boys. The former priest, Curtis Wehmeyer, was sentenced to five years for the abuse, but prosecutors said the archdiocese didnt act on numerous and repeated reports of troubling conduct. Nienstedt also misrepresented his handling of other cases where priests were accused of sexual impropriety, according to prosecutors. Though he had testified that he was unaware that Kenneth LaVan, a priest accused of assaulting a teenage girl, was still in the ministry, documents later showed he had gotten consistent updates on LaVans position and, and even spent time with him socially as friends. My leadership has unfortunately drawn attention away from the good works of His Church and those who perform them, Nienstedt wrote in a letter of resignation last summer. I leave with a clear conscience knowing that my team and I have put in place solid protocols to ensure the protection of minors and vulnerable adults. But Nienstedt also faced allegations of child abuse and sexual misconduct himself. A boy accused Nienstedt of touching his buttocks during a confirmation ceremony at the Cathedral of St. Paul in 2009. The mother later reported the alleged incident to another priest, who alerted police and the archdiocese in 2013. Police declined to pursue charges against Nienstedt, and the archbishop affirmed his commitment to providing safe environments for all children and youth. Another archdiocese investigation into Nienstedt focused on his alleged sexual conduct with seminarians, priests, and other men. Nienstedt called those allegations false, and a personal attack against me due to my unwavering stance on issues consistent with church teaching, such as opposition to so-called same-sex marriage. Andrea Perry, the Youth Ministry Coordinator for St. Philips and two nearby Catholic churches, did not return a request for comment. First, Denmark said they would confiscate valuables from refugees and migrants so they can help pay their way. Now they dont want to let them go dancing unless they speak the right language. The latest attempt to clamp down on the movement of migrants from Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East and Africa comes after officials in three Danish cities said they received complaints from nightclubs and bars about male migrants and refugees harassing the female clientele. The Buddy Holly discotheque in the city of Snderborg has a sign posted warning that any men who want to enter must speak Danish, German, or English, according to local press reports that add that the clubs bouncers want to be sure that the migrant men understand nej means no. In the Danish city of Haderslev, city officials say they have received complaints that men from the new asylum center housing 365 migrants and refugees who are waiting for their asylum status to be decided dont know how to behave when they see scantily clad Danish women. We must say that a large number of the male guests who come from the local asylum center have a very hard time respecting the opposite sex, Glenn Hollnder, owner of the nightclub Den Flyvende, told Danish TV Syd. In my eyes, it is harassment when one or more men continue to touch a young woman after she has said stop. TV Syd also interviewed a Syrian named Rafi Ibrahim, who has lived in Denmark for six years. He agreed that the cultural differences are causing a problem and that the young men are bored in the asylum centers. But they dont know the rules about how to behave around Danish women, he told the television station. The move in Denmark follows growing tensions in Europe as the influx of refugees and migrants continues despite cold weather and closing borders. On New Years Eve in Cologne, Germany, around 1,000 men are thought to have sexually harassed and mugged hundreds of women in what was clearly an organized assault without any apparent provocation. Police in Cologne report that 883 women have come forward so far, of whom more than 500 were sexually abused. Only one mana 26-year-old Algerianhas been arrested for the sexual harassment so far, although eight others are in detention, accused of theft and trafficking in stolen goods related to the incident. If Denmark succeeds in closing its clubs and other private businesses to migrants and refugee seekers, many worry that it could set a precedent in the rest of an already migrant-skeptic Europe. Others wonder what sort of racial profiling will be used to make the call about who gets in and who stays out. There are concerns about safety in Italy as well, after a 35-year-old American woman was murdered Jan. 9 after hooking up with an illegal Senegalese immigrant at a Florence nightclub. Ashley Ann Olsen apparently invited the man to her home willingly, according to local police in Italy. But something definitely went wrong shortly thereafter, when the man allegedly turned so violent that Olsen suffered skull fractures and died of strangulation. Claus Juul with Amnesty International warns that barring people based on country of origin or language barriers is discriminatory. You cant make a general rule that states that you cant come in if you come from a certain country that has created problems before, he said, according to The Locals Danish edition. Still, the move in Denmark underscores Europes clear inability to deal with integration related to the refugee crisis. More than 1 million migrants and refugees arrived in Europe, mostly through Greece and Italy, in 2015, and so far this year hundreds of migrants continue to arrive every day. The European Union estimates that as many as 2 million could arrive in 2016 and up to 3 million in 2017. If Europe doesnt soon figure out how to deal with the influx, either by clear integration strategies or by teaching new arrivals social norms and expectations, fear will surely soon replace reason, which doesnt bode well for anyone involved. On Monday morning, Twitters 300 million users were unable to air their personal and political grievances on the social media site, which was down between 3:00 a.m. EST and 8:30 a.m. EST (in some parts of the world it wasnt back up until noon). It reactivated just in time for a lengthy, written conversation between two New York magazine writers, Annie Lowrey and Abe Riesman, about why theyre quitting Twitter. Basically, they want a respite from bullies, distractions, and viral debates about the proper way that dogs should wear pants. But the very idea of quitting Twitter, or substantially rationing ones involvement on the site, provoked an existential, 2,577-word debate between the two writers. They opened by acknowledging the absurdity of this debate: Riesman is fully aware of how insane this discussion must sound to any sane human being; Lowrey agrees 100 percent and adds that she has rarely spent so much time contemplating my own navel. That said, commence the navel-gazing discussion. For anyone who works in media, quitting Twitter is like removing yourself from the school playground, where gossip and news are first leaked and everyone is competing in a popularity contest. Unless youre an eminently revered novelist or an aging journalist with a well-known byline, quitting Twitter will make you less visible to your writing audience, as well as to other editors and writers. Youll be less clued in to breaking news, hot takes, and the endless stream of jokes and observations from politicos during presidential debates. If this is your bread and butter, quitting Twitter will make you anxious and emotionally ravaged by FOMO (fear of missing out), so much so that you wont actually quit. Indeed, neither Lowrey nor Riesman has signed off the network. Instead, theyve cut back in their own ways. On Monday morning, Lowrey tweeted a link to her conversation with Riesman: GOODBYE FOREVER TWITTER. Riesman has been absent from the Twitterverse for four days, when he promoted his most recent story (his feed is currently filled with links to his pieces). Though Lowrey was tweeting during recent debates and last weeks State of the Union, Twitter has mostly been a megaphone for me, not a chat room, and much less of a megaphone than it used to be, at that. If youre like Lowrey, who has 45,000 followers, youll likely be criticized by many who disagree with your 140-character opinions or a story you wrote and linked to in a tweet. And because this is all happening on the Internet, there will be a good number of asshats among those 45,000 followers who will criticize you for something entirely unrelated to your work or your politics. After a certain point, this was too much for Lowrey. As an official woman-on-the-Internet, Lowrey had suffered years of mansplaining from well-intentioned friends. The forest-for-the-trees criticism of my grammar... The constant, degrading references to me as my husbands wife. (Lowrey is married to Ezra Klein, also a journalist, who has more than a million Twitter followers.) Her breaking point came when a story she wrote about poverty was met with a flood of nasty, sexist tweets and emailsjust days and days of it. It was impossible to defend myself, and impossible to work, and impossible to focus, and I just wanted to leave the Internet forever. Most of us have wanted to leave the Internet forever at some point in time, enraged by idiotic comments in our Facebook feeds following a major news event, or driven to distraction by the whir of everyone weighing in on Twitter. But we also know that we live in an Internet age, and unless we want to become ice fishermen in Alaska, leaving the Internet forever is a pipe dream. And most writers accept that exposing themselves and their work comes with the risk of being relentlessly criticized. Riesman has significantly fewer Twitter followers than Lowrey (around 7,000), but his reasons for limiting his activity are similar: being on the receiving end of a deluge of insults after he tweeted something about Star Wars, and investing too much time and emotional energy in petty online arguments. He doesnt engage with anyone on Twitter anymore, but acknowledges that there are still some quasi-essential purposes that it serves for my professional life. The fact that Lowrey and Riesman felt compelled to have this conversation demonstrates how myopic the media world has become. Indeed, Twitter is an insular echo chamber for people who dont follow or engage others with different opinions. They may be taking a break from their Twitter feeds, but by announcing their departures, theyre signaling to their followers: this is an experimentdont give up on me! Twitter is part of their job. If two equally qualified writers are vying for the same role, the one with more Twitter followers will get it. Being good at Twitterbeing quick-witted in 140 characters and skilled at multitaskingis a valuable weapon in the modern writers armory, even if it doesnt necessarily reflect ones talent as a crafter of words. One Daily Beast colleague, a tremendously gifted and experienced writer who only recently joined Twitter, compares it to standing in the middle of Times Square and shouting your opinions (or your breaking news scoops) to millions of passersby, hoping someone will listen. Its a lot of effort for what he views to be a largely thankless and futile exercise. Yet hes on there for a reason. A college professor in Ohio is under investigation for supporting ISISbut he wasnt hiding his distasteful views. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said Tuesday it is looking at whether Julio Pino of Kent State University supported the terrorist group and if he recruited his own students to join the Islamic State. Public posts on the history professors Facebook page show why the FBI might be suspicious. Two of the cover photos posted by Pino show ISIS militants. One image appears to be a screengrab from an ISIS recruitment video, showing two masked men with guns in the back of a truck. Keep it a secret: thats me on the left! Pino commented. The second image, an AFP photo from Aleppo, Syria, shows a long line of armed men marching through a desert with AK-47s raised over their heads. Another photo shows Pino in front of the U.S. Capitol with a comment referencing 9/11. I told Ziad Jarah to head for the Capitol, but did he listen? No! Pino wrote in an apparent reference to United Flight 93 hijacker Ziad Jarrah. The flight bound for Washington, D.C., crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after a passenger revolt and is believed to have been targeting the Capitol. Pino denied supporting ISIS when asked by Kent States newspaper on Tuesday. Ive not broken the law, Pino said. I dont advocate that anyone else break the law, so Ill stand by that statement that I fulfill my duties as an American citizen by speaking out on issues that some people find controversial, of course, but no, I have not violated any laws that Im aware of or that anyone has informed me of. And I ask others to respect my freedom of speech as I respect theirs. Pino is expected to teach two classes in the spring term, but Kent States president denounced his views Tuesday on Twitter. Prof. Pino doesnt speak on behalf of Kent State, Beverly Warren tweeted. We find his comments reprehensible & counter to our core values. Pino has a long history of controversial remarks about Israel and terrorism. In 2011, he shouted Death to Israel! at a lecture by an Israeli diplomat on campus. In 2002, he praised Jerusalem suicide bomber Ayat al-Akras as a shining star in the campus newspaper. Those general views arent grounds for prosecution, but posting pro-ISIS messages on social media can be. In November, Terrence McNeil of nearby Akron was arrested and charged with soliciting the murder of U.S. servicemembers in ISISs name for re-blogging a GIF on Tumblr that featured some of their names and addresses. Prosecutors allege that McNeil broke the law because the GIF also said to kill them wherever you find them, even though it was created by others. There is some freedom of speech. If I lived in the UK I would have been arrested for the things I post on tumblr, McNeil told a friend on Twitter before his arrest, also referencing First Amendment protections. I don't hide my support, to my knowledge nobody in this country has been arrested simply for support. McNeil and two other Ohio residents have already been charged with ISIS-related crimes, though none of them have any apparent connection to Pino. She went off the grid, he went insane. Prosecutors in Camden, New Jersey, say a part-time father, paranoid of losing his girlfriend to a SnapChat suitor, murdered his 3-year-old son to quell her hateful discontent of the child. David DJ Creato Jr. reported his son Brendan missing at 6 a.m. on Oct. 13. I just woke up and my son was gone, he told a 911 operator. Three hours later, a Port Authority K-9 unit found Brendan partially submerged in secluded woods less than a mile from his fathers home. Brendans socks were still clean. The medical examiner determined he died from homicidal violence of undetermined etiology. Brendans father was arrested last week and indicted for first-degree murder and second-degree child endangerment in Camden County, New Jersey. At a bond hearing last Tuesday, assistant prosecutor Christine Shah laid out their case against Creato, including a motive driven by jealousy and paranoia. Creato met Julia Spensky, 17, on Tinder last June. While prosecutors say Spenksy warned Creato on their second date that she disliked kids, the pair carried on an intense romantic relationship through the summer. The relationship cooled off in September when Spenksy left Pennsylvania to attend college in New York. That left only the weekends for her to spend time with Creato, who also saw his son every other weekend as part of his joint-custody agreement with Brendans mother. The prosecutor told a judge last week that Creato dropped Spensky off at the train station on Oct. 12 so she could return to New York after the long weekend together at his apartment. Once home, Creato spoke to Spensky on the phone at 8:15 p.m. for about four minutes; she told him she was going to bed early because she had a test the next morning and they said goodnight. Creato would later tell investigators he did not believe his girlfriend had gone to bed so early. While he waited for his mother and sister to drop his son off at 8:30 p.m., he texted Spensky several times, sending what Shah called kind messages, telling her he loved her, telling her she was beautiful. Shah said that Spensky did not reply. At 8:50 p.m., Brendan was dropped off at Creatos home. After reading to Brendan and eating potato chips, Creato said he put him to bed in a loveseat at 9:30 p.m., nine feet from his own bed, and went to sleep 30 minutes later. That was his story, Shah told a judge. The forensic examination of his cellphone, however, tells a much different story. Prosecutors say phone records show Creato was awake and online hours later than he claimed on the morning Brendan died, obsessed with what he imagined his absent girlfriend may be doingand who she was doing it with. From the moment he was alone with his son, according to phone records detailed by Shah, Creato was online, snooping through Spenskys social media profiles for evidence of infidelity. Creato told police on the day of the disappearance that he was suspicious of his girlfriend because she was going to bed so early, he didnt believe her, according to Shah. He was having a lot of anxiety about her talking to[a] guy. He described his own state of mind that Monday night as jealous and paranoid. When Spensky did not reply to his texts, and with his mother and sister gone, Shah says Creato used his cellphone to get into one of her social media accounts, including SnapChat. He saw that she received a message, or snap, I believe its called, from a guy at schoolthe same guy he was already jealous of and already worried about, Shah said. Shah said Creato tried to call his girlfriend three more times between 9:54 and 10:07 p.m., but she never answered. And there sleeping in the next room was the source of his girlfriends hateful discontent with their relationship, Shah said. The last time Creato checked his girlfriends SnapChat was a 1:47 a.m. Four hours later, he called 911 and calmly told the operator he could not find his 3-year-old son, offering at one point he must have unlocked the doors and walked out. Creatos attorney, Richard Fuschino Jr., stood and said he was compelled to address Shahs repeated assertions that his client would be found guilty of murder. Very humbly, [for Shah to] say that this case is circumstantial but compelling, I couldnt disagree more. What Ms. Shah would have you believe is that DJ Creato is smart enough to somehow smother, or drown, or strangle his son in a way, that is leaving the remains where they can only tell the cause of death by exclusion and at the same time during a statement to police say things like there was a huge problem between me and my girlfriend. Investigators seem to have suspected Creato all along, as Spensky revealed in now-deleted Tumblr posts in the days following Brendans disappearance. I cant talk to my parents or anyone else in my family, not that anyone knows what happened she wrote a few days after Brendan disappeared. My boyfriend is in worse trouble than I am and cant leave the state hes in, but he has friends and family all around him to cry with and hug and vent to and lean on. I dont have that luxury. Spensky posted that she already been advised by her attorney not to speak to anyone about a homicide case in which she may be a possible suspect. Joseph Sorrentino, a high-dollar litigator in New York City, represents Spensky but would not comment. They are still a couple, Shah said. In fact, she was at his parents house in Haddon Township today. Samantha Denoto, Brendans mother, sat stone-like through most of the hearing Tuesday as Shah related alleged details of her sons murder, but flinched when the prosecutor told the judge Creato and Spensky were still romantically involved. Shah told the judge the continuing relationship made Creato a flight risk, because Spensky has significant out of state contacts, and asked Creatos bail remain at $1 million. Shah did not name Spensky in court, citing her status as a juvenile, but Creatos girlfriend was previously named in the press. After her Tumblr posts gained the medias attention, Fuschino identified her to reporters. Fuschino disregarded Shahs claim that Creatos ongoing relationship with the teen would make him more likely to skip bail. Long before authorities announced a suspect, the Denoto and Creato families closed ranks, and friends started separate online fundraisers. A cruise ship boss says he was forced to walk the plank despite saving dozens of passengers from getting run over. William Vick said he suffered permanent back injuries last year when he jumped in front of a whale of a man flying down a ramp toward vacationers waiting to board a Norwegian Cruise Line vessel in Hawaii. Instead of a clambake for valor, the food and beverage supervisor got a pink slip for allegedly canoodling with an underling. Now hes suing Norwegian in a South Carolina federal court for tossing him off the boat for no reason and skipping out on his medical bills. Vicks attorney calls him nothing short of a hero.Hes like a seaman superman and lunging in and grabbing this thing and saving the people below, Thomas Winslow told The Daily Beast. Thats the kind of image I have. Days after his heroics, when he was scheduled to get an MRI, Vick was summoned to appear at a meeting with senior brass. The minute I got called up there and they spoke her name I knew what this was about. It was a quick meeting and it was a joke, he told The Daily Beast in an exclusive interview about how he was deep-sixed. The poor girl got let go... The whole thing is a farce from the beginning. The ships captain and others in charge of Hawaiian island-hopping Pride of America cruise ship who held the meeting had accused Vick, 51, and a bartender, of courting inside of his cabin weeks before the wheelchair heroics. Thats their accusation. Its the most ridiculous thing Ive ever heard in my life, Vick said, denouncing the idea that the relationship was ever anything but platonic. Theres nothing that stops anybody from coming to talk to me or see me in a cabintheres no rules against that whatsoever. The civil lawsuit cites Vicks own copy of Norwegian Cruise Line Shipboard Handbook as stating that alone time, even hanky panky amongst crew members, is permitted. The handbook specifically states that consensual romantic and/or sexual relationships or platonic living relationships between team members may occur. In fact, Vicks lawyer, Thomas Winslow, said that the food and beverage supervisor was trying to get the twentysomething woman who was homesick to stick around. She was bawling and crying and he was just trying to convince her to work through the end of voyagethe end of the contract and she could just go on her way but he wanted her to not leave them stranded and low-staffed, Winslow said. The harsh exit was crushing for Vick. To be sent offI was literally sitting in the parking lot with my suitcase looking at the ship leaving, he said. I was given 40 minutes to get off the ship. And I had no assistance removing my suitcase. I was in so much pain it was unreal, he said. I had to pay for my own flight home. It was pretty ugly. Left high and dry in Hawaii, the castaway had to figure out how to get clear across the country and back to South Carolina on his own dime. I was thousands of miles from home where Im looking at the Atlantic right now, he said. Its just bizarre the way the whole thing was handled. I had no pain medication I had nothing. I had nothing. Norwegian Cruise Lines did not return multiple emails and voice messages left by The Daily Beast. It was an especially low tide on Sept. 11, 2014, the civil lawsuit notes, and the cruise ship had docked to scoop up revelers who were returning from a luau. Vick, who has 15 years experience on the high seas, was allegedly the only officer to greet returning guests and his lone assistant was a housekeeper. He was wheeling a large man in his wheelchair up the ramp when he lost his grip and the wheelchair began to roll down the gangway and towards all of the other passengers climbing the ramp. That particular day there was nobody there to help, Vick said. The housekeeper apparently was also pulling the heavy wheelchair in front of him before his grip on the handlebars gave way. And the ramp was wet, it was at a weird angle and the kid slipped and here came the wheelchairwhile theres a line of 900 people getting ready to get run over. Even after three back surgeries and telling management I didnt push wheelchairs, Vick says he turned himself into a human shield. Im trying to make sure the crew members OK and the wheelchair hits one of the ladies. I have her in one hand and the housekeeper in the other and knew something had happened with my back immediately. The following day after the incident Vick said he was given injections by the boats medic to quell the pain and that he was promised to be given time off the boat to make an MRI appointment at a Honolulu hospital. The MRI never happened, he said. I got no assistance. Vick freely admits that he had previous back woes and had worked very hard to get myself back physically to be able to work. But mostly Vick said he feels like was let down. Im one of those guys that when Im working somewhere Im in 100 percent, he said. And I expect the people I work with to be in 100 percent as well. Winslow, his attorney, said the injuries are likely irreparable. He has severe nerve damage to his back which causes conditions in his leg. His leg is atrophied and its slowly decaying, he said. Hes got a permanent injury. Since his firing Vick pleaded with his former employer to compensate him for his medical and living expenses while he mends. But, the lawsuit states, Norwegian has failed to fully compensate Vick for his medical living expenses. Vicks lawyer admitted Norwegian has ponied up some money to reimburse the man for his medical expenses but says theres times where they arent sending him the check as agreed. Perhaps the most scalding of Vicks accusations against the cruise company is that he warned them of the safety issues on the very same ramp before the wheelchair slipped away from the housekeeper. I brought this particular issue up in safety meetings about that particular wheelchair, Vick said. And about the ramp that they were using and how unsafe it was and somebody was going to get hurt. But that somebody ended up being me. ISLAMABAD The terrorists were too early. In the morning fog, four young killers cut through the fence and scaled a wall at the back of Bacha Khan University in the northwest Pakistan town of Charsadda. Some of them, possibly all of them, were in their teens, sent on a mission to kill as many people as they could. Probably they had been told to expect crowds. Wednesday is the anniversary of the death in 1988, at the age of 97, of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Basha Khan, the renowned Pashtun leader of a nonviolent resistance movement against the British Raj. GALLERY: Terrorist Attack on University Kills 23 (PHOTOS) His political legacy is carried by the Awami National Party (ANP) which is the only political party in Pakistan that has consistently opposed terrorism and has given political cover to counter-terror operations. That is why it has lost about 1,000 members, including some senior leaders, in terrorist attacks. A major commemoration ceremony was being planned at the university that bears Khans name. But that was scheduled for the afternoon. So the terrorists, armed with at least one explosive backpack and with AK-47 assault rifles, started shooting at any human target they could make out through the mist. We saw them open fire indiscriminately, 24-year-old Abdul Omarzai, a student at the university, told The Daily Beast. Our chemistry professor was the first target, killed on spot just as he was walking from the main door to his department. The militants were so young, one of them could hardly carry his AK-47, said Omarzai. They rushed towards the university hostel. It was a foggy day, but we could still hear them and see them, said Omarzai, who took shelter behind a wall with friends. I heard a couple of students calling for help. Probably that was their last call for help. One professor reportedly was armed and returned fire, helping some of the students escape. The campus security force, said to number about 50 officers, deployed quickly. So did the local police, eventually cornering the attackers and killing them. Partly as a result, the death toll19 people, not including the dead militantswas much lower than in the December 2014 attack on the Army Public School in nearby Peshawar where a seven-man commando sent by the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) slaughtered 141 people, including 132 schoolchildren, some of them as young as 8. Was this attack by the TTP as well? There were conflicting claims. The main organization said it had nothing to do with the operation; but another faction said it did. Whoever was behind it, the attack may end up damaging the Pakistani Taliban more than their enemies. I asked a former Afghan Taliban deputy minister for his opinion, and he said this looks like the TTP have turned into the worst sort of militantsthat attacks on people who are 100 percent innocent for no better reason than that they went to a university named for Bacha Khan is just unacceptable. The Afghan suggested that the governments in Kabul and Islamabad should accommodate the Taliban with a political settlement. If not, this war will take a turn toward the worst sort of revenge and torture. Another ex-Afghan Taliban deputy minister, Abdul Abdul Rahman Zahhin, told The Daily Beast, I personally condemn such meaningless attacks. Professor Khadim Hussain said he was driving on his way to Bacha Khan University when he got a call and was told to get back to his home. I lost about six close friends and students. Many good, brilliant students and professors were killed, he said. Sen. Afrasiab Khattak, a leader of the Awami National Party, which carries Bacha Khans political legacy, told The Daily Beast with marked understatement, this was a most unfortunate incident. To the extent the attack demonstrates anything, its that Pakistan, with all its military power, cannot protect its citizens from the Taliban and has not been able to expel the TTP from North Waziristan even after two years of heavy military operations. As Khattak pointed out, Islamabad announced a 20-point National Action Plan approved by an All Parties Conference soon after the gruesome 2014 attack on the Army Public School, but it was never implemented: banned organizations remain publicly active; so-called good Taliban are allowed to circulate freely. (The extensive presence of Afghan Taliban, who have a longstanding relationship with the Pakistani intelligence services, is an open secret). NACTA , a national counter-terrorism body, was never activated. Reforms to religious schools were called for, but they remain unreformed, Khattack noted. Extremist organizations in Punjab are untouched. The Federally Administered Tribal Areas, FATA, along the Afghan border have not been brought into the main stream of Pakistani government and society. So it is hardly surprising, said Khattak, that the terrorists have been able to regroup and reorganize. Triumph the Insult Comic Dog has really been enjoying his time on the campaign trail this week. Just two days after bantering with Killer Mike and Debbie Wasserman Schultz at the Democratic debate in South Carolina, the puppet creation of former SNL writer Robert Smigel was spotted at a Ted Cruz rally in New Hampshire on Tuesday. Later that night, he was reporting live from the Granite State on MSNBCs The Last Word with Lawrence ODonnell. And as he made clear up top, he was freezing whatever is left of my nuts out here. Pretty impressive for MSNBC, Triumph said of the steam effect coming out of his mouth. I see your budget really skyrocketed once all that Ed Schultz money freed up, he added to groans from ODonnells crew. Im able to go inside the Ted Cruz events, but Im not to talk to Senator Cruz, the puppet explained of his press credentials. You know, I was there with a media pass like a legitimate press person. You know what legitimate press is like, you know, before MSNBC days. If Triumph had been allowed to ask Cruz questions, he would have gone with something like, Your wife works for Goldman Sachs, Ted. We all want to punish Wall Street, but isnt sharing a bed with you a little extreme? You know, simple questions like that. When Triumph caught Cruzs eye at one of his events, he said, I had fear in my eyes. Thats a very scary glare, that Ted Cruz glare. John Waynes daughter endorsed Trump and Cruz, I understand, got the endorsement of the daughter of John Wayne Gacy. And, of course, he couldnt leave without ODonnell asking him about Sarah Palins big endorsement of Trump in Iowa earlier in the afternoon. No one really gives a crap about her except the media, do they? he asked. He posited that Palin is only choosing Trump because hes against background checks, adding, If John McCain had conducted one, she would never have been on the ticket. But he did think Trumps crowds were getting a bad rap. Theres quite a diverse group of individuals who show up at Donald Trumps events and get the crap beaten out of them, he said. People of all races and creeds get ejected. Over the past two decades Smigel and his dog puppet have made appearances on Conan OBriens various late-night shows, but this type of correspondent work for cable news was a bit of a departure. During the last election cycle, he worked the spin room at the final general election debate for a bit that now has nearly a million views on Conans YouTube channel. To share with friends and brethren The Gospel of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ (the Everlasting Gospel), and to prepare a people to stand when He returns to redeem His remnant. Also, to share relevant information of current events, and to show how they relate to prophecy; By means of articles, editorials, opinions, scripture readings, and poetry. Disclaimer Endrtimes does not necessarily endorse or agree with every opinion expressed in every article/video posted on this site. The information provided here is done so for personal edification; It's up to the reader to separate truth from error, and to examine everything (like the Bereans) from a Biblical perspective. Let the Holy Scriptures be you guide! - - - FAIR USE NOTICE: These pages/videos may contain copyrighted () material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available to advance understanding of ecological, POLITICAL, HUMAN RIGHTS, economic, DEMOCRACY, scientific, MORAL, ETHICAL, and SOCIAL JUSTICE ISSUES, etc. It is believed that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior general interest in receiving similar information for research and educational purposes. HONG KONG Three titles among thousands in the anti-Beijing bookstores located here will give you a taste of whats available. Theres Mao Zedong and the Red Guard, theres Xi Jinpings Internal Dialog, and of course theres Princelings: Killing the Nation. Such books, anathema to the mainland government, are published in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and churned out at breakneck speed. If a tigera high level public officialis snagged in President Xi Jinpings anti-corruption campaign, expect to see a slew of books about the unfortunate mans private and personal lives within a week or two. A lot of it might be hearsay or gossip, but that doesnt stop readers from snapping up the volumes. For the booksellers and publishers, its a risky business. As some have learned recently, they can disappear suddenly and without explanation. On Dec. 30, one of the shareholders of the Causeway Bay Book Bookstore, Lee Bo, lost contact with his wife. Earlier that day, Mr. Lee received a phone call for a large order, and went to his warehouse to pick up the books so he could deliver them to the client personally. Lees wife finally received a phone call that evening. The caller ID showed a phone number registered in Shenzhen. Lee said to herin Putonghua, instead of Cantonese, which they normally usethat he was in Shenzhen assisting in an investigation, and he wouldnt be back soon. He also told her to be careful, to take care of their son, and not to publicize the incident. RTHK, the public radio broadcaster in Hong Kong, reported that the Immigration Department had no records of Lee Bo leaving Hong Kong for Mainland China. Two days later, Lee was still missing, so his wife went to the police in Hong Kong for help. They told her that Lee is a normal person, so he is free to cross the border between Hong Kong and Mainland China as he pleases, and there is no reason to mount an investigation. Last October, another shareholder and three employees who work for Lees bookstore disappeared under the same murky circumstances. One of the men, a Swedish national named Gui Minhai, was in Thailand when he apparently fell off the face of the Earth. At the time, Mr. Lee had told BBC News, I suspect all of them were detained. Four people went missing at the same time. Chinese officials still have not confirmed or denied that the four men are in custody in Mainland China. These disappearances arent limited to booksellers or publishers in Hong Kong. The same kind of tactics have been used against Chinese activists, human-rights lawyers, government officials about to be purged, business tycoons, and high-finance types who were blamed for last years stock market crash. Since Lee Bo is a British national, the United Kingdoms Foreign Office has expressed deep concern about his disappearance. During a visit in Beijing two weeks ago, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said Beijing would be guilty of an egregious breach if it is ever confirmed that Chinese security forces were involved in the abduction of Lee. The evening before Hammonds statement, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi ignored Lee Bos British citizenship and said the bookseller is first and foremost a Chinese citizen. There are other serious legal ramifications. Under the one country, two systems formula that establishes the sovereign relationship between China and Hong Kong, the former British colony is guaranteed a high degree of autonomy in its judicial and political affairs. In particular, Mainland Chinese police officers are not allowed to operate in Hong Kong. Removing Hong Kongs booksellers and publishers from public sight is part of a larger campaign waged by Beijing to plug the criticisms coming from the southeastern city. Hong Kong enjoys a greater freedom of speech than Mainland China, and critics of the Chinese Communist Partys actions have, in the past, been able to express their concerns without a huge fear of retaliation. But things have changed in recent years. Kevin Lau, the mild-mannered former chief editor of Hong Kongs Ming Pao, a Chinese-language newspaper with a reputation for engaging in aggressive investigative reporting, was attacked by two men in February 2014. He suffered stab wounds to his back and legs. Less than a year before Lau was attacked, Chen Ping, the publisher of a magazine that is banned in Mainland China, was beaten by two men wielding batons. In a separate incident, masked men threatened the workers of Next Media Group and burned 26,000 copies of Apple Daily, a popular anti-CCP tabloid in Hong Kong. Eleven people, all with links to triad gangs, were arrested in connection with Laus attack, with the two main suspects detained in Guangdong province, which is next door to Hong Kong. The South China Morning Post cited a source close to Guangdongs Public Security Bureau, and said each attacker was paid US$129,000 to carry out the assault on Lau. However, it was never made clear who paid the pair. On Sunday night, state-run CCTV broadcast a statement by Gui Minhai, the man who had disappeared from Thailand in October. For so many years, I was abroad, I was in constant fear and discomfort, and often had nightmares, Gui said. I also dreamed that I would return home, and see my relatives. In his confession, Gui said he was involved in a drunken hit-and-run in Ningbo, a city on the eastern coast of China, 12 years ago. The collision killed a university student. A report by Xinhua claims he used fake identification documents to leave China after the incident, and eventually obtained Swedish citizenship, which Gui addressed in his statement. Even though I have Swedish citizenship, I truly feel I am Chinese, and my roots are still in China, Gui said. I hope the Swedish authorities can respect my personal choice, respect my rights and privacy, and let me solve my problems on my own. The report ends on an ominous note: Gui Minhai is suspected of other crimes, we are told. Other individuals involved in the case are assisting with the investigation. After Gui's appearance on CCTV, the Guangdong Provincial Public Security Department acknowledged that they have Lee Bo in custody. What is evident, by observing the series of attacks and disappearances targeting anti-CCP publishers, is that Beijing is touchy about the printed word. But the CCPs freakishly tight control of all forms of media, particularly in print and online, doesnt simply limit the consumption of information. It hinders economic development. Chinese tech companies are unable to use the tools that are used by their counterparts in every other part of the world. Scholars need to navigate nagging obstacles to conduct research and generate research papers. Students do not have access to the same wealth of information available to anyone else, particularly the modern history of their own nation. In major Mainland Chinese cities, propaganda banners, posters, and murals blanket downtown areas. Certain words are tossed around the most: prosperity, democracy, civilization, harmony, freedom, equality, justice, rule of law, patriotism, dedication, integrity, kindness. Yet dissent, or even mere disagreement with the CCPs policy, is enough to land one in sticky, extra-legal situations involving threats issued by state-sanctioned agents or crippling physical assaults committed by hired hands. Its not a new idea that the gentle public face of Beijing hides an iron fist, but Hongkongers are seeing a gradual but incessant creep of the CCPs thuggish tactics and influence in the city, with no ability to riposte. The O.G. captain of the Starship Enterprise has seen it all. During Star Treks half-century reign as one of pop cultures most beloved science fiction franchises, William Shatner learned to lean into his Captain Kirk roots and the fandom thats embraced him for 50 years (and counting) this year. That includes several generations of diehard Trekkies, NASA engineers, and real-life astronautsbut even Shatner was tickled to learn that his musings on the final frontier made it all the way to the floor of British Parliament. Space is one of the last known frontiers, mostly untouched by mankind in his politics, Scottish National Party MP Philippa Whitford quoted Shatner as saying, addressing a recent House of Commons debate on the future of the U.K.s space program by reading a message from the Star Trek icon. In opening a debate on this subject, it is my hope that you take the tenets of Star Treks prime directive to universally and peacefully share in the exploration of it. I wish you all a wonderful debate. My best, Bill. Whitford filled the rest of her pro-space speech with Star Trek references and concludednaturallyby flashing the Vulcan live long and prosper sign. Days later, Shatner was incredulous to hear that his message had been quoted during an official government session when he rang The Daily Beast to talk Trek. Did they read it out loud? I cant believe it! he laughed. They read it out loud? It was tongue-in-cheek more than anything else, he said, highly amused. Well, its not a terrible message. Thats remarkable and Im complimented I think. Should Shatners prime directive-directive help make Scotland the site of the U.K.s first commercial spaceport, however, the erstwhile James Tiberius Kirk will pass on voyages departing from Earth, thank you very much. Going up into space and coming back down? No, he declared, theres no guarantee Im coming back down. Hes got plenty keeping him busy down here, anyway. Shatner, 84, still stumps for the franchise that made his career and is promoting the Star Trek: The Ultimate Voyage 50th anniversary North American concert tour, which brings music from the films and television shows together, performed by a live orchestra and accompanied by iconic clips from five decades of Trek. Its taking the themes and relating them to other Star Trek franchises, he explained. Man against man might come up three or four times in different entities. The music is really sensational. Youd think hed be tired of hearing the same majestic scores 50 years in, but Shatner chuckled at the thought. Fifty years into the influential serieswhich sees its 13th film hit theaters this summer, albeit sans ShatnerTrek has had such a lasting impact on pop culture that this year Apple released an LLAP emoji, weaving Spocks famous gesture into the very fabric of our digital lives. Its a long time and yet its no time at all, said Shatner. And thats the tragedy and the excitement of it. Im amazed at how much influence this small show had on peoples lives, their choice of career, getting over grief, major events in their lives. Star Trek seems to have helped. I ask Shatner if he ever has work dreams from his years in that Starfleet uniform, on the sets of the seminal Star Trek: The Original Series and the seven feature films that followed. No, I dont have those dreams, he laughs. Well, Ill tell you one of my recurring dreams. I ride a lot of horses and Im competitive in riding, and one of my dreams is Im on my horse, and the horse is galloping across a field. Im running, the horse is running, and its running for me. Im running as fast as the horse. If youre seeking to analyze the dream, it could go anywhere! But I am on the horse, and Im moving at the same speed as the horse. Im a writer, not a psychologist. But the energetic actor, voice actor, Priceline.com spokesman, author, Twitterer, and recording artist has several other projects keeping him busy these days, including the U.S. debut of his one-man show, Shatners WorldWe Just Live In It, which began by request in Australia before Shatner took it to Canada and Broadway. Hes also releasing his latest book, Leonard: My Fifty-Year Friendship With A Remarkable Man, about his Star Trek co-star and longtime pal Leonard Nimoy, who passed away last February from lung disease. The memoir was inspired by the rare closeness he shared with Nimoy, Shatner said. I never had that kind of thing before, and having achieved it was remarkable to me, he said. His death was a severe loss in my life. When you lose somebody you love, with whom youve had life experiences, all of those life experiences are not validated anymore. Remember when we did this? Theres nobody left to say that to, so that memory is lost. A part of your life goes. It also delves into Shatners musings on friendship itself, particularly among men: The strangeness of friendship, why men have more difficulty making friends than women do, how to make a friend, what a friend means, and how you sustain a friendship, he explained. Shatners bond with Nimoy was born five decades ago, but Captain Kirk wasnt buddy-buddy with all of his Enterprise mates. His public feud with co-star George Takei, it seems, has not been quashed since exploding over a decade ago in the pages of Takeis autobiography To The Stars, in which he claimed Shatner snubbed him on the TOS set. He is very self-centered, Takei said of Shatner last year on Real Time with Bill Maher. Shatner shot back, calling Takei a disturbed individual. Shatner says they havent yet buried the hatchet. He buried the hatchet, he laughed. In my back! No, I dont know him. I havent seen him in 20 or 30 years. Hes a strange man, and I dont know who he is. Surely he did once upon a time, when the actors shared time on the bridge of the Enterprise? I never really knew him to begin with. You know, hed come in for a day, then leave. I didnt know who he was exactly. The reality in filming a movie or a series is that its broken down into scenes, and people can play a scene and then leave. So if George was in a scenewhich he was, on occasionhed do a scene and then leave. So I didnt know him very well. He just seems to have had a bug somewhere and has held onto it for 50 years, which seems, on its face, remarkable. Earlier in the day, word broke of actor Alan Rickmans passing. I didnt know him, but I was an admirer of his, said Shatner of Rickman, whose lauded career included the Star Trek send-up Galaxy Quest, in which he played a droll Nimoy figure. A wonderful and eloquent actor, obviously classically trained. He was a joy to behold. Another recent loss sent Shatner down memory lane. His 2011 concept album Seeking Major Tom was inspired by the iconic work of David Bowie, whose Jan. 10 passing shocked fans across the world, underscoring his musical and cinematic impact. I had the best time with that, Shatner fondly recalled. When I saw Bowie perform it, it was a lesson in uniqueness and individuality and blind talent. For me, I used the song as a device to string cover songs all the way through, trying to find what happened to Major Tomhe steps out of a capsule and we never hear of him again! I tried to find where he might have gone, walking on the moon. As for further Bowie covers, Shatners been there, done that. But he does have a Christmas album in the works. I cant tell you what it is, but I do have a concept, he teased. Christmas songs evoke a beautiful sense of peace and justice and little chubby fat men on the roof. Star Treks golden anniversary year also coincides with the 2016 U.S. presidential race, but the prolific Twitterer declined to comment on the upcoming election. Im not going to get involved in the Trump debate, he declared, deftly deflecting. Maybe he got enough grief last summer when Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz claimed Captain Kirk as his kind of leader. I think it is quite likely that Kirk is a Republican and Picard is a Democrat, Cruz theorized, sparking heated debate among fans and a tweet reply from Shatner himself. Star Trek wasnt political. Im not political; I cant even vote in the U.S., tweeted Shatner, who is Canadian-born but became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2004. So to put a geocentric label on interstellar characters is silly. Knowing now that even the British Parliament has his ear, however, he offered the same piece of advice to the U.S. government and 2016s American presidential hopefuls: Dont mess with the Prime Directive. [To U.S. politicians], I say the same thing: Dont interfere with our personal lives, proclaimed the only man to beat the Kobayashi Maru test. Do whats good for the general public. Thats about it. A College Station electronic collector who has purchased a late Texas A&M professor's radio ended up with a rare military device that is now on its way to an Indiana museum to be part of an exhibit dedicated to the sunken battleship USS Indianapolis. Doug Christensen, an electrical engineer, is a tinkerer and inventor, as well as a collector of electronics. He likes to restore old radios, rebuild old guitar amplifiers and operate amateur radios, which are often called "ham radios." Christensen recently bought the antique naval radio after he was contacted through Craigslist by the late professor's son, who said the radio was just gathering dust in a storage locker. "I didn't have any idea it had any value when I got it," he said. The radio, a 120-pound ham-style device, turned out to be a model from the first half of the 20th century that was typically used on naval battleships, Christensen said. He made the discovery after visiting a website devoted to radio enthusiasts and hobbyists, where the Indiana War Memorial Museum had posted a request. The museum has an exhibit dedicated to the radio room of the USS Indianapolis, a battleship that was delivering parts of the first atomic bomb to a U.S. air base in Japan when it was torpedoed in 1945 by the Japanese Navy, killing more than 300 Americans. The exhibit re-creates the battleship's radio room with a fully operational setup, according to the museum's website. It was just missing one essential piece, which Christensen discovered was his radio. Though the actual radio of the USS Indianapolis went down in the water with the ship, Christensen said his model is identical to the one used on the ship -- and it's a rare find. "This radio was a very high-tech receiver for the time," he said. "No one could ever reach a frequency as high as these radios went, so you didn't have to use special codes for secrecy." Christensen contacted the museum, telling them he had this specific model of radio in his possession. Though he hasn't gotten the radio to work, Christensen said museum staff told him that they will be able to restore it to working order for their exhibit. On Friday, three volunteers from the Texas A&M University Veteran Resource and Support Center helped Christensen, a Vietnam-era veteran of the Air Force, build a large wooden crate to ship the bulky radio to Indiana. The radio begins its journey to the museum today, Christensen said. EL PASO, Texas (AP) Most women in the United States about 99 percent, according to one study plan for a hospital birth. But some mothers are trending away from the sterile hallways of their local medical facilities to labor and deliver in the comfort of a birthing center or their own homes. That's what Emily and Vito Cancellare decided to do. On Dec. 26, Leo Cancellare was brought into this world in a tub of warm water at The Retreat birthing center in El Paso. "We educated ourselves on what our options were," Emily said. "I knew that if there was an alternative to a hospital birth, we would take advantage of that because there is a little more freedom in the decision-making process that would be respected more in a birthing center." The Cancellares decided on a birthing center to avoid unnecessary medical interventions and drugs. "Emily was 100 percent in all the way," Vito said. "My wife is a very, very powerful woman. She is strong, she is confident. A lot people view a pregnancy as a condition, she viewed it as something natural. This is what she was built for. Women have been doing this for millennia." The number of babies born in birth centers run by midwives has jumped from 56 percent since 2007 to about 16,000, while total U.S. births have dropped nearly 10 percent in the same time, according to federal data. Lynn Arnold, founder and administrator of The Retreat, said they are providing a support system for women looking for a holistic approach to childbirth. "I don't care who or where you birth with, but I want you to be educated, I want you to have a support system and I want you to come out of your birth experience without feeling birth trauma or postpartum depression or any of those things," Arnold said. "And if you do, we have counseling for that, too." There have been eight births since The Retreat opened in September. Three more births are planned for January and seven more in February. "There's another birthing center called Maternidad La Luz," Arnold said. "That was set up like Casa de Nacimiento, which serves women of Juarez on this side of the border. Our women here tend to be military wives, professionals, upper-middle class Americans. Predominantly, we are serving El Paso women and some Las Cruces women as well." Birth centers are covered by many insurers the same way a traditional hospital birth is covered. Since the length of the mom's and baby's stay in a birth center is so much shorter hours instead of days -- and does not involve doctors or anesthesia, the costs of a normal delivery are about half those in a hospital. "Think of it like a hospital where you go in and pay the hospital and then you pay your doctor separately. It's kind of the same way here," Arnold said. "If you are coming in at a full cash pay, its $1,500 to $2,000. Your midwife depends on what her individual fees are. For example, I'm the most expensive one here at $3,500. There are two other midwives at $3,000, and then there are newly licensed midwives at $1,500 to $2,000." The center provides many services, including breast-feeding support, yoga, music therapy and counseling. "It's a back-to-basic birth," said Lety Knight, a childbirth educator and doula. "Natural birth and birth centers get labeled as being trendy or something new, but in reality, home births, and being surrounded by midwives and other supportive people who know natural birth, have been around since the beginning of mankind. Hospital births are less than 100 years old." A doula is also known as a birth companion and post-birth supporter, who is a non-medical person who assists women before, during and after childbirth. "Knowledge is power," Knight said. "The more you know, the better you're going to be prepared and the more confident you are going to feel. It's nice to have your baby in familiar surroundings, where you know the people, you are comfortable and you know who is coming in because you've worked with them throughout the pregnancy." Jamie and Mark Ziegenfuss said they wanted flexibility to have the birth they wanted. "That was very important to me," Jamie said. "I have many friends who had really downright horrible experiences in hospitals. I'm not bashing anyone who decides to or needs to go to a hospital, but in an uncomplicated birth, there is no reason why a mother should not be able to have her child where she chooses to." Their baby Athena was born at The Retreat on Dec. 25. "I wanted a birth that was unmedicated and make choices that I wanted to have without opposition. I was able to do that here," she said. "It was a very easy birth, I couldn't ask for a better experience. Lynn and the entire staff were very supportive and right by my side the entire time." Amissa Metcalf, a doula, childhood educator and yoga instructor at the center, said the team and personalized concept of The Retreat is what makes the center special. "We realize this is a special experience. But, it's not just a physical experience, it's an emotional experience and it's a mental experience," she said. "This is designed to support all of that in one place. The birth experience is an amazing event every time." Vito Cancellare said being part of the birth experience is something he will always remember. "Emily was going to carry the baby for nine months, so I wanted to do whatever I could to make the birthing experience a positive one," he said. "I didn't want to be the goofy sitcom dad who didn't know what to do." He said it was a positive experience for him, too. "I brought my son into this world," he said. "I was the first person to touch Leo as he came into this world. Emily was in the tub, I saw his head and I jumped right in there. It was amazing to watch; I was in awe. It is something I'll never forget." Don was born September 18, 1951 in Coral Gables, Florida to Jack and Irene (Reed) Winn. As an infant their family moved to Houston, Texas. He attended Annunciation Catholic School in downtown Houston at the early age of 4. His adventures started early in life beginning with dropping out of high school at 16 years old. After attending the infamous Woodstock concert where he got to see "all the cool bands", he began playing bass guitar with several friends and played in a band for many years. In between he sailed with his best friend Larry Nixon to Mumbi, India as an assistant cook. The Nixons were always a second family to him and still are today. The experience opened his eyes to the real world. Unfortunately, due to illness, he had to return home early. After recovering, he returned to school and graduated from Lamar High School in 1969. By driving a Yellow Cab, he afforded himself the opportunity to attend the University of Houston. He was accepted to medical school after graduating in 1976, but decided not to take that path and instead went to work as a laboratory research assistant with the Baylor College of Medicine. He later went to work for Shell Research and Development. It was there that he met the love of his life, Barbara. After a year of courtship, they were married September 6, 1986. Together they raised his stepdaughter, Julie. Don had a love of running and would often run 5 or 6 miles a day. He loved his dogs and a special family of squirrels and enjoyed life to the fullest. He had a unique spark of genius that amazed all who knew him. He was known as the "Mad Scientist" to many of his friends. After early retirement from Shell in 1992, he and Barbara moved to the Lyons community where he raised many dogs, enjoyed the peaceful nature of country living and collected many antique relics. Don was blessed with a life-saving liver transplant on November 16, 1998 and lived another 17 amazing years. He was the oldest and longest living liver transplant recipient known. He was called home to our Heavenly Father on January 16, 2016 after a short battle with cancer. He is survived by his wife, Barbara, of 29 years, stepdaughter, Julie and husband John Mullen. His two grandsons, Quint and Zane, knew him as "Grandude" and "the squirrel whisperer", and always brought that special sparkle to his eyes. He was very proud of them both. He is also, survived by his brother, William R. Winn of Houston and sister-in-law Judy and husband Tom Ingram of California, his special dog "Captain Dawson" and many friends. Thank you to Hospice of Brazos Valley, all the angelic nurses and doctors, especially Dr. Richard Morgan, Dr. Scott Chenault, Dr. John Stonecipher, Dr. Tim and all who assisted him throughout his life. A special celebration of life will be held at a later time. In lieu of flowers, please send any donations to Hospice Brazos Valley. 502 W. 26th Street, Bryan, TX 77803. Services are in the care of Callaway-Jones Funeral Home and Crematory. Express condolences at CallawayJones.com Shortly after signing my contract as a store assistant for a well known low-cost German supermarket company, I came across a nasty reality that seemed not to bother the rest of my colleagues. Every day, at a sleepy four o'clock in the morning, a random employee has to do the 'waste inventory'. This consists of scanning all the products that can't be sold anymore, one by one, and then throwing them out into a blue container. The resulting mountain of food is impressive-around seventy bakery items, a hundred pieces of fruit, and fifteen trays of meat. Over two hundred food items start the morning at the bottom of the garbage container, every single day. But that's not the most surprising thing. The real scandal is that very few of these items need to be thrown away at all. Of course, the expiry dates of food have to scrupulously obeyed, but most of the reasons for throwing things away have nothing to do with protecting our health. Instead, we get rid of items just because they've lost their label, or because the package is broken, or because they've been left outside the fridge. In the frenzy of a regular work day, employees don't have time to scrutinize every corner of the store, searching for items that a neglectful customer has left out of place on a shelf, or that they themselves may have forgotten somewhere. Almost a third of the world's food goes to waste As a rough calculation, I'd say that food that's unfit for consumption accounts for less than half of what is thrown away. While doing the waste inventory I can see it, but the 'waste' is valued at only 300 or so - less than 1% of the store's daily income. What happens to it? I ask the delivery guy where he takes the food. "To the incinerator", he replies. "Why, are you hungry?" If you're able to imagine one ton of food and then multiply it by a hundred million you get the exorbitant amount that's wasted in Europe every year, according to a report from the European Parliament. At the global level, the FAO calculates that this comes to 1.3 billion tons per annum, or a third of all food that's produced. I can see a tiny part of this nonsense, day by day, in my shop. What's going on? At the heart of the problem is a basic lack of care, brought on by a culture of rushing, speed, and busyness-lots of people, scanner sounds, the noise of coins and trolleys-everything in a hurry. In shops like mine, everything is meant to be this way. The tills are designed for customers to be there for as little time as possible so that more people can be processed in the same number of minutes. In some ways the till is the perfect symbol of modern slavery: immersion in this small metal cage implies an average of six hours a day sitting and doing mechanical and monotonous scanning-and-packing work with one 30-minute break. Greetings and goodbyes are identical, mechanical, pronounced a hundred times per day: the same jokes, the same comments. We may have all come on different ships, but were in the same boat now. Using the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. Nathanial Bishop welcomed a crowd to the annual breakfast held in Kings honor at the Pigg River Community Center Monday morning. Bishop, the president of Jefferson College of Health Sciences at Carilion Clinic in Roanoke, was the keynote speaker at the 14th annual event. Bishop said he was happy to be addressing such a diverse and beautiful rainbow of good people. Bishop recalled the days when he attended segregated schools, sat in the balcony of his hometown movie theater and drank from separate water fountains. I thank God for the opportunity to serve as president of my college and, indeed, for all of the roles that God has allowed me to assume over these many years, he said. Its been a tremendous journey getting here. In January 1975, Bishop began work at the Christiansburg Police Department as its first black police officer and was later promoted to investigator. He served there until 1988 when he left to begin a career in healthcare as an administrator with Virginia United Methodist Homes, Inc. Bishop began working with Carilion Clinic in November 1997 at the Burrell Nursing Center in Roanoke, where he served as the executive director. In 2002, he was appointed vice president of Carilion Clinic and administrator of Carilion Roanoke Community Hospital. I remember and celebrate the progress that has been made, but I believe we would all agree that there is still work to be done in overcoming the barriers that still separate and our efforts to work together to build the beloved community that Dr. King so eloquently envisioned and spoke about, he said. Still today, there are too many symbols of division. There is a lack of stability and public discourse and there is too much divisive rhetoric. Bishop praised the members of the MLK Breakfast Club who sponsor the event each year. Bless you for what you are doing here, Bishop told club members. We need more events like this, where people of good will come together to demonstrate our commonality and our unity, where people come together from all walks of life with a desire to make a difference, to make this community a better place for everyone. There is so much hope and promise in our young people as the journey continues, he said. And the journey continues with us. Rev. John Collins, pastor of Rocky Mount Church of the Brethren, gave the invocation during this years breakfast, and Franklin County High School junior Rosalina Trotter offered the welcoming remarks. A prayer was offered by Rev. Chadwich Younger, pastor of Franklin Grove Baptist Church. Miss Pigg River Tatiyanna Trotter introduced the keynote speaker, and musical selections were provided by Cynthia Wade and Rev. James Perkins, pastor of Truevine Baptist Church. MLK Breakfast Club members Mary Helm, Glenna Moore and Josephine Edwards recognized members of the community for their dedicated service. Charles Wagner, vice chairman of the Franklin County Board of Supervisors, was presented a community service and leadership award for his years of service with the Rocky Mount Police Department, Franklin County Sheriffs Office, Helping Hands of Franklin County and other civic divisions. He is a dedicated and busy man in our community, Edwards said of Wagner. Also receiving a civic award was Audrey Clements Dudley, Franklin County transportation department secretary. Audrey will help with anything that benefits the community, said Moore. We are grateful for her love and devotion to Franklin County. Closing remarks were made by Rev. John Heck, executive director of the Phoebe Needles Center and rector of St. Peters Church. Heck also served as master of ceremonies for the event. Minister Sandra Trotter gave the benediction. The breakfast is sponsored annually by the MLK Club. Club members include William and Mary Helm, Bettye Buckingham, Josephine Edwards, Florella Johnson, and Larry and Glenna Moore. Coordinating the ushers was Beatrice Preston. The Virginia House of Delegates passed emergency legislation last Friday to make a widely supported fix to prevent some small businesses from facing higher costs for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. In a 97-0 vote, the House approved a bill to stop businesses with 51 to 100 employees from facing higher premiums by being moved this year into the small group insurance market, which currently applies to businesses with up to 50 employees. Federal lawmakers had already approved the tweak, which President Barack Obama signed into law last year. House Bill 58, patroned by Del. Kathy J. Byron, R-Bedford, was supported by the Virginia Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation for Independent Businesses. At a time when so many small businesses are struggling, we have to do everything we can to provide relief and certainty, Speaker of the House William J. Howell, R-Stafford, said in a written statement. This bipartisan bill will protect small businesses from another premium spike and will ensure their employees can keep their health care plans. Before the vote, House Minority Leader David J. Toscano, D-Charlottesville, rose to voice his support. It does prove again that occasionally Congress and the president can work together to fix some things that need to get fixed, Toscano said. When we focus on trying to fix things as opposed to trying to repeal things willy-nilly, we can get some good things done. Other states have been able to enact the fix through executive action. Legislation was required in Virginia because the implementation of the health care law is overseen by the Bureau of Insurance. A General Assembly bill filed last week would not seek to bring back the Confederate flag to the Sutherlin Mansion, but rather protect other old memorials dedicated to war veterans, bill patron Del. Charles Poindexter, R-Glade Hill, said. We dont need to take down all the monuments in the state, Poindexter said. House Bill No. 587 would amend the language in the Code of Virginia to protect monuments built before the 1998 war memorial law was passed. Currently, the language in the bill protects monuments built after the laws passage, but not before. Poindexter said comments from Danville Circuit Court Judge James Reynolds prompted him to draft the bill. On Oct. 29, Reynolds dismissed a lawsuit seeking to bring back the flag, saying the monument is not covered by state law protecting war memorials because the 1998 law did not specifically protect memorials retroactively. Poindexter said his changes would provide the clarity lacking in the law beforehand, but not seek to reverse the decision made by Reynolds. In August, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring wrote an opinion of the flag monument, saying the memorial was not honoring veterans of a war, but rather the Sutherlin Mansion itself as the Last Capital of the Confederacy. Danville City Council then voted to enact an ordinance allowing only the national, state, city and POW-MIA flags to fly on city-owned property, then the city removed the Confederate flag. When dismissing the lawsuit, Reynolds also said the 1994 resolution passed between the city council and the Heritage Preservation Society erecting the flag monument did not constitute a contract. The HPA filed an appeal of the decision in December. A Rocky Mount woman was indicted earlier this month on four felony fraud charges for allegedly selling counterfeit tickets to a NASCAR race. Brandy Michelle Blankenship, 35, was arrested on Sept. 3, 2015, during an undercover operation conducted by the Rocky Mount Police Department, according to Sgt. Josh Harris. The department received a call in August from a North Carolina man, who said he had purchased tickets for the race off an internet auction site and met a woman in Rocky Mount to make the purchase, Harris said. When the man discovered the tickets were counterfeit and could not get in touch with the seller, he contacted the RMPD. A couple of weeks later, Harris arranged to meet Blankenship in a parking lot in Rocky Mount to purchase five tickets to the Bank of America 500 in Charlotte for $385, he said. Once the exchange was made, Blankenship was arrested. Blankenship was indicted on three additional fraud charges for allegedly selling counterfeit tickets to the North Carolina man who contacted the RMPD and two more North Carolina residents, Harris said. SHARE By Erin Schmitt of The Gleaner Planning for the 2016-17 school budget has begun. The Henderson County Board of Education approved the 2016-17 draft budget during its meeting Tuesday night. A tentative budget will be passed in May and a working budget will be set in September. At least a couple of work sessions will be devoted to developing the tentative budget, which must be approved before June. The outlook for the tentative budget will become clearer once the legislative session adjourns April 12 and the tentative SEEK forecast, salary adjustments and projections for local tax revenues are known. "Our goal, of course, is to continue to fund key programs and to continue to be conservative in our financial decisions," said Cindy Cloutier, the school system's finance director. The draft budget includes planning assumptions since there's not a lot of definitive information at this point. One item that the district doesn't want to change, unless it's to increase it, is the general fund contingency, which is $5,886,268 or 7.21 percent. The total of all funds for the draft budget is $88,582,783. The beginning balance of the draft budget is $11,612,261, which is no change from last year's working budget. The budget does not include a general wage increase, nor does it include rank and step increases in the salary schedule. "The bottom line is conservative planning," said Cloutier. "Plan for the worst and hope for the best." Spottsville: The two-story building that will replace Spottsville Elementary will have a traditional schoolhouse look, complete with cupola. The school board approved the front facade for the new school with the provision that the option chosen didn't exceed $10,000 more than the other two options available. If it does exceed the limit, the board will take another vote at its Feb. 1 work session. Spottsville students and staff were polled informally and also preferred the traditional looking facade. School lunches: Child Nutrition Director Charlotte Baumgartner told the board that the district will need to increase the price for school meals. The cost for school breakfasts and lunches haven't been raised in four years. She said she will have a final recommendation on how much to raise the price in March. Meetings: The following dates have been set for work sessions, all to be held at 5:30 p.m. Feb. 1, March 7, April 4, May 2, June 6, July 11, Aug. 1, Sept. 12, Oct. 3, Nov. 7 and Dec. 5. Regular meetings will be held at 6 p.m. on Feb. 15, March 21, April 18, May 16, June 20, July 18, Aug. 15, Sept. 19, Oct. 17 and Dec. 19. Legal services: A pair of motions were approved in a split 3-2 vote pertaining to legal services. Board Chair Lisa Baird and Board Member Tracey Williams were the dissenting votes. Board Member Sally Sugg asked that a Request For Proposal for an attorney that includes the scope of work and hourly fee be sought. She also requested that the superintendent provide a three-year running list of invoices for legal services be provided so the board can make comparisons and evaluate the money being spent. Sugg said the board could continue to use the same board attorney, Beth Bird, on a month-to-month basis as the board seeks RPFs. Buses: The board approved a request for 21 school buses to be rented between 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. May 21 for the River Run. The rental cost is $4,000. Recognition: Jefferson Elementary's Lighthouse team presented each member of the school board with student-made frames as part of School Board Recognition Month. SHARE By Gleaner Staff FRANKFORT The Kentucky Arts Council will offer a webinar to assist artists seeking to apply for the Performing Artists Directory. The directory is an adjudicated roster of Kentucky performing artists used by in-state and out-of-state presenters and others as a resource for identifying artists for performance bookings and projects. The webinar will help explain the online application process for the program, and arts council staff will answer questions from potential applicants. Artists interested in applying to the arts council's directory can attend a webinar at 1 p.m. CST Jan. 24 or 1 p.m. CST or 5 p.m. CST Jan. 26. Applications are available online for artists interested in participating in the directory, a marketing assistance program that supports Kentucky performers of music, dance, theater and storytelling. Applicants interested in registering for the directory webinar can go to artscouncil.ky.gov/Opportunities/Webinar-PAD2016Register.htm. The deadline to apply is Feb. 16. For more information, contact Tamara Coffey, arts council individual artist director, at 502-564-3757, ext. 479, or tamara.coffey@ky.gov. MIKE LAWRENCE / THE GLEANER Emmi Wolfe, 9 years-old, and sister Eva Wolfe, 3 years-old, enjoy a snow day at Henderson's Municipal Golf course hitting the slopes, January 20, 2016. SHARE MIKE LAWRENCE / THE GLEANER Casey Davis watches his daughter Ella Davis, 11 years-old, (center) and her friend Maddie Patmore, 8 years-old, enjoy a snow day by making a snowman in the front yard of there home on Washington Street in Henderson Wednesday, January 20, 2016. MIKE LAWRENCE / THE GLEANER John Beach uses a snowblower to clear off a church parking lot on Letcher Street in Henderson Wednesday following a three inch snow blanketing the area, January 20, 2016. MIKE LAWRENCE / THE GLEANER Henderson City workers use front end loaders and dump trucks Wednesday to clear snow from downtown streets following the overnight three inch snow, January 20, 2016. MIKE LAWRENCE / THE GLEANER Working in his shorts, Juan Sosa helps out on Harmony Lane in Henderson shoveling off sidewalks Wednesday. The area was hit by a three inch snow late Tuesday evening, January 20, 2016. By Beth Smith of The Gleaner Although winter in the Tri-State started out slow and easy, it's coming on strong now. A snowstorm the first of three weather events anticipated this week moved through the Henderson area Tuesday night, dumping 3 inches in some parts of the county. The accumulation was on course for what the National Weather Service expected in this part of Western Kentucky, according to Meteorologist Sean Poulos. "Basically, we were calling for 2 to 4 inches," he said. "We haven't heard about too many (travel) problems" caused by the precipitation, Poulos said. In Henderson, the main city, county and state roads were passable if people used caution, according to law enforcement personnel. "The main roads are drivable," said Henderson Police Chief Chip Stauffer. "As of this morning, the secondary roads were still snow covered." Stauffer said it appears people are driving carefully, as officers had been dispatched to very few accidents and incidents where vehicles had slid off the road. "Right now, it's strictly snow. So it's not quite as slick as when we have ice before the snow," he said. "And generally speaking, after the first snowstorm, people transition their way of thinking and their way of driving. So last week, we had our first bout of snow. It gave motorists a chance to remember how to deal with the snow and transition into winter-type driving." After early morning patrols on Wednesday, Henderson County Sheriff's Deputy Terry Harmon cautioned drivers to "take your time." If motorists are cautious, "the roads are passable," he said. "You just have to slow down and adjust your speeds for conditions." To his knowledge, Harmon said, deputies have worked very few accidents and situations where vehicles have slid off the roads. "Most people are doing well," he said. "People need to leave early and take their time. Most county roads have had some attention and the road department is doing the best they can to get to them." "We haven't had any reports of wrecks in Union County, but in Henderson County, we had one at the five mile marker on the Audubon Parkway near the Zion exit, and at the 77 mile marker on Interstate 69," said Trooper Corey King, public information officer for Post 16 in Henderson. "But the far majority of people who slide off or get stuck don't call the police. So we need people to know that you could encounter someone who is in the ditch. We tell people to slow down not just due to slick roads, but because you might suddenly come upon someone who is stuck." Officials with the Union County Dispatch Center and Webster County Central Dispatch said there have been few reports of vehicle crashes and motorist assists due to slick roads. Trooper Stu Recke, with Post 2 in Madisonville, reported that state police on Wednesday worked one noninjury collision involving two vehicles on Kentucky 56 in Webster County. "Snow is better to drive on than ice," King said. "I think we'll have a different tale to tell on Friday." "Some of our concerns revolve around how will the roads be when the snow begins melting, then refreezes and then gets freezing rain on top of that. That will be our main concern as we go into Friday. Some weather models suggest we will get all snow, but others suggest a mixture, which is concerning. Navigating on snow is a different animal then navigating on ice." Weather officials said it's still uncertain what the second and third round of winter events will bring to the area this week. "It's tough to say," Poulos said. "We're looking at a wintry mix possible Thursday night and into Friday. But there's an indication that it could stay south of the Henderson area and more in Tennessee and into Central Kentucky." "However, if the track shifts just 50 miles northwest, the Ohio River area could get quite a bit of freezing rain or snow. We are trying to get a handle on what is going to happen," Poulos said. "I would say there will be some precipitation, a little ice and a little snow. The amounts right now are very difficult to gauge," he said. "Friday could be treacherous travel-wise. A layer of ice on top of snow, then more snow, and it wouldn't be good. We may not know until the storm gets here what we're dealing with. It's a pretty dynamic system, and it has a mind of its own." Thursday's high temperature is expected to climb just barely above freezing at 34 degrees. The National Weather Service said there's a 30 percent chance of rain, freezing rain and sleet that afternoon. Officials said the chance for a wintry mix doubles by Thursday night. During the day, Friday, the precipitation is expected to turn to snow and freezing rain and by Friday night, the weather service is anticipating it turning to all snow. Friday's high temperature is expected to top out at 30 degrees. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate LANSING, Mich. -- Only a year ago, Rick Snyder began his second term as Michigan governor promoting the same achievements that had propelled him to victory in 2014: The state was at last in the midst of an economic comeback, and Detroit had emerged from bankruptcy. With the water crisis gripping Flint threatening to overshadow nearly everything else he has accomplished, the Republican governor again pledged a fix Tuesday night during his annual State of the State speech. "We are praying for you, we are working hard for you and we are absolutely committed to taking the right steps to effectively solve this crisis," he said. "To you the people of Flint, I say tonight as I have before, 'I am sorry and I will fix it.'" Snyder committed $28 million more in the short term, announced the deployment of more National Guard members to the city and promised to quickly release his emails regarding the crisis that has engulfed his administration with criticism from across the country. He also announced his appeal of President Barack Obama's denial of a federal disaster declaration for the area and his aides pledged that, by the end of the week, officials would visit every household in Flint to ensure they have water filters. Snyder devoted much of his 49-minute evening address to the GOP-led Legislature to the disaster, which has put residents at risk for lead exposure. Many of his other priorities -- except the mounting financial problems in Detroit's state-overseen school district -- were shelved from the speech due to the crisis. Snyder, who is exempt from public-records requests, plans to release his emails on Wednesday. He outlined a timeline of the "catastrophe," blamed it on failures at the federal, state and local level but also said: "I let you down. You deserve better. You deserve accountability. You deserve to know the buck stops here with me." The images of an impoverished city where no one dares to drink the tap water have put Snyder on the defensive and forced him to step up his efforts to help. The governor, who previously apologized for regulatory failures and for an underwhelming initial response, rejected calls for his resignation. In recent weeks, he declared a state of emergency, pledged another round of unspecified state funding, activated the National Guard to help distribute lead tests, filters and bottled water, and successfully sought $5 million in federal assistance. But to many people, those steps took way too long. The new round of funding, which requires approval from the GOP-led Legislature, is intended as another short-term step while Snyder works to get a better handle on the long-range costs. He plans to make a bigger request in his February budget proposal. The $28 million would pay for more filters, bottled water, school nurses, intervention specialists, testing and monitoring. It also would replace plumbing fixtures in schools with lead problems and could help Flint with unpaid water bills. The crisis began when Flint, about an hour's drive from Detroit, switched its water source in 2014 to save money while under state financial management. Michigan's top environmental regulator resigned over the failure to ensure that the Flint River water was properly treated to keep lead from pipes from leaching into the water. Exposure to lead can cause behavior problems and learning disabilities in children and kidney ailments in adults. Elevated blood-lead levels were found in two city zip codes. The fiasco has bruised Snyder, a former venture capitalist and computer executive who took office in 2011 billing himself as a practical decision-maker and a "tough nerd." When he sought the state's top job, he touted his experience as a turnaround artist committed to making government work better for people. He cannot run again under term limits and has strayed from conservative orthodoxy on some issues, such as expanding Medicaid despite his party's stand against the health care overhaul and vetoing anti-abortion and gun-rights legislation. His top achievements include overhauling taxes, signing right-to-work laws in organized labor's backyard and enacting a road-funding package. Democrats have opposed many of Snyder's most sweeping laws, including a new emergency manager measure under which his administration has made budget decisions for struggling cities and school districts. They say what happened in Flint is an indictment of the GOP's promise to run government like a business. "The state of our state is not strong when residents are being poisoned by their tap water," House Minority Leader Tim Greimel said. The U.S. Justice Department is helping the Environmental Protection Agency investigate, and the state attorney general has opened his own probe, which could focus on whether environmental laws were broken or if there was official misconduct. ___ Follow David Eggert at http://twitter.com/DavidEggert00 . His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/author/david-eggert . This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate NORWALK -- For the last 30 years, El Acapulco Restaurant owners Juan and Elva Umpierre have manned the kitchen and dining room at their Washington Street eatery. The couple is ready for some well-deserved rest and have placed the 84 Washington St. space on the market. "My wife does everything in the kitchen and I do everything in the front," Juan said, as he surveyed his 100-seat Mexican-American restaurant. "Over the years it's been a lot of hours and a lot of work. I'm 72 years old and we are ready to retire." Umpierre, a native of Puerto Rico, and his wife, a Mexican native, moved to the United States in 1975. "I have worked in the restaurant business since I came here and then we opened our first restaurant on Main Street," Umpierre said. "When they took the parking away there, it wasn't good. We moved to Washington Street for the parking." As Umpierre looked back on the past 30 years on Washington Street, he remarked on how the area has changed. "There was nothing on Washington Street when I came here 30 years ago, but there's a lot more competition now," he said. El Acapulco Restaurant is co-listed by Brian A. Clarke, Jr., of William Pitt Sotheby's International Realty and Casey Schroeder of Pyramid Real Estate Group. The 2,784-square-foot commercial condo, with 2,304 additional basement square footage, includes all inventory and equipment and has been listed for $865,000. "As the oldest surviving restaurant in South Norwalk, this popular dining destination has experienced firsthand the many developments and positive changes made in this thriving area throughout the years," said Clarke. "I am honored to be representing such a beloved piece of town history, and look forward to helping others see its magnificent potential and keep its positive reputation alive." This landmark building, with its familiar red and green facade, encompasses two levels and is ideal for those looking to take advantage of the vibrant nightlife scene of South Norwalk, Clarke said. El Acapulco's interior features include ceramic tile flooring, an exposed brick wall, nine-foot ceilings, service bar and main level kitchen. The basement allows for a surplus of possibilities for new owners, Clarke said. "Some of the other restaurants on Washington Street have their kitchens in the basement and moving the kitchen downstairs could work here and also open up some space," Clarke said. The property was listed in mid-December and has piqued the interest of potential owners. "We've had some local interest as well as interest from a well-known Manhattan restaurateur," Clarke said. He declined to name the potential buyer from Manhattan. The restaurant will remain open as El Acapulco until it is sold, Umpierre said. "We've had a lot of regular customers over the years and I'm going to miss them," Umpierre said. "One thing I'm not going to miss is waking up early and being here from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. That's a very long day." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate NORWALK -- Charter Revision Commission members resolved Tuesday evening to hear from residents before delving into extending Norwalk's mayoral term, or tackling other weighty issues assigned to them by the Common Council. As such, they scheduled the first of at least two public hearings on Norwalk's 2016 charter revision effort. The first hearing will be held Wednesday, Feb. 10, at 6:30 p.m. in the Community Room of City Hall, 125 East Ave. The commission set Monday, Feb. 22 (at the same time) as a snow date should inclement weather strike Feb. 10. Legal research and public input are critical, according to commission Chairman William Fitzgerald. "We have the assistance of the law department in procuring the various municipalities' (information on) the way they function with regard to what we've been charged to investigate -- which is going to be incredibly helpful," Fitzgerald said. "But in addition to that, the thoughts and guidance of the citizens of Norwalk is paramount, and I think that armed with both the information that will be provided by the law department together with the input from the citizens of Norwalk, we'll be able to sit down and address intelligently the resolution we've been charged with." Corporation Counsel Mario F. Coppola, head of the city's law department, advised commission members not to have any substantive discussion on charter revision until after the Feb. 10 public hearing. After the hearing, commission members will consider splitting into teams to tackle various assignments, as suggested by Fitzgerald, and whether to consolidate some of the assignments, as suggested by Jerry Petrini. Tuesday evening's meeting at City Hall marked the organizational meeting of Norwalk's 2016 Charter Revision Commission, which was formed per a resolution approved unanimously by the council on Jan. 12. Commission members concurred that their principal responsibility will be to explore whether to amend the city charter to extend Norwalk's mayoral term from two to four years and impose a two-term limit for mayor. Between now and the Feb. 10 public hearing, Coppola is tasked by commission members with assembling a plethora of information on how other Connecticut municipalities operate in terms of term lengths, term limits, types of legislative bodies and legislators' pay. Coppola plans to reach out to the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, which represents 158 towns and cities statewide, to assemble the information but said investigation by the law department also will be needed. Present at the Charter Revision Commission organizational meeting on Tuesday were Fitzgerald, Petrini, Steven Keogh, Yvonne Rodriguez, Michael Witherspoon, Mary Roman and Glenn Iannaccone. They raised several potential issues that could arise as they delve deeper into their assignments. Petrini, a former city councilman, raised the prospect of having a "stinker" elected to the council for a four-year rather than the current two-year term. "I don't know if there's any mechanism for a recall for a council person. Right in the charter, reading through, you can get rid of a mayor," Petrini told fellow commission members. "But I don't ever remember seeing any reference at all about what do you do with a councilman that's a real stinker." Conversely, Petrini expressed concern about potential low voter turnout in non-mayoral-year elections if mayoral terms were changed to four years and council members' terms remained two years. Keogh asked fellow commission members to consider possible "unintended consequences" of extending mayoral and council terms as those elected officials are also responsible for appointments to boards and commissions. "There are a huge number and some of them are really quite significant such as the Zoning Commission or the Board of Estimate," Keogh said. "If you just change the elected terms without looking at the effect that it has as far as the appointments are concerned, you could possibly run into some unintended consequences." In addition to exploring mayoral terms lengths and limits, the commission has been assigned with the following tasks: investigate extending the terms of council members, town clerk and other city officials to four years, adjusting Board of Education elections to synchronize with any such changes, and removing references to selectman, city treasurer and sheriff, as well as council members' salaries, from the charter. Removing references to selectman, city treasurer and sheriff would allow Board of Education candidates to move to the front of election ballots and, according to some, get rid of antiquated offices. Keogh said selectmen (Norwalk has three) held a significant role -- "they were responsible for roads and bridges" -- before the city's consolidation in 1913. Petrini remained at a loss over the need for a sheriff. "I still don't know what the sheriff does. All I picture is Yosemite Sam," Petrini said. Keogh asked Coppola to check whether state statute requires that municipalities have the offices of selectmen, city treasurer and sheriff. "Then the next question (is) must they be elected or can they be appointed?" Keogh said. The Charter Revision Commission has until April 5 to submit its draft report to the Common Council. The council, after holding its own hearing, will decide which recommendations to put before voters as ballots questions in the city's next general election. If a recommendation to extend Norwalk's mayoral term to four years is put to and approved by voters on Election Day this November, the longer term will not take effect until after the 2017 election. Stephanie Seymour arrested in Connecticut for DUI GREENWICH (AP) -- Supermodel Stephanie Seymour was arrested over the weekend in Connecticut and charged with drunken driving. Police say Seymour backed her SUV into another car Friday evening at an exit ramp on Interstate 95 in Greenwich. Nobody was injured in the crash. A Connecticut State police report says Seymour was unsteady on her feet, her eyes were bloodshot and her breath smelled of alcohol. It says Seymour refused to perform field sobriety tests. The 47-year-old celebrity was arrested and charged with operating a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol and unsafe backing. She was released on a $500 bond. Seymour, who has a Greenwich address, is due in Stamford Superior Court on Feb. 2. A number listed for IMG Models, which represents Seymour, rang unanswered Monday. @Brief Headline:Man who dragged woman to death faces sentencing STAMFORD (AP) -- A Connecticut waiter whose car struck a woman and dragged her more than 900 feet to her death in Greenwich is facing sentencing. Vyacheslav Cherepov of Ridgefield is expected to be sentenced to five years in prison Tuesday in Stamford Superior Court. He agreed to the sentence when pleading guilty in October to leaving the scene of an accident resulting in death. Police say Cherepov was leaving work at a Greenwich restaurant in December 2013 when his car struck 21-year-old Meghan Beebe of Middlebury. Authorities say Beebe's friend yelled at Cherepov, but he sped off with Beebe stuck under his car. She died a few hours after being dragged 900 feet. Police arrested Cherepov two days later. Cherepov's lawyer called the incident a tragedy that Cherepov never intended to happen. Police charge 15-year-old in shooting of Hamden man HAMDEN (AP) -- Police say they've arrested a 15-year-old boy in connection with the shooting of a Hamden man. The teenager is charged with first-degree assault, first-degree robbery, criminal use of a firearm and second-degree larceny. Police are not releasing the boy's name because he's a juvenile. Police say they responded to a report of a shooting Nov. 19 and found a 42-year-old man who'd been shot in the neck. Police say the man had been robbed of several hundred dollars. They have not released the victim's name. Police arrested the teenager Thursday. He is being held at the Bridgeport Juvenile Detention Center. Could it be? Could there actually be harmony among the Board of Education, Superintendent of Schools, Mayor's office and Common Council? Yes, we know it is early in the tenure of Superintendent of Schools Steven Adamowski, but all signs seem to point to harmony among all those players. To the average city, that may not seem like a big deal. Norwalk, however, has been hampered over the past years by discord that has led, directly or indirectly, to a revolving door at the superintendent's office. Upon a governmental recommendation, Egyptian MPs changed their votes and approved a controversial law that shields state contracts from third-party legal challenges Egypt's parliament passed a law Wednesday barring third-party challenges to state contracts even though it was rejected earlier this week, MP Medhat El-Sherif told Ahram Online on Wednesday. Law number 32, which was passed in April 2014 under then-interim president Adly Mansour, aims to assure investors that their deals with the Egyptian government would be shielded from lengthy legal disputes incurred by citizens' legal complaints. The law has caused major controversy since it was passed, with critics alleging that it opens a door to corruption by restricting appeals to the parties involved only; the government and investors. "We thought that once a law is voted down in the 15-day period [since parliament first convenes] it cannot be put up for another vote but the parliament speaker said that [taking another vote] is legal, and he is a constitutional expert," said El-Sherif, who is a member of the parliamentary economic affairs committee. The decision to have another vote was taken based on a government recommendation. El-Sherif said that parliamentarians who initially voted down the law were convinced to change their vote after the minister of parliamentary affairs clarified the importance of the law and how rejecting it would negatively impact investment. Legal and parliamentary affairs minister Magdy El-Agaty told the assembly that "the government does not protect corruption" with this law, but rather is claiming its right to protect its deals. The vote on the bill comes as part of parliament's review of 341 laws within 15 days as of its first session, which took place last week. This includes laws issued by Mansour and current President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi since the new constitution was passed in January 2014. Search Keywords: Short link: LINCOLN Jeanette Claire (Pollard) Alexis, 88, of Lincoln died Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016, at Country House in Lincoln. Graveside services will be at 2 p.m. Friday in Elmwood Cemetery at St. Paul. The Rev. Martha Voigt will officiate. A visitation and a time to visit with the family will be from noon until 2 p.m. Friday at Jacobsen-Greenway Funeral Home in St. Paul. Memorials are suggested to the University of Nebraska Foundation, Westminster Presbyterian Church in Lincoln, Lincoln Symphony Guild or the donors choice. Jeanette Claire Alexis, daughter of T. B. and Fern (Witwer) Strain, was born Jan. 17, 1927, in Lincoln. She entered into rest on Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016, at Country House in Lincoln at the age of 88 years. Jeanette was raised in Lincoln and attended Sheridan School and Irving Middle School. She then attended St. Marys Hall in Fairbault, Minn., where she graduated as Salutatorian of the Class of 1944. She attended the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, receiving her Bachelor of Arts Degree in 1948. After graduation, Jeanette attended the Katherine Gibbs Business School in Boston, Mass., serving as Student Council President and graduating first in the class of 1950. Jeanette was employed for many years as a high level executive secretary at several Fortune 500 companies. In addition to her professional life, Jeanette devoted much time to civic activities. She was a member of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Lincoln; Pi Beta Phi Sorority, Chicago Chapter - treasurer; University of Nebraska Foundation; Howard County Hospital in St. Paul - treasurer; Thursday morning lecture series; Altrusa International; American Association of University Women; Infant Welfare Society of Chicago; Lux University Place Art Center; Lincoln Symphony Orchestra Guild; Robert Hillestad Textile Gallery at University of Nebraska; 50 years of hospital volunteerism; the University of Nebraska Alumni Association; Newcomen Society of England, Norden Club Foundation; a Rotary International Paul Harris Fellow; an Admiral in the Nebraska Navy; and the recipient of the University of Nebraska Alumni Award for 2006. Jeanette loved music, spending many years performing, beginning with the piano at age 4. She sang in choirs and vocal groups, acted in numerous school and community musicals and played the harp. She married Robert Pollard on Oct. 19, 1974, in Omaha. The couple lived in St. Paul from 1974 until 1977. They relocated to Grand Island, where they lived until his death in 1997. Both were avid Cornhusker fans and attended games wherever their team played. On April 24, 1999, Jeanette married Carl Alexis and returned to her hometown of Lincoln. They spent their golden years taking frequent trips to Europe and Mexico. During their travels, Jeanette took French literature short courses offered through University of Montpellier, France, and the University of Chardonnay, France. As a French language major in college, this later-in-life course work was a great source of personal pride and enrichment. Survivors include a niece, Nancy Wilcox (and husband, Bob); a great-niece, Katherine Wilcox; a great-nephew, Ian Wilcox of Seattle, Wash.; a nephew, George John of Houston, Texas; a niece, Karen Torrance (and husband, Bruce); a nephew, Stephen Bruce; and other cousins, nieces and nephews. Her family and friends will miss her zest for life and her warm, friendly and gregarious nature. Jeanette is preceded in death by her parents; husbands, Robert Pollard and Carl Alexis; and twin sister, JoAnne Braithwaite. Condolences for Jeanettes family may be left at www.jacobsengreenway.com. Recently, President Obama made his first official visit to Nebraska as president. At the Baxter Arena at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, the president highlighted our states healthy economy, saying Nebraskas current unemployment rate is below 3 percent. In addition to Nebraskas low unemployment rate, our state is a leader in job creation. Nebraska businesses and local communities are the driving force behind creating new jobs, with 40,000 of those new jobs in the Omaha metro area alone. This is real economic growth and Nebraskans should be proud. While I am pleased to see the president tout Nebraskas successes, these achievements are not the result of his policies. Rather, they are due to the hard work of our citizens and the fiscally-conservative policies we enact. Hard work and personal responsibility are core values that are ingrained in our daily lives. Our economic strength is also derived from wise decisions made at the state level. Many of these sound policies were put in place when I served in the Nebraska Legislature. Each year, reckless federal spending has grown our national debt to nearly $19 trillion. But in Nebraska, our legislators are forced to spend responsibly and balance the budget. This is not by accident. Balancing Nebraskas budget is mandated by our states constitution, and, unlike other states, our constitution does not allow extensive borrowing and debt. Although smart policies are a large part of Nebraskas success, our agriculture industry give us a unique economic advantage. In Nebraska, one in four jobs are tied to agriculture. Our farmers, livestock producers, and business owners are the best in world. They are known for utilizing their knowledge and skills to grow the economy and ensure our states number one industry continues to help Nebraskas economy thrive. In 2013, Nebraskas $6.6 billion in agricultural exports provided $8.1 billion in additional economic activity. Nebraska is a prime example of how wise policies can enable unique industries in states across the country to flourish. In the U.S. Senate, I am working to bring this Nebraska common sense to the federal level. Our citizens and agriculture producers rely on Americas roads, highways, bridges, and railroads to bring their products to market. Strong infrastructure is an essential component for a flourishing economy. That is why I was pleased to work on the multi-year highway bill that was signed into law last month. This important legislation will bring $1.5 billion to Nebraska over the next five years, enabling critical infrastructure projects to move forward. This influx of resources will make our roads safer and more efficient, and it will lead to stronger communities and new jobs in our state. In addition to strengthening existing industries in Nebraska, our healthy business environment is encouraging many innovative companies to develop in our state. CNBC ranked Nebraska seventh in its Americas Top States for Business 2015 scorecard. I have visited many of these Nebraska businesses, which ensure that technological advancements are benefiting consumers and industries across the country and around the globe. To help these businesses keep pace with the innovations that are changing the world, I have been working hard in the Senate to see that federal regulations are appropriate for todays world. On that front, two bills I introduced, the E-Label Act and E-Warranty Act, have been signed into law. These important measures ease regulatory requirements on manufacturers by allowing them to post their warranty and labeling information online. This common-sense change provides businesses with more options and lower overhead costs, which results in lower prices for consumers. The Nebraska way works. Its now time to apply these principles on a national scale. As your Senator, I will continue to reach across the aisle to work with my colleagues on policies that sustain a prosperous Nebraska and a stronger America. Building upon Prime Minister Narendra Modis initiative of inviting all SAARC leaders to his swearing-in ceremony in May 2014, the neighbourhood continued to be the primary focus of Indias foreign policy in 2015. While relations with [] However, the house is likely to send the rejected legislation back to committee for changes, then revote Egypt's parliament rejected on Wednesday the controversial Civil Servants Law after the majority of MPs voted against it - 332 out of 468. The law, which was signed by Egypt's cabinet in November 2015, has met with widespread criticism by many state employees, labour unions and other labour rights activists, who say the legislation, would destroy the long held rights such as job security, and could also push many thousands of the six million government workers out of work. However, the legislation which failed to garner majority on Wednesday, is likely to be returned by the floor to the parliamentary committee on labour issues for further review and modifications before returning to the general assembly again. Earlier on Wednesday, the recently convened parliament, passed a lawbarring third-party challenges to state contracts after voting it down earlier this week, and sending it back to the committee on economic issues for review. MP Medhat El-Sherif told Ahram Online the voting came after the minister of Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Magdy El-Agaty, clarified the importance of the law and why rejecting it would negatively impact investment. Search Keywords: Short link: First Presbyterian Church will hold its next recital, Sunday, January 31st at 3:00 pm with The Persied String Quartet. They will be performing works by Beethoven and Smetana. Formed in 2013, The Persied String Quartet has already generated acclaim for its polished, energetic performances and engagement with audiences. The 2014-2015 season sees the Quartet perform in such diverse venues as the Ladue Chapel Concert Series, Schmidt Art Center at Southwestern Illinois College, First Presbyterian Church in Edwardsville, IL, Washington University in St. Louis, and the Tavern of Fine Arts. The Quartet seeks to perform chamber music to the highest possible artistic standards, and has performed works by Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, and Haydn, along with lesser-known pieces by composers such as Hindemith and Golijov. Collaborations in the current concert season include concerts with pianist Diana Umali and Soprano Emily Truckenbrod. Members of the Quartet serve as faculty members at colleges and community music schools, and their collective performing experience includes positions in regional orchestras and opera productions, historically informed performance on Baroque instruments, and playing in a rock band. Members of the quartet hold degrees from such institutions as the Eastman School of Music, Cleveland Institute of Music, Rice University, and University of Missouri-Kansas City. Violinist Hannah Frey is an active chamber and orchestral musician. She is currently concertmaster of the Winter Opera St Louis Orchestra, and plays with the Illumine Ensemble. She also performs as an extra with the St Louis Symphony, the Union Avenue Opera Orchestra, and the Illinois Symphony. Before moving to St Louis in 2008 she was a member of several different orchestras, including the Charlotte Symphony and the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra. Additionally she has held the positions of concertmaster of the Mansfield Symphony and assistant concertmaster of the Cleveland Chamber Symphony. Hannah is also a dedicated educator with a large private studio. She believes that anyone can learn to play the violin and is insistent on sharing her love of music with others. She is trained in the Suzuki method and teaches students of all ages and levels out of her home in St Louis. Hannah previously taught at a variety of schools including the St Louis School of Music, Fairmount School of Music, St Margaret of Scotland School and Good Shepherd Lutheran School. Hannah is a native of Clinton, South Carolina. She received both her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she studied with Linda Cerone and William Preucil. In her free time Hannah can be found curled up with a good book, playing with her two cats and dog, or running in a nearby park. Manuela Kaymakanova was born in Rousse, Bulgaria, and began her violin studies at the age of 5. Manuela holds a Bachelor of Music from Webster University, where she received the Buder Scholarship for gifted students and studied with Yuly Iliashov. Further studies led to a Masters degree from the University of Missouri at Kansas City, where she was awarded a graduate string quartet assistantship for three years. Her teachers there included Benny Kim and Gregory Sandomirsky. Presently Manuela teaches at the Community Music School of Webster University and maintains a private studio. Manuela is an active chamber music and orchestral performer in the St Louis area. Eliana Haig enjoys an active career as both a performer and educator. Since relocating to St Louis in 2012, Eliana has performed with the Evansville Philharmonic Orchestra, Illinois Symphony Orchestra, Winter Opera Saint Louis, and Chamber Project Saint Louis. Chamber music appearances include the Webster University Chamber Music Series, Saint Louis Central Public Library, and Missouri History Museum. Eliana has served as a section violist in the Erie Philharmonic and Binghamton Philharmonic Orchestras and as a substitute in the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. She was awarded a section position with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and performed as a substitute. Summer festival appearances include the National Repertory Orchestra, Chautauqua Festival Orchestra, and National Orchestral Institute. A sought-after private teacher and clinician, Eliana is adjunct Professor of Viola at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, and maintains a private viola studio at the Community Music School of Webster University. Eliana holds a Master of Music in Performance from the Eastman School of Music and a Bachelor of Music with honors from Lawrence University. As an undergraduate student, Eliana spent a year in Austria on scholarship, where she studied music and German at the University for Music and Dramatic Arts in Graz. Her primary teachers include Ira Weller, George Taylor, Matthias Maurer, and Matthew Michelic. An active and versatile musician, Stephanie Hunt performs on both modern and baroque cello. While she has performed with a number of modern and baroque orchestras, she enjoys chamber music and plays frequently as a continuo cellist. Her current activities include performances with Chamber Project St. Louis and the Coromell Ensmble, a Mexican Early Music ensemble. Stephanie has participated in numerous international music festivals, including the Nederlandse Orkest- en Ensemble-Academie, Royaumont Formations Professionnelles (France), the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme, and two summers as a Tanglewood Music Center Fellow. Her studies on modern cello led to a B.Mus. summa cum laude from the University of Miami's Frost School of Music and a M.Mus. from Rice University's Shepherd School of Music. Following her American studies, Stephanie moved to Europe and earned both a B.Mus. Honours and a M.Mus. in baroque cello from the Utrecht Conservatory in the Netherlands. Her teachers include Viola de Hoog, Norman Fischer, Hans Jrgen Jensen, Ross Harbaugh, and Monique Bartels. After five years studying and performing in the Netherlands, Stephanie recently returned to the United States, settling in the St. Louis area. In addition to her performing, she teaches cello in the Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville Suzuki program and at Southwestern Illinois College, and maintains a private studio in St. Louis. Immediately following the recital there will be a Meet & Greet the artists reception, with light refreshments, in the Fellowship Hall of the church. The recital is free to the public - a free-will offering will be taken. First Presbyterian Church is located at 237 North Kansas Street, Edwardsville, IL. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Wu Yan (The Jakarta Post) Wed, January 20, 2016 Men in Chinese mainland outnumbered women by 33.66 million in a country of more than 1.37 billion by the end of 2015. This imbalance has led to great concern over the difficulty of finding a partner for the left-over men, chinanews.com reported. According to figures released by China's National Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday, the number of men in the Chinese mainland stands at 704,14 million while the number of their counterparts is 670,48 million by the end of 2015. For every 113.51 boys born there were 100 girls (the natural rate is 102 to 107 boys to every 100 girls), the data showed. Through still far beyond the natural rate, China's sex ratio at birth plunged by 2.37 from 115.88 of last year, the biggest drop in the last seven years. The Chinese government strived to "lower the sex ratio at birth to 115 or below" during 2011-15, as it is proposed in the 12th Five Years Plan for National Population Development. To balance the population, China further relaxed its more than three-decade-old family planning policy to allow all couples to have two children since the start of 2016. China, like other countries with Asian cultures, held a historic preference for male offspring over female ones. Conservatives, especially old-fashioned clans in rural areas, regard boys as the only recognized heirs to carry on a family line. The family planning policy, which was introduced in the 1980s to encourage each couple to have just one child, has pushed the sex ratio at birth up to some degree. Some families prefer boys if they can only have one child, said Chen Jian, Vice President of China Society of Economic Reform, adding that the gap between sexes at birth will narrow as the two-child policy is implemented. If the sex gap continues to exist, it will threaten the population ecology and sustainable economic and social development, said Chen. "The most noticeable impact is a marriage squeeze. Left-over men will find it more difficult to marry women", Chen added. The sex imbalance will also increase the imbalance of genders in the workplace. "Surplus male labor will intensify the competition in the labor job market and increase the difficulty for women to get a job", said Li Jianxin, professor at Department of Sociology, Peking University. Even the financial industry may be affected. "The left-over men will drag down businesses like credit card, loan, insurance as well as the credit system", said Yi Fuxian, a researcher on demographic policy at the University of Wisconsin. In contrast, a balanced sex ratio would boost China's economy. The implementation of the two-child policy will greatly increase the number of new-born babies, said Wang Peian, deputy head of the National Health and Family Planning Commission. When they reach working age, the dependency ratio of the population will go down while the potential economic growth rate will go up by about 0.5 percent. Some 30 million individuals are expected to enter the workforce by 2050, Wang added. (kes) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Haeril Halim (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Wed, January 20, 2016 Unlike his media-savvy predecessor, Agus Rahardjo, the new chairman of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK), prefers to be low-key and speak only when necessary. To the media, he is more interested in talking about how he will prevent corruption instead of speaking about which high-profile suspects KPK investigators are presently targeting. His standard response to journalists asking for details of ongoing investigations is that divulging information could backfire if investigators failed to gather enough evidence. Agus defended his style at a recent press conference by scolding reporters for pressing for more details about graft suspect Damayanti Wisnu Putranti, a lawmaker with the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P). 'I can't give any further information on the case. I know that you have all written about her, and that is something that I don't want to happen, because it could interfere with the work of our investigators in the field,' Agus said, expressing his displeasure toward the media's exposure of the sting operation that nabbed Damayanti. At the press briefing, Agus also irked photographers from news agencies by refusing to display the US$99,000 suspected bribe money the KPK had seized from Damayanti. A press briefing at the KPK usually lasts 30 minutes, but Agus cut it short to just five minutes and did not take any questions from journalists. Considered a lightweight candidate during December's fit and proper test at the House of Representatives, Agus surprisingly garnered majority support from the House of Representatives' Commission III overseeing legal affairs. It is thought that members of the House favored Agus because they want the new leaders of the KPK to focus primarily on prevention instead of prosecution in the fight against corruption. The lawmakers also want the KPK to restrict media access to graft investigations. During the selection process, Agus campaigned as the 'poorest' candidate with only Rp 20 million in his four bank accounts despite the fact that he served for years as a state official occupying several important posts at government agencies with sizable salaries. Agus is also the first figure to lead the KPK who has no practical or academic experience in the field of law enforcement. Despite his image of relative poverty, data from the selection team revealed that Agus has plots of lands in several places including in Jonggol, West Java and in Serpong, South Tangerang, Banten. When asked how he attained the assets, Agus said that the money that he received from speaking at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris as well as fees from giving lectures around the country between 1995 and 1997 was enough to buy the land. Before being elected KPK chairman, Agus, who was born in 1956 in Magetan, East Java, served as the head of the Goods and Services Procurement Agency (LKPP) between 2010 and 2015. Prior to that, Agus was chairman of the central executive board of the Indonesian procurement expert association. He resigned from the position in 2010. As a younger man, Agus aspired to work as a contractor given his academic background in civil engineering. He graduated from the Sepuluh November Institute of Technology (ITS) and ended up becoming a civil servant in 2006. He earned his master's degree in management from the Arthur D. Little School of Management in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1991. He lived and worked in America for five years after graduation. He joined the government in 2006 after returning home from the US. His first brush with antigraft campaigning did not happen until January 2011, when he, along with former KPK chairman Busyro Muqoddas, Development Finance Comptroller (BPKP) chief Mardiasmo and former Defense Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro, delivered an anticorruption declaration. Eager to practice what he learned as LKPP chairman, Agus said he was committed to promoting openness and transparency at the KPK. During the confirmation hearing at the House's Commission III headquarters, Agus said he planned to create a coordinated electronic system between law enforcement institutions to promote transparency. Agus received a considerable degree of attention after making the controversial statement that members of the public should shame graft suspects by spitting on them. 'There should be punishment from society. We could ostracize them or spit on them,' Agus said. For his focus on prevention, antigraft campaigners have criticized him for being too soft on graft. 'He doesn't have the mentality of an anticorruption fighter. The country has to deal with severe corruption but don't expect an aggressive KPK under his leadership,' Erwin Natosmal Oemar of the Indonesian Legal Roundtable (ILR) said. _______________________________________ To receive comprehensive and earlier access to The Jakarta Post print edition, please subscribe to our epaper through iOS' iTunes, Android's Google Play, Blackberry World or Microsoft's Windows Store. Subscription includes free daily editions of The Nation, The Star Malaysia, the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Asia News. For print subscription, please contact our call center at (+6221) 5360014 or subscription@thejakartapost.com Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta Wed, January 20, 2016 Terrorism analysts have questioned the police's claim that alleged Islamic State (IS) movement member Bahrun Naim is behind the Jan. 14 terrorist attack in Central Jakarta, instead they believe another terrorist convict, Aman Abdurahman, is the initiator of the attack. Former member of the Islamic State of Indonesia (NII) group Al-Chaidar said the planner of the attacks that left eight people dead was Aman, the leader of IS-affiliated group Tauhid Wal Jihad, who is currently being held in Nusakambangan prison island in Cilacap, Central Java. Afif, also known as Sunakim, a terrorist convict killed in the attack, met with Aman in November, 2014 in prison, said Al-Chaidar. "From my viewpoint, it's not Bahrun, but [Aman], who is still in prison," Al-Chaidar said as quoted by tempo.co. Similarly, former Jamaah Islamiyah member Nasir Abbas said Aman was the attack orchestrator who controlled the terrorist actvity inside and outside the prison. It was Aman who instructed Bahrun to handle the ammunition for a militant group in Central Java, leading to the imprisonment of Bahrun in 2011, after which he left Indonesia in February 2015, Nasir said. Meanwhile, a terrorist convict, Muhammad Jibriel Abdul Rahman said contact between Afif and Bahrun was limited as Bahrun had dropped out of the group due to ideological differences. Police identified Bahrun as the figure behind the Jakarta attack not long after the coordinated bombings and shooting occurred on Jl. M.H. Thamrin, but police have not named Bahrun a suspect. Meanwhile, the police were still investigating the transfer of funds from Bahrun in Syria to suspected terrorists in Indonesia as well as the relationship between Bahrun and IS in Syria, said National Police spokesman Insp. Gen. Anton Charliyan. A report from the Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (PPATK) shows 10 suspicious transactions allegedly intended to fund the terrorist attack, which National Police chief Gen. Badrodin Haiti said amounted to between Rp 40 million (US$2,876) and Rp 70 million from Syria through Western Union, a payment service company. The National Police had cooperated with Interpol and intelligence agencies to monitor Bahrun, who was believed to currently reside in Raqqa, Syria and acted as the leader of IS in Southeast Asia, Anton said. A recording of someone who appeared to be Bahrun, has circulated on Soundcloud, a global online audio platform. The person denied his involvement in the Jakarta attack, saying that he rarely went online and thus it was impossible for him to conduct communication. Bahrun's family has confirmed that the voice in the recording is that of Bahrun. "We hope Mas Bahrun will immediately come home to give an explanation," Dahlan Zaim, Bahrun's brother, said on Tuesday. (afr/bbn) (+) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Wed, January 20, 2016 The Jakarta Police have sought the help of the Australian Federal Police (AFP) as part of efforts to uncover the truth behind the suspicious death of Wayan Mirna Salihin, a woman who died after drinking cyanide tainted coffee at a restaurant in Jakarta on Jan. 6. It is expected that the AFP will supply information about the relations between Mirna and her friends, particularly Jessica Kumala and Hani, as the three had studied together in Australia. "We have contacted AFP because we need some information," the Jakarta Police general crime division head Sr. Comr. Khrisna Murti said on Wednesday. Police have not yet named a suspect, but their investigation has, to date, focused on Jessica Kumala. Jessica, Mirna's friend, was with Mirna when she drank the coffee that ended her life. The police questioned Jessica on several occasions and have raided Jessica's house in connection with the murder, but they do not appear to have found sufficient evidence to name her as a suspect. Jessica has denied involvement in Mirna's death. Mirna and Jessica reportedly studied together at Billy Blue College of Design Australia and both moved from there to study at Swinburne University of Technology Australia. Jessica, who ordered the coffee which allegedly killed Mirna, continued to work in Australia following her graduation in 2008, deciding to find a job in Indonesia in December last year. Police will crosscheck the information from AFP along with the testimony provided by witnesses, Khrisna said. Apart from questioning Jessica, the police plan to summon Hani for further investigation. Hani and Jessica were at the cafA with Mirna on the day she died. Jessica arrived early and ordered a sazerac cocktail and a cold Vietnamese coffee. Minutes after, Mirna and Hani arrived at the cafA and Mirna proceeded to drink the coffee. 'It's awful. It's bad,' Mirna had commented. Shortly afterwards, she suffered from convulsions and began to foam at the mouth. She was rushed to the hospital, but died on the way. (bbn)(+) Twenty-nine alleged supporters of the banned Muslim Brotherhood who were accused of illegal assembly, destruction of public property, and inciting violence were acquitted by two Egyptian courts on Tuesday. Twenty- two of the defendants were accused by Suez prosecutors of inciting violence and damaging public and private property during events in 2014 during clashes with anti-Brotherhood citizens. Out of the 22 defendants, 11 stood trial, while 11 remain at large. Also on Wednesday, a Giza court acquitted seven alleged Muslim Brotherhood supporters charged with inciting violence. Thousands of supporters of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi have been serving jail time, with hundreds fighting death sentences for various criminal and murder convictions. *This story has been edited by Ahram Online Search Keywords: Short link: Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Apriadi Gunawan and Andi Hajramurni (The Jakarta Post) Medan/Makassar/Gorontalo/Manado Wed, January 20, 2016 A number of regions in Sumatra and Sulawesi have been hit with recurrent blackouts over the last few days. Parts of North Sumatra and Aceh faced power outages on Tuesday after a fire caused damage to a high-voltage power line in Sicanang, Belawan, North Sumatra. The general manager of the North Sumatra branch of state-owned electricity firm PLN, Agung Nugraha, said the blackouts in the northern Sumatra network were the result of a fire at a timber company, located between towers 3 and 4 of the power line. Piles of timber belonging to PT Canang Indah in Sicanang were destroyed by the fire on Sunday evening. The fire caused damage to the transmission line, disrupting power supplies from Belawan to the northern parts of Sumatra. Agung explained that the line transmitted power from the Pangkalan Susu steam-powered electricity plant (PLTU) in Langkat regency, North Sumatra, and PLTU Nagan Raya in Aceh. Agung confirmed that large parts of North Sumatra would continue to face blackouts, including the cities of Medan, Tebing Tinggi and Pematang Siantar and Karo, Deli Serdang and Asahan regencies. Separately, PLN Aceh general manager Bob Syahril said the damaged transmission cables also caused blackouts in a number of regions in the province. 'We don't know for sure when electricity supplies will return to normal because PLTU Nagan Raya is still undergoing repairs,' Bob said Monday, adding that affected areas included Banda Aceh, Lhokseumawe, Pidie, Sigli and East Aceh. Blackouts also occurred in almost all parts of South and West Sulawesi following damage to an electricity transmission cable in Sungguminasa, Gowa ' Tallasa, Takalar, which was struck by lightning on Tuesday. The blackout, which began at 3 p.m., disrupted electricity supplies from the 200 Megawatt (MW) Janeponto PLTU. PLN said power would return at 10 p.m. In Gorontalo, people have also been complaining over worsening recurrent blackouts in the province, despite PLN's local branch claiming a successful tryout of equipment in the Paguat gas-fueled power plant (PLTG) on Friday. 'It's still morning and we have already experienced two blackouts,' Verawati of Bone Bolango said on Tuesday. PLN Gorontalo spokesperson Syaiful Djalil blamed the condition on power supply disturbances. 'The Sulutgo system ran normally for some time but big power plants such as PLTU Amurang, [geothermal-fueled power plant] PLTP Lahendong and PLTU Molotabu cannot operate normally yet. They need time to return to normal,' Syaiful said. In North Sulawesi, recurrent blackouts were estimated to have caused billions of rupiah in financial losses a day, according to economic observer Agus Tony Poputra. He suggested that PLN spin-off into several independent companies based on territories and functions. PLN's monopoly on electricity, he said, was to blame for its lack of improvement in performance and public service. He said services would improve as a result of breaking PLN into six smaller independent companies. Syamsul Huda M. Suhari in Gorontalo and Lita Aruperes in Manado also contributed to this story Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Rob Gillies (The Jakarta Post) Toronto Wed, January 20, 2016 Canada has been excluded from a meeting of defense ministers in Paris this week to discuss the fight against Islamic State militants. US Defense Secretary Ash Carter didn't mention Canada last week in a speech in Fort Campbell, Kentucky when he said he would meet defense ministers from nations who are playing a significant role in the coalition. Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan tried to suggest it wasn't a big deal on Tuesday, saying this isn't the only meeting. The US Defense Department issued a statement that said "the meeting in Paris this week is not a formal coalition meeting; rather, it is a one-time meeting of defense ministers." Carter previously said ministers from the Netherlands, France, Australia, Germany, Italy and the UK will take part in the talks Wednesday. The US has asked coalition members to boost their military contributions in Iraq and Syria against IS after the deadly terrorist attack in Paris in November. But new Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has vowed to remove Canada's six fighter jets from the mission. Trudeau has said allies understand Canada will step up military training: Canada has had 69 special forces soldiers in a training role in Northern Iraq with the Kurds. A Canadian soldier was killed by Kurdish fighters in a friendly-fire incident last year. The Canadian mission includes six CF-18 fighter jets, a refueling tanker aircraft, two surveillance planes and one airlift aircraft, with about 600 airmen and airwomen based in Kuwait. The Canadian jets continue to participate in air strikes. Australia has six jet fighters based in Dubai flying missions against Islamic State targets. It also has soldiers in non-combat roles in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. The Netherlands has four fighter jets in the mission while Germany is not involved in air strikes. Canada's opposition Conservative party noted the previous Conservative government hosted an anti-ISIS coalition meeting last July. "Canada is deliberately being excluded because of this Liberal government's decision to withdraw our CF-18s from the mission against ISIS," the party said. (+) _____ Associated Press Writer Robert Burns contributed to this report from Washington. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Farida Susanty (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Wed, January 20, 2016 China remains optimistic that construction of Indonesia's first high-speed railway project connecting Jakarta and Bandung, West Java, will remain on schedule despite challenges hampering its progress. 'I am fully confident that the project will be delivered on schedule and will meet the highest quality standards,' Chinese Ambassador to Indonesia Xie Feng said, while addressing the project as 'flagship project for Indonesia-China bilateral relations'. Feng confirmed that a groundbreaking ceremony for the high-speed railway would be held in Walini, West Java, on Thursday, following three months of track permit acquisition and engineering design drafting. Feng also cited the recently issued track route permit as an encouraging sign for construction. 'Another thing that makes me confident that the two sides will accomplish [the construction] within three years,' he said, referring to the scheduled operation for the project in 2019. He added that China's latest railway portfolio, including 1,300 kilometers of railway connecting Beijing and Shanghai, was completed in five years and that the 142-km project was smaller and achievable. Construction for the high-speed train service, which will run at more than 250 km per hour, is scheduled to commence this year and finish by 2018. The cost of the project is estimated at US$5.5 billion, with 75 percent of financing from the China Development Bank (CDB). The Indonesian consortium holds 60 percent of the shares, while the remaining belongs to the Chinese counterpart. China secured the project after Indonesian officials rejected Japan's requirement for the government to guarantee the loans. The route will serve four stations between Jakarta and Bandung in its first phase, including Halim, Karawang, Walini and Tegalluar. Despite the optimism, the ambassador admitted that land acquisition would remain a challenge as he deemed it 'took a long time', besides meeting environmental requirements. PT Kereta Cepat Indonesia China (KCIC), a joint venture between the Indonesian state enterprises consortium and China Railway International, is struggling to acquire the environmental impact analysis study (Amdal). 'As stakeholders, we have to share the interest and share the risk together,' he said, adding that he also called for the Indonesian government's help in land acquisition. A recent media report stated that the KCIC would have to procure 157.7 hectares of rice fields for the construction, including ones in Bekasi and Bandung, which put a strain on the Amdal issuance as it would reduce the amount of rice-producing land. According to Feng, the loan from CDB was 'under final discussion' and would also be ready before the groundbreaking. He also reiterated the economic benefit for both countries. The high-speed railway's daily passenger flow is predicted to hit 44,000 people, based on an estimate by the Bandung Institute of Technology. 'Annual income from fares will amount to Rp 3.2 trillion, and as passenger flow rises over time, revenue will also increase,' he said. Ambassador Feng said that the project would lead to vast economic development and increase the living standard of locals, especially with the expected supporting industries such as real estate, services, smelting, manufacturing, among others, to flourish around the areas passed by the train. The ambassador downplayed the impact of slowing growth in China, which was recorded at 6.9 percent in 2015, the slowest in 25 years, on the project. 'It was still considerably high than the world standard. [...] I think the groundbreaking of the high speed railway is good news for the Chinese economy,' he said. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Corry Elyda (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Wed, January 20, 2016 Despite being inexperienced in many fields, relatively unknown city-owned property developer PT Jakarta Propertindo (Jakpro) has been entrusted with carrying out many major projects by the Jakarta administration. Jakpro president director Abdul Hadi said recently that the company had been tasked with many big projects this year. 'These projects include buying shares in city-owned food security supplier PT Food Station Tjipinang, the acquisition of the toll road connecting Cinere in South Jakarta to Serpong in Tangerang regency, constructing the Light Rapid Transit [LRT], acquiring natural gas filling stations [SPBG] and building water treatment plants at Pluit Dam and the East Flood Canal [BKT],' he said, with out elaborating on the projects' details. Abdul said the company had received Rp 1.5 trillion (US$106.5 million) of initial capital from the city administration allocated in last year's budget. The Development Department head at the Jakarta Financial and Asset Management Board (BPKAD), Lusiana Herawati, said the city administration had revised the Government Investment Participation (PMP) Bylaw for Jakpro to increase its funding. 'Bylaw No. 12/2014 states that the PMP for Jakpro from the city administration is increased from Rp 2 trillion to Rp 10 trillion,' she said. She added that the increase was in order to accommodate Jakpro in assisting the city administration to achieve its mid-term targets. 'The property company can expand into utilities and infrastructure,' she said. According to BPKAD's data, Jakpro has received Rp 3.7 trillion out of the planned Rp 10 trillion of PMP. 'The PMP has soared since 2013 when the company only received Rp 750 billion. It later received Rp 910 billion and Rp 1.5 trillion in 2014 and 2015 respectively,' Lusiana said, adding that the city had allocated Rp 2.95 trillion for Jakpro in 2016. She said the high level of PMP was in accordance with the projects entrusted to the company. Asked about the capacity of the company, Lusiana said the PMP was in line with its investment analysis. 'The governor has given dozens of projects to Jakpro to handle, so the company's dividend to the city administration was less than Rp 40 billion each year,' she said. She added that although none of the projects had yet been completed, the company continually reported on the development of the projects. 'The company also has dozens of its own projects,' she said, adding that it needed a total investment of up to Rp 166 trillion. Lusiana said the focus of the company right now was related to the Asian Games in 2018, such as building a velodrome as well as the LRT. Jakpro recently declared that it would not be able to build the velodrome, however, it later retracted its statement after receiving the Rp 1.5 trillion injection. Muhammad Sanusi, the head of the City Council's Commission D overseeing development said he questioned the ability of the company to handle all the projects. 'The company is inexperienced in handling big projects,' he said, adding that it had never even independently developed an apartment building before. According to Sanusi, the company had failed to carry out some of its tasks. 'For example, it failed to acquire the shares of private water operator PT PAM Lyonnaise Jaya [Palyja]. Jakpro has also been handling other projects like water treatment plants, SPBG and an Intermediate Treatment Facility [ITF] since 2014 but I've heard nothing about the development of those projects,' Sanusi said. The council member, however, said that he still looked forward to seeing improvements in the company. 'The board of directors of the company is new. We cannot directly judge without seeing their performance first,' he said. The city replaced Jakpro's board of directors early last year. 'If their performance is still bad, we need to question the selection process of the directors,' he said. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Erika Anindita (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Wed, January 20, 2016 The government has decided not to include two members of the Indonesian Ombudsman selection committee in the next selection process of new commissioners of the state institution, which is tasked with ensuring the implementation of good governance in the country. State Secretary Pratikno said he shared the view of House of Representatives Commission II overseeing home affairs, which contended that the two committee members had violated ethics codes in the selection process for new Ombudsman commissioners. 'The House's Commission II is disappointed with a conspiracy they committed, which happened amid our hopes that this selection process would run objectively and free of either personal or group interests,' Commission II deputy chairman Lukman Edy said on Monday evening. The two Ombudsman selection committee members, Zumrotin and Anis Hidayah, were found to have committed collusion and conspiracy. They reportedly discussed the Ombudsman selection process with their fellows via a WhatsApp group, @kawal seleksi ORI. The alleged code of ethics violation was reported by the Indonesian Development Watchdog Alliance (APPI), a civil society group. The House's Commission II is set to hand over the names of 18 candidates to the government before it conducts a screening test for the candidates. (ebf)(+) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Lorne Cook (The Jakarta Post) Brussels Wed, January 20, 2016 The European Union's top official warned Tuesday the bloc has just two months to get its migration strategy in order amid criticism that its current policies are putting thousands of people in danger and creating more business for smugglers. "We have no more than two months to get things under control," European Council President Donald Tusk told EU lawmakers, warning that a summit of EU leaders in Brussels on March 17-18 "will be the last moment to see if our strategy works." The EU spent most of 2015 devising policies to cope with the arrival of more than 1 million people fleeing conflict or poverty but few are having a real impact. A refugee sharing plan launched in September has barely got off the ground and countries are still not sending back people who don't qualify for asylum. A package of sweeteners earmarked for Turkey - including 3 billion euros ($3.3 billion), easier visa access for Turkish citizens and fast-tracking of the country's EU membership process - has borne little fruit. The failure has raised tensions between neighbors, particularly along the Balkan route used by migrants arriving in Greece to reach their preferred destinations like Germany or Sweden further north. Tusk warned that if Europe fails to make the strategy work "we will face grave consequences such as the collapse of Schengen," the 26-nation passport-free travel zone. His remarks came after Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French acronym MSF, said that border closures and tougher policing only force people seeking sanctuary or jobs to find more dangerous routes to Europe. "Policies of deterrence, along with their chaotic response to the humanitarian needs of those who flee, actively worsened the conditions of thousands of vulnerable men, women and children," said MSF head of operations, Brice de le Vingne. The group urged the EU to create more legal ways to come to Europe, allow asylum applications at the land border between Turkey and Greece, and set up a real search and rescue system, after more than 3,000 people died trying to reach the EU by sea in 2015. As pressure built among EU partner nations, four Central European members confirmed Tuesday their fierce opposition to a plan to redistribute 160,000 refugees from Italy and Greece, and called for the strict control and registration of all refugees on the external borders of the Schengen zone. The Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, who form an informal grouping known as the Visegrad Four or V4, rejected any compulsory refugee quotas. Officials from Slovenia and Serbia also warned of retaliatory measures if Austria tries to slow the entry of migrants. That, they say, would cause a domino effect and ratchet up tensions along the so-called Balkan migrant corridor back to Greece, where most migrants are arriving from Turkey. "If Austria and Germany introduce certain measures that would mean tighter control of the flow of migrants, Slovenia will do the same," Foreign Minister Karl Erjavec said. Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic said that Belgrade "will protect its interests." "We cannot allow the borders to close and limit the flow of migrants and they stay in Serbia," he said. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said closing borders won't prevent people from trying to enter Europe. Steinmeier said the root causes driving people to flee their homes, such as conflicts in the Middle East, need to be tackled and that Turkey's cooperation is also key. North African states must also take back failed asylum seekers like western Balkan nations already do, he added. Elsewhere, Dutch police said they arrested three protesters Monday night at a demonstration against a town's plan to build a center for potential asylum-seekers. Riot police cleared a central square in the town of Heesch after demonstrators began throwing eggs and fireworks at officers. Police say there were no injuries. Last week, someone hung a pig's carcass from a tree near the proposed location. (+) ___ Mike Corder in the Hague, Netherlands, Karel Janicek in Prague, Frank Jordans in Berlin, and Jovana Gec in Belgrade, Serbia, contributed to this report. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Indra Budiari and Dewanti Wardhani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Wed, January 20, 2016 Five people were killed and 150 were left homeless when a fire originating from an in-house clothing workshop razed 10 houses in a densely populated area in Tambora, West Jakarta, on Tuesday. Tambora Police head Comr. Wirdhanto said Tuesday that police had identified the victims as Riki, 35; Eva, 30; Popo, 70; Sensen, 3; and Ardi, 20. 'Riki and Eva were husband and wife, Sensen was their child, Popo was the grandmother and Ardi was an employee at the workshop,' Wirdhanto said, adding that the fire had started in the house owned by Riki, who also used it as a clothing workshop. The five are believed to have been trapped in the house, unable to save themselves from the fire that started to rage at 1:30 p.m. Wirdhanto said the preliminary investigation had shown that the fire had been caused by an electrical short circuit from the workshop, but added that a further investigation was needed before drawing conclusions. Separately, Tambora district head Djaharidin said the district office and local residents had established an evacuation post to accommodate 150 people of 50 families whose homes were destroyed by the fire. 'Most of the destroyed homes are rented houses, so a lot of people were affected. We will provide them with an evacuation post, an emergency kitchen and a medical post,' he said. Nursama, sitting in front of debris that used to be her house, was in tears to see almost everything she possessed destroyed by the fire. 'All of my belongings aside from a motorcycle have been destroyed by the fire,' Nurasama told the The Jakarta Post, while wiping her tears with her orange dress. 'The only good thing here is that my family was spared.' With a density of more than 40,000 residents per square kilometer, Tambora has been named one of the most populous districts in Southeast Asia. As a densely populated neighborhood with a lot of rented houses, the area is prone to fire. In September last year, 150 houses were burnt down only a kilometer away from Tuesday's scene. Fire and Disaster Mitigation Agency head Subejo said that West Jakarta was generally prone to fire, especially highly populated neighborhoods like Tambora. He said residents often neglected the dangers of improper electrical wiring, which could result in fires. 'Populated neighborhoods, such as Tambora, often have improper electrical wiring. This is dangerous, because it can easily cause short circuits,' Subejo said at City Hall on Tuesday. He went on to say that the agency often carried out preventive measures by educating residents on the dangers of improper electrical wiring and what to do in the event of a fire. However, without proper electrical infrastructure, such an attempt was fruitless, he said. In 2015, the agency recorded almost 1,500 fire incidents throughout the capital, mostly caused by electricity. As many as 56 areas of Jakarta are classified as fire-prone, including South Manggarai, Bukit Duri and Mampang Prapatan in South Jakarta, Penjaringan, Warakas and Koja in North Jakarta, Jatinegara Barat and Halim in East Jakarta, Kebon Kacang and Kramat Sentiong in Central Jakarta and West Palmerah in West Jakarta. Governor Basuki 'Ahok' Tjahaja Purnama said the city administration was offering residents in fire-prone areas the option of moving to low-cost rental apartments. However they would need to wait for the completion of 2,400 low-costs units later in the year. 'One solution is to relocate the residents to low-cost apartments later. Neighborhoods prone to fire are no place to live in,' Ahok told reporters Tuesday. He urged state-owned electricity company PT PLN to crack down on improper electrical wiring. 'We can't offer anything except offering the residents to be relocated to low-cost apartments. PLN should raid such neighborhoods, because they have the authority [to do so],' Ahok said. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Ayomi Amindoni (The Jakarta Post) Wed, January 20, 2016 The government has called an offer for a stake in PT Freeport Indonesia overpriced. At US$1.7 billion, the shares offered to the government by the company were overpriced, State-Owned Enterprises (SOE) Minister Rini Soemarno said on Tuesday. Freeport Indonesia must sell the Indonesian government a 10.64 percent stake in the huge Grasberg copper and gold mine in Papua as part of the process to extend its operating contract beyond 2021. "What is being offered in our opinion is too high," Rini said during a press conference. Nevertheless, the government is still evaluating the divestment offered by US-based Freeport McMoRan Inc's Indonesian unit. "We asked Danareksa and Mandiri Securities to evaluate how much the actual value really is," the minister said. She also said SOEs were still interested in buying the shares to be divested by the gold and copper mining giant. "As state-owned firms we hope to participate in one of the world's biggest copper mines," she said, adding that the ministry and the government would discuss the continuation of the Freeport Indonesia divestment process. A numbers of state-owned firms have expressed interest in acquiring a stake in Freeport Indonesia, including diversified miner PT Aneka Tambang (ANTAM), coal miner PT Bukit Asam (PTBA), PT Indonesia Asahan Aluminum (Inalum) and PT Timah. The Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry's director general of coal and minerals, Bambang Gatot Ariyono, told thejakartapost.com that the assessment of Freeport Indonesia's valuation involved several ministries, including the Finance Ministry and the SOE Ministry. "The Finance Ministry will determine who will be appointed to perform the purchase," Bambang said. Under current regulations, the central government is first in line to purchase the shares, followed by the provincial and regency or municipality administrations. Next are SOEs, followed by local administration-owned enterprises, which have to express their interest within 60 days of the offering. If none of them are interested, private Indonesian companies would be allowed to buy the shares. Earlier, Finance Minister Bambang Brodjonegoro said if the government decided to purchase the shares, the 2016 state budget would need to be revised.(+) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Ina Parlina, Fedina S. Sundaryani and Nani Afrida (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Wed, January 20, 2016 The administration of President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo and the legislative branch of the government have agreed to introduce new legal guidelines to strengthen the country's counterterrorism efforts in the wake of last week's deadly attack in Central Jakarta. The commitment was made following a meeting on Tuesday between Jokowi, a number of senior ministers, House of Representatives (DPR) Speaker Ade Komarudin, People's Consultative Assembly (MPR) Speaker Zulkifli Hasan, Regional Representatives Council (DPD) Speaker Irman Gusman and leaders of the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court at the State Palace. The government will soon begin preparing revisions to Law No. 15/2003 and Law No. 9/2013 on the prevention and eradication of terrorism, with the amendments to be included on the House's 2016 national legislation priority list. The government will press ahead with the amendments despite concerns that the plan could infringe on civil liberties and could also grant the National Intelligence Agency (BIN) the authority to make arrests. One of provisions in one of the amendments will grant the National Police the authority to temporarily detain suspects for preventative and investigative purposes. Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Luhut Pandjaitan has labeled this authority a 'preemptive power'. 'The point is that we want to grant powers to assist preemptive [actions],' Luhut said after the meeting, adding that such preventive detention measures could last one to two weeks. Luhut also said the government was looking into the possibility of granting BIN the authority to make preemptive arrests. Under existing antiterrorism laws, only a law enforcement agency such as the National Police is allowed to make a one-week arrest based on preliminary evidence. Preliminary evidence can be obtained using intelligence reports and must be first legalized by the head of a district court. 'We will see about it. We will weigh whether or not intelligence agencies or other [security institutions should also be granted such powers],' Luhut said. 'We are considering all aspects [including human rights]. Instead of having more casualties due to possible violence and [terror acts], it is better to, let's say, to take legal measures against [possible perpetrators],' he added. Law and Human Rights Minister Yasonna Laoly, however, rejected the proposal, saying that only the police should have the authority to make arrests. 'BIN wants [such an authority] but, I think, it would be better to allow law enforcement agencies to keep control of this power,' Yasonna said. Luhut stopped short of listing the criteria required for authorities to make such arrests, and simply said that the government would ensure that no false arrests would take place. Amid reports that hundreds of Indonesians are fighting with Islamic State (IS) and that their return could create security problems in the country, the government has also revived a plan to revoke the passports and citizenship of those who go abroad to fight with IS. 'The President has reminded me of that possibility. I am currently looking into that option,' Luhut said. In a press conference after the meeting, Jokowi said that everyone in the government was 'committed to finding solution together as soon as possible'. The House, meanwhile, said it would welcome any government proposal to amend the existing anti-terror laws or to issue government regulations in lieu of a law (Perppu), although Yasonna said the government would prefer an amendment to a Perppu. 'We have agreed to make amendments. However, we also noted that a revision would take time,' Ade said, adding that the government might consider a Perppu if it felt the need to take urgent steps. Separately, National Police chief Gen. Badrodin Haiti proposed that the amendments, if approved, should give the police at least one month to detain potential terrorist suspects for questioning. 'We hope that it will be extended to one month. Proving [terror offenses] is not easy because we have to match and confirm details that sometimes come from faraway places, we sometimes even need statements from those abroad. All of that takes a long time,' he said. Under the existing law, investigators have up to seven days after they arrest a person to decide whether or not there is enough evidence to name the suspect a terrorist. The police need at least two pieces of evidence, as stipulated by the Criminal Code Procedures (KUHAP), to support criminal charges or else the suspect must be let go. ______________________________________ To receive comprehensive and earlier access to The Jakarta Post print edition, please subscribe to our epaper through iOS' iTunes, Android's Google Play, Blackberry World or Microsoft's Windows Store. Subscription includes free daily editions of The Nation, The Star Malaysia, the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Asia News. For print subscription, please contact our call center at (+6221) 5360014 or subscription@thejakartapost.com Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta Wed, January 20, 2016 The Jakarta administration has called for an improvement in workers' safety with many construction projects currently in the city involving thousands of workers. Governor Basuki 'Ahok' Tjahaja Purnama reminded companies that worker safety must be prioritized, especially in construction projects. 'Companies must maintain workers' safety and health, and every employee has the right to be protected in order to work in a healthy, safe and productive environment,' Ahok said during an assembly at Jl. Gatot Subroto in South Jakarta on Tuesday. Jakarta Manpower and Transmigration Agency head Priyono said the number of workplace accidents in the city was still high and that protection for construction workers was not yet optimal. According to data from the Workers Social Security Agency (BPJS Ketenagakerjaan) revealed there were 5,567 workplace accidents in 2015, 363 of which involved construction workers. BPJS Ketenagakerjaan processed claims totaling Rp 150.2 billion (US$10.8 million), Rp 5.8 billion of which was for construction worker accidents. Cairo is expected to witness a high of 16 degrees Celsius and a low of 8 degrees on Wednesday Egypts Meteorological Authority (EMA) has predicted that the country's cold weather will continue until the end of this week, expecting a further drop in temperatures on Wednesday night, MENA reported. Cairo is expected to witness on Wednesday a high of 16 degrees Celsius and a low of 8 degrees. The coastal Mediterranean city of Alexandria will see a high of 16 and a low of 9. The authority said that frost is expected on crops in central Sinai and North Delta on Wednesday. Some clouds are also expected by mid-day in the northern parts of the country, accompanied by mild rains. Fog will appear in Upper Egypt, Cairo, and cities near the Suez Canal, including Ismailia and Suez city. The Red Sea resorts of Hurghada and Sharm El-Sheikh will both witness highs of 21, 22, and lows of 10 and 12. The Upper Egypt governorates of Assiut and Minya will witness a high of 18 and a low of 4. Search Keywords: Short link: Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta Wed, January 20, 2016 The family of a 12-year-old boy is likely to reach a settlement with Marine Corps personnel who assaulted the boy for allegedly stealing a bird, the family's lawyer has said. Lawyer Ikhsan Abdullah said on Tuesday that the mediation process between the victim and Marines was still ongoing but that the parties would likely conclude the dispute amicably. 'We are still holding mediation right now. It seems that a settlement will be reached,' Ikhsan said as quoted by kompas.com. The incident took place after the boy entered the Marines' housing complex in Cilandak, South Jakarta, in search of a lost kite. He was then approached by a man in military fatigues. 'He thought I was a bird thief. I told him I wasn't,' the boy said in his account. The boy was then taken to a security post, where three servicemen assaulted him, including by turning a hose on him, and ignored his pleas to be released, according to the boy's testimony. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta Wed, January 20, 2016 A lawyer for Jessica, one of the key witnesses in the death of Wayan Mirna Salihin, 27, claims that Mirna's friend also sipped the cyanide-laced coffee. 'At first, [Mirna asked] Jessica to smell the coffee, then [she asked] Hani too. Mirna then sipped the coffee. Hani also had a sip. They then had a conversation. Mirna later asked Jessica to order her a mineral water because her throat felt bad,' Yudi Wibowo Sukinto, lawyer for Jessica told reporters on Tuesday after a questioning session of his client at the Jakarta Police headquarters. 'The two women drank the coffee. Why was there only one who died?,' he added. Mirna died on Jan. 6 at Abdi Waluyo Hospital in Central Jakarta after suffering convulsions at a restaurant in the Grand Indonesia shopping mall, Central Jakarta. She went into the convulsions after drinking an iced coffee that was subsequently found to contain traces of cyanide. The Jakarta Police said on Monday that post-mortem tests conducted on Mirna's stomach contents and of the coffee residue confirmed a high-level of cyanide present in both. The National Police forensics laboratory recently released a report saying that Mirna's coffee contained 15 grams of cyanide. 'It just needs 90 milligrams of cyanide to kill someone, while Mirna's coffee contained 15 grams of the chemical,' the forensics laboratory head Brig. Gen. Alex Mandalika said. Police have yet to name anyone a suspect in the case. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Tama Salim and Nurul Fitri Ramadhani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Wed, January 20, 2016 Following the resignation of PT Freeport Indonesia (Freeport) president director Maroef Sjamsoeddin, House of Representatives Deputy Speaker Fahri Hamzah plans to set up an inquiry to investigate irregularities in the local subsidiary of the giant US gold and copper mining firm. Fahri, a Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) politician, claimed that Freeport had been involved in high-level mischief because before Maroef's resignation, there was last year's resignation of the company chairman James Moffett. 'We should take note of these phenomena and conduct a comprehensive investigation [into Freeport], particularly in regards to its management systems,' Fahri said after attending an event at the headquarters of the Supreme Audit Agency (BPK) in Jakarta on Tuesday. Discourse about the establishment of such a team became hot talk at the House last year following the controversy that prompted the resignation of Setya Novanto from his post at the House. At first, the planned inquiry aimed to uncover any political maneuvering behind Setya's alleged attempt to strike a deal between the government and the company. Freeport rebuffed speculations surrounding Maroef's withdrawal, saying that his contract had simply expired and so he had tendered his resignation. The House's ethics council (MKD) held a round of hearings last year to examine a report from Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Sudirman Said on Setya's alleged misconduct in negotiations to extend Freeport's work contract. Sudirman attached recorded conversations between Setya, Maroef and businessman Reza Chalid to support his allegation that Setya had tried to wrangle shares from the company to secure the extension. Maroef provided the taped conversations, arguing that he suspected that there had been a conspiracy to try and exploit the company. BPK member Achsanul Qosasi said that it was possible for his agency to probe Freeport by auditing the royalties of the mining company. 'If they want us to audit its royalties, sure, we can do that,' Achsanul said. Separately, various lawmakers expressed contempt for the slow progress of the Attorney General's Office (AGO) in investigating Setya's alleged corruption. Members of the MKD, who also sit on Commission III overseeing legal affairs, ganged up on the AGO for failing to explain the nature of Setya's offense. This included Gerindra's Supratman and Sufmi Dasco Ahmad and the Golkar Party's Adies Kadir. Syarifuddin Sudding of the Hanura Party asked the AGO to be forthcoming about whether or not they had enough evidence to press forward with the case. 'If there [isn't enough to prove the allegations] then stop the investigation, because it has caused too much disturbance,' Sudding said. In response to his critics, Attorney General Muhammad Prasetyo resisted pressure to reveal any details of the ongoing investigation, deflecting allegations of political partisanship. 'We do what we can and we focus on what we can do first. It would be uncalled for if we revealed the [specifics of this] case in this forum, since it is still under investigation,' Prasetyo told the House's Commission III in a meeting on Tuesday. 'Give us time to deal with it. You may proceed if we have enough evidence ' I am certain that it exists.' AGO junior attorney general for special crimes Arminsyah told reporters that prosecutors would continue to reach out to Reza for testimony, despite an absence of leads. He said the investigation could theoretically progress to the next stage without Reza as the AGO had verified the recording with an expert from the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB). _____________________________________ To receive comprehensive and earlier access to The Jakarta Post print edition, please subscribe to our epaper through iOS' iTunes, Android's Google Play, Blackberry World or Microsoft's Windows Store. Subscription includes free daily editions of The Nation, The Star Malaysia, the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Asia News. For print subscription, please contact our call center at (+6221) 5360014 or subscription@thejakartapost.com Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Dylan Amirio (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Wed, January 20, 2016 Publicly listed shipping firm PT Humpuss Intermoda Transportasi plans to enter the port infrastructure business to support the government's program aimed at improving connectivity in the archipelago. Humpuss president director Theo Lekatompessy said in Jakarta on Tuesday the company would provide dredging services, reclamation works or possibly port construction in the infrastructure business. He said that the expansion into the infrastructure business was one of the company's programs aimed at creating higher business value to support its future growth. He said that Humpuss may cooperate with Dutch or Belgian companies in the port infrastructure business. 'We will enter the port infrastructure business as part of our intention to back the government's maritime highway initiative,' he said during a brief discussion during a visit to The Jakarta Post's office. As part of the maritime highway initiative, President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo's administration plans to build ports in various parts of the country and operate more cargo ships to improve connectivity. A weak transportation system has caused logistics distribution bottlenecks, especially from the western part of the country to the east, and resulted in a wide disparity in commodity prices. The price of Premium gasoline in Papua, for example, could be 10 times higher than in Java. Humpus' corporate secretary, Daryono, said earlier that Humpus also planned to provide cargo ship services from Tanjung Priok Port and Panjang in Lampung. The cargo shipping service is considered promising as Merak Port in Banten will be unable to accommodate an increase in cars, especially trucks to and from Lampung. Humpuss Intermoda currently focuses in the transportation of liquefied natural gas (LNG), fuels and coal. Former president Soeharto's youngest son, Hutomo 'Tommy' Mandala Putra, is a major shareholder of Humpuss. The company, which suffered weak sales following the 2008 financial crisis, began to record a positive sales growth between 2012 and 2014, but posted another decline in 2015 due to the country's slowing economy. As of September, last year, Humpuss' revenues fell 21.98 percent to US$38.17 million year-on-year. However, the company expected positive profit growth in 2015, despite the fall in its revenues. Theo said that the company expected a sharp increase in revenues in 2016 thanks to additional revenue from its new contract to transport LNG to state electricity company PLN's power plant in Bali. 'For 2016, we are seeing a possible 50 percent sales growth. The contract we obtained in Bali will definitely have an impact on our monetary state this year,' Theo said. Humpuss signed a seven-year contract worth around $100 million in December last year to transport LNG from Bontang to Bali. Theo said that the project would commence sometime in February and would contribute significantly toward the company's sales revenue growth for 2016. The LNG will be regasified at an LNG receiving terminal in Tanjung Benoa, near the power plant, before gas is delivered to the power plant. The LNG terminal is being constructed on a plot of land owned by state-owned port operator Pelindo III. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Dave Bryan (The Jakarta Post) New York Wed, January 20, 2016 The Islamic State group has acknowledged the death of the masked militant known as "Jihadi John," who appeared in several videos depicting the beheadings of Western hostages, the SITE Intelligence Group reported Tuesday. SITE, which monitors terrorist activity, reported that IS published a "eulogizing profile" of Jihadi John in its English-language magazine Dabiq on Tuesday. Jihadi John had been identified by the US military as Mohammed Emwazi, a Kuwaiti-born British citizen. "His harshness towards the kuffar (disbelievers) was manifested through deeds that enraged all the nations, religions, and factions of kufr, the entire world bearing witness to this," the Dabiq article said, according to a translation provided by SITE. Army Col. Steve Warren, a US military spokesman, said in November that the Army was "reasonably certain" that a drone strike in Syria had killed Emwazi, who spoke in beheading videos with a British accent as he wielded a knife. Separately, a US official said three drones ' two US and one British ' targeted the vehicle in which Emwazi was believed to be traveling in Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic State's self-proclaimed caliphate in northern Syria. The official said the US drone fired a Hellfire missile that struck the vehicle. "Jihadi John" appeared in videos posted online by the Islamic State starting in August 2014 that depicted the beheadings of US journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley, US aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig, British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, and Japanese journalist Kenji Goto. Sotloff's mother, Shirley Sotloff, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that she hadn't heard about the IS announcement but assumed Emwazi was dead following the Army's announcement last fall. "It's good," she said. "I'm glad that he's gone, but it doesn't bring back my son." Jodi Perras, a spokeswoman for the Kassig family in Indianapolis, said they had no comment on the news about Jihadi John. In the gruesome videos, a tall masked figure clad in black and speaking in a British accent typically began with a political rant taunting the West and a kneeling hostage clad in an orange prison-style jumpsuit before him, then ended it holding an oversize knife in his hand with the headless victim lying before him in the sand. The videos don't make clear if he carried out the actual killings. He also appeared as a narrator in videos of other beheadings, including the mass killing of captive Syrian government soldiers. Emwazi was believed to be in his mid-20s when he was killed. He had been described by a former hostage as a psychopath who enjoyed threatening his Western captives. Spanish journalist Javier Espinosa, who was held by the IS in Syria for more than six months after his abduction in September 2013, said Emwazi would explain precisely how the militants would carry out a beheading. The hostages nicknamed three British-sounding captors "the Beatles," with "Jihadi John" a reference to John Lennon, Espinosa said. Emwazi was born in Kuwait and spent part of his childhood in the poor Taima area of Jahra before moving to Britain as a boy, according to news reports quoting Syrian activists who knew the family. He attended state schools in London, then studied computer science at the University of Westminster before leaving for Syria in 2013. (+) ___ Associated Press writer Dave Fischer in Miami contributed to this report. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Dewanti A. Wardhani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Wed, January 20, 2016 The Jakarta administration has earmarked Rp 1.8 trillion (US$129.9 million) to develop five overpasses and four underpasses this year on roads and rail crossings prone to congestion. Bina Marga agency's overpass and intersection division head Heru Suwondo said that all nine projects were slated for completion in 2017 with a multi-year contract. 'This year we will begin the development of overpasses and underpasses, set be completed and available for use next year,' Heru told The Jakarta Post over the phone at City Hall on Tuesday. Heru explained that of the five planned overpasses, three would be built over rail crossings at Bintaro in South Jakarta, Jl. Panjang in West Jakarta and Jl. Cipinang Lontar in East Jakarta. Those rail crossings were among the busiest in the city and were prone to traffic accidents, he said. A fatal railroad accident at the Bintaro crossing late in 2013 caused the death of at least five people and 91 injured. More recently, a bus operated by city-owned PT Transportasi Jakarta (Transjakarta) crashed into an electric train at the rail crossing on Jl. Panjang. Though leaving no victims, the accident highlighted the importance of securing rail crossings. The remaining overpasses will be constructed at Jembatan Tiga in North Jakarta and Pancoran in South Jakarta. Heru said that the design for the planned overpass at Jembatan Tiga was still being planned, while the overpass at Pancoran would be built one-way for drivers traveling from Cawang in East Jakarta to Gatot Subroto in South Jakarta. The underpasses will be built at South Jakarta's Jl. RA Kartini for motorists traveling from Pondok Indah to Lebak Bulus, at Kebayoran Baru for motorists traveling from Jl. Kapten Tendean to Jl. Wolter Monginsidi, Kuningan for motorists traveling from Kuningan to Jl. Mampang Prapatan and Pramuka in East Jakarta for motorists traveling from Jl. Pramuka to Salemba in Central Jakarta. 'Currently we are processing all documents at the BPPBJ [Jakarta Goods and Services Procurement Agency] in order to begin a bidding process to find the projects' contractors, except for the Jembatan Tiga overpass, the design of which design is being finalized,' Heru said. Separately, BPPBJ head Blessmiyanda said that his agency was in the final stage of evaluating Bina Marga Agency's documents. 'Hopefully bidding can begin next week,' Bless said via a text message on Tuesday. He went on to say that the BPPBJ would speed up the bidding process so that the agency could quickly commence construction and have the projects completed on schedule. Normally, the bidding process can take up to 75 days. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Wed, January 20, 2016 The Jakarta Police are set to hand over the prosecution of an American chiropractor allegedly responsible for the death of a patient to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), as he has returned home to the US, a top police investigator said Wednesday. Chiropractor Randall Cafferty left Indonesia and landed in Los Angeles on Dec. 22 before settling in San Diego, California, according to information from the FBI, Jakarta Police general crimes chief Sr.Comr Krishna Murti said. Cafferty was suspected of malpractice that lead to the death of Allya Siska Nadya, 32, in August last year after she received treatment at a Chiropractic First clinic in Pondok Indah Mall. As Indonesia and the US do not have extradition treaties, the Jakarta Police have arranged for Randall to be prosecuted in his home country. FBI representatives declared their support for the Jakarta Police in a meeting on Wednesday morning, Krishna said. "We will conduct a case expose and give all the data like the chronology of the case, the autopsy result and witness statements," he said, adding that FBI representatives had taken Jakarta Police investigators' summary to translate into English. FBI investigators will also talk with the US Prosecutor's Office regarding relevant procedures and would update the Jakarta Police in the next few days, Krishna said. Jakarta Police investigators and key witnesses will also be sent to the US to help with the case. In a bid to prosecute Cafferty, the police issued a red notice with Interpol in the event that Randall attempted to travel to another country. If the destination country had an extradition treaty with Indonesia, he could be brought back to Jakarta for prosecution, Krishna said. Just last week, the police said they believed Randall was still in Indonesia and had overstayed his visa as immigration records suggested he was still in the country. The police named Cafferty and the owner of the clinic ' Malaysian national Kan Wai Ming ' as suspects last week. Allya's autopsy results showed internal bleeding in her upper neck area. The Jakarta Health Agency has shut down all Chiropractic First clinics across Jakarta for operating illegally. (rin) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Matthew Lee (The Jakarta Post) Washington Wed, January 20, 2016 Secretary of State John Kerry is hoping to move aside obstacles that threaten to delay the start of peace talks to end Syria's war, seeking compromise with Russia's foreign minister on which Syrian opposition groups should be eligible to participate. Kerry leaves Tuesday for Switzerland to meet the next day with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Zurich. After attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Kerry will head to Riyadh to discuss the same issue with top Saudi officials. Last weekend he was in Austria sealing the implementation of a landmark nuclear deal with Iran. Russia and Iran, which back Syrian President Bashar Assad, have severe differences with Saudi Arabia, other Arab states, the United States and Europe over which opposition groups should be considered terrorists and not allowed to be part of an 18-month political transition process that the UN has endorsed. One dispute is over the groups Ahrar-as-Sham and Jaish al-Islam, which Russia and Syria consider "terrorists" but Saudi Arabia, the United States and others view as legitimate opposition groups. The dispute is threatening to delay the planned Jan. 25 start of UN-meditated peace talks. "We're not unmindful of the fact that there still remains differences of opinion, and that this is a complicated process and that there is still quite a bit of work that needs to be done to get the meeting to occur," State Department spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday. "But it's our hope that this can continue to move forward, and that we can have this meeting on the 25th." On Monday, UN chief Ban Ki-moon urged countries supporting opposing sides in the Syrian conflict to redouble efforts to reach agreement on the list of eligible opposition groups. Ban's appeal came as the U.N. special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, briefed the Security Council on his efforts to get the talks started and the leaders of Russia and Qatar met in Moscow to try to narrow their differences. UN officials say they remain focused on starting the talks on Jan. 25 as planned, but they say they can't send out invitations until the key countries agree on an opposition list and have hinted at a possible delay. In Washington, UN officials echoed those sentiments on Tuesday. One official said the talks had not yet been delayed, but that it was possible they could slip by a week or more. In Moscow, meanwhile, a top Russian diplomat said he hoped the Lavrov-Kerry meeting would produce an agreement on the list. The conflict in Syria, which began nearly five years ago with protests against Assad, has morphed into an all-out war that has killed more than 250,000 people. The push for negotiations to end the conflict has accelerated with an estimated 4 million Syrians fleeing the country, overwhelming its neighbors and heading to Europe ' and the plight of some 400,000 people trapped in besieged areas where an unknown number have starved to death. Hopes for a quick end to the conflict are dim, however, with Assad's forces scoring a series of battlefield gains which could make the government less inclined to negotiate a compromise. The issue of Assad's future also remains a serious stumbling block. (+) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Hans Nicholas Jong (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Wed, January 20, 2016 The National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) is ready to launch a national action plan on business and human rights on the back of rampant human rights abuses committed by corporations. Komnas HAM chairman Nur Kholis said on Tuesday that the commission had finished drafting the final version of the action plan. 'This action plan is only for businesses. This plan will regulate how companies should pay more attention to human rights, how the government could do more against corporations that fail to protect human rights, and support for victims,' he told The Jakarta Post. The action plan is crucial as currently there are no guidelines for stakeholders to resolve major issues such as labor disputes over low wages, the primacy of human rights over business interests and the debate over profits and workers' rights. Even though the government has issued an action plan on human rights through Presidential Regulation No. 75/2015, it has only a general definition of human rights and lacks an action plan. Nur Kholis said the new action plan would convey principles outlined in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights for Sustainable Development, which had been tailored specifically for the situation in Indonesia. In 2011, the UN Human Rights Council unanimously endorsed the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. 'The UK was the first country to adopt the principle into a national action plan. Why has it taken Indonesia so long to adopt it? It's been five years but we're stuck in this final draft,' Nur Kholis said. In recent years Komnas HAM has received more reports on agrarian conflicts, which mostly involve businesses, than any other type of human rights abuses. Komnas HAM commissioner Dianto Bachriadi said the commission received more than 1,000 reports in 2015 in which companies were accused of treating their employees unfairly, Most of the companies were also accused of illegally taking over land from local and indigenous people. 'The number of companies that have complied with human rights principles continues to be small, maybe just 2 or 3 percent. This is a big challenge for Indonesia, which is now on the world stage but continues to struggle within. So if our companies want to go global, it will be difficult because their products have to meet international standards,' Indonesian Employers Association (Apindo) head of labor department Harijanto said on Tuesday. Before Komnas HAM launches the action plan, it will conduct a high-level meeting with relevant ministries regarding its possible adoption. Foreign Ministry director of human rights and humanitarian affairs Dicky Komar said the government should decide which ministry would be the host of the national action plan issued by Komnas HAM. 'When the action plan is finished, we hope that the plan is passed to the government and the government picks it up,' he said on Tuesday. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Hans Nicholas Jong (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Wed, January 20, 2016 The Yap Thiam Hien Foundation has named lawyer and activist Handoko Wibowo the 2015 recipient of the rights accolade for his relentless effort to fight for the land rights of farmers in Central Java. Foundation chairman Todung Mulya Lubis said that the panel of judges decided to give the award to Handoko, a 53-year-old Chinese-Indonesian, to inspire young advocates to fight for marginalized people. 'Handoko is a role model. He is someone who chose not to become an advocate surrounded by material things. These are the things that I think should be honored,' he told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday. Handoko will receive the award in a ceremony at the National Museum in Central Jakarta on Wednesday night. Handoko's commitment to promoting the rights of farmers was proven by his decision to give up his law practice in 2001 to focus on land conflicts in Batang, Central Java. 'In 1998, my neighbors, who were farmers, were causing riots, damaging the house of one of the foremen of a private company. I was surprised to learn that many of my neighbors were really poor [because they were victims of extortion by the foreman whose house was targeted],' Handoko told the Post on Tuesday. After that, he tried to facilitate mediation between the farmers and the company. 'Many farmers came to me [for help], thousands of them. Therefore, it was hard for me to divide my time between my professional career as a lawyer [and my advocacy work for farmers]. So I decided to shut down my law firm in 2001, but not because I was bankrupt [laughing],' Handoko said. Since then, he has been advocating the rights of farmers in Central Java, helping them defend their land through peaceful means. 'I always prioritize dialogue and networking. I have always criticized my friends who think that advocating means fighting and making enemies. That's not the case, including in land conflicts,' said Handoko. He said that he fed these farmers with information through a social movement called Omah Tani, which was established seven years after he closed his law practice. Through Omah Tani, Handoko provided legal consultation, education, food as well as temporary shelters for those in need. This has helped farmers gain equal footing with other stakeholders during discussions. 'When dialogue is carried out, they have dignity,' Handoko said. In his early days as an advocate, he said that he had to help farmers from his own pocket. 'It was a bit difficult [financially]. I wasn't able to keep my practice open. It would be funny to help rich clients who are in conflict with farmers while at the same time defending the same farmers. But that's alright, I'm not married and have no kids anyway [laughing],' Handoko said. 'That said, I inherited an 8-hectare clover plantation from my father that can be harvested every year.' Besides helping farmers, he said that he was also open to lending a hand to other marginalized groups, such as the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. 'My house has turned into an oasis [for the marginalized]. For example, I've been helping the LGBT community in fighting HIV/AIDS. This is what makes us successful as we don't focus only on one area,' said Handoko. He said that his advocacy work and peaceful approach had earned him many friends, from thugs to politicians. 'We know so many people that we are never attacked, even though I am a Christian and Chinese-Indonesian,' Handoko said. Commenting on the award, he said he was surprised to get a call from the foundation. 'At first I thought it was a joke, [laughing]' said Handoko. 'Because my work [as an advocate] is quiet, far from attention-grabbing. Land conflicts rarely attract the attention of the middle class. Therefore, this award means that there are still people concerned about this issue.' In the end, he considered winning the award a triumph for the farmers' movement. 'This is a win for all, not only for me. This award will remind people that this movement is a worthwhile one,' Handoko said. Over 2800 people were killed in road and train crashes during the first half of 2015 Two people were killed and nine others wounded in two separate road crashes in Qena and Beheira governorates late on Tuesday, state news agency MENA and Ahram Arabic reported. One person was killed and three others were injured when a microbus struck a concrete wall on a highway in Beheira, a governorate northwest of Cairo, according to MENA. A 46-year-old man was killed and 6 others, including a child, were wounded in a car crash near Qena governorate, some 700 km (435 miles) south of Cairo, Ahram Arabic news website reported. The Qena accident occurred when a truck smashed into a taxi on a highway leading to the Upper Egyptian governorate. Egypt is notorious for its poor road safety, badly maintained infrastructure, and loosely enforced traffic regulations. Eight people died and ten were injured Friday when a truck careened off a bridge on Cairo's Ring Road and crashed into a microbus stop below. Last month, the country's census authority reported that over 2800 people were killed in road and train crashes in Egypt in the first half of 2015. Search Keywords: Short link: Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin The Jakarta Post Wed, January 20, 2016 After making the flub that was seen around the world, comedian Steve Harvey finally had the chance to meet Miss Universe first runner-up Ariadna Gutierrez for the first time after wrongfully crowning her as Miss Universe 2015. Last December, Harvey crowned Gutierrez as the winner, only to rectify his mistake minutes later and announced that it was Miss Philippines Pia Wurtzbach who won. In the interview on 'The Steve Harvey Show,' Gutierrez playfully chided Harvey and said that he should learn how to read. 'You have to learn how to read cards,' the Colombian beauty queen told Harvey before she burst out laughing. 'Because it was on the card. You wanted me to win, you know?' she added. To which Harvey responded in jest: 'Yes! I really wanted you to win! Yeah! I'm off the hook. I can leave it at that.' On her part, the 22-year-old beauty queen said that she thought Harvey was just making a joke when he announced that he made a mistake on announcing the winner. 'If you can see the videos, you can see me laughing because I thought you were going to make a joke. 'I said, 'No, he's going to be in the mood to you know, making the people laugh. He's gonna make some jokes. Like Oprah'you're Miss Universe, you're Miss Universe, everyone's Miss Universe!'' she said. While the announcement mix-up has been a nightmare for her, Gutierrez said that she has since moved on from the incident. 'I already moved on. This is our destiny. That's why were here,' she said. During the interview, Harvey fought back tears when she apologized for what had happened. 'You're the one person'you're the one person that I really want to talk to because of the mistake I made. I cast you into a spotlight or place that I never intended to, that I would not want to happen to anybody. I just want to say how sorry I am. I'm beyond sorry for what happened that night, that it was you. Really at the end of the day, we walk away from here with something special,' the comedian said. On Monday (Manila time), Harvey also got to talk to Wurtzbach, who said that everyone should move forward from the incident already. 'Don't beat yourself up anymore. Let's move forward and let's be happy,' Wurtzbach told Harvey, who heaved a sigh of relief. (kes) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta Wed, January 20, 2016 Indonesian Police and military relocated hundreds of former members of the controversial Fajar Nusantara Movement (Gafatar) to Pontianak, West Kalimantan, on Wednesday, following the burning of their houses in Mempawah Regency, West Kalimantan. The former Gafatar members started arriving at the Kodam VII Tanjungpura temporary shelter on Tuesday afternoon, since they have nowhere else to stay, West Kalimantan Police spokesman Adj. Sr. Cmr. Arianto said. "There are currently hundreds of police and military members guarding the location of the former members' houses to prevent any unexpected occurrences," Arianto said as quoted by Tempo.co. The heightened security was put in place after the evacuation began, as a result of the burning of nine houses belonging to former Gafatar members, allegedly by Mempawah residents who have persistantly been pushing them to leave the region, Arianto said. The residents should prevent themselves from committing criminal acts, Arianto added. "Let's just take this issue to the authorities in charge who can handle it," Arianto added. Mempawah Regent Ria Norsan said after the issues are resolved the former members would return home by ship, adding that the local government has allocated funds for the repatriation and would manage the assets and homes of the former group members. On Monday an automobile was set on fire in the yard of the Mempawah regent's office when the owner, who used to belong to Gafatar, was negotiating with the local government about an ultimatum issued by the residents to banish the former members from Mempawah. "Representatives of the former members asked for more time to discuss the residents' ultimatum with their group and families," Norsan said. The regent had asked residents who were protesting to disband, but they refused. They then took stronger action by burning down the nine houses, depriving the former members of their homes. A coordinator for a group of former Gafatar members, Joko, 48, said he had nothing left following the banishment, since all of his money and property had been invested to develop his farm in Sedahan village, North Kayong regency. "We will let the government decide, since we don't have any place to go and nothing left," Joko said. (afr)(+) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta Wed, January 20, 2016 The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) has countered all pretrial accusations from graft suspect and former president director of state-owned port operator Pelindo II Richard Joost Lino by providing strong arguments and evidences of state losses incurred in the company's controversial crane procurement. The antigraft body demanded that sole judge Udjiati reject Lino's pretrial plea, which deems the KPK's investigation into him as illegitimate. KPK legal bureau head Setiadi said among the antigraft body's evidence was an audit report that confirmed Lino's decision to appoint Chinese company Wuxi Huadong Heavy Machinery (HDHM) to procure three container cranes in 2010 for three ports ' in Palembang, South Sumatra, Pontianak, West Kalimantan and in Lampung ' had US$3.6 million in state losses. Lino demanded on Monday that the court annul the crane investigation, claiming the KPK had failed to provide evidence that Lino's alleged intervention had resulted in state losses. Setiadi said the KPK had also questioned 18 witnesses before naming Lino a suspect and seized 159 documents that could prove Lino had abused his authority in the procurement project. 'We also have questioned the plaintiff in the same case in April 2014,' Setiadi said in response to Lino's argument that he had yet to be questioned as a witness in the case before he was named a suspect by the KPK in December. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Kathleen Hennessey (The Jakarta Post) Washington Wed, January 20, 2016 President Barack Obama on Tuesday thanked Australia for its "steadfast" alliance and key contributions in the fight against Islamic State group, as he welcomed Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to the White House for his first visit to Washington since taking office in September. Opening a meeting in the Oval Office, Obama said the leaders planned to discuss the anti-Islamic State operation, as well as broader counterterrorism efforts in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. The president noted Australia is a key contributor to the coalition, with the second-largest force of ground troops in Iraq behind the United States. "They have been a consistent and extraordinarily effective member of the coalition," Obama said. Australia has said it is among 40 countries being pressed by the US to boost their military contributions in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State after the deadly terrorist attack in Paris in November. But Australia told the US that its commitment would remain largely unchanged. Australia has six jet fighters based in Dubai flying missions against Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria. It also has soldiers in non-combat roles in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. Turnbull said his visit had included productive meetings with Defense Secretary Ash Carter. He said he looked forward to working more closely with US intelligence officials on counterterrorism efforts aimed at curbing the Islamic State's recruitment and communications online. Turnbull also praised Obama's work on securing the nuclear agreement with Iran. "That is a formidable effort, a great example of leadership on the part of the United States," he said. "In that very difficult part of the world, which we'll discuss shortly and in much more detail, that is going to be a very important step forward in ensuring stability." Obama and Turnbull first met on sidelines of an economic summit in Manila in November. Obama said after that meeting that they had discussed the fight against extremism, as well as the need to increase international pressure on the Islamic State group.(+) ___ Associated Press writer Darlene Superville contributed to this report. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Raras Cahyafitri (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Wed, January 20, 2016 From US$115 in 2014 to $28 recently ' the lowest level in over a decade ' the global oil price slump is squeezing operations of companies and some of their assets, but the Upstream Oil and Gas Regulatory Special Task Force (SKKMigas) has urged them to continue their exploration work and save on operational expenditure instead. Along with the global trend of lower investment in exploration and production, oil and gas firms in Indonesia have also cut down on such expenditure. Only $14.8 billion of the planned $18.8 billion in expenditure for producing blocks was actualized in 2015. For 2016, the target has been set at $15.95 billion, according to figures from SKKMigas. 'Our current policy is [to push for] maximum efficiency. Efficiency measures can be applied to operational expenditure instead of investment in exploration. Also, we are urging companies to avoid layoffs,' SKKMigas spokesman Elan Biantoro said. Reducing exploration work is normally the first option to cut costs. Operational expenditure and project costs constitute about 70 percent of companies' spending, according to him. 'We expect companies to adjust activities that can be performed at lower costs, such as replacing face-to-face meetings with teleconferences,' he added. State-owned oil and gas company Pertamina has announced plans to reduce its operational expenditure by 30 percent in response to the low price. Meanwhile, Chevron Indonesia Company (CICO) announced Tuesday that it would not extend its East Kalimantan production sharing contract (PSC) beyond the 2018 expiry date and instead would return the asset to the government. Although leaving East Kalimantan, Chevron IndoAsia Business Unit managing director Chuck Taylor said the company would continue its strategic projects in Indonesia, particularly in the Indonesia Deepwater Development (IDD) project. 'Opportunities in the East Kalimantan PSC are not competitive within Chevron portfolios,' Chevron representative in Indonesia Dony Indrawan said. Also, ConocoPhillips reportedly plans to farm out its stakes in South Natuna Sea Block B to new partners. ConocoPhillips holds 40 percent in the block, Chevron 25 percent and Inpex 35 percent. All three are seeking to release at least part of their stakes to new partners. Several other companies, especially small and locally owned oil and gas firms, are at great risk of closure or 'bleeding' operations due to the low prices, according to SKKMigas. The Tonga field in North Sumatra, operated by Energi Mega Persada, has been closed, partly because of high production costs, while other fields 'seriously struggling' are the West Air Komering PSC in South Sumatra, operated by Tiarabumi Petroleum, and the West Kampar PSC by Sumatera Persada Energi (SPE), said Elan. The oil price plunge has also forced global giants to slash jobs and scale back spending plans. BP plc last week cut an additional 5,000 jobs, Petroleo Brasileiro SA slashed its spending plans and Petrolian Nasional Bhd. warned it faced several tough years ahead. The benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude price for February delivery was priced at $29.11 per barrel on Tuesday morning, while Brent crude was valued at $28.55 per barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange on Monday, the lowest since December 2003. Prices have been moving south due to a global supply glut after the success of US shale oil and, most recently, the lifting of an embargo on Iran, one of the world's major producers, with some analysts predicting a further downward movement of prices as big producers refuse to cut output in a bid to maintain market share. In Indonesia, the cost per barrel is $22 on average, according to SKKMigas. However, there are numerous assets that have higher production costs, particularly those located in remote areas and offshore. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Riaz Khan and Asif Shahzad (The Jakarta Post) Charsadda, Pakistan Wed, January 20, 2016 Gunmen stormed a university in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing at least 19 people and triggering a heavy gunbattle with police and army troops that rushed to the scene in a town near the city of Peshawar, officials said. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack but the brazen assault harked back to a December 2014 Taliban attack on a school in Peshawar that killed more than 150 people, mostly children. The attack began shortly after the Bacha Khan University opened for classes in the town of Charsadda, some 35 kilometers outside Peshawar, said Deputy Commissioner Tahir Zafar. As police and soldiers rushed to the campus, the attackers traded gunfire with the troops and several explosions were heard from the area of the university. The Pakistani army said the attackers were contained in two university blocks and that four of them have been killed. Zafar said a chemistry professor and a student were among those killed. He said it wasn't clear how many attackers were inside the campus. Television footage showed heavy military presence at the university, troops rushing in and people fleeing. Ambulances were at the scene and the wounded were being taken to hospital. The Bacha Khan University is named after the founder of a liberal, anti-Taliban political party. The Pakistani Taliban have in the past targeted the party for its anti-militant policies. Pakistan's northwest and its lawless tribal regions bordering Afghanistan is a highly volatile region. Pakistani forces have been carrying out a major operation against the Taliban and other militants there since 2014. Last month, as the country marked the first anniversary of the Peshawar school attack, the military claimed "phenomenal successes" in the war and said it has killed around 3,500 insurgents since launching the operation. The school attack, which was claimed by the Pakistani Taliban, horrified the country and led the government to lift a 2008 moratorium on the death penalty. Pakistan hanged four militants last month who were sentenced to death over the attack. ___ Shahzad reported from Islamabad. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Fedina S. Sundaryani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Wed, January 20, 2016 The National Police have said that six men arrested last week were directly involved in last week's terrorist attack in Central Jakarta. National Police spokesman Insp. Gen. Anton Charliyan said on Tuesday that further investigation had also shown that the remaining seven out of 13 people arrested were not part of the alleged Islamic State (IS) network responsible for the attack. 'Six [of the people arrested] knew directly [that the attacks would occur], because one of the perpetrators had informed them. They received a letter that looked like a will, in which they [the six] were asked to take care of [one of the perpetrators'] wife, children and belongings, because he was about to commit amaliyah [militant jihad],' Anton said, referring to one of the four suspected perpetrators, Dian Joni Kurniadi, who died in the attack. 'Two of them were found not to be directly involved but supporting the attack by supplying goods,' he added. Along with Muhammad Ali, Ahmad Muhazan bin Saron and Afif, Dian is believed to have launched a coordinated attack last Thursday targeting police and foreigners in a district packed with shopping centers, embassies, UN headquarters and government offices. In the attack, Afif and Ali were killed after a bomb they were carrying detonated prematurely on the Starbucks cafe parking space, while Muhazan and Ahmad committed suicide attacks. Three civilians died during the attack, while 26 others were sent to hospitals for treatment. A bystander in the attack, 37-year-old Rais Karna, succumbed to his injuries on Saturday. The National Police arrested 13 people thought to be connected to the attacks. Ten men were arrested in Cipacing, Cirebon, Bekasi and Indramayu in West Java, two in Tegal, Central Java, and one in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan. Earlier on Monday, the Buleleng district office in Bali received a letter stating that an attack similar to the one in Jakarta could happen on the resort island. 'The [letter] explained that the same group that carried out the attacks in Sarinah [Jl. Thamrin] had reached Bali and would commit similar attacks in crowded places. We have sent a team there that is currently investigating the matter, and Bali has been ordered to increase its security and vigilance,' he said. Following last week's attack, the government has clamped down on websites and social media accounts thought to be linked to terrorists. Earlier, the government shut down websites and social media accounts suspected to be connected to former terror convict Muhammad Bahrun Naim, thought to be the orchestrator of the attack. Bahrun Naim is currently fighting alongside IS in Syria. However, several websites using Bahrun's name have reappeared recently. One website, www.bahrunnaim.site, had a new post uploaded on Monday encouraging Muslims to kidnap and kill law enforcement officials and foreigners. National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT) chief Comr. Gen. Saud Usman Nasution told The Jakarta Post that he would work with the Communications and Information Ministry to shut down any new websites promoting radicalism. 'We shut down these kinds of websites immediately, because some people are easily influenced by them and could be encouraged to join radical activities,' he said. Terrorism expert Noor Huda Ismail suggested that in addition to shutting down the websites, the government should also provide a counter narrative to prevent more people from joining such groups. Noor Huda said youngsters aged 16 to 26 were particularly vulnerable to such radical influence. 'The radicalization process goes like this: Websites and social media construct a reality that would later be exposed to these young kids, who then create their own meaning. This meaning is what pushes them to take action, and then this action is [displayed] on these websites. So it continues in a cycle,' he said. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Tassia Sipahutar (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Wed, January 20, 2016 The National Police sent a stern message to tax evaders when they agreed on Tuesday to renew a cooperation agreement on law enforcement with the Finance Ministry. Under the agreement, the police will be ready whenever needed to escort tax officials when collecting tax from tax evaders who often hire thugs to scare them away. 'Tax evaders, watch out! We're coming for you!' was the message conveyed by National Police chief Gen. Badrodin Haiti after signing an addendum of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Finance Minister Bambang Brodjonegoro. Tuesday's signing ceremony also saw the signing of the same addendum between the directorate general of taxation (DJP) and three divisions of the National Police, namely the Criminal Investigation Department (Bareskrim), the Security Maintenance Agency (Baharkam) and Security Intelligence Division (Baintelkam). Badrodin said the National Police were ready to back the ministry in its attempt to increase state revenues, such as from taxes. 'We are fully committed to backing up the DJP, from human resources training to intelligence support, because improving state revenues is one of the government's priorities,' he said. 'It turns out that we don't have to detain them. When tax officials and police officers arrive at their doorstep, they immediately pay their arrears,' Badrodin said, smiling. Bambang could not be happier. He insisted that the police escort would be especially important in 2016, which the government had named 'the year of law enforcement'. 'Tax evaders have always threatened officials by saying that they have backup from thugs. Now we have backup too that they must fear, the police.' The partnership with the National Police will enable the tax office to hone its intelligence skills as well, which is crucial in modern times like now when 'the bad guys are increasingly sophisticated', said Bambang. The government started taking stern measures early last year with its power of gijzeling ' a Dutch term literally meaning 'take a hostage' ' a move aimed at forcing tax evaders to pay their taxes. Tax office data show that throughout 2015, the Finance Ministry approved the detaining of 38 tax evaders with collective tax arrears of Rp 135 billion (US$9.7 million). Twenty-nine of them have since paid their arrears, amounting to Rp 90.6 billion. Meanwhile, as the tax office and the National Police continue to crack down on tax evaders, the government expects to improve the country's tax compliance and increase tax revenue. In a country of 250 million people, there are currently only 27 million registered taxpayers. Last year Rp 1.06 quadrillion in total tax revenue was collected, Rp 1.01 quadrillion of which was the responsibility of the tax office. The government has also repeatedly said that Rp 1.4 quadrillion (US$100.57 billion) was not properly recorded in the domestic financial system for various reasons, including tax evasion. 'We are looking to change that,' Bambang said. The Finance Ministry is struggling to raise tax collection. Bambang said earlier that the government hoped it would be able to implement the proposed tax amnesty law this year in order to raise taxes from funds parked overseas by wealthy Indonesians. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Safrin La Batu (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Wed, January 20, 2016 The police faced tough resistance while raiding drug suspects at locations in East Jakarta on Monday and North Jakarta on Tuesday. A police officer was killed and two others were injured during the operations. Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Mohammad Iqbal said officers Brig. Patrik and chief Brig. Taufik from the Central Jakarta police precinct, along with two informants, were forced to jump into the river behind the house where the drug dealers resided in Berlan, East Jakarta, on Monday. The officers were attacked by a pack of thugs armed with machetes when they attempted to arrest the drug suspects at the location. 'They attacked the four with machetes. Finding themselves cornered, the officers and the informants jumped into the Ciliwung River,' he said. Iqbal said that First Insp. Hariadi Prabowo, who led the raid, was also attacked by people outside the house. Taufik passed away after sustaining severe injuries and his body was found floating in the river around Gambir in Central Jakarta on Tuesday afternoon. Patrik suffered gashes to his body, but he survived the attack. Jakarta Police general crimes detective chief Sr. Comr. Krishna Murti said the two informants had managed to escape and were found alive. Krishna said the officers were about to arrest the wanted drug suspects at the house when one of suspects suddenly started screaming. The scream apparently triggered a gang of people from outside of the house to rush in and attack the officers. When asked whether or not the people who had attacked the officers were local residents, Krishna replied that, 'they were not local residents but people who seemed [to have been put on standby] to protect the suspect.' He said the scream might have been a sign already agreed to beforehand between the criminal elements to act as a call for back-up. '[Using a sign] is their modus operandi. They will gang up on [officers] if they are raided,' he said, adding that the area where the officers were attacked was a drug-riddled part of the city. Berlan is notorious for brawls between residents and neighbors. The clashes, which have taken place since the 1950s, often involve the hurling of stones and Molotov cocktails. Residents are also known to shoot at each other with arrows and air rifles. East Jakarta police precinct spokeswoman Comr. Husaimah, whose force was involved in the investigation of the case, said they had arrested six suspects and were hunting 12 others. She could not, however, specify the role that each of the suspects had played, kompas.com reported. In a separate case on Tuesday, two police officers from the West Jakarta police precinct were shot by a drug suspect, later identified as Ical, when they tried to arrest him at a house on Jl. Bugis, Tanjung Priok, North Jakarta. Iqbal said First Insp. Supriyatin was shot in his right hand while chief Brig. Aris Dinata was shot in his right chest, adding that the two were currently undergoing surgery at Cipto Mangunkusumo General Hospital in Central Jakarta. 'When the two officers entered the house, a person suddenly shot them from inside the house,' he said. Ical is currently being detained at the North Jakarta Police precinct. The Jakarta Police revealed that rampant drug dealing in the city had concentrated in Kampung Ambon, West Jakarta, Kampung Bahari, North Jakarta and in Tanah Tinggi, Central Jakarta. Jakarta Police drug crimes subdirectorate head Adj. Sr. Comr Gembong Yudha estimated that drug dealing in those three areas reached Rp 1.3 billion (US$94,000) every week, mostly for crystal methamphetamine, Antara news agency reported. ____________________________________ To receive comprehensive and earlier access to The Jakarta Post print edition, please subscribe to our epaper through iOS' iTunes, Android's Google Play, Blackberry World or Microsoft's Windows Store. Subscription includes free daily editions of The Nation, The Star Malaysia, the Philippine Daily Inquirer and Asia News. For print subscription, please contact our call center at (+6221) 5360014 or subscription@thejakartapost.com Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Maurizio Geri (The Jakarta Post) Norfolk, Virginia Wed, January 20, 2016 The Islamic State (IS) may have intended to repeat an attack similar to that in Paris with the latest bombs and shootings in Jakarta on Jan. 14, but fortunately it failed. Indonesian security forces promptly fought against inexperienced attackers in a major shopping district where bombs exploded, and the casualties were few. Until now, the police have controlled very well the radical movements in the country, whose members can no longer train abroad and come back as old generations belonging to Jamaah Islamiyah did. But spreading terrorism and ideology cannot be won only with increased control and security. IS has been fought until now mostly with bombings in Syria and Iraq, with unclear results, with increased security control in major cities around the world and with more controls at the frontiers of the states. Nevertheless, this strategy is not enough to win against a destructive cult that became a transnational criminal organization and then an unsuccessful, at least until now, attempt at state creation. What we need is also a battle of ideas. But who is really fighting the IS extremist narrative of Islamic interpretation inside the Islamic world? Not so much Turkey, a secular Muslim democracy busy with its security issues and with its mind in the EU, or Iran, the Shia regional power busy with its ideological rival on the other side of the Gulf, thinking now on how to reintegrate into the international community. Instead, Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, stretched exactly at the opposite end of the Asian continent to where IS dwells, has been doing quite a lot of work recently to oppose the backward, reactionary and violent Salafi-Wahhabi ideology of this group. This is one of the main reasons why IS wants to expand its actions in the country. Indonesian reality is not well-known in the Middle East, and in general in the world, being almost an 'invisible country' in the international community, but it is a rare example of a secular Muslim democracy in which the Islamic ethic perfectly coexists with a modern society. Since the people toppled their last dictator in 1998, Indonesia has gradually grown as an economic, political, cultural and religious power, in its Southeast Asian style. Today, Indonesia could be considered a potential 'diamond' in the battle of ideas against IS. Recently, the country's largest Islamic organization Nadlatul Ulama (NU), also the world's largest Islamic association, with some 50 million members, released a video called 'The Divine Grace of Islam Nusantara'. NU, whose stated goal is 'to spread messages about a tolerant Islam in their respective countries to curb radicalism, extremism and terrorism', was established in1926 in response to the rise of Wahabiism in Saudi Arabia. ___________________________________ Indonesia is on the right path to show some leadership in a counter-extremist global movement. Almost one century later, this organization wants to show to the world that the IS interpretations of the Koran and Hadith are not only dangerous but wrong, and today we need a revolution of ideas. As a former leader of the association, Mustofa Bisri, says in the video, 'We need a mental revolution to reconceptualize our entire understanding of the world. What is our concept of God? What is our concept of brotherhood? What is our concept of humanity? We need to change our entire worldview, by reexamining the nature and purpose of life'. This is exactly what we need today to fight IS, to reexamine the nature and purpose of life and human communities. Will this appeal be welcomed by people around the Islamic faith, but also of other religions, not only Abrahamic? Time will tell, but one thing is certain: Indonesia is on the right path to show some leadership in a counter-extremist global movement, based on its syncretic spiritual paths and its liberal democratic values, working against the attempts of terror to make it fearful and shaking. This leadership potentiality is based on the Indonesian Islamic and political features, very different from the Middle East, and is reflected in the leadership narrative of the Indonesian elites. President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo defined the recent attacks as 'actions that disrupted public security and disturbed the peace of the people'. But he didn't appeal to a 'war against terrorism' or against IS, as other states of Middle East or the West did, avoiding in this way alarmist and manicheist interpretations of the world and our times that foment the terrorist narratives of a total war. Indonesia represents a paradigmatic Muslim democracy, one of the best examples of how Islam can shape the principles of politics toward ethical values without necessarily having Islamism ruling the country. Believing that inclusiveness of pluralism and freedom of diversity are fundamental for a tolerant and open society, Indonesia may represent a real strong alternative to the Wahhabi-Salafi ideology that from the Arab peninsula spreads around the world with ominous and nefarious consequences. This is the battle of ideas that Indonesia can win and which the bombs of IS cannot stop. __________________ The writer is a PhD candidate and research assistant in international studies at Old Dominion University, Norfolk, the US. He is researching Muslim democracies and their treatment of minorities, particularly comparing Turkey and Indonesia. British minister Lord Tariq Ahmad of Wimbledon and a Russian delegation arrived on Tuesday to Cairo to discuss and inspect aviation security in Egypt British Minister Lord Tariq Ahmad of Wimbledon arrived in Cairo on Tuesday along with a Russian delegation to discuss "progress on aviation security in Sharm El Sheikh" with Egyptian officials, a statement by the British embassy read. Lord Ahmad, who has dual responsibility for aviation security in the Department for Transport and for countering extremism in the Home Office, met with a number of ministers to discuss ways to counter terrorism. "We are working side-by-side with Egypt on improving aviation security and we appreciate all the efforts made so far," says Lord Ahmad. According to the statement, Lord Ahmad met with Prime Minister Sherif Ismail, Interior Minister Magdy Abdel Ghaffar, Civil Aviation Minister Hossam Kamal, Endowments Minister Mohamed Gomaa, and Transportation Minister Saad El-Geyoushi. The British official told Egypt's Premier that the British government is "grateful" for Egyptian efforts to improve security in the Sharm El-Sheikh airport. "I know that the tourist industry is of great importance to the Egyptian economy and I also know that British tourists love holidays in Sharm el-Sheikh and want to return," the statement reads During the visit, Lord Ahmad also visited the Al-Azhar English Training Centre where he met a group of English teachers "Egypt is a friend and partner to the UK, and a country of vital strategic importance in the region. Thats why we will not leave Egypt to stand alone in facing the challenges posed by terrorism and extremism in the twenty-first century," says Lord Ahmad. Meanwhile, a Russian delegation arrived on Tuesday to Cairo international airport to check on security measures inside the airport, Al-Ahram daily newspaper reported. UK and Russia suspended all flights to Sharm El-Sheikh following a Russian plane crash that killed all 224 on board. Germany and France have also warned their citizens against traveling to Sinai, where major tourism hub Sharm El-Sheikh is located. Egyptian Tourism Minister Hisham Zaazou said last Friday that the country's tourism sector has been losing LE2.2 billion ($283 million) per month since the crash. Search Keywords: Short link: Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Suherdjoko (The Jakarta Post) Semarang Wed, January 20, 2016 The Semarang municipality plans to reconstruct Kota Lama (Old Town) in the city, a business and trading district in the early 19th century until the early 20th century. Acting Semarang mayor Tavip Supriyanto said recently that the municipality would revamp 105 buildings in Kota Lama, once called Oude Staat (Little Netherlands). 'Kota Lama will have three segments, namely the Jl. Letjen Soeprapto, Jl. Mpu Tantular and Jl. Merak areas,' said Tavip, adding that the municipality had set aside Rp 30 billion (US$2.2 million) for the purpose. He said the Semarang municipality was paying more attention to Kota Lama as it had become one of the tourist attractions in the capital of Central Java. Many of the old buildings, most of them built with European architecture, have been neglected and damaged, with some of them collapsing in past years. Kota Lama was a neat and organized area resembling a European city, with blocks of buildings separated by wide avenues. Previously a center of activity during the Dutch colonial era, Kota Lama was special because it was an integrated area rarely found in other cities in the country. Overall, Kota Lama is home to 245 buildings, with 177 owned by private individuals and 68 owned by state and private companies. The grand old buildings have become an attraction in the area, especially the Tawang Railway Station as well as the canals winding through the area. Kota Lama was evidently built to resemble a Dutch town. The municipality's plan to renovate Kota Lama in the hope of attracting tourists has been welcomed by Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo and residents. 'I will sell Kota Lama all over the world,' said Ganjar during a cleanup drive in Kota Lama on Sunday. Ganjar said he had discussed the renovation plan with State-Owned Enterprises Minister Rini Soemarno because a number of buildings in Kota Lama were owned by state enterprises, such as PT Pelni, PT Pos Indonesia and PT Samudera Indonesia. 'The Dutch paid great attention to Kota Lama. Talk alone is not enough, we must take action. So we have declared 2016 a year to rebuilding Kota Lama. We will rebuild and repair the old buildings. I've spoken with Bank Mandiri, state-run shipping line PT Pelni and state railway company PT KAI,' he said. Semarang resident Ismi supported the renovation plan, saying that she had dozens of friends who cared about Kota Lama and were ready to volunteer to help. 'We're ready to paint or clean up Kota Lama to make it beautiful,' she said. However, Agung, a local handicapped man, asked the Semarang municipality to build a children's playground in Srigunting Park. 'I often bring my children here, but what kind of recreational facilities are appropriate for them? They want slides and other children's rides,' said Agung. Like Agung, Nanang Antik from the Curio Traders Community, who has a store in Kota Lama, claims the area is littered with garbage and that people urinate anywhere and everywhere. 'I wish the area was cleaner. We are willing to organize the area. We also wish the municipality would build public toilets so that people would know where to relieve themselves,' said Nanang. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Erika Anindita (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Wed, January 20, 2016 The Attorney General's Office (AGO) has said it will use the second summoning of the former House of Representatives speaker Setya Novanto on Wednesday to find more evidence of an ethics breach allegedly committed by the Golkar Party politician. 'We aim to get more evidence in the questioning. This is important for [our investigation into] the case so we will not act carelessly here,' he told journalists on the sidelines of a hearing at the House complex in Senayan, Central Jakarta, on Tuesday evening. Setya is accused to have misused the names of President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo and Vice President Jusuf Kalla in an attempt to negotiate with US-based gold miner Freeport Indonesia over the possible extension of its Papuan mining contract. The former House speaker did not fulfil the first AGO summons on Jan.13, saying it was premature. Setya's lawyer Firman Wijaya said at that time that the AGO was examining his client based on an audio recording the lawmaker's legal team deemed illegal. He was referring to hearings on Setya's case conducted by the House ethics council in December 2015, in which several council members called into a question the validity of the transcript and audio recording of a recorded conversation between Setya and Maroef Sjamsoeddin, who was then Freeport's president director, in a meeting in a Jakarta hotel on June 8, 2015, a meeting that was apparently attended by businessman Reza Chalid. The meeting's audio recording and the transcript of it suggested that Setya had promised to facilitate the extension of Freeport's mining contract, which is to expire in 2021, provided that the company gave 11 percent of its shares to Jokowi and 9 percent to Kalla. Prasetyo said Setya's questioning on Wednesday was needed to get more progress in the AGO investigation into the case, which was still in a preliminary phase. On the meeting between Setya and Maroef and Reza, the AGO suspected a conspiracy aimed at extending Freeport's mining contract as soon as possible even though existing laws stipulate the contract could only be extended two years before its expiration. It still cannot be confirmed whether Setya will fulfill the AGO summons. Prasetyo said the AGO was not able to force Setya to attend. 'We will summon him again until he realizes that his presence is necessary,' he said. (ebf)(+) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Indra Harsaputra and Lita Aruperes (The Jakarta Post) Surabaya/Manado Wed, January 20, 2016 Following the government's temporary suspension of a drill site operated by Lapindo Brantas Inc. in Sidoarjo regency, East Java, a special team has been set up by the governor of East Java to study the safety and feasibility of the company's activities, a move viewed as favorable to the company's interests. Amien Widodo, the chairman of the newly formed team, told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday that the team had started their work and would finish it within three months. 'We are now collecting data from Lapindo Brantas and the Upstream Oil and Gas Regulatory Special Task Force (SKKMigas) on geological conditions and other matters related to the worthiness of gas-drilling in the area,' Amien said. After this, he said, his team would conduct a survey with the help of geo-radar to make sure that the condition of the site in Tanggulangin district, Sidoarjo, was safe for gas exploration. He said that theoretically, the drilling activity by Lapindo was lower in risk compared to exploratory activities at the blown-out oil well Banjar Panji-1. However, a 2010 research note conducted by the November 10 Institute of Technology (ITS) highlighted a crack within a radius of 2 kilometers from the mudflow site. Amien said that if the crack reached a distance of 5 kilometers, or at the site of the exploratory drilling, then this would pose a danger. He added that the team would report the results of its study to the governor of East Java. Whether there would be a cancellation of the drilling, he said, was not the team's authority. Lapindo Brantas Inc., which is partly controlled by the family of businessman and Golkar Party chairman Aburizal Bakrie, previously claimed that its gas drilling activities had been approved by SKKMigas. It also said that the drilling was safe because it was conducted at a depth of less than a kilometer under the ground's surface, not like the drilling at the Banjar Panji-1 well, which reached a depth of over 3 kilometers. Ali Masyhar, head of the Java chapter of SKK Migas, said that as a contractor or operator, Lapindo had fulfilled the requirements for the activity. 'All the licensing processes conducted from 2011 until October 2015 show that all the social aspects have been studied,' Ali said. Separately, Ony Mahardika, the executive director of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) East Java, labeled the research team a mere trick to make people to accept the company's drilling plans. 'The government seems to protect corporations while neglecting people who are still traumatized by the mudflow disaster,' Ony said. Meanwhile in Tomohon city, North Sulawesi, people have expressed fear that a spew of mud at the drilling area of PT Pertamina Geothermal Energy (PGE) Lahendong would end up like the mudflow disaster in Sidoarjo, East Java. 'We cannot sleep well. Mud is still spewing up,' Weddy Pongoh of Tondangouw subdistrict, South Tomohon district, Tomohon, said. Geologist Pri Utami of Gadjah Mada University (UGM) Yogyakarta said that a provisional examination showed that it was not a spew of mud but rather of steam, which had brought soil with it to the surface and gave an appearance similar to that of mud. Marly Gumalag, head of North Sulawesi Energy and Mineral Resources Agency (ESDM), concurred with Pri, saying that it was natural. Dimas Wibisono, a spokesperson from PT PGE Lahendong, said that the steam coming out from the drilling site had already subsided. 'I want to make it clear that it was not mud but steam,' Dimas said. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Riaz Khan and Zarar Khan (The Jakarta Post) Charsadda, Pakistan Wed, January 20, 2016 Taliban gunmen stormed a university in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing at least 20 people and triggering an hours-long gunbattle with the army and police before the military declared the assault in a town near the city of Peshawar was over. The attack stirred grim echoes of the horrific 2014 Peshawar school attack that killed more than 150 people, mostly children, and shocked the nation. It also prompted the Pakistani prime minister to pledge the country will wipe out the 'menace of terrorism.' Police said four attackers were also killed. Wednesday's attack began shortly after the Bacha Khan University opened for classes in the town of Charsadda, some 35 kilometers (21 miles) outside Peshawar, said Deputy Commissioner Tahir Zafar. As police and soldiers rushed to the campus, the attackers traded gunfire with the troops and several explosions were heard from the area of the university. The attackers were later contained inside two university blocks where the troops killed four attackers, the army said. A chemistry professor and a student were among those killed, said Zafar, adding that it was not initially clear how many attackers managed to penetrate the campus. Television footage showed heavy military presence at the university, troops rushing in and people fleeing. Ambulances were at the scene and the wounded were taken to hospital. The attackers entered the university compound by climbing over back walls and shooting at a security guard before they made their way to the administration building and the male students' dorms, police official Saeed Khan Wazir said. A witness, botany teacher Mohammad Ishtiaq, said he jumped out from the second floor of the building when he heard gunshots and broke his leg. Two attackers were on first floor and three on the ground floor, he said, adding that they were using automatic assault rifles. The students ran in different directions, he said. "I locked myself in a washroom," he said. "I jumped out when I saw one of the attackers coming toward me and shooting straight ahead of him." Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif vowed to fight to the end and destroy the Taliban and other militants. "We are determined and resolved in our commitment to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland," Sharif said in a statement. A Taliban leader, Khalifa Umar Mansoor, claimed responsibility for Wednesday's attack in a phone call to The Associated Press from an undisclosed location. Mansoor, who was the mastermind mind the Peshawar school attack, said a four-man Taliban team carried out the assault in Chasadda. He said it was in revenge for the scores of militants the Pakistani security forces have killed in recent months. However, a spokesman for the main Taliban faction in Pakistan later disowned the group behind Wednesday's attack, describing the assault as "un-Islamic." Mohammad Khurasani also denied earlier reports that he had endorsed Mansoor's claim and said that those who carried out such attacks would be tried before an Islamic, or Sharia court. Such statements from among the Taliban are not uncommon since the group has many loosely linked factions and is indicative of the deep divisions and splits among the insurgents. Khurasani also said the Taliban "consider the students in non-military institutions the future of our jihad movement" and would not kill potential future followers. He insisted Mullah Fazlullah, the head of the Pakistani Taliban, had nothing to do with the assault. Wednesday's attack was the second major attack in as many days in the volatile northwest. A suicide bomber riding a motorcycle struck a crowded police checkpoint on the outskirts of Peshawar on Tuesday, killing 11 people in an attack that was also claimed by the Taliban. Later in the afternoon, provincial governor Sardar Mehtab Abbasi declared that the military operation on the campus grounds had been completed and that the attack was over. The troops were combing the nearby areas, searching for more possible attackers, he said. Pakistani army chief Gen. Raheel Sharif visited the campus and a town hospital where the wounded were brought to. The Bacha Khan University is named after the founder of a liberal, anti-Taliban political party. The Pakistani Taliban have in the past targeted the party for its anti-militant policies. Pakistan's northwest and its lawless tribal regions bordering Afghanistan is a highly volatile region. Pakistani forces have been carrying out a major operation against the Taliban and other militants there since 2014. Last month, as the country marked the first anniversary of the Peshawar school attack, the military claimed "phenomenal successes" in the war and said it has killed around 3,500 insurgents since launching the operation. Though authorities say overall violence has declined since the wide-ranging military offensive was launched in North Waziristan, the Taliban still manage to carry out major attacks. The Peshawar school attack horrified the country and led the government to lift a 2008 moratorium on the death penalty. Pakistan hanged four militants last month who were sentenced to death over the attack. ___ Associated Press Writers Asif Shahzad in Islamabad and Ishtiaq Mahsud in Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan, contributed to this report. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) Wed, January 20, 2016 The government will create a special team to assess the fair value of Freeport Indonesia's shares after State-Owned Enterprises Minister Rini Suwandi and some observers criticized the company's asking price as being too expensive for the government. The Energy and Natural Resources Ministry said the team will include representatives of the directorate general of taxation, the budget office, the internal auditing agency (BPKP) and the Office of the Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister. "We have sent the letter to them and summoned representatives from them. The first meeting will be held next week," said Muhammad Hidayat, the Energy and Natural Resources Ministry's director of mineral business development on Jan. 20 in Jakarta. Apart from deploying the team to assess the 'overpriced shares', Hidayat said that the government has also asked for an independent appraisal of the asking price. Earlier, Freeport said the total value of all of the company's shares was US$16.2 billion. However, the company did not elaborate on the volume of the shares that will be sold to the government. Under current regulations, Freeport is obliged to sell 30 percent of its stakes to either the government or to private Indonesian companies. The government already owns a 9.36 percent stake in Freeport, leaving 20.64 percent left to buy, of which 10.64 percent is to be sold this year. (ags)(+) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta Wed, January 20, 2016 International tourist arrivals reached a record of 1.2 billion in 2015, according to the latest report from the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO). Compared to 2014, the number grew by 4.4 percent, meaning some 50 million more visitors traveled to international destinations around the globe last year. The 2015 results were influenced by exchange rates, oil prices and natural and man-made crises in many parts of the world, UNWTO secretary-general Taleb Rifai said in a press release. "The current environment highlights safety and security issues. Tourism development greatly depends upon our collective capacity to promote safe, secure and seamless travel," he said. Arrivals in Europe reached 609 million last year, or some 29 million more than in 2014. Meanwhile, the Asia Pacific recorded 277 million international tourist arrivals with Oceania and Southeast Asia leading growth with 7 percent and 5 percent, respectively. Among the world's top source markets, China continues to lead global outbound travel followed by the United States and the United Kingdom. With double-digit growth in expenditure every year since 2004, Chinese travelers enjoyed Asian destinations such as Japan and Thailand as well as the US and European countries. By contrast, expenditure from the previously dynamic source markets of Russia and Brazil declined significantly, reflecting economic constraints in both countries. (kes)(+) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Edith M. Lederer (The Jakarta Post) United Nations Wed, January 20, 2016 Members of the UN Security Council are going to Burundi later this week with three goals ' to try to break the cycle of violence and prevent ethnic attacks from erupting, to promote peace talks, and to encourage respect for human rights, France's UN ambassador said Tuesday. Ambassador Francois Delattre said the council's second visit to the central African nation in nine months will demonstrate its concern about escalating violence and human rights abuses, and its determination to prevent "the genie of ethnic violence to go out of the bottle." France, the United States and Angola are leading the 15-member council delegation that will be in Burundi on Thursday and Friday. President Pierre Nkurunziza's decision to seek re-election last April touched off street protests that led to a failed coup in May and a rebellion that has left the country on the brink of civil war. Opponents and supporters of Nkurunziza in the capital, Bujimbura, have been targeting each other in gun, rocket and grenade attacks and the violence has spread to the provinces. There has been a wave of extrajudicial killings that human rights activists blame on government security forces. The visit follows UN human rights chief Zeid Raad al-Hussein's scathing criticism last Friday of what he described as gang rapes of women in Burundi by security forces, torture and signs of ethnic repression. His office cited growing signs that Tutsis were being targeted in the Hutu-majority country that is next to Rwanda, where a 1994 Hutu-led genocide targeted Tutsis and moderate Hutus. "All the alarm signals, including the increasing ethnic dimension of the crisis, are flashing red," Zeid said. The U.N. says more than 230,000 people have fled Burundi since April 2015, and Zeid's office said 432 people have been killed in violence. Jamal Benomar, the UN special adviser for Burundi, said Monday that the country is facing an "insurgency and counter-insurgency" as well as an "urban guerrilla movement" that the government is responding to. UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson stressed the importance of the council's trip, pointing to "very worrying signs on the ground, and also certain nervousness in Rwanda, that also is of concern." "What must not happen in Burundi is that this conflict moves from a political phase to an ethnic phase," Eliasson told reporters on Tuesday. "When you take that step then we always pay a price because then there is a new element entering the conflict which would be much harder to control." Benomar said everyone in Burundi agrees on the need for dialogue, but the problem is reaching agreement on the process. "Any viable process will have to be inclusive and nationally owned," Benomar said. The East African Community mandated Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni as mediator to try to get intra-Burundian talks started but it took six months to hold a meeting, and nothing was decided at that meeting on Dec. 28. Angola's UN Ambassador Ismael Gaspar Martins said the council's main objective is to convey a clear message "that we want Burundians to engage seriously in a dialogue" which is the only way to end the violence and human rights abuses. He said the council is going to work with the African Union and Uganda to see if the region can get the parties together. "If not, we are ready to step in," Gaspar Martins said. In response to the escalating crisis, the African Union in mid-December authorized the deployment of 5,000 peacekeeping troops to Burundi but Nkurunziza's government rejected the AU decision. The government has also rejected additional human rights monitors. A confidential report from the UN peacekeeping department to the Security Council, obtained last week by The Associated Press, said UN peacekeeping troops should be deployed to Burundi only as a last resort if violence worsens. The report makes clear that the best option in the event of escalating violence would be intervention by a single country or a coalition of nations ' but it said the focus now should be on trying to promote political dialogue and deploying the AU force. Egypt's Prime Minister Sherif Ismail issued a decree Sunday revoking the nationality of an Egyptian citizen who joined the Israeli army without permission from the Egyptian ministry of defence. Dina Ovadia is an Israeli of Egyptian origin who made headlines two years ago for joining Israels army. Several Egyptian media outlets welcomed PM Ismails decision which comes in accordance with Article 16 of the Egyptian constitution. Article 16 gives the PM the right to strip citizens who join foreign armies of their Egyptian nationality. The Egyptian media slammed Ovadia for joining the Israeli army, which once occupied Egyptian territories 1967-1983 and has been occupying Palestinian lands since 1948. Israeli media, on the other hand, denounced the Egyptian prime ministers decision, describing it as anti-Semitic. Ovadia also slammed the decision, saying "it's shocking and a low blow, but I do not want to stoop to their level," adding that the Egyptian government should know she is first and foremost a proud Jew and Israeli. "Every additional word I say will be twisted in Egypt and used against me," she added. In April 2014, the Arabic media spokesperson for the Israeli army, Avichy Adree, released a video online of conscript Ovadia where she said in Arabic that she would recount her experience of leaving Egypt to coincide with the Jewish holiday of Passover, which celebrates the biblical story of the Jewish peoples exodus from Egypt. According to Ovadia, she was raised as Roulin Abdullah in El-Maamoura district, Alexandria till the age of 15 without knowing she was a Jew. The 22-year-old claimed her family fled Egypt after radical Salafists stormed their home and threatened the family with harm if they remained in the country. The family moved to Israel and settled down in Jerusalem. On 23 April 2014, Ovadia was honoured by the Israeli army spokesperson unit, and her story was featured as a 21st century exodus on the official army website. Ovadia's brother and sister have also served in the Israeli army, according to Israeli media. In 1947 the year before Israel was created Egypt had 64,165 Jews, according to the public census. As the Arab-Israeli conflict worsened, most of Egypts Jews left for Europe and the United Staes, with some choosing to make Israel home. By 2014, only nine Egyptian Jews remain living in Egypt, according to media reports. 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Geneinas assertions, which he made last month, have stirred huge controversy, prompting the Egyptian presidency to form an investigative committee which accused him of inflating figures and defaming the state. The parliament has also opened its own investigation into Geneina's figures after a number of MPs accused the state audito of misleading the public. Since taking office in 2012, Geneina has on more than one occasion said that billions of pounds have been stolen by public officals. He cited some of the state's most powerful institutions, including the police, the judiciary and intelligence agencies, as examples of the existence of corrupt practices. He has said that many of the cases he has attempted to bring to the attention of prosecutors met with little response. Search Keywords: Short link: 'Having fair presidential elections in 2014' and 'the 2014 constitution' were among the achievements of Egypt's 25 January revolution, according to the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs As the fifth anniversary of the 25 January revolution looms, Egypt's Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on Wednesday a media campaign to highlight to the world the most important accomplishments achieved by Egypt since the 2011 revolution. Ministry spokesperson Ahmed Abu Zeid said in a statement that the five-day Egypt Better Today campaign will be launched on the anniversary of the revolution. Abu Zaid said the review of accomplishments is divided into five areas: political rights and the enhancement of citizen participation; the restoration of Egypt's regional and international role; youth empowerment; the promotion of a culture of diversity; and the path towards social justice and economic reform. Using the hashtag #EgyptBetterToday in English and Arabic, Abu Zaid has made daily postings on his official Twitter account and the foreign ministry's Facebook page on these achievements: 1. Most progressive constitution in #Egypt history adopted in 2014 after historic voter turnout, guarantees rights https://t.co/IFVBTxjg8M Egypt MFA Spokesman (@MfaEgypt) January 20, 2016 2. #Egypts 2014 constitution establishes checks & balances in the Egyptian political system #EgyptBetterToday https://t.co/W3viH7sMqM Egypt MFA Spokesman (@MfaEgypt) January 20, 2016 3. #Egypt had free/fair presidential elections w/ high turnout, solidifying legitimate institutions #EgyptBetterToday https://t.co/vPhZc2WrHq Egypt MFA Spokesman (@MfaEgypt) January 20, 2016 4. In 2015 #Egypt elected the most diverse parliament in its history in free/fair elections #EgyptBetterToday https://t.co/Lv0GEXTscO Egypt MFA Spokesman (@MfaEgypt) January 20, 2016 5. Following the Jan 25 revolution, #Egypt introduced expatriate voting in elections for first time #EgyptBetterToday https://t.co/JTcvznKmi7 Egypt MFA Spokesman (@MfaEgypt) January 20, 2016 The #EgyptBetterToday Arabic hashtag has attracted many opponents of the 25 January revolution, who slammed the uprising as a "conspiracy," saying that Egypt was better in 2011 than in 2015. Supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi also joined the active Twitter hashtag, slamming president Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and his supporters. The Egyptian constitution recognises the 25 January uprising that ousted president Hosni Mubarak, along with the 30 June protests that led to the ouster of Morsi in 2013, as one of the two sources of legtimacy for the post Morsi political system. Search Keywords: Short link: Fire at professor's home being investigated by Phuket authorities PHUKET: Authorities are investigating a fire that broke out in a professor's home behind Phuket Technical College this afternoon (Jan 20), after about B100,000 worth of valuables were damaged though no injuries were reported. By Darawan Naknakhon Wednesday 20 January 2016, 04:21PM Phuket City Police were alerted to the fire behind the college in Talad Yai at 1:30pm after students spotted smoke coming out of the home of a professor's house. Lt Chatri Waitrangsri arrived with his team and two fire engines from Phuket City Municipality to the professor's house where they saw thick smoke and flames coming out of one home. Officials broke the glass window at the front door to spray water into the home to control the fire from escalating to neighbouring structures. It took firemen more than 20 minutes to put out the blaze. Lt Chatri said,"[The professor] was not at home when the fire happened. All items such as clothing and electronic appliances were damaged, with a total estimation of about B100,000. "[Students] rushed to the scene with buckets of water, attempting to put the fire out but the blaze was escalating out of control so another professor called for help,"explained Lt Chatri. "Forensic [department] is looking into evidence to find the true cause of the fire," he added. The investigation is ongoing. Phuket police arrest Bulgarian card skimmer PHUKET: A man from Bulgaria was arrested for fraud on Monday (Jan 18) when he was caught using cloned credit cards to withdraw cash from an ATM machine outside of a 7Eleven store in Karon. Police seized from the man a total of 130 cloned cards. crimetechnologypolice By Eakkapop Thongtub Wednesday 20 January 2016, 01:24PM A shot of Tulumbadzhiev as he withdraws money from an ATM. The arrest of the man, 31-year-old Boris Krasimirov Tulumbadzhiev, was announced at a press conference held today (Jan 20) by Phuket Provincial Police Chief Col Teeraphol Thipjareon today where Tulumbadzhiev was presented along with the 130 cloned cards, B10,000 cash, skimmer machine, transaction receipt from Kasikorn ATM and other seized items. Col Teeraphol explained, Phuket City Polices Lt Col Prawit Engchuwn and a team from Kasikorn Bank help to make the arrest Tulumbadzhiev. A money laundering and fraud investigation started after Kasikorn Bank suspected a foreign man had been using cloned credit cards to withdraw cash from their ATM machines in Patong, Kamala, Cherng Talay area on Sunday (Jan 17), he said. Tulumbadzhiev was arrested at 12:30pm on Monday at an ATM machine at a 7eleven in Karon after withdrawing B10,000 using one of the cloned cards. He had been followed to Karon by officers after he had also withdrawn money from an ATM at a Family Mart on Sirirat Rd in Patong. He then went back to his hotel room on Soi Nainai before going to Karon, Col Teeraphol added. He went on to say that police found that this is the second time Tulumbadzhiev had entered Thailand, the first being on Nov 5 via Suwannaphum. He left Nov 11 but returned again on Jan 11 via Phuket. We know that he committed fraud several times on Jan 17 and twice on Jan 18, Col Teeraphol said. Officers were able to apprehend Tulumbadzhiev within 24 hour of hearing from Kasikor Bank which is very quick. Phuket is a tourist destination and 90 per cent of foreigners use cards to pay for their expenses so security is a priority, he said. Tulumbadzhiev is to be charged with fraud and possession of cloned cards for criminal purposes. Phuket police to motorbike riders: do not use underpass PHUKET: Over 50 motorbike riders were pulled over near Central Festival in Wichit this morning (Jan 20) for illegally using the Darasamut Underpass and riding without a helmet. transport By Saroj Kueprasertkij Wednesday 20 January 2016, 03:51PM Wichit Police recently received a number of complaints that scores of motorbikes riders have driven through the Darasamut Underpass, in direct violation of the recently amended Phuket traffic laws. Police are ramping up enforcement efforts to make it known that motorbikes are not allowed in the underpass. We are aware of motorists illegally making u-turns at the underpass, some of whom used the underpass without a helmet which is very dangerous for their own lives and others, Pol Maj. Waisakda Klinkeow of Vichit police told The Phuket News. We would like all motorists to understand that we are doing this because of your own safety. We do not want to waste your time for nothing, he explained. Police set up a table for motorists to pay their fined on-the-spot so they do not have to go to the station. But if riders do not have their money to pay the fine then and there, they will have to go to the station by themselves. The fine is up to B500 for no helmet and B1,000 for illegal u-turn and using the underpass. We hope this will help them be more careful when using public roads, Maj Waisakda added. Xi Jinping will meet with Sisi and visit the newly-convened parliament Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Cairo on Wednesday for a two-day visit to Egypt to discuss bilateral cooperation with President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, marking the Chinese presidents first visit to the Middle East in 10 years. The two leaders will sign Thursday a number of economic agreements, including one on civil aviation, several electricity projects and an agreement on the to-be constructed of Egypt's new administrative capital. The two presidents will hold a press conference on Thursday at Kasr El-Kobba Palace in Cairo, according to the Egyptian presidency. Xi will visit Egypt's parliament on Thursday where he will address the newly elected House of Representatives, and will give another speech at the Arab League headquarters in Cairo. He will also attend the launch of the second phase of the Egyptian-Chinese commercial and economic project in Ain El-Sokhna on the Red Sea. China has vowed to invest in Egypt's Suez Canal axis development project; lend the Central Bank of Egypt $1 billion dollars to bolster Cairo's dwindling foreign reserve; $700 million to the National Bank of Egypt; and $100 million to Banque Misr in order to fund small and medium-sized projects. Search Keywords: Short link: The independent MP Mortada Mansour requested that MPs be authorised to file lawsuits against journalists who 'tarnish MPs' In a morning debate on Wednesday, the flamboyant independent MP Mortada Mansour fiercely attacked journalists and the local media, accusing them of doing their best to tarnish the image of the new parliament. Mansour asked parliament speaker Ali Abdel-Al and other leading MPs that the House's new internal bylaws be amended to give MPs the right to file lawsuits against journalists accused of defaming parliament or covering parliament's news in "derogatory" terms. "There is a concerted hostile campaign against Egypt's new parliament on the side of the local media," he claimed. "In their smear campaigns, journalists went as far as describing parliament as "the House of the Mad People" or The House of the Hashasheen," said Mansour, warning that "if parliament did not move quickly to protect its reputation and honour, we all would leave this place." Mansour also insisted that the armed forces and the police cannot be a subject of smear campaigns by the media. Mansour referred to a local newspaper which seized its issue on Wednesday to accuse speaker deputy El-Sayed El-Sherif of exercising rigging practices. "Today they accuse us of rigging without any evidence and I do not know what they will do tomorrow," said Mansour. Mansour also lashed out at young leftist MPs - led by Alexandria's deputy Haitham El-Hariri - portraying them as "parliamentary novices." El-Hariri and other leftist MPs distributed leaflets among deputies this morning, urging them to reject the new Civil Service Law, accusing it of doing a lot of injustice to state employees. According to Mansour, "we are not here in a metro car or in a student union to have these leaflets and I think that the right place for this leaflet is to be dumped into trash cans." Joining forces, speaker Abdel-Al said "Mansour's statement should ring alarm bells about journalists who deliberately aim to tarnish the image of parliament and deputies and that there should be a serious stand against this." \ "While the media and journalists are independent and have complete freedoms in accordance with the new constitution, they at the same time are urged to exercise these freedoms responsibly," said Abdel-Al. "I met with parliamentary journalists and I told them you have the right to cover parliament's news freely, but also wisely and responsibly," Abdel-Al said. Abdel-Al rejected any distribution of leaflets among MPs, describing the measure as directing an insult to parliament and representing a constitutional offence. Many MPs joined chorus with Mansour, asking Abdel-Al to take a firm stand against journalists. Fathi Qandil, an independent MP, said "asking journalists to exercise their rights freely will not solve the problem with these journalists who are doing their best to defame parliament." Abdel-Al, however, insisted that "he as speaker is in charge of protecting the reputation of MPs, but all should remember that we took an oath of respecting the constitution which states that freedom of the press must be respected." Search Keywords: Short link: Pierre, Tea Area lives up to hype and more from HS football week nine The Chinese president will be welcomed to Egypt's parliament by speaker Ali Abdel-Al and a number of high-profile MPs. Gamal Essam El-Din reports Related Chinese president arrives in Cairo to boost bilateral relations China's President Xi Jinping will be welcomed to Egypt's House of Representatives by speaker Ali Abdel-Al and a number of high-profile MPs on Thursday, according to Sameh Seif El-Yazal, the leader of the majority Support Egypt bloc. "China's president requested to visit parliament and we are going to open a dialogue with him on Egyptian-Chinese relations," El-Yazal told reporters on Wednesday. El-Yazal said that this was the first time a leader as high-profile as China's president requested to visit Egypt's parliament. "A number of world leaders have visited Egypt's parliament, but only upon invitation from their Egyptian counterparts," said El-Yazal. The last foreign, non-Arab leader to visit Egypts parliament was US president Jimmy Carter in 1979, where he recommended that parliament endorse the US-brokered peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. Some Arab leaders, such as Libyan president Muammar Qaddafi and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, also visited Egypt's parliament on several occasions. Parliament speaker Abdel-Al disclosed Tuesday that China's president and other leading officials from around the world including the president of the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the speaker of the Russian parliament have requested to visit the newly elected parliament to congratulate Egypt on completing its post-revolution political roadmap. Search Keywords: Short link: wife, mama + biz owner sharing my passion and purpose on the internet thanks for stopping by Russian air strikes have killed more than 1,000 civilians in Syria since they began nearly four months ago, a monitor said Wednesday. The raids, which started on September 30, have killed 1,015 civilians, including more than 200 children, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The group, which relies on a network of sources on the ground for its reports, said the strikes had also killed 893 Islamic State group militants (ISIS), and 1,141 other opposition militants, including members of Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front. The total toll of 3,049 represents an increase of nearly 700 deaths in just three weeks. Russia is a staunch ally of the Syrian government and has coordinated its strikes with Damascus, saying it is targeting ISIS and other "terrorist" groups. But activists and rebels accuse Moscow of focusing more on moderate and Islamist opposition fighters than ISIS. Russia has previously denounced accusations that its raids have killed civilians as "absurd" and said claims by rights groups of such deaths were made up of "cliches and fakes". The Observatory says it differentiates between strikes by Russia, US-led coalition warplanes and the Syrian regime based on the type of aircraft and the munitions used. sah/dr Search Keywords: Short link: Its finally feeling more like winter. Our stomachs are craving the warm and comforting flavours of African cuisine: slow cooked meats spiced with vibrant paprika and turmeric; stews made of one of the few vegetables currently in season: onions; and vegetarian-friendly meals that are good for the body and the wallet in the new year. Lately weve been bombarded with Asian (ramen and the latest Japanese or Taiwanese chain) and Latin (tapas and pinchos) cooking while French and Italian cuisine held steady. For 2016, outlets like the BBC, the National Restaurant Association and ourselves are hoping that the rest of the world will catch on to the many different and vibrant cuisines of the continent. To ease you into African cooking 101, here is a short introduction to the different regional cuisines of the continent, spice blends to flavour your meats and vegetables, and one coveted, easy recipe for Ethiopias national dish courtesy of one of the citys tastiest spots African Palace. Culinary regions of Africa At just over 30 million square kilometres, Africa is the second largest continent and second most populous with 1.1 billion people. A history of colonization dating back to ancient times from countries now known as, Greece, France, Britain and Portugal, made a lasting impression on traditional dishes. In short, theres a heck of a lot of variation in local cooking and major regional variations in flavour. North Africa Countries include: Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Sudan, Morocco Cooking here is highly influenced by Middle Eastern and European cuisine. Falafels made from fava beans rather than chickpeas are a staple in Egyptian street food; couscous is a must-have on Moroccan menus; and Arabic favourites like baklava and shakshouka are found in Tunisia. Staple ingredients include lamb, eggplant, beans and honey, similar to what youd find in the Mediterranean. Whats unique is the tajine, a cone-shaped earthenware pot used to slow-cook meaty stews over hot coals (think a very early version of the Crock Pot). Tunisia is also home to harissa, a fiery garlicky chili paste thats popping up on Toronto menus this year. Horn of Africa Countries include: Eritrea, Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti The horn refers to the peninsula that juts out to the east coast of Africa, and is the region that most Torontonians associate with African cooking thanks to our obsession with stews sopped up with injera, the Ethiopian spongy and tangy flatbread made from a nutty and tiny red grain called teff. Ethiopian and Eritrean cuisines are similar given that Eritrea was once part of Ethiopia: Both are heavy on hearty meat and vegetable stews served with injera but Eritrean cooking also incorporates tomato sauces (it was once under Italian colonization). Berbere is the quintessential spice blend made from a dozen spices including fenugreek, coriander, peppercorn, cardamom, allspice, nutmeg and cinnamon. Its used to add a fiery, oniony kick to dishes such as doro wot (chicken stew) and tibs (spicy fried beef). Dishes without berbere are called alichia. East Africa Countries include: Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Madagascar, Mozambique, Comoros, Mauritius The eastern coast of Africa includes more than a dozen countries that run along the Indian Ocean, in addition to the nations that make up the Horn of Africa. Ugali is one of the most common dishes youll find here, particularly in Kenya. Its a smooth and thick porridge made from cornmeal or millet that diners roll into little balls to go with nyama choma (roasted meat marinated in curry spices). If you want something fried, try mandazi, a crispy fried bread served by street vendors thats like the regions answer to doughnuts. Mozambiques cuisine has a mix of Portuguese flavour as piri piri sauce is a common condiment and is best exemplified in Galinha a Zambeziana: chicken cooked in coconut milk and piri piri sauce. West Africa Countries include: Senegal, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast Its hard to narrow down the cuisine of 16 nations and territories, but there are some commonalities. Root vegetables such as cassava form the basis of fufu, a starchy ball of cooked dough originating in Ghana but widely eaten in the region. Its pretty bland to eat by itself so its served as a side to soups and stews. Peanuts are a big part of many dishes as its a major crop of Senegal including maafe, a popular spicy peanut stew of fish or meat with vegetables. Fish is also big given its proximity to the Atlantic. On the flip side, much of American southern and Cajun cooking was shaped by this region during the slave trade, with ingredients such as okra and fried chicken, which was eaten in West African nations. Central Africa Countries include: Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia The food of Africas heartland is similar to its neighbouring western region: cassava and plantains are made into fufu as a side for grilled meats, while chicken and okra are added to peanut stews. In Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, there is a heavy French influence due to colonization in the late 1800s, so baguettes can be found as well. A staple in Zambia is nshima, a thick porridge made from ground corn meal that can be sweetened with milk for breakfast, or rolled into a starchy ball as a side like fufu. Ifisashi, another Zambian dish, consists of leafy greens like collards or spinach cooked in a peanut sauce. South Africa Countries include: South Africa Given its long history of colonization and trade routes, the food of this region is shaped not only by natives, but also the Dutch and the British, along with Southeast Asia. Indigenous people cooked with pumpkin and beef while the arrival of the Dutch East India Trading company in the 18th century brought in slaves from Southeast Asian Nations, which brought the influence of curries and sambals, a pungent condiment made from chilies, shrimp paste, vinegar and fish sauce. The Dutch sausage, verse worst, is the ancestor to the more popular South African boerewors, a sausage typically containing a mix of beef and pork and spiced with a mix of coriander, nutmeg, allspice and cloves. Serve that at a barbecue with pap, a traditional polenta-like side made from ground corn served alongside soups and meats, as well as chakalaka, a spicy relish made from a mix of baked beans, carrots, tomatoes, chilies, and curry powder. Spice blends You wont be able to find these spice blends at the major supermarket, but the individual spices can be found whole at most bulk food stores (Bulk Barn). Thats good, because toasting and grinding your own spices will yield a much more fragrant and pungent blend. Use any of these to add warm, spicy and nutty aromatics to meats, stews and roasted vegetables when plain old olive oil, salt and pepper gets boring. Berbere (Ethiopia) Contains: Coriander, fenugreek, black peppercorn, allspice, cardamom, cloves, onion, chilies, paprika, salt, nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon Spicy but not overly hot, this blend tastes good on everything from roasted cauliflower to stews to even kale chips. Keep a small jar of this handy whenever you want a subtle heat to a dish with warm, spicy undertones of earthy flavours such as nutmeg, cloves, and allspice. Dukkah (Egypt) Contains: Sesame, coriander, cumin, various nuts like hazelnuts, macadamia, pine nuts, cashews, almonds and pistachios This nutty mixture goes great as a dip for breads when mixed olive oil and works as an excellent crust for roasted meats like lamb or even a cheese log for a snack tray. Tsire (West Africa) Contains: Peanuts, chili, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon Like dukkah, crushed nuts add a wonderful spicy crunch as a crust to roasted chicken and fish. If youre one of those wacky winter people who barbecue in the winter, coat your kebabs in this mix. Ras el hanout (North Africa) Contains: cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, coriander, cumin, paprika, mace, nutmeg, black peppercorn, turmeric Used in tajines, rubs and stews, ras el hanout isnt a particularly spicy mix but instead has warm flavour notes characteristic of North African cooking. In particular, it brings out the sweetness fruits of apricots, currants and dates used in stews and slow-cooked meats. Tunisian baharat (Tunisia) Contains: cinnamon, rose, black peppercorn Baharat, a Middle Eastern spice mix thats used to season pretty much everything, varies from region to region (the Turkish version uses mint, for example) but typically contains black peppercorn. The Tunisian version is notable for its inclusion of dried rose petals (find it in the tea section of Asian grocers) giving it a sweeter, floral taste that will work well with grilled vegetables and milder tasting meats, as well as mixed with olive oil and used as a dip for bread. La Kama (Morocco) Contains: cumin, nutmeg, turmeric, nutmeg, cinnamon, ground ginger, black peppercorn Consider this mix thats particularly popular in Moroccos northern city of Tangier as a slightly parred down version of ras el hanout, Still, it packs that warm, earthy and spicy undertone thats used as a rub for chicken and lamb, or all-purpose seasoning for soups. Make your own berbere This quintessential African spice blend as common as salt on Ethiopian tables is used to spice everything from meats to stews to vegetable dishes. It isnt overly spicy since it lacks cayenne, so treat it more like a mild seasoned salt that will bring a warm heat to everything. Lightly toasting whole spices on a frying pan over low heat and then grinding it finely will always yield a more fragrant blend. If you cant find whole allspice or cloves, use the ground version. If youre not in the mood to source the dozen or so ingredients, pre-made blends can be bought at one of the handful of Ethiopian grocers along the Danforth from Greenwood to Monarch Park (Mister Greek Meat Market at 801 Danforth Ave., just east of Pape is one option). There are a number along Bloor St. W. near Ossington Ave. too. This recipe is from Marcus Samuelsson, the Ethiopian-born celebrity chef, who also suggests using berbere as a dip by mixing it with olive oil, lemon juice and crushed olives. 2 tsp (10 mL) coriander seeds 1 tsp (5 mL) fenugreek seeds 1/2 tsp (2 mL) black peppercorns 1/4 tsp (1 mL) whole allspice 6 cardamom pods 4 whole cloves 1/2 cup (125 mL) dried onion flakes 5 dried arbol chilies, stem and seeds removed, chopped into small pieces 3 tbsp (45 mL) mild paprika 2 tsp (10 mL) kosher salt 1/2 tsp (2 mL) ground nutmeg 1/2 tsp (2 mL) ground ginger 1/2 tsp (2 mL) ground cinnamon In a small skillet over medium heat, toss coriander seeds, fenugreek seeds, peppercorns, allspice, cardamom pods and cloves until fragrant, about 2 to 4 minutes, careful not to burn. Take off heat and let cool to room temperature. Transfer toasted spices to spice grinder. Add onion flakes, chilies and other spices. Grind until a fine powder. Makes about 1 cup (250 mL) berbere. Store in an airtight container away from direct sunlight in a dry, cool spot for up to six months. Where to go for Egyptian Mahas Fine Egyptian Cuisine This cosy but sun-drenched family-run brunch spot makes comforting Egyptian and Middle Eastern classics like shakshuka, foole (cooked-down beans served at breakfast) and piping-hot falafels. You can also get dukkah mixed with olive oil to dip with pita bread. 226 Greenwood Ave., 416-462-2703, mahasbrunch.com Moroccan Casa Moroc Try old-school Moroccan fare like grilled merguez sausages, lamb with couscous and harrira, a spiced tomato soup at this North York dinner spot. This is also where to go if youre curious about tajines, but cant bring yourself to buy one: the restaurants uses them to cook vegetarian, lamb, chicken and seafood mains. 1943 Avenue Rd., 647-268-3327, casamaroc.ca Ghanian Panafest Bar and Grill Head north to Jane and Finch for a taste of Ghana at this unsuspecting all-day takeout and sit-down restaurant. Fried plantains, fufu, okra soup, whole fried fish, it doesnt get more delicious than this. 2708 Jane St., 647-430-0747 Somali Kal & Mooy If you cant find Kal & Mooys roving food truck around the city, head to its brick-and-mortar location inside the Queen Live Market on Queen St. W. Slow cooked goat on a bed of cinnamon-scented rice and vegetables wrapped in anjera (Somali flatbread similar to injera) are the go-to for first timers. 238 Queen St. W., 647-463-4626, kalandmooy.com Karon Liu can be reached at karonliu@thestar.ca SHARE: Hey Boss, get out the 100-point type for the headline out of city hall today. Im thinking it should read, Institute of the Obvious confirms obvious things are obvious, obviously. This is big news in Toronto, as you know, because were talking about transit planning, where plain things become complicated and complicated things become slogans. OK, now that I glance again at this report on Mayor John Torys SmartTrack plan, I see it is actually prepared by someplace called the University of Toronto, for the Toronto city planners office. But the summary of the results holds. Among the key obvious obviousnesses this report confirms through careful study: 1. Running a heavy rail western spur of SmartTrack under Eglinton Ave. is not a good idea, and the mayor and everyone else involved is happily abandoning it in favour of an Eglinton Crosstown LRT extension. This one was so obvious even I could see it coming you may remember that I wrote last October that Tory should and probably would do this. Well, now theres a U of T study to confirm I was right about something for once in my sorry life. Not only will the Crosstown option be several times cheaper, but the ridership projection modelling shows it will attract way more riders. Better yet: this conforms with the plan Metrolinx has reportedly been developing. 2. If you run service more frequently, you attract way more riders. Duh, right? But the difference is huge: depending on the fare youre charging, service every five minutes attracts three to four times as many riders as service every 15 minutes. Service every 10 minutes, as youd expect, splits the difference, more or less. 3. If you charge less, more people will ride. Look, I told you this stuff was obvious. But again, if you charge the same fare as a TTC ride (currently $3.25), in the every-five-minute scenario, you get 314,567 daily riders. If you charge the same fare as for a GO Train ride (which varies, but for example: $5.65 from Kennedy to Union, plus for many riders another $3.25 for the TTC bus to take them to the station), then you get only 108,000. If you want subway-type ridership, you need to charge subway-type prices. Now, in her introductory note, chief city planner Jennifer Keesmaat includes an obvious but absolutely essential proviso on these numbers were talking about: I cannot stress enough that the material herein represents the base SmartTrack scenario that has already evolved as a result of the HDR Western Corridor Feasibility Review. However, they do give us an indication of the opportunities associated with the SmartTrack proposal. Translated into standard English, roughly, that says: this study looked at Torys campaign SmartTrack plan, and since the plan has already changed, further study will be needed to see how the numbers change; but this does provide Tory evidence that the whole concept is not goofy. A couple of obvious conclusions: As Torys critics are quick to point out, hes having to walk back and adapt some of the plan he laid out during the election campaign some of the things Tory laid out with absolute certainty, including that Eglinton West spur, were patently unworkable. Fair enough, but its refreshing to see that no one is stubbornly suggesting pouring billions of dollars into a hole in the ground simply to uphold a past promise. And to give Tory his due, this ridership modelling and the changes to the plan that are now clear (and some that are still rumoured), make it look like he may have something worthwhile on his hands. I say may because the obvious next steps this study suggests strike me as the most important conclusions. 1. As the plan evolves, the study needs to be updated to make sure the ridership numbers hold up if the first phase of the plan doesnt go up through Scarborough to Markham, what happens to the numbers? What if there are fewer stops? What if the Scarborough subway is built? 2. The city needs to hear from Metrolinx to see if it can and will provide frequent levels of service. The existing plan for regional express rail that SmartTrack is supposed to build from provided every-15-minute service, which we now know is a loser. There are questions about whether the tracks can handle 12 trains an hour along with the other train services that use them and whether Union Station can actually accommodate the traffic. But the numbers we have show that frequency is a deal-breaker-level question. 3. Speaking of deal-breakers, the city needs to work out something very firm and clear with Metrolinx now: whoever winds up operating this service, any city of Toronto financial contribution needs to be directly contingent on the fare for it being the same as the fare for the subway. Period. And given that: whos providing subsidies? How big are they expected to need to be? Obviously, thats a tall order. But these things form the very core of Torys SmartTrack promise, the only reason the city would get involved in developing the provinces express rail plans: to ensure frequent, cheap, reliable service to people in Toronto that will attract significant ridership and improve peoples lives. The numbers here show it may be possible: Torys job now is to ensure it can become certain. Obviously. Edward Keenan writes on city issues ekeenan@thestar.ca . Follow: @thekeenanwire Read more about: SHARE: The Canadian Armed Forces recently dropped the decades-long staple of school gym class and elite athletic training alike from its fitness testing and replaced it with exercises that better simulate real-world tasks. The change has caused the U.S. military to sit up and take notice. 1. OUTDATED: Canadian military personnel used to do sit-ups, push ups, grip strength tests and running exercises based on a program developed in the 1970s, says Patrick Gagnon, the Forces senior manager of human performance. Gagnon led a team to update testing based, in part, on cutting-edge research conducted by low-back-injury expert Stuart McGill, a professor of spine biomechanics at the University of Waterloo. The sit-up was an early casualty. 2. AT RISK: We figure out how the spine works and how it becomes injured. Thats our foundation, says McGill, whose 30 years in this field included calculating the loads on the spine from sit-ups (and other exercises and activities) that potentially damage the lower back. His studies agree with others that have found people have a greater chance, statistically, to develop a back disorder if the spine is repeatedly put under force from muscles contracting to hold it in a bent position. 3. UNDER PRESSURE: McGill was consulted by the U.S. military regarding the rationale for and safety of personnel doing speed sit-ups during fitness testing. We measured the loads on the spine with each sit-up. (The spine loads) were right on the limit noted by us (and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in the United States) as causing damage over time and with repetition, says McGill, author of Back Mechanic. 4. BIGGERS NOT BETTER: McGill describes the spine during sit-ups like this: If you take a thin willow branch and bend it back and forth, you wont damage it. But if you took a thicker branch and bent it to the same angle, it would damage right away . . . Thats why bigger, thicker spines get hurt much sooner doing a sit-up. Disc bulges are the main concern since they result from repeated simultaneous compression and bending the spine. 5. FORCE EVALUATION: After 2 years of study, the new FORCE Evaluation testing began rolling out in 2013. More than 400 physical duties performed by our Armed Forces over the previous 20 years were studied in creating new ways to measure minimum requirements of common soldiering tasks, says Gagnon. 6. SANDBAGGERS: Military work comprises much lifting, hauling and dragging of materials to, for instance, build sandbag walls or remove casualties from dangerous areas. The new evaluation has four components, three involving sandbags. In one test, a 20-kilogram sandbag must be lifted one metre off the ground 30 times in 3 minutes. Thats 600 kilograms in total. It requires upper-body strength to manipulate the sandbag and core strength to enable lifting and pushing, says Gagnon. 7. NAVAL GAZING: Gagnons team has collaborated with its U.S. counterparts (army and air force) to develop new fitness standards as the Americans review opening up combat roles for women. (Canadian women have held combat roles for decades). In December, an editorial in Navy Times called for revamped testing and to deep-six the sit-up, an outdated exercise today viewed as a key cause of lower back injuries. 8: SIT-UP WORTHY: McGill says every exercise is a tool to achieve a goal. If (your goal) is to become faster, stronger, or if its to become injury-resilient and have less pain in life and make yourself generally fit to enjoy life, then the answer is dont do sit -ups, he says. Exercises such as planks, he notes, are safer for lower backs and better engage core muscles. But if youre a UFC fighter or a jiu-jitsu master and you have to do groundwork to fight an opponent off your back, you should probably do a few sit-ups. SHARE: TRAVERSE CITY, MICH.The U.S. and Canada have done well at preventing Great Lakes water from being overused or raided by outsiders but should take additional steps to strengthen their legal protection against future grabs, an advisory organization said Tuesday. A compact between the regions eight states, and similar legislation approved by the provinces of Ontario and Quebec in the past decade, banned nearly all diversions of water outside their geological boundary and set conservation requirements for users within the region. Since then, no exports have been approved that would have significant negative impacts on the ecological integrity of the Great Lakes, said a report by the International Joint Commission, which advises both nations on issues affecting shared waterways. This is really a model for watersheds all over the world, emphasizing water conservation and stewardship, said Benoit Bouchard, one of Canadas representatives on the six-member commission and a former minister of industry, science and technology. The report updated an assessment the commission made in 2000, amid concern that Sun Belt states or even foreign powers might use interstate commerce law or trade pacts to justify piping water from the Great Lakes. Despite the legal barriers to such diversions that the regions governments have set, pressure to make exceptions or allow excessive withdrawals within the region could intensify as climate change worsens problems such as droughts and algae pollution, the report said. It advised the governments to consider making the protections even tighter by designating the lakes as resources held in public trust for uses such as drinking, fishing and watering crops. Adopting the public trust doctrine as a backstop to existing policy would bind governments to sustain these waters unimpaired as much as possible from one generation to the next, said Jim Olson, an environmental attorney and president of For Love of Water, an advocacy group that urged the commission to endorse the legal principle. The commission also called for better tools to measure Great Lakes water use and detect degraded groundwater supplies, and for upgrading pipes and other infrastructure to reduce waste. Read more about: SHARE: The Supreme Court of Canada will soon decide the fate of the mandatory one-year jail sentence for trafficking certain drugs. The mandatory minimum has come under fire by civil liberty groups for constituting cruel and unusual punishment, arbitrary imprisonment and restricting security of the person contrary to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The case at issue concerns Ryan Joseph Lloyd, a drug addict in his mid-20s, who lived in Vancouvers notorious Downtown Eastside. He was found in possession of less than 10 grams of three drugs, enough to be charged with three counts of possession for the purpose of trafficking. He was eventually convicted and faced no less than 12 months in jail because he had a prior conviction for trafficking within the last 10 years. The British Columbia Court of Appeal sentenced him to 18 months. The appeal of this sentence has reached our top court, in part because it sparked debate over how our courts deal with markers of disadvantage, including addiction, poverty and race. Seven public interest groups including the African Canadian Legal Clinic, the West Coast Womens Legal Education and Action Fund, and the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs, among others, argue that an offender who lives in poverty, has faced systemic barriers and suffers from an addiction disorder should not be automatically subjected to a one-year sentence upon conviction. In fact, prior to the enactment of the mandatory minimum sentence, judges were free to take social disadvantage into account and prescribe punishments that fit the crime. Offenders like Mr. Lloyd are now casualties on the battlefield of the perpetual war on drugs which targets non-violent street level users instead of kingpins. Our courts are routinely filled with a revolving door of low-level offenders, whose crimes are often triggered by their addiction and poverty. It is no secret that a disproportionate number of these offenders are black. Continuing to direct our resources toward these offenders will do little to keep our communities safe or reduce the number of drug related crimes. A lesson we should have learned from our battle tested counterparts in the United States. The United States has a lengthy history with mandatory minimum sentences, and imposing harsh sentences as part of their widely derided war on drugs. In the U.S., targeting addicts and low-level dealers has helped to skyrocket incarceration rates and perpetuate cyclical poverty. This is best demonstrated by looking at the impact of the war on drugs on the black community. South of the border, incarceration rates for black offenders ballooned when tougher sentences for drug crimes were ushered in under the Regan administration in the 1980s. As the war crept north of the border, black Canadians suffered a similar fate. From 1986 to 1993 the drug trafficking incarceration rates for black offenders exploded by 1,164 per cent. The disproportionate number of black males and females incarcerated in federal and provincial institutions has continued to grow in the new millennium as the war enters its fourth decade. It is tempting to assume that the higher incarceration rates for the black and Aboriginal communities reflect their heightened participation in the drug trade. But nothing could be further from the truth. Research on the Canadian war on drugs by Professor Akwatu Khenti revealed that the African Canadian community is not more likely to engage in drug use than other communities, yet they have been the overwhelming target of law enforcement. Since the cocaine-fuelled 1980s the perception that a drug dealer looks like a young black male has fuelled police enforcement tactics, and our legislatures response to drug crimes. While drug treatment courts, which exist to provide alternatives to incarceration for those who facing criminal charges, have thus far been the best counterpunch to heavy handed law enforcement, they too have missed their mark. A Department of Justice report on these courts in Toronto and Ottawa found that they have failed to attract or graduate offenders from marginalized communities, in particular African Canadians, women, and aboriginals. All of these groups stand to benefit the most from the treatment orders and suspended sentences drug courts offer as alternatives to jail time. While sweeping drug raids on poor communities appear to bring relief, its time we pay attention to the evidence. Prolonged sentences wont cure addiction, anti-black racism and the social marginalization that contribute to drug-related crimes. Public resources must be directed toward equipping our courts and community based programs with the means to create culturally responsive services that can cure addiction, and not simply punish an offenders behaviour. Until then, the soldiers in the war on drugs will continue to shoot blanks. Roger Love is advice counsel at the African Canadian Legal Clinic. SHARE: Western-backed Kurdish forces fighting Islamist militants in Iraq have destroyed thousands of homes in an apparent bid to uproot Arab communities, actions that may constitute war crimes, Amnesty International said Wednesday. The rights watchdog said the destruction took place in areas of northern Iraq recaptured from the Islamic State group, which overran swathes of the country in 2014. The United States has carried out air strikes in support of forces from Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region since August 2014 and other countries have also backed them with air support, training and weapons. Kurdish forces "appear to be spearheading a concerted campaign to forcibly displace Arab communities," Amnesty's Donatella Rovera said in a statement. "The forced displacement of civilians and the deliberate destruction of homes and property without military justification may amount to war crimes," she added. Destruction of homes and property theft have occurred frequently during the war against IS, angering residents whose support security forces need to hold recaptured areas, and sowing the seeds of future conflict. "Peshmerga forces from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Kurdish militias in northern Iraq have bulldozed, blown up and burned down thousands of homes in an apparent effort to uproot communities in revenge for their perceived support" of IS, Amnesty said. The rights group carried out a field investigation and interviewed witnesses. Satellite images also provided evidence of "widespread destruction", it said. Arab civilians who fled fighting have also been barred from returning home. Dindar Zebari, a KRG official, blamed combat for the destruction. "Many houses were destroyed because of clashes between peshmerga forces and Daesh members in villages located in war zones," Zebari said, using an Arabic acronym for ISIS. "Bombing by the international coalition also caused the destruction of houses, and Daesh members rigged houses in the villages to blow up the peshmerga forces," he said. Zebari also accused residents of affected areas of working with ISIS. "On the arrival of Daesh members to these areas, a number of tribal leaders cooperated with Daesh and these villages became a source for terrorists," he said. Colonel Steve Warren, the spokesman for the US-led operation against ISIS, declined to comment on the specifics of the Amnesty report but said that such actions harm the fight against the militants. "As government forces liberate territory... there's gotta be security for all of the civilian population," Warren told reporters. "These types of actions, if left unchecked, ultimately hurt the fight against Daesh. They increase the humanitarian crisis and they undermine the reconciliation efforts," he said. Amnesty documented evidence of "forced displacement and large-scale destruction of homes" by Kurdish forces in three Iraqi provinces: Nineveh, Kirkuk and Diyala. The London-based rights group published a similar report about Kurdish forces in neighbouring Syria in October, accusing them of war crimes. It said those forces had deliberately demolished civilian homes and forcibly displaced inhabitants "with no justifiable military grounds". Syrian Kurdish forces have also received air support and other backing from the US-led coalition. In Iraq, ISIS was driving Kurdish forces back toward their regional capital Arbil in August 2014 when the US began carrying out air strikes against the militants, playing a key role in stopping their advance and later helping the Kurds regain ground. All three provinces where Amnesty said destruction of property took place are outside the borders of the autonomous Kurdistan region. But Kurdish forces gained or solidified control over areas in the provinces after federal troops fled IS's devastatingly effective offensive in June 2014. Iraqi Kurdish leaders want to incorporate territory from the provinces into their autonomous region, and depopulating them of Arabs aids efforts to maintain Kurdish control. Baghdad strongly opposes Iraqi Kurdistan's incorporation of the areas, which it wants to remain under federal control, but after fighting IS for the territory the Kurds are even more committed to keeping them. Search Keywords: Short link: One of Justin Trudeaus first acts as prime minister was to disband Revenue Canadas anti-charity hit squad. He made it clear to Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier in her mandate letter that he expected her to take it from there: Allow charities to do their work on behalf of Canadians free of political harassment, he wrote. Modernize the rules governing the charitable and not-for-profit sectors, working with the minister of finance. This will include clarifying the rules governing political activity with an understanding that charities make an important contribution to public debate and policy. Environmentalists, anti-poverty activists, human rights defenders, foreign aid advocates, church workers and altruistic citizens across the country let out a collective sigh of relief. Calvin Sandborn, legal director of the Environmental Law Centre at the University of Victoria, said he was thrilled by this reversal of policy. For most political observers, that was the end of the story. They ticked off one item on Trudeaus long list of promises and moved on. But Lisa Lalande of the University of Torontos Mowat Centre took a deeper look. She wanted to see and perhaps help shape the followup to the prime ministers good-faith gesture. She brought 20 years of experience in the non-profit sector, the advice of her former peers and her research into the reforms other countries had made. Her report, On the Mend: Putting the Spark Back into the Government-Charitable Sector Relationship, is now publicly available. Lalande gives the Liberal government credit for thawing the charity chill that seized the voluntary sector four years ago when former PM Stephen Harper created a special team of auditors with a budget of $13 million to scrutinize the activities of charities that questioned or spoke out against his governments policies. But thats just the first step, she maintains. Revenue Canadas rules for charities are vague and confusing. A charity must limit its political activities to 10 per cent of its resources to maintain its tax-exempt status and issue official donation receipts. But there is no clear definition of a political activity. This leaves charities guessing or retaining tax lawyers to be safe. Federal regulators see charities as boundary-pushers, not problem-solvers, not contributors to public policy, certainly not partners of the government. They enforce the rules without looking at the bigger picture. They penalize deviators regardless of their intentions or the services they provide. A shared vision of the (non-profit) sectors purpose and clarity about what constitutes an effective partnership (with the government) are necessary to develop coherent policies, Lalande says. Charities need fewer, not more, bureaucratic constraints. They need a legislative framework that bolsters their efforts to support vulnerable Canadians. Policy-makers dont need to reinvent the wheel, she says. Several provinces including Ontario have embarked on reform initiatives. Non-profit leaders have done a lot of brainstorming about how to strengthen their sector. And countries such as Australia, New Zealand and Britain have already modernized their regulatory regimes. Britain and Australia have created independent public agencies to rewrite the rules and monitor the activities of charitable organizations. The U.K. Charities Commission, for example, allows political activity provided it is part of a wider range of activities aimed at furthering the organizations charitable purposes. The Supreme Court of New Zealand has placed no limit on political activity as long as its purpose is charitable and it provides benefits to the public or a sufficient section of the public, not just an individual, an organization or a closed group. None of these models fits Canada. With shared federal-provincial responsibility for the non-profit sector, Lebouthillier will have to create or adapt her own framework. That might mean establishing an arms-length agency to regulate charities; issuing new marching orders to the 270 officials in Revenue Canadas charities directorate, or coming up with a made-in-Canada hybrid. The charitable sector is ready for and in need of change, Lalande says. Circumstances are as good as theyre ever likely to be: a new minister with a long history of charitable involvement; a government that understands the importance of voluntary organizations; a wave of goodwill toward Syrian refugees; and a desire to cast off the secrecy and excessive partisanship that permeate Ottawa. Now is the time to work collaboratively to empower and protect the sector while strengthening its ability to work for the public benefit. Trudeau has seized the moment. Lebouthilliers task is to work with Canadas 85,000 charities to unlock the potential of an army of willing volunteers and donors. Carol Goars column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Read more about: SHARE: Parliament resumes in a few days, and when it does Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus government had better be prepared to let Canadians and the world in on its plans to contribute to the fight against Islamic State jihadists in Iraq and Syria. Our military appears to be stuck in neutral, awaiting marching orders, as our allies gear up for battle, sidelining us. Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan looked feeble this week as news emerged that defence ministers from the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Australia and the Netherlands were meeting in Paris to discuss the upcoming American push to dislodge the jihadists from their strongholds in Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria. Sajjans office conceded that he wasnt invited to the meeting of significant contributors but insisted it has nothing to do with Canadas plans to withdraw our warplanes from the fray. Really? Given that the next phase of the campaign will involve sustained airstrikes over many months, and given that theres no certainty that Canadian warplanes will be there to take part, it should come as no surprise that Sajjan wasnt needed at the planning meeting. It looks as if it has everything to do with our planes being pulled out. Granted, that in itself is no big deal. There are plenty of ways we can and do contribute. We currently have six CF-18 fighter-bombers in Kuwait, along with two useful Aurora surveillance aircraft and a Polaris refueler, supported by 600 personnel. We also have a small contingent of just under 70 special forces in Iraq training Kurdish fighters, close to the action. Thats more exposure than many of our allies are prepared to risk. Still, Canadas absence from the Paris meeting has left the Conservatives howling that weve been snubbed by our allies. They see us as a nation in retreat, complained Tory defence critic James Bezan. That has become the Tory mantra on this issue, and it will hurt the government so long as its plans remain murky. Indeed, the issue is sensitive enough that the Pentagon felt moved to reaffirm that the U.S. and Canada are great friends and allies, working to defeat the jihadists. That ought to have gone without saying. Undeniably, Trudeau gave his new Liberal government a potential political problem by campaigning on withdrawing the warplanes, even though our American and other allies would prefer they remain. Still, he could have spared himself some grief soon after winning power on Oct. 19 by speedily announcing firm plans to pull our weight elsewhere. Instead, the government has dragged out the process for many weeks, giving the Conservatives a target. Trudeau has promised to do more on the training front something the U.S. is pushing for to help teach local forces how to take on the jihadists, and that makes sense. Canadas military is well-qualified for that. We took on that role in Afghanistan, stationing 800 military advisers there. In Ukraine, we now have 200. As the Star has argued before, that would be far more valuable to the alliance than a six-pack of warplanes to an air campaign that the Americans are more than capable of waging without help. Containing and defeating the jihadists can be done only by committed, well-trained, well-supplied Iraqi and Syrian forces on the ground. Ottawa is reportedly reviewing options that range from beefing up the Canadian units that are training Kurdish fighters near Irbil, Iraq, to helping the Kurds to build up their own special forces, to stationing Canadians at Iraqi bases to train troops and police. Of course, exactly nothing the government does will satisfy the Tories, who are still smarting from their election defeat. Still, the Liberals have had three months to review and readjust our contribution. Thats time to have developed a plan. When the House of Commons resumes sitting on Monday, they should spell it out and put this issue in the rear-view mirror. Read more about: SHARE: The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for a gun and explosives attack on a university in the country's northwest that left at least 21 people dead on Wednesday. "Our four suicide attackers carried out the attack on Bacha Khan University today," Umar Mansoor, a commander in the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistani (TTP) militant group told AFP by phone from an undisclosed location. Mansoor added that the attack it was in response to a military offensive against extremist strongholds in the tribal areas. Search Keywords: Short link: A shallow 5.9-magnitude earthquake jolted China's northwestern Qinghai province on Thursday, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said, with no immediate reports of damage or casualties. The quake hit at 1:13 am local time (1713 GMT) at a depth of just 10 kilometres (6 miles), USGS said. Its epicentre was in Menyuan county, around 100 kilometres from the city of Jinchang, according to state media and USGS. China's Earthquake Networks Center put the magnitude higher at 6.4, according to state news agency Xinhua. China is regularly hit by earthquakes, but more regularly in its southwestern provinces of Sichuan and Yunnan. In October 2014, hundreds of people were injured and more than 100,000 displaced after a shallow 6.0 magnitude tremor hit Yunnan province, close to China's borders with Myanmar and Laos. In May 2008, a 7.9 magnitude quake rocked Sichuan, killing more than 80,000 people and flattening swathes of the province in China's worst earthquake for more than three decades. Search Keywords: Short link: Robbers shot dead a prominent ally of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, prosecutors said on Wednesday. Ricardo Duran Trujillo, 45, was shot near his home on Tuesday night, the state prosecution service said in a statement. Duran was a former journalist and ex-head of media for the National Assembly legislature. He was a high-profile supporter of the socialist president, who is locked in a political standoff with opponents. Prosecutors citing witnesses said Duran "was intercepted by three men" in the west of the capital and resisted when they tried to rob him. "The unidentified men shot him several times and he died on the spot," then the men drove off in their own vehicle without taking anything, said a prosecution statement. "It is striking that they did not take anything," said Daniel Aponte, head of the Capital District government, a metropolitan authority for which Duran was working. Aponte told reporters Duran was carrying his own firearm at the time of the attack. Venezuela has one of the highest murder rates in the world, according to the United Nations. It is gripped by a political and economic crisis, with a standoff between Maduro and the center-right opposition in the legislature raising tensions. Duran was working as head of media relations for the metropolitan authority, which was set up by Maduro to rival the opposition-held city hall. He was also a Caracas city councilor and worked for state television channel Venezolana de Television. Search Keywords: Short link: Web surfers will be able to peek into the gilded interiors of Queen Elizabeth II's home in a new virtual reality tour launched by Google on Wednesday. Buckingham Palace, the queen's primary residence, has opened its doors to the tech giant for 360-degree photos of some of its richly-decorated rooms. The tour can be viewed on a computer or in 3D on a mobile phone through the official British Monarchy YouTube channel -- one of several digital initiatives adopted by the royal household in recent years. Visitors are welcomed by a virtual Master of the Household and then guided by curator Anna Reynolds through lavish chambers including the Throne Room. At the end of the video, which lasts around 10 minutes, virtual visitors are also shown a secret door through which the queen arrives at receptions. The programme is intended for schoolchildren and was created under Google's Expedition programme. Instead of having a virtual guide, teachers dictate the tour and highlight interesting topics for pupils. "For schoolchildren, Buckingham Palace is one of the most iconic, magical buildings in the world," said Jemima Rellie, director of content at the Royal Collection Trust which worked together with Google. Jennifer Holland, Expedition's programme manager, launched the tour at an event in London with pupils from a school in east London. "We asked them, if you could go anywhere in the world where would you want to go and they replied -- Buckingham Palace," she said. The photos for the tour were taken last week with a 16-camera rig placed in a circle. The virtual tour will also be available through the official British Monarchy YouTube channel. For more arts and culture news and updates, follow Ahram Online Arts and Culture on Twitter at @AhramOnlineArts and on Facebook at Ahram Online: Arts & Culture Search Keywords: Short link: At the historic Place de la Republique in Paris, street artists have sought to use graffiti to tell the stories of some of the tens of thousands of migrants who have arrived in France over the past year, fleeing war and poverty back home One such story is that of Tarakeel Khan, who was forced to leave his home in Afghanistan after being threatened by the Taliban. Today I see this painting. Its good, its nice [that its seen] not just by me, but by the media, by all the French people, Khan, who arrived in France about a year and a half ago, told FRANCE 24. More than 79,000 people requested asylum in France in 2015, according to official data, the majority of whom came from Syria, Sudan and Iraq. Aurore Cyrille, one of the artists at the Place de la Republique, said she hoped that those fleeing violence in their home countries find shelter in France. Its a welcome for the refugees to Paris, she said. For the past month, weve been commemorating the terrorist attacks of November 13, and theyve often had terrorist attacks in their own home. Over one million people entered the EU in 2015, in what has become Europe's worst refugee crisis since World War II. Video by Luke Brown, Thameen Kheetan For more arts and culture news and updates, follow Ahram Online Arts and Culture on Twitter at @AhramOnlineArts and on Facebook at Ahram Online: Arts & Culture Search Keywords: Short link: Here's one way to deal with the spiraling cost of college education. The cost of going to college continues to get more expensive every year. According to the College Board, higher education costs increased about 3% from last year and as much as 40% from 2005. For example, the annual cost to attend Harvard University as an undergraduate student was $40,000 in 2005, but now carries a $60,000 price tag. As a result, it's become more important for families to prioritize saving for their children's education. One option for saving for college is a 529 plan. "Congress created 529 plans to help families save for college on a tax-advantaged basis. Today, about 11.4million people have saved over $220billion in these plans -- sometimes $25 a month starting when their children are very young so the investment can grow tax-free for many years, " said John Hupalo, CEO of Invite Education, a company providing information and tools to help families better plan and pay for college. A 529 plan gets its "catchy" name from the section in the Internal Revenue Code that authorizes its existence. The plans come in two flavors: a prepaid tuition plan and a college savings plan. This article will focus on the college savings portion. A 529 Savings Plan Carries a Lot of Flexibility In general, 529 savings plans are flexible with fewer restrictions than other types of tax-advantaged vehicles. For example, most plans allow any U.S. resident at least 18 years of age or older to open a 529 savings plan and there are no income restrictions for making contributions. In fact, the Obamas have four 529 savings plans, each with balances carrying $50,000 to $100,000, according to the president's financial disclosure forms. A 529 savings plan can be opened to save for a child, grandchild, younger relative, or even for yourself. There's no age limit for the beneficiary of a 529 savings plan. Even better, you can change the beneficiary on an account at any time for any reason, so if you find that one child doesn't need the funds for college, you have the flexibility to change the beneficiary to another member of the family. Hupalo added, "the donor's ability to switch beneficiaries is a tangible way of ensuring that their goal of supporting family members' college dream is fulfilled. If the designated beneficiary decides not to attend college or if money is somehow unused in an account, the donor can still leverage the investment by re-designating the 529 account to another fortunate beneficiary. That's very powerful." While all states and the District of Columbia have 529 savings plans, residents don't necessarily have to limit themselves to plans in their home state. They can shop around and choose the plan that best suits them. However, as discussed below, many states provide a state tax deduction for contributions, so it's often times beneficial to contribute to your state's plan. Once enrolled in a particular 529 savings plan, account holders have the option to roll over their proceeds to a different plan once every 12 months. But be careful. If you initially invested in your state's plan and received a state tax deduction, certain states will recapture that tax benefit if your monies are rolled out of the state plan. Ultimately, funds within your 529 savings plan can be used for qualified expenses at most accredited colleges, graduate schools, professional and trade schools, and foreign schools, as long as the institution is eligible to participate in the student aid program administered by the U.S. Department of Education. You can check if a school is eligible through this handy lookup tool. Regarding qualified expenses, they generally include tuition, fees, books and supplies, room and board, and equipment required by the educational institution. Tax Benefits of a 529 Savings Plan Beyond the flexibility, there are other benefits associated with a 529 savings plan: 1. State Tax Deduction for Contributions -- Currently, 28 states, including the District of Columbia, offer a state tax deduction for contributions to their particular state plan. Six other states (Arizona, Kansas, Maine, Missouri, Montana, and Pennsylvania) offer a state tax deduction for contributions to any 529 savings plan. Lastly, eight states (California, Delaware, Hawaii, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, and North Carolina) have an income tax, but don't offer a deduction for 529 plan contributions. The remaining states don't have a state tax, and thus don't have a state tax deduction to offer. 2. Double-Tax-Advantaged Savings Vehicle -- While monies are not contributed on a pre-tax basis for federal income tax purposes, the funds grow tax-deferred, and withdrawals are tax-free as long as they are used for qualified education expenses. 3. Gift Tax Benefits -- Unlike other savings and retirement plans, 529 savings plans have an extremely high contribution limit - many state plans have limits in excess of $200,000. Contributions are treated as gifts and traditionally, one can gift $14,000 a year to a recipient without triggering the gift tax or counting against their lifetime gift tax exclusion (currently $5.34 million). However, 529 savings plans allow you to front-load tax-free contributions for up to five years. What that means is you could contribute up to $70,000 initially per beneficiary ($140,000 for a married couple filing jointly) without triggering a gift tax or chipping away from your lifetime gift tax exclusion. Don't Get Schooled While 529 savings plans are extremely flexible and carry advantageous tax benefits, there are penalties if withdrawals are not used for qualified educational expenses. Specifically, the earnings portion of withdrawals that aren't used for qualified expenses will be subject to ordinary income tax (federal), a 10% federal penalty tax, and possibly state and local taxes as well. With that said, "529 savings plans meet the college savings needs of a large majority of families whether they give five years of contributions upfront or they're saving $25 per month," Hupalo said. "529 savers are smartly taking advantage of the most flexible tax-advantaged savings program ever created by the U.S. Congress." Before choosing a particular 529 savings plan, be sure to understand all of the terms, restrictions, and fees associated with enrolling in the plan. Once in a plan, determine your contribution strategy and choose investments based on your time horizon and risk tolerance. Lastly, when removing money from a plan, be sure to understand what qualifies as an eligible expense and be mindful of any timing considerations. Concern about the Chinese economy heightened again with the announcement Tuesday that GDP rose just 6.9% in 2015, its lowest annual gain in 25 years. Last week, the country's benchmark Shanghai Composite index reached bear market status, meaning that it dropped at least 20% from a recent high. Despite a rally at the end of last year, the Shanghai Composite is now more than 40% lower than its peak of 5,166.35, which it reached six months ago. "The bottom has fallen out of the market in the last two weeks," said Francis Lun, chief executive officer at Geo Securities in Hong Kong, told Bloomberg. "Investors have lost confidence after two weeks of meddling by government officials." Chinese and other foreign investors will undoubtedly start shifting their attention to the U.S. and other markets. "Volatility from China is the new normal, and the sooner we get used to it the better," said Spencer Levy, CBRE's head of research for the Americas. "At the same time, a certain amount of volatility isn't all a bad thing as global instability often leads to more foreign capital flows to the safe havens, notably London and the U.S." Among the industries most likely to benefit is real estate, which has benefited significantly from foreign investment in recent years. According to the management consultancy and accounting firm Deloitte, Chinese commercial real estate acquisitions in the U.S. totaled $8.5 billion from 2005 through March 2014. To be sure, real estate deals can be risky, particularly developments that are trying to predict business and home buying trends. But a patient, selective investor can see solid returns with lower risk than they might encounter in the current Chinese climate. A recent tax incentive might make things potentially sweeter for foreign, institutional investors. In December, President Barrack Obama recently signed a into law a measure that waives taxes imposed on foreign pension funds. These funds had been taxed under the 35-year-old 1980 Foreign Investment in Real Property Tax Act, or FIRPTA but will now be treated similarly to U.S. pension funds. That said, foreign investors will be able to invest directly into properties and also in real estate investment trusts (REITs). Foreign pension funds can now buy up to 10% of U.S. publicly traded REITs, without triggering FIRPTA taxes upon sale of the stock. The limit had been 5% up until two months ago. The new measure is intended to promote cross-border investment in U.S. real estate. Jim Fetgatter, chief executive of the Association of Foreign Investors in Real Estate (AFIRE) said the reform "can only be good for U.S. real estate," even if those effects are delayed. The timing couldn't have been better, given China's declining economy and stock market. Some economists believe that Chinese investors and others with large stakes in China will have to adjust their portfolios. "The current volatility in China has underscored for Chinese investors the importance of diversifying their investments into the U.S. and elsewhere," said Sam Chandan, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of publication, the author held no positions in the stocks mentioned. LONDON (The Deal) -- European stocks retreated on Wednesday, with a string of disappointing news from companies including BHP Billiton (BHP) and Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A) , and as falling oil prices rattled markets worldwide. In London, the FTSE 100 was 2.91% lower at 5,705.77, while in Paris the CAC 40 slid 3.33% to 4,129.90. In Frankfurt, the DAX fell nearly 3% to 9,375.71. European stocks trailed Asia lower as Brent crude dipped below $28 a barrel, close to a 12-year-low, amid expectations of increased supply on the world market following the recent lifting of sanctions against Iran. News of a brighter job market in the U.K. did little to lift the mood, with the Office of National Statistics reporting a 74.0% employment rate for the September to November period, the highest since it began keeping records in 1971. The unemployment rate for the same period fell to 5.1% from 5.8% a year earlier. Later Wednesday, the focus shifts to the U.S. for a string of key data from the world's largest economy including the Consumer Price Index and housing starts. S&P 500 futures were down 1.94% ahead of Wall Street's opening. In London morning trading, mining company BHP Billiton was among the biggest decliners. It stumbled 6.84% after cutting its full-year forecast for iron ore output due to an activity suspension in Brazil as a result of a dam collapse in Brazil. The company is now predicting that it will ship 237 million metric tons of iron ore this year, down from a previous forecast of 247 million metric tons. Among other mining stocks, Anglo American (AAUKF) fell 6.03% while Glencore (GLNCY) retreated 5.25%. Royal Dutch Shell declined 5.81% after saying that it expects fourth-quarter profit to drop to $1.6 billion to $1.9 billion, from $3.3 billion a year earlier, when it reports full-year 2015 figures on Feb. 4. Shell also said that preparations are "well advanced" for $30 billion in asset sales in 2016-2018, assuming the successful completion of the combination with BG Group. Shell shareholders are due to vote on the GBP 35.1 billion ($39.7 billion) deal on Jan. 27. BG shares were 2.35% lower. In Paris, Vinci fell 3.39% amid a report in Spain's Expansion newspaper that it has held talks with struggling Spanish renewables company Abengoa over the possible acquisition of its largest unit Abeinsa. In Switzerland, Zurich Insurance Group (ZURVY) slumped more than 8% lower as the country's largest insurer faces a patch of stormy weather -- literally. It predicted a first-quarter operating loss of $100 million at its general insurance business, blaming claims related to natural disasters including storms and floods in the U.K. and Ireland and a "significant level" of large losses. In Madrid, Laboratorio Reig Jofre was down 1.14%. The Barcelona-based pharmaceutical firm will market the Sterimar line of nasal hygiene products made by Ewing, New Jersey-based Church & Dwight (CHD) under an exclusive license agreement announced on Wednesday. Bucking the negative trend, ASML Holding (ASML) rose 2.30% in Amsterdam. Europe's largest semiconductor-equipment announced plans to buy an additional 1 billion of its stock, which comes on top of 500 million remaining from a previous buyback scheme. It also suggested raising its dividend by 50%. The Veldoven, Netherlands-based company -- whose customers include Samsung and Intel -- forecast first-quarter 2016 sales to fall to about 1.3 billion, from 1.65 a year earlier. But sales are expected to increase significantly in the second quarter as order picks up for new equipment. In Asia, the Hang Seng tumbled 3.82% to 18,886.30, while the Nikkei slid 3.71% to 16,416.19 in Tokyo. On mainland China, the CSI 300 composite index, which combines stocks listed in both Shanghai and Shenzhen, ended the day 1.51% lower at 3,174.38. Trade-Ideas LLC identified Delta Air Lines ( DAL ) as a pre-market leader candidate. In addition to specific proprietary factors, Trade-Ideas identified Delta Air Lines as such a stock due to the following factors: DAL has an average dollar-volume (as measured by average daily share volume multiplied by share price) of $557.2 million. DAL traded 70,488 shares today in the pre-market hours as of 7:51 AM. DAL is up 2.1% today from yesterday's close. EXCLUSIVE OFFER: Get the inside scoop on opportunities in DAL with the Ticky from Trade-Ideas. See the FREE profile for DAL NOW at Trade-Ideas More details on DAL: Delta Air Lines, Inc. provides scheduled air transportation for passengers and cargo worldwide. The company operates in two segments, Airline and Refinery. Its route network comprises various gateway airports in Amsterdam, Detroit, Los Angeles, Minneapolis-St. The stock currently has a dividend yield of 1.2%. DAL has a PE ratio of 13. Currently there are 9 analysts that rate Delta Air Lines a buy, no analysts rate it a sell, and none rate it a hold. The average volume for Delta Air Lines has been 8.9 million shares per day over the past 30 days. Delta Air Lines has a market cap of $35.3 billion and is part of the services sector and transportation industry. The stock has a beta of 1.27 and a short float of 1.9% with 1.23 days to cover. Shares are down 10.6% year-to-date as of the close of trading on Thursday. EXCLUSIVE OFFER: See inside Jim Cramer's multi-million dollar charitable trust portfolio to see the stocks he thinks could be potential winners. Click here to see his holdings for 14-days FREE. TheStreetRatings.com Analysis: TheStreet Quant Ratings rates Delta Air Lines as a buy . The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its increase in net income, growth in earnings per share, largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures, good cash flow from operations and solid stock price performance. We feel its strengths outweigh the fact that the company shows low profit margins. Highlights from the ratings report include: The net income growth from the same quarter one year ago has significantly exceeded that of the S&P 500 and the Airlines industry. The net income increased by 268.3% when compared to the same quarter one year prior, rising from $357.00 million to $1,315.00 million. DELTA AIR LINES INC reported significant earnings per share improvement in the most recent quarter compared to the same quarter a year ago. This company has reported somewhat volatile earnings recently. But, we feel it is poised for EPS growth in the coming year. During the past fiscal year, DELTA AIR LINES INC reported lower earnings of $0.75 versus $12.29 in the prior year. This year, the market expects an improvement in earnings ($4.63 versus $0.75). The debt-to-equity ratio is somewhat low, currently at 0.85, and is less than that of the industry average, implying that there has been a relatively successful effort in the management of debt levels. Even though the company has a strong debt-to-equity ratio, the quick ratio of 0.35 is very weak and demonstrates a lack of ability to pay short-term obligations. Net operating cash flow has significantly increased by 52.20% to $2,067.00 million when compared to the same quarter last year. Despite an increase in cash flow of 52.20%, DELTA AIR LINES INC is still growing at a significantly lower rate than the industry average of 139.36%. Regardless of the drop in revenue, the company managed to outperform against the industry average of 5.3%. Since the same quarter one year prior, revenues slightly dropped by 0.6%. The declining revenue has not hurt the company's bottom line, with increasing earnings per share. You can view the full Delta Air Lines Ratings Report. EXCLUSIVE OFFER: See inside Jim Cramer's multi-million dollar charitable trust portfolio to see the stocks he thinks could be potential winners. Click here to see his holdings for 14-days FREE. NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Netflix (NFLX) shares are surging 7.7% to $116.20 in after-hours trading on Tuesday immediately following the video streaming giant's robust fourth quarter fiscal 2015 earnings results reported after the closing bell today. Profit exceeded projections while revenue came in under. For the latest quarter, earnings came in at 7 cents a share, beating analysts' estimates of 2 cents a share. Revenue of $1.82 billion missed forecasts of $1.83 billion. During the same period the year prior, the company earned 10 cents a share on revenue of $1.49 billion. In the recent quarter, Netflix added a total of 5.59 million new subscribers internationally, ahead of expectations of 4.95 million. This was largely helped by the company's big shows such as Narcos and Marvel's Jessica Jones, the company said. In the U.S. the company added 1.56 million new subscribers, slightly below estimates of 1.62 million new subscribers. These results come after the company earlier this month announced that it expanded into an additional 130 new countries. Now, more than 190 countries are using the streaming service. Thanks to this rapid expansion, the company forecasts 6 million new subscribers during the first quarter of fiscal 2016. However, fast overseas expansion and owning original content are expensive goals and will likely dampen cash flow, MarketWatch reports. Additionally, the company is planning to launch more than 600 hours of original programming in 2016, an increase from around 450 hours in 2015. Separately, Netflix will see a new competitor as Time Warner's (TWX) HBO is planning to begin a stand-alone Web service in Spain, according to Bloomberg. TheStreet Ratings has a "hold' rating and score of C on Netflix stock. The primary factors that have impacted the rating are mixed - some indicating strength, some showing weaknesses, with little evidence to justify the expectation of either a positive or negative performance for this stock relative to most other stocks. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its solid stock price performance, robust revenue growth and expanding profit margins. However, as a counter to these strengths, TheStreet Ratings also found weaknesses including deteriorating net income, generally higher debt management risk and disappointing return on equity. TheStreet Ratings objectively rated this stock according to its "risk-adjusted" total return prospect over a 12-month investment horizon. Not based on the news in any given day, the rating may differ from Jim Cramer's view or that of this articles's author. TheStreet Ratings has this to say about the recommendation: You can view the full analysis from the report here: NFLX NFLX data by YCharts Few were surprised by the outcome of the January 17 election in Taiwan, which brought the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) back to power after eight years. The results of the DPP's presidential and legislative victories will be watched for how they reshape cross-strait relations. While some have expressed concerns that the leadership change will hurt ties, it is important for authorities on the mainland to keep their focus on continued peaceful development and making the most of what has already been accomplished. Over the past eight years, reconciliation, cooperation and progress have been the main themes of cross-strait relations. Beijing and Taipei have agreed on a regular consultation mechanism and finalized the "three links," namely direct flights, shipping and postal services. Officials on both sides of the strait have signed 23 trade agreements, including the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement. They have also worked to make it easier for mainland tourists to visit Taiwan. The historic meeting between Xi Jinping and Ma Ying-jeou in Singapore in November, the first meeting between the top leaders of the two sides in more than six decades, has opened another chapter in cross-strait relations. But the Kuomintang's stinging defeat has raised two profound questions. Was the vote a comment on the reconciliation efforts that the Kuomintang has championed? Do the results mean that most people in Taiwan are renouncing the principle of peaceful development? Taking the outcome of the election at face value puts us at risk of misreading the situation. Cross-strait ties are indeed important in Taiwan, but they are not the only issue. The decline in support for the KMT is largely the result of the party's failure to tackle many local issues, including economic stagnation, deterioration of the investment climate and little increase in people's incomes. The party's image has been tarnished by its indecisiveness regarding major policies and by divisions in its ranks. Meanwhile, the DPP has become more pragmatic about cross-strait relations. Tsai Ing-wen, who took over the leadership of the DPP in 2008, has been ambiguous in her statements about the "1992 Consensus," which put forward the "one-China principle." She has, on many occasions, expressed a desire to maintain the status quo. Her party has also refrained from using provocative rhetoric in dealing with cross-strait issues. During her campaign, Tsai was more prudent in her attacks on the KMT regarding its pro-mainland policies than former president Chen Shui-bian was. She called for the island to reflect on relying too much on trade with the mainland and called for bolstering consumer demand and investment. Policies on cross-strait relations which were divisive in the last two elections took a back seat this time around. It is commendable that the excitement of the campaign trail has not distracted policymakers on both sides from working to improve ties. The controversial Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement was indeed put on hold, but a deal on commodities trading has moved ahead. Beijing has also responded positively to Taipei's interest in joining the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and both sides also agreed to set up a hotline for the director of the mainland's Taiwan Affairs Office and the head of the island's Mainland Affairs Council. It is evident that peaceful development is the right formula for moving relations forward. Peace in the Taiwan Strait not only benefits both sides of that body of water, but it also contributes to regional stability. Challenges will arise, but we have good reason to believe that the mainland will demonstrate resolve and sincerity to facilitate this. Many initiatives are in place to maintain stability, including cultural, educational, sporting and religious exchange programs. Some 45,000 students from Taiwan and the mainland traveled across the strait to study last year. The number of direct flights has grown to 890 every week, and they carry nearly 10 million passengers a year. Cross-strait trade the cornerstone of relations hit nearly US$ 200 billion in 2015, and the number of Taiwan-invested projects on the mainland rose 22 percent from a year earlier. Considering the economic stagnation in Taiwan, a win-win relationship will allow for even stronger links to develop, no matter who runs the government in Taipei. The authorities on the mainland no doubt expected this election outcome and have contingency plans in place. The parties may need some time to adjust to one another, and interactions may decrease in the short term. But the mainland's determination to uphold the country's territorial sovereignty and to oppose separatism is unshakable. Beijing has done a good job formulating consistent cross-strait policies without losing its vision amid the comings and goings of one particular party or its leader in Taiwan. It will no doubt show the flexibility needed to help maintain stability by reaching out to the other side of the strait. However, mainland leaders need to show more willingness to heed the aspirations of the people of Taiwan, particularly the younger generation, whose growing political clout was demonstrated in this election. The resurgence of the DPP does not signal an end to cross-strait reconciliation, rather a new beginning in the long process of someday resolving our differences. This will require policymakers to have faith in each other and to make concerted efforts with an effective strategy to move the relationship forward. Hu Shuli is the editor-in-chief of Caixin Media Once seen by execs as a financial burden, Disney's (DIS) retail store network is finally getting some attention amid a flurry of tentpole movie releases from Lucasfilm and Marvel in recent years that have led to increased interest by shoppers in toys and other related merchandise. "Since Star Wars launched in theaters on Dec. 18, we saw a fairly significant traffic increase year-over-year in our stores driven by the new movie," said Paul Gainer, executive vice president of Disney Retail in an interview with TheStreet. Disney hasn't always been so enthusiastic about the prospects for its retail stores. Disney first began building stores in 1987, but made a deal in 2004 to sell its North American chain of Disney Stores to children's clothing retailer Children's Place (PLCE) . Disney handed the keys over to what was then a 313-store chain that was rumored to be deeply in the red (Disney does not break out the financials for its stores). In return, Disney received a royalty from Children's Place on sales from the stores, and the ability to shed an unprofitable network of brick-and-mortar locations. The company did not receive an upfront payment from Children's Place. However, Children's Place never lived up to its goal of nearly doubling the North American store base of the Disney Stores to about 600. So by 2008, Disney decided to repurchase about 220 stores in the U.S. and Canada from Children's Place, which chose to completely exit the business. Disney now operates about 340 Disney Stores globally. Gainer declined to comment on the current financials of the Disney Store network. But it does appear that Disney is moving full steam ahead in investing in the chain's future. A key point of focus for Gainer and his team is the re-training of employees, otherwise known as cast members, in order to enhance the shopping experience. "Because we have a wide range of franchises and stories, cast members need to have that product knowledge," explained Gainer, adding, "They also need to think about how the consumer is changing the way they shop to understand how they are using mobile devices and product ratings." According to Disney, 25% of its digital sales in the most recent quarter came from mobile devices. The company is also holding more events -- leveraging the power of its animated characters -- in its stores to attract traffic. "One of the things we have leaned into the past few years is increasing the number of in-store events such as learning how to draw a character or a sing-a-long or a Halloween costume event. [These] are the types of events that have really resonated with our consumers," Gainer said. Disney Store customers can now find merchandise for Star Wars and Spiderman alongside those for Disney films. Disney is also actively trying to offer a more streamlined assortment in its stores to boost efficiencies. A typical Disney Store has about 1,000 items for sale, so an opportunity exists to offer more items online in order to save on things such as inventory costs. Disney is also back to selectively opening new stores in top-tier real estate, though concedes it will continue to weed out weaker-performing locations. In total, Disney believes its current global count is about the right number to have open. "Disney has learned a lesson from the mid 2000's when we had two times the store count and our stores were bigger," said Gainer. One store that won't be closed anytime soon is the flagship location in New York City's Times Square, which opened roughly five years ago and is the second-largest behind the new Shanghai Disney Store. "[The Times Square location] has been great for us, we have seen significant traffic growth," said Gainer when asked if Disney would follow the lead of Toys R' Us, which recently closed its NYC flagship store on Dec. 30, blaming sky high rent costs. Toys R' Us CEO David Brandon told TheStreet recently that its real estate team is actively searching for another location in Manhattan, but did not give specifics. Meantime, since October 2013, Disney has opened up about 700 Disney shops within J.C. Penney (JCP) stores. Gainer, which oversees the partnership with J.C. Penney, said, "We are excited about J.C. Penney -- we believe what they have done with shops is franchise merchandising and telling the Disney story. At other retailers the story is told in category aisles where it's hard to see the Cars story next to apparel and home goods," noted Gainer, who added the company values all of its relationships with retail partners. According to Gainer, the company has been using insights from Disney Stores to offer better merchandise with important retail partners. "Disney is big across mass retail," Gainer said. Disney's consumer product divisions, which comprises the Disney Stores but also revenue from licensing characters from Disney's films, TV and other properties to toymakers and apparel manufacturers, represents about 10% of annual sales for the company, and roughly 12% of operating income. As for the performance of the new 54,000-square-foot Disney Store in Shanghai that opened to huge crowds in late May? Disney is still learning about the Chinese customer, said Gainer, but it has seen a strong response to Princess Elsa and Mickey Mouse merchandise, as well as to Star Wars following the movie's recent launch. (Beijing) The Shanghai-listed subsidiary of state-owned Baosteel Group Corp. said its profits last year dropped by more than three-quarters year-on-year to 1.8 billion yuan due to lower prices and a much weaker yuan. Baoshan Iron & Steel Co. Ltd. said in a financial report released on January 19 that revenues also slipped, down by 12.6 percent to 164 billion yuan. Prices for steel products fell greater than prices for iron ore last year, the firm said, drastically squeezing profits. An index of prices for domestically made steel that is published by the government-backed China Iron and Steel Association was more than one-quarter lower last year than in 2014. The reading 60 out of 100 was the lowest level in two decades. Depreciation of the yuan over the past six months has pushed up costs on U.S. dollar-denominated debts, Baoshan Iron & Steel said. It said that it has made early repayment of some short-term foreign debts due to fears of a stronger dollar. The company did not provide the amount of U.S. dollar debt it held. Baoshan Iron & Steel Co. Ltd. raised US$ 500 million by issuing bonds in December 2013 to fund expansion. The value of the yuan has dropped by more than 5 percent to around 6.6 against the U.S. dollar since August 11. The company said its gross profit rate, the ratio of gross profit to revenue, slid by 3.3 percentage points year-on-year in 2015. Data from the iron and steel association show that the rate for the industry in the first 10 months of the year was minus 2 percent. Zhao Xizi, former head of the old Ministry of Metallurgical Industry, said at a summit in the capital on January 15 that only 11 state-owned and another 29 privately run steelmakers reported turning a profit in 2015. The industry, which also includes hundreds of small companies, was expected to post a loss of close to 100 billion yuan, he said. (Rewritten by Li Rongde) Announcing an investment in satire publisher The Onion on Tuesday, Jan. 19., Spanish-language broadcaster Univision Holdings' chief news and digital officer, Isaac Lee, noted the increasing strategic value of humor in the media business. Comedy is "an incredibly engaging format for Millennial audiences," Lee stated in a press release, and it would play an increased role in coverage of the 2016 presidential race. Presumably, some of the humor would come at the expense of Univision foe Donald Trump, who is seeking the Republican nomination. While backing The Onion may be a bet on the strategic value of levity, heavier matters await Univision backers Madison Dearborn Partners, Providence Equity Partners, TPG Capital, Thomas H. Lee Partners, Saban Capital and Grupo Televisa (TV) in 2016. Primarily, the backers must decide whether to revive a stalled initial public offering for the largest Spanish-language cable network and broadcast and media group in the U.S. While Univision declined to comment on the status of the offering, for which it filed a proxy last summer, the company is widely said to have put the IPO on hold late last year. The listing had been anticipated in the early fall. While the offering has lagged, Univision updated its proxy on Jan. 12. "My view is that the IPO is still on, but they are going to be prudent and launch that when the market conditions are supportive of the offering," said Moody's Investors Service analyst Carl Salas. "That typically is a matter of time." Even before the recent market turbulence, shares of premier media groups such as Walt Disney (DIS) and Time Warner (TWX) encountered static last year. "People are still trying to determine how the ad market is going to look in 2016, and subscriber growth trends have been somewhat in flux," said Macquarie Capital analyst Amy Yong. SNL Kagan analyst Justin Nielsen suggested that Univision and its backers would be better off selling some of their TV spectrum in cities where it owns multiple stations, via a government auction, and paying down its debt. "The Univision IPO is on hold for now, and in my opinion, the environment right now is not right to go public," Nielsen stated. Univision could test the IPO market later this year or next year. Univision had $2.9 billion in 2014 sales, and through the first nine months of 2015 the top line exceeded $2.1 billion. Madison Dearborn, Providence, TPG, Thomas H. Lee and Saban took the company private via a $13.7 billion leveraged buyout in 2007. Televisa invested $1.2 billion investment in 2010 and signed a new programming deal. If the market becomes more hospitable, Moody's analyst Salas suggested that Univision took a number of steps in 2015 that would make an offering easier. Univision invested in networks and content that it obtained through agreements with Televisa, Salas said. Univision extended U.S. distribution agreements with Televisa through at least 2025, and at least until 2030 if it does have an IPO. Lastly, Univision converted $1.125 billion in debt held by Televisa to equity. "A lot of the work they had to do to prepare for an IPO was taken care of last year," Salas said. NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Freeport-McMoRan (FCX) stock is plummeting by 10.10% to $3.56 as oil and copper prices decline on concerns about Chinese demand. Freeport-McMoRan is a natural resource company with operations in copper, gold, oil and natural gas resources. Although the company has diversified away from copper somewhat, the metal still makes up roughly 60% of its revenue. Copper for March delivery is falling by 0.58% to $1.97 per pound on the COMEX this morning, pressured by demand concerns. China's economy grew at the slowest pace in 25 years during 2015, exacerbating investors' fears that the world's largest copper consumer will be unable to contribute sufficient demand for the metal. Oil is plunging this morning on similar concerns about a lack of Chinese demand for the oversupplied commodity. Crude oil (WTI) is lower by 4.67% to $27.13 per barrel this morning and Brent crude is retreating by 3.37% to $27.80 per barrel, according to the CNBC.com index. Shares of the company are down about 47% so far this year amid the commodities rout. To better contend with lower prices, Freeport-McMoRan has offered the Indonesian government a 10.64% stake in its massive Grasberg mine in Indonesia. The company has submitted a divestment price of $1.7 billion, Reuters reported. Separately, TheStreet Ratings team rates Freeport-McMoRan as a "sell" with a ratings score of D. The company's weaknesses include deteriorating net income, generally high debt management risk, disappointing return on equity, weak operating cash flow and generally disappointing historical performance in the stock itself. Specifically, the company's debt-to-equity ratio of 1.89 is quite high overall and when compared to the industry average, suggesting that the current management of debt levels should be re-evaluated. The company manages to maintain a quick ratio of 0.46, which clearly demonstrates the inability to cover short-term cash needs. You can view the full analysis from the report here: FCX TheStreet Ratings objectively rated this stock according to its "risk-adjusted" total return prospect over a 12-month investment horizon. Not based on the news in any given day, the rating may differ from Jim Cramer's view or that of this article's author. FCX data by YCharts (Beijing) Flaws in China's political system such as an ineffective system of checks-and-balances must be fixed or officials will continue to become corrupt, a law professor said at a forum at Peking University on January 18. A major campaign against graft has netted several top officials, but the political system needs further reform for the situation to improve, said Chen Guangzhong, of China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing. The forum was co-hosted by a legal case research association, a law journal and a media outlet. People invited to attend it voted on the most influential legal cases of last year, and picked the conviction in June of former domestic security boss Zhou Yongkang as the most significant. Zhou, who became the subject of a corruption probe in 2014, was convicted of bribery, abuse of power and intentional disclosure of state secrets and sentenced to life in prison. He is the most senior figure to run afoul of Xi Jinping's campaign to clean up government by catching dirty officials, just ahead of the former Communist Party boss of Chongqing, Bo Xilai, who was convicted and jailed for life in 2013 for taking bribes, abusing his power and other offenses. "We can get rid of one Zhou Yongkang and one Bo Xilai today," Chen said. "But if the system is not fully reformed, it will produce more Zhous and Bos tomorrow. "We should uphold the party's leadership, but power is controlled by a few top officials. We appear to have a mechanism of checks-and-balances on the surface, but in reality it doesn't work." Chen said the country's political system should be made more transparent and based on the rule of law. The campaign against corruption should be continued, he said, but officials should be made to disclose their incomes and the public should be given greater access to government information. Since Xi started his crackdown on corruption shortly after taking the party reins in late 2012, Caixin has counted 46 top military figures; 69 officials with the rank of deputy provincial or ministerial leader; and 115 executives at state-owned enterprises have lost their jobs. Xi's campaign has shown it is alive and well in 2016. On January 20, Yang Gang, the former party secretary of Urumqi, capital of the far western Xinjiang region, was convicted of taking bribes and sentenced 12 years in prison, the Beijing Third Intermediate People's Court said on Weibo, China's version of Twitter. He and his relatives took 13.79 million yuan worth of bribes from 2008 to 2013, the statement said. Also, Shen Weichen, the former party chief of Taiyuan, capital of the northern province of Shanxi, stood on trial on January 18, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. He is charged with taking bribes totaling 95.41 million yuan between 1992 and 2014. The second-most influential case of last year, as voted by the forum's invitees, involved a migrant worker named Chen Chuanjun, who was sentenced to death in 2011 over a robbery case in which one person was killed. A court in the southern city of Guangzhou freed him in August, saying there was not enough evidence to convict him. (Rewritten by Chen Na) NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Continental Resources (CLR) are tumbling by 14.27% to $14.54 on Wednesday morning, as WTI crude futures hit their lowest price since 2003. The price of the commodity is being pressured by slumping global stocks and ongoing concerns about the oil oversupply, the Wall Street Journal reports. Crude oil (WTI) is nosediving by 4.15% to $27.28 per barrel this morning and Brent crude is falling by 2.92% to $27.92 per barrel, according to the CNBC.com index. "The bearish mood continues," Michael Nielsen, an oil analyst at Global Risk Management, told the Journal. "Market participants are digesting the mediocre Chinese economic data and the outlook for Iranian oil flooding the already oversupplied oil market-the outcome seems to be continued fear of demand slowdown and supply increase." Iran could add 300,000 barrels per day of oil by the end of the first quarter now that sanctions have been removed, the Journal noted. Continental Resources is an Oklahoma City-based crude oil and natural gas exploration and production company. Separately, TheStreet Ratings Team has a "sell" rating and score of D+ on Continental Resources. This is driven by multiple weaknesses, which it believes should have a greater impact than any strengths, and could make it more difficult for investors to achieve positive results compared to most of the stocks the team covers. The company's weaknesses can be seen in multiple areas, such as its deteriorating net income, generally high debt management risk, disappointing return on equity, weak operating cash flow and generally disappointing historical performance in the stock itself. Recently, TheStreet Ratings objectively rated this stock according to its "risk-adjusted" total return prospect over a 12-month investment horizon. Not based on the news in any given day, the rating may differ from Jim Cramer's view or that of this articles's author. You can view the full analysis from the report here: CLR CLR data by YCharts Editors' pick: Originally published Jan. 20. The devil is in the details. Thats the takeaway from Senator Bernie Sanderss health care plan, released Sunday night in preparation for the Democratic debate. Ambitiously titled Medicare for All, this is the single payer proposal that the Senator from Vermont has long promised would finally expand health care to all. Its a dud. Of course, these proposal documents are less intended to be an instruction manual, after all, than a road map, and the real test of a candidates idea is internal consistency: given all fair assumptions, does it live up to its own claims? Thats why Sanders shouldn't be knocked for the political realities of 2016 or for his rejection of Obamacares incremental progress. But his current plan is a vacuum of detail. Health care is a field where the how matters almost as much as the what, and its not too much to ask a candidate who wants to turn American medicine on its head to give some idea of just how he intends to do that. Instead this document makes no gestures towards the bones of a new system. It settles for repeating the words single payer like some sort of magic talisman: complex problems solved with nothing more than a government checkbook. This is a health care policy proposal with no health care, no policy and barely even a proposal. For a plan to rebuild American medicine from the ground up, thats quite a thing. Start with implementation. Making any changes to health care in America involves teams of industries and a cascade of side effects, many of which arent even knowable until after the fact. Even the Affordable Care Act, which was built on top of the existing insurance market, took years to roll out. There was a lot of hand wringing over the disruption that Obamacare caused, said Lawrence Levitt, a senior vice president with the Kaiser Family Foundation, and that would be childs play compared to what we would see here." Youre talking about eliminating all private health insurance companies and requiring everyone in the country to change how they get health coverage, plus completely redistribute the financing of health care from premiums to taxes," he added. "The disruption would be tremendous, and would take years to implement. Managing the careful balancing act of cost, payment and incentives is no small thing. The Sanders plan washes it away in one 363- word section ambitiously titled The Plan. It begins short and to the point: Bernies plan would create a federally administered single-payer health care program, followed by a wish list kludge of Left Wing policy preferences that promise everything from dental to vision for consumers wholl have to do nothing more than show their insurance card. Readers could be forgiven for not even knowing what role Medicare is to play in this new system (if any), given that the document is titled Medicare for All while at the same time promising to create that new insurance system. The paper promises no more copays, no more deductibles and no more fighting with insurance companies when they fail to pay for charges, and, without further comment, moves briskly along to a subject Sanders favors so much it's practically a verbal tic: taxing the rich. With all due respect to the Senator, its getting old. Its also a missed opportunity. Why should there be no copays? Isnt there a good argument to be made for putting some consumer skin in the game, or at least defraying costs out to the consumer at least somewhat? The same goes with deductibles. Wouldnt an inequality warhorse like Sanders be all about pricing within the consumers means? Or at least why not? These are complicated issues about which there is much to be considered and much to be said. Sanders has said little. Its up to us to assume that he has considered more. Costs suffer from the same hand waving, even if Sanders has given them more inches on the page. Theres a lot of detail missing, said Levitt, noting that its hard to judge a plan without them. How would doctors and hospitals be paid? Who would make decisions about whether care is medically necessary or not? To make a pan like this work would require reducing health expenditures dramatically, which would create lots of winners and losers and be very disruptive to the health system, he added. Thats to say nothing of Sanderss assumed $10 trillion in health savings over the next decade, which he anticipates while at the same time expanding access and quality of care dramatically. That neat trick is accomplished largely by relying on the magic of single payer to sort itself out. By moving to an integrated system, the government will finally have the ability to stand up to drug companies and negotiate fair prices for the American people collectively, the Sanders plan says. Later: Reforming our health care system, simplifying our payment structure and incentivizing new ways to make sure patients are actually getting better health care will generate massive savings. The assumption is: other countries do it, so we can too. Its not entirely wrong, but its not that easy either. Its very hard to know whether the presence of government run systems in other countries is what is allowing those countries to spend less, or if something else is going on there, Levitt pointed out. Theres some things about single payer that we can be sure would improve efficiencies like elimination of administrative overhead. But then how much single payer would actually reduce health spending depends a lot on the actual decisions that policy makers would make. And thats the rub; we dont know what those decisions are. We dont even have a clue. What we do have, in the words of University of Michigan Professor Richard Hirth, is a $2 trillion magic asterisk. Buried in the accompanying analysis provided by University of Massachusetts Professor Gerald Friedman is an assumption that 20% of out-of-pocket spending would not be covered because they are deemed not medically necessary. Putting aside the decision to tuck a fifth of the budget away under a footnote, theres no mention of who decides and with what criteria. That, to put it mildly, is a problem. I think there would be concern of, kind of the level of power that the government would have in such a system, Hirth said. Would the efficiency and cost reduction come at the cost of quality and access to care? In terms of Medicare, single payer can run lower overhead costs than most private insurance plans, but cutting down on administration is like funding tax cuts off of waste, fraud and abuse. Theres not enough money there. The only way to get to the kind of numbers that Sanders talks about is by seriously cutting back on either consumption or prices, and theres no indication that this plan seriously tackles either of those. Whats more, as Levitt pointed out, without any incentive for consumers to cut back on consumption (indeed, every reason to believe that it will dramatically expand), many doctors would have to take considerable pay cuts to achieve the kinds of savings that Sanders envisions. How long before the best doctors and hospitals flee to an elite insurance market? Its not inevitable, but Sanders doesnt try to talk about how hed prevent it. Hes too busy getting on to the seven new taxes levied to pay for all of this. All of this is not to bash on single payer plans as an idea in the first place. In fact there are several good reasons why America might consider simply dropping the words over 65 from Medicare. As Hirth said, as a method of efficiently covering the most people for the least amount of money, theres a lot of evidence from around the world that its the best option. You have both the model of other countries and you have the model of the Medicare system within our country, which although it doesnt cover the majority of the country it [successfully] covers the highest spending portion of the population, he said. Its not the only option though, and there are a lot of ways that doing something like this could go wrong. Sanders doesnt engage them or even give meaningful shape to his vision of health care beyond government funding and progressive taxes. In this proposal Sanders has more in common with his Republican counterparts than he would care to admit, many of whom have the same magic-asterisk, wishful thinking policy on display here. Single payer isnt a bad idea, but it isnt easy either. Sanders needs to stop posturing and get down to the hard work of running for office. The United Nations says in a new report that Iraq's war with Islamic State militants led to more than 18,800 civilian deaths and more than 36,000 wounded between January 2014 and October 2015. The report is based largely on testimony from victims, survivors or witnesses of violations and says that during the period from May to October of last year, nearly 4,000 civilians were killed and more than 7,000 wounded. About half of these deaths took place in the capital, Baghdad. UN human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani tells VOA the figures do not fully capture what is happening in Iraq. "These only include the people who were directly killed by violence. This does not include the countless others who have died from the lack of access to basic food, to water, and to medical care. And, also bear in mind that the security situation in Iraq prevents us from doing a lot of our work. So, really, even the casualty toll of those killed directly by violence could be much higher than what we have managed to document," said Shamdasani. UN Blames Islamic State UN monitors blame most of these deaths on Islamic State, known also as ISIS and ISIL. It says victims include those perceived as being opposed to the terror group's ideology and rule, such as government civil servants, doctors and lawyers, journalists and tribal and religious leaders. It says women and children are subject to sexual violence, particularly in the form of sexual slavery. The report finds people judged by Islamic State's self-appointed courts are subjected to punishments such as stoning and amputations. It details numerous examples of public executions, including shootings, beheadings, bulldozing, burning people alive and throwing people off the top of buildings. Montreal, CA (H4T1V6) Today Steady light rain in the morning. Showers continuing in the afternoon. High 47F. Winds SW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 70%.. Tonight Rain showers early with clearing later at night. Low 41F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 40%. British Prime Minister David Cameron has attacked what he calls a "passive tolerance" in Britain's Muslim communities for segregation and discrimination against women, and says a poor grasp of the English language leaves Muslim women "more susceptible" to extremist rhetoric. In an essay published Monday in The Times newspaper that drew immediate fire from critics, Cameron proposed nearly $30 million in government funding for English language classes for Muslim women. He also suggested some migrants could be deported for failure to speak the language. remaining of Thank you for reading! On your next view you will be asked to log in to your subscriber account or create an account and subscribepurchase a subscription to continue reading. Attorney General Loretta Lynch arrives on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016, to testify before the Senate Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies subcommittee hearing on gun control. Lynch defended President Barack Obama's executive actions curbing guns, telling lawmakers that the president took lawful, common-sense steps to stem firearms violence that kills and injures tens of thousands of Americans yearly. (AP Photo/Molly Riley) FILE - In this Nov. 20, 2015 file photo, Ingrid Vaca, originally of Bolivia speaks during rally for immigration reform in front of the White House in Washington. The Supreme Court has agreed to an election-year review of President Barack Obamas executive orders to allow up to 5 million immigrants to "come out of the shadows" and work legally in the U.S. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File) In this Jan. 15, 2016, file photo, members of CASA de Maryland participate in a immigration rally outside the Supreme Court in Washington. By agreeing to hear a challenge to Obamas immigration plan, the Supreme Court on Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2016, raised hopes that Obama may have one last chance to make good on an unfulfilled promise to millions of immigrants, many of whom feel abandoned by his administrations recent deportation raids. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File) This picture released on July 13, 2015 by the Rased News Network, a Facebook page affiliated with Islamic State militants, shows Islamic State militants firing weapons during a battle against Syrian government forces, in Deir el-Zour province, Syria. In the besieged eastern city of Deir el-Zour, supplies are running so short that people are selling their gold and other property for food or an exit permit allowing them to escape both the government and Islamic State militants who rule the region of Syria. (Rased News Network via AP) In this Dec. 1, 2015, photo, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nev., left, joined by Senate Minority Whip Richard Durbin of Ill., right, speaks with reporters following a weekly policy meeting on Capitol hill in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) Indian authorities have launched an investigation of a reported threat by Islamic State to kill Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Defense Minister Monohar Parrikar. Media reports say the threat was communicated on a postcard received at the country's State Secretariat last week. Police in Goa said it had been posted locally. "Since you are not allowing to eat beef, you will be taken care of," read the postcard signed "IS." It was referring to the ban on cow slaughtering in the country. Pakistani family members wait outside a local hospital where injured people were taken after an attack in Charsadda town, some 35 kilometers (21 miles) outside the city of Peshawar, Pakistan, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. Gunmen stormed Bacha Khan University named after the founder of an anti-Taliban political party in the country's northwest Wednesday, killing many people, officials said. (AP Photo/B.K. Bangash) Hospital acquires new surgical robotics technology Burke Health announced the purchase of new robotics technology for use during spine surgical procedures last week. The Globus ExcelsiusGPS is a revolutionary robotic navigation platform system designed to be intuitive and streamline the surgical workflow. Real-time tracking of instruments and implants, along with audible, visual and tactile feedback, enables... County center wins senior trike Local seniors now have access to an adult tricycle. Director Kimberly Mathis attended the Move Augusta Senior Expo and Bike Rodeo sponsored by Augusta Urban Ministries October 8. The event, held at The Salvation Army Kroc Center, was aimed at people over 50 years old, and included resources and health... 4-H Food Challenge Team takes State For the first time, Burke County 4-H decided to put together a junior food challenge team this summer. Teams are compromised of 2-4 students in the 6th-8th grades. This competition is very competitive and teams must advance to state after the district competition. Our team started practicing weekly in July... County rehashes trash problem I am bringing up the trash again, Commissioner Evans Martin said during the October 11 meeting. We have to do something about the trash. Martin asked that the record show that he wants to do something about the countys dumpster sites. He made a suggestion that eliminating 10 sites would... Suicide of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula on the University of Hyderabad (UoH) campus seems to have turned into a full-blown political confrontation, with leaders of differing political persuasions making a beeline to the city. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi is the latest to join the protesters, demanding to hold union ministers Bandaru Dattatreya and Smriti Irani accountable for the death. He also called for the removal of UoH Vice-Chancellor P Appa Rao. Gandhi arrived in Hyderabad on Tuesday by a special flight and joined the protesting students on the campus at Gachibowli. He called on Rohiths mother and assured her that the Congress party would stand by her family in the hour of crisis. A combative Rahul then addressed the students and demanded stringent action against those responsible for driving Rohith, a 26-year-old science research scholar, to take the extreme step. Rohith was found hanging in his friend's room in the university hostel on Sunday. He was one of the five students expelled from the hostel and barred from all facilities except their classrooms following a clash with ABVP activists. Students protesting in Hyderabad since then alleged that the five Dalit students were "socially boycotted". Rohith has committed suicide, but the condition for his suicide was created by the vice-chancellor, the minister in Delhi, and the institution," the Congress leader said, without naming the minister. There has been mounting pressure from student organisations and opposition parties to sack Union Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya for allegedly influencing the university authorities to take disciplinary action against members of Ambedkar Students' Association (ASA) for assaulting a local ABVP leader. Based on his letter to Human Resources Development Minister Smriti Irani, the authorities had suspended five Dalit students belonging to ASA including Rohith. Rahul Gandhi asserted that he was not politicising the issue, but yet insisted that the vice-chancellor had no right to continue. There is no question or merit for the VC to remain here any further. Whatever may be the cause of death, the man-in-charge should have the bare minimum respect to at least meet the mother of the boy and console her. His absence is an insult to the country and every single student of the university, Gandhi said. This young man (Rohith) came here to learn, to express himself... but he was put in so much pain, that he had no other option but to kill himself. I have come here for Rohith... He is not alone. Every student, every university in the country has this problem. I have not come here as a politician, I have come as a young person who understands your concern," Gandhi, who demanded a fair compensation for the bereaved family, said. He also called for bringing in a legislation for protection of the rights of students to express their opinions freely, irrespective of their caste and religion, and the autonomy of the universities. Other members from various political parties also made a beeline to the university campus to express solidarity with the protesting students. The Trinamool Congress and Bahujan Samaj Party representative will also join protest. Meanwhile, HRD Minister Smriti Irani has sent a two-member team of officials to the campus to probe the incident and submit a report. The police barricaded the campus's main gate as hosts of students and activists poured into the university. Two prominent African-American entertainers say they are boycotting this year's Oscar ceremonies because the 20 nominees for acting awards are all white. Director Spike Lee wrote an open letter to the Academy Award board of governors Monday, asking, "How is it possible for the second consecutive year all 20 contenders under the actor category are white? 40 white actors in 2 years and no 'flava' (an urban term for things that are different from the ordinary) at all. Can't we act?" Lee also criticized the lack of minorities in studio executive offices, where he says the decisions on what movies and television shows will be produced are made. Black actress Jada Pinkett Smith also announced her intention to boycott the Oscars, which are the film industry's top honors. She is the wife of actor Will Smith, whose critically lauded performance in the film Concussion failed to result in an acting nomination. The Cologne attacks that occurred during the New Years Eve have started a debate in Germany about its very generous refugee policy. A young man from Algeria is the first person who has been arrested with regard to the cologne attacks a string of sexual assaults that occurred during the New Years Eve in the city. The Cologne attacks have started a debate in Germany about its capacity and ability to manage the refugee problem and integrate such a large number of Middle Easterners into their society. German prosecutors released a statement on Monday that the unidentified asylum seeker was arrested over the weekend from within a refugee home in the town of Kerpen near Cologne. The person is accused of trying to grope a woman. He also robbed her of her phone. This was made known to the associated press by the spokesman of the prosecutors office Ulrich Bremer. Two more asylum seekers from Algeria aged 24 and 22 have also been arrested in Kerpen and the city of Aachen over the weekend. They have also been involved in the Cologne attacks and have been accused of robbery. There are at least 21 people who are accused of taking part in the Cologne attacks on New Years Eve and committing crimes. There are eight of these men who are in custody at the moment. It is three weeks since the Cologne attacks occurred. There have been official complaints from around 838 people. Out of these, 497 people are women who have claimed to have been sexually assaulted. There are some victims of the Cologne attacks who have filed joint complaints. This means that the number of crimes officially reported comes down to 766 incidents, of which 381 are reported to have been sexual offences. Three rapes have also been reported during the Cologne attacks. The nature of the Cologne attacks and the scale of the crimes, coupled with the official description by the police which almost unanimously describe the perpetrators as a large crowd of drunken young men of Arab or north African origin, has opened a heated debate about Germanys migrant problem and the government very lenient approach towards asylum seekers. Germany is the biggest country in Europe in terms of population. It also has the largest economy in continent. Unfortunately, Germany has been the destination of most of the refugees from Syria and Iraq as well as Afghanistan and other countries. In fact, the current refugee influx in Germany is the biggest since World War II. Reportedly, more than a million refugees already arrived in Germany during the previous year most of them from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. On Monday the ruling conservative party, the Christian Democratic Union decided that Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia should be designated as safe places. It will effectively minimize the chances of citizens from these countries to achieve asylum in Germany. In fact, the chances for migrants coming from these countries will be zero. This step has been taken in order to minimize the number of refugees coming to Germany from these countries. It will also render deportations easy for the government. [COMMUNICATED CONTENT] Classy Confections specializes in elegant and tasty miniatures, gorgeous cakes and cupcakes, and simply enticing home-made brownies and cinnamon buns! We have customers who send gifts to family and friends simchos, or order cakes and miniatures for their own simcha, as well as those who want to send baked goods with a taste of home to their sons, daughters, or friends. When Mrs. R., administrator of my daughters seminary and our cousin, married off her daughter, I wanted to contribute in some way to the Shabbos sheva brachos, says Mrs. Rivki N. of Lakewood. I ordered a gorgeous strawberry shortcake, which looked like an enticing piece of art! When we made a bar mitzvah in Israel a few months later, I asked my sister-in-law to order that same strawberry shortcake for dessert, and it tasted as good as it looked! Mr. Steve Belkin, from Cleveland, placed a standing order for a Shabbos platter of brownies to be sent to his two yeshiva bochurim every week. When two months were up, he said, They love them; keep it going until the first week in April. From elegant cupcakes to delicate mini trifles, dainty petit fours and gorgeous cakes, you can set up a full dessert table for your own simcha. Or order the same delicious miniatures arranged on elegant giftware and beautifully wrapped for a relatives simcha or a thank you gift for a rebbi! With our special flair and attention to detail, Classy Confections will take care of your simcha needs completely, ensuring that your order is delivered to the door beautifully wrapped! Bracha F. from Baltimore ordered a large platter of flower swirl cupcakes in pinks, purple and white for her nieces kiddush. My brother in Yerushalayim was making a kiddush on Shabbos and the six siblings in America wanted to contribute. I called Devorah Rivka Shafran, from whom I had previously ordered a Purim package, and she took care of sending a stunning platter with a note from all of us. My brother and sister-in-law said the cupcakes were scrumptious and luscious- they look gorgeous from the picture! and I really appreciate your flexibility and hard work! We also offer specials to enhance your familys Yom Tov: desserts for Succos, fresh American-style doughnuts for Chanuka, and soon to be displayed on our website, impressive Purim packages. Why use Classy Confections? Mrs. Raizel Birnbaum, from Flatbush, a loyal customer, explains, Although there are many businesses that offer this service, I am comfortable ordering from Classy Confections, because I have known Devorah Rivka and her family for years. Her father is a rebbi in Baltimore, her husband is learning in the Mir, and she uses exclusively Badatz ingredients. If you have relatives or friends living in Israel, take a look at our website, www.kosherclassyconfections.com and see for yourself! You can sign up your email address to receive news of Devorah Rivkas specials! As one devoted fan put it, you will probably head to your fridge or nearest bakery after seeing the mouthwatering photos. But you can send the real thing to your relatives and friends in Israel.. so looking forward to hearing from you! U.S. officials believe Robert Levinson may no longer be in Iran, a White House spokesman said Tuesday, vowing that the U.S. would keep up the search for the former FBI agent who disappeared from an Iranian resort nearly nine years ago. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the U.S. has received assurance from the Iranian government it would search for Levinson. The commitment came amid broader negotiations over the return of several other Americans detained in Iran. Were going to hold the Iranians to that commitment, Earnest told reporters at the White House. Levinsons relatives said Monday theyre happy for the families of prisoners released from Iranian custody but wished government officials had warned them he would not be among them. We had to learn it from the TV ourselves, and thats very disappointing and heartbreaking, said Robert Levinsons wife, Christine. Robert Levinson disappeared from an Iranian resort on March 9, 2007, while in the country on an unauthorized mission for the CIA. Its unclear where he is. Iranian officials have said they dont know, but Levinsons family does not believe them. Earnest did not elaborate on the evidence putting Levinson outside of Iran. He acknowledged that if Levinson is no longer in the country, the Irans cooperation in the search may be limited use. His son, Dan Levinson, told The Associated Press that it felt like once again, hes been left behind and that the US cant give up on bringing his father back. Iran released four American prisoners over the weekend in exchange for the U.S. pardoning or dropping charges against seven Iranians. A fifth American was also released separately. In discussing the release, President Barack Obama said the U.S. would continue working to find Levinson. But when asked by reporters whether Levinson was still alive, Secretary of State John Kerry said, We have no idea. Levinsons family insists he is still alive, even with health issues including diabetes, gout and high blood pressure. They last got some visual record of him in video and photos that were sent about five years ago. The people who are working on the case directly, they have told us there is no evidence to suggest my dad is not alive, Dan Levinson said. Were not going to give up because obviously were doing everything we can, he said. We need to make sure his country is doing the same. The family plans to mark Levinsons upcoming birthday, which falls on March 10 the day after the anniversary of his disappearance. Its part of the way theyve tried to cope with his absence. We talk about him all the time, Christine Levinson said. Theyve also tried to make his presence real for the three grandchildren hes never met, teaching them a song Levinson came up with when his children were small. If you talk to the grandchildren, they all know how to sing the baby song, she said. Levinsons family worries about what Levinsons ordeal has done to a man who loved making friends and meeting people. I hope that he hasnt lost hope, Christine Levinson said. (AP) Russian President Vladimir Putin called on European Jews facing rising anti-Semitism to return to Russia. They can come to us, Putin told a delegation from the European Jewish Congress (EJC) during a meeting in Moscow. They left from the Soviet Union. Let them return. Ive seen reports that [Jewish] people [in Europe] are afraid of wearing a yarmulke in public. Theyre trying to hide their ethnicity, Putin said. During the meeting, EJC President Moshe Kantor described the very real exodus of Jews from certain parts of Western Europe. While Jews were once again a prominent target for global terror during 2015, the attacks in Paris, the U.S., and elsewhere, and the mass murder of Russians on an airline in the Sinai, show that the terrorists target us all, Kantor said in the meeting. Rising anti-Semitism in Europe has been tied to the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda terrorist organizations, in addition to homegrown extremists inspired by groups like Islamic State. French Jews have been hit particularly hard by Islamic extremism, with a French Jewish leader in Marseille recently suggesting that Jews should no longer wear yarmulkes in public. At the same time, the EJC commended Russia on the countrys statistical decrease in anti-Semitism in recent years. (Source: JNS.org) YWN regrets to inform you of the sudden passing of Rabbi Ronnie Greenwald ZL, the world renowned Askan, spy trader, major community activist and founder of Camp Sternberg. Rabbi Ronnie Greenwald, was suddenly niftar while on vacation in Florida. He had suffered from a heart condition, but showed no signs of imminent death. He lay down to sleep, and was taken from this world as he slept. Hatzolah of Miami Dade were called at around 6AM to the home he was staying at, in North Maimi Beach and found him in Cardiac arrest. Despite all attempts to revive him, he was unfortunately pronounced dead at the hospital. UPDATE 3:00PM ET: The Niftar is being flown to New York, and the Levaya will be held in Monsey at (tentatively) 6:00PM on Wednesday afternoon, at Yeshiva Ohr Sameach, 244 Route 306. The Niftar will be flown to Eretz Yisroel for Kevura, on the 11:59PM flight from JFK. Askonim have secured a permit at the parking lot of the Ramapo High School, 400 Viola Road for people to park their vehicles. The lot is across the street from Yeshiva Ohr Sameach. Rabbi Greenwald (born January 8, 1934) Born in New York City, he has made a career of spy trading, international hostage mediation, and other forms of high-stakes, high-intrigue diplomacy. He served as presidential liaison of President Richard Nixon to the Jewish community during the Nixon administration. He served as a community activist, chaired various civic boards, and directs a high school and a summer camp. Ronald Greenwald was born to European Jewish immigrant parents and raised on the lower east side of Manhattan before his family relocated to Brownsville (in Brooklyn). He studied at Telshe Yeshiva in Cleveland after high school. After getting married, he settled in Boro Park in Brooklyn. In the early years of his marriage, he worked as a teacher of both Judaic and secular studies in Brooklyn yeshivos. Rabbi Greenwald became active in politics in 1962 (at the age of 28) lobbying on behalf of Torah Umesorah to promote the creation and success of Jewish day schools in the United States. At the request of Jewish activist George Klein, Rabbi Greenwald became involved in the gubernatorial campaign of Nelson A. Rockefeller and helped Rockefeller win an unprecedented share of the Jewish vote for a Republican at the time. After this success, the Rockefeller campaign recommended Greenwald to the campaign of Richard M. Nixon and the Nixon re-election campaign appointed Greenwald to work for the Presidents 1972 re-election in the Jewish community. In winning 35% of the Jewish vote in 1972, Nixon, like Rockefeller, did far better among Jewish voters than would be expected from a Republican in that era. During the Nixon administration, Rabbi Greenwald served as liaison between the administration and the Jewish community in a variety of ways. He obtained a $1 million grant to open a legal aid office in Brooklyn to assist the needy in the community of Williamsburg among other accomplishments. During the Watergate scandal, Rabbi Greenwald contacted various Democratic Jewish members of Congress, including Elizabeth Holtzman, Bella Abzug and Arlen Specter to try to convince them that impeaching the President would weaken the United States and, by extension, hurt Israel, which, in the wake of the Yom Kippur War needed the support of a strong United States. Although his entreaties did not work, as President Nixon was eventually forced to resign rather than face impeachment, he did earn a Presidential letter of thanks (see the letter at the bottom of this article). Rabbi Greenwald had been involved in scores of release efforts for various prisoners from around the world. In perhaps his highest profile case, Rabbi Greenwald worked closely with Representative Benjamin Gilman (R-NY) and East German lawyer Wolfgang Vogel to secure the release Soviet dissident and Refusenik Natan Sharansky from Soviet prison in the late 1970s. He made more than 25 trips across the Iron Curtain to East Germany as part of that effort. The Rockland Journal News reported that Rabbi Greenwald was the man behind the talks that freed Sharansky. In conjunction with Representative Gilman, Rabbi Greenwald negotiated the rescue a 24-year-old Israeli citizen named Miron Markus in 1978 who was living in Zimbabwe. Mr. Markus was captured when an airplane piloted by his brother-in-law, Jackie Bloch, was forced to land in Mozambique, where Mr. Bloch was killed and Markus taken hostage. Rabbi Greenwald, Congressman Gilman and others arranged for a complex swap that involved four countries Mozambique, Israel, the United States and East Germany, convicted East German spy Robert Thompson and U.S. student Alan van Norman. Other people he helped negotiate their release include: Raul Granados Vladimir Raiz Shabattai Kalmanovich Lori Berenson Alfred Zehe When he was not engaged in high-stakes international diplomacy, Rabbi Greenwald was busy operating Camp Sternberg, a summer camp in the Catskill Mountains and ran Monsey Academy for Girls, a private high school in Rockland County, New York, of which he was the founder. Rabbi Greenwald has served as chairman of the board of the Womens League in Rockland County (which creates and oversees adult group homes in that county) and of the Borough Park, Brooklyn branch of the Jewish Board of Family and Childrens Services (JBFCS). He also serveed on the Board of Governors of the Orthodox Union, and as acting chairman of Magenu. Boruch Dayan HaEmmes (YWN World Headquarters NYC) South Korea, the U.S. and Japan have agreed to provide technology to ASEAN member nations to search North Korean ships on the high seas, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported Tuesday. ASEAN officials are meeting in Tokyo on Wednesday to discuss the technology sharing plan, and South Korean and Chinese officials are also to attend. North Korea engages in trade not only with China but Burma and Thailand, and ports in Vietnam and Malaysia often serve as stop-over points for North Korean ships. South Korea, the U.S. and Japan hope to provide the necessary funding and technology so that those countries can stop materials involved in the production of weapons of mass destruction passing through en route to the North. Japan is considering tapping into its Overseas Development Assistance funds to buy high-tech scanning equipment for ASEAN countries and supply training personnel. The vice foreign ministers of South Korea, the U.S. and Japan met in Tokyo on Saturday and agreed to create an environment maximizing the effectiveness of sanctions against North Korea. Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn) released a statement on Wednesday after learning of Rabbi Ronnie Greenwalds passing. I am crying today; Klal Yisroel has lost a giant, Assemblyman Hikind said. Rabbi Ronnie Greenwald was one of the most special individuals that Hashem put onto this world. He loved all Jews totally, and was nonjudgmental. He was a huge talmud chacham. One of Rabbi Greenwalds most prominent accomplishments was founding and directing Camp Sternberg, a summer camp for frum girls in the Catskill Mountains. More than 50,000 girls in the fourth to sixth grades have attended the camp since its opening in 1965. In addition, Rabbi Greenwald also served as presidential liaison of former President Richard Nixon to the Jewish community. Hikind added, We have lost a shining light. I lost a dear and beloved friend. I will sorely miss this exemplary mensch. Seen in the photo is Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn) together with Rabbi Ronnie Greenwald at Tiferet Yerushalim Yeshiva on a recent visit to Israel. Below is the video from that recent trip as was reported by YWN. Donald Trump brandished the endorsement of conservative Republican firebrand Sarah Palin at an Iowa rally Wednesday in the increasingly intense 2016 GOP presidential sweepstakes. Were almost at the finish line, Trump said Wednesday, where he implored his supporters to be sure to cast their vote at the lead-off Feb. 1 caucus. The billionaire businessman touted Palins support, as well as some setbacks facing his main rival, Sen. Ted Cruz, describing Tuesday as a good day for Trump. But Palin, who was expected to campaign alongside her new political ally Wednesday, was a no show at the Iowa rally. A campaign spokeswoman did not immediately respond to questions about why she was not in attendance. Palin, the former governor of Alaska and 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee, erupted onto the stage in Ames, Iowa, Tuesday, announcing her support for Trump and echoing his campaigns mantra that its time to Make America Great Again. The endorsement comes as Trump is locked in a dead heat with Cruz in Iowa. The two have been ramping up their attacks against one another as the Feb. 1 caucuses have neared. In the statement announcing the endorsement, Trumps campaign described Palin as a conservative who helped launch the careers of several key future leaders of the Republican Party and conservative movement. The statement also quoted Cruz as once saying he would not be in the United States Senate were it not for Gov. Sarah Palin. She can pick winners. Campaigning in New Hampshire, Cruz said, Regardless of what Sarah intends to do in 2016, I will remain a big, big fan of Sarah Palin. Palin endorsed Cruz in his 2012 Senate race and said as recently as last month that he and Trump were both in her top tier of candidates, making the endorsement a symbolic blow to Cruz. Earlier Tuesday, Cruz faced another blow to his efforts in Iowa, after the states Republican Gov. Terry Branstad said at a renewable fuels conference near Des Moines that Iowans should reject Cruz because he supports phasing out the fuel standard. Asked if he wants to see Cruz defeated in Iowa, Branstad responded: Yes. Palins endorsement speech combining the folksy charm and everywoman appeal that initially made her a GOP superstar with defiant taunting of a busted GOP establishment that she slammed for counting both Trump and herself out. Palin offered her full-throated support for Trump and slammed President Barack Obama as the capitulator in chief. Trump, she said, would be a commander in chief who would let our warriors do their job and go kick ISIS! She also took aim at the Republican establishment for attacking their own front-runner and offered a challenge to those who have suggested that Trump, whose positions on issues like gun control and abortion rights have shifted over the years, isnt conservative enough. Oh my goodness gracious. What the heck would the establishment know about conservativism? she said. Who are they to tell us that were not conservative enough? Give me a break. Trump, whose team had been touting a major, surprise announcement, praised Palin as a friend, and a high-quality person whom I have great respect for in a statement. Were going to give em hell, he said after her speech. Palin will also be joining Trump at two events Wednesday, including a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Palin was a virtual newcomer to the national political arena when 2008 GOP presidential nominee John McCain named her as his running mate. She has since risen to prominence as one of the most outspoken conservatives in the party. She signed on as a Fox News commentator after resigning as Alaskas governor in 2010, a job she held until last year. Trump and Palin did not discuss how the endorsement had come about, but Trumps national political director, Michael Glassner, previously worked for her. Trump said earlier Tuesday that he doesnt typically put much stock in endorsements, but said of this one, I think it could very well result in votes. GOP consultant Kevin Madden said the timing will likely help Trump crowd out Cruzs message as the Iowa caucuses approach. I think it helps Trump overwhelm the news cycle with Trump coverage at a critical time, he said. Madden also said Palins support could help shield Trump from charges that his past positions make him too liberal to be the GOP nominee, giving Trump some rhetorical cover from a conservative validator in the eyes of many grassroots conservatives. (AP) New U.S. sanctions over Irans ballistic missile testing are an example of an American addiction to coercion despite improved relations and a historic nuclear deal, Irans foreign minister said in an interview Wednesday. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, in Davos for the World Economic Forum, said the ballistic program was part of Irans right to legitimate self-defense, and said the prospect of restoring U.S.-Iranian diplomatic relations remains far away despite the nuclear deal. His comments to The Associated Press came after the U.S. on Sunday imposed sanctions against 11 individuals and entities involved in Irans ballistic missile program as a result of Tehrans firing of a medium-range ballistic missile, one day after the Obama administration lifted economic penalties against Iran over its nuclear program. We believe these sanctions are uncalled for. We believe the sanctions are illegal. They violate basic principles. The Iranian missile program is a legitimate defense program, Zarif said. It shows that the United States has an addiction which has been very difficult for it to overcome, Zarif said. Washington, he said, suffers from an addiction to pressure, addiction to coercion, addiction to sanctions. The United States insists Irans ballistic missile tests violated U.N. sanctions sanctions that will remain in effect for at least eight more years under the terms of the nuclear accord. The U.S. administration has long argued that the nuclear deal does not cover other elements of Irans allegedly bad behavior and that Washington will continue to press Iran to change its ways and punish it when necessary. Zarif countered that Iran spends far less than its neighbors on its military. In addition, the United States sells tens of billions of dollars worth of military equipment to the region, he said. So its just preposterous to cry wolf about Irans ballistic missile program while at the same time you are selling the United States is selling tens of billions of dollars worth of toys to our neighbors. He didnt specify, but the U.S. has been a big military supporter of Israel and Iranian rivals Saudi Arabia and Iraq. The end to sanctions is poised to provide a boon to Irans struggling economy, and Zarif pointed to a tremendous response among business leaders many of whom are also attending the WEF. He put in a plug for Irans workforce and relative stability in a region riven with conflict including Yemen and Syria. We have deals that are being worked out with Airbus all sorts of companies from nuclear technology companies, to irrigation, green energy a whole range of them, he said, without elaborating. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who along with other top diplomats worked closely with Zarif to reach the deal, has indicated that he hopes Iran will take a positive role in resolving conflicts in places like Yemen and Syria. Zarif insisted his country has always played a positive role in those two countries. Iran backs Syrian President Assad and Yemeni Shiite rebels known as Houthis, who are fighting a Saudi-led coalition that backs the internationally recognized president. Asked about conservative voices within Iran, Zarif said: Iran is not a monolith, I think Americans would recognize that just like the United States is not. So you have a difference of views among various political actors, among various parts of the population. Despite lingering tensions between Iran and the United States, he said, the United States can take steps to overcome this mistrust, such as through implementation of the nuclear agreement. (AP) Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara on Wednesday, 10 Shevat, left for the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he will present the Israeli economy, focusing on its leadership in technology and cyber. He will meet with heads of state, leaders and senior global industrialists. The Prime Minister will hold a unique meeting with global cyber industry senior figures and managing directors including Eugene Kaspersky on advancing cyber defense. Participants will discuss cyber threats to information and physical systems and their implications on the development and assimilation of innovative technologies, and evaluate the economic, social and strategic risks posed by these threats. They will also consider the unique cooperation required between governments and the business sector in order to be prepared to ensure the ability to use the cyber revolution for the benefit of global social welfare and economic growth. Prime Minister Netanyahu will meet with inter alia Hewlett Packard Enterprise President and CEO Meg Whitman, Dell founder, Chairman of the Board and CEO Michael Dell and UBER co-founder and CEO Travis Kalanick. The Prime Minister will present the opportunities the State of Israel is offering to multi-national companies and emphasize the technological leadership of the Israeli high-tech industry in order to expand cooperation between these companies and Israeli companies and encourage investment and acquisitions in Israel. Prime Minister Netanyahu will continue with a round of diplomatic meetings and will meet with leaders and heads of state including Argentine President Mauricio Macri and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. Mr. Netanyahu will be accompanied to Davos by Prime Ministers Office Director-General Eli Groner, National Economic Council Chairman Prof. Avi Simhon and National Cyber Bureau Head Dr. Eviatar Matania. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) Over the past six months, a stream of pension company executives have been meeting civil servants in anonymous, windowless rooms in Whitehall. Most of the gatherings are held in the vast Treasury building, which dates from the early 20th century and is just a stones throw from the Houses of Parliament and 10 Downing Street. Visitors enter through a magnificent hallway. But theyre quickly whisked down dark corridors to the spartan meeting rooms. Money grab: The outcome of closed-door Treasury discussions could have a disastrous impact on the retirements of millions of people for decades to come Everyone sits around a table on plastic chairs while civil servants give lengthy and complex presentations. Theres normally no natural light, or even a plate of biscuits to cheer things up. To an outsider, these meetings might look as dull as ditchwater. But their subject is dynamite. The outcome of these closed-door discussions could have a disastrous impact on the retirements of millions of people for decades to come. Yet few savers have even an inkling of what is happening. Today, Money Mail lays bare the secret plot that could destroy Britains pensions. TAX RELIED: THE TURBO-CHARGED PENSION PRINCIPLE The furtive discussions revolve around a plan to scrap or slash a perk paid to everyone who saves into a pension. Its called tax relief. Essentially a tax refund, it turbo-charges savers pension pots to give them an incentive to save and a better chance of a decent retirement. Heres how it works. Savers receive a rebate of the income tax they have already paid on their contributions at their normal rate: 20 per cent, 40 per cent or 45 per cent. TAX RELIEF HISTORY The principle of saving into a pension from untaxed income dates back to the 1921 Finance Act To get 1 into a pension, a basic-rate taxpayer needs to save just 80p and HM Revenue & Customs gives back the 20p income tax taken from them. Higher-rate taxpayers who earn 42,835 and over can save 60p and the taxman gives back 40p. Top-rate taxpayers who earn 150,000 or more need to pay in just 55p. Usually, basic-rate taxpayers dont have to do anything to receive the perk. Instead, it is paid directly by their pension company. Higher-rate 40 per cent taxpayers normally receive the first 20 per cent of tax relief from their pension company. They might also need to fill in a form and apply to HM Revenue & Customs for the remainder. When you retire, you can take 25 per cent from your savings pot tax-free, but money you draw after this qualifies for income tax in the normal way. A taxpayer who saves 250 a month and receives investment growth of 5 per cent a year would have 183,042 after 25 years. A higher-rate taxpayer would have 219,650. Without tax relief, both would have accrued just 146,433. WHY A TAX RAID IS SO TEMPTING The problem is that tax relief costs the Government 34.3 billion a year. Its money the Treasury is desperate to keep. Although to put that in perspective, the foreign aid budget is 11.7 billion a year, while welfare and benefits cost 119.5 billion. In July, the Chancellor unveiled plans for an unprecedented assault on pension tax breaks. He said he was rethinking the whole system. The consultation examined scrapping tax relief altogether and replacing it with something closer to an Isa, or introducing curbs on the reliefs savers receive. Cynics fear the tax relief is being targeted because many savers have no idea it exists. The cuts could be slipped under the radar in the same way it took years before the full devastating effect of Gordon Browns sneaky raid on company pensions was realised. That would provide a boost to the Treasury while avoiding public outrage. Pension saint or sinner: George Osborne freed retirement pots but could now limit the funds of those still saving Mr Osborne has been encouraged to act by critics who argue the current system is unfair as it benefits higher earners most. The Treasury wants to frame the raid as an attempt at fairness that would boost saving among low earners. Official figures say people earning above 50,000 received half of the tax relief on private pensions in 2012 and 2013 despite making up only 10 per cent of workers. And 14 per cent of all private pension contributions receiving tax relief were paid by the top 1 per cent of earners with salaries of 150,000 or more. Higher-rate taxpayers often benefit again at retirement. While they are working, they receive tax relief on their pension contributions at 40 per cent. But once they retire many would be taxed at the basic rate of 20 per cent on the cash they withdraw because their income has fallen, which allows them to pocket the difference. In recent years, barely a Budget has gone by without some kind of attack on tax relief for higher earners. There is a lifetime allowance of how much you can save into a pension of 1.25 million, which was has been gradually whittled down from 1.8 million. Anything over this amount is taxed at 55 per cent. From April, even more savers will be caught by this trap because the lifetime allowance will fall to 1 million, affecting an estimated 500,000 people over the coming decades. The annual amount you can put into a pension has been steadily cut back, too, from 255,000. Now you can only pay 40,000 a year into your pension without attracting 55 per cent tax. The annual allowance is gradually scaled back for high earners until it drops to 10,000 if you earn 150,000 or more. For six months Whitehall mandarins have been analysing different options for the tax relief pot. Panic-stricken pension firms have rushed their representatives to the Treasury to offer their views. Sometimes the meetings are tabled at such short notice that there isnt even a proper room available. The smartly dressed executives and civil servants huddle around tables in a corner of the noisy staff canteen where coffee is rumoured to be so bad that guests sometimes bring their own flasks. The three main options on the table are all highly controversial and damaging to savers. Pensions alert: How we warned of a potential pensions tax raid after the Summer Budget OPTION ONE: PENSION ISAs The most radical idea is to reverse the current system entirely so pensions are more like Isas. You would no longer get relief on the contributions you pay in. Instead, there would be no tax to pay on withdrawals. Savers might be given a small government top-up to incentivise saving. This option is said to be most favoured by young civil servants. The Chancellor himself is understood to be a fan, attracted by its simplicity. He knows Isas are popular with the electorate. It could potentially allow savers to dip into their pots as they like through their lives for instance, if they wanted a house deposit. HOW A SWITCH TO AN ISA SYSTEM WOULD HIT SAVINGS According to figures from the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association trade body, a 40-year-old man with 100,000 in pension savings would have a pot of 349,000 when he retired under the current system (assuming 5 per cent annual growth). After tax and taking his tax-free lump sum, his income would be 11,700 a year. With a pension Isa, he would build a pot worth 273,000 a difference of 76,000. Even though withdrawals would be tax-free, he would still be 2,500 a year worse off, with an income of 9,200. Currently, you can only take your pension from age 55. For the Government the biggest benefit of a pension Isa is that wipes away the 34.3 billion in a stroke. It would, however, lose the 13.1 billion it makes each year on income tax from pensioners, giving a net gain of 21.2 billion. And there is nothing to stop future governments changing the rules and taxing payouts later on. Experts have warned such a change would also be hideously difficult to introduce. Most workers would have two separate pensions: savings under the old system which were put in tax-free and so cannot be withdrawn tax-free, and new savings put in after tax which can be withdrawn tax-free. The Association of British Insurers, another trade body, has warned that the reckless idea might lead to a surge in house prices as disillusioned savers invest in property instead. OPTION TWO: ONE SIZE FITS ALL Another option discussed at length is creating a single rate of tax relief for all. This could be anything from 20 per cent to 33 per cent. Savers would be taxed as usual on withdrawals. A flat rate of 33 per cent would benefit basic-rate taxpayers most. This is also one of the damaging proposals for higher earners. It would mean that for every 2 savers invested, they would receive a 1 tax rebate, down from 1.33 under the current system. But more severe cuts are being considered. The Treasury has been told it will struggle to save any money unless it cuts relief to less than 30 pc. HOW FLAT RATE TAX RELIEF WOULD HIT PENSIONS With a 25 per cent flat rate, someone earning 50,000 a year who had already saved 100,000 would build a pension of 320,000 by retirement, down from 349,000 on full tax relief. After taking the 25 per cent tax-free lump sum, they would have an income of 10,800 a year. Thats 900 a year less than under the current system and 18,000 less over a 20-year retirement. A rate of 25 per cent would allow the Government to show it was on the side of lower earners because they would still be better off than today. Every 1 paid into a pension would cost a basic-rate taxpayer 75p instead of the 80p at present. But the impact on higher-rate taxpayers would be dramatic. The same 1 would cost them 15p more than today. Experts fear a flat-rate system would deter higher-rate taxpayers from paying into a pension because the benefits would be stripped away. It could lead to employers replacing pensions with perks such as cars or insurance for higher earners. And in a survey, three-quarters of company pension schemes expected to scale back contributions for all employees, regardless of pay. Treasury discussions have also considered rebranding tax relief as a Savers Bonus to make customers aware of the benefit they receive. Customers might be sent an email once a month telling them their bonus had been paid. OPTION THREE: BIN TAX-FREE CASH Officials are understood to be considering a number of other ideas. These include making further cuts to the amount savers can put into a pension over their lifetime from the new 1 million cap. Savings above this level will be taxed at 55 per cent from April. This could snare hundreds of thousands of middle-class workers on relatively modest incomes. A 35-year-old who had so far saved 37,750 could expect to hit the 1 million limit if they put away 1,000 a month for 30 years. This measure will save the Government 400 million in just one year. By reducing it further Mr Osborne could boost his takings, but it would penalise more hard-working savers. Another idea could be to axe or cap the 25 per cent tax-free lump sum. This is a huge perk of pension saving but costs the Treasury up to 4 billion a year in lost income tax. One option being considered is to cap it at 36,000 for anyone who has saved more than 144,000. This was outlined by the influential Pensions Policy Institute in a 2013 paper. THE RIGHT CHOICE: DO NOTHING When Money Mail asked the Treasury about its plans, it said categorically that no decision had been made. The Chancellor could still row back from his tax raid, deeming it to be too destructive. An international phone call last Friday threatening to blow up all airports in Korea was made through China Telecom, police here said Tuesday. Police said they tracked the call and discovered it was made via China Telecom and relayed via KT to Gimpo International Airport here. Police have asked Interpol to investigate the source of the call. The bomb threat was made at around 7:40 a.m. last Friday to the Korea Airports Corporation's call center at Gimpo. What sounded like a pre-recorded woman's voice made the threat in Korean, and it included the words "armed Arabs." Judging by the flawed grammar, police believe whoever was behind the threat made it in another language and had it translated. Airport police and task forces conducted searches in all 15 airports in the country but found no explosives. More foreign tourists visited Japan than Korea last year for the first time in seven years. The Korea Tourism Organization on Tuesday said 13.23 million tourists came to Korea last year, down 6.8 percent compared to 2014 and the first decline in 12 years. The decline was mainly due to the outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome here last year, which led to 140,000 fewer Chinese and 440,000 fewer Japanese tourists coming to Korea. MBABANE A Swazi man has allegedly murdered an elderly white farmer and his wife by hitting them with crutches in South Africa. The man has been arrested and charged for the double murder of the elderly white couple from Piet Retief. The incident occurred on Sunday afternoon. John Masango, from the Hhohho region, was employed by the couple to work in their farm, which is near Dirkiesdorp in the Mpumalanga Province. The crutches allegedly belonged to his employer, Johannes van Zyl (84). Van Zyl died on the spot during the attack. Police reported that he sustained serious injuries to his head and legs and was found lying on his bathroom floor. Police further reported that they got to the scene at 4:30pm, which was close to an hour after the attack. Van Zyls wife, Charlotte, also died after the attack. She succumbed to the injuries yesterday morning, while undergoing treatment in hospital. She reportedly sustained serious injuries all over the body. Police said the motive for the attack was unknown but the investigation was ongoing. According to the Spokesperson of the South African Police Service in Mpumalanga, Brigadier Selvy Mohlala, Masango went to his employers house and allegedly hit them with the crutches. Information at police disposal revealed that the victims were brutally attacked with crutches by the suspect who is also believed to be their employee. Mr Van Zyl was found lying on the floor with serious injuries on his head and he was certified dead at the scene. His wife Charlotte, sustained serious injuries on her body and was rushed to hospital for medical treatment said Mohlala. The police spokesperson said Masango had been initially charged with murder and attempted murder. He said yesterday morning, they received news that Charlotte had also died and as such they then charged Masongo with two counts of murder. Mohlala said they were alerted of the attack by neighbours of the victims and they went to the scene to investigate. Upon arrival they found Masango within the farm and he was subsequently arrested. A source on Tuesday said many people are now looking for Mao-style jackets in the markets. The trend can also be spotted in TV footage from North Korea. The tunic jacket sported by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is becoming all the rage among senior officials in the North, much as in his father's day they tended toward jumpsuits and shapeless anoraks. Kim Jong-un made his first public appearance in a Mao-style jacket at a Workers Party congress in September 2010. Since then, he has sported it at many major events, apparently himself imitating his grandfather, nation founder Kim Il-sung. Kim's wife Ri Sol-ju used to wear dresses or short skirts, but since October 2013 she has also increasingly embraced the Mao suit. Kim Jong-il cut a rather less snazzy figure in his khaki or gray zippered jumpsuits, which he seemed to believe concealed his puny shoulders and pot belly, while his anoraks made him look increasingly like a bewildered pensioner. The country's gigantic statuary increasingly reflects the leaders' styles. The super-size Kim Jong-il statue on Mansudae Hill in Pyongyang used to wear a sharp overcoat, but in 2012 it got the correct padded anorak. New Transylvania: Pittsburgh ranked #6 for vampires With little sunshine and lots of blood banks, study shows Pittsburgh ranked No. 6 best city for vampires SHARE Contributed by MSU Midwestern State University geosciences professor Dr. Rebecca Dodge has been chosen to receive a national honor for her contribution to the field of petroleum geology. Dr. Rebecca Dodge, associate professor of geosciences at Midwestern State University, will receive one of only five Honorary Member Awards given by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. The award honors individuals who have distinguished themselves by their accomplishments and through their service to the profession of petroleum geology and to the AAPG. Dodge will receive the award at the AAPG's annual conference in June in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Dodge said she was honored with the award because the AAPG has been an important part of her professional life since she joined as an undergraduate student in 1975. "I am joining a group of awardees whom I have always admired," she said. "The AAPG has given me the ability to work with smart people and to connect with other geoscientists around the world." It is her contact with students through the AAPG and the subsequent benefit to her own students that gives Dodge the most satisfaction about her AAPG affiliation. "I have especially connected with students as a visiting geoscientist and as a volunteer judge at student presentations. I can redeliver to my students the best technical information learned at every conference, field trip, and convention I have attended," Dodge said. Dodge's award reflects more than 25 years of service to the petroleum industry in leadership roles ranging from committee memberships and chairmanships to service as an officer in several geologic societies. Her first elected service began by serving as president of the Dallas Geological Society from 1992-1993. During the 1990s she also served on the AAPG Convention Coordinating Committee. She became a charter member of Division of Environmental Geoscientists in 1993 and was president from 2008-2009. Dodge served on the Youth Education Activities Committee of the AAPG from 2012-2015, and as the chairman of the Public Outreach Committee from 2012-2015. Dodge received the AAPG's Distinguished Service Award in 2010. She is currently vice president of the Southwest Section of AAPG, and treasurer of the North Texas Geological Society. She has served as the adviser for student chapters of AAPG at the University of West Georgia and at MSU. Dodge earned her Bachelor of Science in geology from the University of Texas at Arlington and her master's and Ph.D. in geology from the Colorado School of Mines.

Patrick Johnston/Times Record News file photo

Bowie Memorial Hospital laid off eight employees, including three at the management level.

SHARE By Barbara Green Bowie Memorial Hospital Board of Trustees is wasting no time in exploring new options for the sale of the hospital. On Monday the board contracted with a broker to gather potential investors to buy the hospital using a federal tax credit program. Chief Executive Officer Lynn Heller said the board met with Jose Marques, DBA Colmar Group, LLC on Monday afternoon for about 90 minutes. The hospital board was introduced to Marques by Janis Crawley, executive director of the Bowie Economic Development Corporation, who learned about him through the economic development group of the governor's office. Marques is a consultant and broker who puts together people to invest in all sorts of projects, Heller said. Marques pitched the New Market Tax Credit program to the board, a federal initiative that encourages the creation of business and jobs. "The gist of it is he thinks there is no question the hospital is a perfect candidate for the program. A lot of investors are looking for a business to invest in through this program because the tax credit benefits are tremendous," Heller explained. Last Thursday, the board voted to end sale negotiations with The Brough Group after the company failed to follow through on any of the financial requirements of the sales contract. After executive session, the board voted to enter into a tax credit agreement with Jose Marques DBA Colmar Group, to gather investors for the purchase of Bowie Memorial Hospital through New Market Tax Credits at a sale price of $3 million. The sale shall include real estate (hospital, rehab and laundry buildings), furniture, fixtures, equipment and accounts receivable. If the company finds investors, they would buy the hospital, hire someone as a CEO and begin operations. Marques will coordinate the sale. To be part of the tax credit program, the investors must keep it going for seven years minimum. Heller said the hospital board agreed to contract with Colmar at a cost of $25,000. The next step is getting information together for the investor package. "He called it a hot property for him just due to the nature of the business, as well as creating and returning jobs and access to health care," Heller said. Times Record News file photo From inside the Wichita County Jail. SHARE By Claire Kowalick of the Times Record News What began as a hefty to-do list for Wichita County Jail facilities fixes has been whittled down to just couple dozen items, said Commissioner Lee Harvey at the a commissioners meeting Tuesday. In 2015, the county jail facilities received failing marks during an inspection May 19 through 21 by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards. County maintenance, inmate crews and contracted temporary employees have all worked on problems over the past year. To tackle the two largest problems, the court authorized Harper Perkins Architects to send out requests for proposal for the Sprague Jail annex roof and showers projects. In the meantime, Commissioner Jeff Watts requested the commissioners triage the remaining open work orders to see what needs to be done first. Watts noted that each job was identified as routine, priority or emergency, but in some cases "emergency" items were nearly two weeks past their expected completion date. For a specific item, Watts noted that a jail cell was closed in the Sprague Annex because the toilet was clogged. This job was listed as an emergency, but was already 12 days past the completion time. Assistant Jail Administrator Daryl Bonnin said, "Maintenance is doing a phenomenal job for what they have to work with." In 2015, Bonnin said the four-person department had a 93-percent closure rate for work orders. The commissioners said that they would like to begin receiving weekly reports on jail remediation so they can arrange outside help if needed. Chief Deputy Derek Meador noted extensive work needs to be done on the sewage system and it will require an outside plumbing company. "We are not psychic," County Judge Woody Gossom said jokingly, "We need the information to react to the problem." Bonnin and other SO staff agreed that weekly jail remediation reports will be helpful to expedite information to the court. Major projects such as replacement of an exhaust fan and rooftop air conditioning units are complete and working well reports Harvey. "When I started on this there were over 300 items. It was 50 pages, single-spaced. I'm so happy to have it look like this," Harvey said showing the one sheet of items left to do. County staff and Harper Collins are exploring cost-saving initiatives for future projects with the roof and showers. At the Sprague Annex complete replacement of the roof would cost about $3.5 million. As an alternative to complete replacement, county staff is considering a spray foam sealant across the roof surface to control leaks. The spray would cover both the jail facility and Vernon Regional College property, who has expressed willingness to cooperate with maintenance projects for the building, Harvey said. For the showers, staff said they were considering a layered fiberglass that many other county jails use, but recently were turned on to a cheaper, more durable product that could save the county more than $50,000. Council takes no action on suing entertainment giants Wichita Falls city councilors moved consideration of a lawsuit against some major entertainment companies off the agenda when they met Tuesday. SHARE By Chicago Tribune For decades, many liberals have dreamed of a universal health insurance system in which the federal government provides coverage to everyone and pays the cost. Known as "single-payer," it's modeled on programs in Canada and Britain, among others, as well as Medicare. Now Bernie Sanders is making that idea a centerpiece of his presidential campaign. He unveiled an outline for "Medicare for All" on Sunday. And one thing is clear: It has all the qualities of a dream. If Sanders has his way, private health insurance will be a thing of the past, replaced by "a federally administered single-payer health care program" that "will cover the entire continuum of health care." Patients will be free to choose their doctors, and everything will be simple and free, because there will be "no more co-pays, no more deductibles and no more fighting with insurance companies when they fail to pay for charges." How would Sanders pay the $1.38 trillion annual price tag he puts on his model? He would raise marginal income tax rates, which currently top out at 39.6 percent, to 43 percent on households earning $500,000 a year or more, going up to 52 percent on those making more than $10 million. He would raise taxes on capital gains, dividends and inheritances. He would also impose a 6.2 percent "income-based health care premium paid by employers" and a 2.2 percent income-based premium paid by households. But most people, in his forecast, would come out ahead because they'd no longer be paying for private insurance. Among the things Sanders skates over is the practical impossibility of getting this plan written into law. The Affordable Care Act got zero Republican votes, barely passing in the House and narrowly averting a filibuster in the Senate back when Democrats controlled both chambers. Today, Republicans command a majority in each house, and they are likely to retain one if not both in the November elections. In that case, Sanders' program wouldn't be dead on arrival. It would be dead on departure. Sanders also wants those covered to think they can have anything they want from medical providers at minimal cost to them. But that 6.2 percent levy on employers will almost certainly come out of wages. And the marginal tax rate increases he wants are so steep that they would almost certainly have a negative effect on investment and economic growth to the ultimate detriment of workers. The abolition of co-pays and deductibles, combined with the promise of covering any treatment or medicine any patient wants, would make this program far more generous than Medicare. The first effect would be to stimulate even more demand for services. The second would be to prevent sensible limits on therapies. No system can be financially sustainable under such lavish terms. Sanders, however, insists he can bring down our total health care spending by $6 trillion over the next 10 years. Don't bet on it. "That's tremendously aggressive cost containment, even after you take the administrative savings into account," Larry Levitt, vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, told Vox.com. As Ezra Klein wrote on that website, the way single-payer systems curb expenditures is by "cutting reimbursement to doctors, hospitals, drug companies and device companies" which inevitably means denying some treatments to actual patients. Canada and Britain are notorious for rationing care through long waits. One result, says the Fraser Institute, a free-market think tank based in Vancouver, is that 52,000 Canadians went abroad for treatment in 2014. The bold new plan Sanders offers is really a variation on an old theme: the government will provide evermore health care to more and more people at a lower cost. It ducks the painful problem of how much health care we can afford and pretends it can be financed without any real sacrifice by ordinary people. In the long run, choices have to be made and trade-offs have to be accepted. Under Sanders' blueprint, either the government would have to restrict access to some things people want, or it would end up spending far more than he claims. He and his supporters are entitled to dream. But there comes a time when you have to wake up. TORIN HALSEY/TIMES RECORD NEWS Larry Ayers, left, Tom Lang and Jim Cadotte, right, listen as Steve Garner, right center, of the Lake Wichita Revitalization Committee, announces All American Car Care Center's pledge to match a $20,000 grant from the Reservoir Fisheries Habitat Partnership for excavation and improvement of fish habitat at the lake. SHARE TORIN HALSEY/TIMES RECORD NEWS Steve Garner of the Lake Wichita Revitalization Committee, center, speaks Tuesday at the All American Car Care Center on Southwest Parkway. Garner announced the carwash company will match a $20,000 grant from the Reservoir Fisheries Habitat Partnership that will help with excavation of the lake and re-establishing fish habitats. A number of supporters and volunteers were on hand for the announcement. By John Ingle of the Times Record News The Lake Wichita Revitalization group was awarded $20,000 in November from the Reservoir Fisheries Habitat Partnership with one condition they had to find a local entity or person to match the grant. Larry Ayres and All American Car Care Centers have stepped up to match the grant and help the efforts to make the more than 100-year-old lake a destination once again. "We're looking forward to getting this going," the owner of All American said of the partnership between business and the project. "I think we'll be able to raise that money pretty easily through the year. I'm just glad to be a part of it." Tom Lang, a Texas Parks & Wildlife Department Inland Fisheries biologist and member of the Lake Wichita Revitalization Committee, said the combined $40,000 will help with some excavation, development of structures for habitat and vegetation in the lake. He said the work will likely be done near the dam at Lake Wichita. The goal, he said, is to develop a larger crop of fish for fishermen. "The way the grant works (is) we'll purchase the materials to be able to do the work, and then my staff and other volunteers will actually do the work," Lang said. "As long as we get all of the materials purchased in 2016, which Larry and Jim (Cadotte) have agreed to make sure we have that match this year and additional funds as best they can from then on. "This is not a one-time deal for those guys." Cadotte said All American has served Wichita Falls for 18 years now, and partnering with the Lake Wichita Revitalization group is another way to give back to the community. The general manager of All American said they have an interest in saving water "There's no better partnership that we could have had that the Lake Wichita project," he said. "You guys are doing a project that benefits our community and we're glad to offer this matching donation. We ask and encourage all businesses and individuals (to) reach deep, get into your pockets, look at what you can do to benefit our community to support this project, and we're excited to do it." Lang said 2015 turned out to be a banner year for the organization wanting to re-establish Lake Wichita as a place that offers activities for everyone. The group was able to raise more than $500,000 in grants, donation and pledges, and hope 2016 is even better. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Canajoharie U.S. Rep. Chris Gibson toured the derelict former Beech-Nut plant in Canajoharie, where local officials were hopeful Tuesday that federal support might eventually help cover part of a multimillion-dollar bill to knock down and redevelop the property. Gibson saw a facility, which closed five years ago when Beech-Nut moved to a new plant, that since has sprouted numerous leaks in its roof, has large patches of mold on walls, and is icing up in spots. "It may have only been closed for five years, but to look at it, it looks longer than that," said Kenneth Rose, CEO and director of the Montgomery County Business Development Center. The county is taking preliminary steps to foreclose on the 27-acre property for more than $500,000 in unpaid property taxes by its Ohio-based owner. A preliminary study of asbestos and other pollution in the former plant has estimated it could cost $6 million to clean and then demolish the building, said County Executive Matthew Ossenfort, who led the tour. A more detailed study will be done this summer around the 851,000 square-foot main plant that will involve soil tests looking for pollution. Ossenfort said the county wants to understand the extent of potential liability before it moves to foreclose on the property. "We are leery of the potential bill," he said. "But this is not just an economic redevelopment issue. There is a moral obligation to clean this site. ... This issue is at the top of my agenda for the county to resolve this year." Ossenfort said reviving the Beech-Nut site will have to be a "team effort" by local, state and federal officials. "Montgomery County cannot do this on its own," said Gibson. "I will be working with the New York state delegation, including our U.S. senators, to bring federal resources to assist." He also said help will be needed from the state. "Canajoharie has so much going for it: a motivated, dedicated, trained workforce, a beautiful setting, and easy access to the Thruway, water, sewer and other infrastructure. With proper focus, this site will once again play a prominent role in the Mohawk Valley," Gibson said. "Now the congressman has seen this situation firsthand ... he was very sympathetic," said Canajoharie Mayor Francis Avery, who also was on the tour. The plant was purchased from Beech-Nut in 2010 by Cincinnati businessman Todd Clifford, who initially indicated plans to clean and redevelop it. But those plans never materialized and Clifford instead has focused on pulling valuable scrap metal out of the building. That stripping has left little of value behind, with village officials complaining that Clifford worked without necessary demolition or asbestos permits. The project was shut down by the village and restarted several times. The massive eyesore is yet another blow to the village, which saw the plant close in 2010, taking good-paying jobs and a big share of the village tax base with it. The state provided tens of millions of dollars in assistance for Beech-Nut to relocate to a new plant in the Montgomery County town of Florida, but no funds were earmarked to deal with the old plant. bnearing@timesunion-.com - 518-454-5094 - @Bnearing10 OPENING FRIDAY THE 5TH WAVE: Chloe Grace Moretz is a young woman trying to protect her little brother from a wave of attacks on our planet by hostile extraterrestrials. (PG-13 for violence and destruction, some sci-fi thematic elements, language and brief teen partying) http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/the5thwave ANOMALISA: Charlie Kaufman ("Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind") and Duke Johnson co-direct this tale, shot in stop-motion animation, about an isolated man who is forced out of his emotional shell. (R for strong sexual content, graphic nudity and language) http://www.anomalisa.com THE BOY: An American nanny in England discovers that her new family's child is actually a life-sized porcelain doll that the parents use to cope with the death of their son. Horror then ensues. (PG-13 for violence and terror, and for some thematic material) https://www.facebook.com/TheBoyMovie DIRTY GRANDPA: Zac Efron is the uptight aspiring lawyer forced to take his unruly grandfather (Robert De Niro) on a road trip to Daytona Beach for spring break. (R for crude sexual content throughout, graphic nudity, and for language and drug use) http://www.dirtygrandpa.movie Love movies? Love talking about them? Love reading about them? Go to Times Union Movies blog, moderated by film fanatic C.J. Lais Jr. and join in the conversation. http://blog.timesunion.com/movies/ TROY A Rensselaer County grand jury indicted a 27-year-old man Tuesday for allegedly driving into the path of an oncoming car at Routes 66 and 20 in Nassau last year, killing his passenger. Edward Ferguson of Nassau was indicted on 19 counts arising from the July 27 crash that killed Christopher Sharley of West Sand Lake on his 28th birthday. Terry Metcalf, 47, of Scotia, the driver of the other vehicle, was injured. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Two months after a pair of local men went missing, their cases remain active but regular searches have been abandoned. Thomas Messick, 82, of Troy and Frederick "Fritzie" Drumm, 68, of Schuylerville both disappeared in November in separate incidents. The state Department of Environmental Conservation said Wednesday local forest rangers and search-and-rescue teams will cease regular searches for Messick. Instead, spot searches and training exercises will be used to look for him. State Police helicopters and Forest Rangers also will periodically search the land and waters in the area. The Troy man was last seen on Nov. 15 a short distance off Lily Pond Road. He had been part of a hunting party that entered the woods near Horicon in Warren County around 10 a.m. The group separated, with plans to meet up at an agreed-upon location at 2 p.m. Drumm vanished on Nov. 24 and was last seen in his Schuylerville home. An avid hunter, his property included 170 acres of hilly farmland, woods, brush and water from the nearby Fish Creek. "That is still an active investigation," said Lt. Shelley Zieske of the Saratoga County Sheriff's Office. "The investigator assigned the case is still actively working on the case. Ground searches are not occurring." When Messick did not meet up with his hunting party, they began searching for him. At 4:30 p.m., they contacted forest rangers. Four of them came and searched until midnight. In the days and weeks that followed, hundreds of volunteers came, some from as far away as West Virginia, to assist in the search. Messick had poor vision and hearing, a bad back and a history of cardiac issues, according to information given to searchers at the time. He was wearing duck boots, camouflage pants and coat, gloves and a red-and-black checkered hat. He was not wearing a blaze orange hunting vest. Messick's disappearance will remain classified as an active missing person case, and the search would be upgraded to an active search if any leads or evidence are discovered. "I appreciate the tremendous effort made by the Forest Rangers and all the other searchers from various agencies, search and rescue teams, fire departments and individuals in their attempt to locate Mr. Messick," Acting DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos said in a release. "While we have not yet provided his family with closure, they know and appreciate how hard the searchers worked." During the two months of searching, Forest Rangers were joined by Environmental Conservation Police, State Police and several other state and county agencies and hundreds of volunteers from search and rescue teams, fire departments, family and friends. The hunt included more than 10,000 searcher hours, most during the initial 10 days, the DEC said. Drumm's disappearance brought out 150 volunteer firefighters and members of search-and-rescue teams to check over his land and nearby properties. tobrien@timesunion.com 518-454-5092 @timobrientu Albany Supporters of Superintendent Marguerite Vanden Wyngaard promise to keep up the pressure on the Board of Education to find out why some members refuse to renew her contract. Since December, a coalition of community leaders, elected officials and clergy has campaigned to get the superintendent's contract renewed, showing up at school board meetings and rallies demanding to know to why board members would let her contract expire in June. On Wednesday, a day before a board workshop meeting, more than a dozen impassioned supporters held a news conference at the Union Missionary Baptist Church. "They owe us answers, but they won't meet and talk to us," Mark Bobb-Semple, a local leader who works with the Albany Promise, African American Cultural Center of the Capital Region and other groups. "They need to talk to us. This is about the community. They say they represent the community, but who are they really representing? Who's really controlling them?" Vanden Wyngaard arrived in the fall of 2012 as the district's first permanent black female superintendent. The board's support for her began to splinter in 2014 after an audit found $215,000 in undocumented services had been billed to the district by a Minnesota-based consultant. While no one on the board has ever publicly detailed reasons for not wanting the superintendent to remain with the district, some members have revealed tensions during terse exchanges at board meetings. Only two members newcomer Vickie Smith and longtime member Rose Brandon have given a public show of support. Many have questioned whether the splinter is fueled by racism, as well as by contempt over Vanden Wyngaard's public efforts to combat racism in the schools. Barbara Smith, former 4th Ward Common Council member, warned the gathering not to be fooled if the board replaces Vanden Wyngaard with another black leader. "This is a travesty," she said. "We see dynamics on this school board that hearken back to the Jim Crow era. If whatever transpires has us with the substitution of one African American for another, just because you see that doesn't mean that racism is not happening." The current seven-member board includes three black and four white members. Kenny Bruce, who is black and who was elected board president this month, has said any tensions with the superintendent revolve around proper planning and job responsibilities. One of the reasons he joined the board was to fight for more equity for the district's students of color, he said. One way to make that happen is to hire more people of color as teachers and within the superintendent's cabinet something Vanden Wyngaard hasn't done enough of during her tenure, he said With three new board members, it's possible a vote on extending the contract could turn out in Vanden Wyngaard's favor. Except for Smith, the new members have declined to discuss their stance. Smith said after reviewing Vanden Wyngaard's personnel file, which includes annual and midyear evaluations by the board, she still does not understand why the board would not keep the superintendent. "From my perspective, no, I don't see any rhyme or reason not to extend her contract," she said. "And the only thing I can say is it must be something about the changes that she has brought about or something more personal than that, but I'm not getting answers that I'm satisfied with and, in fact, I'm not getting answers at all." A contract extension is not on Thursday night's agenda, but Brandon and Smith have said they'll push for a board vote on the matter in public this month. Community members plan another rally ahead of the meeting, starting at 6:30 p.m. at the Albany School of Humanities, 108 Whitehall Road. bbump@timesunion.com 518-454-5387 @bethanybump Landstuhl, Germany Pale but smiling, former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati recounted Tuesday how disbelief turned to joy when he and three fellow Americans realized that they were being released as part of a deal with Iran and reunited with their families after spending years in an Iranian prison. Speaking publicly for the first time since being allowed to leave Iran in a prisoner swap Sunday, Hekmati said the sudden end to his four-year ordeal still seemed surreal. Convicted by an Iranian court of spying and sentenced to death in 2012, he was later given a 10-year sentence on a lesser charge after a retrial. "I was at a point where I had just sort of accepted the fact that I was going to be spending 10 years in prison, so this was a surprise and I just feel truly blessed to see my government do so much for me and the other Americans," Hekmati told reporters outside the U.S. military's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, where he was taken for treatment. There was no advance warning of his release, he added. "They just came one morning and said 'Pack your things.'" "I was worried that maybe the Iranian side was going to make new demands at the last minute or that the deal wasn't going to work out, so up until the last second we were all worried and concerned," he said. The 32-year-old says he and his fellow prisoners endured repeated delays until they were allowed to board a Swiss government plane. But they weren't able to relax until the jet had left Iranian airspace, after which "champagne bottles were popped" and veal and chocolates were served, he said. Hekmati said he felt lucky and humbled by the support he received from those campaigning for his release. He expressed gratitude to President Barack Obama, U.S. Congress and his other supporters, reserving special thanks for the U.S. Marine Corps. Asked about his 41/2 -years in Iranian prison, Hekmati said "it wasn't good," but that his Marine training helped sustain him. "I tried my best to keep my head up and withstand all the pressures that were put on me, some of them were very inhumane and unjust," he said. "Hearing about some of my fellow Marines supporting me really gave me the strength to put up with over four years of some very difficult times." "He has not had much of a chance to exercise and he's lost some weight but he looks fit and I think he is on the mend," U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee, a Democrat from Hekmati's home state of Michigan, earlier told The Associated Press. Hekmati, Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian and pastor Saeed Abedini arrived late Sunday at Landstuhl for treatment. A fourth American released in exchange for the U.S. pardoning or dropping charges against seven Iranians opted to stay in Iran, and a fifth American was released separately. Rep. Jaret Huffman, a Democrat representing Rezaian's home district in California was also visiting Landstuhl. He said there were "tears, and smiles and hugs" when the family was reunited. When "As You Are" premieres at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah next week, the little Albany film about teens and tragedy in the era of grunge will be one in a mob of hopeful contenders shooting for the usual: awards, recognition, the ever-elusive buzz and the even-more-elusive distribution deal. Standing out in the pack won't be easy. But Sundance, unspooling since 1984, was made for little movies for the unknown, independent outliers that buck expectations without the big bucks. As the festival arm of the filmmaking institute founded by Robert Redford, Sundance is a place where nobodies become somebodies. Often major somebodies, and often overnight: When "Reservoir Dogs" premiered there in 1992, the movie didn't win any awards, but it quickly turned Quentin Tarantino into Quentin Tarantino! "As You Are" is, at this moment, being prepped and preened for its world premiere Monday night, Jan. 25, the first of six screenings at Sundance (which runs today through Sunday, Jan. 31). The feature directorial debut of 23-year-old Albany Free School graduate Miles Joris-Peyrafitte, the movie follows three friends in the early 1990s as they navigate the snarls of self, love, memory, youth and the complications of each. Shot in a 24-day whirlwind that wrapped in mid-October, the film used 29 locations around the Capital Region including Albany High School, Mac's Drive-In in Watervliet, a quarry in Ravena and a trailer in East Berne. Among those involved were students and graduates of YouthFX, the award-winning Albany filmmaking program directed by Free School teacher Bhawin Suchak. On weekends, a YouthFX team filmed behind-the-scenes footage on set. As a student of Suchak's back in the day, Joris-Peyrafitte filmed ambitious mini-epics (zombies, cataclysms, that sort of thing) that honed his skills and fanned his appetite for filmmaking. Later, at Bard, he made a short that he and fellow Free School alum Madison Harrison eventually adapted into the screenplay for "As You Are." That script snagged the attention of film producers in Seattle, who set about shooting it with a "modified low budget" of less than $700,000. Among the cast are a few big-screen notables. The teens are played by Owen Campbell of "Boardwalk Empire," Charlie Heaton of the upcoming "Shut In" and Amandla Stenberg, best known as Rue from "The Hunger Games." Mary Stuart Masterson, who starred in "Benny & Joon" and "Some Kind of Wonderful," plays a mom; Scott Cohen, of "Kissing Jessica Stein" and "Necessary Roughness," plays a dad. On the set in early October, Joris-Peyrafitte was easygoing and eloquent, chatting with the Times Union in the cluttered bedroom of that trailer in East Berne which was later donated to a needy local family. He spoke of his early years studying film with Suchak and the empowering, creative act of handing kids a camera. Of "As You Are," he said, he wanted to make a film about teendom while he still remembered what it felt like the intensity of those emotions, the urgency of all that happened. But the mind has a way of messing with the past, and the movie's structure reflects it: judging from descriptions, the competing viewpoints and conflicting memories smack just a bit of "Rashomon." (And yes, Joris-Peyrafitte had heard that comparison before.) Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and features with our afternoon newsletter. "The point is the recollection. The point is the construction," he said in a previously unpublished part of the interview. "I think that's what makes the idea of memory so interesting, especially in film." He aimed to make a movie that was faithful to adolescence as experienced by adolescents. "The coming-of-age genre is such a thing. It's such a trope. Almost everyone talks about 'Catcher in the Rye,' and everyone talks about certain movies, but at the end of the day it feels like an adult's version. It's nostalgia, in a way." Miles Joris-Peyrafitte is still years away from nostalgia. He isn't yet Miles Joris-Peyrafitte! Right now, he's just a young unknown riding his feature directorial debut into the country's most influential independent movie fest. No matter what happens with "As You Are," that's huge. Whether the film and its maker become huge in turn is up to the gods of cinema. abiancolli@timesunion.com 518-454-5439 @AmyBiancolli Albany Gov. Andrew Cuomo, New York's most prodigious fundraiser, raked in about $5 million over the past six months from contributors, and has about $16 million in his political war chest. Though the governor continues to advocate for stitching up the so-called "LLC loophole" in state election law, Cuomo has continued to take such donations in large quantities, according to filings posted Friday with the state Board of Elections. The records show contributions, expenditures and other campaign finance data from the second half of 2015. More Information Campaign fundraising in Legislature Here's a look at how the Capital Region's state lawmakers - and those hoping to take their seats in November - fared in the past six months of campaign fundraising: SENATE George Amedore, R-Rotterdam Raised in period: $50,050 Cash on hand: $161,905 Notable: A home builder, the first-term senator received contributions of at least $1,000 from a host of Capital Region developers, including Francesco Galesi and John Nigro. He also received $5,000 apiece from an arm of the Durst real-estate empire, the Real Estate Board PAC, and Two Trees Management LLC, which owns a large residential/commercial property in Brooklyn. He received $500 from Michael Avella, an Albany lobbyist who previously served as counsel to Senate Republican leaders Joseph L. Bruno and Dean Skelos. Neil Breslin, D-Bethlehem Raised in period: $64,484 Cash on hand: $159,965 Notable: Breslin, the ranking Democrat on the Insurance Committee, received $5,000 - his largest contribution - from Encompass Indemnity of Northbrook, Ill. Earlier this month, he transferred $5,000 to the Democratic conference's campaign committee. Hugh Farley, R-Niskayuna Raised in period: $1,500 Cash on hand: $106,081 Notable: Farley's six-month haul comes from only two donations: $1,000 from General Electric and $500 from the New York Staffing Association PAC. He doled out $2,716 to various GOP campaign organs, the biggest chunk ($2,000) to the Senate Republican Campaign Committee. Note: Halfmoon Republican Kathy Marchione's January filing has not yet been posted. ASSEMBLY Patricia Fahy, D-Albany Raised in period: $10,651 Cash on hand: $34,832 Notable: Fahy's campaign is still carrying a $10,000 loan she and her husband made to her effort in 2012. (Note: A previous version of this story noted a $2,566 donation from Albany's Tom Ruller; the actual sum was $250. Fahy's campaign said the typo was being corrected.) John T. McDonald, D-Cohoes Raised in period: $6,398 Cash on hand: $34,373 Notable: McDonald's largest contribution was $2,000 from the Public Employees Federation. James Tedisco, R-Glenville Raised in period: $18,811 Cash on hand: $165,447 Notable: Tedisco's largest contribution was $1,000 from LAWPAC, the political arm of the state Trial Lawyers Association. Angelo Santabarbara, D-Rotterdam Raised in period: $19,480 Cash on hand: $21,491 Notable: Santabarbara took $2,000 from General Electric, and $1,000 from Zuffa LLC, a Las Vegas-based company that's pushing for the legalization of professional mixed martial arts bouts. He also enjoys significant labor support. Carrie Woerner, D-Round Lake Amount raised: $28,572 Cash on hand: $33,574 Notable: The Public Employees Federation union donated $2,000. The committee of 43rd Senate District candidate Shaun Francis, donated $300. The campaign gave the Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee $1,000. Steve McLaughlin, R-Schaghticoke Amount raised: $0 Cash on hand: $16,156 Notable: McLaughlin did not raise any money, and spent about half of what he had on hand to start the period. This is the second consecutive January filing that shows no contributions. The campaign gave $150 to North Country Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, and transferred $6,000 to the Republican Assembly Campaign Committee. Note: Colonie Democrat Phil Steck's January filing has not yet been posted; Schoharie Republican Pete Lopez's filing is incomplete and in the process of being corrected. CANDIDATES Shaun Francis (Democrat challenging Marchione in 43rd SD) Amount raised: $9,964 Cash on hand: $6,212 Notable: Francis received a $150 contribution from Friends of Cecilia Tkaczyk, the committee of the former state senator. He also received $100 from state Sen. Neil Breslin's campaign committee. Expenditures included $1,200 to Time Warner Cable for an ad buy. Christian Klueg (Republican challenging Farley in 49th SD) Amount raised: $31,044 Cash on hand: $12,648 Notable: CMK and Associates Real Estate, Klueg's firm, donated $990 to the campaign. CMK Appraisals LLC, another Klueg entity, provided $1,500. Turning Albany Upside Down, a PAC with the same address as former gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino's Ellicott Development, donated $1,250. The campaign paid $8,681 to CMK Marketing, where Klueg is a creative partner, for campaign literature. (Two other potential Farley opponents, Republican Nancy Nugent and Democrat Chad Putman, have not registered committees.) Sara Niccoli (Democrat challenging Amedore in 46th SD) Amount raised: $28,270 Cash on hand: $28,050 Notable: All funds were raised between Dec. 29 and Jan. 11. Friends of Cecilia Tkaczyk transferred $11,000 to Niccoli's campaign, and Tkaczyk personally donated $600. Sen. Liz Krueger of Manhattan donated $500. Christopher Davis (Republican challenging Breslin in SD 44) Amount raised: $7,249 Cash on hand: $4,719 Notable: While he has made little noise, this is Davis' second filing since last year. Source: State Board of Elections filings; research by Casey Seiler and Matthew Hamilton. See More Collapse State election law treats limited liability companies as free-standing individual entities for the purposes of setting maximum campaign contributions. Because LLCs are often nothing more than organs of a larger operation, the loophole allows certain businesses to vastly multiply their political giving. An example: On the same day in October, four LLCs sharing addresses with the Manhattan real estate giant the Durst Organization each gave $25,000 to Cuomo, records show. Montrose Park and MTY Properties, two LLCs that share the same Brooklyn address, gave the governor $50,000 each over two days in July. In July, the state Board of Elections' Chief Enforcement Counsel Risa Sugarman appointed in 2014 by Cuomo filed a lawsuit against a former Brooklyn Assembly candidate targeting such coordinated giving by a single developer through the LLC loophole, albeit in much smaller amounts. The case case was settled out of court this fall with a $10,000 penalty for the candidate, leaving it unclear whether a legal or enforcement precedent had been established. The Long Island-based real estate firm Glenwood Management, the state's most energetic user of the LLC loophole and Cuomo's most generous supporter, appears to have stopped giving to the governor after it was caught up in the successful prosecutions of former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and ex-Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos. A top executive, Charles Dorego, received a non-prosecution agreement in exchange for his cooperation with U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara's office. Cuomo received a $2,000 donation in July from Capitol Group LLC, an Albany lobbying firm whose managing partner Nick Barrella also surfaced in the Skelos case. He was not charged with any wrongdoing. Saying "the time for discussion and debate has passed," Cuomo in last week's State of the State address called on the Legislature to close the loophole this year. "It is imperative," he said. "Pass it and I will sign it into law the very same day." It is unclear if Cuomo will insist on the change during the state budget negotiation that runs through March, when his executive powers are at their peak. Charter school supporters, including many deep-pocketed hedge fund magnates, also continued giving heavily to Cuomo's campaign. The governor's campaign has said it follows all laws, and insists campaign donations never influence the governor's policy proposals. The state Senate's Republicans, who will be battling to protect their majority in 2016, reported $2.8 million in their campaign account as of mid-January. That included some continued giving by the real estate industry, including $150,000 in mid-December from two political action committees linked to the Rent Stabilization Association, which represents landlords. Chicago-based Citadel hedge fund CEO Kenneth Griffin gave the Senate GOP's campaign arm $109,600 the maximum under state limits in December. Griffin made news last fall when he entered into a $200 million Manhattan condo purchase agreement that was described as the largest single residence real estate deal in U.S. history. The Senate Democrats, after years of fighting debt issues from the 2010 elections, had about $1 million in their campaign account. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and features with our afternoon newsletter. The latest filings offered yet another stark reminder of how money flows to those who attain power. A year ago, Sen. John Flanagan, R-Long Island, reported $263,050 in his campaign account close to what he had submitted in January reports from the previous few years. Flanagan took over leadership of the conference in May following Skelos' arrest. His most recent filing shows $723,028 on hand. The same trend was reflected in the filing of Democratic Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, who took the top post in that chamber after Silver's January 2015 arrest. Just weeks before Heastie was tapped for the top post, the Bronx legislator had reported $30,210 in his campaign account. Again, it was in line with what the rank-and-file Assemblyman had reported in previous January filings. Heastie's most recent filing shows a ninefold increase: He has $263,774 cash on hand. State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, a Democrat, reported raising $1.64 million over the past six months. He has $3.62 million in his campaign account. Democratic state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli raised $672,430, and reported $800,171 on hand. Matthew Hamilton contributed. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Albany Despite a daylong symposium last year, previous studies and lots of talk, a special fund to promote the growth of New York-raised thoroughbreds has no provisions in its budget this year to help care for retired race horses who might otherwise be headed for the slaughterhouse or to rescue operations that frequently operate with minimal resources. "They talked all day about rescuing horses," said Sue McDonough of the New York State Humane Association. She was referring to the State Gaming Commission, which last year held a meeting concerning how to care for horses that are no longer on the track. One suggestion: Have the state Thoroughbred Breeding and Development Fund include in its budget funds for aftercare. That didn't happen. "They were going to allocate funding for mares and stallions upon retirement, and allocate funding for aftercare for horses who raced and retired ... so they didn't have to go to slaughter," said McDonough, a retired state trooper who also puts on training sessions about animal cruelty. But the legislation that created the Breeding and Development Fund contains no provision for such spending. "Fund Board Members have publicly illustrated a commitment to supporting aftercare programs, but as a public benefit corporation there is a statutory limitation on expenditures," said Lee Park, spokesman for the state Gaming Commission, in an email. The fund, however, has been able to indirectly support aftercare efforts, including education, through its promotional budget. Those dollars have supported talks about horse care, 4-H projects and other events to publicize the need for aftercare. Running on an approximately $21 million budget, the Breeding and Development Fund's goal is to increase the number of New York-bred race horses. Among its main promotions are enhanced purses, or potential payouts, for winning horses that are bred in the state. Sign up for The Knick Get the latest news and features with our afternoon newsletter. Others wonder if the Breeding and Development Fund is the best source of ongoing aftercare financing. "You need an independent third party that has no ties to racing or breeding to oversee the distribution of those funds to see that it really benefits the horses," said Susan Kayne, founder and president of the Unbridled Thoroughbred Foundation, which advocates for aftercare. Those services can be costly given the cost of shelter, hay and veterinary care. Most estimates run at least $2,000 per animal per year. Created in 2005, a special Task Force on Retired Racehorses recommended in 2010 that fees such as a half-percent on VLT racino commissions could be dedicated to aftercare. The recommendation was never implemented, and the task force dissolved a year later. Gov. Andrew Cuomo vetoed a bill to extend its work for another two years, noting that their report took five years longer than originally expected to be completed. The planned hydro-electric power station in Silvermines has been welcomed by the local community. Despite some misgivings at a public meeting in the village last Saturday night, the general consensus was that the project would be good for the local community. One of its main advantages is the cleaning up, once and for all, of the contaminated Magcobar mining site. Around 100 residents attended the meeting in Hickey's Bar which was addressed by Minister for the Environment Alan Kelly; project director Darren Quinn of SIGA Hydro; Conor Gilligan of Roadbridge and Felix Koselleck of Austrian company Strabag SE. Among the issues raised were the project's impact on property prices and the amount of traffic it would generate. Mr Gilligan assured one woman whose property is near the site that the company would conduct a full surevy of properties and samples recorded to protect themselves and the homeowners. Part of the planning application would include upgrading the road. However, most work would be carried out on site and the only real movement of heavy vehicles would when the turbines were being delivered. He also assured the meeting that there would be no blasting and that it was felt the sludge at the bottom of the current reservoir could be cleaned up. Tipperary County Council director of services Karl Cashen said the council would ensure controls and plans were in place to lessen the impact on Silvermines during construction. If the project went ahead, the council would ensure it followed best practice. One speaker from the floor who worked on two such projects in Alaska described it as a win-win situation because of its spinoffs. Another said that Silvermines and Nenagh needed the project. Minister Kelly told one resident he was hopefult that more than 50 per cent of the workforce would be local. At the start of the meeting, Minister Kelly described the planned project as brilliant for the Silvermines. He described the 650m project as an opportunity to turn a negative environmental legacy into a positive future for the village. He reiterated the point that the planned power station would be emission-free, produce no noise and have no pylons as the cabling to the national grid would go underground However, he maintained this could only be done with community support and recalled the community's battle to prevent a superdump being built on the former mining site some time back. Mr Quinn said the developers were there to listen to the community, unlike in the past when they had been dealt a bad hand. He outlined the project and why Silvermines was chosen, including the fact that a lot of work had already been done on site in that the mountain had already been ripped apart. He listed as the benefits that the plant would be sustainable, it would have a tourism spinoff and lower the country's dependence on 6bn worth of fossil fuel annually. Stage one of the project will take up to two years and involve a detailed feasibility study and community engagement; stage two will be planning and, if successful, stage three will see the start of the four-year construction phase. It appears as though the Titusville Area School Districts board of directors hasnt seen th You have permission to edit this article. Edit Close [January 20, 2016] Ben Beeson to Lead Cyber Risk Practice at Lockton WASHINGTON, Jan. 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Lockton Companies has appointed Ben Beeson its Cyber Risk Practice Leader. Beeson will work with the insurance broker's leading team of cyber insurance professionals to guide companies through an increasingly challenging cyber risk environment. Lockton is the world's largest privately held, independent insurance broker. Beeson is an industry leader in supporting the development of US cyber security policy and was engaged in the creation and roll out of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (National Institute of Standards and Technology). He testified before Congress in 2015 about the evolution of the cyber insurance market. He has also authored a section in the New York Stock Exchange's recently published cyber security guide for directors and officers, "Navigating the Digital Age." Beeson is a sought-after media commentator on cyber security issues, appearing recently on CNN and Fox News, as well as in The Financial Times, Thomson Reuters, and The Huffington Post. Beeson will continue to be based in Lockton's Washington, DC office, where he had previously worked asa client executive. He relocated to the US two years ago from Lockton's London operation where began his work in cyber risk. Brian Kawamoto, Executive Vice President of Lockton, said, "Above all, Lockton is recognized for its culture of innovative thinking when addressing emerging cyber risks for our clients. I can think of no better individual than Ben Beeson to provide Lockton clients the necessary leadership to navigate today's cyber security and privacy challenges." Beeson said, "The insurance industry is at the forefront of the public policy debate about how best to incentivize companies to invest in cyber resilience. We need a great sense of urgency on this issue. It's exciting to lead and support a talented group of people at Lockton who are focused on creating practical cyber risk solutions for clients." Beeson can be reached in Lockton's Washington, DC office at +1 202 414 2653 or [email protected]. About Lockton More than 5,600 professionals at Lockton provide 48,000 clients around the world with risk management, insurance, employee benefits consulting, and retirement services that improve their businesses. From its founding in 1966 in Kansas City, Missouri, Lockton has attracted entrepreneurial professionals who have driven its growth to become the largest privately held, independent insurance broker in the world and 10th largest overall. For seven consecutive years, Business Insurance magazine has recognized Lockton as a "Best Place to Work in Insurance." To see the latest insights from Lockton's experts, check Lockton Market Update. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160120/324202 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20090415/CG99351LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ben-beeson-to-lead-cyber-risk-practice-at-lockton-300207258.html SOURCE Lockton [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 20, 2016] EuroSite Power Books over $350,000 in Cash Tax Incentives WALTHAM, Mass., Jan. 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- EuroSite Power Inc., (OTCQB: EUSP) an On-Site Utility solutions provider, offering clean electricity, heat, hot water and cooling solutions to healthcare, hospitality, housing and leisure centers in the United Kingdom (UK) and Europe is pleased to announce the receipt of $358,780 (249,118) cash in Enhanced Capital Allowance (ECA) incentives from the UK government. The ECA program provides a tax incentive to businesses that invest in energy-saving equipment that meets published energy-saving criteria. Managed by the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), the ECA program is a key part of the UK government's efforts to combat climate-change. "EuroSite Power's installations provide property managers a cost-free way to install energy saving power and heating equipment. The UK government's ECA program recognizes the efficient design of our CHP systems and rewards us for our ultra-efficient solutions," noted EuroSite Power's Managing Director Paul Hamblyn. Under the program, UK businesses may write off the entire cost of qualifying green technology against taxable profits in the year of purchase. Although combined heat and power equipment (CHP) does not automatically qualify for an ECA benefit, owners and operators can submit details of the equipment design for assessment to obtain a certificate of energy efficiency. Once a certificate has been granted, the installation can qualify for an ECA incentive payment. This ECA incentive payment is a result of installations completed in 2014 (and was discussed on the most recent quarterly earnings conference call); tax incentives for fiscal year 2015 have not yet been filed. On-Site Utility EuroSite Power sells the energy produced from an onsite energy system to an individual property as an alternative to the outright sale of energy equipment. On-Site Utility solution customers only pay for the energy produced by the system and receive a guaranteed discount rate on the price of the energy. All system capital, installation, operating expenses and support are paid by EuroSite Power. About EuroSite Power EuroSite Power Limited is a subsidiary of American DG Energy Inc. (NYSE MKT: ADGE). The Company provides institutional, commercial and small industrial facilities with clean, reliable power, cooling, heat and hot water at lower costs than charged by conventional energy suppliers without any capital or start-up costs to the energy user. More information can be found at www.eurositepower.co.uk. FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS This press release contains forward-looking statements under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements, as disclosed on the Company's website and in Securities and Exchange Commission filings. This press release does not constitute an offer to buy or sell securities by the Company, its subsidiaries or any associated party and is meant purely for informational purposes. The statements in this press release are made as of the date of this press release, even if subsequently made available by the Company on its website or otherwise. The Company does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking statements provided to reflect events that occur or circumstances that exist after the date on which they were made. Investor Contact: Media Contact: John N. Hatsopoulos Paul Hamblyn EuroSite Power Inc. EuroSite Power Inc. +1 781.622.1120 +44 7920.859540 [email protected] [email protected] To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/eurosite-power-books-over-350000-in-cash-tax-incentives-300206416.html SOURCE EuroSite Power Inc. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 20, 2016] Friendship Public Charter School Online Welcomes Lottery Applications for 2016-2017 School Year WASHINGTON, Jan. 20, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Friendship Public Charter School Online (Friendship PCS Online), an online public education option for students in grades K through 8, is accepting My School DC lottery applications for the 2016-2017 school year. Families must submit an application through MySchoolDC.org before March 1, 2016 in order to be eligible for potential enrollment at Friendship PCS Online. Friendship PCS Online is the District of Columbia's only online elementary and middle school, and it is the newest program of Friendship Public Charter School, which operates 11 public charter schools in DC, with the goal of providing a world-class education that motivates students to achieve high academic standards and enjoy learning. Friendship PCS Onlineis a tuition-free option for students who seek alternatives to a traditional brick-and-mortar education, as well as a more individualized approach to learning. Teachers communicate with students and parents via phone, email. Lessons and learning activities occur both online and in the home classroom. "Friendship Public Charter School Online is a program tailored to families who are interested in becoming more involved in their children's education," said Donald L. Hense, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Friendship Public Charter School. "Our teachers partner with parents to ensure each student receives an individualized education that allows for flexibility and differences in learning style." With more than 700 lessons per subject available through the online curriculum, students can dive deeply into areas of interest which is especially beneficial for advanced learners, who often do not have the option of moving ahead in a traditional classroom filled with many students. At Friendship PCS Online, students' individual learning styles are recognized and the mastery-based curriculum provides more individualized instruction. Parent involvement is key to a students' success in the home learning environment. Friendship PCS Online will host several online and in-person events for families to learn more about the school and meet with faculty members and staff. More information on these events, the school, and how to submit a My School DC lottery application can be found at http://fpcso.k12.com/. About Friendship Public Charter School Online Friendship Public Charter School Online (Friendship PCS Online), an online public charter school authorized by the Public Charter School Board, is a high-quality education program for Washington, DC students in grades K through 8. Friendship PCS Online is the District of Columbia's only virtual elementary and middle school. In partnership with K, the nation's largest provider of proprietary curriculum and online education programs, Friendship PCS Online gives students the chance to learn in the ways that are right for them. For more information, visit http://fpcso.k12.com/. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150817/258895LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/friendship-public-charter-school-online-welcomes-lottery-applications-for-2016-2017-school-year-300206725.html SOURCE Friendship Public Charter School Online [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 20, 2016] Santa Clara Alumnus Chosen as Schwarzman Scholar Santa Clara University alumnus Jesse Caemmerer has been chosen for the inaugural class of Schwarzman Scholars for the Master's degree program at Tsinghua University in Beijing starting in August 2016. "I'm honored to be selected as part of the Schwarzman Scholars' first cohort of students. It is an exciting opportunity to advance my focus on U.S.-China relations through an immersion experience that combines academics and leadership training, and brings together Chinese and Western approaches to understand the most pressing political issues," said Caemmerer. "I am especially looking forward to learning from such an accomplished and diverse peer group." The 111 Schwarzman Scholars were selected from more than 3,000 applicants, with an acceptance rate of 3.7%. The first class of Schwarzman Scholars is composed of students from 32 countries and 71 universities, with 44 percent from the United States, 21 percent from China, and 35 percent from the rest of the world. Expenses for each scholar are fully funded by the program. Caemmerer, who hails from Bellingham, Washington, was a first-generation student at SCU and graduated in 2014 with a B.S. in politics and international relations and a minor in East & Southeast Asian regional studies. In 2013, while still at SCU, Caemmerer was awarded the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship for undergraduate study abroad where he spent the Fall of 2013 in Beijing. In 2014, Caemmerer won a Rotary Global Fellowship to complete his M.S. in Strategic Studies from Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and graduated at the top of his class. He currently works in Singapore as a personal research analyst to Ambassador Barry Desker and coordinator of the Singapore Committee of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific. "I'm so proud of Jesse for being chosen for this prestigious program. They are calling these awards the 'China Rhode' because they are modeled after the Rhodes competition," said Leilani Miller, director of the Office of Student Fellowships, University Honors Program, and LEAD Scholars Program at Santa Clara. "He is an awesome student and individual and really deserves this opportunity." The selection process involved a rigorous application process designed to evaluate proven intellectual and academic ability, as well as leadership potential, strength of character, ability to anticipate emerging trends, and desire to understand other cultures, perspectives, and positions. The news of the announcement was also featured in a NY Times article that mentioned other institutions including Harvard, Princeton, and Yale whose students were also selected as scholars. About Schwarzman Scholars Schwarzman Scholars was inspired by the Rhodes Scholarship, which was founded in 1902 to promote international understanding and peace, and is designed to meet the challenges of the 21st century and beyond. Blackstone Co-Founder Stephen A. Schwarzman personally contributed $100 million to the program and is leading a fundraising campaign to raise an additional $350 million from private sources to endow the program in perpetuity. The $450 million endowment will support up to 200 scholars annually from the U.S., China and around the world for a one-year Master's Degree program at Tsinghua University in Beijing, one of China's most prestigious universities and an indispensable base for the country's scientific and technological research. Scholars chosen for this highly selective program will live in Beijing for a year of study and cultural immersion, attending lectures, traveling, and developing a better understanding of China. Admissions opened in the fall of 2015, with the first class of students in residence in 2016. Learn more at www.schwarzmanscholars.org, like on Facebook (News - Alert) at www.facebook.com/SchwarzmanScholars and follow on Twitter (News - Alert) at @SchwarzmanOrg. About Santa Clara University Santa Clara University, a comprehensive Jesuit, Catholic university located 40 miles south of San Francisco in California's Silicon Valley, offers its more than 9,000 students rigorous undergraduate curricula in arts and sciences, business, theology, and engineering, plus master's and law degrees and engineering Ph.D.s. Distinguished nationally by one of the highest graduation rates among all U.S. master's universities, California's oldest operating higher-education institution demonstrates faith-inspired values of ethics and social justice. For more information, see www.scu.edu. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160120005045/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 20, 2016] Scania: Past, Present and Future Meet in Scania's New Web Site Today, Scania's global online presence undergoes a major transformation and development. The new Scania Group web site will have a clear focus on news, images and videos about Scania's operations, businesses and transport solutions from around the world. "We continue to strengthen our online channels," says Staffan Ekengren, Head of Scania Newsdesk. "As a global company, we know the importance of a strong digital presence to reach our customers and other stakeholders." "Over the past year, it became increasingly evident that our Newsroom has increasingly become the primary focal point for stories and the gateway to social media," says Erica Zandelin, Head of Online Governance & Solutions at Scania. "We have now adapted to that development and combined our corporate and current information." Scania's new web site is a comprehensive arena for information not just about Scania, but also about developments within the transport and logistics fields - with a significant focus on sustainability. "Much of the long-lasting information on the new corporate site will be perceived as more dynamic since we link information on, for example, sustainability to current and previous stories that exemplify different aspects of the transport and logistics industry," says Erica Zandelin. As Scania in 2016 celebrates its 125th year anniversary, the new web site also provides comprehensive historical content. For readers more interested n future transport solutions the innovation section will be a treat. The new Scania Group web site can be found at http://www.scania.com/group. For deeper and more detailed insight into Scania's products and transport solutions, please see http://www.scania.com/global. Scania is one of the world's leading manufacturers of trucks and buses for heavy transport applications, and of industrial and marine engines. Service-related products account for a growing proportion of the company's operations, assuring Scania customers of cost-effective transport solutions and maximum uptime. Scania also offers financial services. Employing some 42,000 people, the company operates in about 100 countries. Research and development activities are concentrated in Sweden, while production takes place in Europe and South America, with facilities for global interchange of both components and complete vehicles. In 2014, net sales totalled SEK 92.1 billion and net income amounted to SEK 6 billion. Scania press releases are available on www.scania.com (http://www.scania.com/se) This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160120005848/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 20, 2016] Wolters Kluwer Wins 113 New ProVation MD Customers in 2015, Driven by EndoWorks Retirement The Health division of Wolters Kluwer, a leading global provider of information and point of care solutions for the healthcare industry, signed agreements in 2015 to replace Olympus EndoWorks with ProVation MD at 86 healthcare facilities - decisions influenced heavily by Olympus selecting ProVation MD as a preferred replacement for its endowriter software, which is being retired in 2018. Recognizing the opportunity presented by the Olympus announcement to standardize procedure documentation system-wide, several integrated delivery networks will also implement the industry-leading gastroenterology structured reporting software across GI suites in an additional 27 facilities. Among the health systems making the move from EndoWorks to ProVation MD is Florida Medical Clinic, a multi-specialty clinic providing residents in two Florida counties with access to the latest advances in patient care. Founded in 1993, Florida Medical Clinic is made up of 20 locations staffed by a dedicated team of more than 200 providers comprised of primary care and academically trained specialists in more than 40 medical and surgical modalities. "After thoroughly evaluating replacement options, the 'preferred replacement vendor' stamp of approval by Olympus coupled with the promise of an easy transition without extra costs for dedicated servers and migration support moved ProVation MD to the top of our list," said Sandy Harris, Director of Florida Medical Center ASC (News - Alert). "Its clinician-friendly design, minimal impact on productivity and secure interfacing with our EHR system, as well as its outstanding reputation as an industry leader in GI documentation, reporting and coding, ultimately garnered unanimous physician approval and sealed the deal." The only dedicated structured reporting and coding solution that provides clinically relevant, intuitive software for more accurate and complete documentation of procedures, ProVation MD Gastroenterology allows physicians to efficiently capture robust detail from even the most complex procedures. It then automatically generates clear, complete procedure notes and appropriate reimbursement codes, quickly, easily and without dictation. By automatically applying the reimbursement codes and disseminating critical procedural information, ProVationMD ensures appropriate payment, reduces costs and streamlines quality reporting while improving clinical communication and care coordination. To lessen the impact on its customers as it phases out EndoWorks over three years, Olympus identified ProVation MD and one other software solution as recommended replacements. That means Wolters Kluwer is one of just two vendors able to license an Olympus-developed export utility to seamlessly migrate data from EndoWorks to ProVation MD. "This is an important distinction, as the utility enables a more robust and comprehensive transition that is transparent to end users and requires limited assistance from the customer's IT staff," said David A. Del Toro, President & CEO of Clinical Software Solutions at Wolters Kluwer. "That export utility, combined with our 20 years as a leader in GI documentation and extensive experience in managing clinical data, are why a growing number of EndoWorks customers are turning to ProVation for a smooth, disruption-free migration. Also at play is our unparalleled end user training and world-class customer service, which combine to ensure maximum clinician adoption and accelerated ROI." Click here for more information on converting to ProVation MD from Olympus EndoWorks. Follow ProVation on Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+. About Wolters Kluwer Wolters Kluwer is a global leader in professional information services. Professionals in the areas of legal, business, tax, accounting, finance, audit, risk, compliance and healthcare rely on Wolters Kluwer's market leading information-enabled tools and software solutions to manage their business efficiently, deliver results to their clients, and succeed in an ever more dynamic world. Wolters Kluwer reported 2014 annual revenues of 3.7 billion. The group serves customers in over 170 countries, and employs over 19,000 people worldwide. The company is headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands. Wolters Kluwer shares are listed on Euronext Amsterdam (WKL) and are included in the AEX and Euronext 100 indices. Wolters Kluwer has a sponsored Level 1 American Depositary Receipt program. The ADRs are traded on the over-the-counter market in the U.S. (WTKWY). Wolters Kluwer Health is a leading global provider of information and point of care solutions for the healthcare industry. For more information about our products and organization, visit http://www.wolterskluwer.com/, follow @WKHealth or @Wolters_Kluwer on Twitter (News - Alert), like us on Facebook, follow us on LinkedIn, or follow WoltersKluwerComms on YouTube. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160120005189/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 19, 2016] Technavio Announces Top Five Vendors in the Light Commercial Vehicle Market in Europe from 2016-2020 Technavio has announced the top five leading vendors in their recent light commercial vehicle market (LCV) in Europe report. This research report also lists 11 other prominent vendors that are expected to impact the market during the forecast period. To identify the leading vendors, Technavio's market research analysts have considered the top players contributing to the overall revenue of this market. The report also includes market forecast of the light commercial vehicle market in Europe based on key regions, including France, the UK, and Germany. Vendor competitive landscape According to the latest report by Technavio, the LCV market in Europe is highly fragmented and fiercely competitive, consisting of both international and domestic firms. The use of LCVs in this region is rising, slowly overtaking the commercial vehicle market. In terms of sales volume, LCVs present direct competition to passenger vehicles. As the demand for LCVs rises, many foreign players are entering the market. As brand loyalty is important for consumers in Europe, many major brands have started leveraging their names by producing LCVs to fight the foreign competition. Countries such as France, the UK, Germany, Spain, Italy, Belgium, and Poland are key areas targeted by manufacturers, as they represent more than 70% of the total European LCV market. Top five leading companies of LCV Ford (News - Alert) Ford was established in 1903 and is headquartered in Michigan, US. The company is involved in automotive vehicle manufacturing and financing. It sells commercial vehicles and automobiles (under the brand Ford) and luxury cars (under the brand Lincoln). It also owns Australian performance car manufacturer FPV and Brazilian SUV manufacturer Troller. Siddharth J, a lead research analyst from Technavio's automotive research team says, "Ford operates through two sectors - automotive and financial services. The automotive services sector is further divided by geography, which include North America, South America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Africa. The financial services sector comprise of Ford Credit and other financial services." Peugeot Citroen Peugeot Citroen was founded in 1976 and is headquartered in Paris, France. It designs, manufactures, and sells commercial vehicles and passenger cars worldwide. It operates in four segments: automotive, automotive equipment, finance, and others. The company earned revenue of USD 71.24 billion in FY2014. The company has earned more than 70% of its revenue from the European market. The company also spent around USD 4.47 billion on R&D in the same year. Renault Renault was founded in 1898 and is headquartered in Paris, France. It designs and manufactures automobiles and markets them under the brands Renault, Dacia, and Renault Samsung (News - Alert) Motors in 125 countries. The company also provides financial services. At the end of the fiscal year in December 2014, the company had 117,395 employees, and its R&D expenses accounted for USD 2.89 billion and its revenue for USD 54.56 billion. Toyota Toyota was founded in 1937 and is headquartered in Bunkyo-Ku, Tokyo, Japan. It engages in the production and sales of motor vehicles. Toyota operates four plants and offices in Japan and 54 manufacturing companies in 28 countries and regions outside Japan. Its vehicles are sold in over 170 countries and regions. In FY2015, the company employed 344,109 people and generated revenue of USD 247.8 billion. Volkswagen Volkswagen was founded in 1938 and is headquartered in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, Germany. It is an automobile manufacturer that employed more than 592,586 people as of December 2014. The company's revenue accounted for USD 269.13 billion that same year, posting an increase of 2.88%. In 2014, Volkswagen increased the number of vehicles to 10.13 million from 9.7 million in 2013. The company has 119 production plants in 11 countries in the Americas, Asia, and Africa and 20 plants in Europe. It sells its vehicles in 153 countries. Other prominent vendors of the light commercial vehicle market Technavio's market study report also highlights the other prominent vendors in this market, which include Anhui Jianghuai Automobile, Ashok Leyland, AVTO VAZ, GAZ Group, General Motors (News - Alert), Hyundai Motor, Isuzu Motors, PACCAR, Tata Motors, Opel, and Daimler. Browse Related Reports: Global Telehandler Market 2016-2020 Global Pedelec Market 2015-2019 Commercial Vehicle Telematics Market in the Americas 2015-2019 Purchase these three reports for the price of one by becoming a Technavio subscriber. Subscribing to Technavio's reports allows you to download any three reports per month for the price of one. Contact [email protected] with your requirements and a link to our subscription platform. About Technavio Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. The company develops over 2000 pieces of research every year, covering more than 500 technologies across 80 countries. Technavio has about 300 analysts globally who specialize in customized consulting and business research assignments across the latest leading edge technologies. Technavio analysts employ primary as well as secondary research techniques to ascertain the size and vendor landscape in a range of markets. Analysts obtain information using a combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches, besides using in-house market modeling tools and proprietary databases. They corroborate this data with the data obtained from various market participants and stakeholders across the value chain, including vendors, service providers, distributors, re-sellers, and end-users. If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at [email protected]. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160119005862/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 19, 2016] Privacy Advocate Anonabox Launches Indiegogo Campaign, 'Project Blue', Featuring Limited Edition VPN Device CHICO, Calif., Jan. 19, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Nearly a year ago, privacy advocates Anonabox closed out an extremely successful Indiegogo campaign, meeting its funding goal by more than 400 percent. Today, the industry's leading Tor and VPN brand launched its sophomore campaign. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160119/323785 Today, Anonabox launched Project Blue, a fundraising effort to give back to one of computer hacking's founding fathers, legendary hacker and "phone phreaker", John Draper. The 72-year-old Draper (also known as "Captain Crunch" or "Crunchman") is writing his autobiography, and Anonabox is helping to pay for publishing through this crowdfunding campaign. "When we heard the Crunchman was riting his autobiography, we wanted to find a way to help him financially, as he writes his amazing life story," says Anonabox CEO Marc Preston. "This was an opportunity we simply couldn't pass up." Backers of Project Blue can choose from several package levels, including the limited edition blue Anonabox PRO, a functional Project Blue whistle that doubles as a USB drive or signed John Draper memorabilia. The PRO router includes Tor and VPN capabilities, WiFi uplink, a USB port for filesharing and access to the Deep Web, among other features. And, at Draper's request, additional proceeds will benefit the Tor Project. The month-and-a-half-long campaign runs through March 5, and has no official monetary goal, as the Anonabox team hopes to raise as much money as possible to fast-track John's autobiography. Draper's influence in early counterculture and computer hacking circles remains significant. His work with contemporaries Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak helped pave the way for the founding of Apple Computer. Draper's is perhaps best known for the 1971 discovery that he could open up phone lines for long-distance calls by blowing a toy whistle found in a box of Cap'n Crunch cereal. Thus, the moniker Captain Crunch or Crunchman. About Anonabox Anonabox privacy routers provide a robust layer of anonymity and privacy to web browsing by routing Internet traffic over the Tor network or via built-in VPN services (Virtual Private Network). These measures cloak the user's IP address and location, allow the user to easily access the Deep Web, bypass censorship, and much more. To learn more about Anonabox, visit our website, or find us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/privacy-advocate-anonabox-launches-indiegogo-campaign-project-blue-featuring-limited-edition-vpn-device-300206642.html SOURCE Anonabox [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 20, 2016] Nikon-Only Store Grays of Westminster Announces 'The Legend and The Legacy' by Gillian Greenwood LONDON, January 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The multi-award-winning Nikon-only shop based in London have published a superb 208-page full colour hardback volume to mark their 30th anniversary, with an introduction by Kazuo Ushida, President of the Nikon Corporation of Japan. Author Gillian Greenwood's Grays of WestminsterExclusively Nikon: The Legend and The Legacy, chronicles the story of the world's only camera shop to have been granted a Coat of Arms by Her Majesty's College of Arms. The legendary shop, based in London, was founded 30 years ago by Gray Levett. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160119/323713 ) Comprising 20 chapters and measuring 200 x 280mm, the book covers the company's history, exploring its growth from humble beginnings to one of the world's most celebrated photo-outlets, serving a global database of customers, with an unparalleled reputation for customer service tat is second to none. "Grays of Westminster and Nikon represent a timeless partnership and I am honoured to be able to celebrate their 30th Anniversary and to be a part of their journey through history." These words from the book's introduction by Kazuo Ushida, President of the Nikon Corporation of Japan, set the scene for an extraordinary book about an extraordinary shop. Magnificently illustrated with over 180 images, many by master photographer Tony Hurst, the book includes contributions from major names in the world of photography and film production such as Heather Angel, Jim Brandenburg, Neil Lucas, Mike Maloney, OBE, Joe McNally, Tristan Oliver, Moose Peterson and Richard Young as well as celebrity customers such as Michael Bond (creator of Paddington Bear), Stanley Kubrick and David Suchet, each giving their impression of the shop and the high level of service and help they have received over the years. There is also a chapter on the history of photography and the development of the Nikon brand, as well as a biographical profile of Gray Levett. The book will be launched on Wednesday, 3rd February, but is currently available to pre-order directly from Grays of Westminster: http://www.graysofwestminster.co.uk/books/legend-and-legacy.php For further information, please contact: Gray Levett Grays of Westminster...Exclusively Nikon 40 Churton Street Pimlico, London SW1V 2LP Tel: +44(0)20-7828-4925 [email protected] http://www.graysofwestminster.co.uk SOURCE Grays of Westminster [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 20, 2016] Haier Tops Euromonitor's Major Appliances Global Brand Rankings for Seventh Consecutive Year BEIJING, Jan. 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Haier, the world's leading home appliances and consumer electronics brand, has once again been named by Euromonitor International as the number one major appliances brand in the world. This is the seventh consecutive year that Haier has received the accolade recognizing the company as the largest home appliances globally by market share. According to data released by Euromonitor International, which is an independent and leading global provider of business intelligence on industries, countries, companies and consumers, Haier attained a 9.8% market share of global retail volumes in 2015. A transformation in the global major appliances market was witnessed in 2015, with consumers increasingly using Internet platforms to call for individualized product requirements. Outdated and closed industrial manufacturing systems are today unable to satisfy these bespoke demands of the individual customer. Companies therefore need to be able to listen and react to consumers' changing needs in order to stand out from the market. In spite of weak growth in the global home appliances market, Haier was able to succeed and maintain its recognized position as the world's leading home appliances manufacturer largely owing to its ability and desire to adapt its business model to the Internet age and the shifting demands of connected consumers. Haier has created an entire ecosystem that nurtures innovative ways to engage with its consumers. Online factories are such an example. They are a model of manufacturing developed by Haier in line with future visions as set out in Industry 4.0. Haier has already launched a number of these online factories, including a refrigerator factory in Shenyang and an air conditioner factory in Zhengzhou. By linking their consumers to factories and suppliers, Haier's consumers have become designers and are able to directly tke part in the R&D and manufacturing processes for new products. This is in line with the company's aspiration to make the world both their R&D Department and their Human Resources Department. These new ways of engaging with its customers as well as Haier's increasing utilization of popular smart home solutions led to the development of a number of notable product launch successes in 2015. Examples such as the company's Clean-Free washing machine -- that cleans its tub while washing clothes -- helped Haier gain top spot in Euromonitor's International product category ranking for Home Laundry Appliances. Likewise, its Xinchu Refrigerator -- that connects to the Internet to become an interactive platform enabling users to watch videos and order food while cooking -- was another product hit in 2015, helping Haier top the Refrigeration Appliances product category ranking. Haier also ranked first in Euromonitor's International rankings in two other product categories: Freezers and Electrical Wine Coolers/Chillers. Going forward into 2016, Haier, which announced a strategic partnership agreement with General Electric as well as the acquisition of GE Appliances last Friday, January 15, plans to continue its evolution from a traditional manufacturing company into a platform to incubate entrepreneurs. Haier will continue to build its co-creation platform in 2016 as part of its commitment to win together through integrity and create value for all its stakeholders. About Haier Group Haier is the world's leading home appliance provider, with global revenues amounting to US$32.09 billion and profits of US$2.40 billion in 2014. Its mission is to create innovative home appliances that anticipate the fast-changing needs of consumers all around the world. Haier has been named the number one global home appliance brand every year for the last six years by Euromonitor International, a world leader in strategy research for consumer markets, and in 2012 the Boston Consulting Group named Haier one of the ten most innovative companies in the world as well as the most innovative company in the consumer and retail category. Its global headquarters are based in the Chinese city of Qingdao and it also has regional headquarters in both Paris and New York to serve its clients in Europe and America. Haier also has 5 R&D centers, 66 trading companies and 21 industrial parks worldwide. Haier Electronics Group Co., Ltd. a subsidiary of Haier Group, is listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKG: 1169). By drawing on its competitive strengths in marketing, the Internet, logistics and services, Haier Electronics Group aims to provide an integrated and unrivalled consumer experience. Qingdao Haier Co., also a subsidiary of Haier Group, is listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SHA: 600690) and focuses on driving innovation in smart home technologies. Media Contact Mark Rushton FTI Consulting Tel: +86 10 8591 1060 Mob: +86 159 0116 7075 Email: [email protected] To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/haier-tops-euromonitors-major-appliances-global-brand-rankings-for-seventh-consecutive-year-300206919.html SOURCE Haier [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 20, 2016] Ixia Selects Kinaxis RapidResponse Solutions Provider to Manage Supply Chain Volatility with Cloud Service OTTAWA, Jan. 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Kinaxis (TSX:KXS), provider of RapidResponse, delivering cloud-based SCM and S&OP applications, today announced Ixia, a leading provider of network testing, visibility and security solutions that strengthen applications across physical and virtual networks, has selected RapidResponse to act as their supply chain planning system of record. Ixia will utilize the RapidResponse Demand Planning, Supply Action Management, and Inventory Management applications as key technology components to make tradeoff decisions rapidly and effectively, while staying in line with their key performance metrics. "As Ixia continues to grow, our global supply chain becomes more complex," said Mac Swink, Senior Manager, Supply Operations at Ixia. "Kinaxis RapidResponse provides us with a single integrated system that takes multi-directional data from our partners and delivers a reliable, all-inclusive supply network picture with reduced data latency. Working with Kinaxis will allow us to automate our supply and demand processes, while enabling us to execute impactful actions based on solid data." "We're thrilled to be able to work with Ixia in delivering the tools they need to take their planning processes to the next level," said Kinaxis CEO John Sicard. "RapidResponse will provide them with a comprehensive set of capabilities, allowing a shift away from spreadsheets to a more integrated and intuitive approach to their supply chain management practices." Ixia will use RapidResponse to assist in managing increasing supply chain complexity as well as demand and supply volatility. By deployingthe RapidResponse platform, Ixia will be able to realize the following benefits: Visibility provide the ability to proactively identify inventory risks and opportunities, allowing for informed tradeoff decisions, and closer monitoring and management of performance against targets. Accuracy improve demand forecast accuracy and demand planning process cycle times while allowing for collaboration across functions. Flexibility enable the ability for supply chain practitioners to manage through exceptions, supporting easier prioritization and stronger focus on actions that provide the greatest impact on performance metrics. Ixia helps to protect customers against the unpredictable world of IT and security threats through actionable insight into the performance, stability and security of their applications and networks. Ixia enables customers to deliver a seamless, reliable and secure experience to their customers. Whether it is testing a product, validating the integrity of a security infrastructure or monitoring a real-time operation, Ixia can help. For more Kinaxis news, follow Kinaxis on LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ or Facebook. Forward-Looking Statements Certain statements in this release constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements include statements as to Kinaxis' growth opportunities and the potential benefits of, and demand for, Kinaxis' products and services. These statements are subject to certain assumptions, risks and uncertainties, including our view of the relative position of Kinaxis' products and services compared to competitive offerings in the industry. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such statements. Kinaxis' actual results, performance, achievements and developments may differ materially from the results, performance, achievements or developments expressed or implied by such statements. Risk factors that may cause the actual results, performance, achievements or developments of Kinaxis to differ materially from the results, performance, achievements or developments expressed or implied by such statements can be found in the public documents filed by Kinaxis with Canadian securities regulatory authorities. Kinaxis assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as expressly required by law. About Kinaxis Kinaxis is a leading provider of cloud-based subscription software that enables our customers to improve and accelerate analysis and decision-making across their supply chain operations. The supply chain planning and analytics capabilities of our product, RapidResponse, create the foundation for managing multiple, interconnected supply chain management processes. By using the single RapidResponse product instead of combining individual disparate software solutions, our customers gain visibility across their supply chains, can respond quickly to changing conditions, and ultimately realize significant operating efficiencies. SOURCE Kinaxis Inc. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] City Council discuss owner occupied home rehabilitation program The $250,000 grant would be would be split between 15-20 city homeowners, who would be afforded up to $15,000 each for repairs to their homes. You have reached a premium content area of Transitions. To read this entire article please login if you are already a Transitions subscriber. Not a subscriber? Subscribe today for access to: Full access to the website, including premium articles videos, country reports and searchable archives (containing over 25,000 articles). Google Pixel 7 features coming to Pixel 6 heres what to expect Google has announced that the Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro are getting some of the Pixel 7s new features, and older Pixel phones are even getting a few updates. Here's what we know so far. Best international phone plans what travelers need to know Before you head overseas, find out what your cellphone provider will charge you to use your phone. Here are the different options offered by the four major wireless carriers. If you were wondering what happened to Triple R last night, you need only ask the driver of the car that crashed into a fire hydrant near the Melbourne community stations studios last night. As Broadsheet Melbourne reports, the driver lost control of their car and hit a fire hydrant outside the stations Brunswick East studios, taking the station off air for several hours. Broadsheet staffer Emily Naismith was live on air with co-host Ben Birchall when the crash occurred shortly before 8pm last night. We were in the studio and Im not exactly sure what happened, but a car hit a fire hydrant, and possibly another car, and water started pouring into the studio, Naismith told Broadsheet. The hydrant has completely burst off at the ground and water is shooting two or three stories into the air. I dont think anyones seriously hurt, but its hard to tell at this stage. The car reportedly hit Naismith and Birchalls bikes, which were parked outside the station, before crashing into the hydrant and coming to a stop about 30 metres away. I went to move our bikes but theyre right near the fire hydrant, said. The car destroyed the pole [our bikes] were locked to, waters pouring out of the ground and theyve had to turn the power off at Triple R. It might be off for six hours. And @3RRRFM is now without power. Have to wait for the water to be turned off and stuff dries out. pic.twitter.com/i9dMZEU2JH Brett Boxcutter (@bbox) January 19, 2016 Yep- we are off air. We're working on it and will keep you updatedperhaps we'll build an arc?? https://t.co/6dD0Sl016h Triple R FM (@3RRRFM) January 19, 2016 Huge thanks to the hard working crew worked through the night to get us back on air! Programs back to normal & office is closed. Stay tuned Triple R FM (@3RRRFM) January 19, 2016 The hydrant shot water into the air for more than half an hour, covering Nicholson St in 20 centimetres of water. According to the Herald Sun, crews took just over an hour to contain the water. Making matters even more bizarre, less than 24 hour after Triple R flooded, Broadsheet reports that fellow Melbourne community radio station PBS FM has lost power after a nearby power-line exploded, taking the station off air. Station Manager Adrian Basso reportedly spotted a fire atop an electricity pole across the road from the stations entrance just before 10am before witnessing the power line exploding and crashing down onto other lines. Basso isnt sure if any permanent damage occurred and the stations broadcast technician, Bill Runting, who also works at Triple R, is still assessing the situation. Luckily, PBS managed to get ahold of a power generator and get back on air. Local guitar pop/ indie garage rockers Wasters have just dropped their brand new single Bye Bye Bye and its an strangely romantic effort from the Sydney crew. Bye Bye Bye is the tale of an alien who scorched the earth and fled to outer space. Mixing a little bit angst with sunny pop melodies and gooey fuzz guitar the guys have managed to produce a track that traverses many music universes while still staying wholly unique to the Wasters sound. Having only been around since 2014, the trio are early making their mark on the Sydney music scene thanks to an impressive string of releases including End of the World, Rollercoaster and now Bye Bye Bye. Check out the single below and if you like what youre hearing pop by the bands Facebook page for more info on their upcoming EP tour. Single Launch Dates Thu, 21st Jan Brighton Up Bar, Syd NSW w/ Hedge Fund & The Water Board Wed, 3rd Feb Rad Bar, Wollongong NSW w/ Ugly Mundays, Love Buzz & Postmentalist Thu, 11th Feb Bar Open, Melb VIC w/ Face Face, Going Swimming & Beloved Elk Fri, 12th Whole Lotta Love, Melb VIC w/ Luke Seymoup Band The founder of a major US PR and management company has resigned from his own company after he was accused of sexual harassment by several female musicians and industry figures. As Billboard reports, in a series of tweets sent out Monday, Dirty Projectors vocalist Amber Coffman accused Life or Death PR and Management founder Heathcliff Berru of sexual harassment. Coffman recounted an incident that took place a couple of years ago, when Berru RUBBED my ass and BIT my hair at a bar in front of several of Coffmans friends. Soon after Coffman issued the tweets, several other female musicians, including Best Coast frontwoman Bethany Cosentino, claimed to have been harassed by Berru as well. Late Tuesday afternoon US time, Life or Death announced that Berru had stepped down from his position as CEO, citing their zero tolerance policy for the kind of behaviour described in the allegations. We take these allegations very seriously, a statement read. The men and women who make up this company do not, and will not, condone or tolerate any conduct described in the on-line postings. Was just re-telling/re-remembering a story abt how a very popular music publicist RUBBED my ass and BIT my hair at a bar a couple years ago Amber Coffman (@Amber_Coffman) January 19, 2016 This was someone I barely knew and had just met. He did it in front of 4 of my male friends. Still makes me so damn mad thinking about it Amber Coffman (@Amber_Coffman) January 19, 2016 Still mad at myself as well for not punching him in the nose, but I totally froze up. Weird survival instinct I guess Amber Coffman (@Amber_Coffman) January 19, 2016 It was Heathcliff Berru, at Life or Death PR and MGMT Amber Coffman (@Amber_Coffman) January 19, 2016 We are taking measures to ensure that the alleged behavior did not, and will not, make its way into company operations or impact our commitment to promoting art and assisting our clients. We are grateful to Heathcliff Berru for all the work hes done to date and his creative vision at the company. We appreciate and support his decision to step down as CEO of Life Or Death. Coffman has since claimed that when she informed Dirty Projectors label, Domino Records, of the incident, the company stopped working with Life or Death. [include_post id=455980] Domino records asked me what I wanted them to do at the time- I said I couldnt make that decision for them. They made their own decision, Coffman tweeted. Meanwhile, Cosentino thanked Coffman for bravely speaking the truth Im glad someone finally spoke up. Little Empire Musics Christy Merriner and musician Roxy Lange also shared details of their experiences with Berru. Life or Death clients Wavves and DIIV have both posted tweets saying they will no longer be working with the company, who also represent Killer MIke, DAngelo, Of Montreal, and Odd Future. Following the success of this years sold-out UNIFY Gathering, Team UNIFYs Luke Logemann has issued a statement celebrating the festivals achievement and dispelling some of the sore sentiment in the Australian heavy community in recent months. In a lengthy statement, Logemann uses UNIFYs sold-out sophomore event as a prime example that #heavymusicisaliveandwell in Australia, despite the collapse of Soundwave and the recent postponement of the ambitious Legion Festival. I wanted to talk about our event in a larger sense, and touch on why we started this and where it is going, he writes. Obviously, the Australian festival scene has taken a hit recently. And it feels like not a day goes by without our social media feeds being inundated with negative stories about festivals being cancelled and falling apart. And while everyone is drawn to clicking on this endless stream of failure, I hope the media sites and people around will take the time to highlight what a successful and rewarding transaction just took place. After touting the success of UNIFY 2016, Logemann confirms that 2017 is already in works, but stresses that organisers will not be going overboard, preferring to maintain the integrity of the event and improve it as years go by. In our first year, we sold 3000 tickets in 3 hours. We could have sold more, but we didnt want to bite off more than we could chew. Thats been the UNIFIED / THE HILLS ARE ALIVE model since forever, Logemann begins. The fans were always there, and they deserve to not be scrutinised for what they choose to attend. It will naturally be bigger and better than last year, with the key word here being naturally well grow it slightly, and well improve and tweak the things we need to, but we wont be trying to expand it beyond what it needs to be. The statement even seems to take a couple of veiled jabs at Soundwave and Legion Festival, saying, well only make announcements when we have 100% locked everything in and know what we are doing. Ive been asked probably a hundred times now whether we will try and replace Soundwave and fill that space, Logemann continues. But thats not what this event is supposed to be. [include_post id=469234] Obviously via our various business ventures in the heavy music space (UNFD, 24 Hundred, UNIFY) we have a wealth of experience, and we will be exploring how to use that to cater for heavy music festival fans all around the country. But for now, UNIFY will remain what it is a professionally run community experience in country Victoria by the fans and for the fans. I hope the spirit of this announcement is recognised as one of gracefulness and positivity. The statement closes with a reminder that its not the fans at fault when a festival collapses. The festivals that have shut down here arent an indication of the fans not showing support or complaining too much, Logemann writes. The fans were always there, and they deserve to not be scrutinised for what they choose to attend. This has been an industry problem first and foremost. This March will see the return of one of contemporary rock and rolls most beloved vanguards, Buckcherry. With just a couple of months until the band touches down, theyve now announced their Aussie tour supports. Joining the band at 170 Russell in Melbourne will be Palace of the King and Electric Dynamite, while Brisbane fans will party to the sounds of The Poor and the second appearance from Electric Dynamite. Meanwhile, Palace of the King will be tagging along for Buckcherrys Sydney show and the crowd congregating at Metropolis in Perth will be treated to appearances from local favourites Legs Electric and Opia. Tickets for Buckcherrys 2016 Australian tour are on sale now and theres still a few to snatch up so act quick before they sell out. Buckcherry Australian Tour Dates Monday, 14th March 2016 170 Russell, Melbourne w/Palace Of The King and Electric Dynamite Tuesday, 15th March 2016 Max Watts, Brisbane w/The Poor and Electric Dynamite Friday, 18th March 2016 Metro, Sydney w/Palace Of The King Saturday, 19th March 2016 Metropolis, Perth w/Legs Electric and Opia RIGHT NOW. . . CALL THIS THE KICK-ASS TKC PREGAME BEFORE THE JACKSON COUNTY DEMOCRATIC COMMITTEE SHOWDOWN TONITE!!! Fear The Sherwood Smith Showdown Will Exec Frank White Step Out Of The Shadow Of Mike Sanders??? Just A Quick Note On The Process From Our Conservative Pals Look For LeVotas To Flex Tonight You Heard It FIRST On TKC: Legislator Crystal Williams Could Already Be Looking At A Run For Exec!!! JACKSON COUNTY INSIDERS FEAR CRYSTAL'S LATEST GIRL POWER PUSH COULD BE THE START OF HER RUN FOR JACKSON COUNTY EXECUTIVE IN THE VERY NEAR FUTURE!!! Right now power brokers in Kansas City politics are frantically turning up their rhetoric in support of their favorite candidate who will ascend to power @ 12th & Oak without the help of pesky voters.To wit . . .We've talked to more than a few people about this topic over the past 24 hours and so far here's some of what we've learned with the help of Jackson County Insiders and. . .Mr. Smith is the most qualified and dedicated public servant up for the job tonight but that doesn't mean he's gonna win. He's the leading contender but Democratic Party organizeris getting a strong last minute show of support. Also, let's not forget that longstanding grudges with sitting members of the Legislature will hamper Sherwood Smith's chances. Legislatormight be the swing vote to decide who leads the 3 nominees who will be selected tonight.Under the radar, the staffing of the County Exec's office has now become a point of controversy.Don't get it twisted . . . TKC isn't saying that anybody should get the ax in these economic harsh times. But other people aren't so kind . . . Here's the word:Jackson County Insiders tell us . . . If Frank White is going to keep Mike's old staff then he has very little chance of making that office his own and will fall prey to many of the old pitfalls which confronted his predecessor.We'll have more on this later but word is that Team Sanders like things the way they are . . .Here's a quote that depicts how all of this looks to more Conservative denizens of the County . . ."The Democrat (Democrat-Socialist?) Committee of JaxCo will use public facilities at the Courthouse for partisan purposes again tonight. They have to pick three candidates this month for them to choose from at a future meeting to replace Frank White on the County Legislature. When will this use of public facilities for partisan purposes end?"Eastern Jack is looking to the LeVotas for leadership on this tough decision. They still hold a great deal of influence on the JaxCo Democratic Committee and tonight could be their moment to prove as much.And here's where things get scary . . . Recent mention ofreveals a frightening future possibility.Clearly, Team Crystal is laying the groundwork and using very limited influence to build a coalition of ladies and lackeys who idolize this longtime player despite her inability to accomplish much of anything in terms of legislation. Once again, Crystal seems to be concentrating on her next job rather than the one at hand.And all of this is simply prelude to another night wherein local Democrats tout "change" among a collection of familiar faces.Developing . . . Tourexpi, turizm haberleri, Reiseburos, tourism news, noticias de turismo, Tourismus Nachrichten, , travel tourism news, international tourism news, Urlaub, urlaub in der turkei, , holidays in Turkey, , global tourism news, dunya turizm, dunya turizm haberleri, Seyahat Acentas, This site is best viewed with Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0+, at a minimum screen resolution of 1024 x 768. Qatar government has reaffirmed his plans to finance the construction of a cathedral mosque and an Islamic university in Ingushetia, a republic in Russia's North Caucasus region, said a report. The Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani pledged his support for the project during a meeting with the Russian president, Ingushetia's head Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, told Interfax. The project envisages the construction of a mosque, able to accommodate more than 8,000 people, and an Islamic educational and cultural center, the report said. These new buildings will come up on an area of over 11,000 sq m, it added. Record of resilience From:chinadaily.com.cn | 2016-01-20 09:28 A rare photo shows chairman Mao Zedong attending a tea party celebrating VDay in Chongqing on Sept 4, 1945.[Photo provided to China Daily] Rare images from Taiwan of contributions made by common Chinese in the resistance against the Japanese invasion are part of book out in March, Yang Yang reports. The historian Li Hua discovered a treasure trove of images about the mainland on his visits to Taiwan since 2010. The materials form the basis of Memories of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, a book to be launched in March. It was a year earlier that he decided to travel to Taiwan after his colleagues attended a cross-Straits book fair in Xiamen, an eastern city on the mainland. The fair's hosts, Xiamen International Book Co, enabled Li's visits to several museums in Taiwan. His main purpose was to enrich the Democratic Parties History Museum of China in Chongqing. At Academia Historica and Taiwan Film Institute, he was amazed to find tens of thousands of rare photos of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1937-45) and historical events such as negotiations between the Communist Party of China and the Kuomintang in Southwest China's Chongqing city in 1945. "They were generous to let us see the original photos instead of copies. We were so excited that we read the catalogs for three consecutive days, trying to pick photos to buy," Li, 63, who is curator of Chongqing's Red Cliff Revolutionary History Museum, says of his Taiwan trips with colleagues. Women support the war with handmade clothes in October 1937.[Photo provided to China Daily] Many of the materials they saw in Taiwan were hardly available on the mainland back then, and Li decided to purchase more than just what was necessary to start the Democratic Party museum. A total of 15,000 photos shot between 1913 and 1949 were bought. Other than the museum's immediate requirement, Li's team bought some 6,200 photos, taken by journalists of a former KMT news agency from 1931-45, to produce the book. Published by Chongqing Publishing House, Memories of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression will be out in three volumes, covering nine themes related to the war, including military affairs, international cooperation, economic development, culture and education. "These photos vividly describe the Chinese cities at the time, how they were bombed by the Japanese army, how Chinese people fought against the aggression, as well as the politics, diplomacy and culture during the war," Li tells China Daily. The book is full of records. There's evidence, for example, of how the Marco Polo Bridge Incident was plotted by the Japanese army long before battle broke out on July 7, 1937. A photo shows a Chinese official telling reporters about the incident. Several other photos show how the Chinese army kept their word on a following cease-fire but the Japanese did not. "This is proof of our version of the incident as well as the war," Li says. Wounded soldiers pulled back from the front are taken care of in January 1938.[Photo provided to China Daily] From 1937-39, the Chinese fought the Japanese military on their own without help from other countries. Compared with the advanced weapons used by the Japanese in the war, the Chinese forces had limited modern weapons purchased from Italy and Germany. Some photos show Chinese people using broadswords to fight. During the three years, Chinese from different walks of life contributed to the resistance. A series of photos taken in Chongqing, for example, show a rickshaw puller and a paper-delivery boy both donating their respective daily incomes and a kung fu teacher giving away his broadsword handed down from generations. In another image, some female factory workers are seen sewing cotton-padded clothes for soldiers in the frontlines. There are other photos of utter distress: One shows how residents of Guilin in South China hid below a massive rock when the city was being bombed by the Japanese military. "People tried to live normal lives. When they heard the alerts for air raids, they would rush to hide. Once the raids ended, they would get back to work," Li says. Besides the resilience of the Chinese people, Li says he is impressed with major Chinese manufacturers' ability to continue producing goods despite the war. "I've seen very little reporting about economic life at the time, and how Chinese capitalists worked for the good of the country," he says. Historian Li Hua presents his discovery of rare photos of the wartime in a new book, Memories of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.[Photo provided to China Daily] The Japanese army first wanted to occupy Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces in East China as well as Shanghai because the area with 125 factories was a commercial hub. As a result, in 1937, the KMT government ordered all factories to move inland. Photos show that Minsheng Shipping, founded by Lu Zuofu in 1925, thus became the only operator of transportation along the Yangtze River, helping factories transfer their materials and people elsewhere. Another series of photos that is rarely seen on the mainland is focused on Mao Zedong during the 43-day Chongqing negotiations. The images show his meetings with KMT leaders during that period. Some of the other photos show Mao meeting with supporters of the KMT to dispel their misunderstandings about the CPC. The new book, Li says, will help people understand why the 20th century matters so much to the Chinese people. "We will be more confident as a nation." China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC) and China Harbour Engineering Company have signed a deal worth $3.3 billion with the Algerian government to build and operate the new centre transshipment port of Cherchell, said a report. Under the deal, the two sides will establish a consortium company to build the port, some 60 km west of Algiers, the country's capital, reported the Global Times. The port will have 23 docks capable of processing 6.5 million twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU) containers and 26 million tonnes of goods per year, stated the report citing Algeria's Transport Ministry. Port traffic in the country's central region is expected to hit 35 million tonnes or two million TEUs per year by 2050, it stated. The project is due to be completed within seven years and gradually put into service within four years with China's Shanghai Ports Group ensuring its management. Algeria's neighbours such as Mali will also benefit from a port, the report added. China-based Jushi Group, the world's largest manufacturer of fiberglass, is aiming to raise its annual production level to 200,000 metric tonnes in Egypt. Jushi Egypt for Fiberglass Industry, a subsidiary of Jushi Group, exported 95 per cent of its products, valued at $84 million, and paid about EGP135 million ($17 million) in tax to Egyptian government, Yang Jixiang, deputy general manager of Jushi Egypt, was quoted as saying in the China Daily report. "Two Chinese companies have entered China-Egypt Suez Economic and Trade Cooperation Zone to supply materials to us. While improving their technology to meet our need for Kaolin powder, a raw material for glass fiber, an Egyptian mill factory has increased its mills from one to four," Yang said. While assembling manufacturing line also with an output capacity of 80,000 tonnes, which will be put into operation in June, the company has started construction for capacity of another 40,000 tonnes, he added. "If you export fiberglass to Europe from China, you have to pay anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duty at a rate of 24.8 percent, along with the tariff. There is no tariff if you export to Europe and Middle East from Egypt and there is no anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duty at all," he said. He said it takes at least one month to transport product from China to Europe, but from Egypt, it takes only one week. The container could arrive in Turkey in only two days. Egypt is rich in human resources and also in natural resources for fiberglass industry. "The engineers in Egypt are well-educated. Though the efficiency in Egypt is not as high as that in our headquarters, it will improve as we invest more in training," Yang said. The Hotel Show Saudi Arabia will return for its fourth edition in May this year, and is set to welcome over 100 exhibitors and 4,000 plus senior decision-makers, buyers and budget holders from the kingdom's hotel, restaurant, tourism and resort industries. Dmg events and MICE Arabia, organisers of The Hotel Show Saudi Arabia, announced that the event will run from May 17 to 19 at the Jeddah Centre for Forums and Events, under the Patronage of His Highness Prince Abdullah Bin Saud Bin Mohammed Bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, Chairman of the Tourism Committee in Jeddah. Christine Davidson, group event director of the dmg events hospitality portfolio, said: "We are honoured to have the Patronage of His Highness Prince Abdullah Bin Saud Bin Mohammed Bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, Chairman of the Tourism Committee in Jeddah, for this high-profile and important business event for the hospitality market. It seems almost impossible to ignore the Saudi Arabian market at a time when STR Global is reporting it has the most hotel development underway in the Middle East and Africa with 34,415 rooms in 72 hotels under construction. This is being driven by the record number of inbound tourists forecast over the next five years, so the need to upgrade and develop is ongoing. It is exactly because of this that local, regional and international suppliers will keep the kingdom top of the target list for business development and The Hotel Show will continue to offer a route into a complicated but worthwhile market." Davidson continued: "To meet the needs of a growing audience we have increased the size of the show with more exhibitors and products on offer. We saw a significant increase in the number of buyers attending the show in 2015 and so to make it easier and more time efficient for them we have introduced sectors onto the exhibition floor - very like the approach we take at sister event - The Hotel Show Dubai. For the first time visitors will be able to source and visit exhibitors by product sector including technology and security; interiors and operating equipment; F&B, kitchens and bathrooms; and leisure and outdoor." The Vision Conference introduced last year will return to Saudi Arabia in 2016 featuring expert high profile speakers and sessions on latest trends, insight and developments together with Halal tourism. International exhibitors from Turkey, UAE, Italy, China, Pakistan, France, USA, India and the UK have confirmed 2016 participation and major names include: LG Electronics; STYLIS; Silent Night; Soft Dreams; CMT Technologies; Insignia Linen; Al Tabbaa Furniture; World Trading Services; Artasa and more. TradeArabia News Service You can opt out of certain types of cookies (e.g. those used in social media sharing) by choosing "I do not accept". The website will still largely function well, but with slightly less functionality in places. To manage your cookie preferences in future, visit the "Cookie Statement" link at the bottom of any page. News Oct 19th, 2022 at 15:35 The cloud-native IT will continue to be offered as a stand-alone product as well as integrated with the Guestline platform Vacation Tour And Travel Confirmed As Exhibitor At GNEX 2016 (TRAVPR.COM) UNITED STATES - January 19th, 2016 - Orlando, Florida - January 19, 2016 - (INTUITION by Perspective Group) -Vacation Tour and Travel, a leading provider of quality vacation services, has confirmed its sponsorship for the Sixth Annual Global Networking Expo, known as the GNEX Conference. This four-day event is taking place February 2 - 5, 2016, at the historical Ritz Carlton in New Orleans, LA. Vacation Tour and Travel prides itself on providing a powerful cruise certificate product that resort developers can use as gifts. Through its partnership with a leading cruise line, the company is able to offer a product that is flexible and has plenty of attractive options. Additionally, the vacation services provider has a staff of cruise experts who provide quality customer service and do not require certificate holders to jump through any hoops, register their certificate, or send in deposits. "Coming off a record setting year, we are eager to introduce our product to new developers and expand our base to include vacation clubs. We are excited to be a part of GNEX 2016, says Wanda Flemister, President of Vacation Tour and Travel. As an exhibitor, Vacation Tour and Travel will have a booth in the high traffic Networking Lounge, an area specially designed for delegates to meet while enjoying coffee and snacks. The lounge is located near to the main conference room and will be open all day throughout GNEX. This setup gives exhibitors the opportunity to present their products and services to industry professionals from all over the globe in one convenient location. Vacation Tour and Travel is a great resource for resort developer who are looking to increase customer satisfaction levels, says Paul Mattimoe, president and CEO of Perspective Group. It is our pleasure to welcome them to GNEX and we look forward to introducing them to new business prospects while making a few friends along the way. Each year GNEX brings together the timeshare industrys top level executives from around the world to a different destination for a high-energy conference filled with intimate networking opportunities, thought-provoking panel sessions, and one-of-a-kind experiences. This year will be no different. GNEX 2016 will take place at the luxurious Ritz Carlton in the infamous French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana during the week leading up to the world famous Mardi Gras celebration. GNEX attendees will have the opportunity to hop aboard the Creole Queen and enjoy live Jazz as the authentic paddle wheeler floats on the Mississippi river. Additionally, there will be a welcome reception, an exciting speed networking event, and a Louisiana Masquerade party. About Vacation Tour and Travel Vacation Tour and Travel has been servicing resort developers for 15 years. Its primary mission is to be a leading provider of high value premiums. The companys philosophy is simple always strive to exceed expectations. This philosophy is embodied in the core of its product. Through flexible programs, quality vacation offerings and an attentive customer service team, Vacation Tour and Travel has earned a reputation for being a leading provider of quality vacation services. For more information please call 501-329-5434 and speak with Brian Tyner. About Perspective Group Perspective Group provides the resort and shared ownership industrys most comprehensive, independent multi-media marketing and publishing services globally. Products and services range from intensive PR & Multimedia services such as INTUITIONa brand visibility service that includes custom content creation and distribution, social media monitoring, online marketing and brand reputation managementto the Perspective Magazine brand, which publishes the leading independent trade publication globally as well as custom membership magazines for clients. Perspective Group is a media sponsor of more than 30 industry events per year and serves on a number of trade association committees. The group also hosts its own annual industry leader events (should this be plural?), the Global Networking Expo (GNEX Conference), and Canadian Resort Conference (CRC) on behalf of the Canadian Resort Development Association (CRDA). For more information, visit http://perspectivemagazine.com. About GNEX Conference Hosted by Perspective Group, the leading global PR & Multimedia Company for the resort and shared ownership industry, the Global Networking Expo (GNEX) has created a truly unique conference format that focuses heavily on networking. Each year, the conference is shaped by the senior-level industry executives who attend. The conference, now in its sixth year, has not only become a major event on the resort and shared ownership industrys calendar, but also is hailed by many of its attendees as the one conference they must attend. For more information, visit www.gnexconference.com/. ### Search News Archive : Fast Travel News Promotion Via Search, Social Media + Email Follow Us On : VISA-VIETNAM.ORG HELPS FOREIGNERS AVAIL VISA IN A FAST & SECURE MANNER Industry: Visas Renowned travel agent, Visa-Vietnam.org enables clients to avail Vietnam visa on arrival for travellers to visit one of the safest tourist destinations in the world. (TRAVPR.COM) VIETNAM - January 20th, 2016 - Vietnam is perceived as one among the safe, attractive, exciting and friendly tourist spots in the world and has become a preferred holiday destination for touring enthusiasts. Obtaining visa to visit this magnificent location might be cumbersome with queuing and slower processing times. However, Visa-Vietnam.org focuses on offering a pleasant experience throughout the application process for customers looking to procure Vietnam visa. 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Their prompt and effectual services are offered at reasonable prices. ### Please contact the person or company listed above for information regarding the content of this press release. TravPR.com are not the issuers of this press release and are not responsible for the accuracy of the content. Share Release : CONTACT INFORMATION Name: Ta Hoai Nam Company: Nam Thang Travel Co., LTD Phone: 84966569956 Email: visavietor@gmail.com Web: PRESS RELEASE TAGS When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. Cookies collect information about your preferences and your devices and are used to make the site work as you expect it to, to understand how you interact with the site, and to show advertisements that are targeted to your interests. You can find out more about our use, change your default settings, and withdraw your consent at any time with effect for the future by visiting Cookies Settings, which can also be found in the footer of the site. Japans handful of star sand beaches have sand like few other places in the world. So much imagery comes to mind when considering beaches where the sand takes the shape of stars ... the potential for poetry is a bit unbridled. But perhaps the villagers residing on Japans Iriomote Island sum it up best. The star-shaped sands, legend has it, are the children of the North Star and Southern Cross. The descendents of the stars fell from the sky into the ocean of Okinawa, where they were killed by a sea serpent and remain as the beautiful star-shaped grains of sand scattered across the beach. The Japanese term for the sand is Hoshizuna. TokioMarineLife / Getty Images TokioMarineLife / Getty Images However ... science has a different take; the tiny shells are the product of ocean-dwelling one-celled protozoa called Baclogypsina sphaerulata. Their exoskeletons have armlets to assist them in getting around and for storing food. When these little guys die, their shells remain in the sea and the tide washes them ashore. Three islands in Okinawa Hatoma, Iriomote and Taketomi have beaches which are the lucky recipients of this rare and stellar gift. gyro / Getty Images gyro / Getty Images The star-shaped prizes are mingled in with more mundanely shaped grains of sand. After periods of storm and strong seas, the beach is even more abundant with the stars as they are loosened from the sea grass where they collect. Above is Hoshizuna-no-hama (star sand beach) on Iriomote island in Okinawa. TokioMarineLife / Getty Images While it's no secret that sand comes in infinite shapes and sizes, that nature gives us sand shaped like stars feels a bit extra special. The universe at your fingertips with the sea at your feet? Heaven and Earth together at last. Via Atlas Obscura Neeraj Bagga Tribune News Service Amritsar, January 20 Even after repeated announcements of reviving the tourism police in the holy city by the Amritsar Police Commissionerate, the project is hanging fire. The project is to be thrown open for the tourists. Rampant complaints of looting and cheating of tourists have brought infamy to the city, say people associated with the hospitality industry. They want the tourism police to be revived soon. They have complained at the postponement of reviving of the tourism police many times in the past. A hotelier, Sawinder Singh, said this despite the fact that the holy city was counted among the top 10 tourist destinations in the world. Earlier, two attempts of setting up the tourism police in 2002-2003 and 2008-2009 failed. Apparently, proper procedures were absent and suitable staff were not absorbed and trained for a delicate job like handling of tourists. Instead of burly cops of the Punjab police, known for their macho looks, the job of tourism police demands cops who are patient listeners, docile in approach and courteous in behaviour. For this, the city police had identified 56 men and women officials. They had undergone a five-day orientation course at an institute in Gurdaspur. They were also trained in speaking English and Hindi to communicate efficiently with the tourists. The tourism police project was to be operational under an ADCP- level official. However, all these efforts seem to be going waste, as many months have lapsed since these officials underwent training. In order to easily distinguish the tourism police cops, white colour badges with Amritsar Tourism Police inscribed in red and blue colour were to be placed on the upper portion of their arms. As many as eight kiosks of Amritsar Tourism Police were installed at key places, including the Golden Temple, railway station, Airport, bus stand, Durgiana temple, Ranjit Avenue, and Bhandari Bridge. These kiosks have been lying idle and unoccupied. Once display boards of tourism police used to be visible on these. However, now these have been replaced with advertisements boards. These booths used to act as tourist felicitation centres, providing all information of trains and flights schedules, nearest tourist circuits available, details of tourist places in and around the city and obviously registering complaints of tourists besides helping them in distress. Many incidents of robbery, misbehaviour and sexual assault on tourists have been reported, including foreigners. There is no denying that tourist footfall is high but a tourism-friendly atmosphere is missing. Tourists from around the world and across the country visit the city, but there is no attempt to make them feel comfortable and assist them during their stay here. For instance, a young Denmark national, who came to Amritsar regarding some research work in September 2013, was sexually assaulted. As soon as she alighted from train and crossed the road through the footbridge to reach her hotel, an auto-rickshaw driver, identified as Vicky, sexually harassed her. Though the police arrested the accused within 12 hours, it brought a bad name to the city. A family of three from Uttarakhand comprising Kulwant Singh, his wife Rupinder Kaur and father Arjun Singh, that was heading to pay obeisance at the Golden Temple were brutally assaulted by four residents in a road-rage instance in 2014. Besides, the attitude of shopkeepers, rickshaw-pullers and auto-rickshaw drivers towards these tourists needs to be improved. Many instances of fleecing, looting of tourists, snatchings of purses and costly jewellery continue to come to light. Tribune News Service Chandigarh, January 20 Shiroki Corporation of Japan has committed to invest more than Rs 150 crore in its Bawal plant in Haryana in the next two years while Daiwa House Industry Company is considering Gurgaon and Jhajjar as potential locations for its project in Haryana. Hitachi Zosen Corporation has expressed interest to participate in Haryanas efforts to set up waste to energy plant. Haryana CM Manohar Lal Khattar, who is in Japan to woo investors set up their ventures in Haryana, today had meetings with representatives of major companies in Osaka. Hideo Tashima, chairman, Kansai Economic Federation, said impressed by the recent policy reforms introduced by the Haryana Government, the Kansai Economic Federation will promote Haryana as an ideal location for investment among its over 1,300 member Japanese companies. Suhail A Shah Anantnag/Srinagar, January 20 Two militants were killed in an overnight gunbattle with security forces at a village in Pulwama district of south Kashmir, while a civilian was killed during a protest that erupted soon after the encounter was over on Wednesday. According to reports, clashes broke out between locals and security forces in the area soon after the news of the killing of a local militant, Shakir Ahmad, spread in the area. Two civilians have received bullet wounds during protests after the killing of a militant. Troops of 53 Rashtriya Rifles and police cordoned off Naina Batpora village last evening following information about presence of the militants in the area, an army official said today. As the security forces were closing in on the target house, the militants opened fire. The security forces returned the fire, triggering the gunbattle which left two militants dead. The deceased civilian has been identified as 22-year-old Parfvez Ahmad Guroo, son of Ghulam Qadir of the Naina Batpora area. People came out in large numbers as firing was on at the encounter site. The security forces blew up the house in which Shakir was hiding, killing him in the process. His body has been retrieved. Angry locals clashed with the police and Army and pelted them with stones. The protesters allegedly set a police vehicle ablaze during the protests and raised pro-freedom and anti-India slogans. The security forces allegedly opened fire at the protesters injuring at least three people in the process. The injured were immediately taken to nearby PHC, Awantipora, where Guroo was declared brought dead. The two injured have been shifted to Srinagar for specialised treatment. The protests have intensified in the area with the news of Guroos killing and police are having a difficult time maintain law and order. Aerial firing and tear smoke shelling is now being used to disperse the agitated locals. With PTI inputs New Delhi, January 20 The government on Wednesday approved a viability gap funding (VGF) of Rs 5,050 crore for setting up over 5,000 MW of grid linked solar power projects under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission. The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs has given its approval for setting up over 5,000 MW of Grid-Connected Solar PV Power Projects on build, own and operate basis, an official statement said. After the meeting, Power Minister Piyush Goyal said, To push solar energy programme, a scheme to provide Rs 5,050 crore VGF for setting up 5,000 MW capacity has been approved. Elaborating further the minister said, The VGF will be provided through reverse bidding. Whosoever will quote the lowest VGF will win. One part of these funds will be for domestic modules. These companies will be given Rs 1.25 crore per MW and those coming through international competitive bidding will get Rs one crore per MW). Goyal expressed hope that the VGF reverse bidding auction will help in reducing the power tariff in future. According to the statement, it will be implemented by Solar Power Developers (SPDs) with VGF under Batch-lV of Phase-ll of the JNNSM. The total investment expected under this scheme is about Rs 30,000 crore. It said that the estimated requirement of funds to provide VGF for 5,000 MW capacity solar projects is estimated to be Rs 5,050 crore (Rs one Crore/MW). This includes handling charges to Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) at the rate of 1 per cent of the total grant disposed and Rs 500 crore for payment security mechanism for all three VGF schemes of 750 MW, 2,000 MW and 5,000 MW. The upper limit for VGF will be Rs 1 crore per MW. In case there is savings in the total VGF requirement, quantum of capacity of 5,000 MW can be enhanced, it said. Under the scheme 500 MW capacity will be created this fiscal while during four financial year from 2016-17 to 2019-20, solar power generation capacity of 1,125 each year will be set up. The scheme will be implemented on build, own and operate basis through competitive bidding to provide solar power at a pre-defined tariff of Rs 4.93 per kWh (unit) for first year. The scheme will be implemented by SECI as per Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) Guidelines. SECI shall prepare necessary bidding documents for inviting the proposals for setting up of projects on a competitive bidding through e-bidding. SECI will enter into Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with the selected developers and the Power Sale Agreement (PSA) with the buying entities. Requisite funds for provision of the VGF support will be made available to MNRE from the National Clean Energy Fund (NCEF), operated by Ministry of Finance. Out of 5,000 MW, some capacity in each tranche, will be developed with mandatory condition of solar PV cells and Modules made in India. This will be called the Domestic Content Requirement (DCR) category and remaining will be in open category. PTI Charsadda (Pakistan), Jan 20 At least 20 people, mostly students, were massacred today by Kalashnikov-wielding Taliban suicide attackers who stormed a prestigious university here in restive northwestern Pakistan and opened fire, in a grim reminder of the 2014 Peshawar army school attack. The gunmen entered the Bacha Khan University named after iconic leader Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan alias Bacha Khan in Charsadda, some 50 km southwest of Peshawar in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, and opened fire on students and teachers in classrooms and hostels, police said. Earlier, reports said that 21 people and four terrorists were killed but later army spokesman Lt Gen Asim Bajwa held a press conference and stated that 20 people 18 students, a professor and a staffer and four terrorists had been killed in the attack. The militants used the cover of thick, wintry fog to scale the walls of the university before entering buildings. Blasts and heavy gunfire were heard from inside the campus where a poetic symposium was in progress to mark the death anniversary of Bacha Khan who died on January 20, 1988. There were about 3,000 students and 600 guests on the campus when the attack took place, Vice-Chancellor of the university Dr Fazal Rahim said. Umar Mansoor, Peshawar school attack mastermind and a commander of the Hakimullah Mehsud faction of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistani (TTP), claimed responsibility for today's assault. He called local media from a mobile number in Afghanistan to claim that they have carried out the attack. A spokesman for the militant group said it was revenge for those killed by security forces since Peshawar school attack. The attacks would continue, he warned. But the spokesman for another Taliban faction, Mohammad Khurasani, condemned the attack and said they were not involved in it. The Inter-Services Public Relations chief said the four terrorists were using two mobile phones on which phone calls were received from different locations including Afghanistan. Federal Information Minister Pervaiz Rashid visited the university and told the media that the operation launched by security forces to clear the campus has been completed. He said the attack was in response to military operation in the province, which had broken the backbone of militants. The victims were shot in the head or chest. Images from inside the university showed a pool of blood on the floor of a dormitory and charred corpses of two alleged militants lying on a staircase. PM Nawaz Sharif, who is in Zurich to attend the World Economic Forum, condemned the attack. Agencies Attackers were like us The attackers were like us they were very young. They carried AK-47 guns. They wore jackets like the forces do... We were in the hostel sleeping as we dont have classes... After everything was over, the Army men knocked on our room and told us we were safe A university student Strongly condemn the terror attack at Bacha Khan University in Pakistan. Condolences to families of the deceased. Prayers with the injured PM Narendra Modi on twitter We are determined in our commitment to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland. The countless sacrifices made by our countrymen will not go in vain Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan PM Aparna Banerji Tribune News Service Jalandhar, January 20 As many as 920 illegal Indian immigrants continue to languish in US jails. The North American Punjabi Association (NAPA), received this information from the US Customs Department last year through the Freedom of Information Act. Talking to The Tribune, Satnam Singh Chahal, president of the association, said, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement recently revealed that there were 920 Indian detainees who were apprehended at the US borders at various places and a majority of them were Punjabis and victims of illegal human trafficking. As many as 22 Punjabi youths were released from a jail in Miami in August 2015. Similarly, 68 Indians, again Punjabis, were confined at the Immigration and Customs Enforcements detention centre at Tacoma (Seattle) in Washington. Information received by NAPA in August 2014, under the Freedom of Information Act also revealed that 93 people with surname Singh and Kaur were lodged in US jails. Out of these, 84 were non-criminal immigrants and nine convicts. Of these 93 persons, 34 detainees were lodged at the Eloy Federal contract facility, 19 at the El Paso Service Processing Centre, 10 in the Utah County Jail, eight in the Florence Correctional Centre, Arizona, five at the Wackenhut Correction Corporation, four in the Central Arizona Detention Centre, three in the northwest detention centre, two in the Yuba County Jail and a few more in other detention centres, according to figures available with the NAPA, he added. Pointing out to the trail of illegal human smuggling from Punjab to United States, NAPA also wrote to the Punjab State Human Rights Commission in 2014. Highlighting the problems faced by the inmates of El Paso Centre in Texas, it provided details and numbers of the kingpins responsible for the illegal trafficking to the commission. Submitting the contact information of the kingpins for investigation and nabbing them, the association demanded the recovery of amount the agents had charged from such youths. As per information, the detainees at El Paso were duped of $60,000 by the agents. The kingpins included Amrinder Singh Gill alias Raja from Patiala (with his India and Patiala numbers), Sukhvinder Singh Sukhi and Charnjit Singh Charna from Ludhiana. Information on three persons involved in illegal trafficking Teji (from Stockton, USA) and Hukam Singh and Malkit Singh (both in the US) had also been provided to NAPA. However, since they were operating from the US, their names were not divulged in the letter sent to NAPA. Chahal said, While I had provided the information about the kingpins responsible for the crisis that detainees at the El Paso found themselves in, I havent heard of any action against them. If the Indian government doesnt act on the issue soon, there are all possibilities of the crisis escalating. A repeat of Malta and Panama boat tragedies cannot be ruled out, he warned. The government should also create a special fund for exigencies related to illegal immigrants and Manpower Export Corporations which would help youth secure jobs abroad legally, he added. Tribune News Service Chandigarh, January 19 Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal on Tuesday sought the intervention of Union Minister for External Affairs Sushma Swaraj to make expeditious and earnest efforts to rescue the survivors and bring the bodies of youth reported to have drowned near Panama. In a letter to Swaraj, the CM apprised her of the plight of the families who were in distress owing to lack of reliable information. He said the tragedy had shaken the affected families. Badal said the government had already booked the travel agents who were allegedly instrumental in arranging their journey. Two of them had already been arrested. The Chief Minister impressed upon Swaraj that the Union Government should make immediate and sincere efforts with the governments of the nations concerned and Indian missions in Colombia and Panama so that the survivors could be brought back to India at the earliest. Tribune News Service Chandigarh, January 20 With an undertaking that wanted terrorist Paramjit Singh alias Pamma will not be hanged, the Ministry of External Affairs has given a clearance to the Punjab Police. Its team will start for Portugal from New Delhi tomorrow for his extradition. Senior Punjab Police officials said the undertaking was necessary as per the international rules of the Extradition Treaty. The police team will be headed by DIG Patiala Balkar Sidhu. The other team members are SP Mohali Ashish Kapoor; DSP Rajpura Rajinder Sohal; and Patiala CIA incharge Bikramjit Brar. Pamma, wanted as a conspirator in the 2009 murder case of Rashtriya Sikh Sangat chief Rulda Singh, was arrested by the Portugal Police in December last year. The police had responded to an Interpol alert about him. The Punjab Police team was awaiting clearance from the Ministry of External Affairs. London, January 20 The masked British militant dubbed "Jihadi John" was killed in a US-led drone strike last November in the Syrian town of Raqqa, the dreaded Islamic State terror group has confirmed. The militant group published an obituary in its online propaganda magazine 'Dabiq' for the terrorist, whose real name was Mohammed Emwazi but went by the name Abu Muharib al-Muhajir. Emwazi, 27, was known as the executioner of the Islamic State appearing masked in a string of videos showing the beheadings of Western hostages. The US military had said it was "reasonably certain" it had killed Emwazi in the IS-stronghold of Raqqa. At the time of his reported death in November, Prime Minister David Cameron said targeting Emwazi had been "the right thing to do". Three drones one British and two American were involved in the strike. One of the American drones hit the car, and it is believed there was one other person in the vehicle. Kuwait-born Emwazi had appeared in beheading videos of victims including UK aid worker David Haines and taxi driver Alan Henning. The article lists Emwazi's participation in various IS military conquests and praises his work. "His harshness towards the kafir was manifested through deeds that enraged all the nations, religions, and factions of kafir, the entire world bearing witness to this," the author writes. The publication also claims that Emwazi was known for his "mercy, kindness, and generosity towards the believers, his protective jealousy for Islam and its people, and his affection towards the orphans". Emwazi, dressed in black with a balaclava covering all but his eyes, came to the world's attention when he appeared in an IS video brutally murdering US journalist James Foley. He later appeared in videos of the beheadings of US journalist Steven Sotloff, British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, and in November 2014, that of American aid worker Peter Kassig. The 'Dabiq' article describes how Emwazi was able to sneak out of Britain, "Right under the nose of the much-overrated MI5 British intelligence agency, Abu Muharib together with his companion in hijrah carefully and secretly made their departure, utilising every means available to them". More than 750 people from the UK are thought to have travelled to support or fight for terrorist organisations in Syria and Iraq, and approximately half of those have returned. PTI Kabul, January 20 Seven people were killed on Wednesday when a suicide bomber struck a minibus carrying employees of popular Afghan TV channel TOLO, just months after the Taliban declared the network a legitimate "military target". The bombing near the Russian embassy in downtown Kabul also left 24 people wounded, in the latest in a wave of attacks despite an international push to jumpstart Taliban peace talks. No group has so far claimed responsibility for the bombing, which marks the first major attack on a media organisation in Afghanistan. "Our office bus taking TOLO staff home came under attack," an employee at the channel said, requesting anonymity. The bombing left some staff members burning inside the vehicle, another employee said, adding that the bus was mostly filled with behind-the-scenes workers from the channel's graphics and dubbing departments. The loud explosion sent a plume of smoke rising in the sky, with ambulances and firefighters rushing to the scene, which was littered with charred debris. The interior ministry said the attack left seven people dead and 24 others wounded. The Taliban in October declared TOLO and 1TV, both privately run news stations as legitimate "military targets". The group said the move was in response to their reports claiming that Taliban fighters raped women at a female hostel in Kunduz, after the group briefly captured the northern city in late September last year. The Taliban rejected the reports as fabrications, saying they were examples of propaganda by the "satanic networks". The attack, which highlights the growing dangers faced by journalists in Afghanistan, comes just two days after a second round of a four-country meeting in Kabul aimed at reviving talks with the Taliban. Delegates from Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States convened in the Afghan capital Monday for a one-day meeting seeking a negotiated end to the 14-year Taliban insurgency. The first round of the so-called "roadmap" talks was held in Islamabad last week as the four nations try to lay the groundwork for direct dialogue between Kabul and the Islamist group. Taliban representatives were notably absent in both rounds and analysts caution that any substantive talks are still a long way off. The Taliban has stepped up attacks on government and foreign targets in Afghanistan this winter, when fighting usually abates, underscoring a worsening security situation. AFP Charsadda (Pakistan), January 20 At least 20 persons were killed on Wednesday by Kalashnikov-wielding Taliban suicide attackers who stormed a prestigious university here in restive northwestern Pakistan and opened indiscriminate fire, in a grim reminder of the 2014 Peshawar army school attack. The gunmen entered Bacha Khan University, named after iconic leader Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, alias Bacha Khan, in Charsadda, some 50 km southwest of Peshawar in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, and opened fire on students and teachers in classrooms and hostels, the police said. Earlier, reports said that 21 persons and four terrorists were killed but later Army spokesman Lt Gen Asim Bajwa held a press conference and stated that 20 persons 18 students, a Professor and a staffer and four terrorists had been killed in the attack. The militants used the cover of thick, wintry fog to scale the walls of the university before entering buildings. Blasts and heavy gunfire were heard from inside the campus, where a poetic symposium was in progress to mark the death anniversary of Bacha Khan who died on January 20, 1988. There were about 3,000 students and 600 guests on the campus when the attack took place, Vice-Chancellor of the university Dr Fazal Rahim said. Omar Mansoor, a Peshawar school attack mastermind and commander of the Hakimullah Mehsud faction of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistani (TTP), claimed responsibility for todays assault. He called the local media from a mobile number in Afghanistan to claim that they have carried out the attack. A spokesman of the militant group said it was revenge for those killed by security forces since the Peshawar school attack. The attacks would continue, he warned. But the spokesman of another Taliban faction, Mohammad Khurasani, condemned the attack and said they were not involved in it. Bajwa said major breakthroughs had been made in identifying the terrorists who attacked the university. The Inter-Services Public Relations chief said the terrorists phone calls had been traced and analysed, and that two cell phones had also been recovered from them. Federal Information Minister Pervaiz Rashid visited university and told the media that the operation launched by security forces to clear the campus has been completed. He said the attack was in response to military operation in the province which has broken the back of militants. The victims were shot in the head or chest. Images from inside the university showed a pool of blood on the floor of a dormitory and charred corpses of two alleged militants lying on a staircase. 11 persons were injured in the attack and were shifted to a hospital. An emergency has been declared in all hospitals in the town. All schools have been closed in the area. Geo TV reported that Professor Hamid Hussain of the Chemistry Department was also among the dead. A teacher of the university after evacuation said Chairman Chemistry Department Hamid has been martyred by the firing of the militants, it said, adding the terrorists barged into Hamids room and shot in his head, killing him instantly. Army Chief Gen Raheel Sharif rushed to the spot along with Corps Commander Peshawar and other top military officials, where he was briefed about the operation. General Raheel also visited Charsada Hospital, where he condoled the loss of lives and met all those injured in the attack. He also chaired a special security conference at the Corps Headquarters in Peshawar. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who is in Zurich to attend the World Economic Forum, condemned the cowardly attack, saying those killing innocent students and citizens have no faith and religion. Sharif expressed sorrow and grief on the loss of precious lives in the terror attack. Sharif telephoned General Raheel Sharif and discussed the Charsada terror attack. Both of them agreed that the war against terrorism and extremism will continue with full might. The Prime Minister also announced a one-day national mourning to be observed tomorrow for the victims of the attack. The terrorists will see a ruthless response by the state. Cowards and their financers will see our national resolve to eliminate terror from the country. The entire nation is united and one against terrorism, Sharif stressed. The Prime Minister has directed all security agencies to hunt down the patrons and financiers of the Charsadda terror attack, a Prime Ministers Office statement said. Todays attack comes a little over a year after Taliban militants massacred over 150 persons, mostly students, in an assault on an Army-run school in Peshawar in December, 2014. President Mamnoon Hussain also condemned the attack. Provincial Chief Minister Pervez Khattak, who is visiting the UK, cut short his trip and was returning home. Opposition Awami National Party announced 10-day of mourning. Speaker and Deputy Speaker National Assembly, Chief Ministers of Punjab, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh and Tehrik-e-Insaf chief Imran Khan also condemned the attack. PTI Paris, January 20 Defence Secretary Ash Carter on Wednesday said defence ministers from France and five other nations have agreed to intensify the campaign against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, and that the coalition will work together to fill the military requirements as the fight unfolds over the coming months. Speaking at a news conference with Frances Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, Carter said there was broad agreement on a coordinated plan to battle IS over the next year and take back key cities in Iraq and Syria from the militants. We agreed that we all must do more, Carter said shortly after a working lunch with Le Drian and defence ministers from France, Australia, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Carter also announced that the 26 nations in the anti-IS coalition, as well as Iraq, will meet in Brussels next month to continue the talks. Carter urged the coalition to seize the opportunity now to hasten the Islamic State groups defeat. The US has mapped out a coordinated campaign against IS over the next year, and Carter laid out the plans to the ministers during the meeting, which was co-hosted by France. Because Daesh is retreating and we have managed to affect its resources in the ground, it is the moment to increase our collective forces with a coherent military strategy, Le Drian said, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State. Carter has said he wouldnt hesitate to challenge the core nations to do more in the fight in the coming year. The defence ministers also discussed plans to retake two major cities in Iraq and Syria that serve as power centers for IS. The coalition wants to help Iraqi and Kurdish peshmerga forces retake Mosul in northern Iraq and to assist the Syrian moderate forces in ousting Islamic State militants from Raqqa, Syria, the groups self-proclaimed capital. Raqqa and Mosul must be won back, Le Drian said, adding that it can only succeed if the coalition supports the local forces on the ground in Iraq and Syria. US military leaders say the coalition is gaining ground on IS. And they are hoping that the six core nations can encourage others to contribute. While European nations have been heavily involved, the US would like to see more direct military contributions, both equipment and training, from Arab and Asian countries. Arab nations joined the coalitions airstrike campaign early on, but their participation has waned a bit over time, particularly as the fight between Saudi Arabia and Iran-backed rebels in Yemen has increased. AP Manichan who was an accused in the Kalluvathukkal hooch tragedy and lodged in the Central Jail was transferred to the open jail as part of character correction. Bank fraud, drugs and a felon in possession of a firearm were some of the charges brought by a January grand jury, according to U.S. Attorney Danny C. Williams for the Northern District of Oklahoma. John Eldridge Cone, 42, of Tulsa was charged as a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition, possession of controlled substances with intent to distribute and carrying a firearm during and in relation to a drug trafficking crime. Cone is charged with possession of a 9mm semi-automatic pistol and ammunition after prior felony convictions. He is also charged with possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine, cocaine, oxycodone and ectasy and is charged with carrying a firearm during and in relation to a drug trafficking crime. If convicted, the statutory maximum penalty is 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000 for a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition charge. For the possession of controlled substances with intent to distribute, he could serve not more than 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine and a minimum of 25 years up to life in prison. He could also face a $250,000 fine for carrying a firearm during and in relation to a drug trafficking crime. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is the investigating agency. Ivan Chavez Hondal, 29, of Tulsa was charged with drug conspiracy, possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute, and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime. Hondal is charged with conspiring to possess and distribute methamphetamine, cocaine, and heroin. He also faces a charge for possession of firearms in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime. If convicted, Hondal will face the statutory minimum penalty of 10 years and up to life in prison and a $10 million fine. In addition, he will forfeit $61,900 in drug proceeds, and a vehicle and firearm used to commit the drug and firearm offenses. The Drug Enforcement Administration is the investigating agency. Christopher Anthony Smith, 29, of Tulsa is charged with bank fraud, possession of stolen mail and destruction of letter boxes. Smith is charged with bank fraud, two counts of possession of stolen mail, and two counts of destruction of letter boxes. On Nov. 19, Smith allegedly presented to the Bank of Oklahoma a fraudulently altered check made payable to himself which had been stolen from a post office letter box which had been broken into and burglarized. Smith is also accused of being in possession of stolen mail from the burglarized letter boxes and breaking into and destroying the mail letter boxes. If convicted, the statutory maximum penalty is 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine for bank fraud; maximum penalty of five years in prison and $250,000 fine for possession of stolen mail; and maximum penalty of three years in prison and a $250,000 fine for destruction of letter boxes. The U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the Tulsa Police Department have jointly investigated this case. Jairon Vasquez-Macario, 26, is charged with re-entry of removed alien. He is charged with having returned to the U.S. unlawfully after being deported in January 2014 near Harlingen, Texas. If convicted, the statutory maximum penalty is 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is the investigating agency. OKLAHOMA CITY It would be difficult to give education a flat budget without devastating other agencies, House Speaker Jeff Hickman said Tuesday. His comments to reporters came as the House Republican caucus met behind closed doors to discuss the states revenue failure for the current fiscal year and the upcoming fiscal year 2017 budget, which will be at least $900.8 million less than fiscal year 2016s. The revenue failure resulted in 3 percent budget cuts to state-appropriated agencies. The state Board of Education recently voted to reduce school budgets by $47 million as a result. Fifty-one cents of every dollar we spend is on education, said Hickman, R-Fairview. So when they are 51 percent of our budget and a third of that is just common education alone, there is no possible way that I see to be able to do what we did last year, which is to shield education from any budget cuts. With a minimum of $900.8 million less to spend in crafting the fiscal year 2017 budget, Hickman said he didnt know how the state could spend the same amount on education. You will devastate state government if you have to make deep cuts to corrections, mental health, DHS (Department of Human Services) in order to move those dollars to education, and that would be the only way to do it, Hickman said. The state has already made deep cuts to state agencies since 2007, he noted. Hickman said the Oklahoma Department of Corrections may not be able to handle additional cuts. It is one critical area where some adjustments may have to be made, he said. In addition, the Corporation Commission might also need additional dollars to handle the monitoring of injection wells, he said. The wells have been linked to Oklahomas increasing number of earthquakes. Lawmakers return to the Capitol on Feb. 1 to start the legislative session. The states Rainy Day Fund has slightly more than $385 million, of which $144.4 million could be accessed to cover the revenue failure for the current fiscal year, according to the state Office of Management and Enterprise Services. Given the shortfall for the fiscal year 2017 budget, Hickman said he thought lawmakers would be hesitant to tap the Rainy Day Fund to cushion cuts taken in the current fiscal year. The states economic downturn has been attributed to reduced oil and gas prices. But a Jan. 1 drop in the states top income tax rate to 5 percent from 5.25 percent is also contributing. At least one measure has been filed to roll back the tax cut, but Hickman said he believes that under the provisions of State Question 640, such a move would require a super majority in both legislative chambers. State Question 640 was approved by voters in 1992 and requires that tax increases receive a supermajority vote in both chambers or go to a vote of the people. Oklahomans are already seeing that reflected in their paycheck, Hickman said. However, an additional planned drop to 4.85 percent could be modified because it has yet to take effect, Hickman said. The states top higher education official doesnt know whether shriveling state revenue will lead to tuition increases at Oklahomas public colleges and universities, he said Tuesday. Weve been very, very conservative with tuition, Chancellor Glen Johnson said. Its too early to say whether well have an increase. The states higher education system is now about two-thirds self-funded through tuition and fees and other revenue sources. State appropriations make up a little over a third of operating revenue. Johnson was in Tulsa for a presentation to area legislators at Tulsa Community Colleges Southeast Campus and to present state Sen. Gary Stanislawski, R-Tulsa, with a Distinguished Service Award. State appropriations to higher education are about $111 million less in the current budget year than they were eight years ago, with deeper reductions expected in the face of a predicted $900 million revenue shortfall in fiscal year 2017. Despite the cuts, the basic higher education budget has grown by nearly 50 percent to just under $3 billion since 2008. The difference is mostly the result of more students, higher tuition, and schools mining other sources of revenue. Since 2008, in-state undergraduate tuition and mandatory fees have increased to $268.83 from $216.43 per credit hour at the University of Oklahoma and to $259.25 from $206.70 at Oklahoma State University. The more recent figures for OU and OSU are approximates because the two schools now charge a flat semester rate for students enrolled in 12 to 18 hours. Johnson said Oklahoma still ranks among the most affordable states for higher education and that more than half the systems students are graduating with no loan debt. He said the system has met or exceeded degree-completion goals urged by Gov. Mary Fallin and arguably has performed better than any other area of state government. Its our responsibility to make the case that higher education is a good investment, Johnson said. State appropriations are still the most significant part of our budget. Stanislawski was cited for his legislative efforts on behalf of higher education. Stanislawski said he is the youngest of five children and was the first to get a college degree, so he understands the value of education. But the reality, he said, is that everybody is going to take a cut in next years budget. He said increased online instruction offers some alternatives in the current budget situation, and he predicted significant reorganization of common education. This is the year I think were going to see some wide-ranging changes in administration, Stanislawski said. Like all Americans, we are pleased that five Americans unlawfully held in Iranian prisons were released over the weekend, although it does little to change our mind about their captors. Released were: Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian (held since 2014), Marine veteran Amir Hekmati (arrested in 2011 and sentenced to death in 2012), Idaho pastor Saeed Abedini (detained in 2012) and American businessman Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari (whose captivity was not reported before his release). U.S. student Matthew Trevithick, who was held captive for 40 days, was not part of the release negotiations but was set free. Iran is a theocracy that has backed terrorism and discord in a strategically critical part of the world. We are all familiar with Tehrans favorite chants: Death to America and Death to Israel. The Obama administration has worked for years to ease decades of tension between the two nations. One result of that policy is a nuclear agreement that raises as many issues as it resolves. The release of the five prisoners and the relatively quick return of 10 American sailors who recently strayed into Iranian waters are positive results of that policy, but it too is not without troubling aspects. If you reward kidnappings, you encourage kidnapping. Three more Americans were taken captive in Iraq the same weekend that the five were released. Were glad the prisoners and the sailors are free, although it remains an outrage that they were held in the first place. Iran remains a pariah state, and we see little evidence why that should soon change. The acronym, KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid), promotes the principle that often the simple answer is the best. We over-complicate obvious answers, and as a result, the original process is slowed to a halt. We lose sight of what is important. Oklahomas legislators have clearly forgotten this principle when considering education. In 2011, while teaching at Tulsas Booker T. Washington, a nationally top-ranked public high school, I wrote an open letter to key legislators and government officials inviting them to visit my classroom to hear from the students. Two men did. They spent a few hours with my classes and with my fellow teachers. When asked why the school was so successful, the students most often replied that it was because teachers cared about them as individuals. One gentleman asked a small group of teachers if it would help to hire someone to grade papers. Every teacher said, No. The teachers explained that grading papers told what the students grasped and what needed further explanation. Grading gives the teacher the data necessary for student growth. These teachers care about their students lives and education. KISS. This week I heard about an Oklahoma chemistry teacher with approximately 40 students per class with no supplies for experiments. Another teacher complained that she did not even have a class set of books and was told to let the students take a picture of the pages with their phones so they could do the work. An algebra teacher had a class of 60 students in a room built for no more than 30. The students were sitting on the floor. Classroom management became difficult. The funding is not there to help these students. KISS. A high ranking Oklahoma district administrator told me that the district is hiring teachers whom at one point they would never have interviewed. The Oklahoma teacher shortage is forcing districts to hire teachers who will need heavy guidance to find success in the classroom. As a mentor, I saw this daily. Many of the teachers I mentored moved to nearby states. Why would a top teacher stay in a state that consistently ranks near the bottom nationally in teacher pay and per-pupil expenditures? KISS. I have lobbied and written letters and voted my conscience over the years. What I have discovered is that education is not a priority; rather, they want new businesses to move to Oklahoma. I suspect that if you talked to chambers of commerce across our state, they would tell you that most businesses want to move to a state where the education systems are respected and given financial support. Why would you want to move families to a state ranked so low? KISS. In spite of all the negatives, Oklahoma teachers walk into the classrooms and spend their energies doing the very best they can with what they have. They get the KISS principle. They have to. All they have are the simplicities. Oklahoma government officials and legislators, dont tell me that the funding isnt there. It is, if it is a priority. This is a state of creative minds. Let them help. Listen to people like University of Oklahoma President David Boren. Its a penny. KISS. Most of all, visit classrooms across the state. Listen to the students and the teachers. Walk away with your gut in a knot from the lack of teachers, supplies, and technology. Go back and KISS. Claire Robertson is a former teacher and mentor from Tulsa. As the retired director of the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control, I have been asked many times what the solution is for the high rates of incarceration in Oklahoma. We have all heard the numbers: Oklahoma is ranked first in the nation in female incarceration and third in male incarceration per capita. Even more alarming, there are 50,000 children in Oklahoma who have an incarcerated parent and its estimated that 70 percent of those children will go to prison themselves, which equals 35,000 future inmates. It costs about $16,000 a year to imprison one adult, not to mention the loss of human capital. After many years of public service, I believe I have a prescription and a pathway for success. An antidote for this troubling trend is a robust mentoring program for vulnerable youths. Mentoring is linked to improved academic, social and economic prospects for our state, which ultimately will strengthen our communities. Mentoring relationships are basic human connections that let young people know that they matter, and mentees frequently report that this friendship makes them feel like someone is there to help guide them in choosing the right path in life. Research has shown that when matched through a quality mentoring program, mentors can play a powerful role in providing young people with the tools to make better choices. The experience will expose them to opportunities that once seemed out of reach. These youths are able to make more responsible decisions, stay engaged in school and reduce or avoid risky behaviors like skipping school, drug use and other negative activities. For example, in a recent national report, The Mentoring Effect, young people who were at-risk for not completing high school but who had a mentor were 55 percent more likely to be enrolled in college than those who did not have a mentor. They were also 81 percent more likely to report participating regularly in extracurricular activities. Also, they were 78 percent more likely to volunteer regularly in their communities. January is National Mentoring Month. Would you rather invest now in mentoring our youths or pay more taxes later to incarcerate adults? These children are our future and we must be assertive and diligent in protecting them and putting them in a position to be productive citizens. Mentoring changes the trajectory for at-risk youths, and in turn impacts the communities we live in. By volunteering to become a mentor, you can impact a childs life today and transform his or her potential for tomorrow. Darrell Weaver, CEO of Big Brothers and Big Sisters Oklahoma, is the retired director of the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control. This country's cyclists will come up against the region next month when T&T hosts the Ca Next week ABC celebrates Australia Day with two key events, both Live on ABC / ABC News 24 and iview. Australian of the Year 2016 ABC TV will broadcast a special Australian of the Year Awards event, live from Parliament House Canberra. The program will feature red carpet arrivals, stories about inspiring Australians in the running for Awards, and an exciting line-up of performances from leading Australian artists, until the spotlight falls on the Prime Minister and his announcement of our next Australian of the Year. Coverage will also include in-depth profiles of Australian of the Year finalists. Monday 25 January at 7.30pm on ABCTV, and live at 7.30pm AEDT on News24 and ABC iview. Australia Day National Flag Raising & Citizenship Ceremony Join the ABC live from the shores of Lake Burley Griffin, Canberra for the Australia Day National Flag Raising and Citizenship Ceremony to welcome our newest Australian citizens. The Governor General and the Prime Minister will review the guard, address the nation and raise the Australian Flag to the sound of a 21 gun salute and a flyover by air force jets. Tuesday 26 January at 10am on ABCTV, and live at 10am AEDT on News24 and ABC iview. Home and Away actor Johnny Ruffo has pleaded guilty to a string of driving offences, including driving while his licence was cancelled. His lawyer, Nic Angelov, pleaded guilty to five separate charges on his behalf in Sydneys Downing Centre Local Court yesterday. Ruffo, 27, was spotted by police driving an Audi along George Street in Sydney on September 18. The uninsured vehicles registration had expired the previous year, while Ruffos licence was cancelled in January. Ruffo had previously accrued 13 speeding tickets before his licence was suspended for driving between 30 and 45 km/h over the limit. Last March he was placed on a six-month good behaviour bond for driving while his licence was cancelled. He is due to be sentenced on February 11. Source: Nine / AAP Australian Story returns on Monday 1st February with a story that promises to make us re-think everything we think we know about the design of the Sydney Opera House. For more than 50 years, the celebrated Danish architect Jorn Utzon has been internationally acclaimed for creating the iconic building. But few people have heard of Peter Hall, the local architect who completed the design after Jorn Utzons resignation, mid-way through the project. Hall was just 34 and had recently left the NSW Government Architects office when he was approached to take on the job of completing Utzons work. He went on to completely redesign the buildings interiors, turning the main hall into a single purpose concert hall and controversially shifting opera to a smaller space that had been intended for drama performance. He also resolved the problem of how to build the glass walls on the north side of the Opera House, an issue that Utzon and his team had struggled with. But Peter Halls decision to take on the Opera House job came at a heavy price. For the rest of his career, he was ostracised by many in the architectural community who wanted the New South Wales government to bring back the genius, Jorn Utzon. In this episode of Australian Story, Peter Halls children speak for the first time about their fathers sad, lonely and premature death. My father was portrayed as a strike breaker and a mediocre architect who took on a job he shouldnt have taken, says Willy Hall. There were times when he found it unbearable. Peter Hall was just 64 when he died in 1995, destitute and an alcoholic. His family sees him as a tragic victim of that incredible building. To say it destroyed him is a very strong thing, but yes I think so, says his first wife, Libby Turner. Willy Hall has unearthed hundreds of his fathers personal diaries, letters and photographs, a collection which gives a new slant to his fathers role in history. Utzon did a beautiful job of designing the concept, but unfortunately he wasnt able to finish it. A very worthy team of talented Australians was able to finish it, and the history needs to be put right. Jorn Utzons son Jan, also interviewed for the program, says both architects deserve to be put on a pedestal for their contribution to the building. My father felt that this young, promising architect, who he had actually met in Denmark many years previously, was probably a good successor in the way that he would carry my fathers ideas onwards. 8pm Monday 1st February on ABC. In America, where they love to turn everything into a drawn out drama, Miss Universe host Steve Harvey sat down with Miss Colombia, Ariadna Gutierrez to hear how she was doin After all that happened, the only thing I wanted to do was, like, being with my family and, like, take a rest from everything that I went through, she said. It took time because I couldnt stop thinking, like, Oh my God, it really happened. It was like a nightmare. I was watching, like, the videos and I couldnt believe that happened to me. I needed time to be with my family to calm down and think about what Im going to say now, what Im going to do now. Ive already moved on, but this is our destiny. Thats why were here. Heres a pretty good idea A local version of improvisation series Whose Line Is It Anyway? is coming to the Comedy Channel. The series has run in various versions in the UK (first in 1988) and the US (twice in 1998 / 2013). The US series has aired in Australia on Foxtel featuring names such as Drew Carey (host), Wayne Brady, Colin Mochrie and Ryan Stiles. An Aussie version is reportedly due in late February but no details have been released as yet. With Open Slather no longer on the cards, could some of its performers may land another gig? Foxtel did not return enquiries. 3:38 p.m., Jan. 20, 2016--A University of Delaware Police investigation has led to the arrest of five men in connection with an assault of two male students in a parking lot on campus Oct. 25. The two students were assaulted in a parking lot off North College Avenue at approximately 3 a.m., Oct. 25, by four unknown male suspects, who kicked and punched the victims repeatedly, injuring both. One victim sustained a fractured jaw and broken orbital bone, and the other victim suffered lacerations and a possible concussion. After the assault, the suspects fled the area in a four-door sedan. Using video surveillance images, UD detectives were able to locate the vehicle and track its movements throughout the campus and the city of Newark. With the assistance of the Newark Police Departments camera equipment, UD Police detectives confirmed the vehicle description and obtained the license plate information for the suspects vehicle. UD detectives were able to identify the suspects responsible for the assault. While it was initially thought that there were four suspects, the investigation revealed there were actually five people responsible. Charged with second and third degree assault, second and third degree conspiracy, criminal mischief and third degree criminal mischief under $1,000 are Charles Flemming-Reese, 18, of Vince Drive, Elkton, Maryland; Deajh Truitt, 19, of Quindome Drive, New Castle, Delaware; Donnell Truitt, 21, of Quindome Drive, New Castle, Delaware; Elisha Young, 19, of Beech Drive, Elkton, Maryland; and Joshua Snyder, 19, of Bow Street, Elkton, Maryland. None are University of Delaware students. With assistance from the Elkton, Maryland, Police Department, University of Delaware Police were able to locate and arrest all five suspects, and they were arraigned in New Castle County Superior Court. Flemming-Reese was released on $1,000 secured bond; Deajh Truitt was released on $2,500 secured bond; Donnell Truitt was released on $6,000 unsecured bond; Young was released on $5,000 unsecured bond; and Snyder was released on $6,000 unsecured bond. Anyone with additional information on this case is asked to contact University of Delaware Police at 302-831-2222. Members of the UD community may download a free smartphone app, LiveSafe, that lets users submit tips to police, receive important broadcast notifications and contact the University of Delaware Police Department directly. To learn more, visit this UD Police website. Visit this website to receive a UD Crime Alert email whenever an article about a police investigation is posted on UDaily. Photos courtesy of University of Delaware Police 3:54 p.m., Jan. 20, 2016--Three graduate students from Delaware will spend the next year in Washington, D.C., beginning in February as Dean John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellows. Sponsored by the National Sea Grant College Program and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Knauss Fellowship provides a unique educational experience for students interested in the national policy decisions that affect the ocean, coastal and Great Lakes resources. University of Delaware graduate students Erica Wales and Frances Bothfeld, and Symone Johnson, a graduate student at Delaware State University, were selected from Delaware Sea Grant, which is administered by UDs College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment. A total of 53 fellows were selected from across all Sea Grant programs for 2016. The fellowship, named after John A. Knauss, one of Sea Grant's founders and a former NOAA administrator, enables selected graduate students to complete one-year paid assignments in a host organization in the legislative and executive branch of the federal government located in the Washington, D.C., area. The Knauss Fellowship is kind of a launching pad. Its a great opportunity to look at things differently, particularly at the national policy level, and its exciting to have the opportunity to work with agencies on both a national and regional level. Im looking forward to learning how Washington works, says Wales. Erica Wales will work for the Department of the Interiors Office of Policy Analysis as an ocean policy and communications specialist. Wales will work on the National Ocean Policy and work with the National Ocean Councils Ocean Resources Management Interagency Policy Committee and the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force. She also will contribute to the agencys newsletter and social media initiatives. Advised at UD by professors Jeremy Firestone and Biliana Cicin-Sain in the School of Marine Science and Policy, Wales is pursuing a doctoral degree in marine policy. Her research focuses on a capacity assessment for areas of the ocean beyond national jurisdiction, which is everything outside of 200 nautical miles, or 63 percent of the worlds ocean. Her work aims to improve coordination and integration of the regional bodies whose jurisdiction lies outside of 200 nautical miles like shipping and fishing by exploring whether they have the resources they need and what else would be helpful to better understand the connections between these different legal jurisdictions. Symone Johnson, a masters student in natural resources at Delaware State University, will serve as an education policy fellow with NOAAs Office of Education. In this role, Johnson will work in the Department of Commerces Office of Education on education projects and programs in different aquariums across the country. One specific focus of her fellowship will include providing minorities and underrepresented communities with scientific information to improve literacy about coastal communities and environmental issues. Johnsons research at Delaware State focuses on sand tiger sharks, which serve as apex predators in the northwest Atlantic coastal and estuarine environments. Working under the guidance of Dewayne Fox, assistant professor in agriculture and natural resources, Johnson is writing a regional conservation plan that aims to help remove this Delaware Bay apex predator from the Species of Concern list and to preclude a federal Endangered Species Act listing. The conservation plan takes a multi-perspective approach and builds upon stakeholder participation and incorporation of ecological requirements specific to Delaware Bay, including inputs from anglers, commercial fishers and resource managers. Johnson is the first Knauss Fellow that Delaware Sea Grant has sent to Washington, D.C., from Delaware State University. Frances Bothfeld will serve as a congressional affairs fellow with NOAAs Office of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs. She will act as a liaison between NOAA and Congress on a variety of subjects, and will help communicate NOAA's mission to members of Congress during congressional hearings or meetings, or individually. She also will cooperate with NOAA colleagues to develop legislative language for various ocean, coastal and atmospheric initiatives. Bothfeld is a graduate student in UDs water science and policy graduate program. Her research with Angelia Seyfferth, assistant professor in plant and soil science, explores physical and biogeochemical controls on greenhouse gas production and flux in estuaries, which are often known as nurseries of the sea for the critical nesting and feeding habitats they provide for various aquatic plants and animals. Learn more, apply for 2017 Since 1979, Delaware Sea Grant has sent more than 35 Knauss Fellows to Washington, D.C. Applications for the 2017 Knauss Fellowship are being accepted until Feb. 12. To learn more about applying for this or other Sea Grant fellowships, visit the Delaware Sea Grant website. About Delaware Sea Grant The University of Delaware was designated as the nations ninth Sea Grant College in 1976 to promote the wise use, conservation and management of marine and coastal resources through high-quality research, education and outreach activities that serve the public and the environment. UDs College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment administers the program, which conducts research in priority areas ranging from aquaculture to coastal hazards. Article by Karen B. Roberts No Ukrainian servicemen were killed, one soldier was wounded in the ATO area in eastern Ukraine over past 24 hours. Spokesman for the Presidential Administration on the anti-terrorist operation, Colonel Andriy Lysenko said this at a briefing in Kyiv, an Ukrinform correspondent reports. "No Ukrainian servicemen were killed, one our soldier was wounded as a result of the armed hostilities over past day," Lysenko said. The soldier was wounded near Marinka (35 km south-west of Donetsk). ol On January 20 the political subgroup on Ukraine will resume talks in Minsk, Belarus. BelTA news agency reports citing the Foreign Ministry of Belarus. "The Working Group on the political aspects of resolving crisis in eastern Ukraine will resume talks in Minsk in the morning of January 20," the Belarus Ministry of Foreign Affairs noted. It is planned that Trilateral Contact Group will hold a regular session in Minsk today. Recall that the previous session of the subgroup was held in Minsk on January 12-13. South Sudanese refugees sit at the Nyumanzi reception centre in Adjumani in northern Uganda. UNHCR/I. Kasamani ADJUMANI, Uganda, Jan 20 (UNHCR) - Armed militias looting villages, torching homes, sexually assaulting women and forcibly recruiting young men into their ranks are factors driving a growing number of South Sudanese refugees to seek safety in neighbouring Uganda. New fighting in previously peaceful areas and insecurity elsewhere forced many to walk for days through the bush, carrying little more than the clothes on their backs, risking attacks from lions, hyenas and other wildlife as they sleep under trees at night, as well as from the marauding militiamen themselves. "At night, people are sleeping in the bush because people are coming with guns looking for money and clothes," said Cicilia, 40, who fled home in South Sudan's Central Equatoria state, which had escaped conflict until recently. "If you don't have anything they kill you. They rape the young women, and others they take to be their wives. I think more people are coming. The situation is really bad but still it's getting worse," she added, talking in Adjumani, the northern Ugandan town where she has ended up. Fighting between the government and rebels in South Sudan, the world's youngest country, has produced one of the world's largest humanitarian emergencies with 2.3 million people forced to flee their homes, 650,000 of these across borders as refugees and 1.65 million displaced inside the country. A fragile peace was negotiated in that conflict in August. But since then, new clashes have erupted in the country's south, where Cicilia is from. That, and ongoing difficulties faced by people elsewhere in South Sudan, mean that more than 400 refugees a day are now fleeing over the border into northern Uganda, a fourfold increase in numbers since early January. UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, the Ugandan Government and its partners, are ramping up their reception capacities in the area. Most of the refugees are from Juba, the capital of South Sudan, and from Jonglei state. But a significant minority, like Cicilia, are also fleeing from the Equatoria states, an area from which relatively few refugees had previously been arriving. Others have reported that the continued insecurity is making it increasingly difficult to harvest crops, leading to food shortages further exacerbated by the decreasing value of the South Sudanese Pound. "People come with guns and knives," said Nyankor, 24, from Jonglei. "They destroyed our crops and killed all of our goats and cattle. We can't afford to buy more food. Before things used to cost one [pound] and now it is ten," he added. More than 6,000 refugees have trekked to Uganda since the start of the year. Most cross through the border town of Elegu, with a smaller number arriving in Arua District through Kuluba, to the west, close to the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. Uganda's northern Adjumani District is already home to more than 113,000 South Sudanese refugees who have arrived in Uganda since the outbreak of the conflict just over two years ago, in addition to around 12,500 who were already being hosted in the country. Efforts are under way to expand the capacity of Maaji settlement to cope with the latest influx. "The situation remains incredibly volatile," said UNHCR Protection Officer Akiko Tsujisawa. "Around three-quarters of the new arrivals are women and children under the age of eighteen, presenting particular challenges in providing adequate education, child protection and preventing sexual and gender-based violence. Many of the kids are having to take care of younger siblings who have lost their parents in the conflict." Most of the latest arrivals are being hosted at Nyumanzi Transit Centre before they are transferred to nearby refugee-hosting villages. UNHCR is providing shelter, emergency relief items and food provided by the World Food Programme. Meanwhile, staff from Medical Teams International are providing basic health care, ensuring young children are properly immunized and screening for any signs of malnutrition. The Transit Centre currently has a population of more than 3,600, significantly more than its 3,000 person capacity. UNHCR and the Government of Uganda have doubled the frequency of relocations to nearby villages to ease the congestion. The majority of the recent new arrivals have been taken to Maaji village, but with the settlement now in excess of its 12,000 person capacity, a new area is being cleared nearby that will be capable of hosting an additional 12,000 people. "New arrivals are coming in at a faster rate than the Transit Centre can shelter them," said Micaela Malena, UNHCR's Associate Field Officer. "Our teams are working tirelessly to ensure they are provided with life-saving assistance, while efforts are underway to increase the capacity of the settlements to host these new arrivals. Reports from the refugees indicate the situation in these areas of South Sudan are getting worse so we're expecting more new arrivals to follow in the days ahead." Uganda has adopted a pioneering approach to refugee management and protection, integrating refugees within local host communities. Refugees are provided with land on which to build new homes and grow crops, reducing dependency on humanitarian aid. The country recently became host to more than half a million refugees and asylum-seekers, the highest number in the country's history, making Uganda the third-largest refugee-hosting country in Africa and the eighth-largest in the world. The vast majority of refugees are predominantly from the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Somalia and Burundi. UNHCR recently launched its 2016 Regional Refugee Response Plan for the South Sudan humanitarian crisis, detailing the need for the agency to receive around $89 million dollars to provide refugees with life-saving assistance in the year ahead. By Charlie Yaxley in Adjumani, Uganda The Taliban claimed responsibility for a school shooting in northwestern Pakistan that left at least 19 people dead. The Associated Press reported Wednesday morning the death toll could be as high as 30, though such figures cannot be considered official at this time. Four gunmen entered Bacha Khan University, opening fire on students and faculty, before they died in a firefight with police and military personnel. Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, the nation's Taliban faction, is known for targeting education institutions for their attacks, according to The New York Times. The Bacha Khan attack occurred 13 months after the group massacred an army school in Peshawar about 35 kilometers away, killing 150 people. Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif released a strongly worded statement referring to the attackers as "cowards" and calling for the nation to mount a "ruthless response," The Washington Post reported. The newspaper and other news outlets reported some people were shot in the head execution style. "I saw two terrorists standing on the roof... They were shouting 'Allahu Akhbar,'" Basit Khan, a computer science student, told The Post. "After that, firing started and I and my friends started running. There were people screaming. We were terrified." Since the Peshawar attack, Pakistan renewed and strengthened its fight against terrorism, The AP noted. The country lifted its moratorium on the death penalty and hanged four people found to be involved in the massacre a year after it occurred. David Hale, the United States' ambassador to Pakistan, released a statement on the shooting as well. "I strongly condemn today's appalling attack on Bacha Khan University in Charsadda. The blatant disregard for human life displayed by these attackers is intolerable. It is especially reprehensible that the attackers targeted an educational institution where students and educators are seeking to better themselves and the nation of Pakistan," he said. "This attack stands in stark opposition to the desires of the Pakistani people to create a secure, stable, and prosperous country, based on respect for all. We offer our deepest condolences to the victims and their families during this time of grief. "The United States stands with the government and people of Pakistan and is committed to supporting their efforts to fight terrorism. We support Pakistan's efforts to bring to justice those behind the attack." The Taliban's Pakistan faction is speaking out on the attack on Bacha Khan University, but two spokesmen are giving two different stories. According to CNN, Umar Mansoor claimed responsibility for the shooting Wednesday that left more than 20 students and faculty dead in addition to the four gunmen. The organizer of the army school shooting 13 months ago, Mansoor indicated the Bacha Khan shooting was retaliation for the Pakistani government new resolve to crack down on terrorism since then. Also speaking on behalf of the Pakistan Taliban, Mohammad Khurrassani stated the group was not responsible for the Bacha Khan shooting. Mansoor told Reuters the Taliban picked Bacha Khan because its strong ties to the Pakistan government and military. However, Khurrassani outright contradicted Mansoor's claim, even stating Bacha Khan's students should be protected. "Youth who are studying in non-military institutions, we consider them as builders of the future nation and we consider their safety and protection our duty," read Khurrassani's statement. The Pakistan Taliban confirmed its responsibility for the shooting to The Associated Press Wednesday morning, which has since been widely reported by several national news organizations. While CNN acknowledged the conflicting statements make it "unclear" if the Taliban really is responsible, the details and nature of the attack give a clear picture. "We've seen consistent operations by the Taliban up in this area," CNN counterterrorism analyst Phil Mudd said. "I see this as simply as retaliatory, that is the Taliban saying, 'If you're going to bring Pakistani special forces and the army up into our turf, you're going pay a heavy price.'" Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is apparently among those looking past the Taliban's denial of the attack, The Washington Post noted. Following the Dec. 2014 attack, Pakistan lifted its moratorium on the death penalty and hanged four people for their involvement in that massacre. Wednesday, Sharif called the attackers "cowards" and promised a "ruthless response." Penn Museum Ushers in the Year of the (Fire) Monkey at the 35th Annual Chinese New Year Celebration Saturday, January 30 Sifu John Chen at the Baz Tai Chi and Kung Fu Studio leads Museum guests in a Tai Chi demonstration. MONKEY 1944, 1956, 1968, 1980, 1992, 2004, 2016, 2028 People born in the year of the monkey have a quick wit, and are optimistic and adventurous. The zodiac advises that these individuals lucky flower is the chrysanthemum, and that they can find successful careers in banking, science, engineering and film. from The Chinese Zodiac Swing on into the Year of the Monkey at the Penn Museums 35th Annual Chinese New Year Celebration on Saturday, January 30, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The festive day features traditional music and dance, tai chi and tangram workshops and martial arts presentations, family crafts and much morewith the grand finale drums and the roar of the lion dance and parade. Activities are held in the China Gallery, which houses one of the finest collections of monumental Chinese art in the country, and throughout the international galleries of the Museum. A special red envelope of surprises awaits every family who attends the festivities. The celebrationone of Philadelphias oldestis free with Museum admission donation ($15, general admission; $13, seniors [65+]; $10, children [6-17] and full-time students [with ID]; $2, ACCESS Card holders; free to children under 5, members, active U.S. Military, STAMP and PennCard holders). Exploring Ancient and Modern Traditions At 11 a.m., Chinese painting instructor Onlei Annie Jung will lead a drop-in painting workshop to teach basic stroke techniques of monkey images. At 2 p.m., she returns for a separate workshop to explain the seven tans of the tangram, an ancient Chinese puzzle game believed to have been invented in China during the Song Dynasty, and introduced in Europe in the early 19th century. Guided family tours at 12:30 p.m. and 2:45 p.m. will wind through the Museum to find monkeys and primates, exploring how they were valued in other cultures. Tour stops include the Egypt gallery, the Mexico and Central America gallery, and the Human Evolution: The First 200 Million Years exhibition. Qin Qian and local musician and instructor Kurt Jung will perform modern and traditional Chinese melodies on the erhu (Chinese two-string fiddle) and the yangchin (Chinese hammered dulcimer) at 12:30 p.m. and 2 p.m. Mr. Jung will also discuss the role of music in ancient Chinese society in these sessions. Students from the Penn Chinese Language Program will lead a family storytime at 1 p.m. featuring the adventure book, Journey to the West (Monkey), a novel published during the Ming Dynasty and considered one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature. The tale weaves the historical pilgrimage of a Tang Dynasty Buddhist monk with folk tale elements and imaginative, comical elements. In China, tai chi is categorized as a martial art applied with internal power. Focusing the mind solely on the movements of the form helps to bring about a state of mental calm and clarity. Sifu John Chen and his students from the Baz Tai Chi and Kung Fu Studio will offer an interactive workshop at 1:30 p.m. At 2:30 p.m., guests can join Falun Gong practitioners from the Greater Philadelphia Falun Dafa Association for sets of gentle and relaxing exercises. Beginning at 2:15 p.m., the award-winning Great Wall Chinese School Little Mulan Dance Troupe will perform a selection of traditional and folk dances from China. Throughout the day, a Chinese Art Marketplace will provide activities for families, including a Year of the Monkey craft station, and paper cutting presentations by local artists. Chinese calligraphy painters write on red paper in the newer Spring Festival tradition of pasting special couplets on every door in the home. Members of Cheungs Hung Gar Kung Fu Academy will offer a dynamic, Shaolin-style Kung Fu demonstration at 3 p.m., then treat visitors to the sharp footwork and pulsating drums of a spectacular Grand Finale Lion Dance to chase away evil and usher in good luck for the year. The Pepper Mill Cafe will join the festivities by offering a selection of Chinese lunch entrees and kid-friendly foods. The Epoch Times, media sponsor of the 35th Annual Chinese New Year Celebration at the Penn Museum, will offer free copies of their weekly, Chinese language newspaper. The Celebration is the second in the Museums World Culture Day series. Guests can pick up a Passport to Cultures upon arrival and begin collecting their 10 stamps to earn an invitation to a special Penn Museum Junior Anthropologist ceremony. More About the Sign of the Monkey Traditional Chinese element theory assigns one of five elements to each year of every zodiac sign: Gold (Metal), Wood, Water, Fire and Earth. Fire is the element associated with this Year of the Monkey. In particular, Fire Monkey attributes include having a harmonious family, being popular among friends and a tendency to relocate from their hometowns to find success. Famous people born in fire monkey years include Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher, Tom Hanks and Mae Jemison. About the China Gallery Families can explore extraordinary artistic achievements of the Chinese through artifacts including silk paintings, jade and coral figurines, bronze vessels, stone sculptures and glazed pottery. Guests can also view the Museums distinctive 19th-century crystal ballthe centerpiece of the Harrison Rotundaas well as renowned Chinese Buddhist sculptures and the stone reliefs of Emperor Taizongs favorite horses, Curly and Autumn Dew. UW Religion Today: Technology and Christianity By Paul V.M. Flesher What technological innovation has had the greatest impact on Christianity? We might want to point to the radio or TV, or maybe the airplane or automobile. I would argue that the invention that changed Christianity most was invented in the 15th century, namely, the printing press. Printing not only made books, especially the Bible, affordable for many people, but it helped spread literacy throughout the populace by giving them something to read. Picture the situation in medieval Europe, before Gutenberg invented the printing press. Books were copied by hand. Making just one copy of Genesis took a monk two months at the pace of a chapter a day. Few copies of books existed. They were valuable and kept in churches, cathedrals and monasteries. To gain access to a book, a person usually had to pass through a cathedrals many gates and doors to the library, often deep within the complex. Books were read there, in the religious setting, and could not be taken away for study. Such limitations did not really matter; most of the few people who could read were already priests or monks. Only a few, usually rich, lay people could read. The printing press changed all that. Copies of books could be printed in the hundreds or thousands. This made them more affordable. Churches saw opportunity in the increased availability of books, especially the Bible and other religious works. Church organizations expanded education outside the bounds of the monasteries into schools more accessible to the general public. In England, the oldest schools accessible to its citizens are those sponsored by the Anglican Church. In France, the Catholic Church ran schools even in rural areas during the 17th century -- a time when anti-church, enlightenment thinkers pooh-poohed the notion of general literacy. The alliance of religion, literacy and printing led to increased religious knowledge and understanding among churchgoers. Early Protestant churches saw this as a boon. To make Scripture even more accessible, they translated it out of Latin into vernacular languages. Martin Luther composed a German translation in the 1500s, while John Wycliffe had produced an English translation in the 1300s, even before the advent of print! His translation influenced later English translations, including the King James Bible. Martin Luthers dictum Scripture alone emphasized the notion that the Bible was the sole source of truth. The desire of Protestants to know this truth firsthand encouraged increasing numbers to read. In colonial and post-colonial America, even communities on the frontier formed Sunday schools to teach children and adults to read so that they could read the Bible. So, the printing press gave the general populace physical access to the Bible; improvements in literacy gave people access to its contents. But, what did the Bible mean? What meaning did Jacobs and Solomons many wives hold for French citizens? How did Davids divinely established monarchy relate to the increasing power of the English Parliament? What did Jesus command, Give unto Caesar that which is Caesars, say about the governments taxation policies? If everyone could now read the Bible, could not everyone interpret it as they saw fit? Potentially yes, but, in reality, most readers were guided by their teachers. In medieval Catholicism, the church was a powerful guide. Even after the dawn of printing, the Catholic church taught reading within the context of its own theology. Because early Protestant churches opposed Catholic theology, they created appealing theologies to put in its place. Indeed, it was often persuasive theological preaching drawn from the biblical text itself that attracted followers to Protestantism and led to their desire to read the Bible for themselves. Preachers attracted followers, and those who attracted enough created new churches: Lutherans, Presbyterians, Quakers and Methodists, to name just a few. The theologies of churches such as these continue to guide the interpretation of most people reading the Bible even today. Yet, the Protestant impulse to interpret for oneself remains strong. Individual Christians often debate biblical meaning among themselves and with their priests, pastors and religious leaders. Some people are so sure they have a new, correct interpretation of the Bible that they form new churches. The United States has over 300 official denominations and thousands of independent churches. All of this springs from the printing press, which made the Bible accessible to all. Flesher is a professor in the University of Wyomings Religious Studies Department. Past columns and more information about the program can be found on the Web at www.uwyo.edu/RelStds. To comment on this column, visit http://religion-today.blogspot.com. Saudi Arabia oil minister Ali al-Naimi said that stability in the oil market will be attained only through the cooperation amid major manufacturers. Naimi told an energy gathering in Riyadh, "As you know, the oil market has witnessed over its long history periods of instability, severe price fluctuations and petro-economic cycles. This is one of them." The Saudi minister added that although the worldwide oil market has been experiencing an instability for over 12 months, he is hopeful regarding the return and future of the oil market. Oil prices CLG6, -1.12% settled lower $30 per barrel for the first time in 12 years previous week, according to MarketWatch. In his speech, Ali al-Naimi made an orientation to the 1998-1999 financial crises in Asia when oil was stricken and Riyadh aided production cut along with non-OPEC producers to support prices, Reuters said. Ali al-Naimi also added that Saudi Arabia will enter into a deal on Sunday to collaborate with Mexico for boosting mutual funds and setting joint ventures. However, Saudi oil minister declined to remark on how the lifting of international sanctions on Tehran might disturb crude oil prices, according to the sources. The reports said that the lifting of international sanctions from Tehran on Saturday could stir oil market. Iran is anticipated to boost its oil export of 1.1 million barrels per day by 500,000. The sanctions from Tehran was lifted subsequent to the statement issued by US Secretary of State John Kerry confirming the verification by International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran has wholly executed the mandatory commitments, reports said quoting Indian Oil Corporation. UK Brent soared $1.94 to $29 per barrel on Friday trading, on panorama of more Iranian crude oil barrels. Subsequent to the removal of international sanctions on Tehran, oil industry needs $200 billion as investments to grow, Iranian First VP Eshaq Jahangiri said Shana News. Financial sources endowment is not the one and only function of oil manufacturing, but it is the primary axis of the nation's economic growth, Jahangiri added. "We are likely to see some price response early in the week, but this was largely expected by the market," The Wall Street Journal quoted a Morgan Stanley report. Gordon Kwan, analyst at Nomura Holdings, said Bloomberg that Tehran's surplus crude oil shipments have the capacity to lower prices further, to as low as $25 per barrel. According to Bloomberg, Tehran's emerge from international sanctions has made life worse for its Gulf Arab rivals. Ryde is trying to capitalize on the sharing economy by matching private-car drivers with commuters on a similar route. Under the Ryde platform, passenger pay driver according to the distance they travel, helping offset the high costs of car ownership and gasoline. Ryde wants to expand that model to Hong Kong because it has similar regulations and traffic issues as Singapore. Straits Times reported that Founder and chief executive Terence Zou said on Friday that he targets to launch the service - which matches private-car drivers to commuters on a similar route - in the second quarter of this year. During the press event, Mr Zou said that Ryde successfully matched "thousands" of people on its network in December and the number is expected to grow further this month. In Singapore, the app now has amassed 20,000 members, and is on track to add another over 30,000 more by the middle of the year. While the start-up does not take a cut from this fee, drivers and passengers pay an annual fee of $30 and $15 respectively for unlimited matches. There is also a $5 deal for five matches. "Data analytics is a very critical tool we employ to give us the competitive edge in our operations. We analyse our data and identify patterns to help us make better business decisions. For example, we know that the average distance carpooled in 2015 was 14.6 km," said Mr Zou, as quoted on E27. Ryde claims the latest upgrade to its app enhances information flow between members. The app allows riders to make both advance and on-demand requests while drivers can also post ride offers. The app's real-time capability enables members to see the most relevant requests at any point in time. Zou, a Harvard Business School graduate who spent six years working at financial institutions including Citigroup Inc., counters that Ryde has an edge in being familiar with the needs of commuters in Asia's costliest urban centers. "We're rushing to go to Hong Kong because we're pretty sure that Hong Kong doesn't have this service yet," said Zou as quoted on Bloomberg. Zou conceived his business idea after failing to hail a taxi during the Christmas shopping season two years ago. A passenger using the app enters an address and the time he or she wishes to be picked up. The app allows riders to make both advance or real-time requests, and drivers can also do the same with their offers. Competition is heating up across Asia as deep-pocketed companies such as Uber Technologies Inc. step up investments. GrabTaxi Holdings Pte, has raised about $700 million and is soon starting its own carpooling service in Singapore. Zou's Ryde Technologies Pte is in discussions to raise about S$10 million ($7 million) in new financing to help fend off rival GrabTaxi and prepare to take his app abroad. The start-up has raised some $2 million in funding to date. Chevron Corp., on Tuesday, said that its subsidiaries in Australia have entered into a non-binding Heads of Agreement with ENN LNG Trading Co. Ltd., a unit of ENN Energy Holdings Ltd, an energy distributor in China. As part of the deal, Chevron's Gorgon natural gas venture will sell liquefied natural gas to China. On completion of the deal, ENN is anticipated to receive nearly 0.5 million metric tons an annum, MTPA, of liquefied natural gas for a time period of more than ten years. The delivery of LNG will be commenced in the first six-month of 2019, Chevron said. Commenting on the deal, Executive VP of Chevron Mindstream and Development, Mike Wirth, said the agreement with ENN LNG highlights the growth of its gas business in Australia and also signifies further development with new LNG customers in China. Managing Director of Chevron Australia, Roy Krzywosinski, said that this agreement demonstrates the attractiveness of liquefied natural gas supply from the company's projects in Australia. Chevron said that the shipment of LNG will signify nearly 3% of Gorgon's yearly production volume of 15.6 million tons. The company also noted that Osaka Gas, Chubu Electric Power, ExxonMobil and Tokyo Gas are among the partners in the Gorgon project. According to Bloomberg, this agreement comes after Chevron's first deal in December to sell about 1 million tons of liquefied natural gas per annum to Huadian Green Energy Co in China. The Huadian agreement that begins in 2020 will assist Chevron to commercialize Australian gas business, Bloomberg said, citing the US producer. The company said that the Gorgon project, which conglomerates the growth of Jansz-lo field and Gorgon field, is being constructed on the Barrow Island. The energy company reported that it is also constructing Wheatstone LNG project in Australia and its initial volume is anticipated to be 8.9 million tons per annum of LNG. WorldOil quoted Krzywosinski as saying, "Gorgon will be a long-term supplier of natural gas to our customers in the Asia-Pacific region and in Australia, delivering energy security as well as significant long-term economic benefits to Australia for decades to come." In 2015, worldwide LNG production touched 250 mmtpa, headed by the development in Australia, Forbes said citing a report by Wood Mackenzie. With 10 projects on hand, Australia will become the top LNG exporter in the world, Forbes added. ENN's Zhoushan LNG is being built and it is anticipated to begin operation by 2018. ENN Energy Holdings Ltd. functions in 146 cities through 17 provinces, with more than 11.3 million residential and 52,000 commercial clients, Chevron said in its website. Amazon vice president Paul Misener has 'lifted' the cover from Prime Air drones that are soon to set the skies abuzz with express deliveries. The drones are meant to carry anything within 5 lbs and drop it off in your backyard within 30 minutes of ordering. Misener, expertly fielded all the questions posed to him by Yahoo Tech's reporter and provided some insight into how Amazon is rapidly gaining speed with this project. He is confident that "these Prime Air drones will be as normal as seeing a delivery truck driving down the street someday" and that people will stop trying to disengage its flight in any way as the novelty wears off. However, a couple of criteria have to be met for a successful 30-minute delivery - a range of over 10 miles and items weighing up to 5 lbs. Since most of the Amazon products weight 5 lbs or less, the latter is taken care of. The drones will also fly through the "transit zone", states Inverse, which is between 200 and 400 feet. However, the details need to be worked out properly in order to be approved by The Federal Aviation Administration. Paul Misener says that the Prime Air team at Amazon - comprising aeronautical engineers, roboticists, and a former NASA astronaut - understands that the same kind of drones won't operate in diverse landscapes. The drone sent to the dry and arid Phoenix would differ from the one sent to the wet and humid Orlando. The team is currently tackling the sound issue, having taken care of the highly likely possibilities of these air-borne machines running into trees or street lights, with a sense-and-avoid technology. Engadget confirms this fact in the vice president's statement, "These drones are more like horses than cars - and let me explain why. If you have a small tree in your front yard, and you want to bang your car into it for some reason, you can do that. Your spouse might not be happy with you, but you can do it. But try riding a horse into the tree. It won't do it. The horse will see the tree and go around it. Same way our drones will not run into trees, because they will know not to run into it." While delivering in houses seem like a no-brainer, the online retailer is yet to work out the urban scene of high-rise apartments. However, Misener dismisses all fears regarding huge technological, geological, and geographical barriers the company might face. He says the automation processes are well in place, and they are simply testing if everything is working as it should, to ensure safety. The company is more concerned about the regulatory issues. There is still a lot of work to do before these amazing machines go 'on air' and revolutionize the concept of shopping completely. Amazon is currently working with NASA on its prototypes. They are optimistic about the launch and hope that the United States may be the first country to get the much-hyped drone service, although that may not happen as they have customers all over the world. Popular messaging app WhatsApp will remove its $1 annual subscription fee. This is according to its chief executive Jan Kuom during the annual Digital Life Design conference held in Munich Monday. The company will look for other means of income, such as experimenting on making airlines, credit card companies, and restaurants pay the service to contact consumers. NBC News reported that the messaging app company will start exploring how to simplify the processes during interactions between businesses and consumers. Kuom said, "When we think about our philosophy of building something utilitarian, we kinda want to experiment with doing the same thing with businesses." Kuom said requiring users to pay even small amounts is difficult in many countries, especially those places where online payments are still complicated. "Today, we are announcing that WhatsApp is going to be free to users. We aren't going to charge a dollar a year anymore," said Kuom at the DLD event in Munich. The seven-year-old company was acquired by giant social media platform Facebook in 2014 for a price of $19.2 billion, according to a report by Time. WhatsApp now has 1 billion users, and recently released a new browser-based desktop chat feature. Besides dropping the subscription fee, WhatsApp will also start to offer complete encryption on its messaging service to ensure its users' privacy. Reuters wrote that this move could only raise more criticisms from certain government authorities. United States and British authorities argue that encryption of messaging from WhatsApp, iMessage, and other messaging apps hinders them from performing their ability to monitor criminal and militant plots. These authorities are planning to pass new laws that would prohibit these encryptions among messaging services. WhatsApp has been aggressively working on developing end-to-end encrypted communication for its services, which includes free text, images, and video messaging. The company has successfully released full encryption feature for its Android phone users. Kuom even hinted that WhatsApp will soon become the world's largest encryption messaging service provider. India-based Tata Steel has decided to cut down jobs by 1,050 including 750 at Port Talbot in the UK. The cheaper imports from China and drop in steel prices across the Europe are the main reasons behind the decision of Tata Steel to trim its headcount. According to Tata Steel, 100 jobs would be slashed down in mills in Trostre, Corby and Hartlepool. The supporting jobs would also be removed to the tune of 200 at this facility. Tata Steel has urged European Commission to take action against 'unfair trade' imports. Tata Steel is slashing 750 jobs at the strip-products plant at Port Talbot. It has 4,000 workers and is the biggest steel plant in the UK. The plant is suffering loss of 1million per day. BBC reports that the prevailing steel prices are at very low impacting the operational margins for steel firms. Adding to this, cheaper imports are making the situation further worse. Tata Steel in a statement said: "The plans are a result of falling European steel prices caused by a flood of cheap imports particularly from China." Tata Steel is the second largest steel producer after Arcelor Mittal SA in the Europe. Karl Koehler, Chief Executive for European operations at Tata Steel, said: "We need the European Commission to accelerate its response to unfairly traded imports and increase the robustness of its actions. Not doing so threatens the future of the entire European steel industry." The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reports that so-called green taxes on electricity tariff and drop in steel demand are taking a toll on the Britain steel industry. Several steel companies are suffering from losses and started filing for bankruptcy. For instance, London-based Caparo Industries Plc has commenced bankruptcy proceedings in October 2015. It has 1,700 staff and filed for bankruptcy for 16 of its 20 steel businesses. Thailand-based Sahaviriya Steel Industries has already announced its plans to close down steel plant in Redcar, Northern England, and this will result in loss of 1,700 jobs. Tatas previously already announced hundreds of job cuts in the UK operations. Expressing concerns over the adverse conditions in the steel industry, trade unions and industry representatives have requested the UK government to extend support to revive it. Koehler further added: "I know this news will be unsettling for all those affected, but these tough actions are critical in the face of extremely difficult market conditions which are expected to continue for the foreseeable future. UK must take stronger action against unfair steel imports," as reported by City A.M. Trade unions have also urged the government to take some against Chinese steel imports. UK steel industry officials say that Chinese imports are at artificially low prices. Most of the major auto industries are passing through a hydrogen fever. Audi and Mercedes Benz have recently added their names to the last. Audi has unveiled its H-tron Quattro Fuel Cell SUV concept in the just concluded North American International Auto Show held in Detroit. Meanwhile, Mercedes Benz has also hinted for producing a hydrogen fuel cell version of its GLC SUV. Mercedes has lost the intellectual lead over hydrogen cars, but finally reveals to produce a new version of the full-size GLC SUV, featuring "the newest fuel cell technology available". The German automaker is now on course to introduce its first hydrogen fuel cell- powered car by next year, reports Autocar quoting Thomas Weber, chief of its R&D Division. Meanwhile, Honda and GM both have paired to set up a factory for manufacturing fuel- cell stacks with a goal to start production by 2025 at the latest. Earlier the automobile giants have shared their fuel cell development efforts in 2013. Now, either company will manufacture its own vehicle in the joint ventured set up, using the shared technology, narrates Green Car Reports quoting Asahi Shimbun. Audi's h-tron Quattro looks alike the e-tron Quattro concept, displayed in Los Angeles. Experts presume that the car uses a lot of the same EV power train know-how. A full tank of H 2 gives it a range of 373 miles (600km), and the on-board lithium-ion batteries may also be topped up by the gigantic solar panel set atop, reports Ars Technica. Mercedes is in the middle of the car's roll- out phase right now. The R&D Division has successfully and significantly reduced the size of the hardware required to generate electric power. However, Thomas Weber has declined to forecast on probable model to use the technology first or period for introducing the hydrogen fuel powered cars. But it is widely assumed that the car will be displayed first at the 2017 Frankfurt Motor Show. Industry insiders believe the car to have a range of 250 to 300 miles with modular components which may be shared by hybrid and electric models across the group. H 2 (Hydrogen) fuel is not widely acclaimed as an alternative source of power. Many analysts doubt that use of electricity to produce H 2 may be less efficient. But since it allows quicker refueling, the concept appears to be more popular in recent days and all the automobile giants are keenly monitoring competitors' moves in this regard. The whole automobile world seems to ecstatic for hydrogen fuel cell powered car. Recently Audi as well as Mercedes, the two German auto giants have exhibited their interest. Audi remains one step ahead through introducing its h-tron Quattro, while Mercedes expects to make the car available by 2017. Unlike the German auto builders, Honda and GM are also in the race for introducing their self developed products. Indian Prime Minister always claimed he had a 'different thought process'. His ambitious Rs10,000-crore 'Startup India' project that aims to promote a startup culture in India by reducing government interference, simply establishes the fact. Despite having all the facilities that make India the perfect global startup hotspot, the country sees its entrepreneurs making their way to places like Singapore and the United States which have lesser regulations on startups. As Forbes points out, India's leading startups - like Flipkart, the largest Indian retailer, Freshdesk, the customer support software maker, InMobi, mobile ad agency, and Capillary Technologies, software products firm - have all moved away from the country and are likely to list on the foreign stock exchange. It seems the government has finally caught on with the basic root cause and come up with this plan. According to Financial Times, preceding the prime minister's speech, finance minister Arun Jaitley expressed his consent regarding this pioneer project. "The world today has changed. Startup India has marked an important change in India's mindset," he said, "In an unregulated environment, it's the survival of the fittest that matters." Addressing the 2000+ audience in the capital city, Modi said, "Start-up is not just about mobiles and laptops... Start-up does not only mean a company with billions of dollars of money and 2,000 employees. If it is able to provide employment to even five people, it would help in taking the country forward. Young people have to change their mindsets from being job seekers to try and become job creators. Once you become a job creator, you will realise that you are transforming lives," as stated in The Indian Express. With this statement, the prime minister went on to reveal the entire plan, amidst loud cheering echoing the crowd's excitement. He promised a faster patent registration and protection for IP rights and spoke about setting up facilitation centers in several cities to provide free assistance, legal or otherwise, for patent filing by small organizations. There would also be an 80% reduction in the filing fees for the startups. Just like registration can be done in a day via an app, the exit process will likewise be a lot smoother now. The winding down will take a mere 90 days vis a vis the countless months, and sometimes years. A suitable provision in the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Bill will soon be made. Public procurements will now see much relaxed norms. The minimum turnover and minimum operating years required for a startup would be much less, along with income tax exemptions for the first three years, effective April 2016. Additionally, there would be exemptions for venture capital funds to start up a startup as well as incubators' investments, both above the fair market value. Some other highlights of the plan are new policies to encourage women starting their own business, incubators based on sectors, a credit guarantee scheme, and reinvigorating the biotech sector with more bio-clusters. To make the implementation of this ambitious plan a grand success, the central government funding will stand at 40% with the remaining 60% to be provided by the states and private sectors at a 40:20 ratio. It now remains to be seen just how well the plan is executed, in the face of all the promises made. Chinese authorities have reportedly confirmed the whereabouts of the missing Hong Kong publisher on Monday, three weeks after he went missing. The publisher is the chief editor of a publishing house whose books have been banned in mainland China. The Hong Kong publisher, Lee Bo, is the most recent of five Hong Kong individuals have disappeared under mysterious circumstances. All the five have had link with publishing company 'Mighty Current' and its book store naming 'Causeway Bay Bookshop', reports Yahoo News. A statement from the Chinese police has said that Paul Lee, also known as Lee Bo, remains in their custody. The statement has been furnished quoting the Interpol liaison office China's Guangdong Provincial Public Security Department, according to a report published in Time. The publishing firm specialized in books those are banned in mainland China for being critical on its communist leadership. Lee's case in particular has raised alarms on suspicions that Chinese security agents crossed into Hong Kong to abduct him, reports Fox News. Hong Kong has written a letter to the Guangdong officials requesting for a meeting with Lee to further understand the situation of the incident. Guangdong officials have also forwarded them a letter written by Lee himself and addressed to the Hong Kong government. The letter however reveals that he went to the mainland China voluntarily to assist authorities with an unspecified investigation. The revelation strengthens local suspicion that Lee, a British citizen has been snatched from Hong Kong by mainland Chinese authorities in gross violation of Hong Kong's autonomy. The disappearance has drawn widespread international criticism amid concerns that Beijing is widening its dragnet to harass and detain dissidents beyond mainland Chinese territory. In a similar incident, another of the five missing men, a Swedish national Gui Minhai, has been shown on state TV. He has been confessing tearfully to get arrested by the Chinese authorities for a hit and run case, that he committed a decade ago. The official Xinhua News Agency has reported that Gui struck and killed a female college student in 2003 and convicted for drunk driving. He has reportedly fled the country while remaining on probation. Gui, one of Mighty Current's owners, has last been seen in Thailand during mid October. The Hong Kong government has received a letter forwarded by Guangdong Provincial Public Security via Interpol that the missing Hong Kong publisher is in mainland custody. He is reported to assist mainland authority in an unknown investigation. Another missing out of five including Lee, Gui Minhai has similarly been observed to confess for a hit and run case, he has been accused a decade ago. However, both the disappearances and related confessions indicate for China's atrocity to silent opponents' voice. Malaysia's state-oil firm Petronas plans to cut 50 billion ringgit, or $11.4 billion, from its spending for the next four years. This plan comes amidst rout in oil prices, with Brent crude price dropping to $28 per barrel last Friday. Petroliam Nasional Bhd will cut spending on capital and operating expenditure, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. The declining oil prices affected major oil firms in the world, and it could lead to further decline on Petronas' profit both international and domestic. Petronas is the biggest source of income for the Malaysian government, contributing a third of the country's annual budget. According to Reuters, Petronas announced in November that it plans to slash its 2016 dividend to the Malaysian government by almost 40 percent. This plan follows the company's 91 percent decline in profit. Analysts expect the company might continue to reduce its contribution to the government. Petronas CEO Wan Zulkiflee Wan Ariffin said, "We will go through another round of CAPEX (capital expenditure) and OPEX (operating expenditure) review, to target cuts up to RM50 billion over the next four years. This means that we are going to have to defer some of our projects." Meanwhile, Up Stream wrote that Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib Razak announced in October that revenues from oil and gas will constitute 14.1 percent of the budget for this year, which is a decrease from 2015's 19.7 percent. Najib will change the 2016 budget to keep up with the dwindling oil prices. The initial budget made was based on a $48 per barrel oil price, now Brent went down lower than $30. Malaysia second-biggest oil producer in Southeast Asia. It is also the second-largest liquefied natural gas exporter in the world. Besides the slump in oil prices, which adversely affects the government, the controversy surrounding the state-investment fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd. has also troubled the country. Mitsubishi Research Institute partnered up with UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities to raise 50 billion yen, or $426 million, this spring to revive struggling Japanese megasolar power plants. Bloomberg News reported that Mitsubishi Research will head the asset management of the fund and choose which power plants. Meanwhile, the security firm will be in charge with soliciting investors. Financial terms, however, weren't officially announced yet. See News wrote that Morgan Stanley Group and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group have entered a securities joint venture, which is called Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities. The firms aim to fund and buy more than 10 struggling solar power plants that produces 100 MW in a span of three years. The two firms aren't the only ones planning to fund renewable energies, as the Development Bank of Japan (DBJ) and Japan Wind Development Co are also planning to raise 50 billion yen to help wind power projects. The Nikkei reported that Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley plans to raise the money by soliciting investment from domestic institutional investor and pension funds. Mitsubishi Research will look for plants that are for sale. It will also look for sites where new facilities can be built. The firms will put up a special-purpose company for every project that it will support. Mitsubishi Research will collaborate with solar power plant operators and contractors from various regions in the country. These power plants will help optimize the power that the plants must generate. One of the companies Mitsubishi Research will partner with is the Kyuden Mirai Energy. Mitsubishi Research is presently working with megasolar power plant companies in the Kumamoto and Hyogo prefectures. Industrial solar power plants that produce a total of 20 million KW went online as of September. These companies operated under the feed-in tariff system imposed by the Japanese government. However, these power plants failed to generate enough power due to poor maintenance and cheap foreign solar cells. South Korea's Ministry of Environment announced Tuesday that it will file criminal charges against Volkswagen AG's Korean office head Johannes Thammer. The complaint is based on the carmakers recall plan, which the ministry claimed did not reach the country's legal requirements. Reuters reported that the complaint is the latest legal actions that has been hurled against Volkswagen after admitting that it cheated the US emissions tests on several of its diesel cars. South Korea fined the automaker 14.1 billion won, or $11.7 million, and demanded the recall of 125,522 Volkswagen cars. Some of the cars that were recalled were Volkswagen's Beetle, Audi's Q series, and the Tiguan, which is South Korea's best selling import vehicle. Two weeks ago, the German automaker submitted on a proposal to fix its vehicles as requested by the ministry. However, the ministry claimed that the company failed to explain the cause of the problem and how they could be fixed. Since the proposal lack key information, the ministry claimed that the carmaker failed to abide by the country's legal requirements. The Wall Street Journal wrote that Mr. Thammer and other officials from the carmaker, as well as the powertrain-developer chief Friedrich Johann Eichler went to South Korea Tuesday to visit the ministry and passed a proposed fix. Volkswagen's Korean unit said in a statement that "Audi Volkswagen Korea is doing its utmost to resolve the emissions issue." It added, "We'll offer further explanation on our proposal." Meanwhile, according to the Business Standard, Volkswagen is facing the same issues against the US environmental regulators. The automaker is being sued in several other countries besides South Korea after it admitted faking its emission tests. Volkswagen's sales in South Korea increased in 2011 after a free-trade deal made it easier for European cars to enter the country. Its sales in the Asian country reached 167,043 units last year, a 23 percent increase from 2014, which also increased 29 percent from 2013. World's oldest man died Tuesday at 112 in a hospital in Nagoya central Japan. Yasutaro Koide said the secret to long life was to "live with joy." Telegraph UK reported that Koide was named the world's oldest man by the Guinness World Records in August 2015. He died of pneumonia and heart failure, just two months before his 113th birthday. He spent his last six years in Nagoya. According to Daily Mail UK, Koide was born March 13, 1903. To understand how long ago the year of his birth is, imagine that in that year, the Wright brothers flew in Kitty Hawk for the first time. A year after that the Russo-Japanese War erupted. As a young man, he was a tailor. He has seven children, nine grandchildren, and a great grandchild. Japan has one of the highest life expectancy in the world. Some 127 million of its population lived to be 65 years old and above. Meanwhile, BBC wrote that the world's oldest person is an American woman named Susannah Mushatt Jones, who is currently 116 years old. Before her, Japanese woman Misao Okawa held the title of world's oldest person. Okawa lived to be 117 before she died last year. According to Guinness, the oldest recorded person who ever lived was Jeanne Calment. She lived to reach 122 years old and she died in 1997. Susannah Mushatt Jones was born in 1899. She said she ate bacon and eggs everyday, which was her secret in living an exceptionally long life. Meanwhile, Koide said his secret for longevity was to avoid drinking and smoking. He said, "The best thing to do is avoid overwork and live with joy." Another living centennial is Britain's oldest person, Gladys Hooper, who recently celebrated her 113th birthday. Her 85 year old son, Derek Heriston said he is very proud of his mother. There are no official reports yet on who will succeed Koide as the oldest man in the world. JUAN CARLO/THE STAR Jake Mowatt, an eighth-grader in Sally Reimers U.S. history class at Sinaloa Middle School in Simi Valley, writes his homework before the end of class. Reimers uses the growth mindset in teaching, encouraging her students to try another strategy if they make a mistake or dont understand a concept. If students are struggling, she tells them they may not have learned it yet, but they will. By Jean Moore of the Ventura County Star What if we told kids that their brains are like muscles that they can exercise their minds just as they exercise their bodies, to make them stronger? That's the thinking behind the "growth mindset," an approach to learning that is drawing both adherents and critics at schools nationwide. Teachers under the growth mindset don't assume that kids have a fixed ability that they're good at math, for example or even that they're smart. They instead believe a child's ability in any given subject is flexible. So they encourage students to persevere when they hit a hurdle to try another approach or ask for help if that doesn't work, either. Their minds strengthen during that struggle as they learn to bounce back from setbacks and grow more confident in taking on challenges, proponents say. "Struggle is not a bad thing," said Michael Babb, superintendent of the Ventura Unified School District. "It's a necessary step for learning." The approach was developed primarily by Carol Dweck, a psychology professor at Stanford University. She's essentially saying the brain is like a muscle, which means it can get stronger when challenged. The concept is the opposite of a fixed mindset, which says that our ability to do something is set, just like our eye color. Children with a fixed mindset will easily give up on a task that challenges them, said Jennifer Healy, who teaches seventh-grade English and leadership at Sinaloa Middle School in Simi Valley. "If you have a fixed mindset, there's that voice in your head that says you can't do it, and you shut down," Healy said. The growth mindset also aligns with Common Core, which emphasizes critical thinking over memorization, educators say. What does growth mindset mean? This is the first of two stories about growth mindset, a popular approach to teaching students. WEDNESDAY: The concept Growth mindset says the brain is like a muscle that grows when it works hard. Teachers who use the approach believe their students will get better at something if they struggle with it a little, if they challenge themselves. So they encourage students to try another strategy if they get an answer wrong the first time, rather than simply marking it wrong. A growth mindset is the opposite of a fixed mindset, which says that our abilities in math, for example are fixed, like our eye color or height. THURSDAY: Growth mindset as applied in math We tend to think were good at math, or were not, and theres not much we can do about it. But research is showing we can all learn math with the right approach. The idea of a growth mindset is not new but became better known when Dweck published a popular book about it, " Mindset: The New Psychology of Success," in 2007. Diana Janke, principal of Sinaloa, asked all her teachers to read the book this year. DEVELOP STRATEGIES The approach has been misinterpreted by some to mean simply praising effort. But that's misunderstanding the thinking behind a growth mindset, Dweck said. Telling students, "Keep trying; you can do it," doesn't work, she said. Teachers instead should ask students these questions: "What strategies have you tried? What will you try next?" "It's not just effort," Dweck said. "You need strategies." The approach seems to be most effective with low-achieving students, who often show the most growth, educators said. Students learn that when one approach didn't work, another might, said Hani Youssef, assistant superintendent of educational services for the Simi Valley Unified School District. "That's what learning is," Youssef said. "You tell students, 'That didn't work, but that's not necessarily a failure. It just didn't work like you thought it would. What else could you do?' You're encouraging thought by asking those questions." For higher-achieving students, teachers can point to notables who tried several times before succeeding Thomas Edison or Abraham Lincoln, for example Youssef said. "How many attempts at lighting that bulb did (Edison) make before he got it right?" Youssef said. In her second-grade classroom at Hathaway School in Oxnard, teacher Lori Anaya pushes her students to be investigators, to keep asking questions to get an answer. During a recent science lesson when students were exploring marine life, one of her students came to her a bit frustrated. "I did it wrong," he told her. She guided him, asking a couple of specific questions about the shells he was looking at and encouraging him to try again. "I want to know, 'Are you growing, or are you not?' " Anaya said. "Then, at the other end, I want my top, inquisitive kids not to get bored." DAILY PRACTICE In Sally Reimers' eighth-grade history class at Sinaloa on a recent Friday, students were asked to focus on their work over the past week. One of the questions: "What was one thing you could have put more effort into this week?" Reimers and Healy encourage students not to see mistakes as failures. They instead tell students they may not have learned the concept yet, but they will. "It's a life mindset: How do you approach your world? What do you want to accomplish in it?" Healy said. "You may not be able to do it yet, but you will eventually. I tell my students who say they don't like to read, 'You just don't like to read yet, but when you find that right book, you won't be able to get out of it.' " To truly understand the growth mindset, teachers need to experience it, educators say. They need to figure out how to incorporate it into their teaching, to see who it's not working for and often to educate parents. "When you learn, you understand what it takes to learn," Babb said. "And that helps you teach." Teachers also need to believe all their students can learn, said Merilyn Buchanan, interim dean of the school of education at CSU Channel Islands. "It's a mindset for teachers, as well as for students," Buchanan said. "We never give up on students, but we also don't allow students to give up on themselves." Developing a growth mindset also could mean stretching their own ideas, not only of what individual children might be able to do, but entire grade levels, Babb said. Second-graders, for example, are now learning coding. Eighth-graders routinely take algebra. "We have to be able to perceive that kids will be able to do things we hadn't thought they could," Babb said. "We don't want to be fixed in our thinking about what sixth-graders can do that they can learn this but not that. We have to be careful as educators not to have a fixed mindset." Teaching programs at California Lutheran University and CSU Channel Islands may not specifically teach the growth mindset, but they do teach some of the ideas behind it, specifically how to give feedback to students. "You have to be able to tell them where there is growth, and then what the next goal is," Buchanan said. "That's what we're looking for in our teacher candidates. You have to praise behaviors the student can control." SHARE JOSEPH A. GARCIA/THE STAR Angelo Velasquez: In different styles, you can do different things on the drums. If its jazz, you can interact with the other players more. If its rock, you can just really lay down a hard groove. ... When its funk or salsa, you can watch the people dance. JOSEPH A. GARCIA/THE STAR Angelo Velasquez, an 11th-grader at Newbury Park High School, will play at the National Association of Music Merchants convention Saturday in Anaheim as part of the Southern California High School All-Star Jazz Big Band. JOSEPH A. GARCIA/THE STAR Angelo Velasquez, an 11th-grader at Newbury Park High School, will play at the National Association of Music Merchants convention Saturday in Anaheim as part of the Southern California High School All-Star Jazz Big Band. JOSEPH A. GARCIA/THE STAR Angelo Velasquez, an 11th-grader at Newbury Park High School, will play at the National Association of Music Merchants convention Saturday in Anaheim as part of the Southern California High School All-Star Jazz Big Band. His father, Al (right) is also a drummer, and the two have been playing together for years. By Robyn Flans Like father, like son. When he was 3 years old, Angelo Velasquez, now 17, picked up a pair of drumsticks because he was watching his father, Al, play the drums. Under his father's tutelage, the Newbury Park High School junior recently was named to the Southern California High School All-Star Jazz Big Band based on a rigorous audition before the Southern California School Band and Orchestra Association. The band will be playing Saturday at the National Association of Music Merchants convention, where anyone from Stevie Wonder to Elton John could be checking out products or performances. "NAMM is where all the music merchants converge from around the world to show their products to the global market," Al Velasquez said. "They bring their very best artists who they've endorsed to demonstrate their products to the market and consumers who distribute those products. It is very prestigious to be playing with your peers." Papa is proud. As a 10-year-old, Al Velasquez cut his teeth at Henson's Music Store in Oxnard, and he was teaching at Oxnard and Camarillo locations by age 20. He now teaches four days a week at the Camarillo store. His son knew he was serious about drums by the time he was 7. His father already had been teaching him for four years and began letting his son sit in with his band. "I wanted to be him, really," Angelo Velasquez said with a laugh. A foundation studying such drum heroes as Tony Williams, Elvin Jones, John Bonham and Max Roach with a few lessons with such local greats as Joe LaBarbara and Luis Conte thrown in with his father's lessons sculpted his two-hour-a-day practice regimen and helped prepare him for the Southern California School Band and Orchestra Association audition. The audition required soloing in three pieces of music in two disciplines this year in jazz and Latin samba as well as sight reading a piece of music on the spot. He earned the Latin percussionist spot in the all-star band last year and landed the drum chair position this year. "The whole family is proud," his father said. "As you can imagine, it's been a lot of work. It's been everything from playing with Dad, the middle school band, the high school band and jamming with friends. There was a jazz program he was involved with every summer from seventh grade through 10th grade in Agoura called Jazz Lab." Angelo Velasquez described the experience playing at the National Association of Music Merchants last year. "To play at NAMM and see some of your heroes just casually walking by or just people come watch you is so great," he said. He loves the effect music has on the listener. "That's one of the main reasons I play," he said. "What I love is that I can express myself on an instrument without talking. "In different styles, you can do different things on the drums. If it's jazz, you can interact with the other players more. If it's rock, you can just really lay down a hard groove and see how it affects the audience. When it's funk or salsa, you can watch the people dance while you play." His father taught him at an early age that dedication and discipline make a great musician. "And to practice on a daily basis," Angelo Velasquez added. "The goal is to make a living by being a musician." ANTHONY PLASCENCIA/THE STAR Smoke billows above the scene of an explosion near Mission Rock Road in Santa Paula, where Ventura County Hazmat teams tried to contain a spill of organic peroxide. 11/18/14 SHARE By Marjorie Hernandez of the Ventura County Star Defendants accused of criminal charges connected to a 2014 explosion at the Santa Clara Waste Water Co. plant near Santa Paula were ordered to return next month to discuss potential conflicts of interest involving defense attorneys. Seven defendants, as well as attorneys for Santa Clara Waste Water and its parent company, Green Compass, appeared Tuesday before Ventura County Superior Court Judge Kent Kellegrew for an arraignment on an indictment. Kellegrew ordered all parties to appear back in court Feb. 8. A Ventura County grand jury issued a 71-count indictment in August against Santa Clara Waste Water, Green Compass, and nine company officials and employees including CEO William Mitzel. The indictment was spawned by an explosion and spot fires at the company's plant at 815 Mission Rock Road on Nov. 18, 2014, that caused several injuries, led to evacuations of businesses and homes, and required the treatment of dozens of people for potential exposure. The defendants are accused of conspiracy to commit a crime, handling hazardous waste with a reckless disregard for human life, disposal of hazardous waste, committing violations causing injuries and other charges. On Nov. 20, managers Mark Avila and Brock Gustin Baker pleaded guilty to some of the charges. The two men face a maximum of three years in the county jail or home confinement. Defense attorneys for the company, have characterized the explosion as an industrial accident. The company handles wastewater from sources such as chemical toilets, industrial uses, and some oil and natural gas operations. Senior Deputy District Attorney Karen Wold said Tuesday that law firms Musick, Peeler & Garrett LLP, and Burke, Williams & Sorensen LLP currently represent multiple defendants, as well as witnesses and victims in the case. "There is a potential conflict where corporations and corporate officers are charged along with lower-level employees, particularly if the corporation is paying the bill," Wold wrote in a motion filed Nov. 30. "Will counsel's advice to lower-level employees and strategic litigation decisions be in the best interest of those employees, or will they be designed to protect the corporations and their high-ranking officials? The court should determine whether counsel can give undivided loyalty to every client under these circumstances." Kellegrew on Tuesday ordered defense attorneys to respond to the motion by Jan. 29 and both sides will reconvene Feb. 8 to discuss the issue. Defense attorney William Carter, of Musick, Peeler & Garrett, said prosecutors raised the potential conflicts issue only after they filed a motion alleging misconduct. Santa Clara Waste Water filed a motion in November to sanction the District Attorney's Office. The company alleges Senior Deputy District Attorney Christopher Harman made "misleading statements" to the court regarding an employee file seized by investigators. Harman since has been removed from the case. The state Attorney General's Office announced in November it would join the county District Attorney's Office in prosecuting the case. Attorneys for Santa Clara Waste Water last week filed a challenge to the sufficiency of the indictment. "In addition to being vague, ambiguous, lacking in factual particulars and failing to provide proper notice, several of the counts of the indictment are defective because they do not constitute a 'public offense,' either as charged or as against some of the named defendants," company attorney Barry Groveman wrote. Groveman added that the indictment failed to provide adequate notice of the charged offense and defendants were charged with identical and multiple violations for the same offense. Carter said Santa Clara Waste Water also plans to file a motion to disqualify the District Attorney's Office from the case. "Just as the People believe the conflicts (of interest) motion is important for them ... it is equally important for the defendant that discovery with respect to potential misconduct to see whether or not the district attorney is the appropriate entity to be pursuing any of their motion," Carter said at Tuesday's hearing. "That is a fundamental issue for the defendant." STAR FILE PHOTO Simi Valley Rotarians Rocky Rhodes (left) and Tony Falato chat in October after Rhodes decided to donate his kidney to Falato. Their surgery is scheduled for Tuesday. SHARE By Staff Reports The two Simi Valley Rotarians who underwent a kidney transplant Tuesday morning were doing well by the afternoon, with Rocky Rhodes' kidney functioning in Tony Falato's body, relatives reported. "The doctor that did the surgery said that the kidney worked immediately," Falato's wife, Evelyn Locker, said from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where Rhodes, 49, gave one of his kidneys to Falato, 52. "Rocky was out early and he's stable in recovery," Locker said shortly after 4 p.m. Tuesday. "His wife just went in there to be with him." Locker had a surge of emotions when she heard the news that the transplant was a success. "It's like crying, laughing, crying, laughing," she said. "It's a miracle we're here in the right place in Southern California at Cedars-Sinai." Falato owns the Junkyard Cafe in Simi Valley. The effort to find a kidney donor was led by "Team Tony," a group including Locker, along with Rotarians May Culbertson, Terry Marvin, Michelle Neff-Hernandez and Deb Holler. In the end, it was a fellow member of Rotary Club of Simi Valley, Rhodes, who agreed to donate a kidney. Leading up to and the day of her husband's surgery, Locker said she received a wealth of support from the Simi Valley community, where her family and Rhodes' family live. "I can't even tell you how many emails and group messages I've received and all day long," Locker said. "It's amazing. We're fortunate people." File photo SHARE By Staff Reports Ventura County prosecutors said Tuesday that a Simi Valley man has been sentenced to 11 years in prison after being found guilty in December of felony solicitation of murder, conspiracy and identity theft. Brandon Michael Adams, 31, met with someone in March 2014 who was acting as a confidential informant for the Ventura County Sheriff's Office, prosecutors said. They said Adams solicited the informant to kill Robert "Scrappy" Ortiz Jr., a professional boxer from Simi Valley who had a child with Adams' wife. Prosecutors said Adams also knew someone who could provide personal identifying information so that identity theft and funding of the murder could be carried out. Prosecutors said that person and Adams met with the confidential informant multiple times during a three-week period to talk about the murder and various identity theft schemes. The conversations were monitored and recorded by sheriff's detectives, prosecutors said. Adams and Vince Toncher, 50, of Calabasas, were arrested in April 2014. Prosecutors said Toncher pleaded guilty to solicitation of murder and three counts of transferring personal identifying information in April 2015. Toncher was sentenced to nine years in prison in May, they said. Adams also faced a felony charge of conspiracy to commit murder, which could have carried a 25-year-to-life sentence, but a jury found him not guilty of that charge in December. JOSEPH A. GARCIA/STAR FILE PHOTO In this Nov. 5, 2014, photo, Matt Guthrie, a vote-by-mail ballot processing observer for Jeff Gorrells campaign, walks into the Ventura County Elections Division at Ventura County Hall of Adminstration. SHARE By Bartholomew Sullivan WASHINGTON California voters waiting to pick a nominee for president will cast their decisions on Election Day, June 7. But it's already an election year in early voting states gearing up for contests in the days ahead. Here's some things you should know about the process. The nominee will be selected from the candidates still standing at their parties' nominating conventions this summer. Currently, there are 11 Republican and three Democrats vying for their party's nomination. They will be elected by delegates selected in the months ahead. Some delegates, called super delegates, already know who they are: congressmen, senators, and party leaders. Others will be selected at state conventions or directly by voters after the states (and some territories) hold party caucuses and primaries. All delegates will be selected at least a month before the national conventions convene: the Republicans, July 18-21; and Democrats, July 25-28. When is the California Presidential Primary? Election Day is June 7, but vote-by-mail ballots are available from May 9 to May 31. Last day to register to vote is May 23. What are party primaries? Primaries are elections in which voters select their preferred nominee. In closed primaries, a voter's choices are limited to his or her registered party. For example, a registered Republican can only select a Republican candidate. Independent voters cannot vote in closed primaries. In open primaries, a voter can choose any candidate. New Hampshire holds the first primary on Feb. 9. It's a closed primary for registered Democrats or Republicans only. New Hampshire will have 32 Democratic delegates and 23 Republican delegates at the nominating conventions. Who are the nominees? Several candidates have dropped out of the Republican field but 11 remain at this point. They are billionaire developer Donald Trump; Texas Sen. Ted Cruz; Florida Sen. Marco Rubio; Ohio Gov. John Kasich; retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson; former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush; former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina; Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul; former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee; New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie; and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. (There are 31 Republican presidential candidates on state ballots, but those names include South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who have dropped out.) The Democrats running are: former first lady, New York Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders; and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley. (Twenty-nine other Democratic candidates appear on some state ballots but are not considered likely nominees.) Veteran Republican consultant and former New Hampshire Attorney General Thomas D. Rath has said the early contests are part of the "winnowing process." Florida voters will help decide the ultimate winner in that state's primary on March 15. By then, the field should be narrowed to several well-financed contenders. There will be 2,472 Republican delegates voting for the GOP nominee in Cleveland, July 18-21; and 4,764 delegates will be selecting the Democratic nominee in Philadelphia, July 25-28. California, with 172 Republican and 546 Democratic delegates, has the biggest delegation. Texas is next, with 155 Republican and 252 Democratic delegates, followed by New York, with 95 Republican and 291 Democratic delegates, and Florida, with 99 Republican and 246 Democratic delegates. Delegates agree to vote on at least the first vote of the national conventions for the candidate they are obligated to support, or are "pledged" to. Republican Party rules permit removing a delegate who demonstrates support for a candidate other than the one to whom he or she is bound. SHARE Hillary Clinton wrapped herself so tightly in President Obama's mantle at Sunday night's debate that it was a wonder she could walk off the stage. She lauded the Affordable Care Act to the heavens, rejecting the notion that it left too many Americans still without health insurance. She defended Obama's initiatives to rein in Wall Street, dismissing contentions that they did not go far enough. She highlighted his success in seizing Syria's chemical weapons. She praised the way he "led us out of the Great Recession." And she attacked her chief rival for the Democratic nomination, independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, for allegedly being insufficiently loyal to the president. "Senator Sanders called him weak, disappointing," she said. "He even, in 2011, publicly sought someone to run in a primary against President Obama." There was considerable irony in all of this. Eight years ago, the primary fight here between Clinton and Obama was bitter and tinged with racial overtones. This year, with the possibility that Sanders could win both Iowa and New Hampshire, Clinton is counting on South Carolina's large African-American population to serve as a firewall. If there is anything not to like about the Obama legacy, apparently she hasn't heard of it. Sanders made the case that he has been, and remains, a supporter of the president. And he turned the tables, putting Clinton very much on the defensive when the subject turned to Wall Street excesses. "I don't mean to just point the finger at you," he said, pointing his finger at Clinton, "you've received over $600,000 in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs in one year." Clinton's response that "hedge-fund billionaires" are running ads against her and that "I'm the one they don't want to be up against" probably failed to convince many listeners that she is more antagonistic toward Wall Street than Sanders, who frequently rails about all the executives who need to be sent to prison. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, the third candidate on the Gaillard Center stage, delivered a performance that was smooth, knowledgeable and, as things now stand, irrelevant. Focus was on the contest between the two leaders in the polls, Clinton and Sanders, who offer Democrats a clear choice: evolution or revolution. The difference is evident in the two candidates' positions on health care. Clinton proposes building on the foundation of Obamacare, the Children's Health Insurance Program, Medicaid and Medicare to further expand coverage. Sanders advocates a new single-payer system, akin to those in other major industrialized countries, that would be truly universal and provide health care as a right. Clinton recalled that in the fight over passage of the Obamacare legislation, efforts to include even one "public option" government-run plan had to be abandoned. To "start over again, pushing our country back into that kind of a contentious debate, I think is the wrong direction," she said. In other words, let's have evolutionary change. Sanders noted that there are still 29 million Americans without health insurance. He argued that a single-payer system, which he describes as "Medicare for all," would not only provide coverage for everyone but also dramatically reduce medical costs. He said the issue is "whether we have the guts to stand up to the private insurance companies and all of their money, and the pharmaceutical industry. That's what this debate should be about." Translation: We need a political revolution. On issue after issue, Clinton proposes incremental solutions that take into account our political system as it is: sharply divided along ideological lines and warped by gerrymandering and virtually unfettered campaign contributions. Sanders proposes dramatic solutions that will only be possible when power is wrested from "big money" interests that refuse to do "what the American people want them to." In that sense, Democrats are being asked to make a classic heads-vs.-hearts decision. With Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, Clinton would ordinarily have a huge advantage. Given what's happening in the GOP campaign, however, this doesn't much look like an ordinary election cycle. Sanders got a couple of the biggest cheers Sunday night, but for most of the evening the crowd seemed to be on Clinton's side. In interviews afterward, several South Carolina political veterans predicted that Clinton would win the primary here, perhaps comfortably. But the loyal Democrats I spoke with also wished there was more passion in Clinton's appeal to go along with the pragmatism. To convince people to eat their vegetables this year, you might have to add a little hot sauce. Eugene Robinson writes for The Washington Post. Email him at eugenerobinson@washpost.com. SHARE Re: Ken Davis Jan. 15 letter, Trumps support: Mr. Davis describes Trumps followers as fed up with both the political status quo and politicians who lie to their constituents. More people than Trump supporters are disgusted with government dysfunction. The Congressional approval rating is lower than pond scum. The rift between political parties greatly expanded with the advent of the tea party. A main tea party aim is smaller government, and it seem ready to destroy government to achieve its ends. Remember government shutdowns or debt ceiling default threats? Tea party electees found it hard to radicalize other politicians to their dogma, thereby frustrating their rank-and-file. Said rank-and-file includes Obama-haters who are bigoted, racist, misogynistic, anti-Black/Latino, anti-gay, anti-abortion rights, etc. These elements showed up at rallies and on social media while the tea party denied their existence. Davis says,"... Trump may be loud, brash, impolite, crass, etc. He is not business-as-usual, and that is why he has so much support. Trump, the insult candidate, is all those things, as well as completely inexperienced, with a poor temperament to govern. Politicians do the bidding of special interest donors. After characterizing Washington politicians as "stupid," bridges have been burned. If electing Trump brings government to a standstill, the tea party will have achieved its goal. Voters are to blame for electing terrible politicians, but voters need to elect better people, not worse! Trump and his followers declare war against "political correctness." Political correctness can sometimes go too far, but it is meant to make us more polite, civilized and moral nothing wrong with that. A Trump supporter was asked, "Is there anything Trump could say or do to make you question your support?" The guy said, "Nope, my mind is made up." Stuart Wing, Moorpark Vietnams digital economy has seen significant growth over the last decade and is expected to be valued at US$57 billion by 2025. The countrys digital... The VSIP Charity Day on January 16-17 drew in tenants and their workers to raise funds for the underprivileged and low-income people in southern Binh Duong province, where the company is based. Over 1000 customers, partners and civilians volunteered to join the Charity Walk to spread the companys message: Live healthy and share love. Nguyen Thanh Trung, deputy head of VSIPs management board, said that the Charity Day was an annual event held as a playground for the workers in order to strengthen relations between VSIP and its tenants and partners. The event was first launched in 2003. In 2015, the VSIP Charity Fund continued to hand out 100 gifts for underprivileged workers, provide 30 scholarships to needy students in Binh Duong, and a grand cheque of VND20 million ($900) to Thuan An Education Centre for Disabled Children. VSIP has a total of seven industrial parks across Vietnam, the others located in Binh Duong, Bac Ninh, Haiphong, Quang Ngai, Nghe An, and Hai Duong provinces, with the total gross area of more than 6,000 hectares. Editors note: Many expats will not know that the last month of the lunar year in Vietnam is usually the prime time for robbers, thieves and other criminals, so it is highly recommended that everyone keep their defense up. I am living in Ho Chi Minh City and am married to a Vietnamese lady. For years we had led a happy life in Vietnam, until the big disappointment came today, January 15. I was with my son on our motorbike; two big adults were crossing the Saigon Bridge. We then stopped for a while to take pictures of the beautiful skyline. When we started the bike again, it happened, with my eyes wide open, under clear blue sky. Two well-dressed men passed us on a motorbike, only to stop and turn around and pass us again on the bridge. They looked very closely at me and I felt a bit surprised to be surveyed; surely they had seen foreigners before? But they whizzed past us - against the sparse traffic on the bridge. My son and I pulled away and within seconds the same men passed me again from behind. This time the back passenger slipped his finger around my necklace, tore it of my neck and the two men hastily sped away. My golden necklace was stolen in milliseconds, by highly skilled thieves who must have done this many times. Given the accuracy of the robbery (I did not have a scratch!), the timing of the couple (exactly at the right moment of passing my bike), these were clearly very crafted Vietnamese thieves. I am wondering why they can get away with this and the police have not caught them yet. These men were no starters; these were professional snatchers that acted for profit, not because of poverty. They must have done this many times over, and over, and over again, without getting caught. Our disappointment is huge. My wife bought the necklace from her savings, and it was expensive (more than US$500). More disappointing was our conclusion as well that there was no point in going to the police. Where do you find English speaking police in this country? Or some equivalent of the Thai and Malaysian tourist police to whom you can lodge a complaint? At least I would be part of the statistics on the number of robberies from foreigners in Vietnam. For many years I have been reading your newspaper and could not stop wondering if it is really true what tourists and expats write about Vietnamese people doing bad things. We always check taxi meters and pay a tip to the driver if he or she is polite. We do not get involved in scams as my wife only trusts her family. Yes, we do know about the lack of service in the tourist sector, as we have traveled far and wide in this country. The indifference and a lack of customer focus - yep we have experienced them as well. Just go to any supermarket or department store, you will meet with apathy and lackluster staff who do not seem to realize that paid employment is a privilege, and that customers pay for their salaries. But after the incident today, I think that plain robbery should be added to the same row as bad taxi drivers alongside their scams and underperforming tourist services. My thoughts are filled with an African proverb: "Every day is for the thief, but one day will be for the owner" and I hope the owner will strike without mercy on these bad apples. LienVietPostBank, formed in 2011 after the merger of Lien Viet Bank and Vietnam Postal Saving Service Company, is now targeting to be among the top-5 banks of Vietnam in the next five years. The bank has embarked upon a technology transformation and consolidation programme to support this growth objective. Oracle FLEXCUBE will now be the single core banking platform of the two merged entities, across its retail and corporate banking business and will replace a home grown system which was used by Vietnam Postal Saving Service Company. LienVietPostBank is in a unique position to become a true universal bank, a bank for everyone. With the addition of the postal network, we are able to address a large segment of the population, which was previously not served. To accomplish this, we needed a core platform that would provide the right architecture and scalability with a low risk implementation. Oracle stood out as our provider of choice due to its local and global experience as we merge the operations of two banking entities, said Nguyen Dinh Thang, member of the Board Of Directors and chairman of the Technology Committee. Oracle FLEXCUBE had helped us at Lien Viet Bank and we are happy to partner with Oracle in this driving the next phase of growth with Postal Bank. Oracle FLEXCUBE provided the best mix of functionality, scale and local experience to help us meet our objectives. Oracle FLEXCUBES modern architecture, high level of business functionality and localised capabilities can help LienVietPostBank tap diverse market segments consisting of small to medium sized businesses, individuals and rural microfinance through its presence in 51 cities and provinces and 1,029 postal transaction offices nationwide. Oracle FLEXCUBE enables the bank to service diverse segments and deliver the scalability required to rapidly expand its customer base to achieve its growth target. Oracle FLEXCUBE has a strong customer base and experience in Vietnam, extending across more than 10 banks and has shown success in helping banks with mergers. Slated to go live in a year or less, this project can help LienVietPostBank meet its rapid expansion plans. Oracle FLEXCUBE was a platform of choice, in the first phase of the banks expansion, a decade back. Now as the company is expanding into additional markets, we are very excited be the leading choice again. LienVietPostBank will be a showcase of our ability to help banks, successfully merge across different platforms by rapidly deploying a modern core banking platform. Oracle FLEXCUBE provides our customers with efficient, responsive and digitally agile core banking platform, helping them scale, innovate and delight their customers, said Ho Thanh Tung, managing director of Oracle Vietnam Pte Ltd. US President Barack Obama and Australia Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull (L) speak in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC. (AFP/Brendan Smialowski) WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama on Tuesday (Jan 19) welcomed Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to the White House, saluting Canberra's role in the fight against the Islamic State group. "We are going to talk about how we can strengthen our cooperation both in Syria and Iraq but also countering violent extremism globally," Obama said. The deadly attacks on Thursday in Jakarta that were claimed by the IS group shows that Southeast Asia is "an area we have to pay attention to and watch." Australia, with six fighter jets deployed, takes part in US-led air strikes against IS targets, and is heavily involved in training Iraqi security forces. Last week, Australian Defence Minister Marise Payne rebuffed a US request for a larger military commitment, saying its contributions to the anti-IS fight were already "substantial." But she said Australia would offer more transport aircraft for humanitarian missions. Stressing their "strong and steadfast" alliance, Obama also highlighted the role of the two countries as the "driving force" in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a vast free trade zone encompassing 12 Pacific Rim countries, but not China. "It is going to be good for our economy, for our workers and our businesses," he said. "For us to thrive in the 21st century, it's important for us to be making the rules in this region and that's exactly what TPP does," he said. Turnbull, who was making his first visit to Washington since taking office in September, noted his "very productive" discussions with US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, adding that the US-Australian partnership in Iraq and Afghanistan is "very, very strong." "We have to constantly lift our game in the way we engage with and tackle these extremists, particularly ISIL - but there are many others - as they operate in the cyber sphere," he said, using an alternate acronym for IS. "And so I'm pleased that we're going to be working on even closer collaboration there," he said. On TTP, Turnbull said it was lifting the standards for a rule-based international order, and adding to its security by integrating the region's economies. It was confirmed that 59 visitors from Vietnam had vanished before their six-day trip to the island was due to end on Sunday, according to an embassy representative. Earlier reports had said there were 56 visitors. South Korean police have caught 27 of them, and deported all but one who is still being held in the East Asian country as he lost his passport, according to the Vietnamese embassy source. The 32 visitors who remain missing might be hiding somewhere on the island, the embassy representative said. According to information made public by South Korean authorities, the visitors include 25 men and seven women, aged from 19 to 52. The 59 tourists who disappeared during their Jeju trip were taken to the island by four Vietnamese tour organizers, namely New World Tourism, Vietrantour, Hanoiredtours, and Hoang Viet Travel. On Monday, the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT) said it had requested the four travel firms to report on the disappearance of their customers. Nguyen Cong Hoan, deputy general director of Hanoiredtours, reported to the VNAT later the same day that 39 out of the 40 tourists the company took to Jeju had returned to Vietnam. The remaining one is being held to complete deportation procedures, he said. Hoang Viet Travel said it had been notified by the South Korean side that ten of its customers who vanished mysteriously had been arrested by local authorities. Vietrantour had three of its customers disappear and is still not in contact with them, according to the company's report. The four tour organizers sent a total of 155 Vietnamese tourists to Jeju Island, where a South Korean travel firm was in charge of showing them around. The Vietnamese companies do not know of the exact itinerary of their customers, or what the tourists really did on the island, they admitted. These tour organizers may have their license to offer outbound tour packages revoked, according to the VNAT. The incident has left a negative impact on the image of Vietnamese people as well as the countrys tourism in the eyes of people around the world, VNAT deputy head Ngo Hoai Chung said. The tourism watchdog has also released a directive, requesting that local travel firms carefully check the identities of their customers before taking them on outbound packages. The disappearance of the Vietnamese tourists from Jeju Island was first reported by South Koreas Yonhap news agency on Friday. These visitors, as well as those from other countries that are not linked to terrorism, are allowed to enter and stay on Jeju without a visa for up to 30 days for tourism purposes, according to a special act applicable to the island. The local immigration office is therefore investigating whether they were trying to look for illegal employment in South Korea, according toYonhap. In the wake of the incident, South Korean police have expressed suspicion that there is a ring illegally bringing Vietnamese into their country through Jeju Island. Vietnamese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Le Hai Binh lodged the solemn representations on Monday. Vietnamese competent agencies reported that on January 16, the oil rig was moved to the location, about 21.4 nautical miles to the East of the supposed median line-lying between the two baselines of Viet Nam and China, according to Mr. Binh. On January 18, a representative of the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry met with counterpart of the Chinese Embassy in Ha Noi to point out Viet Nams concern over Chinas movement of the oil rig to the aforesaid location-the overlapping area that has not been delimited by the two countries. Viet Nam demanded China stop the operation of the oil rig there and withdraw the oil rig away from this area. Viet Nam also reserves its all legal rights and interests over the area in accordance with international law, including the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and relevant international practices. Photo by ASSOCIATED PRESS A researcher holds a container with female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes on Monday at the Biomedical Sciences Institute in the Sao Paulos University, in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The Aedes aegypti is a vector for transmitting the Zika virus. 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But that would have to benefit the region as a whole, he added. In Asean we protect each others interests, the ambassador said. We always find interest for our partners. Cambodia is also ready to serve the interests. Kerry will also speak about counter-terrorism, the ambassador said. We have good prevention against terrorism, he said. Even Cambodian Muslims help us prevent terrorism. Rights advocates say they want Kerry to raise the issue of Cambodias worsening human rights environment, a topic Chum Bunrong said would be welcome. We are generally open to discussion with the US on every issue, he said. However, he added, there should not be any misunderstanding over opposition leader Sam Rainsy, who is in exile abroad and facing jail time for a criminal defamation suit, brought by Foreign Minister Hor Namhong, while being investigated for another, brought by National Assembly President Heng Samrin. Chum Bunrong said he had already sent a letter to 16 congressmen who wrote to Prime Minister Hun Sen about the issue. There is no more doubt they have accepted our explanation. Cambodia exports through its coastal port rose in 2015, along with the number of cargo and cruise ships docking along the coast. More than 3.8 million tons of cargo moved through the Preah Sihanoukville Autonomous Port in 2015, its director, Lou Kimchhun says. Thats an increase of nearly 10 percent from the year before. The number of ships coming through the port rose 17 percent year to year, and cruise ships rose from 25 to 36. Most of the exports were textiles, rice and other agriculture, he said. Rice goes to Europe and Asia, while textiles go to European and American markets, he said. Imports included raw material from China, fuel from Singapore and machinery and construction materials from various countries. The rise in port exports helped add to broader growth in exports, which rose 7 percent from 2014 to 2015, Ken Ratha, a spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce said. Significant exports came from the garment sector, which employs more than 600,000 people, he said, many of them women from poor, rural areas. Garment exports for 2015 were worth more than $5 billion, up from around $4.8 billion in 2014. Rice and agricultural exports also increased, he said. Rice exports increased about 40 percent year to year, from about 300,000 tons in 2014 to more than 500,000 tons in 2015. Thats about half of what Prime Minister Hun Sen had called for in 2015. Ken Ratha said he hoped to see the export trend continue, but he warned that Cambodias exports depend much on global demand. We have to think about the world market, he said. Meanwhile, Cambodia needs better technology and capacity, such as better warehouses to store rice, in order to meet international standards. Were trying hard, Ken Ratha said. Now we are working with big investors to look into warehouses and drying warehouses, he said. Civil society groups and labor leaders say they want more discussion on a controversial law to regulate unions, as the draft moves through the National Assembly. The draft left an Assembly committee on Tuesday, but unions say their suggestions for changes to the law, which they feel will stifle their efforts for workers rights, have not been incorporated into the draft, despite several meetings. Labor leaders fear the law ties unions up in red tape, makes it harder to form unions in factories and creates a threatening atmosphere for leaders, who can face jail time for leading demonstrations. In a joint statement, civil society and labor leaders urged the government to accept changes to the law as they continue to discuss it. Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Ath Thun, head of the Cambodian Labor Confederation, said the new law would mean a reduction of freedom for unions. If the law is enforced without proper discussion, I think the union movement will be reduced, he said. At that point, the working conditions will be much worse, and theres a high chance of labor rights violations and exploitation. The garment sector employs more than 600,000 people, but many workers say the minimum wage, recently raised to $140 per month, is not enough to live on. Union leaders say the draft law favors factories and managers, not workers, in an already restive industry. However, Kaing Monica, deputy secretary-general of the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia, which represents management, said the law makes sense. For example, requiring that 20 percent of a factorys workers be willing to join a union before it is created prevents only seven to 10 members from creating one. Thus, there will be competition among unions in each enterprise, he said. He also said unions need quality leadership. We appeal to union leaders to have a high school education, because they are negotiators with employers, he said. Sok Eysan, a lawmaker and spokesman for the ruling Cambodian Peoples Party, said the National Assembly is working toward a law that is fair to both workers and factories. The law aims to make all parties involved do things legally, not to invade the other parties rights, he said. The law protects both partiesemployer and employee. As Americans celebrate the safe release of five prisoners from Iran, some members of the U.S. Jewish community are expressing outrage that Robert Levinson, who disappeared in Iran nine years ago, was left behind. Some have gone so far as to suggest that the Obama administration sacrificed Levinson in order to reach a nuclear agreement with Iran. On Facebook, Jerusalem Post deputy managing editor Caroline Glick slammed the White House. In one day, President Obama screwed [did a disservice] to Israel, American Jewry and world Jewry...by abandoning FBI officer Robert Levinson in Iran, sealing his death warrant, and in so doing made clear that Jews are second class citizens and not worthy of the same protection as all other Americans, she wrote. Israeli political insider Josef Olmert, now adjunct professor at the University of South Carolina, said he shares her sense of betrayal. One Jew would never be allowed to in the way of the historic agreement with Iran, he blogged in the Times of Israel, calling on American Jewish groups who support the nuclear agreement to look us in the collective white of our eyes and explain how come the administration, which they so support, allowed this outrage of abandoning one poor Jew to his fate. Olmert told VOA the fact the United States failed to secure Levinsons release is viewed by many as a U.S. gesture to appease Iran. Moreover, its an indication, on top of others, of the resentment of the Obama administration towards Israel, he said. But Jeffrey Salkin, author and senior rabbi at Temple Solel in Hollywood, Florida, cautions against what he calls an Obama-phobic narrative in the wake of the Iran deal. "There is no reason to believe that at all, and certainly I would not support whatsoever any narrative that the Obama administration threw him under the bus for his ethnicity or for any other reason, Salkin said. And most mainstream Jewish organizations, it would seem, agree. We hope that the regime will soon release American prisoner Robert Levinson, who has been held captive in Iran for nearly nine years and whose fate remains unknown, read a statement released by the Anti-Defamation League Saturday, the day the five American prisoners were freed. AIPAC and the American Jewish Committee issued statements acknowledging the nuclear deals implementation, but did not comment on the prisoner release. Salkin said he believes that many members of the American Jewish establishment are uncomfortable criticizing the administration. Those who were in favor of the nuclear deal with Iran are looking for any possible sign that the deal is moving forward without delay, noted Salkin. Acknowledging that we still have a hostage or a prisoner or a missing person left behind puts the glitch in that narrative. Search Ongoing Sunday, President Barack Obama said that Iran would deepen its coordination with the U.S. to locate Levinson. Top U.S. negotiator Brett McGurk told PBS television this week he believes Levinson is being held outside Iran and will continue to press for his release. Levinson, a former FBI agent, disappeared in March 2007 on Irans Kish Island. Initially, the U.S. State Department said he was working as a private investigator, probing cigarette smuggling. A later Associated Press report revealed Levinson had been on an unauthorized mission for the CIA to gather intelligence on Iran. The last person to see him alive, an American fugitive wanted for the 1980 murder of an Iranian diplomat in Maryland, said Levinson was arrested by Iranian authorities. Iran has denied knowing anything about his whereabouts. Levinsons family is calling for both Washington and Tehran to follow through on promises to locate him and are tweeting for his release, using the hashtag #Whataboutbob. There are people in the Iranian government who know where he is, and we believe there are people in the Iranian government who want to help bring my father home to us, Levinsons son Daniel, a financial analyst, told VOAs Persian service. This is a golden opportunity to show once more that our two countries can work together. The human rights group Amnesty International accused Iraqi Kurds Wednesday of deliberately destroying thousands of homes of Arabs in northern Iraq in apparent revenge for their perceived support for Islamic State militants. In a new report it called "Banished and Dispossessed," Amnesty International said Peshmerga forces carried out the widespread destruction in Ninevah, Kirkuk and Diyala provinces over the last year as they reclaimed lands that Islamic State fighters had overrun in 2014. The rights group said Kurdish troops bulldozed, blew up or burned down homes in Arab communities and have not allowed their residents to return to the villages where they lived. Donatella Rovera, who carried out Amnesty International's research in northern Iraq, said, "The forced displacement of civilians and the deliberate destruction of homes and property without military justification may amount to war crimes." Islamic State insurgents took control of a wide swath of northern Iraq and northern Syria a year a half ago, although Kurdish fighters, supported by a massive U.S.-led aerial bombardment of Islamic State targets, have since then reclaimed about 40 percent of the territory. Army Colonel Steve Warren, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, said it takes the issues raised by the Amnesty International report "very, very seriously." Amnesty International said it based its report on visits to 13 villages and towns, the accounts of 100 eyewitnesses and displaced residents, as well as satellite imagery showing the destruction of the homes. Avenging past abuses The rights group said Kurdish leaders have justified the displacement of the Arabs on grounds of security, but said "it appears to be used to punish them for their perceived sympathies" with Islamic State fighters and to consolidate their own territorial gains in northern Iraq. "This is part of a drive to reverse past abuses by the Saddam Hussein regime, which forcibly displaced Kurds and settled Arabs in these regions," Amnesty International said. "Many farmed the land and herded animals in and around their villages," Amnesty International said, "and have not only lost their homes but also their livelihood. Displaced families are now sheltering in camps for internally displaced persons, where conditions are dire and humanitarian assistance woefully inadequate, or in disused or unfinished buildings lacking sanitation and basic facilities." The rights group quoted one local resident, Maher Nubul, as saying that he left his village, Tabaj Hamid, in August 2014 when Islamic State fighters captured it. He said that the village's houses were still standing when Peshmerga forces retook the community four months later, but that Peshmerga forces subsequently bulldozed the village. "I don't know why," Nubul said. "There is nothing left. They destroyed everything for no reason." In response to the Amnesty International report, a spokesman for Iraq's Kurdistan region, Dindar Zebari, said there is "no strategy planned" to destroy the villages. He said Peshmerga forces "have been in full obligation to implement the standards of and principles of international human rights." Discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals is indefensible as a cultural norm, U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden told a gathering of business executives Thursday. Biden led a roundtable discussion with the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) about equality in the workplace for LGBT employees on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He criticized countries without LGBT rights for hiding behind a this is our culture slogan, saying that culture never justifies discrimination or violations of human rights. There's no cultural justification. None. None. None," Biden said pounding the table. He said that together with the president of the United States they have raised LGBT rights in every bilateral meeting with leaders of countries that are hostile to the issue. Biden urged CEOs to sign the HRC pledge to global workplace fairness. He said when it comes to LGBT rights, the world looks to corporations, too, even more so than the Supreme Court or the Obama White House. When the private sector speaks up, Biden said, it can change public opinion. LGBT individuals are banned in 75 countries around the world. A senior Brazilian official is expressing unhappiness at Israel's nomination of a former West Bank settler leader to be the new ambassador to the South American nation, calling the action "a false step.'' Israel nominated Dani Dayan in August, but Brazil has not yet responded. Brazilian officials had remained largely mute on the reasons for the holdup until comments Tuesday to the state-run broadcaster TV Brazil by President Dilma Rousseff's special adviser on foreign affairs, Marco Aurelio Garcia. Garcia said Dayan is known to hold opinions contrary to two important points of Brazilian foreign policy: its opposition to West Bank settlements and support of a future Palestinian state. Dayan is a former chairman of a council representing West Bank settlers. "I think it was a false step made by the Israeli government,'' Garcia said, adding that Israel broke diplomatic conventions by making Dayan's name public before Brazil had accepted the nomination. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly voiced his support for Dayan. In response to a question from a Brazilian journalist last week, Netanyahu insisted, "He's a great candidate. He is my candidate.'' Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip territories claimed by the Palestinians for their future state in the 1967 Mideast War. While Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005, nearly 600,000 Israelis now live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The international community, along with the Palestinians, widely opposes the settlements, saying they undercut the goal of establishing an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. The standoff over Dayan follows earlier flare-ups between Israel and Brazil, whose leaders have been vocal advocates of the Palestinian cause in recent years. In 2010, the Brazilian government recognized the state of Palestine along the pre-1967 lines. Under Rousseff's leadership, Brazil also backed Palestine in a key U.N. vote in 2012, and in 2014 it recalled its ambassador from Israel to protest a military offensive against Islamic militants in the Gaza Strip. Israel said the offensive was necessary to halt heavy rocket fire out of Gaza, and an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman subsequently called Brazil a "diplomatic dwarf,'' angering the Brazilians and forcing Israel's president to issue an apology. Despite the differences, Israel and Brazil enjoy strong trade ties. China has signaled its support for Yemen's government, which is fighting an Iran-allied militia, on the first day of a visit to Saudi Arabia by Chinese President Xi Jinping, who will also be heading to Tehran later in the week. A Saudi-led coalition began a military campaign last year against the Iranian-allied Shi'ite Houthi movement in Yemen, which has seized the capital, Sanaa. The government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi is now based in the southern city of Aden. Riyadh sees the Houthis as a proxy for bitter regional rival Iran to expand its influence in the impoverished Arabian Peninsula nation. The Houthis deny this and say they are waging a revolution against a corrupt government and Gulf Arab powers beholden to the West. A growing diplomatic dispute between Riyadh and Tehran, triggered by mainly Sunni Saudi Arabia's execution of a prominent Shi'ite cleric, has damaged the outlook for any resolution to the conflict in Yemen. Saudi Arabia and China said in a statement on Wednesday that the two countries affirmed their support for the unity, independence and sovereignty of Yemen. The statement was released by China's Foreign Ministry after Xi met Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz in Riyadh on Tuesday. All social, religious and political groups in Yemen should maintain their national solidarity and avoid any decisions that may cause social disruption and chaos, it said. "Both sides stressed support for the legitimate regime of Yemen," the statement said. Xi is expected in Iran later in the week, with a further stop in Egypt after he leaves Saudi Arabia. Asked whether China was siding with Saudi Arabia over Yemen and whether that could risk upsetting Iran, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China had always acted in the interests of the Yemeni people and maintaining peace in the Middle East, and had promoted peace talks. "[We] hope clashes in Yemen can come to an end as soon as possible and there can be reconciliation so the country can return to stability," Hong told a daily news briefing. China relies on the region for oil but has tended to leave Middle Eastern diplomacy to the other four permanent members of the U.N. Security Council the United States, Britain, France and Russia. However, China has been trying to get more involved, especially in Syria, and recently hosted its foreign minister and opposition officials. China and Saudi Arabia expressed deep concern about Syria and renewed a call for a peaceful political settlement as soon as possible. A Chinese president has not visited Saudi Arabia since 2009, when Hu Jintao went. Jiang Zemin was the last Chinese president to visit Iran, in 2002. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has blamed thieving politicians for undermining the militarys fight against Boko Haram militants. But some analysts think the army's struggles result from more than just corruption. A number of prominent figures connected to the administration of former president Goodluck Jonathan have been accused of corruption in recent weeks, including ex-national security adviser Sambo Dasuki and Alisa Metuh, the spokesman for Jonathans party. Both are accused of diverting money meant to equip soldiers. Dasuki, perhaps the highest-profile case, is said to have approved over $2 billion in fictitious arms contracts, a charge he denies. Boko Harams six-year long insurgency has killed about 20,000 people and forced more than two million Nigerians to flee their homes. Buhari campaigned on defeating the group and cracking down on corruption. Information minister Lai Mohammed says the charges make clear the extent of that corruption under the previous government. Its clear that that money was meant to fight terrorism. It was not used to fight terrorism, Mohammed said. More than corruption When Boko Haram began taking control of territory in 2014, they repeatedly routed troops sent to stop them. Dispirited soldiers told stories of being sent into battle without enough ammunition. By the start of last year, Boko Haram had seized territory in the northeast the size of Belgium. They lost most of that in the following months to a military offensive by Nigerian forces supported by foreign mercenaries and troops from neighboring countries. Analysts and politicians have long debated how and why Nigerias army grew so weak, particularly since its soldiers are seen as having played an important role in West Africas response to the civil wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Yan St-Pierre of the Berlin-based security firm MOSECON says corruption is only part of the reason for the militarys struggles in the northeast. The corruption part is indeed very true. Is it as large as to make Dasuki the kingpin of it all and to make it the core reason why the Nigerian army has so many problems fighting Boko Haram? It think thats exaggerated and thats sort of the [public relations] aspect, St-Pierre said. Rather, poor strategy and a lack of collaboration between Nigeria and neighboring countries is more to blame for the insurgencys continued attacks, St-Pierre says. Theres really this rigid strategy, this rigid thought within the Nigerian army that prevents them, that doesnt allow them to become flexible and realize that they have some issues and the way theyre running things isnt that effective, he said. A better strategy would involve better collaboration with the police and more mobility of troops. That rigidity prevents them from conducting proper military operations," he said. Buhari said Nigeria met a self-imposed deadline at the end of last year and defeated Boko Haram, although he acknowledged civilian areas like bus stations and marketplaces were still at risk of suicide bombings. Local media reported Boko Haram killed six people in a village in the northeast last week, while a suicide bombing killed four in a mosque in neighboring Cameroon. North Korea could take further provocative actions after the latest nuclear test that drew strong protests from the international community, experts in Seoul warned. With its fourth nuclear test, the communist country is likely to accelerate its effort to seek the status of a nuclear-armed state, experts said. Washington reaffirmed its position that it would not give Pyongyang such a recognition. We do not and will not accept North Korea as a nuclear-armed state, and actions such as this latest test only strengthen our resolve, said U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in a statement after the test. Kim Tae-woo, a nuclear expert who specializes in the North Korean nuclear issue, said Pyongyang will pursue its longstanding demand for a peace treaty with Washington while keeping nuclear weapons. Nuclear-armed state North Korea wants the nuclear recognition without joining the NPT, said Kim in reference to an international treaty aimed at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and related technology. The peace treaty that they are seeking is an attempt to withdraw U.S. forces from South Korea, Kim added. Last week, Pyongyang offered to halt nuclear tests in return for an end to joint military exercises between Washington and Seoul and a peace treaty with Washington. Some warned Pyongyang could conduct a long-range rocket launch or another submarine-launched ballistic missile test in response to fresh sanctions by the United Nations Security Council. Existing U.N. sanctions ban Pyongyang from conducting any launches using ballistic missile technology. Jeon Ok-hyun, a former senior official with South Koreas National Intelligence Service, said North Koreas provocations against South Korea is also a possibility. North Koreas provocations could come in various forms, including cyberattacks and military actions, said the former intelligence official. Internal politics A senior South Korean official, who asked to remain anonymous, said Pyongyangs internal politics could aggravate the situation, citing the absence of Jang Song Thaek and Kim Yang Gon. Jang, Kim Jong Uns uncle, was executed in late 2013. Kim Yang Gon, Pyongyangs top official on Seoul, died in a mysterious traffic accident last month. Jang and Kim were known as moderates. With both gone, Pyongyang is likely to harden its stance on Seoul, according to the official. The official warned Pyongyang could respond to Seouls resumption of propaganda loudspeaker broadcasts militarily, which could trigger a military confrontation between the two sides. Nam Seong-wook, former president of the Institute for National Security Strategy, a research institute run by South Koreas National Intelligence Service, expected Pyongyang to take a low-key approach toward Seoul for the time being. Focus on internal matters Instead, Pyongyang is likely to focus on internal matters in an attempt to solidify internal support for Kim Jong Un in anticipation of a major party gathering in May. The nuclear test is being touted as Kims achievement in North Korea, according to Nam. On Tuesday, South Korean President Park Geun-hye called for strong and effective measures in the U.N. Security Council in response to North Koreas nuclear test. Park warned a failure to take action would send a wrong signal to Pyongyang. Parks warning came amid a flurry of diplomatic activities by the United States, Japan and South Korea to work on a U.N. response to the North Korean move. A gun and bomb attack on a university in northwestern Pakistan Wednesday killed at least 20 people and wounded dozens more. Military spokesman Asim Bajwa told reporters 18 students and two university staff were among those killed after what he described as a group of four terrorists stormed the Bacha Khan University in the town of Charsadda. Bajwa said troops, including army commandos, gunned down the four attackers and conducted a block by block clearing operation before securing the entire university campus. Regional deputy inspector general of police, Saeed Wazir Khan, said at least two suicide bombers were among the attackers. The spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, Mohammad Khorasani, says the group has nothing to do with the university attack, adding that non-military institutions are not on its list of targets. In a statement sent to VOA, Khorasani declared Wednesday's attack against "Islamic Sharia." Earlier, a local Taliban commander had said he sent the four attackers to the university. There was no explanation for the conflicting claims. Students and staff at the university told the VOA correspondent at the scene, Ayesha Tanzeem, that some of the victims suffered both bullet and stab wounds. Casualties Military spokesman Bajwa said telephone intercepts and other evidence collected from the scene have helped investigators to "swiftly achieve a breakthrough" in identifying the planners, where and how the attack was carried out. But he refused to discuss further details saying it would undermine the investigation process. Watch: TV report from the scene. WARNING: Graphic content. He said the attack against a "soft target" like the Bacha Khan University shows that terrorists have been "frustrated" by successes army operations have achieved against their strongholds in the tribal areas near the Afghan border. He added that telephone calls received by the attackers on their cell phones showed they were in contact with people in Afghanistan. Pakistani Senator Senator Shibli Faraz of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf told VOA that it was alarming that militants were active after a lull in terrorists attacks in the country. Reaction The United States strongly condemned Wednesday's attack. "It is particularly appalling that these terrorists continue to attack educational institutions, targeting Pakistans future generations," State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner said in a statement. "The United States stands with the government and people of Pakistan and their efforts to create a secure, stable, and prosperous country, and we will stand side-by-side with Pakistan in its fight against terrorism." Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, currently visiting Zurich, has condemned "the cowardly attack" and said he was "deeply grieved over the sad incident. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, currently visiting Zurich, has condemned "the cowardly attack" and said he was "deeply grieved over the sad incident. An official statement quoted Sharif as reiterating Pakistan's resolve "to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland." Amnesty International said the attack "violated the central principle of international humanitarian law by deliberately targeting civilians in what appears to be a war crime." Whoever is responsible for this attack showed absolute contempt for life and civilian immunity. Armed groups in Pakistan must end all such affronts to humanity and commit publicly not to attack civilians, said Champa Patel, Interim South Asia Director at the British-based group. The university in the Khyber Pakhtunkhaw province is home to more than three thousand students. Charsadda is located at around 50 kilometers from the province capital of Peshawar, where militants linked to the Pakistani Taliban attacked a school in December of 2014 and massacred around 150 people, mostly children. On Tuesday, a suicide bomber blew himself up near a security checkpoint separating Peshawar from the Khyber tribal district, killing at least 12 people. The Taliban claimed responsibility for that attack. In Indonesia authorities are intensifying efforts to prevent further terrorist attacks in the wake of last weeks deadly siege by Islamist militants. Despite warnings of possible future attacks, life in the Indonesian capital is quickly returning to normal. The Jakarta Starbucks coffee shop that was bombed is boarded up for repairs, and the memorial of flowers at the site is now gone. Traffic at the busy intersection in front of the Sarinah, the citys oldest department store, is again congested as usual. Eight people died in the attack, including four militants. Muhamad Yunus, an ojek motorcycle taxi driver has received widespread praise for his actions after the explosions and gunfire. After the second explosion Yunus rushed to the police station to help a woman whose legs were severely injured, even though the assailants were shooting at anyone in the area. I got that woman and I told her, dont cry. Please be strong. Be strong. Please dont be sad, he said. Yunus said he found out later that the woman was with her nephew, who died in the blast. There have also been demonstrations by Indonesian Muslims denouncing terrorism and calling for the government to eradicate radical militants linked to the Islamic State group that claimed responsibility for the attack. Indonesian President Joko Widodo said he will consider tightening the countrys security laws to prohibit Indonesians from joining radical groups overseas. Critics say the government has been slow to act. The issue itself started in 2013, 2014 but there has been no result. Its not part of the governments priority, said terrorism analyst Taufik Andrie. The latest threat was a letter sent to police in Bali warning of an attack. Authorities advised visitors and residents of the resort island to stay alert and have increased security at shopping malls and other locations that draw crowds. Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev dissolved the lower house of parliament Wednesday and called a snap election, urging the nation to consolidate at a time of economic hardship caused by the crash in oil prices. The vote, originally expected at the end of this year or early 2017, will be held March 20, according to a Twitter message posted by Nazarbayev's press service. Nazarbayev's move was widely expected after the lower house unanimously voted this month to request its own dissolution. Political analysts said the early poll would allow the veteran leader to reaffirm his grip on power before discontent over a slowing economy reached a peak. "Our people, as always, need to unite and rebuff, by means of lawmaking if needed, any potential provocations at this hard time. And [also rebuff] those who try to politicize and seek culprits for the situation worsening," Nazarbayev's office quoted him as saying in a statement. Nazarbayev has no opponents in the 107-seat lower house, which is dominated by his Nur Otan party and routinely approves bills drafted by the government. Kazakhstan has never held an election that Western observers judged to be free and fair. Nazarbayev himself, in power since 1989, was re-elected for another five-year term last April. Uncertainty over the timing of urgent talks on Syria's future and the humanitarian crisis in the war-torn nation were high on the agenda as U.S. Secretary of State Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met Wednesday in Switzerland. Kerry pressed Russia "to use its influence" with the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a U.S. spokesman said, "to ensure immediate, unimpeded and sustained humanitarian access to all Syrians in need, especially those in besieged areas such as Madaya. State Department spokesman John Kirby was speaking with reporters after the Kerry-Lavrov talks in Zurich, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Lavrov confirmed that Russia agrees the most important issue now is getting help for civilians trapped in the Syrian war zone. "We have confirmed the necessity to solve humanitarian problems in Syria," Lavrov said, according to Russia's Tass news agency. On the diplomatic front, Kerry and Lavrov indicated the scheduled start on Monday of U.N.-mediated talks about Syria is in jeopardy. The U.S. and Russia are key members of the International Syria Support Group, which has promoted a U.N. plan for a political transition to end Syria's long and bloody civil war. The next step on that path was to be U.N.-mediated talks between the Assad government and the opposition groups fighting to oust him. There is widespread disagreement over which opposition groups should take part in the U.N. talks, and officials say the meetings next week cannot proceed until there is a mutually acceptable list of which anti-Assad factions will take part. More critically, a failure to get the talks underway would hamper efforts to launch a cease-fire in Syria. Heading into his meeting with Kerry, Lavrov was asked whether he thinks the talks about Syria actually will begin Monday. We will see, Lavrov said. That question, he added, is mostly for de Mistura, not for us a reference to Staffan de Mistura, the U.N. special envoy for Syria. The State Department's Kirby told reporters earlier that it is the U.S. desire to see the meeting begin on the 25th, but "well just have to see how things go. Kerry's trip to the Davos conference is the first step on a five-nation tour that also will take him through the Middle East and Asia. Davos focus The annual World Economic Forum pairs heads of state and government with executives from some of the worlds leading companies. In addition to Kerry, Vice President Joe Biden and Defense Secretary Ash Carter are among the U.S. officials at the event. In a keynote address at the forum Wednesday, Biden urged business executives to support initiatives that will strengthen the middle class. My call to action here is simple, said Biden. Embrace the obligation to your workers as well as to your shareholders." Biden also met with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. The two leaders agreed on the importance of Greece moving forward on economic reforms as quickly as possible. Kerry will address the economic forum Friday. Four focal points for him will be the importance of tackling corruption, clean energy initiatives, expanding Internet connectivity and the environment, according to a senior U.S. official. Carter told reporters traveling with him that he wanted to discuss cooperation between the Pentagon and the "innovative industry," and also will be holding talks on the campaign against the Islamic State group. The annual World Economic Forum is a "benchmark exercise," setting out issues that will be of key importance for the rest of the year, according to global economy analyst John McArthur of the Brookings Institution. From Switzerland, Kerry travels to Riyadh for talks with Saudi officials and foreign ministers of the Gulf Cooperation Council. WATCH: VOA's Pamela Dockins reports on Kerry's travels Next stop: Saudi Arabia The visit comes days after implementation of the major world powers' nuclear deal with Iran, an agreement that Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states say could result in Iran destabilizing the region. The U.S. has been trying to keep tensions between Iran and the Saudis, who are firm U.S. allies, from spilling over into the unrest in Yemen and other issues of regional concern. From Riyadh, Kerry travels to Laos and Cambodia for talks to prepare for ASEAN summit in February hosted by the U.S. The White House says meetings with members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are part of President Barack Obama's "rebalance" of U.S. policy toward Asia and the Pacific. Concerns about North Korea Kerry's final stop, China, comes amid heightened concerns about North Korea's latest nuclear test and the possible response from the international community. Deputy Secretary of State Anthony Blinken discussed North Korea's provocation with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts last week in Tokyo. "All parties affirmed our mutual interest in security, a robust international response to uphold a rules-based order," the State Department said Monday. China is key to the effort to persuade North Korea to cooperate with the international community, analysts say. "North Korea gets something like 80 percent of its food and fuel from China and also China is North Korea's closest friend, for what it's worth, in the international community," said Council on Foreign Relations analyst Scott Snyder. However, he added that China might be reluctant to support additional U.N. Security Council penalties against North Korea because of concern that further sanctions against Pyongyang could increase regional instability. Liberias defense minister said the military is ready to take over responsibility for the nations security after the United Nations Mission in Liberias (UNMIL) mandate ends this June. Brownie Samukai said the more than 2,000 strong Liberia military has been undergoing training in preparation for the UNMIL drawdown. From our side, we believe that the roles and responsibilities that we have are easily executable because we have been doing the preparedness a little over a year and a half," Samukai said. "We are to the point where all of our forces, all of the 2,000-plus personnel of the Armed Forces of Liberia have been going through different kinds of training, different kinds of operations, different kinds of scenarios exercises, including our participation in the UN Mission. So, we are very confident in the capability of the Armed Forces of Liberia, he said. Additional personnel Samukai said the military graduated about 154 additional personnel last week after they completed their advanced individual training to prepare the army for the different roles and responsibilities it will play as a result of the drawdown of UNMIL. But on Monday, Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara vowed that he will ask U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to extend UNMILs mandate beyond 2016 until after Liberias 2017 elections are concluded. Ouattara made the revelation at the conclusion of a three-day Joint Council of Chiefs and Elders Meeting between Liberia and Ivory Coast held in the town of Guiglo. Defense Minister Samukai said the Ivorian leader was speaking in political context that the presence of the international community would lend credibility to the results of Liberias 2017 presidential election. 'Pivotal' transition process One needs to understand that the presence of the international community during an electoral period is very pivotal to the transition process from one administration to the other, and I think it is within that context in which he was speaking," he said. Samukai denied that the trust factor in the presence of the international community implies that the Liberian military is incapable of maintaining the nations security on its own. The military has no influential part to play in the electoral process," he said. "The military simply has unique capabilities in terms of logistics and transportation and the facilitation of individuals from point A to point B. "The military cannot and will not be able to influence the outcome or the process of the election that will be held in 2017. So, the preparedness of the military is simply to suggest its capacity to manage the security situation, come 2017 along the border and the frontiers of our country, Samukai said. In that respect, the defense minister said the military is already playing a more positive role through its contribution to the reconstruction of the country. $100 million to take over Its been suggested that about $100 million would be needed to get the Liberian security sector ready to take over from UNMIL, which was established in September 2003 to monitor a cease-fire agreement in Liberia, following the resignation of President Charles Taylor and the conclusion of the Second Liberian Civil War. Samukai said the amount is based upon the three- to five-year capacity-building, resource mobilization that is needed. That is what the government is doing now. The government has already made available $10 million to support the preparation of the Liberian security forces, including the military heading toward 2017, he said. Samukai said the government has made available an additional $5 million to support the Armed Forces of Liberia and other security agencies in their preparedness for the 2017 elections, and also to prepare for other exigencies, including the issue of terrorism and other unforeseen developments, including natural disasters. Biologists say they have captured photos of one of the most elusive dogs in the world. The photos of the bush dogs, which live in Central and South America, may also prove the rarely seen and threatened species is somewhat more common than previously thought. The photos were taken using automated camera traps - using infrared sensors - in remote areas of Panama by Ricardo Moreno, a research associate for the Smithsonian Institution. "Our group of biologists from Yaguara Panama and collaborators are working on an article about big mammals using camera trapping data that spans Panama from the Costa Rican border to the Colombian border," said Moreno. "The bush dog is one of the rarest species that we photograph." Bush dogs, or Speothos venaticus, are short-legged and stubby, standing only about a foot (30cm) tall at the shoulder, researchers said. Like other dogs, bush dogs hunt in packs of up to 10 and are known to speak to each other using high-pitched whines. They eat mostly large forest rodents. To get an idea about how elusive the bush dog can be, photos of the dog were obtained only 11 times over the course of 32,000 camera days, the number of cameras times the days in operation. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, bush dog populations have dropped by up to 25 percent over the past 12 years, meaning it is classified as a near-threatened species. While they are not directly hunted and killed by humans, habitat loss is having an impact. The dogs are believed to range over areas up to 700 square kilometers. It is estimated that Panama lost 15 percent of its rainforest from 1990 to 2010. In the inaugural Best Countries ranking, the United States places fourth. The rankings, which were compiled by U.S. News & World Report, the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and global brand consultants BAV Consulting, were released Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The best country, according to the list, is Germany, followed by Canada and Britain. Just as we have done with universities, hospitals and other institutions, our Best Countries portal will be a global homepage for stories and data to help citizens, business leaders and governments evaluate performance in a rapidly changing world, Mortimer Zuckerman, chairman and editor-in-chief of U.S. News, said in a statement. The rankings of 60 countries take into account 24 categories and were derived from a survey of more than 16,000 people. Half of those were called informed elites and 4,500 were business leaders. Respondents gave their perceptions of the countries over nine categories:adventure, citizenship, cultural influence, entrepreneurship, heritage, movers, open for business, power and quality of life. The U.S. was first in power and influence, while Germany was best for entrepreneurship. Canada won for quality of life. You can see the entire rankings here. The governor of the U.S. state of Michigan apologized Tuesday to residents in the city of Flint who have been dealing with high levels of lead in their water supply for nearly two years. Governor Rick Snyder said state and federal environmental agencies failed to identify and solve the problem after it emerged in April 2014, and that he has replaced the state officials with people who understand the severity of the situation. "Government failed you, federal, state and local leaders, by breaking the trust you placed in us," Snyder said during his annual State of the State address. He promised to continue deliveries of water and filters so that everyone in the city has clean water. The governor said the state has already dedicated $9 million to the project and that he is asking for another $28 million for bottled water, replacing fixtures in schools and treating children with elevated lead levels. Also Tuesday, President Barack Obama named Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary Dr. Nicole Lurie to coordinate federal assistance to Flint. As Obama headed Wednesday to Detroit, Michigan to celebrate the re-emergence of the U.S. auto industry, a White House spokesman said Obama was "concerned" that such a self-inflicted public health issue as the one in Flint could occur in the United States. But Obama had no plans to visit Flint, a city not far from Detroit. "Clearly, primary responsibility lies with state and local officials,'' White House spokesman Eric Schultz said. "But that is not stopping this president and the administration from doing what they can." He said the government's emergency relief agency is in Flint handing out water filters and bottled water. Obama's appointment of Lurie to oversee the federal response to the Flint disaster came after he met with Flint Mayor Karen Weaver to hear firsthand how residents are dealing with the crisis. Weaver also met with Obama's senior adviser and his intergovernmental affairs director on Tuesday. The White House says the officials assured Weaver that the federal government would be a "constructive partner'' in the city's response and recovery. Financially strapped Flint was under control of a state-appointed emergency manager when it switched its source of tap water from Detroit's system to the more corrosive water in the nearby Flint River in April 2014 to save money. The Flint River water leached lead from city pipes more than Detroit water did, leading to elevated levels of lead in the water and the blood of some children. Flint resumed using Detroit water, which comes from Lake Huron, in October. But the corroded pipes continue to be a problem and may have to be replaced. Many residents are relying on bottled water. Chris Hannas contributed to this report. As the mystery of Hong Kongs missing booksellers continues, the Chinese government has confirmed two of the five that vanished are in the mainland. The case has raised concern in the former British colony that China is expanding its reach to intimidate and detain dissidents beyond mainland Chinese borders. This week, Chinese security officials confirmed that Hong Kong publisher Lee Bo is in the mainland. Lee, a British passport holder, vanished three weeks ago after a trip to his companys Hong Kong warehouse. The confirmation by officials in Guangdong province comes just after Lees colleague, Gui Minhai, appeared on CCTV confessing to a hit and run accident in the mainland in 2003. Gui had vanished while on vacation in Thailand. They are two of five publishers who went missing over the last few months. Abductions? Hong Kong Democratic Party lawmaker Albert Ho says the disappearances of the publishers raises concerns that China is abducting Hong Kong citizens critical of the Beijing government. It is very threatening to the Hong Kong people, because it is related to the personal safety and security of the people. It is much more important than political development or democratization. It concerns whether every Hong Kong citizen is vulnerable to being taken away or kidnapped, he said.This week pro-Beijing lawmaker Jasper Tsang also expressed his concern. Tsang said the CCTV report did not calm the Hong Kong public, and as the case drags it will raise more questions. He said if more details did not come to light, the Hong Kong government should seek assistance from the central government in Beijing. Protest march The disappearances inspired thousands of people to stage a protest march in Hong Kong earlier this month, demanding more information on the missing booksellers, and many protesters said the Hong Kong government needs to better represent the interests of the Hong Kong people when dealing with Beijing. The government needs to continue over the long run to be very vigilant that the rights contained in the basic law are actually implemented, said William Nee, who is with Amnesty International. Criticism of Chinese government Lee, Gui and their colleagues published books that were banned in the mainland, and often contained salacious information on the private lives of Chinese leaders. This month, some Hong Kong bookstores removed books critical of the Chinese government from their shelves. We have heard reports about other booksellers shops are now very quickly taking away books that they think might be offensive to the mainland authorities, or not even daring to publish certain books, said Emily Law, chair of Hong Kongs Democratic Party. Hong Kong police say that Guangdong officials also forwarded them a letter from Lee to the Hong Kong government. Police said the letter was similar to one he purportedly wrote to his wife, saying that he voluntarily went to the mainland to assist authorities with an investigation. Protesters forced their way into the Moldovan parliament demanding snap elections on Wednesday, after lawmakers appointed the country's third prime minister in less than a year in a bid to end months of political deadlock. Waving flags and shouting slogans, a dozen protesters scuffled with police in riot gear and accused lawmakers who appointed Pavel Filip, a member of the main pro-European coalition, of being traitors. Police later secured the building and the situation appeared calm, though the head of one of the smaller political parties was injured and TV footage showed blood dripping down his face. The protests could presage more instability in Europe's poorest country, which has been without a proper government since a no-confidence vote toppled the previous administration in October after a $1 billion banking scandal. The president had nominated Filip, IT and communications minister in the last government, as a compromise candidate after two earlier candidates were rejected. But protesters see him as part of a discredited establishment. International credits on hold Moldova needs a stable government to unlock further funding from overseas lenders, including the International Monetary Fund, that was withheld in the wake of the banking scandal and subsequent political crisis. Filip faces an economic challenge as well as a political one. The IMF, in a report on Wednesday, estimated the economy shrank by 1.75 percent last year, although it did forecast a modest recovery in 2016. Drought and a sharp downturn in Russia have added to Moldova's worries. "The people of Moldova don't need a government that says pleasant things, but a government that solves their problems," Filip said after the vote, which took place while around 3,000 people protested outside parliament. Calls for more transparency Moldova's ruling elite has been the target of mass protests over the banking fraud, which saw the equivalent of one-eighth of Moldova's gross domestic product disappear overseas. Despite being touted as a compromise figure, opposition lawmakers as well as the protesters resisted Filip's appointment. He has close ties to Vladimir Plahotniuc, one of Moldova's richest but most unpopular men. Filip's party originally wanted Plahotniuc as their candidate for prime minister, but President Nicolae Timofti refused to nominate him. Opposition lawmakers argued that, under Filip, Plahotniuc would be the real power behind the scenes. The appointment follows the rise and fall of two prime ministers in the past year. Chiril Gaburici resigned in June following claims he falsified his school diplomas, and his successor, Valeriu Strelet, was ousted in a no-confidence motion in October. The IMF, which is in talks with Moldova about new funding, has urged a clean-up of the financial sector. Insiders say the $1 billion banking fraud, a steady hemorrhaging of money in unsupported loans over several years, reflects deep-seated corruption in Moldova and involved some degree of complicity from many of those in power. "Long-standing deficiencies in identifying ultimate beneficial ownership of banks need to be urgently corrected," the IMF said in its report. This week, communists in Vietnam and Laos are picking leaders to run their countries for the next five years. In Taiwan, the election of the first female president has prompted China to warn hopes for independence are hallucinations. In the Philippines, candidate after candidate is being accused of not qualifying for the upcoming presidential contest. In other words, 2016 could be a bumpy year for the Asia Pacific. And not just in electoral politics. Troubling issues The next batch of rulers will be navigating troubled waters, from the widespread economic slowdown to increasingly complex security linkages, said Evan Medeiros, managing director of the Eurasia Group. The tectonic plates of regional economic affairs, regional politics, and regional security are going to shift in significant and lasting ways in 2016, Medeiros said at a recent summit here on U.S.-Vietnam ties. He argued that economies across the Asia Pacific will have to find new sources of growth. Thats especially true for countries whose financial fates hinge on exports, not least to China. Gone is the era of GDP expansion at breakneck speeds. In that respect, China is both a symptom and cause of weak economies. The global recession meant fewer customers for Chinese goods, which, in turn, meant China was buying fewer raw materials, like Australian iron and Indonesian coal. Other factors, such as mounting debt and a property bubble, also fueled instability, with Chinas stock market going haywire in recent months and its government reporting Tuesday that GDP growth hit a 25-year low. Zero-growth economies Not everyone agrees with Medeiros that Asia needs new engines of growth. Amid the stagnation of recent years, the zero-growth movement has come back into vogue. Proponents believe economies cant keep growing forever, but instead should stabilize enough to provide a sustainable quality of life for the majority. Seongwon Park, an associate research fellow at South Koreas Science and Technology Policy Institute, wrote in a blog post Sunday that one survey showed most South Koreans favor this de-growth future. Some look to Japan as the best example of a steady-state economy. Even without growth, Japan seems to have a better handle on many of lifes pressing problems, including health care, longevity, public safety, and personal security than does the faster-growing and wealthier U.S. economy, economist Ed Dolan writes. Investing in competitiveness But most Asian neighbors arent as rich as Japan or Korea. To develop their economies, states from Cambodia to Myanmar are investing in roads and ports, education and training, and tech-based productivity upgrades. Jocelyn Tran, senior director in Southeast Asia for Walmart Global Sourcing, said she wants countries like Vietnam to get the knowledge and technology transfers to become Walmart vendors. Vietnam still needs to train its talent, from adding more English classes, to vocational training so the workforce can handle machinery, Tran said. What we hope to achieve is to bring the producers and vendors to the standards that could make Vietnam very competitive, she said, also speaking at the summit. She added, There is an international competition. Products out of Vietnam have to stand side by side with products coming out of Japan or the U.S. or any other country. Security implications Analysts say this rising prosperity has security impacts, allowing governments to spend more on aircraft, ships, and weaponry. In that arena, countries may be benefiting from two very different trends: on the one hand, Chinas fragile economy means its moneyed influence in Asia, especially as a main export market, could be weakening. On the other hand, neighboring militaries are recalibrating relationships, with China in mind. The geometry of security relationships in Asia are rapidly moving far beyond the traditional hub-and-spoke model, Medeiros said, with the United States at the center and linked to Australia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea and Thailand. Thats the 20th-century approach to security dynamics in the Asia Pacific," he said. Medeiros predicted more diverse military alliances to come, connecting, say, India and Vietnam, or Australia and Japan. Whatever happens, he said, this will be a challenging year for Asia. Growing calls for a boycott of the Academy Awards over the lack of diversity among this year's Oscar nominees are forcing stars to choose sides and threatening to throw the movie industry's biggest night of the year into turmoil. The backlash over the second straight year of all-white acting nominees is also putting heavy pressure on the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences to diversify its overwhelmingly white male membership. The furor grew on Tuesday when the Rev. Al Sharpton said he would lead a campaign encouraging people not to watch the Feb. 28 telecast. On Monday, Spike Lee, this year's Oscar honoree for lifetime achievement, and Jada Pinkett Smith announced they will boycott the ceremony in protest. Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs, who has led efforts to diversify the academy, responded late Monday evening with a forceful statement saying that those previous measures weren't enough. 'It's time for big changes' Isaacs, the academy's first African-American president, said that "it's time for big changes" and that she will review membership recruiting to bring about "much-need diversity" in the academy's ranks. At a Los Angeles gala honoring Boone Isaacs on Monday night, actor David Oyelowo -- who was famously snubbed last year for his performance as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma -- expressed frustration with the academy. "This institution doesn't reflect its president and it doesn't reflect this room," Oyelowo said. "I am an academy member and it doesn't reflect me and it doesn't reflect this nation." Other stars began weighing in. George Clooney, in comments to Variety, said that after earlier progress by the industry, "you feel like we're moving in the wrong direction." He noted that movies like Creed, Straight Outta Compton, Beasts of No Nation and Concussion may have deserved more attention from the academy. "But honestly, there should be more opportunity than that," Clooney said. "There should be 20 or 30 or 40 films of the quality that people would consider for the Oscars. By the way, we're talking about African Americans. For Hispanics, it's even worse. We need to get better at this. We used to be better at it." A 2012 Los Angeles Times study found that the academy was 94 percent white and 77 percent male. Diversity report UCLA's latest annual Hollywood Diversity Report concluded that women and minorities are substantially underrepresented in front of and behind the camera, even while audiences show a strong desire for films with diverse casts. Hispanics and African-Americans go to the movies more often than whites do. UCLA surveyed film and TV executives and found that 96 percent are white. In his comments Monday, Lee said the Oscars' problems ultimately reside with "the gate keepers" who have the power to green-light projects. Isaacs enlisted Chris Rock, who famously called Hollywood "a white industry" a year ago, as host of this year's ceremony. The backlash all but ensures Rock's opening monologue will, for many, be the most anticipated event of the show. Last year's broadcast, hosted by Neil Patrick Harris, was also boycotted by some viewers because of the all-white slate of acting nominees. Ratings dipped to a six-year low for ABC. Some on Tuesday put pressure on Rock to join the boycott. The rapper 50 Cent urged on Instagram: "Chris, please do not do the Oscars awards. You mean a lot man, don't do it." A representative for Rock didn't immediately respond to an email. Not on board One person emphatically not on board with the boycott was actress Janet Hubert, who starred with Will Smith on the `90s sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air In a video posted on Facebook, she lambasted Pinkett Smith for asking actors to jeopardize their career for an insubstantial cause. "There's a lot ... going on the world that you all don't seem to recognize," said Hubert. "People are dying. Our boys are being shot left and right. People are starving. People are trying to pay bills. And you're taking about some ... actors and Oscars. It just ain't that deep." Just how much more Boone Isaacs can do to promote diversity at the academy, where membership is for life, remains to be seen. In November, she launched a five-year initiative to encourage more diversity in Hollywood, called A2020. But Boone Isaacs noted there is some precedent for more drastic steps. In the late '60s, for example, academy president Gregory Peck tried to inject more youth by stripping many older members no longer working in the industry of the right to vote. At the migrant and refugee registration center in Presevo, Serbia, a small girl wearing a pink coat screams with delight as her older sister bends down and allows her to pet a stray cat she had been carrying in her arms. It is around noon and the little girl's high-pitched squeals condense to form tiny white clouds in the -4 degrees Celsius air. Snow covers the ground; others sit around, shivering from the bitter winds. According to forecasters, nighttime temperatures in the area could plummet to around -10 degrees Celsius over the next two weeks, and aid workers are worried the prolonged cold spell could have deadly consequences, especially for children. "The winter conditions are our main concern now," said Astrid Castelein, head of the UNHCR office in Presevo. Earlier this week, Save the Children reported several possible cases of hypothermia and frostbite among those traveling, while UNICEF released a statement describing many youngsters arriving in the Balkans as "physically exhausted, scared, distressed and often in need of medical assistance." Roughly 1,000 migrants and refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq continue to arrive in Presevo daily. To get there, they first travel through Macedonia, usually by bus or train, but are forced to walk about two kilometers at the border with Serbia. Once they reach the Serbian town of Miratovac, they can take a free shuttle to Presevo. Urgency adds dangers Inside the registration compound, a sense of urgency is palpable, not just to get out of the freezing air, but to get out of Serbia altogether. But this drive to carry on quickly causes extra complications, Castelein said. "An Afghan woman's child was diagnosed with pneumonia so she was brought to the hospital," she explained, "but she absolutely wanted to continue her travel and was about to leave even though the doctors were not in favor of discharging the child. The cold outside would make it even worse. Refugees don't want to take the time to recover here." The reason: They fear the borders of Western Europe could close at any moment. It is a fear Christina, 19, and David Bshara, 17, understand. The siblings left Damascus two weeks ago to reach their mother, who now lives near Hanover, Germany. They decided to leave in winter, "because Turkey said it would make a visa (required) for Syrian people," David said. He also described how his father and little sister had to remain in Syria because the family did not have enough money for everyone to travel. "It's too hard," Christina said, when asked about her remaining family in Damascus. "You can't do anything just stay at home, eat, sleep there's no real life." No end in sight Turkey did impose visa requirements on Syrians arriving by air and sea from third countries shortly after the Bsharas began their journey. Despite Ankara's efforts to stem the flow of refugees into Europe, many experts believe 2016 could see a similar exodus to last year's. "When we started our work, we thought the situation would only last one or two weeks," said Valon Arifi in a smoky cafe across the street from the registration compound's main entrance. He's the leader of Youth for Refugees, a local group that works around the clock to provide migrants and refugees with everything from winter clothes to travel fare. "Now there's no end in sight, he said. I think in spring the number will go up again. I think one million more will come to Europe. And I think this will be a problem more than people think." Arifi's concerns are echoed by many. On Wednesday, Serbia announced it would begin limiting migrant passage to those wishing to seek asylum in Austria or Germany. The decision came after Austria said it would cap the number of people allowed to claim asylum inside the country this year at less than half of last year's amount. Experts said the new rules could easily cause a backup of people and stricter controls farther down the migrant route. But it is a situation Serbia has been preparing for. VOA has learned that the Serbian government has identified a number of former factories, hotels and buildings throughout the country that could be renovated and used to host migrants and refugees who get stranded. The UNHCR the United Nations refugee agency has pointed out that these people always have the right to seek asylum in Serbia. However, the thought of remaining in the country does not appeal to most passing through Presevo. "Serbia? No, no, no," said Fawaz, 25, from Damascus who is traveling alone. "I don't think I could stay in Serbia. It's too difficult." "I don't want to come to Europe at all," he confessed, "I have no friends, no one. But what can I do? I can't go to the Gulf countries. I can't go to Turkey. It's stay in Syria and die, or go to Europeyou have no choice." A new government-sponsored survey found an increasing number of South Koreans view North Korea as an enemy. The latest survey commissioned by South Koreas Unification Ministry showed the number of South Koreans who hold negative views of the neighboring communist country has been growing over the past 10 years. In 2015, 41 percent of respondents said they viewed North Korea as South Koreas enemy, a significant jump from 15 percent in 2005. The study said South Koreans view of North Korea appeared to become negative in 2010, when North Koreas alleged attack on a South Korean navy ship took place, followed by North Koreas shelling of a South Korean island. North Koreas nuclear tests might have also contributed to the negative view, the study said. The survey found that the negative view was higher among younger respondents than older respondents, which is contrary to a widespread perception that younger South Koreans are more likely than older South Koreans to hold a favorable view of North Korea. More apathy Lee Nae-young, a professor at Korea University in Seoul who led the study, said there appeared to be a growing feeling of apathy among younger South Koreans toward the North. It is worth noting that not only hostility but also apathy has grown. They are not in favor of engaging North Korea, Lee said in reference to younger South Koreans view of North Korea. The survey also found South Koreans support for President Park Geun-hyes vision for unification had waned recently. In February 2014, Park said unification would bring an economic bonanza to her country. In 2014, 55 percent of South Koreans supported the idea, but that fell to 47 percent in the most recent poll. Jeong Han-wool, a research fellow at the East Asia Institute, which conducted the survey, said the decline in support reflected South Koreans concern about the financial burden of unification. The 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce. The two countries technically are still at war. Saudi Arabia's foreign minister has refused to rule out that it will seek a nuclear weapon if archrival Iran becomes a threat. In an interview Tuesday, Reuters news agency asked Adel al-Jubeir whether Saudi Arabia would try to get a nuclear bomb if Iran obtained one, despite its agreement with six world powers. He responded that his country would do "whatever we need to do in order to protect our people." Jubeir said the end of Western sanctions on Iran as part of the nuclear agreement would be welcome if Iran uses unfrozen funds to improve the living standards of its people. But he said if the funds "go to support the nefarious activities of the Iranian regime, this will be a negative and it will generate a pushback." The Saudis, Israelis, and some American lawmakers opposed to the nuclear deal say they fear Iran may use the billions of dollars in unfrozen assets to fund terrorist groups and militias. Tensions between Saudi Arabia and Shi'ite majority Iran escalated earlier this month after the Saudis executed a Shi'ite cleric accused of supporting terrorism. Furious Iranians attacked the Saudi Embassy in Tehran. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry brushed off concerns the Saudis may try to get their hands on a nuclear weapon to counter a perceived Iranian threat. "You just can't buy a bomb and transfer it," Kerry told CNN television this week, noting that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and international inspections would make such a thing very difficult. He also said possessing a nuclear bomb would not make Saudi Arabia safer. Singapore deported 26 Bangladeshis Wednesday who were arrested in November for allegedly forming a religious study group that spread the ideology of al-Qaida and of Islamic State. Twenty-seven Bangladeshi construction workers were detained without trial under the city-state's rigorous Internal Security Act, the Ministry of Home Affairs said in a statement. One of them will remain in Singapore until completing a jail sentence for attempting to leave Singapore illegally after hearing of the arrest of the others. According to the statement, the Bangladeshis held discreet weekly meetings to share jihadi-related materials and discuss involvement in armed conflicts. The Bangladeshis' work passes had been revoked and authorities in Bangladesh were informed about their circumstances. Several members of the group considered carrying out armed violence overseas, but did not plan any attack in Singapore, the ministry said. Some of them had contemplated taking part in armed jihad with Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The ministry also said that the group of Bangladeshis supported the teachings of U.S.-born radical Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in a drone strike in Yemen in September 2011. Solidarity Center and other migrant labor organizations are calling on the South African government to urgently intervene and stop severe labor rights abuses faced by thousands of migrants working in the countrys farms. Thousands of Zimbabweans who fled economic meltdown in their country are being mistreated on farms in northern South Africa. Zimbabwean national Thembani Ndlovu has been working at the Johannesburg Farm in the northern province of Limpopo for eight years. He describes his employment at the farm as a job from hell. He works seven days a week for 18 hours a day, but is earning only $120 per month. This is 50 percent below the stipulated $240 per month for farm workers. He and other Zimbabweans are temporarily housed at a disaster management center in Limpopo, after they were brutally assaulted by their employer with the help of fellow farm owners for demanding an extra $0.59 a day for the extra hours they are working. Ndlovu says on the day they were evicted from the farm, their employer teamed up with neighboring farmers and unleashed dogs, teargas and rubber bullets on them. He angrily says that even animals deserve better sympathy than they got from their employer. All of us, we are human beings. We are Africans. They must not treat us as if we are animals. Even the white people they are supposed to be told we are human beings and we need equal rights. Ndlovu said. No enforcement Solidarity Center Country Programs Director Peter Hardie wants the government to urgently put a stop to the abuse. He calls for South Africa's Department of Labor to do more in protecting undocumented migrants and to ensure that farm owners pay the wages stipulated by the law. The laws are there. The biggest challenge around most of this is just inability to enforce what exist on the books, said Hardie. Janet Munakamwe from African Diaspora Workers Network says migrant organizations want the government to deal harshly with the Johannesburg Farm owner, as a deterrent to abuse. The socio-economic rights of workers being trampled on, treated under very slave-like conditions. The employer actually confiscates the documentation to limit mobility. We are not going to allow this farmer to get away with it this time, such that we deter these particular commercial farmers from whatever they have been doing, Munakamwe said. South Africa has been the first choice of thousands of African migrants fleeing war and economic difficulties in their home countries. Rights organizations say even more migrants could be coming, due to the drought and worsening economic conditions in many African countries. Afghan officials say a suicide car bomb blast near the Russian Embassy in the capital Kabul has killed at least seven people. Police say the attack targeted a minibus carrying production staff of a private Afghan television channel. Several employees of Tolo TV were among the dead. The Taliban confirmed it was targeting staff of the Tolo television channel when it claimed responsibility for the attack. In a statement sent to media organizations, including VOA, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid accused the channel of broadcasting anti-Islam , anti-Afghan and anti-Taliban material and warned other Afghan media to learn a lesson from Wednesday's attack. There were no injuries among staff at the nearby Russian embassy, according to Russian foreign ministry officials. NATO's Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan strongly condemned the attack. By specifically targeting journalists, terrorists have proven once again they have no regard for Afghanistans people or future, said Brig. Gen. Wilson Shoffner, Resolute Support deputy chief of staff for communications. A free press is critical to Afghanistans future, and we owe a debt of gratitude to the men and women who choose to become journalists in this critical time in Afghanistans history. The Committee to Protect Journalists said "Attacks aimed at crushing independent media organizations in Afghanistan are a direct assault on the very foundation of Afghan democracy-a free and open press." Meanwhile, the U.S. embassy in Afghanistan said in a statement on Wednesday that it has received reports that militants were planning to attack an unknown hotel or guesthouse frequented by the international community in the Shar-e-Now area of Kabul this month. It said there is no further information regarding the timing, target, location, or method of any planned attacks. The embassy warned U.S. citizens that the security situation in Afghanistan is extremely unstable. The Islamic State group has been losing large swaths of territory to Western-backed Syrian Kurdish fighters and the Iraqi military supported by Shi'ite militias, but a key ingredient in the fightback against jihadists is missing local tribes are not turning en masse against Islamic militants in Syria or Iraq. U.S. and anti-IS coalition allies have been seeking to replicate the Sunni Awakening of 2006, when a Washington-coaxed tribal uprising was a key element in assisting U.S. troops to drive al-Qaida jihadists from Iraqs westernmost Anbar province. Despite the appointment of John R. Allen in 2014 as special envoy to coordinate the international effort to combat IS in Iraq and Syria, a repeat of the Sunni Awakening has not materialized. Allen had been a key figure in 2007 efforts to persuade more than 30 tribes in Anbar province to turn on the Islamic militants, offering protection and financial incentives if they would reject the radical Sunnis; but, he relinquished his special envoy role in October without having pulled off a similar feat. Limited impact A mass uprising of local tribes in Syria or Iraq still seems a distant hope rather than a reality. A trickle of tribesmen in Iraq has joined coalition forces, but not the flood that was expected, says Charlie Winter, an analyst with the London-based Quilliam Foundation. He says much of the reason for the absence of a tribal uprising lies with IS efforts to keep the tribes in line. IS has been working on tribal relations for a very long time now. The networking infrastructure IS has established, principally in the form of the Diwan al-'Asha'ir [Diwan for Tribal Outreach], enables it to anticipate and carefully respond to the complex tribal dynamics of Iraq and Syria. It also seems to be attempting to play the role of honest broker in intra-tribal conflicts, mediating animosity and drawing adversarial tribes together. In short, it has a very nuanced approach. "Nuanced" may be a description some recoil at, as IS has been engaging in brutality and massacres in policing tribes in eastern Syria and western Iraq to ensure their fealty. One of its biggest massacres came in August 2014 when IS fighters took vengeance against the Sha'itat tribe in eastern Syria beheading, crucifying and shooting more than 700 people in a three-day period. Formidable adversary The lesson for tribesmen was that rebellions inside Syria against IS aren't equipped to take on the powerful militants and attract scant outside help when they do take place. Across eastern Syria and western Iraq, the militants of the Islamic State group govern with an iron fist and a sharp eye, purging opponents and are intolerant of expressions of dissent. Relying on an extensive network of spies and informers to ferret out dissent or any behavior that falls afoul of their strict interpretation of Sharia, they are alert for any signs of a tribal insurrection shaping up against them. The killings serve as a warning to others; but, there is nothing to offset the heavy IS hand. Theres no large-scale actor the tribes in Syria in particular can turn to for support, says Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, a research fellow at the Middle East Forum. He notes the August 2014 massacre to suppress the Sha'itat revolt was partly put down by other Sha'itat members working for IS. Lack of ground support Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, an analyst with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, blames a lack of U.S. leadership. He says there is an absence on the ground of appropriate actors who can foster such an uprising, and dedicate resources to doing so. He faults the international coalition for failing to reach out before the fall of Ramadi consistently to tribes who had participated in the original Sunni Awakening in Anbar province in 2006 and 2007. Hoping that eventually the barbarity of the Islamic militants will prove to be their downfall doesnt serve as a strategy, he maintains. And the highly complicated and sectarian politics unleashed by the micro-conflicts in the Syrian war and Iraq battles are pulling against a tribal uprising, he says. In Iraq, the Shi'ite-dominated government is not in a position to rally Sunni tribes who have been burned by it before, says Gartenstein-Ross. Sunni tribesmen dont trust a government that has refused to arm them and relies mainly on Shi'ite volunteers in the popular mobilization committees to fight IS. They deter rather than encourage Sunni tribal participation, says Gartenstein-Ross. Sunni Arab tribes in Raqqa province in Syria issued a statement last month accusing the Western-backed Kurdish forces of the Peoples Protection Units (YPG), of displacing Arabs from the Tal Abyad town on the border crossing with Turkey. They warned, No YPG fighter can enter the Arab areas where our fighters are present. The Kurds deny they have forced Arabs to leave Tal Abyad or other mainly Arab villages in northeast Syria they have overrun. Thailands rice farmers are struggling with drought, low returns, and rising competition as a new era of trade opens under the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC). But growers hope to weather the hard times by drawing on years of farming experience and hopes of a revival in rice prices. In Amnat Charoen, a provincial town in northeast Thailand, villagers at a local fairground compete in teams to mill rice. The winners are judged by the highest quality product. Farmers struggle with low prices The farmers celebrate as rice fields lie fallow over the dry season and await monsoon rains later in the year to plant a new crop. Amnat Charoen, a town near the border with Laos some 600 kilometers from Bangkok, is famed for its rice, notably Hom Mali or fragrant rice, well known on international markets. But Thailand's farmers are facing difficult times, with a severe drought, rice prices at six year lows, stagnating incomes and rising debt. In the village of Ban Plah Khaow, 20 kilometers from Amnat Charoen Town, retired engineer Ajarn Ting said the outlook is bleak. Ting said the situation is no good. Rice prices are down with the popular jasmine rice low with prices of other rice varieties also low, making life difficult for farmers. Farmers call for assistance The current downturn has triggered calls by farmers for government assistance, said Athikarn Ringcharoen, Chamber of Commerce President for Amnat Charoen province. Athikarn said the price of rice was weak and farmers are having to sell to millers quickly because they need funds for their families. They are accepting the gate price (standard price), to sell as fast as possible. Thailands central bank has warned that an ongoing drought and lower agricultural prices are already adding pressure on rice farmers incomes. The Thai Rice Exporters Association said the price for Hom Mali fragrant rice is at its lowest in six years at just $720 per ton, from a peak of $1,200 per ton. Thailands rice industry is still recovering from the end of a rice price pledging scheme set up under the former government of prime minister Yingluck Shinawatra, who was ousted in the May 2014 coup. Supporters of the plan say it boosted farmers incomes. But critics say the program was riddled with corruption, decimated Thai rice exports, cost Thai taxpayers more than $14 billion and left thousands of farmers in debt. Songphan Jansawang, chief of the agricultural department in al Amnat Charoen, said farmers from the northeast Isaarn region have had to adapt to survive the dry conditions. Songphan said the people of Isaarn have had to live with the drought from generation to generation and adjust. Jasmine rice grown in the region is also known as a hardy variety of crop suitable to dry climatic conditions. He said farmers also face growing competition from regional rivals in the rice market as liberalization comes into effect under the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) launched late last year. Thailands Commerce Ministry said it also plans to restructure the rice sector, lowering the total crop from 33 million tons to 25 million tons to avert an oversupply and diversifying rice varieties away from traditional white rice. Eighteen mayors and nearly 50 locally elected representatives of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party are being prosecuted in Turkey. Earlier this month, for example, the mayor of Van was sentenced to 15 years in jail on charges of being a member of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party. The prosecutions and severity of the charges are unprecedented, says senior Turkey researcher Emma Sinclair Webb of the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch. "It is the most serious move against democratically elected mayors in towns we have seen in years, she said. Mayors have been targeted in the past, with arrest and periods in jail. But the charges they face this time are unprecedented. Basically they amount to life in prison for offenses that do not in any way amount to terrorism or violence and deadly acts." Most of the charges against the representatives are for attempting to overthrow the state, following statements calling for Kurdish autonomy. For more than a month, Turkish security forces have been attempting to eradicate the presence of PKK rebels in towns and cities across the predominantly Kurdish southeast. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu defended the prosecutions, accusing the mayors of working with the rebels. Davutoglu said their concern is polemics, ideology and terror. The mayors, he said, spend the people's money in dark channels and function as the logistics center of terrorists. Now, he said, the mayors had to account "for this betrayal." But political scientist Cengiz Aktar of Istanbul's Suleyman Sah University says these are the same policies used by the state since the PKK took up arms in 1984. "The Turkish establishment, be it civilian or military, is repeating the same good old strategy of repression, hoping that this time it will produce another result, Aktar said. Of course, it will not. The Kurdish problem cannot be resolved by force. I mean, the Turkish political establishment is back to square one." Observers say the government appears to believe it has no one to negotiate with and that current representatives of the Kurds are part of the problem, rather than the solution. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ruled out any return to peace efforts with the PKK Kurdish rebel group, telling village representatives that the organization will be liquidated. Erdogan said neither the separatist terror organization nor the party under its control nor other Kurd structures will ever be accepted as counterpart. The time for negotiating is over, he said. Under Erdogan's leadership, a process existed with the PKK that resulted in a two-year cease-fire, which collapsed in July amid mutual recrimination. Erdogan indicated the current military crackdown across the predominantly Kurdish southeast could extend across Turkey's borders, saying the PKK will be liquidated from the region. The Kurdish rebel group has bases in neighboring Iraq, and Ankara has accused a Syrian Kurdish militia of links to the PKK. Erdogan also said the current crackdown would extend to legal Kurdish representatives, adding that parliamentary deputies and mayors would be held to account. The pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party is already facing a number of criminal investigations. Erdogan, however, did suggest new reforms could be introduced for Turkey's largest minority. When Turkish security forces have entirely liquidated terrorists in the region, he said, a discussion will be held to find a radical solution to the issue. Observers say past leaders in the more than three-decade-old conflict have attempted to impose solutions by force on the country's restive minority, all of which have failed. The PKK, which launched its insurgency in 1984, is designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. A United Nations Security Council delegation arrived in Burundi Thursday with a message for the government and opposition to start substantive dialogue and avert catastrophe before it is too late. This is a critical crossroads for Burundi, U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power told VOA ahead of the trip. They cannot let it become business as usual that you wake up in the morning and there is a corpse on the street as you try to get to work, and that is what is starting to happen in Burundi. It is the second time the Council has visited the country in less than a year a clear indication of its growing concern about the escalating bloodshed. Political crisis Election related violence has killed at least 439 people since April and sent tens of thousands fleeing inside the country and beyond for safety. Observers fear that the violence sparked by what is seen by many as an unconstitutional third term for President Pierre Nkurunziza could result in another civil war between the countrys ethnic Tutsis and Hutus, similar to the one that plagued the country from 1993 to 2005. What must not happen in Burundi is that this conflict moves from a political phase to an ethnic phase, U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson told reporters Tuesday. When you take that step, then we always pay a price, because then there is a new element entering the conflict which will be much harder to control. Mediation In July, the East African Community (EAC) regional bloc asked Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni to mediate between the government and opposition groups, but that effort has so far been fruitless. Earlier this month, peace talks between the two groups were postponed, and no new date was announced. We need to find a way that allows the opposition to engage with the government. The government says it supports intra-Burundian dialogue, but its not happening, said Britains Deputy U.N. Ambassador Peter Wilson. If the Ugandan process does not work, then we need to find a process that does, he added. We will come in and throw our weight behind accelerated mediation of the kind that should have taken place over these many months, Ambassador Power emphasized. The U.N. Secretary-Generals Special Advisor on Burundi, Jamal Benomar, says there still is a window of opportunity for Burundians to come together and find a way to move forward. For them to do this, they would need an inclusive process that is impartially mediated, one that has a timeline that is clear, an agenda, an agreement on who will participate and this is exactly what we dont have," Benomar said. African Union troops Last month, the African Union announced it would deploy a 5,000-member prevention and protection force to Burundi for an initial period of six months. The Nkurunziza government, however, has firmly opposed the idea. African heads of state will meet January 28 to discuss what to do next. Within the Security Council there is some difference of opinion on the need for troops right now. This idea of troops, we are not necessarily going there to say that troops have to be there in Burundi, said Security Council Ambassador Ismael Gaspar Martins of Angola, who is co-leading the Council trip with his U.S and French counterparts. It is the primary responsibility of the state to protect their citizens, to stop these, all kinds of situations, which are going on and we should be able to see that they are doing it right, he added. Diplomats say Council members China, Russia and Egypt also have expressed reservations about intensified involvement. Ambassador Power said stakeholders should consider how such a force could become a friend to stability, rather than something that is threatening Burundian sovereignty. Fallout More than 230,000 Burundians have fled the country over the past nine months, including many members of the countrys civil society. Human rights violations are growing. On Friday, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad al Hussein warned of new cases of sexual violence against civilians by security forces, reports of mass graves, and an increase in forced disappearances. The crisis also is having steep fiscal implications on the tiny nation. They are in an economic crisis and thats an undeniable fact, said British envoy Wilson. They are possibly going to become the worlds poorest country this year. There is a real risk of food insecurity in Burundi. There is a real risk that a political divide is going to lead to an economic mess. United Nations officials are urging Libyans to support an agreement among the country's warring factions to create a unity government. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the deal an important step toward resolving the crisis in Libya, which has seen fighting and political chaos since the overthrow of longtime leader Moammar Gadhafi in 2011. The United Nations mediated the agreement at a conference in the Tunisian capital, Tunis, but it remains unclear whether it will draw wide support to end the bloodshed in Libya. There was no immediate reaction from the country's two legislatures, the internationally recognized government that operates out of Tobruk in eastern Libya and an Islamist-backed government in the Libyan capital, Tripoli. Martin Kobler, the head of the U.N. mission in Libya, said "hard work lies ahead" and that Libyans have a "sterling opportunity" to unite and build their country. He called on Libyan lawmakers to endorse the agreement. Quick ratification urged European Union foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini also called for quick ratification of the unity government. "Libya is at a critical juncture and it is crucial that all key political and security actors uphold the interests of their country and its people above all others," Mogherini said. "Only a united Libyan government, supported by all its citizens, will be able to end political divisions, defeat terrorism, and address the numerous security, humanitarian and economic challenges the country faces," she added. If the rival governments agree to join forces in the coming days, Fayez Sarraj, a lawmaker in the eastern parliament, is set to become the Libyan prime minister. The power-sharing deal comes as Islamic State militants are gaining a new foothold in Libya, aiming to take control of the country's oil terminals and fields, Libya's key source of wealth. The United States said China must join with the rest of the world in imposing strong sanctions against North Korea over its latest nuclear test, given its "special relationship" with the reclusive regime. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken made the call Wednesday in Seoul during a a meeting with South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se. Pyongyang angered the international community when it announced it had tested its first-ever hydrogen bomb on January 6, despite being under United Nations sanctions over three previous tests. China is North Korea's closest diplomatic and economic ally, but ties between the two have become strained over the North's failure to end its nuclear ambitions. Worried about sanctions fallout But Beijing is also worried that stronger economic sanctions against North Korea will cause the regime to fall, sending scores of refugees over its shared border. Yun agreed with Blinken's call for tougher sanctions against Pyongyang, saying, "This is North Korea versus the international community." Blinken will travel to China later Wednesday for talks with officials over the matter. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will travel to Beijing next week to hold further discussions with his Chinese counterparts. U.S. military officials insist Afghan forces are carrying the burden when it comes to securing and stabilizing the country, but there are questions as to whether U.S. special forces could soon be playing an increasingly active role. "There hasn't been any signaling of that yet," a U.S. official told VOA. "The primary role there is to train, advise and assist." Still, the official said U.S. special forces have been highly engaged in Afghanistan and that the current approach could change if the Taliban finds a way to expand on gains from the past year, provided the Afghan government agrees. "It's best to leave that responsibility to the host nation itself," the official said. Questions about the role of U.S. special forces in Afghanistan have been simmering since a U.S. Green Beret, Staff Sgt. Matthew McClintock, was killed earlier this month in Marjah, in Helmand Province, when his unit came under fire from the Taliban. The mission for McClintock's team training Afghan special forces is "not unusual," the official said. Nor is the context, described as being part of a larger Afghan counteroffensive against the Taliban. "With the Afghan special forces, that's conducted down to the tactical level, and so that was what was going on in this case," Army Brig. Gen. Wilson Shoffner said during a briefing in Afghanistan. "The force that was there, the American special forces team, is designed to operate independently, which it was doing," Shoffner added. "Combined with the Afghans, they did have sufficient combat power on hand for the threat that they faced, and they had sufficient airpower available to them throughout the operation." Expanded role The U.S. has relied heavily on special forces for its train, advise and assist efforts in Iraq and Syria. The Defense Department expanded the role of special forces last month with the creation of a specialized expeditionary targeting force that would conduct raids, gather intelligence and target Islamic State commanders. "You don't know at night who's going to be coming through the window," Defense Secretary Ash Carter told lawmakers at the time. "That's the sensation we want all of ISIL's leadership and followers to have." ISIL is an acronym for the Islamic State. For now, though, U.S. officials say that type of presence is not needed in Afghanistan, where the Taliban control just nine of the country's more than 400 districts, while wielding influence in another 17. U.S. officials also say that, despite making some gains over the past year, the Taliban is having trouble holding onto those gains and is experiencing difficulty governing the areas it does control. They also say Afghanistan's forces are steadily improving, becoming more capable from one operation to the next. Optimism, setbacks U.S. officials admit that while there is reason for optimism, Afghan forces have had only mixed results as they have begun to shoulder more responsibility. "When they conducted deliberate, planned operations they actually did fairly well," said Army Brig. Gen. Shoffner. "Where they had trouble and where they didn't do so well was in response to crisis situations. That remains one of their weaknesses." U.S. officials also are concerned about the commanders of Afghanistan's armed forces, including the leadership of the country's 215th Corps, which operates in Helmand Province. The commander of Afghanistan's 215th Corps already has been switched out, and two brigade commanders have been replaced, as well as key staff members. "They've got some leaders that are corrupt and need to go," Shoffner said. "They need to make some tough leadership choices." Additionally, recruiting has been a problem. The Afghan National Army currently is facing a 25,000-soldier shortfall, although Afghan officials are hoping to fill those positions within the next six months. The United States has condemned the deaths and atrocities committed by the Islamic State group in its campaign of terror in Iraq. A State Department official commented on a new United Nations report that says close to 19,000 civilians were killed in Iraq between early 2014 and late 2015, and more than 3 million displaced as a result of the violence. The terrorist group also is said to hold about 3,500 slaves. U.N. officials call the figures "staggering," but say the situation may actually be much worse. The figures are based on information from survivors and witnesses, but many atrocities could not be documented. U.N. spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said, "ISIL [an acronym for the militant group] in particular has been employing the most gruesome methods to execute people; by running bulldozers over them, by burning them alive. In one case, people were put in a cage and the cage was then thrown into the water. "People are being murdered for the most obscure of reasons. One imam was killed because he was not praying correctly. There are children that have been abducted by ISIL. We have documented about 800 children who were abducted and then forced to fight, put in religious schools or sent directly to the front lines," Shamdasani said. Violence does not necessarily stop once an area is reclaimed from Islamic State. "We have also documented violations by pro-government forces. In some cases, when people flee ISIL-occupied areas they are then arrested by security forces or they are expelled," she said. Depth of 'depravity' The United States could not immediately confirm the death toll from the report, but a State Department spokesman Tuesday said Islamic State atrocities are well-known. U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said, "The depth of ISIL's depravity has already been well documented, and this report continues to show the horrendous methods that ISIL has used in its campaign of terror." Japan announced plans Tuesday to send additional aid to help refugees fleeing violence in Iraq and Syria. Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said, "In addition to the aid worth $810 million that we have dispersed for refugees and internally displaced people in Syria and Iraq, and for neighboring countries, I would like to announce a plan to provide additional aid of $350 million, pending the approval of the necessary budget." Thousands of others fleeing violence in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere are now without shelter in the freezing temperatures as they cross the Balkan countries on the way to Western Europe. One year from now, on January 20, 2017, the next president of the United States will take office. But between now and then, the country will embark on a long, complicated and unique democratic process to determine who that will be. Right now, it's anyone's guess, since the field of candidates in both major parties is still very large. Who's in the race? In the race for the Democratic Party nomination, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-declared "democratic socialist," is gaining ground on Hillary Clinton, the ex-secretary of state. But Sanders remains nearly 13 points behind Clinton, according to a RealClearPolitics average of recent nationwide polls. Former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley is still in the race, although he has failed to gain any momentum. The Republican contest is more uncertain, with a whopping 12 candidates still vying to become the party's nominee. In recent weeks a top tier has formed in the GOP race. It consists of billionaire real estate developer Donald Trump, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, and Florida Senator Marco Rubio. Trump and Cruz are competing for the support of disaffected voters in the party's ultra right wing, while Rubio is trying to appeal to a more centrist crowd. After that, a second tier has emerged, consisting both of establishment and right-wing candidates that have struggled to gain any significant level of support. Primary season Though the campaign has dominated U.S. news headlines for over half a year, the actual election hasn't even begun yet. That will change in less than two weeks, when a series of state-by-state votes gets underway. Collectively, this process is referred to as the "primary election." The goal of the primaries is for each major political party to choose a nominee to compete against each other in November's general election. This is done by assigning "delegates," or party representatives, to candidates based on the results of each state vote. To become the nominee, a candidate must secure a simple majority of his party's delegates. Caucuses vs. primaries There are two basic types of nominating events during primary election season: primaries and caucuses. A primary is like a regular election, where citizens line up to cast ballots at a voting center. A caucus, however, is a unique part of the American electoral process, and requires additional explanation. Basically, caucuses involve citizens gathering at a public space in their community, such as a church, to debate issues and share concerns. Afterwards, caucus-goers vote - either by writing the name of their preferred candidate on a blank slip of paper, or by physically moving to a side of the room based on their presidential preference. Iowa caucus The first caucus will be held in the rural, Midwestern state of Iowa on February 1. Although Iowa does not have a good record for choosing the eventual nominee, the contest is seen as a crucial way for candidates to gain momentum early on in the primary process. Recent polls in Iowa show Clinton and Sanders virtually tied in the Democratic race. On the Republican side, Trump and Cruz are also locked in a tie, with Rubio polling a distant third. New Hampshire primary The first primary election is usually held in the northeastern state of New Hampshire. This year, the New Hampshire primary takes place on February 9. Although New Hampshire is small and therefore does not assign many delegates, its first-in-the-nation primary is crucial, especially for candidates struggling to get support elsewhere. So far, Sanders has about a 7-point lead over Clinton in New Hampshire, according to RCP's poll average, while Donald Trump is has a 17.7 point lead in the state's Republican race. States will continue to hold primaries and caucuses, assigning delegates to the winning candidates, until around mid-June. Party conventions Most of the time, a clear winner emerges, even before all the elections are over. But the result is not technically official until later in the summer, when each party holds its national political convention. At a political convention, the delegates cast their vote in favor of a candidate. Usually this is just a technicality, since most delegates are already assigned to a particular candidate, based on primary and caucus results. Contested convention? But what happens if no candidate can secure a majority of his party's delegates and thereby win the nomination? That is what is referred to as "contested convention," and its very controversial and very rare. If no majority is reached following the first official vote, delegates are then released, meaning they are allowed to switch their allegiance to a different candidate for the next round. This continues for as many rounds as necessary until a candidate secures the support of a majority of the delegates. Many view a contested convention as undemocratic, since the outcome likely will not reflect the decision of citizens who actually voted in the primaries and caucuses. It also often opens the process to backroom deals between party leaders, an influence that for many feels corrupt. The good news is, it usually doesnt happen, if history is any indication. The last time a major national party convention opened without a clear winner was way back in 1967, when Gerald Ford had a lead but had not captured a majority of the delegates. Could it happen this year? However, several factors suggest there is somewhat more of chance this year's Republican convention will be contested. There are three main reasons why: 1) There is currently a large field of well-funded GOP candidates who have little incentive to drop out. This includes the billionaire Trump, who has the ability to self-fund his campaign if he chooses. 2) Any state holding a nominating event before March 15 is required to award its delegates proportionally, rather than on a winner-takes-all basis. This makes it less likely that any one candidate will jump out to an early lead. 3) A rule passed by the Republican Party in 2012 stipulates that any nominee must "demonstrate the support of a majority of the delegates from each of eight or more states." Most years, when there is a clear front-runner, that's not a problem. This year, with a lot of candidates, it could be. Third party candidate? Each presidential election cycle, a number of third party candidates also run for president. Most of the time, these are relatively unknown and underfunded candidates who do not make a significant impact on the race. But this year, it could be different. Many GOP leaders are concerned Donald Trump, the current Republican frontrunner, could run as an independent candidate if he fails to win the GOP nomination. Trump has repeatedly hinted that he could launch a third-party run, even after making a high-profile pledge last year that he will support the partys eventual nominee. If Trump did run as an independent, many polls suggest he would draw substantial support from the Republican nominee in a general election. If that happens, it could open the door for an easy win for the Democratic candidate. The U.S. State Department says it is "deeply alarmed" by reports out of Burundi of serious human rights violations stemming from a nine-month political crisis. Spokesman Mark Toner issued a statement Tuesday calling on the Burundian government to "permit an immediate, impartial investigation into these recent allegations and to hold accountable all those found responsible for crimes." Numerous reports of gang rapes of women by security forces, torture, extrajudicial killings and reports of mass graves prompted U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein to warn last Friday that "all the alarm signals, including the increasing ethnic dimension of the crisis, are flashing red." Toner also called on the government of Burundi "to allow for the immediate full deployment and unimpeded access of African Union human rights observers to investigate these allegations." Refused peacekeeper offer Burundi refused an offer by the AU last month to send 5,000 peacekeepers to Burundi to stop the violence. The government said the AU troops could be attacked if they attempt to come without permission. The Burundian government has also refused to participate in talks that include the political opposition, which it accuses of "supporting violence." Burundi was thrown into crisis last April after President Pierre Nkurunziza announced he would seek a third term in office, a decision that triggered street protests that were met with violence by security forces. Hundreds of people have died in the violence, while thousands of Burundians have fled their homeland. Legislation restricting Americas acceptance of refugees from Syria and Iraq failed in the Senate Wednesday after passionate debate about U.S. security needs and the nations long history as a destination for the oppressed. Senate Democrats banded together to block debate on a bill requiring the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Director of National Intelligence to certify that Syrian and Iraqi refugees posed no security risk before they could be approved for asylum. That is physically impossible, said Democrat Richard Durbin. Lets call it for what it is. This is an effort to stop any any Syrian refugee from coming to the United States, regardless whether its a mother with a child. Backers of the legislation, which fell five votes short of the 60 required to advance, disagreed. This is not an anti-refugee bill, said Republican Senator John Cornyn. All we are asking for, and all this legislation provides for, is to enhance the screening of refugees so that this system cannot be exploited by terrorists. Serious response sought The House of Representatives passed the measure late last year with bipartisan support. The vote came as the world reeled from Islamic State-inspired attacks in Paris and amid concerns that terrorists could infiltrate those fleeing horrific violence and brutality. The debate about how to safely admit refugees from Syria and Iraq is a serious conversation that deserves a serious response from Washington, said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican. Its difficult to effectively vet immigrants from a war-torn country where records may sometimes no longer exist at all. The White House said the legislation was not needed, as refugees already undergo an intensive vetting process that can take as long as two years. The White House also said the bill would tarnish America's image abroad and hand Islamic State a propaganda tool. The Senates top Democrat echoed that line of reasoning. This bill scapegoats refugees who are fleeing war and torture instead of creating real solutions to keep Americans safe, said Minority Leader Harry Reid. Catch-all debate At times, Senate floor debate strayed from the immediate question at hand. Republicans argued the refugee crisis might have been less severe if President Barack Obama had acted sooner and more aggressively to counter IS. On the Democratic side, Senator Tim Kaine took the opportunity to renew his call that Congress formally authorize military action against Islamic State. Refugees are not our enemy. ISIL is our enemy. And yet for some strange reason, in the 18 months of war against ISIL, Congress has been unwilling to debate our real enemy, Kaine said, referring to the Islamic State group by another acronym. Lets do what Americans have always done, be willing to extend a hand to those who are victimized by atrocity in other lands, rather than extend the back of our hand and label them as enemies, Kaine added. Last year, the Obama administration said the United States would accept 10,000 Syrian refugees - a tiny fraction of the numbers arriving in Germany and elsewhere. Muslim immigrants It had been widely assumed that the refugee vetting bill would fall short of the three-fifths backing required to begin Senate debate. However, in a surprise move, minority Democrats signaled they would be willing to vote to allow debate to proceed if majority Republicans allowed several Democratic amendments to be brought to the floor. Key among them was a politically-explosive measure that would have forced Republicans to take sides on a contentious proposal by the partys presidential frontrunner, businessman Donald Trump, to bar Muslim immigrants. Minority Leader Reid urged a vote to denounce Donald Trumps reprehensible proposal to impose a religious test on admission to the United States. As a front-runner for the Republican nomination, Donald Trump and his proposals are leading the public debate in our country. Republicans who support these illogical plans should be prepared for the next illogical step: voting on his vision of America, Reid added. Republicans rejected the proposed amendment as a counterproductive distraction. This whole idea of having a bunch of show votes to bring the presidential campaign here on the floor of the Senate doesnt strike me as very constructive, Cornyn said. The U.S. Senate is expected to hold a test vote later Wednesday on whether to severely restrict America's acceptance of refugees from Syria and Iraq, because of continuing fears that the Islamic State group and other terrorist infiltrators could be among the millions who have fled horrific violence and brutality in their home countries. The House of Representatives passed the measure late last year with bipartisan support as the world reeled from IS-inspired attacks in Paris. The bill would require the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the Director of National Intelligence to certify that refugees pose no security risks before they could be approved for asylum in the United States. 'Properly vet' individuals "It's clear that many Americans are concerned about the administration's ability to properly vet thousands of individuals from Syria and from Iraq," said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican. "Americans deserve a vetting process they can have confidence in. "Safeguards that weed out ISIL sympathizers can help ensure legitimate refugees to our country are not unfairly stigmatized. The American people are concerned, and they are looking to us to lead with safety and compassion," McConnell added, using an acronym for the Islamic State group. The White House says the legislation is unneeded, as refugees already undergo an intensive vetting process that can take as long as two years. The White House also argues the measure would be counterproductive, tarnishing America's image abroad and handing Islamic State a propaganda tool. Visa waiver program In December, Congress amended America's visa waiver program to force scrutiny of foreigners who have traveled to Syria or Iraq over the last five years. Proponents of that legislation argued that terrorists are far more likely to exploit America's visa system than wait up to two years to come to the United States as a refugee. The refugee certification bill McConnell is bringing up would need three-fifths backing to begin debate, and is likely to fall short of the 60 votes required. Last year, the Obama administration said the United States would accept 10,000 Syrian refugees -- a tiny fraction of the number that have arrived in Germany and elsewhere. A top White House official said the nuclear deal the U.S. reached with Iran has created a new diplomatic tone between both nations that helped in the release last week of 10 American sailors who were detained briefly in Iran as well as five other American citizens who had been held for years. Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser to President Barack Obama, told an event organized by the Georgetown University Institute of Politics and Public Service in Washington that the nuclear deal between the U.S. and five other Western nations and Iran made it easier for diplomats of both countries to communicate in a much healthier, more functional way. Rhodes said the latest example of this new diplomatic era was in evidence last week when 10 U.S. sailors drifted in a vessel into Iranian waters due to engine problems. I dont know where that incident wouldve led four years ago," he said. Communication "You have U.S. Navy personnel in Iranian waters and you could easily see how in 2009 or 2011 it could have escalated [and] it becomes a crisis because it is a public issue in both countries where as here [Secretary of State] John Kerry called [Irans Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammad] Javad Zarif and they were released in a few hours, Rhodes said. Last weekend, former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati, Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, pastor Saeed Abedini, student Matthew Trevithick and Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari were all released after extended negotiations to win their freedom from Iranian captivity. Rhodes described the convoluted old system of diplomatic communication between Washington and Tehran. He said that a few years ago the U.S. United Nations ambassador would talk to Irans United Nations ambassador. That message would later be sent to Tehran and then Iran would send a response to the U.S. Interests Section inside the Swiss Embassy in the Iranian capital, and later it would reach the White House and the State Department. The nuclear negotiations established diplomacy and diplomatic channels between the two countries that just did not exist three years ago. And that doesnt mean that there is a change in behavior. It does mean, though, that we can communicate with this government, Rhodes said. Republicans in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail have been highly critical of the Iran nuclear deal. GOP front-runner Donald Trump has called it "the dumbest deal I think I've ever seen." 'Not legally binding' Republican Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas said the issue is not settled. "This is not legally binding beyond the presidency of Barack Obama. This is not a legal document. It's not a treaty. It's a political agreement. And so I hope the next president understands that he or she will have complete freedom to tear this deal up and negotiate a better deal," Cornyn said. On Tuesday, Iran had access to more than $30 billion in frozen assets from sanctions. The United States and the European Union put the sanctions in place to pressure Iran amid allegations it was working to develop nuclear weapons. The sanctions badly hurt Iran's economy, and lifting them was what Iran got in return for sharply cutting back its nuclear program in the deal with world powers. Rhodes acknowledged that confrontations between both nations are unavoidable. There are going to be other issues, there are going to be irritants. There are just going to be things that come up that will benefit from diplomatic communication between the United States and Iran," he said. The Obama administration has named a senior official to help deal with the toxic water crisis plaguing the city of Flint, Michigan. President Barack Obama met Tuesday with Flint Mayor Karen Weaver to hear firsthand about how her city's residents were dealing with the public health crisis. Obama said Dr. Nicole Lurie, assistant secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, would be the federal official tasked with coordinating assistance to the city from the federal government. Weaver also met with an Obama senior adviser and the president's intergovernmental affairs director. The White House said the officials assured Weaver that the federal government would be a "constructive partner'' in the city's response and recovery. Financially strapped Flint was under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager when it switched its source of tap water from Detroit's system to the more corrosive water in the nearby Flint River in April 2014 to save money. The Flint River water leached lead from the city pipes more than Detroit water did, leading to elevated levels of lead in the water and in the blood of some children. Flint resumed using Detroit water, which comes from Lake Huron, in October. But some people had reported rashes, hair loss and other problems since the switch to the Flint River water, and many residents are relying on bottled water. On Saturday, Obama declared a federal emergency in Flint, freeing up to $5 million in federal aid to help solve the health crisis, but he denied the governor's request for a disaster declaration because the contamination was a man-made problem and therefore didn't meet the definition of a "major disaster" under federal law. Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, facing protests, lawsuits and calls for his resignation over the contamination issue, apologized to city residents Tuesday and called for the state to spend $28 million on diagnostic tests, health treatment for children and adolescents, replacement of faucets and fixtures in Flint schools and child care centers, and a study of the city's water pipes. "To you, the people of Flint, I say tonight as I have before, I am sorry and I will fix it," Snyder said in his annual State of the State speech to lawmakers, adding that federal, state and local leaders had failed residents. He said additional funds would be needed, and he announced his appeal of Obama's denial of a disaster declaration. Also, his aides pledged that by the end of the week, officials would visit every household in Flint to ensure they have water filters. Zimbabwe's highest court has ruled that marriage before the age of 18 is illegal. The unprecedented ruling by the Constitutional Court followed an application by two women who sought to have the legal age of marriage moved to 18 for both men and women. The case was brought to the court by Loveness Mudzuru and Ruvimbo Tsopodzi, two young women who were just girls when they were married and gave birth for the first time. Lawyer and former finance minister Tendai Biti represented them and on Wednesday described the ruling as "historic and revolutionary." 'Bold decision' "The court should be congratulated for making such a bold, bold decision. I feared that they would leave that to the legislature," said Biti. "I am very pleased to be part of this history. Parliament should have done this many years ago. They had over 36 years to do it; they did not do it. So it has taken a bold decision from a bold court to do this. So it is a great day for women." Biti, who is now a member of the group Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, said celebrations would not last long as the country has to come up with penalties for those who ignore the court's ruling. High rate of child marriages Zimbabwe is one of four southern African countries with the highest rates of girl child marriages, according to the United Nations Population Fund and the development group Plan International. The others are Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia. The organizations say early marriages prevent children especially girls from developing careers, forcing them into a cycle of poverty. Clemence Charwe, a marriage counselor, hailed Wednesday's ruling. "It is a right decision that the constitutional court has made; especially in nowadays you really need to be sure of what you are doing because you find the issue of divorce on the high side, because of people who just jump in, not fully understanding what marriage is all about. And when you are in there now, you then find that this is not what I really wanted, or this is not the person I wanted. So if someone is over 18 and you are looking at someone around 21, its an age where you can really make decisions with your full senses, and say this is a real person I wanted. And this is the right time I want to get into a marriage," said Charwe. Poverty, religion and tradition are main reason for child marriages in Zimbabwe, where more than one-third of girls are wed before they turn 18. The U.N. Population Fund calls child marriage a violation of human rights. At least 15 Zimbabweans died in a horrific car crash Wednesday when a twin-cab car they were riding collided head-on with a haulage truck in Mokopane, South Africa. Police said 14 people died on the scene while one died later in hospital. Limpopo Province police spokesperson Colonel Ronel Otto said they were still investigating the deadly smash and trying to identify the deceased. We are still investigating and given the gravity of the crash, police are still trying to gather what documents they can from the scene to identify the victims, Colonel Otto told VOA. The driver of the twin-cab bakkie and another passenger survived, Otto told the South African news agency, Eyewitness News. They were taken to hospital for treatment. The identity of the deceased has not yet been established, were still working on that. They say its quite a gruesome scene. Going by the statistics, it appears the twin-cab was carrying 17 people, which is clearly an unacceptable overload, the police added. Zimbabwes Constitutional Court has outlawed child marriages, ruling that no person should be married before the age of 18. A controversial pastor, who staged a peaceful protest recently against President Robert Mugabe, prays for abducted political activist Itai Dzamara. Do you know the role of Zimbabwean vice presidents? Stay tuned for more details. The Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority presses on with a proposed 49 percent increase in power charges, saying electricity generation is being threatened by the low water levels at Kariba Dam. And this evening on the Dispora Forum, we will be talking with comedian Pepukai Zvemhare, popularly known as Baba vaTensen. Stay tuned for these stories and more coming up on Studio 7 at 7:30 pm on 9-0-9 Medium Wave and on the 4-9-3-0, 5-9-4-0 and 1-5-4-6-0 shortwave frequencies. We also broadcast on www.channelzim.net. Please check us out on Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter. Today on LiveTalk our hosts Gibbs Dube and Blessing Zulu will be talking with listeners and experts about the outlawing of child marriages. Send us your numbers on our WhatsApp number 001 202 465 0318. The number again 001 202 465 0318. Stay tuned!!!!!! Some Zimbabweans are unaware the role of vice presidents, who are not allowed to perform some functions of the president when he is not on duty. Zimbabwe has two vice presidents, who earn thousands of dollars in a nation struggling to generate revenue for capital and recurrent expenditure. One of the vice presidents has spent millions of dollars in hotel accommodation since his appointment a year ago. Section 100 of Zimbabwes constitution clearly stipulates that whenever the president is absent from Zimbabwe or is unable to exercise his or her official functions through illness or any other cause, those functions must be assumed and exercised by vice presidents or a minister chosen by the president or cabinet. The constitution further says the acting president is forbidden from exercising certain duties such as the deployment of deployment of defense forces and entering into any international convention or treaty. The acting president, adds the countrys supreme law, cannot revoke the appointment of ministers, deputy ministers or assign functions to minister or deputy ministers. Like what President Mugabe once said vice presidents Phelekezela Mphoko and Emmerson Mnangagwa have to play to his tune. One of them is currently an acting president at a time Mr. Mugabe is on holiday in the Far East. FIGUREHEADS Independent political commentator, Fortune Gwaze, says Zimbabwe would do well with only a single vice president instead of having two as they are mere figureheads. In accordance with Section 99 of the constitution, the role of the vice presidents is to assist the president in the execution of his or her duties. The roles are very necessary because the president is not an ever present person. Another political commentator and Media Centre director, Ernest Mudzengei, concurs. He or she who becomes acting president in this country does not have much in terms of real power. I think its more of a ceremonial post than anything else. We know for certain that an acting president cannot chair cabinet and from that perspective we can tell that nothing more can really be done by an acting president except to say that he will be the point person between issues and the actual president. Owen Dhliwayo, a local political activist, says the vice presidents, who act in his position when he is away, do not assist him but are merely told what to do. When you look at Zimbabwe, their interpretation is that you wait for Mugabe to tell you what to do, so thats assisting in the Zimbabwean context. ROLES UNCLEAR First Lady Grace Mugabe was once quoted in the local media as saying that the two, Mnangagwa and Mphoko, took notes on what to do from her and Mr. Mugabe. Some Zimbabweans, who spoke to Studio 7, professed ignorance on the role of the vice presidents or acting president, while others like Clifford Hlatshwayo said their role was unclear. The role of the two vice presidents of Zimbabwe that is Emmerson Mnangagwa and comrade Mphoko is not clear and I dont think they are necessary in terms of bringing change and development in Zimbabwe. Harare lawyer, Musindo Hungwe, said the vice presidents are just figureheads as they do not have powers to carry out executive functions of a president. Basically all the executive functions that are the epitome of the presidential power are taken away by that exception which is contained in Subsection 2 of Section 100. So if you are to ask me the long and short of my response would be the vice presidents are simply there as figure heads, they do not have any executive functions. They wait to be appointed functions and duties by the president as and when he deems fit. LEARNING EXPERIENCE But for Zanu PF activist, Terence Tadzungaira, power or no power, it does not matter as what is important is that they gain experience when they act as president. They are learning. What we basically need them to do is to understand the vision of our president Robert Mugabe as of the party so we believe the two vice presidents are acting with the belief of Zanu PFs ideology. According to the constitution, the functions of the vice president are to assist the president in the discharge of his or her functions and perform any such other functions such as the administration of any ministry, department or act of parliament that the president may assign to them. For example, Mr. Mugabe has assigned Mnangagwa to be in charge of the Justice Ministry while Mphoko deals with peace, reconciliation and national issues, among other duties in government. Zimbabwe's highest court, the Constitutional Court, has outlawed child marriages decreeing that any person who intends to get married should be at least 18 years of age. The ruling follows an application by human rights lawyers who wanted legal age of marriage be moved to 18 for both men and women. The case was filed by former Finance Minister and leader of the Peoples Democratic Party, Tendai Biti, and two minor children. Following the courts ruling, Biti, who is also a lawyer, described the judgment as an important milestone in the protection of women and childrens rights. The court has passed what I can only describe as a revolutionary judgment for women and for girl children; the declaration that whether at customary law, whether in terms of religious rights or other cultural practices no person below the age of 18, man or woman, can get married. I think its an amazing judgement. I am pleased to be part of this history. He added that he was not happy that the legislature was taking its time to align several laws to the new constitution so that women and childrens rights were protected. Parliament should have done this many years ago. They had over 36 years to do it (but ) they didnt do it, so it has taken a bold decision from a bold court to do so its a great day for women. Reacting to the ruling, prominent human rights activist Jestina Mukoko of the Zimbabwe Peace Project said that enforcement of Wedesdays ruling is going to be easy without the realignment of other pieces of legislation, arguing that the national constitution supersedes any legislation. Mukoko urged rights activists focusing on women and childrens rights to launch massive campaigns to ensure that all the countrys citizens are aware that child marriages are illegal and unconstitutional. Angela Machonesa of Plan International said they are happy with the ruling. Some activists say many children were being forced into early marriages because of poverty while some parents were covering up for statutory rape by forcing their children to be married to their abusers. Controversial pastor Patrick Philip Mugadza of the Remnant Church, who staged a peaceful protest recently against President Robert Mugabe, on Wednesday prayed for abducted political activist Itai Dzamara. Mugadza said the Dzamara family needs prayers as they are struggling everyday to come to terms with the disappearance of the Occupy Africa Unity Square leader, whose group is calling for the stepping down of President Robert Mugabe for allegedly running Zimbabwe. Mugadza said Dzamaras family will be blessed by God if they forgive those that allegedly abducted Itai Dzamara at a Barber Shop in Gen View 10 months ago. Dzamaras wife, Sheffra, her children and young sister were among people that attended the prayer at shop. The High Court ordered Zimbabwean security agents to look for Dzamara and make some reports to relevant authorities about their progress in finding him. Occupy Africa Unity Square claims that Mr. Mugabe has almost ruined the country, which was once considered one of the fast developing nations in Africa soon after independence from British rule in 1980. The country is currently experiencing serious social, economic and political problems some people attribute to poor governance, an allegedly skewed land reform program and perennial droughts. John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, recently visited Moscow to discuss the Syrian crisis with his colleague Sergei Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin. Journalists observed handshakes, smiles, even hearty laughter, between Kerry and his Russian counterparts. Syrian President Bashar al Assad does not have to resign immediately, Kerry declared, and the United States is not trying to isolate Russia. What good news, and what a surprise for the Russians. The Moscow show seemed a great success. Kerry strolled along Stariy Arbat Street, met smiling Russian pedestrians and bought souvenirs to take home. A few days later the UN Security Council passed a resolution, calling for a ceasefire and negotiations. Russian and western journalists alike now say there is some hope to avoid the worst in Syria. And as you may already know, if the United States wants a ceasefire, its because their moderate Jihadist allies are getting beaten up now by the Syrian Arab Army backed by Russian air support. Is cautious optimism warranted about a Syrian peace? It is hard to see how. Kerry may say whatever he wants in Moscow, but when he gets back to Washington, he sings a different song, or his colleagues do. His boss, President Obama, said Assad has to go only a few days after Kerry returned home. And then there is the new phantasmagorical story published by Seymour B Hersh, the muckraking US journalist, who has revealed that not everyone inside the US government is brain dead. Its a remarkable discovery when you think about US foreign policy. Some military officials, and no less than the former Chief of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, were actually indirectly, and very secretly, passing military intelligence to the Syrian government to help it fight Daesh, Al-Qaeda and allied Jihadist forces operating in Syria. At the same time, the CIA, with Obamas support, was sending arms hither and thither in Syria to help the Jihadists overthrow the Assad government. General Dempsey left office in September 2015 and was replaced by General Joseph Dunford, a true blue Russophobe, who says Russia is an existential threat to the United States. It is a classic Washington response: the US aggressor accuses its intended victim of aggression. Just the other day (22 December), the United States slapped on gratuitous new sanctions against Russia. Its the same old pretext: Russian aggression in the Ukraine. Yet another US provocation, you might think, as Russia searches for a peaceful settlement of the Syrian war. The Russian government is taking a sensible position, but in the present circumstances, is a negotiated peace a real possibility? If the war in Syria were simply a civil war, as is often repeated in the media, you could encourage the belligerents to put on suits and ties and sit down at a table to negotiate a settlement. Unfortunately, the war in Syria is not a civil war: it is rather a proxy war of aggression led by the United States, Britain, and France (until the Paris massacre in November), and pursued vigorously in the region by Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, and Apartheid Israel. Turkey is playing a dirty, evil role. It provides arms and supplies across its borders for Daesh in Syria. Oil taken from Syrian wells by Daesh travels in the opposite direction, sold at cut rate prices, to provide revenue to the Jihadists for their war against Assad. It is estimated that Daesh was obtaining $40 millions a month from exported oil (before Russian intervention), but this is a bagatelle in terms of the money necessary for the Jihadists to wage war against Syria. Hundreds of millions are required. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are important suppliers and financiers of the Salafi Jihadist movement. Jordan permits training of Jihadists on its territory and allows passage across its frontiers into Syria. Israel also provides support from the occupied Golan territory, even providing medical care to wounded Jihadists. A coalition of states, four of which are NATO members, is waging a war of aggression against Syria. Against this array of deadly enemies, the Syrian government and the Syrian Arab Army, in a remarkable feat of arms, has been able to hold out for more than four years. President Assad has proven his courage and tenacity as a leader by refusing US summons to resign and by staying in Damascus to share the personal danger which all Syrians must endure simply to live in their country. No wonder Obama wants to get rid of Assad before talk about Syrian elections for he would almost certainly win them. Sputnik in Moscow has estimated that there are as many as 70,000 foreign Jihadists fighting in Syria. These forces appear for the most part are well motivated, supplied largely with US weapons and deeply entrenched in various parts of Syria. Since the Russian intervention on the side of the Syrian government, progress has been made in rooting out Jihadist forces, but as long as supply routes remain open across Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, even Lebanon, the war in Syria is not going to end. Turkeys role is particularly dangerous. It is a NATO member and it uses this privileged position to commit acts of aggression against Iraq and Syria. It shot down a Russian warplane in a well-planned ambush, likely with US connivance, and then ran to hide in NATOs skirts. Apparently, the Turkish government hoped to sabotage budding European cooperation with Russia against Daesh, or to provoke a NATO-Russian war, as insane as that might seem. Other NATO members, the United States, France, and Britain, have also been deeply involved in the proxy war against Syria. Indeed, after the destruction of Libya, it has been reported that NATO planes were secretly used to transport Jihadists and Libyan arms to other Middle Eastern fronts. NATO members are effectively allied with Daesh and its Al-Qaeda derivatives against the Syrian government. To be sure, the United States and its European vassals have attempted to cover up their links to the Jihadist war in Syria by launching make-believe air attacks on Daesh targets, occasionally bombing a caterpillar tractor here or there and blowing up a lot of sand in peoples eyes. Russian intervention exposed the double game of the United States and changed the balance of military forces in Syria. Even now however, the US air force sends warning messages to Jihadist truck drivers to get away from their vehicles before it attacks them. Or it refuses altogether to attack trucks carrying Daesh oil, claiming its private civilian property. How preposterous! Since World War II, when has the United States hesitated to attack civilian targets? It is understandable that Obama and the CIA, having been caught red-handed in Syria, are furious with Putin for exposing them. Nevertheless, the Russian government has offered the United States, a porte de sortie, pushing for an anti-Jihadist alliance and peace talks to settle the war. Peace is a marvellous idea and the US escape route, a practical gesture, but how is Foreign Minister Lavrov going to get Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, Jordan, and Israel, not to mention the United States and Britain, to stop supporting the Jihadist movement in Syria and Iraq? Talk about an impossible alliance: its like taking a writhing nest of asps to your breast and hoping they wont bite you. Are such hopes realistic? Maybe not but thats diplomacy, Lavrov might respond: we have to try nevertheless. These days it takes infinite patience and great theatrical skills to be a Russian diplomat. Russia is trying to finesse the United States into dropping its support of moderate Jihadists. In fact, such moderates do not exist.USA_moderates.jpg Neither does the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA). The Jihadists decapitate a few hapless victims, and FSA volunteers run away in horror leaving their arms for Daesh. Or, they laugh at the infidels stupidity and go over, arms in hand, to the Jihadist side. Even if Russia could get real commitments from the United States, which is as yet quite uncertain, what is to be done about Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states? And what is to be done with all the foreign Jihadists in Syria? Are these terrorists and war criminals going to be encouraged to return to the 40+ different countries whence they came to stir up violence there? And what is to be done about the Syrian Jihadists, though there is no open source information about their numbers? Will they be allowed to remain at large, or worse, will they be recognised as a legitimate Syrian opposition? Even an anti-Jihadist coalition of willing members will have hard work rooting out Daesh and its allies. But the coalition of asps which Russia is trying to organise is composed of Daesh supporters. How is that going to work? One fears not at all well since the would-be alliance members, with the possible exception of France, have not abandoned their backing of Daesh, whatever one hears to the contrary notwithstanding. The United States remains the chief culprit continuing to pursue its two-faced, dangerous policies. The four core elements of Obamas Syria policy remain intact today, Seymour Hersh says: an insistence that Assad must go; that no anti-IS (Islamic State) coalition with Russia is possible; that Turkey is a steadfast ally in the war against terrorism; and that there really are significant moderate opposition forces for the US to support. Policy based on false premises invariably leads to failure. Obamas policy is no exception. Assad is a courageous leader of Syrian resistance against the Jihadist invasion. The only possible successful coalition against Daesh, Al-Qaeda and their affiliates is with Assad and with Russia. Turkey is a dangerous provocateur, playing with matches amongst open kegs of gunpowder, trying to drag NATO into a deeper de facto alliance with Daesh or even war with Russia. Finally, there are no moderate Jihadist forces in Syria. The Free Syrian Army barely exists at all, and the so-called moderates are no less murderous than their Daesh allies. One cannot fault the Russians for trying to organise an anti-Jihadist alliance in Syria, but their potential allies, apart perhaps from the apparently repentant French, are all snakes in the grass. And Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, is the biggest snake of all. Do you realise what you have done? Putin asked at the UN in September. Not yet apparently, reports to the contrary notwithstanding. But then, as we know, there are none so blind as those who will not see. Photo: Netflix Degrassi: Next Class, Netflixs new iteration of the veteran Canadian series, premiered last week, with ten episodes of exquisite teen earnestness. Its the best season in years, covering Gamergate-esque social politics, STDs, drug abuse, masturbation, body anxiety, Hastygram, privacy concerns about cloud storage, and every permutation of crush-having one can imagine. Its a dream, and the next batch of ten episodes cannot come soon enough. And among its other wonderful stories is a cross-promotion for another Netflix transplant: Theres a Gilmore Girls subplot in episode six, #NotAllMen. Zoe the former star of a teen drama, a survivor of sexual assault who very publicly pressed charges against her assailants, and the creator of Degrassi Nudes, a program in which power-squad cheerleaders sold nude photos of themselves is grappling with being attracted to her BFF, Grace. Zoes mom, not the most loving person by any stretch, is homophobic and unsupportive, and Zoes upset. So upset that she wants to find her father, whom shes never met, and whose identity she does not know. Eventually she concludes that her dad is perhaps David Sutcliffe, who played Christopher on Gilmore Girls. Zoe thinks they have similar features, and reasons she may have gotten her acting genes for him. Plus, her mom was an extra on GG. And what luck! Hes in town filming a movie. Zoe and Grace decide to stalk him. Thats quite the Netflix shout-out. But Degrassi writer and coexecutive producer Matt Huether tells us that it was a lucky coincidence. It was not at all a Netflix-suggested tie-in. We just love Gilmore Girls, Huether wrote in an email. Were all huge Gilmore Girls fans in the writers room and we were delighted to figure out that the timeline worked for Zoes mom to be an extra on the show when she might have gotten pregnant. And we also thought it was great that Zoes comfort show was about a mother-daughter relationship. Aw, poor Zoe. Her comfort show going forward should be something to help teach her the virtues of being a good and responsible friend because oh boy, she could use some help in that department. Photo: Amazon, Max Freeman Perhaps like me you recall first encountering the poetry of Walt Whitman as a high-school student and reacting to certain lines with adolescent giggles. Its an experience shared by the narrator of Garth Greenwells exquisite first novel What Belongs to You, an English teacher at the American College in Sofia, a midwestern stranger in Bulgaria feeling often thrilled and threatened by its foreignness. Early on he recalls walking in the mountain village of Blagoevgrad, chaperoning some students to a conference on mathematical linguistics, a field in which I had little interest and no expertise a flash of offhand candor that inspires steady faith in his telling. Walking along a path between mountain and river, he does a great deal of seeing: The air was thick with movement, butterflies and day moths and also, hanging iridescent in the sun, tiny ephemerae shining and embalmed, pushed helplessly here and there by the light breeze. The grasses and trees were releasing in a great exhalation pods of seeds, the tiny grains each sheltered and propelled by a tuft of hair like a parachute or umbrella. The scene has him thinking of Whitman: There were lines in Whitmans poems that had always struck me as exaggerated in their enthusiasm, their unhinged eroticism; they embarrassed me a little, though my students read them each year with delighted laughter. I take Greenwell to be signaling, through his narrator, his own ambitions. Part of his daring is to risk that sort of embarrassment: What were those seeds if not the winds soft-tickling genitals, the worlds procreant urge, he asks, consciously channeling Whitman, his desire to be naked before the world, his madness, as he says, to be in contact with it. But the prose is of a piece with the rest of the novel. Life, however, falls short of this madness. The narrator thinks of himself as living almost always beneath the pitch of poetry, a life of inhibition and missed chances, but also a bearable life. Just how much life a person can bear is the animating question of What Belongs to You, not that it offers anything in the way of answers. Risk and desire are the coterminous elements of the books style as well as its action, terms of engagement Greenwell makes plain from its first page. The novel has a three-part structure, and is told in the past tense and at a remove of some years, though each scene is drawn closely enough to create the effect of real time passing. Part I is a revised version of a novella, Mitko, that Greenwell published with a small press in 2011. Mitko is a young male prostitute the narrator first meets at a public toilet in Sofia. The initial phase of their relationship is fitful and jagged, and inevitably unequal, erotically charged but also conducive to escalating betrayals. Though not as wealthy as Mitko imagines any American to be, the narrator is comfortable and employed; Mitko is homeless with no prospects aside from what he can find in the streets and online, a hurly-burly that engenders bruises and scars. Of course it cant lastthis transactional love, or, as Mitko puts it, priyatel, an unstable term somewhere between love, boyfriend, and friend and the narrator comes to the point where he has to decide that it wont. Greenwell is a writer with a gift for metaphor, and though he often puts restraints on his lyric impulses, he tends to allow a flourish at the end of a scene. Here he describes an embrace at the end of a night: He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close to him, and not just his arms, he wrapped his legs around me too and with all four of his limbs pressed me to him, embracing me so that when I breathed in the air was filtered through him, smelling of alcohol of course but also of his own scent that elicited such an animal response from me, that so fired me up (I imagined the chambers of the brain lighting up, thrown switches in a house). He lay like some marine creature wrapped around me, wrapping around me again if I shifted or half woke, and I slept as I have seldom slept, deeply and almost without disturbance, held like his beloved or his child; or held, I suppose it must be said, like his captive or his prey. An overabundance of images, perhaps, but the excess has by this point been earned. The one infelicity, to my ear, is fired me up, but its a cliche redeemed twice over between the parentheses. The narrators final self-identification as captive or prey hits directly on the novels organizing theme, and his necessary ambivalence about it. The pleasure comes here and throughout What Belongs to You from the elaborate shapes of Greenwells sentences. Part II, Grave, is 41 pages long, delivered without a paragraph break, a series of recollections of the narrators past, set off by the news that his estranged father might be near death. The memories come in a flurry as the narrator walks through a desolate part of Sofia. We hear of his fathers escape from poverty on a farm in Kentucky, to Chicago and then college, then a middle-class life in the suburbs; of the narrators own yearning for the phase of childhood when there lingers a physical aspect of parental love. The narrator relates his younger half-sisters recent discovery of their fathers secret life online, and of the violent episodes that scarred his childhood. There are two episodes that bring about the narrators estrangement from his father, who disowns his son for being gay, and in between we learn of the narrators own stifled first love. There is a lot of heat in this section, much of it the heat of shame and humiliation, but that of discovery and appetite as well. It throws light on what comes before and after. But its breathtaking enough on its own. The final arresting image is an emaciated horse grazing near a monastery in Sofia: not a portrait of misery but of the persistence of life in a hard place. Pox, the longest and final section, passes at a lower pressure, mostly, than what precedes it. Mitko returns to the narrator after an absence of two years with a phase as a loan sharks enforcer and a phase in prison and informs him that hes contracted syphilis. Though hes shown no symptoms, the narrator learns that he has it too, and it turns out that the country is in the midst of a penicillin drought. The narrator seems to be a proficient speaker of Bulgarian, but living in the language is always an estranging experience for him. Entering a clinic for a second opinion, he finds himself directed to what translates as the venerology department: I wondered if the word was used in the States. By its Latin roots it should have meant the study of love, and I wondered too how often that made it the right word for the people who came here, and whether it was the right word for my own predicament. As far as I can tell, this is the closest Greenwell ever comes to making a joke. What Belongs to You is a humorless novel, and Ive rarely come upon a book, like this one, about which it can be said that humorlessness is not a defect but an aesthetic necessity. The question of what it means for the narrator to be an American in straitened postcommunist, post-collapse Bulgaria, where everyone young who can leave does leave, has been hanging over the book, and here it comes to the fore. Without it ever being stated outright, its clear that the narrators idea of Bulgaria has fused with his idea of Mitko. Early on, we see Mitko in pictures from a dating site taken years before his hustler phase when he was an undamaged teenager. Before we get our last glimpse of him, drunk and all but wrecked, the narrator meets a restless young boy on a train in whom he cant help but see Mitko. Its hard to tell at times whether the narrator is the innocent abroad or an American abroad among innocents. Greenwells insight is that the destruction of innocence is a process that never halts. *This article appears in the January 25, 2016 issue of New York Magazine. Kate del Castillo. Photo: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images Welcome back! The El Chapo drama just keeps getting juicier! Heres what you missed last time: Sean Penn wrote a Rolling Stone article where he met the infamous drug lord El Chapo (who had escaped from prison again!) to get his thoughts on this whole drug-war business. But naturally, no one wanted to talk about that! They just wanted to talk about the fact that Sean Penn hung out with a drug lord. Oh, and the whole meeting was facilitated by Mexican telenovela actress Kate del Castillo, who not only played a drug lord on the show La Reina del Sur, but is a big fan of El Chapo (and he of her!). She even texted him, I confess that I feel protected for the first time. Sounds like famous last words! Now the Attorney General of Mexico, Arely Gomez Gonzalez, told the newspaper El Universal that del Castillo, who is a dual citizen of the U.S. and Mexico, is under investigation for money laundering, thanks to the possibility that her tequila brand, Honor del Castillo, was funded in part by El Chapo himself. No wonder they are such fans of each other! Gonzalez also clarifies the situation with Sean Penn. In an interview with Charlie Rose, Penn said that he didnt help the Mexican authorities catch El Chapo. But, as Gonzalez states in this interview, they had been tracking El Chapo through del Castillo and figured out his location from their not-so-secret rendezvous. Whew. Got all that? Where is Rogelio de la Vega when you need him? Tonights Limitless opens with a grim scene. On a stormy night, the crew goes to investigate a brutal murder, in which a woman was tied to the bed and stabbed dozens of times. This isnt very fun, Brian thinks, as if hes reading the minds of viewers. Thats when were transported into his subconscious. In Brians subconscious, we meet a Barney rip-off named Joshosaurus Josh. Brian loved Joshosaurus when he was a kid. Now, hes pretty chill about him. Photo: CBS Joshosaurus sets up the conceit of this episode: Everything is filtered through Brians perspective, and hes decided to establish some rules. The first is that distressing words (like kill or stab) be replaced with nice words (like hug or cuddle). That leads to Agent Rebecca Harris saying, with gravitas, lines like, The soda pop splatter indicates she was still playing air guitar before being sent to an awesome farm in the country. The FBI is searching for a serial hugger, which brings us to Brians second rule: All serial killers are referred to as Mr. or Mrs. [insert ice-cream flavor]. If reading these last two paragraphs has been frustrating, Im sorry. The cutesy substitutions dont let up. This conceit would maybe seem charming for 30 seconds and it lasts the entire hour-long episode. To track down serial hugger Mr. Pralines & Cream, the FBI calls in David Englander, a famous profiler, who is incredibly cocky about the whole thing. Brian looks at the case file for roughly 40 minutes, and solves the case instantly. The opening credits havent even rolled. Englander, impressed by Brians acuity, invites him to Quantico. Brian and Rebecca put on the Modern Lovers Road Runner which is about Massachusetts, but Im splitting hairs here and head down to FBI HQ to crack some serial-killer cases. During the road trip, Rebecca tells Brian why the Eddie Morra case from last episode seems fishy to her. It seems like Rebecca is figuring this out. Brian will have to run interference. At Quantico, surrounded by kittens and lollipops reminder: kittens and lollipops are actually weird serial-killer stuff Englander proposes that Brian continue to do profiling work. After all, its a lucrative profession that leads to book and movie deals. Englander himself struck gold with the case of Mr. Butter Pecan, otherwise known as Andre Hannan. Brians serial killers as ice cream rule also gives us whatever this is: Brian reads up on the Hannan case, concluding that Englander put an innocent guy on death row. He and Rebecca determine that Hannan wasnt strong enough to kill his victims, even though Hannan passed a polygraph confessing to the crimes. Hmmm. Is there an out-of-the-blue, only-on-Limitless explanation for this? Of course there is. Brian realizes that false memories were implanted in Hannans head using a technique known as optogenetics. Rebecca and Boyle are tasked with looking into Hannans doctor, Dr. Gilroy. Meanwhile, Brian runs interference on the investigation into Morra. He swaps out crucial evidence a coat containing samples of Morras blood which could link the senator to NZT. Brian pulls off the switcheroo, mentally adding it to his long list of federal crimes. Just as hes making the switch, though, Rebecca and Boyle arrive to grab the coat. Brian slips away just in the nick of time. Back to the main case: Brian bluffs his way into Dr. Gilroys office by reviving his older alter ego Mike Ikerson. Once inside, he sifts through client files to discover the real culprit and its some until-now-unknown rich guy. Basically, Dr. Gilroy was paid to plant false memories in Hannan and frame him for murder. Hannan gets released, and the real bad guy is arrested. Case closed. Englander isnt thrilled that Brian discredited his work, but he makes him an offer. What if they worked together on a book about the real case? Photo: CBS Brian who has a super-pill that he could use to change the world, but instead chooses to spend his time solving crimes says no. Duh doooyyy. In the episodes final cliffhanger, Rebecca notices discrepancies on the replaced coat of Eddie Morra. Shes getting closer to the truth! It seems like this could be a big problem right around I dont know May sweeps? Photo: Courtesy the artist and Karma, New York Mark Grotjahn (pronounced Groat-john) is widely recognized for his painting prowess. Since the mid-1990s, hes made radiating butterfly-wing-like bursts of rainbow color that create schisms in vision; since the mid-2000s, hes fashioned canvases with rich thickets of raffialike lines that allude to abstract faces and raw abstraction. He also makes painted bronze mask forms cast from cardboard boxes. Id happily own any of his work, and right now, at Larry Gagosians Madison Avenue palace of fortune, theres a big new show of his paintings that finds Grotjahn further exploring the possibilities of abstraction in thick furrows and clusters of paint, gouged surfaces, and opaque color, all of which gives his work the presence of simian beings or optical shamans. But thats not the show of his Im most interested in. As a fan whos never spoken to Grotjahn, Ive often wondered where this Los Angelesbased artists work comes from, especially since he started making his abstract paintings when such paintings were entirely out of style. At Karma, an exhibition of far less-known work that Grotjahn made in the mid-1990s provides a transcendental answer. It pictures a young painter coming of age as an artist by not making paintings, per se. Photo: Courtesy the artist and Karma, New York The gallery is full of actual handmade store-signs and replicas of florist-display devices. Dont freak out; its not as boring as it sounds. In 1993, Grotjahn, 25, seemingly in crisis, having just gotten out of the University of California, Berkeley, ached to be a painter, but nevertheless had to face the fact that painting the figure in the ways that hed been doing it was already being done all over the world. Back then, along with varieties of neo-conceptual multiculturalism, identity-based art and installation, and nascent relational aesthetics, painting was primarily figurative John Currin, Lisa Yuskavage, Marlene Dumas, Peter Doig, Chris Ofili, Luc Tuymans, etc. Grotjahn must have intuited that it was too late for him to catch on with this crowd. Thats when Grotjahn cast aside art-world strictures and styles and instead followed an obsession always one of the best artistic guides. Frustrated with painting but not wanting to be left behind, he said, I wanted to change. Art, he wrote, had become too coded, too much talking. He longed for a kind of painting that could vie with the graphic world for attention and communicate in straightforward visual terms, not just the latest artistic idioms and clicks. The young Jasper Johns talked about this moment of breaking through to making ones own work. He said, You do what is helpless and unavoidable. Surrender to obsession, follow something to the nth degree. Johns was also interested in art that could communicate on its own terms, and said that paintings should be looked at the same way you look at a radiator. In 1993, Grotjahn reached that helpless radiator place, then surrendered to the unavoidable: He began, he said, painting things that I loved. In this case, small signs that were in stores and shops all around him. There are grids of numbers that look like later-day, homemade versions of post-minimalists, like Mel Bochner and Sol LeWitt; signs in the shape of the thing theyre selling, like a mug of beer, commercial versions of shaped paintings; unaltered manufactured cigarette ads that may have been of interest to Grotjahn for being round (he seems drawn to a lot of circles), or for the ad hoc way theyre installed, for example, by a pushpin; or maybe its the shiny, cricked surface. Small bars and dives, hamburger places, mom-and-pop restaurants, newsstands, smoke shops, quick-marts, and endless liquor stores are evoked. Initially, Grotjahn painted these on large sheets of white paper from photos. Soon he had a batch of these and put them up in his studio. And liked them. He writes that he kind of thought they were bitchin. In fact, Grotjahn says he knew somehow that the originals were better. He gleaned that signs had an audience, they knew who their audience was, and they knew what they wanted to say. Their signs were functioning. He then went into stores, studied the signs closely, took numerous pictures of them, got the colors, tools, scales, and processes down. Unlike the earlier works, which still existed in his mind as paintings and drawings, he then began making exact replicas of the real signs. Most artists would have stopped there. Thats when Grotjahn crossed a personal Rubicon. Grotjahn went back to the stores, and asked owners to exchange his signs for theirs. Of this strange flip-flopping of one order for another, he says, with almost Clint Eastwood directness, Its a weird thing, the exchange. Two different languages are obviously in play; the same goes for class and color lines. Even today, some in the art world bristle, using the word exploitative in relation to this project. One photograph on hand shows the young Grotjahn with an Asian restaurant owner posing with his replicas next to the real signs. The deal he made with her probably didnt make sense to her, of course. In a way, it makes no sense on the art side of the tracks either. No matter; to sweeten the deal, he said he made his signs a little brighter, bumped up colors, or allowed himself to correct spelling mistakes. It worked at least 90 percent of the time. No one felt cheated; everyone was happy; the owners got new, improved signs; Grotjahn got his inspiration. Artist Richard Prince has long made handwritten drawings of jokes that people have given him giving his art in exchange for the joke. Referring to Grotjahn signs on Twitter last week, Prince said the Californian is an honorary member of the Want To Make Art Dont club. Nice movement: Art Dont. Photo: Courtesy the artist and Karma, New York Painters often go through a phase of not painting in order to make their way back to it. Grotjahns way back to painting began in a conceptual discourse on the function of painting itself, how it communicates, where, to whom, and possible processes open to it. Donald Judd memorably wrote that the chief challenge for any artist is to find the concatenation that will grow. Meaning, a chain of abstract ideas that can produce things the artist cannot predict, and that can sustain an artist for a lifetime and grow. Thats what this exhibition shows us: a fabulous lesson for young artists looking to buck rigid artistic structures and find their own art. Displayed at Karma are not the signs that Grotjahn painted, but the everyday signs he got in exchange. A lot of them have garish color or flat-footed or wonderful images and graphics. A steaming bowl of soup is painted so that it looks like cornflakes; a surrealist bowl of something else has the words sea soup rising in smoke from it. I love the we-dont-take-shit signs the ones requiring IDs, saying checks arent accepted, reading not allowed, presumably from a porn store, others noting no refunds and no returns. One reads like a Richard Prince joke: In God we trust; you pay cash. Theres every kind of liquor and beer youve ever heard of, odd arrays of homemade calligraphies. Different BIG SALE signs. Judging from the signs Grotjahn is attracted to, I deduce someone scared, strange, on the margins, avoiding big, glitzy stores, invoking a hardscrabble, old-school Raymond Chandler vibe, an almost alcoholic loner. Sin and shame are ever-present in the liquor- and porn-sign sections. Were glimpsing an artist the way he is when hes alone; not the turned-out art product only. His desire is always near at hand here. All this informational flow and gestural mutation, these natural vernacular aesthetics, aleatory everyday things, rapidly changing obsolescence, coming and goings of signs asking us to look, giving information and orders, inviting us in, telling us where to get off. Unlike fellow Californians Jim Shaw, who simply collected thrift-store paintings and displayed them, or Mike Kelley, who used cast-off stuffed animals in his art, Grotjahn puts his obsession through an extraordinary transformation so that we dont know if the final object is art, a doppelganger, an original, a copy, a hoax, or bad politics. Kafka wrote, What one person takes to be a bundle of rags, or a dog, is for another a sign. This is the fabulous vacuum of the artistic perverse around Grotjahns work. The Sign Exchange project ended in 1998 just as Grotjahn found his way to the butterfly paintings hed become known for. The connections are many and mostly abstract, but include the materiality, textures, and burnished surfaces that mark much of Grotjahns subsequent radiating paintings the way these works are organized in ad hoc ways but still are never chaotic or especially expressive. More, the ways he merged painting and drawing owe much to the way that signs are drawn, colored in, painted with anything handy, and have a real organization even if they are not planned out entirely beforehand. The constant return to cardboard, gritty surfaces, acidic color, irregular lines, puncturing surfaces, and arbitrary color meant not for an abstract ideal of beauty but to work: All this in Grotjahns subsequent art can be seen as part of the deep content of handmade signs and what he learned in making them. Finally, theres the strangeness of the project that must have freed up this artist to do whatever he wanted, however absurd and many of his sculptures can look pretty silly without having any theoretical why. The same duality, of the cerebral and the serendipitous, that the signs give voice to, too. All this gives Grotjahns art extreme flexibility. In the process of making these store signs, something was illuminated: the difficulties of finding ones style, the meta-languages one wants to put into play, the distillations of different kinds of beauty, the intricate syntax of abstraction as the sign and the thing in itself, the kinship that non-objective forms have with shapes in the real world, and most of all, an aesthetics of necessity. This abject project is the bridge that allowed Grotjahn to cross over into being his own artist and make art that in the well-known words of the late Walter Hopps offers the possibility of love with strangers. Welcome back to Stay Tuned, Vultures TV advice column. Each Wednesday, Margaret Lyons answers your questions about your various TV triumphs and woes. Need help? Have a theory? Want a recommendation? Submit a question! You can email staytuned@nymag.com, or tweet @margeincharge with the hashtag #staytuned. Ive just started watching Nurse Jackie on Netflix. Im about five episodes into season one, and while Im enjoying it, Im not totally hooked yet. Should I take the plunge? With seven seasons ahead of me, is it worth my time, or will it lead to heartbreak and regret? Still recovering from Lost, Dexter, Weeds, etc. Claire My favorite season of Nurse Jackie is season six, and I like season seven a lot, so I encourage you to see it through. But Ill also tell you the show changes a lot over its lifespan and depending on which aspects you like, your mileage will vary. I disliked the attempts at slapstick/goofiness but really dug how unsentimental the show could be about addiction and recovery. I wanted less Akalitus (though I love Anna Deavere Smith) and way less OHara, and I wanted a clearer take on Coop. My wishes all came true. Nurse Jackie eventually becomes the drama it was always meant to be, abandoning all its strained humor in favor of more grounded instances where funny things might naturally arise. Its definitely possible that people who unabashedly loved the first few seasons would be put off by the shows later years, but I was thrilled. Go forth! Weve reached the stage where wed like to start being more careful with what we put on TV while our 1-year-old daughter is in the room. Were not ready for programs for toddlers yet, but we need some more ideas for programs that arent not for toddlers. So far were just doing documentaries, sports, and cooking reality shows. Any ideas for good current dramas and comedies without sex and/or violence? Annie This is a tough one, particularly for dramas: Lots of shows I consider very genial and sweet still have occasional instances of violent imagery (Jane the Virgin, for example) that would probably not fit the bill for you. How much sex is a deal-breaker for this? Obviously nothing that goes to uh pound town, but what about pre- or postcoital in-bed scenes on network comedies? Is that too far? Is it language? This isnt me throwing my hands up and saying, Let your toddler watch Game of Thrones, the whole world is ass garbage, anyway! I just dont know what the guidelines actually are for kiddie viewing. So: Start with Bobs Burgers and Fresh Off the Boat. I think ABCs family comedies in general are safe bets, though I think the amount of stress present on The Goldbergs could freak a baby out, just from vibes. Brooklyn Nine-Nine doesnt have realistic violence, but once in a while it has cartoonish violence, and 1-year-olds are probably not drawing a distinction there. I think its mostly safe, though. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt includes dark ideas but no actual depictions of sex or violence; Playing House has some sex ish scenes, but nothing actually racy. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend trafficks in adult themes, certainly, but I dont know that any particular images are necessarily objectionable. Call the Midwife has occasional scenes of labor and delivery crisis, though the show is not graphic. Downton Abbey has stuff like car crashes, but nothing gory. I want to be more up on the Zeitgeist. Good or bad, what TV should I be watching if I want to have my finger on the pulse? For watercooler/cocktail-party chitchat and such Chad Without regard to how good these shows actually are, or how much I think theyre worth watching, here are the shows that people have asked me about in recent weeks, not just for this column but in meatspace, and the shows that feel buzzy, for lack of a better term: Making a Murderer: You dont even have to watch all of it (though you should its excellent). If you just watch the first few, youll get the gist. Jessica Jones: Even if you dont otherwise care about comic-book stuff. That can be your talking point for the cocktail party! Game of Thrones: If you want to talk about the show with people, be very, very clear about how far in you are. And it seems to me that while book fans love talking about it with other book fans, they relish the chance to explain subtle differences and discrepancies to show-only watchers. You can make some exciting friends this way. The Bachelor: People want to talk shit, mostly; you can absolutely get away with just reading recaps. Transparent: Im not sure how Amazons release schedule works, but season two felt ill timed to me for a full chitchat cycle, which might be why there are fits and starts. Some days no one wants to talk about it; other days there are two Eileen Myles stories in the New York Times. Saturday Night Live: Its an election year. Plus, in a lot of ways, SNL is more visible than ever, with the occasional sketch blowing up, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers on TV every night, Will Forte having a network show, Fred Armisen being omnipresent, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler just concluding a press tour Will Ferrell, too. Maya Rudolph went viral yesterday. Adam McKay was just nominated for an Oscar. Leslie Jones was just profiled in The New Yorker. Ghostbusters is on the horizon. Someones constantly claiming to be over SNL, but even thats good conversation fodder. Downton Abbey: People used to want to talk about Downton all the time, and then they stopped wanting to, but it seems they want to again. Maybe because its the final season? Just brush up a little. For example, is Edith still sad? Yes. Edith is still sad. Master of None: Feel free to skip around a bit. Jane the Virgin: It seemed like a lot of people slept on season one and just caught up on Netflix recently. Team Rafael. iZombie: Im assuming this is a skewed effect because my friends know how much I liked Veronica Mars, but my secret wish is that everyone is actually starting to talk more about iZombie. Is this how I make that wish come true? Perhaps! Every week, members of the Vulture staff highlight the best new music. If the song is worthy of your ears and attention, you will find it here. Read our picks below, share yours in the comments, and subscribe to the Vulture Playlist for a comprehensive guide to the years best music. Andra Day, No Makeup (Kendrick Lamar cover) Confirmed: Andra Day has the voice of an angel. We already knew that from her breakthrough hit Rise Up (and all those Christmas commercials with Stevie Wonder). Today, she offers more proof with a cover of Kendrick Lamars devastating No Makeup from Section.80, pegged to the Grammys (theyre both nominated). She handles both Colin Munroes hook and Kendricks verses, sounding freakishly like an India.ArieErykah Badu hybrid on the latter. She flips it at the end, throwing in the hook from Lil Kims Crush on You because thats just the kind of fierce blast from the past Andra Day is. Dee Lockett (@Dee_Lockett) Hit-Boy, Divine Guidance Hit-Boy makes a strong contribution to the hip-hop songs dedicated to moms canon with Divine Guidance, a take-me-to church-on-a-Tuesday banger that gets real-real good after the three-minute mark when the beat drops, the choir gets involved, and the bars hit a high point. An instant-replay classic. (Also, call your mom.) Lauretta Charlton (@laurettaland) Future, Inside the Mattress On his latest mixtape, Purple Reign, Future reveals how he plans to protect his assets during the next financial crisis, and continues to throw shade at his ex, who is too busy shining to care. (Nard & B brought that beat, though.) LC Laura Mvula ft. Nile Rodgers, Overcome It is such a joy to have Laura Mvula back in my ears. She took a bit of a break after her 2013 acclaimed debut, but now shes returned alongside Nile Rodgers on a subtly disco-leaning new track, hopefully off a new album. Theres so much drama in Lauras voice; every note feels like an event. Is there such a thing as disco-gospel? If not, I think Laura Mvula just invented it. DL Alex Newell, This Aint Over Theres not a single dance-pop artist Im more excited about than Alex Newell. The former Glee star is prepping his debut EP, which follows his standout turn on the Knocks jam Collect My Love last year, and hes previewing it with This Aint Over. This is just diva vocal acrobatics flexed with the swag of a queen. They created words like slay with Newell in mind, and I for one cant wait to watch him work the stage on tour with Adam Lambert this year. DL Rostam, EOS Within the finely tuned superstructure of Vampire Weekend, Ezra Koenig and Rostam Batmanglij function as a sort of iceberg: Above the surface, Koenig projects cool, knowing quirk, and cocksure consistency, while below, Batmanglij operates the bands just-controlled chaos with focus and precision. To see Batmanglij unleashed from that structure, then first as Discovery, his project with Ra Ra Riots Wes Miles, and now under his own first name is to get a clear-eyed look at the wizardry with which he creates atmosphere, both within and without VW. EOS is like a thing youd hear echoing across a valley, shimmering and ethereal, at once reminiscent of and completely unlike Vampire Weekends monomaniacal power. And Batmanglijs voice, a throaty, baleful call, fits the scene beautifully; its clear that Rostam understands his own instrument as well as any other. Kevin Lincoln (@KTLincoln) Santigold, Chasing Shadows After a four-year break, Santigold will finally return with 99 next month. Her latest single, produced by Vampire Weeknds Rostam Batmanglij, has her putting on a distinctly Afro-Caribbean accent over what almost sounds like a sample of Jay Zs Hard Knock Life. It works more than the albums last two singles, and, as usual, its visuals are A+. DL Tinashe Feat. Juicy J, Energy Tinashe is best known for her dance moves and her club bangers like 2 On and All Hands on Deck, but she truly excels when she gets her quiet storm on, turns the lights down low, and gives you a slinky R&B jam to chill to. Sounding like a sequel to Aquariuss Cold Sweat, Tinashe sings over an electronic Mike Will beat thatll get you in the mood if you know what I mean. Thats when Juicy J jumps on the track to turn it all the way up. Ira Madison III (@ira) Kanye West Feat. Kendrick Lamar, No More Parties in L.A. Aside from being Kanye Wests second excellent song in as many weeks seriously: If these two tracks are any indication of Swish, then lets just put a statue of Yeezy outside the United Center right now No Parties in L.A. presents a very valuable case study of Rap Music in the Year 2016. Many of the high-gloss team-ups from last season were syntheses, or at least meetings in the middle: What a Time to Be Alive was the best possible version of Drake doing Future karaoke; Young Thug plus anybody is basically the Blob eating a city block. But here, Kendrick and Kanye both do their own particular thing, and those particular things are substantially different. Working within the boundaries of each bar like a ballerina in a very small box, Kendrick pivots and pirouettes; hes such a terrific stylist that hes nearly done away with style altogether, making his perfect flow into a jelly that he can mold and remold at will. Kanye, on the other hand, is more and more seeming to eschew form as a concern at all. He raps when and where he wants on the beat, here a Madlib joint that epitomizes the producers knack for subverting the soul of a sample into something like broiling menace, and he stuffs words into his bars like hes exploding with them. Kanye has a lot to say right now. Good thing for us. Maybe less so for his cousin. KL A McLennan County grand jury cleared a Waco police officer of wrongdoing Wednesday in the Oct. 31 shooting of an armed man who refused police commands to drop his gun. The grand jury no-billed Sgt. Scott Holt after reviewing the incident Wednesday morning. Per department protocol, our officer was cleared by two separate and thorough investigations, as is routine in officer-involved shootings, Waco Police Chief Brent Stroman said. The officer was forced into a life-or-death situation by an armed suspect and acted in defense of himself and others. We are appreciative of the job conducted by the departments investigators, the Texas Rangers, the McLennan County DAs office and the grand jury in this case. Waco Police Department completed two separate investigations on the incident, with the assistance of the Texas Rangers. Both the administrative and the criminal investigation showed Holt followed department training, procedures and state law, Waco police Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton said. Holt and other officers were called to the 4000 block of North 19th Street on reports of a suicidal man with a gun. Ambulance company personnel arrived first but called police after the man threatened to shoot them. When officers arrived, they saw Robert Colton Golson, 25, with a gun on a balcony, Swanton said. They tried to talk to Golson, but he came down the stairs and walked toward the officers as they demanded he stop and drop the gun, Swanton said. As Golson continued approaching them with the weapon, Holt fired, Swanton said. Officers arrested Golson and recovered the weapon, and he was taken to Baylor Scott & White Hillcrest Medical Center with what police described at the time as nonlife-threatening injuries. Holt, who has been on administrative leave, will return to active duty, Swanton said. Golson survived the incident, Swanton said. Waco City Council is considering a partial privatization of the Waco Convention Center and tourism efforts in hopes of making the operations more nimble and competitive. Consultants with Strategic Advisory Group laid out several restructuring options, which could include private management at the convention center under a quasi-independent board of directors. The consultants are in Waco on their second visit this week as part of a $75,000 study of convention and tourism efforts and will meet again with the council to clarify what the citys strategic vision for the convention center is. Daniel Fenton of Strategic Advisory Group said the city has to find its own balance between sometimes competing goals: keeping hotels booked, encouraging tourist spending, keeping the convention center in the black and serving the local community. The challenge is that we have to think about whats best for Waco its not the same for every city, Fenton said. Mayor Malcolm Duncan Jr. said the city hasnt had clear goals for the convention center, despite a $17.5 million taxpayer-supported renovation in 2012. Duncan said he is looking forward to more council discussions with the consultant to work out the citys goals. He said the current way of doing business is unfocused and is a sign of mission compromise. We dont have a strategic plan, Duncan said. We dont know what our priorities are. Currently, the convention and visitors bureau and convention center are a single city department that answers to the city managers office. The operation has a volunteer advisory board, but that board has no real authority. I dont think we have given the advisory board any idea that they have the ability or flexibility to do anything, Duncan said. I think they convene to respond to the what the administration wants. Fenton said the current model has advantages of strong public oversight and transparency in reporting. But it is not as flexible as privately run convention operations in tasks such as negotiating bookings and purchasing materials. In addition, he said, the sales staff is not well insulated from local demands when it comes to prioritizing community booking needs against out-of-town conventions, which have a greater economic impact. The current sales staff is paid on salary, but a privatized model likely would offer incentives to book more and bigger conventions, City Manager Dale Fisseler said. That doesnt really fit into our bureaucratic way of compensating employees, Fisseler said. Alternative models Fenton laid out several alternatives to the citys existing model, using examples from other cities. The city of Irving has a public convention and visitors bureau but a privately managed convention center under control of a board. Some cities, such as Dallas, Fort Worth and Austin, have a public convention center but a convention and visitors bureau under control of a private nonprofit group that is accountable to the city for performance. Cities such as Houston and St. Paul, Minnesota, have a public convention and visitors authority overseeing both tourism and a convention center, but not under the direct control of City Hall. More rare is San Diegos model: a convention and visitors bureau and convention center run by two separate boards. Fenton said such an arrangement can be cumbersome for a city to oversee. Fenton said several of the models give the board fiduciary responsibility for the operations, but ultimately the financial risk falls on the city. For that reason, Fisseler said it would be wise to have the city manager on the boards executive committee to represent the citys interests. The board also would have to be given clear priorities from the city council regarding bookings at the convention center, Fenton said. Councilwoman Alice Rodriguez said local events should get some consideration in bookings. A lot of folks think, This is my convention center, Rodriguez said. Councilman Kyle Deaver said community impact could be one measurement of success along with hotel revenue, direct spending and convention center profit. The consultants study likely will continue for several months, and in the meantime, Fisseler is holding off on replacing recently retired convention director Elizabeth Taylor until the question of the future model is resolved. In the meantime, former parks and recreation director Rusty Black is serving as interim convention director. Baylor University is giving a Rice University psychology professor a $250,000 award and bringing her to Waco for a semester to do what she does best: teach. Michelle Hebl was given the prestigious Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching, an award given every two years to a professor demonstrating academic excellence. Along with the $250,000 for Hebl, the Rice psychology department will receive $25,000. Hebl is teaching in an international program at Rice and is expected to teach in residence at Baylor during the spring 2017 semester. I just feel lucky to be recognized for something teaching and mentoring that I feel so blessed to do as a career, Hebl said in a statement. She earned a bachelors degree in psychology from Smith College in 1991, a masters degree in psychology from Texas A&M University in 1993 and a doctorate of psychology from Dartmouth College in 1997. Hebls studies of gender and diversity have earned her more than a dozen awards, including a lifetime award from the Gender and Diversity in Organizations Division at the Academy of Management. Rice Associate Provost Roland B. Smith Jr. said Hebl has been instrumental to the success of Rices Office of Diversity and Inclusion. She helped obtain a grant from the National Finance Foundation to help develop diversity components. Shes been a great resource for me and this office on issues of diversity, Smith said. Hebls selection for the award comes at a time when Baylors own faculty is debating the value of a proposed chief diversity officer position on campus. Some faculty members have said a position of this type could create a slippery slope, eroding values the university has long held in its Baptist tradition. Others have said the position is a practical step that would help improve diversity at Baylor. Michael Thompson, chairman of the committee that selects the Cherry winner, said Hebls selection was not influenced by Baylors ongoing discussions about the chief diversity officer position. Thompson said Hebl was selected based on her skill as a lecturer. He said her contagious enthusiasm for teaching shone through in a public lecture she gave at Baylor in October called Mindbugs and Gorillas and White Bears, Oh, My! The lecture described the effects of subtle discrimination in the workplace. Very effective talk It was a very effective talk, Thompson said. Everyone was enthralled. The 12-person Cherry Award committee nominated more than 100 professors, then narrowed the field to three, Thompson said. Teresa Balser, a professor of soil and ecosystem ecology at Curtin University, and Lisa Russ Spaar, a professor of English and creative writing at the University of Virginia, were the other finalists. I feel thrilled and humbled, Hebl said in a statement. It was easy for me to envision not being selected over the final two months, particularly given that the other two finalists . . . clearly are very gifted and accomplished teachers. Both other finalists received a $15,000 prize, and their home departments each received $10,000. Though Hebl was unavailable for comment during her international teaching, fellow Rice psychology professor Fred Oswald emphasized the universitys admiration for her. Anyone who has worked with her has seen how shes a force of nature, Oswald said. Shes excellent in being a professor that integrates her research with her teaching. Waco City Council signed off on the application Tuesday for a federal grant to offset the cost of responding to the Twin Peaks biker shootout last May 17. The city is seeking a $248,841 Justice Assistance Grant from the U.S. Department of Justice. The bulk of the requested funding, more than $240,000, would go to the Waco Police Department for overtime and equipment, with small amounts going to Waco Transit, the Waco Fire Department and the police departments in Robinson, Woodway, Hewitt and Lorena. Based on the feedback weve received, I believe we will receive a portion or all of the money weve requested, said Frank Patterson, coordinator of the Waco-McLennan County Office of Emergency Management. Theres no reason to doubt it. McLennan County officials have announced plans to seek a separate grant of about $250,000 from the state of Texas to defray the cost of housing and feeding the 177 people arrested the day of the deadly shootout, along with overtime for deputies. The shootout between rival biker gangs and police left nine people dead and at least 20 others wounded. Patterson said for both the county and city, the requested amounts cover only a fraction of the actual costs law enforcement incurred at the scene. He said the grant covers overtime but not straight time. Since the shooting occurred on a Sunday, the first day of the pay week, many of the officers had to log their hours that day as straight time, and the overtime they worked later in the week is not reimbursable, Patterson said. As I was reading the arguments of some Baylor University faculty against the hiring of a chief diversity officer, I fell asleep and had the following dream: I was in a deep forest and came upon what identified itself as a village of polar bears. I was surprised to find polar bears in a warm forest I would have expected to encounter the more common brown bears (called grizzly bears by some) or black bears. I decided to get close enough to listen but not be seen. One bear standing up on his hind legs in the middle of the group was warning the other bears that the village was on the verge of extinction: Look around the forest at the young bears. So many grizzly bears, so many black bears, and then look at the leaders of this village. If we dont invite in other kinds of bears, we wont survive. A second bear, who clearly was merely an albino bear rather than a true polar bear, stood up and shouted for the first bear to sit down: What you say is fine for other villages, but we are not other villages! The Lord Bear has put us here to be different from the other villages. The first bear noted that the Lord Bear had commanded them to reach out to the needy, and surely that would include bears barred from being village leaders in the days of old. Albino bear responded that it would offend the Lord Bear to allow any bear into the village except on the basis of merit. The first bear asked, But didnt the Lord Bear tell us in the parable of the vineyard not to complain that the workers who devoted the most hours got paid the same as those who arrived later? Albino bear countered that the parable was just a story. He added that the one thing I am certain of is that the Lord Bear always saw people as individuals, not as groups, so it would be a sin to encourage any particular kind of bear to come into the village. The first bear asked, Didnt our Lord Bear repeatedly condemn the Pharisees as a group for focusing on displays of piety rather than on helping needy bears? That was then, this is now, said the albino bear. What about the parable of the good Samaritan? The Lord Bear identified as our model of behavior someone from a group that was hated, offered the first bear. The albino bear dismissed that too as just a story: Surely the Lord Bear would not want even Samaritans to be given any unfair advantage over others. The first bear inquired what the Lord Bear meant by saying that the last shall be first and the first shall be last. Albino bear grew angrier and again shouted for the first bear to sit down. He yelled that it is not our fault the vast majority of the leaders of this village are polar bears. It is merely coincidence. That 87 percent of us are polar bears, when the forest all around us is so much less . . . well, pale? queried the first bear. Albino bear insisted, We hold our positions by merit alone! The first bear asked if albino bear had been born to grizzly bear parents, would he have ended up a leader in the village? All your hard work in choosing to be born to polar bear parents, is that the merit of which you speak? Albino bear, now even more frustrated, began stuttering. We . . . we . . . we have a diverse village. Possibly already too diverse. Albino bear caught his breath and outstretched his paws for emphasis: Surely you all have watched our games of honeyball? We let grizzly bears and black bears play for us! Even lady bears! How can you claim we do not include everyone in the life of the village? Several bears applauded at what they considered a well-made point. But then the first bear added, play for us without pay, that is . . . Because the honeyball teams were considered sacred in the village, this last comment caused all the bears to start arguing among themselves, clawing and snapping their large teeth. I realized it was no longer safe for me to be there. Before I headed back into the deep forest I paused to write out a marker that I hung from a nearby tree. I knew that when others came upon the site in the future they would wonder how it went from being such an important bear village to being decayed and abandoned. I wrote: In this place once was a great village of a species known as shortsighted albino bears. Like many other now-extinct creatures of this forest, the one thing they were most certain of is that there was no need for change. David Schleicher is an attorney with offices in Waco, Houston and Washington, D.C. PRESS RELEASE Pacific Aviation Museum Pearl Harbor has been named Hawaiis #1 Historical Spot Worth Traveling For by FlipKey, TripAdvisors leading vacation rental service. Based on industry research and traveler feedback, FlipKey named the 50 most loved and most talked about historical attractions in each state across the country. Pacific Aviation Museum Pearl Harbor was awarded the number one spot for Hawaii.Receiving this tremendous recognition is such an honor for us, said Kenneth DeHoff, Pacific Aviation Museum Pearl Harbor Executive Director. Hawaii has many notable historical sites, especially at Pearl Harbor and on Ford Island. For us to be given this designation couldnt have come at a better time as we celebrate our 10th anniversary this year. We remain committed to giving visitors the best experience at a historic site where they learn of the sacrifices of those who served in WWII. With more than 5 million monthly unique visits, FlipKey is a TripAdvisor company and helps power the vacation rental experience on TripAdvisor.com the worlds largest travel website. Pacific Aviation Museum Pearl Harbor is located on Historic Ford Island, where bombs fell during the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. Visitors to the Museum can see remnants from that day of infamy, including the 158-foot tall red and white iconic Ford Island Field Control Tower, Hangars 37 and 79, and bullet holes in Hangar 79. Through its preservation and restoration of World War II fighter planes and accompanying artifacts in the Museums historic hangars, Pacific Aviation Museum Pearl Harbor shares the story of the vital role aviation played in Americas winning of World War II, and its continuing role in maintaining Americas freedom. About Pacific Aviation Museum Pearl Harbor Pacific Aviation Museum Pearl Harbor is a 501(c) (3) non-profit organization. Its mission is to develop and maintain an internationally recognized aviation museum on Historic Ford Island that educates young and old alike, honors aviators and their support personnel who defended freedom in The Pacific Region, and to preserve Pacific aviation history. A Smithsonian Affiliate, it is rated one of the top 10 aviation attractions nationally by TripAdvisor. It is located at 319 Lexington Boulevard, Historic Ford Island, Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Honolulu, Hawaii 96818. Visit www.pacificaviationmuseum.org for more information. #Eunma Apartments Seoul approves reconstruction of dilapidated Eunma apartment complex An antiquated southern Seoul apartment complex long at the center of the nation's real estate policy debate due to its massive size and location in the wealthy Gangnam district has... #BTS S. Korea releases tourism promotional videos featuring BTS members The Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) said Thursday it has released two tourism promotional videos on its YouTube channel featuring Suga and Jimin of K-pop megaband BTS. The vid... Essendon confirmed on Wednesday night they had signed former triple premiership Geelong star James Kelly as their latest top-up player. Kelly joined the Bombers a day after former Fremantle tagger Ryan Crowley signed up with the beleaguered club. Former Cat James Kelly. Credit:Getty Images Essendon have been given permission by the AFL to sign up as many as 10 top-up players after 12 of their senior players received year-long suspensions from the Court of Arbitration for Sport last week for doping offences. The Dons can also upgrade five of their six rookie-listed players. Global market turmoil has hit Australian consumer confidence, with a fall in Westpac's monthly index confirming a marked drop in sentiment. The Westpac Melbourne Institute Index of Consumer Sentiment fell by 3.5 per cent in January from 100.8 in December to 97.3 in January. Consumers were impacted by "the spate of negative news on the international front and the spillover effect on financial markets," said Westpac's chief economist. Credit:Gabriele Charotte "The index is at its lowest level since September 2015, but remains 4.3 per cent above its level of a year ago," said Westpac chief economist Bill Evans. Consumers were impacted by "the spate of negative news on the international front and the spillover effect on financial markets," he said. While Burch "volunteered" to step down from her portfolio responsibilities on Tuesday, one can only hope for the general standards of political discourse across this city that she would not have survived the impending reshuffle. It will also tarnish the reputation of Chief Minister Andrew Barr, who should have risen to the task of expecting and enforcing higher standards from his ministers long before now. Joy Burch's resignation from the ACT ministry is long overdue and her tenure will now haunt the Labor Party as it fights to keep office. It speaks volumes about the lack of experience among Labor MLAs that a minister as lacklustre and accident-prone as Burch was on the rise to become the second most senior Labor politician in the city following the announcement that Simon Corbell was leaving politics. The excruciating situation the party found itself in last month when Burch lost the police ministry after her chief of staff briefed the CFMEU on matters regarding ACT Policing which are still under investigation robbed the government of clear air over Christmas to happily celebrate any of the successes of the year in office. This resignation and the reshuffle destabilises things further at the beginning of the crucial 2016 election year. Meanwhile Burch, and Barr by implication, have shown no regard for the concept of ministerial responsibility the convention that the person in charge ultimately accepts the burden of actions taken across their portfolio. In Burch's case she ducked and weaved through many a headline-hitting mistake, many of them in 2015 under the Party leadership of Barr, who stepped forward each time to publicly back her and reject demands for her resignation. Burch's error-prone ways surfaced during Katy Gallagher's term as chief minister. Among them, retweeting that Christopher Pyne was the c-word, unilaterally appointing a new director of the Multicultural Festival who ran a controversial Nazi strip tease act, They continued under Barr - quietly scrapping the $20 limit on pokies (which Barr forced her to reverse), failing to plan for massive traffic disruption during roadworks on Tharwa Drive, the fall-out from her son's involvement in Menslink school visits without a Working With Vulnerable People's card, heartbreaking abuse cases in disability houses and the autism cage scandal were all mistakes which called into question Burch's fundamental political judgment and the management of her directorates not to mention the efficiency and professionalism of her office. The first is unlikely, given the leadership's spectacular failure to get what it wants out of its own sharemarket, the world's biggest. The Shanghai composite index plummeted 15 per cent at the start of the year, despite frantic efforts to prop it up. What's happening to the share index isn't that important, except as an insight into a bigger game being played out on a larger canvas. "Countries are like people," says Patrick Chovanec, chief strategist at Silvercrest Asset Management in New York. "People do what works until it stops working, and then they keep doing it, because it used to work." China latched on to something that worked. Appallingly underdeveloped with embarrassingly low local purchasing power, it turned that weakness into a strength. Like Japan, South Korea and Singapore before it, used its low wages to tap into the rest of the world's purchasing power. As as it sold more and more cheap goods it invested the proceeds in more and more factories and housing. It was bringing hundreds of millions of workers in from the country to cities. As the number of its factories and housing units grew, its need for the rest of the world to buy even more of what it made grew; which it did, enabling China build even more factories and more accommodation, mostly with Australian iron ore. Until China grew to the point it dwarfed the economies it sold things to. On one measure it is now the world's biggest economy, on another the world's second-biggest. With the rest of the world unable to keep buying increasing amounts of what it produced it needed to try something different. It needed to let the growth rate slow and allow the spending of ordinary Chinese drive the economy. It paid lip-service to the idea, but mostly it kept doing what it used to do. If building more factories and accommodation had boosted growth before, surely it would do it again, its logic went. And it worked during the global financial crisis, sort-of. Its economy kept growing while the rest of the world's stumbled. But the rest of the world never really recovered, and China kept building increasingly useless factories and increasingly empty housing. "Intellectually, China's leaders know what they have to do," Chovanec says. They need to shift resources away from construction towards households. It's been Communist Party policy since 2013. "The problem is the moment they succeed they will knock the stuffing out of the investment boom. That's why they flinch. They pull back and try to shore up the existing model." Chovanec was until recently a professor of economics at Tsinghua University in Beijing. No longer living in China, he is free to describe what he saw. "Whether it's in the property market, in shadow banking, in the stockmarket, in bad debts or in uneconomic state-owned enterprises, they want a correction without having a correction," he says. "And the longer that goes on, the deeper the hole they dig, the more traumatic and the scary the correction becomes, and the more they flinch away from it." China's industrial production slowed last year. Yet borrowing jumped a further 5 per cent as banks pumped more and more money into less and less economic factories, housing schemes and loss-making businesses. The City of Perth's annus horribilis has continued on Wednesday with the sacking of chief executive Gary Stevenson with two years to run on his five-year contract. But despite the ongoing issues around her travel schedule and dealings with BHP, mayor Lisa Scaffidi has denied Mr Stevenson was made a scapegoat for a difficult 2015 for the city. A report on Lisa Scaffidi was finally released on Parliament on Tuesday. "The issue is completely separate to that issue and the two are not related at all," Ms Scaffidi told media on Wednesday afternoon. "It is what it is and you can add it up and cut it up and slice it and splice it however you wish to, but today has been by mutual consent. Premier Colin Barnett has announced a public inquiry into the devastating Yarloop fires, as startling new images emerge of the firestorm that tore through the South West town two weeks ago. The Premier announced Euan Ferguson, the former chief of the Victorian and South Australian country fire services, had been appointed to spearhead the review and would start within several weeks. Mr Barnett made the announcement in front of a crowd of around 100 residents at the Yarloop Bowling Club on Wednesday afternoon. He said the government was committed to learning as much as possible about what caused the blaze and how emergency services responded to the fire, that killed two elderly men and destroyed 181 properties, including 162 houses. Patrick Norman Pat Chapman is a 34-year-old, Caucasian male who was last known to be in Piedmont which is near the area of Greenville, Missouri on May 10, 2020. Pat had stayed the night with a friend and his wife at their home. In the early morning when the friend woke to go to work. Pat was gone in his own Burgundy color 1995 Ford Escort. That is the last anyone was known to have seen him. The vehicle was later recovered on May 29, 2020 in Mill Spring, Missouri. by Richard Coulson First published in The Tribune Business and posted here with the kind permission of the author. We see Imaginary scene this week in office of Rt. Hon. Perry G. Christie, Prime Minister, joined by Hon. Philip Brave Davis, Deputy Prime Minister; Hon. Fred Mitchell, Minister of Foreign Affairs; and favorite speech-writer nick-named Bright Boy. They are discussing his key-note address at the imminent Bahamas Business Outlook Conference. PGC: OK, weve got a theme A Bold Agenda for the Next 25 Years. So what do I say to make it bold? Fred, youre always good with wordsgive me some bold ones. FRED: Well, I predict that 25 years from now, Bahamians can do everything; not a single work permit will be granted. And every Haitian will be back in Haiti. PGC: Fred, please stop beating your Haitian drum. At last years conference, I let you talk and you scared everybody. Bright Boy, make a note of that we can do everythingI like that. But nix that stuff about no work permits. I dont want Fred to start cancelling them right before the election and turn off any foreign bucks for my campaign. BRIGHT BOY: Got it, sir. Bahamians can do everything, thanks to the dynamic youths who will be growing up over 25 years. PGC: Fine. I just hope we dont have another 2,000 dynamic youths who get student loans and then stiff the Treasury $60 million without any payback. Brave, you may get my job if I drop dead, so give me a bold idea that you too can run with. BRAVE: Forget about talking 25 years when well all be dead. We have maybe twelve months to solve our up-front catastrophe, that elephant in the room Baha Mar. Everyone will be waiting for you on Thursday to pull a rabbit out of the hat and announce good news: Chinese loan being settled, sale and opening being arranged, contractors to be paid, thousands of our people soon to be at work! Tell Bright Boy how to write it. PGC: Brave, you know every day I am getting expressions of interest, not just wheeler-dealers looking for a cut, but direct from big boys who can perform. Any day now theyll hook up with the Chinese. BRAVE: Yes, any day now! Expressions of interest dont cut any ice with the Chinese Bank. What they want is - He is interrupted by phone ringing on Prime Ministers desk. PGC: (on phone and scowling) I told you no calls. . . oh, I see, put him on speaker so we all can hear. (to group) Well, its Liu Liange, President of Chinese Export-Import Bank. (on phone) Good morning, Mr. Liu, what a pleasure to hear your voice once again. LIU: Ah, distinguished prime minister, for this humble person is equal pleasure and I hope you enjoying sunny Bahamas morning. For me is near midnight in cold rain of Beijing, where we at Bank work all hours to benefit Peoples Republic of China. I now tell you I am calling from office of my superior honorable Hu Xiolian, Chairman of our Bank. She wishes take few minutes from busy schedule for amiable discussion with your goodself. I now transfer to her. HU: Yes, esteemed Prime Minister, my time is taken with many tasks since last February I was honored with appointment as Chairman after 30 years of service to the Peoples Republic in financial postings. I regret I was unable to meet with your distinguished Attorney General during her two visits here, although puzzled about the purpose of her travels, as so little was accomplished by her and her colleague, the eminent Sir Baltron Bethel. However, as I Iearned to say in my English studies, that is now water over the dam, and the problem of Baha Mar remains for discussion between us, now that the visionary but misguided Mr. Izmirlian has left the stage. PGC: Madam Hu, I have of course learned of your leadership of the Bank in recognition of your many years of expertise, and as leader of my nation I am delighted now to establish this high-level contact that will I hope lead to fruitful discussion. I can inform you that we have had many approaches from unimpeachable international investors seeking to participate in the ownership or management of Baha Mar and thus relieve your Bank of its present heavy burden of an unpaid loan. HU: Prime Minister, I must in turn inform you that thanks to diligence of our intelligence directorate we are aware of all those approaches and their, if I may say so, highly ambiguous content. I suggest, dear sir, that they might better have been made directly to our Bank, rather than to your goodself, since it is we who control Baha Mar. PGC: And I must point out, Madame Chairman, that the property sits within the territory of the sovereign Commonwealth of The Bahamas, where your esteemed Bank is recognized only as lender, not the equity owner. HU: Let us not quibble, but my legal department advise me that under your own laws of receivership we, as senior lender of some $2.5 billion of defaulted debt, are entitled to foreclose and assume full rights of ownership. Unless of course your Government should wish to exercise its sovereign power of confiscation, with all the painful international consequences? PGC: No, of course confiscation is never considered. HU: Never? Very well then, my esteemed friend, let us understand that we will study all these approaches with the greatest care and make a final decision that will suit the financial interests of our Bank and, of course, the strategic political interests of the Peoples Republic. PGC: And when, Madame Hu, might we expect your decision? HU: Please, honored Bahamian leader, do not press me for date. We must respect old Chinese proverb, Best for small hare not to hurry large bear. You have my good faith assurance that we will act with all deliberate speed, as our Bank is aware of political realities facing you in May of next year, our Year of the Rooster, that may crow well for you. PGC: Very well, and in good faith I accept your assurance. HU: I cannot fail to mention certain concessions your Government could offer to encourage speedy decision. PGC: We will of course give friendly consideration to concessions. What might they be? HU: Many senior executives in Bank and ministries suffer from their unending toil for the Peoples Republic, particularly in freezing months when, I must admit, our technocrats have not yet eliminated unhealthy toxic Beijing smog. A winter holiday in Bahamas could do wonders to restore well-being. Some might even plan to acquire property for repeated visits, or create companies for tax-free business when they reach honored retirement age. I am hopeful that your regime of permits and taxation could be waived or relaxed for our citizens of recognized high standing. Perhaps even I. . . PGC: Say no more, my dear Chairman. The Bahamas will be most welcoming. I will arrange the details with my fellow Cabinet members. HU: I am grateful that we understand each other. I regret I must cut short our brief conversation to return to my other duties. May I wish you auspicious Feng Shui for all your ventures. PGC: And may the spirit of Junkanoo be with you, Madame Chairman. The call ends PGC: (to group, mopping brow) Wow, that is one tough lady! FRED: I can fly out tonight and make a deal with her. PGC: Fred, you stay here. That female could eat your lunch and take the white shirt off your back before you even flash your teeth. BRAVE: So what did she give us? All deliberate speed all deliberate baloney! And that phony Chinese proverb, made up on the spot! BRIGHT BOY: Look, it can sound great. PM reports first direct contact with Bank Chairman, a lovely lady, who assures speedy decision. Details later. PGC: OK. You write it up, and I can handle it. We can do business with that lady, blah, blah. Listen, Ive got another meeting got to jack up the Carnival Commission to take some action not just sit on their butts. You all come and clap hard on Thursday, hear? ______________________________________________ Mr. Coulson has had a long career in law, investment banking and private banking in New York, London, and Nassau, and now serves as director of several financial concerns and as a corporate financial consultant. He has recently released his autobiography, A Corkscrew Life: Adventures of a Travelling Financier. By Bill Hughes Jan. 19, 2016 | 05:44 PM | PADUCAH, KY A Paducah man facing a second trial for the murder of his wife has pleaded guilty, and will spend three decades in prison. Directing Attorney Chris McNeill from the McCracken County Department of Public Advocacy confirmed to West Kentucky Star that Keith Griffith entered his pleas Tuesday before Judge Tim Kaltenbach in McCracken Circuit Court. Griffith pleaded guilty to murder, arson, tampering with evidence, and cruelty to animals, admitting that he killed Julie, his wife of 36 years, and set fire to their Tudor Boulevard home on January 17, 2014. McNeill said Griffith also pleaded guilty to a new charge of solicitation to commit 1st degree assault, related to an attempt to have another jail inmate shoot McCracken County Sheriff's Department Captain Matt Carter, the lead detective in the murder case. Sheriff Jon Hayden told West Kentucky Star the investigation into the new charge revealed that Griffith attempted to hire the inmate, and wanted to pay the man $10,000 to shoot Carter at his home with a high-powered rifle. Griffith's first trial was declared a mistrial last February because of a hung jury. His retrial was set to begin next month. McNeill said Griffith waived his pre-sentencing investigation and was sentenced Tuesday to 25 years on the original charges, and 5 years on the solicitation charge. The sentences will run consecutively. By The Associated Press Jan. 19, 2016 | 05:03 AM | BENTON, IL A Chicago man who said he was seeking attention on a campus where he was bullied and harassed has been sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty to making bomb threats in a self-declared "war" on Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Derrick Dawon Burns was sentenced Tuesday afternoon in federal court after admitting to sending four threatening letters to students, employees and campus police in 2012 and 2013. The FBI was also an intended recipient. Three of the letters were entitled "The War on SIU." One was placed in a campus mail box and the others found in mail sorting machines. Burns also was accused of threatening campuses in five other states. The former SIU student faced up to 10 years in prison for each charge. Rita Redmond was a true lady who felt that every pupil had something to gift to the world Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 20/01/2016 (2464 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. BRANDON Her body frozen and fractured, Kristen Hiebert clawed and fought her way through a snow-packed ditch and up a steep embankment to save her young daughters life. Tina Dubyts was travelling from Brandon to Killarney, where she works as a lab technician, early Monday when something caught her eye on Highway 23 just east of Dunrea, which is about 220 kilometres southwest of Winnipeg. I thought I saw a hand, Dubyts said. Then I noticed there was a piece of wood missing off the bridge on the side of the road, so I decided to turn around because it was so cold. Avery Hiebert is seen in a photo on Kristen Hiebert's Facebook page. Dubyts said she remembers looking at the temperature gauge in her vehicle showing -19 C outdoors at about 6:50 a.m. when she first saw Hiebert, of Boissevain. After circling back, she noticed a young woman clinging to a guardrail. All I could see was her trying to pull herself up to get attention, Dubyts said. All I could see was the car smashed Dubyts said Hieberts injuries were visible as soon as she got out of her vehicle to help her. Dubyts noticed broken arms, a large gash on Hieberts head and severe frostbite. It was, however, what Hiebert was saying that caught Dubytss attention the most. She just kept saying, My daughter. My daughter. My four-year-old, Dubyts said. Dubyts said at that point she still couldnt make out where the vehicle was. She shone the light from her cellphone into the south ditch of the highway, which revealed a damaged vehicle. All I could see was the car smashed, Dubyts said, becoming choked up with emotion. Im thinking the worst, and I couldnt see the little girl. Dubyts ran down the ditch and found the girl, Avery, lying outside the vehicle wearing only one winter boot. She grabbed Avery and climbed back up the steep slope. Dubyts said it was difficult to climb the ditch, but adrenaline kicked in. By this point, several other drivers had stopped. Dubyts said a woman, who identified herself as a nurse, helped get Avery into the back of her SUV, where the she was stripped of her frozen clothes and wrapped in a blanket. She was frozen, Dubyts said. She was in pain and shock. Then she went back for Hiebert. Its like a horror show Two men who stopped at the scene grabbed Hiebert under the armpits while Dubyts wrapped her arms around Hieberts legs, and the trio carried her to the SUV. Dubyts said she was concerned about moving Hiebert because she could tell she had multiple fractures, but getting her out of the cold as quickly as possible was the priority. She was freezing, Dubyts said. She was in socks, and her clothes were frozen. It was between -18.8 C and -21.7 C in the 12 hours ending at 7 a.m. Monday in Pilot Mound, the closest weather station, according to Environment Canada. Once in the vehicle, Dubyts said, they focused on keeping the 26-year-old mother and her daughter awake before an ambulance from Ninette arrived less than 15 minutes after the initial 911 call. It was terrible,said Dubyts, who also has a four-year-old child. She actually pulled herself up that hill with broken bones. Its like a horror show. Dubyts said a STARS air ambulance arrived in Killarney at nearly the same time as the ambulance from Ninette. Hiebert was airlifted to Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg. A hospital spokesman said there was no update on Hieberts condition Tuesday. Shes the strongest person I know, because with broken arms she pulled herself up onto that guardrail and got herself up that steep hill, Dubyts said. I have no idea how she did it. Pure adrenalin to save her kids life. Dubyts spoke to the family briefly, and they said they believe the duo might have been in the ditch for as long as 11 hours. A GoFundMe page called Kristen and Avery Recovery Fund was set up for the family Tuesday. The page notes Hiebert is going through multiple surgeries, while Avery is reported to be in stable condition with no broken bones. Brandon Sun Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 20/01/2016 (2464 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. A Winnipeg woman who admits she kept her three children and five pets in horrific conditions including a locked room filled with feces, urine and insects says she should not be given a criminal record. The 26-year-old accused, who cant be named in order to protect the identities of the victims, appeared in court Wednesday after pleading guilty to several charges under the Criminal Code, the Child and Family Services Act and the Animal Care Act. She is seeking a conditional discharge, while the Crown is asking for a period of custody. Provincial court Judge Ryan Rolston has reserved his verdict until Thursday morning. Police were called to a Point Douglas home in November 2013 after a neighbour heard the womans children calling for help from their open bedroom window on the second-floor. It was just after 11 p.m. Investigators found an awful scene inside. The mostly naked children, aged two, three and four, had spent several hours alone in the room that contained a dirty mattress, several used diapers, and garbage and waste that had been spread all over. The door was being barricaded shut with a chair. Bedbugs were seen scampering across the floor and up the walls. (Police) were met with conditions that can only be described as completely unlivable, Crown attorney Daniel Chaput told court Wednesday. The smell of feces was overwhelming. It was deplorable. Its shocking. Its unacceptable. Two large dogs were squeezed together inside a tiny kennel that was filled with urine and feces. There were three cats that had been deprived of food. There was one adult in the house a man police found watching television on the main floor while the children were locked upstairs. He was a friend of the mothers who had been invited to crash at the home, court was told. However, the mother had left that night, later telling police she was out with a male friend in an attempt to get money. No other details were provided. She was the only one arrested and charged. Social workers took the children from the accused. The animals were removed and received care from a veterinarian. A court-ordered pre-sentence report shows the mother had ample family and community support at the time, yet apparently balked at any help. She was working 12-hour days in a call centre and claims she couldnt find daycare or afford exterminators for the home. Her lawyer told court Wednesday a criminal record would make her prospects of rehabilitation more difficult and said a discharge would be the best remedy. The Crown did not specify how long of a jail sentence they want, but said it could be served conditionally in the community. www.mikeoncrime.com Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 18/01/2016 (2466 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. According to a December article in the National Post, defeated prime minister Stephen Harper is earning some additional praise from the Conservative party caucus for taking his seat in the Official Opposition benches of Parliament and exercising his voting privileges. Reportedly, he intends to stay on as MP for Calgary Heritage for some time. But should a vanquished Canadian prime minister return to the cutand-thrust of the House of Commons? Why would Harper want to do that? And, at closer inspection, is it really a good idea? One also wonders whether hell be doing the grunt-like work of meeting with ordinary constituents down at the local coffee shop or mall. I highly doubt it. Its just not his style or disposition. Pierre Obendrauf / CNS Montreal Gazette Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper answers questions at an afternoon press conference following a meeting with Montreal business leaders. However, he could bring his valuable experiences as prime minister for almost 10 years to the partys interim leadership. No one in the Loyal Opposition right now knows the policy files better than he does. As aspiring party leadership candidate, Milton MP Lisa Raitt, observed recently: I know that he has told our leader, Rona Ambrose, that he is open to having conversations with anybody and I am looking forward to having my chat about what he thinks we should do in on the finance file I think hes a great resource. In recent memory, it is not customary for former prime ministers, who are not exactly used to being just powerless, regular MPs, to sit in the House for an extended period of time. Lester Pearson, Pierre Trudeau, Brian Mulroney, Jean Chretien and Paul Martin all quickly and quietly departed the political scene. It is true that John Diefenbaker did attend House sittings as a valuable contributor to debates and discussions right up until his death in 1979. And Joe Clark, of course, stayed around long enough to not only end up in Mulroneys cabinet, but also to resume leadership of the Progressive Conservative party again in 1998. But the general rule of thumb is for ex-prime ministers to respectfully exit the political stage. And Stephen Harper, after some initial soul-searching, would be wise to do so himself. Indeed, Harpers presence in the House would certainly make things awkward to say the least for interim party leader Ambrose. That would be especially so if the governing Liberals sought to exploit any daylight between what Ambrose is saying today (particularly if its during Question Period) and what Harper said when he was heading the Prime Ministers Office (PMO). It would also be troubling if Harper insisted on playing a key role in influencing the partys ideological leanings, its messaging or its institutional machinery. Can you imagine the mood in the Conservative caucus room if Harper chose to correct the record or push back against his detractors, to raise serious doubts about any proposed change in the partys policy direction, or to lash out at those who dare to challenge his political legacy and personal integrity? Needless to say, the Conservative party does not need an internal power struggle between the still-loyal Harperites and those who wish to turn the page on the Harper era. The party really does need to make a clean break with its past if it hopes to have any chance of returning to government in four or five years. But Harpers presence could make that task far more difficult. With Harper hanging around and possibly garnering media attention, it does make it incredibly challenging for the Conservatives to change their image, tenor and branding. Lets be realistic here: the federal party desperately needs to put some distance between an emerging new style and the Harper record (which voters soundly rejected on Oct. 19). Clearly, it needs to go in a direction that is starkly different than the previous Harper period; one with a softer face and tone, greater openness, less secrecy and devoid of top-down control, more welcoming to others and one that is less ideologically rigid. Simply put, the party brain trust needs to get Stephen Harper as far away from them as humanly possible. With the House of Commons set to resume sitting on Jan. 25, the last thing that the Conservative party needs is for an unpopular former prime minister to be sitting on the Opposition front benches. It would be much better for everyone concerned if Stephen Harper would quietly fade into the background and to reject any urge to make his presence felt in Parliament or the partys caucus. Peter McKenna is professor and chair of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown. Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 19/01/2016 (2465 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. wfpvideo:4711666802001:wfpvideo Its a thin line any interim leader must walk. You dont want to stray too far off the path in terms of policy and alienate supporters. You dont want to disparage the previous leader and point out mistakes. At the same time, you need to act effectively in government and build a base from which the party can rebuild. This is the job before interim Conservative Leader Rona Ambrose, who was in Winnipeg Tuesday, one of several cities shes visiting this week for pre-budget consultations. Ms. Ambrose went over some familiar ground while speaking at the Manitoba Chambers of Commerce luncheon. Speaking to the very business-friendly crowd, she pledged to be the Canadian taxpayers watchdog sitting in opposition in the House of Commons. As she put it, she isnt optimistic about the new and untested prime ministers ability to do no harm to the economy given the partys miscalculations on the impact of cuts to middle-income earners taxes on the economy. Mike Deal / Winnipeg Free Press Rona Ambrose, interim leader of the Conservative Party and leader of the opposition, during a Winnipeg Free Press Editorial Board meeting at the NewsCafe. She also chided the Liberal government for being weak on the Islamic State and terrorism, particularly after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced he was pulling CF-18 fighter jets out of the bombing campaign against IS in Syria. These are familiar refrains from the Tories certainly something that was heard during the longest federal election in modern history. And as Ms. Ambrose points out, the percentage of voter support didnt change substantively between 2011 and 2015. In other words, if it aint broke, dont fix it, and the economy and security remain the Liberals Achilles heel. However, there is also a softening from the leaders bench on some issues. As soon as Ms. Ambrose was elected interim leader by her peers, she announced her party would support an inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women seemingly a 180-degree turn from the Conservatives under Stephen Harper. But in a meeting with the Free Press editorial board, Ms. Ambrose bristled at that portrayal, stating she has always been active on womens issues, particularly with her work on a national program to end domestic violence. In keeping with her line that her party tends to be the taxpayers watchdog, Ms. Ambrose is on record stating an inquiry should do more than just study the issue, but should include action. At the same time, Ms. Ambrose doesnt have the ability to control her caucus colleagues like Mr. Harper did. The former prime minister was notorious for micromanaging his cabinet ministers, if only by virtue of his position of prime minister. In official Opposition, banishment to the backbenches is not the carrot to control politicians. On that score, Ms. Ambrose has said she wont harness her colleagues. These are very intelligent, experienced, articulate people. I dont have to hold their hands Im proud to allow them to take their files to run with them. I have complete confidence. One wonders what would have happened if the Rona Ambroses, the Jim Prentices, the Lisa Raitts were given that same ability while in government. To run their files with confidence, without the tight control of Mr. Harper. And to do so with the quiet competence Ms. Ambrose demonstrates. The government would have felt just a bit more democratic rather than autocratic. In the next few months, it will be interesting to see who will come forward to run as leader before the May 27, 2017, leadership conference. Ms. Ambrose says she knows about 10 interested candidates, and time will tell who will make the big move forward. As for Kevin OLeary, Ms. Ambrose played it perfectly: I dont judge, she said about the possibility of the bombastic businessman throwing his hat into the ring. A perfect response, from an interim leader who so far seems to be getting it right. Shame she wont run as leader. For decades, many liberals have dreamed of a universal health insurance system in which the federal government provides coverage to everyone and pays the cost. Known as single-payer, its modeled on programs in Canada and Britain, among others, as well as Medicare. Now Bernie Sanders is making that idea a centerpiece of his presidential campaign. He unveiled an outline for Medicare for All on Sunday. And one thing is clear: It has all the qualities of a dream. If Sanders has his way, private health insurance will be a thing of the past, replaced by a federally administered single-payer health care program that will cover the entire continuum of health care. Patients will be free to choose their doctors, and everything will be simple and free, because there will be no more copays, no more deductibles and no more fighting with insurance companies when they fail to pay for charges. How would Sanders pay the $1.38 trillion annual price tag he puts on his model? He would raise marginal income tax rates, which currently top out at 39.6 percent, to 43 percent on households earning $500,000 a year or more, going up to 52 percent on those making more than $10 million. He would raise taxes on capital gains, dividends and inheritances. He would also impose a 6.2 percent income-based health care premium paid by employers and a 2.2 percent income-based premium paid by households. But most people, in his forecast, would come out ahead because theyd no longer be paying for private insurance. Among the things Sanders skates over is the practical impossibility of getting this plan written into law. The Affordable Care Act got zero Republican votes, barely passing in the House and narrowly averting a filibuster in the Senate back when Democrats controlled both chambers. Today, Republicans command a majority in each house, and they are likely to retain one if not both in the November elections. In that case, Sanders program wouldnt be dead on arrival. It would be dead on departure. Sanders also wants those covered to think they can have anything they want from medical providers at minimal cost to them. But that 6.2 percent levy on employers will almost certainly come out of wages. And the marginal tax rate increases he wants are so steep that they would almost certainly have a negative effect on investment and economic growth to the ultimate detriment of workers. The abolition of copays and deductibles, combined with the promise of covering any treatment or medicine any patient wants, would make this program far more generous than Medicare. The first effect would be to stimulate even more demand for services. The second would be to prevent sensible limits on therapies. No system can be financially sustainable under such lavish terms. Sanders, however, insists he can bring down our total health care spending by $6 trillion over the next 10 years. Dont bet on it. Thats tremendously aggressive cost containment, even after you take the administrative savings into account, Larry Levitt, vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, told Vox.com. As Ezra Klein wrote on that website, the way single-payer systems curb expenditures is by cutting reimbursement to doctors, hospitals, drug companies and device companies which inevitably means denying some treatments to actual patients. Canada and Britain are notorious for rationing care through long waits. One result, says the Fraser Institute, a free-market think tank based in Vancouver, is that 52,000 Canadians went abroad for treatment in 2014. The bold new plan Sanders offers is really a variation on an old theme: the government will provide ever-more health care to more and more people at a lower cost. It ducks the painful problem of how much health care we can afford and pretends it can be financed without any real sacrifice by ordinary people. In the long run, choices have to be made and trade-offs have to be accepted. Under Sanders blueprint, either the government would have to restrict access to some things people want, or it would end up spending far more than he claims. He and his supporters are entitled to dream. But there comes a time when you have to wake up. Heading into an election year legislative session, Minnesota House Democrats are telling rural residents that theyre on their side. DFL lawmakers released a proposal Tuesday that would help rural parts of the state with investments in transportation, broadband, property tax relief, workforce housing, oil train safety and dementia care. They estimate the proposal will cost at least $240 million. Rep. Paul Marquart, DFL-Dilworth, said the package of proposals could improve the economy and the quality of life in rural Minnesota. Theres nothing flashy about any of these, Marquart said. Most of the proposals are not new. This is an agenda we can get done this year. Republicans won control of the House in 2014 by claiming that Democrats had ignored rural Minnesota. But House Minority Leader Paul Thissen, DFL-Minneapolis, said last years session under GOP control was a monumental flop on many important rural issues. Republican legislators absolutely have been spending too much time listening to people in corporate boardrooms, listening to people in country club dining rooms more than theyve been listening to constituents across the state of Minnesota, Thissen said. He insisted that the primary goal of the agenda is to help rural communities, as opposed to winning control of the House. Parts of the DFL plan are in line with what House Republicans already have in mind for 2016. Rep. Ron Kresha, R-Little Falls, said he is glad Democrats are talking about rural Minnesota. Rural Minnesota needs attention, Kresha said. As I look at what they have, there are a lot of areas that we should be able to work together in a bipartisan way. Kresha said one shared priority is transportation funding, although Republicans and Democrats still have unresolved differences on where the money will come from. House GOP leaders are also pushing for a package of tax cuts this session. JUNEAU | A 29-year-old Waupun man is facing multiple felony charges after he sold methamphetamine to a confidential informant. Christopher Pultz is charged with two felony counts of manufacture/deliver amphetamine in an amount less than 3 grams, one felony count of manufacture/deliver amphetamine in an amount between 3 and 10 grams, felony maintain drug trafficking place, felony possession of methamphetamine, felony possession of THC as a second offense, and misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia. If convicted of all charges he faces up to 50 years in prison and $130,500 in fines. Pultz made his initial appearance in court on Tuesday before Dodge County Circuit Court Commissioner Steven Seim. Seim set a $1,000 signature bond with the conditions that Pultz not use OR possess any controlled substances without a valid prescription or drug paraphernalia, or be in the presence of anyone who does. According to the criminal complaint, on Jan. 15 members of the Dodge County Drug Task Force were assigned to execute a warrant in the 600 block of Wilcox Street in Waupun. The probable cause for the warrant was based on two reports from the Waupun Police Department that Pultz had sold methamphetamine to the Dodge County Drug Task Force on multiple occasions. A confidential informant successfully purchased .5 grams of methamphetamine from Pultz on Oct. 29, 4.4 grams on Nov. 18 and 1.8 grams on Jan. 12, according to the criminal complaint. Multiple pipes used for smoking were located in the residence along with .2 grams of methamphetamine and 2.6 grams of marijuana. Pultz will appear in court again for a preliminary hearing on March 17 at 8:30 a.m. There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will. If only that statement had been right. But it was wrong. Even Albert Einstein got it wrong sometimes. In 1932 he was already known to be very smart so why wouldnt people believe him? Sometimes people get it wrong. Not just you and I, but the Einsteins of the world. It would seem they dont have many more clues than the rest of us. That to me is unsettling, because if there is anything I want, it is to know that there are people out there who just know. Of course, when Decca Recording Company declined to sign the Beatles, because they thought guitar music was on the way out, they too were just plain wrong. Perrier was the first I had heard of bottled water and although there is a long history of selling snake oil and health drinks, I still questioned its success in the U.S. Who in his right mind was going to pay for water just because it came in a pretty green bottle and had a bit of sparkly in it? I was wrong, so very wrong. Those three words rarely come out in that order. People always speak with such certainty and are fully convincing, when they make proclamations. I was wrong is hardly a desirable follow-up. The New York Times once printed that a rocket would never be able to leave the earths atmosphere, but fortunately humans have a way of forgetting things they read. Western Union sent an internal memo saying the telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communications, and that was that. Two years later, Sir William Preece of the British Post Office said, The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys. I guess he didnt count on them growing up. That goes right along with the president of the Royal Society (the official group of physicians and scientists dedicated to improving knowledge) saying that X-rays would prove to be a hoax. Of course that was in 1883 and a lot has transpired since then to prove him wrong. Then there was the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Fords lawyer not to invest in the Ford Motor Company. The reason was simple. The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty, a passing fad. Well, they were partially right, horses have not become extinct. Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, said there would be a world market for maybe five computers, total. I hope he wasnt selling his fortune telling skills at the fair. The visionary who said, There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home, was none other than Ken Olsen, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corporation. He actually said that to a 1977 World Future Society meeting in Boston. Ouch. The truth about that statement, he argued for years, was that he meant a large computer that would control all aspects of our lives. No one would want that, he asserted. Later he thought the PCs they were advocating would be all right. He really didnt want to be wrong on any count. When do we shrug and say it was an honest mistake and when do we say it was a major blunder? Darryl Zanuck was a movie producer who was certain that television wouldnt last, because people would get tired of starring into a plywood box every night. Fortunately for him, in spite of television lasting, so did movie theaters and movie goers. No harm, no foul. The National Cancer Institute is another story. Putting out word in 1954 that If excessive smoking actually plays a role in the production of lung cancer, it seems to be a minor one might not be as benign. The question is why do we still listen to the experts? Do we listen, because they are always right, or because they have more experience at being wrong? As an educator and trainer in interpersonal and professional communications, Kay Stellpflug challenges companies, organizations, and individuals to stretch. She lives in, works in and loves Beaver Dam. If all goes as planned, the Columbus Fire Department will soon have a drone to provide aerial surveillance when fighting fires, searching for missing people and assessing natural disasters and it wont cost the city a penny. Fire Chief Randy Koehn told the Columbus City Council Committee of the Whole Tuesday that Al Stroschein of the Columbus Area Agribusiness Council contacted him recently to let him know that the organization would like to donate the funds raised at its annual dinner to the Fire Department this year. The dinner is scheduled for March 15 at Kestrel Ridge and would likely result in a donation of four figures. Koehn said he would like to use the donation to buy a drone, which would have many beneficial uses. At a structure fire, as an example, Ive seen a video where a drone was used at an industrial fire, Koehn said. The walls were standing yet, the roof caved in. From the outside you couldnt see anything inside. With a drone overhead, in situations like that, firefighters would be able to see if their streams were being directed in the right spot, Koehn said. A drone could also check out roofs for ventilation purposes. Another use would be for wild land fires. Koehn said when the department fought a 20-acre fire the year before, firefighters had no idea where the flames were headed. They attempted to drive ahead of the fire by cutting through farmers fields to get a look at it, but a drone would have done the job more effectively. A drone could also help the department handle hazardous materials incidents. Whats most scary to me is the possibility of an accident involving crude oil on the railway, Koehn said. There are only two railways in the state of Wisconsin where the highly volatile crude oil is transported, one of them being right here on CP that comes through Columbus. If we had a derailment with that involved, or any other hazardous materials, in order to get a close look at it, how do we do it without sending people in? Koehn said a drone would be helpful in the event of a natural disaster, as well. During a flood, a drone could scan the river for blockages. In the aftermath of a tornado or windstorm, it could help assess damage and determine where trees were down blocking streets. Drones have also been used in the past to locate missing persons and for pre-fire planning purposes. Koehn said the Columbia County Sheriffs Department purchased a drone last year. He talked to a representative from the department who said the complete package cost $3,049, which included the drone, a hard case, extra propellers, a charger, extra batteries, a tablet for live view and training. No budget money would be spent on the drone. Koehn said any funding not covered by the Agribusiness Council donation would be covered by previous donations that had been earmarked for new tablets. Those funds never had to be spent for their original purpose because the Columbus/Fall River Rotary Club subsequently made a large donation that covered the cost of the tablets in their entirety. Council members had no objection to the Fire Department accepting the donation and moving ahead with the purchase. When Brad Hasheider shot a 10-point buck during Wisconsins nine-day gun deer hunting season in November, he had the deer tested for chronic wasting disease. While waiting for results from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, the rural Sauk City man went ahead and butchered the animal. A few weeks later, Hasheider learned the four-year-old deer he harvested had CWD, but he already had decided the meat would end up on the familys dinner table. Theres really no link between CWD and transferring to humans, Hasheider said. Is it possible? We dont know. On its website, the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection states there is no strong evidence that CWD can be passed to humans, but warns hunters to minimize contact with the brain, spinal cord, spleen and lymph nodes when processing deer. Hasheider said he follows the guidelines closely. We cut the meat off the bones and dont touch the bone marrow, brain or organs, Hasheider said. Weve eaten positive deer before. Its a personal decision. No case has ever been documented of a person becoming sick from eating the meat of a deer infected with CWD. However, when it comes to the disease that has spread across the deer herds in some of the most popular hunting areas in Wisconsin, including the south-central part of the state, even experts find there frequently are more questions than answers. Decade of research It has been 13 years since chronic wasting disease was discovered in Wisconsin. In the years since, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has dramatically changed the way it manages and responds to the spread of the illness. CWD is believed to be a transmissible illness of the nervous system caused by unusual infectious agents known as prions. The disease is incurable and fatal for infected deer. Despite efforts to reduce the spread of the disease, its prevalence has not diminished. More sick deer appear each year, although the spread has been slow, and somewhat contained. The disease is primarily in the south central part of the state, and has continued to have the highest prevalence in Iowa and Dane counties, where it was first discovered in 2002. It has since spread to Sauk and Richland counties. Limited portions of the herds in Juneau and Columbia counties have been found to be infected as well. The DNR began monitoring the states wild white-tailed deer for CWD in 1999. After the first positive tests, fears erupted that one of the states most treasured resources and a hunting culture that has developed around it was at risk of being changed forever. The economic impact on tourism was predicted to be significant, and the risk to hunters who ate deer from infected meat was unknown. The DNR estimates deer hunting generates more than $500 million dollars in retail sales annually and over $1 billion for the states economy. Since those early years, research and a management plan have helped reduce fear associated with the disease, but its growth remains troubling. Reduced testing The fight against CWD met a new challenge this year as the state unveiled a new Electronic Harvest Registration System for deer registration. In a video released by Gov. Scott Walker and DNR Secretary Kathy Stepp touting the new electronic registration system, no mention of CWD sampling or testing was made. Prior to 2015, the DNR operated or contracted with local businesses to open registration stations, gathering places where hunters physically brought in their deer for registration. Testing for CWD also was offered. Now hunters who register their kill online must find a place to get their deer tested for CWD, and fewer locations offer the service. The changes have led fewer hunters to take the extra step in getting their deer tested. Our sampling numbers have seen a downward trend, said DNR wildlife health section chief Tami Ryan. The more samples youre able to collect, the better the chances of finding additional areas of CWD. Ryan said the 2015 hunting season began with half the CWD testing budget the agency had the year before, and enough resources to analyze tissue from 4,000 carcasses, down from 7,500 in 2014. Ultimately, the DNR collected 2,023 samples in 2015, the fewest collected since 5,300 were tested in 2011. In 2002, the state tested 40,000 deer. CWD growing Despite fewer tests, the DNRs research shows the disease is slowly spreading. Since 2002, CWD prevalence within the states western monitoring area, which includes Iowa County, has shown an overall increasing trend in both sexes and all age groups. During the past 13 years, the trend in disease prevalence in adult males has risen from eight percent to more than 25 percent, and in adult females from about four percent to more than 10 percent. During the same time, the prevalence trend in yearling males has increased from about two percent to eight percent, and in yearling females from about two percent to seven percent. DNR funding to monitor, study and combat the disease has declined significantly. Were not hearing a lot about CWD anymore, Ryan said. It was quite the topic in the early years, but now its part of the landscape. There are still people out there concerned about CWD and the agency has a mutual desire on behalf of our citizens to have a healthy deer herd. There will be continued interest in monitoring and knowing where the disease exists and to what level. There also are indications the disease is spreading to areas beyond those with high concentrations of CWD, such as Dane and Iowa counties. Ryan said Juneau, Adams and Columbia counties are considered a fringe area for CWD, with a limited number of positive tests in those areas. That first positive is an indicator, Ryan said. Once thats been identified, we transform into disease assessment. Its a slowly progressive disease and complicated and complex as to how its transmitted in the environment. Research declining While the prevalence of CWD slowly grows, financial support for CWD research at both the state and federal level has declined. According to the states Legislative Audit Bureau, $4 million was budgeted for CWD in 2002. That rose to $32.3 million in the 2005-06 budget. The budget primarily was supported by state hunting license revenues and funds from federal taxes on hunting equipment. The most recent DNR biennium budget proposal that mentions CWD was for 2013-15 and included no additional expenditures on the disease, instead calling for unspent funds remaining in the account to be used. Ryan said decreases in funding for CWD have led to no new funding for research of the disease beyond what remains in the states budget. We dont have the USDA funding stream that went to CWD, and Sen. Herb Kohl earmarked funding for CWD in the early years when it was first detected in Wisconsin, but now were completely dependent on what we have in state funding, Ryan said. Budget cuts at the DNR also have drawn criticism from some outdoors groups. As part of the 2015 state budget, 18 DNR scientist positions were eliminated. The Conservation Congress a group of hunters, fishermen and outdoors enthusiasts that gathers annually to weigh in on proposed DNR rules passed a resolution in April 2015 opposing the cuts. Dan Schmidt has been the editor of Deer and Deer Hunting Magazine for 22 years, and has been a vocal opponent of the changes at the DNR, saying the decisions are political and not based in science or an effort to resolve lingering CWD issues. Walker has absolutely gutted that department since hes taken office, Schmidt said in a telephone interview. His latest budget cut out the last two remaining scientific positions for deer research. Theres no one minding the store and no way to fund it. Theres less testing going on now. Its a shell of talking heads with nothing being accomplished. Theres nothing to stop the spread of CWD or reduce it. A doctors prescription For a decade, the states official strategy was to eradicate infected herds of deer in certain zones. In 2012, the state shifted to a more passive management style. That was the word used to describe the recommendation of the governor-appointed deer trustee James Kroll of Texas, a scientist of and professor emeritus of forest wildlife management hired in 2011 to study CWD and make a management recommendation. Kroll heads up the Doctor Deer firm of three consultants that have addressed deer herd management for 40 years. The firms hiring was part of a $2 million CWD budget approved in 2011, of which $125,000 was earmarked for consultants. Kroll said his payment was less than $100,000 based on his travel and other incidental expenses. His contract expired in 2012, but he continues to keep an eye on the states deer management. Kroll said he recognizes the term passive management has been the subject of criticism. The people who dont like that recommendation call it doing absolutely nothing, and thats not what it means Kroll said. The eradication zone was unsuccessful. It just didnt work. The recommendation we had was to go with a strategy of containment. Treat it like a wildfire and try to contain it. He said once the disease is found in an area, eradication is impossible. If you eradicate all the deer, the prion still can exist in the soil, Kroll said. Do you haul out all the soil in southern Wisconsin? I defy anyone to come up with an alternative management strategy. He also said there is no correlation between declines in the states deer herd and CWD. Theres been no credible scientific study that demonstrated any deer heard has declined from CWD, Kroll said. The National Wildlife Federation said the national mule deer population was declining, and CWD was way down on the list. The number one reason was a viral disease from gnats. Kroll said he also questions whether CWD is as contagious as once believed. He used an example from a deer breeding facility in Texas where a deer tested positive for CWD. It was among four deer at that facility that were produced by artificial insemination. Their mothers, their sisters and the other deer in the pens with them did not have CWD, Kroll said. They were all raised in the same pen and from the same sire, and the sire didnt have CWD. Kroll said more CWD research is needed. The point needs to be made we still dont know what the conditions are that create this disease, Kroll said. Research has been focused on doing experiments to see if prions can be transmitted. We dont know what really creates them. The actual cause is not the prions. When it comes to what created the prions, that research is very lacking. Kroll said new studies should focus on genetics, environment and nutritional aspects of wild deer. Hasheider, who chose to eat the meat of an infected deer despite the positive CWD test, said he supports a containment approach, and believes thats what most hunters want. From what Ive seen, when CWD is not in your area, like Juneau or Adams county, you want restrictions on it because you dont want it where you are, Hasheider said. Once its there you learn to go with it. Nobody wants to kill every deer. I think you want to keep the deer population in check and shoot enough to keep the population rotating. Political junkies say the race between Sen. Ron Johnson and Russ Feingold will be the same as most current political discourse: ugly and mean. Historically, rematches between candidates are often pretty negative affairs, Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette University Law School poll, told Journal Sentinel reporter Bill Glauber. Republican strategist Brian Nemoir told Glauber, Ron Johnson has the job of reminding people of why this guy wasnt elected six years ago, and Feingold has the job now of running against an incumbent and comparing the promises he made to what he has or has not delivered. I think at the end of the day these guys bring very different visions of our country to the table, Nemoir said. The contrasts will be crystal clear ... and if that means defining the other one in a light they consider less favorable, that is what is going to happen in this race. I dont know if there is an opportunity for either one to be better liked by the end of this. How depressing. These two should, instead, have a substantive debate about the issues that really matter to Wisconsin voters. They are capable of doing that they clearly see the world in very different ways. Their race is a proxy for the national struggle between conservatives and liberals and an important race for both parties. The Johnson-Feingold race is shaping up as one of the more important Senate contests in the country and outside groups are already spending millions of dollars on the campaign. What does that mean? Expect the airwaves to be clogged in the coming months with negative ads designed to define the candidates, Glauber reported. But thats not the kind of race Wisconsin voters deserve. They deserve a race thats based on a discussion of the issues, such as national security, jobs, the economy, education, trade, climate change and repairing the nations crumbling infrastructure. The candidates should answer questions like these: How will voters lives be better? How will they be safer? How will they make ends meet? How will they get their kids educated without suffocating debt? Where will they find work? Will that work be able to sustain them? Voters deserve to hear clear, thoughtful statements from each candidate on his positions more than sound bites. They deserve new ideas on how to meet the nations challenges. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., has said that 2016 should be a year of ideas for Republicans, but hes only partially right. It should be a year of ideas from Republicans and Democrats and anyone else who is going after citizens votes. Were under no illusion that mean and ugly will go away simply because we ask it to. Negative ads often work. But negative campaigning doesnt get the nation anywhere; it doesnt move improve lives. It poisons the debate. So in between the ads, maybe Johnson and Feingold can still find time to discuss substantive ideas and policy. Lets go there. A packed courtroom listened to wide-ranging answers to a few specific questions in a hearing Tuesday in which a Rio man accused of murdering his girlfriend decided to dismiss his attorneys to represent himself. Patrick Kraemer, 47, of Rio is accused of causing the April 2013 death of Traci Rataczak, his then live-in girlfriend. Deputies and detectives responded to a reported hanging on April 8, 2013, finding Rataczak, 44, dead at the Wyocena home where the two lived. Rataczaks death was initially reported by a man who had been in the house, and went down the stairs into the basement, seeing Rataczak hanging by an extension cord from a floor joist. Officers contacted Kraemer, who told them that he had last seen her at about 3 a.m. on April 6. According to court documents, Kraemer said he had been at home throughout that weekend, going into the basement on the evening of April 7 to do laundry, then twice again early in the morning on April 8 before going to work. Rataczak had been wearing a heart monitor in anticipation of scheduled surgery. The monitor was started on Thursday afternoon and was set to run for 48 hours, but stopped registering a pulse at 2:58 a.m. April 6. On Sept. 11, 2014, a warrant was issued for Kraemers arrest and four days later he made an initial appearance in Columbia County Circuit Court for a bond hearing in which Judge Alan White ordered Kraemer held on a $450,000 cash bond. Kraemer filed motions on Nov. 9 to dismiss his attorneys and proceed with a speedy trial. A speedy trial, which ensures a jury trial within 90 days of request, is seldom demanded given the difficulty of mounting an appropriate defense within that time frame. Both requests came as a surprise to Kraemers attorneys at the time. On Tuesday, Kraemer appeared for a hearing in front of Judge W. Andrew Voigt to address the requests. Attorneys Steven Sarbacker and Gerald Boyle were allowed to withdraw and Kraemer sat alone at the defense table, speaking on his own behalf. I have to evaluate, not whether you are competent to stand trial, but whether or not you are competent to represent yourself, said Voigt. Because I have an obligation, to you frankly, to ensure that you have a sufficient education and understanding and background and life experience and all those things that are necessary, to handle yourself in a case that is as potentially complex as this one is. At most hearings in the Kraemer case, two things have made the proceedings stand out. One is the consistent presence of the Rataczak family, who have worn purple ribbons in memory of Traci and bracelets in recognition of domestic abuse. The other has been the chatty testimony of Kraemer who has filled court transcripts with odd references and cryptic remarks. I understand that judge, and for me to answer that, it is my decision is to my country and to my loyalty to Traci, said Kraemer. And to push this as fast forward as possible. Because when it is done, there is not going to be no doubt in anybodys mind. And that is a fact. Voigt asked Kraemer if he would like any extra time to think over his decision. I just want to put all my stuff on the scale at your bench, because it is overwhelming, and go walk out that door and see somebody I need to see, said Kraemer. Voigt asked Kraemer about his education and Kraemer said he had barely graduated high school, but attended college at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater where he took a business law course as a part of his bachelors of business management program. Kraemer highlighted his life experience as relevant to his education, explaining that he had received combat patches serving in the Army in Iraq in 2005 and 2006. Voigt asked about any academic education beyond his graduation from college in 1990. Im glad you asked that, said Kramer. Because I took the ASVAB test to join the military and they insisted that I be a paralegal. After a couple of more tries from Voigt, Kraemer gave a more direct answer: Thats a negative, judge. At the end of the hearing Voigt admitted to being somewhat ill prepared for the conversation that they were having and ordered that Kraemer return for another hearing on Jan. 29 at which point he would ask Kraemer more questions to see if Kraemer would be able to represent himself for his trial. Kraemers trial remains scheduled to begin June 20 and end July 1. DES MOINES Its pretty clear things have changed in the Democratic presidential race when Hillary Clinton does a sky-is-falling routine for donors. There are not one, but two new public polls out this week that have us down in Iowa, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook wrote in an email to small contributors Thursday. Now, you should always take public polling with a grain of salt. But if you thought this race wasnt going to be close, well, it is. This isnt me claiming the sky is falling these are just the facts. Of the six polls taken most recently here in Iowa, Bernie Sanders leads in the two Mook mentioned by Quinnipiac and ARG while Clinton has progressively smaller leads in the others. Back in December, Clintons margins over Sanders in the polls were 18 points, or 14 points, or 22 points. Today, theyre two or three points. The bottom line is that in Iowa, Clintons lead over Sanders is within the margin of error, and in New Hampshire, she trails Sanders by several points. Which leads to a question: Could Clintons entire theory of the race be wrong? The theory is this: Of course Clinton wants to win Iowa and New Hampshire, but if she doesnt, she will still win the nomination because the race will move on to South Carolina and other states with a significant black population. African-Americans are a critical part of the Democratic coalition, and Clinton is undeniably strong with them. So in the long run, she will win. Its a persuasive theory; Sanders has tried and failed to make any real inroads into Clintons black support. But now theres the question: If Sanders were to vanquish Clinton in the first two contests of the campaign, would that change the dynamics of the race? It does change the dynamics of the race, Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs told me by phone from a campaign event at Dartmouth College. If you do well in Iowa and notch a victory in New Hampshire, youre going to see more and more people take Bernies campaign seriously, and that will change the dynamics. But how specifically? The theory the hope is that the work Sanders has done trying to connect with black Democrats will start to pay off if Sanders comes out of the early states a winner. (Notice Briggs said do well in Iowa, not win.) Sanders has always conceded that as a senator from a nearly all-white state, he doesnt have deep roots in African-American politics. But hes tried hard to reach out, stressing not just his record but civil rights work that goes back to student days. I suggested to Briggs that all that reaching out hasnt paid off, since black Democrats still seem strongly behind Clinton. Its not that it hasnt worked, Briggs answered. People didnt know about it. If Sanders wins early contests, the theory goes, later-state Democratic voters, black and white, will take a look at him. And thats where, again theoretically, the dynamic changes. Truth be told, that still seems unlikely to happen. But it seems less unlikely than it did a few weeks ago, which explains Clintons increasing attacks on Sanders. It also explains the emergence of Chelsea Clinton, who is pretty much universally admired by Democrats, as one of the attackers. Chelseas hit on Sanders health proposal that it would somehow enable Republicans efforts to repeal Obamacare struck a lot of Democrats as not just out of character, but flat wrong, as well. Still, as a sign of Clinton anxiety, it was pretty accurate. I think theyre panicking, Briggs said of the Clinton campaign. Things are moving fast; Iowa Democrats are choosing quickly. In The Des Moines Register poll, 70 percent of Hillary supporters, and 69 percent of Sanders supporters, say theyve made up their minds. Just a month ago, those numbers were quite a bit smaller. More minds will be made up each day. Voters will caucus in Iowa in 18 days, and the Sanders campaign is outspending us on TV, Mook wrote in that alarmed email to small donors. Hillarys been fighting for families for decades if youre with her, this is the time to show it. Mook then asked the recipient to Chip in $1 now. Its not surprising to see a campaign send out a poor-little-old-me appeal, asking for donations to fight a big, bad opponent. But for Hillary Clinton, the unstoppable, inevitable, Democratic nominee-in-waiting, to say that about Bernie Sanders? Now, thats a change. James Gainey James P. Jim Gainey, 34, of Prairie du Sac, passed away Monday, Jan. 11, 2016, at Maplewood Health Center in Sauk City. Jim was born July 8, 1981, the son of James Jim and Maureen (Keefe) Gainey. He married Catherine (Bush) Gainey on Sept. 8, 2007, in Madison. Jim was born in Madison and the family resided in Barneveld until 1984. The family then relocated to Sterling, Illinois, where Jim attended St. Marys Catholic Grade School and graduated from Newman Catholic High School in 1999. Following high school, Jim moved back to Madison to attend Edgewood College, where he met and fell in love with Catherine in 2002. For the last 12 years, Jim worked for North Central Group Hotels in Middleton. Our family has truly appreciated the support that the company and especially Carl Allen has shown us since Jims cancer diagnosis in 2013. Jim never wanted cancer to define him and it didnt. Jim will be remembered as being the most genuine, loving, funny, sweet, and most giving person that we ever had the pleasure of meeting. When he passed he was being held by his wife and his loving family. His boys will always be reminded that he did everything (54 chemo treatments included) to be here with them because there was nowhere else he would rather be. We will never be the same and he will be deeply missed, but he lives on in all of the lives he touched. Jim is survived by the love of his life, Catherine; beloved sons, James Shamus and Finnegan; loving parents Jim and Maureen Gainey; adoring sisters, Bridget (Jeff) Moylan and Margaret Meg (Robert) Penaflor. Other loving family members include Jims in-laws, Bob and Betty Bush; sisters-in-law, Sarah (Joseph) Short and Beth (Greg) Doby. Jim will be remembered as a fun and caring uncle by his 11 nieces and nephews and one great-niece. Jim was very loved by his many aunts, uncles, and cousins. Jims life and love will also be carried on by his many wonderful friends. Jim was preceded in death by his maternal and paternal grandparents. A Mass of Christian burial will be held at 11:30 a.m. Friday, Jan. 22, 2016, at Our Lady Queen Of Peace Catholic Church, 401 S. Owen Drive in Madison, with Msgr. Kenneth J. Fiedler presiding. A visitation will be held from 4-8 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 21, 2016, at Cress Funeral Home, 3610 Speedway Road in Madison, and from 10:30 a.m. until the time of Mass on Friday at the church. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Cat and the boys through their donation account at University of Wisconsin Credit Union, or donations can be made in Jims memory to the Gloria Borges WunderGlo Foundation, whose mission is to find the cure for colon cancer. Our family would like to thank the caring staff at Dean Hematology and Oncology- specifically Dr. OMahar and Nurse Jo Bley, the Agrace HospiceCare staff, Agrace Hospice staff, particularly, our Nurse Case Manager Kevin, Social Worker Laura, and Nurse Bev and the staff at Maplewood Health Center. I had an amazing life. I regret nothing because everything I did made me who I am. Im proud of the family I came from. Im proud of the people I call friends. I was lucky enough to meet my soulmate and have her family become my family. Most of all, Im so proud of my boys and I love them more than air. Jim, December 2015 Please share memories at www.CressFuneralService.com. Cold, cold, cold, but a nice kind of weather to stay inside and knit shawls for the folks at the nursing home or write tales of today or of early days, pet my cat, make a pot of soup and watch old tales on television. We accept that the cold days of winter are upon us. As my great-grandson said, Great-grandma, it is bur-r-r out there! With the cold and the ice, I must accept that as an excuse for not taking my morning walks. It has been quite slippery besides with the earlier melting; more ice is being created. And anyway, my kids wont let me walk these days. I heard Mom, you dont need to slip on the ice, fall and break body parts. I wonder when mom and kids changed roles in life. I know they are right so it is okay. The winter wont last forever, spring will come and walking will be great once again. However, I do believe I am a winter person. It has always been my favorite season. My mom said many times as I was growing up, You like the winter because you were born in winter. The first two years of my life was spent in western Minnesota. Perhaps I acclimated to cold, snowy winters then already. Taking down the Christmas tree these past days seemed almost as memorable as putting it up in mid-December, but maybe a bit more traumatic. Quiet memories of earlier Christmas holidays came forth. Boxes brought in from the garage, trims and decorations put away. My son-in-law dragged the tree to the curb to join the others along the block and I bid farewell to the trims as I put the boxes away. I reviewed the Christmas cards and read each once and hesitated on the names bringing to mind the sender. Perhaps that is the reason for holiday cards. We get a chance to enjoy the time once when we receive the greeting and again when we bundle them up and put them with the Christmas trims. I found a bag of shelled corn in my garage one day and knew it was a Christmas gift from my son-in-law and daughter as the bag had two big red bows on it. My squirrels are delighted. We decided to go with serving them shelled corn because on one of my morning walks, I found an empty corncob about a block from my house. I am quite sure it was dropped there by one of the culprit squirrels that frequent my backyard. So, its shelled corn from now on. A little scoop each day in the feeder does just fine. We bid a chilly fond farewell to the old year and now it is the beginning of a brand new year and now it is time for the paperwork of the old year to finish. That chore sure takes all the fun out of the birth of a brand new year. Shouldnt complain, I guess. Without paperwork, wed be in a fix. However, it would be nice not to have to worry about it. Actually, the paperwork I like the best is writing my tales of life. Now, that is fun paperwork. New thoughts, new ideas, new ways of pleasing the readers and trying to recognize what they want to read is a pleasant part of writing. Until next time, a happy New Year to the folks who take the time to read the words from this old writer who likes to write and thanks to the folks who care enough about it to print the tales I write. A fond farewell to the old 2015 and into the new 2016. Planning nutrient management prior to harvest Harvest is always a fast-paced season for growers, that's why it is important to meet nutrient management goals prior to harvest. China News on Women Sorry, the page you requested was not found. If you're having trouble locating a destination on Womenofchina.cn, try visiting the Womenofchina Home page Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Madonna's Rebel Heart tour rolled into the city of Louisville, Kentucky the other night, but all was not quite well - at least, according to some reports. TMZ suggested that the pop star was drunk when she arrived on stage up to three hours late, and then made some rather strange statements about clowns and drinking alcohol. However, Madonna slammed the comments as 'sexist' on a post on her Instagram page, with a photo captioned: Working on my stand up laying down. Good practice!!! Y'?Y?Thanks Louisville! Y the tears of a clown soon to follow the #rebelheartour and for those people who like to believe all they read i never drink and perform!!! My show is 2 hours and 15 minutes of non stop singing and dancing. In Louisville I made a joke about doing a stand comedy act dressed as a clown and being able to drink alcohol. Its so very interesting how society continues to not only treat me in a totally sexist way (if i a were a man no one would have said a thing) and also continue to take everything i say literally!Thats what happens when people don't read books and get all information from TMZ." Watch footage of her addressing the crowd in Louisville below - do you think she was drunk? Jessie Wallace and Shane Richie have become so synonymous with their EastEnders characters Kat and Alfie, that it's difficult to sit across from them and see anyone but one of soaps best loved couples. That we did though when we got to meet the pair recently who are over in Ireland at the moment rehearsing their upcoming play in the Bord Gais Energy Theatre, The Perfect Murder. While opening night for that play is in February, it won't be long after that until they are back on our island again. "As soon as we finish A Perfect Murder, we are straight out here for four months, and we can't wait, " Shane Richie told us. In case you haven't heard, Jessie Wallace and Shane Richie are leaving EastEnders for their own show which will be set in Ireland, although they were quick to add that it's not a spin-off; "It's a six-part drama," Jessie clarified, with Shane adding that they initially were calling it a spin-off too but producers have been quick to correct them. Turns out, this show is really not what fans are expecting it to be at all, with Shane saying; "It's got Kat and Alfie, but other than that it's got nothing to do with EastEnders." (Still sounds like a spin-off to us.) We were assured however that it wouldn't go down the route EastEnders did back in the nineties when the Fowlers came to Ireland and every stereotype of the country was used - there were practically dancing leprechauns. "I'm from a big Irish family, and even I went 'oh feck off'," Richie said of that episode. However he went on to say that EastEnders' current producer Dominic Treadwell Collins has a lot of family from Cork and would have no interest in portraying Ireland in a negative light. So what do we know of this new 'drama', as they're calling it? Well it's got an Irish cast and crew, the pair told us, and it kicks off in a rural village where Kat and Alfie find themselves embroiled in a story that's already going on. "When I read the first script, I thought, Kat and Alfie shouldn't be there, Shane said." It was uncomfortable to read, yet riveting and dark and sinister, but also had the warmth and charm that Kat and Alfie bring." No word on the location yet, but both described it as 'beautiful' and 'stunning', while Jessie added that they will be in Dublin for some of the filming too. They are currently back in EastEnders setting up the storyline that will bring them to Ireland, with Kat learning recently that she has a long-lost son that lives here, while Alfie's brain tumour story will also play out here. Yes, they sound very soap-like storylines but we will give them the benefit of the doubt that it will transition into a drama well. "The idea is, God willing, that if it does well, then we'll set up here permanently," Shane said. So this isn't just some one-off 'EastEnders goes to Ireland' adventure, it's a whole different kettle of fish really, but with an Irish cast and crew all getting work from it, here's hoping we will have Kat and Alfie over here for many years to come. In the meantime, you can catch them in the Bord Gais Energy Theatre for A Perfect Murder where they play two people who are very different to Kat and Alfie, they told us; "They're a loveless, childless couple and instead of getting divorced, one of them decides they're going to commit the perfect murder." "It's really scary, and very jumpy, but then in the next breath it's funny," Jessie added. If you fancy checking them out in it, A Perfect Murder runs from Monday 15th February to Saturday 20th February, you can get your tickets here. Link to Profile... NB: Unsigned comments will probably be deleted. This is a polemical Catholic Royalist blog. It will also attempt to provide a window onto various events, situations and personalities not generally or favorably presented to the purview of the general public in the English speaking world. It also hopes to be a bridge for those who wish to cross over, unite and fight for the truth.Just remember, the Rhine still flows into the Tiber.Dedicated to the Immaculate and Sacred Hearts. Central Station Ordered To Pay 4890 For Playing Music Without Licence This article is old - Published: Wednesday, Jan 20th, 2016 Last week Central Station was banned from playing music and ordered to pay 3200 in damages and 1,690 in legal costs for playing recorded music without a licence. Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL), who are a music licensing company and performance rights organisation, told Wrexham.com, Mr Justice Snowden imposed the injunction after it became clear that Central Station was using recorded music as one of the main attractions for its clientele without the correct licence in place. The proprietor of the Wrexham business, failed to comply with the legal requirement for a PPL music licence, despite being given ample opportunity to rectify the situation. Wrexham.com asked PPL on Monday why they pursue such cases, and were told: Whether playing music for staff or customers, the majority of businesses are usually legally required to hold a PPL licence. If PPL did not exist, a business playing recorded music at its premises would be required to contact potentially thousands of record companies to individually obtain their permission before being able to play recorded music lawfully. PPL is the music licensing company which works on behalf of performers and record companies to license recorded music played in public (in bars, pubs, offices, restaurants, shops, and many other business types) across the UK. After the deduction of PPLs running costs, all licence fee income is distributed to PPLs performer and record company members. The majority are small businesses, all of whom are legally entitled to be fairly paid for the use of their performances and recordings. Christine Geissmar, Operations Director, PPL said: There is an intrinsic value that music adds to businesses, and this judgement acknowledges that the creators of the music should be fairly rewarded for this. This ruling demonstrates how seriously the courts treat copyright infringement and reiterates that music can only be played in public if the right licences are obtained. Those businesses that choose to play recorded music without a licence will face legal action as a result. PPL regards legal proceedings as very much a last resort but unfortunately they are sometimes necessary. A court can order the business to pay its outstanding licence fees plus PPLs legal costs and issue a court order known as an injunction to stop the business playing recorded music until this is done. PPL told us today: In this instance, in spite of us repeatedly contacting the business owner to get the correct licensing in place, this case was taken to the High Court in London, where the owner was banned from playing any copyrighted recorded music at the venue until a licence is purchased. (Pic: Older pic showing Central Station on the right.) Denmarks right-wing Venstre (Liberal) Party government led by Prime Minister Lars Lkke Rasmussen initiated a debate on a bill in parliament last week on legislation permitting the countrys border guards to seize money and personal belongings of refugees seeking asylum in the country. According to the draft law, which is expected to win the support of the opposition Social Democrats, the far right Danish Peoples Party, and two smaller right-wing parties, money or valuables worth more than 10,000 kroner (1,340) are to be confiscated from refugees entering the country. The only exception to this draconian measure, included only after a wave of outrage and protest from around the world, was for items of special emotional significance such as wedding or engagement rings. As the World Socialist Web Site has already noted, such proposals draw directly on the horrific traditions of the Nazi regime in Germany, which as part of its persecution of the Jewish population confiscated money and personal belongings in the lead up to and during the Holocaust. The proposal is the headline measure in a broader immigration bill containing a range of discriminatory anti-refugee measures. Venstre is suggesting extending the wait to three years before refugees can bring their families to the country, a length of time which virtually no refugee is allowed to stay in Denmark after the previous government moved to expand the use of temporary residency permits for asylum seekers lasting just one year. Other sections of the bill will tighten rules for foreigners seeking Danish citizenship, and shorten the length of time for temporary residence permits. Even in light of the brutal measures adopted by governments across the continent to target refugees, Denmark has one of the strictest asylum regimes in Europe. During 2015, it accepted only 21,000 asylum seekers. Neighbouring Sweden, with a population less than twice that of Denmark, took in nearly eight times as many refugees (163,000). Members of the public who have sought to help refugees in their desperate plight have felt the full force of the state. A man was fined 5,000 kroner (620) last week for picking up a family of refugees walking along a highway from northern Germany into Denmark. I came home during the afternoon and saw on TV that refugees and migrants were walking up and down the motorway. I was particularly affected by seeing the many children, the man said during a court appearance. Two other Danes who set up a humanitarian organisation to assist refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos were recently arrested and charged with people smuggling. The entire political establishment bears responsibility for stoking a ferociously anti-immigrant climate over a period of more than a decade which has led to the latest reactionary crackdown. Rasmussens Venstre Party emerged as the winner last June from possibly the most right-wing election campaign in the countrys recent history. Former Prime Minister and Social Democrat leader Helle Thorning-Schmidt spent the campaign boasting about how her government had tightened asylum laws for the first time in a decade and clamped down on refugee numbers. The Social Democrats campaigned on the slogan that everyone who came to Denmark had to work, a deliberate reference to claims made by far right propagandists that large numbers of refugees were living off Danish welfare payments. This campaign played directly into the hands of the virulently anti-immigrant and far-right Danish People's Party (Dansk Folkeparti, DF), which was able to nearly double its representation in parliament and challenge Venstre as the largest right-wing party. Bowing to the hysteria DF whipped up during the election, Rasmussen embraced the claim that Denmark was being overwhelmed by immigrants and tabled measures on taking power which slashed the amount of social welfare payments available to refugees. Denmarks Nordic neighbours are implementing equally ruthless measures aimed at persecuting refugees seeking safety in the region. At the beginning of January, Swedens Social Democrat-led government instituted checks at crossings on the border with Denmark for the first time in almost fifty years. The move was aimed at preventing asylum-seekers from entering the country if they did not have the necessary papers. The government raised the prospect of passing legislation to close the Oresund Bridge connecting the two countries in a crisis situation, but this was later dropped. Immigration minister Morgan Johansson stated in mid-December, We have hit our limit. Denmark has not. The move prompted Copenhagen to implement similar procedures at its border with Germany. Rasmussen declared, The new Swedish requirements entail a serious risk that a large number of illegal immigrants will be stranded in Copenhagen. Reports indicated the border controls are having an impact farther afield. David Furtner, a spokesman for police in Upper Austria, said that 200 refugees have been turned away from the German border daily since the start of 2016, compared to just 60 per day in December. Officials in the Austrian state of Carinthia have sent 1,652 refugees back across the border to Slovenia since the start of January. Indicating that Vienna is considering turning away so-called economic migrants from its border, Austrian Chancellor Werner Feymann told Kronen-Zeitung, What is certain is that soon we are going to become more active at our borders. Swedens new controls will only force refugees to adopt even more desperate measures to enter the country, as shown by the detention of five asylum seekers trying to cross the Oresund Bridge between Denmark and Sweden on foot. They also will have a serious impact on commuters, over 20,000 of whom travel between Sweden and Denmark daily for work. Several hundred protesters demonstrating against the controls at Copenhagen airport clashed with police on January 10. The journey between Copenhagen and Malmo has been increased from around 40 minutes to well over an hour by the new checks. The border controls come in the wake of a determined drive by the Social Democrat-Green Party coalition in Stockholm to beef up the countrys refugee laws. Prime Minister Stefan Lofven announced a cross-party deal in October with the right-wing opposition Moderates which removed the right of new asylum seekers to permanent residency permits. Asylum seekers from now on will only be granted temporary leave to remain in the country. Notwithstanding the attempts by Swedish politicians to play up their image as offering a sanctuary for refugees, the reality is that the devastating impact of widespread privatisations and social spending cuts by successive governments have led to high levels of poverty and joblessness in major urban areas among immigrants. In some suburbs of major cities such as Stockholm and Malmo, unemployment is twice the national average. The social tensions this is producing exploded in the summer of 2014 when days of rioting broke out in the suburbs of Stockholm. As in Denmark, the capitulation of the Social Democrats to the political right has strengthened extremist forces. The ultra-nationalist Sweden Democrats, closely aligned with Frances National Front, obtained 18 percent support according to a recent poll conducted by the daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter. Over the past year, at least two dozen arson attacks on refugee housing have been reported. After three buildings intended to house refugees were burnt down during one week in October, municipalities like Umea in northern Sweden began keeping the location of refugee housing secret. Anti-refugee agitation is being combined with a push for strengthening the military. Media reports claiming that the armed forces are facing a shortfall of personnel prompted the government to announce it was reconsidering bringing back military conscription for men and women. On January 10, Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom said she would welcome the reintroduction of military and civilian conscription to help tackle the influx of refugees. Imagine if we had civilians in reserve this autumn and they could have been called on to reinforce the immigration agency, she said. Under the guise of combatting Russian aggression, Sweden and neighbouring states have stepped up military collaboration over recent years in line with the drive by US imperialism to isolate and encircle Moscow in Eastern Europe and the Baltic. The essay below by WSWS arts editor David Walsh was written for inclusion in Marc James Leger, ed. The Idea of the Avant GardeAnd What It Means Today, Volume 2 (forthcoming). The first volume was co-published by Left Curve and Manchester University Press in 2014. The two volumes bring together essays on and responses to the issue indicated in the title, the character of the contemporary artistic vanguardif such a phenomenon exists. This is the starting point for Walshs piece. One is obliged, first of all, to pose and answer a number of questions: What is the history and character of the idea of the artistic avant garde? To what extent can one argue there is such an avant garde today? If not, what would a genuine avant garde consist of and what tasks would it set itself? What intellectual influences would sustain it? How would it orient itself politically and socially? The notion of an artistic avant garde was first advanced by figures associated with French utopian socialists Henri de St. Simon and Charles Fourier in the first several decades of the nineteenth century. The conception identified art as advancing as part of or even playing a leading role in the movement for social progress. In 1825 Olinde Rodrigues, a close co-thinker of St. Simon, adopting the voice of an artist, argued, We, the artists, will serve as the avant garde: for amongst all the arms at our disposal, the power of the arts is the swiftest and most expeditious. If the arts, he asserted, support the general movement of the human spirit, if they assist the common cause, and contribute to the growth of general well-being, producing useful sensations for mankind an immense future of glory and success will immediately open up before them. Writing of The Painters Studio (1855) by Gustave Courbet, a staunch partisan of socialist thought, art historian Linda Nochlin noted that the painting is avant-garde if we understand the expression, in terms of its etymological derivation, as implying a union of the socially and the artistically progressive. In fact, the concept of the avant garde, as applied to art work, was bound up with the birth of the socialist movement. However, the relationship between socialism and advanced art as it developed in the latter part of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth is an immensely complex subject and does not yield itself to easy formulas. Only a concrete, historical study can make sense of things. In the first place, the avant garde itself is not some transhistorical entity whose torch leaps from the hand of one generation to the next. Broadly speaking, the avant-garde stage is the initial, insurgent moment in the development of every significant artistic trend. As Leon Trotsky explained, during the epoch in which the bourgeoisie still played a generally progressive historical role, each new artistic tendency emerged from the left wing of the academic school or below iti.e., from the ranks of a new generation of bohemian artists. Each succeeding trend (classicism, romanticism, realism, naturalism, symbolism, impressionism) surged up, only to climb, in its turn, after a decent interval, the steps of the academy. The wide array of what became known as avant-garde movements that appeared between 1848 and 1914 had very different attitudes toward social questions: there were trends whose members were generally sympathetic to socialism or to anarchism, those that were socially indifferent, those that were mystical or decadent, those that were positively reactionary in their political views. For their part, the leading Marxists of the day considered the fight for and the defense of art and culture as indispensable to the intellectual and spiritual development of the working class, to the ability of that class to rise to the level of its historic mission, the overthrow of capitalism. The Social Democratic Party (SDP) of Germany, the first mass workers party, organized a vast number of cultural organizations, musical and literary evenings, concerts and performances. The other socialist parties in Europe, to one extent or another, followed suit. In 1916, Rosa Luxemburg congratulated her comrade, the Marxist journalist, historian and literary critic Franz Mehring, for having saved everything of value which still remained of the once splendid culture of the bourgeoisie and brought it to us, into the camp of the socially disinherited. Mehring had brought the German workers into touch not only with classic German philosophy (Kant and Hegel), Luxemburg wrote, but also with classic German literature with Lessing, Schiller and Goethe. Every line from your brilliant pen has taught our workers that socialism is not a bread and butter problem, but a cultural movement, a great and proud world-ideology. Figures like Mehring and Georgi Plekhanov, the father of Russian Marxism, along with Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky, strove to raise the workers collective thinking and feeling through both the introduction of important art and literature of the past and the analysis and criticism of contemporary trends. As a result of that effort, these Marxists also engaged in an ongoing dialogue, directly or indirectly, with the most advanced artists themselves. At any rate, no significant cultural figure, whatever political position he or she adopted, could ignore the emergence on the historical scene of the working class or the presence of mass socialist parties, including aesthetes as pronounced as Oscar Wilde and Stephane Mallarme. Wilde, of course, authored the insightful essay, The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891), and Mallarme, in an article on impressionism in 1876, recognized the existence of the working class, a hitherto ignored people in the political life of France, whose participation in that process is a social fact that will honour the whole of the close of the nineteenth century. Plekhanovs Art and Social Life (1912) is a masterful discussion of critical cultural questions. That essay and his other works such as V.G. Belinskys Literary Views, The Proletarian Movement and Bourgeois Art, Henrik Ibsen, On the Psychology of the Workers Movement and The Ideology of Our Present-Day Philistine are unknown to the overwhelming majority of our left artists and intellectuals todayto their detriment. In Art and Social Life, Plekhanov analyzed the debate between the advocates of art for arts sake and the so-called socially utilitarian view of art. Discussing figures such as Pushkin, Theophile Gautier, Turgenev, Baudelaire, Jacques-Louis David, Flaubert and others with remarkable objectivity and sensitivity, Plekhanov drew a vivid picture of the concrete historical and social contradictions that determined the particular artists attitude at any given moment (including at different points in a single individuals career) toward society and the purposeor lack of purposeof art. Taking note of the evolution of Baudelaire, for example, the later personification of decadence and social indifference, Plekhanov explained, When the refreshing storm of the February Revolution of 1848 broke, many of the French artists who had believed in the theory of art for arts sake emphatically rejected it. Baudelaire immediately began to publish a revolutionary journal, Le salut public (in collaboration with Courbet, no less). The journal did not survive long, but as late as 1852, Plekhanov pointed out, Baudelaire called the theory of art for arts sake infantile (puerile), and declared that art must have a social purpose. Only the triumph of the counter-revolution induced Baudelaire and artists of a similar trend of mind to revert once and for all to the infantile theory of art for arts sake. In Art and Social Life, Plekhanov took up the contention of figures such as Gautier, that the beauty of a work of art was merely a function of its music, its rhythm, its form. He insisted that there was no such thing as a work which is devoid of idea and that, in the final analysis, the merit of a work was determined by the weightiness of its content. Furthermore, Plekhanov argued that not every idea could be successfully expressed in a work of art (Why cannot a miser sing of his lost money? Simply because, if he did sing of his loss, his song would not move anybody) and that when a false idea is made the basis of an artistic work, it imparts to it inherent contradictions that inevitably detract from its aesthetic merit. These historical materialist notions were very much at odds with the Nietzscheanism and irrationalism that held considerable sway in artistic circles in the period leading up to World War I. The October Revolution and the rise of Stalinism The victory of the October Revolution in 1917, the greatest event in modern history, and the creation of the first workers state, produced a new situation. The coming to power of the working class in Russia, with the conscious goal of establishing the social principles of solidarity and equality and seen by the Bolsheviks as the first stage in the world revolution, had an immense impact on cultural life. Thus, literary critic Edmund Wilson, in To the Finland Station (1940), could write in this fashion of Lenins arrival in Russia in April 1917 and the subsequent revolutionary events: The point is that western man at this moment can be seen to have made some definite progress mastering the greeds and the fears, the bewilderments, in which he has lived. The coming together of advanced politics and advanced art reached its high point in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. Artists in many parts of the globe responded to the earthshaking impact of the October Revolution. The Bolsheviks under Lenin and Trotsky won over many of the most gifted and self-sacrificing artists in Russia to the cause of world socialist revolution. Vladimir Tatlin, who designed the Monument to the Third International (191920), asserted that A revolution strengthens the impulse of invention. Trotsky observed in The Revolution Betrayed (1936) that when the first workers state had a seething mass-basis and a prospect of world revolution, it had no fear of experiments, searchings, the struggle of [artistic] schools, for it understood that only in this way could a new cultural epoch be prepared. The popular masses were still quivering in every fiber, and were thinking aloud for the first time in a thousand years. All the best youthful forces of art were touched to the quick. The rise of Stalinism and the bureaucratic degeneration of the Soviet Union and the various Communist parties had incalculable consequences, including for artistic and cultural life. In 1938, Trotsky pointed out that while art, the most sensitive and the least protected component of culture, was suffering intolerably from the decay of bourgeois society, history had set a formidable snare in the artists path in the form of the Stalinized Soviet regime and parties. The leftist intelligentsia in many cases had changed masters, and now followed the Soviet bureaucracy and its various organizations, but What has it gained? (Art and Politics in Our Epoch) Trotsky, Andre Breton and Diego Rivera offered an alternative to the official servile leftism of the day in their Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art (1938), which asserted that the totalitarian regime of the USSR, working through the so-called cultural organizations it controls in other countries, has spread over the entire world a deep twilight hostile to every sort of spiritual value. The Manifesto explained that in defending freedom of thought we have no intention of justifying political indifference, and that it is far from our wish to revive a so-called pure art which generally serves the extremely impure ends of reaction. No, our conception of the role of art is too high to refuse it an influence on the fate of society. We believe that the supreme task of art in our epoch is to take part actively and consciously in the preparation of the revolution. Testifying to the immense difficulties the revolutionary tendency confronted is the fact that the International Federation of Independent Revolutionary Art, which the Manifesto proposed to establish, fell victim to the fierce hostility of the Stalinist apparatus, the outbreak of the second imperialist war and Trotskys assassination. In this same period, in the face of the coming to power of Hitler, the monstrous Moscow Trials and the betrayal and defeat of the Spanish Revolution, various artists and intellectuals began to question the prospects for socialism and the revolutionary capacities of the working class. For a growing number it seemed problematic, or even beside the point, to treat art from the point of view of its responsibility for deepening the sensitivity and awareness of masses of the population. By 1939, it was therefore possible for Clement Greenberg, a future sympathizer of Max Shachtmans Workers Party, to publish Avant-Garde and Kitsch in Partisan Review, which proposed that the avant-garde poets and artists derive their chief inspiration from the medium they work in. The excitement of their art seems to lie most of all in its pure preoccupation with the invention and arrangement of spaces, surfaces, shapes, colors, etc., to the exclusion of whatever is not necessarily implicated in these factors. This development, Greenberg suggested, calls for neither approval nor disapproval. Behind this resigned and snobbish hollowing out of the idea of the avant garde, and ultimately its severance from any connection with socialism and the working class, lay great and tragic political events. Frightened and demoralized intellectuals of the Greenberg type, and there were many, had grown increasingly disappointed with the course of the class struggle. The Shachtman tendency broke from the Trotskyist movement in 1940. It rejected the definition of the Soviet Union as a degenerated workers state (in favor of identifying it as a type of bureaucratic collectivism) and opposed the defense of the USSR in a war with imperialism. The grouping reflected and transmitted the pessimism of portions of the middle class intelligentsia who were rapidly breaking any links with the October Revolution on the eve of World War II. The anti-Marxist Frankfurt School, which rose to prominence in large measure by default, through the mass extermination of a generation of genuine Marxists by Stalinism, also played a crucial role in neutering the concept of the avant garde. A left disciple of the reactionary irrationalist Heidegger, Herbert Marcuse dismissed the capacity of the artist to cognize the world and influence an audience through the rationality and truth of his or her efforts. Indeed, why should a School that found no objective conditions that would provide a socioeconomic impulse for the development of socialist consciousness preoccupy itself with an exploration of our life of three dimensions? The genuine avant-garde, Marcuse wrote, would be those who bring about a radical change in style and technique. He argued that art created a distinct realm, constituted by the aesthetic form, which represented and criticized the prevailing unfreedom and thus encouraged the individual to imagine his or her own psychic liberation. Echoing Greenberg in his own fashion, Marcuse asserted that the political potential of art lies only in its own aesthetic dimension. (The Aesthetic Dimension, 1977) Discussing Theodor Adorno, Peter Burger states the case rather plainly when he suggests that this leading figure in the Frankfurt School not only sees late capitalism as definitively stabilized but also feels that historical experience has shown the hopes placed in socialism to be ill-founded. For him, avant-gardiste art is a radical protest that rejects all false reconciliation with what exists and thus the only art form that has historical legitimacy. In other words, advanced art becomes here a gesture of individual-aesthetic protest against an ugly, wretched and essentially unalterable world. (Theory of the Avant-Garde, 1974) In recent decades, any connection between the avant garde in art and revolutionary or radical politics has largely disappeared, with the exception of the activities of a few isolated groupings. Avant-garde art is defined at present almost entirely as a formal category. In reality, it has lost any significant meaning. Any theory of the avant garde that ignores the concrete-political dynamics of the twentieth century is without value. Serious art has not declined because of the particular qualities of postwar bourgeois society, or the adaptability or supposedly infinite flexibility of late capitalism or the nature of art as an affirmative bourgeois institution, but as part of a generalized, temporary cultural regression brought about by historic defeats suffered by the working class due to the politics and policies of definite parties and leaderships (Stalinism and social democracy, above all). The lengthy period of reaction and stagnation resulting from the betrayals of global revolutionary opportunities, along with the accompanying dominance of national-reactionary bureaucracies over the working class movement, depressed and weakened the artist and artistic life. Art cannot save itself What follows from the above conclusion is the understanding that art cannot save itself. The messianism of various groupings is inappropriate and counterproductive. Art cannot overcome, or make an end run around, the crisis of revolutionary leadership and perspective in the working class. That is a political-revolutionary task. Art can, however, contribute powerfully and in a unique fashion to the process through which social reality and human psychology are more deeply and richly grasped, through which the mystification of bourgeois social relations is pierced, through which the existing values and institutions are undermined, through which the outrage and indignation of masses of people are ignited. Art can act as a mirror in which the population sees its shortcomings, illusions and stupidities, even its atrocitiesa living mirror, of course, with distinct and intensely complex qualities. All this plays an indispensable part in creating an atmosphere in which social revolution becomes thinkable and realizable. Cultural questions remain today as they have been throughout the modern era, intensely explosive political questions. Every significant work of art has social consequences. The ruling elites are tremendously sensitive to thiskeeping the population numbed and paralyzed is a matter of life and death for them. Writers, filmmakers, painters, novelists, poets, composers are jailed and shot for a reason, because their efforts call into question the status quo. Avant garde has a militant connotation. The phrase appeared in the title of many socialist and left-wing publications in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century for that reason. But little or nothing of that combativeness remains in the art world today. To what extent are avant-garde artists in the front lines of the struggle against a new world war, against poverty and unemployment, against police violence, against the danger of police-state dictatorship? The question hardly requires an answer. In my view, if the idea of an artistic avant garde, the vanguard, is to recover any concrete meaning today it must involve, before anything else, determined, uncompromising opposition to the existing social order. Much of what I see in galleries or exhibitions that presents itself, or is presented, as avant-garde is very unsatisfactory. So-called experimental filmmaking is equally poor. At best there is a hankering after a shock effect, which becomes its own form of conformism, or some technically innovative method of working with materials or images. A certain number of radical artists appear to be working under the influence of distorted or one-sided interpretations of Bertolt Brechts alienation effect or the impact of Adorno-like views that only inaccessible art has value todayor a combination of the two. Much of the time such work is chilly and unaffecting, abstract and far removed from the big difficulties and issues of modern social life. Furthermore, works described as avant-garde are often bound up with the promotion of identity politics, the self-centeredand ever more poisonousobsession with gender, sexuality and race that dominates substantial layers of the upper-middle class. Then, certain radical artists go to some lengths to prove that art museums and other establishment institutions are funded by big corporations and function as establishment institutions. Some of this is useful, but on the whole it is not much more, at best, than a series of truisms. The content of enduring art is life. Every new tendency in art begins with rebellion. There is no reason to accept the current prejudice that advanced art needs to be defined by any particular set of formal qualities, or the absence of other ones. It would be better, in my view, to judge art today by its attitude toward the existing social order and suffering, struggling humanity. In that sense, contrary to Walter Benjamin (The tendency of a work of literature can be politically correct only if it is also correct in the literary sense, The Author as Producer, 1934) and others, there is no good reason why disparate approaches, as long as they all reveal a desire to explore reality freshly and evocatively, and bring out its essential truth, could not co-exist as equally avant-garde under contemporary conditions. We have to begin to change the current situation. Of course, this is not an open-door policy, or mere liberalism in regard to artistic form. Some approaches and methods have been surpassed or discredited by historical-artistic experience. Recourse to outworn photographic naturalism and passive realism, much less dreamy mysticism, emotional bombast or the manipulation of the spectators heartstrings, will not bring happy results. In any event, whatever anyone else may do, we Marxists will not be embarrassed to call the genuinely advanced artists by their proper name. Art is born in protest, but against what? Realism is not a matter of style or school, it comes in myriad forms, but it involves a commitment to engage fearlessly with life and the world. Every form of realism continues to be blackguarded with references to Stalinist Socialist Realism, which represented a systematic, violent repudiation of both socialism and realism and of the entire Marxist tradition. We are speaking of historical, psychological realism, the ability to reveal the times, to get to the core of things, by whatever artistic means. So many phenomena have not found expression at all, or only in the most limited manner. There has not been for decades a film, or play, or art exhibition that has left an audience or a viewer truly, profoundly shakenor wholeheartedly, unrestrainedly laughing. What really needs to be done today? Looking at the current situation, certain things are striking. We have now lived through almost fifteen years of the global war on terror, which has been used as the pretext to curtail liberties, repress political opposition and create the structure for authoritarian rule. Yet very little of substance and nothing of genuine world-historical dimensions have emerged in literature, film or drama, or in any other medium, for that matter, dealing with these enormous events. One has only to compare this with the work generated by World War I, World War II, and even the Korean and Vietnam wars. Nor has the staggering, unprecedented accumulation of wealth by a tiny fraction of society been treated in anything but the most superficial, unserious manner. The working class has all but disappeared as a subject for artistic treatment. Not only in North America, but in Europe, South America and Asia as well. And yet the proletarianization of the global population goes on apace. How is this obliviousness, this willful ignorance, to be accounted for? Why is there no savage mockery of this society rotting on its feet, its swinish ruling elite, its repugnant political campaigns, its ignoramus candidates, its squalid billionaire-swindler entrepreneurs, and all the filth that has floated to the surface and now forms the daily content of authorized public life? Any honest assessment of contemporary lifeas a preconditionwould require casting a critical eye on what passes as official ideology, including middle-class leftismthe dreadful racial, gender, sexual and green politics and everything that goes with them, the self-serving affectations of the not quite top 5 or 6 percent wealthiest portion of the population. Among the many things in desperate need of satirical treatment is this American (and global) left, this pseudo-intelligentsia. The art and academic worlds are saturated with this stuff. In these circles, one finds the worst conformism and conservatism, and frequently a bitter hostility to the working class. Avant garde? Really, this is more often than not the rear guard of bourgeois complacency. If the artists want to make some headway, they could start by paying less attention to themselves and those around them. Someone has to say it: you are really not that interesting! One of the great difficulties at present is that contemporary avant-garde artists are largely working with recycled ideas, long ago analyzed and rejected by serious artists and intellectuals. There is a great deal of pretension. Words and phrases are thrown around, and an incomprehensible jargon has become standard. The more substantial artists of an earlier period recognized a distinction between sensationalism, the artificial creation of controversy, and something else entirely, a more critical appraisal, which always involves examining the socioeconomic foundations of society. A great deal of superficiality and eclecticism dominate in art circles. By and large, we have cliques and celebrities, figures with careers and perhaps corporate support and eventual government honors, rather than artists and artistic schools that stand for something important and groundbreaking, dedicated to the pursuit of truth at any cost. Is this generation of artists less talented or committed than previous ones? Perhaps, but talent and commitment themselves are products of social and historical circumstances. Artistic greatness is not summoned from the vasty deep by mere will power or mental effort alone. The contemporary crisis of cultural life can only be understood on the basis of a serious study of the critical experiences of the twentieth century, the experiences that have shaped present-day social and psychological reality. In left artistic circles one encounters numerous references to Marxism, to the Russian Revolution, to Stalinism, but often names and tendencies are indiscriminately and carelessly lumped together (or worse), without context or any serious examination of the experiences with which they are associated. Trotsky In leftist aesthetic literature, Trotsky, the greatest revolutionary of the century, is generally mentioned, if at all, only in passing. The various commentators studiously ignore Literature and Revolution, Class and Art, Art and Politics in Our Epoch, Problems of Everyday Life and other writings, although these works provide the most indispensable insight into the problems of culture in the present epoch. Trotskys ideas still provoke a hostile reaction from those who take the trouble to respond. With all due respect, the positions of one of the contributors to Volume 1 of The Idea of the Avant Garde, Boris Groys, call for the sharpest criticism. In his morbid essay On Art Activism, published elsewhere, the German-born academic inveighs, above all, against the notion of progress, which leaves behind only debris, ruins, and personal catastrophes. The ideology of progress, he writes, is phantasmal and absurd. Groys continues: Traditionally, we associate art with a movement towards perfection. Modern and contemporary art wants to make things not better but worseand not relatively worse but radically worse: to make dysfunctional things out of functional things, to betray expectations, to reveal the invisible presence of death where we tend to see only life. Finally, he refers to Trotskywhose revolutionary optimism he finds most objectionableas one of those leftist and Socialist theoreticians [who] remained under the spell of the idea of upward mobilitybe it individual or collective. Groys cites the deservedly famed concluding paragraphs of Literature and Revolution in which Trotsky envisions the future: Man will become immeasurably stronger, wiser, and subtler; his body will become more harmonized, his movement more rhythmic, his voice more musical. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above this ridge new peaks will rise. This remarkable passage, which has inspired generations of revolutionaries, only appalls and repels the gloomy Groys: It is this artistic, social, and political alpinism from which modern and contemporary art tries to save us. Modern art is made against the natural gift. It does not develop human potential but annuls it. It operates not by expansion but by reduction. Indeed, a genuine political transformation cannot be achieved according to the same logic of talent, effort, and competition on which the current market economy is based, but only by metanoia [the process of experiencing a psychotic breakdown and subsequent psychological healing] and kenosis [the self-emptying of ones own will and becoming entirely receptive to Gods divine will]by a U-turn against the movement of progress, a U-turn against the pressure of upward mobility. Only in this way can we escape the pressure of our own gifts and talents, which enslaves and exhausts us by pushing us to climb one mountain after another. Only if we learn to aestheticize the lack of gifts as well as the presence of gifts, and thus not differentiate between victory and failure, do we escape the theoretical blockage that endangers contemporary art activism. Groys, who predictably refers in his essay to Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger and Foucault, is here glorifying reaction and repudiating any connection with progressive ideas. This flows inevitably from the orientation of postmodernism and related trends. In the 1930s Trotsky exercised enormous influence because the fate of socialism was identified with the Russian Revolution and the generation of revolutionary Marxists who had provided its intellectual and moral leadership. To this day no ones ideas are more radical or advanced than Trotskys. Taking a position on the struggle between Stalinism and Trotskyism was the harshest and most revealing litmus test of that earlier period, a test that most artists failed. For instance, Brecht could announce one evening in 1931 at a cafe, according to Benjamin, that there were good reasons for thinking that Trotsky was the greatest living European writer, but was unable, even in the face of his own collaborators disappearing in the genocidal purges in the USSR, to break with the Stalinist milieu. Benjamin himself, who also read Trotsky assiduously, eliminated comments by the latter from an address he was to give at the Stalinist-run Institute for the Study of Fascism in Paris in 1934. True, uncompromising radicalism and independence are rarely found among artists. Many if not most, were the truth told, crave acceptance. They want and need an audience and recognition-legitimization-compensation from the society of which they are members, or from a powerful apparatus like the Stalinist bureaucracy, even if they disapprove intellectually of that society or apparatus. Something of this finds expression in the comment of filmmaker R.W. Fassbinder, in a 1974 interview, in regard to the German writer Theodor Fontane: He lived in a society whose faults he recognized and could describe very precisely but all the same a society he needed, to which he really wanted to belong. He rejected everybody and found everything alien and yet fought all his life for recognition within this society. And thats also my attitude to society. Without for a moment underestimating the objective, socioeconomic processes at work, it would be wrong as well to underestimate the impact that the general absence of historical knowledge has had, including on the artists themselves. In this regard, postmodernism, poststructuralism and related trends have played the most deplorable role, attacking the possibility of establishing historical, objective truth. Yes, we have a Marxist this or that on every hand in artistic and intellectual circles, but there is hardly one of these supposed Marxists who can make sense of a single important global development. The endless war on terror, the sociocide in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, the right-wing coup in Ukraine and the imperialist threats against Russia, the divisions between the US and Chinahow can one pretend to produce significant art when one knows so little about all this, when one cannot explain anything in a reasoned, consistent manner? So many radicals and leftists have found themselves dragged behind one or another human rights cliche, these poorly disguised imperialist interventions, beginning more than two decades ago in Bosnia (Susan Sontag, 1993: Like most of the people in Sarajevo, I am waiting for Clinton) and carrying on in more recent days in Libya and Syriawith Iran, Russia and China to come? Rejecting kneejerk anti-imperialism, i.e., principled opposition to great power politics and neo-colonial oppression, is the latest watchword of the pseudo-left. Many artists were enraptured by Occupy Wall Street, only to see it collapse ignominiously in a matter of months and become yet another path back to the Democratic Party and the Obama campaign in particular. And what about the widespread support for Obama himself among artists, the candidate of change, this grotesque product of the military-intelligence apparatus and high finance? One cannot be so wrong about so many major events and still claim to possess extraordinary insight. Surely, at some point a degree of self-criticism must set in. The avant-garde artists, the intellectuals, are as hopeless as the average man on the street at present, probably more so. History demonstrates that it is not enough to bear a grudge against bourgeois society. Bohemianism does not exact a high cost and can even be a marketable commodity in its own right. It is absurd to imagine that one can orient oneself on the issues of our time aside from working through the critical historical questions. Postmodernism evolved precisely as an attempt to codify and legitimize an evasion of such questions. The end of metanarratives (social progress, the heritage of the Enlightenment, Marxism, the class struggle, etc.) was pronounced. There was no need any longerin fact, it was positively harmful and deceptiveto speak about Truth, History and so forth. As the arch-pragmatist-postmodernist philosopher Richard Rorty observed, when the subject of objective knowledge or truth came up, he preferred to change the subject. But this is in no way improved upon by the leftist academic and former Maoist Bruno Bosteels encouragement of active forgetfulness to combat the culture of memory (a version perhaps of Nietzsches Forgetting is essential to action of any kind). As though one could bypass the experience of the Russian Revolution, the struggle between the theory of Permanent Revolution and Stalins socialism in a single country, the lessons of the critical moments in the global class struggle in the twentieth century and hold a coherent view of the present political or cultural situation! Certainly political-historical ignorance and artistic vision do not go hand in hand. At the time of the demise of the USSR in 199192, only the International Committee of the Fourth International, the Trotskyist movement, insisted that everything depended on a reworking of the Russian Revolution, that all creative thought was bound up with a study of the greatest experience of the working class and socialist movement. Only on that basis has something positive been produced. The World Socialist Web Site, the most widely read socialist Internet publication on the planet, launched in 1998, is one of the products of that effort. The past several decades have witnessed the intellectual coming of age of a generation educated outside any genuine Marxist tradition (not the fraudulent Frankfurt School or Western Marxism variety). What has taken place on the watch of the postmodernists, the critical thinkers and the rest? No individual has emerged in the past forty years in global culture or politics that one would have to come to grips with to orient oneself in the current situationthere has not been, in fact, a single irreplaceable figure. That is the fruit of the extreme relativism, subjectivism and irrationalism that have ruled the roost in the art and academic worlds. The scientist attempts to understand the laws of nature accurately for the purposes, ultimately, of improving human life. The Marxist revolutionary attempts to reflect accurately in his or her thought the law-determined movement of the objective world, including social development, and make this reflection the basis of revolutionary practice. But isnt this effort, to align thought with reality and translate that into a practice or a material object, part of art work too? Trotskys comrade and fellow Left Oppositionist, Aleksandr Voronsky, the most insightful Marxist literary critic of the twentieth century and alsoone is tempted to say for that reasonignored by the intellectual left, insisted that the artist who surrenders him or herself to the richness of the world, finds the latter as it is in itself, in its most lively and beautiful forms. An artistic work is truthful, Voronsky argued, if the sensations and conceptions it arouses in us correspond to the actual nature of things, if they have the character of objectivity. The artist does not differ from the scientist in thatthe object is the same. The uniqueness or particularity of the artist is that he thinks in images rather than abstract categories. What the artists presently know of and think about the world is inadequate. The current shibboleths and fashionable formulas cannot be simply shuffled around. New intellectual matter, new problems, new concerns have to be introduced into the intellectual bloodstream. Objective conditions will play a major role. The working class has been held back from active participation in political life for so long by its bureaucratic misleaders. It is now re-emerging onto the historical stage. What has now become a more or less open rebellion by autoworkers in the US against the United Auto Workersno longer a union in any meaningful sense, but a multi-billion-dollar business, a corporate-labor syndicatehas enormous implications. A mass movement by workers against capitalism will do much to disperse the clouds of skepticism and of pessimism which cover the horizon of mankind, including the artists. In my view, artists and intellectuals need to study and understand certain critical events and developments in the twentieth century. Those include, above all, the October Revolution, the rise of the Stalinist bureaucracy and struggle between Stalinism and Trotskyism; the bitter lessons of the conflicts and defeats in Germany, Britain, China, Spain, France; the titanic effort to build a new revolutionary international, the Fourth International, founded in 1938, and its subsequent internal battles, bound up with the struggle to establish the political independence of the working class. To a large extent today, perspectiveincluding artistic perspectiveis history. To conclude: there is every reason to have confidence that events will give a new and forceful impetus to artistic life. Revolutionary crises not only expose what is inadequate, dated and corrupt; they also serve to inspire that which is genuinely creative, resourceful and honest. The coming eruptions of social struggle will shatter many reputations overnight. The term celebrity will acquire an exclusively pejorative connotation. The great artists of the new age will not be given medals at the Kennedy Center nor will they think of submitting themselves to such a disgrace. The genuine avant garde that emerges in moral and political solidarity with the upsurge of the working class will be compelled to draw heavily upon the strategic experiences and lessons of the great revolutionary struggles of the past. The new avant garde will understand its own work as part of humanitys historical movement from oppression to freedom. New revelations on the intensive surveillance of the Kouachi brothers and of Amedy Coulibaly carried out by French intelligence before they launched terror attacks against Charlie Hebdo and the Hyper Cacher grocery in January 2015 raise the most serious questions as to the political origins of the attacks. Already last year, it was hard to understand how individuals known to the intelligence services could have prepared such attacks without being detected. The revelation that Coulibaly received weapons from Claude Hermant, a police informant tied to the neo-fascist and anti-Muslim National Front (FN), raised further questions as to the possible complicity of political forces in France that could have benefited from them. The attack not only accelerated the normalization of the FN, but reinforced police powers, a key element of the policy of the ruling Socialist Party (PS). Documents obtained by investigating magistrates probing the January 2015 attacks raise even more questions, however, about possible complicity of forces within the French state. The Kouachi brothers were closely monitored between 2010 and 2015 due to their direct contact with leaders of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), a branch of al Qaeda often described by NATO security forces, after the killing of Osama bin Laden, as the most dangerous in the world. According to about 40 reports of the General Directorate of Interior Security (DGSI) obtained by Le Monde, French intelligence indeed stopped monitoring Cherif and Said Kouachi a few months before the attacks. The decision not to monitor individuals linked to the AQAP leadership is inexplicable. AQAP members in Yemen are routinely targeted by US drone strikes, supposedly because a war on this group is necessary to prevent them from operating in Europe or America. French intelligence were already investigating Cherif Kouachi and Amedy Coulibaly as far back as March 2010. Starting at that time, according to Le Monde, the two regularly visited Djamil Beghal. Le Monde observes that Coulibaly was linked to the hard core of French jihadism, without this prompting anything other than indifference from the authorities. On the other hand, at that time, French intelligence was following the Kouachi brothers very closely. Beghal was under house arrest after a ten-year sentence for planning attacks against US targets in Europe. Beghal was being tapped and monitored by the Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence (later renamed the DGSI) and targeted for an investigation by the Central Directorate of the Judiciary Police (DCPJ). Between 2011 and 2013, the DGSI's reports show that the Kouachi brothers were close to Peter Cherif, who was also indicted together with Cherif Kouachi for having gone to join the war in Iraq in the early 2000s as part of the Buttes-Chaumont Islamist group. Peter Cherif managed to flee before his sentencing in March 2011 and obtain a leadership role inside AQAP. Cherif Kouachi, on the other hand, was arrested before he could take the plane. Citing judicial sources, Le Monde reports, Starting in January 2012, there was phone contact with Peter Cherif. Said Kouachi carefully tried to hide them, using several SIM cards and phone booths. That was what put him also in the DGSI's sights. Then the General Directorate of Exterior Security (DGSE) reinforced concerns by reporting that he had possibly spent time in Yemen in the summer of 2011. It continued, Starting in April 2012, the Kouachi brothers were considered to be so dangerous that they were targeted for joint DGSE-DGSI investigations. A month before, the DGSI even placed Cherif on the list of its 'priority objectives.' Investigators were concerned particularly about his distrustful attitude and his meeting with former members of the Frankfurt group. These veterans of the Afghan war had been convicted of plotting attacks in 2000 on the Christmas market in Strasbourg. Said Kouachi, for his part, discreetly re-established contact with Farid Benyettou, the leader of the Buttes-Chaumont network. The Kouachi brothers' Internet traffic was intercepted and showed their constant, growing interest for AQAP and Yemen. As priority targets, the Kouachi brothers were targeted for intensive surveillance, which intelligence officials then somehow abandoned. Said's communications were tapped for eight months in 2012 and two months in 2014, from February to June. Those of Cherif were followed for two years, from 2011 to 2013. One can ask what motivated the intelligence services' decision to stop the surveillance of the Kouachi brothers. Le Monde's analysis, describing this decision as a bad twist of fate and a missed rendezvous, explains nothing at all. Le Monde claims that, according to the intelligence services, no physical or technical surveillance allowed to point to the slightest preparation of violent action. This conclusion is in flagrant contradiction with the contents of the dossiers of the Kouachi brothers and of Coulibaly. The Kouachi brothers were priority objectives, considered to be extremely dangerous by French intelligence and at the heart of AQAP's network in France. As for Coulibaly, despite his relations with the Kouachi brothers and a broadly similar background, he was never considered as a priority objective. He was in prison from 2010 to 2014, according to Le Monde, for his role in the planned jailbreak of Smain Ait Ali Belkacem, another key terrorist figure, condemned to life in prison for the attack on the Musee d'Orsay regional transit station in 1995 in Paris. Remarkably, even after Coulibaly helped plan the jailbreak of a leading Algerian Islamist terrorist in France, the intelligence services did not consider him to be an Islamist. Amedy Coulibaly was never considered by the DGSI as a member of the radical Islamist tendency. He was therefore never a target. To the end, he was seen as a minor player and treated as a delinquent and standard petty criminal, Le Monde writes. This raises how French intelligence concluded that Coulibaly was not an Islamist. Given that he maintained a romantic relationship with a policewoman (adjutante gendarme), who according to Le Canard Enchaine and Le Figaro is named Emmanuelle, one can ask whether he might have accepted an offer to work for the French police. Further questions are raised by revelations in Le Canard Enchaine that in October 2014, months before the attacks, Cherif Kouachi stopped in front of the offices of Charlie Hebdo and talked to someone he found smoking there. Kouachi belligerently criticized the magazine for attacking Islam and asked the man, a journalist at the Premieres Lignes audiovisual company, whether he worked for Charlie Hebdo. The journalist subsequently reported the incident and gave Kouachi's license plate number to one of the policemen on Charlie Hebdo's security detail, who filed a report. This report was missing, however, from the investigating dossier provided by the police to judicial investigators, and there is no sign that any official action was taken on the matter. This has led Ingrid Brinsolaro, whose husband Frank was killed while on police duty guarding Charlie Hebdo on the day of the attack, to file involuntary homicide charges against the DGSI and other intelligence bodies. The French state's forbearance faced with individuals tied to al Qaeda's most virulent branch, which was known to be targeting France, emerges in the final analysis from the close relations between Islamist terrorism and imperialism. Since 2011, France, together with the United States and other NATO powers have used al Qaeda and other Islamist groups like the Islamic State (IS), which took responsibility for the November 13 attacks, in neo-colonial wars in the Middle East. The first such war was the 2011 war in Libya. After the Libyan regime collapsed, NATO used the same forces again in Syria to topple President Bashar al-Assad and isolate Iran. The imperialist powers claimed, at least initially, that their proxy forces fighting in Libya and Syria were democratic and progressive. NATO countries' intelligence services did not aggressively target the Kouachi brothers and Coulibaly because, in the final analysis, it was not in the interests of the ruling class. These terrorists were part of the same networks being mobilized in the imperialist wars in Libya and Syria. At the same time, the crimes of the Kouachi brothers and Coulibaly were used to justify a domestic policy that the PS and the entire French financial aristocracy was seeking to implement. At the end of 2014, the PS had its back to the wall, its austerity policies were at 3 percent in the polls, and it feared that it might totally disintegrate in the 2017 presidential election. Prime Minister Manuel Valls had raised the danger of the death of the left in France. The January 2015 attacks allowed the PS to somewhat stabilize itself, in the short term, by pushing the political atmosphere even further to the right, putting 10,000 soldiers on the streets, and accelerating attacks on democratic rights and the integration of the FN into the political mainstream. The November 13 attacks, which claimed 130 lives, allowed the PS to reinforce these police measures by imposing a state of emergency, carrying out mass extra-judicial searches and seizures, and proposing deprivation of nationality for dual nationalsa measure backed by the FN. The terror attacks thus benefited political forces closely tied to the police and to the FN, and served to justify the drive towards an authoritarian state. Hollande was subsequently presented in a new light, as a war president. One can ask whether such anti-democratic considerations played a role in the decision to suspend surveillance of Coulibaly and the Kouachi brothers, thus allowing them to prepare their attacks. A Sri Lanka Economic Forum was organised by the Colombo government on January 7 and 8 with the participation of several international investors and economists, including US-based multi-billionaire investor George Soros and former World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz. Facing an escalating economic crisis, the pro-US government of President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe hosted the forum as part of its efforts to attract foreign investment, on the promise of transforming Sri Lanka into a regional financial and commercial hub. By inviting Soross Open Society Foundation to sponsor the event, Wickremesinghe signaled the governments commitment to serve the interests of finance capital. Wickremesinghe said the government wanted to make Sri Lanka the most competitive state in South Asia and build it as a mega-city, sitting between Singapore and Dubai. Both are police-states, suppressing all forms of dissent, in order to defend the financial and commercial activities of their ruling elites. Soros, one of the main speakers, warned the government that it was going to launch its agenda amid a worsening global financial crisis. He told the gathering: I am afraid, I have to be a messenger that delivers bad news because you are facing a very difficult external situation. Soros added: When I look at the financial markets there is a serious challenge, which reminds me of the crisis we had in 2008. Soros was referring to the collapse of major US finance houses in 2008, triggering turmoil that spread to other major capitalist countries, opening of a new period of global economic breakdown. Referring to Chinas currency devaluations, Soros asserted that China was de-stabilising the rest of the world and inflicting ... deflationary pressures. In reality, China, which functions as the world main cheap labour platform, has been hit by global recessionary tendencies and is now itself contributing to the worsening international crisis. Soros pointed to the crisis only to insist on the need for the Colombo government to impose austerity measures. Money is no longer coming to developing countries and harsh choices will have to be made, instead of waiting for things to get better, he said. Last March, Soros promoted the austerity measures of the Syriza government in Greece, which included slashing wages, jobs, pensions and welfare programs to meet the demands of the European powers and the banks. At the Colombo forum, Soros insisted: Sri Lanka will have to swim upstream as the external global environment becomes more hostile and funds flow out of developing countries and Chinas economy becomes unstable. At the same time, Soros sees Sri Lanka as a bright spot for his business to extract profits. According to media reports, he is looking at $US300 million worth of investment opportunities in the fields of tourism, solar power, IT, education and health. Significantly, Soros praised the unity government of Sirisenas Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and Wickremesinghes United National Party (UNP). The ruling coalition has been formed to unite the two main capitalist parties, backed by the trade unions and pseudo-left groups, to confront the working class. The ruling coalition was formed after Sirisena was installed at last Januarys presidential election through a regime-change operation, backed by Washington, to oust former president Mahinda Rajapakse. Washington was hostile to Rajapakses close political and economic relations with Beijing, and intervened to bring Sri Lanka into line with its diplomatic and military encirclement of China. In his speech to the forum, Stiglitz emphasised the need to tackle Sri Lankas deepening foreign debt crisis. He urged the government to seek the assistance of the World Bank and other international agencies to address the debt problem. Last year, Stiglitz also backed Syrizas plan to seek debt relief by implementing austerity measures. The economic forum served as a reminder of the acute problems produced for the Sri Lankan ruling elite by the global downturn and financial turmoil, and indicated the ruthless austerity drive to come. Just two days after the forum, Sri Lankan Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake announced that the government had decided to seek a $1 billion investment from an unnamed Belgium source. Ostensibly, the purpose of the investment is to stabilise the value of the rupee, which devalued by 10 percent last year, with a further rapid downturn expected. This rather dubious arrangement is part of the governments plans to raise $3-4 billion in the coming months. Foreign investors have been informed they can remit money without any questions being asked, and the government will allow them to withdraw money at any time. Karunanayake said this would give confidence to the investors, but economists have warned that the plan could create a volatile situation. Investment capital has been leaving the country. The securities market suffered a net outflow of $1.1 billion in the first 11 months of 2015, compared to $104.5 million during the same period of 2014. Share prices on the Colombo Stock Exchange have fallen to their lowest level in nearly one and a half years. Moreover, the balance of payments deficit was estimated at $2 billion for 2015, and the foreign debt servicing cost for 2016 is predicted to be around $5 billion. The countrys foreign reserves declined to $7.3 billion at the end of last year and they are estimated to be inadequate for external financing needs. Workers remittances, mainly from domestic servants in the Middle East, have been the main contributor to foreign exchange earnings, but began to decelerate with the escalating warfare in that region. Remittances grew only by 0.8 percent in October 2015, compared to October 2014. In response, the government has turned to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), seeking further loans. However, the harsh cuts that the IMF will impose on public spending will have grave consequences. A Sunday Times editorial noted: Further IMF facilities will have measures that will result in a part contraction of the economy in the initial years, leading to hard times ahead. The government and the capitalist class fear social unrest. However, the proposed solutions will only exacerbate the economic and political crisis. Hundreds of people protested outside the Capitol building in Lansing, Michigan Tuesday as Governor Rick Snyder delivered his annual State of the State address, which began by addressing the water crisis in the city of Flint. Snyder, together with other state, federal and local officials, is deeply implicated in the decision to supply the residents of Flint, Michigan with tainted water, which put thousands of people at risk for lead poisoning and may have contributed to at least ten deaths. Demonstrators demanded accountability, with many calling for Snyders resignation and indictment, and spoke of the broader social implications of the Flint water crisis. Hundreds demonstrate against Flint water poisoning at Michigan state capitol On Monday, more than 80 students and workers attended the final campaign meeting of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) in the student parliament elections at Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany. Joining representatives of the IYSSE in Germany was Niles Williamson, a representative of the IYSSE in the United States. To open the meeting, IYSSE spokesperson Christoph Vandreier discussed the rapidly growing threat of war. He said that the return of German militarism found expression in combat missions in Syria, Mali, Afghanistan and several other countries. Amid growing opposition to war within the population, he noted, official political circles were ever more openly embracing police state measures and chauvinism. The hysteria around New Years Eve in Cologne is a prime example of a dirty smear campaign, said Vandreier, pointing to the lack of evidence to substantiate media allegations of sexual assaults by hundreds of refugees at Colognes central train station on New Years Eve. Despite the lack of evidence, not a single party in the German parliament and not a single major newspaper refused to take part in the hysteria, and all called for a massive build-up of the police. The fact that outside of the IYSSE and the Partei fur Soziale Gleichheit (Socialist Equality PartyPSG) there is no political movement opposed to the drive to war despite the widespread opposition in the population, was, he said, to be explained by the transformation of the leaders of the former anti-war movement into warmongers. High-ranking members of the Left Party agitate against refugees, he pointed out, while the Greens have become the most explicit supporters of war. These developments contain fundamental lessons, said Vandreier. They show that one cannot fight against war without first addressing its roots in the capitalist system. Glaring social inequality and the contradiction between global production and the nation-state system fuel imperialist conflicts and are leading toward a third world war, he explained. We answer the outbreak of national conflicts and the crisis of the European Union with the international unity of workers, said Vandreier. A socialist perspective is required. Niles Williamson, a member of the IYSSE in the United States, who came to Berlin to take part in the meeting, spoke on the significance of the work at Humboldt University. Students and workers all over the world will see an IYSSE victory in the student parliament elections as a clear message against the ruling elites lust for war. The resurgence of militarism was, of course, not limited to Germany, Williamson stressed. The government of the United States is the centre of world imperialism and remains the leading supplier of violence in todays world. Williamson addressed in detail the wars against Iraq, Libya and Syria and the threat of war with Russia. Drone assassinations, torture and kidnappings are all in a days work for the American military, he said. The threat of American imperialism and the danger that its pursuit of hegemony could lead to a Third World War is very real, Williamson said. But there is a strong opposing force, and that is the American working class. The last 15 years of war and social cuts have not gone unnoticed by workers, and there is widespread opposition to capitalism. Williamson strikingly described how basic social services have been destroyed and the rights of workers undermined. No one sees the United States as the land of opportunity anymore, but as the land of foreclosures, utility shut-offs and the dismantling of public education. There are strong indications that workers are entering into ferocious class struggles, Williamson continued. The IYSSE and the Socialist Equality Party won considerable support last year among autoworkers in their fight against the drive to slash wages and benefits by the United Auto Workers union and the US automakers. Polls have shown that a majority of Americans under the age of 29 see socialism in a more positive light than capitalism. Following Williamsons remarks, Sven Wurm, the lead candidate of the IYSSE at Humboldt University, spoke. We have demonstrated, he said, that here at Humboldt University, professors work out the ideological narrative for a more aggressive foreign policy, for new wars, for German world power status and for a strong state, authoritarian forms of rule and, finally, dictatorship. Humboldt University professors Herfried Munkler and Jorg Baberowski have played a central role in this process, he pointed out. Munkler has spoken openly in favour of rewriting history in order to implement a new aggressive German foreign policy. He himself declared that Germany would have to become the taskmaster of Europe. Baberowski defends the Nazi apologist Ernst Nolte and relativizes the Nazis war crimes. Over the past week he has repeatedly appeared in the media to rail against refugees. He openly calls for the building of an extreme right-wing party. Wurm said that when one looks at the developments at Humboldt University and the media campaign in Cologne, one sees how the old questions of xenophobia and dictatorship are resurfacing. It is worth noting, he added, that every party in the German political establishment supports these policies and that the IYSSE is the only force at the university that has opposed the drive to war and the smear campaign against refugees. War will not be stopped by a student parliament election, said Wurm, but our success is an important indicator that there is an opposition to these developments. At Humboldt University, which over the course of the 20th Century played a significant role in the preparation of two world wars, this is extremely important. The student parliament election is not the end of a campaign, but the beginning of an anti-war movement, Wurm concluded. In the discussion that followed, a history student who had learned about the IYSSE during the campaign spoke up. I want to support a vote for the IYSSE, she said. She had read about a ban on foreigners in swimming pools in the city Bornheim and was shocked at such developments. Hostility toward foreigners was being stirred up, she said. With the delivery of weapons and combat missions, Germany was contributing to the misery of people who are being turned into refugees. Other listeners expressed thanks for the contributions and the work of the IYSSE at Humboldt University. Many wanted to know more about what the IYSSE meant by a socialist perspective and why the organization placed such importance on basing the fight against war on the working class. A supporter also asked what the IYSSE hoped to accomplish in the student parliament. In his answer, Vandreier stressed that the perverse growth of inequality and the global drive to war could be understood only with a class analysis of society. A socialist perspective meant that workers had to intervene independently in the political situation and reorganize the economy to meet human needs. The theoretical questions the IYSSE was fighting out at Humboldt had great significance for this task. Katja, who is running as a candidate for the IYSSE and moderated the evenings discussion, added that socialism had nothing in common with Stalinism, which had come to prevail in the Soviet Union. Stalinism was the hostile reaction of the ruling bureaucracy to the October Revolution and not its continuation, she said. Katja also underscored the significance of the elections. The other groups running in the elections are trying to prevent the student parliament from becoming an instrument of students in the fight against the transformation of the university into an ideological centre for war, she said. The student parliament elections at Humboldt University are currently underway and will conclude on Wednesday, January 20 at 6 pm. The US Supreme Court announced Tuesday that it will decide on a Texas case that has blocked the Obama administrations implementation of an executive decree that would have temporarily shielded a fraction of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US from deportation. The high court will hear arguments in the case in April and likely issue a decision in late June. This ensures that immigration, which has been the subject of right-wing demagogic appeals in the Republican presidential nomination contest, will remain at the center of the 2016 election. The courts announcement came in the midst of rising anger and fear within immigrant communities over the Obama administrations launching of nationwide Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids aimed at rounding up and deporting Central American refugees, most of them women and children. The Washington Post reported Tuesday that Department of Homeland Security officials have told immigrant rights advocates that they are considering expanding the raids to include minors who entered the country on their own, a move to further boost deterrence efforts. In other words, the government will send out agents to raid homes in the middle of the night and drag away children for deportation in the hopes that the resulting terror will dissuade other children from fleeing the lethal violence prevailing in Central America. Despite the governments attempt to intimidate undocumented immigrants, there has been a renewed upsurge in the number of families crossing the Southwest US border, which tripled in the last three months of 2015 compared to the same period in 2014. In addition to sowing terror among undocumented immigrants, the raids have also led to an acrimonious debate within the Democratic Party. As the Post noted, A group of 140 House Democrats sent a letter to Obama demanding that he halt the operations, and the three major candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, including Hillary Clinton, have denounced the raids. In point of fact, in 2014, with a growing number of Central American refugees arriving on the US border, Clinton wholeheartedly endorsed mass deportations of children. We have to send a clear message: Just because your child gets across the border, that doesnt mean the child gets to stay, she said then. If the Democrats are chafing over the Obama administrations deportations today it is because they fear that it will undercut their attempts to posture as friends of immigrants in a bid to win a larger share of the Latino vote in 2016. For his part, Obama has become known in immigrant communities as the deporter in chief. His administration has set the record for any presidency in the number of people deported, which reached over 400,000 a year during his first term and still stood at 231,000 in 2015. Even as it has denied Central American women and children refugee status, the administration announced on Monday that it is suspending the Peace Corps program in El Salvador because of security concerns. A similar suspension of the program in Honduras was announced in 2012. The latter country has the highest homicide rate in the world and El Salvador has the sixth highest, conditions that are the product of decades of US military interventions and support for right-wing dictators and deaths squads. The Supreme Court ruling, whichever way it goes, will not resolve the problems faced by the majority of the 11 million undocumented immigrants living and working in the US. The program unveiled by Obama in November 2014, after the failure of Congress to pass an immigration reform bill, would have temporarily deferred the deportation of up to 4 million people, the majority of them undocumented immigrants whose children are US citizens. The program elaborated in Obamas executive order, know as Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA), is founded on the reactionary premise that undocumented workers are criminals who are merely being granted a temporary reprieve. Deportation is deferred for three years, subject to renewal. The deferral can be abolished at any time by a new administration, with those immigrants who joined the program identified and subject to summary deportation. Given distrust of the government, the required documentation of continuous residence in the country since January 1, 2010, a $465 filing fee, together with thousands more for those who go through an attorney, and the mandatory payment of back taxes, it is likely that only a fraction of the 4 million eligible would apply for the deferral. Moreover, any immigrant convicted of a felony, a serious misdemeanor or three minor misdemeanors is disqualified. A federal court in Texas issued a preliminary injunction blocking Obamas implementation of the plan after the Republican administrations in Texas and 25 other states filed suit against it. They argued that Obama had overstepped his constitutional bounds in changing immigration policy without the approval of Congress and had violated federal procedures for making rule changes that require the government to give prior notice and seek comments. While the lower court ruling, which was upheld by the federal appeals court in New Orleans, did not deal with the constitutional issue, the Supreme Court has made an unusual request that both sides in the case address it. The question centers on the so-called Take Care Clause of Article II of the US Constitution, which establishes the executive branch of the federal government. It states that the president must take care that the laws be faithfully executed, a provision that has been interpreted as denying the president constitutional authority to suspend the enforcement of laws legislated by Congress. The Obama administration has argued that DAPA does not suspend enforcement, but rather merely sets priorities as to whom the government should hunt down for deportation, given that the money appropriated for this purpose allows for only about 400,000 a year out of the 11 million undocumented to be deported. Australian mining magnate Clive Palmer placed his Queensland Nickel refinery in the northern Queensland city of Townsville into voluntary administration on Monday, directly threatening the jobs of almost 800 refinery workers, with another 3,000 workers likely to be affected by the flow-on effects in the Townsville region. Refinery workers are still being kept in the dark about their futures. Trade union officials reported yesterday that the newly-installed administrators had revealed that Queensland Nickel had no money to pay entitlements owing to 237 workers already retrenched last Friday, and had not made any superannuation payments since November, even for workers own contributions. The jobs and livelihoods of thousands of nickel mining-related workers are also imperiled in the French Pacific island colony of New Caledonia, where the government is warning of civil unrest if the refinery closes, because it takes all of the islands production of nickel, its main industry. The demise of Queensland Nickel underscores the depth and sharpness of the collapse of the two-decade mining boom now hitting Australian capitalism, with devastating results for the working class. The global price of nickel has fallen by more than 80 percent since its 2007 peak. The collapse of prices for nickel, the ninth-biggest export earner for Australia, has been particularly driven by the slowdown of basic industry in China. Nickel is used primarily for steel production, of which there is now a massive glut in China. According to the latest official China data, steel output in that country fell in December by more than 5 percent, year-on-year. The World Bureau of Metal Statistics estimated that China accounted for about half of global nickel demand in the first half of 2015. Once rated as a billionaire, Palmer also has significant stakes in debt-laden iron ore and coal projects, which have also been hard hit by precipitous price falls over the past two years. Evidently, Palmer declined to provide Queensland Nickel with $35 million to meet immediate cash flow problems, after the major banks and the Queensland and Australian governments both decided not to lend the company that amount. BHP Billiton, then the worlds largest mining corporation, offloaded Queensland Nickel to Palmer in 2009, after the nickel price plummeted from a peak of around $US50,000 per tonne in 2007, before the global financial crisis, to below $10,000 a tonne. Since then, the price has fallen to around $8,000 per tonne. The Australian Financial Review estimates that the 2009 sale price, which has never been disclosed publicly, was as low as $35 million. After extracting an estimated $365 million in operating cash flow from the business, Palmer increasingly faced losses. Along the way, he also donated some $21 million from the company to help fund his right-wing, pro-business Palmer United Party, formed in 2013. Yesterday, FTI Consulting, the administrators appointed by Queensland Nickel, said the company owed creditors between $70 million and $80 million. Retrenched workers were warned they would be added to the bottom of the long list of creditors, forcing them to wait for the possible partial payment of redundancy entitlements. Queensland Nickel is the largest private employer in Townsville, which is home to about 180,000 people. Sacked workers and their partners interviewed by the media voiced anger and disgust. Darelle Baker, the wife of retrenched maintenance operator Nathan Baker, 36, told the Australian it was a kick in the guts, for the couple and their five children, aged from four to 17, leaving them unsure how they will pay school fees and rent. This is dire straits stuff for us, she said. Thousands of coal miners and coal industry-related workers have already lost their jobs in central Queensland over the past two years because of closures and cutbacks by major companies, including BHP Billiton. Across the country, tens of thousands of retrenchments are continuing to take place in the mines and mining construction projects, on top of a wave of sackings in the auto, steel, maritime and retail industries. In New Caledonia, where a quarter of all private sector employment relates to nickel exports, a government agency source told journalists yesterday that if the Townsville refinery closed, the impact would be tremendous. It would possibly trigger some industrial conflict and social discontent. Last November, New Caledonian President Philippe Germain warned in a letter to Palmer that a shutdown of the refinery would result in political unrest, violence and mine closures. The refusal of Germains administration to grant export licences last year to local miners seeking to sell ore to customers other than Queensland Nickel triggered a series of rolling protests and industrial blockades. Palmers handover of the refinery to financial administrators, leaving hundreds of workers to face unemployment, further exposes the reactionary class character of his Palmer United Party (PUP), which was formed in the lead-up to the 2013 Australian federal election to try to divert the widespread hostility to the main parties of the political establishment. By posturing as an opponent of both the Labor Party and Liberal-National Coalition, the PUP attracted around 5 percent of the national vote, and 11 percent in Queensland, gaining Palmer a seat in parliament and, initially, three PUP senators. Palmer issued a grab-bag of promises, including to abolish tertiary education fees, reduce all income tax by 15 percent, provide pensioners with an extra $150 each fortnight, and inject $80 billion into the federal health budget. All this was supposed to be financed by boosting corporate profits, above all by drastically reducing business taxes. The trade unions covering Queensland Nickel workers, chiefly the Australian Workers Union (AWU) and the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, have demagogically denounced Palmer as an individual, but are working to prevent any fight by workers to defend their jobs and halt the closure. Signalling its acceptance of the reduction of workers to the status of unsecured creditors, the AWU is seeking permission to attend a creditors meeting in Townsville on January 28, which could decide to liquidate the company. To divert workers outrage, the unions have spoken of taking legal action to seek to obtain redundancy and other payouts, and are trying to help the state Labor government sow illusions in the prospect of launching government-funded capital works that could provide alternative employment. Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk flew to Townsville yesterday for meetings with union bureaucrats and local government officials on the crisis, making a show of support for the hurting workers and their families. She claimed that her government would establish a priority list of projects for the North and give them the green light. No details have been offered by the government, which itself faces worsening revenue shortfalls because of the mining collapse. At the same time, the government directed the retrenched workers to state agencies and Centrelink, the federal welfare agency, designed to cater for, and head off opposition to, job losses. The Townsville Bulletin reported today that some people stormed out in anger, having received only information about re-training, counselling for depression and details about Centrelink payments. In the midst of growing anger over the poisoning of residents of Flint, Michigan and the exposure of criminal actions by state and local authorities, Governor Rick Snyder gave a State of the State address Tuesday night in which he insisted that neither he nor any other top official should be held accountable. The governors tone betrayed something of a siege mentality, as more than a thousand protesters marched outside the state capitol building in Lansing, many calling for his resignation and indictment. After hailing record profits for the Michigan-based Big Three auto companies and touting the supposed turnaround of Detroit in a year the city emerged from bankruptcy, Snyder came to the subject of the Flint water crisis. The millionaire former corporate executive gave an empty apology to the people of Flint and asserted that it was now time to tell the truth about what we have done, promising to release his emails concerning Flint the next day. After the obligatory the buck stops here declaration, he evaded any responsibility for decisions that have permanently disabled thousands of Flint residents, including infants and children, and will likely result in an unknown number of early deaths. His effort at cover-up and damage control involved striking a pose of contrition (The government has failed you) and acknowledging that various officials had made mistakesmeaningless statements that were meant to evade any real accountability. Snyder pled ignorance concerning the 17 months between April 2014, when his handpicked Flint emergency manager switched the citys water supply to the highly polluted Flint River to cut costs, and September 2015, when he claims he first learned of the crisis. In the future, he admonished, such things had to come to his desk immediately, with no excuses. He omitted the fact that immediately after the water was switched, Flint residents complained of its foul smell, color and taste and the spread of rashes and sickness. Even after a boil only warning had been issued by city officials, tests by the states Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) showed lead levels to be acceptable under the federal Environmental Protection Agency guidelines, Snyder maintained. In May 2015, the governor continued, Dr. Mona Hannah-Attisha of Hurley Medical Center found alarming levels of lead in blood samples of city children, but DEQ failed to reach the same conclusions. Again, Snyder neglected to note that his office targeted Dr. Hannah-Attisha with a slander campaign, saying she was splicing and dicing data and needlessly causing hysteria. With consummate cynicism, the governor asked the doctor to rise to the applause of state legislators. While Snyder claimed that he was first briefed in September 2015, his chief of staff wrote a July 2015 email to the Department of Health and Human Services expressing concern over the stonewalling of Flint residents. I really dont think people are getting the benefit of the doubt, he wrote. Now they are concerned and rightfully so about the lead level studies they are receiving from the (DEQ) samples... These folks are scared and worried about the health impacts and they are basically getting blown off by us In a transparent effort to protect himself from future prosecution, the Republican governor warned Democrats that they too were complicit. He noted that President Obamas Environmental Protection Agency had also ignored resident complaints and remained silent even after tests showed dangerous levels of lead, and the Democratic-controlled Flint City Council had approved the change in the citys water source. There is certainly a case for putting local, state and federal Democrats in the dock along with Snyder. This includes former Flint Emergency Manager Darnell Earley, currently the emergency manager of the Detroit Public Schools. The poisoning of Flint is linked to the 2013-14 Detroit bankruptcy, which was carried out with the backing of the Obama administration. The pensions and health benefits of city workers were slashed and public assets were sold off or privatized, including the treasures of the Detroit Institute of Arts and the citys century-old public water system. This led to sharp increases in water prices in Detroit, Flint and other cities, and mass water shutoffs of working-class customers. The modus operandi of the conspiracy of politicians and corporate holders of city bonds to plunder the incomes of city workers and seize public assets in Detroit has become a model for similar attacks across Michigan, in other US states and now in Puerto Rico. Municipalities and school districts have been starved of resources by federal, state and local authorities, forced to take on immense levels of debt, and then put under financial dictators who do the bidding of the banks. Working-class youth are jailed for minor offenses, but those responsible for decisions that deprive families of water and electrical power and lead to fatal house fires and other tragedies essentially get away with murder. Flint is a symbol of the criminal character of American capitalism. In 1960, the Vehicle City had one of the highest per capita incomes in America, the result of the sit-down strikes and mass struggles of autoworkers that forced the then-largest corporation in the world, General Motors, to recognize the United Auto Workers union. Over the last 35 years, the corporation, facing increasing international competition, has waged a relentless war against the workers, with the indispensable and unstinting assistance of the UAW. GM has reduced employment in the city from 80,000 to 5,500. It has shut down and flattened the sit-down plants Chevy in the Hole and Buick City, which alone once employed 28,000 workers. Exacting huge tax cuts and polluting the Flint River with impunity, GM has left its birthplace in ruins. During the 2009 restructuring of GM, the Obama administration worked with the UAW to shut more plants and halve the wages of all new-hires, while granting legal immunity to GM in any future lawsuits over pollution or defective vehicles. The company has taken in billions in profits and spent them, not on the people of Flint, but on stock buybacks and dividend payments to its biggest shareholders, which includes the UAW. President Obama is coming to Detroit today, where he will speak at a UAW-GM facility and hail the return of the auto industry and the rebirth of Detroit. Meanwhile, young autoworkers cannot afford to buy the cars they build and Detroit teachers have organized sick-outs, independently of the unions, to protest rat-infested schools with no heat, overcrowded classrooms, and cuts in wages and benefits. As for Flint, the president who has allocated trillions to bail out the Wall Street criminals and fund illegal wars has approved a derisory $5 million in federal aid for the citys people. The government of the most powerful country in the world is no less indifferent to working people in Flint than its predecessor was to Hurricane Katrina-ravaged New Orleans. These disasters arise from the failure and bankruptcy of the capitalist system, an outmoded and reactionary economic order that subordinates the most elemental needs of society to the enrichment of the corporate and financial aristocracy. In the 21st Century, no one should go without water, or, for that matter, a well-paying job, health care, education and affordable housing. The fight for these elemental rights places the working class on a collision course with American capitalism and all of its political representatives. Writing in the Scottish Socialist Voice in early December, Jonathan Shafi, the national organiser of RISE, Scotlands Left Alliance, made clear that RISE aims to emerge, after the May 2016 elections, as a loyal opposition to the Scottish National Party (SNP) within the Scottish parliament. With opinion polls suggesting another landslide victory for the SNP, largely at the expense of the Labour Party, RISEs tactic, Shafi explained, is to aim for SNP supporters transferable vote under the regional list system of proportional representation. RISE advances itself as more nationalist than the SNP. Shafi explained, RISE exists to provide a countervailing pressure. We back the SNPs goal of independence, indeed were for a fuller independence than theyre willing to contemplate. But a strong RISE will also give the SNPs new radicals the energy and ideas to ensure their party stands up to frackers, landlords, NATO and so on. In other words, under conditions where the SNP government is enforcing much the same brutal austerity policies as the Conservative government of David Cameron in London, the pseudo-lefts and nationalists in RISE aim to ensure that disaffection with the SNP is contained, kept on board and channelled along nationalist and separatist lines. Shafi was writing on the eve of the organisations founding conference, held in Glasgow late last year. Despite being presented as an attempt to unify the ideas of many hundreds of people who attended a recent tour by RISE activists, conference documents were drawn up by Shafi and a small group of pseudo-lefts, including members of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) the Republican Communist Network, a SYRIZA supporter in Scotland and supporters of the Radical Independence Campaign. Their draft policy program, passed by the conference, consists largely of disposable, Scotland only, proposals for somewhat less inequality, and an expansion of the public sector through a strengthening of the Scottish capitalist state. According to RISE, wage inequality should be restricted between a pay cap of 100,000 and a minimum of 20,000. Making clear the token character of this proposal, they add that the National Minimum Wage should be enforced, particularly in the bar and hospitality industry, while public sector workers should receive at least 10 per hour. Private schools should lose their charitable status, drugs decriminalised and police forces should come under community control. This is mere packaging for the central proposal, which is for RISE to demand that an independence referendum is solely a matter for the Scottish parliament, free from any Westminster veto. Motions proposed to the conference were along the same lines. Echoing the pseudo-democratic and fraudulent rhetoric of Podemos in Spain, which the RISE leadership also admire, one motion explained, We have no desire to build career politicians. We want a politics of many leaders, not just one or two. Other motions called for a 1 tax on whisky, a landlord tax, an end to corporate tax evasion, and a land register. A new layer of local government was proposed from Dundee, on the basis of small communities and more directly accountable to local residents. A trade union resolution called for an end to government subsidies to those companies which dont pay the living wagea policy not as radical as that recently espoused by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn that such companies would not be allowed to pay dividends to shareholdersand called for employment laws to be devolved to Scotland. RISEs piecemeal social measures are explicitly based on the fragmentation of the working class in Britain. One composite resolution on the National Health Service (NHS) made no reference at all to the NHS in England, to the struggles of junior doctors in England, which led to the first strike in 40 years this month, or the destruction of health care south of the border. Another motion opposing cuts and closures called for a campaign to prevent the closure of steel plants in Motherwell and Cambuslang. This motion made no mention at all of the threatened steel plants employing many hundreds of workers in South Wales, Yorkshire and the West Midlands. Motion 45 did refer to England, noting that the largest part of the working class in the UK is in England. But rather than call for a united struggle against austerity and the Conservative government, the motion called instead for RISE to strengthen links with Anti-Unionist socialists in England, Ireland and Walesthat is those sections of the pseudo-left who also support Scottish nationalism. Motions referring to international events and examples were an even deeper morass of contradictory cynicism. Motion 24, for example, called for Scotland to emulate the example of Ireland, and following independence to become a neutral country. The resolution made no reference at all to the fraudulence of Irish neutrality. Ireland is a key refuelling station for US flights to the Middle East. In any case, in the very next sentence, the motion noted that this does not preclude a future debate about [European Union] membership. Ireland, of course, is also an EU member, having suffered some of the most brutal austerity measures as a condition for EU bailouts to rescue its collapsed banking system. Making no comment at all on the nature of the EU itself, another motion, from RISE Lothian, noted the recent experience of Greece shows the immense pressure that RISE will come under when it starts to gain the ear of the masses. In other words, the gross betrayal carried out by Syriza was not the result of that partys perspective of defending Greek capitalism and its place in the EU, but simply the vindictive response of the EU bureaucracy for Syriza having deceived Greek workers into believing they would oppose austerity. Motion 10, Sexism and the Left, proposed by a Jack Ferguson, was drawn up by an organisation formed through a split with the Socialist Workers Party over allegations of rape against a leading member and the mishandling of the charges by the SWPs Disputes Committee. The motion, calling for a clear process for challenging and raising issues with comrades behaviour insisted on the inappropriateness of leading RISE activists investigating each other. It insisted that serious concerns should be referred to outside support and advice from organisations such as Rape Crisis, or where necessary and if requested by those involved, the police. This blanket endorsement of the police is made under conditions where the systematic infiltration of police spies and provocateurs such as Mark Kennedy, some of whom were serial abusers of female activists, into left and protest movements, is now well known. It dovetails with the SSPs ongoing factional warfare against its former leader, Tommy Sheridan, who now heads the rival nationalist group Solidarity Scotland, which saw the SSP openly collude with the police to secure his imprisonment on charges of perjury. RISE is a vehicle for a rightward moving upper middle class layer in and around the leadership of the pseudo-left tendencies, in academia and the media seeking their place in the corridors of power around the Scottish parliament and the host of think tanks and supporting organisations. Their specific role is to package Scottish independence in terms that can be foisted onto the working class by proclaiming it as progressive and obscuring its bourgeois and necessarily disastrous social, economic and political consequences. Join our efforts to get the IRS out of Israel, and other countries! In his first trip to Washington as Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull reaffirmed his governments commitment to the US-led war in Iraq and Syria and to the Obama administrations military build-up in the Indo-Pacific region against China. While Turnbulls tone was not as strident as his predecessor Tony Abbotts, the underlying message was the same: full support for Washingtons wars of aggression around the world. In a media briefing yesterday before their meeting, President Barack Obama expressed his extraordinary gratitude to Australia and pointed out that Turnbull had visited Australian troops in both Afghanistan and Iraq before arriving in Washington. Those are just two places where we see the value of Australias armed forces and the remarkable contribution they have made, Obama said. On the eve of Turnbulls departure for Washington, the Australian government announced it would not be increasing the size of its military force in Iraq. This provoked thinly disguised criticism by former defence minister Kevin Andrews, who has advocated dispatching special forces to fight Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) elements. Obama, however, gave no hint of pressuring Turnbull for a greater contribution, noting that Australia was providing the second largest contingent of ground forces after the US. The Liberal-National Coalition government, with the backing of the Labor Party opposition, has committed 780 military personnel to Iraq, including 380 army trainers and 400 air force staff, supporting strikes by Australian war planes in Iraq and Syria. Turnbull took the opportunity to hail last months success of the bloody battle for Ramadi, which reduced much of the city to rubble. He insisted it was an absolute adrenaline shot for the Iraqi government, delivered by troops trained by Australia and the US. Speaking the previous day at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Turnbull cited Ramadi as a good example of putting the right boots on the right ground. While not directly referring to China, Obama underlined the importance of Australian support for the US pivot to Asia against Beijing. Our marines in Australia, the joint exercises that we do, the work to confirm the international order and the rules of the road in respect to issues like maritime laware all critical for the continued expansion of commerce and the sustained peaceful conditions that are allowing our economies to thrive, he said. Over the past year, the Obama administration has ramped up tensions in the South China Sea, repeatedly demanding China end its land reclamation activities and halt militarisation of islets under its control. In reality, the US has militarised the maritime disputes in the region by sending warships and warplanes to challenge Chinese claims and consolidating military ties with countries throughout the region. Obama invited Turnbull to Washington when the two met at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Manila during November. In remarks leaked to the media, the US president rapped Turnbull over the knuckles over the decision to lease Darwins commercial port to a Chinese company. Even though the deal had been cleared by the Australian military and intelligence establishment, Obama declared Washington should have been given a heads up over that sort of thing. Darwin is where the US Marine force, which is due to number 2,500 by 2017, rotates, or is effectively based. The incident is an indication of just how little room for manoeuvre the US gives its Australian ally. In mid-2010, Labor prime minister Kevin Rudd was ousted in a backroom party coup by a handful of factional powerbrokers with close ties to Washington. Rudd was removed from office not because of any opposition to the US alliance, but because he was calling on the Obama administration to make concessions to China, right at the point when Washington was preparing its confrontational pivot to Asia. Turnbull has previously evinced a similar stance to Rudd, reflecting the dilemma facing Australian capitalism, which is heavily dependent on China as its largest trading partner, but relies strategically on US imperialism. In Washington, however, the Australian prime minister lined up with the Obama administration on every issue. In his speech to the CSIS, Turnbull made a point of emphasising Australias involvement in every war alongside the United States and the enduring character of the US military alliance. While emphasising the importance of China-US cooperation for the peace and stability of the region, he nevertheless made clear that Beijing had to make concessions to Washingtons demands. Turnbull noted that Chinese President Xi Jinping had often said China needed to avoid the Thucydides Trapa reference to the way in which a rising Athens had come into conflict with the dominant power, Sparta, in ancient Greece. He hoped Chinas actions would be carefully calculated to make conflict less likely, not more, and would seek to reassure neighbours and build their confidence in Chinas intentions. After declaring that Chinas territorial claims in the South China Sea were a secondary consideration to ensuring regional stability, Turnbull urged all parties to refrain from further construction on those islands or reefs and to refrain from militarisationa standard line from Washington, directed above all against Beijing. In calling on China to abide by international law, the prime minister suggested that the US should ratify the UN Convention on the Law of the Seanot as a matter of principle but rather to strengthen the US diplomatic offensive by ending its obvious double standard on the issue. During his visit, Turnbull also provided support for Obama on two key issuesthe Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the international nuclear deal with Iranboth of which have been heavily criticised in the US Congress. In his press briefing with Obama, he was effusive in praising the nuclear agreement, saying: That was a formidable effort, a great example of leadership on the part of the United States. The TPP functions as the economic arm of the pivot to ensure, as Obama has insisted, that the US, not China, writes the rules of the 21st century global economy. Turnbull used a speech to the US Chamber of Commerce to make an unabashed call for continued American dominance in Asia. The stability and prosperity of the Asia Pacific, he declared, could not have occurred without the strong position, the strong presence of the United States ... Pax Americana has underwritten that growth and everybody benefited, every country in the region ... But that needs to continue to be worked on, and the TPP is a critically important part of that. US imperialism, howeverno longer in a position to dictate the global economic rules by way of its economic predominanceis engaged in a military build-up throughout the region in preparation for conflict with China. Turnbull has again confirmed that Australian imperialism will back its US ally in this war drive. January 28th, 2016 marks the 30 year anniversary since the Challenger explosion. Watch WTXL ABC 27 every night at 6pm as we profile the crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger. Tune in on January 28th for a special coverage of Lessons Learned from Challenger. TALLAHASSEE, FL (WTXL) -- Lt. Col. Francis "Dick" Scobee, a decorated Air Force Pilot, served as the Commander of the Space Shuttle Challenger on January 28th, 1986. Originally from Cle Elum, Washington, Lt. Col. Scobee's love for flying took shape in 1957 when he enlisted in the United States Air Force. As a test pilot for the Air Force, Scobee flew more than 45 different types of aircraft logging over 6,500 hours of flight time. In 1978, Scobee entered the NASA Astronaut Program and in 1984 as the Pilot of the Challenger's 5th orbital flight, Scobee was a part of a team on a seven day mission to retrieve and repair a solar satellite. In 1986 Lt. Col. Scobee was assigned as Commander for the Challenger Mission STS 51-L. Only 73 seconds into flight, Challenger was destroyed. However, Commander Scobee's legacy lives on. In 2004, Commander Scobee was Posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor and was inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame. WTXL ABC 27 and the Challenger Learning Center honor Lt. Col. Francis "Dick" Scobee and will forever remember his contribution to the exploration of space. THE CAPITAL, TALLAHASSEE -- Attorneys for a convicted murderer scheduled to be put to death on St. Patrick's Day are asking the Florida Supreme Court for a stay, arguing that records --- including some stored in an insect-infested shed --- were destroyed. Mark James Asay's case is even more troubling because the Death Row inmate hasn't had a lawyer to represent him in state court for nearly a decade and had no legal representation when Gov. Rick Scott signed the warrant ordering Asay's execution, Asay's new attorney wrote in a motion filed Tuesday. A Jacksonville judge appointed Marty McClain to represent Asay last Wednesday, five days after Scott signed the warrant scheduling Asay's execution for March 17. A circuit judge gave McClain until Jan. 25 --- 12 days after he was appointed to represent Asay --- to file any motions for relief. That's not enough time, McClain argued in Tuesday's 27-page filing. Proceeding with the case "would be a violation of due process, equal protection and fundamental fairness," he wrote. "Providing an attorney without the client's files and records is the equivalent of providing no counsel at all," McClain wrote. Hours after McClain filed his request for a stay, the Supreme Court gave Department of Corrections Secretary Julie Jones until 5 p.m. Thursday to respond. Scott may not have been aware that Asay did not have a lawyer, as required by state law for inmates on Death Row, when the governor signed the death warrant. "Given that the statute requires that collateral counsel be in place at all times, I would think it would be wise for the governor's office to make sure that the statute has been complied with before a warrant is signed," McClain said in a telephone interview Tuesday. In the court filing, McClain wrote that Scott's staff contacted the state agency that represents Death Row inmates after the warrant was signed on Jan. 8. Capital Collateral Counsel for the Northern Region Robert Friedman told the governor's representative that his agency did not represent Asay. Scott's staff then contacted Thomas Fallis, a private attorney who had represented Asay in federal court. Fallis told the governor's aide that he no longer represented Asay. "What additional steps the governor's office took to notify Mr. Asay's state court counsel of the death warrant is unclear," McClain wrote. "What is clear, however, is that despite being given information that at a minimum, Mr. Asay's representation was unknown, Governor Scott did not pause or delay the execution date in order to ensure that Mr. Asay was or would be represented by competent post-conviction counsel." Asay was convicted in 1988 of the murders of Robert Lee Booker and Robert McDowell in downtown Jacksonville. Asay allegedly shot Booker, who was black, after calling him a racial epithet. He then killed McDowell, who was dressed as a woman, after agreeing to pay him for oral sex. According to court documents, Asay later told a friend that McDowell had previously cheated him out of money in a drug deal. McClain said he and his partner, Linda McDermott, started trying to locate Asay's files after they were assigned to the case last week. "What was learned was quite disconcerting --- numerous boxes, probably a majority, of Mr. Asay's files and records had been destroyed, while those records that theoretically still exist, have yet to be located," McClain wrote, adding that 33 boxes of records pertaining to Asay's file are missing or were destroyed. Asay was once represented by the predecessor of the Capital Collateral Counsel for the Northern Region, but the Legislature shut down the agency in 2004. At least some of Asay's records were transferred to Mary Katherine Bonner, a lawyer who once worked on his case, according to McClain's brief filed Tuesday. Fallis, who represented Asay in federal court from 2010 through 2014, obtained about 10 boxes of documents from a shed that was "infested with snakes, rats and insects" where Bonner stored them, McClain wrote. Fallis decided the files were "worthless due to the condition in which they were stored" and ultimately destroyed them, McClain wrote. McClain, who has worked on death penalty cases for nearly three decades and represented more than 250 clients, and his partner "have never found themselves in such dire and disturbing circumstances when representing a capital post-conviction defendant with an active death warrant," the lawyers wrote. During a case-management hearing Friday, lawyers with Attorney General Pam Bondi's office and the state attorney who prosecuted Asay told McClain they would provide copies of their records regarding Asay's case by the end of the day on Tuesday. Bondi's office was unaware that Asay had gone so long without a lawyer, McClain wrote. McClain is also trying to get copies of other case files from the Department of State's archives, but he is unsure when the documents will be provided, he wrote. As of Tuesday, he still did not have copies of the trial court transcripts. "Historically, this (Supreme) Court has been especially vigilant to the need for procedural fairness in capital proceedings, and has accordingly not hesitated to enter stays of execution in order to ensure that capital petitioners are treated fairly in the litigation of claims for relief during the pendency of a death warrant," McClain wrote. The Florida Supreme Court has granted stays in at least two other cases when new lawyers for inmates scheduled for execution needed more time. In 1990, the court delayed the execution of Paul Christopher Hildwin to give his lawyers extra time to review his files. In 2014, the court threw out Hildwin's death sentence based on new DNA evidence. PANACEA, FL (WTXL) -- A program offered by Tallahassee Community College is giving students the chance to start their own business in oyster farming. The program is in such demand that there's a waiting list of six years to join. TCC's Wakulla Environmental Institute invited Congresswoman Gwen Graham to learn more about the program's development as part of her "Farm Tour." A group of 10 students harvest one million oysters that are carefully grown in caged baskets. "They're taking care of the water, they're providing habitat and providing jobs for people," said student Deborah Keller, who works for The Nature Conservancy. Now in its second year, the program gives each student 100,000 baby oysters -- each the size of a fingernail. "In 6 to 9 months, they're three inches long and ready to go to market," said executive director Bob Ballard. "In Canada, it takes four years to grow an oyster." There's only one oyster bay in Wakulla County, and students in the program use what's called the "Australian technique" -- tying baskets above the water, hanging on poles to get the oysters to contract their muscles when the tide rises over the baskets. When the oysters are cleaned and ready to sell, the program's current rate is 50 cents per oyster. "This is another opportunity for growing jobs and to allow people to have the most delicious oysters on their plates at night," said Graham. The program isn't without controversy. A former student sued TCC, claiming the program didn't deliver what it promised. "It's a student that was not doing what he should have been doing to fulfill his end of the bargain with the class," Ballard said. Students currently in the program say it inspires them to closely guard their investment -- the oysters themselves. "I take care of them. I visit them regularly. I consider them my babies," said Keller, who's popularly known among the class as "Oyster Mom." "Growing a fine oyster that we're growing will be in demand always," Ballard said. The program is hoping to expand the next class to 25 students to meet the growing demand. Submit An Obituary Funeral homes often submit obituaries as a service to the families they are assisting. However, we will be happy to accept obituaries from family members pending proper verification of the death. Go to form A 150-year-old Torah scroll was on Monday donated to a synagogue serving the citys Ethiopian community in a ceremony at the Jerusalem municipality building. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter The ceremony was attended by officials including Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, representatives of the Ethiopian community, and Professor Mark Wainberg, who made the donation. Members of an Ethiopian synagogue in Jerusalem receiving a donated 150-year-old Torah scroll (Photo: Courtesy) Wainberg is a Canadian expert on HIV research who works at Montreal Jewish General Hospital and at McGill University. He thought of making the donation after the murder of Shira Banki , the 16-year-old girl who was stabbed to death in July 2015 during the Jerusalem gay pride parade. When Wainberg heard of Bankis murder, he decided to honor her memory by donating a Torah scroll (a calligraphic copy of the Hebrew Bible used in Jewish prayers) to a community in Jerusalem. Bankis parents, Mika and Uri, also attended Mondays ceremony. The Torah scroll, originally written in Baghdad, Iraq, was restored and repaired, and the Jerusalem municipality assisted in contacting the Ethiopian Jewish community in the citys Katamonim neighborhood and arranging the transfer of the scroll. This is both an exciting and sad occasion, said Mayor Barkat during the ceremony. We remember Shira and the tragedy of her death but, at the same time, we are creating hope and renewal among members of the Ethiopian community in the city. I would like to thank Professor Wainberg for the thoughtful donation and wish the Banki family and all of us many moments of joy, happiness and hope, added Barkat. Dresden police are searching for a man - described as sporting a Hitler mustache and wearing a Nazi-style helmet emblazoned with a swastika - who assaulted an Afghan immigrant on a sledding hill in eastern Germany. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter The Nazi leadership Police said Tuesday the man approached two Afghan men, aged 21 and 26, on Saturday in Geising, south of Dresden. Witnesses say the attacker insulted them, and then hit the younger man on the head, knocking him to the ground. After passers-by intervened, police say the man showed the stiff-armed Nazi salute, then fled the scene. The man, who is being sought on charges of assault and the display of banned symbols, is described as strongly built, about 25-30 years old, with a shaved head. Police are appealing to the public for any information. Meanwhile, support for German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative bloc fell 2.5 percentage points to 32.5 percent, its lowest level since the 2013 election, an INSA poll in Germany's top-selling Bild newspaper showed on Tuesday. The poll also put the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) up one point at 12.5 percent. INSA tends to put the AfD slightly higher than most other polling institutes. Bild gave no reason for the drop but Merkel's popularity and that of her conservative bloc has been falling since the refugee crisis. Representatives from the Finnish town of Rovaniemi, which is next to Santa Claus' home town, will be arriving in Israel in three weeks' time in order to take part in an annual tourism exhibition held by the International Mediterranean Tourism Market (IMTM). Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter The exhibition, which will take place at the Tel Aviv Convention Center, is in its 22nd year. Santa Claus (Photo: Shutterstock) The goal of the Finnish delegation's participation is to promote tourism to Finland and Lapland, the home of Santa Claus. "Tourism from Israel to Finland has been increasing over the last few years, especially since the introduction of flights from the country's flagship carrier, Finair," said Ulla Hakanen, the first secretary at the Finnish embassy in Tel Aviv. Many Israelis take organized tours to Lapland every year, which include tours on snowmobiles, a journey on a sled pulled by huskies and a cruise on an ice-breaker. "Our aim is to expand these visits," Hakanen said. "Direct flights to Rovaniemi will begin this year. Rovaniemi is Lapland's capital city and is very close to the North Pole. It's also five kilometers from Santa Claus' home town from which, according to tradition, he goes out every year at Christmas to deliver presents." The group from Finland will also include tourism officials from other areas. In two months' time we'll be marking a year since the Knesset elections. On the face of it, they didn't change much. The same Netanyahu heads the government, the same Ya'alon heads security and another minister-who-isn't-Likud heads the treasury. Within the composition of the government, the ultra-Orthodox replaced Yesh Atid, but the new incumbents have not caused any political earthquakes. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Netanyahu campaign posters during the last Knesset elections. His rhetoric during his campaign helped fundamentally change the public discourse in Israel. (Photo: Motti Kimchi) But this summary is misleading. In 2015 we experienced a profound, even extreme, change in the public discourse in Israel. Look at the topics that that dominated the media a year ago (and two years ago, and three) and those that capture the headlines today. Before, they seemed to be shouting about centralization, international companies' non-taxable income, the middle class getting poorer, the cost of living and even the natural gas plan. Now the media both establishment and social features stormy discussions about Jewish-Arab relations, Palestinian and Jewish terror, the occupation (yes, the word "occupation") and annexation (yes, the word "annexation"). In the background is the growing and deepening formation of a bi-national state. The transition from social-economic stories to national-political ones is not because the former have exhausted themselves. On the contrary: when the Trajtenberg Committee, which was established in the wake of the 2011 social protests, published its recommendations in the autumn of that year, Israel's economic situation according to objective indexes was better than it is today. The 2011 social protests. Back then, Israel's public discourse was dominated by socio-economic issues. (Photo: Ben Kalmer) Apartments, for example, were 30 percent cheaper, poverty and inequality rates were lower, corporations paid higher taxes, all our pensions were more secure and there was growth that no longer exists. It's not the economy. The turning point was caused by internalization, slow but invasive, of last year's election platforms. Netanyahu put the Jewish-Arab and Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the center of his campaign publicity. Herzog put society and the economy at the center of his. Netanyahu flew to America to speak about the dangers to Israel of developments in the Muslim world in general, and a nuclear Iran in particular. Herzog went to development towns to speak about the cost of living and against tycoons. Netanyahu warned his voters that Arabs were going to the voting booths in droves , bused in by the left. Herzog warned his voters about the passing of the gas deal. Netanyahu forbade senior members of his party from speaking about social and economic issues, despite their being the source of the outgoing government's achievements, because he understood that it wouldn't win votes. Meanwhile, Herzog banned his party members from talking about conflict and peace, because those managing his election publicity told him that it wouldn't win votes. And then the voting slips spoke and it turned out that Netanyahu had rightly assessed the fears of the voters. He understood them. That's how the change began. In the manner of changes to the general mood, the ruling paradigm in public opinion, the process was not immediate and sweeping. But the number of people who considered it essential to return to the fundamental questions about the state and its people, and about war and peace, grew by the day. More and more intellectuals, opinion-makers, columnists, and concerned people from the broader public - on the left and on the right - started to write and speak about the need to shake up the agenda within the public-national discussion, for the sake of our soul. The final straw came with the gas protests , which defined themselves as non-denominational, yet managed to draw only a few thousand out into the streets of Tel Aviv, the capital of protests. The times have changed. Against the backdrop of the intifada of individuals, Israel of 2016 is returning to debate fundamental questions of its founding, its borders and its future. The country is going back to the opinion that "Silver Platter" is not just a television show about capitalists and the government, but rather Nathan Alterman's unforgettable poem about those who fell in the war of liberation and independence. US President Barack Obama and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday pledged continued cooperation in the fight against militants, including Islamic State and Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants, the White House and Turkish presidential sources said. During his phone call to Erdogan, Obama offered his condolences for last week's bombing in Istanbul, when 10 German tourists were killed in a suicide attack blamed on Islamic State , the White House and Turkish presidential sources said. Obama also condemned a recent string of attacks by the PKK against Turkish security forces, and he stressed the need for de-escalation, the White House said in a statement. US presidential candidate Donald Trump stated Monday in an interview with the Brody File that he was "one hundred percent" behind moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter During the interview, which took place at Liberty Univeristy in Lynchburg Virginia, in response to David Brody bringing up the fact that Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio both supported moving the American embassy to Jerusalem, Trump asserted: Well I am for that one hundred percent. We are for that one hundred percent. Donald Trump discusses Israel on the Brody Report X The Jerusalem Embassy Act, passed in 1995 with overwhelming support in the House and Senate, called for the relocation of the US embassy to Jerusalem to take place no later than fiscal year 1999. But it has been waived by every President since them, citing US national security concerns. US 2016 presidential candidate Donald Trump (Photo: AP) Trump also brought up the 2015 nuclear deal signed by the US and other world powers with Iran, asserting to the Brody Report that I just see what is happening and I am so saddened by this Iran deal. Its one of the worst deals Ive ever seen under any circumstances, any deal, not just deals between nations. I think its a tremendous liability to Israel. I think its going to actually lead to nuclear proliferation and its going to cause a lot of problems. The presidential candidate told the Brody Report that he would be very good to Israel and harshly criticized US President Barack Obamas policies regarding Israel: We have a president that I think is the worst thing that has ever happened to Israel. But I will be backing it very strongly. Theyre our best ally. Theyre our best ally in the Middle East. Theyve really been loyal to us. We have not been loyal to them. Trump declined to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital in December, when the question was posed at the Republican Jewish Coalition's 2016 presidential forum. Like many vacation rental operators around the world, Moshe Gordon has listed his property on Airbnb, luring visitors with a stunning vista of desert landscape and boasting of proximity to both Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. What it doesn't mention is that the "cozy fully furnished" apartment, with its cable TV, Internet and hiking trails, is in a West Bank settlement. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Airbnb is coming under Palestinian criticism for such listings, which some find misleading for failing to mention the property is on land claimed by the Palestinians. Such criticism puts Airbnb in the crosshairs of an increasingly aggressive global boycott movement and has injected a dose of Mideast politics into the sharing economy. The Palestinians say that by contributing to the settlement economy, Airbnb, like other companies doing business in the West Bank, helps perpetuate Israel's settlement enterprise. Senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat sent a letter to Airbnb's CEO last week demanding the company cease working with settlers. Moshe Gordon in front of his guesthouse in the West Bank (Photo: AP) "Any international company like Airbnb that profits from the occupation and from our blood must be held accountable and brought to justice," said Husam Zomlot, a Palestinian ambassador at-large and former adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The complaint coincides with the release Tuesday of a report by Human Rights Watch that said that businesses operating in settlements contribute to and benefit from "an inherently unlawful and abusive system that violates the rights of Palestinians." Israel captured the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem in the 1967 war and began building settlements soon after. While Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, the settler population in East Jerusalem and the West Bank has ballooned to almost 600,000. The Palestinians claim these areas as parts of a future state, a position that has wide global support. The Palestinians and much of the international community have grown impatient with Israel's settlement policies, saying the construction runs counter to the goal of establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel. On Monday, the European Union, Israel's largest trading partner, said that all its agreements with Israel must "unequivocally and explicitly" show that they cannot apply to territories over the Green Line. The move followed a November decision to label Israeli products made in the West Bank. Many Israelis fear the step could be a precursor to a full-fledged ban on settlement products such as wines, dates and cosmetics, which make up a tiny percentage of Israeli exports but would set an ominous precedent. Also alarming to Israel has been an international movement calling for boycotts against settlement products or any company doing business in the West Bank. The so-called BDS movement claims responsibility for pressuring some large companies to stop or alter operations in Israel or the West Bank, including carbonated drink maker SodaStream, French construction company Veolia and international mobile phone giant Orange. Although the boycott movement's economic impact has been minimal, it has helped tarnish Israel's international image. While the Human Rights Watch report said it was not calling for a boycott, it urged businesses to cease their settlement operations. The report said Palestinian laborers in the settlements are often paid well below Israeli minimum wage, and that companies operating in settlements receive preferential treatment over Palestinian rivals. It followed repeated claims by World Bank and others that Israeli policy in the West Bank has stifled Palestinian development. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon rejected the report's conclusions as well as the criticism against Airbnb. "The Palestinians should stop whining and take their fate in their own hands and stop blaming Israel for their incapacity to build their own economy," he said. In an email, Airbnb said it "follows laws and regulations on where we can do business." It said it encourages guests to talk to their host about the listing before any trip and that the platform uses Google Maps to determine locations - a website on which Jewish settlements, as well as Palestinian cities, are not listed with an affiliated country. Under its terms of service, Airbnb specifies that it will not accept responsibility for the accuracy of listings posted on the site, saying this lies with hosts. Airbnb, which charges users a service fee, also has listings in Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus and Moroccan-annexed Western Sahara, among other disputed territories. Listings there vary, with some marked only as a city, and others linked to Northern Cyprus or the unoccupied southern half. The few properties in Western Sahara are listed as in Morocco. Owners of Airbnb properties in the settlements reject the criticism. Even though Israel has never annexed the West Bank, they see their communities as essentially part of Israel and point to biblical history as proof of the Jewish connection to the land. Unlike Palestinian residents of the West Bank, settlers are governed by the same laws as residents of Israel proper and vote in Israeli elections. They also enlist for compulsory military service, pay taxes inside Israel and can serve in Israel's parliament. "It is Israel," said Gordon, who charges about $60 a night for his apartment. "I don't really understand the controversy here." Settlements stretching the entire length of the West Bank play host to Airbnb properties, according to the site's listings. Tourists can overnight in a desert camp in Judea and Samaria, the biblical name for the West Bank, or in a yurt in the Tekoa settlement. A perusal of more than two dozen listings showed very few reviews, indicating limited business - which may also be connected to the fact that settlements periodically come under attack by Palestinian militants. Settler officials say there is a blossoming lodging industry in the settlements that has until now mainly targeted Israeli tourists. But with Airbnb experiencing growing name recognition among settlers, Miri Maoz-Ovadia, a spokeswoman for the Yesha settler's council, said she expects more settlement properties on the site. "International platforms such as Airbnb are very positive," she said. "Any of these platforms should be allowed ... to show also places that are here in the heartland of Israel." Israeli and German police on Wednesday arrested in Berlin Gennady Galkin, 43-year-old former resident of Haifa suspected of involvement in a 1998 murder in the Israeli city. The suspect was apprehended after a discovery two years ago that he was living in Berlin under a false name. He was extradited to Israel. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter The murder victim was Edward Rothberg, a 25-year-old student at the Israel Institute of Technology. He was stabbed to death at a club on Nordau Street in Haifa. Rotberg's father Roman told Ynet on Wednesday that the family is "still mourning" and cannot find satisfaction in the apprehension of the suspect. "It's hard to say that we're happy," he said. "We are still mourning and there is no joy or satisfaction in it. Not a day goes by that we don't think about this case and about our son." Edward Rothberg with his parents Galkin's remand was extended by six days on Wednesday. Ahead of the hearing, Galkin said he could not speak as per his attorney's advice, but did say of the incident: "I was wrong." Police Commander Benny Avalia explained that investigators learned of the suspect's false identity about a year and a half before the arrest. "After the information was confirmed and the man was identified, we began the extradition process, which was extremely complicated." Yedioth Ahronoth reported after the murder 18 years ago that the suspect was an ex-boyfriend of Y., a young woman who was in a relationship with Rothberg. "The suspect fled mere hours after the murder in a plane to Germany, and the police are currently expending great efforts to bring about his arrest abroad through Interpol," the newspaper reported. Suspect Gennady Galkin (Photo: Elad Gershgoren) The paper reported that police had detained for questioning eight people who were at the party, including Y., and that they were permitted to go home after talking to police. It also reported that Y. told investigators that she had been with Rothberg at the beginning of the party and didn't know who might want him dead, but later "broke and revealed that she arrived at the party with someone who was her boyfriend for six years. She said that in recent years he has lived abroad and tends to visit Israel now and then. "Investigators were then informed that a few days ago, this man came to Haifa and met with Y.," the report continued. "The two arrived at the party in the basement, where they met Rothberg, with whom Y. had become friendly a few months earlier. Investigators believe he was enraged that Rotberg had a romantic relationship with Y., and a verbal fight broke out between them. According to suspicions, the suspect then laid in wait for Rothberg outside the building, noticed him and stabbed him to death. He had time to get on a flight to Germany." A suicide car bomb attack close to the Russian embassy in the Afghan capital, Kabul, has killed at least seven people and wounded around 25 others, an Afghan official said Wednesday. The police chief for Kabul, Gen. Abdul Rahman Rahimi, said the seven civilians included two women. No Russian embassy employees were injured, the Russian Foreign Ministry confirmed in a statement. It said the building had sustained "insignificant" damage. The attackers, driving a car packed with explosives, targeted a minibus belonging to Kaboora Productions, which is a subsidiary of one of Afghanistan's biggest media organizations, Moby Group, Rahimi said. Head of the Palestinian General Intelligence Service Majid Faraj has said that Palestinian security agents have thwarted 200 potential terror attacks against Israel. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Speaking in a rare interview with Defense News the first interview he has given since assuming his role Faraj also said that they have confiscated weapons and arrested over 100 Palestinians. Palestinian police clashing with protesters X He confirmed that security cooperation between PA security services and Israel will continue, in order to prevent further chaos and to stop extremists such as Islamic State members from entering the country. Faraj also warned that extremist religious groups are a clear danger, not just for the Palestinian Authority itself but also to Jordan and, ultimately, Israel. Nonetheless, Faraj estimated that 90 percent of the Palestinian public is opposed to organizations such as the Islamic State, Al-Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra and others. Majid Faraj, left, looking on as Saeb Erekat greets Benjamin Netanyahu (Photo: Amos Ben Gershom) This opposition, according to Faraj, can be credited to the president of the PA: "The number of Palestinians supporting them is very marginal, and this is a success of Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas)," he said. "He changed the culture. But if Daesh (Islamic State) or other extremist groups decide to fight Israel, they will find sympathy in the Arab street. "(Islamic State) is on our border , and they are looking to find a suitable platform to establish their base," Faraj continued. "Therefore, we must prevent a collapse here, because the alternative is anarchy, violence and terrorism. "We, together with our counterparts in the Israeli security establishment, with the Americans and others, are all trying to prevent that collapse. Theyre already in Iraq, Syria, Sinai , Lebanon and Jordan, but Ramallah, Amman and Tel Aviv must remain immune from them. Talia Sasson, chairperson of the New Israel Fund (NIF), served as head of the special occupations department in the Israeli State Attorney's Office for a period that ended in 2005. At PM Ariel Sharon's request, she prepared a controversial outpost settlement report. Sasson, a Meretz voter, doesn't represent the State Attorney's Office. She represents the Israeli leftist edge. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter After Sasson came Shai Nitzan, a veteran of the religious-Zionist community, who became State Attorney. At the end of this month, Avichai Mandelblit , who served as Netanyahu's Cabinet Secretary, came in as the Attorney General. I don't know if you can find out an organization's DNA by sight, but I'll just say that I saw more knitted yarmulkes (which are usually worn by members of the Israeli religious-Zionist public. -ed) in the State Attorney's Office than their proportion in the general population. Talia Sasson. Not representative of the Justice Ministry. (Photo: Eldad Refaeli) Alon Liel served as Director General of PM Ehud Barak's Foreign Ministry in the year 2000, when the thesis of making peace with enemies collapsed into itself. The one responsible for the collapse was reality, with some encouragement from Barak. He proposed a generous accord to Arafat, offering up massive concessions (ones that make no security sense in my view), and getting rivers of blood in return. Liel was at the Foreign Ministry when the world - including George W. Bush's USA condemned Israel for every response. He saw the government's powerlessness in the intifada's early days. When he left government work, Liel decided to circumvent Israeli democracy and disregard it. He used outside pressure as a replacement for having to contend with the method in which the majority rules according to its leaders and the general happenings around it. Liel is the Foreign Ministry's DNA in the same way Talia Sasson is the DNA of the Justice Ministry or Amram Mitzna, Ariel Sharon, Moshe "Bogie" Ya'alon and Yuval Diskin are the DNA of the security establishment. And still, Education Minister Naftali Bennett was correct when he said there's a problem in the Foreign Ministry, and was also right about his claims regarding the short-lived boycott of him by the Ministry's workers' union. It's unacceptable that workers should decide what the Ministry's policy is, and which minister they're going to boycott. That's where the problem starts. Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely. Trapped. (Photo: AFP) Every time I take part in some symposium whose topic is Israeli PR, there's always someone who gives a long speech about Israel's problems in that field. About how this and that is said, about how the Palestinians have more PR success, about how the international media can't see the whole picture; but also about the accomplishments and successes, the moral efforts, and the Supreme Court. They're all so busy being right that they forget what Israel's policy DNA is made of. Imagine a world where Israeli PR representatives can have as much time as they want on foreign TV channels, front pages in international newspapers, all freely open to them. A whole hour on the BBC or CNN. All with one condition attached: At one point or another, they must say what Israel's policy in the West Bank is. The chances of success there are slim. You won't find many in the government who can say what our policy is either. About a month ago I interviewed Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely. I asked her what our policy was. Hotovely, a gifted and experienced woman when it comes to media interviews, spoke of the incitement and of how problematic the Palestinians are (something about which we totally agree), as well as the world's hypocrisy (again, we agreed), but couldn't actually answer the question. Education Minister Naftali Bennett. The logic of his West Bank plan is understood. (Photo: Moti Kimchi) She's trapped. Netanyahu has stated a policy of two states for two peoples again and again (other than a 24-hour period last election day). Hotovely wants to cancel the Oslo Accords and annex the entire West Bank, Arab residents included. Bennett is interested in separation based on the C territories (which are fully controlled by Israel, from both civil administration and security aspects. ed) 60 percent of the West Bank with the rest going to the Palestinians. The others are busy waiting for the elections with no policy platform in hand. Now go and explain to them what you can't, because it doesn't exist. Of all the various existing plans, I probably lean the most towards Bennett's idea of separation from the PA with the maximum amount of territory kept by Israel. The numbers are different, the idea is the same. I identify with his logic, and so I don't understand what the heck he wants from the Foreign Ministry's diplomats. After all, they're the ones who take orders from the political ranks, not the other way around. As a legal child, they inherit their government's DNA. You are the government, Mr. Bennett. Sit down together, decide what your policy is in the absence of peace from right or left and announce it. That will make life easier for everyone. "The appointment of Dani Dayan as Israel's ambassador to Brazil was a mistake," said Marco Aurelio Garcia, a senior adviser to Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, on Tuesday. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter The comments represent Brazil's first official remarks on the matter of Dayan's appointment. Garcia, who was speaking in an interview on Brazilian television, also accused Israel of "disturbing the diplomatic protocol." Dani Dayan, whose appointment as Israeli ambassador to Brazil is an ongoing source of controversy (Photo: Gil Yohanan) After noting that the appointment was a "mistake," Garcia continued: "By releasing Dayan's name ahead of time and before notifying the Brazilian government, Israel callously disrupted the political procedures between states/" Garcia also mentioned that the former Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson, Yigal Palmor, called Brazil a "diplomatic dwarf," leading to a sharp clash between the two countries. Garcia's comments essentially shut the door on the prospects of Brazil approving Dayan's appointment. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem has not yet responded to his statements. Garcia, who accused Israel of genocide during Operation Protective Edge, noted that there is no arm-twisting between Israel and Brazil and that Israel is an ally with which Brazil has had excellent relations for many years. Commentators say that with his comments, Garcia actually sent a message signaling that Brazil expects Israel to appoint someone else as ambassador, after which they can return to normal and continue strengthening the ties between the two countries. Another senior official in Brazil expressed similar sentiments about a month ago. Carlos Marun, a member of the Brazilian parliament who initiated the opposition to Dayan's appointment, said "sending a settler leader to represent Israel in Brazil is an affront to our country. "We cannot accept this provocation. It's like Germany sending a former concentration camp commander to Brazil as its ambassador, or like Chile sending a former prison guard from the dictatorship, or South Africa sending a torturer from the apartheid era." Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the appointment of Dayan, who is a former head of the Yesha Council, on August 5 of last year. His appointment was confirmed on November 6. Brazil even sent messages to Israel via diplomatic channels, according to which President Rousseff was uncomfortable with his appointment given his status as a settler leader who himself lives in a settlement. Netanyahu clarified to Dayan in recent weeks that he stood by his appointment and worked via several channels to persuade the Brazilians to give their agreement to his nomination. Netanyahu also emphasized that if Brazil does not approve Dayan's appointment, Israel would not send an ambassador to the country. "Russian weapons, Moscow's most advanced, are already in Hezbollah's possession," Gen. (res.) Yaakov Amidror said at the end of last week, while speaking to a group of new immigrants at a Midrasha Zionit event in Petah Tikva. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Amidror, who was head of the National Security Council two years ago and an adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said that the sophisticated weapons reached Hezbollah as a result of the Syrian civil war. Yaakov Amidror, speaking to a group of immigrat youth in Petah Tikva (Photo: Michael Saposnik) The revelations provided by Amidror have been difficult to extract from senior IDF officials and the wider security establishment. Those officials, particularly within the IDF, preferred to comment on such matters in generalities for example, when asked if Hezbollah had sea-to-land missiles in their possession, the customary response was: "Our working assumption is that they do." Amidror also explained the route that the weapons took from Russia to Hezbollah. "Russia sold its advanced weapons to the Syrians and the Syrians transferred them to Hezbollah. The Russians know that's what happens. "According to foreign reports, some of the weaponry is attacked while it's being transferred from Syria to Hezbollah, and I haven't heard much protest from Russia," he continued. "These are first-class weapons, such as Kornet and surface-to-air missiles, perhaps even Onyx missiles, that are now in Hezbollah's possession." Senior IDF officials, particularly those in the Israeli Navy, have over the past three years often mentioned that the Onyx missile is thought to be one of the most sophisticated in the world. Hezbollah displays its arsenal at a parade marking 15 years since its founding (Photo: EPA) These officials estimate that the Onyx can hit Israel's gas rigs and that their range covers a radius which includes Israel's two main ports in Haifa and Ashdod. The ports would be paralyzed in the event of being hit by such a missile. During his talk, Amidror also referred to the cooperation between the Israeli and Russian armies over their activities in Syrian airspace, but stressed that it doesn't constitute "strategic cooperation. "I don't believe that Russia is selling weapons directly to Hezbollah; that would be going against all of Russia's previous codes of conduct and a step too far." Meanwhile, the IDF Spokesperson on Tuesday announced the conclusion of an expansive, two-week training exercise by the Northern Command. IDF Northern Command troops participating in a training drill (Photo: IDF Spokesperson) Every Northern Command unit took part in the drill, and trained for simultaneous clashes at the Syrian and Lebanon borders. The command's naval and air forces also participated. The army said that the exercises, which was planned in advance in order to improve operational competence, led to a significant improvement in the headquarters' and units' capabilities. "The drill focused on operational planning and cooperation between the IDF's different branches in the face of global jihad and Hezbollah both in Syria and in Lebanon," said the head of the Northern Command, Maj.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi. "This large-scale exercise included training with live fire and intensive attacking of thousands of targets on every battle front, including villages from which the enemy operates," Kochavi continued. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday called on European Jews who are facing anti-Semitism to move to Russia. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter In a meeting with members of the European Jewish Congress, held in the Kremlin, Putin heard from congress president Dr. Moshe Kantor about the rise in anti-Semitism in Western Europe. Vladimir Putin meeting members of the European Jewish Council at the Kremlin (Photo: EPA) "They can come here," Putin said to Kantor. "During the Soviet era Jews would leave, but now they can come back." "The situation of the Jews in Europe is the worst it has been since the end of the Second World War," Kantor said. "Jews are again living in fear and there is a very real prospect of an exodus of Jews from certain parts of Europe. "There are more Jews who are escaping from France , which is thought to be very safe, than from the war in Ukraine." The Pope visited Rome's main synagogue for the first time on Sunday, the place of worship for one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world, and condemned the violence that is carried out in the name of God. His visit was intended as a show of interfaith solidarity at a time of proliferating violence across the world in the name of religion. The Pope was accompanied by heavy security throughout his time at the synagogue. The Pope came out against all forms of anti-Semitism during his visit, calling to maintain "maximum alert" and to intervene early in places where anti-Semitism occurs, in order to prevent another Holocaust. At the start of the week, former minister Eli Yishai declared via his Facebook page, "A terror attack in Otniel: B'Tselem and Breaking the Silence are responsible for another heinous murder." You could look at that statement as evidence that Eli Yishai is a fool, but that would be a mistake. What should interest us isn't the stupidity or internal soul of a man who has already declared that Israel should "wipe out whole neighborhoods in Gaza," along with their elderly and women and children. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Yishai's sould is a very simple maze, half of which is made of populism, and other half out of moral imbecility. Yishai as a thinker and a judicial inspector is not the subject therefore, but Yishai as a representative of Israeli dialogue, which he is attempting to curry favor with via that status. Eli Yishai. Half populism, half moral imbecility. (Photo: Gil Yohanan) That dialogue has been focused on Israeli human rights organizations for the past few months. Eli Yishai may have fired an idiotic shot from the hip, but many of his political camp are firing well-aimed and prepared shots of the same nature. Human rights organization have been called Israel's number one problem: They don't just place an unwanted mirror in Israel's face; they aren't just "good souls" who don't understand that "morality doesn't fit in this part of the world" and that "the only language Arabs understand is power;" it seems that the language of blame has recently changed, from accusation of naivete to accusations of malice, and furthermore treason. Starting as a bothersome burden, human rights organizations have now become an existential threat. I assume one of the reasons for this is the severe shortage in existential threats as of late: Iraq and Syria are out of the picture, Hezbollah is busy Hamas isn't firing, Iran heaven forbid is keeping to the term of its nuclear deal. B'Tselem. An easy target. (Photo: EPA) Netanyahu's Israel has to settle for measly replacements, like the doubtful statement by the Swedish foreign minister . We did indeed quickly announce that the distinguished lady is a crazy anti-Semite, hypocrite, and deathly threat to us, but even the prime minister's closest associates didn't believe that silliness. Well, maybe Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely. She is a believer, after all. We're left with the enemy from within. For the move to work, we need an initial action: Warning people that the boycott movement isn't targeting Israel's policies (especially in the Palestinian territories), but its very existence. The boycott movement (assuming there's an actual "movement" and not just a random bunch of disparate groups) is therefore a threat to our survival. There are journalists who dedicate their entire careers to fanning these hot coals, hoping that it they don't catch fire they'll at least produce some smoke. From the moment threats to Netanyahu's holy government became concrete evidence of anti-Semitism and insatiable lust for our destruction, the question becomes about who is helping the villains in random colleges in south Wales plot our demise. The answer was found at home. To find the existential threat, just as it is with the blue bird, you don't have to go far. Human rights organizations are "moisers" (in Jewish tradition, a person who informs or betrays). They give villains out there in the world details of what we do in the Palestinian territories (admittedly, they are true details). The Netanyahu administration's policies in the Palestinian territories are a problem, but human rights orgs get the blame. (Photo: Lowshot.com) And the goyim see what happens and are shocked. And then they demand that their governments stop supporting the Netanyahu administration's holy policy. And the town burns. Fire, my brothers, fire. And how nice is it that we can accuse B'Tselem , and Breaking the Silence, and Ta'ayush of treason and of attempting to destroy the state of Israel. And some day someone will do something about it already and take vengeance against these traitors, with our glazing eyes gazing at our Prime Minister. And after that happens, we'll reflect and blame the other side of spreading generalizations and condescension. And when we say the word condescension, we'll be forgiven. Because condescending isn't nice. Israel's problem isn't the mirrors in its face, no matter if the image they present is correct or distorted. The problem is the government's reckless policy as it concerns the Palestinian territories. Resistance to this policy isn't the disease, but a desperate attempt to find a cure. Relations between Israel and Sudan may be experiencing an unexpected, albeit slight, thaw. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter A few days ago, an "international Sudanese dialogue forum" came to a close in Sudan, aimed at uniting the various dominant parties and armed groups in the country. During the forum, which was launched in October by President Omar al-Bashir, the groups discussed various topics such as state law, personal freedoms and foreign policy. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Omar al-Bashir: not the most obvious of allies. (Photo: Amit Shabi, AFP) Surprisingly, the issue of normalizing relations with Israel came up a number of times over the three months. "There is no justification for Sudan having hostile relations with Israel, because it will pay a political and economical price for it," said the head of the Sudanese Independent Party, who viewed the lifting of US sanctions against Sudan as the opening point for normalizing ties with Jerusalem. The sanctions were put in place around two decades ago as a response to Sudan's support for terrorism. The statements of the Sudanese Independent Party chairman were surprising, but not as surprising as those of Sudanese Foreign Minister Ibrahim Ghandour. "The matter of normalized relations with Israel is something that can be looked into," Ghandour said during a convention in the capital Khartoum, in response to an argument heard at the event that Sudan's belligerent stance towards Israel is an embarrassment to Washington. According to this argument, improved ties with Israel would open the door to creating better ties with the US government. Ghandour's announcement stirred up controversy in Arabic media, leading him to clarify that Sudan is not linking its relations with any specific country to those with another state. Participants at the forum understood the message that the foreign minister was sending them and several dozen said that they support the establishment of ties with Israel under certain conditions. "The Arab League supports this approach," said one forum member, Ibrahim Sliman. Khartoum is moving closer to the moderate Sunni camp Members of al-Bashir's ruling party say that there has been no discussion relating to relations with Israel in any party meetings. Al-Bashir, who is subject to an international arrest warrant by the Hague for war crimes, said in November 2012 that normalization with Israel is a "red line." His declaration came shortly after Israel attacked a weapons factory in the center of Khartoum The surprising dialogue that has arisen surrounding Israel-Sudan relations is likely due to the dramatic developments in the Middle East over the last few months. Nonetheless, it seems that full normalization is still some way off. Sudan appears to have been edging closer to the moderate Sunni camp over the last two years, while distancing itself from Iran's Shi'i leadership. Two weeks ago, Sudan cut its diplomatic ties with Iran following an attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran Over the last few years foreign and Sudanese media have addressed Israel Air Force attacks inside Sudan, aimed at, according to the reports, preventing weapons deliveries to Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khameini and al-Bashir. Are weapons shipments from Sudan to Iran a thing of the past? (Photo: AP, Motti Kimchi, AFP) Relations between Sudan and "resistance movements," i.e. Hamas and Hezbollah, strengthened during the 1990s, particularly since al-Bashir's assumption of power. Sudan's support for Al-Qaeda and its leader Osama Bin Laden embroiled it in a dispute with the US, which hurt Khartoum both politically and economically. The change began in September 2014 when al-Bashir closed Iranian centers in Sudan and expelled the Iranian cultural attache under the claim that he had spread Shi'ism in the Sunni country. Sudan was one of the first countries to join the war against the Houthi rebels in Yemen, who are supported by Iran. The peak was reached with Sudan's severing of diplomatic ties with Iran two weeks ago, a step taken by a number of other Sunni countries. It is not inconceivable that Sudan's actions are a means of winning financial rewards from Saudi Arabia and that it is interested in normalizing ties with Israel in order to improve its financial situation. It is worth remembering that one American visitor who leaked to Wikileaks quoted an adviser to President al-Bashar, Mustafa Osman Ismail, saying in a meeting with senior state officials: "If things with the US go well, you will help us ease matters with Israel, your closest ally in the region." MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images(MEXICO CITY) -- The Mexican actress who helped Sean Penn interview Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is being investigated by authorities for allegedly illegally receiving money from the Mexican drug kingpin while he was on the lam, El Universal reported. Mexico's attorney general said there are indications Kate del Castillo may have received money from Guzman for her tequila company, Honor del Castillo, according to the publication. Since the company is registered in Delaware, Mexican authorities are sharing information they find with the U.S., the publication said. Del Castillo has been under investigation since 2015, when she began to meet with Guzman's lawyers, according to El Universal. Penn, who allegedly accompanied del Castillo in the meeting she arranged for the Rolling Stone interview on Oct. 2, is not under investigation, according to the publication. Guzman was eager to meet with del Castillo and had apparently never heard of Penn before the meeting, according to transcripts of text messages exchanged between the actress and the prison escapee. The actress took to Twitter Wednesday, speaking out for the first time since the news broke of El Chapo's capture. Del Castillo is best known for playing Teresa Mendoza in the telenovela La Reina del Sur. An agent for del Castillo has not responded to ABC News' request for comment. The Mexican Attorney General's office did not immediately respond to an ABC News request for comment. But previously, she tweeted thanking her supporters. Copyright 2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. 3M to sell pressurized polyurethane foam adhesives business 3M today announced that it has entered into an agreement to sell to Innovative Chemical Products Group (ICP Group), a portfolio company of Audax Private Equity, the assets of 3Ms Pressurized Polyurethane Foam Adhesives business (formerly known as Polyfoam), which is part of 3Ms Industrial Adhesives and Tapes Division. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. 3Ms Pressurized Polyurethane Foam Adhesives business is a provider of pressurized polyurethane foam adhesive formulations and systems into the residential roofing, commercial roofing and insulation and industrial foam segments in the United States, with annual sales of approximately $20 million. The product offering includes a two-component roof tile adhesive that professional roofers use to attach concrete or clay roof tile. The business also offers a polyurethane foam adhesive used for adhering the fleece back roofing membrane and insulation board in low-slope roofing applications. After strategic portfolio review, we decided to exit this business and focus on our core adhesives, sealants, and tapes businesses, said Ty Silberhorn, vice president and general manager, 3M Industrial Adhesives and Tapes Division. 3M applies its adhesive technology to solutions for bonding, protecting, masking, enhancing, shielding, damping, splicing, reinforcing, color coding, and case sealing applications. The Pressurized Polyurethane Foam Adhesives business will be a new, strategic business unit within ICP Group, focused on industrial and construction applications. This acquisition further extends the market, technology, and customer base of our business and gives us a foothold into polyurethane technologies. We welcome the entire Pressurized Polyurethane Foam Adhesives team and look forward to working with them to accelerate growth of the business through investments in products, sales and marketing, and acquisitions, said Doug Mattscheck, president and chief executive officer of ICP Group. ICP Group plans to maintain the Pressurized Polyurethane Foam Adhesives business existing operations in Tomball, Texas, and Coral Springs, Fla., as a stand-alone business unit within the specialty chemicals platform. The transaction is expected to close during the first quarter of 2016, subject to customary closing conditions. Approximately 20 3M employees that support the business are expected to join ICP Group in conjunction with the sale. About 3M At 3M, we apply science in collaborative ways to improve lives daily. With $32 billion in sales, our 90,000 employees connect with customers all around the world. ABOUT ICP GROUP ICP is a leading specialty chemical company engaged in the formulation, manufacturing, and marketing of coatings and adhesives. With operations headquartered in Andover, MA, and additional manufacturing and warehousing in Itasca, IL, ICP serves the architectural, specialty construction, packaging, printing and sport surfaces end markets. ICP is privately held and operates primarily under the California Paints, Fiberlock, Storm System, Nicoat, Decoturf, Plexipave, and Rebound Ace brand names. ABOUT AUDAX PRIVATE EQUITY Since its founding in 1999, Audax Private Equity has been focused on building leading middle market companies. Audax has invested over $3 billion in 94 platform and 445 add-on companies. Through its disciplined Buy & Build approach, Audax seeks to help platform companies execute add-on acquisitions that fuel revenue growth, optimize operations, and significantly increase equity value. Audax Private Equity is an integral part of Audax Group, an alternative asset management firm specializing in investments in middle market companies. With offices in Boston, New York, and Menlo Park, Audax Group has over $9 billion in assets under management across its Private Equity, Mezzanine, and Senior Debt businesses. For more information, please visit : http://www.3m.com Click here to view the 3M profile The figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show the September quarter saw work start on more than 55,000 dwellings across the nation, a 0.5% increase compared to the June quarter. Over the 12 months to September 2015 commencements increased by almost 11% to more than 215,000. [The] update for national new home building is a stellar result not only for the residential construction industry, but for the wider economy, Housing Industry Association (HIA) chief economist Harley Dale said. New dwelling commencements hit a quarterly record level of 55,532 in the September quarter last year. The historical high of 215,329 commencements for the year to September 2015 is 15% above the previous peak of just over 187,000 starts in 1994, Dr Dale said. While national construction numbers hit a record high over the quarter, performance varied from state to state. Over the quarter new dwelling commencements increased in New South Wales (2.4%), Western Australia (1.7%), South Australia (1.2%), the Northern Territory (17.4%), and the Australian Capital Territory (0.4%). Commencements fell in Queensland (1%), Victoria (3.8 %) and Tasmania (20.7%). According to the HIA, the current housing boom, which has also seen housing approval records broken, has proved to be a pillar of the economy in recent years. Over recent years households and businesses have faced a barrage of negative chatter about below trend growth and downside risks to the economic outlook, Dr Dale. Throughout this time new home construction has posted one of its longest upcycles in history providing substantial support to Australias economic output and levels of employment. Industry forecasts have predicted the construction surge will begin to taper-off over the coming year, which Dr Dale said accelerates the need for reform on the taxation on housing. The Federal Government is currently preparing a white paper on taxation reform, with speculation surrounding that process suggesting an increase to the GST and changes to negative gearing could be proposed. Both of those options have been criticised by property lobby groups and professionals, who believe they would have a negative impact on the industry. The Global and United States Hydrobike Market Report has been published by QY Research recently. Hydrobike Market Analysis and Insights This report focuses on... Sign up to get the latest news delivered to your inbox every week! There is no denying how the pharmaceutical industry or "Big Pharma" has often been viewed in less than favorable light. While the industry has spent billions of dollars in order to find cures for diseases that have plagued man for centuries, most if not all are driven not by good will but solely by profit. If only accounting for recent news surrounding a botched drug trial, it seems like "Big Pharma's" reputation would not be changing anytime soon. Late last week, a man has been confirmed dead following his participation in a clinical trial conducted by French company, Biotrial International. The clinical trial was initiated last January 7 in order to assess the effects of a painkiller drug made by Portuguese pharmaceutical company, Bial. 90 healthy volunteers participated in the trial and were given the drug in different doses and times. Aside from the one fatal casualty, five other participants are currently being treated at the University Hospital of Rennes. Biotrial International has since addressed the uproar surrounding the incident. According to a statement released by the company, the trial has followed international guidelines for clinical studies. They were quick to reassure the public that the utmost safety of the test subjects is their number one concern. Advertisement "The trial has been conducted in full compliance with the international regulations and Biotrial's procedures were followed at every stage throughout the trial, in particular the emergency procedures for the transfer of subjects to the hospital." read a part of the official press release. The company has also since extended their deepest condolences to the family of the departed clinical trial participant. "Our thoughts go out to the volunteers and their families. We are working hand in hand with the Health Authorities to understand the cause of this accident" detailed Biotrial International on their website. Currently, French prosecutors have instigated an investigation regarding the unfortunate case. The upcoming U.S. presidential elections is still eleven months away however there is no denying that the campaigning and the debates are already in full swing. Just last weekend, the democratic party conducted yet another debate which was participated by Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Martin O' Malley. The event focused on several pressing issues including poverty, gun control and health care. Amongst the most controversial topic of discussion during the debate however is climate change. A team scientists from Youtube's MinuteEarth channel posed a question to the candidates regarding their stance on climate change. The query touched on the concern over urging Americans to view climate change as an urgent matter that needs solutions. Bernie Sanders was quick to explain how young people are already very much aware of the problem at hand. According to the Vermont Senator, there is no longer a debate on whether or not climate change is real. It is and it is time that the U.S. government together with the American people start doing something to combat its effects. Advertisement "I'm on both the Environmental and Energy Committees. The debate is over. Climate change is real. It is already causing major problems. And if we do not act boldly and decisively, a bad situation will become worse" explained Senator Bernie Sanders. Former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, furthered Bernie's sentiments, claiming that the democratic party is a party that actually believes in science. He subsequently claimed that he already has a plan to move the country towards 100% clean energy by 2050. "I would like to challenge and invite my colleagues here on this stage to join me in putting forward a plan to move us to a 100 percent clean, electric energy grid by 2050. It can be done" quipped O' Malley when asked about the issue on climate change. For decades, it has been a popular notion that marijuana use in adolescents may cause stunting in brain development. With the legalization of the drug however, new studies have been implemented in order to verify previous claims. Recently, one such research has presented their findings. To say that the results are controversial is nothing but an understatement. Last January 18, 2016, the marijuana study was released by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Joshua Isen and the rest of the scientists behind the paper conducted the research on 3066 participants. The subjects were tested when they were between the ages 9 to 12 and then again at ages 17 to 20 - after they have begun using marijuana. The researchers tracked the test scores of both marijuana users and non-users over the course of time and according to their findings there is no significant difference between the IQs of those who have used marijuana and those who have not. The study also followed 789 pairs of adolescent twins from Los Angeles and Minnesota. The study started when the participants were between the ages of 9 to 11. Over the course of 10 years, the researchers conducted intelligence tests and confidential surveys delving on not only marijuana use but also painkillers, cocaine and binge drinking. Advertisement The Marijuana users scored four less points over the decade long study. Surprisingly, their twins who have abstained from pot use also exhibited a decline in the intelligence quotient. The research concludes that a pattern of decline is indeed substantial in today's youth however there is a reason behind it other than marijuana usage. "Our findings lead us to believe that this 'something else' is related to something about the shared environment of the twins, which would include home, school, and peers" quipped Nicholas Jackson, a scientist also behind the recently published study. Description Attorney Barry Lites, one of the founding members of the Suffolk County Bar Association's Foreclosure Project, will discuss homeowners at risk of losing their homes to foreclosures. Although the media reports of an improving economy, many people are still struggling financially. Learn your rights under laws specifically designed to help New York homeowners who are facing foreclosure--separate fact from fiction in terms of your rights to empower people in financial distress and relieve anxiety! Contact the library for registration and additional information. A year on the New England grid (2008) Shows the necessity of being able to dispatch electricity Note rise in gas usage while nuclear plants refuel Click to enlarge Click to enlarge table Renewable installations are growing fast, but we can't have huge percentages of wind and solar on the grid unless we first have grid-level storage. With the exception of pumped storage, grid-level storage does not exist at this time. (No, I don't count an occasional 2 MW project as "the answer.")The explanation follows, based on the New England grid.In a guest post on January 7 , Michael Twomey of Entergy used grid operator (ISO-NE) data to show that between 2014 (when Vermont Yankee was running) and 2015 (when Vermont Yankee was closed), nuclear kilowatt-hours decreased by about five million MWh and gas-fired generators increased their output by almost exactly the same amount. Natural gas went from 46,200,000 MWh to nearly 51,900,000 MWh. Nuclear kWh nuclear went down by almost the same amount of MWh.Looking at the table above, you can see that wind went from 1,892,000 MWh to 2,135,00 MWh, growing by approximately 243,00 MWh, and solar grew from 327,500 to 436,200 MWh, approximately 108,700 MWh.This rapid rate of growth (though still only adding up to 2.4% of the power on the grid), prompted Jeff Schmidt to write this comment on the Twomey article:"This article seems to dismiss the growth of wind and solar. While I am pro-nuclear, and think that nuclear needs to play a vital role in our future energy mix, I think the author of the article is neglecting something important - growth of wind and solar.It's true that they are still small. But, if you look at the year-over-year growth rate, as shown by the statistics provided by the ISO and called out by Mr. Twomey, we see that Solar grew 33% in a year, and Wind grew 41%. Of course, one can't predict future growth rates based on one year, but IF wind and solar can keep up strong growth like that, they could conceivably become a very large proportion of the New England energy mix inside of 10 years.It's true that it's likely an overly optimistic and simplistic projection, but just for the sake of argument, if they can keep up that growth rate, then 9 years from now, Wind could produce about 50% of the energy, and solar about 5%. If you projected it to 10 years instead of 9, that would account for more than 100% of current grid generation.However, at the same time, it's very likely that at some point, Wind and Solar's growth must slow. Still, it's a valid point to concede that Wind and Solar, while currently small in absolute terms, are actually growing at a pretty fast rate."I wrote the following response to Schmidt. I oversimplified, but I am also worried that "we can't grow wind and solar" arguments are often based on cost, or on complex technical issues that are hard to explain. So, here's my oversimplification. Basically correct, but oversimplified.JeffI wrote about Vermont's plans to be 90% renewables in today's blog post . Of course, renewable growth from 1 to 3 to 5% is possible and looks great. However, it simply does not scale. Let's oversimplify a little, though not a lot.Most of Vermont is one weather pattern, with some exceptions. Hot, dry and sunny...all over Vermont. Windy at night...all over Vermont. Cold and windless....all over Vermont. Now, obviously, the mountains are different from the river valleys and so forth, but the statement "weather is the same all over Vermont" is far closer to true than its opposite would be.Okay. We cannot turn wind on and off. Let's say that wind has a 30% capacity factor. For wind to grow to 30% of the electricity supply overall, that means when wind is on the grid (the wind is blowing in Vermont)...the grid has to be 100% wind. Without this high percentage when wind is available, wind is not going to be able to be 30% of the electricity, overall. So we have to build a lot of wind to get wind to 30% of the electricity supply, and we have to turn everything else off if the wind is blowing.Well, what if we build more wind? If we do that, when the wind is blowing....what then? We have to curtail some of the wind, because the grid can't take more than 100% of wind. So, without grid level storage, wind reaches a VERY hard stop at 30%.Well, it is windier in the mountains, and the southern part of the state gets less wind and so forth and this is an oversimplification. And the grid requires more power in the day, and less in the night (when the wind usually blows). So it is quite complicated in reality. But the basics remain.IF you can turn things on and off, you don't reach this sort of hard stop. 100% of the electricity from natural gas...this could work. No "hard stop" involved. 100% from nuclear...well, current nuclear doesn't follow load well, but there is no "hard stop" involved, where you have more nuclear than you can use on the grid. You don't need grid level storage for nuclear, just plants that follow load a little better. And so forth.This is why I am so cynical about the Vermont energy plan. The plan is kind of "We don't justfor miracles, wethem."------has two guest posts at this blog: The Nuclear Safety Paradox , which describes how experience (such as building new nuclear plants) increases safety. Flawed Analogies , which describes the analogies nuclear opponents made in a debate against nuclear energy.The illustration showing the need for dispatchable powerFrompresentation by David LamontVermont Department of Public ServiceOctober 18, 2010Presentation is no longer on the web, but I had saved it to my computer. "We should always remember that the danger to societies from security services is not that they will spontaneously decide to embrace [Stasi style] mustache twirling and jackboots to bear us bodily into dark places, but that the slowly shifting foundation of policy will make it such that mustaches and jackboots are discovered to prove an operational advantage toward a necessary purpose. ~ Edward Snowden "America: just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable." ~ Hunter S. Thompson "Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws." ~ Mayer Rothschild "News is what somebody does not want you to print. All the rest is advertising." ~ LACUNA "What matters in journalism isn't politics, which are as universal and inescapable as breathing. What matters -- along with a fundamentally adversarial attitude toward government, without which "journalism" is simply public relations -- is integrity, transparency, evidence, coherence, and principle. These are the principles on which we should evaluate the quality of journalism, and their absence is why some journalists are so desperate to get you to focus on something else." ~ Barry Eisler "There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack." ~ Molly Ivins "The brain of our species is, as we know, made up largely of potassium, phosphorus, propaganda, and politics, with the result that how not to understand what should be clearer is becoming easier and easier for all of us." ~ James Thurber "The highest patriotism is not a blind acceptance of official policy, but a love of one's country deep enough to call her to a higher plane....When you hold up your arm and swear to uphold the Constitution, you dont say, 'Except in wartime.'" -- George McGovern "Ill believe that corporations are people when Texas executes one." ~ Bill Moyers About ZVTS Even with the Biden Administration adults in charge and Democrats in control on Congress (barely), there remains an increasingly crumbling global economy imperiling the world, rising nationalism and deadly racism across Europe and Asia, a seemingly endless war against terror, a federal government nobody trusts or believes in, global climate change putting us on the brink of destruction and a Village media that barely does its job on even the best day. Needless to say there's a lot of Stupid out there when we need solutions . Dangerous levels of Stupid. Into the fray, dear Reader. Tray tables, crash helmets, arms inside blog at all times. New Delhi: Hours after a Delhi court ordered the CBI to return the documents it seized from Delhi Secretariat in December, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday sought an "explanation" from the Prime Minister's Office over the CBI's raid. "After today's CBI court order directing release of (documents) seized from CMO (chief minister's office), PMO owes an explanation to the nation since the CBI reports to PM (Prime Minister Narendra Modi," he tweeted. A court on Wednesday directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to release documents seized from the office of the principal secretary to Kejriwal, Rajendra Kumar, and wondered how a regular case was registered against the official on the basis of oral information. Delhi's Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia called the CBI raid of December 16 "politically motivated" and sought an apology from the prime minister for it, saying it was directed at Kejriwal's office. "Modi should now appologise" and admit the raid was wrong, Sisodia said. He said the court had categorically observed that it was improper to seize files not related to Rajendra Kumar and also the "in" and "out" register of the chief minister's office. Delhi's ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) said the court order exposed Modi government's blatant misuse of the CBI as Kejriwal was the target of the raid, not his principal secretary. AAP Delhi unit convenor Dilip Pandey said the raid was a ploy to unsettle the AAP government. "Rattled by humiliating loss in Bihar elections, the Narendra Modi government unleashed the CBI to terrorize the AAP government in Delhi," he said. Patna: Condemning the terrorist attack at Bacha Khan University in Charsada, Minister of States for Skill Development Rajiv Partap Rudy on Wednesday said there is a need to start an international drive against terrorists active in Pakistan, adding that it could only be possible only with the support of the government in Islamabad. "We know that the world's most wanted terrorist Osama bin laden was hiding in Pakistan for over a decade and it would be wrong to consider that the Pakistan Government was not aware about it. Pakistan will have to fight terrorism," he added. He said terrorism is an international challenge and the entire world is grappling with it. In Pakistan, heavily-armed terrorists today stormed the university in Pakistan's restive northwest Khyber- Pakhtunkhwa province and opened indiscriminate fire on students and teachers. At least 21 people have been killed and over 30 others injured in the attack. Over 3,000 students were present inside the university to mark the death anniversary of Khudai Khidmatgar Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan alias Baacha Khan, who died on January 20, 1988. The Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has claimed responsibility for the attack. New York: The UN should focus on peace-building initiatives as the lasting solution to protect civilians during armed conflict and after, rather than making the task a part of the transitory peacekeeping operations, according to India. In his first address to the Security Council, India`s newly appointed Permanent Representative Syed Akbaruddin said Tuesday, "Efforts at peace building should be initiated right at the beginning and the cause of the armed conflict addressed through national reconciliation and inclusive political processes giving all sections of society a stake in peaceful co-existence." Speaking at a debate on protection of civilians in armed conflict, Akbaruddin said the world body should "consider dis-aggregating the complex multidimensional nature of the UN peacekeeping mandates, and address issues confronting protection of civilians in armed conflict situations through focused peace-building activities, so that the transition to a post-conflict society can be sustainable." Because protection of civilians is primarily a national responsibility, he said that "contribution to national capacity building rather than intervention mechanisms should be the priority." Invoking the heroism of Gurbachan Singh Salaria, an Indian Army captain who was killed during the UN operations in Congo during the 1960s, Akbaruddin, said however that peacekeepers have and will continue to rise to the defence of civilians when they are in danger. "Even though the notion of `Protection of Civilians` was not part of the mandate" of the UN peacekeeping operations then, Akbaruddin said, Salaria and about 45 Indian soldiers made the supreme sacrifice to protect civilians. Salaria of the Gurkha Rifles led his company in December 1961 against the secessionist Katanga forces loyal to Moise Kapenda Tshombe, who were on a mission to encircle the UN headquarters in Elisabethville, now known as Lubumbashi. With bayonets, khukris and hand-grenades, they charged the much large force of Katanga gendarmes routing them. Tshombe, a supporter of Belgian colonialists, opposed the UN and its peacekeeping operations to restore peace in newly independent Congo. Salaria was posthumously awarded India`s highest military honor, theParam Vir Chakra. Akbaruddin pointed out that it took the UN 35 years to recognise his sacrifice with a Dag Hammarskjold Medal. Akbaruddin reinforced the case for the Council consulting with troop-contributing countries. "As a developing country with years of peacekeeping experience, we feel frequent and regular consultation between the Council, the Secretariat and Troop Contributing Countries will enhance the credibility and effectiveness of the Council in protecting civilians," he said. The lack of consultations hurts "the troop contributing countries who put their troops lives at risk in the service of the UN," the host countries, the Council and, ultimately, the entire UN. Last month, the Council acknowledged that the consultation process with troop contributors was flawed and called "importance of substantive, representative and meaningful exchanges." New Delhi: India`s draft law aimed at protecting the rights of the transgender community must be strengthened to allow people to be legally recognised by self identification rather than based on the opinions of experts, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday. India`s upper house of parliament in April last year passed "The Rights of Transgender Persons Bill" which recognises the right of an individual to be termed as of a third gender and provides them with benefits in education and employment. The bill, which was introduced by a private member, is now in the process of being formulated into a possible law by the ministry of social justice and empowerment and will be put before both houses in the coming months. But New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said there were several problems with the current bill, including a proposal that identity certificates be issued to individuals based on the recommendations of a "screening committee" of experts. "The Transgender Persons Bill will help protect and empower India`s transgender population, but the government needs also to address the bill`s shortcomings," Meenakshi Ganguly, HRW`s South Asia director, said in a statement. "With the input of the transgender community, the government should ensure that a new law lays out a strong legal framework in line with the constitution and international law, and provides effective enforcement." Campaigners say there are hundreds of thousands of transgender people in India but because they were not legally recognised, they have been ostracised, faced discrimination, abuse and often forced into prostitution. In April 2014, India`s Supreme court recognised transgender as a legal third gender and, in a landmark judgment lauded by human rights groups, called on the government to ensure their equal treatment. HRW said the proposal of a committee -- including government officials, medical experts such as psychologists, social workers and members of transgender community -- to determine if a person qualifies as a third gender was not the only problem with the bill. The bill also needs to be expanded to take into account the specific concerns of intersex persons and must also address the rights of transgender and gender non-conforming children, including their right to access education, said the group. "The Transgender Persons Bill offers the promise of both changing archaic laws and thinking about transgender people in India," Ganguly said. "The government has taken the first steps to providing transgender people legal protections. Now it needs to strengthen the draft to ensure good intentions are turned into a reality." Patna: A mob chopped off the hand of a man who was trying to flee after looting a bank in Bihar's capital on Wednesday, police said. Jitender Kumar was caught by villagers at Mahua village in Rupaspur area here when he was trying to flee after he looted Rs.1.70 lakh from the customer service centre of Bank of Baroda. "First, the angry villagers beat him up badly and then chopped off one of his hands as an instant punishment," a police official said. According to police, four armed criminals including Jitender Kumar, entered the bank's customer service centre and looted the amount. "After that all four of them opened fire but villagers chased them and one of them was caught, while the other three managed to flee." Patna Senior Superintendent of Police Manu Maharaj said that police rescued Jitender and admitted him to a hospital. Guwahati: With an aim to boost BJP's prospects in the upcoming Assam Assembly elections, PM Narendra Modi on Tuesday launched BJP's election campaign from Kokrajhar by announcing a slew of initiatives, including tribal status to two communities. Here are five reasons why BJP may score big in the Assam Assembly elections:- BJP's new ally Bodoland People's Front - PM Modi kick started the poll campaign with its new ally Bodoland People's Front (BPF). The BPF is believed to have strong presence in Kokrajhar and its neighbouring areas. The party has been in power in Bodoland Territorial Council since its inception in 2003. Hence, with this new alliance partner, BJP's prospects of coming to power have been enhanced Alliance with Asom Gana Parishad on the cards? - BJP is seeking to broaden alliance with tying up with Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) too. Reportedly, BJP's top brass is already in with the AGP high command including ex-CM of Assam Prafulla Mahanta. Notably, AGP and BJP had fought the 2009 Parliamentary elections together. 'Modi wave' - Considering how 2014 Lok Sabha polls witnessed 'Modi wave' that helped BJP bagging seven of the state's 14 LS seats, while AGP drew a blank, this time the saffron party may secure enough seats in Assam. Tribal status to two communities - PM Modi has announced that the people of Karbi community living in the plains of Assam and Bodos living in hill areas would be granted tribal status and the process has already started. This is also likely to boost winning prospects. 'Northeast youths should be recruited in Delhi Police' The Prime Minister has said he had instructed that youths from the Northeast should be recruited in the Delhi Police and the process has already started. With this move, BJP may woo Northeast youths. Other initiatives - Announcing other initiatives, the Prime Minister said a central technical institute located in Kokrajhar would be given the status of a deemed university, the Sealdah-Guwahati Kanchenjunga Express will be extended up to the Barak Valley while the Rupsi Airport in Dhubri will be taken over by the Indian Air Force. --- Election to Assam's 126-member Assembly is expected to be held in April-May along with four other states. Hyderabad: Hitting out at Union Human Resource and Development (HRD) Minister Smriti Irani for dragging his name into the suicide of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula, Congress MP Hanumantha Rao on Wednesday dismissed her charge that he had written a letter demanding a 'probe' to be ordered into the rampant suicides by Dalit students in the University of Hyderabad. "On 17th November, I wrote a letter to Smriti Irani regarding the issues being faced by the students and employees at the university. I said that there was misappropriation going on and that seven students had committed suicide in three semesters. I also wrote that there were cases of rape and kidnapping occurring regularly besides allegations of illegal transfer of university land," Rao told ANI. He added that he should have got the reply in 15 days as per the law but now Irani was bringing up his letter from 2014 for her own convenience. "I never said that there were any anti-social elements in the university. All I did was explain the irregularities at the university. Why did they not answer my letter? Rohit would have been alive if they had paid any heed to my queries," Rao added. Congress leader Digvijaya Singh also hit out at Irani's defence and said that it was an attempt to shift the blame and confuse people. "She should tell how many times she pressurized Vice-Chancellor to change the decision. This is simply an attempt to further disturb and confuse people," Congress leader Singh told ANI. Earlier, Irani attempted to shift the blame on the previous UPA regime and said that things would have been in place at the moment had the Congress taken action then. The HRD Minister drew the attention of the media to the letter written by Rao and said that he wanted a probe to be ordered on the death of students from the Telangana region. "I am in possession of a letter written by Shri Hanumantha Rao ji, Congress MP, on November 17, 2014. In this letter, he had claimed that in the past four years, not the present VC but the earlier VC appointed by the Congress Government, there have been suicides by the students from the Telangana region who were from marginalized communities. He has in his letter to the ministry written that he wants a probe to be ordered," she added, while asserting that the University had been asked to give a clarification in this regard," Irani said. Meanwhile, fierce protests continued at the Hyderabad University over the suicide of Rohith, as students expressed their dissatisfaction with Irani's defence by burning an effigy of the HRD Minister. New Delhi: Suspected operative of al Qaeda in Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) Syed Anzar Shah, arrested for allegedly radicalising youths for terror activities in India, was on Wednesday remanded in police custody till February 1 by a Delhi court. Shah was produced before Additional Sessions Judge Reetesh Singh after expiry of his police custody and the Special Cell of Delhi Police sought extension of his remand saying he was required to be interrogated further to ascertain the identity of his other associates. The police told the court that Shah was to be quizzed to unearth the entire conspiracy as well as funding of the terror outfit. Advocate Akram Khan, who appeared for Shah, argued that the police should first inform the court as to what they have done during the earlier police remand of his client. The court after hearing the arguments said that sufficient grounds were mentioned in the application of the police seeking extension of Shah's remand. Besides Shah, four other accused-- Mohammed Asif, Abdul Sami, Zafar Masood and Mulana Mohd Abdul Rehman Kasmi-- have been arrested in connection with the case. Police had earlier said that Rahman ran a madrassa in Uttar Pradesh where several students were enrolled and he was allegedly trying to radicalise them for terror activities. It had claimed that Masood was propagating the terror agenda of AQIS among the youths and trying to attract them towards the terror outfit. While Asif (41), was held from Seelampur in north-east Delhi, Rahman (37) was arrested from Jagatpur area of Cuttack in Odisha, police had said. They have been booked under provisions of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. According to special cell, Rahman is suspected to have international links in countries like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Dubai. We want your comments and your story tips! geniusofdespair@yahoo.com (use ALL caps in subject line) afarago@bellsouth.net. Actually I never look at my email, Genius, so write to Gimleteye. Srinagar: One militants were killed in a gun battle between security forces and militants holed up in a village in Pulwama district of south Kashmir. the encounter is still on as one more militant is still holed up in the village. The ultras are said to be members of the Hizbul Mujahideen Troops of 53 Rashtriya Rifles and police cordoned off Naina Batapora village yesterday evening following information about the presence of the militants in the area. The security forces had halted fire late in the night to rescue villagers trapped in a mosque before going all out against the militants. Thrissur: Almost a year after he mowed down security guard Chandrabose with his Hummer jeep, justice caught up with beedi tycoon Mohammed Nisham on Wednesday. Thrissur District Additional Sessions Court Judge KP Sudheer convicted Nisham for murdering Chandrabose. The quantum of sentence will be pronounced tomorrow. On January 29, 2015, a delay in opening the gate of Sobha City by Chandrabose had allegedly infuriated an inebriated Nisham. The businessman first mercilessly beat up Chandrabose and when the poor guard tried to escape, Nisham rammed his Hummer into him. The security guard succumbed to his injuries after three weeks at a private hospital. The Kerala Police had invoked provisions of Kerala Anti-social Activities (Prevention) Act (KAAPA) against Nisham, who is a serial offender and has 16 criminal cases against him. He is currently lodged at the Kannur Central Jail. One of the key witnesses in the case Anup had earlier given a statement against Nisham but he later turned hostile. However, he once again approached the court with the plea that he was forced by Nisham's brother to change his statement, following which the trial court accepted his original statement. Mumbai: A sessions court here on Wednesday allowed Mumbai police's application seeking documents pertaining to Pakistani-American Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist David Coleman Headley from a Delhi court. "The court allowed police to approach the (National Investigation Agency) court in Delhi and get those documents," special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam said. Special judge G A Sanap of Mumbai court, on December 10, made Headley an approver in the Mumbai terror attack case and granted him pardon. Headley, currently serving a 35-year prison sentence in the US for his role in the 2008 Mumbai attack, is likely to depose via video link on February 8. LeT operative Abu Jundal is now on trial in the Mumbai terror attack case here. The court overruled Jundal's objection to police's application about the documents. New Delhi: Fresh protests by students from universities across Delhi over the alleged suicide by a Dalit research scholar today rocked the national capital, following which 30 of them were detained by police. While a delegation of students, who had yesterday staged a protest at Jantar Mantar and outside the office of the HRD Ministry, visited Hyderabad University campus today to express solidarity with the agitating students there, scores of them continued their demonstrations here. A group of students under the banner of Krantikari Yuva Sangathan (KYS) gathered at the Connaught Place's Central Park where 30 of them were detained. According to police officials, keeping law and order situation in mind 30 agitating students were detained and released hours later. Jamia Millia Islamia students also took out a rally on the campus in solidarity with the expelled Dalit students of Hyderabad University, and to protest the suicide of Rohith Vemula, one of the expelled students. Imran Khan, a member of the Jamia Students Forum, said Rohith committed suicide due to the unbearable stress put on him by the university administration. While another student, Meeran Haider, demanded that the HRD Minister resign and the vice-chancellor of Hyderabad University be dismissed. Twenty-six-year-old Vemula Rohit, a PhD scholar, was found hanging in a room at the Central University's hostel on Sunday. He was among five research scholars who were suspended by Hyderabad Central University (HCU) in August last year and also one of the accused in the case of assault on an ABVP leader. They were also kept out of the hostel. The suspension was revoked later. Union Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya and Hyderabad University Vice Chancellor were named in an FIR over the death of the scholar, which triggered massive protests and demands for their removal from their posts. Earlier in the day, hitting back at political rivals, HRD Minister Smriti Irani had accused them of attempting to "instigate" students all over the country on the issue and dismissed demands for her resignation. Charsadda (Pakistan): At least 20 people were massacred on Wednesday by Kalashnikov-wielding Taliban suicide attackers who stormed a prestigious university here in restive northwestern Pakistan and opened indiscriminate fire, in a grim reminder of the 2014 Peshawar army school attack. The gunmen entered the Bacha Khan University named after iconic leader Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan alias Bacha Khan in Charsadda, some 50 km southwest of Peshawar in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, and opened fire on students and teachers in classrooms and hostels, police said. Earlier, reports said that 21 people and four terrorists were killed but later army spokesman Lt Gen Asim Bajwa held a press conference and stated that 20 people -- 18 students, a professor and a staffer -- and four terrorists had been killed in the attack. The militants used the cover of thick, wintry fog to scale the walls of the university before entering buildings. Blasts and heavy gunfire were heard from inside the campus where a poetic symposium was in progress to mark the death anniversary of Bacha Khan who died on January 20, 1988. There were about 3,000 students and 600 guests on the campus when the attack took place, Vice Chancellor of the university Dr Fazal Rahim said. Omar Mansoor, Peshawar school attack mastermind and a commander of the Hakimullah Mehsud faction of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistani (TTP), claimed responsibility for today's assault. He called local media from a mobile number in Afghanistan to claim that they have carried out the attack. A spokesman of the militant group said it was revenge for those killed by security forces since Peshawar school attack. The attacks would continue, he warned. But the spokesman of another Taliban faction, Mohammad Khurasani, condemned the attack and said they were not involved in it. Bajwa said "major breakthroughs" had been made in identifying the terrorists who attacked the university. The Inter-Services Public Relations chief said the terrorists' phone calls had been traced and analysed, and that two cell phones had also been recovered from them. Federal Information Minister Pervaiz Rashid visited university and told the media that the operation launched by security forces to clear the campus has been completed. He said the attack was in response to military operation in the province which has broken the back of militants. The victims were shot in the head or chest. Images from inside the university showed a pool of blood on the floor of a dormitory and charred corpses of two alleged militants lying on a staircase. 11 people were injured in the attack and were shifted to a hospital. An emergency has been declared in all hospitals in the town. All schools have been closed in the area. Professor Hamid Hussain of chemistry department, who heroically fought back attackers, was among the dead. New Delhi: Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday held deliberations with Congress leaders from Tamil Nadu on the strategy to be adopted in the poll-bound state where the issue of forging an alliance holds the key to prospects of the party. "Everyone gave ideas and opinions to the leadership on how to face the elections," TNCC chief E V K S Elangovan after the parleys with the Congress Vice President. Congress had contested the last Lok Sabha elections on its own and had drawn a blank. It had contested the last Assembly elections alongwith DMK but secured just five seats. Assembly strength in the state is 234. Talking to PTI, Elangovan refused to elaborate on the stand of the the state unit on the alliance issue, insisting that it was for the party high command to decide whether the Congress should fight as part of a tieup with other like minded parties or go it alone. Several former PCC chiefs and former Ministers were present in the consultations. Only last month, DMK chief M Karunanidhi had said that Congress would be invited to join the alliance led by his outfit for the upcoming Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu. Karunanidhi's statement had come nearly three years after snapping ties with Congress. "We will not exclude Congress while inviting alliance parties (to join the DMK-led alliance)," he had said when the New Year was about to ring in. He was responding to queries if his party would invite Congress like it had reached out to DMDK. In July last year, DMK Treasurer MK Stalin and Elangovan had said the two parties would "work together" to protect the interest of the people of Tamil Nadu, in particular the oppressed sections. DMK had in early 2013 snapped ties with Congress over the Sri Lankan Tamils issue. The rupture had also come against the backdrop of the arrests of former Union Minister A Raja and Karunanidhi's daughter Kanimozhi, Rajya Sabha MP, in the alleged spectrum allocation scam. Congress is out of power in the key southern state for nearly five decades and has generally been aligning with either of the Dravidian party- DMK or AIADMK. Sometimes, it had contested alone too but without much success. Chennai: In a bizarre incident, a second-year student of MS engineering design in IIT Madras went missing from her hostel on Sunday leaving behind a note that she is headed to the Himalayas to pursue a spiritual life. 26-year-old Vedantam L Prathyusha left behind two notes in her room that she was leaving for the Himalayas to explore more about her spiritual leanings. Media reports add Pratyusha mentioned in the note that she wanted to become a saint and that she was being protected by God and her family will never come to know about her whereabouts. As per the institute she left early last Sunday. She had filled in the permission register before leaving the hostel, in which she had mentioned that she would return on January 20. However, after she failed to reach her home in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, her parents contacted the IIT administration. The police has since filed an FIR in the case. Baghdad: Three U.S. citizens who disappeared last week in Baghdad were kidnapped and are being held by an Iranian-backed Shi`ite militia, two Iraqi intelligence and two U.S. government sources said on Tuesday. Unknown gunmen seized the three on Friday from a private residence in the southeastern Dora district of Baghdad, Iraqi officials say. They are the first Americans to be abducted in Iraq since the withdrawal of U.S. troops in 2011. The U.S. sources said Washington had no reason to believe Tehran was involved in the kidnapping and did not believe the trio were being held in Iran, which borders Iraq. "They were abducted because they are Americans, not for personal or financial reasons," one of the Iraqi sources in Baghdad said. The three men are employed by a small company that is doing work for General Dynamics Corp, under a larger contract with the U.S. Army, according to a source familiar with the matter. The Iraqi government has struggled to rein in the Shi`ite militias, many of which fought the U.S. military following the 2003 invasion and have previously been accused of killing and abducting American nationals. Baghdad-based analyst Hisham al-Hashemi, who advises the government, said the kidnappings were meant to embarrass and weaken Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who is trying to balance his country`s relations with rival powers Iran and the United States. "The militias are resentful of the success of the army in Ramadi which was achieved with the support of the U.S.-led coalition and without their involvement," he said. Kabul: A powerful suicide car bomb struck near the Russian embassy in downtown Kabul Wednesday, with casualties feared from the latest attack in the Afghan capital, the interior ministry said. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing, which comes just two days after a second round of international talks aimed at reviving Taliban peace talks. "The attack happened near the Russian embassy," ministry spokesman Najib Danish told AFP. "We fear casualties from the bombing," he added, though he could not confirm if the embassy was the intended target. The loud explosion sent a plume of smoke rising in the sky, with ambulances and firefighters rushing to the scene. Delegates from Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States convened in the Afghan capital Monday for a one-day meeting seeking a negotiated end to the 14-year Taliban insurgency. The first round of the so-called "roadmap" talks was held in Islamabad last week as the four nations try to lay the groundwork for direct dialogue between Kabul and the Islamist group. Taliban representatives were notably absent in both rounds and analysts caution that any substantive talks are still a long way off. The Taliban has stepped up attacks on government and foreign targets in Afghanistan this winter, when fighting usually abates, underscoring a worsening security situation. Paris: Flames ripped through the top floor of the luxury Ritz Paris hotel on Tuesday, as around 60 firefighters battled to put out a fire which threatened the work of a 3-1/2 year restoration programme just weeks ahead of a planned re-opening. Some 150 workers were evacuated from the site in the chic Place Vendome square in central Paris at around 0500 GMT, where about 15 fire trucks were on the scene, Paris fire service spokesman Captain Yvon Bot said on French television. The cause of the fire, which struck on the seventh floor of the building and spread through the attic to the roof, was so far unknown, the official said. By mid-morning, the fire had been brought under control, he told Reuters. "There is no longer any risk of it spreading, but the operation will still take a very long time," he said. The firemen had had great difficulty accessing the part of the building affected, he said. The Ritz had no comment as the incident was ongoing. The hotel's website still indicated on Tuesday it was accepting reservations again from March 2016. The former home of fashion designer Coco Chanel and author Marcel Proust, and a favourite drinking hole of American writer Ernest Hemingway, the hotel was last renovated over a decade beginning in 1979 after its purchase by tycoon Mohamed Al-Fayed. The latest work to restore the Ritz, which opened in 1898 and was the first Paris hotel to boast electricity on all floors and bathrooms that were inside rooms, began in August 2012 and is being overseen by interior architect Thierry W. Despont. It includes the building of a "discreet tunnel" that will enable the rich and famous to come and go in privacy. It was at the Ritz that Diana, Princess of Wales, spent her last night in 1997 before the car crash that killed her. The haredi Sefardi Chief Rabbi of Israel Yitzhak Yosef was invited to speak in the Knessets on-site synagogue yesterday to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the dedication of Knesset building. Yosef's message to lawmakers? Democracy takes a back seat to Judaism. Above: Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef Chief Rabbi Tells Knesset Israel Is A Jewish State First, A Democracy Only (A Distant) Second Shmarya Rosenberg FailedMessiah.com The haredi Sefardi Chief Rabbi of Israel Yitzhak Yosef was invited to speak in the Knessets on-site synagogue yesterday to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the dedication of Knesset building. Yosef spoke to an audience of lawmakers and, Yeshiva World reported, told them that first and foremost, Israel is a Jewish state. Only after that is Israel a democracy Yosef who is a paid state employee said, adding that Members of Knesset are required do everything in their power preserve the Jewishness of the state. Also present were the Zionist Orthodox Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem Rabbi Aryeh Stern and top Knesset staff. Hong Kong: Students protested on the campus of Hong Kong`s leading university Wednesday after a pro-Beijing official was appointed to a senior role, as fears grow of increasing political interference in education. Around 100 protesters left classrooms to rally at the Hong Kong University campus following the appointment of Arthur Li, known to be close with the government, as chairman of the university`s governing council last month. The appointment taps into wider concerns that academic freedoms in the semi-autonomous Chinese city are under threat, particularly in the wake of student-led mass pro-democracy rallies in late 2014. "We are conducting a class boycott in order to target unfairness in the system. Students have raised opposition to the appointment but the school`s autonomy is threatened," student leader Yvonne Leung told protesters through loudspeakers. "It`s an abuse of power," she said. Li, a member of Hong Kong`s Executive Council, the top advisory body to the government, started his three-year term on January 1. He is close to the city`s unpopular leader Leung Chun-ying, who is also the chancellor of all the city`s universities. His appointment came after the university council rejected the nomination of liberal law scholar Johannes Chan as pro-vice chancellor at the university, sparking protests from staff, students and members of the public. Protesters vow to boycott classes for a week. Tel Aviv: Israeli forces have arrested a cell allegedly linked to the Lebanese Hezbollah movement which was planning an attack inside Israel, the army announced on Wednesday. Forces "apprehended a terror cell funded and guided by Hezbollah," an army statement said, adding the cell was "plotting a shooting attack". It said the cell was based in Tulkarm in the occupied West Bank and was made up of Palestinians. However it "received instructions and guidance regarding executing terror attacks... from an additional Hezbollah operative". The leader of the seven-person cell was recruited online by Jawad Nasrallah, the son of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, the army said. It did not provide the dates of the arrests, saying only that the investigation had been concluded recently. On Monday, Israel`s military chief of staff, in a rare public speech, said that Hezbollah was his country`s biggest threat. Gadi Eizenkot said the Iranian-backed movement would be strengthened by the nuclear deal with Tehran. More money would be channelled to Hezbollah with sanctions lifted and as Iran`s economy grows, Eizenkot said. Hezbollah and Israel scuffle intermittently in the disputed border area between Lebanon and the Jewish state, and the powerful Shiite Muslim group has in the past targeted army patrols in response to strikes against its members. The most recent attack occurred on January 4, when an attack targeting an Israeli border patrol caused limited damage. No Israelis were injured. In 2006, Israel fought a war against Hezbollah that killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon, mostly civilians, and some 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers. Nigerian: Nigeria`s most senior army officer has said his troops acted appropriately during a raid on a Shiite Muslim group which has led to claims of hundreds of deaths. Chief of Army Staff General Tukur Yusuf Buratai said on Tuesday his officers and soldiers "acted in accordance to the rule of engagement and to the task given them by their commanders". He was giving evidence to an inquiry set up by the National Human Rights Commission, which is looking into last month`s raid on the headquarters of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria (IMN). No official death toll has been given from the two days of clashes from December 12, which were sparked when IMN followers blocked Buratai`s convoy in the city of Zaria, in northern Nigeria. The group said last week some 730 of its members were unaccounted for, "either killed by the army or... in detention". A medic at the Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital in Zaria told AFP he counted at least 400 bodies in the morgue on the evening of December 12. Local reporters covering the violence said they saw hundreds more on the streets near IMN leader Ibrahim Zakzaky`s compound in the days that followed. Human Rights Watch has said "at least 300" were killed while Amnesty International put the figures at "hundreds". Buratai, however, rejected claims that soldiers operated outside the law. He told the panel soldiers "respect human rights" and had sworn to protect human lives, judging it unfair to criticise troops for trying to uphold law and order. Zakzaky and the IMN have previously clashed with Nigeria`s secular authorities over their quest to establish an Islamic state through and Iranian-style revolution. The cleric has periodically been incarcerated for alleged incitement and subversion. Nigeria`s north is mainly Sunni Muslim. Ames: Sarah Palin, the politician-turned-reality TV star offered a passionate endorsement on Tuesday to Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, the reality TV star-turned-politician, declaring that "the status quo has got to go." Palin, a former Alaska governor who was Republican Senator John McCain`s running mate in the 2008 election won by Democrats Barack Obama and Joe Biden, appeared with Trump at a rally in Ames, Iowa, two weeks before the state`s Feb. 1 caucus, the country`s first nominating process ahead of the Nov. 8 election. Trump is in a close race in Iowa with fellow conservative Republican Ted Cruz. Palin`s folksy, plain-speaking style has won her a loyal following among some conservatives, but she remains a polarizing figure, even among Republicans. It is unclear whether she can attract additional support to Trump, whose own blunt rhetoric has helped lift him to the top of the crowded Republican field. "He is from the private sector, not a politician," Palin said in an animated speech after joining the business mogul and former host of TV`s "The Apprentice" onstage. "Can I get a hallelujah?" She described Trump as an anti-establishment candidate who would "kick ISIS` ass," referring to the Islamic State militant group. Palin said there was nothing wrong with Trump being a multibillionaire and that it did not make him an elitist, citing all the time he had spent with construction workers as a real-estate developer. As Trump stood alongside, Palin said: "The status quo has got to go," adding that the political establishment had been "wearing political correctness kind of like a suicide vest." In a statement before the event, Trump said he was "greatly honored" by the endorsement. "She is a friend, and a high-quality person whom I have great respect for." Trump has led national opinion polls among Republicans for months but is in a tight contest with Cruz, a U.S. senator from Texas, for the support of Iowa Republicans, who lean conservative and whose evangelical Christians comprise a major voting bloc. Palin, who often discusses her Christian faith, is popular among that group and endorsed Cruz when he ran for the U.S. Senate in 2012. Cruz responded to her switch of allegiance with magnanimity. "Regardless of what she does in 2016," he tweeted, "I will always be a big fan." She devoted a large portion of her speech to deflecting criticism from Cruz and others that Trump, who did not oppose legal abortion at least for a time, was not a true conservative. District of Columbia: Former vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin endorsed Republican billionaire Donald Trump on Tuesday, saying the real estate mogul would "lead the charge" as America`s next president. Palin, who flirted with her own White House run, emerged as a conservative icon and political powerbroker following her failed 2008 vice presidential bid. Since then she has endorsed several far-right candidates who went on to win seats in Congress. As the former Alaska governor and gun-enthusiast jumped back into the political limelight, it emerged that her son had been arrested on domestic violence charges after a fight involving a riffle. On the political front the coveted endorsement of Trump comes just 13 days before votes are cast in Iowa, the debut contest in the presidential primary race, and it could give a welcome boost to Trump, the current Republican frontrunner. "No more pussyfooting around!" boomed Palin as she stood alongside Trump at his campaign rally in Ames, Iowa. "The president has to keep us safe economically and militarily," stressed Palin, who rocketed to political stardom when John McCain plucked her from obscurity to be his running mate. Trump is a "master" dealmaker, she said. "He knows how to lead the charge. So troops, hang in there because help`s on the way." Using rhetoric that has helped her rally supporters on the campaign trail, Palin drew huge cheers -- and smiles from Trump -- when she blasted President Barack Obama as a "weak-kneed capitulator in chief" who leads from behind, particularly when it comes to battling so-called Islamic State extremists. "Are you ready for a commander in chief who will let our warriors do their job and go kick ISIS`s ass?" she asked. The endorsement came as news emerged that Palin`s son Track, 26, was arrested on domestic violence charges Monday after an armed altercation with his girlfriend, according to court documents filed Tuesday. During the drunken fight at his mother`s house in Wasilla, Alaska, Track Palin allegedly brandished a rifle and threatened to shoot himself, according to the documents filed in court and posted online.Palin repeatedly knocked the Republican establishment for seeking to derail Trump, warning that they have been "wearing this political correctness kind of like a suicide vest." Riyadh: When Saudi Arabia`s king Abdullah died a year ago on Saturday, his subjects expected their country to keep a steady course under new King Salman. They were in for a royal shock. Within hours of acceding to the throne, Salman, then 79, named his son Mohammed bin Salman, who was not yet 30, as defence minister, setting in motion a year of change while sticking firmly to the Islamic kingdom`s conservative foundations. It was Mohammed, as much as Salman himself, who became the face of the monarchy presiding over one surprise after another during a tumultuous 12 months. The world`s major Sunni power adopted a more assertive foreign policy, began austerity measures to address a record budget deficit, confronted increasing violence from jihadists and faced heightened global concern over its human rights record. "The key shift, I`d say, is the more assertive foreign policy," said Adam Baron, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. "We`ve seen the Saudis take a much stronger leadership role in the region, spurred both by feelings of an increased power vacuum and their anxieties over Iran`s influence." The September death of about 2,300 foreign pilgrims during a hajj stampede in Western Saudi Arabia only added to tensions with Shiite Iran, which claimed hundreds of victims. Three months after taking office from the cautious reformer Abdullah, Salman ruptured with the past and ensured a shift to a younger generation of rulers. He named a new heir in Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, 56, while Mohammed bin Salman became Deputy Crown Prince and second in line to the throne. The kingdom also got a more youthful foreign minister with Adel al-Jubeir, 53. This generational shift was positive, said Iman Fallata, 46, a founder of the Baladi Initiative, which helped prepare women to participate for the first time in municipal elections last December. "The mentality of the people who govern changed a lot," she said, with younger leaders now in "front position". Such an endorsement reflects an administration "very in tune with what the Saudi population want," a Western diplomat said. "And they care about that more than what the West wants or what the liberal elite wants." Yet, despite the generational shift, "they`re not trying to push social change in the way that king Abdullah was," said the diplomat.Saudi Arabia remains one of the most restrictive countries in the world for women. The dark-bearded Mohammed bin Salman, now 30, holds extraordinary power with multiple portfolios, including as head of a new body overseeing Saudi Aramco, the state oil giant that could be partly sold off in a share offer under reforms forced by the collapse in global crude prices. Diplomats and analysts have noted an emerging power struggle between Mohammed bin Salman and Mohammed bin Nayef, the interior minister who supervises the kingdom`s battle against Islamic State group Sunni extremists. The militants have killed minority Shiites and police since late 2014. Ending what the Arab News daily called the kingdom`s "customary quiet diplomacy", Saudi Arabia formed an Arab coalition which in March began air strikes against Iran-backed Zaidi Shiite rebels who took over much of Yemen. "The effects of the ongoing military intervention in the kingdom`s southern neighbour will continue to shape the Arabian Peninsula for years if not decades," Baron said. Yemen is one of many Middle East countries where Saudi Arabia sees Iranian interference, which it decided to confront while it perceives a lack of engagement from its traditional ally Washington. "The United States must realise that they are the number one in the world and they have to act like it," Mohammed bin Salman said in a January 7 interview with The Economist. According to a foreign diplomat, the Saudis "feel isolated and abandoned by a longtime friend". Those feelings crystallised with Washington`s support for a historic agreement that took effect Saturday between Tehran and major world powers. In return for restrictions on its nuclear capabilities the deal lifts crippling sanctions on Tehran. Seeing an emboldened Iran, the Saudis acted. Months of effort led to an unprecedented December meeting by Syrian political and armed opposition factions in Riyadh, a bid for unity before peace negotiations sought with President Bashar al-Assad`s Iran-supported regime. Five days after those Syrian talks, Mohammed bin Salman made the surprising announcement of a 34-member coalition to fight "terrorism" in the Islamic world. "You can see how we became very strong," Fallata said, following Riyadh`s severing this month of diplomatic ties with Tehran after protesters burned its diplomatic missions there. "Now we are leading the action." Ontario: Several major Canadian cities will temporarily stop taking Syrian refugees, the government said Wednesday, after they revealed that they were struggling to find proper accommodation in the dead of winter. Refugee agencies in Halifax, Ottawa, Vancouver and Toronto asked for a pause in resettlements, citing a lack of affordable housing and a shortage of staff. Immigration Minister John McCallum told reporters in Toronto that he would oblige and have new arrivals diverted to other cities until those feeling overwhelmed sort out their issues. McCallum acknowledged that "housing is a challenge, but I think we are in the process of meeting that challenge," he said. "The flow from the airplanes is not slowing down at all," he said. "But if certain towns or cities need a pause, there will be other places in Canada that will receive the refugees. "There are many, many places in Canada that are crying out for refugees." As of January 19, Canada has welcomed 11,866 Syrian refugees and another 5,829 have been cleared to travel here. Ottawa has pledged to take in a total 25,000 by the end of February. Zurich: Syria peace talks are expected to begin within a few days, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday, adding that Moscow was ready to cooperate closer with the United States on Syria aid supplies. Lavrov, who met his US counterpart John Kerry in Zurich today in a bid to create momentum for Syria peace talks to kick off as planned on January 25, rejected suggestions the negotiations might be delayed until February amid disagreements over who will represent the opposition. "We are sure that in the next few days, in January, these talks should begin," he told reporters. He stressed though that the United Nations was leading the process and the start date would ultimately be determined by UN chief Ban Ki-moon and his envoy on Syria Staffan De Mistura. The planned negotiations are meant to help end a conflict that has claimed more than 260,000 lives since it began nearly five years ago. But disagreement over who will represent the opposition has cast a shadow of doubt over whether the UN-brokered talks will begin on schedule. Lavrov meanwhile said today that he and Kerry had discussed the thorny issue of Russia's air strikes in Syria. He said Moscow was ready to coordinate more closely with the US-led coalition to help facilitate aid deliveries inside the war-torn country. "We spoke about how the Russian airforce, when planning its actions, takes into account the programmes that the UN humanitarian organisations, the Red Cross and other NGOs carry out," Lavrov said. "We said that we will be ready to more closely coordinate our actions with the American coalition in this direction," he stressed. Earlier today, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Russian air strikes had killed more than 1,000 civilians, including more than 200 children, in Syria since they began in September. Russia is a staunch ally of the Syrian government and has coordinated its strikes with Damascus, saying it is targeting IS and other "terrorist" groups. But activists and rebels accuse Moscow of focusing more on moderate and Islamist opposition fighters than IS. A coalition led by Washington has also been carrying out strikes against IS in Syria since September 2014, but it does not coordinate its raids with Damascus. Those strikes have killed 4,256 people since they began, among them 322 civilians, including over 90 children, according to the Observatory. Bangkok: Thailand`s criminal court on Wednesday jailed a man for six years for Facebook comments deemed to be an insult to the country`s king, in what one rights group called the toughest sentence by a civilian court for a single such offence. The country`s strict lese-majeste law makes it a crime to defame, insult or threaten the king, queen, heir to the throne or regent. The military government has stepped up prosecutions of those accused of defamation, giving out harsher sentences. Piya Julkittipan, 46, was arrested in December 2014, eight months after the military took power in a coup. He was found guilty on Wednesday of breaking the lese-majeste law and infringing the Computer Crimes Act for posting two pictures with messages on social media site Facebook insulting King Bhumibol Adulyadej, 88. "The Criminal Court sentenced Piya to nine years in prison, which was the highest sentence the civilian court has ever given for one count of lese-majeste," Thai human rights group iLaw said in a statement. The world`s longest-serving monarch, King Bhumibol has been in hospital since May, receiving treatment for multiple illnesses. Nervousness over his health and the succession has formed the backdrop to a decade of political crisis in Thailand. Seoul: Calling North Korea the greatest source of instability in Asia, a top US diplomat urged China on Wednesday to "show leadership" in international efforts to sanction Pyongyang following its fourth nuclear test. US Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken, who was in Seoul on a two-day visit, noted China had a particular role to play given its "special relationship" with its reclusive neighbour. Blinken will meet with Chinese diplomats in Beijing on Thursday, ahead of a scheduled trip to China by US Secretary of State John Kerry next week, as Washington seeks to ramp up pressure on Beijing. "We are looking to China to show leadership on the issue," Blinken said, after talks with South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-Se. China is North Korea`s chief diplomatic protector and economic benefactor, but traditional ties have become strained as Beijing`s patience has worn thin with Pyongyang`s behaviour and unwillingness to rein in its nuclear weapons ambitions. But China`s leverage over Pyongyang is mitigated, analysts say, by its overriding fear of a North Korean collapse and the prospect of a reunified, US-allied Korea directly on its border. "Every country in this region wants stability. North Korea is the greatest source of instability in the region," the visiting US envoy said. "Together, collectively, we have to deal with that," he added. Yun echoed Blinken`s view, saying it is now "North Korea versus the international community". Blinken`s trip is the latest in a flurry of diplomatic exchanges focused on Northeast Asia, as the international community seeks to squeeze North Korea with fresh sanctions for its latest nuclear test on January 6. "Everything is on the table" at the UN Security Council, Blinken said about the sanctions being considered. "But (we are) also looking at this independently and in partnership with other countries." Aviv Bushinsky, a former top aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, called US Ambassador Dan Shapiro "yehudoni, a Hebrew slur that means little Jew boy, on Israeli televi sion. Above: US Ambassador Dan Shapiro at a haredi wedding in 2013 Updated 4:28 pm CST Former Top Netanyahu Aide Calls US Ambassador Little Jew Boy Shmarya Rosenberg FailedMessiah.com Aviv Bushinsky, a former top aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, called US Ambassador Dan Shapiro "yehudoni, a Hebrew slur that means little Jew boy, on Israeli television, the Jerusalem Post reported. Bushinsky served as Netanyahu's spokesperson during Netanyahus first stint as Prime Minister in the 1990s and then later served as Netanyahus chief of staff when Netanyahu was Finance Minister a decade ago. He is now a frequent political commentator on Israeli television. During a televised debate on Channel 2 Bushinsky said US Ambassador Dan Shapiros remark, made earlier this week, that Israel employs two different standards of justice in the West Bank, one for Jews and one (that is much more harsh) for Palestinians, was typical of a little Jew boy. The US Embassy declined to respond to Bushinskys slur. In 2002, Member of Knesset Zvi Hendel of the right-wing National Union Party called the then-US Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer Jew boy after Kurtzer said Israel should stop funding West Bank Jewish settlements and use the money it saves to fund programs for the disabled something Israel was surprisingly lax in doing. Hendels use of the slur caused an uproar. In an Army Radio interview in 2012 Zehava Gal-On of the left wing Meretz Party also reportedly used the slur. Organized groups [which] will come from Brooklyn [to Israel] and [immediately] get the right to vote! All the decisions about life and death here whether to evacuate the territories, whether to authorize outposts those sitting in New York or Brooklyn will decide for us? Groups of Jew boys" Gal-On then stopped and immediately corrected herself "Jews, organized in the Diaspora, will decide how we live here? Related Post: US Ambassador Says Israel Employs Double Standard Of Justice In The West Bank. Hanoi: Vietnam has warned China not to drill for oil after Beijing moved a giant rig at the centre of a previous maritime standoff back into disputed waters. The move comes a day before a crucial political transition begins in Hanoi as the communist leadership meets for its five-yearly congress. China has moved the HY-981 rig into an "overlapping area of continental shelves between Vietnam`s central coast and China`s Hainan island", Hanoi`s foreign ministry spokesman Le Hai Binh said late Tuesday. Hanoi closely monitors the movement of the oil rig, which caused a high seas standoff and deadly anti-China riots in 2014 after it was deployed for several months in waters claimed by Vietnam. "Vietnam asked China not to proceed with drilling activities and withdraw the oil rig out of the area," Binh said in a statement published online. Beijing insisted Wednesday that the rig was operating in the "undisputed waters of China". "We hope (the) Vietnamese side can view the matter calmly," China`s foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters at a regular briefing. The development comes at a delicate time for Hanoi, with Vietnam`s ruling communist party preparing for a leadership change at the upcoming party congress, a once-in-five-years event which starts Thursday. The run up to this year`s meeting has been marked by a bitter factional struggle between the party`s traditional old guard, who are closer to Beijing, and more modern reformers like Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung. Vietnam expert Carl Thayer said Beijing`s move appeared "ill timed and counterproductive" coming ahead of the leadership transition. "China just shot itself in the foot," he told AFP, warning the reappearance of the oil rig could give Dung -- who has been outspoken over the maritime dispute with Beijing -- a boost in support. China last moved the HY-981 oil rig into contested waters in 2014, triggering protests and riots in Vietnam that left at least three people dead. Since the rig incident, Vietnam has drawn closer to its former wartime foe America, with the US partially lifting a ban on lethal weapons sales in 2014. Vietnam staunchly opposes China`s ongoing efforts to develop airstrips and military bases on the island chains it controls in the South China Sea. Its commercial fishing fleet routinely clashes with Chinese fisheries patrol vessels in contested waters from the northern Gulf of Tonkin to fishing zones around the Spratly Islands hundreds of miles further south. Hanoi and Beijing frequently trade diplomatic barbs over disputed island chains and waters in the South China Sea. The leadership`s handling of its delicate relationship with China -- which is the country`s largest trading partner -- is a frequent flashpoint for domestic criticism of Vietnam`s authoritarian government. China asserts ownership over virtually all of the South China Sea, putting it at odds with regional neighbours the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan, which stake partial claims. Bejing: A former deputy Communist Party chief in China`s volatile region of Xinjiang was sentenced on Wednesday to 12 years in prison for corruption. Yang Gang was the communist number two in Xinjiang from 2006 to 2010, and had held positions within the party`s senior ranks in the resource-rich far western region since 1999. From 1998 through 2012, Yang "took advantage of his posts" in Xinjiang and elsewhere to help others secure development projects, sales and promotions, the Third Intermediate People`s Court of Beijing said on its verified social media account. The probe against Yang was announced in 2013, part of a high-profile crackdown on graft under President Xi Jinping. The campaign has brought down numerous senior officials, notably former security chief Zhou Yongkang -- although critics say it is used for political infighting. Yang received almost 14 million yuan (now $2.1 million) in bribes in the preceding five years, at times aided by his wife and son, the court said. He had been given a relatively light penalty because he had confessed and paid back his ill-gotten gains, it added. Xinjiang, the homeland of the mostly Muslim Uighur minority, is the scene of sporadic bloody violence which the government attributes to separatist religious extremists. Rights groups and exile organisations accuse Beijing of discriminating against Uighur culture and religion, saying it is a root cause of the unrest. How the European Union Economy Has Reacted to the Refugee Crisis (Continued from Prior Part) Conflict between Germany and United Kingdom The current refugee crisis is growing in Europe (HEDJ) due to the conflict between Germany (EWG) and the United Kingdom (EWU). At the beginning of 2015, Germany agreed to take a large number of asylum seekers, whereas the the United Kingdom was unwilling to take more refugees. Now the United Kingdom is moving toward a referendum to decide whether to stay in or leave the European Union. Most of the United Kingdoms citizens want to leave the European Union because they think that due to increasing immigration, the jobs for residents in the United Kingdom are being reduced. The EU allows people to move freely within the member countries, which is affecting their employment. Germany has allowed large amounts of migrants into its country because its huge population is becoming much older. The unemployment rate stood at 6.3%, which is lower compared to France and the overall European Union. However, future employment conditions in Germany are going to drop according to the projections of the European Union. Germany and migrant crisis Germany is going to lose around 10 million people because of a demographic change in between 2020 and 2060, according to the European Unions projection. As Germanys workforce is projected to decline by 2060, it will create fiscal challenges for Germany, which will include higher spending on pensions and healthcare. On the other hand, if Germany is allowing more migrants in the country, it can get cheap labor, which could reduce the cost of different corporate houses. It would also increase the profit margins of the large German exporting companies such as Volkswagen (VLKAY), Daimler (DDAIF), and SAP (SAP). The recent terror attack on Paris is taking away the countrys confidence in terms of allowing more refugees into the nation. To learn more, read Eurozones Focus in 2016: British Referendum and Sustainable Growth. Browse this series on Market Realist: A large amount of contraband tobacco products totaling more than 306 kilograms has been seized by the Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission. The AGLC estimates more than $116,000 in potential tax revenue has been lost. Contraband cigarettes, flavoured cigars and shisha tobacco, a flavoured product smoked in a hookah, were discovered when a search warrant was executed at Alex's Convenience Store in Edmonton in January. Two men face criminal charges of fraud over $5,000 and trafficking in contraband tobacco. Under the provincial Tobacco Tax Act, the two face charges for possession of more than 1,000 grams of tobacco. They are scheduled to appear in Provincial Court on March 16. Contraband tobacco is a product that doesn't adhere to provincial and federal laws that involve importation, package marking, manufacturing, and the payment of duties and taxes. Contraband can be recognized by the absence of a red (Alberta) or a peach/light tan (Canada) stamp that says "Duty Paid Canada Droit Acquitte" on the packaging. Provincial revenue from tobacco taxes was $940 million in 2014-15. By Richard Valdmanis (Reuters) - Billionaire environmental activist Tom Steyer said he is not ready to endorse Hillary Clinton, and he would be open to supporting her main rival, Bernie Sanders, if he becomes the Democratic nominee for president. One of the biggest Democratic donors, Steyer could help Clinton boost her standing among environmentalist activists who are a key constituency within the Democratic Party. Clinton is locked in tight races with Sanders in Iowa and New Hampshire, which both have early nominating contests. "Our real goal has been not to support any one candidate, but to emphasize and highlight the issue (of climate change) so that the candidates can lay out their solutions and so the American people can have a chance to make a decision," Steyer said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. After the Democratic Party picks its presidential nominee, that will change. "We have always come out and supported the climate champion," Steyer said. "The idea that for some reason we wouldnt do that, Id have to understand why in hell we didnt. Because that has been our practice always." Steyer has been a longtime ally of Clintons. He held a fundraiser for her presidential campaign at his home in San Francisco in May. He was also an early supporter of Clintons during her 2008 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. There was no immediate reaction from the Clinton campaign to Steyer's comments. Steyer, 58, made his fortune through investments, some in fossil fuel energy, at Farallon Capital Management, the San Francisco-based hedge fund he founded in 1986. He stepped down as co-managing partner of Farallon in 2012 to devote himself to full-time activism because, as he later wrote, he "no longer felt comfortable being at a firm that was invested in every single sector of the global economy, including tar sands and oil." He spent heavily in the 2014 congressional elections to back candidates who could help further his anti-fossil fuel agenda. He paid out over $70 million, more than any other single donor in both parties. Of the seven candidates he supported, three won. CLINTON PLAN NEEDS MORE WORK Steyer said Clinton's position on energy and climate - which calls for increased use of solar and wind power, lower oil use, and a revamping of the aging U.S. oil and gas pipeline network - was good but needed some work. (https://www.hillaryclinton.com/briefing/factsheets/2015/09/23/hillary-clinton-vision-for-modernizing-energy-infrastructure/) "I dont think shes fully fleshed out everything she has to say about energy and climate," Steyer said. "I think that as the campaign goes on I would imagine she will put out more detailed plans of exactly what she thinks. I don't find what she's said inadequate, but I don't think it's complete yet." Sanders has a climate agenda that on its face appears to resonate more closely with Steyer's - an aggressive move away from fossil fuels, including a ban on hydraulic fracturing. But he has also railed against billionaire influence in politics and has pledged not to accept cash from big donors. (https://berniesanders.com/issues/climate-change/) Steyer said Sanders' views on big money "certainly wouldnt disqualify him for us, I can tell you that." "What Bernie Sanders is talking about, which is trying to get back to a more perfect democracy, is something that we support too. We just think that the idea of ... wishing the rules were different and then pretending they were, is something which, unfortunately, probably would be disastrous from the standpoint of energy and climate," Steyer said. YOUNG VOTERS Steyer says he has learned the lessons of the 2014 campaign, when he spent a lot of money in return for relatively little. "When you look at 2014, it was a question of turnout. Americans turned out, and specifically Democrats, turned out in the lowest level theyve done for 70 years. Youd have to go back to 1942 to see turnout that low. And in young people, the numbers are incredibly low. So the question is, how are we going to motivate those voters to show up?" he said. His environmental organization NextGen Climate is running information campaigns on college campuses in Iowa and New Hampshire and elsewhere in an effort to raise awareness about climate change and the positions of all the presidential candidates. Steyer hopes the effort will reach people of 35 and under, a group he says represents about a third of the countrys electorate and who generally agree that climate change is a problem, but who often pass up the chance to vote. "Weve been pushing really hard to get them involved to make them aware of whats at stake," he said. Steyer said he was not sure yet how much money the 2016 effort would cost, but acknowledged the project would likely be larger than the one NextGen undertook in 2014. "We never have a budget. We know this stuff changes. What we do will depend on what happens." Steyer said the 2016 election was critical to consolidating gains for the climate movement in 2015 - a year in which the Obama administration signed onto a global climate pact, blocked the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline from Canada, and ushered in new curbs on oil drilling and air pollution. "If you look at the Republicans, there are a whole bunch of serious Republican candidates who are diametrically opposed to everything the president has spoken about in terms of progressive energy and climate policies. So when you think about what is at stake: almost everything," he said. (Editing by Ross Colvin) The minister of Finance is not ruling out layoffs as the government asks departments, agencies, boards and corporations to identify budget cuts totalling 30 per cent. Speaking in a media scrum Wednesday afternoon, Finance Minister Cathy Bennett said all options are on the table to find the savings needed, including layoffs. "When you do the math, we're short 28 per cent of the money we need to pay the bills," said Bennett. She said government is looking for "bold, innovative ideas" on how to address a $2.4 billion deficit. During the 2015 election campaign, Liberals said there would be no job cuts to balance the books. Bennett said Tuesday that she is looking for the "best ideas" and has ruled nothing out. "To say that anything is not on the table would be irresponsible, but to say that we have our minds made up on something would also be not factual as well," she said. "Every single thing that we can consider is going to be on the table until we develop the plan that we want to implement." - Analysis | Can the Liberals slay the deficit and still keep their election promises? In documents obtained by CBC News, the government said agencies are encouraged to submit ideas that "extend beyond their individual mandates." Specifically, the document asks for "savings totalling thirty per cent of their 2015-16 expenditures over the next three fiscal years." "A specific target has not been set for each year, but departments and ABCs (agencies, boards and corporations) should be prepared to implement accepted proposals as early as possible." A department spokesperson stressed that government will not be making 30 per cent cuts across the board, but called it an exercise to identify cost-cutting options. "We do not have targets right now. This is a framework for a discussion," said Bennett. "We have to look at revenues. We have to look at expenses. We have to look at efficient delivery of services. We have to look at programs that have maybe been around for a decade that are no longer serving the people of the province." Story continues Massive impact NDP leader Earle McCurdy said anything near a 30 per cent savings would have a significant impact. "Anything even close to that number in an economy that's in a recession would really compound the problem," he said. "It would also fly in the face of very clear promises that [the Liberals] made during the election that there would be no layoffs." McCurdy noted a PC savings target of just three per cent in 2013 resulted in 1,200 layoffs. He predicted the government will also have to close schools and hospitals to achieve significant savings. 13-year low prices The province's financial firestorm is linked to a combination of record spending and a sharp drop in oil revenues. Brent crude was trading Tuesday at a 13-year record low of $27.18 US. West Texas intermediate crude was trading even lower, at $26.26 US. "It's very concerning," said Bennett. "The history of relying on oil prices as a significant proportion of our revenue has been flawed." She said that "structural" problem means the province has to look at establishing a Legacy Fund to set aside future oil money for an economic downturn. Last week, Premier Dwight Ball announced an initiative to tackle the dire fiscal situation. These latest instructions to identify savings of 30 per cent are part of that initiative. The consultation process that's part of that plan will begin Jan. 25 with a public session in Rocky Harbour. Others are planned for Corner Brook, St. John's, Port aux Basques and Grand Falls-Windsor. Resettlement agencies in two more Canadian cities have asked the federal government to slow down the arrival of government-assisted refugees as the groups struggle to find permanent housing to lodge Syrian families, says the Department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship. The latest hiccup in the government's plan to resettle 25,000 refugees a mix of privately sponsored and government-assisted refugees by March 1 comes as 11,613 Syrian refugees have already arrived in Canada since Nov. 4 when the Liberals were sworn into power. Groups in Toronto and Halifax have joined agencies in Ottawa and Vancouver in their request to temporarily delay the arrival of government-assisted refugees. Immigration Minister John McCallum, who took part in a question-and-answer session with the Canadian Club of Toronto on Wednesday, said afterward the requests are coming directly from resettlement agencies, not city officials. "They are finding that they need a little [more] time to hire more people," McCallum said in Toronto Wednesday morning. "My officials are helping them with that process, and they also need a little more time to find medium-term housing." McCallum called the temporary measure a "short-term diversion" while the government helps ease the strain felt by some of the resettlement groups. Extended hotel stays That means that some government-assisted refugees will have to stay in temporary accommodations near the Toronto and Montreal airports for a few days before travelling to their host cities, said the minister on Wednesday. "I am told that this will be resolved in a matter of a few days, not longer than that," McCallum said. "At the present time, four communities, Vancouver, Ottawa, Toronto and Halifax, have asked us to delay new arrivals for a few days," said Theodora Jean, a spokeswoman with the Immigration Department in an email to CBC News. "At most, new arrivals in these situations are being delayed up to five days," Jean said. Story continues The Immigrant Services Association of Nova Scotia told CBC News in Halifax that it is not one of the groups who have asked the government to delay the arrival of refugees. The temporary measures do not apply to Syrian refugees who are privately sponsored by Canadians. Daily flights McCallum said the Liberals aren't talking of cancelling government-organized flights carrying Syrian refugees just yet, but rather delaying transport to the cities that will welcome them. "The flow from the airplanes is not slowing down at all. It's just that if certain towns or cities need a pause, there will be other places in Canada who will receive the refugees," he said. According to information posted on the government's website, nearly 600 Syrian refugees are expected to arrive at the Toronto and Montreal airports by the end of today. But details for flights planned for Jan. 21-27 are currently unavailable. "This is a tentative flight and has not been confirmed. The list of destination cities for the refugees is not yet available," the website says. Of the near 600 refugees who are expected to arrive in Canada today, the government website shows that 253 are destined for resettlement in the four cities where agencies are said to be experiencing some strain. - 49 are destined for Vancouver. - 47 for Toronto. - 118 for Ottawa. - 39 for Halifax. 1st flight out of Turkey To date, the Syrians who have arrived in Canada during the past two months have come from refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon. Today's arrivals will include for the first time refugees flying out of Turkey. "Our first government organized flight out of Turkey is expected to depart on Jan. 20, on a charteredcommercial flight departing from Ankara," said Faith St-John, a department spokesperson in an email to CBC News. "Those arriving from Turkey will be a mix of government-assisted and privately sponsored refugees." The UN refugee agency is responsible for identifying refugees in Jordan and Lebanon, but in Turkey the registration of Syrian refugees falls to the government. Canadian officials have been working with the government of Turkey to secure exit permits for the refugees. "Approximately 600 interviews have been completed with Syrian refugees in Turkey and additional interviews are ongoing. However, the total number of refugees who will arrive from Turkey is not yet confirmed," St-John said. McCallum said on Wednesday though it's been a "challenge" to resettle a large number of government-assisted refugees, the "bigger challenge" is to ensure their successful settlement and integration into Canadian society. During the election campaign, the Liberals promised to resettle 25,000 government-assisted refugees by the end of 2015. But shortly after taking office, lowered the target to 10,000 saying most of those would be privately sponsored. (Reuters) - A police officer was shot dead and another was wounded on Sunday by a suspect during a foot chase after a car crash outside of Salt Lake City, police said. Officer Doug Barney died after he was shot once and fellow officer Jon Richey was expected to survive after he was shot three times in Holladay, Unified Police Department of Greater Salt Lake Sheriff Jim Winder said at a news conference. Barney and Richey were among the police officers who chased on foot a man and woman after they fled the scene of a car crash at about 10 a.m. local time in the southeast suburb of Salt Lake City. The man suspect Corey Lee Henderson shot Barney in the head, killing him, during the pursuit, according to Winder. Henderson was shot and killed when he later exchanged gun fire with Richey who was shot three times. Richey was taken to the hospital where he was in stable condition, Winder said. Henderson had a criminal record, according to Winder. The woman was taken into custody, he said. (Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee) Security Academic Program Delivers Malware Reverse Engineering Tools and Training A company in the security segment has opened up a new academic program to provide training to students and faculty in colleges and universities in security incidence response. CounterTack will specifically train students on reverse engineering of malware using Responder PRO, its tool for performing reverse-engineering, forensics and other malware analysis. One institution that has piloted the program is Kingston University in London. "Cyberattacks are having a very real and damaging impact on government and private sector entities," said Dimitris Tsapsinos, an associate professor who leads the cybersecurity program at Kingston, in a press release. "It is vital that our students graduate with the tools they need to recognize and remediate attacks as they increase in magnitude and impact. Our goal is to use industry-leading technology to introduce students to the tools they'll be using upon graduation." The offer, which includes access to online training and the tool, is intended to provide students with practical experience using professional-grade applications. "As universities add cybersecurity programs to their IT curricula, students can't rely on textbooks; they need familiarity with industry-accepted tools and practical training to succeed in the fast-paced cybersecurity environment," added company CEO Neal Creighton. Sign-up to obtain the licenses and training access is available on the CounterTack Web site. Granting the subsidy to couples in which the father learns in yeshiva full time does an injury to all other couples who need to prove that they are working or studying in order to gain employment in the future. This discrimination is expressed in acceptance committees for child day care in which preference is given to the children of yeshiva students since the families of yeshiva students will always be poorer than families where both parents work." High Court Orders Government To Explain Obvious Pro-Haredi Bias In State Child Care Subsidy Program Shmarya Rosenberg FailedMessiah.com In response to a petition from the Reform Movements Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC), Israels High Court of Justice issued an interim injunction today that compels the government to explain why it gives child care subsidies to families in which the male parent is a full time haredi yeshiva student, the Jerusalem Post reported. The IRAC petition claims the legal criteria for receiving discounted child care from the state mandate that both parents in a family must be either employed in the workforce or be studying for a professional qualification which when earned would help them find work. For years, the state gave this subsidy to haredi families in which the father chose not to work and instead chose to study full time in yeshiva, and it continued the practice of doling out this special haredi welfare until the previous government was forced by its then-coalition partner the Yesh Atid Party to change the criteria to mandate that both parents be employed or enrolled in a recognized professional education program. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus newest government repealed most of those changes shortly after taking office as part of the coalition deal Netanyahu made with haredi political parties. Haredi yeshiva students often continue to study full time in yeshiva well into middle age and even beyond with no intention of gaining employment. Many are able to do this in part because of state subsidies subsidies that, for the most part, university students, graduate students, artists and others do not qualify for because the subsidies were essentially tailor-made for the haredi community in order to buy the support of haredi political parties. The newest version of the criteria use a formula that considers a familys total income per head. Because a full time yeshiva students family will almost always have a much lower income even than a family with two parents who work at low wage jobs, families with a father who studies full time in yeshiva are likely to get the childcare subsidy while the family with two working parents is much less likely to qualify for it. Granting the subsidy to couples in which the father learns in yeshiva full time does an injury to all other couples who need to prove that they are working or studying in order to gain employment in the future. This discrimination is expressed in acceptance committees for child day care in which preference is given to the children of yeshiva students since the families of yeshiva students will always be poorer than families where both parents work, Ricky Shapira-Rosenberg, an attorney with the IRAC said, noting the current structure of the childcare subsidy decreases the motivation of haredi men to work. Policy Mentoring Program Helps First-Gen Students and Retired Faculty The University of California San Diego (UCSD) offers multiple mentoring programs matching students with students in the same disciplines, new faculty with experienced faculty and students and staff with librarians. But it's a mentoring program that connects students with retired professors that may offer the younger participants the best preparation for a successful college career while giving the older ones the chance to continue serving their schools. The institution's Emeriti Mentor Program, sponsored by its Emeriti Association, matches students with retired faculty based on academic interest. When the match is successful, the student gains know-how and advice that can "serve as a bridge to future academic, personal and professional growth." In a recent article Melvin Green explained why he has been mentoring undergraduates for the last decade, following his retirement as a professor of biology at UCSD. Early in his own college career, when Green had told his mother that he was switching from engineering to chemistry, she cried, fearful that he'd never make a proper living in his newly chosen field. When he retired, Green wanted to help those who were first-generation students too, facing similar life challenges. He founded UCSD's mentoring program in 2006, he wrote, specifically to help those students from low-income families who were new to the college experience. Currently, the program has about 50 emeriti professors participating as mentors, helping almost 100 freshmen and sophomores. "The main goal of these mentors is to provide career guidance and an understanding ear," Green explained. As he noted in the article, the arrangement helps not just the student but the instructor too. "After retirement, professors typically experience a sense of sudden loss from their once productive lives because they are no longer involved in teaching or research. Those that want to maintain some involvement with the university find mentoring a very worthy and satisfying activity," he wrote. "Universities need to realize the great resource they have in their retired professors and find ways to keep them actively involved." Above: Lord George Weidenfeld Lord George Weidenfeld, a noted British publisher and philanthropist, whose last major philanthropic endeavor was to save Syrian Christians from ISIS, has passed away at age 96. The JC reports: In 2015, aged 95, the peer funded a rescue mission for Christians in Syria and Iraq the Weidenfeld Safe Haven Fund. It flew 150 people to Warsaw in July. At the time he said: I cant save the world but I had a debt to repay. It was Quakers and Christians who brought those [Kindertransport] children to England. It was a very high-minded operation and we Jews should also be thankful and do something for the endangered Christians. He said that he hoped to mirror the work done by Sir Nicholas Winton, who helped 669 children escape from Nazi persecution. Parents of public school children in East Ramapo Central School District have filed a petition in State Supreme Court in Albany, asking the court to direct the New York State Board of Regents and the State Education Department (SED) to take concrete remedial action to safeguard their childrens right to a sound basic education as guaranteed by the New York State Constitution. The press release: EAST RAMAPO PARENTS FILE SUIT TO REMEDY SCHOOL BOARDS FISCAL MISMANAGEMENT SEEK COURT ORDER FOR STATE INTERVENTION AND CORRECTIVE ACTION January 19, 2016 On January 14, parents of public school children in East Ramapo Central School District filed a petition in State Supreme Court in Albany, asking the court to direct the New York State Board of Regents and the State Education Department (SED) to take concrete remedial action to safeguard their childrens right to a sound basic education as guaranteed by the New York State Constitution. The petition describes numerous State and federal investigations and reports documenting a continuing pattern of fiscal mismanagement and neglect by the East Ramapo Board of Education over the last decade. The Boards mismanagement has resulted in a severe lack critical educational resources, resulting in poor student outcomes and depriving district students of a sound basic education. The reports, including two in the last year by State-appointed monitors, provide compelling and overwhelming evidence of a district on the brink of financial collapse. In these reports, State and federal officials document the Boards failures to provide essential programs and services to vulnerable student populations, including English Language Learners (ELL) and students with disabilities. They also spell out the signficiant cuts made by the Board in the number of classroom teachers and support staff employed by the district and in essential school programs. Over a year ago, a comprehensive report by a fiscal monitor appointed by former State Commissioner John King made numerous recommendations to address the Boards mismanagement, reallocate funding within the districts budget, and begin restoring essential resources cut from district schools. These recommendations were echoed in a December 14, 2015, report to the Board of Regents by Dennis Walcott and a team of monitors appointed by State Commissioner Mary Ellen Elia in August. Despite the States best efforts to secure their voluntary cooperation, the Board has steadfastly refused to take meaningful steps to fix the problems identified in the reports and take prompt corrective action to provide students with a sound basic education. In light of the Boards intransigence, the parents petition seeks a court order to compel the SED and Regents to intervene and take all actions necessary and appropriate to remedy the fiscal crisis in East Ramapo. The petition makes clear that, under the New York State Constitution, State education officials have an affirmative duty to intervene whenever a local board of education and district, through a continuing pattern of mismanagement and neglect, sabotage the rights of school children to a sound basic education. It is clear that the children of East Ramapo need the state to step in immediately and ensure that the Board delivers the resources necessary to protect their right to an education, said parent-petitioner Romel Alvarez Each day the state fails to act is a precious day of learning lost by our kids. The community of East Ramapo supports this petition as a logical extension of the December 14 monitors report, said Willie J. Trotman, President of the Spring Valley NAACP. We stand behind the parents in calling for immediate relief for the children of our school district. The parents are represented pro bono by Brad Elias of OMelveny & Myers, and David G. Sciarra and Wendy Lecker of Education Law Center. Related: The petition as a PDF file. All East Ramapo Posts. Two Jewish teens, one 16-years-old and the other 15, have been arrested on suspicion of defacing an iconic Jerusalem church with hate crime graffiti. Above: "May his name be blotted out" written as an acrostic. The first letter of each line spells the name "Yeshu," the rabbinic name for Jesus. (Photo credit: the abbey's Benedictine Monks). Below: more of the graffiti calling for "revenge" (Photo credit: the abbey's Benedictine Monks) Two Jewish Teens Arrested For Alleged Roles In Anti-Christian Hate Crime Shmarya Rosenberg FailedMessiah.com Two Jewish teens, one 16-years-old and the other 15, have been arrested on suspicion of defacing an iconic Jerusalem church with hate crime graffiti, Haaretz reported. The Dormition Abbey on Mount Zion, which is located just outside the walls of Jerusalems Old City, is believed by Christians to be located on the spot where Mary the mother of Jesus died. It was defaced with a string of anti-Christian slurs written in red and black permanent marker Saturday night. Among those slurs were "Christians to Hell," "Death to the heathen Christians the enemies of Israel," and "May his [Jesus] name be obliterated" (written as a Hebrew acrostic of Jesus' Hebrew name as it is supposedly found in the Talmud and which is used as a slur in and of itself by some haredim). The AP reported both suspects are believed to be members of the Zionist Orthodox Hilltop Youth and noted the graffiti included threats of violence against the abbey's monks. Neither suspect has yet been charged. This was not the first hate crime against the abbey. In February 2015 arsonists burned a building near the abbey. Shortly after the Pope visited the abbey in 2014, an arsonist set the abbeys visitor book on fire. In 2012 and again in 2013, anti-Christian graffiti was painted on the abbey walls. A wave of similar anti-Christian attacks has seen the Church of the Multiplication of Loaves and Fishes burned in 2014 and many other Christian buildings and cemeteries vandalized and defaced. Additionally, in the streets of Jerusalems Old City Christian clergy are routinely spat on by haredi yeshiva students and Zionist Orthodox Hilltop Youth. Related Post: Jerusalem Christian Abbey Hit With Hate Crime Attack Again. Will Falling Crude Oil Production Stabilize Crude Oil Prices? (Continued from Prior Part) WTI-Brent spread WTI (West Texas Intermediate) crude oil prices outpaced Brent crude oil prices in the week ending January 15. The WTI-Brent spread narrowed to $0.48 per barrel on January 15. However, the sharp rise in Brent crude oil prices widened the WTI-Brent spread to -$0.45 per barrel on January 19, 2016. WTI-Brent spread widened The US government removed the 30-year-old US crude oil export ban in December 2015. Its expected to trim the supply glut in US crude oil markets. As a result, WTI prices gained momentum. They traded at a premium over Brent crude oil prices. This wont continue in the long term due to gasoline and distillate inventory builds. WTI crude prices traded at a discount to Brent crude oil prices. After the removal of Irans export sanctions and turmoil in the Chinese stock markets, Brent crude oil prices fell more than US crude oil prices. WTI prices traded at a premium over Brent crude oil prices from January 13, 2016, to January 15, 2016. The rise in Chinese crude oil imports for 2015 was positive for Brent crude oil prices. So, the WTI-Brent spread widened during this week. A wider spread yields lower revenue for WTI crude oil producers compared to Brent crude oil producers. This makes it hard to compete with international oil producers. So, US crude oil producers like Occidental Petroleum (OXY), Apache (APA), Cimarex Energy (XEC), Anadarko Petroleum (APC), and Murphy Oil (MUR) will suffer from the wider spread. ETFs like the United States Oil ETF (USO) and the iShares US Oil & Gas Exploration & Production ETF (IEO) will also be impacted due to tracking WTI crude oil prices. Browse this series on Market Realist: Mark Hart Texas-based hedge fund manager Mark Hart III, thinks China will further devalue its currency "north of 50%." Hart, the founder of Corriente Advisors, was one of the hedge fund managers who correctly predicted and profited from the sub-prime crisis. He had a special fund for the European sovereign crisis, which also delivered bumper returns to investors. Now he has a special situations fund specifically structured for the devaluation of the RMB. In an interview on Real Vision Television, a subscription financial news service, Hart said he believes China has the opportunity to allow for a "very sharp devaluation" and they would be "completely justified" doing so. Hart predicted in September 2014 that China would have to devalue its currency. In August 2015, the People's Bank of China did just that. But Hart believes the devaluation of the yuan has barely begun. He said: One thing China could try to do is devalue and then draw a line in the sand and defend and say 'we are going to defend right here.' And then they would use the foreign exchange reserves to make sure it doesn't weaken anymore. The big risk there, of course, is a sharp devaluation is going to be pretty jarring. And at least initially, it's going to have the effect of creating more outflows. He continued: "If China were to devalue to a level that wasn't actually a true equilibrium level then they'll get run over pretty quickly, they will blow through foreign exchange reserves, and then they will lose face because they'll be forced to devalue." Hart said his point is that China should allow for external market forces to allow for the devaluation to happen. That way, it would be from a "position of strength." Hart isn't the only one calling for a drop in the yuan, of course. The yuan depreciation has become a consensus trade amongst hedge funds, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch's Global Fund Manager survey. Story continues "CNY is projected to fall to 6.71-6.90 vs USD by year-end by 37% of respondents. One-third expect it to depreciate below 6.9," the BAML report said. There are voices in China calling for a bigger devaluation too. Reuters reported earlier this year that insiders at The People's Bank of China were in favor of a sharp drop in the yuan. Watch the Real Vision video clip here. For the full hour-long interview, subscribe to Real Vision for a free week-long trial. NOW WATCH: Everyday phrases that even smart people say incorrectly More From Business Insider By Sam Wilkin DUBAI (Reuters) - A multitude of business regulations -- 182,000 by one minister's count -- stands in the way of a rapid flow of foreign investment into Iran after the lifting of nuclear sanctions ended its long isolation from global commerce. Other factors that could stall investment include residual sanctions, a shortage of project finance, and political risks ranging from protectionism to the potential collapse of the nuclear deal, lawyers and consultants say. Some foreign firms have already signed letters of intent with Iran since the international sanctions imposed over its nuclear programme were lifted on Saturday and many more want to trade with its market of about 80 million people. But major foreign investment will take at least six months to arrive, experts say, as companies navigate the web of bureaucracy, opaque ownership structures and powerful Iranian lobbies that bristle at foreign competition. "Iran has been under sanctions so a lot of international business practices are not as common there as they are in other emerging markets," said Farhad Alavi, managing partner at Washington-based Akrivis Law Group. President Hassan Rouhani, who championed the nuclear deal, has ordered his government to facilitate foreign investment but also warned of the "long road" to Iran's economic integration with the world. Rouhani said on Sunday his oil-producing country needs $30-$50 billion a year in foreign investment to meet its economic growth target of eight percent. It attracted an average of only $1.1 billion of foreign direct investment annually between 1996 and 2004, before major economic sanctions were imposed on it, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. BUSINESS REGULATIONS Economy Minister Ali Teyyeb-Nia said on Monday the government was trying to "remove laws that obstruct business". This will not be a small task, he said, adding that there are about 182,000 items of business regulation. "Most of the regulation is still very much focussed on local content, local companies, so it will be interesting to see how the Iranian government will navigate this influx of foreign investment," said Sorana Parvulescu, MENA director at consultancy Control Risks. "We expect the government will have to balance between the interests of local business and foreign investors to make sure nobody loses out as the market opens," she said. The interests of foreign investors and their local partners will not always be aligned on issues such as labour, said Parham Gohari, co-founder of Frontier Partners, a Dubai-based advisory firm focussing on Iran market entry. "Companies are overstaffed and underproductive... they don't want people to be laid off, while foreign investors want to make sure the company is being run efficiently," Gohari said, describing government-owned firms as particularly bloated. As early as last August, shortly after the nuclear deal was reached, Rouhani said foreign investors would be welcome only if they hired local workers and shared their technological knowledge, showing the government's intent to protect the interests of local businesses. POLITICAL RISK Many foreign businesses, however, are hesitant to take on long-term commitments in a market that is still fraught with political risk. A diplomatic incident between Iran and the United States could still undermine the nuclear deal, causing sanctions to "snap back" and exposing investors. Elections due to be held soon in both countries could erode the political will protecting the agreement. "Particularly when we have a new (president in the) White House in 2017, there is a concern in the back of (investors') minds: how far will a new U.S. president want to safeguard this deal?" said Ellie Geranmayeh, Middle East and North Africa policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Republicans Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio have pledged to tear up the nuclear deal if elected. Democratic front runner Hillary Clinton supports it, but through the prism of U.S. dominance that Tehran finds deeply provocative. Many U.S. sanctions on Iran remain in place, notably on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite military force with sprawling business interests and a lot of experience in disguising its assets. "As with other markets affected by international sanctions and having complex corporate structures, there is a requirement to do enhanced due diligence to understand whether the ultimate owners of the business are sanctioned," Control Risks' Parvulescu said. Another obstacle for investors could be a measure adopted last month by the Republican-led U.S. Congress -- which opposed the nuclear deal -- preventing visa-free travel to the United States for people who have visited Iran or hold dual Iranian nationality. Critics of the move, which also applies to Iraq, Syria and Sudan, say it will discourage business travel to Iran and cause complications for dual nationals, who are likely to be among the first attracted to doing business in Iran. A British-Iranian journalist was prevented from travelling to the United States without a visa this week because of these restrictions. LONG ARM OF THE LAW Iran's shadow economy has been a breeding ground for corruption and nepotism, and foreign companies will be wary of approaches by local "fixers" who would pay bribes on their behalf. Under that scenario, the investor would be at fault under extra-territorial legislation such as the UK Bribery Act. U.S. firms will still be subject to a trade embargo that will limit their ability to move into Iran. Other foreign firms are not directly affected, but the long reach of the U.S. financial system could still make them hesitate. Banks will be especially wary of not violating the remaining sanctions because they faced hefty fines in the past, lawyers said. By extension, investors across all sectors might struggle to access the financing options needed to make significant investments. "There can be no meaningful improvement in investment into the Iranian economy until some robust banks agree to raise their head above the parapet and finance it," said Nigel Kushner, chief executive of W Legal and a director of the British Iranian Chamber of Commerce. "I believe they will, but it will take time... I believe it will happen over the next six months and then there will be a domino effect," he said. (Editing by William Maclean and Timothy Heritage) Beirut (AFP) - Russian air strikes in Syria have killed more than 1,000 civilians since they were launched nearly four months ago, a monitor said Wednesday. The raids, which started on September 30, have killed 1,015 civilians, including more than 200 children, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The group, which relies on a network of sources on the ground for its reports, said the strikes had also killed 893 Islamic State group jihadists and 1,141 other opposition militants, including members of Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front. The total toll of 3,049 represents an increase of nearly 700 deaths in just three weeks. Russia is a staunch ally of the Syrian government and has coordinated its strikes with Damascus, saying it is targeting IS and other "terrorist" groups. But activists and rebels accuse Moscow of focusing more on moderate and Islamist opposition fighters than IS. Russia has previously denounced accusations that its raids have killed civilians as "absurd" and said claims by rights groups of such deaths were made up of "cliches and fakes". The Observatory says it differentiates between strikes by Russia, US-led coalition warplanes and the Syrian regime based on the type of aircraft and the munitions used. A coalition led by Washington has also been carrying out strikes against IS in Syria since September 2014, but it does not coordinate its raids with Damascus. Those strikes have killed 4,256 people since they began, among them 322 civilians, including over 90 children, according to the Observatory. The monitor said the strikes had also killed 3,787 IS fighters and nearly 150 militants from other extremist groups including Al-Nusra. Singapore disclosed Wednesday it arrested 27 Bangladeshi construction workers late last year for supporting "the armed jihad ideology" of militants like the Islamic State group, and deported 26 of them. The workers were being groomed to return to their home country to wage holy war and had studied booklets on assassination techniques, the Ministry of Home Affairs said in a statement. "They were plotting nefarious activities in Bangladesh and other countries, and not in Singapore. But they were still a serious threat to us," Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in a Facebook post late Wednesday. "We are tightening up our security, and acting to protect our racial and religious harmony. Radicalisation and terrorism must never take root in Singapore." Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam said in an earlier Facebook post that the workers "could have easily changed their minds and attacked Singapore". Several members of the group also contemplated joining "armed jihad" with the IS group in Iraq and Syria, according to the MHA. "They supported the armed jihad ideology of terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria," the ministry said in the statement. The 27 men, aged between 25 and 40, were arrested between November 16 and December 1 last year under Singapore's Internal Security Act. They all worked in construction in Singapore, where large numbers of labourers mostly from South Asia live in often cramped dormitories. "The group members took measures to avoid detection by the authorities. They shared jihadi-related material discreetly among themselves, and held weekly meetings and gatherings where they discussed armed jihad and conflicts that involved Muslims," the ministry said, adding that the group was also actively recruiting members. Of the 27 Bangladeshis arrested, one was not deported and is serving a jail sentence for attempting to flee Singapore after learning about the arrests of the group's members. Story continues He will be repatriated to Bangladesh after he completes his sentence. The man was said not to have been a member of the group but was "in the process of being radicalised". - 'Silent killings' - According to the ministry's statement, the group's members were encouraged to return to Bangladesh and "wage armed jihad" against the government there, while some had sent money to terror-linked entities in their country. The ministry said they possessed radical and jihadi-related materials, including footage of children undergoing training in what appeared to be militant camps. Excerpts from a video released by the ministry showed young boys dressed in black and wearing white caps firing pistols and automatic rifles during training. There was also a document entitled "Techniques of Silent Killing" that contained graphic images and instructions on how to carry out assassinations, using different methods and weapon. The announcement of the arrests came less than a week after militants mounted attacks in the Indonesian capital Jakarta, leaving at least eight people dead, including four suspected attackers. The IS group claimed responsibility for the coordinated assault on a central thoroughfare in the capital. Kumar Ramakrishna, a counter-terrorism analyst at Singapore's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said the arrests would likely be "disconcerting" to the public as foreign workers have become part of Singapore's social landscape. "It drives home the point that terrorists can be amongst us and not far away," he told AFP. Singaporean officials have said that the city-state remains a target by militants because of the presence of a large number of multinational corporations and its status as a regional financial centre. Authorities in late 2001 foiled an attempt to carry out bomb attacks on US and other foreign targets in the city-state, arresting several suspects in the process. Seven employees of popular Afghan TV channel TOLO were killed Wednesday when a Taliban car bomber rammed into their minibus in Kabul, just months after the militants declared the network a legitimate "military target". At least 25 other people were wounded in the bombing near the Russian embassy in downtown Kabul, in the first major attack on an Afghan media organisation since the Taliban were ousted from power in 2001. The carnage highlights the Taliban's growing campaign of violence across Afghanistan despite an international push to jumpstart peace talks with the Islamist group. "In the terrorist attack today in... Kabul, we lost seven staff members," TOLO, a privately run news and entertainment station that is often critical of the Taliban, said on Twitter. The bombing left some workers burning inside the vehicle which was taking them home, an employee told AFP, adding that most of those killed were behind-the-scenes staff from the channel's graphics and dubbing departments. The loud explosion sent a plume of smoke rising in the sky, with ambulances and firefighters rushing to the scene which was littered with charred debris. "The enemy of humanity, peace and Islam martyred our colleagues because they were exposing their crimes," TOLO news presenter Fawad Aman said in a live broadcast. "They martyred you to silence us, but they will never achieve this evil goal." The deadly assault spotlights the growing dangers faced by media workers in Afghanistan, as the security situation worsens amid a growing wave of militant attacks. "Strongly condemn the barbaric attack on our brave media staff," Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said on Twitter. "My condolences are with their families. This is the act of coward terrorists." - 'Satanic networks' - In a statement, the insurgents warned this would not be the last attack on TOLO if the channel does not stop "spreading evil propaganda against the Taliban". Story continues The group in October declared TOLO and 1TV, another privately run news channel, as legitimate "military targets". The edict was in response to their reports claiming that Taliban fighters raped women at a female hostel in Kunduz, after the group briefly captured the northern city in late September last year. The Taliban rejected the reports as fabrications, saying they were examples of propaganda by the "satanic networks". "No employee, anchor, office, news team and reporter of these TV channels holds any immunity," the Taliban said at the time. Wednesday's attack comes just two days after a second round of four-country negotiations in Kabul aimed at reviving talks with the Taliban. Delegates from Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States convened in the Afghan capital Monday for a one-day meeting seeking a negotiated end to the 14-year Taliban insurgency. The first round of the so-called "roadmap" talks was held in Islamabad last week in a bid to lay the groundwork for direct dialogue between Kabul and the Islamist group. Taliban representatives were notably absent in both rounds and analysts caution that any substantive talks are still a long way off. Observers say the intensifying insurgency highlights a push by the militants to seize more territory in an attempt to wrangle greater concessions during talks. Independent media outlets, banned by the Taliban during their 1996-2001 rule, have mushroomed in the war-torn nation in recent years and hailed as one of the bright spots in efforts to foster democracy in the country. But despite their rapid growth in the post-Taliban era, they face several challenges that threaten to undo the progress made over the past decade. Human Rights Watch last year warned about growing violence and intimidation against journalists in Afghanistan by Taliban insurgents, warlords and the government. Argentina said Wednesday the bondholders with whom it recently restarted talks on paying billions of dollars in defaulted debt have asked it to postpone its repayment proposal to February. The country's new conservative government had announced plans to present its proposal next week for the repayment of some $10 billion owed to so-called holdout creditors refusing to accept a debt restructuring deal. Officials had said they hoped the plan would finally provide a resolution to the long-running financial crisis. But the two US hedge funds suing for full repayment requested a postponement until the first week of February, citing "logistical" problems, said the Argentine finance ministry. It did not say whether it had agreed to the request. Argentine media said the hedge funds had asked the government to sign a confidentiality agreement, but Finance Secretary Luis Caputo vowed that any offer made to creditors would be public, "to guarantee the transparency of the process." US federal judge Thomas Griesa has derailed Argentina's efforts to restructure the debt it defaulted on during its 2001 economic crisis, ruling the country cannot repay creditors who agreed to take heavy losses until it first repays the holdouts. The previous Argentine government, led by leftist president Cristina Kirchner, fought the ruling and branded the hedge funds "vultures" for buying defaulted bonds on the cheap, then suing for full repayment. But her business-friendly successor, Mauricio Macri, has vowed to speedily resolve the dispute, which has blocked the struggling country's access to international capital markets. (Bloomberg) -- The Philippines plans to close a loophole in regulation of trust funds, by restricting those overseen by banks from parking short-term cash at the central bank. Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas is considering limiting lenders trust units from placing funds in its short-term deposit facility, monetary board member Felipe Medalla said Tuesday. Policy makers are reviewing access to its liquidity- mopping tools under the overall framework of its interest-rate corridor, Governor Amando Tetangco said Wednesday. Banks trust units have undue advantage over non-bank trust groups that arent allowed to put money in the central banks special deposit account or SDA facility, and also over lenders themselves that must comply with the reserve requirement, Medalla said in an interview. Placements in the so-called SDA facility, which the central bank uses to control liquidity, totaled about $16.8 billion as of December 29. The central bank is preparing to shift to an interest-rate corridor by the second quarter, a move intended to strengthen its policy tools. Limiting fund managers access to SDAs will make it a purely cash-mopping tool, said Eugenia Victorino, an economist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. in Singapore. In line with plans to shift to an interest-rate corridor system, the central bank may be thinking of making SDAs a liquidity- management tool that should not be thought of as an investment vehicle. At present, the central bank pays 2.5 percent for funds placed at SDAs, compared with its benchmark rate of 4 percent. The 91-day Treasury bill fetched 1.684 percent at the most recent auction. BSP has tools to ensure liquidity growth is healthy and is seeking comments on the proposal, Medalla said. --With assistance from Clarissa Batino. To contact the reporter on this story: Siegfrid Alegado in Manila at aalegado1@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Stephanie Phang at sphang@bloomberg.net Karl Lester M. Yap, Iain McDonald By Alister Doyle OSLO (Reuters) - For British climate expert Chris Hope, new data showing that 2015 was the hottest year ever recorded is not just confirmation he's been right all along that the planet is getting warmer. It also won the Cambridge University researcher a 2,000 pound sterling ($2,830) wager made five years ago against a pair of scientists who reject man-made global warming and bet Hope that the Earth would be cooling by now. NASA, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the British Met Office said on Wednesday that 2015 was the warmest year recorded since 1880, boosted by a long-term build-up of greenhouse gases and a natural El Nino event warming the Pacific Ocean. That puts last year ahead of 2014, the previous warmest, as well as 2010, 2005 and 1998, when a strong El Nino marked, for a time, a peak in temperature rises. A slowdown in temperature increases after 1998 described by most climate experts as a hiatus in a long-term rise - has been invoked by a small band of sceptics who say mainstream science has exaggerated the risks. Hope agreed wagers of 1,000 pounds each with two of them: British engineer Alan Rudge and Australian geologist Ian Plimer. Hope bet average global temperatures in 2015 would be no more than 0.1 degree Celsius (0.18 Fahrenheit) cooler than 2008. He said it was good to test theories with cash. "Of course, one side ends up happier than the other," he said. Neither Rudge nor Plimer were immediately available to comment. "You win some, you lose some," said Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, for which Rudge is an adviser. Peiser said the pace of warming "is not something that people ... need to be greatly concerned about". Among other wagers, in 2005 British climate modeller James Annan bet $10,000 against two Russian solar physicists that average global temperatures from 2013-17 would be warmer than 2003-07. "Things are looking good for my bet," Annan said, noting the U.N.'s weather agency has said 2016 could be as warm as 2015. If so, Annan reckons that his bet is safe unless 2017 is the coldest year since about 1929. His Russian opponents are not conceding yet. Galina Mashnich, an expert at the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics in Irkutsk, Russia, who made the bet with her colleague Vladimir Bashkirtsev, said the new temperature data is not definitive. "2015 is not the warmest year, according to some sources," she wrote in an e-mail to Reuters. In recent years, she said, it was "most likely temperature increases are caused by El Nino". The Russian solar experts predicted a decade ago that a decline in energy output from the sun, linked to the Earth's changing orbit, will depress temperatures. Annan did lose one bet, of 100 pounds in 2011, linked to the pace of global warming. Hope said he made his wager partly to show a potential for a financial market in temperatures, allowing investors to hedge long-term climate risks, for instance of rising sea levels or damage to crops linked to differing rates of warming. After the spur of El Nino fades, global temperatures are likely to be slightly cooler in 2017, said Myles Allen, a climate expert at Oxford University. He predicts any drop will revive doubters' claims of an end to warming. "I bet you in a few years' time they will say global warming stopped in 2015 or 2016," Allen, who is not a sceptic and is senior author of U.N. climate reports, said. (Reporting By Alister Doyle, editing by Bruce Wallace/Jeremy Gaunt) DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Iran said on Wednesday it was up to a United Nations envoy to decide who should represent Syrian opposition forces in international peace talks due to start this month. Foreign Minister Javad Zarif told a news conference at the World Economic Forum in Davos that the opposition delegation at the centre of fierce diplomatic dispute should not include members of three internationally recognised "terrorist groups". Those were Islamic State, also known as ISIS or Daesh, al Qaeda and the Nusra Front, he said, adding that 10 "card-carrying members" of al Qaeda had attended an opposition meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, convened to form a delegation for the Geneva talks. Neither Islamic State nor Nusra Front - al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate - were represented at last month's opposition meeting in Saudi Arabia which agreed to work towards peace talks with President Bashar al-Assad. Representatives of other Islamist factions, including the powerful Ahrar al-Sham, did take part. But Zarif said it was not up to Iran to decide who attended the talks. "That is for Mr de Mistura to decide who will participate and I'm sure he'll apply those criteria," he said. Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking in Zurich after talks with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday, said the peace talks should start this month as planned, despite lack of agreement so far on who should participate. Asked about Western demands that Assad should leave power as part of any settlement in Syria, the Iranian minister said it made no sense to set preconditions before the talks even began. Syria's civil war had dragged on for nearly five years because many countries were entrenched in the position that Assad must go before there could be a political process. "You cannot determine the outcome of this political process before it starts. You do not enter a negotiating room with the outcome already decided," Zarif said. He repeated Tehran's insistence that it was up to Syrians to decide Assad's fate through elections after a new constitution is negotiated in peace talks. Asked whether he planned to meet any Saudi figures on the sidelines of the annual WEF session to try to improve ties after Riyadh broke off diplomatic relations this month, Zarif said: "There won't be a secret meeting here." He said Tehran had not broken off relations nor responded to what he called extensive Saudi provocations, including millions of dollars spent lobbying the U.S. Congress against last July's international agreement on Iran's nuclear programme that led to the lifting of most sanctions on Tehran this week. Iran's Supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had condemned the storming of the Saudi embassy in Tehran that led to the rupture, after Saudi Arabia executed a leading Shi'ite Muslim clerical opponent, Zarif said. "I believe that the Saudi Arabians should come to their senses and understand that they have a much better future in collaboration and coordination and accommodation with Iran, and we are ready for that," he added. (Writing by Paul Taylor; Editing by Dominic Evans) DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Germany cannot take in all the asylum seekers who want to begin a new life there and it is not unethical of Berlin to limit the influx, President Joachim Gauck said on Wednesday, pressing other European countries to share the burden. Germany has borne the brunt of Europe's biggest refugee crisis since World War Two, with more than one million asylum seekers arriving in the country last year, most fleeing war and poverty in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. Many German local authorities say they are struggling to cope with the influx and pressure is mounting on Chancellor Angela Merkel to reverse her open-door policy and even close the country's borders to new arrivals. Gauck, a former Christian pastor in communist East Germany, did not advocate such drastic action but said a policy of limiting the inflow of refugees could be morally and politically necessary to allow the state to cope. "Restrictions are not per se unethical," he told the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "Restrictions help to support acceptance. But without acceptance a society is not open and receptive." As president Gauck wields little real power but his words carry moral weight in Germany and beyond. Merkel's insistence that Germany will cope with the influx of 1.1 million migrants last year and more this year has angered some local authorities struggling to house people. Merkel has vowed to "measurably reduce" arrivals this year, but has refused to introduce a cap, saying it would be impossible to enforce without closing German borders. Instead, she has tried to convince other European countries to take in quotas of refugees, pushed for reception centres to be built on Europe's external borders and has led an EU campaign to convince Turkey, a major transit country, to prevent refugees from entering the bloc. But progress has been slow. Gauck recognised the concerns of eastern European countries about their sovereignty and identity in the face of the influx of refugees, many of whom are Muslim, but said he did not believe a revival of nationalism could provide an answer. "Do we really want the great historical work that has brought Europe peace and prosperity to break down over the refugee issue?" he asked. "Nobody, really nobody can want that." (Writing by Paul Carrel; Editing by Michael Nienaber and Gareth Jones) By Gwladys Fouche NAERBOE, Norway (Reuters) - A workshop that seeks to educate asylum-seekers in Norway about Western attitudes to sex and sexual assault will appeal to European neighbours struggling to cope with a wave of refugees, but not everyone who attends the course is a fan. Sitting with his arms crossed in a classroom with 21 other male Syrian asylum seekers, Issam Alhlabi is wondering why he has been compelled to attend. "I know all this already from back home," the 52-year-old teacher from Aleppo told Reuters. "Syria is like Norway ... In every country you have backward people with low education." The ultimate aim of the course is to discuss - and discourage - rape in the context of a Scandinavian society that is more sexually liberal than back home. But for at least a few of the attendees, it exposes implied preconceptions about the sexual mores of those in the class, not to mention their views on violent crimes like rape. "It is unexpectedly interesting: that most people think we did not experience such things, because we are outsiders, foreigners," commercial airline pilot Muaz, 26, told Reuters. "We go through them every single day in our country. I have two sisters and they could be harassed walking anywhere in the world," said Muaz, who declined to give his last name. "We do experience such things. It is not like we come from a peaceful place." Norway initiated the programme after a series of attacks on women at night in the streets of Stavanger, Norway's third-biggest city, in 2009. According to public broadcaster NRK, which reviewed court papers, 17 of the 20 men convicted in the cases were foreigners. The course will reverberate with European countries facing the worst migration crisis since World War Two, especially after mass sexual assaults on women in Cologne, Germany, on New Year's Eve were blamed on migrants. WHAT SIGNALS? Set in a rural community on Norway's west coast, the refugee camp is surrounded by snow-covered fields. The nearest neighbour is a cluster of World War Two German bunkers; the loudest noise comes from Atlantic Ocean waves crashing on the nearby beach. When a Reuters correspondent visited a one-day workshop on Tuesday, the teacher, Linda Hagen, was showing the classroom a picture of a Norwegian brunette in a short dress and high heels, and asking: "What signals is she giving?" The men broke into groups to discuss and report back to the class. "It could be a very normal situation," said one. "It is not unusual," said another. "She could be in a cafe," said a third. No one said she looked sexy or that she was provocative. Hagen said the course aimed to address an awkward subject as sensitively as possible. "This is a difficult subject. We have the best intentions in running this course but it is a tough thing to discuss. We don't know what people have experienced before," she told Reuters. Participants in the course are not addressed as potential perpetrators but as future members of Norwegian society who can make a positive contribution by helping prevent sexual assaults. One scenario features Hassan, "a helpful, good man who is well-liked" and who has been in Norway for more than a year. He goes out with Arne, a Norwegian, who says he wants to ply Stine, a Norwegian woman, with alcohol to "soften her up". What should Hassan do, asks the teacher? The consensus is that Hassan should try to stop Arne or make sure Stine gets home safely. The course also confronts hard questions that are being discussed around the Western world, including U.S. college campuses. In one case, the men watch a video showing a boy and girl talking at a party, dancing and laughing. The two go upstairs to a bedroom where he forces sex on her, despite her saying no. "What do you think of the boy? What do you think of the girl?," asks Hagen. "If I am the guy, I would say she was interested. She went up the stairs, she sat on the bed," says one man. Another says: "I blame him because he uses power. Both should be in agreement." Alhlabi is firm in his opinion: "To me it was clear from the beginning that this was rape. "It was obvious she was afraid when she was going up the stairs. Kissing and hugging in Europe is not unusual." Alhlabi's comments aside, Hagen said she had seldom received negative feedback since she started teaching the course in 2011. "If we can help avoid misunderstandings, it is very important." And some said the course was useful. "I knew from before that girls here are freer than back home, but now I understand better how," said Hani Salloum, a 25-year-old Syrian student, who arrived four months ago. (Editing by Sonya Hepinstall) By Angus McDowall RIYADH (Reuters) - The lifting of sanctions on Iran as a result of its nuclear deal with world powers will be a harmful development if it uses the extra money to fund "nefarious activities", Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told Reuters on Tuesday. Asked in an exclusive interview if Saudi Arabia had discussed seeking a nuclear bomb in the event Iran managed to obtain one despite its atomic deal, he said Saudi Arabia would do "whatever we need to do in order to protect our people". "I don't think it would be logical to expect us to discuss any such issue in public and I don't think it would be reasonable to expect me to answer this question one way or another," he said. Jubeir's comments were the first to directly address the lifting of sanctions on Iran, Riyadh's bitterest regional rival, although Saudi Arabia has previously welcomed Iran's nuclear deal so long as it included a tough inspections regime. But in private, officials have voiced concern that the deal would allow Iran greater scope to back militias and other allies across the region thanks to the extra funds it can access after sanctions are lifted and because of the reduced diplomatic pressure. "It depends on where these funds go. If they go to support the nefarious activities of the Iranian regime, this will be a negative and it will generate a pushback. If they go towards improving the living standards of the Iranian people then it will be something that would be welcome," Jubeir said. Saudi officials have also in recent years voiced fears that their most powerful ally, the United States, is disengaging with the Middle East, something some of them have said may have contributed to Syria's descent into civil war. Jubeir said he did not believe Washington was retreating from the region, but emphasised that the world looked to it as the sole superpower to provide stability. "If an American decline were to happen or an American withdrawal were to happen, the concern that everybody has is that it would leave a void, and whenever you have a void, or a vacuum, evil forces flow," Jubeir said. SECTARIAN TENSIONS Riyadh accuses Tehran of fomenting instability across the region and the two back opposing sides in wars in Syria and Yemen and political tussles in Iraq, Lebanon and Bahrain. Last year Saudi Arabia began a military campaign in Yemen to stop an Iranian ally from gaining power. The two rival powers accuse each other of supporting terrorism, destabilising the region and inflaming sectarian hatred. Jubeir said Iran's support for Shi'ite Muslim militias across the region was the main source of sectarian ill will, but acknowledged that this had produced what he described as "a counter reaction in the Sunni world". Asked about inflammatory rhetoric from Saudi Sunni clerics, Jubeir said he could not comment on remarks he had not seen, but said the government encouraged dialogue and inclusion and discouraged extreme or disparaging language. The state-appointed Imam of Mecca's Grand Mosque this week wrote a Tweet alleging an "alliance of the Safavids with the Jews and Christians against Muslims", using a sectarian-tinged term often used to describe Iranians or Shi'ites. (Reporting By Angus McDowall; Editing by Ralph Boulton and Janet Lawrence) Singapore must raise its vigilance level against the threat posed by radicalised foreigners, security analysts said, after the country announced the arrests of 27 Bangladeshis under the Internal Security Act. The measures that Singapores security agencies should take to combat the extremist threat must be comprehensive, and involve the cooperation of their overseas partners and those living and working in Singapore, they said. The 27 radicalised Bangladeshis who were arrested by the Internal Security Department were working in Singapores construction industry, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said in a statement on Wednesday (20 January). MHA said the men had jihadi views similar to terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda and Islamic State. Although they were not planning any attacks in Singapore, some of them were encouraged to return to Bangladesh to wage jihad against their government, it added. The statement did not mention if the men were radicalised in Bangladesh or became so when they were in Singapore. Speaking to Yahoo Singapore, Bhaskar Roy, a New Delhi-based security analyst with South Asia Analysis Group (SAAG), said Singapores authorities must monitor closely the threats posed by extremist organisations in Bangladesh. The terror threat is growing at a rapid pace in Bangladesh. Extremist organisations, like Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh, are still at the grassroots level and have not been eradicated. They have the support from different places and money is coming in from workers in the Middle East who have been brainwashed there, Roy warned. For the radicalised Bangladeshis who are based in overseas countries like Singapore, the threat from them has to be rooted out from the beginning to prevent it from spreading, he urged. Associate Professor Kumar Ramakrishna from S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University agreed that preemptive measures to combat the threat must be taken in Singapore. Story continues The arrests suggest that enhanced screening of workers from countries facing an extremist problem will probably need to be ramped up to prevent the import of those extremist ideologies into Singapore, said Ramakrishna. In addition, there is a need for better supervision by firms of workers from such countries and close monitoring of groups of individuals behaving suspiciously or articulating extremist views, he added. Given the open nature of Singapores society and globalised economy, the security analysts warned that extremist groups are making headway in exporting their ideologies to the country. As such, Roy said it is critical that Singapore step up its counter-terrorism cooperation with security agencies in Bangladesh and elsewhere. Singapore is a very small country and the damage could be very extensive if they (extremists) do something there. Bangladeshs government is taking the threat very seriously and co-operation (with Singapore) is very important and must continue, he added. With the media attention on the radicalised Bangladeshis who were arrested, Jolovan Wham, Executive Director of Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics (HOME), hoped that it would not lead to discrimination against workers from the country or Muslims in Singapore. He said that the overwhelming majority of them, whether they are local or foreigner, are peaceful and law abiding. It will be extremely discriminatory to become wary of an entire community just because of the actions of a few, he said. Networking & Wireless Alaska School Deploys Passive Optical LAN Grace Christian School, a K-12 school in Anchorage, AK, has upgraded to a passive optical local area network (LAN) to provide increased bandwidth and reliable connectivity for the school's 60 teachers and 600 students. Over the past three years, the school has purchased $100,000 worth of technology, including Smart Boards, interactive projectors and Apple TVs. However, teachers were reluctant to use the technology in their classrooms because the school's network infrastructure used category 5/5e (CAT5) copper cabling, which resulted in lack of bandwidth, signal degradation and dropped connections. The school wanted to upgrade its infrastructure to support the growing number of networked devices throughout its large campus and also provide parents with access to a campus intranet. The school partnered with DSI, a local communications infrastructure company, and DSI recommended Zhone Technologies' FiberLAN system. The two companies collaborated to to implement Zhone's gigabit passive optical LAN. According to information on Zhone Technologies' site, its FiberLAN system can provide high speed data, voice and video to multi-level, multi-unit complexes. Since implementing the new system, teachers have increased their use of networked devices in the classroom because they no longer worry about wasting valuable class time with slow or dropped connections. The school's IT team has also reported a significant reduction in operating and maintenance issues, and the small team now has more time to focus on other work. "The Zhone solution gave us connectivity everywhere it's like being on a new campus," said Terry Thornhill, chief technology officer at the school, in a prepared statement. "I don't have to spend two or three hours of every day working on the infrastructure. I haven't had a single ONT fail and I don't have to deal with a fiber connection not working like it's supposed to. Teachers don't have their workstations dropping off the network. Everything works like it's supposed to, every time." STEM Reshma Saujani Makes the Case for Girls Who Code The code that makes computers run consists of long strings of seemingly random numbers and letters that tell the computer how to react to certain requests and even let the computer perform tasks that seem almost human. The geeky wizards who control this digital magic are mostly young men. But girls, led by lawyer-turned-tech-advocate Reshma Saujani, have begun to mine this source of power. "They are interested and they are good at it," Saujani said during a keynote address to FETC 2016 last week in Orlando. Through the organization Saujani founded in 2012, Girls Who Code, more than 10,000 young women have been learning to create computer software which runs everything from smartphones to the nation's power grid. The girls have discovered that there is no reason for them to avoid high-tech fields, which are normally chosen by boys. In middle school, three-fourths of girls say they are interested in science and math. But in high school, less than one percent show interest in majoring in computer science. In the 1970s some 37 percent of computer science students were women. By 2013, the percentage had fallen to 18 percent. Somehow girls are being discouraged from entering one of the most lucrative career paths. "We've been sending messages to our girls that 'You are not smart enough,'" Saujani said. "Why do we let our girls say they hate math?" Helping more students have careers in science is becoming crucial for the country's economic progress. "There is no pay gap in science and engineering," she said. "As women are increasingly becoming the breadwinners they need the pay." And since women account for 85 percent of the purchases in the United States, it seems only fair that they should earn a higher portion of the salaries. "I don't want to live in a world that's run by men," Saujani said. "I don't think you do either." The audience at FTEC 2016 appeared to see immediate value in the Girls Who Code program. "I think it's very important for girls to learn to code. I know girls can do it," math teacher Courtney Francis of Beaufort County School District in South Carolina said. Francis has organized a club for girls who use Google-based scratch coding. After hearing Saujani speak she said she planned to use Girls Who Code as a resource to encourage her female students to pursue science careers. "They don't think it's cool," Francis said. "I just have to show them being smart is cool." Many educators at FETC 2016 who heard Saujani's speech said they were surprised at the state of girls in the field of computer science. "I had no idea there's a serious deficiency amongst the females in terms of coding," teacher David Kadoch from Toronto said. "If they have that drive and the will to do it, then maybe something along the way is not happening for them or they're getting turned off," Kadoch said. "Then why not give them a chance?" Kadoch said educators should encourage girls to learn to write computer code. "We tend to think it's the boys that are more technology prone, but I think we've got to give the girls more of a chance," Kadoch said. "Let them experiment and see what they can achieve." The U.S. economy needs computer science graduates, as well as workers in other technical fields. "It's a good time to be looking for a job if you have the right skills," Saujani said. "Employers are desperate to hire workers who have these skills." Typically, the Girls Who Code program takes groups of 20 girls and teaches them how to write computer code during an intensive seven-week program. Of the 10,000 girls who have attended Girls Who Code workshops since 2012, some 90 percent say they will choose computer science as a career. This summer 1,600 girls will go through the program. Some will come from Indian reservations and others will come from Section 8 housing projects and homeless shelters. If they continue studying computer science and earn a degree, some 50 U.S. companies have pledged to hire them. "I think we can close the gender gap in our lifetime," Saujani said. By Hugh Bronstein BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentina decreed measures on Tuesday designed to help fight drug trafficking, vowing to crack down on smugglers using the country as a transshipment point for Bolivian and Peruvian cocaine destined for the lucrative markets of Europe. Declaring a nationwide public security emergency, the country's new president said the army would be allowed to "identify, warn, intimidate and use force" against drug flights. "The resolution includes strong control of air space," said a statement from Mauricio Macri, who won the presidency in November promising to straighten out Argentina's troubled economy and step up anti-narcotics efforts after what he called years of inaction by his predecessor, Cristina Fernandez. The measure overhauls Argentina's border security network, promising efficient coordination of customs and law enforcement. It came days after the end of a two-week manhunt for three criminals convicted of drug-related killings, whose escape from prison gripped the country and pointed to corruption in the security forces. Argentina is a major soy, wheat and corn exporter. International drug enforcement officials have called the country's main grains port city, Rosario, the "Tijuana of Argentina," comparing it to the Mexican border city used to move cocaine into the United States. Experts say drugs enter Argentina from Andean cocaine-producing countries to the north. Smuggling routes narrow the closer the shipments get to Rosario, increasing violence among gangs that want to control the final steps toward the shipping lanes of the South Atlantic. (Reporting by Hugh Bronstein; Additional reporting by Juliana Castilla; Editing by Peter Cooney) By Robin Emmott BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union pressed Ukraine authorities on Monday to overcome political feuding and implement promised reforms as it looks to shore up the country's democratic and economic credentials. Having so far failed to end the Russian-backed war in eastern Ukraine, Kiev's western supporters are now seeking to shift the focus onto modernisation, concerned that the West's huge political investment in Ukraine could go to waste. "We understand the pressures the Ukrainian government is under internally," said Britain's Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond at a meeting of EU foreign ministers. "But we continually remind them of their obligations under Minsk," Hammond told reporters, referring to the peace deal signed in February last year in the Belarusian capital. Reforms tied to the Minsk accord, which was extended beyond its end-2015 deadline, would give Kiev more credibility, Hammond said. That included changing Ukraine's constitution to grant special status to the Donbass industrial regions of eastern Ukraine now under rebel control. Russia denies it has provided weapons to the rebels or that it has troops engaged in the conflict that has killed more than 8,000 people since it broke out April 2014, following Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula. Rebels and the Ukrainians complain of violations of the ceasefire negotiated as part of the Minsk deal. Both say heavy artillery, meant to have been withdrawn, is still being used. Seeking to cement Ukraine's historic shift away from Russia, senior U.S. and EU officials are trying to help Ukraine's leadership modernise the former Soviet state, where the shadow economy accounts more than half of output by some estimates. In a note seen by Reuters on Monday, nine EU countries including Germany and Britain said Europe needed to show even more support for Ukraine, as well as calling for reforms. While political rifts and the danger of the ruling Ukrainian coalition breaking up is less of an imminent threat since the government passed a 2016 draft budget in late December, other difficult reforms outside of the Minsk accord, ranging from the tax code to the judiciary, are pending. "There are deficits in the justice system, especially in the fight against corruption," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told a news conference. "That has to be corrected as soon as possible ... Ukraine has to become more attractive for foreign investors." Ukraine has already received almost $10 billion in 2015 from the International Monetary Fund and other international lenders to shore up its finances, crippled by the conflict and years of mismanagement and corruption. (Additional reporting by Tom Korkemeier; editing by John Stonestreet) David Cameron has urged business leaders to publicly back his negotiations to reform the European Union ahead of a crucial summit next month. Sky News has learnt that the Prime Minister held a meeting of his Business Advisory Group (BAG) earlier this week at which he called on its members to speak out in support of his renegotiation efforts. The members of Mr Cameron's BAG include Carolyn McCall, the easyJet chief executive; Nigel Wilson, who runs Legal & General; Jayne-Anne Gadhia, chief executive of Virgin Money; and Warren East, the boss of Rolls-Royce. At their quarterly meeting, Mr Cameron is understood to have made it clear that he does not wish to undermine the possibility of a positive deal by advocating an 'in at all costs' stance. But one senior business figure who has been a member of the BAG said it was clear that the Prime Minister believed that the explicit support of company chiefs for his negotiating position was useful. The encouragement to business leaders to speak out contrasts with the reported stance of Downing Street last autumn, when it was suggested that Mr Cameron's aides had ordered bosses to "shut up until a [reform] deal is done with the EU". Sir Mike Rake, who handed over the presidency of the CBI, the employers' group, earlier this year, said before he stepped down that business should "turn up the volume" on the Brexit debate. That exhortation drew a sharp rebuke from Sajid Javid, the Business Secretary, who said it would be counter-productive to Britain's ability to extract meaningful reforms in Brussels if it appeared that the UK wanted to remain in at all costs. Momentum is building towards an in-out referendum in Britain, which could take place as early as this June, if Mr Cameron secures an adequate reform package next month. He is negotiating with fellow EU leaders on issues such as the restriction of benefits for migrant workers, and Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, recently expressed optimism that a deal would be struck. Business groups have called on Mr Cameron to stage the referendum as soon as possible because of the uncertainty that a protracted delay risks causing. A Downing Street spokesman declined to comment on the BAG meeting. Sports and wellness-focused venture capital firm Will Ventures has picked up $150m for its sophomore fund, almost triple the total it collected for its debut vehicle in 2020. How much does it cost to buy a second home in France? France is our nearest neighbour and second favourite place to buy a holiday home - find out how much it costs to buy a property across the channel Why Brittany hit the right note for our TV property hunters from Manchester This couple bought a home in France with Jonnie Irwin on A Place in the Sun last year - here's how they're getting on now! Cost of living crisis: how does life in rural France compare? The cost of living in the UK is rising fast across the country - but how does this compare to other countries? How much cheaper is it to live in France? Which areas of France have the cheapest property? Rural France is much loved for its laid-back lifestyle and culinary traditions but also its affordable property. Where can you find the cheapest property for sale in France? Getting a visa: Good tidings (and the latest tips) Our Editor Liz Rowlinson takes a look back at what it's been like for house hunters moving abroad since Brexit, and what's in store for 2022 Meet the TV show couple who moved to France the day before lockdown Despite making tabloid headlines for refusing to step inside one of the properties that Laura Hamilton showed them on an episode of A Place in the Sun, this couple moved into their dream home with the help of the show How long does it take to register with the French healthcare system? We asked the experts at the British Embassy in Paris six key questions about healthcare in France after Brexit. Here's what they said... How to get free healthcare when you retire to France Can you still access healthcare in France as a pensioner, now that the UK has left the EU? We asked the experts... An online community for gourmet and specialty food retailers. Welcome to Fancy Food & Culinary Products' blog, your place to read reviews of the great fancy and gourmet products we find in the marketplace. Threats surrounding developing economies have been recurrent talk in market circles over the last few years. Leaders of the financial world are continuing to discuss this theme on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, as per reports. The latest dark cloud on the horizon is the IMFs quarterly update to its World Economic Outlook. In the report, the IMF has reduced its 2016 growth forecast for developing and emerging economies. However, such economies have staved off multiple headwinds over the last three years. This means that it still makes good sense to invest in select stocks from these countries. Multiple Headwinds The IMF lowered its projections for developing and emerging economies to 4.3% for 2016. Last October, it had estimated that growth for this year would come in at 4.5%. However, this is still higher than the 4% rate experienced in 2015. Chinas economic woes are at the root of the developing worlds problems. The second-largest economy is a major consumer of a variety of materials. On the other hand, relatively smaller economies are part of its massive supply chain. A major outcome of these troubles is the flight of capital from such economies. According to Washington-based Institute of International Finance, nearly $3 trillion had entered these markets during 20012011. This inflow of capital continued until last year, when nearly $735 billion flowed out. Structural issues related to their economies and large buildups of debt are other factors plaguing these countries. Economies Showing Resilience However, things may not be as tough as they seem. For instance, the debt burden of these countries has not been particularly dismal when considering historical standards. A study conducted by research firm Capital Economies last year concluded that it was the rate at which such debt continued to grow rather than the actual volume of debt which triggered crises. Over the last few years, debt levels of most emerging economies have increased only marginally relative to their size, according to the company. For instance Malaysias private debt-to-GDP ratio has increased by 18.5% over the last 10 years. During the crisis of 1997, this metric had increased by almost a 100 percentage points. Story continues Additionally, most of such debt is held in local currency, reducing the impact of capital flight. Also, no key emerging economy has suffered a crisis despite large capital outflows over the last few years. Our Choices The key takeaway from various indicators is that it would be incorrect to lump together all developing economies and say that they are risky options. Several countries, such as, Mexico and Panama, are performing remarkably and deserve the interest of investors. A recent Reuters poll indicated that Mexico will be one of the leading performers among Latin American economies this year. Additionally, Panamas economy grew 6% last year and will possibly expand at the same rate in 2016 per World Bank estimates. More importantly, companies located even within an economy which seems to be a risky proposition could still be great choices. Individual metrics could indicate which of them are winning propositions. We have narrowed down our search to the following stocks based on a good Zacks Rank and other relevant metrics. Sibanye Gold Limited SBGL is a gold mining company based in South Africa. Sibanye Gold has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) and projected growth for the current year is 78.5%. The forward price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) for the current financial year (F1) is 8.78, lower than the industry average of 25.10. Its earnings estimate for the current year has improved 69.4% over the last 30 days. Grupo Simec S.A.B. de C.V. SIM is a Mexico-based manufacturer of special bar quality steel and a broad range of steel products. Grupo Simec has a Zacks Rank #2 and expected earnings growth of 54.4% for the current year. It has a P/E (F1) of 9.05, lower than the industry average of 11.67. Its earnings estimate for the current year has improved 7.8% over the last 30 days. Empresa Nacional de Electricidad S.A. EOC, also known as Endesa Chile, generates, distributes and sells electric energy in Chile, Peru, Brazil, Colombia and Argentina. Endesa has a Zacks Rank #2 and its projected growth for the current year is 22.1%. It has a P/E (F1) of 13.63, lower than the industry average of 15.91. It has a PEG ratio of 1.32, lower than the industry average of 2.98. Avianca Holdings S.A. AVH is a Panama-based owner and operator of airlines services. Avianca Holdings has a Zacks Rank #2 and expected earnings growth of 43.8% for the current year. It has a P/E (F1) of 2.48, lower than the industry average of 12.47. Himax Technologies, Inc. HIMX is a Taiwan-based provider of fabless semiconductors solutions. Himax Technologies has a Zacks Rank #2 and its estimated growth for the current year is 40.3%. Its earnings estimate for the current year has improved 5.9% over the last 30 days. 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 >> 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 ENDESA-CHILE (EOC): Free Stock Analysis Report HIMAX TECH-ADR (HIMX): Free Stock Analysis Report GRUPO SIMEC SA (SIM): Free Stock Analysis Report SIBANYE GLD-ADR (SBGL): Free Stock Analysis Report AVIANCA HOLDNGS (AVH): Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research Schwarzman made his comments after China reported its economic growth for 2015 came in at 6.9 percent, the slowest pace in 25 years. "I think that's going a little far. China is actually slowing, but it's not collapsing," he told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Blackstone Chairman and CEO Stephen Schwarzman said Wednesday it would be an overreaction to say the current global economic conditions in China are reminiscent of the financial crisis in 2008. He acknowledged that parts of the economy such as steel and coal production are doing poorly, but the consumer and services sectors are performing well. "The parts of the economy that are doing pretty well are quite good, and if China can settle down over time to grow at 5 percent long term in the services economy, that would be a good thing," he said. "The disruption as you get there is really substantial." The government will likely take action that will be "reasonably thoughtful and dramatic" in the residential construction area, where overbuilding is underway, Schwarzman added. It's also possible for China's leaders to lay off workers from its state-owned enterprises if that becomes necessary, he said. Blackstone is the world's largest independent alternative asset manager with $334 billion under management as of September, according to the company. Justice for State Murders of Mario and Martin...1-19-16 Mouse Report by DJ Mouse Families demand justice in SFPD shootings of Mario Woods, Amilcar Lopez, Alex Nieto and Kenneth Harding Listen now: Copy the code below to embed this audio into a web page: reading from San Francisco Bay View; "Mario Woods mother and attorney John Burris call for Department of Justice investigation and external review of SFPD...As a result of Mario Woods death at the hands of five San Francisco police officers, we have asked the Department of Justice to 1) investigate the officers who shot and killed Mr. Woods for possible federal criminal civil rights violations; and 2) open a civil rights pattern and practice investigation into the department regarding officers use of deadly force, illegal stops, detention and searches of African Americans and Latinos. We support the mayors request to evaluate the use of force policies in effect at the time Mario Woods was killed; however, to assure transparency and objectivity, the evaluation should be conducted by an outside agency or group of experienced police practice experts. Our concerns about giving this task to Chief Suhr are set forth as follows: Shortly after Mario Woods was riddled with bullets, Chief Suhr held a press conference wherein he appeared to present a false narrative, which further degraded the public trust in the department. Suhrs action sought to demonize Mario Woods in an attempt to justify his officers barrage of bullets. Chief Suhrs actions were either grossly negligent or done with the intent to deceive the public. Even providing Chief Suhr the benefit of the doubt, his conduct renders him too biased to objectively evaluate his department. In early 2015, we believe that Chief Suhr relied on blatantly untrue information to defend another questionable officer involved shooting, prior to even reviewing autopsy reports. Suhr reported that Amilcar Perez Lopez was lunging towards officers when they opened fire on him; however, autopsy results show that officers actually shot Lopez five times in the back and once in the back of his head. Even after being confronted by undisputable medical evidence, Suhr continues to defend his officers action. The year before, four San Francisco police officers showered Alex Nieto with 48 bullets, despite him being armed at most with a taser, another incident where Chief Suhr rushed to his officers defense. These are just three of the 103 times SFPD officers have shot citizens since 2000. In those 103 shooting incidents and 37 deaths, the department did not find a single instance of excessive force. In each instance of deadly force, the department ratified the officers conduct as being justifiable. In addition to numerous incidents of excessive and deadly force, the department was recently exposed for employing at least a dozen officers who were exchanging racist text messages. Many of these officers are still working for the City. This news comes on the heels of a San Francisco drug sting where only African Americans were indicted, despite video evidence showing other races engaged in criminal activity. To support the longtime claims of discriminatory policing, a recently released study shows that African Americans make up 47 percent of the people arrested in San Francisco, despite being only 3 percent of the population, statistics that directly correlate with the attitudes of the racist officers patrolling the streets. These incidents come a year after six officers were indicted for multiple criminal conspiracies directed at the most vulnerable citizens of San Francisco. In addition, numerous citizens have come forward to recount their experiences of being sexually harassed and physically abused by SFPD officers. To support the longtime claims of discriminatory policing, a recently released study shows that African Americans make up 47 percent of the people arrested in San Francisco, despite being only 3 percent of the population, statistics that directly correlate with the attitudes of the racist officers patrolling the streets. The history of abuse shows that SFPD is engaging in a pattern and practice of misconduct that is ratified and condoned at the top of the command staff and works its way throughout the ranks of the department. The chief can and should set a tone that misconduct is unacceptable, but has failed to do so. By appointing an outside agency or independent police expert to evaluate the departments policies and procedures, the public will be more accepting of the findings than if the chief issues them. The mayor should join our request to the Department of Justice that they initiate a criminal investigation into the shooting as well as a pattern and pattern investigation into unconstitutional policing by San Francisco police officers" Houston, TX Veteran Texas lawyer Kay Van Wey grits her teeth when she hears lawyers being accused of bringing frivolous Veteran Texas lawyer Kay Van Wey grits her teeth when she hears lawyers being accused of bringing frivolous medical malpractice suits. Van Wey has been practicing law for 30 years and most of her work has focused on patient safety. She represents people injured by medical errors, pharmaceuticals or medical devices. I get riled up when I hear that same old propaganda that doctors are being harmed by frivolous lawsuits. Nothing could be further from the truth, says Van Wey. Why would any lawyer in their right mind file a silly medical malpractice suit, quips Van Wey.Most medical malpractice cases take on average two to three years of litigation, and the lawyer pursuing a case faces an extremely difficult and expensive process, she says. The doctors win a whole lot more than the patients win. This is a very high-risk investment of time and money for a lawyer. So it is just not true that lawyers are filing frivolous suits. That would be shooting yourself in the foot.Van Wey is the first to say that most doctors and health care professionals do good work and that modern medicine saves countless lives every day in the United States. Unfortunately, it is also true that medical errors continue to kill Americans at an astounding rate.According to the(September 2013 - Volume 9 - Issue 3 - p 122-128), medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States and kill more than 400,000 people a year.In Van Weys experience, one of the most often cited reasons for an error is a miscommunication. In a case she recently litigated, a miscommunication in the operating room led to a 27-year-old man dying from an injection of epinephrine that was 100 times what he was supposed to receive. The calculation was done incorrectly.In the samearticle, author John T. James PhD, cited some of the reasons for medical errors. He wrote, Because of increased production demands, providers may be expected to give care in suboptimal working conditions, with decreased staff, and a shortage of physicians that leads to fatigue and burnout. It should be no surprise that physician errors are frighteningly common in a highly technical, rapidly changing and poorly integrated industry.In the 1990s, physicians claimed they were being driven out of business by waves of unwarranted lawsuits and demanded tort reform. Van Way believes that because health care providers are now less accountable in the courts, it leads to continued errors in the system.There was in my view and in the view of others no proof to support the claim that doctors were hanging up their stethoscopes because their malpractice insurance was so high, says Van Wey. In Texas the claim was that doctors were going to start leaving the state if voters didnt pass this into serious measures.One of the results of tort reform was a cap on the amount of money a patient could expect to claim in a medical malpractice suit. There are exceptions and some variations from state to state, but generally speaking, no matter whether a patient sues one doctor or five doctors in a malpractice suit, the amount of damages is limited to $250,000.Most of the clients I talk to are kind of aware there was some kind of reform but they dont have any idea of how limited their rights are now because of those changes until they find themselves in the situation of being harmed, says Van Wey.What is actually happening is that meritorious lawsuits are not being pursued because of the time, expense, the caps and the laws that are weighted in favor of the health care providers, she says. January 17, 2016, Los Angeles (Press Release) On its Aliso Canyon Information Center homepage, SoCalGas features two press releases. One is about the relocation efforts; the other is called Gas Leak Estimates Reduced by 60-Percent. Such a significant-sounding drop may suggest that the crisis is being quickly addressed, but there seems to be more to the story than SoCalGas readily shares. One month ago, we shot footage showing the gas well blowout at what SoCalGas insists was the peak period of its emissions. We took this new video earlier this week, on Jan. 11. Looking at these two videos together, its hard to believe any progress has been made. To view the new infrared video, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgcWxgo0vGc.On that Aliso Canyon homepage, the company does not feature a press release about the massive discrepancy between their original reports of benzene levels and their most recent reports. Benzene is a colorless chemical found in natural gasses. It has been found by the Department of Health and Human Services to cause cancer in humans.Initially, SoCalGas correspondences with the Associated Press indicated that over the past three months, the companys daily monitoring of the blowout site reported only two instances when the benzene level was abnormally high. As it turns out, the benzene levels were found to be high at least 14 times. On at least 14 separate readings, benzene levels were twice the level considered normal. SoCalGas spokeswoman Kristine Llyods claim that this discrepancy was an oversight has understandably been the cause of concern today. Coming from a company who has repeatedly attempted to reassure people that its gas well blowout causes absolutely no health risk - despite the many reports of residents who have already allegedly gotten sick - that kind of discrepancy is alarming.Still, SoCalGas insists that even these elevated benzene levels are no cause for concern. An energy science expert asked about the state, and SoCalGass health reassurances expressed doubt that it was even possible at this point, for lack of definitive evidence, to conclude that the emissions are not harmful. With this kind of uncertainty and potentially misleading data, its easy to understand the many residents who would rather evacuate Porter Ranch than stick around to see how sick they may or may not become.These recent benzene reports come on the heels of SoCalGas attempts to demonstrate a 60% decrease in methane emissions since the peak emission date of November 28th. In the SoCalGas press release, the company reports data from the California Air Resources Board (CARB) indicating that the volume of gas leaking from the well diminished by 60%. On November 28th, the emissions were at a high estimate of 58,000 kilograms per hour. By January 8th, SoCalGas reports, the emissions had slowed to a rate of 23,400 kilograms per hour. The data also includes greenhouse gas volume, which CARB estimates as equivalent to 0.4% of the states annual greenhouse gas emissions.The interesting thing about this data is that even in the report, it is acknowledged that Scientific Aviation, who conducts the measurements, does so periodically when they are able to fly over the area, causing considerable possible variation in the data. The report indicates that these measurements are very rough estimates of the total methane leaked to date. Both SoCalGas and CARB acknowledge that comprehensive data will not become available until the blowout has been resolved, and possibly not until months after that resolution.When considering that the data meant to reassure us are merely a set of rough estimates and suggestions, it is reasonable to wonder exactly who is setting the standards of measurement. In this case, SoCalGas and state resources seem to use two completely different background levels to determine whether benzene is at, above or below regulatory levels. The lack of consistency is worrisome, because benzene is not an innocuous substance at certain levels, and it is important either to know what the levels actually are, or to have the responsible parties admit uncertainty. Not only can benzene can cause cancer; it has also caused bone marrow conditions, anemia, and excessive bleeding.If the benzene reports were tainted by such a significant discrepancy, residents may not feel confident that the methane emissions reports are particularly reliable either. SoCalGas may claim that the situation is stable and risk-free, however residents are still feeling sick, still being displaced, and still having their lives upturned by this catastrophe. SoCalGas has attempted to minimize the impact of this crisis before, so its important to carefully evaluate all of the data that they present, and use your judgment about how to proceed for the health and safety of your family.For over 30 years, R. Rex Parris has devoted his practice to protecting the rights of injured people and aggrieved workers. With over $1.1 Billion recovered on behalf of clients, Rex and his dedicated team has the experience and track record necessary to help families in need. The R. Rex Parris Law Firm provides thorough, high-quality representation with integrity and compassion. These lawyers fight aggressively to ensure their clients get the compensation they deserve. For more information, visit www.rrexparris.com.Kennedy & Madonna, LLP is an environmental law firm that specializes in representing communities that have been impacted by pollution. The firm uses a variety of legal tools including federal citizen suits, administrative challenges, and tort law to hold polluters accountable for their actions. The firm was formed in 2000 by founding partners Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Kevin J. Madonna. For more information, visit www.kennedymadonna.com.Panish Shea & Boyle LLP is a plaintiff's personal injury law firm that takes on large corporations and government entities whose negligence causes our clients' injuries and holds them accountable. In June 2014, Panish Shea & Boyle obtained at $19.8 million jury verdict to a man who suffered severe burn and traumatic brain injuries when his rental home exploded as a result of a Southern California Gas Company's negligence. In 2008, the firm obtained a $15 million jury verdict against SoCalGas for a 14-year-old boy who was hit by a company truck. Panish Shea & Boyle LLP also represented numerous plaintiffs in the San Bruno PG&E gas explosion cases. Our attorneys are and have always been champions of consumer rights. The size, clout or financial strength of wrongdoers is never a deterrent to our pursuit for justice. For more information, visit www.psblaw.com.Morgan & Morgan is one of the largest exclusively plaintiffs' law firms in the US, with 32 offices throughout the country. The firm handles cases nationally and has been a leader in cases such as the BP Oil spill and Chinese Drywall litigation. We have over 300 lawyers with years of experience involving personal injury, medical malpractice, consumer class action, and securities fraud - as well as complex litigation against drug and medical device manufacturers. For more information, visit www.forthepeople.com. The Federal government of Nigeria has imposed a stamp duty of N50 on bank customers for money remmitted into their accounts. File: A banking hall Vanguard reports that the imposition was made through the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), on Tuesday, January 19. READ ALSO: REVEALED! How Goodluck Jonathan Ran CBN like Idi-Amin [article_adwert] According to the injunction, bank customers will henceforth pay N50 stamp duty for money received into their accounts via electronic transfer, cash and cheques. The law was passed via a circular to all Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) and other financial institutions, the memo was titled "Collection and Remittance of statutory charges on receipts of Nigeria Postal Service under the Stamp Duties Act. The CBN stated: As part of efforts to boost its revenue base, the federal government of Nigeria is exploring revenue opportunities in the non-oil sectors especially taxes and rates. It is in recognition of this fact that banks and other financial institutions are enjoined to support governments revenue drive through compliance with the provisions of the Stamp Duties Act, LFN 2004 as reinforced by the court judgement in Suit No FHC/L/CS/1710/2013. In this regard, the CBN pursuant to the provisions of its enabling laws, hereby issues this circular to all DMBs other financial institutions: With immediate effect, all DMBs and other financial institutions shall commence the charging of N50 per eligible transaction in accordance with the provisions of the Stamp Duties Act and Federal Government Financial Regulations 2009, that is, all receipts given by any bank or other financial institution in acknowledgment of services rendered in respect of electronic transfer and teller deposits from N1, 000 and above; READ ALSO: We Dont Sell Dollars Any More CBN For all avoidance of doubt the following receipts are however exempted from imposition of stamp duties: payments of deposits or transfer by self to self whether inter or intra bank; and any form of withdrawals/transfers from saving accounts; It should be noted that these charges are only payable by receiving accounts; Each DMB shall open an account designated as NIPOST Stamp Duties Account into which all charges collected shall be paid. The balances in such accounts shall be transferred monthly by the DMBs to CBN NIPOST Stamp Duty Collection Account No. 3000047517; Other financial institutions shall remit their Stamp Duty collections to any DMB of their choice. Meanwhile, in the light of a continues decline in the value of the naira, Godwin Emefiele, the governor of the CBN was questioned on Tuesday by the Nigerian Senate. Emefiele has come under serious criticism regarding the depreciating currency. Only recently, a former member of House of Representatives, Bamidele Faparusi, called for the immediate removal of the CBN governor. Source: Legit.ng VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Jan 20, 2016) - B2Gold Corp. (BTO.TO)(NYSE MKT:BTG)(NAMIBIAN:B2G)("B2Gold" or the "Company") is pleased to announce an exploration update from several of its projects . All dollar figures are in United States dollars unless otherwise indicated. Highlights include extending Fekola 700 metres down plunge with drill results up to 4.77 g/t gold over 45.4 metres and a new zone found near Kiaka where drill results are up to 2.21 g/t gold over 106 metres. Fekola Project, Mali Exploration in 2015 focused on the main open pit Fekola deposit, the extension of the main Fekola mineralization to depth outside the feasibility design pit and testing several regional grassroots targets. Fekola Deeps: To date, 8 diamond drill holes, totalling 4,200 metres have been drilled in the Fekola Deeps Zone, a down plunge extension of the Fekola deposit that has been traced for over 700 metres below the limits of the feasibility pit boundary. Recent drilling in the Fekola Deeps Zone indicates the strong down plunge continuity of the Fekola ore body to depths greater than 300 metres below surface. The deposit remains open along strike to the north and down plunge. Highlights of the Fekola Deeps drilling to date include: Hole ID Section (N) From To Length (m) Au (g/t) FKD_148* 1388240 421.30 454.30 33.00 2.90 incl. 440.30 446.30 6.00 7.97 FKD_179* 1388413 488.60 507.60 19.00 3.88 and 515.50 529.19 13.69 1.95 FKD_181 1388612 425.20 470.58 45.38 4.77 incl. 425.20 434.60 9.40 10.70 and 438.60 444.80 6.20 9.23 FKD_182 1388350 457.30 473.10 15.80 2.98 incl. 467.25 472.10 4.85 4.41 FKD_183 1388275 445.10 479.30 34.20 3.27 incl. 463.00 471.00 8.00 8.33 FKD_184 1388500 490.00 515.05 25.05 2.37 incl. 499.70 508.00 8.30 3.54 * (previously disclosed in B2Gold news release, June 11, 2015) Note - true widths are approximately 70-80% of reported core lengths Fekola Infill Drilling: Story continues In 2015, approximately 7,800 metres of infill diamond drilling were completed with the objective of increasing the percentage of indicated mineral resource within the proposed Fekola open pit. The infill drilling confirmed the continuity of grade and widths (as modelled) for the main ore zone and for the well mineralised hanging wall zones. In addition to infill diamond drilling, 3,100 metres of reverse circulation drilling was completed on approximately 20 metre-spaced centres in the Stage 1 design open pit reserves at the south end of the proposed Fekola open pit. Overall, tight infill drilling confirms the grade, widths and continuity of gold mineralization as modelled in the January 24, 2015 resource model and disclosed in the June 11, 2015 news release announcing the results of the Optimized Feasibility Study. Highlights of the tight infill program include: Hole ID From To Length (m) Gold (g/t) FKCR_335 7.00 25.00 18.00 3.55 FKCR_336 23.00 35.00 12.00 3.87 FKCR_338 4.00 35.00 31.00 4.79 FKCR_340 29.00 52.00 23.00 4.77 and 7.00 22.00 15.00 3.79 FKCR_341 6.00 26.00 20.00 15.14 FKCR_342 11.00 49.00 38.00 6.60 FKCR_343 14.00 35.00 21.00 3.24 FKCR_348 19.00 42.00 23.00 9.35 FKCR_349 19.00 62.00 43.00 5.60 FKCR_350 13.00 64.00 51.00 3.38 FKCR_352 14.00 33.00 19.00 16.71 FKCR_353 19.00 78.00 59.00 5.48 FKCR_355 14.00 60.00 46.00 3.70 FKCR_357 46.00 70.00 24.00 2.76 FKCR_358 29.00 61.00 32.00 2.42 FKCR_359 34.00 90.00 56.00 4.42 FKCR_360 33.00 60.00 27.00 6.93 FKCR_361 50.00 77.00 27.00 4.87 FKCR_362 24.00 48.00 24.00 2.92 FKCR_363 32.00 61.00 29.00 5.22 FKCR_364 17.00 32.00 15.00 6.43 FKCR_365 42.00 65.00 23.00 7.70 FKCR_366 23.00 65.00 42.00 2.38 FKCR_368 27.00 48.00 21.00 7.29 FKCR_369 21.00 77.00 56.00 7.59 FKCR_370 51.00 90.00 39.00 2.69 and 14.00 45.00 31.00 4.23 FKCR_372 14.00 44.00 30.00 1.45 FKCR_373 53.00 75.00 22.00 2.24 Fekola Regional Exploration - Mali As part of the 2015 Fekola regional exploration program, B2Gold undertook a combined auger, air core, reverse circulation and diamond drill programs on soil anomalies defined within approximately 20 kilometres of the proposed Fekola open pit. Multiple target areas were drill tested and follow up work for these areas is currently being prioritized. Results indicate there is very good potential to discover further zones of mineralization around the Fekola deposit. Highlights of the program to date include: Hole ID From To Length (m) Gold (g/t) MSAC_046 27.00 48.00 21.00 2.80 MSAC_047 17.00 38.00 21.00 8.73 MSAC_052 26.00 46.00 20.00 3.21 MSRD_002 23.00 40.00 17.00 3.90 MSAC_058 18.00 51.00 33.00 1.49 MSAC_121 22.00 36.00 14.00 3.46 MSAC_131 29.00 35.00 6.00 12.21 MSAC_182 10.00 14.00 4.00 11.93 MSAC_183 4.00 22.00 18.00 3.26 MSAC_196 18.00 26.00 8.00 9.88 Note: Fekola and Fekola Regional intervals reported above are >1g/t gold over > 3 metres, based on a maximum of 3 metres internal waste. Insufficient drilling has been completed to determine true widths. A total of 54,000 metres of diamond, reverse circulation, auger and air core drilling is planned in 2016 to follow up the regional targets in and around Fekola and to further test Fekola deeps. Kiaka Regional Exploration, Burkina Faso In 2015, Kiaka regional exploration was focused along a strand of the regionally significant Markoye fault corridor structure where an auger drilling program carried out in 2014 identified anomalous geochemical targets co-incident with prospective geological structures identified in the interpretation of airborne geophysics and geological mapping. In 2015, 1,591 metres of diamond drilling and 3,870 metres of reverse circulation drilling were completed on this new prospect area. Studies are currently underway to determine whether this new prospect area contains sufficient mineral resources to supplement the Kiaka Gold Project, or if it constitutes a viable, standalone gold project. A total of 13,000 metres of reverse circulation, diamond and air core drilling is planned in 2016. Highlights from the 2015 Kiaka Regional Exploration drilling program include: Hole ID From To Length (m) Gold (g/t) NKRC042 114.00 129.00 15.00 3.17 NKRC043 71.00 142.00 71.00 2.11 NKRC044 69.00 103.00 34.00 2.27 NKRC047 75.00 181.00 106.00 2.21 NKRC048 100.00 140.00 40.00 1.38 NKRC049 110.00 132.00 22.00 1.51 NKRC052 231.00 249.00 18.00 3.12 NKDD005 100.00 156.00 56.00 1.21 NKDD008 111.00 164.15 53.15 1.33 NKDD012 87.00 204.00 117.00 1.91 NKRC057 66.00 74.00 8.00 1.90 and 80.00 104.00 24.00 2.18 Note: Kiaka Regional intervals reported above are >0.3 g/t Au, based on a maximum of 5 metres internal waste. True widths are estimated to be 80% of reported drill intervals. The Kiaka project has an Indicated mineral resource of 124 million tonnes at an average grade of 0.99 g/t gold for 3.9 million ounces of gold and an additional 27.3 million tonnes at 0.93 g/t for 815,000 ounces of gold in the Inferred Category as disclosed in the NI 43-101 technical report entitled "An Updated Mineral Resource Estimate on the Kiaka Gold Project Burkina Faso" dated January 8, 2013. Namibia Exploration Summary Otjikoto and Namibia Regional A total of 20,605 metres of diamond drilling was carried out in and near the Otjikoto deposit and Wolfshag zones at Otjikoto in 2015. An additional 1,453 metres of reverse circulation and 8,500 metres of rotary air blast (RAB) drilling was conducted on regional exploration targets. The majority of the diamond drilling was focussed on the southern, deeper, portion of the Wolfshag zone to decrease the drill hole spacing in support of a Wolfshag resource model update and underground scoping study. Exploration has confirmed a new zone of mineralisation, the Wolfshag East zone, 850 metres east of the Wolfshag zone. The new zone was first identified with 2014 in soil geochemistry and follow-up RAB drilling. Diamond drilling highlights from the new zone include 5.54 g/t gold over 6.0 metres in hole WH15-216 and 6.81 g/t gold over 11.6 metres in hole WH15-223. These holes will be followed up in 2016 as part of a 29,000 metre core, reverse circulation and RAB drill program. Ondundu JV - Namibia B2Gold Namibia and Omatjete Mining Company, a 70% owned subsidiary of Forsys Metals, signed an earn-in joint venture agreement whereby B2Gold can earn in stages up to a 100% interest in the Ondundu project. The property is located approximately 190 kilometres south west of the Otjikoto Mine. The primary exploration target in EPL 3195 is the Ondundu Main Zone which has numerous shallow historic gold workings over a strike length of 2,200 metres. Previous exploration on the property included detailed surface mapping, sampling of old workings and diamond drilling. This work identified gold mineralisation in the Margarethental and Razorback target areas. The Margarethental target has thick zones of low grade gold mineralisation (e.g. ADD10 34 metres grading 0.7 g/t gold at a vertical depth of 100 metres and ADD13 69 metres grading 0.4 g/t gold at a vertical depth of 90m). The low grade zones have higher grade sections and four widely spaced holes over a length of 450 metres intersected possible higher grade shoot associated with the Margarethental syncline axial zone (e.g. OD2 18 metres grading 1.7 g/t gold from 133m). Twelve core drillholes (2,968 metres) were drilled at 25 metre centres on four widely spaced lines to test this zone in November/December 2015. The Razorback target appears to have more typical slate belt type structurally controlled high grade quartz vein mineralisation associated with the Razorback antiform (e.g. ADD40 1.0 metres grading 10.8 g/t gold at 188 metres downhole and ADD58 1.0 metres grading 11.8 g/t gold from 32 metres). A drill program to test the Razorback target area is planned to start in February 2016. Masbate Mine, Philippines The 2015 Masbate Exploration drill program comprised 12,254 metres of diamond drill core and reverse circulation drilling. The objectives of the exploration drilling was to identify potential additional mineral resources to the mine and targeted six areas within trucking distance to the mine. The Pajo area, located one kilometer north of the Colorado open pit with easy road access to the Masbate mill complex was a primary focus of exploration in 2015. Highlights from the exploration drilling include PHRC079 which intersected 11.0 metres true width grading 1.71 g/t gold, PHRC118 which intersected 9.20 metres true width grading 6.93 g/t gold, PHRC136 which intersected 21.08 metres true width grading 2.26 g/t gold and PHRC077 which intersected 14.50 metres true width grading 3.54 g/t gold. The Montana SE zone is the southward extension of the Montana vein which is scheduled for production in 2017. Highlights from the 2015 exploration drilling include MONRC128 which intersected 19.20 metres true width grading 5.14 g/t gold including 3.01 metres true width grading 27.95 g/t gold, MONRC131 which intersected 6.34 metres true width grading 4.16 g/t gold, MONRC132 which intersected 17.14 metres true width grading 1.50 g/t gold and MONRC135 which intersected 11.51 metres true width grading 1.57 g/t gold. Planned exploration in 2016 will consist of 18,000 metres of drilling to continue to test these new zones. At the same time an aggressive surface exploration program comprising geological target generation and follow up prospecting, geochemical sampling and trenching is also planned for 2016. Hole ID Target From To Length (m) True width (m) Gold (g/t) Gold Capped* (g/t) PHRC079 Pajo West 73.00 89.80 16.80 11 1.71 1.71 PHRC118 Pajo Mid 29.50 40.00 10.50 9.2 6.93 2.40 PHRC136 Pajo Mid 3.80 38.80 35.00 21.08 2.26 1.52 PHRC077 Pajo Main 54.15 69.10 14.95 14.5 3.54 3.41 MONRC128 Montana SE 58.80 81.10 22.30 19.2 5.14 2.01 Incl. Montana SE 64.30 67.80 3.50 3.01 27.95 7.96 MONRC131 Montana SE 66.40 74.10 7.70 6.34 4.16 3.67 MONRC132 Montana SE 17.90 35.30 17.40 17.14 1.50 1.50 MONRC135 Montana SE 7.20 19.90 12.70 11.51 1.57 1.57 LASD009 Luy A 30.20 40.20 10.00 8.56 4.80 4.80 LASD002 Luy A South 56.40 79.50 23.10 17.5 1.27 1.27 LASD004 Luy A South 159.95 168.35 8.40 8.2 6.38 1.57 * Drilling Results - All capped gold grades reported have been capped at 15 g/t gold. Nicaragua Exploration Summary Exploration in Nicaragua during 2015 was focused on discovering potential new gold mineral resources around the La Libertad and El Limon mines with 23,737 metres drilled. A total of 17,000 metres of drilling is planned on the La Libertad and El Limon projects in 2016. El Limon diamond drilling in 2015 totaled 10,271 metres, focused mainly on Santa Pancha 1 (SP1), Atravesada, Veta Nueva and other targets, including Portal. The SP1 (Pozo #8) results were encouraging with highlights including LIM-15-3900 which intersected 5.60 metres grading 19.66 g/t gold, LIM-15-3918 which intersected 5.54 metres grading 25.50 g/t gold and LIM-15-3899 which intersected 10.0 metres grading 7.19 g/t gold. Portal North vein returned 4.65 metres grading 4.61 g/t gold in hole LIM-15-3911. At La Libertad, 11,692 metres of diamond drill core were drilled in 2015. The primary focus in 2015 was evaluating the underground potential of the Jabali Antenna and Mojon vein systems as well testing the open pit potential on other regional targets such as Los Angeles-Mestiza structure and San Francisco. Drilling at Jabali Antenna East returned high grade results with JB15-029 returning 8.24 metres grading 5.14 g/t gold, JB15-428 returning 3.57 metres grading 17.0 g/t gold and JB15-426 returning 4.55 metres grading 5.0 g/t gold. At Los Angeles-Mestiza, a potential strike extension of Los Angeles mineralization was identified in MZ 15-007 that intersected 8.2 metres grading 4.56 g/t. In addition, first-pass drilling on a new target near Mojon returned encouraging results with TP15-003 intersecting 16.0 metres grading 3.49 g/t gold (including 6.0 metres grading 5.52 g/t gold). Finland Exploration Results B2Gold has entered into an "earn in" joint venture with Aurion Resources Ltd. on their Kutuvuoma properties comprising Kutuvuoma, Ahvenjarvi, Piko-Mustavaara and Soretiavuoma located in Lapland Province, northern Finland. B2Gold can earn up to a 75% interest upon certain payments, share issuances and expenditures made in accordance with the terms of the agreement. The Kutuvuoma properties are located 30 kilometres southeast of Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd.'s Kittila mine which produced 141,742 ounces of gold in 2014. Highlights from the 2015 exploration season include trench sampling over 470 metres of strike length at the Kutuvuoma Zone that contained up to 8.84 g/t gold over 14.66m, 3.20 g/t gold over 10.92 metres and 5.30 g/t gold over 9.94 metres (Aurion's sampling protocols did not include insertion of certified reference standards into their sample stream). Trench Metres Gold g/t Gold g/t Capped at 20 g/t K1502 14.66 8.84 6.07 K1502 10.92 3.20 3.20 T2 9.94 5.30 3.51 An aggressive exploration program is planned for 2016 comprising surface geochemical sampling, prospecting, geological mapping and trenching to be followed by a small diamond drill program. B2Gold's Quality Assurance/Quality Control Quality assurance and quality control procedures include the systematic insertion of blanks, standards and duplicates into the core, reverse circulation, air core, RAB drilling and trenching sample strings. The results of the control samples are evaluated on a regular basis with batches re-analysed and/or resubmitted as needed. All results stated in this announcement have passed B2Gold's quality assurance and quality control ("QA/QC") protocols. Tom Garagan, Senior Vice President Exploration, the Qualified Person as defined under National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101"), has reviewed and approved the contents of this news release. West Africa The primary laboratory for Fekola is SGS Laboratories in Bamako, Mali, where samples are prepared and analysed using 50g fire assay with atomic absorption finish and/or gravimetric finish. Bureau Veritas, Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire is the umpire laboratory. The primary laboratory for Kiaka Regional Exploration is ALS Minerals Laboratories in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, where samples are prepared and analysed using 50g fire assay with atomic absorption finish and/or gravimetric finish. Namibia The primary laboratory for the Otjikoto and Ondundu Projects is ALS Minerals in Johannesburg, South Africa, and Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, where samples are analysed by metallic screen fire assay with atomic absorption and/or gravimetric finish. Samples are prepared at ALS Minerals in Swakopmund, Namibia. Bureau Veritas, Swakopmund, Namibia, serves as the umpire laboratory for check analysis. Masbate The primary laboratory for the Masbate gold project is the on site laboratory at the Masbate gold project where samples are analysed by fire assay with atomic absorption finish. All sample preparation is carried out at the SGS Exploration sample preparation facility on site at the Masbate gold project. ACME Labs, Vancouver, Canada, is the umpire laboratory. Nicaragua The primary laboratory for the La Libertad and El Limon projects is Bureau Veritas Laboratories in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, where samples are analysed by gold fire assay with atomic absorption finish. Sample preparation is carried out at the La Libertad and El Limon mines sample preparation laboratories where they are dried, crushed and pulverized. ALS Minerals, Vancouver, Canada, is the umpire laboratory. ON BEHALF OF B2GOLD CORP. Tom Garagan, Senior Vice President of Exploration For more information on B2Gold please visit the Company website at www.b2gold.com. The Toronto Stock Exchange neither approves nor disapproves the information contained in this news release. This news release includes certain "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian and United States securities legislation, including projections of future financial and operational performance, statements with respect to future events or future performance, estimated future revenues, production estimates, anticipated operating, production and capital costs and statements regarding anticipated or planned exploration, development, construction, production, permitting and other activities on the Company's properties and the results thereof, including the potential addition of mineral resources at Kiaka, Wolfshag and Masbate and the projections included in existing technical reports and feasibility studies and geological models. Estimates of mineral resources and reserves are also forward looking statements because they constitute projections regarding the amount of minerals that may be encountered in the future and/or the anticipated economics of production, should a production decision be made. All statements in this news release that address events or developments that we expect to occur in the future are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, although not always, identified by words such as "expect", "plan", "anticipate", "project", "target", "potential", "schedule", "forecast", "budget", "estimate", "intend" or "believe" and similar expressions or their negative connotations, or that events or conditions "will", "would", "may", "could", "should" or "might" occur. All such forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management as of the date such statements are made. Forward-looking statements necessarily involve assumptions, risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond B2Gold's control, including risks associated with the uncertainty of reserve and resource estimates; volatility of metal and currency prices; risks and dangers inherent in exploration, development and mining activities; financing risks; ability to obtain any necessary permits, consents or authorizations required for its activities; shortages or cost increases in necessary equipment, supplies and labour; regulatory, political and country risks; litigation risk; risks related to hedging activities; risks related to environmental regulations or hazards and compliance with complex regulations associated with mining activities; the ability to replace mineral reserves and identify acquisition opportunities; unknown liabilities of companies acquired by B2Gold; risks related to operations in foreign countries and compliance with foreign laws; risks related to remote operations and the availability adequate infrastructure; fluctuations in price and availability of energy and other inputs necessary for mining operations; risks related to reliance upon contractors, third parties and joint venture partners; challenges to title or surface rights; dependence on key personnel; the risk of an uninsurable or uninsured loss; changes in tax laws; and community support for operations; as well as other factors identified and as described in more detail under the heading "Risk Factors" in B2Gold's most recent Annual Information Form and B2Gold's other filings with Canadian securities regulators and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), which may be viewed at www.sedar.com and www.sec.gov, respectively. The list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect the Company's forward -looking statements. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results, performance or achievements could differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, these forward-looking statements. Accordingly, no assurance can be given that any events anticipated by the forward-looking statements will transpire or occur, or if any of them do, what benefits B2Gold will derive therefrom. The Company's forward-looking statements reflect current expectations regarding future events and operating performance and speak only as of the date hereof and the Company does not assume any obligation to update forward-looking statements if circumstances or management's beliefs, expectations or opinions should change other than as required by applicable law. For the reasons set forth above, you should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The disclosure in this news release regarding mineral properties was prepared in accordance with NI 43-101, which differs significantly from the mineral reserve disclosure requirements of the SEC set out in Industry Guide 7. In particular, NI 43-101 permits companies to use the term "resources", which are not "reserves". Under U.S. standards, companies are not normally permitted to disclose mineralization that does not constitute "reserves". Accordingly, while mineral resources are recognized and required to be disclosed by NI 43-101, the SEC's disclosure standards normally do not permit companies to disclose mineral resources in their filings with the SEC. In addition, the definitions of "reserves" and related terms under NI 43-101 and the SEC's Industry Guide 7 differ significantly. Under SEC standards, mineralization may not be classified as a "reserve" unless the determination has been made that the mineralization could be economically and legally produced or extracted at the time the reserve determination is made. Among other things, all necessary permits would be required to be in hand or issuance imminent in order to classify mineralized material as reserves under the SEC standards. Further, U.S. investors should also understand that "inferred mineral resources" have a great amount of uncertainty as to their existence and great uncertainty as to their economic and legal feasibility. It cannot be assumed that all or any part of an "inferred mineral resource" will ever be upgraded to a higher category, and investors are cautioned not to assume that all or any part of an "inferred mineral resource" exists or is economically or legally mineable. For the above reasons, information contained in this news release that describes the Company's mineral resource estimates or that describes the results of feasibility or other studies is not comparable to similar information made public by companies that report in accordance with U.S. standards. China Chinese Liaoning Aircraft Carrier By 2030, China will be such an unquestioned superpower that the South China Sea will be nothing more than a "Chinese lake," the Center for Strategic and International Studies writes in a new report. China's dominance in the region is due to Beijing's projected continual development of aircraft carrier groups and the People Liberation Army's focus on expanding its ability to operate overseas. Citing a Chinese white paper, CSIS notes that "the PLA in the near future will be operating well beyond the First Island Chain and into the Indian Ocean ... The call for the PLA to adopt this expanded mission set is of greatest concern to the United States, as it will gradually extend the reach of the PLA and emphasize 'nontraditional security operations.'" In order to fulfill this expanded mission set, CSIS projects that China will invest heavily in the development and deployment of multiple aircraft carrier groups. This sudden influx of Chinese military assets, coupled with their ability to project power, will ensure that by 2030 "the South China Sea will be virtually a Chinese lake, as the Caribbean or the Gulf of Mexico is for the United States today." Such deployments will allow China to hold an even stronger hand in territorial disputes throughout Asia, particularly in the South China Sea. Beijing is locked in border frictions in the South China Sea with Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei. South China Sea Map_05 Currently, Beijing is in the process of reclaiming and constructing a string of artificial islands throughout the South China Sea. These man-made islands are being outfitted with ports, seawalls, and airstrips which would also allow China to project significant influence throughout the region despite protests from its neighbors. Story continues As of now, China only has one aircraft carrier of questionable quality. However, Beijing has confirmed that it is now building a second modern carrier based on its current carrier's design. NOW WATCH: The US Navy's last line of defense is this ultimate gun More From Business Insider The Federal High Court in Abuja has ordered that Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) be remanded in prison. The Federal High Court also struck out six charges of treasonable felony brought against Kanu by the Department of State Services (DSS). Kanu was arraigned in court today, January 20, 2016, on treason charges and other offences resulting from his agitation for the secession of a republic of Biafra from Nigeria. Founder of Radio Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu during his appearance on treasonable charges at the Federal High Court Abuja on Wednesday. Photo: The Punch Chuks Muoma (SAN), counsel to Kanu, in his argument said that his client should be detained in prison custody rather than by the DSS. He argued that since his incarceration, his client has been kept incommunicado for three months within the confines of the DSS facility. He further asked the court to send the accused to prison so that his family could visit him. But, Mohammed Diri, counsel to the DSS in his objection said the accused should remain in DSS custody for security reasons. READ ALSO: Brother: Nnamdi Kanu Has Only One Lawyer [article_adwert] Diri also asked the court strike out the charges that were filed against Kanu on Friday, December 18. "We filed the first set of charges on December 18, and the second set of charges on December 23. The prosecution intend to withdraw the charges filed on December 18 and proceed with the charges filed on December 23," Diri said. After listening to both counsels, Justice John Tsoho ordered Kanu to be remanded in the custody of the Nigeria Prison Service, Kuje, pending his trial for treason. "Having considered all submissions and application before the court and relying on the constitution, an accused person should be remanded in prison custody," he said. Find out more from Legit.ng's exclusive video report below: READ ALSO: Falana Speaks On Dasukis, Kanus Re-arrests Tsoho said that all arrangements for the transfer of the accused and all security measures needed should be undertaken by the federal government. Kanu's case was adjourned to Monday, January 25. Kanu was arrested in Lagos on his arrival from the United Kingdom on October 2015. He has been granted bail by three different courts, but the DSS has continued to flout the court orders. Source: Legit.ng Living in a big city is not always as rosy as it appears on paper and the Lagos life clearly typifies this. In this light, there are a number of issues to contend with as a Lagosian, and we try to look at 10 of the most prevalent of them today. As a resident of Lagos, the economical capital of Africas most populous nation, you are bound to suffer a number of setbacks that are so rife they almost become a part of your everyday existence. And while some of these problems are understandable, as with other major cities of the world, there are some issues in our 'City of Excellence' that could be better managed or completely eradicated better still. Here is hoping the government of today can look into and help address these problems. Now, without further ado, below are the 10 commonest problems faced as a result of living in Lagos: 1. Noise Pollution Lagos is a polluted city in terms of noise control vis-a-vis the survival of the people. This has been the case for decades and it is so unusual when compared to other major cities in neighbouring countries. File photo of a major cause of noise pollution 2. Air Pollution A clear case of inadequate power supply in the state means that many residents and commercial centres have to rely on diesel and fuel generators for survival. In addition to this, there are thousands of un-roadworthy vehicles plying the roads and these contribute to a large amount of exhaust fumes, among which are other forms of harmful materials, into the air. File photo of vehicle in traiffic causing air pollution READ ALSO: 9 Reunions Fans Can Not Wait To See In Nigerian Music The presence of these make life a hazard for both man, pets and other living organisms. 3. Undue Rush Owing To Population Surge This is pretty self-explanatory and stems from the heavily populated nature of the city of Lagos. There are too many people having to survive with so little amenities and this is a real problem today. An image showing the overpopulated nature of the city of Lagos. 4. Erratic Power Supply The absence or inadequate supply of power in Lagos has led to several issues. Inadequate power has grounded many businesses in the city, spiked the cost of living and doing business and caused a lot more problems than we can begin to explain here, including posing security challenges. [article_adwert] An image showing the bad state of electricity connection in the city of Lagos. 5. Inadequate Security The problems of poor security checks in Lagos state makes living and doing business a hard nut to crack, and consequently puts a blot on the city's overall image. This is really bad for foreign investors looking to come in and do business, or for tourists looking to come by and have a feel of the pizzazz and night life in the heart of the city. An image of armed policemen who have just made an arrest. 6. Transportation Troubles Road is the major means of transportation within Lagos state but unfortunately the roads are not exactly as decent as they should be. As a result, there are high costs of commuting over a little distance as a result of poor road networks, bad roads as well as too many vehicles plying too few roads, and corrupt traffic policemen and women, among other things. Traffic problems in Lagos. Credit: CNN 7. Corrupt Policemen The Nigerian Police Force has a completely huge role to play in helping ensure security of lives and properties in the city of Lagos but they havent exactly risen to the occasion. On many instances, they are caught in the web of corruption themselves; steady loitering the state in pick-up vans and scheming for bribes and whatnot. This is an age-long problem in the city, and a failure to address this only means the dream of achieving economic greatness in Lagos in the next few years will remain just what it is a dream. File photo of corrupt police officer. 8. Motor Park Thugs These groups have operated without fear or regard for the law for so many years it now feels like a natural thing. The Lagos state government has the primary role of ensuring the state is habitable, and so unscrupulous elements such as street urchins and uniformed motor park thugs must be done away with for a more thriving state and overall better living conditions. File photo of street urchins in Lagos 9. Inadequate Amenities And Infrastructural Facilities Many of the inhabitants of the city grapple with the odds of living with poor infrastructural facilities and this has had its toll on living conditions for decades. Only a few part of the population can lay claim to living in a truly functional part of the state, a trend that makes the government appear elitist in Lagos. Poor state of amenities and infrastructures in Lagos. READ ALSO: Don Jazzy About To Quit? 10. Unemployment This is another major setback in the city of Lagos and, though this is a new administration, one can only hope for a change as was promised during the election campaigns. Unemployed citizen protesting against unfair policies of the government. Source: Legit.ng VANCOUVER, BC--(Marketwired - January 20, 2016) - Today the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions (CFNU) offered strong recommendations to the country's health ministers, focused on implementing a new Health and Social Accord. At a roundtable briefing, Canada's nurses presented the results of extensive consultations and evidence reviews to twelve provincial health ministers, followed by an open discussion between nurse leaders and ministers. The same recommendations will be presented to the federal government. "We need leadership, Canadians pay more for prescription drugs than nearly every other developed country, our seniors don't have access to the care they need, and nurses are working millions of overtime hours each year, with no rational plan in sight," said Linda Silas, President of the CFNU. "It's time for coordinated action between governments, we need to break the silos in health care and understand that cutbacks at the local hospital, reduced home care services and children who go hungry all impact health status and health care costs. Having only a narrow focus on delivery of health care in hospitals does not go far enough." In order to support the anticipated First Ministers Meeting on a new Accord, the CFNU invited 50 health care stakeholders to consult on what should be part of a new federal-provincial agreement. The CFNU used these consultations to forge the recommendations presented to health ministers today. While strongly committing to the principles under the Canada Health Act, the CFNU has expanded the call for a Health Accord to include a Social Accord, recognizing that talking about the social determinants of health has not led to progress. Coordinated action is needed, now. The Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions recommends that First Ministers set a strong course forward for Canada by implementing a Health and Social Accord that includes: Stable Federal Health Care Funding (to a minimum of 25% by 2025) Coordinated Health Human Resources Planning A National Prescription Drug Plan (Pharmacare) A Canadian Strategy for Healthy Aging Improved Access to Health Services in Home and Community Settings Improved Access to Mental Health Services Story continues To advance the health of Canadians, governments should recognize that health systems do not exist in a vacuum. What is required is a better coordination of health and social services, particularly at points of access such as primary health care networks, along with a more integrated approach to health and social policies. Canada's nurses urge health ministers to work with health care stakeholders in the next few months to prepare for negotiations toward a new Accord. Will our ministers take up the challenges represented by our aging population, our indigenous population's poor health, spiraling drug costs and an increasingly fragmented system and commit to collaborating on items such as national prescription drug plan? Or will they stay on the current path, fiddling around the edges, without confronting the real issues? Canada's nurses are strongly pushing for coordinated action, a bold vision and clear policies that improve health care outcomes as we monitor the negotiations and continue our work with health ministers. "We don't believe Canadians will be served if the negotiations are solely focused on money, in this respect I agree with federal Health Minister Philpott's recent statements," said Silas, "but all evidence shows that federal leadership is essential to addressing some of the structural challenges in health, and this includes having the federal government commit to paying its fair share for health care in Canada and using its national mandate constructively. The CFNU looks forward to working with progressive governments in the coming months." The Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions (CFNU) is Canada's largest nurses' organization representing nearly 200,000 nurses and student nurses. The CFNU has been advocating for national discussions on key health priorities, such as a national prescription drug plan, a comprehensive approach to long-term and continuing care, greater attention to health human resources, and federal government engagement on the future of public health care. Baywatch alumni Pamela Anderson paid a visit to Frances National Assembly yesterday to throw her support behind the proposed legislation to ban foie gras, a controversial French delicacy which involved force-feeding ducks and geese to pump up their livers (known as gavage). Addressing the MPs not all of whom were pleased to see her Anderson called the practise as cruel as Canadas dark history of slaughtering baby seals. In many national cultures there seems to be at least one cruel tradition that stands out as identifying that culture, be it the bullfight in Spain, the eating of dogs in Korea, the slaughter of dolphins and whales by Japan or the bloody and obscene massacre of seals in my own native Canada. In 1977 Brigitte Bardot came to Canada to focus international attention upon the baby seal slaughter. I was 10 years old at the time yet she inspired me to actively oppose the cruel clubbing of seal pups and to recognise that animals must have a right to not be cruelly abused by humans. And now in honour of Brigitte Bardot, I as a Canadian, have come to France to voice my opposition to an industry that is equally as cruel as the baby seal massacre the cruel treatment and slaughter of ducks and geese for another non-essential luxury product foie gras! She tore shreds off both the production of the delicacy and the people who consume it. [It is a] a status product to be consumed by people who have chosen to disassociate themselves from the filth of the cages where the birds are born and subjected to months of agony in a human-created hell where the moans and shrill cries of pain echo through dark buildings where the light of the sun never penetrates and where the stench of rotting carcasses permeates the air. Okay, I think its fair if I just come out and say what were all thinking: Pamela Anderson? Foie Gras? French Parliament??? Event the MP who introduced the bill, Greens member Laurence Abeille, admitted that it was not her idea to invite Anderson. She told French media that the invite was organised through the Brigitte Bardot Foundation, with which Anderson who is in fact a long-time animal rights campaigner had previously worked with in the fight against the aforementioned practise of clubbing baby seals. Other MPs reactions ranged from cautiously bemused to downright scathing; one Socialist MP by the name of Jean-Michel Clement went as far to tell France Bleu radio that she represents everything I dislike including the superficial. She does not honour to the institution I am privileged to have a seat in. The foie gras producers organisation Cifog were also withering in their response. We are astonished that an elected member of the Republic should pull such a publicity stunt by choosing an American actress from the 1980s to condemn the production of one of the jewels of French gastronomy and culture, they said in a statement, while a spokeswoman for the organisation, Marie-Pierre Pe, had a good old whinge. We understand that some people dont want to eat foie gras, she said, but they should not keep foie gras lovers from eating it. The award for the most vile response however goes to the Hunting, Fishing, Nature and Traditions movement, who said that Abeille preferred turkeys stuffed with silicon [i.e. PAMELA ANDERSON] to good geese stuffed with maize from (the regions) Landes and Perigord. Abeille condemned the slur as particularly shocking, sexist, chauvinist, misogynistic comments. Yep. Although subjecting animals to gavage is illegal in plenty of countries, including Australia, the U.K., India, Israel, Argentina, Brazil, Scandinavia, Italy, Poland and more, the product of this treatment foie gras is not, and France produces 75% of the worlds supply, amounting to nearly 20,000 tonnes of it per year. And while it is still legal to produce in many parts of Europe, the European Union ruled in 2011 that birds cannot be kept in individual cages, giving farms till the end of last year to comply. Read Pamelas full speech to Parliament here. Source: The Guardian / The Irish Times. Photo: Mike Windle / Getty. Merchandising stuff-ups as as essential a part of Australia Day as sinking piss, eating charred snags and getting angry at the Hottest 100, and this years comes to courtesy of Woolworths, who have managed to wipe an entire state off the map. The supermarket chain has been selling a hat featuring the outline of the Aussie mainland emblazoned with the nations flag so far, so patriotic but customers have pointed out the lack of one crucial element: Tasmania. This is hardly the first time poor old Tassie has been forgotten about it was omitted from the poster for Baz Luhrmanns Australia, and in the past, has been left off Commonwealth Games uniforms and Olympic medals. Overnight, after getting the piss squarely taken out of them on social media, Woolies issued a statement, saying: Woolworths is aware of the issue and in the process of withdrawing the product from our supermarket shelves. Crisis averted. Back in 2014, Big W and Aldi both withdrew shirts emblazoned with Australia Est 1788 a reference to the landing of the first fleet over claims they were offensive to indigenous Australians. Story: Yahoo News Photo: 7 News M7 Real Estate, the pan European investor and asset manager, announces that it has received investor commitments totalling over 80 million at the first close of its latest European investment fund M7 European Real Estate Investment Partners III (M7 EREIP III or the Fund). It marks the largest fund [] Michael Lewis has joined Knight Frank as a partner in the Property Asset Management team based in the firms global HQ at 55 Baker Street. Lewis was previously at CBRE for seven years where he was head of Fund Mandates within their Asset Services Division, acting on behalf of CBRE Global Investors,... [] At the end of 2015 Australia revealed that 80 of its SAS commandos played a crucial role in helping Iraqi forces retake Ramadi (the capital of Anbar province) in a battle that began on December 8th and was largely complete by the end of December. The Australian SAS were advising one of the two Iraqi brigades that led the assault of the city. What made the SAS men key was that they could call in air strikes and they did so, at the rate over fifty a day when the fighting was most intense. The accurate air support was important because although there were only about a thousand ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) men defending the city center they did so from hundreds of trenches and bunkers which were surrounded by even more roadside bombs and landmines. The SAS had helped train the brigade they were assisting and worked out procedures for the Iraqi troops in contact with the enemy to quickly and accurately report that to the SAS who would confirm the location of friendly and enemy forces and call in the smart bomb or missile strike. This led to the destruction of most of the fanatic defenders and the rapid recapture of Ramadi with low (about a hundred) dead among the attacking troops. Some of the ISIL men who survived fled were publicly executed by ISIL to remind their fighters that retreat is not an option. Not many 8-year-olds spend their birthday counting blessings. Typically, it's a time to count the presents - the video games, toys and gadgets friends and family so dutifully deliver. What kid in his right mind would give up all that kind of loot? Well, this kid. Dodo Shows Comeback Kids Family Stops At Nothing To Help Their Great Dane Run And his mind couldn't be more right. Benjamin Walker of Fort Worth, Texas, gave up on presents for his birthday. Instead, he asked friends and family to give to animals - a bounty that amounted to more than $3,148 in cash and supplies. All of it went to the Humane Society of North Texas (HSNT). "I just really love animals," he told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "I don't really need that much gifts for my birthday. I already have a bunch of stuff." The donation included more than 400 pounds of dog food as well as cat litter and toys. Humane Society of North Texas "This was by far the largest gift we gave gotten from a young adult in the recent history," Whitney Hanson of HSNT tells The Dodo. "Honestly, we were just overwhelmed with gratitude." Humane Society of North Texas Of course, that spirit of giving to animals runs strong in the Walker family - a family that has been a strong supporter of the HSNT, even adopting one of the shelter's longtime residents, a cat. Humane Society of North Texas The University of Pennsylvania campus auditorium was half-empty when GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina strode onstage, smiling and waving with the same corner-office charisma she had showcased in hundreds of speeches around the world. The former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard had been invited to give a keynote address in November to a conference on American business a topic she knew well, having spearheaded one of the biggest tech mergers in history. Instead, Fiorina opened by talking about her charitable work overseas and what she learned by giving microloans to poor women in India. There are two looks that people get, she told her audience, a mix of college students and business professionals in Philadelphia. There is a look that somebody gets when they realize they can achieve more than they thought. . . . Theres also a look people get when theyre hopeless. You see it in their eyes when people have given up. She compared her former employees at HP to the budding entrepreneurs in the slums of New Delhi all of whom, she explained, needed a boost to reach their potential. She had helped provide it, she said. Carly Fiorina leaves a Wilmington, Del., courthouse in 2002. Hewlett-Packard director Walter Hewlett, who opposed HPs planned merger with Compaq, was trying to persuade a judge to scuttle the deal. (Jim Graham/Bloomberg News) As she pursues her long-shot presidential bid, Fiorina has often sought to characterize her divisive tenure at HP as a success. She exhibited the same drive, discipline and unbending resolve she argues is needed to fix the countrys problems, along with a willingness to take action in the face of fierce opposition. But her decision to champion a mega-deal with Compaq Computer in 2001 the most significant and criticized move of her career ultimately became a key reason she lost her job as the countrys most high-profile female CEO. And it remains a liability in her primary campaign. An awful lot of analysts said, No, dont do this, and she took it upon herself to prove them wrong, remembered Roy Verley, HPs former chief corporate spokesman. And the more the criticism mounted, the more determined she became to make it work. Fiorina, 61, declined multiple requests for an interview for this article. When asked at the business conference about the merger, she defended her decision to press ahead. If you are not leading, you are failing, she said. To transform a company from a laggard to a leader took a lot of bold moves and tough choices. What kept me going during that time, she said, is the fact that I knew that this company and these people were capable of leadership and greatness. When you know what someones capable of, you do everything you can to ensure they have the opportunity to demonstrate their capacity. But it was also an opportunity for her to demonstrate her own. A fight from start to finish The $25 billion merger wasnt her idea. It came from HPs longest-serving director, the bespectacled nuclear physicist George Jay Keyworth. In late 2000, Keyworth rushed to meet with Fiorina at HPs headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., to discuss his brainstorm. The company could use its multibillion-dollar war chest to buy Compaq, swallowing a rival and virtually doubling HPs size and stature overnight. Keyworth was one of the more trusted minds on HPs board, and he was so fired up about a deals potential he said she should call Compaqs chief right away. Carly Fiorina at a 2010 Republican primary debate in Los Angeles during her campaign for the U.S. Senate in California. Fiorina would win the GOP nomination but lose in the general election to the Democratic incumbent, Sen. Barbara Boxer. (Jae C. Hong/AP) But Fiorina, who had moved a year earlier from her leading role at AT&T spinoff Lucent Technologies, tossed cold water on the idea immediately, she wrote in her memoir, Tough Choices. She was adamant that she and the company keep the upper hand, telling Keyworth they wouldnt have to make the first move. Compaq, she predicted, would come to them. Fiorina had been hired in 1999 to transform Hewlett-Packard, the tech giant then trapped in a death spiral and losing on multiple fronts to rivals such as Dell and IBM. The board saw Fiorina, then 44, as the perfect driver to speed the grandfather of Silicon Valley into the new millennium. In her first few months, Fiorina acted quickly, restructuring HPs 83 decentralized divisions. She encountered immediate resistance at the 60-year-old firm, renowned for a chummy corporate culture called The HP Way. One of her first power moves was an attempt to buy auditing giant PricewaterhouseCooperss lucrative consulting arm, believing the takeover would vindicate her sweeping reorganization and net her an early win. But after the deal was leaked to the press, then torpedoed by the dot-com bust, HP was publicly embarrassed. In an interview, Steve Huhn, a former HP vice president of global sales, said Fiorina was personally, very heavily involved in all that discussion and research and shared in a great amount of regret. When talk turned to Compaq, Fiorina declared in a heated argument with Keyworth that any new deal under her watch would demand not just intense scrutiny but absolute secrecy. In the weeks after Keyworths pitch, she pushed HP to enlist advisers at McKinsey & Co. to give strategic counsel and commissioned an internal team to crunch the numbers on a handful of alternative ideas, including splitting the company in half. One big obstacle disappeared that spring when Michael Capellas, her counterpart at struggling Compaq, called with an enticing offer. In a merger, he said, the HP brand would survive and Fiorina would stay on top. In May 2001, Fiorina ended her quarterly meeting with HPs nine directors on a giddy note of conquest. I figured out that Compaq would come to us and ask to be bought. Well, guess what. It has happened, she said, as recalled by Walter Hewlett, son of HPs co-founder, in Peter Burrowss book Backfire: Carly Fiorinas High-Stakes Battle for the Soul of Hewlett-Packard. Fiorina moved counterclockwise around the table, asking the directors whether HP should proceed with the deal. Everyone but Hewlett said yes. Fiorina was a microscopic planner a former speechwriter said she demanded detailed analyses of her audiences before speaking events and her management in the run-up to the merger was no less precise. She convened a series of special sessions with the board to debate the deal down to the finest detail, from projections on how server sales would shift in Europe to which executives would sit in which chairs. Keyworth and Dick Hackborn, an HP director and the chief architect of its hyper-profitable printing empire, cheered on the merger, joining with another board member, Bob Wayman, an HP lifer, in becoming her top advisers. But others on the board, including telecom veterans Sam Ginn and Bob Knowling, were far more leery about depending on the collapsing business of PCs. No one outside the board and a select group of top executives knew of the confidential research effort, and by the summer of 2001, Fiorina was still tussling with whether the merger was worth it. At least 15,000 employees would need to be lopped off to get the kind of cost savings the deal needed to thrive. Flying home one night in the corporate jet, she vented to her husband, Frank Fiorina, that it would be incredibly ugly, a huge shock and a fight from start to finish. Her workforce was also quickly tilting toward suspicion. In June 2001, after a desperate HP asked workers to sign up for an optional pay cut, 80,000 employees volunteered, some under the belief that it would save them all from pink slips. When Fiorina a month later announced 6,000 layoffs, some workers felt betrayed, or as if she was showing who was in charge. As one employee told Palo Alto Weekly, She wants to put fear in our hearts, and shes done that. But Fiorina believed she was running out of time. HP was bleeding cash. Her directors and advisers continued to assure her that a deal with Compaq, however messy, was worth the risk. In August, she flew to New York to share her decision with the Compaq board, who had just met with their bankers and still had booklets open on the table showing how much they expected Compaqs stock to rise. But Fiorina was far less bubbly: The market will hate this deal. They wont understand it, and they wont reward us for it, she recounted telling them in her memoir. We will have to convince them that weve done the right thing. Shortly before the announcement, she summoned to her airy glass office the HP leaders who would be critical to leading the integration, to tell them what they would soon see all over the news. This time, there was no discussion. Fiorina was not one for engaging her team in a lot of collaborative decision-making, said one former executive who requested anonymity to avoid damaging his current business relationships. When shed come to a decision of what she wanted to do . . . shed made up her mind. In public, she oozed confidence. At a conference that month in Aspen, Colo., the Stanford medieval-history graduate ended her speech by quoting Leonardo da Vinci in Italian: Ogni impedimento e distrutto dal rigore every obstacle yields to stern resolve. At 2 p.m. on the last Friday in August, Fiorina and the HP board convened at the office of the Silicon Valley law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati to read over the pages outlining the final agreement. And in those last nights, Fiorina wrote, she began saying the Lords Prayer to herself over and over again, just as I had as a little girl. A $25 billion mistake? When the doors swung open at the Flint Center in Cupertino, Calif., at 6:30 a.m. on March 19, 2002, Fiorinas last chance to defend the merger had already devolved into a circus. In the six months since announcing her decision in New York, Fiorina had waged a cross-country charm offensive, flying 100,000 miles to sell the merger to HPs big investors. For the deals final vote, which required shareholder approval, HP hosted a meeting at a community-college theater where Steve Jobs had unveiled the first Macintosh in 1984. But that morning, an angry army of HP workers and retirees had amassed at the center, calling for Fiorinas firing and carrying signs saying, Merger today, Chapter 11 tomorrow. Many of the agitators wore green, for the color of the cards on which they would vote no. One laid-off software engineer dressed in a leprechaun hat and handed out green carnations. But Fiorina wasnt backing down. The majority of our employees understand and support this merger, Fiorina told the crowd, her voice drowned out by waves of boos. Shortly after the merger announcement, the families of the companys founders had mobilized, warning that the deal would decimate the companys culture. Walter Hewlett led the charge, and within weeks the opposition effort had sent letters to shareholders, hired lawyers and public-relations firms, and placed national newspaper ads calling the deal a $25 billion mistake. Fiorina showed subtle hints that she was having second thoughts. One Sunday in late 2001, according to Perfect Enough: Carly Fiorina and the Reinvention of Hewlett-Packard by George Anders, Fiorina sat in the first-floor study of her mansion in Californias Los Altos Hills and called half a dozen HP directors, asking each for a yes-no answer on whether the rocky merger should stop or go on as planned. But with their backing, Fiorina and HP executives mounted an increasingly public counterattack on the family foundations that owned 18 percent of HPs shares. Walter Hewlett sniped that Fiorina, a first-time chief executive, was learning on the job, while Fiorina and other HP leaders penned a series of excoriating Dear Walter letters that called him an academic and musician, inexperienced and out of touch. This is a choice between taking the hill and charging ahead or retreating, she said at a technology conference in Palm Springs. Amid the chaos of the shareholder fight, HP still had to map out how this newly merged behemoth would operate, and Fiorina surprised some on her staff with her deep involvement in the relatively boring grunt work of corporate integration. At one point, more than 1,500 employees were working full time as part of a launch team set to prepare HP for life after the merger. And yet every Friday, from 8 a.m. to noon, the former HP executive told The Washington Post, Fiorina would lead a committee meeting in which she would decide on regional real estate holdings and even the titles for middle managers. Many days, former employees said, she would stay at the office past midnight, polishing the wording in news releases. The vote on the merger the decision Fiorina had staked her career on would for months prove too close to call. But Fiorinas roadshow focus on big investors proved a winning strategy, and the merger won with a razor-thin 51 percent of the 1.6 billion share votes. Afterward, Fiorina and her team flew overnight on a corporate jet to Compaqs Houston headquarters. Early the next day, Fiorina walked the halls in high heels and a green suit, beaming, a victory lap in her conquered land. People were just pouring out of their offices, cheering and clapping, so optimistic about the future, said Susan Bowick, a former HP head of global human resources. But the euphoria wouldnt last. Basing its projections off the froth of the late-1990s dot-com bubble, HP had believed its forecasts for Compaqs new gains were conservative. Instead, they proved wildly overstated. In the three years after the merger, HPs share price crumbled 13 percent, while printer giant Lexmarks stock climbed 60 percent and computer maker Dells soared 90 percent. In 2005, the board that had once seen Fiorina as the companys savior turned on her. She was fired. A change warrior Fiorina has been forced to revisit the merger many times since. When she ran for the Senate in California in 2010, Democratic incumbent Barbara Boxer attacked Fiorina by reminding voters that the merger forced HP to slash 30,000 jobs. And at a GOP presidential debate this past September, Republican front-runner Donald Trump called the merger a terrible deal and ranked Fiorina as one of the worst 20 CEOs in the history of business. When the subject comes up on the campaign trail, Fiorina routinely characterizes herself as a change warrior who saved the company. Last year, at a human-resources conference in Washington, she said that people who drive change get a lot of arrows in the back. The merger opened opportunities for HP that helped the company survive. But its fortunes truly turned only after Fiorina left, leaving some to question whether she or her replacement, Mark Hurd, deserved credit. And a decade later, HP remains a firm on the brink of catastrophe. Its share price has never again come close to its pre-merger peak. In September, a still-struggling HP announced it would slash up to 30,000 jobs, a mass layoff rivaling that of the cuts under Fiorina in the wake of the Compaq deal. That same month, the super PAC supporting Fiorinas candidacy, CARLY for America, premiered an hour-long documentary, Citizen Carly, in which Fiorina sits, hands clasped in a paisley-print chair, to explain just how well the merger worked. The merger with Compaq was the best strategic option for us, Fiorina said. It wasnt surprising for me that not everybody could see that. It wasnt their job to see it. It was my job to see it. U.S. President Barack Obama meets with Spencer Stone (2nd L), Anthony Sadler (R) and Alek Skarlatos (L), the three men who subdued a gunman on a Paris-bound train in August, at the Oval Office on Sept. 17, 2015. (Carlos Barria/Reuters) They tackled a terrorist. Now theyre ready to tackle a book. Anthony Sadler, Alek Skarlatos and Spencer Stone, the three American friends who beat a would-be killer unconscious and saved a train full of people traveling to Paris last August, have sold their life story to PublicAffairs. The 15:17 to Paris will be published this summer on the one-year anniversary of the act of heroism that earned the three men the French Legion of Honor. The highlight of the book will be the reenactment of the thwarted attack on Aug. 21, when Ayoub el-Khazzani, a suspected Islamist militant, began shooting. Stone, an Airman 1st Class, knocked down Khazzani and grabbed him around the neck even while the gunman was slicing him with a box cutter. Skarlatos, serving with the Oregon Army National Guard, and Sadler, then a senior at California State University at Sacramento, helped disarm and restrain Khazzani. A statement released Tuesday by Perseus Books Group describes the upcoming book as the gripping true story of a terrorist attack that would have killed more than 500 people if not for their actions, but it is also the story of three American boys, their friendship, and the values we hold dear. The book deal is hardly a surprise, considering the fame the three men have enjoyed since their brave actions on the train. All of them have been invited to the White House. Skarlatos competed on Dancing with the Stars. Stone was a special guest at last weeks State of the Union address. PublicAffairs plans a six-figure first printing. Jeffrey E. Stern, an international journalist, will co-write the book. David Steinberger, president and chief executive of Perseus Books Group, declined to provide financial details on the deal on the deal, but said, This was an auction, and we were aggressive in spending to acquire the rights because we had a lot of conviction right away, based on the material, that this was going to be an important book and one that readers were really going to respond to. He said he is confident that this is going to be a film. Its extremely cinematic, and theres a lot of interest in the movie. Reached by phone at his mothers house in Sacramento, Stone sounds just as modest and easygoing as youd want an American hero to be. I never thought Id be writing a book, Stone says. People kept telling us, You guys should write a book. We were like, What are we going to make a book about? We cant make a whole book about a two-minute fight. But The 15:17 to Paris will delve into the lives of the three men and their long friendship. Its a trip, Stone says, but its kind of difficult, trying to remember everything in detail. . . . Im excited to see how it comes out. Stone acknowledges that he and his two friends have a different idea of the attack that interrupted their European vacation. Theres what Alek saw, he says. Theres what Anthony saw. But Anthony didnt see it from our perspective, so hes like, Wow, that happened? We all have three different perspectives. No, thats not what happened. And Im like, No, that happened, and I know! Stern recently completed extensive interviews with Stone. I took him places and told him stories about growing up, Stone says, so he could see in person the people in my past. And he hung out with my family, and we became pretty good friends. Stone expects that it will be very weird to read a book about himself and his buddies. Its probably going to seem a little more dramatic than it seemed to me. The months since the train attack have been only slightly less harrowing for Stone. In October, he was stabbed several times several times during a late-night brawl in Sacramento and required open-heart surgery to save his life. I am doing a lot better, he says. You know, its still actually healing. Doctors told me, Youre not going to be 100 percent. For now, Stone is concentrating on recovering and looking forward to the book tour. Our own book tour that would be mind-blowing, he says. It would be like were on vacation, but hopefully no terrorists this time. Ettore Scola, the Italian director whose Oscar-nominated films chronicled the growing pains, class divisions and frustrated idealism of 20th-century Italy, died Jan. 19 at a hospital in Rome. He was 84. His family announced the death, which came several days after Mr. Scola fell into a coma. The cause was not reported. Mr. Scola directed some of the greatest actors of his era, including Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, Fanny Ardant and Jack Lemmon. One of his most acclaimed films was A Special Day (1977), about a chance encounter of a few hours between Mastroianni, playing a homosexual about to be deported by fascists, and Loren as a repressed, sentimental housewife married to a hard-core follower of dictator Benito Mussolini. It was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film, and Mastroianni was a nominee for best actor. In a tribute, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi described Mr. Scola as a master in interpreting Italy, its society and its changes. Mr. Scola was born in Trevico, in the southern region of Campania, on May 10, 1931. He started work as a screenwriter in 1953 and directed his first major film, Lets Talk About Women, in 1964. A student of Vittorio De Sica, he directed We All Loved Each Other So Much in 1974 as a tribute to the neo-realist director who died that year. The film tells the story of three idealists who fight as partisans during the Nazi occupation and follows them over decades with the backdrop of labor unrest and terrorism as Italy is transformed from an agricultural backwater into a world industrial power. Mr. Scola also used events in a rapidly changing Italy as the backdrop for The Family (1987), also nominated for the Oscar for best foreign film, which takes place in the same apartment in Rome and chronicles the life of an upper-middle class family from 1906 to 1986. While none of Mr. Scolas films clinched an Oscar, they won many awards at European film festivals such as Cannes and Berlin. A Special Day won a Golden Globe for best foreign film. Mr. Scola retired in 2011, saying he was too old to deal with the bureaucracy of making films in Italy. My experience in the filmmaking world is not what it used to be: easy and happy. There are production and distribution requirements that I can no longer identify with, he told Il Tempo newspaper. 1 of 83 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad Notable deaths of 2015 View Photos A look at those who have died this year. Caption A look at those who have died. Wait 1 second to continue. But two years later, he went back to work to make How Strange to Be Named Federico, a documentary about his friend and mentor, director Federico Fellini, who died in 1993. Survivors include his wife, Gigliola Scola; and two daughters, Paola Scola and Silvia Scola. His canvases may still be selling for a relative pittance, but the Pablo Picasso who shows up at a Parisian bar in 1904 is making a killing on personality. As zestily portrayed by Matthew J. Keenan in Keegan Theatres Picasso at the Lapin Agile, the Spanish-born artist is a disheveled, swaggering womanizer who talks in ranting tones, because hes so pleased with his own opinions. Dont mention any potential rivals in his presence; the future Cubist goes into a scowling funk when he even hears the name Matisse. Keenans Picasso and Bradley Foster Smiths brightly kooky Albert Einstein are the spark plugs of this generally amusing, if occasionally stagey, production, directed by Chris Stezin from a loose, jokey script by Steve Martin. Among his many credits actor, comedian, banjo player, co-creator of the musical Bright Star (recently seen at the Kennedy Center and upcoming on Broadway) Martin is a noted art connoisseur, and he knew what he was about when he set this play in 1904, just three years before Picasso produced his seminal painting Les Demoiselles dAvignon. In 1904, Einstein was only on the verge of publishing the theories that would revolutionize physics. So part of the breezy, sometimes absurdist humor of Picasso at the Lapin Agile stems from the idea of glimpsing luminaries in their early days, before they had become the household names they are today. Underappreciated at the Lapin Agile (a real historic establishment in Paris), the 25-year-old Einstein of Martins play is at one point casually roped in to helping amiable bar owner Freddy (Brandon McCoy) with his bookkeeping. Also patronizing Freddys drinking spot are the opinionated art dealer Sagot (Lee Liebeskind), the aging barfly Gaston (Kevin Adams) and the beautiful Suzanne (Amanda Forstrom), who has recently succumbed to Picassos philandering. ( . . . The word No became like a Polish village . . . unpronounceable, she says, in one of the scripts characteristic gags. I held out for seconds.) And then theres the flamboyant self-promoter Charles Dabernow Schmendiman (Michael Innocenti), who may or may not become world-famous for inventing a building material made out of asbestos, radium and kittens paws. (Erin Nugent designed the costumes.) Souped up with the occasional easygoing intellectual-history insight, the comedy washes around on a roomy barroom set, with giant stylized scraps of scrawled-on paper floating overhead, to evoke the throes of genius. (Cast member Keenan also designed the set.) The actors sometimes move around this space with a deliberateness that looks very choreographed. And a couple of the performances in the production are more serviceable than inspired. Bradley Foster Smith and Lee Liebeskind in Picasso at the Lapin Agile. (C. Stanley Photography) But its fun to watch Smiths Einstein, who looks like a silent-comedy star and often brims with glee over insights or jokes that only he can understand. And Keenans egomaniacal Picasso is a delight. How does the Lapin Agile manage to attract such prodigies? There must be something in the absinthe. Wren is a freelance writer. Picasso at the Lapin Agile By Steve Martin. Directed by Chris Stezin. Lighting design, G. Ryan Smith; sound, Tony Angelini; projection design, Patrick Lord; set dressing and properties, Carol H. Baker; assistant director, Sheri S. Herren; hair and makeup, Craig Miller. With Allison Leigh Corke, Sheri S. Herren, Jessica Power, Mike Kozemchak, Katie Rosenberg and Caroline Leffert. About 85 minutes. Tickets: $30-$40. Through Feb. 13 at the Andrew Keegan Theatre, 1742 Church St. NW. Call 202-265-3767 or visit keegantheatre.com. Playwright Robert L. Freedman, left, and composer Steven Lutvak in New York. The duo co-wrote the Tony Award-winning musical A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder, now at the Kennedy Center. (Mark Kennedy/AP) A Gentlemans Guide to Love & Murder, the 2014 Tony Award winner for best new musical, closed on Broadway on Sunday. But instead of spending the weekend drowning their sorrows, composer/lyricist Steven Lutvak and book writer/lyricist Robert L. Freedman resolved to celebrate the opening of the touring production at the Kennedy Center. Both artists attribute their optimism to the allure of the nations capital, a deep sense of gratitude and old theater friends in Washington. Glenn Easton, the longtime executive director of Adas Israel Congregation in Washington, is a childhood friend of Freedmans. Freedman got his start in showbiz by writing musicals for a United Synagogue Youth group in Orange County, Calif., where Easton was his spotlight operator. Easton runs a temple in Baltimore, but he gathered more than 20 friends including local playwrights Jon Klein and Laura Shamas to attend Thursday nights opening at the Kennedy Center and an after-party thrown by producer Joey Parnes. Its thrilling for me to have a show at the Kennedy Center, Freedman said over post-show drinks at Circa in Foggy Bottom. Although Freedman and Lutvak are in their 50s, Gentlemans Guide was their first Broadway show and their first to open at the Kennedy Center. Thirty years ago, they never thought it would take them that long to write a hit. The two were paired while students in the first class of the musical theater masters program at New York University, where their mentors included luminaries such as composer Leonard Bernstein and songwriter Jule Styne. They remained friends and occasional partners, but Freedman ended up working mostly in television while Lutvak performed primarily in New York cabarets. In 2006, they gave a workshop performance of Gentlemans Guide at the Sundance Theater Institute. The work generated enthusiasm, but the road to Broadway was long and harrowing, and the project was nearly derailed by a lawsuit related to getting rights to a 1949 film on which the musical is partly based. We have put in our time, Lutvak said by phone from New York this week. I guess thats part of the reason we are so grateful. We were already in our 50s when the lawsuit happened, and we knew this was the best work that we had done. Success has different meaning for us. There have been rewards. People take my calls now, Lutvak quipped. They are working on two new musicals but are mum on the details. Freedman also has a movie script in the HBO pipeline, with Robert Redford directing. Lutvak is more in demand as a teacher, and hell be in town next week offering two master classes. Hell also be performing original songs Tuesday at the Kennedy Centers Millennium Stage. Lutvak was at the Millennium Stage in 2014, but his performance was scheduled on a day when there were no other performances and it was raining. There were like six people there, and one of them was my niece, Lutvak said. They told me I could have a do-over sometime, so I said, How about now? With his Tony-winning show onstage in the Eisenhower Theater, Lutvak didnt have to twist any arms. End of Methuselah postponed A change in fortunes has led the Washington Stage Guild to postpone the conclusion of its Back to Methuselah cycle until next season. Instead, the small theater that performs in the basement of Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church will remount the one-man show St. Nicholas. Performances begin Jan. 28. The switch had been in the works for some time, artistic director Bill Largess said, but was made public only this month. With a cast of 10 and more special effects than usual, Methuselah was going to be expensive to mount. The theater had split George Bernard Shaws five-act drama into three parts, presenting the earlier installments last year and in 2014. This one is significantly bigger than the others, Largess said. We had budgeted for it and were rolling along until some funding we expected didnt come through. He declined to specify exactly what had happened, only saying that he hoped to reapply for grants. Although some cast members were disappointed and had to scramble for work, all have signed on to finish the Methuselah cycle next fall, Largess said. Largess himself will be starring in the Conor McPherson play St. Nicholas, reprising a role he played in 1999. Im the right age now, Largess noted. His character is a 60-ish ornery Irish theater critic who takes a leave of absence from his newspaper gig to work for a league of vampires in London. With the Shakespeare Theatre staging The Critic and The Real Inspector Hound, two other plays about theater scribes from the British Isles, St. Nicholas felt even more suitable as a replacement. There was a little serendipity there, Largess said. Illuminating the Hippodrome In a move that is either serendipitous or ironically good timing, Baltimores Hippodrome Theatre has decided to revamp its chandelier before it welcomes the national tour of The Phantom of the Opera next week. Robert Hayes, a technical director for Broadway Across America who works at the Hippodrome, said the chandelier is a replica of the 1914 original that hung inside the theater and was installed as part of a massive refurbishing project in 2004. There are 52 new LED lightbulbs, including 12 that had to be custom made. Presumably, the chandelier is now not only more energy efficient, but also will remain hanging from the ceiling even when the phantom howls with angry laughter and the prop chandelier crashes to the stage in Andrew Lloyd Webbers hit musical. Comedian and actor Zach Galifianakis specializes in playing schlubs who are pathetic and egocentrically oblivious outrageously confident, perpetually loud and easily wounded all at once. FXs half-hour dramedy Baskets stars Galifianakis as the apotheosis of that personality type and to give it that perfect extra layer of unseemliness, this time Galifianakiss character is a sad clown. After less-than-stellar marks as a student at a Paris academy for French clowns, Chip Baskets (Galifianakis) returns to his hometown of Bakersfield, Calif., broke and dejected, but married to an aloof French woman, Penelope (Sabina Sciubba), who is in it merely for the green card. While she holes up in a gated apartment complex and shuns him, Chip lives at a weekly-rate motel and finds a $4-an-hour shift as a clown at the local rodeo, where his classic mime routines are greeted with jeers. He nevertheless insists on his art, demanding to be billed as Renoir the Clown. The rodeo manager wisely rechristens him Baskets the Clown, but either way it doesnt matter: Baskets/Renoir always gets knocked out by the bull. Baskets boasts a fine array of co-creators/writers. Besides Galifianakis, theres Louis C.K. (who has put his own FX series, Louie, on a long hiatus) and also Jonathan Krisel, whose other work includes producing and directing for IFCs Portlandia and Comedy Centrals Kroll Show. That combined talent reveals itself mainly in the melancholy, funny-because-its-painful tone of Baskets. The viewer feels no sympathy for Chip, while Galifianakiss flair for the absurd and postmodern slapstick actually works against the verisimilitude and utterly banal Bakersfield feeling that the show works hard to create. And if youre not getting enough of him, Galifianakis plays a second role, as twin brother Dale Baskets, the effeminate proprietor of a fly-by-night career college that operates in a strip mall. It could easily peter out, but there are two very wonderful characters who rescue the show. When Chip crashes his scooter, the insurance agent who shows up from Costco (you can buy anything from Costco; the megastore is sort of a running inside joke) is Martha (Martha Kelly). She seems to have stepped straight out of those old Jean Teasdale columns in the Onion. Strangely attracted to Chip, Martha becomes his de facto personal assistant, acting as the only dose of common sense in his life. He treats her like dirt. The shows other and most inspired choice is the decision to cast 62-year-old comedian Louie Anderson as Chips mother, Christine Baskets. With nothing more than a wig, some lipstick and color-coordinated, plus-size separates, Andersons Christine is a formidable force in her sons life, chiding his clowning dreams while agreeing to help him out financially. The price she extracts is high forcing Chip to attend Easter church services and then insisting on brunch at the casino afterward, as per family tradition but she and Martha lend the show a dimension it desperately needs. As we all know from the Hangover movies, a little Galifianakis goes a very long way. Its good to know theres something more to Baskets than a creep in greasepaint. The delicious misery here is evenly spread. Baskets (30 minutes) premieres Thursday at 10 p.m. on FX. Brandi Glanville, from left, Kym Whitley, Aisha Tyler, host Khloe Kardashian, Kendall Jenner and Snoop Dogg on the premiere episode of FYI's "Kocktails With Khloe." (Richard Knapp/FYI) (All times Eastern). The documentary Salam Neighbor (Pivot at 7 p.m.) follows two American filmmakers who move to a Syrian refugee camp in Jordan to live among 85,000 refugees fighting to rebuild their lives. On The Middle (ABC at 8), Mike enlists Brick and Axl to help him throw a belated surprise party to celebrate Frankies 50th birthday. Sue becomes the subject of ridicule when she posts a sign in the dorm laundry room in an effort to find a lost sock. On Arrow (CW at 8), Dahrks latest attack has devastating consequences and Oliver vows to find him and get revenge. On The Goldbergs (ABC at 8:30), Emmy and Adam are thrilled to hear that their favorite TV game show is hosting auditions at their school but end up fighting over their respective partner choices. Nova: Mystery Beneath the Ice (WETA at 9) travels to Antarctica to explore the cause of the decline in the population of the krill, a shrimplike creature that plays an essential part in the Antarctic ecosystem. On Blackish (ABC at 9:30), Dre and Bow suspect they may be spending carelessly and consult a no-nonsense accountant to set them straight. After the Johnson kids overhear their parents talking about money, Junior takes up day trading. On American Crime (ABC at 10), a local news article details the scandalous Captains party and multiple families are affected by the communitys reaction. SERIES PREMIERE: The sassiest Kardashian sister channels her most memorable dinner parties in her new talk show Kocktails With Khloe (FYI at 10). On Younger (TV Land at 10), Liza and Kelsey launch Empiricals new millennial-geared imprint and throw a party (naturally) to celebrate. Actor Gael Garcia Bernal stops by The Daily Show With Trevor Noah (Comedy Central at 11). The Late Show With Stephen Colbert (CBS at 11:35) hosts New York Jets wide receiver Brandon Marshall, Serial host Sarah Koenig and Rev Run, of Run-D.M.C. fame. Actors Casey Affleck and Vanessa Hudgens visit Jimmy Kimmel Live (ABC at 11:35). Savages will perform. Actors Dakota Johnson and Marlon Wayans will be on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (NBC at 11:35). Stephen Bishop is the musical guest. GOOD Shrimp and grits at Due South. (Dayna Smith/For the Washington Post) If Southern food is rooted in its sense of place, Due South is that road trip youve always thought to take. The Navy Yard restaurant, helmed by chef Rusty Holman of Bayou, is a meandering map of the regions best-known eats. Maybe youll start in Charleston with some shrimp and grits, and work your way through the low country for some citrusy pickled shrimp. In Georgia, youll slurp Brunswick stew, the tomato, corn, okra and bean soup that gets its smoky flavor from bits of brisket and pulled pork. Theres Alabama white barbecue sauce for the wings, and Mississippi comeback sauce (it tastes like Thousand Island dressing) for the french fries. The brisket, topped with a pepper and chili sauce, hails from Texas even though Texans prefer sauce on the side, if at all. Holman isnt a stickler for regional authenticity. And of course, there are the dishes that belong to all of the South (cornbread, collard greens, pimento cheese) or nowhere at all (the obligatory vegetarian eggplant, goat cheese, portobello stack). The food is from all over the South, and the man who makes it has a similarly far-flung background. Holman was raised in Durham, N.C., by parents who came from Arkansas. He trained in California and worked in Spain, Colorado and St. Croix. But no matter how far away he roams, I always end up coming back to the South, Holman said. He led the kitchens at Eatonville on 14th Street NW and then Bayou in the West End, and was prepared to move back to his native North Carolina until Bayou owner Bo Blair made him an offer he couldnt refuse: partnership in sister restaurant Due South. The latter opened in the Lumber Shed building in September and came with a $35,000 smoker, his shiny new toy. The squash puppies at Due South are spiked with jalapeno. (Dayna Smith/For the Washington Post) Some North Carolinians would probably say its not totally authentic, said Holman, whose sauce falls in between the vinegary eastern style and the tomato-based western style. But unless you have a die-hard affinity for one side of the state, chances are youll lap it up. That was the case with another one of Holmans not-the-way-your-mother-made-it dishes: squash puppies. The fritters are studded with jalapeno and served in daubs of roasted jalapeno aioli. We didnt leave a crumb behind. Okay, well, those didnt stand a chance, said our server, when he returned a few minutes later to collect the empty plate. The scenario repeated itself later, with peanut butter pie. Dishes like the squash fritters set the tone for the restaurants ambitions. Yes, there are wings and pimento cheese and burgers here, but Due South is better-groomed than its pulled-pork peer down the street, the more casual and sporty Willies Brew & Que. If youre already in the South the Southeast waterfront, that is and want barbecue, Due South is the better choice. But it cant touch the quality of barbecue put out by DCity Smokehouse, at least before the latters pitmaster left to start another project recently. Dont expect your smoked meats to come on a bun for dinner. Other than the burger, sandwiches are served only for lunch and brunch. But its worth ducking in midday for a juicy (and weighty!) fried chicken sandwich, spiced up with that jalapeno aioli and purple slaw. Peanut butter pie may not last long. (Dayna Smith/For the Washington Post) Shrimp and grits include a tasso ham gravy. (Dayna Smith/For the Washington Post) Other than the meats that come out of Holmans smoker, Due Souths modest comforts lie in its greens and beans. Dont ignore the Extras section of the menus, where smoky red peas with ham hocks and briny collards or an oozy mac and cheese that left strings of fontina, jack and cheddar stuck to my chin await. Skip the Cobb salad, drenched in dressing, though. A pimento-bacon burger was cooked beyond the requested medium-rare, and dry as were the nubby, herbed fries that accompanied it. The pickled okra outshone the bourbon chicken liver pate it came with, and we wished we could have ordered it solo. And dont count on the menus grand tour of the South taking you to Nashville. Due South used to serve hot chicken one of the trendiest dishes of the year but it took the spicy fried chicken off the menu just as it got hot. People seemed to either love it or they didnt think it was authentic to the places in Nashville, said Holman. Theres a chance it could come back for spring. The restaurant has its own beers: an IPA brewed by Goose Island and a utilitarian lager brewed by Blue Point. Cocktails lean toward the sweet side: The Savannah Sparkler, a prosecco-and-gin cocktail, goes heavy on the Creme Yvette, and the .38 Special, a whiskey cocktail with Averna and Cointreau, is syrupy. But dont write off the drinks: A sweet tea julep, served appropriately in its metal cup, is less saccharine than both of the aforementioned. An Earl Grey simple syrup adds depth to a citrusy Dixie 75. And at brunch, our whole table slurped down spicy bloody marys, with a crunch of pickled okra and green beans on top. The bar area at Due South, where the drinks are on the sweeter side. (Dayna Smith/For the Washington Post) Service is chipper. On one visit, our female server seemed keen on joining our girls night; on another, our server congratulated us for our superb ordering skills. You guys nailed it, he said, and I half-expected a high-five to follow. Yall come back, said one server after lunch, in a folksy twang undetected until that moment. It felt forced. The ambiance feels a little like that, too. The food may evoke a sense of place, but something about the Navy Yards homogenous, high-end buildings, as well as the futuristic Yards Park all visible from the floor-to-ceiling windows does the opposite. Due Souths decor checks off all the boxes for the prevailing restaurant aesthetic: rustic and industrial, with barnwood and Edison bulbs and nautical rope chandeliers strung from its exposed-HVAC ceiling. But for a cuisine that leans on evoking a sense of hominess, its still a restaurant shoehorned into a glass cube building in a brand-new neighborhood that feels like it could be anywhere. You will have a nice meal and a fine evening at Due South, but not necessarily a special one. The missing ingredient and Due South is not the only D.C. restaurant that strives for it is charm. 2 stars Location: 301 Water St. SE. 202-479-4616. duesouthdc.com. Open: 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday to Thursday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Prices: Appetizers $4 to $16, entrees $14 to $32. Sound check: 82 decibels / Extremely loud. Tom Sietsema is on vacation. Correction: A previous version of this review referred to Due South as being on the Southwest waterfront. It is in the Southeast. This version has been corrected. For stories, features such as Date Lab, Gene Weingarten and more, visit WP Magazine. Follow the Magazine on Twitter. Like us on Facebook. Email us at wpmagazine@washpost.com. Q: We have a green roof that is not meant to be green. Moss (I guess it is moss) is collecting on one side of the asphalt roof. The roof is otherwise in good shape. What I have learned so far is that the roof should not be power-washed. How should one remove the growth, and who does this type of work? I am not interested in getting on the roof myself. Falls Church A: The Asphalt Roofing Manufacturers Association distinguishes between moss, a plant with leaves that can grow into thick clumps, and mold and mildew, which are common names for types of algae that simply discolor the surface. Algae creates ugly black or brown streaks but doesnt damage a roof. Moss which is what shows in the pictures you sent is more worrisome because it can damage asphalt shingles. A thick growth of moss works like a sponge, keeping the roofing damp for long periods, and it can lift edges of shingles, making them vulnerable to blowing off in a windstorm. To clean either algae or moss, the association recommends putting on protective gear and protecting plants, spraying with a 50-50 mix of household bleach and water, allowing that to sit for at least 15 to 20 minutes and then rinsing with low-pressure water. The bleach will kill the algae or moss, but rinsing wont necessarily leave the roof sparkling clean. Algae will disappear and wash away with subsequent rains, the association advises. Moss will loosen over time and may be removed with a leaf blower. Ted Saunders, owner of American-ProTech, a roof-cleaning company with offices in Falls Church and Montgomery County (571-250-9650 for Falls Church; theroofcleaningcompany.com), echoes the warning not to expect the moss to disappear instantly. It will look much worse before it looks better, he says, adding that the moss will turn white or yellowish at first. Depending on the weather and sun exposure, he says, it may take eight weeks to six months for the dead moss to decompose and be rinsed or blown away by weather. A reader hopes to remove the tea stains from this teacup. (Reader photo) Dont be tempted to rush getting the moss off faster by having someone power-wash your roof, or scrub in the bleach solution, or brush or scrape off the moss even though you may find advice on the Web recommending these as long as you are gentle. All of these methods can take off the roofing granules, exposing the shingles to the full brunt of the suns UV rays. Then the roofing is likely to fail prematurely. Saunders agrees with the basic advice from the roofing manufacturers association, especially warnings not to power-wash, scrape or scrub, but he instructs his crews to deviate in one detail: His workers do not rinse off the bleach solution because that creates a lot of caustic runoff that damages plants. He says his company has never found any downside to just leaving the bleach solution on the roof. The chlorine in the bleach evaporates into the atmosphere, leaving salty residue behind, but thats no more salt than if the roof had been rinsed. American-ProTech usually brings an articulated lift, so workers rarely need to be on the roof. The companys minimum charge is $350. On a typical home, the company can usually clean the north side (often the only side that needs it) for a price in the mid-$400s, Saunders said. Jon Quinn, co-owner of Smart Wash in Alexandria (703-595-4000; washsmarter.com), said his company uses a similar approach, except that his crews work from ladders. A typical charge for a single-family home ranges from $450 to $750, he said. The companys website touts use of a custom cleaning solution, specially blended to meet demands of each project. But in most cases, the solution used on roof moss is bleach and water, he said. If a customer does not want that, the crew offers another option. I have a couple of Corelle coffee mugs with deeply ingrained tea stains. Ive tried soaking them in vinegar and in vinegar mixed with baking powder. Nothing worked. I even tried cleaning with Scotch-Brite without success. Any suggestions? Chantilly Most pieces of Corelle dishware are made of Vitrelle, which consists of two types of glass laminated as three layers. Originally introduced by Corning Glass Works in 1970, Corelle is now manufactured and sold by World Kitchen (worldkitchen.com). However, the cups and mugs that come with Corelle sets arent glass because the lamination process does not work well for these shapes. The cups and mugs are stoneware or porcelain, depending on the style. For both materials, the company recommends removing tea stains with a non-abrasive cleaner such as Bon Ami or by filling each cup one-fourth full with vinegar and then rubbing with a paper towel. The company warns not to use chlorine bleach, which it says will lighten the stains but not remove them. A call to the World Kitchen help line yielded a few other suggestions. Katie Stewart, a consumer care representative, suggested using lemon juice and baking soda, or baking soda alone, or Bar Keepers Friend, a powdered cleaner that contains oxalic acid. Youve already tried vinegar, which is chemically similar to lemon juice, but lemon juice is often more acidic than vinegar, so theres a chance it would work. Baking soda is alkaline, so using it alone may make it more effective than mixing it with something acidic. If the stains persist, consider them permanent. Stewart said this could happen for several reasons. Many people dont realize that the company warns against leaving stoneware or porcelain soaking in water for a long period. The moisture gets past the glaze and into the clay, and if heat is applied after the cups soak, the glaze can crack. That would allow the tea to stain the clay a permanent change. Or the clay could be stained because you accidentally scratched the glaze with an inappropriate type of Scotch-Brite pad. Scotch-Brite is a brand for numerous types of cleaning products. Some cleaning pads dont scratch and are fine to use on porcelain or stoneware. But others, such as the green mesh Heavy Duty Scrub Sponge, are as aggressive as steel wool and do scratch ceramic glaze. If the stains are permanent, you might want to buy replacement mugs. Stewart looked at the picture you sent and identified your pattern as Apricot Grove. It is not currently shown on the World Kitchen website, but you can call the World Kitchen Consumer Care Center (800-999-3436) to order it, as item No. 1079909, at $3.99 per mug. Have a problem in your home? Send questions to localliving@washpost.com . Put How To in the subject line, tell us where you live and try to include a photo. Calls for a boycott of the Academy Awards are growing over the Oscars second straight year of mostly white nominees, as Spike Lee and Jada Pinkett Smith each said Monday that they will not attend this years ceremony. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP, File) (Charles Sykes/Charles Sykes/Invision/AP) The 2016 Academy Awards nominations were announced almost a week ago, but the controversy over the nominees or non-nominees is only increasing. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences experienced a severe backlash when it was revealed that for the second year in a row all 20 acting nominees were white. The lack of diversity was surprising because of the critically acclaimed slate of movies led by people of color over the past year, including Straight Outta Compton, Beasts of No Nation, Creed, Chi-Raq and Tangerine. Will Smith was also overlooked for his Golden Globe-nominated role in Concussion. The lone nominations received by Creed and Straight Outta Compton went to white actors and writers, as Sylvester Stallone landed a nomination for Creed, for best supporting actor, while Jonathan Herman and Andrea Berloff received a best original screenplay nod for Straight Outta Compton. Days of outrage from the Hollywood community followed, and the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite went viral once again on social media. Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs (the first black woman to hold the position) issued a statement Monday night and said she was both heartbroken and frustrated about the lack of inclusion, pledging change for the future. This is a difficult but important conversation, and its time for big changes, she said. The Academy is taking dramatic steps to alter the makeup of our membership. In the coming days and weeks we will conduct a review of our membership recruitment in order to bring about much- needed diversity in our 2016 class and beyond. A 2014 Los Angeles Times study found that out of around 6,000 members, the film academy was 93 percent white and 76 percent male. A couple of years earlier, the paper found that only 2 percent of members were black, and fewer than 2 percent were Latino. The academy would not release updated statistics; last year, the organization extended invitations to 322 new members with a focus on diverse demographics. That was after last years Oscars, when actor David Oyelowo and director Ava DuVernay of the much-lauded Martin Luther King Jr. biopic Selma were notably snubbed. The academy has a problem, Oyelowo said Monday night at an industry event in Los Angeles that honored Boone Isaacs. Its a problem that needs to be solved. He said that after his performance in Selma failed to result in an Oscar nomination, Boone Isaacs invited him to her office to talk. We had a deep and meaningful [conversation], he said, according to the Hollywood Reporter. For 20 opportunities to celebrate actors of color, actresses of color, to be missed last year is one thing; for that to happen again this year is unforgivable. Oyelowo wasnt the only celebrity to speak out. Director Spike Lee and actress Jada Pinkett Smith posted messages on social media explaining why they would not be attending the Oscars. Lee, who directed Chi-Raq and was awarded an honorary Oscar in November, said nothing will change until Hollywoods executive suites look much different. The truth is we aint in those rooms and until minorities are, the Oscar nominees will remain lily white, he wrote on Instagram. In a Facebook video, Pinkett Smith echoed similar sentiments. She also tweeted about whether people of color should refrain from attending the ceremony. Begging for acknowledgment or even asking diminishes dignity and diminishes power. And we are a dignified people and we are powerful and lets not forget it, she said in the video. So lets let the academy do them, with all grace and love, and lets do us differently. Chris Rock, who will host the Oscars on Feb. 28, dryly referred to the ceremony as the White BET Awards on Twitter. Boone Isaacs acknowledged in her statement that although the academy has made an effort to diversify its membership, change is not coming as fast as we would like. This isnt unprecedented for the academy. In the 60s and 70s, it was about recruiting younger members to stay vital and relevant. In 2016, the mandate is inclusion in all of its facets: gender, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation, Boone Isaacs said. We recognize the very real concerns of our community, and I so appreciate all of you who have reached out to me in our effort to move forward together. Wanted: Creative types for city art project Alexandrias Office of the Arts invites artists and artist teams to apply for the Traffic Control Box Vinyl Wrap Public Art Project. Up to three individuals or teams will be selected to design wraps for 12 traffic-control boxes at intersections in the citys West End. Artists are encouraged to use a variety of media. Those selected will be required to submit final designs at full-scale in a digital format. The city will print and install the box wraps. The unveiling of the traffic-control box wraps will be during National Public Works Week, beginning May 15. Applications must be submitted by 11:59 p.m. Jan. 31. For information, go to callforentry.org. Citys absentee voting is open for primaries Alexandria voters may cast absentee ballots for the March 1 Democratic and Republican presidential primaries. The deadline is Feb. 27 at 5 p.m. for absentee voting in person at the Office of Voter Registrations and Elections (OVRE), 132 N. Royal St., Suite 100. The deadline is Feb. 23 at 5 p.m. to apply for an absentee ballot by mail. The OVRE must receive absentee ballots no later than 7 p.m. March 1. Ballots may be returned by mail or delivered by the voter. For information on absentee eligibility, absentee voting and identification requirements, go to alexandriava.gov or call 703-746-4050. The voter registration deadline is Feb. 8. Submit or update registration information online through the Citizen Portal at elections.virginia.gov. U.S. citizens who will be 18 by Nov. 8 are eligible to register and vote in this primary. For information, email anna.leider@alexandriava.gov or call 703-746-4050. Arlington voters can register for primaries Arlington County residents have until Feb. 8 to register to vote in the March 1 presidential primaries. Voters can register online, by mail and in person weekdays at the Arlington Office of Elections, 2100 Clarendon Blvd. U.S. citizens who will be 18 on or before Nov. 8 can register. A photo ID is required at the polls. For information, go to vote.arlingtonva.us. Are world markets hearing the warning cry from CEOs gathered atop the snow-capped mountains in Davos, Switzerland? With the slide in markets again today, they just may be. A new survey released at the 2016 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, shows that CEO confidence in the global economy has taken a dive, down by 10 points from the previous year. Confidence in revenue growth for their own companies over the next 12 months has also fallen. Get the Latest Market Data and News with the Yahoo Finance App Only about a third of the 1,400 CEOs surveyed in PwCs 19th Annual Global CEO Survey say they are very confident in their own company's growth in the coming year, with U.S. CEOs growing especially concerned. Last year the U.S. was seen as a beacon in terms of CEO confidence, which is measured by their ability to raise revenues in the next 12 months. Thats down actually about 12%. So 46% of them last year felt good about the ability to raise revenues. That dropped to about 33% this year, says PwC U.S. Chairman Bob Moritz. Its a combination of factors, first the combination of the economic environment as you look broadly. The U.S. is too connected to not be negatively impacted by that, says Moritz. Moritz also notes that this pessimistic outlook was expressed before new concerns over Chinas economy, the drop in world oil markets, and recent steep declines in world stock markets. Chinas economic concerns, the drop in crude oil prices, and geopolitical uncertainty are all taking a toll on confidence in global economic growth, yet over-regulation continues to be cited as the biggest threat to revenue growth by CEOs. U.S. CEOs have, for the last three or four years, had regulation as the number one business risk issue. It's costing them a lot of money, getting in the way of what they want to do and how they want to invest, says Moritz. THE DISTRICT Armed person holds up bakery A person with a gun held up Bread Furst during lunchtime Tuesday, forcing the upscale bakery on Connecticut Avenue to close for the day as D.C. police investigated. One person was seriously injured and taken to a hospital, according to Tim Wilson, spokesman for the D.C. fire department. Authorities did not provide additional details about the incident, which happened in the 4400 block of Connecticut Avenue NW. D.C. police classified the incident as assault with intent to rob with a gun. Authorities had no description of the armed person, and the attempted robbery was not listed on the departments Twitter feed. Bread Fursts owner, Mark Furstenberg, a top chef in Washington, could not immediately be reached to comment. Peter Hermann Grosso, Cheh offer transparency bill D.C. Council members David Grosso (I-At Large) and Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) introduced a bill Tuesday that would attempt to streamline public access to government actions, meetings and information that might otherwise be hard to find. Under the Strengthening Transparency and Open Access to Government Act of 2016, all information yielded through individual Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests would be published to the District of Columbia online FOIA public access library. It would also expand the public reporting requirements for District agencies. Abigail Hauslohner MARYLAND Woman dies in possible hit-and-run Police in Prince Georges County were looking Tuesday for a garbage truck that they think was involved in a fatal hit-and-run crash on the Capital Beltway in the Forestville area. Authorities said they were looking for a truck that is blue or green, has red lettering on it and has fresh damage to the passenger side. Ghada Seifel-Din Ahmed, 37, of Upper Marlboro died in the crash, which happened about 7:15 a.m. Police said she had just leftthe Beltway and was headed onto Pennsylvania Avenue when her vehicle and the trash truck collided, causing her to hit a pole. Its possible that the garbage trucks driver didnt know that a crash had occurred because the truck was so much larger than Ahmeds vehicle, police said. Investigators asked witnesses to call 301-731-4422. Dana Hedgpeth THE REGION Man is fatally struck by train A person was fatally struck by a train in Northeast Washington, D.C. police said Tuesday evening. Police spokesman Hugh Carew did not know the circumstances of the incident, but he said that police were responding to an adult man killed by a train in the 2800 block of New York Avenue NE, where tracks heading in and out of the District run past the National Arboretum. About three hours after trains stopped on the tracks, leaving some passengers stuck on board and others unable to depart, Amtrak began putting its trains back into service between the District and Baltimore. About the same time, just after 9 p.m., MARC said it was also resuming service. It had halted all trains on the Penn Line, which goes from Washington to Baltimore and other destinations. Julie Zauzmer, Peter Hermann and Martin Weil VIRGINIA 8 goats reported stolen in Stafford Baaaa-d news: Eight goats were recently stolen from two residences in Virginia. Stafford County animal control officers first got a call Saturday morning about three missing goats. A resident of the northern portion of the county said the goats were taken from the shelter where they lived behind the house. A few hours later, another resident called to say that five more goats had been stolen, according to the county sheriffs office. Those goats lived in a barn behind a home about two miles away from the first scene. Julie Zauzmer THE REGION Man exposes himself on Green Line train Metro Transit Police are searching for a man who exposed himself to a woman on the Green Line early Saturday. Metro spokesman Dan Stessel said police have reason to believe that the same man may have exposed himself more than once while riding the Green Line. He tends to enter and exit at the Greenbelt Metro station, Stessel said. The woman who saw the mans inappropriate behavior, about 1:45 a.m. Saturday, reported it to police. Julie Zauzmer The District agency responsible for helping troubled youths lacks appropriate controls and policies to keep employees from inappropriately accessing case files with sensitive information, the D.C. auditor has found. The finding, part of a draft audit of the citys Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, comes one week after a former agency employee pleaded guilty to giving personal information about hundreds of young offenders to an identity-theft ring. The thieves used the data to steal at least $2 million in fraudulent federal tax refunds. The audit said the problems go beyond the employee charged in the case, suggesting that the agency computer system has broader vulnerabilities. Marc A. Bell, 49, of Bowie, Md.,who worked at the agency from 2005 to 2013, was part of a large and sophisticated scheme led by the owner of a Southwest Washington barbershop, prosecutors said. But the D.C. auditor found that nearly 350 employees at the agency had access to computer case files, opening up the possibility of fraud, according to the draft report. Auditors found no written policies for limiting access to the system according to an employees job classification. Instead, case managers and department heads provided technical staff with lists of individuals they wanted to have access, auditors found. There also were no policies for updating or ending access rights when employees left the agency or changed jobs. Michael Czin, a spokesman for Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), said he had not reviewed the draft report, which is due out next month, and could not comment on its findings, but he called protecting sensitive information a huge issue. Obviously, maintaining the integrity of all our data, especially for at-risk youth, is an important priority for us, he said. D.C. Auditor Kathy Patterson said Tuesday that agency officials need to have access to personal information to help troubled youths, but they dont yet have procedures in place to ensure people dont misuse it. They just need to have those kinds of protections in place, she said. Brenda Padavil, a spokeswoman for Youth Rehabilitation Services, declined to comment on the finding but said, Obviously, safeguarding our clients information is incredibly important to us, and its something we work on every day. Auditors examined employee access to files for a program that provides community-based services for youths charged with crimes. They flagged the system as vulnerable to another particular fraud scheme unrelated to the identity-theft charges against Bell. The hundreds of employees who have access to the computer system had the ability both to enroll youths in outside programs and to approve payments to those programs. Without restrictions, the audit found, employees could fraudulently create a referral to an outside vendor and simultaneously approve a fraudulent expense report that they submitted themselves. The draft report included no evidence that this has occurred. But it recommended new policies to restrict access to the data and the enrollment system based on assigned responsibilities. Federal prosecutors said Bell, a program manager, had access to the agencys database system, which included names and Social Security numbers. He used that access to get information about at least 645 individuals who had been charged with a delinquent act or were in the agencys custody. He then passed those details to others in the identity-theft ring. The information was used to file at least 1,160 fraudulent federal income tax returns ultimately worth nearly $2.5 million. Bell got a cut of the money in exchange for the information, prosecutors said. He pleaded guilty to various fraud charges. The identity-theft charges carry a statutory minimum of 15 years in prison, but prosecutors recommend 57 to 71 months as part of plea deal. He is scheduled to be sentenced April 20. He has also agreed to pay the IRS nearly $2 million in restitution. The Washington Post profiled Bell in 2001 when he was director of a District-funded program by the nonprofit Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice to keep youths out of jail. Bell grew up in Southeast Washington, overcame a drug charge as a juvenile and received degrees from Morgan State University and the University of Maryland before returning to help at-risk youths, The Post reported at the time. Candidates sought for community center board The McLean Community Center seeks candidates to run for seats on its 2016-2017 governing board, which provides oversight and guidance for programs and facilities. Candidates must reside in the centers tax district (Small District 1A-Dranesville) and obtain the signatures of at least 10 McLean tax district residents. Candidate forms will be available Monday at the centers reception desk. The deadline for filing petitions is 5 p.m. March 25. Voting will be held during the annual McLean Day festival May 21. Three adult seats and two youth seats are open. Adult candidates who receive the three highest vote counts will serve three-year terms. Youth members will serve one-year terms. Youth candidates must be 15 to 17 as of May 21. One youth member will be elected from the McLean High School boundary area, and one will be elected from the Langley High School boundary area. Youth candidates are not required to attend either school but must reside in the boundary areas served by the schools. For information, call 703-790-0123, TTY: 711 or email elections@mcleancenter.org. Herndon accepting arts grant proposals The town of Herndon is accepting grant proposals through the Virginia Commission for the Arts Local Government Challenge Grant Program. Applicants must be nonprofit arts organizations that are incorporated in Herndon. Grant funding of up to $5,000 is available for projects implemented in fiscal 2017. Proposals must be submitted by 5 p.m. Feb. 9 to the performing arts supervisor at the town of Herndon Department of Parks and Recreation. They can be delivered to the Herndon Community Center, 814 Ferndale Ave., Herndon, Va. 20170, or mailed to: Town of Herndon, P.O. Box 427, Herndon, Va. 20172-0427, Attn: Performing Arts Supervisor. For information and proposal guidelines, visit arts.virginia.gov. New representative to Fairfax park board Fairfax County Supervisor Kathy Smith (D-Sully) recently appointed Marguerite Godbold to the Fairfax County Park Authority Board as the Sully District representative. Godbold, who replaces Harold L. Strickland, will serve a four-year term effective immediately. For information about the park authority board, call 703-324-8662 or visit fairfaxcounty.gov/parks/board. Compiled by Sarah Lane THE DISTRICT Ex-city staffer pleads guilty in drug case A former staffer in the religious affairs division of the office of D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) has pleaded guilty to a federal charge of possessing cocaine with intent to distribute, according to court files in U.S. District Court for the District. Lorenzo R. Sanders, 51, pleaded guilty Friday and faces a statutory maximum of 20 years in prison. Prosecutors and Sanderss defense agreed in a written plea deal that a five-year prison sentence was appropriate. U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton set sentencing for April 8, and Sanders remains in custody. In court filings, Sanders acknowledged that police field tests, subject to confirmation, found 10 grams of crack cocaine, 123 grams of powder cocaine and 0.6 grams of heroin in an Oct. 6 raid at his Southeast Washington apartment. Spencer S. Hsu MARYLAND Police: Fatal shooting does not look random A man who was fatally shot Tuesday night in the Camp Springs area of Prince Georges County has been identified as Franklin Latour Young Jr., 29, of Camp Springs. Police said the shooting occurred about 9:30 p.m. in the 4300 block of West Village Avenue. Police who responded to a report of a shooting found a man with a gunshot wound in his apartment. Authorities said it does not appear that the shooting was random. Police said they are working to identify an assailant and determine a motive. VIRGINIA One day, its goats and then its sheep Police said two sheep were stolen from a farm in the Broad Run area of Prince William County. The theft occurred Saturday evening or Sunday morning on a farm on Gaines Road, authorities said. Officer Jonathan Perok, a spokesman for Prince William police, said such a case is unusual. It is not the only recent case of animals being stolen in the area. In Stafford County, officials are investigating the theft of eight goats from two locations between Friday afternoon and Saturday evening. There is nothing to say definitively they are connected, Perok said. Maryland House Speaker Michael Busch, right, and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller. Both are both Democrats. (Brian Witte/AP) Marylands House of Delegates voted Wednesday to override three of Gov. Larry Hogans 2015 vetoes, a reminder to the Republican chief executive that despite his sky-high approval ratings Democrats still wield some power in the state capital. The House voted to restore voting rights to felons who are on parole and probation and to resurrect a bill that requires online hotel booking companies to collect sales tax for the cost of hotel rooms they reserve in Howard County and give the full amount to the state, rather than keeping part of it as a service fee. Delegates also voted to override Hogans removal of $2 million in capital funds from a performing-arts hall in Annapolis. The votes on the hotel-tax bill and for Maryland Hall passed, 90 to 51, with little debate. In each case, every Democrat in the chamber except one voted to override, and every Republican voted against doing so. But lawmakers on both sides of the aisle made impassioned pleas for and against overriding Hogans veto of the voting-rights bill. This is one of the last vestiges of Jim Crow in our law, Del. Eric G. Luedtke (D-Montgomery) said, referring to the disproportionate percentage of felons in the state who are African American. We have a sacred responsibility to ensure the right to vote. Republican delegates who supported Hogans veto said losing the right to vote is a consequence of committing a crime; restoring it before felons complete their probation and parole, they said, goes too far. Under current law, felons can vote after they finish parole and probation. With several felons who had pushed for the law watching from the gallery, the House voted 85 to 56 to override the veto and restore the bill. In addition to the Republican caucus, the votes against the override came from Democratic Dels. Eric M. Bromwell (Baltimore County), Ned Carey (Anne Arundel), Mark S. Chang (Anne Arundel), Mary Ann Lisanti (Harford), Theodore J. Sophocleus (Anne Arundel) and C.T. Wilson (Charles). [Hogans 2015 vetoes could all be overriden, Maryland Democrats say] Hogan vetoed six bills in the spring that had been passed by the Democratic-controlled state legislature. Democrats are trying to override the vetoes, which requires a three-fifths majority in each legislative chamber. On Thursday, the Senate will attempt to override the governors vetoes of three bills that originated in that chamber. One would decriminalize drug paraphernalia. One would prevent police from seizing a certain amount of property and money from people without charging them with a crime. One would require online booking companies to collect sales tax on hotel rooms booked throughout the state. Alexandra Hughes, chief of staff to House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel), said the House plans to vote later Thursday on whatever overrides are passed by the Senate. The Senate also must take action on the three bills that were considered by the House on Wednesday. Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) has said reversing Hogans veto of the voting rights bill would be the biggest challenge. The bill passed the Senate with 29 votes, the same number needed for an override. Since then, Sen. Karen Montgomery (D-Montgomery) has retired. Miller said the override vote could hinge on whoever fills her seat. We continue to count votes, Miller said. I count every day. The Montgomery County Democratic Central Committee is scheduled to meet Thursday to nominate someone to fill Montgomerys seat. Hogan will have 15 days to act on the nomination. The Senate president said he and many others believe voting helps felons as they re-enter society. If they are citizens, they are entitled to vote, Miller said. Restaurant Week starts Friday in county, D.C. More than 40 eateries in Montgomery County and Northwest Washington will participate in this years Restaurant Week, which begins Friday and runs through Jan. 31, with a selection of prix fixe lunch and dinner menus. Organized by Bethesda Magazine, the event showcases cuisine from top local chefs by offering special deals, such as two-course lunch menus for $18 and three-course dinner menus for $36. For information and a list of participating restaurants, visit bethesdamagazine.com. Free tax-preparation program available The RSVP/AARP Tax-Aide Program, which provides free tax-preparation assistance to low- and moderate-income taxpayers who live or work in Montgomery County, will open its scheduling office Monday. Online registration will open Tuesday. Special attention is given to those 60 or older. The program has more than 100 volunteers who are trained to prepare simple federal and Maryland state tax forms. Taxes are prepared at more than 20 locations in the county, and an appointment is required. The program runs through April 18. For information or to schedule an appointment, go to montgomeryserves.org or call 240-777-2577. Candidate filing deadline is Feb. 3 for primaries The deadline to file as a candidate for the Board of Elections in the primaries is 9 p.m. Feb. 3. Those interested in running for the board (districts 2 and 4 and At Large) may file a certificate of candidacy with the Montgomery County Board of Elections at 18753 N. Frederick Ave., Suite 210, Gaithersburg. Candidates for other offices should contact the Maryland State Board of Elections for deadlines and filing locations. The boards office is open weekdays 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. It will accept filings on Feb. 3 from 8:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. For an appointment, call Christine Rzeszut at 240-777-8585. For information, call 240-777-VOTE (9683) or visit 777vote.org or elections.state.md.us. Compiled by Lisa M. Bolton Greater Cheverly community meeting The Prince Georges County Planning Department of the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission will host a public hearing for residents and business owners to learn about the Greater Cheverly Sector Plan. The meeting is scheduled for 6:30 to 9 p.m. Wednesday at Prince Georges Ballroom, 2411 Pinebrook Ave., Landover. Attendees can share opinions and recommendations on growth and development in the plan area, which includes Cheverly and the neighboring communities of Englewood, Landover Knolls, Newton Village, Oaklyn and Radiant Valley. Discussions will focus on development of and around commercial properties, industrial areas, the Cheverly Metro station and the Prince Georges Hospital Center property. For information, visit pgplanning.org/greatercheverlysectorplan or call 301-952-4225. Bowie fire department receives $1.9 million The Bowie Volunteer Fire Department received a Staffing for Adequate Fire & Emergency Response grant in the amount of $1.877 million from the U.S. Department of Homeland Securitys Federal Emergency Management Agency. Department officials said the money will go toward training and recruiting staff members. The SAFER grant is available to volunteer, combination and career fire departments in need of funds to attain and maintain 24-hour staffing of trained frontline firefighters. Patient First clinic opens in Clinton Residents in need of preventive and urgent care services in the Clinton area can now visit Patient First, a walk-in medical care center. Patient First provides health services to those suffering with the flu, ear and sinus infections, skin rashes, minor fractures, and other ailments. Patients can receive digital X-rays, lab work, prescriptions and vaccinations. Primary-care physicians are available, and although it is a walk-in clinic, patients can request preferred physicians through an online scheduling service or by phone at 240-546-3428. The clinic, 9000 Woodyard Rd., is open weekdays from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Patient First was founded in 1981 in Richmond and operates centers in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. For information, visit patientfirst.com. Compiled by Jillian S. Jarrett A D.C. drug kingpin who served nine years in federal prison in a drug case and also ran up $16 million in unpaid taxes as of 1986 pleaded guilty to new tax-evasion charges Tuesday in federal court in Washington. Cornell M. Jones, 58, a one-time high-school dropout who along with the likes of Rayful Edmond III rose to become a prominent player in the citys rampant 1980s cocaine trade, admitted Tuesday to concealing $1.3 million due U.S. taxpayers by concealing income from businesses he ran after his release from prison. In court documents, Jones acknowledged failing to disclose $3.5 million in income in 2010 alone, including proceeds from the sale of his D.C. Tunnel nightclub and other real estate transactions on Queens Chapel Road NE, where he also served as executive director of Miracle Hands, a D.C. government-funded nonprofit counseling center for ex-felons. Did you deal extensively in cash for purposes of concealing income? U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon asked the defendant. Yes, Your Honor, said Jones, who declined to comment after the hearing, as did his attorney, Bernard S. Grimm. Jones faces a statutory maximum of five years in prison. Leon set sentencing for April 14. Jones was released from prison in 1995 after being convicted of running a cocaine, marijuana and PCP ring out of Hanover Place NW. Police found $639,500 in bank safe-deposit boxes and $870,000 in cash at his home, plus jewelry, furs, 28 airline tickets to Las Vegas, five guns, cocaine and a currency-counting machine. In 2008, Jones was profiled as having rebuilt his life in an episode of BETs American Gangster TV series. [Miracle Hands: The squandering of D.C. AIDS dollars] But cracks emerged in his story. Miracle Hands headquarters was next door to D.C. Tunnel, on property controlled by a Jones family property-holding company formed in 1998. Jones also became executive director of the nonprofit, which supplied housing, meals and therapy to ex-offenders, the homeless and troubled children. Miracle Hands ultimately received millions of dollars from the D.C. HIV/AIDS Administration but was found to have mishandled more than $330,000 in grants. [Jones swindled D.C. for $330,000, jury finds] Court records show that an estimated unpaid tax of $1.8 million on nearly $5 million in unreported taxable income including proceeds from real estate deals from 2008 through 2013 and $132,000 paid to Jones by Miracle Hands in 2010 became the basis of the charges to which Jones pleaded guilty Tuesday. [Ahead of birthday fundraiser, questions for Bowser supporters ] Protesters, including Lee Patterson, right, gather outside the courthouse on what was to be the first day of the trial of Baltimore Officer Caesar R. Goodson Jr., charged in the death of Freddie Gray. (Jose Luis Magana/AP) A judge ruled Wednesday that a city police officer awaiting retrial in Freddie Grays death does not have to testify against three of his co-defendants, a blow to prosecutors who had hoped a decision in their favor would allow them to postpone the case indefinitely. The judges decision means the trials for the three officers who arrested Gray will move forward as a Maryland appeals court decides whether William G. Porter can be forced to testify against two other colleagues, police van driver Caesar R. Goodson Jr. and Sgt. Alicia D. White. As far as this court is concerned, were continuing, Judge Barry G. Williams said. Prosecutors have said that Porter, whose trial ended with a deadlocked jury in December, is a key witness against White and Goodson. But last week, the state said they want to use Porter as a witness against three officers involved in Grays arrest: Edward M. Nero, Garrett E. Miller and Brian W. Rice. Porters attorneys have said forcing the officer to testify against Goodson and White would jeopardize his right to a fair trial, despite prosecutors promises that they would not use his testimony against him. The Maryland Court of Special Appeals is expected to hear the matter March 4. Porter, who faces manslaughter and other charges, was present during five of the six stops a police van carrying Gray made in the city after the 25-year-old was arrested in April. Gray was gravely injured in the van and died a week later, sparking protests and later riots. Prosecutors said forcing Porter to testify against Nero, Miller and Rice would allow them to show that Gray was not properly buckled into the van and subsequently suffered a severe spine injury. We think it is in the public interest to have his testimony, Chief Deputy States Attorney Michael Schatzow said. Attorneys for the officers argued that the states disingenuous request was an attempt to have all six trials postponed after legal wrangling over Porters forced testimony has upended prosecutors preferred trial schedule. If Porter were called as a witness against all the officers, every trial would be delayed as the appellate court weighs whether he should take the witness stand. They want to take him hostage for five cases and then torture him at his own trial, Porters attorney Joseph Murtha said. Williams ruled in favor of the defense, saying Porter is not a necessary witness in the trials of Nero, Miller and Rice. The judge also worried that the states request to call Porter in the remaining trials was a ruse and subterfuge to get around the courts ruling that these cases need to continue. Attorneys for White, Nero, Miller and Rice also objected Wednesday to any ruling that would delay their clients cases, saying it would violate their right to a speedy trial. Here's what you need to know after a jury failed to reach a verdict in the trial of William G. Porter, one of six police officers charged in the Freddie Gray case. (Ashleigh Joplin/The Washington Post) Staci Pipkin, a Baltimore defense attorney and former city prosecutor, said postponing the entire case until Porters appeal is settled would have left the officers in limbo indefinitely, as subsequent lengthy appeals are likely. As a prosecutor, you always want to go in with your strongest case and the one most likely to get a conviction, Pipkin said. If your next two cases are your two weakest ones . . . [you] lose momentum. Goodson faces the most serious charge of second-degree depraved-heart murder. White and Rice face manslaughter and other charges, while Nero and Miller face assault and other charges. All of the officers have pleaded not guilty. The next trial, for Nero, is scheduled to start Feb. 22. Tales from the Bummer Zone: China's Stunted Growth Story Drags On (Continued from Prior Part) Chinas industrial production fell in December According to Chinas NBS (National Bureau of Statistics), Chinas industrial production grew at a rate of 5.9% on a YoY (year-over-year) basis in December, which was down from 6.2% in November. The data indicates that China may take some time to come out of its current slump as Chinese factories are operating at overcapacity. In 2015, the total value added of Chinas industrial enterprises above designated size was up by 6.1% YoY, which was lower than the 8.3% growth we saw in 2014. Since 2011, enterprises above designated size has referred to all industrial enterprises with revenues of over 20 million yuan from their principal business. Chinas urban fixed-asset investments dropped in December According to Chinas NBS, Chinas urban fixed-asset investment grew by 10.0% to about 55.2 trillion yuan, or about $8.4 trillion, in 2015, which was down from 15.7% in 2014. In December, Chinas investment in urban fixed assets increased by 0.68% on a month-over-month basisdown from 0.73% in November. Fixed-asset investments are considered to be key drivers of economic growth, and the data indicates that this continued decline in the fixed investments is due to a general slowdown in demand. As a result, YoY investments in factories, machinery, property, and other fixed assets have declined considerably in China. The consequences of Chinas slump in industrial output With the current manufacturing slump in Chinas industrial production, Chinas GDP (gross domestic product) grew by 6.9% in 2015, which was lower than its target aim of 7%. The sharp fall in commodity pricesparticularly in oil and metalscoupled with weakness in global demand may result in a further slowdown in Chinas industrial activity. China is a major revenue driver for multinational companies such as Ford Motor Company (F), General Motors Company (GM), and Apple (AAPL). The revenues of these companies have been directly impacted by the slowdown in industrial production in China. Story continues Gauging the impact of this slump on mutual funds China-focused mutual funds like the Clough China Fund Class A (CHNAX), the John Hancock Greater China Opportunities Fund Class A (JCOAX), and the Guinness Atkinson China and Hong Kong Fund (ICHKX) have more than 10.0% exposure apiece to Chinas industrials sector. So this slowdown in Chinas industrial production should directly impact the performance these funds. Meanwhile, the Eaton Vance Greater China Growth Fund Class A (EVCGX) has only about 7% exposure to industrials sector, and so this slowdown in factory output should have less of an impact on EVCGXs overall performance than it will likely have on other funds. Now lets look at Chinas latest retail sales data. Continue to Next Part Browse this series on Market Realist: Port Tobacco River Conservancy needs help with restoration projects. Contact Jerry Forbes at 301-392-9362 or jforptrc@comcast.net. Three Oaks Center, a shelter for homeless men, needs monitors Saturdays and Sundays from 8 a.m. to noon and from noon to 4 p.m. Volunteers are asked to commit to at least one shift a month at the Lexington Park shelter. Training is provided. Ruben Berry, 301-863-9535. Court-Appointed Special Advocate volunteers are needed in St. Marys, Calvert and Charles counties to help provide a voice for abused and neglected juveniles in court proceedings. CASA volunteers work 10 to 15 hours per month and are screened and trained. Call Deanee Moran, 301-609-9887, Ext. 130, or email casa@centerforchildren.org. MedStar St. Marys Hospital needs high school students and adult volunteers for programs at the hospital. Call 301-475-6453 or go to smhwecare.com. Calvert Memorial Hospital needs help in many areas, including the patient information desk, gift shop, emergency department, urgent-care centers and patient shuttle. Call Susan Stevens at 410-414-4523. University of Maryland Charles Regional Medical Center needs help throughout the week, including evenings, in many areas of the hospital and at off-site facilities in Waldorf and La Plata. Training is provided. Call 301-609-4129. Leonardtown Volunteer Rescue Squad needs volunteers for patient care, ambulance drivers and auxiliary members. No experience needed; training is provided. Call 301-475-8509 or go to lvrs.org. Bay Community Support Services needs volunteers. For information, call Rachel McDermott at 301-863-8870. American Cancer Society offers volunteer training in Calvert, Charles and St. Marys counties. Call 301-261-6000 or 888-603-4304. Calvert Healthcare Solutions needs help with fundraising activities and events. Contact Raymon Noble at 410-414-5628 or rnoble@chesapeake.net. Pets on Wheels, a nonprofit therapy animal organization that visits nursing homes, hospitals and assisted-living facilities, is seeking volunteers in Southern Maryland. Go to petsonwheels.org to review volunteer requirements or to submit an application. Call 301-974-1635 or email sharon@petsonwheels.org. St. Marys County Emergency Services is seeking volunteer first responders. For information, call 301-475-4200, Ext. 2114, or email emergencyservices@stmarysmd.com. Alternatives for Youth and Families needs foster parents in Southern Maryland. Call Sarah at 301-884-0312, Ext. 122. Best Buddies Southern Maryland seeks volunteers 18 and older to create one-on-one friendships with people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Call 877-632-8339. Boys & Girls Club of Southern Maryland seeks parent volunteers to support programs and activities, committee members, committee leaders and board members. Email info@bgcsm.net Calvert Meals on Wheels needs volunteer drivers to help deliver meals to the homebound. Call 410-535-4606 or 301-855-1170. Ruths Miracle Group Home Foundation needs board members. Volunteer help with fundraising, financial management, accounting and public relations. The board meets first Tuesdays in Prince Frederick. Call 410-326-9170, email ruthsmiralegh@gmail.com or go to ruthmiraclehome.com. Project Echo, a shelter for homeless people in Prince Frederick, needs volunteers to staff a shift or help serve a meal. Volunteers must commit to four hours a month. Call Lori Hony at 410-257-0003 between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. or leave a message noting the best time to be contacted. Center for Abused Persons needs on-call volunteers 21 and older to assist victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. Training is provided. Call Alisa at 301-645-9387 or 301-645-8994. Top Banana Home Delivered Groceries, a nonprofit organization that delivers groceries to those unable to get to a store, needs volunteer drivers Wednesdays to deliver to seniors and people with disabilities in Waldorf, La Plata, Indian Head and Hughesville. Call 301-372-3663 or email info@topbananagroceries.org. Spring Dell Center needs volunteers to assist developmentally disabled people during lunch. Call Debbie at 301-870-3758 or 301-932-1601. Charles County Meals on Wheels seeks volunteers to help deliver meals to homebound seniors. Call 301-392-6325. TO SUBMIT AN ITEM Email: smliving@washpost.com Workers clear snow in front of the White House in Washington during a major winter storm in 2003. (Charles Dharapak/AP) The mayhem of winter weather seems all but certain to descend on the East Coast late this week with enough snow to disrupt virtually every means of transportation except the dog sled. Forecasts have raised worries that the storm could rival three of the biggest snowfalls to hit the Washington region in the past 20 years. A rare alignment of the computer models used to forecast weather systems says an abundance of snow will strike the Eastern states beginning Friday. That caused the National Weather Service to raise its winter-storm threat to its highest level, warning that there may be massive travel delays and encouraging people to plan ahead. The Posts Capital Weather Gang, using words such as paralyzing and historic, says there is the potential for double-digit snowfall totals for the region Friday and Saturday. We still have a couple of days until this storm hits, but theres unusually high agreement among forecast models that its going to be a big one, said Angela Fritz, a meteorologist with the Capital Weather Gang. Trust me when I say that it never happens like this. Were usually never this lucky to have three days to prepare. The D.C. area could see double-digit snowfall totals Friday and Saturday. Capital Weather Gang's Angela Fritz has your forecast. (The Washington Post) People with flexible schedules began rushing to fly or drive to their destinations before the arrival of a storm that could envelop the most populous region in the country in feet of snow. Airlines cautioned passengers to check for flight delays or cancellations once the snow begins falling. The operative terms in the nomenclature of bad winter weather this week will be braced (as in, got ready), dumped (now a virtual synonym for heavy snowfall) and blast (a term inevitably prefaced with arctic). Throw in the possibility of high winds, and blizzard conditions could result. Just how much snow would fall in a storm anticipated to last into late Saturday was an open question Tuesday. [Textbook East Coast snowstorm could resemble all-time greats] The National Weather Service forecast said the coming weather could compare with three of the Washington regions biggest storms in the past two decades the blizzard in January 1996, the Presidents Day storm of February 2003 and the February 2010 dump that came to be known as Snowmageddon. The snow could fall from Richmond to Boston, but the path of the storm will dictate how much snowfall parts of each region receive. For example, on Long Island,forecasters said that the farther north the storm tracks, the more likely that New York Citys bedroom communities would get less snow and more rain. Farther north, in Boston, the storms path was being watched to see whether it would slip past New England or hit the region head-on with snow. Plan ahead In the Washington region, the Posts Capital Weather Gang said that snow seemed virtually certain and that there was a 50 percent chance that a foot would fall. Theres also a 15 percent chance of at least 20 inches, they said. We still dont know exactly how much snow will fall, but its looking like double-digit totals for much of the region, Fritz said. The northwest areas will get more snow simply because they tend to be colder at a higher elevation, and areas to the southeast may see sleet and rain mixing in at times. Something thats really important to emphasize with this storm is that it looks like its going to last a while, starting as early as Friday morning and continuing through Saturday night, Fritz said. [Looking back at 2010: The incredible output of Snowmageddon] The regions transportation departments, which were closely watching the forecasts, urged motorists to be prepared. We will ask for drivers to plan ahead, prepare their homes and do errands now so that they do not have to be out, if at all possible, during the storm, said Jennifer McCord, spokeswoman for the Virginia Department of Transportation. With winter making a late arrival in the East this season, state transportation authorities responsible for keeping roads open are fully stocked with the array of salt and briny solution they use to pretreat highways and melt snow and ice. We are always ready for whatever comes our way, said Charlie Gischlar, spokesman for the Maryland State Highway Administration. Maryland has 380,000 tons of rock salt, 837,000 gallons of salt brine, 40,000 tons of abrasives (sand and crushed stone) and 100,000 gallons of magnesium chloride available for the winter season. The materials are stashed at locations across the state. In addition, there are up to 2,700 pieces of equipment available for the nearly 18,000 lane miles maintained by the state. I know the models are beginning to suggest a pretty big storm. We will have a better idea of deployment times and if roads will be pretreated in advance of the storm, Gischlar said. If the pavement temperature is too cold, the material will freeze. If the storm is forecasted as beginning as a rainstorm, then we will not pretreat, as the material will simply wash off the street. Crews will begin to load up the trucks this week, as well as making contact with our contractor forces, he said. That way, we are good to go well prior to the onset of a storm. In Northern Virginia, state plows are responsible for clearing all roadways, not just those designated as state roadways. For a storm of this size, we will deploy all of our resources available in Northern Virginia, about 3,600 pieces of equipment, McCord said. Trucks will stage throughout Northern Virginia along interstates, major roads and in subdivisions to be ready to begin clearing as soon as possible and to make repeated rounds throughout the storm given the totals currently forecasted. McCord said crews would report about 18 hours before the snow is expected to arrive. In the District, officials said they were tracking the storm. The D.C. Snow Team is monitoring the weather reports very closely and will make public its deployment plan once there is more certainty about start time, duration and projected accumulation, said Linda Grant, spokeswoman for the District Department of Public Works. Other than after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the regions three major airports rarely close. Dulles International Airport was closed by the February 2010 snowfall. Were basically always open, said Jonathan Dean, spokesman at Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport. The BWI Marshall Airport snow team is prepared and will be in place this week, should the winter storm develop for our region, though the airlines may cancel some or even the majority of flights, depending on local weather conditions. Del. Stephen E. Heretick (D-Portsmouth), has worked for more than a dozen settlement-purchasing firms and has defended the industry. (Steve Earley/The Virginian-Pilot) A Virginia House of Delegates committee on Tuesday advanced a bill intended to reform an industry that critics say has made millions of dollars off people in financial distress. The measure, which could reach the House floor by Thursday, proposes a raft of changes to laws governing the sales of structured settlements. The industry offers cash upfront to people in exchange for money bound up in structured settlements. Lawyers often recommend the arrangements, in which cash from lawsuits is dispensed in installments over years, to protect vulnerable people from spending a large payout at once. The industrys questionable practices were the subject of a Washington Post investigation in December. [The flawed system that allows companies to make millions off the injured] This legislation makes necessary reforms to Virginias structured-settlement laws, said Del. Terry G. Kilgore (R-Scott), who introduced the bill a month ahead of the Posts report. Virginia is one of 49 states that require county courts to determine whether a settlement-purchase deal is in the sellers best interest. But industry experts say there are weaknesses in state law: Structured-settlement recipients who want to sell their payments are not obligated to attend hearings, and companies can file their deals anywhere in the state. Kilgores bill would require cases to be filed and heard in the jurisdiction where the seller lives, and require the seller to appear in person at the hearing. The bill says a purchase application must include a summary of prior transfers as well as notice of the hearing. The legislation passed the Commerce and Labor Committee, which Kilgore chairs, with unanimous support. No one spoke against it. The National Association of Settlement Purchasers has acknowledged flaws in laws across the country and worked with Kilgore on the measure. This bill will require greater diligence by purchasers, provide additional protections for settlement recipients, and increase transparency in settlement applications so the courts can make informed decisions about settlement sales, Kilgore said. The Post investigation told the story of burn survivor Terrence Taylor, who as a child was diagnosed with a cognitive impairment and sold $11 million in future payments for a small fraction of their current-day value. A similar Post investigation, published in August, led to court reforms to protect recipients of structured settlements in Maryland. The Virginia story drew attention to Del. Stephen E. Heretick (D-Portsmouth), a lawyer who has worked for more than a dozen settlement-purchasing firms. He has handled thousands of purchase agreements, including 10 involving Taylor. Heretick, who was elected in the fall with strong support from Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) and liberal advocacy groups, has called Taylors case a significant anomaly among structured-settlement sales and defended the practice, which he said can help people save their homes or afford medical care. Industry experts, however, have said sellers frequently sell most of their payments over a short period of time for pennies or dimes on the dollar. Heretick did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Republicans were eager to trumpet their role in tackling the problem. Republicans are leading the effort to reform Virginias laws on structured-settlement sales, said House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford). This important reform bill increases court oversight and protects consumers. Despite a substantial head start, Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam raised less money over the past three months than Republican strategist Ed Gillespie, his leading rival for Virginia governor in 2017, according to fundraising figures released Wednesday. Gillespie, who confirmed that he was running for governor in early October and who formed a PAC in November, raised $483,000 by the end of December, according to the nonpartisan Virginia Public Access Project. Northam (D), who nearly a year ago began spreading the word that he was running, raised $85,000 for his political action committee in the last quarter. He also raised $319,000 over the past six months for his campaign account. It was unclear from reports how much of the $319,000 came in over the past three months. Even if it had all been raised in the last quarter, that would make for a combined PAC and campaign haul of $404,000 $80,000 less than Gillespie took in. Northam did not formally announce his bid until November, but he has been raising money for his campaign since spring. Over the past six months, Northam has raised $505,000 between his campaign and Stronger Together PAC. The accounts finished the year with a total of $720,000 in cash on hand. Gillespie had $444,000 on hand. [Gillespie to run for Virginia governor in 2017] Great news! Gillespie wrote to supporters when announcing his haul earlier this month. I just got our numbers back, and in its first seven weeks our new Lets Grow, Virginia! PAC raised nearly half-a-million dollars! Northams PAC also trumpeted its results. With over 9,000 contributions, an average contribution of $111, and 92% of the funds raised in the commonwealth, the sheer number of early supporters for Ralph speaks to the strength of our campaign two years out, Gabrielle Quintana Greenfield, executive director of the PAC, said in an email. Aside from the brisk pace of Gillespies fundraising, he has another advantage over Northam. For about the next 60 days, while the General Assembly is in session, Northam is prohibited from raising money. Gillespie is not. So far, Northam, a pediatric neurologist and former state senator, is the only Democrat running to succeed term-limited Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D). Gillespie, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee and counselor to President George W. Bush, nearly unseated U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) in 2014 in a closer-than-expected race. He is considered the leading contender for the GOP nomination for governor, but he already has competition from within the party. U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman joined the race in December, and former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli II has said he is considering another run. [Rep. Wittman jumps into race for Virginia governor] Ray Spiess, a University of Wisconsin at Madison employee, walks to his office Tuesday across frozen Lake Mendota in Madison. (Michael P. King/Wisconsin State Journal via AP) NEVADA Court backs agency in old grazing case Siding with the government in a decades-old battle over grazing rights, a federal appeals court overturned a lower-court ruling in favor of a Nevada rancher and strongly admonished a judge in Reno for abusing his power and exhibiting personal bias against U.S. land managers. In a pair of decisions issued Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled the late Wayne Hage of Tonopah and his family were guilty of trespassing cattle on federal land illegally without a grazing permit and should be subject to fines. The appellate court based in San Francisco also determined that U.S. District Judge Robert Clive Jones had no legal basis to find employees of the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service in contempt of court for doing their jobs. In remanding the case back to the lower court in Reno, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit took the unusual step of ordering a different district judge to handle the case. Associated Press THE ENVIRONMENT Obama veto preserves water-pollution rule President Obama on Tuesday vetoed legislation that would have nullified a federal rule designed to protect smaller streams, tributaries and wetlands from pollution. In his veto message, Obama defended the rule, saying pollution from upstream sources ends up in the rivers, lakes and coastal waters near where most Americans live. He also said the rule would clarify the scope of the Clean Water Act and protect those resources. Many farmers and businesses have countered that expanding the scope of waters subject to the acts jurisdiction was a power grab that would lead to more permitting requirements for landowners and greater legal liability. Two Supreme Court rulings left the reach of the Clean Water Act uncertain. Those decisions, in 2001 and 2006, left 60 percent of the nations streams and millions of acres of wetlands without clear federal protection, according to the EPA, causing confusion for landowners and government officials. The House voted to void the rule last week. The Senate passed the resolution in November. Associated Press NEW YORK Yemeni pleads guilty to terrorism charges An al-Qaeda member from Yemen pleaded guilty Tuesday to U.S. terrorism charges that included accusations he helped an American recruit join the terrorist group, clearing the way for the New York native to hatch a plot against the Long Island Rail Road. Ali Alvi al-Hamidi admitted in federal court in Brooklyn that he traveled to Pakistan in 2008 to get military training from al-Qaeda and fight alongside the Taliban against U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Hamidi, 31, and another Yemeni recruit had been detained in Saudi Arabia before being brought to the United States early last year to face charges they conspired to kill Americans and provide material support to al-Qaeda. The charges stemmed from information supplied to investigators by Long Island native Bryant Neil Vinas, who was captured in 2008. The three became close associates . . . while they lived together at the safe house, court papers said. The Yemeni suspects later introduced Vinas to senior al-Qaeda members. Associated Press Christie fails to sign bill raising smoking age: Gov. Chris Christie decided not to act Tuesday on a bill that would have boosted New Jerseys smoking age to 21, keeping the age to buy tobacco products at 19. The bill, which passed the Democratic-led legislature amid a surge in lobbying from the tobacco industry, would have fined retailers up to $1,000 if they sold cigarettes or other tobacco products to underage smokers. Associated Press COLOMBIA U.N. observers sought as peace talks progress Colombias government and the countrys largest rebel group on Tuesday marked another milestone in their rapidly advancing peace talks, jointly requesting that the United Nations establish an international observer mission to monitor a disarmament process that could end in a matter of weeks Latin Americas longest-running guerrilla conflict. Negotiators for the two sides announced at peace talks in Havana that the 12-month mission would be made up of unarmed observers from Latin American and Caribbean nations. It would monitor adherence to an eventual cease-fire and resolve disputes that emerge from the expected demobilization of about 7,000 fighters belonging to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. But in calling on the United Nations to begin preparing for the observers deployment, analysts say both sides are signaling that a March deadline to wrap up talks, which some had viewed as overly optimistic, could be within reach. Todays announcement isnt only the start of an international process, its the unequivocal demonstration of our desire to end confrontation, said lead government negotiator Humberto de la Calle. Associated Press LIBYA Unity cabinet named under U.N. plan Libyas Presidential Council announced a new government on Tuesday aimed at uniting the countrys warring factions, though two of the councils nine members rejected it in a sign of continuing divisions over the U.N.-backed plan for a political transition. Western powers hope the new government will deliver stability to Libya, deeply fractured since the fall of Moammar Gaddafi in 2011, and tackle a growing threat from Islamic State militants. Critics say the agreement by the Tunis-based council was forced through too quickly without all groups and factions being evenly represented. One council member pulled out of the process, saying eastern Libya was not properly represented, while local media said there were disagreements about the size of the government. Since summer 2014, Libya has had two rival governments, operating from the capital, Tripoli, and from the east. Both are backed by various militias. The internationally recognized parliament in the east has 10 days to approve the new government. There has been no announcement on how and when the new government to be led by Fayez Seraj, a lawmaker from eastern Libya who also heads the Presidential Council would be able to establish itself in Libya. Reuters Suicide bomber kills 11 in Pakistan: A suicide bomber on a motorcycle struck a police checkpoint on the outskirts of the Pakistani city of Peshawar, killing 11 people. The Taliban asserted responsibility for the attack, which police said also injured 21 people. The blast occurred on a road leading to Afghanistan, police said. Peshawar is on the edge of Pakistans volatile tribal regions. E.U. plans to collect convicted foreigners fingerprints: The European Union wants to collect fingerprints and information about all foreigners convicted of crimes in the 28-nation bloc to help fight terrorism and cross-border crime. The data would be stored on the computerized ECRIS system, which gives judges and prosecutors access to suspects backgrounds. Currently, such information is kept only in national records. Man in Afghanistan cuts wifes nose: A young woman in a remote northern region of Afghanistan had her nose cut off by her husband, officials in the region said. Fawzia Salimi, a hospital director in Maymana, capital of Faryab province, said 22-year-old Reza Gul lost a great deal of blood. Guls husband, 25-year-old Mohammad Khan, has fled their village. Domestic violence is widespread in Afghanistan. 16 die after bus plunges off cliff in Peru: Authorities in Peru said 16 people were killed when a bus plunged about 350 feet down a canyon in the Amazon region. Police said the accident also injured 32 people. The driver survived and blamed a brake failure for the accident. From news services Former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell, shortly after being found guilty of corruption in 2014. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post) Regarding the Jan. 16 front-page article Supreme Court will hear McDonnells appeal: The argument of former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnells attorneys, that in essence everybody does it, is an insult to the vast majority of officeholders, whom I believe to be honest. I say this having worked as a volunteer for political candidates for decades. In the almost 40 years that Ive lived in Virginia, I cannot recall behavior similar to Mr. McDonnells on the part of any governor Republican or Democrat. Id like to think that Virginians have a tradition of governors who have been honest and capable. But what Mr. McDonnell, a Republican, did was not just a disgrace it was also against the law. The public has a right to expect its elected officials to behave and to do the job they were elected to do and not to use elective office as an opportunity to live a life of luxury that they otherwise could not afford. And in the case of Virginias governors, the term is only four years. Cant elected officials such as Mr. McDonnell avoid temptation for such a short time? And God has nothing to do with it, despite Mr. McDonnells repeated references to Gods grace. Jesus example was to live a simple life, not one of excess. This case is an embarrassment to Virginians. Meg Copernoll, Reston Virginia Supreme Court nominee Jane Marum Roush, right, answers a question during a news conference in July in Richmond, while Del. David B. Albo (R) Gov.Terry McAuliffe (D), center, look on. (Bob Brown/Associated Press) VIRGINIA STATE Sen. Glen Sturtevant, a Republican elected just two months ago, is unversed in Richmonds arcane ways. How else to explain his failure to heed the legislatures mindless partisanship? Mr. Sturtevant, who represents a portion of Richmond and points west, has incited the fury of the General Assemblys Republican leadership, and blown up the opening days of this years legislative session, by doing something decent. He has refused to go along with the GOPs plan to remove and replace a sitting justice of Virginias Supreme Court, Jane Marum Roush, whose qualifications, competence and integrity were unquestioned when she received a recess appointment over the summer from Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D). Never in modern times has a sitting justice on the states highest court been replaced in such fashion. In fact, Virginia governors of both parties have made at least 31 recess appointments to the court; all of them have been elected by the General Assembly. However, Republican House Speaker William J. Howell (Stafford) decided to pick a fight in the case of Ms. Roush, a veteran judge on the Fairfax Circuit Court who presided over the trial of sniper Lee Boyd Malvo. Ostensibly, the speaker was irked that Mr. McAuliffe had not consulted Republicans, even though it was a Republican Del. David B. Albo (Fairfax), who chairs the House of Delegatess Courts of Justice Committee who suggested Ms. Roushs appointment. The real issue is that old-boy GOP insiders such as Mr. Howell cannot abide Mr. McAuliffe, a Bill-and-Hillary-Clinton loyalist whom the GOP regards as a modern-day carpetbagger. Spoiling for a fight, Mr. Howell tried to replace Ms. Roush during a special legislative session in August, in favor of a GOP-preferred candidate. But the plan was derailed by a single Republican moderate, Sen. John C. Watkins of Powhatan, who was retiring. In the process, Ms. Roushs appointment expired, but Mr. McAuliffe gave her a second recess appointment. Now comes Mr. Sturtevant, who won Mr. Watkinss former Senate seat in the fall. He has no affection for Mr. McAuliffe, who fought to see him defeated. However, Mr. Sturtevant, a lawyer, seems to possess a sense of right and wrong, as well as a conviction that replacing Ms. Roush would amount to intolerable interference with the judiciary something he promised as a candidate not to abide. Politicization of the entire process is not good for the court, its not good for the General Assembly, its not good for Virginia, he said. His defection robs the GOP of sufficient votes in the Senate and has frozen its efforts to replace Ms. Rousch. Mr. Sturtevant is now persona non grata with Mr. Howell and the GOP. Good for Mr. Sturtevant. Duane Ehmer carries an American flag as he rides his horse at the occupied Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns, Ore., on Jan. 15. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images) Being an avid birder and environmentalist, I was happy to (finally) see in-depth coverage of the armed takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in the Jan. 17 front-page article Sedition, tense sentry duty and snacks. The article mentioned that the leader, Ammon Bundy, runs a business near Phoenix but not that Mr. Bundy took out a $500,000 loan from the Small Business Administration to subsidize that business, a truck -maintenance operation. Those trucks run on highways subsidized by the federal government. So, when it comes to the federal ownership of land, the government has got to go, but when it comes to putting money in Mr. Bundys pocket, the government is good. And while he professes to support the livelihood of local ranchers, he forgets about the huge amount of tourist revenue that national parks and wildlife refuges generate for local businesses. Maybe he and his gang of merry men (and some women) should take control of the federal highways as well. They could fix the bridges, plow the snow, fix the potholes, etc. Lord knows our infrastructure could use some help. Id be glad to send them some snacks if that happened. Rich Rieger, Alexandria The front-page article on the occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge represented thinly veiled rhetorical sneering. Regardless of whether Post reporters support the cause, the article overlooked its significance as a continuing struggle to limit central authority one that has been perpetuated throughout our nations history in multiple conflicts. Just because the occupiers are predominantly white, believe in the Second Amendment and come from rural areas does not mean they should be dismissed and mocked. Stephanie Lundquist-Arora, Springfield Among the more important points rancher Keith Nantz made in his Jan. 17 Outlook essay, Obama has made life awful for ranchers like me, was that rural Westerners and the federal government on which they depend can find middle ground on land-use issues. As someone responsible for a family cattle ranch in Colorado when not working in the District, I know that many of Mr. Nantzs observations ring true. If we are to try to bring the country together, it is crucial that urban readers of The Post listen to responsible rural voices for their insights and not conflate their words with the empty phrases of the Malheur refuge occupiers. Ryan Brown, Washington Two Corinthians, right? Two Corinthians 3:17. Thats the whole ballgame. . . . Is that the one? Is that the one you like? I think thats the one you like. Donald Trump, preaching the gospel at Liberty University . The front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination drew laughter from the evangelical students at Liberty University when he bungled the Bible verse he attempted to read to them, introducing it not as Second Corinthians but as Two Corinthians. But it doesnt seem to matter that Trump wouldnt know a Corinthian from a craps table. Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty and son of the late televangelist, bestowed lavish praise Monday on the thrice- married head of a gambling empire who talks about the need to kill members of terrorists families. Trump, on his way to getting a sizable chunk of the evangelical vote, promised: If Im president, youre going to see Merry Christmas in department stores, believe me believe me. They believe him. So what else is in the gospel according to Trump? Heres a first draft of his beatitudes (Great America Standard Version), blending passages from Jesus Sermon on the Mount with a mash-up from Trumps speech to Liberty University. Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him. And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying: Were having tremendous crowds, and were setting records everywhere. We went to Dallas and the Mavericks Arena, packed, 20,000 people. Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. We want to see win, win, win, constant winning. And youll see if Im president, and youll say, Please, Mr. President. Were winning too much. We cant stand it anymore. Can we have a loss? And Ill say, No, were going to keep winning, winning, winning. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. . . . If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. We got to knock the hell out of ISIS. I want a general where we knock the hell out of them fast. We need to build our military so big, so strong, so powerful. Take the oil! Keep the oil! You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. . . . Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works. Were going to build a wall. This is a serious wall. And we can do it for the right price. Whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, You fool! will be liable to the hell of fire. Obama is a disaster! I hold it against our very stupid leadership in this country. [John Kerry] doesnt have a clue. We get Sergeant Bergdahl, a dirty, rotten traitor. A stiff like Jeb Bush. Low-energy person. I want to see a woman president soon, but not her. Shes a disaster. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth. . . . You cannot serve God and money. They say, O h, you cant build a wall. So easy! I have to make it look beautiful. Why? Because someday, theyll name the wall Trump Wall. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. Were not going to give you any money, no money. We dont have it. Were a debtor nation. We owe $19 trillion. Were not going to give you any money. Were a poor nation. We protect Germany. We protect Japan. We protect Saudi Arabia. They pay us, like, practically nothing. Theyve got to pay up. Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life. . . . Consider the lilies of the field. Were not going to have a country left. Everyone is ripping us. Everyone is ripping us. Were getting killed. Whats going on with the crime and the problems? And it could be some sinister plot. The stock market is starting to go down big league and a lot of bad things. Our country is disappearing. Our country is going in the wrong direction and so wrong and its got to be stopped and its got to be stopped fast. Beware of false prophets. . . . You will recognize them by their fruits. I wrote T he Art of the Deal. I wrote many bestsellers. The Bible is the best. The Bible, the Bible blows it away. Theres nothing like the Bible, but The Art of the Deal was the best-selling business book, and Obama didnt read it. Amen? Twitter: @Milbank Read more from Dana Milbanks archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. A RECENT spike in unaccompanied minors and families crossing the Southwestern border illegally is reviving painful memories from two summers ago, when tens of thousands of migrants traversed the frontier. In October and November alone, border officials caught more than 10,000 children and 12,000 families, in both categories more than double the numbers apprehended in the same period a year earlier. The quickening cross-border flow is mainly driven by resurgent gang violence in Central America. But the Obama administration and Mexico deserve a measure of blame for ham-fisted policies that have done nothing to ease the plight of people fleeing desperate circumstances and may indeed have reinforced migrants resolve to reach the United States. Now, faced with an incipient crisis partly of its own making, and anxious at the prospect of further inflaming the immigration debate on the eve of presidential primaries, the administration is trying to stem the tide of migrants with the blunt instrument of deportations. In the first days of the new year, it rounded up 121 women and children whose asylum claims and other efforts to forestall forced removal failed or were barely mounted in the first place. The United States is justified in taking steps to dissuade unauthorized migrants from attempting a hazardous journey. The deportations of these most recent detainees, a third of which have already been stayed by 11th-hour appeals, send a signal that may prevent a new deluge of migrants from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. That, at least, is what administration officials hope. Deportations are often cruel and unfair. Many deportees are initially judged to have plausible claims for asylum, but relatively few receive competent or adequate legal representation in immigration courts, and the government provides inadequate funds for volunteer attorneys to represent minors and nothing for families. Given the scant legal advice they receive, little wonder the likely result for so many is a deportation order. There are better ways to discourage a fresh exodus of children and families from Central America, starting with a concerted effort by the United States to combat gang violence in the countries where it thrives. U.S. officials also established a program to allow at-risk minors in Central America to apply for asylum from their home countries, without risking the trek to the U.S. border. Thousands of Salvadoran, Honduran and Guatemalan youngsters applied. But owing to red tape, nearly a year went by before the first handful of applicants were allowed into the United States legally, in November. Most of the more than 5,000 children who applied to join parents already legally residing in the United States have not even been granted interviews. Now, faced with an outcry over the recent deportations, the administration says it will seek help from the United Nations to screen adults as well as minors in Central America and determine who should be granted refugee status in the United States or elsewhere. The sluggish response has left asylum-seekers to make their way north along routes plied by ruthless coyotes. Those routes run through Mexico, which, under pressure from Washington to act as a first line of defense, has done nothing to encourage migrants to seek refuge there. To the contrary, Mexican authorities have subjected many migrants to harassment and inhumane treatment. Its not a recipe for success. The Supreme Court on Wednesday sided with Kansas officials who want to execute two brothers who were involved in a brutal mass killing known as the Wichita Massacre. The court ruled 8 to 1 that the Kansas Supreme Court was wrong to have overturned the death sentences of Reginald and Jonathan Carr for crimes that Justice Antonin Scalia described as including acts of almost inconceivable cruelty and depravity. The justices were reviewing two issues from the Kansas courts decision: whether the jury received adequate instructions on how to weigh evidence that might lead it to show mercy, and whether the men should have had separate sentencing trials. Scalia said the Kansas court was wrong about both. [Justices appear skeptical at reversal of Wichita murderers death sentences] The brothers crime spree in the notorious 2000 case culminated in rape, robbery, forced sexual intercourse between the victims and the execution-style shooting of three men and two women. One woman survived when a bullet was deflected by her hair clip, and she walked nude through the snow to find help. Scalia devoted more than two pages of his 18-page ruling to a detailed recounting of the crime. Even in a case with such gruesome details, a jury asked to impose the death sentence must weigh aggravating circumstances which must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt by prosecutors with mitigating factors offered by the defense, such as a troubled childhood or personality disorder. Those do not have to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. The Kansas Supreme Court said that because the jury was not explicitly informed of that lesser burden, the death sentences were invalid. Scalia said that was wrong. Jurors will accord mercy if they deem it appropriate, and withhold mercy if they do not, which is what our case law was designed to achieve, he wrote. The ruling also applied to a separate case: Sidney Gleason, who killed two people to cover up a robbery of an elderly man. Scalia also said sentencing the brothers at the same proceeding did not violate their rights. Each brother had claimed that the jury was prejudiced by facts that could not have been introduced if they had been sentenced separately. Scalia discounted the argument. Only the most extravagant speculation would lead to the conclusion that the supposedly prejudicial evidence rendered the Carr brothers joint sentencing proceeding fundamentally unfair, Scalia wrote. Justice Sonia Sotomayor was the lone dissenter. She said the court should not have accepted the case, because it did not raise federal issues the Supreme Court needed to decide. I worry that cases like these prevent states from serving as necessary laboratories for experimenting with how best to guarantee defendants a fair trial, she wrote. She suggested that her colleagues stepped in because of the notoriety of the Carr brothers crime. The standard adage teaches that hard cases make bad law, Sotomayor wrote. I fear that these cases suggest a corollary: Shocking cases make too much law. The case was the first death penalty controversy the court considered after Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote last term that they thought the court should reconsider the constitutionality of the death penalty. But the case of the Carr brothers did not raise such a fundamental question, and both joined in Scalias opinion. The case is Kansas v. Carr. Win for class-action plaintiffs The court also decided Wednesday that a company may not ask a court to throw out a potential class-action lawsuit simply by offering the lead plaintiff all that he has asked for. The decision was a narrow win for class-action plaintiffs, who are not used to many wins of any kind at the high court. Had the ruling gone the other way, it would have made it harder to mount such lawsuits, because the defendants could moot the proceeding by removing the plaintiffs one at a time. [Unsolicited messages tee up unusual Supreme Court case] An unaccepted settlement offer has no force, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote, even if it would have given the plaintiff all of what he was entitled to receive. Ginsburg wrote for four colleagues; Justice Clarence Thomas agreed with the outcome of the case but not Ginsburgs reasoning. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. dissented and was joined by Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel A. Alito Jr. Federal courts exist to resolve real disputes, not to rule on a plaintiffs entitlement to relief already there for the taking, Roberts wrote, adding that when a plaintiff files suit seeking redress for an alleged injury, and the defendant agrees to fully redress that injury, there is no longer a case or controversy for courts to decide. The case had been billed by business interests as one in which the plaintiff refused to take yes for an answer. In 2006, advertising firm Campbell-Ewald, under contract with the Navy, developed a plan to send text messages to 150,000 adults ages 18 to 24 from an opt-in list of cellphone numbers. But one was sent to Jose Gomez, then 40, who had not consented. Destined for something big? it asked. Do it in the Navy. Get a career. An education. And a chance to serve a greater cause. For a FREE navy video call and it listed a number. Gomez sued under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which forbids unwanted solicitations, and styled his suit as a class action. Campbell-Ewald offered Gomez all the money he could receive under the law, about $1,500 and agreed to pay court costs but not admit liability. When Gomez declined to respond to the offer, Campbell-Ewald asked a court to dismiss the case, saying it was moot. A district court did just that, but a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit reversed the decision. Absent Gomezs acceptance, Campbells settlement offer remained only a proposal, binding neither Campbell nor Gomez, Ginsburg wrote. She said the court was not ruling on what would have been a harder case: if the company had deposited the full amount of the claim into an account payable to Gomez and then asked a court to enter judgment for him in that amount. The case is Campbell-Ewald v. Gomez. (Adds background) ATHENS, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Greece's top administrative court has annulled the government's decision last year to revoke Eldorado Gold's mining licence, according to court documents published on Wednesday. The Canadian mining company had appealed to Greece's top court to overturn the ban on its plans to develop gold mines in a forested area of northern Greece, in a case widely seen as a test of the leftist government's approach to foreign investment. The majority of the court's judges ruled in favour of Eldorado in November, but a final ruling was pending. Eldorado has put in about $700 million since 2012 and planned to invest another $1 billion to develop two mines at Skouries and Olympias sites in Halkidiki. But Greece's government revoked its permit in August, saying the tests for a so-called flash-melting method the company planned to use to ensure there would be no environmental damage did not take place on the spot, but rather outside Greece. Tensions between the two sides came to a head last week, when Eldorado said Greece had been delaying the necessary permits and announced it would suspend construction at the Skouries project, putting more than 600 jobs at risk. It warned it would do the same at its Olympias mine, risking another 500 jobs in northern Greece, if it didn't secure necessary permits by the end of March. Greece's energy minister has asked the firm to reverse its decision and safeguard jobs as a condition for the two parties to continue talks. (Reporting by Angeliki Koutantou; Editing by Mark Potter) President Obama came here Wednesday to highlight the resurgence of the national auto industry and this most troubled of American cities, even as state and federal leaders grapple with an unfolding public health crisis in nearby Flint. Lunching at a trendy brew pub, touring the Shinola watch factory and viewing electric vehicles at the Detroit Auto Show, the president made clear that he thinks the city is on an upswing. On a show floor cleared of ordinary spectators, Obama held open the door of a plug-in hybrid model of the Chrysler Pacifica minivan and later got behind the wheel of a 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV, an all-electric vehicle. Beautiful, he said of the gleaming red Chrysler before turning to reporters. You guys remember Get Shorty, right? Its cool driving a minivan. Detroit, which suffered such major economic setbacks that it declared bankruptcy two years ago, has made major gains in recent years. Its unemployment rate is about 10.7 percent, down from 24.8 percent in 2010, the highest rate among 50 major cities. An infusion of federal funding, coupled with philanthropic and corporate investment, has spurred new businesses, improved public services and helped finance a major demolition effort in blighted neighborhoods. Theres still plenty of work to do, but you can feel the difference, you can feel something special happening in Detroit, Obama said in a speech at the UAW-GM Center for Human Resources. So what is true of Detroit is true of the country. . . . Right now, I want people to remember how far weve come. [The white population in Detroit, and other U.S. cities, is starting to grow] But sometimes it is hard for the broader American public to hear that message. A Washington Post-ABC News poll in December found that just as many respondents disapproved as approved of Obamas handling of the economy, at 48 percent each. The fact that Obama declared a state of emergency Saturday providing up to $5 million in federal assistance to address drinking water contamination in Flint, 70 miles north of Detroit, has further muddied the picture. The citys supply became contaminated with lead, a potent neurotoxin, starting in April 2014 when a state-appointed city manager approved drawing water from the nearby Flint River to cut costs. And I know that if I was a parent up there, I would be beside myself that my kids health could be at risk, Obama said in his speech at the UAW-GM center. It is a reminder of why you cant shortchange basic services that we provide to our people, and that we together provide as a government, to make sure that public health and safety is preserved. Detroit, by contrast, has put much of its most recent crisis behind it. Although a number of factors help account for the citys ongoing recovery, experts said the 2009 bailout that Obama provided U.S. automakers General Motors and Chrysler played a critical role. Since the bailout, the industry has added 646,000 manufacturing and retail jobs, and last year, U.S. drivers bought more cars and trucks 17.5 million than ever. The fact that the president focused on an auto bailout to shore up the core manufacturing sector, that investment has certainly borne out, said Amy Liu, director of the Metropolitan Policy Center at the Brookings Institution, noting that the industry helps sustain not only direct jobs but related economic activity, including 32,000 jobs in computer systems design. Although the overwhelming portion of direct auto-manufacturing jobs are not in Detroit more than 80 percent of American cars arent even made in Michigan Liu said that theres no doubt that the manufacturing supply chain has extended beyond Detroit and that a lot of the R&D activity is still housed in the Detroit headquarters and in the Detroit area. More broadly, the Obama administration has taken part in an intense effort aimed at helping the Motor City rebound. It has unlocked, repurposed or redirected more than $300 million in federal investments for Detroit, said a White House official, and embedded at least three full-time officials in the mayors office to help work on recovery efforts. The city has used $130 million in Treasury money to demolish more than 7,500 blighted structures in less than two years, out of 40,000 targeted for destruction. A $25 million Transportation Department grant allowed Detroit to buy 80 new buses, and it recently restarted 24-hour service on several key routes. [Why Baltimores riots put Obamas urban policy under scrutiny] The private sector has played a critical part in initiatives as well, and in September 2014, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, council member James Tate, former mayor Dave Bing and Skillman Foundation President Tonya Allen joined together to start a city chapter of My Brothers Keeper, a White House effort aimed at supporting young men of color. The group has pledged to double the number of people working in the summer youth employment program in the next three years and add 5,000 African American and Latino men employed in the citys high-growth industries by 2020. Its a great model, in that they have made sure they have leaders from the highest level involved, White House Cabinet Secretary Broderick Johnson, who chairs the My Brothers Keeper task force, said in an interview. It wont be so affected by changes in political leadership and elections and the like. Bruce Katz, an urbanization expert at the Brookings Institution, said much of the credit for the citys revival lies with its private and civic institutions and leaders. The federal government is obviously a major investor in Detroit. But for the most part, there isnt intentionality to federal money, he said. It flows. Its a hodgepodge of grants to the city, HUD, support for Wayne State, the health-care system. The city is still struggling on several fronts. On Wednesday, its public school teachers staged a walkout to highlight the schools deteriorating physical structures as well their overall financial predicament. In response, the school district filed a lawsuit to halt the walkout that has disrupted the routines of both students and parents. As Obama ate lunch at the Jolly Pumpkin Brewery in midtown, an establishment that advertised its artisan ales, Cass Technical High School social studies teacher Brian Diskin complained that the emergency financial management rules put in place by state leaders had robbed students and teachers of the ability to have an impact on citys schools. There is a renaissance going on in Detroit, and we want to be a big part of that, Diskin said, adding that because 40 percent to 50 percent of the districts school funding goes to pay down its debt, students face deplorable conditions. But we dont think we can do that as long as the students are being cheated out of a decent public school education. Cecilia Munoz, Obamas domestic policy adviser, has a personal stake in the city. Her parents moved from Bolivia to Michigan in 1950 so her father could attend the University of Michigan, moving to Detroit a year later so he could work as an automotive engineer for Ford. Munoz, who was born in Detroit, grew up in the suburb of Livonia and goes back regularly to visit her relatives in the area, said the fact that the federal government approached its role by doing a lot of listening was instrumental in helping bring back the city. Growing up, she avoided Detroits Cass Avenue because it was synonymous with blight and crime and danger. A year ago, she and her sister went to that same street to grab lunch at an adorable tapas place and check out the Shinola watch factory, along with several other small shops. On Wednesday, Obama walked within a block of Cass Avenue and later showed off one of the Shinola watches. This street was bustling with all kinds of people, Munoz recalled. The Cass Avenue I walked down a year ago was indescribable. People were there because its vibrant. And if people are still skeptical of the citys recovery, she added, its understandable. People in the country, and certainly people in Michigan and Detroit, went through a really hard time. A really hard and scary time. juliet.eilperin@washpost.com steven.mufson@washpost.com Scott Clement contributed to this report. Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders is preparing for a protracted battle with Hillary Clinton by hiring staffs and laying groundwork in more than a dozen contests that follow Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two nominating states. Sanders has deployed about 50 paid campaign aides apiece to Nevada and South Carolina, the next two states on the calendar, according to advisers. Paid staffs are on the ground in all of the 11 Super Tuesday states that have contests on March 1, a presence that appears to at least match that of the Clinton camp. The Vermont senator is also airing TV ads and Spanish-language radio spots in Nevada. He is about to go on TV in South Carolina. And his team is mapping out plans to spend a fresh wave of small-dollar donations expected to arrive if he upsets Clinton in Iowa or New Hampshire, as recent polls indicate is possible. That money, aides say, would allow Sanders to compete with the former secretary of state and Democratic front-runner in the crush of contests that quickly follow on the calendar, as the playing field rapidly broadens and the election becomes more dependent on expensive television ads. The preparations are part of an effort to buck what has emerged as the latest conventional wisdom surrounding the Democratic contest: that even if Clinton loses the first two contests, her superior campaign infrastructure and other advantages including the demographics of the electorate will allow her to overpower Sanders in subsequent states. There will absolutely be a very active contest after the first two states, said Sanderss campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, who disputed the oft-repeated notion that Clinton has a firewall in states that follow Iowa and New Hampshire. A lot of time and effort have gone into developing our plans for the states beyond the first four. Clintons advisers say they also have paid staffs in all March 1 states, but they declined to share numbers. Aides also noted that Clinton has made at least one stop in each of the Super Tuesday states, with the exception of Vermont, Sanderss home. Knowing this race would always tighten, our campaign has been building a strong grass-roots organization since day one to earn the nomination in the early primary states and throughout the primary and caucus calendar, Clinton spokesman Jesse Ferguson said. Despite the fresh preparations, Sanders, who represents a state that is 95 percent white, continues to trail Clinton among Latino and African American voters, who make up large shares of the Democratic electorate in Nevada, South Carolina and many of the March 1 states. Clinton has led in the few polls that have come out of Nevada, and she has held a commanding average margin of about 40 percentage points in South Carolina, largely on the strength of African American voters, who are expected to make up more than half of the Democratic electorate in the first primary in the South. Several other Southern states would seem to favor Clinton because of the sizable African American populations, including Arkansas, Georgia, Texas and Virginia. Sanders is simply not known by many black voters. Aware of such challenges, Sanders has been, and plans to continue, making appearances in several March 1 states, even prior to the first votes being cast in Iowa. On Monday, he drew a crowd of more than 7,000 in Birmingham, Ala. [Sanders pledges to a crowd of 7,000 in Alabama to carry on Kings legacy] Stump speeches by GOP presidential candidates reveal that they're already planning for a race against Hillary Clinton in the general election. (Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post) And while Clinton has buttoned down the support of far more black elected officials, Sanders has his own eclectic set of African American validators showing up at events. They include the flamboyant academic Cornel West, who has praised Sanders for being someone vanilla who understands the plight of the chocolate community; the Atlanta-based rapper Killer Mike, who has compared Sanderss agenda with that of Jesus Christ; and Nina Turner, a former Ohio state senator who was a former Clinton supporter. At an event Monday commemorating the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Columbia, S.C. where Sanders, who is 74, said he had attended Kings March on Washington in 1963 Kathleen Tisdale was wearing a Hillary sticker but said she is actually straddling the fence between Clinton and Sanders. She said most of her friends, African Americans like her, are still getting to know him. But the little bit theyve seen, they like, she added. Hes very direct, said Tisdale, 53, who works for a telephone company. When he speaks, to me he sounds like a president. Hes got a powerful voice. More broadly, Sanders is counting on a shift in momentum that will alter the dynamics in subsequent states if he wins Iowa and New Hampshire. Others agree that it is possible. If Sanders beats Clinton in the first two states, there will be a very, very strong narrative about his momentum, and then who knows what happens, said Mo Elleithee, executive director of the Institute of Politics and Public Service at Georgetown University and a former spokesman for Clinton and the Democratic National Committee. Elleithee, who is not working for a candidate this year, said Clinton is in a better position to rebound than she was during her 2008 presidential bid, when she finished third in the Iowa caucuses. Having said that, I dont believe theres a single person in Brooklyn who wants to test that theory, Elleithee said, referring to Clintons headquarters. Less clear is whether momentum can offset Sanderss disadvantages notably in a couple of caucus states where complex rules demand early organization. In Colorado, where caucuses are scheduled for March 1, the Clinton campaign connected with local party leaders and activists months ago, ahead of the Sanders camp, according to Boulder County Democratic chair Lara Lee Hullinghorst. Democrats needed to register by Jan. 4 to participate in the states March 1 caucuses. A lot of Bernie people didnt know that the 4th was the date, because they were still getting people on the ground here, Hullinghorst said. However, she suspects that the flood of new registrations that came in before the deadline may have been roughly split between the two campaigns. Her proactivity and his passionate base may have balanced themselves out. In Nevada, aides say Sanders is stepping up his courtship of Latinos and African Americans as well as his overall ground game. About 28 percent of the Nevada population is Latino, and 9 percent is black. Both Clinton and Sanders are giving increased attention to the minority vote there. A lot of young people are excited, and they will caucus and they will bring their relatives, said Emilia Pablo, Sanderss state communications director. Supporters have also targeted Latinos who will be 18 and eligible to vote by November. One radio ad in Spanish is focusing on being a first-generation American. The ad says immigration is not just a word for Sanders but his familys story, and it talks of his father coming to America from Poland with little money or ability to speak English. Clinton enjoys high name recognition, and many Latinos in Nevada say they do not know much about Sanders. But many are undecided. There is also clear disillusionment with President Obama, with many Hispanics feeling that he promised them much in the way of immigration reform and instead deported huge numbers of undocumented immigrants. Supporters in Nevada hope to capitalize on criticism Clinton received recently for using the term illegal immigrants. She later said it was a poor word choice. Carlos Silva Jr., 49, an immigration activist who works in marketing and consulting in Nevada, said he sees a generational divide among Latinos. The challenge now, Silva said, is getting Latinos to caucus. Many do not understand the process or are working several jobs and dont have the time to spend on the meetings. But some groups are holding training sessions and mock caucuses to explain it to the many first-time voters. Sanders has nearly matched Clinton in fundraising during the past two quarters. In the period ending Dec. 31, Sanders said he had raised more than $33 million, just shy of the $37 million that Clinton said she had raised directly into her campaign. But Sanderss aides argue they are better positioned because the vast majority of their donors 99.9 percent, they say have not given the legal maximum of $2,700. That means they can be tapped again and again. And given that Sanders has amassed more than 1 million individual donors, the campaign sees huge potential. The Sanders team often points to South Carolina, where Obama trailed Clinton in 2008 polls until after Obama beat her in Iowa. In this cycle, the vote in South Carolina will be influenced in part by the states ahead of it, said Jamie Harrison, chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party. What happens in Iowa influences New Hampshire, what happens in New Hampshire influences Nevada, and what happens in Nevada influences South Carolina, he said. Its all about momentum and building it. Mary Jordan and Philip Rucker contributed to this report. An Afghan policeman keeps watch near the site of a suicide blast Wednesday near the Russian Embassy in Kabul. (Ahmad Masood/Reuters) A Taliban suicide bomb blast struck a crew affiliated with Afghanistans largest media group Wednesday, killing at least seven people and raising fears of further militant violence against one of the countrys most prominent news outlets. Taliban insurgents claimed responsibility for the attack, the deadliest against media in Afghanistan in recent years. Last year, the Taliban declared one of the media groups flagship stations, Tolo News, a legitimate target and accused it of promoting immorality and foreign culture. In recent years, the station has regularly run anti-militant ads funded by the U.S. military and NATO-led forces. Kabul Police Chief Abdul Rahman Rahimi said the bomber detonated a powerful blast near a minivan carrying nearly 30 staff members of Kaboora Production, a unit of the Moby Group, which also includes Tolo. [Afghanistan peace talks stumble to starting line] Rahimi told reporters at the scene that at least seven people five men and two women were killed and 25 were injured on a road near the Russian Embassy in western Kabul. The target was Kaboora Production, he said. Taliban insurgents denounced Tolo for its coverage of the fall of the northern city of Kunduz to militants in October. The station reported that the Taliban committed war crimes in Kunduz. Kunduz was eventually recaptured by Afghan forces backed by U.S. airstrikes which included an apparent mistaken attack on a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders. More than 40 civilians died in the airstrike. The medical charity called for an independent investigation. You cannot silence our voice, said one of the presenters on Tolo News shortly after Wednesdays attack. In a sign of mourning, another TV channel belonging to Moby Group canceled its regular programs and played Koranic recitations. [Pentagon given new reach to strike Islamic State in Afghanistan] A Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, said the minivan was under Taliban surveillance and denounced Tolo News as an important tool of warfare of America and the crusaders in Afghanistan. He warned of more attacks against the station and its affiliates if its policies remain unchanged. Younus Fakoor, a political analyst, described the attack as an attempt to frighten the media in Afghanistan. The privately owned Moby Group has 15 newsgathering offices throughout Afghanistan and business offices in Dubai. Taliban militants have increasingly targeted sites in Kabul amid deepening rifts over efforts to restart peace talks. Envoys from Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States are scheduled to meet in Kabul later this week to discuss possible peace initiatives. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, who was on an official visit to Switzerland, said his government would not negotiate with those who shed the blood of innocent people. He promised stronger crackdowns on militants. The U.S. Embassy in Kabul and the U.N. mission in Afghanistan also condemned the attack. Read more: Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world Once again, horrific images of dead and injured students flashed across television screens in Pakistan. Once again, sobbing parents rushed into hospitals searching for their children. And once again, Pakistani youths are reminded that they are targets for Islamists seeking to topple a nuclear-armed government. On Wednesday, a little more than a year after Pakistani Taliban insurgents killed about 150 students and teachers at a school in northwestern Pakistan, militants took new aim at students on track to make up the countrys future professional class. The attack at Bacha Khan University, which was claimed by a splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban, began shortly after 9 a.m. when four gunmen used the cover of Pakistans notorious winter fog to slip onto campus. The gunmen shot and killed 20 students and two teachers, some execution-style, and wounded nearly two dozen others. Several students said the toll could have been much higher were it not for a teacher armed with a pistol who briefly held off the attackers before being killed. The massacre in Charsadda, about 30 miles from where the December 2014 school attack occurred in Peshawar, is intensifying fears that Pakistans long-term strategy for combating Islamist militant groups is inadequate. [One year after it went to war, Pakistan is safer but doubts persist] Pakistans military says that in the past year it has largely driven groups such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda from the countrys northwestern tribal belt, which became a hub of domestic and international terrorist groups after the 9/11 attacks. But security officials and analysts have warned for months that Pakistan remains vulnerable to major attacks because government leaders have not mounted a widespread offensive against the roots of militancy, including conservative religious seminaries. The government says the military operation [against Islamist extremists] is successful, said Wisal Khan, who said his son, Junaid, was killed in Wednesdays attack. But I ask, how can it be that successful if the terrorists are still killing the people and the children? The attack is also refocusing attention on the vulnerabilities of schools, both in Pakistan and the West. Schools are generally less well-guarded than government buildings and are tempting targets because when you hit students and kids, the pain is more, said Saad Muhammad, a retired Pakistani army general and Islamabad-based security analyst. Terrorists hate schools, Muhammad added, because they say this is Western education and its un-Islamic. But it appears that the carnage at Bacha Khan University, named after a late Pashtun nationalist and inspirational force behind the founding of the progressive Awami National Party, could have been worse. After the Pakistan Taliban attacked the army-run school in Peshawar in 2014, officials began allowing some teachers to carry weapons in the classroom and gave them weapons training. 1 of 26 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad The scene at a Pakistani university after gunmen kill at least 20 people View Photos Gunmen open fire at Bacha Khan University in northwestern Pakistan. Caption Gunmen open fire at Bacha Khan University in northwestern Pakistan. Jan. 20, 2016 Pakistani rescuers shift an injured man to a hospital after an attack by gunmen at Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, about 30 miles from Peshawar. At least 20 people were killed. A Majeed/AFP/Getty Images Wait 1 second to continue. Syed Hamid Husain, an assistant chemistry professor at Bacha Khan University, was apparently carrying his pistol Wednesday when the gunmen sneaked onto campus. In separate interviews with Agence France-Presse and The Washington Post, several students described Husain as a hero because he pulled out his pistol and confronted the attackers, who were armed with assault rifles. The 27-year-old teacher was killed in the ensuing exchange of fire. Students said Husains actions gave them time to hide or escape. We saw the professor standing there with a gun in his hand, said Shaid Malik, 22, a geology student. He told us to rush back to our rooms and do not open the door for anyone. When the firing stopped, after a while, we came down and saw the professor dead, lying on the ground with the same gun in his hand. Another student, Mohammad Shabeer, said Husain held off the attackers for 15 minutes before he was killed. Shabeer said another student, who also was armed because of threats that had been made against him and his family, helped Husain battle the attackers. That student also was killed, he said. A spokesman for the Pakistani military was not able to confirm the students version of events. But one school official said the presence of armed security guards on campus had been instrumental in averting a far greater death toll. The guards battled the attackers before police and paramilitary forces arrived, which kept the gunmen from entering the womens dormitory, the official said. Maj. Gen. Asim Bajwa, a spokesman for the Pakistani military, said investigators are trying to determine the nationalities of the gunmen and who supplied them with weapons. A Pakistani Taliban regional group led by Omar Mansour from the Darra Adamkhel region sent a statement to reporters Wednesday claiming responsibility. Mansour is also believed to have been a mastermind behind the Peshawar school attack. But highlighting an emerging split within the group, the main Pakistani Taliban faction issued a separate statement denouncing the killings as un-Islamic. The Pakistani Taliban, an offshoot of the Taliban group waging an insurgency in Afghanistan, is pushing for the imposition of sharia law in Pakistan. Since its founding in the mid-2000s, more than 50,000 Pakistanis have been killed in terrorist attacks or battles between the military and Islamist militants. The military operation against the group began in June 2014 after an attack on Karachis international airport killed more than two dozen people. Since then, especially over the past year, there has been a major decline in terrorist attacks in Pakistan. But analysts said militant groups still have a plentiful pool of potential recruits, both in conservative rural areas and relatively modern major cities. Pakistani leaders have also been slow to arrest radical clerics who coddle Islamist extremists, analysts say. This attack clearly shows that terrorists have not disappeared from Pakistan. Although they are weakened, they are there, said Hassan Askari Rizvi, a local security analyst. And their motive is clear: They want to tell everyone they are kicking and alive. Aamir Iqbal and Haq Nawaz Khan in Charsadda and Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad contributed to this report. Read more: The key to solving the puzzle of Afghanistan is Pakistan After years of tension, anti-American sentiment ebbs in Pakistan Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world How the European Union Economy Has Reacted to the Refugee Crisis (Continued from Prior Part) Syria civil war The Syrian civil war has three sides. One is the Syrian government led by Assad. Assad is backed by Iran and Russia (RSX). The opposition leader or so-called rebel group is backed by Saudi Arabia. ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), on the other hand, is fighting for religious and political goals. A few years ago, following the rise of IS militants, civil war claimed many lives along with the destruction of property. Starving citizens had to leave the country in search of food and shelter. The Syrian civil war has resulted in a large number of refugees moving into the European Union. The refugees are taking the Mediterranean sea off the coast of Turkey as a direct route to Greece and other European nations. Russias involvement in Syria Analysts estimate Russias (ERUS) involvement in Syria to be of economic benefit, as it hopes to pressure Riyadh to cut production in order to boost the price of crude oil. The Russian economy is highly dependent on energy exports. Lukoil (LUKOY), Gazprom Pao (OGZPY), and Tarneft (OAOFY) represent the large-cap Russian ADR (American depositary receipts) in the oil and gas sector. The European Union faced a large number of refugees in 2015 The European refugee crisis became widespread in 2015 when a large number of refugees moved to the European Union (or EU). According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the top three nations that contributed the most refugees to the EU in 2015 were Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The report states that: Syria contributed 49% of the total migrants. Afghanistan contributed 21% of the total migrants. Iraq contributed 8% of the total migrants. According to the Eurostat, the EUs member countries received 626,000 refugee applications in 2014, the highest number since 1992. In the next part of this series, well analyze Frances stance on this crisis. Story continues Continue to Next Part Browse this series on Market Realist: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday that neither Russia nor the United States supports a delay in Syrian peace talks, due to start next week, though it was not clear whether he and Secretary of State John F. Kerry had succeeded in determining which opposition groups would participate. We are certain that these talks must start in the next few days, Lavrov told reporters after Kerry and he met in a hotel here in Switzerlands largest city before they headed to the World Economic Forum in the Alpine ski resort of Davos. Peace talks between the Syrian government and many rebel and opposition groups are to start Monday in Geneva. But the specter of a delay looms because the countries organizing the talks have not agreed on which groups constitute the legitimate Syrian opposition and which should be designated terrorist outfits. Those labeled terrorist would be banned from the talks and be exempt from a cease-fire. [Russian airstrikes put Syrian peace talks in doubt] Kerry has been pushing for the talks to start soon to maintain momentum. The negotiations are meant to usher in a political transition for Syria that culminates in the formation of a new government within 18 months. The United States hopes to secure a guarantee that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will cede power, as U.S. forces look to focus on combating the Islamic State militant group, which controls vast territory in Syria and Iraq. But with Russia firmly in Assads corner, a guarantee of Assads departure appears unlikely. State Department spokesman John Kirby said Kerry, in his meeting with Lavrov, urged Russia to use its influence with Assad to allow aid workers to deliver food and medicine to civilians trapped by the conflict. Aid workers have not been able to reach stricken areas as a humanitarian crisis spawned by the war continues to spread. About 400,000 Syrians are trapped in besieged towns, according to estimates from the United Nations, and starvation deaths have been reported in the town of Madaya. The United Nations has accused the Assad government of blocking aid to people living in rebel-held areas. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told reporters in Davos that the need for peace talks is urgent. It was a dark beginning to the annual gathering of diplomats, government officials and business leaders in swanky Davos. Among those attending the World Economic Forum were diplomats from Iran and the United States, which are signatories to a recent historic nuclear deal, and Israel and Saudi Arabia, which fear that the nuclear accord empowers Iran in a way that threatens their security. In the keynote speech at the conference, Vice President Biden said the unraveling of the middle class in the United States and other countries threatens economic growth and global security. When people feel that their shot at a decent life is dashed, is eliminated, the inevitable human reaction is anxiety, frustration and anger, providing fertile terrain for reactionary politicians, demagogues peddling xenophobia, anti-immigration, nationalist, isolationist views, he said. It begins to shred our social fabric in each of our countries. It stirs instability. Biden said he sees the threat materializing in third political parties emerging in Europe and in a U.S. presidential primary contest that he described as the most unusual political campaign I have been engaged in. Biden and Kerry joined several other senior U.S. officials at the Davos forum this year, reflecting the intersection of foreign policy, national security and economic matters. Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter, Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and U.S. Trade Representative Michael B. Froman are attending. The alliance between Russia and the Syrian government goes back decades. Heres a bit of historical context that explains why Russia is fighting to prop up President Bashar al-Assad, its closest ally in the Middle East. (Ishaan Tharoor and Jason Aldag/The Washington Post) Almost certainly, the week will be far less triumphal for Kerry compared with last weekend, which was marked by the implementation of the Iran nuclear deal and the release, after 14 months of secret negotiations, of five Americans imprisoned in Iran. Senior State Department officials said Kerry plans to give a speech on Friday focusing on the diplomatic achievements of the Obama administration, particularly in the past year. He will cite the nuclear agreement, an international climate-change pact in Paris, the restoration of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the officials said. Frankly, things are not as bad as the press would have us believing, an aide said in highlighting the Kerry speech. It has been a very good run over the last six months, and I think he wants to make sure that people are aware of that. Read more: Freed Post reporter seeks to catch up with world The secret pact between Russia and Syria that gives Moscow carte blanche Vladimir Putin hints that Russia could grant asylum to Syrias president 23 starve to death in besieged Syrian town, medical charity says Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan places a carnation as he visits the site of Tuesday's suicide bomb attack at Sultanahmet square in Istanbul, Turkey January 15, 2016. (Yagiz Karahan/Reuters) A week before Nabil Fadli blew himself up among a group of German tourists, killing 10 people in Turkeys largest city, he walked into an immigration office and registered as a Syrian refugee. Dressed in a black jacket and black-and-white sneakers, the 28-year-old removed his woolen hat for photographs. He gave his fingerprints. This seemingly purposeful encounter with Turkish authorities appears counterintuitive for a soon-to-be suicide bomber in a nation awash with undocumented Syrians. But analysts say it may have been aimed at fomenting a backlash in a country that is home to more than 2 million refugees. Their presence is just one of many pressure points in Turkey that the militants can exploit if they try to create chaos. In the countrys southeast, where separatists have fought a long war for autonomy for Turkeys ethnic Kurds, violence has also been escalating. Turkey is now very vulnerable, said Nihat Ali Ozcan, a security expert at the think tank Tepav, based in Ankara. The Islamic State can exacerbate existing instability and push Turkey toward ethnic or sectarian war, he said. 1 of 17 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad The scene after deadly explosion in central Istanbul View Photos At least 10 dead and 15 injured in deadly blast. Caption At least 10 dead and 15 injured in deadly blast. Jan. 12, 2016 Police secure the area after an explosion in central Istanbul, where Turkish police sealed off a central square in the historic Sultanahmet district after a large explosion. Osman Orsal/Reuters Wait 1 second to continue. [Deadly suicide blast in Istanbul tourist area is linked to the Islamic State] Since the Islamic States formation two years ago, the militants and the Turkish state have avoided direct confrontation. The Islamic State has largely steered clear of provoking Turkey as it uses the country as a logistical base, ferrying fighters and smuggling oil and supplies across its border with Syria. Meanwhile, the Turkish state was accused of not doing enough to clamp down on the group. Now the picture has changed, Ozcan said. The Islamic State is steadily losing ground in Syria and Iraq, where the militants were pushed out of the western city of Ramadi last month. A bombing in the southern Turkish town of Suruc in July prompted a shift. Turkey vowed to strike Islamic State targets and allowed the U.S.-led international coalition the use of Incirlik air base in the countrys south for its air campaign. But so far, Islamic State attacks have not directly targeted the Turkish state, focusing instead on Kurdish or leftist gatherings. A bombing in Ankara at an October peace rally, attended largely by pro-Kurdish activists, killed 100 people the deadliest of its kind on Turkish soil leading Kurdish groups to criticize the government. Authorities blamed the Islamic State for the attack. ISIS has had a deliberate strategy of avoiding targeting pro- government Turks, said Soner Cagaptay, a Turkey expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, using an acronym for the Islamic State. They try to exploit existing fault lines. But the Istanbul attack took aim at the countrys vital tourism industry. It came as the United States pressures Ankara to deprive the Islamic State of its last foothold on the Turkish border, a 60-mile stretch between Kilis, Turkey, and Jarabulus, Syria. The bombing was a warning to Turkey, Cagaptay said. They are saying, We can blow people up in the middle of Istanbul, and we will if things continue on this track. Turkish police estimate that there are about 3,000 individuals linked to the Islamic State inside the countrys borders, according to IHS, a firm that offers global risk analysis. An additional 700 to 1,000 Turks are estimated to be fighting for the group in Iraq and Syria, it said. [What the Islamic State gains from the Istanbul terror attack] After the Istanbul attack, Turkish politicians have raised concerns about the security risk of the large Syrian refugee population, given Fadlis refugee status. Analysts speculated that, in a move similar to Fadlis registration in Istanbul, the Islamic State ensured that a Syrian passport was found at the scene of one of the bombings during the Paris attacks in November, in an attempt to stoke discord. There are 2 million Syrians in Turkey. These people can do anything. Its very dangerous, one Turkish shopkeeper said as he watched tourists lay tributes at the bomb site last week. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because the Turkish state had ordered a blackout on the reporting of the bombing in Istanbul. But his criticism was largely directed at Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for allowing the radical Islamist threat to grow. Erdogan is the king of ISIS, he said. In a news conference last week, Turkeys interior minister said the government is acting against the Islamic State, detaining 220 people with suspected links to the group in the week before the Istanbul attack. But the government still considers Kurdish separatists with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) its biggest security threat, analysts say. In the wake of the Suruc bombing, Turkey also opened a new front against the PKK. Claiming that both campaigns are part of the fight against terrorism, it launched dozens of airstrikes on PKK hideouts in northern Iraq. Following the Istanbul attack, Erdogan blamed the Islamic State, but he devoted most of his time to condemning the PKK. Still, Turkey is increasingly fighting on two fronts. Turkish artillery has bombarded Islamic State positions in Syria and Iraq in response to the attack. The real war, however, will start only when the Islamic State begins to attack the state more directly, which is likely as the United States and Turkey increasingly see eye to eye on Syria, Cagaptay said. Turkey will come down with full vengeance when ISIS decides to go after government targets, he said. Read more: Istanbul attack signals Islamic States apparent pivot toward tourism sector Unhappy in Europe, some Iraqis return home Iraqi forces capture main government compound in Ramadi Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world Smoke rises from sites hit by U.S.-led airstrikes in the town of Sinjar, Iraq, on Nov. 13, 2015. (Ari Jalal/Reuters) Kurdish forces in northern Iraq, close partners of the United States, have burned and bulldozed the homes of Arab families in actions that may constitute war crimes, Amnesty International alleged in a new report. Kurdish forces under the regional government, known as the peshmerga, have spearheaded a concerted campaign to displace Arab communities in northern Iraq, Amnesty said. A spokesman for the peshmerga said the allegations were false and that the destruction was caused by their enemies, the Islamic State. The allegations came as the United Nations highlighted the ongoing impact of the Islamic States war in Iraq, describing the continuing violence suffered by civilians as staggering. The United States has worked closely with Kurdish forces in their battles with the Islamic State since the extremists swept into northern Iraq in mid-2014, seizing the northern city of Mosul. The American military has backed the Kurdish fighters with training and airstrikes, helping them to push back Islamic State militants. But while Kurdish villagers and members of the minority Yazidi sect have been allowed to return to areas liberated from the Islamic State, Arabs are in some cases being barred from going home and their property has been destroyed, Amnesty said. The forced displacement of civilians and the deliberate destruction of homes and property without military justification may amount to war crimes, said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty Internationals senior crisis response adviser, who carried out the field research in northern Iraq. The report was based on investigations in 13 villages and towns, in Nineveh, Kirkuk and Diyala provinces, that peshmerga forces recaptured from the Islamic State between September 2014 and March 2015. It was corroborated by satellite imagery, Amnesty said. In Jalawla, east of Diyala province, residents are unable to return and the villages have been largely destroyed, the report said. However, Jabbar Yawar, a spokesman for the Kurdish peshmerga, said that hundreds of families have been allowed to go back in the past two weeks. These are false accusations, he said. He said houses had been heavily damaged by fighting and by booby traps set by Islamic State militants. Its normal for there to be destruction, and it was caused by Daesh, he said, using a term for the extremist group derived from its Arabic acronym. Shiite militia forces and Syrian Kurdish forces have been accused by rights groups of similar abuses in the past. Such forces have suspected Arabs of being sympathetic to the Islamic State militants, who are overwhelmingly Sunni Arabs. Some Kurdish officials have justified the displacement of Arab communities on security grounds, the report said. In some cases Yazidi militias and Kurdish armed groups from Syria and Turkey have also been involved, it said. The Kurdish government has been accused of using the conflict as a way of consolidating its grip on areas that have long been the subject of territorial disputes with Baghdad. The demographic makeup of such regions is particularly sensitive. Many Arab families moved into them and many Kurds were displaced during the rule of Saddam Hussein. The Kurdish government is now attempting to reverse past abuses,Amnesty said. In a separate report released Tuesday, the United Nations also documented alleged abuses by the Iraqi security forces, including militias, tribal forces and peshmerga. The United Nations also said it had received reports in August that peshmerga forces had demolished houses in Sunni-Arab-inhabited areas in Jalawla. The U.N. report said that the Islamic State continues to commit systematic and widespread violence and abuses of international human rights law and humanitarian law. It added, These acts may, in some instances, amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide. The United Nations said that the Islamic State has enslaved around 3,500 people in Iraq. The northern town of Sinjar was the site of some of the Islamic States most notorious abuses. Men were killed en masse and women and children captured and enslaved. Women who were taken as sex slaves were bought and sold for between $500 and $2,000 each, the report said. After Sinjar was recaptured by Kurdish forces in November, Kurdish officials said that Arab villagers who were not associated with the Islamic State would eventually be allowed home, but many Yazidi civilians said they would never be able to live side by side with them again. Yazidis openly took part in mass looting of Arab homes in the area, driving past checkpoints of Kurdish security officials in trucks stacked with goods from the houses of their Arab neighbors. Mustafa Salim contributed to this report. Read more Iraqis think the U.S. is in cahoots with the Islamic State, and it is hurting the war The hidden hand behind the Islamic State? Saddam Husseins. In Iraq, captured Yazidi women fear the Islamic State will force them to wed The Justice Departments pardon attorney charged with overseeing the review of clemency petitions from federal inmates is stepping down at the end of January because she is frustrated by a lack of resources for one of the presidents centerpiece criminal-justice initiatives, according to people close to her. The departure of Deborah Leff, who has been in her role since 2014, comes as the Obama administration struggles to process a backlog of more than 9,000 pending clemency petitions. As the president approaches the end of his second term, time is running out for his high-profile effort to offer clemency to certain nonviolent federal drug offenders harshly sentenced in the nations war on drugs. The Justice Department said it is confident that Leffs departure will not delay the administrations clemency initiative, and it hopes to find a replacement quickly. Justice spokeswoman Emily Pierce also said the department is asking Congress to more than double the number of lawyers assigned to the pardon office, from 22 to 46. Leff could not be reached for comment but released a statement saying that she has known President Obama for more than 20 years and that she thinks his commitment to reinvigorating the clemency process and the promise that holds for justice can change the lives of a great many deserving people. But Leff added: It is essential that this groundbreaking effort move ahead expeditiously and expand. A former trial lawyer, senior television producer and president of the Public Welfare Foundation, Leff was highly respected by sentencing reform advocates. She never got the staffing she needed, said one friend. She was very frustrated. Other people close to Leff said that she was passionate about making the clemency initiative work but had been unhappy for quite some time about not having enough resources. Obama has commuted the sentences of 184 federal inmates. White House Counsel Neil Eggleston said in December that Obama has commuted the sentences of more individuals than the past five presidents combined and that the president will grant more commutations and pardons this year. But advocates of sentencing reform are disappointed that the clemency process has not moved more quickly and that more of the thousands who have submitted clemency petitions have not had their sentences commuted. I think its terrible timing in terms of the push to get more clemency grants before the president leaves office, New York University law professor Rachel Barkow, a clemency advocate and co-founder of the Clemency Resource Center, said of Leffs departure. A senior Justice Department official said that the clemency initiative is of the highest priority for the department and that those involved have been working tirelessly to move petitions along as quickly as they can with a limited budget and legal restrictions. The Office of the Pardon Attorney oversees all pardons and sentence commutations and makes recommendations for ultimate approval of the president. Leffs recommendations first went to Deputy Attorney General Sally Quillian Yates, who then decided which petitions to recommend to Eggleston. To lose the head of the office thats running the clemency initiative is concerning, said Kevin Ring, vice president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums. We hope she is replaced by someone who is as dedicated, smart, passionate and committed as she was to getting these petitions through. Pierce said the department has been constrained by law in terms of how many resources and how much of its budget it can devote to the clemency initiative. Pierce said the department has provided additional funds to the pardon office within the confines of our budget and has detailed dozens of additional full- and part-time attorneys over the course of the clemency initiative. Despite the constraints, a Justice official said that lawyers are reading each of the thousands of clemency petitions that have been submitted and have prioritized the ones that best meet the new criteria set out by the administration. On Monday, White House spokeswoman Brandi Hoffine said that Obama thanks Ms. Leff for her years of service. The president is deeply committed to the clemency initiative and continues to believe that clemency is an important way to spotlight, and remedy, some of the many injustices in our criminal justice system, Hoffine said. Justice officials said that they expect to name a replacement before Leff leaves Jan. 31. A new pardon attorney will be named in the near future and we expect the work of the pardon attorneys office to continue apace as we identify and vet potential candidates for the presidents clemency priorities, Pierce said. The Justice Department is dedicated to the goals of the clemency initiative and is steadfastly committed to doing all it can to ensure fairness in the criminal-justice system. A general view of an oil dock is seen from a ship at the port of Kalantari in the city of Chabahar, 300km (186 miles) east of the Strait of Hormuz January 17, 2012. REUTERS/Raheb Homavandi By Jonathan Saul LONDON (Reuters) - United Arab Shipping Company is resuming business with Iran following the lifting of Western sanctions, despite the deep-seated political rivalry between the Islamic Republic and Saudi Arabia, one of the shipping line's main shareholders. A nuclear deal between world powers and Iran led to the removal on Saturday of international oil export prohibitions as well as restrictions on banking, insurance and shipping. Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia has grave reservations about the lifting of sanctions on its main regional rival, with which it cut ties earlier this month after its Tehran embassy was attacked following Riyadh's execution of a Shi'ite cleric. Other Gulf nations which hold stakes in UASC also have difficult relations with Iran. But a source close to the shipping line made clear that for UASC, commercial considerations were more important than political difficulties. Kuwait-headquartered UASC told Reuters on Wednesday it had "started accepting shipments to and from Iran". "It is important to note that a number of sanctions are still in place, therefore, the ability to accept cargo volumes to/from Iran will continue to be based on UASC's strict internal compliance check, which is in line with the international laws and applicable sanctions," it said in a statement. With U.S. sanctions still in place, which exclude U.S. individuals, banks and insurers from trading with Iran including business denominated in dollars, shipping and marine insurance sources say many foreign companies are likely to tread carefully. UASC, founded in 1976 and with corporate offices in Dubai, is owned by the governments of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Iraq. Qatar holds a 51 percent stake in the group, Saudi Arabia has 35 percent and the remaining nations have smaller holdings. Sunni Muslim power Saudi Arabia cut relations with Shi'ite Iran earlier this month. The crisis erupted when Saudi Arabia executed a Shi'ite cleric on Jan. 2 and Iranian protesters retaliated by storming and setting fire to the Saudi embassy in Tehran. Story continues In solidarity with Riyadh, Kuwait and Qatar subsequently pulled out their ambassadors from Tehran, and the United Arab Emirates downgraded its ties. Bahrain and two non-Gulf states, Djibouti and Sudan, severed relations completely. The source close to UASC told Reuters it was business as usual despite the tensions. "Whatever makes sense commercially and whatever benefits customers are a priority. That is how UASC looks at this matter," the source said. "Qatar and Saudi being the largest shareholders in UASC clearly do not impact its commercial activities." "Historically, since the company's foundation, politics normally stayed away from the board room," the source said. "UASC is commercially managed." The source said UASC weathered Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, even with staff relocating for a while. "If you look at the shareholding nations' relationships ... they were not always at the best levels," the source said. "Meetings continued and services were normal," the source said, referring to the 1991 Gulf War in which a U.S -led coalition forced Iraq out of Kuwait. UASC said prior to cutting ties, the Iranian market represented around 2 to 3 percent of the groups overall business. The container market has been hit by a slowdown in demand from Asia, especially China. The sector is also suffering one of its worst recessions due to worries over the world economy and a surplus of vessels available for hire, leading shipping lines to seek what opportunities they can. NEW OPPORTUNITIES UASC, which suspended all Iran business in April 2013, said it would initially service the Islamic Republic using smaller feeder ships via third parties that shipped containers to Iran from the United Arab Emirates. It aimed to resume direct calls as soon as possible. "For the shipping industry, the relaxation of sanctions is likely to create opportunities resulting in additional volumes due to the expected increase in infrastructure projects as well as the ability of Iranian consumers to access a wider range of foreign goods," the UASC statement said. Iran had depended on foreign ships for much of its imports, but has relied more on land routes and its own commercial fleet, particularly since 2012, as layers of sanctions led to an exodus of Western shipping firms, causing supply disruptions. In August last year the world's number three line, France's CMA CGM, and number four, Evergreen of Taiwan, were the first to resume direct services to Iran. In late December MSC of Switzerland, the world's second biggest container shipping line, resumed direct calls. The world's biggest line Maersk said this week it was "looking into how and when we can resume container transportation services to/from Iran", without providing further details. German container line Hapag Lloyd said this week it would continue to offer only feeder services, which started in November, adding it would handle "all Iran cargo with utmost care in terms of compliance". According to consultancy Alphaliner, UASC's market share, based on fleet capacity, is estimated at 2.6 percent versus nearly 15 percent for Maersk. (Editing by David Evans and Giles Elgood) Last weekend, the New York Times published a vile commentary by Jochen Bittner entitled "Can Germany Be Honest About Its Refugee Problems?" In the article, Bittner, a regular contributor to the German weekly Die Zeit who also writes for the Times, calls for tougher action against refugees. Bittner demands that German Chancellor Angela Merkel admit that she underestimated what he calls the refugee problem in Germany, declaring that potentially thousands of these men are criminals, with no other goal than to rob and betray their hosts. Among Bittners demands are the mass arrest and deportation of refugees. He writes: First, find a way to separate the free-riders and criminals from the refugees Then we need to deport those who have no right to stay, quickly and visibly Finally, we have to be willing to intern those who arrive without passports. In order to legitimise anti-refugee measures that recall those carried out by the Nazis against Jews in the 1930s, Bittner describes the events on New Years Eve in Cologne, Germany as a horror and paints a scenario in which hundreds of immigrants, totally out of control, sexually harassed German women. Bittner writes: More than 650 criminal complaints have been filed by women in Cologne regarding that night, and more than 150 in Hamburg, including two cases of rape. A 28-year-old women named Katja said: Suddenly I felt a hand on my bum, on my breasts, I was grabbed everywhere, it was horrific. I was desperate, it was like running the gauntlet. Over the space of 200 meters, I think I must have been touched about 100 times. Of the 50 suspects identified in Cologne, the bulk are from northern Africa, mostly from Morocco. These are uncomfortable facts. It is necessary to look more closely at the facts that have been disseminated so eagerly by the German and international media in order to whip up a racist campaign against millions of immigrants and Muslims and shift the political agenda further to the right. It is not a matter of asserting that nothing of significance happened in Cologne on New Years Eve. But precisely because of the massive political campaign being waged around this event, it is necessary to take nothing propagated by the media at face value and carefully check all the facts. It is first of all necessary to note that almost three weeks after the event, it remains completely unclear what really happened on New Years Eve in Cologne. Due to a lack of evidence, most of the criminal charges lodged with the police have been dropped. There is no reliable evidence of mass sexual assault and no evidence that what took place in Cologne exceeds what regrettably takes place on a regular basis at major gatherings in Germany where large amounts of alcohol are consumed. Even the bourgeois media, which is so keen to participate in the smear campaign against migrants, has been forced to admit this. On January 17, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung wrote: Given the slim evidence, any conclusions are premature. Investigators are still interrogating victims and witnesses and analysing mobile phone data and video material. Cologne has listed up to now 13 culprits, all from North Africa, none of whom are linked to sexual offenses Hamburg has now identified at least eight suspects who can be linked to sexual assaultincluding refugees as well as men who have lived in the city for several years. Whatever that means. On January 6, Die Zeit, the newspaper for which Bittner regularly writes, ran an article with the title When assumptions become facts, which warned that alleged facts could be distorted in reporting on Cologne and cautioned that nothing has been proved. The article argued that when the situation is not clear, journalists should not spread speculation, conjecture and prejudices, and added that it was important to separate fact from allegations. This warning has not prevented the German media, including the major dailies and weekly newspapers, from publishing racist covers and graphics and unleashing a xenophobic campaign unparalleled in Germany since the collapse of the Nazis. While the political thrust of this campaign is clear, there are a number of articles suggesting that many of the reports and videos relating to the alleged sexual assault of women by immigrants in Cologne are fictitious. On Monday the tabloid Bild, which has been full of lurid accounts of the sex mob in Cologne, conceded that, in connection with such a highly emotional issue, many lies are told. Reports, photos and even videos were rapidly circulated that had nothing to do with the disgusting sexual assaults in Cologne or were even fictitious, wrote a certain I. Rakoczy. Rakoczy mentioned, among other examples, a video of a blonde woman surrounded and harassed by aggressive Arab men that supposedly originated from New Years Eve and was widely spread on Facebook. Now Bild writes: BUT: the video is a fake! In fact, it features scenes from Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt, probably from the year 2012. (It is well known that in Cairo members of the notorious Egyptian Mukhabarat intelligence service organised sexual assaults during mass demonstrations on Tahrir Square in order to discredit the Egyptian revolution.) While it is difficult amid the din of the propaganda to establish which of the countless stories circulating in the media has any sort of factual basis, Bittners account is full of inconsistencies. Even a brief search on the Internet reveals that the Katja mentioned by Bittner, a certain Katja L., was already quoted on January 3 in the Kolner (Cologne) Express . Bittner fails to mention two things. First, the Kolner Express is not exactly unknown when it comes to false reporting and the presentation of allegations as fact. In November 2007, the German Press Council complained about the newspapers breach of the Press Code and its violation of journalistic ethics. The paper had reported on an accident and presented conjectures about the accident as facts. Bittner is also silent on the fact that the article in the Koln er Express contradicts an official report by the Interior Ministry in North Rhine-Westphalia on January 10. The paper reported that Katja L. was traveling with another young woman and both ran through this, in part, very aggressive group of men, in the course of which the young womans tights and slip were almost completely torn from the body. She had laid charges with the police on the same night, the newspaper stated. The report by the Interior Ministry states, however, that on the night of December 31, police headquarters in Cologne was informed by the police inspection Mitte of a sexual offence affecting three women on the night of December 31-January 1. It further states: According to the victims, only their outer garments were touched, and further measures by the criminal police were dispensed with. In his New York Times article, Bittner proposes that the German phrase of the year for 2015, welcoming culture, be supplanted by a new culture of honesty. To this, one can only respond that under a culture of honesty in Germany, someone like Bittner would not be permitted to spread his filth in the New York Time s and Die Zeit. Bittner is not a genuine journalist, but rather a political propagandist who maintains close links to numerous transatlantic, pro-government foundations and think tanks and espouses far-right political objectives in his articles. Bittners connections to foreign policy think tanks and government-affiliated foundations are as deep as his commitment to Germanys new war policy. Among other engagements, Bittner was European and NATO correspondent for Die Zeit from 2007 to 2011, and in 2008 and 2009 he was a participant and reporter for the Brussels Forum, a partner of the German Marshall Fund and the Bertelsmann Foundation. In an article published in Zeit Online in early February 2014 bearing the significant title Setting Course for the World, Bittner described in detail the preparation of a new militarist German foreign policy. What he refrained from mentioning was that he was himself a member of the working group that developed the new foreign policy under the heading New Power: New Responsibilities. On November 4, 2013, he penned a programmatic article in the New York Times entitled Rethinking German Pacifism, in which he argued for a more aggressive German foreign policy. In the commentary, he railed against the too deeply rooted pacifism of the German people and called for expanded military intervention. His current agitation against refugees serves the same purpose. The Russian government announced Tuesday that Russias Navy would reinforce its naval presence in the highly strategic Black Sea. The new deployments come in response to the buildup of US and NATO forces, Moscow says. According to a Russian officer who spoke to Novaya Gazeta, the deployment of additional warplanes and missile batteries, together with Russian forces in the Caucasus, will effectively cancel the danger posed by NATOs own increased military presence in the Black Sea. The Russian deployments have been played up in Washington as representing a grave threat to US naval superiority. In comments to the National Press Club, US Chief of Naval Operations John Richardson declared: The Russians just put out a maritime strategy which is very forward-leaning. We must respond to that threat. The Russian Navy is operating at a frequency and pace not seen for more than two decades, Richardson said. This is great power competition. As part of the US Navys Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority, US officials have been coordinating strategy in the region with governments along the Mediterranean and Black Seas, Richardson said. Late December saw media warnings of supposedly dangerous upgrades to the Russian Navy, as US Naval Intelligence issued a report, The Russian Navy: A Historic Transition. The US Navy warned that better naval technology will now enable Russia to more capably defend the maritime approaches of the Russian Federation, and provide Moscow with forward-layered defense of Russia and its maritime exclusive economic zone. According to the US Navy, Moscow seeks to project power regionally and advance President Putins stated goal of returning Russia to clear great power status. Russian forces now possess the ability to really disrupt access into the Black Sea, US General Ben Hodges, the commander of US Army Europe, warned in December. In reality, the imperialist powers and their regional allies are the ones responsible for the ever growing danger of a military confrontation between the West and Russia. Moscows decision to send more forces to the Black Sea is a predictable response to the efforts of the Western powers to impose maritime strangulation against Russia. The closure of Black Sea shipping lanes by a US-NATO blockade would mean the disruption of oil exports and other commercial flows that are desperately needed by Russias government and ruling elite, under conditions where falling oil prices are already straining Moscows budget. Indeed, a main purpose of the US-fomented crisis in Ukraine and ensuing struggle over Crimea has been to deprive Russia of access to the Black Sea. While the relentless militarism being pursued by Washington has compelled Russia to expand its operations, the US government is by far the leading instigator of violence and warfare globally. Russias own military operations are dwarfed by those of Washington. Russias bombing campaign in Syria and stepped up troop deployments to hot spots from Eastern Europe and Central Asia, including upcoming joint drills by Russian and allied forces in the Black Sea and ground forces in the Caucasus, have been driven by relatively defensive considerations. They are largely aimed at reinforcing Russias southern flank against Western-backed destabilization operations. The US-NATO military buildup in the Black Sea emerges from the broader geo-strategic aims of US imperialism to impose its hegemony over all of Eurasia and to eliminate Russia as a potential regional rival. Talk of Russian imperialism is intended to obscure this reality and provide ideological cover for the US war drive. Since February 2014, when US and German-backed fascist forces spearheaded the February 2014 coup in Kiev, Eastern Europe has been transformed into a NATO war camp. NATO has continuously built up its presence in the following period, announcing another major expansion of its command and control infrastructure in Eastern Europe, including the formation of new NATO sub-headquarters in Poland, Romania, the Baltic states and Bulgaria, in September 2015. The Polish government has emerged, along with a handful of US-backed right-wing regimes in Eastern Europe, as a spearhead of the war drive against Moscow. On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Polish and NATO officials were discussing the deployment of additional NATO troops to Poland on a permanent basis. In remarks from Brussels, Polish President Andrzej Duda called for troop deployments and pre-placement of weapons in Poland and across a broader section of central and eastern Europe. Today everything suggests that we need a significant presence of infrastructure and of troops there, on the ground, in central and eastern Europe. We need a good system of support for these forces, Duda said, essentially demanding the permanent occupation of these countries by NATO armies. Playing a similar role, Romanias government called Tuesday for a permanent NATO Black Sea Force, to include naval forces drawn from Romania, Germany, Italy, Turkey and the United States. South Koreas Ministry of Environment is turning up the heat on Volkswagen AG over its emissions scandal, saying the car makers local unit and its chief will be brought up on criminal charges. Rejecting the companys recall plans, the ministry said Tuesday it would file criminal complaints against Audi Volkswagen Korea and Managing Director Johannes Thammerwith the Seoul Central Prosecutors Office later in the day. Recall plans the company submitted to us earlier this month were insufficient and lacked key information, and thus are unacceptable, the ministry said in a statement. The company, which admitted in September to using software to cheat on U.S. emission testsof some of its diesel cars, is already being sued in U.S. federal court by the U.S. Department of Justice, which seeks billions of dollars in penalties, and faces civil lawsuits from shareholders and customers. After conducting its own emissions tests, South Korea in November fined Volkswagen 14.1 billion won ($12.3 million) and ordered a recall of more than 125,000 vehicles, including Volkswagen Tiguans and Beetles and Audi Q3s, Q4s and Q5s. The government said the recall plans had to show how the car maker would improve emissions results and maintain fuel efficiency after removing the cheating software. Volkswagen apologized to Korean consumers and on Jan. 6, the deadline, submitted a recall proposal. But the ministry said the proposal fails to explain how the problem occurred and how it would be fixed, as required by law. Under Korean environmental law, conviction could result in up to five years in prison and a fine of up to 30 million won. Mr. Thammer and other Volkswagen officials, including powertrain-development chief Friedrich Johann Eichler, visited the ministry earlier Tuesday to offer a technical briefing on the proposed fix. Audi Volkswagen Korea is doing its utmost to resolve the emissions issue, a representative for the Korean unit said in a statement. Well offer further explanation on our proposal. Sales of German cars in South Korea have soared since a 2011 free-trade deal cut duties on vehicles imported from Europe. Imports from Germany last year totaled 167,043 vehicles, up 23%, following a 29% increase in 2014. Nearly a third of all cars imported into South Korea in 2015 were Volkswagens and Audis. More at The Wall Street Journal A 57 Chevy and a Lost Love Memorialized Old Favorites Disappearing From Cars Indias Superrich Have Supercars, but Nowhere to Drive Them By Alex Bregman Former Secretary of Defense and CIA Director Robert Gates talked with Yahoo News and Finance Anchor Bianna Golodryga on Yahoo News Live about his new book, A Passion for Leadership, the Iran nuclear deal, and the 2016 election. On the Iran nuclear deal, Gates told Golodryga, I think we wanted the deal more than the Iranians did, and thats never a good position in a negotiation. He continued, The criticism of the deal could have been mitigated if the president simultaneously had an effect on what the ayatollah did, which was announce were not going to change our policy toward the other side at all. On the prisoner swap and ex-CIA contractor Robert Levinsons being left out, Gates said, I am troubled by the fact that there was no clarification of his status even, much less getting him back. On whether or not the U.S. can trust the Iranian government, Gates said flat out: No. He continued, They can be trusted to pursue their own self-interest. On the presidents strategy in the Middle East, Gates said, I dont think weve seen a clearly thought through strategy for dealing with the Middle East. He later said, I think the president and his advisers have underestimated ISIS all along. On Republican candidates campaigning on the notion that President Obama has diminished U.S. standing in the world, Gates said, There is a certain element of truth to that, but the other side of that coin I certainly havent heard any strategy coming out of any of the Republicans for dealing with any of these issues. You hear sort of grandiose threats and promises, and carpet-bombing, and so on and so forth. These arent strategies, and they were not even tactical realities. On the GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, I think that both Donald Trump and Sen. Sanders have tapped into a frustration on the part of the American people with their elected leaders whether its paralysis, polarization, or the inability to get anything done. And I think thats been the source of their appeal is [that] a lot of people are just angry. Story continues On Trumps proposed temporary ban on Muslims entering the U.S., Gates said it was not helpful to the fight against terrorism. He said, I think that you will see, if you havent already, this used by ISIS as a way of trying to reach [the] alienated living here in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world. On the split within the Republican Party and the potential for three parties, Gates said, I would hate to see it fragmenting. I think three parties becomes destabilizing in terms of how the Congress works. Its bad enough with two. He continued, As the Republican Party splits, the reality is it simply strengthens the Democratic Party. On the Democratic side and Secretary of State Hillary Clintons strengths and weaknesses as a leader, Gates told Golodryga: During the period I was there, I found her a good colleague: I found her tough-minded, and I found her quite realistic. The first time we really disagreed on anything was on the decision to intervene in Libya in early 2011. On Clintons role in the current turmoil in Libya, Gates said, I think her influence was pivotal in persuading the president to broaden the goal in Libya beyond just saving the people in Benghazi from Gaddafis forces and essentially focusing more on regime change. The president told me that it was one of the closest decisions hed ever made, sort of 51-49, and Im not sure that he wouldve made that decision if Secretary Clinton hadnt supported it. On Monday night, Track Palin eldest son of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was arrested and charged with assault, interfering with the report of a domestic violence crime, and possessing a weapon while intoxicated. The incident took place at the Wasilla, Alaska, home of his parents, where Track lives. Both Track and his 22-year-old girlfriend, who has not been identified, called 911 that night. She told police that she was afraid he was going to shoot himself with an assault rifle after he punched her in the eye and kicked her in the knee during a drunken argument. Charges were filed for domestic violence, among other counts, on Tuesday, just as Tracks mom Sarah Palin endorsed Donald Trump for president. STORY: Inside Bristol Palins Custody Battle Over Newborn Baby This isnt the first time Track has gotten into an intense physical altercation. He was involved in a drunken brawl at an Anchorage party in September 2014 that included other Palin family members, though no charges were filed. As dad to 4-year-old Kyla Grace, Tracks escapades arent just those of a hard-partying 26-year-old theyre the actions of a father whose young daughter will be influenced by his behavior. Though Kyla does not live with Track mom Britta Hanson, Tracks ex-wife, has physical custody Dr. Paul Hokemeyer tells Yahoo Parenting that she will be affected by her fathers arrest, especially under these circumstances. Young girls need fathers who are strong and just and fair, the family therapist says. Fathers who attack women are untrustworthy and unsafe. The message they convey to their daughters is that women are inferior creatures, unworthy of respect, who need to be surrogated to male power with force and pain. Its a horrific legacy. STORY: My Dad Went to Prison Like Teresa Giudice Hokemeyer explains that at 4 years old, Kyla will need help to understand her fathers aggression. In contrast to adults who have better tools to process it, children at this age lack the capacity to find their equilibrium and feel safe and in control of their lives, he says. Story continues Hanson told Radar that she didnt know about the incident between her ex-husband and his girlfriend, but that she and Track are on speaking terms. We have a cordial relationship about our daughter, she said. That is as far as it goes. Kylas greatest resource in dealing with the fallout from her fathers arrest will be her mom, plus other close family, like grandparents and aunts and uncles. Family members can help stabilize and recalibrate, says Hokemeyer, adding that its essential not to pretend that nothing happened. Children are incredibly intuitive and know when something is not right. Its critically important that family members surround the child with love at this time. Top photo: Track with ex-wife Britta Hanson. (Palin Family handout) Please follow @YahooParenting on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Have an interesting story to share about your family? Email us at YParenting (at) Yahoo.com. Donald Trumps presidential campaign announced on Tuesday that he had received the coveted and influential endorsement of former Vice Presidential Candidate and Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin. I am greatly honored to receive Sarahs endorsement. She is a friend, and a high quality person whom I have great respect for. I am proud to have her support, Trump said in a statement accompanying the announcement. Palin, who said she was proud to endorse Trump, was a relative unknown before being tapped to run alongside Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the 2008 presidential race. She resigned as governor of Alaska in 2009. Since then, Palin has remained active as a cable news commentator and reality television star. Through her media presence and political action committee, she has built a strong following among conservatives. Photos: Noel Vasquez/Getty Images; Jae C. Hong/AP I am proud to endorse Donald J. Trump for President of the United States of America, Palin said in a statement. News of the endorsement was first reported by the New York Times. Palins support should help Trump shore up his support from the conservative base as he works to fend off Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). Though Trump remains the frontrunner in national polls of the Republican presidential field, Cruz has gained ground in Iowa since last month, and the pair are currently nearly neck and neck in the RealClearPolitics average of polls in the Hawkeye State. Iowa, which is the first state to vote in the primaries, has strong evangelical and conservative constituencies, among whom Palins backing could prove influential. The Trump campaign noted that Palin has campaigned for many conservative candidates and claimed her endorsement is amongst the most sought after and influential amongst Republicans. The announcement also included a quote from Cruz, whom Palin endorsed when he was running for the U.S. Senate in 2012. I would not be in the United States Senate were it not for Gov. Sarah Palin She can pick winners, Cruz was quoted as saying. That Cruz quote is not a word-for-word reflection of comments Cruz made when he introduced Palin at the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference. At that event, Cruz did indeed make both those statements, but the Trump campaign reversed the order of his remarks. Trump is scheduled to hold campaign rallies in Norwalk, Iowa, and Tulsa, Okla., on Wednesday. According to his campaign, Palin will join him at both events. Donald Trump says Sarah Palin could play a role within his administration if hes elected president but doubts shed want to be his running mate. I dont think its something that she would want to do, Trump said on NBCs Today show on Wednesday, a day after the former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee endorsed the GOP frontrunner in Iowa. Shes been through that. I havent discussed anything with her about what shed do, Trump said, but shes somebody I really like and I respect, and certainly she could play a position if she wanted to. The real estate mogul and former Celebrity Apprentice host said Palin approached him about her endorsement which irked Trumps rivals, particularly Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, whom Palin endorsed when he was running for Senate in 2012. Every candidate wanted Sarah. Everybody. They all respect her a lot, Trump said Wednesday. She never said, Gee, Id like to do this, Id like to do that. She never made a deal, like so many people want to try to make deals. She just said, I really like whats going on. Its an amazing thing. Ive never seen anything like it in politics. Campaigning in New Hampshire, Cruz dismissed the endorsement, but not her. Regardless of what Sarah intends to do in 2016, I will remain a big, big fan of Sarah Palin, Cruz said. Story continues After a day of Trump trumpeting a major, surprise endorsement, the conservative firebrand took the stage with him at Iowa State University on Tuesday with a stump speech not unlike his. No more pussy-footing around, Palin said. What he has been able to do, which is really ticking people off, which Im glad about hes going rogue left and right. Palin endorses Trump at a rally in Ames, Iowa, on Tuesday. (Photo: Mary Altaffer/AP) Palin, who rocketed to political stardom when she was tapped to run alongside Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in the 2008 presidential race, has not held public office in more than six years and was dropped as a contributor by Fox News in June. But the 51-year-old has a huge following on Facebook and Twitter and remains an influential figure among tea party conservatives. Trump, she said, would be a commander in chief who would let our warriors do their job and go kick ISISs ass! After the event, Trump said, Were going to give em hell. Palin is expected to join Trump at two campaign events Wednesday, including a rally in Tulsa, Okla. Back in Trumps hometown of New York City, Palins endorsement was front-page news though perhaps not in the way his campaign had hoped. It was in Alaska too, appearing above coverage of the arrest of Palins son, Track, who was charged with assault, interfering with the report of a domestic violence crime and possessing a weapon while intoxicated in an incident involving his girlfriend. In Iowa, where Trump is trying to woo evangelicals ahead of next months caucuses, Palins stump for Trump made headlines, but it remains to be seen if her stamp of approval will translate into votes. I dont think its going to be a detriment, but I dont think its going to be a huge asset, Stephen Freese, a 56-year-old construction worker from Burlington, Iowa, who attended the rally, told the Associated Press. Bruce Dodge, a 66-year-old retiree who lives in Ankeny, Iowa, agreed. I dont think shes really credible anymore, he said. Robert Gates Former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the only person who held that position under two presidents for two different political parties, sat down with Business Insider this week and described what he sees as the two main factors that allowed ISIS to rise in the Middle East. Gates, who is promoting his new book, "A Passion for Leadership," gave his take on US policy in the Middle East. He said the Syrian civil war and the policies of Iraq's former prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, contributed to the terrorist group flourishing in the region more so than the 2003 US invasion of Iraq or eventual troop drawdown. "I think the primary reasons for the rise of ISIS are the Syrian civil war and the policies followed by the government in Baghdad," Gates told Business Insider on Monday. Even before civil war broke out in Syria in 2011, the regime of President Bashar al-Assad allowed "rat lines" of jihadis to travel back and forth across the country's border with Iraq, fueling the Iraqi insurgency that eventually turned into ISIS (also known as the Islamic State, ISIL, or Daesh). As Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan explained in their recent book, "ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror," Syrian authorities reportedly knew about the cross-border flow of jhadis, but did nothing to stop it. And even when the Assad regime did step in and try to make it appear as though it was working to stop extremists from moving between Syria and Iraq, the effort was "eclipsed by rampant corruption" as Syrian authorities took bribes to allow Syrians to cross the border. While the Assad regime was neglecting to stop the stream of jihadists from Syria into Iraq, Maliki was implementing sectarian policies in Iraq that further divided the population, making jihadist groups seem more appealing to some. But the US still did perhaps play a role in the burgeoning conflict as well, Gates suggested. Story continues "You can argue all day long whether the absence of US forces had an impact on" the rise of ISIS, Gates said, admitting that "the absence of senior leadership that was able to mitigate some of the sectarian conflicts in Iraq probably had some impact on the willingness of Maliki to follow these wrong policies." Gates explained that Maliki's sectarian policies, which often benefited Shiites at the expense of Sunnis, made it easier for Al Qaeda in Iraq, the predecessor to ISIS, to recruit. ISIS is a Sunni terror group and bills itself as a great protector during a time when disaffected Sunnis feel like they can't trust the Shia-dominated Iraqi government. Maliki's "policies were so negative toward the Sunnis in Iraq that I think many Sunnis believed that ISIS would be better for them than the government in Baghdad," Gates said. "Theyve learned, to their sorrow, that thats not true, but Maliki gave the Sunnis in Iraq no reason to resist ISIS because he was so anti-Sunni." Watch below: And while the US certainly didn't encourage these policies, the determination to end the war in Iraq and pull US troops out meant that the country had much less of a US presence on the ground at a time when Americans could have been useful in mediating these conflicts, Gates said. "Where I think our presence mattered was when we had senior military officers in Baghdad, they were able to get the leaders of Baghdad from all of the different groups together, Sunnis, Shia, Kurds, and mediate some of these disputes and minimize some of the negative policies that were being followed by Maliki," Gates said. The US leaving may have further emboldened Maliki to continue his anti-Sunni policies. "When we left, most of the leaders of the Iraqi Security Forces were people wed had a hand in training, and in some cases selecting, and they were pretty capable people," Gates said, referring to the Iraqi army that US forces helped train and build up. "Well, Maliki replaced all of those people with a bunch of political hacks who were incompetent and corrupt and no Iraqi soldier was going to fight for them, as we saw in Mosul." Sectarian divisions in Iraq have made it more difficult for the country to foster a sense of national unity that would inspire people from different backgrounds to come together and fight for the future of the country. In Mosul, Iraqi forces abandoned their posts as ISIS forces advanced on the city. The militants still control Mosul to this day. NOW WATCH: Kurds uncovered an overwhelming network of ISIS tunnels in Iraq More From Business Insider How the European Union Economy Has Reacted to the Refugee Crisis (Continued from Prior Part) Frances uncertain economic climate France (EWQ) is one of the leading economies of the European Union (FEZ) (EZU) now facing a serious problem of unemployment. Frances unemployment is rising on a yearly basis. President Francois Hollande has set out a 2 billion euro job creation plan in an attempt to lift France from its state of economic emergency. The country is facing this problem because of a large amount of immigration happening in the nation. The higher number of migrants has been not only creating social disturbances but also affecting the nations economic and political environments. This has led to an uncertain economic climate in France. Frances Presidents new strategy to handle unemployment As the populations in all European nations are already aging, its difficult for these nations to realize economic development. Immigration is the way by which the continent can develop some economic activity, but it also opens the door for political and social disturbances. If a country is not able to produce enough workers domestically, it can import workers, fulfill the labor requirement, increase domestic demand, and expand operations to hire new workers. This is the logic of economic survival. Frances president wants to implement a strategy through which Frances citizens will benefit: He has set out a plan for 2 billion euro job creation plans, with an additional 500,000 vocational training schemes to be created. Companies that have less than 250 staff will get subsidies if they employ a young and unemployed person for six months or more. Money for this plan would come from savings in other areas of public spending, and these 2 billion euros will be financed without any new taxes. As Frances unemployment rate is 10.5% against Germanys 6.3%, Hollande is taking the necessary action to come out from this problem. We could expect a marginal growth in Frances major companies such as Orange (ORAN), LOreal (LRLCY), and Sanofi (SNY) due to this employment plan. Story continues In the next part of this series, well analyze how Germany (EWG) is reacting to this crisis. Continue to Next Part Browse this series on Market Realist: French Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron leaves after the first weekly cabinet meeting of the year at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, January 4, 2016. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes PARIS (Reuters) - French Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron denied on Wednesday he had threatened to resign over the speed of reforms in France, but urged his own government to go further than a job plan unveiled earlier this week. French media had reported talk that the popular former investment banker, who advocates more deregulation of broad sectors of the French economy, had not ruled out resigning if reforms did not go ahead. "When I have something to say, I do it myself," Macron told BFM TV. "I don't talk via others, I don't let others say things, and I don't have the indecency of threatening to resign," he said. In a sign of support for Macron, Hollande mentioned the minister several times in his speech this week and said a job plan centred on training schemes for the jobless would go hand-in-hand with Macron's push to tear down legal barriers to practicing many professions. The 38-year old minister said the plan complemented the pro-business reforms carried out for the last several years to improve French competitiveness, but urged the government to do more. "I think we must go even further," he said. "These are very important measures, the president has opened a path, we must rush into it, give a push, it's also my role in government." However, he said a raft of measures to open up many professions, such as hairdresser and baker, that he had hoped to present in a bill dubbed by the media "Macron 2", will instead be incorporated into other bills sponsored by other ministers. (Reporting by Yann Le Guernigou, writing by Michel Rose Editing by Jeremy Gaunt) Robert Gates Former US defense secretary Robert Gates isn't optimistic that the landmark July 2015 nuclear deal with Iran will lead the country to halt any of its disruptive policies in the Middle East or its support for terrorist groups. In an interview with Business Insider, Gates, who spent nearly 27 years in the CIA and was the only cabinet secretary to have served under Barack Obama and George W. Bush, said that he didn't believe the nuclear deal would have a moderating impact on Iranian behavior or lead Tehran to become a more responsible international actor. "The notion that betting that this regime is going to temper its behavior in the region because of this nuclear deal I think is mistaken," Gates told Business Insider. "I think that will not happen." iran emad rocket test In the six months since the nuclear deal was reached, Iran has tested two nuclear-capable ballistic missiles in violation of UN Security Council resolutions, fired live missiles within 1,500 yards of a US aircraft carrier, and continued its support for the Assad regime in Syria and for Shiite militia groups in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. At the same time, Iran agreed to a prisoner swap with the US that secured the freedom of five US citizens detained in Iran in exchange for the US dropping charges against seven Iranians accused of violating sanctions against the country and removing several regime-linked officials from Interpol's "red notice" list. Iran also quickly freed 10 US sailors detained in Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf on January 12 although not before propaganda images of the captive troops were broadcast on Iranian state media. An undated picture released by Iran's Revolutionary Guards website shows American sailors sitting in a unknown place in Iran. REUTERS/sepahnews.ir/TIMA/Handout via Reuters Overall, Gates doesn't think that Iran's long-term behavior will change that much after the nuclear deal, or that the deal can overcome the now 36-year-old regime's religiously motivated ideology or temper its regional ambitions. Story continues "This is a country that has a long history under the revolutionary government," says Gates. He recalled his involvement in the "very first official US meeting" with members of the Islamic Republic of Iran's government, when Zbigniew Brzezinski, then the US national-security adviser, met with high-ranking regime officials in Algiers, Algeria, just three days before the 1979 US embassy seizure. "As I like to tell people, that began my now more than three-decades-long quest for the elusive Iranian moderate," says Gates. kerry zarif Gates also doesn't expect Iran's geopolitical objectives to change as the result of the nuclear deal. He told Business Insider that he believes Iran will still harbor ambitions of building a nuclear weapon even as the deal is implemented. "My view is that the belief that Iran over time is going to evolve into a regular nation state and abandon its theological revolutionary underpinnings, its aspirations in the region, or even its aspirations for nuclear weapons is unrealistic," Gates said. Under the nuclear agreement, Iran agreed to never "seek, develop, or acquire any nuclear weapons." On one of the agreement's most important points, Gates isn't quite willing to take Tehran as its word. iran nuclear reactor Gates actually urged members of Congress to vote to implement the deal during the runup to the September 2015 deadline for congressional review of the agreement, arguing that the consequences of canceling the accord after its completion outweighed the risks of implementing it. But he still criticized the deal's provisions, stating that the US had gotten "out-negotiated" and calling the deal "flawed." In an interview with Business Insider, Gates raised the possibility that US negotiators did not secure as strong a deal as possible. "The administration told us through April of last year that they had to have anywhere, anytime inspections," said Gates, in reference to the possible degree of access international inspectors would have to sensitive Iranian nuclear sites over the life of the agreement. "That was given up in the deal, so I worry about verification." "I'm not sure we couldn't have gotten a better deal if we hadn't been eager," Gates added. Gates Bush Condi Gates' suspicion of Iran's long-term intentions stems in part from his experience overseeing the US campaign in Iraq as Pentagon chief. As secretary of defense, Gates was involved in a US war effort in which Iranian-backed militia groups were a consistent US military adversary. If this is the case, Gates' concerns might have been vindicated by last week's kidnapping of three American contractors in Baghdad at the hands of an Iranian-linked Shiite militia group. He also witnessed Iran's attempts to meddle in Iraq's internal politics during the closing years of the Iraq War, after the US troop "surge" and the "Sunni awakening" succeeded in defeating Al Qaeda in Iraq and pacifying much of the country. In his interview with Business Insider, Gates identified the strong-arm sectarian policies of former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki as one of the contributing factors to the rise of ISIS. Maliki was closely identified with Tehran and was reelected as prime minister in 2010 as the result of Iranian political maneuvering. Gates might have difficulty investing too much confidence in a regime whose strategies he experienced first-hand during his years at the Pentagon. Overall, Gates thinks that the nuclear deal only creates a greater urgency for the US counterbalancing Iranian moves in the Middle East. "It seems to me that agreement needs to be paralleled by a very aggressive American strategy of working with our allies, both Arab and Israeli in the region to counter Iranian meddling, support of terrorism, and other activities," Gates said. He continued: "We need the same kind of strong-minded strategy in dealing with Iran in its behavior in the region that other countries are looking for, and there's no reason for that to be contradictory to the" nuclear agreement. Pamela Engel contributed to this report. NOW WATCH: Former Defense Secretary calls out Trump for 'over-the-top ISIS plan More From Business Insider Berlin (Reuters) - Germany's Justice Minister Heiko Maas has criticized unequal compensations for U.S. and European customers of car maker Volkswagen following an emissions scandal last year, a spokesman said on Wednesday. "Minister Maas already a few weeks ago said that he considers an unequal treatment of U.S. and German, European customers unacceptable," a ministry spokesman said during a regular news conference. On Tuesday, European Industry Commissioner Elzbieta Bienkowska in a letter to VW's chief executive demanded that U.S. and European customers will be compensated in the same way after the company's emissions scandal. (Reporting by Sabine Siebold; Writing by Tina Bellon; Editing by Michael Nienaber) (Recasts, adds detail, context, quotes) By Angeliki Koutantou ATHENS, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Greece received an improved bid for its largest port on Wednesday, with the 368.5 million euros ($402 million) offered by Cosco Group pushing the Chinese company closer to a deal that would step up the privatisation programme agreed with Greece's international lenders. Privatisations have been a key element in Greece's bailouts since 2010 but have reaped only 3.5 billion euros because of political resistance and bureaucratic hurdles. The leftist government of Alexis Tsipras halted the sale of a majority stake in Piraeus Port and other state assets after winning elections in January last year. The process resumed under the terms of a third international bailout for Greece of up to 86 billion euros ($94 billion) in August. The board of the country's privatisation agency (HRADF) met on Wednesday to evaluate Cosco's offer for a 67 percent stake in Piraeus Port, declared Cosco as the highest bidder and invited it to submit the required documents to name the company as a preferred investor. The sale, if successfully concluded, will be the second large privatisation for Tsipras's government since it took power. Athens sealed a 1.2 billion euro leasing deal for 14 regional airports with Germany's Fraport in December. IMPROVED OFFER Cosco has been operating one of the port's container terminals since 2009 and is investing 230 million euros to build a second terminal at the port. HRADF announced last week that the company was the sole bidder for Piraeus Port Authority (OLP), the manager of the port, which is a gateway to Asia, eastern Europe and north Africa. It had asked Cosco to improve its initial bid, which two sources close to the process said was about 300 million euros. Cosco is now offering 22 euros per share, HRADF said, which translates into a premium of 69.8 percent based on Wednesday's closing price of 12.95 euros a share, according to Reuters calculations. Story continues Under the deal, Cosco will acquire a 51 percent stake in the port and the remaining 16 percent once its concludes mandatory infrastructure investments over five years. Total investments will be about 350 million euros over 10 years, while the state will collect additional revenue of 410 million euros under the 36-year concession deal between OLP and the government, the agency said. Piraeus Port handled 16.8 million passengers and 3.6 million 20-foot equivalent units of containers in 2014. Greece has ensured that the company will keep its headquarters and listing in Athens, HRADF said. The port's workers and some local governors have opposed the sale, fearing it will lead to job cuts and poor revenues for the state. (1 US dollar = 0.9157 euro) (Editing by Larry King and David Goodman) * Private funding for India start-ups halved in Q4 -report * Venture capitalists turn picky in economic uncertainty * PM's $1.5 bln fund small vs investor flood of recent years * Weak start-ups could undermine huge e-commerce potential By Himank Sharma MUMBAI, Jan 20 (Reuters) - After pumping billions of dollars into Indian Internet start-ups in the last 24 months, global investors are cutting that flood back a trickle as dreams of huge online sales are clouded by soaring valuations and still-distant profits. Even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi lines up a four-year, $1.5 billion government fund to help startups create jobs, entrepreneurs fear that may prove a drop in the ocean. Venture capitalists have already tightened purse strings as ripples from China's economic slowdown lap around the world. According to a new report by CB Insights and KPMG, venture capital investments in India's start-ups nearly halved to $1.5 billion in fourth-quarter 2015 from July-September. Faltering start-ups could mean India missing out on huge potential: Bank of America Merrill Lynch has forecast Indian e-commerce will surge to $220 billion by 2025 from about $11 billion last year. "While the first phase of funding was about investing in big markets...now investors want to look at how entrepreneurs manage their business and compete while investing," said Niren Shah, India head of Norwest Venture Partners, said. Modi's plan for newly launched companies includes tax breaks on their first three years of profits, as well as their investors. But most of India's tech startups make losses, not profits. They follow a discount-driven business model aimed at generating revenue from customers that buy and sell goods and services, touting growth in 'gross merchandise value' on their platforms as a metric to attract funding. Two of the country's best known e-commerce retailers - Flipkart and Snapdeal - have attracted big-name backers like Accel Partners, Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings and Japan's SoftBank Group Corp, enthused by growth potential in a country where only 252 million of a population of 1.3 billion people have Internet access. Story continues Yet the pair have notched up huge losses as they compete for increasing sales through deep discounts, according to banking and industry sources. Flipkart and Snapdeal did not immediately respond to Reuters' emails seeking comment. "In the last few years, people were looking at gross merchandise value (when considering investment)," said Radhika Aggarwal, co-founder and chief business officer of online marketplace Shopclues.com. "I think that changed very quickly in the second half of last year." Shopclues.com raised funds last week from investors including Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC and Tiger Global that valued the firm at more than $1.1 billion - helped by detailing plans to hit profitability by the first half of next year, Aggarwal said. In early warning signs for the country's start-up industry, firms from food delivery companies TinyOwl and Foodpanda to SoftBank-backed property firm Housing.com have either cut jobs or shrunk their services. At TinyOwl, last November around 20 employees even held their boss hostage for two days after it announced job cuts. "We are in the middle of this funding winter and global issues such as a slowdown in China could likely have a bigger impact this year," said Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder of mobile wallet Paytm, backed by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (Writing by Sumeet Chatterjee; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell) JAKARTA, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Freeport Indonesia, a unit of U.S. miner Freeport McMoRan Inc, will be granted a copper concentrate export permit when its current one ends this month, the country's mines minister said on Wednesday. Sudirman Said told reporters that the company would still be required to pay a 5 percent export tax on copper concentrates because of slow progress building a domestic smelter, and would have to deposit funds into an escrow account. (Reporting by Bernadette Christina Munthe; writing by Nicholas Owen; editing by Jason Neely) (Adds details) ROME, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Matteo Renzi met Economy Minister Pier Carlo Padoan and chiefs from the Bank of Italy on Wednesday to discuss the banking sector as a sell-off in financial stock continued for a third day, a source in Renzi's office said. The source said the authorities were convinced that past and future measures would help some banks merge, saying this consolidation was "needed more than ever". The measures will also help financial firms manage the problem of bad loans in a "more rapid and efficient fashion." Speaking after the meeting, Padoan said the on-going turbulence on the Italian stock market reflected political and economic instability from abroad, adding that Italy's own economic system was solid. "Italy continues to grow and is considered an attractive place to invest in," Padoan told a convention. Italian bank shares have lost some 20 percent so far this year, with investors increasingly concerned about 200 billion euros ($218 billion) of non-performing loans that are unlikely to be repaid and are weighing heavily on the sector. Monte dei Paschi, Italy's third largest bank, has been especially hard hit, plunging 15 percent on Monday and 14.4 percent on Tuesday. It was suspended from trading several times after falling some 18 percent on Wednesday. With no end in sight to the sell off, Renzi met Padoan and both the governor and director general of the Bank of Italy -- Ignazio Visco and Salvatore Rossi respectively. "The recent financial turbulence is being followed by the relevant authorities with great cooperation, harmony and attention," the source in Renzi's office said. Tensions between the prime minister and Bank of Italy surfaced last year following the rescue of four small Italian lenders that left thousands of investors out of pocket. Politicians questioned whether the central bank could have done more to prevent the collapse of the banks -- a suggestion rejected by Visco. (Additional reporting by Giuseppe Fonte; Writing by Crispian Balmer, editing by Gavin Jones) By Gulsen Solaker ANKARA (Reuters) - Two jailed Turkish editors, accused of spying and helping a terrorist group, have told Reuters in a faxed message from prison that their arrest was designed to send a warning to journalists. Can Dundar, editor-in-chief of the left-wing Cumhuriyet newspaper, and its senior editor Erdem Gul were arrested on Nov. 26 over the publication of footage purporting to show the state intelligence agency helping send weapons to Syria. The issue of Turkey's involvement in Syria is particularly sensitive as the NATO member comes under pressure to take a more active role in the fight against Islamic State militants there. President Tayyip Erdogan has cast the newspaper's coverage as part of a bid to undermine Turkey's standing on the world stage. "Our arrest is a clear message aimed at the press, saying: 'Don't write.' This is a direct drive at self-censorship," the two journalists said in a handwritten fax, cleared by a prison committee that reads inmates' correspondence. A senior government official denied there was any political agenda behind the investigation and said it was purely a legal matter. "There is an open breach of law. Such criticism of the government is unacceptable," the official said. The detention of the two journalists sparked protests in Turkey as well as condemnation from U.S. and European Union officials, concerned that Erdogan and the government are silencing critical voices and exerting too much influence over courts after winning an outright majority in a Nov. 1 election. Erdogan is a vital partner for both Washington and the EU in efforts to combat Islamic State, end Syria's civil war and curb the flow of migrants and refugees to Europe, all factors that may prompt foreign governments to pull their punches over his human rights record. Gul and Dundar, who is also a popular documentary filmmaker, are accused of espionage and aiding a terrorist group. They insist their arrest had no legal basis. "HEAVY PRICE" Cumhuriyet, one of Turkey's oldest newspapers and affiliated with parliament's secular opposition, published photos, videos and a story in May which it said showed intelligence officials transporting arms to Syria in trucks, allegedly to opposition fighters. Erdogan has said the trucks, which were stopped that day by soldiers near the city of Adana en route to the Syrian border, belonged to the intelligence agency. He has said prosecutors had no authority to order the trucks be searched, and that they acted as part of a plot to discredit the Turkish government. At the time, he vowed Cumhuriyet "would pay a heavy price. I won't let go of this." Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who succeeded Erdogan as leader of the governing AK Party, has said a court should try Dundar and Gul for threatening Turkey's strategic interests but that they should not be jailed ahead of that trial. However, they remain in prison some 80 km (50 miles) west of Istanbul, with no indictment or trial date set. "In a country with imprisoned journalists, the media is already under heavy pressure to self-censor. This ... poses a mortal danger for the whole country," the pair said in their faxed statement, dated Jan. 10, in response to written questions from Reuters submitted through their lawyer. The fax was signed by Gul, but the lawyer, Tora Pekin, said he had written on behalf of both journalists. The delay in receiving the response was due to prison rules that allow inmates to send faxes only three days a week, Pekin said. Turkey has about a dozen journalists serving sentences or in pre-trial detention. According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, only China, Egypt, Iran and Eritrea have more. They are mostly leftists, Kurds or members of a religious order led by Fethullah Gulen, a U.S.-based preacher sought by police on terrorism charges in connection with stories his followers ran in papers and TV channels close to the movement. The government says they are all in prison for promoting terrorism or engaging in anti-state activities rather than simply for their journalistic work. Erdogan said in 2014 Turkey has the "world's freest press" because it tolerates insults, defamation and racism, including against him and his family. The two editors were held in solitary confinement for 40 days before being moved to the same prison ward, they said. "Because we think our arrests are not legal but political, it is difficult to guess how long it will last. Our arrests are in themselves a violation of the current law." Their lawyer said the Justice Ministry has blocked applications by more than 100 journalists, as well as foreign officials and non-governmental organizations, to visit them. Only their lawyers, family members and lawmakers are allowed to see the men. Government officials say their detention is a matter for the judiciary, not a political affair, and that as such they cannot intervene. (Writing by Ayla Jean Yackley; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Mark Trevelyan) By Mirwais Harooni and Andrew MacAskill KABUL (Reuters) - A Taliban suicide car bomber targeted a minibus carrying journalists working for a private Afghan television channel on Wednesday, killing seven employees during evening rush hour close to the national parliament in Kabul, officials said.It was the latest in a series of suicide attacks in the Afghan capital that coincide with renewed efforts to revive a peace process with Taliban insurgents that broke down in July.The bomber targeted a vehicle owned by a company that works with Tolo News, Afghanistan's first 24-hour news channel, Kabul Police Chief Abdul Rahman Rahimi told reporters. "Such brutal and cowardly attacks can never stop us serving our country, people and protecting democracy," said Karim Amini, a reporter for the channel.Television footage showed the black burned-out shell of the vehicle where fire had torn through the roof and windows. The Taliban openly threatened to target the television channel last year after it reported allegations of summary executions, rape, kidnappings and other abuses by Taliban fighters during the battle for Kunduz.The Islamist insurgents briefly captured the northern city in October, their biggest success in the 15-year insurgency, before being ousted by government forces.The Taliban, who are fighting to topple the Western-backed government in Kabul and reimpose strict Islamic law, said they carried out the attack and issued another grim warning."If they do not stop their evil activities this will not be the last attack on them," Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, said in an emailed statement. Tolo News has been one of the most active media operations in the country for years, employing dozens of journalists, many in volatile provinces. The latest attack adds a dangerous new complication for local journalists working in a country already ranked as low as 122 out of 180 in the World Press Freedom Index, a gauge of media freedom compiled by the group Reporters Without Borders. At least 25 people were wounded in the bombing, including women and children, police officials said.The attack took place near the Russian Embassy in west Kabul. The explosion sent smoke billowing into the sky and was powerful enough to be heard miles away. Kabul has seen at least six bomb attacks since the new year. On Sunday, a rocket landed near the Italian embassy in Kabul, wounding two security guards.Envoys from Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States met in Kabul this week to explore ways to find a negotiated end to 15 years of war, and urged the Taliban to join peace talks.Separately on Wednesday, the U.S. government issued a warning that it had received reports militants were planning to attack a hotel or guesthouse frequented by foreigners in Kabul. There was no further information regarding the timing, location or method of attack, the statement said. (Editing by Ruth Pitchford and Katharine Houreld) teresa halbach When the podcast "Serial" went viral, fans on Reddit and elsewhere set about looking for clues. The same is now happening for the Steven Avery case at the center of Netflix's "Making a Murderer" docuseries, and viewers have discovered a fascinating new piece of evidence. Jerry Buting, one of the original lawyers defending Avery in the trial for the murder of Teresa Halbach, recently spoke with Rolling Stone and said that internet sleuths had found something he and his partner had missed. "We were only two minds," Buting said. "What I'm discovering is that a million minds are better than two. Some of these people online have found things with a screen shot of a picture that we missed." One of the crucial pieces of evidence dug up by those sleuths is a detail found in a common photo of Halbach before she went missing and died. It shows the victim with a key chain that has a number of keys on it. During the investigation of Halbach's murder, the police found a contested key to Halbach's car in Avery's home. But they only found the one key not the rest of the keys seen on her key chain, which were never recovered. Had this evidence been introduced in Avery's trial, it would've bolstered the argument that the sole car key, found weeks after an initial search of the Avery property, was planted. And if Avery does ever get another trial, it could help him still. NOW WATCH: A law professor tricked his students into lying, which shows why you should never talk to police More From Business Insider VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Jan 20, 2016) - Medgold Resources Corp. (TSX VENTURE:MED) (the "Company" or "Medgold") is pleased to announce it has established a wholly-owned subsidiary in the Republic of Serbia, and has subsequently applied for a 100 sq. km exploration licence targeting newly identified epithermal-porphyry mineralization in the country. Dan James, the President of Medgold, said: "We're excited to establish ourselves in Serbia which has a long and rich history and culture of mining. The country has a tremendous metal endowment and Serbia's mining industry enjoys high-level government support. Our decision to expand our generative exploration effort into Serbia is timely. The on-going contraction of the gold exploration industry worldwide has created major opportunities for risk-tolerant junior exploration companies like Medgold. The cost of exploration has decreased significantly and there are many dormant exploration projects which can be acquired quickly and at low cost. Exploration of our projects in Portugal is on-going and well-funded through our JV agreement with Centerra, and we've spent a lot of time recently reviewing the exploration potential in other regions of Europe. Serbia is a logical place for us to expand our efforts. We're looking forward to commencing field work in the spring." Initial Target Medgold's first exploration target in Serbia has been the focus of reconnaissance geochemical rock sampling and remote sensing studies. The licence application has been made, and management expects the licence to be granted in approximately 90 days. Medgold has engaged a full-time senior Serbian geologist who has more than 12 years of experience in exploration in the region, and is a co-discoverer of the Kiseljak and Yellow Creek porphyry Cu-Au deposits in Serbia. In addition, we have retained the Serbian consultancy, Jantar Group, who have been providing geological services for over 20 years. Story continues The Company intends to apply the same exploration approach in Serbia that it used in Portugal; that is, identifying the key macro controls on metal deposition in the region, and thereby identifying the local deposit-scale controls on mineralization. The Company is in a very positive position in Portugal. Our key projects - which include 6 exploration licences - are joint-ventured to Centerra with a proposed exploration budget of US$1.4m for 2016. Management expects to drill-test the Boticas project with a 3,000m diamond core programme in the late spring of this year. Boticas has been recognized by the Portuguese government as a project of Strategic National Importance. We are also awaiting the issuance of the Caramulo licence in early 2016, which is a large gold exploration area located approximately 60 km due south of the Lagares project. As well, Medgold is expecting repayment of the Boticas and Chaves bonds from Centerra, plus additional bond repayments for several other licences which are in the process of relinquishment. In total, management is anticipating about C$600k in cash in-flow throughout the year. This cash will cover G&A costs through 2016 and a portion of our exploration costs in both Portugal and Serbia. Qualified Person David Clark, PGeo, consulting geologist to the Company, is a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 -- Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects. Mr. Clark has reviewed and approved the disclosure of technical information contained in this news release. About Medgold Medgold is a European-focused TSX-V listed exploration and development company targeting gold properties in northwest Iberia and the under-explored gold provinces of southern Europe. Run by a highly experienced management team with a successful track record of building value in resource companies, Medgold is aiming to become a leading European gold company. Additional information on Medgold can be found on the Company's website at www.medgoldresources.com and by reviewing the Company's page on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD Daniel P. James, President & Director Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Forward-looking statements Certain statements contained in this news release constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation. All statements included herein, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements and include, without limitation, statements about the proposed acquisition of a licence in Serbia, the exploration work proposed on the Company's Portugal projects, and the expected receipt of cash payments during 2016 and the planned use thereof. Often, but not always, these forward looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "estimate", "estimates", "estimated", "potential", "open", "future", "assumed", "projected", "used", "detailed", "has been", "gain", "upgraded", "offset", "limited", "contained", "reflecting", "containing", "remaining", "to be", "periodically", or statements that events, "could" or "should" occur or be achieved and similar expressions, including negative variations. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by forward-looking statements. Such uncertainties and factors include, among others, the issuance of a licence in Serbia; changes in the proposed exploration work on the Company's Portugal projects; the receipt of anticipated cash payments in 2016 and use of such funds; changes in general economic conditions and financial markets; the Company or any joint venture partner not having the financial ability to meet its exploration and development goals; risks associated with the results of exploration and development activities, estimation of mineral resources and the geology, grade and continuity of mineral deposits; unanticipated costs and expenses; and such other risks detailed from time to time in the Company's quarterly and annual filings with securities regulators and available under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results to differ from those anticipated, estimated or intended. Forward-looking statements contained herein are based on the assumptions, beliefs, expectations and opinions of management, including but not limited to: that the Company's stated goals and planned exploration and development activities in Serbia and Portugal will be achieved; that the Company will receive the anticipated cash payments during 2016 and will spend such funds as planned; that there will be no material adverse change affecting the Company or its properties; and such other assumptions as set out herein. Forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and the Company disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise, except as required by law. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. By Alexandra Alper and Dave Graham MEXICO CITY, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Port operator APM Terminals, part of Denmark's A.P. Moller-Maersk, has dropped Mexico's ICA construction firm from a $300 million port project after it ran out of cash and could not continue work, two people familiar with the matter said. ICA, which has defaulted on debt payments, was dismissed at the end of December from the project to build a new container terminal in the major Mexican Pacific port of Lazaro Cardenas, the people said. As early as 2013, ICA's liquidity problems caused delays, forcing APM Terminals to negotiate an extension to the project deadline with the government, one of the people said. The project is nearly two-thirds complete, the person added. Representatives for ICA and APM Terminals did not immediately reply to requests for comment. The cancellation of the Lazaro Cardenas contract raises questions about ICA's immediate prospects after it said it would default on two separate interest payments totalling about $37 million in order to privilege operations. The company, hit by a sinking peso that makes its substantial dollar debt more expensive, has said it would present a preliminary restructuring plan in February. The project to design, build, and operate a new container terminal in Lazaro Cardenas for 30 years was awarded in 2012 to a consortium led by APM Terminals, ICA said at the time. ICA, APM's sole partner with a 5 percent stake, was given the initial civil construction phase, which included dredging a channel and building a wharf, container yard, rail facilities, offices and a water treatment plant. The Mexican company was hired for the first phase of what was laid out as a three-stage $900 million expansion of the cargo port. Successful completion of the first stage could have secured ICA more work in the latter phases. Strikes broke out after ICA's work ground to a halt. It has since restarted and the terminal should begin operating from July, one of the people said. Civil construction work will be completely finished by the end of this year, the person added. (Additional reporting by Noe Torres; editing by Grant McCool) OSLO, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Norway's $790 billion sovereign wealth fund, the world's largest, will vote in favour of the merger of energy companies Royal Dutch Shell and BG , it said on Wednesday. "Norges Bank Investment Management considers that the transaction accelerates value for BG Group PLC shareholders and is in the best long-term interest of Royal Dutch Shell PLC shareholders," the fund said in two statements to shareholders. A spokeswoman for the fund said the price of the transaction was fair overall. "In an environment of low oil price, we believe the companies will stand stronger together," she said. The fund is Shell's fifth-biggest investor with a stake of 2.46 percent and BG's second-biggest investor with a stake of 3.73 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data. (Reporting by Camilla Knudsen, editing by Gwladys Fouche) Russia's economy is seen shrinking another 1 percent this year, but the head of the $10 billion Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) told CNBC the situation was under control. Kirill Dmitriev, the CEO of RDIF since 2011, said that while Russia was in "crisis," due to the slump in oil prices (New York Mercantile Exchange: @CL.1) and the international sanctions on the country, he remained optimistic and saw the situation as an opportunity to restructure. "It could have been much worse (the forecast decline); we believe it is sort of okay," Dmitriev told CNBC. He attributed around 80 percent of the economic decline to falling oil prices and 20 percent to sanctions. "Russia is dealing with this crisis; it is an opportunity for restructuring; it is an opportunity to reduce state involvement because of privatizations, so it is a situation that is controllable," the Ukrainian-born businessman told CNBC from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday. The Russian economy shrunk by a steep 3.7 percent last year, in part due to continued low oil prices and the hit from Western sanctions. On Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) cut its outlook for the Russian economy for 2016, forecasting contraction of 1 percent. "It is an opportunity for the Russian economy to restructure, but definitely, there are a lot of economic challenges ahead," he told CNBC. While declining oil prices have hit the economy, Dmitriev said that the weak ruble (Exchange: RUB=) had helped other sectors, such as agriculture. The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) is worth $10 billion and was established by the Russian government to make equity investments, mainly in the domestic economy. RDIF has partnered with funds in France and Italy, but mainly with those in emerging markets. Efforts to court non-Western powers have intensified since sanctions were imposed on Russia, following its incursion in Ukraine in 2014. Partnerships including a $2 billion Russia-China Investment Fund and joint ventures with India and Gulf states like Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Story continues Last week, the Russia-China Investment Fund announced it had purchased 23.1 percent of JSC Detsky Mir from CJSC DM Finance, a subsidiary of Sistema, for 9.75 billion rubles ($0.12 billion). The chief economist of IHS told CNBC that another cause of Russia's recession was its previous unfriendliness to foreign investment. "There is a triple whammy here. Certainly oil is a very big part of it; no question sanction are a part of it But Russia was very unfriendly to foreign direct investment. Essentially their message was we can do this alone we don't need any investment," Nariman Behravesh told CNBC off camera on Tuesday. His research firm is more bearish on Russia than the IMF, forecasting its economy could contract by near to 2 percent in 2016. "We are seeing a very weak recovery next year," Behravesh added. "The risk is there is no recovery next year If oil prices stay low, at around $30 or $35, next year, they are in for another year of pain." More From CNBC donald trump sarah palin Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice-presidential nominee, delivered a one-of-a-kind speech endorsing Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Tuesday. Standing beside Trump at Iowa State University, Palin delivered an energetic and wide-ranging 15-minute speech praising the candidate, calling for a strengthened military and criticizing political enemies on the left and right. "Todd and I and a couple of our friends from Alaska [are here] lending our support [to] the next president of the United States, Donald Trump," Palin said, referring to her husband. "This is going to be so much fun!" she exclaimed. In her folksy, free-associative rhetorical style, Palin rattled off a number of conservative priorities in rapid succession that she said Trump would help accomplish including the need to project US strength and the need to secure the US border. "We're not going to chill. We're going to drill, baby, drill down," Palin said, "and hold these folks accountable!" "I am in it to win it," she added. "Because we believe in America. And we love our freedom. And if you love your freedom, thank a vet. Thank a vet, and know that the United States military deserves a commander in chief who loves our country passionately and will not apologize for our country." Palin laced her speech with combative rhetoric. "No more 'pussyfooting' around," she said. "Our troops deserve the best. You deserve the best!" Trump "knows the main thing of a president is to keep us safe economically and militarily. He knows the main thing, and he knows how to lead the charge. S0 troops hang in there, because help is on the way," she added. "Because better than anything isn't he known for fire. Are you ready for a commander in chief who will let our warriors do their job and go kick ISIS's ass?" But Palin also made the speech an indictment of Trump's political enemies from both parties. Palin went after the Republican establishment for discounting Trump's presidential bid. She claimed that some Republicans were secretly ready to support Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton so they could keep, as she put it, "slurpin' off the gravy train." Story continues "He's going rogue left and right ... that's why he's doing so well," Palin said, using language that mirrored the title of one of her books. "He's been able to tear the veil off of the system." "The GOP machine, the establishment, they who would assemble the political landscape they're attacking their own front-runner," Palin added. "They are so busted." Palin found herself on familiar territory, criticizing US President Barack Obama for his supposed weakness after American sailors accidentally found themselves in Iranian waters and were briefly detained. Palin said: A weak-kneed "capitulater in chief" has decided that America will lead from behind. And he who would negotiate deals kind of with the skills of a community organizer, maybe, organizing a neighborhood tea. He, deciding that America would apologize, and as part of the deal, as the enemy sends a message to the rest of the world that they capture and we kowtow, and we apologize, and the we bend over and say, "Thank you, enemy." We are ready for a change! She then declared: "Things are going to change under President Trump." NOW WATCH: Can I get a hallelujah? watch Sarah Palin deliver a rousing speech endorsing Donald Trump More From Business Insider Iran's Sanctions Lifted, Saudi Arabia May Not Cut Production (Continued from Prior Part) A high market share even at low cost Saudi Arabia hasnt recently signaled any production cuts. This simply points toward Saudi Arabias plan to grab more market share, even at lower cost. It gives the kingdom two advantages. One is to make revenue from crude oil as entry barriers in the energy sector can be influenced by new technology. The other advantage is that lower crude oil can affect the financial stability of its close competitors Russia (RSX) and Iran. Saudi Arabia derives more than 85% of its revenue from exports related to crude oil. Moreover, the recent plan of Riyadh to dilute assets in the oil and gas segment also focuses on the countrys willingness to diversify the economy. The other areas that the kingdom may be looking to diversify in are the aviation and tourism sectors. Stocks taking the heat of no production cuts The US (SPY) based upstream stocks Kosmos Energy (KOS) and Denbury Resources (DNR) have fallen 21% and 38%, respectively, on a month-to-date basis as of January 14, 2016. These stocks operate with a production mix thats greater than 90% in crude oil. On average, all the constituents of XOP that operate with a production mix thats greater than 90% in crude oil fell 26.7% on a month-to-date basis. The upstream stock Apache (APA) has fallen 17% on a month-to-date basis as of January 14. The graph above shows the month-to-date performance of Apache Corp. In the following part of this series, well discuss the cause of growing rivalry among these oil exporters. Continue to Next Part Browse this series on Market Realist: A woman exits the Viacom Inc. headquarters in New York April 30, 2013. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson By Ross Kerber BOSTON (Reuters) - Media giant Viacom Inc said on Wednesday it cut the compensation of its top two executives, Executive Chairman Sumner Redstone and Chief Executive Philippe Dauman, as the company faced business pressures and a sharp drop in its share price. Although Viacom did not give exact reasons for the pay cuts, they were disclosed amid much criticism of the company's high compensation and as the 92-year-old Redstone faces questions about his health and leadership abilities. In a statement, Viacom said for its fiscal year ended Sept. 30 Redstone's annual compensation declined 85 percent to $2 million as "he became ineligible to receive a bonus," which was $10 million in the prior fiscal year. Representatives said they would not give more details about the wording or say if it reflected a decision by Viacom's board of directors, which has been under fire for lax oversight of executive compensation. Viacom also said that the bonus paid to its chief executive Philippe Dauman declined 30 percent to $14 million in fiscal 2015, while his contractually provided salary of $4 million and an annual equity award worth $18.9 million were not much changed from the prior year. Viacom said it would give more details in its forthcoming proxy statement, expected this week. Shares of Viacom Inc (VIAB.O) fell 44 percent to $43.15 in the 12 months ended Sept. 30, 2015 and closed Wednesday at $40.67. Viacom, whose networks include Comedy Central, MTV and Nickelodeon, has taken much criticism in recent years over its high executive pay even as it struggled with slipping ratings while more consumers ditched pricey cable television subscriptions. Meanwhile, questions about the health of Redstone have also prompted shareholder concerns about his fitness to oversee the company. Most recently, a Jan. 19 shareholder lawsuit filed in the Delaware Court of Chancery against the boards of Viacom and CBS Corp (CBS.N) alleges the companies improperly paid millions for Redstone's services as executive chairman "while he was physically and mentally incapacitated." It also said the Viacom board misrepresented Redstones deteriorated physical and mental condition. Story continues Last year, Institutional Shareholder Services - the large proxy adviser - recommended that Viacom investors withhold their support for all five members of the company's executive compensation committee. In a note to investors ISS wrote that "The current pay and performance misalignment driven by ongoing problematic pay practices indicates poor stewardship of the board's Compensation Committee." Nonetheless all the directors were re-elected by wide margins at the company's annual meeting last year, reflecting how Redstone controls a supermajority of the company's Class A voting shares through his holding company, National Amusements. (Reporting by Ross Kerber; editing by Chris Reese, Phil Berlowitz and Bernard Orr) New York City's two big tabloids embraced Donald Trump's latest presidential endorsement with their Wednesday-morning front pages. The Daily News, a frequent Trump critic, took a much more direct shot at the Republican presidential front-runner and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R), who endorsed Trump the day before. The News put a photo of them together with the headline, "I'M WITH STUPID." That was followed with the text, "Hate minds think alike: Palin endorses Trump." And then the tabloid ran a headline about Palin's son being arrested on suspicion of assaulting a woman: "SARAH'S DRUNK SON BEAT GAL PAL, WAVED RIFLE: COPS." The cover can be viewed below: donald trump sarah palin 1 The New York Post, the more conservative of the two tabloids, also ran a front-page story about the Palin endorsement. The Post put the two of them together with a pun off the movie "Lady and the Tramp." The headline: "LADY AND THE TRUMP: Sarah, Donald make love in Iowa." "As if Donald Trump's campaign needed more spice, firebrand Sarah Palin threw him her support in Iowa yesterday, saying, 'Media heads are spinning this is going to be so much fun!'" the front-page story excerpt read. The cover can be viewed below: donald trump sarah palin 2 NOW WATCH: Can I get a hallelujah? watch Sarah Palin deliver a rousing speech endorsing Donald Trump More From Business Insider Recent updates and announcements from the conservation,wildlife management and environmental community of the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies. 2000 - 2022 24 .- . focus-news.net, () . 24 . 24 . . 24 . We value your privacy. Focus Taiwan (CNA) uses tracking technologies to provide better reading experiences, but it also respects readers' privacy. Click here to find out more about Focus Taiwan's privacy policy. When you close this window, it means you agree with this policy. To activate the text-to-speech service, please first agree to the privacy policy below. Taipei, Jan. 20 (CNA) Core members of the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) have suggested that the party relocate its power center out of Taipei, moving away from the capital, and that to do so, the party should move its headquarters from Taipei to the central city of Taichung. Comments Policy Comments are moderated. I reserve the right not to post spam (comments unrelated to the blog entry, advertisements, and comments posted verbatim to several blogs) or comments that could be considered libelous. Say what you will about me but my family is strictly and completely off limits. Send complaints and private messages to: janeaboveaverage[at]yahoo.com Come and enjoy Read more [...] Singapore have deported 26 Bangladeshi citizens as they were planning to take part in extremist activities overseas. Singaporean authorities arrested 27 alleged suspects under the Internal Security Act last year in November and December. They were planning to conduct terrorist activities in other countries including their homeland Bangladesh. But they were not planning any terrorist attacks in Singapore, according to the Home Ministry. The remaining suspect has been serving a jail sentence for attempting to leave Singapore illegally after learning about the arrests of his fellow group members. He will also be repatriated once he completes his sentence. The men, who were working in the construction industry, supported the armed jihad ideology of terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). They are also charged of providing monetary donations to entities linked to extremist groups in Bangladesh. All of the detainees excluding one were members of a closed religious study group that supported the armed jihad ideology. The 26 construction workers subscribed to extremist beliefs and teachings of radical ideologues like Anwar al-Awlaki, an American and Yemeni Islamic cleric. Awlaki, who had ties with militant group Al-Qaeda, was killed in a drone strike in Yemen in September 2011. The group members shared jihadi-related material discreetly among themselves to avoid detection by the authorities. They held weekly meetings and gatherings where they discussed armed jihad and conflict that involved Muslims, said the Ministry of Home Affairs in a press release. Some of the members supported the killing of shiites because they consider Shiites to be deviant. The Bangladeshi men expressed anger against the government over its crackdown targeting Islamic groups and leaders. Moreover, several of them contemplated traveling to and participating in armed jihad in the Middle East. IMAGE/freemalaysiatoday.com Christopher L. Hodapp is the author of Freemasons For Dummies, the worldwide, best-selling introduction to the Masonic fraternity; Solomon's Builders: Freemasons, Founding Fathers and the Secrets of Washington D.C. ; and Deciphering the Lost Symbol. His most recent book, Heritage Endures, was published in January 2018. Since 2009 he has been on the Board of the Masonic Library & Museum of Indiana, and serves as its Associate Director and Treasurer. In 2021, Chris was named as Public Relations and Marketing Director for the Grand Lodge of Free & Accepted Masons of the State of Indiana. Chris is also the co-author with Alice Von Kannon of The Templar Code For Dummies and Conspiracy Theories And Secret Societies For Dummies. As a Freemason, Chris is a Past Master of Broad Ripple Lodge No. 643 and of Lodge Vitruvian No. 767 under the Grand Lodge F&AM of Indiana; he is a member of Indiana's Schofield Lodge 1818 U.D.; and of Internet Lodge No. 9659 in the Province of East Lancashire of the United Grand Lodge of England. Most recently, he was named the Worshipful Master of the Dwight L. Smith Lodge of Research U.D. in Indiana for 2019-21. In 2018 he was awarded the Caleb B. Smith Medal of Honor by the Grand Lodge F&AM of Indiana for his "distinguished service to Freemasonry in Indiana and worldwide." Chris is a 33 Mason in the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite (NMJ), Indianapolis Valley. He is a Past Sovereign Master of Imhotep Council No. 434 of the Allied Masonic Degrees. He is a founding member of Levant Preceptory, a medieval Knights Templar period recreation degree team in the York Rite, and he is an officer of the Indiana College of the Societas Rosicruciana in Civitatibus Foederatis. He belongs to numerous other Masonic appendant organizations. As a Masonic author, in 2012 he was named as Friar No. 101 in the Society of Blue Friars. Chris is a Founding Fellow of The Masonic Society, and was the founding Editor in Chief of The Journal of The Masonic Society. He remains a regular contributor today, and its Editor Emeritus. He was the editor and a contributor in 2004-5 to "Laudable Pursuit: A 21st Century Response to Dwight Smith" by the Knights of the North, a Masonic leadership think-tank focusing on modern lodge solutions. He has written for Indianapolis Monthly, Heredom, Masonic Magazine, Templar History, the Scottish Rite Journal, the Knight Templar Magazine, the Indiana Freemason , the Phylaxis, and numerous other publications. Chris was a commercial filmmaker for twenty-three years with Dean Crow Productions in Indianapolis. Hodapp and Alice Von Kannon developed scripts for the History Channel program, Brad Meltzer's Decoded in 2010, and contributed material on conspiracies and secret societies for TruTV and the American Heroes Channel. They have both appeared on National Public Radio, the History Channel, Discovery, National Geographic, Smithsonian, and the American Heroes Channel - most recently in 2017 on America: Facts vs Fiction. Chris and Alice live in Indianapolis with Sophie the Flying Poodle who has them both answering to basic commands. However, they can frequently be found alarming the wildlife and dazzling the rustics in their Airstream trailer as they crisscross the country. Appropriately, their newest book together is RVs and Campers For Dummies, released in June 2021. With the goal of maintaining the top-of-the-line care and facilities at Nebraska Masonic Home, Mary Vrbka assumed the executive directorship Jan. 1. Vrbka replaced Mary Stapp, who served as executive director of NMH for 42 years before retiring on Dec. 31. Stapp was known for her kind and caring ways with residents, their families and employees. Mary Stapp was a wonderful teacher and friend. She taught us well, Vrbka said. I want to follow in her footsteps and continue making the home as great as it is. Vrbka is no newcomer to NMH. In October 2004, she joined the staff as a licensed administrator after serving as the administrator for Vetter Health Services in Wauneta, Nebraska. As a licensed administrator, Vrbka ensured employees and procedures met all regulations and codes established for elderly care. I helped get us licensed as an assisted living facility and as a nursing care facility. We have two different licensures under one roof, she explained. Vrbka said she hadnt always known she wanted a career in senior care. In my 40s, I went to college and one of my teachers directed me this way, Vrbka said. The instructor said Vrbkas maturity and good-natured personality made her an excellent candidate for working with senior citizens. After earning her Associates Degree in Human Services from Southeast Community College in Lincoln, she heeded her teachers advice and took the position with Vetter Health Services. Its been wonderful. Ive never looked back, Vrbka said. When a friend from college told her about the opening at NMH, Vrbka applied and moved back to eastern Nebraska. She has especially enjoyed her 11 years at NMH. I love the atmosphere and the residents. I love their stories. Im always learning something new from them. They have a lot to teach, she said. I enjoy that Im helping people. Im making a difference with their families and with their last days in life. There is a lot of fear in growing older and some have no family members. I look at who I can help and who I can listen to. Because they share a commitment to providing high quality care and facilities, NMH staff and residents become like a family. Vrbka said NMH makes sure there are six to eight nurses aides to each resident. We staff very well. Our board wants us to be a premier place, she said. As executive director, Vrbka oversees 90 residents and 125 employees. NMH has 29 independent / assisted living apartments, 20 assisted living center private rooms, 58 nursing care beds and 14 Alzheimers / dementia care rooms. Our dedicated team works diligently on a daily basis to provide our residents with the excellent care and services they deserve, Vrbka said. I love my job. I love being here. This is my family. This is my home. When the board asked me to be in this position I was very humbled. Our staff, residents and just everybody is wonderful. Everyone works well together and were proud of the home. Its gorgeous inside and out. Three people remained in jail Tuesday evening on felony drug charges connected to the largest drug seizure by the Lancaster County Sheriffs Office: 1,517 pounds of marijuana. The pot, worth an estimated $7.5 million, was stuffed into a rental RV stopped by deputies at noon Friday, Chief Deputy Jeff Bliemeister said. Deputies stopped the RV for following another vehicle too closely on U.S. 77 near West Van Dorn Street, Bliemeister said. A Nebraska State Patrol drug dog indicated the presence of drugs, and deputies found 39 duffel bags stuffed with marijuana inside the RV, he said. They arrested Isabel Mallar, 28, of Martinez, Georgia; Rahman Nabavi, 28, of Alpharetta, Georgia; and 51-year-old Abbas Hajianbarzi, also Alpharetta, who was following the RV. The group was traveling from Oregon to Georgia, the sheriffs office said. On Tuesday afternoon, prosecutors charged the three with possession of marijuana with intent to deliver. If convicted, each faces as many as 20 years in prison. Lancaster County Judge James Foster set their bonds at $150,000 each. Treacherous driving conditions played a role in a two-vehicle accident that occurred Tuesday morning. The Dodge County Sheriffs Department received a call at approximately 7:45 a.m. about a two-vehicle accident that occurred at the intersection of Judy Avenue and U.S. Highway 77 involving a 2009 Thomas School Bus heading toward Johnson Crossing Academic Center, and a 1997 Ford tow truck. The school bus, driven by 61-year-old Sandra Michael of Fremont, was traveling east on Judy Avenue with the intention of making a northbound left turn onto U.S. Highway 77, media reports state. As the bus entered Highway 77, it was struck on the drivers side by the southbound tow truck, driven by 36-year-old Scott Taylor of Lyons. The school bus was holding 52 students, two of which were treated and released for minor injuries at Fremont Health Medical Center. The sheriffs department indicated that the school bus did not allow adequate time to turn onto the highway in front of the tow truck, making the collision unavoidable. Japans largest airline, ANA, will connect Japan with Cambodia thanks to a new service that will start in its summer schedule for 2016. In addition to new services on the Narita-Wuhan route from April 28, ANA will launch flights linking Narita and Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, on September 1. When the flights launched to Phnom Penh, it will be the only direct air service between Japan and Cambodia. With this new service, Cambodia becomes the eighth country served by ANA in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which is enjoying explosive economic growth. Celebrating the 30th anniversary of our first regular international services in 2016, ANA continues to expand the ANA network for the convenience of its customers. The new services to Phnom Penh will meet increasing business travel demand. Companies around the world are eying the rapidly emerging Cambodian market, drawn to Phnom Penh as a manufacturing center and the country as a high-potential market for their products and services. This year also marks the 60th anniversary of the conclusion of a friendship treaty between Japan and Cambodia. By launching the first direct flights from Japan, ANA aims to contribute to the further development of friendly relations and bring the world closer to the dynamic Cambodia market. Cunard welcomes the jazz icon Dee Dee Bridgewater who is a Triple Grammy Award Winner, a TONY Winner, a UN Goodwill Ambassador, producer, record label head, and much more. Bridgewater will be co-headlining Queen Mary 2s third Blue Note jazz-themed Transatlantic Crossing from New York to Southampton on October 25, 2016. Widely celebrated for her depth of artistry across mediums, Bridgewater will perform three intimate, powerhouse shows in The Royal Court Theatre as well as a Q&A session on board Queen Mary 2s 7-night crossing. Bridgewater joins booming baritone Gregory Porter on the Transatlantic Crossing. Fellow jazz musician Gregory Porter is also a Grammy Winner and was awarded International Jazz Artist of the Year in 2015 by Jazz FM. (Porters upcoming participation was announced in November, 2015.) I am thrilled to join Cunard and Blue Note for such a unique musical experience on board Queen Mary 2, said Bridgewater. To me, jazz symbolizes liberty and freedom of expression, and I look forward to sharing this jazz experience with guests on board and with my dear friend, Mr. Gregory Porter. Bridgewaters career spans more than four decades, and began with her phenomenal debut in New York City in 1970 as the lead vocalist for the band led by Thad Jones and Mel Lewis, one of the premier jazz orchestras of the day. Bridgewater marked an early career in concerts and recordings with musical giants including Dizzy Gillespie, before beginning a career on Broadway, where she won a Tony Award for her role as Glinda the Good Witch in The Wiz. Her time on Broadway led to work in Tokyo, Los Angeles, Paris, and beyond. In Londons West End, she garnered the coveted Laurence Olivier Award nomination as Best Actress for her tour de force portrayal of jazz legend Billie Holiday in Stephen Stahls Lady Day. On behalf of Cunard, we are delighted to welcome Dee Dee Bridgewater on board Queen Mary 2, said Richard Meadows, president, Cunard North America. Dee Dee is a phenomenal entertainer who captivates audiences worldwide, and we are thrilled for our guests to have a front-row seat to this intimate jazz experience with both her and Gregory Porter on this very special Transatlantic Crossing. For more information about Queen Mary 2 or to book a voyage, contact your Travel Consultant, call Cunard toll free at 1-800-728-6273, or visit www.cunard.com MSC Cruises joins other cruise lines; Celebrity Cruises, Disney Cruise Line and Crystal Cruises and cancels port calls in Turkey. The line will suspend calls by MSC Magnifica to Istanbul and Izmir, replacing them with Athens and Mykonos from March 26th until the end of the Mediterranean cruise season in October. Following the bomb blast in Istanbuls Sultanahmet on January 11, killing 10 German tourists, Crystal Cruises announced on January 15 that the company will reroute two of its upcoming voyages set to call in Turkish ports. MSC Cruises becomes the latest cruise line that announced pulling calls to Turkey amid growing concerns by guests as a result of the recent tragic event in Istanbul. A Native Texan reflects on being a Husband, Father and Lead Pastor of a church planted in the heart of the Cultural District of Fort Worth. Creative England and The Imaginarium Studios, a leading performance capture studio, will join forces to form a new independent publisher. The partnership was announced today at Creative England Live 2016, and will see both companies work together to develop and curate video games and original IPs across a number of platforms. Creative England is a not-for-profit organization that mobilizes public and private recourses to garner more support for the UK's creative England, while The Imaginarium Studios, founded in 2011 by Andy Serkis and Jon Cavendish, offers motion capture services to those in the film, television, video game, and music industries. According to Creative England the deal will help the UK video game industry "develop and grow", and if all goes as planned the new publisher is hoping to bring between 5 to 10 games to market in its first year of business. As part of the deal, Creative England will also back a game created by Imaginarium based on the new Planet of the Apes movies. Solomon Nwabueze, director of content at Creative England, believes that the partnership will "provide a route to market for many of the [UK's] content creators and businesses," helping bridge the gap between smaller studios, grassroots talents, and the industry's global players. At midday on Friday 5 February, 2016 Julian Assange, John Jones QC, Melinda Taylor, Jennifer Robinson and Baltasar Garzon will be speaking at a press conference at the Frontline Club on the decision made by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on the Assange case. DES MOINES Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad said it will be tragic if Ted Cruz wins the states first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses because the U.S. senator from Texas has opposed the federal ethanol mandate that benefits Iowas agricultural economy. Branstad has pledged to remain neutral in the Republican presidential primary race, but on Tuesday said he believes it would be a mistake for Iowans to support Cruz because of his position on ethanol. Cruz has said he opposes all government subsidies and mandates, including the Renewable Fuel Standard, which requires the nations fuel supply to include a percentage of corn-based ethanol. Cruz is engaged in a close race for the lead in Iowa with Donald Trump, according to recent polls on the race here. Ive been a strong supporter of renewable energy from the beginning, and Im really disappointed that (Cruz) recommended terminating the Renewable Fuel Standard, Branstad said. I think that would be really detrimental to the Iowa economy, costing us a lot of jobs and really hurting Iowa farmers, as well as all the people we have in the renewable fuel industry. Ethanol supporters have been dogging Cruz through the state recently, including an advocacy group that is led by the governors son, Eric Branstad. In 2013, Cruz co-sponsored a bill that would immediately terminate the Renewable Fuel Standard. But a year later, he introduced his own bill that would phase it out over five years. Currently, the law sets targets for use of renewable fuels through 2022. Campaigning in New Hampshire, Cruz responded to reporters asking about Branstads statement, saying its a sign the establishment is in full panic mode. We said from the beginning that the Washington cartel was going to panic more and more. As conservatives unite behind our campaign, youre going to see the Washington cartel firing every shot they can, every cannon they can. Because the Washington cartel lives on cronyism. It lives on making deals. It lives on picking winners and losers and supporting corporate welfare, Cruz said. Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican, labeled Branstads comments an endorsement, saying the governor is, by default, supporting Trump. King has endorsed Cruz. Branstad said his comments are not an endorsement of Trump. Im not endorsing anybody. But I am the governor of Iowa, and I think I need to stand up for the interests of my state, Branstad said. I know (Cruz) is ahead in the polls, but I think it would be tragic if somebody that wants to dismantle the renewable energy standard were to win the Iowa caucuses, because I think that would be looked at that Iowans dont care about our Iowa economy and the jobs that are related to them. Generally, Branstad has remained neutral, though he did endorse Bob Dole in 1996. But Dave Nagle, the former chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party, said Tuesday he believes Branstads remarks will hurt the caucuses. Nagle says that there have been elected officials who have endorsed candidates. Former Sen. Tom Harkin endorsed Howard Dean in 2004. But we dont blackball people, Nagle said. Matt Strawn, a former Republican Party of Iowa, shrugged off the notion the caucuses could be damaged by the governors declaration. I dont think it has any bearing on that. The governor, like any elected official, has every right to make his positions known on issues that are important to him, Strawn said. Branstad first made his comments about Cruz on when responding to a reporters question at the Renewable Fuels Summit in nearby Altoona. BELMOND As the Belmond-Klemme School District kicks off a search for a new superintendent, it also must continue to grapple with a growing number of students who are leaving for other schools. The B-K school system is seeing a drain in potential funding as 127 students who live in the district have open-enrolled to other schools as of Monday, according to Superintendent Kirk Nelson. Its just one more challenge in a district that has seen discord among members of the School Board and a turnover in superintendents. The open-enrollment number has grown since October when B-K officially reported to the state that 114 students had enrolled in other districts. That means the district will lose out on about $725,000 in potential state aid, said Business Manager Kevin Stein. Of the open-enrollees, 100 went to nearby Garner-Hayfield-Ventura, six to West Hancock, four to Clarion-Goldfield-Dows, two to Clear Lake and two to West Fork, Stein said. According to state figures, the district lost 108 students last year, 103 in 2013-14, 96 in 2012-13, 86 in 2011-12 and 82 in 2010-11. Im not real sure why its climbing that fast, Nelson said, adding the number has been increasing ever since the district closed school buildings in Klemme. State educational funding follows the students when they open-enroll to another district. That means less money for the B-K general fund for its operating expenses. A districts general fund primarily covers teacher salaries, but also helps pay for transportation costs, utilities, textbooks and technology. Facing a stalemate in the state Legislature over school funding last session, the board last April approved $103,000 in general fund cuts for the current school year. As a result, two elementary teaching positions were eliminated and a full-time high school art teacher was reduced to part-time. But as school costs increase 4 to 5 percent annually, the district could face larger cuts. Nelson said he estimates the district could see cuts as large as $350,000 next year. Our board is going to have a real dilemma, he said. Gov. Terry Branstad has called for a 2.45 percent increase in state aid for K-12 schools next year. Democrats are advocating a 4 percent increase, and some Republicans say a 2 percent hike is all the state budget can afford. The district is bound by what the state does, Nelson said. A 2 percent increase for schools means that they are cutting. The B-K district is accepting early retirements from 10 employees six teachers, its building and grounds director and three other staff members. It is also looking at a drop in enrollment in pre-kindergarten students going into kindergarten next year, Nelson said. This is a critical year. We hope parents will understand (if we make cuts) it is not because we want to do it, he said. A Mason City native was shot and killed Jan. 9 in Memphis during a robbery attempt. Lonnie Ludvigson, 48, was working as a trucker when a masked gunman pulled him from his vehicle and walked him to a car carrying three other suspects, according to Memphis police. Ludvigson was shot while attempting to flee, police said. Ludvigson was the son of former Mason City residents Donna Parks Ludvigson and the late Casper Ludvigson Jr. The family moved to Edgewood in the early 1970s, and he graduated from Edgewood-Colesburg High School in 1986. He served as part of a medical unit with the U.S. Army in Iraq and Kuwait during Operation Desert Storm, according to his obituary. He also attended the University of Iowa and medical school in Chicago and the Caribbean before being diagnosed with cancer. His obituary states that despite his grim prognosis, he had been cancer-free for 12 years. Ludvigson worked for many years as a massage therapist. He was driving a truck for U-Ship when the robbery attempt took place on Jan. 9. The suspects demanded money, and when Ludvigson began to run one of them began shooting at him, police said. A nearby witness started yelling, the gunman turned to fire at him, and the witness then returned fire, possibly striking the robber, according to police. The suspects drove off in a blue passenger car. Police found Ludvigson unresponsive with a gunshot wound, and he was pronounced dead. No arrests had been made as of Tuesday. A memorial service for Ludvigson took place Monday in Edgewood. LAKE MILLS A man from Kiester, Minnesota, was sentenced to up to five years in prison Tuesday on a Winnebago County conviction of going armed with intent to harm another person. A Lake Mills police officer stopped a vehicle driven by Jesse James Thompson, 45, on West Main Street at 10:35 p.m. Sept. 24 after dispatch received a call stating Thompson was on his way to kill someone, according to the criminal complaint. The officer found a machete on the floor of the passenger side of Thompson's vehicle and a large kitchen knife under the passenger seat, the complaint stated. Thompson pleaded guilty in December to going armed with intent, a Class D felony. Two aggravated misdemeanor counts of carrying weapons and one serious misdemeanor count of operating while under the influence were dismissed. Thompson was fined $750. -- Mary Pieper MASON CITY The City Council unanimously and enthusiastically approved two measures Tuesday night that are big steps in advancing the $36 million-plus downtown redevelopment plan. After holding public hearings, the council approved the purchase, sale and development agreements between the city and G8 Development of San Diego, California, for the development of a 98-room Courtyard by Marriott Hotel, the adjacent parking ramp and a commercial-residential structure in the southeast corner of North Federal Avenue and Second Street Northeast. The hotel is to be built in in the city lot just west of City Hall. Councilman Alex Kuhn, who has worked on the project from its onset, praised the development agreements, saying, There are many, many protections for the city in them. He also said tax valuations will skyrocket once the empty lots are developed. Councilman Travis Hickey talked about the $36 million investment in the community, the increased valuations and excitement the projects have generated in the city. Brett Schoneman, the newest council member, said, Ive seen confidence in downtown going up. The increased tax base solves a lot of things. During the public hearing, Tim Moreau of the Veenstra & Kimm engineering firm, said he supported the project but thought Philip Chodur, president of G8 Development, was in violation of the development agreement which prohibits him from being in a lawsuit with anyone during the course of this project. Moreau said Chodur is in violation because Moreau filed a suit in small claims court against Chodur for $2,650 for an unpaid bill. He said he questions Chodurs ability to build a multi-million-dollar hotel if he cant pay a $2,650 bill. Jacquelyn Arthur, a Mason City attorney representing Chodur, told the council the small claim would have no effect on the hotel development. City Administrator Brent Trout said it was possible the small claim was filed after the development agreement had been signed and said it was something Chodur and Moreau would have to work out aside from the agreement Chodur has with the city. The hotel, parking ramp and and mixed-use building are part of a downtown redevelopment plan that also includes an ice arena/multipurpose center in the old J.C. Penney building in Southbridge Mall, a music pavilion in the mall plaza and a parking ramp next to the hotel. The proposed ice arena, which will hold 2,400 spectators, can be transformed into a multipurpose center for year-round use with seating capacity of about 5,000, city officials said. The city has been pre-approved for a $7.1 million grant from the state through the Iowa Reinvestment Act that is contingent upon, among other things, a $10 million private investment in the overall project. The hotel fulfills that requirement. Final approval of the citys application is expected after the city submits its final application which is due by March 1. The council approved a bond sale last year to pay for the parking ramp. Vivian Charlson SWEA CITY Vivian Maxine Charlson, the daughter of Rollie and Ruth (Tweeten) Westerberg, was born Nov. 26, 1923, at her parents home in Hancock County, Iowa. She passed away Sunday, Jan. 17, 2016 at the Valley Vue Care Center in Armstrong, Iowa, at the age of 92. Funeral service will be 11 a.m. Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016, at Immanuel Lutheran Church, Swea City, Iowa, with Pastor Rusty Bailey officiating. Interment will be in Madison Township Cemetery, Forest City, Iowa. Visitation will be at 9:30 a.m. until time of service at 11 a.m. Wednesday at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Swea City. Vivian received her education and graduated from the Forest City schools. She then attended Waldorf College and Upper Iowa University receiving her degree in child education. On Amerys birthday, Oct. 15, 1947, she was united in marriage to Amery Charlson at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Forest City, Iowa. The couple made their home in Fertile and Vivian taught various elementary grades nine years in Fertile, Klemme and Leland public schools. In 1948, they moved to Forest City and in 1957 to Swea City, Iowa, where they lived for 55 years. She helped Amery in the remodeling and building of all their homes they lived in. While in Swea City she assisted Amery in their ownership of the Charlson Hardware Store, provided many years of substitute and full-time teaching along with daycare and various other jobs for many special people there. They moved to the Forest Plaza Assisted Living in Forest City, Iowa, in October 2012 where they have enjoyed reacquainting themselves with Forest City relatives, friends and meeting new ones. In her leisure time she loved crocheting, painting and other handicrafts including her annual family Christmas ornaments. As a couple, they enjoyed traveling, camping and fishing. One of their great pleasures was enjoying a cabin they built in 1966, on Tuttle Lake near Dolliver, Iowa. They also enjoyed wintering some in Texas, Florida and California. Amery died on August 27, 2015. Vivian was a member of Immanuel Lutheran Church, where she was active and a leader in the womens organizations, taught Sunday and Bible School. She was a Cub Scout and Girl Scout Leader many years for her children. She was also a member and leader in the Federated Womens Club; VFW Auxiliary; Swea City Senior Center and many school and community organizations. Left to cherish Vivians memory are her children, Andy Charlson and his wife, Cindy of New Bremen, OH; Nancy Lenhart and her husband Vaughn of Eden Prairie, MN; Mark Charlson and his wife, Lucretia of Plainfield, IL; grandchildren, Melissa Torres, Erica Deren, Neal Charlson, Drew Charlson, Molly Lenhart, William Lenhart; great-grandchildren, Joshua Torres, Alexis Torres, Julian Deren, Emilee Deren. siblings; Marjorie Olson and her husband, Don of Sun City, Arizona; Muriel Lowenberg and her husband, Richard of Anaheim, California; Rodney Westerberg and his wife, Rogene of Forest City; sisters-in-law, Mavis Berhow and her husband Marvin of Dakota City, IA, and Garnett Westerberg of Amery, Wisconsin. Vivian has been preceded in death by her parents; husband; two brothers, Arden and Donald. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be given to Immanuel Lutheran Church or donors choice. BUFFALO CENTER Already drafted, Dennis Murra of Buffalo Center had every intention of going into the Army when he walked into a Minnesota recruiting office in 1971. A class at Southwest Minnesota State required that we interview a business owner, so I went to interview the Army recruiter, Murra said. They Served With Honor: North Iowa's Vietnam Veterans The Globe Gazette will publish 50 stories starting on Veterans Day about North Iowas Vietnam Veterans. The stories will appear on Sundays When I arrived at the recruiting center the Army recruiter was out, but the Air Force recruiter was in. One month later I was in Air Force basic training. It would turn into a 21-year career that took Murra to Vietnam as well as several areas around the U.S. In the 1970s, going into the military didnt strike Murra as unusual. It was just what people his age did. It was so normal for guys at that time to get drafted and go into service I just accepted it as my fate, he said. After attending technical school, Murra was sent to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona, where he was a jet engine specialist. It was quite a shock, yes, he said of Tucson. Id never really been in a large city before so it was different. Of course, the heat there is a lot different than it is here, too. Murra wasnt fazed by the possibility of being sent overseas. As he puts it, I was 19 and single and didnt care. I grabbed my toolbox and my duffel bag and away we went, he said. Murra ended up in Thailand, where the United States launched missions into Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. He worked on planes at Royal Thai Air Force Base Udorn, in northern Thailand, and Khorat, in central Thailand. Some planes had bullet holes. Others had frames stressed from too much downforce. In Korat, Murra and his fellow airmen would watch for lights of returning B-52s from the balcony of old Thai Army barracks. After flying missions the bombers returned to Korat via U-Tapao Royal Thai Naval Airfield, a base south of Bangkok on the Gulf of Thailand. Sometimes there wouldnt be as many as what left, Murra said. The relative secrecy was essential during the war so Thailand could avoid invasion by claiming neutrality, Murra said. Forty thousand North Vietnamese regulars (were) just north of us, he said. As long as Thailand remained neutral they wouldnt bother us. They didnt. He was deployed twice, first for 179 days and then back for a year. During his second stint he got a glimpse of semi-secret Air Force activity. Missions were supposed to be over, but there was clearly continued action in Cambodia and Laos, Murra said. We would see airplanes loaded with bombs, but they would be back an hour later with no bombs on them, he said. So, we knew something was going on. They werent going very far. After his service was over, Murra stayed with the Air Force as a recruiter. After Id been in four years I kind of wanted to come home, but my dad and brother were farming. They didnt need another partner, he said. He recruited in St. Paul, Minnesota; San Antonio, Texas; and eventually in Spencer. He and his wife are now back in Buffalo Center. He retired in 1992 as a master sergeant. OXFORD, United Kingdom, Jan. 19, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via PRWEB - Intense pressures in the global automotive industry could explain why Volkswagen was driven to cheat emissions tests, according to a new book published this month. Academics from Said Business School, University of Oxford and University of Edinburgh Business School argue the scandal is the latest in a series of car industry crises to stem from a 'perfect storm' of challenging conditions. Based on a historical analysis of manufacturers' performance, Professors Matthias Holweg and Nick Oliver say long term overcapacity in the industry results in low margins for many carmakers. Combined with the sector's vulnerability to swings of the economic cycle, this means auto companies are prone to periodically dip in and out of crisis. As demonstrated in the failures of car firms including Saab and Rover, the research shows that competence in designing and manufacturing cars, although a necessary condition for survival, may no longer be sufficient to guarantee it. The study concludes that resilience in the auto industry stems from four factors: Efficient operations to provide a competitive offering in the marketplace Sufficient production volumes to provide economies of scale (or, failing this, a strong enough brand to command premium prices that allow economic operation at lower volumes) Market reach in terms of presence in a) a range of markets to offset the effects of recession in any one market and b) in rapidly growing markets where margins are usually higher Support of powerful stakeholders committed to the continued operation of the firm, who provide support and concessions during troughs when all other measures have failed Based on the analysis, Holweg and Oliver argue the most resilient car companies in the world are likely to be Hyundai, Toyota, Honda and General Motors. Meanwhile, PSA and Fiat-Chrysler appear most susceptible to crisis. Professor Holweg said: 'How to succeed in the global automotive industry has been a subject of extensive research over the years. The general conclusion has been, "become more efficient, and you will succeed". Our review of failures and near-failures in the global car industry reveals that operational effectiveness matters, but in itself is insufficient in explaining whether firms live or die.' Professor Oliver said: 'In the case of VW, its corporate objective of becoming the largest car maker in the world created huge pressures within the company and demanded a dramatic increase in its sales in North America. 'VW's strategy to achieve this was clean diesel, but this had to be executed within a tight envelope of engine power, emissions standards, and fuel economy. Something had to give, and in VWs case what gave was the integrity between emission testing and on-the-road performance. All car companies face these kind of pressures but most do not respond by gaming the system so blatantly'. The findings are published in a new book "Crisis, Resilience and Survival Lessons from the global auto industry" by Professor Holweg and Professor Oliver, which charts the evolution of the global automotive industry. Focusing on lessons from the 40 or so companies that design, build and sell cars, the book examines the pressures and challenges facing the industry as well as approaches to management and organisation that have evolved to address these challenges. For more information and additional resources visit the book's website: http://crisisresiliencesurvival.com/ To speak to Professor Holweg or Professor Oliver please contact the press office: Jonaid Jilani, Press Officer, Said Business School Tel: +44 (0)1865 614678, Mob: +44 (0)7860 259996 Email: jonaid.jilani(at)sbs.ox.ac.uk Derek Main, PR Manager, University of Edinburgh Business School Tel: +44 (0)131 651 5310, Mob: +44 (0)7702 312523 Email: derek.main(at)ed.ac.uk Notes to editors About the authors Professor Matthias Holweg, Said Business School http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/community/people/matthias-holweg Professor Nick Oliver, Edinburgh University Business School http://www.business-school.ed.ac.uk/about/people/503/Nick/Oliver About Said Business School Said Business School at the University of Oxford blends the best of new and old. We are a vibrant and innovative business school, but yet deeply embedded in an 800 year old world-class university. We create programmes and ideas that have global impact. We educate people for successful business careers, and as a community seek to tackle world-scale problems. We deliver cutting-edge programmes and ground-breaking research that transform individuals, organisations, business practice, and society. We seek to be a world-class business school community, embedded in a world-class University, tackling world-scale problems. About University of Edinburgh Business School The University of Edinburgh was founded in 1582 and is one of the world's leading universities. The Business School has provided business education for nearly 100 years. Today it offers undergraduate, postgraduate and executive education programmes and provides a platform for research, discussion and debate on a wide range of business issues. As one of the leading business schools in Europe, the School comprises of an international student body representing more than 88 countries. ENDS This article was originally distributed on PRWeb. For the original version including any supplementary images or video, visit http://uk.prweb.com/releases/2016/01/prweb13171771.htm CLAREMONT, Calif., Jan. 20, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Kiwa Bio-Tech Products Group Corporation (KWBT) (OTCBB:KWBT) has joined with Beijing Living Green Agricultural Technology Co., Ltd. (Living Green) to sign a strategic cooperation agreement with Beijing Community Service Association, an agency of the Beijing Municipal Government (the Association). As suppliers of safe agricultural products to the Association, Kiwa and Living Green will adopt various methods to supply safely planted agricultural products to the stores of the Association using fertilizers produced by Kiwa in Hebei Province, Hainan Province, Xinjiang, Shandong Province, Inner Mongolia and Hunan Province. Kiwa had established a cooperative relationship with Living Green in Beijing several years ago. According to the requirements of Chinas food safety management, microbial fertilizers and biological fertilizers shall be used to replace chemical fertilizers to assure safe planting of agricultural products so as to reduce various hazardous residuals in agricultural products and to provide consumers with safe and healthy agricultural products. Various microbial fertilizer products researched and produced by Kiwa fit the specifications required by the Chinese government. Through its association with Living Green, the Company in communities in Beijing, Kiwas fertilizer products will be broadly used in nearly 200 national agricultural production locations in China. The Company believes that this will result in significant growth in Kiwas fertilizer sales in this area. Cooperative ventures such as the collaboration with Living Green are consistent with Kiwas new development strategy. In the future, Kiwa will seek to enhance its collaboration with Living Green. Mr. Jimmy Zhou, Kiwas CEO, said: This development is consistent with Kiwas new strategy of enhancing its existing fertilizer and agricultural product business. The cooperation with Beijing Community Service Association at this time symbolizes the Companys entry into the provision of its fertilizer products into the government market, which should provide the Company with increasing development opportunities. About Kiwa Bio-Tech Products Group Corporation We develop, manufacture, distribute and market innovative, cost-effective and eco-friendly bio-technological products for agriculture. Our main product groups are bio-fertilizer, biologically enhanced livestock feed. Our products are designed to enhance the quality of human life by increasing the value, quality and productivity of crops and decreasing the negative environmental impact of chemicals and other wastes. Our businesses include bio-fertilizer and bio-enhanced feed. Kiwas strategy is to implement increased visibility for marketing Kiwas current bio-fertilizer products, together with the development of a green agriculture safe food platform in China. Our goal is to build market penetration for our Kiwa brand in Chinas trillion dollar green agricultural produce market. For more information on Kiwa and its products, please refer to the Companys website at www.kiwabiotech.com or the Company filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, available for free at www.sec.gov This press release contains information that constitutes forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any such forward-looking statements involve risk and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from any future results described by the forward-looking statements. Risk factors that could contribute to such differences include those matters more fully disclosed in the Company's reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The forward-looking information provided herein represents the Company's estimates as of the date of the press release, and subsequent events and developments may cause the Company's estimates to change. The Company specifically disclaims any obligation to update the forward-looking information in the future. Therefore, this forward-looking information should not be relied upon as representing the Company's estimates of its future financial performance as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release. DALLAS, Jan. 20, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Strategic marketing leader Chief Outsiders has added global marketing and strategy expert Malinda McFarlane to its list of distinguished Southwestern-based fractional CMOs. McFarlane comes to Chief Outsiders with deep, proven expertise in creating engaging customer experiences for well-known, large corporations as well as startups and mid-size companies. She is committed to making her buyer-focused, results-oriented marketing strategies and tactics available on a fractional or part-time basis. This provides an affordable and effective way for mid-size companies to get the C-level marketing talent they need to fuel their growth without having to commit to full-time salaries and benefits of a senior level executive. Equipped with experience in accelerating growth for brands like Dell, Coke, and Proctor & Gamble, as well as smaller companies, McFarlane brings an action-oriented approach to growing a company's revenue and market share. "McFarlane is a pivotal addition to the Southwest Tribe, because she possesses the kinds of global insights that are important to today's mid-size company owner/CEO," said Clay Spitz, Managing Partner of Chief Outsiders' Southwest Region. "Her deep understanding of how to grow a company using modern marketing strategy and methodology, and her experience in technology, medical and consumer products companies of various sizes, makes McFarlane the ideal partner to assist in the identification of opportunities to make a big impact in today's worldwide, always-on market." Chief Outsiders' fractional CMOs are experienced senior leaders in their respective industries, having held the position of Chief Marketing Officer or VP of Marketing at one or more operating companies. McFarlane's large list of successes in executive marketing positions for leading brands like Nestle, Mary Kay, and Ford, and her understanding of how to apply her skills to smaller companies, demonstrate her impact-driven ability to help corporations zero in on the type of consumer insights needed to support profitable sales growth. McFarlane earned her degree in International Business and Russian Language from the University of Texas at Austin, and her MBA from Harvard Business School. Her esteemed career began with the launch of Revlon International in Russia, and continued with a prestigious position as a strategy consulting leader at Bain & Co. She's made footprints in a variety of industries, from energy to beauty to healthcare. Before joining Chief Outsiders, McFarlane was CMO at MDLIVE Inc., an on-demand telehealth company. McFarlane is on hand and ready to serve chief executives and company owners who want to translate insights into results and develop customers for life. About Chief Outsiders Chief Outsiders, LLC, an "Executives-as-a-Service" firm, helps grow mid-sized companies from coast-to-coast with more than 40 part-time, or fractional, Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) who have held positions of VP Marketing or higher at one or more operating companies. These individuals' breadth of experience makes it possible for Chief Outsiders to put the right skill set on a leadership team of any company for a fraction of the cost of a full time executive. Unlike other strategic marketing and management consulting firms, Chief Outsiders works with company leadership teams to develop and implement market based growth plans. Chief Outsiders believes delivering a world-class marketing strategy on its own creates little value and that the real value is created by helping the organization implement the growth vision. Because of its market based growth plans, leadership and experienced team, Chief Outsiders was recently listed by Inc Magazine as one of the 1,000 fastest growing privately held companies in the US (in the top 25 in Houston) and recognized for the Houston Business Journal's Fast 100. Businesses seeking Chief Outsiders as a premier source include: ErgoGenesis, Five Stone Tax, Summa Technologies, and Riverside Company portfolio companies OnCourse Learning, YourMembership and IDoc, Source Capital portfolio companies such as Abutec, and Merrill Lynch Specialties Group portfolio companies such as EarthColor. A photo accompanying this release is available at: http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=38565 bagdbmba wrote: Digging in sediments in northern China, evidence has been gathered by scientists suggesting that complex life-forms emerged much earlier than they had previously thought. (A) evidence has been gathered by scientists suggesting that complex life-forms emerged much earlier than they had (B) evidence gathered by scientists suggests a much earlier emergence of complex life-forms than had been (C) scientists have gathered evidence suggesting that complex life-forms emerged much earlier than (D) scientists have gathered evidence that suggests a much earlier emergence of complex life-forms than that which was (E) scientists have gathered evidence which suggests a much earlier emergence of complex life-forms than that I'm not able to understand why C is preferred over E? IMO, in option E -emergence of complex life-forms actually (per the evidence) is compared to that previously thought. It seems more clear to me where as option C sounds better but misses 'that' I guess. Please explain. krakgmat wrote: Mike, Can you please clarify the question below. Especially, why choice D is not correct? Thank you for your help. Thanks bagdbmba krakgmat (E) (D) (A) (B) evidence that evidence which evidence which which (E) Digging in sediments in northern China, scientists have gathered evidence suggesting that complex life-forms emerged much earlier than when complex life-forms were previously thought to emerge than (C) than previously thought (D) than that which was previously thought that (E) than that previously thought that "that previously thought that previously thought" emerged emerge that that gathered evidence suggesting that complex life-forms had an emergence that was much earlier than that previously thought that than previously thought that (D) (E) that (C) Magoosh Test Prep Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. William Butler Yeats (1865 1939) Mike McGarryEducation is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. William Butler Yeats (1865 1939) Signature Read More DearI'm happy to respond.You are asking aboutrespectively, so I will ignore, which are clearly wrong.First of all, look at the split "" vs. "" ---- which of these two is correct? See these two posts:The fact that there is no comma following the word "" means that the modifier following it is a vital noun modifier, a.k.a. a restrictive modifier. The GMAT always uses "that" for restrictive/vital modifiers, and always uses "" for non-restrictive/non-vital modifiers. Thus, the "" is wrong here: that's one problem withHere's the larger issue. Think about it this way. Let's state the sentence without dropping any of the repeated words in parallel. Let's pretend we can't omit anything and have to state everything explicitly. Then, we would have:Clearly, that's very awkward and much too long. We are allowed to drop everything among those orange words that are a repeat or are obvious form context. The only piece that is truly different from the part before the word "" is "previously thought", so that's all we need....... Clear, concise, unambiguous, and grammatically correct......--- very wordy, and it's unclear to what the word "" refers.....-- it's unclear to what the word "" refers.Think about" --- to what does the "" refer? What exactly is "? What did the scientist think at an earlier time? This really refers to the verb, to the action of the verb "" --- previously, scientists thought that these critters emerged later, and now the evidence suggest that they emerged earlier. The entire comparison revolves around the verb --- when did they. We cannot use the pronoun "" to refer to the action of a verb. If we want to use "" correctly, we would have to change around the whole sentence -----.....Now, that version is an abominable trainwreck. Even in this version, that word "" is entirely optional --- the phrase "" is still 100% correct by itself, but at least in this sentence, the "" isn't absolutely wrong when it's included, because there's a clear noun antecedent. In choices, the word "" is 100% wrong, because it is trying to refer to the action of a verb, which is not allowed.This is whyis not only the best answer but the only possible answer.Does all this make sense?Mike_________________ When the Apogee Company had all its operations in one location, it was more profitable than it is today.Therefore, the Apogee Company should close down its field offices and conduct all its operations from a singlelocation. Such centralization would improve profitability by cutting costs and helping the company maintain better supervision of all employees.Discuss how well reasoned etc.The argument above states that Apogee company should close down its field offices and conduct all its operations from a single location. The above statement is flawed because it fails to mention several key factors, on basis of which it could be evaluated. The conclusion of the statement is based on questionable assumptions for which there is no clear evidence. Hence, the argument is unconvincing and has several flaws.First, the argument readily assumes that shifting the operations to one location is more profitable than having offices in different locations. This statement is a stretch as it assumes one stratergy which worked well in the past will also be successful in current scenario. For example, if a transport company stops operation from different locations than there will be loss of business to the company. Clearly, the statement does mention the nature of business carried out by Apogee company.The argument could have been much clearer if explicitly stated the nature of business carried out.Second, the argument claims that centralization would improve the profitablity by cutting costs.This is again a very weak and unsupported claim as the argument does not demonstrate any correlation between cutting costs and profitability. This can be more clearly explained and justified if the it can be shown that operating costs of different locations are what percentage of the profits made by the company.If the argument had provided evidence that operating costs of different field offices incoporated larger percentage of the profits then argument would have been lot more convincing.Finally, the argument fails to mention how centralization would help the company to maintain better supervision of its employees. Without convincing answer to this question,one is left with the impression that the claim is more of a wishful thinking rather than substantive evidence.In conclusion, the argument is flawed for the above mentioned reasons and is therefore unconvincing. It could be considerably strengthened if the author mentions the all the relevant facts about the cost and profitability.In order to assess the merits of a such a decision, it essential to have full knowledge about the contributing factors. Without this information, the argument remains unsubstantiated and open to debate. The Gorilla Radio archive can be found at: www.Gorilla-Radio.com. G-Radio is dedicated to social justice, the environment, community, and providing a forum for people and issues not covered in State and Corporate media. Gorilla Radio airs live Thursdays between 11-12 noon Pacific Time. Airing in Victoria at 101.9FM, and featured on the internet at: http://cfuv.ca and www.pacificfreepress.com. And check out Pacific Free Press on Twitter @Paciffreepress Trayon Christian, who was handcuffed and detained by undercover police because he spent $350 at Barneys in 2013, has won a $45,000 settlement from the city after suing over racial profiling. Christian, who was 19 at the time and studying engineering at the New York City College of Technology, said that he went to the department store on April 27, 2013 after receiving a paycheck from his work-study job and purchased a Ferragamo belt. After paying for the belt with his debit card and leaving Barneys, he was stopped a block away on Madison Avenue by plainclothes detectives who said that someone at the store had called to report that Christian had used a fake card. He recalled the cops demanding, "How could you afford a belt like this? Where did you get this money from?" They handcuffed him and took him to the 19th Precinct, where he was held for at least 42 minutes before police determined that his debit card was not a fake and let him go. Christian later returned the belt to the store, saying, "I'm not shopping there again. It's cruel. It's racist." Barneys initially shirked any responsibility in the cases of Christian and Kayla Phillips, another black customer at Barneys who alleged a similar incident after Christian came forward. The department store tried to put the onus on the NYPD, but after the attorney general investigated and got the details of the store's policies from two former security guards, Barneys had to pay $525,000 and hire an anti-profiling consultant. A spokesperson for the city's Law Department declined to comment beyond saying that "Settling was in the best interest of the city." A judge has sentenced two former sex workers to 25 years to life in prison for murdering a florist in his Chelsea apartment in 2012. In October, a jury found Edwin Faulkner, 33, and Juan Carlos Martinez-Herrera, 35, guilty of second degree murder, manslaughter, kidnapping and robbery in the death of John Laubach, who suffocated after they bound and gagged him early one morning that March. They later looted his apartment and fled to Florida. During the trial, a prosecutor said, "The defendants may not have intended the death of John Laubach, but there is no doubt they recklessly engaged in conduct that killed him." Faulkner's lawyer argued that the death was the result of "raw sex for which no one is criminally responsible," and that the pair panicked when they realized he had died. Martinez-Herrera testified that he was choking Laubach as Laubach performed oral sex on him, when suddenly Laubach turned "purple and blue." A jury rejected the defense, deliberating for less than a day before returning with a guilty verdict. Martinez-Herrera and Faulkner made off with Laubach's laptop, jewelry, and debit card. A concerned friend found Laubach's body several hours later. Late that morning, Martinez-Herrera unsuccessfully tried to withdraw money from an ATM using Laubach's card. The two then pawned a piece of the jewelry. Five days passed before they fled to Orlando with luggage full of stolen stuff, and another 10 before police tracked them down. "The defendants in this case displayed an utter disregard for human life," District Attorney Cy Vance said in a statement, adding "Thanks to the work of my offices prosecutors, they must now take responsibility for their horrendous crimes." Laubach was known for walking around the neighborhood with his pet parrot on his shoulder, and was described as active in his church. He designed floral displays for events, and was studying as a seminarian. We rely on your support to make local news available to all Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2022. Donate today The malfunctioning elevator that killed a man in a Lower East Side residential tower on New Year's Eve is still malfunctioning, despite it being supposedly fixed over the weekend. "That particular elevator was cleared just 48 hours ago, and people got stuck in it again yesterday, tenant Daisy Paez told the Daily News. "We live in a 26-story building where people have become hostages in their own homes." Firefighters were reportedly called to the building to free the trapped tenants on Monday. Wavecrest Management, which oversees the building at 131 Broome Street, did not immediately respond to request for comment. 25-year-old Stephen Hewett-Brown was fatally crushed on New Year's Eve when the crowded elevator stalled near the third floor at about 11:30 p.m. Hewett-Brown was reportedly helping people climb out of the elevator when he was killed. Witnesses said he hoisted one woman to safety and wished her a happy New Year moments before the elevator rapidly jolted downward, crushing him between the roof of the elevator and the floor. The building is co-owned by the city and the Archdiocese of New Yorks Catholic Charities; it's one of three towers built in the early 70s as part of the citys Seward Park Urban Renewal Area. Weve been asking the archdiocese and the city for new elevators for years, one tenant told the Post earlier this month. "These are death traps. The archdiocese has connections, they had tens of millions of dollars to fix this place. But they never replaced the elevators. Where did the money go?" News of the most recent malfunction came as the City Council introduced legislation on Tuesday that's intended to better regulate elevator maintenance companies, requiring them to be licensed by the Department of Buildings. There is currently no state or city law requiring elevator companies or individuals to obtain licenses to perform elevator maintenance. Earlier this month, state Senator Daniel Squadron and Assemblyman Keith Wright, from Harlem, called on the state senate to pass legislation requiring licensing. Such a bill has passed four times in the state assembly since 2011, but has been blocked by the senate every time, The Villager reports. According to Squadron's office, the State Elevator Safety Act "increases and formalizes licensure and regulation for elevator workers statewide. The bill would provide baseline worker credentials, as exist for many trades, to ensure better training and help provide safety assurances." The City Council's bill, sponsored by Council Member James Vacca and others, would not require the licensing of individual elevator techniciansonly one technician per contractor. "Thats not enough," says union organizer Michael Halpin from the Local 1 IUEC. "If one person in a household has a drivers license, that doesnt mean everyone else in the house is qualified to drive. Similarly, every elevator technician must be licensed to safely perform their work." Still, Vacca argues that it's better than nothing, which is all that seems to happen in Albany anyway. "It is unfathomable that there are still no requirements for elevator maintenance and repair companies to be licensed," Vacca said in a statement announcing the bill. "Since the State has still not acted on implementing elevator maintenance licensing state-wide, it is incumbent on the New York City Council to pursue our own legislation. Most people use elevators on a daily basis and they should be assured that the elevators have been worked on by competent professionals who meet the necessary standards of ability and knowledge." Speaking before the City Council on Wednesday, New York Civil Liberties Union attorney Christopher Dunn described what it's like to visit Hart Island, where more than 1 million New Yorkers are buriedmany of them homeless in life or unidentifiable in death, alongside stillborn infants, veterans, or AIDs victims. "You get to a dock that looks like you're arriving at a prison," Dunn said. "There's razor wire and armed guards. Guests are subject to search, and accompanied by an armed, uniformed DOC officer to each burial site." The 131 acre island at the west end of the Long Island Sound has been under the jurisdiction of the city since 1868, and operated solely by the Department of Correction since 1946. More than 1,000 New Yorkers are buried on the island each year, by a skeleton crew of fewer than 10 inmates overseen by five officers and a captain. The Hart Island Project keeps a digital archive of the dead, allowing family members to upload pictures and stories. Legislation before the city Council would shift the maintenance and oversight of Hart Islandthe largest tax funded cemetery in the world, and the only one operated by a corrections department, according to the cityto the Parks Department. Queens Councilmember Elizabeth Crowley has argued that Parks would be better equipped to reduce the size of mass gravespine wood coffins are currently packed sardine-like, 150 per troughas well as prevent land erosion on the island and mark the graves with plantings. From the NYCLU's perspective, the revocation of DOC management would also allow family members to grieve without the close oversight of armed guards. The organization reached a settlement with the city last July, giving the bereaved the right to visit graves on Hart Island on a designated day each month with armed escorts. Until last summer, visits were contained to a gazebo near the island's ferry dock, out of view of the graves. Still, visitors are subject to search, and guards have the right to confiscate graveside offerings that could be deemed a "security risk." According to the DOC's website, only small stuffed animals, photographs, prayer cards, small flags, blankets, and flowers without vases are permitted. Dunn was not sparing in his assessment of the DOC setup. "It's ghoulish to think of the prospect of inmates being trucked over to Hart Island to bury infants who have been abandoned," he said. "Because we have prisoners on Hart Island, we have to run it like it's a prison facility. Everything about that is wrong and Medieval." The DOC countered that guards work to clear footpaths on the overgrown island, and steer visitors clear of unstable building structures. Upper West Side Councilmember Mark Levine, who's long pushed for public access on nearby North Brother Island, would like to see Hart Island not only more hospitable to families of those buried there, but widely accessible to the public. "If there's one takeaway, it's that you should want to visit Hart Island," he said. "It's a spectacular place with views of the city and a dozen historical buildings. Unfortunately you can't, because it's run by the DOC." Open burial pit with goose nest (Richard Nickel Jr. via) But the DOC and the Medical Examiner dug in their heels on Wednesday, arguing that it is in the interest of the city not to interrupt services on Hart Island. The Parks Department agreed, testifying that it lacks the funds or skill set to take over. "NYC Parks believes that this falls outside the department's expertise," said a spokesman. "None of our parks include active burials." He estimated that any significant overhaul of the island for public access would cost tens of millions of dollars, citing crumbling buildings, low flood planes, and inadequate ferry service. Councilmember Crowley was surprised at the legislation's reception, asking, "Does DOC really want to continue managing Hart Island?" "We certainly can and are happy to continue," said Carleen McLaughlin, the DOC's director of legislative affairs. McLaughlin went on to argue that the DOC's Hart Island stewardship advances Mayor de Blasio's 14-point plan for reducing violence on Rikers Island. "The work detail on Hart Island gets hours of programing so they can earn some money," she said. "They reduce their idleness, and are out there for several hours a day, so it meets that goal perfectly." The defense was lost on Rogers, who testified on behalf of Picture the Homeless. "I have relatives buried on Hart Island, and I think that should be publicized," he said. "It is time for us to close what has been a prison to the dead and turn it into a park and a memorial." The City Council has yet to schedule a vote on Hart Island's management. However, a spokesman for Levine's office said that the Council is nearing majority support of the legislation. A man on a flight from Hawaii was recently arrested by federal authorities after the plane touched down at JFK airport, because he allegedly molested the passenger sitting beside him during the flight... and removed his own pants and pleasured himself. According to the criminal complaint, Ricardo Caceres was on an overnight Hawaiian Airlines flight that left Honolulu on January 15th; he was sitting on the aisle seat, while a man was sitting in the middle seat and the man's wife was by the window. A federal agent said that Caceres had multiple alcoholic drinks: During the flight, the defendant reached over and touched the passenger on his chest, belt and groin. The passenger asked the defendant what he was doing. The defendant then removed his pants and started masturbating. The passenger and his wife both saw the defendant fully exposed, after which the passenger notified the flight crew. Two members of the flight crew responded, observed the defendant fully exposed with his pants off and instructed him to put his clothing back on, which the defendant did. The flight arrived on January 16th, and Caceres was released on $50,000 bond. Oddly enough, in 2013, a man named Ricardo Caceres was "accused of assaulting a flight attendant and biting one of two Federal Air Marshal deputies who restrained him during an 11-hour flight from New York" to Hawaii. The emergency physician who was accused of drugging, molesting and then masturbating on a patient at a Manhattan hospital was also charged in a second incident. Dr. David Newman Dr. David Newman turned himself into Special Victims Unit detectives yesterday after a young female patient, 29, said he sexually assaulted her when she went to Mount Sinai Hospital for shoulder pain. She was first given pills and morphine from a nurse, but when Newman checked on her, he allegedly gave her more morphine, even though the patient said she had been given a dose. According to the Daily News, the patient said that "Newman started fondling her breasts" when examining her right side and then "moved her bed away from the wall and positioned himself with his back toward the patient. The woman heard the sounds of someone masturbating and then felt semen on her face, she claimed." During this time, she was in and out of consciousness. The patient then saved the blanket Newman allegedly used to wipe semen from her face as well as a hospital gown that she used to wipe remaining ejaculate. He is charged with sexual abuse and forcible touching. After this incident was publicized, a second woman came forward with similar allegations. The NY Times reports, "The woman, 22, had gone to the emergency room with a cold around 6 p.m. on Sept. 21 when, she told investigators, Dr. Newman groped her breasts, according to a criminal complaint. He has been charged with sexual abuse in that episode." During a court hearing, the Manhattan DA's office "said only nurses are given access to morphine - concluding that Newman must have had his own stash." Mt. Sinai says that Newman had been suspended from seeing patients since the beginning of the investigation. He is being held on $50,000 bail or $150,000 bond. The married 45-year-old doctor is an Iraq War veteran and has given Ted Talks and contributed to the NY Times op-ed section. The Times notes that the back cover of his book, Hippocrates Shadow: Secrets From the House of Medicine, declares that Newman "sees a lack of candid communication between doctors and patients." The book promises to "show the patterns of secrecy and habit in modern medicines carefully protected subculture." One woman told WCBS 2 that the allegations were "horrifying, especially since Ive been to Mount Sinai multiple times. Ive had multiple surgeries here. And so to hear something like that is very scary, cause its like how many other women has this happened to?" Sean Ludwick, the Manhattan real estate developer who allegedly killed his passenger in a drunken Hamptons car crash last summer and ditched the body on the side of the road before fleeing the scene, was arrested today for attempting to escape the country by boat while enjoying a vacation to Puerto Rico in between court appearances. According to a spokesperson from the Suffolk County DA's office, Ludwick, 43, was allegedly trying to buy a large boat so that he could flee to South America. State Supreme Court Justice Fernando Camacho issued a bench warrant for his arrest, which U.S. Marshals fulfilled, though it was not immediately clear whether he was arrested in Puerto Rico or on U.S. mainland. Bench warrants are typically issued when a person is acting in contempt of court say, by trying to sail out of the country when facing criminal charges. Ludwick was ordered to surrender his passport when he posted bond on January 4th. However, U.S. residents are not required to present passports in order to travel to Puerto Rico, as noted on the U.S. Customs and Border Protection website. A source familiar with Ludwick's arrest, who spoke anonymously because he wasn't authorized to discuss the case, said that Ludwick in fact successfully bought a boat in Puerto Rico and was taking sailing lessons from an instructor who just so happened to be a retired FBI agent. The instructor became suspicious and researched Ludwick, before determining that he was planning to sail to South America, at which point he notified authorities. This thwarted escape isn't Ludwick's first: when he crashed his Porsche into a utility pole last summer and left Paul Hansen to die steps from his home, he didn't get far before police found him further down the road, where he was visibly intoxicated (his blood alcohol measured 0.18, more than twice New York's legal limit, four hours later). Hansen left behind a wife and two young sons. Shortly after his death, a family friend told us that Hansen "spent every waking moment that he could with his sons. They were his reason for doing everything. Everything he did was for those boys. It was like he was on a mission to be the best dad ever." Ludwick pleaded not guilty to DWI, aggravated vehicular homicide, and multiple other charges earlier this month, and had been out on a $1 million bail until U.S. Marshals took him into custody. He's facing a 32-year sentence if proven guilty, though it's unclear whether this attempt to flee will affect that sentence. He appeared before Justice Camacho this morning and is currently in custody at Suffolk County Jail in Riverside, where is expected to be held until his next court appearance, the DA's office said. "If someone asks for something we don't have on the menu, we'll make it for them," Syed Hossain explains while pointing out what he describes as a "small" menu at his new restaurant Tikka Indian Grill on Williamsburg's Grand Street. "As long as we have the ingredients, we'll make it." In an era of no substitutions, Hossain's hospitality initiative is unique and expands beyond what's going out of the kitchen. Hossain says that while his memory for names can be lacking, he can pick out a face even years later. "I can even tell them where they sat." Hossain's charming personality notwithstanding, it's undoubtably the foodcrafted and cooked by Bangladesh-born chef Malika Khanthat packs out the small, simply-appointed dining room each night. Bright yellow crocks of Shrimp Malai Curry, with tangy mango spiced with fenugreek and cumin, are paraded through the dinning room alongside baskets of fluffy naan studded with onion or garlic. Bowls of Tofu Mushroom Jalfrezi offer a slow burn of onions and bell peppers for vegetarians, who'll find plenty to eat between paneer dishes and wholly vegan tofu and vegetable entree options. Khan got her start cooking with her mother and grandmother, learning classic dishes, before going on to culinary school. From there, stints working in hotel kitchens in Kolkata, Bombay and London before settling in New York City. "It's a combination of various regions of India and Bangladesh," Hossain says of Khan's cooking style, which includes things like biryanis, tandoori chicken and Paanch Phoran Jhingashrimp tossed in a fenugreek seed, nigella seed, cumin seed, black mustard seed and fennel seed saucethat both "grew up eating regularly." Though Khan and most of the kitchen staff are Bangladeshi, Hossain was clear about wanting to highlight the flavors of India, even though there are many similarities between the two cuisines. "People know Indian, they don't know Bangladeshi," he explains. Still, the restaurant's Black Pepper Chicken, a super spicy poultry dish redolent with peppers and green chilies, would be common in his home country, which gets a nod here and elsewhere on the menu. Hossain estimates that 65% of his customers are regulars who've come for repeat visits, an impressive feat for any restaurant. He's hoping the same will be true of the Indian street food restaurant he's opening in Astoria at some point soon. On the menu there will be things like kati rolls and curries and the plan will be to stay open later in the evening to entice revelers. To that end, they have a full liquor license (Tikka is BYOB at the moment) and plan to pour tap beers, predominantly. 185 Grand Street, (718) 768-2262; website Grace Lutheran Church exists to proclaim Christ crucified and all the truths of God's Word in the Kenai-Soldotna area. Please feel free to contact Pastor Guenther for more information or some spiritual counsel from God's Word. To listen to these sermons or subscribe to the podcast, visit our webpage: www.GraceLutheranKenai.com and check out the resources there! Thanks for reading! God's blessings! In Him, Pastor Guenther Welcome Visitors! Live Traffic Stats READING LIST The Lucky One, Nicholas Sparks--2 stars Chestnut Street, Maeve Binchy--5 stars Little Fires Everywhere, Celeste Ng -- 4 stars While I Was Gone--Sue Miller--4 stars Olive Again--Elizabeth Strout--4 stars The Burgess Boys--Elizabeth Strout--4 stars The Offing--Bernard Myers--4 stars Rainsong--Sue Hubbard--5 stars Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet--5 Stars Christmas at War --5 Stars The Wife's Tale--Lori Lansens -- 5 Stars Patron Saint of Ugly--Marie Manilla -- 5 Stars Christmas at Harringtons--Melody Carlson-- 1 Star A Time to Dance and Other Stories -- 4 Stars Midwinter Break--Bernard Laverty --4 stars On Folly Beach---2 stars Olive Kitteridge--Elizabeth Strout--5 Stars A Spool of Blue Thread--Anne Tyler -- 5 Stars The Girl From Hoxley--5 Stars Addie: A Memoir--Settle --5 Stars Don't Tell 'Em You're Cold--Manley --5 Stars The Glass Castle--Walls -- 5 Stars Where the Crawdads Sing--Owens --2 Stars There, There--Tommy Orange -2 stars Dust Bowl Diary --5 Stars The Peace of Wild Things --5 Stars Delights and Shadows--Kooser --5 Stars Bedside Book of Famous French Stories --4 stars Ghosts of the Ohio River --3 Stars Big Book of Ohio Ghost Stories --3 stars The Moon-Eyed People --Peter Stevenson-- 5 Stars Morality for Beautiful Girls (No.1 Ladies Detective Agency)--5 Stars Haunting Experiences: Ghosts in Contemporary Folklore --4 Stars Cornish Ghost Stories -- 5 Stars The Persecution of Witchcraft and Magic --4 Stars A Pity Youth Does Not Last An Old Woman's Reflections What Lies Beyond the Frame Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling World Made and Unmade Country Life in England Cornish Tales The Good Earth by Pearl Buck Good Earth Mother (Buck biography) River Rats The Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm Outwitting the Devil The Hogboon of Hell Broonies, Silkies and Fairies Miracle at Hominy Falls The Civil War Diary of Henrietta Fitzhugh Barr Winter Morning Walks by Ted Kooser Irish Ghost Stories by Jeremiah Curtin The Apple That Astonished Paris by Billy Collins Volume 24, WV Encyclopedia Volume 25, WV Encyclopedia Windfall by Maggie Anderson (poetry) Mountain Trace Book 3 The Handy Book Snyder's Hound and Other Poems by Elaine Rowley Hickory & Lady Slippers: Life and Legend of Clay County People, vol 3 Remarkable Words with Astonishing Origins by John Train Opinion Destination Sharjah Come November and all roads will lead to Expo Centre Sharjah. Every year, we wait for this moment to arrive. The 41st edition of Sharjah International Book Fair (SIBF) is all set to begin from Nov.2. Everybody in the UAE is super excited for SIBF. Lots of authors of international repute will grace the much-loved event. A total of 1,632 exhibitors from 83 countries will attend the event. I am also looking forward to meet and listen to a few of them. The other day, swimming around at Richardson Beach, I had a long talk with a woman who informed me that she is not interested in politics. I thought about that. How can anyone not be interested in politics? Well, they can put themselves above the fray, say it makes no difference in their lives, that they have better things to do., it's all too ugly, takes too much time and they would rather think beautiful thoughts while keeping their heads down. They don't like controversy. What does this lead to? In Switzerland the women said they were happy to stay out of politics and said they would rather leave the dirty work to the men. They got the vote in 1972. British and American women raised hell, took to the streets, went to jail, were beaten up and worse. They got the vote in, respectively, 1918 and 1920. Sanders is perfectly right in almost everything he proposes. He believes the right things. His story is an important one. Jews in Germany and Austria avoided political life or were even prevented from taking part in politics, so politics has always been central to him, as it was to his Jewish parents. It's the source of power. Not political? You have no power. German and Austrian Jews were educated, cultivated, some were rich. None of this helped them to do anything when the Nazis took over but escape if they could. The poor powerless Jewish people to the East were simply wiped out and no one was there to save them. Sanders was right about the Iraq War and Hillary Clinton wasn't. But: How far does his vision extend to encompass the diverse nation this country has become? I raise questions but don't have the answers. What would a Sanders presidency look like? A big question mark. We can have pretty fair idea of what a Clinton presidency would look like. It would be similar to the Obama presidency. I would hope that women would be better represented in the areas of reproductive rights, pay equity and so on. These primaries coming up should be fascinating. SAN JOSE, Calif. Alicia Marmoros was desperate to bring some order to her Los Altos, Calif., home but didnt know how to start. Every square inch of her kitchen counter, it seemed, was covered with gadgets and other items she had moved from lower cabinets to be out of her toddler sons reach. Meanwhile, receipts, catalogs and other paperwork were piling up in her foyer. Finally, there was the chaos of the guest room closet and, most horrifying of all, the garage. It all felt so chaotic, she felt she couldnt function, couldnt even think. And, she shuddered at what the mess might say about her competency as a stay-at-home mom, or even her character. My home is a reflection of who I am and what I do, she thought. Marmaros apparently is not alone in feeling overwhelmed, witness the popularity of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, which has sat on the New York Times best-seller list for more than a year, attaining almost cultlike status for some of its extreme streamlining advice. Author Marie Kondo, a personal organizing guru from Japan, promises readers they can change their lives dramatically by putting their homes in order, comparing decluttering a house to detoxifying ones body. Once youve experienced what its like to have a truly ordered house, she says, youll feel your whole world brighten. But to achieve such nirvana requires one to follow some fairly rigid rules, including organizing all at once, instead of in stages, and dramatically limiting the number of books, photos or mementos to keep. Bay Area professional organizers find that while many clients crave that transformative tidying experience, they also hit emotional roadblocks, such as procrastination, dread, anxiety, confusion and an overwhelming fear of failure. Even Kondo acknowledges: Facing our possessions can be quite painful. So is there another approach? Absolutely, say Bay Area professional organizers. In fact, they concur, the key to success is understanding that theres no one way to approach home organization. Whats important is what works for you. Paula Berman, a Los Altos-based professional organizer who worked with Marmaros, says the most effective strategies align with how individual people think and how they define what it means to be organized. Thats because different people have different levels of tolerance for clutter, she notes. Isabella Guajardo, owner of the Oakland, Calif.-based Bella Organizing, adds that organizing all at once may not be practical for the amount of stuff thats packed into many American households. Still, she and Berman do agree with Kondos general prescription that people should only hang onto possessions that are truly useful or that bring them joy. Unfortunately, as Kondo notes, some people have a hard time deciding whats worth keeping, because they may associate even mundane household items with loved ones or precious memories. Emotional attachments to things is what stalls a lot of people, Guajardo says. Emotions run especially high when people are going through a major life change, Guajardo says. She recalled a client who was trying to sort through her late husbands clothing and other belongings. She was worried she wasnt ready, that she was letting go of (her husband) much too soon. In that case, its not a good idea to rush. WHEN NOT TO PURGE On the other side of the spectrum are those whose impulse to purge may not be healthy. She points to a client so eager for a fresh start during a painful divorce, she planned to move out of the house and to leave behind furniture or most household items. Again, Guajardo suggested she slow things down and consider the feelings of her children, who could be further traumatized by having to leave behind familiar surroundings. She adds that special care needs to be taken with people who have been diagnosed with ADHD or anxiety and hoarding disorders. An older client, for example, had a pantry that was overflowing with cans and boxes of food she admitted she would never use. While she was now financially secure, the client had survived war and poverty, which left her with a deep-seated anxiety about letting food go to waste. Guajardo was able to convince the woman to let her take the surplus food to a homeless shelter or food pantry, where it could be truly useful. It was so much easier for her to let it go, she said, when it was me physical transporting the items. But emotional roadblocks are also common even when theres no traumatic life event involved. Berman works with stay-at-home moms like Marmaros, as well as doctors, lawyers and other professionals who function at high levels of efficiency in other areas of their lives but become paralyzed at the prospect of doing the same to their home. I work with a doctor who is the head of her department, but hates facing all the junk mail and catalogs that come to her, she says. After a day of delivering babies and saving lives, she cant face getting on the phone and ask to be taken off some list. WHERE TO BEGIN? One reason Marmaros had a hard time starting her tidying up is that the job seemed open-ended. Her perfectionist tendencies, plus the demands of raising a toddler, made her worry that straightening a drawer in one room would lead to an unwieldy job in another part of the house. She knew that some of the items taking up space on her kitchen counter could go in the garage, but since the garage was such a mess, she wondered if she should start there. That was the loop I had gotten into, that I should clean out the garage first. But that was such a daunting idea, it just stopped me cold, she says. I tend to have an all-or-nothing approach. If I dont have enough time to do it right, I wont do anything. She said Berman helped her break her project into manageable jobs, each of which could be completed in a few hours. Berman also showed her how to stick to one task. Over the course of six sessions that started last summer, Berman helped her first tackle the foyer, going through each and every item of paperwork. Marmaros especially appreciated Bermans solution for all the unopened bottles of specialty sauces that crowded her pantry. Marmaros was reluctant to give them away because they had been gifts, and Marmaros, who loves cooking, hoped they would inspire her to try new dishes. Berman came up with a compromise that allowed Marmaros to keep them for the time being. She had her put them in a box, with a February date written on the top. Any sauces she doesnt use by that date she must give away. Marmaros says shes reminded to use the sauces every time she goes into the pantry and sees the box. Through the step-by-step process that started in the foyer, Marmaros gained confidence in her ability to make decisions, to keep things in order, and to one day finish the garage. As Kondos book promises, tidying up has been transformative for Marmaros, but, with help, she had to find her own way there. I feel accomplished, she says. Its like I can think again. MISSOULA -- While crossbreeding with other fish remains the biggest risk to Montanas westslope cutthroat trout, new DNA testing shows the populations may be tougher than expected. If you care about pure westslope cutthroat, there are a lot of them out there and a lot that dont show any sign of hybridization, said Kevin McKelvey, lead author of a study from the Rocky Mountain Research Centers National Genomics Center for Wildlife and Fish Conservation in Missoula. The majority of the high portions of basins we looked at are pure, unhybridized cutthroat trout. Even areas farther downstream still have pure populations. Thats something thats good to know. During the 20th century, almost 400 million hatchery-raised rainbow trout were stocked in Montana lakes and streams. Those nonnative fish have the capability of interbreeding with native cutthroat trout. The resulting hybrids tend to be less vigorous and may lose some survival traits that natives depend upon. For example, a recent study of trout in the wildfire-scarred drainages of the Bitterroot Mountains found that silt from eroding hillsides crushed populations of rainbow and brook trout, but triggered a reproductive surge in cutthroats. Over the years, rainbows and brown trout took over the rivers and lakes where cutthroat used to spend part of their development. That has left smaller, higher-altitude streams as the cutthroat stronghold. The loss of habitat has been serious enough to raise discussion about putting cutthroats under federal Endangered Species Act protection. The paper was published in the journal Ecology and Evolution with co-authors Michael Young, Taylor Wilcox, Daniel Bingham, Kristine Pilgrim and Michael Schwartz. It looked at fin clips from 3,865 fish caught in 188 locations on 129 streams in Montana and northern Idaho. While only a third of those sites harbored only cutthroats, the biologists found little sign of hybridization even in places where rainbows were present. Unlike past surveys that could look at five to eight DNA species markers, the Genomics Centers new test uses 86 markers. That gave the researchers a much more fine-grained look at each fishs parentage and evidence of cross-breeding. Nevertheless, they found more than 70 percent of the cutthroats showed no signs of hybridization. Thats good news for Montana state fisheries managers, whove been trying a variety of ways to support native cutthroat populations. Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Region 2 fisheries manager Pat Saffel said the research could explain why some places are more receptive to genetic mixing. Were trying to understand their life history and find out where hybridization is going, Saffel said. These genetic techniques have been progressing rapidly. For instance, biologists have built fish barriers near the bottom of Silver Bow Creek between Butte and Anaconda, which was recently restored from a century of toxic mine waste. Then they stocked the new waterway with native cutthroat. The barrier should keep nonnative rainbows and brown trout from moving up from their Upper Clark Fork River habitat, and reveal how well cutthroat can colonize a new place without unnatural competition. There are a number of pure cutthroat populations around Missoula and western Montana, Saffel said. But theyre a fraction of what we historically had, and hybridization is a major reason. These small populations are isolated, and this is how were addressing that. Were trying to find bigger landscapes where cutthroats can live, so theyre more likely to persist into the future. Thats going to take a lot more time and work. The Genomics Center study involved teams of two biologists electrofishing portions of public land streams in remote parts of the Rocky Mountains. On places with lots of roads, they might sample four spots a day. Brushier country might limit that to one a day. Meanwhile, the habitat keeps changing. Cold stream temperatures appear to give cutthroat an advantage in upper drainages, but they might lose that as mountain snowpacks continue to shrink. Whirling disease radically changed the makeup of many Montana streams, turning Missoulas Rock Creek from a rainbow to a brown trout fishery in a couple of decades. With what were starting to know about the status of hybridization now, we can model it on landscape pretty well, McKelvey said. But this is just a one-off sample in time. That helps us understand: Is it growing or shrinking? In some places or other places? But we need a research structure to do that. A 63-year-old polygamist and child molester who eluded authorities for more than a decade has returned to jail in Helena. Thomas Emil Sliwinski on Tuesday afternoon appeared on a bail jumping warrant field in 2004 in Lewis and Clark County Justice Court. It was his first local court appearance after authorities captured him in Mexico at the end of October. Sliwinski, convicted for having sex with his young stepdaughter in 2003, stabbed himself while officers worked to apprehend him. He was subsequently taken to a San Diego hospital, where he received surgery and other treatments for his wounds. During his brief appearance in court via television from the county jail, Sliwinkski stood with the assistance of a walker. Officials booked him into the detention center Monday morning. He is being held on $100,000 bond. Sliwinski faces a felony charge of bail jumping and a petition to revoke his suspended sentence on charges of criminal endangerment and tampering with evidence. He is set to have an initial appearance in district court on Wednesday. Sliwinski was charged with sexual intercourse without consent in December 2000 after one of his wives, who was also his stepdaughter, left him after 11 years of marriage. She revealed Sliwinski's polygamist lifestyle to authorities, which she said included having sex with her and her younger sister before they reached the age of 16. Sliwinski and his wives lived in the Wolf Creek area. In 2003, Sliwinski pleaded guilty to the criminal endangerment charge, which was lowered from sexual intercourse without consent in a plea agreement. The underlying crime was having sex with his stepdaughter. He received a 10-year suspended sentence and was required to complete sex offender treatment. Sliwinski also received a five-year suspended sentence, to run concurrently, for a felony charge of tampering with evidence in connection to the rape case. Sliwinski was later kicked out of his sex offender treatment program. As a result, prosecutors filed a petition to revoke Sliwinski's probationary sentences. Sliwinski also failed to register as a sex offender. A hearing regarding the petition was to be held on Sept. 2, 2004, but Sliwinski failed to appear. A warrant was issued that day for revocation of his suspended sentences for the underlying felony offenses of criminal endangerment and tampering with physical evidence. A second warrant was issued locally for bail jumping in September 2004. Federal authorities had issued an arrest warrant for unlawful flight against Sliwinski. The warrant was dismissed with prejudice on Nov. 24 after the U.S. Attorney's Office argued the warrant's purpose was to assist in the apprehension and arrest, which was completed. BUTTE -- A fourth bomb threat in less than a week has law enforcement officials perplexed in the Mining City. It doesnt make any sense, Butte-Silver Bow Sheriff Ed Lester said Tuesday. Theyre trying to disrupt - its all over the country. Lester was referring to media reports of bomb threats made against schools in at least nine New Jersey towns that forced lockdowns or evacuations, according to The Associated Press. None of the threats was credible, including the two in Butte on Tuesday morning. Reuters also reported bomb threats were made in Massachusetts, Delaware and Iowa. At 9:55 a.m., Lori Maloney, Butte district court clerk, answered her telephone and heard a recorded message threatening pipe bombs would explode if the courthouse wasnt evacuated within 30 minutes. A minute later, at Butte High School, a similar recording forced the evacuation of 1,200 students and personnel for 30 minutes with outside temperatures in the high teens. Personnel and visitors to the courthouse were evacuated to nearby streets within 5 to 10 minutes, Undersheriff George Skuletich said, adding that the building lacks a public address system and relied on floor marshals to sound the alarm. Once the threat was called in, Tom Powers, chief deputy in the clerk's office, was seen calmly alerting people to evacuate. The undersheriff said the dialed-in threats were made from the same phony number and utilized a male voice speaking English with a Middle East accent. He said it was unknown if the recordings were computer-generated. Police believe the four bomb threats made since Thursday are the work of one person or a group of individuals. Skuletich said investigators would continue to work with the federal Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to identify the origin of the calls and possible suspects. On Tuesday afternoon, an FBI spokesman based in Salt Lake City said the Montana Division of Criminal Investigation was taking the lead. However, John Barnes, director of communications for the state Department of Justice and the Attorney Generals Office, said DCIs role in the investigation was one of information sharing. But theyre not part of any investigation because their assistance has not been requested, Barnes added. A 31-year-old Helena woman faces a felony charge of robbery after police say she assaulted an employee at Safeway while trying to steal items from the store. Angel Marie Phend is accused of causing injuries to the loss-prevention officer. Documents filed in Lewis and Clark County Justice Court on Tuesday did not detail the incident. Police arrested Phend at about 12:15 p.m. Saturday at Safeway, 611 N. Montana Ave. Officers said Phend tried to steal items from the store by concealing them in her purse and then assaulted the employee who attempted to stop her. Phend is accused of kicking at police as she was apprehended. She faces additional misdemeanor charges of obstructing a peace officer and resisting arrest. She is being held on $25,000 bond for the robbery charge and another $10,000 for a probation and parole hold. Phend is on probation for a 2015 conviction of issuing a bad check. Refugee resettlement in Montana was the topic of conversation Wednesday, for a room full of Helenans on their lunch break. The Brown Bag Lunch and Learn event hosted by the Helena YWCA featured Steve Maly of WorldMontana, and Wilmot Collins, a Liberian refugee who has made Montana his home for 21 years. I am so positively excited about how many of you have come for this conversation, said Emily Tosoni, chairperson for the YWCA Social and Racial Justice Committee, about attendance to the inaugural event. Maly discussed the nuances of refugee settlement in western states as well as the actions people can take to help with the refugee crisis worldwide. Drawing from his own experience, Collins spoke about the difficulties of being a refugee and the negative impact of hateful rhetoric on the process. So when you hear people talking all this negative stuff -- challenge them, Collins said in regards to the stigma associated with refugee settlement in the U.S. Modeled after a similar event in Missoula, Tosoni said, We just wanted to start a dialogue about social and racial justice in the Helena community. According to Tosoni, future Lunch and Learn events will be held on the third Wednesday of each month at 30 West 14th St., in the Great Northern Town Center. Log on to the YWCA's Facebook page for updates on the series of talks. World Montana is hosting an informational meeting on the same topic at Plymouth Congregational Church at 400 Oakes St., Thursday night at 6:30. If I were to calculate my daily average number of hours spent on sleeping since I arrived in India, I'd definitely come up with a number smaller than that ... By corporate standards, the job of a Montana state legislator is not a great gig. Among the drawbacks are the long hours, which are apparent during the legislative session held once every two years but extend far beyond that. One of the factors that separates good legislators from great ones is the amount of time they spend working for their constituents. Many serve on various committees throughout the year, and all of them should take time regularly to meet with the people they serve in their home districts and throughout the state to identify and implement solutions to their concerns. And because of Montanas citizen-Legislature structure, most of the legislators have full-time jobs in addition to their responsibilities as elected officials. That means much of a legislators duties are completed during the discretionary time that others use to unwind with friends and family. Public scrutiny is another downside to the job. In politics, unlike in the corporate world, a persons job performance has very little to do with his or her evaluation. And regardless of what legislators accomplish, they should expect harsh criticism from individual constituents, organizations, the media and the opposing political party. And did we mention the lousy pay? Most legislators earn $82.64 per day during the legislative session or while engaged in other authorized legislative business. They get some other perks too -- such as mileage, expenses and insurance benefits -- but their compensation is hardly comparable to what they could earn for the same amount of work in the private sector. With all of that said, we hope to see a lot more candidates file for Montanas legislative positions up for election this year before the filing deadline of 5 p.m. March 14. We are pointing out the disadvantages of serving in the Legislature not to discourage anyone from running, but in hopes that it will encourage people to run for the right reasons. We want the candidates to know that if they want to become a Montana state legislator for fame, fortune or recognition, they should probably just bow out of the race right now. If their goal is to make a meaningful difference in the lives of everyday Montanans, however, the role of a state legislator might be one of the best opportunities there is. Montanans need legislators who can find and implement ways to address issues like the states crumbling infrastructure, growing fire danger and reliance on nonrenewable fossil fuels. On a local level, we need leaders who are passionate about finding adequate care for residents of the soon-to-be-shuttered Montana Developmental Center and protecting the states monetary and cultural investment in the Montana Historical Societys collection. There are no easy solutions to many of the issues facing our state, as evidenced by the many times past legislatures have tried and failed. But much can be accomplished by good legislators working for the right reasons, and we encourage anyone up to the task to get their hat in the ring. On the day before Christmas, political columnist and digital project specialist, Landon Hemsley, gave us his version of Christian theology in which he proposes that the story of Jesus had to be true because it was too preposterous to be otherwise. "Who would believe this story, honestly, if it wasn't true?" he says, adding. "Who could tolerate this story long enough to even begin to believe it?" More feared by a farmer than a call from the IRS is a margin call from a grain broker saying the market has moved away from their position and thousands of dollars are needed by the end of the day to settle the financial shortfall. Even the IRS may provide time to pay a shortage, but not the Chicago Board of Trades clearing house, meaning the hedged position will be liquidated. That scenario prevents 80 percent or more farmers from using legitimate risk management tools, said Gerry Bertrand, who has turned the Ayars Bank at Moweaqua into a one-bank island in the U.S. ocean of financial services. And because no other bank provides a grain marketing line of credit to farmers, Bertrand said farmers across the United States have been restricted in their marketing prowess. Bertrands service to the Central Illinois agricultural community is suddenly going to expand, despite his imminent departure as a loan officer at the Ayars Bank, part of the First National Bank of Nokomis network. In a joint venture with Advance Trading of Bloomington, Bertrand will be teaching other banks how to serve their farm customers and improve the quality of those farm loan accounts. If the bank would put the numbers on a balance sheet when the market is rallying, that farmer is more valuable to the bank. However, when the market rallies and margin calls come in, banks will tend to shut off the credit and pull the loan. That is the wrong thing to do. They should keep going, Bertrand said. In the seven and a half years he has been at the Ayars Bank, Bertrand had created such hedging accounts for 40 farm clients, and developed software that tracks every trade and shows that the quality of the loan has improved. Banks fear speculation, and while the farmer will always be long in the market, the system allows the trading statements to be reconciled at the end of the month, and zeroed out for regulators to see, he said. This is not rocket science, it is simple math Bertrand said, and the elevator managers whose clients overlap with Bertrand agree, tossing their kudos to what he has done for their customers. Bertrand knows from grain industry experience how the system works. He was managing a Northern Illinois grain elevator in Peotone when the 2007-2008 grain market began its bullish move. At the time, elevators were selling futures contracts to offset forward contracts as they bought grain. But because the market was rallying so rapidly, margin calls were coming daily, some demanding millions of dollars from large elevators. Banks might support the elevators position for three months, but would not support any loans to pay margin calls for the new crop, which farmers were wanting to hedge. So the elevators could not get needed money to help their farmers be better marketers, Bertrand said. It was at that point he left the grain industry he had known since he was a child, working at an elevator his father owned. I knew there had to be a way that farmers and elevators were better financed when they used the Chicago Board of Trade. The CBOT has been in business for over 150 years, they must be doing something right. However, he decided that to be successful, the hedging accounts had to belong to the farmer, not the elevator, so agricultural banks had to be educated. Bertrands job hiatus was short-lived when the Ayers Bank needed a loan officer who understood the grain industry, and the rest is history. With 80 percent of farmers and 99 percent of banks needing his foresight, Gerry Bertrand is hedging his bets on bushels of business. Thousands of health insurance consumers around the country have started the new year dealing with missing ID cards, billing errors and other problems tied to an enrollment surge at the end of 2015. Brokers and insurers in several states told The Associated Press that they've been inundated with complaints about these issues from customers with individual plans and those with coverage through small businesses. Insurance provider Health Care Service Corp., for instance, has been dealing with delays for about 10,000 companies, while billing errors caused bank overdrafts for 3,200 individual customers of a North Carolina insurer. These delays mean that some customers may have to pay for care up front or wait for their insurance cards to arrive before scheduling a doctor's appointment, even though many have technically been covered since Jan. 1. "I've been in the health insurance business 20 plus years, and I've never seen anything like this," said Dallas-based broker Tanya Boyd, who estimates that hundreds of customers have complained about delays in receiving their insurance cards or a confirmation of coverage. The delays are due in part to more customers than expected shopping for coverage late last year after carriers ended plans in some markets, leaving thousands to find new ones. And a last-minute enrollment deadline extension from the federal government gave people two more days to sign up. An expansion of the Affordable Care Act's mandate that employers cover their workers also may have contributed to the rush. It's unclear how many people have had trouble so far this year. To be sure, a certain amount of problems can crop up at the start of every year, after insurers wrap up a busy holiday season clogged with enrollment periods for several types of insurance. But brokers say this year has been exceptional. Changing federal deadlines also contributed to the problem in some markets. Consumers who wanted coverage that started Jan. 1 originally had to sign up by Dec. 15. But HealthCare.gov, the federal website that handles applications for coverage from ACA exchanges in most states, announced Dec. 15 that it would extend the deadline two days due to heavy demand. Brokers say most remaining problems should be resolved by the end of the month. But some confusion or delays may return in future years because many shoppers tend to buy coverage at the last minute, and then they don't have to make a payment until after coverage starts. These factors can delay the delivery of cards or confirmation of coverage. DECATUR Infrastructure, revenue, economic development and urban revitalization emerged as common themes for Decatur City Council members during a wide-ranging goals discussion Tuesday. Mayor Julie Moore Wolfe noted that the hourlong conversation was only the beginning, as the council will seek input from residents and continue to discuss the ideas at a future meeting. Councilman Jerry Dawson was absent. I'd like for us to do everything possible to make Decatur the most competitive city in Central Illinois to attract business and retain business, Moore Wolfe said while offering her list. We can be that. We can be the city that people want to come to. A local motor fuel tax, which the council has mulled for years as an answer to declining road condition, met with approval from several council members. We've been talking about this for years, and I want us to go ahead and pass it because we need to go ahead and improve our roads, Councilwoman Dana Ray said. It is an eyesore. You can notice a difference when you're traveling from a different city into Decatur, the condition of our roads. Three council members mentioned the Decatur Plugged-In initiative, an effort to extend a fiber backbone through the city and connect it to an existing network at Richland Community College. Fiber provides the opportunity for high-speed, high capacity Internet, said Patrick Hoban, the city's economic development officer. The city would not become an Internet provider but could lease space to companies that would do so, he said. This could be the niche to make Decatur the city of choice for business, entrepreneurs, young professionals. We have a tremendous opportunity with this project, Moore Wolfe said. Neighborhoods remain a concern for the council, which has taken to the streets on annual neighborhood walks since 2012. While demolition of unsafe structures has been ongoing, several council members called for more proactive measures to stabilize property values and improve quality of life. Even though there are a variety of our neighborhoods that are flourishing, there are quite a few that are not, and I think they're having an overall impact on the well-being of the rest of our city, Councilwoman Lisa Gregory said. It is no longer acceptable to me that this city's only substantive approach to urban renewal is simply placing homes on the demolition list. A few council members mentioned making Decatur more business-friendly in terms of requirements and city codes. Councilmen Pat McDaniel and Chris Funk both said they had heard from business owners that Decatur was a more difficult location than others because of restrictions. Do we need to have 30,000 trees in a new development? No, McDaniel said. Things like that add more cost. It looks pretty, but we need the businesses, we need the sales tax, we need the jobs. Flat or declining revenue sources, such as sales tax, combined with rising expenses have placed stress on the city budget. Council members raised property taxes, utility taxes and hotel use taxes in December, but agreed Tuesday that the financial situation needed more attention. There are ways to engineer more efficiencies and more savings and more smarts into the system, Funk said. That's not a criticism of what's been done in the past, necessarily, but it's really a mandate for the future. Councilman Bill Faber reiterated his call to discuss a citywide minimum wage increase, which no council member has seconded. It's a great economic stimulus plan, he said. He also prioritized a residency requirement for new city employees and creation of a citizens' advocate position, among other goals. Residents can submit their ideas for city priorities to the council by visiting decaturil.gov and clicking the Decatur City Council Goals Recommendations link at the top of the page, or email myopinion@decaturil.gov. In other business, the council moved the time designated for public comments to the beginning of its meetings. The move was meant to give more residents an opportunity to speak, as the length of some recent meetings may have caused people to leave before the end, Moore Wolfe said. Traditionally, the council has allowed residents to ask questions and offer thoughts before the vote on each agenda item. That policy was not part of the ordinance change and is under review after suggestions from several council and audience members. DECATUR Drivers were expected to wake up to tough travel conditions today in the wake of a fast-moving winter storm that was predicted to coat much of Central Illinois with 2 to 4 inches of snow. The Illinois State Police issued overnight hazardous travel warnings extending into today's morning commute. Drivers were warned to increase stopping distances, keep their fuel tanks full to help prevent fuel lines freezing and to make sure their cellphone was with them and fully charged. Weather forecasters watching the storm approach Tuesday afternoon said the big problem it posed was the expected snowfall would come down in a short period of time, from about 8 p.m to 3 a.m. That is likely to make travel pretty challenging, because it's a lot of snow to get quickly, said Lincoln-based National Weather Service meteorologist Heather Stanley. And it's hard to keep up with clearing all that on the roads. It's not a lot of snow considering what we could get in January, but it's a lot to deal with in a short space of time. Snowfall amounts of 2 to 4 inches were predicted in a wide area, extending from Decatur toward Taylorville, with snowfall amounts due to be somewhat higher in an arc reaching southward to Vandalia and Effingham. Winds weren't expected to get much above 10 mph, but the dry, powdery snow produced in the recent intense cold drifts easily, and that was forecast to be a problem on rural roads and highways. The good news is that, apart from a slight chance of some additional snow in the southern area of Central Illinois on Thursday, the rest of the week was forecast to be clear. Temperatures will remain in the deep freeze but with a warming trend that is scheduled to post a high near 37 on Sunday. The Palms Grill Cafe in Atlanta serves up just the right blend of old and new. That, combined with a love of exploring close to home, makes it the perfect topic to reintroduce myself to you as a columnist for the Herald & Review. My husband and fellow adventurer suggested a couple Saturdays ago we head to this Logan County tourist spot, situated on Historic Route 66. Andy ran across it in a magazine recently and was reminded hed still never been there. So Lincoln and Atlanta were the destinations for our last day trip. After some fun shopping at the Goodwill store in Lincoln, which has an especially nice boutique area, we arrived at the Palms shortly before noon and just as it was beginning to snow. We were immediately smitten with the cafes charms, which included a diner-style counter and metal tables and vinyl-upholstered chairs straight out of our early childhoods in the 1950s. Other details were an ornate old-time cash register next to a small and unassuming modern one. The food was also plentiful and tasty. Andy enjoyed his Holy Smokes Burger, topped with pulled pork, grilled onions and sweet apple barbecue sauce, but the blue plate special I ordered was a special treat. Served atop a sectioned plate rendered somewhat irrelevant, real mashed potatoes became the foundation for baby spinach leaves, warm cream sauce and pan-seared salmon stacked one on top of the other. It was the priciest special served all week at $12.99 but well worth the cost. Almost all the others were $10 or less. The Reeses cheesecake we shared afterward was yummy, too. That and bottomless coffee while watching large snowflakes come down through the cafe window made our cozy winter dining experience complete. Longtime readers will remember I wrote a column in from 1995 through 2004 and that Ive continued the conversation since then with blogs on the newspapers Web site and with in-print articles about our travels around Illinois. Today Im re-opening the dialogue in its original form through a weekly column. Through it Ill share my personal experiences and perspectives but want to hear from you as well. Write to me at the Herald & Review, 601 E. William St., Decatur, IL 62523, find me on Facebook and Twitter, or contact me via the email or phone number provided below. Investigations are still continuing regarding the use of force by police against protestors who demonstrated on June 23 of last year on Yerevans Baghramyan Avenue against electricity rate hikes. Complaints of police manhandling filed by reporters on the scene are also stuck in the examination phase. Surprisingly, though, complaints filed by police regarding unruly protestors who didnt heed their instructions on September 12 to disperse are already being heard at the administrative court. Here are a few people who have been called to court based on police complaints: Ernest Avanesov (No to Plunder initiative) Attorney Hayarpi Sargsyan told Hetq that she is representing eight individuals in administrative court who have been singled out by police for their conduct on that day. More than twenty people have been charged with various offences on September 12 by the police. One of them is Ernest Avanesov, a member of the No to Plunder coordinating committee. Today was his first trial date in court. The presiding judge is Liana Hakobyan. Judge Liana Hakobyan Attorney Hayarpi Sargsyan says she has filed countersuits in some of the cases, including that of Ernest Avanesov, arguing that police overstepped their bounds on the day in question. Avanesov noted that police, using force, arrested him while he was standing on the sidewalk, not in the middle of Baghramyan Avenue. He was later taken to the Kanaker-Zeytoun police station. Avanesov and attorney Sargsyan claim that during the trip to the station, the police never identified themselves by name or rank. Furthermore, they never explained why Avanesov was detained in the first place. Avanesov spent three hours at the station without a lawyer. Attorney Hayarpi Sargsyan Police Major Marta Meliksetyan, who works as a senior legal consultant at the Arabkir Police Division, told Hetq that the Yerevan Municipality had specified a legal route for the September 11 march and demonstration but that some participants had left the official route and did not heed police instructions. Meliksetyan says the police issued statements in advance that the actions of march participants were illegal. The police major says that marchers were even given time to disband and leave Baghramyan Avenue. Police Major Marta Meliksetyan Marianna Margaryan, a spokesperson for the Kanaker-Zeytoun Police Division, told Hetq that police from her unit had filed 17 complaints on the day. If demonstrators are found to have violated the law they can be fined 50,000 AMD (US$103). Police spokesperson Marianna Margaryan Attorney Hayarpi Sargsyan notes that cops do not have to use force to haul off people to the nearest police station if they have committed an administrative offence. If a policeman can sustain such an offence, it can be written up on the spot, she says. Artur Kocharyan, a member of the No to Plunder coordinating committee, against whom the police filed a complaint, believes that these administrative cases are a means for law enforcement to pressure citizens. If we are talking about violations, the police are violating civil order. There are videos showing how the cops seized people off the sidewalks. I regard this behavior as political persecution of citizens. Its done so that people will fear taking to the streets to voice certain issues, said Kocharyan. Artur Kocharyan (No to Plunder initiative) Readers will recall that on September 11, 2015 those peacefully protesting the hike in electricity rates marched towards the beginning of Baghramyan Avenue where they encountered a wall of police. At 5 a.m. the next morning police had given the demonstrators 30 minutes to continue their rally on the adjoining sidewalks. The cops then moved in, pushing many off the avenue onto the sidewalk, and detaining others. What follows is an official communique by the U.S.Embassy in Armenia regarding the recent resignation of Karen Andreasyan, Armenia's Human Rights Defender. We note with regret Karen Andreasyans decision to step down as Armenias Human Rights Ombudsman. He has been a tireless and effective champion for those who were defenseless; those who feared their voices might be silenced if they voiced unpopular messages; and any Armenian who fought for his or her rights as a citizen to be respected. We wish him the greatest success in his future endeavors. He will remain a friend, colleague, and contact of the U.S. Embassy and the U.S. Government. Mr. Andreasyans work was buttressed by the professionalism and dedication of the staff at the Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman. One of Mr. Andreasyans lasting legacies will undoubtedly be the expansion of the number, and the quality, of staff at this invaluable Armenian institution, which we trust will continue to serve the best interests of the Armenian public under his successor. We are committed to maintaining our close cooperation and partnership with the Office and its staff on issues related to the protection of human rights in Armenia. We look forward to working with the new Human Rights Ombudsman. The United States remains dedicated to working with the Armenian Government and our Armenian partners to advance the cause of democratic development and human rights in Armenia. Our ultimate goal has been, and will remain, a democratic and prosperous Armenia, living in security and peace with its neighbors. Embassy of the United States of America On the eve of the forthcoming session of PACE where the debates on two draft documents related to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict are planned, the NGOs of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic (NKR) have sent an appeal to the members of the PACE. The appeal of the NGO leaders in particular reads The names of the reports prepared by Milica Markovic and Robert Walter, already point to the biased, pro-Azerbaijani nature of both reports. The draft resolutions prepared on the basis of these reports do not stand out for their impartiality either. As supporters of peaceful dialogue and cooperation at various levels, we regret that the texts of the documents were prepared without PACE rapporteurs visit to the Nagorno Karabakh Republic, and without any communication and interaction with the authorities and the civil society of the Republic. The NGO representatives of the NKR have alerted the PACE members that the possible adoption of the draft resolutions would have an extremely negative effect on the process of peaceful settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. The documents put forward for your consideration have nothing to do with the peace process, pursue propagandistic goals and may offer certain advantages to the Azerbaijani authorities, who, in spite of the commitments taken do not exclude the use of force in the solution of political problems, constantly and flagrantly violate the ceasefire agreement in the conflict zone and persecute civil activists in their own country, including the participants of peacekeeping projects, note the authors of the appeal. The NGO leaders of Artsakh expressed their conviction that the PACE could help to achieve peace in the region exclusively through supporting the formation and development of civil society in all three conflicting countries. For democratically developed Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia it would be much easier to find a peaceful and lasting solution to the Azerbaijani-Karabakh conflict on the basis of common values- the document reads. The civil society leaders of Artsakh have urged members of the PACE to refrain from adopting the proposed PACE resolutions on Nagorno-Karabakh, which are aimed at undermining both the official negotiating process under the auspices of the OSCE (Track I), as well as peoples diplomacy (Track II). According to the authors of the document Draft resolutions, which run counter to the declared values of the Council of Europe, will contribute to the final disruption of relations between the civil societies, which act as carriers of peaceful conflict transformation. Copies of the appeal of Artsakh NGOs to the PACE have been sent to the parliaments and the ministries of Foreign Affairs of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic and the Republic of Armenia. New TORAH-SEARCH Engine & Concordance -----------------------------------Now you can easily search through Torah or Tanach. Find a phrase, find a gematria, or find a word; E.g., where in Torah is the 1st mention of a given word or verb? You can personalize gift cards with your findings, e.g., using the Hebrew names of bride & groom. Use it for research, e.g., how many times is mentioned in Tanach?-----------------------------------New App is Available Install the free torawarefromby clicking the icon below. It's a handy Torah-search tool for the curious or the scholarly. The Innovative and Alternative education programs in the Madison School District serve students in ninth to 12th grade. The programs provide a learning space different from mainstream high schools and center on student needs like earning required school credit, boosting skills, reading levels and career goals. Laurel White Laurel White covers city and county government for The Capital Times. She joined The Capital Times in 2014, having previously served as a general assignment reporter at Wisconsin Public Radio. She graduated with her master's in public affairs reporting from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in 2014. Share your opinion on this topic by sending a letter to the editor to tctvoice@madison.com. Include your full name, hometown and phone number. Your name and town will be published. The phone number is for verification purposes only. Please keep your letter to 250 words or less. A veritable cocktail of drugs reportedly was found in a mans system after he allegedly struck a Caledonia teen with his sport utility vehicle last summer, killing her. Thomas C. Macemon, 34, of Caledonia, is accused in the drugged driving crash that killed Sara Dresen, 13, of Caledonia, on Aug. 9. A state crime lab report shows that Macemon had marijuana, oxycodone and benzodiazepines in his system. The report also showed alprazolam, also known as Xanax, which is a benzodiazepine. Benzodiazepines are a type of tranquilizer that can cause muscle relaxation, sedation and reduce anxiety, as well as be used for seizure control. During a court hearing Tuesday, Macemons defense attorney, Assistant State Public Defender Joshua Hargrove, said he had received the report shared by Racine County Deputy District Attorney Tricia Hanson. He told the judge he wants to order a defense analysis, as well, which is standard practice. Hargrove said he wants the prosecutions reports looked at in more detail. Circuit Judge Eugene Gasiorkiewicz scheduled Macemons trial for June 28. Setting a trial date can result in speedier evidence testing by state crime lab staff. Macemon is charged with homicide by negligent use of a vehicle and homicide by vehicle while using drugs. District Attorney Rich Chiapete said once samples are sent to the lab in Milwaukee, its a matter of waiting to hear from the lab. They have protocols. This isnt the only case the lab is working on for us. Cases in other counties also involve evidence that must be analyzed. They are not beholden to our schedule, Chiapete said Tuesday afternoon of the crime lab staff. On our end, we immediately sent it to the lab. Then we have to wait for whatever their time schedule is. Questions for Milwaukee Crime Lab Supervisor Dirk Janssen and lab Manager Carlton Cowie were referred to Wisconsin Department of Justice spokeswoman Anne E. Schwartz. Phone and email messages were left Tuesday for Schwartz, but she wasnt available for comment. The fateful evening Dresen was a catcher for the Sturtevant Starz softball team, as well as a cheerleader, musician and artist, family members have said. She was walking at about 5:50 p.m. on Aug. 9, near the intersection of Middle and 5 Mile roads, when she was struck by the SUV reportedly driven by Macemon. The vehicle crossed the center line and struck Dresen who was walking along the gravel shoulder off the roadway before going into the ditch and hitting a speed limit sign and telephone pole, according to Macemons criminal complaint. The teens death was caused by blunt-force trauma to the head, the complaint states. She also suffered a broken pelvis, broken bones in her left leg and right arm and several skull fractures. Macemon was found lying near a gravel driveway by a ditch, the complaint states. He allegedly admitted to drinking cognac and using marijuana and Xanax before the crash, according to police and prosecutors. Macemon remains in the Racine County Jail on $250,000 cash bond. His next court date is June 20. A house fire Tuesday evening in the village of Dane has completely damaged the structure, but the lone occupant at the time made it out safely, a Dane County Sheriff's Office state said. Sheriff's officers and the fire departments from Dane and Waunakee responded to the fire around 7:30 p.m. at 108 Dane. St., and the house is considered a total loss, authorities said. The preliminary investigation suggests electrical issues may have played a role in the fire, according to the statement. Dane County officials are offering to rewrite the countys zoning ordinance in an effort to stop the state Legislature from voting on a bill that would allow towns to opt out of shared zoning control. County Executive Joe Parisi and County Board Chairwoman Sharon Corrigan made the offer in a letter last week to the bills lead sponsors, Rep. Keith Ripp, R-Lodi, and Sen. Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau. The letter asks that the Assembly bill and its Senate companion be set aside in exchange for an overhaul of the countys zoning ordinance. The rewrite would be led by a special committee that would include members of town governments, builders, real estate agents and farmers, with a goal to enact a new ordinance that addresses towns concerns within 18 months. Its adoption would be followed by a yearlong period for town boards to either ratify the new ordinance or opt out of shared zoning authority. We will not stand in the way of towns that ultimately wish to opt out, the letter said. But the Dane County Towns Association called the proposal a ploy and said the county has ignored past requests for comprehensive zoning revisions. We are not willing to accept a comprehensive revision. They werent willing to do that 5 years ago when we asked. Theyre not offering this as a compromise, but rather as a diversion, said towns association attorney Mark Hazelbaker. Under current Wisconsin law, cities and villages control decisions on rezoning farmland for residential or commercial construction, but most towns share the authority. Both the town and the county hold veto power over proposals. Supporters of an opt-out have said its necessary because Dane County government is controlled by residents of urbanized areas who oppose significant development in any rural parts of the county, and that zoning autonomy would help towns grow their tax base to pay for services. County officials, however, have faulted the bill for carving out rules that would apply only to Dane County. The proposed legislation would allow towns to opt out of shared zoning authority only in counties with populations over 485,000. Dane Countys official population in the 2010 census was 488,075, and the only other county above that threshold, Milwaukee County, does not have any towns. Corrigan and Parisis chief of staff Josh Wescott said they had not heard back from the bills sponsors, but both said they hope state lawmakers allow the county a chance to resolve the dispute. Ripps office did not return a call Wednesday. Im hoping that this Legislature, which has talked a lot about local control in the past, will see that were sincere in wanting to find local solutions, Corrigan said Wednesday. The existing zoning code has been amended many times, but the last comprehensive rewrite was approved by the County Board in May 1950, said county zoning administrator Roger Lane. A County Board resolution that would create an ad-hoc committee to rewrite the ordinance was introduced Friday. The resolution needs a recommendation from the countys Zoning and Land Regulation Committee but Corrigan said it should be ready for a vote by the full board at its Feb. 4 meeting. Its unclear whether the countys offer will have any impact on the bill. But Wescott said a local process would be better than a state-imposed solution even if several towns ultimately decide to opt out. The difference is wed have a locally driven process where we bring in those towns, Wescott said. We think wed be able to demonstrate to them the value that comes with having a centralized zoning and development process that we have now. At least eight towns have joined the county and the local cities and villages association in formally opposing the opt-out legislation. Those towns contend that the current system allows for a predictable, cooperative approach to development in rural areas, and that towns lack the staff and financial resources to administer their own zoning code. With many towns wanting to remain in the shared zoning system, Corrigan said its the right time to revise the ordinance regardless of whether legislative Republicans pass the bill. We likely would go through with it because there are towns that are interested in changes, Corrigan said. Ive heard from towns that are welcoming this process, but they are wanting to stay with county zoning. Its expensive to do your own zoning. Seeking to rehabilitate his sagging standing in the state, Gov. Scott Walker pledged Tuesday to spend more money on public education using savings from changes to state employee health plans. Walker who has previously cut funding for K-12 and higher education while expanding the private school voucher program said in his sixth State of the State address that his pledge could mean tens of millions of dollars for the states public schools. Tonight, I commit to investing every penny of savings to the general fund from these specific reforms to support public education, Walker said. People tell me that they appreciate our efforts to get the states fiscal house in order and that now is the time to use savings to help our students prepare for the future. That proposal, and support for college affordability and job training measures, counter Democrats sharpened criticism of Walkers education cuts. The 40-minute speech came after a roller coaster year in which Walker briefly led the 2016 Republican presidential field before a colossal campaign collapse returned him to a state where his approval level had dipped below 40 percent. In the address, Walker offered a variety of smaller proposals to harness the power of government to help educate residents and find them jobs, but none of the big, bold ideas that he championed in the past and touted on the presidential campaign trail. Walkers comments about the states health insurance plan for employees were his strongest yet, but he didnt specify which option he supports. The Group Insurance Board is set to vote Feb. 17 on adopting a self-insurance model, in which the state would pay benefits directly and assume the risk for large claims. Consultants have said such a plan could save as much $40 million or cost up to $100 million more per year. Another option of reducing the number of HMOs from 17 to seven could save $45 million to $70 million a year. Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, said after the speech that lawmakers want to examine the proposal even further before getting on board. I think it would take a lot of convincing to get the Legislature to move forward without seeing some hard numbers on what the benefit would be, Fitzgerald said. He said the proposal likely wouldnt come up for debate until the next biennium and maybe even beyond that. Fitzgerald also said the Legislative Fiscal Bureau is expected to release tax revenue figures soon that are far shorter than the $150 million in additional funds that was anticipated, which could put a damper on any new spending this legislative session. Walker also: Announced an additional $3 million for a dual enrollment program, known as Wisconsin Fast Forward, that allows high school students to take courses at technical colleges. Said he would work with University of Wisconsin System leaders to promote on-time graduation, to expand the online UW Flex Program to include as many students as a new UW campus and to explore a three-year degree option. Called on the Legislature to pass a package of bills that would lift the cap on tax deductions for student loan interest, add $1.5 million in need-based student college grants, increase internships and require state higher education institutions to provide financial literacy instruction. Highlighted new information to assist employers whose workers have loved ones suffering from dementia. Asked for feedback from the citizens of Wisconsin as part of a 2020 Vision Project, which he described as a state listening tour with diverse small groups to discuss what makes Wisconsin great, where it should be headed in the next two decades and how to measure success. Says Wisconsin on track Declaring the Wisconsin comeback is real, Walker highlighted how employment levels are near an all-time high, state finances are stable, students are performing well, college tuition is frozen and property and income taxes are down from before he took office. We have an aggressive plan over the next year to ensure that everyone who wants a job can find a job, Walker said. We will enact this plan by helping the people of this state improve the economy and by investing in K-12 education, higher education and worker training. Democrats have fired back that job growth in Wisconsin has lagged other states, the labor participation rate has declined and higher education funding remains below 2010 levels. The state is set to spend $5.4 billion on K-12 general school aids in 2016-17, the first year since Walker took office that aid will rise above 2010-11 levels. Senate Minority Leader Jennifer Shilling, D-La Crosse, took issue with the governors characterization that the state was strong. Id like for him to tell that to the 1,200 workers who have been laid off at Oscar Mayer. Id like for him to tell that to the 400 workers who were laid off from Tyson Foods, she said. For these workers and their families, the state of the state is not working for them. Democrats also have criticized the Republican higher education proposals for not going far enough to help Wisconsinites with student loan debt. They have proposed making all student loan payments, not just interest, tax deductible and setting up a student loan refinancing authority, which Walker has rejected. Walker highlighted budget measures requiring able-bodied adults without children to be enrolled in job-training programs before they can receive food stamps. When we first proposed these reforms, some in this Capitol argued that we were making it harder to get government assistance, Walker said. The truth is: were making it easier to find a job. Laying foundation for 2018 run? Walker also has been talking up a potential run for a third term in 2018. His presidential campaign sent out a fundraising appeal Monday noting our re-election campaign may seem like a long way off but the other side is already gearing up for a bruising battle. Over the past year the Legislature has controlled much of the agenda, passing a contentious state budget, making Wisconsin a right-to-work state, adopting new campaign finance rules, and replacing the nonpartisan Government Accountability Board with two bipartisan commissions. Two years ago, heading into an election season, the state had $912 million in unanticipated tax revenue that Walker and legislative Republicans used to reduce property taxes. This year finances are much tighter, with the state ending last year with $136 million in reserves. The state had $517 million in reserves at the end of the previous year. Last years fast-paced 24-minute speech was largely overshadowed by Walkers widely anticipated presidential run and a looming $2.2 billion budget shortfall. Walker proposed balancing the budget with $250 million in cuts to the University of Wisconsin System, increased borrowing for roads, higher park fees, fewer scientists at the Department of Natural Resources and other austerity measures across state government. Walker has been traveling the state extensively since dropping out of the presidential race on Sept. 21, and he said he plans to visit every part of the state to hold listening sessions throughout 2016. State Journal reporter Molly Beck contributed to this report. The state Senate has passed a pair of bills to curtail public funding for Planned Parenthood. The Senate voted on party lines, 19-14, to pass both bills Wednesday. One of the bills would bar abortion providers from getting Title X grant money. Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin currently is the state's only recipient of those funds. The organization estimates it could lose about $3.5 million in annual funding as a result of the bill. That bill, which passed the Assembly in September, now heads to the desk of Gov. Scott Walker. The second bill would require abortion providers, when billing the state's Medical Assistance program for a covered prescription drug, to bill for its actual cost. Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin spokeswoman Iris Riis said the organization isn't sure how much funding it could lose if that bill becomes law. It has yet to pass the Assembly. Democratic lawmakers who oppose the measure said during Wednesday's debate that it likely will be overturned in court because it targets a single organization. They also said the bill will restrict women's access to birth control and other health care, especially in rural areas with few providers of such services. This will prevent people from getting the care that they need and deserve," said Sen. Janet Bewley, D-Ashland. The bill addressing Title X grant money says that, if the federal government approves, the grant money instead would go to the state's Well-Woman program, which provides breast cancer and cervical cancer screenings for women. Federal law requires the grants go to family planning and contraceptives, and screening for breast and cervical cancer and sexually transmitted diseases. It is not allowed to be spent on abortions but can be used for family planning services and wellness screenings. Planned Parenthood provides reproductive health care services to about 60,000 men and women a year in Wisconsin. Its Republican critics object to giving public funds to Planned Parenthood because some of its facilities provide abortions. Planned Parenthood says about 3 percent of its budget goes toward paying for abortions. The Senate sponsor of the bills is Sen. Chris Kapenga, R-Delafield. The Associated Press contributed to this report. The state Senate has voted to remake Wisconsins civil service system, enabling a supportive Gov. Scott Walker to sign the measure the latest far-reaching change to rules governing the state workforce. The Senate voted on party lines, 19-14, late Wednesday to pass the civil service bill. The state Assembly passed it in October. Walker, a chief proponent of the bill, is virtually certain to sign it. The bill applies to the states civil service, nearly all state workers except the University of Wisconsin System and the Wisconsin National Guard. It replaces state civil service exams with a resume-based hiring system. It also would determine layoffs from state agencies based on job performance instead of seniority, extend probationary time for new hires, outline specific offenses for which employees can be immediately terminated and centralize the hiring process within the Department of Administration. The bill was a priority for passage in 2016 for Walker and his GOP legislative allies. They contend the states century-old civil service system is cumbersome, outdated and ripe for reform. Democrats strongly oppose the bill, saying it could lead to cronyism in state hiring. State employees should be hired on what they know, not who they know, said Sen. Fred Risser, D-Madison. Wisconsins civil service system was adopted in 1905 under Gov. Robert La Follette as a bulwark against political patronage. By imposing a merit-based hiring system including an objective hiring exam and a just-cause requirement to fire state workers, it was meant to prevent state jobs from being doled out as favors to political allies. Critics of the bill warned that it could send Wisconsin back to the patronage days of the 19th century. The bills sponsor, Sen. Roger Roth, R-Appleton, disagreed. He said the bill wont erase an existing law barring workers from being hired based on political affiliation. Roth said the state must fill many vacancies in coming years as baby boomer employees retire. He said his bill is needed to streamline the states hiring system and allow employees to be hired more efficiently. It does not strip away the civil service protections that our employees deserve, Roth said. Critics linked the bill to a series of bills passed under Walker and recent GOP Legislatures starting with Act 10, the historic measure that curtailed collective bargaining rights for public employees that they said diluted conditions and safeguards for state workers. Walker has told at least two stories to justify the bill that havent been supported by state records. One of them that the current civil service system barred the state from firing two state Railroad Commission workers caught having sex in the workplace was directly contradicted by former state human resource officials who served under Republican and Democratic governors. Walker also claimed a short-order cook scored high enough on a civil service exam to be considered for a financial examiner job. But his administration couldnt produce any documents to support the claim. Sen. Jon Erpenbach, D-Middleton, cited the story about the Railroad Commission workers while urging his GOP colleagues to question the need for the bill. The things the governor is saying about this are not true, Erpenbach said. A Senate sticking point on the bill was removed Wednesday when a Republican senator announced he was ending his pushback to its so-called ban the box provision. The provision, also included in the bill that passed the Assembly, bars the state from asking applicants about past criminal convictions on their initial job applications. Applicants could still be asked about criminal convictions later in the process. Sen. Stephen Nass, R-Whitewater, announced his retreat in a news release Wednesday, about an hour before senators convened to take up the civil service bill. Nass led the fight in the state Senate against the ban the box provision. But Nass said in his release that Assembly Republican leaders made it very clear that civil service reform would die if any amendments were added in the Senate. Keeping food on the shelves, fresh produce in the aisles and a stocked storeroom to replenish goods are obvious priorities for independent supermarket operators, but these business owners play a bigger role in their communities beyond providing food to eat. From creating jobs to investing in the local economy and supporting charitable activities, grocery stores are a vital partner in every community. A lot goes in to operating a business that ensures its customers and communities are served with the highest quality, and when Im out talking with grocers in Wisconsin, taxes are often top of the list. A proposal floated in Washington, D.C., would repeal an accounting method that is heavily relied on by the supermarket operators. Because of the constant inventory fluctuations, the grocery industry is one of largest users of the last in, first out method of accounting, also known as LIFO. LIFO is an essential tool that makes running a business more efficient and, in turn, more prosperous. The grocery industry isnt alone in its utilization of this accounting method. Retailers, wholesalers, distributors, manufacturers and countless small businesses use LIFO to manage fluctuating inventory expenses and keep enough cash on hand to cover operating expenses. Despite its key benefits for so many small businesses here in Wisconsin and across the country, the Obama administration and lawmakers in Congress want to ban this accounting method. Eliminating LIFO would hurt those business owners who chose to employ the accounting method while only satisfying short-term federal government revenue goals. Businesses would be forced to pay an immediate retroactive tax increase. If businesses are able to keep their doors open after paying this immediate painful retroactive tax, they would continue to see increased taxes. Ultimately, in the end, grocery shoppers in Wisconsin and across America would lose. Repealing the LIFO method of inventory accounting would have lasting effects on a broad cross section of businesses. A proposal to repeal LIFO is a blow to the hardworking independent grocery store operator who works each day to ensure the shelves are stocked with healthy and safe food for their customers. Wisconsins economy cannot sustain a ban on using LIFO. I urge the members of Wisconsins congressional delegation to oppose any suggestion of repeal. According to the Constitution, the legislature is the first and most powerful branch of government. And yet, many believe on the left and the right that the institution has atrophied. By all accounts, House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin is eager to change that. He has his work cut out for him. At the Republican congressional retreat in Baltimore last week, I participated in a panel discussion about how to revive Congress traditional role. It was off the record, but I can certainly repeat a story I told. When my father was in the Army, he was stationed in Japan. His commanding officer, a master at maneuvering the military bureaucracy, gave him one piece of advice. Goldberg, its always better to be on the committee that says, This must never happen again. In other words, its easier to wag a finger at mistakes than to be accountable for them. Congress has largely become a finger-wagging bystander. Its great at expressing outrage. But when it comes to the messy work of legislating, its fallen down on the job. This is true even when it writes landmark laws. The Affordable Care Act, for example, isnt so much a piece of legislation as a letter of marque for the Health and Human Services secretary to chart whatever course she pleases. The law contains more than 2,500 references to the Secretary, as Philip Klein reported in 2010 in The American Spectator. In 700 of them, the law says she shall do X and in another 200-plus instances it says she may do Y. In 139 instances, it simply says the Secretary determines. This is just one example of how Congress routinely vests legislative power in the executive branch. Other aspects of Congress authority have been hacked away and sold off in pieces. The Constitution says only Congress can levy taxes. The founders had this crazy idea called no taxation without representation. And yet, numerous agencies are self-funding, raising money without having to worry about Congress power of the purse. For example, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau gets its revenue from a skim of the profits from the Federal Reserve. Not only are such arrangements a hate crime against the Constitution, they also make agencies less accountable to Congress and, by extension, the people. These agencies are, furthermore, often unaccountable to the judicial branch. Bureaucrats have their own administrative courts, which routinely deny traditional due process to plaintiffs. The executive branch was never supposed to be this powerful. Richard Neustadt famously wrote in Presidential Power that the presidency is an inherently weak office and therefore the presidents chief power is persuasion. For decades, presidents took Neustadts argument to heart, using the bully pulpit to rally public opinion to their side. President Obama has certainly tried to do that. But its turned out his powers of persuasion have been greatly exaggerated, particularly in this age of polarization. Unable to coax the country in his direction, Obama has relied on his beloved pen and phone strategy that is, signing executive orders often to the cheers of congressional Democrats apparently eager to celebrate their institutional gelding. The Hudson Institutes Christopher DeMuth argues that Obama is the first president to recognize that Neustadt is obsolete and so is the notion of a lame duck presidency. Obama can keep making policy right until the day he leaves office. The challenge for Ryan is multifaceted. He wants to restore Congress primacy, but to do so he must also transform the GOP into what he calls a proposition party, not an opposition party (which may be difficult if Obama does everything he can to invite opposition from conservatives). Both require time he may not have. Clawing back the legislative function cant be done overnight and requires a cultural transformation of Congress itself. Meanwhile, both parties front-runners dont seem interested in deferring to Congress. Hillary Clinton has already said that Obamas unilateralism hasnt gone far enough, and vowed to go further. Donald Trump promises to just make stuff happen via his superhuman management skills. We already know liberals will applaud an imperial Democratic president. I can only hope conservatives will stick with Ryan under a Republican one. To save money, the state of Michigan poisoned the children of Flint. State officials thought so little of the impoverished city and its 100,000 residents, most of them poor and people of color, that they switched the water supply from the pure waters of Lake Huron to the brackish Flint River. Then they broke federal law by neglecting to treat the water with an anti-corrosion agent, which would have cost about $100 a day. The waters heavy iron content ate into the water lines, about half of which are made of lead. The water smelled and tasted foul, but state officials said everything was fine, even though a university research team said the lead content was dangerously high. Finally a pediatrician, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, compared the blood lead levels of toddlers she was seeing with records on hand from previous years. She saw lead levels had doubled or even tripled since the water line switch. Lead poisoning is irreversible. To save a relatively small amount of money, the state may have doomed these children to lower IQ levels, behavioral problems, growth delays, hearing difficulties and other physical and neurological ailments. Theres tons of evidence on what lead does to a child, and it is one of the most damning things that you can do to a population, Hanna-Attisha told CNN. Michigan has committed a stunning act of governmental malpractice. ... The tainted water supply will cost the state and federal government for years. Flints families will need intensive services like nutritional programs and early childhood education to mitigate the damage. But right now they need clean water. The state spent $10 million to hook the water back to its old source, but the corroded pipes are still leaching lead. The National Guard is going door to door, passing out bottles of water safe to drink. The scandal ought to bring an end to the political career of Michigan GOP Gov. Rick Snyder, who personally reacted far too slowly to the crisis while some of his top officials improperly downplayed the threats as well. And it should act as a cautionary tale to other states that wrongly think its smart policy to starve state budgets to the point where essential services begin to break down. States can act irresponsibly with wasteful spending, yes. But refusal to spend even when the law requires it can cause immeasurable harm. Just ask the people of Flint. Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-01-20 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at CONTENTS [01] PM Tsipras' agenda at the Davos World Economic Forum [02] Seamen's strike on Wednesday and Thursday; ships docked at ports [03] Snowfall and low temperatures across the country [04] Greece-Fyrom buffer zone still closed [01] PM Tsipras' agenda at the Davos World Economic Forum Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has a full agenda during his visit at Davos for the World Economic Forum on Wednesday and Thursday. The economic crisis, the foreign policy, the cooperation with other countries and the situation in the wider area are expected to dominate Tsipras' contacts on the sidelines of the forum. Tsipras will meet with German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel and EU Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs Pierre Moscovici to discuss economic issues. He will also meet US Vice President Joe Biden to discuss bilateral relations, the situation in Syria and the Balkans, the Cyprus issue as well as economic issues. On Thursday, he will participate in a panel with German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble to talk on the Greek programme. He will also have meetings with US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and IMF chief Christine Lagarde in order to clear out the role of the Fund in the Greek program and discuss upon the Greek debt. [02] Seamen's strike on Wednesday and Thursday; ships docked at ports The National Seamen's Federation (PNO) announced a 48-hour nationwide strike on Wednesday and Thursday, during which no ships will set sail from ports around the country. The employees of the Shipping ministry have also announced a working stoppage from 11.00 to 14.00 on Thursday. The secretary general of the seamen's federation Yiannis Halas warned that they are determined not to retreat. [03] Snowfall and low temperatures across the country Heavy snowfall has been recorded across the country from early Wednesday. Snow has fallen in central Greece and traffic in the mountainous and semi-mountainous areas is only conducted with the use of snow chains. Problems have been reported on Athens-Thessaloniki motorway, particularly at Martino, where a large number of snow graders are working to keep the road open. Below zero temperatures are recorded in all the regions of Central and Western Macedonia with the lowest one in the city of Florina (-12C) and Ptolemaida (-11C). In the city of Thessaloniki the thermometre early Wednesday was stuck at -01C while rain and sleet are expected to fall within the day in the city. Intense snowfall was reported to have fallen all night on all the mountainous of the regions of Peloponnese. Rain is falling in Athens from early Wednesday and temperatures are ranging between 04C-09C. [04] Greece-Fyrom buffer zone still closed The buffer zone between Greece and Fyrom at Idomeni, the crossing point for refugees from Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, remains closed. Police said that seven buses with 350 refugees are waiting at the nearby gas station expecting Fyrom to give the signal to depart. Fyrom's authorities closed the crossing point on Tuesday afternoon. Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-01-20 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at CONTENTS [01] Cannes Festival director Fremaux at a special event on birth of cinematography in Athens [02] Two refugees die from hypothermia during their trip to Greece [03] Athens candidate for "European Best Destination 2016" [01] Cannes Festival director Fremaux at a special event on birth of cinematography in Athens General director of the Cannes Film Festival and director of the Institut LumiAre Thierry Fremaux will pay a one-day visit to Athens on February 2, invited by the Greek Cinema Academy and Onassis Foundation. Fremaux will present and address the Greek audience on the occasion of the 120-year anniversary from the birth of the cinema and the first movies of Lumiere Brothers and will at a special event entitled "Lumiere!". [02] Two refugees die from hypothermia during their trip to Greece Two deaths were reported in two incidents involving refugees and migrants north of Lesvos island on Wednesday. A five-year-old child died when the boat it was on board capsized and sank. According to initial information, the child died from hypothermia. 46 more persons that were in the same boat were rescued while the number of missing remains unknown. At a separate incident a woman died from hypothermia during the trip from the Turkish coasts to the Greek territory. [03] Athens candidate for "European Best Destination 2016" Athens has been selected to participate for second consecutive year in the competition "European Best Destination." Twenty cities will compete for the award. Athens took the third place in 2015. The competition runs from 20 January to 10 February. Whoever wants to vote should visit the following site www.vote.ebdest.in Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-01-20 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at CONTENTS [01] Farmers throughout Greece mobilise over pension reforms; clashes in Komotini [02] Archaeologists discover large ancient theatre on the island of Lefkada [01] Farmers throughout Greece mobilise over pension reforms; clashes in Komotini Farmers protesting against planned pension system reforms on Wednesday carried out a brief half-hour blockade of the customs office in Promahonas, at the border crossing from northern Greece into Bulgaria. According to their trade union representative Stelios Nikitopoulos, the same protest action later in the day should not be ruled out. Tractor convoys had earlier blocked roads at Koboti in Arta and the centre of Ioannina in northwestern Greece but the roads were opened by the afternoon. Protesting farmers intend to return to Ioannina without their tractors at 18:00 for a rally, while a rally is being organised in Arta on Saturday morning. Agricultural associations in Thesprotia and Preveza are also preparing to launch protests in the next days. Riot police and farmers earlier clashed outside the Rodopi Regional Authority building in Komotini, where Rural Development and Food Minister Evangelos Apostolou was meeting a farmers' delegation from Rodopi and Evros, resulting in use of tear gas. Meanwhile, hundreds of Larisa farmers turned out in protest in Thessaly, with a tractor convoy heading toward the pass in Tempi. By order of the police, the Athens-Thessaloniki national highway was closed to traffic from noon, from the Gyrtoni junction to the Stomio junction, so that the tractor convoy could reach its destination. Traffic was diverted onto alternative routes. In Macedonia, farmers with 750 tractors threatened to block the Kerdyllia junction on the Egnatia highway "indefinitely" while those in Drama blocked the Kokkinogeia junction to Exohi. Farmers with tractors also turned out to support a protest by fishermen in the city of Thessaloniki and protests were held in Crete, Fthiotida, the Peloponnese and other areas of the country. A mini-government meeting with Labour Minister George Katrougalos on the farmers' pension system issues was arranged at the Maximos Mansion on Wednesday. Alternate Finance Minister Tryfon Alexiadis will also participate in the meeting. According to sources, the Labour ministry is examining changes in the pension system for new farmers, as well as tax relief. [02] Archaeologists discover large ancient theatre on the island of Lefkada Archaeological excavations on the Ionian island of Lefkada have brought to light a previously undiscovered and sizeable ancient theatre, the culture minister announced on Wednesday. It said the find was made on Koulmou hill toward the end of 2015. Test 'sections' were cut in an area on the northeast flank of Koulmou's middle hill, which forms an amphitheatrical downward hollow ending in a lengthy flat section, the ministry announcement said. It noted that archaeologists knew very little about the city's ancient theatre, which was not mentioned in any ancient sources, though the logs of an early 20th-century archaeological excavation under the direction of German archaeologist A. ErAger, lasting only a few days, recorded the discovery of signs indicating the presence of an ancient theatre. The Aitoloakarnania and Lefkada Antiquities Ephorate dug sections in 13 places, which confirmed the existence of the theatre and uncovered rows of seats, parts of the orchestra and some of the retaining walls for the stage and other parts of the theatre. The ministry said that six sections revealed seats carved from the rock, about 0.73 to 0.90 metres deep and 0.22-0.33 metres high. Others found the orchestra and a section of a wall in a quadrant plan, up to 0.6 metres across. The sections also found portions of retaining walls. The culture ministry said that continuing the excavation in order to reveal and protect the monument will be a priority for the ministry's services, adding that the Lefkada Municipality and Ionian Islands Regional Authority have both supported the work. Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-01-20 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at CONTENTS [01] Iranian oil minister to visit Athens on Jan. 22 to discuss energy cooperation [02] Privatization agency accepts Cosco's improved offer for 67% of OLP [01] Iranian oil minister to visit Athens on Jan. 22 to discuss energy cooperation Environment and Energy Minister Panos Skourletis will discuss energy cooperation with Iranian Deputy Petroleum Minister in International Affairs and Trading Amir Hossein Zamaninia during the latter's two-day visit to Athens on January 22, following an invitation by Skourletis. According to a ministry announcement, the two sides will discuss energy relations between the two countries with an emphasis on the oil sector, while a wider meeting will follow with representatives from the two countries, the management of Hellenic Petroleum (ELPE) and Iran's state oil company NIOC. The ministry has not yet announced the time of the meeting. According to Iranian news agency Shana, Zamaninia's visit will be a preliminary to an upcoming visit to Tehran by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. Greece has started consultations with Tehran on ELPE's debts, relating to crude oil purchases from Iran between December 2011 and March 2012, under a long-term contract with state oil company NIOC. Despite ELPE's efforts to meet its obligations, the company was unable to pay its debt due to the imposition of the international sanctions on Iran. [02] Privatization agency accepts Cosco's improved offer for 67% of OLP China's Cosco Group will obtain 67 pct of Pireaus Port (OLP) after the company submitted an improved offer of 368.5 million euros (a22/per share) Greece's privatization fund (HRADF) said in a press release on Wednesday. The group was the only company that had submitted a bonding offer for the country's biggest port last week and the agency had requested an improved offer. As soon as Cosco submits the documents required it will be designated as a preferred investor, according to the terms and conditions of the tender. Besides acquiring 67 pct of Piraeus Port, Cosco has also committed to investing 350 million euros in the next five years. OLP's valuation in the Athens stock market stood at 337 million euros at the end of trading on Tuesday. Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article Last year, a Ford Mustang mule was spotted at the Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI), Pune, for government approvals, making it clear that the company is serious of bringing their most iconic car to the Indian streets. We expect the upcoming Ford Mustang to be between Rs 60 to Rs 65 lakh. By India Today Web Desk: Ford India will be bringing their most famous car, the Ford Mustang GT to the Indian shores on January 28, reports say. It was previously reported that the American muscle car could be unveiled at the upcoming Auto Expo 2016 in February, but according to OverDrive, the Mustang will soon be available for Indian customers. Last year, a Ford Mustang mule was spotted at the Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI), Pune, for government approvals, making it clear that the company is serious of bringing their most iconic car to the Indian streets. The Ford Mustang GT will most likely come to the Indian shores through the CBU route, which will make it a tad bit expensive. Engine: ALSO READ: Ford Mustang GT India launch soon for Rs 60 lakh advertisement The India-bound Ford Mustang is the GT Premium Fastback, which will come with a 5.0-litre, V8 petrol engine, churning out a maximum power output of 435 BHP and maximum torque of 542Nm, mated to a six-speed automatic gearbox, which will come with paddle shifters behind the steering wheel. Design: Although much is not known of the car yet, the India-bound Ford Mustang GT will come with black multi-spoke alloy wheels. The exteriors of the car has features such as automatic HID headlamps with wiper activation, LED tail lamps and fog lamps, rear spoiler and heated door mirrors and turn indicators. Features: The interiors of the Mustang GT Premium Fastback come with dual-zone climate control, a 4-gauge instrument cluster with chrome accents, a multi-function steering wheel. ALSO READ: All new Ford Endeavour launched for Rs 24.75 lakh But that is not the best part of the car. The Mustang GT Premium Fastback is made with right-hand drive specially for India, reports say. Price: We expect the upcoming Ford Mustang to be between Rs 60 to Rs 65 lakh. Vedantam L Prathyusha, a 26-year-old second-year MS student of IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) Madras, left a note for her father and her friend explaining her wish of attaining sainthood. By India Today Web Desk: Vedantam L Prathyusha, a 26 year old second-year MS student of IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) Madras, left a note for her father and her friend explaining her wish of attaining sainthood at Himalayas. She went missing from her hostel on Tuesday and left two notes, one in Tamil and the other in English. According to newspaper reports, the note also stated that she was being protected by God and will never be found by her family now. Hailing from Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh, Prathyusha was known to be a chirpy and a nice person and her friends also did not find a change in her behaviour in the last few days. Her parents requested IIT-M director Bhaskar Ramamurthi to file a police complaint as they could not locate her and it would take them some time to come to Chennai. The police has since filed an FIR in the case. A police officer found that her notes mentioned that she wanted to have an adventure and do research in spirituality. advertisement Her pages on social networking sites also indicate that she she had an avid interest in spiritual texts like Ramayana, Mahabharata and Bhagavad Gita. She left early last Sunday and had filled in the permission register before leaving the hostel, in which she had mentioned that she would return on January 20. Police said that some of the students had complained about her disappearance later on and that it was after she failed to reach her home in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh that her parents contacted the IIT administration. Read: IIT Admissions: Besides JEE, students need to clear NAT too For information on more latest news and updates, click here Your digital subscription includes access to all content on our agricultural websites across the nation. Access unlimited content and the digital versions of our print editions - This Week's Paper. The Japan-Asia Youth Exchange Programme in Science (SAKURA Exchange Program in Science) will be organised in Japan in May and a casual labourer's daughter and a farmer's son from Jharkhand will be representing the nation along with few others. By India Today Web Desk: The Japan-Asia Youth Exchange Programme in Science (SAKURA Exchange Program in Science) will be organised in Japan in May and a casual labourer's daughter and a farmer's son from Jharkhand are amongst the group of young talented Indians who have been chosen to represent the nation.15-year-old Pushpa Kumari from Bundu and 16-year-old Anil Singh from Ramgarh will participate in the same for their innovative models. According to newspaper reports, Pushpa was among the five students selected for the INSPIRE Award Scheme held at IIT-Delhi in December 2015. The award is organised by the Union ministry of science and technology to promote and develop scientific talent among students. A student of Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya (KGBV), Pushpa has been selected for inventing an affordable baby food with a view to combat infant malnutrition in the country. Her product, Baal Amrit, costs Rs 59 per kilogram and is a lot cheaper than other branded baby food products available in the market. advertisement The state HRD department has also decided to launch her product in the market after first testing the baby food in a few Anganwadi centres. Pushpa's teacher Shahikant Mishra, who helped her develop it said that Baal Amrit has all the essential vitamins, minerals and nutrients important for the growth of a baby. It has been made using 15 food products including wheat, peanut, soya bean, basil and iodine salt, among others. Anil is a Class 10 student at Pindra's Sramik High School, Topa, and was selected for the programme after he showed how coal mines could be used even after extraction of coal from them by putting dust material under the earth.His model too was selected at the Inspire Award Scheme and has thrown open an opportunity for him to visit Japan. District education officer Ratan Singh said Anil is extremely talented and will go a long way if he gets proper support. Read: IIT-Madras student embarks on Himalayan journey to attain sainthood, goes missing So far, you know Blinkit for its 10 - minute delivery services. But now youll know it for silent stores. Blinkit has launched its first silent store in the Laxmi Nagar area of the national capital. But what is a silent store? This store is special as it is run by 20 specially-abled individuals who cannot hear or speak. This move is the start-ups endeavour to make its systems more inclusive and accessible. Watch to know more. It's that time of the year again when readers flock to the Jaipur Literature Festival to satiate their voracious appetite for deep thoughts and being a step close to celebrated writers. By Anirbaan Banerjee: It's that time of the year again when readers flock to the Jaipur Literature Festival to satiate their voracious appetite for deep thoughts and being a step close to celebrated writers. With its 9th edition beginning tomorrow, the festival has scooped up the creme de la creme of the literary landscape and brought them under one roof at the Diggi Palace, once again. 1. The Literary Giants The festival will commence with a spotlight on its literary star this year--Margaret Atwood--the "doyenne of dystopic fiction", delivering the keynote address. No holds barred tete-a-tetes abound for an intimate insight into writers such as acclaimed Irish novelist Colm Toibin and the mystery writer with a difference--Alexander McCall Smith. Whether you pick Stephen Fry flying in from Britain to tickle your funny bone, or the reclusive writer of the hills, Ruskin Bond, descending to the deserts of Rajasthan, it is truly a movable feast. advertisement 2. The Bigger Picture| Expanding the horizons of literature, the festival has some of the finest writers of non-fiction lined up for some intellectual jousting. Look out for revolutionary economist Thomas Piketty's unique perspective on capital and surgeon Atul Gawande's exploration of the intersections of medicine and mortality. Renowned photographer Steve McCurry will discuss his iconic image The Afghan Girl that continues to captivate, while war journalist Christina Lamb will explore the persisting turmoil in this volatile nation. Equally enthralling will be Shashi Tharoor's debate with noted historian Niall Ferguson on how the British Raj impacted India. 3. The Booker Bonanza It's the Booker catch of the year as three of 2015's contenders for the holy grail of literature--Booker prize winner Marlon James, shortlisted writer Sunjeev Sahota and longlisted novelist Anuradha Roy--come together on one platform to discuss their writing and read from their books. In a strong Caribbean connect this year at the festival, James will also discuss traditions of Caribbean prose and poetry with fellow Jamaican poet Kei Miller, winner of the Forward Prize for Poetry. 4. The Indian Flavour Bollywood bigwigs abound with Karan Johar in conversation about the release of his new biography An Unsuitable Boy, and veteran poets Gulzar and Javed Akhtar inducing magic in the air with their lyrical conversations. In a blurring of linguistic boundaries, we will also find reputed Hindi writers Uday Prakash and Alka Saraogi discussing issues ranging from political activism to the mysteries of the creative process. 5. Poetry in Motion With the setting of the sun, JLF will spread its cultural tentacles beyond the Diggi Palace for a unique Jaipur experience with the performative arts. Catch the performance of Piya Behrupiya, an Indian adaptation of Shakespearea's Twelfth Night at The Albert Museum. Or immerse yourself in a captivating reading by Girish Karnad, followed by an enchanting Sufi poetry performed by Mir Mukhtiyar Ali against the backdrop of a luminous Amber Fort. The mosque shelter comes as no less than a blessing for the stray cats, who otherwise would have had to battle the freezing temperatures of Istanbul. By India Today Web Desk: Felines in Istanbul have found safe haven in a Turkish mosque, all thanks to Imam Mustafa Efe. Efe, who is an Imam at the Aziz Mahmud Hudayi Mosque in the city's historical Uskudar district, has an extreme fondness for cats, as is evident from his decision to provide shelter to the stray cats in the mosque's vicinity. Also Read: Cats outnumber humans six to one on Japan's Aoshima Island The mosque shelter comes as no less than a blessing for the stray cats, who otherwise would have had to battle the freezing temperatures of Istanbul without any help whatsoever. Also Read: Now, a room spray and hand cream that smell like a cat's forehead The Imam's love for cats has been gaining popularity and accolades from those who visit the mosque regularly. According to the city's English newspaper, Daily Sabah Istanbul, the Imam is a diligent and affable man, who enjoys a lot of respect in the society not only for his kindness, but also his sense of humour. advertisement Bir Kedinin Amam Sevgisi..."...Sonra, deniz iinde ve zemin yznde merhamet ve A?efkatle terbiye edilen kk...Posted by Mustafa Efe on Friday, January 15, 2016 Huffington Post reports that Efe refers to the cats at the mosque as his "guests" who deserve every bit of the love and affection they get. Not only the Imam, the visitors of the mosque also share pictures of the little fluffy guests making themselves quite at home. Camimizin Cuma misafirleri, Bugn Hutbe de bizi bekleyen spriz :)Kedicik A?efkat ve merhametin merkezini bulmuA?...Posted by Mustafa Efe on Thursday, April 16, 2015 Cemaatimizin kedi sevgisi... YaratAlana A?efkat ve merhametin gzel bir misali...Posted by Mustafa Efe on Friday, November 27, 2015 Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif earlier said in a statement, Pakistan forces are fighting the terrorists that "killed its children". By Sanjana Agnihotri: A group of militants attacked Bacha Khan University, located in the suburbs of Charsadda city in Pakistan, and left at least 25 people dead and 50 injured. The gunmen open fired on students and teaches in classrooms and hostels. Pakistan has witnessed numerous terror attacks in the past decade and Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was earlier seen talking about Pakistan's forces were fighting the terrorists that "killed its children". Here is a list of 5 deadly attacks Pakistan witnessed: 1. Karachi bus shooting- 13 May 2015 In a shocking attack on the Ismaili community, 45 people were killed and 13 injured in a gun attack in Karachi. The bus carried Ismaili Shia Muslim. 6 gunmen on motorcycles had stopped the bus and fired at the passengers. advertisement Pakistani Taliban splinter group Jundullah and Islamic State (IS) both took responsibility of the attack and later, the militant group Tehrik Taliban Pakistan (TTP) also said it was behind the shooting. The attack was the second deadliest attack in Pakistan in 2015 after 62 Shia Muslims were killed in a suicide bombing in January. 2. Peshawar school attack- 16 December 2014 A heinous terrorist attack that shook Pakistan occurred in the Army Public School in Peshawar where a group of terrorists open fired on innocent children and killed 148 of them. The militants even pulled out children hiding under the table and shot them indiscriminately. 3. Quetta bombing- 16 February 2013 A bomb hidden in a water tank exploded in Quetta, the capital city of Balochistan, and claimed at least 110 lives and left 200 people injured. Majority of the victims belonged to the Shia Twelver ethnic Hazara community. This was the second major attack against the Shia Hazaras in a month. The Lashkar-e-Jhangvi group claimed responsibility for the blast. On February 19, one of the masterminds of the attack was arrested and 170 suspects were taken into custody. Four high-profile militants were also killed during the operation. 4. TTP's new gift in 2012 Tehrik-i-Taliban (TTP) Pakistan murdered 15 Frontier Constabulary soldiers in Orakzai Agency who had been in their custody for over a year. The bodies were found in North Waziristan and sustained 40 bullets each. The TTP called these killings a 'new year gift' and said that the incident was a retaliation for the killing of Taliban comrades by Pakistani security forces. They vowed further violence. 5. Target killings post Osama's death What is called as a 'fitting end' to the figure who inspired bloodshed, Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed in his compound in Abbottabad, northeastern Pakistan in May, 2011. Post Osama's death, continuous target killings in the month of July claimed the lives of over 300 people. The death toll was so high that it recorded July as one of the deadliest months in almost two decades in the history of Karachi. There were ethnic and religious tension in the city. Buses were fired, mass-shootings were conducted and amid the chaos the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, one of the large mainstream political parties threatened to call a strike if the government did not take any step. Pakistan has been accused of breeding terrorism previously as well. Giving a response to Nawaz Sharif's statement on how Pakistan's forces were fighting the terrorists that "killed its children", its neighbour India said, "Pakistan claims to be the primary victim of terrorism. In truth, it is actually a victim of its own policies of breeding and sponsoring terrorists." The prime accused, Nisham, who pleaded not guilty in December last year, has now been convicted for Chandrabose murder. By India Today Web Desk: On December 11, 2015 we told you how Kerala's beedi tycoon Nisham, the prime accused in the Chandrabose murder case, said he is unaware how the victim was injured and how he pleaded not guilty. A year ago, on January 29, 2015 to be exact, Nisham was accused of ramming his Hummer jeep into Chandrabose, a security guard of Sobha City township where Nisham owns an apartment, for not opening the gate promptly. Before crushing Chandrabose, Nisham has also been accused of mercilessly thrashing the man. That's some rage! Chandrabose succumbed to his injuries within a month since the incident. Thrissur District Additional Sessions Court Judge KP Sudheer has convicted Nisham for Chandrabose murder. The sentence will be pronounced tomorrow. Nisham is currently at the Kannur Central Jail in North Kerala. advertisement One of the key witnesses in the case, Anup, was earlier declared hostile by the court in October. But he once again approached the court saying he was forced by Nisham's brother to change his statement, and then his original statement was accepted by the court. Nisham has 16 other criminal cases lodged against him. The Karnataka police freed as many as 15 bonded labourers, including 6 children and 4 women, from the clutches of a sugarcane grower in Bagalkote district in central part of the state. By Mail Today: The Karnataka police freed as many as 15 bonded labourers, including 6 children and 4 women, from the clutches of a sugarcane grower in Bagalkote district in central part of the state. According to the police, Shankaragouda Lakshmanagouda Patil hired the 15-member joint family from Madhya Pradesh for his farm work, as they came in search of livelihood to Karnataka. He promised them a salary of Rs 20,000 per person for two months to harvest sugarcane. However, the farmer allegedly held them captive in his farm and did not pay them any wages. After the bonded labourers managed to inform local villagers about their plight, the government intervened to free them. The police have registered a case against the farmer as well as the middleman Purushottam Kakote. Also Read: Child labour should go into pages of history: Kailash Satyarthi --- ENDS --- Law doesn't allow alcohol brands to advertise. So, alcohol companies are now using the social media to target the young, urban population. As social media is easily accessible and has deep penetration among the youth, alcohol companies are targeting potential customers between 15 to 45 years, which accounts for around 46 per cent of the Indian population. "Though the use of media like television, radio, newspapers, etc., for the promotion of alcohol is not permitted, the law is silent on the social media. This is used as an opportunity by alcohol companies to legally market their brand on social media sites, in an innovative manner," said Dr Zakirhusain A Shaikh of the department of community medicine at Jamia Hamdard. Dr Shaikh recently studied the trend of misuse of social media marketing by alcohol companies and his research has been published in the journal of mental health and human behaviour. Alcohol is prohibited in some states, while the legal drinking ages in India varies from 18 years to 25 years. While analysing the presence of alcohol companies over social media, it was found that 26 brands of alcohol had active pages on Facebook. These pages receive numerous hits per day (which means a user has liked it and favours its contents). Followers in these pages range from 14 to 17.7 million. At least 14 brands of alcohol were identified to have their presence on Twitter and 20 brands of alcohol were found on YouTube. The Facebook policy speaks only about paid advertising and not about the content posted by users on their individual accounts or groups or pages. "There is ample content posted by alcohol companies on their Facebook accounts, which is apparently not specifically governed or prohibited under any Facebook policy. Besides, any person aged 13 years or more can have a Facebook account, which means children are potentially exposed to the content pertaining to alcohol, as there is no age screening for content of groups or pages," said Dr Shaikh. Though popular search engines like Google restricts advertisement of alcohol, it has no notification on posting of content pertaining to liquor on its sites like YouTube. "YouTube was found to have accounts by alcohol companies with videos marketing alcohol brands. Also, none of these videos were marked as unsuitable for a child, which means a child of any age has an easy access to these videos," he said. "An analysis of Indian alcohol policy and policies of various social media sites reveal several loopholes. There is no central uniform policy regarding alcohol. The laws regarding the advertisement of alcohol do not adequately cover the modern media like social media and mobile applications. The alcohol policies of social media are vague and do not have adequate and stringent provisions. Besides, their policies mostly deal with alcohol advertising and not with user-generated alcohol-related promotional content," Dr Shaikh added. Also read: Apparently, North Korea has alcohol that won't give you a hangover In a shocker to private schools in the Capital, the Delhi High Court on Tuesday said that the schools built on land allotted by Delhi Development Authority (DDA) cannot hike the fee before taking prior permission from Delhi government. By Astha Saxena: In a shocker to private schools in the Capital, the Delhi High Court on Tuesday said that the schools built on land allotted by Delhi Development Authority (DDA) cannot hike the fee before taking prior permission from Delhi government. The decision will have an impact on the functioning of more than 400 private unaided schools in the city. "It is clear that schools cannot indulge in profiteering and commercialisation of school education...Quantum of fees to be charged by unaided schools is subject to regulation by DoE in terms of power conferred under Delhi Schools Education Act of 1973 and it is competent to interfere if hike in fee by a particular school is found to be excessive and perceived as indulging in profiteering. ...," the court said on Tuesday. advertisement A bench of Chief Justice G Rohini and Justice Jayant Nath directed the Delhi government's Directorate of Education (DoE) to ensure compliance of the terms in letter of allotment regarding increase of fees by recognised private unaided schools on land alloted by DDA. "Delhi Development Authority (DDA) is directed to take appropriate steps in accordance with the law against those private schools which violate the stipulation regarding fee hike in the letter of allotment," it said. In light of Supreme Court judgment in Modern School vs Union of India, they (private schools) are bound to comply with stipulation in letter of allotment, the bench said in its 16-page verdict. "We are so happy with the decision. The schools, every year increase the fee by 30-40 per cent and we have to face the heat. The court has finally asked them to follow certain set of guidelines," Shishir Verma, one of the parents said. The HC also asked, DoE to ensure compliance of the terms in letter of allotment regarding increase of fees by recognised private unaided schools which are alloted land by DDA. The judgement came on a PIL filed by advocate Khagesh Jha for an NGO, Justice for all, which had sought that recognised private unaided schools on land alloted by DDA be directed to abide by the stipulation in letter of allotment to take prior sanction of DoE before hiking their fees. "It's a relief for the parents who have to face the brunt every year. This landmark judgment by the court will tighten the noose over the private schools and their unjustified fee hike," Ashok Aggarwal, Delhi-based NGO Social Jurist's president told MAIL TODAY. Meanwhile, the Delhi government on Tuesday made it mandatory for all government as well as unaided recognised schools to run upper primary classes for at least 220 working days in an academic year. Also read: Improve public schools before interfering in pvt ones: Delhi HC to AAP By Javed Anwer: Samsung and Apple are fighting a battle over patents for the last few years. And now it is reaching a conclusion. While earlier Samsung was told to give Apple a fairly hefty compensation, now a court in the US has agreed with the iPhone-maker and has ordered a ban on several Samsung phones. However, this Samsung and Apple battle is so old and the phone in question were released such a long time ago that it wouldn't affect the Korean company much. The court in the US has said that Samsung can no longer sell Galaxy S II, Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note in the US. All three phones are so old that they have already been discontinued. According to a report by Bloomberg , the enforcement of the order will begin in 30 days. advertisement While Apple did not comment on the ruling immediately, Samsung wasn't very happy, at least that is what it said. "We are very disappointed," Samsung reportedly told Bloomberg. "While this will not impact American consumers, it is another example of Apple abusing the judicial system to create bad legal precedent, which can harm consumer choice for generations to come." Samsung and Apple started their patent fight in 2011 after Apple accused the Korean company of ripping off the design from its iPhones. In retaliation, Samsung too filed several cases against Apple, accusing the iPhone maker of using some of its patents in its devices. In the subsequent months and years, Apple had more successes in the court compared to Samsung that saw its lawsuits not finding much favour with the US judges and juries. The two companies also fought in courts in Germany and South Korea. Interestingly, the two were fighting over the patents even as both were business partners and Samsung was supplying crucial components and making processors for the iPhone. The patent fight between Apple and the US was arguably the most publicised such fight. But away from the spotlight other phone companies too fought in courts. Apple and Motorola had several court cases going on at one time. Then, Nokia too was fighting a few firms. The patents fights not only forced companies to change the design and features in their phones -- Samsung made subtle changes in its subsequent phones -- it also led to a sort of patent arm race in the industry. Fearing that whole Android ecosystem was under threat from Apple, Google bought Motorola for over $12 billion primarily for patents. Meanwhile, Apple and Microsoft joined forces behind the scenes and along with a few more firms established Rockstar Consortium that bought vital patents from a Canadian company called Nortel at a price of $4.5 billion. But after the 2013, as phone companies adjusted feature and design of their products and amassed more patents for counter attack the fight eased in intensity. In 2014, even Samsung and Apple decided to bury their hatchet though they also agreed to let the two cases pending in courts continue until their eventual conclusion. You may also like: Samsung urges US court to overturn $120 million patent verdict for Apple Apple asks court to make Samsung pay $180 million more in patent dispute In his first strongly worded office memorandum, Chief Secretary KK Sharma slammed Heads of Department in the Delhi government for not exercising the powers delegated to them and instead sending files to the Finance Department for approval. By India Today Web Desk: In his first strongly worded office memorandum, Chief Secretary KK Sharma slammed Heads of Department in the Delhi government for not exercising the powers delegated to them and instead sending files to the Finance Department for approval. Warning top bureaucrats and all the HODs, Sharma asked them to expedite the functioning of their respective departments and exercise financial powers instead of routing all the files to Finance Department. The routing of files to the Finance Department, when it is in the power of HODs to execute, has caused delays in the implementation of developmental works, social welfare measures and other programmes of the government. Sharma stated that the proposals, which are within the delegated powers of HODs, shall not be referred to the Finance Department for approval. --- ENDS --- According to the complainant, Shah Rukh and Salman were seen wearing shoes on the sets of temple of goddess Kali while shooting for an episode of Bigg Boss where the idol can be seen in the background. By India Today Web Desk: A Delhi court today accepted a criminal complaint against Bollywood stars Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan and a TV channel for allegedly hurting sentiments of devotees by entering the sets of a temple wearing shoes while shooting for Bigg Boss 9. The case has been listed for hearing before Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate VK Gautam on January 22. The development came after petitioner and advocate Gaurav Gulati sought action against the two actors and the channel for disrespecting the sentiments of the devotees. According to him, Shah Rukh and Salman were seen wearing shoes on the sets of temple of goddess Kali while shooting for an episode of Bigg Boss where the idol can be seen in the background. "It has been seen by the complainant on YouTube on December 15, 2015 that both the actors were standing and moving on the sets of Kali Mata temple wearing their shoes. It is a disrespect to the Hindu religion and its belief as it is strictly prohibited to come in the temple with shoes and also they were showing their back to the idol which is also deemed to be an insult to the Hindu goddess... (sic)," the complaint read. advertisement Maintaining that it seemed to be a "well-planned malicious act to outrage Hindu feelings", the plea also claimed that any kind of misdeed committed by them affected the masses. Seeking prosecution of the two actors, channel and the show's director and producer, the complainant said that he felt insulted about his religious belief. He said he had approached Roop Nagar Police Station here with his complaint but no action was taken by the police, following which he approached the court. Gulati has sought the court's direction to the police to register an FIR against the two superstars, the Colors channel and director and producer of the reality show for alleged offences of sections 295A (deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings), 298 (uttering words with deliberate intent to wound religious feelings) and 34 (common intention) of the IPC. Meanwhile, a source close to Salman Khan said that the matter concerned the channel and that the channel should respond to the case accordingly. Earlier, the Hindu Mahasabha's plea against the actors and the TV channel on similar grounds was accepted by a local court in Meerut. "A scene with Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan inside a Kali temple on the sets of TV reality show Bigg Boss was broadcast by Colors channel in December last year," Bharat Rajput, president of Hindu Mahasabha's Meerut unit said. Watch full video here: While Indian agencies routinely track down overstaying foreigners especially Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, this assumes significance in the wake of Syria being at the epicentre of ISIS-led terror. Syria has been at the epicentre of the ISIS crisis. By Ankur Sharma: Syrians who arrived in India in 2015, overstayed their visas, and then went missing have prompted security agencies to act. While Indian agencies routinely track down overstaying foreigners especially Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, this assumes significance in the wake of Syria being at the epicentre of ISIS-led terror. Some from Syria's troubled neighbours Iraq and Turkey may have also overstayed, sources said. Central agencies have a list of almost 100 overstaying Syrians who arrived in India last year during the peak of the ISIS crisis in their country. While security sources said most of them had been traced because of quick action, MAIL TODAY could not independently verify it. "Most of them have been traced but details of a few Syrian nationals are still to be verified. Soon, we will submit our report, along with details of action taken, to the concerned authority," a top government official said, requesting anonymity. advertisement The Syrian nationals had shown various reasons like medical treatment, transit and tourism for visiting India. They got visas ranging from just a few days to a maximum of six months. Security agencies want to initiate deportation along with possible legal action. A list was given to various states including the Delhi police as several Syrians, including women and children, came to Delhi during this period. With the threat of ISIS or Islamic State lurking, the security establishment has been on alert. Officials following the developments said there was no specific input about their links with ISIS. Recently, Syria's Ambassador to India Riad Kamel Abbas reportedly said that some Syrian refugees had arrived in India and sought refugee status under the United Nations. Some of them may belong to terrorist organisations, he said, according to published reports. A communication sent to the Delhi Police by central agencies on the list of overstaying Syrian nationals requested that efforts may be made to ascertain presence of any of the above-mentioned individuals in Delhi and to consider legal measures. According to a senior government official, security agencies have prepared a list along with their arrival cards and details of their stay. "Most of the Syrian nationals who have arrived in Delhi are young and arrived in India on different dates. Some of them come as family for treatment and other came as tourists," an official said, requesting anonymity. According to the list, Syrian nationals arrived in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai and other cities. "Those who came for medical treatment were given sufficient time. But some of them arrived as tourist so they got visa maximum valid for six months, although a few came on transit visa valid for only 15 days," the official said. Also read: ISIS letter threatens to kill PM Modi: Goa Police Think twice before you Google ISIS, Police is keeping a tab Shaun Tait was recalled to the Australian national side after a good Big Bash League season, in which he picked 10 wickets. By Press Trust of India: Veteran speedster Shaun Tait terms his Australia T20 call-up as a "privilege" and is not thinking in the lines of how many matches he will get to play in the series for Australia. "I feel pretty privileged to be called in at this stage of my career. With a few injuries around it's been good timing and a bit lucky but you go through your career you have good luck and bad luck," 32-year-old Tait told the Daily Telegraph. Tait has had a good Big Bash League for the Hobart Hurricanes, where he got 10 wickets and is now being looked as someone who could be drafted into the World T20 squad. "It's quite special, whether it's for one game or two or three, or more fantastic. This is a good luck one for me, so I'll take it," said Tait. advertisement "I was going to go to the pub and have a few beers at Port Elliot. That's probably the second place I'd want to be, and this (Adelaide Oval) is the first. So it's worked out OK," the speedster said in jest. He did admit that it will be a kind of World T20 audition for him. "Without looking too much into what Rod and people have been saying in the media, that's pretty much what it is, it's a bit of an audition for a couple of guys," Tait said. "The ball's in my court. If I get a game, run in and take wickets, and we win, I suppose I'm a realistic chance." According to initial reports, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) had claimed responsibility for the attack on Bacha Khan University. However, their spokesperson has denied these reports. By India Today Web Desk: A group of militants stormed a university in northwestern Pakistan today leaving at least 25 people dead and 50 injured. Gunmen entered the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and opened fire on students and teachers in classrooms and hostels. Four of the gunmen who stormed a university campus have been killed, police said, but other attackers are believed to be on the second and third floors of campus buildings and firing is still going on. Professor Syed Hamid Husain, a PhD in Organic Chemistry has been killed in the ongoing attack on Bacha Khan University. According to a rescue worker, 60 to 70 students had been shot in the head by the attackers. According to initial reports, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) had claimed responsibility for the attack on Bacha Khan University. However, their spokesperson has denied these reports. advertisement Official of Bacha Khan University said, "Due to fog, security forces are unable to tell how many terrorists have entered the University." Students told media they saw several young men wielding AK-47 guns storming the university housing where many students were sleeping. "Those who kill innocent students and civilians have no religion," said Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The attack at the university comes on the day that Bacha Khan University, which has 3,000 enrolled students, was marking the death anniversary of Bacha Khan. Dawnnews reported that the attacks began began as a mushaira was underway at the premises. The attack comes a little over a year after Taliban gunmen killed 134 students in a school in the city of Peshawar. Charsadda is a district in Pakistan's northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and has been a scene of several militant attacks during the past decade. The region is mostly rural in its makeup and lies 40km from Peshawar. Soon after the massacre of over 100 school children in December 2014, Pakistan launched a massive counter terrorism operation and has killed and arrested hundreds of suspected militants. Deputy Inspector General Saeed Wazir told Reuters that the number of gunmen was unclear but police had moved into the university and a gunfight with the attackers was under way. "We launched an operation inside the university and are trying to rescue the students and staff of the institution," Wazir said. Shabir Khan, a lecturer in the English department, said he was about to leave the hostel for the department when firing began. "Most of the students and staff were in classes when the firing began," Khan said. "I have no idea about what's going on but I heard one security official talking on the phone to someone and said many people had been killed and injured." Also read: From the slaughter hall State of delusion What kind of 'dua' for children? Patel quota agitation leader Hardik Patel has set a 10-day deadline for the Gujarat government to release him and other imprisoned Patel leaders for reaching a compromise formula. By India Today Web Desk: Patel quota agitation leader Hardik Patel has set a 10-day deadline for the Gujarat government to release him and other imprisoned Patel leaders for reaching a compromise formula. In a letter, written from Lajpore jail in Surat which surfaced today, Hardik addressing the Patel community, admitted that he is in talks with BJP-led state government to arrive at a compromise formula. The letter has surfaced after some prominent Patel community members started the exercise to broker a compromise between the BJP government and Patel community members agitating for quota under the banner of Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS), PTI reported. Hardik further stated that the truce, however, will happen only when the government accepts the demands of Patels including the release of their leaders. "It is true that I have talked about compromise with government (from jail). But, I want to assure you that I will not do any compromise at the cost of community's interests. Our first and foremost condition is that our demands must be met," said Hardik, convener of PAAS. advertisement "BJP government is given time till January 30. We have set a condition that talks with government will take place only when the government releases me and other jailed Patel youths by January 30 and withdraw all the cases against us," he claimed in his letter, which was circulated in the media by his lawyer Yashwantsinh Vala. "Patel community will think about BJP government only when they think about us. Till January 30, we will sit peacefully. After that, Patel community will do its work," warned Hardik in his letter. He further clarified his political stand by claiming that he will never contest elections and the fight to get reservation for Patel community is not against any political leader of a particular party. "I am not having any grudge against any political leader of the BJP government including CM Anandiben Patel. Our fight will continue even if Congress comes to power. If BJP government thinks that our fight is a war, then let it be," said Hardik, who is behind bars on the charges of sedition and conspiracy to wage war against government. Patel community's protest for quota had turned violent and 10 people had lost their lives in the August 25 rally last year. ALSO READ Sedition case: Hardik Patel's voice matches intercepted calls Mamata to meet Hardik Patel's close aide in Kolkata Hyderabad Central University(HCU) Vice Chancellor Appa Rao who is at the centre of a raging controversy over the suicide of Dalit student Rohith Vemula ruled out his resignation on the demand made by "aggrieved" students. By India Today Web Desk: Hyderabad Central University(HCU) Vice Chancellor Appa Rao who is at the centre of a raging controversy over the suicide of Dalit student Rohith Vemula said that he is still in shock. He said, "I am still in shock. I still see his face. He used to attend my classes." Appa Rao ruled out his resignation on the demand made by "aggrieved" students. Rao also sought to distance the HRD Ministry and the two ministers Smriti Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya from the decisions taken by the University which allegedly forced the student Rohit Vemula to take the extreme step. "I am not going to consider such kind of demand," Rao in an exclusive interview said when asked whether he would consider quitting the post as demanded by students who are now being backed by several political parties. advertisement The students, Rao said, have made the demand in a situation in which they feel they are aggrieved and have asked for his resignation. "Anything has to come through a proper method and has to go through an established process. Decisions are taken in a cool atmosphere. If an appropriate committee considers the whole issue and finds if I have done anything wrong then I can consider," he said. Asked about the alleged intervention by the HRD ministry on the basis of a letter written by Dattatreya, Rao said it is a common practice for people's representatives to write routinely on common man's grievances. "It is entirely university's decisions (relating to Rohit) and it has nothing to do with the HRD ministry," he said. HCU Chancellor C Rangarajan said the incident was "very regrettable" and that it should not have happened. He, however, pleaded ignorance about the details. "As a Chancellor, I am not apprised of all these details. I do not know the sequence of events like that because that is not the role of the Chancellor. All that I can say is that it is a very regrettable event. It should not have happened. It's an extremely sad event," he said. "Ofcourse I will go to Rohith's family to express my condolenses. Why will not? I am not a robot, am a human being and above all I am a teacher," Rao said. Former Pakistan Interior Minister Rehman Malik has blamed India for the terror attack on Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province today. Pakistan troops arrive at the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda town, some 35 kilometers (21 miles) outside the city of Peshawar in Pakistan on Wednesday, January 20, 2016. By India Today Web Desk: Former Pakistan Interior Minister Rehman Malik has blamed India for the terror attack on Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province today. The Pakistani Taliban first took the responsibility for the attack in which 25 people were killed but later denied its involvement. "We should not take the threat of India's defense ministry lightly. Indian agency R&AW is behind the attack on Bacha Khan University. They have reached at an understanding with Tehrik-e-Taliban," Malik told a news channel. "Jo Indian defence minister ne kaha...How dare he talk about us...hum kahte hain ki Bacha University unhone karwaya hai," Malik said. "Jaish-e-Mohammad is not involved in attack on Pathankot air base and these attacks have been carried out by people from India. Indian intelligence agency R&AW does not want that relations are improved between Pakistan and India. Whenever the Modi government has tried to hold talks, R&AW has thwarted such moves," he added. advertisement Last week, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar had said that the country has run out of its capacity to tolerate acts of terror and that he, too, as the Defence Minister, can't tolerate it anymore. "The nation has run out of its capacity to tolerate acts of terror and as a Defence Minister, I, too, have run out of it. So we will do something about it, you'll see," Parrikar had said in Jaipur. Responding to a question about a Pakistani probe team's visit to Pathankot air base, Parrikar said, "I don't know. Without my permission, no one can come, I can guarantee." ALSO READ | Bacha Khan University terror attack: Operation ends, 25 dead, 50 injured Miss Colombia made an appearance on The Steve Harvey Show this week and got candid about the infamous Miss Universe 2015 blunder. By India Today Web Desk: Steve Harvey made headlines for making a huge blunder while announcing the wrong winner's name during the live broadcast of Miss Universe 2015. After becoming the subject of innumerable memes--and making a joke about the joke that he'd become--Harvey is back with the fourth season of his chat show, The Steve Harvey Show. And whom did he decided to have over a guest? The two ladies from the Miss Universe blunder, of course. The actor and comedian, ever since the big blunder of pronouncing the wrong name has been trying to clean up his mess, and what better platform than a TV chat show! Also read: Oops! Steve Harvey just wished everyone a "merry Easter" on Christmas So, this week, he invited both Miss Colombia and Miss Philippines for a sit-down in a two-part special called, Miss Universe: The Truth, where he apologised to them and asked them some questions. advertisement The host asked Miss Colombia, Ariadna Gutierrez, about the awful moment. "How did you feel I handled the situation?" asked Harvey. "Is this for real?" said Gutierrez. "You need to learn how to read cards," she continued. "I think you wanted me to win," Ariadna joked with Harvey. Also read: Steve Harvey to return as Miss Universe 2016 host? "That would have been the worst damn joke I ever wrote in my life," Harvey shot back. The special episode, which was shot separately with each of them, had Miss Philippines Pia Wurtzbach on Monday's episode, titled Miss Universe: The Truth, Part I. "I was very happy that I won; I was excited," Pia told Harvey. "But I was also thinking about (Gutierrez). I couldn't help but think about how tough this must be for her." Whereas the second part featured a visit from Miss Colombia, Ariadna Gutierrez, the woman he incorrectly named as the winner of the pageant. And guess what? Despite the gaffe, Harvey is expected to return to host the Miss Universe contest this year. lang="en"> This would have been the worst joke ever! #MissUniverseTheAnswers https://t.co/dK6Eilrskk Steve Harvey (@IAmSteveHarvey) January 19, 2016 Chinese authorities have indicated they are willing to release and repatriate him citing his mental state. By Ananth Krishnan: A temple employee from Madhya Pradesh with a history of mental illness who was missing for three years was found to have been living in China for as long as six months, having crossed over to the country without any documents, in a case that has puzzled authorities on both sides of the border. The man, identified as Chandra Mohan from Guna in Madhya Pradesh who worked as an assistant to a temple priest, was detained in the city of Anning, a small town in South-Western Yunnan province, as long as six months ago, after the local authorities found he was without proper documents and was in a state of "mental illness", according to officials. After being alerted of the case this week, the Indian Consulate in Guangzhou obtained documents to establish his identification from India and submitted it to Chinese authorities on Tuesday, initiating the process of his repatriation. advertisement He was detained as early as in June last year, following which the Yunnan provincial authorities tried - and failed - to establish his nationality, unsure of whether he was from India, Bangladesh or Pakistan. In January, an Indian citizen in Yunnan's provincial capital Kunming who was called upon by the local government to speak with Chandra managed to ascertain that he was from India. The Indian Consulate in Guangzhou was alerted, which this week sent over documents to the authorities to establish his identity and begin the process of repatriation. "Nobody knows how, why and when he landed up in China," Consul General in Guangzhou Y.K. Sailas Thangal told India Today. "What complicated matters was his mental state, and that he also didn't speak pure Hindi. We have now established his identity and have received the documents from India last evening. We are taking a humanitarian approach and hope to have him sent back to India, it is just a matter of time." Indian and Chinese authorities are puzzled by how he entered China. He was last seen at Guna train station. Since he wasn't carrying a passport, officials suspect it was unlikely he took a flight and might have probably entered China through Myanmar. How a man with a history of mental illness managed to traverse a difficult journey of more than 2,500 km from Madhya Pradesh, possibly across Myanmar, and entered China remains a mystery, officials said, although there are several land crossings along the Myanmar-Yunnan border that are famously porous and routes for smuggling and trafficking. Chinese authorities have indicated they are willing to release and repatriate him and not press charges for illegally crossing over into China, citing his mental state. Both sides are now working on arranging his journey back to India, and are concerned whether he will be able to make the journey alone and to ensure arrangements to receive him in India. A 14-year-search for her missing father came to a close for Kashmir's Bilquees Manzoor on Tuesday. Coming to terms with the idea that her father is dead, she observed his funeral rites. Bilquees Manzoor wants justice for her father, and the Army man responsible for his death, to be punished. By Naseer Ganai: A 14-year-search for her missing father came to a close for Kashmir's Bilquees Manzoor on Tuesday. Coming to terms with the idea that her father is dead, she observed his funeral rites. As hundreds of people offered prayers for Manzoor Ahmad Dar on the premises of a government-run school at Rawalpora, his daughter Bilqees stood outside the school gate watching the last rites being performed without her father's body. "The funeral prayers mark the end of my long and painful wait, but my fight for justice continues. We want the army officer who killed my father punished. It was a hard decision for us as it was first case among the disappeared to be offered funeral prayers," Bilqees, who has grown up fighting the case, said. On the night of January 18, 2000, the Army took three people, including Manzoor Ahmad Dar, a chemist, from his home at Rawalpora. advertisement Two persons were later set free. But the Army refused to own custody of Manzoor. After massive protests in the area against his custodial disappearance, police filed an FIR under Section 364 (abduction) against Army's 35 Rashtriya Rifles and later during the investigation, the name of Major Kishore Malhotra (now brigadier) surfaced as an accused in the case. On November 26, 2015, the Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the custodial disappearance of Manzoor concluded that the chemist could have died in custody of Army's 35 Rashtriya Rifles led by Major Kishore Malhotra after his arrest. "The custodial disappearance took place nearly about 14 years ago which clearly indicates that the disappeared person could have died in custody of 35 RR and accordingly section 302 (murder) of RPC is invoked," reads the status report filed by the SIT in the Jammu and Kashmir High Court. The SIT has now approached the government for sanction of prosecution against the accused Major, who has approached the Supreme Court (SC) against the SIT's request. "We appeal to the SC to dismiss the petition and to give me the details of my father's burial site," Bilqees said. Parvez Imroz, patron of the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP), said over 8,000 people had been subjected to enforced disappearance in Kashmir. "Those families have not accepted the death of their dear ones and the pain and torture continues," he added. Also read: Grave digger who buried 235 unidentified bullet ridden bodies dies Four armed miscreants had looted the money from the Mahuabagh branch of Bank Of Baroda under Rupaspur Police Station. By India Today Web Desk: A mob in Bihar chopped off the hand of a 35-year-old person caught looting Rs 2.5 lakh from a bank. This incident has once again brought to the fore the growth of crime in the state. According to the Director General of Police, four armed miscreants had looted the money from the Mahuabagh branch of Bank Of Baroda under Rupaspur Police Station in Patna. The locals nabbed one of the miscreants and chopped off his hand. Police have seized Rs 1 lakh from his possession and sent him to Patna Medical College and Hospital. Raids were on to nab the other three goons. Also read: Crime wave in Bihar: Now, jeweller shot Newman allegedly fondled a 29-year-old patient who was on morphine and ejaculated on her after masturbating. By India Today Web Desk: David H. Newman, the 45-year-old physician at the Mount Sinai Hospital of New York has been charged with sexually abusing a patient while she was sedated. According to a report in the Washington Times, Newman allegedly fondled a 29-year-old patient who was on morphine and ejaculated on her after masturbating. He later surrendered to the NYPD, and has been slapped with charges of sexual abuse. The police also claims that the emergency doctor groped other patients as well in different incidents. A report in Daily Mail mentions that another woman has also come forward to accuse Newman of sexual abuse in alleged incident in September. She claims he fondled her breasts when she came with a heavy head cold for consultation. Newman has been suspended by Mount Sinai Hospital in New York while investigations are underway, the report says. advertisement "We are aware of an allegation that has been made against one of our physicians," the hospital said in a statement to the Daily News. "This is a matter under investigation and we are fully cooperating with the appropriate authorities. We take this matter very seriously and are conducting our own internal investigation." According to the Washington Post, Newman blogged for the New York Times and the Huffington Post, and wrote a book - "Hippocrates' Shadow: Secrets From the House of Medicine" - exploring "the underbelly of modern medicine and the fraying of the patient-doctor bond." It's jacket describes it as a "new paradigm to rebuild the bridge between physicians and their patients." Labour and Employment Minister Bandaru Dattatreya, who is under pressure to resign from his post in the wake of suicide of a Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula of Hyderabad University, today came out with his clarification. By India Today Web Desk: Labour and Employment Minister Bandaru Dattatreya, who is under pressure to resign from his post in the wake of suicide of a Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula of Hyderabad University, today came out with his clarification. In a statement issued to the media, Dattatreya admitted forwarding letters to the HRD Ministry but asserted that his role was limited to that only. Here's what the minister said: 1. I have expressed my deep condolences on learning about the death of Hyderabad University researcher Rohit Vemula and I pray that his family get strength to withstand and overcome the loss. 2. On August 10, 2015, I received a representation on the state of affairs in the University of Hyderabad which disturbed me greatly and I forwarded the same to the HRD ministry in the hope that things in the campus would change for better. advertisement 3. On August 29, 2015, I received a second representation over the issue and I forwarded this also to the ministry with a request to look into the matter and do the needful. 4. The University of Hyderabad is an autonomous institution with established procedures and I have no role in the administration of university. 5. My role was only limited to forwarding these two representations. I would have happily forwarded representations of any other student body, if they were to have approached me. 6. I hope the matter will now rest with this clarification. ALSO READ | Rohith Vemula's suicide not due to Dalit vs non-Dalit confrontation: Smriti Irani Protests and visits of leaders continued for the fourth day today at Hyderabad University campus. Talking to the media in New Delhi, Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani refused to term PhD scholar Rohith Vemula's suicide as a Dalit versus non-Dalit issue. Irani said that facts were being misinterpreted and that attempts were being made being made to polarise the Hyderabad University campus. "In the aftermath of a young life cut short, I express my grief over death of Rohith. A group of students allegedly attacked another student, we have ascertained that this is not a Dalit vs non-Dalit confrontation. There is an attempt to ignite passion and politicise the issue. There is a malicious bid to portray the case as a caste struggle," the minister said. Despite the minister claiming that Hyderabad University suicide had nothing to do with confrontation between Dalits and non-Dalits, Rohith's suicide has put the spotlight on the treatment meted out to Dalit students in academic institutes across India. Big questions Was Rohith forced to kill self due to expulsion? Who is to be blamed for the scholar's death? Was Rohith's personal life reason for suicide? Is Rohith Vemula a victim of campus politics? What is the reason for rising campus suicides? Will the university take any concerete action? Should Union minister Dattatreya be blamed? Do Dalits face discrimination in universities? By not acting, is government role complicit? Why was Thorat Committee's counsel ignored? Famous author Meena Kandasamy pointed out that cases such as the one in Hyderabad University still happen in India because education is one area which is seen to be controlled by the people belonging to the upper class of the society. Kandasamy added that no one has shared the detail about how many Dalit students decide to leave their study midway, how many become dropout, how many become a permanent victim of depression and how many end up dead. Speaking on To The Point, former vice-chancellor of Delhi University Dinesh Singh said that students from the weaker sections of the society have to face various kinds of difficulties when they arrive in cities and universities to follow their aspirations. "It may not just about be Dalit students. My premise is that these students come from a slightly socio-economic backward, deprived background and so when they come into a city situation...university situation they do face all kinds of difficulties. I have noticed this time and again. But I am not sure that this is confimed to Dalit students," Dinesh Singh said. Former chairman of the University Grants Commission (UGC) and chairman of Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) Professor Sukhadeo Thorat said that the issue should be looked in a wider context. "In Hyderabad University, there were two suicides, one was in 2008 and now in 2016. But in Hyderabad city itself there were nine suicides. If we come to northern India, then two suicides were reported in AIIMS, 14 suicides reported from Lucknow, Kanpur, Roorkee and Chandigarh. The issue is why is that the proportion of suicide much higher among the Dalits. The 23 cases that I mentioned, one is Muslim and one tribal and rest of them were Dalits. It means there are problems as far as the stay of Dalits in universities is concerned," Thorat said. "I won't say that there is a caste system there, but there is a legacy of caste system. We need a legislation against discrimination in educational institutions," he added. Professor of Sociology at Delhi University Satish Deshpande pointed out that higher education represents the upstream of the education system. "We must remember that every first generation learner who makes it to higher education, makes it against prevailing odds. Dalits bring with them far less social capital. Resentment is higher in elite institutions than other institutions because of presence of the upstart groups," Deshpande said. Zoya Hassan, professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, said that despite the democratisation of Indian higher education there is a great deal of prejudice, discrimination and hostility against Dalits specially in elite institutes. "It's not always the difficulties that they face, it is the difficult environment which does not nurture them, not support and encourage them," Hassan said. ALSO READ | Rohith Vemula's suicide not due to Dalit vs non-Dalit confrontation: Smriti Irani Hyderabad University V-C on Rohith Vemula's suicide: Wrong to label me as BJP man Jada Pinkett Smith responded to Academy President, Cheryl Boone Isaacs's letter. Meanwhile, Academy Award-winning actors George Clooney and Lupita Nyong'o have joined the social media outrage over discrimination towards people of colour. By India Today Web Desk: Days after taking to social media to vent her frustration over the lack of diversity among the Oscars' nominations this year, actor Jada Pinkett Smith has addressed the Academy president for her "quick response" to the issue. "I would like to express my gratitude to the Academy, specifically Cheryl Boone Isaacs, for such a quick response in regard to the issue at hand. I look forward to the future," Jada wrote on Twitter. I would like to express my gratitude to the Academy, specifically Cheryl Boone Isaacs, (pt 1) Jada Pinkett Smith (@jadapsmith) January 20, 2016 for such a quick response in regard to the issue at hand. I look forward to the future. (pt 2) Jada Pinkett Smith (@jadapsmith) January 20, 2016 advertisement ALSO READ: #OscarsSoWhite - After social media outrage and stars' threats to boycott event, Academy to review nominations ALSO READ: #OscarsSoWhite - Director Spike Lee and Matrix star Jada Pinkett Smith to boycott Oscars over lack of diversity Over the weekend, the actor had criticised the Oscar panel for nominating only white actors in four acting categories for the second year in a row. "At the Oscars...people of colour are always welcomed to give out awards...even entertain. But we are rarely recognized for our artistic accomplishments. Should people of colour refrain from participating all together?" she had written. "People can only treat us in the way in which we allow. With much respect in the midst of deep disappointment," she added. Jada's husband Will Smith was left out of the race for his role in Concussion. Isaacs had earlier responded to the backlash over diversity in the 2016 Oscar nominees. She said the Academy will take "dramatic steps" to alter the make-up of its membership. Even two-time Oscar winner George Clooney has penned an open letter expressing his frustration over the lack of diversity in this year's Academy Awards nominations. "If you think back 10 years ago, the Academy was doing a better job. Think about how many more African Americans were nominated. I would also make the argument, I don't think it's a problem of who you're picking as much as it is: How many options are available to minorities in film, particularly in quality films," Clooney said in a statement, reports variety.com. Jada Pinkett Smith and Spike Lee earlier announced that they were going to boycott this year's Oscars ceremony after no people of colour were nominated in the main acting categories for the second year in a row. "I think we have a lot of points we need to come to terms with...I think that African Americans have a real fair point that the industry isn't representing them well enough. I think that's absolutely true," Clooney said. "Let's look back at some of the nominees. I think around 2004, certainly there were black nominees - like Don Cheadle, Morgan Freeman. And all of a sudden, you feel like we're moving in the wrong direction. There were nominations left off the table," he added, mentioning films like Creed, Concussion, Beasts Of No Nation and Straight Outta Compton. Clooney said "there should be more opportunity than that". "There should be 20 or 30 or 40 films of the quality that people would consider for the Oscars. By the way, we're talking about African Americans. For Hispanics, it's even worse. We need to get better at this. We used to be better at it," he concluded. Even Lupita Nyong'o, who won a best supporting actress Oscar for 12 Years A Slave in 2014, took to Instagram to share her disappointment over the Academy nominations and called for "change". She quoted James Baldwin in the caption, ""Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced." - James Baldwin #manystoriesmanyvoices (sic)" "Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced." - James Baldwin #manystoriesmanyvoices A photo posted by Lupita Nyong'o (@lupitanyongo) on Jan 19, 2016 at 8:40pm PST The 88th Academy Awards will take place on February 28 this year. (With Inputs from IANS) Creating a balance between the organisation and the government will be the main challenge for the Narendra Modi government in the next Cabinet reshuffle, which is expected to happen after the re-election of Amit Shah as the BJP president by the end of this month. The next Cabinet reshuffle is expected to happen after the re-election of Amit Shah as BJP chief. By Kumar Vikram: Creating a balance between the organisation and the government will be the main challenge for the Narendra Modi government in the next Cabinet reshuffle, which is expected to happen after the re-election of Amit Shah as the BJP president by the end of this month. Assembly elections in five states- West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Assam where the party traditionally has little presence- and the Uttar Pradesh polls will have a major bearing on the exercise as the government is firm on its development agenda. Moreover, rising instances of rebellion within the party will also be a significant factor. A party insider claimed while the top ministries may be left untouched, some ministers could be deputed to organisational work. "The performance of the ministries and ministers will be taken into account. advertisement Some ministers who underperformed might be sent to other ministries or they may also be shifted to the organisation," the party leader said. Party sources said the upcoming political battle in the Hindi heartland UP will have a serious imprint on the Cabinet rejig. Induction of more names from the poll-bound state will not come as a surprise. A Dalit face might also find place in the Cabinet as the Dalit vote bank is significant for the party with eye on UP polls. Currently, there are 14 ministers in the Cabinet from the state quota, of which five are Union Cabinet ministers. The main agenda of the government is development and the party will continue to bank on the plank for the upcoming state elections. Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi reiterated this in Assam on Tuesday: "We have a three-point programme - development, development and development. All problems could be solved only through development." Keeping this in view, some ministries may also be reorganised for better governance and some of the better performers may get additional charge of related ministries. Moreover, party sources said PM Modi could cut down the number of ministers from Bihar following the party's defeat in the Assembly polls in November. Besides, floor management during Parliament sessions will also be one of the challenges which will be looked into as the government has failed to pass the crucial GST Bill during the winter session. The Pulwama encounter which was halted last night has resumed in the morning. According to reports, two terrorists are still hidding in a villager's house since night. By India Today Web Desk: The Pulwama encounter which was halted last night has resumed in the morning. According to reports, two terrorists are still hidding in a villager's house since night. A gun battle broke out last night between security forces and militants holed up in a village in Pulwama district of south Kashmir, a police official said. Troops of 53 Rashtriya Rifles and police cordoned off Naina Batapora village following information about the presence of the militants in the area, an official said. The official added as the security forces were closing in on the target house, the militants opened firing. There's more to the legendary Audrey Hepburn than the classic Little Black Dress. By Hemul Goel: Loved all the big contributions the iconic Breakfast At Tiffany's star, Audrey Hepburn, made to the world of fashion? With a touch of innocent charm to her persona, Audrey Hepburn ensured that black flats, LBDs, pearls and capris came to be reckoned as 'wardrobe essentials' for girls around the world. With her style and her work as a UNICEF International Goodwill Ambassador, Audrey Hepburn has been immortalised as an icon for generations, and on her 23rd death anniversary today, we remember her by some of her most quotable quotes that always remind one to live life like a true lady! Also read: Here's decoding the evolution of our beloved Little Black Dress On making the most of what life has to offer, EVERY single day "Pick the day. Enjoy it to the hilt. The day as it comes. People as they come...The past, I think, has helped me appreciate the present--and I don't want to spoil any of it by fretting about the future." advertisement On sex appeal being more than a number "There is more to sex appeal than just measurements. I don't need a bedroom to prove my womanliness. I can convey just as much sex appeal picking apples off a tree or standing in the rain." On companionship "The best thing to hold onto in life is each other." Also read: The one wardrobe mistake you keep making time and again On the need for sharing love "I was born with an enormous need for affection, and a terrible need to give it." On beauty "For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone." On happiness "The most important thing is to enjoy your life - to be happy - it's all that matters." On the importance of the right lighting, especially in the time of selfies ;) "There are certain shades of limelight that can wreck a girl's complexion." And yes, happy girls indeed are the prettiest! "I believe in pink. I believe that laughing is the best calorie-burner. I believe in kissing, kissing a lot. I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day and I believe in miracles." Sanjay Dutt has learnt how to make jute bags from the prison inmantes, and he has started creating them on his own. By India Today Web Desk: Sanjay Dutt, who is serving a five-year sentence at the Yerwada Central Prison in Pune, will be released on February 25. ALSO READ: Deepika finally uses the B-word for Ranveer. Yes, you read it right! ALSO READ: Rocky Handsome: John Abraham keen on remaking his film in Tamil and Telugu The Munna Bhai actor participated in several activities that were carried out by inmates on a daily basis. Sanjay Dutt even learnt how to make jute bags, and he has started creating them on his own. Sanjay Dutt receives about 30 paise for making one bag. He has saved most of the money he earned, as he wants to use it to buy something for his children (Iqra and Shahraan) when he is released. advertisement It is said that the actor has stopped himself from spending the money he has earned in the prison and has saved it to buy some gifts for his children. Sanjay was allowed to buy some basic necessities with that money, but he didn't spend it unless it was absolutely needed. When contacted, the actor's spokesperson confirmed the news. Security has been beefed up after a call from Bangladeshi terror outfit Hizb-ut Tahrir that was intercepted by central agencies. By India Today Web Desk: India has been put on high alert and the security has been tightened days ahead of Republic Day. Security has been beefed up after a call from Bangladeshi terror outfit Hizb-ut Tahrir that was intercepted by central agencies. Hizb-ut Tahrir of Bangladesh (HTB) with the support of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), Indian Mujahidin(IM) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) could plan an attack on January 23 at various places in India. The code word likely to be used for carrying out coordination and planning is 'doctor medicine lekar jayega'. BSF, Army, Airforce, state police and other key installations have been alerted. Earlier, an anonymous letter supposedly signed by ISIS had threatened to kill Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar. Also read: ISIS letter threatens to kill PM Modi: Goa Police advertisement After pumping billions of dollars into Indian Internet startups in the last 24 months, global investors are cutting that flood back to a trickle as dreams of huge online sales are clouded by soaring valuations and still-distant profits. By Reuters: After pumping billions of dollars into Indian Internet startups in the last 24 months, global investors are cutting that flood back to a trickle as dreams of huge online sales are clouded by soaring valuations and still-distant profits. Even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi lines up a four-year, $1.5 billion government fund to help startups create jobs, entrepreneurs fear that may prove a drop in the ocean. Venture capitalists have already tightened purse strings as ripples from China's economic slowdown lap around the world. According to a new report by CB Insights and KPMG, venture capital investments in India's startups nearly halved to $1.5 billion in fourth-quarter 2015 from July-September. Faltering startups could mean India missing out on huge potential: Bank of America Merrill Lynch has forecast Indian e-commerce will surge to $220 billion by 2025 from about $11 billion last year. advertisement "While the first phase of funding was about investing in big markets...now investors want to look at how entrepreneurs manage their business and compete while investing," said Niren Shah, India head of Norwest Venture Partners, said. Modi's plan for newly launched companies includes tax breaks on their first three years of profits, as well as their investors. But most of India's tech startups make losses, not profits. They follow a discount-driven business model aimed at generating revenue from customers that buy and sell goods and services, touting growth in 'gross merchandise value' on their platforms as a metric to attract funding. Two of the country's best known e-commerce retailers - Flipkart and Snapdeal - have attracted big-name backers like Accel Partners, Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings and Japan's SoftBank Group Corp, enthused by growth potential in a country where only 252 million of a population of 1.3 billion people have Internet access. Yet the pair have notched up huge losses as they compete for increasing sales through deep discounts, according to banking and industry sources. Flipkart and Snapdeal did not immediately respond to Reuters' emails seeking comment. "In the last few years, people were looking at gross merchandise value (when considering investment)," said Radhika Aggarwal, co-founder and chief business officer of online marketplace Shopclues.com. "I think that changed very quickly in the second half of last year." Shopclues.com raised funds last week from investors including Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC and Tiger Global that valued the firm at more than $1.1 billion - helped by detailing plans to hit profitability by the first half of next year, Aggarwal said. In early warning signs for the country's startup industry, firms from food delivery companies TinyOwl and Foodpanda to SoftBank-backed property firm Housing.com have either cut jobs or shrunk their services. At TinyOwl, last November around 20 employees even held their boss hostage for two days after it announced job cuts. "We are in the middle of this funding winter and global issues such as a slowdown in China could likely have a bigger impact this year," said Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder of mobile wallet Paytm, backed by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Also Read Startup India: 19 key points of PM Modi's action plan Leading women entrepreneurs share their experience at Startup India campaign Startup India: The number game Twitter gives a thumbs-up to #StartUpIndia PM Modi unveils Startup India plan, new ventures to join 3-year tax holiday Start-Up India campaign: SoftBank looks to raise India investment to USD 10 bn, says CEO Masayoshi Son The bomber targeted a vehicle owned by a company that works with Tolo News, Afghanistan's first 24-hour news channel. By Reuters: A suicide car bomber targeted a van carrying journalists working for a private Afghan television channel on Wednesday, killing seven people during evening rush hour close to the national parliament in Kabul, officials said. It was the latest in a series of suicide attacks in the Afghan capital that coincide with renewed efforts to revive a peace process with Taliban insurgents that broke down in July. The bomber targeted a vehicle owned by a company that works with Tolo News, Afghanistan's first 24-hour news channel, Kabul Police Chief Abdul Rahman Rahimi told reporters. He did not say how many of those in the van were killed or wounded. The Taliban openly threatened to target the television channel last year after it reported allegations of summary executions, rape, kidnappings and other abuses by its fighters during the battle for Kunduz. advertisement The Islamist insurgents briefly captured the northern city last year, their biggest success in the 15-year insurgency, before being ousted by government forces. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Wednesday's attack. The Taliban, who are fighting to topple the Western-backed government in Kabul and reimpose strict Islamic law, could not be reached for comment. Tolo News has been one of the most active media operations in the country for years, employing dozens of journalists, many in volatile provinces. The latest attack adds a dangerous new complication for local journalists working in a country already ranked as low as 122 out of 180 in the World Press Freedom Index, a gauge of media freedom compiled by the group Reporters Without Borders. At least 20 people were wounded in the bombing, including women and children, Ministry of Public Health spokesman Ismail Kawusi said. Since the start of the new year, Kabul has seen at least six bomb attacks. On Sunday, a rocket landed near the Italian embassy in Kabul, wounding two security guards. Envoys from Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States met in Kabul this week to explore ways to find a negotiated end to 15 years of war, and urged the Taliban to join peace talks. Separately on Wednesday, the U.S. government issued a warning that it had received reports militants were planning to attack a hotel or guesthouse frequented by foreigners in Kabul. There was no further information regarding the timing, location or method of attack, the statement said. The trailer of Tere Bin Laden Dead Or Alive was released recently, and it is a laugh riot all through. Pradhuman Singh is back as Osama Bin Laden, and his beloved rooster is also there in this film. By India Today Web Desk: What if the White House is forced to prove that the deadly terrorist Osama Bin Laden is indeed dead, and what if the US President's men have to seek help from an aspiring Bollywood filmmaker to prove it? It will be uproariously funny, right? That is what the spin-off of Tere Bin Laden is all about. ALSO READ: Sunny Leone can't get to work with Aamir Khan? Sunny, I'll be happy to work with you, says Aamir ALSO READ: Photo of the day: Akshay Kumar wishes happy couple Asin and Rahul a lifetime of love and adventure The trailer of the film was released on January 19, and it is a laugh riot all through. Pradhuman Singh is back as Osama Bin Laden, and his beloved rooster is also there in the second part. Talking about the sequel, Pradhuman said it was easier for him this time to reprise the role of Bin Laden. "It was more difficult last time because I was very new and it was a Pakistani character I was playing, so the accent was difficult. This time it is similar but different... it was easier this time around," he told IANS. advertisement Actor Ali Zafar, who was the protagonist of the first part, Tere Bin Laden, is playing a special role in this film. Talking about Zafar's role, director Abhishek Sharma said, "The journey of the character of Ali from the first film has been completed and this film is about the character of Sharma (played by Manish Paul). And in the film, Ali has a very special role. When you'll watch the film, you'll understand why he couldn't do the main role." The director has also said that the main character of the film (played by Manish) is an aspiring filmmaker from Delhi's Chandni Chowk, who wants to make a big film and not fry jalebis with his father. In an interview to PTI, the director said that the film is not a sequel to Tere Bin Laden, but a spin-off of it. The satirical film is all set to hit the screens on February 19, 2016. The pilot asked 4 Asian men to deboard stating their presence made him uneasy. What! By India Today Web Desk: Shah Anand, a Sikh, accompanied by his friends, a Bangladeshi Muslim, an Arab Muslim and a fellow Faimul Alam, were on an American Airlines flight 44718, flying from Toronto to New York, last month. They have filed a 9 million dollar lawsuit against the airline which asked them to deboard on a baseless ground that the pilot was uncomfortable because of their presence. According to the lawsuit filed by the Brooklyn federal court, the Bangladeshi Muslim and Arab Muslim were identified only with their initials W.H and M.K. When Anand and Alam switched seats with W.H and M.K, a flight attendant came by and asked W.H to get off the plane. When they questioned the flight crew on why they were asked to deboard, all they told them was to exit 'peacefully' and 'demanded' they return to the gate to await further directions. advertisement Passengers surrounding Alam and Anand started making racist comments and clutching their children "as if something was going to happen," the suit charges. When the group asked the agent whether their appearance had contributed to their removal, 'being that they are dark-skinned and had beards,' the agent responded their appearance 'did not help,' the lawsuit said. The 4 men are seeking damages, alleging the airline 'disgracefully engaged in the discrimination based on their perceived race, colour, ethnicity, alienage and/or national origin,' the lawsuit reads. Ridiculous, is the word. Investigative reporting from the inner city to Wall Street to the United Nations This is the blogspot version InnerCityPress.com When the U.S. Abandoned a Catholic President | Kevin Schmiesing | CWR An Interview with Geoffrey Shaw, author of The Lost Mandate of Heaven: The American Betrayal of Ngo Dinh Diem, President of Vietnam On November 2, 1963, shortly after they attended Mass in the city of Cholon, Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu were taken from a nearby Marian grotto and executed. They had fled Saigon in the face of a military coup, a revolution encouraged by the United States government, which had repeatedly pledged its support for Diem. In retrospect, Diems fall was a pivotal moment in the Vietnam conflict, a significant cause of the quagmire that so divided Americans during the 1960s and 1970s and cost the lives of more than 50,000 U.S. soldiers. During the Cold War, Vietnam was seen as a key battleground between the free world and Communism. As the United States became more deeply involved in the early 1960s, one critical question was whether and how the U.S. should partner with President Diem. Diem, the scion of a prominent Catholic family, was not a proponent of liberal democracy in the Western vein, but he was staunchly anti-Communist and enjoyed widespread popular support. He was, according to diplomatic and military historian Geoffrey Shaw, the best leader that could be hoped for in the Vietnam of the 1960s, and the U.S. was wrong to abandon him. In The Lost Mandate Of Heaven: The American Betrayal of Ngo Dinh Diem, President of Vietnam , Dr. Shaw investigates the person and regime of Ngo Dinh Diem and finds that conventional histories have obscured the truth about him and his government. CWR spoke with Dr. Shaw about his research, focusing on how and why so much misinformation has clouded the historical record on this point. CWR: The last Americans fled Saigon in 1975, more than forty years ago. It seems that this country is finally healing from the civil strife and rancorous disagreement that characterized that period in our nations politics and culture. Why revisit that poisonous time and reignite one of the contentious debates: the character of President Diem and the wisdom of American policy toward his regime? Shaw: The foremost reason for revisiting this terrible time is that the truth must be honored and, in so doing, yes, an unhealthy, festering scab may be torn off the old wound in the process, but the purpose here is not to re-injure but to heal, and only the truth can bring about real healing. Perhaps Confucius held the best perspective on this (as did the early Doctors of the Church): When a society starts to fail, it is because it has failed to call things by their right name (i.e., tell the truth) and the only way to go back from the precipice of catastrophic failure, where all is lost, is to start calling things by their right name again; in short, tell the truth again! Related directly to this is the fact that U.S. foreign policy, in the post-1945 era in general and post-1963 Vietnam in specific, has careened from disaster to disaster because its very foundations have been built on an erroneous view of the world that has emanated from activist liberal humanists within the U.S. Department of State. Dr. Robert Hickson has called these folks Liberal Imperialists and they seem driven to recreate the world in their own liberal image via strenuous social engineering. (Remember, in more recent times, their claims that they were going to make Iraq the aircraft carrier of democracy in the Persian Gulf? To paraphrase old Winnie Churchill: some aircraft carrier; some democracy!). This, of course, is idolatry and it has led Americas good intentions by the hand down some very dark paths. The murders of Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, on All Souls Day, 1963, became one of those critical hinges of history upon which everything that follows swings. Rather than face up to what had been done via these murdersnothing short of the murder of South Vietnamthe perpetrators, and those of like liberal/humanist mind, have dug in and re-victimized the victims, Diem and Nhu, by blaming them for what their killers have brought down on the heads of all Vietnamese and, indeed, all Americans who suffered and died or were left wounded or scarred for life by what followed. And how they have dug in! They have worked quite literally like demons (and, in my estimation, were inspired by the cadres of the evil one) to make the lie, their narrative, the truth about the history of that conflict and, conversely, they have moved mountains, via their infernal zeal, to make the factual truth appear as a lie. But they are undone because the truth, like water, does not like to be compressed and squished into some dark, small corner; inevitably, it bursts out and breaks the bonds of the lie. Darkness cannot extinguish the light, though it strives mightily to do so. The release of all the U.S. Government documents, held classified for over three decades, has brought a devastating light upon the lie that the liberal news media and U.S. Department of State activists tried to maintain; indeed, all they can do in reaction is call the messengers of these facts by various derogatory names, such as revisionist (always, a pejorative amongst the left who hold sway in academe). Perhaps, their greatest tactic is to simply ignore the truth; for example, two of the finest and most truthful accounts written about Ngo Dinh Diem and the unholy alliance between apparatchiks within the State Department and mutinous South Vietnamese military men have been generally panned in academe. I am referring here to Ellen Hammers A Death in November and Maggie Higgins Our Vietnam Nightmare. Both of these authors, expert in their own particular ways on Vietnam, with much more experience under their belts than the celebrated liberal press journalists, David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan, were deliberately ignored in academes history departments from coast to coast while Halberstam and Sheehans histories (and I use that term advisedly) were hailed as compelling. I hope the point is well made that, starting with this rotten foundation of lies that led to Diems persecution and death, the superstructure of U.S. foreign policy built upon said shoddy foundation, has been crumbling ever since. And this is because it has no truthful basis upon which to stand and reality, from Kosovo, to Iraq, to Afghanistan, back to Iraq, Benghazi and on to Ukraine, has made this so manifest that only the truly delusional can continue to cling to this failed superstructure as if all were just fine in the world. In short, the liberal/left/humanist worldview has been exposed as the same complete deceit that Communism was revealed to be with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The only thing that keeps it going in the west, ironically, is that capitalism has given our dishonest and idolatrous view deeper pockets upon which it can draw than Communism permitted the Soviets. But to be absolutely clear, both ideologies have been exposed as frauds and, in many ways, are remarkably similar in spirit and effect. CWR: Much of the story revolves around the conflict between the views and actions of two key American figures: US ambassador to Vietnam, Frederick Nolting, and Assistant Secretary of State Averell Harriman. In sum, Nolting had a favorable view of Diem and was committed to building a positive relationship with him, while Harriman lost faith in Diem and sought to undermine and eventually replace him. In your view, what are the most important factors that account for this radical difference of opinion about the best way forward in Vietnam, circa 1963? Continue reading at www.CatholicWorldReport.com Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who on Wednesday went to Davos, Switzerland, among official Ukrainian delegates attending the World Economic Forum, will hold a meeting with Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Christine Lagarde, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk said. "I know the president is scheduled to meet with the IMF managing director," Yatseniuk said at a Cabinet meeting in Kyiv on Wednesday. Yatseniuk added that Ukraine should continue the program of cooperation with the IMF, as it is fundamental to economic stability in Ukraine. As was reported, Poroshenko announced last week that additional negotiations should take place to continue cooperation with the IMF under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) program. "Probably it will require my involvement," he said in Kyiv on January 14. In his words, the updated memorandum under the EFF will be finalized soon. He also announced a meeting with IMF representatives in Switzerland. UN mission to come to Ukraine to assess possibility of starting mine clearance in Donbas A mission of UN experts is expected to visit Ukraine to assess the possibility of starting mine clearance work in Donbas, Ukrainian Permanent Representative to the UN Volodymyr Yelchenko said. "The mission is coming on January 23, and it will be working for two weeks," Yelchenko said on the Ukrainian television Channel Five on Tuesday evening. So far the matter does not imply the deployment of a full-format UN peacekeeping mission, he said. "This mission will come, see, do some calculations, and make conclusions, and after that, a small coordinating staff will be set up in Ukraine to start [the] work," he said. The decision has been made by the UN Secretariat, and the organization is ready to allocate significant funding for this work, he said. Yelchenko said he hoped that, along with Kyiv, the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics (DPR and LPR) would also be interested in mine clearance and that there would be no problems with that. Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk will hold a meeting with the prosecutor general of Ukraine, the heads of the Interior Ministry, the Security Service, the National Police and the new anti-corruption prosecutor on January 21 to hand them over the priority cases against corrupt officials. "As the prime minister, I initiate a meeting of the prosecutor general, the head of the Interior Ministry, the National Police, the head of the SBU, the new anti-corruption prosecutor, the justice minister to convey on behalf of the government of Ukraine a list of criminal proceedings, which, in our opinion, require immediate investigation and bringing corrupt officials to justice," Yatseniuk said at a meeting of the Cabinet in Kyiv on Wednesday. "First of all, I would like to emphasize that virtually none of the scams by [ex-president of Ukraine Viktor] Yanukovych and the former regime has been investigated. The arrested funds are still on the accounts, while two years have passed," the prime minister said. Yatseniuk expressed his hope that "tomorrow there will be a meaningful and effective conversation, on how to fight corruption, and when this will be done." Ukrainian army positions come under 327 attacks over past week, with 30 times of forbidden weapon use Ukrainian army positions have come under 327 attacks in the eastern territory, uncontrolled by the Ukrainian government, where the Ukrainian army is conducting its operation, in the period from January 13, when the Trilateral Contact Group held its first meeting of this year, and Wednesday morning, the Ukrainian mission to the Joint Center for Control and Coordination (JCCC) has said. Thirty attacks were conducted through the use of armaments, which were supposed to be pulled back, the JCCC press service quoted Ukrainian Representative to the JCCC Lt. Gen. Andriy Taran as saying on Wednesday. An overwhelming majority of the truce violations happened in the Donetsk and Mariupol sectors, in the evening or at night, he said. Most attacks on Ukrainian army positions over the past week were observed near Novhorodske, Maryinka, Krasnohorivka, Vodyane and Talakivka, the report said. In addition to small arms, militants weapons, which were required to be withdrawn, Taran said. "Mostly, those were 82mm mortars, but some 120mm mortars and one Grad-P, the so-called 'Partizan', were used, too," he said. Militants fired at least 145 82mm and 120mm mines, JCCC Ukrainian observers said. The Ukrainian representative to the JCCC also said that hostile snipers had become active in that period. In all, 22 sniper shots have been observed, Taran said. A Ukrainian serviceman was injured in the anti-terrorist operation zone in Donbas in the past 24 hours, Ukrainian Presidential Administration spokesman for military matters Andriy Lysenko has said. "There were no fatalities amongst the Ukrainian servicemen in the hostilities in the ATO zone over the past day, but one soldier suffered injuries. That happened in the attack on Maryinka," he said at a press briefing in Kyiv on Wednesday. The hostilities focused on the Donetsk sector, from Avdiyivka to Pisky, Lysenko said, adding that the enemy had also breached the truce in Zaytseve and Novhorodske. Militants fired 82mm mortars near the Donetsk airport. Ukrainian positions were shelled by grenade launchers and 122mm mortars near Maryinka, Lysenko said. You can read more about this on CIPA's press release . The IPKat welcomes any development to simplify and harmonise IP systems, because the most confusion and misunderstanding arises in those areas where national practices diverge the most. UCL Faculty of Laws is running a course on IP transactions - Law & Practice from 11 to 15 April 2016. It is convened by Professor Sir Robin Jacob and Mark Anderson (of fame). You can read about the course "designed to focus on the legal and practice issues that are directly relevant to transactional IP practitioners" . 3-5 September 2016, The Oxford Intellectual Property Research Centre (OIPRC) is hosting the 11th Annual Conference of the EPIP Association in Oxford, UK. Scholars and practitioners interested in the economic, legal, political and managerial aspects of intellectual property rights are encouraged to attend the conference. At this stage, submissions of Full Papers, Extended Abstracts and proposals for Themed Sessions of 3-4 papers are solicited, and the deadline is 13 March 2016. More details can be found Looking ahead to, The Oxford Intellectual Property Research Centre (OIPRC) is hosting the 11th Annual Conference of the EPIP Association in Oxford, UK. Scholars and practitioners interested in the economic, legal, political and managerial aspects of intellectual property rights are encouraged to attend the conference. At this stage, submissions of Full Papers, Extended Abstracts and proposals for Themed Sessions of 3-4 papers are solicited, and the deadline is. More details can be found here The Japanese Patent Attorneys Association hosted a meeting of ten national and international intellectual property associations, including the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys, resulting in the signing in Tokyo of a declaration committing to an alliance to help shape, promote and improve global patent initiatives. The organisations involved are:All-China Patent Attorneys Association (ACPAA)American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA)Asian Patent Attorneys Association (APAA)Association of Singapore Patent Attorneys (ASPA)Federation Internationale des Conseils en Propriete Intellectuelle (FICPI)Intellectual Property Association of Thailand (IPAT)Japanese Patent Attorneys Association (JPAA)Korea Patent Attorneys Association (KPAA)The Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (CIPA)The Institute of Patent and Trade Mark Attorneys of Australia (IPTA)Katpat to Chris Torrero for informing the IPKat the the European Patent Office has launched a short user survey regarding the planned improved online archive for legal texts on the EPO website. The survey can be accessed here: https://de.surveymonkey.com/r/MSZG3TR . The survey apparently takes about 10 minutes to complete.The UK Intellectual Property Office wants to make Registered Designs cheap - very cheap. They are consulting on a proposal whereby, for online filing: The cost of a single online application will be 50 Multiple online designs will cost 70 for up to 10 designs To introduce a fee of 20 for every 10 online thereafter (i.e. 11-20)You can see the consultation here , and responses are due by(If you had missed that the UK IPO allows you to file designs online - this was introduced on 30 September 2015 for single designs, and expanded to allow multiple designs on 13 October 2015. But you can only pay by credit or debit card.)INTA has announced the launch of a new resource, Geographical Indications, Certification Marks and Collective Marks: An International Guide This Guide is described as[c]overing eighteen jurisdictions to start (with plans already underway to include more), this cutting-edge database is a searchable guide that traces the treatment of all three concepts in a structured format. Details regarding protection, opposition and cancellation procedures, availability of enforcement mechanisms and more are available in a concise form within a few clicks. Such detailed treatment of these concepts in one publication is unprecedented.Past experience by the IPKat attests to the care and detail that INTA takes in producing these informational resources. That is the good news, and with the launch of this new International Guide, INTA members will be enriched by its contents. The less good news, at least for persons and organizations that are not members, is that access to the Guide, as well as the other Guides produced by INTA, is limited to the organizations members only.The IPKat thanks Kat friend Latha Nair, of K & S Partners, Gurgaon, India, one of four project team editors for this Guide (along with Emmanuel Baud, Edouard Fortunet, and Anne Glazer) for this information.The Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) has started to issue first-office-action search and examination reports for patent applications filed inCambodia is poised to ascend to the Patent Cooperation Treaty, and this cooperation between both countries is testament to the progressive integration and development of IP within ASEAN.Katfriend Ventsi Stoilov informs the IPKat that thePatent Office has launched brand-new IP databases - apparently more user-friendly than the old ones, and allowing searching in English. You can access them here As ever, don't forget to check the Forthcoming Events page, which is frequently updated. The IPKat would like to draw readers' attention to a number of events in particular.This will take place onat the Hotel Pullman London St Pancras. In-house counsel attend for free; for others it is 1095 + VAT if booked before 29 January 2016. The packed programme includes sessions looking at IP in many jurisdictions worldwide, as well as technology-specific issues in Europe and the USA. There is something for everyone! More details can be found here For litigation enthusiasts, the European Patent Litigators Association will be meeting onin Amsterdam at Sofitel Legend The Grand Amsterdam. EPLIT is mainly intended to promote the Unified Patent Court, and the programme focusses on the preparations for the UPC. More details can be found here Taking placeonat the University of Westminster - The interactive discussion will include audio and musical illustrations and an invitation for delegates to vote on and discuss each example. By Simon Anderson, recent LLM graduate from the University of Westminster. See here for more details (free to attend, but registration required).Taking placeonat City University London. By Dr Peter Mezei (University of Szeged, Hungary). More details here (free to attend, but registration required).Geneva (Switzerland).This is a full day Seminar by the Law Department of the University of Geneva, in collaboration with the European Communities Trade Mark Association. For further details just click here The debate over whether there should be a harmonised international grace period, allowing limited disclosure or commercialisation of an invention before filing a patent application, has rumbled along for many years. Attempts to reach agreement have never got very far, given that Europe and the USA have historically regarded their own (very different) approaches to this subject with something bordering on religious dogma. European legislators have long believed that absolute novelty and third party certainty are sacrosanct, while the USA has equally zealously protected the right of an inventor to disclose an invention without losing the right to a patent. In recent years some softening of positions is detectable: The America Invents Act diluted the US grace period somewhat, while in Europe some influential groups have suggested that the sky might not in fact fall down if a grace period were to be permitted. FICPI , the International Federation of Intellectual Property Practitioners, is making a concerted effort to reignite this debate, and is urging that authorities reconsider the issue and make provision for a harmonised 12 month "safety net" form of grace period across all major jurisdictions. In a paper setting out FICPI's argument, the authors (Robert Watson (GB), Jerome Collin (FR), Ivan Ahlert (BR), Philip Mendes da Costa (CA), Michael Caine (AU), Jan Modin (SE) and James Pooley (US)) argue that the supposed disadvantages of the grace period, primarily that it would create too much uncertainty for industry, are not borne out by empirical evidence. The paper can be read in full here FICPI notes that several studies conducted on behalf of the EPO, either alone or in conjunction with other major IP offices, have given at least a guarded welcome to the notion of a limited grace period covering the inventor's own disclosures (as opposed to a blanket exemption to also cover third-party disclosures in the preceding 12 months). Providing relief to inventors who have made an honest mistake is a natural and important part of any patent system that seeks to encourage innovation from all sources. Indeed, continuing to maintain the requirement of absolute novelty risks reinforcing public cynicism about the law, because users may see it as promoting only the convenience and opportunism of large corporations who can effectively mitigate their own risk of losing rights by inadvertent disclosure, while benefiting from the mistaken disclosures by smaller entities. Whether or not this is true is not the point; rather, it is the perception of this asymmetric situation that matters. In response to the fundamental fairness of a grace period and the unequal effects of the status quo, the classic argument about legal certainty is insufficient. It is an abstraction that fails to account for the very substantial uncertainty that already exists, independently of whether a grace period is provided, in any patent search. No empirical evidence has demonstrated that a grace period creates any significant incremental uncertainty. And the abstract concern stands in stark contrast to the clear and existential harm to innocent inventors, who can lose all their rights. Under this model, third parties would be entitled to retain any intervening rights, which should encourage inventors to continue to file early, and emphasising the "safety net" character of the grace period (i.e. so that it does not encourage delay in filing). On the question of whether the inventor would be required to make a declaration covering any pre-filing disclosures, the FICPI authors urge against this, noting that such a requirement: "would put the inventor at risk of an insufficient statement. The declaration would become the focus of inquiry: did the inventor think of everything that might destroy novelty? If an argument can be made that he has missed something, then the risk remains that he will be stripped of his invention. In this regard, the declaration would provide very little benefit while setting a trap for the unwary inventor." They conclude with a call for action as follows: Consequently, FICPI urges the relevant authorities to come to an agreement, at the earliest possible time, on the institution of a global grace period of the safety net type, measured from the filing date or the priority date for a period of twelve months, without any requirement for an inventor declaration. I WRITE NEWS ABOUT AND PUT NEWS ARTICLES ABOUT ISRAEL AND JERUSALEM PERTAINING TO BIBLE PROPHESY HAPPENINGS.JOEL 3:20 But Judah (ISRAEL) shall dwell for ever, and Jerusalem from generation to generation.(THATS ISRAEL-JERUSALEM WILL NEVER BE DESTROYED AGAIN)-WE CHRISTIANS ARE ALL WAITING PATIENTLY FOR THE PRE-TRIBULATION RAPTURE TO OCCUR.SO WE CAN GO TO JESUS AND GET OUR NEVER DYING BODIES.SO WE CAN RULE OVER CITIES OURSELVES.WHILE JESUS RULES FROM DAVIDS THRONE FOREVER IN JERUSALEM. [January 19, 2016] Bosch demonstrates complete solutions for home, jobsite and community at 2016 International Builders' Show At the 2016 International Builders' Show (IBS), Bosch is showcasing innovative products and solutions that bring value to any residential project. The company's latest innovations for the home, jobsite and community will be on display at the Las Vegas Convention Center - Central Hall, booths C4543 and C3837. FOR THE HOME Bosch Home Appliances: Modern design simplifies life in the kitchen. Bosch home appliances, the premier European kitchen design brand, will expand its award-winning suite of sleek, modern appliances. Bosch home appliances are "Invented for Life," providing solutions to meet the needs of every kitchen-from the growing trend of small and secondary spaces, to the modern kitchen in single and multi-family homes. Through its modern design principles, including ergonomic design and precision technology, Bosch enhances life in the kitchen. At this year's International Builder's Show, Bosch home appliances will unveil the new Benchmark 36" Induction Cooktop and the new 24" Custom Panel Refrigerator. The new Benchmark 36" Induction Cooktop features FlexInduction technology and enhanced features to streamline the cooking process, delivering perfect results more efficiently. The new 24" Custom Panel Refrigerator enables consumers to customize their kitchen space and achieve a truly integrated look, especially in areas of the home where space is a consideration. Bosch Thermotechnology: Innovative heating, cooling and hot water solutions. As a leading provider of high-quality, comfort conditioning systems for residential, commercial and multi-family applications, Bosch Thermotechnology offers a full portfolio of sustainable heating, cooling, hot water, and energy management solutions. Beyond added comfort and convenience, the systems reduce harmful carbon dioxide emissions, improve home values and cut utility bills for lower cost of ownership. With every product line, Bosch offers controls and accessories to manage energy use, including wi-fi enabled smart controls and mobile apps. At IBS, Bosch will show its ultra-efficient geothermal heat pump systems, which use the relatively constant temperature of the earth to provide heating, air conditioning and hot water. Geothermal systems are the most efficient, comfortable and quiet heating and cooling solutions available for residential or commercial applications. In addition to being a key enabler for Zero Net Energy capable homes, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has stated that these systems can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 40 percent compared to conventional HVAC systems. Bosch will display its new Hydronic Air Handlers for a more efficient, compact home heating and hot water system. When used with Bosch Greentherm Condensing Tankless Water Heaters, the Bosch Control Smart Room Thermostat to control temperature using a compatible smart device and mobile app, Greenstar wall-hung, floor-standing boiler and a Greenstar model for high-volume project and builder programs, gas tankless and electric whole house and point-of-use water heaters. Bosch Security Systems: Flexible security and home automation solutions for modern lifestyles. By integrating intrusion and fire detection, video surveillance and home automation control, Bosch systems help make residences more secure and provide peace of mind. With customized solutions for any home layout, individual control of rooms or areas, and the ability to carry out multiple functions with a single command, homeowners can create a customized security plan to fit their lifestyle. Integrating security systems with video surveillance allows monitoring, identification of who turned the system on or off, and viewing images of other events occurring within or near the home - all from a remote desktop, smart phone or tablet. Homeowners also gain convenience and save energy with support for industry-standard Z-Wave devices, which enable connected systems to control security, lighting, heating, cooling and more. Bosch EV Charging: Prepare the homes of the future for the vehicles of the future. Bosch residential EV charging stations are designed to work with all electric vehicles sold in North America, providing safe and reliable charging. The stations offer great flexibility with hardwire or plug-in options, compatibility with input currents of 12 to 40 amps, indoor or outdoor applications, and wall- or pedestal-mount choices. FOR THE JOBSITE Bosch Power Tools: Powerful, forward-thinking, smart. Bosch will highlight its best-in-class cordless tools, rotary hammers, fine woodworking tools and professional-grade circular saws. Bosch uses the world's toughest materials for its circular saw blades, drill bits, concrete cutting blades and jig saw blades. Unlike other manufacturers, Bosch produces its own carbide for cutting and drilling everything from wood to cast iron, and sources the best industrial diamonds for concrete- and masonry-cutting applications. With an extensive range of line lasers, laser measures, rotary lasers, point lasers, wall scanners, digital levels, optical levels and measuring tool accessories, Bosch delivers solutions for virtually every jobsite project. FOR THE COMMUNITY Bosch Software Innovations, the Bosch Group's software and systems division, designs, develops, and operates innovative software and systems solutions for the Internet of Things (IoT). Its Bosch IoT Suite provides the technology basis for enabling IoT applications in a variety of industries including manufacturing, mobility and energy. For building and city verticals, Software Innovations collaborates with city stakeholders and partners to provide intelligent monitoring and control systems to make lives safer and more convenient, and resources more sustainable. Pedal-assist electric bikes are the new frontier for neighborhood mobility. Electric bikes powered by Bosch boost a cyclist's human power with electric power making it easier than ever to enjoy life by bicycle. Rechargeable at any standard wall outlet and built to last, eBikes are ready for healthy communities everywhere. Follow the Bosch 2016 IBS activities on Twitter (News - Alert): #BoschIBS About Bosch Having established a regional presence in 1906 in North America, the Bosch Group employs some 28,700 associates in more than 100 locations, as of April 1, 2015. In 2014, Bosch generated consolidated sales of $11.3 billion in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. For more information, visit www.boschusa.com, www.bosch.com.mx and www.bosch.ca. The Bosch Group is a leading global supplier of technology and services. It employs roughly 360,000 associates worldwide (as per April 1, 2015). The company generated sales of 49 billion euros in 2014.* Its operations are divided into four business sectors: Mobility Solutions, Industrial Technology, Consumer Goods, and Energy and Building Technology. The Bosch Group comprises Robert Bosch GmbH and its roughly 440 subsidiary and regional companies in some 60 countries. Including its sales and service partners, Bosch is represented in roughly 150 countries. This worldwide development, manufacturing, and sales network is the foundation for further growth. In 2014, Bosch applied for some 4,600 patents worldwide. The Bosch Group's strategic objective is to create solutions for a connected life. Bosch improves quality of life worldwide with products and services that are innovative and spark enthusiasm. In short, Bosch creates technology that is "Invented for life." Exchange rate: 1 EUR = $1.32850 *The sales figure disclosed for 2014 does not include the former joint ventures BSH Bosch und Siemens (News - Alert) Hausgerate GmbH (now BSH Hausgerate GmbH) and ZF Lenksysteme GmbH (now Robert Bosch Automotive Steering GmbH), which have since been taken over completely. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160119006525/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 19, 2016] Panasonic Announces New Network Scanning Solution Panasonic (News - Alert), a provider of industry leading document management and imaging solutions, announced today its newest M100 series network scanning solution that combines the advanced processing power of an Intel (News - Alert) Core i5 tablet with the reliability of its award-winning scanners. This new system provides a state of the art, fully-connected document management and imaging solution ideal for any sized business-from enterprise to a small to medium-sized-the universal solution provides a streamlined workflow, ultimately trimming unnecessary back-office time. With superior network connectivity and advanced image processing, the network scanning solution eliminates the need for manual scanning and data entry with the ability to scan to email, shared folders, fax or Bluetooth* at the touch of a button. "By enhancing the scanner system with the advanced processing and durability of the Toughpad, I'll be able to deliver an overall superior solution with enhanced document management abilities using Panasonic's patented technology," said Levi Longmore, President of Scanner One, Inc., a Panasonic authorized Value-Added Reseller. "As the first and only 100 page per minute document management solution of its kind, I have no doubt the new network scanning system will be a welcome solution for many of my customers including insurance companies, banks, hospitals, and healthcare offices." Panasonic is an industry leader in delivering high-speed-exceeding 45PPM-and true production level network scanning. The M100 series stays true to that promise providing best-in-class image processing. With the added high-performance processor, the Panasonic system can quickly scan images without any reduction in productivity. Additional features include: High-speed Simplex & Duplex Scanning: With increased scanning speeds up to 100PPM, ability to automatically scan single or double-sided with the stroke of a single key. With increased scanning speeds up to 100PPM, ability to automatically scan single or double-sided with the stroke of a single key. Double-Feed, Staple & Dog-Ear Detection*: Using several high-performance sensors to detect issues, these functions alert the user at the time of detection to help eliminate paper jams and increase scanning speeds. Using several high-performance sensors to detect issues, these functions alert the user at the time of detection to help eliminate paper jams and increase scanning speeds. Long Paper Mode, Mixed Media & Batch Scanning: Save time and eliminate the need to set-up scanning parameters multiple times with the ability to automatically scan multiple items at one time, and capacity to support long-paper items such as electrocardiograms, passports and thick card stock with the straight-path paper feed. Save time and eliminate the need to set-up scanning parameters multiple times with the ability to automatically scan multiple items at one time, and capacity to support long-paper items such as electrocardiograms, passports and thick card stock with the straight-path paper feed. Various Type File Support: The system can support a multitude of file formats including uncompressed TIFF, JPEG TIFF, multipage TIFF, JPEG, PNG, PDF and searchable PDF. The system can support a multitude of file formats including uncompressed TIFF, JPEG TIFF, multipage TIFF, JPEG, PNG, PDF and searchable PDF. Security & Device Management: Feel confident and secure with even your most sensitive business documents with added security and management features including: Domain Network Authentication / Local User Management Remote Administration Local Device Address Book (LDAP) Built in Auditing Auto Document Erasure Feel confident and secure with even your most sensitive business documents with added security and management features including: * Available on select models only "We're always on the lookout for new ways to package up and deliver an even greater, efficient and cost-savings document management solution to our customers," said Joseph Odore, Product Manager for Document Management and Imaging Solutions, Panasonic. "Our new network-connected scanning system provides enhanced processing for businesses of all sizes, as well as a software development kit and custom professional services upon request." Pricing and Availability The new network scanning soluton is available today through authorized Panasonic resellers, and configured with select scanner models, including: KV-S157M100 - KV-S1057C w/ M1 Network Scanner Solution - $4,000.00 MSRP - $4,000.00 MSRP KV-S287M100 - KV-S2087 w/ M1 Network Scanner Solution - $6,200.00 MSRP - $6,200.00 MSRP KV-S546M100 - KV-S5046H w/ M1 Network Scanner Solution - $7,900.00 MSRP - $7,900.00 MSRP KV-S576M100 - KV-S5076H w/ M1 Network Scanner Solution - $8,400.00 MSRP - $8,400.00 MSRP KV-S465M100 - KV-S4065CW w/ M1 Network Scanner Solution - $9,900.00 MSRP - $9,900.00 MSRP KV-S485M100 - KV-S4085CW w/ M1 Network Scanner Solution - $14,600.00 MSRP The Intel Core i5 Toughpad M1 tablet is covered under a Three-Year Limited Parts & Labor Warranty. For more information on the new M100 series network scanner solution, please visit: http://business.panasonic.com/products-officetechnology-documentmanagementimaging-scanners-networkscanning. Select scanner models come standard with a Three-Year Advance Exchange Warranty Select scanner models come equipped with a 90-Day Warranty Panasonic Solutions for Business Panasonic delivers game-changing technology solutions that deliver a customized experience to drive better outcomes-for our customers and our customers' customers. Panasonic engineers reliable products and solutions that help to create, capture and deliver data of all types, where, when and how it is needed. The complete suite of Panasonic professional solutions for government and commercial enterprises of all sizes addresses unified business communications, mobile computing, security and surveillance, retail point-of-sale, office productivity, visual communications (projectors, displays, digital signage) and HD video production. Panasonic solutions for business are delivered by Panasonic System Communications Company of North America, Division of Panasonic Corporation of North America, the principal North American subsidiary of Panasonic Corporation. All brand and company/product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of the respective companies. All specifications are subject to change without notice. Information on Panasonic solutions for business can be obtained by calling (877) 803-8492 or at http://business.panasonic.com. Connect with Panasonic for Business: Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Blog About Panasonic Corporation of North America Panasonic Corporation of North America provides a broad line of digital and other electronics products and solutions for consumer, business and industrial use. The company is the principal North American subsidiary of Osaka, Japan-based Panasonic Corporation and the hub of Panasonic's U.S. branding, marketing, sales, service and R&D operations. In Interbrand's 2014 annual "Best Global Green Brands" report, Panasonic ranked number five overall and the top electronics brand in the report. As part of continuing sustainability efforts, Panasonic Corporation of North America relocated its headquarters to a new facility, adjacent to Newark Penn Station in Newark, NJ. It is the first newly constructed office tower in Newark to earn both LEED Platinum and Gold certifications from the U.S. Green Building Council. Learn more about Panasonic at us.panasonic.com/news. Connect with Panasonic: Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, Facebook, YouTube, Panasonic Business Blog View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160119006628/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 19, 2016] Esri Unveils ArcGIS Earth to the World Esri, the world leader in mapping technology, has launched ArcGIS Earth, a free, desktop-based interactive globe that anyone can use to explore the world and work with a variety of 3D and 2D map data formats including KML. ArcGIS Earth allows users to quickly display data on the globe, sketch place marks, measure distances and areas, and add annotations to easily understand spatial information. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160119006735/en/ "ArcGIS Earth is a revolutionary desktop application that offers GIS to the world," said Jack Dangermond, Esri founder and president. "It supports spatial data formats and workflows that are familiar to your enterprise. It is a core component of Esri's secure, stable, and mature ArcGIS platform, and it's another tool for serving all your internal and external users through GIS." Demand for 3D mapping continues to grow among Esri customers in industries as diverse as national and local government, urban design and planning, and commercial space management. These customers are using 3D to visualize plans and conditions, understand the behavior and aesthetics of proposed development, and communicate ideas in the context of real-world imagery and data. ArcGIS Earth allows users to examine interrelationships of assets in 3D, report project status, and present work to stakeholders or clients in a compelling and interactive experience. ArcGIS Earth is designed to provide a high-performance globe viewer with an immersive user interface. ArcGIS Earth users can explore open standard KML and KMZ data, shapefiles, imagery, and web services; tilt and rotate the view; measure distances and areas on the globe; and supplement maps with sketches and annotations. ArcGIS Earth includes free content that encompasses global imagery, topographic maps, world ocean maps, OpenStreetMap, and publicly available maps shared by millions of rcGIS users around the world. "Enterprise customers can use ArcGIS Earth to put the power of mapping into the hands of anyone in a large organization who needs to reliably access a map," said Chris Andrews (News - Alert), Esri product manager for ArcGIS Earth. "The application combines a familiar, immersive, globe-based experience that is accessible by nontechnical users, with the power to access any data stored in the ArcGIS platform. With ArcGIS Earth, we are adding an option to help our users share the value of GIS throughout their organizations or even beyond." ArcGIS Earth is fully integrated with the ArcGIS platform-on-premises and in the cloud-for the secure access, sharing, and publishing of enterprise maps and data, and continued operations with minimal interruption. Users with an ArcGIS account can access secured data in ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS for Server including feature, scene, map, and image services. ArcGIS Earth is also part of Esri's offer for Google (News - Alert) customers and partners looking to transition to Esri software following the deprecation of Google Earth Enterprise. Along with other capabilities of the ArcGIS platform, ArcGIS Earth provides an alternative to Google Earth Enterprise Client. To learn more about the offer, visit esri.com/google. Download ArcGIS Earth for free today. Get started at esri.com/earth. About Esri Since 1969, Esri has been giving customers around the world the power to think and plan geographically. The market leader in GIS technology, Esri software is used in more than 350,000 organizations worldwide including each of the 200 largest cities in the United States, most national governments, more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, and more than 7,000 colleges and universities. Esri applications, running on more than one million desktops and thousands of web and enterprise servers, provide the backbone for the world's mapping and spatial analysis. Esri is the only vendor that provides complete technical solutions for desktop, mobile, server, and Internet platforms. Visit us at esri.com/news. Copyright 2016 Esri. All rights reserved. Esri, the Esri globe logo, ArcGIS, GIS by Esri, @esri.com, and esri.com are trademarks, service marks, or registered marks of Esri in the United States, the European Community, or certain other jurisdictions. Other companies and products or services mentioned herein may be trademarks, service marks, or registered marks of their respective mark owners. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160119006735/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 19, 2016] cPDM and CAD Markets Leading the Way for Global PLM in Automotive Sector, Says Technavio According to the latest market study released by Technavio on the global PLM market in the automotive sector, the market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 9% from 2016 to 2020. The research report is titled "Global PLM in the Automotive Sector 2016-2020" and provides an in-depth analysis of both revenue and emerging market trends. The research report also includes up to date analysis and forecast estimates for various market segments and all geographical regions. Request Sample Report: http://goo.gl/2EAOJU The report states that the automotive industry is being driven by increased demand for highly efficient vehicles. Some of the major factors shaping the automotive industry are: Increased need for fuel-efficient automobiles due to rise in fuel prices Stringency of environmental laws and emissions standards from various governments such as in the EU Increase in global demand for small and light vehicles Growing safety requirements and increased demand for electronics and embedded software content in vehicles The global PLM market in the automotive industry is segmented into seven products: cPDM CAD EDA NC FEA CFD DM In terms of CAGR from 2015 to 2020, the CFD and FEA segments have the fastest growth rates, followed by EDA and, the market leader cPDM. Vendors like ANSYS, Mentor Graphics (News - Alert), EXA, and ESI have recently entered into strategic partnerships with different CFD support platform providers, whih is driving the growth of the CFD market. High research and development investments by automobile manufacturers to develop new and innovative products in the market is also providing a driving force in the growth of the global CFD market in the automotive industry. The cPDM segment is the market's largest, generating revenue of over USD 3 billion in 2015 and is expected to exceed USD 5 billion by 2020, growing at a CAGR of 10%. cPDM plays a major role in meeting the needs of the automotive industry to comply with requirements imposed by governments. "cPDM software solutions are a strategic business approach, applying a consistent set of business solutions that collaboratively provide effective and efficient methods for managing the functions of PLM," said Technavio PLM research analyst Arjun Das. "They help with product data management, collaborative product visualization, collaborative product commerce, effective integration of cPDM with enterprise applications, and SRM." CAD is the market's second largest segment and generated revenue of nearly USD 3 billion in 2015 and is expected to increase over USD 600 million by 2020 growing at a CAGR of 5%. The market is driven by the presence of large international vendors: Autodesk (News - Alert), Dassault Systemes SA, PTC, and Siemens PLM Software but also has the presence of local vendors such as Graebert, one of the leading custom CAD solution providers in Germany. The company's product portfolio includes ARES Commander, DWG-compatible CAD software, and ARES Touch. Browse Related Reports: Global CAD Market for VARs 2015-2019 Global EDA Market in the Automotive Industry 2015-2019 Global CFD Market in the Industrial Machinery Sector 2015-2019 Purchase these three reports for the price of one by becoming a Technavio subscriber. Subscribing to Technavio's reports allows you to download any three reports per month for the price of one. Contact [email protected] with your requirements and a link to our subscription platform. About Technavio Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. The company develops over 2000 pieces of research every year, covering more than 500 technologies across 80 countries. Technavio has about 300 analysts globally who specialize in customized consulting and business research assignments across the latest leading edge technologies. Technavio analysts employ primary as well as secondary research techniques to ascertain the size and vendor landscape in a range of markets. Analysts obtain information using a combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches, besides using in-house market modeling tools and proprietary databases. They corroborate this data with the data obtained from various market participants and stakeholders across the value chain, including vendors, service providers, distributors, re-sellers, and end-users. If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at [email protected]. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160119006092/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 19, 2016] Cloud Environments Will Account for a Third of Worldwide Spending on Enterprise IT Infrastructure in 2015, Led by Growth of Public Cloud Datacenters, According to IDC According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker, total spending on IT infrastructure products for deployment in cloud environments will increase by 24.6% in 2015 to reach $32.8 billion. This amount includes spending on servers, storage (excluding double counting between storage and server), and Ethernet switch products. Spending on cloud IT infrastructure will grow from 28% of overall spending on enterprise IT infrastructure in 2014 to 32.9% in 2015. In comparison, spending on IT infrastructure deployed in traditional, non-cloud, environments will decline -1.1% in 2015. At $67 billion it will remain the largest segment of the market. Spending on private cloud IT infrastructure will grow by 19.1% year over year to $12.4 billion, while spending on public cloud IT infrastructure will increase 28.2% year over year in 2015 to $20.4 billion. Central and Eastern Europe remains the only region where spending on cloud IT infrastructure is expected to decline in 2015. In most other regions, spending on cloud IT infrastructure will grow at double-digit rates. For all three technologies - server, storage and Ethernet switch - growth in spending will exceed 20%; spending on servers will grow at the highest rate, 26.7%. For the five-year forecast period, IDC (News - Alert) expects that spending on IT infrastructure for cloud environments will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.5% and will reach $54.3 billion by 2019, accounting for 46.6% of the total spending on enterprise IT infrastructure. Spending on non-cloud IT infrastructure will decline at a-1.7% CAGR during the same period. Within the cloud segment, spending on public and private cloud IT infrastructure will grow at 16.6% and 13.8% CAGRs respectively. In 2019, IDC expects service providers will spend $34.4 billion on IT infrastructure for delivering public cloud services, while spending on private cloud IT infrastructure will reach $19.9 billion. An interactive graphic showing worldwide spending share for public cloud, private cloud, and traditional IT infrastructure over the 2014-2019 forecast period is available here. The chart is intended for public use in online news articles and social media. Instructions on how to embed this graphic can be found by viewing this press release on IDC.com. "The growing sophistication and reliability of cloud services continue to drive increasing demand for public and private cloud offerings," said Natalya Yezhkova, Research Director, Storage Systems. "End users find that through utilization of multiple deployment models, including public cloud, on-premises and off-premises private cloud, and traditional IT infrastructure, they can achieve flexibility and agility tuned to the requirements of various legacy and next-gen workloads and applications." IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker is designed to provide clients with a better understanding of what portion of the server, disk storage systems, and networking hardware markets are being deployed in cloud environments. This Tracker breaks out vendors' revenue by the hardware technology market into public and private cloud environments for historical data and also provides a five-year forecast by technology market. Taxonomy Notes: IDC defines cloud services more formally through a checklist of key attributes that an offering must manifest to end users of the service. Public cloud services are shared among unrelated enterprises and consumers; open to a largely unrestricted universe of potential users; and designed for a market, not a single enterprise. The public cloud market includes variety of services designed to extend or, in some cases, replace IT infrastructure deployed in corporate datacenters. It also includes content services delivered by a group of suppliers IDC calls Value Added Content Providers (VACP). Private cloud services are shared within a single enterprise or an extended enterprise with restrictions on access and level of resource dedication and defined/controlled by the enterprise (and beyond the control available in public cloud offerings); can be onsite or offsite; and can be managed by a third-party or in-house staff. In private cloud that is managed by in-house staff, "vendors (cloud service providers)" are equivalent to the IT departments/shared service departments within enterprises/groups. In this utilization model, where standardized services are jointly used within the enterprise/group, business departments, offices, and employees are the "service users." For more information about IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker, please contact Lidice Fernandez at 305-351-3057 or [email protected]. About IDC Trackers IDC Tracker products provide accurate and timely market size, vendor share, and forecasts for hundreds of technology markets from more than 100 countries around the globe. Using proprietary tools and research processes, IDC's Trackers are updated on a semiannual, quarterly, and monthly basis. Tracker results are delivered to clients in user-friendly excel deliverables and on-line query tools. The IDC Tracker Charts app allows users to view data charts from the most recent IDC Tracker products on their iPhone and iPad. The IDC Tracker Chart app is also available for Android Phones and Android Tablets. About IDC International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. With more than 1,100 analysts worldwide, IDC offers global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries. IDC's analysis and insight helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community to make fact-based technology decisions and to achieve their key business objectives. Founded in 1964, IDC is a subsidiary of IDG, the world's leading technology media, research, and events company. To learn more about IDC, please visit www.idc.com. Follow IDC on Twitter (News - Alert) at @IDC. All product and company names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160119006857/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 19, 2016] Fitch Downgrades Chicago Board of Ed (IL) ULTGOs to 'B+'; Outlook Negative Fitch Ratings has assigned a 'B+' rating to the following Chicago Board of Education, IL's (the board) bonds: --$795.5 million unlimited tax general obligation (ULTGO) bonds series 2016A; --$79.5 million ULTGO bonds taxable series 2016B. The bonds are scheduled to sell the week of Jan. 25, via negotiation. Proceeds will finance various capital projects, swap termination payments, reimbursements of reserves and short-term lines of credit used to pay swap termination payments, reimbursement of the general fund for prior capital advances, and the fixed rate refunding of variable rate debt. Fitch also downgrades to 'B+' from 'BB+' approximately $6.1 billion of outstanding ULTGO bonds. The Negative Watch is removed, and a Negative Rating Outlook is assigned. SECURITY Most of the bonds are payable in the first instance from unrestricted general state aid. All are general obligations, payable from unlimited ad valorem taxes levied against all taxable property in the city of Chicago. KEY RATING DRIVERS LACK OF MATERIAL PROGRESS: The downgrade reflects the limited progress Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has made in addressing a structural budget gap approximating 20% of spending for the current fiscal year. Following substantial drawdowns in fiscal years 2013-2015, reserves will likely be fully depleted by the end of fiscal 2017. SEVERE OPERATING IMBALANCE: CPS has a relatively inflexible expenditure profile and little to no independent ability to raise revenues. Substantial changes are necessary to support ongoing operating and fixed cost spending. Options within the board's control are limited absent meaningful solutions with other parties, which Fitch believes are unlikely in the near term. WEAK LIQUIDITY: Fitch will be monitoring access to external liquidity as internal cash and investments have been greatly diminished, requiring increasing levels of short-term borrowing to finance on-going operations. PENSION LIABILITY WEAKNESS: Large pension liabilities were exacerbated by a three-year payment deferral that caused a dramatic jump in annual contributions beginning in fiscal 2014. Most options for relief are dependent on actions by the state, which is plagued by political disagreements and its own challenged financial position. POOR LABOR HISTORY: The last contract negotiation with the Chicago Teacher's Union (CTU) was highly acrimonious and involved a strike. Talks regarding a new agreement to replace the recently expired contract have so far yielded no resolution and the CTU has authorized another strike. SOLID ECONOMIC FUNDAMENTALS: Chicago serves as the economic hub for the Midwestern region of the United States with a highly educated workforce and improving employment trends. The city, county and state finances remain challenged, mainly due to a large long-term liability burden. UNFAVORABLE DEBT POSITION: The district's debt levels are above average with very slow amortization. The current issue increases debt levels and includes a debt restructuring which will further exacerbate this challenge. RATING BASED ON (News - Alert) GO PLEDGE: The 'B+' rating relies upon the general obligation, unlimited tax pledge which serves as the backup to the primary pledge of unrestricted general state aid (GSA (News - Alert)). Fitch believes that the mechanics of the GSA pledge do not insulate bondholders from the issuer's general credit. RATING SENSITIVITIES REVERSING STRUCTURAL IMBALANCE: A lack of progress towards resolving CPS's large structural imbalance would put further negative pressure on the rating. MARKET ACCESS: Reliable market access is important to near-term stability. Fitch will monitor the district's ability to access external financing for both liquidity and capital purposes. CREDIT PROFILE CPS serves almost 400,000 students in 664 schools in school year 2014/2015 in a district that is coterminous with the city. Enrollment trends are slowly declining. LIMITED OPTIONS TO ADDRESS LARGE BUDGETARY GAPS Fitch believes the size of the operating shortfalls in fiscal 2014 and 2015, and the magnitude of the gap in fiscal 2016 underscore the difficulty of balancing fiscal operations. CPS recorded a $724 million (13%) net general fund operating deficit after transfers for fiscal 2015, somewhat more positive than the $862 million budgeted draw. The operating deficit is symptomatic of a chronic structural imbalance which persists despite implementation of a far-reaching and controversial school closure plan in 2013, an increase in property tax revenues to the statutory cap, and sizable reductions in non-education spending. The projected gap for fiscal year 2017 is over $1 billion, or about 20% of spending, which would wipe out remaining reserves and likely exhaust available lines of credit. The district ended fiscal 2015 with unrestricted reserves of about $254 million (4.5% of spending) in the general fund. This follows a drawdown in fiscal 2014 of $513 million (9.4% of spending). Budgetary balance in recent prior years has relied largely on non-recurring measures. Management's efforts to reduce costs have yielded some savings and included school closures as well as reductions in central office and other administrative spending, while generally avoiding cuts to classroom spending. The potential for additional savings in these areas appears to be limited. Furthermore, Fitch believes the 2012 CTU strike made apparent the poor working relationship between the board and CTU. The agreement reached in 2012 expired June 30, 2015. Prospects for achieving savings from labor negotiations are dim, as a strike has already been authorized by the CTU membership. FISCAL 2016 BUDGET UNCERTAINTY The fiscal 2016 budget closed the $1 billion gap with a mixture of recurring and non-recurring elements. A $138 million appropriation of reserves and $200 million of cuts have already been impemented and the current issue includes $200 million of debt restructuring budgetary relief. The budget also assumed $480 million of additional pension support from the state, the receipt of which appears speculative to Fitch given the current impasse at the state level. CPS's pension payment is a large $675 million for fiscal 2016. GAPS FOR FISCAL 2017 AND BEYOND WIDEN CPS has identified a $1.1 billion budget gap for fiscal 2017, which it proposes to be addressed with a mixture of increased funding from the state, increased local funding, a new $170 million pension levy (requires state legislative approval), and negotiated employee benefit restructuring. If any of these are not realized, school funding cuts would be implemented. Other avenues for revenue enhancement are limited, although the city has authorized a $45 million property tax levy for school capital improvements which does not require state approval. Management has requested a change in the state education funding formula to increase state aid. A bill has been introduced to the state legislature proposing a blue ribbon commission to examine this issue, but Fitch does not expect resolution in the near term. If structural solutions prove unattainable the district may undertake another debt restructure and/or finance its pension payment. Both would result in increased longer-term costs, and thus would be considered a negative credit factor by Fitch. LIQUIDITY CONCERNS Even with significant spending cuts the district will be highly dependent on short-term borrowing to maintain positive cash flow. Liquidity has declined dramatically from $1.1 billion of cash at the close of fiscal 2013 to $150 million at the end of fiscal 2015. The decline was exaggerated by the use of cash to pay for capital projects that are being reimbursed by the bonds now offered and the acceleration of vendor payments that were partially reimbursed in fiscal 2015. Liquidity continues to deteriorate with negative cash balances for much of fiscal 2016 absent outside support. The district plans to use liquidity facilities for ongoing operations in fiscal 2016 and likely beyond. Currently, the district has $935 million of short-term debt outstanding, some of which (relating to payment of swap terminations) may be partially repaid with the current offering. Fitch will monitor the district's ability to access external markets for both this short-term borrowing and planned long-term borrowing. PENSION LIABILITIES CONSISTENT WITH WEAK REGIONAL NORMS A combination of lower-than-expected investment returns and payment deferrals for the CTU plan granted by the state for fiscal years 2011-2013 have weakened the district's pension plan. As of the June 30, 2015 CAFR, plan assets represented 53.2% of liabilities. The pension payment rose dramatically in fiscal 2014 to $613 million versus $245 million in fiscal 2013, to bring payments up to the level statutorily required to increase the CTU plan's funded ratio to 90% by fiscal 2059. Fitch does not believe this is an aggressive goal with respect to addressing the unfunded liability; however, the district is still finding it difficult to incorporate this increased payment into the budget. The fiscal 2016 contribution is $675 million. Fitch is concerned not only about these plans but other city, Cook County, and state of Illinois plans which are all poorly funded and draw upon the same resource base. Other post-employment benefits (OPEB) are similarly underfunded but annual payments are statutorily capped at $65 million. HIGH DEBT, SWAP TERMINATION TRIGGERED BY DOWNGRADE The district's overall debt levels are high at 8.5% of market value, with slow amortization of 31% in 10 years, the result of long-dated debt and restructurings. The reduction in variable rate debt to 13.5% (after the current transaction) from 40% in the last several years is a positive credit development. Downgrades last year resulted in termination events for eight of the district's 10 swaps. All 10 swaps have been terminated. The district drew upon reserves and short-term borrowing to fund the termination payments. Importantly, the district is no longer exposed to rating trigger risk. Proceeds of the current issue will pay down approximately $176 million of short-term borrowing relating to prior swap terminations and debt restructuring. Approximately $392.6 million of the current issue will reimburse the general fund for prior capital expenditures and fund future expenditures. Carrying costs for debt service, OPEB and the full required pension contribution were a moderate 18.8% of governmental spending in fiscal 2015. Costs will likely stay relatively controlled due to the slow amortization of the pension obligation, assuming the full required contribution is paid each year. ECONOMIC FUNDAMENTALS SOLID Chicago ('BBB+', Negative Outlook) serves as the economic and cultural hub for the Midwest region, and maintains good prospects for long-term stability if not growth. The city has gained almost 50,000 jobs since 2010 primarily in professional and business services despite reductions in both manufacturing and public service. Chicago's population totaled 2.7 million in 2014, down 6% from the 2000 census, but still accounts for 21% of the state's population. Socioeconomic indicators are mixed with elevated individual poverty rates, average per capita income levels, but strong educational attainment levels. As of November 2015, the city's unemployment rate was 5.8%, consistent with the state, and down from 6.5% a year earlier. Additional information is available at 'www.fitchratings.com'. Fitch recently published an exposure draft of state and local government tax-supported criteria (Exposure Draft: U.S. Tax-Supported Rating Criteria, dated Sept. 10, 2015). The draft includes a number of proposed revisions to existing criteria. If applied in the proposed form, Fitch estimates the revised criteria would result in changes to less than 10% of existing tax-supported ratings. Fitch expects that final criteria will be approved and published by the end of the first quarter of 2016. Once approved, the criteria will be applied immediately to any new issue and surveillance rating review. Fitch anticipates the criteria to be applied to all ratings that fall under the criteria within a 12-month period from the final approval date. In addition to the sources of information identified in Fitch's applicable criteria specified below, this action was informed by information from Creditscope, Lumesis, IHS (News - Alert) Global Insight, and Zillow Group. Applicable Criteria Exposure Draft: U.S. Tax-Supported Rating Criteria (pub. 10 Sep 2015) https://www.fitchratings.com/creditdesk/reports/report_frame.cfm?rpt_id=869942 Tax-Supported Rating Criteria (pub. 14 Aug 2012) https://www.fitchratings.com/creditdesk/reports/report_frame.cfm?rpt_id=686015 U.S. Local Government Tax-Supported Rating Criteria (pub. 14 Aug 2012) https://www.fitchratings.com/creditdesk/reports/report_frame.cfm?rpt_id=685314 Additional Disclosures Dodd-Frank Rating Information Disclosure Form https://www.fitchratings.com/creditdesk/press_releases/content/ridf_frame.cfm?pr_id=998082 Solicitation Status https://www.fitchratings.com/gws/en/disclosure/solicitation?pr_id=998082 Endorsement Policy https://www.fitchratings.com/jsp/creditdesk/PolicyRegulation.faces?context=2&detail=31 ALL FITCH CREDIT RATINGS ARE SUBJECT TO CERTAIN LIMITATIONS AND DISCLAIMERS. PLEASE READ THESE LIMITATIONS AND DISCLAIMERS BY FOLLOWING THIS LINK: HTTP://FITCHRATINGS.COM/UNDERSTANDINGCREDITRATINGS. IN ADDITION, RATING DEFINITIONS AND THE TERMS OF USE OF SUCH RATINGS ARE AVAILABLE ON THE AGENCY'S PUBLIC WEBSITE 'WWW.FITCHRATINGS.COM'. PUBLISHED RATINGS, CRITERIA AND METHODOLOGIES ARE AVAILABLE FROM THIS SITE AT ALL TIMES. FITCH'S CODE OF CONDUCT, CONFIDENTIALITY, CONFLICTS OF INTEREST, AFFILIATE FIREWALL, COMPLIANCE AND OTHER RELEVANT POLICIES AND PROCEDURES ARE ALSO AVAILABLE FROM THE 'CODE OF CONDUCT' SECTION OF THIS SITE. FITCH MAY HAVE PROVIDED ANOTHER PERMISSIBLE SERVICE TO THE RATED ENTITY OR ITS RELATED THIRD PARTIES. DETAILS OF THIS SERVICE FOR RATINGS FOR WHICH THE LEAD ANALYST IS BASED IN AN EU-REGISTERED ENTITY CAN BE FOUND ON THE ENTITY SUMMARY PAGE FOR THIS ISSUER ON THE FITCH WEBSITE. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160119006885/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 20, 2016] HostReview Ranks Infinitely Virtual Among Best Cloud Service Providers of 2015 LOS ANGELES, Jan. 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Leading cloud service provider Infinitely Virtual announced today that the company has been ranked 6th among the foremost players in the cloud hosting space for 2016, according to HostReview's Best Cloud Computing Providers Awards (http://www.hostreview.com/awards/2015/cloud-service). The company finished ahead of Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google. The publication's annual Best Cloud Computing Providers Awards honor those companies that offer outstanding performance and value for cloud computing servers; and deploy and scale effortlessly in the abstracted global computing cloud. Included in the review process are the hosting company's price, technology, reliability and overall performance. "Much as it has in our monthly surveys, Infinitely Virtual has been ranked in our annual overview by the HostReview editorial staff because of both ongoing developments at the company and its well-earned reputation for quality," the publication wrote. The HostReview staff closely monitors a variety of factors to determine the companies that it recommends to its readers. <>"Infinitely Virtual is a leading provider of high quality and affordable virtual server technology, capable of delivering services to any type of business, including file servers, e-mail servers or web servers," HostReview noted. "As a virtual company, Infinitely Virtual is managed using Infrastructure as a Service, or IaaS tools -- an affordable way for businesses to use software as it's needed, rather than licensing all devices with all applications." "This is a ringing endorsement of both our IaaS model and our ongoing commitment to providing our customers with superlative service," said Adam Stern, founder and CEO, Infinitely Virtual. "In every solution we offer, we think of the real-world issues that confront small and midsize businesses as they migrate to and operate in the cloud. In our view, this partnership orientation is behind our success in the market." During 2015, Infinitely Virtual placed first in the Best VPS Hosting category and earned a Top #10 ranking in the "Fastest Growing Provider" category. For more on the Web Host Awards, see: http://www.hostreview.com/awards/2015/cloud-service#ixzz3xfsvXcuE. For additional information on the company, visit www.infinitelyvirtual.com. About Infinitely Virtual Infinitely Virtual is a leading provider of high quality and affordable Cloud Server technology, capable of delivering services to any type of business, via terminal servers, SharePoint servers and SQL servers all based on Cloud Servers. Named to the Talkin' Cloud 100 as one of the industry's premier hosting providers, Infinitely Virtual has earned the highest rating of "Enterprise-Ready" in Skyhigh Networks' CloudTrust Program for four of its offerings -- Cloud Server Hosting, InfiniteVault, InfiniteProtect and Virtual Terminal Server. The company recently took the #1 spot in HostReview's Ranking of VPS hosting providers. Infinitely Virtual was established as a subsidiary of Altay Corporation, and through this partnership, Infinitely Virtual provides customers with expert 247 technical support. More information about Infinitely Virtual can be found at: http://www.infinitelyvirtual.com, @iv_cloudhosting, or call 866-257-8455. Media Contact: Ken Greenberg Edge Communications, Inc. 323-469-3397 [email protected] Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160119/323812 To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/hostreview-ranks-infinitely-virtual-among-best-cloud-service-providers-of-2015-300206685.html SOURCE Infinitely Virtual [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 20, 2016] New Encryption Solution from Ciena Decreases Data Breach Risks Across Metro and Long-Haul Networks In today's web-scale world, where more and more applications reside in the cloud, businesses need the assurance that their data is secure not only at rest but also in-flight. An industry first and backed by Ciena's (NYSE: CIEN) industry-leading coherent optics, the WaveLogic Encryption solution offers new optical-layer encryption capabilities to match high capacity infrastructure needs - from 10G to 100G, 200G and beyond, from metro to ultra-long haul distances - providing a simple-to-implement, always-on, data encryption solution. Key Facts: A range of security solutions exist today to protect data at-rest. However, high volumes of critical data are continuously in-flight, traveling beyond the walls of the data center and across large networks. Additionally, an increasing number of government mandated regulations for data protection have made securing in-flight data a higher priority in networks. With Ciena's WaveLogic Encryption solution, data can now be secured as it leaves the private cloud and protected as it traverses across the network, across any distance, without sacrificing the end user experience. Ciena's WaveLogic Encryption solution addresses all infrastructure needs and provides added network security for service providers and large enterprises, such as financial service firms, healthcare and government organizations. The solution is FIPS-certified and meets the highest security standards recognized globally in the industry. Powered by Ciena's WaveLogic 3 Extreme chipset, the solution provides software programmable modulation to enable both 100G encryption with QPSK modulation and 200G encryption with 16QAM modulation - an industry first. WaveLogic Encryption is simple to deploy and protocol agnostic, meaning it simultaneously encrypts any traffic type coming into the network, including Ethernet, Fibre Channel, OTN, IP, SONET, and SDH. It encrypts the entire wavelength before the data leaves the building or data center, and transports it transparently with virtually no added latency, making efficient use of network resources and maintaining quality of end-customer experience. Additionally, Ciena's software-based MyCryptoTool features a dedicated management user portal that provides full control to the end enterprise user or security officer to manage all security parameters. The solution will be generally available in the first calendar quarter of 2016. Executive Comments: "High profile security breaches are commonplace in the news today. Service providers tell Heavy Reading repeatedly that security risks are the number one concern when they talk to their enterprise customers today. These concerns are only rising as more and more data moves to the cloud. And, while encryption inside the data center or enterprise campus is well established, service providers are now realizing that encryption of in-flight data is an important component of their holistic security strategy. By integrating security functions directly into its coherent chipsets, Ciena's WaveLogic Encryption provides protection from breaches for all high capacity links, something we believe will be well-received by both service providers and their end customers." - Sterling Perrin, Senior Analyst, Heavy Reading "In the EU, as with the rest of the world, data security is high on the ageda. New regulations and legislation are coinciding with expanding bandwidth needs, making it vital that we support our customers with solutions that provide additional security measures by encrypting data in-flight. As Ciena's encryption solution helps to ensure the best possible safeguards with no impact on service or latency we are already seeing take-up of these new capabilities, in fact we are currently deploying the 200G encryption solution for a customer in the Dutch finance sector." - Geert Degezelle, Managing Director, Telindus "We are proud to offer a world-class network experience to our customers. As part of that commitment, we are constantly exploring new ways to secure our network and protect our end customers' data - not only at the application layer, but also at the network layer. Following our successful 200G Encryption network trial with Ericsson (News - Alert) and Ciena, and with the ability to now implement WaveLogic Encryption, a FIPS-certified solution, across our network, customers can be assured they are receiving best-in-class connectivity and service." - David Robertson, Director, Transport and Routing Engineering, Telstra (News - Alert) "Safeguarding critical data has become a major priority in today's web-scale world. Previous infrastructure solutions have been cumbersome to manage and burdened by separate boxes, impacting throughput and latency. Our new WaveLogic Encryption solution is simple to deploy and provides a strong and effective defense with an additional level of protection to enable end-to-end security." - Francois Locoh-Donou, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Ciena Events: On Tuesday, January 26 at 11 a.m. ET, Ciena will host a webinar, "Don't Let Your Network Be a Security Leak." The webinar will feature Sterling Perrin, Senior Analyst at Heavy Reading with Ciena's Patrick Scully, Director, Product Line Management and Paulina Gomez, Product and Technical Marketing. Click here to register. Supporting Resources: Video: In the Labs with Ciena's WaveLogic Encryption In the Labs with Ciena's WaveLogic Encryption Blog: WaveLogic Encryption Brings Effortless In-Flight Data to the Masses WaveLogic Encryption Brings Effortless In-Flight Data to the Masses Infographic: 24/7 Data Security with Optical Encryption 24/7 Data Security with Optical Encryption Application Note: WaveLogic Encryption solution About Ciena Ciena (NYSE: CIEN) is the network specialist. We collaborate with customers worldwide to unlock the strategic potential of their networks and fundamentally change the way they perform and compete. Ciena leverages its deep expertise in packet and optical networking and distributed software automation to deliver solutions in alignment with its OPn architecture for next-generation networks. We enable a high-scale, programmable infrastructure that can be controlled and adapted by network-level applications, and provide open interfaces to coordinate computing, storage and network resources in a unified, virtualized environment. For updates on Ciena news, follow us on Twitter (News - Alert) @Ciena or on LinkedIn. Investors are encouraged to review the Investors section of our website at www.ciena.com/investors, where we routinely post press releases, SEC (News - Alert) filings, recent news, financial results, and other announcements. From time to time we exclusively post material information to this website along with other disclosure channels that we use. Note to Ciena Investors Forward-looking statements. This press release contains certain forward-looking statements based on current expectations, forecasts and assumptions that involve risks and uncertainties. These statements are based on information available to the Company as of the date hereof; and Ciena's actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied, due to risks and uncertainties associated with its business, which include the risk factors disclosed in its Report on Form 10-K, which Ciena filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on December 21, 2015. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding Ciena's expectations, beliefs, intentions or strategies regarding the future and can be identified by forward-looking words such as "anticipate," "believe," "could," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "should," "will," and "would" or similar words. Ciena assumes no obligation to update the information included in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160120005167/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [January 20, 2016] Cybersecurity and FirstNet to be Spotlighted at Penton's IWCE 2016 in March ATLANTA, Jan. 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Cybersecurity and FirstNet are two key topics that will be highlighted at Penton's International Wireless Communication Expo (IWCE), the premier annual event for communications technology professionals, scheduled to take place March 21-25, 2016 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160119/323856LOGO As more critical systems become connected it also means that communications technology infrastructures are more vulnerable to hacking and cyber attacks. Cybersecurity is a critical topic that will be featured at IWCE. IWCE's opening keynote will be presented by Curtis Levinson, Cybersecurity Advisor to NATO, on March 23 at 9:00 a.m. He will discuss threats to the critical infrastructure, including power grids and communications systems across the globe, as well as the adversaries that are targeting the U.S. with cyber attacks. He will also outline specific cybersecurity considerations for the communications-technology industry and provide practical actionable remediationpolicies, procedures and technologythat can be implemented right now to help protect your valuable data and networks. IWCE will offer several educational sessions on cybersecurity. They include: Introduction to Cybersecurity The Threat to Technology: Cybersecurity Overview The Power Grid: The Biggest Vulnerability Cybersecurity Considerations for FirstNet The Challenges for Security in the Wireless Environment Armageddon! How a Cyber Breach Can Disable a City Case Studies in Vulnerability SCADA, Industrial IoT and Cybersecurity Convergence IWCE will be the first industry event to take place following last week's FirstNet request for proposal (RFP). IWCE will also feature many educational sessions on FirstNet, including: FirstNet RFP and Operational Architecture Review Evolution of FirstNet Taking Advantage of the Opportunities Offered by FirstNet FirstNet at Four Years The Economics of Building and Sustaining FirstNet The Next Phase of FirstNet Consultations Early Builders of FirstNet-Ready LTE Networks Cybersecurity Considerations for FirstNet FirstNet Breaking News The State of the States: FirstNet and Public Safety Broadband Priority, Pre-emption and QoS: Local Control of FirstNet The Legal and Regulatory Issues: Opting In or Opting Out FirstNet Consultants' Roundtable Vision versus Reality Where Do the Carriers Fit into FirstNet? Access Authentication, Identification and Verification FirstNet Trials Case Studies Morgan O'Brien introduced the notion of a 700 MHz nationwide public-safety broadband network during the opening keynote session at the IWCE 2006 show," said Donny Jackson , editor of IWCE's Urgent Communications. "A decade later, this vision today is embodied in FirstNet, which just released its final RFP to seek a commercial partner to build a system that promises to have a significant impact on the communications sector. Jackson added, "Nothing like FirstNet has been done before, so there are a lot of questions being asked in many critical areas, including policy, technology, operations, cybersecurity and economic sustainability. IWCE 2016's comprehensive FirstNet sessions are an ideal place for attendees to learn about today's relevant information and hear wide-ranging perspectives on key unanswered questions that should be monitored in the future." To register to attend IWCE 2016, click here. For additional information on IWCE and to sign up for email updates, visit iwceexpo.com. Stay connected with us on Twitter, Facebook @iwceexpo and follow our IWCE company page on LinkedIn. Media interested in attending IWCE can register to attend at http://www.iwceexpo.com. ABOUT THE INTERNATIONAL WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS EXPO (IWCE) Since 1977, the International Wireless Communications Expo (IWCE) has been the premier annual event for communications technology professionals. IWCE features over 370 exhibitors showcasing the latest products and trends in the industry. Over 7,000 individuals attend from a diverse group of industry professionals including government/military, public safety, utility, transportation and business enterprise. IWCE 2016 will be held March 21-25, 2016 at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, NV. For more information, visit www.iwceexpo.com. ABOUT PENTON Penton is an innovative information services company that empowers nearly 20 million business decision makers in markets that drive more than 12 trillion dollars in purchases each year. Our products inform with rich industry insights and workflow tools; engage through dynamic events, education and networking; and advance business with powerful marketing services programs. Penton is the way smart businesses buy, sell and grow. Headquartered in New York, Penton is privately owned by MidOcean Partners and Wasserstein & Co., LP. For more information, visit http://www.penton.com or follow us on Twitter @PentonNow. MEDIA CONTACT Nadira Ramatally Marketing Manager Penton Public Infrastructure (770) 618-0121 [email protected] To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cybersecurity-and-firstnet-to-be-spotlighted-at-pentons-iwce-2016-in-march-300206927.html SOURCE Penton [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] Watch us shake up our life by joining the foreign service and moving overseas. proxima Lectores matutinos de AJN/Iton Gadol, estos son los titulares de la manana en Israel While a majority of French respondents to a new survey believe Jews should not stop wearing their skullcaps in the wake of a series of recent attacks, an even greater number considers antisemitism on the rise in their country, the French-Jewish news service JSS reported on Sunday. According to the Odoxa survey, conducted for French digital channel iTele and the weekly magazine Paris Match, 70 percent of the French population do not think Jews should refrain from wearing yarmulkes, though 71% say antisemitism is increasing in France. The poll comes on the heels of the January 11 machete attack against a Torah teacher outside of a Jewish institute in Marseille, which led to the head of the citys Jewish community to call on Jews to remove their yarmulkes during this difficult period, until better days. Rabbi Zvi Amars position aroused controversy among the Jews of France and spurred French Chief Rabbi Haim Korsia to take the opposite position, asserting that removing yarmulkes would be giving in to the terrorists. Most respondents to the survey, from across the political spectrum the Left, the Right and the far-Right National Front agree with Korsia. JSS noted a three-percentage-point increase, from 68% a little less than a year ago to 71% today, in the number of people in France who consider antisemitism to be rising. proxima Proximo miercoles el mundo recordara el Dia Internacional de Conmemoracion de las Victimas del Holocausto anterior Israel anunciara una gran apropiacion de tierras en el Valle del Jordan Ventings from a guy with an unhealthy interest in budgets, policy, the dismal science, life in the Upper Midwest, and brilliant beverages. Psalm 96:13 speaks of all creation rejoicing at the coming judgement. The idea of rejoicing and judgement are not usually connected in our minds, but ... 1 week ago MATTOON -- The City Council voted Tuesday night to hire a contractor to repair accident damage and to remodel part of the Burgess-Osborne Auditorium. The 62-year-old building was damaged on Nov. 18 when a compact sport utility vehicle crashed into vacant office space at the northeast corner of this historic structure, 1701 Wabash Ave. The city has hired Standerfer Construction of Mattoon for $31,173 to handle the repairs, funded by the driver's insurance, and the remodeling. Public Works Director Dean Barber said Standerfer will convert the north office into a dressing room and the south office into a coat room and storage area. He said the contractor also will create a new interior door that will provide direct access from the coat room to the auditorium. "It is part of the overall remodeling plan for making the facility more attractive for wedding receptions," Barber said. The building is also available for fundraisers, classes and other community use. Barber said the city plans to install a countertop with a sink and electrical outlets inside the auditorium this winter, through a grant from the Mattoon Community Trust. The city power washed the exterior of the auditorium and repainted the wooden trim and panels prior to the accident. The auditorium is listed as a Coles County landmark because of its architectural and social history significance. Mattoon native Emily Burgess-Osborne established a trust for creating a community building. The auditorium was subsequently built in the post-World War II modern movement style. In other matters, the council authorized the city to join in a class action lawsuit filed by the law firm of Wolf, Haldenstein, Adler, Freeman & Herz of Chicago. The suit alleges that the makers of liquid aluminum sulfate conspired to fix prices in the market for this chemical, which is used in water and waste water treatment. City Attorney Janett Winter-Black said the city will not incur any costs by taking part in the class action lawsuit, other than providing information for the case. She said the lawsuit, filed in federal court in eastern Pennsylvania, will focus on pricing history going back more than five years. "(The lawsuit) may enable us to recover some money that we have already expended," Winter-Black said. Other actions taken by the council included: Distributing two $5,000 grants from hotel/motel tax funds to the Mattoon Area Family YMCA for hosting the Charleston Mattoon Weightlifting Club Competition on Jan. 16-17 and the YMCA Junior District Swim Meet on Feb. 27. Allocating $9,800 extra in motor fuel tax funds to pay for resurfacing work that was completed last year on Wabash Avenue from 19th to 21st streets. The additional cost was for driveway, drainage and gutter work. The final construction cost was $144,758. JIW includes excerpts from many sources using their copyright material for the purpose of education and discussion only, and not for profit. We a cknowledge and link to our sources. We reserve all rights to our own original material, including the excerpted and edited version of the source material. However you are welcome to use JIW material freely for the purpose of education and discussion only, and not for profit, and provided proper acknowledgement is included. A divided Lincoln-Lancaster County Planning Commission on Wednesday gave the go-ahead for an indoor storage facility in northeast Lincoln after the owner scaled back the plans. Dino's Storage, which has facilities in Omaha, Des Moines, Iowa, and Winnipeg, Manitoba, had last month proposed a four-story, 140,000-square-foot climate-controlled storage facility on two lots in the Northern Lights Commercial Center at 84th and Leighton Avenue. That sparked a flood of complaints from adjacent businesses as well as residents of a nearby town home development, nearly 150 of whom signed a petition opposing the building. The main complaints were that the building was too tall, too big and too close to 84th Street and would reduce the visibility of other businesses. After meeting with neighbors, the owners of Dino's Storage made several modifications, including reducing the size to 101,000 square feet, reducing the height to three stories and moving the building 119 feet back from 84th Street, more than double the requirement. That mollified some neighbors, but not others. Derek Zimmerman, an attorney representing T.O. Haas Tire & Auto, said that despite the modifications, the building would still be at least five times as large as any of the other buildings in the development and would not fit the character of the commercial center or the surrounding residential area. Zimmerman also said that T.O. Haas would be "directly and negatively impacted" by the building, which would impede the business' visibility to people coming from the north. Commissioner Jeanelle Lust said that while the owners had not addressed all the neighbors' concerns, they had made a tremendous effort to make the building more acceptable. "This is a significant change from what we saw in December," she said before voting to approve the building. But Commissioner Dennis Scheer, while commending the changes, said the building would cause a "dramatic change" to the character of the development. "It's too much for me," he said. Only Scheer and Cathy Beecham voted against the building. The Planning Commission's decision will stand unless someone appeals it to the City Council. A measure that would have required most Nebraska students to be vaccinated for bacterial meningitis failed to surmount a filibuster in the Legislature on Wednesday. The bill (LB18) sponsored by state Sen. Bob Krist of Omaha would have required Nebraska students to be immunized for meningococcal meningitis before starting seventh grade, then get a booster shot at 16. Hard-line conservatives and civil libertarians in the Legislature argued the vaccination is unnecessary and potentially unsafe, and that requiring it would infringe on parents' freedom to choose what is best for their children. "I'm disappointed," Krist said following an unsuccessful vote to end the filibuster, which effectively killed the bill for the year. He said he sympathizes with families whose children could be exposed to the illness in classrooms, and he took issue with senators who pledged to support his measure and then didn't. Sen. Mike Groene of North Platte, who led the opposition, has accused pharmaceutical companies of fearmongering with stories of meningitis survivors losing fingers and families losing loved ones. Those cases are rare, Groene said Wednesday: Fewer than a dozen diagnoses of bacterial meningitis have been documented among young Nebraskans over the past 13 years. He said chances of catching bacterial meningitis are about one in a million. "And remember most cases, when they are diagnosed correctly, the old-fashioned penicillin clears it right up," he said. About one-tenth of cases result in death. Meningitis vaccines recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention the same ones Krist's bill would have required cost about $150. Fifteen other states mandate some form of immunization for bacterial meningitis. But even those mandates include exceptions, as would Nebraska's, noted Sen. Robert Hilkemann of Omaha. Krist's measure would have allowed families to opt their children out if the meningitis vaccination conflicted with their religious beliefs or if a medical provider concluded it could be harmful. Either step would have required a signed statement from a doctor or parent. Hilkemann, a retired podiatrist, supported the bill. But not all medical practitioners agree, said Sen. Laura Ebke of Crete, whose husband is a family physician. Doctors and pharmaceutical companies who think the vaccine is important already have a captive audience when students get their required school physicals, Ebke said. "It's all well and good to advise. It's all well and good to recommend. It's all well and good to educate," she said. "But I'm not sure that it's well and good to impose a mandate of this sort on the citizens of this state." Krist's bill advanced to the second of three rounds of legislative consideration in 2015 but stalled there because of the filibuster. Lawmakers took on the issue again this week but without enough support to cease debate and reach a final vote. A cloture motion, which would have ended the filibuster, failed on a 29-14 vote. It would have needed support from 33 senators to succeed. Some state senators are catching flak for accepting greenbacks from backers of a bill to let pork packers own pigs. The measure, which would eliminate Nebraska's ban on meatpackers owning their own hogs, is up for debate by lawmakers Thursday morning. In the meantime, progressive groups including Bold Nebraska are encouraging people to contact senators who accepted campaign money from one major pork producer, Smithfield Foods. They argue the company stands to benefit from the bill and that family farms would suffer. Smithfield and an affiliated group have contributed thousands of dollars to legislative campaigns in recent years, along with $10,000 to Gov. Pete Ricketts and $25,000 to then-Attorney General Jon Bruning to support their 2014 gubernatorial campaigns. Supporters of the bill sponsored by Sen. Ken Schilz of Ogallala argue it would help Nebraska's pork industry grow at a rate comparable to surrounding states that do not prohibit meatpackers from owning hogs. The measure failed to overcome a legislative filibuster last year but was returned to the agenda this year after Schilz designated it his priority. Sen. Laura Ebke of Crete introduced legislation Wednesday to abolish the state commission that was created to resolve labor disputes involving public employees. The authority invested in the Commission of Industrial Relations actually "inhibits the ability of public employees to truly negotiate," she suggested, because its decisions are designed to comport with the mid-range of contracts reached by an array of similar employees. "Contracts could be negotiated more effectively" to meet local conditions and needs without resorting to the commission, Ebke said. Her bill (LB1044) would continue to protect the right of public employees in Nebraska to strike in the event of unresolved disputes. Nancy Fulton, president of the Nebraska State Education Association, opposed the bill, arguing that the CIR's dispute resolution authority is "a reasonable process" that leads to resolution of contractual differences. That process also is an effective means of avoiding strikes, she said. "Nobody wins in a strike -- not our communities, not our schools, not our teachers and certainly not our kids," Fulton said. "We need the CIR as a dispute resolution process," she said. "We have not used it often, but it has worked well." Ebke, a former member of the Crete school board, said she found the board "hamstrung a lot by CIR regulations" and unable to reach agreements that might have benefited its teachers and the school district more because of the emphasis on comparability. Since 1969, the CIR has had jurisdiction over public-sector labor disputes involving state and local government employees, including public utility employees. Originally established as the Court of Industrial Relations, it had jurisdiction only over public utility employee disputes. Ivan Hildreth's knees had gotten so bad he couldn't walk up a flight of stairs without a lot of pain and effort. He had resisted getting his knees replaced, but his wife finally convinced him last year to see an orthopedic surgeon to discuss options. He went to Dr. Scott Bigelow at Lincoln Orthopaedic Center, because Bigelow was advertising partial knee replacements. It turned out Hildreth wasn't a candidate for a partial replacement, but Bigelow told him about a new procedure using a custom implant. Hildreth went ahead and had his first knee done in June and the second at the end of November. He's been more than pleased at the result. "I've had no pain whatsoever," said the 61-year-old Lincoln resident. Other than the scars, Hildreth said he doesn't even feel like he's had his knees replaced. "I don't have any sensation of not having my God-given knees whatsoever," he said. Bigelow was the first doctor in Nebraska to start doing total knee replacements with customized implants from a Massachusetts-based company called ConforMIS. He's now one of two in the state who do them. Bigelow said he has been doing total knee replacement surgeries for 20 years and was looking for a better option than trying to match mass-produced implants to patients' knee joints. He said he talked with surgeons who had used the ConforMIS implant and came away impressed. He took a course on how to use the implant and did his first surgery with it in March. "Six weeks after his surgery he rode his bike 50 miles," Bigelow said. The ConforMIS knee uses a proprietary platform to create a 3-D map of a patient's knee after the patient has had a CT scan. The company then uses a 3-D printer to produce a precise wax mold that is used to form the metal components of the total knee. The result is an implant designed for optimal bone preservation and made in the exact shape and size of the patient's natural knee. Bigelow said the surgery needed to implant the custom knee is less invasive and patients tend to recover faster than with traditional knee implants. The implant also costs about the same as traditional models, and he said he's had no issues with insurance companies. Hildreth said he was out of the hospital within 24 hours after each knee replacement. "I was walking the halls and going up the stairs before I left." A study published last summer at the Pan Pacific International Congress for Joint Reconstruction showed that patients with the ConforMIS implant were about twice as likely as those with traditional implants to have excellent or good results with range of motion, alignment and stability. Other than the time it takes to get the implant made, which can be as long as two months, Bigelow said the only drawback as far as he's concerned is the lack of long-term data on performance and durability. Because the surgery is so new, it's impossible to know whether the implant will last as long as traditional implants; 80 to 85 percent of them last for at least 20 years. "That's the big risk," Bigelow said. "I tell people we don't know." Hildreth said that's not much of a concern for him. "Even if it wears out quickly, I'd do it again in a heartbeat." A Lancaster County grand jury on Tuesday cleared of wrongdoing the three Lincoln police officers involved in the fatal shooting of 29-year-old Zachary Grigsby in November, County Attorney Joe Kelly said. Grigsby, of Central City, died outside of a home near 73rd and Adams streets Nov. 29 after a struggle with Sgt. Bradley Junker, Officer Angela Morehouse and Officer Matthew Gilleland, according to police. "All officers on the scene were in fear of being shot by Mr. Grigsby," Kelly said in an interview. As Junker tried to arrest him on outstanding warrants that night, Grigsby said he wasn't going back to jail and began resisting, Chief Jim Peschong has said. Morehouse and Gilleland came to the area to back up Junker and also became involved in the struggle before Grigsby pulled out a handgun and shot Gilleland in the arm, Peschong said. At some point, Grigbsy tried to shoot Morehouse who he had punched in the face while she was in a headlock, Peschong said. Two officers fired seven shots at Grigsby during the struggle, hitting him three or four times, the chief said. Grigsby fired three. Kelly declined to name which officers shot Grigsby, saying he wouldn't because Peschong hasn't released that information. All three officers were cleared in an internal investigation in December. Investigators couldn't determine who owned the .380-caliber automatic handgun Grigbsy used that night because the serial number had been scratched off to the point it couldn't be traced, Kelly said. Also on Tuesday, Kelly said a grand jury cleared police in connection with the death of a 66-year-old man who shot himself in front of them in September. David J. Prochaska died Sept. 12 outside of a home at 2430 Vine St., according to Peschong. Police were called there by a neighbor around 9:15 p.m. on a report of someone trespassing in the house, which was under construction, Peschong said. Officers found Prochaska inside the house, holding a shotgun, and tried to talk him into putting the gun down, he said. An officer tried to use a stun gun on Prochaska to separate him from the weapon, but it didn't affect him, Peschong said. That's when Prochaska shot himself. Other than the stun gun, officers didn't use any other force against Prochaska, Peschong said. The grand jury that investigated Prochaska's death also declined to issue indictments in a series of other deaths occurring in police custody or in a prison in the county, Kelly said. State law requires a grand jury to review these deaths. Among the other deaths reviewed by the grand jury were: * Charles Burriell, 56, who was found unresponsive in his Nebraska State Penitentiary cell July 13. His cause of death wasn't immediately available Tuesday afternoon. * Trinidad Y. Chapa, 58, who died in October at the Diagnostic and Evaluation Center of natural causes, Kelly said. * Lee E. Collins, 75, who Kelly said died of natural causes at the Nebraska State Penitentiary in October. Three people remained in jail Tuesday evening on felony drug charges connected to the largest drug seizure by the Lancaster County Sheriff's Office: 1,517 pounds of marijuana. The pot, worth an estimated $7.5 million, was stuffed into a rental RV stopped by deputies at noon Friday, Chief Deputy Jeff Bliemeister said. Deputies stopped the RV for following another vehicle too closely on U.S. 77 near West Van Dorn Street, Bliemeister said. A Lancaster County Sheriff's Office K-9 indicated the presence of drugs, and deputies found 39 duffel bags stuffed with marijuana inside the RV, he said. They arrested Isabel Mallar, 28, of Martinez, Georgia; Rahman Nabavi, 28, of Alpharetta, Georgia; and 51-year-old Abbas Hajianbarzi, also Alpharetta, who was following the RV. The group was traveling from Oregon to Georgia, the sheriff's office said. On Tuesday afternoon, prosecutors charged the three with possession of marijuana with intent to deliver. If convicted, each faces as many as 20 years in prison. Lancaster County Judge James Foster set their bonds at $150,000 each. A bill introduced on behalf of the University of Nebraska Board of Regents would allow NU to name a single finalist for its top administrative positions who would then be vetted during a 30-day process. The bill (LB1109) introduced by Sen. John Murante of Gretna would allow the university to be more competitive in hiring a system president or campus chancellors, backers said. Instead of the process currently outlined under Nebraskas public records statutes requiring all public agencies, including NU, to name four finalists, Murantes bill would give the university authority to name a single priority candidate. That person would then be subject to a cooling off period where they would attend public forums, meet with students, faculty and staff as well as the media. While NU conducted public forums and meetings with the media during the presidential search that led to the hiring of Hank Bounds in early 2015, those meetings are not currently required under state law, Murante said. Under his bill, the single priority candidate would be required to attend those meetings, which would lead that person to become "the most scrutinized public official in the state, Murante said. The state's existing public records statute requires NU to turn over job application materials for the four finalists named -- a provision regents bristled against in 2014 as they launched the search to replace J.B. Milliken as system president. At that time, a bill introduced by Sen. Galen Hadley of Kearney would have exempted NU from turning over any public records related to the hiring of a president, vice president or chancellors. Senators debated the bill in committee but did not advance it. Murante said he worked on a new bill with members of the Board of Regents including Howard Hawks of Omaha. This is a fundamentally different proposal than anything introduced before, Murante said. Hawks said while NU has been fortunate to attract talented leaders, he believes the current law in Nebraska discourages many potential candidates from applying. Outstanding leaders -- particularly sitting university presidents and chancellors, who are the type of experienced candidates we want in our search pools -- are not often willing to be one of the four public candidates for a similar position at another institution, Hawks said in a news release. Delette Olberg, a spokeswoman for Hawks, said 140 applicants during NUs search for a new president -- including 15 university system presidents and 69 campus presidents -- dropped out when they learned they would be publicly identified if named one of the four finalists under Nebraska law. NU is searching for a chancellor to replace Harvey Perlman at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Murantes bill only applies to searches done by the University of Nebraska system. Media of Nebraska, which represents newspapers and broadcast stations in the state, opposed Hadleys bill in 2014, saying the benefits of public disclosure outweighed regents desires for secrecy in administrator searches. A string of investigations into alleged incidents of hazing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has turned up a common theme: apparent crimes in which victims say they took part willingly. Take for instance an investigation launched by UNL police a week ago after a 2014 video surfaced allegedly showing a member of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity being branded on his buttocks with the organizations symbols. Members of the fraternity said the student being branded in the video willingly took part in the activity along with other fraternity brothers. They said it was not a rite of initiation. But UNL police said state law does not excuse instances of hazing -- defined as intentional or reckless activities endangering the physical or mental health or safety of students for the purpose of initiation, admission or affiliation -- even when victims agree to take part. You cant consent to a hazing, said UNL Police Sgt. Dave Dibelka. Its spelled out in the statute that that is not a defense. In fact, the provision attached to the state's definition is labeled: Hazing; consent not a defense. A similar rule is spelled out in UNLs student code of conduct, warning students that activities under investigation as hazing, those that could reasonably be expected to diminish the reputation of the group ... or the University, whether inside or outside of the University are not excused if victims claims they took part willingly. The express or implied consent of the victim will not be a defense, the code says. That hasnt stopped UNL students from trying. In December, UNL police opened an investigation into an alleged hazing that took place in front of Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority, where a member of Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity was bound to a bench and doused with condiments. According to court documents, members of the fraternity told police the incident was part of an annual event where freshmen members select a senior to repay the seniors for what they do to the freshmen. Later, they said being chosen by the freshmen was more of an honor than payback. Police got a search warrant to review security camera footage of the event, and the investigation continues, Dibelka said. Last week, UNL police were called to a parking lot behind the Gamma Phi Beta sorority, where a group of male students dressed in black allegedly pinned another student to the ground before covering him in a sheet and throwing him into the back of a van. Officers later found the van near 16th and R streets and contacted the registered owners son in the basement of the Newman Center, where he was with about a dozen other UNL students. The student who was reportedly kidnapped told police the incident was a prank in which he voluntarily participated, and officers gave the students a warning. UNL spokesman Steve Smith said students pledging Greek houses at UNL are required to attend workshops where they review the definition of hazing -- including that claiming consent does not protect an organization from investigation. Additionally, events throughout the year for members of the Greek community and non-Greek students often touch on these and similar topics, Smith added. Were taking that very seriously, and it has not gone unnoticed," he said of cases recently reported. "If we evaluate this and determine there needs to be more steps taken, there will be. Students who claim to have willingly taken part in activities that could constitute hazing often complicate investigations, Dibelka said. Sgt. Doug Petersen said more reports of hazing are being made to campus police. "If something is reported, we will investigate it," Petersen said. The difference between a child ending up a Rhodes Scholar or a convicted murderer lies in part in the expectations set by the people surrounding them, an author told a crowd of hundreds Tuesday night. At the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's E.N. Thompson Forum, BridgeEDU founder and youth advocate Wes Moore said he grew up in the same environment as a man with the same name who is now serving a life sentence for killing a cop. The Baltimore natives lived most of their childhoods without fathers, said the author of "The Other Wes Moore." "We both lived up to our expectations," he said, noting America has an "expectation gap." Moore first experienced handcuffs at 11 and was sent to military school at 13. He shed his troubled youth not because he was sent there by his mom, he said. It was that he gained mentors and teachers, he said. Ultimately he graduated high school, joined the Army's 82nd Airborne Division and became a Rhodes Scholar. "I know I stand here right now because there are people who believed in me," he said. But he reflected on his life when he learned of the fate of another Wes Moore, who killed an off-duty police sergeant following a jewelry store robbery, he said. The other man's arrest made Moore curious, so he read up on his case, and ultimately wrote him letters in prison, he said. Dozens of letters turned into dozens of visits, he said, and the more he learned about Moore's life the more he realized the two had more in common than just their names. "There are Wes Moores that exist in every one of our communities, and every one of our schools and every one of our lives," Moore said. "People who are one decision away from going in one direction or going in a completely different direction." Moore encouraged audience members to seek out "the others" and try to make their lives a little easier. Lincoln native T.J. McDowell knows firsthand about Moore's experience. "In my situation, I went to Nebraska Wesleyan University and folks I grew up with went to the Nebraska State Penitentiary," McDowell told a crowd of several dozen before Moore's speech. McDowell, who is assistant dean of students at Nebraska Wesleyan University, said the differing trajectories of his life and the lives of kids he grew up with were affected by choices. But they were also products of the support they each received from adults, said the former executive director of the Lighthouse and the Clyde Malone Community Center. McDowell's father was always present in his life, he said. That wasn't the case for the boys his age. "We have to do a better job of helping people be fathers," he said. Lincoln needs to expand and support mentoring programs for at-risk youth to help give them role models and better their decision-making, he said. But tackling this problem, which affects many of young black boys in Lincoln, means recognizing these problems arise from the country's history of structural racism, McDowell said. "There are no easy fixes," he said. This problem wasn't created overnight and it won't be fixed overnight, he said. "But we have to start now," McDowell said. WASHINGTON -- The British Parliament set out Monday afternoon to debate a question that is often argued on this side of pond but has never before been taken up in the halls of Westminster: Is Donald Trump dangerous? Or is he merely a buffoon? The man who would Make America Great Again, it turns out, has already done a great job of unifying Great Britain. Members of Parliament from across the political spectrum took turns insulting the American billionaire. "Daft and offensive." "Ridiculous xenophobe." "Impulsive, not well informed." "Objectionable and hateful." "Buffoonery." "The orange prince of American self-publicity." "What is under his hair?" British legislators giggled as a colleague read aloud some of the puffy plutocrat's utterances on global warming ("It's freezing and snowing in New York") and on the "great" and "inexpensive" border wall he wants to build. "Let's be clear: Donald Trump is an idiot," said Gavin Newlands, an MP from the Scottish National Party. A Tory MP, declaring Trump "crazy" with "no valid points to make," said he would like to see Americans challenge Trump with the words that brought down Joe McCarthy: "Have you left no sense of decency?" "I don't think Donald Trump should be allowed within 1,000 miles of our shores," said Labour MP Jack Dromey. "Trump is free to be a fool, but he is not free to be a dangerous fool in Britain." Still, the result was good news, of sorts, for the Republican presidential candidate: While there was universal consensus that the billionaire developer is appalling, there was little interest in banning him from entering Britain -- if only because that would make him a martyr. Half a million Britons, reacting to Trump's pledge to ban Muslims from entering the United States, had signed a petition calling for Trump to be banned from Britain. A travel ban is up to the Home Office, not Parliament, but legislators decided to have a debate because, as Labour MP Paul Flynn said in introducing the topic, "it is very difficult to ignore a vox pop." Flynn was apologetic about the debate because it "might well be interpreted as disrespect" to America. But for Americans watching, it was useful proof that Trump is a reviled and preposterous figure to our most important ally and that America would be the laughingstock of the world if we elect him. MP Sarah Wollaston, who represents Dartmouth, noted that the Pilgrims sailed from there four centuries ago "to escape the kind of religious persecution that we are addressing today." She argued that if Britain were to ban Trump, it "would send a very clear message to the people of the United States about what we feel about those who demonize an entire people for no reason other than their religion." On Monday, Trump was at Liberty University in Virginia, warning his evangelical Christian audience that "our country is disappearing fast." Across the Atlantic, in the Grand Committee Room of Westminster Hall, Tulip Siddiq, a Muslim and an MP, was at that moment speaking about the "need to stop a poisonous, corrosive man from entering our country." She listed some of his many attacks on women, his racist "dog whistles" and his proposed ban on Muslims. But while there was no defense of Trump in the House of Commons, most in the debate thought it counterproductive to ban him from Britain, rather than employing, as one put it, "a classic British response of ridicule." That British natural resource was in abundant supply in Parliament on Monday. Conservative Paul Scully, though calling Trump's conduct "not acceptable for an aspiring world leader," said travel bans to Britain are issued for "incitement and hatred, but I've never heard of one for stupidity." Gavin Robinson, from Northern Ireland, described Trump's style of discourse: "He throws a dead cat on the table, and people stop and listen to him." One of the most powerful contributions came from Naz Shah, a "proud British Muslim woman" who called Trump "evil" and a "demagogue." But she said she wouldn't ban Trump from Britain but rather "invite him for a curry." "Given that it is Martin Luther King Day," she said, invoking the American holiday, "I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear." Tired of finding themselves on the short end of the water meter, farmers in southwest Nebraska who rely on the Republican River for irrigation are suing for access to more water and for damages they claim to have suffered when state officials turned off their faucets to meet provisions of a 70-year-old interstate pact. The Bostwick Irrigation District headquartered in Red Cloud filed a class action lawsuit this month on behalf of more than 160 of its members who have suffered due to unreliable water access for 118 farms, according to court records. The irrigation district covers about 22,400 acres. Bostwick joins the Frenchman Cambridge Irrigation District in suing over water rights to seek relief. The Republican River has been the source of multiple lawsuits that have cost Nebraska taxpayers millions. The Nebraska Attorney Generals Office in December asked for another $1.2 million to fight lawsuits filed by farmers and to pay consultants for ongoing negotiations with Kansas. The river starts in Colorados high plains, crosses the northwestern tip of Kansas and then flows into southern Nebraska before re-entering Kansas in its northeastern corner and eventually meeting up with the Smoky Hill River to form the Kansas River. The states signed a compact in 1943 that divides the rivers water, giving Colorado 11 percent, Nebraska 49 percent and Kansas 40 percent. Kansas has long contended that Nebraska farmers use more than their share. The U.S. Supreme Court last year ordered Nebraska to pay Kansas $5.5 million. Nebraska hailed the ruling as a victory because it was much less than the $80 million and shutdown of thousands of acres of Nebraska farmland for which Kansas had asked. Nebraska and its natural resources districts have instituted a variety of measures to ensure Kansas is happy with the amount of water its getting, including pumping water from the Platte River into the Republican and shutting down farmland and using its irrigation wells to pump water into the Republican. The states recently extended a one-year agreement that lets Nebraska use more than its share of water as long as it places water in storage for Kansas over the winter and spring, when it's not being used for agriculture. The states are working toward a long-term agreement. But farmers who use surface water in the Republican River watershed say they have been forced to bear more than their fair share of irrigation restrictions. They contend that water being pumped from wells has caused surface water to dry up and those depleted flows caused state officials to impose restrictions on using surface water. Only surface water users such as Bostwick have been shut off for compact compliance, while wells have been allowed enough water to continue irrigating a full crop, the Bostwick Irrigation District said in a news release. Jasper Fanning, general manager of the Upper Republican Natural Resources District, disputed those claims. He said surface irrigation infrastructure in the area hasn't been sustainable since its inception in the 1930s. Fanning said NRD programs that are pumping water into the Republican are allowing surface irrigators to continue using the river. "I have a hard time seeing how they think they're the ones shouldering the burden of compact compliance," Fanning said. "Essentially they are allowed to use the same volume of water even though that water belongs to Kansas and the NRDs make up the entire projected shortfall." The demands of the Bostwick lawsuit include reimbursement for unspecified financial damages related to restrictions in 2013 and 2014; for the river integrated management plan to be declared unlawful; and for the 2016 compact compliance actions to be deemed unlawful. The Bostwick lawsuit was filed against the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources and its director Gordon Jeff Fassett, as well as the Upper Republican, Middle Republican and Lower Republican NRDs. Bostwick filed its lawsuit Jan. 11, and Frenchman Cambridge refiled its suit Jan. 7, both in Lancaster County District Court. COLUMBUS Dr. Anthony Krueger was still two years away from finishing his radiology residency at the University of Nebraska Medical Center when he started reaching out to hospitals for employment. With Midwest roots, Krueger didnt want to stray too far from home, which for him is South Sioux City and Newman Grove for his wife. One of the places he connected with was Columbus Community Hospital. Even though he also had interest in working in large cities like Lincoln and Omaha, he chose Columbus when the job offers started to come in and began working in radiology at the hospital last June. Working in a smaller, rural community hasnt meant handling a lighter caseload. It is a lot busier than I expected coming to a town Columbus size, Krueger said. Being one of three radiologists contracted to work at CCH keeps him busy. Finding the right fit professionally was a goal, but even more important was a personal fit in a community for his family, which includes three young children. Columbus had the right combination, so much so that he can see himself settling down here permanently. We dont have any plans to leave. I want to stay until I retire, Krueger said. That is exactly what hospitals like to hear from their recruits. They not only want to get doctors on staff, they also want to retain them long-term. With a growing nationwide shortage of physicians, recruitment and retention are becoming even more important. Rural hospitals arent an exception. Hospitals in smaller communities, like CCH, are employing different strategies to fill the need for physicians. One way hospitals are securing doctors is by reaching out to medical students who are early in their career planning. Amy Blaser, vice president of physician relations at CCH, said hospitals used to be able to connect with physicians who had just a few months left in their residency program and still had a good chance of being competitive in the hiring process. Now that connection is made much earlier, sometimes in the first year or two of residency. More and more physicians are wanting to have a clearer, definitive idea of where they are going once they complete their residency after Year 2 or 3, Blaser said. Right now, CCH is recruiting heavily for specialties like otolaryngology (ear, nose and throat), pediatrics, ophthalmology and internal medicine to fill positions in the community. The hospital hires physicians to be employed at CCH, as well as private practices. Since Mike Hansen came aboard as CEO of CCH six years ago, the hospital has stepped in to help recruit physicians for local providers. The charge from the board was to realize the potential of the hospital to become a rural referral center. So probably the biggest part of that or the biggest gap in that is filling in provider needs, he said. At that time, there were gaps in the types of physicians who needed to be recruited. Physicians are really the engine that runs our hospital because they provide all the referrals. In order to grow and continue to prosper, you need to have that engine. So we set out to build our provider base, Hansen said. Physicians already working in the community proved to be a big help in the recruitment process. Good physicians recruit good physicians. It is really the quality of physicians here that are a key factor in recruiting additional doctors, Blaser said. Selling a community to a potential employee is a factor, too, because that is where they are going to live and raise their families. Highlighting the housing, schools, recreation and work opportunities for a spouse is important. Other tools include offering compensation packages, loan reimbursement, sign-on bonuses and paying for moving expenses. Building a connection, though, remains a crucial part of the process. I dont know if there is magic in recruiting. Its about relationships, said Connie Peters, president of CHI Health Schuyler. Within the last year, that hospital has brought on two physicians to increase the number of doctors on staff at the 25-bed critical access facility to four. Three are in family practice and the other in internal medicine. Specialists from Omaha, Lincoln, Columbus and other areas also come to the community on a regular basis to see patients. Peters said it is difficult to recruit doctors to small communities. Part of that is because its challenging to be a rural physician. They often arent only working in a clinic, but also the emergency room and with patient care. It is a demanding career, she said. Once a doctor is recruited to a rural area, chances are it will be long-term. That is the case for Genoa Medical Facilities, which contracted with two doctors who have been working in the community for more than a decade each at Park Street Medical Clinic. We have not had to recruit for a while. Weve been fortunate to have a pretty sold group of providers, said Cory Nelson, who is in his first year as CEO of the hospital. The 19-bed critical access facility relies on those physicians, mid-level providers like nurse practitioners and telecommunications to meet the needs of patients. When recruiting, Nelson said it can be years in the making. It can even go back to reaching out to high school students who show an interest in the medical field. Getting in touch with someone who has Midwest roots can give recruiters a leg up on the competition. Once you get someone back to the area, you have a chance to hold on to them, Nelson said. Blaser said the majority of her recruiting efforts in Columbus are done through word of mouth, meetings and phone calls. A search firm is rarely used. The hospital, which features 47 acute care beds, has 640 people on staff and employs 10-12 doctors at a time in the emergency room and orthopedics. Other recruitment efforts are done for the private practices here, like Columbus Family Practice, Columbus Medical Center and Columbus Childrens Healthcare, among others. Since 2010, 72 new providers have been added to the community, including 55 physicians and 17 physician assistants or nurse practitioners. About half of those providers have moved here and made Columbus their primary practice. The other half are visiting physicians who come to see patients on a weekly, monthly or quarterly basis. Being able to use those visiting physicians helps plug holes in certain specialties. Our population size isnt large enough to support a full-time physician in some specialty areas. What we do is recruit physicians from larger cities to actually satellite here and bring their practice and services here so our patients wont have to travel, Blaser said. When reaching out to potential employees, Blaser said she paints a realistic picture of the community and doesnt oversell it. If Columbus is screened as a good fit for the entire family, if we can get the physician for a site visit, it is very rare that we arent successful in getting that physician to come to Columbus, she said. Currently there are six positions CCH is trying to fill in Columbus. Since the hospital has helped fill the needs in the medical community, Hansen said it has been good to see the effects. Whats really been interesting to watch as we fill those gaps and as we really build our provider community is to watch the change and shift in outmigration from Columbus to other cities. We are starting to stem a lot of that outmigration. We are also, very interestingly, starting to get people to come from Omaha, Lincoln and out of state to our facility because of the quality of the providers we brought here, he said. Recruiting and retention is a critical part of health care and Peters of CHI Health Schuyler said it will continue to be in the future because of the shortage of physicians. It certainly will remain a priority. The success of any clinic or hospital is sustainability of medical staff, she said. RACINE The City of Racine has extended its five-year contact with Belle Urban System management company First Transit. But officials plan to take a look at how the contract is working in the coming months to see if they want to seek proposals from other vendors next year, said Michael J. Maierle, the citys parking and transit systems manager. Aldermen voted 13-0 on Tuesday at City Hall, 730 Washington Ave., to extend the current five-year contract with the company for a sixth year for an annual price of $159,212 $4,637 more than the 2015 payment. That money will go to First Transit to pay for BUS General Manager Willie McDonald, who, with the assistance of the company, manages the day-to-day operations of the BUS and the more than 70 people the company employs. Those include: 38 full-time bus drivers, 11 part-time drivers, nine part-time para-transit drivers, mechanics, dispatchers and custodians. Those employees work for First Transit, but their salaries and benefits are paid for by the city, explained Maierle. All of the BUS drivers are represented by the Teamsters union and First Transit negotiates that contract, Maierle added. Maierle explained Tuesday that the contract dictates that the annual pay increase by 3 percent a year over the five-year period. The sixth year is designated as being a negotiated amount, but going with a 3 percent increase again seemed reasonable to members of the citys Transit and Parking Commission, he said. Now that the city has begun the first year of a two-year extension set forth in the five-year agreement, officials will do an analysis of the contract and how it is working, Maierle said. Re-upping with First Transit at this point wasnt a really hard decision, he noted. If there is any news, its that we are going to take a hard look at it for the seventh year. About BUS and First Transit First Transit is headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio and, according to its website, operates in 242 locations, including 39 states, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and four Canadian provinces. The BUS provides nearly 1.5 million rides each year in Racine, Mount Pleasant, Caledonia and Sturtevant, as well as service to the Grandview Industrial Park just west of Interstate 94 in Yorkville. The local service costs about $10 million annually to operate and is funded through a variety of sources including state and federal funding, fares, and money from the City of Racine and the surrounding communities. YORKVILLE Sheriffs deputies arrested a waiter at the Iron Skillet restaurant Friday night after his manager discovered hed allegedly given out thousands of dollars in free meals. Korey Hintz, 23, of the 17100 block of Durand Avenue in Yorkville, allegedly cost the restaurant nearly $5,000 since June by giving out free meals while he was the only waiter on duty. When he was arrested Friday, deputies said they also found illegally obtained amphetamines in Hintzs possession. According to a criminal complaint, the manager of the Iron Skillet was informed by an employee that third-shift employees were giving out half-price dinners. The manager checked computer records and observed that several of Hintzs transactions had been discounted down to a bill of $0, deputies said. Hintz allegedly did this by utilizing a $2-off button, created for a promotion the restaurant had not used in over a year that could be only applied once per meal, until there was no charge remaining, according to the criminal complaint. Deputies said that if the bill then showed an amount less than $0, Hintz would rectify the negative balance by adding an extra charge, usually for an item from the O&H Bakery, also located at the Highlands PETRO truck stop, which cost the restaurant additional money beyond the price of the meal. According to the criminal complaint, all of the transactions took place during third-shift hours when only Hintz and a line chef were working. Deputies said the manager tracked the transactions because Hintz was listed as the cashier on all the receipts. The manager calculated that Hintz allegedly cost the restaurant approximately $4,743.37 since June, according to the criminal complaint. Hintz was charged on Monday with felony theft in a business setting as well as possession of a controlled substance. If convicted, he faces up to two years and six months in prison, another two years of extended supervision and fines up to $15,000. He remained in custody as of Tuesday at the Racine County Jail. RACINE The man whose death has launched a homicide investigation by Racine police was identified Wednesday. Michael Hardy, 41, of the 3200 block of Indiana St., was found dead after police conducted a welfare check at about 4 p.m. Tuesday, according to a news release issued Wednesday afternoon. Lt. Al Days of the Racine Police Department said the death was being investigated as a homicide and that the investigation is ongoing. As of 8 p.m., Days said, no one is in custody in connection with Hardys death. Hardy served as the treasurer of the Harvest Outreach Food Pantry, 2000 DeKoven Ave., for at least four years, according to the Pantry President Wally Herman. Hardy volunteered there every day, Herman said, and had not shown up since Thursday, which raised suspicion. Nobody understood why he wasnt showing up, Herman said. Hardy lived in the Windsong Court Apartments, Herman confirmed. Herman had dropped him off a few times after volunteering. Herman said Hardy was a devoted volunteer, but an extremely private person who had no known telephone number. So on Tuesday, a volunteer from the pantry went to Windsong Court to check on Hardy, which started a series of events that ended with police kicking down the door and finding Hardy deceased. He was an extremely faithful member of Harvest Outreach, Herman said. I didnt have anything bad to say about that man. According to Herman, Hardy did not have a steady job and was on disability benefits. Herman did say Hardy was a member of Grace Church in Racine, which a spokesperson for the church confirmed. Herman hadnt seen Hardy for more than a week, last speaking with him at the pantrys board meeting last Tuesday. He has no idea what could have happened to him. It was an absolute shock, Herman said. Gov. Scott Walker used his election-year State of the State address Wednesday to rally support for his plans to use the majority of Wisconsins $912 million in unexpected revenue for tax cuts. What do you do with a surplus? he said. Give it back to the people who earned it. Its your money. He said he would call a special session of the Legislature to consider his income and property tax cut package part of a broader fiscal plan called A Blueprint for Prosperity which would save average Wisconsin families about $150 this year. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said there is support among Assembly Republicans for Walkers proposal and it will likely be the first bill his chamber takes up when it convenes Feb. 11. The package, however, faces some opposition from Republicans in the Senate. I dont have 17 votes for anything right now, said Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau. Much of the tax cut plan was detailed by Walker to reporters Tuesday, but the speech was the first time Walker disclosed it directly to voters. It was Walkers fourth State of the State, and he delivered it less than 10 months before standing for re-election and as he considers a 2016 presidential bid. Also Wednesday, the administration launched prosperity.wi.gov so people could use a tax savings calculator to check their own tax savings under the plan. The Legislative Fiscal Bureau has yet to analyze Walkers proposal. Democrats said Walker avoided talking about the states dismal record of job growth and criticized his proposal for adding more than $100 million to an existing $708 million structural deficit the amount expenditures are expected to exceed revenues by mid-2017. Hes going to be kicking a bigger can down a longer road, said Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca, D-Kenosha. Thats a self-inflicted wound we shouldnt have to absorb. Walker also proposed adding more than $100 million to the states rainy day fund and increasing by $35 million a job training program known as Wisconsin Fast Forward. The $35 million, which comes from economic development-related surplus funds, would be spent on several programs, including eliminating waiting lists at technical colleges in such high-demand fields as manufacturing, agriculture and information technology; helping high school students get training in high-demand jobs through dual-enrollment programs with high schools and technical colleges; and supporting programs helping people with disabilities to enter the workforce. In his nearly hourlong speech, Walker touted improvements in the states finances and credited his fiscally conservative policies, including his controversial 2011 measure to all but end collective bargaining for public workers. The move along with the ensuing massive protests put Walker in the national spotlight and fueled speculation about a presidential run. The state of our state is strong and improving every day. The economy is dramatically better, and our finances are in great shape, Walker said. Thankfully, the days of double-digit tax increases, billion-dollar deficits, and major job loss are gone. Walkers critics, including his likely Democratic opponent, Madison School Board member and former state Commerce secretary Mary Burke, have pointed to the state ranking 37th in the nation in private-sector job creation, according to the most recent federal data. Burke said Wednesday she would use the surplus to reduce the states debt levels, which are budgeted to increase $1.2 billion since Walker took office, target property tax cuts to residential property owners rather than businesses and put more money toward worker training programs. I dont know too many Wisconsin families who would rush out to spend money they may not even have on new things, particularly when theyve already racked up a bunch of debt and have other bills coming due, Burke said. Walker said his Blueprint for Prosperity would trim property taxes by about $406 million and provide about $98.1 million in income tax relief. He also plans to adjust withholding tables so that Wisconsin workers will have more money in their pockets starting April 1 $521 for the average taxpayer though it would mean less of a tax refund in 2015. The governor also encouraged employers to hire people with disabilities, promoted workforce development, and touted his approach to providing health care for the poor. Were not making it harder to get government assistance, Walker said. Were making it easier to get a job. He introduced numerous guests, including disabled workers, people who have found jobs since he took office, students, and workers who helped fix the Leo Frigo Bridge in Green Bay. Earlier Wednesday, Fitzgerald and Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, said that Senate Republicans support the general idea of tax cuts. Theres definitely a willingness to return the money to the taxpayers, Fitzgerald said. Fitzgerald acknowledged that one side effect of Walkers tax cut plan increasing the structural deficit by about $100 million is definitely a concern for some of his members. Several Republicans in the Senate, including a group of moderate members, have been advocating first putting money toward ensuring the states long-term financial health and making sure the next state budget cycle doesnt begin with a shortfall. Sen. Luther Olsen, R-Ripon, said if the state relies on economic growth to cover the structural deficit, it wont have money in the next budget to address looming problems, such as a shortfall in transportation funding, growing Medicaid costs and local governments that have had to live with less state funding in recent years. The Senate is very interested in the structural deficit getting smaller, not bigger, Olsen said. Senate President Mike Ellis, R-Neenah, said whatever the Legislature does should include a plan to eliminate the structural deficit in time for the next budget cycle. To do that, he suggested not cutting income taxes by $98.1 million annually as Walker proposed. Walkers tax cut proposal will likely face less criticism from Assembly Republicans. Rep. Dale Kooyenga, R-Brookfield, said hes not worried about the governors proposal adding about $100 million to the states projected $706 million structural deficit. He said continued economic growth will bring state finances into balance. I will promise you that at this point next year the structural deficit will be gone, Kooyenga said. The state is projecting a surplus of $976.6 million by mid-2015. That includes $912 million more in revenue than was anticipated when Walker signed the 2013-15 budget last summer. Walker plans would cut taxes by $504 million and the overall package would cost the state $826.7 million and eat up the lions share of $912 million. RACINE A Racine man accused in the fatal 2008 shooting of another man uttered just five words in court on Wednesday before pleading not guilty to the homicide charge. Jonathan W. Sparks, 25, sat dressed in orange Racine County Jail scrubs during the two-minute appearance in court. Prosecutors charged Sparks on Nov. 9 with first-degree reckless homicide by use of a dangerous weapon in the fatal shooting of Jamaal Stanciel, 20, also of Racine. Reports at the time state Stanciel was standing with a group of friends on June 14, 2008, in the area of 11th Street and Hilker Place when he was shot. Two bullets hit Stanciel: one in his right shoulder and the other went through his torso and punctured his lung, killing him, according to autopsy results. Sparks waived his preliminary hearing on Wednesday, which is where prosecutors must prove a felony has been committed and the defendant likely committed it. Sparks responded five times with only one-word answers yeah, both and no when asked questions such as whether he voluntarily was waiving the hearing, if the form was read to him or if he read it, and whether anyone made any threats to force him to waive it. Assistant State Public Defender Gretchen Rosenke entered the not-guilty plea, on his behalf, during his arraignment. Court Commissioner Alice Rudebusch found probable cause for the charge and (bound) him over to stand trial on the charges. Sparks remains jailed on $500,000 cash bond. Gone cold, then a spark After Stanciel was fatally shot, the case went cold. A break in the case came last year, more than seven years later. Investigators interviewed Sparks in June in an Illinois prison after reportedly being tipped that he was the shooter. Sparks allegedly told them he held a gun over the top of a fence and fired that night, according to his criminal complaint. Three people who were identified as associates of Sparks and interviewed by police allegedly were in a car with Sparks the night of the shooting. When Sparks returned to the car, police said he told one of the men that he had fired multiple times, the complaint states. Police arrested Sparks on July 14, 2008, after they were called to an area where he allegedly was found with a gun and cocaine, the complaint states. Police said one of Sparks associates identified that weapon as the gun Sparks allegedly used to shoot Stanciel. But it wasnt until a December 2012 interview with investigators that an associate of Stanciels, who reportedly was near the scene of the shooting that night, said he saw Sparks shoot over the fence five or six times, according to the complaint. Sparks next court date is Feb. 19. Through the wonders of the Internet, I read Kristen Zambo's story about German prisoners of war in Sturtevant during World War II. There are two great books on that topic. Betty Cowley's "Stalag Wisconsin" describes the lives of 20,000 prisoners housed in 38 different camps in Wisconsin. Some of them found relatives among the local German population, and one local farmer was surprised when his brother showed up as an assigned worker. Arnold Krammer's "Nazi Prisoners of War in America" notes there were more than 400,000 prisoners scattered across the country. The prisoners were shocked to see the Statue of Liberty and skyscrapers of New York. Nazi leaders had told them all those buildings had been destroyed by German Air Force bombers. James E. Bie Palm Desert Withering on the Vine The Demographic Time Bomb is Most Marked in Japan The demographic time bomb whereby the elderly population assumes a greater and ... Government Sexual Libertinism Coming to a Government School Near You Further to our piece yesterday on the promotion of sexual libertinism in government schools, we rep... Some Random Observations The Aftermath of Mass Pre-Mediated Murder A few observations on the murder of 14 people in San Bernadino and the wounding of many more see... Letter From the UK (About State Tyranny) Ta-ta UK freedoms! Miranda matter outs vindictiveness of wounded police state Annie Machon is a former intelligence of... The Big One The Panoptican State Is Actually Operational Yesterday the "big one" dropped. The Guardian reported that the US and UK spy age... Fraud Central German Professor: NASA Has Fiddled Climate Data On Unbelievable Scale by James Delingpole BreitbartLondon A German professor ha... Statist Groupthink More and More Fashionable The Rise of Liberal Intolerance in America Edward Luce Financial Times I t ought to be a triumphal moment for American liberalism .... Vacuous Greenism Anti-Fracking Luddiocy Think of any technology that involves carbon based energy and its utilisation, and the lunatic fringe can be found ... "It is Finished": the Sixth Word from the Cross It is Finished: our Lords Sixth Word from the Cross What is history? That simple question covers a multitude of complexity, profundity... The California District Court for the Northern District [official website] on Monday granted [order, PDF] Apples [official website] motion for a permanent injunction against Samsung [official website] for infringing upon three software patents [Apple Insider report]. The patents involve data detector, slide-to-unlock, and predictive text input software on certain older Samsung models. Judge Lucy Koh [official website] made the decision to prevent irreparable harm that might occur if Samsung were to continue, but many believe this decision will not have much of an effect on either company other than a morale boost for Apples counsel. Not only is the software on older models of Samsung products, but according to FOSS Patents [official website] Florian Mueller [Blogger profile] two of the three patents are likely to be found invalid, and the other expires at the beginning of February. Apple sought immediate relief, but Judge Koh rejected the request and allowed Samsung the 30-day deadline to comply. This is the most recent installment of the ongoing patent dispute [JURIST op-ed] between the two electronics giants. In December 2015 the companies and this court released a joint statement [statement, PDF] regarding damages that Samsung owed Apple [JURIST report]. In August 2014 the US District Court for the Northern District of California denied [JURIST report] Apples request to ban Samsung from selling any of its products that infringed on Apples patented technology. Earlier in August 2014 Apple and Samsung agreed to drop [JURIST report] all patent infringement lawsuits in courts outside of the US. In June 2014 Apple and Samsung also agreed to dismiss [JURIST report] their appeals of a patent infringement case at the US International Trade Commission (ITC) [official website] that resulted in an import ban on some older model Samsung phones. In May 2014 a jury in the US District Court for the Northern District of California ordered [JURIST report] Samsung to pay $119.6 million to Apple for two phone patent infringements. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos on Monday enacted [El Colombiano report, in Spanish] the Natalia Ponce Law, establishing acid attacks as a specific crime with harsh punishments. The punishments under the new law between 12 to 20 years in prison for a simple attack and between 20 to 30 years in prison for an attack that causes disfigurement or permanent injury to the victim, with punishment increased in cases with disfigurement of the face, against those who commit such crimes against minors and attacks that resulted in death. The law also gives the government six months to design and implement a public policy that ensures comprehensive medical and psychological care to victims of such attacks. Corrosive substances used in such attacks will also be included in a law prohibiting the creation, possession and traffic of dangerous substances in order to address all levels of criminal behavior relating to acid attacks. The country has seen 222 cases [The Jakarta Post report] of acid attacks since 2013. Acid attacks are defined [advocacy website] as the deliberate use of acid to attack another human being. Such attacks are a worldwide phenomenon that are not restricted to a particular race, religion or geographical location. The leading cause of attacks is the availability of acids, and women form the majority of victims. In November, a Russian national suffered [BBC report] an acid attack in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, and according to official statistics, there are a few hundred acid attacks in India every year. Other forms of irregular warfare have been condemned recently, as last week, the UN labeled [JURIST report] forced starvation in Syria a war crime. A German court on Tuesday ruled against the legality of the taxi-hailing app Mytaxi [official website]. Mytaxi began offering cab rides for half the regular price in several cities if customers agreed to an electronic payment method instead of cash. According to the Frankfurt court [Reuters report], this is illegal and unfair commercial practice. The case was brought before the court by Taxi Deutschland [official website, in German]. Taxi Deutschland is a German taxi operating group with a competing app. Daimler [official website, in German], the German car maker that owns Mytaxi, has stated it will appeal the ruling as it is convinced its business practices are legal. Regulators have been tough on ride-hailing apps. In March Uber [official website] was banned in Germany [BBC report] after a court decided it violated transportation laws for using drivers that do not have professional licences. In June France saw multiple riots [BBC report] staged by FTI in an effort to force a government crackdown on Uber. In April, taxi drivers in London staged a similar coup [CNET report], blockading Londons busy Oxford Street to bring awareness to the hardships they face due to undercutting by Uber. In January, the California Labor Commission ruled [JURIST report] that drivers for Uber are considered employees, not contractors, which could lead to higher costs for the company as they may have to begin paying benefits. Settlement businesses contribute to Israels violations of Palestinian rights, Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] said in a report [text] Tuesday. The report stated that, it is Human Rights Watchs view that by virtue of doing business in or with settlements or settlement businesses, companies contribute to one or more of these violations of international humanitarian law and human rights abuses. Settlement businesses depend on and benefit from Israels unlawful confiscation of Palestinian land and other resources, and facilitate the functioning and growth of settlements. HRW said that settlement businesses, facilitate Israels violations of international humanitarian law. The group urged the international community to ensure that any import of settlement goods into their territory is consistent with their duty under international humanitarian law not to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Palestinian territories. Recent conflicts between Israel and Palestine [HRW backgrounder] over settlements in the occupied West Bank have raised concerns over possible human rights violations. In August UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged both sides of the conflict [JURIST report] to reconcile and move towards peace after an attack occurred in the West Bank village of Duma, where Jewish extremists allegedly set fire to a Palestinian home while the family slept. In April HRW alleged [report] that Israeli settlement farmers in the occupied West Bank are using Palestinian child laborers in dangerous conditions in violation of international laws. Last January Germanys top human rights official urged Israel to cooperate with the International Criminal Court (ICC) [official website] probe into possible war crimes in Palestinian territories. After a prosecutor for the ICC announced the investigation [JURIST report], Israels government said that it would not work with the ICC and called for its funding to be cut. The US Supreme Court [official website] on Tuesday rejected an Arkansas appeal to revive an old abortion law that banned abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy. After the injunction was issued, Arkansas appealed and the Eight Circuit Court of Appeals [official website] affirmed [text, PDF] in May 2015. The law in question was the Arkansas Human Heartbeat Protection Act [text, PDF], and its goal was to prevent abortions after a heartbeat was detectable. The Supreme Court said that historically the rule has been to prevent abortion before viability, not the detection of the heartbeat, and it was not ready to deviate from this. The Supreme Court is set to hear a new case, Whole Womans Health v. Cole [SCOTUSblog info], in March dealing with abortion. Abortion waiting periods and reproductive rights issues [JURIST backgrounder] have been heated topics throughout the US. In May 2015 Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin [official website] signed House Bill 1409 [bill information] into law extending the mandatory [JURIST report] waiting period for women seeking an abortion from 24 to 72 hours. In April 2015 Alabama state representative Terri Collins [official website] proposed a bill to ban abortion [JURIST report] once a fetal heartbeat has been detected. Also in April 2015 Kansas Governor Sam Brownback [official website] signed a bill [press release] that bans all forms of dismemberment abortion unless necessary to protect the life or health of the mother. In March 2015 Arizona Governor Doug Ducey [official website] signed a bill [JURIST report] that requires abortion providers in the state to tell women that they can reverse the effects of a drug-induced abortion, in addition to barring women from buying any healthcare plan through the federal marketplace that includes coverage for abortions. Also in March 2015 the West Virginia Legislature overrode [JURIST report] the state governors veto, passing a bill that bans abortion after 20 weeks. Peter Dahlin, a Swedish rights advocate who had been detained in China [JURIST report] on charges of endangering state security, confessed his crimes [YouTube video] on Chinese state television on Tuesday. In the interview, which aired on State Broadcaster CCTV, Dahlin said I have caused harm to the Chinese government. I have hurt the feelings of the Chinese people. I apologize sincerely for this. And Im very sorry that this ever happened. Dahlin co-founded Chinese Urgent Action Working Group [advocacy website], a non-profit organization [Reuters report] that provides training for uncertified rural defense lawyers of potential human rights abuse victims. The Chinese Urgent Action Working Group reported that Dahlin was detained earlier this month on suspicion of endangering state security. It is believed by rights groups that the detention is part of a crackdown [BBC report] on rights lawyers and members of groups seeking reforms of the countrys legal system. Chinese state media recently criticized [JURIST report] detained human rights lawyers for undermining the rule of law. Last month prominent Chinese human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang was released [JURIST report] after receiving a suspended sentence. Pu was detained [JURIST report] in 2014 on a charge of causing a disturbance after he attended a weekend meeting that urged an investigation into the 1989 crackdown of pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square and was subsequently denied [JURIST report] bail. The Tiananmen protests began in April 1989 with mainly students and laborers protesting the Communist Party of China. The Chinese government declared martial law in May and initiated the violent dispersal of protesters by the Peoples Liberation Army on June 4. The Tokyo High Court [official website, in Japanese] on Tuesday reversed a Tokyo District Court ruling from 2014 regarding the death of a detained immigrant. Immigration authorities were under investigation after restraining Abubakar Awudu Suraj, ultimately leading to his death. The new ruling states [Reuters report] that the restraint was not at the level to stop his breathing and was not illegal. Suraj had been in Japan for over two decades when authorities detained him in May 2009. An autopsy report noted [Japan Times report] abrasions to his face, internal bleeding of muscles, along with leakage of blood around the eyes and blood congestion in some organs and the heart. According to reports, Suraj was escorted by nine immigration officers to the airport. He was restrained and gagged after protesting his deportation. During the trial, the initial ruling was that Suraj died of suffocation, however the high court has now stated he died of a rare heart condition. Migrant rights have generated a tremendous humanitarian issue around the world with hundreds of deaths in the past year. In August migrants who set up a tent city in Athens, Greece began relocation [JURIST report]. Many migrants coming from Afghanistan, Syria and other countries migrated to the country to escape violence, and with more than 130,000 migrants coming in the last year alone, a strain has been put on Greeces finite finances. Earlier that month the International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported that more than 2,000 migrants have died this year [JURIST report] in an attempt to enter Europe through the Mediterranean Sea. According to IOM, the death toll this year, up from 1,607 at the same point in the year last year, confirms that migrants attempt to enter Europe through the Mediterranean is especially dangerous, and in fact more dangerous than other routes according to statistics. In June a British ship launched a mission [JURIST report] to rescue more than 500 migrants stranded in the sea. The US State Department [official website] released a statement [press release] Tuesday expressing concern over reports of serious human rights violations and abuses in Burundi. Allegations of mass graves, sexual violence by security forces, and enforced disappearances and torture are being reported by both the UN and the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights [press releases]. The State Department called for the government of Burundi to concede to the internationally mandated deployment of African Union [official website] human rights observers to assess the claims and for the government of Burundi to take action against unlawful violence. Violence in Burundi began in the wake of President Pierre Nkurunzizas announcement that he would seek a third term of office, which he was voted into [JURIST report] in July. Earlier this month the UN High Commission for Human Rights, Zeid Raad Al Hussein [official profile], warned of increasing violence in Burundi [JURIST report]. Last month the UN Human Rights Council approved a resolution [JURIST report] to dispatch experts to investigate human rights violations in Burundi, condemning violence in the country, use of excessive force by officials and restrictions on freedoms. In November Zeid condemned [JURIST report] the suspension of 10 NGOs in Burundi. Also in November the UN Security Council unanimously adopted [JURIST report] a resolution condemning the political violence and killings currently afflicting Burundi. Shortly before, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a statement calling for [JURIST report] an end to the political violence and killings in Burundi. In October the UN human rights office shared concerns [JURIST report] over the rapidly worsening security and human rights situation in Burundi, noting that 198 people have been killed in the nation since April. Zimbabwes Constitutional Court ruled Wednesday that neither boys nor girls can legally marry under the age of 18, even in unregistered, customary or religious unions. Previously, the Marriage Act allowed girls to be married at the age of 18 and boys to be married at the age of 16 and did not address a minimum age for customary unions. The head of the Peoples Democratic Party, Tendai Biti, filed an application [AP report] along with two women from Harare, now 20, who say they were forced to marry at the age of 15. They argued [SABC report] that the sections of the Marriage Act allowing child marriage were discriminatory and violated childrens rights as laid out in the 2013 constitution. The ban is effective immediately. In recent years, child marriage has been criticized in many countries. In November Guatemalas congress approved [JURIST report] legislation to raise the legal age for marriage to 18, previously 14 for girls and 16 for boys. Malawi enacted [JURIST report] the Marriage Act last April, a move that Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] welcomed as an important step toward preventing child marriage. In September Bangladeshi officials approved [JURIST report] the Child Marriage Prevention Act of 2014, requiring a two-year jail term for any person who marries a girl under the age of 18. However, in October, Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was considering [JURIST report] changing the countrys law once again to allow marriage at 16, a move HRW urged against. In December 2011 HRW also called on the government of Yemen to increase [JURIST report] the minimum age for girls to enter into marriage. Yes, you can transfer your domain to any registrar or hosting company once you have purchased it. Since domain transfers are a manual process, it can take up to 5 days to transfer the domain. Domains purchased with payment plans are not eligible to transfer until all payments have been made. Please remember that our 30-day money back guarantee is void once a domain has been transferred. For transfer instructions to GoDaddy, please click here. Child dies in ambulance hit A child died in a road mishap at Parseni in Dang district Sunday night. 5-day event from Jan 21 Bangladesh Expo 2016 will kick off in the Capital on January 21, the Embassy of Bangladesh in Kathmandu has confirmed. Bharatpur Hospital preparing to add 165 additional beds Bharatpur Hospital is planning to increase its number of beds to 600 to accommodate more patients. FNCCI team in Kolkata to ask for port fee waiver FNCCI team in Kolkata to ask for port fee waiver Four held for falsifying documents to exonerate rape convict Four persons including three health officials have been arrested on the charge of preparing fake documents to exonerate a rape convict. Major parties agree to endorse bill Saturday The major parties have agreed to endorse the First Amendment to the Constitution of Nepalwith or without a deal with the Madhes-based partieson Saturday. Moving nowhere Nepal must understand that bilateral ties no longer work without trade Ncell warns of service disruption Ncell has gone into panic mode as its services can come to a grinding a halt in a few days if it doesnt get adequate power to keep its equipment running. Oil slump While the world rejoices the plunge in oil prices, the reality for Nepal is entirely different Protests pick up with talks stalled As the talks between the three major political parties and the agitating Samyukta Loktantrik Madhesi Morcha (SLMM) has been stalled, the Morcha supporters have started to stage demonstrations in Birgunj, the major trade point between Nepal-India, from Tuesday. Morang's Rangeli bazaar tense, Morcha to disrupt PMs scheduled programme Tension flared up in Rangeli Bazaar in Morang district on Wednesday after Madhesi Morcha decided to disrupt CPN-UML youth wing Youth Association Nepals programme to honour Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli. Rs 5 billion programme for Tarai districts launched The government has launched a five-year multi-billion rupees programme targeting the development of over 100 villages and cities in Tarai districts bordering India. 1. Yes. Its important to cast my votes early and avoid the lines on Election Day. 2. Yes. With nearly two weeks of early voting, its a more convenient way to take part. 3. No. Its better to wait until Election Day, in case any last-minute information surfaces. 4. No. Im not planning to vote early or on Election Day. It isnt worth my time. 5. Unsure. It depends on how the campaigns are shaping up. Ill play it by ear. Vote View Results Independent presidential candidate Amama Mbabazi has refuted latest poll results saying opinion polls do not reflect the views of society and should not drive debate. The poll conducted by Research World International puts president Yoweri Museveni in the lead with 51%. FDC candidate Dr Kiiza Besigye trails at 32%, Mbabazi stands at 12%, while Dr. Abed Bwanika and Gen. Benon Biraaro follow with each having 1% of the vote. The research was conducted between December 15th and 5th January in 89 districts mainly in up country areas. While addressing journalists at Mbarara Lake view, Mbabazi said Uganda is still a young democracy and therefore cannot rely on polls to determine her political destination. He added that the poll results are often false because many people cannot open up when speaking to strangers. Meanwhile Mbabazi continues traversing different areas in South Western Uganda with his message of change. He will later today hold rallies in Mbarara and Sheema districts. Story By Moses Kyeyune Uganda Peoples Congress has released the funeral program for its fallen Vice President Patrick Mwondha. The late Mwondha breathed his last yesterday at Mulago Hospital. According to party president Jimmy Akena, the body was this afternoon taken to the Uganda House for public viewing before being moved to the family residence at Katalemwa where the vigil will be held. Akena praised the late Mwondha for flying both his party and national flags high during his time of service as Minister and Member of Parliament. There will be a funeral service at All Saints Cathedral Nakasero tomorrow at 10:00am and thereafter the body will be transported to his ancestral home in Ntanda in Bugiri where he will be laid to rest on Friday afternoon. Story By Moses Ndhaye Trollfest '09 Trollfest '07 was such a success that Jackson Jambalaya will once again host Trollfest '09. Catch this great event which will leave NE Jackson & Fondren in flames. Othor Cain and his band, The Black Power Structure headline the night while Sonjay Poontang returns for an encore performance. Former Frank Melton bodyguard Marcus Wright makes his premier appearance at Trollfest singing "I'm a Sweet Transvestite" from "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." Kamikaze will sing his new hit, How I sold out to da Man. Robbie Bell again performs: Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be Bells and Any friend of Ed Peters is a friend of mine. After the show, Ms. Bell will autograph copies of her mug shot photos. In a salute to Dancing with the Stars, Ms. Bell and Hinds County District Attorney Robert Smith will dance the Wango Tango. Wrestling returns, except this time it will be a Battle Royal with Othor Cain, Ben Allen, Kim Wade, Haley Fisackerly, Alan Lange, and Big Cat Donna Ladd all in the ring at the same time. The Battle Royal will be in a steel cage, no time limit, no referee, and the losers must leave town. Marshand Crisler will be the honorary referee (as it gives him a title without actually having to do anything). Meet KIM Waaaaaade at the Entergy Tent. For five pesos, Kim will sell you a chance to win a deed to a crack house on Ridgeway Street stuffed in the Howard Industries pinata. Don't worry if the pinata is beaten to shreds, as Mr. Wade has Jose, Emmanuel, and Carlos, all illegal immigrants, available as replacements for the it. Upon leaving the Entergy tent, fig leaves will be available in case Entergy literally takes everything you have as part of its Trollfest ticket price adjustment charge. Donna Ladd of The Jackson Free Press will give several classes on learning how to write. Smearing, writing without factchecking, and reporting only one side of a story will be covered. A donation to pay their taxes will be accepted and she will be signing copies of their former federal tax liens. Ms. Ladd will give a dramatic reading of her two award-winning essays (They received The Jackson Free Press "Best Of" awards.) "Why everything is always about me" and "Why I cover murders better than anyone else in Jackson". In the spirit of helping those who are less fortunate, Trollfest '09 adopts a cause for which a portion of the proceeds and donations will be donated: Keeping Frank Melton in his home. The Keep Frank Melton From Being Homeless booth will sell chances for five dollars to pin the tail on the jackass. John Reeves has graciously volunteered to be the jackass for this honorable excursion into saving Frank's ass. What's an ass between two friends after all? If Mr. Reeves is unable to um, perform, Speaker Billy McCoy has also volunteered as when the word jackass was mentioned he immediately ran as fast as he could to sign up. In order to help clean up the legal profession, Adam Kilgore of the Mississippi Bar will be giving away free, round-trip plane tickets to the North Pole where they keep their bar complaint forms (which are NOT available online). If you don't want to go to the North Pole, you can enjoy Brant Brantley's (of the Mississippi Commission on Judicial Performance) free guided tours of the quicksand field over by High Street where all complaints against judges disappear. If for some reason you are unable to control yourself, never fear; Judge Houston Patton will operate his jail where no lawyers are needed or allowed as you just sit there for minutes... hours.... months...years until he decides he is tired of you sitting in his jail. Do not think Judge Patton is a bad judge however as he plans to serve free Mad Dog 20/20 to all inmates. Trollfest '09 is a pet-friendly event as well. Feel free to bring your dog with you and do not worry if your pet gets hungry, as employees of the Jackson Zoo will be on hand to provide some of their animals as food when it gets to be feeding time for your little loved one. Relax at the Fox News Tent. Since there are only three blonde reporters in Jackson (being blonde is a requirement for working at Fox News), Megan and Kathryn from WAPT and Wendy from WLBT will be on loan to Fox. To gain admittance to the VIP section, bring either your Republican Party ID card or a Rebel Flag. Bringing both and a torn-up Obama yard sign will entitle you to free drinks served by Megan, Wendy, and Kathryn. Get your tickets now. Since this is an event for trolls, no ID is required. Just bring the hate. Bring the family, Trollfest '09 is for EVERYONE!!! This is definitely a Beaver production. Note: Security provided by INS. If you are wondering what our review criteria are, you can see that and all of our reviews for the last several years using the links above! We've been doing this since 2003 If you are wondering what our review criteria are, you can see that and all of our reviews for the last several years using the links above! Kiss the Book is a book review site to help school librarians at any K-12 level find books for their classes and libraries. Our reviews are written by school library professionals and vetted student reviewers. We live in a world in which an authoritarian state, $-freeloader narcissistic U.S., controls the digital infrastructure, enjoys the dominant position in the world's technology platforms, controls the means of production for critical technologies, and harnesses a new wave of general purpose technologies, like biotech and new energy technologies, to transform the world society, economy and military, to continue feeding U.S.' parasitic needs. However, the really funny thing is that US smears China for exactly what US itself is. Why didn't NATO (US) stop the real genocide and grave Human Rights violations (since 2014) in Ukraine?! And when Russia did, the NATO (US) attacked Russia. And what about the islamofascist Saudi dictator family's atrocities in Yemen - just to mention one from the Saudi pile?! China is now not only outperforming the West technologically but also the capitalist country that has come the furthest in balancing greed for the good of the people. In contrast to communist dictatorships such as the Soviets, Mao's China, North Korea and others, modern China is more democratic than most Western countries. This is because, via a meritocratic system, political career is built from the bottom up, i.e. local politicians must show results in order to move forward, while together they later form a political communication link between Beijing and the people, which means that unlike dictatorships, it is the top that is most sensitive to grassroots dissatisfaction. And this is proven in several Western research projects which unilaterally show a popular support that is sky-high above, for example, the US. Peter Klevius art analysis: When kings possessed antidemocratic total power (as the Saudi islamofascist murderer and terrorist war criminal "king" still today), they could deliberately show off their personhood. However, when kingdom became art - not to say sign post - then a "good" king or queen became someone who like Elizabeth had to shut up and instead be filled with the content of "the eye of the beholder" - just like art, which is always excluded from its artist. My guess is that she could only really trust her husband - 'husband' is Swedish meaning 'hus' (house) and 'band' means ties like in 'bond'. However, her son Charles has an extremely poor record at that - which may be entertaining, especially for republicans. US should be the "enemy" rather than modern China And when will Liz Truss declare the islamofascist "custodians of islam", the Saudi dictator family - who has murdered, tortured, terrorized and committed war crimes - an enemy? With the U.S. dollar as the world's main reserve currency - since 1971 criminally disconnected from its promised gold connection - and with the U.S. controlling global financial and monetary flow U.S. has raised massive debt while printing money - not "out of thin air" but out of the world. The U.S. economy hence rests on financial colonialism and imperialism, i.e. forcibly robbing its value from other countries. And when excess liquidity drives up global inflation, and the Fed raises interest rates and tightens monetary policy, it also widens its interest rate gap with other countries, while attracting international capital to the otherwise empty (and doomed) U.S. dollar. The Brits should blame US, the militant financial $-freeloader (since 1971) - not modern China, the peaceful tech and wealth building rescuer at home and around the world! Bank of England is a helpless pawn against the feds. At the very moment when especially UK but also the rest of the world needs China the most, then dangerous and militant (CIA steered?) Liz Truss declares China an "enemy". Hello! It's US that 2014 ignited the low scale Ukrainian civil war to a fullblown deadly genocide against Russians, and 2022 to a real proxy war via NATO threatening Russia for the ultimate purpose of attacking China. And it is the US' antidemokratic (decoupled from democratic institutions) Federal Reserve that is behind inflation and the fall of the pound and other financial problems outside US. US is the only country in the world that can survive heavy deficit by counterfeiting money. It's US that is the root of high inflation, energy costs, supply shortages etc. (because of modern China). The feds has since 1913 been the factual dictator of US, and when US became bankrupt after a costly Vietnam war and space (incl. military) program it 1971 unscrupulously cheated with the promised dollar connection to gold. US hence started a fullblown robbing of the world with the dollar as the world currency and now culminating in an untenable money printing that together with China's economic and tech rise threatens US criminal $-freeloading. US is a theocracy if measured by how much "in god we trust" is involved in policy and politics, and that the Supreme Court is 100% religious, in stark contrast to the huge number of Atheist people in US. This has also led to US using islamists against China. How come that this US patriot shares Peter Klevius view on US? Why trust Peter Klevius instead of BBC and other trolls? Because 1. Peter Klevius has a much higher IQ (beware of IQ-phobia) than most professors or world leaders 2. Peter Klevius has a long and clean life record when it comes to women, children, crimes, drugs etc. 3. Peter Klevius has no finacial or career ties to anything he writes about 3) Peter Klevius doesn't (sadly) know (20220326) a single Russian or Chinese, and has never visited the countries nor having any other connections 4) Peter Klevius groundbreaking scientific achievements (e.g. about evolution, consciousness, sex segregation, sociology, psychoanalysis etc.) can all be dated to publications, theses (and after 1998 also on the web) or correspondence with professors considered top of their game. Possibly all of them may also qualify as first of its kind - or at the very least certainly not copied from others - as others seem to do with Peter Klevius' works, without even giving him credit. 5. Peter Klevius had the most unprivileged start of life and adulthood - but also the most privileged when it comes to brain power, dopamin-serotonin balance and psychological stability - to an extent that he can't possibly believe in the psychological non sense excuse that "we're all a little mad". US rape of the Maid of Finland Peter Klevius to Boris Johnson: It was only half of the Brits who voted Brexit, and it was only half of the Ukrainians who voted for Ukrexit. However, in Ukraine it ended with civil war instigated by UK's ally $-freeloader rogue state US. You should really have kept your peaceful Huawei instead of being pushed to the militant F35! US has already sunk below the surface but abuses the "West" as its snorkel. What most people don't realize is that by following US you step downwards in future development compared to China. Little Japan already showed the world how to beat the West in technology. China is more than ten times bigger. And when people - sooner or later - realize the difference, the backlash will be harsh. Peter Klevius asks: Which war (post WW2) has NOT been instigated by rogue state $-freeloader US? Korea, Vietnam, Serbia, Iraq, Georgia, Ukraine, Libya, Yemen, Syria etc.. US, which has also used nukes, biological wepons, and torture, tops by far the list of war criminals - and US allies are gravely complicit! We're constantly told "not to incite hatred against muslims" when we're just criticizing sharia islam for its lack of Human Rights. However, when US/CIA not only incites hatred but also weaponizes it, no one in the West seems to care. Why?! How many more should suffer and die because of US senseless behavior when facing a future where its $-freeloading is coming home to roost because of China's success? 20220221: BBC main news hour at 13:00 today for the first time didn't mention Ukraine and Putin at all - while the worst shelling against Russian populated parts of Ukraine significantly escalated, leading to a peak of over 50,000 refugees fleeing to Russia to escape the genocide the $-freeloader (and now desperate because of China's growth and success) US iniitiated, agitated and assisted with weapons (together with its coerced, or just stupid/evil Western puppets) - while continuing spitting on Putin/Russia. World economies (CIA World Factbook 2022): 1 China 2/3 US, EU 4 India 5 Japan 6 Germmany 7 Russia 8 Brazil 9 France 10 UK Dear reader, stop supporting/aiding dangerous rogue state US! Otherwise US $-desperation (i.e. that it will lose its financial stealing hegemony because of China's growth) will lead to it deliberately starting a WW3. Except for human suffering and lower standard, it would be the great reset for $-freeloader US to stand in the ruins and continue being a stealing and ruling world dictator. No other country poses a similar threat. Religion is segregation. Judaism: We are the chosen people! Christianity: Christ will forgive, you sinner! Islam: Everyone is born muslim, you infidel! Human Right is de-segregation, you human! Peter Klevius wonders if you can spot the difference between the People's republic of China, the Congress' republic of US, and the Parliament's/government's "democracy" of UK. Hint, the clue is in the word 'people' and the fact that Chinese are more satisfied with their democracy than US and UK people. Moreover, can you spot the difference between modern China and Stalin's, Mao's, Castro's, Pol Pot's etc. Communist countries? And when it comes to unjust sentencing, spying, surveilling, detaining/torturing/killing people, US is definitely worse than China. Not to mention US global meddling, militarism and dictatorial fiat $-freeloading. A US that can't manufacture its own chips but tries to hinder China from it. And if you aren't on US sponsored IS-Uyghurs side - why spit on China?! And if you aren't on US sponsored IS-Uyghurs side - why spit on China?! Why is US calling anti-islamism "human rights violation"?! And when will US stop dealing with Saudi, NATO (e.g. Turkey) etc. Human Rights violators?!Btw, Peter Klevius suggests buying Chinese property stocks now. After all, there are more rural Chinese than the entire US population, waiting for getting urban after this temporary slow down. Why doesn't Peter Klevius publish his groundbreaking science in Nature? Because he has no peers! Peer review, according to Google, is the evaluation of work by people with similar competence. Peter Klevius healthy mind and total lack of institutional/financial/political/career bias combined with extra high intelligence is unique in science - and it's precisely therefore his best scientific achievments can't be evaluated by peer-biased people but need a blog to be presented because 1) they would never be peer approved in Nature 2) they would never be produced in a "proper" form with painstaking efforts to squeeze in citations/references etc. that contribute nothing. Whom should Peter Klevius quote about EMAH/consciousness out-of SE Asia , or about hetersosexual attraction and sex segregation ? When I made my phd on sex segregated resistance against female football I was asked to quote feminists. I did, and after every quote I had to negate it. Alternatively it would have silenced the women's voices in my in-depth interviews re. thair experience about resistance. After all, it was feminists behind the 1921 ban against women's football in England, and it was the most powerful feminists in Sweden who for a decade opposed girls and women playing football after the Swedish FA had included it. So instead of me testing Nature, you test me - before "anti-feminism", "anti-out-of-Africa" and "anti-religion" are criminalized as "hate speech"! - In anthropology fossils usually get all kinds of nicknames before scientifically "baptized". However, precisely because Homo floresiensis (the definite proof that humans evolved in SE Asia) was the "missing link" that afropologists wanted to find in Africa (how could an allround mover and allround eater ever evolve on a continent?!) they needed to dismiss it at every level incl. continue calling it a "hobbit". And when it comes to EMAH/consciousness it's extremely simple - yet not "simplistic" at all. However, the culprit is what humans are most proud about, i.e. language. By giving something one doesn't comprehend but wants to put in a package, a name, will continue to contain its blurred definition. This is why EMAH only deals with 'now' and the body of past this now lands on. Of course this leads to everything having "consciousness". A brick "remembers" a stain of paint as long as it's there - and with some "therapeutical" investgation in a laboratory perhaps even longer. And a stain of paint on your skin is exactly the same. However, unlike the the brick you've also got a brain that may also be affected by the stain. This could be compared with a hollow brick where the paint has vanished from the outside but submerged so that when cutting the brick it "remembers" it and tells the cutting blade about it. And for more "sophistication" just add millions of differect colors unevenly spread. Our brain is no different from the rest of the body. If Frankenstein with tomorrow's tech had created an adult human body, then that body wouldn't be able to walk or talk etc. because it lacked the body program we've been programmed with by living. The US-led climate hoax against China : $-freeloader US uses its hegemony to cover up the worst global threat, i.e. itself. And targets China which challenges its hegemony. A sustained and coordinated campaign aimed at undermining the credibility of China. China is already way more democratic than US - especially when considering that its infrastructure today is already where it inevitably will be tomorrow in a technologically lagging US. In other words, technology itself puts ever more distinction on our behavior - compare e.g. the shift from unmarked cash to marked card/online payments. And as an extra bonus China has extremely low criminality, better privacy law, and incredible record of improving poverty and welfare both home and abroad compared to US. Just consider how US has painted itself into a corner by the 1971 cheating that disconnected the dollar from US' own means, hence creating a situation with no other return than lowering its standard (i.e. stopping printing dollar that the rest of the world have had to pay for due to US' global financial empire tentacles) or a new war (which US is already brewing). Where US uses CIA meddling, sanctions and militarism, China has risen with honest manufacturing and trade. Peter Klevius: Do note that my klevius.info is an experimental webmuseum made 2003 and deliberately hasn't been touched upon since 2007. 20211103: Why is BBC 4 news so silent about CIA's murder plot and ongoing extradition request against Julian Assange, but instead has plenty of news time to repeatedly tell listeners about some cricket player (muslim?) who 'was allegedly hurt' because of 'verbal abuse'? $-freeloader US is the main driver of dangerous global militarism and state terror. It's also a many times bigger per capita polluter than China. Why is BBC repeating the lie that "China is the biggest polluter" when in fact it's one of the smallest?! And the only reason to not use per capita would be that China, unlike e.g. similar size Africa, has a single government. But even then China shines as the by far best led country. China is the technological future that we all have to walk - not led by the Chinese, but by technology. And because of US's desperation as its dollar-thieving (since 1971) is now threatened by China irresistibly passing them technologically and economically, China actually serves as a protected "soft landing model" for the future AI world (China's new privacy law, tech crackdown etc.) is exactly what most people want), while aggressive U.S. is a threat to peace and prosperity. Google is precisely the state link Chinese companies are accused of being, and US's "alliance" with "colored" and muslims is basically Sinophobia, i.e. the fear of losing control of those whom it has abused - it simply divides the world into good colored/religious and evil Chinese/Atheists (and evil whites who disagree). US-led "anti-communism" is not about communism or any belief that China would attack the rest of the world (as the US has done, after all). Almost everyone understands that today's China has nothing in common with Cuba, the Soviet Union, Pol Pot, and Mao's China. Peter Klevius has collected US Google News China headlines for years and never seen them (algorithms) so extremely anti-China as now. US' (+its puppets) Taiwan lies in perspective: UN Resolution 2758 which was approved on October 25, 1971 states that "The representatives of the Government of the People's Republic of China are the only lawful representatives of China to the United Nations" and "decides to expel forthwith the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek (i.e. Taiwan) from the place which they unlawfully occupy at the United Nations and in all the organizations related to it." Again, U.S.-linked disinformation campaign against China is made up as it goes along. So how much of US' "anti-Communism" rant is actually Sinophobia spized with greed and fear of losing its parasitic world sucking position? Btw, the worst polluters on measure of culpability as weighted annual per capita greenhouse gas pollution taking relative per capita income into account include the Anglosphere countries US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Ireland. Isn't it shameful that these hypocrites point finger at China?! And why is BBC so silent about the volcanic catastrophe on La Palma that not only keeps continuing but also is getting more vicious by the day?! Volcanos can at any moment start an abrupt iceage - and we are anyway already overdue to the next statistical iceage. 20210926 UK became even more a totalitarian right wing militaristic one party state when Labour cut off its left wing. And unlike China, UK has no meritocracy demand on MPs, nor has it any people's democracy even close to that of China (just consider how the Western, US steered, media told you Xi ordered less gaming for kids when in fact it was a broad demand from parent). And China forces its companies to use less energy - and the Sinophobic West of course spits on this environmental effort when some energy companies break the limits and can't deliver. The West, not China, is the biggest emitter of pollution. What's not to like about China?! Best privacy law: least crimes: best high tech: best tech control: best poverty extermination: best manufacturer: best meritocratic democracy happiness: best trust in leadership, applauded by OIC for treatment of muslims, etc. And badly behaving $-freeloader and financial (and militaristic) global dictator U.S. jailed Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou in a foreign country for her normal business in an other foreign country (whose prsidential candidate was murdered by US in a third foreign country) that US didn't happen to like as it didn't like the success of Chinese Huawei. How $-freeloader US has robbed the world since 1971 China hating bigoted and hypocritical West (i.e. US+puppets) - which strangly calls itself "the international community" - worries about Taliban sharia while West's close ally, the islamofascist Saudi dictator family (behind 9/11 and most other islamic terror) has the most medieval form of sharia of any muslim country! Btw, most feminists are sharia muslims - and feminism ticks most fascism boxes . Peter Klevius to his readers: Never forget that fascism emerged in the very midst of what is now in anti-China rhetoric called "the international community" or the West. And the roots of Western fascism has never been treated but live on. Ask yourself, what if China had behaved like the murderous terror rogue state $-freeloader U.S.?! Islamism wants islamic "human rights". Feminism wants women's "human rights". Peter Klevius wants Human Rights. Together with their close ally Saudi Arabia, US and its puppet UK have among the worst Human Rights records - yet they blame China and Russia instead. Fact correcting BBC's lies: Rogue state $-freeloader U.S. is also the by far much worse per capita greenhouse gas polluter than China. Peter Klevius serious questions to you "out of Africa" believer! Ask yourself: How come that the oldest primates came from outside Africa; that the oldest great ape divergence happened outside Africa; that the oldest bi-pedals are from outside Africa; that the only australopithecines with a Homo skull lived as far from Africa you can get; that the oldest truly modern looking skull is from eastern China (and to Chris Stringer - its slightly archaic bun fits a very old age); that the oldest Africans are mongoloid; that the latest genetic mix that shaped the modern human happened in northern Asia and is traced to SE Asia; that the earliest sophisticated art (e.g. a drilled and polished perfect shiny stone bracelet from Siberia, perfect paintings and figurines) and tools (e.g. a perfect sewing needle, flutes etc) are found from Iberia to Sulawesi - but not in Africa so far; that the oldest round skulled Homo sapiens in sub-Saharan Africa is much younger than similar skulls in Eurasia; that we lack ancient enough DNA from Africa to use as evidence (although afropologists happily do), etc. etc.? Peter Klevius theory answers all these questions - and more. Peter Klevius (the only serious anthropologist?!) to afropologists: If you honestly and with simple words would explain the essence of the out-of-Africa myth/hoax to a child s/he wouldn't believe a word of your story: A cold adapted (mongoloid phenotype) population P1 (Homo sapiens), which eats everything and has almost infinite time and skills to move anywhere on land - lives all over a southern "island" (Africa) that has an easily accessible bridge (Sinai) to an other "island" (Eurasia), but somehow cannot get out for hundreds of thousands of years. And when they tried they couldn't survive on places where their primitive relatives (Homo erectus) for 2 million years had thrived all over the places from the tropics to the northern cold. Then the kid would probably ask why you keep telling things that make no sense. And when you answer by saying that this now living population P2 on the warm island - but with features seen in all cold adapted populations P3 far north of the bridge - has the oldest DNA, then the kid would probably ask you if you have ever considered the possibility that those genes were aquired in the cold north far on the other side of the bridge. And your last resort to convince the child concists of some bone fragments that fit in a shoe box together with a decent pair of shoes - and there is no agreement about what they really are - and are the only thing we have between the chimp-like Lucy and the human-like erectus. And what would you answer when the kid then asks how a tiny Lucy-like (poor bipedalism) population A4 could possibly make it out of Africa all the way over the Wallace line to Flores as well as to the Philippines, long before Homo sapiens managed to do so? Peter Klevius suggests you and your kids learn from the best: Peter Klevius theory Speciation needs isolation over time and the best evolutionary lab has been SE Asian archipelago. Like all primates, carnivores, ungulates etc. we also came out of SE Asia with a new brain setup (due to island shrinking and mainland enlargement of this new brain setup), got coldadapted in the north and then spread all over the world while mixing with other Homo sapiens in a pattern easily recognizable. Peter Klevius evolution formula. U.S. main brain asset is East Asians - same with China... East-Asians (mostly Chinese) also took most gold medals in Tokyo Olympics. China won shared gold in the gold-medal race (39 golds - why are some excluding Hong Kong's gold). Peter Klevius suggests taking the knee for Human Rights instead of for certain "races" based on skin color, religion - or sex. The main threat against Taiwan is U.S. starting a war. But China just has to wait until the Taiwanese anyway want to rejoin because of Cnina's fast growing superior R&D, high tech, infrastructure, privacy law, economy etc.. For U.S. it's just the opposite. And West's hollow rant about "liberty" and "party-democracy" echoes back against China's democracy where the Chinese vote for truly merited individuals and against corruption. And Chinese hightech will, after some political delay come near you anyway - while in the meantime being called "assertive threat from CCP". And there's no more "Communism" in China's progress than there is Christianity in U.S' militaristic war mongering, criminal sanctions, $-freeloading, extrajudicial murders, unfair justice, torture, spying on everyone, use of islamists etc.. U.S. "Americans"! Payback time! When Peter Klevius bought his Japan made Citizen Eco Drive chronograph watch it cost ~ $240 in US and ~ $340 in EU. Those ~ $100 is what "American" (i.e. U.S. people - not all Americans) $-freeloaders owe to the rest of the world because of benefitting locally by money printing and pricing the main global reserve currency - but the end is near. $100 trillions - or more?! Apoorva Mandavilli (New York Times): "Someday we will stop talking about the lab leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots. But alas, that day is not yet here." Peter Klevius wonders what made her later delete it?! Fiat-money-world-$-freeloader-US' intention is not at all to clarify anything but instead to keep up hate against China. Would Fiat-money-world-$-freeloader-US and its UK puppet let Chinese inspect Fort Detrick and over 200 US bio-labs all over the world and UK's notorious military research at Porton Down, Salisbury. So while Chinese and "Chinese" looking people now are the most harrassed, BBC gives it no real attention while filling its news with BLM and "worries about islamophobia". Btw, if you poke any s.c. "free speech debate" you'll always find islamic efforts for "blasphemy" laws - and never laws against real blasphemy against basic negative Human Rights of 1948. When should islam pay for 1400 years of genocides? The West has abandoned Human Rights for the sake of sharia islam and is again becoming what it fought against - itself. Communistphobia (an "autoimmune" reaction now boosted by US' collapse and due aggression) led to Fascism, Nazism and WW2. Why do the worst (per capita and consumption) militant polluters and hypocrites (Fiat $-freeloader US, UK, Australia etc.) lie about China. the world's best source for cleaner tech?! Fiat $-freeloader US' influence behind Sinophobic attacks against China, the world's by far largest economy and future of tech, privacy law and Human Rights, and with less assaults, rapes and murders etc. than e.g. US and EU, while the "democratic West" turns sharia theocratic and militant. And why is islamism called "religion" and Confuzianism "propaganda"?! Peter Klevius: Why would religious precepts and Human Rights denial be more worthy of protection than political ones? After all, Human Rights are there to guide legislators and the Chinese trust their politicians much more than Westerners trust theirs. So there's a case to be made against anti-China hate propaganda which harmfully affects Chinese and "Chinese" looking people. The senseless flaw of monotheism: The pompous self-delusion of oneself as "god's" chosen individual while projecting one's "beliefs" on "god's" chosen "community" - which in turn projects a collectivist "belief" on its individuals. Freedom of thought doesn't mean freedom from law - and freedom of religion doesn't mean freedom from Human Rights. The only "ideology" that flawlessly fits negative Human Rights is Atheism (not believeing in any supremacist "god"). Lod/Lydda in Israel should be a warning that convinces anyone about the necessity to abandon racist and sexist monotheist religions and instead support the basic negative Human Rights of 1948 to guide legislation and behavior for a positive human future for all. https://negativehumanrights.blogspot.com/2021/05/negative-human-rights-for-positive.html US declares Turkish murder and islamization of more than a million Armenians a genocide while UK declares China's de-islamization and education of backward Chinese Uyghurs a "genocide". Joe Biden: "China will not become the leading country in the world, the wealthiest country in the world, and the most powerful country in the world on my watch! And history proves US is the dangerous one that wants to dictate and bully the world to keep its $-freeloader hegemony. Xi Jinping: "China will never seek hegemony, no matter how strong it becomes." And he has the longest civilization to back it up with. Peter Klevius warns the Brits about the danger posed by spy master Jeremy Fleming's delusional, dangerous and Sinophobic China "analysis" which, if followed, may lead to stagnation and even US initiated war. It's all about UK either chosing a dangerous puppet status under US decline and stagnation by supported US' populist riding on pre-existing anti-Chinese (and anti-mongoloid racism, compare e.g. footballer Son Heung-Min and BBC lacking to report hate crimes against Chinese etc) sentiments - or simply benefitting from China's success through cooperation. The "danger" of new Chibese surveillance tech becomes ok later on in the West. However, China has now better privacy protection than the West, and China's meritocratic political representation combined with the world's toughest anti-corruption, makes West look bleak in comparison. And unlike UK, China has a real written constituion that gives women the same rights as men without exeption - someting US is still lacking, as are UK's sharia courts. 20210416: US' puppet sidekick UK cowardly runs away when it cannot hide in the master's shadow anymore - leaving Afghanistan's women without protection against islamic evil. Don't respect islam as long as islam doesn't respect Human Rights! And if you don't trust Peter Klevius (2001-) on this, then trust Council of Europe's (2019) basically similar criticism of islam's main worldly (except Gabriel) representative, Saudi based and steered OIC's Human Rights violating sharia declaration CDHRI! Moreover, the most pious muslims seem to be the ones furthest distancing themselves from Human Rights. Peter Klevius to the women of Greenham Common: Aren't the Saudi allied and posturing "in cheat and global nUKes we trust" right wing Sinophobic Brexiters a bigger threat than Iran? BBC is the world's main spreader of anti-Sinoist hate speech and populist Sinophobic propaganda on an industrial scale and therefore guilty of inciting crimes against humanity! First spitting on China and then using China's reaction as an excuse for more spitting. The original (negative) Human Rights (1948) means the individual is not to be imposed an action of another individual, group, government, religion etc. Negative Human Rights hence function as the guidance and guardian against unneccessarily restricting legislation. Sharia islam, i.e. in praxis Saudi based and steered OIC's notorious* sharia declaration, is the very opposite. However, UK and BBC seem to approve of islam's Human Rights violations while calling China's efforts to stifle them "human rights abuse". The original (negative) Human Rights (1948) means the individual is not to be imposed an action of another individual, group, government, religion etc. Negative Human Rights hence function as the guidance and guardian against unneccessarily restricting legislation. Sharia islam, i.e. in praxis Saudi based and steered OIC's notorious* sharia declaration, is the very opposite. However, UK and BBC seem to approve of islam's Human Rights violations while calling China's efforts to stifle them "human rights abuse". * Similarly criticized by Peter Klevius and the Council of Europe. Are both "islamophobes"?! Global China for peace and wealth vs. "global UK" for more hate incitement, lies, threats, nukes, warmonger and miltarism under the shield of the militaristic world dictator and $-freeloader US. Compare this to UN's Resident Coordinator in China, Siddharth Chatterjee, who says "we stand in a unique position to cooperate with the Government of China and apply its successes of lifting hundreds of million people out of poverty globally. China has shown its firm belief in the principles of multilateralism. As I witnessed in Kenya, China's donations of personal protective equipment and other supplies played a critical role during the disruption in global supply chains in March 2020. And every day I am in China, I am inspired by what I see around me, what China has achieved and can achieve as a country." But US/UK do their utmost to stop "assertive Chinese influence". And a Sinophobic parliament shouts "genocide" when China protects women's Human Rights. Without a fair reason UK declares Chinese a "threat" while Brits and other "infidels" are constantly threatened by Human Rights violating islamism. 20210320: The world's master fake news troll farm BBC today still uses conspiracy theorist, warmonger and China hater Pompeo to smear China and spread anti-Sinoism - but nothing about islamist Human Rights violating atrocities (e.g. 50 children beheaded by islamists in Mocambique etc.), !? Btw, UK abducts proportionally many more children than China - and expose them to islamist child abuse. Peter Klevius feels truly ashamed of looking like a Westerner. Btw, how can you excuse US criminal behavior: First benefitting from monopolizing global web tech and then using this monopoly as a weapon against competitors?! $-freeloader US and its UK puppet don't care about the wellbeing of Chinese but want only to damage China's success. Sinophobic UK parliament should just shut up talking about China and democracy. People living legally in their own state EU were robbed of their democracy by UK! And even UK nationals are just subjects, not citizens. BBC, the world's worst war mongering and hate spreading propaganda troll farm, uses Chinese "Guantanamo"* prisoner fotage out of context as "evidence" of how "truthful" BBC is! * US detained muslim terrorist suspects outside US! BBC stereotypes whatever to fit "genocide" in China but doesn't mind US-UK-Australian torture and murder of civilians. Where China stands for tech and wealth development $-freeloader US + UK-Australia stand for spreadinng lies and militarist tensions. And why so silent about UK torture of Assange while declaring an Iranian spy suspect as "innocent" simply because she says so (Iran, like US, doesn't approve of double citizenship). Uncritical democracy with islam inevitably means the death of Human Rights. Peter Klevius probably has some half of muslims on his side in saying so. BBC welcomes Jo Johnson when he now says "China is authoritarian, almost neo-totalitarian regime". Peter Klevius wonders how that fits with a country which leadership is much more approved of than Western ones?! Even an idiot (but not BBC) can see that China's modern Communism has nothing to do with Maoism or Soviet Communism. The only criticism left the West can come up with is name calling. The welfare, progress and out of poverty success for Chinese people has nothing in common with "conventional Communism". On the contrary, it delivers exactly where s.c. "democracies" (one might even argue that China is closer to democracy than the West) often fail. "Democracies" are anyway one party states supported by at the most some half of the population compared to China's qualified majority. So China's "authoritarian" Communist "dictatorship" is as far you can get from the West's beloved Sunni islamist theocracy, steered by the murderous and war crimes committing Saudi dictator family. So why is China declared an enemy while Saudi is an ally! Moreover, China's new privacy law will protect the individual much better than any similar laws in in the West. Why? Because China's leadership thinks the individual's privacy is too important to fiddle with (read the draft). Something the West has given up (to US). And who was it that started smearing, lying, spreading rumours and conspiracy theories, military threats etc. against China in the forst place? Sinophobic racism from the West for the purpose of aiding the US $-freeloader. Peter Klevius: Every muslim is responsible for muslims racism and sexism. So stop shouting "you're not a muslim" to a muslim who believes and knows the Koran by heart! Immigration is ok - if you criminalize anti-Human Rights sharia muslims (and their accompllices)! In cheat we trust: UK decreases aid to Yemen while increasing weapons sale to the muslim Saudi dictator family and spending more on militarism. And BBC is more concerned about Uyghurs than Yemenites. And worries more about Buddhists who don't like to be attacked, raped, murdered etc. than about their radicalized muslim attackers. Lord Palmerston, UK PM who supported the Confederacy in the US civil war, hoping a dissolution of the Union would weaken the US: "The Chinese are uncivilized and the British must attack China to show up their superiority as well as to demonstrate what a civilized nation could do." US is now the worst global threat that only cooperating with China could mitigate - instead of being US' puppets. Peter Klevius: Why is US ordering 600 new nukes - i.e. the double of China's total? Why is China the only NPT state to give an unqualified negative security assurance with its "no first use"? Why isn't UK's parliament more interested in the real genocide in Yemen than the made up "genocide" in Xinjiang?! Why is UK applauding the conviction of Syrian soldiers while UK soldiers go free from similar crimes against humanity. Why isn't the real genocide that muslim Uyghurs have committed against non-muslim Uyghurs talked about?! When Dominic Raab visited Saudi Arabia he failed to raise the question of Saudi Human Rights abuses.However, in UN he lied about "China's industrial scale Human Rights abuses". He deliberately conflated unchecked BBC "reports" by East Turkestan jihadis with China's out of poverty and de-radicalization programs. And of course forgot to say sterilization was offered after three (3) children and with economical and educational incentives for muslim women tied at home by sharia. The militant $-freeloader US' spread of misinfo about China has made Chinese the most hated ethnicity while sharia muslims are the most protected - and US' puppet UK's Dominic Raab keeps spitting Sinophobia while supporting anti-Human Rights islamism. UK, which illegally still colonizes Chagos (but complains about China), in a secret ballot 'arranged' (helped by OIC) a sharia islamist to become leader of the International Criminal Court - i.e. someone who doesn't respect basic Human Rights! Should ICC now change to ICT (In Cheat we Trust)? Peter Klevius (like e.g. most really intelligent Jews is an Atheist, not confined with "faith", politics, career, finance etc.): While the West accepts OIC's Human Rights violating sharia islamism, China defends Human Rights against islamism. And unlike US' constitution, China's constitution is fully aligned with women's rights in the 1948 Human Rights declaration. So to avoid the West turning into a full muslim theocracy (OIC sharia) fractioned in infighting, we better become Sinophils instead of Sinophobes! "Anti-democratic ommunism" is now the only (empty - the only difference is that MPs in China are under harder scrutiny) argument the West still swings. Peter Klevius: SE Asia was the evolutionary laboratory that made human evolution possible. Africa doesn't tick a single box 20210127, BBC (fake) News: "We are memorizing 6 million Jews in Holocaust." Peter Klevius: So why not include the more than 6 million non-Jews?! See BBC's diabolically wild lies about Uighurs! Many Afgan women's dream is to be treated like Uighur women in China. However, the criminal militaristic war mongering rogue state U.S. abandons them and instead declares islamist Uighur terrorists not terrorists anymore and accuses China's emancipation efforts for "genocide" and "human rights violation". However, the criminal militaristic war mongering rogue state U.S. abandons them and instead declares islamist Uighur terrorists not terrorists anymore and accuses China's emancipation efforts for "genocide" and "human rights violation". The biggest scandal in anthropology: Afropologist John Hawks and faith creationists dismiss the hereto most important "missing link" in human evolution. How many have they brainwashed and kept misinformed?! 1990 islam officially and globally (via UN) rejected Human Rights (the Saudi based and steered OIC's sharia declaration witch gravely violates the most basic of Human Rights)! If Atheist Chinese had reproduced like muslims, there'd be more s.c. "Mongoloids" than the whole world population today. BBC is the world's biggest lying and faking propaganda troll - BBC's agenda has absolutely nothing to do with journalistic principles but is a mix of US pressure spiced with the worst of "Britishness" (UK cuts foreign aid from 0.7-0.5% and adds the same money to militarism) meeting in Saudi/OIC islamofascist sharia against basic Human Rights. BBC: UK has to aid Saudi war crimes and genocides cause else Russia and China would do it. UK's future is as a militaristic puppet for US (compare BBC's campaign against Johnson and Corbyn). Peter Klevius to BBC's Sinophobic muslim presenters in their ivory minaret: How many muslim women are detained in UK's sharia camps? US secretary of state, Pompeo declares Islamic State Uighur jihadi not terrorists - so they can attack China and get support from US (as in Syria). It's an irony that China now seems to offer the only defense of those very Human Rights it's accused of not following - while the West supports islamism that violates those Human Rights (compare Saudi based and steered OIC's global sharia declaration against Human Rights). Moreover, apostasy (i.e. leaving islam, which is the worst crime in islam) and the fact that the muslim man determines the faith for the children no matter who is the mother, together have to be added to any estimation of muslim population growth. US' and its puppets' Sinophobia campaign rooted in UK's appalling opium wars against Chinese people Why do Sinophobic BBC and UK parliament call it "deradicalization" in UK, US and Saudi Arabia, but "genocide" in China?! And why wasn't one-child policy against Atheist Han Chinese called "genocide" while Uighur muslims were allowed to have many children?! Btw, e.g. Sweden abducts many more children than China does in Xinjiang - and for extremely questionable reasons (read Peter Klevius' thesis Pathological Symbiosis and ask yourself why Sweden gets away with its Human Rights violations). Answer: It's all about U.S. being a lousy loser and therefore behaving appalingly badly with smear, threats, illegal sanctions, militaristic aggression etc! Btw, China is already number one in economy and most technology - and accelerating compared to US. So you stupid US puppets - take note! Shame on everyone who blinks Saudi based and steered OIC's anti-human rights sharia for all the world's muslims while spitting on China! Should BBC and some politicians be put on a Nurenberg trial after this relentless and demonizing Sinophobia campaign and deliberate lies? US is rottening fast and should therefore go for peace and cooperation! Despite using $-freeloading, sanctions, breaking treaties, murdering officials and politicians in other countries during state visits etc., hindering the use of tech previously used to monopolize US companies globally etc., US now wants to destroy Huawei and other Chinese companies, not for security but because US is inevitably losing the tech race. And no, it isn't the Chinese state support any more than US uses state support for force-feeding Apple, Google etc. and backed up by US state militaristic interventions, spying, interference, threats etc. globally. And China was the first to recognize the danger of Covid-19 - not "delaying" anything" but quite the contrary (see below)! BBC News' deliberately misleading and dangerous anti-China rant 20200706: "China ought to be our enemy! We can't do any business with China because of Hong Kong, and the sterilization of Uyghur muslims which some people (BBC and its cherry picked guests?!) think amounts to genocide". Peter Kleius: That Chinese muslims should follow the same laws as other Chinese, and that China uses similar deradicalization programmes proposed in the West, BBC thinks is "suppression". And volontary sterilization in the West BBC calls "genocide" in China. And Hong Kong's security law is similar to those in the West - and not as bad as US - and are definitely neccessary to keep "one nation" together under the immense pressure from US and its puppet regimes. 2020 4th of July: Peter Klevius wonders when US women will get the same rights as Chinese women - ERA is still lacking from US constitution? Article 2, Chinese constitution: Women shall enjoy equal rights with men in all aspects of political, economic, cultural, social and family life. Peter Klevius also wonders why aggressive and assertive US attacks peaceful China (every schism has US fingerprints) while siding with the war crimes committing murdeous islamofascist Saudi dictator family whose OIC sharia clearly denies eqaulity for women?! China is doing more good to more people than any other country today. Is this the reason?! 20200618: Why is the most cemtral witness, Inge Morelius (later aka Marelius) in the Swedish PM Palme's murder case, deleted by Google's search engine from deleted by Google's search engine from Peter Klevius revealing murder analysis ?! 20200616: When China discovers Covid-19 with a European DNA profile on a cutting board for Norwegian salmon, the BBC thinks it's the communist party. Why is BBC so quiet about Churchill's secret (until 2018) pact with Stalin in 1939 which would have divided Scandinavia between Russia and UK?! And US' NATO puppet Jens Stoltenberg repeats like a parrot his master's voice against China - while a civil war is going on inside NATO between Greece and Turkey. African Pygmy lives matter! Colonized and enslaved for more than 3,500 years by the Eurasian Bantu etc. intruders we now call Africans. It's a senseless irony that "Africans" (Bantus etc. newcomers) who enslaved and mixed with original Africans (Khoisan and especially Pygmies from whom they got their phenotype) and later were enslaved by muslim Arabs and their "African" collaborators now get a brain drop at the West African ports where islam exported slaves. Any old African genes come from Khoisan and Pygmies - and ultimately out of Asia - not Africa. "Out-of-Africa" and BLM are created by white idiots and only feed supremacism. Read "out-of-Africa" more dangerous than the Piltdown hoax Peter Klevius 20200604: What if Floyd had been white or Chinese?! And the officers members of Nation of Islam? And how do we even know that any racism was involved? And what about a fair trial? 20200603: UK's Sinophobic right wing anti-EU migration Brexiters now want to import 3 million Chinese from Hong Kong!? 20200529: In its everyday Sinophobia rant BBC today managed in one sentence to accuse Chinese, China and Xi separately - and even missing the stock smear, i.e. the "communist party". However in a very near future China will develop and export a world leading ecosystem of non-US software, hardware, fintech, social media, telecom infrastructure etc. that everyone will long for. Stubborn and dumb stiff lipped Sinophobes will become Neanderthals in no time. Sadly few politicians understand how powerful Chinese tech development is. Japan did the same but wasn't hampered by Maoist communism and was ten times smaller. High IQ and an Atheist culture they both have in common. The pro-Saudi and anti-China "party-within" UK's governing party is committing long term criminal harm to UK. China is the future and US is rottening with accelerating speed (the desperate sanctions against China tell it all). Only tech cooperation with China will benefit Brits and Americans. So why are UK politicians and BBC so eager to shoot their own PM and the Brits in the foot by being dictated by Pompeo, Trump and the Saudi dictator family, and boosted by a general Sinophobia racism? The "communist" scare mongering has no relevance because in practice China behaves in no way different than US - but is under constant smear and subversion attacks. And China's surveillance has actually developed less fast than that of US. US is a rogue state that murders and surveils in other countries (e.g. murdered top politician in Iran and surveilled Merkel - and you). And who likes ISIS and al-Qaeda etc. Uyghur jihadi terrorists anyway? Pompeo, Erdogan and Saudi steered islamofascists. 20200522: BBC and some right wing MPs call it a "draconian move" when China wants to stop foreign interference and people using Molotov cocktails. Really! So what about in UK?! 20200518: BBC again repeated the anti-China lie about "a silenced doctor" by inviting the former right wing and pro-Saudi (anti-)EU Research Group - now (anti-)China Research Group. How bad a journalist isn't Sarah Montague then when she didn't even try to question it - or is she muffled?! Eye dr. Li Wenliang wrongly spread out it could be SARS. It wasn't and just one hour later - and long before any police etc. had contacted him - he corrected his mistake (see fact check below). $-freeloader US provoking China with war ships while simultaneously "leaking" "classified" rumours. Why?! Its Sinophobia is all about trying to stop China's success as the foremost spreader of wealth and high tech both in China and the world. It's not the leadership but China's success that US can't stand. BBC sides with whoever Sinophobes - and would probably even have used Goebbels against China if he was still around. UK universities etc. are littered with dangerous Saudi (OIC) anti-Human Rights sharia jihad propaganda (incl. supprt of IS Utghur jihadi) - yet China has always been aggressively smeared all the way since UK's opium war attacks on China when it was declared "inferior" and "uncivilized". Today the problem seems to be that China is too superior and too civilized - but thankfully they have a "communist" party to blame, although the leadership has behaved better than most in the West. And when BBC talks about the "West" against China it actually means US spy organization Five Eyes (with the puppet states Australia, UK, Canada and NZ) and whoever other Sinophobes it can find elsewhere - like the Israel supporting and anti-muslim right wing Axel Springer, Europe's largest media (practically a monpoly) which is accused of e.g. censorship and interference in other countries (just like state media BBC). Should China sue BBC and UK (not to mention US) and the far-right, anti-China and anti-muslim UK "think tank" the Jackson Society (with associated Sinophobic MPs and lords) - whose Sinophobia (disguised as "against communism" etc.) complements leftist and pro-sharia jihad muslims BBC which now so eagerly gives it a platform, as well as the closely connected US spy organization Five Eyes which has demonized China for years long before Huawei or Covid-19? The lies about China they have spread are indistinguishable from those of Pompeo and Trump. Is this baseless (compared to US/UK) hate mongering really conducive to the welfare of UK? And when China reacts to this massive Sinophobia campaign then BBC calls it "aggressive Chinese propaganda". US "warns" about China "stealing" vaccine info because US knows that China now produces much better research than US. BBC anti-China fake 20200506: "Hundreds if not thousands of people were likely to have been infected in Wuhan, at a time when Chinese officials said there were only a few dozen cases." Peter Klevius fact check: BBC deliberately conflates real time confirmed knowledge with calculations in retrospect. US has made all the mistakes it accuses China for. Here's one from the top of the iceberg: Whistleblower Dr. Rick Bright, the director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, pressed for urgent access to funding, personnel and clinical specimens, including viruses, which he emphasized were all critically necessary to begin development of lifesaving medicines needed in the likely event that the virus spread outside of SE Asia. He was then cut out of critical meetings for raising early alarm about the virus and ousted from his position. Chinese 5G much more reliable than US' Five Eyes, the world's most dangerous misinfo and conspiracy spreading US spy and smear organization (together with its puppet states UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) which "leaked" a 15-page dossier alleging "probing the possibility" the virus came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. As Peter Klevius has said before, it didn't come from bats to humans but from some other host animal. Fake news and anti-China propaganda videos are making false and unfounded claims about "delays" and "late" human to human transmission report. Again, it was only in retrospect anyone could have known the nature of early cases. Many weren't even connectded to the wet market and many weren't affected at all despite intimate contact. Moreover, the wrong early SARS diagnosis was corrected the very same day but spread by a "whistleblower" eye doctor (see fact check below). And despite being first affected China acted better than US etc. countries. 5eyes equals Nazi Goebbels in propaganda misinfo. Every single accusation so far has built on deliberate distortion of facts. And possble improvements in retrospect would have been exactly the same in even the best of Western countroes. Peter Klevius to Chinese people: I'm not a racist - although I certainly look like one. Origin of Sinophobia: The 19th century Opium Wars were triggered by UK's imposition of the opium trade upon China. Lord Palmerston regarded the Chinese as uncivilized and suggested that the British must attack China to show up their superiority as well as to demonstrate what a "civilized" nation could do. The resulting concession of Hong Kong compromised China's territorial sovereignty. There's also the background to South China Sea. "God", "Allah", or whichever "monotheistic" idol is a pathetic fallacy and "monotheism" is a ridiculous and dangerous self-delusion because your "god" is used to defend the undefendable. There are equally many "gods" as there are individuals - and the collective "god" only functions as cherry picked confirmation of the individual's "god". However, the collective "god" may combine individual evil - never individual good, because that can only be achieved by (negative) Human Rights. After all, as Peter Klevius always has said, the only way of being fully human is to allow others full humanhood (what else could possibly unite all humans) - without religious impositions/exclusions. Pentagon, islam - and China?! Also check out Peter Klevius theory (1992) on "consciousness"/Thalamus - the only one that fits empirical evidence. And don't miss And don't miss Anthropologist Peter Klevius vs. Afropologist John Hawks - and how the British Piltdown hoax moved to Africa . Peter Klevius asks for an independent international inquiry on BBC's racist Sinophobia and its support of sharia islamism - incl. how many victims and suffering it has caused because of its worldwide propaganda influence. In the early 1990's US accused Japan of selling superior cars in US without buying crappy cars from US. And a congress woman warned for tech theft if selling US planes to Japan - but was told that those planes wouldn't even fly without Japanese high tech. At the same time EU was created to build a trade wall against Japanese products. However, Japan is more than ten times smaller than China - and isn't at the hotbed of different coronaviruses in SE Asia. Dear reader, if you think Peter Klevius has a problem with self-assertion you're very wrong. Apart from it being connected to Peter Klevius criticism of citation cartels (see Demand for Resources, 1992:40-44) Peter Klevius main problem is your self-assertion. Is this MP a clown? Sinophobic BBC working hard for a Coup d'etat together with Saudi loving and China hating MPs against PM Boris Johnson. Peter Klevius wonders why Sinophobic state media BBC (with Tom Tugendhat etc.) goes against the state (PM, MI6 etc.) in being so extremely worried about unfounded claims about China while having no problem with the threats posed by the worst of the worst, the islamofascist Saudi dictator family's influence over UK - and BBC?! goes against the state (PM, MI6 etc.) in being so extremely worried about unfounded claims about China while having no problem with the threats posed by the worst of the worst, the islamofascist Saudi dictator family's influence over UK - and BBC?! 20200417: BBC's Sinophobic muslim Razia Iqbal together with Tom Tugendhat arrange a pathetic propaganda theatre of BBC's 22:00 news hour for the most senseless and even childish smearing of China. And how can this clown (just listen to his laughter etc.!) be a leader of UK's foreign affairs committee?! Moreover, Razia Iqbal even uses Trump as an expert! Desperate...! arrange a pathetic propaganda theatre of BBC's 22:00 news hour for the most senseless and even childish smearing of China. And how can this clown (just listen to his laughter etc.!) be a leader of UK's foreign affairs committee?! Moreover, Razia Iqbal even uses Trump as an expert! Desperate... 20200416: State media BBC's Sinophobic Uganda rooted muslim Razia Iqbal lies about Chinese "racism" against Ugandans without telling that it was a local matter that was caused by some Africans linked to a cluster of cases in the Nigerian community in Guangzhou at a time when China had already curbed Covid-19. At least eight people diagnosed with the illness had spent time in the city's Yuexiu district, known as "Little Africa". Five were Nigerian nationals who faced widespread anger - not for being Africans but because of reports that they had broken a mandatory quarantine and been to eight restaurants and other public places instead of staying home. As a result, nearly 2,000 people they came into contact with had to be tested for Covid-19 or undergo quarantine. Guangzhou had confirmed 114 imported coronavirus cases 16 of which were Africans. The rest were returning Chinese nationals. 20200407a.m.: UK's best PM, Boris Johnson, is much shorter (same as Einstein and Klevius dad) than Trump - but also much more intelligent. It's OK to say so when Trump is white - and loves to play on height, right? 20200412: The reason the Chinese government wanted extra control of DNA results was the previous failed report (see below) which wrongly indicated SARS. However, British media (BBC etc.) blatantly lie about it and first accused Shi Zhengli's lab for spreading infected bats, while some weeks later making her a hero and accusing the government. And no, it didn't spread from bats - but possibly from civet cats. Suspected animals are now forbidden from the market. Anthropologist Peter Klevius vs. Afropologist John Hawks - and how the British Piltdown hoax moved to Africa. And why would antelopes evolve in the very opposite direction to humans - at the same time? UK/Matt Hancock (20200402): "We will work (against Covid19) with our friends and allies." Peter Klevius: That excludes the best, i.e. China, which you, on order from US, have declared an "unfriendly enemy"! SINOPHOBIA RACISM. US tries to pull you away from Chinese high tech superiority so US can keep feeding you with its outdated tech and influence - just as it used to do with cars and wars. Your pick: US militarism with Saudi led islamofascism - or highspeed Chinatech towards Chinese democracy and global wealth. China is the very opposite to Cuba - and already, in practise, almost identical to Western governments. Excluding China only prolongs the democratic process - and even speeds up China's high tech inside its 1.4 billion market. Peter Klevius fact check: "COVID-19 has a natural origin and there is no evidence that the virus was made in a laboratory or otherwise engineered" (Nature). China swiftly sequenced and shared the genome worldwide. China's remarkable response on all stages was praised by WHO (but not BBC) and is in line with its superior tech advances (Mao's China would never have made it). There isn't a trace of an alleged (by BBC etc. fakes) Chinese Covid19 reporting "delay" that wouldn't have been bigger in the West. And the reason is that for China good reputation is all that matters - now when it has already won the tech competition. China's defense against West's smear campaign is called "propaganda" - in the West. Dear US, it's time to behave! You lost the tech war to little Japan long ago. Now you've lost it against big China. Get over it. So Peter Klevius advises: Do as Wall Street, shake hands instead of producing unfounded Sinophobic smear propaganda! Covid19 timeline " (Nature). China swiftly sequenced and shared the genome worldwide. China's remarkable response on all stages was praised by WHO (but not BBC) and is in line with its superior tech advances (Mao's China would never have made it). There isn't a trace of an alleged (by BBC etc. fakes) Chinese Covid19 reporting "delay" that wouldn't have been bigger in the West. And the reason is thatfor China good reputation is all that matters - now when it has already won the tech competition. China's defense against West's smear campaign is called "propaganda" - in the West. Dear US, it's time to behave! You lost the tech war to little Japan long ago. Now you've lost it against big China. Get over it. So Peter Klevius advises: Do as Wall Street, shake hands instead of producing unfounded Sinophobic smear propaganda! 17 November 2019: A retrospectively confirmed case. 1 December 2019: The first known patient started experiencing symptoms but had not been to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. No epidemiological link could be found between this case and later cases. 818 December 2019: Seven cases later diagnosed as COVID19 were documented; only two of them were linked with the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. 18-29 December 2019: Bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BAL) that will eventually be used for viral genome sequencing is collected from patients. 25 December 2019: Wuhan Fifth Hospital gastroenterology director Lu Xiaohong reported suspected infection by hospital staff. 26 December 2019: Zhang Jixian identified a CT scan that showed a different pattern from other viral pneumonia. 27 December 2019: She reported to Jianghan district CCDC with four cases. During the following two days, the hospital received three similar cases, who all came from Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. The hospital reported to the provincial and city CDC directly which initiated a field investigation with a retrospective search for pneumonia patients potentially linked to the market. They found additional such patients and on 30 December, health authorities from Hubei Province reported this cluster to CCDC who immediately sent experts to Wuhan to support the investigation. Samples from these patients were obtained for laboratory analyses. 30 December 2019: Wuhan Municipal Health Committee informed WHO, Weibo etc. about an "urgent notice on the treatment of pneumonia of unknown cause". There had been "a successive series of patients with unexplained pneumonia recently." However, a DNA report inaccurately indicated SARS on one patient. Late same day (17:43) ophthalmologist Li Wenliang WeChatted "There were 7 confirmed cases of SARS at Huanan Seafood Market." He included a patient's CT scan. At 18:42, he admitted that it wasn't proven SARS. 31 December 2019: US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were alerted by China of an unexplained "cluster of 27 cases of pneumonia in Wuhan. US worst nightmare is a democratic China - which wouldn't change China but make it even more like one-party "democracies" in the West - because that would mean losing US only argument. US deliberately seeks Sinophobic confrontational aggression against China - which hampers the development and peace of the world. US island puppets against China and EU. US, who used to treat Japan as it now treats China, is now parasitizing on former enemy Japan in an (in vane) effort to keep China high tech down, and on the much tinier UK ally to trouble EU. Something sinister is behind when Sinophobic far right extremist politicians so desperately risk future development in UK with false accusations of "possible risks in the future", skewed presentations, and unfounded demonization of Chinese high tech. And while Klevius is posting this, all in his machine is spied on and sent to US. And why is BBC constantly only hosting Sinophobic guests who also happen to be supporters of the islamofascist Saudi dictator family and happy to allow US spying on you via US companies? The only risk Huawei poses is that the Chinese state gets fed up and makes it illegal to sell Chinese top tech to UK. China is the future of high tech, so stepping off the bus means retardation. Btw, the two main accusations against China could easily be made against US/UK as well. China wants to trade and therefore doesn't want to risk reputation. US doesn't bother about its reputation. And when it comes to clean up muslim "communities" from islamofascist extremists there's really no other difference than in numbers. Moreover, NATO/Turkey uses extremist Uyghurs against civilians in e.g. Idlib - and hypocritically accuse China when these jihadi return. Klevius to women: NATO makes a deal with the Taliban to continue sharia oppression of women, and NATO+IS=true because NATO is the main culprit behind the suffering in Idlib. Without the support from NATO the worst muslim terrorist group would never have survived. Like IS, NATO ally Hayat Tahrir al-Sham wants to create an islamic state. Turkey/NATO backs SNA well knowing that it's together with HTS. I.e. a NATO member state invades its neighbor, sides with terrorists and gets full support from NATO when its soldiers get killed while helping the terrorists. And what about Yemen?! It's truly pathetic that muslims seem more worried about islamofascism than the West! Peter Klevius to climatists: Sinophobia is a threat to the environment, because China has the slowest population growth and is the the least per capita polluter of main economies (see table below) and the main producer of alternative and conventional super high tech! Moreover, China lacks the same proportion of natural resources as e.g. Sweden, Norway etc. (e.g. hydropower) but instead has to deal with the dust smog blowing from the Gobi desert and the extreme cold from the north. And China bears the manufacturing pollution for products other countries then consume and profit on. NATO (Turkey supported by US/UK) is siding with the worst muslim terrorist organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (some 10,000 IS jihadi) against the people of Idlib while BBC News spreads misinfo propaganda against Syria, Russia and Iran - and nothing about the Saudi dictator family. BBC (20200217) wants to stop Chinese tech because China opposes islamofascist Uyghurs. Klevius suggests the world should stop dealing with US/UK because of involvement in war crimes and genoscides against Shia muslims. Why is Wikipedia allowed to spread polemical, tendentious and deliberately misleading info about islam? And not a word about islam's original supremacist enslavement, booty and humiliation ideology?! This misinfo is the most harmful of all! From a true (negative) Human Rights, as well as from a historical perspective, original islam may rather be seen as original fascism. The oldest Koranic texts and the historically verified beginning of islam both emphasize supremacism as the main tenet (blamed/excused on "Allah"). Islam conserves racism, sexism and supremacism as pointed out by true muslims (aka "fundamentalists") reinforced through sharia (e.g. by Saudi based and steered OIC's world sharia which is heavily criticized both by Klevius and the Council of Europe etc.). Islamic (and therefore muslim) supremacism is easily distinguished as it doesn't approve of Human Rights equality. And why does Wikipedia deliberately conflate the history of islam with the fairy tales of believers in islam?! Sinophobia is racism but "islamophobia" is criticism of an ideology. "Islamophobia" shouters are directly responsible for islamic hate crimes based on Koranic texts and hitting children of "infidels". The Saudi-US-UK axis of evil Chinese eyes less intrusive than Five Eyes (US and its puppets) - because China prioritizes trade and reputation while US prioritizes global spying, meddling and military control. The Saudi loving US puppets Duncan Smith, Davis, Paterson, Green, Ellwood and Seely etc. produce baseless "security" arguments for Sinophobic MPs. U.S. flu this season Feb. 2020: 19 million illnesses, 180,000 hospitalizations, and over 10,000 deaths (China has a third less common flu than US). 2019-nCoV, 6 Feb. 2020 (estim. total death rate 0.1-0.2%, i.e. same as common flu): 28,018 cases (not illnesses) and 563 deaths. Did the eye doctors SARS rant on social media delay response in China? It wasn't SARS but much closer to common flu - but without vaccine. Instead of assisting, US/UK/BBC did the utmost to smear China with it! Klevius warning to Finland (and the rest of the world): Don't be useful idiots in US' export of militarism! It will create tension and pull fire on you in a conflict. Four balancing power blocs is safer than one or two. Moreover, China will become the world's first true democracy thanks to AI. Don't let Sinophobia blind you. US is going down unless it starts cooperating instead of trying to rule the world. Non 5G iPhone sells well - in US - where there's no true 5G. BBC's bigoted and hypocritical Pakistan rooted, Saudi raised and Cambridge schooled "muslim" (no veil, no Ramadan fasting, but yes to alcohol etc.) presenter Mishal Husain, like many Saudi/OIC supporters, represents the "security risk" between islam's "core" (OIC sharia) and "periphery" (e.g. "Euro-islam", "cultural islam" etc.). Peter Klevius suggests cooperation instead of unfounded incl. religious) hate! Klevius is ashamed over hateful, racist Western Sinophobia - and support of hateful sharia jihad. BBC's sharia supporting (?) muslim Mishal Husain now eagerly sides with Sinophobic extreme right wing politicians who support Saudi islamofascism but demonize China and Chinese (except if critcical of China). Sinophobes would treat China exactly the same if it copied US "democracy". BBC today (20200129) forgot to tell about China already having isolated the virus for vaccine (and helped Australians to do so). However, BBC repeatedly lied that the death rate is 20%. Common flu and the new corona virus deaths (~2%) are extremely rare outside very vulnerable groups - who don't travel much. BBC, who otherwise don't hesitate to spit on Trump, has no problem using his advisor when it comes to racist Sinophobia against Huawei. US is blackmailing UK so to hinder China's tech success and the "security issue" is actually US itself. Niklas Arnberg, Swedish professor in virology: "Considerably higher mortality than ordinary flu." BBC: "Death toll rises as disease spreads from China." Peter Klevius: Both are faking! Arnberg used overall death numbers although most (all?!) of these deaths have been people who could have died from ordinary flu as well. And do you really think BBC would ever have written similarly about the deadly camel flu from Saudi Arabia?! Why is BBC spending so much more time on a 2019 flu from China than on the much deadlier 2019 camel flu from Saudi Arabia?! Why is BBC only talking about Jewish victims - and why is BBC silent about the fact that most "anti-semites" (i.e. anti-Jews) are muslims? Holocaust: 6 million Jews and 11 million "others" were murdered by the German government for various discriminatory practices due to their ethnicity, Atheism, or LGBT+. Hitler: "All character training must be derived from faith." Himmler: ""We believe in a God Almighty who stands above us; he has created the earth, the Fatherland, and he has sent us the Fuhrer. Any human being who does not believe in God should be considered arrogant, megalomaniacal, and stupid." Klevius (the Atheist "other"): That's a description of me by most Americans and muslims. Btw, why are muslim sex predators (compare Koran and sex slaves) from Pakistan called "Asians"?! And why have they been protected while Klevius has been muffled?! Islam trumps LGBT rights in English schools - and hateful sexist and racist muslim supremacism defending BBC is silent as usual (e.g. about Parkfield Community School 2020). Klevius: Do you really support US/UK/BBC's disgusting racist Sinophobia madness - and their support and use of anti-Human Rights muslim islamism?! Wikipedia: In the Xinjiang riots Turkic speaking Uyghur muslims shouted/posted "kill the Han (Chinese) and Hui (Chinese speaking muslims)"! Why is BBC so silent about Iran Air Flight 655 that was recklessly shot down by US over Iran territory killing 290 incl. 66 children?! Is it the new US puppet empire agenda? Did US aggression also cause the latest plane crash? When BBC announces "the threats of 2020" the murders, terrorism and war crimes committing Saudi dictator family isn't included. As isn't US/UK militaristic meddling and proxy wars in Syria, Yemen, Iraq etc. However, China's peaceful trade and high tech manufacturing is!? Saudi based and steered Human Rights violator OIC is the main legal guidance for the world's sharia muslims. BBC eagerly supports it by neglecting to criticize it while spitting on those who do. OIC's Cairo Declaration on "Human Rights" in Islam (CDHRI) is against freedom of religion - but abuses real Human Rights for the promotion of anti-Human Rights sharia islam. The CDHRI concludes in Articles 24 and 25 that all rights and freedoms mentioned are subject to the Islamic sharia, which is the declaration's sole source. OIC hence keeps the gate open for continued islamofascism in the "muslim world" - and as a convenient tool for meddling in "hostile states". You believer in "islamophobia"! Doesn't it scare you that if Peter Klevius is right about islam but wouldn't say anything, then who would when you're doomed on the market if you do? If Marx had been called a "messenger" then Marxism would have been protected by freedom of religion, and critics called "Marxophobes". All "monotheist" religions make excuses not to fully accept Human Rights equality, but islam is by far the worst - not the least due to its origin and the fact that it's protected, unlike other threats to Human Rights. Whereas totalitarian Marxism used to be the enemy of the West, today US is on the totalitarian islamofascist side using it for Saudi gains against declared "enemies". It's truly a grim irony when BBC protects islamofascist terrorist groups by telling you that the suffering in Syria is due to the Syrian government and Russia. US could stop the muslim terrorist groups at any time - but doesn't because it wants the war and suffering to continue. Peter Klevius fact/fake check: Why does Google (and BBC) lie and fake straight up your face about China ?! When searching for 'world's biggest per capita polluters' China comes up with extra big letters despite being When searching for 'world's biggest per capita polluters' China comes up with extra big letters despite being one of the least polluting of major economies (47th on a reliable polluters list). Moreover, China is not only the world leader for alternative technologies, but its pollution number also includes the biggest production of products exported and consumed all over the world outside China. Source: EDGAR and incl. all human activities leading to climate relevant emissions, except biomass/biofuel combustion (short-cycle carbon). US/UK (NATO) don't accept muslims like Uighur islamists (other than as proxy soldiers) - but demand China to accept them. NATO's Sinophobia is a threat to world peace, environment and prosperity. NATO is all about US monopolizing space for its own militarism and to block China's success? In 1990s Russia was proposed as a member of NATO but is now demonized by US/UK (and BBC) as the "main enemy" together with "the challenge from China" (sic). But NATO members are guilty of offensive wars, occupations, annexations, use of chemical weapons, use of islamist terrorists, foreign interventions, extrajudicial murderings in other countries - and use of similar muslim "re-education" camps as China (why not just criminalize original evil islam?!). NATO (US) threatens the free flow of tech and wealth, and provokes hate and defensive attitudes among Chinese - hence forcing China (world leader in tech) using its financial muscles more for defense (China can't be starved like USSR in 1980s) than environment. Btw, Chinese per capita GDP is 1/3 of US, and total GDP much bigger than US - and faster growing. A fraction of the effort given to demonize "islamophobic" islam criticim, would do wonders to reduce Sinophobic racism against Chinese. And stop using the "Communist threat". China is now a capitalist country similar to Western powers - except technologically much better (and the West copies everything China does in surveillance). Do you really think much would change if China would be fully democratic - except chaos caused by NATO? NATO (US/UK) would be equally Sinophobic. In fact, what is called "democracy" in the West functions quite similarly as the leadership in China. Media propaganda, lying politicians and empty promises combined with silencing the real issues (compare BBC's fake "news") - and therefore a truly democratic vote. Moreover, the only reason capitalist China has a non-democratic leadership for the moment is precisely its justified fear for leaving it vulnerable for what happened in the past when UK and US meddled and attacked with great suffering for the Chinese people. NATO should turn against the real evil, the islamofascist Saudi dictator family. Peter Klevius Christmas greeting to BBC and Tesco: Ever thought about the possibility that muslim islamists don't like making Christmas cards but are encouraged by US/UK/BBC etc. to smear China. "We are foreign prisoners (muslims?) in Shanghai Qingpu prison China. Forced to work against our will (islamic Christophobia?). Please help us and notify human rights (ultimate bigotry if sharia muslims ask for HR) organisation (Saudi based and steered OIC?!)." "British" nationalist hypocrisy: Get back control - and meddle, influence, intervene, spy and control all over the world. More than half of muslims in UK are "islamophobes" (against sharia) - just like Peter Klevius, Council of Europe etc. - but opposite to BBC and many UK politicians (source: A survey of UKs muslim communities by Martyn Frampton, David Goodhart and Khalid Mahmood MP). (source: A survey of UKs muslim communities by Martyn Frampton, David Goodhart and Khalid Mahmood MP). BBC awards a white man who plays an odd sport few are interested in the title of "sports personality of the year 2019". Why?! Because cricket is a "british" colonial sports and also fits BBC's special interest in "asians" - but couldn't find a "british asian" good enough. England voted (for the second time) against Merkels islam import from Turkey. Can islam be rehabilitated from its evil origin and deeds - and can unrehabilitated islam be allowed in public and private spheres? Why is Saudi based and steered OIC's Islamic State of Gambia accusing Aung San Suu Kyi for the consequences of islamofascism OIC's sharia protects - and why isn't the murderous islamofascist war criminal and genocide committing Saudi dictator "prince" accused of anything? And why is BBC's leading muslim extremist propaganda presenter Mishal Husain allowed to "present" an absolutely one-sided pro islamist picture for BBC's compulsory fee paying listeners? Peter Klevius fact/fake check: Why does Google lie and fake straight up your face?! When searching for 'world's biggest per capita polluters' China comes up with extra big letters despite being one of the least polluting of major economies (47th on a reliable polluters list). Moreover, China is not only the world leader for alternative technologies, but its pollution number also includes the biggest production of products exported and consumed all over the world outside China. Source: EDGAR and incl. all human activities leading to climate relevant emissions, except biomass/biofuel combustion (short-cycle carbon). US/UK (NATO) don't accept muslims like Uighur islamists (other than as proxy soldiers) - but demand China to accept them. NATO's Sinophobia is a threat to world peace, environment and prosperity. NATO is all about US monopolizing space for its own militarism and to block China's success? In 1990s Russia was proposed as a member of NATO but is now demonized by US/UK (and BBC) as the "main enemy" together with "the challenge from China" (sic). But NATO members are guilty of offensive wars, occupations, annexations, use of chemical weapons, use of islamist terrorists, foreign interventions, extrajudicial murderings in other countries - and use of similar muslim "re-education" camps as China (why not just criminalize original evil islam?!). NATO (US) threatens the free flow of tech and wealth, and provokes hate and defensive attitudes among Chinese - hence forcing China (world leader in tech) using its financial muscles more for defense (China can't be starved like USSR in 1980s) than environment. Btw, Chinese per capita GDP is 1/3 of US, and total GDP much bigger than US - and faster growing. A fraction of the effort given to demonize "islamophobic" islam criticim, would do wonders to reduce Sinophobic racism against Chinese. And stop using the "Communist threat". China is now a capitalist country similar to Western powers - except technologically much better (and the West copies everything China does in surveillance). Do you really think much would change if China would be fully democratic - except chaos caused by NATO? NATO (US/UK) would be equally Sinophobic. In fact, what is called "democracy" in the West functions quite similarly as the leadership in China. Media propaganda, lying politicians and empty promises combined with silencing the real issues (compare BBC's fake "news") - and therefore a truly democratic vote. Moreover, the only reason capitalist China has a non-democratic leadership for the moment is precisely its justified fear for leaving it vulnerable for what happened in the past when UK and US meddled and attacked with great suffering for the Chinese people. NATO should turn against the real evil, the islamofascist Saudi dictator family. DEMOCRACY DENIED: WARNING TO UK VOTERS ABOUT BBC's HUMANRIGHTSPHOBIA! WHO's RIGHT ON ISLAM - BBC OR THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE? BBC undermines your most basic Human Rights. BBC's "islamophobia" propaganda machine (incl. Sayeeda Warsi) boosts OIC islam while neglecting Council of Europe's sharp ("islamophobic") criticism of OIC's world sharia (Cairo declaration). SO HOW COME THAT BBC IS ALLOWED TO MEDDLE IN THE VOTING PROCESS BY ATTACKING AND SMEARING THOSE CANDIDATES WHO SHARE THE VIEW OF THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE - not to mention the anti-fascist Universal Human Rights declaration of 1948?! And how come that racism against e.g. Polish people in UK is of no interest for BBC while the "problem" of "islamophobia" fills all BBC "news"? Is BBC killing UK democracy and paving the way for islamofascism?BBC undermines your most basic Human Rights. BBC's "islamophobia" propaganda machine (incl. Sayeeda Warsi) boosts OIC islam while neglecting Council of Europe's sharp ("islamophobic") criticism of OIC's world sharia (Cairo declaration). SO HOW COME THAT BBC IS ALLOWED TO MEDDLE IN THE VOTING PROCESS BY ATTACKING AND SMEARING THOSE CANDIDATES WHO SHARE THE VIEW OF THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE - not to mention the anti-fascist Universal Human Rights declaration of 1948?! And how come that racism against e.g. Polish people in UK is of no interest for BBC while the "problem" of "islamophobia" fills all BBC "news"? How Merkel paved the way for Brexit (Erdogan deal) and aided jihad in EU. NATO (US) with former fascist state Germany now sides with islamofascism - especially Erdogan's Ottoman aspirations - and supports Uyghur jihadism in hope of placing NATO (i.e. US) nukes between Russia and China. Peter Klevius wonders whether this ill-directed jihad propaganda will promote peace and safety? The world bully U.S. thinks it owns and rules the world after having colonized it via dollar manipulation, infiltration, spying, meddling, sanctions and the unscrupulous use of militants and militarism. Thanks to the global dollar scam, Americans have been freeloaders on the rest of the world, the biggest per capita polluters and the U.S. by far the biggest threat to world peace via weapons built with money it stole from the world. Said by Peter Klevius who has been an anti-socialist all his life. Btw. the world's industrial revolution didn's start in England but in Sweden already in the late 17th century by inventor Christopher Polhem and capitalist Gabriel Stierncrona. Without Polhem's automation to get the rich Swedish iron ore from the mains, England had no chance to start real industrial production. A nun's gear doesn't sign other women as "whores". However, what about a woman in an islamic "chastity" gear? K.S. Lal (a giant among historians): Mahmud of Ghazni had marched into Hindustan again and again to wage jihad and spread the Muhammadan religion, to lay hold of its wealth, to destroy its temples, to enslave its people, sell them abroad and thereby earn profit, and to add to muslim numbers by converting the captives. Is BBC 100% steered by muslims? Not only can you ever hear anything critical about islam and muslims - but all main channels are also occupied by sharia (OIC) supporting (i.e. against basic Human Rights equality) muslims. Nazir Afzal ('Moral maze', news, culture etc.), Mishal Husain (news, culture etc.), Samira Ahmed (news, culture etc.), Razia Iqbal (news, culture etc.). And they all keep cheating the public about it and instead pointing finger to "dumb and hateful xenophobes". Not a word about e.g. Council of Europe's harsh critcism (see below) of muslims biggest sharia organization, the Saudi based and steered OIC. Foreigners isn't the peoblem - sharia islam is! BBC's muslims and their PC supporters also meddle in UK election by demonizing "islamophobia", i.e. trying to stop critcs of islamofascism. Muslim child/youth fascism induced by an islam interpretation from family and strengthened by PC media, politicians etc. Peter Klevius: Everyone - incl. every muslim who respects Human Rights - ought to make sure to vote for an "islamophobe"! BBC and Sayeeda Warsi will make their utmost to stop critics of islamofascism in the election. Don't be robbed of your democratic right. And of course you know that the only real problem with migration is islamofascism. BBC's "man in Hong Kong" asked street terror leader Joshua Wong if they could possibly escalate violence. And they could. One day later they put a Chinese on fire in a murder attempt. While US/UK aim for militarism and war, China aims for health and wealth. One Atheism and three "monotheisms" The Saudi Aramco and OIC scams Peter Klevius: The Saudi Aramco sale is the biggest ripoff in the world. If there's any future in oil and you don't care about environment, then why buy what's at its peak when Venezuela's PDVSA is bigger and as low it can get?! Are you an "islamophobe" if you don't like islamist Human Rights violations? Islam has (via OIC's sharia declaration) abandoned the most basic anti-fascist Human Rights from 1948. Islam is hence the only religion in doing so - not even the Catholics have needed to replace Human Rights with "Catholic human rights". The seed for world fascism is dormant in Saudi based and steered OIC's world sharia - opposed by ECHR and Peter Klevius, but supported by Sayeeda Warsi. Breakit instead of Brexit because what's the point of leaving one EU while still staying in an other called UK? England voted leave. However, unfortunately BBC demonizes China on behalf of UK's relying on militarist meddling, weapons sales and islamofascist sharia finance. So you see the solution: Cut off sharia etc. islamofascist ties and open up for prospering with China - not the over-selfish game of spying and dying of US. BBC boosts stupid nationalist "Britishness" with peculiar "sports" like cricket and rugby because the world has already "colonized" football and the English language is a global property. Nigel Farage is like BBC against "islamophobia" and pro-Saudi - but Boris Johnson doesn't like letter boxes and was criticized by Theresa May for being critical against the Saudis while serving as her foreign minister. However, unfortunately BBC demonizes China on behalf of UK's relying on militarist meddling, weapons sales and islamofascist sharia finance. So you see the solution: Cut off sharia etc. islamofascist ties and open up for prospering with China - not the over-selfish game of spying and dying of US.BBC boosts stupid nationalist "Britishness" with peculiar "sports" like cricket and rugby because the world has already "colonized" football and the English language is a global property.Nigel Farage is like BBC against "islamophobia" and pro-Saudi - but Boris Johnson doesn't like letter boxes and was criticized by Theresa May for being critical against the Saudis while serving as her foreign minister. China (laws against sharia islamofascism) and EU (Human Rights against sharia islamofascism) are now the only ones protecting basic (negative*) Human Rights. * Religious people and socialists don't like negative Human Rights simply because they prefer collectives ("communities") rather than individuals. That's why the web is full of misinfo about these rights. Read Peter Klevius definition instead if you want a deep view - or listen to Lauren Chen starting from 7:11 if you want it light The Saudi "custodian of islam" has some 1.5 billion "citizens" in the muslim world Ummah nation - and demands the world to bow them no matter what (as long they aren't Shia or so, of course). China, on the other hand, keeps its citizens and laws within its own borders. IS islam IS fascism and islam (even the archbishop agrees). So why is sharia fascism not separated from an "islam" that submits to basic Human Rights? As it stands now Saudi based and steered OIC's sharia (the 1990 Cairo declaration) still stands as the basic Human Rights violation via sharia muslims all over the world. And whereas China actively tries to erase sharia islamofascism, EU keeps promoting import of it while judicially telling us it's not right, yet doing nothing to stop it. Unlike the West, China hasn't aggressively meddled militaristically in other countries around the world, but rather being the world's foremost spreader of new technology and wealth. And whereas the West has eagerly supported Mohammed's totalitarian aims, China has, in practise, implemented in law most of the Human Rights advices that The Council of Europe has directed against OIC. Against this background West's Saudi backing and China smearing is deeply bigoted and hypocritical. John le Carre: I'm depressed and ashamed of British nationalism. Nationalism needs enemies but today we really have no identifiable enemies except among ourselves. North Atlantic (sic) Treaty Organization invades a country in Mideast and attacks (with chemical weapons) a people without a country. UK's Brexit business model: Sharia finance, weapons sale and militaristic meddling?UK Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (sic) and Global Neo-Imperialist and Militarist Meddling, Jeremy Hunt, 15 Oct. 2019: It's wrong to accuse Donald Trump - it's Americans isolationism because American taxpayers don't want to pay between 1/2 and 2/3 of the defense of Europe. And Turkey is very skilled at finding wedges and gaps between allies. UK should be EU's bridge to US. Peter Klevius: No, EU should take care of its own defense - against whom? The Saudi dictator family who is the world's no 1 spender on weapons and islamic terror incitement and who hates EU's anti-sharia legislation? And UK taxpayers should not have to pay more for dangerous militarism. Militaristic meddling is a bad and dangerous business idea. Read K.S. Lal (free online) on islam's evil spread! A Google (i.e. U.S. web monopoly) search (20191006) reports 'islamists Hong Kong' "missing". Really! No islamists in Hong Kong? Peter Klevius also wonders if EU citizens in UK are UKongers and can peacefully demand the same rights as Joshua Wong violently demands (and eagerly broadcasted by BBC) for Hong Kongers? Really! No islamists in Hong Kong? Peter Klevius also wonders if EU citizens in UK are UKongers and can peacefully demand the same rights as Joshua Wong violently demands (and eagerly broadcasted by BBC) for Hong Kongers? Peter Klevius cong r atulates Savid Javid for abandoning the islamofascist "islamophobia" smear. BBC s bigoted hypocrite Mishal Husain and others ought to follow! BBC's Mark Mardell couldn't get a visa to China because of his extreme and hateful Sinophobia - but that didn't stop him/BBC from producing a fake anti-China program series while pretending to be there. Is Sinophobia really better than cooperation? Are EU citizens in UK included in Tom Tugenhadt's "British people"? Sinophobe Tom Tugendhat, chair of UK's Foreign Affairs Committee (who has studied islam and Arabic in Mideast) suggests that English speaking universities should consider banning Chinese students because "they might be used as leverage like Huawei". Peter Klevius wonders if one could be any more racist than this, and if he doesn't see any islamofascist sharia supremacist "leverage" at all? Btw, there are more than 50,000 Chinese muslims in Hong Kong. Peter Klevius wonders how many of them are "radical" ones and participate in BBC's lengthy anti-China propaganda "news" - while the world doesn't suffer from Chinese but from muslim violence and Human Rights violations? US/UK destroyed the lives of millions of Chinese during some hundred years of evil militaristic meddling. BBC is now busy smearing China all the time while supporting Saudi islamofascism and violent Hong Kong demonstrators - but neglecting the mass of peaceful pro-China demonstrators. BBC also "worries" about Chinese "surveillance state" while the truth is China's technological superiority. US is much more insidious in its surveillance policies but lacks the techno - can't even produce a working 5G so far. US/UK follow exactly China but utilize the meantime to smear it. And who is really behind the Hong Kong riots? Someone who can't take China's success? But the Syria tactics won't work. US (and its UK puppet) wants to be able to meddle militarily near China - therefore its interest in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, Tibet, Myanmar, Uyghur extremist muslims etc. As Greta Thunberg is allegedly reported to the Swedish social authorities, Peter Klevius suggests that her parents read his thesis Pathological Symbiosis in LVU, Relevance, and Sex Segregated Emergence. Keeping in mind that Peter Klevius daughter was only 15 when she entered university and at 16 made her graduate paper about women in ancient times, it shouldn't be considered too sensitive for Greta either. Also read the attached email correspondence which clearly shows how democracy is manipulated. And why not consider Keeping in mind that Peter Klevius daughter was only 15 when she entered university and at 16 made her graduate paper about women in ancient times, it shouldn't be considered too sensitive for Greta either. Also read the attached email correspondence which clearly shows how democracy is manipulated. And why not consider Angels of Antichrist, the Social State vs the People (P. Klevius 1996) . And last but not least, Peter Klevius 1981/1992 Demand for Resources (original titel Resursbegar) Peter Klevius and the Council of Europe share exactly the same "islamophobia". Council of Europe. Resolution 2253 (2019), Sharia, Saudi based and steered OIC's Cairo Declaration and the European Convention on Human Rights: Human Rights protect the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion as enshrined in Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The right to manifest ones religion, however, is a qualified right whose exercise, under Article 17 of the Convention, may not aim at the destruction of other Convention rights or freedoms. Human Rights protect the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion as enshrined in Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights. People in UK-land (especially women) will loose their Human Rights after Brexit - while sharia prevails in UK, and UK citizens in EU are protected by the European Court of Human Rights. Brexit was meant to protect UK from muslim invasion via Turkey's proposed visa free deal with Merkel. Even the possibility of temporary membership in ECHR (in case of a deal) isn't enough - especially considering UK will be out of reach of the European Court of Justice. US loosing the tech war - and starting a real one? A muslim wants to criminalize Peter Klevius islamophobia. Really! West's indulgence of islamofascism (sharia) has made its boasting against China about "democratic values" empty. The risk of you being stabbed, raped etc. by a hateful jihadi is created by your political leaders, BBC etc. - who also have arranged so it's not even called a hate crime. Peter Klevius stands for these "stops" and due huge implications - all shame on him if you can prove him wrong (click links if you need to educate yourself before saying something stupid): Stop using Stop using the misleading 'gender' instead of sex (sociology)! Stop islam's abuse of Human Rights (jurisprudence)! Stop saying humans came "out of Africa" (anthropology)! Stop talking about "consciousness" when you don't know what you're talking about (philosophy/ai). Peter Klevius: BBC supports the islamofascist Saudi dictator family's strategic use of supremacist islam which has spred muslim hate all over the world's streets, institutions etc. (and usually not correctly, if at all, reported by BBC which instead doesn't hesitate to give long coverage of "alternative news" that better suits its propaganda) - while muslim terrorist organizations keep it within muslim territories. So if true Salafists became the "gurdians of islam's holy places" then that would mean less muslim terror elsewhere. And less to cover up for BBC. How big a contributor to the suffering of islamic supremacist hate crimes has BBC's fake (and lack of) info been? Will we in the future see BBC in an international court accused of crimes against humanity? As it stands now the spill over effect of BBC's cynical support of proxy evil is stained in blood and rape etc. over innocent p South Korea will start another round of nationwide discount events later this month in a bid to boost domestic consumption around the Lunar New Year's holiday, the finance ministry said Tuesday. The so-called Korea Grand Sale will begin on Jan. 25 and run through Feb. 7 across the nation before the holiday, with the participation of 300 local traditional markets, according to the Ministry of Strategy and Finance. For foreign tourists, the event will take place from Feb. 1 in duty-free shops and other retail stores to celebrate the start of the Visit Korea Year 2016-2018. The Lunar New Year, which shifts year to year, falls on Feb. 8 this year, with a five-day break. The ministry said the sales event is aimed at maintaining an uptrend in consumption that was seen in the third quarter of last year. Last year, the country hosted such events three times, including the K-Sale Day and Korea Black Friday, and saw local retailers post sharp sales increases, along with the government's excise tax cut programs. The rise in sales helped push up the country growth to a five-year high of 1.2 percent in the third quarter, successfully escaping the sluggish mode stemming from the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome outbreak. "We've come up with plans to keep the pace of private consumption alive and revitalize domestic demand as a whole," the finance ministry said in a release. (Yonhap) ORLAND Two men arrested during a meth bust Tuesday night in Orland have admitted to visiting a common nuisance. Ryan J. Sells, 21, of Columbia City, and Derrick Wilson, 37, of Churubusco, pleaded guilty to the Class B misdemeanor charge during arraignment on Wednesday afternoon before Magistrate Randy Coffey. They admitted they were at a trailer in Orland where meth was being used. Orland Police Department wrapped up an investigation Tuesday and issued a search warrant at the home of Kirstin D. Callahan, 25, in the 9500 block of West Kimball Street, said Orland Town Marshal Brooke Norton. Indiana State Police assisted in the warrant service, which resulted in the arrest of Callahan; Chace M. Gamble, 18, of Kendallville; Sells and Wilson. Callahan and Gamble are each charged with Level 5 felony dealing in methamphetamine for allegedly manufacturing meth inside of the trailer. They also face Level 6 felony maintaining a common nuisance and Class C misdemeanor possession of paraphernalia. Orland Police were assisted by the Indiana State Police Clandestine Lab Team, Indiana State Police Detective and Orland Fire Department at the scene. Wednesday, Coffey sentenced Sells to 90 days and fined him $50. Due to his prior criminal history, Wilson was sentenced to 180 days and fined $50. Both were released from Steuben County Jail on Wednesday and given an opportunity to qualify for community corrections programs. If they are unable to do that, they must report to Steuben County Jail on March 11. Callahan was appointed public defender James Burns, and is scheduled for a pretrial conference in Steuben Circuit Court on Feb. 8. Gambles pretrial conference is Feb. 1 in Circuit Court. He will be representend by public defender Hugh Taylor. Gamble and Callahan are being held in Steuben County Jail pending $8,000 bail. FORT WAYNE Great Lakes Capital (GLC) will develop the residential component of the major development project in downtown Fort Wayne. A development agreement between the City of Fort Wayne and GLC was signed on Wednesday, Jan. 13 and the financial commitments for GLCs private investment are in place for the residential development to be known as Skyline Tower. GLC is a real estate private equity firm with offices in Fort Wayne and South Bend. GLC will invest $40 million to construct 124 apartments, as well as retail and office space totaling 170,000 square feet. Retail will be located on the first floor, office space on the second floor, and 10 floors of apartment units. Im encouraged by the momentum we continue to see in our downtown, Fort Wayne Mayor Tom Henry said. GLC will be a great partner, and we appreciate their commitment to Fort Wayne as we work together to move our community forward in the right direction. Providing additional housing and retail opportunities in the heart of our City strengthens our position as a destination place for individuals, families, and businesses. Weve done our due diligence to ensure the residential piece is reflective of the tremendous investments taking place in our downtown and community as a whole. Both companies, Great Lakes Capital and Bradley Company, have committed to relocating their offices into Skyline Tower, which guarantees nearly 70 professionals will occupy a substantial portion of the newly created office space. GLC will be utilizing Community Revitalization Enhancement Credits from the Indiana Economic Development Corporation and New Markets Tax Credits to assist with the financing of the project. Collectively, GLC and Bradley Company collaborate to build and manage long term, Brad Toothaker, president and CEO of Bradley Company and Managing Partner of GLC said. This project is the quintessential model of a public-private partnership with businesses and the community coming together to create a project that truly moves the needle for the region as it elevates the landscape of Fort Waynes downtown. The citys investment toward Skyline Tower will be a $4 million bond and will require approval by the Fort Wayne Redevelopment Commission and Fort Wayne City Council. A timeline for those approvals will be finalized soon. In addition, the Northeast Indiana Regional Development Authority is expected to consider Skyline Tower as part of the Regional Cities initiative. Following the necessary approvals that are needed, construction could begin in late summer-early fall. Its anticipated the retail and office spaces will be completed in late summer-early fall 2017, with completion of the residential portion in late 2017-early 2018. The announcement continues the progress being made at the downtown development site. Construction of the Skyline Garage is substantially complete. The west side of the garage will open Feb. 1 for monthly parkers from nearby properties who were moved to other parking areas due to construction of the garage and Ash Skyline Plaza. Also beginning Feb. 1, the garage will be open to customers visiting the new Lake City Bank. The City is in the final stages of determining the timeline for when the garage will be open to the general public. It will likely be in the next 1-2 months. Portions of the east side of the garage remain a construction area. Ash Skyline Plaza, the national corporate headquarters for Ash Brokerage, is on track for completion in May. Ash Brokerage is the largest independently owned brokerage agency in the United States serving insurance agents, financial advisors, registered representatives and career agents nationwide. Ashs investment of up to $29 million includes 95,000 square feet of office space. In December 2013, Lake City Bank agreed to lease commercial space as part of the retail portion of Ash Skyline Plaza. Last year, DeBrand Fine Chocolates announced it will have retail space at Ash Skyline Plaza, as will a new restaurant, The Golden. The Skyline Garage has 1,100 parking spaces. The garage will meet current needs, anticipated growth and future development in the downtown area. The citys investment of $39 million for the Skyline Garage component includes the construction of the parking garage, land acquisition, site preparation, streetscape improvements, utility upgrades, as well as other project enhancements. Funding for the citys investment in the Skyline Garage component came from a combination of tax increment financing (TIF) funds through the Fort Wayne Redevelopment Commission, Legacy funds, and support from the Allen County-Fort Wayne Capital Improvement Board (CIB). No property taxes were used to fund the Skyline Garage. Kendallville, IN (46755) Today Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. Low near 30F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. Low near 30F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. After the war that was waged during its controversial development process, you'd think that the Chinatown Walmart would have emerged, battle-scarred but strong, asserting its dominance over the neighborhood for decades after a hard-fought battle for existence. Turns out, the fight leading up to the opening of Chinatown's Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market went on for almost as long as the actual tenure of the store. After only two years and change, the controversial store closed its doors on January 17 amid worldwide cutbacks, reports KPCC. It's truly a sad day for big box stores everywhere. But in this time of loss, we can at least revisit the nuthouse shitshow that was the Chinatown Walmart Wars. It all started back in 2012 when it was announced that a 33,000-square-foot Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market would be coming to the bottom floor of the Grand Plaza senior housing complex, and neighbors went berserk. Walmart was invading LA, people exclaimed. Sure, Panorama City had already succumbed to the menace, but no one could believe a neighborhood so close to City Hall as Chinatown would be susceptible to the Walmart plague. The Los Angeles City Council tried to stop it, proposing a ban on all chain stores in Chinatown, only to see Walmart swoop in and obtain a building permit just one day before councilmembers unanimously voted on the issue. The proposed ban had the City Planning Commission miffed, saying the urgency was unfounded and Chinatown should be open to a "diversity of uses." Meanwhile, neighborhood activists filed an appeal of Walmart's building permits, saying they were rushed through to squeak by the City Council's chain store ban. Labor unions tried to get a temporary restraining order to stop construction. There was even an AFL-CIO march down Cesar Chavez Avenue to protest the store's opening. Finally, a group of neighbors straight up sued the city, saying city planners never sought out the public's opinion on the new store. Walmart was getting it from all sides, but as they often do, they won in the end. The appeal was denied, as was the restraining order. Lawsuits went nowhere, and the neighborhood was ready to embrace low, low prices. And they did, for two short years. The store opened in the summer of 2013, and the skies went black as coal. To its credit, the Walmart did employ some people, albeit for low wages, and there was some increased foot traffic in the neighborhood. Satit Thuvamontolrat, owner of the liquor store next door, tells KPCC that Walmart's opening boosted alcohol sales some 10 to 20 percent. No word on how much of that spike can be attributed to neighborhood activists drowning their sorrows in defeat. Wal-Mart leaves behind LA's Chinatown - and mixed emotions [KPCC] Chinatown Walmart Wars [Curbed LA] WASHINGTON (AP) The Supreme Court stepped into a boiling political dispute over immigration Tuesday, setting up a likely decision in the middle of a presidential campaign marked by harsh rhetoric about immigrants. The justices agreed to review whether President Barack Obama, acting without congressional approval, has the power to shield from deportation up to 5 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally and make them eligible to work without fear of being rounded up. Underscoring the political dimension, the case will be argued in April and decided by late June, about a month before both political parties gather for their nominating conventions. If Obama prevails against opponents led by Republican governors, there would be roughly seven months left in his presidency to implement plans that would affect the parents of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, as well as some people who arrived in the United States before they turned 16. We are confident that the policies will be upheld as lawful, White House spokeswoman Brandi Hoffine said after the courts announcement Tuesday. At issue is the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans program, which Obama said in late 2014 would allow people who have been in the United States more than five years and who have children who are in the country legally to come out of the shadows and get right with the law. He also announced the expansion of a program that affects people who came here illegally as children. That earlier program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, is not being challenged and has resulted in more than 720,000 young immigrants being granted permission to live and work in the United States. When he announced the measures 14 months ago, Obama said he was acting under his own authority because Congress had failed to overhaul the immigration system. The Senate did pass legislation on a bipartisan vote, but House Republicans refused to put the matter to a vote. Texas quickly led a legal challenge to Obamas program on behalf of 26 states and has won every round in court so far. Most recently, in November, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the states, prompting the appeal to the Supreme Court. Texas actually asked the Supreme Court not to hear the case challenging those rulings, but state Attorney General Ken Paxton said he was pleased the justices will examine the presidents constitutional power to intercede without congressional approval. In deciding to hear this case, the Supreme Court recognizes the importance of the separation of powers, Paxton said. The U.S. solicitor general, Donald Verrilli Jr., said in his Supreme Court filing that allowing the lower court rulings to stand would force millions of people to continue to work off the books, without the option of lawful employment to provide for their families. Ever been in a boardroom with a group of people trying to make a decision, and somebody says, "Hey, it's not rocket science"? Adam Steltzner would know for sure. Steltzner is an engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he spent a decade working as a project leader on the Mars Curiosity Rover for NASA. He also got his Ph.D. in engineering mechanics from the UW-Madison. His new book, "The Right Side of Crazy," is both a memoir of his experiences and a guidebook of sorts for creative thinkers across all disciplines -- how to make decisions based on curiosity rather than fear, how to lead teams where ideas are respected but honestly evaluated, and when to fight for your ideas and when to yield to the thinking of others. Steltzner writes in particular about how being a teaching assistant in Madison taught him the value of embracing doubt, rather than rushing to certaintly. An excerpt from the book, which is now in stores, is below: (The University of WisconsinMadison) admitted Ruthann (Steltzner's first wife) to their finance program and gave her money, and their engineering mechanics department admitted me. I remained an employee of JPL, working there summers and holidays, and got a job at Wisconsin as a teaching assistant, which there meant that you werent just some sort of proctor but you actually taught the courses. We moved to Wisconsin in the fall of 1994, and for the next five years, we jockeyed back and forth between Madison and Pasadena. I was surprised to discover that I loved teaching. It was terrific fun to engage with thirty-odd students all thinking about the same conceptsome nailing it and some getting it wrongand trying to identify and communicate the essential lesson in the material. It was through teaching that I first learned how to hold on to the doubt with others, not just alone. Take a typical professor-student interaction. One day during my office hours, a sharp student lets call him Tim walks in with an assignment that is neat, tidy, well written, looks right, but is somehow wrong. The assignment: the classic bowling ball problem. A popular exercise in undergraduate physics classes, this involves asking questions about the dynamic behavior of a bowling ball as it travels down the lane toward the pins. Everyone who has ever bowled knows that the ball starts out sliding but eventually starts to roll. This behavior seems frighteningly complex, and that makes it a great and challenging problem for college students. Tim comes in with this problem, and hes solved it. At least he has the correct answer, but he hasnt used the proper approach, the classic method, which I recommended. So now hes come to my office to tell me that Im wrong. To solve the bowling ball problem, you need to utilize Newtons second law of motion in two dimensions: the kinematics of the eventually rolling ball and the conditions of the ball when initially released. For undergraduates, that is a lot to untangle. They often neglect at least one of the puzzle pieces. This is the case with Tim. Hes very bright, headstrong, and certain of his correctness. After all, his solution matches the answer in the back of the book. The easy response is to tell him hes wrong, hand him the correct working of the problem, and push him out the door. That technique minimizes my time in the presence of both my doubt (am I really correct?) and his (does this guy Adam really know what hes talking about?). The other approach is to wade into Tims work, line by line, term by term, not knowing if I will discover what went amiss; not knowing if I can prove to Tim that I know my stuff; worrying, maybe, at some deep level, that I dont. True learning lies in the latter approach: to embrace the confusing mess of tangled thought and tangled algebra and let curiosity loose to hunt for what is right and true. This is not a process without anxiety. It requires that both parties sit side by side with doubt and hold on to it no matter what the ego demands. In the end, it was a delightful case of two wrongs within his work making a right, or an apparent right. After wading through the problem together, Tim and I agreed on the primacy of Newtons second law and the importance of going slow in our work. Many years later, Tim has a very successful career. Holding on to the doubt (HOTTD) is a big deal, and it is not always easy, but it has to happen, and it has to happen at many levels. Not only does HOTTD make you a better thinker yourself; it is indispensable in making a good thinking team. Developing something new and novel is a nonlinear process. Being part of that process, as a team member or a leader, can be anxiety provoking, because we dont know where it is going and we dont know if we are really going to find a solution that works or meets our needs. The temptation to short-circuit the team process is strong. It is only by HOTTD that we can allow ourselves to fully understand the problem we are solving and fully develop the solution. In my current job, were way beyond the bowling ball problem. I dont have answers beforehand, and I dont know the solution method that will work. But I still use the same process I developed back in Wisconsin whenever Im leading a team through an engineering challenge. Ive learned to be comfortable sitting beside doubt, and that Ive got to help the team feel that way, too. Together, thus far in my life, we always find a solution. Reprinted from The Right Kind of Crazy: A True Story of Teamwork, Leadership, and High-Stakes Innovation with permission of Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright Adam Steltzner, 2016. On Monday, I began my day at 7 a.m. with a small group gathered for coffee fellowship in the home of a La Crescent community member. A variety of freshly baked breads were shared as participants shared stories of the various ways that the light of Gods love had blessed them during the past week. The stories brought both laughter and tears, and Gods love was clearly present in both the joy and the sorrow. Since Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I spent the rest of my morning reflecting on Dr. Kings life and his prophetic ministry. I enjoyed listening (over and over again) to Joan Baezs moving rendition on youtube of Let Us Break Bread Together/Freedom. Each time I listened, the word together rang in my ears on every verse. That evening, I ended my day gathering with the greater La Crosse community at the Viterbo University Fine Arts Center to celebrate the life and ministry of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. What a gift it is to gather in community to celebrate the amazing ways God is made visible when the love of Christ is shared by people of all races, nationalities and socio-economic backgrounds. In this week of prayer for Christian unity (Jan. 18-25), I offer prayers of thanksgiving for the many communities of faith that gather in homes, churches, restaurants and even taverns to hear Gods word and to share with one another where God is at work in their lives. Each gathering, large or small, holds the same loving promise of Jesus For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them. (Matthew 18:20) It is my prayer that the grace, mercy and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ will continue to strengthen each community of faith so that the light of Gods love for all people will shine brightly in our world today. Let Us Break Bread Together African American Spiritual Let us break bread together on our knees. Let us break bread together on our knees. When I fall on my knees with my face to the rising sun, O Lord, have mercy on me. Let us drink wine together on our knees. Let us drink wine together on our knees. When I fall on my knees with my face to the rising sun, O Lord, have mercy on me. Let us praise God together on our knees. Let us praise God together on our knees. When I fall on my knees with my face to the rising sun, O Lord, have mercy on me. A proposed bill that the Ho-Chunk Nation says would endanger sacred burial sites likely wont be up for a vote in this state legislative session following public input and a rally attended by a thousand people at the state Capitol last week. The bill would have required the state historical society to allow property owners to excavate in order to determine whether human remains are present in effigy mounds on their land. The legislation, from Republican state Sen. Chris Kapenga and Rep. Robert Brooks, drew ire from Native American and non-native people who organized a rally to voice opposition last week Tuesday. Overall, everyone said that the rally was well put together, and I give credit to the office staff and the (Nation) legislature for all the behind-the-scenes work because it did take a lot. Tribes from all over the state the country were in attendance, and were happy, despite the cold, freezing weather, that everyone was out there in full force and everyone was loud, said Collin Price, the Ho-Chunk Nations public relations officer. The feeling of support was something that was really cool to see. You had people travel from all over just to be there and show their support and let us know that this piece of legislation was going to impact them as well in the future. Ho-Chunk Nation members are descendants of the original mound builders who started the construction of the sites thousands of years ago. Theres an estimated 4,000 of fewer mounds remaining in the state, including a few on private land in Jackson County, of the 20,000 that were present when the first Europeans arrived. Ho-Chunk Nation officials and members already had attended a town hall meeting hosted by Kapenga where they expressed their opposition to the bill, and representatives also met with legislators in addition to holding the rally, which included an honor drum song and circled the Capitol building in Madison. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said last week Tuesday its unlikely lawmakers will vote on the bill in this session. I think it requires an awful lot more study, an awful lot more conversation, he said. I dont intend to move on the bill. Price said he believes the rally and the amount of public input played a role in turning back the bill for now. I think the rally did play a role in that in letting lawmakers know that were there and this is something we werent going to let slide, he said. I think on the other side of that, the rally was just one of the ways to communicate to the lawmakers and the public. It was also getting in front of these state legislators and informing them Overall, were very happy that Speaker Vos is not going to move it through in this session. We kind of anticipate this will be something well have to address in the future. Its going to take ongoing education from the Nation and information the public. Jessie Opoien of The Capital Times contributed to this story. Melrose-Mindoro schools went into lockdown all day Wednesday last week after a report of a man with a gun in Melrose. The report of the weapon turned out to be unfounded, but three people eventually were arrested in connection with what the sheriffs department says was a drug-related incident. The district was notified about 10 a.m. that a man may be in Melrose with a gun, prompting officials to send all three of its schools into lockdown procedures. It was only the second time in Melrose-Mindoros history that schools went into lockdown, Superintendent Del DeBerg said. Safety is No. 1, and if were ever going to be put in a decision like that, were going to err on the side of being safe we have to, he said. Were going to get everyone safe and then wait for updates and make decisions based on how the incident unfolds. We do have a plan, we practice that plan and then we adjust as we go. I think we did a good job on Wednesday. Students were held in classrooms until 11 a.m., when authorities believed the person in question was contained at a residence, but students remained on lockdown and were escorted to and from bathrooms and given lunch. The district was informed just before 12:30 p.m. that the issue was contained, but officials opted to keep all buildings locked and students and staff inside all day as a precautionary measure. Authorities received a report of a home invasion at 207 Court St. in the village of Melrose just before 10 a.m., involving a man possibly armed with a handgun. Jackson County Sheriffs deputies met with the callers at Black River Country Bank where they fled to call 911. However, an investigation and entry into the home by the Jackson County Emergency Response team revealed no home invasion occurred, all people involved were acquaintances and it was a drug-related issue, according to a statement from the sheriffs department. No additional details of the incident were available, but Aleasha Herth and Skyler Farr, both 19 and of Melrose, were taken into custody on numerous charges. David L. Nelson, 25, of Humbird, also was taken into custody. Mel-Min sent a letter home with all students informing families detailing the districts decision. The letter said the district considered sending out an emergency messenger announcement but opted against it because students were safe and notification may have caused more disruption and confusion. Needless to say, this was not a normal school day. I try to remind people that safety is our first and foremost responsibility, DeBerg wrote in the letter. These kids mean everything to us and they are returning home to you safely tonight. Herth and Farr were booked into jail and faces possible charges of maintaining a drug house, possession of methamphetamine and methamphetamine paraphernalia, possession of marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of a schedule II narcotic. Nelson faces possible charges of disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, possession of meth and meth paraphernalia, possession of marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of a schedule II narcotic. One thing I vividly remember about grade school was ordering paperback books. Several times each year our teacher would receive a catalog of available books from TAB, the Teen Age Book Club. We would eagerly look through the listing of available books to see if there was something we wanted to order. Each book would have a picture of the cover, a short description of the book, the price and an order number. I would look through the list and get to order a couple books each time. I loved the books about animals and adventure stories. I still have many of those books today. I couldn't bring myself to throw them away or give them away when we moved. So I packed them up and carted them with us. There was Red Fox by Charles Roberts, The Red Pony by John Steinbeck, Old Yeller by Fred Gipson, Midnight The Story of a Wild Horse and Ghost Town Adventure both by Rutherford Montgomery, The Mudhen and The Mudhen and the Walrus both by Merritt Parmelee Allen, Big Red, Outlaw Red and Irish Red all by Jim Kjelgaard, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Jim Davis Smuggler's Captive by John Masefield, Down the Big River Two Boys Battle the Ohio Cave Gang by Stephen Meader, Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss, Anne Frank The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank and The Mystery of the Spanish Cave by Geoffrey Housebolt. There were many more, but that's a sampling of the books I read during my grade school days. At that time, in the 1950s, a paperback book cost 25 or 35 cents. That was probably a lot of money to be spending on books by the parents of most of us at Smith, a one-room country school. It always was exciting when the package arrived containing the books. There was something magical about receiving a book that was your very own to keep. The covers always had wonderful illustrations and we could hardly wait to start reading the selections we received. I should mention that the available books for reading in a rural school library were very limited. Our library consisted of one small bookcase at the back of the room. I don't remember very many books in it. After school, when I could sit down at home with my new books, I would lose myself in the story I was reading. I sailed down the Big River in search of pirates or followed the adventures of the dog Big Red. I had tears in my eyes when Old Yeller and the Red Pony died. I was there when Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher had their adventures together, and I sailed on the raft down the Mississippi River with Huck Finn and Jim. I lived the life of the Red Fox and was there in the den with the Gray Wolf. It gave me an appreciation for wild animals. Books could take me places I had never been and participate in adventures I would never otherwise have. I could go to all those places and experience all those things without ever leaving my room. Those books expanded my horizons and sparked my imagination. They let me explore fantasy worlds and real worlds. What wonderful things they were to me. I think those books from the Teen Age Book Club started me on the path to enjoying reading, and also writing. They led to my first writing attempts. One of the stories I wrote was a pirate adventure. I don't remember much about the story now, but I doubt if my great literary gem would have rivaled Treasure Island. I wish I had a copy of that story now. Another writing attempt was a series of stories called, "The Adventures of Rocky Rooster," illustrated of course. How many adventures could a rooster have anyway? When we cleaned out the old farmhouse after my parents died I was hoping to come across those old stories. We didn't find any trace of them. I suspect they were thrown in the trash and destroyed years ago. Such literary treasures, up in smoke! I jest of course, but I would love to be able to read today what I wrote so many years ago. Another of my literary gems was an illustrated story about a country mouse titled "Under The Country Oak Tree." I still have that one. It's a real Shakespearean tragedy. The poor mouse dies in the end. I thought I had accidentally thrown it out when we were getting rid of "stuff" before we moved. I was glad when I came across it last weekend as we moved the last of our stuff to Westby. Now the problem is, which box did I throw it in? At least I know where those old books are. They're all in a special box. The books we ordered from that book club, while I was in grade school, were very important to a young farm boy and they still are. Perhaps that's why I saved them all these years. I wonder if other rural students still have some of their TAB books? To most people they're just old, cheap paperbacks, but to me those books opened up a whole new world. They were worth every penny back in the 50s, and they're real treasures today. I recently joined fellow legislators from rural areas across the state to announce the Rural Wisconsin Initiative. It will be ongoing and incorporate suggestions from people across the state. To begin the conversation, the Initiative will focus on improving education, workforce development, technology and health care in our rural communities. Quality education is the foundation of a strong economy and essential to improving those areas of our communities. In order to better understand the challenges facing our rural schools, I toured them and met with administrators and parents. My goal was to see the success stories and find ways to reinvest and renew our states support in public education. Some school districts have Science, Technology, Engineering and Math education programs to help prepare students for the new high demand careers of the 21st century. The Initiative will focus on developing a Rural STEM Grant to help rural school districts start, expand and maintain STEM education programs. If our rural communities want to grow and become economically competitive, we need to graduate more students who are highly skilled and fully prepared to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Many schools have done an outstanding job in advising students on career and academic choices. However, students are graduating from four-year universities, burdened with high debt and unable to find employment in their field of study; while at the same time, there is a worker shortage in segments of our economy that provide high-paying, desirable jobs that do not always require a four-year degree. To address this issue, I have co-authored legislation to create a new pilot program designed to assist schools, students and parents in career and workforce education. It will be a competitive grant program for the 12 Cooperative Education Service Agencies to apply for. The duties will include workforce education, business development outreach, coordination between businesses and schools, and apprenticeship and job training opportunity advancement. Additionally, they will work to assure that students and their families receive sufficient career and academic counseling to make informed choices. Wisconsins Youth Apprenticeship program is another valuable tool for students. The program is designed for high school students who want hands-on learning in an occupational area with classroom instruction. Increasingly, rural schools, tech colleges and businesses are working together to equip students with the skills they will need to succeed in their local industries. The Initiative will work to increase the amount of funding to bring the program in line with current demand. Along with enhanced skills comes greater needs for information and technology delivery. Rural areas are still underserved when it comes to high-speed internet, and focusing on bridging the technology gap will ensure that people in rural areas have the same access to opportunity that people in urban or suburban areas do. That is why I have authored Assembly Bill 647 to make changes to the Broadband Expansion Grant Program. Currently, there is $6 million in funding for the grants to expand service to underserved areas of the state, but the Public Service Commission is prohibited from making more than $1,500,000 in grants in a fiscal year. My legislation eliminates that prohibition and allows the PSC to allocate the grants until funding is depleted. This will ensure that the funds for the grant program can continue to be used to extend broadband access to underserved areas. Increasing broadband to underserved areas will better serve rural communities in areas such as education and business development, but it will also translate to increased access to health care. Quality broadband service will help promote the use of telemedicine, which provides many benefits, including greater convenience for families, safer care, better outcomes, and ultimately higher quality care and cost savings. In order to increase the availability of telemedicine and address our physician shortage, I authored Assembly Bill 253. It enables Wisconsin to enter into an Interstate Medical Licensure Compact, which will provide a new, expedited, licensing option for physicians seeking to practice in multiple states. As a former hospital board member, I understand the challenges some of our rural hospitals have in attracting and accessing healthcare specialists. With the compact in place, qualified physicians with an existing medical license in a compact state can begin providing care in Wisconsin communities more quickly. Eliminating the regulatory burden by allowing for expedited multistate licensing was a good step but now it is time to attract physicians so they want to work and live in rural Wisconsin. The Initiative will do that by focusing on improving the Wisconsin Rural Physician Residency Assistance Program. The WRPRAP program is a collaboration of rural health advocates, community clinicians, and residency educators throughout Wisconsin to develop educational experiences that encourages young new physicians to practice in our rural communities. I think that many of the items Ive mentioned here showcase just some of the positive changes being made for the future of our rural communities. Improving all areas of rural life in Wisconsin will be a process, and one that needs your input. The intent of the Initiative is to begin a conversation and continue to work toward reflecting what our constituents want. I encourage you to join the conversation and please share your feedback and ideas at www.RuralWisconsinInitiative.com. Nancy VanderMeer represents Wisconsins 70th Assembly District. LANSING, Mich. (AP) Only a year ago, Rick Snyder began his second term as Michigan governor promoting the same achievements that had propelled him to victory in 2014: The state was at last in the midst of an economic comeback, and Detroit had emerged from bankruptcy. With the water crisis gripping Flint threatening to overshadow nearly everything else he has accomplished, the Republican governor again pledged a fix Tuesday night during his annual State of the State speech. We are praying for you, we are working hard for you and we are absolutely committed to taking the right steps to effectively solve this crisis, he said. To you the people of Flint, I say tonight as I have before, I am sorry and I will fix it. Snyder committed $28 million more in the short term, announced the deployment of more National Guard members to the city and promised to quickly release his emails regarding the crisis that has engulfed his administration with criticism from across the country. He also announced his appeal of President Barack Obamas denial of a federal disaster declaration for the area and his aides pledged that, by the end of the week, officials would visit every household in Flint to ensure they have water filters. Snyder devoted much of his 49-minute evening address to the GOP-led Legislature to the disaster, which has put residents at risk for lead exposure. Many of his other priorities except the mounting financial problems in Detroits state-overseen school district were shelved from the speech due to the crisis. Snyder, who is exempt from public-records requests, plans to release his emails on Wednesday. He outlined a timeline of the catastrophe, blamed it on failures at the federal, state and local level but also said: I let you down. You deserve better. You deserve accountability. You deserve to know the buck stops here with me. The images of an impoverished city where no one dares to drink the tap water have put Snyder on the defensive and forced him to step up his efforts to help. The governor, who previously apologized for regulatory failures and for an underwhelming initial response, rejected calls for his resignation. In recent weeks, he declared a state of emergency, pledged another round of unspecified state funding, activated the National Guard to help distribute lead tests, filters and bottled water, and successfully sought $5 million in federal assistance. But to many people, those steps took way too long. The new round of funding, which requires approval from the GOP-led Legislature, is intended as another short-term step while Snyder works to get a better handle on the long-range costs. He plans to make a bigger request in his February budget proposal. The $28 million would pay for more filters, bottled water, school nurses, intervention specialists, testing and monitoring. It also would replace plumbing fixtures in schools with lead problems and could help Flint with unpaid water bills. The crisis began when Flint, about an hours drive from Detroit, switched its water source in 2014 to save money while under state financial management. Michigans top environmental regulator resigned over the failure to ensure that the Flint River water was properly treated to keep lead from pipes from leaching into the water. The Greater La Crosse Area Shamrock Club is making history with its first Irish Rose and Irishman on record who have dual U.S./Irish citizenship even though Rose isnt Irish. Instead of having blood ties to the Old Sod, Kathy ODriscoll was able to call upon the luck of her Polish-Austrian heritage to become an Irish citizen, courtesy of husband Bills citizenship. The Shamrock Clubs selection process evaluated the nominations of the Onalaska couple separately, with each rising to the top of the shamrock for Kathy to receive the mantle of Irish Rose and Bill, to carry the shillelagh as the Irishman. As soon as we got married, I became Irish, Kathy said of the charm of the name, which conveys an Irish tenor on a couple of levels. Noting with a laugh that she highlights the name with the periodic wearin of the green, Kathy said, I love the live music, and I like to get people interested in the Shamrock Club and Irishfest. Acknowledging her Polish-Austrian heritage, Kathy said (perhaps a bit defensively, but still laughing), Well, St. Patrick wasnt Irish, either. Ethnicity wasnt much of an issue when she was growing up in a Chicago suburb, the 58-year-old Kathy said, adding, Back then, you were just an American. Another bit of Ireland warms the cockles of Kathys heart. I do like the Waterford, she acknowledged, referring to the coveted cut crystal glassware once made exclusively in Waterford, Ireland, and now also produced in several other European countries. Bill hails from Grand Rapids, Mich., but they were married in Chicago and received many Waterford crystal gifts from his relatives who couldnt make the trip to the wedding, Kathy said. The wedding was the key to unlocking Kathys Irish citizenship, said Bill, 60, a patent attorney for Trane Co. My dads an immigrant, he said. There were no jobs in Ireland, so his dad, also named William, and a couple of buddies traversed the Atlantic Ocean in search of work. William married and ended up in Grand Rapids, where he practiced internal medicine. Since Bill was born there, he was able to claim U.S. citizenship, as well as hang onto his dads coattails as the direct descendant of an Irish-born citizen. Ireland once had a law allowing people who werent citizens to become one if they were married to an Irish citizen for at least three years. About 10 years ago, they phased that out, which the ODriscolls learned about shortly before the change took effect, he said. We already had the paperwork, Bill said, so the couple filled it out, sent it back to the Emerald Isle, and voila: The Shamrock Club now inadvertently has its first dual-citizenship royalty. While a great number of our members claim Irish ancestry, not many are actual citizens dual or otherwise and those who can claim Irish citizenship have never been paired with an opposite number who could also claim Irish citizenship, said club president Barrie Monks. The club, formed in 1973, began naming an Irishman two years later. Christening an Irish Rose dates to 1983, as the women designated before that were called Irish Colleen or Wild Irish Rose, Monks said. As Irish Rose and Irishman, the ODriscolls will reign over the clubs annual St. Pats Dinner/Dance on March 5 at the Radisson Hotel Ballroom, the St. Pats Day Parade in La Crosse on March 12 and the St. Pats Day Bus Tour on March 17. Bill has visited Ireland three times: as a child with his parents, another time to attend an aunts funeral, and when he and Kathy celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary, which they made into a family trip. The couple has four children 28-year-old twins Matt and Liam, 22-year-old Colleen and 15-year-old Kevin. MILWAUKEE Two defendants are set to go on trial in a large coupon fraud case nearly nine years after a grand jury indicted the nation's biggest coupon processor and nearly a dozen people. The grand jury's 2007 indictment alleged that $250 million was stolen over 10 years and that defendants defrauded manufacturers and retail stores by cashing coupons they knew weren't used. The case has languished in federal court in Milwaukee, with two judges on the case moving into semiretirement and the case going twice to an appeals court. The remaining two defendants appeared in court Tuesday for a pretrial conference, with a trial set to begin next month, the Journal Sentinel (http://bit.ly/1PhIGmH ) reported. Earlier defendants reached plea agreements. One of the remaining defendants, former International Outsourcing Services CEO Thomas Balsiger, has argued investigators don't understand the coupon business and alleged prosecutor misconduct. He said Tuesday that his former co-defendants will get breaks in prison time in exchange for bending the truth to convict him. "We know they are going to be paid for performance, and that disturbs me," said Balsiger, who has chosen to represent himself after his attorney's death in 2014. International Outsourcing handled millions of coupons annually from stores, sent them to manufacturers for redemption and returned the money to stores, while collecting a fee for its service. Court documents say International Outsourcing executives systematically defrauded stores and manufacturers across the United States, including five manufacturers in Wisconsin, by cashing millions of coupons that weren't used. Some of the coupons were put in a cement mixer in Mexico to make them appear worn and used, according to the indictment. Prosecutors say International Outsourcing agents bribed small stores in exchange for them submitting large volumes of fraudulent coupons. Those coupons from smaller stores were bundled in with ones from larger chains in order to avoid scrutiny, according to court documents. Defense attorneys say coupons from small and large stores were mixed for convenience. The case began in Milwaukee in 2001 when the FBI started looking into a large coupon-redemption check sent to a small store that didn't take coupons. There are two units in Wisconsin state government that have similar, even overlapping responsibilities. They are the Office of the Commissioner of Railways and the Department of Transportation-Division of Investment Management-Bureau of Rails and Harbors (Transit and Local Roads.) The Railway Commissioner also has oversight for water carriers. For purposes of this column, only railway matters will be addressed. The regulation of railways has long been a concern of the state of Wisconsin. What is now the Public Service Commission (regulating all public utilities) had its origin in 1874 as a commission to regulate railways; that evolved into the Public Service Commission in 1933. In 1977, regulation of railways was transferred to an independent Transportation Commission. After further assignments and reassignments, in 1993, at the proverbial 11th hour a vestigial remnant, called the Office of the Commissioner of Railways, was created. At that time, the question arose: Why should there exist both the Bureau of Rails and Harbors along with the Railway Commission (one apart of the Department of Transportation and the other attached to the Public Service Commission?) There were those who strongly argued against what was considered a redundant boondoggle; however, due to strong special-interest influences, the status quo was continued. At that time, I exerted strong pressure for the redundant bifurcated structure to be eliminated and folded into the Wisconsin Department of Transportation but to no avail. Given the recent inappropriate behavior within the Wisconsin Office of the Commissioner of Railways, it would seem that the time is now ripe for this archaic governmental remnant to meet its end. Two Democratic lawmakers from Milwaukee renewed a call for Rep. Bob Gannon, R-Slinger, to apologize for comments about Milwaukee's crime rate they believe were racially charged. Democrats introduced a proposal to create an Assembly committee to combat racial intolerance, which Republican lawmakers sent to a committee rather than taking it up for a vote in Tuesday's floor session. Gannon issued a press release earlier this month titled, "Murder, Mayhem and Jobs," which sparked a heated debate last week on the Assembly floor. "Milwaukee finished the year with an unemployment rate of approximately twenty percent for their black population," Gannon said in the statement. "This is almost four times as high as the white unemployment rate for the city and the state. This means that Milwaukee leads in murders and mayhem per capita, with a large number of these crimes occurring in mainly black neighborhoods, the same neighborhoods with the worst unemployment rates in the state." Reps. Mandela Barnes and JoCasta Zamarripa, both Milwaukee Democrats, said last week that Gannon had offended people of color throughout Wisconsin. Both lawmakers asked Gannon to apologize and retract his statement. After a heated back-and-forth, Gannon flashed Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca, D-Kenosha, his middle finger and walked out of the Assembly chamber. While Gannon apologized for losing his cool on the floor, he doubled down on the spirit and content of his original comments. Gannon said Milwaukee's mayor, police chief and district attorney are failing to keep the city's citizens safe. He argued that the city's criminal activity is spilling into his district, which neighbors Milwaukee to the northwest. "Put your focus where it belongs and stop worrying about me," Gannon said last week. "Your drugs, your crime knows no border. The 58th Assembly District is being impacted by the out-of-control crime in the city of Milwaukee." Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, later said Gannon's behavior was "stupid," but since the lawmaker had made a sincere apology, it was time to move on. Asking again for an apology on Tuesday, Barnes said his request wasn't for himself or his fellow lawmakers, but for residents of Milwaukee and people of color throughout the state. "He declines yet again and so we cant put that hurt away, and it is a shame," Zamarripa said. Child protective service workers would be given a set of guidelines to follow when investigating the abuse or neglect of children with disabilities, under a bipartisan bill passed by the state Assembly Tuesday. The bill seeks to address challenges that can arise when a child is non-verbal or cannot otherwise easily communicate the extent or kinds of abuse that have occurred. Since 2010, there have been 15 deaths of special-needs children within the capacity of the Department of Children and Families, said bill author Rep. LaTonya Johnson, D-Milwaukee. She partnered with Rep. Joel Kleefisch, R-Oconomowoc on the bill. In one case, the abuse of a six-year-old child from Milwaukee continued over several documented cases, but because the child had autism and was non-verbal, he couldn't communicate about the abuse he was receiving. "We want to make sure that all children receive the level of safety and protection that they deserve," Johnson said. The bill would require the Department of Children and Families to take action by the end of the year on a plan to identify and address areas that need improvement in investigating these cases. Child welfare agencies at the county level would be required to adopt the plan by July 2017. Under the bill, an agency would be required to ask whether the subject of a report of abuse or neglect is a child with a disability. The model proposal would have to include interviewing strategies developed specifically for children with disabilities and a plan to train agency staff in the model's implementation. 2016 is a big year, not only for the Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation (SMIF), but our five sister foundations, as well. In 1986, at the height of the farm crisis, the Minneapolis-based McKnight Foundation was seeking a way to help revitalize Minnesotas rural economies struggling to rebound from hundreds of farm foreclosures, layoffs in the Iron Range, outsourcing of manufacturing jobs, and the exodus of young people looking for a brighter future elsewhere. Thirty years later, the solution The McKnight Foundation developed after several regional conversations with concerned residents and rural leaders has proved an effective one: they created six separate Minnesota Initiative Foundations (MIFs) to individually serve the six non-metro regions of the state that could work collaboratively to share lessons learned and develop best practices for rural economic development. One of the biggest needs during the 1980s was access to capital. Banks were hesitant to lend, but without access to capital and only 9 percent charitable dollars going toward philanthropic investments (compared to 66 percent in the metro), the MIFs were established not only to give grants, but to make loans. This was a unique permission granted to the MIFs, and to our knowledge, we are the only foundations in the U.S. that have this flexibility. SMIF and our sister foundations all received an initial investment from McKnight to make loans and grants around four focus areas identified in the early meetings: economic development, human needs, natural resources and rural leadership. At SMIF, we continue to focus on investments to strengthen economic development initiatives, early childhood and rural philanthropy. After three decades and a total of $285 million investment from The McKnight Foundation to the six MIFs, we have collectively leveraged an additional $270 million in investments from other foundations, corporations, government and individuals. These investments have helped diversify our rural economies beyond agriculture and manufacturing to areas such as biosciences, renewable energy, tourism and additional social services. Millions of dollars and hours of technical assistance have gone to strengthening early childhood development efforts. To me, one of the most valuable aspects of the MIF model is the collaborative nature between the six foundations. I meet four times a year with the other MIF presidents to discuss new programs, recent research impacting our work, forecasted needs and success stories that could be replicated across our regions. Even though our regions vary greatly, we share a lot of common ground. This willingness to freely share information for the betterment of all is a Minnesota way of doing business we all take pride in. Not only are the foundations benefiting the 80 non-metro counties of Minnesota, they make us a stronger state as whole. As we enter our 30th year, we are undergoing a strategic planning process to set our course and priority areas for the next several years. Early-stage investments in new and growing businesses as well as in our youngest generation have been focus areas from the beginning; we anticipate this will continue to be the case. However, we realize that technology, demographic shifts in our region and continued advances in the areas of education, agriculture and engineering necessitate that we remain flexible and responsive to the new needs going forward. Part of going forward is learning from the past; throughout the year, well be interviewing past stakeholders and those impacted by SMIFs works former presidents, board members, loan clients, grantees and partners. I encourage you to learn how much southern Minnesota has been transformed by the hard work of many in the past three decades by following our 30 Voices for 30 Years story board, which will be updated monthly on SMIFs website. For a full history of the Minnesota Initiative Foundations and our impact, I encourage you to read the Initiative Foundations cover story in their latest IQ Magazine: 30 Years: A Model for Moving Forward. I welcome your comments and questions. You can reach me at timp@smifoundation.org or 507-455-3215. Wisconsin Senate to vote on civil service changes MADISON The state Senate is set to vote on a bill that would reform Wisconsins civil service system. Republicans who control the chamber have scheduled a vote on the measure for Wednesday. Approval would send the bill to Gov. Scott Walker for his signature. The Assembly passed the measure in October. The bill would eliminate exams for applicants, bumping rights that protect more experienced workers from losing their jobs, create merit raises, extend probation periods from six months to a year and define just cause for firings. Democrats say the changes would open the door to political cronyism in state agencies. Not guilty plea entered in Sawyer County shooting death HAYWARD (AP) A Hayward man accused of killing his sisters boyfriend has pleaded not guilty in Sawyer County Circuit Court. Lorne Young entered the plea Tuesday to a charge of first-degree intentional homicide in the shooting death of Kyle Ross of Wausau. Authorities say Young shot Ross with a deer rifle on Nov. 25 after Ross argued with Youngs sister. The 23-year-old Young is being held on $1 million bond. A jury trial is scheduled to begin April 19. Fundraising email suggests Walker will run again MADISON Gov. Scott Walkers campaign has sent out a fundraising email suggesting he plans to run for a third term. The email the campaign sent out Monday says liberals hope they can defeat the Republican governor in the next election. The message goes on to say that liberals are gearing up for the next election and Walker supporters need to do the same and Walker needs his supporters help to start fresh with the next campaign. The email adds that Walker needs to pay off the debt from his short-lived presidential campaign first and asks contributors for donations ranging from $10 to $250. Walker has hinted he will seek a third term but hasnt yet declared his intentions. His campaign spokesman, Joe Fadness, didnt immediately respond to an email message Tuesday. Syrians selling gold for food BEIRUT In Syrias eastern city of Deir el-Zour, supplies are running so short that desperate residents are selling their gold, valuables and even their homes for food or an exit permit allowing them to escape a siege by both government troops and Islamic State militants. The extremists have blockaded government-held areas of the city for over a year, and some of its 200,000 residents are slowly starving while troops and militias supporting President Bashar Assad exploit their suffering. Colombia, rebels request UN monitor ceasefire HAVANA Colombias government and the countrys largest rebel group marked another milestone in their rapidly advancing peace talks Tuesday, jointly requesting that the United Nations establish an international observer mission to monitor a disarmament process that could end in a matter of weeks Latin Americas longest-running guerrilla conflict. Negotiators for the two sides announced at peace talks in Havana that the 12-month mission would be made up of unarmed observers from Latin American and Caribbean nations. Nigeria losing millions in attacks on oil installations LAGOS, Nigeria Multiple attacks on strategic oil and gas installations is costing Nigeria $2.4 million daily, a Cabinet minister said Tuesday as the military launched a manhunt for a militant and warned it will hold community leaders responsible for the economic sabotage. The attacks began Friday in the southern Niger Delta after a court issued an arrest warrant for former warlord Government Tompolo Ekpemupolo in connection with $17.4 million that has gone missing from government coffers. Calais migrants displaced, forced deeper into camp CALAIS, France Authorities are shrinking the huge migrant camp in Calais, in northern France, pushing tent dwellers back 100 meters (110 yards) to distance them from the road leading to the port, a jumping off point to sneak to Britain. Bulldozers moved in this week to clean the terrain after hundreds of migrants began moving deeper into the squalid camp. The move continued on Tuesday. Economists relieved Chinese slowdown wasnt worse BEIJING The slowdown of Chinas once-sizzling economy has fueled anxiety over its impact on the rest of the world. Yet when Beijing reported Tuesday that its economy grew last year at the slowest pace in a quarter-century, the reaction seemed to be mainly relief it wasnt worse. Economists welcomed details in the report suggesting that the worlds second-biggest economy is making some progress in a difficult and complex transition away from a reliance on manufacturing and investment in real estate and factories and toward dependence on services and consumer spending. Congo drafts new adoption legislation KINSHASA, Congo Congo has drafted new adoption legislation and reviewed cases pending since it halted international adoptions in 2013, the government said Tuesday. Among the recommendations in the legislation, international adoptions will only be allowed if solutions in Congo are lacking, both in the family and public, said government spokesman Lambert Mende. Hawking: Threats to human survival likely from new science LONDON Physicist Stephen Hawking has warned that new technologies will likely bring about new ways things can go wrong for human survival. When asked how the world will end naturally or whether man would destroy it first Hawking said that increasingly, most of the threats humanity faces come from progress made in science and technology. They include nuclear war, catastrophic global warming and genetically engineered viruses, he said. UN report: Iraqi civilians dying at a staggering rate SUSANNAH GEORGE BAGHDAD (AP) Iraq witnessed a sharp increase in civilian deaths following the fall of large swaths of territory to the Islamic State group in the summer of 2014. Now despite a string of recent battlefield losses for IS, civilians in Iraq continue to die at a staggering rate, according to a new United Nations report. At least 18,802 civilians were killed and another 36,245 were wounded in Iraq between the start of 2014 and Oct. 31 of last year, according to the U.N. report released Tuesday. In just one six-month period between May and October last year, more than 10,000 civilians were killed. Despite their steady losses to pro-government forces, the scourge of ISIL continues to kill, maim and displace Iraqi civilians in the thousands and to cause untold suffering, U.N. envoy Jan Kubis said in a statement, using an alternative acronym for the extremist group. The numbers are nowhere near the death tolls recorded during Iraqs bloody civil war. In 2006 alone more than 34,000 civilians were killed, according to U.N. data. The following year the Iraqi government refused to provide the U.N. with death toll statistics, stating that the government wanted to prevent the data from painting a negative image of the country. But civilian casualties since the rise of IS in Iraq are considerably higher than the preceding years of relative stability. In 2011, the number of civilian deaths due to violence was at its lowest since the civil war, with fewer than 2,800 killed. U.N. human rights chief Zeid Raad al-Hussein said the civilian death toll may actually be considerably higher. Even the obscene casualty figures fail to accurately reflect exactly how terribly civilians are suffering in Iraq, he said in a statement. The U.N. report also documented a wide range of human rights abuses, including the IS groups conscription of some 3,500 people into slavery. Many of those are women and children from the Yazidi religious minority who were taken hostage in the summer of 2014 and forced into sexual slavery. It said another 800 to 900 children were abducted from Iraqs second largest city, Mosul, for religious and military training. A number of IS child soldiers were killed by the extremists when they tried to flee fighting in the western Anbar province, it said. ISIL in particular has used the most gruesome methods to execute people by running bulldozers over them, by burning them alive. In one case, people were put in a cage and the cage was put into the water, Ravina Shamdasani, a UN spokeswoman told The Associated Press in Geneva. I think this kind of violence will affect our society for the long term, said veteran Iraqi human rights activist Hana Adwar. The culture of violence is rooted in Iraq now, its not something thats easy to combat. The U.N. report called the civilian death toll in Iraq staggering. It also detailed the various methods the IS group has employed to kill its enemies, including public beheadings and throwing them off buildings. Such acts are systematic and widespread ... abuses of international human rights law and humanitarian law, the report said. These acts may, in some instances, amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide. After IS was pushed out of the majority Yezidi town of Sinjar a number of assumed burial sites that local officials have dubbed mass graves were found in the town. They are symbols of a nation, they are symbols of Kurdistan and they represent the victims of terror, said Mahmood Salih Hama Karim, the minister with the Kurdish Regional Government responsible for overseeing excavation of the sites. Last month Iraqi forces also advanced against IS in the countrys western province of Anbar, pushing the group out of the center of the city of Ramadi. The U.S.-led coalition fighting IS announced this month that the militants had lost 30 percent of the territory they once held in Iraq and Syria. Baghdad-based spokesman Col. Steve Warren told reporters the extremists have lost 40 percent of their territory in Iraq and 20 percent in Syria, adding that the group is in a defensive crouch. IS still controls large areas of Iraq and neighboring Syria after the group swept across Iraqs north and west in the summer of 2014. It has set up a self-styled caliphate in the territories under its control, which it governs with a harsh and violent interpretation of Islamic law. The Fine Arts Foundation of the Westby Area (FAFWA) "Let's Build It Now" Capital Campaign to construct a Performing Arts Center continues to draw the attention and support of businesses, organizations and the public as it tops the $750,000 mark of its $1 million challenge. With a million dollar challenge before them the Fine Arts Foundation informed the Westby Area School Board of Education that it had raised more than $750,000 in pledges, donations and memorials as of Jan. 15. The capital campaign got its most recent boost with a $25,000 pledge from the Dahl Family Foundation. Harry Dahl stated that he and his sons, Andrew, Jansen and Tyler had discussed the Fine Arts Center and wanted to support the capital campaign. The naming right for $25,000 of stage equipment will be designated from "Dahl Automotive" per the family pledge request. Fine Arts Foundation President Linda Dowling said she was aware of the long time ties the Dahl family has with Westby and is very appreciative of their donation and support. "While continuing to raise funds and aided by generous donations, such as the Dahl Family Foundation pledge, the Fine Arts Foundation is excited about having a Community Performing Arts Center become a reality for our communities soon," Dowling said. In June 2015, the Westby Area School District Board of Education agreed to back the FAFWA efforts and hold a community referendum if FAFWA could meet a $1 million fundraising challenge before the end of 2015. Realizing they could not meet the designated time line, the FAFWA organization came back to the school board in December to provide an update and ask for the school district's continued support by allowing them more time to meet the financial challenge placed before them. The school board was genuinely impressed with the efforts of the group and agreed to sign a resolution to hold a referendum in April 2016, if FAFWA succeeds in raising the $1 million challenge placed before them. The million dollars raised would offset one-third of the projected $2.8 million project price tag, reducing the portion taxpayers would be asked to approve and fund through the referendum. The project would be constructed on the opposite side of the current school district field house, connecting the two buildings through a shared middle school commons and restroom area. The building would be 14,645 square feet, seat 498 people, have a 40x80 foot stage, orchestra pit, dressing rooms and more. For the past 15 years a small group of volunteer citizens tried to raise enough money on its own to construct a fine arts center adjacent to the Westby Fieldhouse. Fundraising efforts have gone through a run of highs and lows as volunteers joined and left the organization and enthusiasm peaked and leveled off over time. In 2014, Attorney Russell Hanson revitalized the group, an effort that has been going gangbusters ever since. The group is currently working on a $500 seat naming event and has received many small and large donations, including $100,000 in anonymous gifts of money and many memorials. Dowling said the organization is filled with tons of energy and pushing forward full steam ahead. "We will not stop until they meet the challenge," Dowling said. For more information about FAFWA or to make a donation connect any of the board members listed in the breakout box connected to this article. Wednesday, January 20, 2016 Sadok El Ghoul, University of Alberta, Campus Saint-Jean, Omrane Guedhami, University of South Carolina, Moore School of Business, Robert C. Nash, Wake Forest University, and Ajay Patel, Wake Forest University, School of Business, have published New Evidence on the Role of the Media in Corporate Social Responsibility. Here is the abstract. Prior research suggests that the media plays an important information intermediary role in capital markets. We investigate the role of the media in influencing firms engagement in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. Using a large sample of 4,453 unique firms from 53 countries over the period 2003 to 2012, we find strong evidence that firms engage in more CSR activities if located in countries where the media has more freedom. This relation is robust to using various proxies for media freedom and an alternative source of CSR data. In additional analyses, we find that the positive relation between media freedom and CSR engagement is stronger for better governed firms and for larger firms. Since the media have the ability to impact reputational capital, we conclude that media freedom affects firms incentives to engage in costly CSR activities. Download the article from SSRN at the link. https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/media_law_prof_blog/2016/01/el-ghoul-guedhami-nash-and-patel-on-the-role-of-the-media-in-corporate-social-responsibility.html Christians and Muslims in Cameroon offered protection to each other following five attacks on mosques by suspected Boko Haram fighters. Christians guarded mosques and Muslims protected churches after a fifth mosque was attacked by a male suicide bomber on Monday. The attack took place near Cameroons border with Nigeria. The development marked a change in Boko Haram operations. In the past, the terror group attacked churches, schools and markets. Now, Boko Haram is attacking mosques. Christians now stand guard during Muslim call to prayer. Most groups assist government troops against the increasing attacks by Boko Haram. The Nigerian terrorist group has been active in Cameroon for three years. Christians told VOA News they help Muslims for the well-being of the country and as a duty of faith. Cameroon officials said militants have attacked mosques after being attacked by Cameroon and Nigerians soldiers. Nearly 24 million people live in Cameroon: 40 percent are Christian, and 20 percent are Muslims. In Mozambique in Africas southeast, citizens are fleeing clashes between rebels and government forces. They seek asylum in neighboring Malawi, a U.N. refugee agency reported. The agency says its staff registered about 1,300 new arrivals near the Malawi-Mozambique border. More than 900 refugees are waiting to be processed. A United Nations spokesman said most of the refugees are women and children. The fighting in Mozambique started last year. A previous civil war between 1977 and 1992 forced 1 million people from Mozambique to flee to Malawi. I'm Anne Ball. Moki Edwin Kindzeka and Lisa Schlein reported on this story for VOANews.com. Jim Dresbach adapted their stories for Learning English. Kathleen Struck was the editor. We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section or visit our Facebook page. _______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story mosque n. a building that is used for Muslim religious services church n. a Christian religious center Iran says it welcomes the easing of economic sanctions, but will remain wary of the United States. Monday, Iran's Defense Minister called the U.S. sanctions hostile toward Iran. The U.S. imposed the new sanctions Sunday against five Iranian nationals and a network of companies with links to banned missile activity. The U.S. Treasury Department said five Iranians worked to get missile parts for Iran. Companies in the United Arab Emirates and China also were involved. Iran drew anger from the United States and other Western powers last year when Iran tested two ballistic missiles. Iran defended the tests as a matter of national security. President Barack Obama said the U.S. government will vigorously enforce sanctions against Irans ballistic missile program. The new sanctions come after economic sanctions were lifted which were tied to Irans nuclear program. Following the lifting of the sanctions, Iran announced an increase in oil production by 500,000 barrels a day. Iran currently produced 3 million barrels per day. About 1 million of the barrels are exported. I'm Marsha James. This report was based on information from VOAnews.com. Jim Dresbach adapted the story for Learning English. Kathleen Struck was the editor. We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section or visit our Facebook page. ________________________________________________________________ Words in This Story network - n. a group of people or organizations that work with each other; a system of computers and other devices that are connected to each other matter - n. something that is being done or talked about wary - adj. not having or showing complete trust in someone or something sanction n. an action that is taken or an order that is given to force a country to obey international laws by limiting or stopping trade with that country ballistic missile n. a weapon that is shot through the sky over a great distance and then falls to the ground and explodes vigorously adv. done with great force and energy Russias Parliament rejected a bill Monday that would have permitted fines or jail time for homosexual acts. Rights groups have welcomed the move. But, they are also calling for a repeal of a 2013 law that they say has encouraged discrimination against non-heterosexuals. It is called the gay propaganda law. Communist Party lawmakers had proposed the measure that was rejected. Had it passed, gay people could have been fined between $50 and $65 for public demonstrations of affection. The proposed measure described such acts as "expression of non-traditional sexual relations." It could also have led to jail time depending on where the act took place. Human Rights Watch denounced the bill. The group said the measure would have punished people for expressing their identity. It was a rare win in Russia for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transsexual people, also known as LGBT. Human Rights Watch's Russia Program Director in Moscow, Tanya Lokshina, praised the defeat of the measure in an email. "However, she wrote, the parliament has yet to repeal the 'gay propaganda' bill, which has done tremendous damage to Russia's LGBT people." The 2013 measure outlaws the "promotion of non-traditional sexual relations among minors." The law has received international criticism. Lokshina says it also has led to increased numbers of attacks on the LGBT community in Russia. Sandra is a transgender woman living in Moscow. She told VOA that she was beaten in broad daylight after the law was passed. Her girlfriend called the police. Officers arrived quickly, she said, but were not willing to arrest her attackers. She said the attackers were not charged with any crime. She said the police insulted her instead. President Vladimir Putin has defended the "gay propaganda law," saying it does not ban homosexuality. The chief of Russian state media once said the hearts of dead homosexuals should be burned instead of donated. He called them unfit to live. LGBT activists continue their efforts for equal rights, however. Vladimir Komov, a Teachers' Union official, and engineer Dmitry Svetly are a gay couple living in Moscow. "We're openly gay," says Komov. "We're not hiding in fear," says Svetly, "For us, being open is a weapon." Im Caty Weaver. VOA's Moscow reporter, Daniel Schearf, wrote this story. Caty Weaver adapted it for Learning English. Are there laws against homosexuality in your country? Leave a comment or post on our Facebook page. ________________________________________________________________ Words in This Story homosexual n. a person who is attracted to others of the same gender heterosexual n. a person who is attracted to others of the opposite gender repeal v. to take back gay n. homosexual affection n. warm feelings or fondess for something or someone LGBT adj. an acronym for Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender minor adj. slight, or younger The richest 62 people on earth now have the same wealth as the poorest 3.6 billion, according to a report from Oxfam. Five years ago, the majority of wealth was in the hands of 388 individuals. As the global population increased by around 400 million people, the wealth of the poorest half of the world has fallen by 41 percent - a drop of about $1 trillion. That means more money, assets and wealth shifted to fewer people. Oxfam is an aid organization working to fight poverty and hunger around the world. The group reported that women are more affected than men by inequality. The majority of low paid workers around the world are women. Just nine of the richest 62 individuals are women, the aid group says. It said the differences between the very rich and everyone else has widened over the past 12 months. It said Oxfam predicted last year the 1 percent would soon own more than the rest of us. That happened a year earlier than expected, in 2015, the report said. The use of tax shelter Oxfam considers tax shelters for the wealthy the biggest problem. The group said rich individuals and companies hide their wealth in countries where they can pay less tax on their earnings. This is tax money that governments need to tackle poverty and inequality. It is simply unacceptable that the poorest half of the worlds population owns no more than a few dozen super-rich people who could fit onto one bus, said Winnie Byanyima, Oxfam Internationals Executive Director. The report said about $7.6 trillion of individual wealth is kept in offshore banks. They give the wealthy a rate of return on their investments that is higher than the economic growth rate in many countries. Oxfam said taxes on the wealthiest income would add an extra $190 billion to governments every year. As much as 30 percent of all African financial wealth is estimated to be held offshore, costing an estimated $14 billion in lost tax revenues every year, it added. This is enough money to pay for healthcare for mothers and children in Africa that could save 4 million childrens lives a year, and employ enough teachers to get every African child into school, it continued. The report comes a few days before the World Economic Forum opens in Davos, Switzerland. The WEF is a non-profit organization. It invites about 2,500 business leaders, politicians, thinkers and journalists to discuss issues like world poverty and economic growth. Talk among world leaders about the escalating inequality crisis has so far not translated into concrete action, the report says. The world has become a much more unequal place and the trend is accelerating. We cannot continue to allow hundreds of millions of people to go hungry while resources that could be used to help them are sucked up by those at the top. Oxfam noted that had inequality within countries not grown between 1990 and 2010, an extra 200 million people would have escaped poverty. It said governments should recover the missing billions lost to tax havens to pay for healthcare, schools and other public services for the general public. Governments should move minimum wage rates towards a living wage and tackle the pay gap between men and women. Byanyima added, The richest can no longer pretend their wealth benefits everyone their extreme wealth in fact shows an ailing global economy. The recent explosion in the wealth of the super-rich has come at the expense of the majority and particularly the poorest people." Oxfam said global wealth was calculated by Credit Suisse Global Wealth Datebook (2013 and 2014) and Forbes billionaires list published in March. Not everyone agrees with the report The Institute for Economic Affairs in London called the numbers in the report meaningless and misleading. Mark Littlewood, director general of the IEA, said that, global capitalism has eradicated poverty and generated prosperity in the developing world at an unprecedented rate. Tim Worstall, a Fellow at the Adam Smith Institute in London, and a blogger for Forbes magazine, disputed the Oxfam report. What the Oxfam report is complaining about isnt very important and weve already solved it anyway, he said. We dont actually need to do anything therefore, need no public policy over something weve already solved. ... Global demographics are such that the global labor force is going to shrink from now on. Thus the return to labor will rise. Were done. Im Jonathan Evans The full report can be downloaded here. Kathleen Struck wrote this story for Learning English. George Grow was the editor. Do you have something to say about wealth, poverty and the Oxfam report? Can poverty be changed? Please leave a comment under the story and on our Facebook page. ________________________________________________________________ Words in This Story inequality -- adv. unfairness, favoritism toward one thing, a lack of fairness dozen -- n. 12 offshore n. definition escalating -- v. going up or higher, increasing in height concrete -- n. a building material that begins as a liquid and dries to a solid accelerating -- v. going faster, increasing in speed minimum -- n. the lowest or least amount prosperity -- n. thriving, gaining, increasing in wealth or comfort demographics -- n. the categories of a population that show age, income, education, etc. LEXINGTON, Neb. Pinata Time, a party services and pinata business, officially opened in downtown Lexington on Black Friday last year. The pinata shop business, located at 207 E. 6th Street, was opened by Nick and Paloma Abitia, both of Mexican heritage who previously managed a party services business in Holdrege. Both have previously worked as DJs for parties and have a deep passion for parties and family get-togethers. Were both very musically oriented. We have DJed in LA and Nebraska, so we decided to take it to the next level and DJ for kids parties. We realized a lot of people were asking for bounce houses, so we invested in some and bought some, said Paloma. She continued, Weve always been into pinatas, weve loved making them for years so we started selling them. Nick is originally from Los Angeles and Paloma is from Cozad. Pinata Time, Inc is inspired by families and celebrations! Bounce houses get the kids active, music gets the people dancing, and pinatas get everyone to gather around for confetti and goodies. Theres nothing better than getting together with people you love for a fun time, Nick said. Working from Holdrege operating a party planning business, they noticed that a large number of their customer base came from Lexington, Paloma said. Pinata Time offers party supplies, bounce house and water park rentals, DJ services and made-to-order and in-stock pinatas. Paloma said to order a made-to-order pinata customers must give a minimum two-week notice to allow time for construction and pay a deposit of half the price of the pinata. Each pinata is completely hand-crafted. Pinatas made at Pinata Time are not your typical pinatas. Paloma said they are never made with cardboard. Pinatas are hand-crafted in store with paper mache using 100 percent recycled paper. Recycled newspapers are provided by the Lexington Clipper-Herald, she said. Giving back to their communities is a way of life for the Abitias. They DJed for the Walk to End Alzheimers at Kearneys Yanney Park last summer. They also hosted a customer appreciation potluck last year and are always open to donating their services and pinatas when asked. Paloma said the first two months of running the business in Lexington and getting to know the community has gone very well. More and more people are seeing who we are. The Lexington community has been very welcoming and supportive, she said. The biggest thing for us is keeping it in the community,Lexington has been so good to us, Nick said. The enthusiasm of this city made it an easy decision to relocate their business to Lexington, he said. The hard working community of Lexington deserves an outlet for fun. So we work as hard as we can to bring it to you. Asked about her inspiration for making and choosing the characters for her pinatas, Paloma said, it takes a lot of research staying up-to-date on the latest movies, shows and trends. Paloma said the bond between pinata maker and pinata was very deep. She said once she makes each pinata she can get a sense of what type of pinata it should be made into. This might sound kind of weird but when you make a pinata it tells you what it should be, she said. Ultimately the driving force behind the Abitias pinata business were spreading a piece of the party spirit to others. Our biggest goal is to make sure families can get together and have fun, Nick said. When you see a kid take a pinata home and smile its a good feeling, Paloma said. Pinata Time, Inc, is open Wednesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. The store is located at 207. East 6th Street in downtown Lexington. Many in-stock pinatas and party supplies are carried. For more information, call 308-746-7211. Google is getting ready to ship a new tool that could help web sites load more quickly. Its a data compression algorithm called Brotli that could allow some web content to load up to 25 percent more quickly. Brotli will be built into future versions of the Chrome web browser for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and Chrome OS. Google says Brotli outperforms gzip compression by up to 25 percent, loads HTML content up to 25 percent more efficiently, and also offers improved load times for css and javascript. You can already give Brotli a try if youre using the Chrome Canary web browser, by typing this into your location bar: chrome://flags#enable-brotli Of course, just because your web browser can support the new algorithm doesnt mean the web content youre trying to view does. And Brotli only works on sites that use HTTPS. So you might not see any big speed boost right away. But Google says its Google Fonts API is already using Brotli compression, so sites that use Google Web Fonts should benefit. via Engadget and +Ilya Grigorik Blog Archive April (1) March (27) February (28) January (29) December (31) November (28) October (25) September (30) August (28) July (28) June (29) May (29) April (26) March (29) February (27) January (30) December (31) November (20) October (24) September (28) August (29) July (26) June (27) May (31) April (26) March (21) February (23) January (28) December (30) November (29) October (25) September (29) August (28) July (30) June (27) May (29) April (26) March (27) February (27) January (28) December (26) November (25) October (25) September (23) August (22) July (27) June (21) May (24) April (21) March (26) February (25) January (28) December (24) November (28) October (19) September (23) August (29) July (25) June (27) May (23) April (25) March (27) February (25) January (31) December (14) November (22) October (25) September (25) August (23) July (25) June (21) May (24) April (23) March (26) February (21) January (29) December (31) November (25) October (24) September (27) August (25) July (16) June (17) May (25) April (25) March (23) February (24) January (28) December (19) November (24) October (21) September (23) August (21) July (12) June (15) May (22) April (22) March (28) February (29) January (24) December (28) November (16) October (27) September (19) August (22) July (31) June (27) May (16) April (18) March (16) February (19) January (27) December (25) November (30) October (27) September (24) August (31) July (23) June (23) May (20) April (29) March (29) February (27) January (29) December (29) November (21) October (29) September (31) August (21) July (31) June (30) May (27) April (29) March (31) February (28) January (32) December (30) November (30) October (30) September (30) August (31) July (32) June (30) May (31) April (29) March (32) February (29) January (31) December (9) About Me Name: David Yonki Location: Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, United States Political analyst for WBRE TV's Pa. Live program and post election commentator for WBRE TV's Eyewitness News Daybreak show. Author of the book "A Radio Story/We Wish You Well In Your Future Endeavors" and "Leges Vitae" "26 Rules of Life" and the new novel, "Weather Or Knot". The blog editor also writes various news articles and columns as well as upcoming literary projects. The blog editor was a frequent guest on WYOU TV'S INTERACTIVE NEWSCASTS when political issues were discussed on the national, state and local level. Yonki was a weekly panelist on WYLN TV 35's Friday Topic A program. He also appeared on the Hazleton, PA. station on Election Night doing coverage and did special projects and stories for WYLN TV 35's 10PM Newscast "Late Edition". View my complete profile Russia is waging a disgraceful war on Ukraine. Stand With Ukraine! New Delhi: The Centre today unveiled a new power tariff policy which allows 100 percent expansion by existing power plants, passing on levies to consumers and purchase of 100 percent electricity produced from waste. "The Union cabinet has approved the proposal of the Ministry of Power for amendments in the tariff policy," an official statement said. "A holistic view of the power sector has been taken and comprehensive amendments have been made in the Tariff policy 2006. Our aim is to achieve the objectives of Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojana (UDAY) with the focus on 4 Es: Electricity for all, Efficiency to ensure affordable tariffs, Environment for a sustainable future, Ease of doing business to attract investments and ensure financial viability," Power Minister Piyush Goyal said after the Cabinet meeting. He said that under the first E (Electricity for all), the policy is aiming at 24X7 supply to all consumers and state governments and regulators will devise a power supply trajectory to achieve this. Under this, power to be provided to remote unconnected villages through micro grids with provision for purchase of power into the grid as and when the grid reaches there. Goyal said: "Small plants will be set up in coal mining areas to provide power to people living near coal mines." The statement said that affordable power will be provided to people living near coal mines by enabling procurement of power from coal washery reject based plants. Under the second E (efficiency), Goyal said that 100 percent expansion of existing plants will be allowed because it is always easy to go for brown field expansion as these already have clearance like environment and forest approvals. Government expects that this will also help in reducing power cost to consumers through expanding existing plants. The minister also said, "States do not buy (committed) power from plants. There is spare capacity. Now plants will be able to sell power generated from this spare capacity on energy exchanges." Power plants run on low PLF or generate less power than their installed capacity because state do not buy the committed power. This results in underutilisation of plant capacity which increases fixed cost component in the power tariff. The minister also said, "Except few lines like on India-Bangladesh border, all transmission lines will be auctioned through competitive bidding." Government expects that development of transmission projects through competitive bidding process will ensure faster completion of lines at lower cost. According to the statement, the new tariff policy also provides for faster installation of smart meters to enable Time of Day metering, reducing theft and allowing net-metering. It also aims at lowering power cost by creating transmission capacity for accessing power from across India. Under third E (Environment), the tariff policy provides that under the renewable Power Obligation (RPO) 8 percent of electricity consumption excluding hydro power, shall be from solar energy by March 2022. Under the RPO, the discoms are required to either buy certain proportion of their purchases from renewable source or buy RPO certificates. The minister said that the new power tariff policy also provides for the Renewable Generation Obligation (RGO) under which new coal/lignite based thermal plants after specified date will establish/procure/purchase renewable capacity. The policy also provides for affordable renewable power through bundling of renewable power with power from plants whose PPAs have expired or completed their useful life. It also provides that no inter-State transmission charges and losses are to be levied for solar and wind power. The policy will also give big boost to Swachh Bharat Mission as it provides for procurement of 100 percent power produced from Waste-to-Energy plants. Thermal plants within 50 km of sewage treatment facilities to use treated sewage water which will help in releasing Clean drinking water for cities and reduce pollution of rivers like Ganga, he said. The policy also provides for promotion of Hydro projects through long term PPAs and exemption from competitive bidding till August 2022. Besides, it states that ancillary services will support grid operation for expansion of renewable energy. Under the fourth E (Ease of Doing Business), the policy provides for generation of employment in coal rich Eastern states like Odisha, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh etc. by encouraging investments. It provides that states will be allowed to setup plants, with up to 35 percent of power procured by DISCOMs on regulated tariff. The policy also allowed pass through for impact of any change in domestic duties, levies, cess and taxes in competitive bid projects for removing market uncertainty. Goyal said: "If coal cess or any of levies like excise, custom or octroi is increased then it will be considered change in law...pass through in tariff will be allowed. This will help in reducing number of cases in APPTEL (Applette Tribunal for Electricity)." The policy says that Central Regulator will determine tariff for composite schemes where more than 10 per cent power sold outside state which will bring clarity on tariff setting authority for multi-State sales. PTI Dear Minister, Lets begin this letter with a clean chit to you. The FIR against you in the Rohith Vemula matter is not going to land you in jail. Its not worth the paper it is written on. Rohiths suicide note does not name you. In fact, it neither demonstrates no anger nor points any accusing finger at anyone. Its content reflects hopelessness and a sense of defeat. Theres a hint of a depressed mind in it too. If the suicide note is the sole basis of the FIR, then rest assured, the courts of law will junk it at some point. Rohiths case will not affect your ministerial position either, or that of Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani, whose office sent one email and five reminders in response to your letter. Its possible you will be feted for showing the world how you deal with anti-national students. Other leaders may soon be emulating your example. I see an elevation in position for you. Congratulations in advance! But Sir, beyond the small world of the law, courts, evidence etc, theres a big universe driven by the consideration of morality or at least the perception of morality and the rules of conscience. The courts may absolve you of all guilt but you will find it difficult to escape being considered guilty by the yardsticks of the universe. A young students death is no small matter. He was only 26; its no age to die for anyone, including those who do not believe in your construct of nationalism or your way of looking at the world. Branding someone anti-national is a bigger crime. Let me reiterate that you had nothing to with Rohiths suicide. But let us have a look at the chain of events. There was a fight between members of Ambedkar Students Association and Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad over the hanging of Yakub Memon last year and the screening of a documentary Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai on campus. In August, a letter purportedly written on your letter pad and sent to the Union HRD ministry calls the university a den of casteist, extremist and anti-national politics. In justification, it adds this could be visualised from the fact that when Yakub Memon was hanged, a dominant students union that is Amedkar Students Union has held protest against the execution. It sought action against such anti-nationals and blamed the university for not doing enough. The same proctorial board that had found Rohith and other members of ASU not guilty in the incident in August, found them guilty in December. Its action was allegedly spurred by Bandarus letter to the ministry. The students were expelled. And what followed till Rohiths suicide is public knowledge. Sir, as the chain of events suggests, were it not for your letter, Rohith would perhaps be living today, dreaming of becoming a science writer. Whatever has emerged from the case so far does not point to a direct, legally establish-able link between the letter and the suicide but the weight of circumstantial developments is difficult to ignore. It is possible, like you clarified, that you only forwarded the representation from ABVP activists to the ministry and had no idea what happened to it later. It is possible again that some overenthusiastic official in the HRD ministry kept pursuing the matter and equally overenthusiastic varsity authorities overreacted. However, what was jarring is your statement on news channels that the university had anti-social and anti-national elements, who were assaulting ABVP activists. Who are you to decide who is an anti-national? For that matter who gave the right to the ABVP to decide who is what? There are so many people in the country who disapproved of Yakubs hanging for different reasons and yes, there are so many who did not view the Muzaffarnagar riots in the similar way a large number of your friends in your political circles did. But does that make them anti-national? Am I anti-national because I am writing this? Of course, you will be backed by everyone in your ideological fraternity. There will be strong justification for your action. That will wash away the sense of guilt, if there is any at all. As the FIR goes into the legal labyrinth, Rohith will be forgotten. But Sir, do you feel now that this could have been avoided? If Rohith was planning to commit suicide he would have done it anyway, but did he deserve the anti-national tag? Best of luck for the case. The FIR is a joke. You will emerge with flying colours. Yours truly, An Indian New Delhi: A high-level task force, headed by former DRDO chief VK Aatre, has recommended to the defence ministry ten critical segments where it can go for strategic partnerships. In a move that may rile private companies, the task force has recommended that one company cannot be eligible for multiple partnerships. This means that, each company would be restricted to just one critical segment in the overall multi-billion dollar defence manufacturing sector. The task force, which has submitted its report to the defence ministry, has divided the sectors eligible for strategic partnerships into two groups. Segments in Group 1 are - aircraft, helicopters, aero-engines, submarines, warships, guns (including artillery guns) and armoured vehicles including tanks. In Group 2, the segments are - metallic material and alloys, non-metallic material (including composites and polymers) and ammunition including smart ammunition. However, it has recommended that in the initial phase, aircraft, helicopters, submarines, armoured vehicles and ammunition be considered for strategic partnerships. "Only one company shall be eligible as the Applicant Company from one group in respect of Group 1 segments. Such applicant company shall be permitted to file an application for selection as a Strategic Partner in respect of Group 1 segments," the report said. It has recommended a series of criteria for the ranking of the companies. "Upon application of the applicant companies, the highest ranked applicant company shall be selected by the MoD and allotted the status of strategic partner of the segment. In event the same applicant company is ranked highest in more than one segment, the preference list as submitted by the applicant company at the time of application shall be followed. "Therefore, such an applicant company shall be appointed the strategic partner for the segment which is listed higher in its preference list prioritising it preference to segments in rank. For other segments where it is highest ranked but has not been selected, in view of the preference list the next ranked applicant company shall be appointed the strategic partner," the report said. The feeling among the private industry players is that only the big firms will benefit out of this. However, even the large firms are not open to the idea since they feel that they would be restricted to just specific fields and, therefore, their overall investment and plans will get affected. An official of a defence firm, who did not want to be identified, said, "It creates the ground for nomination of a private sector business partner for award of defence contracts on an exclusive basis in each of the major categories in defence production." "The Aatre process could enable the big five of the Indian private sector defence industry to corner about 80 percent of the business and create monopolies in all categories," an industry source said, claiming that it may herald a return of "crony capitalism". Also, "restricting one group to one platform is unprecedented. Globally, every large defence firm has a land, air and naval segment," a defence company official said. Even the foreign firms are skeptical. "How can the government decide who our private sector partner will be? We will wait for a final decision before commenting," a company source said. PTI Mumbai: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday appeared in a court in Mumbai in connection with a case for allegedly holding a rally without required permission during the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. On 9 December last year, the Kurla court had granted Kejriwal permanent exemption from appearance in the case. However, Magistrate Richa Khedekar had directed the AAP leader to appear on Wednesday for furnishing a bail bond. The magistrate on Wednesday allowed the Delhi CM to leave after his aide Satish Jain stood as his surety. The rally in Mankhurd was held to campaign for AAP candidates Meera Sanyal and Medha Patkar, which the Mumbai Police has claimed was "unscheduled" and held without priorrequisite permissions from traffic police following which a complaint was filed against Kejriwal and others in March 2014. Kejriwal had approached the Bombay High Court seeking quashing of the FIR and exemption from appearing before the Kurla metropolitan magistrate. But the HC asked him to appear before the magistrate and seek permanent exemption from appearance from that court. PTI New Delhi: Delhi Police has arrested four suspected terrorists -- reportedly linked with the Islamic State terror outfit -- from Haridwar in Uttarakhand for plotting attacks in the capital and nearby areas. The four suspects -- Akhlaq ur Rehman, Mohammad Osama alias Adil, Mohammad Azimu Shaan and Mehraj -- were arrested on Tuesday based on specific information by central intelligence agencies. "All the suspects belong to Haridwar from where they were arrested on Tuesday. We produced them in a court in Delhi on Wednesday which sent them to 15 days police custody," said Special Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) Arvind Deep. The suspects had plans to carry out bombings during the ongoing Ardh Kumbh in Haridwar, in Roorkee-Haridwar bound trains, in Delhi and some parts of the National Capital Region (NCR). The Ardh-Kumbh started on 1 January this year and will end on 30 April. During the four-month religious congregation, over five crore pilgrims are expected to visit the district to bathe in the holy Ganga river. On the first major bathing day on 14 January, close to 10 lakh devotees took a dip in the Ganga. Police claimed that the arrested people were in touch with Shafi Armar, who handles recruitment for Ansar Al Twahid, the Indian offshoot of the terror group. "We got an input from intelligence agencies that some people are planning attacks on Roorkee-Haridwar bound trains and some other locations in Haridwar and NCR," Arvind Deep said. The official said a specific team including police inspectors Neli and Hridaynath was set up under the supervision of Additional Commissioner of Police Alok Kumar and Deputy Commissioner of Police P.S. Kushwah and they thwarted a possible attack after the arrest of the four people. Deep said further investigation was on to unearth the whole plot. The officer also praised Uttar Pradesh Police for helping them in the operation. IANS Srinagar: Two separatist guerrillas were killed on Wednesday in a gunfight with the security forces in south Kashmir's Pulwama district, a police official said. "Two militants belonging to the Hizbul Mujahideen - identified as Riyaz Naik and Lateef Dar - were killed in a gunbattle with the security forces today (Wednesday) in Naina Batpora village," the official told IANS in Srinagar. He said the house used as a fortified bunker by the separatists was destroyed in the gunfight. "We suspect the body of a third militant was buried under the debris," he added. Troops of the 55 Rashtriya Rifles, 182 and 183 battalion of Central Reserve Police Force and special operations group of the state police surrounded the house of Abdul Salam Wani in Naina Batpora on Tuesday evening after a tip-off on guerrillas hiding there. When the security forces asked the guerrillas to surrender, they resorted to indiscriminate firing that triggered the gunfight, police said. IANS New Delhi: The union cabinet on Wednesday gave its ex-post facto approval for the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between India and Britain for cooperation in public administration and governance reforms. The meeting of the union cabinet was chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "The form of co-operation will be in areas like sharing good governance practices in public administration, user led service design, reducing bureaucracy in service delivery, government process re-engineering, building and developing staff capability, public grievance redress mechanism, local government reforms, reforms towards strengthening of social security, collaboration in strategies for promotion of ethics in government, collaboration between government and industry on staff management, mechanisms for public engagement, crisis and disaster management and digital transformation of government," an official release said. A joint working group on public administration and governance, which is scheduled to meet later this month in London, will be responsible for implementation of the MoU. "The MoU will help in understanding the system of customer-oriented public service delivery in UK with reference to rapidly changing environments in the area of public service management and enable in replicating, adapting and innovating some of the best practices and processes in the Indian Public Service Delivery System, leading to improved public service delivery in India," the release said. New Delhi: India has welcomed Maldives decision to allow jailed former president Mohamed Nasheed to travel to the UK for treatment. "Welcome decision by government of Maldives to give permission to former President Nasheed to travel to UK for treatment," External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Vikas Swarup tweeted. Nasheed, convicted of ordering the military to arrest a senior judge when he was in power in 2012, had sought permission to go abroad for a surgery on his back and left earlier this week for the UK. His trial and subsequent conviction had got widespread international criticism. PTI The cold-blooded mass murder of 132 children, among others, by the Pakistani Taliban has rightly drawn a huge wave of sympathy from Indians, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Pranab Mukherjee reaching out to Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in his countrys hour of tragedy. But the sympathy has also brought forth the usual foolishness from peaceniks of every hue. On Twitter, #IndiaWithPakistan is, even now, trending just below #PeshawarAttack. We should not mix up sentimentalism with substance. In terms of the larger India-Pakistan relationship, Peshawar does not change anything. Repeat, anything. It is one thing to empathise with Pakistans civil society over this terrible human tragedy, quite another to believe that the deep Pakistani state is overnight going to change its anti-India colours or stop sending mass murderers across the border to kill our people. Even a few days ago, when the Pakistani army was busy prosecuting its fight against the Taliban in North Waziristan, jihadis groups were paying us a visit in Jammu & Kashmir. For the Pakistani army, terrorists are those who fight them, not us. The Pakistani state has systematically nurtured terrorists on its territory both for use in Afghanistan and in India. Terrorism is a part of its security doctrine, and this doctrine is decided not by the civilian government, but by the army and the ISI independently of elected politicians. A close look at what Nawaz Sharif said after the Peshawar attack (read here), and the statement put out by the Pakistani foreign office after the killings ended, should offer clues. Sharif said: "Operation Zarb-e-azab will continue until terrorism is completely wiped out from the country. We have had talks with Afghanistan about jointly fighting the menace of terrorism. Note: Sharif is offering to fight jointly terror with Afghanistan, not India. Now, consider what the Pakistan Foreign Office said: These terrorists are enemies of Pakistan, enemies of Islam and enemies of humanity. The Pakistani nation stands united in condemning this heinous crime and remains resolute in its commitment to eliminate terrorism from the soil of Pakistan. Note: The Foreign Office wants to fight enemies of Islam, not terrorism per se. It also wants to eliminate terrorism from the soil of Pakistan, not its neighbours, especially India. Clearly, the Pakistani foreign policy of differentiating between good terrorist and bad terrorist is intact even after the Peshawar attack. So anybody who thinks this is the psychological movement to push forward with their own woolly notions of "Aman ki Aasha" or for forward movement on contentious issues with Pakistan will be making a serious mistake. The history of Pakistan suggests that there is almost no room for optimism on this score. With every setback and every positive opening - after 1965, 1971 and 1999 - Pakistan has re-emerged with more hostility towards India, not less. So it will be after Peshawar. As South Asian strategic affairs expert C Christine Fair notes perceptively in her book, Fighting to the end: The Pakistani Armys Way of War, Pakistan defines defeat very differently from normal countries. For Pakistan, defeat would be an inability to defy and fight India, not military or diplomatic defeat. Writes Fair: Pakistan's antagonism with respect to India cannot be reduced to the bilateral dispute over Kashmir... Pakistan's defence literature clearly maintains that Pakistan's army also aims to resist India's position of regional dominance and its slow but steady global ascent. Further: The likelihood that Pakistan's military or even civilian leadership will abandon the state's long-standing and expanding revisionist goals and prosecute a policy of normalisation with India is virtually nil. So, to believe a tragedy like Peshawar will change the Pakistani attitude to India is to believe something that has not happened in 67 years of antagonism will now miraculously happen. On the other hand, consider how strengthened the Pakistani army would be after Peshawar. In the last one year, the army first neutered Nawaz Sharif by using Imran Khan and a Canada-based cleric to undermine Sharif's popular mandate so that he is forced to kowtow to the army. The Pakistani army has always been popular with its people, but after Peshawar the people will back it more than ever, since it was armymen's kids who were killed in the Taliban attack. The army, for its part, has been taught that if they mess with the Taliban, they will get it where it hurts. So what do you think will happen now? Despite protestations to the contrary, the Pakistan will try and finish the Taliban, the probability is that the army will ease off its operations in North Waziristan, where the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan has its strongest base. And, basking in public sympathy, it will focus on terrorism directed at India. The world will be told that all this terrorism exists because India will not talk to them on Kashmir, and our own "useful idiots" will parrot this mindlessly, undermining our strategic understanding of the situation and our collective will to fight Pakistan-based terror. Sympathy for the victims should not blind us to the importance of strategy and national will. While some people think we should not talk to Pakistan till it ends terror, I believe talking can never do harm. At best, cancelling the occasional schedule of talks is good for political messaging. Talking is good because it sends the world a message of reasonableness on our part. However, what we should not do is talk about giving concessions to Pakistan without clearly understanding what they are offering to give us. This time, they should put what they are offering on the table for forward movement in the relationship. We should not give without a lot of take. Pakistan often scores by claiming to be the one always willing to talk while we are shown as whimsical people who don't want to even talk, abandoning dialogue on the slightest pretext (a 26/11 here, a decapitation of soldiers there). For Pakistan these are minor things. We have to be smart, and talking endlessly and firmly without offering concessions is one way of being smart. It will force Pakistan to wonder what it is getting out of it, and if it calls off the talks instead of us, it will be shown up as the unreasonable state - which is really the case. When it comes to Pakistan we can never lower our guard or listen to peaceniks. Our policies should be entirely guided by realism and long-term strategy. We have to play for the long haul - which has never been our strength. Time we changed that. We cannot view Pakistan with rose-tinted spectacles ever. We need an iron fist in a velvet glove always. So the WWE circus rolled into town town, if you happen to live in New Delhi after 13 years and put on two shows at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium on 15 and 16 January. But, not before the WWE had averted a minor but potentially damaging incident. Damaging to the organisations reputation perhaps, but primarily to the money that stood to be made from two shows where tickets were priced between Rs 1,699 and Rs 17,999 (before handling charges and all manner of taxes were applied) not to mention the millions of rupees to be made from a fanbase in India. The Aadvanshi Veer Sena (yes, us neither) and a group of local wrestlers reportedly protested against an incident in 1998 that saw then WWF wrestler Kurt Angle clean his nose with the Indian flag. They demanded an apology or else... We never did find out what the or else was because in the days leading up to the Delhi shows, WWE International President Gerrit Meier said (in oddly broken and stilted English, it must be stated): This case is about 20-years-ago and we did not deliberately did that. We have a great respect for the country. We are sorry that it happened, but we had no intention of doing it. India is a reputable country and we apologise for this We are extremely pleased that India is hosting the live events again. There are good number of fans and I am confident that they will enjoy it all. Nearly 14 years later, we are once again on the ground of India will play a WWE match. (sic) Lets just sidestep the incredibly patronising reputable country part. But at least he didnt say that the footage was doctored, the incident was taken out of context, their accounts were hacked or that it was a smear campaign against them by a rival organisation. Meier apologised. Twice, in fact. The addition of the claim that it was not done deliberately (something that was again said twice) serves to water down the apology and even render it disingenious. But, hes not entirely at fault. While you digest that idea, heres the incident in question that was supposedly not intentional: But that was 1998: The WWE was called the WWF and would continue to sport that name until it had the proverbial smackdown laid down on it by the panda organisation in 2001, superstars were called wrestlers, Olympic gold medallist Angle was just entering the world of professional wrestling, and Bret Hitman Hart was on the verge of jumping ship to erstwhile rival WCW. Why is the last part relevant? The contrast between Meier and Harts approach to India is notable. While one issued a perfunctory apology to ensure that the show would go on, the other seemed to genuinely treasure his brush with India. Hart was part of the contingent that came to India in 1996 and the experience clearly stayed with him, seeing as he saw fit to include it in his documentary Hitman Hart: Wrestling with Shadows and write about it in his autobiography Hitman: My Real Life in the Cartoon World of Wrestling. But as noted earlier, this isnt entirely Meiers fault: He was only doing his very best to apologise for something that comes as naturally to the WWE as breathing does to you and me. The incident with the tricolour is only a tiny footnote in the history of WWEs complex but abusive relationship with flags. Basing storylines on geopolitical equations is something the WWE has been doing for decades, from Soviet flag-waving Nikolai Volkoff and Iraqi flag-wielding General Adnan to the ridiculous 2005 angle involving terrorists seeking to sacrifice the Undertaker (dont ask). And every time a statement has to be made whether to draw cheers or jeers from fans or further the political agendas of pro-wrestlings First Family, the McMahons something or the other happens to a flag. Remember Ultimate Warrior ripping up the Iraqi flag and feeding it to Sgt Slaughter? Lets do a brief rundown, shall we? Undertaker laying waste to the Japanese flag: Hulk Hogan having his way with the Soviet flag: The Big Show ripping down a Russian flag: Chris Jericho kicking the Brazilian flag around in Sau Paulo no less: Numerous incidents involving the Canadian flag most of which have disappeared from the internet, but this one remains: A notable exception to this rule is the US flag, which has largely escaped this treatment. Thats not to say it didnt come close on at least two occasions. The Un-Americans if ever a name was more on the nose, I havent heard it almost setting the flag ablaze: Rusev almost ripping it down: The key word in both cases is almost. With a primarily American audience, the WWE would obviously not be able to get away with desecrating the Star-Spangled Banner on cable television. But the national flags of other countries have always been fair game. These antics have allowed the WWE to clearly demarcate bad guys and good guys for its audiences and in the process sell pay-per-view events, merchandise and tickets to their live shows. It's safe to say that these angles are going nowhere anytime soon. That being said, action has been taken for a small percentage of these in-ring stunts over time, with Jericho being suspended for 30 days (although the fact that he was almost arrested may have had something to do with it) and the WWE apologising to Russia on behalf of the Big Show. And now, the apology to India. Bear in mind that Angle hasn't been in the employ of the WWE for a long time and the company could have easily palmed it off as the actions of a former employee and something for which the current management takes no responsibility. But to even merit this strange apology, one thing is clear to the folks in Titan Towers: India where the company recently launched its WWE Network is a major business opportunity for the WWE. That's also probably why Iraq or Japan with its own thriving pro-wrestling ecosystem never received an apology. The sheep farmers of Australia would like to thank all the vegans who complained about Meat and Livestock Australia's latest effort to convince us to eat lamb on Australia Day. Making Operation Boomerang our most complained about ad is wonderful publicity. A word of comfort here for such vegans: of all the things that might happen to you in Brooklyn, I wouldn't worry too much about having your kale torched by commandos. I intended to join in the Australia Day fun by explaining that the lamb ads had actually pulled the wool over Australians' eyes but facts have got in the way of what is still a good story. A British preacher considered so extreme in his home country that he has been kicked out of mosques and spurned by the Islamic community has turned his gaze to Australia and is quickly building a support base in Sydney and Melbourne. Abu Haleema, who had his passport cancelled in Britain and was arrested on terrorism offences last year, has produced YouTube videos in recent weeks attacking moderate Sydney sheikhs Shady Alsuleiman and Wesam Charkawi. He also attacked Liverpool imam Sheikh Abu Adnan for allowing Bankstown policeman, Danny Miqati, to give a talk in the mosque about domestic violence. However, Australian authorities are powerless to stop Haleema from spreading his hardline sermons on YouTube and Facebook, where he is gathering a following among young Australians including some of those on the periphery of a group charged over the murder of police accountant Curtis Cheng. At a hotel bar in the city of Ras al-Khaima foreign women work as prostitutes and wait for customers. Credit:Thessa Lageman "I think that in three months I will have earned enough and will go home." A Filipino rock band starts playing and a German tourist comes over and asks where she is from. The living room in the Ewa'a shelter for women and children in Abu Dhabi. The women from Nigeria said they wanted to return home as soon as possible. Credit:Thessa Lageman In a nightclub on the top floor of a hotel in the northern city of Ras al-Khaima, six women in nylon dresses slowly circle on a stage lit by coloured spotlights. Plastic flower garlands hang around their necks. The walls are draped with purple and red velvet. At the tables in front of the stage, men dressed in the traditional Emirati long white garb known as a dishdasha are drinking strong liquor and smoking water pipes. The keyboard player sings in Iraqi Arabic: "Don't be so cruel, Syrian woman. This man is fed up with waiting. You are so stubborn. Bring your price down." Sex services in the country are also openly advertised on websites and social media. How many women do this work of their own free will and how many are coerced is unknown, says Sara Suhail, director of the Ewa'a shelters for trafficked women and children. Most of the victims had been offered a respectable job as a receptionist in a hotel or as a secretary in the UAE while still in their home countries, she explains from her office at a shelter in an Abu Dhabi suburb. "They are often lured to the country by a friend or family member and don't suspect anything." The shelter's staff is made up of Emirati women. Maitha al-Mazrouei is second from left. Credit:Thessa Lageman This was also the case with 19-year old Oksana, of Uzbekistan, who has long brown hair and is wearing a wide flower-print dress. She has been staying in the shelter for a few months now. Her best friend and her best friend's mother, who had earlier moved to Abu Dhabi, persuaded her to come too, saying many well-paid jobs were available. Soon after however, her friend's mother told her to spend the night with an old Afghan man. In a dark basement bar below a hotel in the old centre of Dubai, women from countries such as Vietnam, China, Ethiopia, and Uganda working as prostitutes wait for customers. Visitors were all men, mainly Westerners. Credit:Thessa Lageman "Luckily, when I started crying, he didn't touch me," Oksana says in a soft voice. Instead he gave the mother 20,000 dirhams for the costs she had incurred in bringing the girl to the country. "But she didn't release me and instead found another man interested in a virgin like me." She managed to escape and the mother and daughter are now in prison. Maitha al-Mazrouei, a shelter employee says helping victims of sexual abuse is something new in the Gulf region. "Most people don't know that prostitutes are often forced. It's still a big taboo." She shows the bedrooms with the bunk beds, the large kitchen and the rooms where painting and other creative courses take place. Two Nigerian women are knitting in the living room in front of the TV. "We want to go home," one of them whispers. Dubai, Sharjah and Ras al-Khaima also have shelters, all opened by the National Committee to Combat Human Trafficking after a law was passed in 2006 criminalising human trafficking. So far, fewer than 250 women and children have stayed in the shelters. The number of victims who have received shelter has decreased in the past few years, the director says, thanks to the state's efforts in combating trafficking. The women are encouraged to take legal action, but in 2014, only 15 women took their cases to court. However, Rothna Begum, researcher at Human Rights Watch, thinks that the number of victims who receive assistance, and the number of prosecutions are far lower than would conceivably be expected for a country known for its high rate of trafficking. "The UAE authorities would like to consider that the drop in cases is because of successful deterrence, but in fact, the success would be noted if there were more successful prosecutions", she said. An activist for migrants' rights from one of the Persian Gulf countries, who asked not to be named after having received threats, says that "literally on a monthly basis" they receive reports about domestic workers being sold into sex slavery upon arrival in Dubai. The government and recruitment agencies prefer not to upset the status quo, because they benefit from it economically, the activist says. The publication of photographs of prisoners being held at a US military camp in Cuba has led to concern that their human rights are being abused. The Pentagon has released the pictures showing the detainees kneeling and subjected to sensory deprivation on their arrival at Camp X-Ray, which is housed in a military base at Guantanamo Bay. They are seen handcuffed, wearing goggles, ear muffs, surgical masks and heavy gloves. A new group of 34 prisoners have arrived at Camp X-Ray, taking the total number being held there to 144. US forces captured the men during military operations in Afghanistan on suspicion of links to the Taleban and al-Qaeda. Human rights activists have objected to the prisoners being shackled and kept in temporary eight-by-eight feet cells made of wire mesh and corrugated metal roofs, leaving them subject to adverse weather. Amnesty International, the human rights group, says conditions there fall below US standards for ordinary prisoners and the men are being degraded. The director of the British-based Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, Helen Bamber, said: They will probably have panic attacks, mood changes and terrible nightmares. But Washington says the pictures show the men arriving at the camp and were not representative of daily life there. It says they have been treated humanely and been given adequate provisions. The US military has stressed the prisoners are extremely dangerous and said it will press ahead with plans to expand Camp X-Ray so it can hold 320 prisoners. Hundreds of detainees remain in custody in Afghanistan awaiting transfer to the camp. A permanent prison which will hold up to 1,000 detainees is currently under construction at Guantanamo Bay. Last week, a team from the International Committee of the Red Cross started evaluating conditions at the US military camp and interviewing detainees. Officials will report on whether the captives are being treated humanely in accordance with the Geneva Conventions on prisoners of war. But the US insists the men are not PoWs but illegal combatants, which means they can be interrogated without legal representation. Under the Geneva Conventions, prisoners would be tried for war crimes through courts martial or civilian courts, not by secretive military tribunals which could impose the death penalty. Courtesy BBC News In context In 2001, following the 11 September terrorist attacks which killed nearly 3,000 people, the US launched a military campaign in Afghanistan. The objective was to remove the Taleban regime, which harboured al-Qaeda and its leader Osama Bin Laden who later admitted carrying out the attacks. In April 2003, Camp Delta replaced Camp X-Ray and became the permanent facility to hold detainees, who were given cells with solid walls and proper facilities. At its peak in 2003, Guantanamo Bay held 680 prisoners from around 40 countries nine of them from Britain and more than 100 have been released. The majority have been held without charge. In 2004, hearings began so detainees could challenge the rules under which they are being held and determine if their detention is legal. Also, military tribunals, similar to criminal trials, began for some detainees who have been charged with war crimes and conspiring to commit terrorism. Allegations of abuse of prisoners have continued to surface from previous detainees and human rights groups, which the White House has said will be fully investigated. United Nations investigators have called for the closure of the prison which Amnesty International campaigners have compared to a Soviet labour camp. Even the UK, a strong American ally, has asked for the camp to close, saying it fuels Islamic radicalism. CHINAs central bank yesterday announced it will inject at least 600 billion yuan (USD91.46 billion) to provide liquidity for the impending Spring Festival holiday, the state-run agency Xinhua reported. The liquidity will be added through tools such as the standing lending facility (SLF), the medium-term lending facility (MLF) and pledged supplementary lending (PSL), the Peoples Bank of China said in a statement on its website. The central bank vowed to ensure liquidity in the banking system is reasonable and adequate around the Spring Festival, which will fall on Feb 8. MIDDLE EAST Chinese President Xi Jinping has arrived in Saudi Arabia for a two-day visit as part of a Mideast tour that will include stops in Egypt and Iran. The official Saudi Press Agency reported that Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman greeted the Chinese delegation upon their arrival yesterday. Xi will be meeting with King Salman, as well as the chiefs of the Gulf Cooperation Council and the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation. IRAN has successfully transferred some of its formerly frozen assets in order to ensure that financial sanctions have been fully lifted in accordance with a historic nuclear deal, the head of the central bank said yesterday. SOUTH KOREA toughened its aviation security law in the aftermath of the notorious nut rage incident involving a top airline executive. The transport ministry said the revised law went into effect yesterday, more than a year after a Korean Airlines vice presidents tantrum over macadamia nuts delayed a flight. MYANMAR Members of the Kachin ethnic group have called for justice for two young volunteer teachers who were raped and murdered in a case they believe highlights sexual violence by government soldiers. A report on the assault was released yesterday as a memorial service was held in Yangon for Tangbau Hkawn Nan Tsin and Maran Lu Ra, who were attacked a year ago. INDIA Shouting slogans and holding placards, hundreds of students yesterday angrily protested the death of an Indian student who, along with four others, was barred from using some facilities at his university in the southern tech-hub of Hyderabad. INTERNET Some Twitter users had to do without early yesterday after sporadic outages knocked the social media site offline in Europe. Reports of malfunctions began to appear in the US as well, but it was unclear how widespread the outages were. Twitter Inc. which has 320 million active users, tweeted that it is aware of the issue and is trying to fix it. Users said the service was not accessible on desktop computers. A young woman in a remote northern region of Afghanistan had her nose cut off by her husband, officials in the region said yesterday. Fawzia Salimi, a hospital director in Maymana, capital of Faryab province, said 22-year-old Reza Gul was brought in early Monday having lost a great deal of blood. Guls husband, 25-year-old Mohammad Khan, has since fled their village. Salimi said the Afghan-Turk Hospital in Maymana was trying to arrange transport for Gul to Turkey for further treatment. Domestic violence is widespread in Afghanistan, where women are often denied constitutional rights designed to protect them. Violence has also become somewhat entrenched in Afghan society after 40 years of war, with nearly non-existent mental health care and few options or outlets for a traumatized population. Hafizullah Fetrat, the head of Fayrabs provincial human rights commission, said violence in the area had risen by at least 30 percent in the past year. Its not just in Faryab, it is across the entire north of the country poverty, high unemployment, ignorance about marriage, he said. Faryab borders Turkmenistan and is among the poorest regions of Afghanistan, with many people relying on government food handouts. Corruption is also rife, and many residents complain that officials pilfer the aid. Over the past year, the Talibans presence in the region has grown. The militant group has intensified its campaign following the drawdown of the international combat mission in 2014. The district where Guls family lives is under Taliban control, said Rahmatullah Turkistani, a member of Fayabs provincial council. Salimi said Khan had returned from Iran three months ago, and since then had repeatedly beaten and tortured his wife. He had also taken another wife who is just seven years old, she said. Community elders and Taliban representatives in their village had tried mediating with the family to help sort out their problems, a traditional method of dealing with marital issues, Salimi said. Khan had disappeared from the village, and local security forces including the intelligence agency and police were searching for him, said the provincial governors spokesman Ahmad Jawed Dedar. Humayoon Babur, Kabul, AP Taliban gunmen stormed a university in northwestern Pakistan yesterday, killing at least 20 people and triggering an hours-long gunbattle with the army and police before the military declared the assault in a town near the city of Peshawar was over. The attack stirred grim echoes of the horrific 2014 Peshawar school attack that killed more than 150 people, mostly children, and shocked the nation. It also prompted the Pakistani prime minister to pledge the country will wipe out the menace of terrorism. Police said four attackers were also killed. Yesterdays attack began shortly after the Bacha Khan University opened for classes in the town of Charsadda, some 35 kilometers outside Peshawar, said Deputy Commissioner Tahir Zafar. As police and soldiers rushed to the campus, the attackers traded gunfire with the troops and several explosions were heard from the area of the university. The attackers were later contained inside two university blocks where the troops killed four attackers, the army said. A chemistry professor and a student were among those killed, said Zafar, adding that it was not initially clear how many attackers managed to penetrate the campus. Television footage showed heavy military presence at the university, troops rushing in and people fleeing. Ambulances were at the scene and the wounded were taken to hospital. The attackers entered the university compound by climbing over back walls and shooting at a security guard before they made their way to the administration building and the male students dorms, police official Saeed Khan Wazir said. A witness, botany teacher Mohammad Ishtiaq, said he jumped out from the second floor of the building when he heard gunshots and broke his leg. Two attackers were on first floor and three on the ground floor, he said, adding that they were using automatic assault rifles. The students ran in different directions, he said. I locked myself in a washroom, he said. I jumped out when I saw one of the attackers coming toward me and shooting straight ahead of him. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif vowed to fight to the end and destroy the Taliban and other militants. We are determined and resolved in our commitment to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland, Sharif said in a statement. A Taliban leader, Khalifa Umar Mansoor, claimed responsibility for yesterdays attack in a phone call to AP from an undisclosed location. Mansoor, who was the mastermind mind the Peshawar school attack, said a four-man Taliban team carried out the assault in Chasadda. He said it was in revenge for the scores of militants the Pakistani security forces have killed in recent months. However, a spokesman for the main Taliban faction in Pakistan later disowned the group behind yesterdays attack, describing the assault as un-Islamic. Mohammad Khurasani also denied earlier reports that he had endorsed Mansoors claim and said that those who carried out such attacks would be tried before an Islamic, or Sharia court. Such statements from among the Taliban are not uncommon since the group has many loosely linked factions and is indicative of the deep divisions and splits among the insurgents. Khurasani also said the Taliban consider the students in non-military institutions the future of our jihad movement and would not kill potential future followers. He insisted Mullah Fazlullah, the head of the Pakistani Taliban, had nothing to do with the assault. Yesterdays attack was the second major attack in as many days in the volatile northwest. A suicide bomber riding a motorcycle struck a crowded police checkpoint on the outskirts of Peshawar on Tuesday, killing 11 people in an attack that was also claimed by the Taliban. Later in the afternoon, provincial governor Sardar Mehtab Abbasi declared that the military operation on the campus grounds had been completed and that the attack was over. The troops were combing the nearby areas, searching for more possible attackers, he said. Pakistani army chief Gen. Raheel Sharif visited the campus and a town hospital where the wounded were brought to. The Bacha Khan University is named after the founder of a liberal, anti-Taliban political party. The Pakistani Taliban have in the past targeted the party for its anti-militant policies. Pakistans northwest and its lawless tribal regions bordering Afghanistan is a highly volatile region. Pakistani forces have been carrying out a major operation against the Taliban and other militants there since 2014. Last month, as the country marked the first anniversary of the Peshawar school attack, the military claimed phenomenal successes in the war and said it has killed around 3,500 insurgents since launching the operation. Though authorities say overall violence has declined since the wide-ranging military offensive was launched in North Waziristan, the Taliban still manage to carry out major attacks. The Peshawar school attack horrified the country and led the government to lift a 2008 moratorium on the death penalty. Pakistan hanged four militants last month who were sentenced to death over the attack. Riaz Khan, Zarar Khan, Pakistan, AP CHINA A deputy head of the Chinese Cabinets Taiwan Affairs Office is placed under investigation for apparent corruption amid renewed scrutiny of Beijings policies toward the island following its election of a new independence-leaning president. VIETNAM The Communist Partys eight-day Congress set to open today is the kind of political cliffhanger that would do a democracy proud, as a battle for power hinges on a last-minute procedural question AFGHAN troops are fighting the Taliban across most of southern Helmand province and are in desperate need of reinforcements, an Afghan official says. NEPAL Villages near the epicenter of a massive earthquake last year have been blanketed with snow, making life miserable for people still living in temporary shelters and huts. N KOREA A cold snap in the North Korean capital has residents ice fishing on the Taedong River. The whole country was colder than minus 10 C, and the Norths official weather forecaster predicted that Pyongyang would sink to minus 16 C. BURKINA FASO Frances prime minister said three attackers remain at large following the attacks in Burkina Fasos capital, though authorities there insist that all those who carried out the assault had been shot dead. USA Secretary of State John Kerry is hoping to move aside obstacles that threaten to delay the start of peace talks to end Syrias war, seeking compromise with Russias foreign minister on which Syrian opposition groups should be eligible to participate. HAITI For a second straight day, opposition protesters erected burning roadblocks and shattered windows in a section of Haitis capital Tuesday to press for new elections less than a week before the Jan. 24 presidential and legislative runoff. MOLDOVA Hundreds of protesters broke through police lines yesterday to get into Moldovas Parliament after it approved a new government to end months of deadlock between the president and the legislature. GERMANYs finance minister is floating the idea of a European tax on gasoline to help finance the continents efforts to manage the migrant crisis. The EU has struggled to find common ground amid the huge influx of people seeking safety and a better life. Germany and Sweden have allowed in large numbers of refugees but many other countries are reluctant to share the burden. INDIA Violent clashes between police and protesters erupted yesterday in Indian-controlled Kashmir, leaving a man dead and two others wounded, officials said. Italian graffiti crew Truly Design made their debut production in the MSAR last week at the Graffiti Square located in downtown Macau. Despite rain forcing the Torino-based group to relocate indoors on Friday and Saturday, the guest crew was able to produce two large murals decorated with bright tones and intricate details. The murals were created as part of the Macau Graffiti Festival, which ran from January 11 until January 16. The festival was co-organized by the Macau Powers of Arts to Inspire Intelligence Association and the art group, Truly Design, and sought to bring together artists from abroad in order to inspire residents and enable graffiti artists to learn from each other. Truly Design has been active since 1996 when they turned their passion into a profession. Upon landing in Macau last week, the crew headed to a conference at the UNESCO center in the NAPE area. In March 2014, local graffiti group Gantz 5 was commissioned to produce a work of art outside the Macao Museum of Art (MAM), but the piece has since been removed. Contemporary graffiti has been regarded as street art for around 50 years, when it developed from an underground and illicit phenomenon into a recognized art form. Controversy has arisen in recent decades, as critics claim that the movement of graffiti from the street to the exhibition hall undermines the origin and purpose of the art. On the other hand, authentic graffiti remains equally controversial. In August, five men were arrested for what was described as unauthorized vandalism, after they spray-painted on protected, heritage architecture in the St. Lazarus quarter. Incidents such as these continue to tarnish the reputation of the art form. Staff Reporter The family of an Australian doctor and his wife abducted in Burkina Faso urged the kidnappers yesterday to release the couple so that they can continue their life-saving charity work in the West African country. Surgeon Ken Elliott and his wife Jocelyn, aged in their 80s, disappeared from their home on Friday near the northern town of Djibo where they have run a medical center for four decades. A statement on behalf of their daughter and two sons issued by Australias Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said the children had been heartened by an outpouring of support from the Burkinabe people who clearly consider Ken and Jocelyn to be one of their own after all these years of providing surgical services to the region. It said the couples children are understandably deeply dismayed by this incident and sincerely hope that their parents are being treated kindly wherever they are. The statement called on the couple to be released so that they may continue to assist those who are in need of their services. The couple are thought to have been abducted by jihadis who may have taken them across the border to Mali. Authorities do not know if the abductions are linked to the attack on the countrys capital Ouagadougou by al-Qaida-linked fighters on Friday night that left up to 32 people dead. Following news of the abduction at the weekend, Australia warned travelers of the serious threat of kidnapping in Burkina Faso, particularly in the north. The Australian government, which has a policy of refusing to pay ransoms to kidnappers, was dealing with Burkina Faso authorities through Australian diplomats in Ghana. The family said the couple began their hospital work in Djibo in 1972. They operate a surgical clinic with 120 beds, where Ken Elliott is the sole surgeon and is supported by local staff. A Facebook page supporting the couple since their abduction has attracted numerous comments of support from around the world. I am hopeful that they will come back to us healthy, said one post. AP At least RMB207 billion was channeled out of Guangdong Province last year in illegal transfers, with some if it transiting through Hong Kong and Macau. According to media reports, a total of 83 cases were discovered by security officials from the mainland, involving sums that collectively exceeded RMB207 billion. Many more incidents are believed to have occurred, meaning that the total amount laundered could be much higher than official figures. Up to 231 suspects have been implicated in current investigations. Some of these people have been implicated for the laundering of illegal funds, while others as those who solicited such services. According to a recent report from the U.S. State Departments Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, responsible for monitoring international money laundering, China leads the world in illicit capital flows. Within China, Guangdong has long been regarded as a national hotspot for illegal money transfers out of mainland jurisdiction especially in the border cities of Shenzhen and Zhuhai. Equally Macau has earned a reputation for being a recipient of illegal transfers. For high rollers, it is one way to bypass Chinas currency controls and circumvent the watchful eyes of Xis anti-corruption bureaucrats. One case last year involved a mainland official who had attempted to siphon around RMB12 million into Macau to use for gambling purposes, the SCMP reports. In August last year, police in Macau arrested 17 people after a crackdown on pawn shops that were suspected of aiding the illicit flow of currency into the MSAR. This kind of illegal activity has persisted for years in Chinas southern Guangdong Province, but it may have intensified of late due to a weakening yuan, which is creating strong demand for other currencies. The HKD and MOP are directly and indirectly pegged to the USD respectively, and this has sheltered them somewhat from the recent turbulence of the RMB and the turmoil of the Chinese stock markets in recent weeks. Chinese efforts to tackle money laundering have increased in recent years, partially in reaction to the mainland economy becoming more globally connected. In 2013, the central government intensified its enforcement of anti-money laundering operations and promised that incidents of non-compliance would be taken more seriously. Chinese banks were subsequently required to monitor the transactions of their clients and to rate the risk of such transactions being used for criminal purposes. However, there remain concerns about Chinas willingness to cooperate in the prevention of cross- border money laundering. For example, in June last year, Chinese authorities refused to assist with an Italian investigation that alleged that Bank of China operations in the Mediterranean country had been complicit in money laundering and had profited from it. Staff reporter Electronic cigarettes (e-cigs), which use nicotine derived from a tobacco plant and are designed to mimic smoking, are currently facing a global challenge. Late last year, the Health Bureau and the government proposed a ban on the trading of e-cigs in Macau to ensure public health. However, a recent survey by the regional consumer advocacy group factasia.org (an organization that, according to its website, seeks to represent the rights of adults in Asia who choose to enjoy smoking or other related forms of consumption of nicotine) stated that most smokers want to be able to switch to less harmful alternatives to smoking, such as e-cigs. Recognizing that e-cigs are less damaging to health than tobacco consumption, Public Health England (PHE) has said that they are 95 percent safer than smoking. In Hong Kong, e-cigs have risen in popularity since 2012 and sales have been doubling in the past two years, according to the Asian Vape Association. However, the Hong Kong government has also proposed a ban on e-cigs, with experts saying that a lot of vapers strongly opposed the move, as it would force them to go back to tobacco cigarettes. E-cigs are regulated as a tobacco-medicinal product in the Philippines, according to the president of the Philippine E-Cigarette Industry Association, Joey Dulay. Were fighting for a new category of legislation specifically for e-cigs not too lenient and not too strict. Whats important is that consumers are protected by a safety standard, he said. Meanwhile in the U.S., e-cigs were categorized as medicine in 2008. From May this year, e-cigs and other nicotine vapor products will be regulated in the EU under the Tobacco Products Directive, which Britains The Guardian newspaper described as an extremely costly route. Heneage Mitchell, another Factasia.org co-founder, believes that endorsing e-cigs is a primary way for governments to see positive results in national public heath policy. He argued that smokers shouldnt be denied access to nicotine. Staff reporter Lets use an f-word: fake. And another? How about framed. Fake is how the edited, inconsistent confession of publisher Gui Minhai appears to his daughter and to most Hong Kongers. Typical of the style of televised pre-trial confessions on the mainland, Guis appearance did nothing to assuage strong doubts in Hong Kong about the true nature of the publishers disappearance. Raising more doubts is one of the latest twists: how Gui disappeared from Thailand. There has been no record at any Thai immigration control points of him leaving Thailand, which is where he was last known to have been, according to his daughter who was informed by Swedish authorities. That Thai authorities appear to have come up empty in their supposed investigations into the matter smacks of a cover up. However, there have been investigations by British newspaper The Guardian and by Guis friends, which, unlike those of the Thai police, did not come up empty. The Guardian obtained CCTV footage of Gui entering and leaving his building in Pattaya for the last time, along with witness accounts of what happened from staff members on the block. They also traced down a taxi driver who drove Gui and other unidentified individuals on that day. The picture reveals a series of highly suspect events surrounding Guis mysterious departure, certainly involving Chinese individuals, which point to an abduction via China-friendly Cambodia. During Guis arrival back at his complex from a shopping trip, CCTV at the building gate shows a casually dressed man appearing from the security area apparently watching the cars progress. A management employee at the condominium recalled a man who spoke poor Thai waiting at the gate, where he was speaking in Chinese on his phone; then, he claimed to see Gui speaking to the same man and shortly afterwards asking for his shopping to be taken up to his flat. Gui was never seen at the complex again, but made two suspicious calls to his daughter. The first was two weeks later to ask her to her to put food away and secure the flat no explanation of why he had vanished, despite her several messages asking about his welfare. The second call was the day after to say a friend would come by to pick up his computer. The friend turned out to be four men, only two of whom spoke Thai, who entered Chinese names in the visitor log book. They went to the flat and spent almost half an hour there but did not take the computer. The saga continued with another highly suspicious turn. The condominium manager, who discovered that Gui was unreachable, called the number the flats visitors had used. A taxi driver answered, saying that the four men had left the phone in the cab but had been negotiating a ride to a border town in Cambodia a place with a reputation for immigration officials who take bribes. The Guardian reported that, soon after, two Beijing-dispatched airplanes were about to arrive to deport some Chinese people who were allegedly fraudsters. The Guardian then called all of the numbers Gui had used since he vanished. One was from Croatia, another from Togo and the last was from Poland all were disconnected. Of course, we had to leave open the possibility that the publisher arranged his own disappearance. On the other hand, going shopping the same day, and not saying anything to his wife and daughter, the latter of whom he was supposed to meet a couple of days after he disappeared, remains suspicious. And why all the trouble and expense for a highly secretive, illicit flight to China when he could have handed himself in at the Chinese embassy or the China Liaison Office in Hong Kong? The case in China against Gui is also suspicious: a hit and run driving accident where a student was killed. Firstly, the driver was reported to have two different ages. Secondly, that was thirteen years ago. Why so long before any action? F for fake and F for framed comes to mind. He was said to have just been about to publish a book about Chinese president Xi Jinping. The Secretary for Economy and Finance evoked the Macau spirit to bring people together, overcome the difficulties they face and use the opportunity to improve the citys economy. Lionel Leong Vai Tac said in a recent interview with Exmoo News that, in meetings with friends, social groups and people in industry, he felt the Macau spirit had not changed. This year Macau people are facing a year of economic adjustment but most do not complain. On the contrary, they have a positive attitude toward the new economic situation. It makes me feel deeply their spirit of stability, being responsible and going forward. Leong added that, when the economy was growing fastest, rents for offices and shops rose rapidly and there were no conditions to develop certain sectors. But, now that the economy is slowing, it is an opportunity for them to grow, such as young entrepreneurs and traditional shops developing e-commerce to open new markets. Since Leong took the post in December 2014, he has lived through a dramatic change in gambling, the citys main business for 168 years. For over a decade, it grew rapidly, overtaking Las Vegas to become the worlds top gaming center. But, from the middle of 2014, revenues began to fall; they have dropped for 18 consecutive months, sending ripples across the whole economy. Worst hit has been the VIP sector, of wealthy people brought to Macau by junkets. They used to account for more than 70 per cent of casino income, rising to 80 per cent at the peak, but have now fallen to 53 per cent. On the other hand, the mass market has remained strong, said Leong. With hindsight, the gambling industry in Macau depended too much on the business brought by junkets. The regulation of it was not strong enough. The healthy improvement of the junkets can promote the healthy development of the six large casinos and will in the end bring benefits to the whole of Macao. This means improving the law and strengthening the monitoring system, improving the non-gambling elements and the mass market. In this way, the leisure elements in the casinos will improve. Only then can Macau meet its development target for becoming a world tourism and leisure centre. Leong said that people in the city had reacted well to the difficulties. Opportunities and challenges exist together. Facing difficulties and challenges, everyone has responded calmly and is working hard to improve the situation. Leong said that now was the time both to restructure the economy and self-examination. Macaus gaming market is changing; it must overcome two large dependencies one is on a single industry and the other on a group of people in the industry. To revamp the gambling industry, Macau needs to improve the legal infrastructure and supervision. It has to change from doing the biggest to doing the best. He said that this restructuring was difficult in every aspect. Considering all the external economic factors, in the short term, he cannot see many positive factors. He was asked if, after 18 months of decline, gambling revenue had reached their bottom. I have no crystal ball. I have no way to predict. Leong is so busy that his only days off come when the cleaners have to wash the carpets and the air conditioners in the office. His two sons and one daughter are all studying overseas. The two sons have gone to university in the U.S., while his 15-year-old daughter is studying in the UK. The only time he can see them is during long holidays. Before, when I was a businessman, I spent a lot of time with them. Now they realize that the role of daddy has changed. They will support me well, he said. MDT/Macauhub/Exmoo The director of the Judiciary Police (PJ), Chau Wai Kuong, has stated that the threat of a terrorist attack in Macau remains low, in light of a recent report issued by Hong Kong-based risk consultancy Steve Vickers and Associates. The Vickers report suggested that although the risk of an attack occurring in Macau remained low, the territory presented itself as an attractive target given the nexus of Chinese, American and Jewish interests in the gaming sector. Gaming tycoons Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn both have Jewish origins and extensive stakes in Macaus gaming industry, holding two of the six gaming licenses in the MSAR between them. PJ director Chau said that Macaus security forces regularly train with their counterparts in Hong Kong and in mainland China, although he stressed that the likelihood of an attack occurring was very low. He added that Macau has been developing mechanisms for dealing with such an event, and has focused resources on preventing the spread of terrorist activities to the region. The Secretary for Security once said that the risk [of a terror attack] is quite low in Macau, but we do have a mechanism to deal with that, Chau told TDM reporters. We are actively carrying out preventive measures such as collecting data and participating in joint anti-terror drills with police forces in Hong Kong, mainland China, and even Guangdong Province, the director added. We hope to strengthen our cooperation through these drills in order to prevent any kind of terrorism. Eric Sautede, a political commentator and contributor to the Times, noted that he has strong reservations about a possible convergence of so-called Chinese, American and Jewish interests [making Macau a target]. From what I know, he said, it was never a concern in the past for Adelson. It is always possible, of course, but bringing the war to Chinese territory would be a clear suicidal move, Sautede added. ISIS is already withdrawing part of its assets to Libya. The Vickers report made reference to the terrorist attack in Guangzhou in March last year, which left at least six injured from a knife assault at a major train station in the city. Chinese state media Xinhua reported that the perpetrators were Muslim Uighurs from Xinjiang Province a region where Xinhua says Chinese intelligence has monitored a significant growth in radical Islam. Chau Wai Kuong reiterated that Macaus security forces have remained vigilant and have been holding consultancy meetings over security matters in recent years to prevent this sort of attack from occurring in the SAR. Staff reporter The Macau Polytechnic Institute (IPM) expects their graduates to be able to find jobs in their areas of study in about three months time. This is the belief or at least the hope expressed by the institutions Academic Affairs Department Head, Vivian Lei. The scholar was speaking on the sidelines of IPMs Careers Day 2016 that was inaugurated yesterday at the tertiary institution. In the past, it took about two months time for the fresh graduates to get a job but our last survey from 2015 shows that the period extended slightly to an average of about three months after graduation. This is still a very good record when compared to other regions and countries, Lei said. She added that IPM expects 650 fresh graduates to emerge from the different majors on offer this year, explaining that they will have easy access to the job due to the programs suitability to the local market and to potential hirers. We are very confident that our graduates can find jobs very easily because our programs are fully related to the Macau strategy and development, namely its role as a platform between China and the Portuguese speaking countries, Vivian Lei said. The department also mentioned that other study programs such as the ones related to the creative industries and nursing are also currently in high demand. Graduates from these programs should therefore not expect to encounter many obstacles when entering the job market. The students are looking for, firstly, something related to their study program, and secondly, jobs that offer a better salary, Lei stated, adding that only some of the fresh graduates may be affected by the downturn in Macaus economy. It depends on the programs. For example, in Chinese-Portuguese translation the employment rate is 100 percent with most students finding a job three or four months before they actually graduate. For Yili Ling, 21, a student from mainland China who expects to be on the graduates list this year, to find job opportunities in Macau is the goal. The graduate hopes to find a job in the marketing field. Casinos are the strongest industry so I might get a job there, or even in another area. As I am not a resident, I might have some quota- related issues, Yili Ling said, adding that although she is not too optimistic about it, she looks forward to receiving responses from some of the companies she is contacting. Yili Ling was one of the students visiting the Careers Day, which featured 38 booths comprising of representatives from different companies and institutions. The Times also spoke with Brenda Hoi, the Human Resources Business Partner of a company dedicated to the sale of wristwatches. She told the Times that she is looking for candidates that have a passion for the retail sector and love to work in a customer service-oriented job and have a very good customer service mindset. Although the company receives a lot of applications, she finds it difficult to hire the right people because the gaming industry is often looking for the same kind of candidate. Brenda Hoi sees the retail industry as much more competitive than the casino industry because many people are not interested in working night shifts. The Careers Day is one of the activities planned by the IPM in order to put their students in contact with companies that might be interested in recruiting them according to the deputy head of the institution, Yin Lei, in her opening speech. Other activities will occur over a period of one month, including talks and seminars from several companies, as well as workshops about employment-related topics. The Legislative Assembly (AL) vetoed the seventh attempt to pass a trade union law yesterday. Unlike in previous occasions, when proposals were vetoed without undergoing a debate, this time several lawmakers praised the proposal, while others said that its approval could disrupt companies operations or even create chaos. The debate surrounding the bill was sparked by lawmakers linked to the Macau Federation of Trade Unions (Kwan Tsui Hang, Lam Heong Sang, Ella Lei) and ended with a split result: 18 against, 12 in favor, and lawmaker Leonel Alves abstaining from the vote. A part of the discussion centered on what Melinda Chan labeled a local peculiarity the fact that there are over 6,000 associations registered in Macau. Politics in Macau are based on associations. In mainland China, theres only one association. In the U.S., the syndicate represents one labor sector. [] We need to know which model we want to follow. China or the U.S.? she asked. The lawmaker said that she approved the proposal but with some conditions, namely freedom of association. In Macau, there are several associations of doctors, nurses, and so on, she explained. Will these associations be forced to be united under a single trade union? Will they not be able to act independently? If that is the case, I dont agree. We must respect the associations that are already established, she stressed. Other than lawmakers being linked to business interests, there was no doubt about the perniciousness of the proposal. Fong Chi Keong was, as usual, the most vociferous: Do we need to resort to trade unions to solve problems?! We have the government! [] I dont want to have a radical power established in Macau, he said. Fong predicted that the trade unions would be used by some groups to create chaos, and that no businessman would want to invest here if that was the case. After I read the proposal last night, I couldnt sleep, he concluded, raising laughter among some lawmakers, and warned that he still had 20 minutes left to speak. Appointed lawmaker Ma Chi Seng said that the implementation of a trade union law would create great pressure over the SMEs, adding that social consensus is needed before making such a move. Chan Chak Mo complemented that viewpoint, saying that the workers could engage in strikes if the proposal was approved. As in previous occasions, the argument was again raised that it is poor timing to attempt to approve the law in the face of current economic, social and industrial conditions. Au Kam San tried to counter-argue this view by asking: But what is the favorable time to approve the trade union law? When the economy was better, the opponents to the proposal said that it was not a good time, now they are saying the same. The proponents, headed by Kwan Tsui Hang, noted that there are notable differences between trade unions and associations, one of them being the fact that trade unions can represent workers in judicial cases. They added that the law is needed to compensate the imbalance between workers and employers. They also said that the government should assume the responsibility of filling the gap in legislation. But their arguments, once again, were made to no avail. on the lawmakers agenda Inner Harbor link The sudden closure of the ferry link between the Inner Harbor and Zhuhais Wanzai Port on Sunday has left some lawmakers worried. According to lawmaker Mak Soi Kun, the local ferry terminal shutdown has caused major inconveniences to both Macau residents and tourists who use the link. In his spoken enquiry, the lawmaker found it strange that the closure announcement was made on the eve of the closure. Is there a lack of communication between the administrations of Macau and Zhuhai? he asked. The lawmaker finds it strange that such a sudden move could happen in a context where the cooperation between Macau and Guangdong province is being enhanced. Kou Hoi addressed the same issue, stating that the infrastructure of the Inner Harbor and the Wanzai Port should be revamped in order to be able to receive more passengers. He added that if the border reopens with better conditions, there is potential that an increased number of people would use it. Govt rents Song Pek Kei pointed out that the government is spending large amounts of money to rent offices. According to her, the value of rent paid to private owners will surpass one billion patacas. Stressing that her intervention was also on behalf of lawmaker Chan Meng Kam, Song said that she didnt understand why the rent paid by the public administration continues to increase despite the rental market downturn. What does the government have to hide regarding these rental issues? she asked. According to Song, The population has an answer to that question. She concluded by saying that the government isnt careful in the way it spends the generous resources available. Lawmaker Ella Lei also addressed the government rents, saying that more transparency is needed. Poverty Pereira Coutinho said that he recently visited several households in the northern district, where people live in a state of hidden poverty. Enumerating the cases in detail, the lawmaker said that the cases of hidden poverty are growing. In his opinion, these cases are triggered by major disruption in a citizens personal life (like the death of a family member), but also by the brutal increase in rent and other aspects that raise the cost of living. President Xi Jinping will wade into the feud between Iran and Saudi Arabia as he begins a Middle East tour that shows a new willingness by China to flex its diplomatic clout in one of the worlds most volatile regions. Xis five-day swing through Riyadh, Cairo and Tehran represents the presidents first foray into the Middle East since taking power three years ago and marks 60 years of relations between Beijing and the Arab League. Hes also seeking to protect Chinese influence that accumulated in Iran during the countrys long isolation, with Xi becoming the first major world leader to visit since the U.S. and European Union lifted sanctions Saturday and cleared the way for its reemergence in the global economy. The trip may show China playing a more hands-on peacemaking role as the Syrian conflict exports violence around the world, regional powers quarrel along sectarian lines and U.S. influence wanes. China doesnt want more strife between Saudi Arabia its largest source of foreign oil and Iran, a potential strategic ally sitting at the crossroads of Xis Silk Road plan to build railways, pipelines and other infrastructure from Asia to Europe. Hell be the first top Chinese leader to visit Iran since 2002. China has found itself increasingly enmeshed in the regions conflicts and diplomatic disputes, said Michael Singh, managing director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former regional adviser to the National Security Council. Iran represents a strategic opportunity for China. As Beijing seeks to project power globally to secure its interests, Iran will be its most important partner in the Middle East. Chinese business interests in the region have been expanding for decades and the country is the top trading partner with all three nations on Xis tour. Saudi Arabia supplied China with 16 percent of its imported oil in 2014, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Xi, in an article published in the Alriyadh newspaper this week, praised robust bilateral economic cooperation, highlighting a light railway in Mecca built by China in 2015 for providing convenient service to Muslim pilgrims from around the globe. In Iran, Chinese interests prospered while sanctions over the countrys nuclear program blocked U.S. and European competitors from the market. China buys 40 percent of Irans oil exports and has become the countrys top source of capital and technology. Almost 100 Chinese companies have a presence there. With the sanctions lifted, China is counting on initiatives like the USD40 billion Silk Road fund to counter an influx of competition. China will face rivals in a market that heretofore was under sanctions and uncontested, said Ali Vaez, an Istanbul- based senior Iran analyst with the International Crisis Group. The timing of Xis visit in the wake of lifting the sanctions seems designed to ensure that Chinas predominant position in the Iranian market is preserved. In November, China Railway Construction Corp., the national train operator, floated a proposal for a 3,200-kilometer (2,000 mile) high-spreed train to Tehran from Chinas western region of Xinjiang. Officials hope to finalize a deal for the construction of two Chinese-built nuclear power plants during Xis visit, Irans Tasnim news agency reported Tuesday. The Middle East trip is the latest illustration of Xis desire to build geopolitical influence commensurate with Chinas status as the worlds second-largest economy. Xis challenge is to promote stability in the region and expand business ties without being dragged into the same bloody quagmires as the U.S. China is now proposing a new role of constructive engagement and is urging Western powers to follow its example, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. This leadership is taking a much more proactive approach, since maintaining stability in the Middle East is crucial for China and any major regional conflict will negatively impact Chinas energy security, said Li Guofu, who overseas Middle Eastern affairs at the government-run China Institute of International Studies. China is still rather green in mediating Arab affairs, and the learning process can be slow and painful. Concern over stability in the region prompted China to help broker the Iranian nuclear deal in July. China also supported a Security Council resolution condemning the Islamic State in November, after the group launched attacks in Paris and Beirut and announced the execution of a Chinese national. The government in Beijing is particularly concerned that Islamic extremism could spawn more unrest in Xinjiang, which is home to more than 10 million Uighur Muslims. The Chinese hope their lack of historical baggage helps them mediate in the region, Li said. In the run up to Xis trip, Communist Party leaders have dispatched envoys to Egypt, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Theyve hosted both the Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem and the countrys opposition leaders in Beijing. Last week, the government issued its first Arab policy paper, in which it vowed to deepen ties between the two sides. One question is how long China can maintain neutrality in the Middle East as its own growing economic and military clout puts it into increased strategic competition with the U.S. elsewhere in the world. That rivalry favors closer ties with Iran Washingtons long-time antagonist in the region than Saudi Arabia, said Timothy Heath, a senior international defense analyst with the RAND Corporation. Besides providing a chance to reduce Chinas dependence on Saudi oil, Tehran also offers a potential partner in Xis effort to challenge the Western-dominated international order. China may quietly lean towards Iran, Heath said. Publicly, however, China can be expected to present an even-handed approach to bolster its image as a peacemaker. Ting Shi, Bloomberg WENDELL Reconstruction started on a small bridge along Idaho Highway 46 south of Wendell and is expected to impact travel until early May. Traffic during the project will be reduced to one lane on the bridge, which spans the W-9 canal about a mile south of Interstate 84 near Wendell, Idaho Transportation Department spokesman Nathan Jerke said in a statement. Traffic signals will be posted on each side of the bridge and there will be an 11-foot-6-inch width restriction and 35 mph speed limit. Crews will begin by demolishing the first half of the bridge before they install a pre-cast concrete bridge, Jerke said. Crews will demolish the second half of the bridge and begin construction on it in late February. Final paving is expected to begin in April. This is the second of two bridges along Idaho 46 south of Wendell that are currently under reconstruction, Jerke said. Reconstruction began in early November on the first bridge, which spans the Cedar Draw canal about five miles south of Wendell. Both bridges were built in 1939 and more than 3,000 vehicles cross each span every day, Jerke said. Cannon Builders of Blackfoot is the contractor for the $1.26 million project to replace both crossings. Construction on the Cedar Draw bridge is about halfway complete, Jerke said. Construction on both bridges is expected to be complete by early May. BOISE Idaho Medicaid officials are seeking a 2.4 percent bump in general fund spending in 2016-17, bringing the states share up to $515 million. Meanwhile, the overall size of the Medicaid program is expected to grow 5.3 percent over the next year, which is slower than the projected national growth rate of 7.4 percent, state Medicaid Administrator Lisa Hettinger told the Joint Finance Appropriations Committee Tuesday morning. Medicaid in Idaho costs $2.2 billion a year, making up 80 percent of the states Department of Health and Welfare spending, with the federal government picking up 63 percent of the cost and receipts from beneficiaries making up another 12 percent of the funding. There are 288,704 people receiving Medicaid in Idaho, an increase of about 2,000 from a year ago, about three-quarters of them children. Growth in enrollment has slowed after spiking a few years ago. Hettinger spent much of her budget presentation to lawmakers on some of her departments recent initiatives, such as a health home pilot program that, she said, has reduced hospital and emergency room claims, and the Idaho Behavioral Health Plan, which state officials say has reduced the use of community-based rehabilitation services and increased the use of family therapy by contracting outpatient mental health services to Optum. Hettinger said that, while the goal of contracting with Optum wasnt necessarily to save money, health officials did believe some services were being overused and wanted to change that. The utilization patterns reflect the shift to evidence-based care, she said. Optums three-year contract is up at the end of the March, but it contains the option for two two-year extensions. The 2016-17 budget proposal also contains $9.7 million, of which $2.8 million would come from the state general fund, to pay for transitional Medicaid up to a year of benefits for people who find a job and no longer qualify for Medicaid. The program lets people find work without having to worry about losing their health insurance immediately, Hettinger said. It has been around for a while, but would originally have gone away under the Affordable Care Act because the original act was premised on every state expanding Medicaid and everyone having health coverage. However, Congress reinstated the program last year, Hettinger said. BOISE (AP) | Federal agencies need to do a better job considering state and local ideas when it comes to making decisions about species facing possible extinction, Idaho Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter said Tuesday. "Being part of the process, being part of the solution, and being seriously considered with our ideas is what matters and will continue to matter," Otter said in Boise at a Western Governors' Association workshop intended to find a way to give states a stronger say in Endangered Species Act decisions. Panelists at the Species Conservation and Endangered Species Act Initiative included representatives from conservation groups, extractive industries, scientists, and federal and state agencies. They discussed voluntary conservation efforts, incentives for private land owners, best available science and critical habitat designation. A previous workshop for the 19-state association was held in Wyoming in November, and several more workshops are planned. "Even though we deal with a lot of frustration in this federal vs. state, federal vs. local game, there are some successes," Otter said. He noted in particular salmon and steelhead in the upper Salmon River in central Idaho. But he also made it clear he's still perturbed with federal agencies that discarded Idaho's plan for protecting sage grouse habitat but announced new restrictions in September while declaring the bird didn't require federal protections. "It meant a whole different management of the landscape that is, and should be, unacceptable," he said. Idaho shortly after the announcement filed a lawsuit over the restrictions on mining, energy development and grazing that are intended to protect sage grouse across millions of acres of the American West. Virgil Moore, director of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, said he's noticed that everyone has their biases concerning species protections, and for animals that occupy a larger range, "the more charismatic it is, the more difficulty we have overcoming those biases." Some panelists were also concerned that the best available science isn't always reliable. Ann Forest Burns of the American Forest Resource Council, which represents the forest products industry, said critical habitat designations often don't consider economic impacts. "We are concerned that there is not enough good economic science being brought to bear on these decisions," she said. Bruce Farling, executive director of Montana Trout Unlimited, said economic impact studies should receive the same scrutiny as science-based decisions. Some panelists spoke about collaborative efforts that turned out in the end to be cheaper than litigation. Trent Clark, director of government affairs for Monsanto Co., said the company spent $5 million planning to build a road in eastern Idaho to haul phosphate ore. However, that road turned out to go through sage grouse habitat. Instead of fighting in court, he said, the company built a road in the opposite direction to an existing rail line. He also noted that restoration costs of mined land have gone from $3,000 an acre two decades ago to more than $240,000 an acre now. "This move toward ecological restoration does come with a fairly significant price tag," he said. The Western Governors' Association said information from the workshops will be compiled into a report to help guide legislative, regulatory and legal actions. "It's a long process for sure," said John Freemuth, a Boise State University professor and public lands expert who served as facilitator for the workshop. "There are a lot of important people in the room, and people are sitting and talking." BOISE A House panel shot down a proposed rule Tuesday that would have required trappers to take a trapper education class. The regulation would have required anyone who first got their trapping license after July 1, 2010, to take a six-hour trapper education class, for an $8 fee. Sharon Kiefer, deputy director of programs and policy at Idaho Department of Fish and Game, told the House Resources and Conservation Committee that the rules were developed to deal with concerns such as dogs and other non-target animals getting caught in traps, and that the training was seen as a better solution than restricting the types of traps people can use or when they can trap. However, Majority Leader Mike Moyle, R-Star, said that while he supports trapper education he didnt think the department had the legal authority to write the rule; the committee voted it down then held a second vote to reject the rule formally. It was a voice vote and wasnt recorded, although local Reps. Steve Miller, R-Fairfield, and Donna Pence, D-Gooding, were among the ones who could be heard to vote No on the motion to reject the rule. Only one person from the public testified, a man who was concerned the proposed training requirements were inadequate. The rules rejection by one committee doesnt mean it is dead for the session it is expected to come before the Senate Resources and Environment Committee next week, Kiefer said. If both committees dont reject the rule and sign on to a resolution rejecting it, then the rule stands. We certainly appreciate Rep. Moyles concerns, and were also looking into avenues that would address his concerns as well, Kiefer said. Addressing that, she said, could mean a bill that would give Fish and Game the authority to require trapper education, then passing a rule to implement it. However, the time period for an agency to bring a bill is over, meaning the agency would need to talk it over with legislators. The rule review continues, Kiefer said. We still have work to do in that regard. The House Resources and Conservation Committee also approved a number of other rules, including one to allow goose hunting in some areas of the Hagerman Valley around Miracle Hot Springs and Banbury Hot Springs where it is banned now. The original ban was put in place decades ago to protect migrating geese, but the rule says the numbers of geese migrating through the valley have increased greatly since then. Kiefer said the change would both open up more opportunities for hunters and reduce conflicts between geese and farmers. The waterfowl hunting ban in the Hagerman Wildlife Management Area would not be affected by the change. The committee also approved a rule letting anglers transport trout, bass and tiger muskies with heads and tails removed, provided the anglers are not on a boat, are done for the day and follow some rules regarding their packaging, Kiefer said. The fish would still count toward the anglers possession limit. The leader of an armed group who took over a national wildlife refuge in southeastern Oregon weeks ago joined hundreds of area residents at a tense community meeting listening quietly as many loudly chanted at him to "go." Ammon Bundy, who has been trying to drum up support for his cause, didn't speak at Tuesday night's meeting in Burns where residents discussed the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge which began earlier this month. Some of the several hundred community members spoke to Bundy directly. One woman thanked him for raising awareness around issues of public lands, but told him it's time to go home to his family. "Ammon, you need to go home to your family; thank you," said local resident Jennifer Williams. "I've heard so many things I didn't know before. Now I'm aware." Other speakers were less congenial and at times angry and emotional in comments directed at the armed group as well as at local government officials and federal government, in part for not doing more to end the occupation. Harney County Judge Steve Grasty took the microphone over to where Bundy sat in the bleachers and told Bundy he'd drive him wherever he wanted to go, as far as Utah. He also offered to meet with him anytime. Bundy and his small posse left after the meeting without incident. Rallies also were held in Portland and Eugene, Oregon and in Boise, Idaho, Tuesday, with hundreds of people calling for Bundy to end the occupation and pointing out that federal management allows all kinds of people to enjoy public lands. Harney County Sheriff Dave Ward reiterated in a statement before the Burns meeting that law enforcement wants the armed group to vacate the refuge. He said police have arrested two men affiliated with the group and included a new report that Duane Kirkland of Hamilton, Montana, was stopped and arrested Thursday on a felon in possession of a firearm charge. Police arrested Kenneth Medenbach, of La Pine, in Burns Friday for unauthorized use of a vehicle authorities say was taken illegally from the refuge. Bundy and his group are demanding that the refuge be turned over to local residents. Bundy is a son of rancher Cliven Bundy, who was involved in a 2014 Nevada standoff with the federal government over grazing rights. Rallies also were held in Portland and in Boise, Idaho, Tuesday, with hundreds of people calling for Bundy to end the occupation and pointing out that federal management allows all kinds of people to enjoy public lands. The group Bundy leads has said repeatedly that local people should control federal lands. Bundy has told reporters the group would leave when there was a plan in place to turn over federal lands to locals a common refrain in a decades-long fight over public lands in the West. At a Tuesday news conference, Bundy said "we're not going anywhere" until his group gets its goals accomplished. Another effort is underway to designate Craters of the Moon as a national park. The name change would essentially create the first national park in Idaho, excluding a small sliver of Yellowstone. Proponents of the deal and there are many, including us hope the change would put Carey and Arco on the map and attract more tourists to the regions faltering economy. But opponents namely the Idaho Farm Bureau worry a new federal designation could jeopardize current land-use arrangements, particularly grazing and hunting on federal lands just outside the monument. There are no guarantees, of course, that land rules near the monument wont change 10, 20 or 50 years from now should Craters be designated a national park. But no one repeat, no one now is talking about changing anything other than the name. If it becomes a national park, the site would continue to be run exactly as it is now. So why even bother? Locals are hoping a national park designation would get the monument listed in more guide books and bring a little panache and a lot more tourism money. The Idaho Association of Counties projects about 60,000 more visitors a year to the nearly 200,000 people who have visited the site fairly consistently since the 1960s. While were skeptical a new name will lead to that many more visitors, any increase is sure to help. Communities surrounding Craters of the Moon are losing population and jobs. The area is already highly dependent on the monuments success. Craters generates about $7.2 million in visitor spending, supporting 112 area jobs a year, according to National Park Service estimates. Proponents say a national park designation could boost the number of annual visitors to the site by 28 percent. A measure calling on the federal government to make Craters a national park garnered 32 co-sponsors and passed the Idaho Senate unanimously last year, but the bill died in the House after the Idaho Farm Bureau began to raise questions about land use. A similar bill is expected to come up this year. Regardless, only the U.S. Congress could designate the area a national park, and that would require the support of Idahos congressional delegation. A spokesman for Sen. Mike Crapo told the Times-News the senator would first need to see strong local support before hed consider introducing a national park bill. To us, its clear the support already exists. Besides the regional business community, the federal designation is supported by a broad coalition of city and county governments, including Blaine, Butte, Lincoln, Power, Bingham, Minidoka, Camas and Bonneville county commissioners and the city councils of Arco, Mackay and Carey. Theyve all voted to support a national park designation. Only the Farm Bureau stands in the way. The agency seems too preoccupied with far-fetched what-ifs, especially potential amendments that could be added in Congress to change the parks administrative boundaries and harm farmers and ranchers near the site. The Farm Bureau may lack faith in Idahos delegation, but were confident they could shepherd a bill through Congress that lands the national park designation without jeopardizing agricultural interests. The economic upsides far outweigh the what-ifs. Craters of the Moon deserves to be a national park. SHARE THIS BLOG SEARCH THIS BLOG BUY MY BOOK ... at Barnes & Noble or Amazon . A full set of End Notes, Advance Praise, and reviews can be found here . REGULAR READERS ... UNIVERSITY WEB PAGE You can access Professor Martinez' web page - where you will find course syllabus, op-ed articles, academic contributions, etc. - by clicking here BARACK OBAMA " ... The 40-hour work week, the minimum wage, family leave, health insurance, Social Security, Medicare, retirement plans. The cornerstones of middle-class security all bear the union label." HARRY S. TRUMAN "I never did give them hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell." WOODROW WILSON "I have long enjoyed the friendship and companionship of Republicans because I am by instinct a teacher, and I would like to teach them something." JOHN F. KENNEDY "The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic." THOMAS JEFFERSON "He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors." FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT "I ask you to judge me by the enemies I've made." * * * * * * * " ... while they prate of economic laws, men and women are starving. We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings." JOHN M. KEYNES "I do not know which makes a man more conservative--to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past." VISITOR LOCATIONS MORE ABOUT MARK MARK MARTINEZ'S WEBSITE My Liberal Identity: You are a Reality-Based Intellectualist, also known as the liberal elite. You are a proud member of whats known as the reality-based community, where science, reason, and non-Jesus-based thought reign supreme. Take the quiz at http://www.fightconservatives.com/Inside-the-Book/What-Breed-of-Liberal-Are-You.html BLOG ARCHIVE Hello. Olen elakkeella oleva, talla hetkella 67 vuotta vanha ukko. Kun olin lapsi sota oli viela hyvin lahella, etenkin aikuisten miesten kahvipoyta keskusteluissa. Samaan aikaan kun opin lukemaan 1955-1958 ilmestyi runsaasti erilaisia sarjakuvalehtia, ja poikien moniin leikkeihin kuului pyssyleikit, joko villi-lansi tai juuri paattynyt sota. Nama kaikki juurtuivat syvalle pojan sieluun ja etenkin tuohon aikaan ilmestyneet sarjakuva lehdet lisasivat kiinnostusta. Muovi mallit tulivat elamaani 1958, eraan japanilaisen sarjan merkeissa. Seuraavana oli Aurora, Lindberg, ja sitten Airfix. Lopulta myos Esci, Italeri, Hasegawa, Heller... ----- After postponing the announcement of the cabinet to be formed under the Libyan Political Agreement on Sunday, Libyas nine-member Presidential Council based in Tunisia but aspiring to move to Tripoli unveiled a 32-member cabinet on Tuesday that will serve as a unity government to end the war and spearhead the countrys transition under a U.N backed plan. The U.N, Washington and the E.U supported the cabinet but the two rival governments in Tripoli and Tobruk are unlikely to accept it. Deputy Speaker Awad Abdulsadeq of the General National Congress in Tripoli on Monday said what is happening in Tunisia now is not an agreement that contains all parties and a close ally of the influential Khalifa Haftar, army chief of the Tobruk-based government, reportedly walked out of the meeting to appoint the cabinet because he was unconvinced about the guarantees for the independence of the military. U.N. Special Envoy Martin Kobler said the new announcement presents a sterling opportunity for Libyans to come together to build their country and an important leap on the path to peace and stability while E.U.s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini described it as an essential step and called on the Tobruk-based parliament, that has to approve it within 10days, and the presidency to show the same spirit of compromise and sense of leadership, and promptly convene to endorse the proposed Cabinet. The new cabinet however seems to be illegitimate hours after it was announced as reports emerge that Ali Gatrani and Omar Al Aswad, members of the nine-member presidential council, offered their resignation as they complain that the new government should not command the armed forces. The Libyan Political Accord requires the unanimous agreement of the council. All members of Burkinabe parliament on Tuesday agreed on a salary reduction in solidarity with the victims and all people who suffered during the popular uprising in October 2014, the failed coup in September 2015 as well as the latest terror attacks on Jan. 15. Members of parliament who were initially entitled to a monthly salary of 1.2 million CFA Francs ($2,000) will henceforth get 960,397 CFA Francs, Speaker of Parliament Salifou Diallo said. Diallo strongly condemned last weekends barbaric attacks, and urged the government to do more to protect Burkinabe people and their properties, adding that parliament will give the executive absolute support to secure the country. Last Friday, attackers raided a luxury hotel and a cafe in Burkina Faso, shooting at some and taking others hostage in a siege that lasted hours and ended with 30 people dead and scores injured. Security forces entered the hotel early Saturday and freed 126 hostages, half of whom were hospitalized, according to Burkina Fasos foreign minister, Alpha Barry. The attack comes a few months after Burkina Faso marked a turning point following a historic presidential election. The West-African nation elected a new president in November after nearly three decades of autocratic rule followed by a civil uprising. Roch Marc Christian Kabore, the former Prime Minister, won more than 53% of votes in that election. Elections were postponed the month before because of a failed coup against the transitional government. The West, particularly France, considers Burkina Faso a key ally in the fight against al Qaeda. The international humanitarian community is seeking $1.3 billion in humanitarian aid to support an estimated 5.1 million people facing life threatening situations in South Sudan, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) disclosed on Tuesday. South Sudans appeal, which takes into account projects from 114 humanitarian organisations, including international and national NGOs and UN agencies, will respond to the life-threatening needs of 5.1 million people across the country. This appeal must be fully funded, urged Eugene Owusu, UN humanitarian coordinator for South Sudan. It presents the bare minimum required to respond to the most urgent needs, and these needs cannot go unanswered. The challenge we face is unprecedented but we must not give up. One in every five people in South Sudan have been forced to flee their homes since conflict began in 2013. Towards the end of last year, as many as 3.9 million people in the country were food insecure, and in some areas worst affected by the violence up to 30,000 people faced a real risk of famine. It is the sincere hope of the humanitarian community that 2016 will bring long lasting peace to this young and potentially great nation and replace the desperation and devastation we have seen in 2015 with hope for a brighter future, said Mr. Owusu. Kenyas President Uhuru Kenyatta on Tuesday vowed to continue war against Al-Shabaab in Somalia, saying Kenya remains unbowed and would continue to stand with the international community to free Somalia from oppression by terror groups. Kenyatta addressed the nation following an Al-Shabaab attack on an African Union Mission in Somalia (Amisom) over the weekend that killed several Kenyan soldiers. Let us all continue praying for our forces in Somalia. My Government will give them all the support they need and for those who carried out the attack thinking they can scare us, they will not have space to breath, said the President. He reiterated that Kenya would not be cowed and that the government would pursue the terrorists and make sure there is peace in Kenya and neighbouring countries. We will join hands with other neighbours to make sure there is peace in Somalia because that it is key to development, he said. He insisted that Kenya cannot afford to relent in the fight against the militants, adding that a lot had been achieved since 2011, including the revival of tourism in the country. Credit: CDC New anti-malarial drugs could be developed after researchers discovered a new mechanism used by the malaria parasite when it infects humans. Experts from St George's, University of London and the Instituto de Medicina Molecular (iMM Lisboa), have exploited baker's yeast to discover how iron is controlled by the malaria parasite within the human body, providing the first detailed characterisation of an important iron transport pathway. Malaria is a massive global health burden, with a current WHO estimate of around 600,000 deaths annually, although this figure could rise sharply if treatment failures associated with drug-combination therapies become widespread. Dr Henry Staines, a senior research fellow at St George's, University of London said iron is essential to a malaria parasite's survival but can also be toxic at high levels. He explained that iron is also critical to the effectiveness of important antimalarial drugs such as chloroquine and the artemisinins. "This research will not only allow us to identify new ways to attack the parasite but will help us to understand how our current arsenal of antimalarial drugs work," he said. "This is important because antimalarial drugs such as artemisinin-based combination therapies are not as effective as they were in South East Asia, which is a worrying trend." The researchers used a mutant baker's yeast, in which the sequence for a specific iron transport protein is removed from the yeast's DNA. "With the yeast mutant unable to make this iron transport protein, it loses the ability to grow when iron is present. We thought a protein from the malaria parasite might perform the same iron transporting role, as the one lacking in the mutant yeast," Dr Staines said. Dr Ksenija Slavic from Instituto de Medicina Molecular in Lisbon said to confirm our hypothesis, we introduced the DNA sequence for the malaria parasite protein into the mutant yeast and showed that the yeast regained their ability to grow in the presence of iron. "A mutant malaria parasite was also created by removing the iron transporter's gene, which resulted in reduced numbers of parasites in the liver, where they first multiply, and subsequently in the blood, at which point patients become ill", Dr. Slavic said. Inside liver cells, iron binding chemicals that remove iron improved how well the mutant parasites grew, adds Dr. Maria Mota from Instituto de Medicina Molecular in Lisbon, one of the senior authors of the study. "Inside red blood cells, we found that these mutant parasites contained an increased amount of iron that could be potentially toxic, explaining the reduced numbers. Both findings imply that the gene helps the parasite to tolerate iron. This greater understanding of iron regulation in the malaria parasite could lead to urgently needed new treatment strategies," Dr Mota said Next up, the researchers will be looking into how the mutant parasites are impacted by anti-malarial drugs that use iron. Explore further Malarial parasites dodge the kill More information: Ksenija Slavic et al. A vacuolar iron-transporter homologue acts as a detoxifier in Plasmodium, Nature Communications (2016). Journal information: Nature Communications Ksenija Slavic et al. A vacuolar iron-transporter homologue acts as a detoxifier in Plasmodium,(2016). DOI: 10.1038/ncomms10403 Dangerous driving when dropping children off at schools may put kids at increased risk of getting injured in the vicinity of their schools, a recent York University and The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) study indicates. "Though dangerous driving behaviour near schools is often witnessed and reported, such incidents are not well described," says Professor Alison Macpherson, in the Faculty of Health. "Our study shows that there is a significant association between schools with dangerous driving and pedestrian-motor vehicle collisions (PMVCs)." The observation is the result of a joint study by researchers at York University, the Hospital for Sick Children and the University of Toronto. In 2011, trained observers measured dangerous driving behaviours and numbers of children walking to school during morning drop-off times. The study reviewed police reports on child PMVCs, mapped around 118 Toronto public elementary schools, along with characteristics of the physical traffic environment. The research team also compared the level of social disadvantage for each school, provided by the Toronto District School Board. "Over a 12-year period, there were 411 children involved in PMVCs near schools, with 45 occurring during school travel times. Twenty-nine of these collisions (64 per cent) were taken to the emergency department for their injuries," points out lead author Linda Rothman, who is a York U Postdoctoral Fellow and a research manager at SickKids. Unsafe parking and child drop-offs, such as dropping children off on the opposite side to the school, stood out as the most common dangerous driving behaviours, seen near 104 schools (88 per cent) according to the findings of "Dangerous student car drop-off behaviours and child pedestrian-motor vehicle collisions: an observational study", published online at Traffic Injury Prevention. More dangerous driving was observed in schools with greater social disadvantage and those near higher speed roadways. "We urge that collision prevention approaches should include strategies to change the physical traffic environment, provide police enforcement and education to promote active transport to schools to reduce dangerous driving behavior," says Dr. Andrew Howard, a senior scientist and orthopaedic surgeon at SickKids and Associate Professor in the departments of Surgery & Health Policy, Management & Evaluation at the University of Toronto. He adds that the study results could have major impact on the City of Toronto's as well as the Toronto District School Board's policies to make walking to school safe for children. Explore further Having kids walk to school comes with risks, benefits The USPSTF has issued another set of recommendations for breast cancer screening. What are they? The USPSTF recommendations for breast cancer screening are as follows: Women between the ages of 40 and 49 should consult a doctor to individualize screening recommendations based on personal situation and risk For women between the ages of 50 and 75, screening mammography is recommended every two years For women over the age 75, there are insufficient data to make recommendations. Women should consult their doctors Do the recommendations differ from previous ones and if so, how? The recommendations of the USPSTF are similar to their previous ones, but differ somewhat from the new and former American Cancer Society (ACS) guidelines as well as current guidelines from the American College of Radiology. The former ACS guidelines recommended annual screening mammography; this is also the current recommendation from the American College of Radiology and several other societies. However, the new ACS guidelines are more in line with the USPSTF guidelines in their recommendation for screening every two years beginning at age 55. Dr. Anees Chagpar, associate professor of surgery (oncology) at Yale School of Medicine and director of The Breast Center at Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale-New Haven, breaks down the new set of breast cancer screening guidelines issued by the U.S. Preventive Service Task Force (USPSTF). Why is there yet another set of guidelines for mammograms? We continue to evaluate the data in terms of risks and benefits. There is no question that mammography saves livesit enables us to find cancers sooner, when they are smaller and more treatable. However, increasing data are emerging regarding the risks of mammographythe radiation exposure, unnecessary biopsies, and over-diagnosisthe concept that some small cancers may never have any meaningful impact on one's longevity and may not require treatment. How do the new recommendations affect women when they go to the doctor? Hopefully, the recommendations affect women only in terms of having meaningful conversations with their doctors about risks and what tests are right for them. Women should not interpret the new guidelines as diminishing the importance of mammography. And insurers should continue to cover screening mammography every one to two years. Do the guidelines match what you tell patients about screening? Pretty much, although these guidelines don't apply to most of my patients. Remember, these guidelines are only for women at average risk. That means if someone already has been diagnosed with cancer, has a genetic mutation or strong family history of breast cancer, or has symptoms such as a lump, bloody nipple discharge, or skin changes, these guidelines don't apply. What should women in their 40s think about in terms of screening? Well, the data do indicate that screening mammography can find cancers in women in their 40s. Many of us have had patients who go for their first screening mammogram at the age of 40 and are found to have a cancer. So, it's important for women in their 40s to talk to their doctors about their risks to determine when and how frequently they ought to be screened. Breast cancer is less common for women in their 40s than women in their 60s. This is why screening is more efficient in the latter age category. But younger women tend to get more aggressive cancers, so it behooves us to find these as early as possible. It's important for young women to know their risk and tailor their screening accordingly. And of course, if women get symptoms at any age, they should see their doctor. What about women with a family history? Should they get more screening than is recommended? The guidelines pertain only to women at average risk. So, if someone has a strong family history of breast cancer, she should talk to her doctor about what may be right for her. For example, women who have a BRCA gene mutation or a family history of such a gene mutation should likely be getting annual mammograms and annual MRIs. Women who have a family history of a first-degree relative who had cancer at a young age (<50) should consider starting screening 10 years earlier than the age at which their youngest relative was diagnosed with breast cancer. However, not all family histories necessarily merit more aggressive screening. For example, my mother was diagnosed at the age of 74; and although I am at slightly increased risk due to the fact that I have a first-degree family history of breast cancer, given that there is no other family history, I would likely follow routine screening guidelines. What else do women need to know about detecting or preventing breast cancer? There are many things that women should keep in mind. In terms of detecting breast cancer, remember first of all, that mammography is the mainstay. For women with dense breasts, ultrasound may be a helpful addition to mammography but should not replace mammography. Women should also know that the technology for mammography is improving dramatically. Three-dimensional mammography, called tomosynthesis, is a promising technology that allows the radiologist to analyze thin sections of the breast. It has been shown to improve detection and reduce call-back rates. How can women determine and lower their risk? Even without a family history, there are other factors that can increase risk. One can do a quick calculation of risk here. Note that this model (known as the Gail Model) is not perfect but has been used in many prevention trials. If someone has a five-year risk of more than 1.67, she would be considered high risk. In terms of preventing breast cancer, women should remember that maintaining an ideal body weight, avoiding excessive alcohol, and minimizing exogenous estrogen exposure through things like hormone replacement therapy can all help to minimize risk. It's also important for women to know their riskknow their family history, and seek the advice of genetic counselors if they are concerned about a genetic predisposition. Remember, however, that most breast cancers are sporadic and not related to a particular genetic mutation that may run in the family. If a woman finds she has a higher-than-average risk, what can be done? There are many things that can be done to reduce risk. First, talk to a doctor about the type and frequency of screening that is right for the risk. While this won't prevent cancer, it can save lives by allowing us to find cancers earlier when they are most treatable. Second, there are medications, such as tamoxifen, raloxifene, or the aromatase inhibitors that have been shown to also reduce risk by roughly 50% in women who are at high risk. If this is of interest, a woman should talk to her doctor or seek out a high-risk clinic to learn about risks and benefits of these medications. Finally, prophylactic surgery may be of benefit. For women who are at very high risk, prophylactic mastectomy can reduce risk of developing breast cancer by 95%. Often this can be done with immediate reconstruction and the cosmetic results are very good. For women who have a BRCA mutation, prophylactic ovary removal can reduce risk of both ovarian and breast cancer. Again, a woman should talk to a breast and/or gynecologic surgical oncologist about these options to see if they are right for her. Explore further False-positive mammography results are common The time is right for a broad range of stakeholders to push for a health care information economy founded on the basic principle that patients should have control over their data, Boston Children's Hospital informatics researchers say in a Perspective article in The New England Journal of Medicine. The technologies, demand and benefits are there, they note; what remains are the incentives and will to make it happen. In the piece, Kenneth Mandl, MD, MPH, director of Boston Children's Computational Health Informatics Program (CHIP), and Isaac Kohane, MD, PhD, CHIP faculty and chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School, briefly recount the history of the movement to develop personally-controlled health records (PCHRs)repositories in which patients can store, track and manage their own health data. They also point out barriers that have stymied PCHRs' widespread adoption, including the industry move to provider-based electronic health records (EHRs) and associated patient portals. "EHRs are limiting in two ways," Kohane explained. "First, they only show the data from one hospital or provider, which is not a complete picture if you see multiple providers at multiple hospitals. Second, the data stay with that hospital, such that patients can't want to share their data elsewhere, easily seek second opinions or contribute their data to clinical studies." "Since 1996, federal regulation defining a patient's right to health data have failed to ensure access," said Mandl. "Further, hospitals in general do not see having complete patient records as a business priority. We believe the Meaningful Use program would have been more successful if it had rewarded clinicians for storing data in patient-controlled repositories rather than in EHRs that fragment data across the health care system." The pair notes several reasons for pursuing a patient-controlled health data economy, including: enabling patients to gather all data from all health care encounters in one place, providing a more complete picture of a patient's health fostering greater coordination in the care multiple providers deliver to each patient allowing patients to easily donate their data for research purposes empowering patients to augment their data and correct errors in their health records feeding the development of intelligent health care software or health care apps Mandl and Kohane outline four steps could fuel the creation of a patient-drive information economy in health care: 1. strong incentives from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and private insures for health care organizations to provide data to patients 2. development, backed by federal health care IT policy and demand from purchasers of health systems, of uniform, standard, public application programming interfaces (APIs) to catalyze the development of an ecosystem of health data apps for providers and patients 3. creation of tools by which patients can set permissions and consents for who can access their health data and for what purposes 4. adoption of rigorous authentication frameworks akin to those in the e-commerce industry to provide data security and accountability "It's time to re-evaluate what the fundamental architecture of the health care system should look like," Mandl said. A patient controlled record allows each patient to become a health information exchange of one; as data accumulate in a patient controlled repository, a complete picture of the patient emerges." "EHRs and patient portals were plan B," Kohane added. "We should go back to plan A, which was to create patient-controlled data stores that compiles all pertinent data across a patient's lifetime and is the patient's to share as they see fit." Explore further Tapping into electronic health records to improve care for patients with chronic kidney disease Provided by Boston Children's Hospital The United States may be on the cusp of changing its collective policy mind on the issue of physician aid-in-dying. Bans remain in 38 states, but in a new Viewpoint essay in the Journal of the American Medical Association, two Brown University authors point out that the momentum is building in favor. In October 2015 when California enacted a law permitting doctors to assist terminally ill patients in ending their lives, the proportion of Americans living in a state in which that practice was allowed rose to 1 in 6. A May 2015 Gallup survey showed that the state reflects a rapid consolidation of public opinion: Nearly 7 in 10 surveyed by Gallup approve. In the meantime, 23 states and the District of Columbia began debating laws in favor of the practice last year, wrote Dr. Eli Adashi, former dean of medicine and biological sciences at Brown, and Ryan Clodfelter, a student in the Alpert Medical School. Their essay is titled "The Liberty to Die," a reference to an Emily Dickinson poem. "To its proponents, physician aid-in-dying represents compassion and beneficence in the face of terminal physical pain and disability, and the right to exercise free choice and autonomy of will," they wrote. "To its opponents, physician aid-in-dying violates deeply held views on the sanctity of life, distorts the imperative of the healing mission, devalues the role of palliation, and risks coercion of the elderly, disabled, destitute, and despondent." In 1994 Oregon became the first state to legalize physician aid-in-dying. Since then Washington, Vermont, Montana (by a court ruling) and California have followed suit. Health care organizations remain split with the American Public Health Association in favor, for example, and the American Medical Association opposed. [In a commentary on the issue in the December edition of the Rhode island Medical Journal, Dr. Herbert Ratansky, clinical professor emeritus of medicine, notes that physicians no longer have the presumptive upper hand in the discussion. After tracing centuries of philosophical debate about the morality of suicide, Ratansky notes the very recent shift: "Historically, medical paternalism espoused the view that the 'doctor knows best.' The concept of patient autonomy has risen rapidly in recent years and puts the patient at the center of medical decision-making."] With a majority of popular support and both legislative and judicial approvals mounting, Adashi said, he sees a parallel with other policy evolutions on national moral questions. The most recent example is the recent shift that saw same-sex marriage transition from something that was being actively banned by states into becoming a national right. California will likely not be the last state to enact a "Death with Dignity" law, Adashi and Clodfelter predict. "It is not beyond the realm of possibility that other states will enact comparable laws before too long." From Emily Dickinson: The heart asks pleasure first, And then, excuse from pain; And then, those little anodynes That deaden suffering; And then, to go to sleep; And then, if it should be The will of its Inquisitor, The liberty to die. Researchers analyzing data from the National Cancer Data Base (NCDB) have found that patients who had a cancer operation at precisely eight weeks56 daysafter the end of combined chemoradiotherapy had the best overall survival and successful removal of their residual tumors. The six-year study of almost 12,000 patients may bring clarity to doctors who have long debated the ideal waiting time between combined chemotherapy and radiation for rectal cancer and surgical removal of the cancer. The study, published online in Journal of the American College of Surgeons in advance of print publication, investigated outcomes of 11,760 patients with advanced stage localized rectal cancer who had chemoradiotherapy and surgical treatment from 2006 to 2012. The patients had either stage II or III localized rectal cancer (stage IV is the most advanced stage). Christopher Mantyh, MD, FACS, of Duke University led the study, and its results were presented at the Southern Surgical Association meeting in Hot Springs, Virginia, in December 2015. Colon and rectal cancers are the third most common cancers in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), with about 135,000 new cases and 51,000 deaths per year.* (The CDC does not separate out colon and rectal cancers.) Dr. Mantyh noted that this study differs from previous studies that evaluated the interval between chemoradiotherapy and surgery for rectal cancer in its sheer size; previous studies were typically smaller and involved single institutions. "Due to its size, we thought NCDB was a perfect resource to answer the question about the timing of surgery after chemoradiotherapy for rectal cancer. The data set represented all types of hospitals," Dr. Mantyh said. NCDB, a joint program of the Commission on Cancer (C0C) of the American College of Surgeons and the American Cancer Society, captures an estimated 70 percent of newly diagnosed cancer cases in the United States and Puerto Rico from approximately 1,500 cancer programs accredited by the CoC. Patients with many types of cancer typically have a course of combined chemotherapy and radiation treatments before undergoing surgery to remove the tumors. The treatment before the operation helps to treat surrounding tissue and shrink the tumor. The researchers set out to determine the best timing interval in terms of two key measures of success in cancer treatment: margin positivity, that is, the cancer-free zone in the tissue surrounding the cancerous tumor after it is surgically removed; and tumor downstaging, which means the amount of the tumor that is downgraded in terms of its size and penetration into surrounding tissue. Secondary outcomes the study evaluated were readmission and death rates within 30 days of hospital discharge and overall survival. The investigators found that the median time between chemoradiotherapy and surgery was 53 days, with the actual timing ranging from 43 to 63 days. "The odd thing about the study is that when we looked at the best timing for pathological downstaging as well as margin positivity, they both arrived at exactly the same time56 days," Dr. Mantyh said. The study analysis divided patients into two groups: short-interval, those who underwent operations within 55 days of chemoradiotherapy; and long-interval, having had an operation 56 days or more after radiotherapy. The long-interval group was slightly older (age 59 vs. 58 years), more likely to be black (9.5% vs. 8%), treated at an academic hospital, and less likely to have private insurance (50.2% vs. 55.4%) and stage III disease (51.4% vs. 54.2%). Moreover, extending the delay beyond 56 days between radiation and surgery did not result in a greater downstaging effect, but was associated with a higher likelihood of positive resection margins and compromised long-term survival, suggesting that longer waiting times may risk tumor regrowth. Long-interval patients also had a lower risk of returning to the hospital within 30 days after surgery with no difference in death rates in that period, but they also had worse long-term survival. "The real significant thing we found was that long-term mortality was significantly higher after 56 days," Dr. Mantyh reported. Study results suggested longer wait times might risk tumor regrowth. The study findings can bring some clarity to the debate among oncologists about the timing of an operation after patients complete radiotherapy. "In the global picture, there's a lot of discussion about if waiting longer for surgery is better, and if you don't wait as long there's less chance of tumor spreading, but none of it is backed up on good modeling data like we have in this study," Dr. Mantyh said. "This kind of analysis is what we need in medicine and surgery. We need to have good population based data." Explore further Study: radiation an important addition to treatment for pancreatic cancer surgery candidates Vanessa Marquez was an actress best known for playing Ana Delgado in the classic movie Stand and Deliver (1988) and Nurse Wendy Goldman on t... President will deliver his national address in February By Messenger Staff President Giorgi Margvelahsvili will address nation from the legislative body in February.The President of Georgia, Giorgi Margvelashvili, will deliver his annual speech in February before national lawmakers, at the beginning of the spring session of Parliament.The exact date of the address will be announced by the Parliament Bureau.It will be President Margvelashvilis third annual address since his election as the President of Georgia in October 2013.In his annual addresses, the President touches on all state important issues.The spring session opens on February 2.Since his being elected as the President of Georgia in 2013, Margvelashvili has appealed to the Cabinet of Ministers and the Prime Minister to attend his annual speeches in the legislative body.However, the former Prime Minister of Georgia, Irakli Garibahsvili, did not attend any of the addresses.The main reason for this was that the Georgian Constitution changed, and the President ceased to be the major political figure in the country. As a result, it was not necessary for the Prime Minister and the Ministers to attend the speech.However, this has been considered controversial, and the Prime Minister and the Ministers have been criticized for their absence.Garibashvilis lack of attendance was also seen as a sign of the poor relations between the two state leaders.This year, Georgia has a new Prime Minister in Giorgi Kvirikahsvili, who is described by analysts and politicians as more balanced and diplomatic than his predecessor.Margvelashvilis annual speech will indicate whether his relationship with the Prime Minister will improve now that Garibashvili has been replaced. It would undoubtedly help if the Prime Minister breaks the habit of his predecessor and chooses to attend the annual address.Such a step will only improve the state image in the eyes of Georgias international partners. The News in Brief Deputy Tbilisi Mayor resigns Tbilisi City Hall has confirmed that the Deputy Mayor, Giorgi Solomonia, has resigned. Solomonia will continue to work in the Investigative Department of the Finance Ministry. "Deputy Mayor Giorgi Solomonia has resigned. He served as the deputy mayor since August 2014. He submitted a personal letter regarding his resignation. He will continue to work in the Investigative Department of the Finance Ministry, read City Halls statement. (IPN) S.Ossetia Chief Prosecutor Dies After Being Hit by Car in Tskhinvali The Chief Prosecutor of the breakaway territory of South Ossetia, Merab Chigoev, died after he was struck by a car while crossing a street in Tskhinvali on January 9, according to the breakaway regions Interior Ministry. Initially, Russian and local media sources reported citing a witness that the driver ran from the scene, but later the same media sources reported that the breakaway regions Interior Ministry said that the driver did not try to flee and was arrested on the scene; he was identified as Soslan Tedeev, a 33-year-old resident of Tskhinvali. The incident does not appear to be being treated by the law enforcement agencies of the breakaway region as an intentional act. South Ossetian leader Leonid Tibilov, who has called for stricter road safety measures, was quoted by the Tskhinvali-based news agency RES as saying at a meeting with Interior Ministry leadership on January 10: I take the investigation of this crime under my personal control. But what else can be said? The case is actually already solved. The culprit should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. Merab Chigoev held the post of the breakaway regions chief prosecutor since April, 2012; he also served as the Minister of Justice from 2004-2008. (Civil.ge) Iraqi students protested against revoked residency permits A group of Iraqi students protested in Kutaisi on Monday after having their residency permits revoked. The protest at Akaki Tsereteli State University involved up to ten Iraqi students, who asked the university to help them after the Ministry of Justice revoked their residency permits. They received notices from the Justice Ministry on December 25. Mustapa Karakuli told journalists that they were not told the reason behind the decision. They only told us that it is dangerous that we are in Georgia. We never had any problems - not even a fine or anything which could become a reason to revoke our permits, he said. We are not dangerous. We are launching a protest from now and will continue with it. We wont attend lectures until the university helps us. The students also said that the administration assisted four Iraqi students who had their residency permits prolonged. The Deputy Rector at ATSU, Shalva Kirtadze, said that the university was doing everything to help the students. We gave the relevant bodies an assessment of the students, along with the documents describing their education, he said. The procedures were the same for the protesting students as for the four who had their permits prolonged, Kirtadze added. We are on a third course right now and if we hadnt been dangerous before, what changed? This is absurd, another student told Kutaisi Post. (DF watch) De- facto government of Abkhazia to join Russian sanctions against Turkey The de facto government of Abkhazia will join the Russian sanctions against Turkey. The information was released by the Abkhazian government's website. According to the statement, possible economic measures are being devised and will be implemented before January 20. In particular, the so-called government plans to ban the import of certain goods from Turkey, imposing control on Turkish organizations and prohibiting their activities. According to the de facto authorities, the abovementioned is provided by the strategic partnership agreement signed with Russia in 2014. (IPN) Minotauro Records 2016 stone cold hit For our readers who might not be familiar with the name, Matthias Steele is a power metal/thrash band that hails from Rhode Island and was formed in 1985 by three high-school friends (bassist/vocalist Tony Lionette, drummer Nino Trovato and original guitarist Todd Gencarella). Early on the band drew it's influences from thrash and epic power metal (or more specifically American power metal of the eighties!), the NWOBHM scene, and bands such as Cloven Hoof and Tyrant. Judging by their forthcoming album here not much has changed in that regard, but we'll get back to that notion shortly enough! First things first and that's the last of this ever so brief history lesson. Having formed in the mid-eighties (or as I like to refer to it "The height of the heavy metal fever!"), Matthias Steele spent it's formidable years playing throughout Rhodes Island and Connecticut before releasing their highly-regarded self-titled demo in 1987. With a new line-up in hand (guitarist John Erkan and drummer Jay Jordan were eventually replaced Todd Gencarella and Nino Trovato) the band would go on to release their full-length debut album, "Haunting Tales of a Warrior's Past", in 1992. Ain their stomping ground of Rhode Island, Metal Mark actually covered "Haunting Tales of a Warrior's Past" back in the day (or at least in 2012 ) and (incidentally ladies and gents) Minotauro Records will be re-releasing Matthias Steele's (must-own!) first album in the near future. And with bonus cuts to boot! But anyway, back to today's short lesson plan. Plagued by line-up changes over the following years the band soldiered on before settling on their most consistent line-up to date with bassist/vocalist (and sole original band member) Tony Lionette joined by drummer Nino Trovato and guitarist Jami Blackwood. In 2007 this line-up recorded "Resurrection" and that same chemistry-laced trio is responsible for the metal madness that is "Question of Divinity". Now over 30 years old (with the band having celebrated their 25th anniversary in 2010 with a special show in their hometown of Westerly) Matthias Steele sounds remarkably fresh and energetic on their forth release to date.! In truth theses recordings are from studio sessions that took place in 2009 and 2010 at Redbone Recording in the group's hometown of Westerly, Rhode Island, but still, "Question of Divinity" is a damn fine metal album from start to finish! As previously mentioned, Matthias Steele takes it's cue from thrash and epic power metal as well as the NWOBHM scene. On "Question of Divinity" though we're also treated to the experienced sounds of one savvy band that knows a thing or two about traditional/classic heavy metal, eighties metal (think Judas Priest meets Metal Church first two albums) and even progressive power metal! And thanks to hard work of Shawn Allen* these various recordings have a distinct vibe about them that makes the album sound both classic and slightly modern. In addition to the eight (head bang-worthy) studio tracks on "Question of Divinity" there are two bonus live tracks from the band's aforementioned 25th anniversary show. The first one is called "Worthless Soul" and it is an unreleased song from guitarist Jami Blackwood. A great number in it's own right, "Worthless Soul" will be properly put to tape on the inevitable follow-up to "Question of Divinity". "Supersonic Man" is the other live track and this great number comes from the band's 1987 demo. Both tracks show what the band is capable of when playing out live and with Minotauro Records set to re-release both "Haunting Tales of a Warrior's Past" and "Resurrection" maybe just maybe this under-appreciated metal trio will finally get the proper respect that they so rightly deserve! @ByKristenMClark In a pivotal vote, a Senate education committee on Wednesday narrowly gave its support for continuing a controversial program that awards teacher bonuses based, in part, on how well they did on college-entrance exams. Although the "Best and Brightest" program is in its first year, senators didn't debate it last year -- only the House did -- so Wednesday's vote was the first true test of legislative support for it in the 2016 session. Its chances, at this stage, in the Senate: Not good. Senate Bill 978 barely passed the Pre-K-12 Education Committee by a 6-5 vote, with Chairman John Legg, R-Trinity -- the bill sponsor -- joining the panel's four Democrats in opposition. It could have died in that committee were it not for a couple of Republicans -- including Sen. Nancy Detert of Venice -- who said they only voted in favor of it this time so as not to kill a priority of the House during the second week of the legislative session and so as to give other lawmakers an opportunity to fix it. After criticizing the "ill-thought-out" eligibility criteria in the bonus plan, Detert finished her remarks by imploring House leaders: "Could you please put in the time to make it a bill we can be proud of, instead of one were ashamed of?" A House committee unanimously passed a bill Wednesday that would remove the requirement that government officials who intentionally violate the state's public records law pay attorneys fees when citizens take them to court. The measure, HB 1021 by Rep. Greg Steube, R-Sarasota, would give judges the discretion to determine if government agencies will pay the legal fees of a lawsuit when they are found in violation of the law. It also requires that the a person who intends to file a lawsuit give the public agency notice at least five business days in advance. The bill, and SB 1220 filed by Sen. Rene Garcia, R-Hialeah, are vigorously opposed by representatives of a coalition of public records advocates who believe it will "gut" the state's already hard-to-enforce Sunshine laws by removing the only penalty that exists against violators. "Without a penalty provision when the government is wrong, there is no incentive to be transparent and provide citizens with access to information about governmental decision-making,'' said Barbara Petersen, president of the First Amendment Foundation in a letter to supporters this week. "The result will be fewer challenges brought by citizens, which will certainly result in less government transparency." But the House Government Operations Subcommittee was persuaded by members of the League of Cities that the current law needs reform because individuals, particularly law firms, are creating a "cottage industry" that attempts to collect attorneys fees by attempting to snag local government in gotcha violations of public records laws. Bob Ganger, Vice Mayor of the tiny City of Gulfstream in Palm Beach County, told the committee that his town of 900 residents was the "poster child" for the abuses, having received over 2,500 public records requests from a handful of individuals attempting to profit off the practice. @PatriciaMazzei Florida voters are undecided about who they want to replace Marco Rubio in the U.S. Senate, according to a new state robopoll. But of those supporting a candidate early on in the campaign, Democrats prefer U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson of Orlando to U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy of Jupiter, 27-20 percent, the Florida Atlantic University survey shows. Republicans like U.S. Rep. David Jolly of Indian Shores, who received 28 percent support, over U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis of Ponte Vedra Beach and Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera, who drew 8 percent support each. How many voters remain undecided? Forty-five percent of Democrats and a full 50 percent of Republicans. The primaries won't take place until August. "While it is very early, the race between Congressmen Patrick Murphy and Allen Grayson looks to be competitive," Kevin Wagner, an FAU associate professor of political science at FAU and a research fellow of the Business and Economics Polling Initiative, said in a statement. "While Grayson has a lead in our poll, the large number of undecideds make that lead tenuous at best. Grayson's advantage may simply be greater statewide name recognition at this point. This appears to be a wide open primary contest. "In the Republican Senate primary, Congressman David Jolly is out to a substantial early lead, but with half of the polled voters undecided, this race is far from over." The poll, conducted Jan. 15-18, surveyed 371 likely Democratic voters and 345 likely Republican voters, with an error margin of 5 percent and 5.2 percent, respectively. Florida lawmakers have a jam-packed schedule Wednesday that includes controversial issues from gambling to public records. Here are five things to watch: * The Senate Regulated Industries Committee will hear from the governor's office, the state's economist and a top official with the Seminole Tribe about the prospects of the $3 billion gambling deal negotiated by Gov. Rick Scott. * Secretary of State Ken Detzner will provide an update on the status of the state's online voter registration efforts at a meeting of the Senate Ethics and Elections Committee. * The Senate Education Pre-K-12 Committee hears about the "Best and Brightest" teacher bonus program. It will be the first test of the Senate's willingness to address the issue that has drawn criticism from the state's teacher's unions. * The House Government Operations Subcommittee takes up a controversial measure aimed at reducing the award of attorneys fees by public agencies that violate the state's public records laws. The measure, HB 1021, by Rep. Greg Steube, is criticized by citizens groups and First Amendment advocates as an attempt to severely weaken the state's public record laws. * The Senate Fiscal Policy Committee hears a bill to expand the ailments covered by the state's non-euphoric marijuana law. The measure is a top priority of the five growers who have won licenses to grow and cultivate the limited strains of cannabis for people with epilepsy, seizure disorders and cancer. @JeremySWallace The Florida Legislature is giving up the fight and will not contest a court ruling that redraws all of the states 40 state senate districts for the 2016 election cycle. State Sen. Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton, said he told Senate President Andy Gardiner on Wednesday that the Legislature should let court-ordered maps go into effect, even though he says there were legal issues that were open to appeal. My recommendation is for us not to appeal, and the Senate President has agreed, Galvano said. The decision leaves the state with a new map that will recast Florida's political landscape, giving millions of people new representation and bolstering Democratic chances in 2016. Voters in South Tampa, East Hillsborough, and large portions of Pasco County will get new state senators, as a result of the map. In Miami-Dade in casts incumbents against one another in potential new districts in a presidential election cycle. Democratic party analysts say the new maps are fairer and gives them a better chance of winning additional seats in a Florida Senate that has been dominated by the Republican Party for most of the last two decades. The decision not to appeal also ends a tumultuous process that cost taxpayers over $11 million, led to four trials, three special sessions and eight rulings from the Florida Supreme Court. Circuit Judge George Reynolds in Tallahassee ruled in late December that he was rejecting the Senates latest attempts to draw district lines and turning instead to a map backed by a coalition of votings rights groups, the League of Women Voters and Common Cause. Galvano said after that ruling that the Legislature was considering appealing the decision or even requesting a re-hearing of the case. But Galvano said Wednesday that hes ready to accept the court ruling and move forward with the new districts in place for the 2016 election cycle. He said the issues he has can be addressed in future redistrictings, which happen ever 10 years after the U.S. Census is completed. The Legislature has been trying -- and failing -- to draw new district lines since 2012. But those maps and subsequent redistricting efforts have been struck down by the courts after the League of Women Voters and Common Cause challenged them in court saying they violated the fair districts provision of the state constitution, which mandates that lawmakers draw political boundaries without the intent to favor incumbents or political parties. @PatriciaMazzei Whoever the Republican presidential candidates are come early March, they will be coming to Miami. To Coral Gables, to be exact. The University of Miami will house a debate five days before Floridas big March 15 primary, the Republican National Committee announced Wednesday. The March 10 debate, which had been scheduled months ago for Florida, will be hosted by CNN, The Washington Times and Salem Radio Network. Its possible two hometown candidates, Sen. Marco Rubio and former Gov. Jeb Bush, could still be on stage come debate night, though theres a whole month and a half of primaries and caucuses before then that could winnow the large Republican field. The GOP face-off will take place a day after a Democratic primary debate hosted by Univision and the Washington Post at Miami Dade Colleges Kendall campus. More here. The post has been updated. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is trying to stamp out criticism from other presidential candidates about his slick, zip-up boots by saying hes giving American business a leg up. Rubios ankle boots became the subject of Internet scrutiny after he was photographed wearing them in New Hampshire on Jan. 3, 2016. Pundits and fashion columnists commented on them ad nauseam. Rubio drew fire from his GOP rivals for being perhaps a bit too chic for the campaign trail. Some speculated they were to make the 5-foot-10 senator appear taller. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul called the boots "cute" and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bushs Right to Rise super PAC made a commercial mocking them. While Rubio initially called the focus on his footwear "craziness," hes worked at thinking on his feet. At a Jan. 18 campaign event in Waverly, Iowa, a voter jokingly asked about the boots. Rubio declared his boots, appropriately outfitted with a Cuban heel, are a patriotic choice. "They sold out of those boots online," Rubio said. "Theyre made in Wisconsin. Florsheim! You know what that means? That means I did more for American business in one week than Barack Obama did in seven years!" See what Joshua Gillin of PolitiFact Florida found. @NewsbySmiley Contractors eagerly began work this month on a grid of floating docks in the Marine Stadium basin after it appeared the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued the final environmental permit needed to host the Miami International Boat Show on Virginia Key. Perhaps they were a little too eager. Two days after Boat Show organizers acknowledged that work was underway at the site ahead of their President's Day weekend event, county environmental regulators cited Dock & Marine Construction Corporation for installing "multiple floating docks and piling in, on, over and upon tidal waters" in preparation for the Boat Show. County commissioners had voted weeks earlier in favor of issuing a Class I permit to allow for the construction of temporary docks in the water, but regulators said work began before the document was finalized the following day, on Jan. 8. A Senate committee Wednesday delayed debate and the first vote on a controversial public records exemption that would make secret the names, addresses, birthdates, and email addresses of all registered voters on Florida's statewide voter database. The bill has drawn significant support and opposition and it appears to have been inspired largely by one man: Tom Alciere, a former New Hampshire state legislator who operates a for-profit web site, flvoters.com, and similar sites, using publicly available voter information. His work has inspired a Facebook page called "Tom Alciere Is Violating Your Privacy." Alciere resigned his House seat in New Hampshire in 2001 after he said he supported the killing of police officers, according to a New York Times story. Florida election supervisors cite growing concern about identity theft as a main reason for their support of the bill. They say they have had calls from people who are shocked to see their date of birth, home address and private phone number on websites and that some have left the voter rolls as a result. (A voter's phone number is on the statewide voter database if the voter lists it on a voting application). The bill (SB 702) was filed by Sen. Thad Altman, R-Rockledge, at the request of his hometown Supervisor of Elections, Lori Scott. The 67-member supervisors' association strongly supports the bill. The First Amendment Foundation opposes it, as do Common Cause, the League of Women Voters and the Advancement Project. @ByKristenMClark A proposed amendment to the Florida Constitution that would give a state board the power to authorize and control charter schools statewide gained its first approval in a House committee on Wednesday. The proposal from state Rep. Manny Diaz Jr., R-Hialeah, is one of several bills moving in the Legislature this session that could shift oversight of charter schools from school districts to the state -- in part, as a reaction to local school boards that have tried to stop the proliferation of charter schools. Charter schools are publicly funded but privately managed. There are more than 650 operating in Florida now. Diaz's proposal (HJR 759) would direct the State Board of Education to set up a "statewide charter school authorizer to authorize, operate, control and supervise charter schools." There's no criteria listed for how members would be chosen to serve on the proposed authorizing board. Diaz argued school districts would still have the ability to authorize charter schools themselves and this simply provides an alternative. "We're not removing local control," said Diaz, who has ties to the charter school industry. However, he acknowledged charter school operators would be able to choose whether to send their application to the state or to the local school district for approval -- which Democrats said would let operators pick the more favorable venue. "Its really kind of forum shopping. You get to pick who it is that's your judge," Rep. Joseph Geller, D-Aventura, said. "I dont think thats appropriate." The Florida Senate is drafting an ambitious package of bills that will reform the state's sentencing laws to give judges more flexibility, provide more productive alternatives for low-level drug offenders, and ultimately reduce Florida's prison population. The Senate Criminal Justice Committee conducted a two-hour workshop Tuesday on its 10 proposals, hearing from representatives of both public defenders and prosecutors. The state has enacted 108 minimum mandatory sentencing laws over the last 30 years, ranging from five years in jail to life imprisonment. Each law reduces the flexibility a judge has and increases the power of prosecutors, who have the ability to determine what crime to charge a suspect with. Sen. Greg Evers, R-Baker, the chairman of the committee, said that a series of reports and audits that focused on problems at the Department of Corrections also exposed the ineffectiveness of the state's sentencing laws. "Some of the sentencing that we're doing is actually creating more harm than it is good,'' he told his committee. @MichaelAuslen State officials are refusing to support 4,460 refugees the federal government plans to place in Florida this year. In response to the federal governments request to up the number of refugees from across the world headed for Florida this year, Patti Grogan, the states refugee services director, wrote, we will not support the requests we have received to an already overburdened system. (Read the federal government's request and the response from the state of Florida.) At the heart of the denial are concerns raised by Gov. Rick Scott and 30 other governors nationwide in November after terrorist bombings in Paris. In an email sent Tuesday evening to State Department officials, Grogan wrote that Florida wont accept refugees until three demands are met: * The alleviation of our concerns about the vetting process. * Federal officials agree to share background information about every refugee being settled in the state with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. * FDLE is allowed to do its own screening of refugees. Legal experts say governors and state agencies dont have the power to refuse refugees. The Department of Children and Families works with nonprofit refugee placement agencies around the state to help resettle refugees, but it cannot close the door to them altogether. "No state can tell legal immigrants where they can live," Andrew Schoenholtz, director of the Human Rights Institute at Georgetown University Law Center, told PolitiFact in November. "Theyre entitled to live anywhere." The initial State Department request sent Jan. 4 by Kiera Berdinner, program officer for U.S. Refugee Admissions, asked the state to provide input on increasing the maximum capacity for each refugee resettlement agency in Florida. Taking the increases into account, the federal government is asking to send as many as 1,185 refugees to the Tampa Bay area and as many as 1,338 to South Florida. Much of the recent months angst about refugees has settled around those fleeing civil war in Syria. But refugees come to Florida and the United States from all over the world. In 2015, the state accepted 2,709 refugees. Just 104 were from Syria. But the Obama administration has promised to increase the number of Syrian refugees accepted by the U.S. Michael Deibert is the author of Haiti Will Not Perish: A Recent History (Zed Books), In the Shadow of Saint Death: The Gulf Cartel and the Price of America's Drug War in Mexico (Lyons Press, 2014), The Democratic Republic of Congo: Between Hope and Despair (Zed Books, 2013) and Notes from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti (Seven Stories Press, 2005). He can be followed at twitter.com/michaelcdeibert. Astra and Sinar Mas - 22-Year Performance Comparison In the early 1990s I wrote two reports on Indonesian business groups. They were updated in 1997 and 2007. The reports are deep-dives i... Valuation Matters. A Winning CAPE Strategy In my research and investing I stress three things: people, structure and value. I look for companies that are controlled and managed by ... 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The Euro is down some 8% vis-a-vis the USD and RMB over the last several months. Most markets hav... Trip Report: Cairo, Egypt, October / November 2016 In my research and investing I stress three things: people, structure and value. I look for companies that are controlled and managed by ... Book Review Liem Sioe Liongs Salim Group: The Business Pillar of Suhartos Indonesia In my research and investing I stress three things: people, structure and value. I look for companies that are controlled and managed by ... 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Marc Lynch, Foreign Policy "Michael Collins Dunn is the editor of . He also blogs. His summarizes a lot of material on the Iranian election and offers some sensible interpretation. If you are really interested in the Middle East, you should check him out regularly. Gary Sick, Gary's Choices "Since were not covering the Tunisian elections particularly well, and neither does , Ill just point you over . Its a great post by MEI editor Michael Collins Dunn, who . . . clearly knows the country pretty well." alle, Maghreb Politics Review "And bookmark that blog! Good posts, long posts, fast pace." again. "Ive followed Michael Collins Dunn over at the Middle East Institutes since its beginning in January this year. Overall, it is one of the best blogs on Middle Eastern affairs. It is a selection of educated and manifestly knowledgeable ruminations of various aspects of Middle Eastern politics and international relations in the broadest sense. davidroberts at The Gulf Blog "Michael Collins Dunn over at the indefatigable and ever-informative puts forward an focusing on what he sees to be some level of distortion of coverage of the Yemani conflict. " davidroberts at The Gulf Blog "What's amazing about this blog is not just the range of subjects covered but the clear expertise of the blogger in discussing them." John T., commenting on "Time Out for Something Completely Different: Punic and Berber Influences on Etruscan?" "Michael Collins Dunn, editor of the prestigious , wrote an interesting ' ' on the Berriane violence at his . It is a strong piece, but imperfect (as all things are) . . . kal, Middle East JournalMiddle East Institute Editors Blog Thoughts on the military and military activities of a diverse nature. Free-ranging and eclectic. Blog ego cogito ergo sum. It was a scary proposition, Wendy Koster admitted. Koster, chief operations officer at Diversified Plastics on Old Grant Creek Road, told 300 people Tuesday at the 31st annual State of Missoula luncheon that a job posting by the manufacturing company in 2009 resulted in 50 applications in two days. Five years later, she posted a job and left it up for a month. She got one bite. Diversified Plastics has been around for nearly 40 years. It employs more than 60 people and has become, according to its website, a North American leader in plastics engineering and fabrication. We had to step back and take a really hard look at what we were doing as a business, Koster said. The answer: a pay increase of 17 percent across the board. We held meetings with every single employee and we gave them all raises they werent expecting, she said. It was my best day at work ever. Now Diversified Plastics has a turnover rate of less than 2 percent, with a goal to cut that in half. And wed like to be the highest-paying manufacturer in Montana over the next five years, Koster said. Not all employers can afford to bump up their payrolls 17 percent, but there was an assortment of ideas at Tuesday's luncheon on how to attract, train and keep skilled workers in a dwindling workforce in Montana. They ranged from simplifying the application process to creating apprenticeship programs, to establishing business school partnerships to on-the-job training and expedited college courses. Robert Farmer of the Missoula Credit Federal Union said sometimes it can be as simple as a flexible dress code for workers. Is it OK to have a tattoo on my arm? he asked. Yes. Anything we can do to help our employees be comfortable and succeed. Farmer and Koster were last among 10 speakers from state and local levels in wide-ranging presentations at the DoubleTree Hotel. *** Organized by the Missoula Area Chamber of Commerce, the 2016 State of Missoula attracted the largest crowd and the largest panel of speakers in its 31 years. They came to hear and talk about Montanas growing workforce shortage. On one hand, the state has more than half-a-million people employed for the first time in its history, said Pam Bucy, commissioner of the Montana Department of Labor and Industry. On the other, 130,000 Montanans will be retiring in the next decade, and therell be just 123,000 in the 16-24 age group to fill their slots. And that doesnt take into account the nearly 6,000 jobs a year we anticipate Montana will create in the next decade, Bucy said. The worker shortage will impact every industry sector, with jobs in construction, extraction, production and health care fields seeing the greatest impacts because they require greater skills, she said. Montanas unemployment rate of 4 percent is one of the lowest in the nation. Were at the bottom of the normal unemployment range the perfect place to be, said Barbara Wagner, the Department of Labors chief economist. But she warned dropping below that level causes all kinds of problems for management. Wagner said solutions on the statewide scope include recruiting the underemployed women, American Indians, those from lower education levels, veterans and people with disabilities. She said adding full-time jobs and reducing the time out of work required for retraining will help, as will making the application process easy and transparent by including the things an applicant wants to know required versus desired experience, for instance. Wolf Ametsbichler, manager of the Missoula Job Service and emcee of the panel, said its easy to see the brewing crisis. Several years ago, during the height of the recession, we had 450 people coming through our doors every day, he said. We are down to about 120, 150, on a good day 180 people, so theres a dramatic drop-off for the right reasons. People are employed, and thats good news for the workers in Montana. Its tougher for the employers. *** Shannon OBrien, dean of Missoula College, said the goal is to have graduates ready for the workforce right away. She said partnerships and communications with a variety of businesses have resulted in creation of training tailored to fit the needs of employers. O'Brien citied as an example a radiology technology program that was suggested in October and begins at Missoula College next week. We are nimble, OBrien said. When your business thrives, we thrive. Training for the workforce can start as early as ninth grade, Big Sky High School Principal Natalie Jaeger said. The schools Big Sky Health Science Academy graduates its first class this June. It indoctrinates freshmen through seniors in rigorous, relevant curriculum in health care fields, including four years of bio-medical science, exposure to professionals in the field, job shadowing and field trips to selected medical centers outside of Montana. Its the best on-ramp you can find to jobs in the medical field, Jaeger said. A workforce training grant for high-paying health care positions has resulted in a complete revamping of nursing curriculum in Montana, Bucy said. It reduces by 18 months the time it takes to become a licensed practical nurse. "We have to start thinking about training differently," the state commissioner of labor said. "We absolutely have to speed it up, we have to make it less expensive, and frankly we can't take someone out of the work force for two, four, six years to get their training. "We have to, if at all possible, do it on the job." Jenn Ewan said its understandable if employers are overwhelmed by the training and hiring programs out there. The Missoula Economic Partnerships director of entrepreneurship and special projects urged them to use us to navigate the maze. Thats what were here for, Ewen said. Well connect you to where you need to be connected. *** Shawn Horton of DirecTV, one of Missoula Countys larget private employers, addressed attrition keeping trained workers on the job. Its not an easy task at a call center, Horton said, but by communicating with them as individuals, offering career development opportunities, and soliciting and implementing feedback, it can be done. Farmer, human resources director for Missoula Federal Credit Union, had a similar message. An office policy that allows tattoos is just one way to retain employees and create a forward-leaning work place. And as Koster discovered at Diversified Plastics, a pay raise can do wonders. Farmer said the credit union has gathered data on salary ranges to make sure were confident talking out our wages. It encourages its employees to have conversations about pay, so introducing more transparency around salary. Missoula Fed is also raising its starting pay in order to attract the talent we want, Farmer said. There needs to be a balance within your culture in compensation, but in this economy where employment is low, compensation is becoming more important." Former Vanns Inc. chief financial officer Paul Nisbet has pleaded not guilty to a charge of conspiracy in a federal case in which prosecutors allege he helped the former CEO defraud the company. Nisbet, who appeared in U.S. District Court on Jan. 12, previously signed a plea agreement in the case. The conspiracy charge carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and mandatory restitution. Prosecutors in the federal case allege former CEO George Manlove and Nisbet used their positions in the company to defraud Vanns. Manlove and Nisbet allegedly had Vanns lease property from shell companies they set up, earning them more than $900,000. Manlove also allegedly used Vanns funds for personal gain, including paying for college education, trips for his family, and membership fees at private clubs, among other fraudulent charges. Nisbet was aware of many of these expenditures and as CFO, authorized payments from Vanns funds, according to an order of proof filed in Nisbets case. Nisbets prior agreement recommended reducing his penalties in exchange for a guilty plea and assistance in the federal investigation. Manlove, who left the company shortly before it declared bankruptcy in 2012, faces more than 200 federal charges related to his alleged mismanagement of the company and its funds. He pleaded not guilty in U.S. District Court to 124 counts of wire fraud, 86 counts of money laundering, four counts of bankruptcy fraud, four counts of making false statements, two counts of bank fraud and a count of conspiracy. Founded as a single Missoula store in 1961, Vanns Inc. grew to include include four retail locations across Montana, an online store and two sister companies, The ON Store in Southgate Mall and BigSkyCountry.com. Vanns Missoula store closed in May 2013. In 2014, a civil lawsuit filed against Manlove and Nisbet by a group of former employees was settled out of court for $7.3 million. The lawsuit alleged the executives led a moderately successful company into financial ruin" by spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on inflated rent, bonuses and trips. Last July, the FBI and U.S. Department of Labor last July announced a joint investigation of the appliance and electronics retailers bankruptcy. Manlove and Nisbet both have pretrial conferences scheduled Wednesday before U.S. District Court Chief Judge Dana Christensen. A man who exposed himself to girls in Missoula and Lolo has pleaded guilty in an agreement with prosecutors. Cole Francisco was arrested in March 2015 after a series of incidents in which he exposed his genitalia to girls who were waiting at bus stops or walking home from school. The girls ranged in age from 11 to 15 years old. In each incident, Francisco parked his car and made contact with the girls. He was not wearing pants or underwear when the girls approached his car. Investigators later found ketamine, which can be used as a date-rape drug, and a gun in Francisco's car. Francisco originally was charged with four counts of indecent exposure, attempted indecent exposure and criminal possession of dangerous drugs. Under the agreement, prosecutors dropped two indecent exposure charges. Francisco pleaded guilty to the remaining charges Tuesday in Missoula County District Court. He will be sentenced March 22. When he was arrested, Francisco was already on probation for masturbating while watching a woman outside her Missoula home. He also had a prior weapons-related conviction from California, in which he went into the bathroom of a women's dormitory to watch residents while carrying a pistol in his backpack. In interviews with police, Francisco said he committed the offenses for sexual gratification and was unable to stop himself from committing the acts. In September, Francisco was released from the Missoula County jail to live with his grandparents in Bigfork. Missoula airport and development officials werent surprised by American Airlines announcement last week that it would make its first inroads into Montana in Bozeman. In fact, we were hoping it would happen after Missoulas application for a $750,000 federal grant failed last fall, airport director Cris Jensen said Tuesday. Missoula International joined forces in November with Bozeman Yellowstone International to court American for seasonal service to Dallas/Fort Worth to and from both cities. The Fort Worth-based airline accepted Bozemans bid, which included a larger revenue guarantee and $750,000 from a Small Community Air Service Development Grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Transportation a couple of years ago. Missoula and Billings, which also tried to lure American for its Texas connection, were left out in the cold for now. We had every indication that would happen, said James Grunke, director of the Missoula Economic Partnership. What we dont realize when we read the headlines is that it took four years for American to get (to Bozeman). Missoula understood its first attempt was a long shot, especially after its grant application was rejected. The $5 million grant pot was distributed to 11 airports across the country. Montanas lone recipient was Great Falls, which is using $385,000 for a revenue guarantee to attract new service to Chicago on United Airlines. Bozemans bid included a match of another $750,000 in pledges from resorts in the Big Sky area and from the Bozeman Chamber of Commerce, as well as a marketing commitment of $210,000 a package totaling more than $1.7 million. Bozeman flights to and from Dallas/Fort Worth will run from June to October, then resume in December to April. Even had it received the grant, Missoulas revenue guarantee was considerably less. Missoula business leaders and Destination Missoula raised $500,000 in pledges. I think what happened, in all honesty, was we had three weeks to put it together and we werent prepared, Grunke said. We should have been thinking of that stuff a year in advance. Those are all things were trying to get better at. The original concept was to parlay the federal grant money and local guarantees into a shared service between Missoula and Bozeman perhaps connections four days a week with Bozeman and the other three days with Missoula. That was probably a best-case scenario, Jensen said. When we didnt get the grant it weakened our case considerably. American said its an interesting idea but lets concentrate on Bozeman first, said Grunke. We do think its really positive for Montana and us that theyve entered the state. In essence, Jensen said, American is using Bozeman as a testing ground for Montana. If theyre successful, and I do believe theyll be successful, it makes it easier to get American into the state, the airport director said. "This will give us more time to enhance our incentive package and kind of get ready." Missoula last received a Small Community Air Service Development Program Grant in 2008 for $485,000. It was used to add a seasonal nonstop United Airlines flight to San Francisco in 2010. We have every intention to pursue another one, said Grunke. But it doesnt necessarily mean we would be pursuing American. Maybe we want year-round to San Francisco or Chicago, or perhaps New York to Missoula. Over the coming months well try to identify a route that makes sense, apply for a grant for that and then begin the negotiating process with the airlines. A new application will entail a new start to again assembling incentive packages from businesses, Grunke said. Weve got zero incentives now, he said. They always look for them on a case-by-case basis. Its a long negotiating process with an airline. They call it risk sharing. They want to make sure the market proves itself." MISSOULA Born Jan. 5, 1917, in New York City. Only child of Sadie Wald Kempner and Emanual Kempner. Mother died when he was seven; father at 13. Lived with various relatives until graduated high school at 16, and found a full-time job. Rented a furnished room near cousins, and lived there until married. Grew up in and attended grade and high schools in the metropolitan area of New York and New Jersey. Married Marjorie Harriet Wasserthal in 1941 a day after receiving a commission as Ensign in the U.S. Navy. Celebrated 53 years of married life before she passed away in 1995. Graduated from New York University in 1947 after a six year interruption while serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II. Began Naval career as an officer candidate in 1940 as the eleventh volunteer in the country in the V-7 Officer Candidate program; released to inactive duty in 1946 at the end of World War II as a commander, and was later recalled to active duty between 1951 and 1953 during the Korean War. During World War II saw active duty in the Southwest Pacific on PT Boats, originally turning over the PT 109 to Jack Kennedy in March 1943 at the advanced training base in Panama. Returned to the States to command a new squadron of PTs, and then returned to the Pacific seeing action in the Solomon Islands, Bismarks and New Guinea areas. Received a master's degree in accounting at University of Colorado in 1953 while on active duty with the Navy during the Korean War, and a Ph.D. in accounting at the Ohio State University in 1956. Became certified as a CPA in 1957. Spent professional career during and after leaving the Navy in academia on the faculties of Columbia University and University of Colorado teaching Naval Science and eventually as professor of accounting at California Western University, the Ohio State University and lastly at the University of Montana where he joined the accounting and finance department in 1956, retiring from that institution in 1981. From 1962 to 1964 took a temporary leave of absence; joining the faculty of Michigan State University in Sao Paulo, Brazil, organizing the first graduate school of business in that country. Served as chairman of Department of Accounting and Finance at the University of Montana from 1966 until retirement. Spent one year during this period as acting dean of the School of Business Administration until a permanent dean was appointed. Chose not to be a candidate for this position but preferred to remain in teaching. Elected as president of the Montana Society of CPAs in 1967; was named CPA of the year in 1970 by that organization, and in 1976 was named national educator of the year by the American Accounting Association. Included in Who's Who in Education as well as Who's Who in America. The School of Business Administration designated the seminar classroom to be known as The Professor Kempner and Marge Kempner Room in its new building. Member of Missoula Rotary Club, active in several community organizations including Boards of Directors of Missoula Crippled Childrens' Association, Missoula Aging Service, Meals on Wheels and others. Published articles in the Accounting Review, Banking, and Montana Business Quarterly as well as several monographs surveying the public accounting profession in Montana and the Northwest. Elder of the First Presbyterian Church in Missoula, past chairman of the finance committee and past president of the Church Corporation. Taught numerous adult Bible study classes over a period of 20-plus years. Remarried in 1998 to Luceile Rodewald Sperry. Survivors include wife, Luceile; three sons, Ken and his wife Cheryl of Ashland, Oregon, Roger and his wife Nancy of Omaha, Nebraska, and Cliff of Seattle; three grandchildren, Brandon, Jessica and Christopher. Memorial service will be held at the First Presbyterian Church, Missoula on Saturday, Jan 23, at 10 a.m. Memorials requested in lieu of flowers may be sent to either First Presbyterian Church of Missoula or the University of Montana School of Business. can you add to the bottom of the obituary. Messages and condolences may be left at missoulafuneralhomes.com. November may seem far away to most of us, but not to the folks at the Missoula County Elections Office who are already preparing for high voter turnout for the upcoming general election. Its a presidential election year, after all, and voters will also cast ballots in local school elections in the spring and in the presidential primaries in June. And in order to ensure another smooth and fair elections process this year, the elections office needs your help. Election years with an open presidential seat, such as in 2000 and in 2008, have extremely high polling place and Same Day Registration turnout, Missoula County Elections Administrator Rebecca Connors explained in a news release last week. We see the highest voter participation in presidential years, and especially those without an incumbent. The elections office anticipates needing up to 800 election judges this year to help set up polling locations, distribute ballots, verify signatures, validate voter eligibility, operate voting equipment and do all the important things that need doing in an election. Unfortunately, for many years Missoula County has been struggling against a general decline in the number of election judges, leaving the remaining judges to take on more duties and work longer shifts. If there arent enough judges to staff an election, the county may have to consider closing some polling places. A reduction in the number of polling locations makes it that much more difficult for voters to access election services and exercise their right to vote. Fewer judges also means slower processing, which means longer lines another inconvenience that can make voting more challenging than it needs to be. Even all-mail-ballot elections rely on election judges to verify signatures, process ballots and make sure every vote gets counted in accordance with elections laws. They ensure the integrity of the elections process, whether that process occurs primarily by mail or in person at the polls. Election judges receive special training, and are compensated for their time starting at minimum wage, with opportunities to earn more for taking on additional training and responsibility. Its a two-year commitment, with training required every other year. This year, basic election judge training starts Feb. 4, and takes about three hours total. To qualify as an election judge, you must be 18 years old or older and registered to vote in Missoula County. According to the Montana Secretary of States Office, Missoula County has more than 75,000 registered voters. If just one voter out of 100 signs up, the county will nearly meet its 800-judge goal. Free and fair elections are a central tenet of an effective democracy, and election judges play a critical role in ensuring that elections remain a credible, equitable, legal method of choosing political representation at every level. Wouldnt you say thats worth a few hours of your time? The Missoula League of Women Voters commends the Missoula City Council for addressing the important issue of gun control. The League of Women Voters of the United States believes that the proliferation of handguns and semi-automatic assault weapons in the United States is a major health and safety threat to its citizens. The League supports strong federal measures to limit the accessibility and regulate the ownership of these weapons by private citizens. The League supports regulating firearms for consumer safety. The League supports licensing procedures for gun ownership by private citizens to include a waiting period for background checks, personal identity verification, gun safety education and annual license renewal. The license fee should be adequate to bear the cost of education and verification. The League supports a ban on Saturday night specials, enforcement of strict penalties for the improper possession of and crimes committed with handguns and assault weapons, and allocation of resources to better regulate and monitor gun dealers. Nancy Maxson, secretary/treasurer, On behalf of the board of directors, Missoula League of Women Voters, Missoula BILLINGS Michael Ostby was found dead in his Yellowstone County jail cell July 1 with a sheet wrapped around his neck. A jury in the Tuesday inquest into the 28-year-old father of two's death found no criminal responsibility on the part of the Yellowstone County Detention Facility. Ostby was arrested in May 2015 after ramming his car into a police cruiser and then yelling for officers to shoot him, according to court documents. During the inquest held in a courtroom at the jail, testimony suggested Ostby might have attempted suicide twice in the jail before he finally took his life. Two-months after his arrest, Ostby was found dead by asphyxiation in his cell. Ostby was not on suicide watch and and was not given suicide-resistant clothing and bedding. He was alone in his cell when he died. On the day Ostby was arrested, officers had been alerted by his girlfriend that he was going to attempt "suicide by cop." Within minutes of that call, Ostby drove into a police vehicle. He then got out holding a crow bar and yelling for police to shoot him. He was arrested on two counts of assault on a peace officer, criminal mischief, drug possession and possession of drug paraphernalia. While in a holding cell, Ostby used his shirt to wrap around his neck and strangle himself. Jail Commander Capt. Sam Bofto said during his testimony Tuesday that Ostby was "wild" and needed to be restrained because he was detoxing from drugs. A report filed that day by jail guards, however, described Ostby as calm and cooperative. Chief Civil Litigator for the County Attorney's office, Kevin Gillen, did not challenge the conflicting descriptions of Ostby. *** In court the day after the arrest, Bofto said Ostby appeared "agitated." At that time he was being held in the jail's general population. According to court documents, Ostby had argued with prisoners and was told by a guard to lock himself in his cell. Ostby did so, immediately tying his shirt around the toilet and around his neck. When the officer opened the cell door to stop him, Ostby "bear-hugged him, and dragged him into the cell" before punching him "about a dozen times" and "kneeing" the officer in the stomach, according to court documents. Gillen asked Bofto if he believed this was a valid suicide attempt. Bofto testified it was not a serious suicide attempt, but a "ruse" to get the officer in his cell. Ostby was then placed in Class A, a section of the jail reserved for especially violent or dangerous inmates. On June 4, 2015, Terry Jessee, a psychiatric assessment clinician with Billings Clinic and former deputy sheriff, met with Ostby. Jessee testified Ostby told him he had "a lot of voices in my head" urging him to get into trouble. He also said Ostby "cries a lot, sometimes from sadness or sense of loss." Jessee diagnosed Ostby with probable major and chronic depression, as well as anxiety, substance-induced psychosis and a possible personality disorder. Jessee wrote in his notes that Ostby should continue to be monitored and recommended a referral for psychiatry. But Ostby was not told he should see a psychiatrist, Jessee testified, and he did not see one while he was incarcerated. Jessee said he did not prescribe medication for Ostby because he wasn't sure what type of drugs Ostby had in his system. Jessee said he assumed the hallucinations were from drug withdrawals after being jailed. Jessee said it might have been related to Ostby's severe depression. Jessee also never recommended Ostby be put on suicide watch. On July 1, 2015, at about 2:45 p.m., Officer Brett Toland conducted a cell check on prisoners in Class A and saw Ostby sitting on his bed. At the top of Ostby's suicide note, the time 12:50 p.m. was written. Although jail policy is to check cells every 30 minutes, according to one jail report, Ostby's suicide wasn't discovered until about 4:20 p.m. At about 4:15 p.m., Toland and another officer, Levi Anderson, were searching a cell in an adjacent block when they said they were "calmly" told by inmate Vincent Bell that someone may be dead in their cell. Bell was being housed in a cell near Ostby. A statement from Bell was taken by a sheriff's detective but not entered into evidence during Tuesday's inquest. *** Bell said in a letter to the Billings Gazette that he shouted to jailers, "he's not breathing, he's not breathing, guard, guard!" Bell said he kicked the door over and over again to get the guard's attention. Anderson said after hearing what Bell was saying he walked to Ostby's cell. "The officer instantly called for assistance while he ripped the sheet down from where it was," Bell wrote to the Gazette. Ostby had used a bed sheet from his cell to tie around a hook on the cell door and around his neck before sitting down. Donald Habbe, a South Dakota forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy, testified Ostby would have been dead in minutes. His autopsy showed no signs of a struggle after the strangulation began. On the day of the suicide, deputy sheriff and coroner Cliff Mahoney, arrived at the jail at 4:40 p.m. Mahoney said by then rigor mortis was present and that Ostby would have been dead for "no more than an hour." Mahoney also noted the suicide note found next to Ostby's body. *** One of the seven jurors, Shelly Carlton, said after the verdict she wished she knew more about Ostby's mental state. She said he would have had a hard time detoxing from drugs, and it sounded like he had to do it all on his own. "If it was my family member, I would have wanted them to do more," Carlton said. Ostby's mother, Nicole Hale, and grandfather Joe Ostby and an adoptive sister attended the proceedings but left before the verdict, which their lawyer John Moyers called a "foregone conclusion." Moyers said the family has not ruled out legal action against the county. "We remain very upset regarding the circumstances surrounding Mike's death. We understand that the coroner's inquest is just part of the legal process of finding answers to Mike's preventable death at the Yellowstone County Detention Facility," The family said in a statement. Hale said her son told her from jail that ramming into the police car was a suicide attempt. She said she was initially almost happy when Ostby was arrested, because she thought he would finally get some help. "He was just a hurt person, crying out for help," Joe Ostby said. The inquest was presided over by Big Horn County Coroner Terry Bullis, who took over after Yellowstone County Coroner Bill Jones recused himself due to his role as a law enforcement officer. Two Yellowstone County jail inmates died by suicide in 2013. Chad Shuler hanged himself Jan. 18, 2013, after wedging a sheet into his cell door. He was the first suicide in the jail in nine years. Six months later, Steven Tyler Russo used clothing to hang himself in a shower. More than 92,000 people made the perilous sea crossing from the Horn of Africa to Yemen last year, one of the highest annual totals of the past decade, the United Nations refugee agency said Tuesday. The agency said two-thirds of the people arrived after March, when the conflict in Yemen began. Most were from Ethiopia or Somalia. A spokesman for the agency, Adrian Edwards said that many new arrivals are misinformed about the severity of the conflict, even though the agency has warned of the dangers in Yemen. Mr. Edwards said that 95 people died during the crossings last year and that 36 people had drowned already this year. Along with 2.5 million Yemenis displaced by the conflict, Yemen hosts 266,000 refugees. May 11-12 brought top expert Dr. David Galler to Las Vegas for advanced Invisalign training. The course titled Invisalign: Re-Ingengage was held at the Renaissance Hotel in Las Vegas, NV and lmited to 25 of the top dentists in the country who have already been certified as Invisalign providers. Dr. Galler's exclusive group of serious minded dentists are poised to become the major Invisalign GP provider in their respective cities just as I am an Elite provider here in Las Vegas. This two day intensive course presented the latest Invisalign protocols for treatment planning and case selection from one of Invisaligns Elite Top 1% submitting doctors. Dr. David Galler provided techniques and practical advice based on his personal journey with Invisalign. I was fortunate to attend along with 1 other dentist from Las Vegas. We both felt very fortunate to have the world come to us here in Las Vegas for such advanced dental training. Our patients will benefit from the knowledge Spotlight Innovation Inc. Engages WithumSmith+Brown, PC as Its New Auditor Spotlight Innovation Inc. (OTCQB: STLT) announces that following a search and an evaluation period, it has engaged WithumSmith+Brown, PC as its new independent registered public accounting firm. WithumSmith+Brown, PC is a full-service accounting and consulting firm with fifteen offices in the U.S. and other locations. WithumSmith+Brown, PC replaces GBH CPAs, PC as the Company's auditor. The Company had no disagreements with GBH CPAs, PC on any matters. Cris Grunewald, President and Chief Executive Officer of Spotlight Innovation, said, "After meeting with several public accounting firms, we are pleased to welcome WithumSmith+Brown, PC as our new auditor. They are a well-known and leading audit, tax and advisory firm with extensive experience in life sciences and an outstanding track record for delivering support to rapidly developing companies like ours. We believe that WithumSmith+Brown, PC will provide Spotlight Innovation and our shareholders with an exceptional auditing experience, and we look forward to working with them for many years to come." About Spotlight Innovation Inc. Spotlight Innovation Inc. (OTCQB: STLT) identifies and acquires rights to innovative and proprietary platform technology candidates with a focus on cancer drugs and related treatment therapies, solutions for infectious disease, and other specialty and unique opportunities. Access to platform technology candidates is accomplished via our extensive relationships with many leading academic institutions and other sources. We provide value-added development capability and funding in order to accelerate development progress. When commercially significant benchmarks have been achieved, we will partner with proven market leaders via sale, out-license or strategic alliance. For more information, visit www.spotlightinnovation.com or follow us on www.twitter.com/spotlightinno. About WithumSmith+Brown, PC Founded in 1974, WithumSmith+Brown, PC, with in excess of 575 professionals, ranks in the top thirty public accounting and consulting firms in the country with offices in: New York City; Princeton, NJ, its headquarters; Philadelphia, PA; Boston, MA; Orlando and West Palm Beach, FL; Aspen, CO; and the Cayman Islands. For more information, please visit www.withum.com. CEOs of Euronav, Frontline & Tsakos Energy Navigation to Discuss Developments & Outlook of the Tanker Shipping Sector Tuesday, January 26th, 2016 Capital Link Shipping announces that the Senior Management of: Euronav NV (NYSE: EURN) (EURONEXT: EURN), Mr. Paddy Rodgers, CEO Frontline Ltd (NYSE: FRO) (OSE: FRO), Mr. Robert Hvide Macleod, CEO Tsakos Energy Navigation Ltd. (NYSE: TNP), Mr. Nikolas Tsakos, President & CEO will participate in a Webinar Panel discussion on the Tanker Shipping sector on Tuesday, January 26th, 2016 at 11:00 am EST (4:00 pm London, 5:00 pm Paris, 11:00 pm Hong Kong). The panel discussion will focus mainly on the trends, developments and outlook of the crude oil tanker shipping sector. The discussion will be moderated by Mr. Michael Webber, Senior Analyst, Director Shipping, Equipment Leasing & Marine MLPs Equity Research at Wells Fargo Securities, LLC The Tanker Shipping Forum Webinar is organized by Capital Link, a New York-based Investor Relations and Financial Communications firm with strategic focus on shipping. ACCESS TO THE DISCUSSION The panel discussion can be accessed only through a live audio webcast at www.CapitalLinkWebinars.com or at Capital Link's Shipping Website www.CapitalLinkShipping.com. Alternatively, participants can click on the link below or copy and paste it in your browser to gain direct access to the webinar: http://webinars.capitallink.com/2016/tanker/ Participants to the live webcast should register on the website approximately ten minutes prior to the start of the webcast. Please go to the above indicate websites to register and access the event. After the event, the panel discussion will remain archived and accessible upon demand through the same websites indicated above. PANEL STRUCTURE - TOPICS TO BE COVERED The focus of the discussion (and the Q&A) will be only on sector trends and fundamentals, and not on company specifics or company recommendations. The discussion will cover mainly four topics: The discussion will focus primarily on the crude oil shipping sector. QUESTIONS FROM PARTICIPANTS Participants can submit questions to the panelists prior to or during the event through the special feature on the event page, or they can email them to us at questions@CapitalLinkWebinars.com. TRANSCRIPT A transcript of the panel discussion will be publicly available at no cost within approximately 48 hours after the event and those interested can request it when they register for the event or afterwards through the event page at websites indicated. ABOUT TANKER SHIPPING: A principal function of the tanker sector is to transport crude oil from oil production and export facilities to oil terminals, storage facilities, pipeline systems and oil refineries internationally (Crude Oil Tankers). In addition, tankers are also involved in the carriage of refined petroleum products, such as gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and naphtha, from refineries to storage and distribution systems, industrial plants and other consumers (Product Tankers). Tankers generally are a more cost-effective alternative to pipelines and their advantages increase over distance. Pipelines are also considered to be more vulnerable to political instability, sabotage, economic blockade and the risk of environmental disaster. There are two principal types of providers of international seaborne transportation services for crude oil and refined petroleum products: independent shipowners and end users, such as oil, energy, petrochemical and trading companies (both private and state-owned). Tonnage controlled by end users is primarily chartered from independent shipowners under short-term spot market contracts and long-term time charters, with the balance being directly owned. The prices for transporting crude oil and refined petroleum products, which are referred to as tanker charter rates, are set in highly competitive markets in which both independent and end-user tonnage participate. Vessels in the tanker fleet can be divided into categories based on their size in deadweight tons, or dwt, which is a vessel's capacity for cargo, fuel, oil, stores and crew measured in metric tons (1,000 kilograms). The following are the main categories of tankers based on dwt: (1) Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) -- tankers with capacity of 200,000 dwt and over; (2) Suezmax tankers -- tankers with capacity ranging from 120,000 to 200,000 dwt; (3) Aframax tankers -- tankers with capacity ranging from 80,000 to 120,000 dwt; (4) Panamax tankers -- tankers with capacity ranging from 60,000 to 80,000 dwt; (5) Medium Range tankers (MR) -- tankers with capacity ranging from 25,000 to 60,000 dwt, and (6) Small tankers -- tankers with capacity up to 26,999 dwt. A 300,000 dwt tanker can carry 2 million barrels of crude oil, while a Suezmax can carry about 1million barrels and an Aframax between up to about 800,000 barrels. Tankers that transport refined petroleum products are referred to as products tankers. Products tankers generally range in size from 10,000 to 80,000 dwt, although there are some larger products tankers designed for niche long-haul trades, such as from the Middle East to Japan, Korea and South East Asia. Products tankers generally have cargo-handling systems that are designed to transport several different grades of refined petroleum products simultaneously. These systems include coated cargo tanks that facilitate cleaning between voyages involving different cargoes. Ice Class tankers are vessels that have been constructed (in compliance with Finnish-Swedish Ice Class Rules) with strengthened hulls, a sufficient level of propulsive power for transit through ice-covered routes and specialized machinery and equipment for cold climates. ABOUT EURONAV (NYSE: EURN) (EURONEXT: EURN) Euronav is an independent tanker company engaged in the ocean transportation and storage of crude oil and petroleum products. The Company is headquartered in Antwerp, Belgium, and has offices throughout Europe and Asia. Euronav is listed on Euronext Brussels and on the NYSE under the symbol "EURN". Euronav employs its fleet both on the spot and period market. VLCCs on the spot market are traded in the Tankers International pool of which Euronav is one of the major partners. Euronav's owned and operated fleet consists of 56 double hulled vessels being one V-Plus vessel, 28 VLCCs (of which 1 in 50%-50% joint venture), three VLCCs under construction which were recently acquired as resales of existing newbuilding contracts, 22 Suezmaxes (of which four are owned in 50%-50% joint ventures) and two FSO vessels (both owned in 50%-50% joint venture). The Company's vessels mainly fly Belgian, Greek, French and Marshall Island flags. ABOUT FRONTLINE LTD. (NYSE: FRO) (OSE: FRO) Frontline Ltd. (the "Company") is a world leader in the seaborne transportation of crude oil and refined products. The Company's diversified fleet of vessels within the VLCC, Suezmax, Aframax/LR2, and MR segments is the largest among U.S. listed tanker companies by carrying capacity. Due to Frontline's brand, financial flexibility, and significant scale, it holds a unique position among its peers. The Company has a long history of executing strategic transactions and returning value to shareholders through dividends and spin-offs. Frontline is listed on both the New York and Oslo Stock Exchanges under the symbol "FRO." ABOUT TSAKOS ENERGY NAVIGATION (NYSE: TNP) To date, TEN's fleet, including two VLCCs, an LNG carrier, nine Aframax crude oil tankers, a Suezmax DP2 shuttle tanker and two LR1 tankers all under construction, consists of 65 double-hull vessels, a mix of crude tankers, product tankers and LNG carriers, totalling 7.2 million dwt. Of these, 47 vessels trade in crude, 13 in products, three are shuttle tankers and two are LNG carriers. In addition, TEN has an option to construct another Suezmax DP2 shuttle tanker. All of TEN's tanker newbuildings except the two VLCCs and the LNG carrier Maria Energy are fixed on long-term project businesses. TEN is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "TNP". ABOUT THE ORGANIZER - CAPITAL LINK INC. Capital Link is an Advisory, Investor Relations and Financial Communications firm with strategic focus, among other, on the maritime industry working with the many sector companies listed on the U.S. and European Exchanges. Capital Link's headquarters are in New York with a presence in London, Athens and Oslo. It is a member of the Baltic Exchange. In our effort to enhance the information flow to the investment community and improve investor knowledge of shipping, Capital Link has undertaken a series of initiatives beyond the traditional scope of our investor relations activity through our websites, weekly newsletters, webinars, investor forums in New York, London, Athens and Shanghai, and the Capital Link Maritime Indices. A former Butte teacher who is facing charges of endangering minors and criminal mischief changed her plea Wednesday, denying accusations by county prosecutors. Kristen Hill-Huff, 41, violated a duty of care when she enlisted 12- and 13-year-old boys in throwing eggs at two homes and a vehicle in mid-January, according to court documents and the police. The Butte woman is facing two counts of endangering the welfare of a minor and three counts of criminal mischief, all misdemeanors. She had pleaded guilty before City Court Judge Glen Granger on Tuesday morning, but changed her plea Wednesday. She was arrested Friday and released on bond from the county jail about an hour later. Butte-Silver Bow Undersheriff George Skuletich said a 5-year-old girl also accompanied Hill-Huff in a vehicle during the incidents. The girl shares the womans last name, he said. Hill-Huff was employed by the Butte school district from January 2000 through June 2014, according to the district. She taught at several elementary schools in the district, including Whittier Elementary. All three egg-throwing incidents took place in the Home Atherton area, the undersheriff said. Hill-Huff received a six-month suspended sentence for a DUI, a second offense, in Butte district court in 2008, The Montana Standard previously reported. Judge Kurt Krueger suspended all but seven days of her sentence, but allowed her to avoid jail if she completed an alcohol treatment program. Butte-Silver Bow police are seeking the publics help to find a 55-year-old homeless man who has been missing since Christmas Eve. Ernest David Surles was last seen at St. James Healthcare where he had taken a shower, Undersheriff George Skuletich said Tuesday. Linda McGillen, the facility's director of communications and marketing, said there is no record of Surles being admitted on Christmas Eve. If he had showered, as police indicated, then it was due to the kindness of a staff member allowing him access to a workout room shower. Surles is described as 5 feet, 7 inches tall and weighs 180 pounds. He has black and gray hair, and brown eyes. He was last seen wearing blue jeans, a black Nike windbreaker, dark brown leather shoes and a tan Carhartt jacket with the name Ernie on a sleeve. Surles, who has a history of alcohol use, frequented the Butte Rescue Mission, but had not sought shelter there since Dec. 15. He was also a regular in Uptown and in the Harrison Avenue and Dewey Boulevard area. Anyone with information on Surles whereabouts is asked to contact police at 406-497-1120 or Crimestoppers at 406-782-7336. A Butte man suspected in Mondays casino heist is facing a felony robbery charge. Shane Tenold was charged with the offense before Butte justice court Judge Ben Pezdark on Tuesday afternoon. The 23-year-old is being held at the Butte-Silver Bow Detention Center on $40,000 bond. Tenhold was apprehended within 10 minutes of the robbery. A female reported to police that he pointed a loaded gun at her about 8 a.m., demanding money before he fled from the Lucky Charm Casino, 2325 Harrison Ave. An off-duty police officer witnessed the suspect running from the casino and followed him until police officers responded and apprehended him. Tenhold was seen throwing two money bags and a Smith and Wesson 40-caliber pistol as he fled to the yard of a residence on the 2100 block of Ottawa Street, where he was arrested. Tenhold could face up to 40 years at the Montana State Prison. A preliminary court hearing was slated for Feb. 18. A Butte district judge has sentenced a 40-year-old man to a six-year deferred term for negligent vehicular assault and ordered him to pay restitution to the victims. Alejandro Palma-Ayala was driving too fast and lost control of a vehicle with two male passengers on New Years Eve in 2014, according to court documents. The crash, just northeast of Excelsior and Centennial, resulted in one man being ejected about 15 to 20 feet from the vehicle. A second man was transported to St. James Healthcare after speaking with police officers at nearby Swiss Alps Casino, 1000 S. Excelsior Ave., court documents state. He stated that he had run to the casino to seek help. A police officer stated that Palma-Ayalas speech was slurred and his eyes were bloodshot and glassy. He was in and out of consciousness, smelled of alcohol and refused to give a blood sample to test for alcohol, documents state. Judge Kurt Krueger last week ordered Palma-Ayala to pay a restitution of $40,546 for medical bills incurred by the two victims since the incident. In handing down his sentence to the Montana Department of Corrections, Krueger said it was the defendants first felony offense and would enable him to receive treatment and remain sober. The judge also said the length of the sentence would give Palma-Ayala time to make restitution. Palma-Ayala had pleaded guilty as part of plea deal with Butte-Silver Bow County prosecutors last year. The agreement states that he would also plead guilty to a DUI citation pending in Butte city court. In exchange, the state would dismiss three misdemeanor traffic offenses. HELENA (AP) After months of being coy about his political intentions, wealthy high-tech entrepreneur Greg Gianforte will be barnstorming the state over the next two days to announce whether he will seek to oust Gov. Steve Bullock, the Democratic incumbent. The Bozeman Republican will make his first stop at the Peterbilt warehouse in Billings on Wednesday morning, then head to Sidney, Lewistown and Kalispell. On Thursday, Gianforte will head west to Great Falls before going to the state capital and Missoula. He will close his two-day announcement in Bozeman. Gianforte's possible gubernatorial bid, which has long been expected, would be his first foray into running for public office. In August, he assembled a committee to explore a possible run. "He has made a decision," Gianforte spokesman Ron Catlett said Tuesday. "He felt this was the right time to make an announcement." But Catlett declined to say what that announcement will be. "He took some time in the fall to really think about it," Catlett said, adding that Gianforte based his decision on conversations with voters across the state. "He's met with hundreds and hundreds of Montanans." Gianforte is widely regarded as the leading Republican contender, mainly because of his considerable wealth which gives him ready access to money needed to finance a campaign. He raised more than $315,000 over the last three months of 2015 and had more than $332,000 on hand, according to his campaign finance reports. Four years ago, Gianforte sold his software company, RightNow Technologies, to Oracle for $1.8 billion. According to federal and income tax records he released to The Associated Press, he made $220.5 million between 2005 and 2014. Last fall, fellow Republican Brad Johnson, who served as Montana's secretary of state from 2005-2009, announced his bid to challenge Bullock, but has thus far raised scant money. Johnson was elected to the Public Service Commission in 2014. Bullock does not yet have a primary challenger. Democrats have already begun portraying Gianforte as out of touch with Montanans. "Under Gov. Bullock's leadership, unemployment is down, income growth is up and our budget is balanced," Jason Pitt, the communications director for the Montana Democratic Party, said in an email. "So why is out-of-touch New Jersey multimillionaire Greg Gianforte really running? Gianforte wants to impose his out-of-the-mainstream agenda to benefit himself and people like him while ignoring Montana values." Elaine B. Murray, 93, has earned her wings. She was born July 13, 1922, and passed away Jan. 16, 2016, due to causes incident to age. Elaine was born in Wahpeton, North Dakota to Peter and Rami Sorenson. Prior to her marriage to Robert M. Murray, Elaine lived and worked in Chicago, Illinois. Then while visiting friends in Los Angeles, California, Elaine was introduced to Robert M. Murray, a handsome soldier home on leave. A few weeks later they were on their way to Las Vegas where they married and then on to Minnesota and later to Seattle. Eventually they settled in Butte, Montana. Elaine is survived by her four children, Robert M. Jr. (Chris), Monica Tamble, Terrie Wilfong and James (Dawn). Elaine is also survived by eight grandchildren, five great-grandchildren, and her brother Larry Sorensen. She was preceded in death by granddaughter, Jennifer; son-in-law, Steve Wilfong; parents and sister, Celeste. Elaine worked hard her whole life to see that her children had what they needed. She was a champion bowler until arthritis forced her to give it up. She was the Number One fan of the Butte Copper Kings and still kept up with her boys until the time of her death. Elaine was an active and faithful member of the First Presbyterian Church for more than 50 years, serving on any committee or in any office that needed her. She also volunteered in several positions both in her church and in the community -- she was always ready to help anyone with anything as long as she was able. Services will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 23, at the First Presbyterian Church, corner of Excelsior and Platinum. A luncheon will follow. A special Thank You to Patty Salazar for her tender care and friendship throughout Elaines ordeal. Also special thanks to Copper Ridge Care Center, in particular Wing 100 for their special care and kindness. In lieu of flowers, please make a donation to the charity of your choice, and hug and hold close those you love. Interment will take place in the spring. Axelson Alternative Cremation is privileged to serve the Murray family. Express condolences at www.mtstandard.com. Helen M. (Richards) Anderson, 79, passed into the hands of the Lord January 14, 2016, at Deaconess Hospital in Spokane, Washington. Helen was born to Ellie and Bill Richards June 18, 1936, in Butte, Montana. Helen grew up in Butte along with her two sisters. Helen wed Wendell F. Andy Anderson October 2, 1954, in Butte. Several years later Andy started his career with the Hoover Corp. and Helen supported Andy and raised a family as Hoover lead them to Los Angeles, Sacramento, Spokane and Seattle. During this period Helen also held jobs with Sacramento County, Safeway and Drug Fair. Helens creativity was expressed with her sewing, baking, cake decorating and oil paintings. Care of Andy, devotion to her children, working outside the home and her creation of beautiful clothes, oil paintings and wedding cakes, Helen was a very busy and talented lady spending many sleepless nights perfecting the projects she was working on. Always doing for others she was a very loving, nurturing angel on earth that will be missed by anyone who had the opportunity to be a part of her life. After Andys retirement from Hoover, they purchased, ran and sold businesses in Seattle and Spokane. Helens favorites were the pet stores she worked in and helped manage. She loved the animals they sold and looked forward to seeing and caring for them each day. Helen and Andy permanently settled in Spokane 12 years ago to spend their final years close to their children. Helen was plagued with many medical issues throughout her life, but through all the difficulties Helen encountered she met them with resolve, kept her head up and pushed through them no matter the severity. Now she is able to rest without pain in the arms of her loving savior. Helen was preceded in death by her parents, Bill and Ellie Richards of Butte, Sister Rita Navarro of Butte, son Michael, interred in Sacramento, husband Andy in Spokane. She is survived by her daughters, Sherill Stueve and husband Donald Jr., Lynn Pisar and husband John, Gail Bass and husband Rob, Sister Judy Keto and husband Jim of Butte, brother-in-laws Neil Anderson and Joe Navarro of Butte. Grandchildren Angela Cook, Nathen Bass, Dawn Summers and Joe Bass, many great grandchildren, nieces and nephews. Her memorial and interment will be a private family affair according to her wishes. In lieu of flowers or donations Helen would like you to get creative and bake a cake. If youre not a baker then paint a picture. Express condolences at www.mtstandard.com Longtime Anaconda resident Margaret Ruth Jacobson died Jan. 16, 2016, at Good Samaritan Society in Spokane Valley, Washington, at the age of 87. Margaret was born Oct. 2, 1928, in Three Forks, to Frank and Edna Irvine. Margaret was raised and educated in Deer Lodge and Anaconda. She graduated from Anaconda High School and attended the University of Montana, Missoula. She married Donald Jacobson on Dec. 27, 1947. They lived in Anaconda until 2002, when they moved to Missoula. Margaret moved to Spokane in 2013. Margaret was a devoted wife, mother, and grandmother. She loved family gatherings and was friends with everyone. She enjoyed competition of all kinds, including watching grandchildren compete and playing games and cards, especially bridge and dominoes. She enjoyed traveling, was a proficient quilter, avid reader, good pianist and excellent cook. Margaret was a member of the First Presbyterian Church of Anaconda, where she served as a deacon, and Missoula. She also served as a treasurer of St. Timothys Chapel. She was a past matron of the Eastern Star in Anaconda, a member of PEO and Daughters of the American Revolution. Survivors include a son, Donald (Verna) Jacobson, Spokane; daughters, Marilyn (Bob) Todorovich, Philipsburg, and Marcia (John) Papich, Spokane Valley; grandchildren, Jeff Jacobson, Dawn (Jurian) Hofman, Scott (Nicky) Todorovich, Teresa (Matt) Grange, Chris (Jennifer) Papich, Mark (Kim) Papich, Greg (Tiffanie) Papich, Lindsay Papich, Jason (Myra) Schmidt, and Angie (Greg) Joaquin, 16 great-grandchildren; and many nieces and nephews. Margaret was preceded in death by her husband, her brother, Frank Irvine, Jr., and her parents. Memorial services will be held at 11:30 a.m. Friday, Jan. 22, at the First Presbyterian Church, Anaconda, with the Revs. J. P. Carlson and Rusty Craig officiating. In lieu of flowers, the family would suggest donations to the First Presbyterian Church at 4th and Main, Anaconda, Montana 59711 or a charity of choice. Longfellow Finnegan Riddle Funeral & Cremation Service is entrusted with Margarets funeral arrangements. You may pay your respects at www.longfellowfinneganriddle.com or go to www.mtstandard.com. From: Mercy gado Date: Sat, 26 Dec 2015 12:24:48 +0000 Subject: I WILL LOVE TO KNOW MORE ABOUT YOU MY Dear one I am more than happy for your reply to my mail. How is your day, My name is Ms, Mercy Gado, single and never been married, I am from Sudan in East Africa, 23 yrs, Earlier I was residing in Darfur's refugee camp in Chad due to the war that fought in our country some years back, at a time there is a division and dispatch of some of the refugees due to the over population of the people in Chad, I was taken to Senegal West African where I'm presently residing in orphanages Trinity here in Senegal where I am seeking political asylum due to the civil war in my country. I am in suffering and pains here in this camp and I really need to have a someone by my side to encourage me and give me good advice in life and help me to come out from this situation. My late father Dr Mark G. Gado was the Industrial Managing director of (GADO INDUSTRIAL COMPANY LTD) in the federal capital of Sudan (KHARTOUM) the economic capital of my Country, and he was also the personal adviser to the former head of state, before the rebels attacked our house one early morning and killed my mother and father in a cold blood. It is only me that is alive now and i managed to save my life here in Senegal where I am living now as a refugee. This Refugee Camp is headed by a Reverend Father, I used his office computer to send you this email and i only enter his office when he is less busy in his office. I would like to know more about you, your likes and dislikes, your hobbies and what you are doing presently. I like to meet understanding, loyal, sincere, truthful, kind, friendly and more to that, someone with vision and truth. I will tell you more about myself in my next mail. Attached is my picture, Hoping to hear from you soonest. thanks yours Mercy Gado From: Mercy gado Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2015 09:37:53 +0000 Subject: THIS IS MY FULL LIFE STORY WITH TRUST Hello Dear how are you today. l hope you are fine. My day is very boring over here in Dakar Senegal. in this camp we find it hard to go out because we are not allowed to do so, its just like one staying in the prison and l hope by God's grace i will come out here soon, I don't have any relatives now that i can go to, all my relatives ran away in the middle of the war the only person i have now is Rev. Donatus Diop, who is one of the pastor's in the (Trinity United Methodist Church) and he is the one taking care of the refugees/orphanage he has been very good to me since l came here i am not living with him rather i am living in the women orphanage home because the orphanage have two department one for men the other for women, The Pastor's Tel number is +221770928225 if you call, tell him that you want to speak with Miss Mercy Gado, in the trinity Orphanage camp he will send for me, I will be glad to hear your voice. As a refugee here i don't have any right or privilege to any thing be it money or whatever because it is against the law of this country, I want to go back to my studies because i only attended my first year before the tragic incident took place, please l would like you to know that l have my late father's statement of account and death certificate here with me, because when he was alive he deposited some amount of money in a leading bank in Europe which he used my name as the next of kin. The amount in question is $3.8 (Three Million Eight Hundred Thousand US Dollars). I have got in touch with the bank and made them to know about my plans to withdraw this money, l also got them aware of the death of my father and they have acknowledged it with all their confirmation and verification's. However, they advise me to get a very responsible person who will stand on my behalf as my trustee as regards to this money since l am presently of refugee status over here and wouldn't be permitted to handle this amount of money, I will like you to assist me to transfer this money to your account and from it you will send some money for me to get my traveling documents and air ticket to come over to meet with you, I can't withdraw the money my self due to my refugee statues here in this country which does not permit me to do so, and the money can not be transferred in Senegal where i am in refugee statues. I want you to send me your contact information's such as, Your Full Names................ Your Address....................... Your Telephone Number .... your Age .......................... your Occupation................ so that i will forward it to the bank and let them know you are my trustee. I just have to let you know about this so that you can assist me to be my trustee on this money, like i said, l want you to call me because i have a lot to tell you,l kept this secret to people in the camp here the only person that knows about it is the Reverend because he is like a father to me, l hope to hear from you soonest. thanks yours Mercy. From: Mercy gado Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2015 10:48:07 +0000 Subject: PLEASE DEAR CONTACT THIS BANK FOR THE TRANSFER Hello my sweetheart, how are you doing today i hope all is well and fine thanks be to God almighty who gives you health in more abundantly. I thank you once again for your kindness towards me. Remember Honey age, distance and color does not matter what matters most is love and mutual understanding i trust you honey that is why i am giving you all this information's. My love is for you and you alone when i will come to you after this transfer. I have informed the bank about my plans to claim this money and the only thing they told me is to look for a foreign partner who will stand on my behalf due to my refugee status and the laws of this country. please i have not told anyone about the existence of this money and i will like you to please keep it SECRET to other people because since it is (MONEY) all eyes will be on it, You will have 20% of the total money for helping me In this regards and l have mapped 10% for any expenses that might come in this transfer and the remaining money will be managed by you in any business of your choice while i go back to my studies which is the most important thing to me. l will like you to contact the bank in London (United Kingdom) and tell them that you are my foreign partner and that you want to know the possibilities of assisting me transfer my $3.8 million dollars deposited by my late father of which i am the next of kin. The contact information's of the bank are as follows. ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND. Transfer Manager : Mr. Ross McEwan Address: 9, High St, Perth, Perthshire PH1 5JS Tel: +447857072286a Fax: +447031893675 E-maIl: rbs.royalbank@consultant.com Information about the deposit code are as follows: Name of depositor: Dr. Mark G. Gado Nationality: Sudan Next of kin: Miss Mercy Gado Amount deposited: ( $3.8 Million USD ) Account Number: RBS845008901546/QB/91/A. Contact them now on how to transfer the $3.8 million dollars deposited by my late father of which i am the next of kin. My dear i am glad that God has brought you to help me out from this situation and i promise to be kind and will equally need you in every area of my life plus investing this money since i am still too young to manage it. As i told you before, this camp is just like a prison and my prayer is to move out from here as soon as possible. Please make sure that you contact the bank for more in-formation, l am waiting to hear from you soonest. thank yours Mercy From: "ROYAL BANK" Cc: mercygado@hotmail.com Date: Tue, 29 Dec 2015 15:35:30 +0100 Subject: FROM ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND. (R.B.S) THE ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND GROUP ADD: OFFICE: NO 36 ST ANDREW SQUARE EDINBUGH Scotland, SW1A 2DX Phone number : +447857072286 Fax Number: +447031893675 Email rbs.royalbank@consultant.com Date 29-12-2015 For your attention, Mr. . I am the Deputy chairman of the overseas Operation/Wire Transfer, it is my pleasure to write you in respect of the mail which we have received. Actually, we have earlier been told about you by the young lady Miss Mercy Gado, that she wishes you to be her trustee/representative for the claim of her late father's deposit with our bank. Late Dr. Mark G. Gado, he was our late customer with Bank Data Base as detailed below on the chart: International Bank Account Number (Dr. Mark G. Gado-54-80) US$3.8M (BIC) rbs IE 2D (IBAN) (RBS845008901546/QB/91/A. Hence you have been really appointed as a trustee to represent the next of Kin. How ever before our bank will transact any business concerning the transfer of the fund with you, we will like you to send the followings: 1.) A power of attorney and affidavit of oath permitting you to claim and transfer the funds to your bank account on her behalf. This document must be endorsed by a Senegalese resident lawyer. 2.) The death certificate of late Dr. Mark Gado (Her deceased father) confirming the death. 3.) A copy of Certificate of Deposit or statement of account issued to Dr. Mark G. Gado by our bank. Note that the above are compulsory, and are needed to protect our interest, yours, the next of kin after the claims. These shall also ensure that a smooth, quick and successful transfer of the fund is made, if only you shall be fast in bank's response, and honest while dealing with this bank. We promise to give our customers the best of our services. JUST MORE CONCERNING THE PROCEDURES OF REMITTING THIS FUND LEGALLY, AS THE LAW GUIDING OUR FINANCIAL INSTITUTION DEMANDS . Should you have any question(s), please contact overseas transfer officer Tel: +447857072286 Fax: +447031893675 for more directives/ clarifications. Yours Faithfully, chairman Mr Ross Maxwell McEwan From: Mercy gado Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2015 10:15:07 +0000 Subject: PLEASE CONTACT THIS LAWYER IMMEDIATELY FOR THE DOCUMENTS My Dear, I believe you are well. God will bless and reward you for every effort you are making to see me out from this horrible situation i found myself today. As for me i am fine here with all hopes that you will assist me to transfer my money to your position for a better life with you. i really love you. I appreciated the way you are handling this transfer of my money to your position pending my arrival to meet with you to start a new life. I am suffering here in the prison called refugee camp and i believe with you i can start a new life in your country after the transfer of my money to your account. My dear i will also advise you to please keep it to yourself because i am afraid of loosing the money to people who will disappoint me when the money gets to your account please try to handle it carefully, take it as yours because we are one please don't use it rough OK, because the money is for us to use it and start a new life especially on the business investment you are going to invest with it. I can see what the bank is demanding before they will transfer my money to your position. Presently i have my Late Father Death Certificate with Deposit Certificate which i will give to the lawyer if he agree to help us. The only problem we have now is the Power of Attorney and affidavit of oath, which the bank said that it will be issued by a lawyer here in Senegal for me to sign my signature on it. After reading the bank mail, i discussed it with Rev. Donatus Diop and he gave me the contact of this lawyer Attorney Barrister Solomon Wade. He is a very reliable and God fearing one, he is a registered lawyer in the United Nations Camp and also a registered member in (Senegalese Bar Association) who will help in preparing the documents for us. I will want you to contact him on both phone and email telling him that you are my foreign partner that you need his services to prepare a power of attorney and affidavit of oath, that will enable you transfer my $3.8 million dollars from ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND LONDON PLC (ROYAL BANK) to your account on my behalf due to my refugee status. His contact information's are as follows, Name: Attorney Barrister Solomon Wade Address; Rue 48 Laminu Guye Street. (2nd -floor) Dakar Senegal. Tel: +221775998689 Email: barristersolomonwade@lawyer.com God bless you as you contact him immediately. Yours Forever Miss Mercy From: "BarristerSolomon Wade" Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2015 18:15:08 +0100 Subject: EQUAL RIGHT CHAMBERS & ASSOCIATES. EQUAL RIGHT CHAMBERS MEMBER ECOWAS BANK ACCREDITED ATTORNEYS. Rue 48, Laminu Guye Street, Dakar P. O. Box 28874 Dakar senegal Tel: +221775998689 Email; barristersolomonwade@lawyer.com ATTENTION; MR, , SEQUEL TO YOUR MAIL ON HOW TO GET A LETTER OF AFFIDAVIT AND PREPARE A POWER OF ATTORNEY TO YOU AND YOUR PARTNER. MY NOBLE LAW FIRM WISH TO BRING TO YOUR NOTICE THAT BEFORE WE CAN PROCEED WITH THIS SERVICES, I WILL GO TO THE FEDERAL HIGH COURT HERE TO ASCERTAIN THE COST OF THE AUTHENTICATION OF THE POWER OF ATTORNEY AND THE AFFIDAVIT OF OATH BEFORE IT BECOMES VALID FOR THE TRANSFER OF THE MONEY TO YOUR ACCOUNT. AFTER WHICH MY LAW FIRM WILL CONTACT YOU BACK WITH THE REQUIRED COSTS BEFORE ACCEPTING TO RENDER THE REQUIRED LEGAL SERVICES. THANKS. YOURS SINCERELY IN SERVICE, BARR, WADE SOLOMON (Esq) Equal Right Chambers & Associates. Rue 48 Laminu Guye Street. (2nd -floor) Dakar Senegal. Office tel: +221775998689 From: "BarristerSolomon Wade" Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2015 12:39:35 +0100 Subject: LETTER OF ACCEPTANCE EQUAL RIGHT CHAMBERS MEMBER ECOWAS BANK ACCREDITED ATTORNEYS. RUE 48, LAMINU GUYE STREET DAKAR SENEGAL P. O. BOX 28874 Dakar senegal TEL: +221775998689 EMAIL; barristersolomonwade@lawyer.com ATTENTION; MR, . SEQUEL TO YOUR MAIL ON HOW TO PREPARE A POWER OF ATTORNEY AND AFFIDAVIT OF OATH FOR YOU AND YOUR PARTNER THAT WILL ENABLE YOU TO STAND ON HER BEHALF TO TRANSFER HER MONEY FROM THE BANK TO YOUR ACCOUNT IN YOUR COUNTRY OR ELSE WHERE. MY NOBLE LAW FIRM WISH TO BRING TO YOUR NOTICE THAT, MY LEGAL DUTY TO YOU AND YOUR PARTNER IS TO EXECUTE THE LEGITIMATE AND AUTHENTICATION OF THE POWER OF ATTORNEY FROM THE FEDERAL HIGH COURT, AND THE SWEARING OF AFFIDAVIT OF OATH AT THE FEDERAL HIGH COURT OF SENEGAL. I WANT TO BRING TO YOUR NOTICE THAT, I HAVE COLLECTED THE DEPOSIT CERTIFICATE AND THE DEATH CERTIFICATE FROM YOUR PARTNER AND REGISTER IT AT THE FEDERAL HIGH COURT HERE, FOR PROCESSING OF THE POWER OF ATTORNEY AND THE AFFIDAVIT OF OATH. FROM MY FINDINGS AT THE HIGH COURT IN REGARD OF THE FEE, IT WILL COST THE SUM OF ($250) FOR THE REMITTANCE OF AUTHENTICATION OF THE POWER OF ATTORNEY IN YOUR NAME. ($200) FOR THE SWEARING OF THE AFFIDAVIT OF OATH AT THE FEDERAL HIGH COURT HERE BEFORE IT BECOMES VALID. ($20) FOR NOTARY STAMPING AT THE NOTARY OFFICE HERE. MY LEGAL PROCESSING FEE OF ($250). TOTAL NOW WILL BE ($720) ONLY, TO GET EVERYTHING DONE WHICH WILL TAKE 2 WORKING DAYS. YOU ARE TO TRANSFER THE MONEY THROUGH MONEYGRAM OR WESTERN UNION MONEY TRANSFER , WITH MY SECRETARY NAME. TO SENEGAL. NAME: STANLEY BENJAMIN DESTINATION: DAKAR SENEGAL. QUESTION: YES ANSWER: OK MTCN: ............................ MAKE SURE YOU INFORM ME IMMEDIATELY YOU TRANSFER THE MONEY TODAY, SO THAT I WILL START THE PROCESSING OF THE DOCUMENTS WHICH WILL BE READY IN THE NEXT TWO WORKING DAYS. THANKS. YOURS SINCERELY IN SERVICE, BARR WADE SOLOMON ( ESQ) EQUAL RIGHT CHAMBERS & ASSOCIATES. RUE 48 LAMINU GUYE STREET. ( 2ND -FLOOR) DAKAR SENEGAL. Office tel: +221775998689 If you received a similar letter, please ignore it. Do not answer it. If you do, you will end up on more of the mailing lists used by the criminals behind this fraud. Read more.... Comment Policy Advance Indiana allows you to post comments via this blog subject to the guidelines set forth herein. You understand that any comments you post are your own and are not those of Advance Indiana. You further understand that Advance Indiana is not responsible for the content of any external sites referenced in your comments. Unlawful, harassing, defamatory, abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, racially offensive, or otherwise objectionable comments are not acceptable. If you think any content posted or otherwise included in Advance Indiana violates the guidelines set forth herein, then please alert Advance Indiana. Advance Indiana reserves the right to pre-screen, edit, and remove any post as it deems appropriate. You specifically acknowledge that Advance Indiana has no obligation to display any post submitted or otherwise provided via Advance Indiana. Botswana will be hosting the 2016 Innovation Prize for Africa awards. According to a press release from the government of Botswana, the African Innovation Foundation in a joint collaborative effort with the Botswana's Ministry of Infrastructure, Science and Technology and the Botswana Innovation Hub, the Innovation Prize for Africa event will be held in Gaborone, in June 2016 - the exact date is yet to be confirmed. The Innovation Prize for Africa is a landmark program of the African More details here... MUSCATINE, Iowa A Muscatine County jury has found a dog owner negligent in the 2014 killing of a goat herd. But the defendant is considering an appeal of the verdict. Defendant Matthew Schneider was found 100 percent at fault for the "negligent acts of his dog" in the killing of goats belonging to Michael Baxter, at Baxter's Vail Avenue farm. The attacks occurred in March 2014. The verdict was handed down Jan. 14. The jury awarded Baxter $10,974.79 in damages. The damages included: $9,905 for replacement of the goat herd, $414 for vaccination and tagging, $105 necropsy examination, and $250 for burial expenses. Eighteen goats belonging to Baxter were killed on March 23, 2014. Then on March 27, 2014, another 22 goats were slain. Baxter allegedly shot at a dog trying to scare his goats but the dog ran away. Schneider's attorney Craig Levien, of Davenport, said his client is considering appealing the jury verdict. "The jury awarded less than half of the damages Mr. Baxter sought," Levien said. "We respect the jury verdict but we believe that there was insufficient proof that it was my client's dog." Baxter filed a civil claim against Schneider on June 25, 2014, seeking damages, punitive damages and injunctive relief. Schneider lives about a mile south of Baxter. Baxter is responsible for his legal fees in the matter. "The jury did decide that the dog killed the goats," he said. He is raising goats again. "I don't know how much longer I am going to be able to do it though. This legal thing has been real expensive. I thought I was covered but I was not covered. I did not know I had no insurance on the goats," Baxter said. "They didn't award half of what my loss was. That (the award) paid for the goats that got killed but that didn't pay for all the extra work we had to go through to replace them." WAPELLO, Iowa Louisa County off-road riders may have won a battle, but whether they will win the war is still unknown. The Louisa County Board of Supervisors agreed Tuesday to move forward with developing an ordinance that would allow some of the vehicles to use the countys secondary roads. Acting on a petition that was presented to them on Nov. 24, the supervisors acknowledged they were torn between allowing more use and the potential impact on road safety, maintenance and possible liability issues from that usage. Supervisor Randy Griffin said he was especially conflicted over the proposal because of potential county liability, although a report from supervisor Chris Ball had eased some of his concerns. Ball reported he had talked with Louisa County Attorney Adam Parsons and learned the county would not have any additional liability if it approved the vehicles use. This morning at seven oclock I was ready to vote against it, but thats changed me a little bit, Griffin said after hearing of Parsons opinion. However, other issues, such as allowing all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) or just certain utility task vehicles (UTVs) continued to create uncertainty for the board, especially after Ball pointed out he and Parsons had discussed only UTV usage. A key question was identifying what safety equipment needed to be included in any ordinance proposal. Supervisor Paula Buckman suggested the ordinance require roll over protection and four wheels along with age and licensing requirements. That would serve a utilitarian purpose, she said, explaining those restrictions would likely reduce the number of ATVs. Griffin was not convinced. I dont think were qualified to say which is safer, he said, pointing out manufacturers recommended neither should be used on roadways. Who are we to say a UTV is different from an ATV? Griffin asked. Ball finally suggested he would create a proposed ordinance and present it to the board for review and possible action. Buckman seconded the motion after Griffin said he was reluctant. All three voted in support, but Griffin continued to maintain a neutral stance on the proposal. Im still torn on this, he told the board before casting his vote. After the meeting, petition organizer Tim Gerst, of Wapello, who attended the meeting, but did not speak during the discussion, said he was pleased an ordinance proposal would be created. Its a slow process, but Im glad to see it move forward, he said. In other action, County Engineer Larry Roehl reported he had completed a walk-through of the former Louisa County Jail and would begin developing bid documents for its demolition. The supervisors announced last week they were giving up trying to sell the historic building and would now investigate its demolition. Roehl agreed a newer portion could likely be salvaged and adopted to other uses. The board also approved a 28E agreement with Washington County to begin sharing Washington Countys Mental Health and Disability Services Director (MHDSD/CSD) Bobbi Wulf. Wulf would spend about 66 percent of her time on Washington County programming and the remainder on Louisa Countys duties. Her hourly wage of $37.57 would also be shared using those percentages. Louisa County Community Services Clerk Cyndi Mears would also assume some Washington County duties and be re-identified as an administrative assistant. She would also serve as Louisa Countys general assistance director. The agreement is scheduled to go into effect on April 1. MUSCATINE, Iowa LULAC is an abbreviation for League of United Latin American Citizens, but Maria Bribriesco's message Tuesday evening was that everyone needs to get involved. "If we don't participate, we don't have a democracy," Bribriesco, deputy director of Iowa LULAC, told a small group at Guadalajara restaurant who came for caucus training. LULAC sponsored the event to encourage Latinos to caucus and provide information about the process, Bribriesco emphasized the latter because she believes apathy is detrimental to a democracy. "Everything you can think of is touched by the government," she said. She explained the differences in the two parties' caucus activities. The Democrats have people stand in certain parts of a room and whittle it down to a nomination. In Muscatine, they will be in many location depending on which precinct a participant lives in. Meanwhile, the Republicans cast a secret ballot. In Muscatine, the entire Republican Party convenes at Muscatine High School. Bribriesco emphasized that to participate, people must be in the buildings by 7 p.m. Feb. 1. Ana Xolo, of Muscatine, has participated in caucuses in the past, but came for more information and at her mother's request. Xolo said her mother is very interested in politics. "She's always in the know," Xolo said. Despite this, Josefina S. Garcia, Xolo's mother, has never participated in a caucus before. She plans to this year. "It's something I never did and I want to feel the experience," Garcia said. She said issues like education are important to her. Both Garcia and Xolo know who they want to caucus for, but did not want to share that. Bribriesco also noted that LULAC's efforts to inform voters would continue with a round-table discussion including members from the various campaigns 6:30-8:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 26, at St. Ambrose University in Davenport. She said all campaigns have been invited. She said the topics that will be focused on are the environment, civil rights, campaign finance reform and education. She said immigration is also a priority for LULAC, a non-partisan organization, and that it's included in civil and human rights. Bribriesco encouraged people to get informed and participate. "It's very important for all Americans to participate in the process," Bribriesco said in an interview. "Our vote is our voice." MUSCATINE, Iowa As the Muscatine County Board of Supervisors reviewed budget requests, a debate started on body cameras for law enforcement. Muscatine County Sheriff CJ Ryan is not requesting funds for body cameras, but Supervisor Kas Kelly brought it up when he listed patrol car dash cameras that need replaced. Kelly pressed Ryan about whether he planned to request in future budgets to equip deputies with body cameras. Ryan said hes not against the idea, but doesnt want to rush into it. He anticipates $50,000 to $100,000 in startup costs for body cameras with the bulk of those funds paying for storage. Ryan said there also needs to be a good policy in place. As soon as deputies start using body cameras, the sheriffs office needs to know what footage can be released to the news media or general public and how issues of privacy come into play. He also pointed out that there would be the ongoing issue of storage, which the policy would answer as to how long a video must be kept after an incident. Ryan said a couple deputies had purchased body cameras on their own, but he made them stop using them because of the lack of policy and the legal ramifications that could cause. Supervisor Matt Bonebake said hes against body cameras for law enforcement. I think its stupid, Bonebrake said. He said the national media has cast a negative shadow on law enforcement for isolated incidents, creating more expenses for body cameras and the sense of distrust toward law enforcement. Bonebrake said he doesnt think patrol car dash cameras are necessary either. We need to quit giving them cameras and give them our support, Bonebrake said. Ryan pointed out that cameras can protect law enforcement as much, if not more so, than the citizens. They provide a level of translucency, which we want, Ryan said. He said almost every time a citizen makes a complaint against a deputy, the dash cam video reveals the deputy did nothing wrong. Ryan also said the cameras provide evidence for the prosecutor to file charges and form a more successful case against prosecutors. Were not anti-body cameras, Ryan said, but wants the details to be ironed out by other agencies before investing in them. Supervisor Robert Howard agreed with Ryans stance. Im OK with body cameras when it makes common sense to do it, Howard said. Supervisor Chair Jeff Sorensen also worried about costs. I think its prudent to take a good strong look at it, Sorensen said. Supervisor Scott Sauer worried about annual maintenance costs for storage and potential litigation tied to use of body cameras. Kelly asked if it would be worth putting money aside each year to prepare for the expense. MUSCATINE, Iowa The Muscatine County Board of Supervisors began reviewing budget requests Tuesday for the 2016-17 fiscal year, having until mid-March to certify the final budget. The board heard from several departments, but spent most of the morning on the topics of public health and safety. Sheriff The Muscatine County Jail could eliminate part-time positions in favor of full-time positions. Muscatine County Sheriff CJ Ryan discussed the idea with supervisors during annual budget discussions. Supervisors said theyd like to see the numbers and thought even if its a little more expensive it could be worth it. The Affordable Care Act will soon require employers provide health insurance for part-time employees. Ryan believes this could remove the financial incentive to keep part-time staff. He said for the most part, its a revolving door for part-time jail staff. He said its difficult to attract many well-qualified, long-term employees with only part-time hours available and no benefits. I need good employees in that environment, Ryan told the board. Thats a high liability environment. Supervisors agreed with this predicament. They cant afford to come work there, Supervisor Scott Sauer said. Ryan also noted turnover is costly because of equipment and training for new staff. Supervisors will make a decision after reviewing the estimated figures. Ryan also told the board hes already made efforts to increase revenue. Hes changed the rate of housing Johnson County prisoners from a flat $43 per day to a tiered system. The Muscatine County Jail held many prisoners for Johnson County while it remodeled its jail. The jail didnt expand its capacity and prior to renovation had used Muscatine County to house prisoners over capacity regularly. Ryan changed the rate to $45 per day when there are 50 or more prisoners from Johnson County, $50 per day when there are 41-50 prisoners from Johnson County and $55 per day when there are less than 40 prisoners from Johnson County. Ryan said there have been less prisoners from Johnson County lately, so the tiered system will balance what would be a revenue loss when numbers are down. He also increased the cost of items in the commissary to offset the cost of paying employees who staff the jail store. Public Health Christy Roby Williams, public health manager Unity Point-Trinity Public, presented on behalf of Public Health. Mary Odell, director, is out of the country visiting family. The county contracts with Unity Point for public health services. Williams highlighted several statistics before asking for an increase, then cited that Muscatine County residents are getting a bargain. Williams explained that three priorities, determined by a public health survey, will be the focus this year: health care infrastructure, access to mental health care and healthy behavior. Infrastructure is primarily access to more health care providers. Thats one that bubbled to the top, Williams said. She said healthy behavior includes decreasing obesity, improving early childhood development and increasing cancer screenings. Beyond those priorities, it will be business as usual which is busy. In 2015, 592 hours were spent on 29 patients with tuberculous, 387 sexually transmitted disease tests were taken with 25 positive results, communicable diseases included eight cases of salmonella and eight cases of mumps, there were 21 animal bite reports, and 1,516 immunizations given. Williams said that in addition to providing immunizations, public health works with 33 schools, day cares and preschools to audit immunizations by checking 8,400 records. Needless to say, our nurses are busy during that immunization review time, Williams said. She said the staff also attended a workshop to learn how to respond to mass casualties and conducts drills with Monsanto. She requested a 5 percent increase in funding for public health to bring the allocation to $205,634. Thats $4.79 per county resident. This continues to be a bargain, Williams said. She noted that Washington County allocates $396,482 to public health, costing the approximately 22,000 county residents $19.75 each; and Louisa County allocates $326,800, costing the approximately 11,282 residents $29.28 each. Budget planning The board also discussed general services, met with the county attorney, EMS, medical examiner, veterans affairs, MCSA and court services among others on Tuesday. The board will resume budget presentations at 9 a.m. Thursday by hearing requests from outside agencies including libraries, the county fair, Senior Resources, etc. The board plans to finalize budget details in February for public review and hold a public hearing in early March. The budget must be certified by the county board of supervisors by March 15. The fiscal year begins July 1. Recently it was announced Single Speed Brewing Co. had received the deed to the old Hostess Bakery building from the city of Waterloo. That's great news for those supporting the project of renovating the old Hostess Wonder Bread building and placing a viable business at the site - which includes a production brewery, restaurant and retail space. Sidecar Coffee also is set to locate in a portion of the building. "People are stoked," said Dave Morgan, Single Speed founder."It's gone slightly quiet because nothing's been happening while we waited to get the deed." While the building has already received a local historic designation, Single Speed is pursuing its listing on the National Register of Historic Places. Some work will be waiting on historic reviews. Single Speed has fit in nicely in its Cedar Falls location, quickly becoming a successful and complementary business to the merchants, bars and eateries downtown. Last spring it became known Single Speed was looking at expanding its operation and was looking at the building at West Third and Commercial streets in Waterloo. It's a site that intrigued Morgan. It's in the heart of the city's Riverfront Renaissance project near the RiverLoop Expo Plaza and Amphitheatre, Center for the Arts, Cedar Valley SportsPlex and Young Arena. We believe the project currently moving forward can add a quaint and enjoyable atmosphere to that particular area, which will blend well with the redevelopment of Waterloo's downtown - efforts that have been years in the making and many that have come to fruition. Initially, there had been some question if the city should keep a one-story building on that location. In 2014, a proposal to build a 58-unit apartment building near the former bakery fell though after it failed to receive the $3 million federal community development block grant. After reviewing, the city saw the Single Speed proposal as a legitimate one. It's an established business that will fit in well downtown. It's a way to encourage economic development as well as historic re-use. And, it's all in an area the city has set up as a social hub that is friendly to foot traffic. Around the country, former Wonder Bread plants have found new life as shared work space offices, breweries and restaurants. In Waterloo, the old bakery is in a key location. That's why the city purchased it - to be able to control what was ultimately placed there. It was a good strategy This will add another destination point for downtown Waterloo. We thank Morgan and others who have been pushing for this project, and we thank city leaders and officials who worked with them We're looking forward to having this new neighbor in downtown Waterloo. The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier Violence in Iraq dropped during the second week of October. There were fewer incidents by the Islamic State. On the other hand, Sadrists and... Important stuff you won't get from the liberal media! We do the surfing so you can be informed AND have a life! Les emplois a Rennes sont abondants et varies. Il y a quelque chose pour tout le monde. Que vous soyez a la recherche dun emploi [] Les blattes ou cafards (Blatta orientalis) sont des insectes qui appartiennent a la famille des Blattoptera. Ils se caracterisent par leur forme allongee, leurs ailes [] A media alert sent out by Parliament on January 14 about a meeting to discuss possible regulation of over-the-top (OTT) services like WhatsApp was unauthorised, according to an MP. Last week, Parliaments Portfolio Committee on Telecommunications and Postal Services issued a media alert on behalf of its chairperson and MP Mmamoloko Kubayi about a planned meeting on January 26 to discuss OTT services. The media alert said that mobile operators are requesting that Parliament consider passing a policy or regulations of data services on mobile networks such that they generate revenue for carrying the data services on their bandwidth infrastructure. The alert went on to say that stakeholders such as network operators, ICT bodies and internet service providers would attend the meeting. The alert also followed a notice sent to stakeholders which called for the full-day meeting which was expected to discuss aspects such as necessary policy interventions on how to govern the OTTs, regulatory interventions on the guidelines to regulate OTTs and the impact of OTTs on competition. But Kubayi told Fin24 that she did not see the January 14 media alert before it was issued and that she did not sign off the communications, despite the alert stating that it was issued on her behalf. Its not authorised; we are sorting it out. It was a mistake; I mean, how do you issue a press release without even a venue of the meeting? Kubayi told Fin24. I thought it was still going to be issued. So, procedurally in terms of Parliament, I need to sign it off. I have not signed it off, Kubayi added. Kubayi went on to say that the person who normally issues her committees media alerts and press statements was not available last week. Subsequently, the media alert was issued by another member of Parliaments communications services who did not want to make any comment to Fin24 about the alleged mistake. Luzuko Jacobs, a spokesperson of Parliament, said he was looking into the matter and following up with the chairperson. But Jacobs told Fin24 that this is the first time he has come across this type of situation. Look, in my history here which amounts to more than 13 years it is the first time that such an incident has happened. But its an unfortunate, rare and once-off, and obviously unacceptable incident really, he said. Jacobs said that if a media alert deals with, for example, logistics of meetings, it doesnt always have to be signed off by the chairperson. But where content becomes intensive and deals with issues that relate to the programme of the committee, obviously the committee would have to be made aware of that information, said Jacobs. Asked whether Kubayi should have signed off on the media alert on January 14 which contained information about what would be discussed at the meeting Jacobs said: Obviously, something like that, youd want the chairperson to sign off. He also said that regardless of who sends out parliamentary media alerts for committees, there is a standard practice where chairpersons have to sign off communications of this type. Incorrect information In the meantime, the meeting on OTT is still scheduled for January 26 but Kubayi has said that certain statements made in last weeks media alert were incorrect. She said that mobile networks had not asked for the meeting, as first indicated in the media alert. She told Fin24 that she had prompted the discussions on January 26 after she realised from stakeholders at events last year that it had become an issue. She also clarified that her committee is having a meeting on OTT on January 26 and not hearings, which are more formal. But she did not rule out future hearings on the matter. If indeed we see that this is a matter that needs a formal process, we definitely need to impose that, she said. But for now we want test what is it, how is it and from there take a decision, she added. Tension in the industry Chief executives at both MTN and Vodacom last year called for regulation of OTT services like WhatsApp because they said these technologies do not contribute financially to local networks. The issue is that I was in two workshops last year where the matter came up and I could see each side took its own corner, said Kubayi. And I felt that if this continues, its not assisting anyone. We need to create a platform where we can discuss and think about what is the way forward, she added. Kubayi said she called the meeting to avoid a situation where mobile networks and OTT providers clash, which she said could result in South Africans losing out. I think that consumers must be taking the centre stage in the discussions, Kubayi told Fin24. The public is further invited to attend the meeting, Kubayi added. DA questions meeting Meanwhile, Democratic Alliance (DA) MP Marian Shinn, who is the shadow minister for telecommunications and postal services, said the issue of OTT had not been raised in the committee previously. My thoughts are that we knew nothing about this, Shinn told Fin24. This issue has not been raised in the committee before and the only information that has been sent to us about this is our draft programme for the whole term, which just has this as a subject: over-the-top technology, all-day briefing. That is all we know, said Shinn. Shinn further said that discussing OTT should not be among the committees first course of business for 2016 owing to other pressing issues such as infrastructure and spectrum. As far as Im concerned, this (OTT) is not a priority in South Africa at the moment. Its probably a conversation that needs to be had, but not right now. We have so much on our programme that is unfinished from last year that we need to be tapping, Shinn told Fin24. We actually need to focus on issues that bring down the cost of communications, not add to the cost of communications, Shinn added. Nevertheless, Shinn said she would go to the meeting on January 26 with an open mind but that its not an issue that we need to spend the whole day on. Fin24 More on WhatsApp Vodacom and MTN declare war on consumers with WhatsApp regulation: Cell C WhatsApp is now completely free Police in Mabopane are appealing to people using public WiFi access points to be on the lookout for criminals. They were targeting people accessing WiFi near schools in the area, spokesperson Constable Petunia Chabangu said on Wednesday. We want to alert people who are using WiFi to access internet at the schools and library to be careful of the criminals because they are robbing them, especially from 14:00 and into the evening. She urged them not to go alone to avoid being robbed of cellphones, laptops and tablets. The thieves were armed with knives or guns. Most of the victims could not identify the criminals. Since December there had been about 12 cases. Hotspots were Lebanon, Slovoville, Busheveld Road, and Molefe Makinta Road. News24 More on Wi-Fi AlwaysOn Streaming Wi-Fi just for video streaming New Wi-Fi standard gives more range, better wall penetration As owner of this blog, I bear no responsibility to what other contributors/bloggers may post. I encourage all to speak freely without indulging in libel or defamatory content. Anyone who feels offended by any posting can email me and I will remove the offending article if appropriate. Contact me at redbeansg@yahoo.com redbean Since then, Theresa has been married, had three terrific kids, moved to central Ohio, and has been repeatedly guilt-tripped into adopting a menagerie of animals that are now members of the family. But dont be fooled by her domesticated appearance. Her greatest love is travel. Having traveled to over a dozen countriesnot to mention an extended seven-year stay in Kodiak, Alaskashe is anything but settled down. Wherever life brings her, Theresa will continue to weave tales of adventure and love with the hope her stories will bring joy and inspiration to her readers. BEIRUT Syrian peace talks due next week are looking increasingly moot as a string of recent battlefield victories by government troops have bolstered President Bashar Assads hand and plunged the rebels into disarray. The governments advances add to the obstacles that have scuttled chances of halting at least anytime soon the five-year civil war that has killed a quarter of a million people, displaced half the country and enabled the radical Islamic State group to seize a third of Syrias territory. A proxy war on the ground between regional rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia, disorganization among the rebels after a top commander and several other local leaders were killed, rigid and disparate U.S. and Russian positions regarding Assads future, and a spat over which groups will be invited to the negotiating table have all added to the conflagration. I dont think we should expect any major results, said Fawaz Gerges, professor of Middle Eastern politics at the London School of Economics. Assad really believes that time is on his side, that he is winning, that the opposition is in tatters. The Jan. 25 talks in Geneva are meant to start a political process to end the conflict that started in 2011 as a largely peaceful uprising against Assads rule but escalated into an all-out war after a harsh state crackdown. The plan calls for cease-fires in parallel to the talks, a new constitution and elections in a year and a half. On Monday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged countries supporting opposing sides in the Syrian conflict to redouble efforts to reach agreement on a list of opposition groups that are to be invited to the talks. U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said the United Nations is focusing on starting the talks on Jan. 25, but he said it cant send out invitations until the key countries agree on a list of opposition invitees. He hinted the talks could be delayed, telling reporters they would be notified as soon as we can if there is any slippage in the date. The fighting in Syria intensified since Russia intervened militarily with airstrikes last September, ostensibly to target Islamic State militants and other extremists. But the airstrikes helped Assad push back rebels on several fronts and capture dozens of villages in the north and west. In November, government troops broke a three-year siege of the Kweiras air base in the northern province of Aleppo, and in December they captured another air base, Marj al-Sultan, in an opposition stronghold near the capital, Damascus. Allied fighters from the Lebanons Shiite Hezbollah group, as well as Iranian military advisers and pro-government militias, have helped the army take several areas in and around Latakia province, the heartland of Assads minority Alawite sect, which dominates the military and government. The latest victory came last week with the capture of the town of Salma, one of the most significant government advances since the Russian air campaign began. Overlooking the coast, it is only seven miles from the border with Turkey, a key supporter of rebels in the area. The Syrian army has shifted from a defensive mode to offense, said Gerges. Before the Russian intervention the army was bleeding, it was desperately trying to maintain its position, but now it has achieved major tactical gains on many fronts. This does not bode well for the Geneva talks, as neither side will be interested in making compromises while the front lines are in a state of flux, Gerges added. Damascus officials have indicated lately that Syrias future will be decided on the battlefield, and have repeatedly said the rebels whom they refer to as terrorists should not expect to gain anything from the talks that they could not achieve on the ground. Meanwhile, relations have been deteriorating between the two main players backing opposite sides Saudi Arabia and Iran. The kingdoms execution earlier this month of a Shiite cleric who had criticized the ruling family brought a wave of recriminations from Tehran. Protesters attacked Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran, prompting Riyadh to cut diplomatic ties. That escalation has undermined hopes that arose at the United Nations in December, when a resolution established a new road map set to begin with the Geneva talks. The Saudis and the Iranians are already facing off in Yemen, where the kingdom is fighting Shiite rebels who are supported by Tehran. Riyadh is highly skeptical of the nuclear deal with Iran and wary of the billions of dollars that will fill Tehrans coffers now that international sanctions have been lifted. The Saudis are in a very confrontational mood, and thats not just with regard to Syria but also in Yemen, said Shadi Hamid, senior fellow at the Brookings Institutions Center for Middle East Policy. While Syrian opposition factions outside the country say they hope to see some confidence-building measures by Assad before the Geneva talks, dozens of insurgent groups within Syria said last week they wouldnt attend at all unless humanitarian access was granted to areas under siege and prisoners were released. The regime is trying to achieve as much as possible on the ground before the peace talks, which will be hollow, said Zakaria Ahmad, a spokesman for a moderate rebel faction operating near the Turkish border. It remains unclear which rebel groups will be invited to join the talks. Russia and Syria want to bar many moderate Islamic groups which are backed by the Saudis, who will insist on giving them a place at the table. Meanwhile, top international players the United States and Russia disagree on the basic issue of whether Assad should be allowed to stay on and run in presidential elections or if he should step down as part of the transition. The Saudis and much of the West are adamant that he should leave, while Iran and Russia say his fate should be decided in elections. As long as the basic question of Assads future is not resolved there will be no elections its the central issue, said Rami Khouri of the American University of Beiruts Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs. The IRS called, threatening you with arrest unless you immediately pay the taxes you owe. You left a check for the electric company in your mailbox for the letter carrier to take, but your bill never gets paid and someone else gets the money. These are just a couple examples of scams discussed during the Elder Abuse Scams Panel held at Rianda House Senior Activity Center in St. Helena recently. The panel, although geared toward the senior population, provided information pertinent to everyone with an identity to protect. As a consumer its important for you to do your homework, said Jane Hinshaw, an investigator with the Napa County District Attorneys Office. Hinshaw receives calls about different scams at least every other day, she said during the discussion. There have been a few success stories where victims have gotten their money back, but that isnt the norm. Thats why its important for people to be careful with their information, she said. There are a few common types of scams, many of which happen over the phone or through the internet. (The IRS, by the way, won't call you to collect, Hinshaw said.) Hinshaw explained that scammers are interested in collecting information about your identity and your bank account. These professional callers may sound legitimate over the phone, but many of them will use what you say against you. Be careful not to give callers that you dont know information about you or your family inadvertently, she said. A common scam is for someone to call claiming to be a family member trapped in another country and needing financial assistance immediately. The caller will try to make the recipient of the call feel that the situation is dire. And since its an emergency, Hinshaw said, youll respond more quickly. She calls these interactions high pressure calls. Once you feel this pressure, she said, its a sure sign to walk away. Its not an emergency unless someone is bleeding, she said. If you fall for one of these scams or give any information over the phone, it is likely that youre information will be shared and you will be targeted again, Hinshaw said. The same thing can happen with over-the-phone giving. If a charity solicits for money over the phone, Hinshaw said to ask them to send information through the mail. If they are legitimate, they should be happy to comply. Public services, like police and fire departments, wont raise money over the phone, either, she said, so dont fall for it. Hinshaw also warned people in attendance to be careful about sending personal information through emails. A bank will never ask you to send your Social Security number through an email, she asserted. Craigslist has perpetuated a couple of different scams, Hinshaw said. One is a check scams someone will ask you to cash their check for them, promising you a portion of the money for your trouble. The victim will end up giving money or another check to the scammer, and then the original check bounces. Hinshaw suggested not meeting anyone alone from Craigslist sometimes this is a scam, she said. A person may be meeting you in order to sell you something, but instead they rob you. Or, someone on Craigslist may advertise a nice item for sale, but when you get there it is substantially less valuable than suggested. And never pay cash up front, Hinshaw said. That includes contractors, too. Hinshaw said that contractors in California are only allowed to ask for 10 percent up front. They should also be registered as a contractor through the state something you should check on before you make any payments. You need to be very, very careful and know your rights, Hinshaw said. Sign up for the Do Not Call list, monitor your credit, always empty your mailbox (and drop checks off to the post office or a post office box), and check the credentials of those in your home whether theyre contractors or caregivers, she said. Napa County has a new caregiver ordinance that may help reduce scams, especially against seniors. By making sure your caregiver, or a family members caregiver, has a permit, you can make sure that people with criminal histories arent being invited into your home, Hinshaw said. The permit process, which includes a background check, will help ensure that you dont hire someone who is likely to steal you blind, she said. The elderly are so vulnerable, said Catherine Singels of Calistoga. Singels said that the seniors at Rancho de Calistoga, where she lives, would definitely benefit from a discussion on scams. Recently, she said that some of the cars at the mobile home park have been robbed. From her vehicle they took a copy of her registration, she said. Hinshaw said that you should never leave your car unlocked or leave valuables, even documents, in it. She also explained that seniors are sometimes more vulnerable due to their age. At some point, our brain stops recognizing deception, she said. There will be a discussion on preventing elder abuse and scams held during the Lunch and Learn on Wednesday, Jan. 20, from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the Calistoga Community Center, 1307 Washington St. If you suspect youve been a victim of a scam, file a consumer complaint at CountyOfNapa.org/da and report it to the Federal Trade Commission at ftc.gov/complaint. To register for the Do Not Call list, visit DoNotCall.gov. At Maggie Austin Cake, there is no such thing as instant gratification. Cake artist Maggie Austin LaBaugh spends months designing the elaborate wedding centerpieces that have earned her worldwide fame. It takes several more months to craft the delicate decorations - ruffles, botanicals, animals, anything that crosses her or her clients' imaginations. There are sugar flowers to form, rice paper to paint. She sculpts models to create custom silicone molds used to shape fondant. And that's all long before the actual wedding. As the day approaches, LaBaugh and her sister and business partner, Jessica Rapier, will jet to the reception site with plans to stay as long as a week, if necessary. Ideally, everything will arrive intact and fit for display, but if not, they have the time and materials to rebuild or tweak, even if it means re-coloring the sugar flowers to ensure an exact match with the fresh ones provided by the florist. After everything has been confirmed perfect, "we make a graceful exit before anyone arrives," LaBaugh said. The effort doesn't come cheap. Maggie Austin Cake, now approaching six years old, has an $8,000 minimum. Most of its international commissions - from Tokyo, Saudi Arabia, Australia - are in the tens of thousands of dollars. LaBaugh's breathtaking creations have catapulted the petite former ballet dancer into the orbit of royalty, both inherited (no, they don't "bake and tell") and Hollywood. (She made the cake for Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively's wedding, though she didn't know it at the time. Another client: Nationals' first baseman Ryan Zimmerman.) Still, despite all her success, or perhaps because of it, she felt something was missing. So when a local restaurateur asked her the question "What do you want?" LaBaugh immediately knew the answer: She wanted to bake things you don't have to be royalty to afford. --- Even before a foot injury derailed LaBaugh's dance career and led to her transformation into a couture cake artist, the New England-born-and-raised 35-year-old had been baking almost her entire life. "She would get the stool and stand next to me at the counter," recalled her father, Ross LaBaugh, who recently moved to Alexandria, Va., to be closer to his two daughters. An avid baker, he was famous for never repeating, let alone following, recipes - a stark contrast to the girls' mother, Mary McInnes, who lives in New Hampshire. As it turned out, little Maggie grew up to inherit both of their approaches, not to mention some recipes, all of which, put together, would convince Michael Babin that she was the right person to take over as culinary director of his beloved Buzz Bakery. (Her mom's apple bread is, in fact, on the menu at Buzz.) LaBaugh and Babin, founder and owner of Buzz parent company Neighborhood Restaurant Group, had been introduced by mutual friends. Sometime around the middle of 2014, LaBaugh invited Babin over for lunch at the now-closed studio in Old Town Alexandria that doubled as the home she shared with her husband, Robert Lusk. For dessert she served the restaurateur her "signature" rum cake. "He was hooked," LaBaugh said. "It's like the perfect model of a rum cake," Babin said, and while it might not have directly resulted in the eventual appointment of LaBaugh as Buzz's culinary director, the dessert "was definitely an eye-opener." Neither had gone into the meal thinking it would result in anything beyond possible referrals from NRG to the cake business. Even though former executive pastry chef Tiffany MacIsaac had left the group that year, "things were in a pretty good place" at Buzz, Babin said. "The team that she had created was still there and doing the same work they had been doing before." "Until I met Maggie, the thought of redoing Buzz . . . wasn't in my head," he said. "I wasn't expecting to find out that she was just as interested in the more everyday cakes and sweet things. That was interesting." At the same time, LaBaugh and Babin agreed that they wanted to transform Buzz into something "just a touch more refined and grown up," she said. After almost a year in development, the new Buzz Bakeshop debuted this past fall in both locations - its original Alexandria storefront, newly renovated, and its Arlington shop - marrying the kind of artistry and care LaBaugh's cakes are known for with the muffins, cookies, scones, brownies and cupcakes expected at a neighborhood bakery. --- Ironically, it was the increasingly demanding artistry of Maggie Austin Cake that helped pave the way for the Buzz opportunity. The demand for the time-consuming cakes had gotten so high that LaBaugh either needed to hire a full-time staff or limit the number of cakes she took on. She and Rapier, who now holds the title of managing director at Buzz, decided in favor of the latter. Maggie Austin Cake now makes only a handful of cakes a year; LaBaugh said she had no interest in streamlining her designs, some of the secrets of which will be shared in an instructional cake decorating book set for publication in 2017. But streamlining was key at Buzz. The trick was to balance the precision and attention to detail that are trademarks of LaBaugh's personality (and cakes) with the ability to scale up production of her recipes. Joli Ridenour, a former Maggie Austin Cake intern who joined Buzz as production manager, said she and LaBaugh spent about nine months in initial recipe testing. "It was like America's Test Kitchen over there," said Ross LaBaugh, referring to the famously thorough producer of cookbooks, magazines and public television shows. The food had to be delicious but also "as foolproof as possible," explained Ridenour, since neither she nor LaBaugh would be in complete control of the process. Other people would have to be able to follow their recipes and designs. "It's tough, because I'm a super-controlling person," LaBaugh said. Attractive flourishes are common in Buzz's display case, though. Gold-dusted chocolate bees rest atop some cupcakes as a nod to the Buzz name. Macaroons are shaped into Egypt-worthy pyramids, and cookies impeccably decorated with fondant, glitter and icing are almost too pretty to eat - except for the fact that they taste so much better than the cardboard commercial sugar cookies we're used to. Even though LaBaugh won't have her hand on every baked good to come out of the Buzz kitchen, each recipe is a little piece of her. "It's sort of a scary thing to step off that cliff and say, 'This is my brownie. This is the best that we have to offer,' " LaBaugh said. And NRG is taking pains to make sure Buzz's new identity is closely tied to its culinary director. She features prominently on the bakery's redesigned website and on a placard placed front and center in the shop - the kind of attention that still makes LaBaugh uncomfortable, despite the fact that she's been featured in magazines, books and websites the world over. "I still tend to hang out in the back of the kitchen," LaBaugh said. That sentiment makes perfect sense to her father and is one reason the sisters complement each other so well, with the somewhat reticent LaBaugh perfectly content to get lost in the artistry while the more outgoing Rapier handles inquiries and makes sure everything gets done. Even when the two were studying dance - Rapier has a background in modern dance - they took different approaches. "Jess was more performance-based, and Maggie was more technique-based," Ross LaBaugh said "What that really means is, for Maggie, it was never really about the performance. It was about mastery." Still, even Maggie LaBaugh will admit that it's immensely satisfying to see customers enjoying her creations at the shop - the kind of instant gratification that rarely happens at a client wedding. --- When NRG first announced LaBaugh's hiring at Buzz, she knew that one of the immediate questions would be, "Are you going to be doing wedding cakes?" Not quite, but there will be two ways Buzz customers can get their hands on a Maggie Austin-designed cake. For grab-and-go purchases, Buzz will sell a variety of home-style cakes (starting at $50 for an 8-inch cake) with a rustic buttercream finish in flavors such as red velvet, and banana with chocolate and peanut butter frosting. On the more elaborate end, customers will have no doubt about who's the creative force behind the eye-catching Celebration Cakes now available for special order. The line - starting at $60 for an 8-inch cake - is divided into four categories: "Candy Shop," "Cookie Bouquet," "Kid at Heart" and "Sprinkles!" The Ice Cream Cone cake features pink frosting adorned with candy confetti and a cascade of green-tinted white chocolate ganache (the colors can be customized), capped by an upside-down cone filled with a scoop of frosting. The Cookies and Cream cake is coated in a crushed cookie frosting under another artfully applied cascade of chocolate, crowned by a few Oreos and a glass of white chocolate ganache "milk" complete with straw. Playful but sophisticated, a fitting representation of the best-of-both-worlds approach LaBaugh is bringing to Buzz. With the wedding cake business, "I was really missing that reason why bakers bake," LaBaugh said, "and that's to give people good food on a more grand scale." It was a startling announcement: As of Dec. 1, 2015, the Brewers Association had counted 4,144 breweries in the United States, the most ever operating simultaneously in the history of the country. According to historians, the previous high-water mark of 4,131 was set in 1873. The new number includes giant Budweiser, artisan Dogfish Head and your neighborhood brewpub. Although beer industry observers have known this day was coming, the pace of growth was explosive: At the end of 2011, there were 2,033 breweries, or fewer than half as many as now. In 2005, there were only 1,447. And 25 years ago? The Brewers Association, a trade group for small and independent breweries, logged a mere 284 in 1990. So this is a golden age for beer lovers. It is easier than ever to find a great IPA (the most popular craft beer style in America), stout or session ale at a bar or liquor store. Previously ignored styles such as gose and Berliner weisse have become trendy, while brewers have a free hand to experiment with Belgian IPAs or saisons packed with unusual herbs. On the other hand, the expanding marketat least two breweries open every dayhas created a new set of problems for brewers. New arrivals, riding the craft beer wave, are finding it difficult to stand out. And its not as if bars have doubled the number of their taps in the past five years. So not only do the new breweries need to squeeze past their rivals even to make it in front of consumers, but they might need to convince bars that theyre more deserving of a chance than better-known beers from Lagunitas or Great Lakes. Graham MacDonald, the co-founder of Washingtons new Handsome Beer, estimates that his beers have been sold at around 140 bars, restaurants and stores in the District and Maryland since last fall. Even so, he describes the process of getting into those establishments as a bit of a challenge. Theres been a huge influx of breweries whove come to market in the last year, he says. Only two or three years ago . . . it was easy to go in and say, Heres a new IPA, heres a new pale ale, heres a new stout. But now its not just the other new guys who are making the same thing; its all the other established breweries. The sentiment is the same on the other side of the bar. Picking the draft list has become exponentially harder than it was two or three years ago, says Jace Gonnerman, beer director for the Districts Meridian Pint, Brookland Pint and Smoke and Barrel. You have to balance styles, but how many spots do I have for national breweries? What local breweries do I want to focus on? Every time a local brewery opens making really, really high-quality beer, it pushes a national brewery off. We keep a good mix of national breweries on, because people are looking for that. But you have to say no to people way more than you say yes. Even when they are given a chance, some small brewers have expressed frustration with the way beer bars order products. Instead of buying three kegs of a new beer and running through them all, as it might have done when local beers were a novelty, a bar tends to buy a keg and, once its empty, fill the draft line with a competitors product, and then another one, and so on, before rotating back to the first brewerys beer weeks or months later. Dave Delaplaine of Roofers Union in Adams Morgan, which regularly swaps beers on and off 16 of its 22 draft lines, defends the practice. Thats what the culture of the beer world is: In order to have really fun beers, these crazy one-offs, you have to change a lot, he says. Breweries are approaching it as an art and want to try new things. Id take that any day: Thats what got people to try their beer in the first place. When brewer Jason zumBrunnen and his partners began planning Ratio Beerworks in Denvers River North district, they knew what they were up against. I think weve had 10 breweries open in the neighborhood since 2010, zumBrunnen says. Colorado is the forefront of craft beer in general. Making great beer is just the barrier to entry. Five years before us, opening a brewery was a very cool thing to do. The difference now is the amount of brands. Theres a finite number of tap handles at Falling Rock or Euclid Hall, two Denver beer bars known for outstanding craft selections. Ratios business plan didnt rely on getting beer bars to put their French-style saison and Scotch ale on tap. Instead, it called for 90 percent of all sales to take place onsite. The brewery built a modern-industrial taproom that encouraged lingering, and it made deals with local music promoters to host acoustic performances and meet-and-greets with bands. For outside the brewery, Ratio made arrangements with a handful of modern restaurants and beer bars, not necessarily the fastest-moving accounts, zumBrunnen says, but establishing the kinds of place we wanted to be in, so that customers at those places think, Oh, Ive heard of them, Ill go check out the taproom. RAR Brewing, which opened as a brewpub in Cambridge, Maryland, in the summer of 2013, took the opposite approach. It began distributing its beers around the Eastern Shore and eventually in the District and Baltimore last fall, and the citrusy Nanticoke Nectar IPA became a hit. Nectar sold so well that (bars) believe in us, says co-founder Chris Brohawn, and that gets our foot in the door when theyre trying to get bars to carry a saison or a seasonal beer. About 85 percent of the beer RAR makes leaves the premises. Still, with an increasing number of local breweries fighting for the same oxygen, Brohawn knows buzz can be fleeting. This year, RAR plans to stay in the spotlight by releasing limited-edition beers in cans at its brewpub monthly, if not bi-weekly, Brohawn says. RAR has experimented with placing local radio and print ads, but he says the social-media buzz surrounding a beer release increases the word-of-mouth tenfold. Many in the beer industry pin their hopes for small breweries on localization: the idea that consumers would rather drink beers made down the road than across the country. Lary Hoffman, who co-owns Galaxy Hut in Arlington and Spacebar in Falls Church with his wife, Erica, prefers to stock most of the taps with Virginia breweries, such as Blue Mountain, Champion and Three Notchd. You can get any style of beer locally now, and the quality is on par with the best beer in the world, so why not seek out the regional option? he asks. A handful of national brands, including Bells and Avery, show up on the 28 taps at Galaxy Hut and the 24 at Spacebar, but theyre the exception. Customers would be angry if our draft lineup looked like a Safeway shelf, Hoffman says. In national surveys conducted by the Brewers Association, 67 percent of craft beer drinkers said it was important to them that their beer be locally made, while 61 percent said it was important that the brewery was independent. Meanwhile, the craft category is growing faster than the total beer market, and in 2014 reached a double-digit (11 percent) share of the marketplace by volume. Those trends arent lost on Terry Haley, vice president for marketing at World of Beer, which has 77 craft-focused locations along the Eastern Seaboard and throughout the South. Haley says his company tries to make sure local and craft regional beers are well represented among the roughly 50 taps found at each tavern, even though theres definitely a point of emphasis to have what we call craft beers across the major styles: Stone, Lagunitas; here in Tampa, Cigar Citys Jai Alai (IPA). You have to have some of these standbys. Of the 50 drafts at World of Beer in Arlington last week, 12 were from the DMV. They included 3 Stars, Parkway, Oliver and Escutcheon, as well as the more widely distributed Devils Backbone and Flying Dog. Other World of Beer locations had a similar ratio: 14 of 46 drafts in Atlanta came from Georgia; Louisvilles 50 taps included 11 Kentucky or Indiana beers. Brewers Association economist Bart Watson called the number of brewery openings pretty incredible, but he points out that America isnt exactly saturated with beer makers: In a 2014 article, he noted that the United States has fewer breweries per capita than the United Kingdom, Germany or Latvia. Last summer, after the number of breweries hit 4,000, Watson calculated that there are also nearly 1,000 cities with a population of more than 10,000 that dont have a local brewery yet, and numerous neighborhoods in larger cities without a local brewpub or taproom. Other markets are hyper-competitive. Mike Sardina, president of the San Diego Brewers Guild, says that while there are at least 100 breweries in the county, there are also plenty of bars that will give a shot to newcomers. But the beer has to be killer from a quality perspective, and the angle has to be that its not just another pale ale, he says. These bars support San Diego craft beer to a degree that theyll bring in any new beer, but if its not up to par, its tough to get a second chance. That law-of-the-jungle competitiveness will guide whether or not new breweries make it, says Scot Blair, owner of San Diegos Hamiltons Tavern, a fixture on national Best Beer Bar lists, and the Monkey Paw and South Park breweries, both of which have been honored at the Great American Beer Festival. Local doesnt mean better, he says. The emphasis has to be on making good beer. We have maybe 110 breweries in San Diego. We were better when we had less breweries, because we were focused more on quality. Its like real estate. Everybody jumps on when its a bubble. ST. HELENA The IRS called, threatening you with arrest unless you immediately pay the taxes you owe. You left a check for the electric company in your mailbox for the letter carrier to take, but your bill never gets paid and someone else gets the money. These are just a couple examples of scams discussed during the Elder Abuse Scams Panel held at Rianda House Senior Activity Center in St. Helena on Tuesday. The panel, although geared toward seniors, provided information pertinent to everyone with an identity to protect. As a consumer, its important for you to do your homework, said Jane Hinshaw, an investigator with the Napa County District Attorneys Office. Hinshaw receives calls about different scams at least every other day, she said during the discussion. There have been a few success stories where victims have gotten their money back, but that isnt the norm. Thats why its important for people to be careful with their information, she said. There are a few common types of scams, many of which happen over the phone or through the Internet. (The IRS, by the way, wont call you to collect, Hinshaw said.) Hinshaw explained that scammers are interested in collecting information about your identity and your bank account. These professional callers may sound legitimate over the phone, but many of them will use what you say against you. Be careful not to give callers that you dont know information about you or your family inadvertently, she said. A common scam is for someone to call claiming to be a family member trapped in another country and needing financial assistance immediately. The caller will try to make the recipient of the call feel that the situation is dire. And since its an emergency, Hinshaw said, youll respond more quickly. She calls these interactions high-pressure calls. If you feel this pressure, she said, its a sure sign to walk away. Its not an emergency unless someone is bleeding, she said. If you fall for one of these scams or give any information over the phone, it is likely that your information will be shared and you will be targeted again, Hinshaw said. The same thing can happen with over-the-phone giving. If a charity solicits for money over the phone, Hinshaw said to ask them to send information through the mail. If they are legitimate, they should be happy to comply. Public services, like police and fire departments, wont raise money over the phone, she said, so dont fall for it. Hinshaw also warned people in attendance to be careful about sending personal information through emails. A bank will never ask you to send your Social Security number through an email, she asserted. She also said people have used Craigslist to perpetuate a couple of different scams. One is a check scam someone will ask you to cash their check for them, promising you a portion of the money for your trouble. The victim will end up giving money or another check to the scammer, and then the original check bounces. Hinshaw suggested not meeting anyone from Craigslist alone sometimes this is a scam, she said. A person may be meeting you in order to sell you something, but instead they rob you. Or, someone on Craigslist may advertise a nice item for sale, but when you get there it is substantially less valuable than suggested. And never pay cash up front, Hinshaw said. That includes contractors. Hinshaw said that contractors in California are allowed to ask for only 10 percent up front. They should also be registered as a contractor through the state something you should check on before you make any payments. You need to be very, very careful and know your rights, Hinshaw said. Sign up for the Do Not Call list, monitor your credit, always empty your mailbox (and drop checks off at the post office or a post office box), and check the credentials of those in your home whether theyre contractors or caregivers, she said. Napa County has a new caregiver ordinance that may help reduce scams, especially against seniors. By making sure your caregiver, or a family members caregiver, has a permit, you can make sure that people with criminal histories arent being invited into your home, Hinshaw said. The permit process, which includes a background check, will help ensure that you dont hire someone who is likely to steal you blind, she said. The elderly are so vulnerable, said Catherine Singels of Calistoga. Singels said that the seniors at Rancho de Calistoga, where she lives, would definitely benefit from a discussion on scams. Recently, she said that some of the cars at the mobile home park have been burglarized. They took a copy of her registration from her vehicle. Hinshaw said that you should never leave your car unlocked or leave valuables, even documents, in it. She also explained that seniors are sometimes more vulnerable due to their age. At some point, our brain stops recognizing deception, she said. WASHINGTON - The number of violent crimes committed across the country was up in the first half of 2015 compared with the same period a year earlier, with increases seen across the country and spanning different types of crimes, federal authorities said Tuesday. The numbers of murders, rapes, assaults and robberies were all up over the first six months of 2015. Overall violent crime was up 1.7 percent, an increase that followed two consecutive years of declines, according to the FBI. These figures come after a year that saw murder rates go up in cities nationwide, sparking a series of tense media reports. The numbers are among the preliminary figures released by the FBI as part of its Uniform Crime Reporting program, a national storehouse relying on the voluntary participation of more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies. The numbers released Tuesday came from more than 12,000 agencies submitting comparable data for the first six months of 2014 and 2015. Between January and June 2015, the number of murders was up 6.2 percent, with the biggest jumps seen in the country's smallest and largest areas. Murders were up 17 percent in areas with fewer than 10,000 residents, while murders were up 12.4 percent in places with between half a million and a million residents and up 10.8 percent in places with more than 1 million residents. The Census Bureau has said that small places -- incorporated areas with fewer than 10,000 people -- account for about 9.1 percent of the total U.S. population. Most local law enforcement agencies represent smaller areas, even though they combine to employ fewer officers than larger areas, Justice Department data shows. Seven out of 10 local law enforcement agencies serve areas with fewer than 10,000 residents, employing about an eighth of all full-time local police officers. By comparison, only 3 percent of local police departments serve populations of at least 100,000 people, and they employ about half of local police officers. The FBI found that violent crime increased in most regions of the country -- with one notable exception. It actually fell by 3.2 percent in the Northeast, even as it ticked up by 5.6 percent in the West, 1.6 percent in the South and 1.4 percent in the Midwest. Rapes were up using the FBI's newer definition (which includes more forms of sexual assault) as well as going by the older definition, while aggravated assaults and robberies both ticked up. Property crimes including burglaries and larcenies fell over the first half of last year, with an increase in only one category: Car thefts, which were up 1 percent. The FBI had said last fall that violent crime fell in 2014, part of an overall drop in violent crimes seen in recent years. Homicides and shootings were increasing last year in a number of major metropolitan areas, with dozens of big cities reporting upticks in both categories, according to the Major Cities Chiefs Association. While this comes after a lengthy period of falling crime rates, criminologists said it was not clear what was happening and counseled patience. The overall violent crime rate has fallen significantly over the last two decades, falling from 79.8 victimizations per 1,000 people in 1993 to 20.1 per 1,000 in 2014, according to Justice Department figures. Last October, the Pew Research Center released an analysis of death certificate data and said that gun homicide rates had dropped significantly since the early 1990s. In the country's biggest cities, the murder rate is expected to be higher in 2015 than 2014, even though the overall rate of murders remains relatively low, the Brennan Center for Justice, a law and policy institute in New York, concluded in a recent analysis. "Because the underlying rate of murders is already so low, a relatively small increase in the numbers can result in a large percentage increase," the report noted. Its authors added: "One year's increase does not necessarily portend a coming wave of violent crime." The number of murders increased significantly in Washington and Baltimore, with increases also seen from Denver to Chicago. The Brennan Center last month released updated figures and noted that there were declines in cities like Boston and Memphis. (It is worth noting here that a city's homicide count, which is often used as a measure of violence, is not a precise tool.) Still, Americans are usually pretty sure that crime is going up in the United States. Polls dating back a quarter of a century show that most Americans consistently think that crime is up, not down, across the country, even when crime is falling. Amidst the controversy over gun control, the dispute raging between the NRA and the Congress on the one hand and appalled citizens on the other -- that is to say, the rest of us -- a surefire solution has been staring us in the face. Suppose a significant number of citizens of color -- blacks and Latinos in every state -- were to apply for licenses to buy firearms. Suppose this were to happen in open-carry states like Texas and Arizona? Two things would happen: 1. the NRA would be in a tizzy. 2. the U.S. Congress overnight would become converts to vigorously applied waiting periods, limits on the number of guns owned, ammunition restrictions. There is precedent: In the 1960s, Huey Newton and the Black Panthers, fully and openly armed to the teeth, marched onto the floor of the state Assembly. Within weeks, the governor signed legislation closing down Californias liberal gun laws. Jay Greene St. Helena OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso Video footage shows Burkina Faso jihadies in fatal attack Video footage shot by The Associated Press shows three jihadis in the middle of the weekend attack on a cafe and hotel in Burkina Fasos capital that killed at least 30 people. The video comes as some victims asked new questions Tuesday about why it took so long for security forces to find and kill the three militants. One of the men is seen wearing a tunic and turban, carrying what appears to be a Kalashnikov around 8:45 p.m., a little over an hour after they first attacked the Cappuccino Cafe. On Tuesday, authorities in Burkina Faso acknowledged that security forces first tried to enter the hotel more than four hours after the attack began, only after French forces arrived from Mali. TUNIS, Tunisia Tunisia clashes over jobs lead to curfew in western city Tunisia declared a curfew in the western city after clashes between police and more than 1,000 young protesters demonstrating for jobs. The interior ministry says the clashes in Kasserine on Tuesday left 20 protesters injured as well as three police. Tensions have risen in Kasserine since Sunday when an unemployed youth killed himself by scaling an electricity transmission tower to protest his rejection for a government job. The self-immolation five years ago by another unemployed youth in the neighboring town of Sidi Bouzid set off a popular uprising that overthrew Tunisias longtime ruler Zine El Abine Ben Ali, and eventually gave rise to the Arab Spring uprisings across North Africa. PARIS Defense secretary: U.S. looking to coalition for more trainers for Iraq Defense Secretary Ash Carter says he wants coalition and other Arab countries to greatly increase the number of trainers they provide for Iraqi security forces and police and adds that that the U.S. will also look at boosting its numbers. Carter says the U.S. is open to doing more when there is an opportunity to make a difference. Yet he says that there is no reason why the U.S. should be doing all of the additional training. He adds that the 200-person special commando force in Iraq has not yet started operations. Carter spoke Tuesday to reporters as he traveled to Paris for a meeting with several defense ministers, most of them from Europe. The U.S. has more than 3,300 troops in Iraq. MOSCOW Gorbachev says Russia must step up economy efforts Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, is warning that Russia needs to increase efforts to find a solution to its ailing economy. Gorbachevs comments to the state news agency RIA Novosti on Tuesday came a day after the ruble hit an all-time low against the euro, as Russia struggles with a sharp decline in prices for oil, a key export. The ruble has declined about 60 percent against Western currencies over two years. Russian officials have suggested that the economic decline, which has also been driven by Western sanctions over the Ukraine conflict, can be an opportunity for the country to reorient the economy and make it less dependent on oil and gas. But Gorbachev said that so far no such program has been put together. BERLIN Number of complaints in Cologne attacks continues to grow German prosecutors say more than 800 complaints have now been filed in connection with assaults and robberies in Cologne on New Years Eve that investigators have linked largely to foreigners. About 521 complaints allege some kind of sexual assault, including three rapes. The overall number of complaints has grown from 766 on Monday to 809 on Tuesday. The attacks have stoked a fierce debate in Germany about how to integrate the almost 1.1 million asylum-seekers who arrived last year. German news agency dpa reported Tuesday that police are investigating 21 people from North African countries in connection with the Cologne attacks for robbery, theft and trafficking stolen goods. Eight suspects are currently in detention. One of them is accused of sexual assault for allegedly groping a woman. JERUSALEM Israel arrests 9 for price fixing trips to Nazi death camps Israeli police have arrested several people for involvement in price fixing high school trips to Nazi death camps in Poland. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said Tuesday that nine people were arrested and that police searched offices and confiscated equipment and receipts. Preserving the memory of the Holocaust has become a central tenet of Israeli identity. Students learn about the Holocaust from a young age and thousands of high school pupils make an annual journey to Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps in Europe in visits that some view as a rite of passage. Some 6 million Jews were systematically murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators in Europe during World War II. Tra Vigne was as full as ever on Monday, but for once nobody was there for its famous mozzarella al minuto. Instead, the contents of what was once a foodie mecca and the pinnacle of the Napa Valley restaurant scene were being auctioned off, plate by plate and oven by oven. Bidders ranged from professional dealers to restaurateurs to longtime Tra Vigne fans looking to take home a memento from their favorite restaurant. It was our go-to restaurant here, back when there was very little else around, said Roberta Sciandri of Napa, who attended the auction with her daughter, Rebecca Griffin. It was an iconic place, and now its gone. Its heartbreaking. We wanted to come and say goodbye. Tra Vigne closed Dec. 20 after its lease wasnt renewed. It will be replaced this year by a new restaurant, operated by Christopher Kostow and Nathaniel Dorn of The Restaurant at Meadowood, that will be centered on a celebratory and casual dining experience, according to Martina Kostow, director of communications for The Restaurant at Meadowood. The construction will focus on bringing the existing building up to (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliance fixing the roof, floors and deferred maintenance with very little operational changes to the current building, Kostow added. The goal is to ensure the structure is viable for many decades to come. Some of Tra Vignes core staff are moving to Cairdean Estate north of St. Helena, where a new restaurant is replacing The Farmer & The Fox. But Tra Vigne will always have sentimental value for people like Sciandri, who remembers bringing her family and some guests to the restaurant a month or two after it opened in 1987. We had a lovely lunch, Sciandri said. When she and her husband went outside for a few minutes as dessert time was approaching, her husband jokingly told their daughter Rebecca to just order one of everything. When they returned to their table, they found out she had taken what hed said literally and ordered the entire dessert menu. It turned out to be a brilliant move. Sciandris husband especially enjoyed the strawberries with balsamic vinegar, which he never would have ordered on his own. Ordering one of everything from Tra Vignes dessert menu became a family tradition. Back in the day we would come here at least 10 times a year, Sciandri said. More recently, not so much, because we have nice restaurants down in Napa and we dont have to drive up here. Sciandris daughter, Rebecca Griffin, said that even after she became an adult, she kept bringing friends to Tra Vigne for its addictable burrata. There are a lot of family memories here, she said. Darlene Sutherland of Vacaville didnt hear about Tra Vignes closure until she tried to book a reservation over the weekend. I came to see if I could get a piece of memorabilia from the really wonderful years that we came to eat here, she said. It was one of my favorite restaurants. Other people, like Cesar Montanez, attended the auction for practical reasons. Hes opening a new restaurant in Fairfield called the Slanted Tree Kitchen and Taproom, and he was looking for some good deals. Im looking for any general appliances furniture, kitchenware, he said before the auction. Were about to open, so this is a great opportunity to find some steals. Its a fun way to shop, too. You find little treasures you wont find at a general supply store. Sure enough, Montanez went home with a set of plates for 50 cents apiece, and paid just $120 for three sturdy wood tables with cast-iron bases. Auctioneer Ron Charyn auctioned off 397 lots in 5 hours, taking no breaks and striving to maintain the auctions momentum. About nine out of every 10 lots sold: a dime apiece for 200 white plates, $30 for a set of gnocchi boards, $600 for a red acrylic artwork by German artist Ralf Bohnenkamp, and $1,300 for an 8-foot-long granite table. Kitchen appliances fetched the highest prices, with the top bid going to a Traulsen two-door wine cooler, new and in perfect condition except for a small dent on the front, that sold for $4,000. Its one-door partner sold for $3,000, as did a 22-foot-by-9-foot walk-in freezer and a pasta machine with a ravioli maker and other accessories. A walk-in cooler went for $2,500, and a few ovens and a mixer sold in the $1,000-$1,250 range. Sometimes Charyn would try to cajole reluctant bidders. This costs $15,000 new, he said when a 60-gallon steam-jacketed kettle couldnt attract any bids. No, $18,000, one of his assistants called out. Despite their best efforts, the kettle went unsold. At other points Charyn would chastise people for trying to split the bid by bidding in smaller increments than he was calling out. Never try to negotiate with an auctioneer, he admonished one woman. For some of the more experienced bidders, a slight nod was all it took to place a bid. Are you bidding or scratching your head? Charyn asked one man. Dont scratch your head during an auction. Some of the most interesting lots had nothing to do with food, like the portable parquet dance floor that sold for $500 and the ping-pong table snapped up by Kerry Baldwin for $175. Baldwin said the table will be installed at his familys Silverado Orchards retirement home. But he was also bidding out of nostalgia, having worked at Tra Vigne while he attended Pacific Union College. Back then it was like the French Laundry is today, Baldwin recalled. Michael Chiarello was chef, and Napa Valley luminaries like the Mondavis and the Duckhorns were regulars. Baldwin was just bussing tables to earn some extra money, but most of his co-workers were starting careers in the restaurant industry, and many of them had jobs at other notable restaurants like Terra. Having lived a sheltered Seventh-day Adventist childhood, I learned so much from working there, said Baldwin, who took home some salad bowls, serving platters and a framed Tra Vigne poster. Baldwin also paid $500 for the yellow metal Cantinetta sign that hung outside the building Tra Vigne used for private parties. However, there were no takers for the much larger Tra Vigne sign that sits along Highway 29, even though Charyn went as low as $100. What would you do with it? Baldwin asked later. At 4:40 p.m. a set of four black rubber floor mats sold for $20. With that, the auction ended, and a St. Helena landmark passed into history. To reduced the cost of Governance in Lagos State, the State Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu has moved to stop the Pension of all past Governors ... Question -- What is the goal of this website? Why do we share different sources of information that sometimes conflicts or might even be considered disinformation? Answer -- The primary goal of Nesaranews is to help all people become better truth-seekers in a real-time boots-on-the-ground fashion. This is for the purpose of learning to think critically, discovering the truth from withinnot just believing things blindly because it came from an "authority" or credible source. Instead of telling you what the truth is, we share information from many sources so that you can discern it for yourself. We focus on teaching you the tools to become your own authority on the truth, gaining self-mastery, sovereignty, and freedom in the process. We want each of you to become your own leaders and masters of personal discernment, and as such, all information should be vetted, analyzed and discerned at a personal level. We also encourage you to discuss your thoughts in the comments section of this site to engage in a group discernment process. "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." Aristotle 11 Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance. Through promotion of free debate on our website, New Age Islam encourages people to rethink Islam. White House is puzzling over how to avoid meeting between Putin and Biden at G-20 summit Eduard Aghajanyan: Once again I remind that Armenia was deprived of opportunity to protect rights of people of Artsakh U.S. says that limiting Russian oil prices is not aimed at OPEC OSCE sends mission to Armenia to assess situation on Armenian-Azerbaijani border Jeff Bezos warns that U.S. economy may face recession Kiev says nearly 40% of Ukraine's energy infrastructure has been damaged Raisi: Iran will use all its capabilities and potential to end war in Ukraine Qatar gets first pandas in Middle East Armenian president delivers lecture at St. Kliment Ohridski University in Sofia More than half of Britons think Liz Truss should resign Bloomberg: Putin and Erdogan's cordial relationship arouses Western anger Dutch government invests up to 3.5 billion in military procurement Erdogan discusses latest developments in Ukraine with Zelenskyy School in Paris expels student from class for denying Armenian Genocide Germany would like to participate in EU observer mission to Armenia U.S. is considering plan to co-produce weapons with Taiwan Poland to buy K239 Chunmoo from South Korea Air defense system repels several missile attacks by Ukrainian troops at Kakhovskaya HPP Baku court does not definitively terminate criminal prosecution of Yunus spouses Liz Truss has no plans to resign CSTO countries agree on draft agreement on standardization of military equipment EU countries agree to sanction eight people and organizations over Iranian drones Congressman David Price meets with rector of Yerevan State University Chairman of Amsterdam City Court visits Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex in Yerevan ASPU supports process of unification of universities Deputy Chief of Police on new draft law: 'Citizen of Azerbaijan' is extremely relative notion Benny Gantz: Israel will not supply weapons to Ukraine Saudi Arabia lifts ban on Turkish soap operas Armenia lawyer arrested Remains discovered during renovation of Ministry of Culture building in Tbilisi are transferred to Armenian Pantheon Dollar goes up, euro falls in Armenia IRGC special forces conduct helicopter operations on third day of exercises on border with Azerbaijan MFA: France position on achieving Armenia-Azerbaijan peace is unchanged Foreign Minister: Iran will not allow blocking its communications with Armenia Kremlin: Russia does not intend to close borders amid introduction of martial law in four regions EU mission delegation visits some border communities of Armenias Gegharkunik Province (PHOTOS) Armenias Papikyan attends defense ministers assembly in India Brusov university rector: Armenia education minister offered me a high position in new university, I declined Putin imposes martial law in new territories of Russia Yerevan to host Eurasian Intergovernmental Council meeting Putin holds meeting of Security Council Armenia MOD spox: Azerbaijan still preventing search operations Iran announces retaliatory sanctions against EU Russian Defense Ministry reports on strike on military facilities in Ukraine Artsakh Foreign Minister receives Ruben Vardanyan Israel calls Australia's refusal to recognize Jerusalem as capital of Israel 'pathetic decision' Armenia to tighten penalties for overloading of trucks Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkey army elite units conduct demonstration military drills Luxembourg parliament speaker: Azerbaijan aggression is direct attack on Armenia sovereignty Russia Investigative Committee chief confirms theory of Crimean Bridge explosion accomplices Uruguay vice president: We express our solidarity with Armenian people GeoProMining's ZCMC has tripled tax payments to the state budget of Armenia Yerevan judge to be arrested Paul Krekorian unanimously elected as LA City Council President ThePrint: Armenia eyes procuring Akash missiles, loitering munitions from India Armenia MP to international colleagues: Azerbaijan intends to carry out new aggression Ukraine military hits Energodar city hall Armenia PM: We hope Azerbaijan will cooperate in clarifying destiny of our compatriots Newspaper: Where is 1991 declaration by which Armenia, Azerbaijan once recognized each other's territorial integrity? Azerbaijan fires at Armenia positions at midnight PACE lawmakers call for Azerbaijan militarys immediate withdrawal from Armenia Australia reverses decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel capital Armenia MPs meet with European Parliament colleagues, reflect on recent Azerbaijan attack Nouriel Roubini: In some sense, World War III has already started EU considers paying Elon Musk to provide Starlink Internet to Ukraine U.S. will continue to take practical, aggressive steps to make it difficult for Iran to sell drones to Russia German Prosecutor's Office searches Deutsche Bank headquarters Head of Germany's national cybersecurity agency fired amid reports of ties to Russia Uruguayan Chamber of Deputies condemns Azerbaijan's invasion of Armenian territory Spanish minister: EU is far from solution to energy crisis Fake Azerbaijani names of Syunik province communities removed from Google Maps and Google Earth apps Artsakh President presents details of meetings held in Yerevan to MPs Lavrov: Russia sees no point in maintaining its previous presence in Western countries UAE: OPEC+ decision has no political motive Opposition to David Price: Right to self-determination is the right of people of Artsakh to survive Iran is ready to negotiate with Ukraine to resolve ambiguities Deputy Speaker of Armenian National Assembly: 47 PACE deputies made written statement condemning Baku's aggression Lapid will discuss Kiev request for Israeli systems with Kuleba Morawiecki: Poland is not afraid of losing EU funds Armenian President meets with Sofia Mayor Speaker of Armenian National Assembly to Norway FM: Withdrawal of Azerbaijani Armed Forces from Armenia is a priority Nikol Pashinyan receives delegation headed by Norwegian Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt Iran responds to Borrell's garden and jungle statement: EU needs to accept realities or it will continue to wither Pashinyan: No one can accuse Armenia of evading its obligations Congressman: U.S. was not active in terms of security in Armenia, but now situation is changing Indian defense company Solar group says it has received orders from Armenia for 'Pinaka' missiles Price: U.S. military aid to Azerbaijan will not be used for offensive purposes against Armenia Military expert assesses possibility of new hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan Russian Embassy: Armenians' attitude towards Russians who moved to Armenia remains very friendly Clarification by Price: What Could Armenian-American military cooperation look like? Armenian Defense Minister visits DEFEXPO exhibition in India President of Artsakh talks about results of discussions held in Armenia Borrell angers UAE with his comparison of world outside Europe to 'jungle' Public Council formed in Artsakh China Daily: Party's anti-graft efforts generate fruitful outcomes Price: We demand that Azerbaijan return to its initial positions Aghajanyan: This visit should be seen as another stage in dynamic development of Armenian-American relations Ukraine will officially ask Israel for transfer of air defense systems Head of National Assembly Commission: 2023 state budget turned out to be biggest in Armenia's history Turkey conducts test launch of its own ballistic missile over Black Sea Permanent Representative of the Republic of Armenia to the United Nations (UN), Ambassador Zohrab Mnatsakanyan on Tuesday delivered a statement at the Security Council Open Debate on Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict. In his statement Ambassador Mnatsakanyan stressed that Armenia shares the concern of the UN Secretary General about the disturbing challenges for the protection of civilians in conflict-affected areas, which remain persistent as ever. While the humanitarian aspects of affected populations are of high concern, basic physical security of civilians continues to be wracked. The persistently rising numbers of civilian casualties call for a resolute action. Ambassador Mnatsakanyan also emphasized that the question of accountability requires amplified consolidation of the Council in demonstrating a resolve against parties responsible for denying basic security or humanitarian relief to affected populations. The idea of enabling the UN peace operations with a mandate for a preventive, protective and tactical use of force to protect civilians under threat of physical violence needs to be given thorough consideration. The reputation of the Organisation is judged not by words of condemnation, but by deliverable protection. Strengthening the capacities of field missions, including those of the relevant regional organizations, remains an on-going priority. Last, but not least, protection of civilians in armed conflicts is closely tied to the prevention of mass atrocities, including the crime of genocide. A culture of assessing every crisis situation affecting civilian populations through the prism of massive crimes, including the crime of genocide, should be further cultivated within the Organization, - underscored Zohrab Mnatsakanyan. The Ambassador of Armenia referred to the recent situation in the region, stressing that Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh have been experiencing significant challenges to the security of its civilian populations as a result of the on-going disregard by Azerbaijan to respecting and upholding the 1994 cease-fire agreement. Increasingly, Azerbaijan continues to target civilians across the line of contact with Nagorno Karabakh and the border with Armenia. As a result of intensified cease-fire violations and massive shelling of populated areas with the unprecedented use of heavy artillery, considerable damage has been inflicted on the livelihoods of the bordering villages. In September 2015 three women have been killed by Azerbaijani fire. Armenia strongly deplores the purposeful acts of Azerbaijan to violate the cease-fire regime and damage the on-going peace process within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairmanship. Once again, Armenia urges Azerbaijan to heed the calls of the international community and agree without delay to establish an investigative mechanism into the cease-fire violations, and to withdraw snipers. By rejecting such mechanism, Azerbaijan bears full responsibility for the violations and the escalation of tensions. In conclusion, Ambassador Mnatsakanyan underlined that the on-going negotiations for the peaceful settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairmanship is a positive example of effective utilization of the capacity of regional organizations in conflict resolution. Armenia highly commends the support of the international community, of the United Nations and of the Secretary General rendered to the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairmanship in the peaceful resolution of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. He stressed that Azerbaijan should be denied the attempts to undermine the efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, or to engage in forum and mediation shopping. 14:07 This couldn't come at a worse time for Prime Minister Narendra Modi.As the Sensex gave up its Modi momentum and fell to 2014 levels yesterday, Modi and the BJP's credibility to lead India to achche din is at stake.The PM has always tom-tommed his humble 'chaiwalla' origins and used it to leverage the BJP as the right choice as against the family-run Congress and the 'privileged' Gandhis.Now, an RTI report threatens to downsize whatever little support remains of Modi. In 2014, a photograph of Modi sweeping the floors for a living went viral. The internet and his followers, who are popularly called Modi Bhakts, went on a mission to showcase his humble background. This black-and-white photo of Modi holding a broom and cleaning a floor was in fact used in the run up to the Lok Sabha polls as a part of the party's election campaign. While some did question the authenticity, no one could trace the origins and most left it at that. Except for an Ahmedabad-based activist, whose RTI has revealed that the image was photoshopped. See the original picture in the image. The RTI reply said, "It is stated while the information sought does not form part of records, it may be noted that the said photograph is morphed and the person in the photo is not Mr Narendra Modi." More ammo for the opposition. BANGALORE: Global instant messaging behemoth WhatsApp on Monday said it will waive its annual subscription fee over the next several weeks as it has not worked well. For many years, we have asked some people to pay a fee for using WhatsApp after their first year. As we have grown, we have found that this approach hasnt worked well, said WhatsApp in a blog post. Despite not being able to charge its hundreds of millions of users the annual fee, WhatsApp said it would not subject its users to advertisements. Naturally, people might wonder how we plan to keep WhatsApp running without subscription fees and if todays announcement means we are introducing third-party advertisements. The answer is no, said the WhatsApp blog post. Where then will WhatsApps revenue come from? Without clearly defining the revenue model, WhatsApp said it would test tools starting from 2016 which could replace text messages and phone calls mode of communication between people and businesses and organisations. We will test tools that allow you to use WhatsApp to communicate with businesses and organisations that you want to hear from. Promising zero third-party advertisement and spam, WhatsApp said, That could mean communicating with your bank about whether a recent transaction was fraudulent, or with an airline about a delayed flight. We all get these messages elsewhere today through text messages and phone calls. Reaching out to many WhatsApp users without a debit or credit card across countries is also an objective of the move. Many WhatsApp users dont have a debit or credit card number and they worried they would lose access to their friends and family after their first year, said the blogpost. Founded by Ukrainian immigrants to America Jan Koum and Brian Acton in 2009, WhatsApp got acquired by social media giant Facebook for $19 billion in 2014. Both Koum and Acton were former employees of technology company Yahoo. Read Also: 8 Ground Breaking Innovations of 2015 Most Encountered Marshmallow Setbacks Resolved SIU to celebrate Black History Month by Christi Mathis CARBONDALE, Ill. -- Southern Illinois University Carbondale will commemorate Black History Month with numerous special activities and presentations in February. Sites of African-American Memory is the theme of this years celebration and it begins with the Black History Month Kickoff at 6 p.m. on Feb. 1 in the Student Centers Old Man Lounge. Those attending will reflect on Hallowed Grounds: Sites of African-American Memory and learn more about Black History Month. Afterward, they can take in the movie Selma at 7 p.m. in the Student Center Auditorium. Author, journalist and lecturer Lawrence C. Ross Jr. will present the keynote address for the month, Racism on Campuses in the United States, at 7 p.m. on Feb. 8 in Morris Librarys John C. Guyon Auditorium. Ross is the author of several books, including The Divine Nine: The History of African American Fraternities and Sororities, Money Shot: The Wild Nights and Lonely Days inside the Black Porn Industry, Skin Game, and Blackballed: The Black and White Politics of Race on Americas Campuses, which is being released in February. The bestselling author is a double alumnus of UCLA with an undergraduate degree in American history and a masters in screenwriting. His writings have appeared in numerous national and regional publications and he has been featured on MSNBC, NPR, BBC and other media. Other highlights of Black History Month include the presentation The Black Mammy Monument: Site for Remembering and (Mis)Remembering the Slavery Past, by Tiffany Player, history instructor, at 5:30 p.m. on Feb. 3, and the movie Banished, at 5:30 p.m. on Feb. 4 at Morris Librarys John C. Guyon Auditorium. Banished tells the story of three American towns that forced their entire African American populations to move from the communities in the early 20th century and ponders if anything can be done to repair past racial injustices. Angela Aguayo, associate professor of cinema and photograph, is the director of 778 Bullets, a documentary about a 1970 shooting in Carbondale. The film will be shown at 5:30 p.m. on Feb. 23 in the Illinois Room at the Student Center. Throughout February, there will be poetry readings, plays, lectures, movies and a wide variety of special presentations. In addition, WSIU-TV will air special programs all month and there will be an exhibit, Women Pioneers and Trailblazers at Morris Library. All events are free and open to the public. For the complete schedule, or to learn more, visit the Center for Inclusive Excellence website at www.inclusiveexcellence.siu.edu/brc, or call 618/453-3740. After a landmark deal at last months United Nations climate change conference to curb greenhouse gas emissions, three UC Santa Cruz environmental studies professors who closely follow climate change offer thoughts on next steps in advance of a major climate conference at UCSC in February. Its all about implementation, said Sheldon Kamieniecki, dean of Social Sciences and professor of environmental studies. Immediate and long term solutions are needed, he said. We have moved from mitigation to adaptation. The precautionary principle needs to be invoked: what will happen if we dont adopt restrictions of greenhouse gases? Kamieniecki and other leading climate experts from across the country will discuss the climates future at the third annual climate science and policy conference next month, a two-day event co-sponsored by UCSCs Social Sciences and Physical and Biological Sciences divisions. Panels will address public health, geoengineering, and geopolitics. Accountability and human rights The moral question of climate change is a pressing concern for professor S. Ravi Rajan. Rajan, working with the Global Network for the Study of Environmental Human Rights, highlighted a crucial gap in the Paris deliberations by drafting a resolution that draws attention to the human rights implications of climate change. There is the planetary issue, but there is also a human rights component, Rajan said, asking who will pay the costs of the earths rising temperatures and how. Rajan, a board member of Greenpeace International, sees issues of migration, accountability, and human rights as measures that need to be addressed. He points to the case of environmental refugee Ioane Teitiota from the small pacific island of Kiribati who migrated to New Zealand because of the threat of rising sea levels. He predicts there will be more cases like Teitotas to come. Who will take these migrants in and what are the obligations of states to take them in? Rajan asked. People have to do the right thing. Rajan is deeply concerned about how countries are going to be held accountable to their commitments in the Paris Agreement. Innovate and experiment Environmental studies professor Daniel Press, who attended the Paris conference last month as part of the University of California delegation, said the time to innovate is now. We only just started to turn a rhetorical corner where people have stopped talking about climate changes catastrophic costs and are addressing its opportunities, Press said. . Press, who has spent more than 25 years exploring the environmental impact of climate change, is co-author of the UC report, Bending the curve: Ten scalable solutions for carbon neutrality and climate stability, set for release in the spring. There is enormous opportunity to innovate," Press said, now that consumers are making the switch to cleaner energies like solar, geothermal, and biofuel technologies. Reflecting on the Paris agreement, Press also shares Rajans concern about accountability. There needs to be a concerted effort to implement the agreements, he said. There needs to be measures in place that instill confidence that national commitments are being met. Press and Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a distinguished professor of climate sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego,recently publsihed an op-ed in the op-ed in the Los Angeles Times that described some of the practical steps that can happen immediately. Climate Science and Policy Conference 2016 Climate science policy and research will be addressed Feb. 26-27 at the third annual climate conference at UC Santa Cruz. The theme is Earth's Climate Future: Uncharted Territory." Keynote speakers will include Nobel prize winner, former U.S. Secretary of Energy, and now Stanford professor Steven Chu and Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist also at Stanford, where he investigates issues related to climate, carbon, and energy systems. The men, who were working in the construction industry here, were detained arrested under the Internal Security Act (ISA) last year. Among them some had considered waging armed jihad overseas but they were not planning any terrorist attacks in Singapore, reports The Daily Star. All 27 have had their work passes cancelled and 26 of them have since been repatriated to Bangladesh.(ANI) Under the bilateral deal signed between state-owned Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC) and AVIC International, the state-owned Chinese plane manufacturing company, Kathmandu is to purchase six aircraft from the company, Xinhua quoted Tourism and Civil Aviation Minister Ananda Prasad Pokharel as saying. Nepal has already purchased two aircraft MA60 and Y-12e. The remaining four passenger planes are to be received by the Nepal government soon. The government has already made payment for manufacturing the planes through the China Exim Bank, the minister said. Pokharel reaffirmed the commitments of the Nepalese government to purchase the Chinese planes under the agreement between the NAC and AVIC International signed on November 29, 2012. Pokharel said China's assistance for the construction of Pokhara Regional International Airport is one of the important aspect of bilateral cooperation in aviation sector. Chinese Ambassador Wu Chuntai said the Chinese leadership has taken the "good neighbourhood policy" focusing on sharing technology, experiences and making investment in neighbourhood. Wu said cooperation between the AVIC International and NAC was a good example of the Chinese policy towards Nepal. Nepal Airlines managing director Sugat Ratna Kansakar said the NAC has limited planes to fly both domestic and international flights so it decided to purchase the Chinese planes for domestic flights. He added that the NAC also plans to start flights to China's major cities, including Guangzhou, Shanghai and Kunming, in the near future as it only has a service to Hong Kong. The AVIC International vice-president Xu Bo said the company was ready to provide all necessary assistance to the Nepal Airlines Corporation for smooth operation of the aircraft. --Indo-Asian News Service py/vt ( 306 Words) 2016-01-20-20:17:35 (IANS) The city Police today arrested a burglar for robbing 450 gms gold ornaments from a house in the city. The accused Koli Srinivasa Rao (28), robbed the gold ornaments from the house belonging to one Madana Jyothi, a widow on January 7. Talking to mediaperson, DCP (Crime) T Ravi Kumar Murthy said that the accused was known to the victim for the last two decades. The police also said that on December 24, 2015 Jyothi performed marriage of her daughter and during that time Srinivasa Rao, being close to the family, was exposed to the jewellery at home.Srinivasa Rao who had run a lorry hire business in the past and suffered huge losses, hatched a plan to rob the jewellery to overcome the financial hurdles. As Jyothi has been living alone in the house and she used to call Srinivasa Rao for small help. Similary, on January 7, she called Srinivasa Rao to drop her at the RTC Complex, as she wanted to go her relatives house in Vizianagaram for medical treatment. While dropping Jyothi at the complex, the accused managed to take out the house keys from her bag. Later, he robbed the jewellery from the Jyothis home. Jyothi realised that keys were missing and called up Srinivasa Rao for help. However, he played a drama that he had got new keys done and opened the door. Jyothi, who was back to Vizag on January 13 realised that the gold ornaments were missing and lodged a complaint. The cops investigated the case and arrested Rao for robbing the gold jewellery and the cops also recovered all the stolen property from him.UNI BSR CJ RJ GC001 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0400-547270.Xml Jabalpur Divisional Commissioner Gulshan Bamra issued the order against Mr SC Paraste hitherto posted in Balaghat Districts Baihar. The disciplinary action is on the basis of a report, submitted by the Collector and an inspection by an inquiry team constituted by the Commissioner, an official statement said. According to a UNI report from Balaghat, the investigation found that the bureaucrat bypassed rules, while granting permission for logging in 4,273 cases thereby causing a loss of Rs 21.46 crore to the exchequer and in excess of Rs 100 crore to peasants.UNI Team-AC RJ GC2349 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0044-547220.Xml 1.3000 students enrolled in the university 2.According to Geo TV, one chemistry professor killed after being shot in head 3.Evacuation of campus currently on 4.Terrorists entered form the back-gate as the security at the front-gate was high 5.Two guards were injured at the gate 6.Extensive firing continues in the area and heavy contingents of elite force have been deployed, including aerial support given by Army choppers 7.Pashtun independence activist Bacha Khan Baba died on January 20, 1988. It is his death anniversary today 8.Helicopters called in to assist the operation 9.Panic stricken parents have gathered outside the University 10.Five persons, who suffered minor injuries, have been shifted to District Headquarters Hospital, Charsadda, for treatment 11.Army contingents have also arrived at the scene and firing is continuing 12.According to the Dawn, a rescued student claims that 60 to 70 students had been shot in the head by the attackers. The student added that the attack is reminiscent of the Army Public School Peshawar attack in December 16, 2014. 13. More than 50 injured, security forces say. Injured being taken to hospital, Geo Tv reports. 14.Nine injured at the hospital 15.Operation on inside and outside campus 16.No proper roads around university, only farms 17.At the time of attack, an event regarding death anniversary of Pashtun politician Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, known as Bacha Khan, was being attended by a large number of students inside the university 18.Media persons are not being allowed inside 19.Armed assailants scaled the university walls and opened fire 20.Multiple blasts were heard along with heavy gunfire (ANI) Reiterating the demand for sacking of Minister of State for Labour and Employment Bandaru Dattatreya and Hyderabad University Vice-Chancellor Appa Rao, the Congress Party on Wednesday backed writer Ashok Vajpeyi, who returned D. Litt honours conferred on him by the varsity as a mark of protest against the Dalit scholar's suicide. "Since the incident took place in Hyderabad University and that too due to the pressure on the VC by the HRD Ministry, he has returned his D. Litt. Writers and poets are free to express their thoughts. The BJP earlier used to say that 'award wapasi' was taking place due to the Bihar polls, but there are no polls going on at the moment. So, whom will they hold responsible?" Congress leader Shakeel Ahmed told ANI. "It is very clear that the BJP's student wing had troubled him (Rohit). It is only after pressure from Dattatreya and Smriti Irani's ministry that the Vice Chancellor took such a step. All the three: the VC, Dattratreya and Union HRD Minister are responsible for this. The demands that they should step down from their posts is valid," he added. Vajpeyi had earlier returned the Sahitya Akademi Award in protest against the murder of renowned writer M.M. Kalburgi. Rohith, a second-year research scholar of Science, Technology and Society Studies Department, and others were suspended from the hostel last year following allegations that they attacked Sushil Kumar after the screening of a controversial documentary 'Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai'. Earlier this month, five students were thrown out of the hostel after they accused the university authorities of denying them access to campus facilities, except their classrooms and workshops. The 28-year-old from Andhra Pradesh's Guntur district was found hanging at the hostel room of one of his friends around 7:30 p.m. on Sunday. (ANI) "This is a revenge attack against the Pakistan Army to refute its claims that they have eliminated Taliban. By these attacks, they want to convey the message that they are still active in the region and they can attack," Khajuria told ANI. "Most probably the attack has been planned by the Tehreek-i-Taliban, I hope they will claim the responsibility also," he added. Khajuria also condoled the death of innocent students. Condemning the attack, the former top cop hit out at Pakistan for supporting the terror outfits. Khajuria said the moot point here is that Pakistan has to take a call that there is no good or bad terrorist. "Any form of terrorism has to end. If you show your sympathy towards Jaish and Masood, this acts a morale booster for other terror outfits," he added. In Pakistan, heavily-armed terrorists today stormed the university in Pakistan's restive northwest Khyber- Pakhtunkhwa province and opened indiscriminate fire on students and teachers. As per latest reports, the security forces have neutralised the armed terrorists inside the campus. At least 21 people have been killed and over 30 others injured in the attack. Over 3,000 students were present inside the university to mark the death anniversary of Khudai Khidmatgar Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan alias Baacha Khan, who died on January 20, 1988. (ANI) Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Sitaram Yechury on Tuesday dubbed the Dalit scholar's suicide a political conspiracy by Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Smriti Irani, Minister of State for Labour Bandaru Dattatreya and Hyderabad University Vice Chancellor Appa Rao in tune with the ideology of the RSS. "It's a very clear-cut political conspiracy to change the echoes of research in our country, in tune with the ideology of the RSS which wants to convert Indian history only on the lines of upholding Indian mythology," Yechury told the media here. "What has happened in the Hyderabad University is completely obnoxious. This is something that cannot be accepted and cannot be tolerated. This runs contrary to the fundamental feature of the Indian Constitution. Therefore, action should be taken against all those who are involved, including two Cabinet Ministers in the Centre, the Labour Minister, the HRD Minister and the Vice Chancellor," he added. Yechury further said that the Union Ministers and the VC should immediately asked to demit their offices and a criminal proceeding must be initiated against them. The CPI (M) visited the Hyderabad University campus and interacted with the students protesting over Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula's suicide. Rohith, a second-year research scholar of Science, Technology and Society Studies Department, and others were suspended from the hostel last year following allegations that they attacked Sushil Kumar after the screening of a controversial documentary 'Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai'. Earlier this month, five students were thrown out of the hostel after they accused the university authorities of denying them access to campus facilities, except their classrooms and workshops. The 28-year-old from Andhra Pradesh's Guntur district was found hanging at the hostel room of one of his friends around 7:30 p.m. on Sunday. (ANI) Following are the top developments in the terrorist attack today on the Bacha Khan University, located in Charsadda, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Two gunmen have reportedly been killed. According to the Pak media, around 60 to 70 students have been shot in the head. Around 90 percent of the buildings have been cleared on campus. 1.3000 students enrolled in the university 2.According to Geo TV, one chemistry professor killed after being shot in head 3.Evacuation of campus currently on 4.Terrorists entered form the back-gate as the security at the front-gate was high 5.Two guards were injured at the gate 6.Extensive firing continues in the area and heavy contingents of elite force have been deployed, including aerial support given by Army choppers 7.Pashtun independence activist Bacha Khan Baba died on January 20, 1988. It is his death anniversary today 8.Helicopters called in to assist the operation 9.Panic stricken parents have gathered outside the University 10.Five persons, who suffered minor injuries, have been shifted to District Headquarters Hospital, Charsadda, for treatment 11.Army contingents have also arrived at the scene and firing is continuing 12.According to the Dawn, a rescued student claims that 60 to 70 students had been shot in the head by the attackers. The student added that the attack is reminiscent of the Army Public School Peshawar attack in December 16, 2014. 13. More than 50 injured, security forces say. Injured being taken to hospital, Geo Tv reports. 14.Nine injured at the hospital 15.Operation on inside and outside campus 16.No proper roads around university, only farms 17.At the time of attack, an event regarding death anniversary of Pashtun politician Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, known as Bacha Khan, was being attended by a large number of students inside the university 18.Media persons are not being allowed inside 19.Armed assailants scaled the university walls and opened fire 20.Multiple blasts were heard along with heavy gunfire 21.Pakistani journalist Talat Hussain tweets: Eyewitnesses say 'dozens killed'. Terrorists had a free hand for 50 mnts. Now terrorists are in one block 22.Talat Hussain tweets: Very serious development. Spoke to a stranded teacher who said intense firing and total chaos at campus 23.Dawn tweets: DIG Saeed Wazir says two attackers have been killed 24.Dawn tweets: Rescue officials say some 50 students have been rescued from the premises 25.Dawn tweets: An Edhi volunteer says he has seen the bodies of at least 15 persons 26.Pakistan Army helicopters are monitoring the situation from the air to provide better spatial awareness to the forces conducting the operation on ground 27.Edhi source claims 15 dead 28.University professor, Hamid Hussain, was killed in the attack 29.According to Express Tribune: The vice chancellor has said more than 3,000 students are present at the premises, while several girls are inside hostels. Members of staff also remain within the building. More than 50 students have been evacuated. 11: 41 am (IST): Two loud blasts heard from inside the university 11: 48 am (IST): A large number worried parents have thronged the hospital looking for their children 11: 50 am (IST): Geo News reports Shakeel Farman Ali reported that 90 percent of the buildings have been cleared in the campus 11: 53 am (IST): Panic sets in inside the campus. Eye-witnesses say not enough ambulances to bring out severely injured and dead 11: 55 am (IST): Rescue officials say some 50 students have been rescued from the premises 11: 57 am (IST): Dawn tweets: 8-10 terrorists still inside the school 12: 02 pm (IST): Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif: Sacrifices made by Pakistan will not go in vain. Those who kill innocent students and civilians have no religion. 12: 03 pm (IST): 11 blasts till now 12: 05 pm (IST): According to Express Tribune: Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has claimed responsibility for the attack on Bacha Khan University. TTP commander, Omar Mansoor, said that the attack was carried out by four attackers. 12: 08 pm (IST): According to Express Tribune: Seven people have been killed in the attack so far, while casualties are feared to rise 12: 09 pm (IST): Six dead bodies recovered 12: 12 pm (IST): Asim Bajwa tweets: Two more terrorists who were firing from inside the Block cordoned by Army troops, shot & killed. Op continues 12: 14 pm (IST): Emergency declared in hospitals 12: 20 pm (IST): Asim Bajwa tweets: Snipers killed 2 more terrorists on roof top,total Terrorist killed so far 4.All buildings&roof top taken over by Army.op continues-3 12: 21 pm (IST): Total four terrorists killed so far 12: 28 pm (IST): Provincial minister Shaukat Yousufzai has said that over 20 people have been killed 12: 35 pm (IST): Chairman Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Imran Khan to leave for Charsadda shortly This is a developing story and will be updated as we receive updates.(ANI) Singh, who inaugurated an international conference on cooperative federalism in the national capital, said the centrally sponsored schemes have been rationalized through the NITI Aayog to give best benefit of it to the states and citizens. He said the Centre has also increased the tax devolution from 32 percent to 42 percent as per the 14th Finance Commission recommendations. The Home Minister further said the Centre and the states must work together in spirit of cooperative federalism. (ANI) : Natura Bio Science Ayurvedics Private limited, a Bio Science Company engaged in the scientific research and development of nature based wellness products here, is planning to invest Rs 25 crore this year by setting up of a chain Natura Ayush Hospital, both in the country as well as in abroad. Talking to newspersons here last night, Company CMD Joseph Vattakunnel said the first hospital would be inaugurated by Kerala Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala in the city on January 22. The company is planning to open a chain of 16 hospitals, including Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Singapore, besides various parts of India in the first phase in 2016 with an investment of Rs 25 crore, the CMD informed. Mr Joseph said, ass part of their entry to promote the traditional ayurveda globally, the company would also open 200 outlets for ayurveda medicines and 25 had already started. The object of opening Natura Ayush Hospital was to provide healthy lifestyle treatments of ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy under one umbrella, he claimed. In the world of ayurveda, Kerala is renowned as the pioneers in preventing authentic Ayurveda, and also as the innovators of many Ayurvedic procedures, products and techniques. We at Natura Ayush Hospital inculcate Traditional Methodologies, he added. In his address Company Vice President Joy Varghese said the object of starting such a hospital was to bring all method of treatment, including Ayurveda, Yoga and Homeopathy under one umbrella, and the treatment would be for coordination of all these branches of medicines. Currently the hospital will have facilities of Ayurvedic surgery (shalya thantra, especially for pistula and piles), Paediatrics (Kaumara Bhruthya) and Panchakarma (Detoxification and purification), Mr Varghese said adding that the hospital was also planning to start a infertility clinic soon. However, while starting this facility, the hospital was planning to tie up with allopathic branch also with it. Kerala has a rich heritage of ashtavaidya tradition, which is implemented in a very scientific manner where which we too follow, the Vice President added. The Executive Director Rajesh Sharma also took part in the press conference.UNI CGV KVV ADB 1325 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0312-547528.Xml Two Limited Series Production (LSP) aircraft produced by defencePSU Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd, would take part in the BahrainInternational Air Show to enthrall the visitors from variouscountries during the flying display through a series ofaerobatic maneuvers such as 8-g pull, vertical loop, slow fly past,barrel roll, among others,T Suvarna Raju, CMD, HAL, said. It is important that indigenous aircraft fly outside India ininternational air-shows. HAL is proud to be associated with design,development and production of Tejas. We have set-up state of theart, environmentally controlled dedicated Division at Bengaluru forproduction of LCAs, he said. Tejas is a single engined, light weight, highly agile, multi-rolesupersonic fighter. The Tejas light combat aircraft is a 4.5generation aircraft with supersonic capability at all altitudes. Ithas the fly by wire, state of the art open architecture computer foravionics and better weapon and combat capability. With the advancedavionics, the pilot load is also reduced, HAL said in a release heretoday. Also, the Sarang (Peacock in Sanskrit) helicopter display team ofthe Indian Air Force that flies four HAL produced Dhruv helicoptersis all set to enthrall visitors at Bahrain. HAL Dhruv is suitablefor increased payload at higher altitudes and has been developed forthe Indian Defence Forces. More than 200 helicopters have beenproduced so far cumulatively clocking around 1,42,000 hours offlying. Apart from this, HAL will be setting up a stall at the Show toexplain visitors various activities of the company with a focus onALH WSI (Rudra) and Light Combat Helicopter (LCH). The LCH whichcompleted performance trials recently is only attack helicopterwhich can operate above 10000-12000 feet altitude with considerableload of armament. The armed version of the ALH-Rudra is equipped with turreted gun,rockets, air-to-air missiles, EO POD, Helmet pointing system andRadar, Laser and Missile Warning Systems.UNI RS KVV ADB 1255 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0284-547530.Xml "Strongly condemn the terror attack at Bacha Khan University in Pakistan. Condolences to families of the deceased. Prayers with the injured," Prime Minister Modi tweeted. In Pakistan, heavily-armed terrorists today stormed the university in Pakistan's restive northwest Khyber- Pakhtunkhwa province and opened indiscriminate fire on students and teachers. At least 21 people have been killed and over 30 others injured in the attack. Over 3,000 students were present inside the university to mark the death anniversary of Khudai Khidmatgar Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan alias Baacha Khan, who died on January 20, 1988. The Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has claimed responsibility for the attack. (ANI) Tamil Nadu Governor K Rosaiah today urged the Centre to find a lasting solution to the continuing arrests of fishermen from the state by retrieving Katchatheevu, an islet ceded to Sri Lanka,and restore the traditional rights of fishermen. Delivering his customary address to the State Assembly,Dr Rosaiah said the continuing arrests of fishermen from Tamil Nadu and seizure of their boats by the Sri Lankan Navy, while fishing in the traditional fishing waters of the Palk Strait, was reprehensible and condemnable. The reluctance of the Sri Lankan Government in releasing the apprehended fishing boats, even after the release of the fishermen, was causing endless agony amongst the fisher folk of Tamil Nadu. ''Therefore, it is our duty to find a lasting and permanent solution to this issue by retrieving Katchatheevu and restoring the traditional rights of our fishermen'', the Governor said and hoped that considering the sensitivity of the issue, the Centre would work with the Sri Lankan Government to find an amicable solution to the problem at the earliest. UNI GV KVV ADB 1430 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0415-547820.Xml The ruling CPI-M in Tripura has expelled another of its comrade on the allegation of defalcating public fund to the tune of Rs 50 lakh in Durgachowmuhani area of Kamalpur in Dhalai district. Allegedly Birendra Koiri, CPI-M local committee secretary of Kamalpur and incumbent vice-chairperson of Panchayat Samiti of Durgachowmuhani rural development block has siphoned off about Rs 50 lakh meant for watershed management project. According to party insiders, the money was sanctioned for the beneficiaries of the locality to supplement their livelihood by integrated watershed management programme during the past three financial years. However, the fund allotted to the beneficiaries, including his partyman and the then Panchayat chief of Noangoan Kamal Das, was allegedly used by Koiri. After investigation, the party found him guilty and expelled him from the party for three months initially. The villagers through RTI came to know that in last three financial years, Rs 55 lakh was sanctioned in favour of 58 people. But except two, none got any money.Reportedly, Koiri along with some officials looted the fund. There is no formal case yet registered against the accused.UNI BB PL RSA AS1511 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0211-547889.Xml Chief Minister T R Zeliang has said experts from India and Japan unlock the problem of land-locked North East. Inaugurating a workshop on Indo-Japan Partnership towards meeting the challenges of Infrastructure Development in Indias North East at Dimapur yesterday, Mr Zeliang said the Union Governments Act East policy and Vision 2020 is yet to see the light of the day, as still, no connectivity exists with any South Asian countries. Mentioning Japan for its role in the second World War, Zeliang expressed optimism that with successful implementation of infrastructure projects in the region, the name of Japan will no more be associated with war, but with peace and development in the minds of new generation of region. He highlighted construction of highways and railways within the region and electricity, security, strategy for Nagaland sector of the Indo-Myanmar border. Mr Zeliang expressed confidence that the workshop would come out with practical solution and thereby change the face of Indias North Eastern Region. Minister of Economics in the Embassy of Japan in New Delhi, Akio Isomata emphasized on the importance and need for enhancing connectivity in the North East region. He observed that geographical difficulties could be solved by using Japanese technology' underling the need of engaging local people to work and take up other challenges, which hopefully could be solved by the involvement of Centre and States. 'We provide partnership and the onus of ownership lies with local people,' he added.Cabinet ministers, Director and Chief Executive of the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) Rajat Kathuria and Director of India Foundation Alok Bansal were also amonget those present at the event. UNI AS PL PL SA RSA NS1537 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0211-547931.Xml Shah was earlier presented before Additional Sessions Judge Reetesh Singh on the expiry of his 14-day police custody. The police told the court that Shah needed to be quizzed to unearth the conspiracy as well as the funding of the terror outfit. Defence counsel Akram Khan, however, argued that the police should first inform the court about the investigation so far since the accused was sent in police custody earlier. Shah was arrested on January 6 by the anti-terrorist Special Cell from Bengaluru on the charge of plotting to carry out a series of terror strikes in the country. He was sent to police custody till January 20. --Indo-Asian News Service akk/tsb/bg ( 153 Words) 2016-01-20-16:25:35 (IANS) Facing sharp criticism over the suicide of Dalit scholar at the University of Hyderabad, Union Human Resource and Development (HRD) Minister Smriti Irani on Wednesday attempted to shift the blame on the previous UPA regime and said things would have been in place at the moment had the Congress taken action then. Irani attempted to defend Minister of State for Labour Bandaru Dattatreya, who has been charged with abetting Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula's suicide. The HRD Minister drew the attention of the media to the letter written by Congress MP Hanumantha Rao and said that he wanted a probe to be ordered on the death of students from the Telangana region. "Bandaru Dattatreya was not the only MP, who had raised concerns about the University of Hyderabad. I am in possession of a letter written by Shri Hanumantha Rao ji, Congress MP, on November 17, 2014. In this letter, he had claimed that in the past four years, not the present VC but the earlier VC appointed by the Congress Government, there have been suicides by the students from the Telangana region who were from marginalized communities," said Irani. "He has in his letter to the ministry written that he wants a probe to be ordered," she added, while asserting that the University had been asked to give a clarification in this regard. Irani further silenced the opposition and asked as to why this issue was not taken up during the UPA regime. "Why now? Why nobody in the Congress Party spoke then and now? It is not a debate that I want to indulge in. A student has died and I only want to talk about facts. If Congress had fixed it back then, possibly Rohith would have been alive today," she added. The Congress has been demanding the resignations of the HRD Minister, Minister of State for Bandaru Dattatreya and Hyderabad University Vice Chancellor Appa Rao over the Dalit scholar's suicide. The HRD Minister also urged the people to take responsibility and not ignite passion and then regret it later. "Let us all take responsibility. It is very easy to ignite passion and then regret in leisure," she said. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, who visited the University of Hyderabad yesterday, said that the varsity Vice Chancellor Appa Rao and Union Minister Bandaru Dattatreya created the situation that made Rohith, a Dalit scholar studying there, kill himself. "I agree with the students here. Rohith committed suicide but the conditions for his suicide were created by the VC and the minister," Gandhi said. Urging the media not to misconstrue facts, she said, "The fact of the matter is an MP wrote to us based on certain observations and we within ministry forwarded that observation for the response from the university. Do not ignite passions by naming a particular caste." Vemula, who belonged to Guntur district of Amravati, was found hanging in his hostel room on Sunday. He was doing his PhD in science technology and society studies for the past two years. The protests escalated yesterday over Rohith's suicide with activists demonstrating outside the residence of Dattatreya, who has been accused of abetment of the Dalit scholar's suicide and demanded his resignation. (ANI) India today expressed concern over the situation in West Asia, especially the deteriorating relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia. "The growing tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran does not auger well for the world, Secretary East in the External Affairs Ministry Anil Wadhwa said here. He said though India would not be prescriptive in its policies towards the region, but given the sheer depth of its engagement and its multifarious stakes in peace, stability and prosperity of West Asia, it had been closely tracking winds of change blowing across the region. "As a plural society, India cannot be comfortable with sectarianism. As a friend of the region, India is worried about the recent developments there," he said delivering a special address on the concluding day of the second West Asia Conference on Ideology, Politics and New Security Challenges in West Asia. Commenting on the Syrian crisis, he insisted that India strongly believed that there was no military solution to the crisis. "Security through dialogue is the basic framework for peace and security in the region, he said. He said India was of the view that it was up to the people of the region to decide the pace and the means to achieve those goals, keeping in mind their traditions and history. Justifying Indias policy of old-order neutrality while dealing with the region, Mr Wadhwa insisted that it should not be misinterpreted as political passivity or absence of decision making on the part of government. India is, on the contrary, more engaged in the region than in the past, he insisted. He said India continued to remain cautious in its approach towards the region, steering clear of any regional alliances, but at the same time maintaining cordial relations with them. India is committed to protecting the interest of the large number of Indian expatriates in the Gulf and Middle East, he pointed out, describing the promotion of ministerial level interactions with the countries of the region as an integral part of Indias policy towards West Asia. Commenting on the perception that India should be more proactive in its approach towards West Asia, Mr Wadhwa said that India is not in the business of exporting democracy. Though India is a robust practitioner of democratic pluralism and religious moderation, it does not believe in intrusive prescriptive diktats. Scholars from India, West Asia and other parts of the world attended the two-day conference organised by the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA)to analyse the recent issues and trends which have emerged in the West Asian region.UNI NAZ SW RSA 1822 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0091-548458.Xml : Leader of Opposition in Telangana Legislative Council Mohammed Ali Shabbir today accused the MIM leadership of deliberately neglecting the backwardness in the Old City of Hyderabad. Addressing a series of corner meetings in Doodh Bowli, Ghansi Bazar, Pathergatti and Puranapul divisions in view of ensuing GHMC elections slated on February 2, Shabbir Ali said despite having the flexible policy of aligning with the party-in-power, the MIM leadership never bothered about resolving the problems being faced by the people in the Old City. "MIM leaders have turned into millionaires during the last few decades. But the people who voted them to power are still poor with most of them working as vendors, auto drivers or daily wages earners," he said. The former Minister said MIM leaders objected to every move which was aimed at development of Old City. "Right from expansion of roads to Metro Rail in the Old City, MIM objected to every developmental project. They never wanted economic prosperity of people living in this part of the city. Government schools and colleges were systematically closed. Urdu schools were also neglected and closed. All public hospitals, including famous Charminar Hospital, were put to neglect. They even failed to regularise the services of Mecca Masjid employees and the staff does not even get their salaries on time. They wanted every hand in the Old City to move with a begging bowl. The concept of accountability never existed and they used force to suppress any kind of criticism or opposition," he said. However, he said that the Congress party's entry has triggered a new wave of change in Old City. Listing out various measures taken by the previous Congress Government for the development of Muslim community, the senior congress leader said 4 per cent Muslim reservation has benefitted nearly 10 lakh socially and economically backward Muslims. Thousands of students benefitted from the scholarship and Fee Reimbursement schemes. He said that the Congress Government supported modernisation of Madarsas and also distributed computers. He slammed the TRS Government for not honouring the promise of 12 per cent Muslim reservation. He said except for making fake promises, the TRS Government did not nothing concrete for the Muslim community.MORE UNI KNR VV AK1813 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0415-548340.Xml : YSR Congress party SC Cell has taken strong objection to the lack of response from the TDP government towards the death of dalit scholar Rohit at the Central University campus. The Chief Minister N Chandrababu or his cabinet colleagues did not react to the grave incident which shows that they are anti-dalit, party SC Cell president Merugu Nagarjuna told reporters here. The Vice Chancellor of the varsity, Appa rao who was responsible for the suspension of the dalit students by acting on the orders of the union ministers, has been very adamant, he said that VC was appointed by Chandrababu Naidu and Venkaiah Naidu with caste taking precedence and even in ANU Rishikeswari suicide went on the same lines. We condemn the caste based politics and demand justice to the dalit scholars who are suspended, he said. There is every effort to dilute the case as inquires have been going at Gurazala, the native place of Rohit though not a single minister had condoled the death and were looking away when there was a social boycott against dalits, he said. The body of Rohit has been cremated while it should have been buried according to the dalit tradition, he said.UNI KNR VV AK1822 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0415-548470.Xml The 33-year-old victim, who hails from Barela village, used to visit Dr AB Khans clinic often for treatment. On November 18, 2015, the doctor allegedly sexually assaulted her and threatened to kill her. The woman reached police station along with her husband and lodged a police complaint. The accused is absconding.UNI SN-PS RSA AN1802 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0044-548404.Xml Separatist and mainstream organizations today strongly condemned the Peshawar University attack by terrorists in which at least 20 people were killed and scores injured. Chairman of the moderate Hurriyat Conference (HC) Mirwaiz Moulvi Omar Farooq described it against the teachings of Islam and expressed his condolence with the family members of those who lost their near ones in Pakistan. He said such inhuman acts have no place in Islam. Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) President and Member Parliament, Mehbooba Mufti has strongly condemned the terror attack. "It is a cowardly act of brutality that has claimed lives of the innocents, Ms Mehbooba said in a statement. My heart goes out to everyone who lost their loved ones in todays cowardly terror attack in the Bacha Khan University, Charsadda. I share their pain and offer my deepest condolences," she said and added that those who attacked innocent students and citizens have no religion the perpetrators are enemies of mankind. We stand united with the people and the Government of Pakistan in their resolve to fight the menace of terrorism and condemn use of violence under any circumstance, she said and added that the atrocity of this proportion should outrage the feelings of every human being. Ms Mehbooba said the attack on a school in Peshawar, Pakistan in December 2014 and the recent attack on an airbase in Pathankote area of Punjab were a grim reminder of how the terrorists are trying to destabilise the region by shedding the blood of innocents. She said such gruesome and heinous attacks only reiterate the inevitability of greater cooperation between India and Pakistan to eliminate the scourge of terrorism from the region. Islami Tanzeem-e-Azadi chief Abdul Samad Inquilabi also strongly condemned the attack.UNI BAS RSA NS1756 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0153-548269.Xml The collaboration is expected to pave way for global educationand degree, turning into an expression of innovation and newdirection in the field of Science. JSS University Vice Chancellor Dr B Suresh said that under theMoU special thrust was given to entrepreneurial development andScience based start-ups. This would further provide a platform forglobal engagement. "There are very few entrepreneurs who want to go ahead withScience based start-up owing to its longer incubation period. but wehave to sow the seeds to reap the good crop in the future," he added. He said that the collaborative activities would enable studentsget world class learning experience as UNC is far ahead inelectronic learning management and innovative learning and teachingmodules. With this JSS too has moved forward towards web based learning.UNI BSP MSP VV AK1725 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0284-548311.Xml South Africa based Regenesys Business School has offered Rs 100 crore scholarship scheme for Indian students who intend to pursue their Management graduate and post graduate degree programmes in its institutes situated in Johannesburg (SA), Lagos (Nigeria) and Mumbai (India). Announcing the scheme here today, Regenesys Group Chairperson Marko Sarvanja said students will be eligible for the scholarship on the basis of their rankings in the country level entrance test. The top 100 student will get the scholarship equivalent to the 60 per cent of their tuition fees which goes down up to even 30 per cent as per the rank , she added. "We are also offering an unique Internship linked Management Education Programme wherein student, under contractual agreement, has an option to pay his or her tuition fees from internship income in an extended period plan ranging from three to 10 years. The programme is offered for the students of North India including states of Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh and they can avail the scheme by making a down payment of one semester fee", she said. UNI RKS DB PY RSA AN1900 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-548473.Xml Himachal Pradesh Health Minister Kaul Singh Thakur held a high level meeting of the senior officers of Health and Irrigation and Public Health departments and Municipal Corporation today to take stock of the steps being taken to tackle the situation of jaundice in Shimla town. The Minister said effective steps had been taken by the concerned departments and Municipal Corporation to check further spread of jaundice and the situation was under control. The facility of free medical tests for jaundice was being provided at IGMC and Deen Dayal Upadhayay hospitals besides providing medicines free of cost. He said so far 817 cases of jaundice had been reported in the town and one person lost his life due to this disease. Mr Thakur said the priority had been given by the government to supply clean and safe drinking water to the residents. All the major water storage tanks had also been cleaned and water was being chlorinated on regular basis. He directed the concerned departments to work in coordination to tackle this situation and asked the Irrigation and Public Health officials for random testing of water from Kandaghat laboratory. He directed the Municipal Corporation to ensure that all households were connected to sewerage lines so that leakage of polluted water from the septic tanks to the water resources could be checked. He also urged the residents of the town to clean their water tanks on regular basis. Shimla Municipal Corporation Commissioner Pankaj Rai apprised the Minister that Corporation had constituted seven teams for the four wards where cases of jaundice had been reported. He said action had been taken in 107 cases where people had not connected their sewerage line with the main line. UNI ML DB PY RSA AS1900 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-548494.Xml As protests continued for the fourth day at University of Hyderabad over a Dalit research scholar's suicide, the central government said on Wednesday that this was not a "Dalit versus non-Dalit issue". Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani said there was a "malicious attempt to project it as a caste battle". Another central minister, Bandaru Dattatreya, insisted he did not influence the university to suspend Rohith Vemula - who killed himself - and four other students. "There has been a malicious attempt to project the issue as a caste battle. The truth is that, it is not," Irani told the media in New Delhi, in her first reaction to the raging row. She said the case was being "misrepresented". "It's not a Dalit versus non-Dalit confrontation," she said, adding there had been media debates suggesting that Vemula mentioned the names of people and organisations who forced him to commit suicide. She flashed a letter, saying it was the only document police got while investigating the case. She also read out a few lines from the letter, suggesting what was being widely projected was not the truth. The other suspended students, who continued their protest on the campus, condemned Irani and accused her of trying to twist the facts. The Joint Action Committee (JAC) for social justice, an umbrella of student groups, continue its protest at the university that remained shut. The protesters have vowed not to allow classes till Vice Chancellor Appa Rao resigns and justice is done to Rohith's family. A two-member committee sent by the human resource development ministry continued its probe for a second consecutive day. Minister of State for Labour Dattareya, who represents Secunderabad in the Lok Sabha, clarified that he did not put pressure on the university to suspend any student. He said he merely forwarded two representations he got from the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) to the human resource development ministry. Dattatreya extended his heartfelt condolences to Rohith's family. Politicians meanwhile continued to swarm the campus for the second day. On Wednesday, CPI-M general secretary Sitaram Yechury sought President Pranab Mukherjee's intervention. The president is Visitor of the university. Addressing the students, Yechury demanded the sacking of central ministers Irani and Dattatreya and also the vice chancellor, saying all three were part of a criminal conspiracy. He called the probe ordered by the ministry an eyewash, saying a judicial or CBI investigation should be ordered. When Republican Party of India leader Ramdas Athawale came to the campus, he had to face the ire of students who asked him to first withdraw support to the BJP-led NDA government. Police escorted him out. YSR Congress party chief Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy also met the students and demanded action against the guilty. Trinamool Congress MPs Derek O'Brien and Pratima Mondal also met the students. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal will visit Hyderabad on Thursday to meet the family of Rohith, an official told IANS. --Indo-Asian News Service team-ms/mr/pm ( 503 Words) 2016-01-20-19:23:38 (IANS) Northern India Institute of Fashion Technology, a venture of the Punjab Government, failed to attract candidates specially from the rural Punjab for prestigious courses of fashion and textile designing. NIIFT director Inderjit Singh attributed unawareness as the major cause for the much less number of candidates for the courses introduced in 2009. The astonishing fact is that despite all the efforts and initiatives made by the state government, the building to house several courses introduced by NIIFT at Jalandhar is yet to complete. Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal had laid the foundation stone of the building here in 2009 but it is yet under construction following which only one course in Fashion designing (B.Sc in fashion design after 10+2 ) could be introduced. This course is also being run from the old and dilapidated building of leather tannery at Nakodar road here. NIIFT had introduced three under graduate courses in fashion designing, fashion design (knit) and textile design while two post graduate courses M.Sc in garments manufacturing technology and M.Sc in fashion marketing and management were introduced at its centres in Mohali and Ludhiana. He said NIIFT had been introducing new professional courses including short term certificate programmes, vocational programmes in fashion design and clothing technology, interior design, apparel merchandising etc in accordance with the current needs of the fashion industry in the state. He claimed that all the 2000 candidates who had passed out from the three centres of NIIFT got placements with huge and handsome annual packages in the reputed companies of India engaged in fashion and textile designing.UNI XC DB PY RSA NS1923 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-548436.Xml Mahto was convicted by judicial magistrate Mohammed Umar in Dhanbad district. The BJP legislator was accused of forcefully taking away a person from the custody of the excise department and creating problems in government work in 2006. In another case, the BJP legislator is accused of taking away an accused from the police lock-up in 2013. The Dhanbad district court had earlier rejected the state government plea to withdraw the case. --Indo-Asian News Service ns/pm/bg ( 112 Words) 2016-01-20-20:11:35 (IANS) Workers of the Youth Congress and the Trinamool Chhatra Parishad on Wednesday demanded sacking of union ministers Smriti Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya and set afire their effigies, protesting the suicide by Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula. A large number of slogan-shouting Youth Congress activists assembled outside Raj Bhavan and held a rally demanding the two ministers' removal. The Trinamool Chhatra Parishad organised a demonstration in north Kolkata's College Street. Carrying posters demanding exemplary punishment to those responsible for Rohith's death, the TMCP activists attacked the BJP government at the Centre for the increasing "intolerance" in the country. --Indo-Asian News Service ssp/pm/bg ( 113 Words) 2016-01-20-20:19:36 (IANS) Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu today met with Cyrus Mistry, Chairman, Tata Sons, who proposed to make an iconic investment in the State. The Chief Minister had a series of meetings and interactions on Day two of Davos Summit. Mr.Naidu and Mistry discussed possible areas of collaboration in the state. During their interaction, Cyrus Mistry proposed to make an iconic investment in Andhra Pradesh. During the interaction, the Tata Sons Chairman recollected his association with the state and talked about his love for Andhra food and culture. Significantly, Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe during his meeting, invited the Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu for dinner during his stay in Davos to have a detailed meeting.UNI DP VV AK2012 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0415-548815.Xml Jurgen van Breukelen, Chairman, KPMG Netherlands and Richard Rekhy, KPMG India Head held discussions with Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on incorporating Netherlands experience of coastal development in AP. During the meeting at the WEF summit at Davos, it has been suggested that an idea bank needs to be created so that every society can implement the best ideas that are incubated. The Chief Minister also enquired into effective ways to make Andhra Pradesh an export oriented hub of manufacturing. In this regard, the Andhra Pradesh government and KPMG global will work out a mechanism to achieve desired results in these sectors.UNI DP VV AK2020 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0415-548835.Xml Chief Minister N Chandrababau Naidu held a meeting with Prof. Kishore Mehbubani of the National University of Singapore (NUS) at WEF summit in Davos. Mr.Kishore Mehbubani assured the universitys assistance in transforming Andhra Pradesh into a knowledge/education hub. We are looking at partnerships and collaborations with top 20 universities in the world, Mr.Naidu said. The meeting also discussed how the NUS can provide inputs to Andhra Pradesh on public policy, ease of doing business, competitiveness advantage. Given that Andhra Pradesh aims to be one of the best states in the world, the Chief Minister said, the state needs advice and guidance at policy level.UNI DP VV AK2014 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0415-548853.Xml Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu today participated in the session 'A New Climate for Doing Business' at the WEF summit in Davos.In a government release from Davos said that during the session, Mr.Naidu met Sri Lankan Prime Minister Sri Ranil Wickramasinghe and Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake. The Sri Lankan Prime Minister expressed his interest in exploring tourism opportunities in Andhra Pradesh and invited Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu for dinner, during his stay in Davos to have a detailed meeting.Meanwhile, Nestle CEO Paul Bulke also met the Chief Minister and evinced interest on investing in the dairy and food processing sector. He spoke about the possibilities of exploring Araku coffee and cocoa plantations. The Chief Minister briefed Bulke the agrarian profile of the state and various opportunities in the field of agriculture, food processing and milk production.UNI DP VV AK2010 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0415-548873.Xml Ten Left parties, including the CPM and CPI demanded inquiry on the suicide V Rohit, the student University of Hyderabad, by a sitting judge and stepping down of the two Cabinet ministers.In a statement here today, the Left party leaders demanded inquiry by a sitting judge on the circumstances that forced the university student to commit suicide. They also demanded the stepping down of two Cabinet ministers B Dattatreya and Smrithi Irani, holding them responsible for his death.The Left leaders alleged that the BJP led Centre was trying saffronize the educational institutions and also oppressing the freedom of speech. They demanded the VC of the university to step down voluntary.The Left leaders also demanded revocation of suspension of the rest of the four students and disbursement of their stipend. The Left party leaders who issued the statement were including CPI state Secretary K Rama Krishna, CPM State Secretary P Madhu, CPI (ML) New Democracy Y Sambasiva Rao and Forward Bloc PVS Rama RajuUNI DP VV AK2040 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0415-548950.Xml Jharkhand Governor Draupadi Murmu today urged students to bring change in society through education. Addressing the 29th convocation ceremony of the Ranchi University here, Ms Murmu told the students that they were fortunate to get higher education study as there are thousands of others in the state who do not. "We need to think that how the knowledge and education that we received can bring change in society. How can the society be economically strengthened," she said, adding that if the students would think only about themselves and their families than their education would be considered incomplete. The Governor added that despite being rich in mineral and natural resources the state was behind on the global stage. It ranked 19th on the Human Development Index in the country. "It is of great plight that despite being blessed by nature Jharkhand ranked low in HDI," she said, adding that only education can remove such discrepancies. She said the gross enrollment ratio in the state was 8.1 per cent and from this year classes in the university would be held in the second half of the year so that more students can achieve higher education. The Governor hoped that the universities would provide similar facilities to the students studying in the second shift like those being provided to students in the first shift. She also urged the Ranchi University to prepare the students for start-ups in the era of globalisation and information technology. She also urged the varsity to accord more focus on research work. The Governor said compared to the Central Universities, the economic condition of the state universities was not very good which impacts the overall quality of education facilities. The Governor said through RUSA state run universities and colleges would be strengthened. UNI AK AD PY AJ NS2045 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0108-548724.Xml Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, who is in Japan these days to invite investors and entrepreneurs to set up their ventures in the state, is getting encouraging response because of progressive policies and industry friendly climate in Haryana. He is accompanied by Haryana Industries Minister Capt Abhimanyu and Social Justice and Empowerment Minister, Kavita Jain. Shiroki Corporation has committed to invest more than Rs 150 crore in its Bawal Plant in Haryana in next two years, Daiwa House Industry Company, one of the largest residential manufacturers in Japan, is considering Gurgaon and Jhajjar as potential locations for its project in Haryana and Hitachi Zosen Corporation has expressed interest to participate in Haryanas efforts to set up management federation is waste from energy plants, according to a statement issued here. Hideo Tashima, Chairman, Kansai Economic Federation, said that impressed by the recent policy reforms introduced by the Haryana Government and the Kansai Economic Federation will promote Haryana as an ideal location for investment among 1,300 members of Japanese companies. Tetsuro Morita, Managing Director, Shiroki Corporation Shiroki Corporation, who called on the Chief Minister in Osaka today, is committed to invest over Rs 150 crore in its Bawal Plant in next two years.More UNI NC PS RSA BD2012 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-548302.Xml The four suspects -- Akhlaq ur Rehman, Mohammad Osama alias Adil, Mohammad Azimu Shaan and Mehraj -- were arrested on Tuesday based on specific information by central intelligence agencies. "All the suspects belong to Haridwar from where they were arrested on Tuesday. We produced them in a court in Delhi today (Wednesday) which sent them to 15 days police custody," said Special Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) Arvind Deep. The suspects had plans to carry out bombings during the ongoing Ardh Kumbh in Haridwar, in Roorkee-Haridwar bound trains, in Delhi and some parts of the National Capital Region (NCR). The Ardh-Kumbh started on January 1 this year and will end on April 30. During the four-month religious congregation, over five crore pilgrims are expected to visit the district to bathe in the holy Ganga river. On the first major bathing day on January 14, close to 10 lakh devotees took a dip in the Ganga. Police claimed that the arrested people were in touch with Shafi Armar, who handles recruitment for Ansar Al Twahid, the Indian offshoot of the terror group. "We got an input from intelligence agencies that some people are planning attacks on Roorkee-Haridwar bound trains and some other locations in Haridwar and NCR," Arvind Deep said. The official said a specific team including police inspectors Neli and Hridaynath was set up under the supervision of Additional Commissioner of Police Alok Kumar and Deputy Commissioner of Police P.S. Kushwah and they thwarted a possible attack after the arrest of the four people. Deep said further investigation was on to unearth the whole plot. The officer also praised Uttar Pradesh Police for helping them in the operation. --Indo-Asian News Service rak/pm/bg ( 318 Words) 2016-01-20-21:53:35 (IANS) Stating that IMF will become much more stronger India and United Kingdom today welcomed the passing of IMF quota reforms by the US Congress. "We are pleased that the US Congress has agreed to ratify the reforms of IMF quota and governance, which will make the IMF a stronger and more legitimate institution," said a joint statement issued after a meeting of India's Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and UK Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne. The US Congress had last month passed a legislation approving long-pending quota reform of International Monetary Fund (IMF) that will give more voting rights to emerging economies like India and China in the functioning of the organisation. The Washington-headquartered IMF reviews members' quotas once in five years and the last such review took place in December, 2010. India has already consented to its quota increase under the review.UNI ABI ASH PY NS2120 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0388-549007.Xml In a major breakthrough, 14 Assam Rifles (AR), apprehended Tenyang Kungkho area commander of NSCN (K) cadre from Changlang in Arunachal Pradesh, AR sources informed here today. They said the security personnel arrested Kungkho alias Saka Tutsa from his residence located in general area in Ngoitong yesterday morning. A Chinese made nine mm loaded pistol, 12 bore barrel gun, including six cartridges, and other incriminating articles like village tax collection slips were recovered from the arrested cadre. Tutsa was involved in extensive extortion. The apprehended individual was handed over to the Changlang police station and a case has been registered against him for further investigation, they said. UNI PB AD AJ AN2150 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0108-548723.Xml West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today condemned the killing of students in terror attack at Bacha Khan University in Pakistan and condoled the aggrieved families. Tragic news of so many students shot dead in Bacha Khan University, Pakistan. Prayers, Ms Banerjee tweeted. At least 21 people were killed and about 50 others injured today after heavily-armed terrorists stormed the University and opened indiscriminate fire on students and teachers in Pakistan's restive northwest Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.UNI BM AD AJ AN2153 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0214-549001.Xml BJP government in Haryana has decided to honour all those people who remained in jail during the emergency period in 1975. It has also decided to honour the kin of those who died. The Manohar Lal Khattar led government has issued directions to deputy commissioners to present 'tamra patras' on the Republic Day function, sources said here.According to information, about 28 persons from Kaithal district were imprisoned in that period for varying terms and some of them had expired. The sources said information and public relations department Director General Abhilaksh Likhi had a talk with respective Deputy Commissioners through video conferencing on January 19 and gave them necessary instructions to follow government directives in this regard. When contacted Kaithal Deputy Commissioner Nikhil Gajarj confirmed that the administration had identified all those falling in this category and all of them had already been issued identity cards over four months ago and they were entitled to free bus travel in Haryana Roadways buses. UNI XC DB AJ 2144 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0293-548547.Xml Rajasthan High court today dismissed the bail plea of former IAS, G S Sandhu and RAS officer Nishkam Diwakar in the single land lease scam.The single bench of Justice P K Agarwal dismissed the anticipatory bail of the absconding former IAS, and senior RAS officer, who is in jail in connection with the case. Sandhu who is absconding had applied for anticipatory bail after ACB had summoned him for questioning in the alleged land scam in transferring a housing society land to a builder. According to the ACB, Sandhu as additional chief secretary; Urban Development and Housing (UDH) allegedly connived with JDA officials had transferred society lease deed of land measuring 40,000 square yards to a builder against norms in 2011. The agency had registered a complaint in the case in 2013. An RTI activist had lodged the complaint alleging that then Principal Secretary UDH Sandhu acted arbitrarily and in connivance with JDA officials, he granted a single deed of 28-bigha lands worth nearly Rs 300 crores as per the current market value to one Ganpati Constructions company at throwaway prices.Sandhu and another official Onkar Mal Saini are evading deposing before the ACB. UNI PJJ SHS AJ 2308 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0329-548876.Xml A two-judge bench of Calcutta High Court today rejected bail plea of a murder accused, even after the prosecution did not raise any objection to the relief sought for the accused. The accused, Soumitra Das, 20, was on bail which was granted by a lower court. The bench comprising Justice Aniruddha Bose and Justice Sankar Acharya, however, admitted the application.He was arrested after his friend Sunoi Chatterjee, a resident of Mahendranagar in North 24 Parganas went missing on September 22 last and the day after, Chatterjee's body was found floating in a nearby pond.Das was arrested after uncle of the deceased filed a complaint accusing him of murder. He was granted bail by ACJM Barrackpore 21 days later.Alleging lack of progress in investigation, petitioner Ratan Chatterjee moved an application for cancellation of bail to Das before the High Court.During the hearing, public prosecutor Manjit Singh pleaded that he could not find anything significant against the accused in the case diary and as such did not oppose continuation of bail that had been granted by the lower court earlier.The victim's family has also moved another application before the bench of Justice Dipankar Dutta seeking a CBI investigation into the murder.The petitioner claimed that investigation into the murder was not being done by the state police allegedly owing to extraneous reasons and sought that the probe be handed over to the central investigating agency.The next hearing of the case was fixed on January 27. UNI XC AD PY AJ 2330 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0108-549029.Xml This announcement was made by Mr Khadse while attending funural of former state minister and senior BJP leader D S Ahir last evening here. Talking to media persons, he further said that Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis took this decision after a meeting with secretaries of agriculture and commerce departments in this regard in Mumbai. In the meeting, the Chief Minister's attention was drawn to onions not getting proper rate. Hence, it was decided to give some subsidy to the onion farmers from the government to store onions. The Chief Minister then sanctioned Rs 25 crore, the Minister said. In addition to Rs 10 crore, the farmers from Nashik would also get Rs 16.5 crore as subsidy of last year, totaling Rs 26.5 crore, he said. Nashik being the largest producer of onions in the country, the government will also give subsidies for precooling, harvesting, cold storage and other schemes, Mr Khadse added.UNI RDS SS PY AJ AN2345 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0169-549108.Xml US President Barack Obama and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan spoke by phone and pledged to deepen their cooperation in the fight against terrorism, the White House said in a statement.The two leaders also reiterated their shared goal of degrading and ultimately destroying Islamic State, the statement said yesterday.Obama condemned the recent string of attacks by the Kurdistan Workers Party against Turkish security forces and stressed the need for de-escalation, the White House said.REUTERS MI RK0638 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0387-547321.Xml Asif said that 'Pakistan has the second largest Shia population in the world after Iran, so how can we even think of joining an anti Shia military alliance.' Acknowledging the existence of fault lines between the Sunni and Shia sects, Asif stressed that the government's efforts would remain focused on promoting religious harmony, both within the country and elsewhere in the region. He added that the 34 nation Saudi led coalition was still evolving but it was unclear how this coalition would work and what precise role its members would be playing. Asif clarified several times that Pakistan would never commit its military to any alliance against another Muslim country.(ANI) Following are the top developments in the terrorist attack today on the Bacha Khan University, located in Charsadda, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Two gunmen have reportedly been killed. According to the Pak media, around 60 to 70 students have been shot in the head. Around 90 percent of the buildings have been cleared on campus. 1.3000 students enrolled in the university 2.According to Geo TV, one chemistry professor killed after being shot in head 3.Evacuation of campus currently on 4.Terrorists entered form the back-gate as the security at the front-gate was high 5.Two guards were injured at the gate 6.Extensive firing continues in the area and heavy contingents of elite force have been deployed, including aerial support given by Army choppers 7.Pashtun independence activist Bacha Khan Baba died on January 20, 1988. It is his death anniversary today 8.Helicopters called in to assist the operation 9.Panic stricken parents have gathered outside the University 10.Five persons, who suffered minor injuries, have been shifted to District Headquarters Hospital, Charsadda, for treatment 11.Army contingents have also arrived at the scene and firing is continuing 12.According to the Dawn, a rescued student claims that 60 to 70 students had been shot in the head by the attackers. The student added that the attack is reminiscent of the Army Public School Peshawar attack in December 16, 2014. 13. More than 50 injured, security forces say. Injured being taken to hospital, Geo Tv reports. 14.Nine injured at the hospital 15.Operation on inside and outside campus 16.No proper roads around university, only farms 17.At the time of attack, an event regarding death anniversary of Pashtun politician Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, known as Bacha Khan, was being attended by a large number of students inside the university 18.Media persons are not being allowed inside 19.Armed assailants scaled the university walls and opened fire 20.Multiple blasts were heard along with heavy gunfire 21.Pakistani journalist Talat Hussain tweets: Eyewitnesses say 'dozens killed'. Terrorists had a free hand for 50 mnts. Now terrorists are in one block 22.Talat Hussain tweets: Very serious development. Spoke to a stranded teacher who said intense firing and total chaos at campus 23.Dawn tweets: DIG Saeed Wazir says two attackers have been killed 24.Dawn tweets: Rescue officials say some 50 students have been rescued from the premises 25.Dawn tweets: An Edhi volunteer says he has seen the bodies of at least 15 persons 26.Pakistan Army helicopters are monitoring the situation from the air to provide better spatial awareness to the forces conducting the operation on ground 27.Edhi source claims 15 dead 28.University professor, Hamid Hussain, was killed in the attack 29.According to Express Tribune: The vice chancellor has said more than 3,000 students are present at the premises, while several girls are inside hostels. Members of staff also remain within the building. More than 50 students have been evacuated. 30.Death toll claims run from 15-60 killed 31.Fear of militants fleeing to nearby fields. Army troops out for search 11: 41 am (IST): Two loud blasts heard from inside the university 11: 48 am (IST): A large number worried parents have thronged the hospital looking for their children 11: 50 am (IST): Geo News reports Shakeel Farman Ali reported that 90 percent of the buildings have been cleared in the campus 11: 53 am (IST): Panic sets in inside the campus. Eye-witnesses say not enough ambulances to bring out severely injured and dead 11: 55 am (IST): Rescue officials say some 50 students have been rescued from the premises 11: 57 am (IST): Dawn tweets: 8-10 terrorists still inside the school 12: 02 pm (IST): Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif: Sacrifices made by Pakistan will not go in vain. Those who kill innocent students and civilians have no religion. 12: 03 pm (IST): 11 blasts till now 12: 05 pm (IST): According to Express Tribune: Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has claimed responsibility for the attack on Bacha Khan University. TTP commander, Omar Mansoor, said that the attack was carried out by four attackers. 12: 08 pm (IST): According to Express Tribune: Seven people have been killed in the attack so far, while casualties are feared to rise 12: 09 pm (IST): Six dead bodies recovered 12: 12 pm (IST): Asim Bajwa tweets: Two more terrorists who were firing from inside the Block cordoned by Army troops, shot & killed. Op continues 12: 14 pm (IST): Emergency declared in hospitals 12: 20 pm (IST): Asim Bajwa tweets: Snipers killed 2 more terrorists on roof top,total Terrorist killed so far 4.All buildings&roof top taken over by Army.op continues-3 12: 21 pm (IST): Total four terrorists killed so far 12: 28 pm (IST): Provincial minister Shaukat Yousufzai has said that over 20 people have been killed 12: 35 pm (IST): Chairman Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Imran Khan to leave for Charsadda shortly 12: 40 pm (IST): Express news: 17 dead bodies recovered 12: 45 pm (IST): President Mamnoon Hussain condemns terrorist attack 12: 48 pm (IST): clearance of university block by block continues by Army troops.No firing being heard 12: 50 pm (IST): Express Tribune reports, majority students residing in the boys hostel are dead: student 12: 57 pm (IST): DIG Mardan says: 21 people have been killed, over 30 have been injured. We fear some of the militants have fled into the nearby fields. Army troops have been sent to search for them This is a developing story and will be updated as we receive updates. (ANI) World leaders will convene at the meeting in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, under the theme 'Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution'. Over 40 heads of state as well as 2,500 business and society leaders are expected to attend the forum, reports Tolo news. Critical current challenges, such as security, climate change,'new normal' global growth and commodity prices, are among the key issues on the agenda. It is expected that Ghani will meet Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Vice President of United State Joe Biden on the sidelines of the summit. This comes after the second Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) of Afghanistan, Pakistan, the United States and China on the Afghan peace and reconciliation process that was held in Kabul.(ANI) Support for Chancellor Angela Merkel and her conservative bloc has slipped further due to her handling of the refugee crisis and worries about crime and security after assaults on women at New Year in Cologne, a poll showed today.Merkel's open-door refugee policy, and her insistence that Germany can cope with last year's influx of 1.1 million migrants and more this year, has strained local authorities and split her right-left coalition.Mass sexual attacks on women in Cologne and other German cities at New Year which have been largely blamed on migrants have deepened public scepticism about Merkel's policy.She remains far more popular than her main rival, Social Democrat Sigmar Gabriel, however, and her conservative bloc still leads in the polls.Forsa put Merkel's conservatives down 1 percentage point at 37 per cent, its lowest level since November, and the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) up 1 point at 10 per cent, in double figures for the first time in a Forsa survey.Furthermore, support for Merkel, the conservative bloc's main electoral asset, dropped 4 points to 44 per cent, the poll showed, if a theoretical presidential-style vote were to be held in Germany.Despite the drop, Merkel is still way ahead of her Social Democrat (SPD) rival Sigmar Gabriel who was up 1 point at 16 per cent. Merkel's conservatives share power with the SPD in a "grand coalition"."After New Year's Eve in Cologne and the attack on German holidaymakers in Istanbul, many citizens are thinking not only about the refugee crisis but also fighting terror and criminality," said Forsa chief Manfred Guellner.Merkel is under mounting pressure from some in her conservative party, especially her allies in Bavaria -- the entry point for most migrants entering Germany -- to change course and shut Germany's borders.The poll also showed 55 per cent of Germans favour a closing of the border to stem the influx of migrants, many of whom have fled war zones in the Middle East and Africa.Germany's next federal election is due in 2017 but three closely-watched regional elections take place in March. REUTERS DS RAI1359 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0177-547739.Xml At least 21 people, mostly students and teachers, were killed in a terrorist attack in the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda town today, Dawn News reported, quoting police sources. Gunmen entered the University in Khyber Pakhtunkhas Charsadda town and opened fire on students and faculty members as they gathered for a poetry recital to commemorate the death anniversary of the activist and leader Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, also known as Bacha Khan, whom the institution is named after. A security official said the death toll could rise to as high as 40 as the army cleared out student hostels and classrooms. Army Public School Peshawar attack mastermind Omar Mansoor of the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the attack through a post on his Facebook page saying that it has sent four attackers to the university. Police confirm 21 dead...Military says four attackers killed, gunfire over," the report said, adding armed assailants scaled the university walls and opened fire, multiple blasts were heard along with continuous heavy gunfire. However, according to a Reuters report, a security official has said the death toll could rise to as high as 40 as the army cleared out student hostels and classrooms. As many as 3,000 students enrolled at the university, the report added. As the military announced the end of the clearance operation, mass casualties were feared in the attack, reminiscent of the deadly December 2014 terrorist attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar which left more than 140 dead most of them students, the Dawn paper reported. Quoting military spokesperson Lt Gen Asim Bajwa, the paper said four attackers had been killed. Security forces cordoned off a one-storey house, situated around a km from the university's boundary wall, where three terrorists were believed to be holed up. It was later declared clear by military personnel. The terrorists mounted stiff resistance to security forces engaged in an operation to clear the varsity over several hours. Intelligence sources said eight to 10 terrorists were inside the school, adding that they were between 18 and 25 years old, were wearing civilian clothes and had their faces covered. The families of students lined up outside the building. Journalists and all other non-essential personnel were asked to stay back in order not to interfere with the ongoing security operation. Up to 20 ambulances entered the university to rescue the injured, the report added.UNI XC-SS RP1500 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0089-547849.Xml Bulgarian police officers summarily return migrants and asylum seekers to Turkey, often after stealing their belongings and using violence against them, rights group Human Rights Watch said today.Migrants from Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq reported forceful returns, robbery, violence and police dog attacks, according to a survey by the Human Rights Watch carried between October and December last year among 45 refugees in six countries.The group said migrants reported of 59 incidents of forceful returns from Bulgaria to Turkey between March and November last year. 26 refugees also said they had been beaten by police or bitten by police dogs."All but one said they were stripped of their possessions, in some cases at gunpoint by people they described as Bulgarian law enforcement officials, then pushed back across the border to Turkey," the group said in a statement.In November, the Belgrade Center for Human Rights, funded by Oxfam, also reported testimonies for beatings, threats and other police abuse at migrants coming through Bulgaria.Human Rights Watch urged Bulgaria's authorities to take urgent steps to stop the unlawful treatment of people who seek protection and hold those responsible to account.Bulgaria's interior ministry spokeswoman said forceful returns or improper treatment of asylum seekers were not part of the Balkan country's policy towards migrants and that every reported case was being investigated."We do no have such policy and we do not tolerate it. Every signal we receive for an abuse we do investigate," the spokeswoman said.Bulgaria is one of the EU countries struggling to handle the biggest influx of migrants and refugees since the World War Two, with more than 1 million entering the 28-member bloc in 2015 alone.Over 30,000 illegal migrants entered Bulgaria last year, nearly three times more than in 2014. But very few of them stay in the EU's poorest member state and prefer to continue their journey to wealthier western countries. REUTERS PS VP1621 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-548104.Xml Gunmen killed three gendarmes in an overnight ambush near a town in central Mali, the defence ministry said today, confirming the latest in a growing wave of attacks that risk spilling over into Mali's West African neighbours."I can confirm the information (about the attack), but I cannot say more at the moment," said defence ministry spokesman Colonel Diarran Kone.The identities of the assailants were not immediately known. However a Malian army source, who asked not to be named, said that fighters from the Massina Liberation Front (FLM), an Islamist militant group based in the area, were believed to have been behind the attack near the town of Mopti.He said three or four gendarmes were killed in the raid.FLM were also one of the groups that claimed responsibility for an attack on a luxury hotel in the capital Bamako on November 20 which killed 20 people.The attack comes as violence spreads across West Africa into areas previously considered outside the sphere of operations of Islamist militants.Last week, 30 people were killed and dozens of others were wounded in an attack on a hotel and restaurant in Burkina Faso's capital Ouagadougou, carried out by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.Militants kidnapped a Swiss citizen from a house in Timbuktu on January 8, while armed men attacked a food convoy in the north last week and four attackers and two soldiers were killed.The Malian government is trying to implement a peace deal with a Tuareg-led coalition based in northern Mali, in talks being held in Algiers this week.Mali's army has frequently been attacked, with 82 soldiers killed in 2015.REUTERS PS NS1631 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-548149.Xml The official spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban said today that the Islamist movement was not behind the deadly attack on a university that killed at least 19 people. The written statement by spokesman Muhammad Khorasani came hours after a senior Taliban commander said four of his fighters launched the assault today at Bacha Khan University in Charsadda in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The reason for the conflicting statements was not immediately clear.REUTERS PS BD1652 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-548207.Xml US and European criticism of Israeli actions in the occupied West Bank have drawn a furious response from Israel this week, including a former official dismissing the US ambassador to Tel Aviv as a "little Jew boy".Although the concerns expressed by Israel's closest allies were partly cloaked in diplomatic language they struck a nerve in Israel, which is anxious to counter what it sees as growing attempts to isolate it over its policies towards Palestinians.Ambassador Dan Shapiro's supposed misstep was to observe in a speech to a security conference that Israel applies the law differently to Israelis and Palestinians living in the West Bank. "There seem to be two standards," he said.It is a point diplomats and human rights groups frequently make, identifying the fact that Palestinians are subject to Israeli military law as part of Israel's 49-year occupation, while Israeli settlers are subject to civil law.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately jumped into the fray, calling Shapiro's comments "unacceptable and wrong". He met with Shapiro, who is Jewish and is usually regarded by Israeli officials as a "close friend", to discuss it.There was no such attempt to paper over differences from Aviv Bushinsky, a former adviser to Netanyahu and a frequent commentator on Israeli TV. After viewing a clip of Shapiro's comments during a debate on Channel 2, Bushinsky said:"To put it bluntly, it was a statement typical of a little Jew boy," he said, using the derogatory Yiddish term "yehudoni" to describe the ambassador, who is in his mid-40s.The US embassy declined to comment.The criticism heaped on Shapiro was not dissimilar to that aimed at Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom, who last week called for an independent investigation into Israel's efforts to quell a surge in violence, saying that in some cases Palestinian assailants were being killed "extrajudicially".Netanyahu's energy minister called Wallstrom "anti-Semitic, whether consciously or not", and the prime minister did not back away from that characterisation, saying of Wallstrom's suggestion: "it's outrageous, it's immoral and it's stupid."Appearing before the foreign media last week, Netanyahu was asked for his response to those who say Israel increasingly acts as if it is above criticism and cannot be reined in."Israel's not above criticism," he said, "but it should be held to the same standard that everyone else is being held to."I mean, people are defending themselves against assailants wielding knives who are about to stab them to death, and they shoot the people, and that's extrajudicial killings?"US AND EU ALLIEDAt the event, Netanyahu played up Israel's strong ties with India, China, Japan and Russia, countries that rarely criticise. On the other hand, he acknowledged relations with the European Union, Israel's biggest trading partner, needed a "reset".The EU has been straightforward in opposing Israeli settlement growth in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, a policy seen as illegal by most of the world.To draw clearer lines between Israel proper and the land it has occupied since the 1967 Middle East war, the EU has called on member states to put labels on imports from the settlements and is considering other ways of "differentiating" between Israel and land the Palestinians seek for their own state.That has enraged Israel, which says it is being boycotted. But in a sign that the EU's position is gaining support, the US State Department gave it verbal backing yesterday."We view Israeli settlement activity as illegitimate and counterproductive to the cause of peace," spokesman John Kirby told reporters. "We do not view labeling the origin of products as being from the settlements a boycott of Israel."With less than a year of Barack Obama's presidency to run, and almost no prospect of a return to Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, some analysts think the US administration could step up its criticism of Israel over the coming months.When it comes to settlements, there is widespread frustration. In a report yesterday, Human Rights Watch called on businesses to stop operating in, financing and trading with Israeli settlements, calling it an ethical obligation.REUTERS PS AS1713 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-548280.Xml Armed militants stormed a university in volatile northwestern Pakistan today, killing at least 19 people and wounding dozens a little more than a year after the massacre of 134 students at a school in the area, officials said.A senior Pakistani Taliban commander claimed responsibility for the assault in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province but an official spokesman later denied involvement, calling the attack "un-Islamic".The violence nevertheless shows that militants retain the ability to launch attacks, despite a country-wide anti-terrorism crackdown and a military campaign against their strongholds along the lawless border with Afghanistan.A security official said the death toll could rise to as high as 40 at Bacha Khan University in the city of Charsadda. The army said it had concluded operations to clear the campus six hours after the attack began and that four gunmen were dead.A spokesman for rescue workers, Bilal Ahmad Faizi, said 19 bodies had been recovered including students, guards, policemen and at least one teacher, named by media as chemistry professor Syed Hamid Husain.Many of the dead were apparently shot in the head execution-style, TV footage showed.The militants, using the cover of thick, wintry fog, scaled the walls of the university today morning before entering buildings and opening fire on students and teachers in classrooms and hostels, police said.Students told media they saw several young men wielding AK-47 guns storming the university housing where many students were sleeping."They came from behind and there was a big commotion," an unnamed male student told a news channel from a hospital bed in Charsadda's District Hospital. "We were told by teachers to leave immediately. Some people hid in bathrooms."CONTRADICTING CLAIMSThe gunmen attacked as the university prepared to host a poetry recital today afternoon to commemorate the death anniversary of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a popular ethnic Pashtun independence activist after whom the university is named.Vice Chancellor Fazal Rahim told reporters that the university teaches over 3,000 students and was hosting an additional 600 visitors for the poetry recital.Umar Mansoor, a senior Pakistani Taliban commander involved in the December 2014 attack on the army school in Peshawar, claimed responsibility for the Charsadda assault and said it involved four of his men.He told Reuters by telephone the university was targeted because it was a government institution that supported the army.However, later in the day, official Taliban spokesman Muhammad Khorasani issued a written statement disassociating the militants from attack, calling it un-Islamic."Youth who are studying in non-military institutions, we consider them as builders of the future nation and we consider their safety and protection our duty," the statement said.The reason for the conflicting claims was not immediately clear. While the Taliban leadership is fractured, Mansoor is believed to remain loyal to central leader Mullah Fazlullah.The Pakistani Taliban are fighting to topple the government and install a strict interpretation of Islamic law. They are loosely allied with the Afghan Taliban who ruled most of Afghanistan until they were toppled by a US backed military action in 2001.By afternoon today, the military said all four gunmen had been killed."The operation is over and the university has been cleared," Pakistan army spokesman General Asim Bajwa said.A security official close to the operation said he had seen the four gunmen's bodies riddled with bullets. He said none of the gunmen was wearing a suicide vest but carried guns and grenades.RUMOURS OF ATTACKTelevision footage showed military vehicles packed with soldiers driving into the campus as helicopters buzzed overhead and ambulances lined up outside the main gate while anxious parents consoled each other.Shabir Khan, a lecturer in the English department, said he was about to leave his university housing for the department when firing began."Most of the students and staff were in classes when the firing began," Khan said. "I have no idea about what's going on but I heard one security official talking on the phone to someone and said many people had been killed and injured."Several schools had closed early at the weekend around Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, after rumours circulated of a possible attack.The area has been on edge since the December 2014 massacre by six gunmen in Peshawar.Pakistan, which has suffered from years of jihadist militant violence, has killed and arrested hundreds of suspected militants under a major crackdown launched afterwards.The Peshawar school attack was seen as having hardened Pakistan's resolve to fight militants along its lawless border with Afghanistan."We are determined and resolved in our commitment to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland," Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said in a statement after today's attack.REUTERS PS VP1721 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-548332.Xml Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei today thanked the Revolutionary Guards for briefly detaining US sailors last week, but condemned the attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran as an action that damaged the country.Protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran on January 2 after Saudi Arabia executed a Shi'ite Muslim cleric. This prompted Riyadh to sever relations with Tehran, which in turn cut all commercial ties with Riyadh, and banned pilgrims from travelling to Mecca."Attacking the Saudi embassy (in Tehran) was really bad and harmed Iran and Islam, but this should not be an excuse to criticise our devout young people," Khamenei was quoted as saying on his website."I didn't have the opportunity to thank the young soldiers in the Revolutionary Guards. What they did in the Persian Gulf was right," Khamenei also said.Ten US sailors, who were aboard two patrol craft, were detained for 15 hours by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on January 12 when they inadvertently entered Iranian territorial waters."The politician should do the same and stop the enemies with full power if they cross the line anywhere," Khamenei said.Khamenei yesterday welcomed the implementation of the nuclear deal with world powers and lifting of international sanctions against Iran, but warned that Tehran should remain wary of its old enemy the United States and its "deceit and treachery."REUTERS PS NS1734 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-548349.Xml Singapore, a wealthy multi-ethnic city state, arrested 27 Bangladeshi construction workers who supported Islamist groups including al Qaeda and Islamic State and deported 26 of them, the government said today.The 27 were arrested in November and December, the home ministry said. Twenty-six were deported, while the last one was jailed for attempting to leave Singapore illegally after hearing of the arrest of the others, the home ministry said.Twelve of the 26 have since been jailed in Bangladesh on "terror charges", Bangladeshi police said.The Singapore investigation revealed that several members of the group had considered carrying out armed violence overseas, but did not plan any attack in Singapore. Some of them had contemplated taking part in armed jihad in the Middle East, the ministry said."I appeal that we be more vigilant, whether against radical teachings and ideologies, or of any suspicious activities around us," Minister-in-Charge of Muslim Affairs Yaacob Ibrahim said on his Facebook page."At the same time, I hope we will remain united and not resort to discriminating (against) foreign workers here."Singapore broke up plots for militant attacks after the Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks on the United States. Recently, concern has been growing in countries around the world about individuals joining the cause of the Islamic State.The Bangladeshis were encouraged to return home and wage armed jihad against the government in Dhaka, and tried to recruit other Bangladeshis to their group, the ministry said.The announcement came a week after an attack by suicide bombers and gunmen in the heart of Jakarta, the capital of neighbouring Indonesia, highlighting the growing threat Southeast Asia faces from radicalised Muslims.Maruf Hossain Sardar, a deputy commissioner of Bangladesh police, said 14 of the 26 had been jailed on "terror charges"."We have freed 12 others after interrogation, but we are monitoring their activities," he told Reuters.Last year, two foreigners and five bloggers were killed in Bangladesh amid a rise in Islamist violence in which members of minority Muslim sects and other religious groups have also been targeted.REUTERS PS BD1822 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-548500.Xml Armed militants stormed a university in volatile northwestern Pakistan today, killing at least 20 people and wounding dozens a little more than a year after the massacre of 134 students at a school in the area, officials said. A senior Pakistani Taliban commander claimed responsibility for the assault in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, but an official spokesman later denied involvement, calling the attack "un-Islamic". The violence nevertheless shows that militants retain the ability to launch attacks, despite a country-wide anti-terrorism crackdown and a military campaign against their strongholds along the lawless border with Afghanistan. A security official said the death toll could rise to as high as 40 at Bacha Khan University in the city of Charsadda. The army said it had concluded operations to clear the campus six hours after the attack began, and that four gunmen were dead. A spokesman for rescue workers, Bilal Ahmad Faizi, said 19 bodies had been recovered including students, guards, policemen and at least one teacher, named by media as chemistry professor Syed Hamid Husain. Husain reportedly shot back at the gunmen with a pistol to allow his students to flee. Many of the dead were apparently shot in the head execution-style, TV footage showed. The militants, using the cover of thick, wintry fog, scaled the walls of the university today morning before entering buildings and opening fire on students and teachers in classrooms and hostels, police said. Students told media they saw several young men wielding AK-47 guns storming the university housing where many students were sleeping. "They came from behind and there was a big commotion," an unnamed male student told a news channel from a hospital bed in Charsadda's District Hospital. "We were told by teachers to leave immediately. Some people hid in bathrooms." Thirty five of the wounded remain in hospital, a local police official said late today. CONTRADICTING CLAIMS The gunmen attacked as the university prepared to host a poetry recital today afternoon to commemorate the death anniversary of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a popular ethnic Pashtun independence activist after whom the university is named. Vice Chancellor Fazal Rahim told reporters that the university teaches over 3,000 students and was hosting an additional 600 visitors for the poetry recital. Umar Mansoor, a senior Pakistani Taliban commander involved in the December 2014 attack on the army school in Peshawar, claimed responsibility for the Charsadda assault and said it involved four of his men. He told Reuters by telephone the university was targeted because it was a government institution that supported the army. However, later in the day, official Taliban spokesman Muhammad Khorasani issued a written statement disassociating the militants from the attack, calling it un-Islamic. "Youth who are studying in non-military institutions, we consider them as builders of the future nation and we consider their safety and protection our duty," the statement said. The reason for the conflicting claims was not immediately clear. While the Taliban leadership is fractured, Mansoor is believed to remain loyal to central leader Mullah Fazlullah. The Pakistani Taliban are fighting to topple the government and install a strict interpretation of Islamic law. They are loosely allied with the Afghan Taliban who ruled most of Afghanistan until they were overthrown by US backed military action in 2001. By afternoon today, the military said all four gunmen had been killed. "The operation is over and the university has been cleared," Pakistan army spokesman General Asim Bajwa said. A security official close to the operation said he had seen the four gunmen's bodies riddled with bullets. He said none of the gunmen was wearing a suicide vest, but they carried guns and grenades. RUMOURS OF ATTACK Television footage showed military vehicles packed with soldiers driving into the campus as helicopters buzzed overhead and ambulances lined up outside the main gate while anxious parents consoled each other.Shabir Khan, a lecturer in the English department, said he was about to leave his university housing for the department when firing began. "Most of the students and staff were in classes when the firing began," Khan said. Several schools had closed early at the weekend around Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, after rumours circulated of a possible attack. The area has been on edge since the December 2014 massacre by six gunmen in Peshawar. Pakistan, which has suffered from years of jihadist militant violence, has killed and arrested hundreds of suspected militants under a major crackdown launched afterwards. The Peshawar school attack was seen as having hardened Pakistan's resolve to fight militants along its lawless border with Afghanistan. "We are determined and resolved in our commitment to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland," Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said in a statement after today's attack.REUTERS PS AN2002 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-548825.Xml Blog Archive Oct 2022 (38) Sep 2022 (60) Aug 2022 (61) Jul 2022 (55) Jun 2022 (60) May 2022 (73) Apr 2022 (60) Mar 2022 (58) Feb 2022 (65) Jan 2022 (69) Dec 2021 (106) Nov 2021 (84) Oct 2021 (58) Sep 2021 (67) Aug 2021 (62) Jul 2021 (54) Jun 2021 (50) May 2021 (58) Apr 2021 (44) Mar 2021 (57) Feb 2021 (64) Jan 2021 (93) Dec 2020 (82) Nov 2020 (62) Oct 2020 (50) Sep 2020 (45) Aug 2020 (51) Jul 2020 (56) Jun 2020 (53) May 2020 (70) Apr 2020 (66) Mar 2020 (169) Feb 2020 (211) Jan 2020 (184) Dec 2019 (54) Nov 2019 (56) Oct 2019 (55) Sep 2019 (63) Aug 2019 (54) Jul 2019 (69) Jun 2019 (56) May 2019 (65) Apr 2019 (68) Mar 2019 (72) Feb 2019 (76) Jan 2019 (62) Dec 2018 (55) Nov 2018 (69) Oct 2018 (90) Sep 2018 (82) Aug 2018 (58) Jul 2018 (36) Jun 2018 (47) May 2018 (44) Apr 2018 (64) Mar 2018 (63) Feb 2018 (68) Jan 2018 (92) Dec 2017 (85) Nov 2017 (64) Oct 2017 (82) Sep 2017 (54) Aug 2017 (89) Jul 2017 (60) Jun 2017 (86) May 2017 (84) Apr 2017 (62) Mar 2017 (86) Feb 2017 (91) Jan 2017 (113) Dec 2016 (109) Nov 2016 (100) Oct 2016 (82) Sep 2016 (95) Aug 2016 (84) Jul 2016 (84) Jun 2016 (99) May 2016 (93) Apr 2016 (106) Mar 2016 (145) Feb 2016 (125) Jan 2016 (103) Dec 2015 (83) Nov 2015 (80) Oct 2015 (100) Sep 2015 (111) Aug 2015 (94) Jul 2015 (98) Jun 2015 (151) May 2015 (125) Apr 2015 (109) Mar 2015 (122) Feb 2015 (113) Jan 2015 (135) Dec 2014 (131) Nov 2014 (115) Oct 2014 (146) Sep 2014 (112) Aug 2014 (128) Jul 2014 (94) Jun 2014 (104) May 2014 (140) Apr 2014 (132) Mar 2014 (81) Feb 2014 (89) Jan 2014 (141) Dec 2013 (100) Nov 2013 (96) Oct 2013 (99) Sep 2013 (94) Aug 2013 (95) Jul 2013 (95) Jun 2013 (91) May 2013 (139) Apr 2013 (179) Mar 2013 (73) Feb 2013 (76) Jan 2013 (85) Dec 2012 (59) Nov 2012 (71) Oct 2012 (85) Sep 2012 (70) Aug 2012 (71) Jul 2012 (53) Jun 2012 (51) May 2012 (52) Apr 2012 (52) Mar 2012 (69) Feb 2012 (76) Jan 2012 (70) Dec 2011 (60) Nov 2011 (54) Oct 2011 (57) Sep 2011 (75) Aug 2011 (72) Jul 2011 (64) Jun 2011 (76) May 2011 (56) Apr 2011 (73) Mar 2011 (114) Feb 2011 (71) Jan 2011 (80) Dec 2010 (92) Nov 2010 (82) Oct 2010 (73) Sep 2010 (95) Aug 2010 (86) Jul 2010 (81) Jun 2010 (76) May 2010 (71) Apr 2010 (74) Mar 2010 (74) Feb 2010 (82) Jan 2010 (101) Dec 2009 (108) Nov 2009 (182) Oct 2009 (136) Sep 2009 (102) Aug 2009 (120) Jul 2009 (151) Jun 2009 (136) May 2009 (180) Apr 2009 (145) Mar 2009 (113) Feb 2009 (113) Jan 2009 (124) Dec 2008 (108) Nov 2008 (69) Oct 2008 (89) Sep 2008 (76) Aug 2008 (75) Jul 2008 (87) Jun 2008 (80) May 2008 (99) Apr 2008 (93) Mar 2008 (115) Feb 2008 (147) Jan 2008 (162) Dec 2007 (124) Nov 2007 (95) Oct 2007 (67) Sep 2007 (42) Aug 2007 (78) Jul 2007 (75) Jun 2007 (123) May 2007 (110) Apr 2007 (108) Mar 2007 (92) Feb 2007 (136) Jan 2007 (119) Dec 2006 (41) Nov 2006 (34) Oct 2006 (12) Sep 2006 (13) Aug 2006 (13) Jul 2006 (16) Jun 2006 (12) May 2006 (21) Apr 2006 (38) Mar 2006 (27) Feb 2006 (25) Jan 2006 (18) Serbia from today will begin limiting migrant passage to those who state they plan to seek asylum in Austria or Germany only, a Serbian government minister was quoted as saying. Austria announced last week it would deny entry to migrants intending to pass through its northern neighbour Germany to other western European countries, and today said it would cap the number of people allowed to claim asylum this year at less than half last year's figure. Serbian Labour Minister Aleksandar Vulin, who is the government's pointman for the migrant crisis, said Serbia would act accordingly. "From today, based on the decision of the Austrian government, which was relayed to us via the governments of Slovenia and Croatia, migrants will not be able to continue their travel if they have not expressed intention to seek asylum on the territory of Austria or Germany," the Tanjug state news agency quoted Vulin as telling reporters. REUTERS PS BD2016 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0421-548888.Xml Wilfred R. Konneker, PhD 50, a trustee emeritus of Washington University in St. Louis, died Thursday, Jan. 7, 2016, in St. Louis. He was 93. A pioneer in nuclear medicine and radiopharmaceuticals, Konneker founded or co-founded numerous successful companies and ran the pharmaceutical division of Mallinckrodt. He was among the original members of the Arts & Sciences National Council as well as a supporter of professorships and scholarships. Konneker received the Deans Medal from Arts & Sciences in 2015 and the universitys Distinguished Alumni Award in 1991. Wilfred R. and Ann Lee Konneker also provided for a distinguished professorship of physics in Arts & Sciences, a title currently held by Carl Bender, PhD. In 1947, Konneker began his doctoral work in physics at Washington University. After earning his doctorate in 1950, Konneker co-founded Nuclear Consultants, the nations first commercial supplier of radioactive isotopes for the pharmaceutical industry. When Mallinckrodt bought the company in 1966, Konneker became vice president of its diagnostics division. Dr. Konneker was one of Washington Universitys most celebrated alumni scientists and business executives and one of the universitys greatest supporters and citizens, said Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton. Under the mentorship of Nobel laureate and former university Chancellor Arthur Holly Compton, he emerged as an innovative and forward-looking industrial scientist and led some of the great companies involved in nuclear medicine. He inspired and motivated many others and encouraged innovation and entrepreneurship. I will miss him personally as a trusted adviser and dedicated trustee. Konneker had served as a trustee emeritus since July 1997. Previously, he served four years on the board as a Shepley trustee and, in the mid-1980s, served on the Alumni Board of Governors. Survivors include his wife, Ann Lee Konneker, of St. Louis; daughter, Barbara Lynn Webster, of St. Louis; grandchildren and great-grandchildren. A celebration of his life will be held at 1 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 13, at the Sheldon Concert Hall in St. Louis. Born in the segregated South, Brown learned early no one should be denied opportunity to succeed Alfreda Browns mother cried when Alfreda was chosen to integrate East Side Junior High School in Little Rock, Ark., in 1961. She knew how I would be treated and that she could not protect me from that, recalled Brown, a consultant with the Office of Human Resources at Washington University in St. Louis. Browns mom was right. No, Brown would not need a military escort like her cousin Thelma Moorehouse, one of the Little Rock Nine, who integrated Little Rock Central High School in 1957. But she would be bullied, ridiculed, dismissed. We were there and not there, said Brown of her fellow nine black classmates. We were allowed to be part of the classroom but, for example, when they taught square dancing in gym class, all of the black students had to sit in the bleachers. They didnt want us mixing. Despite her mothers misgivings, Brown chose East Side because she wanted the same resources and opportunities as white kids. Hard-working and high-achieving, Brown believed she deserved them. So she was shocked when her guidance counselor told her she would fail at East Side. It was the first time I heard an adult doubt my ability, said Brown. Up until that point, my parents always pushed us to succeed. I was just a pre-teen at that time, but I knew you should never say anything to another person that will limit their view of whats possible. You never can tell. In the decades since, Brown has had many jobs and titles but only one goal to help others realize those possibilities. As the longtime director of the Career Center, she helped students discover employment paths that matched their passions. And today, she helps university staff members build their careers. Ive always believed that you need to have a good understanding of an individuals gifts and talents, Brown said. Then you can empower them with the right opportunities and resources. Empress Sanders is among the staff members who have realized their potential with Browns guidance. After 10 years at the university, Sanders decided to attend one of Browns career workshops. She expected to get networking tips; what she got was a new life. She asked us to map our lives from high school to the present. And then she asked a question I will never forget: How would your life be different if fear had not been a factor? recalled Sanders. That question kicked me in the gut. I realized that I was afraid I wasnt good enough. Thoughts from Alfreda Brown Her earliest memory of Chancellor Danforth: I remember going to a meeting (where Danforth was answering questions about protests on campus). What struck me was Dr. Danforths willingness to be in that space and to be open to a group of angry black students. It spoke volumes about the people who make up Washington University. At that moment, I fell in love with the institution. On the No. 1 mistake internal candidates make: Our internal applicants are competing with external applicants who spend the time to prepare a meaningful cover letter and tailor their resume to fit the position. It is not an automatic hit send on a computer keyboard. When someone tells me theyve applied for 100 jobs, that tells me they have not spent the necessary time examining the type of position they really want. On student protests: The people of my generation wanted to feel like we fell on the sword so there wouldnt be a need to protest. We took the bullying, the name calling, the unfair treatment so it would be a better world for them. It is heartening to know that this generation of young people is willing to stand up and speak out for justice and equality. Sanders earned her degree in psychology from University College in Arts & Sciences, took a leadership role with the Diversity and Inclusion Forum for Faculty and Staff (DIFFS) and was selected to serve as a delegate for the Day of Discovery. Sanders also helped form the recently convened Danforth Staff Council. She did not, however, leave her job as student coordinator and adviser in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures in Arts & Sciences. I like my work, but I wanted to find innovative ways to ramp up my role in the department and the university, Sanders said. Its about blooming where you are planted. For employees who have felt this is all there is take it or leave it Alfreda has restored hope. Still, Brown recognizes the challenges staff face, especially African-American employees. She helped coordinate the administration of the 2015 Diversity Engagement Survey on the Danforth Campus, which found that black employees feel less valued and supported than their white counterparts. One of my greatest disappointments, after reviewing the survey results, is to read statements by young professionals of color that express the same level of dissatisfaction that black employees felt in the 1970s when many of us were looked over for advancements, Brown said. To provide more opportunities for all staffers, she helped develop the You Behind WashU networking series, where staff members meet campus decision-makers. A collaborative effort with DIFFS, the Career Center and the Office of Human Resources, the next You Behind WashU event is at noon Feb. 11 in the Danforth University Center, Room 276 with University Librarian Jeffrey Trzeciak. We have people working on our campus who accepted a position at WashU just to have a job, Brown said. Since they have been here, many have taken advantage of our tuition benefits, theyve grown professionally, theyve mastered their position they are in and are capable of doing something different. The You Behind WashU series is designed to help our staff know where the opportunities are on campus and, more importantly, know what the decision-makers value in the people they hire. Brown will retire this summer and plans to return to Little Rock. She will travel, spend time with her family and volunteer at the nonprofit organization Heifer International, which has headquarters in Little Rock. I dont know whats next for me, Brown said. You never can tell, but I do have great expectations for some wonderful new adventures. PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Two of the gunmen who stormed a university campus in northwestern Pakistan have been killed, police said, but other attackers are believed to be on the second and third floors of campus buildings and firing is still going on. Deputy Inspector General Saeed Wazir said police believed that most of the students had been rescued but several gunmen remained at large inside the university. Related: Mourners pay respect to Chinese student killed in US shooting Grief along with calls for self-defense were expressed on Monday at a memorial service for 19-year-old Jiang Yue, a Chinese exchange student who was shot and killed in a road confrontation in Arizona over the weekend. More than 200 people, including Jiang's fellow students, members of the Chinese community and local residents, gathered at the scene of the Jan 16 incident in Tempe. Jiang, a native of Chongqing, was a sophomore finance major at the WP Carey School of Business at Arizona State University in Tempe. Riyadh (AFP) - Here are key dates for the year since King Salman took the throne in Saudi Arabia in January 2015. - January 23, 2015: Salman accedes to the throne following the death of his half-brother King Abdullah. He chooses his nephew Mohammed bin Nayef as deputy crown prince, and promotes his son Prince Mohammed bin Salman to defence minister. - March 26: Saudi Arabia leads a military coalition in an air campaign against Shiite Huthi rebels and their allies in Yemen in support of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi. Coalition members later deploy troops in Yemen. - April 29: King Salman promotes Mohammed bin Nayef to crown prince after removing his half-brother Moqren. He appoints his son Mohammed bin Salman as deputy crown prince, putting him second in line to the throne. - May 13: King Salman snubs an extraordinary meeting between US President Barack Obama and Gulf leaders in response to a rapprochement between Washington and Tehran. - July 18: Saudi authorities announce the dismantling of an organisation linked to the Islamic State group, arresting 431 suspected members and foiling attempts to attack mosques and a diplomatic mission. - September 24: Around 2,300 pilgrims die in a stampede near Mecca, in the deadliest incident recorded during the annual hajj. Iran, which loses about 464 of its pilgrims, accuses Saudi authorities of being incompetent. Earlier that month, at least 109 people died when a crane crashed into the Grand Mosque in Mecca. - October 29: Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, sentenced to 10 years in jail and 1,000 lashes for allegedly insulting Islam, wins the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament. Saudi Arabia is also criticised for the rise in the number of its executions, which reach 153 by the end of 2015, up from 87 in 2014. - December 12: Saudi women are allowed to vote for the first time ever in municipal elections in which they also participate as candidates for the first time. Twenty women are voted in. Story continues - December 15: Saudi Arabia announces the launch of an anti-terrorism coalition of 34 Muslim countries. Five days earlier, Riyadh hosted a meeting of Syria's main opposition factions, whose representatives agreed to hold talks with President Bashar al-Assad's regime. - December 28: Saudi Arabia announces a budget deficit of $98 billion in 2015 due to a sharp drop in oil prices. - January 2: Saudi Arabia executes 47 people convicted of terrorism, mostly Sunnis linked to Al-Qaeda, but also including prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr, whose execution stirs a diplomatic crisis between the kingdom and Iran. Are you cold? Is that looming snowstorm making you shake in your Uggs? Enjoy it while it lasts. Earth just set a terrible record. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA just announced that 2015 was the warmest year on planet Earth recorded in the 136 years such records have been kept, CNN reported. The 2015 record shatters a record set just last year by 2014, and the competition wasn't even close 2015 was 1.62 degrees Fahrenheit above 20th-century averages, or "more than 20% higher than the previous highest departure from average," CNN reported. "2015 was remarkable even in the context of the ongoing El Nino," an irregularly occurring weather phenomenon that warms the tropical Pacific Ocean off the coasts of Peru and Ecuador, Goddard Institute for Space Studies Director Gavin Schmidt said in a statement on NASA's website. It wasn't even close: 2015 was Earth's hottest year on record http://on.mash.to/1S4Czkp pic.twitter.com/J1BLo8m5Fk https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CZLemaVWYAACN6G.jpg:large "Last year's temperatures had an assist from El Nino, but it is the cumulative effect of the long-term trend that has resulted in the record warming that we are seeing," Schmidt said. According to NASA, the planet's surface temperature has risen by an average of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since scientists began accurately measuring global temperatures in the 1880s. This should shut the climate skeptics up once and for all. Climate scientists told Mic that while surging temperatures across planet Earth in 2015 are alarming, they align with scientists' predictions on the effect of greenhouse gas emissions. They also said Earth's hot year in 2015 should be the final blow to global warming skeptics. "Warming is proceeding pretty much as expected," Pennsylvania State University geoscientist Richard Alley told Mic via email. "What I've seen of the projections on which the [United Nations'] Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change relies ... is that, given a fair accounting, they are proving to be accurate within the stated uncertainties, with no strong reason to believe that there is any notable bias in the models or their projections." Story continues A NOAA graphic released Dec. 17, 2015, shows record average temperatures across much of the globe, with only small sections of the northern and southern Atlantic Ocean showing colder-than-average temperatures. Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist at the USA National Center for Atmospheric Research, told Mic that even accounting for the effect of El Nino, the measurements "would make 2014 and 2015 the warmest years on record. This is very much in tune with what the models have been suggesting and wipes out as silly all the suggestions that were made that there was no global warming because of the pause in the rise of GMST called the 'hiatus.'" "Yes, this is indeed a big deal," PSU climatologist Michael E. Mann told Mic. "As I've noted elsewhere, the likelihood that two consecutive record-breakers would have happened by chance in the absence of global warming is less than 1 in 1,000." Earth's hot year in 2015 should be the final blow to global warming skeptics. "Despite the continued false claims by climate change contrarians to the contrary, the globe continues to warm at the rate that the models predict it should be warming given our ongoing burning of fossil fuels," Mann added. In other words, not only was 2015's record predictable, it's a milestone toward the unpleasantness that could await us in the future. With fossil fuel use s, and cheap oil prices likely to add fuel to the fire, 2015 might not even hold the record for much longer. And if nothing changes, the world won't be ready. Humanity is already facing some of the costs of a warming globe, but it is far from prepared for a planet with a much warmer climate, Alley said. "[T]he costs of global warming, the damages and other problems, rise faster than the temperature does," Alley cautioned. "The first degree of warming is low-cost; we've dealt with a range of conditions before, and one degree hasn't shifted us too far. But, in round numbers, we've already used that low-cost degree. ... The second degree will cost more than the first. ... We're probably committed to that second degree, or fairly close to that. The third degree will cost more than the second, and we're discussing what to do about that." "The likelihood that two consecutive record-breakers would have happened by chance in the absence of global warming is less than 1 in 1,000." Mann said that unless humans collectively work to reduce their impact on the environment, 2015's record temperatures won't even be the new normal. "The bad news is that it's worse than a new normal," Mann warned. "If we continue to burn fossil fuels at current rates, then there is no normal. Temperatures that were once unprecedented will become commonplace. And the new temperature records will have no counterpart, no analog, in human existence." "What we've seen so far is the veritable tip of the iceberg," he concluded, "hence the urgency of acting now." Scientists from two government agencies confirmed on Wednesday that average global temperatures in 2015 were the highest in 136 years of record keeping, and the world is likely to see more of the same in 2016. The reason, emphasized NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt, is that excess carbon dioxide, created by both deforestation and burning fossil fuels for energy, is trapping heat in the atmosphere. The trend over time is why were having a record warm year, Schmidt, the director of NASAs Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told reporters on Wednesday. There is no indication that that trend has slowed, paused, or hiatused in the past few decades. Most of the resulting warming has happened over the past 35 years, and 15 of the 16 hottest years on record have occurred since 2001, according to NASA. Combined, the globes average ocean and land surface temperatures in 2015 were 1.62 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average, and a quarter of a degree Fahrenheit warmer than in 2014, said Thomas R. Karl, the director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations National Centers for Environmental Information. It was the largest year-on-year increase in record-breaking global temperatures, he said. Both Schmidt and Karl emphasized that that rising greenhouse gas emissions are responsible for record temperatures, independent of weather cycles such as the current warming trend in the central Pacific. The interesting thing is that 2015 did not start with an El Nino event in the tropical Pacific, said Schmidt, but still showed unusually high temperatures early on. Even without El Nino, this would have been the warmest year on record. RELATED: Climate Change(d): The Future We Were Warned About Is Here Once the El Nino cycle began to affect temperatures after mid-year, October, November, and December were record warm anomalies for any month in the record, he added. Schmidt underscored that while climate change cant be linked to every extreme weather event, it has been firmly linked to severe heat waves, loss of Arctic sea ice, rising sea levels, and the melting of glaciers around the world. Well expect that to continue into 2016, he said, as global warming continues. Story continues Now that a particularly strong El Nino-based warming trend is underway, Schmidt and Karl said, scientists believe it could combine with 2015s high sea surface temperatures to make 2016 another record-breaking hot year. If that happens, it will be the first time in the 136-year record that three record-breaking hot years have occurred in a row. Last year marked the first time in history that average land and sea surface temperatures surged 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, or one full degree Celsius, beyond those of the 19th century, according to both the NASA and NOAA analyses. World leaders agreed in December in Paris to keep temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius. What were going to see are more and clearer impacts as the climate warms, said Schmidt. Were on a trajectory that, because the carbon cycle is very out of balance right now, cant be turned around easily, he said. While some climate research suggests that an 80 percent cut in carbon emissions between now and 2050 could stabilize the climate, theres no evidence to date that the world as a whole can find the will to make that happen, Schmidt noted. It is up to society and policy makers, he added, to decide what to do with that information. Related stories on TakePart: Protesters Press World Leaders to Carry Out Paris Climate Agreement Fatal Thaw: The Sami Fight to Preserve an Ancient Culture as the Arctic Warms The Reddest State Goes Green (Just Don't Mention Climate Change) Original article from TakePart Paris (AFP) - US defence secretary Ashton Carter said Wednesday he would convene a meeting of 26 ministers in Brussels in three weeks' time to discuss operations against the Islamic State group. "Every nation must come prepared to discuss further contributions to the fight and I will not hesitate to engage and challenge current and prospective members of the coalition as we go forward," said Carter after a meeting with six other defence ministers in Paris, adding that Iraq would also be represented at the Brussels meeting. Starting with a gut-wrenching plunge on the first trading day of the year, stocks have given investors one frightening day after another in recent weeks. It's enough to shake the confidence of even the most cool-headed buy-and-hold investor. If only you could buy an insurance policy that would pay off if stocks go over a cliff. Actually, you can. By purchasing a type of stock option called a put, you can lock in the right to sell your shares at today's price no matter how far prices fall. That's just one of a number of ways to protect against losses, or to minimize them -- and investors are wise to know how each works. "While weathering the storm is likely the best strategy, ongoing liquidity needs and inability to stomach paper losses make this a difficult strategy to implement," says Karan Sood, CEO of Vest Financial in McLean, Virginia. "What is required is a consistent risk management strategy that contains the volatility at all times." Weathering the storm is the most common risk-control strategy, since the broad market always eventually recovers from downturns. That's why experts typically say investors should plan on holding their stocks and stock funds for at least five years. But although the broad market has a great record of recoveries, individual stocks and funds can be wiped out. That's where the second-most common strategy comes in -- diversification. "For those panicky clients, and anyone we meet with for that matter, the message is always the same -- diversification among key asset classes and rebalancing are the ways to minimize market volatility," says Betsy Vallone, partner in Essential Asset Management of Norwell, Massachusetts. Rebalancing means restoring the intended mix of assets after the price changes get the portfolio off target. Stocks tend to be among the riskiest of holdings, but tend to provide the biggest returns over time. Bonds are less risky and generally less generous, though not always. Cash is safe, but earns almost nothing. Story continues The basic idea is to have uncorrelated holdings, so that when some go down, others go up. Stocks in energy-producing companies, for example, are likely to fall when oil prices drop, as they have recently. But low fuel prices can be good for companies that use lots of energy. Professional traders constantly bet on these shifting factors, but that takes a lot of knowledge, effort and stomach for risk. Small investors are usually told to own a wide variety of stocks, so that some will do well while others are in trouble. This can be done quite easily by holding mutual funds that contain many stocks of different types. Other loss-control techniques are more complex, and although useful in times of high risk, they are often too expensive to employ all the time. Most work best with individual stocks, or with exchange-traded funds and index-style mutual funds such as those that track the Standard & Poor's 500 index. Your broker can walk you through the steps. Purchasing puts. As mentioned, these are stock options that allow their owner to sell a set number of shares at a given price anytime over a period of days, weeks or months. If you bought a put to sell 100 shares of XYZ Corp. at $10 a share, you could sell for $10 anytime until the option expired, even if the price fell to $5, $2 or zero. You could then buy the shares back at a cheaper price, or sit on the cash until the smoke cleared. Your stocks would be bought by the person who sold you the put. Unfortunately, the "premium" you'd pay for this option could be sizable, and if you don't exercise your option by the deadline you lose all you spent on the premium. Earlier this week, it cost nearly $650 to buy a single put contract, good until mid-March, on $18,500 worth of S&P 500 stocks, using an exchange-traded fund called SPDR S&P 500 Trust (ticker: SPY). While an option's price changes with market conditions, it's too expensive to insure an entire portfolio all the time. It would be cheaper, however, to buy partial insurance. If your stock were trading at $10, it would cost much less to buy a put with the right to sell at $8 than at $10. You could still lose $2 a share, but would be protected against an even deeper sell-off. "This is like very expensive insurance to cover the downside risk of your assets," says Chase Hinderstein, wealth management specialist at The Wise Investor Group, a unit of Baird. Selling covered calls. The opposite of a put, a call is an option giving its owner the right to buy a block of shares at a set price for a given period. The person who sells a covered call owns the shares involved -- is covered -- and agrees to sell them if the owner of the call exercises his right to buy. The buyer pays the seller a premium. This technique doesn't protect the call seller from loss if the share price falls. But the premium received helps offset some of that loss. It's critical to be willing to sell at the strike price specified in the call, as you most likely will have to sell if the price rises above that level. "Covered calls are so simple that anyone can do them. They are proven to have better returns with less risk and volatility than the buy-and-hold strategy," says Mike Scanlin, CEO of Born to Sell, a software firm specializing in covered calls. Use a stop-loss order. With this, you tell your broker to automatically sell certain shares if they fall to a set price, thus protecting you from deeper losses. The risk: if there is no buyer at that price you might end up selling even lower. You can add a limit, so the shares are sold only at a given price or higher, but then you risk not selling at all if prices plunge. "For our clients with significant positions in a public company, we may set a stop order 5 percent to 10 percent below the current market price to reduce further declines," Vallone says. Saving some "dry powder." This refers to cash kept available for a good investing opportunity. If stocks fall, your cash can be used to buy some bargains, offering gains in a subsequent rebound. But because cash does not earn much, having too much can undermine returns when the market is going up. "We look at market drops as buying opportunities," says P. Jeffrey Christakos, an investment expert at Westfield Wealth Management in Westfield, New Jersey, explaining that downturns are welcome if they are temporary. Dollar-cost averaging. Buying stocks or funds with a set amount of money every month or quarter helps you avoid the temptation to try to spot the market's peaks and valleys, says Andrew R. Avellan, founder of Philadelphia Wealth Management Co. Also, a given sum, such as $500 a quarter, will buy more shares when prices are down, reducing your average cost per share in a holding accumulated over time. That will maximize your gains and minimize your losses. "When considering this strategy, investors should consider their ability to continue investing in times of market downturns," Avellan says. That can be done by setting up automatic investments with a broker, a fund company or a workplace plan, such as a 401(k). Jeff Brown spent nearly 40 years as a newspaper reporter, columnist and editor, including 20 years writing about investing, personal finance, the economy and financial markets. He spent 20 years at The Philadelphia Inquirer and has been freelancing since 2007. By John Ruwitch SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Air pollution levels fell in most cities in China last year, environmental group Greenpeace said on Wednesday, but a humid and windless winter shrouded swaths of the country in choking smog, slowing improvement in the second half. Beijing hoisted its first ever "red alerts" on air pollution in December, when a blanket of humid, still air trapped haze over the capital. The episode followed heavy criticism of the government for inaction during a prior bout of hazardous smog. "Despite Beijing's choking winter of red alerts, data from 2015 clearly shows a continued positive trend in Beijing and across the country," said Greenpeace climate and energy campaigner Dong Liansai. "However, air quality across China is still a major health hazard." Annual average levels of PM2.5 - particulate matter of 2.5 micrometers in diameter that can penetrate deep into the lungs - dropped by 10.3 percent last year compared with 2014, Greenpeace said in a report published on Wednesday, citing official data from 189 cities. In the first half of the year, PM2.5 concentrations were down 16 percent from the corresponding 2014 period, the group had reported. Decades of growth-at-all-costs economic development in China has spawned massive problems of air, water and soil pollution that the ruling Communist Party has only in recent years begun to tackle. The challenge is large and the topic sensitive, with thousands of protests sparked every year by concerns about environmental degradation. Uncontrollable environmental factors, such as wind, can also play a role. Beijing's fourth-quarter pollution woes were mirrored elsewhere in northern China, where concentrations of PM2.5 were significantly higher than in 2013 and 2014, Greenpeace said. Even so, Beijing was among roughly 90 percent of the cities Greenpeace analyzed where air pollution improved overall last year. That as a sign the capital's "serious efforts" to curb pollution were paying off, Dong said. China has worked to toughen environmental protection laws in recent years. Amended legislation took effect this month giving authorities more power to punish firms and officials responsible for violations. Some local authorities, including Beijing, have been trying to limit emissions and forcing polluting factories to close or move. Still, 80 percent of the 366 cities whose data Greenpeace analyzed fell short of China's ambient air quality standards last year, it said. The national average concentration of PM2.5 was 50.2 parts per cubic meter, exceeding the World Health Organization's guideline of an annual average of less than 10 micrograms. China's financial hub, Shanghai, was among the cities where air quality worsened in 2015. Its average PM2.5 concentration increased 3.14 percent over the 2014 data, Greenpeace said. "Greenpeace recommends Shanghai to implement a solid coal consumption cap target and aggressive measures to solve the air pollution problem," Dong said. Ratings Soar for Alaska Air Group ahead of 4Q15 Earnings Stock movement Alaska Air Group (ALK) saw one of the strongest positive stock movements during 2015, as it has been able to maintain exceptional operational performance and strong growth throughout the year. The airlines stock surged by about 40% in 2015. In the same timeframe, the stocks of legacy carriers United Airlines (UAL), American Airlines (AAL), and Delta Air Lines (DAL) moved by -12%, -18%, and 4.7%, respectively, primarily due to pressure on yields and utilization. The broader market tracked by the S&P 500 Index (SPY) dipped slightly by ~2% for the year. As airline services compete for consumers discretionary funds, it makes more sense to compare the airlines performance with the consumer discretionary sector. The Consumer Discretionary SPDR ETF (XLY) rose by 8% during the year. However, for 4Q15, ALKs stock increased by just 1.3% as compared to DALs 13% gains, AALs 9% gains, and UALs 8% gains. Where other legacy players have started restraining capacity growth and introducing capacity cuts to ease off pressure on yields, Alaska Air Group has continued its aggressive expansion plan behind only Spirit Airlines (SAVE) and Frontier. Series overview Alaska Air Group (ALK) plans to announce its 4Q15 and full year 2015 financial results on Thursday, January 21, 2016. The company had a successful 2014 with record profits of $605 million on revenues of $5.37 billion. In this series, we will look at what investors can expect for 4Q15 and more importantly, for 2016. We will also discuss key indicators that investors should watch for. Continue to Next Part Browse this series on Market Realist: Sarah Palin's star may have dimmed since 2008. Republican pundits and donors may have wearied of her. But Republican pundits and donors dont typically vote in the Iowa caucuses. To many, many of the people who do vote there, Palin remains a heroine and a martyr. Endorsements are usually said not to matter much in todays politicsbut if any endorsement in any contest ever can matter, Palins endorsement in the Republican Iowa caucuses will. In 2012, Romney and Santorum finished only 34 votes apart in Iowa. If Palin tips a few hundred votes toward Trump in 2016s neck-and-neck Trump-Cruz contest, she could set in motion a dynamic where Trump may win both Iowa and New Hampshirea stunning and once-unimagined result. But Cruz has vocal friends, too. Radio talkers Rush Limbaugh, circumspectly, and Mark Levin, more explicitly, have made clear that although they like Trump, they prefer Cruz. The Texas senator has collected endorsements from Glenn Beck, James Dobson, Brent Bozell, and Ginni Thomas, among many other conservative luminaries. In the contrast between Cruzs support and Trumps, one sees something truly new and disruptinga battle between those for whom conservatism is an ideology, and those for whom conservatism is an identity. Since Donald Trump entered the race, one opponent after another has attacked him as not a real conservative. Theyve been right, too! And the same could have been said about Sarah Palin in 2008. Palin knew little and cared less about most of the issues that excited conservative activists and media. She owed her then-sky-high poll numbers in Alaska to an increase in taxes on oil production that she used to fund a $1,200 per person one-time cash payouta pretty radical deviation from the economic ideology of the Wall Street Journal and the American Enterprise Institute. What defined her was an identity as a real Americanand her conviction that she was slighted and insulted and persecuted because of this identity. Recommended: Why Is Bernie Sanders Against Reparations? Thats exactly the same feeling to which Donald Trump speaks, and which has buoyed his campaign. When hes president, he tells voters, department stores will say Merry Christmas again in their advertisements. Probably most of his listeners would know, if they considered it, that the president of the United States does not determine the ad copy for Walmart and Nordstroms. They still appreciate the thought: Hes one of usand hes standing up for us against all of themat a time when we feel weak and poor and beleaguered, and they seem more numerous, more dangerous, and more aggressive. Talk radio uses those feelings, too, of course, and has used them for years. But the more ideological stars of conservative talkthe Limbaughs, the Levinstry to use those feelings in service of a more-or-less coherent set of political ideas. Speaking to the feelings of persecution is only a means; some vision of a revitalized free-enterprise system is the end. For Palin, though, her personal grievances were always what the whole commotion was all about. She was effective, to the extent she was, because millions of people agreed that her personal grievances sometimes also represented theirs. Although Palin did finish college, her life story resembled the lives of non-college white America in a way that the personal lives of the Bushes, of John McCain, of Mitt Romney, or of Paul Ryan never did or could. The themes and commitments that define Movement Conservatismfree-market ideology, organized religiosityare increasingly upmarket themes and increasingly remote from downmarket America. Sarah Palin did get rich in the end, but like Donald Trump, she didnt get wealth or enjoy wealth in the way that the hated elite got and enjoyed wealth. Recommended: The U.S.-Iran Conflict That Never Happened Meanwhile, Trump is battling against Ted Cruz of Princeton and Harvard Law School, a Supreme Court practitioner married to an investment banker, who insists that the dividing line between us and them is not life story, not personal experience, but ideas and values. His conservatism is defined not by personal wrongs but by a complicated set of principles, that connect opposition to abortion to support for the gold standard; missile defense to cuts in the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency; and gun rights to a lower corporate tax rate. Ideology versus identity: Thats going to be the ballot question in Iowa on the first of February. A lot more than the Republican presidential nomination may depend on the answer. Read more from The Atlantic: This article was originally published on The Atlantic. By Mark Hosenball, Lesley Wroughton and Stephen Kalin WASHINGTON/BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Three U.S. citizens who disappeared last week in Baghdad were kidnapped and are being held by an Iranian-backed Shi'ite militia, two Iraqi intelligence and two U.S. government sources said on Tuesday. Unknown gunmen seized the three on Friday from a private residence in the southeastern Dora district of Baghdad, Iraqi officials say. They are the first Americans to be abducted in Iraq since the withdrawal of U.S. troops in 2011. The U.S. sources said Washington had no reason to believe Tehran was involved in the kidnapping and did not believe the trio were being held in Iran, which borders Iraq. "They were abducted because they are Americans, not for personal or financial reasons," one of the Iraqi sources in Baghdad said. The three men are employed by a small company that is doing work for General Dynamics Corp, under a larger contract with the U.S. Army, according to a source familiar with the matter. The Iraqi government has struggled to rein in the Shi'ite militias, many of which fought the U.S. military following the 2003 invasion and have previously been accused of killing and abducting American nationals. Baghdad-based analyst Hisham al-Hashemi, who advises the government, said the kidnappings were meant to embarrass and weaken Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who is trying to balance his country's relations with rival powers Iran and the United States. "The militias are resentful of the success of the army in Ramadi which was achieved with the support of the U.S.-led coalition and without their involvement," he said. SECTARIAN TENSIONS Shi'ite militias were kept out of the battle against Islamic State in Ramadi for fear of aggravating sectarian tensions among the Sunni population in the western city. Baghdad touted the military's advance there last month, with backing from coalition airstrikes, as evidence of a resurgent army after it collapsed in 2014. The State Department said on Sunday it was working with Iraqi authorities to locate Americans reported missing, without confirming they had been kidnapped. Asked about the kidnapping at the daily U.S. State Department news briefing on Tuesday, spokesman John Kirby said: "The picture is becoming a little bit more clear in terms of what might have happened." He provided no details. Kirby declined to say whether Secretary of State John Kerry had contacted Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif about the kidnapping. Hostility between Tehran and Washington has eased in recent months with the lifting of crippling economic sanctions against Iran in return for compliance with a deal to curb its nuclear ambitions and a recent prisoner swap. However, the United States imposed sanctions on 11 companies and individuals on Sunday for supplying Iran's ballistic missile programme. (Additional reporting by Mohammed Zargham in Washington and Maher Chmaytelli in Baghdad; Writing by Stephen Kalin; Editing by Gareth Jones) JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Global mining firm Anglo American will sell its Callide coal mine in Australia to Batchfire Resources, it said on Wednesday. "The transaction will be effected via a sale of shares in the subsidiary companies holding Anglo American's interest in Callide," the company said in a statement. Anglo said the terms of the deal were confidential. The company announced a major restructuring in December, saying it would offload three-fifths of its assets as it attempts to tackle sliding commodities prices. Callide, an open pit thermal coal mine that produced 5.6 million tonnes in the first nine months of 2015, is one of four Australian coal mines the company plans to sell. Anglo announced last month it would sell its majority interest in Dartbrook coal mine to Australian Pacific Coal Ltd in a deal worth up to A$50 million ($34 million). The company is scheduled to give more details on its future global portfolio in February. The overhaul at Anglo American highlights the scale of the fallout from the commodities slide, which is forcing mining companies across the board to cut jobs, investment and costs. ($1 = 1.4571 Australian dollars) (Reporting by Olivia Kumwenda-Mtambo; editing by Susan Thomas) Apple said on Wednesday it has asked the Indian government for permission to open its first stores in the country, paving the way for its feted brands to join the fast-growing smartphone market. While it has 31 stores in China alone and others in Japan and Hong Kong, the world's biggest technology company by market value has held off from opening its own stores in India. Its iPhones are available in the country through a broad network of "Apple shops" -- small, Apple-designed outlets that sit within the outlets of third-party retailers such as Airtel and Vodafone. "We can confirm the filing," an Apple spokesperson said in an email to AFP. The company declined to comment further on the request, lodged with India's Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion. Smartphone sales in India have soared in recent years. The country recently hit one billion mobile phone subscribers, making it an attractive prospect for the technology giant. Record sales of its iPhones globally prompted chief executive Tim Cook to declare 2015 the company's most successful year ever, but some analysts have suggested handset sales may decline this year. Apple will also face a challenge in persuading cost-conscious Indian consumers to buy its expensive phones in a market dominated by Chinese-made handsets costing as little as $20. By contrast, the basic iPhone 6s model costs about 58,000 rupees ($852) in New Delhi, making it a distinctly luxury offering in a country where average gross national income is $1,570. By Hugh Bronstein BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Argentina decreed measures on Tuesday designed to help fight drug trafficking, vowing to crack down on smugglers using the country as a transshipment point for Bolivian and Peruvian cocaine destined for the lucrative markets of Europe. Declaring a nationwide public security emergency, the country's new president said the army would be allowed to "identify, warn, intimidate and use force" against drug flights. "The resolution includes strong control of air space," said a statement from Mauricio Macri, who won the presidency in November promising to straighten out Argentina's troubled economy and step up anti-narcotics efforts after what he called years of inaction by his predecessor, Cristina Fernandez. The measure overhauls Argentina's border security network, promising efficient coordination of customs and law enforcement. It came days after the end of a two-week manhunt for three criminals convicted of drug-related killings, whose escape from prison gripped the country and pointed to corruption in the security forces. Argentina is a major soy, wheat and corn exporter. International drug enforcement officials have called the country's main grains port city, Rosario, the "Tijuana of Argentina," comparing it to the Mexican border city used to move cocaine into the United States. Experts say drugs enter Argentina from Andean cocaine-producing countries to the north. Smuggling routes narrow the closer the shipments get to Rosario, increasing violence among gangs that want to control the final steps towards the shipping lanes of the South Atlantic. (Reporting by Hugh Bronstein; Additional reporting by Juliana Castilla; Editing by Peter Cooney) Ouagadougou (AFP) - Burkina Faso police were questioning several people on Wednesday, including four seen talking to the jihadist gunmen who killed 30 people after storming a top hotel and a cafe in the capital, a security source said. Two of the 30 dead, around half of them foreigners, have still not been identified, "one black person and one white," prosecutor Maiza Sereme told AFP. She said French and US investigators were working with local police on the probe, as well as experts from Canada and police from Niger. A video recovered in the four-star Hotel Splendid targeted in Friday's attack in Ouagadougou shows "four people communicating with the jihadists. We identified and found them. They are being interrogated," a security source told AFP on condition of anonymity. Another security source added that police had detained four Niger nationals as well as more than a dozen members of a Tuareg rebel group, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA). Meanwhile Italy's Mario Giro, the under-secretary for foreign affairs, laid a wreath at the Cappuccino cafe near the Splendid hotel where a nine-year-old Italian boy was killed along with 25 other victims of the attack. "We must not forget, so this never happens again," Giro said. "Burkina was hit because it's an example of democracy in this region and in Africa and because it's traditionally been a place where Christians and Muslims live together." Among the four Niger citizens detained was a contender for next month's presidential elections, Adal Rhoubed, a doctor of Tuareg origin who runs a clinic in Tahoua in western Niger and who supporters said travelled to Burkina as part of his electoral campaign. The security source who spoke to AFP said the Niger nationals were pulled in for questioning "to check their identities and schedule." Some 15 members of the MNLA were detained for questioning in different parts of Burkina Faso, "some then freed and others not." Story continues Police were also reported to be making arrests in a refugee camp sheltering Malians in Mentao, near the town of Djibo, where an elderly Australian couple were kidnapped at the weekend. Residents of the remote, rural community have opened a Facebook page calling for the release of "the doctor of the poor", Dr Ken Elliot, and his wife Jocelyn, on the night of January 15-16. The elderly couple from Perth spent some 40 years running a 120-bed clinic there, the only medical facility in the region. Earlier this week, hundreds of students in khaki uniforms with hand-printed cardboard placards reading "Free Elliot" turned out in Djibo with their teachers. Separately, French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian on Wednesday said recent jihadist attacks in Burkina and neighbouring Mali had only served to bolster the resolve of France's counter-terrorism mission in the Sahel region, known as Operation Barkhane. The attacks "have shown that our work in the Sahel is not done yet," Le Drian told reporters in Paris. "I've always know it would be a long-term job," he said, adding that France was satisfied with Operation Barkhane and had no plans to change strategies. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Wednesday condemned attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan, saying they underscore the ongoing threat that militants pose to the region. "We offer our deepest condolences to the victims of the attacks and to their families, and we stand with the people of the region against all forms of extremism and terrorism," National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said in a statement. Armed militants killed at least 20 people at a university in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday. In Afghanistan, a Taliban suicide car bomber targeted a minibus carrying journalists working for a private Afghan television channel, killing seven employees in Kabul. (Reporting by Roberta Rampton and Ayesha Rascoe; Editing by Eric Beech) By Richard Cowan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A battle over gun ownership between President Barack Obama and the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress kicked off on Wednesday as lawmakers began weighing whether to fund the administration's unilateral moves to tighten background checks on buyers. This month, Obama stirred conservative ire with executive action clarifying that all dealers selling guns, including at shows, flea markets, on the Internet or in stores, are required to get licenses and run background checks on buyers. A Senate appropriations panel that funds Justice Department activities used its first hearing of the year to zero in on the new federal guidance that pits gun rights advocates against gun control organizations energized by a series of high-profile mass shootings. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch told the Republican-controlled panel the actions would "bring progress on a number of fronts" in the face of "an epidemic of gun violence." In urging Congress to approve millions of additional dollars to help her agency hire more agents and conduct background checks around the clock, Lynch said she had "complete confidence" Obama's moves would survive any court challenges from opponents who argue he has over-stepped his authority. But Senator Richard Shelby, the Republican chairman of an appropriations subcommittee, told Lynch the public fears Obama "is eager to strip them of their Second Amendment rights" to bear arms and warned that the panel "will have no part in undermining the Constitution and the rights it protects." Obama issued his executive orders after Congress over the past few years refused to pass gun control legislation and as shooters carried out fatal attacks including on an elementary school in Connecticut, a movie theater in Colorado, a Virginia university and a community center in California. Senior Democratic Senator Barbara Mikulski decried a "growing nexus of drugs, crime, guns, violence and murder" that she said resulted in more than 350 people being killed last year just in Baltimore, in her home state of Maryland. Amid the infighting, Republican Senator James Lankford said there likely is common ground on the need for states to improve reporting to federal authorities on people convicted of crimes under state law. "Alabama currently has zero felonies running into the (federal background check) system; California has 4,032. ... Delaware has zero, Maryland, 12, my fine state of Oklahoma has one," Lankford complained. Congressional appropriators will spend much of this year wrangling over fiscal 2017 funding, such as money for gun background checks. (Reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by James Dalgleish) By Francois Murphy and Alexandra Schwarz-Goerlich VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria declared on Wednesday it would cap the number of people allowed to claim asylum this year at less than half last year's total, and its chancellor said border controls would have to be stepped up "massively"- but how that would be done was unclear. Germany said on Wednesday Austria's decision was "not helpful" to German efforts to negotiate a European Union-wide solution with the support of Turkey, from which most migrants reach the European continent. Hundreds of thousands of people have streamed into Austria, a small Alpine republic of 8.5 million since September, when it and Germany threw open their borders to a wave of people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Afghanistan and elsewhere. The vast majority of arrivals simply crossed the country on their way to Germany, but a fraction have stayed. Roughly 90,000 people, or more than 1 percent of Austria's population, applied for asylum last year. Public fears about immigration have fueled support for the far right, and calls for a ceiling on the number of migrants by members of the centre-right People's Party within the coalition government have grown. "We cannot take in all asylum seekers in Austria, or in Germany or in Sweden," Werner Faymann, a Social Democrat who has resisted calls to cap immigration, told a joint news conference, referring to the countries that have taken in the most migrants. The government plan announced on Wednesday provides for the number of asylum claims to be restricted to 1.5 percent of Austria's population, spread over the next four years. Breaking down the four-year cap, the statement said the number of asylum claims would be limited to 37,500 this year, falling annually to 25,000 in 2019. Asked what would happen if the number of people who wanted to apply for asylum exceeded that figure, Faymann said only that experts were due to examine the issue. "We must also step up controls at our borders massively," Faymann told the joint news conference with Vice Chancellor Reinhold Mitterlehner and other officials, without explaining what that would involve. Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said one option would be to accept asylum requests without processing them. "The (other) option of not having to accept asylum requests at the Austrian border is now being checked, and to send these people back, to deport them back to our safe neighbor states," she told public broadcaster ORF. Slovenian police said later on Wednesday that Slovenia planned "the same action" as Austria on its southern border with Croatia if Austria, which lies north of Slovenia, took further steps to limit the inflow of migrants. The Dutch prime minister, whose government currently chairs EU ministerial councils, said Austria's move illustrated the kind of national action likely to multiply if the 28-nation EU did not start implementing a commonly agreed strategy on asylum before a likely "spike" in arrivals with spring weather. Saying the EU had six to eight weeks to end division and inaction on managing immigration, Mark Rutte told reporters at the European Parliament in Strasbourg that if that failed "we have to think about a plan B". As Germany has firmed up border controls in recent months, Austria has often followed. Austria's interior minister said last week it would start turning away people who were no longer being let into Germany, prompting a knock-on effect further down the main route into Europe. Faymann said he had discussed his government's plans in principle with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and their Slovenian counterpart. Faymann referred to the measures as a second-best option while awaiting a European solution involving securing the EU's external borders, setting up centers there for people to apply for asylum, and spreading them around the bloc. (Additional reporting by Matt Robinson in Belgrade, Marja Novak in Ljubljana and by the Brussels bureau; Editing by Mark Heinrich) Vienna (AFP) - The ranks of EU countries closing their doors to migrants swelled further on Wednesday, with hotspot Austria announcing it would "drastically" cap the number of asylum-seekers this year. Chancellor Werner Faymann called the move a "wake-up call for the EU", which he said had failed to protect the bloc's external borders and therefore forced individual members to take matters into their own hands. Non-EU member Macedonia meanwhile said it had temporarily closed its border with Greece to migrants, blocking the path of hundreds trying to reach northern Europe. The announcements reflect an ever-deepening rift between countries opting to tackle the continent's worst migrant crisis since 1945 on a national level and those calling for a joint European solution. Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Austria imposed entry restrictions for migrants earlier this month to reduce the influx. Serbia and Croatia followed suit on Wednesday, saying they would only allow migrants to pass through the country if they were specifically seeking asylum in Austria or Germany. Human rights groups have expressed fears that the restrictions' knock-on effect risked leaving migrants -- including many children -- stranded in icy temperatures on the western Balkans route. Separately, German and Turkish police on Wednesday announced major coordinated raids against a criminal trafficking network that used unseaworthy ships to send more than 1,700 refugees to Europe. The joint operation was a major strike against international organised crime fuelling the record migrant wave to Europe, police chiefs from both countries told a press conference at Potsdam outside Berlin. - 'Running out of time' - Governments are worried that the onset of spring, and with it warmer temperatures, will herald a fresh spike in arrivals in the coming months. "We are running out of time. We need a sharp reduction in the coming six to eight weeks," warned Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, whose country holds the bloc's rotating presidency. Story continues In 2015, more than one million refugees and migrants made the perilous journey by sea to Europe, according to the United Nations. Half of the new arrivals were Syrians fleeing civil war. Many also came from Iraq and Afghanistan. But the crisis shows no signs of abating, with latest figures revealing that Greece has already seen 21 times more migrants arrive on its shores so far this month than in all of January 2015. Grasping for solutions, the European Commission is set to unveil a major overhaul of its refugee system, known as the "Dublin Regulation", in March. Current rules require a migrant's claim to be processed in the EU country they first arrive in. But the EU's executive body intends to replace the regulation with a permanent quota system, which would require each bloc member to accept a set number of refugees based on its population size and other factors. Several countries, including Hungary and Poland, remain fervently opposed to such a quota system. - Limits 'morally necessary' - Austria, which last year received one of the highest asylum claims per capita in the bloc, said Wednesday it could not cope with another huge influx. It said it had decided to accept only 37,500 asylum claims in 2016 -- less than half of the 90,000 applications received last year. "We can't take in all asylum-seekers in Austria," warned Faymann whose small nation of 8.1 million people has become a key transit country for migrants. The sentiment was echoed by German President Joachim Gauck who said it was "morally and politically necessary" to limit Europe's refugee influx, and avoid ceding ground to populists and extremists. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been facing increasingly strong criticism even from within her own camp over her open-door policy. Spurned by Austria's announcement, the Bavarian sister party of Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) on Wednesday reiterated its calls for a cap on migrant numbers. "The Austrians do. So we have to do it too," said the party's secretary general Andreas Scheuer. Leading children's charities this week warned that young refugees crossing through the Balkans were at serious risk from the bitterly freezing weather and lacking adequate shelter from the snowy conditions. A five-year-old girl and a woman died of cold on Wednesday as they tried to reach Greece by sea, as the flow of migrants heading for Europe resumed following a lull due to high winds. Washington (AFP) - American conservatives watching and sometimes wincing as "Mama Grizzly" Sarah Palin threw her support to Donald Trump were left wondering whether their movement to reclaim the White House in 2016 had received a shot in the arm -- or to the heart. Conservative icon Palin, the 2008 vice presidential nominee, delivered the endorsement heard round the US political world in a rambling, sarcastic and occasionally improvisational speech Tuesday with Republican frontrunner Trump at her side. It might pay critical dividends for the braggadocious celebrity billionaire as he seeks conservative credibility in the run-up to the February 1 caucuses in Iowa, where Americans cast the first votes in the nominating process. But several conservative pundits and analysts warned that it could also shred efforts to install a core conservative as the next US president. If Palin helps Trump win, "emotionalist nationalistic populism will have officially -- perhaps temporarily -- supplanted principled, policy-driven, limited-government conservatism as the dominant strain within the American right wing," wrote commentator Guy Benson on conservative opinion website Townhall.com. Palin has been one of the movement's controversial luminaries over the past decade. She has retained the loyalties of many core conservatives, which could translate into votes for Trump as he faces a stiff challenge in Iowa from Tea Party favorite Senator Ted Cruz. "We need someone new... who can bust up that establishment, that can make things great again," Palin told the Trump crowd. "Media heads are spinning," she said in a mocking tone. "This is going to be so much fun." US media indeed have had a field day with Palin's appearance in the Trump spotlight. "I'm with stupid!" blared the New York Daily News, depicting the pair on its front page. - Rogue once again - Securing Palin's endorsement when he did may have been a stroke of genius for Trump, who managed to steal the thunder from a surging Cruz in a state critical for the senator's nomination chances. Story continues But several conservative pundits and strategists have sounded off about Palin's endorsement, warning that it could backfire on a movement that has struggled to define itself within the parameters of a 2016 presidential race that has thoroughly upended convention. "OMG. Sarah Palin has gone rogue," William Kristol, founder and editor of The Weekly Standard magazine, tweeted after Palin's speech, in which she used foul language, mocked President Barack Obama as a "weak-kneed" coward, and evoked disturbing terrorism imagery. Palin has praised Trump for months, and she could act as an important surrogate for him on the campaign trail. But is she helping Trump harness the anger that has boiled over within the Republican base, or merely grabbing more self-promoting attention? The endorsement has fueled speculation that Palin, a former governor of Alaska, might be offered a position in a Trump cabinet, should he win the White House. "She could play a position if she wanted to," Trump told NBC on Wednesday. Critics panned Palin for backing a political novice whom they accuse of once supporting government bailouts and abortion rights and donating to Democrats. "I couldn't disagree with her more," disillusioned conservative talk show host Glenn Beck fumed on Facebook. "Maybe the press was right about her." Conservative personality Tucker Carlson, founder of The Daily Caller, was left unconvinced that Palin would help Trump's primary chances. "She's not that impressive, she squandered this great political capital she had eight years ago and hasn't achieved really anything since -- and also she gives disjointed speeches," he told Fox News. After losing in 2008, Palin kept a hand in politics while turning to business endeavors, including reality television and a stint as a pundit on Fox News. Her endorsement of Trump appears to draw a line between core conservatives and those in the more reactionary, anti-establishment camp. Even Cruz, who lost out to Trump for her endorsement, acknowledged Palin is capable of having an impact. "She can pick winners," Cruz has said, a wry reference to her endorsement of him in his underdog 2012 Senate race. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The balance of military power in the Asia-Pacific is shifting against the United States, as China and North Korea challenge the credibility of U.S. security commitments and the Pentagon faces spending limits, according to a study released on Tuesday. Researchers at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which conducted the study for the U.S. Department of Defense, were left "concerned" that President Barack Obama's "rebalance" of U.S. interests toward Asia might not be sufficient to secure U.S. interests in the region. Congress required the Department of Defense to commission the report under the 2015 National Defense Authorization Act. "Chinese and North Korean actions are routinely challenging the credibility of U.S. security commitments, and at the current rate of U.S. capability development, the balance of military power in the region is shifting against the United States," the study said. Pentagon leaders, and supporters in Congress, say efforts to keep pace with China's growing military might and other international security threats have been hampered by mandatory "sequestration" budget cuts imposed across the government in 2011 in an effort to address the massive U.S. deficit. Congress passed a spending bill at the end of 2016 that addressed some of those concerns, but has not come up with a long-term solution. The report makes four recommendations. The first is that the White House should develop a single rebalance strategy, after finding confusion throughout the government. Among other things, the report said the administration should increase its outreach to Congress and coordinate better with allies. The second recommendation is that Washington should accelerate efforts to strengthen its allies and partners, including in the area of maritime security. "Many states are struggling to mitigate regional security risks that range from major humanitarian crises to maritime disputes to missile threats," the study said. The third recommendation is that the United States should sustain and expand its military presence in the Asia-Pacific, and the fourth was that the United States should accelerate development of new capabilities for U.S. forces, such as the ability to resist the growing ballistic missile threat to U.S. ships and forward bases. (Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Lisa Shumaker) For Syrian civilians who remain in the country, the twin dangers of starvation and dehydration can be a more pressing threat than being killed by bombs or gunfire. Even as far back as 2013, civilians in Eastern Ghouta were desperate enough to run through shelling and sniper fire to obtain flour that had been stockpiled as reserves for the Syrian government, The Washington Post reported. Nearly three years later, as the fifth anniversary of the civil war approaches, continued conflict has made the situation even worse. While more traditional weapons of war, including barbaric barrel bombs, continue to kill civilians, food and water are being weaponized too. Many besieged towns are deliberately kept from access to food, water, electricity, and even medical assistance. All sides, including the Syrian government, which has the primary responsibility to protect Syrians, are committing atrocious acts prohibited under international humanitarian law, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the general assembly last week. He noted specifically, The use of food as a weapon of war is a war crime. Though the International Criminal Court doesnt formally charge anyone with a war crime until a tribunal investigation is completed, its a weighty declaration from the secretary-general. Simply stating that a situation is horrendous enough to constitute a war crime is a serious matter, said Andre-Michel Essoungou, public information officer at the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. They are not words we use lightly, he said. Other than the occasional food deliveries permitted when sieges lift for affected towns, most residents rely on black market food at highly inflated prices. When you control bread and fuel, you control the whole society, one Syrian analyst told The Washington Post. From the beginning, the focus for many armed groups in Syria has been the food chainnot just land itself. Armed forces can sell the increasingly valuable food to residents or merchants in other nations to raise funds. CNN reported that a kilogram of rice could easily sell for more than $100 in some places while milk may be as expensive as $300 per liter. In the besieged city of Deir ez-Zor, food prices rose 978 percent in the last year, according to the World Food Programme. Despite the devastating effects of using food as a weapon, the right to food wasnt codified into international law until the end of World War II. While international humanitarian law contains no mention of the right to food as such, many of its provisions are aimed at ensuring that persons or groups not or no longer taking part in hostilities are not denied food or access to it, wrote legal adviser Jelena Pejic in the International Review of the Red Cross. She added that the main purpose of these laws is to enable civilians to remain at home, a goal that is clearly not being met in Syria. The Food and Agriculture Organizations most recent estimates show that more than 50 percent of the population have fled their homes. Of the 18.2 million who remain, more than half are food insecure. Even before the beginning of armed conflict, Syria was struggling with food insecurity caused by a paralyzing drought. For those Syrian farmers still producing wheat and other crops, its more expensive to sell the product domestically than abroad due to the challenges of transportation, the FAO reported. Even if the current conflict subsides, its unlikely that Syria will reach a state of political stability without regaining food security. Food insecurity, especially when caused by higher food prices, heightens the risk of democratic breakdown, civil conflict, protest, rioting, and communal conflict, the WFP noted in a report on conflict and food security. The absence of war itself, the authors add, does not automatically equate peace and stability. Unfortunately, even definitive war crimes cannot easily be stopped or persecuted. Nothing happens right now because the conflict is ongoing and the bad actors are just too powerful to be caught. Essoungou gives the example of war criminals from the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, some of whom were only recently punished. But Bans statement could lead to some relief for Syrians, as it may cause those who have been targeting civilian food supplies to step down. Essoungou believes that even the worst international human rights violator doesnt want to be branded a war criminal. No single warlord or fighter out there likes to be seen or wants to be seen having fingers pointed at him, Essoungou said. Related stories on TakePart: Women Fleeing War Say European Refugee Camps Are No Safe Haven Syria to Allow Food Aid to Town Where Residents Are Eating Grass and Leaves: Heres How to Help Three Wounded Syrian War Veterans Flee to Europe Original article from TakePart Avantika Chilkoti is a Jakarta-based reporter who has also covered India, Sri Lanka and the Philippines in recent years. Some years ago, a group of Afghan and Pakistani scholars went to visit a public, Islamic university in Jakarta. But, remembers the universitys former rector, Azyumardi Azra, the visitors refused to pray with the locals. The reason: The imams beard, which they considered a measure of religious seniority, was too short. The anecdote says something about the nature of Islam in Indonesia, the worlds largest Muslim-majority country: It is flowery and colorful, says Azra, and contrasts sharply with branches elsewhere, especially the drier, more Spartan fundamentalist forms in the Middle East. And so, even in the wake of last weeks terrorist attack in central Jakarta, the first in the region attributed to the Islamic State, many Indonesians insist that religious extremism is not a broader threat. It takes only a few radicalized individuals to orchestrate a violent act of terror The country certainly has plenty of experience with Islamic extremism. Since independence from the Dutch around 70 years ago, the Darul Islam group has been pushing to establish an Islamic state in the country. The al-Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiyah network has orchestrated some of the bloodiest acts of terror in recent history, including the bombing of two nightclubs in Bali in 2002. And this past weekend, Jakarta police chief Tito Karnavian told CNN that ISIS perceives Indonesia as not an Islamic country, putting it at greater risk. Yet few would argue that Indonesia is anything but a tolerant, pluralist society. Tourists are welcomed into local mosques, which stand shoulder to shoulder with churches and Hindu temples across most of the country. Pluralism is rooted in its history. Islam arrived on the archipelago through traveling Sufis and merchants and has been infused with Hinduism, animism and local belief systems, all of which have since existed side by side. More recently, when drawing up the constitution in the 1940s, Indonesias leaders decided not to introduce Shariah law. And the five principles of the Pancasila founding philosophy includes the belief in one God but none in particular. Story continues Powerful Islamic organizations like the Muhammadiyah and the Nahdlatul Ulama, which claims 70 million members alone, have also played a role running deradicalization campaigns and in condemning militant groups like ISIS through films and books. The power of these mainstream religious organizations and the very fact of Muslim majority makes Indonesian Muslims more secure than their brethren in Europe. Where those in France or the U.K. may feel marginalized, Indonesian Muslims are the powerful majority. Official estimates suggest about one Indonesian per million has joined the Islamic State. In France and Belgium, the figures are 13 and 21, respectively, according to the Brookings Institution. To be sure, there is no denying that radicalized returnees pose a real threat to security. It was, after all, those coming back to Indonesia from the Soviet-Afghan War in the 1980s with bomb-making know-how and a radical bent that led the Jemaah Islamiyah. Since the 2002 Bali bombings, the Detachment 88 special forces has taken the teeth out of local jihadis by arresting many powerful leaders and keeping that generation of well-trained jihadis under close surveillance, according to Greg Fealy, an Indonesia expert at the Australian National University. One result is that last weeks attackers probably lacked lethal training. As security analyst Yohanes Sulaiman wrote in the BBC last week, While the new generation may be capable of firing weapons, they do not have strong battlefield tactics that they gained through years of experience. Indeed, the number of confirmed dead in Jakarta last week two could easily have been higher. Attackers shot civilians in broad daylight and detonated five bombs near a busy shopping center, but police say they found six other bombs in the area undetonated, suggesting the attack didnt go to plan. And yet: It takes only a few radicalized individuals to orchestrate a violent act of terror, a fact that countries around the world are grappling with. For Indonesia, retaining its pluralistic approach to religion and its flowery Islam will require special vigilance to ensure that pro-ISIS returnees dont fire up local extremist networks in the coming years. Related Articles Ilfenesh Hadera is confirmed to join Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron in Baywatch, Paramounts big-screen take on the 1990s television series about California lifeguards. Seth Gordon is directing the 2017 feature, which is paddling toward a shoot with Alexandra Daddario and Kelly Rohrbach also suiting up. The movie centers on the leader (Johnson) of an elite group of lifeguards who is forced to team up with a young, hotshot former Olympian (Efron) to save their beloved bay. Hadera (Showtime's Billions) will play Johnson's onscreen love interest, Stef, who the actor says in his announcement on Instagram must "be a lot of things: Strong, intelligent, formidable, beautiful and funny," and calls the actress "a 5'11 walkin' smokestack with legs for days. Smart and tougher than new rope ... just the way we like 'em." Hadera has also appeared in the Spike Lee films Chi-Raq and Oldboy, as well as HBO's Show Me a Hero and NBC's Chicago Fire. She is repped by The Gersh Agency. Beau Flynn and Ivan Reitman are producing Baywatch. Johnsons Seven Bucks Productions will produce in some capacity. Michael Berk, Douglas Schwartz, Gregory Bonann also are producing. See Johnson's announcement below. EXCLUSIVE: Casting my #BAYWATCH love interest wasn't easy (extremely tough job but hey I'm one of the producers;) but we finally found her. For our coveted role of "STEF", she had to be a lot of things: Strong, intelligent, formidable, beautiful and funny. Want to welcome the talented @ilfenator Ilfenesh Hadera to our #BAYWATCH family. She's a 5'11 walkin' smokestack with legs for days. Smart and tougher than new rope.. just the way we like 'em. And seeing as she's playing my love interest - my strong calloused hands are the ONLY HANDS allowed to rub suntan oil on her soft supple skin. You hear that Efron? Step out of line Zac and she'll knock your unattractive candy ass into next week. Mine too. Our dope cast is coming together nicely with a few more big announcements/cool surprises along the way. Let's have some rated R fun.. We are the keepers of "The Bay". We are... #BAYWATCH. #SandSquadUpInThisBitch Story continues A photo posted by therock (@therock) on Jan 20, 2016 at 3:57am PST Borys Kit contributed to this article. While Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is performing well against Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire and Iowa polls, is Sanders' electability. Put simply, the that the American public would not be comfortable with a self-described "democratic socialist" in office, which could result in another Republican president. But what, exactly, are Sanders' socialist views? In the prepared remarks for his Nov. 19 speech at Georgetown University, provided on his campaign website, Sanders described democratic socialism as a means to fix the economy and the stark difference in income between the 1% and the middle class through higher tax rates for the rich, while also comparing his present-day ideals to those of former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the Great Depression. "Democratic socialism means, that in a democratic, civilized society the wealthiest people and the largest corporations must pay their fair share of taxes," Sanders said in the speech. "Yes. Innovation, entrepreneurship and business success should be rewarded. But greed for the sake of greed is not something that public policy should support." Sanders defining himself as a democratic socialist in his speech, Vox's Ezra Klein noted, means he is still not a full-fledged member of the Democratic Party, which in part is what makes his campaign and its success wholly unique. "Sanders' socialism is at least partly a signaling device: He's signaling that he's not a member of the modern Democratic Party, that he hasn't made the compromises with big money that other modern Democrats have made, and that he won't get into office and fall prey to the same advisers that other modern Democrats have picked," Klein wrote for Vox. Watch the full speech at Georgetown below: Discovery Communications' YouTube platform, TestTube News, also created a succinct, explanatory video on the distinct differences between the socialist principles Sanders supports, and how they stand apart from socialist ideals of other countries that might have a negative connotation namely, China and Russia. Story continues However, despite the potential uncertainty with the ideology, Sanders and Clinton still stand quite similar on many of the issues, like favoring background checks for gun control and supporting the DREAM Act (a full, comprehensive graph on the candidates' issue stances is available on Business Insider). Two s where the leading Democratic candidates' policies differ are with higher education and health care. On education, Sanders is a firm proponent of the creation of tuition-free public colleges and universities a concept that is . According to Sanders' campaign page, the plan would cost around $75 billion a year, paid for with a tax on Wall Street speculators. "If the taxpayers of this country could bailout Wall Street in 2008, we can make public colleges and universities tuition free and debt free throughout the country," the Sanders campaign states on its page. Meanwhile, on the issue of health care, Clinton supports President Barack Obama's health care law and would not repeal it if elected, and conversely, Sanders is a supporter of a health care system. Broadly, what Sanders proposes economist Gerald Friedman from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst is a program provided to every American nationally, rather than through employer-based health care, coining it "Medicare for all." "As a patient, all you need to do is go to the doctor and show your insurance card," the Sanders campaign states on its page. "Bernie's plan means no more copays, no more deductibles and no more fighting with insurance companies when they fail to pay for charges." However, some have raised issues with the cost of a single-payer health care program. RNC is sending out a fact check defending Bernie Sanders from HRC's attacks on single payer health care. This feels weird. @BernieSanders thinks the way to make healthcare cost less is to get the government MORE involved. That has never worked #DemDebate Sanders for his health care plan, though. According to the American Prospect's Paul Waldman in an article for the Washington Post single-payer systems that are used in other countries are still noticeably cheaper than health care in America. "Whatever you might say about Sanders' advocacy for a single-payer system, you can't say it represents some kind of profligate, free-spending idea that would cost us all terrible amounts of money," Waldman wrote for the Post. Ultimately, even with the socialist label among 2016 presidential candidates, Sanders' poll numbers suggest that Americans are warming up to the idea of a president with socialist values. Retirement. The word is often followed by thoughts of a new place to live. But a new country? Retiring abroad sounds appealing, but there are important issues to keep in mind, such as cultural clashes and distance from family and friends. Still, as people plan for retirement, an increasing number are looking abroad, and as communications and travel shrink the world, more countries are becoming options to live out the golden years. The Central American nation of Costa Rica is the most highly rated country to retire, according to individuals who were surveyed for the 2016 Best Countries rankings. The 2016 Best Countries rankings, conducted in partnership with brand strategy firm BAV Consulting and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, asked more than 16,000 survey participants from four regions to associate countries with specific attributes. The Best Countries for a Comfortable Retirement are ranked based on scores from individuals who are 45 years or older and who define themselves as "upper class" on a compilation of seven equally weighted country attributes: affordable, favorable tax environment, friendly, is a place I would live, pleasant climate, respects property rights and a well-developed public health system. No. 1 Costa Rica offers beaches and coastlines on the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea, as well as green inlands. According to Numbeo, a crowd-source global database of various statistics, Costa Rica offers a competitively low cost lifestyle, and the United Nations gives it a favorable rating for its overall standard of living. Europe occupies a special place for people who are considering retirement: Twelve of the top 20-rated countries on the survey come from that continent. New Zealand and Australia also are seen as attractive countries to retire -- both finishing in the top five. The Top 5 Best Countries for a Comfortable Retirement No. 5: Australia Next door to its island neighbor New Zealand, the continent-nation of Australia offers retirees a warm climate, low crime and top-level health care at reasonable prices. Like New Zealand, retirees must meet financial requirements. Once in the country, retirees have endless lifestyle options, from several urban areas -- punctuated by Sydney and multicultural Melbourne -- to smaller towns and rural areas. Story continues No. 4: New Zealand The stunning landscapes of New Zealand, which offer tropical climates on the North Island and temperate climates on the South, are one of the most obvious reasons to retire in the country. It also offers a variety of rural and urban lifestyles and top-rate health care. Be aware, however: While New Zealand's overall cost of living is competitive, there is a barrier to entry. Both the temporary and parent retirement visas require significant amounts of money for investment into the country. No. 3: Canada Like Ireland, Canada presents a contrast to the stereotype of living out the golden years under golden sunshine. And the North American country has a comparatively high cost of living. Offsetting those issues are its health care system and varied lifestyle choices, from the urban East with European flavor in Quebec, to wide open expanses in the West, with Vancouver one of the most scenic cities on the planet. No. 2: Ireland Ireland offers a grayer counterpoint to dreams of living in a sun-splashed tropical climate with white-sand beaches. But its rolling green landscapes and dramatic seasides are just as alluring as palm trees and sand. It offers the quiet peace of small, sleepy towns as well as sophisticated -- albeit more expensive -- lifestyles in its primary urban centers of Dublin and Cork. No. 1: Costa Rica Known for its comparatively progressive environmental policies, Costa Rica offers year-round tropical climate and lifestyle options ranging from small towns to its cosmopolitan capital, San Jose. It was one of the first countries to woo foreign retirees with a package of special benefits, its "pensionado" program. Want to Know More? Click to see the full list of Best Countries for a Comfortable Retirement, or visit the U.S. News Best Countries homepage to find news and more rankings. The 2016 Best Countries report and rankings were formed in partnership with brand strategy firm BAV Consulting and The Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania. Global communications group Edelman released its 2016 Trust Barometer at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The annual survey tracks the public's trust in business, government, media, and non-governmental organizations. Richard Edelman told Yahoo Finance editor-in-chief Andy Serwer that the most significant finding was the widening trust gap between the informed public and mass population globally. The informed public, or elite, are regular media consumers between the ages of 25 and 64 with at least a college education and an income in the top 25%. The attitudes of the elites are at a 16-year high, while the mass population has flatlined, said Edelman, president and CEO of Edelman. Youve got populism. Youve also got the blocking of innovation. You have people afraid, in particular because of the compression of middle-class incomes. The middle and lower class are nervous over the next five years. Trust is below 50% for the mass population in more than 60% of the 28 countries surveyed. That's almost the same level, on average, of trust as in the Great Recession. And the trust disparity between the informed public and mass population is now at double-digit levels in over 50% of the countries surveyed. The U.S. posted the largest disparity at nearly 20 points, followed by the United Kingdom, France, and India. But its not all bad news. Despite the skepticism, respondents viewed business in a positive light. The 2016 Trust Barometer found that business was significantly more trusted than the government in 21 of the 28 countries surveyed, and respondents viewed business as the institution most trusted to keep pace with rapid change. Edelman says this is a real opportunity moment for businesses right now. Trust in business has climbed since 2008 and is now at the point of equivalence with NGOs. Also, trust in CEOs has risen to almost 50% globally and to 70% in select markets, said Edelman. I think this is because we have new kinds of CEOs who are leading from the front and making business not about just making profits, but about answering societal issues like employment and the environment. The 2016 Edelman Trust Barometer surveyed more than 33,000 respondents, consisting of 1,150 general population respondents ages 18 and over from each of the 28 countries surveyed and 500 informed public respondents in the U.S. and China, plus 200 informed public respondents in all other surveyed countries. Paris (AFP) - Already assailed by animal-rights groups, France's foie gras industry now faces a fight on a second front: bird flu. Production of France's favourite festive-season treat has been hit by restrictions resulting from an avian influenza scare in the southwest, where most of the delicacy is produced. "In the most optimistic scenario... a third of this region's (usual) output will not be produced," Christophe Barrailh, head of the CIFOP group that represents the foie gras industry, told AFP on Wednesday. It could be far worse, according to one of the largest producers, who said output could be halved. Foie gras -- consumed in lavish quantities in France at Christmas and New Year -- is the "fatty liver" of geese and ducks which have been force-fed grain. The highly virulent H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus was identified at a chicken farm in Dordogne in November, triggering intervention by veterinary watchdogs. H5N1 is is highly lethal to birds but does not infect humans easily, although when it does is fatal in about 60 percent of cases, the World Health Organization (WHO) says. The potential for infection comes when a human is in very close contact with a live bird which is sick with the disease. Agriculture officials respond to an outbreak by quarantining poultry farms or restricting production to prevent the virus from being circulated by infected fowl, which are bought and sold for fattening or slaughter. H5N1 has so far been detected on 69 farms in the region, prompting the agriculture ministry to impose restrictions on production until at least late May. The order allows geese and duck farmers to continue raising the birds they currently have but bans them from taking on new chicks until after a cleanup launched this month. After the current flock is sold, the farmers must halt all production while their farms are thoroughly cleaned and disinfected, the ministry says. Details of how the operation will be carried out will be announced later this month. Story continues The programme has cost implications, as future production will require farmers to separate birds into batches according to age, to prevent the virus from spreading within a single flock. - 'Attack' on small farmers - On Wednesday some 500 duck farmers with artisanal foie gras businesses took to the streets of Mont-de-Marsan, in Aquitaine, to demand an easing of the measures. "This sanitary crisis will allow big producers to restructure the industry by eliminating all the small farms," the lobby group Peasant Confederation said in a joint statement with a duck and goose growers' union. The region covered by the restrictions accounts for 80 percent of France's foie gras production, according to CIFOG. "Initial estimates point to a production gap of 30 to 50 percent depending on the area," said Dominique Duprat of Delpeyrat, which represents about 13 percent of the market. He said prices would inevitably go up with "less available primary material and higher production costs". Duprat said existing stocks would be enough to supply festive dinners at Easter, but that the outlook was uncertain for next Christmas and New Year's. France, which produces 75 percent of global foie gras, exported nearly 5,000 tonnes of it in 2014. Production in the Dordogne is covered by a "protected geographical indication" label -- a European Union (EU) scheme to defend local skills and values from imitation. The luxury dish has become a battleground between animals-rights campaigners and defenders of France's gourmet traditions. Force-feeding -- known as "gavage" in France -- has been banned in several countries but is legal in France. On Tuesday, former "Baywatch" star Pamela Anderson appealed to French lawmakers to draft a law to ban the practice. "Foie gras is not a healthy product and does not have a place in a civilised society," she said. "These ducks did not have a single day of happiness in their short lives." By Lacey Johnson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Demonstrators from the Black Lives Matter movement interrupted the U.S. Conference of Mayors' meeting on Wednesday, protesting the killing of a Chicago teenager by police and the lead-tainted water supply of Flint, Michigan. At least three people among onlookers and one person on stage held up signs when Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, the group's president, spoke during the meeting's opening news conference at a hotel in Washington, D.C. One protester interrupted her several times, shouting, "You failed us!" Baltimore was torn in April by rioting over the death of black detainee Freddie Gray, and six police officers are facing charges. A protester also held up a sign onstage that said, "16 Shots is a cover up. #LaquanMcDonald #ResignRahm." The 2014 shooting death of Laquan McDonald, a black teenager, by a Chicago police officer has led to calls for Mayor Rahm Emanuel to step down. Emanuel has been the target of protests because of the year-long delay in bringing charges against the officer. The deaths of Gray and McDonald were among a series of police killings of black males that have fueled the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and stoked a national debate on race and policing. At the news conference, Flint Mayor Karen Weaver was interrupted by a protester who shouted, "I need some water!" Flint is facing a health crisis from lead in its drinking water. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is expected to brief staffers of a House of Representatives on Thursday about the contamination. The protest at the mayors' meeting went on for about 25 minutes, with occasional outbursts and the display of signs. Protesters left without interference with security. Rawlings-Blake, Emanuel and Weaver are all Democrats. (Writing by Ian Simpson; Editing by Alistair Bell) The good news: Iran seems to be living up to its end of the treaty with six other nations that requires a halt to Irans uranium enrichment and processing activities. In shortthey cant make nuclear weapons. Related: 9 ISIS Weapons That Will Shock You The bad news: Last December, Iran launched the second ballistic missile test in violation of its nuclear arms agreement. The missiles are housed in an underground storage bunker 1,640 feet underground. One of Irans former nuclear enrichment sites, known as Fordow, is built into a mountain and is designed to withstand an aerial bomb attack. A story in The Washington Post in 2012 called the site impregnable. The Post said Fordow was engineered to repel massive attacks and was modeled after North Korean bunkers. One of Irans underground missile storage bunkers - Twitter Separately, the Center for Strategic and International Studies said Fordow included blast-proof doors, extensive divider walls, hardened ceilings, 20-centimeter-thick concrete walls, and double concrete ceilings with earth filled between layers. Whether its Iran, North Korea or even Russia, the U.S. now has its just-in-case weaponan earth penetrating B61-12 nuclear bomb that detonates after hitting its target underground. Of course, this is just one of many different types of bunker busting bombs in Americas arsenal. Take a look at Americas bunker busting B-61 bomb: Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: Not all psychotic episodes signal the beginning of a long-term mental health disorder like schizophrenia. In fact, when patients experience one of these short-term breaks with reality, it's not precisely clear how the individuals should be diagnosed. Now, a new study finds there are no significant differences in the prognosis for patients who have four different types of brief psychotic episodes. (Such episodes may involve hallucinations or delusions, or less severe symptoms such as disorientation, disorganized thinking or speech that doesn't make sense.) The new findings, based on a review of research covering 11,133 patients, highlight how little is understood about how psychosis may progress, the researchers said. "In the history of psychiatry, it has been a challenge to understand the prognosis of brief and remitting psychotic episodes. The best treatment was not clear, and long-term outcomes were not clear," said Paolo Fusar-Poli, one of the authors of the new study and a clinical senior lecturer in psychosis studies at King's College London. [Top 10 Controversial Psychiatric Disorders] Types of psychosis People who experience psychotic episodes may be diagnosed with schizophrenia, or with a more short-term mental health condition. To be diagnosed with schizophrenia under the guidelines of psychiatry's handbook, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) 5, patients must have at least two psychotic symptoms for at least a month, and at least one of those symptoms must consist of delusions, hallucinations or disorganized speech. People who have psychosis symptoms that last less than a month, or who have only one symptom instead of two, are instead diagnosed with a condition called "brief psychotic disorder." (In addition, the symptoms can't be the result of drug use.) But there are other ways to classify people who have brief psychotic breaks, outside of the DSM criteria. The World Health Organization, in its International Statistical Classification of Diseases (ICD) 10, uses a category called "acute and transient psychotic disorder," for patients who don't meet the criteria for having schizophrenia. Under this breakdown, patients' symptoms must last at least three months (rather than one month) to be diagnosed with schizophrenia. Story continues And two other classifications in the psychology literature peg these psychotic events not as disorders in themselves, but rather as risk factors for future psychosis. These diagnoses are "BLIPS" (brief and limited psychotic symptoms), which puts the cutoff for symptoms at less than one week, or "BIPS" (brief intermittent psychotic symptoms), which puts the cutoff at three months. Clearly, this system leads to confusion, Fusar-Poli told Live Science. Are patients who are undergoing a psychotic break mentally ill by definition? Are they just at risk for developing a mental illness in the future? And what is the line between the two? Psychosis prognosis Fusar-Poli said he and his colleagues wanted to find out if these different definitions were meaningful, particularly for predicting how a patient would do in the long run. The researchers suspected that the length of a psychotic break would predict whether a person was at higher risk of ongoing problems with psychosis, he said. But that's not what the investigators found after analyzing 93 earlier studies of more than 11,000 patients who'd experienced brief psychotic episodes. The scientists looked at how these patients fared over time and compared that with the outlook for patients diagnosed with first-episode schizophrenia. "Our main finding is that there is no substantial prognosis difference across all of these competing diagnostic constructs," Fusar-Poli said. Whether a person was diagnosed with brief psychotic disorder, acute and transient psychotic disorder, BLIPS, or BIPS, he or she had about a 50-50 chance of experiencing another psychotic event in the future. In comparison, almost all patients with first-episode schizophrenia experienced future psychosis. The finding suggests that "researchers should compromise on a common definition" of brief psychotic events, Fusar-Poli said. In an editorial accompanying the Jan. 13 publication of the research in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, Australian researchers suggested basing the definition on patients' treatment needs. The study points to the need to treat psychotic episodes aggressively, Fusar-Poli said. If even a one-day break with reality brings with it a 50 percent chance of further problems, patients need help to prevent a worst-case scenario, he said. Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science. Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. London (AFP) - British Prime Minister David Cameron on Wednesday is expected to urge leaders to ease trade rules between Jordan and the European Union (EU) to help Amman cope with the Syrian refugee crisis. The Conservative leader is to call for changes to spur economic growth and employment in neighbouring countries to Syria at the annual gathering of business and political elites at Davos in Switzerland. "The EU has a vital role to play -- coming together to offer genuine support for Syria's neighbours. We should swiftly agree to change the rules so Jordan can increase its exports and create new jobs," Cameron said in a statement released ahead of his arrival at the World Economic Forum (WEF). "This is not just in the interests of Syria and her neighbours. It is in the interests of Europe too. The more we do to enable people to stay in the region, the less likely we are to see them coming to Europe." Cameron will raise the ideas including revising trade rules, allowing zones where investors could employ Syrians, and allowing businesses to be run in refugee camps in meetings with European leaders during the forum. A spokesman for Cameron said the prime minister would meet with Queen Rania of Jordan and other business and political leaders "to discuss what practical steps they can take to create new economic opportunities in Jordan". The meeting comes ahead of a conference on Syria scheduled for February 4 in London. Jordan hosts more than 600,000 of the four million Syrians who have fled their country since the conflict broke out in 2011, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The Jordanian government estimates the numbers of Syrian refugees it hosts to be 1.4 million. Rouen (France) (AFP) - A French court on Wednesday sent a 41-year-old British woman to jail for attempting to sneak a young Syrian migrant into Britain. The woman was handed a one-year sentence, with nine months of the term suspended, for hiding the 15-year-old boy in the boot of her car in an attempt to get him onto a cross-Channel ferry. She was apprehended by French authorities at the northwestern port of Dieppe before they could board the vessel to Newhaven on Britain's south coast. The mother-of-one, who works in a London suburb as a waitress and occasional escort girl, had arrived in northern France to visit "The Jungle" migrants' camp in Calais, which she knew well from earlier trips as a volunteer. According to the French authorities she accepted 500 pounds (650 euros) from an Iraqi migrant at the Calais camp, who managed to get over to England and asked her to smuggle the 15-year-old across, a task she accepted for "humanitarian reasons". An initial court decision in November deemed her crime worthy of a year in jail. On appeal at a court in the northeast town of Rouen that sentence was eased to three months in jail. Including time already served in custody she should be freed on February 12. The appeal court also banned her from entering France for five years. Last week French justice showed more clemency to another British voluntary worker, former soldier Robert Lawrie, who was only fined 1,000 euros for attempting to take a four-year-old Afghan girl out of the Calais camp in order to drive her to Britain. Unlike his compatriot he received no money and his act was deemed to be unpremeditated. On a visit to Paris on Monday Lawrie urged people to understand the desperation of the migrants fleeing war and misery as they languish in a camp with some 4,000 inhabitants, mainly from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq but also Sudan and Eritrea. "You can't help everyone. But everyone can help someone", said Lawrie, a father-of-four from northern England who has visited The Jungle several times to build shelters for the migrants. Calais (France) (AFP) - Smuggling yourself from France to Britain can be hugely expensive for refugees, but there is a cheaper "pot-luck" option -- the only snag being you might end up in a French military base. Some who have used the 500-euro ($550) smuggling service at a motorway rest stop near the northern French port of Calais, have found themselves heading in completely the wrong direction, winding up in lorries to Germany or Belgium rather than their dream destination of Britain. "The guys who run it know the trucks where the driver is not around or sleeping, and they can get you inside," said Adam Mohammed, a 30-year-old from Ghana. "But they don't know the destination. They look for English number plates, but you are still taking a chance." One group of three young men and two women came back to Calais saying they had woken up in a French military base. "They said the door opened and they had laser lights on their bodies because soldiers were pointing guns at them," said Mohammed Adam, a Sudanese doctor, who is not related to the other migrant. "They were really panicked. They were handcuffed and police came and arrested them and brought them back here," said Adam, speaking in the migrant shantytown on the outskirts of Calais known as the "Jungle" where thousands are trying to make their way across the English Channel. The pot-luck method is far cheaper than the more organised smuggling operations that involve payments to lorry drivers. Migrants and refugees can be expected to pay several thousand euros to guarantee passage to Britain, according to people working in the Jungle. A charity worker, who asked to remain anonymous, said a Syrian had last week paid 11,500 euros ($12,500) -- around double the going rate -- to reach London. The Syrian was only in the Jungle for one night, compared with others without cash who spend months making repeated and fruitless attempts to dodge police and sneak through security barriers. Story continues Britain has spent millions reinforcing security around the port and the cross-Channel tunnel in Calais, but some migrants still get through. "Sometimes 10 will get through in one night, but then 10 days will go by with no one making it," said the charity worker. - 'People never give up' - The pot-luck option is reportedly run by a group of Afghans -- who allow migrants a second chance if their lorry does not go to Britain. "When they are in the truck, they try to feel if it is making a lot of turns because that means they are going through the roundabouts that lead to the ferry terminal, and they can feel if it goes up the ramp on to the ferry. That is the only way to know," said the doctor. Many are discovered by border police and sent straight back to the Jungle, though a few are taken to jail. "I spent a week in prison and they sent me to court," said Solomon Vandy, a 25-year-old from Sierra Leone. "It was horrible. People were so afraid and you can't use your phone so I did not know what was happening," he said. Vandy was not clear on his charges or why he was released, but he was now back in the camp, along with the thousands of others hoping to reach Britain. "People never give up. They are fighting for their lives," said Adam, the doctor. Another aid worker, who also asked to remain anonymous, said some members of the smuggling network had stopped charging money altogether. "I spoke with one of the Kurdish guys who said he felt too guilty about taking money and was no longer taking a cut," said the aid worker. Those who organise the trips from the camp are widely known as "mafia", although their role is simply to act as a middle-man between people in the camp and a smuggling network that is dominated by Albanians, according to several interviews with community leaders and aid workers in the Jungle. Others said the existence of the camp and the smuggling networks were an inevitable result of British policy. "The British government is making absolutely no attempt to accede to French demands and the refugees' demands to make it possible for people to claim asylum from here (in the Jungle). People can only claim asylum if they illegally cross," said Tom Radcliffe, a British volunteer working in the camp. "There are people here with perfectly legitimate asylum claims but they have to make an illegal action before they can be heard," he said. DAVOS, Switzerland - Prime Minister David Cameron will call on EU leaders to relax trade rules with Jordan to help spur economic growth and help "hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees across the region to work". Before arriving at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Cameron said he would, together with Queen Rania of Jordan, discuss with business and political leaders on Friday what steps could be taken to create economic opportunities in Jordan. Cameron said he would press the EU to relax export rules for Jordan, making it easier for the country's producers to qualify for duty-free access to EU markets and create jobs for refugees fleeing conflict in Syria, in meetings with European leaders on Wednesday and Thursday. "These steps will provide real benefits to refugees in the region now, as well as enabling them to play a leading role in Syria's reconstruction in the future," he said in a statement. "This is not just in the interests of Syria and her neighbours. It is in the interests of Europe, too. The more we do to enable people to stay in the region, the less likely we are to see them coming to Europe." Hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled the Middle East and Africa and arrived in Europe, straining the bloc's system of open internal borders within the EU. Britain, which is not part of the Schengen system of borderless travel within Europe, drew criticism from other EU leaders for not taking Syrian refugees stranded on Europe's highways, and only agreeing to take 20,000 of them directly from Middle East camps. Cameron said Britain will stage a pledging conference for Syria next month to raise billions of dollars in international aid for those fleeing Syria's five-year conflict. "We don't just need to agree more money and more aid. We need to agree concrete action that will give hope to so many - jobs so they can provide for their families, and education for their children," Cameron said. "The EU has a vital role to play - coming together to offer genuine support for Syria's neighbours. We should swiftly agree to change the rules so Jordan can increase its exports and create new jobs." (Reporting by Elizabeth Piper, editing by Larry King) 01_15_rubio_foreign_policy_01 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Republican presidential candidates took swipes on Tuesday at the lifting of sanctions against Iran, but they disagree on how they would to handle Tehran if they win the White House at the Nov. 8 election. Iran can expect an abrupt shift in relations with the United States to a more aggressive posture under a Republican president, a reversal of the warming trend nurtured by Democratic President Barack Obama. With only two weeks to go before the first nominating contest in the presidential race, Republican candidates have devoted large sections of their stump speeches to Iran, giving Tehran as much time as they devote to their condemnations of Islamic State militants, also known as ISIS. "I would say this," Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on Tuesday. "The convergence of an aggressive Iran in the region and ISIS are the two threats that we have to deal with and from day one we have to confront those ambitions." Obama has carried out a 2008 campaign pledge to negotiate with Iran by striking an agreement last year to curb Tehran's nuclear ambitions. That deal was capped over the weekend when the United States along with other countries lifted sanctions against Iran, and Washington swapped prisoners with the Islamic Republic. While Republican condemnations of Obama's Iran policy abound, there is a split among the candidates as to how far to go with Tehran. U.S. Senator Ted Cruz from Texas and U.S. Senator Marco Rubio say they would rip up the nuclear deal and start over, on the thinking that the United States would be able to persuade European allies to reimpose economic sanctions. "The Europeans are going to have to decide do they want to deal with the Iranian economy or the American economy," said Cruz foreign policy adviser Victoria Coates. "That's the choice we have to put to them." A Rubio adviser said the Senator from Florida feels strongly that Iran had gotten the better of the Obama administration and that Rubio would only begin to discuss better relations with Tehran if it were willing to respect human rights and change its stance on Israel. Story continues "I am going to cancel that ridiculous deal," Rubio said last week in Mount Pleasant, S.C. Other candidates like Ohio Governor John Kasich and front-runner Donald Trump are more cautious, preferring to wait and see what the situation is with Iran once the next president is sworn in on Jan. 20, 2017. Kasich told Reuters that the United States should be working with U.S. allies now to ensure Iran sticks to the deal reining in its nuclear program and only if there are any violations the sanctions should be quickly reimposed. "I think as time goes on it's going to be harder because people are addicted to money," he said. "I don't know where we're going to be in 10 months. No one knows where we're going to be." Trump has said it would be tough to rip up the agreement with Iran on its nuclear program but has vowed that if he were elected president he would "police that contract so tough they don't have a chance." Republican Senator John McCain, the party's 2008 presidential nominee, told Reuters the argument over whether to stick to the Iran agreement is academic because he believes Iran will violate the nuclear deal. "I think the best thing to do is evaluate it on Inauguration Day," he said. "You're going to have between the election and the Jan. 20 swearing-in to evaluate whether they have adhered to it and make a judgment then. But I think it's a very bad agreement." Related Articles Carol screenwriter Phyllis Nagy has set up her next act. The Oscar-nominated scribe is set to adapt Rachel Kushner's book Telex From Cuba for Paramount Television and Anonymous Content, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. The National Book Award finalist is set in the American community in Cuba during the years leading up to Fidel Castro's revolution. Nagy will adapt the novel and serve as showrunner and executive producer. A network is not yet attached. Anonymous Content's Rosalie Swedlin and Adam Schulman also are on board to exec produce. Anonymous Content is behind best picture Oscar nominees Spotlight and The Revenant. Read More: Making of 'Carol': Why It Took 60 Years to Film the Lesbian Love Story Told from multiple perspectives, the novel captures the world of the Americans who lived in a pleasure-filled Shangri-la, blissfully unaware that the proverbial crystal chandelier was about to come crashing down on them. "I am thrilled to begin work on bringing the complex, beautiful, colliding worlds of Rachel Kushners magnificent novel to dramatic life," said Nagy. "The political, social and economic landscapes of Cuba in the 1950s is rich, exciting territory and I look forward to exploring it all with Anonymous Content and Paramount Television. In addition to her Oscar-nominated screenplay for Carol, which was based on Patricia Highsmith's book The Price of Salt, Nagy also wrote and directed the HBO telepic Mrs. Harris, which was nominated for 12 Emmys. She is currently plotting feature adaptations of The Trap and The Luneburg Variation and writing an original screenplay titled Middle of Somewhere, which details a week in the life of Dusty Springfield. Nagy is repped by UTA. For Paramount TV and Anonymous Content, this marks the latest collaboration following their three-year, first-look production pact. The companies also are teaming on Cary Fukunaga's The Alienist at TNT and Netflix's Thirteen Reasons Why, starring Selena Gomez, among others. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson canceled public events on Tuesday after a van carrying three volunteers and a campaign staffer slid on ice in Iowa, flipped on its side and was hit by another vehicle, his campaign said. One of the volunteers, Braden Joplin, 25, died after being taken to a trauma center at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, the hospital said in a statement released by the Carson campaign. The other three people were treated and released from a hospital in Atlantic, Iowa, the statement said. Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, was traveling from South Carolina to Omaha where he planned to meet with Joplin's family members and offer his condolences, the hospital statement said. Carson is among a dozen Republican presidential candidates crisscrossing Iowa before the state's Feb. 1 caucuses, the nation's first contest to determine the party's nominee in November's presidential election. (Reporting by Doina Chiacu and Eric Walsh; Editing by Alistair Bell and Peter Cooney) A chemistry teacher who tried to shield his students by opening fire on Taliban militants during a deadly attack at a Pakistani university was known as "The Protector" even before his death in a hail of bullets Wednesday. Lecturer Syed Hamid Husain, a 32-year-old assistant professor of chemistry at the Bacha Khan university in Charsadda, ordered his students to stay inside as Taliban gunmen stormed the school near the city of Peshawar on Wednesday, leaving at least 21 people dead. Students told of how the father-of-two opened fire on assailants as they rampaged across campus, giving the young people time to flee before he was cut down by gunfire. "We saw three terrorists shouting, 'Allah is great!' and rushing towards the stairs of our department," one man told reporters. "One student jumped out of the classroom through the window. We never saw him get up." He described seeing Husain holding a pistol and firing at the attackers. "Then we saw him fall down and as the terrorists entered the (registrar) office we ran away." Geology student Zahoor Ahmed said Husain had warned him not to leave the building after the first shots were fired. "He was holding a pistol in his hand," he said. "Then I saw a bullet hit him. I saw two militants were firing. I ran inside and then managed to flee by jumping over the back wall." "They fired directly at" the professor, sociology student Muhammad Daud told AFP, describing Husain as "a real gentleman and a respectable teacher". Students and university officials paid tribute to the slain academic Wednesday, saying he had been nicknamed "The Protector" even before his death. "He would always help the students and he was the one who knew all their secrets because they would share all their problems with him," 22-year-old geology student Waqar Ali told AFP. "He was referred to by students as 'The Protector'." Story continues - 'Remember, kiddo, I have a pistol' - Husain had been the father of a three-year-old boy and a daughter who had recently celebrated her first birthday, a university administration official told AFP. He had spent three years studying in the UK for his PhD, the official said. Mohammad Shazeb, a 24-year-old computer science student, told AFP that Husain was fond of gardening and used to joke with the students that they should learn gardening for when they are unemployed. "He had a 9mm pistol and used to tell us stories about his hunting trips," Shazeb said. Husain also never missed a game of cricket with the students, he said, adding: "When someone would go to bowl to him, he would joke: 'Remember kiddo, I have a pistol'". Tributes were also paid online to the slain teacher, whose funeral was held in his home village of Swabi Wednesday evening. "Martyr of #education: Prof Hamid who was killed by terrorists in #BachaKhanUniversity#Pakistan," tweeted journalist and academic Raza Ahmad Rumi. Pakistan's President Mamnoon Hussain expressed his grief and condolences to the man's family. Police said at least 21 people had been killed in the university attack, with security forces killing all four gunmen. It was not clear if they were included in the toll. A faction of the Pakistani Taliban have claimed responsibility for the attack, though the umbrella group's main leadership has condemned it as "un-Islamic". Teachers in northwest Pakistan were given permission to carry firearms in the classroom after Taliban militants massacred more than 150 people, the majority of them children, at a school in the city of Peshawar in 2014. The attack on an army-run school in the city, some 50 kilometres (30 miles) from Charsadda, was the deadliest in Pakistani history, and saw heavily armed militants go from room to room slaughtering students and staff. Teachers' associations had objected to arming staff, saying it was not their job to fight off militants. BEIJING (Reuters) - A court in Beijing on Wednesday jailed a former Chinese Communist Party chief of Urumqi, the capital of the violence-prone far-western region of Xinjiang, for 12 years for corruption. Yang Gang, who was indicted for accepting bribes last year, served as party secretary of Urumqi between 1999 and 2006. The Beijing court said in a statement that Yang abused his power while working in Xinjiang by providing "assistance" to others in promotions and winning contracts. He also took 13.79 million yuan ($2.10 million) in bribes that were channeled via his wife and son, the court said. Yang confessed to his crimes and gave help in the investigation, meaning he received a lighter sentence, it added. President Xi Jinping has launched a sweeping campaign against deep-seated graft since assuming office three years ago, and dozens of senior officials have been jailed. Xinjiang is one of China's most sensitive regions. Hundreds have died there in unrest in recent years, blamed by the government on Islamist militants who want to establish an independent state called East Turkestan. Many rights groups and foreign experts though say the root cause of the problems is unhappiness among the Muslim Uighur people who call Xinjiang home over controls on their religion and culture. China denies any repression in Xinjiang and says it faces a very real terrorist threat. China's top prosecutor said on its official microblog that the arrest of a deputy security chief in Xinjiang had been approved on Jan. 15 on suspicion of "abuse of power" and "accepting bribes", a move paving the way for his prosecution. Xie Hui, who ran the Xinjiang prison system from 2010 until his promotion in 2013 to be a vice head of the Xinjiang public security bureau, was put under investigation in July. The notice provided few details but said the case was still being investigated. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Michael Martina; Editing by Nick Macfie) BEIJING (Reuters) - China has signaled its support for Yemen's government, which is fighting an Iran-allied militia, on the first day of a visit to Saudi Arabia by Chinese President Xi Jinping, who will also be heading to Tehran later in the week. A Saudi-led coalition began a military campaign last year against the Iranian-allied Shi'ite Houthi movement in Yemen, which has seized the capital, Sanaa. The government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi is now based in the southern city of Aden. Riyadh sees the Houthis as a proxy for bitter regional rival Iran to expand its influence in the impoverished Arabian Peninsula nation. The Houthis deny this and say they are waging a revolution against a corrupt government and Gulf Arab powers beholden to the West. A growing diplomatic dispute between Riyadh and Tehran, triggered by mainly Sunni Saudi Arabia's execution of a prominent Shi'ite cleric, has damaged the outlook for any resolution to the conflict in Yemen. Saudi Arabia and China said in a statement on Wednesday that the two countries affirmed their support for the unity, independence and sovereignty of Yemen. The statement was released by China's Foreign Ministry after Xi met Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz in Riyadh on Tuesday. All social, religious and political groups in Yemen should maintain their national solidarity and avoid any decisions that may cause social disruption and chaos, it said. "Both sides stressed support for the legitimate regime of Yemen," the statement said. Xi is expected in Iran later in the week, with a further stop in Egypt after he leaves Saudi Arabia. Asked whether China was siding with Saudi Arabia over Yemen and whether that could risk upsetting Iran, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China had always acted in the interests of the Yemeni people and maintaining peace in the Middle East, and had promoted peace talks. "(We) hope clashes in Yemen can come to an end as soon as possible and there can be reconciliation so the country can return to stability," Hong told a daily news briefing. China relies on the region for oil but has tended to leave Middle Eastern diplomacy to the other four permanent members of the U.N. Security Council - the United States, Britain, France and Russia. However, China has been trying to get more involved, especially in Syria, and recently hosted its foreign minister and opposition officials. China and Saudi Arabia expressed deep concern about Syria and renewed a call for a peaceful political settlement as soon as possible. A Chinese president has not visited Saudi Arabia since 2009, when Hu Jintao went. Jiang Zemin was the last Chinese president to visit Iran, in 2002. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Paul Tait and Simon Cameron-Moore) Riyadh (AFP) - Chinese President Xi Jinping and Saudi King Salman on Wednesday inaugurated a joint-venture refinery, symbolising Beijing's deepening involvement in the Middle East and Riyadh's need for economic diversification. The event took place in the Saudi capital on the second day of Xi's first visit to the region. He later left for Cairo and will also travel to Saudi Arabia's rival Iran. The YASREF refinery, in Yanbu Industrial City on the Red Sea, is 62.5-percent held by Saudi oil giant Aramco, while China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (Sinopec) holds the balance. "YASREF represents both companies' focus on driving downstream growth," the refinery said in a statement. Billboards on a highway outside the ceremony showed Xi and Salman waving against a backdrop of the refinery. Saudi Arabia is China's biggest global supplier of crude, and state-owned Saudi Aramco says expansion into refining and chemicals fits the kingdom's goal of economic diversification. The policy has been given added urgency by a plunge in the kingdom's oil revenues. YASREF is one of five joint-venture refineries in Saudi Arabia. Another four are overseas, including one in Fujian, China. The YASREF refinery shipped its first diesel one year ago and has a capacity to refine 400,000 barrels of Arabian crude per day. Saudi Aramco and Sinopec also signed a framework agreement on cooperation, reflecting confidence "in the potential opportunities we can create together," said Saudi Aramco president Amin Nasser. - Growing trade - Sinopec's strengths in refinery and chemical technology would support the kingdom's drive to diversify its petroleum sector, said the company's chairman Wang Yupu. The ceremony, accompanied by a Chinese dragon and Arabian sword-dancing, took place in Riyadh at the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center (KAPSARC). Salman separately inaugurated that facility, which focuses on energy research and policy. Story continues Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi, who chairs KAPSARC's board of trustees, told the gathering the centre would "contribute to the diversification and expansion of the Saudi economy". Salman in December said he had ordered economic reforms to diversify sources of income and reduce the kingdom's high dependence on oil. Global crude prices have collapsed from above $100 a barrel in early 2014 to below $28 on Wednesday. To cope with a record budget deficit, the kingdom broke with its decades-old generous welfare system and raised fuel, electricity and other prices in its 2016 budget. Government spending has also been cut, there is talk of a value-added tax in the tax-free nation, and state assets including Saudi Aramco could be privatised. Trade between the Gulf nations and China, the world's second-largest economy, has been growing. Two-way commerce between China and Saudi Arabia alone reached $69.1 billion in 2014, according to China's official Xinhua news agency. Although China depends on the Middle East for its oil supplies, it has long taken a low-profile approach to the region's diplomatic and other disputes, only recently beginning to expand its role, especially in the Syrian crisis. Before Xi's visit, a Chinese analyst said Beijing would do what it could to ease heightened tensions between Saudi Arabia, the region's main Sunni power, and its Shiite rival Iran. Later, Xi was welcomed at Cairo airport by his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, with whom he will hold bilateral talks that focus on the economic sector. Bilateral trade between China and Egypt amounted to $11 billion in 2014, the bulk of it being Chinese exports to the biggest Sunni Arab country, state-run Al-Ahram newspaper reported. On Thursday, Xi is to visit Egypt's newly convened parliament, and will address a session of the Cairo-based Arab League. Today's budding entrepreneurs can learn how to build and run a successful business by taking their education online. Entrepreneurship is a growing discipline in online education for a number of reasons, including that skills in the field are becoming more appealing to employers, experts say. "People are excited when they see companies startup and become successful, and also I think that there's a way to apply entrepreneurial thinking within an organization," says Cheryl Bann, chair of the MBA program at Capella University, an online, for-profit school that offers a graduate certificate and an MBA degree in entrepreneurship. [Ask these questions when choosing an MBA entrepreneurship program.] There are different types of online programs and classes out there for aspiring entrepreneurs that range in both subject matter and structure. "I would not limit all entrepreneurship as being the same," says James Green, director of entrepreneurship education for the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute, or Mtech, at the University of Maryland. "I would go even deeper than that and try to figure out what facets of entrepreneurship -- be it technology or social or international or other elements -- may be of interest." Online programs in entrepreneurship can be categorized based on cost, but programs and classes in the field differ in many other ways, experts say. Take a look at what makes each type unique. -- MOOCs and free online programs: Free online courses in entrepreneurship are usually self-paced and don't enable students to earn a credential or credit of any kind without payment, experts say. They can be a good option for those looking for an overall introduction to the field or answers to more specific questions. Free online classes can have hundreds or thousands of students, which can mean less, if any, interaction between them and an instructor. [Understand how online learning options vary by most than just cost.] Story continues Companies such as Udacity and universities such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University offer free online entrepreneurship class options. At MIT, learners both within and outside the university can sign up for three different entrepreneurship MOOCs, which are self-paced, says Bill Aulet, managing director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship at the university . Another free option is the Kauffman Founders School, which publishes video content from leading experts as well as suggestions for further reading and other resources. -- Low-cost options: Lower-cost options might involve more faculty interaction and the ability to earn a credential of some kind, experts say, though the distinctions between free and low-cost options can vary. On Udemy, an online learning marketplace, entrepreneurship classes that cost money can range from less than $20 to a few hundred dollars. Meanwhile, in each of MIT's online entrepreneurship MOOCs, students have the option to earn a verified certificate if they complete assessments and pay $100, says Andrew Ngui, manager of entrepreneurship programs in MIT's Office of Digital Learning. Ideally after completing at least one of the MOOCs, students can pay $6,000 to attend a three-month bootcamp, a mentorship program that can include face-to-face and online instruction and a one-week, in-person training. -- Certificate programs: Experts say earning a certificate in entrepreneurship can be a great option for the student who might already have some business knowledge but is looking to learn more about entrepreneurship specifically. Certificates often have fewer class requirements than degrees and are generally less costly. The certificate in entrepreneurship offered at Capella entails completing five courses, whereas the MBA in entrepreneurship requires 16. "You're getting a variety of a small number of courses," Bann says of online certificate programs. "But you're getting courses that have been put together looking at the overall discipline of entrepreneurship and how to ready someone to participate." -- Degree programs: The percentage of new entrepreneurs who were college graduates rose from 23.7 percent in 1996 to 33 percent in 2014, according to a Kauffman Foundation report. By pursuing a degree, an online student can receive a foundational business background in addition to a deeper knowledge of entrepreneurship, Bann says. [Choose between an online graduate certificate and degree.] This was the case for Felicia Rosemond, a student in Capella's online MBA in e ntrepreneurship . She's been working in information technology and software development for about 20 years but is looking to start and run a business, which she says will require her to get more general business knowledge. "I just didn't think a certificate would be quite long enough to build up that acumen that I wanted to build for myself," she says. Trying to fund your online education? Get tips and more in the U.S. News Paying for Online Education center. Jordan Friedman is an online education editor at U.S. News. You can follow him on Twitter or email him at jfriedman@usnews.com. When Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY) announced earlier this month that he was retiring after eight terms in Congress, he didnt hold back about why. I dont think I can spend another day in another call room making another call begging for money, Israel, the former head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told The New York Times. In an op-ed, he estimated that he spent roughly 4,200 hours in call time, attended more than 1,600 fund-raisers just for my own campaign and raised nearly $20 million while in office. Related: Trump and Cruz Feud Ignites Into a Full-Blown War as Race Tightens The 57-year-old lawmaker said he plans to spend his retirement pushing for campaign finance reform, working on his second novel and visiting his beloved New York diners. Israels confession was yet more confirmation of what many people outside the Beltway already suspect about how lawmakers spend their time. Namely, that despite a $174,000 salary to do a job they were elected to do, members devote considerable time and energy to raising money. And its not just Congress. Experts predict that around $10 billion will be raised during the 2016 presidential election. Perhaps thats why Rep. David Jolly (R-FL) is proposing a measure to slow the flow of campaign cash into every nook and cranny of political life. Related: Cruzs Unreported $1 Million in Bank Loans Wont Help His Bid for President The Stop Act would ban members of Congress from personally asking people for money. Federal officeholders would still be allowed to attend fundraisers and talk to donors, and voters could still contribute money to any campaign they want, but officials would be prohibited from personally asking for cash. We cant have a part-time Congress in a full-time world, Jolly, who is running for the Senate seat vacated by Marco Rubio, said Tuesday in a statement. Americans wonder why we havent defeated ISIS, secured our border, provided health care for veterans, or reduced the national debt. Heres why. Too many in Congress are more focused on raising money than solving the problems people elected them to fix." Story continues Here is Jollys video promoting the act (and his own re-election): Its unlikely that Congress would ever approve a measure that would ask members to unilaterally disarm themselves in the race for money. Jolly himself is trying to lead by example, telling National Journal that he is personally forswearing any fundraising and will leave it up to his campaign staff to bring in the bucks. Related: Clinton Facing a Long Fight as Sanders Fundraising Soars But Jollys proposal could help him in a year in which outsider candidates like Donald Trump have ruled public opinion polls and GOP primary voters have displayed anger, in part, with what they see as a quid pro quo system between lawmakers and donors. Only time will tell if Jollys legislation will generate enough momentum to break up the current system of fundraising, or if it will be nothing more than a footnote in the long, sad history campaign finance reform. Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: Tokyo (AFP) - US animal rights activist Ric O'Barry who featured in "The Cove", a documentary about dolphin slaughter in a Japanese town, has been detained in Tokyo by immigration authorities after being denied entry to the country, his supporters said Wednesday. O'Barry, 76, was held by immigration officials at Toyko's Narita International Airport on Monday and interrogated repeatedly, they said, citing his lawyer. He was denied entry to Japan on a tourist visa, they said on his website "Ric O'Barry's Dolphin Project". O'Barry appeared in "The Cove", the Oscar-winning documentary which drew worldwide attention to the annual dolphin hunt in the small Japanese town of Taiji, and has frequently visited Japan and the fishing community to protest against the killing of the mammals. The Tokyo Immigration Bureau said it cannot comment on individual cases, citing privacy rules. It is not the first time O'Barry has been detained by Japanese authorities. Last September he was arrested near Taiji on the eve of the start of the controversial six-month dolphin hunt, for allegedly failing to carry his passport after being stopped by police. He was released the following night. In recent years, Japanese police have dispatched more officers to Taiji during the hunt in anticipation of possible clashes between locals and activists from conservation group Sea Shepherd. During the current detention immigration officials accused him of making "The Cove" movie and collaborating with Sea Shepherd, which he denied, the supporters said, citing his lawyer. O'Barry's attorney could not immediately be reached for comment. "I feel I am being used as a figurehead representing all Western activists," he said through his son, Lincoln O'Barry, on the website. The last social networking post by O'Barry himself is an Instagram photo with the comment: "Here we go again...", showing an immigration sign apparently at a Japanese airport, dated Sunday. O'Barry first found fame in the 1960s for catching and training five dolphins for the well-known TV series "Flipper", but he has recently fought against keeping the mammals in captivity. Paris (AFP) - The defence ministers of seven countries leading the battle against the Islamic State group met in Paris on Wednesday to review strategy as the jihadists spread their influence around the globe. The French and US defence ministers, Jean-Yves Le Drian and Ashton Carter, hosted the meeting attended by their Australian, British, Dutch, German and Italian counterparts. British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said it would look at ways to "capitalise on the setbacks that Daesh (an alternative name for IS) has suffered in Iraq and tighten the noose around the head of the snake in Syria." But the coalition must also face up to the spread of IS around the world, notably in Libya where political chaos has allowed the group to build a 3,000-strong force. Russia, a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, was not invited to Wednesday's meeting, though US Secretary of State John Kerry met his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Zurich at the same time to discuss Syria. Moscow's air campaign, which it claims is targeted against IS, has been criticised for focusing on the moderate opposition to Assad. "I'm increasingly disturbed by the Russian bombing," Fallon told reporters in Paris. "We've had estimates of several hundred civilians killed now through the use of unguided munitions in civilian areas, clearly aimed at opposition groups that are fighting Assad, and that I deplore," he added. IS has seen some setbacks, losing around a quarter of its self-proclaimed caliphate, including the Iraqi city of Ramadi to US-backed local forces last month. Washington this week claimed to have leaked IS documents showing the group had cut fighters' pay by half since the coalition stepped up bombing of oil production, a key source of revenue for the group. - A lack of ground forces - But the coalition faces major challenges, particularly the lack of ground forces willing to fight IS in Syria, since most groups are focused on toppling Assad. Story continues IS showed its continued threat this week, taking 400 people hostage when it attacked the eastern Syrian town of Deir Ezzor. Some 270 have since been released. "The sooner the civil war is brought to an end the better, and then we can all focus on the enemy that is Daesh," Fallon said. "That is going to take time, we don't have what's available in Iraq. We don't have a New Model Army standing around the walls of Raqa waiting to move in. But that shouldn't delay us in doing what we can from the air." UN-brokered Syrian peace talks are tentatively set for next Monday in Geneva, but the main parties have yet to agree on who will represent the Syrian opposition. Carter has repeatedly urged other countries in the approximately 60-member coalition to step up their participation in the military effort, particularly Arab and Gulf countries that are more focused on fighting Iran-backed forces in Yemen. In a rare admission, the French army's operations chief, General Didier Castre, recently recognised that the coalition's military strategy was having trouble "producing speedy results". Libya will be discussed at Wednesday's meeting, but no concrete proposals are on the table, a US military source said. US, Australian and French instructors have already trained 15,000 Iraqi soldiers, notably against improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and vehicle suicide attacks that are the IS weapons of choice. But Western forces remain reluctant to get too deeply involved, fearing a repeat of the quagmire of previous campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. Australia has already ruled out any increase to its military contribution, and Canada was pointedly absent from Wednesday's meeting after its new government said it would pull out of the bombing campaign. Mexico City (AFP) - Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman has had a rocky return to prison: He arrived depressed, officials gave him "Don Quixote" to read and a dog tastes his food for poison. After his January 8 recapture, Guzman was returned to Altiplano, the same high-security prison that he escaped from through a tunnel six months ago. A K9 unit now guards the area where Mexico's most-wanted criminals are held, including Guzman, as part of new measures implemented three months ago, Eduardo Guerrero, the head of Mexico's penitentiary system, told Radio Imagen. "A K9 tastes the food first because we must care for his physical integrity in case someone wants to poison him," Guerrero said, adding that the same thing is being done for the other imprisoned drug barons. The dogs were also trained to recognize the smell of the country's "main objectives" as part of efforts to prevent another embarrassing escape. Guzman has been moved to a different cell 11 times without warning since he was sent back to the prison, Guerrero said. "He was depressed when he arrived, tired, which is what he said in his first interview. He was very tired of being on the run," said Guerrero. Officials gave Guzman a copy of the classic novel "Don Quixote" because "we think that it's an excellent book and I think that we must start giving him this type of reading material, so that he starts reading." - Common-law wife can't see him - Attorneys have claimed that Guzman was being kept in isolation and was being mistreated. But officials denied that Mexico's most powerful drug baron was being held incommunicado, saying he had access to a lawyer. Guzman was able to see a stream of visitors in his previous, 17-month stay in prison, including a woman who entered with a fake ID. One of his lawyers is accused of helping to plan his escape. This time, the mother of his twin daughters, Emma Coronel, has been unable to see him since his return to prison. Story continues Although it was widely believed that Coronel, a former beauty queen, married Guzman a decade ago, Guerrero said Guzman had not divorced from his previous wife. For Coronel to be allowed to see him, "he will have to give us a divorce certificate and then he has to demonstrate the common-law marriage," the official said. While Guzman awaits possible extradition to the United States, the government has taken extraordinary measures to prevent a new escape at the Altiplano, which nobody had broken out of until his henchmen dug a 1.5-kilometer (one-mile) tunnel to set him free. A dozen prison officials, including the director, were detained following Guzman's escape last year. Metal rods were woven closely together under the floor to prevent another tunnel entrance like the one that opened into Guzman's cell shower. More surveillance cameras were installed and blind spots, like the one behind the shower wall, no longer exist. Two elite guards now keep watch on Guzman 24 hours per day, with a camera on top of their helmets. It is no longer an exaggeration to call Donald Trump's efforts to win the evangelical vote a "battle." The Republican frontrunner himself seems inclined to agree, telling the Christian Broadcasting Network's David Brody that Christianity is "under siege." "You look at Syria, where they're chopping heads off, specifically of Christians, and others," Trump told Brody during an interview Monday at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. "And Christianity is under siege, David. As you understand well from covering it. And we have to do something, we have to band together, we have to become stronger as Christians because it's very bad what's happening with respect to Christianity. We're not banded together properly." Trump said he'd like to see "Merry Christmas" replace the secular "happy holidays" as the standard seasonal greeting. Donald Trump speaks Monday at Liberty University. This isn't the first time Trump has taken an alarmist tack in addressing his faith. He gave a speech Monday again, at Liberty University in which he promoted his Presbyterian faith and stressed the necessity for all sects of Christianity to come together to protect their faith. Far more killed than anticipated in radical Islamic terror attack yesterday. Get tough and smart U.S., or we won't have a country anymore! According to CNN, his statements about safeguarding Christianity generated the loudest applause from his audience of around 10,000. This despite a few faith fumbles, including a misspoken Bible reference and use of the word "hell," which is prohibited under Liberty's code of conduct. Still, Trump's attention to the religious right is paying off. According to the most recent New York Times/CBS News poll, he leads his major rival, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, 42% to 25% in the contest for the evangelical vote. Although Trump has recently pushed his "great relationship with God," as the Times reported, it seems to be more Trump's strength of will than his religious conviction that's swayed this demographic in his favor. Story continues "Spirituality is a big issue, but we need somebody who's strong," one devout voter told the Times. "Lots of times the preachers and everything, they have a tendency to be just a little bit weak." "None of us know if there really is a God, you just hope there is," a Methodist voter said. "If he was an avowed atheist, then I would know he was crazy." As Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr. put it, it's the fact that Trump "speaks the truth publicly, even if it is uncomfortable for people to hear" that is gaining him ground with the country's evangelicals. Smoking pot can be a health concern for teens, but it is unlikely to cause a decline in their thinking abilities, a new study finds. Instead, the results suggest that if teens experience a cognitive decline, other factors, such as genetics or that young person's family environment, are more likely to be responsible for the drop, the researchers said. "It could be that they come from a neighborhood or a home where intellectual development is not highly encouraged," said study author Joshua D. Isen, of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. The implications of the new findings are that "it is unlikely that the exposure to marijuana itself is causing children to show intellectual change," Isen told Live Science. Previous research on marijuana use during adolescence has yielded mixed results. Some studies have linked use of the drug during adolescence with a decline in cognitive ability. But other studies have suggested that the potential effects of marijuana on cognition were temporary, and that they wore off within several months after young users quit smoking. In the new study, the researchers looked at the relationship between marijuana use and intelligence based on data from two studies of twins that involved more than 3,000 participants. In the first study, which involved nearly 800 twins, the researchers administered IQ tests to measure the twins' intelligence when they were 9 or 10 years old, and again when they were 19 or 20 years old. The researchers also asked the young people whether they used marijuana at any time throughout their middle school or high school years. [6 Foods That Are Good For Your Brain] In the second study, which involved nearly 2,300 twins, the researchers also used IQ tests, this time testing the twins at age 11 or 12, and again when they were 17 to 18. Again, the researchers asked the young people whether they used pot while they were in middle school and high school. Story continues In the study of nearly 800 twins, the participants' baseline IQ scores did not show significant differences between the average IQ scores of kids who had smoked marijuana and those who had not used the drug. However, it may be that smarter kids don't start using marijuana in the first place, the researchers said. For example, among the kids in the other study, the average score on the vocabulary test was 98.8 among the kids who later used marijuana, compared with 100.7 among those who didn'tuse the drug. Similarly, the average score on the general knowledge test was 97.9 among future users, compared with 101.2 among nonusers. When the researchers looked at the IQ patterns in both groups, comparing the beginning and the end of the follow-up periods, results showed that the kids' vocabulary IQ scores declined over time among the young people who used marijuana while they were in middle school or high school. However, when the researchers compared the changes in IQ between individuals within the the same twin pairs, in which one twin had used marijuana and the other had not, they found that there were no significant differences in the extent to which both twins' IQ's might have changed over time. In other words, the twins who used marijuana did not develop greater cognitive deficits over time, compared to their twin siblings who didn't use the drug. Though the new findings may cast doubt on the idea that smoking marijuana makes kids less intelligent, "it doesn't mean that marijuana use itself is harmless," Isen told Live Science. Dr. Scott Krakower, an assistant unit chief of psychiatry at Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, New York, who was not involved in the study, agreed, saying that, despite the new findings on marijuana and overall IQ, there may be "other variables, other consequences that can come from using cannabis." For example, the marijuana users in the study used more drugs and alcohol, compared with marijuana nonusers, he noted. Moreover, the users did have some reduction in their vocabulary scores, he added. The new study was published Monday (Jan. 18) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Follow Agata Blaszczak-Boxe on Twitter. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on Live Science. Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. QUITO (Reuters) - Ecuador, whose U.K. embassy provides refuge to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, will have him answer questions from Swedish authorities about allegations of assault and rape against two women, President Rafael Correa said on Wednesday. Correa told reporters at a briefing that he expects Assange to be questioned by Ecuadorean authorities in the next few days. Assange, an Australian citizen, sought protection in Ecuador's embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he is alleged to have committed the crimes while on a visit. Assange has said he fears Sweden will extradite him to the United States where he could be put on trial over WikiLeaks' publication of classified military and diplomatic documents five years ago, one of the largest information leaks in U.S. history. Britain has accused Ecuador of preventing the course of justice by allowing Assange to remain in its embassy in the upmarket central London area of Knightsbridge since 2012. Ecuador's Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said Swedish judicial authorities had shown "real lack of respect" by sending a questionnaire with some sections crossed out by hand, and a new version had been requested before the case could proceed. (Reporting by Alexandra Valencia; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Girish Gupta, David Gregorio and Andrew Hay) Ankara (AFP) - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday launched a blistering attack on academics who criticised his policies in the Kurdish-dominated southeast, warning they would pay a price after falling into a "pit of treachery". Prosecutors have launched a major investigation against more than 1,200 Turkish academics who signed a petition denouncing the military operations against Kurdish rebels in the southeast. At least 18 were then detained as part of the probe. The European Union and United States denounced the investigation in unusually strong statements. Speaking in one of his regular and typically raucous meetings to supportive local Turkish politicians at his presidential palace, Erdogan said the academics had shown "real and ugly faces" after their "masks fell off". "They spit out their hatred of our nation's values and history on every occasion and the petition has made this clearer," said Erdogan. - 'These days are over' - Erdogan implied that the academics would face both criminal consequences and the loss of their posts. "So you think you will try to disrupt the unity of these nation, and continue to have a comfortable life with the help of the salary that you receive from the state and pay no price?" he said. "Those days are over." Erdogan said the academics will continue to thrash around "in this pit of treachery they fell in". "In a state of law like Turkey, so-called academics who target the unity of our nation have no privilege to commit crimes," he said. "They don't have immunity." Referring to the secular elite who ruled Turkey for many of the years before his Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002, Erdogan said: "Thrash about as long as you want: The old Turkey, where an entire country and nation were being run by a handful of so-called intellectuals... no longer exists." Story continues All of those detained last week have now been released but they still face investigation and possible trial. On Wednesday, three academics working for Sakarya University east of Istanbul who had signed the petition were arrested on the order of prosecutors, Turkish media reports said. Two were later released after questioning. In an unusually tough statement days ahead of a visit to Turkey by US Vice President Joe Biden, the US embassy warned the investigation risked having a "chilling effect" on political discourse in Turkey. The Turkish army is pressing on with a relentless crackdown in the southeast which the government says is aimed at flushing out Kurdish militants but activists say has claimed dozens of civilian lives. - 'Showed his ugly face' - Erdogan also escalated a row with the leader of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) Kemal Kilicdaroglu who last week had called the Turkish strongman a "tinpot dictator". "I shouldn't even bother respond to him," fumed Erdogan, then adding: "No words are enough to describe what kind of a person he is." But Erdogan then went on to vent his opinion of his rival: "He is so shameless: If you spit on his face, he thinks it's raining... None of us know if he is sane." Kilicdaroglu on Tuesday had refused to go back on the comments, quipping that what had annoyed Erdogan was the "tinpot" remark rather than the "dictator". "My God, give me some patience. He showed his ugly face one more time," seethed Erdogan. Prosecutors have now opened an investigation against Kilicdaroglu for insulting the president, while Erdogan is suing him for damages of 100,000 Turkish lira ($33,000) in two separate cases over the original remarks and the new comments Tuesday. "The amount of compensation I receive (from him) is exponentially increasing," said Erdogan. ANKARA (Reuters) - The European Union must fulfil its promises as part of a 3 billion euro ($3.28 billion) deal it struck with Turkey in return for stemming the flow of migrants into the bloc, Turkey's EU Minister said on Wednesday. Speaking on state-run TRTHaber, Volkan Bozkir said that Turkey had fulfilled its side of the bargain, but that the EU must resolve its internal differences, after European officials said last week that Italy was blocking plans to release the earmarked cash. "The method (countries) will use regarding the deal is a matter of EU's internal affairs," Bozkir added. (Reporting by Ece Toksabay, editing by Jonny Hogg) By Barbara Lewis and Sabine Siebold BRUSSELS/BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's justice minister and Europe's industry boss increased the pressure on Volkswagen to compensate European consumers as well as U.S. drivers for its diesel emissions scandal, potentially adding to a hefty bill. Volkswagen has been mired in scandal since September when it admitted it had cheated U.S. tests by using software known as "defeat devices" to mask nitrogen oxide emissions. In the United States, Volkswagen Group of America has promised goodwill compensation worth $1,000 each to tens of thousands of vehicle owners. But in Europe, VW officials have said they will repair vehicles to remove illegal software, but have no plans to pay consumers compensation, arguing they have suffered no loss. Europe's Industry Commissioner Elzbieta Bienkowska, who has had a series of meetings with VW and will meet Chief Executive Matthias Mueller in Brussels on Thursday, wrote to him on Jan. 15 with a list of demands. High on the list is that the estimated 8.5 million European owners of VW cars fitted with defeat devices, out of 11 million worldwide, should be compensated. "I would like to ask you to reconsider your stance regarding compensation and reflect on the ways to offer compensation also to the European consumers," Bienkowsksa says in the letter seen by Reuters. The EU executive can apply only moral and political pressure in a very different legal framework from the United States. "The issue of compensation goes beyond the difference in the legal set-up between the U.S. and the EU and plays a fundamental role in viewing VW as a responsible and trustworthy company," Bienkowska writes. Germany's Justice Minister Heiko Maas is also unhappy with the disparity in the way customers are being treated. "Minister Maas has already said a few weeks ago that he considers an unequal treatment of U.S. and German, European customers unacceptable," a ministry spokesman said during a regular news conference on Wednesday in Berlin. VW FACES BIG BILL Volkswagen has made a provision of 6.7 billion euros ($7.3 billion) globally for the repair process. Apart from the repair bill, VW has the prospect of massive fines and litigation. In the United States, VW faces fines of up to $46 billion for allegedly violating environmental laws. Germany has long worked to protect its car industry, weakening European Union legislation that could damage its profits and EU sources say it is expected to continue negotiating to minimise the damage. It has won backing from other member states as governments fear job losses if they hurt a sector that provides jobs for 12 million people and accounts for 4 percent of the European Union's gross domestic product, according to Commission data. Slowly, however, political and public pressure is growing. Lawyers have begun private litigation against Volkswagen, while the European Parliament has set up a committee of inquiry into why EU regulations failed to prevent Volkswagen's use of illegal software. Bienkowska's letter also asked for precise detail on the number of vehicles affected by illegal software and technical details on "corrective measures". The European Union regulatory regime is likely to remain different from that of the United States, where the Environmental Protection Agency has enforcement powers. But the European Commission is seeking to wrest some of the responsibility for policing the car industry from member states, through legislative proposals on national car approval bodies to be published next week. Separate proposals to be published later this year would require carmakers to give full details of the emission performance of their cars, including nitrogen oxide levels as well as carbon dioxide, making it easy for consumers to challenge them for excessive pollution. ($1 = 0.9171 euros) (Additional reporting by Alissa de Carbonnel, Gernot Heller, Andreas Cremer, Jan Schwartz, Georgina Prodhan and Kirstin Ridley; Editing by Susan Fenton and Keith Weir) By Sarah N. Lynch and Lisa Lambert WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. regulator that polices the complex derivatives markets is struggling to keep its own books in order and has made a material error that its auditor found so significant that it withdrew nearly a decade of its financial opinions, according to documents seen by Reuters. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission understated liabilities by $194 million in fiscal 2014 and $212 million the following year, the agency's auditor KPMG estimated in the documents. The understatements are the equivalent to more than 75 percent of the CFTC's $250 million annual budget. CFTC's management responded to KPMGs report by saying that it is investigating whether accounting rules were broken. It added that it did not concur with KPMG's findings and is still awaiting results of an official government audit, according to a series of documents exchanged between the CFTC and KPMG which were reviewed by Reuters. It was not clear when the auditor became aware of the matter but in its response the CFTC said it had notified KPMG of potential issues involving its accounting in October. KPMG declined to comment. At issue is how the agency has accounted for costs associated with leasing office space, the documents show. Unlike some federal agencies, it does not own its own buildings and rents space in Washington, D.C., Chicago, New York and Kansas City, Missouri. The leases generally cover a period of several years. However, in its annual financial statements, the regulator was only accounting for a year's worth of rent - and not the full cost of the lease over time. A CFTC spokesman said the agency sees this as a technical accounting issue that does not affect current lease payments or its obligation to creditors. KPMG alleges the CFTC violated Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, or GAAP, the accounting rules used in the United States. The firm also said it is possible the CFTC is in violation of the federal Anti-Deficiency Act, which prohibits government agencies from obligating or expending federal funds in excess of the amount available. Story continues KPMG's findings could add to the scrutiny of the CFTC, which already faces criticism from Republicans over its spending. It won broad new powers from Congress in 2010 to police the lion's share of the derivatives market in the aftermath of the financial crisis, but some lawmakers have said it creates unnecessary regulatory burdens and have refused to grant the full budgets requested by President Barack Obama. In a letter to congressional staff sent on Friday, also reviewed by Reuters, the CFTC's deputy inspector general said her office is removing copies of the firm's audit opinions from fiscal years 2005-2008 and fiscal years 2010-2014 from its website at KPMG's request. These audit reports, she said, have been deemed "unreliable." The CFTC spokesman said Congress sought to address the historical accounting treatment for the CFTC's leases by adding language to a December omnibus spending bill to prevent the CFTC from ever being required to obligate the entire cost of a lease upfront. This is not the first time leasing issues have come up at the CFTC. In 2014, the inspector general criticized it for wasting taxpayer money on underutilized office space in Kansas City. The Government Accountability Office, a non-partisan government watchdog, is currently reviewing various legal issues surrounding the CFTC's leases. A number of other federal regulators, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, have also in the past come under scrutiny over office leasing practices. (Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch and Lisa Lambert; Editing by Lisa Shumaker) By Alan Baldwin LONDON (Reuters) - Formula One's four manufacturers have agreed a deal to reduce the cost of engines and ensure that no team is left without a supply, sources at the governing FIA said on Tuesday after meetings in Geneva. In exchange, the manufacturers were assured that the current V6 turbo hybrid power unit regulations would remain stable until at least 2020, staving off the threat of an alternative independent supplier being introduced. The sport's core Strategy Group, which includes the six top teams and governing body and commercial rights holder, had met in Geneva on Monday before a meeting of the broader Formula One Commission on Tuesday. The agreement, details of which had yet to be finalised, will come into force in 2018. The four manufacturers -- Ferrari, Mercedes, Renault and Honda -- had agreed to come up with proposals by last Friday with the FIA and commercial rights holder Bernie Ecclestone threatening to tender for an independent option if no progress was made. FIA president Jean Todt had told reporters in Birmingham, England, last Friday that he was optimistic a solution was close. The situation came to a head last year when former champions Red Bull struggled to secure an engine for this season. In the end they managed to patch up frayed relations with Renault and continue with the French manufacturer after Mercedes ruled out a supply, Ferrari offered only an old engine and Honda's interest was vetoed by partners McLaren. (Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Toby Davis) By Luke Baker JERUSALEM (Reuters) - U.S. and European criticism of Israeli actions in the occupied West Bank have drawn a furious response from Israel this week, including a former official dismissing the U.S. ambassador to Tel Aviv as a "little Jew boy". Although the concerns expressed by Israel's closest allies were partly cloaked in diplomatic language they struck a nerve in Israel, which is anxious to counter what it sees as growing attempts to isolate it over its policies toward Palestinians. Ambassador Dan Shapiro's supposed misstep was to observe in a speech to a security conference that Israel applies the law differently to Israelis and Palestinians living in the West Bank. "There seem to be two standards," he said. It is a point diplomats and human rights groups frequently make, identifying the fact that Palestinians are subject to Israeli military law as part of Israel's 49-year occupation, while Israeli settlers are subject to civil law. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately jumped into the fray, calling Shapiro's comments "unacceptable and wrong". He met with Shapiro, who is Jewish and is usually regarded by Israeli officials as a "close friend", to discuss it. There was no such attempt to paper over differences from Aviv Bushinsky, a former adviser to Netanyahu and a frequent commentator on Israeli TV. After viewing a clip of Shapiro's comments during a debate on Channel 2, Bushinsky said: "To put it bluntly, it was a statement typical of a little Jew boy," he said, using the derogatory Yiddish term "yehudoni" to describe the ambassador, who is in his mid-40s. The U.S. embassy declined to comment. The criticism heaped on Shapiro was not dissimilar to that aimed at Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom, who last week called for an independent investigation into Israel's efforts to quell a surge in violence, saying that in some cases Palestinian assailants were being killed "extrajudicially". Netanyahu's energy minister called Wallstrom "anti-Semitic, whether consciously or not", and the prime minister did not back away from that characterization, saying of Wallstrom's suggestion: "it's outrageous, it's immoral and it's stupid." Appearing before the foreign media last week, Netanyahu was asked for his response to those who say Israel increasingly acts as if it is above criticism and cannot be reined in. "Israel's not above criticism," he said, "but it should be held to the same standard that everyone else is being held to. "I mean, people are defending themselves against assailants wielding knives who are about to stab them to death, and they shoot the people, and that's extrajudicial killings?" U.S. AND EU ALLIED At the event, Netanyahu played up Israel's strong ties with India, China, Japan and Russia, countries that rarely criticize. On the other hand, he acknowledged relations with the European Union, Israel's biggest trading partner, needed a "reset". The EU has been straightforward in opposing Israeli settlement growth in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, a policy seen as illegal by most of the world. To draw clearer lines between Israel proper and the land it has occupied since the 1967 Middle East war, the EU has called on member states to put labels on imports from the settlements and is considering other ways of "differentiating" between Israel and land the Palestinians seek for their own state. That has enraged Israel, which says it is being boycotted. But in a sign that the EU's position is gaining support, the U.S. State Department gave it verbal backing on Tuesday. "We view Israeli settlement activity as illegitimate and counterproductive to the cause of peace," spokesman John Kirby told reporters. "We do not view labeling the origin of products as being from the settlements a boycott of Israel." With less than a year of Barack Obama's presidency to run, and almost no prospect of a return to Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, some analysts think the U.S. administration could step up its criticism of Israel over the coming months. When it comes to settlements, there is widespread frustration. In a report on Tuesday, Human Rights Watch called on businesses to stop operating in, financing and trading with Israeli settlements, calling it an ethical obligation. (https://www.hrw.org/node/285045/) (Writing by Luke Baker; Editing by Dominic Evans) By Umaru Fofana FREETOWN (Reuters) - Community fear and suspicion in Sierra Leone are obstructing officials' attempts to stop the spread of Ebola, health reports showed on Wednesday, after the West African nation reported its first cases of the deadly virus in months. The discovery of a case last week, only made posthumously, was announced a day after the World Health Organization said transmission had ended in what had been the only country yet to be declared Ebola-free - Liberia. Sierra Leone had been declared officially free of transmission two months earlier. The new death was a setback for the region seeking to end a two-year epidemic that has killed more than 11,300 people, and it was followed by a second case on Wednesday, heightening fears of further transmission. Internal health reports seen by Reuters showed that at least 50 people linked to Mariatu Jalloh, the 22-year-old student who died from Ebola on Jan. 12, and who were potentially exposed to virus have gone missing. At least a dozen of them are considered at high risk of infection. Last week, just three contacts were reported missing. One of the health reports noted: "Community very uncooperative and unwilling to direct us to the missing contacts". They also referred to "great resistance" to a programme to vaccinate locals who were potentially exposed to the virus in the Northern Province, a remote area near the Guinean border where Jalloh had travelled before falling ill. The reports show that suspicion towards health officials, one of the aggravating factors in the disease's early spread nearly two years ago, is still dogging attempts to end the epidemic. Some conceded, however, that such incredulity is understandable given the apparent failure of local officials to follow basic health protocols with the last case. Sierra Leone was supposed to be in a 90-day period of "heightened surveillance" but Jalloh was examined by an official without protective clothing against the virus. "I cannot believe Ebola is back in Sierra Leone!" said Zainab Thorlie, a resident of the capital Freetown, cursing under her breath. "I think the health workers at the hospital made a bad situation potentially terrible." FORGOTTEN MESSAGES Health sources familiar with the reports who sought anonymity said that the number of total contacts has increased to over 200 people, from 109 quarantined last week. One high risk contact sought by authorities is a sheikh believed to have fled the Northern Province by boat to Freetown, possibly with his wives who are also missing. He is Jalloh's stepfather. Some fear the virus will reach the capital, where the disease spread rapidly in late 2014 as ambulances struggled to fetch the sick and the main graveyard burst its limits with the dead. At the time, army officials from former colonial power Britain helped bring down case numbers by setting up a series of command centres and the National Emergency Response Centre (NERC) in a building once used to try civil war criminals. But NERC is now shut and most international medical workers and soldiers have gone. On the walls of Freetown's twisting streets, painted anti-Ebola slogans designed to motivate locals to fight the disease are peeling off. "I think the dissolution of NERC was untimely," said retired civil servant Foday Kallon. A Western aid worker, speaking on condition of anonymity said money was part of the problem. "Government agencies are being asked to come up with a full (Ebola) response but there's very little funding for that sort of thing," he said. (Additional reporting and writing by Emma Farge; Editing by Joe Bavier/Mark Heinrich) Damascus (AFP) - A deadly Islamic State group assault on Deir Ezzor has seen the jihadists tighten their siege on the eastern Syrian city and left residents terrified and fearing the worst. Fierce clashes have rocked the city's northern edges after a multi-front offensive on Saturday that cost the lives of dozens of people. IS jihadists overran Al-Baghaliyeh, one of the last agricultural areas on the city's outskirts known for producing food. The extremists now control 60 percent of Deir Ezzor city, intensifying a siege that had already caused fear and hardship for the roughly 200,000 people still living inside. Around 70 percent of the city's remaining residents are women and children, according to the United Nations. "People are afraid, the situation is very difficult," Attiyeh, a resident of Deir Ezzor, said by phone from the city. "Food and vegetables are rare, and we're starting to have problems with bread," he added. He said reports circulated by state media that IS fighters had killed 300 civilians in the city had sparked even more fear. "If the city falls there will be a massacre," Attiyeh said. IS launched a bloody offensive on Deir Ezzor on Saturday, with dozens of its fighters carrying out suicide bomb attacks as they stormed government positions. The attack and subsequent fighting has killed at least 120 members of government forces, many of whom were executed by IS, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor. The group also said at least 70 IS fighters had been killed in the assault and clashes, with the jihadists seizing territory inside and outside of the city's northwestern tip. The Britain-based monitor said the jihadists had also killed at least 85 civilians and kidnapped 400 more. IS on Tuesday freed 270 of the civilians -- including women, children under 14 years of age, and elderly -- after questioning them and concluding they had no ties to Syria's regime, the Observatory said. Story continues - 'Severe' shortages - Resident Ghaleb al-Haj Hamdo, 23, told AFP the boom of nearby clashes could still be heard in the city. "I am afraid of a massacre that will repeat itself over and over if Daesh invades our neighbourhood," Hamdo said by phone, using an Arabic acronym for IS. Fearing fresh violence, residents are limiting their activities around the city at night, said the university student, who lives in the central Al-Joura district. The IS advance is just the latest encroachment on the city, where the government has clung to several neighbourhoods and the nearby military airport despite IS control of the rest of the province. On Monday, IS consolidated its gains on the city's edges, taking advantage of a dust storm that all but grounded Russian warplanes that had been carrying out strikes in support of regime troops, according to Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman. Since early 2015, IS has blocked off access to most of the city, leading to "a severe shortage of food, medicine, and basic commodities," according to the United Nations. Its most recent offensive "is putting thousands of people in the line of fire," said Linda Tom, spokeswoman for the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA. "The UN has received credible reports of the execution and abduction/detention of civilians, including people believed to have been smuggling food into the besieged city," she told AFP by email. In an update published just before the attacks, OCHA said landmines lined the roads leading out of Deir Ezzor and that a majority of inhabitants were surviving on bread and water. Syria's government airlifted basic supplies into the city on January 11, and the Russian government said a few days later it had also dropped aid into besieged neighbourhoods. Deir Ezzor city lies about 450 kilometres (280 miles) northeast of Damascus and is the capital of the oil-rich province of the same name which borders Iraq. More than 260,000 people have been killed in Syria's conflict, which erupted nearly five years ago with anti-government protests. Amsterdam (AFP) - In an unprecedented step, Europe's five largest airline groups including budget carriers EasyJet and Ryanair on Wednesday launched a new alliance to combat rising airport charges amid a fierce battle with Gulf rivals. The new association dubbed Airlines for Europe (A4E) brings together the budget airlines, Lufthansa, Air France-KLM and the International Airline Group, parent company of both British Airways and Iberia. The alliance will "represent the interests of its members when dealing with the EU institutions, international organisations and national governments on European aviation issues," it said in a statement at the launch at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport. - 'Travellers fleeced' - In their first act, the five managing directors of the member airlines called for swift steps to stop European travellers being "fleeced by excessive airport charges" and for the removal of "unreasonable taxes". "Six months ago we got together to agree that Europe needs a loud and unified and clear voice to represent the airline industry in order to bring changes to the EU aviation framework," said Willie Walsh, chief executive of IAG. The new association will "support and create jobs and support the interest of aviation in Europe," he said. European Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc welcomed the move, saying: "Not only do we want a very strong internal (aviation) market... but we also want to ensure that European aviation stays a leading force in shaping global aviation." The alliance said it is demanding "a significant reduction" in the charges which are "paid by hundreds of millions of EU travellers." Citing a recent study, Air France-KLM chief Alexandre de Juniac revealed that airport charges at the largest 21 European airports had soared by 80 percent since 2005 even as the average price of airline tickets has fallen by about 20 percent. Story continues "At the 10 largest airports the increase was even greater, close to 90 percent," he said. "These increases mean that passengers have had to pay an extra 5.4 billion euros ($6.11 billion) in airport charges over the last 10 years." The airline bosses urged the "EU to take action lowering the cost of the EUs airports by ensuring that monopoly airports are effectively regulated." The association is also taking aim at unions within the air traffic control sector, with Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary saying "we want to eliminate air trafic control strikes that affect thousands of passengers." "We expect to see action this year," O'Leary said, adding the association believed that reform on airport directives will be implemented before the end of 2016. The launch of the new association comes on the eve of an EU Aviation Summit, being hosted by the Netherlands as part of its six-month presidency of the European Union. - Competitive edge - It also follows European allegations that their Gulf rivals enjoy a competitive edge due to what they say is unfair financing from their energy-rich, deep-pocketed state owners. But Europe's largest airline bosses, whose businesses transport around 460 million passengers a year, remained coy on the issue of tackling rivals from the Gulf saying that it was an area of disagreement. "Competition by the Gulf airlines wasn't an area were we could find common ground," Walsh told journalists. The new alliance also intends to push for a more reliable airspace by reducing the costs of air traffic control through the completion of the Single European Sky plan. The aim of the project, launched in the late 1990s, is to make European skies more competitive, secure and environmentally friendly by eliminating national borders. Miami (AFP) - Three cases of Zika virus, Florida's first, were recorded in people who had recently traveled in Latin America, health authorities said Wednesday. The first two cases were found in Miami-Dade County, in people who visited Colombia in December. The third case, in Hillsborough County, involved a person who traveled to Venezuela last month, Florida Health Department spokeswoman Mara Gambineri said. "We encourage Florida residents and visitors to protect themselves from all mosquito-borne illnesses by draining standing water, covering their skin with repellent and clothing, covering windows with screens," Gambineri said. No cases have yet been confirmed of infections contracted in the United States, though the virus has quickly spread across South America and the Caribbean in recent weeks. The Zika virus, which is transmitted by mosquitoes, cannot spread between humans. But for pregnant women, the virus can be transmitted to the fetus, triggering brain damage like microcephaly in which the brain and skull are abnormally small. The virus often produces flu-like symptoms (fever, headaches and joint pain) as well as skin rashes and conjunctivitis. Those symptoms appear within three to 12 days of the mosquito bite. In 80 percent of cases, the infection goes unnoticed, and it is very rarely fatal. Last week, the United States warned pregnant women to avoid travel to 14 countries and territories in the Caribbean and Latin America because of the virus. There have been 26 travel-related cases of Zika virus in the United States since 2007, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Davos (Switzerland) (AFP) - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau defended Wednesday the planned withdrawal of fighter jets from the fight against the Islamic State group, after Canadians died in recent attacks by the extremists. Facing a growing backlash at home for ordering the withdrawal of the six CF-18 fighter jets from the US-led coalition fighting in Iraq and Syria, Trudeau insisted Canada still plans to contribute militarily to the fight, in some other way. Ottawa has yet to say exactly how, but Trudeau suggested Canada could send more military trainers to Iraq to "help local troops bring the battle directly to (the enemy)." Trudeau was speaking at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, where he pitched Canada's economic strengths to leaders. In addition to the CF-18 fighter jets and other military aircraft, Canada in 2014 deployed some 70 special forces to northern Iraq to train Kurdish forces. "Canada recognizes that we need a global concerted response to... terrorists," Trudeau said. "Canada has an important role to play, on a humanitarian side, on a refugee side, and yes on the military side as well." But, he added, "if there is one thing that recent history has taught us is that ultimately, conflicts like this need to have their resolution on the ground, with people who live (there) and want to take their countries back from terrorists." - 'Incoherent' policy - Earlier in the week, a grieving mother led strong condemnations of Canada's plans to pull back militarily against Islamic State extremists and other jihadists after seven Canadians were killed in overseas attacks. Camille Carrier, whose daughter Maude was one of six Canadian victims of an attack in Burkina Faso on Friday, said she was "ashamed" by Ottawa's stance, while a Tory opposition MP called the Liberal government's policy on fighting the Islamic State group "incoherent." Story continues A Canadian was also killed in Jakarta last week in an attack by a group allied with Islamic State extremists. Carrier, whose daughter died when Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) attacked the Splendid Hotel in Ouagadougou, said that Canada should be boosting its military response and standing with allies such as France and the United States, not retreating. "I was ashamed before this happened, but obviously the loss of my daughter has only made me more revolted about this situation," Carrier told The Globe and Mail. "I'm so ashamed of my country." Trudeau "offers shallow words about inclusion and tolerance. We need to do more. We need our leader to pay attention to legitimate security concerns in addition to our image as a welcoming country," she said. Carrier was alluding to Canada's welcoming with fanfare of 10,000 Syrian refugees since November and plans to bring in another 15,000 by February. Opposition MP James Bezan, meanwhile, branded the government's policy on fighting the IS group as "incoherent." "The decision to withdraw Canada's CF-18s is seen by our allies as stepping back, rather than standing shoulder-to-shoulder with them," he said. - 'Free and open societies' - Trudeau urged governments to defend the values of free and open societies against jihadist attacks and not yield to fear in order to triumph over extremism. "I think people are open to not choosing to live in constant fear," he said. "There are terrible things in the world, terrible people who want to attack our free and open society." But, he added, "we have to make a choice about how much we're going to close and limit and crack down within our societies in order to protect it, because if you do that too much, you lose part of the free and open nature of society." Trudeau repeatedly stressed he felt optimistic about the future despite global conflicts and economic woes that are fostering insecurity. "I have a tremendous level of confidence in ordinary people who go through their lives, don't think a lot about politics, don't think a lot about terrorism (and instead) think a lot about their families, about their job, about their future and about their community and want to see things work in the right way," he said. An army of artisans have laid down their paintbrushes, chisels and pigments after three years of painstaking work to create a true-to-life replica of renowned Stone Age cave paintings long hidden away in southwestern France. "Absolutely all the work you see on the wall has been engraved, worked and sculpted, chiselled by hand, with little paintbrushes and sometimes even tools used in dentistry," said Francis Ringenbach, the artistic director of the project to replicate the 18,000-year-old Lascaux cave paintings. The meticulously faithful copy of what has been dubbed the "Sistine Chapel of prehistoric art" is now ready to be transported one segment at a time -- 46 all together -- and installed just down the road from the original at a site semi-buried in a hillside in Montignac, in the Dordogne region. The International Centre of Parital (rock wall) Art, 150 metres long (500 feet) and nine metres high, designed by Norwegian architectural firm Snohetta, will open by the end of the year. The nearly 2,000 Upper Paleolithic wall paintings depicting rhinos, horses, bison, deer and panthers make up Europe's most important collection of prehistoric art and were inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage list in 1979. The caves, discovered in 1940 by four teenagers, quickly became a massive tourist draw, with around a million people flocking to see the work of the oldest known modern humans, who came to Europe from Africa via Asia. Authorities closed them to the public in 1963 out of concern over the danger posed by humans to the delicate micro-climate. A limited set of reproductions have been on display in Montignac since 1983, while Chicago's Field Museum hosted the first exhibit outside France of copies of the paintings last year titled "Scenes from the Stone Age". The 57 million-euro ($65 million) project to replicate the entire set has married cutting-edge technology with a desire for the utmost authenticity in the reproduction. Story continues Ringenbach, himself a sculptor, says the need to be as faithful as possible to the original slowed the team down. "Sometimes one has to spend hours reproducing just 10 square centimetres (1.5 square inches)," he says. - A 'magical' feeling - The artists benefitted from 3D digital scans of the original paintings that were projected onto the walls, creating a task akin to using tracing paper as they applied layer upon layer of natural pigments. Chief painter Gilles Lafleur said of the original works: "We try to understand them really, to understand how and why they were painted this way." But he admits that "time has taken its toll and these animals don't look the way they would have when they were painted. Time has had a visible impact, so we must also recreate that." Ringenbach says he doffs his cap to the talent of our ancient forebears who only had rudimentary tools to create their masterpieces. "They were extraordinary technicians, reproducing animal likenesses from memory with their highly vivid movements," he marvels. Reproducing the originals is, he says, a "magical" feeling. Whereas the smaller-scale original museum could give only "limited insight" into the site's significance, "here, we reach a whole new level in terms of helping people to understand what Lascaux represents for science, the history of art, prehistory." Paris (AFP) - The defence ministers of seven countries leading the battle against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria will meet in Paris on Wednesday to hash out ways to build their coalition and boost its resources. Co-hosted by the French and US defence ministers, Jean-Yves Le Drian and Ash Carter, the meeting will be attended by their Australian, British, Dutch, German and Italian counterparts. Their countries have taken the lead in the air campaign against IS and the training of Iraqi forces to fight the jihadists. Russia, a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, began a campaign of air strikes in support of the regime in late September, targeting IS -- but, say critics, more often the moderate opposition. US Secretary of State John Kerry is to discuss the situation in Syria with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Geneva on Wednesday. The French government said the ministers on Wednesday would "take stock" of coalition efforts since the campaign kicked off in 2014 and study ways to intensify it. "They will discuss what may be needed to speed up the tempo," a French defence source said, adding that he hoped the meeting would become a regular event. The fight against IS has been slow to take off, but has begun to bear fruit, experts say. The IS group, which swept through vast regions of Iraq and Syria in 2014 and 2015 and captured a string of cities, has seen recent setbacks across its self-proclaimed caliphate, including the loss of the key Iraqi city of Ramadi to US-supported local forces last month. Air strikes have intensified since IS claimed the November 13 jihadist attacks in Paris, especially targeting its oil production, a principal source of revenue. IS is having trouble guaranteeing public services within the territory under its control, causing "tensions" within the group, a source at the French defence ministry said, adding that IS fighters are facing pay cuts. Story continues - 'Speedy results' elusive - Carter, who has repeatedly urged other countries in the approximately 60-member coalition to step up their participation, will be keen to rally further support. In particular, Arab and Gulf countries that are also part of a Saudi-led coalition have since last March been more engaged in Yemen, carrying out air strikes against Iran-backed Shiite Huthi rebels. Greater participation by them against IS, even symbolic, would be greatly appreciated, Carter aides say. Asian countries, mainly involved in humanitarian efforts, could also step up support in terms of military equipment, they say. In a rare admission, the French army's operations chief, General Didier Castre, recently recognised that the coalition's military strategy was having trouble "producing speedy results". The French government said the defence ministers would also study ways to boost the capacity of local forces -- Kurdish Peshmergas and the Iraqi army -- with equipment and training. US, Australian and French instructors have already trained 15,000 Iraqi soldiers, notably in defending themselves against the improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and suicide bombers aboard cars and trucks that are the IS weapons of choice. While the Western powers are keen to avoid the quagmire experienced by US forces in Iraq, they recognise the need to beef up their special forces on the ground and their intelligence-gathering capabilities. Among the Europeans, the Netherlands promised to spell out its commitment by the end of January. Australia has already ruled out any increase to its military contribution. Libya, whose political chaos has enabled IS to bolster its power, will also be on the agenda, but no concrete proposals are on the table, a US military source said. The French government is still hopeful that the military strategy can be coupled with diplomacy. But a French push for a united front including Russia against IS has so far failed to gain traction. UN-brokered Syrian peace talks including Moscow are tentatively set for next Monday in Geneva, but the main parties have yet to agree on who will represent the Syrian opposition. It's been almost three weeks since 68-year-old Gurcharan Singh Gill was found stabbed to death at a liquor store in Fresno, California, and authorities in the city still haven't found his killer. Surveillance footage has provided clues a pale, red-clad young man filmed attacking Gill on New Year's Day is the main suspect but neither that, nor the $10,000 reward being offered for his whereabouts, have yielded an arrest. Gill's murder was the first homicide of 2016 for the central California city, which has 516,000 residents. The week before, three miles west at the corner of Shields and Brunswick Avenues, another 68-year-old man was attacked while waiting for his ride to work on Dec. 26. "Why are you here?" the two white assailants shouted, hitting Amrik Singh Bal with their car and beating him so viciously they broke his collarbone. Though the back-to-back proximity of these incidents doesn't define the Sikh experience in Fresno the Central Valley's Sikh population enjoys a prominence and history uncommon in the rest of the country there still remains cause for concern. You don't have to look far to see why: In an era when xenophobic rhetoric is being spewed by a major political party's leading presidential candidate, and when acts of violence against perceived foreigners are making headlines on a regular basis, the safety of Sikh communities across the United States feels as tenuous as ever. "The recent violence in Fresno is not isolated," Valarie Kaur, a Sikh advocate, lawyer, filmmaker and Fresno native, told Mic. "It is part of a long history of racism and xenophobia that has surged to the surface in the wake of terrorist attacks throughout the last century and especially since 9/11." Police in Fresno respond to a domestic disturbance call. Sikh men especially have made easy targets. Their distinctive facial hair and turbans provide a glaring visual marker of difference, making them targets for ridicule, harassment and brutality in a troubling frequency of cases. Story continues Meanwhile, violence against Sikhs in the U.S. has increased dramatically in the last 15 years, according to reports. The first person killed in a 9/11-related hate crime was a Sikh gas station owner in Arizona named Balbir Singh Sodhi. In 2012, a white supremacist named Wade Michael Page walked into a Sikh temple or gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, and opened fire, killing six people. The bigger story being peddled about this violence is that the perpetrators are mistaking Sikhs for Muslims. One man attacked in Chicago last year was reportedly called "terrorist" and "bin Laden" by his assailants, while similar slurs have been used in other cases too. But talk to Sikhs in the Central Valley and a more complex picture emerges one rooted in the history and politics of one of the most established Sikh communities in America. "It's different here, where there's such a Sikh presence," Deep Singh, acting director of the Jakara Movement a California-based Sikh youth organization told Mic of the recent violence, "in the same way being Mexican in Iowa is different from being Mexican in Los Angeles." In other words, if there's a place where folks are less likely to "mistake" Sikhs for Muslims, Singh says, it's the Central Valley. "In my 15 years as an advocate responding to hate crimes, it doesn't matter to most perpetrators whether their targets are Sikh or Muslim," advocate and filmmaker Kaur added. "The men who attacked Amrik Singh Bal would likely not have stopped if they knew the turbaned and bearded man they were beating was a Sikh rather than a Muslim." There is a precedent for this in the U.S. Simran Jeet Singh, professor of religion at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, broke it down for Mic earlier this week. "We know the first moment of xenophobic violence against [American] Sikhs happened around the first decade they arrived," he said. "That was the Bellingham riots in 1907." On Sept. 4 of that year, a mob of angry white men descended on the Indian community in Bellingham, Washington, saying that Sikh men were stealing their jobs in the lumber yards. "It was not Islamophobic at all in its rhetoric," Singh said. "They specifically targeted Sikh Americans." A long history of Sikhs in California: In spite of this, the West Coast has become a sort of mecca for Sikhism in the U.S. The Merced Sun-Star estimates more than 25% of Sikh Americans live in California, while other reports have suggested as many as half (reliable numbers are hard to come by, since the U.S. Census does not track religion). Most California Sikhs live in the north and Central Valley, where they've had a presence for more than 100 years. "Central California is probably the most densely populated Sikh community in the U.S.," said. He told Mic that Sikh prominence has even presented itself in local politics. "You have Sikhs on the city councils in some of these towns," he said. "A couple cities have had Sikh mayors." Deep went on to explain that California Sikhs, like his father, have been migrating to the region for decades, initially working odd and low-wage jobs to get by. The Punjab region of India from whence most Sikhs hail ancestrally has a heavily agrarian economy, so it's no surprise that many in California started as farmers or, in the case of women, livestock factory workers. "Like, all of our moms worked in Foster Farms chicken factories," Deep Singh said. "It had to be the single largest employer of Sikhs for a while." Homeless encampment in Fresno, 2009 Economic factors may play into perceived differences. Eventually, many Sikhs started getting into trucking, where salaries were generous enough that families could start pooling their money, buying gas stations, liquor stores and land. A relative sense of establishment followed in the '80s and '90s, Deep Singh said, with telltale Sikh cultural markers popping up across the region. "To white people it must look hella weird," Singh said, "seeing all these gurdwaras up and down Highway 99 [the 420-mile stretch of road that splits the Central Valley]." Unfortunately, the same prosperity hasn't blessed the rest of the region in kind. Take a look at Fresno. We can all recount horror stories from the Great Recession, but few can claim the kind of deleterious impact felt by people here the fifth most populous city in the most populous state in the country. In 2008, only 11 U.S. cities saw more housing foreclosures, according to Bloomberg. A recent Time documentary, The New Poor of Fresno, paints a picture of a dusty, smog-choked metropolis, where poor residents increasingly find themselves living in tent cities beneath overpasses spewing chemicals that made Fresno the most polluted city in California in 2014. It doesn't stop there. Last year, Fresno had the distinction of being the only city in the state to rank among those with the most concentrated poverty nationwide. The distinction transcended racial categories, too. Not only did Fresno have among the highest concentrations of Hispanic poverty (the city is almost 50% Hispanic), but also high rates of black and white poverty as well. Still, it's hard to definitively source the animosity behind the anti-Sikh attacks of recent years. Whether it's the events of the last few weeks the beating of Amrik Singh Bal and the New Year's liquor store murder, which may or may not be a hate crime or the notorious 2013 beating that left 82-year-old Piara Singh in the hospital, Fresno has drawn attention from people across the country as a place where this phenomenon could boil over. "There's no question it's part of a broader pattern of violence and harassment against Sikhs that we're seeing," said Simran Jeet Singh, the religion professor. "I can speak to that as someone who's working on these issues, and from anecdotal experience. I've been called more names on the street in last two weeks than last two years." But in a city where people are losing their homes left and right, and the volume of folks living below the poverty line is twice the state average, it's hard to deny the presence of environmental factors that would breed such violence regardless of the xenophobic rhetoric popping up across America. Members of the Sikh community gather in New York City's Union Square to pay respect to the six lives lost in a 2012 terrorist attack on a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. So what's actually going on in "the best little city in the U.S.A."? To hear Deep Singh tell it, it might just be the same, good old-fashioned American racism that made his dad's early years in Fresno such a struggle. "If you asked my dad, he'd say it was way more racist when he came in the 1970s," Singh said. "And you know what? He might be right. He'll tell me stories, and I'll be like, 'Fuck. People said that to you?'" The truth is, the history of brown people in the U.S. is rich with Donald Trumps, hate crime spikes and periodic explosions of xenophobic violence. "There's a general feeling that this will probably happen again," Singh said. "All you can do is be more vigilant." "But there isn't a general feeling of fear, or, 'Why is it happening here?'" he added. "I'd describe the mood as apprehension. But nobody is looking over their shoulder more. It's just seen as, there's always been a certain amount of racism." "Things are improving," he said. "But by no means are they perfect." By Atul Prakash and Kit Rees LONDON - Britain's blue-chip equity index entered "bear market" territory on Wednesday after falling more than 20 percent from its record highs in April, with concerns about China triggering a sharp decline in commodities-related stocks. The benchmark FTSE 100 index <.FTSE> ended 3.5 percent lower at 5,673.58 points after touching 5,639.88, its lowest level in more than three years. "The FTSE is now in a bear market," said Brenda Kelly, an analyst at London Capital Group. "It's not a pretty sight with every single sector in the red." Technical analysts define a "bear market" as one in which the index falls more than 20 percent from its previous peak. The UK mining <.FTNMX1770> and energy <.FTNMX0530> indexes both slumped 5.6 percent to their lowest levels in about 12 years, with a sharp decline in oil and metals prices scaring investors away from commodities stocks. Shares in commodities-related companies such as BHP Billiton , Anglo American , Glencore and Royal Dutch Shell plummeted by between 7.2 percent and 9.9 percent. Mining and energy stocks have been hit by a slowdown in China, the world's second-biggest economy and a major global consumer of metals and oil. "We do not see any lasting potential for these sectors to outperform and believe any recovery might be short-lived," said Christian Stocker, equity strategist at UniCredit. "The trend of earnings estimates is declining strongly, relative valuation versus the overall market is still very high and a lasting trend reversal in commodity prices is not in sight. We recommend remaining underweight on commodity stocks." BHP Billiton came under further pressure after saying it expected no recovery in iron ore or coal prices in the next few years, with global markets suffering from oversupply and a slowdown in China, the world's biggest metals consumer. Among mid-caps, pub chain operator J D Wetherspoon slumped 9.7 percent after warning that 2016 profits would be at the lower end of analysts' expectations. (Additional reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Ruth Pitchford) Love the article on Gaddaf i Samosa Iyoha Hello from Johannesburg I was amazed to find a website for Africans in Hungary . Looks like you have quite a community there. Here in SA we have some three million Zimbabweans living in exile and not much sign of going home ... but in Hungary??? Hope to meet you on one of my trips to Europe; was in Steirmark Austria near the Hungarian border earlier this month. Every good wish for 2011. Geoff in Jo'burg I'm impressed by ANH work but... Interesting interview... My comment to the interview with his excellency Mr. Adedotun Adenrele Adepoju CDA a.i-- B.Ayo Adams click to read editor's mail We must rise above tribalism & divide & rule of the colonialist who stole & looted our treasure & planted their puppets to lord it over us..they alone can decide on whosoever is performing & the one that is corrupt..but the most corrupt nations are the western countries that plunder the resources of other nations & make them poorer & aid the rulers to steal & keep such ill gotten wealth in their country..yemen,syria etc have killed more than gadhafi but its not A good investment for the west(this is laughable)because oil is not in these countries..when obasanjo annihilated the odi people in rivers state, they looked away because its in their favour & interest..one day!I think from what have been said, the Nigerian embassy here seem to be more concern about its nationals than we are for ourselves. Our complete disregard for the laws of Hungary isn't going to help Nigeria's image or going to promote what the Embassy is trying to showcase. So if the journalists could zoom-in more focus on Nigerians living, working and studying here in Hungary than scrutinizing the embassy and its every move, i think it would be of tremendous help to the embassy serving its nationals better and create more awareness about where we live . Taking the issues of illicit drugs and forged documents as typical examples.. there are so many cases of Nigerians been involved. But i am yet to read of it in e.news. So i think if only you and your journalists could write more about it and follow up on the stories i think it will make our nationals more aware of what to expect. I wouldn't say i am not impressed with your work but you need to be more of a two way street rather than a one way street . Keep up the good work... SylviaHe is an intelligent man. He spoke well on the issues! Thanks to Mr Hakeem Babalola for the interview it contains some expedient information.. The candidate: Jeb Bush The gaffe: Bush was speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations on Tuesday, and wanted to explain how cultural differences could hinder communication with China. He noted that Michelle Obama had skipped a summer in Palm Springs, offending some Chinese people. Every meeting I had in Beijing started out for the first 10 minutes lambasting me about why it was, as an American, why it was that we insulted China. And Im thinking, you know what, it could be that Mrs. Obama was worried about the science project of Malala. The presidents daughter is Malia. Malala is a Nobel laureate. The defense: Jebs heart was clearly in the right place here. (Incredibly, this is the second Gaffe Track cameo for the Pakistani teen activist; in November Marco Rubio rather curiously said he wanted to have a beer with her.) Why it matters (or doesnt): Jeb is struggling to emulate his father and brothers examples and win the Republican nomination, but it seems like he did inherit the Bush family proclivity for the verbal gaffe. But really, is Malia such a hard name? This hardly suggests Bush is laser-focused and sharp as he attempts a late-game comeback in the GOP primary. The lesson: You can fool some of the voters some of the time, but you cant fool Malala people all the time. Read more from The Atlantic: This article was originally published on The Atlantic. George Bachiashvili always seems to get ahead of himself. He started school at 4, opened his first business (an Internet cafe) at 13 and finished high school at 15. But with his more recent spate of successes, theres been a certain stately sugar daddy behind him: Bidzina Ivanishvili, the richest man in Georgia, who a few years ago rose to power as the countrys prime minister. The pair go back several years, to when Bachiashvili joined the billionaires investment office in Russia. He swiftly got promoted to group CFO before leading in the sale of six companies valued at more than $1.5 billion. He was 28 years old. Despite his relatively young age, he had an ability to give me a very short and to-the-point opinion on different business-related matters, Ivanishvili recently told OZY via email. G.b. profile photo George Bachiashvili has been thrust into a crucial role for Georgia. Source: Georgian Co-Investment Fund Hardly known to the rest of the world, Bachiashvili (pronounced BAKE-ee-ash-villy) has since been thrust into a rather crucial role for his home country as chief executive of the $6 billion Georgian Co-Investment Fund, one of the regions biggest private equity funds. Now 30, the wunderkinds running what many locals hope will boost this nations flagging economy. In 2015, the World Bank expected Georgias GDP to grow just 2 percent, down from 4.7 percent in 2014, while the jobless rate improved but still topped 12 percent much higher than in the EU or U.S. Enter the sovereign wealth funds and major corporations looking to pay for opportunities in this part of the world, and from where Bachiashvili says hes squeezed around $2 billion in commitments for deals in hydropower, greenhouses and Panorama Tbilisi, one of Georgias biggest real estate plays involving hotels, apartments and offices linked by cable cars that would crisscross the capital. But still, this landmark fund hasnt avoided all controversy. As it turns out, it launched over a month before Ivanishvili voluntarily stepped down in 2013, after about a year as prime minister; when he was still in office, he was named the funds single biggest investor, with a commitment of $1 billion. Critics say the funds size equivalent to about 40 percent of Georgias GDP combined with its close links to a former leader in a country where the lines between business and government have been known to blur has raised concern. The question is not so much in the credentials in this young man [Bachiashvili], but whether or not this fund is conducting itself transparently, says Yaroslava Babych, who teaches at the International School of Economics at the local Tbilisi State University. Story continues Some local businessmen see him as being on the fast track to power, possibly in politics. Yet the young Bachiashvili, who has fast become the face of big investment and international business in Georgia, dismisses these concerns and says the fund doesnt participate in projects financially supported by the government. We never have secrecy about what we do, how we do it or how we invest, he says, noting investment deals are often published on the funds website. While Skyping from the picturesque, cobblestoned capital of Tbilisi, with a clean-shaven face and neat hair, he discusses luring wealthy investors from the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and China, not to mention his hometown billionaire buddy. I had the personal touch, Bachiashvili says, with a nod to connections made several years ago while earning his MBA at INSEAD. It also helped, of course, that Bachiashvili worked for a couple of years at the Dhabi Group, a UAE-based investment fund that was named one of the Georgian Co-Investment Funds major investors when it launched. Yet most of the funds backers are historically old trade and business partners for Georgia: After the European Union, which leads trade with Georgia at 26 percent, a lot of the countrys trade takes place with Turkey or Azerbaijan, though countries including Kazakhstan and the UAE have long held bilateral trade and economic agreements. Bachiashvili, the son of two surgeons, says he got into this world because finance was in high demand. And some local businessmen see him as being on the fast track to power, possibly in politics. Fady Asly, chairman of the International Chamber of Commerce in Georgia and head of Agritechnics Holding, an import and distribution company, says Bachiashvili could be appointed finance minister any time, considering that some of the ministers of the economic team are not as competent as he is. Meanwhile, his mentor, Ivanishvili, says its been an asset having this young protege around, because it is very important to have someone that I trust who can give me an unbiased, clear picture of matters at any point in time. Now focusing his attention on Georgia, Bachiashvili sees an opportunity where others see risk. Its very interesting doing private equity in a frontier market because almost every project you do is new for the country, he says. Some of those high-tech deals include a $45 million dairy farm and processing plant in West Georgia with a Dutch company called the Friesian, which has the ability to produce 50 tons of milk per day. The technology you bring has an impact on the whole country, he says. Related Articles Davos (Switzerland) (AFP) - Germany's president said Wednesday it is "morally and politically necessary" to limit Europe's refugee influx, warning that failing to do so meant ceding ground to populists and extremists. "Limits are not unethical: they help to maintain acceptance within society," Joachim Gauck told the world's political and economic elite gathering at the Swiss ski resort of Davos. "Without acceptance, a society is not open and not willing to take in refugees," said Gauck, noting that this was why EU leaders are battling to stem the continent's biggest migrant crisis since World War II. "A limitation strategy can be both morally and politically necessary to preserve the state's ability to function," said the former Protestant pastor. "It may also be necessary in order to ensure that refugees receive all the assistance they require once they have arrived." Debate is raging in Germany over the country's ability to cope with a record 1.1 million asylum seekers who arrived in 2015. Gauck stressed however that the drastic action of slamming the door shut to refugees -- as sought by populists and the far-right -- was not an option. An isolation strategy is different from setting limits, he said, urging supporters of democracy to take ownership of the debate rather than give ground to the extremists. "If democrats are unwilling to talk about limits, then they will be leaving the field to populists and xenophobes," he added. In Germany, he said, the political debate is "very clear that we should expect some form of control and limits to kick in this year". Like Gauck, Chancellor Angela Merkel has rebuffed calls to close the German borders. Instead, she has pledged a "tangible reduction" of arrivals in coming months and is counting on a raft of measures at the national and EU level to deliver on that promise. These include reinforcing controls at the EU's external borders and getting other members of the bloc to take a bigger share of refugees. Story continues Berlin is also tightening its scrutiny of asylum seekers by reintroducing individual interviews for all applicants, including Syrians, as well as ramping up the deportation process for those who have failed to win asylum. Cases of deportations doubled in 2015 from a year ago, the interior ministry told AFP, with 21,000 forcibly removed from Germany last year. After having already put several Balkan states on a list of "safe countries of origin", whose citizens are unlikely to gain refugee status. Berlin is now looking to add to the list several North African countries, like Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. Berlin (AFP) - A German court on Wednesday began the trial of an Islamic State 'storm trooper' who allegedly helped track down deserters for the jihadist group in Syria. Nils D., a 25-year-old German national, had travelled to Syria in October 2013, where he "took on several tasks within the Islamic State organisation," prosecutor Carola Bitter said. They include assisting in interrogations, prison guard duty, as well as participation in the jihadist group's "storm troops," a special assault team. As a member of this unit, D. allegedly took part in between 10 and 15 missions, in which, masked and armed with a Kalashnikov, he helped to track down IS deserters -- fully knowing that those caught could be tortured to death, Bitter told the court. Although he did not fight on the front lines, he looked on as executions were carried out by the IS group, and was trained to handle weapons and make explosives, she added. The accused has been in police custody since his arrest upon his return to Germany in January 2015. According to a Spiegel Online report, he left Syria after changing his mind about the IS, and managed to escape after telling the jihadists that he was heading back to Germany to bring his daughter to Syria. Taking the stand at a court in Duesseldorf, western Germany, D. recounted his troubled teenage days, when he admitted he was a "pothead" before converting to Islam in August 2011. "I practically slipped directly into radicalism," he said, adding that he subsequently joined a local jihadist group called "Lohberger Brigade" and travelled with it to Syria. D. risks a 10-year sentence, but his willingness to provide details of the IS organisation to investigators may be a mitigating factor. Thousands of Europeans have travelled to Syria to fight for the IS group, and concern is growing about the threat that these returning jihadists pose on their home soil. Gunmen raided Bacha Khan, a university in Charsadda, northwest Pakistan, at 9:30 a.m. local time, firing at staff and students who were preparing for a poetry recital and detonating explosives, killing at least 30 people and injuring dozens more. The death toll continues to rise and is likely higher than initially reported numbers, the Guardian reported. The four suspected attackers capitalized on a thick, morning fog the reduced visibility initially worked to their advantage, but armed and trained campus security guards, who knew the grounds more intimately, were able to gain control of the situation, ending the attack after about three hours, the BBC reports. The four suspected attackers were killed. The alleged attackers were all wearing suicide vests, the Guardian reports. "I personally heard two explosions," an eyewitness told Geo TV, a Pakistan network, according to BBC. "We don't know if they were suicide bombers or grenades. I personally saw two explosions and smoke was rising." Umar Mansoor, largely credited with orchestrating a devastating attack on a school in nearby Peshawar in December 2014, which killed more than 150 people including 144 children, and a member of Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, the country's wing of the Taliban terrorist network, took credit for Wednesday's attack with a post on Facebook, one of the country's biggest newspapers, Dawn, reported. According to the BBC, Mansoor claimed the attack was in retaliation to the Pakistani military's aggressive campaign against Islamic militants in the past year, who had largely overrun the northwestern frontier, bordering Afghanistan, before military pushback an offensive, which at first successful, appears to be unraveling by the day. However, TTP spokesman Mohammad Khorasani later denied his organization had any involvement in the attack, adding those who suggested otherwise would face retribution. "We are determined and resolved in our commitment to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland," Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said in a statement, according to Reuters. Story continues Correction: Jan. 20, 2016 A previous version of this story reported 144 people died in the December 2014 attack in Peshawar. The attack killed more than 150 people; 144 were children. Port-au-Prince (AFP) - Police in Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince fired tear gas at opposition demonstrators Tuesday who rallied in their thousands, five days before a presidential vote runoff is scheduled. The poorest country in the Americas has been on edge for months after legislative and presidential elections that the opposition branded a fix and that were marred by violence. Demonstrators in Port-au-Prince set fire to tires and threw stones, and police responded with tear gas, managing to disperse most of the several thousand protesters. The opposition, which has staged regular protests, accuses outgoing President Michel Martelly of instigating an "electoral coup." In the first round of the presidential election in October, Jovenel Moise, the government candidate, had 32.8 percent of the vote against 25.3 percent for Jude Celestin. Celestin said he had been cheated, branded the outcome "a farce" and told AFP on Monday that he will not take part in Sunday's runoff. Separately, the United States offered its support for the troubled electoral process. The State Department argued that Haiti's government has made "numerous concessions" to try to secure Celestin's participation in the vote and could wait no longer. The vote is the latest attempt to restore stability in one of the most unstable countries in the Americas. Since the end of the Duvalier dictatorship in 1986, Haiti has been jolted by coups and contested elections that have further undermined the fragile economy. The country is also still trying to get back on its feet after a devastating 2010 earthquake. Supermodel Heidi Klum is putting her perfect beach body to good use with the news that she is set to launch a new swimwear line. Created as part of her Heidi Klum Intimates brand launched by New Zealand-based retail company Bendon last year, the range is set to hit the stores this year. Klum announced the news on her social media networks, accompanied by a photo of herself and her team chilling in a pool while she rocks a sporty, striped two-piece. She captioned the image: "Big things to come... Heidi Klum Swim launching this summer." According to Women's Wear Daily, the collection, which will launch in the Southern hemisphere in July and the Northern hemisphere in October, will comprise both swimwear and cover-ups. The campaign features images shot by fashion photographer Rankin. "Most of my career has been spent rolling around on beaches around the world, and I still love it, so we've been working on this for a while," Klum told the publication. She added that practicality was a top priority when designing the range and opted for simple pieces, saying: "I'm not a huge fan of strange tan lines. There are so many complicated swim shapes out there but I don't want 10 straps on my back." She continued: "The line also has to perform really well. I go to water parks a lot with my kids and you want things that look good but that also hold up when they are wet." German fashion icon Klum first partnered with Bendon to launch Heidi Klum Intimates in January 2015, following the news that supermodel Elle Macpherson was to end her longstanding professional partnership with the brand. Her collection was designed to offer "femininity, elegance and sophistication" with the modern woman in mind. Gov. Rick Snyder apologized to the residents of Flint, Mich., Tuesday evening for the failure in state, local and federal leadership resulting in a water contamination crisis that has consumed the city for nearly two years. To you, the people of Flint, I say tonight as I have before, I am sorry and I will fix it, Snyder said in his annual State of the State address, calling on state lawmakers to approve $28 million in funds to help replace water faucets in city schools and daycare centers, do diagnostic tests and treat children who may have been exposed to lead and other hazardous chemicals, and study the citys piping system. SLIDESHOW Water crisis in Flint, Michigan >>> Snyders apology came amid calls for his resignation over what critics charge has been a delayed and neglectful response to the citys water crisis. Flint residents began complaining about the taste, odor and color of their tap water as well as side effects like rashes and hair loss within a month after the city switched its drinking water supply from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department to the Flint River in April 2014. But it wasnt until October 2015 after reports revealed an increase in lead-in-blood levels among Flint residents and children in particular that Snyder finally ordered Flint to stop using the river water and return to Detroits supply. AP Interactive: The Flint Water Crisis Over the past few weeks, the local crisis has continued to snowball into a national issue, with Snyder declaring a state of emergency and deploying the Michigan National Guard to distribute water bottles and filters, as federal officials launched an investigation. Over the weekend President Obama signed an emergency declaration and ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security to coordinate in bringing federal aide to Flint. Flint and Snyder have even become talking points on the presidential campaign trail. During Sundays Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton admonished Snyder, accusing him of deliberately ignoring the basic needs of an already disadvantaged community. Story continues Weve had a city in the United States of America where the population, which is poor in many ways and majority African-American, has been drinking and bathing in lead-contaminated water. And the governor of that state acted as though he didnt really care, Clinton said. He had a request for help that he had basically stonewalled. Ill tell you what if the kids in a rich suburb of Detroit had been drinking contaminated water and being bathed in it, there wouldve been action. Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders also commented on the Flint water crisis, saying Snyder should resign. Flint Mayor Karen Weaver who met with President Obama Tuesday joined Hillary for Americas national political director on a phone call with reporters earlier in the day to discuss Clintons response to the water crisis and Flints needs going forward. People are angry, theyre scared, theyre confused, they need support. We need more than just water and filters coming in, Weaver said. What are we going to do for these kids and families that have been impacted? Weaver said she was grateful to Clinton for speaking out about Flint during Sundays debate, and especially for questioning how this situation would have played out in a city with different demographics than Flint, a predominately black community with more than 40 percent of its population living below the poverty line. This is also a class issue, Weaver said. Water is a basic right; its a social issue. As more than 1,000 people protested outside the state Capitol, Snyder promised that on Wednesday he would release all his emails regarding Flint from 2014 and 2015 apparently in an effort to answer growing questions about what exactly he knew about the water situation and when. Below is a timeline of what we know so far. April 16, 2013: State-appointed emergency manager Ed Kurtz signs an agreement passed by the Flint City Council to join the Karegnondi Water Authority (KWA), a new pipeline project that would supply Flint with tap water from Lake Huron. April 2014: Flint moves water supply from Detroit to Flint River. Flint previously purchased its drinking water from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department. And despite the fact that the KWA pipeline would not be complete for about three more years, in April 2014 Flint severs ties with the DWSD and begins supplying its residents with water from the Flint River. Flint residents soon begin to complain about cost and quality of water. The top of a water tower at the Flint Water Plant is seen in Flint, Michigan January 13, 2016. (Rebecca Cook/REUTERS) June 12, 2014: Flint water treatment plant announces plan to add more lime to the river water in response to customer complaints. Residents begin complaining about the color, odor and taste of their costly tap water not long after the city switches its drinking water supply to the Flint River. It stinks. Its nasty, and we shouldnt even be drinking it, Flint resident Rev. Barbara Bettis says at a City Council meeting. Then-Mayor Dayne Walling rebuffs residents concerns about the river water, insisting, Its a quality, safe product. I think people are wasting their precious money buying bottled water. August-September 2014: Flint issues three separate water-boil advisories to different parts of the city within 22 days after water samples repeatedly test positive for total coliform bacteria. Oct.13, 2014: General Motors announces it will stop using river water at its Flint engine plant because of concerns about potential corrosion caused by the waters high chloride levels. Feb. 3 2015: Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder announces $2 million in state funding to help improve Flints water system. Feb. 17, 2015: Mayor Dayne Walling appoints 40 city officials, business owners and community organizers to a newly formed water advisory committee. March 2015: Flint dedicates $2.24 million to improve water supply as Flint officials insist water quality has improved and meets safety standards. September 2015: Researchers from Virginia Tech release findings of increased lead-in-blood levels of Flint residents over the past two years. Sept. 24, 2015: Mona Hanna-Attisha, MD, a pediatrician at Hurley Childrens Hospital and head of the pediatric residency program at Michigan State Universitys College of Human Medicine, releases a review of blood test results showing elevated levels of lead in Flint children coinciding with the switch to Flint River water. Sept. 29, 2015: Gov. Rick Snyder acknowledges for the first time that Flints water has a lead problem. Flint resident Lorraine Jones pours canned water into a pot in preparation for boiling to cook on Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016. (Jake May/The Flint Journal-MLive.com via AP) Oct. 2, 2015: Snyder says the state will spend $1 million on water filters and testing of water in Flint public schools. Oct. 8, 2015: Snyder says Flint should go back to getting its water from Detroit. Oct. 16, 2015: State legislature approves $9.3 million for Flint: $6 million of it is meant to help get Flint back on the Detroit water supply until KWA is ready, and the rest to fund water filters, testing and inspections. Nov. 3, 2015: Mayor Dayne Walling loses reelection amid the water scandal. New Mayor Karen Weaver is elected. Nov. 13, 2015: A class-action lawsuit accuses 14 officials (including Gov. Snyder and former Mayor Walling) of supplying Flint residents with dangerous, unsafe, and ... inadequately treated water as a means of saving money. For more than 18 months, state and local government officials ignored irrefutable evidence that the water pumped from the Flint River exposed [users] to extreme toxicity, reads part of the suit. Nov. 16, 2015: The ACLU of Michigan, the National Resource Defense Council, Concerned Pastors for Social Action and Flint resident Melissa Mays file notice of intent to sue the city and state over lead in the drinking water. Dec. 29, 2015: Dan Wyant resigns as director of state Department of Environmental Quality and issues an apology to Flint residents. Jan. 5. 2016: Federal officials announce investigation of the Flint water crisis. The same day, Gov. Snyder declares a state of emergency. Jan. 12, 2016: Michigan National Guard is deployed to Flint to distribute filters and water bottles. Snyder asks for federal assistance. A forklift driver moves a pallet of water in a warehouse for residents of Flint, Michigan. (Carlos Osorio/AP Photo) Jan. 13, 2016: Michigan health officials report jump in cases of Legionnaires disease in Genesee County, which includes Flint, over past two years. Jan. 16, 2016: President Obama signs emergency declaration, orders FEMA and DHS to coordinate on federal aid for Flint. Jan. 17, 2016: During the Democratic presidential debate, Hillary Clinton says, I spent a lot of time last week being outraged by whats happening in Flint, Michigan, and I think every single American should be outraged. Bernie Sanders also comments on the Flint water crisis, saying Snyder should resign. Jan. 18, 2016: More National Guard troops are sent to Flint. That same day, Snyder responds to Clintons comments from the debate, accusing her of politicizing the crisis. Were going to keep working on putting solutions in place, Snyder told the Detroit News after speaking at an event in Flint for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. And what I would say is politicizing the issue doesnt help matters. Lets focus in on the solution and how to deal with the damage that was done and help the citizens of Flint and make Flint a stronger community. U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich.; U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich.; and Congressman Dan Kildee, D-Mich. urge Snyder to commit state resources to reimburse Flint residents for their water bills, repair the damaged water system and create a Future Fund for kids exposed to lead poisoning from water. Jan. 19, 2016: Two new class-action lawsuits are filed against Gov. Rick Snyder, former Flint Emergency Managers Darnell Earley and Jerry Ambrose, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, Genesee County and other government officials. The latest two, one filed in Genesee County Circuit Court and the other in the Court of Claims, come in addition to the suit already filed in federal court. That evening Snyder apologizes to the people of Flint and promises to fix the damage caused by water contamination. By Dave McKinney CHICAGO (Reuters) - Illinois' two top Republican legislators said on Wednesday they will introduce legislation soon to let the state take over the cash-strapped Chicago public school system, permit the district to file for municipal bankruptcy and eventually allow for city-wide school board elections. The plan has the backing of Republican Governor Bruce Rauner, who has embraced allowing local governments facing financial turmoil to file for bankruptcy. But it is strongly opposed by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who controls the city's schools, the Chicago Teachers Union, and by Democratic leaders, who control the legislature. Senate Minority Leader Christine Radogno and House Minority Leader Jim Durkin, both Republican allies of Rauner, said a new approach is needed to rescue the Chicago Public Schools (CPS)from financial mismanagement and near collapse. Rauner told reporters Emanuel has failed to address the school district's fiscal woes over the nearly five years he has been mayor. "His message to us in state government has been for months, 'We have a crisis. We need $500 million. We want the state to give it to us.' Thats not a reasonable message. Thats not a reasonable request, Rauner said. The nation's third-largest school system has a structural budget deficit topping $1 billion and credit ratings that have fallen deep into the "junk" level. The district's current budget has a $480 million gap that officials hope to fill with bigger pension funding support from the state. But the plan has become entangled in a state budget stalemate between Rauner and Democrats. The Republicans' plan would amend an existing law permitting state oversight of fiscally troubled schools to include CPS and allow for an independent authority to run the district, while making it clear the state is not liable for school debt. Once solvency is regained, an elected school board would take control. The plan would also open the door to Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy while protecting general obligation bondholders with a statutory lien. "The mayor is 100 percent opposed to Governor Rauner's 'plan' to drive CPS bankrupt," Emanuel spokeswoman Kelley Quinn said in a statement, adding that the state has been shortchanging Chicago students. House Speaker Michael Madigan rejected the plan, pointing to Michigan's takeover of the city of Flint, which has led to a health crisis from lead-tainted water. "The disaster in Flint, Michigan, is a very timely example of how reckless decisions just to save a buck can have devastating consequences on children and families," Madigan said in a statement. Senate President John Cullerton, a Chicago Democrat, said the Republicans' "mean-spirited" plan is not going to happen. CPS has scheduled an $875 million bond sale for next week, partly to free up revenue for its sagging budget. (Additional reporting by Karen Pierog in Chicago; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Matthew Lewis) Prepping for finals is never fun, but few things can propel students through the pain like an upcoming boat ride along a Venetian canal or a glass of wine in a Roman cafe. Italy is the best country to study abroad, at least according to nearly 6,000 millennials, or adults under age 35, who filled out surveys for the 2016 Best Countries rankings. The rankings, formed in partnership with brand strategy firm BAV Consulting and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, aim to gauge global perceptions of the world's biggest economies in terms of specific attributes associated with countries. The Best Countries to Study Abroad, including Spain, the United States, France and the United Kingdom, scored highest on a compilation of five equally weighted country attributes: culturally accessible, fun, has top quality universities, many cultural attractions and would consider attending university there. Pakistan and Iran -- two countries criticized by human rights groups -- were perceived as the worst countries in which to hit the books. Italy, a country known worldwide for its architecture, stunning coastlines and cuisine, doesn't have a problem attracting visitors. Italy was the fifth-most popular tourist destination in 2014, drawing in 48.6 million international visitors, according to the World Tourism Organization. Students also flock to the country in significant numbers. Italy was the 10th-most popular destination for international students in 2012, drawing in 2 percent of the total international student population, according to the most recent UNESCO data. The country is popular among U.S. students, who only choose the United Kingdom to study in greater numbers. Top 5 Countries to Study Abroad No. 5: United Kingdom The United Kingdom is the second-largest host of international students behind the United States, and welcomed more than 493,000 international students in the 2013-2014 academic year, according to the British Council. The top five countries of origin were China, the United States, India, Nigeria and Germany. The country is home to some of the world's best universities, including the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge. Story continues No. 4: France France welcomed more than 298,000 international students in 2014-15, according to CampusFrance. Many of the international students came from French-speaking North African countries. France has more than 30 universities, including the highly ranked Pierre and Marie Curie University - Paris 6 and Universite Paris-Sud. No. 3: United States Since the late 1940s, the United States has drawn more international students than any other host country, according to the International Institute of International Education. In 2014-2015, the country welcomed more than 900,000 international students. Overseas students added more than $30 billion to the U.S. economy in 2015, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. No. 2: Spain Spain hosted 189,198 international higher education students in 2013-14, according to the Spanish Service for the Internationalization of Higher Education, or SEPIE. The top five places of origin for international students that year were Italy, France, Germany, China and Colombia. Spain has more than 25 universities, including the highly ranked University of Barcelona. No. 1: Italy Italy was the 10th-most popular destination for international students in 2012, drawing in 2 percent of the total international student population, according to the most recent UNESCO data. The Mediterranean country, home to more than 35 universities, drew in 48.6 million international visitors that year. Want to Know More? Click to see the full list of Best Countries to Study Abroad, or visit the U.S. News Best Countries homepage to find news and more rankings. The 2016 Best Countries report and rankings were formed in partnership with brand strategy firm BAV Consulting and The Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania. Devon Haynie is news editor, international for U.S. News. You can follow her on Twitter or email her at dhaynie@usnews.com. By Tom Hals WILMINGTON, Del. (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Tuesday denied a request by media company Bloomberg LP to stay an order requiring more than 100 people to disclose information they shared with its reporters about the bankruptcy of the largest U.S. rare earth mining company, which Bloomberg said inhibits its free speech rights. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Sontchi in Wilmington, Delaware curtly dismissed the request by Bloomberg's legal team to stay his order for 48 hours so the company could appeal. Last week, Sontchi ordered 123 people to disclose by the end of Tuesday their contacts with Bloomberg reporters regarding Molycorp Inc over the prior 60 days. Sontchi had ordered Molycorp and its creditors and other parties into confidential mediation in November, and information from the mediation was apparently reported by Bloomberg. Sontchi's order did not spell out what specific information in Bloomberg's reporting troubled the judge. The order was prompted by the parties to the case, who consented to making the disclosures. "The order issued by the Delaware bankruptcy court last Thursday strikes at the heart of the First Amendment and the fundamental mission of a free press: to provide transparency into important public events," John Micklethwait, Bloomberg's editor-in-chief, said in the statement. Lawyers for Bloomberg declined to comment. Bloomberg filed an emergency appeal with the U.S. District Court in Wilmington to stay the order, although no action by the court was publicly docketed at the close of business. After the start of the confidential mediation, Bloomberg published three articles describing efforts to find a buyer for Molycorp. The articles, by Jodi Xu Klein, and one that included reporting by Steven Church and Fion Li, cited unidentified sources. Bloomberg said in court papers the order cast too broad a net. It said the judge has ordered bankers, lawyers and advisers to give information even though their discussions with Bloomberg journalists may have had nothing to do with the Molycorp bankruptcy. The order also required the parties to disclose if they knew who provided information to Bloomberg. The declarations, which began to appear on the docket late on Tuesday, were to be sealed from the public but shared with key parties. Journalists organization Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press said Sontchi's order would have consequences beyond Molycorp's bankruptcy. "The repercussions from a single legal demand affect not just the work of the targeted journalist but all other journalists whose sources will hesitate and hold back information on matters of public concern, such as the operation of the judicial system," the group said. (Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Editing by David Gregorio and Sandra Maler) NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya will this year begin to automate trading at its weekly tea auction of regional produce to increase transparency in dealings, the chairman of the East African Tea Traders Association (EATTA), which runs the sale, said on Wednesday. Kenya's hosts the world's biggest tea auction, selling produce from nine African nations, including from Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Malawi and Mozambique. Ethiopia is due to join in March. Kenya, the world's top producer of black tea, earns about $1 billion a year from exports, according to EATTA, making it one of the nation's main sources of foreign exchange earnings. Complete automation of the auction would be completed in 2017 but the first phase would be in place this year, EATTA Chairman Nick Munyi told Reuters. "We are changing from the normal way of knocking the hammer to clicking the mouse," Munyi said by phone from the port city of Mombasa, where the 60-year old auction is based. EATTA has 200 members drawn from growers, buyers, warehouse operators and brokers from regional African nations. Automating the auction would cost $1.3 million, Munyi said, adding it would be funded by Trade Mark East Africa, an organisation that supports trade in the region. Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta visited the auction on Tuesday and urged members to speed up automation. "Automating your system will go a long way to dispel some of the perceptions that this is a house of collusion. People believe that you just come here to showcase, but the real deals are done at night," Kenyatta said. (Reporting by Duncan Miriri; Editing by Edmund Blair and Raissa Kasolowsky) Baghdad (AFP) - Western-backed Kurdish forces fighting jihadists in Iraq have destroyed thousands of homes in an apparent bid to uproot Arab communities, actions that may constitute war crimes, Amnesty International said Wednesday. The rights watchdog said the destruction took place in areas of northern Iraq recaptured from the Islamic State group, which overran swathes of the country in 2014. The United States has carried out air strikes in support of forces from Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region since August 2014 and other countries have also backed them with air support, training and weapons. Kurdish forces "appear to be spearheading a concerted campaign to forcibly displace Arab communities," Amnesty's Donatella Rovera said in a statement. "The forced displacement of civilians and the deliberate destruction of homes and property without military justification may amount to war crimes," she added. Destruction of homes and property theft have occurred frequently during the war against IS, angering residents whose support security forces need to hold recaptured areas, and sowing the seeds of future conflict. "Peshmerga forces from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Kurdish militias in northern Iraq have bulldozed, blown up and burned down thousands of homes in an apparent effort to uproot communities in revenge for their perceived support" of IS, Amnesty said. The rights group carried out a field investigation and interviewed witnesses. Satellite images also provided evidence of "widespread destruction", it said. - Harmful to anti-IS fight - Arab civilians who fled fighting have also been barred from returning home. Dindar Zebari, a KRG official, blamed combat for the destruction. "Many houses were destroyed because of clashes between peshmerga forces and Daesh members in villages located in war zones," Zebari said, using an Arabic acronym for IS. "Bombing by the international coalition also caused the destruction of houses, and Daesh members rigged houses in the villages to blow up the peshmerga forces," he said. Story continues Zebari also accused residents of affected areas of working with IS. "On the arrival of Daesh members to these areas, a number of tribal leaders cooperated with Daesh and these villages became a source for terrorists," he said. Colonel Steve Warren, the spokesman for the US-led operation against IS, declined to comment on the specifics of the Amnesty report but said that such actions harm the fight against the jihadists. "As government forces liberate territory... there's gotta be security for all of the civilian population," Warren told reporters. "These types of actions, if left unchecked, ultimately hurt the fight against Daesh. They increase the humanitarian crisis and they undermine the reconciliation efforts," he said. Amnesty documented evidence of "forced displacement and large-scale destruction of homes" by Kurdish forces in three Iraqi provinces: Nineveh, Kirkuk and Diyala. - Violations in Syria - The London-based rights group published a similar report about Kurdish forces in neighbouring Syria in October, accusing them of war crimes. It said those forces had deliberately demolished civilian homes and forcibly displaced inhabitants "with no justifiable military grounds". Syrian Kurdish forces have also received air support and other backing from the US-led coalition. In Iraq, IS was driving Kurdish forces back toward their regional capital Arbil in August 2014 when the US began carrying out air strikes against the jihadists, playing a key role in stopping their advance and later helping the Kurds regain ground. All three provinces where Amnesty said destruction of property took place are outside the borders of the autonomous Kurdistan region. But Kurdish forces gained or solidified control over areas in the provinces after federal troops fled IS's devastatingly effective offensive in June 2014. Iraqi Kurdish leaders want to incorporate territory from the provinces into their autonomous region, and depopulating them of Arabs aids efforts to maintain Kurdish control. Baghdad strongly opposes Iraqi Kurdistan's incorporation of the areas, which it wants to remain under federal control, but after fighting IS for the territory the Kurds are even more committed to keeping them. Part of an OZY series on Historys Forgotten Women. Video by Charlotte Buchen The history of piracy is full of cliches. Yet the worlds most successful buccaneer might have been Chinese and a woman. Ching Shih, also known as Cheng I Sao, instilled fear in the hearts of merchants across the China Sea in the early 19th century. During her relatively short run as a pirate lord about a decade this ruthless and cunning woman went from being a prostitute to commanding the infamous Red Flag Fleet and sending hundreds of thousands of men into battle. At the height of her success, Ching Shihs pirate armada boasted 1,600 ships, and she commanded more than 70,000 male and female pirates, spies and suppliers. Her sphere of influence stretched from the waters of the South China Sea through much of Guangdong Province, and she even had spies working within the ruling Qing Dynasty. The Qing emperor, Jiaqing, raised a large fleet of ships against her to no avail. Ching Shih was eventually offered amnesty by Jiaqing, and went on to retire at the ripe age of 35. The queen of the pirates then had a child, opened a brothel and lived a comfortable life until she died, at age 69, a wealthy aristocrat. Her name has been largely forgotten, but her legacy still lives today on the pirate-infested waters of the South China Sea. Related Articles Whats the difference between a language and a dialect? Is there some kind of technical distinction, the way there is between a quasar and a pulsar, or between a rabbit and a hare? Faced with the question, linguists like to repeat the grand old observation of the linguist and Yiddishist Max Weinreich, that a language is a dialect with an army and a navy. But surely the difference is deeper than a snappy aphorism suggests. The very fact that language and dialect persist as separate concepts implies that linguists can make tidy distinctions for speech varieties worldwide. But in fact, there is no objective difference between the two: Any attempt you make to impose that kind of order on reality falls apart in the face of real evidence. Related Story How Immigration Changes Language And yet its hard not to try. An English-speaker might be tempted to think, for example, that a language is basically a collection of dialects, where speakers of different dialects within the same language can all understand each other, more or less. Cockney, South African, New Yorkese, Black, Yorkshireall of these are mutually intelligible variations on a theme. Surely, then, these are dialects of some one thing that can be called a language? English as a whole, meanwhile, looks like a language that stands by itself; theres a clear boundary between it and its closest relative, Frisian, spoken in Northern Europe, which is unintelligible to an English-speaker. As such, English tempts one with a tidy dialect-language distinction based on intelligibility: If you can understand it without training, its a dialect of your own language; if you cant, its a different language. But because of quirks of its history, English happens to lack very close relatives, and the intelligibility standard doesnt apply consistently beyond it. Worldwide, some mutually understandable ways of speaking, which one might think of as dialects of one language, are actually treated as separate languages. At the same time, some mutually incomprehensible tongues an outsider might view as separate languages are thought of locally as dialects. Story continues Recommended: The U.S.-Iran Conflict That Never Happened I have a Swedish pal I see at conferences in Denmark. When were out and about there, he is at no linguistic disadvantage. He casually orders food and asks directions in Swedish despite the fact that we are in a different country from his own, where supposedly a different languageDanishis spoken. In fact, Ive watched speakers of Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian conversing with each other, each in their own native tongues, as a cozy little trio over drinks. A Dane who moves to Sweden does not take Swedish lessons; she adjusts to a variation upon, and not an alternate to, her native speech. The speakers of these varieties of Scandinavian consider them distinct languages because they are spoken in distinct nations, and so be it. However, there is nothing about Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian in themselves that classifies them as languages; especially on the page, they resemble each other closely enough to look more like dialects of one language. It turns out that its impossible to determine precisely where one language leaves off and another begins. Meanwhile, one generally hears Mandarin, Cantonese, and Taiwanese described as dialects of something called Chinese. But the only single Chinese language that exists is on paper, in that all of its varieties have the same writing system, where each word has its own symbol that (more or less) stays the same from one Chinese dialect to another. Mandarin and Cantonese, for example, are more different than Spanish and Italian. I, you, and he in Mandarin are wo, ni, and ta, but in Cantonese they are, respectively, ngoh, leih, and keuih. Dialects? A Mandarin-speaker can no more adjust to Cantonese than a Swede could adjust to German. There are cases of the Scandinavian and the Chinese kind worldwide. A Moroccans colloquial Arabic is as different from the colloquial Arabic of Jordan as Czech is from Polish. In order to understand each other, a Moroccan and a Jordanian would have to communicate in Modern Standard Arabic, a version preserved roughly as it was when the Koran was written. The cultural unity of Arab nations makes the Moroccan and the Jordanian consider themselves to be speaking kinds of Arabic, whereas speakers of Czech and Polish think of themselves as speaking different languages. But then, while Im on Czech, there is no such language as Czechoslovakianat least in name. A Czech and a Slovak can usually converse. However, they consider themselves to speak different languages because of historical and cultural factors. Recommended: Mapping Scotlands Disgust With Donald Trump It turns out that its also impossible to determine precisely where one language leaves off and another begins. An example is certain languagesum, dialects?in Ethiopia. According to data from Sharon Rose of the University of California, San Diego, speakers of Soddo say, for he thatched a roof, kddnm. (The upside-down e is pronounced a lot like the oo in foot.) Not far away, people speaking Muher say it starting with kh instead of k: khddnm. A further ways distant, people who speak what they call Ezha say it with an r in the place of the n: khddrm. In Gyeto, the same word is khtr. Then in Endegen they start with an h instead of a kh: httr. Now, where we started and where we finished look like what one might call different languages: Soddos kddnm and Endegens httr seem about as distinct as Frenchs dimanche and Italians domenica for Sunday. But in between Soddo and Endegen are several other stagesI only gave a few of themthat each differ from the previous one by just a little change, such that the speakers can converse. If those stages are dialects, what are they dialects of? Both Soddo and Endegen over on the ends? The serendipities of history chose one dialect as a standard and enshrined it on the page. All of them are simply dialectseven though the ones on the ends are not mutually intelligible and dont feel like the same language to their speakers. Speech worked this way from village to village across Western Europe until recently, when unwritten, rural dialects started steadily disappearing. People now know this area as home to a few languages like Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Italian, but on the ground there once was basically a smudge of countless Romance dialects shading gradually into one another from Portugal to Italy. In each nation, the serendipities of history chose one dialect as a standard and enshrined it on the page, but in real life, the situation was much like in Ethiopia. There are hints of this history today; in Catalan in Spain, key is clau; to the north, in Occitan, its clau as well; but then a little further north, in obscure rural varieties called Franco-Provencal, its cla; in the Romansh of the Swiss mountains its clav; in the northern Italian variety Piedmontese its ciav (pronounced chahv,); and then in whats known as standard Italian its chiave (pronounced KYAH-vay). The idea of distinguishing languages from dialects is of no logical use here. As often as not, its more that speech is a little different from place to place, such that a person can get along speaking when in the town a few valleys over; one starts having trouble the further away he gets; and after a traveling a certain distance can no longer understand a thing anyone is saying. Recommended: What ISIS Really Wants The only thing that can save an attempt to impose a formal definition on the terms language and dialect now is perhaps to be found in popular usage, which suggests that languages are written and standardized and have a literature, while dialects are oral, without codified rules, and have no literature. Now, a typical objection to using literature as the dividing line is that there is oral literaturethe Iliad and the Odyssey likely originated as memorized poems. But even allowing that memories can only retain so much, and that perhaps it is legitimate to distinguish what Greek bards knew from, say, Russians written literature, theres another problem. Is a dialect, on some level, unsophisticated, as if it doesnt have a literature because it is unsuited to extended thought and abstraction? Namely, its the implication that there is something lesser about a dialect. Is a dialect, on some level, unsophisticated, as if it doesnt have a literature because it is unsuited to extended thought and abstraction? I recall an exquisite exchange I once caught between a man Nathan Lane could easily play, wearing an ascot and a long scarf and rather plummy of expression, and a man Sacha Baron Cohen would be cast as, straight-backed, earnest, and a little wary. Nathan asked Sacha what he spoke. Sacha said Uzbek. Nathan asked breezily, Is that a dialect? Sacha, almost snapping, replied, No, it is a beautiful language. Despite Sachas defensiveness, its not the case that what one is taught to think of as dialects are somehow more lowly or simple. As often as not, obscure, unwritten dialects are much more grammatically complicated than familiar languages. The Foreign Service Institute ranks what it calls languages in terms of their difficulty for English-speakers; the hardest to learn to speak include Finnish, Georgian, Hungarian, Mongolian, Thai, and Vietnamese. However, just about any Native American, Australian Aboriginal, or indigenous African tongue would easily rank among these in terms of difficulty, and actually, many obscure tongues around the world make any language on the FSI list look like a toy. For example, in Archi, spoken in the Caucasus mountains, a verb can occur in 1,502,839 different formsthats over a thousand times more forms than the number of people who even speak it (about 1,200). Meanwhile, here in the English language, there are walk, walks, walked, and walking. If sophistication separated languages from dialects, Archi would have more claim to the language title than English. A language, then, is indeed a dialect with an army and a navy; or, more to the point, a language is a dialect that got put up in the shop window. Yes, people can sit down in a room and decide upon a standardized version of a dialect so that large numbers of people can communicate with maximal efficiencyno more clau, clav, and ciav. But standardization doesnt make something betterdonning a Catholic school uniform isnt better than wearing different clothes to school every day. The world is buzzing with a cacophony of qualitatively equal dialects, often shading into one another like colors. Or, yes, the written dialect will have its words collected in dictionaries. The Oxford English Dictionary does have more words than Archi and Endegen do; the existence of print has allowed English-speakers to curate many of their words instead of letting them come and go with time. But words are only part of what makes human speech: You have to know how to put them together, and knowing how to handle Archis words (or Endegens) requires its own level of sophistication. So, whats the difference between a language and a dialect? In popular usage, a language is written in addition to being spoken, while a dialect is just spoken. But in the scientific sense, the world is buzzing with a cacophony of qualitatively equal dialects, often shading into one another like colors (and often mixing, too), all demonstrating how magnificently complicated human speech can be. If either the terms language or dialect have any objective use, the best anyone can do is to say that there is no such thing as a language: Dialects are all there is. Is it a dialect? asks Nathan. Properly, Sacha could have answered, Yes, a beautiful one. And Nathan should have understood that he was speaking a dialect too. Related Video Read more from The Atlantic: This article was originally published on The Atlantic. The mayor of Flint, Michigan, declared a state of emergency last week after elevated levels of lead were detected in the city's drinking water. Experts say that young children are especially susceptible to even low levels of lead because their brains are still developing. Ingesting the metal can lead to neurological problems in children, studies have shown. A recent report from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) identified 27 children with blood lead levels greater than or equal to 5 micrograms per deciliter (an amount used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to identify levels "much higher than most children's levels") since Oct. 1. Flint changed its water source in 2014, disconnecting from Detroit's water supply and instead drawing water from the Flint River, according to the MDHHS. Unfortunately, the water wasn't properly treated, and had absorbed lead from the pipes. Flint has since switched back to using the Detroit water, which includes anti-corrosive chemicals to keep the lead from leaching, according to an advisory issued by the City of Flint. [9 Weird Ways Kids Can Get Hurt] However, until these chemicals have time to take effect, the water will continue to contain elevated levels of lead, the mayors office told ABC News. Flint Mayor Karen Weaver said that by declaring a state of emergency, she hopes to acquire federal funds to help people suffering from the effects of lead exposure, ABC News reported. Lead can interfere with proteins in the body, and mimic the actions of calcium at a molecular level, which means the substance can affect many crucial cellular processes. Dr. Alex Kemper, a professor of pediatrics and community and family medicine at Duke University in North Carolina, has conducted research with Michigan local public health departments about preventing lead poisoning. He published his findings in the journal Public Health Reports in 2007. Of the 45 local public health department zones in Michigan, 42 participated in the research study, and 74 percent reported that"lead poisoning is inadequately addressed within [their] area," Kemper's study said. However, the state and federal governments set up initiatives to help eliminate lead poisoning, and by 2013, only 3.9 percent of tested children had elevated blood lead levels, compared to 13 percent in 2007. Story continues "The key thing to know is that even at low levels, lead can be dangerous, and most of the time there are no symptoms," Kemper told Live Science. For affected individuals in Flint, Dr. Kemper suggested reaching out to local health authorities for treatment. Certain medications are effective at chelating, or removing, lead from the body, but these are used only on individuals with very high lead levels, because the treatments can induce side effects, Kemper said. Germaine Vazquez, a representative for the CDC's National Center for Environmental Health/Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, emphasized that no safe blood level of lead has been identified for children, and that the effects of lead exposure cannot be corrected. The best way to protect yourself and your children from lead poisoning is to avoid exposure in the first place, Vazquez said. According to a report issued by the MDHHS, free water filters and replacement cartridges are available to Flint residents, and tests are being administered to identify residents with blood lead levels greater than 5 micrograms per deciliter. The MDHHS is working with its local partner, the Genesee County Health Department, to help families when elevated blood levels are detected. The City of Flint also recommends flushing pipes before drinking, and using only cold water for cooking and drinking, because hot water is more likely to contain high levels of lead. [16 Oddest Medical Cases] Lead in the water supply is a relatively uncommon problem, but there are other sources of lead exposure. The CDC estimates that children in at least 4 million U.S. households are exposed to high levels of lead, but in most of these cases, the exposure is due to environmental contaminants, such as paint and gasoline. Lead-based paint was banned in the United States in 1978, but can still be found in some older homes. Kemper said that in these older homes, young children might lick or eat paint that still contains lead. Vazquez explained that "the normal hand-to-mouth activity of young children makes them more likely to absorb lead than adults." States maintain databases that track child-specific elevated blood lead levels, including follow-up medical treatment, environmental investigations and potential exposure sources. These databases are compiled, but because data-collection methods vary among states, the CDC doesn't provide national data analyses. Ultimately, lead toxicity can affect every organ system, with neurological effects being the most pressing concern. Some studies have found that for every increase of 10 micrograms per deciliterin blood lead level, children's IQs were lower by 4 to 7 points, according to research published in the journal American Academy of Pediatrics in 1993. Lead exposure can also damage kidneys and inhibit the production of hemoglobin,the protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen, according to the CDC. The blood lead levels for individuals in Flint will likely need to be closely monitored, and the long-term effects will depend on both the amount of lead and the duration of exposure. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science. Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. BEIRUT (Reuters) - The influential speaker of Lebanon's parliament has cast doubt on whether the reconciliation of the country's rival Christian leaders will help the country install a new president after nearly two years with the post empty. In a surprise move, Christian politician Samir Geagea declared support for 80-year-old rival Michel Aoun for presidency on Monday, edging him closer to the position. Aoun is part of the March 8 alliance dominated by the Iranian-backed Shi'ite group Hezbollah. Geagea is part of the March 14 alliance led by Sunni politician Saad al-Hariri, who is in turn backed by Saudi Arabia. "The rivalry between the two was the toughest and hardest (in the country) hence what happened is an advanced step for the Lebanese and a positive thing on the Christian front in particular but this step is not enough presidentially," speaker Nabih Berri was quoted as saying in Assafir newspaper on Wednesday. Berri, a powerful Shi'ite politician, is also part of March 8, and has said he will not call parliament to elect a president unless all the main sectarian parties attend. That means Aoun must win Sunni backing in addition to the strong Shi'ite support he enjoys from Hezbollah. Assafir newspaper said Berri would call on his own grouping, the Amal Movement, to discus its position when "he has enough elements to take the appropriate decision". Lebanon has been without a president for nearly two years. The parliament, which elects the president, has convened for at least 30 times without being able to agree on a candidate. Berri had earlier called for a session to elect a president on Feb. 8. An initiative by Sunni leader Saad al-Hariri to nominate another Christian leader Suleiman Franjieh for the presidency has also thrown another possibility into the mix. (Editing by Alison Williams) Early galaxies are shining light on a decades-old mystery, helping to determine the size and composition of the gas clouds responsible for forming their neighbors. A new technique uses the light from some of the first galaxies to illuminate gas clouds from the early universe. "These gas clouds their size has been elusive for decades, even though they tell us an enormous amount about galaxy evolution," Jeff Cooke, an astrophysicist at Swinburne University in Australia, said at a news conference at the 227th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, held in Kissimmee, Florida, earlier this month. Cooke worked with John O'Meara, an astrophysicist at Saint Michael's College in Vermont, to pioneer a new technique to illuminate the clouds of gas that built galaxies like the Milky Way. [Watch 13.7 Billion Years of Galactic Evolution in Less Than a Minute (Video)] "Now, you have a comprehensive sample," Cooke said. "You can study all galaxies and learn how they formed from the beginning until now." A new era After the Big Bang, clouds of gas and dust permeated the universe. As these clouds coalesced, they formed clusters that created stars and, ultimately, galaxies. Because light takes time to travel through space, as astronomers stare over great distances, they are able to see objects as they appeared early in the life of the universe. That means they can observe early gas and dust clouds, known as damped Lyman alpha systems (DLAs), as they appeared 11 billion years ago, only a few billion years after the Big Bang (which occurred about 13.8 billion years ago). These clouds are thought to be precursors to early galaxies. Cooke and his team used the Keck Observatory in Hawaii and data from the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile to measure the size and characteristics of 10 DLAs with a new technique that should help to characterize the clouds of early gas. They looked through the material to large galaxies behind it, which provide significant light, to understand both the sizes and the chemistry of the ancient clouds. Story continues Previously, scientists used light from quasars, some of the brightest objects in the universe, to understand the chemistry of the early galactic seeds. If light from a quasar streamed through a DLA before it reached Earth, the elements within the cloud would absorb some of it, providing insight into its composition. But quasars are small, and provide only a peek through a tiny portion of one of these enormous clouds, which can stretch over 33 to 330 square light-years, according to Cooke essentially the size of smaller galaxies from the early universe. If a galaxy were roughly the size of a college campus, using a quasar to investigate part of it would be like using a laser pointer to light up a region. Using a background galaxy's light provides as much as a 100-million-fold increase in the area probed, Cooke said. "That's immense," Cooke said. "It's a new era in studying these objects." The larger light source not only allows a more in-depth probe of the enormous clouds; it also can help astronomers understand just how large a cloud is. Furthermore, galaxies are far more common than quasars. If a DLA is larger than the light from the background galaxy, astronomers also can use other galaxies to probe the cloud. The astronomers successfully used small telescopes to study their sample, but Cooke called the newfound technique "timely" due to the rise in larger telescopes, which could make the method even more effective. Instruments such as the Thirty Meter Telescope in Hawaii, slated to go online within the next decade, could help to map the clouds of gas that evolve into galaxies like our own. "It's now the era of the new 30-meter [98 feet] telescopes that will be online in just a few years," Cooke said. "With these telescopes, you can do this routinely. You can look at hundreds of thousands of these things, and study these galaxies in great numbers." The prolific population of early galaxies should allow astronomers to make a three-dimensional map of how gas is distributed across the universe and how the galaxies evolved. "It's a very powerful technique, and one that we're quite excited about," Cooke said. The research was detailed in The Astrophysical Journal Letters in October. Follow Nola Taylor Redd on Twitter @NolaTRedd or Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com. Copyright 2016 SPACE.com, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Germany cannot take in all the asylum seekers who want to begin a new life there and it is not unethical of Berlin to limit the influx, President Joachim Gauck said on Wednesday, pressing other European countries to share the burden. Germany has borne the brunt of Europe's biggest refugee crisis since World War Two, with more than one million asylum seekers arriving in the country last year, most fleeing war and poverty in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. Many German local authorities say they are struggling to cope with the influx and pressure is mounting on Chancellor Angela Merkel to reverse her open-door policy and even close the country's borders to new arrivals. Gauck, a former Christian pastor in communist East Germany, did not advocate such drastic action but said a policy of limiting the inflow of refugees could be morally and politically necessary to allow the state to cope. "Restrictions are not per se unethical," he told the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "Restrictions help to support acceptance. But without acceptance a society is not open and receptive." As president Gauck wields little real power but his words carry moral weight in Germany and beyond. Merkel's insistence that Germany will cope with the influx of 1.1 million migrants last year and more this year has angered some local authorities struggling to house people. Merkel has vowed to "measurably reduce" arrivals this year, but has refused to introduce a cap, saying it would be impossible to enforce without closing German borders. Instead, she has tried to convince other European countries to take in quotas of refugees, pushed for reception centers to be built on Europe's external borders and has led an EU campaign to convince Turkey, a major transit country, to prevent refugees from entering the bloc. But progress has been slow. Gauck recognized the concerns of eastern European countries about their sovereignty and identity in the face of the influx of refugees, many of whom are Muslim, but said he did not believe a revival of nationalism could provide an answer. "Do we really want the great historical work that has brought Europe peace and prosperity to break down over the refugee issue?" he asked. "Nobody, really nobody can want that." (Writing by Paul Carrel; Editing by Michael Nienaber and Gareth Jones) Skopje (AFP) - Macedonia has closed its border with Greece to migrants, police in Skopje said Wednesday, blocking the path of hundreds trying to reach northern Europe. "The border is closed," a senior Macedonian police official told AFP, while a police spokesman in northern Greece said it had been closed since Tuesday evening, leaving about 600 migrants stranded at the frontier. There were contradictory reasons for the move, which the Macedonian official said was "temporary," along the so-called Balkans route that migrants follow in a bid to reach European Union territory. The Skopje police official said the move stemmed from problems with Slovenian trains that had disrupted the flow of migrants, but the Slovenian rail company Slovenske Zeleznice (SZ) insisted they were running as normal. "Macedonia temporarily closed the border upon the request received from Slovenia. The reason is a defect on the railroad (in Slovenia) and migrants trying to enter Macedonia could not continue their journey," the official said. However, while the SZ website reported Wednesday that technical problems had disrupted traffic at the crossing with Croatia and trains were being replaced temporarily with buses, an SZ spokesman told Slovenian news agency STA that migrants "have been travelling undisturbed so far". Both Serbia and Croatia meanwhile announced that they would only allow migrants to pass through if they were specifically seeking asylum in Austria or Germany. The moves come after Austria last week signalled that it would follow neighbouring Germany's lead and begin turning back any new arrivals seeking to claim asylum in Scandinavia after Sweden and Denmark tightened their borders. The Serbian minister for migrant issues, Aleksandar Vulin, said in a statement that from Wednesday, migrants "will not be able to continue with their journey unless they express intention to seek asylum on the territory of Austria and Germany". Story continues Croatian Interior Minister Ranko Ostojic said his country was following suit, telling HINA news agency that all migrants will be asked whether they intended to seek asylum in Germany or Austria before being allowed to pass through. In the Presevo reception camp in southern Serbia, an AFP photographer said the temperature dropped to minus 15 degrees Celsius on Wednesday morning. He said fewer migrants were at the camp than on previous days -- apparently due to the hold-up at the Greece-Macedonia border. Leading children's charities had warned Tuesday that young refugees were at serious risk from the bitterly cold Balkan weather, as figures showed 31,000 migrants had arrived in Greece already this year. UNICEF, the UN Children's Fund, released a warning that children arriving in southeast Europe were "physically exhausted, scared, distressed and often in need of medical assistance". Mirjana Milenkovski, a spokeswoman for the UNHCR in Serbia, said Wednesday that they had seen an increasing number of people with flu or respiratory infections, but the migrants and refugees were being provided with better clothing, medical care and other assistance where needed. Cut from the same cloth as NPRs acclaimed Serial podcast, Netflixs Making a Murderer is a true-crime documentary that prompts its audience to legitimately question whether or not the justice system ended up sending an innocent man to prison. But what separates Making a Murderer from similar programs is that the shows focus, Steven Avery, had already been wrongly convicted and sent off to prison. Back in 1985, Avery was sent to prison for a rape that he didnt commit, only to be released 18 years later thanks to conclusive DNA evidence pointing to another culprit. What makes Averys 1985 conviction so infuriating is that the local police handling the investigation all but railroaded Avery, actively ignoring strong evidence which may have pointed to another suspect from the get-go. Shockingly, it wasnt until 2003 that Avery was finally exonerated and released. DONT MISS: Google is rolling out a smart new Android feature that iPhone users will never get Flash forward to 2005 and Avery is once again caught up in the justice system, this time for murder. Theres no question that the evidence pointing to Averys guilt in this case is compelling. At the same time, its also hard to ignore the incredibly unscrupulous behavior of law enforcement officials, attorneys, and investigators who were involved in sending Avery and his 16-year old nephew Brendan Dassey to prison for first degree murder. If you thought Serial lent itself to a did he or didnt he? debate, Making a Murderer is Serial on steroids. As a quick example, Averys DNA was found on the hood of the victims car. Sounds incriminating, right? That is, of course, until we learn that the DNA technician who inspected the car didnt change his gloves after conducting an examination of Averys trailer, thereby raising the possibility that Averys DNA was accidentally transferred over to the car. Perhaps the most appropriate summation of the show comes from former Avery attorney Dean Strang who, while appearing on CBS This Morning last week, said that while he isnt entirely convinced of Averys innocence, hes not entirely convinced of Averys guilt either. Story continues This haziness and reasonable doubt surrounding Averys guilt is precisely what makes Making a Murderer such a riveting and addictive program. Seemingly every single piece of evidence is counterbalanced by other considerations. As another prime example, the murder victims car keys were found in Averys trailer. Again, this sounds incredibly incriminating. But at the same time, its important to mention that the keys were only found after the seventh search of Averys trailer (which is bizarre and questionable in and of itself). Further, the officer who happened to conveniently discover the incriminating key just so happened to play a role in Averys prolonged prison stay for rape and shouldnt have even been involved in the murder investigation in the first place. Making a Murderer has understandably sparked a vigorous debate about Averys alleged guilt and the fairness of the justice system as a whole. While some look at the program as concrete proof that Avery was set up and the victim of an elaborate frame-job, others contend that the filmmakers behind Making a Murderer only presented one side of the story. Those who stake their flag in this particular camp contend that the documentary was told exclusively from the perspective of Steve Avery and that it was purposefully edited to make Avery appear more like a victim than a cold-blooded killer. Using this as a jumping off point, Kathryn Schultz of The New Yorker writes that the show seems less like investigative journalism than like highbrow vigilante justice. Schultz writes: Making a Murderer raises serious and credible allegations of police and prosecutorial misconduct in the trials of Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey. It also implies that that misconduct was malicious. That could be true; vindictive prosecutions have happened in our justice system before and they will happen again. But the vast majority of misconduct by law enforcement is motivated not by spite but by the belief that the end justifies the meansthat it is fine to play fast and loose with the facts if doing so will put a dangerous criminal behind bars. That same reasoning, with the opposite aims, seems to govern Making a Murderer. [Filmmakers] Ricciardi and Demos instead stack the deck to support their case for Avery, and, as a result, wind up mirroring the entity that they are trying to discredit. There are a few things to consider here. One, Making a Murderer isnt a piece of journalism. Its a documentary. It has a perspective, and while perhaps one-sided at times, the filmmakers note that they unsuccessfully tried to interview those involved in the prosecution of Avery. Second, the documentary is a little more than 10 hours long, which is to say that condensing down a trial that went on for weeks into just a few episodes will of course result in footage being left on the cutting room floor. Third, while theres no doubt that some of the states evidence against Avery was left out, so too were important parts of Averys defense. All that aside, I think Schultzs position takes on a holier-than-though approach, thereby making it all too easy to nitpick at things she thinks the filmmakers should have tried to accomplish. The petition points to another weakness of Making a Murderer: it is far more concerned with vindicating wronged individuals than with fixing the system that wronged them. The series presents Averys case as a one-offa preposterous crusade by a grudge-bearing county sheriffs department to discredit and imprison a nemesis. (Hence the ad-hominem attacks the show has inspired.) But you dont need to have filed a thirty-six-million-dollar suit against law enforcement to be detained, denied basic rights, and have evidence planted on your person or property. Among other things, simply being black can suffice. While Averys story is dramatic, every component of it is sadly common. Seventy-two per cent of wrongful convictions involve a mistaken eyewitness. Twenty-seven per cent involve false confessions. Nearly half involve scientific fraud or junk science. More than a third involve suppression of evidence by police. All valid points, but the documentary was uniquely concerned with the plight of Steven Avery. Guilty or innocent, looking at the justice system through a more expansive lens was never the intention of the documentary. If anything, the impressive work the filmmakers did in putting Making a Murder together can, in the future, serve as a useful resource and foundation for other filmmakers who decide to approach the issue as Schultz would have preferred. Indeed, almost every one of the topics Schultz brings up the reliability of eye witnesses, videotaped interrogations, forensic testing issues, ethically challenged attorneys could easily be the subject of its own feature-length documentary. For what its worth, the creators of Making a Murderer remain steadfast in their belief that they adequately represented all sides in the documentary. In an interview with the National Post, creators Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos explain: Rather, our goal was always to reach as wide an audience as possible and to start a dialogue, Demos explains during a recent phone interview. Obviously theres a very loud debate about guilt and innocence, but that was not really our driving question in making this. We were using Stevens story as a window into the system; as a way to really pull back the curtain on the American criminal justice system. Ricciardi firmly believes Making A Murderer to be an unbiased account of what transpired in the Avery case. We included as many points of view as were available to us, including Mike Halbach. Including Ken Kratzs and the states. These were people that decided for themselves not to sit down with us and give a sit down interview but we used our original and acquired footage to tell their point of view as accurately and fairly as we could. We think multiple points of view are represented in the series. Schultz, however, is clearly not convinced, and concludes with the following statement. Toward the end of the series, Dean Strang, Steven Averys defense lawyer, notes that most of the problems in the criminal-justice system stem from unwarranted certitudewhat he calls a tragic lack of humility of everyone who participates. Ultimately, Making a Murderer shares that flaw; it does not challenge our yearning for certainty or do the difficult work of helping to foster humility. Instead, it swaps one absolute for anotherand, in doing so, comes to resemble the system it seeks to correct. Im not quite sure that Schultzs sweeping declarations here pass muster. In fact, Id venture to say that the series is incredibly captivating precisely because it does not offer up any absolutes. The debate surrounding Avery and Dasseys alleged innocence is vigorous and heated. In other words, its not as if 90+% of viewers are so quick to assume that both Avery and Dassey are innocent. On the contrary, many viewers come away from the documentary exceedingly confident that the right people went to prison. This is hardly the mark of an overtly one-sided production. If anything, the show is extremely popular not because it deals with absolutes, but because it engenders conflicting and passionate viewpoints on any number of important issues. The proclamation that the documentary is more akin to highbrow vigilante justice than to investigative journalism makes for a sexy soundbite, but Im not so sure that it really encapsulates what Making a Murderer truly achieves. Make sure to hit the source link for Schultzs full critique on the show. I may not agree with the entirety of her position, but she nonetheless raises a number of thought-provoking and insightful points. At the very least, its productive and reassuring to see people at the very least talking about some of the problems that currently plague the criminal justice system and individuals who suffer immensely as a result. Related stories Netflix is about to get more expensive again Netflix now has more than 75 million subscribers across 190 countries Netflix's CEO predicts genetically modified humans will fight AI robots in battle for Earth More from BGR: Galaxy S7 specs leak on popular benchmarking site This article was originally published on BGR.com San Francisco (AFP) - Microsoft said Tuesday it will put a billion dollars' worth of cloud computing power in the hands of non-profit groups and university researchers free of charge. A philanthropic arm of the US software colossus will make the donation during the coming three years to 70,000 non-profit groups and researchers, chief executive Satya Nadella said while attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Cloud computing lets people use the Internet to tap into processing or data storage capacity at huge data centers. "Among the questions being asked in Davos are these: If cloud computing is one of the most important transformations of our time, how do we ensure that its benefits are universally accessible?" Nadella said in an online post. "What if only wealthy societies have access to the data, intelligence, analytics and insights that come from the power of mobile and cloud computing?" The philanthropic move comes as Microsoft continues adapting to a trend of people economically renting software as services in the Internet cloud instead of buying and installing programs on their machines. "Last fall, world leaders at the United Nations adopted 17 sustainable development goals to tackle some of the toughest global problems by 2030, including poverty, hunger, health and education," Nadella said. "A careful read of those goals reveals the central role that data and cloud computing must play for analysis and action." Microsoft chief legal counsel Brad Smith said the massive computing power available in the cloud can help researchers mine insights and secrets from data. By Abu Arqam Naqash MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) - The Pakistan-based chief of a militant alliance fighting for an end to Indian rule in divided Kashmir openly condemned on Wednesday a crackdown by the Pakistan government against another group India blames for an attack on an air base. Syed Salahuddin, the chairman of the United Jihad Council (UJC), an alliance of pro-Pakistan militant groups based in the Pakistani-administered part of the divided Kashmir region, had claimed responsibility for the assault in Pathankot on Jan. 2. The claim of responsibility was met with a sceptical response among India's security establishment, which blames another group called Jaish-e-Mohammed. Last week, Pakistan arrested the head of Jaish-e-Mohammed as well as several other leaders of the group and shut down offices and seminaries linked to the outfit. "We are at a loss to understand whether they (the Pakistan government) are concerned about the interests of the country that feeds them or that of its enemy?" Salahuddin told a news conference, referring to the government's crackdown. "Pakistan is not only an advocate but also a party to the longstanding Kashmir dispute and therefore the Pakistani people, government and media should play the role of a patron rather than of an adversary." Salahuddin's public comments could cause further tensions between the two nuclear armed rivals, with New Delhi accusing Islamabad of tolerating groups openly hostile to India. He spoke at the Press Club in Muzzafarabad, capital of Pakistani-administered part of Kashmir. Police outside the club made no move to arrest him. Following the Jan. 2 attack on the Indian air base, the United Jihad Council had warned that their attacks "can engulf all of India" if the issue of Kashmir's divided rule is not resolved. Since the attack in Pathankot, Pakistan has said it is clamping down on Jaish-e-Mohammed, which India has long accused Pakistani authorities of tolerating, while it investigates Indian assertions that the attack was the work of the militants based in Pakistan. India has demanded that Pakistan take action against the group and last week announced that the two countries would reschedule talks between their foreign ministers while the investigation into the air base attack was carried out. Jaish-e-Mohammed militants are blamed for a 2001 attack on India's parliament that nearly led to a war between the nuclear-armed rivals. (Writing by Mehreen Zahra-Malik Editing by Jeremy Gaunt) By Phil Stewart and John Irish PARIS (Reuters) - Defense chiefs from the United States, France, Britain and four other countries pledged on Wednesday to intensify their fight against Islamic State, looking to capitalize on recent battlefield gains against the militants. The jihadist group lost control of the western Iraqi city of Ramadi last month, in a sorely needed victory for U.S.-backed Iraqi forces. But critics, including some in the U.S. Congress, say the U.S. strategy is still far too weak and lacks sufficient military support from Sunni Arab allies. Sunni Arab nations have largely dropped out of the air campaign against Islamic State since last year joining a Saudi-led coalition fighting Houthi rebels in Yemen. "We agreed that we all must do more," U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter told a news conference after talks in Paris among the "core" military coalition members, which also included Germany, Italy, Australia and the Netherlands. A U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States was looking for additional contributions of special operations forces from allies. The official also signaled a willingness among core contributors to consider providing additional police and military trainers as needed. A joint statement by the ministers re-committed their governments to work with the U.S.-led coalition "to accelerate and intensify the campaign." The Paris setting for the talks itself sent a message, coming just over two months after the city was struck by deadly shooting and bombing attacks claimed by Islamic State. French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Islamic State was in retreat. "Because we have been able to hit its resources, it's now time to increase our collective effort," he said. British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said the goal was now to "tighten the noose around the head of the snake in Syria in Raqqa." COALITION 'NOT WINNING YET' But U.S. Senator John McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee - along with other critics of U.S. President Barack Obama's approach to the war effort - says Islamic State still poses a potent threat. "ISIL has lost some territory on the margin, but has consolidated power in its core territories in both Iraq and Syria," McCain said at a Wednesday hearing on U.S. war strategy, using another acronym for Islamic State. "Meanwhile, ISIL continues to metastasize across the region in places like Afghanistan, Libya, Lebanon, Yemen, and Egypt. Its attacks are now global, as we saw in Paris." Carter has sought to confront Islamic State both by wiping out its strongholds in Iraq and Syria and addressing its spread beyond its self-declared caliphate there. But U.S. officials have declined to set a timeline for what could be a long-term campaign that will also require political reconciliation to succeed. Carter announced a meeting next month of defense ministers from all 26 military members of the anti-Islamic State coalition, as well as Iraq, in what he described as the first face-to-face meeting of its kind. "Every nation must come prepared to discuss further contributions to the fight," he said. "And I will not hesitate to engage and challenge current and prospective members of the coalition as we go forward." The U.S. defense official acknowledged that the need for a greater Arab role was a focus of discussions and held out hope that Saudi Arabia would attend next month's talks in Brussels. (Additional reporting by Marine Pennetier, editing by Larry King and John Stonestreet) Steve Harvey sat down with Miss Colombia, Ariadna Gutierrez, for the first time since the comedian mistakenly crowned her Miss Universe before revealing that he made a mistake and that Miss Philippines, Pia Wurtzbach, was the winner. The talk-show host devoted two episodes of his eponymous daytime program to revealing the truth about what happened on the pageant, telling his side of the viral gaffe, and talking with Wurtzbach and Gutierrez about how they felt during and after his mistake. Harvey said he especially wanted to check in with Gutierrez, whom he hadn't spoken to since the pageant. "I want to make sure she's OK," Harvey told the audience before his interview with Gutierrez, which aired on Tuesday. "I hated what happened for her. I do need this, though. I really need to see her. I really, really do. I need her to hear it from me. I hope she's forgiving. If she's not, I'll stay in the mist a little while longer. I'm tired of it, really." When Gutierrez walked out onstage, the two shared a long hug before an emotional Harvey apologized for what happened. "You're the one person that I really wanted to talk to," he said. "Because of a mistake I made, I cast you into a spotlight of a place that I never intended to that I would not want to happen to anybody. I just want to say how sorry I am. I'm beyond sorry for what happened that night and that it was you." Read More: Miss Universe Talks Steve Harvey Mix-Up: "People Make Mistakes" Gutierrez said that after the incident, it took her some time to accept that the viral moment actually occurred, adding that she took some time away, with her family. "After all that happened, the only thing I wanted to do was, like, being with my family and, like, take a rest from everything that I went through," she said. "It took time because I couldn't stop thinking, like, 'Oh my God, it really happened.' It was like a nightmare. I was watching, like, the videos and I couldn't believe that happened to me. I needed time to be with my family to calm down and think about what I'm going to say now, what I'm going to do now. I've already moved on, but this is our destiny. That's why we're here." Story continues Gutierrez also indicated to Harvey that rumors of her filing a lawsuit over the incident aren't true. Read More: Miss Colombia Talks "Humiliating" Miss Universe Mix-Up, Why She Agrees With Trump "I'm not going to take your mansions or your car," she said. "I never thought of suing you. That's not me. That's not who I am. But a lot of lawyers wanted me to sue." Indeed, Gutierrez indicated she was over it, telling Harvey, "I really forgive you." And she apologized on behalf of Colombians who criticized Harvey. Read More: Steve Harvey Announces Wrong Winner Of Miss Universe: "I Feel Terrible" "I don't feel proud about that, because Colombians are not like that, you know," she said. "But we have to understand that people got angry because they felt like they got robbed people felt bad in Colombia and in the Latin community. They felt humiliated, and it was so harsh to watch the show and that moment when I was waving my little flag. I don't know how to say it now, but it was like really, really, really harsh to watch it. I have to apologize for them because we're not like that." Harvey and Gutierrez also shared their favorite memes of the mistake, with Gutierrez saying her favorite was the Oprah meme reading, "You're Miss Universe, and you're Miss Universe! Everyone is Miss Universe!" Read More: Miss Universe Exec: Steve Harvey "Absolutely" Welcome to Host in 2016 "If I'd have gave everybody a car, they'd have forgave me right away," Harvey said. "But I ain't got Oprah money, so ...." By Alexia Shurmur LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - An Oregon woman facing a murder charge for killing a tourist when she drove onto a sidewalk and caused chaos on the Las Vegas Strip was charged on Wednesday with dozens more counts, including attempted murder, for harming other pedestrians, prosecutors said. Lakeisha Holloway, 24, has been charged with 71 counts, most of them for attempted murder and battery with a deadly weapon for striking more than 30 people with her sedan on Dec. 20, according to the charging document. Holloway was originally charged with murder in the death of an Arizona woman, as well as child abuse or neglect for having her 3-year-old daughter in the back seat and failure to stop after a collision. Prosecutors said they dropped the failure-to-stop charge, but that the other charges remained and Holloway was charged with another count of child abuse for striking an 11-year-old boy with her car. Holloway, who police say was living in her car with her daughter for a week before the incident, already faced the possibility of life in prison if convicted of murder. "These additional charges reflect the totality of the lives impacted by the defendant's actions," Clark County District Attorney Steven Wolfson said in a statement. The deadly scene on the Las Vegas Strip, an international tourist destination, unfolded as Holloway repeatedly drove her Oldsmobile onto the sidewalk, ramming pedestrians, police said. Holloway faces the possibility of more than 1,000 years behind bars if convicted and given consecutive prison terms for each offense, Wolfson said. Holloway showed little emotion as she appeared, in handcuffs, in a Las Vegas court on Wednesday. After her arrest she was held in a what is known as a medically restricted jail unit for inmates on suicide watch or requiring increased supervision. Her public defender, Joseph Abood, said on Wednesday she had been moved to the jail's general population. "She's doing somewhat better; she's still in a very difficult state of mind," he said. Story continues Prosecutors have not said what may have motivated Holloway to drive onto the sidewalk. Several victims were badly injured. Nearly a month later, one man remained hospitalized in serious condition at University Medical Center of Southern Nevada, a facility spokeswoman said. Holloway has been held without bail since she was arrested after parking her car and telling a hotel worker to call 911. She is due in court again on Feb. 4. (Reporting by Alexia Shurmur, writing by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Alan Crosby, Frances Kerry and Dan Grebler) Murphy Oil's 4Q15 Revenues and Production Are Expected to Fall (Continued from Prior Part) Murphy Oils production guidance For 4Q15, Murphy Oil (MUR) expects worldwide total production of ~18.3 million boe (barrels of oil equivalent) or 199,000 boe per day, which is ~4.1% lower compared to 3Q15. In its 3Q15 earnings call, MUR increased its full-year 2015 production guidance to a range of 205,000209,000 boe per day, which is still lower by ~8% when compared to 2014. MUR is expecting 2015 production to come mainly from the Eagle Ford Shale, USA, and Sarawak, offshore Malaysia. Within the Eagle Ford Shale, MUR is expected to bring 20 more wells online in 4Q15, bringing the total number of producing wells to 136 for 2015. EOG Resources (EOG) is also active in the Eagle Ford Shale and is expecting strong growth from the area. Pioneer Natural Resources (PXD) and Cimarex Energy (XEC) are also active in unconventional resource space across the United States. The SPDR S&P Oil and Gas Exploration & Production ETF (XOP) generally invests at least 80% of its total assets in oil and gas exploration companies. MURs costs reduction focus In MURs 3Q15 earnings call, the companys executive vice president and chief financial officer John Eckart said that revenues continue to be under presser due to significantly lower energy prices, and the company is focusing on a reduction in costs. Eckart stated, The company continues to address its cost structure by aggressively reducing both operating and administrative costs. By year-end 2015, we anticipate a 23% reduction in staffing levels compared to a year earlier. For 2015, MURs management is anticipating an ~18% year-over-year reduction in general and administrative costs and a ~13% YoY reduction in lease operating expenses to $9.65 per boe. MUR on the lookout for acquisition MURs production growth stagnated in recent quarters due to maturing Malaysian assets. Also, MUR is trying to keep exploration limited due to lower crude oil prices. Due to these growth concerns, MUR is actively looking for potential oil and gas asset acquisitions. Story continues Continue to Next Part Browse this series on Market Realist: By Hnin Yadana Zaw YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar has arrested a former monk and leader of a 2007 uprising on grounds of illegally crossing the border, media said on Wednesday, spotlighting the issue of political prisoners that faces Aung San Suu Kyi's incoming government. Nyi Nyi Lwin, better known as Gambira, was freed from prison during a 2012 general amnesty, a year after Myanmar's junta handed power to a semi-civilian government, following 49 years of direct rule of the southeast Asian nation. Since his release, Gambira has divided his time between Myanmar and neighboring Thailand, but Myanmar authorities have re-arrested him several times, in what his family has described as continued harassment for his criticism of the government. The widely-read Irrawaddy news magazine reported that Gambira was detained again on Tuesday by immigration officers in Mandalay, the country's second largest city, for illegally crossing over from Thailand. He was traveling with his wife, Marie Siochana, to obtain a new passport and faces his first hearing on Wednesday, the magazine added. "I'm worried about him because he can't get bail," the magazine quoted Siochana as saying. "He is mentally ill and needs to take medicine regularly. He needs to look after his health, and I wonder why they still want to arrest him." Reuters could not immediately reach Siochana or government officials for comment. In 2007, Gambira emerged as a leading figure in a mass protest over living conditions and the oppressive rule of then-dictator Than Shwe that was dubbed the Saffron Revolution. The government cracked down harshly in response, opening fire on protesters and sweeping up those who took part. Gambira's prison term of 63 years for his role in the protest turned him into one of Myanmar's most prominent political prisoners. Members of his family were also arrested. While in detention, Gambira was repeatedly beaten and tortured, he and rights groups, such as Amnesty International, have said. Gambira's arrest came just two days after a visit by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who urged Myanmar to free all the rest of its political prisoners. "Remaining political prisoners must be released and human rights protected for all, no matter what their ethnicity or religion," Blinken said. A new parliament dominated by Nobel peace laureate Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy will sit for the first time on Feb. 1, after the party won the November election. Rights groups have urged the former political prisoner to prioritize the issue of prisoner releases when the new government is formed. (Editing by Timothy Mclaughlin and Clarence Fernandez) By Nate Raymond NEW YORK (Reuters) - The head of a New York-based foundation pleaded guilty on Wednesday to participating in a scheme to bribe a former U.N. General Assembly president to advance various business interests, becoming the second defendant to admit wrongdoing in the case. Sheri Yan, who was Global Sustainability Foundation's chief executive, pleaded guilty in federal court in Manhattan to one count of bribery in connection with illicit payments made to John Ashe, the former General Assembly president. Choking back tears, Yan admitted that beginning in 2012, she agreed with others to pay money to Ashe, who was also the U.N. ambassador from Antigua and Barbuda, to influence officials in Antigua and the United Nations to support business interests. "While I was doing these things, I knew that they were wrong," Yan said through a Mandarin interpreter. The plea by Yan, 60, a U.S. citizen, comes less than a week after the former finance director at the foundation, Heidi Hong Piao, pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with authorities in their continuing investigation. Both women were arrested in October by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as prosecutors unveiled charges over a multi-year scheme to pay more than $1.3 million in bribes to Ashe. Unlike Piao, though, Yan's plea came without any agreement to cooperate with authorities. Under a plea agreement, Yan, who also is known as Shiwei Yan, agreed not to appeal any sentence of 7-1/4 years in prison. Her sentencing is set for April 29. Prosecutors allege that Ashe, the U.N. General Assembly president from 2013 to 2014, accepted $1.3 million of bribes from Chinese businessmen to support their interests within the United Nations and Antigua. Those bribes included over $800,000 from three businessmen that were arranged through Yan and Piao, prosecutors said. In court, Yan said she and others paid Ashe to persuade officials in Antigua to enter into contracts with foreign companies, and to use his U.N. position help her and others promote business ventures from which we intended to profit. Story continues Prosecutors have also charged Ng Lap Seng, a billionaire developer from the Chinese territory of Macau who allegedly paid $500,000 in bribes to Ashe through intermediaries. Those intermediaries included Francis Lorenzo, a now-suspended deputy U.N. ambassador from the Dominican Republic, and Jeff Yin, Ng's assistant, prosecutors said. Ashe, Lorenzo, Ng and Yin have pleaded not guilty. Ashe, 61, has only been charged with tax fraud, as prosecutors have said diplomatic immunity may preclude any bribery charges. But prosecutors have said they were examining the issue and likely would bring further charges. A lawyer for Ashe did not immediately respond to a request for comment. (Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Alistair Bell) This story first appeared in the Jan. 29 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe. Veterans of recent TV press tours know to expect an industry kerfuffle or two for restless journalists to report and then forget about weeks later. But the most recent TCA fistfight NBC research guru Alan Wurtzel's surprise reveal Jan. 13 of what he touted as viewership data for some Netflix shows isn't going away. The data, compiled by Palo Alto, Calif.-based tech startup Symphony Advanced Media, reported that Netflix "hits" like Master of None and Jessica Jones were on par with programs perceived as less-than-hits on NBC. Read More: Netflix's Ted Sarandos Reacts to NBC Outing His Ratings: "Remarkably Inaccurate Data" It was an attempt to get under the skin of Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos, who for years has kept viewership numbers private. But it also illustrated in stark terms the key tension in the television business in 2016: How should success be measured, and whose data should the industry trust? "It's important to know that TV actually is growing very well, and streaming originals are supplementing it," says Symphony CEO Charlie Buchwalter. The company tracked media consumption for NBC with Shazam-like audio-recognition technology, parsing through data from 15,000 smartphone users who have its app. But critics quickly doubted the data could be trusted, suggesting the move backfired on NBC. "Given what is remarkably inaccurate data, I hope they didn't spend any money on it," Sarandos quipped, adding, "Why would NBC use their lunch slot to talk about our ratings? Maybe because it's more fun than talking about NBC ratings." Read More: NBC Exec Outs Netflix Ratings for 'Jessica Jones,' 'Master of None,' More Netflix long has maintained it won't reveal viewer numbers because it isn't beholden to advertisers (except when it benefits Netflix, like when Sarandos said that 3 million people had watched Beasts of No Nation on the service after the movie tanked in theaters). Sarandos tells THR that he was blindsided by NBC, whose studio has received millions of dollars in fees for such shows as 30 Rock. "We have a great relationship with NBC," he says. "We don't think of them as competitors at all." Story continues NBC and other networks likely would disagree, given how their Nielsen ratings have declined as Netflix has grown to 43 million U.S. subscribers. But Sarandos also received support from FX Networks CEO John Landgraf, who, despite being a vocal critic of Netflix's secrecy, said he was suspicious of the NBC numbers. And among talent, reactions are mixed. Master of None exec producer Mike Schur says he stopped caring about viewership data while working on NBC's low-rated Parks and Recreation. But Netflix's Orange Is the New Black creator Jenji Kohan admits to reading "a lot of secret reports" about ratings, though she acknowledges, "It's a waste of time to speculate." Read More: FX Chief on 'Louie's' Future, Netflix's Ratings and Streamers' Lack of Profits By Anya George Tharakan (Reuters) - Rupert Murdoch's News Corp said rumors about the company's interest in buying microblogging site Twitter Inc or building a stake in it were untrue. Twitter's shares, which rose as much as 14 percent on Wednesday, pared some gains and closed up 4.1 percent at $17.38. The stock rose from a record low after unconfirmed chatter about News Corp's interest in Twitter circulated on Wednesday. The rumors intensified after a CNBC segment, tech website Re/code said. The social media site was evaluated as a takeover target because of the company's shrinking stock price, Re/code said. (http://on.recode.net/1QeVuHw) In the few months since co-founder Jack Dorsey returned as the chief executive, Twitter has been trying to make the site more engaging. The company said in December it was testing a feature to show ads to people who read tweets without logging in as it tries to monetize non-active users. "Twitter inside a larger organization definitely makes theoretical sense, whether its another internet company or a media company," Monness, Crespi, Hardt, & Co Inc analyst James Cakmak said. A News Corp spokesman said there was no truth to the rumors. Twitter already has several high-profile investors. Former Microsoft Corp CEO Steve Ballmer reported a 4 percent stake in October, making him the third-biggest shareholder after Twitter co-founder Evan Williams and Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. Twitter has been the subject of takeover rumors in the past, including a fake report attributed to Bloomberg that claimed the company had received an offer to be acquired for $31 billion. (http://reut.rs/1Qn5AIj) Twitter had received bids from Alphabet Inc's Google and Facebook Inc, according to reports. Twitter trades at 28.12 times forward earnings, below its peer median of 36.06. Facebook has a PE of 33.08, while LinkedIn Corp's is 52.64, according to Thomson Reuters data. "Even though News Corp denied the rumors, I do think this could help investors potentially see some valuations for the stock," Cakmak added. Up to Tuesday's close, the stock had fallen nearly 41 percent since Dorsey was named permanent CEO in October. (Reporting by Anya George Tharakan in Bengaluru and Jessica Toonkel in New York; Editing by Don Sebastian and Sriraj Kalluvila) ABUJA (Reuters) - Telecom firms operating in Nigeria should not put their desire to make profits above security concerns, President Muhammadu Buhari said on Tuesday. Nigeria has been pushing telecom companies to verify the identity of their subscribers amid fears that unregistered SIM cards were being used by criminal gangs in a country facing an insurgency by Islamic militant group Boko Haram. MTN , Africa's largest mobile operator, has been fined $3.9 billion in Nigeria - its biggest market by sales - for failing to disconnect users of unregistered SIM cards. The company, which makes about 37 percent of its revenue from Nigeria, is awaiting a ruling after launching a December court challenge over the fine, which equates to more than twice its annual average capital spending over the past five years. "President Muhammadu Buhari ... urged telecommunication companies operating in Nigeria not to place their desire for huge profits above the security needs of the country," said spokesman Garba Shehu. Buhari was speaking on Tuesday with members of the Nigerian community in Abu Dhabi, where he was attending an energy summit. Buhari said telecom companies "must adhere to the rules and guidelines" of Nigeria's industry regulator by carrying out "the registration of all mobile phone users without exception" to help security agents, added Shehu. The fine imposed on MTN by the Nigerian Communications Commission was reduced from $5.2 billion, which was based on a $1,000 penalty for each phone line. On Tuesday MTN said its Nigerian business is likely to report about $955 million in annual profit after tax. (Reporting by Felix Onuah; Writing by Alexis Akwagyiram; Editing by Susan Fenton) President Obama headed to Detroit on Wednesday to visit the North American International Auto Show and applaud the progress the auto industry has made since the global financial crisis, when major automakers teetered on the edge of bankruptcy. The Motor Citys students, who attend schools with leaking ceilings, black mold, broken toilets, dead rodents, huge classes, and a lack of academic resources, were probably feeling less celebratory. On Wednesday hundreds of educators working in Detroit Public Schools staged a mass sickout to protest the horrific conditions, which theyand the kidshave been forced to endure for years. The teachers protest of the dilapidated buildings and disenfranchisement of Detroits children resulted in the closure of 88 schools, roughly 90 percent of the campuses in the Motor City. As a result, nearly 45,000 students had to stay home. RELATED: Here's Why There's No Such Thing as Free Public Education Anymore The Detroit Federation of Teachers has asked members to help distribute leaflets outside the auto show on Wednesday. As the city celebrates this ultra-luxury automobile event, Detroits public schools are in a state of crisis, wrote the union on its website. Children are struggling in schools with hazardous environmental and safety issues. Educators have made significant sacrifices for the good of students, including taking pay cuts and reductions in health benefits. The union also hopes attendees will support a petition it launched on Friday. From serious health and safety hazards such as mold, asbestos, and mice infestations, to classrooms with no heat, these unacceptable conditions have been ignored. The floor of the gym at one school has buckled from water damage and is covered in black mold. In at least one school, classrooms even have bullet holes in the walls, reads the petition. It goes on to note that educators, custodians, counselors, and other staff members are expected to teach in overcrowded classrooms without textbooks or support. Students with health issues are suffering due to the lack of school nurses. Story continues The petition, which has garnered nearly 12,000 signatures, is addressed to Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and Detroits unelected emergency manager, Darnell Earley. Earley was previously the emergency manager in Flint, an hour north of Detroit. Earley was in charge in 2014 when the catastrophic decision was made to stop sourcing tap water from Lake Huron and switch to using corrosive water from the Flint River in order to save $500 million over two years. That decision has resulted in a federal state of emergency being declared in Flint due to the presence of lead in the water. RELATED: Outraged Girl Scouts Send Letters Demanding Action on Flint Water Crisis No child in Flint should have to drink lead in water and no child in Detroit should have to learn under such conditions, David Hecker, the president of the American Federation of Teachers-Michigan said last week after touring four schools with Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan toured a school. Duggan expressed dismay over seeing a dead mouse in a trap at one campus, and said some of the conditions he saw were deeply disturbing reported the Detroit News. The sickout is the second one staged by Detroit teachers in January and comes on the heels of a successful social media campaign about the problems in the schools. Over the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend the hashtag #SupportDPSTeachers trended on Twitter in the United States as educators in the Motor City posted dozens of shocking images of building code and safety violations at schools. However the problems plaguing the public schools are not new. In 2009, the first unelected emergency manager, Robert Bobb, was appointed to run the citys schools, which were burdened by a $259 budget deficit and declining enrollment. The shocking state of the citys public schools was subsequently put into the national spotlight in 2011, with Bobbs controversial decision to shutter half of the citys schools in order to cut the deficit. That same year, veteran journalist Dan Rather Reports aired A National Disgrace a two-hour special on the dismal state of education in Detroit. Rather had spent much of the previous two years filming students, parents, teachers, and other community members. The program put conditions in the schoolsincluding a warehouse of unused motorcycles when kids didnt have textbookson display. RELATED: The Recession Is Over, but Child Poverty Is Still Crippling America According to the Detroit Public Schools website, the budget deficit is $46.5 million, but the district is also facing $515 million in legal liabilities. In his State of the State address on Tuesday night, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder asked the state legislature to split the district in two, and warned that bankruptcy could be on the horizon. On Wednesday Detroit Public Schools spokesperson Michelle Zdrodowski told reporters that "The only way we will be able to address the bigger issues is through an investment by the Michigan Legislature in the students and families of DPS, reported the Detroit Free Press. Obtaining this support becomes more difficult with each sickout that happens," said Zdrodowski. While the wrangling over how to solve the woes in Detroit continues, the video below, which takes us inside a school in the city, serves as a heartbreaking reminder of the real victims of this crisis: innocent children. Related stories on TakePart: A Shockingly Low Number of High School Students Want to Be Teachers These Kids Will Be Hit the Hardest By Education Budget Cuts Finally, Someone in Power Is Fed Up With Education Budget Cuts Original article from TakePart Davos (Switzerland) (AFP) - Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Wednesday there could be no military solution to the devastating war in Syria and vowed to throw Tehran's weight behind a political solution. Appearing at a gathering of political and business leaders in Switzerland just days after Iran sealed a historic deal ending punishing sanctions by the West over its nuclear programme, Zarif said Iran was now determined to help end a conflict in Syria that has killed more than 250,000 people and left millions displaced. "There is no military solution to the (Syrian) crisis. We need a political solution. Everyone must understand that," he told the elite meeting in the snow-covered ski resort of Davos. Zarif said Iran believed a ceasefire in Syria was required before a national unity government could be set up and elections based on a new constitution held. "We are determined to assist in this process," he said. Iran wanted the region to make common cause against "our common threat -- extremism", he said. He said the Islamic State jihadists and the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra -- another extremist group which is fighting the rule of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Syria -- were "ravaging our entire region and ravaging the world". - 'Bizarre US decision' - But Zarif criticised a US decision on Sunday to reimpose some sanctions, this time over Iran's missile programme, calling the move "bizarre". "I find it rather bizarre that the United States expresses concern over the Iranian missile programme, which is defensive and does not violate any current international regulation," Zarif told an audience of bankers and top business figures. "We are entitled to our defence. We are spending a fraction of what our neighbours spend on defence, so what's all this fuss about? I can't understand." He said there were "constituencies" in the United States who "did everything to kill" the nuclear deal. Story continues "But let's let bygones be bygones. Let's start from now. There is no threat coming from Iran against any of its neighbours." The US Treasury on Sunday announced new sanctions on individuals and companies in connection with Iran's ballistic missile programme, with President Barack Obama charging that Tehran continued to engage in "destabilising activities". Yet Zarif argued that such concerns were misplaced because Iran spent less than a tenth of what Saudi Arabia spends on military hardware. Saudi Arabia and Iran are locked in an escalating row and on Tuesday Riyadh accused Tehran of having "a record of spreading sedition, unrest and chaos in the region". But Zarif urged the Saudis not to choose conflict. "I think our Saudi neighbours need to understand that confrontation is in the interests of no one," he said. Addressing the Saudis directly, Zarif said: "There is no reason to panic, my friends. "Iran is there to work with you, Iran does not want to exclude anybody from this region," he said. Zarif said he had been asked several times to break off diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia and had refused each time. "There is no need to engage in a confrontation. Iran has been provoked time and again." He vowed that those responsible for an arson attack on Saudi Arabia's embassy in Tehran on January 2 -- which led to Riyadh breaking off diplomatic ties -- would be prosecuted. Earlier Wednesday, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly condemned the attack for the first time, calling it "a very bad and wrong incident". (Reuters) - Manchester City striker Wilfried Bony has dismissed British media reports linking him with a return to former club Swansea City during the January transfer window, by saying that he is happy at the Etihad Stadium. Bony had earlier expressed his disappointment at losing his starting place to a returning Sergio Aguero after manager Manuel Pellegrini opted to start the Argentine in the 2-1 Premier League defeat by Arsenal on Dec. 21. "I'm happy at the club, all this speculation is not true. I have a contract so I'm happy and I think I'm at one of the top clubs in the United Kingdom," the 27-year-old told the BBC. Bony has played second fiddle to Aguero for much of his career at City, having made 27 Premier League appearances since he joined the club in January 2015, 16 of which were as a substitute. "I have no regrets about joining Man City. We play in the Champions League and we're one of the top clubs in the world. I'm happy here and I can just say I'm blessed," the Ivory Coast international said. City, who are third in the table after 22 games, just a point behind leaders Arsenal, travel to take on sixth-placed West Ham United on Saturday. (Reporting by Shravanth Vijayakumar in Bengaluru) 108 at Noma, the famed two-star Michelin restaurant's new pop-up venture, opens Wednesday, giving food lovers 13 weeks to try the restaurant's new specialty dishes. Open from January 20 until mid-April, the new restaurant is a result of a partnership between Noma's chef and co-owner Rene Redzepi and chef Kristian Baumann, who will oversee the restaurant while Redzepi and his team head to Australia. Like Noma, 108 at Noma will continue to celebrate Danish gastronomy, with the "108" taking its name from Strandgade, Christianshavn, where the new Noma restaurant will open next spring. The restaurant will be accepting walk-ins, but to reserve a table at the restaurant head to www.108.dk. They may pay among the world's highest taxes, endure long winters and watch the sunset before 4 p.m., but Danish women still remain the envy of many in the world. The Kingdom of Denmark is the best country for women, at least according to the more than 7,000 women who filled out surveys for the 2016 Best Countries rankings. The rankings, formed in partnership with brand strategy firm BAV Consulting and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, aim to gauge global perceptions of the world's biggest economies in terms of specific attributes associated with countries. The Best Countries for Women, including Sweden, Canada, the Netherlands and Australia, scored highest on a compilation of five country attributes: cares about human rights, gender equality, income equality, safe and progressive. Algeria and Pakistan -- two countries criticized by human rights groups for their treatment of women -- are perceived to be the worst countries for females. Denmark is consistently among the globe's happiest nations, according to the World Happiness Report. And one study found that retired Danish women are the most content in all of Europe. Many experts suggest Denmark does well in such studies because of its generous welfare state. Education and health care are virtually free in Denmark. And the country promotes gender equality by offering an earnings-related day care system and a parental leave policy that is among the most flexible in the European Union, according to the organization's website. Denmark is ranked fourth on Save the Children's 16th annual Mothers' Index, which assesses the well-being of mothers and children in 179 countries. The Best 5 Countries for Women No. 5: Australia In recent years, more women have taken leadership roles in Australian universities, workplaces, boardrooms and in government, according to the Australian Human Rights Commission. At the same time, Australian women have to work an extra 66 days a year to earn the same pay as their male colleagues. Australia ranked No. 24 out of 142 countries in the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2014. Story continues No. 4: Netherlands The Netherlands ranks No. 14 out of 142 countries in the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2014, meaning it has done a relatively good job of narrowing the gender gap between women and men across health, education, economy and politics. The country provides benefits to new mothers, including giving them access to a maternity nurse, with part or all of the cost covered by insurance. No. 3: Canada Canada ranks No. 19 out of 142 countries in the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2014. The country's government has made protecting women's rights part of both its domestic and foreign policy. But the experience of being a woman in Canada is far from uniform. Indigenous women, for example, face significantly higher murder rates than most Canadian women. No. 2: Sweden Swedes have the most progressive attitudes toward gender equality, according to a report released by YouGov, a United Kingdom-based market research firm. Both men and women in the Nordic country tend to see women as an oppressed group -- and leaders seem to have taken steps to address it. Sweden also fared well in the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2014, ranking No. 4 out of 142 countries. No. 1: Denmark Denmark promotes gender equality by offering an earnings-related day care system and a parental leave policy that is among the most flexible in the European Union, according to the organization's website. Denmark ranked No. 5 out of 142 countries in the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2014. The report looks at the relative gaps between women and men across health, education, economy and politics. Want to Know More? Click to see the full list of Best Countries for Women, or visit the U.S. News Best Countries homepage to find news and more rankings. The 2016 Best Countries report and rankings were formed in partnership with brand strategy firm BAV Consulting and The Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania. Devon Haynie is news editor, international for U.S. News. You can follow her on Twitter or email her at dhaynie@usnews.com. New York (AFP) - The trial began Wednesday of a rookie New York police officer accused of manslaughter in the death of an unarmed black man whose shooting fueled nationwide protests against US police tactics. Peter Liang, 28, faces up to 15 years if convicted of manslaughter in the second degree, criminally negligent homicide, assault in the second degree, reckless endangerment and two counts of official misconduct. Liang fatally shot Akai Gurley, 28, the father of a young daughter, in a dimly lit stairwell of a Brooklyn housing project on November 20, 2014. His death closely followed those of Eric Garner, a father of six in New York, and 18-year-old Michael Brown in Missouri, also at the hands of police. Brown's death sparked the first of angry and at times violent protests across America. Liang appeared in Kings County Supreme Court dressed in a suit, white shirt and gray tie. He made no remarks and sat silently next to his lawyers as jury selection for his trial began. It is rare for US police officers to face trial for actions carried out in the line of duty. The Asian-American officer was on the job just 18 months before the shooting. The trial is likely to last three to four weeks, Judge Danny Chun said. Jury selection is expected to continue Thursday and opening statements are scheduled next Monday. Liang and his partner were on a routine patrol of the Louis H. Pink Houses complex, the scene of two murders in one year, the night that Gurley was killed. Liang left the roof and walked down the stairs to the eighth floor. The lights were not working and at that moment Gurley and his girlfriend stepped into the stairwell, a floor below, when the elevator failed to appear. Liang opened fire and the bullet struck Gurley in the chest. - Missing minutes after killing - New York police immediately declared his death a "tragedy" and Commissioner Bill Bratton described Gurley as a "total innocent." Within hours Brooklyn district attorney Ken Thompson opened an investigation into Gurley's death, interviewing dozens of witnesses and inspecting the staircase multiple times. Story continues A grand jury's subsequent decision to indict Liang came in stark contrast to decisions by other grand juries in similar cases, particularly the death of Brown in Missouri and Garner in New York. Dozens of potential jurors spent Wednesday trying to be excused, citing reasons such as lack of fluency in English, a bad experience with the police or claiming to have read a lot about the case. Others said they had grown up surrounded by police officers and would be biased or unable to exercise fair judgment. "There was a lot of police misconduct recently, I don't think I can be fair," said one potential juror, who was excused. After Liang fired the bullet, he and partner Shaun Landau did not respond to radio contact for more nearly seven minutes, the New York Daily News reported. Kimberly Ballinger, the mother of Gurley's daughter, filed a wrongful death suit last May against the city, the two officers and the housing authority which runs the apartment building. A series of high-profile police killings in the US, usually of black men or youths, triggered a nationwide debate about police reform and penalties for officers who kill unarmed suspects. The US Bureau of Justice Statistics says that blacks accounted for 32 percent of all reported arrest-related deaths from 2003 to 2009, despite making up 13 percent of the population. Detroit (AFP) - President Barack Obama expressed anger Wednesday at a high-profile health scare in Flint, Michigan, where lead-tainted water is believed to have sickened residents. Wading into a debate that has seen local authorities accused of putting lives at risk by cutting corners and trying to save money, Obama said, "You can't short-change basic services that we provide to our people." "If I was a parent up there I would be beside myself that my kids' health would be at risk," said Obama during a stop in nearby Detroit. As part of cost-cutting, the city began drawing water from the Flint River in April 2014 rather than continuing to buy it from Detroit. Officials are accused of ignoring months of health warnings about the foul-smelling water as residents complained that it was making them sick. Obama declared a state of emergency in Michigan on Saturday, freeing up federal aid to help Flint, a city of 100,000 at the epicenter of the scare. On Tuesday he met Mayor Karen Weaver and "reiterated that his administration will continue to support state and local officials in their response," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan spoke by phone on Tuesday and pledged to deepen their cooperation in the fight against terrorism, the White House said in a statement. The two leaders also reiterated their shared goal of degrading and ultimately destroying Islamic State, the statement said. Obama condemned the recent string of attacks by the Kurdistan Workers Party against Turkish security forces and stressed the need for de-escalation, the White House said. (Reporting by Eric Beech; Editing by Eric Walsh) ANKARA/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday pledged continued cooperation in the fight against militants, including Islamic State and Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants, the White House and Turkish presidential sources said. During his phone call to Erdogan, Obama offered his condolences for last week's bombing in Istanbul, when 10 German tourists were killed in a suicide attack blamed on Islamic State, the White House and Turkish presidential sources said. Obama also condemned a recent string of attacks by the PKK against Turkish security forces, and he stressed the need for de-escalation, the White House said in a statement. The two leaders said the fight against terrorism would be among a number of topics on the agenda when U.S. Vice President Joe Biden visits Turkey on Saturday. NATO member Turkey, a member of the U.S.-led coalition battling Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, has increasingly become a target for the Sunni Muslim militants. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu blamed Islamic State for the bombing on Jan. 12 in Istanbul's historic heart. The suicide bomber is thought to have crossed recently from Syria. Islamic State is also believed to be behind other attacks last year in Turkey, including one in the capital Ankara in which more than 100 people were killed. Turkey's predominantly Kurdish southeast is currently engulfed in the worst violence since the 1990s after the collapse last July of a two-year-long ceasefire with PKK militants. Last week the PKK, deemed a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union as well as by Turkey, attacked a police station in a Diyarbakir district with a truck bomb, killing six people including a baby and two toddlers. (Reporting by Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara; Additional reporting by Eric Beech in Washington; Writing by Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Gareth Jones and Sandra Maler) By Lawrence Hurley WASHINGTON (Reuters) - If the U.S. Supreme Court endorses a key immigration initiative of President Barack Obama protecting more than 4 million illegal immigrants from deportation, his administration could face a surge of applicants and little time to process them before he leaves office in January 2017. Obama announced the action in November 2014 but it has never gone into effect, being put on hold by a federal judge in Texas in February 2015. The plan was designed to help illegal immigrant parents of children who are U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents. It would protect them from deportation and give them work authorization. The Supreme Court on Tuesday said it would decide whether Obama acted lawfully in creating the program by executive order, bypassing a gridlocked Congress. If Obama wins when the court rules by the end of June, his administration would have just seven months to implement the program. Obama's victory could be short-lived because the next president, set to be elected in November, would have the final say on whether to keep the program in place. Democrats including presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton have embraced Obama's plan. Republican presidential candidates including businessman Donald Trump and Texas Senator Ted Cruz have assailed it. Cruz said on Tuesday if elected he would rescind Obama's order on the first day of his presidency. An earlier immigration program that gave similar relief to children of illegal immigrants who grew up in the United States showed that such policies take time to implement. Launched in June 2012, it took two months to put in place. After that, there were almost 408,000 applications in the first six months of the program, according to government numbers. By January 2013, only 154,000 applications had been approved. More than 700,000 people have since benefited from the program. The government has been able to do nothing to prepare while Obama's executive action has been on hold. In the injunction that halted the plan, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen specifically said the administration was barred from implementing any and all aspects or phases of the program. A Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman said the federal government is complying with the injunction. Immigration advocates said they are preparing for a new effort to educate potential applicants about the program. They forecast much higher numbers than those who applied to the earlier 2012 program, largely because many more are eligible. "There is no way the administration can process the projected volume of people that would be eligible," said Gregory Chen, director of advocacy for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. The new program is likely to present additional bureaucratic problems, legal experts say, in part due to the larger pool of eligible people but also because of the specific nature of the applicants. Both programs require proof of continued residency in the United States. For younger people, this is easier to prove as usually they can cite school records, immigration experts say. For older people, who often do not speak English, it can be harder to provide necessary documentation. Women who do not work could find it especially difficult. Its going to be a little bit more tricky for some applicants, said Adonia Simpson, managing attorney for the Esperanza Center, an immigrant resource center run by Catholic Charities in Baltimore. In some cases, approval will be delayed while the government asks for additional evidence, she added. Criticism of Obama's actions by Republican candidates could also deter some people from applying, Simpson said. In her group's discussions with immigrants, "we make it very clear that this is an executive action that could be changed," she said. (Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Additional reporting by Richard Cowan and Julia Edwards; Editing by Will Dunham) Washington (AFP) - President Barack Obama met at the White House the mayor of Flint, the Michigan city at the center of a health scare over tainted tap water, triggered by budget cuts. Obama's meeting with Mayor Karen Weaver allowed the president to hear "firsthand how the residents of Flint are dealing with the ongoing public health crisis, and the challenges that still exist for the city, its residents, and the business community." Obama "reiterated that his administration will continue to support state and local officials in their response," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. Obama declared a state of emergency in Michigan on Saturday, freeing up federal aid to help in the crisis over lead-contaminated water that arose from cost-cutting measures implemented in Flint, home to 100,000 people. Problems arose after state officials ignored months of health warnings about the foul-smelling water as residents complained that it was making them sick. As part of cost-cutting, the city began drawing water from the Flint River in April 2014 rather than continuing to buy it from Detroit. DETROIT (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday pledged to continue to offer support for the local response to the water contamination crisis in Flint, Michigan. "If I were a parent up there, I would be beside myself that my kid's health could be at risk," Obama said in remarks at the UAW-GM Center for Human Resources in Detroit. Obama met with Flint Mayor Karen Weaver on Tuesday. The meeting followed Obama's order on Saturday for federal aid for the state and local response efforts in Genesee County, which includes Flint. "I told her we are going to have her back and all the people of Flint's back as they work their way through this terrible tragedy," he said. "It is a reminder that we can't shortchange the basic services we provide to our people." (This version of the story corrects location of Obama remarks in second paragraph to UAW-GM Center) (Reporting by Jeff Mason; Editing by Eric Beech) New York (AFP) - Oil prices plunged again on Wednesday, losing 6.7 percent in New York in the absence of any sign of tightening of supplies and amid gloomy global economic forecasts. The US benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for February delivery dropped $1.91 to $26.55 a barrel, the lowest level since May 2003. The contract traded as low as $26.19 a barrel during the session, the last day for the February contract. Losses also persisted in London trade, but were not as heavy as Brent North Sea crude for March delivery tumbled to $27.88, down 88 cents from Tuesday. The market is still in the process of finding a bottom, said analyst Oliver Sloup at iiTrader.com. Sloup said the end of the WTI February contract could have exacerbated the losses and that could lead to a rebound with the new March contract. "In the past when we've seen the futures contract go off the board, we've actually seen a short-term bottom in the market. So we wouldn't be surprised to see a little bounce." "You might get some bargain buyers, but for the most part a lot of traders are just sitting on their hands waiting to see a base form." Also influencing trade was the expectation that the US weekly crude and fuels stockpiles report could show another significant rise -- more oversupply -- when it is released on Thursday. "That's why the market is under pressure. But if we come in with a smaller build than anticipated, that could also help support prices," Sloup said. UFC Matt Mitriones right eye did not have a fun Sunday night. As an Ultimate Fighter, one expects to get banged up during a fight, but what Matt experienced during his fight with heavyweight fighter and Ronda Rousey beau Travis Browne was much worse than typical. He got poked in the eye not once but twice, and wasnt given enough time to recover from either incident. He went into the third round seeing double, and afterwards mentioned he actually shut his right eye just so he could see a single fighter in front of him. Unfortunately, that allowed Browne to hit him with a huge overhand that cracked Matts orbital bone and led to his defeat. The injury quickly swelled up to egg-shaped proportions, leaving UFC announcers and fans alike horrified. GETTY IMAGE Fortunately, it was nothing a good doctor couldnt fix. Guess whos got 2 eyes again! Mitrione gushed on Twitter with a huge smile. Great big, HELL YES to binocular fusion! Driving back to Purdue from Florida. Guess who's got 2 eyes again! A great big Hell yes to binocular fusion! pic.twitter.com/jjqoI12Dvj Matt Mitrione (@mattmitrione) January 20, 2016 Itll still take a while for the orbital bone to heal, but Mitriones got some time to kill. He went into this match with Browne as the last fight on his contract, so it could take a while for him to come to terms with the UFC or allow their matching clauses to expire so he can take offers from other promotions. That could be a blessing in disguise its worth taking the time to make sure this kind of injury heals properly. Meanwhile, Mitrione is hoping what happened to him in the cage will lead to some reform in how eye pokes are treated by referees and ringside doctors. Via MMA Fighting: I had my eye closed for however long it was closed, like a minute or something like thatthat should have been a sign to the doctors and for the referee to be like, hold on, dudes closing his eye because he cant focus, we need to call this a no contest. We need to save him from himself, and step in and do something about this. Because Im not going to do that, because Im too grindy and gritty and I want my paycheck. But its not a safe way for the sport to evolve. Thats the thing man, it shouldnt be up to me, the guy who lives his life to compete to make a decision, he said. It should be up to the commission, the doctors and the referee to realize the dude is fighting with one eye closed, and hes complaining about seeing double. At the very least, Travis Browne should have been docked a point after the second eye poke. The guy pulled a Jon Jones and had his fingers extended outwards for the entire fight. When you do that and accidentally poke your opponent in the eyes, that should be a point. Because right now we have rules about eye pokes that seem to fail fighters in every way. (Reuters) - Pakistani authorities concluded an operation to clear a university in volatile northwestern Pakistan of gunmen who had attacked the campus on Wednesday, the army's spokesman said, ending an assault that left at least 19 people dead. "The operation is over and the university has been cleared," Pakistan army spokesman General Asim Bajwa told Reuters. "Four gunmen have been killed." The militants, using the cover of thick, wintry fog, scaled the walls of the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, before entering buildings and opening fire on students and teachers in classrooms and hostels. (Reporting by Mehreen Zahra-Malik) ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - The official spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban said on Wednesday that the Islamist movement was not behind the deadly attack on a university that killed at least 19 people. The written statement by spokesman Muhammad Khorasani came hours after a senior Taliban commander said four of his fighters launched the assault on Wednesday at Bacha Khan University in Charsadda in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The reason for the conflicting statements was not immediately clear. (Reporting by Saud Mehsud. Writing by Kay Johnson) (Reuters) - A pastor from Idaho who was among five American prisoners released by Iran over the weekend will return to the United States on Thursday from Germany, his wife said on Wednesday. "Saeed will be landing on American soil Thursday evening," Naghmeh Abedini said in a Facebook posting. Saeed Abedini, 35, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was detained in 2012. He was sentenced to eight years in prison in 2013 after being accused of harming Iran's national security by setting up home-based churches in his native country. "He will spend a few days with his parents and then the kids and I will join him on Monday," his wife said. The couple have two young children. The Americans' release coincided with the implementation of a nuclear deal under which international economic sanctions against Iran were lifted in return for curbs on Iran's atomic program. The White House offered clemency to seven Iranians who were convicted or facing trial in the United States. Abedini, along with Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian and former Marine Amir Hekmati, arrived at a U.S. military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, on Sunday. Also released by Iran were Iranian-American Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari, who stayed behind, and American student Matthew Trevithick. (Reporting by Mohammad Zargham; Editing by Richard Chang) By David DeKok HARRISBURG, Pa. (Reuters) - The city council of Allentown, Pennsylvania, is expected to vote on Wednesday on a resolution expressing "no confidence" in Mayor Ed Pawlowski and urging him to resign as an FBI corruption investigation swirls around city hall. All seven city council members co-sponsored the non-binding resolution, which would draw a line between Pawlowski, who has been mayor of Pennsylvanias third-largest city for 10 years, and the rest of the city's government. The vote follows federal indictments of three members of Pawlowskis administration over allegations of a pay-to-play scheme benefiting the mayor. All three have pleaded guilty. No, he doesnt have to resign, said City Councilman Julio Gurido. He can stay there until they arrest him. Pawlowskis spokesman, Mike Moore, said the mayor would not attend the council meeting and had no plan to resign. Removing an elected official in Pennsylvania is relatively difficult unless that official is convicted of a serious crime. Only the state legislature can remove a mayor through impeachment. Council President Raymond O'Connell said the council may have other options if the mayor refused to resign after the vote. "We do have a next step that is available and we are pursuing that now," he said in an email. Dale Wiles, a former assistant city solicitor, pleaded guilty in December to withholding documents from the FBI. Gary Strathearn, the former finance director, and Mary Ellen Koval, the former city controller, pleaded guilty this month to fraud charges. Court papers identify the purported master of the scheme as "Public Official #3." The city council resolution says Pawlowski is the only city official who fits the description. Pawlowski needed campaign funds in 2014 for an abortive run for governor, and in 2015 for an announced bid for the U.S. Senate that ended when the FBI raided city hall on July 2, 2015. We can neither confirm nor deny the existence or non-existence of an investigation, said Patricia Hartman, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. (Reporting By David DeKok and Frank McGurty; editing by Grant McCool) Private Facebook groups based out of Iraq are being used "to peddle and purchase everything from assault rifles and pistols to flak jackets," Vocativ reported, based off intel obtained by its Deep Web analysts. A local black market arms dealer spoke with Vocativ about the thriving Facebook-facilitated industry. "The people who buy these weapons are common and poor people, not rich," the dealer, who chose to remain anonymous and is based in the Shiite-majority Sadr City, told the website. "You know the situation in Iraq, there is war," he added. "Common people couldn't protect themselves and now we learned from this lesson." He noted many of those purchasing weapons on Facebook are Shiite Iraqis using guns to protect themselves against ISIS, or the Islamic State group. Used Glocks and other handguns are reportedly being sold for $800-$900 roughly twice the price of a secondhand Glock in the United States. A United Nations report released on Tuesday revealed that nearly 19,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed and thousands tortured in 21 months, partly due to ISIS' established caliphate. The dissemination of weaponry amongst warring factions and ordinary citizens alike has proliferated as the country has plunged deeper into civil war. By now, you've probably heard the phrase "dark money." Activists use it. Politicians use it. And journalists use it, including here at the Center for Public Integrity. For some people, it's just another piece of confusing campaign finance jargon. For others, it's a term of art, with a precise definition. So here are answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about dark money in politics. What makes political money dark money? The sources behind most of the money raised by politicians and political groups are publicly disclosed. Candidates, parties and political action committees including the super PACs that are allowed to accept unlimited amounts of money all report the names of their donors to the Federal Election Commission on a regular basis. Or, to be technical, they regularly disclose the names of all their donors who each give more than $200. But when the source of political money isn't known, that's dark money. What does political dark money look like? The two most common vehicles for dark money in politics are politically active nonprofits and corporate entities such as limited liability companies. Certain politically active nonprofits notably those formed under sections 501(c)(4) and 501(c)(6) of the tax code are generally not required to publicly disclose their donors. Meanwhile, when limited liability companies are formed in certain states, such as Delaware and Wyoming, they are essentially black boxes; the companys name is basically the only thing known about them. These LLCs can be used to make political expenditures themselves or to donate to super PACs. How much money are we talking about? During the 2012 election cycle the last time the presidency was at stake dark money groups pumped about $300 million into political messages that called for the election or defeat of federal candidates, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Additionally, dark money groups spent hundreds of millions of dollars on political advertisements that focused more on issues than candidates. The most notable example? Americans for Prosperity, the flagship nonprofit of the conservative billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. Also worth noting: Dark money doesnt affect every election. It frequently targets the most high-profile political races. Story continues Do Democrats use dark money? Yes. Neither party wants to be left behind in the political money arms race. The result: Dark money groups are multiplying and thriving on both ends of the political spectrum. However, during the 2012 election cycle, conservative dark money groups that reported expenditures to the FEC outspent liberal ones by about 8-to-1, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. This story is part of Politics. Campaign donations, lobbying and influence in government and reports on the special interests that are funding elections and buying power. Click here to read more stories in this topic. Don't miss another Politics investigation: Sign up for the Center for Public Integrity's Watchdog email. How does dark money relate to the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling? The Citizens United decision gave the green light to corporations, including certain types of nonprofit corporations, to spend money on political ads that expressly called for the election or defeat of federal candidates. A prior U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2007, known as Wisconsin Right to Life v. FEC, had allowed corporations, including certain types of nonprofits, to spend money on issue ads during the run-up to elections so long as they did not overtly call for the election or defeat of candidates. The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 had banned both types of corporate spending in politics. Now that these restrictions have been overturned, politically active nonprofit groups are spending more money than ever to directly influence elections. Are there other types of money in politics that come from unknown sources? The names of small-dollar donors who give $200 or less are not publicly disclosed. Some conservative activists and politicians have worried that foreigners, or other illicit donors, might try to exploit this disclosure rule to their advantage. But most election observers cant point to any evidence of widespread abuse. Why are so many people upset about dark money in politics? Campaign finance reform activists argue that voters should know who is funding political advertisements. Such information, they assert, is essential to voters ability to evaluate the merits of political messages and to know if certain special interests may be trying to curry favor with politicians. Fred Wertheimer, the founder and president of Democracy 21, for one, has said that history makes clear that unlimited contributions and secret money are a formula for corruption. Likewise, the Campaign Legal Center has called the emergence of dark money a serious threat to our democracy. In a portion of the controversial Citizens United decision, eight of the nine Supreme Court justices agreed that disclosure of money in politics was important because transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages. Related story: The Citizens United decision and why it matters Who thinks dark money in politics is good? Supporters of anonymity in politics frequently note that The Federalist Papers and Thomas Paines Common Sense were published anonymously during the countrys founding. Lawyers at the Wyoming Liberty Group, for instance, have argued that throughout American history, anonymous political speech has been the scorn of entrenched powers and the saving balm of emerging voices. Meanwhile, officials at the Center for Competitive Politics have argued that dark money is a pejorative term and that its threat is overblown. The Center for Competitive Politics has further argued that disclosure comes with a cost, including the potential to chill speech and for donors to be harassed. Who regulates political dark money? The nations primary regulator of money in politics is the six-member FEC. However, the FECs three Republican commissioners and three Democratic ones have significant ideological disagreements about the degree to which dark money is a problem. Meanwhile, the Internal Revenue Service regulates nonprofit organizations and can revoke a nonprofits tax-exempt status if a group is deemed to not deserve it. But in recent years, only a handful of 501(c)(4) nonprofits which have the primary purpose of promoting social welfare have had their tax-exempt status revoked because the Internal Revenue Service deemed them to be too political. The Department of Justice can also criminally prosecute knowing and willful violations of campaign finance law, although this, too, is rare. So, is there really no way to know who's behind political dark money? Over the years, journalists have developed a number of backdoor approaches to follow the money flowing to dark money organizations. But oftentimes, these approaches only yield results long after a dark money spending spree is over. What are these backdoors? Sometimes dark money groups receive money from other political groups that must disclose their expenditures to either state or federal campaign finance regulators. Other times, dark money groups receive substantial amounts of money from other nonprofits that must report doling out these grants on their own annual tax filings with the IRS. Similarly, some dark money groups receive money from labor unions, which must report those expenditures on annual reports filed with the Department of Labor. And on rare occasions, corporations voluntarily disclose their contributions to politically active nonprofits. If an individual donates to a dark money group, there is essentially no public paper trail to follow. This story was co-published with NBC News. A version of this story also appeared on Al Jazeera America. Related: Citizens United quote This story is part of Politics. Campaign donations, lobbying and influence in government and reports on the special interests that are funding elections and buying power. Click here to read more stories in this topic. Copyright 2016 The Center for Public Integrity. This story was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C. By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Man's inhumanity to man, as 18th century Scottish poet Robert Burns put it, is no recent development. Scientists said on Wednesday they had found the oldest evidence of human warfare, fossils of a band of people massacred by a troop of attackers with weapons including arrows, clubs and stone blades on the shores of a lagoon in Kenya about 10,000 years ago. The remains of 27 people from a Stone Age hunter-gatherer culture were unearthed at a site called Nataruk roughly 20 miles (30 km) west of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya. One man's skeleton was found with a sharp blade made of a volcanic glass called obsidian still embedded in his skull. Another man had wounds from two blows to the head apparently with a club, crushing his skull. A woman in the last stages of pregnancy appeared to have been bound by her hands and feet. Victims also had projectile wounds to the neck and broken skulls, hands, knees and ribs. University of Cambridge paleoanthropologist Marta Mirazon Lahr said evidence indicates these people, who hunted animals, caught fish and gathered edible plants, were slain in a premeditated attack by raiders, perhaps from another region. "It is a brutal, physical, lethal attack with the intention to kill those individuals who could put up a defense or mount a counter-attack, or who perhaps were of no use to them, whether it was a man or a very pregnant woman, too young or too old," Mirazon Lahr. Our species arose 200,000 years ago in Africa. Many scholars had thought warfare first emerged long after the time of the Nataruk people when humans formed settled communities instead of a nomadic, hunter-gatherer existence. The Nataruk fossils "raise the question of whether warfare has been part of the human experience for much longer than previously thought," Mirazon Lahr added. A planned attack would suggest that resources the Nataruk people possessed, perhaps water, dried meat or fish, nuts or even women and children, were considered valuable, she said. There were remains of 21 adults and six children, most under age 6. There were no older teenagers. "Whether they managed to escape, or were taken, we will never know," she said. "At the end, all massacres are savage," Mirazon Lahr said. "How many examples do we have from our very recent, and current, history? But finding the remains of a massacre among the skeletons of hunter-gatherers of this period was totally surprising." The research appeared in the journal Nature. (Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Sandra Maler) The Hague (AFP) - War crimes prosecutors will Thursday seek to convince the International Criminal Court to put infamous Lord's Resistance Army commander Dominic Ongwen on trial on charges including keeping sex slaves in a rebel army. Known as the "White Ant", Ongwen faces 70 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role from 2002 to 2005 in the rebel group's reign of terror in northern Uganda, led by its fugitive chief Joseph Kony. A former child-soldier-turned-warlord, Ongwen was Kony's one-time deputy and one of the most senior commanders of the LRA, which is accused of slaughtering more than 100,000 people and abducting 60,000 children in a bloody rebellion against Kampala that began in 1986. In the five-day confirmation hearing starting on Thursday, prosecutors will lay out the charges to a three-judge bench seeking to show that the evidence is solid enough to put Ongwen in the dock. The judges will then have to determine whether Ongwen should stand trial. The prosecution will focus in particular on four attacks on camps housing people forced to flee the LRA's violence. More than 130 people -- many of them children and babies -- died in these attacks and dozens of others were abducted, prosecutors said in the court document containing the charges. "LRA fighters under the joint control of Dominic Ongwen... abducted civilians, forced them to carry looted items... shot at them and threatened them with acts of violence," the charges read. In one instance after an attack on the Odek camp, northern Uganda, in April 2004 in which at least 61 men, women and children were killed, "one individual was forced to kill an abducted man from Odek with a club and forced to inspect decomposing bodies, including that of his father," prosecutors said. - Sex slaves - Ongwen, who has been wanted by The Hague-based ICC since 2005 in the court's longest-running case, was originally charged with seven war crimes and crimes against humanity. Story continues The ICC's chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda however in December broadened the charges to 70 which now also include eight sexual and gender-based crimes. Kony, Ongwen and senior commanders of Ongwen's notorious Sinia brigade "pursued a common plan to abduct girls and women to serve as domestic servants, forced wives and sex slaves," prosecutors said. "The victims had no choice but to submit to rape, enslavement, sexual slavery and become forced wives," they said. Ongwen is further charged with using children under 15 years old to fight in the LRA rebel army. - Victim? - Born in 1975, Ongwen was transferred to The Hague a year ago shortly after surrendering to US special forces operating in the Central African Republic. President Barack Obama had deployed a small number of US troops to the region to aid the hunt for Kony, who remains at large. Washington had also offered a $5 million (4.5-million-euro) reward for Ongwen's capture. Experts believe Ongwen fled after falling out with Kony and almost being killed. The LRA first emerged in northern Uganda in 1986, where it claimed to fight in the name of the Acholi ethnic group against the government of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. But over the years the LRA has moved across porous regional borders: it shifted from Uganda to sow terror in southern Sudan before moving into northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, and finally crossing into southeastern Central African Republic in March 2008. Combining religious mysticism with an astute guerrilla mind and bloodthirsty ruthlessness, Kony has turned scores of young girls into his personal sex slaves while claiming to be fighting to impose the Bible's Ten Commandments. Ongwen's own troops were notorious for their punishment raids, during which they would slice off victims' lips and ears as a grim calling card. But rights groups say Ongwen was himself initially a victim -- abducted at 14 by the LRA as he was walking to school -- which may prove a mitigating factor, should he be found guilty at trial. Beirut (AFP) - A local leader of Al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate was assassinated by unknown gunmen on Wednesday, the latest in a string of killings of mostly hardline Islamist rebels, a monitor said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Iyad al-Adl, "emir" for the town of Ariha in northwestern Syria's Idlib province, was shot dead along with a second member of Al-Nusra Front. The Britain-based monitor said unidentified gunmen opened fire on the car in which the men were driving in a western neighbourhood of Ariha. The assassination is the latest in a series of targeted killings of senior Islamist rebels, including from the Al-Qaeda affiliate Nusra and its ally Ahrar al-Sham. Analysts say the killings could be the work of the regime or the Islamic State group, which considers all factions that have not pledged allegiance to it to be its rivals. At least 20 rebel commanders have been killed in the assassinations since early December in several parts of Syria, including central Homs province, southern Daraa and elsewhere in Idlib. Idlib province is held by the powerful "Army of Conquest" coalition of rebels including Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham. Rebel groups have regularly accused IS of having sleeper cells in their territory, but the jihadists have not openly claimed the assassinations. More than 260,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011 with anti-government protests. KINSHASA (Reuters) - Randgold Resources has signed three joint venture agreements with junior miners to explore potential gold deposits in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, its chief executive Mark Bristow said on Tuesday. Randgold already operates the Kibali mine in northeastern Congo, a joint venture with AngloGold Ashanti and state miner Sokimo. It also has a joint venture with Kilo Goldmines to explore for gold in the area. The new joint ventures with the Toronto-listed Kilo, Deveron Resources and Loncor Resources more than double the size of Randgold's landholdings in Congo. "We have offered them to take over their ground," Bristow told reporters in the Congo capital of Kinshasa. "If we discover any deposits and are able to deliver a pre-feasibility study, we get 65 percent of the joint venture." Kibali and other new gold mines opened by companies like Banro Corporation have boosted Congo's gold output from near zero in 2011 to an expected 26 tonnes in 2015. Randgold also announced on Tuesday that Kibali, which poured its first gold in 2013, was likely to exceed its 2015 production target of 600,000 ounces. Congo, which hopes to become one of Africa's leading gold producers, increased output 69 percent in the first half of 2015 compared to the same period in 2014 despite falling gold prices. (Reporting By Aaron Ross; Editing by Susan Fenton) JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Yasiin Bey, the American rapper formerly known as Mos Def, has been charged with violating South Africa's immigration laws after he was arrested last week trying to leave the country on an unrecognised travel document. Bey, who is free on bail, will appear in court on March 8, officials said on Wednesday. The entertainer was arrested on Thursday in Cape Town when he produced a "World Passport" to get on a flight to Ethiopia. The World Passport is a document issued by a non-profit organisation called World Service Authority. South Africa does not recognise it, making it illegal for anyone to try to use it as a travel document, the Home Affairs department said. Bey, who has lived in Cape since 2013, called his arrest illogical and unjust in a post on fellow rapper Kanye West's website. (www.kanyewest.com) "I'm being prevented from leaving, unjustly, unlawfully, without any logical reason," he said. The World Passport was not a fictitious document as claimed by South African government officials, he said. Citing the United Nations' right to freedom of movement, the World Service Authority has been issuing World Passports since 1954. Many countries do not accept the passport either as travel document or a formal identity but WSA claims countries such as Togo, Mauritiania, Ecuador, Zambia, Tanzania have accepted the 30-page document in the past. Authorities have also ordered Bey's wife and child to leave South Africa by January 29 because they had overstayed their visit. Born Dante Terrell Smith, Bey, also played roles in films such as "The Italian Job", "Brown Sugar" and Cadillac Records. (Reporting by Tiisetso Motsoeneng; Editing by James Macharia and Angus MacSwan) Johannesburg (AFP) - American rapper Mos Def will be tried in a South African court in March after being arrested for presenting a "world passport" when trying to fly out of the country, officials said Wednesday. The 42-year-old hip hop artist, actor and activist, whose real name is Dante Terrel Smith, was arrested in Cape Town last week while attempting to board a flight to Ethiopia. He was later released on bail of 5,000 rand (about $300). The Department of Home Affairs said the actor had entered South Africa with a legitimate US passport in November, and had a visitor's visa valid until February. "The major problem why he could not get on the Ethiopian flight was the document he produced at the immigration counter, the World Passport, which South Africa does not recognise," home affairs director general Mkuseli Apleni told reporters. "Immigration officers had also detected that his spouse and minor child had overstayed their visit to the Republic. "Mister Smith will appear for trial on March 8 to answer the immigration charges." Smith attempted to leave the country using a "World Government of World Citizens" passport, Apleni said. The World Government of World Citizens was established in 1953 by the late peace activist Garry Davis, an American who renounced his citizenship after World War II. Both WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and intelligence leaker Edward Snowden are reported to be holders of world passports, which are not officially recognised. Mos Def, who also uses the name Yassin Bey, faces charges including using a false identity, and "aiding and abetting his family to stay illegally in South Africa". His family's visas expired in April 2014, and they have been given until January 29 to leave South Africa. According to immigration officials, Mos Def entered the country ten times since 2013, always on a 90-day tourist visa using a US passport. He is believed to have been living in Cape Town for some years. Story continues "I haven't broken any law. And I'm being treated like a criminal," he said on a message released via superstar rapper Kanye West's Twitter feed. In 2014, Mos Def cancelled a planned tour of the US due to what his publicists called "legal and immigration issues". In his acclaimed hip-hop career he has produced classic solo songs as well as albums with Talib Kweli in the duo Black Star. By Idrees Ali WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S.-led coalition air strikes hit a cash collection point in the Islamic States northern Iraqi stronghold of Mosul on Monday, bringing the total strikes on these targets to nine in Iraq and Syria, a U.S. military spokesman said. This was the second strike in Mosul in as many weeks against ISIL financial targets, Army Colonel Steve Warren told a Pentagon briefing on Wednesday, using another name for Islamic State. Warren said the coalition had been prepared to accept some civilian casualties with the strike. Yes, we were prepared to accept civilian casualties in conjunction with this cash strike, it's tragic and it's not something that we want to do," Warren said. He added that initial estimates showed civilian casualties were low and in the single digits. Targeting Islamic State's finances is a key part of the coalition's strategy to defeat the group. Iraq's finance minister last year said the militants had looted nearly half a billion dollars from banks in Mosul and the other northern cities of Tikrit and Baiji after its lightning dash across the Syrian border in 2014. Warren said that along with strikes on Islamic State oil facilities, strikes on the collection points were having an impact. "As we strike the Daesh cash, as we call it here in Iraq, we are going to see them react to our strikes, whether it's storing their cash in smaller amounts, in multiple locations, or whether it's moving it more often, we don't want to tip them off to what we see," Warren said. Daesh is an Arab acronym for Islamic State. He added that it was unclear whether currency was in dollars or dinars, and while the exact amount destroyed in the strikes was not known, it was roughly tens of millions of dollars. According to Pentagon data, between July 1 and Jan. 13, the coalition reported that it had hit three cash distribution points - one in Mosul and two in Dayr Az Zawr. (Reporting by Idrees Ali. Additional reporting by David Alexander; Editing by Chris Reese) London (AFP) - Britain's interior ministry said Wednesday it will probe asylum-seeker housing in northeast England over complaints that the properties' red doors identify them as targets for abuse. The announcement follows an investigation by the Times newspaper into properties run by Jomast, a subcontractor for security giant G4S, which provides asylum accommodation in the northeastern town of Middlesbrough. Local asylum seekers told the Times they had been verbally abused, had their properties vandalised and had the sign of the far-right National Front carved on their front doors. "I am deeply concerned by this issue and I have commissioned Home Office officials to conduct an urgent audit of asylum seeker housing in the north-east," said immigration minister James Brokenshire. "I condemn absolutely any actions that sow divisions within communities. We have been in contact with the local police, and they are actively considering any appropriate steps," he added. The Times identified 168 properties run by Jomast, 155 of which had red front doors. The newspaper contacted the residents of 66 properties, 62 of whom were asylum seekers. "When people see them (the red doors), everyone knows it means asylum seekers," said one man whose house was vandalised. Answering an urgent question asked in parliament, Brokenshire said that "anything that identifies asylum seeker accommodation for those who may harm those accommodated in the properties must be avoided." Local MP Andy McDonald said the doors "mark out those properties and its inhabitants for those with prejudicial motivations and evil intent" and risked "undermining social cohesion". G4S said there was "categorically no... policy to house asylum seekers behind red doors" and that it had ordered Jomast to repaint some of the doors. McDonald told parliament that Jomast had suggested completing the work within three to six months -- a timeframe he called "unacceptable", saying it should be undertaken "as a matter of supreme urgency". Story continues Local resident Suzanne Fletcher said the issue had been raised for four years. "In September 2012 we asked G4S if they would do something about the red doors and they replied that they had no intention of doing anything about it," she told BBC radio. "The police obviously have done everything that they can do but because asylum seekers are so vulnerable, they are frightened of jeopardising their case, things haven't always been reported," she added. Local police declined to comment. By Phil Noble MIDDLESBROUGH, England (Reuters) - Asylum seekers in a northern English town believe they are easy targets for racist abuse because they have been housed in properties that almost all have red front doors, a local support group manager said on Wednesday. The houses in Middlesbrough are owned by a subcontractor of G4S, the outsourcing giant which has been embroiled in a series of scandals over alleged incompetence and abuses. After a report about the red doors appeared on the front page of Wednesday's Times newspaper, a spokesman for G4S said its subcontractor, Jomast, would repaint the doors. Jomast said it was "ludicrous" to suggest it had practiced discrimination. Asylum seekers described having eggs and stones thrown at their windows, dog excrement smeared on their doors and racist jibes shouted at them, the Times reported. Britain has not received migrants in the same huge numbers that arrived in other European countries last year, but public concerns over immigration are running high and tensions have risen in some communities with large numbers of migrants. "Many of our asylum seekers feel the red doors make them a target," said Pete Widlinski, manager of local group Justice First, which offers support to claimants. He told Reuters that he and others had raised the issue with G4S and Jomast several times, but the asylum seekers' concerns had been ignored until now. Immigration Minister James Brokenshire said he had ordered an urgent audit of housing for asylum seekers in northeast England, which is provided by G4S under a government contract. "Anything which identifies asylum seeker accommodation to those who may wish to harm those accommodated in the properties must be avoided," he told parliament, urging anyone who had suffered racist abuse to contact the police. The Times quoted Ahmad Zubair, from Afghanistan, as saying he had repainted his front door white to stop the abuse, but a Jomast worker had repainted it red citing company policy. "Asylum houses have red doors. Everyone knows that," Zubair was quoted as saying. "People were shouting outside the house, calling us hate words, throwing things at our windows." The Times said it had identified 168 houses owned by Jomast of which 155 had red doors. Reporters spoke to people living at 66 of the properties with red doors and found that 62 of them housed asylum seekers of 22 nationalities. STRING OF SCANDALS Stuart Monk, owner and managing director of Jomast, said paint was bought in bulk for use at all its properties as was common practice among landlords. "It is ludicrous to suggest that this constitutes any form of discrimination, and offensive to make comparisons to a policy of apartheid in Nazi Germany," he said in a statement, referring to headlines and comments in the Times report. Jomast is highly profitable and Monk's fortune was estimated at 175 million pounds ($248 million) by the Sunday Times last year in its list of the richest people in Britain. The G4S spokesman said Jomast accepted that the majority of houses where asylum seekers lived had red doors, and had agreed to repaint them so that there would be no dominant color. The Times said Middlesbrough had one asylum seeker for every 173 residents, the highest concentration anywhere in Britain. The Home Office, or interior ministry, said its guideline was that no area should have more than one asylum seeker for every 200 residents and it was "working closely with G4S to implement a reduction program" in Middlesbrough. Asked about the allegations of racist abuse targeting asylum seekers, Widlinski said "there is an element of that" but added that on the whole Middlesbrough was a cohesive community where racism was less of a problem than elsewhere in England. He said a far-right group had organized a rally in the town on Saturday to call for refugees not to be let into the country, and only 30 people had turned up, some of them from other towns. The controversy over the red doors is the latest in a string of public relations disasters for G4S, one of the largest private employers in the world with around 611,000 employees. The group, which has annual revenues of 6.8 billion pounds, failed to provide enough security guards for the London 2012 Olympics and the army had to fill the gap. In 2013, it admitted overcharging on a British government contract to tag criminals by billing for some who were dead or not tagged. G4S also got into trouble over its handling of a deadly riot at an immigration detention center in Australia in 2014, while earlier this month it fired four workers over alleged use of unnecessary force against British young offenders. (Writing by Estelle Shirbon, additional reporting by Kylie Maclellan, William James and Li-mei Hoang in London; Editing by Giles Elgood) By Martin Petty HANOI (Reuters) - As Vietnam's Communist Party opens its five-yearly Congress on Thursday, the country's progressive prime minister is headed for the political wilderness, an unexpected development that clouds the outlook for reform of the fast-growing economy. Premier Nguyen Tan Dung, widely credited with driving a recent wave of economic liberalization, has been omitted from nominations for key leadership posts to be agreed at the week-long meeting, several party sources told Reuters. Dung, 66, had been tipped by business leaders and experts as almost certain to become party chief and to install a protege as prime minister, a scenario that would have consolidated his power but which could have tested four decades of consensus rule in a country with no paramount leader. Dung's office did not respond to requests for comment. Asked about widespread speculation on social media that Dung would be out of a job, a deputy information minister declined to comment at a briefing on Monday to discuss the Congress. Dung has reached his two-term limit as prime minister. His effective ouster could unnerve investors drawn to a rising manufacturing star with an expanding consumer market of 90 million people. "A lot of investors are holding back to figure out the politics. I've never seen such a divisive leadership change in a communist country," said one Western private equity investor with business interests in Vietnam. Party sources with knowledge of a key meeting last week said Dung was not among candidates endorsed for four top positions by the party's outgoing central committee. His exclusion, say analysts and diplomats with party contacts, indicates a pre-emptive move by conservatives wary that Dung's ambitions could challenge the status quo. "They want to block his path to power by any means necessary," said Jonathan London, a Vietnam expert and professor at Hong Kong's City University. The gambit is not guaranteed to succeed, however. Leadership candidates can be nominated at the congress itself, state media has quoted one party official as saying. London does not exclude the possibility of Dung engineering a comeback. "Dung has enjoyed a lot of support in the party and among lower ranks of the elite," he said. "If anyone were to mount a campaign to overturn this, it would be him." BOOMING ECONOMY A source with direct knowledge of the four nominations said incumbent General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, 71, had won party approval to extend his tenure even though he has passed retirement age. Dung's deputy, Nguyen Xuan Phuc, was nominated as premier, Minister of Public Security Tran Dai Quang as president and legislative vice-chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan nominated to head the national assembly, the source said, confirming names also cited by diplomats. The four nominees did not respond to requests for comment. Vietnam's economy has been energizes by the opening up of dozens of business sectors under Dung and his government's pursuit of free trade accords. The economy grew 6.7 percent in 2015, with record foreign investment of nearly $15 billion, mostly into a manufacturing sector used by giants such as LG, Sony, Intel and Samsung. Experts say Dung has cultivated support among business groups and the wider party. His strong rebuke of China for moving an oil rig into part of the South China Sea claimed by Vietnam in 2014 also won wide public backing. Vietnam warned China on Tuesday against a repeat of the incident after the same rig entered disputed waters. (Additional reporting by Saeed Azhar in Singapore; Editing by Simon Webb and Dean Yates) Beirut (AFP) - The Islamic State group has released 270 of more than 400 civilians it had abducted during its assault on the eastern Syrian city of Deir Ezzor, a monitor said. Those released included women, children under 14 years old, and the elderly, said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. He said they had been freed after undergoing questioning by IS jihadists to determine whether they had ties to Syria's regime. "They will not go back into Deir Ezzor city, but will be spread out among local tribes in the province," Abdel Rahman told AFP. IS still holds 130 civilians, mostly teenage and adult men, whom Abdel Rahman said were being questioned. "If IS sees that they have no ties to the Syrian government, they will take a religious course and will be released," he said. IS launched a multi-pronged assault on Deir Ezzor city on Saturday, with dozens of its fighters carrying out suicide bomb attacks as they stormed government positions. The group is now in control of 60 percent of the city and has tightened its siege around it by capturing surrounding towns. As IS overran Al-Baghaliyeh, an agricultural area northwest of the city, it abducted another 50 people, mostly men, Abdel Rahman said, but it was not immediately clear whether they were civilians or pro-regime fighters. Washington (AFP) - A former US Navy SEAL kept an unauthorized photo of Osama Bin Laden's corpse on a computer that he turned over to investigators, a US news site reported Tuesday. The discovery came after Matthew Bissonnette, who shot Bin Laden in the infamous 2011 raid on the Al-Qaeda leader's compound in Pakistan, gave investigators a copy of his hard drive. He had been under investigation for allegedly revealing classified information in his book about the incident, "No Easy Day." Bissonnette gave investigators his hard drive as part of a deal to avoid prosecution over the material, two people familiar with the deal told The Intercept. On it, they found the Bin Laden photo and documents detailing Bissonnette's work as a consultant while also serving with the SEAL Team 6, the Intercept reported. The US government has never released images of bin Laden's body and says the Al-Qaeda leader was buried at sea shortly after the raid. President Barack Obama has cited national security risks and said the United States should not brandish "trophies" of its victory. Robert Luskin, an attorney for Bissonnette, told The Intercept his client had previously been under investigation, but the Department of Justice closed that probe in August. Luskin said he brokered a deal in 2014 for Bissonnette to give the US government some of his millions of dollars in book profits. He did not comment on the purported photo, or whether an investigation remained open. Aside from the image, some of the records found on Bissonnette's computer were not part of the non-prosecution deal, so led to a widening probe being conducted by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, The Intercept reported. Investigators have started looking into Bissonnette's business deals, and whether he inappropriately used his SEAL connections to help in ventures with military equipment-supply firms, The Intercept wrote. Bin Laden was killed in May 2011 when SEALs stormed his hideaway in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Washington (AFP) - Freed reporter Jason Rezaian said Wednesday he wants to write more about "the US and Iranian story" but first needs time with his family to recover from 18 months in a Tehran prison. The Iranian-American Washington Post journalist was freed on Saturday in a prisoner swap between his two homelands, and has been flown to Landstuhl in Germany to receive treatment after his ordeal. "I want everyone to know that I'm feeling fine, and I feel lucky to be here at a place where I can get such terrific care," he said, thanking medical staff and the Swiss diplomats who helped oversee his release. A beaming Rezaian appeared briefly with his immediate family in front of reporters outside the US military hospital in Landstuhl but spoke little and instead released a written statement. "I've spent a lot of my life writing about the United States and Iran, and I never imagined - and never wanted - to become a part of the story, particularly at such an extraordinary moment," he said. Rezaian was arrested in July 2014 along with his Iranian wife, who was later freed and was allowed to leave Tehran with him, her mother and two more former US prisoners at the weekend. The reporter and his employer have always firmly denied Iranian allegations that he was a US spy, but he was convicted in a secret court and only freed after the implementation of the Iran nuclear deal. "I want to get back to writing the US-Iran story at some point in the future. But I won't be saying anything further for a while," he said. "I hope everyone will respect my need for privacy as I take some time for myself and for my family. For now, I want to catch up with what's been going on in the world, watch a Warriors game or two, and see the Star Wars movie." Another of the released prisoners, 32-year-old former US marine Amir Hekmati, also released a statement. "I am learning more about the grassroots support I received from ordinary people from across the world over the past four-and-a-half years," he said. "I wanted to take a moment to thank you for everything you have done to keep my name a part of the conversation and for the kindness and support that you have given my family during the darkest period of our lives." By Suzannah Gonzales (Reuters) - Nearly all public schools in Detroit were closed on Wednesday as teachers called in sick to protest conditions, the school system and teachers' union said. The school district filed a request for a temporary injunction on Wednesday with the Michigan Court of Claims against the Detroit Federation of Teachers, teacher groups and two dozen individual teachers, court records showed. District and union officials said they expected schools to reopen on Thursday. Detroit Federation of Teachers Interim President Ivy Bailey said that with President Barack Obama visiting Detroit on Wednesday, people wanted to call attention to problems at schools. It was the second time in as many weeks that teachers staged a protest. A sickout on Jan. 11 closed 64 schools. All but nine of the district's 97 schools were closed, leaving 44,790 students out of class, district spokeswoman Michelle Zdrodowski said. Union officials have said teachers are frustrated over conditions in schools such as crumbling walls, mold in classrooms, rats, and classroom overcrowding, and by a teacher shortage and low pay. Bailey said the average Detroit school building was over 60 years old and the original part of one elementary school was more than 100 years old. Detroit Public Schools, which are under state oversight, have seen declining enrollment as the city's population decreased and heavy pension and debt obligations that have left the district in danger of running out of cash in April. The district said on Facebook that staff members were expected to report to work as usual. "When teachers decide not to come to work, we have no other option but to close the schools," Zdrodowski said. The Detroit Federation of Teachers said on its website that members who did not call in sick should report to work, whether or not their schools were closed. A report by Citizens Research Council of Michigan, a nonprofit public affairs group, said Detroit schools have $3.5 billion in debt and need to be rescued by the state of Michigan. (Reporting by Suzannah Gonzales and Karen Pierog in Chicago and Victoria Cavaliere in Los Angeles; Editing by Alison Williams and Jeffrey Benkoe) Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin endorses Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a rally at the Iowa State University, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016, in Ames, Iowa. (Photo: AP) In the most unsurprising political endorsement throughout this unpredictable race to the White House, Sarah Palin threw her weight behind Donald Trump, the current dark horse candidate. Are you ready for the leader to make America great again? the former vice presidential hopeful asked the crowd at Iowa State University. Are you ready to stump for Trump? Im here to support the next president of the United States Donald Trump. But what was unanticipated from the former Alaska governor was her choice of outfit at Tuesdays rally. Never one to blend in with the Ann Taylor-clad crowd, the 51-year-old grandmother opted for a beaded bolero more fit for a ladies luncheon sponsored by former Studio 54 regulars reliving their heydays over glasses of mimosas and spiked green juices. Sarah Palin paired a beaded bolero with patent-leather knee-high boots at an Iowa rally for Donald Trump. (Photo: AP) The embellished jacket comes from Milly and retails for $695. According to the product description, the pieces short, beaded fringe adds playful glamour, and the uneven hem dips in the front. Palin paired the statement jacket with a black sheath, which was simple enough, but then added patent leather knee-high boots for some extra flair (so maybe that brunch was for go-go dancers instead). A product shot of the Milly jacket Sarah Palin wore to the Iowa rally on Tuesday. (Photo courtesy Shopbop) Throughout her time as the Republican partys gun-wielding, antiabortion gaffe-maker, Palin has shown off styles unlike those of her peers. While most female politicians stick with a standard uniform look to Hillary Clintons pants suits, Nancy Pelosis one- to three-button suit jacket with a large pearl necklace, and Kirsten Gillibrands neutral wardrobe for examples the Going Rogue author has favored off-the-shoulder jackets, cropped coats, brightly colored sleeveless dresses, and Louboutins. One time, she even borrowed a sparkly white minidress from her daughter Bristols closet. Palin wore the slinky number, which she paired with black booties, on the red carpet at SNLs 40th anniversary special. Story continues With Palin expected to make an appearance in Oklahoma on Wednesday and even more stops along the way, watch out for more out-of-the-box outfits maybe shell even try out a crop top. You never know! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate, has backed Donald Trump in his run for the White House. "I'm proud to endorse Donald J Trump for president," Mrs Palin said in a statement on his campaign website. The property billionaire said he was "greatly honoured" by the endorsement from his fellow reality TV star. "She is a friend, and a high-quality person whom I have great respect for. I am proud to have her support," he added. :: Donald Trump tells Sky's Kay Burley he is 'more influential than the British Parliament' She announced her endorsement in person on stage alongside Mr Trump at a rally in Ames, Iowa. Mrs Palin told the audience: "He's the master of the art of the deal. "He's beholden to no one except we the people. "No more pussyfooting around. "He's from the private sector, not a politician. Can I get a hallelujah?" The endorsement came as it emerged Palin's son Track, 26, had been charged with domestic violence after allegedly attacking his girlfriend on Monday night. Mrs Palin's seal of approval comes at a pivotal moment as the countdown begins to the first-in-the-nation presidential primary, on 1 February, in the Hawkeye state. Her endorsement is a blow to one of Mr Trump's closest rivals, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who is also wooing disaffected, anti-establishment voters. He sought to put a brave face on the high-profile endorsement of his arch-rival for the Republican presidential nomination. He praised Mrs Palin saying "without her support, I wouldn't be in the Senate", in reference to his election in 2012. "Regardless of what she does in 2016, I will always be a big fan," he tweeted. But his spokesman Rick Tyler told CNN's New Day programme that he would be "deeply disappointed" if she backed Mr Trump. Though her conservative star power has waned in recent years, Mrs Palin still enjoys a popularity among tea party voters that could boost Mr Trump in a dead-heat against Mr Cruz in Iowa. Mr Cruz's campaign was also rocked on Tuesday as Iowa's governor warned voters it would be a "big mistake" to pick him. Terry Branstad, a Republican, cited Mr Cruz's opposition to government support of biofuel in the corn-producing state. Sea Shepherd, the renegade environmental group known for its militant tactics, swept into the Gulf of California in Mexico last week and seized fishing nets killing the critically endangered vaquita porpoise. All with the express permission of the Mexican government. The vaquita is in such dire straitsfewer than 100 survivethat the Mexican government readily approved requests from Sea Shepherd to help enforce a ban on gillnets that are ensnaring the small porpoise. It took the crew of the Sea Shepherd vessel Farley Mowat more than six hours on Friday to pull in 1.5 miles of net, which had already killed 60 dogfish sharks, two species of protected hammerhead sharks, and other shark species. Many gillnets target another endangered speciesthe totoabaa large fish whose swim bladder is a sought-after delicacy in China. But the nets also catch the vaquita, leading Mexican officials to ban the use of the nets for two years across 5,000 square miles in the northern Gulf of California. RELATED: This Could Be the Last Chance to Save Mexico's Vaquita Porpoise From Extinction Oona Layolle, captain of the Farley Mowat, said the net had likely been in the water for several days before the crew discovered it. Layolle saw sea lions eating totoaba trapped in the gillnet as the crew loaded the net onto the ship. The Farley Mowat, a 110-foot former U.S. Coast Guard vessel, joined Sea Shepherds research vessel, the Martin Sheen, this month as part of the groups Operation Milagro II, to protect the vaquita. Conservation groups such as Sea Shepherd and Greenpeace have been working with Mexican officials to patrol vaquita habitat. On Jan. 1, the Mexican Navy granted Sea Shepherd permission to locate and seize gillnets illegally set inside the preserve. Vaquitas are the smallest member of the porpoise family, and have been listed as critically endangered in the U.S. and Mexico since 1996. In recent years, increasing demand for totoaba bladders has led to more gillnets in vaquita territory. Scientists estimate that the porpoise population has fallen from 200 porpoises in 2012 to 97 today. Story continues Totoaba bladders can fetch as much as $3,800 a pound on the market in Hong Kong, while anglers only face fines of around $500 and no jail time if they are caught with the fish. Lorenzo Rojas-Bracho, a research scientist who leads the international vaquita recovery team, told TakePart in December that the Mexican Congress is working on legislation that would put punishment for totoaba fishing and smuggling on par with cocaine trafficking. Related stories on TakePart: New Study Shows Decline in Endangered Vaquita Population Mexican Poachers Ignore Fishing Ban as the Worlds Most Endangered Porpoise Nears Extinction This Could Be the Last Chance to Save Mexico's Vaquita Porpoise From Extinction Original article from TakePart BELGRADE (Reuters) - Serbia will deny migrants access to its territory unless they plan to seek asylum in Austria or Germany, a government minister was quoted as saying on Wednesday. The ban follows action by Austria, which announced last week it would bar all migrants intending to pass through its northern neighbor Germany to other western European countries. On Wednesday it said it would cap the number of people it allowed to claim asylum this year at less than half last year's figure. Labor Minister Aleksandar Vulin - the Serbian government's pointman for the migrant crisis - said Serbia would respond in kind. "From today ... migrants will not be able to continue their travel (through Serbia) if they have not expressed intention to seek asylum on the territory of Austria or Germany," state news agency Tanjug quoted him as saying. In Zagreb, outgoing Interior Minister Ranko Ostojic said neighboring Croatia would also ask migrants if they intended to seek asylum in Austria or Germany, state news agency Hina quoted him as saying. A new, center-right coalition government takes office in Croatia, the newest European Union member state, later this week. Its officials have said it plans to clamp down on migrant flows in response to any similar action by Germany or Austria. (Reporting and writing by Matt Robinson, additional reporting by Igor Ilic in Zagreb; editing by John Stonestreet) Jihadi John was compassionate with orphans, protective of Muslims, and so generous toward his fellow militants that he once offered his personal concubine to an injured, unmarried friend. At least, thats the account offered in Tuesdays edition of Dabiq, the Islamic States English-language magazine, which confirmed the notorious militants death in a drone strike in November. U.S. officials announced shortly after the strike that they were reasonably certain Jihadi John whose real name was Mohammed Emwazi had been killed, and Tuesdays obituary corroborated those suspicions. In the West, Emwazi gained notoriety after officials identified him to likely be the masked man who appeared in videos threatening and then killing British and American aid workers and journalists, including James Foley and Steven Sotloff. Both were held hostage by the Islamic State and then slowly beheaded on camera by who is believed to be Emwazi. The graphic videos soon became a gruesome calling card of sorts for the group. But conspicuously, Tuesdays edition of Dabiq fails to specifically mention anything about those killings, instead saying only that his harshness towards the kuffar [unbelievers] was manifested through deeds that enraged all the nations, religions, and factions of kufr [unbelievers], the entire world bearing witness to this. The rest of the obituary which includes a full body shot of the British extremist and takes up two pages of the magazine tells how he was radicalized in England, contemplated joining al-Shabab in Somalia, and eventually caught the attention of British intelligence officers. But when he ultimately decided to move to Syria, he did so just days after a British intelligence officer warned him he was being closely monitored. Youre not going anywhere, the magazine claims the officer said said. We are going to be on you like a shadow. Dabiq claims that for two months, Emwazi traveled through Europes marshy farmlands with an unnamed companion, and was stopped by security officials in two different countries. Story continues The articles goal seems to be to paint the jihadi as a rough around the edges fighter with a big heart, even saying that his compassion wasnt witnessed except by those who knew him. It goes on to share anecdotes of his most generous moments, including one that claims after one of his fellow Islamic State fighters died, he would also frequently frequently visit his orphaned son, taking him to the masajid [mosque] and entertaining him with trips out to the park and the zoo, according to the magazine. And after receiving a concubine as a gift, when another militant was injured, he did not hesitate to give her away likewise as a gift to an unmarried injured brother. The Islamic State is understood to have a large-scale system for buying and selling Yazidi and Christian women, then justifying their rapes by calling them unbelievers. The article does not clarify whether the woman in this instance was Yazidi or Christian. Jihadi Johns obituary was not the only tribute in Tuesdays magazine. The foreword also praised Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, the terrorists who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California in December. They proved that they were ready to sacrifice what was dearest to them, the article says, adding they left their baby daughter in the care of others knowing that they likely wouldnt see her again in this life. Image Credit: Screenshot, Dabiq By Maytaal Angel LONDON (Reuters) - Sheffield Forgemasters, one of Britain's oldest steelmakers, plans to cut up to 100 UK steel jobs, it said on Wednesday, in another blow for an industry reeling from tumbling global steel prices and cheap imports. The announcement comes two days after Tata Steel , Britain's largest steelmaker, said it would cut 1,050 jobs in Britain. "This is undoubtedly a long period of industry contraction, with major recovery seemingly still some way in the future," Sheffield Forgemasters CEO Graham Honeyman said. The latest job losses will place further pressure on the government to do more to protect the British steel industry, which is having to contend with EU steel prices at their lowest levels since 2004 . Since October, 5,000 British steel jobs have been axed, equivalent to about a quarter of the sector's workforce. "These significant job losses highlight that there isnt an area of steel that is off limits to the mix of extreme pressures the sector is facing," said Gareth Stace, Director of UK Steel. "Government must act to ensure no further highly skilled jobs are lost." Producing steel profitably in Britain is difficult because of cheap imports, mostly from China, as well as a strong currency, energy costs, soaring business rates and green taxes that are among the highest in the world. (Editing by David Goodman) FREETOWN (Reuters) - Sierra Leone confirmed a new case of Ebola on Wednesday, its second in less than a week, marking a further setback in efforts to end a two-year West African epidemic that has killed more than 11,300 people. Health ministry spokesman Sidi Yahyah Tunis described the new patient as a 38-year-old woman, a relative who had helped care for the earlier victim Mariatu Jalloh. Jalloh died from the disease on Jan. 12, and tested positive for Ebola posthumously. (This version of the story refiles to include omitted word "Leone" in headline) (Reporting by Umaru Fofana; Writing by Joe Bavier; Editing by Mark Heinrich) (Photo by MHA) The Internal Security Department arrested 27 radicalised Bangladeshi nationals who worked in Singapores construction industry between 16 November and 1 December last year. According to a media release by the Ministry of Home Affairs, 26 of them were found to be part of a closed religious study group, which subscribes to extremist beliefs, and teachings of radical ideologies. All of their work passes have been cancelled and they have been repatriated back to Bangladesh. The authorities in their country have been informed of the reason for repatriation. The remaining Bangladeshi national is not part of the group. However, he is currently serving a jail sentence for attempting to leave Singapore illegally after learning about the arrest of the other members. He will be repatriated back to Bangladesh after he has served his sentence. MHA did not specify the length of time for his prison sentence. (Photo by MHA) Besides attempting to leave the country illegally, he was also found to be in the process of being radicalised, supported extremist preachers and possessed jihadi-related material. Members of the closed religious group was found to be supportive of the jihad ideology similar to terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda and Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. They organised weekly meetings to discuss armed jihad and conflicts involving Muslims, and have also targeted the recruitment of other Bangladeshi nationals to grow their membership. Some of the members had thoughts of participating in armed jihad in the Middle East, and supported violent actions of extremists who kill Shiite Muslims, whom they consider as deviant. The ISD also found that the members bore grievances against the Bangladeshi government for its actions against Islamic leaders and groups in their home country. Some of them were encouraged to return to Bangladesh to wage jihad against their government, and send monetary donations to extremist groups in Bangladesh. Story continues MHA added that the Bangladeshis were not planning any terrorist attacks in Singapore. (Photo by MHA) ISD also recovered jihadi-related material like books and videos, including footages of children undergoing training in what looked like terrorist military camps. It also found a document containing graphic images and instructions on how to conduct silent killings using different methods and weapons. (Photo by MHA: Extract from a Bengali softcopy document that was found in the possession of several of the radicalised Bangladeshi nationals. The document, which was saved under the English title Techniques of Silent Killing, depicts in a graphic manner how one can attack and kill with stealth.) Minister in-charge of Muslim Affairs Yaacob Ibrahim said that he is deeply concerned about the arrests. He said on Facebook, I appeal that we be more vigilant, whether against radical teachings and ideologies, or of any suspicious activities around us. At the same time, I hope we will remain united and not resort to discriminating foreign workers here. News of the arrest came just a day after the Minister of Home Affairs K Shanmugam gave a speech about the threat of terrorism in the Southeast Asian region. Religion can be a force for good. Many of our modern societal values are derived from religious beliefs and values. How our societies are structured, laws, morals - indeed civilisation as a whole - owe a lot to religion. But, we have to note another facet about organised religions the role they have played in encouraging intolerance, bigotry, the denial of anothers right to pray to a different God, he said in his speech. In response to the arrests, the Mufti from the Islamic Religious Authority of Singapore (MUIS) denounced extremist beliefs. Mufti Mohammed Fatris Bakaram said, The safety and peace of Singapore is of paramount interest to the Singapore Muslim community. We have a commendable tradition of living as inclusive and progressive Muslims within the context of Singapores multi-ethnic and multi-religious landscape. MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Twice Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova was sent tumbling out of the Australian Open in the second round by Daria Gavrilova on Wednesday, stunned 6-4 6-4 by the 21-year-old local. The sixth seed, a semi-finalist at Melbourne Park four years ago, made 35 unforced errors and was broken five times in the 89-minute contest, to the delight of the partisan crowd on Margaret Court Arena. Kvitova rallied to save a match point and break back for 5-4 in the final set but Gavrilova claimed the victory when the world number seven went long with a forehand in the next game. Powerful Czech Kvitova suffered from glandula fever last year and pulled out of the Australian Open warm-up events in Shenzhen and Sydney with a gastro-intestinal illness. She did not blame ill health for her defeat though. "I think she played a really good game today and did what she needed to do," she told reporters. "I felt a little bit tired on court today and my serve didn't want to work. I felt a bit weird but I'm not sick anymore, well, maybe in the head," she laughed. Moscow-born Gavrilova, who paired up with Nick Kyrgios to win the Hopman Cup for Australia at the start of the year, will play France's Kristina Mladenovic in her first trip to the third round at a grand slam. (Editing by Alison Williams) JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African iron ore and manganese producer Assore said on Wednesday it expected half-year profit to fall by almost half due to softer commodity prices. Headline earnings per share - which strips out certain one-off items - are seen falling to between 5.31 and 6.51 rand for the six months through December from 9.59 rand a year earlier. Prices for iron ore dropped 38 percent during the period, Assore said in a statement. The steel-making ingredient has been hammered by oversupply concerns and fears of slowing growth in main consumer China. Chinese iron ore futures fell on Wednesday, with worries about oversupply of the commodity offsetting expectations that steel mills could pick up production. Top global miner BHP Billiton said on Wednesday it saw no recovery in iron ore prices in the next few years. Assore shares fell as much as 9 percent before recouping losses to trade 3 percent higher at 72 rand by 1105 GMT. (Reporting by Thekiso Anthony Lefifi; Editing by Mark Potter) JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Kumba Iron Ore has told South Africa's National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) it will issue lay-off notices this year if low prices persist for the steel-making ingredient, the union's general secretary said on Wednesday. "The price has put them in dire straights and there is a prospect of them issuing a Section 189 notice at Sishen mine," NUM General Secretary David Sipunzi told Reuters. He was referring to the regulatory process South African employers must follow before they lay off staff. "They have been trying to sensitise us to this possibility. If the price remains like this for a few months they will have no choice but to issue a Section 189," he said. Officials from Kumba were not immediately available for comment. The group has said it plans to reconfigure its Sishen mine, the largest iron ore operation in Africa, and was targeting 2016 production there of 26 million tonnes, down from a previous guidance of 36 million tonnes. Lay-offs are a politically thorny issue in South Africa, where the jobless rate is around 25 percent and local elections are expected this year. The NUM is also a key political ally of the ruling African National Congress (ANC). Sipunzi said he expected to see more lay-off notices this year from other sectors but the union wanted to work with companies to find ways to minimise job cuts. In line with other commodities, prices for iron ore have been sliding due to oversupply and and slowing economic growth in China, the world's bigest metals consumer. Mining giant BHP Billiton said on Wednesday that it saw no recovery in iron ore or coal prices in the next few years. (Reporting by Ed Stoddard; Editing by James Macharia) On Sunday, minimum-wage earners in Charleston, South Carolina, rallied outside the venue where the three remaining Democratic contenders would take the stage for the final debate before the 2016 presidential primaries. Backed by the national Fight for 15 movement, the crowd comprised fast food, home care, child care and other workers who currently pull in the state's hourly base rate of $7.25 per hour. Their challenge to the candidates? "Come and get my vote" by supporting a $15 minimum wage nationwide. "You can't just say you're with us and not take action," one demonstrating fast food worker, Rachel Nelson, told ThinkProgress. "If they want to be elected as president, if they want my vote and the vote of millions of struggling voters here, they need to get on the right side of history and show me that they're standing by us in our fight for $15 an hour and union rights." At the start of 2016, 14 states agreed to raise their minimum hourly pay rates, but South Carolina wasn't among them. The South Carolina Minimum Wage Increase Question may appear on the state's 2016 ballot in November. If passed, it would raise the minimum wage one dollar, meaning that the workers who went on strike Sunday would earn either $8.25 or $16.25 in 2017, depending on whom the nation elects as president. Which is why hundreds of Charleston's low-wage earners walked out of their jobs Sunday and joined the Fight for 15 protest. The South Carolina city is a snapshot of a larger trend within the U.S., as the minimum wage question becomes a decisive factor in the 2016 election. According to USA Today, 48 million people nationwide make less than $15 per hour and would be more inclined to cast their ballots in November if the candidates supported a pay hike. Presidential hopefuls in both parties are paying attention. Former Secretary of State and Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton wants to raise the federal base rate to an hourly $12, and supports organized movements, including Fight for 15, to boost the wage in states and cities. Both Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley support a $15 minimum wage and workers' right to unionize. O'Malley introduced what he calls a "workers bill of rights" on Thursday, and Sanders introduced $15 federal minimum wage legislation in July. He's also nudged President Barack Obama to back Fight for 15. The Republican party is less amenable to raising the federal rate. At the November debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin outside which Fight for 15 had staged a demonstration real estate mogul Donald Trump, former neurosurgeon Ben Carson and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio all said no to a wage increase. In December, however, Trump changed his tune in response to an allegation by Sanders that the Democratic frontrunner thought the minimum wage should stay where it was. "Wages are too low," he tweeted. Wages in are country are too low, good jobs are too few, and people have lost faith in our leaders.We need smart and strong leadership now! A South Carolina Republican wants to send a signal to members of the press: We're watching you. On Tuesday, South Carolina state Rep. Michael A. Pitts introduced legislation that would require all journalists throughout the state to appear on a formal registry as well as establish "requirements" as to who may write for media outlets. A summary of the proposed "South Carolina Responsible Journalism Registry Law" on the state legislature's website says the bill will "establish requirements for persons before working as a journalist for a media outlet and for media outlets before hiring a journalist ... require the establishment and operation of a responsible journalism registry by the South Carolina secretary of state's office ... [and] authorize registry fees." Most ominously, the legislation would also "establish fines and criminal penalties for violation of the chapter." South Carolina Responsible Journalism Registry bill introduced today in the House. Would include criminal penalties. pic.twitter.com/0CND0Gd6Tc https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CZGj7z4VAAAMafO.jpg:large It remains unclear what journalistic behavior the law seeks to sanction and how stringent penalties for violations would be although Pitts hinted at what his proposal tends to accomplish in an interview with the Post and Courier: He proposed the law after seeing biased media coverage of Second Amendment issues in the press. "It strikes me as ironic that the first question is constitutionality from a press that has no problem demonizing firearms," Pitts said. "With this statement I'm talking primarily about printed press and TV. The TV stations, the six o'clock news and the printed press has no qualms demonizing gun owners and gun ownership." Story continues Meanwhile, the director of the South Carolina Press Association, Bill Rogers, told the Post and Courier that Pitts' bill was, quite simply, "outrageous and unconstitutional." And journalists have also taken issue with the proposal. On Twitter, the Post and Courier's Andrew Knapp suggested it would be a constitutional breach. Good thing journalists already have a pretty good law on their side (RE: SC Responsible Journalism Registry bill). pic.twitter.com/HB6PVYL69L https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CZGsAcGUAAEtGdo.jpg:large Pitts made news last July when, in the wake of a white supremacist terror attack at an African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina, the representative offered a long, impassioned and rambling defense of the Confederate battle flag days before the state legislature voted for its removal. Pitts did not return several calls for comment from Mic. Thousands have been killed, maimed, and displaced over the last two years in what a new United Nations report characterized as the untold suffering of Iraqi civilians. The report, released Tuesday, provides some staggering figures related to the horrors of life in Iraq in the time of ISIS. According to the UN, between the start of 2014 and October 31 of last year, 18,802 Iraqis were killed, 36,245 were wounded, 3.2 million were displaced, and 3,500 others, mainly women and children, have been enslaved by Islamic State fighters. Worst of all, perhaps, the issuers of the report fear that their estimates may be low and that their assessments of the carnage, which were collected by the UN from interviews with survivors and witnesses, may not fully reflect the situation. The charges of systematic violence mainly focus on Islamic State activityone grim entry in an attached glossary involves the acronym SVBIED for suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices. Stories from the collected testimonies involve abuses including the killing of women who refused to have sex with ISIS fighters, the public bulldozing of a crowd, drownings, decapitations, and the killing and abduction of minorities. Recommended: The U.S.-Iran Conflict That Never Happened In June, three men, two young men, and a 60-year-old man were reportedly thrown off a building in Mosul for alleged homosexual acts. Later that month: On 21 June, in Mosul, Ninewa, it was reported that ISIL had announced a Quran memorization competition in Mosul on the occasion of Ramadan, stating that the first three winners would reportedly receive sex slaves as prizes. These acts may, in some instances, amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide, the UN report noted. However, the UN also cites acts of violence committed by Iraqi security forces, anti-ISIS militiamen, Kurdish forces. Story continues All told, the figures, however low they may be, show a terrible return to levels of violence not seen in Iraq since the height of Sunni-Shia conflagration in 2006-2007 when more than 50,000 Iraqis died. The UN report was accompanied by a small piece of good news on Tuesday. Owing to the ongoing international campaign, which has recently liberated the city of Ramadi and targeted the Islamic State capital of Raqqa in Syria, ISIS has reportedly cut the pay of its fighters in half. Read more from The Atlantic: This article was originally published on The Atlantic. Davos (Switzerland) (AFP) - "House of Cards" star Kevin Spacey said Wednesday his new role as a studio boss made him doubly fearful that material could be destroyed or leaked in a repeat of the Sony Pictures hack last year. "Obviously the Sony hack was a wake-up call for anyone in my industry, and I would think for anyone in any industry," Spacey told a debate on cybersecurity at the gathering of the rich and powerful in a Swiss ski resort that also featured Wikipedia's founder and the creator of the World Wide Web. "It caused a tremendous amount of damage, I was personally affected by it and obviously it became the point of a great amount of controversy and issues of how does a company go about protecting itself," he said. Spacey said he had to change his email address after his conversations with Sony were released by WikiLeaks following the massive hack that involved the release of stolen data including many still-to-be-released films, and also revealed an executive's unflattering comments about Angelina Jolie. Taking over as head of Relativity Studios two weeks ago had made him acutely aware of the dangers of content being released against its creator's will. He said: "For me now, the issue of content protection, and protection of intellectual property is even more important. "From the artist's point of view, a person's IP is their identity, it is what they hold dear, it is the way we know their work. "We hope that as things go forward, artists will be able to protect that identity and they'll be able to get the kind of credit they deserve." Tim Berners-Lee, the Briton who created the first web page 25 years ago, told the debate in Davos that the problems facing those seeking to protect the Internet were immense. "No matter how smart you think you have been, there is always someone out there being paid a lot of money to figure out where you have slipped up," he said. Jimmy Wales, who founded the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, urged companies and states to start spending "big money" to secure their systems. But he also called for security systems to be "inter-operable", using the theoretical example of a fridge only able to cool one brand of cola and not another. By Irene Preisinger KREUTH, Germany (Reuters) - Germany said on Wednesday Austria's decision to cap the number of refugees it will let in and tighten border controls was "not helpful" to German efforts to negotiate a European Union-wide solution to the migrant crisis and ensure Turkey's support. Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke during a meeting with her conservative allies in Bavaria, the state bordering Austria that serves as an entry point for virtually all migrants heading to Germany, two members of the Bavarian party told Reuters. Merkel is under popular pressure to cap migrant arrivals that last year reached 1.1 million, reducing her popularity and fuelling support for an anti-immigration populist party. She wants to stem the influx by improving conditions at Syrian refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan, giving Turkey aid in exchange for a crackdown on people smugglers responsible for the passage into Europe of many of the migrants from that country, and distributing refugees across the EU based on a quota system. Her efforts have produced little tangible results to calm critics at home, including her Christian Social Union coalition ally in Bavaria who want her to reverse her open-door policy for refugees and shut Germany's borders. Some 3,000 migrants continue to stream over the border from Austria on average each day and if the trend continues Germany will have over a million more asylum seekers by the end of 2016. Two members of the CSU who attended the meeting with Merkel in Kreuth near Munich said she had criticized Austria's decision to limit the number of people allowed to claim asylum there this year at less than half the 2015 total of 90,000. CSU leader Horst Seehofer said after the talks with Merkel that his party did not believe the chancellor would be able to broker a solution on the European level any time soon. "Today was disappointing," he told ARD television. "There was no trace of a concession. Tough politics await us in the next weeks and months." He added: "We don't believe that in the near future a solution will be found in Europe to limit the number of refugees. Therefore we as Germans have to act now." Speaking at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel said that Austria's decision was a "cry for help" from Europe. Gabriel, who serves as Merkel's deputy in a right-left coalition government, added that there was only a broad EU solution to the refugee crisis and that closing borders across the continent would lead to an "economic catastrophe". INTERIM CONCLUSIONS AT EU SUMMIT Merkel has expressed fear that shutting borders across Europe's Schengen zone of passport-free travel would menace the very existence of the euro common currency and EU single market. Eastern European EU members wary of immigration are loath to help Germany, Austria and Sweden, which have taken in a huge majority of migrants. France, where the anti-immigrant National Front is on the rise, has also been cool to refugee quotas. Austria's decision came on the same day as Serbia's announcement that it would deny migrants access to its territory unless they plan to seek asylum in Austria or Germany. Arriving at the CSU meeting, Merkel said her government would bring new proposals on tackling the refugee crisis to an EU summit in mid-February. "Then we can draw an interim conclusion, then another interim conclusion, and then we will see where we stand," she said. Merkel's open-door refugee policy, and her insistence that Germany can cope with last year's influx, has strained local infrastructures and divided her conservatives. Mass sexual attacks on women in Cologne and other German cities at New Year that have been largely blamed on young migrant men have deepened public scepticism about her policy. Support for Merkel, long her conservative bloc's main electoral asset, dropped 4 points to 44 percent if a theoretical presidential-style vote were to be held in Germany, a poll showed on Wednesday. Nonetheless, Merkel remains way ahead of her Social Democrat (SPD) rival Gabriel, who was up 1 point at 16 percent. Merkel's conservatives share power with the SPD in a "grand coalition". (Additional reporting by Noah Barkin in Davos, Madeline Chambers and Paul Carrel in Berlin; Writing by Joseph Nasr; Editing by Mark Heinrich) GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations Special Envoy for Syria said on Wednesday that peace talks might not start as planned in Geneva on Jan. 25th but that major powers must maintain diplomatic pressure on the warring sides to come to the table. Staffan de Mistura, in an interview on CNN from the Swiss resort of Davos, said he would know on Sunday whether the negotiations could start the next day, but added that they had to be "serious talks about peace" linked to "concrete demonstrations" such as ceasefires and aid convoys. "I believe we can start talks, perhaps not on the 25th (of January), but we need to maintain the pressure and the momentum," he said. He said he believed Russia, Syria's ally which has been bombing rebel positions for months, had a strong interest in not being embroiled for too long in the conflict. Despite their rift, Iran and Saudi Arabia "probably realize that the time has come to try to find a political solution (on Syria) which will be a compromise", de Mistura said. (Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Gareth Jones) Davos (Switzerland) (AFP) - Rising risks to the global economy and a string of jihadist attacks around the world overshadowed Wednesday's opening of an annual meeting of the rich and powerful in a snow-blanketed Swiss ski resort. The Taliban assault on a university in Pakistan that left at least 21 dead was a jolt to the billionaires, business titans and leaders, including Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, gathering in the Swiss Alpine village of Davos. The heightened security threat was starkly in evidence in Davos itself, with police carrying machine-guns patrolling the streets and concrete blast blocks positioned in front of key venues. Fears over the obstacles facing major emerging economies were on everyone's lips at the annual gathering after the International Monetary Fund lowered its outlook for global economic growth this year. The slowdown in Chinese growth was especially darkening the mood of policymakers after Beijing announced that gross domestic product expanded at its slowest in a quarter of a century last year. "The big event that I think has captured everyone's attention is the developments in China and in particular the fact that growth is slowing," IHS chief economist Nariman Behravesh told AFP. The Chinese policymakers have "fumbled", he said. "They have made some mistakes. And they have added to the uncertainty and the volatility by their behaviour." China's problems will be discussed by the Davos delegates -- "but they won't say it in public, they will say it in the hallways," Behravesh said, noting that "the public Davos is a little different than the private Davos." That is exactly why 2,500 movers and shakers make their annual pilgrimage here -- to air the biggest issues. The foreign ministers of two countries deep in conflict -- Saudi Arabia and Iran -- are attending, although a public meeting is considered unlikely. Business leaders heard Wednesday of the rising threat prosed by cyber attacks. Story continues "These weapons, and they are weapons, are moving towards a level of mass destruction," said James Stavridis, who was NATO supreme allied commander for Europe from 2009-13 and is now dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in the United States. Stavridis said the world over time would need an international regime to prevent mass cyber attacks, just as it has for nuclear weapons, and he pressed major cyber powers such as the United States, China and Russia to start one-on-one talks to curb the threat. "We cannot afford to stumble into a cyber cold war but I fear that is where we are headed," he said. - Migrant furore in focus - The former military chief warned, too, of heightened tensions in Asia following North Korea's January 6 nuclear test. "We have a young leader there who is very unstable and it is in the middle of this cauldron of tension between Japan, China, South Korea to some degree, North Korea, " he said. "I see that pot bubbling and I worry about that a great deal." US Vice President Joe Biden is due to speak later on Wednesday, laying out his vision of the challenges facing the global economy. The flow of hundreds of thousands of migrants to Europe last year is the other theme running through this year's Davos. German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel and Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven will debate Wednesday on how to integrate migrants, at a time when the fallout from the New Year's Eve sex attacks in Cologne threatens Germany's open-armed approach to refugees. Later in the week, leftist Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras locks horns once again with his bete noire, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble. On Thursday, Argentine President Mauricio Macri will make his first appearance at Davos since his election in November, setting out his case for economic reform in a country with a turbulent recent past. Also on Thursday, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari is expected to face questions about his handling of the Boko Haram insurgency in Africa's most populous country. Oscar contender Leonardo DiCaprio, a long-time environmental campaigner, used his appearance at Tuesday's opening ceremonies to urge leaders to keep the commitments they made at last year's UN climate talks in Paris to limit global warming and curb fossil fuel use. "Our planet cannot be saved unless we leave fossil fuels in the ground where they belong. Twenty years ago we described this problem as an addiction, today we possess the means to end this reliance," he said. By Jon Herskovitz AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Texas plans on Wednesday to execute a man convicted of strangling a female impersonator in Houston in 2001 and then stealing the victim's car. Richard Masterson, 43, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at 6 p.m. at the state's death chamber in Huntsville. If the execution goes ahead, it will be the state's first this year and the 532nd in Texas since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, the most of any state. There were 13 executions last year in Texas, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which monitors capital punishment in the United States. Lawyers for Masterson have launched appeals with the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the execution, saying his due process rights were violated and that Texas presented false and misleading evidence regarding the death of Darin Honeycutt, 35, who went by the stage name of Brandi Houston. Lawyers for Masterson said there was no struggle, no murder and no evidence indicating their client acted with violent intent. They also questioned the credibility of the medical examiner who called the death a homicide. "The State's theory at the trial was that Petitioner strangled complainant during the course of a robbery. Petitioner has never denied that he restricted the complainants airflow, but only that it occurred during a consensual sexual encounter," lawyers for Masterson said in a court filing. Texas prosecutors said that after Masterson killed Honeycutt, he left the state in the victim's car, which was found days later in Georgia being driven by a nephew of Masterson. After fleeing to Florida, Masterson met a man in a bar frequented by gay men. The two went to the apartment of the Florida man and Masterson placed him a headlock, trying to strangle him, prosecutors said. The man passed out and when he regained consciousness, he found that his car and wallet were gone, authorities said. Story continues A Florida police officer ran across the stolen car at a mobile home park, which led to Masterson's arrest. At his trial in 2002, Masterson, who has a long criminal record, did not admit to the murder. He took the stand and said he was a danger to society, daring jurors to sentence him to death, which they did. (Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Peter Cooney) By Elizabeth Pineau and Leigh Thomas PARIS (Reuters) - Three suspected al Qaeda attackers involved in an assault on a hotel and cafe in Burkina Faso's capital that killed 30 people at the weekend were still being sought on Tuesday, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said. Three gunmen were killed in a French and U.S.-assisted operation by Burkina security forces to retake the Splendid Hotel and surrounding buildings following the Friday night attack, which targeted an area popular with foreigners. Eight Burkinabes, six Canadians, three Ukrainians and three French citizens were among the dead. Other bodies are still in the process of being identified. "Of the six assailants, three were killed and three others are still being sought," Valls said in remarks before the French parliament, adding that the attack on Ouagadougou was a reminder of a similar attack in Paris in November. "This attack was claimed by AQIM. This is further proof that this group is dangerous." Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) on Monday identified three fighters it says were responsible for the attacks, giving their names as al-Battar al-Ansari, Abu Muhammad al-Buqali al-Ansari and Ahmed al-Fulani al-Ansari. The French troops involved in the operation against the attackers were part of a 200-strong force stationed in the country as part of a regional anti-militant operation. AQIM claimed a similar attack on the Radisson Blu hotel in Mali's capital Bamako that killed 20 people in November. Some witnesses however reported seeing more attackers. Security forces responding at the scene of events initially believed they were facing a team of 12 gunmen. Gendarmes at the time said they believed at least two assailants were women. "The investigation is moving forward. Eleven French police and gendarmes are assisting Burkinabe experts with the identification of bodies. There are also five American FBI agents," Burkina Security Minister Simon Compaore said. ARRESTS Authorities in Ouagadougou have already made a number of arrests though some had since been released, said Foreign Minister Alpha Barry. "In this kind of situation we pick up everyone who could resemble the suspects and then, bit by bit, we verify," he said. Leaders from Burkina and Mali have agreed to work more closely to fight jihadists by sharing intelligence and conducting joint security patrols. Heavily armed security agents on Saturday raided the Ouagadougou home of Mossa Ag Attaher, spokesman for the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) - a Malian Tuareg rebel group. He was questioned but later released. "What kept coming up was 'Do you have information on imminent threats to Burkina? Does the MNLA have links with those threatening Burkina?'" Ag Attaher told French radio RFI, adding that he had denied any connection to the attack. Burkina authorities also arrested Adal Rhoubeid, a politician from Niger who is running for president this year. "Rhoubeid was in the wrong place at the wrong time and there's no doubt he will be freed," said a source close to his family. Both men are Tuaregs, a nomadic people based in Saharan parts of Niger, Mali and Algeria. A photograph of one of the attackers released by AQIM showed a man of light-skinned appearance, suggesting he was Tuareg or Arab. Barry would not comment on the arrest, but an intelligence official in Niger said Rhoubeid had been picked up when he returned to the Splendid Hotel, where he had been staying, to collect his belongings. Earlier on Tuesday, French President Francois Holland paid homage to French photographer Leila Alaoui, who was in Burkina Faso for a report on women's rights for Amnesty International. Alaoui succumbed to injuries sustained during the attack, becoming the 30th fatality. (Additional reporting by Abdoulaye Massalaki and Souleymane Ag Anara in Niamey, Mathieu Bonkoungou in Ouagadougou; Writing by Joe Bavier) By Jibran Ahmad and Mehreen Zahra-Malik CHARSADDA, Pakistan/ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Armed militants stormed a university in volatile northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing at least 20 people and wounding dozens a little more than a year after the massacre of 134 students at a school in the area, officials said. A senior Pakistani Taliban commander claimed responsibility for the assault in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, but an official spokesman later denied involvement, calling the attack "un-Islamic". The violence nevertheless shows that militants retain the ability to launch attacks, despite a country-wide anti-terrorism crackdown and a military campaign against their strongholds along the lawless border with Afghanistan. A security official said the death toll could rise to as high as 40 at Bacha Khan University in the city of Charsadda. The army said it had concluded operations to clear the campus six hours after the attack began, and that four gunmen were dead. A spokesman for rescue workers, Bilal Ahmad Faizi, said 19 bodies had been recovered including students, guards, policemen and at least one teacher, named by media as chemistry professor Syed Hamid Husain. Husain reportedly shot back at the gunmen with a pistol to allow his students to flee. Many of the dead were apparently shot in the head execution-style, TV footage showed. The militants, using the cover of thick, wintry fog, scaled the walls of the university on Wednesday morning before entering buildings and opening fire on students and teachers in classrooms and hostels, police said. Students told media they saw several young men wielding AK-47 guns storming the university housing where many students were sleeping. "They came from behind and there was a big commotion," an unnamed male student told a news channel from a hospital bed in Charsadda's District Hospital. "We were told by teachers to leave immediately. Some people hid in bathrooms." Thirty five of the wounded remain in hospital, a local police official said late on Wednesday. CONTRADICTING CLAIMS The gunmen attacked as the university prepared to host a poetry recital on Wednesday afternoon to commemorate the death anniversary of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a popular ethnic Pashtun independence activist after whom the university is named. Vice Chancellor Fazal Rahim told reporters that the university teaches over 3,000 students and was hosting an additional 600 visitors for the poetry recital. Umar Mansoor, a senior Pakistani Taliban commander involved in the December 2014 attack on the army school in Peshawar, claimed responsibility for the Charsadda assault and said it involved four of his men. He told Reuters by telephone the university was targeted because it was a government institution that supported the army. However, later in the day, official Taliban spokesman Muhammad Khorasani issued a written statement disassociating the militants from the attack, calling it un-Islamic. "Youth who are studying in non-military institutions, we consider them as builders of the future nation and we consider their safety and protection our duty," the statement said. The reason for the conflicting claims was not immediately clear. While the Taliban leadership is fractured, Mansoor is believed to remain loyal to central leader Mullah Fazlullah. The Pakistani Taliban are fighting to topple the government and install a strict interpretation of Islamic law. They are loosely allied with the Afghan Taliban who ruled most of Afghanistan until they were overthrown by U.S.-backed military action in 2001. By afternoon on Wednesday, the military said all four gunmen had been killed. "The operation is over and the university has been cleared," Pakistan army spokesman General Asim Bajwa said. A security official close to the operation said he had seen the four gunmen's bodies riddled with bullets. He said none of the gunmen was wearing a suicide vest, but they carried guns and grenades. RUMORS OF ATTACK Television footage showed military vehicles packed with soldiers driving into the campus as helicopters buzzed overhead and ambulances lined up outside the main gate while anxious parents consoled each other. Shabir Khan, a lecturer in the English department, said he was about to leave his university housing for the department when firing began. "Most of the students and staff were in classes when the firing began," Khan said. Several schools had closed early at the weekend around Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, after rumors circulated of a possible attack. The area has been on edge since the December 2014 massacre by six gunmen in Peshawar. Pakistan, which has suffered from years of jihadist militant violence, has killed and arrested hundreds of suspected militants under a major crackdown launched afterwards. The Peshawar school attack was seen as having hardened Pakistan's resolve to fight militants along its lawless border with Afghanistan. "We are determined and resolved in our commitment to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland," Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said in a statement after Wednesday's attack. (Additional reporting by Saud Mehsud. Writing by Tommy Wilkes and Kay Johnson; Editing by Nick Macfie) London (AFP) - Glasgow flanker Ryan Wilson escaped a suspension on Wednesday after being cleared of grabbing the testicles of Northampton scrum-half Lee Dickson in a European Cup tie. Scotland back-row forward Wilson, 26, had been cited for the alleged offence in Northampton's 19-15 European Champions Cup victory on Sunday but had the complaint against him dismissed in a disciplinary hearing in London. Wilson pleaded not guilty to the offence, with independent judicial officer Simon Thomas effectively throwing out the case. Wilson, overlooked for the Six Nations, could have faced a minimum 12-week ban had he been found guilty of the offence, but is now free to return to action without delay. Paris (AFP) - The world is about to go all baggy. As stock markets tumble and economists talk of more tightening of belts, fashion has gone supersized, with Paris catwalks overflowing Wednesday with outsized overcoats and baggy trousers. If the first day of the menswear catwalks shows is anything to go by, men will be flapping around in too-long trousers and enormous ankle-length coats when the new autumn-winter designs hit the shops in six months' time. Most of the models in Off-White's show looked as if they had borrowed their big brother's clothes or were auditioning for a remake of the video of British ska band Madness' 1980 hit "Baggy Trousers". - Badass sleep suits - American designer Virgil Abloh, fashion guru to the rapper Kanye West, went for long flowing greatcoats and bomber jackets with hands lost inside long sleeves, and a series of huge overcoats that could double as man-sized badass baby sleep suits. And former Dior darling Raf Simons, who left for his own label in October, took the supersize trend to still greater extremes with humongous hoodies and jumpers large enough to shelter a small family and their pets. Even the usually restrained Parisian label Lemaire was in on the new look, mixing its classic restrained collection with boxy coats that go below knee and long baggy pants that are likely to fray on the pavement behind you. Newcomers OAMC tried to give the supersize look a snarling street wise twist in their debut show, with big parkas paired with short baggy trousers and boots. Their skinhead models played at being gang members, insulting the audience who were forced to stand -- "Fils de pute!" (sons of whores) -- in between shouting out the brand's name. - Hippy dippy - In the face of such brazen bad manners Valentino was all perfect lines and grooming. But mid-show its design duo Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli suddenly went all hippy with ponchos and rancher sheepskin jackets before going south of the border with black tailored suits with white stitching that channelled both the Mexican Day of the Dead and Cockney pearly kings. Story continues The joyous highlight of the day, however, was the Belgian Walter Van Beirendonck's riotously inventive show "Woest", which means furious in his native Flemish. With felt scarves with cuddly toys at one end and Kalashnikov rifle or chainsaw shapes at the other, van Beirendonck was clearly inspired by the terror attacks and migrant crisis shaking Europe. - Papa Smurf - Looking like a cross between Papa Smurf and a pirate with his full grey beard, orange bobble hat and pearl earrings, the designer told AFP the scarves were "like dolls. We wanted to create kind of puppets. We feel today like we are puppets and other people are pulling the strings. It is a mixture of very sweet things and very aggressive things which is what the world is like now. "What has happened in the last year has been really depressing," he added. "Everyone has the feeling the world is really fucked up and that things are out of control. The migrants, the attacks and the crime... It's tough." - Stop to terror - Using bold primary colours and some eye catching mixes of ethnic, Amerindian and leopard skin motifs, van Beirendonck also went big and baggy but opted for shorter flared trousers, the better to show off his multi-coloured high-heeled Oxford shoes. Emblazoned across the chest of one see-through sweater was the message "Stop terrorizing our world." "Even the hardest things in life I try to transfer into the most colourful fabrics," he said. "I don't want to create doom." ANKARA (Reuters) - A Turkish court on Wednesday sentenced a female teacher to almost a year in prison for making a rude gesture at President Tayyip Erdogan at a political rally in 2014, local media reports said on Wednesday. Insulting public officials is a crime in Turkey, and Erdogan, the country's most popular but most divisive politician, is seen by his critics as intolerant of dissent and quick to take legal action over perceived slurs. After a rally in the Aegean city of Izmir in 2014 when he was prime minister, Erdogan lashed out at the female teacher and said she made a gesture at him that typified the rudeness of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP). "Today as I was arriving (there was) a woman on a balcony," he said. "She made such an ugly gesture with her hand. There you go, that is the CHP. I mean the country's prime minister is passing by and you make that gesture with your hand and arm." The teacher, who pleaded not guilty at the hearing, will serve 11 months and 20 days in jail, the Dogan news agency said. Earlier this week, lawyers for Erdogan filed a lawsuit against the main opposition leader for saying that Erdogan was a dictator, presidential sources and the opposition party said. Last week he urged prosecutors to investigate scores of academics for signing a declaration criticizing military action in the mainly Kurdish southeast of Turkey. Last Friday Turkish security forces briefly detained 27 academics accused of terrorist propaganda. Erdogan denounced the more than 1,000 signatories of the petition, who include U.S. academic Noam Chomsky, as "dark, nefarious and brutal". Erdogan, who has dominated Turkish politics for more than a decade, first as prime minister and since 2014 as its first popularly elected president, has sued a number of people in the past, including cartoonists, teenagers and a former Miss Turkey winner. (Writing by Ece Toksabay; Editing by David Dolan and Hugh Lawson) Mad Dogs starts off as a lark four guys head to Belize to visit a longtime friend, whose success has allowed him to buy a beachfront villa and enjoy a laid-back lifestyle. But their buddys life is not stress-free, as it turns out, and the group holiday quickly turns into a collective nightmare. Unfortunately, the experience of watching Mad Dogs contains echoes of what the characters experience. Despite a strong cast, the Amazon drama quickly devolves into a series of tiresome squabbles, mistakes and annoyances. Perhaps this version, adapted from a British program, would have been better off as a film. Ultimately, its difficult to picture anyone wanting to binge-watch a 10-episode show that ends up being quite predictable. Director Charles McDougall wrings the maximum potential from the shows locations (though the story is set in Belize, Mad Dogs was shot in Puerto Rico). Michael Imperioli, Romany Malco, Steve Zahn and Ben Chaplin play the four friends who arrive at the sunny mansion owned by their friend, Milo (Billy Zane). The first episode does a fine job of depicting the subtle tensions and quiet animosities that lurk just below the surface of the friendships, and McDougall capably injects a growing atmosphere of menace into the proceedings. Despite the appearance of ease and luxury, all is not well with Milo, who may be mixed up in something complicated and dangerous. After that relatively engrossing first episode, however, things quickly becomes repetitive, and despite the actors game investment in the material, its difficult to care much about a group of middle-aged men who constantly snipe at each other and do a fine job of getting themselves in deeper trouble every time they try to dig themselves out of a bad situation. The circular nature of the overall story is the biggest problem in Mad Dogs: Once its clear that every attempt to undo previous mistakes will only land the men in deeper trouble and that basic scenario keeps playing out over and over it becomes challenging to stick with the show. There are fine dialogue scenes here, in which the men pick at old wounds and examine the ways in which their lives did not match the expectations they had when they were younger, and full of optimism and energy. But ultimately, even the themes of disappointment and regret dont coalesce into gripping character studies. These are simply a collection of more or less unremarkable men in over their heads, who tend to follow bad decisions with even worse reasoning. Watching them try to dig themselves out of the complications they create for themselves is hardly a mental holiday; its alternately stressful and repetitive. Related stories Amazon's 'Mad Dogs' to Launch Jan. 22 for Prime Members Amazon Greenlights 5 Series, Renews 'Mozart in the Jungle' for Season 2 Netflix Orders Music Drama 'The Get Down' From Baz Luhrmann, Shawn Ryan By Lawrence Hurley WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court took aim on Wednesday at a U.S. government regulation that banned an Alaska moose hunter from riding his hovercraft through a conservation area in a case that touches upon simmering tensions over federal control of public lands. Long-time hunter John Sturgeon contends the federal government cannot prevent him from traveling through the federal Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve on his hovercraft to access moose-hunting grounds. At issue is whether the U.S. National Park Service has the authority to issue a regulation than bans hovercraft use, a legal question that could have implications for other park service regulations including limits on oil and gas extraction. Sturgeon was traveling on the Nation River in 2007 when park service rangers detained him and said he could not use his hovercraft. He contends the regulation has no force because the river is owned by the state of Alaska, which allows hovercraft. People in some parts of the country, especially the West, have complained about too much federal control of public lands. The cause was embraced by armed protesters who on Jan. 2 took over buildings at a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon and continue to occupy them. The state of Alaska filed court papers supporting Sturgeon, saying that in a 1980 law the U.S. Congress specifically limited park service jurisdiction over land within a conservation area that is not federally owned. The rule banning hovercraft, which travel on a cushion of air, has been in place since 1996. During Wednesday's oral arguments, none of the nine justices expressed agreement with the rationale of an 2014 ruling by the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals backing the federal government. The appeals court said park service regulations are limited in scope only if they are Alaska-specific. That would mean national regulations like the hovercraft ban could be interpreted more expansively to cover land within a conservation area not federally owned. Story continues "It's a ridiculous interpretation, is it not?" Justice Samuel Alito of the ruling. The justices appeared to struggle with how to resolve the case. Justice Stephen Breyer hinted at this frustration when, while asking about the complicated law in question, he broke off and said amid chuckles in the courtroom: "Who drafted this?" Breyer suggested the case be returned to lower courts. Alaska said the ruling could impact park service efforts to regulate oil and gas extraction on its land in that state and elsewhere. A ruling is due by the end of June. The case is Sturgeon v. Frost, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 14-1209. (Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham) NAIROBI (Reuters) - The United Nations is seeking $1.3 billion in humanitarian aid for South Sudan, where two in ten of the population have been driven from their homes during two years of conflict. More than 10,000 people have been killed and 2.3 million displaced since the country's civil war broke out in December 2013, when soldiers loyal to President Salva Kiir first clashed with troops who backed his deputy, Riek Machar. Eugene Owusu, the U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator for South Sudan, said $1.3 billion would be the "bare minimum" needed to support 5.1 million people in the country facing life-threatening circumstances. "The challenge we face is unprecedented," he said. The U.N. said more than 680,000 children below the age of five are believed to be acutely malnourished. Much of the fighting has been along ethnic lines between Kiir's Dinka community and Machar's Nuer people. Progress on a peace deal signed last year has been slow, with both sides accusing the other of violating the agreement and dragging their heels over plans to form a government of national unity. The war has also devastated South Sudan's economy, slashing the oil production that funds most public spending. (Reporting by Drazen Jorgic; editing by John Stonestreet) WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A delay of one or two days in the start of planned Jan. 25 talks between the Syrian government and opposition groups would not be the end of the world, a U.S. State Department spokesman said on Wednesday. Asked about the U.N. special envoy for Syria's suggestion that the talks may not start as planned in Geneva on Monday, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said: "Deadlines matter, but ... if it slips one or two days ... that's not the end of the world either. We recognize that this is a difficult process ... but we have to keep the pressure on, and we have to keep moving forward." (Reporting by Arshad Mohammed and Mohammad Zargham; Editing by Eric Beech) By Patricia Zengerle WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When implementation of the Iran nuclear pact was looming and a secret prisoner swap deal in the works, Obama administration officials called the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in early January to ask him to put a hold on calls for sanctions over Tehran's missile test, the senator told Reuters. Senator Bob Corker is the first U.S. senator to confirm reports by Reuters that there was a link between the Obama administration's delaying sanctions over Iran's ballistic missile program and efforts to free Americans held prisoner there. He had hoped that the ballistic sanctions would be imposed before the nuclear sanctions were lifted. "I just thought that that was a better place for us to be, that we were going to be firm in implementing the deal," he told Reuters at the U.S. Senate late on Tuesday. However, he added, "Once I knew that the hostages were wrapped in all of that, I realized it may be difficult for that to occur." Sources described to Reuters before the prisoner deal was announced how Secretary of State John Kerry and other officials scrambled to ensure that the possibility of new sanctions over Iran's ballistic missile program did not derail the effort. Corker had been pushing hard for the administration to impose new sanctions since Tehran's ballistic missile tests last year. After the sanctions were almost announced and then delayed on Dec. 30, he issued a strong statement on Jan. 1 calling for action. Corker was then contacted by President Barack Obama's administration about the link to American prisoners and decided to hold off on more calls for sanctions, for a time. "I didn't know who we were swapping for, but I knew that the ballistic missile sanctions were being held until such a time that we could work something out on the hostages," Corker said. "Once you know that we've got an opportunity to get four Americans out, obviously we turn the volume off," he added, A Swiss plane left Iran on Sunday with Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post's Tehran bureau chief; Saeed Abedini, a pastor from Idaho; and Amir Hekmati, a former U.S. Marine from Michigan, as well as some family members. Another released Iranian-American, Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari, stayed behind. A fifth prisoner, American student Matthew Trevithick, was released separately on Saturday. The U.S. Treasury Department said on Sunday after the release that it had imposed the sanctions on 11 companies and individuals for supplying Iran's ballistic missile program. (Editing by David Greising and Cynthia Osterman) By Jonathan Stempel (Reuters) - A Ukrainian computer hacker who fought extradition to the United States and has been accused of trying to frame a prominent cyber security expert pleaded guilty on Wednesday to using more than 13,000 computers to steal log-in and credit card data, federal prosecutors said. Sergey Vovnenko, 29, whose aliases included "Flycracker," "Centurion" and "Darklife," pleaded guilty to charges of aggravated identity theft and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, according to U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman in New Jersey. Vovnenko, of Naples, Italy, faces a mandatory minimum two-year prison term for identity theft and may face additional prison time, plus a fine for conspiracy, at his May 2 sentencing. The defendant entered his plea before U.S. District Judge Esther Salas in Newark, New Jersey. Timothy Anderson, a lawyer for Vovnenko, was not immediately available to comment. U.S. prosecutors said that from September 2010 to August 2012, Vovnenko was part of an international conspiracy to hack into computers belonging to individuals and companies, steal user names and passwords for bank accounts and other online services and steal debit and credit card numbers. They said Vovnenko admitted to operating a "botnet" of more than 13,000 computers infected with malware to gain unauthorized access and used "Zeus" malware to steal banking information from and record keystrokes of people using infected computers. Vovnenko fought extradition after he was detained by Italian authorities following his June 13, 2014 arrest, U.S. prosecutors said. The defendant made his initial U.S. court appearance on October 13, 2015. At the time of the extradition, Brian Krebs, who runs the cybersecurity blog Krebs on Security, wrote that Vovnenko had been behind a 2013 plot to have heroin sent to Krebs' Virginia home, and then tell police when the drugs arrived. Krebs said he foiled the plot after he tracked Vovnenko's online activities and alerted police. The case is U.S. v. Vovnenko, U.S. District Court, District of New Jersey, No. 14-cr-00237. (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Dan Grebler) PARIS (Reuters) - Britain is "increasingly disturbed" by Russian air strikes on moderate opposition forces and civilians in Syria, its defense secretary said on Wednesday, adding that it was time for U.S.-led coalition forces to capitalize on recent Islamic State setbacks. "I am increasingly disturbed by Russian bombing," British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said ahead of a defense ministers' meeting in Paris to assess U.S.-led coalition efforts in Syria and Iraq. "The casualty total keeps climbing. We have estimates of several hundred civilians killed through the use of unguided munitions on civilian areas and opposition groups fighting (Syrian President Bashar al) Assad. "That I deplore. Propping up the Assad regime is simply prolonging the agony. On the contrary, Russia should be using its influence to make it clear that Assad has no future in Syria." He added that it was time to capitalize on Islamic State's recent setbacks and tighten the noose around its Syrian bastion Raqqa. (Reporting by John Irish; Editing by James Regan) Geneva (AFP) - Around 100 UN agencies and other humanitarian organisations on Thursday called on citizens worldwide to join an appeal to end the "carnage" in Syria as the conflict there approached its sixth year. "In the name of our shared humanity... For the sake of the millions of innocents who have already suffered so much, and for the millions more whose lives and futures hang in the balance, we call for action now," the appeal said. The new head of the UN refugee agency Filippo Grandi, along with the heads of the UN agencies for food, children and humanitarian action were among the nearly 100 signatories of the appeal. They pointed out that in early 2013, many of the same agencies and organisations had appealed to the international community to end the suffering in Syria. "That was three years ago. Now the war is approaching its sixth brutal year," they lamented. "The bloodshed continues. The suffering deepens." Thursday's appeal, they said, was therefore not only directed at governments "but to each of you -- citizens around the world -- to add your voices in urging an end to the carnage." The appeal came as the UN is scrambling to try to kick-start a new round of peace talks for Syria next Monday. Since the conflict began in March 2011, it has claimed more than 260,000 lives and has left 13.5 million people inside Syria in desperate need of humanitarian assistance. "That is not simply a statistic," the appeal said. "These are 13.5 million individual human beings whose lives and futures are in jeopardy." The conflict has also devastated an entire generation of Syrian children and youths, "who, deprived of education and traumatised by the horrors they have experienced, increasingly see their future shaped only by violence," the appeal said. Syria's civil war has also forced 4.6 million people flee to neighbouring countries and beyond, it pointed out, sparking a towering refugee crisis. United Nations (United States) (AFP) - The UN Security Council decided Wednesday to reduce the size of the UN peacekeeping force in Ivory Coast in light of an improved security situation and last October's successful presidential elections. The number of troops authorized for the UN Operation in the Ivory Coast was reduced from 5,437 to 4,000 soldiers, according to the resolution, which was adopted by unanimity. The mission also includes 1,500 police officers. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was asked to report at the end of March on the drawdown and his recommendations on the mission's future. The government of the Ivory Coast wants all the UN peacekeepers out by the end of 2017 or early 2018. In the resolution, the council commends the government's role in staging transparent elections in October and congratulates Ivorians for displaying "their strong commitment to peace and democracy." It notes, however, that while "considerable" progress has been made in putting the Ivory Coast back on a path toward stability, there remains "a threat to international peace and security in the region." The resolution keeps in place an arms embargo, despite Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara's repeated demands that it be lifted. The embargo has been in effect since 2004, but was eased in 2012 to enable the training of the country's security forces. An embargo on diamond exports dating from 2005 was lifted in 2014. The Ivory Coast has been buffeted by crisis for the past decade, split by a rebellion in the north and controlled in the south by partisans of ex-president Laurent Gbagbo, who ruled from 2000 to 2011. Special UN representative Aichatou Mindaoudou said in a recent Security Council debate that the security situation in Ivory Coast was now stable. But she said banditry remains a problem, as does the threat of terrorist attacks from Mali and Liberia. Paris (AFP) - The US and French defence ministers on Wednesday condemned Moscow's role in the Syria conflict, saying Russian jets should stop targeting the opposition forces fighting the Islamic State group. "The Russians are on the wrong track strategically and also in some cases tactically," said US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter after a meeting in Paris of seven defence ministers in the coalition fighting IS. "We don't have a basis for broader cooperation (with Russia)," Carter said. His French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian said, for his part: "We hope that Russia will concentrate its efforts against Daesh (the Arabic acronym for IS) and stop bombing the groups of the uprising (against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad) who themselves are fighting Daesh." At the same time on Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia was ready to work more closely with the US-led coalition to help facilitate aid deliveries inside Syria. Speaking after talks with his US counterpart John Kerry in Zurich, Switzerland, he said: "We spoke about how the Russian air force, when planning its actions, takes into account the programmes that the UN humanitarian organisations, the Red Cross and other NGOs carry out. "We said that we will be ready to more closely coordinate our actions with the American coalition in this direction." He also said UN-brokered Syria peace talks would begin "in the next few days" in Geneva. Lavrov rejected suggestions that the negotiations, tentatively set for January 25, might be delayed until February amid disagreements over who will represent the Syrian opposition. "We are sure that in the next few days, in January, these talks should begin," he told reporters. Berlin (AFP) - One of the Iranian-Americans freed in a historic prisoner swap with Washington over the weekend described his final hours in captivity as "nerve-wracking", in images broadcast Tuesday by US television channel MSNBC. "I was worried that maybe the Iranian side was going to make new demands in the last minute or that the deal wasn't going to work out so up until the last second, we were all worried and concerned," veteran Marine Amir Hekmati said on board a Swiss jet that carried the released prisoners out of Iran. "We kept being told that we are going to be taking off in two hours and two became six, became 10, so a total of two and a half days was really nerve-wracking," the 32-year-old said. The hostages' uncertainty ended when the Swiss ambassador arrived for them. "We just felt an immense pressure come off our shoulders and when we finally got on the plane, that's when we knew", Hekmati said. "As soon as we got out of Iranian air space, the champagne bottles were popped." The prisoner swap came as the UN nuclear watchdog confirmed Iran had put a nuclear bomb beyond its immediate reach and the US and EU lifted their most draconian sanctions. In exchange for four Iranian-American dual nationals, some of whom had been held for years, and a fifth American, Washington granted clemency to seven Iranians and withdrew arrest warrants for 14 others. Asked about the way he had been treated in prison, Hekmati replied: "Well, it wasn't good." "You know, I was at a point where I had just sort of accepted the fact that I was going to be spending 10 years in prison," he added. Hekmati was arrested in August 2011 while he was on a visit to his grandmother in Iran. He was sentenced to death in January 2012 for "spying" for Washington, despite the US' repeated denials. The sentence was later commuted to a 10-year jail term. Hekmati arrived in Germany on Sunday along with two other prisoners, including Washington Post correspondent Jason Rezaian, who had been detained in July 2014. The fourth freed Iranian-American apparently chose to remain in Iran. Paris (AFP) - Once the world as a whole has warmed by two degrees Celsius, top temperatures in the United States and Mediterranean basin will have climbed by even more, according to a study released Wednesday. A global 2C (3.6 Fahrenheit) rise above mid-19th century levels would mean a jump of at least 3.0C (5.4F) in maximum daytime temperatures in these regional hot spots -- deep into the red zone of dire climate impacts, said the study. Central Brazil can also look forward to a bigger-than-average increase, with summertime peaks rising by 3.5C. Moreover, no matter how quickly humanity reduces the greenhouse gas emissions that drive warming, the gaps will remain just as big. "These relationships hold true regardless of what emissions pathway you take," Sonia Seneviratne, a professor at ETH Zurich's Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, told AFP by phone. "If our aim is to limit summer temperature extremes in the Mediterranean region, for example, to 2C, then the global temperature must rise no more than 1.4C." The study, published in Nature, looked at projections in each region for the evolution of annual maximum and minimum daytime temperatures. In 2010, the world's nations set a goal of capping average planet-wide warming to 2C, a hugely daunting task. But a crescendo of extreme weather -- US government scientists confirmed today that 2015 was "by far" the hottest year on record -- and new studies suggest that even this ambitious goal may be inadequate. A more recent global climate agreement, inked by 195 countries in Paris in December, set a new target of "well below 2C". Earth has already heated up by nearly 1.0C. Scientist do not know when it might pierce the 2C cap, but many acknowledge that the chances of staying under it are not good. - Regional hot spots - There are several explanations for the gap between global averages and "hot spot" regions, Seneviratne explained. Story continues One is the simple fact that temperatures above the oceans -- which cover more than 70 percent of the planet's surface -- are significantly cooler, bringing down the average. Beyond that, however, there are local factors -- the impact of parched soils, loss of heat-reflecting snow -- that make some land areas even hotter. The area facing the sharpest increase is the Arctic. Once the thermometer for Earth's surface has gone up by 2C, the coldest temperatures registered in the realm of polar bears will have risen by three times as much, the study found. Regional variations are well known, and have been minutely described in the benchmark reports of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). "What will surprise climate scientist," said Seneviratne, "is that these outcomes are independent of how quickly we reduce greenhouse gases in the coming century." Her research team based their calculations on existing climate models, as well as different projections on the rate at which CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere will increase. Under both a so-called "business as usual" scenario of no further action to reduce emissions, or a more realistic middle-ground scenario, the fate of hot-spot regions -- once Earth has reached the 2C benchmark -- was the same. The general public should be aware of these differences, the researchers said. "For many people, two degrees doesn't sound like it's a lot, or that it would make much of a difference," Seneviratne said. "But when you take regional variations into account, you realise that it is in fact a very big change." San Juan (AFP) - US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said Wednesday that creditors holding Puerto Rico's $70 billion of debt should agree to sacrifices in a debt restructuring. With the US island territory in its 10th year of recession and the government forced to cut spending, "the people of Puerto Rico are sacrificing," Lew said after talks with local officials. "But unless that sacrifice is shared by creditors in an orderly restructuring, there is no path out of insolvency and back to growth," he said, according to prepared remarks. Lew was visiting the Caribbean island of 3.5 million nearly three weeks after it defaulted on its debt and warned that it could miss larger payments in coming months without some relief from creditors. Unable to reach agreements on restructuring with bondholders, Puerto Rico, with the support of President Barack Obama's administration, is pressing the US Congress to pass legislation that would allow it to enter bankruptcy protection and force all of its creditors into talks together. Lew pledged to help the island, short of a full bailout, and said the Treasury has a dedicated team that is working with Puerto Rico's economic managers "on a daily basis." But he stressed that Congress needs to pass the bankruptcy legislation to begin turning the situation around. "This crisis is already imposing real hardship on the people of Puerto Rico in terms of basic health care, legal and education services, and significant unemployment," he said. "And that hardship will only get more intense as the fiscal situation deteriorates." Frankfurt (AFP) - A German law firm said Wednesday it is suing embattled auto giant Volkswagen on behalf of a British pension fund for compensation for the plunge in its shares due to its emissions test cheating scandal. Law firm Nieding + Barth said in a statement that together with another fim, Mueller Seidel Vos, it had filed a suit on behalf of the pension fund at the regional court in Brunswick. The identity of the pension fund was not revealed. "The basis for our claim is (VW's) violation of its capital market information obligations," said law firm chief Klaus Nieding. "Because VW concealed its manipulation of the software in diesel vehicles for many years, shareholders have suffered substantial losses on their investment. And VW must be held responsible for that," said Daniel Vos of Mueller Seidel Vos. VW is currently embroiled in a scandal of global proportions after it admitted in September that it had fitted 11 million diesel engines worldwide with devices aimed at cheating emissions tests. It is under investigation in several countries including the United States where authorities first uncovered the scam and have now filed a lawsuit against VW. The scandal has hit VW hard. It lost nearly 40 percent in market capitalisation since September, when the scandal broke, even if its shares have come back off their lows since then. The German law firms accused VW chief executive Matthias Mueller of deliberately playing down the affair on his recent visit to the United States. "That testifies to a lack of will (within VW) to clear up the matter," Nieding said. He also accused the German authorities of dragging their feet in their investigations. Nieding + Barth and Mueller Seidel Vos described themselves as the biggest platform for VW shareholders seeking compensation in Germany. They said they currently represented around 6,500 private and institutional investors who were seeking hundreds of millions of euros (dollars) in damages. Story continues VW is facing a legal onslaught on several fronts. Aside from the lawsuit filed by the US Justice Department, US vehicle owners are expected to seek billions of dollars in damages. Germany's financial sector watchdog, Bafin, is also investigating whether VW breached disclosure rules. Inexpensive dispensers that bring cold, filtered water into New York City public schools may be putting a dent in the childhood obesity epidemic there. More than 40 percent of children in elementary or middle school in New York City are overweight or obese. But now, researchers have found that the schools that have installed the new water dispensers called water jets, serving chilled, oxygenated water into cups or bottles have seen a decline in body-mass index among children with a weight problem. The decline was modest a drop of 1 percentage point in the obesity rate among boys, and a half percentage point among girls but the study, published today (Jan. 19) in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, was statistically significant, following more than 1 million schoolchildren in 1,227 schools for five years in a real-life setting. "These are small but meaningful numbers, particularly for an intervention like this that was very low-cost to implement and can be done widely throughout New York City public schools," said Brian Elbel, an associate professor of population health at the Langone Medical Center of New York University, who led the study. [10 Ways to Promote Kids' Healthy Eating Habits] The New York City Department of Education has taken several measures to reduce the rate of childhood obesity, including the introduction of healthier lunch foods and the removal of nearly all sugary drinks from vending machines and cafeterias in the public schools. The only sugary drink one can now buy at a New York City public elementary or middle school is low-fat chocolate milk. However, students can and routinely do bring in drinks from the outside. "Some of these older grades very likely had an 'open campus' where they could bring something in from the local corner store [or] bodega," Elbel told Live Science. The water jets are an "old school" solution with a new twist that kids seem to like. The dispensers reliably serve fresh, cool tap water; the oxygenation doesn't offer health benefits, but does improve the water's taste. These are no fountains of horror so often found in city schools, encrusted in rust or crud, or serving warm, metallic-tasting water that barely forms an arch leaving the dispenser. Story continues The new water jets were introduced in 2009 at a cost of about $1,000 per unit. Among New York's 1,227 elementary and middle schools, nearly 500 received the jets during the study period, between the academic school years of 20082009 and 20122013. The researchers tapped into school health records to analyze height and weight measurements of the students through these years. Because the children were growing taller and gaining weight in mostly healthy ways, the researchers used body-mass index, a ratio of height to weight, to determine which students were overweight or obese. The massive health analysis is the first to link the water-jet program to weight control. The reason for improved weight measurements is not clear. The researchers found a decline in milk purchases, particularly chocolate milk, during the study period, Elbel said. So it may be that the children are choosing zero-calorie water over drinks with 100 calories or more, including sodas and juices brought in from the outside, as well as milk sold in the cafeteria. A cup of low-fat chocolate milk has 160 calories; sugary sodas typically have about 200 calories per cup. And although New York City has strict rules on what foods and drinks can be sold in schools, other cities are not as rigid. In these environments, free and tasty water might compete well with other tempting, higher-calories drink options. "You can in fact imagine the New York City water-jet program having a much larger effect in a school that had not taken such great lengths to rid the school of sugary beverages already," Elbel said. In an accompanying editorial, Lindsey Turner, director of the Initiative for Healthy Schools at Boise State University in Boise, Idaho, who was not involved with the study, said that oxygenated tap water is not only inexpensive compared with bottled water but, in most U.S. cities, provides the added benefit of containing fluoride that can combat dental problems, unlike bottled waters. Also, at approximately 25 percent of middle and high schools nationwide, administrators have reported concerns about water-quality problems in traditional drinking fountains, and water jets could be an attractive alternative, Turner said. "Sometimes, a very simple intervention can have a powerful effect," Turner wrote with her co-author, Erin Hager, of the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. "At the cost of $1,000 per unita school-based drinking water access intervention can be remarkably affordable relative to other, more intensive obesity prevention strategies." Follow Christopher Wanjek @wanjek for daily tweets on health and science with a humorous edge. Wanjek is the author of "Food at Work" and "Bad Medicine." His column, Bad Medicine, appears regularly on Live Science. Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. A campus attack in Pakistan: At least 20 people were killed and more were wounded when Taliban gunmen stormed Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, located in northwestern Pakistan. The attackers were killed by security forces. Update: More here. The politics of a water crisis: Michigan Governor Rick Snyder apologized to Flint residents for the government response to the towns water supply, which became contaminated with dangerous amounts of lead when Flint switched its water source in 2014 to cut costs. You deserve accountability. You deserve to know that the buck stops here with me, he said at his annual State of the State address. The refugee debate in Congress: The Senate will vote today on a House-passed bill that would require new FBI background checks and sign-offs from three high-ranking federal officials before any refugee from Syria or Iraq is allowed to enter the United States. Obamas travels: The president will be in Detroit today at the North American International Auto Show to talk about the auto industry. Read more from The Atlantic: This article was originally published on The Atlantic. It seems U.S. fighter jets arent the only ones prone to head-scratching technological problems. Six German Tornado jets deployed to Syria to participate in the fight against ISIS cant fly at night because the cockpit lights are too bright for pilots, a local German paper reports, according to Agence France-Presse. Related: Russias Military Buildup Continues with Big New Fighter Jet Order The aircraft in question are outfitted with high-resolution infrared surveillance equipment and are supposed to be able to conduct reconnaissance missions during the day or night, regardless of weather conditions. That the same gear is blinding the pilots is a bit of a hiccup, to say the least. "It is possible that the night goggles worn by pilots result in reflections," a defense ministry spokesman told the news agency, adding that right now there is currently no need to fly the aircraft. He said officials hope the problem can be fixed within the next two weeks. Related: Why the Air Force Will Keep the A-10 Warthog Flying for Now Germany sent the warplanes to assist the U.S.-led coalition effort to help gather information against the terror group following the ISIS attacks in Paris that killed 130 people. Last month a defense ministry report revealed that only 29 of Berlins 66 Tornado jets are airworthy, mostly because of overdue or poor repairs. The multi-role strike aircraft was developed in the 1970s by United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. Besides Germany, the Tornado is still flown by the United Kingdom, Italy and Saudi Arabia. The aircrafts variants carry different avionics and equipment, depending on their mission. Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: As Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders turn to South Carolina, both will be hoping to win over African-Americans, who account for about half of those who will vote in the states primary next month. Currently, Clinton has a lead with that group, besting her rival 69 percent to 27 percent. She will presumably campaign, as she has done elsewhere, on the promise of four more years of President Obamas policies. Will that be enough? Maybe not. Its early yet, and many potential voters are still getting to know Sanders and his message of income inequality, healthcare for all, and other social reforms. Also, the most recent referendum on the Obama presidency was in 2014, during which black turnout plummeted, even accounting for the usual slump in non-presidential contests, ten percent of African Americans defected to Republicans. In that election, Democrats lost every state in which Bill and Hillary Clinton campaigned. At the time, a poll showed that only 53 percent of African-Americans held a very favorable view of Clinton. Related: Hillary Clinton Gets a Taste of What Could Be a Painful 2016 The lesson is that the high black turnout and solid support for the Democrat ticket in 2008 and 2012 was largely because of Barack Obama. That enthusiasm may have waned, since many African-Americans feel Obama has failed the black community. Hillarys promise of allegiance to the president may not carry much weight. Unemployment among black men is nearly 9 percent today, more than twice the rate for whites. In January 2009, the month Obama took office, the unemployment rate for white men was 8.3 percent and for blacks 15.8 percent; by this one measure, the divide between white and black employment has gotten worse under President Obama. The disparity between black and white worker incomes has widened since 2009. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in the third quarter of last year median weekly pay for black men was $652, compared to $919 for white males, a difference of 41 percent. In the final quarter of 2008, before Obama took office, that difference was 35 percent. Story continues African Americans have made almost no progress in educational achievement over the past eight years, with only 11 percent meeting three benchmarks on ACT tests of high school achievement, compared to 49 percent of whites. This does not stir our president, who gave up efforts at school reform when alerted by the teachers unions that he might lose their endorsement in 2012. Related: Sanders Lashes Out at Clinton in Contentious Democratic Debate Blacks are right to feel slighted. Obama could have done more to move the needle on African American earnings and achievement, but at some risk. Controversial news anchor Don Lemon landed in hot water in 2013 when he suggested that blacks might improve their lot by finishing school and stemming out-of-wedlock births riffing on a Talking Points broadcast by Fox anchor Bill OReilly. Lemon said, Stop telling kids they're acting white because they go to school or they speak proper English. A high school dropout makes on average $19,000 a year, a high school graduate makes $28,000 a year, a college graduate makes $51,000 a year. On marriage, he was equally forthright: More than 72 percent of children in the African American community are born out of wedlock. That means absent fathers. And the studies show that lack of a male role model is an express train right to prison and the cycle continues. The furor over Lemons pitch was sadly predictable. A writer on the black website Clutch dismissed Lemons nostrums, arguing he was ignoring the countrys history of institutional racism and systematic oppression. The author resists Lemons respectability politics play [which] sends a dangerous message that the blame for oppression lies with the oppressed. He puts the onus on us to change to earn basic rights and privileges that are extended to other races, no matter their flaws. In other words, why even try? In a Fathers Day speech in 2008, then Senator Obama sailed into this conversation, telling a packed black church in Chicago, We need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception. The candidate observed, More than half of all black children live in single-parent households, a number that he claimed had doubled in his lifetime. On education, he told the applauding congregation, Dont get carried away with that eighth-grade graduation; youre supposed to graduate from eighth grade. In an earlier speech in 2008, Obama had also pushed family responsibilities, lecturing them for giving cold Popeyes to their kids for breakfast. Related: Heres Why Clintons Lead over Sanders Is Shrinking Fast He could have pushed that theme more consistently, but he desperately needed blacks to turn out for him in 2012 as they did in 2008, and this line of persuasion isnt too popular. In 2008, Obama received 96 percent of the black vote; in 2012, it dipped to 93 percent. It could have gone lower. Kevin Johnson, the senior pastor of the Bright Hope Baptist Church and a long-time Obama supporter, wrote a scathing criticism of the president in 2013, titled A president for everyone, except Black people. In his piece, he noted that Obama had appointed fewer blacks in his cabinet than Bill Clinton or George W. Bush, and that African-Americans are in a worse position than they were before he became president. He also decried the presidents poor record in catapulting an economic and empowerment agenda for the African-American community and wondered why blacks were still supporting the president. Obama did revisit the theme of taking responsibility in 2013, telling graduates of Morehouse College, there is "no time for excuses" for African-American men. But, he has also voiced sympathy with those who see racism as the biggest threat to blacks. Obama has found, according to black firebrand Cornel West, the middle ground. He says, He doesnt realize that a great leader, a statesperson, doesnt just occupy middle ground. The middle ground is not the place to go if youre going to show courage and vision. This moderation, frustrating to both those advocating reforms in the black community and in society, prompts Johnson to note in his op-ed, Obama is more of an historical leader than he is a transformational leader for the African-American community. Obama wasted his opportunity to boost the fortunes of blacks. Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: By Marko Djurica and Aleksandar Vasovic PRESEVO/SID, Serbia (Reuters) - Migrants braved temperatures as low as -15 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit) on Wednesday to cross frozen Balkan borders en route to western Europe, visibly unprepared for winter and in increasing danger from the cold. Governments and aid agencies along the route have laid on heated tents and mobilized trains and buses to support the flow of migrants, most of them refugees from the war in Syria winding across the Balkan peninsula. But the sheer numbers though down from a summer peak of some 10,000 to just under 2,000 per day mean many spend nights sleeping on tent floors. A Reuters photographer saw children crying from the cold as they walked or were carried several kilometers across the Macedonian-Serbian border to waiting buses. The United Nations and aid agencies warned on Tuesday that children were particularly at risk given their lack of adequate clothing or access to sufficient nutrition. A spokesman for the U.N. children's agency UNICEF said the risk of children freezing to death was "clearly very, very high." Most migrants wore jackets and sneakers; some had hats and gloves, and many were wrapped in gray blankets handed out by the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR). "It's too cold, but what can I do? I'm wearing everything I have but it's still too cold," said a 22-year-old man at the town of Sid on the Serbian-Croatian border. He gave his name as Amr and said he was from the Iraqi town of Fallujah, where Islamic State militants hold sway. On the highway in Serbia, hundreds of migrants received hot soup, tea and gloves from aid groups at a disused motel that has been turned into a refugee camp. More than a million people fleeing war, poverty and repression in the Middle East and Africa reached Europe's shores last year, most heading for Germany. Aid agencies expect a similar number this year, testing the willingness of a divided Europe to take them in and putting unprecedented strain on the continent's commitment to a Schengen zone of open borders. (Writing by Matt Robinson, editing by Sarah Young) Craig Scharton (right) in 2014 at his Peeves Public House in downtown Fresno. With him is Oscar Fuentes, who was the beer buyer for Peeves then and now has started his own brewery. During our visits to Fresno, in Californias Central Valley, over the past two years, my wife Deb and I have made regular stops at Peeves Public House, on the downtown Fulton Mall. Initially this was because the proprietor, Fresno patriot and publican Craig Scharton, was the first person to argue to us (at a chance meeting elsewhere in California) that tattered-looking Fresno was worth serious attention as a city turning itself around. After heavy initial skepticism, we became convinced. You can read the summary version of why we changed our minds here, or the full chronicles here. On return trips to Fresno we kept going back to Peeves because we liked the beer, food, and atmosphere there. And increasingly we came to respect its role as a civic center, in a part of town very much in need of such a thing. Here was the event board on our first visit: The Fulton Mall area where Peeves has been an anchor and outpost (its one of the few businesses now open at night) is in the middle of a mammoth construction project, whose details you can read about here. In the long run, the overhaul is meant to spur downtown Fresnos revival. In the short run, its yet another challenge for the businesses already there. Read more from The Atlantic: This article was originally published on The Atlantic. LUSAKA (Reuters) - Zambia plans to import maize from South America as drought is expected to cut the 2015/2016 maize crop by a third, local media reported on Wednesday. "The government is looking for possibilities of importing maize from South America as the entire region does not have enough maize stocks," President Edgar Lungu is quoted as saying in the Zambia Daily Mail. Zambia's maize stocks would only last until June, Lungu told the newspaper. Lungu's spokesman Amos Chanda was not immediately available to comment. The southern African nation harvested 2.6 million tonnes of the staple in the 2014/2015 season and drought could slash this year's output by 30 percent. Millions of people in southern Africa face hunger because of a drought that has been exacerbated by an El Nino weather pattern. (Reporting by Chris Mfula; Editing by Susan Thomas) Politics Zeroing in on New Hampshire, Kasich campaigns with optimism With three weeks until the primary in New Hampshire, where John Kasichs White House hopes probably will live or die, hes approaching his campaign with a sense of calm perhaps with good reason. His campaign has five offices open in the state and 15 full-time staff members, and hes backed by notable Republicans such as former Sens. Gordon Humphrey and John E. Sununu. Three New Hampshire newspapers recently endorsed him. And as the Feb. 9 primary approaches, Kasich is seeing progress in polling. Im doing the best I can, nobodys working harder than I am, and Im very much at peace. John Kasich As Kasich fights for a strong finish in the state, he has strayed little from a strategy centered on the idea that voters want a candidate with a record of getting things done. And in a race where Republican voters are gravitating toward political outsiders like Donald Trump, Kasich openly talks about his 18 years as a member of Congress. He shies away from the doom and gloom that some of his rivals project, suggesting the countrys problems are easy to fix if only people work together. The Ohio governor may be fighting for his political life, but he is doing so with a serene outlook that is at odds with the stakes and the pace of the Republican contest in the state. BOGOTA (Reuters) - The mosquito-borne Zika virus has already infected more than 13,500 people in Colombia and could hit as many as 700,000, the health minister said on Wednesday. According to Pan-American Health Organization figures, the country is second only to Brazil in infection rates, health minister Alejandro Gaviria told journalists. "We expect an expansion similar to what we had with the chikungunya virus last year, to finish with between 600,000 to 700,000 cases," Gaviria said. Some 560 pregnant women are among those infected, the minister said, though so far no cases of newborns suffering from microcephaly, a congenital defect caused by zika, have been registered in the country. The government is advising Colombian women to delay becoming pregnant for six to eight months in a bid to avoid potential infection. The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention last week warned pregnant women to avoid travel to 14 countries, including Colombia, and territories in the Caribbean and Latin America affected by the virus. (Reporting by Luis Jaime Acosta, writing by Julia Symmes Cobb; editing by Helen Murphy and David Gregorio) By MacDonald Dzirutwe HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's tobacco export earnings rose 11 percent to $855 million in 2015 on higher prices and demand from China, an industry official said on Wednesday, but production this year could suffer from a scorching drought. Tobacco is the Southern African nation's single largest export commodity, ahead of platinum and gold. Andrew Matibiri, general manager at Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB), said Zimbabwe - which exports 90 percent of its tobacco - sold 152 million kg of tobacco, up from 136 million kg in 2014. Cigarette makers in China, the world's biggest market and grower of tobacco, bought 62 million kg worth $513 million or 60 percent of total earnings and nearly double its 2014 purchases. Other major buyers of Zimbabwe's flue-cured tobacco, which is used as a flavouring in cigarettes, are Belgium, South Africa and Indonesia. Chinese buyers paid an average of $8.31 per kg of tobacco, more than double what the other major buyers offered. China has become the largest investor in Zimbabwe, which has been shunned by the West over its human rights record and is struggling to emerge from a deep 1999-2008 recession that forced the government to ditch its own currency in 2009. Matibiri told Reuters that the El Nino-induced drought had delayed tobacco planting. TIMB is carrying out an assessment of the current crop, which will be harvested from March, he said. "The El Nino effect came with prolonged dry and very hot weather during the transplanting phase of the crop," Matibiri said, referring to moving seedlings from the seedbed to the field. "This obviously decimated those crops that could not be irrigated." Zimbabwe's tobacco production fell 8.5 percent to 189 million kg last year and some farmers project lower output this year after drought scorched their crops. About 14 million people face hunger in Southern Africa because of the El Nino-induced drought, according to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), with more than 10 percent of Zimbabwe's population in need of food aid. (Editing by James Macharia and Ralph Boulton) Pakistani Taliban Attack University, Killing 21 Pakistani Taliban gunmen stormed a university campus in the countrys northwest on Wednesday and killed at least 21 people, officials said. Senate Panel Approves Bill to Make School Lunches Tastier School meals could be a bit tastier under legislation approved by a Senate committee Unscriptd Aims to Let Cristiano Ronaldo, Others Build Brand Cristiano Ronaldo using social-media platform called Unscriptd for self-shot videos South, East Brace for Big Storm, Significant Snowfall The South and East are bracing for a nor'easter at the end of the week with the potential for significant snowfall An armed Pakistani teacher is hailed as a hero after Taliban terrorist attack After terrorists killed about 150 people at a school in northwestern Pakistan 13 months ago, officials started arming teachers and gave them weapons training. Like the debate over guns in schools in the United States and elsewhere, the m... Iraq's Oldest Christian Monastery Razed Satellite photos obtained by the Associated Press confirm what church leaders and Middle East preservationists had feared: the oldest Christian monastery in Iraq has been reduced to a field of rubble. Most of Detroit's Public Schools Close Amid Teacher Sick-Out Union: Teacher sick-out closing most city schools timed to coincide with Obama's Detroit visit FBI Probes University Professor Over Possible ISIS Support The feds have interviewed people about the outspoken Kent State professor. 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Obama in Detroit; schools closed President Barack Obama will visit Detroit on Wednesday to highlight a resurgence in the auto industry, but all eyes will be on how he addresses the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, and Detroit's education funding problems. Supreme Court Rules Against Business in Class-Action Case The Supreme Court says a business cannot end a class-action lawsuit by offering the person who first sued everything he asked for Trump Touts "A Good Day" After Palin Endorsement Republican candidate Donald Trump touts "a good day for Trump" following Palin endorsement Pressure Mounts as EU Migration Strategy Bogs Down Pressure is building for EU leaders to overcome differences and tackle the refugee emergency amid criticism that Europe's migrant strategy is unraveling fast Trump Touts "A Good Day" After Palin Endorsement - ABC News New York Times Trump Touts "A Good Day" After Palin Endorsement ABC News Donald Trump brandished the endorsement of conservative Republican firebrand Sarah Palin at an Iowa rally Wednesday in the increasingly intense 2016 GOP p... 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Plan for takeover, bankruptcy is 'lifeline' for CPS, Republicans say - Chicago Sun-Times Chicago Sun-Times Plan for takeover, bankruptcy is 'lifeline' for CPS, Republicans say Chicago Sun-Times Illinois Senate Republican Leader Christine Radogno and Illinois House Minority Leader Jim Durkin discussed their plan to in... Deadly attack on Pakistan university Security forces end an attack by four gunmen on a university in north-west Pakistan in which 19 people are killed and 17 injured. Khadija Considering Help Offer From Amal Clooney Imprisoned RFE/RL contributor Khadija Ismayilova is considering an offer of legal representation by human rights lawyer Amal Clooney. The wife of Hollywood star George Clooney previously has taken on prominent cases in Egypt, Armenia and... Brazil Official Criticizes Israel's Choice for Ambassador The Brazilian president's special adviser on foreign affairs has spoken out against Israel's nomination of a former leader of the West Bank settler movement to be the new ambassador to Brazil Iran Foreign Minister Slams New U.S. Ballistic Missile Sanctions "We believe these sanctions are uncalled for" Ex-Pharma CEO Shkreli Is Getting New Lawyers Former pharmaceutical CEO Shkreli changing lawyers in his securities fraud case Suicide Bomber in Kabul Strikes Packed Commuter Bus At least seven people were killed and dozens were wounded in a rush-hour attack the fourth major assault in the capital this year, officials said. Actress slams Oscars boycott Janet Hubert is the latest celebrity to speak out about the #OscarsSoWhite controversy, but she is aiming her thoughts at two people in particular: Jada Pinkett and Will Smith. Why your brain goes mushy over cute animal videos Humans are instinctively attracted to beings with large eyes, chubby cheeks, big forehead. And the reason is tied to happiness and our survival. Greek Leader Pushes for Less Austerity Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras aims to persuade economic leaders meeting in Davos, Switzerland, that Greeces creditors should acknowledge its overhaul efforts and disburse rescue loans without the fight that pushed Greece to the br... Kerry and Lavrov meet to get Syrian peace talks moving - Washington Post Washington Post Kerry and Lavrov meet to get Syrian peace talks moving Washington Post ZURICH The fate of Syrian peace talks hung in the balance as Secretary of State John F. Kerry met Wednesday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lav... Danish Town Opens New Front in Immigration Culture War: Childrens Menus Pork has become the latest weapon in a fight to preserve national identity after Randers, Denmark, voted to require day care centers and kindergartens to include it on menus. Low oil complicates struggle to raise eurozone inflation Low oil prices are complicating life for the European Central Bank in its struggle to push up the worrisome low inflation in the 19 nations that use the euro currency. Suicide bomb blast in central Kabul A suicide bomber in the diplomatic area of the Afghan capital Kabul has killed at least four people, officials say. Posts Rezaian makes brief appearance outside hospital Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian made a brief appearance outside the U.S. militarys Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, where hes being treated along with two other Americans who were just freed by Iran in a prisoner ex... Canadas central bank keeps key interest rate unchanged Canadas central bank has kept its key interest rate unchanged. Germany, Turkey arrest 35 in raids against traffickers German and Turkish police said Wednesday they broke up a sophisticated smuggling ring that had been trafficking primarily Syrian refugees across the Mediterranean in freight ships into Europe. How Will The Saudi-Iranian Conflict Affect Oil Markets? The recent Saudi-Iranian clash is unlikely to affect oil markets for now, but the redistribution of political power between Saudi Arabia and Iran, along with the US disengagement from the Middle East might have long-term consequences for... Ted Cruz reacts to Sarah Palin's endorsement of Trump Ted Cruz reacts to Sarah Palin's endorsement of Trump Lynch Defends Obama Executive Actions Curbing Guns as Legal AG Loretta Lynch goes before Congress to defend Obama's executive actions curbing guns Canada's Central Bank Keeps Key Interest Rate Unchanged Canada's central bank keeps key interest rate unchanged amid plunging dollar, oil prices Theres Nothing to Rebuild: Satellite Photos Show ISIS Destruction of Iraqi Holy Site St. Elijah's Monastery is the latest religious site targeted by ISIS Migration takes center stage in Davos Europe's refugee crisis has been a hot topic in Davos, where German President Joachim Gauck hinted at a shift in Germany's open-door policy. He said limiting refugee numbers could be necessary and not 'per se unethical.' Pope tells Davos elite: Consider your role in creating poverty DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Pope Francis told members of the world's wealthy political and economic elite on Wednesday that they should not be deaf to the cry of the poor and must consider their own role in creating inequality. 2015 'shattered' global temperature record by wide margin - BBC News BBC News 2015 'shattered' global temperature record by wide margin BBC News Global temperatures in 2015 were the warmest on record, according to data published by meteorologists in the UK and US. The Met Office figures show that ... Nobody expected this 'Jeopardy!' ending After all three contestants wagered it all and lost during the "Final Jeopardy!" round, the show was left without a winner. Kerry, Lavrov Try to Settle Differences Over Syrian Talks US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have met in hopes of resolving differences over who is eligible to join UN-mediated peace talks for Syria US firms moving out of China One out of four US companies active in China has started moving out of the worlds second-largest economy. Or is at least planning to, according to a report from the American Chamber of Commerce in China. Egypt: who's afraid of January 25? CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian activists Ali al-Khouly and Mohamed Ali had just sat down at a Cairo coffeeshop when plainclothes officers grabbed them and hauled them off to a police station. What they most wanted to know was: what are your ... NOAA, NASA: 2015 Was Hottest on Earth by a Wide Margin Federal meteorologists announced that Earth last year was the hottest on record Gunmen Open Fire at Pakistani University, Killing at Least 20 Several gunmen have stormed a university in Pakistan in an attack reportedly still underway. 366 of China's Cities Don't Have Safe Air: Report Air quality across China generally improved last year but remains a "major health hazard," according to Greenpeace. Blizzard watch: Severe snowstorm likely Friday through Sunday - Washington Post Washington Post Blizzard watch: Severe snowstorm likely Friday through Sunday Washington Post The latest forecast data are insistent that a severe winter storm will unleash crippling snow amounts and strong winds over much of the D.C. ar... Bomb Targeting TV Workers Kills 7, Wounds Two Dozen There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast near the Russian embassy, though the Taliban has directly threatened journalists from Tolo TV. She's back! Palin endorses Trump In front of thousands of Trump fans, Palin handed Trump his most high-profile endorsement yet, just two weeks out from the Iowa caucuses. Op-Ed Contributor: Hong Kongs Missing Booksellers Why is Beijing using brute force to close down a tiny publisher of two-bit political gossip? Davos Mood Dimmed as Markets Continue to Slide A pessimistic mood reigned as corporate officials and others gathered for the World Economic Forums annual high-level confab here, darkened by financial markets that continued their dismal start to the year. US and Allies Meet in Paris to Strengthen Anti-IS Coalition - New York Times Washington Times US and Allies Meet in Paris to Strengthen Anti-IS Coalition New York Times PARIS Britain's top military official says countries allied against the Islamic State group have to capitalize on recent gains made against... 'Whiteness History Month' planned for college in Oregon 'Whiteness History Month' planned for college in Oregon Two Witnesses Speak About Pakistan University Attack A student caught up in the carnage, and an emergency rescue worker aiding the victims, spoke to RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal about the attacks on the Bacha Khan University in Northwestern Pakistan on January 20. (RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal) Homeless woman gives birth near Vatican, receives aid offer The Vatican has offered a place to stay to a homeless woman who gave birth on a piece of cardboard near St. Peters Square early Wednesday. Shes thinking about it. Report: Turkey arrests 2 more over deadly Istanbul attack Turkish authorities have arrested two more people with suspected links to the suicide bomber who killed 10 Germans in Istanbul last week, raising the number of arrests to 12, the state-run news agency reported Wednesday. AP Interview: Irans top diplomat decries US coercion New U.S. sanctions over Irans ballistic missile testing are an example of an American addiction to coercion despite improved relations and a historic nuclear deal, Irans foreign minister said in an interview Wednesday. The Latest: Irans foreign minister: no need for Saudi panic The latest developments from Davos, where global leaders and business executives are attending the World Economic Forums annual meeting. All times local. IS pays tribute to Paris attackers, identifies 2 as Iraqis The Islamic State group has published an online photo tribute to the Muslim extremists who killed 130 people in Paris, including pictures of two unknown men identified as Iraqis. FIFA voters publicly declare support as election day looms Five weeks before election day, some of the 209 FIFA member federations are publicly pledging their votes in the presidential race. Post reporter seeks to catch up with world after release from Iran Jason Rezaian plans quiet time with family before returning to cover the U.S.-Iran story. India Offers Training, Funding to Spur Growth in Tibetan Entrepreneurs The physical therapy clinic sits on a hilly road in Dharamsala, home to the Dalai Lama and thousands of Tibetan exiles in northern India. The clinic has examination tables, colorful anatomy posters and a Tibetan flag. This is the first... Marijuana Inc. eyes Mexico as drug liberalization looms MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Many top companies cashing in on legal cannabis are considering a bet on Mexico after a Supreme Court decision raised hopes for a legalization of medical and recreational marijuana in a country reeling from years ... Moldovan Parliament Approves New Government Moldova's parliament has approved a new pro-EU government led by Pavel Filip, ending a monthslong political crisis. ISIS Has Destroyed Iraq's Oldest Christian Monastery - New York Times New York Times ISIS Has Destroyed Iraq's Oldest Christian Monastery New York Times Islamic State militants have destroyed the oldest Christian monastery in Iraq, the latest in a growing list of ancient monuments and artifacts that ha... ISIS Has Destroyed Iraqs Oldest Christian Monastery Satellite images show that St. Elijahs Monastery, a 1,400-year-old stone sanctuary, was probably razed to rubble between August and September 2014. US Housing Starts Slip in December, but Annual Gains Solid US builders started fewer homes in December, but prior gains meant that ground breakings still ended 2015 at a much healthier level than a year ago Amy Schumer calls out teen film critic for sexist tweet But was the boy being sexist? Austria Imposes Asylum Cap as Refugee Crisis Bites Austria announced Wednesday it would limit the number of migrants and refugees granted asylum to no more than 1.5 percent of the population over the next four years. 'Worst Passwords Revealed The worst password of 2015 is 123456, according to SplashData, which released the Worst Passwords List on Tuesday. The firm has been ranking passwords since 2011 and bases its selection on more than two million leaked passwords. Many ... Goldman posts smallest profit in four years after bond settlement - Reuters Reuters Goldman posts smallest profit in four years after bond settlement Reuters Goldman Sachs Group Inc reported its smallest quarterly profit in more than four years as a $5 billion settlement of crisis-era legal claims added pain to ... New Mexico Rescue Worker Discovers Fallen Climber Is Ex-Wife A member of a New Mexico rescue team received a shock when he discovered the climber's body he was sent to recover belonged to his ex-wife North Korea's Day of the 'Big Cold' Lives up to Reputation The date known on traditional calendars as the day of the "Big Cold" lived up to its reputation Wednesday in North Korea Brazilian Lawmakers Threaten to Crack Down on Internet Freedom A new bill says it will protect victims of honor crimes but will also shield politicians from criticism Post's Rezaian Makes Brief Appearance Outside Hospital Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian made a brief appearance outside the US military's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, where he's being treated along with 2 other Americans who were just freed by Iran in a prisoner exchange Suicide Bomber in Kabul Strikes Packed Commuter Bus - New York Times Newsweek Suicide Bomber in Kabul Strikes Packed Commuter Bus New York Times KABUL, Afghanistan At least seven people were killed and dozens wounded in Kabul on Wednesday, officials said, when a suicide bomber in a car struck a commuter... Global stock markets dive amid oil rout Stock markets worldwide have tumbled with investors unsettled by the continued slide in oil prices and fears about the impact on global growth. Global stock markets fall amid oil rout Stock markets worldwide have tumbled with investors unsettled by the continued slide in oil prices and fears about the impact on global growth. Senate Dems Press for Vote on Religious Test for Immigrants Senate Dems press for vote on religious test for immigrants When vengeful obits go viral It was the kind of obituary made for social media: a brutally honest -- shocking, even -- retelling of a life from start to finish with a few digs at surviving relatives in between, sure to raise eyebrows and compel readers to share it. Al Qaeda attack dents Burkina Faso's hopes of recovery OUAGADOUGOU (Reuters) - When Burkina Faso swore in its first new president in decades last month, many people hoped the democratic transition would pave the way to an era of progress. Now a deadly raid by al Qaeda militants has shaken th... Spanish town celebrates bizarre, turnip-throwing festival Hundreds of people are running through the streets of a tiny town in southwestern Spain, chasing a fancy-dressed, beast-like figure and pelting it with turnips. Zimbabwes Constitutional Court outlaws child marriage Zimbabwes Constitutional Court has outlawed child marriage in an effort to end a practice that a rights group says is common in the southern African nation. Nazarbaev Dissolves Kazakh Parliament, Sets Date For Early Elections Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev has dissolved the parliament's lower chamber, the Mazhilis. Students suicide poses problem for Modi Prime ministers party leaders accused of driving PhD student to death AP Interview: Iran's Top Diplomat Decries US 'Coercion' Iran's foreign minister is decrying new US sanctions over Iran's ballistic missile testing, calling them an example of an American "addiction to coercion." Does Sarah Palin still have influence? Former VP nominee endorses Trump Supreme Court says class action lawsuits can survive compensation offers - USA TODAY USA TODAY Supreme Court says class action lawsuits can survive compensation offers USA TODAY WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court dealt a rare setback Wednesday to companies trying to avoid potentially expensive class-action lawsuits. The jus... IS Pays Tribute to Paris Attackers, Identifies 2 as 'Iraqis' The Islamic State group has published an online photo tribute to the Muslim extremists who killed 130 people in Paris, including pictures of 2 unknown men identified as Iraqis Chile Opens Latin America's Largest Medical Marijuana Farm Latin America's largest marijuana plantation opened in Chile on Tuesday, marking the region's growing acceptance of the medical uses of cannabis. Israel plans to seize West Bank farmland: Army Radio JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel plans to appropriate a large tract of agricultural land in the occupied West Bank, Israel's Army Radio said on Wednesday, a move that has angered Palestinians and is almost certain to draw international criti... Hezbollah Recruited Palestinians to Attack Israel, Security Officials Say The Lebanese militant group offered training on explosives and suicide bombing, Israel says The Latest: Chicago Mayor Opposes State Takeover of Schools Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel opposes a state takeover of the financially troubled Chicago Public Schools U.S. Defense Secretary Urges Allies to Help Accelerate Islamic State Fight U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter on Wednesday called on top allies in the fight against Islamic State to share ideas and find ways to accelerate the military campaign against the militant group in Iraq, Syria and beyond. Is Oscars apology too little too late? Academy president 'heartbroken' Militant who claimed responsibility for Indian base attack warns Pakistan against crackdown MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) - The Pakistan-based chief of a militant alliance fighting for an end to Indian rule in divided Kashmir openly condemned on Wednesday a crackdown by the Pakistan government against another group India bla... Stuttgart: Germany's 'Beijing' for air pollution? In German "car city" Stuttgart, air pollution has reached harmful levels - again. Authorities are trying "soft" appeals to the public - but environmentalists blame the bad air on Germany's strong car lobby. How the RNC squashed its only conservative-media debate The Washington Times and Liberty University were planning for a year. And then the Republican Party pulled the plug. Historic Monastery in Iraq 'Pulverized' by ISIS: AP Satellite photos appear to show the destruction of St. Elijah's Monastery, which stood as a place of worship near Mosul, Iraq, for 1,400 years. From the Frontline: stories we should not forget Telegraph foreign correspondents and editors discuss stories they have covered that they feel should not be forgotten Is the race in Iowa as close as the polls show? Is the race in Iowa as close as the polls show? Djokovic wins, and again faces questions about match-fixing MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) -- For the second time in three days, Novak Djokovic won a match at the Australian Open and was confronted by questions about match-fixing in the sport.... Eric Trump says father will 'cut through the nonsense' in DC Eric Trump says father will 'cut through the nonsense' in DC Suicide bomber targets bus, kills 4 in heart of Kabul - CNN CNN Suicide bomber targets bus, kills 4 in heart of Kabul CNN (CNN) A suicide attacker on a motorbike set off a deadly explosion near a bus Wednesday in the heart of Afghanistan's capital, officials said. At least four civilians died... Limiting German refugee intake not unethical, president says DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Germany cannot take in all the asylum seekers who want to begin a new life there and it is not unethical of Berlin to limit the influx, President Joachim Gauck said on Wednesday, pressing other European cou... Irans Supreme Leader Condemns Mob Attack on Saudi Embassy Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the assault that followed the execution of a Shiite cleric in Saudi Arabia was detrimental to the country and Islam. Kazakh 'Gray Mass' Protests Bank Loan Policies Mortgage holders held a protest outside of major banks in the Kazakh city of Almaty. They called for a recalculation of their loans, amid the recent economic crisis. (RFE/RL's Kazakh Service) The Latest: Germany wants fewer migrants this year The latest news on the influx of asylum-seekers and other migrants in Europe. All times local: UN: Central African Republic facing hunger crisis The United Nations is warning of a hunger crisis in Central African Republic that is affecting half the countrys population. NBA Ex-Player Tate George Back in Court for Fraud Sentencing Former NBA player and University of Connecticut star Tate George is in federal court in New Jersey for a sentencing hearing on fraud charges connected to an alleged Ponzi scheme US Defense Secretary Calls for Allies to Help Accelerate Fight Against Islamic State - Wall Street Journal BBC News US Defense Secretary Calls for Allies to Help Accelerate Fight Against Islamic State Wall Street Journal PARISU.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter on Wednesday called on top allies in the fight against Islamic State to share ideas... Smuggling soars as Venezuela's economy sinks BOCA DEL GRITA, Venezuela (Reuters) - Clutching egg cartons on his shoulder, a young man wades precariously through a muddy river on Venezuela's western jungle border where a Colombian shopkeeper will happily buy them up. Gun control group submits petitions for ballot measure AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) - Maine election officials are verifying petitions for a ballot measure requiring criminal background checks for all private gun sales in the state. The group Maine Moms Demand Action submitted petitions to the Secret... Zimbabwe's Constitutional Court Outlaws Child Marriage Zimbabwe's Constitutional Court has outlawed child marriage in an effort to end a practice that a rights group says is common in the southern African nation 2016-01-20Pentagon Eyes Laser-Armed Drones to Shoot Down Ballistic Missiles 2016-01-20 Pentagon Eyes Laser-Armed Drones to Shoot Down Ballistic Missiles - Defense One | "The US is losing leverage with its traditional allies in the Middle East. As the nuclear deal with Iran is implemented, its historic relationsh... GOP Leaders to Pitch State Takeover of Chicago Schools Top Republicans in the Illinois Legislature plan to call for a state takeover of the financially troubled Chicago Public Schools Jason Rezaian Says Hes Feeling Fine After Release From Iran "I appreciate everything that has been done on my behalf," the Washington Post journalist said Tennis Stars, Past and Present, Want Names of Match-Fixers Tennis stars, past and present, want names of match-fixers to prevent scandal turning into a 'witch hunt' Deadly assault on Pakistan university Security forces end an attack by four gunmen on a university in north-west Pakistan in which 19 people are killed and 17 injured. Right at Home: Bold, Black Kitchens Serve up Style Right at Home column: Black is back in kitchen decor Clinton campaign accuses GOP of 'coordinated leak' in email scandal 'She was been through the wringer in terms of Republicans targeting her,' spokesman Brian Fallon says. Boxing Champ Mike Tyson Selling Home Near Las Vegas Mike Tyson has upgraded to a bigger house in his neighborhood and put his former home near Las Vegas up for sale French Watchdog Files Complaint Over Emergency Powers A prominent human rights watchdog is challenging emergency laws adopted in the wake of the Nov. 13 Paris attacks that allow the state to ban public demonstrations and conduct raids without warrants. Mos Def Charged With Breaking South Africa's Immigration Law - New York Times Times LIVE Mos Def Charged With Breaking South Africa's Immigration Law New York Times JOHANNESBURG An official says American rapper Mos Def will appear in court for breaking South Africa's immigration laws. Home Affairs Direct... Stocks plunge: Dow down more than 300, oil tumbles below $28 - USA TODAY USA TODAY Stocks plunge: Dow down more than 300, oil tumbles below $28 USA TODAY The sell-off that has engulfed global stock markets early in 2016 intensified Wednesday, with oil breaking below $28 a barrel for the first time since 2003,... Vietnam mourns death of sacred turtle and speculates on omens for ruling communists Demise of ancient reptile in Hanoi lake as party delegates prepare to choose new leaders prompts grief and questions Clinton Library set to release Donald Trump records The files could revive questions about the friendly relationship Trump had with Bill and Hillary Clinton. Stocks plunge: Dow down almost 300, oil tumbles below $28 - USA TODAY USA TODAY Stocks plunge: Dow down almost 300, oil tumbles below $28 USA TODAY The sell-off that has engulfed global stock markets early in 2016 intensified Wednesday, with oil breaking below $28 a barrel for the first time since 2003, th... These are the world's best countries. (Sorry, America you're No. 4.) A new project from U.S. News & World Report has an ambitious goal: Ranking the world. Shell expects 4th Q profits to drop at least 40 percent Royal Dutch Shell expects its fourth quarter profits to drop at least 40 percent to between $1.6 billion and $1.9 billion after a sharp drop in crude oil prices, but underscored its determination to press ahead with the proposed mega-mer... Bomb explodes near Russian embassy in Kabul A powerful suicide bomber has struck downtown Kabul close to the Russian embassy. There are fears that several people may have died in the attack. Mos Def charged with breaking South Africa's immigration law JOHANNESBURG (AP) -- An official says American rapper Mos Def will appear in court for breaking South Africa's immigration laws.... This is how you capture the spectacular beauty of arctic wilderness Canadian photographer Michael H. Davies has been photographing his arctic community for years, but it was only a month ago that the broader public became familiar with his work. Claims of corruption at Tennis's lower levels, but "no proof" at top level As the Australian Open action heats up, allegations of match fixing in tennis are as well. The sport's top players maintain their innocence while others suggest the corruption is at the lower levels. US Ranks 4th in 'Best Country' Poll In the inaugural Best Countries ranking, the United States places fourth. The rankings, which were compiled by U.S. News & World Report, the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and global brand consultants BAV Consulting, were ... Drew Barrymore's Sets New Sights for Beauty Brand Actress, director and author Drew Barrymore is looking to build her beauty business beyond Wal-Mart Sinosphere: Treatment of Foreigners in China a Worrying Trend, E.U. Envoy Says Hans Dietmar Schweisgut, speaking at a news conference on economic matters, addressed the recent string of expulsions and detentions of Europeans. 5 Ways You Can Help Flint, Michigan Amid The Water Crisis - Huffington Post Huffington Post 5 Ways You Can Help Flint, Michigan Amid The Water Crisis Huffington Post The residents of Flint, Michigan, are facing an unprecedented water crisis as their sinks, bathtubs and water hoses have been gushing lead-contamin... Rise of the transformer house It seems like a regular room, with a minimal aesthetic and laminated wooden flooring. New buildings set to define cities in 2016 From where we stand, 2015 has been an exciting year for architecture. From the opening of Zaha Hadid's cliff-side Alpine museum, to the ongoing controversy surrounding Herzog & de Meuron Parisian tower and Tokyo's 2020 Olympic stadium. B... Militants storm Pakistan university, kill at least 20 CHARSADDA, Pakistan/ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Armed militants stormed a university in volatile northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing at least 20 people and wounding dozens a little more than a year after the massacre of 134 students at... Suicide bombing in Afghan capital kills four people - Reuters Reuters Suicide bombing in Afghan capital kills four people Reuters KABUL A suicide bomber killed four people in the evening rush hour on Wednesday in a district of the Afghan capital near the national parliament, government ministries a... In Struggling Mill City, 24-Year-Old Mayor Seeks Turnaround Young mayors took office this month in cities around the country, but only one is running a place as big and challenged as Fall River, Massachusetts Rivesaltes Journal: Memorial for Frances Undesirables Echoes Debate Over Migrants The ruins of an internment camp at Rivesaltes, where for decades waves of refugees and others persecuted in wars were once held, have been turned into a memorial. Sarah Palin endorses Donald Trump for president John Roberts reports from Norwalk, Iowa Vietnam mourns revered Hanoi turtle Vietnam mourns an ancient turtle revered as a symbol of auspiciousness, whose death has shocked the country on the eve of the Communist Party congress. Red doors mark out asylum seekers' houses in English town MIDDLESBROUGH, England (Reuters) - Asylum seekers in a northern English town believe they are easy targets for racist abuse because they have been housed in properties that almost all have red front doors, a local support group manager s... Search called off for missing Marines The U.S. Coast Guard will stop actively searching for the 12 Marines who went missing when the two helicopters carrying them apparently crashed off the coast of Hawaii last week. The search suspension goes into effect at sunset Tuesday. Jamie Foxx rescues crash victim Oscar winner Jamie Foxx helped rescue a man whose crashed pickup truck caught on fire Monday night, Foxx's publicist confirmed to CNN. Sarah Palin: Trump 'Would Let Our Warriors Do Their Job' Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump wins the endorsement of conservative firebrand Sarah Palin University attack shows Pakistan's failure to curb terror After the 2014 Peshawar massacre, most Pakistanis believed their state had effectively cracked down on militants. But the latest attacks show the government's anti-terror policy has been a failure, say analysts. VIDEO: Is Poland being 'Putinised'? Poland is under pressure from the European Union after the government approved laws giving it significant new powers over the media, civil service and the judiciary. Goldman Sachs Profit Falls 65% on Legal Expenses - Bloomberg Bloomberg Goldman Sachs Profit Falls 65% on Legal Expenses Bloomberg Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s fourth-quarter revenue beat analysts' estimates as fees from advising on mergers jumped 27 percent. Net income dropped 65 percent on ... This Is the Best Country in the World According to a Davos report Austria caps asylum claims and steps up border checks - Irish Times Irish Times Austria caps asylum claims and steps up border checks Irish Times Europe's passport-free Schengen system developed another serious crack on Wednesday after Austria vowed a considerable step-up in border controls and a t... Attack at Bacha Khan University in Pakistan Leaves at Least 22 Dead The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the assault in northwestern Pakistan, which was among the most brazen in a long insurgency. Iraq's Historic St. Elijah's Monastery Has Been 'Pulverized' by ISIS: AP - NBCNews.com NBCNews.com Iraq's Historic St. Elijah's Monastery Has Been 'Pulverized' by ISIS: AP NBCNews.com IRBIL, Iraq Satellite photos obtained by the Associated Press confirm what church leaders and Middle East preservationists... Deputies: Man Killed in Dispute Over Touching Truck Authorities in central Florida say a man was killed in a dispute over whether he touched another man's pickup truck Islamic State destroys oldest Christian monastery in Iraq - NOLA.com NOLA.com Islamic State destroys oldest Christian monastery in Iraq NOLA.com IRBIL, Iraq -- The oldest Christian monastery in Iraq has been reduced to a field of rubble, yet another victim of the Islamic State group's relentless destr... The Latest: Germany, Turkey in sweep against traffickers The latest news on the influx of asylum-seekers and other migrants in Europe. All times local: Chocolate wars: Nestle loses bid to trademark KitKat shape Nestle has lost a long-running court battle to trademark the four-finger shape of its KitKat chocolate bar in Britain. Blast near Russian Embassy in Kabul amid efforts to restart peace bid There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but Taliban factions have targeted Kabul in the past. ISIS Has 'Pulverized' Iraq's Oldest Christian Monastery: AP Satellite photos obtained by AP show that Iraq's oldest Christian monastery has been reduced to rubble, another victim of ISIS's destruction of heritage sites. Man Convicted of Stealing $240 From Double Homicide Scene A Massachusetts man who happened upon a double homicide, didn't report the deaths and stole $240 cash from the home has been sentenced to two years in prison Documents: Ex-Alabama Deputy to Plead Guilty in Assault A former Alabama sheriff's deputy has signed court documents showing he intends to plead guilty to charges of beating up a motorist during a roadside stop in 2012 Inspector reports on Clinton email The emails on Hillary Clinton's private server contained classified intelligence from some of the U.S. intelligence community's most secretive programs, according to a new report. Sarah Palin's Circle of Victimhood - The Atlantic The Atlantic Sarah Palin's Circle of Victimhood The Atlantic In endorsing Donald Trump, Sarah Palin faced a challenge. How does a woman who has built her brand on hating cultural elites endorse a billionaire, Manhattan TV star? Her a... Ballistic Missiles Are 'Legitimate' for Defense, Iran Says Iran's foreign minister decried new U.S. sanctions over Iran's ballistic missile testing. Colombia Cracks Down on Wave of Acid Attacks Against Women Colombia's wave of acid attacks is a relative anomaly in Latin America. Perpetrators are overwhelmingly men, while victims are mostly women. Britons love me, Donald Trump says over Parliament ban debate Republican presidential frontrunner says he can reach more people with one tweet than the petition to ban him did U.S.-Backed Kurds Are Waging 'Revenge' Campaign: Report U.S.-backed Kurdish forces have been leading the charge in driving ISIS out of areas seized by the militants. Austria to slash asylum claims, beef up border checks VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria said on Wednesday it would cap the number of people allowed to claim asylum this year at less than half last year's figure, and Chancellor Werner Faymann said border controls would have to be stepped up "massiv... Militants storm Pakistan university, kill at least 20 - Reuters Reuters Militants storm Pakistan university, kill at least 20 Reuters CHARSADDA, Pakistan/ISLAMABAD Armed militants stormed a university in volatile northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing at least 20 people and wounding dozens a lit... Austria to slash asylum claims, beef up border checks - Reuters Reuters Austria to slash asylum claims, beef up border checks Reuters VIENNA Austria said on Wednesday it would cap the number of people allowed to claim asylum this year at less than half last year's figure, and Chancellor Werner Fa... CBS News chief on Bob Schieffer's return: 'How could you sit out a year like this?' CBS News president David Rhodes talks ratings, and Bob Schieffer Report Urges Colleges to Change Application Process A Harvard-based group is calling for colleges to change the application process to give greater importance to applicants community involvement. Cain: Palin's Trump endorsement a 'game-gainer,' not changer Cain: Palin's Trump endorsement a 'game-gainer,' not changer China Offers Support for Yemen Government as Xi Visits Saudi Arabia China has signaled its support for Yemen's government, which is fighting an Iran-allied militia, on the first day of a visit to Saudi Arabia by Chinese President Xi Jinping, who will also be heading to Tehran later in the week. A Saudi-l... These are the worlds best countries. (Sorry, America youre Number These are the worlds best countries. (Sorry, America youre Number 4.) Russian airstrikes are working in Syria enough to put peace talks in doubt Gunmen storm university in Pakistan, killing at least 20 people By 2030, South China S... Seeking Asylum In Ukraine, Russian Dissidents Get Cold Shoulder More than 200 Russian dissidents have fled to Ukraine over the past two years, but only a handful have been granted political asylum. Some fear they could be sent back and are warning that Ukraine is not a safe place for embattled Russia... Sopranos' star Jamie-Lynn Sigler says she has MS - USA TODAY USA TODAY Sopranos' star Jamie-Lynn Sigler says she has MS USA TODAY Jamie-Lynn Sigler, who played the emotionally conflicted daughter of mobster Tony Soprano on the Emmy-winning HBO drama, has gone public with her struggle with her ... The 1 Thing on Everybodys Mind at Davos 2016 Most want to know when will the great revolution in technology actually deliver enough jobs Water crisis 'is an embarrassment' If Michigan Governor Rick Snyder thought he'd calm fears and win over residents when he addressed the current water crisis in Flint, he was mistaken. The Note: The Palin Factor - ABC News ABC News The Note: The Palin Factor ABC News --PALIN ENDORSES TRUMP WITH RAUCOUS 20-MINUTE SPEECH: Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin endorsed Donald Trump during a raucous speech at the presidential candidate's rally in Ames, Iowa last ... Bin Laden body photo recovered? A Navy SEAL who helped kill Osama bin Laden allegedly kept an unauthorized photo of his corpse, The Intercept reported Tuesday. Ferries stay docked, farmers empty milk churns in Greek pension protests ATHENS (Reuters) - Ferries remained docked at Greek ports and farmers poured milk onto the streets on Wednesday in protest over plans to revamp Greece's pensions system, a condition for the country's multi-billion euro bailout. Top EU official seeks migration summit as crisis deepens The head of the European Commission on Wednesday called for a special summit of EU leaders to deal with the refugee emergency amid criticism that the blocs migrant strategy is unraveling fast. The Latest: Austria caps asylum-seekers at 37,500 in 2016 The latest news on the influx of asylum-seekers and other migrants in Europe. All times local: Pakistan university attack: Dozens of students and teachers killed by militants Four attackers killed after opening fire in classrooms and dormitories at Bacha Khan University in Charsadda Deep freeze across Balkans makes migrant journeys harder Subfreezing temperatures and snow have settled over Central Europe, adding to the difficulties of migrants heading to Western Europe but not weakening their determination to continue their journeys. New Michael Jackson Documentary to Feature Never-Before-Seen Footage Spike Lees new documentary about Michael Jackson will feature new archival footage from the Jackson family. 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But the slump won't stop Shell from pursuing a multi-billion-euro mega-merger. 80 Shot as Gunmen Storm University in Pakistan Eyewitnesses told local media the gunmen chanted "Allahu Akbar" or "God is greatest" as they carried out the attack. WSJ Forum: Has Central Bank Policy Had the Desired Effect on Growth? Watch a debate hosted by the Journal in Davos featuring UBS Chairman Axel Weber, Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan and others, with central banks, economic growth and market volatility on the agenda. Most Memorable Lines From Sarah Palin's Endorsement Speech Sarah Palin made quite a splash in Iowa tonight. Russia shows off military might at Syrian base - Fox News Jakarta Post Russia shows off military might at Syrian base Fox News Russia has showcased the military might it is currently using in Syria, days before peace talks aimed at devising a political settlement to the conflict. Warplanes took... Could sports at your kid's birthday get you sued? 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The Latest: UK asylum-seekers: Red doors mark us for abuse The latest news on the influx of asylum-seekers and other migrants in Europe. All times local: Austria announces caps on refugees: 37,500 in 2016; 127,500 through 2019 Austria announces caps on refugees: 37,500 in 2016; 127,500 through 2019. Publisher George Weidenfeld dies in London aged 96 Publisher and philanthropist George Weidenfeld, who devoted himself to improving understanding between faiths and peoples, died Wednesday in London. He was 96. Biden urges US business in Davos to lean on anti-gay states - Reuters Reuters Biden urges US business in Davos to lean on anti-gay states Reuters DAVOS, Switzerland U.S. Vice President Joe Biden urged executives in Davos to use their influence to drive change in countries where lesbian, gay, bisexual and t... 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In Davos, Iran's Foreign Minister Says U.S. Missile Sanctions 'Illegal' Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has repeated Tehrans criticism of fresh U.S. sanctions over Irans ballistic missile program, calling the sanctions illegal and justifying Tehrans recent missile tests as self defense. The Latest: Germany Wants Fewer Migrants This Year - New York Times Channel News Asia The Latest: Germany Wants Fewer Migrants This Year New York Times VIENNA The latest news on the influx of asylum-seekers and other migrants in Europe. All times local: 3:20 p.m.. The German government wants the number... What you need to know about the Octagon Art Festival on Sunday in Ames news Sergio Canavero plans to transplant a humans head onto a donor body. He says that the procedure will be ready before the end of 2017 and could eventually become a way of treating complete paralysis. The team behind the work has published videos and images showing a monkey with a transplanted head, as well as mice that are able to move their legs after having their spinal cords severed and then stuck back together. Non-damaging transplant of Monkey head and mice have had spinal cord repairs Sergio Canavero said researchers led by Xiaoping Ren at Harbin Medical University, China, have carried out a head transplant on a monkey. They connected up the blood supply between the head and the new body, but did not attempt to connect the spinal cord. Canavero says the experiment, which repeats the work of Robert White in the US in 1970, demonstrates that if the head is cooled to -15 C, a monkey can survive the procedure without suffering brain injury. The monkey fully survived the procedure without any neurological injury of whatever kind, says Canavero, adding that it was kept alive for only 20 hours after the procedure for ethical reasons. New Scientist was, however, unable to obtain further details on this experiment. Weve done a pilot study testing some ideas about how to prevent injury, says Ren, whose work is sponsored by the Chinese government. He and his team have also performed experiments on human cadavers in preparation for carrying out the surgery, he says. This can open up a new science of spinal cord trauma reconstruction Canavero is seeking funds to offer a head transplant to a 31-year-old Russian patient, Valery Spriridonov, who has a genetic muscle-wasting disease. Canavero says he intends to make a plea to Mark Zuckerberg to finance the surgery. Last week, Trinh Hong Son, director of the Vietnam-Germany Hospital in Hanoi, Vietnam, offered to host the procedure. If the so-called head transplant works, this is going to open up a whole new science of spinal cord trauma reconstruction, says Michael Sarr, editor of the journal Surgery and a surgeon at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. We are most interested in spinal cord reconstruction using head transplantation as a proof of principle. Our journal does not necessarily support head transplantation because of multiple ethical issues and multiple considerations of informed consent and the possibility of negative consequences of a head transplant. The worlds first head transplant patient has scheduled the procedure for December 2017. Valery Spiridonov, 30, was diagnosed with a genetic muscle-wasting condition called Werdnig-Hoffmann disease, and volunteered for the procedure despite the risks involved. Nextbigfuture has covered the proposed full human body [aka human head transplant] transplant procedure several times. The background information and science behind the procedure is below. Dr. Sergio Canavero, an Italian neurosurgeon, will perform the procedure on Spiridonov. The procedure is expected to last up to 36 hours, and it will require Spiridonovs head be cooled as well as the donors body. In 2015, Canavero calculates it will take two years to plan and prepare for a successful procedure. The surgery will be done once the doctor and the experts are 99 percent sure of its success. Russian computer scientist Valery Spiridonov, suffering from Werdnig Hoffmans disease, has volunteered for the worlds first head-to-body transplant. Vladimir Smirnov/TASS/Corbis Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero announce a project perform a human head transplant at a keynote lecture at the American Academy of Neurological and Orthopaedic Surgeons annual conference this June. He believes the patient would be able to speak in his own voice upon waking and that walking could be achieved within a year. If society doesnt want it, I wont do it, Canavero says. But if people dont want it in the US or Europe, that doesnt mean it wont be done somewhere else. Most other surgeons do not believe the procedure will be successful. New Scientist reports that Xiao-Ping Ren of Harbin Medical University in China recently showed that it is possible to perform a basic head transplant in a mouse. Ren will attempt to replicate Canaveros protocol in the next few months in mice, and monkeys. CNS Neuroscience and Therapeutics Allogeneic Head and Body Reconstruction: Mouse Model Rens approach, pioneered in mice, involves retaining the donor brain stem and transplanting the recipient head. Our preliminary data in mice support that this allows for retention of breathing and circulatory function. Critical aspects of the current protocol include avoiding cerebral ischemia through cross-circulation (donor to recipient) and retaining the donor brain stem. Successful clinical translation of AHBR will become a milestone of medical history and potentially could save millions of people. Rens mouse experiment confirmed a method to avoid cerebral ischemia during the surgery and solved an important part of the problem of how to accomplish long-term survival after transplantation and preservation of the donor brain stem. Head Transplant Procedure * The sharp severance of the cervical cords (donors and recipients), with its attendant minimal tissue damage * The exploitation of the gray matter internuncial sensori-motor highway rebridged by sprouting connections between the two reapposed cord stumps. This could also explain the partial motor recovery in a paraplegic patient submitted to implantation of olfactory ensheathing glia and peripheral nerve bridges: A 2-mm bridge of remaining cord matter might have allowed gray matter axons to reconnect the two ends * The bridging as per point 2 above is accelerated by electrical SCS straddling the fusion point * The application of fusogens/sealants: Sealants seal the thin layer of injured cells in the gray matter, both neuronal, glial and vascular, with little expected scarring; simultaneously they fuse a certain number of axons in the white matter. During CSA, microsutures (mini-myelorrhaphy) will be applied along the outer rim of the apposed stumps. A cephalosomatic anastomosee will thus be kept in induced coma for 3-4 weeks following CSA to give time to the stumps to refuse (and avoid movements of the neck) and will then undergo appropriate rehabilitation in the months following the procedure. In addition, the immunosuppressant regime that will be instituted after CSA is expected to be pro-regenerative Figure 1: (a) Longitudinal cut along a primate spinal cord depicting the internuncial system (gray matter motor highway) and the nano-size of the proposed severance (left). The red circle on the right side of this panel is the pyramidal tract, shown in two exploded views of a sharply transected cord (middle right) and of the cord in the vertebral canal (lower middle right). (b)Visualization of the severed pyramidal tract. The uppermost image depicts a motor neuron in the cortex sending forth the axonal prolongation. Middle panel: The pyramidal tract (red) and a portion of its severed axons. Lower panel: The sharply severed axonal extensions (adapted from Laruelle 1937 and several images in the public domain) The project for the first head transplant in man is code-named HEAVEN/GEMINI (Head Anastomosis Venture with Cord Fusion. I covered the internet and news reactions to the 2013 discussion of technical feasibility of head transplants. I consider the 2013 proposed procedure in the context of organ donation and xenotransplantation. The technical hurdles have now been cleared thanks to cell engineering. As described in his paper, the keystone to successful spinal cord linkage is the possibility to fuse the severed axons in the cord by exploiting the power of membrane fusogens/sealants. Agents exist that can reconstitute the membranes of a cut axon and animal data have accrued since 1999 that restoration of axonal function is possible. One such molecule is poly-ethylene glycol (PEG), a widely used molecule with many applications from industrial manufacturing to medicine, including as an excipient in many pharmaceutical products. Another is chitosan, a polysaccharide used in medicine and other fields. HEAVEN capitalizes on a minimally traumatic cut of the spinal cord using an ultra-sharp blade (very different from what occurs in the setting of clinical spinal cord injury, where gross, extensive damage and scarring is observed) followed within minutes by chemofusion (GEMINI). The surgery is performed under conditions of deep hypothermia for maximal protection of the neural tissue. Moreover, and equally important, the motoneuronal pools contained in the cord grey matter remain largely untouched and can be engaged by spinal cord stimulation, a technique that has recently shown itself capable of restoring at least some motor control in spinal injured subjects. Surgical Neurological International HEAVEN: The head anastomosis venture Project outline for the first human head transplantation with spinal linkage (GEMINI) * a head of a monkey was transplanted in the 1970s but the spinal cord could not be repaired at the time * Spinal cords have been regrown in rats. * In 2000, guinea pigs had spinal cords surgically cut and then protected with PEG chemical (like what is proposed here) and they had over 90% of spinal nerve transmission restored with a lot of mobility and function restored Over the last 30 years, scientists have worked to chemically encourage regrowth. Two chemicals, chondroitinase and FGF, show strong signs of doing exactly thatin rats, at least. Independently, over the past three decades, each chemical has shown some promise in restoring simple but crucial rat motor processes, like breathing, even with entirely severed spinal cords. Two surgeons in the field figured that a combination of the chemicals might enhance the regrowth even more. The surgeons, from Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Clinic, began by entirely severing the spinal cords of 15 rats to ensure no independent, natural regrowth. That shut off the rats bladder control (a nervous system process that is especially important in rats, since they urinate often and to mark their territory). The researchers then injected the two growth-stimulating chemicals into both sides of the severance, and reinforced the gap in the cord with steel wiring and surgical thread. The Cleveland clinic has the full description of the rat spinal cord repair. The indications for HEAVEN would be far-reaching (including non-brain cancer), but, given the dearth of donors, a select group of gravely ill individuals would be the target. This would include for instance people with some kinds of muscular dystrophies, which prove eventually lethal and a source of major suffering. A Possible Head Transplant Scenario is Described What follows is a possible scenario in order to give the reader a feel for the whole endeavor. Donor is a brain dead patient, matched for height and build, immunotype and screened for absence of active systemic and brain disorders. If timing allows, an autotransfusion protocol with Ds blood can be enacted for reinfusion after anastomosis. The procedure is conducted in a specially designed operating suite that would be large enough to accommodate equipment for two surgeries conducted simultaneously by two separate surgical teams. The anesthesiological management and preparation is outlined elsewhere. Both R and D are intubated and ventilated through a tracheotomy. Heads are locked in rigid pin fixation. Leads for electrocardiography (ECG), EEG (e.g., Neurotrac), transcranial measurement of oxygen saturation and external defibrillation pads are placed. Temperature probes are positioned in tympanum, nasopharynx, bladder, and rectum. A radial artery cannula is inserted for hemodynamic monitoring. Rs head, neck, and one groin are prepped and draped if ACHP is elected. A 25G temperature probe may be positioned into Rs brain (deep in the white matter), but, as highlighted, a TM thermistor should do. Antibiotic coverage is provided throughout the procedure and thereafter as needed. Before PH, barbiturate or propofol loading is carried out in R to obtain burst suppression pattern. Once cooling begins, the infusion is kept constant. On arrest, the infusion is discontinued in R, and started in D. An infusion of lidocaine is also started, given the neuroprotective potential. Organ explantation in R is possible by a third surgical team. Rs head is subjected to PH (ca 10C), while Ds body will only receive spinal hypothermia; this does not alter body temperature. This also avoids any ischemic damage to Ds major organs. R lies supine during induction of PH, then is placed in the standard neurosurgical sitting position, whereas D is kept upright throughout. The sitting position facilitates the surgical maneuvers of the two surgical teams. In particular, a custom-made turning stand acting as a crane is used for shifting Rs head onto Ds neck. Rs head, previously fixed in a Mayfield three-pin fixation ring, will literally hang from the stand during transference, joined by long Velcro straps. The suspending apparatus will allow surgeons to reconnect the head in comfort. The two teams, working in concert, would make deep incisions around each patients neck, carefully separating all the anatomical structures (at C5/6 level forward below the cricoid) to expose the carotid and vertebral arteries, jugular veins and spine. All muscles in both R and D would be color-coded with markers to facilitate later linkage. Besides the axial incisions, three other cuts are envisioned, both for later spinal stabilization and access to the carotids, trachea and esophagus (Rs thyroid gland is left in situ): Two along the anterior margin of the sternocleidomastoids plus one standard midline cervical incision. Under the operating microscope, the cords in both subjects are clean-cut simultaneously as the last step before separation. Some slack must be allowed for, thus allowing further severance in order to fashion a strain-free fusion and side-step the natural retraction of the two segments away from the transection plane. White matter is particularly resistant to many of the factors associated with secondary injury processes in the central nervous system (CNS) such as oxygen and glucose deprivation and this is a safeguard to local manipulation. Once Rs head is separated, it is transferred onto Ds body to the tubes that would connect it to Ds circulation, whose head had been removed. The two cord stumps are accosted, length-adjusted and fused within 1-2 minutes: The proximal and distal cord segments must not be accosted too tightly to avoid further damage and not too loose to stop fusion. A chitosan-PEG glue, as described, will effect the fusion. Simultaneously, PEG or a derivative is infused into Ds blood-stream over 15-30. A few loose sutures are applied around the joined cord, threading the arachnoid, in order to reinforce the link. A second IV injection of PEG or derivative may be administered within 4-6 hours of the initial injection. The bony separation can be achieved transsomatically (i.e., C5 or C6 bodies are cut in two) or through the intervertebral spaces. In both R and D, after appropriate laminectomies, a durotomy, both on the axial and posterior sagittal planes, would follow, exposing the cords. In D, the cord only has been previously cooled. If need be, pressure in D is maintained with volume expansion and appropriate drugs. The vascular anastomosis for the cephalosomatic preparation is easily accomplished by employing bicarotid-carotid and bijugular-jugular silastic loop cannulae. Subsequently, the vessel tubes would be removed one by one, and the surgeons would sew the arteries and veins of the transplanted head together with those of the new body. Importantly, during head transference, the main vessels are tip-clamped to avoid air embolism and a later no-reflow phenomenon in small vessels. Upon linkage, Ds flow will immediately start to rewarm Rs head. The previously exposed vertebral arteries will also be reconstructed. The dura is sewn in a watertight fashion. Stabilization would follow the principles employed for teardrop fractures, anterior followed by posterior stabilization with a mix of wires/cables, lateral mass screws and rods, clamps and so forth, depending on cadaveric rehearsals. Trachea, esophagus, the vagi, and the phrenic nerves are reconnected, these latter with a similar approach to the cord. All muscles are joined appropriately using the markers. The skin is sewn by plastic surgeons for maximal cosmetic results. R is then brought to the intensive care unit (ICU) where he/she will be kept sedated for 3 days, with a cervical collar in place. Appropriate physiotherapy will be instituted during follow-up until maximal recovery is achieved. More Background and History of head transplants and spinal cord repairs There have been many studies on spinal cord repair, but many have the repair performed after waiting for one week. It would be far easier to repair if the repair is done right away and separation and reattachment is done in a careful surgical way. In 2000, there was immediate recovery from spinal cord injury through molecular repair of nerve membranes with polyethylene glycol. (10 pages) Immediate and full (over 90%) recovery from a severed spinal cord was performed in adult guinea pigs with the application of one of the chemicals proposed in the human head transplant project. A brief application of the hydrophilic polymer polyethylene glycol (PEG) swiftly repairs nerve membrane damage associated with severe spinal cord injury in adult guinea pigs. A 2 min application of PEG to a standardized compression injury to the cord immediately reversed the loss of nerve impulse conduction through the injury in all treated animals while nerve impulse conduction remained absent in all sham-treated guinea pigs. Physiological recovery was associated with a significant recovery of a quantifiable spinal cord dependent behavior in only PEG-treated animals. The application of PEG could be delayed for approximately 8 h without adversely affecting physiological and behavioral recovery which continued to improve for up to 1 month after PEG treatment. Stem cell injections help repair damage and restore function. The early-stage neural stem cells grew new axonal connections across the injury and re-established significant mobility, something that hasnt been done before, Tuszynski said. Both rat and human neural stem cell transplants restored function. The stem cells improved mobility on a 21-point scale, from 1.5 after spinal cords were severed to 7 after the treatment. The rats were treated a week after the injury, a clinically relevant model for human therapy. Rats with spinal cord injuries and severe paralysis are now walking (and running) thanks to researchers at EPFL. Published in the June 1, 2012 issue of Science, the results show that a severed section of the spinal cord can make a comeback when its own innate intelligence and regenerative capacity is awakened. In 1959, China announced that it had succeeded in transplanting the head of one dog to the body of another twice. On March 14, 1970, a group of scientists from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio, led by Robert J. White, a neurosurgeon and a professor of neurological surgery who was inspired by the work of Vladimir Demikhov, performed a highly controversial operation to transplant the head of one monkey onto anothers body. The procedure was a success to some extent, with the animal being able to smell, taste, hear, and see the world around it. The operation involved cauterizing arteries and veins carefully while the head was being severed to prevent hypovolemia. Because the nerves were left entirely intact, connecting the brain to a blood supply kept it chemically alive. The animal survived for some time after the operation, even at times attempting to bite some of the staff. Other head transplants were also conducted recently in Japan in rats. Unlike the head transplants performed by Dr. White, however, these head transplants involved grafting one rats head onto the body of another rat that kept its head. Thus, the rat ended up with two heads. The scientists said that the key to successful head transplants was to use low temperatures. * Effective repair of traumatically injured spinal cord by nanoscale block copolymer micelles (Nature Nanotechnology, 2009) These experiments treated the damage after about ten minutes and were able to get a lot of movement back in most cases. The damage was a crushing of the spinal cord, so the transplant procedure would have better results because it would be a careful separation of the spinal cord under cold conditions with immediate application of the protectant chemicals. Spinal cord injury results in immediate disruption of neuronal membranes, followed by extensive secondary neurodegenerative processes. A key approach for repairing injured spinal cord is to seal the damaged membranes at an early stage. Here, we show that axonal membranes injured by compression can be effectively repaired using self-assembled monomethoxy poly(ethylene glycol)-poly(D,L-lactic acid) di-block copolymer micelles. Injured spinal tissue incubated with micelles (60 nm diameter) showed rapid restoration of compound action potential and reduced calcium influx into axons for micelle concentrations much lower than the concentrations of polyethylene glycol, a known sealing agent for early-stage spinal cord injury. Intravenously injected micelles effectively recovered locomotor function and reduced the volume and inflammatory response of the lesion in injured rats, without any adverse effects. Our results show that copolymer micelles can interrupt the spread of primary spinal cord injury damage with minimal toxicity. Improvement in the locomotor function in the micelle-treated group was evident by a more rapid increase of BBB scores in the first 14 days and continuation of improvement over the following two weeks. Specifically, at 28 days post-injury, the BBB scores were 12.5 + or minus 3.1. From a clinical perspective, an animal with a BBB score equal to or less than 11 lacks hindlimb and forelimb coordination, whereas a score of 12 to 13 corresponds to occasional to frequent forelimb and hindlimb coordination. Reaching a BBB score of 12 is significant in that it is a sign of axonal transduction through the lesion site Illustration of the monkey head transplant from the 1970s. Ethical full body donation The need for organ donors has never been greater. Presently, there are more than 110,000 people on the national waiting list who need a life-saving organ transplant. Organ donations in the USA are made after a donor has been declared brain dead. I do not see the argument that donating all of the body of a brain dead person to another recipient is unethical. It seems that careful policy would make it as ethical as organ donation from someone deceased. Experiments on animals for body transplant also seems ethical as it would be work to lead to clinical treatment. Data on the number of US organ transplants in each year. The number of organ donors ranges from about 6 to 34 donors per million people depending upon country. There are plans to get up to 40 donors per million people. The number of organ transplants is higher because one donor could provide organs for multiple transplants. There has been work to make genetically modified pigs as a source for human heart transplants. Xenotransplantation is the transplantation of living cells, tissues or organs from one species to another. There have been a few dozen xenotransplantations into humans. So how far could an ethical boundary go ? Could genetically modified pigs be used for body donation to keep someones head alive for extended periods of years ? Could you transplant someones head, arms and legs to the genetically modified pig ? Could genetically modified chimps or gorillas be mass produced for whole body donation ? The immune system would be modified for compatibility but other aspects would remain to prevent it becoming too human as a source. There has been research on giving mammals improved regeneration and self-healing capabilities like those that exist in salamanders. Regeneration and healing genetic enhancement has been done mainly in mice. It could be adapted to chimps, gorillas and pigs. It would be immune and healing steps to enhance the level of recovery of the spinal cord and acceptance of the transplant. Welcome to the new Enlightenment, an era when suppressed science, hidden history and the enlightening nature of reality are all revealed to those with eyes to see and ears to hear. These are the thoughts and ideas of New Illuminati - bold forerunners and pioneers of new awareness all over the globe. Notes on new emerging paradigms from the NEXUS New Times Magazine Founder R. Ayana, who lives in a remote Australian rainforest (and is no longer involved with the magazine) - Catching drops from the deluge in a paper cup since 1984. Follow us via Facebook, Google+, Friend Connect, rss, Networked Blogs, Twitter or join the mailing list below for regular updates. We won't use your address for anything else. Please COMMENT at the end of any entry and see the realtime CHAT ROOM below this column, where you can find plenty of STREAMING VIDEOS. Together we can create the best of all possible worlds! Posted by Nogger - a legend in his own mind at | Categorized as Corn: The corn market closed around 4 cents higher. Weekly export sales of 581,479 MT were average. Season to date inspections are down more than 20% on this time last year. Informa estimated US 2016 corn plantings at 88.869 million acres versus a previous estimate of 88.93 million and 88 million in 2015. Agroconsult pegged its Brazilian corn production estimate at 85.6 MMT, down from its previous forecast of 88.5 MMT. The USDA reported 110,500 MT of US corn sold to unknown destinations for 2015/16 delivery under the daily reporting system. Ukraine are indicating that the country might see a 22% jump in spring barley plantings due to reduced winter grain sowings and possible heightened levels of winter-kill. It's possible that a similar scenario might pan out for Ukraine corn this year too. They seem to now be majoring on corn exports, with APK Inform saying that more than 89% of last week's grain exports via Ukraine seaports were corn. Mar 16 Corn settled at $3.67 3/4, up 4 1/2 cents; May 16 Corn settled at $3.72, up 4 1/2 cents. Wheat: The wheat market closed little changed. Weekly export inspections of 340,842 MT were in line with market expectations. Season to date inspections are more than 10% lower than a year ago. Informa estimated US wheat plantings for the 2016 harvest at 51.1 million acres, down 6.4% versus 54.6 million from the USDA last year. It's said that the two cargoes of Argentine wheat sailing/expected to sail to the US port of Wilmington are carrying feed wheat and are replacing US corn as a feed ingredient. Argentina has also stepped up it's sales of milling wheat to Brazil in the past week weeks by all accounts. Japan is in the market for it's regular weekly US wheat tender this week, with the results due on Thursday. Substantial snow is said to be on the way for southern Russia and Ukraine, which may slow up shipments of wheat from that direction a little. Europe will be only too glad to pick up any spot orders that are around. May 16 CBOT Wheat settled at $4.79, up 1/2 cent; May 16 KCBT Wheat settled at $4.82 3/4, down 1 1/4 cents; May 16 MGEX Wheat settled at $5.02 1/4, down 1 1/4 cents. 19/01/16 -- Soycomplex: Beans closed around 4 cents higher. Weekly export inspections of 1.395 MT were fairly good. Analysts seem to be paring the top off the size of the Brazilian crop, even if it is still likely to be record large. Agroconsult reduced its 2015/16 Brazilian bean production estimate to 99.2 MMT from 100.6 MMT previously. Rains in Mato Grosso over the weekend were reported to have bee "far lighter" than expected. Having had a persistently wet growing season so far, the weather in the south of the country may also be turning the other way. "The soybeans in Rio Grande do Sul are now flowering and starting to fill pods just as the weather has turned dryer. There is no rain in the forecast until sometime next week and in the meantime, temperatures are expected to be in the mid-90F range," said Dr Cordonnier. Any price rallies will simply encourage more soybean plantings going forward though. Informa now estimate US 2016 soybean plantings at a new record 85.23 million acres versus a previous estimate at 84.54 million and 82.7 million a year ago. Mar 16 Soybeans closed at $8.83 1/2, up 4 1/2 cents; Mar 16 Soybean Meal closed at $271.30, up $0.60; Mar 16 Soybean Oil settled at 30.03, up 38 points.Corn: The corn market closed around 4 cents higher. Weekly export sales of 581,479 MT were average. Season to date inspections are down more than 20% on this time last year. Informa estimated US 2016 corn plantings at 88.869 million acres versus a previous estimate of 88.93 million and 88 million in 2015. Agroconsult pegged its Brazilian corn production estimate at 85.6 MMT, down from its previous forecast of 88.5 MMT. The USDA reported 110,500 MT of US corn sold to unknown destinations for 2015/16 delivery under the daily reporting system. Ukraine are indicating that the country might see a 22% jump in spring barley plantings due to reduced winter grain sowings and possible heightened levels of winter-kill. It's possible that a similar scenario might pan out for Ukraine corn this year too. They seem to now be majoring on corn exports, with APK Inform saying that more than 89% of last week's grain exports via Ukraine seaports were corn. Mar 16 Corn settled at $3.67 3/4, up 4 1/2 cents; May 16 Corn settled at $3.72, up 4 1/2 cents.Wheat: The wheat market closed little changed. Weekly export inspections of 340,842 MT were in line with market expectations. Season to date inspections are more than 10% lower than a year ago. Informa estimated US wheat plantings for the 2016 harvest at 51.1 million acres, down 6.4% versus 54.6 million from the USDA last year. It's said that the two cargoes of Argentine wheat sailing/expected to sail to the US port of Wilmington are carrying feed wheat and are replacing US corn as a feed ingredient. Argentina has also stepped up it's sales of milling wheat to Brazil in the past week weeks by all accounts. Japan is in the market for it's regular weekly US wheat tender this week, with the results due on Thursday. Substantial snow is said to be on the way for southern Russia and Ukraine, which may slow up shipments of wheat from that direction a little. Europe will be only too glad to pick up any spot orders that are around. May 16 CBOT Wheat settled at $4.79, up 1/2 cent; May 16 KCBT Wheat settled at $4.82 3/4, down 1 1/4 cents; May 16 MGEX Wheat settled at $5.02 1/4, down 1 1/4 cents. If someone were to be asked about self-driving cars 20 years ago, they probably wouldnt be able to say much. Now, these cars are the prime example of what kind of cars are seen today. While self-driving cars are convenient, they arent the safest to use. Big car companies, such as Tesla and We have used your information to see if you have a subscription with us, but did not find one. Please use the button below to verify an existing account or to purchase a new subscription. " ... How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public... " [From George Washington's farewell address.] Other Quotes: "Don't worry about genius and don't worry about not being clever. Trust rather to hard work, perseverance and determination. The best motto for a long march is ' Don't grumble. Plug on.'....Be honest. Be loyal. Be kind. Remember that the hardest thing to acquire is the faculty of being unselfish. As a quality it is one of the finest attributes of manliness." Sir Frederick Treves "...To be clear, the Constitution of the United States of America is the United States of America. They are one and the same. Any individual or agency which seeks to subvert the Constitution and wage political and/or rhetorical war on it, are self-declared enemies of the United States of America, as they are subverting and waging war on the United States of America." - Pat Dollard The truth to the matter is that Obama lies but he does it with such finess that the easily fooled are easily fooled. ~ Norman E. Hooben "Going for the grandest illusion of all, [Obama] ... told the New York Times: 'We've actually been operating in a way that has been entirely consistent with free-market principles.' Excuse me while I pick my jaw off the ground. Everyone knows -- or should know -- that putting more and more of the government in charge of more and more of the economy is entirely inconsistent with free-market principles. This means that the president's statement to the contrary is what is known as a big lie." --columnist Diana West When you trust a stranger more so than your friend, you become stranger than the stranger; Barrack Husein Obama is a stranger. - Norman E. Hooben We the peopleWe the people now have a New World Order that we the people did not order. Norman E. Hooben "We are now in a great civil war of words and you have the honor of participating as a true patriot. The battle has not been won but you will be there when we are victorious. The pen is mightier than the sword and you will inscribe your name in the book of freedomand that, my friend is an honor "If you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a small chance of survival. There may even be a worse case: you may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves ." - Winston Churchill It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first. - Ronald Reagan Thomas Sowell For those who promote a race they are called, "racists". For those that promote American they are called "American". For 'American' is a 'concept' and no racial tones are tolerated either in shades or sounds. -Norman E. Hooben (In reference to Lourdes Galvan of San Antonio, Texas racial bigotry regarding American military heroes.) Note to NATIONAL COUNCIL OF LA RAZA ( Hola! I know you are watching): Will Rogers never met Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid. - N. E. Hooben, July 2008 Harvard University was once an all boys school...today they have no balls at all. - N. E. Hooben I will stand with the Constitution For The United States of America should the political winds shift in an ugly direction Politicians are like vampires... Whether its blood or money they want to suck it out of you till you die. ~ N. E. Hooben (Norman E. Hooben in response to a writer who complained of not having the honor of serving in the U.S. Military)Back in the days of "The Lone Ranger" program, someone would ask, "Who is that masked man?" People need to start asking that question about Barack Obama. -N.E. HoobenThe Police State of Massachusetts is now imposing laws against nature. Massachusetts is by far the most un-Constitutional government of the State, by the State, and for the State than any among the the fifty that hold a star on the banner of freedom. It is run by Socialists and hypocritical so-called Christiansthe worst among them are the Catholics who go to Church on Sunday and forget what they Prayed for on Monday. - Norman E. Hooben - "A proud Catholic proud of my Faith. A proud Catholic NOT so proud of my Church!" - July 16th 2008 N. E. Hooben When a people are satisfied with receiving gifts paid with their own taxes as a way of life Anarchy is sure to follow. - Fred Boutin 2008 From the first time I heard about the boogey-man as a child to the first time I got shot at in Vietnam, nothing in my entire lifetime, THAT'S NOTHING! has put more fear into me than this man Obama. - Norman E. Hooben - July 2008 We are here for only a mini-second in the sands of time. Then we become the dust that makes the sand; and the Hand of God molds us anew. Take care my friend and may God Bless... - Norman E. Hooben on the death of our dearly beloved pet dog, Stirling The evidence is overwhelming! In order to save America we must destroy the Socialst Marxist Party... - N. E. Hooben "America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within." -- Josef Stalin -- When it comes to lying, prudent people are guided by a Higher Authority driven by thou shall not written in stone. Whereas Bill Clinton has no Higher Authority to guide him, thou shall not has no conscious objections; for without a conscience there is no guilt. - Norman Hooben The victor will never be asked if he told the truth. - Adolph Hitler The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. - James Madison, the Federalists Papers There was a Chemistry professor in a large college that had some Exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab the Prof noticed one young man (exchange student) who kept rubbing his back And stretching as if his back hurt. The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country's government and install a new communist government. In the midst of his story he looked at the professor and asked a strange question. He asked,'Do you know how to catch wild pigs?' The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said this was no joke. 'You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, who are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat, you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd. Suddenly, the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity. The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening to America. The government keeps pushing us toward Communism/Socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, etc. while we continually lose our freedoms- just a little at a time. One should always remember 'There is no such thing as a free Lunch!' Also, 'You can never hire someone to provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself. You apparently don't share a sense of patriotism, Americanism, freedomism, or whatever kind of 'ism' that true Americans believe in... You do however, display a bit of socialism, communism, marxism or whatever kind of 'ism' that you make excuses for... ~ Norman E. Hooben (in response to an Obama supporter's views about the ACS census) A nation that knows not from where it came, knows not where it is going! Today, Americans know too little about the foundations of our nation. The result is a nation now in chaos, its people unable to discern what is wrong with the transformation (paradigm shift) of our society and form of government that, if left unchecked, will destroy every facet of freedom, liberty and justice. The price of freedom is vigilance; the price of vigilance is knowledge. Many of America's founding documents are now available on the web. ~ Learn USA The Mauritanian Government will next month organize a roundtable with its technical and financial partners in a bid to mobilize $117 million necessary to implement the national youth strategic program. The roundtable, scheduled for February 18, will gather Mauritanias technical and financial partners who will discuss means of mobilizing $117 million necessary to implement the 2015-2020 national strategic plan for youth proposed by the Ministry of Youth and Sports. In preparation of the roundtable, the government held on Monday a meeting with some key technical and financial partners among which France, Spain, Japan, EU, World Bank, African Development Bank and UN Population Fund (UNFPA) to explain the broad lines of the program. The strategic plan encompasses 12 key projects to be implemented via 64 actions steps and seeks first and foremost to scale down youth unemployment rate in the backdrop of the economic crisis and the rampant extremism in the Sahel. Youth unemployment and poverty are seen as the major problems exploited by Jihadist recruiting cells. UNFPA which has assisted the Mauritanian government in the elaboration of the plan will play a central role in the mobilization of the funds. For the UN agency investing in youth will help the country benefit from demographic dividends as youth under 15 represent 44 % of the Mauritanian population. The Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara smashed again requests by supporters who want him to change the constitution to be able to stand for another third term in office. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and I concerted each other and we said no, we dont need that, President Alassane Ouattara said in the presence of the Liberian President. President Ouattara who just won a second election in 2015 has always maintained that he will not stand for another third election even though voices within his own coalition and supporters urge him to do so. Reports say President Ouattara was angered by his former Minister of Civil Services Bacongo Cisse who openly suggested that the countrys constitution be altered so that President Ouattara can run for another term, citing lack of charismatic leaders to take over from him when he wraps its current term in 2020. Analysts argue that President Ouattaras Monday remarks may stir debates in the ruling coalition RHDP as to the future candidate. Coalition party UDPCI has already chosen its leader Albert Mabri Toikeuse as the next candidate for 2020 presidential elections and expects RHDP to validate. Analysts also expect the coalition party and former ruling party PDCI of Henri Konan Bedie to vest one of its leaders as candidate as former President Bedie pulled out of the 2015 race in favor of President Ouattara. The familiar emergency alert system, the one where we in the U.S. occasionally hear a radio or television broadcast interruption that... Lower Manhattan will receive $176 million in funds for flood protection, the New York Times reports. While the specifics of what this protection entails has not yet been decided, the funds, awarded to city by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, will cover the shoreline stretching from Montgomery Street on the Lower East Side to the tip of Battery Park City. The funds were awarded as part of a National Disaster Resilience Competition launched by the HUD. The competition provides a total $1 billion in funds to areas across the country that were declared a part of a major disaster by the President in 2011, 2012, and 2013. Last summer, HUD announced 40 finalists - mostly cities and states - to compete for the funds. Of the total fund, $181 million was set aside for projects in New York and New Jersey. It has now been revealed that New York will walk away with $176 million of that fund. "Today's news that Lower Manhattan is to receive $176 million in federal funds from the Department of Housing and Urban Development's National Disaster Resiliency Competition is a significant step toward completing comprehensive resiliency measures around Lower Manhattan to the north end of Battery Park City," New York State Senator, Daniel Squadron, who represents the affected areas in Lower Manhattan, said in a press release. "These funds, together with the nearly $115 million I worked with the city and state to have committed to Lower Manhattan, will allow resiliency efforts to continue south of Montgomery Street, north of which the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project is proceeding." The federal funds will be a helpful addition to the $100 million set aside by the de Blasio administration last year for the storm proofing efforts as a result of Hurricane Sandy, that devastated the city in 2012. New additions to the shoreline as a result of the funds could include sea walls, temporary flood walls, and grass berms that will be used as green spaces and publicly-accessible waterfront areas, as per the Times. This new chunk of funding comes in addition to the $335 million the HUD provided to the city in early 2015, through another competition, Rebuild by Design, protecting the shoreline stretching from East 23rd Street to Montgomery Street. And then of course there's also Bjarke Ingels' Dryline proposal - to transform the Lower East Side shoreline - to look forward to, if the project is approved. New York City to Get $176 Million From U.S. for Storm Protections [New York Times] NYC Will Spend $100 Million to Stormproof Lower Manhattan [Curbed] Plan to Protect Manhattan from Sandy 2.0 Moves Forward [Curbed] Exploring How the Dryline Could Transform Manhattan's Coast [Curbed] Cookie banner We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. To learn more or opt-out, read our Cookie Policy. Please also read our Privacy Notice and Terms of Use, which became effective December 20, 2019. By choosing I Accept, you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Times columnist David Brooks sure does wish Republican voters would do something about Trump and Cruz. Photo: Josh Haner/The New York Times Theres been a lot of talk in the last couple of weeks about the Republican Establishment coming to grips with a GOP presidential nominating contest that could soon become a choice between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, and which choice said Establishment would make in that Hobbesian situation. But now comes New York Times columnist David Brooks to reject that choice in a panic-stricken column that calls on the great unwashed Republican primary voters to save the Establishments bacon. Its odd enough to see Brooks identify himself as a Republican, panicked or otherwise. He typically likes to position himself far, far above the ignorant partisan armies clashing by night, a condor wheeling and soaring in broad, high-minded arcs before eventually landing on ground that happens to coincide with the short-term positions of the GOP. But it seems the present emergency is now too dire for these sort of dialectics. Rarely has a party so passively accepted its own self-destruction. Sure, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are now riding high in some meaningless head-to-head polls against Hillary Clinton, but the odds are the nomination of either would lead to a party-decimating general election. So what is to be done? Whats needed is a grass-roots movement that stands for governing conservatism, built both online and through rallies, and gets behind a single candidate sometime in mid- to late February. In politics, if A (Trump) and B (Cruz) savage each other then the benefits often go to Candidate C. But there has to be a C, not a C, D, E, F and G. I suppose this is an advance endorsement of the idea that whichever Establishment candidate wins that lane in New Hampshire whose primary is right on the brink of mid-February should have it all to himself thereafter. But who will insist on Jebs super-pac disgorging its money, or Kasich not holding on until Ohio, or Rubio and Bush not holding on until Florida, or Christie throwing in the towel while his ego still rages unappeased? Oh, thats right: a grass-roots movement that stands for governing conservatism, whatever that might be. Seems it will have to be something different from the usual Republican formula: This new movement must come to grips with two realities. First, the electorate has changed. Less-educated voters are in the middle of a tidal wave of trauma. Labor force participation is dropping, wages are sliding, suicide rates are rising, heroin addiction is rising, faith in American institutions is dissolving. Second, the Republican Party is not as antigovernment as its elites think it is. Its members no longer fit into the same old ideological categories. Trump grabbed his lead with an ideological grab bag of gestures, some of them quite on the left. He is more Huey Long than Calvin Coolidge. So the Republican conspiracy needs to preempt that appeal: Whats needed is a coalition that combines Huey Long, Charles Colson and Theodore Roosevelt: working-class populism, religious compassion and institutional reform. Does any of that sound like Jeb! Bush to you? Or Marco Rubio? Or Chris Christie? Or John Kasich? Will this new grassroots movement thats supposed to arise in a matter of weeks recognize its hero, and will that happen to coincide with the wishes of a plurality of New Hampshire primary voters? Is there any remote chance the tepid Reformicon agenda Brooks alludes to in casting about for something governing conservatives can talk about will light fires in the electorate? Hell if David Brooks knows. But hes laid down his marker and will now presumably flee back to higher ground. Ethan Couch. Photo: Handout/2015 U.S. Marshals First Ethan Couchs parents gave him affluenza the made up condition used to explain his 2013 DUI crash that killed four people and now theyre causing even more legal trouble. A juvenile-court hearing to determine whether the 18-year-olds probation should be transferred to adult court was put on hold shortly after it began on Tuesday because Couchs parents werent properly notified of the proceedings. Plus, Couch himself could not attend because he is still in a Mexico City detention facility. Authorities allege that the teen and his mother, Tonya Couch, fled to Mexico last month when police began investigating the possibility that he violated his probation by drinking at a party. But in court his attorney Scott Brown presented an alternate theory, saying whether his client was voluntarily or involuntarily taken to Mexico is something that is still being investigated. So far there is no evidence that Couch was forced to go on the lam, and it would not explain why hes contesting his deportation (though his attorneys say hes dropping that fight). Dallas attorney Peter Schulte, who is not involved in the case, told the Chicago Tribune that the argument may be some extension of affluenza, that he cant make decisions on his own and any time mommy says to do something he does it. He predicted it wouldnt impress the judge, since Couch is now 18, but if it does work it could create new problems for his mother. Tarrant County district attorney spokesperson Samantha Jordan said if the teen can present adequate proof that he was taken against his will, his mother could be hit with a kidnapping charge. Couchs next hearing is set for February 19. To send or not to send? That is the question. Photo: Kevin Lamarque/AFP/Getty Images A new report from the intelligence inspector general shows that there may be a few emails from Hillary Clintons server that are even more classified than originally believed. About 1,300 of the emails released so far the last batch is scheduled for release at the end of the month featured redacted text, mostly at the lowest level of secrecy. Clinton and her campaign team have argued that the emails didnt contain classified information when sent, and were only labeled as such after the State Department began marking up the correspondence for release. However, the new report from Charles McCullough III, sent to the congressional oversight committees earlier this month and first reported by Fox News, says that a few documents were actually top secret or special access program which is about as secretive as you can get. Last year, McCullough said that two other emails were found to contain top-secret information, which set off an FBI investigation into the server an investigation that is not targeting Clinton. Stuff marked SAP only gets shared on a need to know basis, and usually involves the most secretive parts of the CIA and other intelligence-gathering agencies. A spokesperson from Clintons campaign, Brian Fallon, told the New York Times, This is the same interagency dispute that has been playing out for months, and it does not change the fact that these emails were not classified at the time they were sent or received. It appears that this may still revolve around a State Department employee forwarding a published news article about the drone program. If so, it would further reinforce how absurd it is to suggest that Secretary Clinton did anything wrong. As The Wall Street Journal explains, Information deemed highly classified by the intelligence community could include programs that have been publicly revealed in the media, for example the governments drone program. Media reports about classified programs could be deemed classified by government officials. The report does not say whether Clinton sent or received the emails in question or how many of them there might be. State Department spokesperson John Kirby released a statement saying, No one takes this more seriously than we do. We have said repeatedly that we anticipate more upgrades throughout our release process. Our FOIA review process is still ongoing. Once that process is complete, if it is determined that information should be classified as Top Secret we will do so. Although the debate about those emails of Clintons that remain unseen has stewed for months, those emails that the public has been allowed to look at have been less than remarkable although they did fit an overarching theme on the perils of technology. In the last batch of emails, released earlier this month, there was one document marked secret. It featured Hillary remarking,Wow not good. Donald Trump is running the kind of campaign for the presidency Sarah Palin might have run. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/2015 Getty Images Notwithstanding the howls of pain and rage from supporters of Ted Cruz, Sarah Palins decision to endorse Donald Trump for president makes perfect sense when you think about what she has distinctively represented in the Republican Party. Yes, shes a conservative in the sense of standing for maximum confrontation with Democrats and constantly accusing the party Establishment of acts of betrayal. But no, theres nothing particularly ideological or, for that matter, intellectual about her approach to politics or issues. She represents almost perfectly the passion and resentment of grassroots cultural-issues activists. When John McCain vaulted her into national politics, she was known for two things other than her gender: She was a walk the walk role model for the anti-abortion movement, thanks to her small child Trig, and she had taken on the crony capitalist GOP Establishment in Alaska and won. Thus she was a fellow maverick with Christian-right street cred and a game-changing identity. The remarkably widespread belief that Palin lost the 2008 presidential election for her party is even more far-fetched than the hope that she could win it. And so the many fans she made in that campaign developed with a lot of help from Palin herself a deep resentment of all of the Democrats, Republicans, and media elites who belittled her. In a very real sense, she was the authentic representative of those local right-to-life activists disproportionately women who had staffed countless GOP campaigns and gotten little in return (this was before the 2010 midterm elections began to produce serious anti-choice gains in the states) other than the thinly disguised contempt of Beltway Republicans. And after 2008 she generated a sort of perpetual motion machine in which her fans loved her precisely for the mockery she so reliably inspired. Unfortunately for those fans, St. Joan of the Tundra was never quite up to the demands of a statewide much less national political career. So she opportunistically intervened in politics between books and television specials and widely broadcast family sagas, mostly through well-timed candidate endorsements. Its striking, though not surprising, that Palin is now endorsing the nemesis of one of her most successful Mama Grizzly protegees, South Carolinas Nikki Haley, on the turf of another, Iowas Joni Ernst. But in many respects, the Trump campaign is the presidential campaign Palin herself might have aspired to run if she had the money and energy to do so. Her famous disregard for wonky facts and historical context is but a shadow of Trumps. His facility with the big and effective lie cant quite match Palins, who after all convinced many millions of people in a Facebook post that the Affordable Care Act authorized death panels. And both of them, of course, exemplify the demagogues zest for flouting standards of respectable discourse and playing the table-turning triumphant victim/conqueror of privileged elites. Conservatism for both Trump and Palin simply supplies the raw material of politics and a preassembled group of aggrieved white people ready to follow anyone purporting to protect hard-earned threatened privileges, whether its Social Security and Medicare benefits or religious hegemony. So its natural Palin would gravitate to Trump rather than Cruz, whos a professional ideologue but a mere amateur demagogue. The endorser and the endorsee were meant for each other. Right-winging, bitter-clinging, wife-beating, PTSD-suffering, broken victims of Americas endless wars! Photo: Mary Altaffer/AP/Corbis Former Alaska governor and symbol of American decline Sarah Palin just blamed President Obama for making her son beat his girlfriend. Last night, while Palin was endorsing Donald Trump, her 26-year-old son, Track, was being picked up for domestic violence. At a Trump rally in Oklahoma on Wednesday, Palin addressed the elephant in the room which, in her telling, wasnt the fact that one of the worst moments of her sons life had just become a national news story, but rather that Barack Obama was personally responsible for the assault. I guess its kind of the elephant in the room because my own family, going through what were going through today with my son, a combat vet having served in a Stryker brigade fighting for you all, America, in the war zone, Palin said, according to Politico. Its a shame that our military personnel even have to question, have to wonder if theyre respected anymore. It starts from the top the question, though, that comes from our own president where they have to look at him and wonder, Do you know what we go through? Do you know what were trying to do to secure America and to secure the freedoms that have been bequeathed us? On Tuesday night, a drunken Track Palin punched his girlfriend in the eye after discovering that she had been in contact with an ex, according to an affidavit posted by KTVA-TV. Palin allegedly went on to point an AR-15 at his own head and threaten suicide, kick his girlfriend while she was on the floor, and refuse to cooperate with police upon their arrival. Police found the girlfriend hiding under a bed. The elder Palins attempt to fold her sons troubles into Obamas legacy caromed off a cogent point about a major, underrecognized cost of war. Studies consistently show that the partners of combat veterans face a heightened risk of domestic violence. According to one study from Yale University, combat veterans account for 21 percent of all domestic-violence incidents in the United States. My son, like so many others, they come back a bit different. They come back hardened, Palin said Wednesday. So when my own son is going through what he goes through coming back, I can certainly relate with other families who kind of feel these ramifications of PTSD. Then she brought it back to Obama. It makes me realize more than ever, it is now or never for the sake of Americas finest that well have that commander-in-chief who will respect them and honor them, she said. Quick: Name two popular white women who have some trouble speaking off the cuff. Heres one: Former vice-presidential candidate and devoted reader of every newspaper Sarah Palin, who addressed a crowd in Ames, Iowa, on Tuesday, officially throwing her support behind autumn gourd Donald Trump for president. Discussing Trumps appeal to her particular conservative demographic, she well, she rapped. Really. Heres what Palin said, semi-rhythmically and semi-rhymingly: How bout the rest of us? Right wingin, bitter clingin, proud clingers of our guns, our God, and our religions, and our Constitution. Tell us that were not red enough? Yeah, coming from the Establishment. Right. But the former governor of Alaska stumbled a little bit between our God and our religions, calling to mind a proud clinger of a different sort another white female rapper whose popularity passed its peak years ago and whose delivery needed some serious work. Yes, Iggy Azalea, whose infamous stumbling freestyle was recently immortalized in Vine form: All of which is just to say that this brilliant, perfect Vine mash-up now exists: It works on so many levels. Penguin Random House. Photo: Ben Pruchnie/Getty Images Penguin Random House UK announced this week that it would be removing all degree requirements from its job postings because, as the company put it, theres increasing evidence that there is no simple correlation between having a piece of paper that says you went to class and performing well at your job. Penguin Random House hopes to use this opportunity to broaden the appeal of the company. The decision is a good one that other organizations should mimic. In a press release the HR director of Penguin Random House, Neil Morrison, said, Not having been through higher education will no longer preclude anyone from joining and progressing their career with Penguin Random House UK - if they have the skills and potential. He continued, The move is also designed to send a clear message to job-seekers who have been through higher education that the university they attended will not impact their chance of success. Removing degree requirements is one step toward developing a more diverse workforce. If youre capable of doing the job, who cares what school you went to? There will remain some professional qualifications for job applications at the company in certain instances, but going forward, university degrees (which, in creative industries, are losing their luster) are beginning to look more and more obsolete. This is the starting point for our concerted action to make publishing far, far more inclusive than it has been to date, Morrison said. We believe this is critical to our future: to publish the best books that appeal to readers everywhere, we need to have people from different backgrounds with different perspectives and a workforce that truly reflects todays society. i watched until episode 6 and have taken a break i did just marathon through a show called badlands texas that's about a murder investigation/trial/aftermath in a little ghost town. has anyone watched that? the verdict was insane to me Reply Thread Link is it on netflix? Reply Parent Thread Link it's streaming for free on hulu Reply Parent Thread Link is it true crime or fictional? Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Damien is so cool~ who would he be if that hadn't happened to him I wonder Reply Thread Link I was being totally sarcastic but IA about Jason Reply Parent Thread Link I love Damien, but sometimes I feel like he's emotionally a teenager. Like he's frozen at the time he was incarcerated. His new tattoos are interesting, though. Reply Parent Thread Link met about Jason Reply Parent Thread Link I stopped watching after episode 5 I was mentally exhausted. My friend recommended Jackson's earlier comedy horror movies and I really enjoyed Braindead. Reply Thread Link I've been dying to try some of the West Memphis 3 films, but there's so many docs to choose from. Reply Thread Link Wait really? I didn't like how it was like "OH MAN, THIS GUY IS SUUUUPER WEIRD, MAYBE HE DID IT?". It's pretty shitty to use the way a person looks and acts against them when that was literally what got the WM3 convicted in the first place. Reply Parent Thread Link The Paradise Lost docs are so biased, rewatching them was weird Reply Parent Thread Expand Link They're so good. Very heavy, and I'm not sure I recommend bingeing them all in one day like my roommate and I did, but we couldn't stop :/ Reply Parent Thread Link watch the one peter jackson produced or directed. Its the best out of all the documentaries about the west memphis 3, and gives a full, clear story. The 3 paradise lost docs I could barely watch. It was like watching a long youtube video of selected court footage and nothing else, no commentary...nada. Edited at 2016-01-20 03:10 am (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link West of Memphis (the one Peter Jackson produced) is superb, and gives a great overview of the whole case as it was made after everything happened, not during like the HBO series. I've watched it a few times now, it's that compelling. Reply Parent Thread Link There are only 4 and they're in chronological order. Reply Parent Thread Link I honestly got bored with it. The nephew had me confused as fuck too... why say such a thing. I mean you can tell he isn't the brighest but, damn. Reply Thread Link I'm still on episode 2 lol, I don't want to get into the Halbach case, like I want to keep on believing that he won his settlement from Manitowoc and everything is all fine. Also, Kusche, the guy who drew the facial composite that made Beernstein believe it was Avery is some sort psycho, like, what kind of person frames a facial composite WITH THE MUG SHOT and hangs it on his office, like some sort of stag head he shot and hung on his wall? Reply Thread Link And he's still like "well, I still think it was Steve Avery who did it, even if the DNA said it wasn't because DNA can be fabricated!!!" like what sort of common sense... Reply Parent Thread Link oh man yeah i'd forgotten about that bit since it was so early in the episodes. uck. i'm also binging estee videos so your icon made me lol. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link not only did he frame him. he literally framed him. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link That guy drives me nuts. In what universe is a sketch better evidence than DNA?! jfc. I know that's his job, but sketches are iffy even when people don't have their thumbs on the scale. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I think Steven definitely could be guilty, but I also think it's possible he is innocent and it was Brendan's stepfather/brother. I don't believe Brendan was involved, nor do I believe the sequence of events at trial is correct. I know they're saying there's more of the video that wasn't in the doc, but I taught SpEd and now work in social services for 18-24 year olds transitioning out of high school SpEd to the workforce, and knowing tons of kids like Brendan...there's no way that confession was legit. There have been really interesting studies/research about false confessions - even people you'd think would be unflappable can admit to crazy things to get out of stressful situations. If anything, I hope this doc opens people's eyes to that reality, as well as that you can't trust cops to have your best interest in mind. Always call a lawyer. Reply Thread Link I agree OP, I'm glad someone is taking about Brendan and that he is getting some legal help. Peter made some good points about his interrogation and his apparent intellectual disability. Reply Thread Link That would be awesome. Idk about Steven's innocence (the trial was full of reasonable doubt tho) but I feel that Brendan is innocent. Reply Parent Thread Link I'm not saying we should, like ~prioritize Brendan over Steven, because obviously a false conviction is horrible no matter what, but I can't help but feel like he is the biggest, most tragic victim in this case. He was collateral damage and it just hurts so much to think about. I dont want Steven to rot away in jail but if I had to choose one to pour my energy/resources into exonerating... it would be Brendan without question. Reply Parent Thread Link I just hope someone is able to help Brendan. I'm on the fence with Steven's guilt, but not with Brendan. He definitely was railroaded and his first lawyer is a disgusting vile excuse for a human being. Not only has he lied, but he even admits now that he made mistakes. Of course his biggest being he hired that terrible investigator, but of course he wants to throw all if not most of the blame on him. And I'm definitely not surprised about false confessions. Even before the Memphis 3, all you had to do was look at the Central Park Five and how they were treated. Reply Thread Link Since the Philippines is getting Netflix, we should have our own version of MAM, the Hubert Webb edition. Reply Thread Link Just read a quick summary on that case and I about fell over when I got to the part about the only "eyewitness" turning out to be a NBI asset pretending to have seen the crime. Wow. Reply Parent Thread Link And the fact that he wasn't even in the country. The class situation in this case is basically opposite from Avery, in that the Webbs are a very well-known, well-connected family and that's what ended up hurting Hubert, just as Steve's social class (obviously, on the other side of the spectrum) hurt him. Reply Parent Thread Link yeah there was no "innocent until proven guilty" at all in either of those juries. it was the opposite. Reply Parent Thread Link Absolutely this. I was watching The Staircase (another true crime series) the other night, and the things the defence had to worry about were ridiculous. Like, they had been critised for the case they presented being based all in science and not emotion. That's a good thing! That should be the best kind of case TO present! And then there was the fact that the defendant was bi and his wife - apparently - knew that and was fine with him seeing men occasionally, and the case was tried in a small-ish Southern town, so narrow-mindedness became a major issue. People in general are not fit to serve on a jury, not when they let their ignorance, emotions and prejudices determine their decisions. Reply Parent Thread Link yes more articles about brendan, good I feel that his case better highlights the core issues of the case, i.e., abuse of the justice system , and you can eliminate the 'well it doesn't matter bc steven is guilty either way!!' arguments Reply Thread Link I binged this serious last week while on holiday. The moment the defense revealed one of the cops called up to confirm Teresa's plates and car two days before the vehicle was discovered on the Avery property I legit shrieked OH SHIT. Reply Thread Link I rewatched the West Memphis 3 doc and Central Park 5 doc on Netflix after finishing Making A Murderer. No matter how many times I revisit it I get so enraged. Especially the Central Park 5 case. Add that case to the million reasons Trump can die tbh. Reply Thread Link I still need to watch the Central Park 5 doc. Since it's been a few weeks since I watched Making a Murderer, hopefully my nerves can handle it by now. Reply Parent Thread Link I still don't understand how there was no focus on the lack of blood at the scene in Brendan's case. Reply Thread Link That point really frustrated me. His poor mom. Reply Parent Thread Link if she was so fearful she should've quit! All of that sounded legit until that line. That's what a bully boss would say. Reply Thread Link That's exactly what my ex-manager said. She'd made pretty much all the employees cry, but I was the only one to (finally) "nope" out of there. Reply Parent Thread Link Exactly! Like people can't always quit just like that. Sometimes its like indentured servitude. Reply Parent Thread Link yeah, she lost me there...but i do think there is probably some truth in what she said. Reply Parent Thread Link eh....i don't know. i think it's different in this situation. she had been on the panel, was semi recognizable. if she was really THAT miserable and THAT afraid, she could have left and found another option. i highly doubt she was living paycheck to paycheck and couldn't afford to leave a truly awful situation, if it was as bad as it sounds. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I kind of side with Chelsea. She's known for being extra generous with her employees and Heather's grievances weren't really that severe enough to make them public. It made her look ungrateful. Reply Parent Thread Link yup. heather has always been super desperate and was prob envious of ha not that i care for chelsea Reply Parent Thread Link Yeah Chelsea has always had a really good rep when it comes to her employees and being charitable. That's why this Heather thing came completely out of left field. I used to think they were mostly playing up her desperation for fame but I guess it's not hard to believe she'd leak shit to the press. Reply Parent Thread Link Yep. As you said, Chelsea is known for being generous with her employees. I followed Heather for awhile on twitter but I had to unfollow her because she is clearly desperate to be more famous and it got sooo cringe-worthy. The final straw was when she made a comment about how her family struggles just like min wage workers do and I had to call her ass out. Reply Parent Thread Link Yep not to mention Heather waited, what, two years after the show's been done to actually say anything? Reply Parent Thread Link Same Yes Chelsea can be messy here and there, but a lot of people saying she is a generous person, and I can see that. I actually met her during her book signing and she was absolutely nice and, there's no way I'd believe Heather when it's a known fact she's friends with Jenner. Attention whore. Reply Parent Thread Link Honestly, they both sound like unprofessional and unpleasant people to work with. Chelsea sounds like a nightmare boss and Heather sounds like a nightmare coworker. Reply Thread Link heather was annoying on 'chelsea lately' but her cousin geri impersonation would have me in tears. Reply Thread Link lmfao I love the one skit they did where they break character and Chelsea is like "the only reason we even did this sketch is because Heather does a good impression of a person with cerebral palsy" or something Reply Parent Thread Link Bc Cerebral palsy is so funny? Edited at 2016-01-20 09:37 pm (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link i don't really let my co-workers get close enough to me to where i'd feel betrayed if they fucked me over Reply Thread Link I'm weird about socializing with coworkers. i have great relationships with all of mine, but not outside of work. we spend too much time together as it is and i don't need anyone i work with knowing my business. Reply Parent Thread Link Exactly. I even have a strict "no social media" connection rule with them. As far as they know, I'm not on social media. I still get chastised cause I showed up married one day. I didn't invite a single one. Nope. My life is MY LIFE. Reply Parent Thread Link i was so annoyed how chelsea got all of the a-list interviews when the soup was on much longer, better and funnier Reply Thread Link The soups format isn't really setup for that though. An interview would mean less clips! And big stars aren't going to go on there just to shout some promotion for their show for ten seconds Reply Parent Thread Link Everyone on the show seemed awful and not funny tbh. Although I did love April Richardson's Saved by the Bell podcast. Reply Thread Link Im listening to that right now. Iys way more hilarious than I tjought. Reply Parent Thread Link I 100% believe her. Heather always came across as self important and I'm guessing one of the reasons she's only casually friendly with the real housewives clique is because they can see her coming a mile away. Reply Thread Link I don't know this Heather person, but tbh both of them just seem like loud obnoxious ott white women to me...and that's just from looking at that one picture of the two of them. Chelsea Hanlder has only said maybe 2 or 3 things that I care about, but other than that she can evaporate into the ether as far as I'm concerned. Reply Parent Thread Link take my word for it - having watched almost ALL of Chelsea's show from its original, sketch comedy beginnings, Heather very soundly came across as a real housewives wanna be who strived to make it in good with the beverly hills 'mommy' crowd that the real housewives appeal to as the 'funny' one, you know? This isn't to say that Chelsea is without problems herself - self admitting you are horrible often isn't as good as working to change it - but everything she's said here feels authentic to me if only on the merit that she would have no reason to go this far as to lie as it's outside her character. She's always shown herself to be honest at the top of everything, even when it makes her look weird or horrible, so based on that reputation and the one of Heather's I can 100% believe Chelsea. Reply Parent Thread Link watching the show you can tell things were unprofessional. it was all one inside joke and people beyond the round table had no fucking idea what they were laughing about or shit they were spewing. chelsea was such an asshole to her crew. it got mean spirited. Reply Thread Link Concludes that Heather is full of shit, opened for her on tour during their last year together and if she was so fearful she should've quit lol this is sooo sooo what a mean boss would say... Reply Thread Link or just overall bad work experiences .. pls i want to feel better about my shitty mentor lol edit: to be on topic i feel like chelsea is a child who prob let ppl get away w being unprofessional and then just resented them privately so she could still be seen as a 'cool' boss Edited at 2016-01-20 01:10 am (UTC) Reply Thread Link I've come to realize that everyone's job is shit. I have a dream job but there are days when I'm ready to walk away because of office politics, backstabbing colleagues, etc. It gets too much sometimes. Reply Parent Thread Link Wholeheartedly agree, unless you work for yourself. I love my job, but the office politics are insane. I had to learn to completely separate work from my personal life (which should be done anyway) but I've gotten to be such a fake person at work that it kind of bugs me I have to be that way. Reply Parent Thread Link At 29 and with at least 12 diff jobs under my belt now, I can say that I'm currently in the least bullshitty job of my career life and have very few complaints. But I've also only been in it for 2 months so shit could 180, who knows. Edited at 2016-01-20 02:50 am (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link Yep. It's all about the people, I've had amazing jobs but they were made hellish by bosses being horrible dicks to everyone. And I've had jobs making cappuccinos making minimum wage but where everyone got along so well, supported and helped each other that it was a wonderful job. Reply Parent Thread Link currently being micromanaged by a supervisor who picks and criticises every single thing I do. I'm a wreck since they started managing me, and it feels fucking horrible. She seems to radiate hate toward me anytime we're physically together in the same room. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I worked in the fashion dept. of a large music store - there was this passive aggressive manager in music- she talked to another manager in music and they both confronted me in a weird meeting, asked me if I liked my job and questioned why I was there. Um, I was there because you hired me, told fold t-shirts and organize tables. They both didn't manage my department but tried to make me quit because apparently I wasn't doing anything, but quite frankly I had no instruction whatsoever. I cried in front of them and made all my other coworkers aware of them being assholes when I went to the break room and emoted everywhere. Apparently the passive aggressive chick had major problems and was mentally unstable, so she took her issues out on me. It was super weird and I don't regret crying at all. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link i interned at Nordstrom one summer and would cry in the parking lot before driving home almost every night. my manager was SO mean to me and then brought the manager from the next department in on it. they were so petty. very competitive and just miserable. a co-worker and i could go to max and erma's on our breaks and drink. lmao. it was stupid stuff too. i was there once at 7am steaming clothes. i stepped a few feet away to answer a phone call and got reprimanded for walking away. "a child could get hurt. you can't just leave a steamer on." um... the store isn't open. what child? she bought me earrings on my last day and i told her to keep them. i put off graduating a semester early for that shitty internship that did nothing for me. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link oh goodness i worked at starbucks once and one of the shift leaders was jealous that the manager liked me - we used to talk about music and movies and this chick would seethe in the background. SO supremely jealous. To get back at me, she tried to tell me how to cut the bagels and claimed that I needed to wash my hands once because I allegedly touched the trash when i tossed a splenda pack in the air to the trash. she was CRAZY jealous. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link i work at a coffee shop on campus and we have co-workers that are called career workers because they're 40+ years old, not students, and have been employed for like 20+ years. our career worker is named norma and i get that it must suck having to follow directions from a college kid, but like she's awful and disrespects everyone. the other day she was talking to a customer/friend in spanish about how shitty all the students at the coffee shop were, and how no one appreciates her. and so this kid was brewing coffee and "standing still" and norma SNAPS and starts yelling at this poor college freshman who is a little socially awkward about how he never does anything at work and how useless he is, then she switches to spanish and starts calling him dumb and is yelling at the customer like "look, do you see how dumb he is?! i do everything here!" and she pushes a cup in his face telling him to finish making this frappucino and it was just WILD i was like standing behind her being like "norma, it's okay. i'm going to finish making the frapp. norma..." and she's going OFF on this poor kid and there's like 6 customers waiting for their drinks looking at all of us?? as the supervisor i had to write her up and get "proof" so my boss and i watched the tape together and it was crazy lol Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I use to work at a medical office. My boss was the owning doctor's daughter. She always had everything handed to her her whole life, including the job she had. She kept talking me up, saying that she was looking for me to take over her position so she could have a baby, etc. She ganged up on me with another girl and made my life hell. She changed me from hourly to "salary" so I would come in at 7am and leave at 4pm (later most of the time) and have no lunch break or anything. We couldn't take a break without getting passive aggressive messages, etc. She would micromanage EVERYTHING and be totally inconsistent. She would expect you to make fun of people behind their back, etc. It came down to a point where she was constantly on top of me, messaging me nonstop all day, telling me how terrible I was. I got panic attacks when she was in the office, when my messenger went off, etc. So I quit. Now I work somewhere laid back, but my boss can be uppity sometimes. Edited at 2016-01-20 01:23 am (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I don't really feel like getting into all the details but I had the meanest scariest boss at my first job. She made me cry once. Reply Parent Thread Link This asshole was a doctor and partner with another doctor. Both had 3 medical offices for tourists in hotels. As a doctor he was mediocre but as a thief he was superb: -He was stealing money from his partner who lives in Spain. -He was charging disgusting prices to tourists/insurances -He bought fake medication and sold it like the real thing. -He was scamming the government to avoid paying high taxes, declaring his business like he was earning a small amount per month when it was all the opposite. -He hired and fired nurses all year and with each new one he paid her less than the one before. -He pushed us doctors to charge extra medication/treatments to patients and I was fired because I was "barely making money". -He fired me because I got 1 complain from a hotel, which was a mistake (there was another doctor, a crazy one, who got kicked out of the hotel for being so awful, and when I went there to take her place, they thought it was the same doctor again) so he used that complain to kick me out without previous announcement. Because of that complain, he thought he had the right to do that and not paying a dime. I was smarter than him, I went to the government's work office (?) and told them I was being abused at work. Long story short, workers here have more rights that we know, I got twice the money and a recommendation letter. Idk if he's still in business. He probably is. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I was being overworked, forced to work over time and over compensate for my shitty coworker, and then I got cornered in a staff meeting about ~how we can fix things and I just said it was stressful and she kept pushing how and why and what can we do and I just wanted to be like TO NOT DO IT ANYMORE because I've said for years that it's too much for our small office to handle anymore and I ended up bursting into tears because I was so exhausted and then she kicked everyone out and backed me in a corner again to get me to talk and I just kept saying I was tired (wihch was true, I only cry when Im exhausted or extremely angry, which I was both). and just said we need to tell her when we're stressed. Then I got sick and was off work for a week wth a massive cold (that Im sure was brought on by being stressed) and I was back at work for like a week when she made me cry again, and then in my review she told me I should seek therapy to deal with stress management. I was just like... but you told us to tell you when we're being overworked and now it's my fault for not being able to handle doing 15 hours worth of work in 7? so once i got over that shock, i later told her she misunderstood what was happening and I don't feel like I need therapy (well, for stress management. im sure i should go for other things) and then not even a year later, she also tore me a new one and attempted to make me feel guilty for saying I wasn't going to volunteer my friday evening to work an event (and yes work, but completely on my own time without pay) because I was working through a long weekend the weekend before. like, sat us down and yelled at us and told us she was up all night upset about it. and my coworker caved and apologized and I was like yeah, no. I asked if they needed help, they said no, I'm not going because I would have been working for like 13 days straight in the busiest time of year. so no. and then shit hit the fan the next day (on saturday) where I had to call her with all the shit I was dealing with and she never said anything to me again about that. I could go on forever, I have a list on my phone of all the shit she's said. (except now I fear my coworkers will know this is me. hi guys!) Reply Parent Thread Link I made a 250 euros mistake because my stupid colleague thought that when I asked "is this all, can I send the drivers away?" meant "all in the elevator" and said yes. He said to our coach I had asked about the elevator, the coach said I should never believe a word colleague says. SO WTF LET HIM WORK WITH ME WHEN THERE'S MONEY INVOLVED? It was my first day in that function, asses. Reply Parent Thread Link I worked at an entry level admin job for an arts school. My boss was a former performer and a complete nightmare. All the girls who worked there printed off pages of her emails to use a collateral in case we needed it. The emails were full of insults and threats. We had to give 3 months notice so girls would just not show up the next day rather than having to fight with the boss on leaving the company. Oh and one of the teachers slept with two of the students and he was arrested. My boss pretended she didn't know when interviewed even though one of the teachers had already told her. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link My first ever nursing job was a fucking nightmare. I was fresh out of nursing school and I had 44 fucking patients to take care of with 3 CNAs on 2nd shift. My administrator was a fucking PSYCHO. She was so unprofessional. She would yell in the hall way at people and call them stupid. I guess she was used to working with a bunch of soft heart women cause when my black ass came up in there it was WAR. We argued ALL the time and I stayed in the office over some mess. I only lasted 14 months before I peaced the fuck out and got a better job. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I constantly get in trouble for things my coworkers are not doing which has magically become my responsibility overnight with no notice even if I have no time for it. My boss spent like a month switching every week if she could give me a recommendation when my contract ends. Reply Parent Thread Link I've been at my fast food place for 7 years now and my first GM, who was my first real world boss, was really awful. He was always cutting corners and rescheduling people when he felt like it. My first month working there he called me in on a shift a half hour before he needed someone on my day off. Not requested or saw if I could but demanded I do it and that was amongst his many antics & mind games he pulled that I didn't even realize were illegal until he left and we got a new GM. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link my last year of university, i worked part time as a supervisor at a clothing store. I really needed the job (I worked full time/went to school part time; prior to this but decided to focus fully on my last year) and everything was good up until the first time the store had a visit. I got a call from the manager screaming at me because a customer had filed a complaint about one of the girls being rude at the register and sonce I was on duty, I should have handled it, etc. I was taken aback but I just took it in stride and came to work the following day, only to be screamed at again. The next few months consisted of me being afraid to answer my phone; having minor panic attacks everytime i went in, and generally hating life. I only had a semester left of school; so there was no point in quitting and I had an internship (which turned into a job THANKFULLY) lined up for summer so I just needed to wait it out. But it was hell. Turnover was so high, when she was looking for my replacement, she went through 3 girls who quit within a week because they couldn;t handle her mood swings. It was intense. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I work at an "adult store" and constantly get my sandals stuck the floor in our theatre during close. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link This wasn't my boss, he was the head of HR. He would always harass me with the worst questions. He would do it seriously even if he meant it as a joke, which I could never really identify that well. He would ask me if I wanted to go out with him and get some hookers or if I was "ashamed" of being a virgin (which is something he wouldn't know). It was disgusting. He would also always psychoanalyze me, like saying he could tell I was an only child because of how I conducted myself and how he had an only child and was raising him to avoid him turning out like me (I'm paraphrasing that one). Anyway, I'm glad I'm out of there. Edited at 2016-01-20 02:30 am (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I love my job atm because I work 20 hours a week and get paid like if I were working full time (although it's on a 1099), but my boss (the owner) recently told me that the whole office EXCEPT for me and a coworker were going to Colombia for an office wide trip, and I was like OH REALLY NICE TO KNOW and he was like "yeah but you got the new workspace instead." Thanks dude. Reply Parent Thread Link I'm in retail, and while I usually have had decent managers, I feel like the store where I'm at now has some managers with shitty attitude problems. And it's crazy because this particular one is our store manager and she normally projects this really upbeat, funny, exciting presence in our little pre-shift meetings - but when I see her and say hi to her she won't even answer back and she'll just ignore me. Like probably 7 times out of 10 there won't be a response. I think she's just really dry. We ended up going to the same train platform after work (turns out we were going the same way) and she just upfront said "yeah, no offense but I'm not gonna talk to you, I'm just going to put my headphones on". Which is fine but idk just kind of rubbed me the wrong way? She also talked to one of my coworkers because she "didn't wear enough makeup". Just weird bullshittery. I think she's being transferred out so I hope that happens because she just puts me in a bad mood when I see her. Reply Parent Thread Link my current job really frustrates me for a lot of reasons, but the blatant sexism is starting to get to me on a deep level it's tough because I care about my job and I adore my coworkers, but it's hard to watch people get promoted and know that I probably never will be because I'm a woman and literally all of my bosses are white men Reply Parent Thread Link I got my last job through a family friend. I rose ranks real fast which pissed him off because I was the youngest in the group. Long story short, my boss pushed him out by cutting his hours and such because we suspected he was stealing. The prep cooks would tell me how he would go through a ton of produce when he was left in charge of the kitchen on Sundays. Since we didn't freeze anything, inventory was easy to keep track of. He is still bitter and spreads stories about me. LOL Reply Parent Thread Link I got fired after 3 weeks of working at a private independent pharmacy. The lady had bible quotes posted all over her business. A week before I worked she had a bunch of college pharmacy students apply to work for free for clinicals. She just hired me and one of the other techs didn't like me because I called her out for not doing things on time. She blamed inventory being wrong on me and I suddenly noticed everyone being hateful. I did what my pharmacy manager asked me to but the other tech told me to do something else and of course I did what my pharmacy manager told me to do but she got mad that I didn't follow the other tech's orders. We had a screaming at the top of our lungs match in her office and I absolutely fucking lost it. On top of that she had fucking bible quotes and verses" all over the business and I called her out for being a hypocrite. Only time I've ever had a problem with a boss, but then again it was privately owned and she mainly got rid of me to save money since she had pharmacy students to work for free. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I worked in dietary at a hospital. It should have been a great job, the pay was excellent for being a high school job, my coworkers were fun, I generally liked it. There was just this manager who had a reputation for having a chip on her shoulder. I dunno what the fuck her problem was. It was like she targeted certain employees to fucking hate. I asked my friend who got me the job why the manager hated me and she said "I think it's because you took so-and-so's position, and those two didn't get along." The fuck was that?? She just generally had a horrible attitude with some workers and treated others perfectly well. It drove me insane. Reply Parent Thread Link I work retail and have been with the same company for about 4 years now. A couple years ago a new key holder was hired on. At first he was okay then suddenly it was like a switch flipped and he was a huge dick to everyone. Always condescending and passive agressive when he talked to you, all the sales kids hated him and he made work miserable for everyone. And of course, my store manager was so far up this guys ass that he never believed me when I brought up how fucking mean he was. Basically, this dude made me hate my job and I seriously considered quitting I was so unhappy. Luckily, he got transferred to a new store and within 8 months he was demoted because all the associates at the new store had issues with him. He ended up quitting a couple days later and even tried filing for unemployment. Don't know if he got it.. I hope he didnt. But I have never hated someone as much as I hated that fucking douche bag. Reply Parent Thread Link one of my first bosses became extremely jealous of me, because i was basically her but 10 years younger. it all started with many of our coworkers commenting on how similar we were (both physically and professionally) and calling me her mini me. instead of her feeling proud of the great impression i made, she ended up resenting me. slowly began reprimanding me for non-issue things, micromanaging my every move, pulling some of the important tasks i had... thank god i found a lifeline out of there, but i'm still sad i had to leave a great company just because of how awful she is. a good or bad manager really does make or break your experience anywhere. Reply Parent Thread Link I had an on-call shift, called it was told to come in, and then was sent home after 7 fucking minutes. I should have quit on the spot, but I was so hurt I couldn't even function. They could have sent home someone who had been there for hours, but nope sent me instead. Reply Parent Thread Link This is shit quality since I couldn't find the original. I love it, probably the only person on earth who's not here for Taylor Swift's shit. Chelsea's body language speaks volumes, I wish I was able to post the whole thing. Taylor Swift never came back to the show. Edited at 2016-01-20 01:08 am (UTC) Reply Thread Link chelsea said she didn't like daughtry and i remember she went to Australia and the guy from true blood was trying to give a professional interview and chelsea made it so awkward. Reply Parent Thread Link omg the ryan kwanten one? i vaguely remember that one, it was so awkward and oddly tense..like u could hear crickets chirping every time chelsea tried to make a sex joke lol Reply Parent Thread Link i mean, chelsea commenting on taylor's sex life probably means taylor doesn't want her to interview her either but this quality is soo shit i can feel the awkward body language tho edit: there's a better quality on perez Edited at 2016-01-20 01:31 am (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Taylor and comedians (aside from the ass-kissing ones like Ellen) don't really seem to have a great relationship. She sees them as attacking her if they make even benign jokes about her and they see her as someone who can't take a joke. Reply Parent Thread Link I can't hear shit Reply Parent Thread Link i cant hear it can i get some cliff notes please Reply Parent Thread Link Ughhhh, is this necessary? Let the "cat fight" headlines begin. Reply Thread Link lol fuck both of these white hags. i can't believe chelsea handler's unfunny crouton looking ass is a thing tho like damn america mediocrity really reigns supreme huh Reply Thread Link (Just really wanted to post something As Told By Ginger because of your icon.) (Just really wanted to post something As Told By Ginger because of your icon.) Reply Parent Thread Link Heather reeks of desperation. I gagged when I saw her ass on KUWTK, buddying up to Satan Kris Jenner. Reply Thread Link so does chelsea. she only went after easy targets like lindsay lohan and the kardashians while licking the asses of every a lister that came on her show - goopy, jennifer aniston, etc. i guess it worked in her favor cause she's in deep with that crowd so w/e Reply Parent Thread Link chelsea handler only fucks w a-list bitches, though. so... Reply Parent Thread Link I would steal $1,600 worth of Butter London. Reply Thread Link So two handfuls of bottles. Reply Parent Thread Link lmao Reply Parent Thread Link lol Reply Parent Thread Link Same, though I'd pocket some of their glitter polish remover in there too. Reply Parent Thread Link Nails Inc for me tbh Reply Parent Thread Link Me too. Reply Parent Thread Link Illamasqua Reply Parent Thread Link wet n wild TBH Reply Parent Thread Link china glaze glitters tbh i have cheap taste and like shiny things Reply Parent Thread Link ILNP <3 Reply Parent Thread Link How long does BL last on you without chipping? It hates my body chemistry or something and doesn't even last 24 hours. :( I'm about to just get rid of all my bottles. Reply Parent Thread Link Dior for me, their shade range is limited but the formula and brushes >>>>>>>>>> I'd just steal a lot of dupes basically. Reply Parent Thread Link what's ashley been up to these days? Reply Thread Link enjoying her nose job Reply Parent Thread Link I'm not really a fan of Essie tbh. I have a few colours from them, but I don't like their consistency. Their brushes are too narrow and the formulae are too runny imo. Reply Thread Link Their brushes are the worst. Reply Parent Thread Link Yeah, I tend to prefer nail polish that comes with a wider flat brush. It's so much easier to get an even application instead of a streaky mess :/ Reply Parent Thread Link i dont like their US brushes, but the ones we have in europe are actually quite good Reply Parent Thread Link IA. Essie is way too inconsistent. I have had some crap polishes from them. Reply Parent Thread Link That's what I have, the new one, and now I'm so sad urgh :( When I was in NY recently, I bought Fiji, because I've always loved the look of the color even if I knew the formula would be terrible. But apparently the color has changed in North America:That's what I have, the new one, and now I'm so sad urgh :( Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I like their colours, but they're kinda overpriced and they're hard to get off. Reply Parent Thread Link IA. I only have 2 colors from them nowadays because of the thin formula. Essie bubbles the most out of any brand I own, too. Reply Parent Thread Link Essie is really hit or miss for me. Reply Parent Thread Link Yes the consistency is terrible. I've found Wet N Wild to be better than Essie. Reply Parent Thread Link yep ita Reply Parent Thread Link their brushes suck and they spin the wacky wheel of formulas every time they do a collection. sometimes you're painting with glue other times you're painting with water but they do the most beautiful blue shades :( Reply Parent Thread Link ill take $1600 worth of zoya plz Reply Thread Link Omg yes Zoya never gets enough love. Their cremes and shimmers are the best Reply Parent Thread Link Seconded. I especially love that they tend to keep colors around... it's annoying to have one you like be discontinued, or be debating over whether the current collection's _____ is really pretty much the same thing as ______ from last year. Reply Parent Thread Link Which is a fuck ton of Zoya if you jump on all the excellent sales they randomly have. I can't justify not buying them when they have those. Even if they were half the price (like they were regularly just 4$ bottles), the deals are often still worth it. Reply Parent Thread Link Yes! They're my favorite. I'm wearing Lael right now. Reply Parent Thread Link Damn Reply Thread Link Your Essiebutton icon is giving me waking nightmares. Reply Thread Link lol I will never get tired of that fucking icon. OP is queen. Reply Parent Thread Link I wanna make more icons of her face tbh, she has pictures where she's smiling vacantly and staring at the ceiling all pretentiously like she's saying "LOOK AT MY DRAB OATMEAL COLORED SHAPELESS EXPENSIVE CLOTHING THAT KAZAKHSTAN'S TAX MONEY PAID FOR!!!" Edited at 2016-01-20 06:42 am (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I love Essie. Its the only nail polish that lasts for me. Reply Thread Link I'll stick to china glaze cause at least I can get that for like $3/bottle online. idk how anyone pays like $10 for a thing of nail polish no thanks Reply Thread Link where do you find china glaze that cheap online? Reply Parent Thread Link I've gotten bottles of CG for between $3 and $5 on eBay. Reply Parent Thread Link http://head2toebeauty.com/ Don't know if it's the best store so be wary, but hey, maybe it's fine. Sorry, for the late post, but here's a site:Don't know if it's the best store so be wary, but hey, maybe it's fine. Reply Parent Thread Link i'd pay that much for sally hansen's wine not since someone stole it from me. like who steals a polish? tf Reply Parent Thread Link you can also get essie and OPI for 3 bucks a bottle online, at least in the UK Reply Parent Thread Link Tbh, the main reason I paint my nails is so I won't bite them. Or you could get some of that bitter stuff you paint on to keep you from biting them. Reply Parent Thread Link Nail polish doesn't prevent me from biting my nails, I just end up biting them until the ends start chipping and then peel off the polish which leaves my nails in worse shape. Also, the bitter stuff doesn't really taste too bad. It tastes kind of like the aftertaste of biting into a lemon which I actually like, lol. So that doesn't work for me. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Lol same. I swear it's the worst addiction ever but it's such a great stress reliever that I refuse to give it up. Reply Parent Thread Link my problem's not nail biting but similar and I'm trying a stress ball. Seems to be working when I don't lose it lolz ... Reply Parent Thread Link I was teaching the sociology of deviance a few nights ago and everyone's jaw hit the floor when I admitted to being a teenage shoplifter. Pretty priceless. Reply Thread Link A few years ago I stole a bottle of Essie polish from a CVS, for no other reason than to see if I could do it. I still feel dirty. Reply Parent Thread Link I'd steal $1,600 of Rescue Beauty Lounge if it were still around. I swear that was the only brand I ever thought was actually worth its inflated price tag. Did anybody else get anything with the 4/$15 Zoya sale? As usual, the shade I was the least excited about is the one I like the best. I'm kind of disappointed in Yves. I really like the other shades I have with that finish, but it's just way darker and less sparkly than I was expecting. Edited at 2016-01-20 05:01 am (UTC) Reply Thread Link i got a few things, but they aren't here yet. i usually end up liking the ones i don't expect to be great, it's strange. Reply Parent Thread Link I got some RBL when they were doing the closing sale. I wish I got more, it's awesome. I got the Zoya Natural Satins with the 4 deal. By far, I have the most Zoyas in my collection. Reply Parent Thread Link I got Yves, Ryan, Lael and Sue. So far, I've only tried the last two and I'm enjoying them. Reply Parent Thread Link I got Aspen, Isa, Leah and Monica. I'd been dying for Aspen but I really hate not using a top coat so I only wore it for 3 days. I'm wearing Isa now and have gotten a few compliments. Reply Parent Thread Link That packing is terrible. It looks like it is rusting. Reply Thread Link i used to be so into nail polish but now i legit can't be bothered like i went from stockpiling zoya and essie and indie polishes and googling how to perfect my dotting technique to just never doing my nails at all ever Reply Thread Link lol same at uni would do my nails all the time, nail art and everything now i cant even remember the last time i painted my nails Reply Parent Thread Link same, I can't remember the last time I painted my nails, and I gave a bunch of my polishes to my mom :/ Edited at 2016-01-20 05:39 am (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link This is me. With my job it just chips so fast. Even without my job it usually chips that day or the next. I've tried every technique and product commonly recommended. Cheap and expensive stuff. It's just not worth it to me to put in all that time for little return. It's crazy how I used to horde every shade and finish and now I'm like eh whatevs Reply Parent Thread Link If I was going to steal $1600 worth of anything I'd rather get skincare products. OMG imagine all of the sheet masks I could get for that price. Reply Thread Link mte gimme all the moisturizers and cleansers you got Reply Parent Thread Link THIS Reply Parent Thread Link ikr like i love my cheap skincare...but those fancy af serums YAS Reply Parent Thread Link GIMME ALL THE OSKIA CLEANSING GEL AND SKII ESSENCE AND SUNDAY RILEY JUNO FACE OIL. Edited at 2016-01-20 05:21 am (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link mte I love adding new stuff to my routine Reply Parent Thread Link yeah, skincare is all i really care about tbh. i'd steal a bunch of sulhwasoo products lol Reply Parent Thread Link ikr SO MANY MASKS Reply Parent Thread Link I just got into sheet masks and they're great! So far I tried the derma gold mask and my face felt so nice the next day. I need to find a 10 pack though. Reply Parent Thread Link yesss my skin has expensive tastes :( Reply Parent Thread Link ia. i'd rather get skincare stuff. Edited at 2016-01-20 07:08 am (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link SAME. Skincare is my new addiction. Reply Parent Thread Link mte. i'd end up with 4 or 5 Biologique Recherche products & be perfectly happy with that. Reply Parent Thread Link Yes skincare is where it's at. Your nails won't save you when your face looks like leather right Reply Parent Thread Link I would still Deborah Lippmann nail polishes, especially her glitters b/c who wants to pay $20+ for a single bottle of nail polish I have so much polish but I've been lazy about painting my nails lately and I'm not going to go to a salon b/c I'm pretty sure one of them gave me warts (which i got rid of, but it took over two years and was a major bummer) Reply Thread Link OH YES. Deborah Lippmann! She's so pricey but I have some polishes from her that I adore. Reply Parent Thread Link Gilt sometimes sells a bunch of them at a decent discount (I think I got 3 for 20 something?) Reply Parent Thread Link i love her polishes, but fuck the price Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Last August, I discussed how uranium production in world-leading nation Kazakhstan appeared to be rising, despite lower prices. And this week we got confirmation that 2015 was another record year for this uranium hotspot. Kazakhstans state uranium miner Kazatomprom said Monday that the countrys output saw a substantial rise over the past year. With production jumping 4.3 percent in 2015, to 23,800 tonnes uranium (52.5 million pounds). Related: The Condensate Con: How Real Is The Oil Glut? Thats an increase of over 970 tonnes (2.1 million pounds) from the 22,829 tonnes that Kazakhstan produced in 2014. Showing that the mining industry here is continuing to expand, even as prices have languished below $40 per pound for the entirety of the past year. Such price levels however, appear to be entirely feasible for Kazakhstans uranium industry. Which enjoys some of the lowest production costs in the world, outside of Canadas stellar Athabasca Basin. This is a case where geology and metallurgy come together to create world-leading production conditions. With Kazakhstans deposits having decent grades, generally above 0.1 percent uranium oxide and also being amenable to sulfuric acid leaching, which is usually more effective than the alkaline leaching that must be used in places like the U.S. Related: $20 Oil No Longer Seen As Good For The Economy Thats an important lesson in general for mining observers: there are a lot of different factors that go into determining a mines position on the global cost curve. But when the stars align, low production costs can keep an operation in demand even during market downturns like weve seen in uranium the last few years. A final interesting note from the Kazakhstan data is that production from state mining firm Kazatomprom itself actually declined in 2015. With the company producing 13,000 tonnes uranium during the past year, as compared to 13,156 tonnes in 2014. Related: Oman Offers to Slash Oil Production If OPEC Follows Suit That suggests private enterprise in Kazakhstan is actually picking up the slack. No numbers were given on which firms were responsible for the overall production rise but recent moves by Chinese firms into Kazakhstan could be helping. Watch for this to remain the worlds go-to producer as long as uranium prices stay subdued. Heres to thriving in the lows By Dave Forest More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: OPEC acknowledges that it is still producing more oil than its customers can consume, but says a drop in output by producers outside the cartel will begin a rebalancing of prices in the coming year. In its Monthly Oil Market Report, issued Monday, OPEC said demand for its crude averaged 29.9 million barrels per day in 2015, while the group was producing an average of 31.85 million barrels per day throughout the year. This excessive production came despite declines in output during the year by several leading OPEC members. Saudi Arabia production dropped by 58,000 barrels per day to 10.1 million barrels per day by December 2015; Iraqs output was down 31,000 barrels per day to 4.3 million barrels per day; Kuwaits drilling produced 23,000 fewer barrels per day, down to 2.7 million barrels per day; and Nigerian production dropped by 77,000 barrels per day to 1.8 million barrels per day. Related: Does Buffett See A Bottom In Oil Prices Still, the oil glut persisted because such production decreases, particularly in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, didnt balance with an even lower demand from OPECs customers. Saudi Arabia designed the low-price strategy aimed at making oil production too costly for competitors in North America and Russia, and has refused to make more significant output cuts unless other producers agree to do the same. The 104-page OPEC report finds that there will be greater demand for the groups oil in 2016, with customers consuming an average of 31.65 million barrels a day throughout the year because the market will be supply-driven as competitors, beset by low prices, continue to cut back severely on capital expenditures ranging from exploration to new drilling. It will also be the year when the rebalancing process starts, the report said. After seven straight years of phenomenal non-OPEC supply growth, often greater than 2 [million barrels per day], 2016 is set to see output decline as the effects of deep capex cuts [by non-OPEC producers] start to feed through. Related: Is This The Bottom? Balance In Oil Markets Closer Than Many Think Until a balance is restored between supply and demand, though, Saudi Arabia is willing to endure the current low price of oil, even as its own budget, heavily reliant on energy revenues, faces a deficit of $98 billion, or 15 percent of gross domestic product, for fiscal 2016. On Sunday, Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi, who is considered to be the architect of OPECs price war to regain market share, said Sunday that hes optimistic that oil prices will recover, though he conceded that any rebalancing will take some time. The report said a price recovery is expected to cause the most pain among companies drilling in the United States, who rely mostly on hydraulic fracturing, which isnt profitable unless the average global price of oil is around $60 per barrel. Its now dropped to about half that. Related: $20 Oil No Longer Seen As Good For The Economy The cartels report said U.S. production will drop by 380,000 barrels per day in 2016 from nearly 13.5 million barrels per day. Other areas that it sees as particularly vulnerable because of dramatically reduced capital expenditure are parts of Asia, as well as Canada, Latin America and the North Sea. OPECs report adjusted its expected supply levels to include Indonesia, which resumed its membership in the group in December after a seven-year hiatus. The document noted that Indonesias output in 2015 averaged 700,000 barrels per day in 2015. What the report didnt mention, however, was the outlook for Iran in 2016 as it returns to the world market now that its free of Western sanctions. That may be a major oversight. Iran's oil minister, Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, says it intends to resume production almost immediately to 500,000 barrels per day, and could double that output after a short while. By Andy Tully of Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Until the close of 2015, Russia was the sole investor in two planned hydro-electric power projects in Kyrgyzstan: the Upper-Naryn cascade project and the Kambar-Ata-1 hydropower plant. The Upper Naryn project is estimated to cost $700 million and consists of four hydropower plants, while Kambarata-1, a mega-hydropower plant, is estimated to cost $2 billion (Kloop.kg, December 31). But the realization of these plans is now under threat after Kyrgyzstan determined that Russia is not really planning to invest in the project. Kyrgyzstans President Almazbek Atambayev, in his end-of-year press conference, acknowledged that so far no investments had been made by the Russian side in the projects due to the ongoing economic stagnation in Russia. Nevertheless, Atambayev said, that will hardly be an impeding factorif Russia cannot do it, then Kyrgyzstan will implement the projects with other investors and partners. He added that Russia will even be relieved with having one less financial burden. President Atambayev did not hide his frustration that the Russian Ministry of Energy had raised multiple technical issues with the Upper-Naryn cascade project throughout 2015. Kyrgyzstan addressed these points put forward by Moscow, but Atambayev doubts this was the end of such roadblocks coming from Moscow; rather, he believes Russia may never have planned to actually fund these hydro-electric projects in the first place (YouTube, December 24, 2015; Interfax, December 24, 2015). Related: Oil Sold for -$0.50 per Barrel. A Negative Price! To follow up on President Atambayevs statement and demonstrate the governments confidence in completing the projects, Kyrgyzstani Prime Minister Temir Sariyev gave assurances the following day that negotiations with other investors will be held in the near future and that the government already has a number of alternatives in mind (KyrTAg, December 25, 2015). Sariyevs remarks may have been a bluff, however. Russias ambassador to Kyrgyzstan, Andrei Krutko, meanwhile, urged the government in Bishkek to wait to hear from Moscow before taking any further steps in pursuing the project without Russia (24.kg, December 25). Nevertheless, no official statements from Russia followed, and the Kyrgyz Republics government officially terminated its investment agreement with Russia on the last day of 2015 (Kloop.kg, December 31). Some parliamentary members had advised the government to wait until Russias economic problems had been resolved before moving forward on the hydropower projects. But President Atambayev refused, saying the country needed to construct the necessary infrastructure to meet its obligation to supply electricity to Afghanistan and Pakistan under the CASA-1000 project. Specifically, Atambayev referred to the economic advantages Kyrgyzstan will reap under the CASA-1000 project, earning a profit of five cents on every produced unit of electricity sold. However, building new hydro-electric plants is contrary to the stated purpose of the CASA-1000 project given that, by design, only excess existing electrical power from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan is supposed be sold to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Related: The Condensate Con: How Real Is The Oil Glut? On paper, this should not require additional power generating capacities for the successful realization of the project, as had been stipulated in multiple multilateral documents pertaining to CASA-1000 from the Asian Development Bank and World Bank in relation. The CASA-1000 project is also a key element of the New Silk Road Initiative, promoted by the United States. But from the outset, the project has had the potential to turn into a major regional headache for downstream Central Asian states, as both Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have been planning to build additional hydro-electric dams across rivers that flowed onward to water users Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. President Atambayev may also want to speed up the construction of the proposed new hydropower plants in order to leave a legacy as the first president who brought energy self-sufficiency to Kyrgyzstan (Gezitter.org, September 1, 2015). During his December press conference, he openly said that he wished to have at least one new hydropower plant open before the end of his presidential tenure in 2017 (YouTube, December 24, 2015; Interfax, December 24, 2015). Related: The World Just Lost One Of Its Biggest Oil Plays To Low Prices Yet, the Kyrgyz Republics aging Soviet-era electricity infrastructure has long been vulnerable; even with new hydropower plants, the country will be far from energy secure. On December 28, Kyrgyzstans largest electricity producer, the Toktogul hydropower plant, had to be shut down and the electrical power supply to the population had to be rationed because of oil leaks from the cable lines (KyrTAg, December 29, 2015). Consequently, Kyrgyzstan had to increase its imports of electricity from neighboring countries. The incident is a reminder that a state with a vulnerable and unsustainable domestic electricity supply will have great difficulty exporting power. Although terminating the agreement with Russia was a bold move by Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek is unlikely to find any serious alternatives to Russian financingparticularly since these mega hydropower projects are politically contentious in Central Asia due to fears by the downstream countries over losing their access to water supplies. But given Moscows repeated tendency not to deliver on promised large-scale infrastructure projects in the region (see EDM, August 14, 2014), Kyrgyzstans ultimate exasperation and canceling of its deal with Russia should have come as little surprise. By Umida Hashimova via Jamestown.org More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: The price of oil, now in the neighborhood of $30 per barrel, is getting close to its production cost in Nigeria and soon may lead to the shutdown of some of the countrys oil fields, according to some energy executives and financial institutions. The Central Bank of Nigerias latest figures show that the price of Nigerias crude, Bonny Light, has dropped to $29.47 per barrel. And several financial services companies, including Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, City Group, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley say it could drop further to $20 per barrel.One oil executive, Alhaji Abdullahi Bukar, told the Nigerian newspaper Punch that the current price isnt much more than it costs to extract the oil. The unit technical cost of many of our producers is not far from $30 per barrel, said Bukar, the project director for the Uquo gas field development, a joint venture project by Frontier Oil Limited and Seven Energy. So many companies are in trouble. Related: Is This The Riskiest Oil Stock In The World? According to Bukar, extracting a barrel of oil in Nigeria costs between $24 and $25 on average but sometimes will cost more. For some fields, the production cost is well above $25, maybe $28, he said. For some fields it is well below $20 and $25. Many of the older fields have got high production costs. The low oil price also threatens to delay several deep-water projects planned off Nigerias coast, long a mainstay of Nigerian production. Adeola Elliott, the CEO of Petrosystem Nigeria Ltd, said, What [international oil companies] have done now is to just keep maintaining the facility they have now and producing what they [are] producing now. There is no more new investment. Nigeria is the leading producer of oil in Africa, and relies on its oil for most of its revenues from exports and its national budget. In the past several years its average production has ranged between 1.9 million barrels of oil per day and 2.3 million barrels per day. Related: Oman Offers to Slash Oil Production If OPEC Follows Suit In 2015 it produced an average of nearly 2.28 million barrels per day, but President Muhammadu Buhari says he expects it to fall to no higher than 2.2 million barrels per day in 2016. Despite such concerns, Tam David-West, who served as Nigerias oil minister in 1984 and 1985, said theres little if any reason to worry about the countrys oil industry. It is nonsense to panic over the current oil price, David-West said in a telephone interview with The Sun, another Nigerian newspaper. Instead, he said, the government should focus on strict budget discipline and crackdown on corruption in the oil industry. Related: Irans Eagerness To Export Sees Oil Tanking Again David-West said that in 1984, when he was oil minister, the price of Bonny Light fetched no more than $30 per barrel on the world market, and even plunged to $10 per barrel in April of that year. Nevertheless, the countrys leadership coincidentally Buharis military government at the time remained calm and kept the country from the brink of economic disaster. All of the fears are not necessary, David-West said. People should not put the nation into unnecessary anxiety. David-West said hed already reminded Buhari of this oil-price crisis of three decades ago, and added that the president agreed with me. By Andy Tully of Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: About Give - Aways All Give-Aways posted on the Oklahoma Transient Blog are sponsored and purchased by me, Sandy, as a special gift to say Thank You. could have faced felony charges if an officers misconduct while still on active duty is documented, including by conviction after retirement, a new grade determination may be completed The decision now rests with Secretary of Defense Ash Carter , who is said to be willing to consider overruling an earlier recommendation by the Army that Petraeus not have his rank reduced. Such a demotion could cost the storied general hundreds of thousands of dollarsand deal an additional blow to his once-pristine reputation.The secretary is considering going in a different direction from the Army, a defense official told The Daily Beast, because he wants to be consistent in his treatment of senior officers who engage in misconduct and to send a message that even men of Petraeuss fame and esteemed reputation are not immune to punishment.Pentagon spokesperson Peter Cook toldthat Carter had requested the information ex-Army Secretary John McHugh had when he made his recommendation on the matter, before reaching a final decision. McHugh had recommended taking no action against Petraeus.The Department of the Army is still in the process of providing the secretary with information relevant to former Secretary McHughs recommendation, Cook told. Once the secretary has an opportunity to consider this information, he will make his decision about next steps, if any, in this matter.Carter could also recommend other actions that dont result in Petraeus losing his fourth star. Or, the defense secretary could simply allow the Armys previous recommendations to stand. Petraeus , arguably the most well-known and revered military officer of his generation, retired from the Army in 2011, with the rank of a four-star general, the highest rank an Army officer can achieve. If Carter decides to strip Petraeus of his fourth star, he could be demoted to the last rank at which he satisfactorily served, according to military regulations. (Oh dear, says, that likely means the General would loose one of his four stars....haha, almost laughable; but, surely, the serious symbolism would also be significant.)Reducing Petraeuss rank, most likely to lieutenant general, could mean hed have to pay back the difference in pension payments and other benefits that he received as a retired four-star general. That would amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars over his retirement. According to Pentagon figures, a four-star general with roughly the same years of experience as Petraeus was entitled to receive a yearly pension of nearly $220,000. A three-star officer would receive about $170,000.But the financial pain to Petraeus isnt likely to be severe. He has confided to friends and acquaintances that hes making a hefty sum from his job at a private equity firm and through speaking fees.The demotion in rank would be a bigger, lasting blow, and take from Petraeus the rare achievement hed set his eyes on many years ago.At any given time, there are only 12 four-star generals in the Army, the largest of the services. By the time he was a colonel, in the mid-1990s, many thought Petraeus was destined to be one of them.The U.S. military has, on several occasions, demoted generals, increasingly for improper personal contact and not for poor battlefield decisions. But rarely does it demote four-star generals, in part because there are so few of them. Its also more common to reduce the rank of more junior officers than of top generals.If Petraeus were demoted, it would mark another spectacular fall. Petraeus stepped down as director of the Central Intelligence Agency in 2012 after his affair with Paula Broadwell , a writer and current Army reservist, was revealed. At the time, Petraeus had been frequently mentioned as a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2016.Petraeus pleaded guilty last year to giving Broadwell eight notebooks that he compiled while serving as commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and that he knew contained classified information. The notebooks held some of the most sensitive kinds of military and intelligence secrets , including the identities of covert officers, intelligence capabilities, quotes from high-level meetings of the National Security Council, and notes about Petraeuss discussions with President Obama.After leaving Afghanistan, Petraeus took the books back to his home in Virginia and gave them to Broadwell just three days before he retired from the Army. She later returned them. No classified information appeared in her biography, All In: The Education of General David Petraeus , officials have said.Petraeus, including for lying to FBI investigators, but was allowed to plead guilty last year to a misdemeanor count of unauthorized handling classified information. He avoided a prison sentence but received two years probation and a $100,000 fine.But that wasn't the end of the matter. Last year, the FBI gave Army investigators information that the bureau had come across as it was closing up its own investigation of Petraeus, the defense official and one former U.S. official toldThe information, the FBI believed, might be of interest to the Army, the defense official said. The Army investigated and decided there was nothing new here that should change his retirement and recommended that there be no change to his four-star rank, the official said. Last month, it went to the secretary of defense for final approval.Army personnel regulations say that an officer doesnt automatically retire with the highest rank he or she achieved while in uniform ( PDF ). And even though Petraeus had already been officially retired, through a process known as grade determination the Army can retroactively reopen his case and consider whether to demote him [i]f substantial new evidence discovered contemporaneously with or within a short time following separation could result in a lower grade determination.The regulations also state that. Petraeus hadnt yet retired when he gave Broadwell the classified information.The Army received the information from the FBI that prompted this new review more than four years after Petraeus had retired. The Defense Department was also running its own investigation into Petraeuss relationship with Broadwell and what classified information he gave her at the same time the FBI and federal prosecutors were pursuing their case. That may explain why the Army decided it had seen nothing new in the information it received last year from the FBI and decided not to recommend a demotion.But Carter is said to be concerned that because he has recommended other generals be reduced in rank for actions not becoming an officer, hell be seen as inconsistent if he doesnt do the same for Petraeus. The decision is as much about timing and politics as it is Petraeuss own transgressions.This is about Ash Carter, not David Petraeus, the defense official said.Last November, Carter removed his senior military aide, Lt. Gen. Ron Lewis, for personal misconduct, and referred the matter to the Pentagons inspector general for investigation. Lewis was demoted a rank, to a major general.Lewis was a longtime and influential aide to the secretary, and his removal and punishment signaled Carters commitment to maintaining upstanding behavior among the militarys generals. The exact nature of Lewiss misconduct has not been announced, but military officials have suggested he was involved in an improper personal relationship.While few are familiar with Petraeuss potential demotion, those who are aware of it said they were surprised that he could be punished years after the scandal was presumably put behind him and after he pleaded guilty to mishandling classified information. No general in recent history has been demoted years after scandal swirled around him or her.Those who know and have worked with Petraeus describe him as a man of extraordinary capabilities and ambition. He received his fourth star in 2007 and then served in several prestigious and demanding assignments, including commander of U.S. Central Command, the commanding general of all ground forces in Iraq, and later as commander of ground forces in Afghanistan.Petraeuss unorthodox thinking and willingness to buck conventional strategy was seen as key to the U.S. victory over insurgents and jihadists in Iraq during the so-called troop surge of 2007 and 2008. His reputation was so esteemed that there was talk of giving him a fifth stara largely symbolic gesture that was highly unlikelyor renaming the road to Petraeuss alma mater, the U.S. Military Academy, after him.Should Carter choose to knock Petraeus down to the rank of a three-star general, he will have a chance to appeal his case to the secretary, but Congress doesnt have to be informed of the decision, the official said.There is no deadline on Carter to make a decision.The last commander to lose rank for professional misconduct was Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who was demoted to colonel in 2005 for the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq. The last four-star general to be demoted was Gen. William Ward, who retired as a three-star in 2012 amid allegations he misspent government money on himself and his family. Bell Tavern building in Silver Spring Township was nearly destroyed before demolition was haltedCARLISLE, Pa. (WHTM) The debate over the Bell Tavern continues in Silver Spring Township. The partially demolished building is still standing in the 7000 block of the Carlisle Pike. Many want to know what the future holds for it. According to the Cumberland County Historical Society, the Bell Tavern is not on any historical registry. However, they say the building was written about frequently for its ties to the Bill of Rights and also was a part of a tour given by the Cumberland County Historical society . Thats why residents raised concerns when they noticed the building was being demolished. The property is owned by Triple Crown Corporation, which has halted the demolition. In a new release, the company said the public outcry caught them off guard. Prior to application for a demolition permit, Triple Crown Corporation examined the federal, state, county and township records for any historical registration. This review was required by the demolition permit itself. There is no indication of any historical significance of the property on any of the above sites, said Karen Jordan, marketing manager of Triple Crown Corporation. During a 40-year ownership time frame, Triple Crown Corporation has submitted at least four separate industrial land development and subdivision plans. At no time during these publicly advertised and open to the public meetings was there any mention as to the potential historical significance of this property. ABC 27 tried to contact Silver Spring Township to inquire why the permit for demolition was approved. They did not return calls. They previously released a statement to our media partners at The Sentinel which read in part: Whether intentional or by error in 1995, the Bell Tavern was not listed as an historic, protected building on the townships cultural features map and historic buildings list referred to in our zoning ordinance. Based on that, the township had to lift the stop-work order. Despite the lifting of the order, the developer has continued to suspend demolition, affording us the opportunity to engage in discussions about the preservation of the building. The company is currently in talks with the township about how to move forward. Although we are in sincere dialogue with the Silver Spring Township, we must emphasize that this is private property. Over the decades, the state, county and township all have had multiple opportunities to acquire and protect this asset. This could have been done for the benefit of the citizens at the expense of the citizens. Demanding that ownership repair and give this property to a governmental or historical preservation group at the sole cost of an individual owner is in direct opposition of what the Bill of Rights stands for, Jordan said. In a deal that closed today, Chef Thomas Hauck of c.1880 has become the proud owner Karl Ratzschs, one of Milwaukees oldest German eateries. The stately restaurant, located at 320 E. Mason St., has been a fixture in Milwaukee for over 110 years. And its cuisine has proudly reflected Milwaukees German heritage through the lens of fine dining. Hauck, who says hes been working on the deal with the current owners for over a year, says its an honor to take over a place thats become a part of Milwaukee for so long. "Theres a special history with Karl Ratzschs in this city," says Hauck. "It taps into what people identify with Milwaukee, and it has a really important legacy. I want to have a hand in keeping that going." As of today, the restaurant is closed for renovation and will reopen sometime in late spring. Hauck says that the space will get "a face lift, and maybe some reconstructive surgery," with the help of Patrick and Libby Castro of LP/W Design Studios, designers who assisted in creating the atmosphere at c.1880. A bathroom will be added on the first floor, and numerous elements will get a refresh. But a variety of familiar elements including "Mama" Ratzschs collection of beer steins, porcelain and glassware will be preserved and utilized in the refreshed space. "When you walk back in after the remodel, youll know that its Karl Ratzschs," says Hauck. "But well be bringing it some new life." In terms of Ratzschs menu, Hauck says hell be shifting offerings back to the restaurants original authentic German roots. "Over time," he says, "particularly in the 1990s, the menu took on more of a continental European feel. Well be taking it back and making a shift to bring things back to how they were originally." That includes a large selection of German beer, he says, which hell be carefully curating and presenting to diners in an accessible way. Hauck says the project is expected to take a few months to complete but he hopes to reopen the restaurant sometime in April, if not sooner. Meanwhile, c. 1880 will not be affected by Hauck's new role as owner of Karl Ratzsch's. Ratzsch's began in 1904 Ratzschs Restaurant began in 1904, when Chef Otto Hermann opened Hermanns Cafe on Water Street in Downtown Milwaukee. He ran the restaurant with the help of his stepdaughter, Helen. In 1929, after a 10-year courtship, Helen married Karl August Ratzsch Sr. and they purchased the cafe, relocating it to 320 E. Mason St. and renaming it Karl Ratzschs. The two continued operation for decades before passing the reins to Karl Jr., who carried on the restaurants successful tradition into the 1990s before selling the restaurant to his son, Josef. It remained in the Ratzsch family until 2003, when Josef sold it to Executive Chef John Poulos, restaurant manager Tom Andera and dining room manager Judy Hazard. Over the years, Karl Ratzschs has won countless awards and honors, including the Travel Holiday Magazine Award, a spot among USA Todays "10 Best Restaurants in the U.S." list and a place in the DiRoNA Hall of Fame. Watch OnMilwaukee for more details about the renovation as it progresses. by Rep. Mike Nearman Ballot measure would combat vote fraud, help safeguard Oregonians electoral will Here, sir, the people govern. With this immortal phrase, Alexander Hamilton summarized the system of self-rule that, among other attributes, has made America the envy of the world. And how, specifically, do the people govern? First and foremost, by their right to vote. Every American citizen has a vote equal to every others. With it, those citizens have the right to elect the people who make their polities laws. In initiative-and-referendum states like Oregon, citizens even may vote to make laws directly. And this year, via proposed ballot measure Initiative 51, Oregonians have the chance to better protect their votes from fraud specifically, from voting by non-citizens If passed, the measure would enact an amendment to the Oregon Constitution to require proof of U.S. citizenship from Oregon residents seeking to register to vote. From already-registered voters, it would require such proof within ten years of its enactment. Ten readily-available documents among them U.S. birth or naturalization certificates, U.S. passports, and military records listing a U.S. birthplace would suffice. For aspiring registrants who lacked an approved document, the Oregon secretary of state would contact federal immigration authorities to determine citizenship or lack thereof. Granted, the amendment would require more from voter registrants than does the current system. But wouldnt that be a small price to pay to help assure Oregonians electoral choices their very self-government are not compromised or even nullified by non-citizen vote fraud? Contrary to the assertions of some, such fraud is not uncommon. Instances of it, indeed, have directly affected elections across America. In Californias 46th Congressional District election of 1996 (which was decided by 979 votes), writes former U.S. Justice Department official Hans von Spakovsky, a House committee . . . found clear and convincing evidence of 624 invalid votes by non-citizens and circumstantial evidence of another 196 non-citizens voting. In North Carolina between 2008 and 2012, note von Spakovsky and former Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund, the states Board of Elections reported there were 475 cases of election fraud [it] believed merited a referral to prosecutors . . . The fraud included double voting, impersonation and registration fraud, and illegal voting by non-citizens and felons. And in 2011, reported The Hills Debbie Siegelbaum, Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler told Congress that nearly 12,000 people who were not citizens [were] registered to vote in Colorado . . . Of those non-citizen registered voters, nearly 5,000 took part in the 2010 general election. And these are just a few among countless examples. The signers of the Declaration of Independence pledged our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor to cast off George IIIs tyranny and inaugurate, in its stead, a system of government by the people. Two-and-a-half centuries later, that hard-won system endures. It is too precious to leave unprotected. Over the next half-year, Oregon voters should sign the petition to qualify Initiative 51 for the November ballot and to help assure, in years to come, that non-citizen vote fraud does not compromise Oregonians electoral will. State Representative Mike Nearman (R-Independence) is a chief petitioner of Initiative 51 with James Buchal. Please click here in order to read our guidelines on commenting to the blog. Flat in Luxor? Apartment in Luxor? Holiday Rental in Luxor? Luxury Accommodation in Luxor? Is this what youve been searching for? The Our Luxor Holiday Apartment isnt on the Side of the Dead, or the on edge of town; no, were right in the middle of the real Luxor where you can see life lived in all its glory! We love to know that we are safe and secure among our caring neighbours in this closely knit community. Come and join us in the best private accommodation available. 12 reasons why Cameron will lose on Brexit The pundits have got it wrong: The Brits will vote themselves out of Europe. By DENIS... This is just a random blog where I talk about things that interest me. Movies, TV, books, comics, board games, cooking, and other random events will all be discussed here. Caution: Almost none of the pictures I post are owned by me, and are the property of the original creators. Bacha Khan University cleared after four terrorist killed 20 January, 2016 Related News Imran Khan distributed loan cheques under Kamyab Jawan Programme PTI govt to face all challenges coming its way: Imran khan More on this View All Types of Casino Payment Methods Tips for Taking Incredible iPhone Travel Photos Top 2021 Accessories We Know You Will Love Are Slot Developers Important for players? Best Poker Hands ever played on a Casino Hand Wash and Toiletries in Pakistan And the Role of DUPAS in Reshaping the Industry Woke Bingo PESHAWAR: Unidentified gunmen entered Bacha Khan University in Khyber Pakhtunkhas Charsadda town Wednesday and opened fire on students and faculty members as they gathered at the school for a poetry recital to commemorate the death anniversary of the activist and leader whom the school is named after. The mastermind of the APS Peshawar attack, Omar Mansoor, of the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Geedar group has claimed the attack through a post on his Facebook page, adding that four attacker were sent to the university. However, a spokesperson from the TTP Mohammad Khorasani issued a conflicting statement shortly after Mansoor's claim, in which Khorasani condemned the attack, terming it "against Shariah". Khorasani also warned that those "using the naming of TTP will be brought to justice". As the military announced the end of the clearance operation, mass casualties were feared in the attack reminiscent of the deadly December 2014 terrorist attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar which left over 140 dead most of them students. Sources added that the four attackers were wearing suicide vests but were killed by security forces' before they could detonate their explosives. Military spokesperson Lt.Gen Asim Bajwa said four attackers have been killed. Security personnel, including SSG personnel went inside the school to control the situation. Security forces cordoned off a one-storey house, situated around a kilometre from the university's boundary wall, where three terrorists were believed to be holed up. It was later declared clear by military personnel. The terrorists gave stiff resistance to security forces as they engaged in an operation to clear the school over several hours. Intelligence sources said eight to 10 terrorists were inside the school, adding that they were between 18 and 25 years old, were wearing civilian clothes and had their faces covered. The families of students lined up outside the school. Most of the boys belonged to Dir, Hangu and other parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Journalists and all other non-essential personnel were asked to stay back in order to not interfere with the ongoing security operation. Up to 20 ambulances entered the university to rescue the injured. Provincial Minister Shah Farman told journalists 54 security guards were stationed at the university. He said around 200 people were present in the examination hall all of whom were rescued and "timely action by police and army has prevented large scale damage". The death toll in the terrorist attack has risen to 21, regional police chief Saeed Wazir told AFP without specifying if that included the four militants the army stated it had killed. He said the operation had ended and security forces were clearing the area, with most of the student victims shot dead at a hostel for boys on the campus. The medical superintendent at District Headquarter Hospital, Charsadda confirmed 18 dead. DHQ Charsadda's officials also stated that casualties had cuts on the bodies, probably inflicted from a sharp-edged weapon. An Edhi volunteer earlier said he had seen the bodies of at least 15 persons. One Rescue 1122 official said, "The boys section [of the hostel] has been affected. Victims have mostly been hit by bullets." "Around 90 per cent of the area has been cleared. Over 70 per cent students have been rescued." Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) provincial spokesperson Shaukaut Yousafzai said between 50 to 60 people were wounded. He added there was no prior threat about an attack. Special assistant to chief minister, Mushtaq Ghani said the critically injured victims shifted to the Lady Reading Hospital Peshawar and that security in the province has been on high alert for 10 days. At least three to four security guards were injured, an eye-witness who managed to come out of the premises said. The Associated Press quoted police as saying gunmen killed an assistant professor and a student in the attack. DIG Saeed Wazir confirmed that two students and assistant professor Dr Hamid, who taught organic chemistry at the school, have been killed in the attack. All students have been evacuated from the hostels, but militants are still hiding in different parts of the university and some students and staff are stuck inside, Wazir said. Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif reached Charsadda to boost the morale of the security personnel who took part in the operation. He was accompanied by Corps Commander Peshawar. Television footage showed soldiers entering the campus as ambulances lined up outside the main gate and anxious parents consoled each other. A rescue official talking to reporters quoted a rescued student as claiming that 60 to 70 students had been shot in the head by the attackers. The student added that the attack is reminiscent of the Army Public School Peshawar attack. A student speaking to media men said the attackers who has penetrated the building appeared to be young. "The attackers were like us they were very young. They carried AK-47 guns. They wore jackets like the forces do... We were in the hostel sleeping as we don't have classes. "There are no classes at the university currently, there may be around 200-300 students in the hostel." "There was firing between attackers and security forces. After everything was over, the army men knocked on our room and told us we were safe." Geology student Zahoor Ahmed said he had tried to leave his hostel after hearing shots fired.(We) were stopped by our chemistry lecturer who advised us to go inside. He was holding a pistol in his hand, he said. Then I saw a bullet hit him. I saw two militants were firing. I ran inside and then managed to flee by jumping over the back wall, According to one eyewitness who escaped the university, the attackers had taken position at the entry points of the school. "I saw three attackers engaged in an exchange of fire with security guards of the university. One was positioned at the roof, another near the corner and the third near the wall." "We rescued the university's guards and then I saw the attackers engage the arriving police party." Attackers are believed to be on the second and third floors of the campus buildings. Shabir Khan, a lecturer in the English department, said he was about to leave the hostel for the department when firing began. Most of the students and staff were in classes when the firing began, Khan said. I have no idea about what's going on but I heard one security official talking on the phone to someone and said many people had been killed and injured. A student said two security personnel were killed. "A hostel friend of mine was killed, two security personnel were killed as well." "The gunmen attacked the registrar office. Our professor was killed, his name is Hamid. Some students have also been killed. A friend of mine was so scared he jumped from the university building." A computer science student who was rescued from the university said the poetry recital event to commemorate Bacha Khan's death anniversary was to begin at 10:30am. "The university [security] on common days is enough to perplex students. They have five security checks. But the security is only for students and not VIPs," he said. "In the beginning, there was just firing. There were attackers in the stairwell. We had no arms to counter them." "In the Pushto Department and Computer Science blocks I saw at least three attackers." Rescue officials say some 50 students were rescued from the premises. Out of these 50, five students were injured and have been shifted to District Headquarters Hospital, Charsadda for treatment. An emergency has been imposed in all hospitals in the town. Snipers have taken position around the premises, with monitoring being provided by aerial assets. An eyewitness rescued from the university said the university was not adequately secured, especially at the backside of the building, which had low boundary walls. Another eyewitness said that attackers threw a grenade, injuring a guard and then entered the school. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's Member of Provincial Assembly Arshad Ali told reporters that the attackers entered the university after scaling its walls. MPA Fazal Shakoor, who was elected from Charsadda, says army contingents have also arrived at the scene and that firing is continuing. Former provincial health minister Shaukat Yousafzai speaking at the site said, "This is a frontline province. We are fighting Pakistan's war in this province." "This is international terrorism. This province is a target of terrorism. We are making full efforts to combat terrorism and it has dropped. The backs of terrorists have been broken and they are breathing their last. This stunt is an attempt to breathe life into their cause." The state-run PTV quotes DSP Charsadda as saying that three armed men entered the university premises and opened fire. Television reports added that a large contingent of security forces had reached the site. A woman inside the university says intense firing is underway. The woman asked for help, saying assistance be sent to the premises. The attack on the university comes on the death anniversary of Bacha Khan and it began as a mushaira (poetry recitation) was underway at the premises. Around 3,000 students are enrolled at the university. Vice Chancellor Fazal Rahim told reporters that the university teaches over 3,000 students and was hosting an additional 600 visitors on Wednesday for the recital. There are male and female staff members and students on the campus, Fazal said, adding he had been on his way to work when he was informed of the attack. Shabir Khan, a lecturer in the English department, said he was about to leave his university housing for the department when firing began. Most of the students and staff were in classes when the firing began, Khan said. I have no idea about what's going on but I heard one security official talking on the phone to someone and said many people had been killed and injured. Security forces had earlier conducted search operations in adjoining areas and claimed that four wanted men had been arrested. Weapons and army and police uniforms were also recovered from the arrested men. Charsadda is a district in Pakistans northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and has been a scene of several militant attacks during the past decade. The region is mostly rural in its makeup and lies 40 kilometres from Peshawar. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in a statement issued from Zurich said he is "deeply grieved" over the attack at the university. "Those killing innocent students and citizens have no faith and religion," the statement said. "We are determined and resolved in our commitment to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland." The prime minister is in Switzerland to attend the World Economic Forum. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi condemned the attack and offered his condolences to the families of the deceased. Rumours of possible terrorist attacks on schools had been circulating in Peshawar and surrounding rural areas over the last week, forcing some schools to close educational institutions early. District administration had directed some schools to close their campuses for one day (last Saturday) insisting there were reports of possible terrorist attacks on them. General Raheel Sharif on Wednesday reached Bacha Khan University CHARSADDA Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif on Wednesday reached Bacha Khan University, in Charsadda to review situation after a terrorist attack. The army chief will chair a high level meeting at the university where he will be briefed about the details of militant attack and response of armed forces. The Peshawar Corps Commander and other top military officials were also accompanying him on the occasion. Earlier, a group of militants stormed a university in Charsadda on Wednesday, killing at least 19 people and wounding dozens as the army killed four terrorists killed, officials said. Pakistan initiative was welcomed in both capitals: Nawaz Sharif ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif struck an upbeat tone on Tuesday at the conclusion of his mediation trip to Saudi Arabia and Iran saying Pakistans initiative was welcomed in both capitals and he expected it to progress. Leaders of both countries appreciated our effort to reduce tensions between them. I received a positive response and Im deeply encouraged. It is a sacred responsibility, Mr Sharif told Pakistani reporters accompanying him in Tehran after his meetings with President Hassan Rouhani, First Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri and Defence Minister Hossein Dehghan. Army Chief Gen Raheel Sharif, who is accompanying the prime minister, held separate meetings with Secretary of National Security Council Ali Shamkhani and Defence Minister Dehghan. The prime minister and the army chief were in Tehran after visiting Riyadh for what the government described as a move for defusing tensions between the two Muslim countries that were sparked by execution of Saudi dissident Sheikh Nimr and the subsequent attack on Saudi mission in Iran by protesters. Mr Sharif said that in the next step Iran and Pakistan would appoint focal persons for dealing with the matter. The focal persons would work full time on this issue, he said and added that he would ask Saudi Arabia to also name someone for this purpose. An understanding between Pakistan and Iran on designation of focal persons for pushing the process forward was the only major outcome of the nascent initiative, besides both disputing parties welcoming Islamabads move, according to what has been disclosed to media. Sharing the essence of his meetings in Tehran and Riyadh, Mr Sharif noted that neither wanted tensions. Saudi leadership told me that they did not see Iran as an enemy and I heard similar sentiments from Iranian leaders, who too are not in favour of tensions, the prime minister said and hoped that his mediation project would progress smoothly. In his meetings in Tehran Mr Sharif conveyed Saudi concerns and said that the Iranian position would be shared with Riyadh. The prime minister emphasised on undertaking sincere efforts and said Pakistan was already acting with sincerity. He said he believed the efforts could succeed if taken forward by other parties. Iranian President Rouhani had told Mr Sharif that discord between Muslim countries was unacceptable for Iran. Mr Rouhani set conditions for a rapprochement with Saudi Arabia. He said: We want expansion of ties and do not welcome tensions on the condition that Muslim rights be respected and nations of the region be honoured and diplomatic frameworks be observed. Another statement on Mr Sharifs meeting with First Vice President Jahangiri stressed the need for expanding bilateral economic cooperation after lifting of the sanctions and collaborating in the fight against extremism and terrorism. Mr Sharif reportedly assured Iran of cooperation particularly in the energy sector. He further told Mr Jahangiri that he would instruct the State Bank of Pakistan and the Finance Ministry to initiate steps for resuming banking mechanisms. COAS Gen Raheel Sharif in his meetings with Defence Minister Dehghan and Secretary of National Security Shamkhani explained Pakistans entry into the Saudi-led 34-nation counter-terrorism alliance and clarified that it should not be interpreted as an anti-Iran measure. Talking to Iranian defence minister, Gen Sharif said terrorism is a global threat, which has the potential of destabilising the region and needs a well coordinated response. He further told Mr Dehghan that Pakistan takes Iran as very important neighbouring Muslim country and people of Pakistan have a great affinity with our Iranian brothers. In his interaction with Mr Shamkhani, who is also military adviser to Iranian Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Gen Sharif underscored the need for Muslim unity for countering emerging threats. He told him that terrorism could only be defeated through a coordinated response. To quote Larry Kudlow: Free market capitalism is the best path to prosperity! Matters of business and free enterprise are discussed on this blog. Included are company press releases, 3rd party news articles and videos, articles and videos pertaining to small business, and white collar crime. 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... Now that I have retired and have time to spare, I want to travel to places that fired my imagination when I was a child. Places that old men told you about, that you read in books and comics that only the rich or adventurers went to. Now it is within all our grasps, so pack a few things and come along on the journey and hopefully we will have some fun. January 19, 1994 temperatures pull out of a relatively fleeting arctic rut. We climb above 0F today; 20s will feel shockingly good tomorrow - there's still a good chance of a thaw by Sunday . What's missing? Snow. tonight The Southern Hemisphere typically has milder winters than the Northern Hemisphere. This is because the Southern Hemisphere has less land and a more maritime climate. While it seems counterintuitive, Earth is actually closest to the sun in December, even though winter solstice is the shortest day of the year. According to the Guinness World Records, on January 28, 1887, a snowflake 15 inches wide and 8 inches thick fell in Fort Keogh, Montana, making it the largest snowflake ever observed. (Image credit: NOAA). European Solution. Check out some of these predicted snow depth predictions by Sunday at midnight. I'm not buying it yet - I want to track a few more model runs and see if they converge and agree. But the ECMWF model is fairly impressive, from Richmond and D.C. to New York and Boston. Source: WeatherBell. Seasonably Cool and Quiet. While the media out east goes nuts with the potential for a cool foot or two of snow west of I-95 Minnesota will be lucky to pick up a coating of snow tonight - no weather drama brewing, just a warming trend. Graphic: WeatherSpark. El Nino Signal Lingers. The 500 mb GFS forecast valid Monday evening, February 1 shows the core of the jet diverted well south of Minnesota, soaking California and much of the Gulf Coast and eastern USA, while seasonably cold and dry air lingers over the Upper Midwest. This looks seasonably chilly for us: 20s with a few spurts of 30-degree air possible. Source: GrADS:COLA/IGES. Graphic credit Map credit Image credit above: " A rendering of a city proposal to protect against flooding in Lower Manhattan from another storm like Hurricane Sandy." An Oligarchy Has Broken our Democracy. It Must Be Dislodged. Have things really gotten this bad? Here's an excerpt of an Op-Ed at . Have things really gotten this bad? Here's an excerpt of an Op-Ed at The Guardian : ".... Image credit above: "The calculus of the Deep State has been upset by Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders." Photograph: Jim Bourg/Reuters. These Airlines Have the Lowest Safety Ratings. Buyer beware; here's a clip from TODAY : Sunny start, then increasing clouds. Winds: SE 5-10. High: 10 TUESDAY NIGHT: Light snow and flurries - possible coating. Low: 20 WEDNESDAY : Mostly cloudy, thrilled to see average temperatures. High: 25 THURSDAY : Partly sunny, chilly breeze. Wake-up: 20. High: 23 FRIDAY : Bright sunshine - light winds. Winds: NW 3-8. Wake-up: 7. High: 18 SATURDAY : Fading sun, milder breeze kicks in. Winds: S 10-15. Wake-up: 10. High: 28 SUNDAY : Overcast, chance of a thaw. Winds: NW 8-13. Wake-up: 22. High: 32 MONDAY : Few flurries, then some sun. Wake-up: 23. High: 27 I define the American Deep State as a hybrid association of elements of government and top-level finance and industry that is able, through campaign financing of elected officials, influence networks and co-option via the promise of lucrative post-government careers, to govern the United States in spite of elections and without reference to the consent of the governed. These operatives use their proximity to power and ability to offer high-paying jobs to government officials to achieve outcomes foreclosed to ordinary citizens..."above: "The calculus of the Deep State has been upset by Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders." Photograph: Jim Bourg/Reuters.. Buyer beware; here's a clip from TIME : "...Unfortunately, some airlinesas per the ratings listed on AirlineRatings.com have some work to do . The aviation safetyfocused website performs a comprehensive analysis of data from several international aviation and government sources and gives every airline they monitor a numerical rating from 1 to 7. (Airlines that receive a 7 are considered the safest; those that receive a 1 are the least safe.)...": Sunny start, then increasing clouds. Image credit they are not thermometers in space. The satellite [temperature] data were obtained from so-called Microwave Sounding Units ( MSUs ), which measure the microwave emissions of oxygen molecules from broad atmospheric layers. Converting this information to estimates of temperature trends has substantial uncertainties. they are not thermometers in space. The satellite [temperature] data ... were obtained from so-called Microwave Sounding Units ( MSUs ), which measure the microwave emissions of oxygen molecules from broad atmospheric layers. Converting this information to estimates of temperature trends has substantial uncertainties. Graph credit Photo credit Rolling waves driven by cyclone Christian appear in the Elbe estuary near the North Sea close to Brunsbuettel, northern Germany, in 2013." (European Pressphoto Agency/Christian Charisius) Photo credit " Credit: Thawing permafrost caused significant damage to the Dalton Highway in the North Slope of Alaska in June 2015.Credit: Alaska DOT Cancer and Climate Change. The New York Times has a poignant and powerful Op-Ed; here's the introduction: " Tatsuro Kiuchi). IM a climate scientist who has just been told I have Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. This diagnosis puts me in an interesting position. Ive spent much of my professional life thinking about the science of climate change , which is best viewed through a multidecadal lens. At some level I was sure that, even at my present age of 60, I would live to see the most critical part of the problem, and its possible solutions, play out in my lifetime. Now that my personal horizon has been steeply foreshortened, I was forced to decide how to spend my remaining time. Was continuing to think about climate change worth the bother?..." (Illustration credit: Photo credit Oakley and Casey Jones, tourists from Idaho Falls, navigate the flooded streets of Miami Beach during a king tide in September." EMILY MICHOT MIAMI HERALD STAFF. Why Climate Change is a Moral Concern for the Religious Community. An Op-Ed at An Op-Ed at NJ.com resonated; here's a clip: "... Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/elections-2016/article54945660.html#storylink=cpy Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/elections-2016/article54945660.html#storylink=cpy Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/elections-2016/article54945660.html#storylink=cpy Image credit . low early Monday at KMSP.. high in the Twin Cities Monday.. average high on January 18.. high on January 18, 2015.: The cold continues from the previous day with a low of -47 at Brainerd and, despite the heat island effect, the Twin Cities' airport hit -27.Data shows an average of 105 snow-producing storms hit the USA every winter. A single snowstorm can dump 39 million tons of snow. Winter cold increases a persons appetite, which can lower libido. Couples are more than twice as likely to think about splitting up between the holidays and Valentines Day.Nationwide: 74% of all auto accidents occur on wet pavement, 46% when it's raining. Only 17 percent of crashes occur during snow or sleet, 12% on icy pavement - 14% take place on snowy or slushy roads, according to Random History.com Yeah, I'm great fun at parties.Expect quiet weather asWe may get brushed with a coating, but El Nino continues to hijack the jet stream, nudging the biggest, wettest storms well south of town.We'll see more cold fronts (pretty safe bet) but I suspect the coldest weather of the Winter of '15-16 is behind us now. That wasn't so bad was it?* Model temperature forecasts above courtesy of Aeris Enterprise.Here is a link to the site referenced in the column, Random History.com , with a few factoids that made me do a triple-take:It's still WAY too early to panic (or celebrate), but a major storm is brewing for the Mid Atlantic region and New England from Friday into Sunday. If your travels take you to Washington D.C., Philadelphia, New York or Boston you may experience significant delays, even cancellations this upcoming weekend. East of I-95 a sloppy mix may keep amounts down (a little), but this storm has the potential to drop a foot of snow or more on major urban centers. GFS guidance: NOAA and AerisWeather.This is another classic symptom of El Nino, which tends to energize the storm track over the southern and eastern USA. Up until now it's been amazingly quiet for the East Coast with record warmth into December. It may be time for a little payback, a cold, crystalline dose of karma.Marshall Shepherd takes a look at a fascinating and vaguely terrifying phenomenon at Forbes ; here's an excerpt: "...As reported by NBC-2.com , this particular squall line (with 80 mph wind) arrived at high tide and raised water levels significantly. The National Weather Service believes that this event was a meteotsunami because water levels coincided with storms moving inland. The water levels were nearly 6 feet higher than a normal high tide at over 7 feet. A meteotsunami is also suspected because periodic peaks and valleys in the levels, indicative of an oscillatory wave, were observed...": "Water levels at Naples, FL. January 17th, 2016." Courtesy of National Weather Service via www.nbc29.com Website.No kidding. But MSP is colder than Anchorage an average of 50 days a year? Here's some perspective in an excerpt of a WXshift article : "Whenever the mercury plummets to particularly bitter temps anywhere in the U.S., an oft-heard refrain is, Its colder here than it is in Alaska ! But just how often is that actually the case, for, say New York City, or Chicago, or Atlanta? The answer turns out to be more days than you might think. A climatologist who happens to be based in Alaska created a set of maps that shows how often cities in the lower 48 have winter days with temperatures colder than those in Anchorage or Fairbanks. Virtually all saw at least one day a winter with temps lower than those in Anchorage, which given its more southerly and coastal location than Fairbanks has a comparatively mild climate. Even parts of Florida have between 1 and 5 days a winter that are colder than Anchorage...": "The typical number of winter days with low temperatures below those in Anchorage, Alaska, across the U.S." Credit:. Here's an excerpt from a press release from NOAA : "...While flying in a low orbit, 830 miles above the Earth, Jason-3 will use a radar altimeter instrument to monitor 95 percent of the worlds ice-free oceans every 10 days. Since the Topex/Poseidon, and Jason satellite missions started in 1992, researchers have observed global sea-level rise occurring at a rate of 3 mm a year, resulting in a total change of 70 mm or 2.8 inches in 23 years...". Basic physics: a warmer atmsophere holds more water vapor, loading the dice in favor of more extreme rainfall events; here's more information from WXshift : "Climate scientists tell us that when April showers arrive, they may come with heavier downpours as the planet warms. Its not just April: more water can evaporate into a warmer atmosphere at all times of the year, and what goes up must eventually come down. (Thank you, Clausius-Clapeyron.) The data in these graphics come from 207 airports across the continental U.S. where records have been reliable and continuous since at least 1950. And the data show very clearly that theres been an upward trend in rainfalls of 1+, 2+, and 3+ nationwide with respect to the average from 1950 to 2014..."Joe Romm connects the dots at ThinkProgress ; here's an excerpt: "...If we dont act now, then, within decades, a large fraction of the worlds 9 billion people will find themselves living in places whose once stable climate simply now cant sustain them either because it is too hot or arid, the land is no longer arable, their glacially fed rivers are drying up, or the seas are rising too fast. The overwhelming majority of those suffering the most in this country and especially abroad will be people who contributed little or nothing whatsoever to the problem. This would be the greatest injustice in human history, irreversible on a time scale of centuries..."above: Shutterstock.. Here's the intro to a Guardian article at Raw Story : "Satellites dont measure the Earths temperature. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and his fellow climate contrarians love the satellite data, but as Carl Mears of the Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) satellite dataset and Ben Santer recently wrote Scientists process the raw microwave data, applying a model to make numerous adjustments in order to come up with a synthetic estimate of the atmospheric temperature..." (Image above: NOAA).Here's a link to a YouTube video from Yale Climate Connections: "We often hear from climate deniers that satellite measurements of global temperature are "the best data we have"? But is that true? Here, interviews with leading climate scientists, including Carl Mears, who keeps the dataset that he says Senator Ted Cruz, and others, are misusing."There are no direct measurements of temperatures from satellite sounders; temperatures are inferred. Here's an excerpt of a good explainer at The Guardian : "Satellites dont measure the Earths temperature. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and his fellow climate contrarians love the satellite data, but as Carl Mears of the Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) satellite dataset and Ben Santer recently wrote Scientists process the raw microwave data, applying a model to make numerous adjustments in order to come up with a synthetic estimate of the atmospheric temperature..."above: "Estimates of the temperature of the lower troposphere from satellites by RSS vs. weather balloons by NOAA (RATPAC)." Created by Tamino at the Open Mind blog.. Here's an excerpt of a Chris Mooney story at The Washington Post : "...Gleckler is the lead author of a new study in the journal Nature Climate Change finding that, in the past two decades, ocean heat content has been rising rapidly and that, much more than before, heat is also mixing into the deeper layers of the ocean, rather than remaining near the surface. As the upper oceans have been warming over time, more and more of this heat is finding its way down into the deeper ocean, and our results indicate that the fractional amount of heat that is trapped in the deeper ocean is increasing as well, Gleckler said..."above: " Huffington Post has an important story - here's the intro: "Climate change isn't just a political, social and economic issue. It's also a deeply psychological one -- and now, behavioral scientists are using psychology to better understand the complex relationship between people and nature. An increasing number of psychologists are arguing that in order to tackle the growing threat to our environment, we need to understand people's emotional and cognitive responses to this new reality, which can run the gamut from denial to indifference to outrage to anger to grief..." (Image credit: Matt Brown, Flickr). Climate Central has the story - here's the intro: "If youd asked permafrost researcher Vladimir Romanovsky five years ago if he thought the permafrost of the North Slope of Alaska was in danger of substantial thaw this century because of global warming, he would have said no. The permanently frozen soils of the northern reaches of the state are much colder, and so more stable than the warmer, more vulnerable permafrost of interior Alaska, he would have said. I cannot say it anymore he told journalists last month at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco..."above: " InsideClimate News has a fascinating article at ground zero of rising seas, a close #2 after Miami Beach - here's an excerpt: "...Conservative estimates predict a further rise of 1 to 3 feet in the next century, accelerated by climate change. Those estimates are used by many local city planners. Even a 1-foot rise would reshape floodplains and threaten neighborhoods. But those estimates are probably too low. We tend to think that higher scenariosthree feet or moreare likely, said Larry Atkinson, who directs the Climate Change and Sea Level Rise Initiative at Old Dominion University in Norfolk. The Navy has prepared reports that analyze the effects of local sea level rise of up to 6 feet. It is possible that the change will be even greater in the 22nd century...". Here's the intro to a Miami Herald story : "Not 15 miles from the homes of Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush on the mainland, Miami Beach work crews elevate the streets , turning ground floors effectively into windowed basements, to try to stave off the implacable rise of sea water. Up comes the powerful ocean, threatening people, property and the underground freshwater supply . Cant control nature, Rubio quips with a smile. Got bigger problems, Bush insists with exasperation. I dont have a plan to influence the weather, Rubio said dismissively at a town-hall style meeting in New Hampshire last month..."above: "This is to say that our current commitments to reduce carbon emissions fall short, and we continue to accelerate our consumption of natural resources. God calls his people to be stewards of all natural creation. Therefore, we must protect the Earth in any way we can and push towards a more sustainable future. As humans, we are deeply interconnected and dependent on the Earth. Climate change is not an isolated phenomenon and is more than rising sea levels or droughts. Climate change has social, health, urban, and agricultural implications. Thus, it is crucial for everyone to play a part in tackling this for the well-being of others and of the world...". Here's the intro to an Op-Ed at The Salt Lake Tribune : "A hotter, more humid world is already becoming a world of more serious virulent infectious diseases. West Nile, dengue fever, chagas, Lyme disease, yellow fever, chikungunya, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Rift Valley fever, Japanese encephalitis and malaria are just a few of the many infectious diseases spreading far beyond their previous geographic confines. Global temperatures aren't the only things that broke records in 2015. The number of victims of dengue fever in Brazil reached 1.58 million, an all time high, 20 times more than in 1990. Heat, precipitation and humidity augment the life cycle, reproduction and even biting activity of mosquitoes and other insects that carry these diseases..."Truthout has the story; here's the intro: "Is the hydrocarbon economy too big to fail? If the woefully inadequate outcome of the Paris climate conference is any indication, the answer is still a resounding "Yes!" That's because the overly optimistic agreement conspicuously ignored the core issue driving up the earth's temperature and warping the world's already misshaped markets. The problem is Big Oil. Simply put, Big Oil is a bad investment fueled by irrational exuberance, chronic cronyism and an increasingly indefensible misallocation of capital..."above: Lauren Walker/Truthout. Victoria Smith, killed by black adoptive parents at age 3 (Isaiah 62:1) A 19th century Democrat political poster below: Leftist tolerance African immigrants in the Western world Bloomberg JFK knew Leftist dogmatism Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner once turned down a dinner invitation to the Kennedy White House because it was a hundred miles away. Thats a long distance to travel only to get some food. -- Geert Wilders The most beautiful woman in the world? I think she was. Yes: It's Agnetha Faltskog /> A beautiful baby is king -- with blue eyes, blond hair and white skin. How incorrect can you get? Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair Enough said A face of Leftist hate: Cory Booker, (D-NJ) There really is an actress named Donna Air. She seems a pleasant enough woman, though What feminism has wrought: There's actually some wisdom there. The dreamy lady says she is holding out for someone who meets her standards. The other lady reasonably replies "There's nobody there". Standards can be unrealistically high and feminists have laboured mightily to make them so Some bright spark occasionally decides that Leftism is feminine and conservatism is masculine. That totally misses the point. If true, how come the vote in American presidential elections usually shows something close to a 50/50 split between men and women? And in the 2016 Presidential election, Trump won 53 percent of white women, despite allegations focused on his past treatment of some women. Political correctness is Fascism pretending to be manners Political Correctness is as big a threat to free speech as Communism and Fascism. All 3 were/are socialist. A good thought from Thomas Sowell: "The phrase "glass ceiling" is an insult to our intelligence. What does glass mean, except that we cannot see it? In other words, in the absence of evidence, we are expected to go along with what is said because it is said in accusatory and self-righteous tones." The problem with minorities is not race but culture. For instance, many American black males fit in well with the majority culture. They go to college, work legally for their living, marry and support the mother of their children, go to church, abstain from crime and are considerate towards others. Who could reasonably object to such people? It is people who subscribe to minority cultures -- black, Latino or Muslim -- who can give rise to concern. If antisocial attitudes and/or behaviour become pervasive among a group, however, policies may reasonably devised to deal with that group as a whole The American Psychological Association is generally Left-leaning but it is the world's most prestigious body of academic psychologists. And even they (under the chairmanship of Ulric Neisser) have had to concede a large gap (one SD) in black vs. white average IQ. Black lives DON'T matter -- to other blacks. The leading cause of death among young black males is attack by other young black males Leftist logic: There are allegedly no distinctions between groups of humans, yet we're still supposed to celebrate diversity. Identity politics is a form of racism 'White Privilege'. .. Oh yes. .. That was abundant in the Irish potato famines. ... And in the Scottish Highland Clearances. ...And in transportations to Australia. ... And in Workhouses. ... 'White privilege' was absolutely RIFE! Psychological defence mechanisms such as projection play a large part in Leftist thinking and discourse. So their frantic search for evil in the words and deeds of others is easily understandable. The evil is in themselves. Leftist motivations are fundamentally Fascist. They want to "fundamentally transform" the lives of their fellow citizens, which is as authoritarian as you can get. We saw where it led in Russia and China. The "compassion" that Leftists parade is just a cloak for their ghastly real motivations Occasionally I put up on this blog complaints about the privileged position of homosexuals in today's world. I look forward to the day when the pendulum swings back and homosexuals are treated as equals before the law. To a simple Leftist mind, that makes me "homophobic", even though I have no fear of any kind of homosexuals. But I thought it might be useful for me to point out a few things. For a start, I am not unwise enough to say that some of my best friends are homosexual. None are, in fact. Though there are two homosexuals in my normal social circle whom I get on well with and whom I think well of. Of possible relevance: My late sister was a homosexual; I loved Liberace's sense of humour and I thought that Robert Helpmann was marvellous as Don Quixote in the Nureyev ballet of that name. Bible references on homosexuality: Romans 1:27; Jude 1:7; 1 Timothy 1:8-11; Mark 10:6-9; Matthew 19: 4-16; 1 Corinthians 6: 9-11; 1 Corinthians 7:2; Leviticus 18:22; Leviticus 20:13; Genesis 19:4-8 One may say that the person who gets in trouble with drugs is just as dumb without them I record on this blog many examples of negligent, inefficient and reprehensible behaviour on the part of British police. After 13 years of Labour party rule they have become highly politicized, with values that reflect the demands made on them by the political Left rather than than what the community expects of them. They have become lazy and cowardly and avoid dealing with real crime wherever possible -- preferring instead to harass normal decent people for minor infractions -- particularly offences against political correctness. They are an excellent example of the destruction that can be brought about by Leftist meddling. I also record on this blog much social worker evil -- particularly British social worker evil. The evil is neither negligent nor random. It follows exactly the pattern you would expect from the Marxist-oriented indoctrination they get in social work school -- where the middle class is seen as the enemy and the underclass is seen as virtuous. So social workers are lightning fast to take children away from normal decent parents on the basis of of minor or imaginary infractions while turning a blind eye to gross child abuse by the underclass "In the end every feminism ends up being a machismo with a skirt" -- Pope Francis, February 23, 2019 Racial differences in temperament: Chinese are more passive even as little babies The genetics of crime: I have been pointing out for some time the evidence that there is a substantial genetic element in criminality. Some people are born bad. See here, here, here, here (DOI: 10.1111/jcpp.12581) and here, for instance" Gender is a property of words, not of people. Using it otherwise is just another politically correct distortion -- though not as pernicious as calling racial discrimination "Affirmative action" Postmodernism is fundamentally frivolous. Postmodernists routinely condemn racism and intolerance as wrong but then say that there is no such thing as right and wrong. They are clearly not being serious. Either they do not really believe in moral nihilism or they believe that racism cannot be condemned! Postmodernism is in fact just a tantrum. Post-Soviet reality in particular suits Leftists so badly that their response is to deny that reality exists. That they can be so dishonest, however, simply shows how psychopathic they are. So why do Leftists say "There is no such thing as right and wrong" when backed into a rhetorical corner? They say it because that is the predominant conclusion of analytic philosophers. And, as Keynes said: "Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back Children are the best thing in life. See also here. Juergen Habermas, a veteran leftist German philosopher stunned his admirers not long ago by proclaiming, "Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization. To this day, we have no other options [than Christianity]. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter." Consider two "jokes" below: Q. "Why are Leftists always standing up for blacks and homosexuals? A. Because for all three groups their only God is their penis" Pretty offensive, right? So consider this one: Q. "Why are evangelical Christians like the Taliban? A. They are both religious fundamentalists" The latter "joke" is not a joke at all, of course. It is a comparison routinely touted by Leftists. Both "jokes" are greatly offensive and unfair to the parties targeted but one gets a pass without question while the other would bring great wrath on the head of anyone uttering it. Why? Because political correctness is in fact just Leftist bigotry. Bigotry is unfairly favouring one or more groups of people over others -- usually justified as "truth". One of my more amusing memories is from the time when the Soviet Union still existed and I was teaching sociology in a major Australian university. On one memorable occasion, we had a representative of the Soviet Womens' organization visit us -- a stout and heavily made-up lady of mature years. When she was ushered into our conference room, she was greeted with something like adulation by the local Marxists. In question time after her talk, however, someone asked her how homosexuals were treated in the USSR. She replied: "We don't have any. That was before the revolution". The consternation and confusion that produced among my Leftist colleagues was hilarious to behold and still lives vividly in my memory. The more things change, the more they remain the same, however. In Sept. 2007 President Ahmadinejad told Columbia university that there are no homosexuals in Iran. It is widely agreed (with mainly Lesbians dissenting) that boys need their fathers. What needs much wider recognition is that girls need their fathers too. The relationship between a "Daddy's girl" and her father is perhaps the most beautiful human relationship there is. It can help give the girl concerned inner strength for the rest of her life. A modern feminist complains: "We are so far from having it all that we barely even have a slice of the pie, which we probably baked ourselves while sobbing into the pastry at 4am." Patriotism does NOT in general go with hostilty towards others. See e.g. here and here and even here ("Ethnocentrism and Xenophobia: A Cross-Cultural Study" by anthropologist Elizabeth Cashdan. In Current Anthropology Vol. 42, No. 5, December 2001). The love of bureaucracy is very Leftist and hence "correct". Who said this? "Account must be taken of every single article, every pound of grain, because what socialism implies above all is keeping account of everything". It was V.I. Lenin "An objection I hear frequently is: Why should we tolerate intolerance? The assumption is that tolerating views that you dont agree with is like a gift, an act of kindness. It suggests were doing people a favour by tolerating their view. My argument is that tolerance is vital to us, to you and I, because its actually the presupposition of all our freedoms. You cannot be free in any meaningful sense unless there is a recognition that we are free to act on our beliefs, were free to think what we want and express ourselves freely. Unless we have that freedom, all those other freedoms that we have on paper mean nothing" -- SOURCE RELIGION: Antisemitism in the Koran Although it is a popular traditional chant, the "Kol Nidre" should be abandoned by modern Jewish congregations. It was totally understandable where it originated in the Middle Ages but is morally obnoxious in the modern world and vivid "proof" of all sorts of antisemitic stereotypes What the Bible says about the transexual craze: The male-female distinction is the only innate human distinction God cares about: God created mankind in his own image . . . male and female he created them (Genesis 1:27). He created them male and female and blessed them (Genesis 5:2). No ethnic or racial distinction matters in Genesis, only the male-female distinction. What the Bible says about homosexuality: "Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind; It is abomination" -- Lev. 18:22 In his great diatribe against the pagan Romans, the apostle Paul included homosexuality among their sins: "For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature. And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.... Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them" -- Romans 1:26,27,32. So churches that condone homosexuality are clearly post-Christian Although I am an atheist, I have great respect for the wisdom of ancient times as collected in the Bible. And its condemnation of homosexuality makes considerable sense to me. In an era when family values are under constant assault, such a return to the basics could be helpful. Nonetheless, I approve of St. Paul's advice in the second chapter of his epistle to the Romans that it is for God to punish them, not us. In secular terms, homosexuality between consenting adults in private should not be penalized but nor should it be promoted or praised. In Christian terms, "Gay pride" is of the Devil The homosexuals of Gibeah (Judges 19 & 20) set in train a series of events which brought down great wrath and destruction on their tribe. The tribe of Benjamin was almost wiped out when it would not disown its homosexuals. Are we seeing a related process in the woes presently being experienced by the amoral Western world? Note that there was one Western country that was not affected by the global financial crisis and subsequently had no debt problems: Australia. In September 2012 the Australian federal parliament considered a bill to implement homosexual marriage. It was rejected by a large majority -- including members from both major political parties. The tide turned in 2017, however, with a public vote authorizing homosexual marriage in Australia Religion is deeply human. The recent discoveries at Gobekli Tepe suggest that it was religion not farming that gave birth to civilization. Early civilizations were at any rate all very religious. Atheism is mainly a very modern development and is even now very much a minority opinion "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" - Isaiah 5:20 (KJV) I think it's not unreasonable to see Islam as the religion of the Devil. Any religion that loves death or leads to parents rejoicing when their children blow themselves up is surely of the Devil -- however you conceive of the Devil. Whether he is a man in a red suit with horns and a tail, a fallen spirit being, or simply the evil side of human nature hardly matters. In all cases Islam is clearly anti-life and only the Devil or his disciples could rejoice in that. And there surely could be few lower forms of human behaviour than to give abuse and harm in return for help. The compassionate practices of countries with Christian traditions have led many such countries to give a new home to Muslim refugees and seekers after a better life. It's basic humanity that such kindness should attract gratitude and appreciation. But do Muslims appreciate it? They most commonly show contempt for the countries and societies concerned. That's another sign of Satanic influence. And how's this for demonic thinking?: "Asian father whose daughter drowned in Dubai sea 'stopped lifeguards from saving her because he didn't want her touched and dishonoured by strange men' Islamic terrorism isnt a perversion of Islam. Its the implementation of Islam. It is not a religion of the persecuted, but the persecutors. Its theology is violent supremacism. And where Muslims tell us that they love death, the great Christian celebration is of the birth of a baby -- the monogenes theos (only begotten god) as John 1:18 describes it in the original Greek -- Christmas! No wonder so many Muslims are hostile and angry. They have little companionship from women and not even any companionship from dogs -- which are emotionally important in most other cultures. Dogs are "unclean" Some advice from Martin Luther: Esto peccator et pecca fortiter, sed fortius fide et gaude in christo qui victor est peccati, mortis et mundi: peccandum est quam diu sic sumus. Vita haec non est habitatio justitiae Latina est immortalis On all my blogs, I express my view of what is important primarily by the readings that I select for posting. I do however on occasions add personal comments in italicized form at the beginning of an article. I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age. I imagine that the the RD is still sending mailouts to my 1950s address! Germaine Greer is a stupid old Harpy who is notable only for the depth and extent of her hatreds Even Mahatma Gandhi was profoundly unimpressed by Africans http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/42197/20121106-1520/jonjayray.comuv.com/ There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here . Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)If the link to one of my articles is not working, the article concerned can generally be viewed by prefixing to the filename the following: Selected pictures from blogs (Backup here Another picture page (Rarely updated)(My frequent reads are starred)Email me here (Hotmail address).The archives provided by blogspot below are rather inconvenient. They break each month up into small bits. If you want to scan whole months at a time, the backup archives will suit better. See here or here About Penplusbytes www.penplusbytes.org is a registered non profit since 18th July 2001. Vision "To be the leading institution for promoting effective governance using technology in Africa". Jillian Kestler-D'Amours More than 70 percent of the guests had their visa applications denied [Marc Braibant/AFP] T... I rarely do movie reviews as my blog focuses more on food. The Ruthless Eater/PerutBesi covers not just food (although primarily food), but anything that comes with adventure & friendship as well :) It's been a "motto" that the blog has been living on for the past erm...9 years or so? Recently, I had the opportunity to watch a movie from the Singapore Film Festival (14 - 17 Jan 2016) at any either GSC 1 Utama or GSC Pavilion. Having live too far from the city centre, 1 Utama was no doubt my pick to watch one of the Singaporean movies featured in the festival. My schedule is somewhat tight these couple of weeks, but I managed to squeeze in some time to watch a family movie (with my family, of course!) on a Saturday evening. Ilo Ilo () year 2013 has won quite a number of awards Yeo Yann Yann, Best Supporting Actress, Asia-Pacific Film Festival 2013 Anthony Chen, Camera dOr, Cannes Film Festival 2013 Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Screenplay, Best New Director and Best Film, 2013 Golden Horse Awards Sutherland Prize for the Best First Film, 2013 London Film Festival The plot is set in a typical Singaporean lifestyle where a Chinese family who lives in the HDB flats has to hire a Filipino domestic helper, Teresa/Terry (Angeli Bayani) to assist them with looking after their son, Jia Le (Koh Jia Ler), who is a troubled delinquent, while they work. The father, Teck (Chen Tian Wen), works as a salesman for a glass company, while the expecting mother, Hwee Leng (Yeo Yann Yann), works as works as a secretary for a shipping company that is undergoing retrenchment. The movie began with Jia Le & Terry not having the best of relationships with each other as Jia Le deems Terry as an outsider who needs to share a room with him & be with him throughout the day. Almost everyday, Terry will get into trouble thanks to Jia Le's mischief & be bullied by Jia Le as well. Due to his mischief, Hwee Leng, the mother, receives calls frequently, either from the son or the school, where she had to leave the busyness of her stressful office work to meet the school authorities. As the plot grows, Teck losses his job, but hides the truth from his wife, with only Terry knowing the truth of her master. The poor mother, filled with stress & feeling helpless with her family's condition & her work stress slowly turned to a motivational speaker, thinking that it's her glimmer of hope for a better future. She ended up finding out that the seminars that she signed up for was a scam & she loss money from it. Not only was her husband jobless & slowly penniless (he loss money from buying stocks as well), she too loss more money from what they own. The movie actually ended with Terry being sent back to the Philippines as the family couldn't afford to have a domestic helper with the arrival of their newborn child. Teck's car was sent for scraping & he started working as a taxi driver. Jia Le, who by then was very attached to Terry was truly upset with Terry's dismissal that he couldn't even bring himself to bid goodbye to her at the airport, but took a scissors to snip off part of her locks for his own keepsake. (It was rather weird, I know) A story of relationships, of the importance of truth & love in a family & of respect for others, this movie was truly touching & 'real' that warmed the hearts of movie goers. I'm glad that I could treat my family to this relatable movie as my parents haven't been to the movies for years :) Family movie time! was my best option as the timing for other movies that feature Jack Neo's creations, one of our family's favorites, weren't at the times where we could make it :( So our next best options were any other movies that won awards + in English/Mandarin or that were on Saturday evening where we could make it.This movie, directed by Anthony Chen, that was released in the. Among the few are: We have options beyond resignation? complacency? or denial? By: Romeo O. Encarnacion Ian Hawes and Anne Jungblut dissecting and documenting samples of microbial mats from the floor of Lake Fryxell collected by divers. Divers bring samples of the mat to the surface in plastic containers (one is visible on the bench top), where researchers dissect them for various analytical purposes. Ian and Anne are inside one of the permanent lab buildings at Lake Fryxell. Credit: Tyler Mackey At the bottom of an icy Antarctic lake, a thin, slimy layer of bright green microbes is generating a tiny oasis of oxygen that might give a picture of what early Earth looked like before oxygen became common in the atmosphere. These findings could shed light on the ways scientists might detect evidence of oxygen, a potential sign of life, on distant planets, researchers said. Nowadays, oxygen comprises about a fifth of Earth's atmosphere. However, in our planet's early history oxygen was much rarer. It wasn't until about 2.4 billion years ago that oxygen for the first time filled Earth's primordial atmosphere in what scientists call the Great Oxidation Event. The oxidation of Earth's atmosphere and oceans, evidence of which has been seen in ancient rocks, is the biggest chemical change on the surface of the Earth that scientists have ever detected, said Dawn Sumner, a geobiologist at the University of California, Davis. Prior research suggests this spike in oxygen levels was probably due to the advent of photosynthesizing cyanobacteriamicrobes that can fuel their lives by turning solar energy into chemical energy. These bacteria were probably the first producers of oxygen on Earth, generating the gas as a byproduct of photosynthesis. But the microbes that first dominated the Earth found oxygen poisonous, and the Great Oxidation Event forced these microorganisms to develop ways to deal with oxygen or perish. The survivors not only evolved to withstand oxygen, but they even figured out how to use the gas to release energy, just as fires depend on oxygen to help them unlock energy from wood and other fuels. Diver Ian Hawes preparing to enter Lake Fryxell as Anne Jungblut provides dive assistance. Credit: Tyler Mackey "Oxygen is really critical to the survival and evolution of animal life," Sumner said. "The oxygen provides huge amounts of energy through respiration. A lot of my work has been spent understanding the process of the oxidation of Earth, in part to understand how we got here." It is unclear the precise steps in which oxygen came to fill Earth's atmosphere. Scientists have speculated that cyanobacteria at the time may have created "oxygen oases"isolated areas where oxygen was abundant before it became widespread across the globestarting as far back as 2.8 billion years ago (400 million years before the Great Oxidation Event). Scientists have now found what may be the first known modern example of these long-lost oxygen oases. They investigated Lake Fryxell in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica, and detailed their findings in the October issue of the journal Geology. "When it comes to research in Antarctica, you don't know what you're going to find," said Sumner, who is lead author on the paper. "You keep an open mind, and discover new things that you never would have predicted. It's a lot like exploring space." Lake Fryxell is permanently covered in ice 13 to 16 feet thick. To explore the lake, Sumner and her team typically drill a hole about 7 inches in diameter through the ice, then put down a copper pipe pumped with heated antifreeze to melt the hole larger enough for divers to get through to study the microbes beneath. The green microbial mat produces an oxygen oasis under anoxic water. The two red spots are laser pointers separated by 3 cm. The various colors represent different microbes with various pigments, some for harvesting light for photosynthesis. Credit: Tyler Mackey "Large animals are extinct in Antarctica because of the glaciation there and its isolation from other continents, so by looking at these lakes, we can look back to a time when ecology on Earth lacked large animals," Sumner said. Furthermore, she believes such hearty microorganisms may be similar to the first forms of life that appeared on newborn Earth when it was much less hospitable, and perhaps on distant planets as well. "By having a better understanding of the early Earth, we can create better models of other places in the Solar System and the Universe," Sumner said. The lakes of the Dry Valleys typically contain oxygen in their upper layers, but are anoxicmeaning they have little to no oxygenfarther down. Lake Fryxell is unusual because it becomes anoxic at depths of 9.8 meters, where light still penetrates. During dives of more than 10.2 meters, below Lake Fryxell's oxygen zone, ecologist Ian Hawes at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and geobiologist Tyler Mackey at the University of California, Davis, noticed bright green mats on the lakebed. Anne Jungblut, a microbiologist at the Natural History Museum in London, identified the microbes in these benthic mats as cyanobacteria. Green pigments such as chlorophyll are key to photosynthesis, and the scientists found these microbes generated thin layers of oxygen just one to two millimeters thick on top of these benthic mats. "This discovery was not at all something we were looking for," Sumner said. "It was a serendipitous find." The cyanobacteria in these benthic mats photosynthesize slowly because only a little light makes it down to the lake bottom. Still, the scientists found that oxygen production seasonally exceeds oxygen consumption and the loss of the gas to the surrounding environment. Oxygen accumulates within the mats during the long days of the Antarctic summer, when the amount of sunlight they receive peaks. The researchers suggest these mats could have generated oxygen oases, and as these mats spread across the planet, they eventually triggered the Great Oxidation Event. As a next step, the researchers want to return to Lake Fryxell to study how the oxygen-producing bacteria survive the long, dark winter and the how the chemistry changes when the sunlight returns for the long summer. "Understanding how oxygen is produced and consumed there can help us make better models of the early Earth," Sumner said. Explore further Oxygen oasis in Antarctic lake reflects Earth in the distant past This story is republished courtesy of NASA's Astrobiology Magazine. Explore the Earth and beyond at www.astrobio.net . UW transportation engineers have developed an inexpensive system to sense Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals from bus passengers mobile devices and collect data to build better transit systems. They tested it on UW shuttle buses last spring. Credit: University of Washington On any given bus ride, a good share of passengers are reading, texting or rocking out to music on their phones or tablets. In the future, though, those mobile devices may add more value to our transit commutes than simply filling time. University of Washington researchers have developed an inexpensive system that uses Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals from passengers' mobile phones and devices to collect better data about where bus riders get on and off, how many people use a given stop and even how long they wait to transfer to another bus. The systemdescribed in a paper that was presented at the 2016 Transportation Research Board annual meeting in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 11could help transit agencies collect valuable real-time data to provide better service. To improve efficiency and ensure that buses are meeting the greatest needs in a community, transit agencies today typically rely on passenger surveys, head counts and smart card swipes that may only offer partial information about how people are using the transit network. The UW transportation engineers developed sensors which cost about $60 per busthat can detect a unique identifier called a Media Access Control (MAC) address associated with a particular mobile device as it boards and leaves the bus to offer complete and real-time travel data. The system only collects MAC addresses and the time and location they are detected from Bluetooth or WIFI signals, and each address is anonymized for privacy protection. The technology has been used to estimate vehicle travel times on highways and roads, but this is among the earliest attempts to investigate its possible use for collecting passenger origin and destination data on a transit system, researchers said. "Let's say you have a Husky game or Seahawks game and you want to know how much demand changes so you can offer the right level of bus service for this special event," said senior author Yinhai Wang, a UW professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of the Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium, or PacTrans. This map shows Bluetooth detections recorded on a single shuttle bus during the testing window last spring. Credit: University of Washington "If you can gather enough data from these real-time sensing systems, that's going to offer very valuable information," he said. The research team tested the system in May 2015 by installing sensors on the South Lake Union Shuttle and Health Sciences Express buses operated by UW Transportation Services, which run from the university's main campus to South Lake Union and Harborview Medical Center. Because the system only senses addresses from mobile devices that have Wi-Fi enabled or whose Bluetooth is in discoverable modewhich wouldn't be the case for everyone riding a busthe transportation engineers wanted to know whether they could collect enough data to yield an accurate picture of travel behavior. Another challenge was developing processing algorithms to filter out all the signals from mobile devices running Wi-Fi or Bluetooth carried by people who were near the bus but not actually riding on it."That's probably the hardest part of the whole thing," said co-author Kristian Henrickson, a UW civil and environmental engineering doctoral student and research assistant who manages the UW's Smart Transportation Application and Research (STAR) Lab. "The big things we're concerned with are pedestrians and cyclists or people in cars or buildings that have their Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices on and are close enough to have the sensors on the bus pick up those signals," he said. "So we have to make sure we filter out those addresses." For instance, the sensors mounted inside the buses initially picked up more than 20,000 unique addresses from mobile devices, the time of detection and GPS locations during the test period. After weeding out signals that were unreasonably long or short, or that appeared or vanished far from a bus stop, the researchers wound up with 2,800 "trips" that they are confident were taken by passengers on the bus. The origin and destination data from the remote sensing system matched information that the researchers collected by riding buses and tracking how many people got on and off at various stops. Transit agencies are perennially seeking that type of information to inform decisions about changing routes or service levels, or to determine how frequently buses should run, whether they need larger buses at certain times of day, and how to meet demand and operate the transit system most effectively. "We were able to prove the concept and demonstrate that it's much cheaper to collect data this way," Wang said. "This is really just at the beginning stage, but this technology is going to become more universal in the age of smart cities." One open question is whether data collection that relies on Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals could leave out certain segments of the populationsuch as the elderly or low-income who may not carry mobile devices or use wireless networks. That's why UW researchers are also interested in investigating how people use different technologies during their commutes. Given the penetration of cell phone ownership, though, Henrickson said the technology's potential to improve equity in the transit system arguably outweighs possible drawbacks. "Think about understanding how long and disconnected a route may be from some less-privileged neighborhoods to an employment center. This technology provides a much better way of assessing that and possibly improving upon that," Henrickson said. The cost burden of Quebec's carbon-pricing policy, is likely to be modest across income groups and industries, according to a McGill University research team. The policy, which began to be implemented in 2013, provides a model for capping emissions "without undue hardship for the population," the researchers conclude. If anything, they suggest, the program could be more aggressive in seeking to cut emissions. Their findings are reported in the December issue of Canadian Public Policy. Quebec is one of the only jurisdictions in North America that has adopted a carbon-pricing policy as a way to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. If the Quebec carbon market - which is linked to California's - develops successfully, this approach could attract other provinces and states seeking to curb emissions in the wake of the recent Paris climate-change agreement, the researchers note. One political stumbling block to such initiatives is their potential to create uneven costs for different sectors and income groups. To assess the risk of that happening with Quebec's program, the McGill team analyzed its expected short-run impacts on households, industries and regions. Lead author Christopher Barrington-Leigh, an economist at McGill's School of Environment, notes that the Quebec program combines a rising price floorto assure a minimum return on carbon-efficiency investmentswith a price ceiling to ensure against high short-run economic costs. "As a result, everyone in Quebec has an idea of future costs in the medium run, is ensured against too sudden a transition, and has an incentive to invest in transitioning toward more climate-friendly consumption and production," he says. One potential inequity: the province's "generous" plan to hand out free emissions permits to incumbent industries is likely to result in some windfall profits for companies and shareholders, according to the researchers. "Future policy platforms from the Quebec government could offset this by including higher subsidies or energy efficiency rebate programs" to help lower-income families adjust to rising fuel prices, they suggest. Overall, however, "the policy appears tuned to provide a balance of price predictability, steady decarbonisation, and manageable transition costs," they conclude. Explore further How to beat the climate crisis? Start with carrots More information: Christopher Barrington-Leigh et al. The Short-Run Household, Industrial, and Labour Impacts of the Quebec Carbon Market, Canadian Public Policy (2015). Christopher Barrington-Leigh et al. The Short-Run Household, Industrial, and Labour Impacts of the Quebec Carbon Market,(2015). DOI: 10.3138/cpp.2015-015 A Department of Fire and Emergency Services photo shows a bushfire burning near Waroona, south of Perth, Australia on January 7, 2016 "A sunburnt country... with a pitiless blue sky", so the famous poem goes, but where once Australia could rely on "steady, soaking rain", a trend of hotter and drier weather as the climate warms is making it more vulnerable to severe bushfires. US government scientists are widely expected to announce Wednesday that 2015 was the planet's hottest year in modern times. Climate experts warn that with rising temperatures, as well as decreasing rainfall in the south, parts of Australia are so dry the risk of bushfires is rising. Since November huge swathes of the country have been scorched by ferocious blazes, leaving a total of nine dead and hundreds of homes destroyed. In South Australia, locals told of an "Armageddon-like" inferno sweeping through some areas, while in Western Australia bushfires raged out of control in a situation residents described as "like hell". Already this year there have been scores more bushfiresa recent incident at Yarloop, 110 kilometres (70 miles) south of Perth, left two dead. Firefighters warn they are facing more intense, erratic blazes. "From my experience, fires appear to be getting more intense, harder to fight, harder to plan for... and this is having an impact on firefighting strategies," Darin Sullivan, a 25-year veteran New South Wales state firefighter, told AFP. Graphic on rising temperatures in Australia and estimated economic costs of bush fires. Three of the five hottest years on record in Australia have occurred in the last three years, according to data compiled by the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM). In 2013, Australia experienced its warmest year on record, 2014 was the third-hottest while last year was the fifth-warmest. "Studies have shown an increase in the number of days with high levels of fire danger in southern and eastern Australia," BOM climatologist Blair Trewin told AFP. "One of the things that is apparent is a lengthening of the fire season, so we're seeing more high fire danger days in spring and autumn, as well as in the core of summer." A house saved from an approaching fire near One Tree Hill in the Adelaide Hills, northeast of Adelaide on January 3, 2015 'Catastrophic fires' Bushfires are common in Australia's arid summer, which usually begins in December. Former prime minister Tony Abbott, a long-time climate change sceptic, said during the sweltering 2013-14 summer season that the heat was "just part and parcel of life in Australia". "Australia is, to use the famous phrase, a land of droughts and flooding rains," he added, recalling the well-known Dorothea Mackellar poem "My Country". But firefighter Sullivan said he and his colleagues were witnessing deteriorating conditions, including an apparent increase in the number of the most severe fires in recent years. The "catastrophic" category in fire ratings was introduced after Victoria state endured the devastating "Black Saturday" bushfires in 2009 that left 173 dead in Australia's worst natural disaster. Since November huge swathes of Australia have been scorched by ferocious blazes, leaving a total of nine dead and hundreds of homes destroyed Another issue exacerbating the impact of bushfires is that more and bigger buildings are being built in disaster-prone areas, with Campbell Fuller of Insurance Council Australia adding that often the properties being constructed were not resilient to extreme weather events. An increase in the number and intensity of blazes is predicted to have a serious economic impact. Bushfires were estimated to have cost Australia US$247 million in 2014, but this is forecast to soar to US$548 million by 2050, according to Deloitte Access Economics, which cited population growth and infrastructure density as factors. 'Increasing danger' Ken Mansbridge, whose family home was burnt down in the 1983 Ash Wednesday bushfires that killed more than 70 people in Victoria and adjacent South Australia, continues to live in the same region and has noticed a stark difference in weather patterns. "There's definitely a noticeable change in the weather patterns and in the actual vegetation... I've never seen the local area look as dry as it does," the 70-year-old retiree, who has lived in the Macedon Ranges about 70 kilometres northwest of Melbourne for more than four decades, told AFP. "The trees are all flowering at different times, the vegetables this year were all wind and sun burnt," he explained. A November report by the independent Climate Council pointed to longer bushfire seasons across the globe. "What climate change is doing is loading the dice towards having the sort of conditions that are conducive to fires spreading and being very hot and more uncontrollable," said lead author Lesley Hughes, a Macquarie University biologist and ecologist. With the BOM and national science body CSIRO expecting Australia to "warm substantially" this century, having already seen temperatures rise approximately 1.0 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1950, Sullivan said strategies for fighting fires needed to be overhauled and climate change addressed. "If this type of intensity and increase continues, then our resources are very close to being overrun at times," he said. "This is our workplace. When we go to work to fight fires, our workplace is now more dangerous because of climate change as well." Explore further Firefighters contain deadly Australian bushfire 2016 AFP The objects shown in these microscope images have a width of 15 to 35 micrometres. In comparison, a human hair is approximately 50 micrometres wide. Credit: ETH Zurich / Luca Hirt A new 3-D microprinting process allows scientists to easily manufacture tiny, complex metal components. The used technology was designed by ETH researchers years ago for biological research and has now been further developed for a completely different application. Scientists at ETH Zurich have developed a new method of 3D microprinting. This can be used to manufacture even tiny, partly overhanging structures easily and in a single step. One day, this could pave the way for the manufacture of complex watch components or microtools for keyhole surgery, for example. In most existing 3D microprinting processes, overhanging structures can be achieved only through a workaround: during the printing process, a stencil manufactured beforehand is used as a placeholder under the overhang that is to be printed. The template must be removed once printing is complete. In the new technique developed by ETH doctoral student Luca Hirt of the Laboratory of Biosensors and Bioelectronics, the print head can also print sideways. This means that overhangs can be printed without templates. Tiny pipette The new technique is a refinement of the FluidFM system developed at ETH Zurich several years ago. At the heart of this system is a moveable micropipette mounted on a leaf spring, which can be positioned extremely precisely. Nowadays, FluidFM is used primarily in biological research and medicine; for example, to sort and analyse cells and to inject substances into individual cells. For three years now, the system has been sold commercially by the ETH spin-off Cytosurge. The objects shown in these microscope images have a width of 15 to 35 micrometres. In comparison, a human hair is approximately 50 micrometres wide. Credit: ETH Zurich / Luca Hirt As part of his doctoral thesis at ETH Zurich, Luca Hirt has been investigating the possibility of using FluidFM for printing processes. In particular, he is interested in using this technique to electro-deposit dissolved metals and other substances on to a conductive substrate. Electrochemical reactions at the tip The system now developed works as follows: a droplet of liquid is placed on a base plate made of gold. The tip of the micropipette penetrates the droplet and acts as a print head. A copper sulphate solution flows slowly and steadily through the pipette. Using an electrode, the scientists apply a voltage between the droplet and the substrate, causing a chemical reaction under the pipette aperture. The copper sulphate emerging from the pipette reacts to form solid copper, which is deposited on the base plate as a tiny 3D pixel. ETH researchers use a movable micropipette (blue) to manufacture tiny copper objects. Credit: ETH Zurich / Alain Reiser Using a computer to control the movement of the micropipette, the researchers can print three-dimensional objects pixel by pixel and layer by layer. The spatial resolution of this process depends on the size of the pipette's aperture, which in turn determines the size of the copper deposits. At present, the scientists can produce individual 3D pixels with diameters ranging from 800 nanometres to more than five micrometres, and can combine these to form larger 3D objects. In an initial feasibility study, various spectacular microscopic objects were created. They consist of pure, non-porous copper and are mechanically stable, as studies by scientists from the group led by Ralph Spolenak, Professor of Nanometallurgy at ETH Zurich, showed. A particularly impressive object consists of three nested microspirals, which the ETH researchers manufactured in a single step and without using a template. "This method can be used to print not only copper but also other metals," says Tomaso Zambelli, associate lecturer and group leader at the Laboratory of Biosensors and Bioelectronics at ETH Zurich. And FluidFM may even be suitable for 3D printing with polymers and composite materials, he says. An advantage of the new method over other 3D microprinting processes is that the forces acting on the tip of the pipette can be measured via the deflection of the leaf spring on which the micropipette is mounted. "We can use this signal as feedback. Unlike other 3D printing systems, ours can detect which areas of the object have already been printed," says Hirt. This will make it easier to automate the printing process. Successful collaboration with a spin-off The scientists have submitted a patent application for the method. The scientists have submitted a patent application for the method. The ETH spin-off Cytosurge has now licensed the method from ETH Zurich. Pascal Behr played a key role in developing FluidFM at ETH several years ago. Today, he is CEO of Cytosurge. "We see big market potential in the printing process and an opportunity to further diversify our company," he says. "We are convinced of the idea of using FluidFM in 3D microprinting. Now, the task is to optimise this application in collaboration with interested researchers at universities and in industryfor example, in the watchmaking, medical technology and automotive sectors." Behr sees an initial application in the field of rapid prototyping, where microscopic components can be manufactured quickly and easily using 3D printing. The long-established collaboration between ETH Zurich and Cytosurge will also continue. "It is a case of mutual give and take, from which both sides profit," says Zambelli. Cytosurge provides ETH with its latest equipment, which the ETH scientists are able to use for their research. They in turn help to test the devices and offer suggestions for improvements and further development. Explore further Nanowalls for smartphones More information: Luca Hirt et al. Template-Free 3D Microprinting of Metals Using a Force-Controlled Nanopipette for Layer-by-Layer Electrodeposition, Advanced Materials (2016). Journal information: Advanced Materials Luca Hirt et al. Template-Free 3D Microprinting of Metals Using a Force-Controlled Nanopipette for Layer-by-Layer Electrodeposition,(2016). DOI: 10.1002/adma.201504967 The increase in regional average temperatures around the world when global average temperatures reach 2C above pre-industrial levels. Credit: From authors' Nature paper, Allowable CO2 emissions based on regional and impact-related climate targets At the recent COP21 climate conference in Paris, delegates reached an agreement that plans to limit global warming to "well below" two degrees Celsius. This stems from the fact that scientists and politicians now agree: the global average temperature must rise by no more than two degrees if we are to prevent serious, irreversible damage to humans and the environment. "However, this climate target is abstract and invites misunderstanding," says Sonia Seneviratne, Professor of Land-Climate Dynamics at ETH Zurich. According to Seneviratne, many people will interpret two degrees globally as two degrees of warming in their region and, accordingly, will not be proactive enough about reducing CO2 emissions in their countries. The problem is that, according to various climate models, the temperature will rise more sharply over land than over oceans. The big question is therefore how a maximum of two degrees global warming will affect individual regions of the world. First quantitative treatment A team of climate researchers from Switzerland, Australia and the UK led by Seneviratne has now addressed this question. For the first time, the scientists have calculated the levels of extreme and average temperatures, as well as of heavy precipitation, that will occur in individual regions if the average global rise in temperature is taken as a reference. Recently published in Nature as a "Perspective", this study constitutes one of the first quantitative treatments of this issue. Several qualitative examinations have already been carried out on the relationships. This study was supported by Seneviratne's ERC Consolidator Grant project "DROUGHT-HEAT". The research team based their calculations on several existing climate scenarios, as well as on the assumed and effective development in atmospheric CO2 concentration. New graphical depictions were a key result of the calculations. They show at a glance how average temperatures respond to the overall quantity of CO2 emitted and in relation to average global warming in major geographical regions. Four model regions tested The depictions are easy to interpret: the graphical representation is like a type of ruler on which the envisaged target value - such as the global two-degree target - can be set; a linked warming value can then be identified in the corresponding region. The scientists tested their new model using four examples: the Mediterranean, the USA, Brazil and the Arctic. For each of these regions, the researchers computed a separate graphical representation. For the Mediterranean, the results reveal the following: if the global average temperature increases by 2C, the region will see mean temperatures increase by 3.4C on average. If, however, our aim is to limit warming in the Mediterranean to 2C, then the global temperature must rise by no more than 1.4C. The most extreme changes could be seen in the Arctic: with global warming of 2C, the average temperatures in the far north increased by 6C. The 2C target for the Arctic had already been exceeded when global warming reached 0.6C on average (this figure is now approximately 1C). "Clear-cut effects" The study conducted by Seneviratne and her colleagues illustrates that the 2C target cannot be met in many regions of the world, even if it were adhered to on a global scale. "We wouldn't have expected the effects to be so clear-cut," emphasises Dr Markus Donat, a researcher at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science in Australia, and co-author of the study. "Moreover, the connections between extreme temperatures and the global temperature targets are largely linear and independent of the emissions scenario." For the ETH climate researcher, the study is a practical aid - "a communications measure," as she puts it - for defining regional emissions targets. "The regional impacts of global warming are far more important," she says. The study could be helpful during negotiations, as it would quickly show the significance of climate change for the various parties, adds Seneviratne. This could also help citizens and decision-makers of individual countries to understand why it is important to rapidly reduce CO2 emissions and, specifically, to below the global 2C target if possible. Valuable tool for everyone According to Seneviratne, anyone can use these calculations to see how 2C of warming would affect their region; this makes them a valuable tool for politicians and decisions-makers, as well as for civilians, agriculture and the tourism industry. However, the scientists also point out that the calculations have their limitations. For example, they only provide statements on climate evolution for major regions. "The diagrams cannot be used to deduce what temperatures will be like in the city of Zurich if we reach two-degrees of warming on a global scale," says the ETH professor. Explore further Researchers reveal when global warming first appeared More information: Sonia I. Seneviratne et al. Allowable CO2 emissions based on regional and impact-related climate targets, Nature (2016). Journal information: Nature Sonia I. Seneviratne et al. Allowable CO2 emissions based on regional and impact-related climate targets,(2016). DOI: 10.1038/nature16542 , . , 12 2000 . , - . , . , . , . FORT EDWARD | A two-time felon from Argyle who burglarized a Fort Edward home last June, stealing a gun and credit card, has pleaded guilty to a felony and is headed to state prison for 7 years. Casey M. Gregory, 24, pleaded guilty to second-degree burglary, a felony, for a theft from a home on St. James Road. Police said he worked as a farmhand for the owners. A .22-caliber rifle and credit card were stolen, and the card was used to make several hundred dollars worth of purchases. Gregory agreed to a plea deal that will include a seven-year prison term and an unspecified amount of restitution. He also has two prior felony convictions in Washington County between 2012 and 2014. The first few laps Picking up where I left off from my last post, I was ambling down East Dayton to try and find the house I lived in back... The U.N. health agency said Friday that Sierra Leone's government was moving rapidly to contain the new threat, but it was not clear how the 22-year-old woman who died may have contracted Ebola. His comments were reported by the Associated Press. He said: "We can anticipate future flare-ups of Ebola in the coming year". A woman's body has tested positive for Ebola in Sierra Leone, an official said, the day after the World Health Organisation declared the outbreak over in west Africa. Countries are then placed on a 90-day heightened surveillance. The victim reportedly fell ill after returning from Kambia district, also in the north, which is a region close to the border with Guinea, where the epidemic that erupted in 2014 began. Authorities are tracing her contacts and have dispatched teams to the area for investigations. Another death by the Ebola virus was confirmed Jan. 15 in Sierra Leone. The news comes only a day after officials declared the entire epidemic over in West Africa. Health officials in Sierra Leone are seeking out anyone who the victim had contact with recently, and quarantines are a possibility. The WHO had said Thursday a two-year Ebola outbreak that killed more than 11,000 people and triggered a global health alert was over, with Liberia the last country to get the all-clear. Sierra Leone was declared Ebola-free Nov. 7 and Guinea followed suit Dec. 29. "While this is an important milestone and a very important step forward, we have to say that the job is still not done", said Rick Brennan, WHO director of emergency risk assessment and humanitarian response, at a news conference in Geneva. Men who survive Ebola are known to emit viruses in their semen for months after their recovery. As well as screening for persistent virus, they will need medical and psychological care, and support to help them return to normal life in their families and communities, who will also need education and help to reduce stigma and minimize risk of Ebola virus transmission. More than 11,200 people have died from Ebola since an epidemic broke out in December 2013 in Guinea. Liberia and West Africa were formally declared Ebola-free by the World Health Organization on Thursday. Actor Jamie Foxx rescues man from burning auto The crash is still under investigation but the driver was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol, the CHP said. He said he feels better and has been taken off a machine that helped him breathe, but remains in intensive care. "China will not participate in the global community's sanctions towards North Korea". (Hong Hae-in/Yonhap via AP). South Korea's military and police announced Wednesday they have found thousands of anti-South leaflets in Seoul, border towns and other areas. Another pastor named Park Simon, who also accompanied Ma and Kim to several church gatherings in the United States, told Voice of America that Kim frequented North Korea and called him from Pyongyang about four years ago. The diplomat said all 15 Security Council members agree that North Korea should be denuclearized, and this will be reflected in a new resolution. Nam is originally from a place that's now part of North Korea. At the same time, the propaganda punch of the nuclear tests holds for many ordinary North Koreans has diminished each time as they begin to realize the pursuit of the weapons means more economic suffering, said Sokeel Park of the Liberty in North Korea (LiNK) organization, which works with defectors. The shots did not hit the drone. North Korean drone flights across the world's most heavily armed border are rare but have happened before. Relations are at boiling point after the secretive state conducted the test before declaring it is on the verge of war with South Korea just days later. Kim Jong-Un, the leader of the secretive communist state, hailed the test a "success" and said it was created to protect the region "from the danger of nuclear war caused by the US-led imperialists", according to the country's news agency. In an address to her own nation, Park spoke of the need to properly punish Pyongyang, after the North claimed last week that it had carried out its first hydrogen bomb test. The administration is deeply concerned about North Korea's recent actions, the official said, and will continue to use existing sanctions authorities to prevent financial support for North Korea's nuclear and missile programs. South Korean President Park Geun-hye said more "provocations" by the North including "cyber-terrorism" were possible and new sanctions should be tougher than previous ones. Prior to last Wednesday, North Korea tested nuclear weapons in 2006, 2009 and 2013. Park said Seoul and Beijing were discussing a draft U.N. Security Council resolution on North Korea, noting that Beijing has stated repeatedly that it would not tolerate the North's nuclear programme. Recently, the country's 'shop abilities have gotten better, and if this analysis is correct, then North Korea's next goal should be to improve its video manipulation. His reported remarks sparked speculation in Seoul that China has no intention of joining in any harsh punishment on the North. Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida (L) listens to US Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy (R) during their talks at the foreign ministry in Tokyo on January 6, 2016 following North Korea's nuclear test. Park said past broadcasts helped frontline North Korean soldiers learn the truth about Pyongyang's authoritarian rule and defect to South Korea. Shell expects $47 bn BG takeover to go through within weeks Full year 2015 earnings on a CCS basis excluding identified items are expected to be in the region of $10.4 - 10.7 billion. Chief executive Helge Lund actually expects to unveil results in line with, or ahead of guidance for the year. This domain name expired on 2022-10-20 02:30:41 Click here to renew it. This domain name expired on 2022-10-20 01:12:11 Click here to renew it. Madam Rubelyn Yap, Executive Director of C4C told the Ghana News Agency that the farmers were not only provided with training but were also supported with seed capital and materials as well as other logistics to start their business ventures. She said a United Kingdom Charity Organisation Ghana Outlook (GO) was funding the project, noting that there were still so many farmer groups in the communities needing training. The training was in line with the C4Cs attempt at mitigating practices injurious to the environment especially in the dry season when farmers hustle for survival and to create alternative livelihoods for people to adapt in the medium and long term. Madam Yap explained that the project initially was aimed to support underprivileged women in beekeeping and soap making for increased household incomes and food security as alternative to environmental degradation practices but was later extended to men to complement their incomes. The C4C Executive Director expressed disappointment that the practices of bush burning for hunting, tapping of wild honey, charcoal burning and unsustainable agricultural practices were widely practiced in most communities in the Region. She said the C4C would roll-out environmentally friendly strategies and best farming practices as well as provide economic livelihoods training to the people in deprived rural communities to increase incomes. It is important that while we implement campaigns against these, we also find alternative means to empower the people to move away from such practices, Madam Yap said. Madam Yap reiterated C4C commitment to the partnership with GO to improve lives of the marginalized in the communities that it operates. She applauded the farmers for their exuberance, which contributed to the success of the project in the Nimbare and Kampoare communities, which included the drilling of one new borehole, rehabilitation of an old borehole and the construction of a KVIP for the Nimbare School and community. The C4C is a non-governmental organization which aims to raise secured families using ecologically sustainable local farm base strategies, adaptable income generating activities and available forms of educations as means of closing poverty gap in Ghana. Thus the C4C team up with poor households within deprived communities to eliminate identified forms of obstruction to the full attainment of basic human stateliness through participatory approach to reduce poverty using gender mainstreaming, self-help communal spirit and promoting quality education. MP for Abuakwa South, Lawyer Atta Akyea said the governor is fond of making excuses for not appearing before the committee. The governor is fond of excuses, this particular governor is fond of excuses, I have to say it out, he said.His comments came after Dr. Henry Kofi Wampah failed to appear before the committee for the second day running, with the excuse that he has some important official duties to performance. Subsequent checks by Pulse Business, however, revealed that the multinational conglomerate had been entertaining the idea of reducing its presence in Africa since the appointment of the its new CEO, Jes Staley in the last quarter of 2015. Consequently, most people are curious as to why Barclays will take such an audacious decision especially when the bank spent close to a century in making progress on the African continent. So we went digging along the following parameters: Financial Performance Barclays Africa's financial performance makes the decision to get out of Africa even more surprising because it has been above satisfactory. According to the bank's financial statement for 2015, Barclays Africa Group Limiteds headline earnings increased 11% to R6 755m from R6 110m. Diluted HEPS also grew 11% to 797,0 cents from 720,7 cents. The Groups RoE improved to 16,4% from 16,1%, comfortably above its 13,75% CoE, due to its return on assets rising to 1,33% from 1,27%. Barclays Africa declared a 13% higher ordinary DPS of 450 cents, given its strong CET1 and internal capital generation capacity. NAV per share increased 6% to 9 860 cents. Groups net interest margin (on average interest-bearing assets) improved to 4,70% from 4,56%. Loans and advances to customers grew 7% to R657bn, while deposits due to customers increased 8% to R649bn. The Groups cost-to-income ratio improved to 55,9% from 56,4% as operating expenses rose 5%. Credit impairments fell 1%, despite improving non-performing loan (NPL(s)) cover and increasing portfolio provisions to 0,74% of performing loans from 0,70%. NPLs declined to 4,0% of gross loans and advances to customers from 4,6%. RBB's headline earnings increased 17% to R4,7bn, as revenue growth exceeded cost growth and credit impairments fell 8%. WIMIs headline earnings increased 14% to R751m, with 48% growth in Short-term Insurance SA, while CIB grew 3% to R1,9bn, including 9% higher Corporate earnings. Revenue from Rest of Africa grew 9% (12% in constant currency) and headline earnings rose 22%, to contribute 20% and 18% of the total Group respectively. Strategic Cut Down on investments Clearly therefore, the decision to retract from Africa is not due to poor financial performance, at least based on the financial performance of 2014 and 2015. The African unit is outperforming its parent. Last year, its net profits rose 10 per cent to SAR13bn, giving it a healthy return on equity of 16.7 per cent. However, when this is converted into Barclays accounts, it looses its value. This is because Barclays has to hold equity against the whole of its African business, as it is on the hook for all its liabilities if anything goes wrong. But the UK bank only includes 62 per cent of the profits in line with its shareholding. Depreciation of South Africa's Rand The second factor is the depreciation of the rand against the British pound it has fallen 25 per cent this year, dragging the good performance of Barclays Africa further down. The African units return on equity at group level was 9.3 per cent last year below Barclays target of 11 per cent. As a standalone business the returns of the African operation are higher than the rest of the group through the cycle, said Chirantan Barua, banking analyst at Bernstein. But it does not fit with the strategy, investors dont pay you a premium for it and you dont invest in it. So it makes sense to look at selling it. A reportage by the The Times newspaper in England quotes top Executives of Barclays as saying that the move is strategic. Jes Staley, Barclays' new Chief Executive wants to streamline the investments of the bank in order to concentrate on much narrower operational activity. And Africa lpops up as the best sacrificial lamb, and there appears to be good enough reason. Falling Oil and International Commodity Prices Barclays has not been spared the shivers of record-low oil and international commodity prices. Barclays is reportedly facing potentially heavy losses on an $850m loan made to two oil and gas companies, in a sign of how the dramatic slide in the price of oil is beginning to reverberate through the wider economy. Details of the loan emerged as delegates of Opec, the oil producers cartel, gathered in Vienna to address the growing glut in the supply of oil. Repercussions from the decline in the price of crude, which has dropped 30 per cent since June, are spreading beyond the energy sector, hitting currencies, national budgets and energy company shares. Companies are also being hit, with BPs shares down 17 per cent since mid-June and Chevrons down 11 per cent, according to FT.Com. Shares in SeaDrill, one of the worlds biggest drilling rig owners, fell nearly 23 per cent on Wednesday as it suspended dividend payments. The company has suffered from an oversupply of rigs as the majors respond to crudes slide by cancelling projects. Now banks are also being affected, with Barclays and Wells said to face potential losses on an energy-related loan. Earlier this year, the two banks led an $850m bridge loan to help fund the merger of Sabine Oil & Gas and Forest Oil, US-based oil companies. Investors, however, balked at buying the loan when it was first offered in June and slumping oil prices combined with volatile credit markets in the months since have scuppered further attempts to sell, or syndicate, the loan, according to market participants. Barclays and Wells declined to comment. This is as a result of a video he appeared in, promoting the Nigeria Police Force (NPF). He recently landed an endorsement as the first Youth ambassador for the institution. The fan reaction specifically addresses a snippet which he shared expressing a tag Everyone is a police. Series of mind troubling tweets followed this, with the fans sharing instances of police brutality. See fans comments on Instagram: odih4sure "Police as a friend? That is strange in this Country. My truck fell, police came for money. When I said no, they sent area boys against us". lolu_slimz "Police dey kill Nigerians lik goat n u dey preach this... U need cane" jefe_dave "Trust police kwa...You don collect money come dey yarn okpata". Some of the continents urban growth is due to rural-urban migration, but most of it is being driven by natural population increase in the cities. Child survival and life expectancy in urban areas has increased, resulting in an urban population boom. But a third of urban dwellers in the region have no access to electricity, and the most reported deprivation for urban Africans was clean water, according to data from the Mo Ibrahim Foundation. And although urban environments provide easier access to health facilities and services than rural ones, theres a growing inequality in accessing services such as drugs and skilled practitioners. Africas challenges arent intractable; in fact they provide the ideal environment for technology to come in and fill the gap. It is what has driven companies like General Electric (GE) to invest in technology that solves big problems. A selection of the companys groundbreaking innovations is featured in documentary programme Breakthrough, aired on Nat Geo, DStv Channel 181. The show invites viewers to take a look at the advancements that will define our lives in the next few years. Scientists on the cutting edge reveal whats next in the fields of smart energy, water provision, and living longer, healthier lives. Digital wind farmsFor example, GEs jet engine technology has given way to the creation of gas turbine technology, which helps power the world. With scientists and engineers working around the globe, GE is on the cutting edge of developing more efficient energy solutions, including digital wind farms and solid oxide fuel cells. In the area of water, GEs ZeeWeed Membrane technology an advanced filter that delivers clean, usable water from wastewater is featured as part of the solution. The programme highlights the Butler Water Reclamation Facility in Peoria, Arizona, that uses GEs technology. The facility has the capacity to recycle over 37 million litres of water every day, transforming the area. The facility delivers water to a 5-acre lake and a town park, in one of the US most arid states, and in the near future, it will support the growing town and the people who live there. And in health, molecular pathology scientists are studying tumour cells, in order to understand how to be more effective in fighting cancer. Using GEs MultiOmyx technology, scientists can determine the cell makeup and characteristics of these tumour tissues, as well as the likelihood of potential growth. The teen thought she had fallen for an Albanian guy called Jak, but he was actually grooming her to sell to a sex trafficker. After Jak sold her to a trafficker called Leon, Megan was ordered to work in brothels and on the streets. She recalls how she was once forced to have sex with 110 men in 22 hours. Megan escaped in 2009 when she was hospitalised and sectioned after a suicide attempt. Shes now settled in the UK with her partner and a baby on the way. In a memoir of her harrowing experience, Bought & Sold, the survivor says she lives in fear of the trafficking ring discovering where she lives and trying to hurt her or her family. Like many victims, Megan blames herself, she told MailOnline: I used to put myself down about how stupid Id been. If I could go back and tell myself what to do, Id say to myself to get up and run and do something more to stop what was happening. When I look back on that time I feel angry with myself and incredibly sad. When you truly believe that youre nothing, you dont even consider the possibility that you have a choice about anything. Megan also explained that due to her parents splitting up in her childhood, she was desperate to be loved, which could have made her an easy target for Jak. Megan managed to persuade her mum, whod fallen for a local bar tender, to allow her to prolong her stay. Within days Jak started playing on Megans conscious with a story about his mum having cancer. He persuaded Megan to take a job in a topless bar, despite only being 14, and convinced her she was a hero for saving his mums life. Two weeks after her mum left, Megan moved into an Athens flat with Jak. He took her into a local burger bar to meet a man called Leon. They exchanged money and spoke in Greek, she thought nothing of it at the time. She later realised Leon had bought her to force her into sex work. We need to design a stability mechanism, create a banking institution, strengthen fiscal regimes in member countries and improve information sharing and surveillance within the West Africa Monetary Zone, he said. Amissah Arthur said because of the centrality of exchange rates in the convergence process, its volatility and transmission role in reserve accumulation, price formation and the fiscal deficit, there is an advantage for countries to enhance currency stability by devaluing. Will formal and discrete devaluation rather than creeping depreciation increase currency stability and resilience, thereby boosting convergence? Amissah Arthur asked rhetorically. Mixed Reaction Managing Director of Dalex Finance, Kenneth Thompson has welcomed the vice president's call. We are now caught between importing everything, a steadily depreciating currency transfer of local jobs overseas, rising taxes to finance a fiscal deficit and an exploding national debt. One way to break this vicious cycle and is to devalue the currency and take short term pain for long term gain he told the Business and Financial Times. Emmanuel Asiedu-Mante, Former Deputy Bank of Ghana Governor also told Accra based Cit Fm that the decision to devalue the cedi should be based on economic fundamentals not for being part of a Union. According to him, majority of companies in import business risk collapse if Ghana goes ahead to devalue the cedi. Cedi performance The cedis is expected to remain volatile in the first quarter of 2016. The Ghana cedi lost 18.75 per cent in value to the US dollar last year, making it one of the most underperforming currencies in Africa. Now that commodity prices are declining, technically the Central Bank must accommodate the pressure on the cedi or else we will be in trouble,CEO of Investcorp, Sampson Akligoh told the Business Finder Newspaper. The ceremony which was held at the Ampain Camp Health Facility saw in attendance Representatives of the UNHCR, Western Regional Health Directorate, the Ellembelle District Assembly and the Refugee Camp. The provision of the equipment is in line with UNHCR's support to national efforts on fighting against cervix cancer, through health system strenghening by training human resource on screening and early diagnosis and treatment. The UNHCR Head of Field Office Mr Arjun Shrestha in a speech on behalf of the Country Representative on UNHCR in Ghana noted that it is their mandate to provide international protection for Persons of Concern(PoCs) and that includes health. "UNHCR, Ghana implements its health programs through partners. In this kind of arrangement, UNHCR financially supports provision of healthcare services to PoCs same as when there was emergency and this practice perpetuated parallel programming and lacked sustainabilty". Mr Arjun Shrestha noted that UNHCR contribution to national program on fighting against cervix cancer will be listed among efforts to support the on-going health integration of the Camp Health Facility to Ghana Health Service in Central and Western Regions. Today people are able to buy almost anything from houses to cars over the Internet, and pay for it. This was not possible some three or four years ago. Though the Internet was as vibrant and reliable as it is today, there was no way to monetize value transfer. There was no adequate payment system. The internet was not a money making tool. Today, local techpreneurs have stepped up to fill the void after foreign giants like Paypal and Mastercard left Ghana in the cold. DreamOval's SlydePay which was formerly I wallet, Express Pay, Mpower, and others have made online payments possible. One of such innovators who has taken this to the next level, is Ghanaian born American- based techpreneur Paul Miller. Paul was asked by a friend in the U.S who is now his co- founder to send some cash to her mom. On his way to deliver the money upon arriving in Ghana, Paul though that there ought to be a simpler way for Ghanaians living abroad and foreigners in general to remit money to relatives in Ghana in a more convenient way and not encountering the difficulties posed by traditional money transfer systems. That was how Sika App was born. " So on my drive to Tema to deliver the money to my friend's mom, I wondered if there could be a more convenient way to send money without either party having to leave the comfort of their homes or offices, or inconveniencing anybody. That was how Sika App was born." So this will give people the chance to send money across borders in the comfort of their homes, that is what the power of the Internet can give. On the face of it, Sika App may not look like the life saver it is in practical terms, " Transferring money to relatives or others can be a matter of life and death. Imagine a relative who is sick and bed- ridden and cannot go out to claim a transferred fund. This becomes a life and death issue. That relative should be able to get that transfer in the comfort of their homes and even go on to get whatever medications they need online", Paul says. The protest is to register Organised Labours displeasure about governments refusal to reduce the increase in taxes that have heightened the prices of petroleum products and the cost of utility tariffs. Since December, water bills have increased by 67.2 percent and power by 59.2 percent. Ahead of the protest, the Accra Regional Police Commander, COP Dr George Akuffo Dampare, cautioned police officers assigned to the demonstration to desist from any acts that may mar the exercise. General Secretary of the Industrial and Commercial Union (ICU), Solomon Kotei told Pulse.com.gh "everything is on track We have been able to clear with the police the routes. hosting Tema and Accra is clear the various regions feedback is that everything is set. He is hopeful the protest will be very peaceful. The protesters will move from Obra spot through to Adabraka and then to the TUC, Tema station, Ministries and then to the Independence Square where a petition will be presented. This is not a strike , it is a demonstration we are not shutting down machines or offices Kotei said Yesterday, Organised Labour warned political parties whose intent is to capitalize on the demonstration to stay away from infiltrating the protest march, stating the demonstration was specifically for workers and not political parties. Justice Ernest Obimpeh and Justice Ajet Nasam were on Tuesday removed from office as Justices of the High Court following a directive by President John Mahama. The removal is on grounds of stated misbehaviour after they were both implicated in the judicial corruption scandal. However, Ken Anku, lead lawyer of Justice Obimpeh, said he and his client will contest the decision of the committee at the 'proper forum.' Why should we leave it when the process through which my client was asked to go through has not been fair? When you allow one person to be violating the constitution here and there and you wont find any judge to stand up and say no, all the judges have now been fixed into line to do the bidding of one person, what goes up must come down. Nobody has been the Chief Justice forever, you have a determinable term and it will soon come to pass, the lawyer added. The decision by the president to remove the two followed his acceptance of a report by the five member impeachment committee which investigated their conduct after an expose' by investigative journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas in August 2015. Read More : In the mind of Anas Aremeyaw Anas, Pulse News Exclusive The Western regional chairman of the union Osei Assibey Antwi said the GES intimidated member teachers by threatening to do a headcount of teachers in the various schools on the day of the demonstration which led to the low turnout experienced. He said we had information that some directors at GES clandestinely sent messages round that they were going to do a headcount in the schools and that kept most of our member teachers outside this demonstration, but whatever they do, organized labour will strive. He sent a strong warning to the Ghana Education Service to desist from infringing on the rights of its members from demonstrating to drum home their concern. He warned that they dare not take any action against any of our members for hitting the streets. Its a national thing. Even in Accra they are doing it. I am challenging any person who will take any action against any of our members and we will see where the power lies. Mr. Assibey also expressed disappointment with the reception given the demonstrators in the western region. After walking for over two hours on some principal streets from Takoradi to Sekondi, only the leadership of the demonstrators was allowed entry into the regional coordinating council. Their petition was also given to the chief director at the western regional coordinating council instead of the regional minister the demonstrators had wanted to hand over their petition to. Speaking to a jeering crowd at the Organiser Labour protest this morning, Haruna Iddrisu said he had received the Organised Labour petition and would pass it on to President John Mahama. I will try to convince him to meet as soon as practical this afternoon, Iddrisu said. He spoke at Independence Square to the 3000 plus protesters, thanking them and the demonstration's leadership for ensuring a peaceful and incident-free protest. He said he noted the crowds anger at the government in respect of the tariffs and the introduction of the Energy Sector Levy. While your concerns are legitimate, the actions of government is necessary, he said. We could have chosen a more peaceful path for political expedience so not to do this even in an election year. That is what you should appreciate. We need to improve the health of the economy, the health of our energy institutions for sustainable development of our country. So with the decisions we have taken, as difficult as they may be, we do it to protect your jobs in the immediate and foreseeable future, he said. The minister told the crowd the government was available for continuing negotiations. Let me assure you, the government will not take interest in inflicting pain on the Ghanaian worker. We know our decisions hurt, it hurts our nurses, it hurts our workers, [but] we have done so in order to protect jobs. The Organised Labour demonstration began at Kwame Nkrumah Circle, on Monday, January 20, went along Liberia Road, past the National Theatre and ended at Independence Square. The demonstration, estimated to be about 3,000 people, had many groups represented, including overall body Ghana Trades Union Congress (TUC), as well as the Judicial Service Workers Association of Ghana (JUSAG), the Cocoa Processing Company Ltd and the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) among others. The action extended through the country with demonstrators taking to the streets in solidarity and to present petitions. The nationwide protest was to register Organised Labours displeasure about the governments refusal to reduce the increase in taxes that have heightened the prices of petroleum products and the cost of utility tariffs. Since December, water bills have increased by 67.2 percent, power by 59.2 percent, and fuel by 27 percent. Protesters peacefully waved their placards, danced to drums and chanted along the streets of Accra. Placards urged President John Mahama to have compassion, others said the worst form of violence is poverty, as well as spare us our future, politicians and we are suffering fix the economy and stop the blame game. The protest had a heavy police presence, police flanked the protesters on all sides and also blocked off roads as the protest passed them by. Some wore riot helmets and carried batons. Some armed police stood on tanks with rifles pointed at the crowd. The demonstration ended at Independence Square, where TUC secretary general Kofi Asamoah read out the Organised Labour petition and then handed it to Minister for Employment and Labour Relations Haruna Iddrisu, who was also present. The petition called for a reduction in the tariff increases and a withdrawal of the Energy Sector Levies Act. Reading the petition out, which was addressed to Iddrisu, Asamoah said the working group government set up to work out an amicable solution had failed to produce satisfactory results. The message we are getting from our participation in the Working Group is that government remains adamant to our demands. The petition also said the International Monetary Fund (IMF) may have suggested the government implement the recent hikes. The petition said IMF policies did not work and caused negative outcomes. He said the protest was to show the desperate social and economic conditions the utility tariff increase and the new levies and taxes on petroleum products and on incomes have occasioned. "We firmly believe that a governance system in which [the] taxation of the ordinary man and woman becomes an obsession, is socially undemocratic and unacceptable. The Organised Labour petition acknowledged the need to increase tariffs, but with public sector wages only increasing by 10 percent, it said the current hikes were unbearable for individuals and industry. It called for a reduction of the utility increases to 50 percent for both electricity and water, the lifeline consumption for water to remain at between 0 and 20 cubic meters and it called for the withdrawal of the Energy Sector Levies Act, which caused the increase in fuel prices. It warned of social instability if the government kept on attempting to fix all economic challenges too quickly. Responding to the crowd's call and the petition, Iddrisu said he would pass the petition on to the president. He said the hikes were to protect jobs and were not done to spite workers. Some protesters who spoke to pulse.com.gh said they needed an improvement in their lives; that working conditions are poor and the president needs to intervene. "Mahama needs to listen to our plight. If he doesn't listen, we will advise ourselves," one demonstrator said. "We can't pay our children's school fees anymore. Our wives are angry with us," another demonstrator lamented. Ghana Tourism Authority worker Ree Sumo Attuquayefio said a salary increase of 10 percent was not enough when he was facing 157 percent in utility hikes. We think that is not right...it means I can not buy anything. I have a family too and extended family. He said the government had appeared to have taken an entrenched position. Its not right, they should listen to the people. While JUSAG worker Darius Boateng said he was at the protest because he could not keep quiet any longer on the effect the increases had on him. He was pleased with the number of people at the protest and hoped the government listened to their calls. A nationwide strike is also organised for January 21 and 22 if government fails to meet the demands of the demonstrators. In a statement signed by Communications Minister Omane Boamah, "For the avoidance of doubt, Government wishes to place on record that at all times it has acted strictly within the law. Any claims therefore by Mr Akufo-Addo and his assigns to the contrary are false and a complete misinterpretation of the Anti-Terrorism Act (Act 762)." Flagbearer of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Akufo-Addo was of the view that the decision by government to bring the Gitmo two was illegal because it violates the Anti-Terrorism Act. He said President Mahamas failure in showing leadership in this matter "is a sad example of his belief that he is answerable to no one, not even to the laws of the Republic, like s.35 of the Anti-Terrorism Act (Act 760), which, as President, he is sworn to uphold." But government in the statement said, "It would appear that he merely channeled claims in sections of the media- that an allegedly leaked 2007 report classifies the two detainees as terrorists." They are praying the court to declare that the continued stay of Mahmud Umar Bin Atef and Muhammed Salih Al Dhuby unlawful. The legal suit follows fears by some Ghanaians that the presence of the two poses a threat to the country's security. The two ex-detainees, Mahmud Umar Muhammad Bin Atef and Khalid Muhammad Salih Al-Dhuby, arrived in Ghana on Thursday January 7, 2016 for a two-year stay as part of a deal reached between the United States of America and the Government of Ghana. Seeking 11 reliefs, Margarat Banful and Henry Nana Boakye argue President John Mahama breached Article 58 (2) of the 1992 constitution and also broke his presidential oath under Schedule 2 in which he pledged to preserve, protect and defend the constitution of Ghana. Reliefs: 1.A declaration that on a true and proper interpretation of Article 75 of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana, the President of the Republic of Ghana, by agreeing to the transfer of Mahmud Umar Muhammad Bin Atef and Khalid Muhammad Salih Al-Dhuby (both former detainees of Gunatanamo Bay) to the Republic of Ghana, required the ratification by an Act of Parliament or a resolution of Parliament supported by the votes of more than one-half of all the members of Parliament. 2. A declaration that on a true and proper interpretation of Article 75 of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana, the President of the Republic of Ghana acted unconstitutionally in his failure to obtain the requisite ratification by an Act of Parliament or a resolution of Parliament supported by the votes of more than one-half of all the members of Parliament when he agreed with the Government of the United States of America to transfer Mahmud Umar Muhammad Bin Atef and Khalid Muhammad Salih Al-Dhuby to the Republic of Ghana. 3. A declaration that the reception of the said detainees into the Republic of Ghana by the Parliament of Ghana is in excess of his powers under the constitution and hence unconstitutional. 4. A declaration that on a true and proper interpretation of Article 58(2) of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana, the President of the Republic of Ghana is under the obligation to execute and maintain the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2008 (Act 762) and the Immigration Act of 2000 (Act 573), both being laws passed under the 1992 Constitution of Ghana. 5. A declaration that on true and proper interpretation of chapter 5 of the 1992 Constitution the President by holding Mahmud Umar Muhammad Bin Atef and Khalid Muhammad Salih Al-Dhuby under restricted conditions without a valid order of a court of competent jurisdiction is breaching their fundamental human rights and thus acting in a manner that is unconstitutional. 6. A declaration that the President of Ghana breached Article 58(2) of the 1993 Constitution of Ghana by agreeing with the Government of the United States of America to have Mahmud Umar Muhammad Bin Atef and Khalid Muhammad Salih Al-Dhuby transferred to the Republic of Ghana. 7. A declaration that on a true and proper interpretation of the 2 schedule of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana, the President of the Republic, by agreeing to the transfer of Mahmud Umar Muhammad Bin Atef and Khalid Muhammad Salih Al-Dhuby to the Republic of Ghana, has broken the Presidential Oath. 8. A declaration that the reception of Mahmud Umar Muhammad Bin Atef and Khalid Muhammad Salih Al-Dhuby and their continuous stay in the Republic of Ghana is unlawful. 9. An order directed at the Minister of Interior for the immediate removal and return of Mahmud Umar Muhammad Bin Atef and Khalid Muhammad Salih Al-Dhuby from the Republic of Ghana to the United States of America. 10. Such further or other orders as the honourable Supreme Court will deem fit. Pulse.com.gh correspondent at the Accra Court Complex has shown that the courts closed as many courts and users are stranded. Lawyers and litigants who came in to do their daily businesses were asked to leave the premises of the court after about an hour of waiting to see whether the situation will change. According to him, "The ongoing reshuffle appears to be one to do with winning an election rather than one aimed at addressing the challenges faced by Ghanaians." Bawumia in a Facebook post on Wednesday, January 20, 2016, said Ghanaians need a reshuffle that will impact the quality of lives and create jobs and not one intended to win elections. President John Dramani Mahama on Tuesday, January 20, 2016 appointed former Chief of Staff, Prosper Douglas Bani as the Minister Designate for Interior in his first reshuffle list for 2016. Prosper Bani was last year February relieved of his post and was replaced with Julius Debrah. A statement signed by Chief of Staff, Julius Debrah, said Mr. Kenneth Wujangi, a Management and Integrated Rural Development Specialist has been made a Deputy Chief of Staff (Operations) at the Flagstaff House. Fiifi Kwetey replaces Dzifa Attivor who resigned from her position on December 23, 2015 over the controversial GHc3.6 million bus re-branding saga. Alhaji Mohammed Muniru Limuna has also been appointed the new Minister for Food & Agriculture. But Dr. Bawumia believes that the ongoing ministerial reshuffle by President Mahama will amount to nothing. Below is his Facebook post Trump, along side Stacey Dash, shared his opinion on TV show, Fox $ Friends, when both guests had been asked about their thoughts on celebrities boycotting the Oscar awards because the blacks had not been nominated for 2 years in a row. Dash, had called out Black Entertainment Television (BET) during the interview for giving awards to mostly black people. Speaking during the interview, she said: "I think it's ludicrous, because we have to make up our minds. "Either we want to have segregation or integration. If we don't want segregation, then we need to get rid of channels like BET and the BET Awards and the Image Awards, where you're only awarded if you're black. If it were the other way around, we would be up in arms. It's a double standard." Later in the show, Trump had this to say: "I saw somebody on your show today say, 'Well, what do we do with BET? "The whites don't get any nominations, and I thought it was an amazing interview, actually. I've never even thought of it from that standpoint." The presidential candidate who had been endorsed earlier today by former VP candidate, Sarah Palin, had added: "I mean, Ive watched over the years where African Americans have in fact received Academy Awards and have in fact been represented. "And this is not one of those years, but over the years Ive seen numerous black actors and African American actors receive awards and I think thats great. This doesnt happen to be one of those years. It's a difficult situation." Although his later statement had seem to show some empathy towards the situation, his support of Dash's comparison between the BET Awards and the Oscar's as a yardstick for the lack of black nominees, has only put him a tighter situation. Meanwhile, comedic actor, Chris Rock is still receiving appeals from black celebrities to step down from hosting the Awards. According to Radar Online, the billionaire heiress is being pressured to file for bankrupt by her husband, aftr American Express filed a lawsuit against the former Beverly Hills 90210 star for failure to pay more than $38,000 in charges and a loan. A source tells the site that the financial situation at the Spelling-McDermott household is even worse than Spelling has admitted. "American Express provided a loan to Tori out of a line of credit she had," the source says of her massive bill. "The loan was needed because Tori and Dean had no money coming in last summer. She was hospitalized with burns on her arms, and was in pain for months." READ MORE:Tori Spelling sues Benihana restaurant for 3rd degree burns "Having four young kids is also very expensive, especially since Liam and Stella go to private school," said the source. So now, "Dean wants Tori to file for bankruptcy because there are other credit card companies that are owed money too," the insider claimed. "It's surprising that this was only the first company to file a lawsuit in an attempt to get the outstanding balance paid." The insider adds that, "But Tori refuses to even discuss the possibility of bankruptcy." READ MORE: 50 Cent files for bankruptcy The loan from American Express was in the $25,000 to $30,000 range, according to the insider. Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected! The actor is fast becoming a force to reckon with within Hollywood, with his second oscar nomination announced just a few days ago for his portrayal in undefined. Hes not only known for taking on complex roles that reveal the true human condition like he did in , which he won an oscar for last year, but hes also known for his impeccable sharp looks. In the magazine, photographed by Tom Munro, actor Eddie Redmayne dishes on picking challenging roles to play; I think people look at it and go, urgh, you want to try and do something transformational. And its not truejust, if youre lucky enough in your lifetime to get two parts that are interesting and challenging to play, then its a privilege really. Hes also big on giving back. He occasionally pays young actors rents and he shared; The greatest privilege that I had was that my parents lived in London. So when I was out of university and out of work for a year, working in a pub, I didnt pay rent. And I get letters from people trying to go to drama school and needing to pay their rent. And so thats something I occasionally do. Its impossibly expensive to live in London. As far as his style goes, some say that are tired of the suits and classic looks and seek that he switch it up. However, in playing devils advocate, it is always better to stick to what you know and what works for you. Fortunately, in his case, his style, suits, is one that wont go out of trend anytime soon and he wears it oh so well. Peter and Timothy pleaded not guilty to the two-count charge of criminal conspiracy and theft. Prosecutor Umoh Inah told the court that one Zibriyan Bulus of Durumi had reported the matter to the Police Station on Nov. 21, 2015. He said the accused persons stolen N51,000, two wrappers, half bag of rice and 30 mudus of beans from her house.He said the offence contravened Sections 97 and 287 of the Penal Code. The Judge, Alhaji Umar Kagarko, granted bail to the accused persons in the sum of N200,000 each with reliable surety in like sum. Bose Oladunjoye, 44, and Tobi Oladunjoye, 20, both residents of No. 45 Olota St., Abule Egba, Ikeja, are standing trial on a two-count charge of conspiracy and unlawful assault. The Prosecutor, Insp. Uche Simon, told the court that the accused persons committed the offences on Jan. 12 at the same address. Simon said that the accused person unlawfully assaulted Akinola by beating her to a pulp and also biting off part of her right ear. He said that the complainant had heard Oladunjoye's daughter accusing another tenant of stealing her money. "Akinola decided to confront Oladunjoye's daughter on the matter and when she got to their apartment she told the mother what her daughter had done. "Oladunjoye and her son instead of listening to the complainant assaulted her by beating her up and biting off part of her ear. "Akinola was immediately rushed to a nearby hospital by neighbours who were at the scene of the fight, "Simon stated. The prosecutor noted that the offences contravened Sections 172 and 409 of the Criminal Law of Lagos State, 2011. The accused persons, however, pleaded not guilty. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Section 172 prescribes a three-year jail term for assault occasioning harm. The Senior Magistrate, Mrs Y.R. Pinheiro, granted the accused persons bail in the sum of N20,000 each with two sureties each in like sum. The Commissioner of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Dr Nasiru Gawuna, made the disclosure in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Kano on Tuesday. He said that the measure had become necessary so as to check the spread of the disease to other farms across the state and beyond. As soon as the disinfectant is procured, it will be used to clean all the poultry farms found to be affected by the disease. Government is also doing its best to protect all the farms that are not yet affected by the disease and ensure that the disease does spread to other places, he said. The commissioner said that they were expected to forward their report to the state government for immediate action. According to him, the state government is also expecting intervention from the Federal Government within the shortest time possible He also described the outbreak as a national embarrassment while urging health practitioners not to hide cases in their respective states, ThisDay reports. Professor Adewole made the disclosure in Abuja on Tuesday, January 19, 2016, during the Emergency National Council on Health meeting with state Commissioners of Health and other stakeholders in the sector. There is a high level of denial and a conspiracy of silence in some of our states. I think people take delight in saying we have no case and to me that is not the issue, the minister said. In fact, if you are able to pick a suspicious cases, to me that is the issue because that goes to tell us that the surveillance system is at work. We also want to alert all health professionals in the country that they should report any case. I have described the outbreak as a national embarrassment. We can manage embarrassment, but when we allow another outbreak to occur in August this year, it will become a national shame to all of us. One of the things we will do to prevent us from dragging this nation into shame is to stamp out Lassa Fever. Healthcare managers should not deceive their political leaders that all is well. All states should consider themselves at risk. It has affected 64 local governments across the country and we have been able to pick 212 suspected cases. It dates back from August last year, not just this year. It is better to over-count suspected cases than to under-count. The real hot spots are Niger, Bauchi, Taraba, Kano, Edo, Nasarawa, Plateau and Rivers, but for us to be honest with ourselves, all states should consider themselves at risk and please, put up measures to contain, prevent and reassure the community that we are on top of the situation, he added. Leadership Newspapers reports that a male patient who tested positive to the disease has escaped a Hospital in Ebonyi state. This might be a very dangerous situation regarding the fact that the disease can be transferred through contact and other means. Speaking on the incident, the minister of health, Prof Isaac Adewole said the patient must have escaped with the help of the officials in the hospital. He laso urged the state government to try their best to manage the disease. Adewole said He should be traced and taken back to the facility. He should be reassured that he will live if the treatment is done promptly as he could not have absconded on his own without the support of the health officers. "These three sicknesses are circulating simultaneously," Cabello said. "Dengue is in a greater area, but we have to be careful about zika and chikungunya, which have been introduced as well. They could grow if we are not careful." Currently, the way NIMASA is, if you look at it very well, it was worse in the last administration. It was as if it was established just for the purpose of collecting money and nothing more. What we need to do is to ensure that NIMASA discharges its core responsibilities, the minister said. If NIMASA failed to outsource its core responsibility, then it has no business existing. If it is just to collect money from individuals, anybody can do that. We can hire a tax collector to collect money from maritime operators on behalf of Federal Ministry of Transportation. So it is either NIMASA sits up and carries out its own responsibility or we come to the National Assembly to repeal the Act setting it up and allow the department of marine security in the Ministry of Transportation to discharge the responsibility currently being discharged by NIMASA. We are not going ahead with the university project proposed by NIMASA because we have a an institution in Oron, we have Nigeria Institute of Transport Technology, Zaria, and we have the Nigerian College of Aviation in Zaria which we could upgrade to a university status and NIMASA is proposing to build a new one. Who will attend the university? How many parents will allow their children to go to such place where it proposes to site the university? What is the aim of the university that we cannot achieve in Oron where they have all the necessary infrastructure? I dont think we are proceeding with the university being proposed by NIMASA because it is a waste of resources, and unfortunately, a lot of money had already been released for the university project hence there is no structure on ground but just the feasibility study. Whoever is holding on to the money should better return it. The Chinese company contracted confirmed that only the feasibility study was in place. In fact there is a particular man who collected N32 billion and left the country. I dont think that the federal government needed to release N52 billion to investors in the maritime industry. The responsibility of NIMASA is to protect Nigerias water ways but it has out-sourced its responsibility to a private firm, Global west, which Tompolo has interest in. We need to first address the contract of global west with NIMASA. I was extremely disappointed NIMASA made N63 billion annually and this money is not remitted to the government coffers. At the moment, N53 billion is at Treasury Single Account (TSA) of NIMASA, Amaechi said. Ambode, in a statement by the states Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Mr Steve Ayorinde, described it as a major landmark in the effort of the South-Western states of Nigeria toward regional integration. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the decision to admit the state to Odua Group was taken at the end of a meeting of the five governors of Oyo, Ondo, Ogun, Osun and Ekiti States in Ibadan on Tuesday. Ambode said he believed that the drive toward regionally integrating the region could not be effectively pursued if all the states in the region did not combine their resources and maximise their comparative advantages. "Lagos joining the Odua Group is a priority for this administration," he said. According to him, the state, with its huge population and vibrant economic base, is uniquely placed to contribute to the development and growth of the Odua Investment Company Limited. He said that the state was poised to contribute to the investment arm of the group and the integration of the region. A member of the movement, Mr Abdullahi Musa, made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Wednesday. "We are demanding for justice for what happened in Zaria; they have killed so many people; they have arrested so many people. "We are the Academic Forum of the Islamic Movement. We lost a lot of our students. "Some were in their 200 level, 400 level and 100 levels respectively. They were killed and many of them were arrested by the Army. "We dont know their whereabouts so we are demanding for these people that are missing. "The Army should give us the corpses of those killed so that we can go and bury in accordance with Islamic rites. "We strongly demand for the release of our dear leader Sheik Ibrahim El-Zakzaky, he said. NAN recalls that many people reportedly died on Dec. 12, 2015 during an alleged assassination attempt on the Chief of Army Staff Lt.-Gen. Tukur Buratai, by members of the Shiite sect in Zaria. The incident led to a vicious clash between the military and some members of the sect, leading to the loss of lives and property. The Chief of Army Staff had on Dec. 14, 2015 petitioned the National Human Rights Commission on allegations of attempt on his life and attack on his convoy. Consequently, the commission constituted Mr Tony Ojukwu five-man panel to carry out a holistic investigation into the alleged violations of human rights. Curiously, the sect also within the same week, sought the urgent intervention of the commission for the release of its 50 members, allegedly trapped in a tunnel, on Dec. 13. The Chairman of the Committee, Rep. Aminu Jaji, made the disclosure in an interview with journalists shortly after he led the Committee members to various scenes of the clash in Zaria. He said "we are here to ascertain what actually happened on Dec. 12, 2015 between the military and members of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria also known as Shiite. "We have visited the scenes; we have spoken to the public and we are satisfied with what the people told us; we will make sure we do everything within the ambit of the law to avoid a recurrence. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the committee had earlier paid homage to the Emir of Zazzau, Dr Shehu Idris, at his palace. The Emir appreciated the Committee for the visit, saying it demonstrated the members' efforts and concern toward lasting peace in the country. The terrorist chief, identified as Jarasu Shira, was arrested today, January 20, 2016, Daily Trust reports. He was reportedly trying to make his way to Lagos State when he was apprehended by men of the Civilian Joint Task Force. The vigilantes also arrested 10 suspected members of the group who had accompanied Shira to the park. The kingpin was said to have been disguised in a cowboy suit at the time of his arrest. He is also reported to be one of the 100 most wanted terrorists on the Nigerian Armys newly released list. Malami said further that such judges would also be forced to forfeit their assets if found guilty. The AGF made the comments on Tuesday, January 19, 2016, in Lagos while delivering a paper at the presentation of the Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Projects (SERAP) latest report, according to Punch. As we may be aware, this administration promised Nigerians that it will promptly address the challenges facing our nation in the three areas of corruption, economy and security. Let no one be in doubt, the legitimate expectation of Nigerians in this regard shall be met, Malami said. In this regard therefore, I am reiterating that the fight against corruption shall be total and will not exclude judicial officers, who are found wanting. After all, it is beyond doubt that a corrupt judge cannot meaningfully contribute to the fight against corruption. In reality, it cannot be over-emphasised that systemic corruption and impunity are prevalent in Nigeria, and that they cut across all sectors of the society, unfortunately, including the judiciary an institution that is universally believed to be the hope of the common man. Ideally, the judiciary in a democratic state ought to be accountable less to public opinion and more to public interest. It should discharge its constitutional roles by being principled, independent and impartial," he added. Buhari made the threat on Tuesday, January 19, 2016, while speaking with Nigerians resident in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE). The presidents comments were contained in a statement released by his media aide, Garba Shehu. The oil thieves and abductors are a less problematic target. We will re-organise and deal with them, Buhari was quoted as saying after a previous comment on the Boko Haram insurgency. Buhari also said that the war against terrorism can only be won with the collective effort and commitment of everyone. This is contained in a letter to the House of Representatives as read by the Speaker, Yakubu Dogara in Abuja. The President's letter reads in part: It will be recalled that on Tuesday, 22 December, 2015, I presented my 2016 budget proposals to the joint sitting of the National Assembly. "I submitted a draft bill accompanied by a schedule of details. At the time of submission, we indicated that because the details had just been produced, we would have to check to ensure that there were no errors in the detailed breakdown contained in the schedule. That has since been completed and I understand that the corrections have been submitted. The National Assembly would therefore have the details as submitted on the 22nd and a copy containing the corrections submitted last week. It appears that this has led to some confusion. In this regard, please find attached the corrected version. This is the version the National Assembly should work with as my 2016 budget estimates.The draft bill remains the same and there are no changes in any of the figures." Shortly before the letter was read, Rep. Leo Ogor (Delta-PDP), the Minority Leader of the House, raised a constitutional point of order citing Sections 81 and 84 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended). He consequently called on the House to disregard Buhari's letter. However, Dogara rose in defence of the president submitting that there was nowhere in the letter that Buhari said the budget was amended. He said that it is only the president that has powers to make corrections to the budget if he observes any error. Dogaras explanation, however, drew the ire of PDP lawmakers, who started chanting "no, no!" preventing the Speaker from making his point for some minutes. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the monarch died in Ibadan on Tuesday at the age of 101 years. Balogun, who is the Otun Olubadan, also told NAN that the traditional chiefs were meeting over the burial arrangement. The death of the Olubadan has been confirmed; it is true that the monarch is dead, he said. Also speaking to NAN, one of the daughters of the monarch, Mrs Folasade Bankole, told NAN that her father was a rare gem. "He lived the way he wanted to live and died the way he wanted to die. He achieved all he set out to before his death. We thank God for his life, she said. The Aare Alaasa of Ibadanland, Chief Lekan Alabi, described the demise of Odulana as a big loss to the people of Ibadanland. "He was a repository of history and an icon of culture, education and justice. We will miss a great king in the entire Yorubaland, Nigeria and indeed Africa. "He was among the rare kings of the century in Africa and the world. He was 101 years old and we pray his soul would find repose in heaven, he said. Odulana, the 40th Olubadan, ascended the throne on August 17, 2007 at the age of 93. He died 86 days to his 102nd birthday, April 14. Odulana was born April 14, 1914 in Igbo Elerin, Ibadan to Pa Odulana Ayinla. He began his elementary education at Saint Andrews School, Bamigbola, Ibadan in January 1922 and transferred to St. Peters School, Aremo, in 1929. The traditional ruler completed his middle school education at Mapo Central School in 1936 and was an army officer during the 1939 World War II. After returning from World War II in 1945, he was appointed to be in charge of the demobilisation of returning soldiers in Lagos. He briefly worked with United Africa Company as a produce clerk before commencing his teaching career at the Church Missionary Society Elementary School, Jago, in 1938. Odulana also taught in several schools from 1939 to 1942 and was with the Colonial Office Education Department in 1964. The late monarch went into politics in 1959 as a member of the House of Representatives and was appointed parliamentary secretary to the late Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. He was Minster of State for Labour and in 1964, he led the Nigerian Parliamentary delegation to the London Constitution Conference to restructure the former British colonies of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (now Malawi, Zimbabwe and Zambia). Odulana joined the royal chieftaincy line in 1972 as the Mogaji of Ladunni compound in Ibadan, and in 1976, he was conferred Jagun-Olubadan. He was a co-founder of several organisations such as the Ibadan Economic Foundation and the Ibadan Progressive Union. The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) was said to have stopped production at the refineries due to vandalism by the Niger Delta militants last week. The NNPC spokesman, Ohi Alegbe, who confirmed the shutdown, said the move was to avoid any fire incident along the pipelines. He said the corporation will continue to monitor the progress of the refineries and the Nigeria Gas Company and update the public at the appropriate time. The refineries which which stopped production on Sunday, January 17, have a combined capacity of 235,000 barrels per day. The army says the Islamic Movement in Nigeria had tried to assassinate its chief of staff, Lieutenant General Tukur Buratai, when members of the sect blocked his convoy in the northern city of Zaria in December. The following day the army said it had raided several buildings connected to the sect. The Shi'ite sect said hundreds of its members had been killed. The army took most of the bodies away, making it impossible to verify the claim but the director of a local hospital said at least 60 people had been killed. "I'm here because I was there during the incident. I was involved and my officers and soldiers acted in accordance with the rule of engagement," Buratai told an inquiry panel of the National Human Rights Commission into the raid. "There is no way we would pick our weapons and deliberately violate what we have been tasked and paid to defend and protect," added the army chief. Members of the Shi'ite sect are also expected to give evidence to the inquiry panel, which was set up to establish what happened in the raid and sat for the first time on Tuesday. It has the power to impose fines and payment of compensation. Most of Nigeria's Muslims, who number tens of millions, are Sunni, including the Boko Haram jihadist militants who have killed thousands in bombings and shootings, mainly in the northeast, since 2009. However, in the nation of 170 million people, there are also several thousand Shi'ite Muslims whose movement was inspired by the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Shi'ite Iran. The comment was made by the APCs National Secretary, Mai Buni via a statement released on Tuesday, January 19, 2016. It reads in part: The questions begging for answers are: Why does the PDP choose to grope in the dark when reality stares it in the face? Did the PDP not know that it will one day pay for the impunity, recklessness and shocking mismanagement of the countrys wealth under its watch for 16 years? For the record, the APC has no hand in the infighting and resultant implosion being witnessed in PDPs hierarchy. Perhaps the wind of change has blown through the PDP camp and many PDP members have realized the need to embrace and enforce change. He alleged that the Muhammadu Buhari administration is just using the false figures to cover up its clueless solution to Nigeria's economic problems. The reality is that the All Progressives Congress (APC) Federal Government has destroyed the economy within eight months in power and rather than look for solutions to the problems facing Nigeria, Lai Mohammed and his cohorts are branding bogus figures about stolen money just to cover up their lack of solution to the countrys economic problems, he said. Speaking through his Special Assistant on Public Communications and New Media, Lere Olayinka, the Governor also condemned the APC government for handcuffing the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) National Publicity Secretary, Olisa Metuh, to court yesterday, January 19 - saying even terrorists were not handcuffed when arraigned. Fayose said: Even the masterminds of Mandala and Nyanya bomb blasts, Kabiru Sokoto and Aminu Sadiq Ogwuche, were not handcuffed when they were arraigned in court. They are turning governance to Nollywood such that when one movie is about to end, they release another one. As it appears that the $2.1 billion arms deal movie is getting to an end, Lai Mohammed introduced another movie entitled N1.34 trillion loot. Unfortunately for them this time around, Nigerians have become tired of watching the Federal Government movies, they now want reality. Nigerians are now aware of the scam in the $2.1 billion arms deal movie having seen that the amount those already charged to court were charged with is not more than N10 billion and $2.1 billion is over N600 billion". Unknown to many Nigerians, and quite usual with politics at the top, for reasons not clearly defined, I never got along well with colonel Dasuki retired, the former Jonathan aide said in a statement, according to The Cable. In fact, he twice told me to my face that he will get Alhaji Gulak and myself out of former president Jonathans administration. Colonel Dasuki would never have patronised me or any associate of mine. It was for this reason I was totally schemed out from the entire presidential campaign in 2015. Romix Technologies is an offshore company registered in Cyprus. I am not the owner, I have no relationship with it neither do I have any financial interest. I had no knowledge of their bidding for contracts from the office of the National Security Adviser, I was not informed when they were awarded any contract neither was I in the know of what and when they were paid. I have not benefited financially from the proceeds of payment for the said contract neither can any money be traced to me, or any of my family members or associates, Okupe said. Dasuki is at the center of a massive money laundering investigation and is alleged to have supervised the looting of the $2.1 billion in funds which were meant for the procurement of arms for Nigeria's military. He was arrested by the Department of State Services (DSS) on December 1, 2015 and handed over to the EFCC the day after. The former NSA is reported to have implicated several prominent persons in the deal including former governors, ex-ministers and members of the PDP. Dasukis lawyer however denied the report that his client had become an informant while the former NSA said that ex-President, Goodluck Jonathan was aware of the transactions he had made. Jonathan has however denied authorizing the release of the stated funds despite the former NSAs claim that he got the necessary presidential approval for the transactions. During a recent inspection, he revealed that the project has been ongoing for five years without a completion date in sight. "The contract was awarded almost five years ago and we are just tired of all these ongoing projects that have been ongoing almost at indeterminate period of time. We have resolved that these projects will not continue to be at the state of ongoing again. Speaking at a symposium organized by the Faculty of Law, Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) Zaria, Kaduna State, recently, the cardinal said the cordiality among the Christian and Muslim faithful in the country was smooth until about two decades ago, pointing out that the new development is not between Christians and Muslims alone, but also found among all faiths and that religious crises have become global phenomenon. "Some two decades or so ago, a negative development started to be witnessed by our people with regards to religious harmony. We began to see a rise in strict fanaticism, where people held so tightly to their own faith that they declared that they are the only ones acceptable to God. This leads to a total rejection of whoever does not follow their own line," he said. At the event, which was themed "Religion for Peace and Harmony in Nigeria," Onaiyekan also expressed that the Christian and Muslim fanatics make it a point to attribute their action to some passages in the Bible and Quran, adding that this is the misrepresentation of God on the equality of people, freedom of choice of religion. He said: "We have also seen that doctrinal extremism easily move from oral violence to physical violence. Riots and murderous conflicts are a natural development from exclusivist fanatical rejection of the other. The anomaly of the Boko Haram is a clear case in point. It is clear now that it is not enough to condemn the violent activities of terrorists who kill and maim. We must also address the grave danger posed by those who preach rejection of other faiths, whether in their Mosques or in their Churches." The pastor, who narrated his ordeal to TheNation, said that the 14 hours they spent in captivity was not pleasant. According to him, their boats were hijacked at about 9am and taken to the hoodlums camp in the creeks. They were blindfolded by the gunmen who took their time to dispossess them of their valuables including mobile phones and cash. The pastor said the abductors initially mistook them for very important personalities they could hold hostage and later ask for ransom. The gunmen were mad after discovering that the occupants of the boats were civil servants. He said: Initially they thought we were important person they will hold down and demand ransom. So, what they did was look into our faces and ask, honourable, who are you? Are you not an honourable? And when they got to me I told them I am a pastor. When they discovered that most of the passengers were normal civil servants and pastor we were released and dumped near a fishing point at around 11pm. It was from there that we were eventually rescued through a fishing canoe to Okoroma town, where we slept till this morning. This became necessary after five attacks on mosques by suspected Boko Haram fighters. The fifth mosque was attacked by a teenage male suicide bomber near the central African nation's border with Nigeria. Boko Haram is now attacking not only churches, schools and markets, but mosques, making Cameroonians more united to fight what they call a common enemy. The vigilante groups were created to assist the government against increasing attacks by Boko Haram, which even began using female suicide bombers early last year. The Hollywood actress have been friends with the former Spice Girl for almost ten years. Victoria who is well renowned for her fashion expertise will assist Longoria in getting the 'perfect' wedding dress. "Victoria is helping me pick the perfect dress. She always knows exactly what looks good on me and is one of the only people in the world who will tell me the truth and if something looks hideous", the 40-yr-old Desperate Housewives actress told Closer magazine. She also revealed that the fashion icon and mother of four will also help her plan the hen night before tying the knot with fiance Jose Antonio Baston this year. Longoria got engaged to the 46-yr-old Televista CEO on December 13 while they were away in Dubai. The little boy identified as Mukesh Kerayi from Jharkhand, India, had grown a tooth in the upper part of his mouth which is considered bad luck by his people according to their traditional beliefs. Kerayi's family made his marry a dog in order to make sure the future predictions do not come to pass in future. The dog officially became the boy's first wife. Family members had dressed the female dog in a bridal outfit and villagers had attended the wedding ceremony. They had danced and were merry like it was an actual wedding between two lovers. "We believe the marriage will ward off any bad omen attached the boy", Mukesh's grandfather 43-yr-old Ashok Kumar Leyangi said. "This is traditional practice in our tribal community and we still believe in these old customs. We feel that it is our adult responsibility to keep our children safe and happy this way," he added. The family said the dog was put back on the streets after the wedding. Dana Olsen couldn't get a refund after her January 16 wedding was cancelled by fiance Brendan McCarthy six weeks before their big day. The bride and her mum, Karen Olsen, had spent most part of 2015 planning a lavish wedding reception for 250 guests the couple had invited. The lavish wedding in total cost at least $32,000, a source told Daily Mail. When Olsen couldn't get her money back, she decided to hold the reception for 150 homeless women and children from the city's Marys Place Shelter. As the news of Dana's generosity spread, a few people decided to make the night more memorable. Some of the homeless women had their makeup and hair done by a stylist - Lauren Grinnell from Lalas Cuts, while others donated dresses and jewelry. The homeless were entertained by a live band as they were served sumptuous meals by caterers. "I love that hopefully a lot of people will have a really fun night, I mean, if we cant have a good night, I hope that they have a great time," the bride-to-be told news men though she didn't attend the event. "She just wanted to marry the guy she loved, and thats not happening, and if she cant have that, she is very happy to share it with someone else," the bride's mother Karen said. Dana and Brendan began dating after they both moved to Southern California though they had known each other for over 10 years since they went to highschool together in Seattle. He proposed a year ago but changed his mind about marrying her weeks before the wedding. Though the jilted bride had no idea why he called off their big day, she was happy to put smiles on other people's faces. "I wish I knew more myself, I just wanted to marry him. I didnt care about the wedding stuff," she told Kiro7s Monique Ming Laven. "Pretty much immediately I thought about the fact that my family had paid for almost the entire wedding, and I knew we wouldnt be able to get most of it back, So after the shock of what had happened wore off, I started to think about what to do. It just felt really terrible and wasteful and awful to just have all that money and this beautiful event that wasnt going to happen. I just couldnt stand the thought of it being wasted," she told KING5. Though Dana still wished it was her wedding day, she doesn't regret the decision she made. "I wish it were going to be my wedding, but if Im going to have a really bad weekend, at least I want to help someone else have a really good day, " she said. Three gunmen were killed in a French and U.S.-assisted operation by Burkina security forces to retake the Splendid Hotel and surrounding buildings following the Friday night attack, which targeted an area popular with foreigners. Eight Burkinabes, six Canadians, three Ukrainians and three French citizens were among the dead. Other bodies are still in the process of being identified. "Of the six assailants, three were killed and three others are still being sought," Valls said in remarks before the French parliament, adding that the attack on Ouagadougou was a reminder of a similar attack in Paris in November. "This attack was claimed by AQIM. This is further proof that this group is dangerous." Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) on Monday identified three fighters it says were responsible for the attacks, giving their names as al-Battar al-Ansari, Abu Muhammad al-Buqali al-Ansari and Ahmed al-Fulani al-Ansari. The French troops involved in the operation against the attackers were part of a 200-strong force stationed in the country as part of a regional anti-militant operation. AQIM claimed a similar attack on the Radisson Blu hotel in Mali's capital Bamako that killed 20 people in November. Some witnesses however reported seeing more attackers. Security forces responding at the scene of events initially believed they were facing a team of 12 gunmen. Gendarmes at the time said they believed at least two assailants were women. "The investigation is moving forward. Eleven French police and gendarmes are assisting Burkinabe experts with the identification of bodies. There are also five American FBI agents," Burkina Security Minister Simon Compaore said. ARRESTS Authorities in Ouagadougou have already made a number of arrests though some had since been released, said Foreign Minister Alpha Barry. "In this kind of situation we pick up everyone who could resemble the suspects and then, bit by bit, we verify," he said. Leaders from Burkina and Mali have agreed to work more closely to fight jihadists by sharing intelligence and conducting joint security patrols. Heavily armed security agents on Saturday raided the Ouagadougou home of Mossa Ag Attaher, spokesman for the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) - a Malian Tuareg rebel group. He was questioned but later released. "What kept coming up was 'Do you have information on imminent threats to Burkina? Does the MNLA have links with those threatening Burkina?'" Ag Attaher told French radio RFI, adding that he had denied any connection to the attack. Burkina authorities also arrested Adal Rhoubeid, a politician from Niger who is running for president this year. "Rhoubeid was in the wrong place at the wrong time and there's no doubt he will be freed," said a source close to his family. Both men are Tuaregs, a nomadic people based in Saharan parts of Niger, Mali and Algeria. A photograph of one of the attackers released by AQIM showed a man of light-skinned appearance, suggesting he was Tuareg or Arab. Riyadh sees the Houthis as a proxy for bitter regional rival Iran to expand its influence in the impoverished Arabian Peninsula nation. The Houthis deny this and say they are waging a revolution against a corrupt government and Gulf Arab powers beholden to the West. A growing diplomatic dispute between Riyadh and Tehran, triggered by mainly Sunni Saudi Arabia's execution of a prominent Shi'ite cleric, has damaged the outlook for any resolution to the conflict in Yemen. Saudi Arabia and China said in a statement on Wednesday that the two countries affirmed their support for the unity, independence and sovereignty of Yemen. The statement was released by China's Foreign Ministry after Xi met Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz in Riyadh on Tuesday. All social, religious and political groups in Yemen should maintain their national solidarity and avoid any decisions that may cause social disruption and chaos, it said. "Both sides stressed support for the legitimate regime of Yemen," the statement said. Xi is expected in Iran later in the week, with a further stop in Egypt after he leaves Saudi Arabia. China relies on the region for oil but has tended to leave Middle Eastern diplomacy to the other four permanent members of the U.N. Security Council - the United States, Britain, France and Russia. However, China has been trying to get more involved, especially in Syria, and recently hosted its foreign minister and opposition officials. A report from Accra said thousands of workers, clad in red and black dresses, are also demanding the withdrawal of a new tax law passed by parliament late 2015 that slapped extra taxes on petroleum products. It also read that "Mr President, have compassion for Ghanaians", "Reduce utility and taxes", "Reverse taxes" and "Give us a living wage". The report said the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission late last year increased the electricity rate by 59.2 per cent, while water tariff was also increased 67.2 per cent. It said further that prices of petroleum products went up by some 28 per cent in the first week of January, although fares have remained the same. A source said on condition of anonymity that the producers and distributors of electricity had argued strongly that they needed higher rates to recover cost. They said it has become imperative, especially as production of electricity now was mainly through thermal sources, gas and fuel, which are far more expensive than the hydro. They noted that the levels of water in the three main dams, which have installed capacity of about 1,600 megawatts, are critically low because of poor rains. The source noted that Ghana went through excruciating load shedding from 2012, now has some relief as production was about matching demand and many areas have not gone off since Christmas last year. "But a huge chunk of production is by independent power producers who have signed agreements for rates that have to be paid by government. "The state-owned Ghana Water Company also says it wants higher rates to recover cost else production will be affected, he said. A TUC member said on condition of anonymity that they turned down an offer to reduce rates of water and electricity because they did not meet its demand. He said government has stuck to the fuel levies saying it needs revenue in a country where the tax net was very small. The official said public sector workers now guzzle more than 50 per cent of the tax revenue, which was a source of worry for the government. He said the demonstration is expected to be followed by a nationwide strike on 21 and 22 January. The government, which began a programme with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) last year, has been watching its expenditure closely and has promised to stick to its budget and not to cave in to demands although this is an election year. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also said, however, that the ultra-hardline group rounded up another 50 men on Tuesday during raids on houses in areas seized during four days of fighting in Deir al-Zor, the provincial capital. Rami Abdulrahman, the Observatory's head, said that the group has kept male prisoners between the ages of 14 and 55 for more questioning. The United States condemned violence against civilians in Deir al-Zor and said those responsible must be held accountable. "We demand the immediate and unconditional release of any civilians who were taken captive and of all those held by ISIL," U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said, referring to Islamic State by an acronym. The civilians released will remain in Islamic State-run villages in the province of Deir al-Zor, which links the group's de facto capital in Raqqa with territory controlled by the militant group in neighbouring Iraq. Mexican Attorney General Arely Gomez said in an interview in the newspaper El Universal on Tuesday that there were "indications" the Mexican actress may have used money from Guzman to help finance her tequila business. There was not yet a date set for her to appear at the consulate, he added. An official at the attorney general's office said on Monday she would be questioned by authorities next week. The Mexican government has said a meeting between the actress, who played a drug boss in the television series "La Reina del Sur", Oscar-winning actor Penn and Guzman was essential to the kingpin's recapture earlier this month. Turning the ship before it hits the iceberg Finding Peace of Mind: Discover These Five Places in Europe to Unwind Organizers of Nye Ryder, Pahrumps first on-demand transportation program, delivered four buses from Salt Lake City to Pahrump thanks to numerous donations from the community. On Jan.13, four members of the Nye County Regional Transportation Committee flew to Salt Lake City to pick up the buses that had been donated to Nye Ryder by the Utah Transit Authority. It was about an 18-hour day overall, so we got here about 11 oclock at night. It was a very long day, said Albert Bass, one of the organizers for Nye Ryder. The trip was funded by numerous donations from the community, including the Pahrump Nugget and Pahrump Valley Disposal, Inc., that donated $500 each and NyE Communities Coalition that donated $300. Private donations totaled $1,000. The four 2008 Ford E450 Glaval buses are currently set up for 10 passengers and two wheelchairs, which is a standard for the demand response service, Bass said. Program officials are currently working with Nye County Manager Pam Webster on the location for storage of the buses. The initial plan for the program will not have a central route service, but as program organizers collect more data along the way, Bass said they plan to develop a central deviated-fixed route. A demand response could be anywhere from $1 to $2 to $3 a ride, Bass said. It depends on where you are going. We want to keep it as low as possible because the cost does not really affect the program. The operation of the program is not benefited really from making money off the passengers. Its all coming in through grant sources. So we keep that as low as possible. The program is still on track to kick off in late 2016, as Bass said the NDOT funding starts in October. Before then, he said Nye Ryder organizers will focus on pre-planning that will involve penning contracts, hiring drivers and training them. While Nye Ryder will be overseen by the county, program officials plan to contract an operation company. The goal is to employ people, so we want to get to the point where we actually have all paid staff and paid drivers, dispatchers and general managers, he said. But again, a lot of that will depend on the operation company who we contract the operations with to handle all of that. Nye Ryder received support from numerous organizations, including the Nevada Rural Transportation Association, Community Transportation Association of America, and LSC Transportation Consultants that are all working with program organizers on various aspects at no cost. In addition, Southern Nevada Transit Coalition is providing technical support and assistance to the program while the Nevada Department of Transportation is responsible for grant funding. Representatives from LSC Transportation Consultants of Colorado Springs will attend a Pahrump Regional Transportation Commission meeting on Wednesday where they will provide Nye County officials with an update on the progress. Now, we are just to the point where we really need coordinated effort between the committee, all of these five organizations and the local RTC to put the plan together, Bass said. Contact reporter Daria Sokolova at dsokolova@pvtimes.com. On Twitter: @dariasokolova77 The pair charged with shooting and injuring a female inside the Pahrump Nugget on Jan. 9, appeared in Pahrump Justice Court on Tuesday. Lee Anthony Daniels, 46, and Desiree Lewis, 36, had their bail lowered to $250,000 each, and remain in custody at Nye County Detention Center. Both were arrested in Las Vegas and booked on multiple felony charges including attempted murder in connection with the 12:11 a.m. shooting at the Pahrump Nugget Hotel-Casino. Judge Gus Sullivan appointed both a public defender after inquiring whether they were financially able to hire an attorney. Details surrounding the case were not discussed during the hearing. Sullivan appointed defense attorney Jason Earnest to represent Daniels, and Nathan Gent to represent Lewis, after both said they would not be able to afford attorneys through their jobs. Daniels, a father of three, said he was employed at Wings N Things and Draft Picks. Lewis, mother of three, said she worked at Best Western. Pretrial for both suspects is Feb. 3 at 1:30. A preliminary hearing is scheduled Feb. 11th at 9 a.m. Nye County Sheriffs deputies and detectives responded to the Golden Harvest CafA on Jan. 9 after reports that a black adult male fired one round at a female after a verbal altercation ensued between them. According to police, the male was then observed fleeing with another white female adult in a vehicle. The incident was witnessed by several employees and customers, as well as captured on video surveillance. No other bystanders were injured. Daniels and Lewis were located in Las Vegas where both were arrested with the assistance of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Other preliminary charges listed for Daniels and Lewis include battery with a deadly weapon, assault with a deadly weapon, discharge a weapon in a casino and possession of firearm by prohibited person. The shooting victim, a female whose name is being withheld, was transported to University Medical Center in Las Vegas with a leg wound. Contact reporter Selwyn Harris at sharris@pvtimes.com. In 2006, the Democratic National Committee slated Nevada and South Carolina for new, and very early, berths in the Democratic schedule for presidential primary and caucus states. Initially, the plan was for Nevada to go after Iowas caucuses and before New Hampshires primary, but New Hampshire wasnt going to put up with that and so Nevada caucuses and the South Carolina primary went after New Hampshire and Iowa but before all other states. When Nevada was campaigning for that early slot, party officials from Nevada circulated a 40-page prospectus singing the states praises to members of the national committee and other opinion leaders: Nevada is an outstanding selection as an early caucus state because it possesses the benefits of retail politics found in Iowa and New Hampshire. At the same time, it equally highlights other key electoral factors such as union density, racial and geographical diversity, and most of all, the ability to deliver electoral votes to the eventual Democratic nominee. With one of the highest union densities in the nation and the highest in the Western region, Nevada will provide an opportunity to discuss issues important to working families across the country. An earlier push and more attention to core party and Western issues could make the difference in the next presidential election not only in Nevada but in the Western region. There were a lot of those kinds of predictions that western issues would come to the fore. I made some of them myself (Nevada gets early caucus, Aug. 20, 2006, Las Vegas Review-Journal). Western issues will be more in focus than they have been in the past, Colorado political consultant Mike Stratton told the Los Angeles Times. Those predictions gained force when Nevada Republicans decided to join the Democrats on the early date. Well, here we are on the eve of the third round of early Nevada caucuses, and I am unable to remember much discussion of Western issues. Candidates usually commit themselves on Yucca Mountain and otherwise talk about the same issues they do elsewhere. Occasionally an individual candidate will take up some local issue, as Ben Carson did this year with public lands, but there has not been the exploration of western issues across the breadth of the Republican and Democratic candidate fields. (Rand Pauls secret meeting with Cliven Bundy might have prompted some useful discussions, but no one including other candidates didnt seem to want to talk much about it.) How often have they all discussed the western drought and climate change, grazing fees, the mining law of 1872? This year, the Democratic candidates engaged on rooftop solar because it blew up in the final stretch in the national financail media, but even then the Republicans ignored the issue. In the first early Nevada caucuses of 2008, with no incumbent president, both parties had a large fields of candidates (Democrats: Bayh, Biden, Clinton, Dodd, Edwards, Dodd, Gravel, Kucinich, Obama Richardson, Vilsack; Republicans: Giuliani, Hunter, Huckabee, Keyes, McCain, Paul, Romney, Thompson) and getting them to talk about western issues was like pulling teeth. In the months before the Nevada caucuses, I sent out questionnaires to all the candidates and then browbeat the campaigns incessantly to get them returned. My newspaper ran three cover stories in advance of the caucuses, two of them on the candidates positions on local issues. We editorialized, But in the end, we got answers from five of eight Democrats and two of eight Republicans. Perhaps most disappointing was the lack of response from candidates who are all about issues, like Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul. Pauls office asked us for an extension of time, which we granted. We never heard from them again, though we tried to make contact five times. Journalists didnt do much better than candidates. They tended to emulate national reporters with a focus on money or polls and who was ahead, not on issues. This was particularly distressing for a caucus state like Nevada. Caucuses are more deliberative than primary elections. People sit and talk with people from their neighborhoods about candidates, swapping information and trying to select the best candidate their party can provide to the November electorate. If all the candidates and reporters can give them is pretty much what the voters in other states are getting, what is this early start getting Nevadans? Dennis Myers is an award-winning journalist who has reported on Nevadas capital, government and politics for several decades. He has also served as Nevadas chief deputy secretary of state. There are people that make things happen, people that watch things happen and people that wonder what just happened. Then there are people that dont care what happened. So consider what happened at the Pahrump Regional Planning Commission on Wednesday night. It appears that the members that voted to approve the conditional use permit for Utilities Inc. to build two rapid infiltration basins here in Pahrump either didnt read the staff report or didnt care what it said. Very plainly on page 5 it says, and I quote: 2. Water Quality. Impact on Existing Groundwater Quality: Could the proposed project/land use (be) considered a Potential Contamination Source? (Yes/No Table E-1): Yes. Class: Municipal Waste. Source: Wastewater Treatment Plant. Risk level (Low/Moderate/High): High. Contaminant Categories: B, C, and D B = Synthetic Organic Compound C = Inorganic Contaminant D = Microbiological 3. Water Quantity. Estimated Water Use: Water usage estimate not provided or calculated for the proposed use. Pahrump Basin 162 is a closed basin. Whatever gets dumped into it gets pumped right back out by domestic and other well owners. Im having a hard time understanding what would entice anyone on the Pahrump Regional Planning Commission staff to recommend approval of this conditional use permit with such damning information included in the report. Didnt they read their own report? Did any of the PRPC members read this report prior to voting? Or is there so much money involved that contamination of our drinking water is insignificant? Perhaps now is the time for the Nye County Commission to dissolve this dysfunctional board and start making these decisions that we elected them to make. How about it, commissioners? Youve dissolved numerous other boards and committees lately, how about this one? Furthermore, since this is a water quality problem, where is the Water District Governing Board in all this? The WDGB should take this up in an emergency meeting and stop it in its tracks. The WDGB charter by the Nevada Legislature gives them authority over water quality and things that have the potential to affect that quality. These Rapid Infiltration Basins are a time bomb. According to testimony of both staff representatives and Wendy Barnett of Utilities, Inc., these proposed basins will be placed in an area prone to flooding. Neither of these people seemed to know whether future runoff would adversely impact the affluent capacity of these RIBs. While Im on that subject, are the staff members making recommendations for approval even qualified to make those decisions? What are their backgrounds? Are they engineers? Do they have firsthand knowledge of wastewater treatment plant construction and operation utilizing rapid infiltration basins and the dangers inherent in their use? Since some of the PRPC members seemed to lack the knowledge to make an informed decision they relied on staff recommendations. Was it prudent if those recommending approval lacked the knowledge and experience necessary. It would appear that much of the information and data concerning these RIBs was furnished by Utilities Inc. Is this a case of the fox guarding the henhouse? Since board member Greg Hafen III manages Pahrump Utilities, which utilizes RIBs, he couldnt very well vote against this project without jeopardizing his own livelihood. It would be interesting to see the results of testing domestic well water quality down gradient from those RIBs since they have been there for some time. Since the WDGB is collecting $5 per parcel to sustain their operations perhaps they could afford the few hundred dollars necessary to conduct a sampling in nearby wells? How about it members of the WDGB, are you interested? Dave Caudle is a Pahrump resident and former candidate for Nye County Commission. He resigned from the new Pahrump Groundwater Management Plan Advisory Committee in early 2014. Our regional sites have now moved. If you are not redirected automatically, please click here to access our new PwC in Northern Ireland site. After a 7 percent drop in passengers in December, the Quad-City International Airport closed the year with nearly flat passenger numbers from a year ago. Bruce Carter, the airport's aviation director, said Tuesday that enplanements and total passengers ended the year down 1 percent from 2014. For the year, the airport had 367,048 enplanements, compared with 372,101 for the prior year. Total passengers enplanements and deplanements combined also were down 1 percent for the year to 730,292, compared with 738,398 in 2014. The year-end results are on the heels of December's enplanements which fell 7 percent to 28,315 from 30,568 a year ago. Carter said the results were impacted by having one less flight to Denver and the lack of service to Punta Gorda, which became a seasonal flight but was available in December 2014. According to the airport's statistics, three of its four commercial carriers reported decreases in enplanements for the year. Allegiant and American Eagle/Envoy both were down 2 percent to 66,052 and 73,836 respectively; and United Express was down 4 percent to 96,088. Delta Airlines grew 1 percent increase to 128,844 enplanements. "As we get into 2016, we are going to continue to be aggressive,'' Carter told the Rock Island County Metropolitan Airport Authority. Among his plans, he said is to try to bring larger planes into the market to increase capacity. In other business, the airport authority voted unanimously to accept the low bid from Miller Trucking and Excavating for the demolition of Bud's Skyline Inn, which the airport acquired Dec. 1. Miller bid $48,000. The $64,635 project project also will include asbestos abatement by Advanced Environmental at a cost of $9,850; engineering services by McClure Engineering ($5,800); and asbestos testing by Graves Environmental ($985). Carter said asbestos removal will begin immediately with demolition in February. The Quad-City International Airport will be dipping into a subsidy to provide United Airlines with its revenue guarantee for the initial months of operation of its new direct Q-C to D.C. flight. At its meeting Tuesday, the Rock Island County Metropolitan Airport Authority learned from the airport's consultant that the airline is owed an estimated $593,472 for the first three months under the revenue guarantee it received to start up the long-awaited direct service. According to Mike Bown, of Trillion Aviation, ridership on the new flight "is starting slow, but seasonally that is to be expected. The key will be what happens going forward." Bown said United is owed $87,632 for October and $263,632 for November, as well as an estimated $242,207 for December. With a cumulative total of $593,472, the first few months will have used about a fourth of the $2 million annual subsidy made up of state, local and federal funding. Bown told commissioners that passenger numbers have been increasing, but flights still have been only about half full. He reported average load factors of 31 percent in October, 53 percent in November and an estimated 58 percent in December. Direct service to Dulles International Airport, provided on a 50-seat Embraer E145 aircraft, began the weekend of Oct. 24. In the month of December, the outgoing flights to D.C. averaged a 68-percent load factor, but the return flights were less full, which airport officials said was an indication that passengers are finding other return flights, including through Chicago. The Q-C-to-D.C. flight returns at 11:22 p.m. daily. Airport officials said the slow start was to be expected as the services ramps up. Bown said the service was launched in the slowest historical season November to February, minus the holiday travel season. In addition, most new air service has a 90-day window for pre-booking, but the Q-C-to-D.C. flight began with a 60-day window. "United is fine for now, but things need to improve," he said, adding that he expects passenger numbers to pick up in about March. Bruce Carter, the airport's aviation director, said he thought the connectivity out of D.C. to other destinations would draw more passengers than it has. "When you get a service like this, people have to use it or we'll lose it. That's what happened with AirTran," he said of the low-fare carrier that left the market in January 2012. Bown added that if the route "did super well, we wouldn't have to pay (the guarantee). But everyone understood we'd have to pay the revenue guarantee." "While we're losing a little bit more than we planned on, there is a ramp-up in seasonality," he said. "The key will be how the flight does in the spring and summer." Molly Foley, the airport authority's chairwoman, said the early results met her expectations, especially because of the winter months. Increasing passenger numbers "is going to take a push and the community stepping up," she said. Although the initial marketing message has been the direct D.C. flight, Foley said "I think we need to change the message to our new East Coast hub and focus on the connection opportunities." "Hopefully we will see an increase in our load factors. That's why we knew this service was going to be struggling from the beginning. There are only so many people flying to D.C.," she added. "The bigger issue will be getting state support in year two, year three." Illinois lawmakers authorized a $1.5 million a year subsidy for three years, but officials said they will have to go back to the state each year for the funding. The state subsidy was matched by $200,000 each from the airport authority and the Quad-Cities Chamber of Commerce, and a $500,000 federal grant spread over three years. Davenport aldermen continued the practice of meeting five at a time behind closed doors on Tuesday. Aldermen Maria Dickmann, 2nd Ward, Ray Ambrose, 4th Ward, Rita Rawson, 5th Ward, and Kerri Tompkins, 8th Ward, were seen going into a meeting together on the third floor of Davenport City Hall. Aldermen Rick Dunn, 1st Ward, Mike Matson, 7th Ward, and Kyle Gripp, at large, were seen going into a separate meeting that occurred after the first one. The aldermen discuss city business at the meetings, which they call "briefings." The 10 aldermen meet not more than five at a time so as to not violate Iowa's open meetings law. When asked if the Quad-City Times could attend a session, Rawson said, "No." Davenport Mayor Frank Klipsch, Interim City Administrator Corri Spiegel and Bruce Berger, director of Davenport's office of community planning and economic development, were also at the meeting with Dickmann, Ambrose, Rawson and Tompkins. Afterwards, Klipsch was asked if the Times could attend a future briefing. He said the process is still evolving and, instead, invited the reporter to a newly created work session from 3:30 to 5 p.m. Jan. 26 that he said will be open to the public. The mayor did not say specifically when the next briefing was scheduled to occur or if the Times could sit in on it. Aldermen have met at the Tuesday afternoon briefings under former Mayor Bill Gluba and now Klipsch. Briefings have usually been at 1:30 and 3 p.m. and typically last an hour and a half each. The public is not invited to attend the briefings, which are held behind closed doors in the city council office, across the hallway from the mayor's office. Multiple aldermen going in and out of the briefings on Tuesday said they mostly discussed the city's upcoming operating budget. "The downside is we're on a tight budget," Ambrose said. "We are every year. But we're a can-do city. We'll get it figured out." Dunn said he expected to discuss the capital improvement projects budget at his briefing. "Rockingham better be on there," the west-side alderman said. "If it's not, I'll be screaming." Klipsch is continuing the practice of briefings begun by his predecessor. Gluba had said aldermen are briefed about city business the day before city council meetings. He also said the briefings cut down on aldermen arguing with each other during the open council meetings. Meetings that used to go on for three or four hours also got a lot shorter under Gluba, the former mayor would say. After Klipsch was introduced as mayor during the Jan. 6 committee of the whole meeting, his first official city council meeting on Jan. 13 lasted 18 minutes. Just a few years ago, teens from the Rock Island County Extension 4-H program found inspiration when they served a free meal at the countys Township Hall. As Maya Chavez recalls, tacos were the main course, and when they began to run out, the youths were asked by the guests to hand out the ingredients, such as tomatoes and onions. "It was heart-breaking," she said. "They kept coming back for more and we thought, 'this is how hungry people are.'" What has evolved from that experience is the 4-H Teen Hunger Ambassadors, a success story that has found acclaim in Illinois and Missouri and on the national stage in Washington, D.C. Clare VanSpeybroeck remembers an initial exercise on the organization's focus: "We had a game where we got into three groups, named first-, second- and third-class. The first-class group got all the food and drink they wanted, and didnt have to do anything," she said. "I was in the second-class group, and we had to walk twice around the parking lot and got a little bit of clean water. The third-class group had to walk four times around the parking lot, and got 'dirty' water (actually cocoa water). "That really put it in perspective, kind of Third World," said VanSpeybroeck, 16, and a sophomore at Alleman High School, Rock Island. The teens decided they wanted to make a difference with hunger in Milan, home to the Rock Island County Extension Service offices. The Milan community did not offer a similar program, so the project fills a void. "At our first event, we made the food, announced the free meal and invited the community to come," Diane Baker said. Baker is 4-H youth development manager for the Extension Service. The youths brainstorm different meals they'd like to serve each month, and then look at what food donations are on hand, Baker said. Food items are also purchased at River Bend Foodbank, Davenport. "That helps to stretch our food dollars longer. We can do more meals that way." The teens make the meals after school on a Wednesday night, and serve everyone who walks through the door from 4:30-5:30 p.m. on the next Thursday. The meal is served once a month at the Extension office, 321 W. 2nd St., Milan. On a recent Wednesday, teens prepared baked chicken and rice casserole, tortellini, Caesar salad, and fruit crisps for dessert, featuring berry or peach fillings. "Each meal is a little different," Baker said. The teens like to dress up the main dishes to make them more flavorful or nutritious, adding different seasonings, or vegetables. "We've had rave reviews of the casseroles we've made," Baker said. The biggest challenge is the flow of monetary support. The program is run off grant dollars, and Baker said it has had "good support" from the community. Grants so far have come from Community Foundation of the Great River Bend, the Illinois 4-H Foundation and Deere & Co., Moline. The Doris and Victor Day Foundation has supported a food packaging program. For that, the teens prepare rice-based or pasta-based meals and package them for delivery. "That helps to alleviate hunger," Baker said. There are some 20 Teen Hunger Ambassadors in the program, and it is open to anyone who is interested, Baker said. Almost 10 million meals represents a new yearly record at the River Bend Foodbank, Davenport. The actual number of meals 9,882,698 were provided through the food bank in 2015, compared with 7.3 million in 2014, an increase of 34 percent, according to Mike Miller, the organization's executive director. The goal is to help end hunger in a 22-county region of the Quad-Cities, a geographic area that is home to about 1 million individuals, "This is good news, but the need is still out there," Miller said, noting that an estimated 132,000 people in the region remain without enough food to lead a healthy lifestyle. According to a food bank survey, 23 million meals were missed, and not by choice, in the area that includes both eastern Iowa and western Illinois. River Bend Foodbank, founded in 1992, has a goal of tripling the number of meals distributed in the next 10 years. The meals are actually provided by 300 partner agencies, and programs, including the Backpack program, School Pantry program, mobile food pantries, Kids' Cafe, Senior Pantry program and Senior Hunger Initiative. All three of the people seeking the Democratic party's presidential nomination will be in the Quad-Cities on Saturday, including two who will attend the county party's annual fundraising dinner. Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley have scheduled events in Davenport. Clinton and Sanders also plan appearances in Clinton. The biggest political event of the day will be the Scott County Democratic Party's "Red, White and Blue" fundraising dinner at the Starlite Ballroom at the Mississippi Valley Fairgrounds. The dinner will begin at 6 p.m., with the program to begin at 7 p.m. With just a few days to go before the dinner, it wasn't clear who might attend. But Clinton and O'Malley confirmed their attendance Tuesday. There also had been some speculation Sanders might attend, but his campaign confirmed Tuesday he would not be at the dinner, though he will be in the area on Saturday. Scott County Democratic chairman Thom Hart said he's happy that the fundraiser will get two of the three candidates. "I learned a long time ago to appreciate what you have in life. Two out of three, I think, is much more than anyone can hope for," he said Tuesday. Clinton will be at three events in the Quad-City region. At 1:30 p.m., she'll be at a "get out the caucus" event at Eagle Heights Elementary, 1350 Main Ave., Clinton. Doors will open at 12:30 p.m. Then, at 4:30 p.m., she'll be at a labor event at Danceland Ballroom, 501 W. 4th St., Davenport. Doors open at 3 p.m. The Clinton campaign encouraged people to RSVP for those events at her web site. Clinton will be at the fundraising dinner at 6:30 p.m. Sanders will be in Davenport at his campaign field office, 736 Federal St., Suite 2101, for a 1:30 p.m. canvass launch. The event is open just to those who are canvassing for Sanders. After that, the Vermont senator will go to town hall meetings in Clinton and Maquoketa. The first, at 3:30 p.m., will be at the Clinton Masonic Center, 416 S. 1st St., Clinton. Doors open at 2:30 p.m. At 7 p.m., he'll hold another town hall meeting at Centerstone Inn and Suites, 1910 Nairn Drive, Maquoketa. Doors open at 6 p.m. The Sanders campaign also encouraged people to RSVP at the campaign web site. In addition to being at the Scott County fundraising dinner, O'Malley will be in Maquoketa on Saturday. He will be at Brick Tap, 116 W. Pratt St., at 3 p.m. Doors open at 2:45 p.m. DES MOINES Carly Fiorina espoused her anti-abortion credentials Wednesday in Des Moines during a presidential candidate forum hosted by Iowa Right to Life. Fiorina said she believes that life begins at conception and that science will support that belief. She also told personal tales of accompanying her friend who had an abortion and of her husband, whose mother originally wanted an abortion. Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO, has been stuck in the lowest tier in the expansive field of Republican candidates in polling on the race in Iowa. Later Wednesday, she had appearances in Long Grove, Maquoketa and Mount Vernon. She told Wednesdays Right to Life gathering that those personal experiences form her anti-abortion beliefs. She said her friend was offered no options or counseling at the abortion clinic and saw what that did to her emotionally, physically and spiritually. Fiorina also railed against Planned Parenthood, the womens health provider that drew conservatives ire last year when secretly recorded videos showed an employee discussing transfer fees for delivering fetal tissue for research. No one has been a louder speaker of the truth on this issue than Carly Fiorina, Fiorina said. Iowa Right to Life Executive Director Jennifer Bowen praised Fiorinas positions on abortion issues. As Ive gotten to know her, the things that you read about her, theyre true. The good stuff, Bowen said. She is so pro-life, shes pro-woman. Because we know that pro-life and pro-woman do go hand in hand. Fiorina pushed back at the suggestion that it is an extreme view to believe life begins at conception. I am sick and tired of being told that those of us who believe life begins at conception are extreme, she said, adding later, The truth is Americans have found common ground. A vast majority of Americans now agree theres no reason at all to permit abortions after five months (of pregnancy). Speaking to reporters after the event, Fiorina said she thinks her campaign will surprise people by outperforming her poll numbers. Ive exceeded expectations every step of the way, Fiorina said. The truth is I have come from further behind than anyone else running. So I need to continue to exceed expectations. NORWALK, Iowa Spending a second consecutive day in Iowa a rarity for him in the campaign presidential candidate Donald Trump on Wednesday continued to assail fellow Republican front-runner Ted Cruz, sustaining the heat on the competitive GOP race in the first-in-the-nation caucus state. Trump raised questions of whether Cruz, who was born in Canada, is eligible to serve as president and criticized his ties to the banking firm Goldman Sachs. So hes got a double problem, Trump said. Trumps newly minted supporter, former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, did not speak at Wednesdays event, despite campaign promotions saying Trumps special guest would be there. Palin was scheduled to appear with Trump at an event later Wednesday in Oklahoma. Trumps campaign spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment. Palin appeared with Trump on Tuesday night in Ames, praising him as someone new who has the power and is in the position to bust up that (political) establishment and make things great again. During Trumps remarks Wednesday in Norwalk, he gave his usual stump speech and devoted some time to lambasting the media, at one point breaking from his remarks to ask a television camera operator why his camera was pointed in the direction it was. But Trumps biggest target was Cruz, the U.S. senator from Texas who has overtaken Trump for the lead in recent polling on the GOP race in Iowa. One of Trumps biggest selling points to potential supporters is that because of his wealth he is largely able to fund his own campaign and thus is not beholden to donors. Trump coupled that with his criticism of Cruz and in particular Cruzs personal loan that he used to help fund his 2012 Senate campaign and that was underwritten by Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs owns (Cruz). Remember that, folks. They own him, Trump said. Its wrong. Its wrong. Its really wrong. Whats he going to do, be tough on Goldman Sachs when he has a personal guarantee (loan) for $1 million? Trump also expressed doubt that Cruz is eligible to serve as president and claimed those who are opposed to a Cruz presidency may file lawsuits if he becomes the Republican nominee or wins the 2016 general election. Most legal experts agree Cruz, whose mother was a U.S. citizen at his birth, is eligible to serve as president. Trump continued to pile on Cruz, noting Republican Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad on Tuesday said he does not want Cruz to win the Iowa caucuses because of Cruzs desire to phase out the federal ethanol mandate. You have a great governor in this state. For him to come out with that statement, that was a big statement, Trump said. (Tuesday) was two wins. You had Sarah Palin, and you had that statement. (Tuesday) was a good day for Trump. DES MOINES Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad said it will be tragic if Ted Cruz wins the state's first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses because the U.S. senator from Texas has opposed the federal ethanol mandate that benefits Iowas agricultural economy. Branstad has pledged to remain neutral in the Republican presidential primary race, but on Tuesday said he believes it would be a mistake for Iowans to support Cruz because of his position on the ethanol mandate. Cruz has said he opposes all government subsidies and mandates, including the Renewable Fuel Standard, which requires the nations fuel supply include a percentage of corn-based ethanol. Cruz is engaged in a close race for the lead in Iowa with Donald Trump, according to recent polls on the race here. Ive been a strong supporter of renewable energy from the beginning, and Im really disappointed that (Cruz) recommended terminating the Renewable Fuel Standard, Branstad said. I think that would be really detrimental to the Iowa economy, costing us a lot of jobs and really hurting Iowa farmers, as well as all the people we have in the renewable fuel industry. Ethanol supporters have been dogging Cruz through the state recently, including an advocacy group that is led by the governor's son, Eric. In 2013, Cruz co-sponsored a bill that would immediately terminate the Renewable Fuel Standard. But a year later, he introduced his own bill that would phase it out over five years. Currently, the law sets targets for use of renewable fuels through 2022. Campaigning in New Hampshire, Cruz responded to reporters asking about Branstad's statement, saying it's a sign the establishment is "in full panic mode." "We said from the beginning that the Washington cartel was going to panic more and more. As conservatives unite behind our campaign, you're going to see the Washington cartel firing every shot they can, every cannon they can. Because the Washington cartel lives on cronyism. It lives on making deals. It lives on picking winners and losers and supporting corporate welfare," Cruz said. Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican, labeled Branstads comments an endorsement, saying the governor is, by default, supporting Trump. King has endorsed Cruz. Branstad said his comments are not an endorsement of Trump. Im not endorsing anybody. But I am the governor of Iowa, and I think I need to stand up for the interests of my state, Branstad said. I know (Cruz) is ahead in the polls, but I think it would be tragic if somebody that wants to dismantle the renewable energy standard were to win the Iowa caucuses, because I think that would be looked at that Iowans dont care about our Iowa economy and the jobs that are related to them. Generally, Branstad has remained neutral, though he did endorse Bob Dole in 1996. But Dave Nagle, the former chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party, said Tuesday he believes Branstad's remarks will hurt the caucuses. Nagle says that there have been elected officials who have endorsed candidates. Former Sen. Tom Harkin endorsed Howard Dean in 2004. "But we don't blackball people," Nagle said. Matt Strawn, a former Republican Party of Iowa, shrugged off the notion the caucuses could be damaged by the governor's declaration. I dont think it has any bearing on that. The governor like any elected official has every right to make his positions known on issues that are important to him," he said. Branstad first made his comments about Cruz on when responding to a reporters question at the Renewable Fuels Summit in nearby Altoona. (The Associated Press contributed to this report). Nikki Haley's 44th birthday is this week. You would think her a little old for fairytales. But a bizarre, little-reported remark the South Carolina governor made last week suggests that, age notwithstanding, Haley lives in Fantasyland, at least insofar as American history is concerned. The comment in question came the day after her Tuesday night speech in response to President Obama's State of the Union address, in which she cuffed Donald Trump for his strident anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant bigotry. Haley told reporters, "When you've got immigrants who are coming here legally, we've never in the history of this country passed any laws or done anything based on race or religion." Some observers found that an astonishing thing for her to say as chief executive of the first state to secede from the Union in defense of slavery, a state that embraced segregation until forced to change by the federal government. Others observed that any fair reading of Haley's quote makes it pretty clear she was speaking only in the context of legal immigration. They're right. The problem is, even if you concede that point, Haley is still grotesquely wrong. She thinks no immigration laws have been passed "based on race or religion"? What about: The Naturalization Act of 1790, which extended citizenship to "any alien, being a free white person..."? Or the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, whose title and intent are self-explanatory? Or the Immigration Act of 1917, which banned immigrants from East Asia and the Pacific? Or Ozawa v. U.S., the 1922 Supreme Court decision which declared that Japanese immigrants could not be naturalized? Or U.S. v. Bhagat Singh Thind, the 1923 high court ruling which said people from India -- like Haley's parents -- could not become naturalized citizens? So yes, however you slice it, Haley is wrong and Haley is ignorant. But one wonders if Haley is to blame. Americans, the historian Ray Arsenault once said, live by "mythic conceptions of what they think happened" in the past. And as school systems, under pressure from conservative school boards, retreat from teaching that which embarrasses the nation's self-image, as ethnic studies classes are outlawed, as textbooks are scrubbed of painfully inconvenient truths, as standards requiring the teaching of only "positive aspects" of American history are imposed, we find those mythic conceptions encroaching reality to a troubling degree. Suddenly, slaves become immigrants and settlers. The Civil War has nothing to do with slavery. Martin Luther King becomes a tea party member. And America has never passed laws "based on race and religion." Yes, Haley's ignorance might be willful. There's surely a lot of that going around. But it might also be that she's simply part of that generation which has been taught fairytales under the guise of history. Such teaching will leave you comfortably indoctrinated in a kind of civic mythology -- and wholly unprepared to interpret or contextualize what's happening before your eyes. To wit: What makes Donald Trump's proposed restrictions on Muslims troubling is not that they represent the coming of something new, but the return of something old, a shameful strain in the American psyche that we have seen too many times before. It is not a deviation from America, but the very stuff of America, an ugly scapegoating that has too often besmirched our character and beguiled us away from our most luminous ideals. This is something all of us should know, but do not. As a state official, perhaps a candidate for vice president, perhaps eventually a president of the United States, Nikki Haley might someday change history. It would be good if she understood it first. Bail has been reduced for three of the four people charged in connection with an October traffic stop that left a South Dakota state trooper badly beaten. Bail for Chase Sukert, 23, Desiree Sukert, 26, and Jonathan Melendez, 22, was reduced to $50,000 apiece during a joint hearing Tuesday at the Pennington County Courthouse in Rapid City. Bail was previously set at $750,000 for Chase Sukert and $1 million apiece for Desiree Sukert and Melendez. Bail for Donald Willingham, 33, remains at $5 million. Three separate local attorneys for the Sukerts and Melendez argued that although the three defendants were present when Trooper Zachary Bader was severely beaten, none directly participated in the beating, and none has a major criminal record. Only Willingham is suspected of assaulting Bader. Pennington County States Attorney Mark Vargo argued against the bail reductions, but Judge Wally Eklund granted them. The Sukerts and Melendez were returned to the county jail immediately after their court appearance, with the knowledge that they could be released for as little as $5,000 apiece if they could obtain a bail bond. The two attorneys for Willingham one local lawyer and one recently admitted to the case from Chicago did not seek a reduction in bail Tuesday. Some routine motions were discussed, and another status hearing was set for all four next month. The Sukerts, who are siblings from Renton, Wash., and Melendez, of Kent, Wash., all face identical charges: possession of marijuana, possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, commission of a felony with a firearm, and being an accessory to a crime. Willingham, of Renton, Wash., faces the same drug and firearm charges plus two more serious charges: attempted first-degree murder and aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer. Maximum prison sentences for each of the various charges range from five to 25 years. The charges stem from an Oct. 24 traffic stop of a Chevy Suburban that all four defendants were riding in on Interstate 90 east of Rapid City. Court documents say Bader noticed the aroma of marijuana emanating from the vehicle. He searched it and identified something that caused him to attempt an arrest. A struggle ensued, and Bader was left incapacitated. The four defendants allegedly fled in the Suburban and ditched some items, including 50 pounds of marijuana and a handgun, off a rural road in Meade County. Their vehicle was eventually spotted behind a hotel in Wall, where they were arrested. Authorities found $30,000 cash in the Suburban. According to a report written by a Pennington County Sheriff's deputy, Willingham, while in custody, admitted hitting Bader. Bader was hospitalized with injuries including broken bones in his face. He was released Nov. 7 and is still recuperating. The 2016 Legislative Session began this week. This year, I am proposing that South Dakota address the issue of teacher pay. We all know that the key to student achievement is an effective teacher. We also know that South Dakotas teacher salaries are lowest in the nation and have been for decades. South Dakota competes with our surrounding states for teachers, and we are falling further behind them. Ten years ago, South Dakotas average teacher salary was about $2,000 behind North Dakota. We were 51st and they were 49th. Montana was 47th and Nebraska was 42nd. Today, we are still closest to North Dakota among our surrounding states. But the gap is $8,000. We still rank 51st. North Dakota moved from 49th to 36th. Montana moved from 47th to 28th. Nebraska moved from 42nd to 32nd. If South Dakota wants to maintain high student achievement, we need a new generation of high quality teachers. To address this need, I am proposing a one half cent increase in the state sales tax. This will fund a new school funding formula that will move South Dakotas average teacher salary from $40,000 to a target average of $48,500. At that level, South Dakota will be competitive with surrounding states. The new funding formula will fund schools based on a target average salary of $48,500 and on a target student-to-teacher ratio for each district. That is not a measure of class size it is a measure of all instructional staff per student. Here is what the state is offering schools: the state will give school districts enough funding to pay the target salary, if the district reaches the target student-to-teacher ratio. This new formula will create a more transparent funding system, based on actual costs. State policymakers will be able to see that schools receive enough money to pay their costs. At the local level, the new formula will lead to informed conversations about how local decisions impact a schools ability to reach the target average salary. As we ask schools to pay teachers more, we must also give them tools to be more efficient. My plan includes several measures to allow schools to become more efficient and save money. An expansion of the Statewide Center for e-Learning at Northern State University will make more high-quality online courses available to students, at no cost to their home schools. The state will also expand successful programs that encourage sharing of services. For example, the state already negotiates centrally for Internet broadband access, and provides that service to schools. This saves schools more than it costs the state. We can expand this approach to other areas, such as purchasing, payroll administration or software licensing. The introduction of new funding also allows the state to correct inequities. Under our current formula, property taxes are equalized across districts, so children receive uniform education, regardless of property values in their districts. However, the formula does not equalize some revenue sources, such as wind farm taxes, bank franchise taxes, the gross receipts tax on utilities and traffic fines. My proposal will treat all of these sources like property taxes, so that all schools are treated fairly. The one half cent will generate $40 million in new revenue beyond our needs, however, so I am also proposing that this excess be dedicated to property tax relief. My plan imposes caps on school reserves funds, and limits future growth of property taxes for capital outlay. These are positive steps that benefit taxpayers and ensure that the funds we spend benefit todays students. We all want what is best for our children. We want to provide them with a quality education. And we know that requires a strong workforce of great teachers. This is the year to act. If Gov. Dennis Daugaards proposal to add a half penny sales tax to help fund South Dakotas schools passes into law, it could bring about $800,000 new money into the Belle Fourche community. Thats what it looks like to Belle Fourche Superintendent Steve Willard after last weeks State of the State proposal by the governor and Willards look at the numbers from Daugaards office staff. On the other hand, Willard said the proposal still has to get through the legislature. Even then, he said, it could be subject to a statewide referendum. Overall, I think the governor has a good plan, Willard said. I commend him for the courage to come out and present it. One advantage to the proposal is that a sales tax is paid by visitors to South Dakota as well as residentsand some of the added sales tax could go to property tax relief as well. Currently school districts in the state are funded through local property taxes and a per-student, per day formula for state funding. If Daugaards proposal does pass the legislature, theres a potential that local school districts could begin to see additional money in by the 2016-17 school year coming from outside the districts real estate taxes and the current state aid formula. Willard said, We just have to see what the Legislature thinks and what the citizens of South Dakota think. Its good for the district and its good for the community because a lot of that money stays here, he said. Willard said overall that the states education funding study acknowledged in Daugaards proposal points out changes in the job market in the state, both in attracting good teachers and in preparing students in local schools. A lot of good teachers are retiring across the state, and we have to have good teachers to fill their shoes, he said. There are so many new jobs out there, he said. Those new types of jobs both challenge schools to compete in the job market, and to prepare students toward that marketplace. Education has to be tied to economic development, Willard said, adding that to have a good workforce, You have to grow it. Belle Fourche school efforts to increase technical education are part of that process, he said. I think people are looking at Belle Fourche, he said. Things are happening in Belle Fourche, good things. Along with a growing retail and manufacturing business base, he said, the community also has increasingly become a tourism destination. Hopefully that positive perception continues, Willard said. He added that if Belle Fourche gets the additional $800,000 proposed by the governor, it would not be an $8,000 raise for each teacher. The target average salary for teachers in South Dakota is $48,500 and will take most school districts a little time to reach, Willard said. The current average salary in the Belle Fourche School District is $38,000. The average will continue to move downward because of veteran teachers retiring and leaving the school systems. The new educational funds will help school districts work toward raising its salary average. Willard said other school employees likely would be included in higher paychecks if the governors proposal passes. He said the school board would have to look at how new funding would be used. Its a lot better problem to have than having to cut $800,000 as we have had to do in the past, Willard said. He added, Every school district will not be guaranteed that level of funding. Another factor to consider in the legislative proposals, Willard said, has to do with school fund reserves. The governors proposal mentions possible caps on school cash reserves. Willard said thats used in Belle Fourche for cash flow to pay bills between when the district receives local tax funding and state aid. Changes on how schools operate with their capital outlay funds also could be in new legislation. Along with the governors proposal, a Democrat counterproposal came from House Minority Leader Spencer Hawley that would add a full one percent state sales tax, except on food, and increase teacher salaries to a $50,000 average. A Chadron man received six months in jail for failing to register his address as a sex offender and another 195 days related to drug charges in Dawes County District Court, Tuesday, Jan. 12. Jason Johnson, 25, of Chadron, received the sentence after pleading guilty in November to one count of felony failure to report for address verification in compliance with the Nebraska Sex Offender Act. Johnson originally faced two Class IV felony charges, but reached a plea agreement with the court. Johnson was also sentenced Jan. 12 for an incident that occurred while he was free on a personal recognizance bond pending the outcome of the above case. In September, Johnson was rearrested for alleged possession of methamphetamine after he reportedly spent a night at home south of Chadron. During Johnsons stay, drugs were discovered by the residents, who contacted Chadron Police. Johnson faced another Class IV felony charge for alleged methamphetamine possession, but was charged with a misdemeanor as part of the plea deal. He was sentenced to 195 days in jail, and a $100 fine for possession of drug paraphernalia. Johnson was also ordered to pay court costs in both matters. In other matters: Jessica Cuny, 22, of Chadron, was arraigned on charges of child abuse and first degree assault, both are felonies. Cuny entered a not guilty plea and a hearing was set for March. Sentencing for Clint Canaday was continued to February after his attorney cited some inconsistencies in a presentence investigation report. A March 22 trial date was set for Marshall Miller, 22, of Chadron, who faces DUI charges stemming from a May 2015 traffic stop. Kyle Mousseau, 19, of Rushville, was arraigned on charges of felony terroristic threats and third degree assault. Mousseau entered a not guilty plea and a hearing was set for March. I have sat back over the last two years or so and watched and listened to public education take a beating from folks around our great state and I cant take it anymore. Ive seen and heard organizations like the Platte Institute, Farm Bureau, and even the State Chamber of Commerce take some cheap shots at us for spending and under-delivering. Heck, even some of our elected officials in the Capitol view public education as a burden. As a career educator that didnt grow up in Nebraska but has been here since 2000, I have come to love and appreciate what our great public school system offers. Did you know that over 86% of Nebraska Public High School students took the ACT in 2014? Their average composite score of 21.7 is the HIGHEST IN THE NATION for states that had 80% or more of their students taking the ACT! Did you know that Nebraska has one of the best high school graduation rates in the nation, with nearly 90% of our seniors graduating? Now, we hear about how our spending is out of control and were the culprit for obscenely high property taxes. Well, we have spending lids and tax levy lids that we are mandated to adhere by. Many of our districts absolutely do have an overreliance on local property taxes and you would have to think that one of the main reasons is that Nebraska ranks #49 in the nation for the percentage of its state budget that goes towards K-12 public education. In 1998-99, right at 32% of the states general fund was spent on K-12 educational aid. During this 2015-16 fiscal year, that percentage has plummeted to 27.6%. It is projected to be even lower in 2016-17. If K-12 aid made up the same percentage of the budget today as it did in 1999, the states general fund support would be over $187 million more than it is. Most states provide significantly more state aid to K-12 schools. In fact, Nebraska would have to increase state aid to K-12 education by more than $700 million just to reach the national average. Here in York, weve seen our state aid go from $3.7 million a few years ago to $1.56 million this year. We are projected to lose another million for 2016-17 and receive just $560,000 in state aid. All the while, our total revenue, which includes state aid, federal monies, special education reimbursement, etc. has only increased by an annual average of just over 2%. We HAVE to increase local property taxes just to make up for the huge losses in state aid. Local school districts are very wary of their spending. They have public board meetings every month where their bills are discussed and approved. Here in York, our spending is so out of control that it has grown by an average of 1.8% over the last six years. What other organizations, businesses, and institutes can say the same? Right at 33% of our spending increase has been for grant funded programming that weve added over the past six years for pre-school, children living in poverty, and before/after school programming. If we didnt have these student needs, we wouldnt have increased our spending! We have lots of room for improvement in every public school district in this state. We will always be a work in progress. It just sickens me that people that have never walked a step in the shoes of our dedicated teachers, support staff, and administrators get to continually put us down. Come visit a high needs special education room and help care for severely disabled students that cant go to the bathroom on their own. Come visit a pre-school or kindergarten room and help provide meaningful instruction for youngsters that havent eaten anything since they left your classroom at 3:15 yesterday. Come deal with the mental health issues we have in our middle and high schools. Come deal with more and more unfunded mandates and school accountability. Come spend a day with your local school administrator and deal with the chaos that often begins before 7:00 AM and ends around 10:00 PM. We do it every day and love it and cant wait to do it again tomorrow! What services do they want us to cut? What are we providing for our students that is so out of line? Well hear an awful lot this legislative session about how under-performing our states public schools are. Folks will be pushing charter schools and vouchers, spending lids, and all kinds of measures that paint public education as the enemy. Were not. Come visit us and see for yourselves! The Jan. 28 appearance at Chadron State College by celebrated livestock handling expert and autism activist Temple Grandin will fulfill a long standing goal of CSC professor Kim Madsen, but it took a nudge from one of her grandchildren to make it happen. This has been a dream of mine for years, said Madsen, the former director of CSCs Child Development center, teaches courses in early childhood education and has a multigenerational family background in ranching. Madsen encountered Grandins autobiographical book Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism while working on a doctorate in the 1990s and said it probably changed my life. I finally figured out, as an adult, how I learn by thinking in pictures, she said. Thats what I weave into my classes. You work with so many different people and you have to know their learning styles. Grandin is a Ph.D. professor of animal science at Colorado State University whose story of professional and academic success has been profiled in books, magazine articles and a 2010 Emmy award winning HBO film starring Claire Danes. Bringing her to CSCs annual Early Childhood conference was Madsens aim for years, but the conference date in February never fit Grandins busy public schedule. About two years ago, Madsens grandson Cody, then an eighth grader, told her he had seen a video about a really neat lady (Grandin) at school and that he would like to meet her. I said Ive tried for a long time to get her here and between the two of us, well make it happen, Madsen said. Grandins celebrity status, enhanced by the HBO film, her TED talks and her selection in 2010 as one of Time magazines 100 Most Influential People, made lining up an appearance a daunting task, but Madsen searched online, contacted Grandins booking agency and finally, about one year ago, managed to secure a date that fit for both Grandin and CSCs class schedule. Madsens grandsons Cody and his brothers Cole and Clay, were included in planning for Grandins appearance, through collaboration with their 4-H Club and a co-sponsorship by the Chadron Public Schools, Madsen said. The CPS chapter of National FFA Organization has helped with publicity for the event and will host Grandin at an evening meal and help with introductions, seating and book signing opportunities. Grandins innovative ideas about humane treatment in handling livestock are a regular topic for the recently revived National FFA Organization club, which has about 40 members, said adviser John Cogdill. They (club members) are pretty excited. We talk about her every year, he said. Grandins daylong visit will include sessions with CSC education and rangeland students, an afternoon talk to 4-H and National FFA Organization members about animal care and treatment and an evening meal with students in the Project Strive/TRIO program, Madsen said. At a 7 p.m. presentation in Memorial Hall that is free and open to the public, Grandin will touch on both topics that have brought her to public attention-humane treatment of livestock and understanding the special abilities and needs of autistic individuals. Fresh from a lengthy phone conversation with Grandin Dec. 21, Madsen was impressed with her flexibility in arrangements for the day. She said I like to be busy. Find things for me to do I want people to hear my story, said Madsen. Grandin also discussed the variety of subjects she plans to address during her visit. Those topics include the importance of time management and early selection of a career path, the need for self-knowledge and the understanding that everyone learns in different ways, Madsen said. The evening talk will incorporate some of Grandins personal story of growing up with autism at a time when it was poorly understood and often diagnosed as an incurable mental illness, and the success she achieved through academics and an empathetic understanding of animals. PIERRE | The state Public Utilities Commission moved closer Tuesday to proposing formal rules regarding stray electrical voltage at dairy facilities in South Dakota. The Legislature established a remediation program last year for solving disagreements between electricity providers and dairy farmers and put the commission in charge of writing the program rules by July 1, 2016. Some experts say stray voltage or current can hurt milk production by dairy cows. The commission met Tuesday to talk with dairy producers, investor-owned utilities and rural electric cooperatives about draft versions of the rules. The commissioners previously received written comments from the various sides. They used the meeting to ask questions and reach consensus in instances when the two sides disagreed. Chris Nelson, commission chairman, said the next step is to formally propose rules. The commissioners voted 3-0 to proceed. The Legislatures Rules Review Committee would need to give its clearance before the rules could take effect. One point of difference Tuesday was whether the testing cycle at a farm should be 24 hours or 48 hours. The South Dakota Dairy Producers prefer 48 hours because there are variations in weather and power load that can affect results of a study, Executive Director Roger Scheibe of Brookings said. The commission chose to proceed with 48 hours, although Nelson said hed like to see statistical reliability evidence. We dont have that, Nelson said, adding that without it he would rather err on the side of a longer testing period. Commissioner Gary Hanson said he would want 72 hours. Water lines can be tested as part of an investigation under the current draft. The South Dakota Rural Electric Association didnt object. Dave Eide, general manager at Codington-Clark Rural Electric, said an investigator would be led back to the water line eventually if there was a problem. We want to find the source of the voltage anyway, and point that out to the dairyman, Eide said. Dairy producers are interested in getting baseline measurements at their farms, Scheibe said. He said South Dakota Rural Electric Association offered the idea last year. Theres only 245 (dairies) in the state. You spread them out to the utilities, I dont think the workload would be that great, Scheibe said. But commissioner Kristie Feigen said it perhaps should be more of a legislative decision because the commission could be reaching beyond its legal authority. Ed Anderson, general manager for the South Dakota Rural Electric Association, agreed with Scheibe that the idea was discussed. Anderson said the response since then from the cooperatives in the association was they werent going to deny a farmer-members request for a baseline test but didnt want to provide them across the board. Pam Bonrud, director of government affairs for NorthWestern Energy in South Dakota, said the cost for the baseline tests shouldnt be the financial responsibility of the investor-owned utilitys other customers. PUC chairman Nelson said hes not sure he wants to make baseline measurements a requirement and certainly not on an annual basis. Fiegen agreed. I dont see a need to put it into our rules, she said. I have never seen our energy providers not working with our customers. Refugees who crossed Norwegian border on bikes deported to Russia report MOSCOW, January 20 (RAPSI) Norway has begun deportation of refugees who tried to get into the country on bikes by illegally crossing the border with Russia, Mashable has reported. On Tuesday, refugees and migrants were deported from the Norwegian town of Kirkenes back to Russia by bus. Which city or cities are marked as their destination is unknown. According to Mashable, Norwegian authorities began limiting number of asylum seekers who try to enter the country. Measures against flow of refugees include deportation of those who crossed Norwegian-Russian border at Storskog without proper visa. In 2015, about 5,500 asylum seekers and migrants entered Norway through Storskog by finding a loophole in Norwegian legislation. It was prohibited to cross the border on foot or by automobile, but people on bicycles were often given a free pass. Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Project On Oct. 3, 2015 I was inducted into an elite club, the Sunday Mountain Club, of which I am honored to be a member. Reaching the top of Sunday Mountain in the Swan Range led by Lee Boman with the Montana Wilderness Association gave incredible views of the Missions, the Bob Marshall Wilderness and the Swan Range itself. I would have little chance for this back in my home state, Virginia. Coming to college in Montana, I have realized how grateful I am for this opportunity and I love to support legislation and programs that would open up more places like this. The Blackfoot Clearwater Stewardship Project (BCSP) is celebrating its 10 year anniversary and we want the Montana delegation to know we support it. Its a wonderful collaborative between diverse stakeholders to protect some of the Montana landscape that we all hold dear. The BCSPs main outcomes are restoration, recreation, and conservation. This is accomplished by funding for stewardship and restoration practices in Seeley Lake, supporting a biomass cogeneration facility, and expanding snowmobile areas in the Seeley Lake area. These outcomes will also bring an increase in jobs and the local economy. Best of all, it will designate 87,000 acres of the Lolo National Forest as wilderness. This project has been a phenomenal collaborative effort for years between many agencies and interest groups for a great cause of expanding wilderness. Please join me in supporting this by letting our congressional delegation know of your support. Sarah Gaulke Missoula redeyeblog.alabama@yahoo.com These actions will result in corrective action facilitated by the blog owner to restore the sanctity and flow of the comments section. RedEye's Rules Harassing, defaming or disparaging fellow commentators. Harassing, defaming or disparaging the blog owner. Deliberately interfering with the natural progress of the thread (derailing, redirecting, etc). Engaging in Internet trolling, including "concern trolling," tone-deaf racial trolling or any other form of trolling behavior. Posting inflammatory or obscene material. Posting comments containing spam links and advertisements. Creating "anonymous" user accounts for the sole purpose of trolling or flaming the comments section. Contact meThese actions will result in corrective action facilitated by the blog owner to restore the sanctity and flow of the comments section.RedEye's Rules I didn't plan or want to start this blog. For three years years I had the privilege and honor of being a front pager at Left in Alabama . Friday, November 13,2009 was my unlucky day because my privileges were revoked. Prior to my privileges being revoked I was constantly being advised how to write, what to write, and finally informed if I wanted freedom of speech I needed to start my own blog.Since I have been *ahem* banned from a total of 4 forums it's a good thing I have my own blog. Billie Holiday sang God bless the child that has his own" , and to quote Ellen Moody, freedom of the press belongs to the woman that has one", so here I am.I didn't leave Left in Alabama, Left in Alabama left me, literally. Despite sincere, begging and groveling I am not allowed to express my opinions there, and that's a pity since it's supposed to be the blog of record for progressive, informed, democrats, but the Righty's have more privileges.I don't have any illusions as to my "influence" or importance in the world, but I love my country, and in my own way I hope to make a difference because I want to make this world we live in a better place for everyone.This sandbox is a blog forpolitics, ideas, and current events. I encourage and welcome your comments, criticism, debate, and discussion. I only ask you to refrain from personal attacks, insults, and name calling of fellow bloggers. Attack the issue(s) not the person. Tolerant people can agree to disagree without being disagreeable.If you want to know more about me, where I stand and what I stand for I invite you to read my writings at Left in Alabama for a historical perspective. Sagarmatha Network Pvt. Ltd. is the organization dedicated in the field of printing, publishing service since 2001. As part of media, we've been publishing Review Nepal, an English medium weekly registered at District Administration Office (DAO) Kathmandu with registration number 130-162-163 and reviewnepal.com as an online digital newspaper, with registration number 849-075-076 at Department of Informational and Broadcasting (DIB) from Kathmandu, Nepal since 2003. RoadDog's RoadLog Blog: Being my travels down those great two lane highways of this nation as well as news I learn about them from media sources. Since I'm also very interested in historic preservation, there will be a lot of that as well. WARNING for European visitors European Union laws require you to give European Union visitors information about cookies used on your blog. In many cases, these laws also require you to obtain consent. As a courtesy, we have added a notice on your blog to explain Google's use of certain Blogger and Google cookies, including use of Google Analytics and AdSense cookies. About this blog In my mid 30s, this blog is about birds (mainly gulls) and birding. I'm normally in southeast London, but travelling in the Western Palearctic and further afield as much as possible. A kid lister still trying to grow up. Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Note that this only concerns my own imagery posted here, not imagery by others which I post with permission (the latter are clearly indicated as such in the subscripts)! Excerpt from United Nations resolution 2222 (XXI) Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies In order to promote international co-operation in the peaceful exploration and use of outer space, States Parties to the Treaty conducting activities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, agree to inform the Secretary-General of the United Nations as well as the public and the international scientific community, to the greatest extent feasible and practicable, of the nature, conduct, locations and results of such activities. On receiving the said information, the Secretary-General of the United Nations should be prepared to disseminate it immediately and effectively. Click On Our Advertisers Ads Most of our ads have links to take you directly to their Websites. Just click on an ad and away you go. This site has been created to facilitate the establishment of a South East Asian biochar interest group. BIG-SEA could provide communication and linkage between biochar researchers, farmers, related industry and supporting organisations, interested in tropically focused biochar industry development. Please get in touch if you are interested in supporting or participating in this effort. Date: Jan 18, 2016 12:16 PM Subject: GREETING Cc: Hi friend, I ' m very sorry that i could not reply your mail on time, it was due to my busy schedule with Hope Worldwide. How are you doing and how is your family? hope all is well with everyone around you? to me i give God the glory for making it possible for us to be alive today. please do not hesitate to share your feelings with me as i have made up my mind to keep a long lasting relationship with you and i believe that the WILL of God will be done. I got a lot of gifts and items from the organizations for Christmas, and your thought just came in my mind and I decided to send some to you as present to you as to initiate our relationship and to effect a positive change in the lives of the less privileged;indigent widows and some natural disaster displaced folks in your Geo political zones or domain. Actually, I do not have need for some of these items so i felt they might be useful to you and to numerous war victims, and less privileged which is the main objective and visions of our organization. And also to assure you that you came first in my priority list of people to benefit on this awesome gesture. I sent the gift yesterday through a friend and a Co_worker by name Rev.Sister Antonia M Dickson, she have traveled with her groups, Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine on a mission for Hope Worldwide Aid support to West Africa Senegal precisely. It is worthy of note that yesterday after participating in a meeting we held, i gave (Rev.Sister Antonia M Dickson) the gift package to deliver to you When she arrives there in Senegal since you didn' t supply me with your postal address and I couldn' t wait for you to do that now because I am on my way to Nepal located in South Asia on a special sponsored Mission of ( Hope Worldwide Aid support ) to Nepal in South Asia. And i may not be able to reply my mails now until i get back to UK because most of the Areas we will visit in Nepal during our stay there will or might not have network coverage after since the earthquake. I believe where Rev.Sister Antonia M Dickson, and her group will be camping in Senegal, might be closer to you or your resident country. You should contact her via email: ( revsisterantonia@hotmail.com ) and if possible discuss with her on phone regarding how to receive your gift package and you should send her your home Address and telephone number through her email OK. Here is her Telephone number ( +221771985483 ) Please don' t laugh at me when you receive the package lol, I know it isn' t much but I sent it from my innermost heart and i believe you will appreciate everything inside the package because it is coming from a special friend and in a special way. I know that you will be in need of these items in one way or the other. The content of the pack are 2 piss of Dell laptops, 2 Pies of Toshiba Laptop computer, i-phones, AN ENVELOPE, piss of Video Camera and some 5500KG jewelries Wrist Watch' s and 3600KG Gold I packed everything in a medium carton and gave it to Rev.Sister Antonia yesterday to deliver it to you because he didn' t travel with much luggage of her own when traveling to Senegal. Open the pack of one of the laptop to bring out the envelop which I put inside, it contains some of my recent photos and that of my family members and a surprise gift which I don' t want to disclose to you till you see it, leaving it at home my brother will do away with then OK. Update me when you receive it, so I will be aware. I will see how i can make a request for you as a volunteer in this organization only if you would be interested? My self and my group will be visiting your country soon. I will get back to you when i come back from Nepal. Yours truly Friend, Dr. Rose Michelle. From: " Dr. Rose Michelle" < rosemichelle39@hotmail.com Date: Jan 18, 2016 12:16 PMSubject: GREETINGCc: Date: Jan 19, 2016 12:52 PM Subject: May the peace of the lord be with you and your family. Cc: Good morning, May the peace of the lord be with you and your family. I ' m Reverend Sister Antonia Dickson, a friend to Dr. Rose Michelle from United Kingdom. Yes my beloved i received a gift on your behalf by your friend from UK. Am here in Senegal for missionary work with (Hope Worldwide Aid support to Senegal with my groups, Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine.) Sorry for my late response, we just arrived here in Senegal and i have been trying to set up our tents in other to start work immediately, the weather here is too hot and we have a lot of places to visit. I have been able to make contact concerning the sending of the gift package which contain 2 Toshiba laptops computer, i-phones,AN ENVELOPE, Video Camera and some jewelries, with photos e.t.c, from your friend. So at this Juncture i will like you to kindly forward me your residence address so that i can ship your package through a shipping courier service company D.H.L. or U.P.S. Meanwhile after our province meeting today, i will be going to the courier service office to make inquiry on how your gift will be deliver to you also i want you to reply me with your contact information. Because i receive an instruction from your friend and i don' t know if it' s you or not,and please your advice is not taken as to hand in your gift to anybody for security reason, Furthermore, in your response Please kindly include all the information that they may need and for my verification about you. (1). Your full names:. . . . . . . . . . (2). Country:. . . . . . . . . . . . (3). Country of residence:. . . . . . . . . (4). Your home/office address:. . . . . . . . . . . (5). Your cell/mobile telephone numbers:. . . . . . (6). Your occupation:. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (7). And a scan copy of your Id or passport if you have it. . . . . . . . . . . (8). Your age:. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Please get in touch with me through my email or direct phone line to enable us discuss further. Phone number.(+221771985483 ) Thanks and remain blessed Rev. Sister Antonia Dickson From: " Rev.sister. Antonia Dickson" < revsisterantonia@hotmail.com Date: Jan 19, 2016 12:52 PMSubject: May the peace of the lord be with you and your family.Cc: If you received a similar letter, please ignore it. Do not answer it. If you do, you will end up on more of the mailing lists used by the criminals behind this fraud. Read more.... Coming to us soon - us as in those living in Palma - will be the Hazte Oir "bus of hate", as it has been branded. The bus is sched... Nicht Ihr Computer? Dann konnen Sie fur die Anmeldung ein Fenster zum privaten Surfen offnen. Weitere Informationen If you are currently a print subscriber but don't have an online account, select this option. You will need to use your 7 digit subscriber account number (with leading zeros) and your last name (in UPPERCASE). New FBI data indicates violent crime up, property crime down in first half of 2015 | Main | Supreme Court, reversing Kansas Supreme Court, finds no Eighth Amendment problems with Kansas capital procedures January 20, 2016 Justified criticisms of Prez Obama's not-so-justified criticisms of proposed mens rea reform This new National Review commentary authored by James Copland and Rafael Mangual, headlined "On Criminal-Justice Reform, Obama Should Practice What He Preaches Civility," levels complaints at the Obama Administration for complaining about mens rea reform efforts in Congress. Here are excerpts: In his final State of the Union address, President Obama expressed his hope to reach across the aisle on what he described as a priority issue: criminal-justice reform. Although we strongly agree with the president that reforming the federal approach to criminal justice should be a priority, he has unfortunately jeopardized such reforms with an uncompromising hostility to Republicans and other Democrats reform ideas.... Following the lead of left-wing advocacy groups including Public Citizen and Think Progress, the White House and the Justice Department almost instantly came out against both criminal-intent bills [introduced in the House and Senate]. A White House official told the Huffington Post that these bills would enable defendants charged with a range of offenses including violent crimes, terrorism, and sexual offenses to potentially escape liability for egregious and harmful conduct. These claims are pure poppycock and completely at odds with the presidents State of the Union call for a rational, constructive, and more elevated debate. To be sure, there might be reasonable critiques of the draft legislation and possible amendments that could create different definitions or standards just as the sentencing reforms supported by President Obama ought to be vetted to make sure that they are not releasing violent criminals back onto the streets. But by drawing a line in the sand against Republican priority reforms and by suggesting that Republican and Democratic legislators who support criminal-intent standards are somehow soft on terrorism or sexual assault the president is hardly being constructive or elevating the debate on criminal-justice reform. In essence, the bill so vehemently opposed by the White House would merely require Congress to be explicit whenever it wishes to criminalize conduct without regard to the intent of the actor. It would prevent courts from assuming from congressional silence that Congress meant to send unknowing violators of a law or regulation to jail, as opposed to merely hitting them with an often-hefty civil fine or penalty. Democrat stalwarts on the House Judiciary Committee, including John Conyers (D., Mich.) and Shelia Jackson Lee (D., Texas), are supporting this reform because they understand its a matter of fundamental fairness. They also understand that it is small businesses and individuals, disproportionately minorities and those less well off, that tend to get unknowingly entangled in the labyrinthine federal code; big businesses and their executives have teams of lawyers to advise them. The fact is that 15 states have explicit default standards for criminal intent like those in the bipartisan task forces bill. Michigan enacted such a reform most recently, in December 2015. The Michigan ACLU spoke in favor of the law, and it passed both houses of the legislature unanimously. If President Obama really does care about getting something done on the issue of criminal-justice reform, he ought to heed his own advice and take a more civil tone in his own contributions to that debate. Its hardly constructive to demonize others positions and adopt a my way or the highway negotiating stance. With Republicans enjoying majorities in both chambers, the criminal-intent piece of the reform effort a product of more than two years effort by a bipartisan task force is especially important if the president truly hopes to achieve meaningful progress toward criminal-justice reform in his remaining year in office. Some recent and older related posts: January 20, 2016 at 10:22 AM | Permalink Comments Be more civil with your "pure poppycock"! I need more evidence of this "uncompromising hostility" but it is amusing that NR thinks Obama is being too conservative on the matter. So, I checked the Public Citizen link and it turns out (my surprise can be imagined) it involved concerns about making it too hard to prosecute corporate wrongdoing and the like. There seems to be a reasonable debate going on here & even if "left-wing advocacy groups" cited by the right-wing advocacy group here are wrong, it surely doesn't look mere poppycock. The whole "demonizing" business is a bit lame too. POTUS is not some saint or something without strong opinions on various matters. He is going to be against some things National Review thinks is good policy. But, until I see evidence he is going to veto this thing unless it isn't changed, etc., "uncompromising hostility" is more of the same b.s. against Obama for being unreasonable. Posted by: Joe | Jan 20, 2016 11:02:00 AM Post a comment Justified criticisms of Prez Obama's not-so-justified criticisms of proposed mens rea reform | Main | Disconcerting backstory apparently explains quick departure of DOJ's Pardon Attorney January 20, 2016 Supreme Court, reversing Kansas Supreme Court, finds no Eighth Amendment problems with Kansas capital procedures Continuing to do significant capital sentencing procedure work at the start of 2016, the Supreme Court this morning handed down an opinion rejecting Eighth Amendment concerns with the way Kansas has imposed some capital sentences. The opinion of the Court in Kansas v. Carr, No. 14-449 (S. Ct. Jan. 20, 2016) (available here), authored by Justice Scalia and joined by every Justice except Justice Sotomayor, is at times quite nuanced in its analysis and at times quite crisp. Here are excerpts from the start and body of the opinion highlighting these realities: The Supreme Court of Kansas vacated the death sentences of Sidney Gleason and brothers Reginald and Jonathan Carr. Gleason killed one of his co-conspirators and her boyfriend to cover up the robbery of an elderly man. The Carrs notorious Wichita crime spree culminated in the brutal rape, robbery, kidnaping, and execution-style shooting of five young men and women. We first consider whether the Constitution required the sentencing courts to instruct the juries that mitigating circumstances need not be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. And second, whether the Constitution required severance of the Carrs joint sentencing proceedings.... As an initial matter, the defendants argument rests on the assumption that it would be unconstitutional to require the defense to prove mitigating circumstances beyond a reasonable doubt. Assuming without deciding that that is the case, the record belies the defendants contention that the instructions caused jurors to apply that standard of proof.... Not once do the instructions say that defense counsel bears the burden of proving the facts constituting a mitigating circumstance beyond a reasonable doubt nor would that make much sense, since one of the mitigating circumstances is (curiously) mercy, which simply is not a factual determination..... The instructions repeatedly told the jurors to consider any mitigating factor, meaning any aspect of the defendants background or the circumstances of their offense. Jurors would not have misunderstood these instructions to prevent their consideration of constitutionally relevant evidence.... Whatever the merits of defendants procedural objections [about a joint sentencing], we will not shoehorn them into the Eighth Amendments prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments. As the United States as amicus curiae intimates, the Eighth Amendment is inapposite when each defendants claim is, at bottom, that the jury considered evidence that would not have been admitted in a severed proceeding, and that the joint trial clouded the jurys consideration of mitigating evidence like mercy. Brief for United States 24, n. 8. As we held in Romano v. Oklahoma, 512 U. S. 1 (1994), it is not the role of the Eighth Amendment to establish a special federal code of evidence governing the admissibility of evidence at capital sentencing proceedings. Id., at 1112. Rather, it is the Due Process Clause that wards off the introduction of unduly prejudicial evidence that would rende[r] the trial fundamentally unfair. Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U. S. 808, 825 (1991); see also Brown v. Sanders, 546 U. S. 212, 220221 (2006). The test prescribed by Romano for a constitutional violation attributable to evidence improperly admitted at a capital-sentencing proceeding is whether the evidence so infected the sentencing proceeding with unfairness as to render the jurys imposition of the death penalty a denial of due process. 512 U. S., at 12. The mere admission of evidence that might not otherwise have been admitted in a severed proceeding does not demand the automatic vacatur of a death sentence. In light of all the evidence presented at the guilt and penalty phases relevant to the jurys sentencing determination, the contention that the admission of mitigating evidence by one brother could have so infected the jurys consideration of the others sentence as to amount to a denial of due process is beyond the pale. January 20, 2016 at 10:44 AM | Permalink Comments Wonder if the back and forth between Scalia and Sotomayor is indicative of how the Court will handle the jurisdictional issue in Montgomery v. Louisiana. Posted by: Da Man | Jan 20, 2016 1:16:05 PM I'd say that Sotomayor mailed in her dissent, but it's so atrocious. Posted by: federalist | Jan 21, 2016 10:05:28 PM The "wise sic] Latina" has certainly polluted the US Reports with lots of opinion diarrhea, but the dissent here is about as bad a legal opinion as one can find. The Carrs committed ghastly crimes--crimes that scream out for the death penalty, if for no other reason than to end the sick satisfaction these savages probably still have. Yet Sotomayor would allow a surviving victim and the victims' families to be cheated out of justice because she thinks that these capital murderers should get a hook up from a court that couldn't get the law right. Someone will correct me if I am wrong, but didn't Sotomayor affirm the empathy standard? Well where is her empathy for Holly (the surviving victim)? We're not talking about law here---we're talking about prudence--the issue wasn't whether the Kansas Supreme Court erred--even Sotomayor doesn't really argue that--she just says that the case shouldn't have been taken. Apparently, Holly having to re-tstify isn't a reason for this "Justice" to have a little empathy. "I see no reason to intervene in cases like these"--what a sick sick woman. Posted by: federalist | Jan 23, 2016 9:46:43 AM Post a comment This well-established Blog is worth visiting on a regular basis for a wealth of information of interest to Armenian nationals and to the Armenian Diaspora world-wide. Although it has a particular role in promoting international recognition of the Genocide, the Blog encompasses much more and includes many articles of general appeal to all those concerned with Armenian affairs. Much of the content is difficult or impossible to find elsewhere and the long list of links provided gives easy access to a plethora of material on social, political, religious, educational and cultural matters, and many news items from around the world. Mayor Ed Lee and Supervisor Jane Kim have been duking it out over the future of affordable housing in San Francisco for months. Yesterday, the battle went even more public as both Kim and Lee submitted competing measures for the upcoming June ballot. Both measures give the Board of Supervisors the power to decide below-market-rate housing percentages in new developments, but Kim's measure sets a floor of 25 percent BMR housing that the Board could never dip below. Yesterday was the deadline to submit ballot measures, and both Lee's and Kim's snuck in right before the final hour. Lee moved first, with Kim's measure going in just four minutes later. That doesn't mean that two measures will ultimately end up on the ballot, however. As SFGate points out, ballot measures are often used as bargaining chips in political games, and there is still time for negotiations. Either side could pull its measure by March 4. No matter what happens, it seems as if voters will almost definitely get a say on affordable housing this June. Proposal for More Affordable Housing Moves Ahead [Curbed SF] Dueling S.F. Housing Measures Submitted for June Ballot [SFGate] The five SFPD officers who fired on and killed Mario Woods, a 26-year-old black man in San Francisco's Bayview neighborhood, have been cleared to return to work by a Police Department panel and Police Chief Greg Suhr. The Chronicle reports that while three investigations into Woods' death continue one internal, a second from from the DA's office, and a third from the Office of Citizens Complaints (with a fourth from the Department of Justice requested by the Board of Supervisors and the SFPD) those officers have been placed on desk duty. The SFPD management panel, a seven-member body, recommended that the officers return to work, to which Suhr says he concurred and placed them on administrative duties. Meanwhile, the San Francisco Police Officers Association is calling on its membership to support the officers at tonight's commission meeting. Officer Shante Williams, who will attend, says that People are screaming justice for Mario Woods, but you have to understand that less than 30 minutes before this, he stabbed a man unprovoked, Ironically presuming Wood's guilt but his colleagues innocence, Williams added that some are pretty much passing judgment on us as guilty until proven innocent, Williams is black, and maintains that race had nothing to do with the move to fire on Woods. Of the five officers who shot Woods, one is white, one is Asian American, one is Latino, and one is black and Filipino American. We dont go out looking for color we go out looking for criminal activity, Williams said. We are not out there racial profiling. The Examiner reports that on January 16, all active Police Officers Association members received a letter requesting they attend tonight's meeting. The entreaty hopes to gather a a strong showing Wednesday night to ensure the commission remains impartial despite attacks on law enforcement from some politicians and others." Wrote Union president Martin Halloran, I am writing to all active POA members to request a show of support by officers at the next police commission meeting. We are asking our members to show support for our brothers and sisters involved in the recent officer involved shootings in the Bayview district.. Our profession is under attack nationally, and especially here in San Francisco. Halloran has said of the Wood's killing that these officers were forced into an impossible situation with an armed suspect who allegedly stabbed an innocent victim less than a half hour earlier. These officers exhausted all forms of less lethal force and were forced, by the suspect, to discharge their firearms. The Police Officers Association has also launched a radio ad campaign in which Halloran says minus the allegedly "San Francisco trains more officers in cutting edge de-escalation techniques than anyone, but the recent shooting death in the Bayview showed how tragedies still happen. The deceased stabbed a citizen, he ignored all de-escalation efforts, and he refused to drop his knife. Almost all the officers involved in this incident were minorities. We call for a fact-based debate on the future of law enforcement, not a politically driven one." Earlier this week, the Chron's C.W. Nevius called out Halloran for his earlier incendiary comments about the Woods case, which have only made life harder for Suhr. Halloran wrote in the POA Journal, that local politicians "followed the other sheep blindly down the path of political expediency and made uninformed, ignorant and at times derogatory and inflammatory public statements" about the cops involved. Related: Two SFPD Officers Who Shot Mario Woods Previously Faced Excessive-Force Lawsuits San Francisco may not be known as the City of Lights (thanks, fog) but January 30th will elevate our status in the illumination department when 25,000 LEDs return to the Bay Bridge. Electricians and construction workers began re-installing conceptual artist Leo Villareal's programmatically dancing light show back in October, and it's nearly ready to go live again after nearly a year of darkness and a brief bit of testing last month. After what was to be a two year run, they twinkled out last March. According to the installation's website, the Bay Lights will flip on at 7:25 p.m. "and remain forever brilliant." That's an allusion to the plan to keep the installation going strong for at least a decade with funds from Caltrans and Illuminate the Arts, who raised $4 million for the materials and other costs according to KRON4. Their triumphant return is timed to the Super Bowl, an event being welcomed as the "America's Cup of 2016." I kid, but hey, at least the lights are back. Previously: When The Lights Go Down In The City: A Few Great Bay Lights Videos A man thought to be the oldest in the world, who lived through three centuries of wars, presidents, social change, and technological advancements, died yesterday in Oakland.Rest in peace, Andrew Hatch. Posted by ABC7 News on Tuesday, January 19, 2016 The man believed to be though not officially documented the oldest living person on earth, 117-year-old Andrew Hatch of Oakland, California, just departed the planet. Having lived partly in three centuries, Hatch was a member of a very tiny club, and his passing marks one of the last we'll know of people who were alive in both the 19th Century and our contemporary time. The official oldest living person is now Brooklyn resident Susannah Mushatt Jones, who is 116 and will turn 117 in July. She was born in 1899, and moved to New York during the Roaring Twenties. As the Contra Costa Times reports, Hatch only lacked the official designation, though he'd been featured in multiple publications over the last decade as one of the world's "supercentenarians." At the time of his passing, Hatch, born in Louisiana Oct. 7, 1898, was likely the oldest man in the country, if not the world. And though he had decades' worth of driver's licenses and work-permit cards displaying his age, he didn't have a birth certificate. Birth records for African-Americans in the South were scarce in the late 19th century, so he was never officially listed as "oldest man" by the Gerontology Research Group, which tracks longevity. Hatch lived through nearly every stage of the civil rights struggles of African Americans, and in recent years could always be seen wearing an Obama ballcap he still rolled through the streets of downtown Oakland daily on his scooter up to the age of 115. In 1971, at the age of 73, he survived an apartment fire in West Oakland after which he lost a couple of fingers after hanging from a burning ledge. He had lived in Oakland since 1933, before which he did stints in Louisiana, Texas, and then Africa, Europe, and Canada as a merchant marine. In Texas, he recounted being jailed in his early 20's for the "reckless eyeballing" of a pretty white woman. Using his lock-picking skills, he escaped, hopped a boxcar to Mexico and spent a couple of years down there too. As NBC Bay Area points out, he died on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf met him last year, just after his 117th birthday and found him "amazingly lucid," and President Obama had been sending him birthday letters every year since 2008. VISION: Better Tomorrows' vision is that all communities are strong, healthy, and comprised of people who are self-sufficient and successful. MISSION: Better Tomorrows mission is to empower individuals, families, and neighborhoods to thrive. WHAT WE DO: The Better Tomorrows impact-driven social service model is aimed at fostering economic stability, educational success, healthy lifestyles and strong communities. By providing a continuum of direct support to affordable housing residents and the neighboring communities, Better Tomorrows place-based programming and case management build safe and nurturing environments and uplift youth, adults, families, and seniors. "This government never furthered any enterprise but by the alacrity with which it got out of the way." Henry David Thoreau "Free association . . . the only true form of society." Pierre-Joseph Proudhon SIOUX CITY | The importance and history of the Iowa caucuses will be on display at Morningside College. From Jan. 30 to Feb. 13, the State Historical Museum of Iowa will bring its traveling display about Iowa caucuses First in the Nation to the colleges Hickman-Johnson-Furrow Learning Center. The display features images and clips from past caucuses and some historical caucus artifacts, exploring the history of the caucuses from 1972 to 2012. It also explains why Iowa holds the first caucuses in the nation. The Hickman-Johnson-Furrow Learning Center is open from 7:30 a.m. to midnight on Monday through Thursday; 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday; 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday; and 1 p.m. to midnight on Sunday. SIOUX CITY | CenturyLink shut down its call center in Sioux City Friday, displacing the last 47 employees at a once-vaunted customer service facility originally envisioned to house nearly 500 workers. CenturyLink, a Monroe, Louisiana-based communications firm, announced the closure in October, giving the notification required under a union contract with its hourly workers. Of the 47 workers left, 39 were represented by the Communications Workers of America, said Nancy DeVinay-McNeley, a regional CenturyLink spokeswoman. Workers at the center assisted customers with CenturyLink services such as local phone and high-speed Internet. Qwest Communications, which CenturyLink acquired in a $24 billion deal in 2011, opened the center in 2005. State and local leaders spent months courting Qwest, which considered several other sites in its 14-state territory. A bevy of high-level officials, led by then-Gov. Tom Vilsack, announced the project at a March 4, 2005, news conference. Company officials pledged to create 468 jobs in return for more than $2.5 million in state and local incentives to renovate the office space, buy equipment and train workers. At the time, the package included a $100,000 forgivable loan from the Siouxland Initiative, and about $225,000 of forgivable loans from the city of Sioux City. After an initial surge of hiring, the number of workers at the call center reportedly exceeded 400. In subsequent years, employment fell as the operation battled turnover, industry pressures and competition from other local call centers. By 2012, after CenturyLink had taken over the Sioux City center, employment reportedly stood at around 275. DeVinay-McNeley said the closure is part of CenturyLink's ongoing efforts to remain competitive by reducing cost structure and achieve operational efficiencies. Work at the Sioux City center will be transferred to a customer contract center in Midvale, Utah, she said. The former Sioux City workers were invited to transfer to Utah or apply for other positions within the company, DeVinay-McNeley said. They also are eligible for severance packages, based on provisions spelled out in the union contract, or, in the case of non-union workers, length of employment. Local officials pointed out that former CenturyLink workers who opt to stay in the region have plenty of options. Unemployment is low and a number of other metro area call centers are hiring. CenturyLink leased its space in the Expedition Business Center, located near Sioux Gateway Airport. The 50,000-square-foot building, equipped with fiber optic cable and other technology, was built in 1999 by SOSINC Communications. SOSINC, which made voice-over Internet network equipment, went out of business in 2001. SIOUX CITY | Frank R Hansel, 89, beloved husband, father and grandfather, of Springdale, Ark., formerly of Sioux City, passed away on Jan. 19, 2016. Graveside services will be 10 a.m. Friday in Fayetteville National Cemetery, Fayetteville, Ark., with military rites. Arrangements are under the direction of Sisco Funeral Chapel in Springdale. Online condolences may be sent to siscofuneral.com. Frank was born on Feb. 26, 1926, in Sioux City, Iowa. Frank was very proud to have served in the U.S. Army during World War II. He truly enjoyed his final trip to see all the memorials in Washington, D.C. thanks to the generosity of Tyson Foods and Wal-Mart for the Honor Flight, it touched his heart and his soul. He married Audrey Moser on April 24, 1948. Frank is survived by his wife, Audrey of Springdale; daughter, Linda L. Bennier and husband, John of Springdale; granddaughter, Heather Jean Meckem and husband, John of Springdale; grandson, Gary L. Bennier and wife, Angel of Sioux City; great-grandchildren, Jacob Meckem and wife, Jodi of Bethel Heights, Ark., Jordan Meckem and wife, Emily of Fayetteville, Jenna F. Meckem of Springdale, Lauren, Chandler and Aspen Bennier from Sioux City; and several nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by his parents, John and Lucy Hansel; and his brothers and sisters. The Hansel and Bennier families would like to express our deepest appreciation to the doctors, nurses and staff of Fayetteville Health and Rehabilitation Center. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Regional National Cemetery Improvement Corp, P.O. Box 4221, Fayetteville, Arkansas 72702. SIOUX CITY | A Sioux City murder trial has been continued to this summer in order to give defense attorneys more time to prepare for trial. District Judge Jeffrey Neary on Tuesday scheduled Timothy Schroeder's trial for July 12 in Woodbury County District Court. His trial had been scheduled for Feb. 16. Neary agreed last week to continue the trial after a status conference with attorneys. The continuance will give Schroeder's attorneys, public defenders Jennifer Solberg and Lydia Davis, more time to prepare their case. Both were appointed to represent Schroeder in late September after Schroeder's previous attorney was removed. Schroeder, 30, of Sioux City, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, going armed with intent and being a felon in possession of a firearm. He is accused of the Jan. 9, 2015, shooting death of Dustin Wilder, 29, of Sloan, Iowa. According to court documents, Wilder left the Sloan tap early in the morning with Schroeder and his wife, Amanda Schroeder, who told investigators that they were in Wilder's house in the 600 block of Buckley Street in Sloan when Timothy Schroeder fired two or three shots with a handgun. Wilder was found unconscious later that morning by a dog sitter and was declared dead at the scene. DES MOINES | Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad said it will be tragic if Ted Cruz wins the state's first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses because the U.S. senator from Texas has opposed the federal ethanol mandate that benefits Iowas agricultural economy. Branstad has pledged to remain neutral in the Republican presidential primary race, but on Tuesday said he believes it would be a mistake for Iowans to support Cruz because of his position on the ethanol mandate. Cruz has said he opposes all government subsidies and mandates, including the Renewable Fuel Standard, which requires that the nations fuel supply include a percentage of corn-based ethanol. Cruz is engaged in a close race for the lead in Iowa with Donald Trump, according to recent polls on the race here. Ive been a strong supporter of renewable energy from the beginning, and Im really disappointed that (Cruz) recommended terminating the Renewable Fuel Standard, Branstad said. I think that would be really detrimental to the Iowa economy, costing us a lot of jobs and really hurting Iowa farmers, as well as all the people we have in the renewable fuel industry. Ethanol supporters have been dogging Cruz through the state recently, including an advocacy group that is led by the governor's son, Eric. In 2013, Cruz co-sponsored a bill that would immediately terminate the Renewable Fuel Standard. But a year later, he introduced his own bill that would phase it out over five years. Currently, the law sets targets for use of renewable fuels through 2022. Campaigning in New Hampshire, Cruz responded to reporters asking about Branstad's statement, saying it's a sign the establishment is "in full panic mode." "We said from the beginning that the Washington cartel was going to panic more and more. As conservatives unite behind our campaign, you're going to see the Washington cartel firing every shot they can, every cannon they can. Because the Washington cartel lives on cronyism. It lives on making deals. It lives on picking winners and losers and supporting corporate welfare," Cruz said. Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican, labeled Branstads comments an endorsement, saying the governor is, by default, supporting Trump. King has endorsed Cruz. Branstad said his comments are not an endorsement of Trump. Im not endorsing anybody. But I am the governor of Iowa, and I think I need to stand up for the interests of my state, Branstad said. I know (Cruz) is ahead in the polls, but I think it would be tragic if somebody that wants to dismantle the renewable energy standard were to win the Iowa caucuses, because I think that would be looked at that Iowans dont care about our Iowa economy and the jobs that are related to them. Generally, Branstad has remained neutral, though he did endorse Bob Dole in 1996. But Dave Nagle, the former chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party, said Tuesday he believes Branstad's remarks will hurt the caucuses. Nagle says that there have been elected officials who have endorsed candidates. Former Sen. Tom Harkin endorsed Howard Dean in 2004. "But we don't blackball people," Nagle said. Matt Strawn, a former Republican Party of Iowa, shrugged off the notion the caucuses could be damaged by the governor's declaration. "I dont think it has any bearing on that. The governor, like any elected official, has every right to make his positions known on issues that are important to him," he said. Branstad first made his comments about Cruz when responding to a reporters question at the Renewable Fuels Summit in nearby Altoona. The Associated Press contributed to this report. SIOUX CITY | A Sioux City bar has received criticism on social media after a weekend incident in which a server denied service to a breastfeeding mother. Amber Kollbaum, 28, of Sioux City said she was at The Diving Elk, 1101 Fourth St., on Jan. 15 with her husband and 9-month-old daughter when the incident occurred. Kollbaum said her child was hungry so she breastfed at their corner table. "She wanted water or something so I decided to nurse her," Kollbaum said. Kollbaum said she ordered a margarita and food. She later attempted to order a glass of wine. She said the waiter denied to get her the wine and told her it was because she had been breastfeeding. On Tuesday, Austin Jeffries, a manager at the bar, said: "It's an issue that's been handled with the mother, and as far as we're concerned, it's been taken care of." He declined to identify the employee involved. "I don't think I was treated poorly. I think I was judged poorly," Kollbaum said. "Maybe he (the server) has an opinion he's firm on. I don't think it's his place to judge my parenting publicly, let alone at all." Caroline Johannes, a Sioux City-based advocate for breastfeeding, said the situation at the bar could have been prevented. She pointed toward proper breastfeeding education. Its just pretty clear the way The Diving Elk handled that situation that theres a need for breastfeeding education for the public, Johannes said. I think its a lack of education and how people dont really understand breastfeeding and how it works. AMES, Iowa | Donald Trump presented to Iowans on Tuesday evening his campaigns newest supporters: former vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin and John Waynes daughter. Speaking at the Hansen Agricultural Student Learning Center on the Iowa State University campus, Trump gave his normal stump speech -- including his reading of the latest polls that show him leading the competition for the Republican nomination for president -- but also yielded the microphone to Palin and Aissa Wayne. He is beholden to no one but we the people. How refreshing, Palin said. He is perfectly positioned to let you make America great again. Wayne also spoke at the event, after initially appearing with Trump earlier Tuesday in Winterset, Iowa, the site of her famous fathers childhood home. Wayne said she is supporting Trump because hes an American, a strong American who loves this country. Hes a strong leader, like John Wayne. And you know what? He tells it like it is. Palin also said Trump tells it like it is, using a phrase that it is a key draw for his supporters. Mike Vaclav, of Ames, who attended Tuesdays rally in Ames, called Trump a very dynamic speaker. Vaclav said he has not yet decided upon a Republican candidate to support, but that Trump is among his top three with Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, who round out the top three GOP candidates in polls on the Iowa race. Vaclav said he came to Tuesdays event to hear Trump for himself. Hes a very dynamic speaker. He makes a good argument, Vaclav said. And Mrs. Palin certainly didnt hold anything back, either. She was quite convincing. Vaclav said he possibly will caucus on Feb. 1, when Iowans begin the process of selecting the next president. His hesitation is what Trump and the other speakers had in mind when they encouraged supporters to caucus for Trump. You have to get to caucus, Trump said. Otherwise weve all wasted our time. Cruz, who has overtaken Trump for the lead in recent polls on the race in Iowa, said on a Des Moines conservative radio show that he calls Palin a friend and will continue to be a big fan. At the end of the day, the decision as to who is a proven conservative, thats a decision thats going to be made by the men and women of Iowa, Cruz said by phone from New Hampshire. And I have faith and trust in the men and women of the state of Iowa that theyre going to hold every candidate accountable -- not just for our campaign rhetoric -- but for our record and I continue to be more and more encouraged every day that Iowa conservatives are uniting behind our campaign. Democrats seized on the opportunity to highlight Palins endorsement of Trump, and attempted to lump the other Republican front-runners with the duo. Even with a record number of candidates and internal calls to become more inclusive as a party, Donald Trump and Sarah Palin remain two of the GOPs most influential leaders. Their divisive rhetoric is now peddled by everyone from Ted Cruz to Marco Rubio, Democratic National Committee national press secretary Mark Paustenbach said in a statement. Americans deserve better than what Trump and Palin have to offer, but it seems like the other Republican candidates would rather follow in their footsteps. Experts and politicians debate whether the U.S. economy has begun to recover. But locally, there's no question that metro-area call centers have continued to flourish and provide a steady employment base for the area. Many call centers that call Siouxland home continue to add jobs and are often hiring. Part of that is because of expanding business. Another part is because of the higher attrition rate that's found in the industry. "The call center industry remains strong, but its greatest challenge may be consistently finding new employees as attrition is generally higher in this industry than in other fields," said Chris McGowan, president of the Siouxland Chamber and The Siouxland Initiative. Siouxland remains a strong location for call centers, McGowan said. "The contact center industry likes Siouxland for several reasons," he said "We are located in the Central Time Zone so we can work both the Eastern and Pacific time zones. We have a strong educational system and above-average language and communication skills. We have a neutral accent or dialect and a competitive cost for employees with industry experience and a strong work ethic." McGowan said with the large number of workers already employed at call centers, it might be hard for more companies to land here. Still, there is ongoing interest. "Although it has slowed considerably in the last year or two, historically this has been one of the industries that frequently considered Siouxland," he said. Those already here have continued to show growth in the past year. CompUSA The computer and electronics seller continues to fill the first floor of its two-story building, which was once used as a retail outlet for computer maker Gateway, at 617 N. Derby Lane in North Sioux City. "We definitely are growing. We will be adding more people this year," said Kevin Neuzil, business sales manager. The company plans to increase its workforce by 45 percent, adding more sales account managers. Neuzil declined to say how many people work there. CompUSA manages accounts through the United States and internationally. It sells IT equipment and services and more than 4 million electronics products, including many leading brands of desktop computers, laptops, monitors, televisions, cell phones and other computer-related equipment. "We actually challenge customers to find something we don't sell," Neuzil said. Alorica One of the larger employers in the area, Chino, Calif.-based Alorica's workforce now numbers between 800 and 1,000 since opening its North Sioux City call center in 2006 in one of Gateway's former buildings. Site director, Mike Freeman said the company, which counts a premier wireless carrier among its chief clients, will grow its contract with an international client later this summer, a move that will require the hiring of additional workers. Alorica workers now answer inbound customer service calls, perform technical assistance and perform some billing- and device-related services. "We still continue to perform real well. We've gotten a lot of accolades from our client," Freeman said. Freeman credits the quality of workers here in Siouxland for the accolades the local call center continues to receive from its client and Alorica, which has 30 domestic call centers and seven international call centers, employing nearly 22,000 people worldwide. CenturyLink The name may be new, but the service is familiar. CenturyLink bought Qwest in April and assumed control over the company's call center in Sioux City's Expedition Business Park near Sioux Gateway Airport. David Slinker, market development manager, said the 175-200 employees at the Sioux City call center continue to handle sales, service and customer retention duties as they did when working for Qwest. Slinker said one of the advantages of the buyout was that CenturyLink gives its local offices more control and decision-making authority rather than most of the decisions coming from corporate headquarters. He said that should lead to CenturyLink having increased visibility in Siouxland through charitable events and volunteer activities. "We've had a good history of doing business in Sioux City," Slinker said. TMone This year promises to be one of expansion for TMone, currently located at 200 S. Derby Lane in North Sioux City. "We have seen an increased demand for service delivery in that market plan. As a result, we are looking to expand," president Anthony Marlowe said. The Iowa City, Iowa-based company opened the North Sioux City call center in 2010. It also operates centers in Iowa City, Des Moines and opened another in Spearfish, S.D., this past year, which was the company's ninth consecutive year of growth, Marlowe said. TMone has traditionally had a large client base in the telecommunications sector and is now adding retail and energy companies to its list of clients, Marlowe said. Stream Global Services About a year ago, Stream Global Services announced plans to lay off 250 employees from its Sergeant Bluff call center. Two weeks later, it reversed that decision and announced it would add more workers after gaining a new consumer electronics client. Joe Thornton, senior director of brand management, said Stream did see that increase in employees last year, a trend that likely will be repeated this year. "Stream has grown in the Sioux City area and surrounding region over the last year, and we anticipate continued growth in employee headcount during 2012 based on new business for our company," Thornton said. Because of agreements with its clients, Thornton said Stream cannot name them. The Sergeant Bluff call center does serve several of Stream's clients, providing customer support, customer care programs and sales. There are many fitness goals out there that we desire. Some of us want to be leaner and others wish to put on muscle mass. The thing is, for you to achieve your fitness goals, you need to 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. Metro Transit Police at WMATA West Falls Church-VT/UVA Station at 7040 Haycock Road in Falls Church VA on Sunday afternoon, 2 September 2013 (Photo: Elvert Barnes Photography via Flickr, (CC BY-SA 2.0)) ANNAPOLIS (Jan. 19, 2016)Paul Wiedefeld, the general manager of WMATA, knows riders don't trust the Metro.Wiedefeld has been in his position since late November, and on Tuesday he briefed Marylands House Environment and Transportation Committee.From a riders perspective, weve lost credibility as an agency, Wiedefeld said.Wiedefeld said he wants to improve both safety and connectivity on the system, which includes installing a 700 megahertz radio system so police and first responders can communicate in the tunnels.The Metrorail System has come under scrutiny after a woman died from respiratory failure when her Metro car filled with toxic smoke outside LEnfant Plaza in January 2015. Issues with the radio signals in the tunnels slowed firefighters response to the incident.The problem is that the entire system needs to be in place before it can be turned on in order to have redundancies, so Wiedefeld anticipated it wouldnt be ready for a few years.Id like to see it a little faster than a few years, said Delegate David Fraser-Hidalgo, D-Montgomery.Wiedefeld said he is working with cell phone carriers to expand reception into the tunnels. Unlike the radio system, cell service can be turned on as the cables are hung, instead of all at the end, so improved cell service will likely come before a radio system.Wiedefeld said Metro will begin that project shortly, once the agency finalizes an agreement with the carriers. He noted that Metro is ahead of other transit systems because there is cell phone service at all of the stations, a feat the New York City subway system has yet to accomplish.Another problem with the Metrorail system is its aging fleet. There are plans to update it with 738 new carsthe 7,000 seriesthat have a moving map display and a PA system throughout the compartment.The problem, Wiedefeld said, is that Metro has only accepted 84 of the cars from the manufacturer, Kawasaki Industries.Theyre not coming off the production line in the state that we want them to, so when they come to us in that condition, were, in effect, doing a lot of design and engineering on those, which is unacceptable, Wiedefeld said.Metro will also be able to purchase parts faster for 70 old rail cars in need of repair by using its own money instead of going through federal procurement procedures.Safety is one of Wiedefelds primary concerns. He says there are now firefighters at every rail operation center, improved tunnel ventilation and regular drills with first responders.Currently, the Federal Transit Authority is overseeing Metro safety, but that is supposed to be handled by an independent body, according to federal regulations. The Metropolitan Safety Office needs to be created with the approval of Maryland, Virginia and District lawmakers. Nationally, states have two years to create an independent body for oversight,according to Wiedefeld.The process of single-tracking certain lines for maintenance midday is also coming under review. In New York City, Wiedefeld said, entire lines or stations will be shut down in order to get in and get out, as opposed to keeping trains running less frequently while work is done on the Metro. He said he hoped the study would produce some suggestions for improvement in the near future.He also noted that the Metro alert system is often wrong, and it should improve once the transit agency starts determining whether trains are on time based on when individual passengers tap in and tap out of stations, as opposed to timing train movements.I think that fixing the system is going to be a long-term project, House Majority Leader Delegate Kumar Barve, D- Montgomery, said. ANNAPOLIS (Jan. 19, 2016)Since 2011, $3.37 million intended to help mitigate pollution in the Chesapeake Bay has been diverted to the state's general fund, but Sen. Bryan Simonaire, R-Anne Arundel, is aiming to stop that.His bill, the Chesapeake and Atlantic Bays 2010 Trust Fund, was introduced to the Senate Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee on Tuesday. It would put a proposed state constitutional amendment before voters that, if approved, would make it increasingly difficult to divert funds from the bay fund to the states general fund or other special funds.Under the bill, a transfer of funds would occur only if the governor declares a state of fiscal emergency and the General Assembly passes legislation approving the decision with at least a three-fifths majority in the House and Senate.Upon its creation in 2008, the bay fund was allotted about 2.3 percent of motor fuel tax revenues and 55 percent of sales and use tax revenues from short-term vehicle rentals. Since then, subsequent legislation has diverted $112.4 million of that revenue from ever reaching the bay fundthe intended purposeand instead allotted it to other funds, according to state data attached to the bill.While the bill would prevent the direct transfer of money from the bay trust fund, it would do nothing to stop the diversion of motor fuel and rental-vehicle sales and use tax revenue.A representative of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation attended the hearing to voice the organizations support for the bill.We promise the people we put that money in the fund for the bay and I think if it's important enough for our roadway funds (to have a lockbox) then it's important enough for our bay, Simonaire said.Another bill would update the Patuxent River Policy Plan, focusing less on regulatory ways to reduce pollution and instead seeking to engage people as stewards of the river, said Mary Kay Sigaty, vice-chair of the Patuxent River Commission.The bill, sponsored by Sen. Joan Carter Conway, D-Baltimore, the chair of the Senate Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee, was met with no opposition and an optimistic outlook for its uncontested passage.After an era of significant regulation, Sigaty said, the updated plan will focus on fostering a sense of appreciation for the states waterways, in hopes that state residents would be mindful of the environmental consequences of their actions.I think you can rest assured that the committee will take care of this, said Sen. Paul Pinsky, D-Prince Georges, the vice-chair of the committee.Conway also introduced legislation that would alter the way 12 out of 15 trustees of the Maryland Environmental Trust are selected. Instead of requiring a unanimous vote from all trustees present at a meetingthe current methodthe governor will select new appointees with the input of the Senate.By virtue of their election, the governor, speaker of the House and president of the Senate are automatically trustees.This is a very magnificent bill; this is a very simplistic bill, Conway said, noting that it would help to improve the diversity, both racial and geographical, among the trustees of the Maryland Environmental Trust. Donna Edwards and Chris Van Hollen. Caricatures by DonkeyHotey with Flickr Creative Commons License. ANNAPOLIS (Jan. 19, 2016)The Democratic primary race to succeed retiring U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski is very tight three months before voting begins. In a poll taken last week, Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Montgomery County got 38% of Democratic voters and Rep. Donna Edwards of Prince George's County got 36%.This election "looks like it's going down to the wire," said pollster Patrick Gonzales, who has been doing political surveys in Maryland for 30 years. "The next three months will be critical," but ultimately he gives a "slight edge to Edwards."Edwards, an African American, does particularly well among African American voters (65%) and in the majority black jurisdictions of Baltimore City (50%) and Prince George's County, her home base (68%). Van Hollen does well on his home turf, Montgomery County (60%), and the rest of the state (49%). (Full poll results here.)On the presidential race in both parties, Maryland voters pretty much follow the national trends. For Democrats, it's Hillary Clinton, 40%; Bernie Sanders, 27%; and Martin O'Malley, 4.5%, with just 18 Democratic voters out of 400 polled supporting the man who governed the state for eight years. For Republicans, it's Donald Trump, 32% (41% of men, 22% of women); Ted Cruz, 15%; Marco Rubio, 14%; Ben Carson, 9%; Chris Christie, 8%; and Jeb Bush, 4%.Gonzales said that "One of the keys to the outcome of this [Senate] contest is how each ultimately performs in their respective geographical base." He noted that "both counties are part of the Washington suburbs, leaving a large portion of the state up for grabs."In a close analysis of the poll number, Gonzales writes:"This election could well test the old axiom in politics that claims 'message trumps money,' because Chris Van Hollen has plenty of money and the proven ability to craft a compelling enough message, as demonstrated by his success 14 years ago, when he took on the 'Kennedy Dynasty' in the Democratic primary for Congress in 2002.""Donna Edwards would wish to replicate her 2008 effort, when she cobbled together a very impressive coalition of influential, progressive groups and community organizations, which translated into broad success on Election Day.""Van Hollens recognition and money advantage have propelled him to a 16 point lead in the Baltimore suburbs, and a 2-to-1 lead (49% to 24%) in the Eastern Shore/Southern Maryland and Western Maryland rural parts of the state. But, while the Baltimore suburbs, Eastern Shore/Southern Maryland, and Western Maryland regions comprise 21 of the 23 counties, they make up less than 50% of the vote in a Democratic primary."Gonzales sees "a bit of gender partiality in play, with Van Hollen leading among men, 45% to 30%, and Edwards ahead with women, 40% to 33%. Come April this will work to Edwards advantage because women make up nearly 60% of the vote in a Democratic primary in Maryland."Reacting to the poll in an email, Van Hollen campaign spokeswoman Bridgett Frey said: "We're pleased that Chris Van Hollen has maintained his lead, despite the million dollar blitz of Super PAC advertising. We're confident that voters are looking for his effective, progressive leadership that gets things done for Maryland families."The poll was taken Jan. 11-16, contacting 819 registered voters by both landline and cell phone. The margin of error is 3.5%, meaning that there is a 95% probability that the figures would fall within this range if all voters were surveyed. Rep. Chris Van Hollen at the Columbia Democratic Club. (Photo: MarylandReporter.com) ANNAPOLIS (Jan. 19, 2016)Rep. Chris Van Hollen may have the biggest campaign chest, the longest list of endorsements and a very slight lead in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in a new poll. But that doesn't mean he doesn't have to do the hard work of wooing political clubs after a long day on Capitol Hill.As Rep. Donna Edwards did in November, Van Hollen trekked to a neighborhood center in Columbia last Wednesday to talk to about 40 people of the Columbia Democratic Club for a two-hour meeting where the questions included varied topics like health care and visas to Putin and income inequality."The stakes are very high" in this race for the seat Sen. Barbara Mikulski is retiring from, Van Hollen told the club. "There is no way Democrats win back the U.S. Senate without winning the Maryland senate seat.""We cannot take anything for granted," said Van Hollen, who represents the 8th Congressional District in Montgomery, Frederick and Carroll counties.One of the biggest chores in the race is how to distinguish himself from Edwards, who shares with him a very liberal record on legislation."You're not going to find significant differences" on that record, but rather than comparing floor votes, "Most of the work is putting together coalitions" to pass legislation.Edwards asked "What kind of fighter do you want?" but Van Hollen said, "I've tried to find common ground whenever possible."He's also gone head-to-head with Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, now the speaker of the House, when he chaired the House Budget Committee and Van Hollen was the ranking Democrat. Unlike Edwards, Van Hollen has had other top leadership roles, including being assistant to the speaker, a position created for him by then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and he was the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.Van Hollen was speaking the night after President Barack Obama gave his last State of the Union speech."He was terrific," Van Hollen said. "I've very proud of President Obama," but "imagine one of the Republican presidential candidates giving the State of the Union in 2017.""I know this presidentI think he's one of the best presidents," Van Hollen said.He's especially proud of the Affordable Care Act, which the GOP candidates deride as Obamacare and voted to abolish or defund 62 times. The last time was the first to get to the president's desk, which Obama promptly vetoed."The Affordable Care Act is one of those things you run for office for," and it was "hard work" to get is passed. "We had a lot of Democrats that didn't want to vote for that thing.""The economy is in much better shape" than it was when Obama took office in 2009, but "while jobs are back, we've seen the consistent stagnation of wages."In response to questions, Van Hollen listed a range of legislation he'd like to achieve: affordable college, a living wage, increasing the minimum wage, reducing mass incarceration, improving federal laws for gun safety, and action on climate change, noting that he is co-chair of the Chesapeake Watershed Caucus."We have a very toxic polarized environment" which he's experienced first-hand since 2012 when large parts of Frederick and Carroll counties were added to his Montgomery County district in order to add more Democrats to the 6th Congressional District and defeat the incumbent Republican."I got the red [GOP] part of Frederick," Van Hollen said, and "Carroll County makes Frederick County look liberal." Van Hollen gets only about 30% of the vote in those areas."We've got to take on the divisive rhetoric," he said, but it's hard to do when Tea Party representatives refuse to compromise. "I'm worried that polarization leads people to tune out.""I stand with the Black Lives Matter movement," Van Hollen said. He supports police body cameras and changes in police training.Asked how he might work with the Democrats running for president, he said, "I'd be happy to work with all of them."Van Hollen clearly had a lot of support at the Columbia club, and seems better organized than Edwards, with staff and volunteers placing lawn signs outside the building.Mary Jo Neville, a retired staff member of the Maryland State Education Association, and her husband William Brown, a retired Montgomery County teacher, are both long-time supporters of Van Hollen.They got to know him as one of the leaders in the state Senate for the massive infusion of school aid in 2002 through the Thornton "Bridge to Excellence" funding."He's terrific," said Neville, and they were happy to vote for him when he ran for Congress that year.The Columbia Democratic Club endorses candidates and supplies volunteers for those they endorse. Paid club membership always swells before the endorsement meeting coming up in March, and club president Josh Friedman said that endorsement could be unpredictable, despite the obvious support for Van Hollen at last week's meeting.He noted that in 1986, the club endorsed then-Gov. Harry Hughes for the Senate seat over then-Rep. Barbara Mikulski, who won and is today the longest serving woman in congressional history. BALTIMORE (Jan. 20, 2016)Capping a months-long undercover investigation, prosecutors with the Attorney Generals Organized Crime Unit obtained indictments from a Baltimore grand jury, charging 26 individuals who were operating as part of five separate drug organizations with allegedly conspiring to distribute heroin and cocaine in Northwest Baltimore. The indictments were announced by Attorney General Brian Frosh; Commissioner Kevin Davis of the Baltimore Police Department; Special Agent in Charge William McMullan of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Baltimore Field Office; United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein; and Baltimore City States Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby. The indictments allege that the drug organization is responsible for daily trafficking of illegal narcotics in neighborhoods near Park Heights Avenue, West Belvedere Avenue, Oakley Avenue, and Pimlico Road. According to the indictments, members of five organizations operating in the area sold heroin and cocaine to undercover officers from early September through late December. Some members are alleged to have used juveniles to make sales; others are alleged to have sold illegal narcotics near neighborhood elementary schools. Search warrants executed last week also led to the recovery of hundreds of vials and bags of heroin and cocaine packaged for distribution, along with a stolen loaded firearm. The area has been subject to gun violence that police say may be related to drug trade in the neighborhood. Many of those charged in the indictments have arrests and convictions for crimes of violence including attempted murder, armed robbery, assault, burglary, and handgun violations. The following indicted individuals are in custody: Nigel Gross, 26, charged with one count of conspiring with others to distribute narcotics, and one count of heroin distribution. Darryl Harris, 18, charged with one count of conspiring with others to distribute narcotics, three counts of cocaine distribution, two counts of distributing narcotics within 1000 feet of a school, and one count of using a minor to distribute narcotics. Tino Hayes, 23, charged with one count of conspiring with others to distribute narcotics, four counts of cocaine distribution, four counts of distributing narcotics within 1000 feet of a school, and one count of using a minor to distribute narcotics. Derrick Holmes, 19, charged with one count of conspiring with others to distribute narcotics, two counts of cocaine distribution, and one count of distributing narcotics within 1000 feet of a school. Christopher Jones, 22, charged with one count of conspiring with others to distribute narcotics, three counts of cocaine distribution, and three counts of distributing narcotics within 1000 feet of a school. Michael Key, Jr., 27, charged with one count of conspiring with others to distribute narcotics, one count of cocaine distribution, and one count of distributing narcotics within 1000 feet of a school. Jaqwuan Owens, 20, charged with one count of conspiring with others to distribute narcotics, one count of cocaine distribution, three counts of heroin distribution, and two counts of distributing narcotics within 1000 feet of a school. Robert Rather, 40, charged with one count of conspiring with others to distribute narcotics, and five counts of heroin distribution. Troy White, 23, charged with one count of conspiring with others to distribute narcotics, and one count of cocaine distribution. These criminal organizations are selling near schools where children go every day to learn, said Attorney General Frosh. I commend the city detectives and federal agents who build these investigations and work with our prosecutors to make our communities safer. I am pleased that as we start a new year our local, state, and federal partnerships remain strong and committed to working together, said Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis. We are collectively showing these criminal organizations that we are working together to impact their drug trade. Attorney General Frosh commended the Baltimore City Police, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the United States Attorneys Office, and the Baltimore City States Attorneys Office for their work in the investigation. Mr. Frosh thanked Katie Dorian, Chief of the Organized Crime Unit, Gary Musgrave, Assistant Attorney General, and troopers from the Maryland State Police assigned to the Organized Crime Unit, which is responsible for the prosecution of this case . An indictment is not a finding of guilt. A person is innocent unless and until proven guilty. A representative indictment is attached. Promotional graphic for the March of Dimes March for Babies campaign. ST. CHARLES, Md. (January 20, 2016)St. Charles Vice President of Public Affairs and Community Relations, Craig Renner, has accepted the role of 2016 March for Babies Co-Chair in Southern Maryland, along with Pat Day, GM of the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs and the New Britain Bees. Renner and Day will play integral roles in raising awareness and funds to advance the lifesaving research, education and programs at the core of the March of Dimes effort to find causes and preventions for preterm birth, birth defects and infant mortality.Craig has played a leadership role in the March of Dimes March for Babies for many years, recognizing the impact that this organization has on providing hope to nearly half a million babies and their families each year, said St. Charles Companies President, Matthew Martin. We appreciate the dedication he has shown and are honored to support his efforts.The March of Dimes is working hard to help women have full-term pregnancies and healthy babies. March for Babies is their largest annual fundraising event. It gives hope to nearly half a million babies born too soon each year in the United States.Premature birth is the leading cause of newborn death. It affects one in eight babies in Maryland, said Renner. We hope everyone comes out to support this years event and helps us raise our goal of $45,000 in new revenue.Last year, more than 1,000 people attended March for Babies in Southern Maryland and raised over $160,000. Renner and Day have committed to raising approximately $45,000 in new revenue as part of this years March for Babies goal of $169,000. They will also focus on recruiting new companies to participate and lead the community in making a difference for the health of moms and babies.We are grateful for both Pat and Craigs commitment and excited to have their continued support of our mission, said Jennifer Abell, Suburban Maryland Division Director for the March of Dimes Maryland-National Capital Area Chapter. Their passion and commitment to helping the smallest and sickest of babies will be a huge driving factor in the success of our event.March for Babies will be held on Sunday, May 1 at Regency Furniture Stadium in Waldorf. Visit www.marchforbabies.org to start a team with co-workers, family and friends or to make a donation.March for Babies 2016 is sponsored locally by the University of Maryland Charles Regional Medical Center, The St. Charles Companies, Southern Maryland Blue Crabs, Calvert Memorial Hospital, SMECO, Outdoor Landscaping Services, Inc., MedStar Southern Maryland Hospital, MedStar St. Marys Hospital, The Apartments of St. Charles, Safeway and Subway. LEONARDTOWN, Md. (Jan. 20, 2016)The St. Mary's County Sheriff's Office released the following incident reports.ATTEMPTED BURGLARY: Unknown suspect(s) attempted to force entry into a residence on the 19000 block of William Franklin Drive in Leonardtown. CASE# 3217-16THEFT: Unknown suspect(s) removed property from a residence on the 49000 block of Cypress Way in Great Mills. CASE# 3290-16THEFT: On January 15, unknown suspect(s) stole money from a victim's purse on the 41000 block of Fenwick Street in Leonardtown. Deputy First Class Teague is investigating the case. CASE# 2554-16RECKLESS ENDANGERMENT: On January 15, deputies responded to the area of Midway Drive for a large disturbance with the possibility of shots fired. A check of the area revealed rounds near a driveway. Deputy First Class Teague is investigating the case. CASE# 2626-16BURGLARY: Unknown suspect(s) attempted entry into a residence on the 18000 block of River Road in Tall Timbers. There was no evidence of entry into the residence, and nothing appeared to be missing. CASE# 2697-16BURGLARY: Unknown suspect(s) entered a business and stole property on the 24000 block of Big Foot Trail in Loveville. CASE# 2885-16THEFT OF MOTOR VEHICLE: Unknown suspect(s) stole a motor vehicle on the 21000 block of Oakley Road in Avenue, during the overnight hours. CASE# 2878-16BURGLARY: Unknown suspect(s) forced entry into a residence and stole property on the 42000 block of St. Johns Road in Hollywood. CASE# 3087-16For the latest missing persons, wanted persons and Crime Solvers cases, visit http://forums.somd.com/threads/306535-Crime-Solvers-Cases-St-Marys A bill that would ban the practice of administering gay conversion therapy to minors in Florida has advanced through the House and Senate. The bills, HB 137 and SB 258 Conversion Therapy, also known as ex-gay therapy, would make it illegal for counselors or any other licensed mental health professionals to perform conversion therapy on anyone under 18. Gay conversion therapy is the practice of trying to change the sexual orientation of individuals from homosexual to heterosexual. Miami Beach Democrat David Richardson, the first openly gay man to be elected as a state representative, is the sponsor of HB 137. Dania Beach Democrat Evan Jenne is the co-sponsor. Lake Worth Democrat Jeff Clemens is the sponsor of the Senate Bill with no co-sponsor so far. Richardson, who has introduced multiple bills dealing with the LGBT community, including HB 1151, which would remove gender specific terms in relation to adoption documents, sponsored a similar bill in 2014. HB 221 and SB 240 Sexual Orientation Change Therapy, both died in committee. In its rejection of conversion therapy, the American Psychological Association [APA] reaffirmed its findings that homosexuality is a normal part of human sexuality and not in need of changing. The APA found that the benefits claimed by those in favor of conversion therapy, such as higher self-esteem and acceptance by others, can be gained through approaches that do not attempt to change sexual orientation. And while no reliable data has been provided that shows conversion therapy succeeds in changing sexual orientation, the APA found that distress and depression were exacerbated. Belief in the hope of sexual orientation change followed by the failure of the treatment was identified as a significant cause of distress and negative self-image. According to the Human Rights Campaign [HRC], California, New Jersey, Oregon and the District of Columbia have already prohibited conversion therapy from being administered to minors and 18 other states, including Florida, have introduced bills to do the same. On its website, the HRC opposes the practice. Many right-wing religious groups promote the concept that an individual can change his or her sexual orientation, either through prayer or other religious efforts, or through so-called reparative or conversion therapy. The limited research on such efforts has disproven their efficacy, and also has indicated that they can be affirmatively harmful. A message left with Richardsons office was not returned in time for publication. Trenches are once again being dug for an Uber war in Tallahassee. The Florida Senate's Banking and Insurance Committee passed a bill requiring drivers for Uber, Lyft and other ride-hailing services to have the same level of insurance as taxi drivers, and to have it all the time. That stands in contrast to model legislation agreed upon by the insurance industry and ride-hailing companies that has already been passed in at least 20 states, and cleared its final committee in the House last week. The House version requires more insurance -- $1 million worth but only when the driver has passengers in the vehicle and the Uber or Lyft app is on. The Senate version was similar until the bill's sponsor, state Sen. David Simmons, R-Altamonte Springs, made the bill more taxi-friendly. "This is a work in progress," Simmons said. "The concern that I have is the citizens of the state of Florida be protected in the event there is an accident. That includes the drivers, it includes the passengers, a person who may be injured who is a pedestrian. It also means a level playing field for the persons who are the stakeholders in this." John Camillo, CEO of Broward's Yellow Cab, praised the Senate bill, saying it clarifies what coverage is required, protects people from uninsured drivers and "goes a long way to creating some parity between taxis and [ride-hailing companies]." But Stephanie Smith, senior public policy manager for Uber, called the Senate version "a dealbreaker." "Our drivers are not 24/7 on the app," she said. "Many of them are less than 10 hours on the app." The House bill is ready for a full floor vote but the Senate version still has two committee hearings to go. After some activists protested a Jewish organization hosting the National LGBTQ Task Forces opening reception for its annual Creating Change Conference this weekend, organizers abruptly cancelled the event. But when other activists and groups protested that decision the Task Force quickly reversed course and un-cancelled the event. I have decided to reverse our decision to cancel the Beyond the Bridge reception hosted by A Wider Bridge with guest speakers from the Jerusalem Open House, said Rea Carey, executive director of the Task Force. It is our belief that when faced with choices, we should move towards our core value of inclusion and opportunities for constructive dialogue and canceling the reception was a mistake. But thats not what Carey said the day before. We cancelled the reception when it became clear to us it would be intensely divisive rather than the community-building, social atmosphere which is the norm for Friday night at the conference, wrote Carey, in a prepared statement. While we welcome robust discourse and political action, given the complexity and deep passions on all sides, we concluded the event wouldnt be productive or meet the stated goals of its organizers. We also have the overarching responsibility to ensure that Creating Change is a safe space for attendees. SFGN sought clarification on what the organization meant by safe space. The Task Force did not respond. A Wider Bridge blasted the initial decision. it is both sad and disgraceful that the organizers of Creating Change decided that there is no place for us in this significant gathering of LGBT leaders from around the U.S. and the world. The Israeli LGBTQ community has something important to add to the global conversation about LGBTQ rights, wrote Arthur Slepian, Executive Director of AWB. We are saddened by what appears to be capitulation to the intimidation of a small number of anti-Israel extremists who want to shut down the voices of those who dont adhere to their rigid and exclusive party line. As LGBTQ people, we are all too familiar with being oppressed through shaming, the closet, and imposed silence, and we see great danger in allowing this kind of censorship and blatant double standard to become the norm in our community. The Task Force has deep roots in South Florida being the hosts of the annual Winter Party that takes place in March in Miami. Last year, for the first time in its 22-year history, the event raised more than $1 million, with reportedly 13,000 people attending. Hava Holzhauer, the Florida regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, commended the Task Forces reversal. Were very pleased to see they reversed their course and took responsibility for the decision in the first place. We really have to commend task force leadership engaging in this process to change their mind, Holzhauer told SFGN. This is a reminder of what makes the Task Force a very important partner [in the fight for] for full freedom and justice for all in the LGBTQ community. Tarab NYC, an LGBT Middle Eastern group in the New York City area, was one of the major groups that called for the initial cancellation of the of the opening reception. But thats not all they wanted. Theyve updated their demands since the reversal. The Creating Change conference re-cancel the reception, and release a public statement attesting to why the reception hosted by A Wider Bridge should be cancelled (specifically, as a move to counter pinkwashing and Zionist efforts in solidarity with the Palestinian people). The Creating Change conference commit to opposing future efforts that promote Zionism and pinkwashing of the illegal occupation of Palestinewhether those efforts appear in workshops, caucuses, plenaries, organizational sponsorships, and more. The National LGBTQ Task Force publicly endorse the Palestinian right of return and the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. Pinkwashing is a term describing a public relations strategy that uses Israel's good record on LGBT rights to deflect from its treatment of the Palestinians. The Creating Change Conference takes place January 20-24 in Chicago and is sponsored by and organized by the Task Force. The annual event, now in its 28th year, is described on its website as the pre-eminent political, leadership and skills-building conference for the LGBT social justice movement. This isnt the first cancellation of this years conference. Last week the Task Force cancelled a panel that included representatives of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. According to the Washington Blade they were scheduled to speak about the detention of LGBT immigrants. We know the decision to accept a proposal from ICE for a session at our Creating Change Conference was the wrong decision and that it has caused hurt and pain to communities and individuals we deeply care about. The decision also could have created a situation where the conference would not have felt like a safe space a vitally important component of what makes the conference special for undocumented immigrants, immigration activists and allies, Carey wrote in a prepared statement. Our commitment to immigrant rights and reform has never wavered, but we know community trust in our commitment has been damaged. We appreciate being held accountable and look forward to continuing this work with immigrant rights colleagues and activists. At last years event Denver Mayor Michael Hancock cancelled his appearance after a group stormed the stage in protest of a recent police shooting that killed a trans teenager. The mayors office told media outlets "protesters were unlikely to let Mayor Hancock deliver his speech." A new bill making its way through the Florida legislature has been described by one public records expert as undoubtedly the worst bill I've seen in all my 25 plus years. Barbara Petersen, president of the First Amendment Foundation, further criticized HB 1021 as an attempt to severely weaken Floridas public records laws. On Wednesday the Florida House bill unanimously passed in the House Government Operations Subcommittee. According to the Florida Sunshine Coalition the bill would make the award of attorneys fees discretionary even when a judge has made a finding that a public agency has wrongfully withheld public records from inspection. Currently if a government agency is found to be at fault that agency will be on the hook for the plaintiffs attorneys fees. The attorney fee provision creates a level playing field for someone who can afford to pay for an attorney and those who cannot, FSC said in a press release. FSC believes that without a guaranteed penalty there is no incentive for the government to be transparent while also decreasing the number of challenges brought by citizens. Rather than reforming the public records law a specious claim by the Florida League of Cities these bills will essentially gut our right to access to government records, FSC wrote. Rand Hoch, founder of the Palm Beach County Human Rights Council, said his organization has filed almost 100 public records requests over the years. And we have had to file dozens to find out why action was not being taken on our requests for law and policy changes, he said. Requiring someone seeking public records to go to court to seek payment of attorneys fees further weakens the public records law, and may actually deter people from taking steps to learn what public entities are doing. We are fortunate that the Florida Sunshine Coalition and the First Amendment Foundation are being proactive in their opposition to this legislation. The Florida Society of News Editors also came out against HB 1021 sending a letter to Rep. Greg Steube, the bills author. There are good reasons to object to public money being spent on legal fees in lawsuits over public records. It is a mistake, however, to think it is cheaper or better public policy to weaken the law that provides successful plaintiffs with the ability to hold bureaucrats accountable, wrote Douglas Ray, president of FSNE. On behalf of journalists in small towns and big cities across Florida, I hope you will see that the urgent risk is not to shield bureaucrats who break the law but to protect citizens who successfully fight for its enforcement. On hot South Florida days, when the temperature rises with the sun and humidity climbs, making one feel like theyre wading through a jungle, many men opt to take off their shirt. Women, on the other hand, cannot. If a man can walk around the street topless, with breasts that are bigger than some, why cant I? asked Donna Newman. Theres days in Florida where its so hot that you just can't stand it, and when I go to my mailbox I see every guy in the neighborhood with no shirt on. Newman, a Go Topless representative in Miami, as well as a priest and guide in the Raelian Movement, is fighting for the right for women to be topless in public. The right for women to be topless is celebrated with protests near Womens Day every August, when women won the right to vote in 1919. Go Topless started with the Raelian religion, which prides itself in the tenant of gender equality. A Raelian leader read about and was motivated by a New York City artist, Phoenix Feeley, who was arrested for walking topless in New York City, even though its been legal since 1992. The city paid her $29,000 in a settlement. Every August, coinciding with the anniversary date of womens right to vote, pro-topless advocates take to the streets baring their chests and breasts. Newman and other Miami activists have done the same on Lincoln Road and Haulover Beach, a nude beach, but are looking for more people to join. We just dont have enough girls that will participate, Newman said. Everybody is too afraid, theyre afraid theyre going to get arrested, theyre afraid theyre going to go to jail, theyre afraid to show their breasts. While the right to bare breasts seems a trivial pursuit to some, it opens up a larger discussion of gender equality and puritanical laws. Advocates argue that if men can freely walk around without a shirt on, why cant women? In the United States in our Constitution, women are supposed to be equal to men, but of course we know we arent, Newman said. You were born naked, you were a child running around the beach naked, and at what point in your life did someone tell you that it was a bad thing? The Go Topless movement also intersects with social medias #FreeTheNipple -- some women have posted photos of themselves topless and photoshopped male nipples over their own -- as well as mothers fighting to breastfeed in public rather than being sent to public bathrooms. Newman reminds people that once, a womans ankle or collarbone was considered indecent and had to be covered up, making them sexualized as well. While participating in the Go Topless walks, she said that men catcalled them and hung out the windows screaming at the crowd as they walked past, in a not supportive way. [Men] need to get over themselves. If they get all excited about seeing a breast, what does that say about them? What kind of control do they not have in their life that they get so sexually aroused by a womans breasts that they have to act like a moron? Newman asked. Once upon a time, however, it was illegal for men to bare their chests in public until 1936 -- men had been protesting the right to take their tops off at the beach for years prior, including four men in Coney Island in 1934 and 42 men in Atlantic City in 1935. In fact, in 1934, a scene in It Happened One Night where Clark Gable takes off his shirt, with no undershirt underneath, caused waves with moviegoers -- the same movie where Claudette Colbert lifts her skirt to expose a leg in order to attract a car to stop for her. What you cant see you want to see, Newman said. Gender doesnt matter. A breast is a breast is a breast. Im not telling every woman to run out in the street and go topless. If youre not comfortable, thats OK. Visit GoTopless.com for more information about the movement, and for more information locally, contact Donna Newman at 305-690-9800 Lesbian Womans Murder Thought to be Homophobia Related (SFGN) The murder of 21-year-old Motshidisi Pasca Melamu is under investigation by police in South Africas Gauteng province, and Eye Witness News reports several activists and rights groups suspect the murder was a hate crime. Melamu, an out lesbian was found mutilated near a school in Evaton North in December. LGBTQ Nation reports that four men have been arrested in connection with Melamus murder. Investigators believe she was subjected to corrective rape, in which men try to cure women of lesbianism by raping them. Melamus cousin said she had often received threats from people in the community. We had accepted her at home. We didnt care what others had to say. I just want police to take action and use these people as an example, to show them that what they did as wrong. Queer Girl Meets World Star Comes Out (SFGN) Rowan Blanchard, the 14-year-old star of Girl Meets World, came out as queer on Twitter. Blanchard went on to say that while shes only ever been attracted to boys, she chooses to identify as queer because shes open to dating any gender in the future. Blanchard added that she would like to see her character, or any character on the show explore bisexuality in the interest of having more LGBTQ representation on TV. The announcement comes after Blanchards essay for Rookie magazine, Sorry Not Sorry: How I quit apologizing for existing. Bisexual Bisexual Jamaican man wins right to stay in the UK (SFGN) After three and a half years fighting attempts to deport him to Jamaica, Orashia Edwards has won the right to stay in the UK. Edwards had been seeking asylum in order to avoid the discrimination he faced in Jamaica for being bisexual. Homosexuality is illegal in Jamaica and many LGBT citizens face the risk of vigilante violence. Edwards pleas for asylum on the grounds of sexuality had been rejected after authorities claimed Edwards was hetero sexual and had just been experimenting with men, Pink News reports. Edwards said in a statement I want to thank everyone who has supported my campaign over the years, none of this would have been possible...Im finally allowed to work so have applied for my National Insurance number and can go get a job and open my own bank account. Things are really looking up for me, Im buzzing. Transgender Mississippi Gang Member Indicted In Transgender Teen's Death (AP) A documented member of the Latin Kings street gang allegedly used a hammer to beat to death a transgender teen who once considered him a boyfriend. A George County grand jury indicted 28-year-old Joshua Vallum in the killing of 17-year-old Mercedes Williamson, of Theodore, Alabama. Williamson's death made national news last year when Caitlyn Jenner remembered her during an acceptance speech for the Arthur Ashe award at the ESPY awards. The Sun Herald reports Vallum was transferred Friday from the East Central Mississippi Correctional Facility to the Jackson County jail to undergo a mental evaluation. He was to return to the prison in Meridian once the examination was completed. Vallum has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the case. The grand jury indicted him on the lessor charge of murder, which carries a maximum penalty of up to life in prison. His trial is set for Feb. 1. Vallum's attorney, David Futch, declined to comment. Hillary Clinton will win Florida says former Broward County Democratic Party Chairman Mitch Ceasar. Ceasar, a member of the Democratic National Committee, sat down with SFGN just prior to the start of the Dolphin Democrats meeting on Jan. 13 at the Pride Center in Wilton Manors. Hillary will win Florida, I have no doubt, Ceasar said. The Clinton familys ties in Florida go back more than 25 years. Ceasar said another race to watch in the Sunshine State is the campaign for Marco Rubios abandoned U.S. Senate seat where Congressmen Patrick E. Murphy and Alan Grayson are competing for the Democratic nod. Grayson has an electability issue, Ceasar said. Hes very outspoken about certain issues. Grayson indeed has made noise recently of bringing a lawsuit forward if U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas wins the Republican Partys nomination for President. Grayson contends because Cruz was born in Canada -- and only recently renounced his Canadian citizenship -- his eligibility to serve as Americas Commander-in-Chief is in doubt. Its a matter for courts to determine and there are legitimate arguments, Grayson told The Hill, when asked about Cruzs eligibility to be President based on the natural-born citizen requirement in the U.S. Constitution. Meanwhile, at the local level, Ceasar is campaigning for Broward Clerk of Courts, seeking to replace the retiring Howard C. Forman. There are currently six candidates filed for the position. In addition to being a practicing attorney and former Broward Democratic Party boss, Ceasar notes he was an early advocate for LGBT rights. It was just automatic for me, Ceasar said. I marched in the some of the early pride parades here not because it was politically advantageous, but because it was the right thing to do. The Islamic militant group ISIS is taking responsibility for the execution of another man accused of being gay, the Daily Mail reports. The murder falls in line in the previous executions: According to the newspaper, members of the group murdered the victim by throwing him off the roof of a tall building in the al-Furta providence of Iraq. Horrific images of the incident soon hit social media. ISIS claimed the man was arrested and subjected to a mock trial at an Islamic court before he was murdered, the Daily Mail writes. In the images posted online, the anonymous victim is walked up a set of stairs to the roof of a building. He is shown to be blindfolded with his hands bound. Guards move him to the edge of the roof before pushing him to his death. There are even images of the man falling. Like in the other executions, a large crowd of civilians and fighters are gathered below the building, waiting to watch man fall. Homosexuality goes against ISIS' Islamic beliefs, who carry out the executions under extreme Shariah law. ISIS has now become notorious for accusing men of being gay and executing them by throwing the victims off the roof of a tall building or stoning them to death. A report from a U.K.-based monitoring group, which was released earlier this month, claimed the terrorist group is responsible for killing at least 25 people believed to be gay. The most recent incident is the second execution of its kind in 2016. The first incident was reported in early January, where ISIS accused a 15-year-old boy of being gay, killing him by throwing him off the roof of a building. The group spared the life of a commander, who allegedly raped the young victim, however. Orion NASA NASAs Orion spacecraft is another step closer to launching on its first mission to deep space atop the agencys Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. On Jan. 13, technicians at Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans finished welding together the primary structure of the Orion spacecraft destined for deep space, marking another important step on the journey to Mars. Weve started off the year with an key step in our process to get ready for Exploration Mission-1, when together Orion and SLS will travel farther than a spacecraft built for humans has ever traveled, said Mike Sarafin, Exploration Mission-1 manager at NASA Headquarters in Washington. This brings us closer to our goal of testing our deep space exploration systems in the proving ground of lunar space before we begin sending astronauts days to weeks from Earth. Welding Orions seven large aluminum pieces, which began in September 2015, involved a meticulous process. Engineers prepared and outfitted each element with strain gauges and wiring to monitor the metal during the process. The pieces were joined using a state-of-the-art process called friction-stir welding, which produces incredibly strong bonds by transforming metals from a solid into a plastic-like state, and then using a rotating pin tool to soften, stir and forge a bond between two metal components to form a uniform welded joint, a vital requirement of next-generation space hardware. The team at Michoud has worked incredibly hard produce a lightweight, yet incredibly durable Orion structure ready for its mission thousands of miles beyond the moon, said Mark Kirasich, Orion program manager. The work to get us to this point has been essential. Orions pressure vessel is the foundation on which all of the spacecrafts systems and subsystems are going to be built and integrated. The pressure vessel provides a sealed environment for astronaut life support in future human-rated crew modules. After final checkouts, technicians will prepare the pressure vessel for shipment to NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida in the agencys Super Guppy aircraft. At Kennedy, it will undergo several tests to ensure the structure is sound before being integrated with other elements of the spacecraft. The uncrewed Exploration Mission-1 will pave the way for future missions with astronauts. During the flight, in which SLS and Orion will launch from NASAs modernized spaceport at Kennedy, the spacecraft will venture to a distant retrograde orbit around the moon. This first exploration mission will allow NASA to use the lunar vicinity as a proving ground to test technologies farther from Earth, and demonstrate it can get to a stable orbit near the moon in order to support sending humans to deep space. CITIZENS of France sent two tonnes of second-hand books to Slovakia. Font size: A - | A + These travelled several thousand kilometres to establish the first Francophone library in Slovakia at the Juraj Fandly Gymnasium in the town of Sala. It was named after a Slovak poet, prose-writer, scriptwriter, dramatic advisor and visual artist, Albert Marencin. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement The library and the mediatheque with more than 3,000 books were ceremonially opened at the end of May 2015 and mostly holds fiction. Young people today read too little and have problems understanding the texts they read, headmaster of the school, Vladimir Takac, told the Pravda daily. In the future, textbooks and non-fiction could be added. The books that came from private collections of donors or from French libraries were sent to Slovakia thanks to Bibliotheques Mediatheques Francophones, the French association of cultural partnership with Francophile countries . The headmaster found space for the books in a special multi-media classroom where foreign languages are taught. He did not want to establish it in some remote corner of the school. The library operates during breaks and it is the students who administer it, Takac said. It is meant mostly for the schools students but cooperation with elementary schools as well as the department of linguistics in Nitra. The French language has been taught at this Sala secondary school for more than 25 years. This school year, one bilingual class has been opened, accepting students with zero knowledge of French language. It has been planned for more than two years in cooperation with the Slovaquitaine association that operates in the French region of Aquitaine, thanks to which a partnership with a French lyceum in Bayonne has been established. We were not satisfied with the idea of a mere school exchange that often shrinks merely to trips abroad, said Gabriela Ziakova, founder and chairwoman of the association. She opined that the Francophone library is a way in which to converge the two different cultural environments. Our secret wish is to see generations grow with an enhanced world view, who will be able to translate our books into foreign languages. Maybe we could even manage to open a library that will offer our translated literature. SLOVAK President Andrej Kiska and his Hungarian counterpart Janos Ader paid homage to 41 Slovak soldiers and one civilian ministry official who were killed in a military aircraft crash in the Hungarian village of Hejce on January 19, 2006. Font size: A - | A + The soldiers were on their way back from a successful mission in Kosovo where they had helped protect peace and security, said Kiska. Weve gathered here to say that we havent forgotten, and never will, Kiska said, as quoted by the TASR newswire. Well pay our greatest respects if we continue with the mission, strive for a good Slovakia and build a good reputation in Slovakia and abroad. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement The two presidents, along with defence ministers Martin Glvac and Istvan Simicsko, laid wreaths at the site of the accident, the Borso hill, and at a memorial at Hejce, where a ceremony was held. NATO Assistant Secretary General for Operations Patrick Turner, representatives of the Slovak and Hungarian armed forces and other institutions, as well as relatives of victims and locals were also present. January 19, 2006, is the blackest day in the modern history of the Slovak armed forces, said Glvac. Its incumbent on us to gather here every year and tell their relatives and friends thank you, Glvac added, as quoted by TASR. I think we owe that to them. Martin Farkas, the sole survivor of the crash, also attended the ceremony. I find it very unfair, because it happened ten years ago, Im alive, have a family, a beautiful daughter while all others were killed and didnt get the chance to live on ... and I dont know who I should be cross with, said Farkas, a member of Slovakias armed forces to this day, as quoted by TASR. The AN-24 military aircraft was carrying 28 soldiers returning from their mission in Kosovo as part of a regular troop rotation, along with seven members of support staff and eight crew members. The crash took place only some five kilometres from the Slovak border. THE NUMBER of jobless in Slovakia is the lowest since March 2009, and it is expected to continue decreasing. Font size: A - | A + The registered unemployment rate in December 2015 amounted to 10.63 percent, down by 0.14 percentage points compared with the previous month. In annual terms, the jobless rate fell by 1.66 percentage points. The average registered unemployment rate in 2015 amounted to 11.50 percent, which is 1.29 percentage points less than in 2015, according to the data of the Central Office of Labour, Social Affairs and Family (UPSVaR). Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement If we sustain this pace, we can attack the magical 10-percent threshold as early as in the summer, Prime Minister Robert Fico said, as quoted by the TASR newswire. For the first time since 1990, the number of jobless in December was not higher than that registered in November, said Labour Minister Jan Richter, as quoted by the SITA newswire. This happened also thanks to projects focused on the unemployed who are without work for more than 12 months, he added. In absolute numbers, the number of jobless ready to take a job immediately stood at 286,825 in December 2015, down by 3,687 compared to November 2015 and by 44,908 people compared to December 2014. The average number of jobless ready to work immediately amounted to 310,220 people last year, UPSVaR data show. The total unemployment rate in December 2015 was 12.40 percent, down by 0.10 percentage points in monthly terms, and by 1.45 percentage points in annual terms. The labour offices registered a total of 334,379 people, a drop of 2,652 people month-on-month, and 39,375 people year-on-year. The jobless rate in December 2015 decreased in all regions, except for Trnava where it rose by 0.02 percentage points. The highest jobless rate remains in Presov Region (15.50 percent), followed by Kosice Region (14.94 percent) and Banska Bystrica Region (14.39 percent), according to UPSVaR. Fico emphasised that the cabinets aim was to focus primarily on young people below 29 years of age and the long-term unemployed, among whom are many Roma people who did not properly complete primary school. He said that the government has succeeded in matching the eurozone average for unemployment. Weve done a great job, Fico said, as quoted by TASR, adding that the Labour Ministry is carrying out successful projects in relation to youth and the long-term unemployed and along with strong economic growth and investments contributes positively to developments in the unemployment rate. THE REPRESENTATIVES of nurses and midwives personally delivered to the Government Office a letter for Prime Minister Robert Fico, in which they call upon him to address the mass resignations of nurses. Head of nurses trade unions Monika Kavecka (second from right) and head of the Slovak Chamber of Nurses and Midwives Iveta Lazorova (third from right) in front of the Government Office (Source: TASR) Font size: A - | A + They were checked by two police patrols, which supervised them until the nurses vacated the premises, the TASR newswire reported. The nurses warn that the real situation bears little resemblance to the sunny picture repeatedly painted by Health Minister Viliam Cislak. They referred to his January 17 performance in the political talk show O 5 Minut 12 (Five to Twelve) broadcast by the public-service RTVS, where he defended the steps adopted by head of Presov hospital Radoslav Cuha, who, for example, called nurses on sick leave back to work or sent inspectors from social insurer Socialna Poistovna to check on them, the SITA newswire reported. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Head of the nurses trade unions Monika Kavecka refused Cislaks claim that nurses misused the situation and asked for sick leave, as reported by SITA. Read also: Read also: Nurses in Presov fail to show for work Read more Once again, we call upon you not to wait for February 1, 2016, when hundreds of nurses will leave Slovak hospitals, but use the weight of your office to intervene now and initiate a meeting with representatives of nurses and midwives ... Despite our interest in talks, since December 1, 2015, the minister has failed to meet us and has showen no willingness to arrive at an agreement, reads the letter, as quoted by TASR. Fico replied that nurses are not being ignored and that the Health Ministry is taking an active approach to negotiations. Further talks are pending, he told a press conference on January 19, as quoted by TASR. He respects the nurses right to a different opinion or some form of protest, although he would not have left the patients if he had been in their shoes. Fico pointed out that an additional 55 million has been earmarked for health workers pay hikes; although he understands that everyone would like to see more on their payslips, as reported by TASR. BUSINESSMAN Miroslav Vyboh, one of Prime Minister Robert Ficos friends, will not face the court in the international corruption case Pandur. Font size: A - | A + This stems from the decision of the Austrian Prosecutors Office after reading the results of an investigation pertaining to the purchase of armoured vehicles for the Czech Republic worth billions of Czech crowns. The only person accused in the case is lobbyist Marek Dalik, former right-hand man of Czech ex-prime minister Mirek Topolanek, the Sme daily reported. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement The investigation is closed, prosecutor Norbert Hauser told the Aktuality.sk website. The prosecution of one Slovak national and one Israeli national was stopped. The prosecutors office found the evidence against the accused men insufficient. Read also: Read also: Two people charged in Pandur case Read more This means that the only person charged in the case remains Dalik, who is being prosecuted in the Czech Republic. He is accused of asking for three payments of 6 million at meetings with representatives of Austrian company Steyr back in 2007 and 2008. The negotiations were allegedly attended also by Vyboh and businessman Lova Drori from Israeli firm Rafael, which was to install the remotely operated devices on Pandur vehicles, Sme wrote. According to the Dennik N daily, two things might have impacted the final decision. First, that the suspicions of corruption were based mostly on testimonies of Steyrs representatives and their written records from meetings. There was no more evidence. Moreover, Vyboh has refuted the accusations. Second, the investigator also complained about the time gap between the case, which happened in 2007, and the investigation, the daily reported. Czech investigative reporter Marek Kroupa, who first wrote about the case, said that nobody has doubted Vybohs presence at meetings. Vyboh himself confirmed it in 2014 when he testified at Daliks trial. SLOVAK Teachers Initiative (ISU) which has declared a strike alert and threatened to organise a full-fledged strike as of January 25, has organised a demonstration that is due to take place on SNP square in Bratislava on that day, at 11:00. Font size: A - | A + Education, Science, Research and Sport Minister Juraj Draxler will meet dissatisfied teachers prior to this demonstration, on January 21. ISU has declared a strike alert due to the long-term ignoring of teachers demands to provide adequate financing of the education system, the TASR newswire wrote. Teachers expect the government and parliament to adopt specific measures to resolve this situation. If they do not, the teachers will launch an unconditional strike. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement More than 5,400 teachers from almost 300 schools have signed up for the strike. Read also: Read also: Minister Draxler: I dont think there will be across-the-board strikes Read more Slovak opposition parties could not care less about teachers, head of the new SKOK party Juraj Miskov said on the same day, speaking after it emerged that only eight MPs had subscribed to SKOKs initiative to hold a special parliamentary session on problems plaguing the education sector and the looming teachers strike. The signatures were provided by Miskov, Daniel Krajcer, Martin Chren, Jozef Kollar (all now with the extra-parliamentary SKOK), fellow independent legislators Magdalena Vasaryova, Viliam Novotny and Ludovit Kanik (all formerly with Slovak Democratic and Christian Union-SDKU), and former Ordinary People and Independent Personalities-OLaNO MP Mikulas Huba. The initiative fell well short of the 30 MPs signatures required for such a session to take place. The initiative of the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) and Most-Hid who opted instead to seek a special session of the parliamentary committee for education, amounts to politicking, TASR quoted Miskov as having said. A nurse at Kosice University Hospital committed suicide in the emergency admission ward during the morning of January 18. Font size: A - | A + The nurse, aged 37, a mother of two, was on duty when she suddenly disappeared. She was eventually found lying in the ladies toilets, having injected herself with a lethal dose of medication, the Korzar daily wrote on its website. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Police are investigating the motivation for her act, which may, or may not, have been connected to the mass resignation of nurses in several hospitals, including those in Kosice. So far, they have only determined that no other person caused her death. The nurse was a true professional, easy to work with, and her death is a big tragedy, Luis Pasteur University Hospital spokeswoman Ladislava Sustova told Korzar. She rejected the claim that the late nurse might have been among those who had filed resignation notices. Representatives of the nurses unions, as well as the police, failed to comment on the case in more detail. Privacy statement: This blog does not share personal information with third parties nor do we store any information about your visit to this blog other than to analyze and optimize your content and reading experience through the use of cookies. You can turn off the use of cookies at anytime by changing your specific browser settings. We are not responsible for republished content from this blog on other blogs or websites without our permission. This privacy policy is subject to change without notice and was last updated on January 1, 2017. If you have any questions feel free to contact Springfield Vermont News directly here: ed44vt@gmail.com Rochester, New York, until a few years ago, had relegated my caffeine fulfillment to iced teas in my friend Dans kitchen. Now dont get me wrongiced tea is deliciousbut this charming, mid-size Rust Belt city, famous for lilacs, contact lenses, and obsolete camera film, had a void. A cold, ceramic void, just waiting to be filled with delicious, hot coffee to help its denizens get through the harsh winter months. As of late 2015, were happy to report that the caffeinated tides have turned in Rochester. Not only are there established specialty cafes, but everything from pop-up cafes and local roasters to folks representing Rochester in the United States Brewers Cup. We offer you here a quick tour of the citys finer coffee offerings, with more surely to come as the taste for quality coffee in Rochester continues to accumulate like a drift of lake-effect snow. Pour Coffee Parlor Pour Coffee Parlor may be Rochesters most chic coffee establishment right now, and not just because it has parlor in the name. Possessing atmosphere both serious and college-town-y, its flagship location (just off of Park Avenue, right behind another coffee shop!) walks the line between a fancy, by-the-cup place and a more democratic coffee hangout with a vintage sofa and lots of laptop camping. Coffee comes from their affiliated roaster, Glen Edith, as well as a cast of rotating outsiders, and is served alongside waffles, nitro cold brew, local beer on draft, and wine. The Pour team recently opened a second location, under the name Glen Edithnamed such as it will only proffer its eponymous beansin the NOTA community. A sleek white Slayer anchors the bar here at the Somerton Street shop, adorned with a tribute to the companys vehicular mascot, the Bean Cruiser, a 1986 Toyota van. Joe Bean Roasters When Joe Bean opened on University Avenue in 2011, it was the first cafe in Rochester to attempt a true specialty, quality coffee service. Its stayed a stronghold, with a decidedly mature approach to preparation and coffee educationdont miss their coffee lab in the back, or their multipage printed menus with brewing descriptors like textural and articulate acidity. Located within a mixed-use building, the shops decor strives toward an Italian-American sensibility. The eye is quickly drawn to a copper Victoria Arduino lever espresso machine on the center island bar, which is surrounded along the walls by high tables and window-view benchesits a vibe that will be more comfortable to some than others; you can totally take your mom. Joe Bean roasts its own, and will be happy to prepare and discuss with you over coffee flights, Chemex brews, siphons, or even a French press. Already a Rochester coffee classic at just under 5 years old. Fuego Humble but growing, and with some of the friendliest staff in town, Fuego dwells in an attention-getting blocky storefront in Rochesters Center City, not far from the soon-to-be-filled, once-majestic Inner Loop expressway. Inside, the coffee bar for now is unassuming: the corrugated metal bar hosts a few intimate seats gathered around a compact array of coffee equipment that packs in a lot of choices. Another two-group Arduino waits in the service of your espresso drinks, while Kalita Wave, Chemex, and AeroPress are available as filter-brewing options. The space is currently undergoing some construction, as it expands seating into the adjacent room (which has actual daylight) for early 2016. The renovation follows the move of roasting operations from the back of the cafes current small space to a separate facility a few miles away, said co-owner Renee Colon, who also operates a second Fuego location with her husband Tony Colon on the Monroe Community College campus. Its been a long time coming, says Renee. We have a lot more room to store green beans and actually roast, and nobody is walking through to use the bathroom. Look for Fuegos expanded space to include food options from local sandwich artists Orange Glory. We trust the added seating wont diminish the tight-knit community feel of this downtown bar, which currently feels like a friendly oasis. Ugly Duck The last stop on our coffee tour of Rochester is a moving targetfor now. Ugly Duck Coffee, a mom-and-pop-up from husband-and-wife team Rory and Cristina Van Grol, has been a going concern in Rochester since Flag Day 2015 (thats June 14, but you knew that). The compact cartwhich fits easily into the same minivan the couple uses to transport their baby son, Wrenhas been popping up around Rochester for regular stints outside restaurants and in the Rochester Public Market, as well as at special events. The minimal cart features a La Marzocco GS/3 andto the confusion of a few, who assume the Van Grols must be strict vegansnondairy milk alternatives, owing to the lack of refrigerated space. Theyre not new to the citys coffee scene, thoughRory started his career in coffee at Providence, RIs New Harvest, before returning to Rochester to work at Joe Beanwhere he can still be found one day a week. That will change soon enough, however, as the Van Grols progress on the buildout of their permanent location in Center City (conveniently just a stones throw from Harts Local Grocers). For Rory, who says he got into specialty coffee over French presses and Magic: The Gathering, being able to highlight New York State roasters like Joe Bean and Gimme! alongside further-flung companies like Madcap and Dogwood is clearly a source of delight. The permanent Ugly Duck location will continue to partner with local food businesses, like Scratch Bakeshop, and will indeed feature dairy productsbut will forgo the beer and wine popularly found in the Flour Citys other cafes. As the Inner Loop is slowly packed high with rubblethe goal being to fulfill city planners dreams of a more accessible, vibrant downtown corethe Van Grols are excited to see what happens. Its almost like theres a neighborhood being built up around this little building, says Cristina. Liz Clayton is the associate editor at Sprudge.com. Read more Liz Clayton on Sprudge. On January 11, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Christine Lagarde, stated that China's economic growth model is in a stage of legitimate and crucial transition and some turbulence should be expected. Yun Sun, a senior associate with the East Asia Program at the Stimson Center, reiterated this assessment to Sputnik on Wednesday, adding that "the sluggish export recovery, the economic restructuring which takes time and pains, the accumulated effects from previous economic policies, the mismanagement of stock market and foreign exchange" are among the main reasons for the slowdown. At the same time, Kerry Brown, director of the Lau China Institute at King's College, London, told Sputnik that this kind of restructuring is actually increasing the quality of the economy. "It is part of the transition to a higher quality, lower growth economic model, and this has been happening for a number of years now. China could not sustain such high GDP growth levels. It is working on producing higher service levels, greater value added, and a different growth model. And this 6.9 percent growth is on a huge economy, rather than the 10 per cent growth in the last few decades which was when China was a smaller economy," Brown said. The director of the Lau China Institute added that China's "era of fast double digit growth is over." Speaking about the governments assessment of the situation, Yun Sun said official Beijing is "more optimistic than many outside observers." "The government seems to believe that [the Silk] Belt and Road will create demand and reinvigorate the economy, but in reality it is much more complicated than that," the senior associate with the East Asia Program at the Stimson Center warned. In 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed the construction of a new Silk Road within the Silk Road Economic Belt initiative to facilitate the direct flow of goods from the Pacific Ocean to the Baltic Sea. The megaproject is intended to connect China with Europe and strengthen economic ties between Asia, Europe and the Gulf states. Those Who Suffer As for 2015, Chinas gross domestic product equates to nearly 16 percent of the worlds economy. When such a heavyweight begins to slow down, other countries will feel the impact, experts believe. "In fact the whole world will see a knock on effect, because China is an engine of demand, and that demand is now clearly slowing," Kerry Brown noted. According to Brown, the counties suffering the most are those that are reliant on Chinese demand for resources, such as Brazil and Australia. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Earlier in the day, Amnesty International said Kurdish militias had destroyed thousands of homes belonging to Arabs in northern Iraq in retaliation for their alleged support of the Islamic State (IS) militant group. The 46-page report documents widespread burning of homes and property in villages and towns in the Nineveh, Kirkuk and Diyala governorates, which Peshmerga forces captured from Daesh militants. "Those who worked on the report compiled it from a unilateral point of view and did not ask the Peshmerga about the contents of the report, whether or not the information was true," Secretary-General of the Kurdistan Regional Government and spokesman for the region's armed forces Jabbar Yawar told Sputnik. The report has been distributed by news agencies and has not been shown to the ministry beforehand, Yawar noted. Bogdan Bezpalko, the deputy director of the Center for Ukrainian and Belarussian Studies at Moscow State University, said that Europe is much more eager to accept refugees from the Middle East and Africa than from Ukraine. "Europe needs Ukraine only for its resources and as a market it needs a semi-colonial state and doesnt care about the people who live there," he said. "It becomes clear when you see how Germans treat the refugees from Africa and the Middle East, even though theres no civil war in some of those countries, unlike Ukraine. This is a fine example of how Europeans really feel about Ukrainians; it shatters all illusions about Europeans treating Ukrainians as equals." Bezpalko also claimed that many Europeans have rather hostile feelings towards the citizens of post-Soviet states like Ukraine. Amid increased tensions between China and the US over land disputes in the South China Sea, new research from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), has called for Washington to bulk up its military fleet in the region and stand up to what it sees as aggressive territorial moves being carried out by Beijing. In order to stand up to China, the CSIS has recommended that the US deploy more nuclear submarines and long-range missiles to the region. "Chinese and North Korean actions are routinely challenging the credibility of US security commitments, and at the current rate of US capability development, the balance of military power in the region is shifting against the United States [] Robust funding is needed to implement the rebalance." MOSCOW (Sputnik)Russian and Jordanian nuclear officials will convene in Amman in February to discuss the construction of Jordans first nuclear power plant, the head of the Jordan Atomic Energy Commission (JAEC) told Sputnik on Wednesday. Russia won a contract to build the NPP in northern Jordan in 2013. An inter-governmental agreement on cooperation was signed in March 2015. "Top decision-making committees have been regularly meeting to discuss the NPP [construction] every six months. The last meeting was held in October in Moscow, the next one is due next month in Amman," JAEC chairman Khaled Tukan said. When Macedonia was embroiled in its latest Hybrid War struggle in fending off the combined threats of a Color Revolution and Albanian-affiliated Unconventional Warfare (terrorism), it was targeted mostly because its pragmatic government had refused to sanction Russia and actually wanted to cooperate with it on the Balkan (Turkish) Stream project. This time around, Balkan Stream has been suspended, but in the event that the Turkish opposition somehow succeeds in throwing Erdogan out of office, this mega infrastructure project will instantly be revived. Still, by itself, this possible scenario isn't sufficient enough grounds to invest in the social infrastructure necessary to topple the Macedonian government. One would be inclined to believe that after Balkan Stream was suspended, so too would the anti-government movement in Macedonia be, right? Well, what happened in between the last Hybrid War attempt and the forthcoming one is that the Republic of Macedonia has become an indivisible Chinese partner in facilitating Beijing's One Belt One Road blueprint for Europe. Last November saw the latest China and Central and Eastern European Countries (China-CEEC) summit take place in Suzhou, the fourth since the mechanism was first created in 2012, and Beijing proclaimed that it will be moving forward with its plans to construct a high-speed railroad between Budapest and Belgrade. Eventually, this project is expected to expand to Skopje and the Greek port of Piraeus, the latter of which is one of Europe's largest and already sees heavy Chinese traffic. In effect, this project symbolizes a Balkan Silk Road that's engineered to facilitate a healthy influx of multipolar influence straight into the heart of Europe, but this vision is impossible to actualize if the Republic of Macedonia, the vital geopolitical bottleneck, is suffering a Ukrainian- or Syrian-like destabilization. If a Hybrid War breaks out in this tiny but disproportionately pivotal state, then China and the rest of the multipolar world will be in a less advantageous position to liberate the Balkans and save them from the West's asphyxiating institutionalism'. Simply put, in the absence of the alternative global trade route that this project would streamline for the region, the Balkans would inevitably become fully conquered by the EU and NATO after some time, with Serbia and Republika Srpska likely capitulating by force or free will in the years following Macedonia's meltdown. Changing Circumstances There are three significant factors that have changed since May 2015, with one of them being beneficial for Macedonia but the other two of which are detrimental to its stability: Reinforced Multipolarity: Grueveski had always stated his intention for Macedonia to join the EU and NATO, yet he never wanted this to interfere with his country's ability to pragmatically interact with Russia and China. His refusal to become a puppet leader like Montenegro's Djukanovic and his desire to remain independent in the New Cold War was a big no-no in Washington's eyes, and he learned the hard way just how far the US would go in trying to punish him during the Hybrid War unrest that it tried to unleash last May. Nowadays Gruevski still espouses pro-Western rhetoric so as not to appear too much of a threat' to the unipolar establishment, but his continued infrastructural interests with China and economic engagement with Russia reveal that he still remains true to his original multipolar vision. Having not backed down from his principles after the first warning' the US gave him, he's not likely to do so during the second time either, indicating a high likelihood that he'll accelerate Macedonia's multipolar trajectory after the elections. "Greater Albania": The irredentist policy of "Greater Albania" has always been a threat to Macedonia, despite most Albanians in the country having refused its tantalizing allure last year. "Let it be very clear that I do not approve of the violence used during some of these protests, like in Heesch. But I do understand people who have had enough of it," Wilders said. Dutch authorities ignore the wishes of the population to close the country's borders amid the massive refugee influx in the European Union, Geert Wilders said. "Local governments ignore the wishes of the local inhabitants because the mayors are civil servants who work for the government instead of the local people," Wilders said. According to Wilders, the Dutch people do not want a "huge camp full of testosterone bombs" in their neighborhood. "If we allow the Dutch people to decide, our borders would be closed tomorrow," the politician added. According to the Dutch authorities, a record 60,000 refugees sought asylum in the country in 2015, over two times more than in 2014. The newspaper also recalled that politicians from Germany's ruling Christian Democratic Party (CDU) demanded last week that Berlin should recognize Ukraine as a "safe country of origin". "Already now, Ukrainian asylum seekers are very seldom being recognized as refugees on German territory," Frankfurter Rundschau said. German laws currently allow for migrants to be sent back to their countries of origin if they have been convicted of a crime that carries a prison sentence of three or more years, and only when the situation in their country of origin is deemed safe for them to go back. Ok this is weird. In the morning I asked what was happening in Germany with the refugee crisis. Twitter replaced "refugee" with "human" Prof. Nick Flor (@ProfessorF) 12 2016 German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said last week that the government wanted to ease deportation barriers in cases where asylum seekers are jailed for violent crimes like bodily harm, homicide, rape, and sexual assault. The German government came under pressure over its open-door policy toward refugees after a series of sex attacks on women by mostly Middle Eastern asylum seekers hit German cities on New Years Eve. According to the German news network Deutsche Welle, in 2014, the number of asylum applications filed by Ukrainians stood at 2,703; in 2015, the figure increased to about 4,440. However, this number is relatively minuscule: according to International Business Times, a total of 1.1 million people were registered as asylum-seekers in Germany in 2015, most of them from war-torn countries such as Syria, Libya and Iraq. WASHINGTON (Sputnik)The inflow of refugees to Europe will have a positive impact on the local economies gross domestic product (GDP) growth, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said in a report unveiled on Wednesday. "In the short term, the macroeconomic effect from the refugee surge is likely to be a modest increase in GDP growth, reflecting the fiscal expansion associated with support to the asylum seekers, as well as the expansion in labor supply as the newcomers begin to enter the labor force," the report stated. Main refugee destinations such as Germany, Austria, and Sweden will experience the "concentrated" effect of the surge, according to the IMF. ATHENS (Sputnik)Speaking on Skai TVs Istories (Stories) program, Varoufakis stated that the first days after his appointment as the countrys finance minister, he visited the port city of Piraeus, met with representatives of the Chinese company Cosco, working in the port at that time, and informed them that the Greek Finance Ministry was open for investment. "Thus, the process of establishing relations with the Chinese government had begun. During a visit to Beijing, Greek Deputy Prime Minister Yannis Dragasakis reached an informal agreement on direct investment in specific sectors and, simultaneously, a credit line for the Greek government, should we start to issue bonds," Varoufakis stressed. The aim was to show that the Greek authorities had the ability to enter into agreements with other countries so that it could put pressure on the European Central Bank (ECB), he noted. MOSCOW (Sputnik)Talks on Ukrainian settlement between US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Russian Presidential Aide Vladislav Surkov touched on the issue of Washington receiving up-to-date information on the Normandy Quartet process on Ukrainian reconciliation, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday. Surkov and Nuland held talks last week in Russia's westernmost city of Kaliningrad. Following the talks, Surkov said that some topics put forward during the meeting, including constitutional reform in Ukraine, might be discussed at a meeting of the Normandy Four, comprising Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany. "Regarding these talks, in this case we are talking about dialogue at the expert level between Moscow and Washington. As you know, the United States is not party to the Normandy process, at the same time, of course everyone is interested in the United States having the opportunity to receive firsthand information, [despite] not being a member of the Normandy process," Peskov told reporters. According to Igrutinovic, in order to preserve the current state of affairs, EU officials are likely to attempt to strengthen border controls, especially in the Mediterranean. "Theyll try to beef up the border control in the Mediterranean region: at the Greek islands, at the border with Turkey. The question is, however, will it work?" he remarked. "This year the flow of migrants could be twice as numerous as the year before. But it remains unclear what Greece will do; will Turkey try to detain these migrants in refugee camps like it was paid to do? Or will the Turkish authorities turn a blind eye and tell the migrants to proceed to the EU?" The strengthening of the border control implemented by some of the EU members doesnt pose a threat to the Schengen Agreement, but the restoration of borders within the European Union would drastically alter the nature of United Europe, Igrutinovic added. Furthermore, the Schengen Agreement is essentially one of the EUs basic principles, according to Milos Jovanovic, an associate professor at the faculty of law at the University of Belgrade. "The absence of border control within is essentially one of the cornerstones of the EUs marketing. This principle is being destroyed and it is a serious problem for the EU," he said. "I wouldnt call it disintegration, but it is clearly a serious blow to Europe, a blow which delegitimizes the European project." The refugee crisis made it clear that the EU doesnt always use the most effective tools at its disposal to protect its member states, he added. "The EU is losing its legitimacy even, among its own members," Jovanovic concluded. UK government (through GCHQ) are mandating a voice encryption protocol MIKEY-SAKKE with a key-escrow backdoor: https://t.co/NT5HKCOe40 Steven Murdoch (@sjmurdoch) January 19, 2016 Secure Chorus relies on a tool called MIKEY-SAKKE, a centralized service provider that basically gives keys out in exchange for personal information, like an email address. Murdoch has discovered that Secure Chorus is used by GCHQ's information and security unit, CESG, for the purpose of "protecting official and sensitive communications" and that the organization is committed to "supporting the Secure Chorus standard," suggesting that while the home secretary is calling for a ban on heavily encrypted services, the British government actually has one of its own. Does the government want to break encryption or not? Government responds, very unclearly: https://t.co/6gQtptBgpw #IPBill Open Rights Group (@OpenRightsGroup) January 19, 2016 However, because the keys are handled by MIKEY-SAKKE, they could potentially be accessed by a third party not authorized by the British government to do so. "In end-to-end encryption, each person generates their own private keys so only they can decrypt conversations. In MIKEY-SAKKE the central network provider generates everyone's private keys so can decrypt all conversations," Steven Murdoch told Motherboard who made the discovery by examining public documents published by GCHQ and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). However, Murdoch points out that the central network provider using MIKEY-SAKKE to unlock communications is not revealed in the documents. He told Motherboard that "for government communication it would likely be GCQH or an organization controlled by GCHQ. "For corporate communications, it could be the company itself or it could be delegated, perhaps to GCHQ," Murdoch suggested. But because the MIKEY-SAKKE keys are stored centrally, they "may be more vulnerable to hacking, intimidation of employees or insider abuse, as well as allowing less oversight," security expert Murdoch suggests in previous analysis published on Benthams Gaze, a blog written by information security researchers. The blog states: "The MIKEY-SAKKE protocol is being promoted by the UK government as a better way to secure phone calls. "The reality is that MIKEY-SAKKE is designed to offer minimal security while allowing undetectable mass surveillance, through the introduction a backdoor based around mandatory key-escrow. This weakness has implications which go further than just the security of phone calls." A CESG spokesperson told Motherboard that: "We do not recognize the claims made in this paper. The MIKEY-SAKKE protocol enables development of secure, scalable, enterprise grade products." MOSCOW (Sputnik)Kurdish militias have destroyed thousands of homes belonging to Arabs in northern Iraq for their alleged support of the Daesh militant group, a report by a prominent rights watchdog said Wednesday. "Peshmerga forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Kurdish militias in northern Iraq have bulldozed, blown up and burned down thousands of homes in Arab villages," Amnesty International said in the report. The 46-page report documents widespread burning of homes and property in villages and towns in Nineveh, Kirkuk and Diyala governorates which Peshmerga forces captured from Daesh militants. #SYRIA Near #Mreyah (Deir ez-Zor), Russian aircraft hit #ISIS field camp. Command post & barracks with all contents were destroyed (@mod_russia) January 20, 2016 "Russian Su-34 bomber jet hit the terrorists' field artillery in the town of Meshiya, in Deir ez-Zor province. Surveillance confirmed the destruction of three artillery systems," the Russian Defense Ministry's spokesman told journalists. Also, according to Konashenkov, Russian aircraft bombed enemy rocket artillery positions and a fuel depot in the vicinity of the village of Bgelia in Deir ez-Zor province. "Surveillance confirmed the destruction of two rocket artillery systems as well as detonation of the fuel stored at the facility," he said. "A Daesh field training camp in the vicinity of the village of Mreya in Deir ez Zor province was bombed. A militants command post and barracks located on the premises were obliterated by direct hits," Konashenkov said. The Russian group's warplanes hit the terrorists as they fled Latakia being attacked by the Syrian Army, Konashekov said. "Over the past 24 hours, Russian jets carried out 4 strikes on the terrorists near Jabal al-Akrad (Latakia province), who left their positions while being attacked by the Syrian Armed Forces and patriotic opposition units," the spokesman said. He also said that a Su-34 aircraft bombed a workshop in the vicinity of Hatla, which the militants were using to manufacture carbombs. Target data was actually provided by the Syrian opposition. #SYRIA Syrian opposition provided information about a workshop near #Hatla (Deir ez-Zor), which was used for fitting vehicles with ED (@mod_russia) January 20, 2016 The terrorists workshop was completely wiped out by the airstrike, Konashenkov added. Moreover, Russia continues to provide humanitarian aid to Syria. On January 15, Russian aircraft delivered nearly 50 tons of humanitarian aid to Deir ez-Zor, the spokesman said. WASHINGTON (Sputnik)The US-led coalition launched 14 airstrikes against Daesh terrorists in Iraq, while no coalition airstrikes were carried out in Syria, the Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR) said in a press release on Wednesday. In Iraq, coalition military forces conducted 14 strikes coordinated with and in support of the Government of Iraq using attack, fighter, and remotely piloted aircraft against ISIL targets, the CJTF-OIR said. Tuesdays airstrikes in Iraq were carries out near six locations, including Mosul, Ramadi and Sinjar, and destroyed multiple Daesh fighting positions, command and control nodes, two vehicles, two assembly areas and one building. Zaki made a similar accusation in an interview on Syria TV in June last year, when he described US policy in the region as "destructive anarchy," and said that "they (the US) created IS, but cannot control it." He has also previously caused controversy by making inflammatory statements about Israel. According to Times of Israel, in 2014 Zaki told Palestinian TV that Israelis are "an advanced instrument of evil." On Wednesday PLO representative Salah Abu Khatla told Sputnik Arabic that Zaki's comments were a result of his experiences of political negotiations with colleagues from the US, and should be seen in that context. "Mr Zakis statements came at the right time and place. This is all due to American bias in the negotiations, starting from negotiations about Palestine, then manipulating in negotiations at Camp David, until the legislative elections in 2006 in which Hamas won the majority." "Because of that, this is not odd at all. It is the American policy, with Obama as President, to be biased towards the right-wing government (of Israel) with regards to the Palestinian cause, a central cause of manipulation in Palestine as well as in the region," Khatla claimed. Khatla also said that the migration crisis being experienced in Europe is a consequence of mistaken US foreign policy, which European countries have themselves followed. "All in all, the policy of the European countries is the policy of supporting the policy of the United States." "In addition to this, their (European countries') policy follows their own interests in this instable region, and then Daesh rises and spreads to (commits attacks in) Europe. Therefore, a reconsideration of their politics is needed." The amendment's addition was put at risk after the Pentagon pressed the House Defense Appropriations Committee to withdraw the Conyers-Yoho amendment from the bill, The Nation quoted an official as saying. The stated reason for the withdrawal was that similar legislation, in the form of the Leahy law, already existed as a guarantee that no funds would go to Azov. The Leahy law, however, covers only those groups for which the "Secretary of State has credible information that such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights." As long as the State Department continues to not consider Azov as a violent group, the Leahy law cannot act as a veto to the funding of the group by the US. "Even if Azov is already covered by Leahy, then no there was no need to strip it out of final bill," an unnamed official familiar with the debate said. Ukraine's infamous Azov volunteer neo-Nazi battalion, known for its extremist nationalist views, was integrated into the Ukrainian National Guard after the February 2014 coup and subsequent conflict in the country's southeast. Under increasing nationalism in Ukraine since the beginning of 2014, ultranationalist and neo-Nazi volunteer militia forces, including the notorious Azov Battalion, have been accused of committing war crimes in the eastern part of the country. In fact, the biggest problem, some Russian experts warn, is that the Geneva negotiations might not even get off the ground. In a recent analysis, geopolitical analyst Gevorg Mirzayan suggested that the series of tactical military and diplomatic victories recently enjoyed by the Syrian government and its allies may lead Damascus's opponents (Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar) to attempt to break off the talks altogether, using their proxies among opposition fighters. Ultimately, Stratfor suggests, Washington might "get Moscow's attention" and force it to the negotiating table with Ankara over Syria by compelling Turkey to "increase the size and frequency of naval rotations in the Black Sea," within the limits of the Montreux Convention on the Turkish Straits. Recalling US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland's ongoing tour of Eastern Europe and Turkey, where she has pushed "security proposals to underscore the US security commitment to Central and Eastern Europe," Stratfor notes that the economic squeeze presently faced by Russia means that "Moscow would not take a larger NATO encroachment on these two fronts lightly." "At the end of this week, Nuland will join US Vice President Joe Biden in Turkey and hold high-level talks with Turkish leaders. The United States could use this opportunity to try to bring Ankara back into dialogue with Russia over Syria. It could also use the occasion to feel out Turkey's position on NATO's Black Sea security. If Moscow feels its hostile relationship with Turkey has pushed Ankara too far toward its NATO allies, Russia could resume a dialogue with Turkey, making a compromise in Syria possible." In other words, Stratfor seems to argue, Washington could force Moscow to compromise on Syria by threatening a buildup in the Black Sea. But with Turkey already demonstrating what such a 'compromise' would entail (i.e. attacks against Syrian Kurds and support for anti-Assad rebels), the only question the think tank should be asking itself is: How likely is Russia to abandon its regional ally for the sake of a flimsy verbal guarantee from a Western military alliance which has broken almost every promise it has ever made to Moscow? With relations between Beijing and Riyadh anchored by Saudi Arabia's extensive oil exports to China (totaling 1/6 of China's overall imports), it is Xi's visit to Tehran, scheduled for the end of his trip, which has analysts worried. This will be the first visit by a Chinese leader to Iran in nearly a decade and a half, and comes right on time for Beijing, the newspaper suggests. "The trip comes just days after the lifting of international sanctions on Iran under the Obama administration-backed nuclear accord that went into effect over the weekend, and analysts say Beijing is eager to get in on the ground floor as the Iranian government scrambles to end its diplomatic isolation and ink deals with foreign investors," The Washington Times writes. Furthermore, with tensions between Riyadh and Tehran on the rise, "some believe Mr. Xi's goal is to promote a message that both Riyadh and Tehran would be wise to embrace China not Washington as the partner of the future." Crises and Opportunities Young added that Russia's capacity for innovation isn't limited to just men, and that both sexes take part in the business of innovative technology. Young noted that Russia's difficult climate and history have motivated people to adopt an innovative mindset. "Nations which frequently undergo incredible extraneous threats, whether it's a fundamental one, [such as Russia's weather systems], it's a fact that Russians have had to make do with less, and therefore there is a great deal of incentive to use your ingenuity," Young told Radio Sputnik. In addition to its aptitude for improvisation, Russia has fostered its engineering capabilities, according to Young, which has in part been the result of the development of missile and nuclear programs in the nation's past. "One legacy which all national rocket [and nuclear] programs have given us, the world over, is a plethora of mathematicians. And that's why when you look at something like the technology behind the Moscow Stock Exchange, for example, it's state-of-the-art, has always been state-of-the-art ever since it was born," Young said. Young noted that he does not believe sanctions could kill the Russian economy, although they could lead Russia to look inward in order to develop further, thereby blunting the impact of sanctions. When it comes to natural resources, it is very easy to squander them for Russia, as was the case for other countries, such as Venezuela. However, sanctions have given the country the opportunity to look for a way to use them effectively, according to Young. The surgeon told New Scientist magazine that the operation indicated that if the head is cooled to 15C, the animal can survive without neurological damage. Professor Ren previously tested mice heads and some head transplants on monkeys last year. A colleague from South Korea-based Konkuk University School of Medicine, C-Yoon Kim, also experimenting with mice, claimed that mice could recover motor function, suggesting "it is possible to reconnect the [spinal] cord after complete severing." "It's important that people stop thinking this is impossible," he added. "This is absolutely possible and we're working towards it." The purported scientific breakthrough has its detractors. Neurologist at Harvard Medical School's Centre for Bioethics Thomas Cochrane told New Scientist that the monkey head transplant is "science through public relations." Cochrane accused Canavero and other researchers of publishing prematurely, suggesting that the operation is "frowned upon for good reason." "It distracts people from actual work that everyone can agree has a valid foundation," Cochrane said. "As far as I can tell, that operation has mostly been about publicity rather than the production of good science." Maverick surgeon claims to have transplanted monkey head in China https://t.co/KfRHSdH2Lq pic.twitter.com/kaUj3CvEZG C. Michael Gibson MD (@CMichaelGibson) January 20, 2016 Michael Sarr, Mayo Clinic surgeon and editor of the journal Surgery, in which three of seven articles about the transplant are to be published, echoed Cochrane, stating that reports of this nature require several edits before being released so as to avoid hasty generalization and unsubstantiated statements. "Unfortunately, I think Canavero has been a little premature with sending this out," Sarr told Motherboard magazine. "This head transplantation-even the term is sensationalism. I worry tremendously about that." In February, Northrop reversed its plan to propose an updated version of the Hawk T2/128 for the T-X program, and instead decided to pursue an entirely new design. The prototype is being constructed by Scaled Composites. The company is currently working on 15 projects, a mixture of government and commercial models, company President Ben Diachun said. "We've averaged a first flight every year in our 34-year history," Diachun said. "Each new project we take on, we look at what kind of opportunity is there to go demonstrate a new technology or a new aviation milestone." The Air Force is on schedule to release a formal request for a September 2016 proposal, a contract award in fall of 2017 and initial operating capability sometime in 2023. The Air Force believes a new trainer is needed not just because of the age of the fleet, but because it cannot provide up-to-date training for pilots who will be flying the F-35 joint strike fighter in the future. TOKYO (Sputnik)The Japanese cabinet will sign off on the move after Iran was verified over the weekend to be in compliance with the landmark nuclear deal reached last summer, according to the Nikkei Asian Review. Tokyo is seeking to restore exploration of the Azadegan oilfield near the Iraqi border with an estimated 5.2 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Japans oil and gas exploration and production company INPEX withdrew from the project in 2010, six years after receiving three-quarters of concessions to develop the field and four years after that share dropped to one-tenth. In this blog, I use quite a bit of materials from other sources. To a large extent, I am systematic about making sure the reader immediately knows that these are not mine. The good thing is that most graphics, cartoons in particular, have the copyright information embedded in them, which makes it convenient for me when blogging. Springforth, a strong second last week, was overlooked at 15-1 in the $20,000 Mares Open Handicap at Dover Downs, on a cold Tuesday, Jan. 19. George Dennis sent Springforth four-wide on the final turn and then hustled up to engage the only four-year-old in the field, leader Cheyenne Robin (Tony Morgan), deep in the stretch before reaching the finish line first by a nose in 1:52.2. Jeff Clark owns and trains the Artiscape-Spring Morning six-year-old who won for the first time this meet after two wins at Rosecroft recently. The win was her 17th lifetime, bringing her earnings to $331,554. The race before, Ross Wolfenden put the Bob Winkelman owned-and-trained Paradise Lost into the lead and took no prisoners en route to a 1:53.2 decision in a $12,500 Fillies and Mares pace. The veteran Artsplace-Loving Ideal mare has now won $339,843 after recording her 30th career victory. $1.4 million-winner Handsoffmycookie (Tony Morgan) finished second in front of Jeremes Sweetheart (Jim Morand). The longest win streak by a pacer at the track this meet ended in the $13,500 Four- & Five-Year-Old Mares pace when Nice Trip finished out-of-the-money after six straight wins. The race was won by Electric Z Tam, owned by Legacy Racing and trained by Wayne Givens. Michelle Rocks (Tim Tetrick) was runner-up. Caviart Cari Ann (Vic Kirby) was the show horse. Electric Z Tam, a daughter of Electric Yankee-Gens Z Tam, chalked up her third win this meet and fourth in her last six. Allan Davis notched his second of three wins steering Rich Lombardo, the Atleys and JJM Stables Caviart Scarlet to a 1:54.1 score in a $12,000 race for female pacers. It was the Sportswriter-Caviart Sydney four-year-olds second straight win and fourth in her previous six outings Allan Davis drove three winners while Ross Wolfenden, George Dennis, Tim Tetrick and Jonathan Roberts had two wins. Trainers Dylan Davis and Kevin Lare also scored a pair of victories. I LIKE MY BOSS, TOUGH MAC MEET AGAIN IN $20,000 OPEN TROT A hard-hitting group of fast trotters meet in the $20,000 Open trot heading a strong program on Wednesday, Jan. 20 at Dover Downs. First post is 4:30 p.m. In the feature, trainer Bob Shahan, Jim and Amanda Parsons' homebred I Like My Boss leaves from outside post 8 for Geroge Dennis. A top Delaware-bred trotter, I Like My Boss saw his four-race winning streak end last week. To his right is Mike Casalinos talented Tough Mac, with Tim Tetrick driving. Meanwhile RBH Ventures War Cry Hall finally gets an inside post starting from the rail with Ross Wolfenden. Trainer Leigh Raymer, S.M. Moss and the Solomons' Tirade Hanover (Brett Miller) finished third last Wednesday. Ted Gewertzs Panamanian Hanover (Tony Morgan) has won two of his last four starts. Ed Gannons Winbak Charles M (Jonathan Roberts), Bill Dittmar and Steve Iaquinas Razor Ramone (Allan Davis) and Providence Wests improving Odessa (Justin Vincent) complete the opposition. The secondary feature is a $15,000 Four- & Five-Year-Old trot with a wide-open field of seven. Jim Moores Royal Becca J (Jack Parker) is the lone winner last week after an impressive victory after racing outside for most of a 1:56.1 mile. After leading for most of his race, Bob Shahans Machuca (A. Davis) had to settle for second with Gary Simpson and Eric Goods Adrenalin Junkie (Jim Morand) third. The other contenders are Max Waltons Someway Same Hall (Art Stafford Jr.), Carol Atkinson and Serendipity Stables Made To Trot (Morgan), Barbary Kinseys Myclaimtovictory (Kim Vincent) and Al Moors Royal Status (Vince Copeland). (with files from Dover) John Reid, 59, who spent many years driving at Raceway Park, Hazel Park and Windsor Raceway, passed away on Saturday, January 16. With his family by his side, he was relieved of his pain and reunited with his beloved Aggie. John is survived by his siblings, Frank (Daphne), Brenda (Randy), Heather (Bob), Judy (Mark), Terry (Joan), and Cindy (Steve); many loving nieces and nephews; many friends; and never to be forgotten by his harness racing family. He was preceded in death by his parents, Frank and Marilyn. Please join Standardbred Canada in offering condolences to the family and friends of John Reid. (USTA) 11th Annual ProLifeCon to Feature Majority Whip Scalise, Sen. Ernst, Governor Brownback, David Daleiden Contact: J.P. Duffy or Alice Chao, 866-FRC-NEWS, 866-372-6397 WASHINGTON, Jan. 20, 2016 /Standard Newswire/ -- Family Research Council (FRC) will host its 11th annual ProLifeCon Digital Action Summit on Friday, January 22nd, the day of the March for Life, commemorating the 43nd anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide. ProLifeCon is the premier conference for the digital pro-life community. This year's conference will feature activists, experts and legislators who will inform audiences about ways to make a difference for the pro-life movement on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and the rest of the online world. This year, FRC is honored to welcome Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) and Governor Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) to speak at ProLifeCon. David Daleiden will be awarded Digital Prolife Pioneer Award for his undercover work exposing Planned Parenthood's sale of aborted babies' parts. Confirmed speakers include: Tony Perkins, President, Family Research Council Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), House Majority Whip Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) Governor Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) David Daleiden, Founder, Center for Medical Progress Lila Rose, President, Live Action Jeanne Mancini, President, March for Life and former Director of FRC's Center for Human Dignity Kristan Hawkins, President, Students for Life of America John Flynn, CEO, Copley Advertising John-Henry Westen, Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief, LifeSiteNews Ryan Bomberger, Chief Creative Officer/Founder, The Radiance Foundation Matthew Fridg, Social Media Director, 3801 Lancaster Film Project Alison Howard, Director of Alliance Relations, Alliance Defending Freedom Arina Grossu, Director of the Center for Human Dignity, Family Research Council Brynne Krispin, Social Media Manager, Family Research Council Lisa Smiley, LisaSmiley.com Brandon Buell, 'Jaxon Strong' Facebook Community WHAT: ProLifeCon Digital Action Summit: The premier conference for the online pro-life community WHERE: In Person: Family Research Council Media Center, 801 G Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20001; Online: frc.org/prolifecon WHEN: 8:30 a.m. -- 11:30 a.m. EST, Friday, January 22nd To request a media credential, please email media@frc.org A light breakfast will be served. A multbox will also be available. For more information, please see: frc.org/prolifecon Er is iets heel griezeligs aan de gang in Nederland. Dat wij geleidelijk aan in een totalitaire 'democratie' wegzinken wordt steeds ... There is now a unified government, in theory at least. The former Tripoli and Tobruk governments control most of the militias in the country and fear of endless fighting and the growing threat from ISIL (al Qaeda in Iraq and the Levant) and starvation helped overcome remaining differences to achieve agreement. The main problem with ISIL is not the few towns it controls and the large numbers of ISIL fighters in those places. The greater danger is the large number of Libyans (several percent of over four million people left in the country) who still believe Islamic terrorism will fix all the problems in Libya and that ISIL is best practitioner of this savage and ultimately futile strategy. Nearly all older Libyans realize ISIL is a dead (and deadly) end but many teenagers are still believers. These pro-ISIL teenagers are often found at the many mosques in the country run by radicalized clergy. In some areas the radical clergy have been arrested or killed and radical mosques turned into moderate ones or destroyed if conversion was difficult. Islam is still important for most Libyans but there is a growing intolerance of the more radical forms. The continued presence of ISIL supporters throughout Libya makes it possible to carry out terror attacks wherever there are ISIL supporters. This has encouraged a growing number of local militias to create a hostile atmosphere for any form of Islamic radicalism. This means a lot of police state tactics. Stuff like more unannounced searches of homes and businesses based on slender evidence or just gossip or rumors. Some arrests are made the same way and there have been injuries and deaths as well when there is any resistance. Thus ISIL can be a threat even when it isnt present but is suspected of being somewhere nearby. ISIL is directing many of its new recruits to Libya, where the Islamic terror group apparently senses an opportunity to establish another relatively secure base. ISIL is under increasing threat in Iraq and Syria. It recently lost Ramadi (western Iraq), one of the three cities in controls. Northeast of Ramadi Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq and held by ISIL since mid-2014 is being surrounded and will soon be attacked. Even the ISIL capital Raqqa (eastern Syria) is under attack by Kurds raiding the outskirts. Apparently ISIL sees Libya as a backup base if the core of the current caliphate in Iraq and Syria is lost. ISIL also has franchises in Libya and nine other countries but none as vulnerable as Libya. So far ISIL succeeded mainly because they had cash and no scruples and that appealed to enough local thugs to make recruiting possible. The international coalition of Western and Moslem states fighting ISIL has greatly reduced ISIL cash flow and this has reached crises levels in some parts of Syria and Iraq, where ISIL members are seeing pay cut up to 50 percent and delays of more than a month in getting any pay. In Libya ISIL is still finding wealth to loot and lucrative sources of income (like smuggling illegal migrants to Europe). ISIL uses that cash, and their fearsome reputation to attract the more fanatic men from other Libyan militias. ISIL has concentrated its forces a few places like Sirte, Derna, Ajdabiya, Benghazi, Bin Jawad and at least 300 kilometers of the coastal road it is active on. From these places ISIL continues to make attacks and expand its presence. ISIL is having a difficult time advancing because many local militias will not surrender. ISIL is believed to have more than 4,000 armed men in Libya. While there are far more (over 100,000) armed men in other Libyan groups who oppose ISIL nearly all these other gunmen are only concerned with defending the area they live in. Thus ISIL can expand by concentrating on a few targets at a time and attacking with their usual ruthless and fearsome tactics. In 2016 ISIL appears to have modified their strategy and is now going after oil fields and export facilities. ISIL believes this will weaken the opposition (the new coalition government) and give ISIL an opportunity to produce and smuggle oil. That will be more difficult to do than in Syria and Iraq, where Turkey was nearby and many smugglers were available to get oil from ISIL controlled oil fields to criminal gangs in Turkey that would pay cash for the heavily discounted oil. The resistance around the Libyan oil facilities is a lot more steadfast and smuggling any oil out is much more difficult. Libyans are concerned that the ISIL attacks on the oil facilities will damage them and further reduce the ability to increase production to pay for essential imports (like food and medicine). ISII forces have advanced from Sirte as far as Bin Jawad which is 626 kilometers east of Tripoli and 30 kilometers west of the port of Es Sider and its facilities for loading oil tanker ships. ISIL attacks against oil facilities near Es Sider have killed at least 18 of the defenders so far this year and apparently about as many ISIL men. Es Sider has been closed since December 2014. In normal times Es Sider and Ras Lanuf (21 kilometers further east) can ship 600,000 barrels a day but will remain shut down until the attacks cease. ISIL attacks in 2016 have hit some of the oil storage tanks at Es Sider and Ras Lanuf destroying over 800,000 barrels of oil (worth about $25 million). Another oil shipping port at Brega (115 kilometers further east) is still operational and nearby are still functioning oil fields producing most (60 percent) of the 400,000 barrels a day Libya is still able to export. ISIL has been going after oil facilities south of Sirte as part of a strategy to conquer functioning oil fields and ports to ship oil from. ISIL is telling its followers that the plan is to eventually use Libya to launch an invasion of Europe, This sounds rather fanciful but ISIL has already gotten several known ISIL members across the Mediterranean among the continuing floor of refugees. Europe is not doing much to screen these refugees and ISIL apparently senses an opportunity. In the meantime ISIL still faces a lot of active opposition in Libya. There is still fighting in Ajdabiya but ISIL is facing the most opposition in Benghazi where the more effective forces of the Tobruk government quickly go after any ISIL activity. In Derna ISIL has been largely chased out but is still on the outskirts trying to fight its way back in. In Sirte the local militias, some of them rival Islamic terrorists, are less effective defending against ISIL. Thus in Sirte ISIL is able to use its terror tactics (public executions and beatings) for force civilians to submit to ISIL rule. The forces defending against ISIL are receiving some help from air strikes delivered by the handful of Libyan Air Force warplanes the Tobruk government has operational. NATO has offered to provide air support, and already has some commandos on the ground. But the Tobruk government is in the process of carrying out the recently signed peace deal with the rival Tripoli government and some of the Tripoli factions oppose a return of NATO air power. So it appears that permission for NATO to hit ISIL from the air in Libya will have to wait until the political differences there can be sorted out. There is some urgency about this because ISIL is concentrating on Tobruk January 19, 2016: The Tobruk government (recognized by the UN) and the rival (not UN recognized) Tripoli government agree on how to implementing the peace deal both signed last December 17th. A new government with 32 key officials from both the Tobruk and Tripoli factions will run all the territory now administered separately. This comprises most of Libya but implementation may be difficult because both governments are coalitions of many more (hundreds) of factions and not all these factions fully endorse the details of the unification deal. The threat of starvation (because of the chaos and inadequate oil exports) and ISIL (which wants to turn Libya into a religious dictatorship) means most of the factions are willing to cooperate, for a while at least. More peace could result in renewed conflict later as factions seek to settle unresolved disputes. The new coalition government is supposed to be operational by February. January 15, 2016: ISIL forces attacked and captured the coastal town of Bin Jawad. Because of the threat from nearby ISIL forces most of the normal civilian population of 8,000 had already fled, along with the armed militiamen in the vicinity. ISIL promptly murdered several civilians who were still there and later broadcast videos of ISIL men driving through the deserted town holding the heads of executed residents. This is meant to discourage defenders of other towns and this sort of thing often works. January 14, 2016: South of the Ras Lanuf oil export terminal ISIL apparently blew up part of an oil pipeline that has not been used since 2014. January 13, 2016: In the eastern city of Benghazi ISIL attacks on a major power plant caused damage that have meant many parts of the city are without power four or more hours a day. January 12, 2016: In Mali officials believe AQIM (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb) affiliate al Mourabitoun was mainly responsible for the November hotel attack in the Mali capital. Al Mourabitoun and AQIM continues to survive in Libya because of the chaos there. Using bases in southern Libya Al Mourabitoun carries out operations in Mali and Niger. The U.S. is offering a $5 million reward for information that would lead to the death or capture of Al Mourabitoun founder and leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar. January 11, 2016: Unidentified jets bombed ISIL facilities in Sirte. Some ISIL leaders blamed Egypt and in response Egypt sent more troops to the Libyan border to guard against any ISIL retaliation. January 8, 2016: The National Oil company moved over 400,000 barrels of oil from storage tanks near the port of Ras Lanuf to a safer (and undisclosed) location. This was done as the last of the fires were put out. This fires were started by an earlier ISIL rocket attack that destroyed two storage tanks and set their contents ablaze. January 7, 2016: In Zliten (60 kilometers west of Misarata and 130 kilometers from Tripoli) an ISIL truck bomb killed over 47 students and staff at a police training center. Later in the day an ISIL suicide car bomber killed six militiamen outside the port of Ras Lanuf. January 4, 2016: ISIL attacked the Tobruk controlled oil export port of Es Sider using two suicide car bombs. The attacks were against several road checkpoints. ISIL also fired unguided rockets at oil storage tanks setting several of the tanks on fire. At least nine of the militiamen guarding Es Sider were killed and about thirty wounded. The attackers suffered heavy losses. One of the attackers was later discovered to be a 15 year old boy who had been radicalized at one of the many pro-Islamic terror mosques in Tripoli. The boy went to Sirte four months ago, where ISIL has been active for over a year, and volunteered. January 3, 2016: In 2015 nearly 4,000 illegal migrants and a few of the people smugglers died at sea trying to reach Europe from Libyan ports. This is about 20 percent more deaths than in 2014. Most of the 2015 deaths occurred early in the year because by mid-2015 there was a major effort by European nations to find and rescue smuggler boats that were sinking, or already sunk, and rescue the passengers and crew and take them the rest of the way to Europe. If smugglers could be identified they were usually arrested but otherwise the rescue service made the smugglers a lot more money because they could use cheaper and less reliable boats for the trip and raise their fees because the trip was now safer (fewer than four out every thousand people on the boats died in 2015). ISIL gets a cut of smuggler profits and tolerates and protects smugglers who operate from ISIL controlled ports. The smugglers got about a million people into Europe via the sea route during 2015. January 2, 2016: The eastern (Tobruk controlled) branch of the National Oil Company announced that in 2015 it had exported 175,000 barrels of oil a day and refined another 36,000 barrels a day for local use. The western branch, controlled by the Tripoli government) exported more than 200,000 barrels a day but refined less for local use. Back in November, I blogged about the fact that Belize Music Industry officials were looking for artists to perform at Jazzfest, and that Belize culture would be a focus of Fest 2016. That's now confirmed. here's what the Jazz Fest website says about this year's Cultural Exchange Pavillion. In 2016, Jazz Fest celebrates Belize! At the heart of the celebration is the Cultural Exchange Pavilion featuring artist demonstrations, live music and dance showcases, authentic food, photo exhibits and cultural displays. With its Spanish-speaking neighbors to the south and west and the laid-back Caribbean to the east, the tiny country of Belize features a unique cultural melange including Maya, Mestizo, Garifuna, and Creole and an exceptional range of musical styles and traditions, which is unrivaled in Central America. Punta-Rock, Brukdong, Paranda and other rhythms from Belize will take over the Fair Grounds. The Garifuna Collective, Talla Walla Vibrations, Sweet Pain with Chico Ramos and Supa G, Bredda David & Trival Vibes, and the Wageirale Drummers will appear on several Festival stages and on the Belize Stage inside the Cultural Pavilion dedicated to Belizean culture. Step inside the Cultural Exchange Pavilion to hear the ethereal harp melodies of master Maya harpist Florencio Mess, the creole drums of Talla Walla Vibrations, and the traditional Garifuna songs and dances of the Wageirale Drummers. Live artist demonstrations inside the Pavilion will include Jippi Jappa basket weaving, slate carving, drum making and more. A Mestizo Day of the Dead altar, Belizean carnival costumes, and other cultural displays will complete the presentation. Outside the Pavilion, Garifuna women will demonstrate the making and baking of Cassava bread, which requires a two-day process to extract the poisonous juices of the cassava or manioc. Festival-goers can sample this staple food of the Garifunas, which will be baked over a fire hearth. http://www.nojazzfest.com/culture/cultural-exchange-pavilion/ Alpenrose Dairy of Portland is holding a social media recipe contest and giving away five custom iPads in honor of the companys 100th anniversary. People who want to participate in the contest can post a recipe and an original photo of the finished dish using one of the companys low-calorie Lite n Trim products. The recipes can be posted to one or any combination of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter using #LiteBites. Social media users can vote for their favorites by liking or retweeting them. The top five entries with the most votes will win new custom gold iPad Air 2s Alpenroses 100th anniversary logo. The contest, which began Jan. 18 and continues through Feb. 29, is open to legal U.S. residents 18 years old or older at the time the recipe is entered or minors who have consent from a parent or guardian. Employees of Alpenrose Dairy and their immediate family members are not eligible. Recipes and photographs must be the original work of the participant. They must not be copied or reproduced from any published or copyrighted source. No purchase is necessary. For details, visit the events section at Alpenroses Facebook page. The Archdiocese of Seattle last week published a list of 77 clergy members and others accused of sexually assaulting children seven of which at some point served at churches in Cowlitz County. Of the seven, five are dead, one is of unknown status and one has been removed from ministry work and sentenced by the church to permanent prayer and penance, according to the list. Archdiocese spokesman Greg Magnoni said hes not aware of any pending criminal charges and only one individual on the list Paul Conn, who served at Queen of Angels in Port Angeles from 1985 to 1988 has been prosecuted. Everyone on the list either resided or served at a church in western Washington. Magnoni said the list, which took two years to compile, was only recently completed. He said it was released because its the right thing to do. This is a societal problem, he said. We will take responsibility for the need to prevent child sexual abuse, raise awareness about it and, most importantly, to encourage anybody who is a victim of child abuse to come forward whether it be within the church or outside the church. Magnoni couldnt comment on why there havent been more charges filed against the clergymen and women. However, according to state law, charges of child abuse can be filed until the victim turns 30. Father Bryan Ochs, St. Roses priest administrator, said Monday that he announced news of the list during last weekends mass. Honestly, not many people said anything, he said of the congregations reaction. People who did were sad because they remember the priests and thought highly of them. So the ones who commented were stunned. Ochs said no one has ever come to him reporting sexual assault and said he doesnt know whether the assaults happened while those priests were serving at St. Rose or at another parish. To deal with public perception of the church, Ochs said the church is acting as transparent and honest as possible. Were trying to move forward by making people feel safe when theyre here, he said, adding that the church has taken steps to educate parish about how to recognize behaviors of predators. I think its good that the list was published, he added. I think its something that the victims of abuse expect, and I think that this is a necessary step for transparency and acknowledging the terrible things that happened. Christi Brittain, director of Childrens Justice and Advocacy Center of Cowlitz County, said its not surprising that the sexual assault came from clergy. A lot of time predators for sexual abuse are people you would never expect, she said, adding that people are more likely to trust their children with people perceived to be upstanding individuals. Brittain said sexual predators often find different ways to be in positions of trust and power around children whether thats being a teacher or being involved in extracurricular activities with children. Its actually very common, she said. Its not the person thats hiding in the bushes that jumps out. According to CJAC statistics, 90 percent of abuse comes from someone the family knows and trusts. As for the archdiocese publishing the list of clergymen, Brittain said she appreciates that theyre talking about it. Keeping it quiet protects the abuser and allows him or her to continue abusing children, she said. I think that their acknowledging it and talking about it is helpful, but there needs to be more done than that to protect the kids, she said. Some ways to protect children from sexual assault, she said, include always having more than one adult present in a room with children. CJAC offers a free, two-hour sexual abuse prevention program that sheds light on how to stop abuse. With support, with counseling, with advocacy, there is hope for people who have been abused, she said. Kids are so resilient. With 2016 being an election year for most state lawmakers and the Governors office, dont expect too much out of this years legislative session. As weve said before, one of the problems with American politics is some politicians consider getting re-elected their primary job. This is whats on full display right now. Funding state education has been the dominant statewide issue for several years now, but with a 2018 deadline to have school funding fixed there isnt much time left just enough to put off the tough decisions until after the election season. State lawmakers already are tipping their hand about what will get done when it come to education funding this year, which is not much. A bipartisan group has put forward legislation for more data, indicating they dont have enough information to fix the school funding problem yet. This is politics at its finest or worst, depending on how you look at it. The blame game for finding whos at fault for not having the right information has already begun. Republicans make note of Gov. Jay Inslee vetoing a bill that wouldve mandated collecting data out of last years budget. Democrats blame Republicans for not approving legislation passed by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, only to go nowhere in the Republican-led Senate. Educations two biggest remaining issues yet to be solved are teacher salaries and levy replacement. If youre a teacher, you probably want the salary issue put off until next year youll get far more dollars in an off-election year. The levy process has been in place for decades, but the McCleary decision will force a new system to be put in place. This pits the big city vs. rural areas, which will be interesting to say the least. Republicans and democrats find themselves on opposite sides of the funding issue depending on geography. It will make for some strange alliances. Depending on what new funding process and formulas are put in place King and Pierce counties may have to pay more in taxes after the funding problem is fixed than they do now. No politician wants to do this in an election year. If you are an anti-tax believer, you likely want the teacher salary and school funding issues solved now. Politicians probably wont vote for one of the biggest tax increases in history in an election year. Politicians would most certainly vote for a huge tax increase next year, hoping voters would forget before the next election cycle. In talking to Rep. Brian Blake, he anticipated an agreement, on a path forward, meaning the school funding issue will be probably be pushed to next year. Just as we expected, but not what wed want to see. Election-year politics will also make for many bills being offered just to appease constituencies. Politicians will put forth proposed legislation knowing it has no chance to be passed, so they can go back to their districts claiming to have done what voters asked. With this in mind its likely well see legislation proposed for tighter gun control, more government transparency and environmental-based taxes or restrictions. It would be surprising if any of the bills passed through the legislature. Well keep you posted on what were hearing, but when it comes to new legislation, fewer new laws is usually better than more. hidden Cobalt used in batteries for phones, laptops and electric vehicles could come from mines in Democratic Republic of Congo that use child labour, an Amnesty International report said on Tuesday. Working with campaign group African Resources Watch (Afrewatch), Amnesty accused technology giants including Apple, Samsung SDI and Sony of lax oversight of the supply of cobalt from mines in Congo to smelters and on to battery-makers. As a result, consumer products sold across the globe could contain traces of the metal produced each year by informal Congolese mines without companies knowing, the report said. "It is a major paradox of the digital era that some of the world's richest, most innovative companies are able to market incredibly sophisticated devices without being required to show where they source raw materials for their components," Afrewatch executive director Emmanuel Umpula said. In a statement issued in response to Amnesty's research, Apple said it had a zero tolerance policy towards child labour and was evaluating ways to improve its identification of labour and environmental risks. Samsung SDI said it conducted written evaluations and on-site inspections of all suppliers to certify compliance with human rights, labour, ethics, environment and health standards. Sony did not respond to emailed requests for comment. Millions of Congolese work in informal mining, with rudimentary tools and usually without legal authorisation. They often scavenge in the waste heaps of larger mines. The report, based on research in Congo's mining heartland, singled out a smelter in southern Congo owned by Congo Dongfang Mining International (CDM), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Chinese mineral giant Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt Ltd. The report alleged that CDM did not check the source of the cobalt it purchased from local buying houses, leading to a "high risk" that it came from mines where children and other workers were exposed to hazardous conditions. Scavenging children The researchers interviewed 17 children at five mines where they said children as young as seven scavenged for rocks containing cobalt. The researchers said they saw workers from the mines queuing to sell cobalt to buying houses that claimed to sell to CDM. Huayou Cobalt is the largest cobalt chemicals producer in China and sold almost $235 million of the metal in 2013, according to the report. Once smelted, the cobalt is exported to China before being sold to battery manufacturers who claim to supply top-end electronics companies including Apple, Samsung, Sony and 13 others, the report said. In a written response quoted in the report, Huayou Cobalt said it had "reasonably presumed that the behaviours of suppliers comply with relevant regulations of the DRC and taken the corresponding social responsibilities". A woman who answered the phone at Huayou Cobalt this week and identified herself as Ms. Yang told Reuters the information in the report was not true as far as she knew but added that she was not very familiar with CDM's operations. The report also said none of the 16 companies linked to the CDM smelter provided enough detail to researchers to independently verify the origins of the cobalt used in their products. Only one acknowledged the link with the smelter plant. Reuters could not independently verify any link between the companies and the smelter plant. Samsung told Amnesty it was very hard to trace the source of the cobalt due to non-disclosure by suppliers and the complexity of supply chains. It denied to Reuters that CDM or Huayou Cobalt were in its supply chain. Congo's supply of the metals such as tantalum, tin, tungsten and gold has been under scrutiny since 2010, when laws in the United States required U.S.-listed companies to ensure their supply chain was free from these so-called "conflict minerals". But cobalt has received scant regulatory attention, although strifetorn Congo is the source of more than half of global supply. Amnesty and Afrewatch said they hoped the research will trigger action. Reuters tech2 News Staff Samsung's Note series has received accolades across the tech world, but the latest Note 5 brought the S Pen glitch to the forefront. After repeatedly showing how one should insert the S-Pen, the company has finally pushed out a better solution. According to Phandroid, Samsung now adds a new grey-white tab onto the motherboard that will let one easily eject the S-Pen when inserted backwards. Looks like the S-Pen-gate problem has been sorted, at least for now. These changes will be seen in the newer models of the Note 5. For those not in the know, last year there were reports about the stylus getting stuck in the storage slot when users inserted the pen the wrong side in. They did so, because owners did not experience an obstruction to instantly realise that something is wrong. In case of Note 5, one simply ended up breaking the stylus or getting it hopelessly stuck. Back then, in response to TheVerge, a Samsung spokesperson had said, We highly recommend our Galaxy Note5 users follow the instructions in the user guide to ensure they do not experience such an unexpected scenario caused by reinserting the S pen in the other way around. It soon started shipping the device with a warning and an image showing how to insert the stylus in the slot. Karrishma Modhy Popular and widely used messaging service WhatsApp is now free. The Facebook-owned company has decided to stop charging people 99 cents annually to use the service. Up until now, WhatsApp has been free for the first year, with the annual fee added for subsequent years of use. WhatsApp founder Jan Koum made the announcement at the DLD conference in Munich and admitted, "It really doesnt work that well." Does this mean we will now see innumerable third party ads? Apparently not. But, the company will instead try to monetise communication in different ways. WhatsApp said in blogpost, "Starting this year, we will test tools that allow you to use WhatsApp to communicate with businesses and organisations that you want to hear from." The company explains that this could either mean communicating with a bank about whether a recent transaction was fraudulent, or with an airline about a delayed flight. Mostly, these kind messages (SMS) are passed on using a simple SMS. WhatsApp aims to offer tools in which, conversations can be carried out between businesses and organisations with the common man via its service, sans spam and advertisements. Communicate with businesses and organisations. This sounds a bit similar to BlackBerry Channels or Line Messenger wherein users could head to a channel of interest and discuss about certain topics or even, contact them. As of now, the company's approach remains unclear. Today, WhatsApp is an integral part of our lives for communication. We depend on the service to talk to various service platforms for work. It could either be a grocery store or even an e-commerce store. If given the option, it would be far more convenient to order a smartphone via WhatsApp rather than going through the trouble of ordering it online. This process would be the simplest, instead of the other two - order online or via retail. But then again, the only question which arises is security. If the service wishes to offer a platform where companies and consumers can make transactions, it needs to tighten up its security. It is a known fact that even the Pentagon trusts BlackBerry for their internal communication, but not WhatsApp. So would businesses blindly trust the service for intense transactions? On the contrary, it can. WhatsApp's parent company is Facebook, one of the biggest and strongest platform today has the man power and technical expertise to take it forward. Even revolutionise the entire structure as we know it. A report by Wired points out the deal with Facebook allowed WhatsApp to concentrate on growth without worrying too much about revenue. Koum points out, WhatsApp has a greater global reach than nearly any other app. This gives Koum and company additional leverage. A lot of companies are global, he says, such as airlines and banks and car rental outfits. And these companies may be willing to embrace this kind of messaging because WhatsApp gives them more efficient access to more people than any other medium. If this plan goes forward, there wouldn't be much difference between WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, a platform which also allows users to communicate with companies. For example, Facebook has struck a deal with Uber, to allow users to hail a taxi directly from the app. However, Facebook made a good decision by not meddling into WhatsApp and making various changes and added a line of new features. Though, the company kept improvising Messenger and today, it can be touted as a rich-in-media app. Another good decision is not combining them into a single app. Keeping two separate messaging apps makes a lot more sense as Messenger is popular in the US, but WhatsApp has a stronger hold in countries such as India, Brazil and others. In conversation with Re/Code, Koum has stated that businesses are already finding ways to use WhatsApp to reach customers. The new plan, could make the flow of communication a lot easier. He said that the company wants to experiment with different approaches but added, "We havent written a single line of code yet." Possibly, WhatsApp could also look at a business-to-consumer (B2C) integration. This leaves WhatsApp as a product, and not a service. It isn't necessary that a business perspective put in to place for WhatsApp could be a welcome change. Even without having ads, companies could send various messages, in the form of advertisements, which might irk the 900 million users and counting, it has today. That's a huge number! The main essence of the $19 billion acquisition in 2014 for Facebook, has remained untouched, up until now. Here's hoping that Facebook can in fact, monetise the service, at the business' expense and not the user! A blog containing opinion and analysis in a wide array of areas including the economy, health care, broadband and international relations. Dedicated to the Restoration of Progressive Democracy Volodymyr Bilyk from WRITINGOO (+ one extra piece) is a writer, translator from Ukraine. His works include: visual poems in the series(2013),(2013),(2013),(2013),(2014),(2014),(2014),andin The Chapbook 5(2015),(2016),(2016) and screenplays for the films "Midget-Stripper" (2012-2013), "The Trial of Beilis"(2013-2015), "Escapee" (2014), "Joan the Battalioner" (2014), "Waking" (2015), and "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" (2015-2016).His works were exhibited on Bright Stupid Confetti Asemic Show, Yoko Ono Fan Club, Venti Leggeri in Bologna, The Spiral Asemic Show in Malta; EL MARTELL SENSE MESTRE in Barcelona, The Future is Here Again: VISUAL LANGUAGE in New York, 1st International Literary Fair of Mato Grosso (2015), World Association of Visual and Experimental Artists in Valjevo and OVERCONSUMPTION in Ternopil.He is editor-in-chief of UndergroundBooks.org and contributing editor of Utsanga.it. Volleyball results from Thursday Friday, Oct. 7, 2022, 8:34 a.m. -- LAPEER COUNTY -- The Almont varsity volleyball team beat Madison Heights Lamphere and New Lothrop in a triple header at Almont Thursday. Dryden beat Bay City All Saints... Golf and tennis regional results Thursday, Oct. 6, 2022, 5:41 p.m. -- LAPEER COUNTY -- Boys' high school tennis regionals and girls' golf regionals took place yesterday. Lapeer girls' golf placed 11th at the Div. 1 regional hosted by Oxford... Friday night football scores Friday, September 30, 2022 10:15 p.m. LAPEER COUNTY Lapeer beat Grand Blanc 39-17 at Lapeer to remain undefeated at 6-0. Almont upset Croswell-Lexington 37-26 North Branch routed Richmond 62-10 Imlay City/Dryden fell to Yale... Summer sports camps/clinics Wednesday, June 15, 2022, 4:40 p.m. -- LAPEER COUNTY -- Below is a list of the summer sports camps and clinics that will take place through early Aug. The regular sports update posting of high... Obama, Erdogan vow to continue cooperation against terrorism Turkey\'s President Tayyip Erdogan and US President Barack Obama attend a working session at the Group of 20 (G20) summit in the Mediterranean resort city of Antalya, Turkey. Reuters, Washington :US President Barack Obama and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday pledged continued cooperation in the fight against militants, including ISIS and Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants, the White House and Turkish presidential sources said.During his phone call to Erdogan, Obama offered his condolences for last week's bombing in Istanbul, when 10 German tourists were killed in a suicide attack blamed on Islamic State, the White House and Turkish presidential sources said.Obama also condemned a recent string of attacks by the PKK against Turkish security forces, and he stressed the need for de-escalation, the White House said in a statement.The two leaders said the fight against terrorism would be among a number of topics on the agenda when US Vice President Joe Biden visits Turkey on Saturday.NATO member Turkey, a member of the US-led coalition battling Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, has increasingly become a target for the Sunni Muslim militants.Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu blamed ISIS for the bombing on January 12 in Istanbul's historic heart. The suicide bomber is thought to have crossed recently from Syria.ISIS is also believed to be behind other attacks last year in Turkey, including one in the capital Ankara in which more than 100 people were killed.Turkey's predominantly Kurdish southeast is currently engulfed in the worst violence since the 1990s after the collapse last July of a two-year-long ceasefire with PKK militants.Last week the PKK, deemed a terrorist organisation by the United States and the European Union as well as by Turkey, attacked a police station in a Diyarbakir district with a truck bomb, killing six people including a baby and two toddlers.Another report adds: A Turkish security force campaign against Kurdish militants in the southeast has been largely completed, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was reported as saying on Tuesday, as he outlined plans to maintain tighter control in parts of the region.Police and military launched operations against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) fighters in towns across the mainly Kurdish region last month, after the conflict reignited with the collapse of a two-year-long ceasefire in July.The army says it killed more than 500 PKK rebels in the campaign, adding to a death toll of more than 40,000 people killed since the PKK took up arms in 1984. The pro-Kurdish HDP party says about 100 civilians have been killed in the fighting. China offers support for Yemen govt Chinese President Xi Jinping Reuters, Beijing : China has signaled its support for Yemen's government, which is fighting an Iran-allied militia, on the first day of a visit to Saudi Arabia by Chinese President Xi Jinping, who will also be heading to Tehran later in the week. A Saudi-led coalition began a military campaign last year against the Iranian-allied Shi'ite Houthi movement in Yemen, which has seized the capital, Sanaa. The government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi is now based in the southern city of Aden. Riyadh sees the Houthis as a proxy for bitter regional rival Iran to expand its influence in the impoverished Arabian Peninsula nation. The Houthis deny this and say they are waging a revolution against a corrupt government and Gulf Arab powers beholden to the West. A growing diplomatic dispute between Riyadh and Tehran, triggered by mainly Sunni Saudi Arabia's execution of a prominent Shi'ite cleric, has damaged the outlook for any resolution to the conflict in Yemen. Saudi Arabia and China said in a statement on Wednesday that the two countries affirmed their support for the unity, independence and sovereignty of Yemen. The statement was released by China's Foreign Ministry after Xi met Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz in Riyadh on Tuesday. All social, religious and political groups in Yemen should maintain their national solidarity and avoid any decisions that may cause social disruption and chaos, it said. "Both sides stressed support for the legitimate regime of Yemen," the statement said. Xi is expected in Iran later in the week, with a further stop in Egypt after he leaves Saudi Arabia. Kurds destroyed thousands of Arab homes in Iraq: Amnesty Reuters, Erbil : Kurdish forces have bulldozed, blown up and burned down thousands of Arab homes across northern Iraq in what may constitute a war crime, human rights watchdog Amnesty International said in a report published on Wednesday. Amnesty said it found evidence of a "concerted campaign" by the Kurds to uproot Arab communities in revenge for their perceived support of Islamic State, which seized control of about one third of Iraq in the summer of 2014. Kurdish peshmerga forces have since driven the insurgents back in the north of Iraq with the help of airstrikes from a U.S.-led coalition, expanding their control to include ethnically mixed territories they claim as their own. "KRG (Kurdistan Regional Government) forces appear to be spearheading a concerted campaign to forcibly displace Arab communities by destroying entire villages in areas they have recaptured from IS (Islamic State) in northern Iraq," Amnesty's Senior Crisis Response Advisor, Donatella Rovera, said. "The forced displacement of civilians and the deliberate destruction of homes and property without military justification, may amount to war crimes." The report, based on field investigation in 13 villages and towns, and testimony gathered from more than 100 witnesses, also includes satellite imagery showing large-scale destruction of homes in Nineveh, Kirkuk and Diyala provinces. Arabs who fled their homes have also been barred by Kurdish forces from returning to areas recaptured from Islamic State, Amnesty said. 97 held with Yaba, liquor Chittagong Bureau : Chittagong district police in a series of overnight drives arrested 97 persons including a Islami Chhatra Shibir activist from different upazilas of the district on Tuesday night. Abdul Awal, Additional Superintendent of Police (Special Branch) of Chittagong district, said police detained 97 persons including a Islami Chhatra Shibir activist from different upazilas of the district for their alleged involvement in sabotage acts and vandalism. Police also recovered 860 pieces of contraband yaba tablets and 576 liters of country-made liquors during the drives. The detainees also included 83 persons who were under warrant of arrest and 13 others accused in regular cases, he said. Introducing a unified school management system Masum Billah : The recently retired education secretary Nazrul Islam Khan happened to meet the prime minister who wanted to know the number of schools, colleges and madrasas run in the private sector and how much additional money could be required to nationalize these privately run institutions. The outgoing secretary informed the prime minister that it would require one thousand crore additional money to nationalize the thirty thousand schools, colleges and madrasas run privately in the country. Of course, many of these institutions enjoy MPO (Monthly Payment Order) system of the state. This news appeared in an online newspaper where the outgoing secretary expressed that the prime minister showed her interest to nationalize these institutions but it was followed by some adverse comments regarding nationalization made by two powerful minsters has added confusion to this issue. We can learn the plight of non-government teachers and how they were treated by the state if we just look a little bit back. In the eighties and nineties the hundred percent salary of the non-government teachers and staff got more importance than nationalizing the privately run educational institutions as it was a matter of their existence as human beings satisfying the fundamental needs. In 1980 the non-government teachers were first enlisted in the national pay scale during the reign of Ziaur Rahman and since then teachers were paid fifty percent of their salaries every three months to the MPO enlisted teachers. Ershad government (1982-1990) increased it up to seventy percent and Khaleda Zia government further increased it into eighty percent. Hasina government in her first tenure (1996-2001) further increased it into ninety percent and it became hundred percent during the second tenure of Khaleda government (2001-2006). But this situation did not come to teachers automatically. They had to undergo a lot of movement, strike and hitching. The non-government teachers of secondary level started only thirty taka and non-government college teachers got only fifty taka per month as government benefit. This figure utterly shows how much neglected our education sector has been and how the government treated this most productive sector of the country. Non-government education covers the significant portion of our entire educational field though production of this field stands many times higher than government run educational institutions. We have only 317 government schools and more than six hundred government colleges. Only two percent educational institutions are run fully by the state though it is the responsibility of the state to give education to all the citizens. It expresses and shows a serious discrimination in the policy of education. Government takes the responsibility of only 317 schools fully. Doesn't it show the hollowness of our education system? What about the rest of the students and teachers? It also says that the state gives importance to education through lip service. Of course, today the situation of privately run institutions does not prove extremely deplorable which was two decades ago but it is the result of many movements and struggles of teachers for long. When this field will be nationalized, it will see a sea change in terms of quality, standard, teacher recruitment and uniformity. Today, the teachers of government school and college enjoy not only a secure job but also they are financially solvent and enjoy higher social status. But the teachers of non-government schools and colleges are deprived of these phenomena despite having the same educational qualifications quality which creates a serious imbalance and non-uniformity in the field of teaching. But this sector supplies the future and deserving citizens of the country. The more well-equipped this sector will be, the more strong future leaders we can produce from our educational institutions. Hence full state patronization is a must to fulfil that dream. Recruitment of teachers in the non-government schools, colleges and madrasas are in a deplorable condition as it is mostly done by the committees concerned which is comprised of non-professional people and they are politically motivated and influenced which influences quality teaching. In government schools and colleges the recruitment procedure though not fully leak-proof, it is somewhat reasonable. To ensure quality of education the nationalization of education is a must. When non-government teachers have been deprived of the due state facilities which are enjoyed by the government teachers it means we deliberately commit this mistake. We know, the financial condition of the state, which is, uttered sometimes stands as a barrier to nationalize education. Things actually go otherwise. The teacher leaders have said that the government does not need extra money from the state treasury to nationalize the existing non-government schools and colleges. It is not unknown to us that many state run organizations and bodies witness huge amount of loss which is met up from the state treasury and the said amount is collected from the citizens whereas education is the most vital element of the country but we always show this plea that money is a great matter to nationalize the education of the country. It is heard that the government plans to nationalize non-government schools, colleges and madrasas step by step and better intuitions located mostly in upazila headquarters will be nationalized first. This practice does not prove sound. Rural educational institutions are poverty stricken. The infra-structure of these institutions are not up to the mark. These situations hamper the usual activities of teaching-learning situations in these institutions. The financial condition of the rural guardians are still near poverty line with some exceptions. Quality teachers are also not available in these institutions as better performing teacher's work either in cities or in sub-urban education institutions. All these factors deprive the rural students of receiving good education and enjoyable teaching learning situation. But it is their right to enjoy from the state. So, it is recommended that nationalization of schools, colleges and madrasas must be started from rural areas if it is done step by step. But it is far better to nationalize all the institutions at a time which will remove the existing non-uniformity and discrimination lying in this sector. (Masum Billah works as an education specialist in BRAC Education Program, Email: [email protected]) Not easy legal system but easy atmosphere needed for investment BUSINESS leaders have called for a simplified legal support system to get increased flow of foreign direct investment (FDI) into the country to accelerate the pace of economic development. Speakers at the monthly luncheon meeting of American Chamber of Commerce and Industry (AmCham) at a city hotel Tuesday said the government has rightly prioritized to secure more FDIs but what is lacking is a right kind of legal framework, besides political risk and shortfall in infrastructure such as giving gas and electricity connection. AmCham president's suggestion that Bangladesh needs simplified laws and prompt support services deserves appropriate consideration of the government's policy makers. Particularly when he said the one-stop service center must be helpful but not adequately available at the Board of Investment (BoI), he made no secret of the fact that the BoI is failing to serve investors needs. It is really sad that the government is spending lots of money to beef up BoI and FDI but as per the AmCham president it has so far failed to the task. It is noticeable that ministers and senior government officials are often holding 'road shows' at global business centers to highlight Bangladesh but back at home they are yet to frame and put in place appropriate laws and develop institutions. BoI with a chief executive at State Minister's status is not enough to suggest that it is so powerful to solving problems, he is rather isolated by many restrictions to reach him. AmCham leaders have rightly pointed out that business people must be consulted when the government enacts any laws which have bearing on business and particularly on inflow of investments. Unfortunately the practice is missing so far rendering many laws inappropriate. Another point they made is that government should not constantly change business policies, because without predictability of future of investment and sure about its sustainability, investors always remain shy in making long-term investment. We believe that the government would hear the suggestions and put in place appropriate laws and make sure that business rules and its environment will not quickly change. They are also right when they called for reducing corruptions at all levels. Assurance of a just and free legal system is not what the government believes in. They want a judiciary politically obedient. That is not the kind of legal system good for boosting foreign investment. Then toll collection politics is also undermining foreign investment. False propaganda of success will not bring success. Don`t talk of toughness, talk of competence for providing services CITY Corporations have to ensure services they are supposed to provide before blaming the tax evaders. City dwellers are forced to pay taxes despite the hard economic reality and hardship of the people. Our people are too docile otherwise they would have stood up in protest against paying taxes without services. So it is no surprise that Tk.285 crores in taxes have fallen due and remain uncollected from taxpayers in Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC) areas. As the corruption and incompetence are to be found everywhere among public functionaries it is for the Corporations officials to prove their worth for the taxes the people should pay. The businessmen are evading holding taxes by hiding building's area and by renting residential space for commercial purposes. But the salient causes of heaping arrears holding taxes are poor management and dishonesty of some DSCC officials. The top tax dodgers include popular hospitals, public universities, schools and colleges, shopping malls, and also some government blessed businessmen. Even, tax collectors become helpless as most of the tax evaders are politically and economically influential and they do not heed DSCC notice. Sometimes, the evaders provide fake cheque that gets bounced after submitting at banks. The DSCC mayor said they would become tough to realize the dues but officers of many public organizations said the percentage of holding tax is unrealistic and they do not earn enough to pay such tax. So, the city corporations must formulate realistic policy and also time frame to realize the dues. They should forget talking about taxes, without offering honest and clean services to the residents of Dhaka. Jatrabari OC, among 5 cops sued Court Correspondent:A woman on Wednesday noon filed a case against five police officials including Officer-in-Charge (OC) of Jatrabari Police Station Aboni Shankar Kor and four other police personnel for allegedly assaulting her.The woman, Shirin Sharmin Shila, filed the case with Women and Children Repression Prevention Tribunal-2 of Dhaka. Other four police personnel are Sub-inspector Jasim, and Zaman, and Constable Devashish, and SI Abdul Quader of Mughda Police Station. In the case statement, the woman alleged that the policemen assaulted her at a house of Uttar Kutubkhali on December 3 last year. Advocate Shahidul Haque, the filing lawyer told newsmen that Judge Shafiul Azam of the court recorded the depositions of the complainant partially and decided to record the remaining depositions on Thursday to pass his order. Terrorists target Pak school Peshawar-style army operation cost 21 lives: 60 injured Rescue workers transport a wounded man to a hospital following an attack by gunmen on Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, Pakistan on Wednesday. Internet photo Dawn.com, Peshawar :Unidentified gunmen entered Bacha Khan University in Khyber Pakhtunkha's Charsadda town Wednesday and opened fire on students and faculty members as they gathered at the school for a poetry recital to commemorate the death anniversary of the activist and leader whom the school is named after.The mastermind of the APS Peshawar attack, Omar Mansoor, of the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Geedar group has claimed the attack through a post on his Facebook page, adding that four attacker were sent to the university. However, a spokesperson from the TTP Mohammad Khorasani issued a conflicting statement shortly after Mansoor's claim, in which Khorasani condemned the attack, terming it "against Shariah".Khorasani also warned that those "using the naming of TTP will be brought to justice".As the military announced the end of the clearance operation, mass casualties were feared in the attack reminiscent of the deadly December 2014 terrorist attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar which left over 140 dead - most of them students.Sources added that the four attackers were wearing suicide vests but were killed by security forces' before they could detonate their explosives. Military spokesperson Lt.Gen Asim Bajwa said four attackers have been killed. Security personnel, including SSG personnel went inside the school to control the situation.Security forces cordoned off a one-storey house, situated around a kilometre from the university's boundary wall, where three terrorists were believed to be holed up. It was later declared clear by military personnel.The terrorists gave stiff resistance to security forces as they engaged in an operation to clear the school over several hours. Intelligence sources said eight to 10 terrorists were inside the school, adding that they were between 18 and 25 years old, were wearing civilian clothes and had their faces covered.The families of students lined up outside the school. Most of the boys belonged to Dir, Hangu and other parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Journalists and all other non-essential personnel were asked to stay back in order to not interfere with the ongoing security operation. Up to 20 ambulances entered the university to rescue the injured.Provincial Minister Shah Farman told journalists 54 security guards were stationed at the university. He said around 200 people were present in the examination hall all of whom were rescued and "timely action by police and army has prevented large scale damage". "The death toll in the terrorist attack has risen to 21," regional police chief Saeed Wazir told AFP without specifying if that included the four militants the army stated it had killed.He said the operation had ended and security forces were clearing the area, with most of the student victims shot dead at a hostel for boys on the campus. The medical superintendent at District Headquarter Hospital, Charsadda confirmed 18 dead. DHQ Charsadda's officials also stated that casualties had cuts on the bodies, probably inflicted from a sharp-edged weapon.An Edhi volunteer earlier said he had seen the bodies of at least 15 persons. One Rescue 1122 official said, "The boys section [of the hostel] has been affected. Victims have mostly been hit by bullets." "Around 90 per cent of the area has been cleared. Over 70 per cent students have been rescued." Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) provincial spokesperson Shaukaut Yousafzai said between 50 to 60 people were wounded. He added there was no prior threat about an attack.Special assistant to chief minister, Mushtaq Ghani said the critically injured victims shifted to the Lady Reading Hospital Peshawar and that security in the province has been on high alert for 10 days.At least three to four security guards were injured, an eye-witness who managed to come out of the premises said. The Associated Press quoted police as saying gunmen killed an assistant professor and a student in the attack. DIG Saeed Wazir confirmed that two students and assistant professor Dr Hamid, who taught organic chemistry at the school, have been killed in the attack. "All students have been evacuated from the hostels, but militants are still hiding in different parts of the university and some students and staff are stuck inside," Wazir said.Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif reached Charsadda to boost the morale of the security personnel who took part in the operation. He was accompanied by Corps Commander Peshawar.Television footage showed soldiers entering the campus as ambulances lined up outside the main gate and anxious parents consoled each other. A rescue official talking to DawnNews quoted a rescued student as claiming that 60 to 70 students had been shot in the head by the attackers. The student added that the attack is reminiscent of the Army Public School Peshawar attack. A student speaking to DawnNews said the attackers who has penetrated the building appeared to be young."The attackers were like us - they were very young. They carried AK-47 guns. They wore jackets like the forces do... We were in the hostel sleeping as we don't have classes. "There are no classes at the university currently, there may be around 200-300 students in the hostel.""There was firing between attackers and security forces. After everything was over, the army men knocked on our room and told us we were safe." Geology student Zahoor Ahmed said he had tried to leave his hostel after hearing shots fired."(We) were stopped by our chemistry lecturer who advised us to go inside. He was holding a pistol in his hand," he said. "Then I saw a bullet hit him. I saw two militants were firing. I ran inside and then managed to flee by jumping over the back wall, "According to one eyewitness who escaped the university, the attackers had taken position at the entry points of the school. "I saw three attackers engaged in an exchange of fire with security guards of the university. One was positioned at the roof, another near the corner and the third near the wall.""We rescued the university's guards and then I saw the attackers engage the arriving police party."Attackers are believed to be on the second and third floors of the campus buildings. Shabir Khan, a lecturer in the English department, said he was about to leave the hostel for the department when firing began. "Most of the students and staff were in classes when the firing began," Khan said. "I have no idea about what's going on but I heard one security official talking on the phone to someone and said many people had been killed and injured."A student speaking to DawnNews said two security personnel were killed. "A hostel friend of mine was killed, two security personnel were killed as well." "The gunmen attacked the registrar office. Our professor was killed, his name is Hamid. Some students have also been killed. A friend of mine was so scared he jumped from the university building."A computer science student who was rescued from the university said the poetry recital event to commemorate Bacha Khan's death anniversary was to begin at 10:30am. "The university [security] on common days is enough to perplex students. They have five security checks. But the security is only for students and not VIPs," he said."In the beginning, there was just firing. There were attackers in the stairwell. We had no arms to counter them.""In the Pushto Department and Computer Science blocks I saw at least three attackers." Rescue officials say some 50 students were rescued from the premises. Out of these 50, five students were injured and have been shifted to District Headquarters Hospital, Charsadda for treatment. An emergency has been imposed in all hospitals in the town.Snipers have taken position around the premises, with monitoring being provided by aerial assets.An eyewitness rescued from the university said the university was not adequately secured, especially at the backside of the building, which had low boundary walls. Another eyewitness said that attackers threw a grenade, injuring a guard and then entered the school.Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's Member of Provincial Assembly Arshad Ali told Dawnnews that the attackers entered the university after scaling its walls. MPA Fazal Shakoor, who was elected from Charsadda, says army contingents have also arrived at the scene and that firing is continuing.Former provincial health minister Shaukat Yousafzai speaking at the site said, "This is a frontline province. We are fighting Pakistan's war in this province." "This is international terrorism. This province is a target of terrorism. We are making full efforts to combat terrorism and it has dropped. The backs of terrorists have been broken and they are breathing their last. This stunt is an attempt to breathe life into their cause." Soldiers gather outside Bacha Khan University where an attack by militants took place, in Charsadda. Eyewitnesses report having heard three blasts inside the university. The state-run PTV quotes DSP Charsadda as saying that three armed men entered the university premises and opened fire. Television reports added that a large contingent of security forces had reached the site.Speaking to DawnNews via telephone, a woman inside the university says intense firing is underway. The woman asked for help, saying assistance be sent to the premises. The attack on the university comes on the death anniversary of Bacha Khan and it began as a mushaira (poetry recitation) was underway at the premises. Around 3,000 students are enrolled at the university.Vice Chancellor Fazal Rahim told reporters that the university teaches over 3,000 students and was hosting an additional 600 visitors on Wednesday for the recital. "There are male and female staff members and students on the campus," Fazal said, adding he had been on his way to work when he was informed of the attack.Shabir Khan, a lecturer in the English department, said he was about to leave his university housing for the department when firing began."Most of the students and staff were in classes when the firing began," Khan said. "I have no idea about what's going on but I heard one security official talking on the phone to someone and said many people had been killed and injured." Security forces had earlier conducted search operations in adjoining areas and claimed that four wanted men had been arrested. Weapons and army and police uniforms were also recovered from the arrested men.Charsadda is a district in Pakistan's northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and has been a scene of several militant attacks during the past decade. The region is mostly rural in its makeup and lies 40 kilometres from Peshawar. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in a statement issued from Zurich said he is "deeply grieved" over the attack at the university. "Those killing innocent students and citizens have no faith and religion," the statement said. "We are determined and resolved in our commitment to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland."The prime minister is in Switzerland to attend the World Economic Forum.Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf Chairman Imran Khan said, "I will visit Charsadda and the attack site to review the situation. I will review if we are at fault or not." "We are all on the same page, the whole nation stood united after the APS attack."The PTI chairman added that they have also asked KP Chief Minister Pervez Khattak to return as soon as possible from England. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi condemned the attack and offered his condolences to the families of the deceased.Rumours of possible terrorist attacks on schools had been circulating in Peshawar and surrounding rural areas over the last week, forcing some schools to close educational institutions early.District administration had directed some schools to close their campuses for one day (last Saturday) insisting there were reports of possible terrorist attacks on them. Writing judgments after retirement illegal: CJ Chief Justice SK Sinha has expressed dissatisfaction over the inordinately long time some judges take to give verdicts. He has insisted the judgement be completed within the judges' tenure in office."Some judges take extremely long to write their judgments. Some others keep writing their verdicts long after their retirement, a practice that is against the law and the Constitution," the chief justice said.Justice Sinha made the observations in a statement given on the completion of his first year at Bangladesh's highest judicial post.He was sworn in as the country's 21st chief justice on Jan 17, 2015. In a four-page statement, he has highlighted the various aspects of his term so far. He admitted his failure to convince his colleagues that it was possible to finish writing the judgments of resolved cases within a "reasonable" time. "A judge is considered to be an ordinary citizen after his retirement and the oath he takes also exhausts itself," the chief justice said, explaining the illegality involved in writing judgments after retirement."Court papers are official documents. A judge loses his authority to keep them, review them or prepare judgments and sign on them," he said. "I hope judges will refrain from such illegal practices in deference to the law," the chief justice said.Justice AHM Shamsuddin Choudhury, who retired from the Appellate Division a few months back, had complained that the chief justice had withheld his pension for not completing the writing of his judgement before retirement. He said many earlier judges had followed a similar practice in the past and alleged that he was a victim of 'unfair treatment'. Justice Choudhury had even demanded Chief Justice Sinha's impeachment.Justice Sinha stressed the importance of the judiciary in a democracy and referred to several steps taken after he became the chief justice to speed up the judicial process.He has promised to take steps to solve problems that lawyers might face, and urged them to lodge complaints instead of going on strike. He expressed the hope that the mass media, as the 'Fourth Estate', would continue to make people aware of the rule of law.He also stressed greater use of information technology to streamline the judiciary. The chief justice's statement also spoke of online publication of the Supreme Court cause list, bails granted by the High Court, important verdicts of the Appellate Division and the High Court.He also mentioned an initiative to introduce e-court facilities in the High Court and lower courts.He also mentioned a day-care centre in the Supreme Court, modernisation of the apex court museum, enhanced medical facilities and the establishment of a legal aid office in the apex court.Chief Justice SK Sinha said the number of cases disposed had gone up across the judicial tiers in the past one year. He said 9,356 cases had been resolved between Jan 17 and Nov 30, 2015, in the Appellate Division, up from 5,789 the year before, registering a 162 percent increase in the disposal of cases in the Supreme Court.In the High Court, 33,380 cases had been resolved until November 2015, against 22,477 cases in 2014.Between January and September 2105, altogether 1,067,733 had been settled at the courts across Bangladesh. In 2014, the number was 997,652."The current backlog of cases can be reduced fast with the help of the government and with the cooperation of the judges, lawyers and people," Justice Sinha said in his statement. UK to continue to flourish democracy: Envoy Staff Reporter :The United Kingdom would continue to work with the government, political parties, democratic institutions and other stakeholders to help 'flourish democracy' in Bangladesh,' newly appointed British High Commissioner in Dhaka Alison Blake told journalists on Wednesday.Blake, the first female High Commissioner from UK to Bangladesh, said this while addressing a press conference her first in Dhaka at British High Commission Amenities Centre (BHC Club), Dutabash Road, Baridhara. She said democracy with strong civil society is the key to building a prosperous and stable society.We believe democracy with a flourishing civil society operating under the rule of law is the best way to build a prosperous and stable society, Alison Blake said. She added her country United Kingdom is ready to support the government and people of Bangladesh to develop institutions befitting a middle income country and to ensure that in the pursuit of economic growth and development no one is left behind.In the coming days I will work with Bangladesh and its people taking the shared agenda forward. A democracy with strong civil society "is the key to building a prosperous and stable society, she said. The British High Commissioner said the new Global Goals also include, for the first time, commitments to Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions. The UK has provided support to Bangladesh over many years to modernise its institutions, Alison Blake said. She said as the two 'United Kingdom and Bangladesh' are commonwealth countries, they share a set of core values including a commitment to parliamentary democracy and a tolerant and pluralistic system with a commitment to protect and uphold human rights.She said they have the largest Bangladeshi diaspora in Europe, and the nearly 500,000 British Bangladeshis have made an immense positive contribution to every aspect of British life, from Parliament to business, food, arts and culture. The UK is Bangladesh's third biggest export market and many thousands of Bangladeshis visit or work or study in the UK each year, she said. Alison Blake said she has been in Bangladesh for one week, and touched by the warmth of the welcome she has received from everyone she has met.My appointment is not a break with the past but an opportunity to build on the work of my many respected predecessor High Commissioners to further strengthen and deepen the long and friendly relationship between the UK and Bangladesh and to build a bright future for both our countries, she said.The UK is a somewhat older state and you have growth rates that we certainly don't match. But the UK and Bangladesh share the broadest range of interests, including education, development, bilateral trade and prosperity and security, including action on the threats that harm us all, she added.The UK is the largest cumulative investor in Bangladesh with over 1.3bn of investment in the country, the British High Commissioner said. She said over 100 British companies operate in Bangladesh, including at least one that has been here for over 100 years. These companies span the fields of banking, consumer products, energy, consultancy, textiles, education, architecture and much more, she added. Alison Blake said they are also some of the largest contributors to the Bangladeshi Exchequer and have industry-leading social responsibility programmes. She said the UK believes that a stable, prosperous and secure Bangladesh is in the UK's interest as well as that of Bangladesh. "We are committed to supporting Bangladesh in its aspirations to build a brighter future for all its people," Alison Blake said. She said the UK and the Government of Bangladesh also work together to tackle shared problems, ones that neither of us can solve on our own, including security problems and particularly extremism and terrorism and the threat posed by climate change, a threat to all of us but very acutely to Bangladesh which is already vulnerable to natural disasters, such as cyclones, floods, river bank erosion, earthquakes.She said in an increasingly unpredictable and unstable world, Bangladesh deserves the credit it has rightly been given for its role internationally in the UN, not least helping to shape the new Global Goals, at the UN Human Rights Council and as the largest personnel contributor to UN peacekeeping operations.She said they are also supporting Bangladesh put in the place the foundations for continued economic growth and job creation. She added the UK supports Bangladesh's continuing development and sustainable future growth, building on a strong trade partnership and continuing our major development programme.As Bangladesh's friend and the biggest bilateral grant donor we care deeply about Bangladesh's future and value deeply the UK's relationship with Bangladesh, the British High Commissioner said. She said Bangladesh's people have made an immense positive contribution to British society.We believe we can support Bangladesh on its democratic path and as it grows to be a stronger and more prosperous nation for all its people, the British High Commissioner said. Workers' Party leader shot dead in Pabna UNB, Pabna : A local leader of Jatiya Krishak Samity, the farmer wing of Workers' Party, was shot to death by miscreants at Chachkia village in Atgharia upazila on Wednesday night. The deceased was identified as Abdul Rashid, 35, vice president of the upazila unit of Krishak Samity and son of late Bahadur Pramanik of the village. District Workers' Party president Zakir Hossain said a group of miscreants swooped on Rashid near his house around 9pm. They stabbed him indiscriminately and fire on him, leaving him dead on the spot. Officer-in-charge of Atgharia Police Station GM Mizanur Rahman said they were informed about the incident. S`pore sends back 26 BD terror suspects Only 14 land in jail: Foreign Office mum Staff Reporter :Twenty-six Bangladeshis arrested in Singapore earlier for their alleged involvement with militant groups, have been sent back home in batches in November and December last.According to the Foreign Ministry sources, there has been no case against them and they were the followers of Ahle Hadith and used to invite people to accept Islam as religion. When contacted Foreign Secretary Shahidul Haque said they know the arrest of Bangladeshis in Singapore."We have not taken any initiative regarding the issue yet. Bangladesh High Commissioner in Singapore is looking into matter," he said. The Foreign Ministry is likely to receive a report from Bangladesh Mission in Singapore over the matter on Thursday. Meanwhile, the identity of another person among total 27 could not be known immediately.However, the Singapore based national daily The Straits Times and the Channel News Asia, Singapore on Wednesday reported that at least twenty-seven Bangladeshis working in Singapore have been arrested under the Internal Security Act (ISA).Investigations showed that they supported the armed jihad ideology of terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).Some of them considered waging armed jihad in overseas lands, but they were not planning any terrorist attack in Singapore, said the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Wednesday.The men, who were working in the construction industry there, were detained between Nov 16 and Dec 1 last year.The 26 members were of a closed religious study group that subscribed to extremist beliefs and teachings of radical figures like Anwar al-Awlaki, an American and Yemeni Islamic lecturer alleged to have ties with militant group Al-Qaeda. Awlaki was killed in a drone strike in Yemen in September 2011.The other man was not a member of the study group, but was suspected to have been undergoing radicalisation. He supported extremist preachers and possessed jihadi-related material.All 27 have had their work permits cancelled, and 26 of them have since been repatriated to Bangladesh, where the authorities were informed of the circumstances of their repatriation.The last person is now in prison for attempting to leave Singapore illegally after learning of his fellow members' arrests. He will also be repatriated once he completes his sentence.In the course of their arrests, the Internal Security Department recovered a "significant amount" of radical and jihadi-related materials, such as books and videos containing footage of children undergoing training in what appeared to be terrorist military camps.Several members also possessed a shared document with graphic images and instruction details on how to conduct "silent killings" using different methods and weapons.The group members took measures to avoid detection by the authorities, sharing jihadi-related materials discreetly and holding weekly gatherings to discuss armed conflicts involving Muslims, said MHA.They also bore grievances against the Bangladeshi government over its actions against some Islamic groups and leaders.The government takes a serious view of any form of support for terrorism.Any person - foreigner or otherwise - who engaged in any activity that threatens to harm Singapore's national security and racial and religious harmony will be firmly dealt with under the law.Foreigners are guests of our country and they should not abuse this privilege and use Singapore as a base to import their own domestic political agenda and carry out activities in pursuit of such an agenda," MHA said.Among the 26 Bangladeshis repatriated, 14 of them have been sent to jail under the country's Anti-Terrorism Act, said the Bangladesh High Commission in Singapore."The concerned agencies of the Government of Bangladesh produced them before a court and the court placed them on a four-day remand. During the remand, they will be interrogated to find out about their alleged involvement. They will be dealt with in accordance with the law of the land and if found guilty, legal action will be taken against them," a spokesman said. These Bangladeshi nationals also bore grievances against the Bangladeshi government over its actions against some Bangladeshi Islamic groups and leaders, according to the press release.The Migrant Workers' Centre (MWC), a non-government organization for foreign workers in Singapore, also cautioned against discrimination.The Mufti of Singapore Dr Mohamed Fatris Bakaram spoke out against extremism following news of the arrests. "They contradict the fundamental Islamic teaching of protecting the sanctity of human life and preserving peace and harmony at all times. The safety and peace of Singapore is of paramount interest to the Singapore Muslim community," he said. The Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (MUIS) called on the Singapore Muslim community to remain vigilant and uphold resilience against radicalism. It also said it will step up efforts to prevent any form of radical teachings from taking root in the Singaporean Muslim community. If you are looking for the new Immoral Minority posts, you should know that they can be found here at our new home Please stop by to get caught up on politics, join the conversations, or simply check out the new digs. Capt. Reginald Thomas accepts the position of LPD interim chief. Photo by Wynce Nolley Mayor-President Joel Robideaux announced Tuesday that he has named Capt. Reginald Reggie Thomas as the Interim Police Chief for the Lafayette Police Department. Thomas is a 25-year veteran of the LPD and a graduate of the FBI National Academy who just this past Sunday was promoted to captain and named as the commander of Precinct Four headquartered on Moss Street. Thomas will take over for outgoing Police Chief Jim Craft who will be ending his 39-year career with LPD on Jan. 31 to take a position as the executive director of the Louisiana Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Criminal Justice, which is among the recent cabinet appointments by Gov. John Bel Edwards. Chief Craft, thank you for everything, said Robideaux to a round of applause. I appreciate your help in this process. Your community certainly owes you a debt of gratitude and I hope that you remain a familiar face in Lafayette as you venture into your next phase. Robideaux also announced his intention to create a new position within the police department of deputy chief. While its not an easy task to fill the void that Chief Craft leaves behind, Im certain that I have found the right person to lead the department, said Robideaux. And going forward, let me say that I plan to work with the council and with the Civil Service Board to establish the position of deputy chief. My intention and hope is to have Capt. Thomas serve in that role once the national search has been conducted and a permanent chief has been named. Thomas holds a number of leadership positions including having served as the supervisor of the Officer Involved Shooting Team and has been previously elected by his peers to serve as their representative on the Civil Service Board. As a supervisor in the Criminal Investigations Division, Thomas has both led and supervised investigations of major crimes in Lafayette. Thomas also currently serves at the president of the Louisiana Chapter of the FBI National Academy Association, and was instrumental in obtaining and managing a grant for the department for the Violence Against Women Act. Thomas was surrounded by his friends and family as he accepted the position. I would like to thank Mayor Robideaux for trusting me with this important position, said Thomas. I am honored and humbled to accept the position of interim chief of the Lafayette Police Department. I would also like to thank Chief Jim Craft for not only training, but mentoring me throughout the years. Thomas will take over as interim chief as Robideaux begins a nationwide search for a permanent police chief. During this time, it will be my duty to insure a successful transition and ensure the safety of the community, said Thomas. It is my goal as interim chief to continue to lead the city of Lafayette with the input of the community and to focus more heavily on community policing. I understand that we must bridge the gap between the police department and the community. Monet rahapelien ystavat ovat viime vuosina loytaneet netticasinot ja olleet ihmeissaan. Verrattuna kotimaisen Veikkauksen kivijalkarahapeleihin puhutaan aivan eri tason palautusprosenteista ja lisaksi pelaaminen on aarimmaisen helppoa ja turvallista. Netticasinoiden maara on tana paivana todella suuri ja niita loytyy jokaiseen lahtoon, suurin ongelma aloittelevalla pelaajalla onkin tehda valinta siita, minka netticasinon valitsee. Kaikkien netticasinoiden mainospuheet naet lupaavat kauniita asioita ja niiden lapinakeminen on tietysti tarkeaa. Nyrkkisaantona voidaan kuitenkin jo kattelyssa todeta, etta jos valitsemasi netticasino on lisensoitu ETA-alueella, sen kanssa ei tule olemaan ongelmia, ellei niita itse jarjesta. Kay tutustumassa parhaisiin netticasinoihin osoitteessa www.ilmaiskierroksia.info! Ensimmainen nyrkkisaanto on siis varmistaa, etta valitsemallasi netticasinolla on ETA-alueen lisenssi. Suurimmassa osassa tapauksista se on Maltan eli MGA:n lisenssi. Myos Viron, Englannin ja Gibraltarin lisensseja nakyy ja naissa valvonta on jopa Maltaa tiukempaa. Lopputulema on kuitenkin se, etta ETA-alueen lisenssi takaa suomalaisille verovapaat voitot seka sen, etta niita valvotaan kontrolloidusti. Maailmalla on iso nippu Curacaon lisenssilla toimivia netticasinoita ja niistakin suurin osa on laadukkaita. Ne eivat kuitenkaan ole suomalaisille asiakkaille verovapaita, joten emme suosittele niita. Tana paivana markkinoille on ilmaantunut paljon ETA-alueella toimiva netticasinoita ilman rekisteroitymista. Jos tarkoitus on vain pelata yksittaisia pelikertoja, on varsin helppo suositella naita. Netticasinot ilman rekisteroitymista tarjoavat palvelun tunnistautumisen verkkopankin avainlukulistan avulla ja saman palvelun kautta tapahtuvat talletukset ja mahdolliset voittojen nostot silmanrapayksessa. Normaaleihin netticasinoihin pitaa asiakkaan rekisteroitya, tehda talletukset ja tunnistautua dokumenttien avulla. Tama on lisenssiehtojen mukainen kaytanto, eika kovinkaan monimutkainen, mutta silti monet asiakkaat haluavat yksinkertaista ja nopeaa palvelua. Toki normaalit netticasinot tarjoavat usein asiakkailleen laadukkaita talletusbonuksia ja erilaisia kampanjoita, joten kannattaa tarkkaan punnita, kumman ratkaisun valitsee. Kannattaa myos muistaa, etta tunnistautuminen tehdaan vain kerran, joten mikaan jatkuva riippakivi se ei ole. Suomalaiset asiakkaat ovat netticasinoille tarkeita, joten kaikilla vahankin laadukkailla netticasinoilla on suomenkieliset sivut seka suomenkielinen asiakaspalvelu suomenkielisyys kannattaakin ottaa netticasinoa valittaessa nyrkkisaannoksi. Vaikka tana paivana englanninkielisyys on harvoille ongelma, on suomenkielisten netticasinoiden maara niin valtava, etta suosittelemme niiden kayttoa. Rahansiirrot ovat tana paivana niin hyvassa mallissa, etta niiden kanssa tuskin tulee mitaan ongelmia. Kolme tarkeinta segmenttia: Suomalaiset verkkopankit, luottokortit (Visa, Mastercard) seka nettilompakot (Skrill, Neteller) loytyvat jokaisesta laadukkaasta netticasinosta. Viime vuosien trendiksi noussut verkkokauppa on kehittanyt rahansiirrot niin laadukkaiksi ja nopeiksi, etta niiden suhteen ei ole enaa vuosiin ollut ongelmia. Luonnollisesti netticasinot kayttavat naita samoja palveluita ja hyotyvat kehityksesta. Naiden isojen linjojen jalkeen netticasinon valintaan vaikuttavat luonnollisesti tarjottavat tervetuliaisbonukset uudet asiakkaat saavat tana paivana kovan kilpailun myota merkittavia etuja netticasinoilta ja niita kannattaa luonnollisesti vertailla. Erilaiset talletusbonukset, ilmaiskierrokset seka ilmaiset pelirahat tuovat suuriakin rahanarvoisia etuja ja niiden vertailu on ehdottomasti kannattavaa. Myoskaan useampien tilien avaaminen ja tervetuliaistarjousten kayttaminen ei missaan nimessa ole huono idea. Kun edella mainitut asiat ovat mieleisia ja vaihtoehtoja on vielakin jaljella, mennaan jo nyansseihin. Toki pelivalikoima on yksi kriteeri, mutta taman paivan netticasinoissa tamakin asia on paasaantoisesti varsin samanlainen. Toki useamman samantasoisen netticasinon vertailussa kannattaa yleensa valita se, jossa on eniten peleja tarjolla. Vaikka omat suosikit loytyisivatkin useammasta, voi tulevaisuudessa mielenkiinto nousta joihinkin muihin peleihin ja silloin on tietysti mukavampaa, etta ne loytyvat valikoimista. Viimeisena voidaan nostaa esiin kaytettavyys joidenkin netticasinoiden sivut ovat vilkkuvia, valkkyvia ja epakaytannollisia. Omaan silmaan ja kaytettavyyteen sopiva sivusto on luonnollisesti aina se paras valinta. Tarjonta netticasinoissa on tana paivana valtava ja jokaiselle loytyy varmasti se oma netticasino onnea matkaan! President Joe Biden has decided to ban Russian oil imports, toughening the toll on Russia's economy in retaliation for its invasion of Ukraine. The United States generally imports about 100,000 barrels a day from Russia, only about 5% of Russia's crude oil exports, according to Rystad Energy. Last year, roughly 8% of U.S. imports of oil and petroleum products came from Russia. Gas prices have been rising for weeks due to the conflict and in anticipation of potential sanctions on the Russian energy sector. The U.S. national average for a gallon of gasoline soared 45 cents a gallon in the past week and topped $4.06 on Monday, according to auto club AAA. Should the US ban Russian oil imports over Ukraine war? You voted: Here is the account from the NY Times:The pension board of the United Methodist Church one of the largest Protestant denominations in the United States, with more than seven million members has placed five Israeli banks on a list of companies that it will not invest in for human rights reasons, the board said in a statement on Tuesday. It appeared to be the first time that a pension fund of a large American church had taken such a step regarding the Israeli banks, which help finance settlement construction in what most of the world considers illegally occupied Palestinian territories.The five banks Bank Hapoalim, Bank Leumi, First International Bank of Israel, Israel Discount Bank and Bank Mizrahi-Tefahot are each involved in financing settlement construction in Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun magazine, the largest circulation voice of liberal and progressive Jews (and the winner of the Best Magazine of the Year Award from the Religion Newswriters Association in both 2014 and 2015) issued the following statement January 13, 2016:Although we at Tikkun do NOT support a general boycott of Israel, and wish to see Israel remain strong and its security intact, we welcome the action of the United Methodist Church Pension Fund. The action of the UMC Pension Fund is narrowly focused on boycotting and divesting from Israeli and other firms that help perpetuate Israels Occupation of the Palestinian people in the West Bank and the construction of Jewish-only settlements . The Occupation of the West Bank with its attendant oppression of the Palestinian people is not only a violation of the highest values of the Jewish people, it is also the Israeli activity that most threatens to turn Israel into a pariah state and thereby weaken its ability to protect its citizens from the real threats it may face from surrounding hostile powers and forces. For that reason, we support all efforts to boycott the products produced on the West Bank in Israeli Jewish only settlements and to disinvest from Israeli and global corporations and institutions that help make the Occupation possible. The Jewish people in centuries to come will thank those friends of Israel, like the United Methodists, Presbyterians USA, and the United Church of Christ, who are doing all they can to reverse Israels self-destructive policies in the West Bank while distancing from the BDS movement that aims not only at the Occupation of the West Bank but at the totality of Israel and the Israeli people. News and views on social issues, development, human rights and the environment The sextoy market is growing quite rapidly in India right now. Although it is not a big trend, it is a hot topic on the internet as it is secretly expanding its market. In this article, we will focus on sextoy and introduce recommended sextoy for Indian beginners of sextoy by gender. India, the birthplace of the Kama Sutra, is very strict about sex. Also, premarital sex is basically not allowed. Therefore, there are many people who are sexually restricted. But what happens when you continue to be sexually restricted? Frustration may build up and you may end up taking your sexual stress out on your partner. If you are able to adopt sextoy in a timely manner, you can get rid of those problems. I want to have more exciting sex than Im having now. I want more variation in masturbation I want to get even stronger pleasure than I do on my own. If you have any of these problems, please stay with me until the end. What is sex toys for Indian? Sextoy, as the name implies, is a toy used during sex and masturbation. It is a generic term for vibrators, Egg-vibrators, Electric massagers, dildo, handcuffs and condoms. They are used to make regular sex more exciting or to make masturbation more pleasurable. Because sextoy is very stimulating, it can help you to get rid of the problems and frustrations of being in a rut of sex with your partner for a long time, or if you are unhappy with the lack of pleasure in sex with your partner. The ability to satisfy your desires with movement, texture, and size, which cannot be done by a normal human being, can help you to be satisfied with sex and, as a result, improve your relationship with your partner. It is also said to help improve sexual dysfunction (inability to get an erection or ejaculate) and difficulty in feeling during sex (insensitivity), which is attracting more attention than in the past. In recent years, the demand for sextoy has increased due to the spread of smartphones and the Internet and the increasing number of people using online shopping. Even those who are concerned about the appearance of sextoy (and find it difficult to purchase) can now easily obtain it by using mail order. In the case of online shopping, most of the stores have taken steps to ensure that the contents of the products delivered to you are not revealed, so you can purchase them without your family members knowing. Until a while ago, you had to go to the store where the adult goods were sold to buy them, so it was quite a hurdle to overcome. Also, many people may have an image that sextoy is somehow embarrassing to own. But nowadays, some of them are so stylish and cute that you cant believe they are sextoy at a glance. More and more people are using them for travel and outdoor use because they are not too bulky and are suitable for carrying around. Sextoy situation in India Before introducing the recommended sextoy for Indians, lets talk about one of the sextoy situations in India in recent years. In India, due to the high concentration of population, the following six cities have particularly high sales of sextoy in India. Mumbai Kolkata Bangalore Delhi Chennai Hyderabad These cities account for roughly 70 percent of sextoy sales in India. In the future, the percentage of sextoy use will gradually increase in other cities in India as well. If you never talk about sextoy publicly, that girl in your neighborhood might be a sextoy user too. If you are interested in sextoy, you dont have to suppress your desire for it. What are Sextoys for beginner? Among all sextoys, sextoy for beginners are vibrators, dildo, masturbators, Sex Lubricants, and condoms. Sex Lubricants and condoms, which are familiar to people who have had sex, are also a great beginners sextoy. I will explain the details of each toy later, but there are many sextoy products that are painful to use and can only be used after some anal expansion. I assume that the Indian readers of this article are people who have not had much experience with sextoy. If such people use professional sextoy suddenly, they are at risk of injury or trauma. Therefore, to introduce sextoy, you need to start with a beginners version and gradually become familiar with it. Advantages of using sextoy for Indians There are three advantages of using sextoy for Indians You can masturbate in a wide variety of ways. Can have stimulating sex Can develop new sexual zones If you try to masturbate with your own fingers or hands, it tends to be a pattern. However, with sextoy, you can easily masturbate in a variety of ways. You will definitely be fascinated by the attraction of new stimulation. Also, your daily sex life will be more exciting than ever. There are many things in sextoy that are visually stimulating and give you a strong and intense feeling of pleasure. This allows you to see your partners promiscuity in a way that you wouldnt normally see it. When you are in a relationship, sex with your partner may become a pattern, but it can also eliminate these problems. It can also lead to the development of new sexual zones (which is the training of sexual stimulation to allow you to feel orgasms). For more information on the development of new sexual zones, see the following articles [Women's Erogenous Zone]How to find and develop, 7 hidden sexual zones !![In India] In this issue, we will dissect the female erogenous zone! ..." Many of you may be like that. Men, in particular, shou... Thus, the use of sextoy can only be a good thing for the men and women of India. Sextoy for beginner men in India So, lets continue with the recommended goods for Indian sextoy beginners. For ease of understanding, we will introduce them by gender. Lets start with the men! The following five goods are recommended for novice Indian sextoy men Masturbator Cock rings Love Doll Sex Lubricants Toys for the prostate Lets check each one in detail. Masturbator The masturbator is a sextoy for men that elaborately reproduces a womans vagina, mouth, and anus, and is one of the most popular sextoy products. It is used by men to masturbate, and it is popular because it provides stronger stimulation and pleasure more easily than using hands. Most are made of good quality silicone, and their softness is something that cannot be achieved with ones own hands. They can provide stronger pleasure than a real womans vagina, so be careful not to overuse them. (You wont be able to have an orgasm in a womans vagina anymore.) Again Male masturbators are a wonderful toy. I do not need any favourite timing, bothersome bargaining. You do not have to worry too much. Revolutionize your masturbation time! ! ! Made in Japan is a wonderful kinky toy.#sextoysindia #SexToyIndia #Japanhttps://t.co/4k70QGzoTP pic.twitter.com/tRVdxTKPpa SEXToys India PR (@SextoysIndia) November 12, 2018 Some of them are disposable, while others can be washed and used over and over again, so its fun to buy a few to use depending on your mood. If you want to know more about masturbator, please click here Really pleasant male masturbation and how to do it Are you in a rut with your daily masturbation routine? I'm going to show you five ways men masturbate that you might ... [For Beginners] How to choose and use a male masturbator without fail Gentlemen.Have you ever used a masturbator? The person who sees this article is probably the one who has not experien... Cock Ring A cock ring is literally a ring-shaped sextoy that is worn on a mans penis. It maintains an erection by binding the penis with a ring of rubber and blocking blood flow. It is sometimes used as an accessory to be worn on the penis, and may be made of metal or plastic as well as rubber. In some cases, cock rings have parts or vibrators attached to them that stimulate the vagina, so they kill two birds with one stone, giving a woman pleasure while maintaining an erection. Cock rings are also sometimes used to treat erectile dysfunction. It can help with erectile dysfunction, where the penis doesnt get hard when you get an erection or doesnt last long when you try to insert it. Men who are prone to breakage or who are unsure of the hardness and size of their erections can use a cock ring to increase the size of their penis and maintain an erection for a longer period of time. Cock rings vary in price from around RS700 to over RS2000 with a vibrator function. Some of them do not fit your penis, so you should check the size of the cock ring before you buy. You should know the size of your partners or your own penis when it is erect. [Penis enlargement] What is a cock ring? Types and usage Cock rings can make your penis bigger and harder. It also makes sex with women more fulfilling and increases your sat... Love Doll Love dolls, also known as Dutchwives, are dolls with the appearance of a woman who can experience simulated sex. There are dolls that look like a woman, but they have no face and only have their breasts and lower torso cut off, and some dolls are so realistic that they can actually be mistaken for real women. Some expensive dolls can cost more than 1 million yen, and the quality of the doll is easily influenced by the price. The higher the price, the higher the quality of the doll will be, the closer it will be to the real woman, and the cheaper the doll will be, the less elaborate it will be, making it look like a real doll! Something is wrong! That is also true. You cant go wrong if you choose a balance between price and taste. There are stores that allow you to make custom-made love dolls, so you can create a girl of your choice. You can make a girl of your choice. You can start with inexpensive love dolls at first, and once you get used to it, you can try custom-made love dolls. If you want to know more about Love doll, please click here Thorough explanation of the charm of sex dolls! Have you ever heard of sex dolls that are used primarily for pseudo-sex purposes? It is a doll that is quite close to... Sex lubricants Sex lubricants are used as a substitute for lubricating fluid during sex or as a lubricant for men to use masturbator rules. It is not uncommon for women to have difficulty getting wet, depending on their physical condition, or to have difficulty getting wet due to their constitution. Forcing the penis into the vagina at such times can cause painful intercourse. There are various types of Sex Lubricants, some with a warming effect, some with a cooling effect, and some with a scent. Changing the Sex Lubricant used during play is recommended as a good sex accent. If you want to learn more about Sex Lubricants, click here. What is sex lubricant?Explain the difference and usage of each ingredient The word "sex toy" may seem like a hurdle to overcome, but lotion is actually one of the most familiar sex toys. Many... Toys for the Prostate Another sextoy for men is prostate toys. The most famous prostate toys include Enemagra, which was originally a prostate massager developed by an American urologist to treat an enlarged prostate line. Modern prostate toys are imitations of Enemagra that have spread as sextoy for men. Many people think of prostate toys as being used by gay men, but in fact they are often used by straight men. What is the prostate? The prostate is an organ found only in men. It is a walnut-sized organ located deep in the pelvis, just below the bladder, and its primary role is to protect and nourish sperm. You cannot touch the prostate gland from outside the body, but you can touch it by inserting a finger or sextoy through the anus. By inserting a finger or sextoy through the anus and touching the prostate and developing it, you can feel intense orgasms. Orgasms felt in the prostate are mainly dry orgasms, which are orgasms that do not involve ejaculation. (You can also feel orgasms with ejaculation through prostate stimulation.) The prostate is called the male G-spot, and dry orgasms can be much more intense than ejaculation. Therefore, men who are able to develop a prostate can become addicted to the pleasure. sextoy for beinner women in India The following are the recommended goods for Indian women who are new to sextoy. The following three are recommended for use by women who are new to sextoy. Vibrator. Dildo Electric Masserger Lets check out what each one is in detail. If you want to check out womens toys, click here. [BEST25]Sex Toys for Women in IndiaThat Can Help You Have an Orgasm There are many women who pretend to feel orgasm during sex. But don't worry, you don't have to pretend to feel orgasm... Vibrators A vibrator is a sextoy that vibrates with an Egg-Vibrator to provide stimulation and is often referred to simply as a vibrator. Some vibrate as well as rotate, and there are many variations of sextoy. It is quite a popular sextoy, and is well recognized by people who do not know much about sextoy. Its usage is similar to that of a massager, but it is more compact and easier to carry than a massager, and many of them look as cute as a lipstick or a macaroon, so they are popular among women. For a while, a famous influencer on twitter said, This is good! You may have heard of the topic of this article by introducing the recommended vibrators. Vibrators are great for women to use on their own, but they are also recommended for men who have difficulty satisfying women with sex. Since it is powered by electricity, it is far less tiring than moving your hands by yourself. This makes it easier to satisfy a woman with sex because you can caress her for longer than usual. Vibrators are mainly used on the female side, but they can also be used on men. When used on men, they are used to attack the nipples and glans, and in both cases it is recommended to wear a condom for hygiene reasons. Introducing how to use the vibrator, its purpose, and how to choose it! Vibrator uses the vibrations caused by the rotation of the motor to provide stimulation. It is one or two of the most... Dildo A dildo is a model sextoy made to mimic a male penis. It can be made of silicone, elastomer (think of it as a material similar to PVC), metal or glass. A dildo can be used by a man for his female partner during sex, or by a woman for masturbation to get pleasure from it. They are mainly inserted into women, but some can be used in the male anus as well. It is sometimes used synonymously with vibrators, but the vibrator is not the same thing as a vibrating device. A model of a penis that does not vibrate is a dildo. Some of them have suction cups that can be attached to the floor or wall so that you can enjoy realistic masturbation without using your hands. For fun, there is a dildo made in the shape of your partners penis. This one is also popular as a gift, and if youve been together for a long time and are having trouble finding a gift for your partner, you might want to pick one. To learn more about dildo, please click here. What is Dildo: Orgasms with Dildos for Men and Women A dildo is a model of a male organ that is used by women for masturbation and by men to stimulate the prostate gland. Th... Electric Masserger A Electric Masserger is a hand-held electric massager, also known as a handheld massager, and can usually be purchased at electronics stores. It was originally designed to relieve stiff shoulders and back pain, so the hurdle of buying one in a physical store is quite low. Many people may have seen or used it in some form or another, as it is often installed in leisure hotels. Such a massager is highly recommended for beginners because it is easy for women to get pleasure from it when they use it during masturbation. It is larger than Egg-Vibrator and vibrations are stronger than those of Egg-Vibrators and vibrators, so even just hitting the clitoris can give you a great deal of pleasure. For those women who have never had an orgasm during sex with their man, the massager may be a good way to get a feel for what it feels like to have an orgasm. It looks and feels like an electric massager, so you wont have to feel awkward if your roommate finds out. If you are in a rut of having sex with your partner, if you want to feel an orgasm through masturbation, or if you are thinking of using a sextoy, why dont you try it from a simple massager? To learn more about Electric Masserger, click here. What is a massager? Introducing types, selection methods, and usage Originally, the Magic-wand vibrator and the massage machine were sold as a home massage machine used for the back and th... How to choose a sextoy for Indian Now that weve covered the different types of sextoy, heres how to choose one. Especially if you are trying sextoy for the first time, pay attention to the following three points: Does the size fit you (the partner)? Does the size fit you (your partner)? Is the environment able to produce sound without problems? Price range First of all, the choice of size is quite important. Most sextoy are used against or inserted into the genitals, but the genitals are very delicate organs for both men and women. For this reason, using an inappropriate size may cause damage. Secondly, the environment should be able to produce sound without problems. Some sextoys not only wear, but also rotate and vibrate. Its easier to get pleasure from something that moves than something that doesnt, but the fact that it moves means that the internal rotors make some noise. If you live in a house with thin walls or if you have roommates, you may not be able to concentrate because of the noise, so it is best to choose one that is silent or has a low noise level. Especially in India, where many people live with their families, it is very important that you dont have to worry about sound when you use it. Finally, there is the price range. The price range of sextoy ranges widely, from around RS500 at the cheapest to RS10,000 or more at the highest. Its good to consider how much money you can afford and how much you want to buy. Do you want your family to not find out about sextoy? I live with my family and want to use sextoy without them finding out! If you are a man, you should buy a camouflage sextoy that does not look like a sextoy at first glance. For men, there are many masturbators that do not look like a sextoy, and for women, there are vibrators that only look like cosmetics. If you choose such a type, youll be safe in case your family members find out. How to buy sextoys in India The best way to purchase sextoy is through online shopping. For more information on how to purchase sextoy, please see the article below. Sextoy is one of them. Therefore, you can easily get sextoy in India by using online shopping. SexToysINDIA is a long established and stable sextoy store and you can have sextoy delivered to any place in India. They also offer cash on delivery, so those who are worried about shopping with a credit card do not have to worry. Of course, the latest security is in place, so your information will not be taken out when you use your credit card. To begin with, many people may be concerned about whether they are legally allowed to purchase sextoy. ikmAs it turns out, its not illegal. Right now, it is not open to the public because the Indian adult market is still in the development stage, but it will gradually spread from now on. Take advantage of sextoy and open the door to new pleasures and culture. Cautions for Indians using sextoy When using sextoy, keep the following three things in mind Keep sex toys clean Watch out for electrical leakage Beware of the heat generated by the body while using a sex toy As I mentioned earlier, many sextoy products are used for the delicate zone. Therefore, it is most important to keep the sextoy itself clean. It is very important to keep the sextoy itself clean, because if a slight scratch is created by friction, bacteria can enter and breed there. It is safe to wear a condom when using the masturbator, just in case. In addition, many sextoy devices are powered by a power source, so if they are not waterproof, there is a possibility of electric shock or malfunction due to wetness. Some may even develop heat during continuous use. If the fever becomes too much, you may get burned, so be careful. If you get a fever during use, stop driving the sextoy immediately and refrain from using it. You will enjoy sex more if you keep it safe and use it correctly. Summary What did you think? In this article, we have introduced the recommended sextoy for the beginners of sextoy in India. The sextoy market is growing rapidly in India and it will continue to grow steadily in the future. As India is a rather closed-minded country, it can be difficult to be open about ones sexual habits and values. However, being faithful to ones desires by properly dissolving ones sexual desire is very effective for ones physical and mental health. If this is your first time to learn about sextoy, or if you are interested in using sextoy, why not give it a try? Indian Sextoys for ur best! will introduce you to sextoy and other trivia about sextoy, sexuality, and sexuality for men and women. I want to read more! If you think its a great idea, please bookmark it. CAIRO Against the directive of HUDs Fair Housing Director in Chicago, the Alexander County Housing Authority Board on Tuesday voted 3-0 at the top of a contentious morning to hire Sesser Mayor Jason Ashmore as its next executive director. The meeting lasted less than five minutes and included little discussion among the board members present: Chairman Andy Clarke, Monica Smith and Sidney Miller. Board members Irene McBride and Judson Childs were not in attendance. Board Chairman Andy Clarke adjourned the meeting without taking comments from any of the about 15 people in attendance, almost exclusively African-American public housing residents and citizens, many of whom said they were upset with the hiring of Ashmore. "You cannot disrespect the tenants and do what you want to do," community activist Linda Frazier stated as Clarke called the meeting to a close. The three board members quickly exited the room, while Ashmore stayed behind for about 30 minutes talking to those who wanted to express their concerns. Many from the audience questioned his lack of housing experience, and the fact that he doesn't plan to move to Alexander County. Phillip Matthews, a pastor, said he knows another more qualified candidate from Cairo applied for the job. "Buddy, buddy system," another person responded about the choice of Ashmore. Ashmore repeated several times that he hoped to work together with HUD and the citizens of Cairo as a team, and asked that people give him a chance. The little discussion at the meeting came when Clarke briefly stated that officials from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development had asked board members to reconsider other applicants. Clarke asked Smith and Miller if they had reconsidered others or if they had any other questions, and both said no. In a Jan. 8 letter, Maurice McGough, HUDs Region V director of the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, wrote a letter to Clarke, informing him he does not approve of the boards hiring of Ashmore. The reasons McGough cited were that Ashmore will not be relocating to Alexander County. McCough said he believes a director living in the county is necessary because of the unique challenges facing the housing authority, including its troubled status, and because the board should pick a candidate able to demonstrate technical expertise in affordable housing programs. Ashmore is a 10-year veteran of the Illinois Department of Transportation who was let go nearly a year ago after Gov. Bruce Rauner took office. He was elected mayor of Sesser, a part-time position, in 2013. McGough is required to sign off on the boards selection for executive director under the terms of a Voluntary Compliance Agreement between HUD and the board as part of resolving numerous HUD citations of civil rights violations by the housing authority for alleged discriminatory practices in the housing and hiring of African-Americans. The agreement states that failure for the housing authority to follow it could result in HUD pulling funding, or placing the housing authority into receivership. Ashmore said hes in discussions with HUD officials, but would not say which HUD officials nor reveal anything about the nature of those conversations. Were in discussions right now and Im just going to have to leave it at that, he said. Asked why he would not wait to resolve issues with HUD before accepting the position and finalizing his employment, so as not to jeopardize the housing authoritys financial situation, Ashmore said hes been trying to have those conversations. He said he will step down if HUD threatens to pull funding or take other punitive action. But Ashmore maintains that the compliance agreement was not broken because a different HUD official, Bill Wilkins, HUDs director of Office of Public Housing in Illinois, winnowed a list of applicants to eight while attending a board meeting. When they narrowed down to eight that is when they gave their approval for one of them eight persons, Ashmore said. Wilkins said previously he was just trying to help move the process along, not giving approval of candidates. Ashmore is reiterating statements made previously by Clarke, and that were formalized as an argument in a written response to HUDs McGough for the hiring of Ashmore. It stated that the board believes it could have extended an offer to any of the candidates whose resumes Wilkins labeled yes or maybe and been in compliance. Clarke said Ashmore was in the yes pile. In an emailed statement after the housing authority boards vote, HUD Region V spokeswoman Gina Rodriguez said the situation is currently under review. Christina Mulka, spokeswoman for U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, said Durbin's state director is expected to participate in a briefing on Friday afternoon with HUD officials about what has transpired, and what is next. Mulka said Durbins staff also has had conversations with housing authority officials, as well as the citizens who have formed the Cairo Public Housing Advocacy Committee. Many of those committee members who spoke after the meeting said they opposed the hiring of Ashmore because they believe there are more qualified candidates who applied, and because he doesnt plan to live in the county but rather commute to work from Sesser, which is about a 75-minute drive. As Clarke adjourned the meeting without allowing public comments, Theresa Delsoin, a longtime resident of Cairo who has been attending meetings for months, stood up and said: No. The meeting is not over. It is not over. CARBONDALE Talks to give homeless people shelter in empty Carbondale houses have died down because of the lack of an individual or entity to bear the financial oversight. That was the update Tuesday evening from Carbondale Mayor Mike Henry, who said he had spoken to three local landlords who were willing to make provisions to create a space for homeless individuals. It was at a meeting of the Sparrow Coalition this past year that Henry mentioned the idea. Henry said some of the homes discussed were dwellings already zoned for multiple-family use. He said the landlords agreed to forego the first and last months' rent to make it easier for the to-be residents to move in. "So they were ready to do that, they were ready to forfeit first and last months rents," Henry said. "What they needed was for someone to sign the lease, for legal purposes, and so we kind of got stuck on that part of it." He said he also looked into moving some into two city-owned properties, but learned that those were not outfitted for overnight habitation. He shared the information with some members of the Sparrow Coalition, a group of local individuals who have been meeting over the past few months to discuss how to handle issues of poverty particularly homelessness. Aside from those talks, Shannon Butler, the social work intern at the Carbondale Public Library, has helped to find homes for at least four individuals, said the library's director, Diana Brawley Sussman. "(She) has successfully placed a few people in houses simply by talking to landlords, finding a price point that works for the landlord and the persons budget and getting asking the landlord to waive some of the upfront fees," Sussman said. "So she has been successful with that a few times." The model that the mayor wants to use is actually a model used by the Southern Illinois Coalition for the Homeless, whose mission is to find homes for the homeless, Sussman said. That organization rents homes and apartments from landlords and then rents those out to people needing them, based on ther income. The program is subsidized by federal and state funds. It is also the regional organization authored to tally those who are unsheltered in a Point In Time count of area homeless. From the state budget impasses impact on colleges and universities to a push to reform school funding statewide to a Republican-proposed takeover of Chicago Public Schools, education has taken center stage this week at the Capitol. With the stalemate between Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner and the Democratic-controlled General Assembly nearing the end of its seventh month, a group of students, business and labor leaders, and organizations representing institutions of higher learning came to Springfield on Wednesday to urge the two sides to come to an agreement on higher education funding. Public universities and community colleges havent received any state funding since July 1, and the state also hasnt given schools money to pay for grants to help 125,000 low-income students cover the cost of tuition. The group, calling itself the Illinois Coalition to Invest in Higher Education, said the states colleges and students shouldnt be held hostage in the standoff. In Southern Illinois, community college leaders said budget stalemate could have devastating effects. Members of Southeastern Illinois Colleges Board of Trustees voted Tuesday to increase tuition and layoff several employees, according to a news release. Incoming students will pay an extra $5 per credit hour next year, bringing the total cost to $99 per credit hour. The Adult Education program, which includes the GED program, will see three layoffs, forcing most of those classes to end early, in March. An administrator at the Carmi location also lost his or her job. Some part-time and contractual staffers will see reduced hours as well. At the meeting, board members viewed a series of financial models based on different dates/amounts of payment from the state. From what we are hearing, none of our expected scenarios are good, said Jonah Rice, president of the Harrisburg-based college. Administrators said the college may have to operate without state funds for 18 months in total. And even still, funding for the 2016 fiscal year is far from assured. Its just sad to think that after all the hard work, heavy lifting and strong community support in the past seven years since Illinois hit a wall, theres no release on the pressure, Rice said. Mitch Dickey, student body president at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said the situation is a catastrophe. The entire state of Illinois is dependent upon our investment in higher education, and the long-term sustainability of Illinois depends on the investment now, Dickey said at a Statehouse news conference. Pedro Cevallos, a U of I graduate and founder of the Chicago-based engineering firm Primera, said that in todays global economy, businesses like his rely on the states universities to produce a well-trained workforce. The only thing that can keep us competitive in that environment is a talent pool of people that have the knowledge, experience and qualifications to compete on a global level, Cevallos said. The uncertainty created by the lack of a higher education budget is bad for students and for business, he said. An agreement on funding doesnt appear close at hand, however. The Rauner administration distributed a memo to legislators Wednesday repeating its position that they must address rampant financial mismanagement inside the university system that hurts academic performance and sends tuition costs skyrocketing. Rather than creating a cash flow crisis by appropriating hundreds of millions of dollars without accompanying spending reductions or cost-saving reforms, lets find a sensible and responsible way to fund (the Monetary Award Program) and higher education by tying such funding to other spending reductions or cost-saving reforms, deputy chief of staff Richard Goldberg wrote. Also on Wednesday, Sen. Andy Manar, D-Bunker Hill, and Rep. Sue Scherer, D-Decatur, held a news conference with members of the Springfield-based Faith Coalition for the Common Good and the community organizing group Gamaliel of Illinois to call on Rauner and the Legislature to approve a bill they said would make Illinois funding for elementary and secondary education more equitable. David Lett, superintendent of the Pana School District, said smaller, poorer districts like his have been pummeled and discriminated against by the current formula and by reductions in state aid in recent years. A study last year from The Education Trust found that Illinois has the widest funding gap between high-poverty and low-poverty districts. Manar said his bill, introduced last year, would close the gap between districts like Pana and wealthier ones in the Chicago suburbs and elsewhere. Were not going to turn Illinois around until this is resolved, he said. Rauner, who has spoken of the need to reform how education funds are distributed, has not taken a position on Manars bill. Earlier in the day in Chicago, Senate Republican Leader Christine Radogno of Lemont and House Republican Leader Jim Durkin of Western Springs announced a plan that would allow Chicago Public Schools to declare bankruptcy. It would also clear the way for the state school superintendent to appoint a new body to replace the existing Chicago school board. The plan, which would require legislative approval, comes as the city is seeking help from the state to close a $480 million budget hole. It was met with widespread opposition from Democrats. A wicked calumny against the Washington media is that we live and work in a liberal echo chamber, never interacting with persons of alternative political viewpoints. For that reason, it is said, we unfairly demonize conservatives. No truth to either charge. I demonize no one. For years I myself frequently encountered conservatives because I lived on the same block as my friend Grover Norquist, the famous anti-tax agitator and political bully-boy goon. Periodically, Grover would host cocktail parties for up-and-coming conservatives. These earnest young people, dressed like middle-schoolers on yearbook photo day, would spill out onto his front lawn in parties of one, talking on their cellphones with (a guess) their personal single-malt Scotch sommeliers. I am proud to say that I went out of my way to interact with them. I would sidle up, dressed as I usually am, which is like a middle-age middle-school-playground loiterer, and Id whisper Heroin? Quaaludes? Glue? just to watch that look of horror as they backed away. But Grover moved, so I have lost contact with conservatives, which is why I was delighted to have a chance to go to a party thrown by the Heritage Foundation, Washingtons prominent conservative think tank. The only corporate parties I usually attend are hosted by print media, which means I am accustomed to cash bars, linoleum floors and bologna on saltines. This was not that kind of party. Within seconds of our entering the room, liveried waiters descended on us with trays of hors doeuvres that included steamed lobster in beurre blanc, canapes of boeuf Wellington, shot glasses of anise-infused sweet potato soup, and ramekins of pumpkin creme brulee. The bar was open and generous. And, all around us were middle-school-portrait people in earnest conversations that, according to my professional eavesdropping, were largely about the threat to Republicanism occasioned by people like me. In truth, everyone was polite and welcoming and joyful, even after reading my name tag. Tragically, I had found nothing to make fun of until I met The Second Most Conservative Man in the World. Ralph Benko, who happens to be a funny guy, is a senior economic adviser to a righty group called the American Principles Project. Ralphs big issue turns out to be demanding that the United States return to ... the gold standard! Now I dont want to be snarky, but I believe the most prominent American most recently defending the gold standard was Grover. No, not Norquist ... Cleveland. In 1896. Then Ralph gleefully informed me that, as luck would have it, The Most Conservative Person in the World also happened to be at the Heritage Foundation Christmas party, as Ralphs guest! Benyamim Tsedaka, 71, is an Israeli scholar, who, Ralph said, is so conservative, he is pre-modern! A stegosaurus. Tsedaka is a leader of the Israelite Samaritans, an 800-person pre-Judaic sect that lives by a strict 3,000-year-old code of conduct. How strict? At home, he eats beef, but when traveling, only fish and veggies because for every cow he eats, he must donate the beasts foreleg to the holy men on Mount Gerizim, near Nablus, and this original body part is impossible to locate if you are dining at, say, McDonalds. So I left the party happy. I had two new conservative friends, and a whole new echo-chamber defense! This columnist has an answer for the calumnists. In the Mizzell, Metts, Branch, Chinners, etc. huge extended family, since the beginning of last May we have had graduation parties galore, game-day parties, birthday parties, a few rehearsal dinners, several wedding showers, a few baby showers and believe it or not, we've got several more to come between now and the end of May. Having so many events is challenging, and our shower "team" tries to stick to theme showers that include all family members men, women, and children. We have had pulled pork luaus, variety-of-soup/chilies showers, and Italian-theme showers with lasagna and spaghetti. You name it, we've had it and with love always in the air, it seems the wedding showers and baby showers will keep on happening. Many of you who correspond comment that you don't have big enough groups to put on huge showers, but you are weary of chicken salad and/or a cheese ball with crackers, nuts and cake squares. Many people have said they want a little something different that will be enjoyable to a wide variety of people's taste buds. So, I dug in my recipe files/stacks to find easy-to-make, but delicious recipes in response. Please try the tasty ones below. Chicken nibbles 1-1/2 pound skinless, boneless chicken breasts, cut into 1-inch pieces 1 jar or bottle thick honey mustard dressing/dip 2 cups herb seasoned stuffing, crushed 2 tablespoons orange juice Dip the cut-up chicken pieces in 3/4 cup honey mustard dressing. Then coat each piece with the crushed stuffing mix. Place the pieces of chicken on a sprayed baking sheet. Bake them at 400 degrees for 15 minutes or until the chicken is no longer pink. In a small saucepan, mix the remaining dressing and orange juice. Heat this mixture over medium heat until thoroughly heated. Serve it with the baked chicken pieces as the dipping sauce. This recipe makes about 36 appetizers. Salsa, onion dip 1 pouch onion soup mix 16-ounce container sour cream 1 cup thick and chunky salsa Assorted fresh vegetables and/or chips In a medium bowl, combine the soup mix, sour cream and salsa. Refrigerate this mixture for at least two hours. Serve this dip with fresh celery, carrot strips, bell pepper strips, other vegetables or your favorite chips. This recipe makes three cups of dip. Cheesy Bread sticks 1 loaf (11-3/4 ounces) Pepperidge Farm frozen Mozzarella Garlic Cheese Bread 1-1/2 cups bottled spaghetti sauce Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Cut the bread bag at one end and place it on a long baking sheet in the center of the oven. Bake it for 25 minutes or until the bread is well heated. Remove the bread from the bag. Cut each bread heal into 12 slices. Pour the spaghetti sauce into a small (dip-size crockpot) Heat it well. Reduce the heat to warm. Serve with bread for dipping. If you dont have the appropriate bread, you may use regular French bread, spray it with sprayable Parkay or Cant Believe Its Not Butter, sprinkle it with garlic salt, and sprinkle it with dried Mozzarella or Parmesan cheese before baking. Fiesta nachos 11 ounces Campbells condensed Fiesta Nacho Cheese Soup 1/3 cup water 10 ounces tortilla chips Chopped tomatoes Sliced green onions Sliced pitted ripe olives Chopped green and/or red peppers In a small saucepan, mix the soup and water. Heat this combination over low heat, stirring often, until it is well heated. Serve this mixture over tortilla chips. Top it with chopped tomatoes, onions, olives and peppers. This recipe makes six servings. After four months as the interim superintendent of Orangeburg Consolidated School District 5, Dr. Jesse Washington III is now the newly hired district head. It is a very humbling and honoring experience, Washington said moments after the OCSD5 board adjourned a special called meeting Tuesday night. Washington, 42, and the board agreed to a three-year contract with an annual salary of $165,000, announced OCSD5 Chairwoman Mary Ulmer. The OCSD5 board met behind closed doors with attorney Connie Jenkins to receive legal advice and to discuss an employment/contractual matter involving the position of the superintendent. After discussions that lasted less than an hour, the board returned to open session and voted unanimously to approve Washingtons contract. In a prepared statement, Ulmer read, Through the past few months, the OCSD5 board of trustees has thoroughly considered its options for selecting the districts next superintendent including the possibility of conducting a superintendent search with the assistance of an executive search firm. We settled on a decision that, in our opinion, would result in an outstanding, experienced administrator being appointed with minimum disruption and expenses, she said. Ulmer said Washington is a superb internal candidate who has worked successfully in the district since 2011 as chief human resource services officer and has held a number of positions over his educational career, including teacher, assistant principal, principal, community relations and human resources administrator. Ulmer said Washington has also worked as an administrator in Lexington School District 4, Oconee County School District, Lexington School District 2 and Beaufort County School District. We are so thrilled and excited that Dr. Washington agreed to work with us to help our children and to move this district, said board member Idella Carson. Im very pleased the board has reached a consensus in hiring Dr. Washington. Hes one who already knows the district, knows its employees and one that we feel will serve the district very faithfully, Ulmer said. Ulmer said Washingtons previously held position of human resources director is now vacant and the board will hire someone to fill the post. Were just elated, said board member Julius Page. Hes a super individual and were happy to have him. Board member Vernon Stephens said, I see good things happening for the children of OCSD5. Hes an excellent choice, echoed board member Susan Gleaton. When I took on as interim superintendent, I spoke to the faculty and staff and said that theres a tremendous opportunity here to do some great things for students, Washington said. Theyve been so supportive. The board has been so supportive, he said. As for taking the helm as the districts new superintendent, One of the main things is making sure the district engages all students in meaningful and profound learning in any avenue we can get them there, Washington said. I think any vision we have should be a shared project, he said. Washington said hes looking forward to hearing from staff, faculty, teachers, students, parents and all stakeholders for suggestions and contributions toward a shared vision. When everyones a part of it, everyone owns it, Washington said. His official first day on the job as superintendent is Wednesday. Donald Trump has built his campaign using many tools: Bravado, bigotry and barnstorming rhetoric. But right at the heart of his success has been public opinion polling. Now, he will proudly and loudly tell you that he doesnt rely on polls even getting into a very public spat with my own boss, pollster Frank Luntz, on the subject. Trump doesnt survey on issues. He wont hold focus groups. He has not poll-tested his strengths and weaknesses (as if, perish the thought, he even has weaknesses). He wears the absence of political spinners and professional polling as a badge of honor to show his absolute authenticity: I dont have pollsters. I dont want to waste money on pollsters. I dont want to be unreal. But public opinion polling is central to his success, even if his campaign doesnt actually do polling. Why? Because he uses outside polls to show not only his strength today but to prove his success tomorrow. He cites them as Exhibit A of his narrative that hes a winner and the other candidates are losers. And no one likes supporting a loser, right? So according to Trump, If the polls say Ill win, then you, Joe Six Pack, should join me on the winning team. A sophisticated strategy this is not, but an effective one it surely is. He has led the field since July, except for the approximately four minutes in November when Ben Carson led. So Trumps position as frontrunner is fortified by the polls, but hes not there because of them. Hes the clear frontrunner because he has effectively channeled the simmering rage and resentment of the 2016 electorate. From corrupt politicians in Washington, to being ripped off by China, to America being overrun by illegal immigrants, hes tapped into a deep-seated fear and frustration that the American Dream is dead and only You-Know-Who can Make America Great Again. Voters see the politicians squabble endlessly on the nightly news while the debt mountain grows bureaucrats push pens with zero accountability and the problems perpetually persist and multiply. Is it any wonder why voters are so angry? Trump didnt need an opinion poll to tell him that. He could have seen it in virtually any survey. And thats precisely why public opinion polls are so vital to American politics: Properly constructed and conducted, polls are the most effective means of gauging what the American people think what they believe and what they want from their representatives. Polls educate and inform, enlighten and instruct on what citizens truly believe should be the policies and priorities pursued in Washington. But remember this: Surveys are navigational tools for campaigns and candidates they cannot tell you what to think or do. For instance Do voters support or oppose sending ground troops to fight ISIS? Surveys show that more than half support, but only a leader can judge whether its the right thing to do. What do citizens want most above all else? To make government efficient, effective and accountable but it takes a statesman to figure out how to put those principles into practice. What kind of tax code do they want? Fair and consistent, simple and straight-forward but its the job of a representative to translate that into meaningful policy. George Gallup, the founder of modern-day polling, put it best when he said, When a president or any other leader pays attention to poll results, he is, in effect, paying attention to the views of the people. And there are consequences when they dont. Remember that President Obama and huge Democratic majorities in Congress pushed through the Affordable Care Act when polls showed a clear and commanding majority opposed to the plan. What was the result? A historic Republican sweep in the 2010 midterm elections and the birth of the tea party all because politicians rejected the polls and didnt listen to their constituents. In so many ways whether it be our version of the Great Wall, or the total shutdown on Muslims Donald Trump is turning the laws of American politics upside down. And his Flat Earth approach to modern campaigning, voter targeting, message-testing just might work. But for the other mere mortal candidates who lack Trumps clairvoyance, public opinion polling gives them a better understanding of the American people and gives the people the strong voice they deserve. Orangeburg Department of Public Safety An Orangeburg man believes the company that helped him remodel an Ellis Avenue home is to blame for vandalism at the property. He told police that between Tuesday and Saturday someone broke a window and the covers for the home's two chimneys were damaged, the report states. The complainant said shingles from the roof and bricks from the chimney were also damaged. He said he paid $3,500 to the company to fix his roof and chimney and then refused to pay the balance of what he owed after completion of the project due to his concerns that the work was not done properly. The victim said he filed a complaint against the business and also got into an argument with the company's owner after the man threatened to remove all the work done to the house, the incident report states. The complainant said his life was also threatened by another man if he did not pay the full amount due. He told police he believes the contractors are involved with a Mexican gang, according to the report. In another report, an Orangeburg woman said her vehicle was burglarized Saturday afternoon. She said after she parked her car at an Ellis Avenue residence, she returned to it about three hours later to discover a window had been broken out and her keys, purse, wallet and iPad were gone. The items were valued at $936. Musings of an unabashed liberal about how the current administration of the US government is performing. We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking Accept, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. If the shoe fits, wear it: "... in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt." -- Bertrand Russell "There's no firewall for stupidity." -- Mike Hamilton "I won't insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said." -- William F. Buckley, Jr. "There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true." -- Sren Kierkegaard Nothing better to wish Happy New Year 2022 , if not the use of images to share on WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram. Funny, funny, original Happy New Year 2022 images, which represent a different way to celebrate the New Year by sending a Happy New Year message to all friends and relatives. There are many people who share phrases, images, photographs, videos and many other types of content with relatives and friends at the end of the year. We always point out that the Happy New Year 2022 images to share on WhatsApp collected here are totally free and can be sent with any instant messaging platform and social network. The best images Happy New Year 2022 For Happy New Year 2022 messages, phrases, letters, cards, postcards and even images are shared. With latest generation smartphones and tablets it has become extremely easy to share images on smartphones and tablets on WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram. We remind you that to save the Happy New Year 2022 images present you need to perform some extremely simple operations. Press and hold your finger on the image for a few seconds, until a new dialog box appears on the screen. Within the latter, click on the Save image item . The image will be saved in the roll of iOS devices , such as iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, while on Android it will be stored in the browser's Downloads folder . By doing so, you can easily share humorous images with other third-party applications and social networks, including WhatsApp. Among the best Happy New Year images for WhatsApp we start with this one dedicated to 2022 with very accurate and really beautiful graphics to use with friends and relatives. The best phrases to wish happy new year 2021 We all know that a new year brings new experiences, joys, opportunities, people, love, stories, challenges. Let's use a few phrases to wish happy new year 2021 to our dear friend, friend, boyfriend or girlfriend. Why not to loved ones who are far away and who probably in this damned 2020 we could not embrace. Here are some suggestions: My wishes for you are not limited to just next year but to all the years you will experience in your life. Happy New Year full of fun, awesome, rocking and eventful! " Don't worry when others are unable to understand you. Only worry when you are unable to understand yourself. May you have a happy new year! ". Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, yippee! It's a new year! Happy New Year, my beloved friend! " I am lucky to have friends who bring so much joy and madness to this life. I can't imagine what it would be like without you encouraging me. Happy New Year! " The new years come and the new years go by, but our friendship has stood the test of time. I wish you the best for next year! " On the road to success, the rule is to always look ahead. May you reach your destination and may your journey be wonderful. Happy New Year! ". I would just like to express how much joy you have given me and wish your joy and happiness in return. Goodbye 2020 Welcome 2021 Happy New Year! " May each day of the next year be vibrant and new bringing with it many reasons to celebrate and rejoice. Happy New Year! " I wish you a great year that starts with happiness and ends with that too. Happy New Year! ". I wish you a bright, prosperous and glorious new year. Happy New Year! ". Happy New year wishes and images in various Languages /By AzerNews/ By Nigar Orujova The government of Azerbaijan continues measures to control prices that were increased following the depreciation of the national currency in December-end. For this end, 12 monitoring groups have been created to control prices of products entering the minimum consumer basket. The groups were created by the Labor and Social Protection Ministry, Minister Salim Muslimov told the state television AzTV. Four groups are operating in Baku, while the rest monitors the price changes in the regions of the country. The monitoring groups are investigating prices twice a week on Tuesday and Friday and sending this information to the Ministry. He went on to add that the Economy Ministry also controls the level of price increase. Artificial overpricing is one of the actual problems in Azerbaijan that has recently faced economic challenges due to low crude prices. Increase in prices was expected as Azerbaijan could not fully provide itself with food products. However, the depreciation also affected goods produced in Azerbaijan, and the state actively fights against artificial overpricing. The minister further noted that in European countries, particularly in Northern Europe, there is a maximum price limit for products included in the minimum consumer basket, and these prices are monitored. This is necessary from the point of view of antitrust policy, and avoid cartel agreement, said Muslimov. If you release [the price] without control, monopolies and cartel agreements may arise, which will lead to higher prices. Controls over the prices of goods from the consumer basket, presidential decree on the VAT exemption for import, production and sale of grain, flour and bread, as well as the activities of the Economy Ministry are aimed at preventing an artificial increase in prices, the minister said noting that these measures are designed to support the population by increasing their income. The General Directorate for Combating Corruption is also carrying out necessary measures investigate cases of artificial overpricing. Deputy Director General of Eurasia Division at Israel`s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Zvi Rav-Ner has praised his country`s relations with Azerbaijan. Azerbaijani-Israeli relations develop and nothing can hinder this, he told journalists in Baku. We have good relations. Israeli-Azerbaijani relations have deep roots. These are the relations that we consider as important and significant, that have a great potential, enjoy quite a lot of collaboration. And we have even greater potential for the future. It`s my second visit to Baku. We feel that we need this dialogue with Azerbaijan to be continued. We have many issues to discuss between the two countries. It is always pleasant to come here to have a dialogue because it is a pleasant atmosphere and very open to discussions, exchange of views concerning both bilateral issues, as well as regional and even global subjects that we discussed very friendly with our Azerbaijani counterparts. Rav-Ner said: We have to work even harder to expand, deepen and diversify our relations in several other potential fields. We have very strong, powerful relationship basing on deep strategic partnership. We have great friends in Azerbaijan. We discussed a couple of economic agreements that should be signed. There is an expectation and need to make changes to the economic field. In addition, we have very strong relations in the economic area. It touches many areas, agriculture, water technologies, high-tech, cyber, tourism, medical technologies. He also hailed tolerance that exists in Azerbaijan. The Jewish community enjoys wonderful conditions here. This is really something very special. Azerbaijan is unique, it`s a model of tolerance, Rav-Ner added. /By AzerTac/ Turkish could become an official language of the EU thanks to the efforts of the Greek Cypriot leader, an official said Tuesday, according to Anadolu agency. Nicos Anastasiades has been lobbying for Turkish to be made the EUs 25th official language ahead of expected reunification with Northern Cyprus, Baris Burcu, a spokesman for the president of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, said. Speaking at a news conference in Lefkosa, Burcu described the move as a "late but well-meaning step". Talks between Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot President Mustafa Akinci to produce a federal state with two autonomous entities have been positive and many of those involved have said they expect an agreement on reunifying the island to be made by the end of the year. "Turkish will be one of the official languages of the prospective united federation, if we come to any agreement," Burcu said. The Greek Cypriot administration has been an EU member since 2004. Turkish Cypriots are considered EU citizens, even though they live on territory not under the control of the Greek Cypriot government. Cyprus has been divided since 1974. The stalled negotiations resumed last year following Akincis election in April. Irans President Hassan Rouhani has called on Muslim countries to form an alliance for progress and development and not for war, in an apparent reference to the coalition formed by Saudi Arabia for the aggression against Yemen, Press TV reported. "We believe that the conditions in the region and world of Islam call for the creation of a coalition for development, and not war, in the world of Islam," Rouhani said in a meeting with Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in Tehran on Tuesday. Saudi Arabia launched a deadly aggression against Yemen last March with the help of some of its allies. More than 7,500 Yemenis have so far been killed in more than nine months of incessant attacks, while millions more are reported to have been stranded across the country. Responding to the Pakistani premiers remarks about the recent tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia, Rouhani said, We call for the expansion of relations and do not welcome tension provided that the rights of Muslim people are respected. Nimrs execution was widely censured by Muslims and human rights activists around the globe as well as different governments. Saudi Arabia severed diplomatic relations with Iran on January 3 following demonstrations outside the Saudi embassy in Tehran and its consulate in the northeastern city of Mashhad by angry protesters. The Saudi diplomatic premises was attacked by some during the demonstrations. Iranian officials strongly denounced the raids and have arrested over 150 people over the incident. Besides Pakistan, other countries, including Russia and China, have voiced readiness to mediate between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Elsewhere in his remarks, Rouhani expressed deep concern over insecurity caused by terrorists in the region and said the Iranian administrations policy is based on constructive interaction with world countries, particularly neighboring states. Iran will give a positive response to request for cooperation by countries which are fighting terrorism, the president added. He pointed to unacceptable efforts aimed at causing division between Shia and Sunni Muslims and said, We call for enhanced unity and coherence among all Muslims, including Shias and Sunnis, and are ready to cooperate with regional countries in line with the campaign against terrorism, extremism and sectarianism. /By AzerNews/ By Aynur Karimova As economic sanctions imposed on Iran over its nuclear program were lifted, the country has finally realized its old dream of getting back its frozen assets from foreign banks. Abdolnaser Hemmati, the CEO of the National Bank of Iran (known as Bank Melli Iran or BMI), said that frozen assets of the bank at the Deutsche Bundesbank were freed. "Following the move, 17 BMI subsidiaries will be able to work abroad," Fars news agency reported on January 19. Deutsche Bundesbank authorized BMIs branch in Hamburg, and the BMIs Dubai branch has also been freed of transaction barriers previously in place under sanctions. "Measures have been taken to launch the London branch of the BMI. Only a UK permit is left to be issued," he added. Mir Business Bank CJSC, a BMI branch in Moscow, can also resume its full operations, according to Hemmati. "In one week, all BMI branches abroad will be operational," he stated. Western sanctions were lifted on Iran after the IAEA, the international nuclear watchdog, said Iran had complied with a deal designed to prevent it developing nuclear weapons on January 16. The day after, Iranian sources said over 1,000 letters of credit (LCs) had been opened for Iranian businesses. Iran is also expected to join the SWIFT soon. The country expects the removal of western sanctions to enable the country to trade through international financial systems, receive its frozen assets, and resume oil trade on international markets. There were speculations that the value of the countrys assets frozen in overseas banks amount to above $100 billion, meanwhile Iranian officials have repeatedly rejected these huge figures. Russian TASS quoted a U.S. officinal on January 17 that the amount is about $50 billion. Amnesty International says a French-Moroccan photographer who was wounded in the attack by extremists on a hotel in Burkina Faso has died of a heart attack. The human rights group says Leila Alaoui was being treated in a hospital after being shot twice, and suffered a heart attack while awaiting medical evacuation. According to the New York Times, she was 33 years old. Amnesty International said Tuesday that its driver, Mahamadi Ouedraogo, was killed in his car. Ouedraogo was a father of four and had accompanied staff and consultants on missions in Burkina Faso since 2008. Alaoui was in Burkina Faso for a photography assignment on women's rights. The French Foreign Minister confirmed her death on Twitter. According to Alaoui's website, she was born in Paris in 1982 and she studied photography at the City University of New York before spending time in Morocco and Lebanon. Her work has been exhibited internationally since 2009, including at the Institut du Monde Arabe, Art Dubai and the Maison Europeenne de la Photographie in Paris, and has been published in newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times and Vogue. According to the site, she was currently living and working between Marrakech and Beirut. Amnesty has condemned "the vicious attack on civilians in Ouagadougou." Officials say about 30 people were killed. As security forces surrounded the Splendid Hotel and neighboring Cappuccino Cafe -- both under siege by terrorists -- Amy Riddering tried desperately to reach her husband Mike. He was at the cafe when the assault began Friday night. "I still have no news about Mike," she wrote on her Facebook page Saturday morning. Florida-native Mike Riddering moved with his wife Amy and two daughters to Burkina Faso in 2011 to start an orphanage. Mike and a pastor were at the cafe in the country's capital Ouagadougou to meet new volunteers. The pastor later called Amy after escaping. "Gunmen came into the restaurant shooting and everyone ran to hide. [The] pastor somehow had Mike's phone and called," wrote Amy. It was still unclear if Mike survived. Another American, Edward Bunker, emerged from his room to a deserted hotel lobby and realized something was wrong. "I saw cars on fire and a gunman and I realized I had to hide," he said. The 12-hour siege began when heavily armed al Qaeda militants, two of them women, stormed the buildings and set off car bombs. In all, 28 people were killed, including a Canadian family of four who were on a humanitarian trip. Edward Bunker, and 11 other Americans, made it out alive. Mike Riddering did not make it out alive. "You left quite a legacy here. I can only imagine the adventures you're having now," read Amy's final post. Burkina Faso, a largely Muslim country, had for years been largely spared from theviolence carried out by Islamic extremist groups who were abducting foreigners for ransom in Mali and Niger. Then last April, a Romanian national was kidnapped in an attack that was the first of its kind in Burkina Faso. The country also has been in growing political turmoil since its longtime president was ousted in a popular uprising in late 2014. Last September members of a presidential guard launched a coup that lasted only about a week. The transitional government returned to power until Burkina Faso's November election ushered in new leaders. The hotel attack in Mali in November also was claimed by a leader of AQIM, who said it had been carried out as a declaration of unity with Algerian militant Moktar Belmoktar's extremist group Al-Mourabitoun, according to an audio speech that was distributed by SITE at the time. Belmoktar was a former leader in AQIM before starting his own group, which now has merged back with al Qaeda. /By CBS News/ The Swedish Prosecution Authority will open a preliminary investigation over whether an apartment rental contract given to Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom by a trade union constituted a bribe, the authority said in a statement, according to The Jerusalem Post. Wallstrom rented an apartment in Stockholm in a building owned by trade union Kommunal from April 2015. While a popular minister among voters, she is one of Sweden's most controversial politicians due to her open criticism of Israel. "I welcome the investigation. I have nothing to hide and it is good that this will be resolved. I continue to do my job," Wallstrom said in a written statement to news agency TT. Chief prosecutor Alf Johansson told TT there were no suspects at this point. I've been a big fan of Lucy Score for several years now and always grab her books when they come out. I tend to buy the physical copies... 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Decatur Book Festival, 2014 Books that "Stuck" Please note that the poems and essays on this site are copyright and may not be reproduced without the author's permission. Welcome to Trading for a Living, a technical analysis blog on stocks listed in Singapore Stock Exchange(SGX). Objective of this blog is to share ideas in trading stocks. Please note postings in this blog are based on my personal opinions which are neither investment advice nor inducements to trade. The blog owner does not accept any claim for any loss incurred by any reader acting on these postings. You are encouraged to seek professional advice when in doubt. Good Luck and Happy Trading! German exports to major oil producers are soaring despite the slump in oil prices to their lowest for more than a decade, data showed on Wednesday. German exports to major oil producers are soaring despite the slump in oil prices to their lowest for more than a decade, data showed on Wednesday, countering worries that weaker demand from Gulf countries was slowing growth in Europe's largest economy. German exports to Saudi Arabia jumped by 13 per cent to 9.1 billion euros ($9.94 billion) from January to November in 2015 compared with the same period in the previous year, Germany's Statistics Office said. Exports to the United Arab Emirates soared by about 30 per cent to some 13 billion euros in the same period, topping the record 11.4 billion reached in 2014 as a whole. Volker Treier, head of Germany's trade and industry body DIHK's foreign trade department, said this was because the UAE had diversified its economy with Dubai in particular turning itself into a hub for transport, logistics and finance. He said Saudi Arabia was still spending billions of euros on infrastructure, including public transport in Riyadh, and that German expertise was in demand for such projects. The German economy grew by 1.7 per cent in 2015, its strongest rate of expansion for four years, mainly driven by robust increases in private and public consumption. Trade contributed only 0.2 per centage points due to an economic slowdown in China and other emerging markets. Reuters Despite headwinds, opportunities exist in Dubais real estate market in 2016, according to Deloitte Corporate Finance (regulated by the Dubai Financial Services Authority) in its second annual Real Estate Predictions Report for Dubai. The report provides an economic overview and review of Dubais residential, hospitality, office and retail markets in 2015 and also examines the latest trends and developments and what lies ahead for 2016. Over the past 13 years Dubai has experienced development on a scale and to a standard like no other real estate market globally. Along with other regional and international markets, it has suffered the effects of the global financial crisis, explained Robin Williamson, managing director, Deloitte Corporate Finance. Today, it is now maturing and feeling the effects of various market drivers whilst demonstrating strong resilience in certain sectors, he stated. On Dubais residential market, Deloitte said whilst published pipeline forecasts estimate that some 40,000 units will get delivered this year, consultations with key developers suggest that a more realistic number will be approximately 10,000 units. Last year saw average residential sales prices across the UAE emirate decline by 10 per cent and so it is predicted that average residential prices will decrease further in 2016, reflecting a transition to a more mature market. Whilst there may be a softening in residential rental prices in some submarkets, this softening wont be to the same degree of recent declines in residential sales prices, said the report. On the hospitality sector, Deloitte said the occupancy levels at around 70 per cent to 75 per cent are likely to represent the new norm in Dubais hospitality market this year compared to 77.5 per cent in 2015. As operators compete for occupancy, it is expected that Average Daily Rates (ADRs) will soften further, which should encourage growth in visitor volumes required to support the investment in tourism infrastructure. "Serviced apartments are likely to be an area of focus in 2016, driven by key source market trends, growing visitor demand for longer average lengths of stay and better value accommodation," stated Williamson. Planned capacity increase at Dubais Airports to approximately 97 million in 2016 will present more opportunities to capitalise on hospitality demand from transit and destination visitor growth, he added. On the office sector, Deloitte said the rental growth will be slow in some submarkets as a result of supply growth and the power of negotiation will, in general, shift from landlords to tenants in 2016. There will be a trend towards more mixed use office led developments and a greater allocation of space to amenities, which will enable schemes to differentiate against competition as well as a strategy for developers to diversify risk and generate more robust cash flows, said the expert. Given the shortage of high quality office space in Dubai, some companies will be more amenable to leasing additional space than is required at present in order to accommodate future expansion, with a view to subletting surplus space in the short term, it added. On the retail sector, Deloitte said there will be a further moderation in retail sales growth in 2016 against a strong dollar and slowing demand from international source markets such as Russia, China and parts of Europe. Retail rental growth will be relatively flat in 2016, with the exception of super prime malls, and some secondary malls will need to incentivise the major retail groups to retain brands, revealed Williamson. According to him, the food and beverage (F&B) retail will go from strength to strength in 2016 driven by greater brand penetration and expansion. It is envisaged that there will be good prospects for fashion retail following the successful completion of the initial phase of D3 Design District, noted Williamson. Despite the decline in average residential sales prices in Dubai during 2015, price growth over the last four years reflects a compound annual growth rate of 11.6 per cent, which outperforms other leading global cities such as London, Paris and Singapore, he added.-TradeArabia News Service Hydrochem Saudi, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hyflux Group, has been awarded a contract by a subsidiary of Saipem, to design, manufacture and supply a desalination plant in Khurais, Saudi Arabia. The project value is approximately $50.4 million. This win underscores Hyfluxs growing presence in the Middle East region and our expertise in designing high-specification plants for industrial customers, said Olivia Lum, executive chairman and group CEO of Hyflux. The Khurais oil field is located approximately 150 km northeast of Riyadh. Italian group Saipem is the engineering and construction contractor for the project to boost the daily production capacity at the Khurais central processing facility by 300,000 barrels of oil from the current 1,200,000 barrels. The contract is to be fulfilled over one year, and is expected to contribute to the financials of Hyflux for the financial year ending December 2016. TradeArabia News Service King Abdullah Port in Saudi Arabia handled 1.307 million TEU (twenty foot equivalent unit) containers in 2015, the ports second year of operations, said a top official. King Abdullah Port, the first privately developed and managed port in the Kingdom and the region, also opened its fourth berth in May 2015, increasing its capacity to over 2.7 million TEUs as per its Masterplan, explained Abdullah bin Muhammad Hameedaddin, managing director of the Ports Development Company, owners, developers and managers of the port. Hameedaddin pointed out the significant role of the advanced capabilities available in King Abdullah Port, such as the 18-meter deep berths, as well as the massive storage spaces and the latest state-of-the-art equipment, which enables the port to contribute to the Kingdom's economic development by offering the finest services in the shipping industry. Earlier in 2015, King Abdullah Port signed a partnership agreement with NYK Group, one of largest car shipping companies in the world. The partnership will result in operating the King Abdullah Port's first ro-ro berth, which has the capacity to transport 300,000 cars per year, and will be the first of its kind in the region to be operated by NYK Group through joint management by the third quarter of 2016. Hameedaddin expects NYK's management of the ro-ro berth to take part in diversifying the services offered by King Abdullah Port, alongside the services of transporting containers and goods. Completion of the first phase for the station designed for bulk cargo and RO/RO (cars) is estimated to be finished by the third quarter of 2016. In March 2015, King Abdullah Port also succeeded in attracting Maersk Line, which is the world's largest cargo transport and container shipping company. More recently King Abdullah Port also attracted UASC. TradeArabia News Service Public and private sector leaders will come together to shape the future of manufacturing at a summit in Abu Dhabi, UAE. The inaugural Global Manufacturing and Industrialisation Summit (GMIS) will run from October 10 to 12 at Al Saadiyat Island, under the patronage of Sheikh Hazza bin Zayed Al Nahyan, National Security Advisor, Vice Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council, said a statement. The global initiative, organised by the UAE Ministry of Economy and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in collaboration with the Global Agenda Council for the Future of Manufacturing of the World Economic Forum, aims to promote and advance inclusive and sustainable industrial development in line with the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, it said. GMIS will establish a global platform for dialogue and the sharing of best practices and knowledge in manufacturing through an unprecedented gathering of public and private sector leaders, as well as representatives from civil society, with the aim to shape the future of manufacturing through solutions and initiatives that contribute towards the achievement of inclusive and sustainable industrial development. It has been anticipated that GMIS will attract to Abu Dhabi, more than 1,500 representatives from governments, industry and civil society including more than 300 representatives from the UAE and the wider Gulf region. In a recorded statement, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon congratulated both the UAE Government and UNIDO for convening the worlds first-ever global manufacturing and industrialisation summit in Abu Dhabi, stating I welcome this innovative dual-focus on shaping the future of manufacturing. Responsible business practices benefit individuals and society. We now have the Sustainable Development Goals, our map to a new future. Inclusive and sustainable industrialization will help get us there while advancing us on the low carbon path that our world needs. Success depends on all partners. That is why I welcome the participation of governments, industry and civil society converging for global development. I count on [all stakeholders] to promote a transformational approach towards manufacturing that will benefit our world for generations to come, he said. Abu Dhabi was selected as the preferred destination to host the inaugural edition of GMIS for its tangible contributions to manufacturing and the UAEs commitment in building an advanced industrial base that promotes economic diversification and social development, reinforcing the goals sought by GMIS internationally, said the statement. By attracting participants from all around the world to attend the summit, it will utilise the cultural sites and state-of-the-art hotel facilities to offer a unique setting that would inspire global dialogue and debate. GMIS will address key global themes that influence the manufacturing sector such as the fourth industrial revolution, the capabilities gap, the standardisation of global manufacturing, innovative applications to reduce the carbon footprint generated from manufacturing activities, global value chains, the competition for investments in engineering, research and development, additive manufacturing, and the future of mobile applications and interconnectivity in the manufacturing sector. GMIS will also include a manufacturing exhibition that will showcase cutting-edge technologies alongside a business exchange and networking event (named the 'Global Value Chain Market') that allows participants to explore business opportunities by promoting cooperation between manufacturers and suppliers. Sultan bin Saeed Al Mansouri, the UAEs Minister of Economy, said: The global economic developments today illustrate the importance of diversification. The UAE government has adopted this approach long ago in increasing its contribution from non-oil based sectors to reach 70% of the UAEs GDP." The UAEs Minister of Economy also added the manufacturing sector is a key pillar that reinforces the economic diversification policy adopted and implemented in the UAE representing approximately 14 per cent of the countrys GDP with an aim to increase this to approximately 25 per cent over the coming years. This target can be achieved through the ongoing emphasis of our leadership on the manufacturing sector and the UAEs logistical capabilities. "The UAE has taken great strides in developing its manufacturing sector, and is home to many industries that today manufacture high quality products that are globally competitive such as aluminum, steel and aircraft parts, in addition to several other industries that have contributed to our national economy. Meanwhile, LI Yong, director general of UNIDO, said: There is no doubt that Abu Dhabi is the perfect destination to host the inaugural edition of the Global Manufacturing & Industrialisation Summit due to its unique approach towards manufacturing through investments in high-tech global technologies, its commitment to social development, and its role in expanding manufacturing capabilities and renewable energy in addition to its special global positioning as a platform for dialogue to discuss many important global themes. - TradeArabia News Service Turkish businesses are targeting $155 billion in exports in 2016, an 8 percent increase on last year, the head of the Turkish Exporters' Assembly said on Wednesday. Exports in 2015 were $144 billion, Mehmet Buyukeksi, the head of TIM, told a news conference. Turkey's main exports markets are the EU, Iraq, Russia, US, UAE and Iran. Turkey major exports are: textiles and clothing, automotive, iron and steel, white goods and chemicals and pharmaceuticals. Turkey is also one of the leading shipbuilding nations. Turkey's exports to the EU are mostly machinery and transport equipment, followed by manufactured goods. - Reuters Energy efficiency will be key for global countries to meet skyrocketing energy demand and the investment in the sector is set to reach $385 billion per year, or $5.8 trillion in total to 2030, according to a report. The World Future Energy Summit (WFES) announced today the launch of the Energy Efficiency Expo at WFES 2017, to meet the needs of this sector. With buildings a major energy consumer, investment in energy-efficient buildings alone is set to reach $125 billion by 2020, said the report by the International Renewable Energy Authority (Irena). To meet the regions rapid energy growth, with the Middle East and North Africas (Mena) energy demand set to double by 2030, the Middle East requires $555 billion in total energy infrastructure investment by 2030, according to a recent report by NBAD, University of Cambridge, and PWC. Energy efficiency in buildings, transportation, and manufacturing will play a key role by replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy, improving electricity access and reliability, and reducing pollution, which in turn support economic growth, while benefiting society and the environment. Anticipating the growing demand for energy efficiency solutions in the region, the WFES Energy Efficiency Expo 2017 is set to be a new annual, co-located exhibition, conference, and business matchmaking programme in the energy efficiency sector at Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week, hosted by Masdar. The WFES Energy Efficiency Expo is set to further elevate Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week as a global platform addressing the interconnected challenges and opportunities of sustainable development and clean energy. Sustainable development requires efficient management of energy demand as well as supply, and the Middle East and North Africa is no exception, said Dr Ahmad Belhoul, chief executive officer of Masdar, Abu Dhabis renewable energy company. At the WFES Energy Efficiency Expo 2017, we will share our public-private partnerships in energy conservation, including the role of Masdar City, Abu Dhabis green-print for sustainable urban design which consumes 40 per cent less water and energy than city developments of a comparable size. It will also be an opportunity to showcase innovations such as Future Build, an online platform to help architects, engineers and contractors source environmentally responsible building materials and products that have been independently assessed. The Energy Efficiency Expo will encourage further collaboration and entrepreneurship at the intersection of water and energy, promoting the business case for sustainability, added Dr Belhoul. Abdulla Al Shamsi, executive director, strategic affairs sector, Abu Dhabi Urban Planning Council (UPC), said: Sustainability is one of the guiding principles of Abu Dhabi Vision 2030 and as such lies at the heart of the UPCs objectives for the development of the emirate. We see energy efficiency in buildings as a vital factor in supporting Abu Dhabi to meet its current and future energy demands. Over the past five years, through the Estidama programme of sustainability, has rated the emirates real estate developments based on a range of factors, including energy efficiency, using the mandatory Estidama Pearl rating system. As strategic partners of this event, we look forward to sharing our knowledge and experience of best practice sustainability processes, tools and techniques with delegates at the WFES Energy Efficiency Expo in 2017. Estidama is Abu Dhabi governments official programme for developing a sustainable emirate for the benefit of its citizens. Since its launch in 2008, it has gained international recognition, and we believe the WFES Energy Efficiency Expo offers a great platform to engage with a diverse audience and further enhance awareness of Estidama on a global scale, added Eng Al Shamsi. In the Middle East, the UAE and Saudi Arabia are leaders in energy efficiency, with the UAE recently revising fuel subsidies in line with global indices, and Saudi Arabia aiming to improve energy efficiency for new vehicles by 20 per cent and air conditioners by 35 per cent to 2020, according to the Irena report. With buildings consuming 80 per cent of the UAEs electricity, energy-efficient buildings have one of the highest potentials to reduce carbon emissions and energy costs. The WFES Energy Efficiency Expo will be a landmark event to drive new business opportunities in energy efficiency projects which not only provide favorable returns on investment but also contribute positively to the environment. As an independent forum aimed at promoting energy efficiency, Emirates Green Building Council is proud to be an event partner, said Saeed Al Abbar, chairman, Emirates Green Building Council. In the wider Middle East and North Africa region, countries that reduce their electricity load by five per cent can save an average of $190 million per year, according to the Clean Energy Business Council. Energy efficiency is the low hanging fruit, it is one of the least expensive but most effective ways to solve the Middle East and North Africas skyrocketing energy demand. The WFES Energy Efficiency Expo 2017 will support smart government regulation that can help change behaviors of organisations and people to adopt energy-efficient technology, said Dr Nasser Saidi, chairman, Clean Energy Business Council. The WFES Energy Efficiency Expo 2017 aims to enable the public and private sectors and end users to network, source innovative solutions, and build partnerships. Exhibitors are expected to cover lighting, smart buildings, cooling, power generation, smart grids, and financial services. With global energy demand continuing to rise, the WFES Energy Efficiency Expo is set to make WFES 2017 the largest and most in-depth to date. The expo will build on the success of our Energy Efficiency TechTalk, and feature business development opportunities with leading efficiency players from the Middle East and around the world, said Frederic Theux, President, Reed Exhibitions. - TradeArabia News Service Armed militants stormed a university in volatile northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing at least 19 people and wounding dozens a little more than a year after the massacre of 134 students at a school in the area, officials said. A senior Pakistani Taliban commander claimed responsibility for the assault in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province but an official spokesman later denied involvement, calling the attack "un-Islamic". The violence nevertheless shows that militants retain the ability to launch attacks, despite a country-wide anti-terrorism crackdown and a military campaign against their strongholds along the lawless border with Afghanistan. A security official said the death toll could rise to as high as 40 at Bacha Khan University in the city of Charsadda. The army said it had concluded operations to clear the campus six hours after the attack began and that four gunmen were dead. A spokesman for rescue workers, Bilal Ahmad Faizi, said 19 bodies had been recovered including students, guards, policemen and at least one teacher, named by media as chemistry professor Syed Hamid Husain. Many of the dead were apparently shot in the head execution-style, TV footage showed. The militants, using the cover of thick, wintry fog, scaled the walls of the university on Wednesday morning before entering buildings and opening fire on students and teachers in classrooms and hostels, police said. Students told media they saw several young men wielding AK-47 guns storming the university housing where many students were sleeping. "They came from behind and there was a big commotion," an unnamed male student told a news channel from a hospital bed in Charsadda's District Hospital. "We were told by teachers to leave immediately. Some people hid in bathrooms." CONTRADICTING CLAIMS The gunmen attacked as the university prepared to host a poetry recital on Wednesday afternoon to commemorate the death anniversary of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a popular ethnic Pashtun independence activist after whom the university is named. Vice Chancellor Fazal Rahim told reporters that the university teaches over 3,000 students and was hosting an additional 600 visitors for the poetry recital. Umar Mansoor, a senior Pakistani Taliban commander involved in the December 2014 attack on the army school in Peshawar, claimed responsibility for the Charsadda assault and said it involved four of his men. He told Reuters by telephone the university was targeted because it was a government institution that supported the army. However, later in the day, official Taliban spokesman Muhammad Khorasani issued a written statement disassociating the militants from attack, calling it un-Islamic. "Youth who are studying in non-military institutions, we consider them as builders of the future nation and we consider their safety and protection our duty," the statement said. The reason for the conflicting claims was not immediately clear. While the Taliban leadership is fractured, Mansoor is believed to remain loyal to central leader Mullah Fazlullah. The Pakistani Taliban are fighting to topple the government and install a strict interpretation of Islamic law. They are loosely allied with the Afghan Taliban who ruled most of Afghanistan until they were toppled by a US-backed military action in 2001. By afternoon on Wednesday, the military said all four gunmen had been killed. "The operation is over and the university has been cleared," Pakistan army spokesman General Asim Bajwa said. A security official close to the operation said he had seen the four gunmen's bodies riddled with bullets. He said none of the gunmen was wearing a suicide vest but carried guns and grenades. RUMOURS OF ATTACK Television footage showed military vehicles packed with soldiers driving into the campus as helicopters buzzed overhead and ambulances lined up outside the main gate while anxious parents consoled each other. Shabir Khan, a lecturer in the English department, said he was about to leave his university housing for the department when firing began. "Most of the students and staff were in classes when the firing began," Khan said. "I have no idea about what's going on but I heard one security official talking on the phone to someone and said many people had been killed and injured." Several schools had closed early at the weekend around Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, after rumours circulated of a possible attack. The area has been on edge since the December 2014 massacre by six gunmen in Peshawar. Pakistan, which has suffered from years of jihadist militant violence, has killed and arrested hundreds of suspected militants under a major crackdown launched afterwards. The Peshawar school attack was seen as having hardened Pakistan's resolve to fight militants along its lawless border with Afghanistan. "We are determined and resolved in our commitment to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland," Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said in a statement after Wednesday's attack. Reuters The lifting of sanctions on Iran as a result of its nuclear deal with world powers will be a harmful development if it uses the extra money to fund "nefarious activities", Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir told Reuters on Tuesday. Asked in an exclusive interview if Saudi Arabia had discussed seeking a nuclear bomb in the event Iran managed to obtain one despite its atomic deal, he said Saudi Arabia would do "whatever we need to do in order to protect our people". "I don't think it would be logical to expect us to discuss any such issue in public and I don't think it would be reasonable to expect me to answer this question one way or another," he said. "It depends on where these funds go. If they go to support the nefarious activities of the Iranian regime, this will be a negative and it will generate a pushback. If they go towards improving the living standards of the Iranian people then it will be something that would be welcome," Al-Jubeir added. Al-Jubeir said he did not believe Washington was retreating from the region, but emphasized that the world looked to it as the sole superpower to provide stability. "If an American decline were to happen or an American withdrawal were to happen, the concern that everybody has is that it would leave a void, and whenever you have a void, or a vacuum, evil forces flow," Al-Jubeir said. Al-Jubeir said Iran's support for Shi'ite Muslim militias across the region was the main source of sectarian ill will, but acknowledged that this had produced what he described as "a counter reaction in the Sunni world". Asked about inflammatory rhetoric from Saudi Sunni clerics, Al-Jubeir said he could not comment on remarks he had not seen, but said the government encouraged dialogue and inclusion and discouraged extreme or disparaging language. Reuters Electricity tariffs in Iran are among the lowest in the world, owing largely to the countrys own internal resources, while current and forthcoming capacity is capable of allowing GDP to double, a report said. The current state of Irans electricity sector puts the country in the developed-economy basket installed capacity per capita exceeds that in China and Brazil, and electricity tariffs are among the lowest in the world, a report said. Notably, this has been achieved largely with the countrys own internal resources, while current and forthcoming capacity is capable of allowing GDP to double under an optimistic scenario, added the latest Utilities Research from Renaissance Capital, a leading investment banking firm. Installed capacity leader Irans current installed capacity stands at 73.2 GW, which translates into 0.91 kW per capita. This is far below the 3.25 kW per capita in the US or even the 1.6 kW per capita in Russia. However, Irans electricity sufficiency exceeds that of China, Brazil, Turkey or South Africa. This has largely been achieved using the resources of the national economy, as the participation of foreign investors in the sectors development is limited. Moreover, the system is relatively young, with the average age of capacity standing at 15 years, and capacity is likely to break through the 100 GW mark in the next five-to-seven years. Overall, taking into account current utilisation rates, we believe the Iranian power sector will not be a bottleneck on potential economic growth (unlike, for instance, in Nigeria) and could cope with as much as a doubling in national GDP. Tariffs among the lowest in the world Currently, we calculate Irans average wholesale electricity tariff at $8/MWh, compared with $75/MWh in Egypt or $17/MWh in Russia. The key reasons for this competitive advantage for the national economy include the energy subsidy system, which is set to be phased out in the next few years; major state (or state-affiliated) ownership of the sector, which significantly caps the economically rational level of required returns on investment; and low domestic prices for gas the sectors main fuel source. System efficiency is high Irans electricity sector demonstrates many traits of high efficiency grid losses are low (13 per cent in 2014, vs 15 per cent in Turkey and 11 per cent in Russia); the capacity fuel mix helps to provide the cheapest source of electricity to the economy (dominated by gas-fired power units, combined with a gradual rise in the share of nuclear and hydro energy); while average capacity utilisation of 42 per cent leaves plenty of room to meet both fast-growing demand and sudden peaks in consumption. Solid support for economic growth; private investors not needed We expect Irans electricity sector to remain a solid support for economic growth in the country with electricity demand growing on average by 5-6 per cent pa and an investment programme well under way, we believe the sector will be able to cope well with the demands of the economy, the report said. However, tariff setting is non-transparent and highly regulated, the sector is dominated by state entities, and there is limited political pressure on decision-makers to adopt a more liberal regulatory regime, making the sector more of an economic tool of the government rather than a self-funded liberalised sector. Lack of pressure on the government to attract private investors into the sector makes us think this is unlikely to change in the medium term. TradeArabia News Service Rotana Group, a leading hotel management company in the Middle East, has welcomed Amr El Naggar as its new cluster director of revenue for Capital Centre Arjaan by Rotana and Centro Capital Centre in Abu Dhabi. In his new role, El Naggar is responsible for overseeing the revenue department of both hotels, balancing their financial objectives to ensure profitability for the group, value for money for customers and strong returns for shareholders. A highly experienced hospitality finance professional, El Naggar was previously director of revenue at Park Rotana and Park Arjaan by Rotana complex, Abu Dhabi. His numerous accomplishments during his tenure there included achieving a 163 per cent growth in electronic distribution revenue for a 12-month period from 2014 to 2015 and increasing the hotels rankings to the first two pages of one of the worlds most popular online booking websites. Strategically located adjacent to the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre (ADNEC) and a few minutes drive from the capitals centre and Abu Dhabi International Airport, Capital Centre Arjaan by Rotana and Centro Capital Centre are Rotana Groups most recent offerings in Abu Dhabis business district. TradeArabia News Service Travel Notes: Travel Notes Blog: Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe - Daily Travel Photo Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe - Daily Travel Photo Victoria Falls in full flow; as seen from the Zimbabwean side of the Zambezi River, in southern Africa. Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe Day 20: January 20th, 2016 - One Photo Upload a Day. Project 366 - With a width of 1,708 metres and height of 108 metres Victoria Falls is the world's largest sheet of falling water and forms the natural border between Zambia and Zimbabwe. The spray from the falls can be seen for miles around and the constant roar of water crashing down a series of basalt gorges is truly thunderous; so much so that the Kololo tribe living in the area referred to this natural wonder as 'Mosi-oa-Tunya', or 'Smoke that Thunders'. When David Livingstone explored this part of Africa on 16th November, 1855, he chose to name the majestic falls in honour of the British Queen, Victoria. Both names are inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List although there have been some concerns in UN corridors about the rapid rise of tourist development in a national park area near the Zambian town of Livingstone. Most Western tourists used to visit from the Zimbabwean side, while staying as guests at the Victoria Falls and Elephant Hills hotels. The falls can be reached from Livingstone in Zambia, or Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. http://pics.travelnotes.org Victoria Falls in full flow; as seen from the Zimbabwean side of the Zambezi River, in southern Africa.: January 20th, 2016 - Project 366 - Daily Travel Photos With a width of 1,708 metres and height of 108 metres Victoria Falls is the world's largest sheet of falling water and forms the natural border between Zambia and Zimbabwe.The spray from the falls can be seen for miles around and the constant roar of water crashing down a series of basalt gorges is truly thunderous; so much so that the Kololo tribe living in the area referred to this natural wonder as 'Mosi-oa-Tunya', or 'Smoke that Thunders'.When David Livingstone explored this part of Africa on 16th November, 1855, he chose to name the majestic falls in honour of the British Queen, Victoria.Both names are inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List although there have been some concerns in UN corridors about the rapid rise of tourist development in a national park area near the Zambian town of Livingstone.Most Western tourists used to visit from the Zimbabwean side, while staying as guests at the Victoria Falls and Elephant Hills hotels.The falls can be reached from Livingstone in Zambia, or Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. Labels: Africa, Daily Photo, photography, Project 366, travel, travel photography, Zimbabwe Register for more free articles. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading. Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! Already a Subscriber? Already a Subscriber? Sign in Terms of Service Privacy Policy Open enrollment ends January marks the Natrona County School Districts Open Enrollment Period. Parents may go online anytime through Thursday to enroll their child. During the coming month families with incoming Kindergarten students, along with students entering grades 6 or 9 are asked to go online and select their top three choices of schools. Those parents wishing to make a school choice change for 2016-17 may do so at this time as well. (If you would like to retain your childs spot in his or her current school, you need to do nothing further.) When choosing a school that best fits your child, we encourage you to research schools before you make your selection. NCSDs Family Guide provides detailed information on each school. Additionally, Open House dates have been scheduled. Enrollment information can also be found by visiting www.natronaschools.org Open house at Mount Hope Mount Hope invites you to come and tour our school, observe classes and visit with our headmaster. Please join us any time between 8 a.m. and 3:15 p.m. Mount Hope Lutheran School offers preschool through eighth grade and follows a classical curriculum. Registration for the 2016-2017 school year is now open. For more information, please call us at 234-6865. Veterans help available Alisa Cochrane, a state of Wyoming veteran service officer, is available to meet with veterans and their families to discuss state and federal veterans benefits, Department of Veteran Affairs claims or VA healthcare at the following places and times: Douglas, Workforce Center, 311 N. Russell Ave., 9 a.m. to noon. If there is inclement weather, please check with the staff at the outreach locations to ensure Cochrane will be available. In addition to the scheduled outreach, she is available at other times by calling 472-0212. Five Trails hears of philanthropy The Five Trails Rotary Club will hear from Ann Ruble at noon at the Casper Petroleum Club. Community members are welcome to attend this presentation as guests of the Five Trails Rotary Club. Ruble, director of Regional Philanthropy for the Wyoming Community Foundation, will be speaking about the history of the Wyoming Community Foundation and its impact on the non-profit sector in the Casper region. As the director of Regional Philanthropy for the Wyoming Community Foundation, Ruble is responsible for managing legacy investments and Foundation contributions in Natrona and Converse counties. She joined the foundation in May 2013 and in addition to her primary responsibility, she has also managed special projects and events for WYCF. Evening screenings for kindergarten Kindergarten screenings will be held through Friday in the gym at the old Westwood School, 2300 Bellaire Drive. Appointments will be scheduled from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. A limited number of early evening appointments, from 4 to 7 p.m. will be available on Thursday only. Please call (307) 253-5450 to make an appointment for your child to have a brief, screening assessment. It is important that ALL kindergartners participate in screening prior to being assigned to a school. Current NCSD preschool students will be assessed by their preschool teachers during regular class times, those parents do not need to call for an appointment. Parents and children should plan to arrive at least 5 to 10 minutes prior to the appointment time. Afternoon Book Club for tweens An afternoon book discussion will be held at 4 p.m. at Metro Coffee Co. Participants will read Uglies by Scott Westerfeld. The group is open to teens in grades 7-8. Participants receive a free drink, courtesy of the Friends of the Library. To participate, pick up a copy of Uglies in the Librarys Teen Zone. Call 577-READ ext. 101 for more information. Raptors at Werner Raptors face daily dangers and those dangers will be discussed during Januarys Raptor Rap titled Danger at the Top of the Food Chain: Raptor Conservation. The program will take place at 4 p.m. at the Werner Wildlife Museum. Well discuss hazards posed by pesticides, human encroachment on raptor territory, how concerned humans are working to mitigate those dangers, and the triumphs and losses incurred in conservation over the last hundred years, said India Hayford, museum specialist. Raptor Rap is a family-friendly program for all ages, and is free and open to the public. It takes place on the third Thursday of each month in the Wyoming Room of the Werner Wildlife Museum, which is located at 405 E. 15th Street. For more information, contact the museum at 235-2108. Community impact at Pizza Ranch Pizza Ranch, 5011 E. Second St., hosts Community Impact nights from 5 to 9 p.m. normally on Mondays and Wednesdays. Members of nonprofit groups bus tables for tips, and 20 percent of meal tickets from diners who mention the group are donated as well. Dine-in, delivery or pickup orders qualify. Thursdays nonprofit is Midwest Robotics Team. Kindle Fire basics The Natrona County Library will offer a Kindle Fire Basics class Thursday at 5:30 p.m. in the Crawford Room. Bring your own Kindle Fire tablet and learn how to use the touch screen, settings, and keyboard as well as discover how to download and use common Apps. Call 577-READ ext. 2 for more information. Genealogists hear about air base The Natrona County Genealogical Society will meet at the Casper Senior Citizens Center at 1831 East 4th St at 7 p.m. We will begin our new year with Douglas Cubbison of the Wyoming Veterans Memorial Museum enlightening us on the early history of the Casper Airbase. He will talk primarily about the years from 1942 to 1946 and the post years of World War II. Our air force base in Casper was the main training area for the B-17s and B-24s during the war. Did you have family or friends that worked or trained there? There is a lot of history and genealogy to be discovered by attending this presentation. As always, guests are welcome. Our help desk will also be open at 6:30 p.m. for any of you that be experiencing a research block or some advice on proceeding forward on your search. For more information please call Marcia Stroh 265-5568. A man suspected of stabbing his roommate to death has been ordered to undergo a second evaluation to determine if hes competent to stand trial. Don Johns attorney said he didnt agree with the findings of his clients first evaluation at the Wyoming State Hospital. Tim Cotton asked a Natrona County District judge to allow his client to be evaluated by an independent psychologist. Cotton did not disclose the findings of Johns evaluation at the state hospital. He said he believes Johns has a mental deficiency that affects his capacity to comprehend the serious charge against him and, in turn, adequately defend himself. Johns, who appeared in court dressed in red jail scrubs, is charged with first-degree murder for the death of his roommate, Don Wickersham. Prosecutors have said they will not seek the death penalty against Johns for the Aug. 29 killing. A motion filed by prosecutors in October states they will seek a penalty of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Natrona County District Court Judge Catherine Wilking suspended all proceedings in Johns case in October so he could be evaluated at the state hospital in Evanston. Further proceedings in the case will remain on hold while Johns is evaluated by Dr. Max Wachtel, a forensic psychologist based in Denver. Wachtel will conduct the evaluation at the Natrona County Detention Center, where Johns remains held. The evaluation is expected to be completed within 60 days. Authorities found the body of 49-year-old Wickersham shortly after noon on Aug. 30 in an apartment at 314 N. Jackson St. Police said another tenant who lived in the four-plex had visited Wickershams apartment, which is above his, because he was out of hot water and heard the water running above. A police detective who testified at Johns preliminary hearing said Wickersham could have been saved with immediate medical treatment. Instead, Wickersham bled out very slowly from 29 stab wounds. Cotton has said his client was not at the apartment he shared with Wickersham when the killing occurred. The man who discovered the victim said Wickersham and Johns had argued in front of the residence the night before. Authorities have said the fight may have stemmed from Wickersham telling Johns to move out of the apartment. About 9 p.m. on Aug. 29, Johns arrived at his ex-girlfriends home and told her he had hurt Wickersham, according to police testimony. The woman had a friend drive Johns somewhere else because she was afraid of Johns. The woman then reportedly called several friends to tell them what Johns had said. Two of her friends went to the North Jackson Street apartment about 11 p.m. to find out what had happened. Upon peeking into the apartment and seeing Wickershams body, one of them made an anonymous 911 call to report a man was bloody and needed help. However, the man did not say exactly where the injured person was. A tenant told police he heard several thuds and knocks in Wickersham and Johns apartment around 11 p.m. On the evening of Aug. 30, Johns called the police and asked to be picked up at 229 Lathrop Road in Evansville. He surrendered to officers when they arrived. His pockets were empty except for photos of his children. Officers found blood on his shoes. The renters at the Lathrop residence told police Johns arrived at their trailer the previous night. They helped clean the blood off Johns and disposed of the rags. They told officers they did not ask Johns what happened nor did he tell them. Police later found bloody rags and clothing in a trash can outside of the trailer. Authorities arrested the Sublette County sheriff Tuesday, alleging he ordered more than $11,000 worth of equipment before taking office and then altered invoices to show he made the purchases after being sworn in. Stephen Haskell is accused of ordering uniforms and badges for deputies before taking over as sheriff on Jan. 5, 2015. He allegedly told the Sublette County Commissioners that he made the orders after he was sworn in, so the items would be paid for by the county. Haskell later asked the uniform and badge companies to doctor invoices to show he had purchased the items after Jan. 5, court documents allege. The court documents also allege Haskell had asked Sublette County Commissioners to pay for his lodging during a trip to Baltimore. It was later discovered that the Wyoming Association of Sheriffs and Chiefs of Police had already paid for his lodging. The sheriff turned himself into authorities in Sweetwater County after the charges were filed. He was booked and released on a $10,000 personal recognizance bond, which does not require him to put up money before leaving jail. In a statement released by the Sublette County sheriffs office late Tuesday afternoon, Haskell said he was blindsided by the allegations, noting that some commissioners had previously said he had not done anything criminal. I am dismayed that my fellow elected officials have gone back on their word regarding this matter, he said. I have been very forthright and honest with them from the beginning and I have been met with hostility at every turn. I suppose this shouldnt come as much of a surprise. I look forward to working through the judicial process in this regard and being cleared. Haskell is charged with official misconduct, obtaining property by false pretenses, wrongful taking or disposing of property, false swearing in of nonjudicial or nonadministrative proceedings and public officer acting before qualifying, according to documents filed in the Sublette County Circuit Court. Three of the charges are felonies and carry a maximum prison sentence of 22 years upon conviction. The remaining charges are misdemeanors, and could bring up to $6,000 in fines. Haskells preliminary hearing is set for Feb. 11 in Sublette County. Natrona County District Attorney Michael Blonigen said he is serving as special prosecuting attorney for the case. According to charging documents filed Tuesday, the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation was assigned to look into the matter in September after Sublette County Commissioners wrote the agency asking for an investigation into criminal wrongdoing by Haskell. Investigators interviewed Sublette County Clerk Mary Lankford, who provided them with vouchers that were approved for payment by the Sublette County Commissioners, the court documents state. The vouchers showed the county paid Skaggs Uniform and Creative Culture Insignia for orders made by Haskell before he was sworn in as sheriff. These payments totaled about $11,800 and excluded $3,000 paid by Haskell. The documents state DCI agents obtained a recorded telephone call made by Haskell to Skaggs Uniforms, during which he asked the company to change the dates on the order. An employee at Creative Culture Insignia also told agents Haskell had called and requested to have the order dates altered because the items had been ordered in November and December, before he took office. I was elected to perform a specific function as the Sheriff of this county, and because I have opinions that differ from theirs, this is how I am treated, Haskell said in his statement. Its a shame that when someone stands up for the people, this is what happens. Sgt. Katherine Peterson, spokesperson for the Sublette County Sheriffs Office, issued a statement in November regarding a special prosecutor who was appointed to look into alleged misconduct by Haskell. According to Petersons statement, Haskell was interviewed in September by DCI agents. That release states the Sublette County Board of County Commissioners requested Haskell pay for uniform items that he bought before he was sworn in as sheriff. Haskell accepted his responsibility for the mistake and paid for the items himself, according to the release. Those items totaled about $3,000. Commission Chairman Andy Nelson and Commissioner Joel Bouseman each made statements, clarifying that they could clearly see there was no criminal intent concerning these orders, which were placed for law enforcement equipment and supplies destined for distribution to Sheriffs Office personnel, the release states. Their concern was that Haskell had placed the orders before being sworn in, which caused them hesitation in paying for the items. About two weeks before the DCI interview, Haskell filed a court action against Lankford, the county clerk, alleging she was overstepping her professional boundaries. In the action, Haskell claimed Lankford had been altering budget line items without permission. Haskell also asserted Lankford made a decision on a sheriffs office personnel matter that she was not authorized to make. CHEYENNE Wyoming lawmakers targeted state agency spending, a property tax refund program and several other areas in their first day of crafting the states 2017-18 budget. The Joint Appropriations Committee voted Tuesday to strip millions of dollars out of the states two-year spending plan that will be up for approval during next months legislative session. One of the panels first actions was to recommend 1 percent standard budget reductions for each year of the upcoming biennium. This will result in a total of about $44 million in cuts, according to the Legislative Service Office. Rep. Steve Harshman, R-Casper, who co-chairs the JAC, suggested the proposal, which was approved on a voice vote. He called it an austerity measure that is in response to falling oil, gas and coal revenues and fears that the states budget picture wont improve anytime soon. Ive been part of these 5 percent or 8 percent cuts, he said, referring to larger budget cuts the state has experienced in recent years. And I think this would be more of a gradual drawdown, and itll be easier to adjust for everyone. Although the details still need to be worked out, the JAC agreed to give Gov. Matt Mead the time and authority to select where to find the reductions. The budget that Mead proposed largely avoided cuts to the standard budget, which is essentially agencies normal ongoing expenses. And he specifically asked the Legislature to avoid across-the-board reductions. In the event the Legislature believes additional reductions are required, I ask you to look at agency programs, he wrote Monday in a letter to the JAC. I asked each agency to prioritize programs and to include that prioritization in their budget submission. Across-the-board cuts without program reduction dilute resources and disrupt services. The JAC also approved motions to cut 10 percent of state agencies travel budgets and 5 percent of agencies contract ser-vices budgets. Those will result in savings of $1.5 million and about $10 million, respectively. Although the measures apply to all state executive branch agencies, lawmakers said they will make exceptions for agencies where the cuts are unrealistic or not appropriate. The JAC also began going agency by agency to review Meads budget recommendations. The panel denied some of Meads recommendations ranging from requests worth a few thousand dollars to millions of dollars in several of the agencies that were reviewed Tuesday. This includes reducing the amount the governor was seeking for the states disaster contingency accounts by about $500,000. The group also voted to entirely eliminate the funding for a program designed to help low-income taxpayers with rising property taxes. The tax refund program has helped thousands of residents since its creation in 2003. The Department of Revenue believes that this program has been successful over the years and has provided relief to thousands of taxpayers that are struggling with the rising cost of property taxes, stated the Department of Revenues written budget request for the program. Mead recommended lawmakers reduce the program, which has a two-year budget of $2.6 million, by $500,000 in light of the pressure on the general fund. The JAC, however, took that a step further and decided to eliminate the full $2.6 million. The JAC had spent dozens of hours over the past two months reviewing Meads recommendations and interviewing agency heads about their requests. Tuesday, however, was the first day the group began voting on the proposals. The lawmakers spent more than nine hours debating and voting on the budget. But many of the big-ticket budget items, including University of Wyoming requests, capital construction projects and the Medicaid expansion proposal, will come later in the week. Some of those could be considered as early as today. The panel will have a chance to reverse any of its recommendations at the end of its work Friday. But after that point, the Legislative Service Office will begin drafting the budget bill that will be presented to the full Legislature when the session begin Feb. 8. BOZEMAN, Mont. Officials say the elk population in the northern part of Yellowstone National Park and southern Montana is stable after dropping over the past few years, though biologists are warning that after a set of mild winters, there is a possibility that harsher winters could change that in the future. The Northern Yellowstone Cooperative Wildlife Working Group counted 4,900 elk in the region this winter. Thats up from last years count of 4,840 elk, but still down sharply from the highest count in recent years, when biologists saw more than 6,000 in 2010, and down from 19,000 in the mid-1990s. In a way its good news, said Doug Smith, a Yellowstone National Park biologist. We think we have a fairly stable elk herd. The number of elk in that region has been the subject of a debate between outfitters, hunters and wildlife officials for several months. Wildlife officials proposed capping the number of hunters in one hunting district near Gardiner at 75, a huge drop from the number allowed to hunt there now, which is about 1,500 in heavily trafficked years. Wildlife officials cite unsustainable hunting, while opponents argue the herd isnt in a biological crisis. The count is an estimate, based on airplane surveillance. They were documented by the number of elk and didnt classify them by sex or age. Karen Loveless, a biologist with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, said she flew over the area in late December and kept track of the bulls, an indication of the herds health. She saw 116 brow-tine bulls, which are bulls older than about 2 years. Of those, she said about 44 percent were six-point or better, and about 56 percent were five-point or smaller. A Park County man faces 13 counts of animal neglect after seven dead horses were found on his property. Michael Aaron Wood, a 39-year-old Clark resident, was arrested Friday after the dead horses were found. Six surviving horses displayed signs of neglect, according to a press release from the Park County Sheriffs Office. An anonymous report about the animals at Woods Crossfire Trail residence was called in to the sheriff's on Jan. 7. Wood could not be found, but five dead horses were initially discovered, with six live horses in corrals. The deputy did not observe any food or water available for the horses. When Wood was located later in the day, he admitted that he couldn't afford to feed the horses and admitted that he realized some of them had died due to a lack of feed, according to the press release. Wood said "he had been trying for some time to get rid of a number of the horses but had not had any luck finding anyone to take them," according to the press release. Wood claimed to have placed an advertisement in a local newspaper and had attempted to contact a local rescue organization with no success," according to the release. After the discussion with Wood, the case was turned over to the county attorney, and the sheriffs office began locating caretakers for the remaining horses. A search and seizure warrant was executed Jan. 9 on the Crossfire Trail property, leading to the discovery of two more dead horses and the seizure of the remaining six live horses to be put under the care of Park County. Wood was arrested Friday and is being held in the Park County Detention Facility. In the press release, Park County Sheriff Scott Steward said, In these hardship situations, the Livestock Board can assist livestock owners in finding suitable caretakers or buyers as long as the current owner can prove ownership. In extreme cases, the board will seize the animals as strays, he said. I cant imagine being faced with a life-threatening illness and wondering how my family would get the care and treatment we need, or watching loved ones become sicker as they wait for options like many Wyoming residents are forced to do currently. Right now, about 20,000 low-income, hardworking Wyomingites fall in the coverage gap. They do not qualify for our states Medicaid program, are unable to afford private insurance and do not qualify for tax credits that could assist them in paying for their health insurance through Wyomings Health Insurance Exchange. Its time we increase access to health care through Medicaid to ensure all Wyoming citizens can get the care and treatment they need and deserve. Our friends, neighbors, co-workers and family members shouldnt have to wait any longer. Wyoming and its citizens are battling a tough state economy. Wyoming faces a $600 million budget deficit this year. Unfortunately, the Legislature will be forced to make cuts to good programs to balance the budget. In addition to providing affordable quality health coverage to all citizens, extending access to care through Medicaid would save the state money that the Legislature could redirect to other important programs, preventing them from being cut. Extending Medicaid eligibility to more low-income, hardworking Wyomingites would also significantly reduce overall health care costs and the state Department of Healths budget. Wyoming is leaving $1.4 billion on the table over the next 10 years by not accepting federal dollars to broaden access to health care through Medicaid. Statistically, at least 95 Wyomingites who could receive health care coverage if Medicaid eligibility were extended will be diagnosed with cancer this year. Without access to health coverage, research shows that individuals are more likely than those with insurance to be diagnosed with cancer at a much later stage when the disease is more costly to treat and much less likely to be cured. Expanding access to health care through Medicaid would help thousands of our most vulnerable residents see doctors regularly and access preventative screenings like pap smears, mammograms and smoking cessation aids that can prevent some cancers in the first place. Providing low-income adults and families access to affordable, comprehensive health coverage is critical in our fight against cancer. Gov. Mead and elected officials can help save lives and money for the state. The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN) believes that everyone in Wyoming should have access to affordable health care coverage, including cancer prevention screenings, diagnostic testing and treatment services. We urge the Legislatures Joint Appropriations Committee to leave the extension of Medicaid eligibility in the 2016 budget. More than 20,000 Wyoming residents are counting on you for access to primary care, cancer screenings and life-saving treatments. Public opinion research shows the majority of Wyomings residents support the idea of extending health care coverage to the states lowest-income residents through Medicaid. During Wyomings current budget challenges, lets make sure our loved ones dont have to wait for medical attention they need and deserve. Join the ACS CAN Wyoming efforts at www.acscan.org/wyoming. WASHINGTON China produces an astonishing number of astonishing numbers, including this: In the 20th century, America made automobiles mass-consumption items, requiring prodigious road building. China, however, poured more concrete for roads and other construction between 2011 and 2013 than America did in the 20th century. This fact is emblematic of Chinas remarkable success. And is related to its current difficulties, including its 2015 growth rate (6.9 percent), its slowest in 25 years. The regimes contract with its 1.4 billion subjects is that it will deliver prosperity and they will be obedient. Now the bill is coming due for the measures taken to produce prosperity. In 1978, when Deng Xiaoping began the regimes attempt to leaven Leninism with market reforms, half of the Chinese lived on less than $1 a day. In just six years, collective agriculture almost disappeared and grain production increased 34 percent, freeing people to move from the countryside to more productive urban employment. No Westerner knows more about Chinas regime and political economy than Henry Paulson who, as CEO of Goldman Sachs, then U.S. treasury secretary and subsequently, has made more than 100 trips to China. In his book Dealing With China, he writes: China consumes almost half the worlds cement, coal, iron ore and steel, and 40 percent of the aluminum and copper. Beijing has six ring roads and the seventh, under construction, will be almost 600 miles long, encompassing an area as large as Indiana. (Washington, D.C.s beltway is 64 miles long.) Demand for roads so exceeds supply that a 2010 traffic jam extended 62 miles and lasted 12 days. China has six of the worlds 15 tallest buildings (America has three) and eight of the 10 tallest under construction. In four years, beginning in 2011, the government built enough housing to shelter the population of the 12th most populous nation, the Philippines. Two months after the September 2014 $25 billion IPO for the Chinese internet company Alibaba, the worlds biggest IPO, the company had a $280 billion market capitalization, bigger than Amazon and eBay combined. Chinas prosperity has been fueled by the traditional modernization trek of people from the countryside to cities 300 million so far, with another 300 million by 2030. But China has also relied perilously on exports and excessive, grossly inefficient infrastructure spending to employ the former peasants and make burgeoning metropolises habitable. Just between 2010 and June 2013, local government debt alone surged 70 percent to $2.9 trillion. What the regime calls socialism with Chinese characteristics is, like sauerkraut ice cream, a combination of incompatible ingredients. A senior Chinese reformer propounded the birdcage theory of the socialist market economy: The market sector should be as free to fly as a bird in a cage the cage of a state-commanded economy. Private enterprise, however, creates 90 percent of new jobs. By itself, the private sector, which accounts for perhaps 60 percent of Chinas $10 trillion GDP, would be the worlds second biggest economy, trailing only Americas. Although state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are often corrupt and always inefficient, the regime resists privatizing SOEs, which would mean worker layoffs of up to 80 percent. More than 100,000 local SOEs have been closed but, Paulson says, perhaps another 100,000 or more remain. The fact that Paulson says no one seems to know the exact number speaks volumes about the disorderly nature of things bubbling beneath Chinas still-nasty authoritarianism. Chinas 87 million party members, Paulson says, work first and foremost for the party, which remains the alpha and omega of political, economic and social life. But as Paulson says, corruption breeds where power meets opportunity. Because opportunity festers everywhere that the party continues to insinuate itself, inefficient allocation of resources will depress growth. The regime is wagering that it can achieve its second-highest goal, prosperity and the geopolitical weight that can come with it, while preserving its highest priority a Leninist one-party state acting as the vanguard of an accepting population. But Chinas per capita GDP, one-eighth that of the United States, ranks 80th in the world, barely ahead of war-ravaged Iraqs. After the U.S. opening to China, Daniel Patrick Moynihan acerbically said that many travelers to China returned more impressed by the absence of flies than by the absence of freedom. The continuing absence of the latter, illustrated by the apparent kidnapping of five Hong Kong booksellers, are not noticed by foreigners mesmerized by bullet trains. The next stage of Chinas ascent will test the continuing compatibility of Leninism and dynamism. Welcome to Holy Trinity Church! Holy Trinity is a small parish, located in Troy, Montana right on US Highway 2 at the corner of Third Street and Missoula Avenue. Here you'll find a lovely 'Carpenter Gothic' church with red doors and a garden out front, between the Sanctuary and parish hall doors. See the "About" page for worship times and dates. The Episcopal Church welcomes you! DAVIS-MONTHAN AIR FORCE BASE, Ariz. The 355th Fighter Wing held the first large force employment and expeditionary exercise this year from Jan. 11-15 known as Cactus Flag. Cactus Flag brought a unique spin to the usual exercise routine. The exercise tested the 355th Fighter Wing on a broad scope of expeditionary skills across all units. Normally an exercise, centers around one scenario, location, and threat. Rather than having each individual unit react to a single overarching scenario such as, an active shooter, each unit was given a flexible range to develop personalized settings. "This new construct is helping the Wing Inspection Team gather a broader evaluation of the 355th Fighter Wing's readiness and compliance arming all commanders with a more accurate picture of unit effectiveness." said U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Mark H. Molineaux, 355th Fighter Wing inspections superintendent. Everyone plays a role during emergencies, deployments and normal operations. Where one unit excels, another may be weak. Targeted training allows for growth in areas that are usually not flexed. Every unit are trained on situations that focused on their personal response requirements such exercises like a vehicle rollover, deployed environment, dust storm or active shooter. "The exercise is definitely a little stressful on the new Airmen; they haven't done this before," said Staff Sgt. Matthew Ruggiero, 355th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron crew chief. "It is up to the more experienced Airmen to teach how to cope with the stress and how to keep their head up in a faster paced environment." Real world events rarely play out in an orderly fashion. Exercising allows Airmen to experience scenarios in a safe environment, expose potential flaws or areas of improvement. Using the information and experience from exercises allows for preparation to face real world events according to Molineaux. A 48-year-old Tucson man has been sentenced to nearly 22 years in prison on federal convictions in New Mexico on methamphetamine and firearms charges stemming from a drug trafficking organization that prosecutors said he led. The organization led by Matthew Maley distributed significant quantities of methamphetamine in New Mexico and Arizona in 2013, according to prosecutors. Maley was sentenced Wednesday in federal court in Las Cruces on convictions resulting from a four-day trial in September 2014. He was convicted of four meth trafficking charges and of being a felon in possession of firearms and ammunition. Its like an Arizona reunion out on the snowy flatlands of southeastern Oregon. Our state was already well-represented among the armed militants who are occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Now, Tucson resident Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, has shown up and helped lead opposition to the occupiers. Suckling is an old adversary of the Bundy family, members of which are leading the occupation, because the center has sued them for overgrazing on federal lands. These days, Suckling has been challenging the occupiers claim of the moral high ground, arguing that the refuge and other federally owned lands are public lands, not to be turned over to private interests. I feel like this is some sort of proxy Arizona war, Suckling said. I talked with Suckling, a renowned and in some circles reviled environmentalist, by phone from Oregon Tuesday. Q: Why are you there? A: Were here to protect Americas public lands against an armed militia that is trying to take it away at gunpoint. Q: What have you done while youre there? A: We have been going up to the Bundy militias daily press conferences, then after they do their spiel, we get up and have our own press conference at their press conference to tell the real story of what the militia is doing to our public lands. Today, were holding our own environmental rally to talk about why it would be such a disaster to turn our public lands over to miners, loggers and ranchers. Q: How have relations been between you and the occupiers? A: They have been just short of outright violent,. They have been insanely aggressive and threatening. They come out with their guns, get in our faces and scream. I went down in the compound itself to send the message that this is public land. We dont agree that its occupied. Q: How dangerous is what youre doing? A: Its dangerous. When were up there at their press conferences and theyre getting in our faces screaming at us, theyve got the rifles and everything. Weve been moving around motels for safety reasons, since were now publicly known. Theres more militia in town than there is in the refuge: 15-20 in the refuge headquarters, a camp of 12 about five miles below them. Then, in town, theres probably 100-plus militia. Theyre staying in a bunch of motels. When you go to motels, its chock-full of these guys. I figure its most dangerous in town. Those are the fringe people. Theyre out drinking and getting testosterone-filled. Q: Its been emerging over the last few days that the occupiers are followers of the ideology laid out by anti-communist conspiracist W. Cleon Skousen in the 1960s. Whats your understanding? A: Their position following Skousen is that the Constitution is the only law of the land. All other laws are illegal and should be ignored and thrown out. The only duty anyone has is to follow the Constitution. All other laws are tyranny. They believe the Constitution forbids not just the actions but the very existence of the federal government. They claim the very existence of the federal government is a tyrannical violation of the Constitution. Since the federal government doesnt exist, it cant own any federal land. They also believe, since the U.S. government doesnt exist, that theres no such thing as U.S. citizenship. When (Cliven) Bundy (the father of two Malheur occupiers) lost the last time (in court), his argument was that I am not a citizen of the United States and consequently the government has no jurisdiction over me. These guys go right down the whole sovereign citizen line. Q: Could you all at the Center for Biological Diversity not be rightfully blamed for pushing the ranchers into a desperate situation? A: This stuff has been going on since the 1930s. This sort of Sagebrush Rebellion thing just cycles through every 15 or 20 years. That was long before there were even environmental laws or environmentalists. The Bundys say this themselves this is not fundamentally about grazing and grazing restrictions at all. What theyre talking about here every day is that the federal government has no right to own land. It should be given to the loggers and miners and ranchers. The militia guys who are out there, they arent ranchers. Theyre just crazies from Cleveland, Portland or Miami who hate the government. Q: Couldnt the federal government arrest these guys? A: Absolutely! Last night Im at a public meeting with Ammon Bundy, Ryan Bundy, Fluffy Unicorn (the nickname of an occupier) and Ryan Payne. Theyre right there. They drove up, went to a public meeting in a hotel, got back in their car, and drove away. Its not just that they (federal agents) are not attacking the refuge. They (occupiers) are allowed to come and go and mill around and come and go as they please. Q: What would you like the feds to do? A: They should cut off power and water to the refuge. Its freezing out here. Theres also only one road in block the road and dont let any more militia in. PHOENIX The nations high court on Tuesday gave the Obama administration the chance to defend its deferred action programs for illegal immigrants even as the justices gave the boot to a head-on challenge to them by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. In the first order, the U.S. Supreme Court voted to review the decision of a federal judge in Texas that the president and the Department of Homeland Security had acted illegally in deciding that some people who were in this country illegally could stay without fear of deportation. That judge said the administration did not follow the legal requirements for enacting regulations. Separately, the justices refused to resurrect a challenge by Arpaio to the administrations deferred action programs. Without comment, the justices let stand a ruling last year by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that Arpaio had no right to sue. In that ruling, appellate Judge Nina Pillard said the sheriffs lawsuit is based on the contention that allowing people who arrived in this country illegally as children to remain without fear of deportation will lead to more crime in Maricopa County and burden his officers and jails. But Pillard, writing for the three-judge panel, said the sheriffs contentions are unduly speculative and rest on chains of supposition and contradict acknowledged realities. And without any proof he or his agency would be harmed, Pillard said there was no basis for a lawsuit. In a prepared statement attorney Larry Klayman, who represented Arpaio, said he and the sheriff were disappointed the justices did not take up their case. The lawsuit, filed in 2014, challenges three deferred action programs, which would allow millions of people here illegally to remain and work. That includes the original Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program implemented in 2010. At last count nearly 800,000 requests to remain and work including 28,000 from Arizona had been approved nationwide. Arpaio charged that the programs are unconstitutional abuses of the presidents role in our nations constitutional architecture, and exceed the powers of the president within the U.S. Constitution. And he said even if Congress has granted some power to the president to decide how to enforce immigration laws, these two programs exceed that delegated authority. But the court never addressed those arguments, saying Arpaio has no legal right to even make them. That leaves the challenge by Texas and 25 other states, including Arizona, to the other two programs: an expanded DACA and a new Deferred Action for Parents of Americans aimed at helping illegal immigrants who are the parents of children in this country legally. All three programs are built on the administrations arguments that it lacks the resources to find and deport the estimated 11 million people not in this country legally. So the Department of Homeland Security decided to let some people stay and work, saying that allows federal agents to concentrate on finding criminals who are here illegally. If the high court upholds the legality of those programs, too, its estimated that ultimately could result in four million people being allowed to stay. In filing suit, the states did not challenge the ability of the Department of Homeland Security to decide who it pursues for deportation. But they argued those decisions need to be made on a case-by-case basis. By contrast, the states said what the president has enacted amounts to a wholesale policy change. In February U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Hanen agreed, saying if the administration wants to do that it has to go through a full-blown rule-making procedure, something it did not do. He enjoined the administration from pursuing the expanded DACA and new DAPA programs. In a split decision, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision, going farther and concluding the presidents actions were illegal. But while agreeing Tuesday to hear the administrations appeal, the justices may have impeded the president. They said they want to be briefed on whether the policies violate a constitutional requirement that the laws be faithfully executed. In other words, can the administration simply decide not to enforce laws against people who, legally speaking, have no right to be in this country? The high court could hear arguments as early as April, potentially reaching a decision just a month before the presidential election. That timing has big political implications. All three programs are effectively administrative actions and thus could be rescinded by whoever succeeds Obama in the White House. Most of the Republican presidential contenders have vowed to do just that. Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus is making the rounds with community groups and going on patrols with officers to get a better understanding of the issues hell likely face as the citys new top cop. The official first day on the job for Magnus, the former police chief of Richmond, California, was Tuesday. It was stacked with meetings with command staff and personnel. During his first news conference at downtown police headquarters, he described the department as having a progressive and cutting-edge reputation and said he wants to build on its successes. Magnus said dealing with the departments budget is one of his top priorities. Tucson is facing some real budget challenges, and the reality of those challenges have to be studied in order to see how the department can provide high-quality services, he said. TPD has about 900 sworn officers and 300 civilian personnel. The yearly budget is $168 million. The department is authorized for 992 commissioned officers. In an interview in November Magnus said in addition to budget challenges, the department faces personnel retention, ongoing retirements and the need for updated technology and other equipment. Magnus said once he meets with department staff and the community to understand the departments strengths, resources and challenges, he will be in a stronger position to set priorities, establish goals and address needs. Magnus said he also has met with leaders in the business and faith communities; leaders from the Latino, African-American and Muslim communities; and nonprofit organizations. I want to get out and around and get to know my personnel and have opportunities to get to know Tucson, said Magnus, explaining that he will continue riding with patrol officers and meeting with neighborhood associations. He also said he plans on learning Spanish. According to the 2013 U.S. Census, Tucsons population is about 526,116. Hispanics make up 42 percent. In a question about curbing violent crime, Magnus said there has to be a strong partnership between police and the community, which must be open to that message, in order to prevent and reduce crime. We have to work together, said the chief, adding that crime rates in Tucson are not bad. He said Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos reached out to him before he settled in Tucson, and he plans on meeting with Nanos to talk about issues of public saftey. Magnus said he received a warm reception when he arrived in Tucson, and he and his husband, Terrance Cheung, were welcomed by their neighbors when they moved into a house in central Tucson. Magnus will be paid $200,000 a year, and after one year will receive a raise. Also, as part of his benefits, the city will contribute $10,000 annually into a deferred compensation account, said City Attorney Mike Rankin previously. Prior to Tucson, Magnus was chief of the Richmond Police Department where he began working in 2006. The city near San Francisco has a population of about 108,000 and a police force about a third the size of Tucsons. In November, Mayor Jonathan Rothschild and the City Council voted unanimously to appoint Magnus as chief. Magnus, who was the preferred candidate of the citizens advisory committee that helped conduct the chiefs search, replaced Chief Roberto Villasenor who retired in December. As the midterm elections come ever closer, it can feel as if were stewing in a cauldron of tribalism, of our side vs. their side with no middle ground and little agreement on much of anything. That makes it a good time to take a breath and realize the consensus weve reached on some issues that were incredibly contentious not long ago. It gives us hope in the angry days ahead. PHOENIX Saying it promotes safety, the No. 2 House Republican wants the state to pay for Arizonans to get licensed to carry concealed weapons. The proposal by House Majority Leader Steve Montenegro, R-Litchfield Park, would provide a dollar-for-dollar credit against state income taxes owed for the cost of training to get a CCW permit, up to $80. Costs for the required training around Arizona range from $50 to $115. Put simply, any Arizonan who gets a permit could deduct the amount from owed state taxes. Arizona law allows any adult to carry a concealed weapon. There are, however, certain advantages to having a permit, like being able to bring it into a place where alcohol is served. And Arizonas permit is honored by a majority of other states. At last count about 251,000 people have obtained CCW permits in the state. But Montenegro said there also is a public benefit to having more people who have licenses. Its promoting safety, Montenegro said of HB 2494. Law enforcement has told us time and time again that the first line of defense are those that carry CCW permits. Montenegro rejected any comparison of offering concealed-carry courses to create safer gun owners with optional driver-education courses to create safer drivers courses that would not qualify for the same tax credit. He said preparing people to safely handle firearms addresses a specific risk. We see this throughout the country where you have, all of a sudden, someone that is not in their right mind, or somebody that is evil, walking in and targeting innocent people, Montenegro said. We want to promote people being educated in having CCW permits, he continued. We value those that are able to take these classes and help us with safety. Montenegro, who has a CCW permit, said the classes teach more than safely handling a firearm. He said it also acquaints people with the laws on the use of deadly force as well as knowing when not to use a gun. Montenegro said he does not know how many Arizonans could take advantage of the law and get the credit. About 251,000 people already have such permits. Those people would be ineligible for the credit. But the permits are available to anyone 21 or older who is not otherwise disqualified from possessing a firearm, such as conviction of a felony. That could theoretically leave at least 3 million Arizonans who could take the course and get the $80 credit, at a cost of $240 million. Montenegro said he does not think the cost in state tax revenues should be a factor. We want to promote a safe Arizona, he said. And we cant put a price on any lives as well. This is a Blog about student mobility experience study, internship or just a vacation! Help India! By Raqib Hameed Naik and Amit Kumar, TwoCircles.net The Baiga tribe in Madhya Pradesh have had good reason to look at any action from the administration with an eye of suspicion: most of the times, the civil authorities were only too keen to get them evicted from the states forests despite the Baigas having lived there for centuries. Last year in January, the eviction of Baigas from Kanha Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh, which was also the home of Rudyard Kiplings The Jungle Book, in the name of forest conservation, grabbed media attention in both India and abroad. Support TwoCircles But over the past month, the authorities at Dindori, Madhya Pradesh have, for the first time, recognised the habitat rights of seven villages in the district mostly inhabited by the Baigas. Under Habitat Rights, these seven villages have been given an area of about 23,000 acres which is non-transferable and non-alienable, essentially meaning that the Baigas will not be evicted for any purpose from this area and allowed to use the forests and rivers. The district administration of Dindori district held a meeting in one of the villages, Rajni Sarai, on Wednesday, January 13 and told the villagers that they are free to access all their ancestral rights over land and forests besides assuring them that the government will not be able to transfer any land for non-community uses. The Habitat Rights documents signed on January 13 The move also gains importance because Baigas are considered as one of the 75 particularly vulnerable tribal groups (PVTG) in the Indian Constitution. Ekta Parishad, the NGO which helped the locals mobilise for claiming their rights, believes this to be the first step in recognising the rights of Tribals across the country. The seven villages have received habitat rights only 50% of the land, indentified as Baiga Chak (land of Baigas) they are entitled to, but nevertheless, it is a start and a positive step, Ramesh Sharma, convener, Ekta Parishad, told Twocircles.net. He added that until now, even under Community Forest Rights, the land given to Tribals have consisted of a few acres or a couple of villages at the max. This, however, is a welcome change in the matter of allocating rights to forests. The focus is to map the entire area that belongs to the Baigas, which is a lot more than the current 23,000 acres and allot them Habitat Rights for all of it, he adds. He added that even now, there are almost 50 Baiga villages which havent received these rights in the district, apart from about 30-odd Baiga villages in the districts of Mandla and Balaghat. A similar movement will be carried in other villages too, Sharma said. The Forest Rights Act mandates that the claim for tribal land must come from the people themselves and since Habitat Rights come under Section 3 (1) d of Forest Rights Act, 2006, the organisation will encourage all other villages to push for the same. Once the claim is made by the Gram Panchayat in front of the district collector, even if the process of granting Habitat Rights takes time, the people cannot be evicted during that period. So, we will ask all other villages to push for the same, so that any scope of evictions do not exist and the Tribals can claim what is rightfully theirs, said Sharma. And there are good reasons for the villages to push for the same. The Madhya Pradesh government, along with various other national and international conservation agencies, has been considering a wildlife corridor which connects Kanha Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh with the Achanakmar Wildlife Sanctuary in Chattisgarh. As has often been the case, such plans almost always lead to forcible evictions of the tribal population. According to Sharma, about 20% of the Baiga land falls in the proposed corridor, which is about 600 kms by 80 kms in size. However, District Collector Chhavi Bhardwaj believes that no such thing will happen. Evictions happen mostly when human population is found to be living in the core areas of protected forests and there are no such issues with the Baigas, as their area is mostly in the buffer zones, she told Twocircles,net. She added, The administration used a gazette notification passed by the colonial British government which recognised these areas as Baiga Chak (meaning area of Baiga). Bhardwaj added that there is a lot of ambiguity in defining what habitat consists of, and instead the official terminology focuses mainly on what does not come under habitat. Through this allocation under Habitat Rights, we are also trying to study how it impacts the Tribals, so that we can work on extending the rights to other villages in the area too, she added. While the move has of course, drawn criticism from industries, Bhardwaj says that the administration will help other villages claim their rights too and that the state government is actively working towards this. Help India! By TCN News Washington: The Indian American Muslim Council, an advocacy group aimed at safeguarding Indias pluralist and tolerant ethos, expressed shock and outrage over the suicide of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula in Hyderabad University. Vemula and four other members of Ambedkar Students Association were victimised and subjected to relentless harassment by the University officials, said the Council. Support TwoCircles Rohith Vemula and his associates were clearly targeted for raising issues that were inconvenient not only for upper-caste outfits and University officials, but also for the blatantly anti-Dalit and sectarian BJP administration at the Centre. Their harassment by the University on flimsy grounds included discontinuation of the monthly stipend since July and suspension from the University since September last year, the council said in a press release. This council also said that the incident exposes the role of Smriti Iranis Human Resource and Development (HRD) Ministry. This is the second instance where Smriti Iranis Ministry has been found exerting overbearing political pressure and interference in University affairs. The IIT Madras decision to ban the Ambedkar-Periyar Study Circle (APSC) followed the receipt of a letter from Smriti Iranis HRD Ministry. In this case, Smriti Iranis HRD Ministry sent five letters to the Hyderabad University for action on Labour Minister Bandaru Dattareyas complaint regarding anti-national activities on the campus and the alleged violent attack on an ABVP leader. Rohith Vemulas suicide is a chilling example of the deeply entrenched caste-based oppression in India, said Umar Malick, President, Indian American Muslim Council. His death is not only an occasion for profound sorrow but also a call to action for all who care about human rights and religious freedom. Continuing caste-based oppression in modern India and anti-minority repression are the bitter fruits of Hindutva, he added. The council further said that while the charges against Union Minister Bandaru Dattatreya and the Vice-Chancellor of the University are a step in the right direction, justice could be elusive unless there is mass outrage over Rohiths suicide, as well as sustained action by civil society institutions. IAMC urged all people of conscience, in India and across the world, to recognise caste-based oppression as a form of racism. Help India! Kolkata: Workers of the Youth Congress and the Trinamool Chhatra Parishad on Wednesday demanded sacking of union ministers Smriti Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya and set afire their effigies, protesting the suicide by Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula. A large number of slogan-shouting Youth Congress activists assembled outside Raj Bhavan and held a rally demanding the two ministers removal. Support TwoCircles The Trinamool Chhatra Parishad organised a demonstration in north Kolkatas College Street. Carrying posters demanding exemplary punishment to those responsible for Rohiths death, the TMCP activists attacked the BJP government at the Centre for the increasing intolerance in the country. Help India! New Delhi: Delhi Police has arrested four suspected terrorists reportedly linked with the Islamic State terror outfit from Haridwar in Uttarakhand for plotting attacks in the capital and nearby areas. The four suspects Akhlaq ur Rehman, Mohammad Osama alias Adil, Mohammad Azimu Shaan and Mehraj were arrested on Tuesday based on specific information by central intelligence agencies. Support TwoCircles All the suspects belong to Haridwar from where they were arrested on Tuesday. We produced them in a court in Delhi today (Wednesday) which sent them to 15 days police custody, said Special Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) Arvind Deep. The suspects had plans to carry out bombings during the ongoing Ardh Kumbh in Haridwar, in Roorkee-Haridwar bound trains, in Delhi and some parts of the National Capital Region (NCR). The Ardh-Kumbh started on January 1 this year and will end on April 30. During the four-month religious congregation, over five crore pilgrims are expected to visit the district to bathe in the holy Ganga river. On the first major bathing day on January 14, close to 10 lakh devotees took a dip in the Ganga. Police claimed that the arrested people were in touch with Shafi Armar, who handles recruitment for Ansar Al Twahid, the Indian offshoot of the terror group. We got an input from intelligence agencies that some people are planning attacks on Roorkee-Haridwar bound trains and some other locations in Haridwar and NCR, Arvind Deep said. The official said a specific team including police inspectors Neli and Hridaynath was set up under the supervision of Additional Commissioner of Police Alok Kumar and Deputy Commissioner of Police P.S. Kushwah and they thwarted a possible attack after the arrest of the four people. Deep said further investigation was on to unearth the whole plot. The officer also praised Uttar Pradesh Police for helping them in the operation. Membership Has It's Privileges The Tyrconnell Heritage Society is always looking for new members. We have special membership rates available for individuals, families, businesses and organizations. Email us at info@backuspagehouse.ca or call us at 519-762-3072 for more information. This is the continuing story of a Jewish woman's spiritual journey and search. Jo Ann Schneider Farris has searched and searched for God in many different ways. In this blog, she tells her past, present, and future stories and shares her thoughts. 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. Indonesia's first high-speed railway would be great boost for development Updated: 2016-01-20 14:24 By Deng Yanzi in Hong Kong(chinadaily.com.cn) Indonesia's first high-speed railway project, to be built by China, will be a boost to its economy, and the beginning of further infrastructure development in the country and Southeast Asia, Indonesian analysts believe. This railway will bring a multiplier effect for economic growth in the region and create a new economic region. "It is about the multiplier effect for the regional development, especially in a job creation by the project construction, or local factories that produce train components," Titissari Rumbogo, a planning and public policy scholar at the University of Indonesia, told China Daily. The $5.5 billion railway project, slated to begin construction this Thursday, will connect the capital city Jakarta and the third biggest city Bandung with a 150-kilometer railway. The railway will stop at four stations in West Java Island in the first phase of operation. It will create new residences around the transit areas with its transit-oriented development planning, according to Bintang Perbowo, president director of the Indonesian state construction firm PT Wijaya Karya. "With these new areas being opened, people will choose to live there. There will also be development of a new city," Bintang said as reported by the Jakarta Post. Harun al-Rasyid Lubis, executive director of Indonesia's Infrastructure Partnership & Knowledge Center, said the project was just a beginning for a wider railway network. The government should be prepared to extend the high-speed rail to Surabaya, the eastern part of Java Island, Harun urged on a panel earlier this month, as reported by Indonesian newspaper Kompas. The high-speed railway is not only the first in Indonesia, but also in Southeast Asia, where infrastructure development is in high demand. Experts see it as a demonstration of further infrastructure cooperation in the region. "China's success in this high speed rail project would open up opportunities for other projects in Indonesia and other countries in Southeast Asia," Emirza Adi Syailendra, researcher at the S. Rajaratnam of International Studies (RSIS) of Nanyang Technological University, wrote in a commentary. As Southeast Asia's largest economy, Indonesia has missed most of the economic targets in 2015 with the slowest growth since 2009. The government banks on infrastructure development and foreign investment as part of the ambitious push for economic growth. Indonesian President Joko Widodo said in a cabinet meeting earlier this month that he wanted to see infrastructure development accelerate this year, particularly in railway projects, Jakarta Post reported. A well-timed completion of the Jakarta-Bandung railway will also serve President Widodo's administration as a major economic accomplishment, experts believe. The project is slated to be completed by 2019, when a national election will take place. "That would be a plus for the President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo, who in all likelihood would run for a second term. It would be an enormous political boost for him," RSIS's Emirza wrote. China welcomes WTO ruling on fastener imports from EU Updated: 2016-01-20 15:19 By Zhong Nan(chinadaily.com.cn) China's fastener industry welcomed the World Trade Organization's decision to require the European Union to eliminate inconsistent anti-dumping measures on the basis of the appellate body ruling as soon as possible. The industry's response came after China scored a major victory in its seven-year trade dispute with the EU on Monday after the WTO ruled in favor of Chinese fastener manufacturers. Wang Guiqing, vice-president of the China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products, said it is worth mentioning that the purpose for China to bring the dispute before the WTO dispute settlement body is to ensure that the EU implements its obligations under WTO and complies with WTO rules, in order to restore a fair and healthy trade order. "We believe that there will be no adverse effects on the EU by eliminating the inconsistent measures, because either the China-EU trade in general, or the China-EU fasteners trade in particular is mutually complementary," said Wang. China is the most attractive market for EU fasteners, because Chinese and European fasteners are complementary. According to China's customs statistics, the total value of import of EU's fasteners into China increased by 2.44 times from $285 million in 2007 to $695 million in 2014. The EU fastener industry enjoyed great market access and benefits in China due to the fact that the Chinese automobile market has developed rapidly in recent years. Chinese govt in action: Protecting citizens overseas Updated: 2016-01-19 14:10 By Yan Dongjie(chinadaily.com.cn) The 19th Escort Fleet of the Chinese Navy evacuated 122 Chinese nationals, including seven women and one child, after arriving in the Gulf of Aden in Yemen, on March, 29 2015. [Photo by Xiong Libing/Asianewsphoto] China has more citizens living outside the country than any other nation in the world. With 50 million already residing abroad, this figure will increase in the coming years as more will head overseas for study, work or business. In 2013, more than 98 million people from mainland traveled abroad, and over 20,000 Chinese companies established their branches across the five continents. It is the duty of Chinese government to protect the overseas citizens and their properties and they have done a good job in that regard. China has attached great importance to the protection of overseas Chinese citizens. When Chinese leaders visit a country, they always meet the expatriates and pay close attention to their issues. For example, President Xi Jinping delivered a speech in front of the Chinese community when he visited the US on September, 2015. Moreover, consular services have improved gradually. In 2006, the Chinese Foreign Ministry established the Division of Consular Protection and the Center of Consular Protection was founded a year later. In September 2014, the Foreign Ministry established the Emergency Call Center of Global Consular Protection and Service, whose 24 hour-hotline, 12308, mainly serves overseas Chinese citizens and enterprises. Thanks to the care and attention from leaders of the Party and the State Council, the regulations and institutions of consular protection experienced great promotion. As a result, the Chinese government managed to protect Chinese citizens effectively and enjoyed great success and compliments. First, the action of protecting overseas Chinese citizens and their properties have been effectively carried out and the government has maintained the national interest and image in the meantime. In 2015, China successfully rescued around 20 kidnapped citizens abroad. As a developing country, Chinas international status and image have improved accordingly. Furthermore, the Chinese government has efficiently protected overseas citizens, showing Chinas powerful national capacity and enhancing the countrys international reputation. The success of the evacuations of Chinese nationals in Lebanon, Vietnam and Nepal all demonstrate the efficiency of Chinas government. Another example was the evacuation action carried out in Yemen in April 2015. Chinese government successfully negotiated with the government and the rebels-the Houthis. The Chinese frigates faced no obstacles in the 220-mile way to rescue, which shows that the Party and government are determined to shoulder responsibility. Last, the Chinese government has obtained rich experience in protecting overseas citizens and is gradually making progress in protecting overseas citizens in other countries. Thus, China has formed an image of a responsible power in the world and improved its soft power. In the evacuation operation in Yemen, 225 citizens from 10 countries, such as Pakistan, Ethiopia, Singapore, Italy, Ireland, Poland, Germany, Canada, UK, and Yemen, left the war zone through Chinese frigates. This is definitely a humanitarian rescue operation, adding to Chinas reputation as a responsible nation. Zeng Wangmei contributed to the story. Senior govt officials accused of corruption, expelled from Party Updated: 2016-01-19 15:25 By Zhang Yi(chinadaily.com.cn) Two senior government officials accused of bribery, trading power for sex and other improper behavior have been expelled from the Communist Party of China and removed from their posts. Ai Baojun, former vice-mayor of Shanghai and a member of the Party's standing committee, was stripped off his Party membership and removed from his public posts for violating political disciplines, refusing to cooperate in an investigation, taking bribes and trading power for sex, Xinhua News Agency reported on Tuesday. He was handed over to the law enforcement, the report said. Zhou Laizhen, former deputy director of the Civil Aviation Administration of China and a member of the Party committee, was ousted from the Party and removed from his public posts on similar charges. He also was reported to have been handed over to law enforcement. China looks to move career barriers for top foreign talents Updated: 2016-01-20 07:47 By SU ZHOU(China Daily) Government looks at ways to help top talent connect with Chinese programs, institutes Zhang Jianguo, director of the SAFEA. CHINA DAILY China is looking at removing career barriers for top foreign talent eligible to work at research institutions, colleges and universitiesa move expected to make more opportunities, such as research projects or jobs, accessible to highly qualified foreigners. Zhang Jianguo, director of the State Administration of Foreign Expert Affairs, said China will further enhance its attractiveness to global talent in the coming five years. "We will encourage establishing a recruitment mechanism within research institutions, colleges and universities that will take job applications from around the world," said Zhang. "We will also draft a regulation to guide foreign experts to participate in national science and technology programs, as well as being leaders of important research projects." "We will also encourage foreign experts to participate in the selection of China's science and technology awards equally with their Chinese colleagues," Zhang said. Gao Xiang, spokesman of the administration, said barriers exist for three reasonslimitations created by bureaucracy, lack of transparency in current policies and the Chinese language barrier. "In the past, some jobs in China could only be taken by Chinese employees within their own system. Some research projects were not open for applications from foreign talents," Gao said. "There have been some changes in certain research institutes or universities, yet it is not a formalized government policynot to mention that many foreign talents have little understanding of the changes." Gao said another area of complaint involves the language. "In China, even if some foreign talents can apply for research project funds, they must submit papers in Chinese. This is a disadvantage for them," said Gao. Ralf Altmeyer, a German virologist who is managing director at the Helmholtz Institute of Biotechnology at Shandong University, agreed. Requiring Chinese as a working language does create challenges for foreign experts doing scientific research, Altmeyer said, suggesting that application forms be made available in English. Wang Huiyao, president of the Center for China and Globalization, a Beijing think tank, added that other barriers should also be removed to keep foreign talents in China. "Many foreign scientists and researchers might have very limited information, say on education for their children," he said. State Councilor to attend Indonesian rail project ceremony Updated: 2016-01-20 19:47 By Wang Qingyun(chinadaily.com.cn) State Councilor Wang Yong will attend the commencement ceremony for Indonesia's first high-speed railway project during his visit to the country from Wednesday to Friday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said on Wednesday. Wang will meet with Indonesia President Joko Widodo and will attend the ceremony launching the joint project that will connect Jakarta to Bandung about 150 kilometers away, Hong said. Wang is visiting Indonesia at the invitation of the country, he said. There is "very good momentum" in the development of the China-Indonesia relationship and the two countries working together in constructing the railway will enhance their practical cooperation in infrastructure and develop their comprehensive strategic partnership, he added. The highest designated speed for trains on the new railway will be 300 kilometers per hour, according to China Railway, who led an organization of companies that signed the agreement with their Indonesian counterparts to form a company to run the project on Oct 16, 2015. The railway will improve Indonesia's infrastructures and enhance interconnectivity, said Hong. Dialogue still the way to resolve nuke crisis Updated: 2016-01-20 08:18 By Wang Xiaobo(China Daily) DRPK leader Kim Jong-un (C) watches a firing contest of the KPA artillery units at undisclosed location in this photo released by DPRK's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang, Jan 5, 2016. [Photo/Agencies] In a televised address on Jan 13, Republic of Korea President Park Geun-hye urged the international community to strongly respond to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's recent claim of testing a hydrogen bomb. She also said the ROK is discussing with the United States countermeasures to prevent the DPRK from conducting more nuclear tests, and emphasized that her country will impose the strongest sanctions on the DPRK in a bid to force it to change its behavior. Two days before Park's address, the ROK had already hinted that further US "strategic assets" might be deployed on the Korean Peninsula, following a "flyover by a US B-52 bomber" over Osan Air Base, about 70km south of the inter-Korean border in a show of strength. Pyongyang's claim of testing a hydrogen bomb on Jan 6, the fourth nuclear test since 2006, which was strongly condemned by Washington and Seoul, shows that the peninsula issue is close to reaching a tipping point. The peninsula nuclear issue has been a sore point in regional affairs for years. Now, it is becoming the biggest uncertainty in Northeast Asia, because Pyongyang's latest nuclear test has made clear its increasingly aggressive resolve to realize its nuclear goal, even by ignoring global efforts, including UN resolutions and international sanctions against the DPRK, to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula. But, to a certain extent, the DPRK's obsession with developing nuclear weapons has a lot to do with its pursuit of national security, especially because it believes that it faces grave military threats and lacks effective countermeasures for self-protection. Apparently, Pyongyang has lost faith in trading its nuclear development for security and continues developing nuclear weapons as an ultimate defense strategy, even if it is wrong to do so. In regard to its nuclear issue, a "legacy" of the Cold War that still plays a key role in the DPRK's national development and security, the beleaguered country until recently was ready to compromise on the premise that the US would guarantee its security and normalize diplomatic ties with it. For the time being at least, Pyongyang has "succeeded" in convincing the international community that its nuclear-first policy is final. A more worrying fact is Pyongyang's increasingly irregular responses to latent security challenges, and its enduring resistance to all the pressures and sanctions. As a major shareholder in the Korean Peninsula affairs and a key to the settlement of the nuclear issue, the US is yet to recalibrate its not-so-successful "strategic patience" policy. China as a responsible power in Asia and a permanent member of the UN Security Council, has reiterated its unambiguous stance on the Korean Peninsula's denuclearization. China has made it clear to Pyongyang that its desperate nuclear program will not only backfire, but also threaten its neighbors' security. However, it's not China's job alone to prevent the grave damages and safeguard regional security and prosperity. The long-stalled Six-Party Talks which involve the DPRK, the US, the ROK, China, Japan and Russia, as well as the UN Security Council's futile economic sanctions to deter Pyongyang from its nuclear ambitions have worn out relevant parties. However, the talks are the only way to peacefully resolve the nuclear issue, and no one should wait any longer. The author is a professor at Yanbian University, Jilin province. Chicago has big plans for Chinese New Year Updated: 2016-01-20 06:25 By By Jian Ping in Chicago for China Daily(China Daily) From left: Melissa Cherry, SVP of marketing and Cultural Tourism, Choose Chicago; David Thurm, chief operating officer, Art Institute of Chicago; Nelson Sum, global sales manager, Asia-Pacific sales, United Airlines; Julie Ma, board president, The Chinese Fine Arts Society; Zhao Weiping, Chinese consul general in Chicago; Steve Koch, Chicago deputy mayor; Ling Markovitz, board member and sponsor of the Chinese New Year Concert, Chicago Symphony Orchestra; and Steve Robinson, general manager, WFMT Radio Network and executive producer of Shanghai Spring Program. Chicago is lining up the events in its ongoing effort to have the largest Chinese New Year celebration in North America. The city recently announced a variety of programs in February for its third annual Lunar New Year celebration. Melissa Cherry, senior vice-president of marketing and cultural tourism for Choose Chicago, said that Mayor Rahm Emanuel set a goal in 2013 for the citys celebration to be tops on the continent. This set forth Choose Chicagos first collaboration with the Ministry of Culture in China and the Chinese Consulate in Chicago to launch a citywide Spring Festival in 2014, she said. This years programming includes the first Midwest tour by Jackie Chans Long Yun Kung Fu Troupe; a new program at the Art Institute of Chicago; a Chinese New Year concert at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Center; and performances by the Chinese Fine Arts Society. WFMT Radio and WFMT Radio Network in Chicago will broadcast and distribute a Shanghai Spring series program based on the 2015 Shanghai Spring International Music Festival. Its the first program ever from a music festival in China to be introduced to the West, said Steve Robinson, general manager of WFMT Radio Network. Cherry said that in May 2015, Choose Chicago and the China International Cultural Association, under the guidance of Chinas Ministry of Culture, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for cultural collaboration. Chicagos 2016 Chinese New Year celebration is the first official event honoring our MOU agreement, Cherry continued. Choose Chicago is an official destination marketing organization whose mission is to bring visitors to Chicago. Chinese visitation is a critical component to our growth strategy, added Cherry. Chinese Consul General Zhao Weiping agreed with Cherry, stating that China continues to be the worlds biggest outbound tourism market. As 2016 is the China-US Tourism Year declared by President Xi Jinping and President Barack Obama during President Xis recent visit to the US, we are ready to work with Choose Chicago and its cultural partners on programs that will foster cultural exchanges as well as two-way tourism between China and Chicago in this important year, Zhao said. The Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) will feature a number of artworks with monkeys to celebrate the Chinese New Year and the Year of the Monkey in February. It will also offer free museum tours in Mandarin from Feb 13-14 and Feb 20-21 at noon. Also new for this year is the addition of Chinese noodles and dumplings at the Museum Cafe. The Chinese Fine Arts Society will feature Jackie Chans Long Yun Kung Fu Troupe on Feb 9 and 13 at the University of Chicagos Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at 7:30 pm. The Chicago Symphony Center will present a special Chinese New Year Concert on Feb 21 at 3 pm, featuring the China Broadcasting Chinese Orchestra, conducted by Pang Kapang, with Chicago Symphony Orchestra cellist Katinka Kleijn as soloist. The WFMT Radio Networks (98.7 WFMT) Shanghai Spring started on Jan 6 and will run until Feb 24 on Wednesdays at 8 pm), a program produced in collaboration with the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and Shanghai Spring International Music Festival. A complete list of Chinese New Year events, including the Chinese Lunar New Year Parade in Chinatown and the Chinese New Year Lantern Festival at Navy Pier, is available at ChooseChicago.com/chinesenewyear. Cui calls 2016 'crucial' for relations Updated: 2016-01-20 22:57 By DONG LESHUO and HEZI JIANG in New York(China Daily USA) From left: Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Hochul, and Cui Tiankai, Chinese ambassador to the US, attend the dinner gala of China General Chamber of Commerce - USA at the Waldorf Astoria New York hotel on Tuesday evening. CAI CHUNYING / CHINA DAILY The Chinese ambassador to the United States told a business gathering on Tuesday that 2016 is a crucial year for both countries. Ambassador Cui Tiankai addressed the prospects for Sino-US relations at the New Year Celebration Gala Dinner of the China General Chamber of Commerce USA on Tuesday at the Waldorf Astoria New York hotel. "2016 is a year of crucial importance for all of us," Cui said. "For China, 2016 marks the start of the 13th Five-Year Plan." The plan underpins the policies for China's development from 2016 to 2020. "It is the last mile we have to travel before realizing the first centenary goal to double the 2010 GDP and per capita income and build a society of moderate prosperity in all respects by 2020," Cui said. Cui also said that "the American people will elect a new president and a new Congress, a critical choice (for the) American people to make". "The two countries must work together to ensure a smooth transition of their relationship into the next year and pave the way for its irreversible growth in the years and even decades to come," he said. Some 350 business leaders involved in trade and investment between China and the US were in attendance. "In building up this new model of relationship, we will continue to count on the support of the business communities of the two countries," Cui said. China is now the United States' largest trading partner and provides a market worth $450 billion for American goods and services, he said. "At the same time, Chinese investment in the United States is growing rapidly. It has outpaced annual US investment in China. These investment flows deliver benefits to both Chinese and Americans, including more jobs and more competitive consumer markets. They also help cement China-US relations," Cui said. Cui expressed his "sincere appreciation to the Chinese and US businesses for your longstanding support and contribution to China-US relations over the years". He said he hopes that "Chinese companies in the United States will continue to act as Chinese ambassadors of goodwill, and continue to learn from your US counterparts, assume more corporate social responsibilities and contribute more to the local communities where you are operating." Stefan Selig, undersecretary of commerce for international trade at the US Department of Commerce, pointed out the importance of the Chinese economy to the American and global markets. "The year has gotten a quite volatile start in the financial markets around the world, in no small part because of increasing concern about decreasing growth in China, which I think speaks to the importance of our continued cooperation and connectivity to drive forward our commercial relationships between our two great nations," Selig told China Daily. Michael Bloomberg was honored as Goodwill Ambassador for China-US Exchange. The founder of Bloomberg LP and former New York mayor called the Sino-American relationship "more important than ever before". "We share many challenges; we share many opportunities," he said. "It's true that there will always be ups and downs in any economy, but I think China's economy's future is better than ever." Ni Pin, president of Wanxiang America Corp, was honored as the most influential businessperson of the year. Ni believes Chinese companies can become part of the US mainstream "by hiring tens of thousands of people, paying millions of dollars of taxes, although I still think it's not enough," he said to laughter. Stephen Ross, chairman and founder of Related Cos, was named the most influential real estate person of the year by CGCC. Contact the writers at dongleshuo@chinadailyusa.com and hezijiang@chinadailyusa.com US envoys visit China on DPRK Updated: 2016-01-20 23:06 By CHEN WEIHUA in Washington(China Daily USA) Top US diplomats are busy visiting China in a bid to push China to endorse tougher economic sanctions on North Korea after its recent nuclear test. US Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to China on Wednesday and Thursday to meet with Chinese Executive Vice-Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui, a former Chinese ambassador to the US. Blinken's trip is believed to be a preparation for a trip to Beijing on Jan 27 by Secretary of State John Kerry. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei has described the meeting between Zhang and Blinken as co-hosting the interim Strategic Security Dialogue. The formal Strategic Security Dialogue is usually held each summer as part of the annual Strategic and Economic Dialogue, known as S&ED. Blinken visited Japan and South Korea before going to China. The US and its two East Asia allies hope to push for a tougher UN Security Council resolution on further economic sanctions on North Korea. One of the most sanctioned nations, North Korea is already under UN sanctions for its three nuclear tests in 2006, 2009 and 2013. Hong said last Friday that China supports the UN Security Council in reacting to North Korea's nuclear test. "The relevant resolution should focus on denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, prevention of nuclear proliferation, as well as the peace and stability of Northeast Asia," he said. Asked on Monday about North Korea's statement about its proposal to stop nuclear tests in exchange for the US scrapping joint military drills with South Korea and the signing of a peace treaty between North Korea and the US, Hong said the Chinese side has always aimed to address both the symptoms and root causes of the Korean Peninsula issue with a holistic approach. "We hope that all relevant parties can take a sober look at the current situation, stay on the path of resolving the issue through dialogue and consultations, meet each other halfway, properly address each other's concerns and strive for enduring peace and stability of the region with a concerted effort," he said. Douglas Paal, vice-president for studies and director of the Asia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said he is not very hopeful for progress in China's position regarding North Korea. "All the indications so far show Beijing leaning toward the stability leg of its policy tool, and not the denuclearization leg," he told China Daily on Tuesday. "Moreover, I sensed testiness in China's responses to Secretary Kerry's impetuous public remarks about having tried China's policy approach and declaring that it failed," Paal added. Kerry said in a phone conversation with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi early this month that China's approach to North Korea "has not worked and we cannot continue business as usual," a finger-pointing China has rejected. China has long called for the resumption of the Six-Party Talks to deal with the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. The talks have been suspended since late 2008. It is believed that Taiwan and the South China Sea will be other major topics for Blinken and Kerry in Beijing. The US State Department said Blinken will also meet Zhang Zhijun, director of the State Council's Taiwan Affairs Office. Paal believes Blinken and Kerry will express the US commitment to peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and see whether or not China will show any flexibility toward the new Tsai Ing-wen administration. China, US should ensure smooth transition of relationship in election year: ambassador Updated: 2016-01-20 17:13 (Xinhua) Chinese ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai addresses the 2016 New Year Celebration Gala Dinner of the China General Chamber of Commerce - USA in New York, Jan 19, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] NEW YORK - China and the United States must work together to ensure a smooth transition of their relationship in the 2016 election year and pave the way for its irreversible growth in the future, a Chinese diplomat said Tuesday. For the China-US relationship, the good momentum brought about by the successful state visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to the United States last September must be strengthened in the new year, Chinese ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai said. He made the remarks here when addressing the 2016 New Year Celebration Gala Dinner of the China General Chamber of Commerce - USA. Cui said no country can single-handedly deal with challenges such as terrorism, financial contagion, infectious diseases and climate change in a world that is "undergoing profound changes." The challenges "call for greater cooperation among nations ... Zero-sum game and 'winner takes all' are obsolete mindsets, and will only lead to a situation of no winner at all," Cui said. With this global outlook, China has chosen a path of peaceful development, Cui said. "We are convinced that such a path will best serve China's development needs while bringing benefits to the international community as a whole." "We reject the assertion that confrontation between rising and established powers is inevitable. We are confident that the so-called 'Thucydides Trap' can and will be avoided if our view of the world and our commitment to community building are shared by others," Cui said. "It is with this in mind that China sees the need to build a new model of major-country relationship with the United States," Cui said, adding that this new model is both a long-term goal and an ongoing process, as well as both a set of guiding principles and an operational framework. "It (the model) calls on the two countries to take a constructive and creative approach to deepen mutual trust, expand cooperation, and properly handle differences," Cui said. He said the key features of the model of major-country relationship between the two countries "are always clear -- no conflict or confrontation, mutual respect, and win-win cooperation," despite changing situations. China, EU discuss furthering tourism support Updated: 2016-01-20 20:45 By Chen Yingqun(chinadaily.com.cn) More than 100 officials, institutions, companies and media in the tourism sector met in Beijing to discuss how to develop tourism cooperation between China and the European Union. The forum, co-hosted by the China National Tourism Administration and the Delegation of the European Union to China, focused on three topics: how to strengthen cooperation and connectivity of tourism companies in China and Europe; how to improve the public service quality of tourism destinations; and how to promote the scenic spots of China and Europe to more people. European Union countries have been important tourism destinations for Chinese citizens. In the past decade China and Europe have strengthened cooperation and improved tourism. There were more than 3.43 million Chinese visits made to European Union countries last year, which saw a year-on-year increase of 22.9 percent. Meanwhile, there were more than 2.98 million visits of EU citizens to China. That James Webb Space Telescope can see everything! However, as powerful as it is, it may not be able to encompass the massive scale of this... Please turn JavaScript on and reload the page. Loading... Checking your browser before accessing the website. This process is automatic. Your browser will redirect to your requested content shortly. Please wait a few seconds. Iran's President Hassan Rouhani will travel to Italy and France next week after his visit scheduled in November was cancelled following the deadly Paris attacks, state television reported. Rouhani's visit to Italy and then France, his first European tour since Iran secured a historic nuclear deal with world powers, will now be held between January 25 and 27. He had been due to visit France on November 16-17 but the trip was postponed after jihadist attacks in Paris just three days before killed 130 people. Rouhani condemned the Paris attacks as "crimes against humanity". On his trip, he will meet the Italian and French presidents, Sergio Mattarella and Francois Hollande, and also possibly Pope Francis in what would be his first visit to Vatican, the report said. The tour is an opportunity for rapprochement and renewed trade ties in the wake of July's landmark nuclear deal following years of strain between Tehran and the West. It comes even at a better time for Iran than the previous cancelled visit, as the United States and the European Union lifted crippling sanctions following the entry into force of the nuclear deal on Saturday. Gerard Larcher, head of the French Senate, who visited Tehran on December 19, said he hoped the visit would be "the starting point of stronger relations" between Paris and Tehran. The president will also meet top industry owners and business leaders. Saudi Arabia today accused Iran of a nearly four-decade record of "sedition, unrest and chaos," as the community tried to calm tensions between the regional rivals. "Since the Iranian revolution in 1979, Iran has established a record of spreading sedition, unrest and chaos in the region," the Saudi Press Agency quoted an unnamed senior foreign ministry official as saying. "During the same period, the kingdom has maintained a policy of restraint in spite of having suffered -- as have neighbouring countries -- the consequences of Iran's continued aggressive policies." The official said Iranian policy was based primarily on the idea of exporting revolution. "Iran recruits militias in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen", the official said, further accusing Iran of supporting "terrorism" and carrying out assassinations. Tensions between Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia and predominantly Shiite Iran reached a new high this month when Riyadh and a number of its Sunni Arab allies cut diplomatic ties with Tehran. They acted after protesters burned Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran following the kingdom's January 2 execution of Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr. Vietnam has lifted the nine-month ban on groundnut import from India, which it had imposed in April 2015 over quality concerns over groundnut of Indian origin. The development assumes significance as Vietnam is a major export market for Indian groundnut. Exports to that country constituted 26 per cent of the overall groundnut exports in 2014-15, at 183,000 tonnes worth Rs 1,251.57 crore. The Indian Oilseeds & Produce Export Promotion Council (IOPEPC) had been striving hard for revocation of the temporary suspension on Indian groundnuts since April 2015. The constant follow-up at different levels in India as well as in Vietnam has resulted in the latter lifting the ban. This is an important event for Indian groundnut export sector since Vietnam is one of the most important markets, said Sanjiv Sawla, chairman of IOPEPC. Cautioning exporters, Sawla stressed on the need to focus on quality of groundnuts since most countries are applying stringent norms on import of food products. Vietnams ministry of agriculture and rural development said the countrys plant protection department would issue permits to Vietnamese importers to import groundnut from India. Meanwhile, Sawla said IOPEPC would closely examine the procedure for groundnut shipments to Vietnam. Processors and exporters will have to take extra precaution for groundnut shipments to Vietnam. France's prime minister said three attackers remain at large today following the attacks in Burkina Faso's capital, though authorities there insist that all those who carried out the assault had been shot dead. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said six people carried out the deadly attacks on the cafe and hotel in Burkina Faso's capital, and three are still on the loose. But Burkina Faso authorities on Wednesday insisted that only three jihadis carried out the attacks and were killed, although more accomplices are being sought. At least 30 people were killed in last Friday's attacks on targets in Ouagadougou frequented by Westerners. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls told the French National Assembly on Tuesday that "of the six attackers, three were killed and three are still being sought." He didn't elaborate. He also said that three attacks in Burkina Faso that day were "distinct but certainly coordinated." An Australian couple was kidnapped in the country's north and two were killed in an attack on a district administrator's escort, he said. Burkina Faso army spokesman Guy Herve Ye said the army is searching for other suspects and perhaps that is what the prime minister is referring to. "They were only three who conducted the raid. Our intelligence and videos show it," he said, adding that the attackers were well trained. Burkina Faso's Security Minister Simon Compaore said yesterday that several people have been detained and questioned but he declined to give further details, citing the ongoing investigation. Questions have been raised about the length of time it took for authorities to find the attackers, who hid at the neighboring Taxi Brousse restaurant. Within 30 minutes the president of Burkina Faso had asked the French ambassador for help, according to a French official who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to the press. It would be four more hours, though, before French special forces arrived at the scene to help flush out the attackers and Burkina Faso's military was awaiting their help. French and Burkina Faso forces then stormed the Splendid Hotel, thinking it was the main target, but later shot down three attackers at the nearby Taxi Brousse. French experts have been carrying out forensic investigations at the sites. The odor of the attackers' dead bodies still lingered from that restaurant today, as investigations continued. CEDAR FALLS Few who attended Tuesdays 16th annual Ag Industry Update & Trade Show at the PIPAC Centre seemed willing to kid themselves about making huge profits in the corn and soybean markets in 2016. Not with markets holding stubbornly at levels at or below production costs. The theme, rather, seemed to be how to survive the lean times, which likely will continue for this year and perhaps next, according to some at the event. Right now, theyre procrastinating a lot of decisions, trying to get a handle on what may work best, said Darwin Cannegieter, a Dike farmer who organizes the annual outlook-focused summit. Any decisions growers make for this year will be particularly deliberate because theres little room for error on the balance sheet, Cannegieter said. Theyre doing a lot more research, he said. Before, we just did the normal thing, went out and bought it. We knew our outlook and that at the end wed be profitable, it was just a question of how much. Now, we have to analyze how much input. Its always cash flow, cash flow. About 100 area farmers, as well as industry leaders and Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey, attended the meeting, which featured roundtable discussions on current trends and economic factors and updates and forecasts on the upcoming season. Certainly, with softer prices and big crops we had around, its hard to get dollared up, Northey said. With that in mind, many attending the summit rightly were focused on ways to be more efficient. I think an awful lot of focus well have is how to cut expenses, Northey said. Its tough to see ahead where we get some kind of bounce in prices to make it profitable on the grain side, and then challenges on the livestock side, beef and pork, as well. Craig Hill, president of the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation, agreed cost-cutting would be a top priority for the typical Iowa farmer. Its going to be a difficult situation, Hill said. If your marketing plan a year ago did not include forward sales, its pretty desperate right now. Growers can look toward high-yielding crops as possible saviors this year, Hill said. If we have really high yields, maybe were OK, but if we have any yield shortfall, with the prices that we currently have, it will result in losses, he said. How many losses can you sustain before your balance sheet starts to get the banker nervous? At the same time, Hill said its all a part of the business. This is a cycle in agriculture. Weve had many of them before, and we have to survive it. Hill said growers should expect a bumpy ride and not necessarily a short one. I dont think the duration is going to be short. I think were looking at this for a few years, so whenever you can eke out a little bit of a profit, just a few cents even, you better be looking seriously at it, he said. Yields were high in 2015, and that was a difference-maker, said Sid Hayes, a corn and soybean farmer from Dike. We had good yields, and there was an opportunity to sell ahead a year ago, he said. This year, theres not. There isnt much farmers can do about the current sagging corn and soybean markets. But whatever can be done will be done to fight the low markets, Hayes said. Chuck Baker, a Grundy County farmer, agreed. We got through last year, but price-wise, this years just gonna be a rough year, Baker said. Theres not much upside to it for the next year or two. So you dont overspend on anything and do a better job. OMAHA, Neb. A volunteer for the presidential campaign of Ben Carson has died after a car accident in western Iowa that hurt three other campaign workers. Carson was in South Carolina at the time of the Tuesday morning accident and has suspended his campaign events. An official for a hospital in Omaha, Neb., said the Carson campaign volunteer, 25-year-old Braden Joplin, died late Tuesday afternoon. Campaign spokesman Jason Osborne said the crash occurred Tuesday morning when a van carrying three Carson volunteers and a paid staffer flipped onto its side on an icy road and was hit by another vehicle. The others in the van were treated at a hospital in Atlantic. Farm marketing Complaining about taxes, regulations and hard work isnt the best marketing plan for farmers hoping to encourage a younger generation to follow them into one of the great callings in life, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack told farmers Tuesday. The former Iowa governor told the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association he praised agriculture and ag-based fuel producers for their contribution not only to the nations food supply, but to its national security. But, he said, farmers could be their own worst enemy when it comes to marketing their occupation and lifestyle to the next generation of agricultural producers. Huckabee stop Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee will conclude another six-day swing through Iowa with a final stop in Reinbeck on Saturday. Huckabee will hold a moral clarity matters town hall event from 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday at Jack and Arnies Steakhouse, 24735 U Ave. Throughout the week, Huckabee will make a total of 21 stops. He promised at the outset of the month to hold 150 events in the state in the last 31 days before the Iowa caucuses. OMalley campaign WATERLOO Democratic presidential candidate Martin OMalley will return to Waterloo on Saturday. OMalley, the former governor of Maryland, will continue his new leadership tour with 12 stops over four days, starting with a visit to his Waterloo campaign office Saturday morning. OMalley will host supporters for coffee and doughnuts at 9:30 a.m. Saturday at his campaign office at 329 E. Fourth St. This is OMalleys third trip to Iowa since the new year. Medicaid calls State long-term care ombudsman Deanna Clingan-Fischer told state lawmakers Tuesday her office already is struggling to keep up with the volume of calls from Iowa Medicaid recipients who have questions about the change to managed care slated for March 1. She said her office fielded nearly 300 calls during the first week of January, and in many cases her staff does not have access to the information needed to answer questions about new managed care plans. Many of those calls are referred to the Iowa Medicaid Enterprise or the state Department of Human Services. A multi-agency workgroup issued a report earlier this month indicating Iowa would need to hire 134 additional workers and spend as much as $17 million more a year to properly expand ombudsman oversight of the switch to privatize Iowas Medicaid management. Legislators said that appeared to be the Cadillac plan, but several questioned whether the private companies taking over the Medicaid system shouldnt share in the expanded oversight costs. WATERLOO | Democratic presidential candidate Martin O'Malley will return to Waterloo on Saturday. O'Malley, the former governor of Maryland, will continue his "new leadership tour" with 12 stops over four days, starting with a visit to his Waterloo campaign office on Saturday morning. O'Malley will host supporters for coffee and doughnuts at 9:30 a.m. on Saturday at his campaign office at 329 E. Fourth St., in Waterloo. This is O'Malley's third trip to Iowa since the new year. During his stops, he will lay out plans to address climate change, cut youth unemployment and make debt-free college a reality within five years. AMES (AP) Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump received a key endorsement Tuesday from conservative heavyweight Sarah Palin, giving the billionaire businessman a potential boost with some voters less than two weeks before voting begins with the Iowa caucuses. "Media heads are spinning," Palin said after taking the stage at a Trump rally at Iowa State University. "This is going to be so much fun." She said that, with Trump as president, America would no longer apologize. "No more pussy-footing around," Palin said, adding that Trump would allow the military do its job and destroy the Islamic State group. "He's going rogue left and right. That's why he's doing so well." "I am greatly honored to receive Sarah's endorsement," Trump said in a statement announcing the support of the former Alaska governor and former running mate of Sen. John McCain in his 2008 bid for the White House. "She is a friend, and a high-quality person whom I have great respect for. I am proud to have her support." Palin will also be joining Trump at two events Wednesday, including a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The endorsement comes less than two weeks ahead of the critical lead-off Iowa caucus, where Trump is locked in a dead heat with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. In the statement announcing the endorsement, Trump's campaign described Palin as a conservative who "helped launch the careers of several key future leaders of the Republican Party and conservative movement." The statement also quoted Cruz as once saying he "would not be in the United States Senate were it not for Gov. Sarah Palin. ... She can pick winners." Campaigning in New Hampshire, Tuesday, Cruz said, "Regardless of what Sarah intends to do in 2016, I will remain a big, big fan of Sarah Palin." Trump's national political director Michael Glassner previously worked with Palin, who was a virtual newcomer to the national political arena when McCain named her as his running mate. She has since risen to prominence as one of the most outspoken conservatives in the party. She signed on as a Fox News commentator after resigning as Alaska's governor in 2010, a job she held until last year. Asked Tuesday morning about his thoughts on a potential Palin endorsement, as rumors of her potential backing swirled, Trump said, "I'm a big fan of Sarah Palin." While Trump said he doesn't typically put much stock in endorsements, he said, "I think it could very well result in votes." GOP consultant Kevin Madden said the endorsement's timing will help Trump to crowd out Cruz's message at a crucial time in the race. "I think it helps Trump overwhelm the news cycle with Trump coverage at a critical time," he said. "It sort of denies Ted Cruz any chance to get back on offense." Madden also said that Palin's support could help shield Trump from charges that his past positions make him too liberal to be the GOP nominee, "giving Trump some rhetorical cover from a conservative validator in the eyes of many grassroots conservatives." But some rally-goers at Trump's event Tuesday evening said they weren't sure whether Palin's support would help Trump. Several referenced what many saw as her poor performance as a vice presidential candidate. "I don't think it's going to be a detriment, but I don't think it's going to be a huge asset," said Stephen Freese, 56, of Burlington, Iowa, who works in construction. "I don't think she's really credible anymore," said Bruce Dodge, 66, of Ankeny, Iowa. Earlier Tuesday, Trump received an endorsement from the daughter of movie star John Wayne. Standing in front of a life-size, rifle-toting model of the actor in full cowboy gear, Trump accepted the endorsement of Aissa Wayne at the John Wayne Birthplace Museum in Winterset, Iowa. "America needs help and we need a strong leader and we need someone like Mr. Trump with leadership qualities, someone with courage, someone that's strong, like John Wayne," she said. WATERLOO | A Waterloo man has been arrested in connection with two handguns found by police in December. Tearon Kenyage Jackson, 39, of 201 Randall St., was arrested Jan. 12 for carrying weapons, third-degree theft, interference and being a felon in possession of a firearm. His bond was set at $15,000. Police said they were attempting to stop a vehicle at about 12:40 a.m. on Dec. 17 when a Jackson, a passenger, exited and began walking through a parking lot. Officers found a bag that contained a .380-caliber Walther pistol and a 9mm Ruger pistol under a nearby vehicle. The Walther had been reported stolen, court records state. When he was initially detained, Jackson, who has a prior conviction for unlawful use of a weapon in Illinois in 2011, struggled with police and was shocked by a Taser. The arrest was just one of several firearms arrests in recent weeks. --- On Jan. 10, Waterloo police arrested Joseph Robert Bondy, 38, of Washburn, for felon in possession of a firearm, driving while suspended, two counts of carrying weapons and one count of possession of marijuana. Officers found a 9mm Ruger handgun under the passenger seat during a traffic stop. Bondy, who has a prior burglary conviction from 1997, had a belt buckle that doubled as brass knuckles, court records state. --- Black Hawk County sheriffs deputies arrested Mark Edwain Klepper II, 33, of 204 College St., Cedar Falls, on Jan. 13 for second-degree theft and trafficking stolen weapons. He allegedly took a 12-gauge Remington 870 shotgun from an acquaintances home at 1443 Raymond Ave. in December and pawned it at a Waterloo pawnshop. He also took a power drill, jewelry and silver coins, court record state. The shotgun was recovered. --- Gilbertville police arrested James David Welton, 36, of Independence, on Saturday for being a felon on possession of a firearm. Officers found him stopped along Raymond Road with mechanical problems and discovered he had an outstanding warrant on a public intoxication charge in Story County from 1997. A search of his vehicle turned up a military-style rifle, and Welton has a felony conviction from 2012, court record state. WATERLOO Questions of cost quickly rose to the top Tuesday at a town hall meeting on Waterloo Community Schools upcoming $47 million bond issue referendum. The Feb. 2 vote would fund construction of a $35 million career center where an expanded menu of career and technical education, or CTE, courses would be offered to all district high school students. It would also pay for $6 million in upgrades to both East and West high schools. But attendee John Neuman wondered about expenses after that money is spent. I want to know the true cost of this, Neuman told district officials. The people that are coming down the line are the ones who are going to get stuck with this thing. He was one of about 80 people who turned out for the forum at the Waterloo Center for the Arts. Nearly a dozen people asked questions following a presentation. Superintendent Jane Lindaman noted there are currently 26 CTE teachers in the districts high schools and a plan to phase in 30 programs over four years. The teachers that were currently employing, that were paying for right now, would be the teachers, she said. Possibly one to five teachers would be added over time, depending on growth of the programs. Additional annual operating costs of $218,000 to $279,000 are expected for the district once the center is operational. That includes expenses of $70,000 to $105,000 transporting an estimated 40 to 60 percent of students who will use the center. Two custodial staff add another $70,000 and energy usage is estimated at $78,000 to $104,000. The law says bonds have to be repaid through property taxes, said Lindaman. But the Board of Education has pledged to maintain the existing property tax rate by offsetting additional costs with with the help of its 1 percent sales tax revenues and a state income surtax, a tool the district doesnt currently use. The surtax shifts the increase from property to income taxpayers, a broader pool in the district estimated at more than 45,000 people. The amount paid is based on a percentage of how much is owed to the state each year. Officials will use a 4 percent surtax, which equates to $40 for every $1,000 owed on line 53 of the state tax form. For the average Waterloo resident, the cost is $53 on $1,330 in Iowa income tax, according to the district. In response to concerns about the 4 percent increasing over time, Lindaman said it was more likely to decrease as the tax base grows. If the percentage did grow, there would need to be a corresponding drop in the property tax rate because the district would have a set spending authority related to the bond issue. The amount paid should not change, because the 20-year bond rate is fixed, added board member Lyle Schmitt. Town hall meetings will also be held 6 p.m. Thursday at Payne AME Church, 1044 Mobile St., and 9 a.m. Saturday at Bunger Middle School, 157 S. Roosevelt Road, Evansdale. CEDAR FALLS -- The Community Foundation of Northeast Iowa has moved into its new location at 3117 Greenhill Circle in Cedar Falls. The transition comes a year after the announcement of the project and ushers in the 60th anniversary year of the organization. The new building is in the Midway Business Park off Greenhill Road. The building also includes the Ike Leighty Family Community Room, a community space designed to increase collaborative efforts. The room also will be available at no cost for nonprofit use beginning in February. Peters Construction was the contractor for the project and Levi Architecture was the architectural firm. Information on an open house and ribbon-cutting ceremony will be set at a future date and listed at www.cfneia.org. CEDAR FALLS The City Council will take up the matter of who should be allowed to speak at council meetings and how much weight should be given to their remarks. However, one citizen says the city should continue to be as inclusive as possible of council speakers, contrary to anothers suggestion more weight should be given to citizens and residents of Cedar Falls. The council Monday night referred the matter to a future discussion at a committee-of-the-whole work session. The issue came up two weeks ago when frequent council speaker Larry Wyckoff, citing the citys rules for public participation at the public forum section of the council meeting, noted those rules consistently said citizens were allowed to speak. He had taken exception to comments made at a December council meeting by a visiting resident of the United Kingdom in support of traffic roundabouts such as those proposed as part of the University Avenue reconstruction project. At the Jan. 4 council meeting, Wyckoff questioned whether that opens the door at future council meetings, for example, for illegal immigrants to come in and tell me how to spend my money, or tell you how to spend your money. In a letter to the council, resident Rob Green suggested the public forum participation rules be revised to address participation by the public rather than citizens. I believe that anyone, resident or not, who attends a City Council meeting should have the opportunity to influence city policy making, Green told the council. We residents still maintain the primary means to influence the direction of Cedar Falls through the ballot box and referendums, and by interacting with the mayor, council members and staff directly as we deem necessary. Five minutes of free speech doesnt frighten me. The lack of it does, Green said. When Wyckoff asked for the chance to respond to criticisms of his remarks, Mayor Jim Brown said, No sir, noting he had expended his time on another topic earlier in the public forum. In other business, the council awarded a contract to K. Cunningham Co. of Cedar Falls for $13.8 million for the reconstruction of University Avenue in front of College Square mall and Black Hawk Village shopping center this year. The work, anticipated to begin with the spring thaw in a few weeks, includes narrowing the road from six lanes to four and replacing several signalized intersections with roundabouts. Valley Park Drive also would no longer be a through street crossing University. On that scheduled agenda item, Wyckoff questioned whether the city would be able to keep costs of that project down sufficiently to complete the reconstruction of University throughout the city. He expressed concerns city taxpayers will be on the hook for cost overruns. He supports reconstructing the road as is, without roundabouts. Socialisms losses DAVID A. KRAFT NEW HAMPTON There is one certainty about socialism. It never lasts. Sooner or later it becomes communistic. What is lost? Individualism the pillar of every community. Choices. Opportunity our greatest resource. Incentive/motivation. God (Judea-Christian principles and values; entering post-Christian era). Freedom. Toothless tigers JAMES GLAZE EVANSDALE Videos of our military being forced on their knees, hands behind there heads at gunpoint makes me physically ill. While the president proclaims our strength to an unimpressed Joint Chiefs, our heroes are put through unspeakable shame at the hands of the enemy, and make no mistake, Iran is the enemy. Once again Americans in harms way are sent no cover or assistance. While an aircraft carrier is 15 minutes away by air, the stand-down order was obviously issued again. To add insult to injury John why the long face Kerry thanks them. The message to the world is go ahead and tread on the old United States because we have been reduced to a toothless tiger by the cowardliness of our present leadership. We will have to face down these wretches some time. No time like the present. Give him time VALERIE NORMAN WATERLOO Let me start off by saying we are very proud of Mayor Quentin Hart. Lately on the news, every time something happens on the street dealing with African-Americans, we want to get Harts thoughts or comments. Why are you reaching out to Hart on every issue that comes up on the street? I dont remember the previous mayor being asked to comment every time something happened. Just doesnt seem fair. Please allow Hart time to get settled and let him contact you. God bless Mayor Hart, for he is the right man for the job, but we all know it takes a village, not just one person. If you see something say something. Modern atheists ROGER W. SMITH WATERLOO Co-authors Patrick Madrid and Kenneth Hensley point out in their 2010 book The Godless Delusion: A Catholic Challenge to Modern Atheism that the New Atheism is much more openly aggressive and offensive than previous manifestations of atheism. Whereas, they note, past atheists were content simply to challenge widespread belief in God through debates and publications, more recent proponents of atheism wish to eradicate belief in God from the public realm altogether. In other words, modern atheists view religious belief as a positive evil, and have even asserted it is child abuse to teach children to believe in a creator-God. There is little doubt the number of atheists has risen in recent decades in Western societies and atheists are now making use of a sympathetic Fourth Estate, the social media and an enthusiastically supportive regime in Washington to promote their beliefs and unbeliefs. Madrid and Hensley observe many books written by popular atheists such as Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens tend to be distributed and promoted widely, whereas books responding to their arguments are not as well known. Are these deliberate attempts by atheists and their supporters to suppress and eradicate our Judea-Christian traditions? Caucus for Bush WILLARD JENKINS WATERLOO -- I am supporting Jeb Bush at the Iowa Caucuses. Here is why. First, he has had hands-on experience in the Executive Branch. Jeb was Governor of Florida for eight years with impressive accomplishments. He not only had to talk a good game, but also had to get it done. We must improve education so our students can compete in the global economy they will face. Governor Jeb supported education and saw a dramatic test score increase for Florida students. With a national debt at nearly $20 trillion, our next president must reduce our debt so future interest payments dont threaten our position as a world leader. Governor Jeb cut taxes in Florida and their reserves increased from $1.3 to $9.8 billion through stewardship and economic development. Jeb retired as Governor with a favorability rating of 64 percent. Wow! The Florida people cant be that wrong. Some may be concerned about a repeat in the Bush family. I am impressed that one family is very strongly committed to public service and dedicated themselves to lead the United States of America. Please join me on Caucus night, Feb. 1, and support Jeb! 12. Commando (1985) Back in the day an audiences appetite for action was sated by Glenn Ford on a horse, a sword and sandals epic, or a movie about how America won WWII for the Allies. But all of that changed when Hollywood discovered the blockbuster. As the movies became bigger, plots got smaller and expectations had to be reduced in order sit through them. Movies like Tango & Cash or Hudson Hawk mightve been big, but they werent particularly clever, and didnt offer much in the way of thrills. Last Action Hero, hyped by Arnold Schwarzenegger as big, gigantic, monstrous, was basically a bad joke made at the expense of the films that had made him a star. Van Damme in Sudden Death? Steven Seagals On Deadly Ground? Horrendous. All of them. But somewhere between the lows of Seagals oeuvre and the highs of Die Hard and Beverly Hills Cop exists the kind of action film that genre enthusiasts look upon with real love. To paraphrase Stephen King, its the love one spares for an idiot child, but love is love and enough said. In these movies, invincible henchmen do battle with bulletproof cops, musclemen win wars singlehanded and WWE stars walk away from fireballs in slow motion. In order for them to work, disbelief is suspended, brains are disengaged and physical laws are thrown out the window.No list of guilty pleasure action movies is complete without acknowledging the contribution of Joel Silver, the producer who helped turn Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mel Gibson and Bruce Willis into action megastars. He burnt his fingers in the 90s with Hudson Hawk, but then The Matrix helped put him back on top again (at least until The Matrix Reloaded came out). Anyway, Commando was his first movie with Schwarzenegger, and in many ways its the archetypal 80s Arnie movie in between making corny jokes, he kills about a hundred people. And yes, he does say Ill be back, but it was still fun back in those days, which puts the movie above, say, Terminator 3 and Expendables 2. It also accomplishes something that most late-period Arnie didn't do it gets everything said and done (and exploded and sent flying through a window) in 90 minutes without extraneous subplots or dramatic scenes where Arnold attempts to add depth to his character. Sorry, Arn, but thats not what people want to see. "Let us therefore grace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour'." These are the famous words of Sir Winston Churchill, delivered in June 1940, following Britain's successful evacuation of their military forces from Dunkirk following the fall of France during World War II. Part of just one of the numerous orations the former British Prime Minister gave during his lifetime, which came to be known as the "Churchillian speeches", he is fondly remembered around the world for helping lead the Allies to victory against Nazi Germany. Churchill, who in a 2002 BBC poll was named as the "Greatest Briton" in history, served two spells as Prime Minister, first between May 1940 and July 1945, and then he returned for a second stint between October 1951 and April 1955. Adored by the British public, Churchill was given a state funeral by Queen Elizabeth II when he died at the age of 90 on January 24, 1965. But despite so much being known about Churchill's famous speeches and his various leadership accomplishments during World War II, some of his private characteristics remain less-well publicised. For example, it is not widely known that Churchill has had two albums in the UK charts, that he painted close to 600 artworks during his lifetime, or that he accidentally flashed US President Franklin D Roosevelt... 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ignorant I was not to get some snowshoes / Snow skis. Expensive yes, but still an investment worth the time. Maybe I can make a set? I will study the internet and see what I need to do. I have piles of snow starting to reach waist level in places and drifts much taller than that. It looks like two months of snow ahead and very little reprieve Sammy the Volga is bedded down until spring thaw and at this point it is all I can do to keep a path open to the gates, loop around the yard and to the well. I have to cut a path to the dump area and keep a path down the road near the home, so that Boza can do his doggy duties I will it seems have snow piles taller than my head and soon I will be hauling snow by the wheelbarrow and out of the yard. Getting kinda cool now * * * * * * * * * * Last night several people from America donated money for the hosting. I was extremely happy and to top it all off; I did not get a single hateful e-mail. I got several upbeat and helpful e-mails and I am thankful for that. It seems that at times the good people will speak. There are good people in America and I acknowledge that. Thus, I appreciate when Americans prove me wrong. Wish it was more Americans, but I will take a trickle and hope it grows to a stream I will stay silent about who donates, unless they tell me it is okay! You are able to communicate through PayPal and leave me a message and whether you want me to have your e-mail address or not. Silence is best in my eyes, but that is up to the individual We are getting close to enough money for paying the host bill and then I can start on the other fees associated with the site of Windows to Russia Once again Thank You very much for the money to pay the sites bills and for caring * * * * * * * * * * This is my favorite spot in the world. >>> I thank God here, I thank Sveta here, I thank Boza here, I thank anything in the world that is good here and I wish and pray for the bad in the world to get its act together. This is my favorite spot to sit and look out over the valley and breath the freshest air and most wonderful energies of the monastery, this is where I sit to heal and it does not matter what the weather is This is my spot to contemplate life * * * * * * * * * * As the title says; Sveta has to leave tonight and we will have to call a taxi and walk two or more kilometers to get to the main highway to meet that taxi. Then I will send Sveta off to meet the train and walk back to the Tiny Russian Village Home It will be sad for her to leave, but it has been wonderful with her here. She might try to come back at the end of February, but I think that the snow will be seriously deep. I will be making a few store trips on foot and stock for February. February looks to be snow the whole month and never any melting * * * * * * * * * * The mental list is growing and it looks like I will have to write down the issues that I find as I live here. There are things that are necessities and things that are wishfulness. Either way, they have a purpose and reason in my head. We are seeing snow skis being used and snowshoes being used. Not sure which is best for Sveta and I? I also know that Boza is going to get snowed in, before I am. He is close to the ground and it is getting hard for him to get around. That is why I must clean areas for him to walk and play. He still loves to play ball and a little snow should not take that away! Should it? Have a nice day WtR Denmark and Greenland reach uranium export agreement 20 January 2016 Share An agreement has been reached between Denmark and Greenland on how they will cooperate on foreign, defence and security policy issues related to the mining and commercial export of uranium from Greenland. The island of Greenland introduced a zero-tolerance policy concerning the mining of uranium and other radioactive elements in 1988, while under Danish direct rule. It took a step towards greater autonomy from Denmark in 2009 with the official transition from 'home rule' to 'self rule'. This saw Greenland assume full authority over its mineral and hydrocarbon rights, which had formerly been overseen by Denmark. However, Greenland remains part of the kingdom of Denmark and its defence and foreign policies are still determined by Copenhagen. In October 2013, Greenland's parliament voted to remove the ban on the extraction of radioactive materials, opening up the possibility for companies to begin mining uranium and rare earth minerals. Yesterday the governments of Denmark and Greenland reached agreements concerning the export control and security of uranium and other radioactive substances from Greenland and the definition of competences in the raw materials sector. According to a statement from the government of Greenland, "The agreements establish concrete cooperation between Denmark and Greenland, ensuring that Greenland can continue its efforts to expand its mining whilst the kingdom complies with international obligations and lives up to the highest international standards." "It is a complex of agreements which, based on the current division of powers within the realm, clearly specify responsibilities and tasks between Danish and Greenland authorities," the statement noted. Greenland's minister of industry, labour and trade, Randi Vestergaard Evaldsen, said, "Overall the agreements ensure that, if at a later time the extraction of uranium as a by-product is allowed, it can be used solely for peaceful and civilian purposes." She added, "It is a matter which has been very carefully prepared in a good and constructive cooperation between Denmark and Greenland and which is based on the joint recommendations of the uranium report from 2013." The Danish government will introduce legislation on safeguards and export controls to parliament in the coming months. Concurrently, the draft laws will be will be introduced to the Greenland parliament for consideration. Australia's Greenland Minerals and Energy completed a feasibility study for its Kvanefjeld uranium and rare earth element project in southern Greenland in May 2015. In November, the project received pre-hearing approvals from the government of Greenland and has moved into the permitting phase. The government also approved the terms of reference setting the agreed initial development strategy for Kvanefjeld. Greenland Minerals and Energy last June formally announced JORC-compliant maiden ore reserves for the Kvanefjeld project. Total ore reserves of 108 million tonnes contain uranium at 362 ppm U3O8, comprising 43 million tonnes of proven reserves with 352 ppm U3O8 (12,834 tU) and 64 million tonnes of probable reserves with 368 ppm U3O8 (19,970 tU). Researched and written by World Nuclear News Related topics Application of the SOMARK tattoo is simple- It takes seconds.... SOMARK Labstamp technology is based on a unique ink tattoo and a propri... Youve got a decent hand. Youre sure of it, but you dont want to bet everything on it because you know the game and know that youll lose. What do you do? That depends in part upon how strong your hand is (or isnt). For example, if you have an ace low flush, you might be tempted to fold, knowing you probably wont make money betting with it. On the other hand, if you hold a pocket pair, you may have enough confidence in the strength of your hand to bet all-in, hoping for a full house or better. In order to get the most from your hand, you need to understand what the odds are against each possible outcome. Heres how you can figure out whether or not you should push your luck with a particular hand. The decision of the player to do the okbet login will provide him good return in the future. This is the platform that is considered as the reliable option. It provides the players with the high stake of the winning. Even a representative is there who will work to serve the people. The Value of A Pair Lets assume weve just dealt two cards and one player has three suited cards and another has four. If the first player bets, then hes going to win about half the time (assuming everyone else folds), so his expected return is 50 percent. The second player has a much tougher time. Hell have a good chance of winning only when he gets three of a kind, which happens 1/4th of the time. So he has a 25 percent chance of winning. When he makes the call, the third player has a 55 percent chance of winning. His expected return is 45 percent. Of course, if the first player loses, then the chances of the third player winning go way up about 80 percent. All of these percentages are based on the assumption that all players will fold. The value of the hand is calculated by taking the probability of winning times the amount you would win if you did win. This gives us a number between zero and 100. Well use $5 as our basic unit for calculating the value of the hands. If you had 10 chips and could choose any five, what would you pick? Well, wed obviously take the top hand, which is worth $50. The second best hand is a little bit worse $45 since youre giving up some equity for the opportunity to win more. So now lets calculate the value of the remaining hands. If the second player chooses a third card, his expected gain is $25, which represents the difference between the two hands. A fourth card increases the expectation to $30, while adding a fifth card drops it back down to $20. Since there are no sixth cards, the value of the hand is equal to the average of the five cards, which is $24.60. The value of a suit We can also figure out the value of a suit by looking at the value of each individual card within that suit. Lets say were dealing a standard deck of 52 cards. One person holds a KQ; the next person has a 7D; and the third has a 2S. Each person has a 20% chance of winning. What is the expected return of having this group of cards? Well, the KQ has a 5% chance of winning, the 7D has a 4% chance, and the 2S has a 3% chance. So the total expected return is 25%. The same logic applies to the other suits, where the probability of winning goes up as the value of the card decreases. For instance, the Aces have a 9% chance of winning, Kings have 8%, Queens have 7%, Jacks have 6%, and Tens have 5%. So the expected returns add up to 36%. Now lets add all of these numbers together to get an estimate of the value of a hand. Assuming that each hand was equally likely to come up, our total would be 60 percent. But we know thats wrong! Not every hand is created equal. It turns out that a royal flush beats the rest of the pack pretty consistently. So were going to adjust our calculations to reflect this fact. Royal Flushes So far, weve assumed that all of the cards were equally likely to come up. Actually, most poker players believe that Royal Flushes are extremely unlikely. In fact, many experts estimate their frequency at less than 0.1 percent. To account for this, lets increase the probability of winning for each card in a Royal Flush by 10 percent. Now when we calculate the value of a Royal Flush, well find that its actually worth 62.5 percent of what it used to be. The value of the cards in each rank will still add up to 100, but theyre now weighted differently. So what does this mean for you? Well, if you hold a Royal Flush, youre probably going to win about 75 percent of the time. And if you hold a hand like QJT, youll win about 75 percent of the time too. And if you hold a straight, youll win nearly 70 percent of the time. In short, the bigger your hand, the more likely you are to win. Of course, even though youre getting a higher hit rate, youll also tend to lose more often. So if you hold a straight, youre almost guaranteed to lose. But if you hold a Royal Flush, youre going to win about one-quarter of the time, and youll win about twice as much money. So youre almost certain to profit from such a hand, but youll also take a lot of losses. Now, I mentioned that youll lose money on any hand. In fact, youll lose money roughly half the time. So if you hold a straight, youll lose about 25 percent of the time. If you hold a flush, youll lose about 40 percent of the time. And if you hold a pair, youll lose 35 percent of the time. In addition, if you hold a set one of the two highest ranks youll lose 35 percent of the time. Finally, if you hold a high card in the lowest rank, youll lose 30 percent of the time. But the interesting thing is that youll lose less money on those losing hands than you do on winning hands. Why is that? Well, suppose you hold a straight. Theres a 65 percent chance youll win. But suppose you hold a pair instead. Theres a 65 percent chance youll win. But you lost on your last hand. So theres now a 75 percent chance that youll lose again. On the other hand, if you hold a straight and lose, theres still a 65 percent chance youll win again. So youre only losing about 15 percent of the time. This means that you can minimize your losses by playing only hands that are reasonably likely to win. So if you hold a straight, youll probably lose around 25 percent of the time. But if you hold a flush, youll probably lose around 40 percent of the time. And if you hold a pair, youll probably lose around 35 percent of the time. And if you hold a set, youll probably lose around 35 percent of the time. But if you hold a high card in the lowest rank, youll probably lose around 30 percent of the time. In summary, the higher the probability that youll win, the lower your loss percentage will be. And the lower the probability youll win, the higher your loss percentage will be. So the optimal strategy is to play only hands whose probability of winning exceeds your expected return. If you hold a straight, theres a 65 percent chance of winning, so youll lose around 25 percent of the time. If you hold a flush, theres a 65 percent chance of winning, so youll lose around 40 percent of the time. And if you hold a pair, theres a 65 percent chance of winning, so youll lose around 35 percent of the time. But if you hold a set, theres a 65 percent chance of winning, so youll lose around 35 percent of the time. And if you hold a high card in the lowest rank, theres a 65 percent chance of winning, so youll lose around 30 percent of the time. Of course, you shouldnt ignore your opponents actions entirely. You should always give them credit for being smart, making decisions, and doing whatever it takes to beat you. But just remember that youre being punished for having a decent hand. Jan 20, 2016 | By Benedict Chicago-based artist Heath Dewey-Hagborg has 3D printed two masks depicting the face of Chelsea Manning, the US soldier and whistleblower who was sentenced to 35 years in military prison in 2013 for violating the Espionage Act. The piece, part of the Victoria & Albert Future Design exhibition, has been titled Radical Love. One of the most important political events of 2010 was the online publication of a huge number of classified US diplomatic cables via the online whistleblowing platform WikiLeaks. The source of those leaks was former US soldier Chelsea Manning, then known as Bradley Manning. WikiLeaks, led by the now-famous Julian Assange, upheld Mannings anonymity, but hacker Adrian Lamo eventually informed US Army Counterintelligence of Mannings responsibility. Manning was charged with 22 separate offenses, and sentenced to 35 years in military prison. The legitimacy and morality of her actions has been debated ever since, with some liberal thinkers staunchly defending her actions with public displays of solidarity, 3D printed and otherwise. In an effort to affirm Mannings existence, artist Dewey-Hagborg created the life-size 3D prints of Mannings face using characteristics drawn from the soldiers DNA sequencing, with a technique called forensic DNA phenotypinga sometimes controversial method used by some police forces to create likenesses of unknown suspects. To obtain a sample of Mannings DNA, the artist took a cutting of her hair and a cheek swab. Then, using advanced software, the DNA sequencing was translated into physical traits such as eye color, hair color and complexion. Feeding in those different parameters, I could generate random variations of Chelseas face within a prescribed typology, Dewey-Hagborg told the Guardian. The 3D printed artwork is, according to the artist, a comment on Mannings total disappearance from the public eye since her incarceration, but the work also comments on Mannings gender transition: Chelsea announced her new identity shortly after her 35 year sentencing in 2013. One of the masks has been rendered with the gender genome set to neutral, with the other rendered as female, as though Manning had been born a woman. She has been imprisoned and unable to be seen or visited for the duration of her gender transition, Dewey-Hagborg explained. As long as shes been identifying as Chelsea Manning weve been unable to see her, so there was poetry to making visible the invisible. Manning herself, who is being held at the brig at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, agreed to provide DNA for the 3D printed piece because of the artists reputation for being really good at examining the convergence of art, science and technology. The two 3D printed masks are being displayed at Davos, Switzerland, where neither artist nor subject has been able to view themfor greatly different reasons. The faces were 3D printed and shipped from London directly to Switzerland, the artist explained. Tickets for the World Economic Forum are reserved for world leaders, and I wasnt invited. Although disconnected from society, Manning began communicating via Twitter in April 2015. Despite being forbidden from browsing the web, Manning is able to dictate audio messages to intermediaries, who then publish the whistleblowers thoughts on her behalf. Posted in 3D Printing Application Maybe you also like: TransTroops wrote at 1/21/2016 8:29:26 PM:Heather Dewey-Hagborg's project is a publicity stunt. What distinguishes her creepy death masks of a living person is the veneer of science, involving DNA samples voluntarily submitted by Chelsea Manning. There is, however, nothing scientific about the result. Last September, the artist told Paper magazine that her process was selective. "I'll generate lots of different facesdifferent versions of this identityand I'll go through and decide which one I think is the most compelling. Obviously, since I already know what she looks like, that does very much influence my choice. I definitely was leaning more toward ones that I thought looked the most similar to Chelsea. It's my interpretation, or my guesswork, of how she would want to be represented." Guesswork? Sorry, that may be art, but it's not science. Certainly there is no evidence that hormone replacement therapy, which Manning had been receiving for six months at the time her DNA was sampled, has ever by itself produced the dramatically sculpted nose and smoothly reshaped chin depicted in the "female" version of Dewey-Hagborg's diptych. Plastic surgery? Yes, of course. HRT? No way. Jan 20, 2016 | By Andre Every time a major player in print-technology proceeds to put emphasis on the advancement of 3D printing, I become a little bit excited. Without major investment, research and strong leadership, its possible that the industry will stagnate and fail to reach its full potential. Xaar plc, a publicly traded Cambridge based firm that is known for the manufacture of inkjet printheads is officially entering the 3D printing space with the appointment of Professor Neil Hopkinson, who is tasked to lead and further develop their internal 3D Printing Department. Once his new role begins in March, 2016, he will be responsible for the recruitment of a world-class team to work on advancing additive manufacturing in a general sense, but also specifically on the High Speed Sintering (HSS) 3D print technology he invented. As someone that brings 19 years of additive manufacturing experience to the job, it isnt any wonder that Xaar CEO Doug Edwards exclaims thrill that Neil has agreed to join. Additionally, he is "excited about the potential for HSS and other additive manufacturing technologies to expand Xaars horizons and exploit new opportunities. For Professor Hopkinson, whose career spanned through The University of Sheffield, as well as other academic institutions plus some time at 3D Systems, he is the foremost expert on HSS printing, which uses inkjet printheads and infared heaters to print, layer-by-layer, from polymer powder materials at much higher speeds than other 3D print methods allow. Delving a bit deeper into the technology, the HSS process requires the 3D printer to deposit radiation absorbing materials (RAM) directly onto the surface of a powder, which in turn is followed by irradiation of the entire build surface by an infared lamp. While this is taking place, the build volume is maintained at a temperature just below the melting point of the powder, so the areas printed with RAM absorb IR much more than the areas without. It is this absorption energy that allows sintering to occur. To me, the method is reminiscent of the PolyJet technology already established by Stratasys with the Connex series of 3D printers in that UV light is used as part of the bonding process. But the sintering with powder used in HSS is admittedly very unique with its high-speed potential. For now, Professor Hopkinson is currently completing a three year tenure at the Innovate UK funded Factum Project. While there, he was tasked to develop supply chain and full scale production capabilities for both laser sintering and his very own high speed sintering technology. Industry giants such as Unilver, BAE System, and Cobham Technical Services all have vested interests in the project's results. This new appointment with Xaar seems to be great news for Professor Hopkinson himself as well. He comments that Industrial 3D printing is entering an important phase of maturation and Im excited to be joining Xaar at this critical time, before further suggesting that its clear that inkjet printing will be an important enabling technology as the 3D printing sector scales up to be an integral part of mainstream manufacturing. As a leading supplier to printing equipment manufacturers all over the world, Xaar is in a strong position to accelerate the adoption of HSS technology within a number of key applications. Further to the above, it seems his research ties to the University of Sheffield will continue into the future as well. Professor Mike Hounslow, Pro Vice-Chancellor for Engineering at the school has gone on to say, we are proud of the achievements of Professor Hopkinson and his team and we welcome Xaars investment to progress the commercialization of this exciting technology. At the end of the day, it appears that this new merger of minds is a perfect match. To reiterate, Xaars experience in inkjet printheads (they developed technology behind Xeroxs market leading Colorgrafx wide-format printer) is second-to-none. Then of course theres Neils career spanning experience with the HSS technology and other 3D printing methods. Theres no question that this very established inkjet head manufacturer is set to jump full into the world of 3D printing. Posted in 3D Printer Company Maybe you also like: Jan 20, 2016 | By Tess As Valentines Day slowly approaches, couples everywhere are sure to be looking for this years hottest gifts, whether that is a 3D printed fetus for expecting parents, or, a bit more traditionally, a unique and charming piece of jewelry. Well look no further because Italian jewelry brand Maison 203 is introducing their most recent collection of 3D printed jewelry just in time for the romantic holiday. Maison 203s most recent collection of 3D printed jewelry, Kalikon, includes two short necklaces, one long necklace, two different pairs of earrings, and one ring, each with the same distinct ring, or chain shape. What is most notable about the accessories is their structure, which, because of the inclusion of small ball joints, is entirely flexible. That is, each hollow ring in the jewelry possesses a small slit on its circumference which functions as a track, allowing the joints that connect two rings to move relatively freely. The flexibility of the jewelry, especially of the necklaces, allows for clients to truly wear the jewelry, as it falls naturally over the body and moves along with it in a comfortable way. The necklaces also come equipped with a changeable hook that allows the wearer to adjust their length, and in the case of the long necklace, also its shape. The collection was 3D printed using a sintered nylon material, and did not require any assembly, as the components of the jewelry were printed in one go. Each of the pieces is available in a variety of colors, as seen in the photos, which include powder pink, powder blue, sage green, jungle green, night blue, blood red, and black. Overall, the collection is a remarkable fusion of design, geometry, and movement, made possible through additive manufacturing technologies. Additionally, Kalikons pieces are each visually appealing, as any wearer of the stately and colorful jewelry is sure to turn heads. Maison 203 was founded by the Italian design couple, Orlando Fernandez Flores and Lucia De Conto and features several collaborations with designers coming from various backgrounds. For their most recent collection, Maison 203 collaborated with industrial designer Giulio Iacchetti, who was able to bring certain elements such as Kalikons unique structure and mechanics to the table. So far, the brands focus has been on using new technologies such as 3D printing to create unique and contemporary jewelry, for as they state on their website, Maison 203 is a young company exemplifying the digital maker era. Their most recent collection Kalikon, though not yet available for retail, is being presented at Maison et Objet Paris, an international trade fair which showcases the latest in decoration and design and which will be running from January 22nd to the 26th. Posted in 3D Printing Application Maybe you also like: Jan 20, 2016 | By Benedict Three Swedish institutions have joined forces to improve the national metal 3D printing industry. Gothenburg-based Chalmers University of Technology, Trollhattan-based University College West and research group Swerea have together established a national arena for metal 3D printing, intended to accelerate the pace of 3D printing research, education and information throughout the Swedish metal and engineering industries. Metal 3D printing at Swerea A well-attended meeting was held on January 7 in the Western city of Trollhattan, an industrial hotspot whose name translates as trolls bonnet. During the meeting, the three parties discussed the possibility of creating a national arena focused on expanding nationwide use of metal 3D printing. Various motions were tabled during the discussion, including the essential need to reduce environmental impact and resource consumption in the metal and engineering industries, both at the production stage and during the eventual usage of manufactured components. The overwhelming consensus was that 3D printing could help save resources and therefore offer a positive contribution to the environment. The group decided that 3D printing could help Sweden reduce its overall material consumption in the industry by optimizing the geometric structures of its metal components. 3D printed metal components can often be made significantly lighter than traditionally-built alternatives with little reduction in strength, whilst the technology also permits shorter runs and greater customization. Sweden has considerable expertise in this area and we should exploit, enhance and further develop it, said Staffan Soderberg, CEO of Swerea KIMAB, materials research arm of the Swerea group. We want to join forces to strengthen the competitiveness of Swedish industry. We have different skills and experience to contribute and our goal is to put Swedish industry in a world-leading position. From top to bottom: Chalmers, University College West, Swerea Chalmers, University College West and Swerea have each vowed to bring their respective areas of expertise to the table, in order to maximize the effectiveness of the newly-founded 3D printing institution. With Sweden already a respected international figure in the engineering and metal industries, the challenge for the group is to channel the nations considerable skills and resources into the additive manufacturing industry, when environmental and financial advantage could be gained by doing so. Additive manufacturing is a hot area, commented Per Nylen, director of technology research at University College West. With Swerea investing in three different techniques for 3D printing metals, along with a new powder-bed laboratory at University College West and further ventures at Chalmers, we have created a strong platform for the industry. Together we can create tangible results for the Swedish industry while becoming a strong player internationally within the metal additive manufacturing scene. The three participants have recently received several new projects from the Vinnova Strategic Innovation Program, as well as 6 million SEK in funding from the European Regional Development Fund to construct the proposed powder-bed laboratory at University College West. The collaborative project looks as though it could soon be heightening the Scandinavian countrys presence in the global 3D printing scene. Posted in 3D Printing Technology Maybe you also like: Maggie Koerth-Baker in Nature: In 1990, when James Danckert was 18, his older brother Paul crashed his car into a tree. He was pulled from the wreckage with multiple injuries, including head trauma. The recovery proved difficult. Paul had been a drummer, but even after a broken wrist had healed, drumming no longer made him happy. Over and over, Danckert remembers, Paul complained bitterly that he was just bored. There was no hint of apathy about it at all, says Danckert. It was deeply frustrating and unsatisfying for him to be deeply bored by things he used to love. A few years later, when Danckert was training to become a clinical neuropsychologist, he found himself working with about 20 young men who had also suffered traumatic brain injury. Thinking of his brother, he asked them whether they, too, got bored more easily than they had before. And every single one of them, he says, said yes. Those experiences helped to launch Danckert on his current research path. Now a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Waterloo in Canada, he is one of a small but growing number of investigators engaged in a serious scientific study of boredom. There is no universally accepted definition of boredom. But whatever it is, researchers argue, it is not simply another name for depression or apathy. It seems to be a specific mental state that people find unpleasant a lack of stimulation that leaves them craving relief, with a host of behavioural, medical and social consequences. In studies of binge-eating, for example, boredom is one of the most frequent triggers, along with feelings of depression and anxiety1, 2. In a study of distractibility using a driving simulator, people prone to boredom typically drove at higher speeds than other participants, took longer to respond to unexpected hazards and drifted more frequently over the centre line3. And in a 2003 survey, US teenagers who said that they were often bored were 50% more likely than their less-frequently bored peers to later take up smoking, drinking and illegal drugs4. More here. NSU's Innovation Startup Center aims to foster tech businesses growth While a majority of Americans live in rural communities, tech jobs are often focused in major metropolitan areas. Aberdeen hopes to change that. Trading Halt Brisbane, Jan 20, 2016 AEST (ABN Newswire) - In accordance with Listing Rule 17.1 Orocobre Limited ( ASX:ORE ) ( TSE:ORL ) requests a trading halt be applied to all of its quoted securities. The Company advises the following: 1. Reason for the Trading Halt Pending release of an announcement in relation to a proposed capital raising via placement of ordinary shares to institutional and sophisticated investors. 2. Length of trading halt. Until the opening of trade on Friday 22 January 2015 or until the announcement is made. 3. The event that the Company expects to happen that will end the trading halt. A relevant announcement by the Company. The Company is not aware of any reason why the trading halt should not be granted or of any other information necessary to inform the market about the trading halt. About Orocobre Limited Orocobre Limited is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange and Toronto Stock Exchange ( ASX:ORE) ( TSE:ORL) (OTCMKTS:OROCF), and is building a substantial Argentine based industrial chemicals company through its portfolio of lithium, potash and boron assets. In partnership with Toyota Tsusho Corporation (TTC) and JEMSE, Orocobre has built and is now operating the world's first commercial, brine-based lithium operation constructed in approximately 20 years. In 2018 Orocobre announced the Stage 2 Expansion of its flagship Olaroz Lithium Facility in Argentina. The Stage 2 Expansion will add 25,000 tpa of lithium carbonate production capacity, taking full production and capacity to 42,500 tpa of lithium carbonate for sale to industrial, technical and battery markets, positioning Orocobre as one of the world's largest and lowest cost lithium chemicals producers. Additionally, Orocobre and Toyota Tsusho Corporation have commenced construction of the 10,000 tpa lithium hydroxide plant in Naraha, Japan. The construction of the Naraha Lithium Hydroxide Plant will further cement Orocobre's position as a global lithium chemicals producer operating at the bottom quartile of the lithium cost curve. This new hydroxide plant will be the first of its kind in Japan and will provide Orocobre product diversification suitable for different battery technologies and the potential for significant margin growth on our primary lithium carbonate being converted to battery grade lithium hydroxide. Business software provider Open Systems has acquired mid-market ERP software provider ProcessPro, which specializes in solutions for process manufacturing across industries. With the merger, ProcessPro will become a division of Open Systems and continue enhancing their software products and serving their customers of process manufacturing ERP in the food and beverage, pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, cosmetic and specialty chemical industries. The acquisition of the St. Cloud, Minnesota-based ProcessPro will also expand Open Systems presence in the state. We are very excited about ProcessPro joining the Open Systems team, stated Open Systems CEO Michael Bertini. ProcessPro brings over 30 years of proven solutions, complementary vertical markets, and extensive expertise in process manufacturing. Its great to join forces with another Minnesota-based company with decades of technological innovation and success. Open Systems provides business, accounting, CRM, ERP and mobile software solutions for organizations in the industries of distribution, manufacturing and nonprofit. Open Systems has a history of success growing vertical solutions by leveraging the strengths of their core business, stated Joe Blauert, ProcessPro CEO. This is a significant step forward and will enable the ProcessPro division to increase the value delivered to our client base. Paychex has compiled a list of what the payroll giant considers to be the top 10 regulatory issues that will have the biggest impact on businesses this year. From the IRS extending select Affordable Care Act reporting deadlines to a delay of the debated Cadillac Tax, Paychex noted 2016 is gearing up to be another active year for government regulations impacting business. Business owners have been inundated with proposed regulations that will affect how they pay employees in 2016, said Paychex president and CEO Martin Mucci in a statement. Paychex will continue to monitor these regulationsand others that emergeto ensure employers understand how these issues impact their business. According to Paychex, the top regulatory issues are: 1. Affordable Care Act On Dec. 28, 2015, the IRS extended the Affordable Care Act reporting deadlines for the 2015 tax year to give businesses more time to meet the requirements. The deadline extension impacts certain forms mandated under the ACA, notably Forms 1094-C and 1095-C. The new deadlines are March 31, 2016, to deliver the 2015 Forms 1095-C to affected employees; May 31, 2016, to manually file the 2015 Forms 1094-C and 1095-C with the IRSfor employers whore eligible for paper filing; and June 30, 2016, to electronically file the 2015 Forms 1094-C and 1095-C with the IRS. Applicable large employers (i.e., employers with 50 or more full-time employees, including full-time equivalents) who fail to file Forms 1094-C and 1095-C and/or provide 1095-C informational returns to employees may be subject to penalties for failure to file correct information returns and/or failure to furnish correct statements, similar to the penalties for not filing Forms W-2. 2. Overtime Regulations The U.S. Department of Labor released its proposed Overtime Rule to revise the salary thresholds for federal overtime regulations for the Executive, Professional and Administrative white collar exemptions in June 2015. The DOL also proposed changes to the Highly Compensated Employee exemption and an annual indexing of the applicable salary thresholds. After receiving close to 300,000 public comments, the agency is expected to release the final rule as early as this spring, creating the need for employers to take immediate action to prepare for compliance. 3. Employee Pay Across the country employers will be adjusting pay practices to accommodate minimum wage increases, equal pay laws, and paid sick time laws. This includes an industry-specific minimum wage increase for fast food workers in New York, and the most stringent equal pay law in the country for employers in California. Businesses in the state of Oregon and in the cities of, Tacoma, Wash.; Jersey City, N.J.; Montgomery County, Md.; Elizabeth, N.J.; and New Brunswick, N.J. will all be implementing new paid sick leave policies in 2016 and complying with the mandatory notice and recordkeeping requirements. 4. Worker Classification The very active DOL enforcement initiative with regard to worker misclassification continues, while changes in the economy, such as the rise of companies like Uber and Airbnb, present even greater challenges for employers attempting to accurately classify workers. Employers need to examine third-party relationships and monitor state and federal agency developments to assist in the efforts to appropriately classify workers. 5. Privacy With the continued focus on safeguarding sensitive data, many businesses will be obligated to comply with more demanding privacy and security laws and regulations. Many states have either recently enacted or are considering a wide array of requirements. These include the minimum necessary levels of encryption and security controls, as well as establishing stricter notification processes and remediation steps when a data breach occurs. Businesses should implement and maintain an information security program with privacy and security measures appropriate to their organization and in compliance with state, federal, and, as applicable, international mandates, Paychex recommended. 6. Earlier Annual Reconciliation and W-2 Employer Deadlines to Combat Fraud Currently, there is a gap between the time employees receive their W-2 forms (by January 31) and the date at which employers must file these forms with stateseither at the end of February or March, if filed electronically. Historically, employees are issued refunds before their tax returns are matched to third-party information, such as W-2 data. Eleven states, along with Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, now require employers to file both Annual Reconciliations and W-2 forms by January 31 each year. While more states are considering this accelerated due date, the federal government has not adopted the earlier filing for tax year 2015 W-2 forms due in 2016. However, this will change for tax year 2016, with W-2 forms due to the federal government Jan. 31, 2017. 7. Retirement The final version of the DOLs long-awaited fiduciary standard is expected to be released mid-year. This may impact the availability of plan advisors and result in more scrutiny of a business selection and ongoing monitoring of its retirement service providers. Recent DOL guidance on state-based retirement initiatives has made it easier for states to launch such programs. States may mandate that employers not providing a 401(k) or similar retirement plan have their employees participate in the state plan. 8. EMV In October 2015, a major liability shift took place related to credit card payments. EMV is a global standard for cards equipped with computer chips and the technology needed to authenticate chip-card transactions. This is a better means of controlling credit card fraud verses the traditional magnetic stripe cards. With this change, liability for credit and debit card fraud shifts from issuing banks to merchants who have not yet installed new EMV terminals and processes. These businesses may face much higher fees in the event of fraudulent transactions, Paychex noted, and businesses should work closely with their credit card processor to ensure compliance with the rules and reduce fraud risk. 9. Online Sales Tax Taxation of online sales will continue to be a topic of interest to businesses in the coming year. Currently, states are limited by federal mandate to only collect tax made on online purchases when the seller has sufficient physical presence in the state. To level the playing field between brick and mortar retailers and online merchants, many have pressed for passage of legislation which would allow states to collect tax, regardless of where the seller resides. This may gain momentum in 2016 due to recent changes in Congressional leadership. 10. Workers Compensation and OSHA In response to business concerns over burdensome workers compensation insurance costs and processes, some states have or are contemplating weakening related requirements. While workers comp programs are state-regulated, some in Congress believe federal intercession may be needed to maintain worker protections as benefits erode. In addition, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration implemented new rules in 2015 on injury and illness recordkeeping and reporting. Presented in the new ruling is an expanded list of industries subject to these requirements. To download a SlideShare of the Top Regulatory Issues to Impact Businesses in 2016, click here. Air Partner, working on behalf of TNT Romania for the National Museum of Romanian History (MNIR), successfully helped to deliver a precious cargo of 445 treasured Romanian artefacts to China for the 'Treasures of Romania' exhibition at the National Museum of China in Beijing. The shipment was flown from Bucharest Otopeni airport to Beijing on the 12th January aboard a B777 freighter, which was operated by Emirates. Due to the nature of the cargo, all flight clearances had to be secured through diplomatic channels. The exhibition will open at the National Museum of China in Beijing (above) on the 28th January and run until the 8th May 2016, when it will move to the Sichuan Provincial Museum in Chengdu. The artefacts, which date from prehistoric times to the late 18th century and include ceramics, glassworks, mural paintings, manuscripts and textiles, are mainly from the MNIR although about 30 other Romanian museums have also loaned items. The show is the first of its type and size to be held in China for 66 years, and comes after the MNIR held the Treasures of China exhibition in 2013. Mike Hill, Regional Freight Director for Air Partner Europe, said: We were honoured to assist in transporting these treasured artefacts to China. The items are of huge cultural and historical importance and we were thrilled to play a role in bringing them to a wider audience. I dont doubt that they will be missed back in Romania but we have already arranged their return later in the year. My thanks go to Emirates and all the Romanian diplomatic services involved, who all worked tirelessly to ensure that the shipment was delivered on time and in perfect condition. Ciprian Popescu, Special Services Manager for TNT Romania, said: Arranging this flight was a highlight of our longstanding relationship with Air Partner even though it proved to be more logistically challenging than initially expected! During a time of the year when most people are busy decorating Christmas trees and preparing New Years Eve parties, the teams at TNT and Air Partner were working around the clock to make sure that this flight went seamlessly. As a Romanian, it is an honour to be part of this project and serve the countrys best interests. Special thanks go to our Foreign Affairs Ministry for all their support. Air Partner Freight charters aircraft of every size to fly cargo anywhere, at any time, whatever its weight, size or shape. Serving governments, leading industrial shippers and relief and humanitarian organisations, the freight team provides bespoke air charter solutions to meet a wide range of cargo charter needs. From urgent go now requirements moving small quantities of automotive spare parts, through to the most complex project cargo shipments taking several months to plan, Air Partner Freight has the skills, experience and expertise to ensure shipments are handled securely and reliably. Air Partner Freight has cargo specialists in the UK, USA, Germany, France, and Turkey, who provide strength of knowledge by utilising regional carriers for tailored charter services. Founded in 1961, Air Partner is a global aviation services group that provides worldwide solutions to industry, commerce, governments and private individuals. The Group is structured into four reporting divisions: Commercial Jets, Private Jets, Freight and Baines Simmons. The Commercial Jet division charters large airliners to move groups of any size. Cabot Aviation, which is formed within the Commercial Jet division, provides comprehensive remarketing programmes for all types of commercial and corporate aircraft to a wide range of international clients. Private Jets offers the companys unique pre-paid JetCard scheme and on-demand charter. Air Partner Freight charters aircraft of every size to fly almost any cargo anywhere, at any time. Baines Simmons is a world leader in Aviation Safety Consulting which specialises in aviation regulation, compliance and safety management. Air Partner is headquartered alongside Gatwick airport in the UK. Air Partner operates 24/7 year-round and has 20 offices globally. (This feature is part of the " Through Airmen's Eyes " series. These stories focus on individual Airmen, highlighting their Air Force story.)Joining the Air Force, commissioning, becoming a pilot, progressing to the rank of major -- all of these things define the word minority. Majs. Regina Wall and her husband, Jared Wall, have done all of the above.Regina, the 86th Flying Training Squadron assistant director of operations, and Jared, the 47th Operations Group T-6A Texan II standardization and evaluation branch chief, have shared almost every duty station and three deployments since beginning their careers in 2005.The Walls story began in 2005 at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, where they first met during the Air and Space BasicCourse. Upon completion of ASBC, they found themselves on their way to Offutt AFB, Nebraska, where they completed Initial Flight Training with a follow-on to Laughlin AFB.After arriving to Laughlin AFB, the Walls officially began their pilot careers in the Specialized Undergraduate Pilot Training program.Not only did we both get assigned to class 07-04, but our assigned seats were right next to each other in the flight room, Regina said.After the completion of the T-6 program, Jared continued at Laughlin AFB as a T-1 Jayhawk student and Regina moved to Corpus Christi Naval Air Station, Texas, to fly the T-44A Pegasus. This was the couples first experience with a long-distance relationship.It was a good test for our relationship, Regina said. We both knew by being in the military we might have to spend some time apart, and it was something we needed to be prepared for.But this long-distance relationship was only temporary. On Dec. 14, 2006, toward the end of pilot training, Jared proposed to Regina. Two days later, the newly engaged couple got married. Now join-spouse, Jared and Regina got assignments to fly the C-130 Hercules at Dyess AFB, Texas.From Dyess AFB, the Walls deployed together three times to Kuwait and were able to see various parts of the world and share unique and life-changing experiences.Sharing our deployments together and day-to-day Air Force life together has been a great experience, Jared said. It has allowed us to easily relate to each other. It also helps that during those deployments and during much of our career, we have had very similar jobs and the same mission.After their time at Dyess AFB, Jared and Regina relocated to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, in the spring of 2012.Once in Alaska, the Wall family grew by one. Their first child was born in the fall of 2012 and would change the way Regina and Jared would go about their lives.It wasnt just about us anymore, Regina said. Making decisions about our positions, assignments and deployments affected more than ourselves. We had to do what was best for our whole family.While still keeping their familys needs in mind, the Walls kept progressing with their careers and moved back to Laughlin AFB in January 2014. Regina became a T-1A Jayhawk instructor pilot and Jared, a T-6A Texan II instructor pilot.Since arriving here, the Walls have changed more than duty titles. They have also had their second child and have both promoted to the rank of major together.Though they were promoted to major on the same day, this is unlikely to be the case for the next rank of lieutenant colonel, as the Walls will have to compete against each other to see who pins on first.We have a healthy competition, Regina said. Of course I like to win, but if I was to get beat-out by anyone, Id want it to be him.At this point Jared and Regina arent sure of an exact career path to take, but they are ready for whatever the future holds.Were just going to do our best in the positions we hold now and go from there, Jared said. We know we cant always get the exact assignment we want, but weve learned to compromise with each other and find a balance.Although moving from base to base, deploying and working long and erratic hours can be stressful for mil-to-mil spouses; Jared, Regina and their two children have found a balance in the military and their personal lives.Weve learned to craft many of our career decisions around our family and relationship, Regina said. Its not always easy, but sometimes whats best for our careers may not be whats best for our family.While there are many stressors and roadblocks in a mil-to-mil marriage, Jared and Regina have clung to the positives.It is very easy for us to relate to each other, Jared said. We speak the same Air Force language.Both Jared and Regina are thankful for what they have thus far and are eager to see what comes next.Weve overcome every obstacle weve been presented with so far, Regina said. Only time will tell what comes next. Airmans quick, calm response helps save life It was this past Christmas and the restaurant was nearly empty. Michael Hamilton, a cook, fell to the ground during his shift. The restaurant staff had no medical training and panicked, unsure of what to do. A waitress remembered speaking with a patron, who had mentioned she was a medic, just minutes before in the lounge area. The patron was Staff Sgt. Christina Begeal, a 22nd Medical Group aerospace medical technician, who had just happened to be relaxing in the restaurant on her night off. The waitress rushed to Begeal and brought her into the kitchen. Upon seeing the emergency, Begeal responded immediately, aware that the victim was having a seizure. "He couldn't talk. He couldn't move," Begeal said. "So I told him, 'If you can hear me, squeeze my hand -- one for yes, two for no,' and he could do that." She directed the two other staff members to call 911 and to help her care for the victim. They moved the victim to a safer location and treated him for shock, she said. They elevated his legs and put something soft around him. Begeal checked his pulse and his eyes for reaction to light. At one point, Hamilton stopped breathing and Begeal gave him rescue breaths until he started breathing on his own again. Before paramedics arrived on scene, he came around. She continued to communicate with him and asked if he had eaten any food recently or was currently on any medication, so she could relay the information to the paramedics. "When Emergency Medical Services got there, it seemed like he was paralyzed; he was so exhausted from the seizure," Begeal said. "They loaded him in the ambulance and took him to the hospital." At the hospital, Hamilton was evaluated, treated and released back to work. "I didn't think what happened that day would have happened so quickly," Hamilton said. "If she hadn't been here, there would have been more questioning, more chaos and less stability." When Begeal returned to the same restaurant a few weeks later, Hamilton approached her and thanked her for saving his life. "I was really glad she was there to help because everybody else was frantic," he said. "She stepped up, called the shots and made me feel like everything was going to be OK." Begeal stressed that basic care provided to a victim in the midst of waiting for paramedics to arrive is crucial and wanted to spread the message. To emphasize the importance of bystander intervention and self-aid and buddy care, she is coordinating to teach a certified CPR course to the restaurant staff. Every 22nd Air Refueling Wing Airman is trained in SABC, bystander intervention, basic situational awareness, and many other life-saving lessons. They are trained to employ this knowledge to help individuals during an emergency situation -- anytime and anywhere it may occur. "If someone needs a helping hand I will be there -- so would any other McConnell Airmen," Begeal said. "The willingness of our Airmen to step up in so many different critical situations is what makes us the wing of choice." Air Force implements additional security measures In response to tragic events that have taken place on and off installations over the past few years, Air Force commanders can take additional measures to secure personnel and property on their installations through three programs that allow service members to carry weapons. The Air Force Security Forces Integrated Defense team established and implemented the Unit Marshal, Security Forces Staff Arming and Law Enforcement Officer Safety Act programs that will enable commanders the ability to increase his or her force protection measures on their installations. We looked at active-shooter incidents across the country and there are statistics out there that show where many ended without police intervention because there was somebody there who had a concealed carry permit or somebody interdicted the active shooter, said Maj. Keith Quick, the Air Force Security Forces Integrated Defense action officer. These programs allow commanders the ability to arm additional trained Airmen who could interdict before police arrive and are trained to stand down when police arrive. The Unit Marshal Program is the newest of these tools designed to enable commanders at every level, when approved by the installation commander, permission to work with security forces to train Airmen and allow them to open carry an M9 pistol in their duty location. We are calling it a subset of the security forces augmentee program, Quick said. The traditional augmentee program was established for security forces squadrons that didnt have enough personnel to cover installation security and we would ask for personnel from other work centers across the base. Unlike the security forces augmentee program, the UMP allows a squadron commander who has a perceived threat to request additional security. Now a commander can train and arm Airmen in their unit that would remain at the squadron doing their primary job but also provide security for the location. Members selected for the program will attend a training course that includes sections on use of force, weapons retention and weapons training. The goal of the UMP is to protect them, their immediate work space and the people within it, Quick stressed. They are not first responders, they are not to go to the sound of fire, they are not to chase bad guys. If an active shooter happened, these members are not authorized to engage unless confronted directly by the active shooter. The second program is the Security Forces Staff Arming program that would enable more security forces members who work in staff billets at the squadron, group, wing or major command to carry a government-issued weapon while on duty with the approval of the installation commander. Any Air Force security force member who has the appropriate Air Force specialty code and is current on all of their qualifications may qualify with the goal of putting trained defenders in places around the base where they could immediately interdict an active shooter or some type of other threat. If we can have a trained defender in the Base Exchange or commissary getting their lunch, or in the dry cleaners or library they can immediately interdict against an individual, Quick said. The goal is to have armed and trained service members carrying to respond if a need arises. The program that supports the Law Enforcement Officer Safety Act also applies to security forces members both past and present. LEOSA is a federal act that provides credentials for law enforcement members to carry a concealed weapon to any state for personal protection against people who may want to harm them, as long as they obey state and local laws pertaining to firearms. The theory was that throughout their career they were arresting criminals, putting them in jail and creating enemies, and while they are allowed to carry in their jurisdictions they may not be able to go to another state or city and still have that same right to carry and defend themselves, Quick said. However, the Air Force now allows its members to request LEOSA credentialing. There is a list of criteria that a security force member must meet. Active-duty Airmen can apply if they have the security forces AFSC, work a security forces position and maintain current weapons qualifications. If an Airman is in the Reserves, Guard or retired they must fulfill a minimum service requirement and still maintain weapons qualification through their states requirements. This affects base personnel because we have given the option to the installation commander to allow security forces members to carry under LEOSA on the installation while they are off duty, Quick said. With installation commanders approval, I could go to the commissary on Saturday and stay armed and concealed while conducting my business on the installation and leave its not for work purposes. Commanders can use these formalized programs at their discretion; the Air Force Integrated Defense team is also looking at how to authorize a member of the Air Force who is assigned to duty at off-installation, center or facility to carry an appropriate firearm. None of these programs gives the installation commander authorizations they didnt already have the authorization to do, Quick said. We are now formalizing it and telling them how they can use these types of programs more effectively. This Account has been suspended. Contact your hosting provider for more information. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal appeared in a court in connection with a case for allegedly holding a rally without required permission during the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. On December 9 last year, the Kurla court had granted Kejriwal permanent exemption from appearance in the case. However, Magistrate Richa Khedekar had directed the AAP leader to appear for furnishing a bail bond. The magistrate today allowed the Delhi CM to leave after his aide Satish Jain stood as his surety. The rally in Mankhurd was held to campaign for AAP candidates Meera Sanyal and Medha Patkar, which the Mumbai Police has claimed was unscheduled and held without priorrequisite permissions from traffic police following which a complaint was filed against Kejriwal and others in March 2014. Kejriwal had approached the Bombay High Court seeking quashing of the FIR and exemption from appearing before the Kurla metropolitan magistrate. But the HC asked him to appear before the magistrate and seek permanent exemption from appearance from that court. The Congress insisted on a probe by a sitting high court judge against HRD minister Smriti Irani on Wednesday, saying her culpability should be investigated following protests over the suicide of a Dalit student at the University of Hyderabad. The party also demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi break his silence and take concrete action in the case and sack Union minister Bandaru Dattatreya. Congress spokesperson Deepender Singh Hooda said instead of apologising, Irani described the whole issue as Dalit vs non-Dalit. The culpability of Union HRD minister Smriti Irani should be investigated by a sitting high court judge and the Union labour minister should be immediately sacked, he said. He also demanded the immediate sacking of the Hyderabad university vice-chancellor Appa Rao and the immediate withdrawal of the suspension of four Dalit scholars. Hooda told the media that the Hyderabad university had stopped payment of the Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) stipend to Rohith Vemula, who committed suicide last Sunday, since July 2015 and asked if it was not a case of clear-cut harassment. Vemula ended his life on Sunday. He was staging a protest along with four other Dalit research scholars over their suspension following an alleged clash with some leaders of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, a students wing of the RSS. Addressing a news conference, Irani accused the Congress of trying to use the issue for political gains and referred to a letter written to the HRD ministry by party MP Hanumantha Rao in September 2014 where he had talked about suicides by marginalised students in the university for over four years. Hooda said a university board had recommended removing suspension of all five Ph D students, including Vemula, but later changed its stance under pressure from the vice-chancellor and the HRD ministry. He accused Irani of trying to mislead the country on the issue. Hooda also referred to five communications of the ministry to the university following a letter by Dattatreya, and said it clearly demonstrates the malice and malafide writ large. Hooda accused the Modi government of anti-Dalit and anti-poor mindset and said it had imposed a cut of Rs 19,734 crore in the Scheduled Castes sub-plan in 2015-16 and a cut of Rs 305.78 crore in the post-matric scholarship scheme for the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes in 2015-16. He sought compensation and a job to a family member of Vemula. Through this act Dawood wants to send across a message to the Indian government that he is active in the underworld. Indias most wanted terrorist Dawood Ibrahim who has been on a long hiatus is planning to spread communal riots in the city a mission which remained unfulfilled in 1993. Through this act Dawood wants to send across a message to the Indian government that he is active. The intelligence agencies have intercepted various phone calls in which they have traced Chhota Shakeel giving instructions to his gang members about how to accomplish the task of spreading riots in Mumbai. He wants to create a rift between two communities in the city. The ISI will be assisting Ibrahim for fulfilling this objective. Political experts have already mentioned about Dawoods role in some communal riots which occurred in various parts of the country. Since last few years, Dawood remained inactive and by planning to target the city and spread riots the gangster is keen to announce his resurgence in the underworld. He also wants to destabilise the Modi government which is already called for a global resolve to fight terrorism. Few months back, Javed Patel alias Javed Chiknas brother Abid Patel and one his accomplices were arrested from Gorakhpur near the Indo-Nepal border by Gujarat Police. Abid Dawood Patel, wanted in connection with the murder of two BJP leaders in Bharuch in November, and his associate Salim Ganchi were nabbed by a joint team of the Gujarat Anti Terrorism Squad (ATS) and the Detection of Crime Branch (DCB), Ahmedabad. Abid is said to be holding UK citizenship. According to police, the Patel brothers have links with underworld dons Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar and Chhota Shakeel. Indias National Investigation Agency has approached the Interpol to trace Dawood Ibrahims aide Javed Patel alias Javed Chikna in Pakistan. The aim is to arrest and hand him over to India. The anti-terror probe agency has got Interpol to issue a red corner notice against Javed Chikna along with another D Company member based out of South Africa Zahid Miyan Sheikh alias Jao. This is apparently in connection to the probe into the conspiracy to attack BJP and RSS leaders last year. Chikna is on a list of 48 most-wanted criminalsincluding terrorist Hafiz Saeed and Dawood Ibrahimshared with Pakistan. India has sought their arrest several times in the past. In an apparent response to the Islamic State, a Hindu outfit is training thousands of people some of them children as young as eight years old to fight with guns, swords, and rocket launchers. In two years, the Hindu Swabhiman has prepared 15,000 such fighters as part of their dharma sena. The outfit is running three training camps in Meerut city and five in Muzaffarnagar district in Uttar Pradesh. The outfit headquartered is in Dasna, Ghaziabad. Child soldiers, some of them as young as eight years old have also been enlisted as their soldiers. According to its leaders, their members are given training on how to use to use swords and firearms. Our motto is simple catch them young. We have over 50 training centres all over western UP. Our students are from ages eight to 30. We dont give guns and swords to children straight away, said Hindu Swabhimans leaders, Chetna Sharma, who is also a member of the VHPs Durga Vahini. For the first six months, we train them mentally. We teach them verses from the Gita. Hindus must not be afraid of death because we are reborn. The children here are fearless, added Chetna. At the centre of the groups efforts is Swami Narsinghanand Saraswati (born Deepak Tyagi), a Hindu ascetic on whose ideology this army is being built. He told that he fully supports an extremist Hindu outfit as an answer to ISIS to fight fire with fire. He called for support from Hindus all over the country to help them get access to more weapons. In fact, they have already started reaching out to Hindus in the country by speaking to two panchayats a month, propagating the idea that people should die fighting against the enemy. At the panchayats, I ask my Hindu lions to be brave and make sure they keep weapons with them at all times, said Saraswati. During the Muzaffarnagar riots, we went to the ground and asked people to be armed. All these politicians, who claim credit for saving Hindus, are lying. ISIS militants created havoc since establishment of its caliphate in Iraq and Syria in 2014. ISIS has executed thousands of civilians, including children, women, by shooting, beheading, stoning, throwing from high places and burning. An anonymous postcard threat letter purportedly signed by ISIS and received at the State Secretariat in Goa last week has threatened to kill Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar. Japan`s Parliament on Wednesday approved $350 million in humanitarian aid and other support for refugees fleeing violence in Syria and Iraq. The fresh round of aid comes in addition to $810 million to assist refugees inside and outside Syria and Iraq, which was announced last year. The $350 million was included in a supplementary budget bill for the current fiscal year ending March that lawmakers approved, a parliamentary spokeswoman and a foreign ministry official said. The funds are for the stabilisation of Syria and Iraq, Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said in a policy speech late Tuesday. Japan will devote efforts particularly to humanitarian assistance for those people, such as the provision of food and water and education, and stabilisation of areas liberated from the rule of terrorism, Kishida said. Japan, which will host the Group of Seven summit this year, plans to take up issues including terrorism, the Middle East, refugees and internally displaced persons, among others, Kishida said. The Japanese government will assist creating societies resilient to radicalisation and work to restore a tolerant and stable society in the Middle East, he said, without elaborating. Four operatives of a global terror outfit plotted to carry out multiple terror strikes in New Delhi, NCR and the Ardh Kumbh in Hardwar, inspired by the ideology of Islamic State. But the terror attacks were foiled as in a joint operation by intelligence agencies and Delhi Polices special cell dismantled a terror module and arrested the four Islamic state operatives. The Special Cell of the Delhi Police arrested a suspected terrorist from Roorkee, Uttarakhand on Tuesday night. The man named Akhlaq is said to be associated with ISIS or Daesh Arrested terrorists also disclosed to the intelligence agencies that they were planning to carry out attack on 26th January. Huge amount of arms and ammunition was recovered from them The Islamic State jihadists planned to execute terror attacks at a mall in Delhi NCR and at Ardh Kumbh in Haridwar, Uttarakhand. The terrorists arrested were in touch with ISIS in Syria. Recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and National security adviser Ajit Doval held a meeting with intelligence agencies on the issue of security for this years Republic Day parade where French President Francois Hollande will be the chief guest. Intelligence and security agencies feel the threat of a lone wolf attack by an Islamic State-inspired element during the Republic Day preparations. The Special Cell tracked down the suspects in a joint operation with a central intelligence agency and they are conducting search operations throughout Uttarakhand, the source said. The detained suspect is also being questioned in connection with the recent terror attack at Punjabs Pathankot as he is believed to have links with terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed, the source said. On Tuesday, the Special Cell of Delhi Police had arrested a person with suspected al Qaeda links from Nuh town in Haryanas Mewat district. In a joint operation with a central intelligence agency, two persons were apprehended from there, of which one was arrested by the Special Cell, senior officials claimed. The arrests have come a day after police nabbed an Al Qaeda operative Abu-al-Sami from Mewat in Haryana. Sami, who belongs to Jamshedpur in Jharkhand, has reportedly provided some important details to the intelligence agencies Let it be BJP, PM Modi, GST, Dalit atrocities or any issues related to the country, Rahul Gandhi is aggressively taking each issue nowadays. He is showing maturity as a seasoned politician, but how can BJP tolerate that? BJP and its propaganda agencies already damaged Rahul Gandhis image by various ways, but still the fading charm of Modi waves is giving big scope to Congress and Rahul to get back in peoples mind. No one expected BJP would lose its credibility so soon. People are running towards Congress again. The ruling BJP has gone very insensitive towards Gandhis, fearing on their evergreen popularity among common man. Recently, Rahul Gandhi trained his guns on Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying, he is surprised to see how swiftly public anger has grown against the BJP government at the Centre and in Maharashtra. He brought the deadlock on the BJPs ambitious indirect tax reform the GST bill, back into focus saying the Congress will not relent unless the ruling party accepts its demands for tweaks in the proposed legislation. Rahul Gandhi was in Mumbai as part of a two-day tour. During his visit to Mumbai, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis ignored the request seeking stay for Rahul Gandhi at state guesthouse. The BJP has now started to indulge in the lowest level of politics. Looking at criticism from all sides, however, Fadnavis told media that a suite was in fact kept reserved for Gandhi at the guesthouse but the latter failed to turn up. The Protocol department had booked a suite for Rahul Gandhi from January 14 and the concerned people had been apprised about it. They had made arrangements for Rahuls security contingent as well. But, he failed to turn up at the Sahyadri Guest House. Nirupam alleged that the BJP turned Gandhis apolitical discussion with students of a college into political one with the BJP workers chanting slogans in Modis name. During his two-day visit to city on January 15-16, Gandhi participated in a padyatra where he addressed party workers and separately interacted with college students. Rahul sounded very seasoned and ready to take controls of power. His popularity among youth has gone high; the way Gandhis connected with common people is worth appreciating. He seems to be very charged and aggressively reacting on every issue. As soon as he finished his two days visit to the city, he went to Hyderabad for condolence to meet Rohith Vemulas parents. Frustrated BJP accused Rahul Gandhi of politicising the suicide of a Dalit student at Hyderabad Central University after he visited the protest-hit campus, and insisted that the issue had nothing to do with the victim being from the backward community. Normally, whenever a government is voted to power, they remain popular for a while, their credibility remains for three to four years. However, here the case is different, BJPs and especially PM Modis credibility has gone to zero. Now, they feel that leaders like Rahul Gandhi and Kejriwal are threat to their existence. Gandhis strident tone on GST comes within days of Jairam Ramesh hitting out at Jaitley. Imploring mythos, Jairam Ramesh nailed away at Finance Minister Arun Jaitley saying Stop being Narad Muni and start being finance minister in response to the ministers criticism of the partys top leadership for delay in passing the ambitious indirect tax reform the GST bill. Once again, Jaitley is determined to try in the Budget session but before that, he singled out the Congress top leadership is the problem and not the rest of them. Ramesh accused the finance minister of attempting to drive a wedge between the Congress and its leadership. Sharpening knives ahead of the upcoming Budget session, Ramesh said Jaitley has lost complete command and control over the economic situation. The Congress party rebuffed suggestions of a breakthrough on a landmark tax reform, hours after the government said it had accepted the demands set by the main opposition party to back the measure. The proposed Goods and Services Tax (GST), Indias biggest revenue shake-up since independence in 1947, seeks to replace a slew of federal and state levies, transforming the nation of 1.2 billion people into a customs union. The new sales tax will add up to two percentage points to the South Asian nations economic growth. The Congress party, the original author of the tax reform, has opposed what it calls the flawed version now before parliament, where it has been able to block a key constitutional enabling amendment in the Rajya Sabha. Congress Party and their vice President are giving tough time to BJP and its leaders by questioning every issue and also supporting public in particular, from greeting farmers to visiting the students. Rahul Gandhi seized every issue to his political advantage. From Delhi elections to Gram Panchayat election in Maharashtra, BJP has tasted the defeats everywhere. May be Rahul emerges as threat to the ruling party. Now Uttar Pradesh Assembly Election next year will give clear indication for the future of BJP in 2019. Lets see, how much more are there for BJP to lose. At least 25 people were killed and about 50 others injured today after heavily-armed Taliban militants stormed a prestigious university and opened indiscriminate fire on students and teachers in Pakistans restive northwest Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. The gunmen entered the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda district of the province, some 50 kms southwest of Peshawar, and opened fire on students and teachers in classrooms and hostels, media reports said. Blasts and heavy gunfire were heard from inside the University campus. Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf Party leader and provincial lawmaker Shaukat Yousafzai said that 25 people, including a professor, were killed and around 50 others injured in the terrorist attack on the University this morning. The injured were shifted to hospital. An emergency has been declared in all hospitals in the town. All schools have been closed in the area. Yousafzai said between four to 10 attackers were involved in attack. Such cowardice attack could not shake the resolve of the Government in the fight against terrorism, he said. Soon after the attack, a large contingent of security forces rushed to the site and started evacuating students. Pakistan Army troops also rushed to the University from Peshawar and started operation. Army spokesman Lt Gen Asim Salim Bajwa tweeted that four terrorists were killed during operation launched by security forces to clear the University. Snipers killed 2 more terrorists on roof top, total Terrorist killed so far 4. All buildings & roof top taken over by Army, he tweeted. Clearance of university block by block continues by Army troops. Earlier, two terrorists who were firing from inside the university block were shot and killed by the army. The terrorists were contained in two blocks within the university and troops, commandos are participating in the operation. Surveillance operation has been completed. Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan claimed the responsibility for the attack, reported Pakistani media. Citing intelligence sources, media reports said the terrorists are between 18 and 25 years old. University Chancellor Dr Fazal Rahim said there are over 3,000 students present inside the university along with an additional 600 guests who are present for a poetic symposium to mark the death anniversary of Khudai Khidmatgar Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan alias Baacha Khan who died on January 20, 1988. Rahim said four guards of university and one policeman were killed in attack. Geo TV reported that Professor Hamid Hussain of chemistry department was also among dead. A teacher of the varsity after evacuation said Chairman Chemistry Department Hamid has been martyred by the firing of the militants, it said, adding the terrorists barged into Hamids room and fired at his head, killing him instantly. The Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) will set up 13 night shelters in the city in which around 500 children of homeless people and pavement dwellers will be kept, the civic body today informed the Bombay High Court. MCGM, in an affidavit submitted before a division bench of Justices A S Oka and C V Bhadang, said initially 13 shelters will be constructed in different parts of the city in which 500 children will be accommodated during night time. The court was of the view that if policy permits, then some temporary structures can be set up under flyovers and homeless children can be accommodated there too. The HC was hearing a public interest litigation filed by NGO Homeless Collective highlighting the plight of pavement dwellers. The petition has sought directions to the civic and state authorities to identify homeless persons and ensure adequate night shelters for them. The PIL contended that for every one lakh population in a city, there should be one night shelter as per National Urban Livelihood Mission (NULM). According to that norm, Mumbai should have 207 shelters. However, only nine night shelters are operating at the moment as opposed to the 25 that were promised in 2012, it said. Ben Swann (CBS46 in Atlanta) announced that in one week the CDC whistleblower documents will be publicized in a Truth in Media documentary. (VIDEO) Ben Swann: "This is not a story about vaccines or about autism; this is a story about corruption and cover-up within the CDC." Jan 19, 2016, UPDATE: Truth In Media to Release Documentary on CDC Documents On Tuesday, January 26, 2016 Swann will release a Truth in Media documentary which details a study of CDC cover-up and suppression of medical findings. In addition, Swann will release the Thompson documents at TruthinMedia.com to anyone who wishes to learn more about whats inside them. WASHINGTON, Jan. 20, 2015 Robert Fraley, Monsantos chief technology officer, admitted that his company has done a lousy job of selling the public on genetically modified (GM) seeds and other agricultural products. Weve done a lousy job communicating about science and what these (GM) technologies can do, Fraley said at a talk hosted by the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. As important as science is, its not enough. We have to be able to communicate science to the public better than we are today. Monsanto made a big mistake in 1996 when it released the worlds first agriculture-specific product made with a genetically modified organism (GMO) Roundup Ready soybeans and marketed them solely to the farmers that would use them instead of the public that would consume them, he said. Now Monsanto is engaging consumers around GM technology and products and is being transparent about its business operations via social media, said Fraley, the World Food Prize laureate from 2013. This shift is important, he argued, because consumers need to know how GM technology improves crop yields and decreases farmers inputs. They also need to know that the technology has had a stellar safety record not one safety issue in the 20 years its been commercially available, he added. Consumers and policy makers can become so elitist when it comes to regulating GMOs, Fraley said. The European Unions strict rules on GM products, for instance, represent an extreme position that has stifled first generation GMOs and will likely do the same with gene editing and other emerging biotechnology, he said. Allowing individual states to require labeling of foods containing GMOs would create a patchwork of regulations that would be very hard on the food industry devastating for farmers and very confusing for consumers, he said. Monsanto supports voluntary labeling of GMOs, he said. If mandatory labeling regulation are unavoidable, he said, the company would prefer a uniform national law, as opposed to ones enacted by individual states. Are you following food labeling issues? Agri-Pulse is the place for the latest news on the topic. Sign up for a four-week free trial subscription. Fraley said he is a proponent of SmartLabel, an application that shoppers can use to scan the QR codes on food packages to find out more about the ingredients. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack proposed the idea for the barcode-scanning app last year as an alternative to mandatory labeling. Jennifer Kuzma, a public affairs professor for North Carolina State University, served as Fraleys counterpoint during Wednesdays discussion. While she agreed that GMOs hold a great deal of promise, she questioned whether GM crops actually had higher yields, and whether they would be critical to feeding a world population that Fraley predicted would grow to 10 billion people by 2050. Kuzma said reducing food waste and the number of calories consumed per day sourced from animals, like meat, eggs and dairy, were likely better ways to secure enough food to feed the world in 2050. For instance, a study by the World Resources Institute found that if the world cut its current rate of food loss and waste from 24 percent to 12 percent, the savings would cover about a quarter of the additional food needed to feed the world in 2050. #30 For more news, go to: www.Agri-Pulse.com Because this resolution seeks to block the progress represented by this rule and deny businesses and communities the regulatory certainty and clarity needed to invest in projects that rely on clean water, I cannot support it, Obama said in his veto message. Republicans were unable to muster veto-proof, two-thirds majorities in either the House and Senate, but GOP leaders believe the measure will serve to highlight election-year differences between the parties. The WOTUS rule took effect last August, but courts have put it on hold nationwide while legal challenges are considered. The White House blocked Republicans from using the fiscal 2016 omnibus spending bill to ensure that the rule couldnt be enforced if the courts lift the stay. The Senate scheduled a vote for Thursday morning on overriding the veto. The House approved the resolution, 255-166, on Jan. 13 with the support of 12 Democrats. The Senate approved the measure in November, 53-44. The resolution was drafted under the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to reject major new regulations. Watching for news on the Clean Water Act? Find it on Agri-Pulse. Sign up for a four-week free trial subscription. We must protect the waters that are vital for the health of our communities and the success of our businesses, agriculture, and energy development, Obama said. As I have noted before, too many of our waters have been left vulnerable. Pollution from upstream sources ends up in the rivers, lakes, reservoirs, and coastal waters near which most Americans live and on which they depend for their drinking water, recreation, and economic development. The resolutions prime sponsor, Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, said she was still committed to identifying new ways to push back against this complex, burdensome and overreaching rule. The National Corn Growers Association said Obama continues to ignore the will of Congress and the significant impact this will have on our country's farmers at a time when they cannot afford more regulatory confusion and red tape. (Updated Jan. 20) #30 WASHINGTON, Jan. 19, 2016 - The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide the legality of the Obama administrations efforts to allow some undocumented immigrants to stay in the country. The ruling would likely be issued ahead of this summers presidential nominating conventions, virtually ensuring that the case will be an issue in the presidential campaign. Texas and 25 other states sued to stop Obama from going forward with the initiative, called Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA), on the grounds that the administration had failed to comply with the Administrative Procedure Act in setting it up. Also at stake is an expansion of an earlier program for children of illegal immigrants. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in November turned down the administration's appeal of a stay blocking the policy imposed by a district judge in Texas. House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said the administration actions threaten the separation of powers. Such lawlessness must be stopped so that we protect the Constitution and the intent of the Founding Fathers that the legislative branch, which reflects the will of and is accountable to the American people, makes the laws, not the President, he said. But United Farm Workers President Arturo Rodriguez said, At a time of poisonous anti-immigrant prejudice from Republican presidential candidates, farm workers are hopeful with the Supreme Court decision to hear the case. There are concerns in the industry that farmworkers who receive the deferred actions will leave agriculture for other jobs. The Supreme Court agreed to consider three issues raised in the administrations petition, including whether the states had the standing to sue to stop the actions, as well as a fourth issue - whether Obama violated the Take Care Clause of the constitution. The states argued that the clause limits the scope of presidential power, and that his executive actions would be difficult to undo once immigrants started to apply for deferred action. In an analysis of the Supreme Courts decision to hear the case, SCOTUSblog said that the courts decision to consider the Take Care issue could mean that the justices just want to make sure that all of the bases are covered in the case, or it could mean that there are at least four justices who believe that the argument has some merit; it is impossible to know right now. #30 Editor's note: Agri-Pulse and The Chicago Council on Global Affairs are teaming up to host a monthly column to explore how the U.S. agriculture and food sector can maintain its competitive edge and advance food security in an increasingly integrated and dynamic world. The statistics on global hunger are both familiar and daunting: The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that nearly 800 million people suffer from chronic hunger. The vast majority live in underdeveloped or developing regions that often lack sufficient resources to mitigate the problem. We also face a growing global population. The regions that will experience the greatest population growth Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia have the lowest agricultural yields and will be most at risk for hunger and malnutrition. While U.S. food assistance programs are critical tools for meeting immediate needs, the enormity of these gaps demands longer-term, systemic solutions to food insecurity. As a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, I know how important food security is to our nation and world. The U.S. governments commitment to global food security is not just a moral imperative. Its also critical for enhancing economic growth domestically and promoting national security. And the solutions are complex, requiring innovative thinking and innovative partnerships. I saw the importance of public-private partnerships firsthand when I traveled to Africa. I visited Faffa Foods in Ethiopia, a leading supplier of baby food in the country. Hundreds of African food companies including Faffa Foods have received assistance through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and Partners for Food Solutions (PFS), a nonprofit program jointly founded by two Minnesota companies General Mills and Cargill and other food companies to share technology and expertise. Chronic food insecurity and malnutrition are serious issues in Ethiopia, where two in five children are chronically malnourished. Lending expertise to a company like Faffa Foods doesnt just make nutritious food more readily available and affordable for children. It also has a multiplier effect by creating a market for smallholder farmers and boosting local incomes. In turn, robust markets ultimately benefit American farmers by building functional supply chains and higher median household incomes. More money gives people around the world more ability to buy American products. The poorest two-thirds of the worlds population represents $5 trillion in purchasing power. Its a huge opportunity for U.S. exports if poverty can first be alleviated. Minnesota-based Land OLakes, Inc., one of the largest farmer-owned cooperatives in the United States, recognizes this value. In 1981, it established a group solely focused on applying an integrated approach to international economic development that capitalizes on its expertise as a leading farm-to-market agribusiness. In Bangladesh, for example, Land OLakes worked with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and two local food processors to create nutritious cereal bars made from local ingredients. In one year, 17 million cereal bars were produced and distributed as a snack to provide an incentive for 100,000 children to attend school in an impoverished area of the country. Along with USDA, Land O Lakes provided technical assistance that helped farmers improve their post-harvest handling and companies boost their food safety and manufacturing processes. By August of 2015, five years later, 20,000 farmers were employed as a result of the program. Their incomes have increased by $100 per year on average, which is significant in a country where the per capita income is currently $550. Public-private partnerships can scale up best practices for improving production and create important market linkages between American agriculture and developing markets. They also foster innovation, which is critical for addressing food insecurity globally in the face of growing populations and increasing food demand. In fact, some economists estimate that well need as much innovation in agriculture in the next 40 years as in the past 10,000 years to meet the global hunger challenge. Public-private partnerships can pool resources and maximize the value of taxpayer dollars. My job is to be a steward of those dollars and ensure policies are in place that encourage innovation and leverage the strengths of partnerships. Weve made important progress in the past several years. Weve seen the fastest reductions in malnutrition in several countries where these partnerships are at work numbers that once seemed far out of reach. We must continue to build on this progress. The history of American agriculture is an amazing story of innovation. With challenge comes opportunity, and I am confident that our farmers and companies can help solve food insecurity. Minnesotans are widely known for being nice, but we are also pragmatic. Being leaders in food security is not only the right thing to do but also a thing we must do right. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Senator Amy Klobuchar is in her second-term representing the agriculturally rich state of Minnesota. In addition to the Joint Economic Committee, the Judiciary Committee, and the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, she sits on the Agriculture Committee. In the summer of 2014, she traveled to Africa with several other women Senators to witness first-hand the efforts of the U.S. government to advance international agricultural development, particularly as it relates to women and girls. #30 For more news go to: www.Agri-Pulse.com ALTOONA, Iowa, Jan. 19, 2016 Seeking an edge in his tight race with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in Iowa, Donald Trump assured farmers and the states biofuel industry that he would work to preserve the federal biofuel mandates that are important to the states economy. Trump, who uncharacteristically read from a prepared statement at the start of his opening remarks, was enthusiastically welcomed by the crowd at the 10th Annual Renewable Fuels Summit. He was one of four GOP candidates who attended the event along with Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee and Carly Fiorina. Cruz was not invited to speak because of his support for phasing out the RFS, and Iowa Gov. Branstad said during a news conference at the summit that he would like to see Ted Cruz defeated. Branstad, who has not endorsed or spoken out against candidates in the past, said a Cruz win in the Feb. 1 caucuses would be very damaging to our state. Recent polls have shown either Trump or Cruz leading the race in Iowa. Trump received a standing ovation as he entered the auditorium and opened his comments by pointing out that he had visited the John Wayne birth place in Winterset, Iowa, earlier in the day and received the endorsement of John Waynes daughter, Aissa Wayne. He quipped, Thats what we need a little more John Wayne-ing in this country. Reading from his prepared remarks, Trump said, I wrote this down. The RFS, which is the Renewable Fuels Standard, is an important tool in the mission to achieve energy independence in the United States. I will do all that is in my power as president to achieve that goal. As president, I will encourage Congress to be cautious in attempting to change any part of the RFS. Energy independence is a requirement for America to become great again, which is my theme -- to make America great again. The EPA should be sure that biodiesel RVOs or blend levels match those set by Congress under the RFS. So, we are with you and have been since the beginning. I am there with you 100 percent, Trump added. He was not alone in his support for clean, green renewable energy. Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, touted the fact that he is the only candidate who voted for the RFS when he was in the senate from 1995 to 2007. I was an unabashed supporter of the FPS in 2005, before I had the vision to run for president. Santorum noted, If Iowa, a state who benefits from the RFS, nominates someone who is not for the RFS, why would anyone else support that candidate? Santorum admonished the crowd, You have great responsibility and a key role in the process. Stand up for someone who supports the RFS. Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, said most people dont appreciate the fact that our agricultural system produces not only food but also fuel. We need to make sure we never import one ounce of energy ever again. He noted Congress created a mandate and farmers invested millions of dollars to accommodate that mandate, and it works. Several of the candidates blasted the EPA for not adhering to the renewable fuel standards set by Congress and several times referred to the statutory usage targets as a contract. Fiorina said politicians got pressured by oil and gas and the EPA voted to change the contract. She noted, Rule makers are not elected and are not accountable to anyone and that has to change. Trying to keep up with what 2016 candidates are saying about ag & energy? We cover it on Agri-Pulse. Sign up today for a four-week free trial subscription. Beyond that, she spent more time talking about taking government back. Referring to EPA water regulations, she said a farmer has more right to protect his land, his family, and his community than nameless, faceless bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. Branstad, who also addressed the crowd, said he is disgusted the EPA has not supported the RFS as envisioned by Congress. Its critically important we restore leadership in the White House that supports the original vision. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack also addressed the crowd and he spoke about the need to support not only the RFS, but also initiatives that will create new markets and new jobs in the process. Vilsack said that USDA will help by providing $5 million to install about 100 blender pumps in the state to enable sales of higher ethanol blends. The state of Iowa will provide $2.5 million and private companies will be required to match state and federal contributions for the installations. #30 For more news, go to: www.Agri-Pulse.com WASHINGTON, Jan. 17, 2016 - The Senate Agriculture Committee begins moving long-awaited legislation this week that would preserve the broad improvements in school nutrition standards implemented by the Obama administration. Details of the bipartisan compromise, backed by Senate Agriculture Chairman Pat Roberts and the committees ranking Democrat, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, were not expected to be released before Monday, but school officials won some relief on the whole grains and sodium provisions, according to a summary of the legislation posted online by the School Nutrition Association. The committee is due to vote on the bill on Wednesday. House Education and Workforce Chairman John Kline, R-Minn., has said he plans to move similar legislation but has not scheduled action. His committee has jurisdiction over child nutrition programs in the House. The increased nutrition standards implemented under the expired Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 are a high priority of First Lady Michelle Obama. Enacting a reauthorization bill this year that keeps the key advancements largely intact while addressing schools concern would likely go a long way toward quelling the political controversy that has surrounded the rules. It is important to move a bill so that there is certainty about what the future looks like and how to get there, said Jessica Donze Black, who directs the Kids Safe and Healthful Foods Project for The Pew Charitable Trusts. Were hopeful that the House will currently follow the Senates lead in terms of having a really bipartisan process. Trump, Vilsack pitch Iowa farmers, biofuels industry One of the most important events for agriculture this week will take place Tuesday near Des Moines, Iowa, where Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will cross paths with Donald Trump and three other Republican presidential candidates. Vilsack, Trump, Carly Florina, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee are all scheduled to speak at the annual Iowa Renewable Fuels Summit in Altoona. The organizers invited all the candidates from both parties that the industry advocacy group Americas Renewable Future has rated good on biofuel policy. Monte Shaw, executive director of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, said he expects the candidates to address agricultural as well as biofuel issues and some may take questions. Trump, who didnt attend the candidates agriculture summit in Iowa last March, came under fire in last weeks Fox Business debate over his advocacy for imposing antidumping tariffs on China. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who is running just ahead or behind Trump in Iowa polls, and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said such tariffs could lead China to retaliate against U.S. farm exports. Cruz, who has proposed phasing out the Renewable Fuel Standard, and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul werent invited to the summit because Americas Renewable Future rates them as bad. EPA launches new initiative to cut food waste Also this week, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy announces the latest of the administrations interagencys efforts aimed at reducing U.S. food waste by 50 percent by 2030. The latest plan, called the Food Stewards initiative, is supposed to help faith and community groups reduce food waste in churches, homes and communities. Shell announce the event at a church soup kitchen in Washington, D.C., where shell help a local chef prepare a roasted pumpkin salad from gleaned ingredients that have been saved from the landfill. The House isnt in session this week. SNA: worked alongside USDA on nutrition bill The school nutrition directors didnt get all that they wanted in the Senate bill, according to the details the group released, but their support will be critical to getting the legislation enacted. SNA has clashed sharply with the Obama administration over the standards. But SNA President Jean Ronnei said in the associations summary of the bill that her group worked alongside USDA in crafting practical solutions, referring to the challenges schools said they had with the bill. The bill would delay for two years the next round in reductions of sodium limits for school meals, which would leave in place the current standards until the 2019-2020 school year, SNA says. The current limits took effect in 2014. Did you know Agri-Pulse subscribers get our Daily Harvest email Monday through Friday mornings, a 16-page newsletter on Wednesdays, and access to premium content on our ag and rural policy website? Sign up for your four-week free trial Agri-Pulse subscription. The bill would allow 80 percent of grain products served in schools to be whole grain rich, down from the current standard of 100 percent. Since 2014, all grains are supposed to be whole grain rich, although some schools have received hardship waivers from states under temporary provisions Congress has enacted. SNA had asked Congress to block further reduction in sodium limits, lower the whole grains requirement to 50 percent and allow schools to decide whether students are required to take a fruit or vegetable. Heres a list of agriculture- or rural-related events scheduled for this week in Washington and elsewhere: Monday, Jan. 18 Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack speaks at a food packaging event at Central College in Pella, Iowa, in observance of the MLK Day of Service. Deputy Agriculture Secretary Krysta Harden hosts service events at the Thomas County Food Bank and Outreach Center in Thomasville, Ga. 7:15 a.m. - EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy announces a food waste initiative, Miriams Kitchen, 2401 Virginia Ave. NW Tuesday, Jan. 19 Vilsack will speak at the Iowa Renewable Fuel Summit in Altoona, along with several GOP presidential candidates. Harden and Rep. Gwen Graham, D-Fla., moderate the Next Generation of Agriculture Panel for Women, Veterans and Minorities in Agriculture in Tallahassee, Fla. All day - National Conference and Global Forum on Science, Policy and the Environment: The Food-Energy-Water Nexus, through Thursday, Hyatt Regency Crystal City. 10 a.m. - Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee holds hearing on the near-term outlook for energy and commodity markets, 366 Dirksen. Noon - Heritage Foundation forum, Federal Mismanagement of Western Lands: Bringing Solutions to Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 20 National Conference and Global Forum on Science, Policy and the Environment. 9 a.m. - Farm Foundation forum on antibiotic use in humans and animals, National Press Club. 9 a.m. - U.S. Trade Representative Mike Froman addresses the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Capital Hilton Hotel. 10 a.m. - Senate Agriculture Committee markup of child nutrition reauthorization bill, 328 Russell. 1 p.m. - National Summit on Antimicrobial Stewardship: Policy, Education and Economics, Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill. Vilsack and Navy Secretary Mabus make a biofuels announcement in San Diego to launch the Department of the Navy's Great Green Fleet. Thursday, Jan. 21 National Summit on Antimicrobial Stewardship. National Conference and Global Forum on Science, Policy and the Environment. 9:30 a.m. - Senate Energy and Natural Resources hearing on innovative automotive technologies, 366 Dirksen. Noon - The United State Energy Associations annual State of the Energy Industry Forum, National Press Club. Friday, Jan. 22 Vilsack and EPAs McCarthy hold a media call on Local Food, Local Places, an interagency initiative to promote the development of local food systems. #30 For more news, go to: www.Agri-Pulse.com January 19, 2016 This year marks the 60th anniversary of the massacre carried out by soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces against the Arab Israeli village of Kafr Qasim, during which 49 residents died, including women and children, who were making their way home from their fields. In anticipation of the 1956 military campaign over the Sinai Peninsula, Israel had declared a curfew for Arab villages on that day. The villagers were returning from the fields half an hour after the declaration, unaware of the curfew. Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Halevy, in his famous ruling concerning the massacre, determined that the order to shoot the villagers had been patently unlawful. He said, The hallmark of manifest illegality is that it must wave like a black flag over the given order, a warning that says: forbidden!" Halevy added, Illegality that pierces the eye and revolts the heart, if the eye is not blind and the heart is not impenetrable or corrupt this is the measure of manifest illegality needed to override the soldier's duty to obey and to impose on him criminal liability for his action. Eleven officers and soldiers were sentenced to jail terms of 3-14 years, eventually downgraded by reduced sentences and clemency. When the State of Israel was established, it imposed military administration over areas populated by Palestinians. Military rule, which was discriminatory and cruel, was repealed in 1966. A year later, in 1967, Israel established discriminatory and cruel military rule over the West Bank and Gaza after capturing them in the June war that year. These days, the black flag is once again flying in the evil wind blowing across Israel: Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan, also a member of the diplomatic-security Cabinet, declared in October, Every terrorist must know that he will not survive the attack he is about to carry out. The leader of a political party, Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid, announced that same week, Anyone taking out a knife or screwdriver [by a directive] should be shot with intent to kill. Israel Police Deputy Commissioner Moshe Edri, until recently commander of the Jerusalem District Police, was even more emphatic, stating, Anyone stabbing Jews or harming innocents is as good as dead. Too often, injured attackers or people suspected of planning a car ramming, and even unlucky passersby, are shot to death by the security forces. The foreign minister of a European Union state has been added to the Israeli Foreign Ministrys blacklist after daring to demand that Israel investigate these lethal shootings by security officers. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is also foreign minister, described the demand by Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom as absurd and stupid and refused to respond when asked if the Swede had been motivated by anti-Semitism, instead of rejecting the premise. These days, Israeli diplomats save their growing concern over the deterioration of Israels international standing for private conversations. They open up only when they are being personally insulted. The Foreign Ministrys labor union flexed its muscles at Education Minister Naftali Bennett when he dared cast aspersions on ministry employees because of the active support of Alon Liel, former director general of the ministry, for European pressure on Israel to end the occupation. Meanwhile, not one of Liels former Foreign Ministry colleagues stood up in his defense. They are too busy trying to explain to the world the foolish parallel Bennett drew this month between the alleged, extremist right-wing murderers of the Palestinian Dawabsha family in the village of Douma and the human rights organizations Breaking the Silence and B'Tselem. Bennett stated, We see exactly the same dynamic [as the one that motivated the Douma murderers] on the radical left; they've lost hope, alleging that they therefore act out in ways destructive toward Israel. When in November Bennett dismissed the deputy director of the Council for Higher Education Hagit Messer-Yaron, who had drafted a reform plan for broadening academic freedom council members voted unanimously to replace her with a lecturer who is not a professor but who moves in the education ministers circles. They are reserving their energy for battles over their pay. Meanwhile, the state has decided to prosecute a young performance artist, Natali Cohen Vaxberg, who relieves herself on the Israeli flag. Her fellow artists have not reacted. Their shows must go on. The thespians at the Cameri Theater are deep into rehearsals for Klaus Mann's Mephisto, a work about the evolution of moral corruption. In the documentary The Gatekeepers, Avraham Shalom, former head of the Shin Bet, did not hesitate to draw a direct line between the horrific acts of the Third Reich and the fascistic effects of the occupation on Israel. The future is black, said Shalom. It changes the character of the population. Because you put most of our young people in the army, and they see contradictory things: on the one hand it wants to be a peoples army and, on the other, a cruel occupation army resembling that of the Germans in World War II. The film also references The Territories, a 1968 essay by Yeshayahu Leibowitz. Leibowitz wrote, A state ruling a hostile population of 1.5 to 2 million foreigners would necessarily become a secret-police state, with all that this implies for education, free speech and democratic institutions. The corruption characteristic of every colonial regime would also prevail in the State of Israel. The administration would suppress Arab insurgency on the one hand and acquire Arab Quislings [collaborationists or traitors] on the other. Yuval Diskin, Shin Bet director from 2005 to 2011, responded tersely to Leibowitz's observations: I agree with every word. Shalom, Diskin and the four other gatekeepers interviewed for the film like the dozens of officers, former Mossad heads and diplomats who have joined peace and human rights organizations saw the light only after leaving office. For many years, they justified their cooperation with the disastrous occupation in the hopes of exercising influence from within the system. Those wearing uniforms in a democracy are obliged to obey the orders of the political echelon, and civil servants are tasked with implementing the policy of the elected government, but fascism and witch hunts are a democracy overshadowed by a black flag. Whoever cooperates with it, whether in action or in silence, is carrying out a patently unlawful order. January 19, 2016 CAIRO A global study of river dams predicts dire environmental consequences if the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam begins operating on the Nile River under current specifications. The study by Sameh Kantoush, a professor at Japan's Kyoto University who specializes in dams and water resources, warns of the potential for a number of bleak scenarios involving environmental deterioration that would affect not only the downstream countries of Egypt and Sudan, but Ethiopia as well. Indeed, repercussions would also reach the Mediterranean Sea. The dam, as currently designed, would affect the quality of Egypts drinking water and potable water stations, as well as the Egyptian-Sudanese water reserves in Lake Nasser. The study, which is still being finalized, assesses various river dams around the globe. Al-Monitor secured a copy of the study's most important results regarding the Renaissance Dam. If the dam is put into commission as scheduled in July, the damage will start in the upstream country, Ethiopia, and intensify in Egypt and Sudan. In Ethiopia, silt will accumulate inside the dam's reservoir because of insufficient openings at the bottom. The resulting sedimentation increases the likelihood that the dam will collapse, evaporation rates and greenhouse gas emissions will increase, and the water's biological and chemical specifications and physical properties will deteriorate. The study divides the damage in Egypt and Sudan into three impact levels. The first level addresses how the dam would prevent silt from being carried to Sudan and reduce the amount of water flowing to Egypt. Then, water quality would decrease and pollution would increase. The second level includes the impact of the deteriorated water quality on invertebrates and fish. The third level addresses the negative effects on mammals and birds. Speaking to Al-Monitor, Kantoush said that for many years he has been studying the extreme impacts of dams on various rivers in the world. He explained that these dams trap water and silt behind their walls and disturb the natural equilibrium of the rivers. When governments prepare their own designs, they often do not include measures to minimize negative effects on the environments and communities upstream and downstream from the dam. The only way to avoid these impacts is to create dams that generate power but do not hold back water and sediments, he said. Within 10 years, the course of the Nile River toward Egypt and Sudan at the lower part of the Renaissance Dam will be reduced by more than 5 meters [about 16 feet]. The dam will [intensify] the erosion of the river course, threatening to affect [Egypts] Mediterranean coast, potentially totally submerging the Delta areas. Kantoush explained, This requires taking swift engineering and environmental measures before construction is completed, to protect the Egyptian coast from erosion. Nader Noureddine, a professor of water resources at Cairo University, told Al-Monitor, The construction of the Aswan High Dam in Egypt led to the deterioration of water quality by reducing fish stocks and causing the extinction of many fish species by trapping the Nile water stored in Lake Nasser. The Renaissance Dam will add to the Mediterranean environmental crises. He pointed out that the impacts could lead to faster displacement of 4 million Egyptians living in coastal cities, since the Mediterranean Sea level is currently rising 1 to 2 centimeters (0.4-0.8 inches) per year, while the Delta areas in Egypt are sliding 1 to 3 mm (0.04-0.12 inches) per year and are expected to further recede as the Nile water levels drop. For his part, Alaa Yassin, adviser to Egypts minister of irrigation for dams and the Nile Basin, told Al-Monitor that Egypt consumes its entire Nile water quota of 55.5 billion cubic meters (14.7 trillion gallons) and reuses agricultural drainage water more than once and still has an annual water deficit of up to 11 billion cubic meters. Noureddine said, The Renaissance Dam will trap 136.5 million tons of silt and various weeds that will degrade behind [its wall] every year, which will cause a very high microbial activity and lead to oxygen depletion in the Nile waters. He added that Sudan is inclined to compensate for the lack of silt by using agricultural chemical fertilizers, similar to what Egypt did after the High Dam was built, which would only exacerbate the discharge of contaminated agricultural wastewater in the Nile for both countries. Noureddine indicated that an African expert who collaborated in drafting the May 2013 report of the International Panel of Experts on the Renaissance Dam confirmed that fish will disappear from the Nile River in Sudan and Lake Nasser in Egypt within five years after the dam begins operating. Kantoushs study about various dams in the world cites the example of the Mekong River, where China had the same plan as Ethiopia to create a series of dams, which would have harmed Vietnam as a downstream country. China took the advice of experts and modified the designs of its dams to generate electricity with the same capacity and with minimal damage to Vietnam by reducing the size of those dams' reservoirs. It seems that things are different for the Nile Basin. Egypt and Ethiopia still disagree on the feasibility of modifying the dams design. Ethiopia has rejected Egypts request to increase the Renaissance Dam openings so water can pass through four openings instead of just two. Yassin explained that the additional openings Egypt is requesting relate to that country's water security and its ability to make use of water during droughts or in case the power-generation turbines malfunction. The Egyptian public seems to feel the Renaissance Dam negotiations are useless. According to an opinion poll conducted by Al-Youm Al-Sabeh in early January, 66% of its readers feel the negotiations are unlikely to lead to positive outcomes. January 19, 2016 GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip The Ministry of Interior in the Gaza Strip ushered in the new year by launching what many view as a war on political satire, sending a warning with the Jan. 3 arrests of Ayman al-Aloul and Ramzi Harzallah. In December, parties in government close to Hamas had filed complaints with the public prosecutor against them because of their activities online. Alouls son, Omar, told Al-Monitor, A military jeep and two Hyundai cars stopped in front of the house, in the Sabra neighborhood, south of Gaza City. Several individuals got out of the vehicles and introduced themselves as members of the internal security apparatus. They asked my father to step out of the house, without letting him change, so my grandmother wrapped him with a fleece robe. Omar added, They asked for all the laptops we had in the house, and one of them told my grandmother that her son is too comfortable expressing his opinions on Facebook. On Jan. 3, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights posted notice of Harzallah's arrest on its website. It read, Individuals who introduced themselves as members of the internal security apparatus arrested Harzallah, a political activist from al-Wahda Street in central Gaza City. They confiscated his laptop and cell phone and took him to an unknown destination. Khalil Shaheen, manager of the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Unit of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, told Al-Monitor that summoning satirical writers for expressing criticisms is a violation of freedom of expression. Al-Monitor had spoken with both Harzallah and Aloul before their arrests to ask them about the complaints filed against them with the public prosecutor. Aloul told Al-Monitor on Dec. 20, Around two months ago, I posted on Facebook [a story] about a school in Gaza in which there are separate classrooms for Hamas-affiliated teachers and Fatah-affiliated teachers, and I stated the schools name but later deleted the post. He did not receive threats regarding the posting. According to Aloul, he did not mention whether the classroom divisions stemmed from a decision by the Ministry of Education or some other official body, but he did say it was the result of social division. Regardless, the Ministry of Education filed a complaint with the public prosecutor, Ismail Jabr, accusing him of lies and defamation. On Dec. 10, Jabr summoned him for questioning, meaning that the case had been referred to the Magistrates Court. While Aloul awaited notice of his hearing, internal security authorities detained him. On Dec. 28, Harzallah told Al-Monitor that he had received a phone call ordering him to report to the public prosecutor's office in Gaza City. I thought the call was an attempt to muzzle activists in Gaza so that no one would speak up about injustices, he said. No matter what happens, I will not stop being an activist, even if it costs me my life. The important thing is to defend peoples rights. Harzallah added, I went to the [public prosecutor's] office with two lawyers. They played a video I had posted on my Facebook page, and the [public prosecutor] told me that the ministries of interior and national security in Gaza had filed a complaint against me because of this video. The video showed border guards affiliated with the Ministry of Interior using their mobile phones Dec. 24 to take pictures of Isaac Hassan as he walked and swam in the Mediterranean toward the Egyptian border. The guards watched as Egyptian army personnel shot and killed Hassan, who was unarmed and said to have been desperate to go to Egypt for medical treatment. The incident was widely reported. Harzallah described the video as the green occupation, a reference to Hamas. After they were detained, Aloul and Harzallahs Facebook pages were removed. Al-Monitor tried, though to no avail, to meet with representatives from the Ministry of Interior to inquire about the summoning of the activists. Ministry spokesperson Iyad al-Bozom asked for interview questions to be sent in writing and said, Freedom of opinion and expression is guaranteed to all citizens in the Gaza Strip in accordance with the Palestinian Basic Law. Should any citizen be summoned, it would be by virtue of the law. Samir Zaqout, coordinator of the Field Research Unit at Al Mezan, said the detention of both activists was not in accordance with the law. According to him, the internal security apparatus, which detained the men, does not have the right to act as a judicial enforcement authority. Only representatives of the public prosecutor and the police, instructed by the public prosecutor, have the right to do that. Everyone has the right to express their opinion in a suitable manner, as long as it does not violate the law and does not include revealing military or security secrets or defamation of people and their private lives, Zaqout told Al-Monitor. Judicial proceedings are crystal clear, and the prosecution has the right to summon anyone to testify, but their houses should not be raided in order to arrest them, their dignity should not be harmed and suspicions about the person arrested should not be spread. On Jan. 4, a group of journalists and human rights activists circulated a petition, collecting more than 1,000 signatures, calling for the release of Aloul and Harzallah. The group also staged a protest in front of the government media office in Gaza. In another case, on Dec. 17, security intelligence summoned the satirist Akram Sourani for questioning after his participation in an episode of al-Nashra, a political satire program, aired on YouTube. Civil society figures intervened on his behalf to mediate with Hamas, allowing him to avoid interrogation. Al-Nashra, first screened July 10, was the first satirical show program produced by Palestinian Khabar Press, a local media agency. The New York Times ran an article about it June 19 and reported that Hamas had not objected to the show. Only two episodes were broadcast, however, as political satire in Gaza has become threatened with extinction. Harzallah and Aloul were released Jan. 11. Aloul told Al-Monitor after his release, I will no longer write, I am afraid. They beat me and put me in solitary confinement. I dont want to go through the same experience again. Maybe next time they will shoot me. Aloul added, Everyone is quiet. Things have changed now. My arrest was a message to public opinion. Some security officers in prison told me that they have problems with the Palestinian Authority, Israel and Egypt, which is why they will no longer tolerate our criticism and us inciting people against [the security forces]. January 19, 2016 WASHINGTON Amid a flurry of diplomatic activity with Iran over the weekend that saw US prisoners freed, the nuclear deal go into effect and sanctions lifted, the United States permitted the removal of two Iranian banks from a United Nations sanctions list, US officials said Jan. 19. The delisting of the Iranian banks Bank Sepah and Bank Sepah International occurred at the UN Security Council on Jan. 17 at the request of Venezuela. The United States decided not to block the request, US officials said. We saw this as something we could do as a confidence-building measure and a goodwill gesture, a US administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Al-Monitor Jan. 19. In the course of two separate tracks of negotiations with the Iranians on the nuclear issue and the humanitarian release of detained citizens Iran had sought the delisting of the banks from UN Security Council sanctions. But the issue was not resolved by the time negotiations for the final Iran nuclear deal reached agreement in July 2014. The United States had already determined that it would remove secondary sanctions on the banks, the US official said. We already made the decision to delist this bank as part of US secondary sanctions as part of the nuclear deal, the official said. The United States would agree not to oppose the delisting at the UN, which Iran very much wanted. This little-noticed action at the United Nations came as five Americans were freed from Iranian detention Jan. 16, and US Secretary of State John Kerry, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini gathered in Vienna to announce implementation day of the landmark Iran nuclear deal. As part of the agreement to free the Americans detained in Iran, the United States would grant clemency to seven Iranians charged with export violations and drop Interpol red notices seeking the extradition of 14 other Iranians abroad charged with similar offenses. A tense night ensued overnight Jan. 16-17, during which, behind the scenes, Iranian authorities reportedly tried to block the wife and mother of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian from boarding the Swiss plane with him and two other freed Iranian-Americans to leave Iran. Brett McGurk, President Barack Obamas envoy to combat the Islamic State and his point man in the secret talks on the detained citizens, told Iranian counterparts in Geneva that the whole prisoner release was off if Rezaians wife, Yaganeh Salehi, and his mother, Mary Rezaian, were not on the plane. Swiss authorities eventually found the women at a hotel and got them on the plane Jan. 17, and it took off for Switzerland. Obama then granted seven Iranians and Iranian-Americans in US prisons commutations or pardons. Rezaian, former US Marine Amir Hekmati and Pastor Saeed Abedini have been recovering at Landstuhl Hospital in Germany since their arrival. Photos of their joyful families meeting with Hekmati and Rezaian on Jan. 18 have been posted to Twitter. Abedinis wife was due to arrive in Germany on Jan. 20. To date, all of the seven Iranian-Americans and Iranians who received pardons or commutations from the United States have apparently decided to stay in the United States or have not decided to return to Iran. In addition, US officials refuted Iranian claims that an additional seven Iranian men were granted any special favors in the swap deal. Only 21 Iranians received benefits under the arrangement, they said. Some Iranians finishing US prison terms shortly were not granted special terms upon their release, since they would already have been permitted to, for instance, travel to Iran when they finish their sentences, officials said. January 19, 2016 BAGHDAD Unlike other religious minorities in Iraq, Sabian Mandaeans meet their election quota by selecting members within their community for parliament and provincial councils. The communitys three bodies the Spiritual Council, General Assembly and General Affairs Council supervise and nominate Mandaeans for senior positions in Iraqi state institutions. A candidates name is then submitted in a letter from the community to the institution concerned, such as the Electoral Commission, parliament or presidency. Through this democratic mechanism, the Mandaeans have tried to prevent major political currents from dominating the minority parties or using the minority representatives to their advantage in parliamentary voting. Yet at times these currents have wielded their influence to manipulate the process so that their supporters are nominated. Of course, the Mandaeans consider this a denial of their rights. Al-Monitor interviewed Nadia F. Maghamiss of the Divan for Endowments of the Christian, Yazidi and Sabian Mandaean Religions. The prime minister appointed her as acting general director of Sabian Mandaean affairs for the Council of Ministers-affiliated divan. The text of the interview follows: Al-Monitor: How do you describe the fact that a woman from a minority community was appointed acting general director at the divan? Maghamiss: It is a great challenge at the divan, the state institutions and the Mandaean community. First, it is not easy for a person from a minority community to hold the post of general manager under the quota system and dominance of major political parties. The difficulty is double, because I am a member of a small minority compared to the number of Christians and Yazidis, which is the Mandaean. Second, being a woman of a minority community made my accession to the post more difficult, given the quota system at the Christian, Yazidi and Sabian Mandaean Endowments Divan, since it is a state institution. Although the internal regulations of the divan stipulate that religious communities should be represented regardless of the number of adherents, the representation in the divan took into account the numeral criteria rather than the equal representation among religious communities. Al-Monitor: How were you nominated by the Mandaean community for this post? Maghamiss: It was a unique event in the Mandaean community. The three councils of the communitys internal system namely the Spiritual Council, the General Assembly and the General Affairs Council have made the decision that any nomination to a high post in the Iraqi state institution should take place through elections within the community, in the presence of members of the communitys three councils. Then the candidates name will be submitted in a letter from the community to the state departments. The candidate must have half plus one of the votes at the general assembly in order to be nominated. The members of the general assembly are the only ones entitled to vote among the three councils of the Sabian community. [The General Assembly] is similar to a parliament and is responsible for the enactment of laws according to the communitys internal regulations. I won half plus six of the votes during the elections that were held in the Mandaeism Mandi [place of worship for Sabian Mandaean community; the main mandi is in Baghdad's al-Qadisiyah neighborhood] on March 11, 2014. Al-Monitor: Is your nomination considered an unprecedented event in the community? Maghamiss: The Sabian Mandaean community has never nominated a woman for any important post in the state institutions. Historically, a woman never held the post of general manager of any of the communities endowment affairs, be it Muslim, Christian, Yazidi or other, in the contemporary history of the Iraqi state. This post was reserved for men only. I appreciate the big responsibility of representing women and my religious community, which is incumbent upon me. I succeeded in convincing them to have access and manage this post to the fullest. I took office as acting general director [this position requires the approval of the Iraqi prime minister exclusively] on Sept. 17, 2014, as a [successor] to Toma Zahroon. Al-Monitor: Do you have remarks on the Sabian Mandaean community representation in the state institutions? Maghamiss: Sectarianism, the quota system, the many political parties and the distribution of posts among themselves have caused our representation to be ineffective. The Sabian seat in [Iraqs] parliament can be taken away by powerful parties. In other words, although this seat is for a Sabian Mandaean member of parliament, it may fall under the influence of the Shiite or Kurdish political currents, and thus, the Mandaean community will lose this privilege [choosing their representative] in the Baghdad council. Major political parties request their followers to vote for a candidate of a certain minority so that this person receives enough votes to reach the threshold of the quota although he had not been chosen based on the will of the sect or according to [the sects] internal elections. The same applies to our representation in the Baghdad provincial council. The political representation of the minorities is symbolic and ineffective in all cases. Al-Monitor: Does the Mandaeans representation in the divan fulfill the Mandaeans ambitions and express their aspirations? Maghamiss: The Christian, Yazidi and Sabian Mandaean Endowments Divan is a small state institution, although it concerns the three religious communities that are acknowledged in constitutional Article 2-2. Yet in the divan, dealing with the three religious minorities that are officially recognized is based on the number of adherents rather than their competence. There are seven general directors, two vice presidents and one president of the divan, of which the Mandaeans only obtained the post of general director of the Sabians' endowment affairs, or rather acting general director, and one vice president of the divan. So far, we have not gotten the Cabinets approval on these posts, although more than a year has passed since [the letter] was submitted for approval. This means that it is not our right to compete for the post of president of the three religious communities' endowments divan, due to our small number compared with the Christians and Yazidis. Al-Monitor: What is the nature of your job at the Christian, Yazidi and Sabian Mandaean Endowments Divan? Maghamiss: I use my experience as an architectural engineer at the divan to serve its projects, as I provide engineering consultancy services. I have chaired several committees such as the Christian, Yazidi and Sabian Mandaean women's affairs follow-up committee, the high committee for the advancement of women with the canceled Ministry of Womens Affairs, the High Committee for Literacy with the Ministry of Education and I was a member of the adjudicating committee in the divan, in charge of making important decisions. My duties as the acting general director of the divan include following up on Sabian religious affairs and endowments, including real estate properties, acquisitions and architectural designs and monitoring the implementation of the sects related projects such as the construction of Mandaean places of worship [mandis], cemeteries, guest houses, schools and other buildings in Baghdad and the provinces. I am also tasked with communicating with the representatives of other religions, by participating in meetings, conferences and festivals and by exchanging visits and visiting religious figures and authorities and diplomatic bodies to cater to the needs of adherents of the three religions in the divan. Al-Monitor: What are the main obstacles that hinder your work? Maghamiss: We mainly suffer from a lack of financial allocations to the divan. How can we introduce our religion to Iraqis and to the world in light of no allocations to print publications on our beliefs and produce movies and documentaries? The official media does not contribute in any way in introducing our religion. We have almost become an unknown religion. Is it possible for the Mandaean sect not to be able to print its holy scriptures, such as the Ginza Rba, due to lack of financial allocations? Mandaean clerics are the poorest clerics among religious sects [in Iraq] because they are fully dedicated to religious affairs and have no financial resources or salaries by the government. Mandaeans do not have any properties or investments that generate funds, such as the Islamic or Christian endowments. Mandaean clerics do not receive any paychecks from the government as is the case of Muslim clerics who are in charge of supervising mosques and Husseiniya councils. Moreover, Shiite clerics, for instance, receive religious donations known as khums. But there are no Mandaean wealthy traders to make such donations to this small community, as most of them left Iraq. We are a forgotten sect in Iraq and are on the verge of extinction. Al-Monitor: Do you feel there is discrimination against Mandaeans on the official level? Maghamiss: Mandaeans complain of a discriminatory preferential treatment regarding the construction of places of worship. While it is easy for Muslims to build a mosque or a Shiite shrine, constructing a mandi requires cumbersome administrative measures and prior approvals. Mandaeans have no place to perform their rituals in numerous regions [in Iraq], especially in al-Qurnah in Basra province, in Kut, which is the center of Wasit province, and in Sawira in Wasit province. A large number of Mandaean families reside in these regions [there are no official statistics whether from Mandaeans or the state]. There is an urgent need for constructing mandis to allow the Mandaean population to practice their religious rituals, especially in light of the scarce financial resources of this sect and the lack of sufficient financial allocations in Iraqs budget to the divan to allow it to acquire real estates and build mandis. Mandaeans also complain of a discriminatory preferential treatment on another level, related to the investment of their endowments and properties. While it is permissible for Muslim endowments by the Ministry of Planning to invest their lands in projects, such as using them as parking spaces, building hotels, playgrounds and other projects, Mandaeans are not allowed to construct guest houses or religious schools or even residence complexes for their clergy. The Mandaeans are even not allowed to invest in projects of public interest, such as the construction of a hospital, for example. Al-Monitor: What are your current and future personal ambitions? Maghamiss: I want to fulfill the Mandaeans needs. They need to have a place of worship, an administration complex, guest houses, schools and cultural buildings in the provinces where they reside, such as the provinces of Maysan, Basra, Qadisiyah and Dhi Qar. My political ambition is to represent the Mandaeans at a higher level. I want the Mandaeans to have a member of the parliament or a minister. My experience in engineering may be put to use in the Ministry of Housing and Construction, the Ministry of Municipalities [and Public Works] and the secretariat of Baghdad. This is how I will seek to serve my country. Al-Monitor: What do you want to offer to the women of religious minorities? Maghamiss: I was tasked with the follow-up on the affairs of women of the three religions at the divan. I found that there is an overwhelming mission in this respect, which is to address discrimination against the women of these religious minorities Christians, Mandaeans and Yazidis and even against Muslim women who suffered from the scourge of war and the sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shiites. Women are the most vulnerable segment; if a womans husband or father is killed in the Sunni-Shiite conflict, she is left alone to provide for her family. The enslavement of Yazidi women by the Islamic State is a catastrophe on all levels, and yet we stand idly by, unable to free these women detained by IS. Planning to preserve womens dignity is an integral part of our work in the follow-up committee on women, such as paying ransoms to free those kidnapped by IS or at least offer a shelter to the Yazidi survivors. Once again I confirm that the crippling lack of financial allocations prevents us from taking any efficient step. Al-Monitor: In light of the foregoing, are you practically unable to help women from religious minorities in general, and Yazidi women who were liberated from IS in particular? Maghamiss: The lack of financial allocations and the ensuing halt of the endowments projects will not discourage us from continuing our work. We have been exerting all possible efforts. We had no other choice than taking action. For example, the divan has set on its list of our priorities building a camp for the Yazidi women who survived enslavement by IS as well as displaced Yazidi women with their children. I went on a field visit on Dec 1, 2015, to Sheikhan, an area where the divan had built a camp near the Yazidi sacred Lalish temple. The project cost 2.6 billion Iraqi dinars [$2.3 million], and it was assigned to a local contracting company. We are hoping to get the allocations from the Iraqi government in the future to pay the contractors financial dues [deferred payment]. By virtue of my work as responsible for women's affairs in the divan, I inspected the project and followed up on it by conducting a field visit. I also urged the contractor to complete the project and followed up on his needs. Together [with the contractor], we set a time limit to finish the project, not exceeding three months, however this period may be extended for two months for the completion of additional works that I am directly in charge of. This is the best we can do under the current circumstances. January 20, 2016 During a Jan. 20 meeting with election officials, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei discussed the attack on the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Iran, upcoming parliamentary elections and implementation of the nuclear deal between Iran and the six world powers. Khamenei called the Jan. 2 attack on the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and consulate in Mashhad very bad and wrong. He added that this attack, as well as one on the British Embassy in 2011, were both to the detriment of the country and Islam and I disliked both. He also said that young religious groups, often called Hezbollahis in Iran, should not be blamed for the attack. This is the first time Khamenei has publicly addressed the attack that resulted in Saudi Arabia cutting off all ties with Iran and led other Arab countries to downgrade their ties. His comments are not necessarily a surprise. He had previously condemned the attack on the British Embassy and in 1989 also spoke against attacks on embassies in general. The Jan. 2 protests outside the embassy erupted after Saudi Arabia executed Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr. After the attack, two security officials in the country were fired and the administration of President Hassan Rouhani was quick to distance itself from the actions of people it called extremists. Abbas Araghchi, deputy foreign minister of legal and international affairs, left Tehran on Jan. 19 to attend an emergency meeting in Jeddah of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. The meeting was called for by Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir to discuss the attack. Various countries have attempted to mediate between the two rivals, who are at odds over a number of regional wars. Quoting Turkish media, Fars News wrote that Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had obtained Irans agreement to meet with Saudi officials in Pakistan. Khamenei also discussed the upcoming parliamentary elections in February. There has been a great deal of controversy in Iran since more than half of the 12,000 candidates who registered were disqualified. Rouhani is reportedly in negotiations with the Guardian Council to reinstate some of those candidates. Khamenei addressed the mass disqualifications and clarified a previous comment he had made that even those who do not believe in the Islamic Republic and who do not accept him should still vote. He explained that the statement did not mean that people who do not believe in the system should become candidates in the elections. He continued, Nowhere in the world, when someone does not believe in the principles of the system, will they be allowed in the decision-making centers. Even in a country like America that portrays itself as a symbol of democracy which a few simple-minded [people] accept and promote in the era of rivalry between the Eastern and Western blocs [Cold War], an individual with the smallest accusation of sympathizing with socialism was sidelined. At the meeting, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, head of the Guardian Council, said the council will "not be influenced by pressure over its duties to vet the qualifications of candidates. On the nuclear deal, Khamenei also said that all of Irans demands were not met, but he thanked the nuclear negotiators for their honest efforts. However, he also said that thanking the United States for releasing blocked Iranian money as a result of the nuclear deal would be very ugly and dangerous and likened it to thanking a bully for giving back your house after he has taken it from you. January 19, 2016 While most Iranian officials are praising the implementation of the nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers that required Iran to reduce its nuclear capabilities for sanctions relief, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has expressed concern that the United States may fall short on its obligations in the nuclear deal. In response to a letter from President Hassan Rouhani, Khameneis website published a response thanking the president, the nuclear negotiators and specifically Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif for their efforts in the negotiations and removing the sanctions. However, Khamenei added five points of concern. Khamenei wrote that Rouhani should be careful that the opposing side completely fulfills its commitments, and that statements by some American politicians in the last two, three days have caused suspicions. Khamenei's second point was that all the officials should be warned that the solution to the countrys economic problems are tied to uninterrupted and wise efforts toward the resistance economy. Lifting the sanctions alone is not enough to open up the economy and [improve] peoples livelihood. Iran's resistance economy calls for building its own domestic capacities to make the country less vulnerable to foreign economic turmoil and sanctions. Khamenei also wrote, Attention must be paid, in the advertising of what was obtained in this deal, that a heavy price was paid. He continued, The writings and statements that try to ignore this reality and thank the West are not behaving truthfully toward public opinion. Khamenei was not specific here, but in order to receive sanctions relief, Iran drastically reduced its nuclear program, making some parts of it completely inoperable. Iran had endured nearly 10 years of UN Security Council resolutions that eventually led to "crippling sanctions," the assassination of nuclear scientists and cyberattacks on its nuclear program. These achievements that have been reached against the arrogance and bullying front are due to resistance and endurance, Khamenei wrote. This has to be a great lesson for all of us in all of the issues and events of the Islamic Republic. In his fifth point, Khamenei reiterated, Once again, I emphasize to not ignore the deceit and violation of commitments by the arrogant governments, especially America. The letter, published on Khameneis website and by Iranian news agencies Jan. 19, is not surprising. Khamenei has typically had lukewarm responses to all the steps and milestones of the nuclear deal. His distrust of the United States has been one of the hallmarks of his leadership. Officials from the Rouhani administration, hoping for a favorable outcome in next months parliamentary elections, have been touting the achievements of the nuclear deal, which ended a decadelong crisis between Iran and Western countries. During a Jan. 19 speech at a commemoration for the implementation of the nuclear deal, Rouhani said that Iran is the only country to have Chapter 7 sanctions removed without being invaded and the government toppled. Rouhani thanked Khamenei for accepting his proposal when he took office to move the responsibility for nuclear negotiations from the Supreme National Security Council to the Foreign Ministry. Zarif, the lead nuclear negotiator, told Iranian television that the most important achievement in the nuclear deal is the end of the environment of Iranophobia in the world, and that no one can claim that Iran is a threat to the region. Zarif also added that there were no negotiations on Irans defensive capabilities. January 19, 2016 The meeting Jan. 18 between the leaders of the two largest Christian parties and parliamentary blocs in Lebanon Gen. Michel Aoun, former leader of the Free Patriotic Movement and the Change and Reform bloc, and Samir Geagea, the head of the Lebanese Forces can be described as a miracle. After more than a year and half of negotiations, Aoun visited Geagea at the latter's headquarters in the village of Maarab, in Keserwan, Mount Lebanon. During a press conference following the meeting, Geagea announced his support as well as his partys support for Aouns candidacy for the vacant presidential seat a seat that was left empty after the term of President Michel Suleiman ended on May 24, 2014. Aoun and Geagea waged a bitter struggle against each other and were fierce rivals for nearly 30 years. When Geagea presided over the Lebanese Forces during the Lebanese civil war in 1986, he entered into a tense relationship with Aoun, who was then the Lebanese army commander. The multiple factors in this struggle included the quest to become the top Christian leader and the ambitious project to become president. The struggle was also influenced by the position and alliances with other Lebanese forces, and even with external forces that had a special influence on the Lebanese arena. The rivalry reached its climax following the vacancy of the presidential office between 1988 and 1990, when an open military civil war was waged between the two men. The civil war only ended when the Syrian army invaded Lebanon on Oct. 13, 1990, at which time Aoun was militarily defeated and was exiled to France. But after nearly four years, and in light of the Syrian tutelage over Lebanon, Geagea was put behind bars on April 21, 1994, on charges of committing several crimes during the military war. Thus, the first phase of the struggle between the two leaders ended with their mutual defeat that lingered on until the Syrian army's pullout from Lebanon on April 26, 2005. On May 7, 2005, Aoun returned to Beirut and Geagea was released in July 2005 in the wake of the Cedar Revolution. But suddenly, the mens old feud was rekindled as another presidential election loomed on the horizon, at the end of the term of President Emile Lahoud, who served for an extended mandate engineered by the Syrians. In this context, the UN Security Council issued, on Sept. 2, 2004, Resolution 1559 stipulating the holding of presidential elections in Lebanon and the withdrawal of all foreign that is, Syrian armed forces from the country. Once again, the relationship between the two men turned ice-cold; they chose to ally themselves with opposing political camps. During the first parliamentary elections, held after the Syrian withdrawal from the country, in the spring of 2005, Geagea allied with the Sunni majority team led by former Prime Minister Saad Hariri. Meanwhile, on Feb. 6, 2006, Aoun concluded a memorandum of understanding with the Shiite majority team led by Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. The divide between the largest Christian poles once again led to their mutual defeat. Lahouds presidential term ended on Nov. 24, 2007, and the presidential elections were postponed several times. Thus, Lebanon entered a new phase of being without a president that lasted until May 25, 2008, when Suleiman was elected to the post. During this period, tensions escalated to the point of direct military confrontations between Hariri and Hezbollah on May 7, 2008. This clash paved the way for a Qatari-Turkish settlement that ended with the election of Suleiman, who was commander of the armed forces and not affiliated with either Geagea or Aoun. As Suleimans tenure came to term, questions were raised whether Aoun and Geagea would reignite their struggle for the third time in a row. Indeed, this has been the case for a year and a half now. Geagea announced his candidacy for the presidency in 2014, supported by Hariri as his ally, while Aoun, supported by his Shiite allies, refused to accept Geageas candidacy. These two intransigent positions crippled the presidential election since the first session to elect a president on April 23, 2014. The paralysis eventually led the country after the end of Suleimans tenure into a new vacuum. Since January 2015, two new strange channels of communications were secretly opened in Beirut. Contacts were made behind the scenes between one of Aouns allies, member of parliament Suleiman Franjieh, and Hariri. Other contacts were also underway between Aoun and Geagea, through their mutual representatives, member of parliament Ibrahim Kanaan and Geagea media official Melhem Riachy. For over a year now, these two developments paved the way for two major occurrences. Following Franjiehs meeting with Hariri in Paris on Nov. 17, 2015, an agreement was orchestrated to back Franjieh as the new president. Aoun and Geagea rejected the agreement and a mutual rapprochement was engineered that ended Jan. 18 with Geagea backing Aouns candidacy. Thus, the hidden stitches in this ironic miracle would have been clarified. Aoun and Geageas relationship is marred by their previous bitter political struggle and their war over the presidential seat; their current positions reek of divergence on all levels. Aoun is Hezbollahs ally and Geagea is Hariris ally. Aoun maintains a good relationship with Iran. Geagea has a close relationship with Saudi Arabia. Aoun was a presidential candidate supported by Geagea's opponents. Up until the historical meeting between the two leaders, Geagea remained a presidential candidate backed by Aouns opponent Hariri, who suddenly turned against both leaders and nominated Franjieh as president. Yet, or rather consequently, Aoun finally met Geagea and the two reconciled. Kanaan one of the architects of this reconciliation told Al-Monitor after the Jan. 18 meeting, The agreement between the two leaders is comprehensive and goes beyond the presidency issue. More importantly, this breakthrough agreement aspires to attract all of the Lebanese forces. His counterpart, Riachy, also told Al-Monitor that this agreement is not directed against any particular party. He stated that it is an irreversible process. But what are its direct consequences on the presidential elections? Is the Aoun-Geagea agreement enough to secure Aouns seat in the presidential palace? The first reaction of presidential candidate Franjieh seemed negative. He was quoted as confirming that he maintains his candidacy, after having repeatedly declared that he would withdraw in favor of Aoun, if supported by Geagea. It seems that the other parties are reluctant to take a stance. But a Christian minister who helped orchestrate the Geagea-Aoun meeting told Al-Monitor that what happened Jan. 18 reflects an almost unanimous Christian support of Aoun as president. The minister told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, More than 85% of the Christian public opinion is now with Aoun, after Geagea and his party granted him full support. If this quasi-Christian consensus proves to be unable to lead to the election of a president, things may then move toward radical developments. It will then be clear that the entire Lebanese political regime is no longer viable. In other words, the miracle of Jan. 18 raised the following ultimatum: either Aoun is elected as president, or the Lebanese Republic will no longer be the same and will no longer have a president unless under a different political and constitutional system. It seems clear that what pushed Geagea to support Aouns candidacy is the fact that his ally, Hariri, backed his foe, Franjieh, without consulting him. But the recent rapprochement between the West and Tehran may have repercussions on the Lebanese political scene, as Hezbollah has supported the Geagea-Aoun meeting and is excited about Aouns chances of being elected president of Lebanon. January 20, 2016 Israeli Minister of Defense Moshe Ya'alon has reportedly decided to expand the Etzion settlement bloc in the West Bank to include a compound later intended to become a new settlement. Located between the Etzion bloc and Hebron, the new settlement would create an Israeli corridor stretching from Jerusalem to the city of Hebron. The plan has been severely criticized by the US administration. State Department spokesperson John Kirby condemned the decision, asserting that it hinders attempts to reach a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. Continued settlement activity and expansion raises honest questions about Israel's long-term intentions, Kirby said Jan. 8 at a press briefing. The Palestinian reaction was much sharper. In the view of the Palestinian leadership, the move is aimed at sabotaging the last chance for a two-state solution. A senior Palestinian security official who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity angrily stated, This is Ya'alon's way of thanking the Palestinian Authority's [PA] security cooperation. The minister of defense is well aware of the fact that the PA security forces have averted attacks, mainly by Hamas, against Israelis. President Mahmoud Abbas is taking considerable political risks on the issue. The approval of a new settlement that hinders the establishment of a two-state solution is an affront against all moderates in the Palestinian leadership and might serve as a prescription for enhancing violence. The security official also discussed the political situation within the Palestine Liberation Organization and the PA leadership. According to him, the PA has come to a dead end. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's settlement policies on the one hand and the international preoccupation with Iran and the Islamic State on the other leave no glimmer of hope for a political process on a two-state solution. In parallel, the economic situation in the West Bank has worsened because of Israels stringent security measures across the territory. Abbas is perceived as weak, and rumors continue to spread on social networks about his possible resignation. According to a Dec. 14 poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR), a majority of Palestinians support his departure from office. Inside the leadership, there is a growing camp calling for Abbas to make a drastic move. Only very few, said the official, support Abbas' policy of sustaining the status quo. The Palestinian official said various Fatah elements are currently considering three options for altering the status quo. One option is to hold new elections for the presidency and parliament so younger and more combative Fatah members can take the lead. Another option is to dismantle the PA to put the entire economic onus for administering the territories on Israel and the political onus on the international community. The other option would be to reach an agreement with Hamas to launch a combined, armed intifada. With these options in play, the recent move by the Israeli minister of defense has strengthened the hand of the hard-liners in Fatah who favor armed struggle. The senior security official, who has been an active player in the peace process, now supports an armed uprising. At this point, the Palestinian leadership has yet to decide on a strategy that would lead toward statehood. The Israeli government, however, has settled on its strategy, and Ya'alons decision, backed by the prime minister, is strategic in nature. The latter aims at creating, through settlement expansion, two irreversible processes: jeopardizing the territorial contiguity of a potential Palestinian state and increasing the number of settlers. The second process is designed to prevent any future Israeli prime minister from evacuating settlers. The European reaction to Ya'alons announcement was no less critical than the Americans'. A senior EU official in Brussels who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity said that she was extremely concerned about the ramifications of the announcement. She said, It is a clear signal to the Palestinians that the Israeli government will not take into consideration the interests of Abbas, and therefore we foresee a radicalization of Fatah. According to the official, the EU is very concerned about the economic situation in the West Bank. It has become increasingly difficult to advance European development projects on the ground because of Israeli security measures and PA dysfunction. Without a political process on the horizon, she foresees chaotic developments. Indeed, the writing is on the wall. The relatively low-level, sporadic terror attacks by individuals will probably be replaced by more organized armed uprisings. According to the above-mentioned PSR poll, two-thirds of Palestinians support an armed intifada. Is it, however, avoidable? The Palestinian security official replied to this question by stating, Its simple. Instead of announcing every week a new settlement, Israel has to freeze settlement construction and release 40 pre-Oslo prisoners. The next day, we shall come to the negotiation table. More settlements will lead to more terror. January 15, 2016 KHARTOUM, Sudan Increasingly, Sudan appears to be assuming greater space in Saudi Arabias foreign policy. Last year, Sudanese warplanes and troops joined the Saudi-led war in Yemen. Moreover, Sudan is the only country, besides Bahrain, which has joined Saudi Arabia in recently cutting diplomatic relations with Iran. This followed the attacks on Saudi diplomatic compounds in Iran after the execution of Saudi Shiite Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. Of further note, Riyad's announcement of a 34-member coalition against the Islamic State includes Sudan, which as recently as 2013 saw its President Omar al-Bashir banned from flying over Saudi airspace en route to Iran. While the Islamic Coalition is not a military alliance, Khartoums involvement in Yemen effectively makes it a military partner of Riyadh, cooperation for which it has reportedly received $2.2 billon. Mindful of the above, has Sudan really gone pro-Saudi? Or is it just increasingly anti-Shiite? Sudans acceptance of Saudi Arabias cold hard cash, as one report describes it, does not in itself signal a fundamental change in Sudans political orientation. Indeed, while the sensational political shift toward Riyadh is new, Saudi investment in Sudan is not. The Saudis have long been the biggest single investors in Sudan, having pumped an estimated $11 billion into the country and particularly in agriculture. For instance, almost all of Sudans sheep and mutton exports go to Saudi Arabia, one of the reasons why sheep is exorbitantly expensive for Sudanese even in rural areas, where an animal goes for some $200. Sudanese moves against Shiite political power in the region also suggest that there is more to Khartoums repositioning in its foreign policy than just the lure of petrodollars from abroad. The Islamic Coalition initiative has already been criticized for ignoring the Shiite and Shiite-related elements of the regional political structure for instance, excluding both Iraq and Syria apparently due to their close ties to Iran. In this vein, it should be borne in mind that the Saudi-led war in Yemen is also widely seen as a proxy war against Shiite Iran and its allies. For Sudan, this endorsement of and participation in efforts to freeze out Iran is new. Until recently, Tehran and Khartoum had maintained good relations for decades, particularly in the field of weapons trade and the exchange of armaments more generally. Commenting on this, and the Sudanese governments simultaneous closure of Iranian centers and cultural institutes, Yassin Ibrahim of the University of Al-Nileen in Khartoum told Al-Monitor, [The government] wants to stop the spread of Shiism. Indeed, Sudan now appears to be more than ever before focused on countering the spread of Shiism, as some put it. Yet, its current pro-Saudi posture is in essence ambiguous. On the one hand, it is clear that the Saudis and the Sudanese are consciously crafting a mutually convenient financial and political alliance. However, the relationship is perplexing from a sectarian angle. Riyadh has long since championed Wahhabism, the predominant brand of Islam within its borders. And indeed, as one UK-based Sudanese academic told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, due to the sensitivity of Sudans sectarian makeup, In recent years Salafism has increasingly taken root. However, Salafists in Sudan have failed to attain a strong political platform. They have instead continuously had a tense relationship with the central government, and also with adherents of Sufism, another branch of Islam that is predominant in Sudan. The most prominent Salafist group is known as Ansar al-Sunnah, which literally means "followers of the tradition of Prophet Muhammad." Naturally, its emergence has been seen as a direct result of Sudans links with Saudi Arabia. Indeed, a high-ranking member of the group who also serves as a government official told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, Ansar al-Sunnah has widespread relations with Saudi Arabia, and it has taken the approach of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab [the founder of Wahhabism]. Ansar al-Sunnah, through its members, is vocal at universities and in fraternities, and builds at a prolific rate, particularly when it comes to the construction of religious schools and mosques. Apparently now joined by a strong common interest in fighting Shiism, Sudans government and Ansar al-Sunnah should in theory be in agreement with each other. The Saudi version of Salafism is widely known for its vitriol against Shiism and other branches of Islam, including Sufi and Sunni schools of thought. The Sudanese brand of Salafism appears to be no exception to this rule. Sheikh Mustafa al-Mukhtar, an Ansar al-Sunnah imam based in northern Sudan, told Al-Monitor that Sufism and Shiism have nothing to do with Islam. The UK-based academic, who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, agrees, They do not speak against them [Sufis] publicly, though privately, they would like the demise of all Sufi orders in Sudan and elsewhere among Muslims. The Sudanese official also displayed the same attitude, saying that the execution of the Shiite rejectionist Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr is satisfying and necessary for [Saudi Arabia], because he was destabilizing the[ir] security and the Holy Mosques. However, things are more complex than that in Sudan. The Sudanese official who is also a member of Ansar al-Sunnah told Al-Monitor, Ansar Al-Sunnah is a group [that has] deviated from the path of teaching people the religion. They became involved in politics and started to think about ruling the country. This link between the spread of Salafism and related Salafist political influence has been witnessed elsewhere in the past: In a 2013 study of Egypt, Tunisia, Bosnia, Pakistan and Indonesia, the European Parliament concluded, Financial aid granted by Salafists/Wahhabists, whether by institutional or private [donors], systematically pursues a goal of political influence. Ansar al-Sunnah sternly rejects accusations of its intentions to seize power especially after its official entry into the Cabinet last June, when Mohammed Abu Zaid Mustaf, one of the groups members, was appointed minister of tourism. Ansar al-Sunnah Imam Mukhtar used the political trajectory of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood as an example to be avoided in his conversation with Al-Monitor. This is not about changing the government. We want the middle path its not about force, its about belief, he said. Unsurprisingly, the relationship between the central government and Ansar al-Sunnah has been and despite the groups recent inclusion in the Cabinet continues to be, tense. The authorities have tried to contain the Salafist groups activities, and in return Ansar al-Sunnah has accused the government of harassment, criticizing the latter on a regular basis. Yet, for Sudanese such as Ibrahim of Karthoum's University of Al-Nileen, on balance, it is a good thing that Salafists are allowed to be in Sudan, as they provide the money to construct public services that the government does not. Thus, in the grander scheme of things, it seems that Bashir appears to be resorting to accommodation rather than confrontation in his efforts to contain the group. In sum, while Sudans shift to Saudi Arabia may appear surprising, the reality is that the relationship between the two countries is complex and far from new. If anything, the future of the new partnership between the two countries will likely be told from the future of groups, such as Ansar al-Sunnah, and the development of their alleged ties with Saudi Arabia. January 19, 2016 For some time, Turkey's attention has been concentrated on the plight of Syrian Turkmens as they fight the Assad regime and the Islamic State, while pleas from Iraqi Turkmens have largely fallen on deaf ears in Ankara. This discrepancy was made apparent after Iraqi Turkmen leaders recently complained of what they claim are the expansionist aims of the Iraqi Kurds at the expense of the Turkmens. This indifference to the Iraqi Turkmens, is likely, however, to cause fresh headaches down the line for the government of Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, accused of using the Iraq and Syrian Turkmens willy-nilly to advance its own agenda. Iraqi Turkmen leaders are now claiming that the Kurdistan Regional Government is using the war against IS to expand its borders in northern Iraq. They say the KRGs plans also include taking control of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. Turkmen leaders accused the KRG last week of digging a long trench along the front line in the battle against IS, which they claim is actually a demarcation line indicating the lands it wants to wrest from Baghdad. "We see this move to dig a trench as suspicious," Ersad Salihi, the head of the Iraqi Turkmen Front (ITF), told Agence France-Presse. "It starts in Rabia and ends in Khanaqin," he said, referring to a northwestern town near the Syrian border and a city 400 kilometers (250 miles) away in the southeast near the Iranian border. In a separate interview with Hurriyet, Salihi said Kirkuk has also been surrounded by trenches and that 80% of the lands where the Turkmens live have been added to territory controlled by the KRG. Majed al-Gharawi, a member of the Iraqi parliaments Defense and Security Commission, also believes that the Kurds are preparing to realize their ultimate dream of an independent Kurdistan, and have started drawing their borders. The government of [Iraqi Prime Minister] Haider al-Abadi is busy fighting IS and therefore unable to open a front against the Kurds as they dig these trenches, Gharawi was quoted as saying by the Turkish daily Yeni Yuzyil. Due to the central governments inability to provide sufficient protection, Kirkuk is currently under de facto KRG control and guarded by Kurdish peshmerga fighters. It has, however, been a longstanding ambition of the Kurds to take official control of the city. Salihi told Hurriyet that the trenches being dug by the KRG were now progressing toward the town of Tuz Khormato, 88 kilometers (55 miles) south of Kirkuk, a potential flashpoint between Turkmens and Kurds. The town witnessed intercommunal violence in November due to a dispute over a checkpoint. While the risk of further violence appears to have receded for now, divisions between the towns Kurdish and Turkmen communities are said to be sharper than ever. Spurred on by domestic nationalist sentiments, Ankara had long opposed the territorial ambitions of the Iraqi Kurds. It had also argued that Kirkuk is a historically Turkmen city, and that its demography was tampered with under Saddam Hussein, and later by the Kurds, does not alter this fact. Ankara also opposed the idea of a referendum on Kirkuks future status, arguing that the KRG had moved in Kurds from elsewhere to bolster the claim that the city is predominantly Kurdish. Ankara even suggested at one time that for the Kurds to grab Kirkuk would be cause for war. This approach was also in line with Turkish irredentism, according to which Kirkuk and Mosul rightly belong to Turkey, from which they were torn away unjustly by the victorious powers after World War I. Developments in Iraq and Syria have, however, changed Ankaras calculus with regard to the Turkmens in both countries, leaving the Davutoglu government facing charges of cynically using the Turkmens and later deserting and abandoning them in difficult situations. Suha Umar, who knows the region well, having served in Jordan as ambassador in 1995-1998, is among those who believe that the Turkmens were used to promote the interests of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) rather than Turkeys national interests. The AKP went into this Turkmen business for its own political interests, much of which had to do with oil, Umar told Al-Monitor. He said the situation changed fundamentally after Ankara started developing close ties with the KRG, especially in the strategic energy field. Circumstances have changed and Ankara today relies on Barzanis support in the region. It is therefore not in a position to object to what the KRG is doing, Umar said. He was referring to KRG President Massoud Barzani, who has also established warm ties with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Umar argued that the Syrian Turkmens were also being used by Ankara now, especially with regard to the transportation of illicit oil from Syria. Many recall that until the Syrian crisis, Ankara did not even have a policy with regard to the Syrian Turkmens, presumably not to anger the Assad regime it had developed good ties with prior to 2011. Erdogan, who was prime minister at the time, and President Bashar al-Assad often referred to each other as brother then. The focus at that stage was on Iraqi Turkmens based in Kirkuk and operating under the ITF banner. The ITF was supported by the Turkish state (some argue it was established by Turkey) to block the political ambitions of Iraqi Kurds in the oil-rich city, among other objectives. Times have changed radically since those days, though, and Turkey and the KRG are close allies today, following a historic about-turn by Ankara that left the startled Turkmens in the cold. As a sign of these close ties, Barzani was almost alone in supporting Turkey recently, after Baghdad with US support objected to the deployment of Turkish special forces in the town of Bashiqa near Mosul, and called for them to be withdrawn from Iraq. Tellingly, the few that were withdrawn were sent to regions controlled by the KRG. Ankaras apparent indifference to the pleas of the Turkmens in Kirkuk has also fueled speculation that it has reconciled itself to the fact that this city will most likely remain in Kurdish hands. Al-Monitors Fehim Tastekin reported recently that the Iraqi Turkmens are also blaming Turkey for the fall of Mosul to IS in 2014. The Davutoglu government is also under fire from the opposition in Turkey, accused of preparing the groundwork for Sunni Kurds to be the major stakeholder, not just in Kirkuk but also in Mosul after it is liberated from IS. Ozturk Yilmaz, a deputy from the main opposition Republican People's Party, criticized the government for attempting to silently deploy extra forces in Bashiqa, where some Turkish troops have been training peshmerga and local Sunni fighters against IS. Why did these soldiers go there? What was their aim? Are 600 soldiers going to save Mosul? Are we going to liberate Mosul with our own hands only to hand it over to someone else? Yilmaz asked during an address to parliament in December, indicating that it was not clear what the governments strategy was. Yilmazs remarks were especially significant since he was Turkeys consul general in Mosul when it fell to IS in 2014, and was held hostage with his staff by the group for 101 days. It is not clear how the Davutoglu government plans to extricate itself from this situation; it would need to appease the Iraqi Turkmens, in order to also avoid a nationalist backlash at home, while not harming its ties with the KRG. The picture should become clearer after the battle to liberate Mosul begins in earnest and the role Turkey plays in it comes into better focus. January 19, 2016 DIYARBAKIR, Turkey Turkeys ongoing security operations in the Kurdish-majority southeast are aimed at crushing Kurdish demands for self-rule and the grounds for any democratic discussion on the issue, the co-chair of the Democratic Regions Party (DBP) said in an interview with Al-Monitor. Kamuran Yuksek argued that the entrenchment of armed Kurdish militants behind ditches and barricades in residential neighborhoods was a reaction to Ankaras policies rather than a cause of the current clashes. He warned the conflict could grow into a civil war. Yuksek studied electronic communications at Ankara University from 1997 to 2000, but dropped out to join the Kurdish political movement. In 2009, he was arrested in a massive crackdown on Kurdish activists accused of collaborating with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), and served five years in prison. After his release, he was elected co-chair of the DBP, the second pro-Kurdish party after the Peoples Democratic Party (HDP). More than 100 Kurdish mayors in the southeast belong to the DBP, whose main objective is to steer political preparations for eventual self-rule in the region. The text of the Jan. 12 interview follows: Al-Monitor: What does the DBPs autonomy demand entail? Yuksek: The HDP, too, has the issue of autonomy on its program but we are the ones who are working more actively on the issue. There is almost no democracy in the world today without some kind of a decentralized governance model like autonomy, self-rule, federation or federal states. In all countries with an advanced level of democracy, power has been decentralized, and this is how economic and social problems have been resolved. We are asking for decentralization of power and the creation of local governance models. We call this democratic self-rule and envisage the creation of [self-governed] regions. Al-Monitor: Have you mustered enough public support for that? Yuksek: The Justice and Development Party (AKP) has greatly criminalized the issue, preventing it from being discussed as a political project. It has portrayed it as a terrorist activity and shifted the problem to a confrontational ground to prevent the emergence of sufficient public support. We are faced with a government that portrays anyone supporting local democracy as a traitor and immediately launches judicial processes against them. Al-Monitor: How did the issue of self-rule transform into a problem of clashes in the trenches? Yuksek: This is a problem created by the government. Our party has been closely following the issue from the very beginning. The self-rule demands were not raised after the trenches or the clashes. The popular neighborhood councils created had begun advocating transition to an autonomous model. They said the central authority could no longer be accepted in its current form and that power should be transferred to local administrations. The government reacted very harshly, launching a campaign of oppression. Violence was heavily used against those who resisted. Thats how the problem started. Then the government moved quickly to portray the problem as a problem of terrorism and Turkeys partition. This was meant to delegitimize the self-rule demands and portray them as terrorist demands to the public in Turkey. I can say that people were unlikely to resort to violent means if the government had not reacted that harshly. The government worried that the project would garner popular support and shifted the problem to a confrontational one. Al-Monitor: Why would the government do that? Yuksek: The [settlement] process was impaired with attitudes that President [Recep Tayyip] Erdogan and the government adopted after the Feb. 28, 2015, agreement on a road map for settlement. Self-rule, local democracy, all those issues were off the table. The government resorted to policies aimed at preventing the Kurds both in Syria and Turkey from acquiring any status. It chose the confrontational approach because it wanted to bury the issue. A decision of war on the Kurds was made at the National Security Councils meeting on Oct. 30, 2014. They began making up pretexts to shelve the settlement process, and eventually succeeded. Their project envisages a presidential system, seeking to shift local powers into the hands of a single person in the center. The AKP is seeking to centralize all power, while our project is just the opposite. So this is a clash between the presidential system and the self-rule model. Al-Monitor: Do you believe self-rule could be achieved by digging trenches? Yuksek: No, this is not the way to achieve self-rule and resolve problems. Yet one could understand the trenches in the context of a cause-and-effect relationship. I mean, for years, everybody tended to accuse the Kurds of quarreling. But when you go to the origin of the problem, you see that the Kurds have faced denial ever since the creation of the republic [in 1923], and that their identity and rights have not been recognized. Certain Kurds have risen up against this. You cannot resolve the problem if you only see its results but not its causes. So, the trenches today are a result of the governments rejection of the Kurdish demand for self-rule, an outcome of the problem. The trenches or the barricades is a form of defense that is seen as a reaction. One has to ask, why are the trenches there? Why have people suddenly resorted to trenches? As you know, the president recently said there is no Kurdish problem. So there is a state of denial. The means of democratic discussion have been ruled out. When we bring the issue up as a party, they take us to court. They want to lift the parliamentary immunity of [HDP] deputies. What for? Because they advocate democratic self-rule. Because there is no democratic discussion, the issue remains on the agenda in the context of trenches and barricades. Al-Monitor: Some say the PKK resorted to this method in order to keep Turkey busy, away from meddling in Syria. What would you say on that? Yuksek: The whole process has become intertwined. A regional process is underway. Yet this is not a situation where internal unrest has been stirred in a bid to stop Turkey from further obstructing the Kurds in Rojava [Syrian Kurdistan] in their quest to obtain status: Rojava is on the international agenda, while the Kurdish problem is not a problem of the Kurds in Syria alone but of the Kurds in Turkey as well. The solution of the problem in Rojava does not resolve the problem of the Kurds in Turkey. If the whole region is to be redesigned, if the Middle East is to be restructured, the situation of the Kurds in Turkey, Syria and Iran should be taken up together. Al-Monitor: Where do you think the current clashes could lead? Yuksek: If the government refuses to change its policies and continues like this, the country could descend into a civil war. We are already in such a situation, more or less. A part of Diyarbakirs population has been unable to go out for 41 days because of curfews, besieged by tens of thousands of soldiers and police. The people are unable to meet their basic needs. What are we supposed to call this? Tanks have moved to streets in cities. If this goes on like this, the country could be gradually dragged into a civil war. The responsibility lies with the AKP government. Al-Monitor: Do you think the conflict could spill over to western Turkey? Yuksek: Unfortunately, I do. The Kurds are being killed in the streets and they feel humiliated. The number of civilian deaths has reached 230, all killed by the army or the police. This has been greatly disturbing the Kurds in western Turkey, and the accumulation of anger could soon explode. Al-Monitor: How could this trend be stopped? Yuksek: We dont want the problem to grow into a civil war, we want a settlement through democratic means. What we are asking for is not something impossible for Turkey. We want that universal norms of democracy be implemented here as well. Al-Monitor: What should be done to stop the clashes in the immediate term? Yuksek: We think that international and domestic public pressure are necessary. The government has rejected everything we have proposed to end the clashes. As a first step, curfews should be lifted. This could create an atmosphere to sit down and talk. The government, however, is currently far from such a move because there is no pressure on it. It has legitimized the situation, portraying its war as a struggle against terrorism. Al-Monitor: You went to Russia in December as part of a Kurdish delegation. Did you discuss this issue there as well? Yuksek: Turkeys internal problems were not part of the discussions there. But Russia is following the developments. We made no request to Russia to put pressure on Turkey. The expectations we expressed vis-a-vis Russia were along the following lines: Russia is an influential power in the region, especially in Syria, and the Kurds want to live in freedom in their homelands in this region. So, the Russians, too, need to refresh their point of view on the issue and acknowledge the status of the Kurds. We made no request concerning specifically the Kurds in Turkey. We are watching the Russia-China-Iran bloc, but we have no intention to be part of this bloc or to seek the settlement of problems via this bloc. January 19, 2016 Is Turkey actually fighting the Islamic State? Or is the accusation that Turkey supports IS valid? If you ask President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, no other state combats IS as much as Turkey does. After the deadly suicide bombing Jan. 12 in Istanbuls Sultanahmet area, he was asked how sincere Turkey is about fighting IS. An irate Erdogan replied, Turkey is the primary target of all terror organizations operating in the region, because we are combating all of them without discrimination. Is there any other country in the world apart from Turkey that combats the [IS] terror organization as we do and pays so much doing so? Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu also said Turkey is determined in its battle against IS. In about 48 hours, we attacked [IS] with about 500 tank and artillery rounds, Davutoglu said a few days after the assault in Istanbul. We hit [IS] positions and bunkers with all our means at the Syrian border and at Bashiqa. About 200 [IS] militants were killed in the last 48 hours. There are several reasons why such statements by Erdogan and Davutoglu don't have much of an impact and often aren't taken seriously. The first is Turkey's support of organizations fighting against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Sometimes those groups include IS jihadis. For years, Turkey has been criticized for its porous borders that allow fighters and weapons to pass unhindered. When it is pointed out that jihadis control border terrain and Turkey is becoming another Pakistan, Turkish officials merely respond that such allegations are exaggerated. When Jabhat al-Nusra and then IS became well-established and prominent, Turkeys argument was, Assad has sponsored these organizations. Their source is the regime. If the regime goes, then this question will go away too. But when the United States added Jabhat al-Nusra to its terrorist list in 2012, Turkey covertly continued to support that group. By 2014, Ankaras policy was simple: If IS was fighting against opposition groups supported by Turkey, it was a nasty organization, but IS became a good group when it fought against the Kurds, designated by Ankara as the enemy. Turkey used IS as a tool to suppress the Kurds who had declared autonomy in Rojava, the western Kurdistan region of northern Syria. Another question arose when Turkey basically handed over its Mosul Consulate to IS in June 2014, believing IS wouldn't touch the Turks. The consulate staff was taken hostage and had to be rescued through bargaining. Turkey also allegedly has financed IS. Despite constant warnings from the United States, Turkey did not try to block the transfer of IS oil through its border until March 2014. Although some measures were taken to cut the pipelines across the Assi River at Hatay, oil trade continued via traditional smuggling routes. The oil IS was producing in Syria's Hasakah and Deir ez-Zor provinces was smuggled into Turkey by mixing it with the Kurdish oil that was legally exported to Turkey by the Kurdistan Regional Government. This oil flow under the guise of Kurdish oil was not a secret to those monitoring the region, even before the Russians announced it as a major discovery. Al-Monitor's Iraqi and Syrian sources said, Arab tankers take the [IS]-produced oil across to Iraq to oil terminals at Zakho and Dahuk. There the [IS] oil is mixed with Kurdish oil. Then Turkish tankers carry it into Turkey legally as Kurdish oil. Another point that raised questions about Turkeys truthfulness in combating IS was how Ankara took a position against IS only under US pressure. While Ankara continued bargaining with the United States on the concept of combating terror, Ankara declared Incirlik Air Base available for US and coalition air operations in Syria but then suddenly switched its focus from IS to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). Despite two artillery salvos against IS after Turkish soldiers came under fire twice in July, Turkey mobilized its military might against the PKK instead. Politically, Ankara launched a propaganda campaign equating the US-supported Kurdish nationalist Democratic Union Party and its military wing with IS. Turkish security agencies said they had been aware of the suspected bombers before attacks in Suruc, Diyarbakir and Ankara, but were not actively monitoring them. The government, instead of focusing on the IS role, diluted the case by saying those responsible could have been from the PKK, IS, the Syrian regime or the Revolutionary Peoples Liberation Party-Front. The government also imposed news blackouts on all attacks as yet another attempt to make people forget. Turkey's ambiguities in the legal struggle against IS also raise questions. News of IS militants apprehended and then released, or the potential suicide bombers who were known but not apprehended, gave rise to suspicions that Turkey plays a double-sided game. Davutoglu's statement, There is a list of people who can launch suicide attacks in Turkey. If you take any action before they actually attack, then you are protested. Most commentators viewed that as an admission of a security flaw. Immediately after the Sultanahmet bombing, dozens of people accused of IS membership were rounded up across the country. This naturally justified the question, if Turkey had the security intelligence to detain so many people in one night, why didnt it take action before the bombing? Then came reports that the national intelligence service MIT had warned security agencies on Dec. 17 and Jan. 4 that tourist sites and foreigners could be targeted. The only court action against IS operations in Turkey followed the complaints of families of the young people who had joined the organization. Of 67 suspects listed in the charge sheet submitted to the court, 23 were named by their own families; 29 were released. This and similar cases give the impression that legal action against IS is not taken very seriously. Government officials say such allegations are baseless. According to them, in the first 11 months of 2015, 1,200 people were detained on suspicion of links to IS and at least 350 were arrested. Still other situations raise doubt about Turkeys stance against IS in Iraq. For example, Turkey, which wants to play a role in the future of Mosul and promote the role of its Sunni allies, is still keeping troops at the Bashiqa camp despite protests from Baghdad. Also, Turkey has delayed blocking the 98-kilometer (61-mile) border strip that serves as IS' window to the world. Many parties, and certainly the Iraqi government, are asking why, if Turkey is sincere in the struggle against IS, doesn't it cleanse its border of those terrorists? Only now is Turkey fortifying this border strip with concrete walls to end such accusations. Turkey firmly opposes the Kurdish People's Protection Units operations lest they create a Kurdish corridor at Jarablus, which is still controlled by IS. While Turkey intensified its military operations against its own Kurds, its military mobility along the border was seriously curtailed with the fear that Russia would retaliate after Turkey downed one of its jets. Turkey is now in a position of not even implementing its own game plan, never mind joining the common front against IS. We now detect a new option to implement the Turkish plan that entails deploying forces friendly to Turkey to Jarablus, should IS be pushed out. Which are those forces that would be left? IS cousins Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham. Turkey appears to be on the perilous course of resorting to proxies in its battles. No doubt, these organizations will become headaches for Turkey, just as IS did. New York Times article on the prime ministers popularity stirs talk about US perception towards its northern neighbour. In Canada, we are often torn between feeling ignored and getting too much of the wrong sort of attention. A common refrain is that people in the US know nothing about us. Then we usually add that they dont take us seriously enough, even if they do notice us. We just cant make up our minds. Take last weeks opinion piece in the New York Times headlined With the rise of Justin Trudeau, Canada is suddenly.hip? READ MORE: Note to world leaders from Canada: This is how to welcome refugees It was like something written by a marketing professional with a sense of humour. Gentle gybes about our weather (cold) and old-school national icons (often bland) are interspersed with praise for todays young filmmakers, fashion designers, artists and a country on the cusp of change. Theres even a sort of index below the article, just in case readers need more information about these counter-intuitively edgy Canucks people like film directors Xavier Dolan or Sarah Polley, rapper Drake, pop star Justin Bieber and Tanya Taylor, who has designed dresses for the US First Lady Michelle Obama. I thought the piece was fun. The praise was palpable, often lavish; the jokes certainly worth a smile or two. But judging by the social and legacy media reaction up here, we dont want to be hip. Or perhaps its that pesky question mark. Hip? You mean were not? Some found offensive the description of Canada as a frozen cultural wasteland populated with hopelessly unstylish citizens. Thats even though the writer was quick to say that view was outdated. Oh. You mean we used to be hopelessly unstylish in our frozen cultural wasteland? Twitter was its usual acerbic, abbreviated self. Canadas always been hip and Yep, known this for years summed up the breezy putdowns. Others bemoaned US delusions of cultural superiority or simply pointed out that its unhip to say youre hip, whatever that means. The thoughtful columnist Colby Cosh found the Times hip list solid proof that Canadians English Canadians as opposed to those from French-speaking Quebec seem to lack anational genius, a distinct collective personality or set of practical strengths of the kind the Australians or the Scots or the Swiss are understood to have. Writing for the National Post, he said most of those praised were people spawned in our northern climes whod sought and received success in the US a most Canadian form of achievement it seems. Comfortable in its own skin But the man who touched off this firestorm, writer Peter Stevenson, protests he had nothing but the highest motives in penning the piece. Speaking to Canadas CTV television news network, Stevenson said he was surprised to find so many young interesting Canadians challenging US perceptions of the northern neighbour. No surprise then, according to Stevenson, that the hippest of all, the leader of the new in-crowd, is the new Prime Minister with an old surname, Justin Trudeau. He embodies a confident, no longer self-effacing Canada thats comfortable in its own skin, says Stevenson. Down here in America, were living through sort of a bizarre, political season and theres something very refreshing about a prime minister whos talking about compassion to Syrian refugees, and not building walls. Thats of course a reference to Donald Trumps bellicose Republican Party primary campaign. No, we dont have the equivalent of that in Canada, not yet, anyway. Those of us of a certain age and level of experience have, of course, seen this happen before. Many a US or overseas writer has found merit in our land. And many a time have we squirmed in the afterglow of their praise. In fact, the reaction to Stevensons piece shows that we havent changed all that much. We still care a lot about what Americans think about us. And once they tell us, we rush to parse, agonise over and criticise their words. Politely of course. Were Canadians after all. Sorry. Ex-nominee for vice president lends support to billionaire candidate, who is accused of not being conservative enough. Sarah Palin is still the darling of many in the Republican Party in the United States. She sprang to national prominence when she was selected by John McCain to be his running mate in the 2008 presidential election. She wasnt well known outside her home state of Alaska, but was thought to bring youth and vitality to a ticket, which also needed some diversity. Still, it was an odd choice and one those closest to McCain say he regrets. Since resigning as Alaskan governor in 2009, Palin has spent her time building her brand, her popularity and her fortune. READ MORE: Donald Trump calls for halt on Muslims entering the US Her autobiography, Going Rogue sold more than two million copies and became one of the fastest selling political books of all time. She has appeared in several reality shows and is a regular pundit on one of Americas cable news channels. Palin has endorsed several right wing candidates running for office, although her record in doing so is mixed. She has had some significant successes, backing Ted Cruz early in his run for the Senate in the state of Texas. But she also supported Christine ODonnell, who lost heavily in Delaware after video emerged of her claiming to have dabbled in witchcraft. Shes been friends with Donald Trump for years. She enthusiastically backed the businessmans campaign to have President Barack Obama produce a birth certificate to prove he was born in the US, and therefore eligible to run for president. And she sought Trumps advice when she was considering her own presidential run in 2012. But so many of his past positions clash with her own. He has said hes very pro-choice on the question of abortion; he once supported a ban on assault rifles; and hes talked of his admiration for universal health care. All of which Sarah Palin has hammered. Significant endorsement So her endorsement of Trump in the presidential race is significant. Not least because, so far, he has failed to win any big name support: not a single governor or senator. She flew to the state of Iowa to stand by her choice and urge people to vote for him when they gather to caucus on February 1. By tradition, Iowa is the first state to vote for the presidential nominees for the November 2016 election. Palin gives Trump protection against the attacks on his New York Values, shorthand for him not being conservative enough to be a Republican. She gives the three-times married, non-church going billionaire coverage with evangelicals, who form a big part of the Republican party in Iowa and who adore Palin. And she gives him credibility with conservative women, a constituency he has struggled to win over. Shes essentially saying to all these groups, Its ok to vote for Trump. Her endorsement speech was typical Sarah Palin. It was folksy, it was loud and it was at times garbled. Hes got the guts to wear the issues that need to be spoken about and debate on his sleeve, where the rest of some of these establishment candidates, they just wanted to duck and hide, she said. And she added, You quit footing the bill for these nations who are oil-rich, were paying for some of their squirmishes that have been going on for centuries. The first contest in the Republican side is narrowing to a battle between Trump and Cruz. And so Palins endorsement is a setback for the Texas senator. Cruz insists he remains a big fan of Palin, acknowledging her role in getting him into the Senate. But earlier his campaign spokesman claimed the endorsement would harm her reputation as a supporter of those who support true conservative values. Palins backing came just a day after evangelical pastor, Jerry Falwell Jr. praised Trump. Falwell is popular among conservative and church-going voters. But Trump will be more pleased with the support from Palin. And the publicity, glamour and, more importantly, the support that she brings. As Iraq braced for war with the US, Iraqi AP reporter Salah Nasrawi was torn between journalistic duty and patriotism. On the eve of the 1991 Gulf War, I was working as a correspondent for the American news agency, the Associated Press (AP), in Saddam Husseins Iraq. My job was not only demoralising, exhausting and hazardous, it was virtually suicidal. War was looming, and I was pulled between my sense of duty and my sense of patriotism the dilemma of a native journalist reporting on a conflict for a news organisation that, in theory, belonged to the other side to the enemy. I had already spent more than six years reporting for the BBC and AP on the Iraq-Iran war, which ended in August 1988. For much of that time, I was in the trenches along the 1,200km-long frontline or investigating the wars human cost and its political and social impact. I had my own war to fight, too, as I battled to maintain neutrality between the two sides narratives and positions. Complying with global journalistic standards often meant employing tricks to avoid Saddams censors. An Iraqi covering the war under Saddam I no longer questioned whether Iraq would be bombed, just what would become of the 'cradle of civilisation'. by Salah Nasrawi, Gulf War reporter Sometimes it worked. But sometimes it didnt. There were occasions when I faced the wrath of Iraqs Ministry of Information or its ruthless intelligence service, the Mukhabarat often for stories they considered negative or insufficiently patriotic. But if covering the Iraq-Iran war for foreign media was daunting, it was nothing compared to reporting on the USs Operation Desert Storm for a major American news agency. Under Saddams authoritarian rule, there were strict limitations on what could be reported. The cost of breaching those could be grave. An Iraqi reporter might face death for gathering information considered to be confidential or for writing an article deemed to be harmful to the state. Really, I should have quit. But that would have meant losing both my job and the opportunity to be on top of the biggest story in the world at the time. When I contemplated resigning from AP during a heated discussion with then Minister of Information Latif Nussayif Jassim al-Dulaymi about a report I had written on Iraqs war preparations, I was surprised that he rejected the idea. I will shoot you with my own gun and hang your body over the bridge, he thundered. He had his reasons. We were, after all, showing the world horrific scenes of death and destruction inflicted by the Americans, images that he knew could prompt the world to demand that the US stop its bombardments. American reporters fled before the bombs fell Many news organisations kept their teams away from the front lines, arguing that it would be too dangerous for their reporters to stay in Baghdad. Then US President George Bush senior personally rang the heads of US media networks to ask them to ensure that their employees left. Few foreign journalists were willing to remain. As they left and the doors to Iraq closed, I felt acutely aware of being stuck with my own destiny for better or for worse. The countdown to war had started as Saddam refused to comply with the UNs January 15 deadline to withdraw from Kuwait, and I found myself deeply immersed in covering the crisis. My fears gave way to my journalistic instinct. On January 8, 1991, I made my fifth trip to Kuwait under Saddams occupation. It was a trip organised by the Ministry of Information to show Iraqi reporters the trenches and fortifications built by Iraqi soldiers across the country. There was no doubt, war was imminent On my return to Baghdad, I met the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat, whom I had known for years. I had been at Arafats office less than two months before, when, on November 29, 1990, he had met the former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone. Nakasone had previously met Saddam in an effort to convince him to defuse the crisis. WATCH: Selling the first Gulf War Go and tell Saddam that Iraq will be sent back to the pre-industrial age if he does not withdraw from Kuwait, Nakasone had basically told Arafat. Now, I told Arafat that war was unavoidable. To my surprise, he called an urgent press conference at his residence in an Iraqi government guesthouse, telling journalists: There will be no war. There will be no war. I promise. Once the press conference was over, Arafat was whisked along the 1,000km-long highway to neighbouring Jordan in a Mercedes. When the war began two days later, US warplanes bombed that same road. There was one last-chance bid for a peaceful resolution from the then-UN Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar. He arrived in Baghdad on January 12, 1991, to tell Saddam to pull out of Kuwait. I was the only reporter on that historic day to have access to De Cuellars spokesman, Francois Giuliani, at a secret guesthouse. Giuliani, a former Reuters journalist, told me that De Cuellars encounter with Saddam was scheduled for after the Iraqi leaders afternoon nap the next day. From that, I immediately understood that the UN chiefs mission was doomed. Baghdad, the ghost town I no longer questioned whether Iraq would be bombed, just what would become of the cradle of civilisation. The moment we would find out came on Wednesday, January 16, 1991, the day after the deadline set by the UN. Government offices and shops were shuttered. Windows were taped. Tens of thousands of Iraqis crammed into buses and cars and fled the capital. As dusk approached, the streets were dark and quiet. Troops manned roadblocks at the main junctions, but Saddams henchmen seemed to have given up altogether. The city that history books called Madinat al-Salam, or the City of Peace, was bracing for war. My headline that night was: Saddam defiant, Iraq bracing for military showdown, Baghdadis leaving or cowering at home. At 2:30am, the first bombs fell. Explosion after explosion rattled the city. Iraqi soldiers fired back from anti-aircraft batteries positioned on rooftops. By morning, Baghdad was a ghost city. Its main government buildings and communication centres either disabled or heavily damaged. There was no electricity or running water. The city of A Thousand and One Nights seemed to be on its way back to the Middle Ages. Today, I am retired from active reporting. Yet, I am still stuck with Iraq as much as it is stuck with me. The 1991 Gulf War, as I have repeatedly argued in all my writing, including my memoirs, A Life of Paper, was an eruption that has left Iraq forever shaken, and with it, my own life too. Salah Nasrawi is a veteran Iraqi journalist who worked for international media, including the Associated Press and the BBC in the Middle East. He wrote for leading Arab newspapers and periodicals. Philippines and neighbours are welcoming a growing US military footprint in the region to stave off a revanchist China. The past few days have been abuzz with coverage of Chinas wild economic swings, as volatility in its financial markets, coupled with structural slowdown, chip away at the countrys long-held image of prosperity. No less than George Soros, a global icon known for his prescient economic forecasts, has warned about the prospects of another global economic crisis on the heels of a whimpering China. For some countries, however, it is Chinas growing territorial assertiveness in adjacent waters that is of grave concern. Undeterred by its anaemic economy and successive stock market meltdowns, China kicked off the year with a bang by conducting multiple test flights to bitterly contested islands in the South China Sea. Having constructed a gigantic airstrip on an artificially created island (Fiery Cross), China showed little reticence with displaying its growing ability to dominate the skies above arguably the worlds most important international waterway. Alarmed by Chinas territorial assertiveness, the Philippines has once again opened up its most prized military base to US troops. Smaller neighbouring countries have desperately welcomed growing US military footprint in the region in order to stave off a revanchist China, which is gradually reconfiguring the Asian maritime seascape in its own image. A history of dependence For much of its modern history, the Philippines has lived in the shadow of its former colonial master, the United States. Though the Southeast Asian nation gained formal independence in the mid-20th century, it effectively outsourced its national security to Washington throughout the Cold War decades. READ MORE: A Sino-American naval showdown in the South China Sea A series of landmark agreements, particularly the Military Assistance Pact (1947), the Military Bases Agreement (1947), and the Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) of 1951, undergirded the Philippines acute dependence on the superpower. The former US colony served as a critical forward deployment base against the Communist threat in East Asia. The eventual collapse of the Soviet Union ... unleashed a patriotic euphoria in the Philippines, which precipitated the ejection of US bases from the country shortly after. by The Philippines, which hosted Americas largest overseas military bases in Subic and Clark, effectively acted as Washingtons unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Western Pacific. In particular, the former US colony served as a critical forward deployment base against the Communist threat in East Asia. The eventual collapse of the Soviet Union (1991), however, unleashed a patriotic euphoria in the Philippines, which precipitated the ejection of US bases from the country shortly after. Constitutionally, the Philippines was barred from hosting permanent US troops on its oil. The Philippines was by now intent on becoming more self-reliant, abandoning its explicitly pro-US foreign policy throughout the Cold War days. It didnt take long, however, before the Philippines realised that it was dangerously unprepared for full independence. The China threat Shortly after the exit of US bases, China occupied the Philippine-claimed Mischief Reef, triggering a diplomatic crisis between the two neighbours. In response, the Philippines re-invited US soldiers under a Visiting Forces Agreement, which oversaw expanding joint military exercises between the two allies. But US troops were barred from (i) engaging in direct combat operations and (ii) establishing permanent bases in the Philippines. The South China Sea disputes are nothing new, dating back to the Cold War years when China squared up to Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries for mastery of disputed islands, resources, and waters in the area. But in the past few years there has been a dramatic increase in the number of maritime spats, with China flexing its muscles at the expense of weaker claimant states such as the Philippines, which lost the Scarborough Shoal to its giant neighbour in 2012. In the past two years alone, China has engaged in a construction frenzy on disputed land features across the Spratly chain of islands, artificially transforming rocks, atolls and shoals into gigantic islands, which now host advanced dual-purpose facilities. Hopelessly outgunned by China, which has rapidly developed both its conventional and asymmetrical military capabilities, the Philippines has tried to solicit greater US military assistance in the form of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), which was signed hours before US President Barack Obamas visit to Manila in 2014. A group of patriotic and progressive groups, however, immediately challenged the new security agreement at the Philippine Supreme Court. They contend that the EDCA is a violation of Philippine sovereignty, will lead to more abuses by US soldiers against Filipino citizens, and necessitates the concurrence of the Philippine Senate, which bitterly resented being bypassed by the Benigno Aquino administration. Not Game-Changer After almost a year of deliberations, the countrys highest court ruled that the bilateral security agreement was consistent with Philippine constitution and, as an Executive Agreement, doesnt necessitate Senate ratification. It was arguably a decision that was both populist and born out of an acute sense of urgency. READ MORE: Chinas regional isolation The vast majority of Filipinos (92 percent) have a favourable view of the US, the highest among any nation, so they are expected to warmly welcome the prospect of growing US military presence in the country. Both the ruling establishment and majority of Filipinos are also deeply worried about Chinas growing assertiveness in Philippine-claimed waters. The Philippines hopes that EDCA, which provides expanded US rotational access to eight of its most important military bases, including those that embrace the disputed South China Sea, will serve as a latent deterrence against further Chinese assertiveness. The bilateral security agreement also augments pre-existing joint military exercises, facilitates better interoperability among their militaries, and paves the way for more US military assistance to the Philippines. Yet, there is nothing in the agreement, which guarantees US assistance to the Philippines in the event of war with China over disputed features in the South China Sea. Unlike in Cold War days, the Philippines will not receive billions of dollars for renting out its bases and, in fact, will end up paying utility and transportation costs of US troops traversing its soil. The bigger risk, however, is an escalation in disputes, with China bitterly opposing what it sees as an US-led containment strategy in the South China Sea. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Richard Javad Heydarian is a specialist in Asian geopolitical/economic affairs and author of How Capitalism Failed the Arab World: The Economic Roots and Precarious Future of the Middle East Uprisings. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy. The results of the general and presidential election in Taiwan on January 16 had been predicted by pollsters for months, but the size of the landslide victory came as a surprise. After winning two successive elections in 2008 and 2012, the former ruling party Kuomintang lost to the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and their frontrunner Tsai Ing-wen. Outgoing president Ma Ying-jeou will be remembered for his rapprochement with mainland China, including the unprecedented meeting between him and President Xi Jinping in November 2015. His legacy will be to have guided relations between Taiwan and China to the economic advantage of Taiwans economy. Twenty-three agreements between the two sides during his rule have underpinned Taiwans growth and external trade, and its people-to-people exchanges since 2008, Taiwan allows direct flights from mainland China as well as its international standing. But trading with the Peoples Republic of China has not solved all of Taiwans economic problems. Its unemployment rate is growing, while property prices increase and overall growth slows down. In addition, the trade with mainland China has not been received positively by the Taiwanese public. In 2014, thousands went on to the streets in Taipei in what became known as the Sunflower Student Movement to protest against the Kuomintangs appeasing approach to China. Growing public concerns The movement was triggered by legislative plans for an Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, which the Kuomintang had negotiated with China. The protests also reflected growing public concerns over greater dependence on China and possibly steps towards unification with China. Ma may have failed to educate the public about these agreements, but he certainly underestimated the increasingly widespread political and security concerns that contributed to his dramatic fall from grace. China and Taiwan: Normal is the new normal The voters clearly want someone to represent Taiwans interests towards Beijing more firmly. Consequently, Lady Tsai is most likely to pick up negotiations with China over the trade agreements more resolutely. The voters clearly want someone to represent Taiwan's interests towards Beijing more firmly. Consequently, 'Lady Tsai' is most likely to pick up negotiations with China over the trade agreements more resolutely. by She has the necessary experience, having successfully led trade negotiations with China as chairwoman of the Taiwans principle mainland policy planning body the Mainland Affairs Council from 2000 to 2004, under then DPP president Chen Shui-bian. This time, however, she will need to balance more carefully her China policy between Taiwans interests and Beijings opinions. Her party traditionally stands for independence from mainland China. It is likely, therefore, that the DPP victory will change cross-strait relations for the worse. The voters wanted a government that is steadfast in protecting this countrys sovereignty, she said during her victory speech on Saturday. Lady Tsai, as I heard people call her in Taiwan, warned Beijing to accept Taiwans democracy as otherwise stability might be endangered. This may be crucial. Xi Jinpings foreign and security policy has become more assertive towards Chinas neighbours, and thus has changed Taiwans regional environment. Taiwan is probably the focal point where the United States and Chinas interests in Asia clash the most. Heart of controversy The status of Taiwan the Taiwan issue has been at the heart of decades of controversy between Beijing and Washington. Some of Xis statements on Taiwan underline the high level of concern with which his government views a DDP victory. He warned in a speech on TV that Tsai must accept the 1992 agreement between the China and Taiwan which both constitute one China. Or else the earth will shake and the mountains tremble, he said, looking up from his manuscript. It is in the interests of the US not to touch on this question, but most Taiwanese want their country to maintain the status quo with China, according to a survey from last year. Tsai, realising this, announced that she will work towards maintaining the status quo. This depends not only on her. Xi Jinping prides himself on understanding Taiwan, having served in Fujian province, which lies opposite the island. Will that understanding lead him to tighten the screws of Taiwans dependence on the mainlands goodwill? Beijing could presumably easily persuade a number of the 22 countries that still have diplomatic relations with Taipei to switch to the Peoples Republic of China. It might also undermine Taiwans position in international organisations, which it tolerated during Mas time in office. READ MORE: Chinas rollercoaster year Tsais election victory also reflects the Taiwanese publics growing dissatisfaction with the countrys domestic development. Thus Tsai has announced major reforms of government institutions and legislature. To boost Taiwans economic development, she might try to have Taiwan included in the negotiations with the US on the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Taiwans international space This might help to improve Taiwans regional economic integration in Asia, as well as its international standing. She might even make some efforts to widen Taiwans international space by deepening relations with the European Union, which is already Taiwans largest source of investment. Aspirations in Taiwan go as far as to negotiate a trade and investment agreement with the EU, which puts Europeans on the spot to re-evaluate their position in the triangular relationship between the EU, China and Taiwan. Failure in any of these areas would hurt not only Taiwan, but also Tsais government and her standing with the public. It therefore might have been premature for the Financial Times to predict that Tsai would become the most powerful female politician in the Chinese world, or for the German newspaper Bild to call her Asias Angela Merkel. Her election victory has proved to sceptics mainly in official circles in Beijing but also among Western observers that democracy can work in a Chinese culture, and also that women can make it to the top there. To succeed long-term, however, she will need qualities as yet untested. Angela Stanzel is a policy fellow in the Asia programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy. Let us not overstate the significance of ISIL in Indonesia. Last Thursday, Jakarta was rocked by its first major attack by religiously inspired Islamic militants since the Ritz Carlton bombings of 2009. Lasting more than three hours, the grim attacks in which seven people, including five assailants, died may not have been as devastating as the previous bombings that hit the capital in the 2000s, but they point to a grim new reality: the growth of a new form of violence inspired by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) ideology. Yet, as horrific as these events were, we should not overemphasise their significance, nor the effect of ISIL ideology, within Indonesia. Those who carried out the attack remain a marginal group whose reasoning is linked to global ideas of the ISIL caliphate rather than the policies of the Indonesian government. More so, the attackers lack meaningful support within the wider Islamic community including more experienced Islamic militants. If the government wishes to bring those behind the attacks to justice it is vital that this remains the case. Does ISIL really threaten Indonesia? Those who carried out Thursdays attacks were loyal to ISIL, with no links to previous militant networks of either the Darul Islam rebellions of the 1950-60s or the Jemaah Islamiyah who were behind the wave of bombings in the 2000s. One former internet cafe manager currently residing in ISIL-controlled Syria, Bahrun Naim, stands out in particular as the link between ISIL and this violence. A member of ISILs Malaysian-Indonesian Katibah Nusantara military unit, Bahrun has become an online source for ISIL information in Indonesian and active recruiter for a domestic ISIL front. READ MORE: Jakarta attacks what now for Jokowi? According to the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, in mid-2015 he managed to recruit and train a cell of five potential followers in Central Java. The cell intended to attack a church, Buddhist temple and police in August but were discovered and arrested beforehand. All may pledge loyalty to ISIL, but they continue to maintain their own separate agendas. by Not deterred, Bahrun continued to recruit potential cells throughout Java and, in December, his name surfaced again as the police conducted several raids in West and Central Java in relation to a series of attacks that were planned for Christmas and New Year. Last Thursdays attacks are therefore premeditated and planned, but also part of a prolonged attempt by one man to create an ISIL network in Indonesia. Yet, we should not overstate Bahruns apparent success. His support remains limited to several hundred followers who communicate with him via social media, and at present there is no real united ISIL front to speak of in Indonesia. This does imply pro-ISIL online forums do not exist. Several influential preachers, such as Abu Bakar Baasyir and Aman Abdurrahman, have pledged support to ISIL although they remain in prison and limited to telephone communication. Further, a pro-ISIL umbrella, Jemaah Ansharut Daulah, was formed March 2015. However, this includes a range of disparate groups such as the Mujahidin of Eastern Indonesia and Mujahidin of Western Indonesia as well as segments of Abu Bakar Baasyirs Jemaah Ansharut Tauhid. All may pledge loyalty to ISIL but they continue to maintain their own separate agendas. With the exception of the Mujahidin of Eastern Indonesia a force of 30 individuals currently evading security forces in Central Sulawesi there is no explicit open rebellion against the state to talk about. Lack of support from traditional militants Although vigilance is necessary, this implies that ISIL continues to have limited reach, and the way religious leaders reacted to last Thursdays attack implies that there is little space for it to gain popularity. Even among experienced militant circles such as Jemaah Islamiyah and the Indonesian Council of Mujahideen, ISIL sympathy remains low (as they support al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri). READ MORE: Indonesia elections infusing democracy A crucial factor limiting the dissemination of the pro-ISIL message continues to be an inability to tie its global message to the domestic socio-political situation of Indonesia. Certainly Bahrun and his supporters have tried to do so by encouraging sectarian violence against Shia whom have been targets of previous planned attacks. Yet for the most part militants remain unable to frame their ideology in terms that resonate among the wider population. President Joko Widodo has done well not to exaggerate the ISIL threat and, in this light, he must ensure that any security operations against ISIL supporters are not viewed as part of an international war but domestic law and order policy. Indeed, he must take measure not to arbitrarily target the Islamic community or use excessive force as this would provide ISIL supporters with the ability to frame domestic state policy as an extension of any global war against Muslims. Not only would this create potential sympathy for further violence but it may also push more experienced militants into the ISIL camp. Chris Chaplin is a researcher at the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) examining contemporary citizenship and identity within Indonesian Islamic communities. He has spent more than six years in Indonesia working on social development, human rights and politics across the country. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy. At least seven dead and many wounded as explosion hits vehicle owned by production company affiliated with TOLO News. A Taliban suicide car bomber has targeted a minibus carrying employees working for a private Afghan television channel, killing seven people during the evening rush hour. The attack on Wednesday, close to the Russian embassy, was the latest in a series of suicide bombings in the Afghan capital that coincide with renewed efforts to revive a peace process with the Taliban fighters that broke down in July. In a statement emailed to Al Jazeera, the Taliban said that it was responsible for the attack. Kabul resident Faridullah conducted the attack, the Taliban statement said, adding: The vehicle [a minibus that was targeted] has been under our surveillance for a long time. The car bomber targeted a vehicle owned by the Kaboora production company, which is affiliated to TOLO News, Afghanistans first 24-hour news channel. Rajab Noorzayi told the Associated Press news agency that his daughter Zeinab worked for Kaboora and was on the bus. Im looking for her but the police say everyone has been taken to hospital, he said. General Abdul Rahman Rahimi, the Kabul police chief, said the attackers were driving a car packed with explosives and targeted a minibus belonging to Kaboora. TOLO News confirmed in a live news broadcast that the bus was Kabooras and that six of their staff had been killed. The identity of the seventh victim is unknown. At least 20 people were wounded in the bombing, including women and children, said Ismail Kawusi, a Ministry of Public Health spokesman. Abdullah Abdullah, the Afghan government chief executive, condemned the attack and said he had drawn up plans for more security. I have also advised security forces to provide security for media outlets and journalists. A witness earlier told Al Jazeera that the suicide bomber rammed his motorbike into the vehicle before detonating himself. But authorities later said the suicide attacker was in a car. The bus was taking employees home from the companys office in central Kabul when the attack took place, at around 5pm local time. Taliban threats Last year, the Taliban openly threatened to target the television channel after it reported allegations of summary executions, rape, kidnappings and other abuses by Taliban fighters during the battle for Kunduz. The Taliban said at the time that the reports were inaccurate and threatened unspecified consequences. No one from Tolo TV was immediately available for comment. The latest attack adds a dangerous new complication for local journalists working in a country that is already ranked as low as 122 out of 180 in the World Press Freedom Index, a gauge of media freedom compiled by the group Reporters Without Borders. Series of attacks Since the start of 2016, Kabul has seen at least six bomb attacks. On Sunday, a rocket landed near the Italian embassy in Kabul, wounding two security guards. Representatives of Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States met in Kabul this week to lay the groundwork for a negotiated end to 15 years of war, and urged the armed group Taliban to join peace talks. Separately on Wednesday, the US government issued a warning that it had received reports of armed groups planning to attack a hotel or guesthouse frequented by foreigners in Kabul. There was no further information regarding the timing, location or method of attack, the statement said. No flammables found on samples at the scene of blaze on New Years Eve, the emirates chief of police says. A fire that engulfed a five-star hotel in Dubai on New Years Eve was caused by an electric fault, the emirates chief of police said. Major General Khamis Al Muzeina said on Wednesday, via an official Facebook page: The fire at Address Hotel on New Years Eve was caused by electrical short circuit. Citing findings from an investigation, he added that the cause of the fire was on the 14th floor. The huge blaze on December 31 started around 17:30 GMT and quickly shot up the 63-storey hotel in the city, covering nearly the entire structure and sending hundreds of people fleeing for safety. It continued to burn during a fireworks display at the nearby Burj Khalifa, the worlds tallest building. Al Muzeina said that forensics had not found any flammables such as oil in samples from the scene. Several people sustained injuries from the fire, and at least one person suffered a heart attack. Police have said that there were no deaths. Earlier this month, the United Arab Emirates released two young men it detained over a selfie they took in front of the hotel fire. Under the UAEs cybercrime laws, people can be arrested, imprisoned and deported for taking photographs without the consent of those shown. Lawyers decry court date proposed by Israel for detained journalist Mohammad al-Qeq fearing he could die before hearing. The hearing of a hunger-striking Palestinian journalist whose weight has fallen below 30kg must be moved forward in order to save his life, the defendants lawyers said. The Israeli Supreme Court said on Tuesday that it would consider an appeal to release 33-year-old Mohammad al-Qeq, a Palestinian journalist engaged in a 58-day hunger strike, on February 25 a date many have said is too far away. Hes in a very bad situation. He fell into his third coma in recent days, and his weight has dropped to 30kg, Ashraf Abu Sneina, al-Qeqs attorney, told Al Jazeera on Wednesday. This week, he only drank water twice. Al-Qeq began his hunger strike on November 24 in protest of Israels administrative detention. Administrative detention is a practice in which Israel jails Palestinians for renewable six-month intervals on secret evidence without charge or trial. READ MORE: Hunger-striking Palestinian reporters appeal rejected Abu Sneina fears his client will starve to death before the ISC hears his case. For him, theres no time, and were doing our best to make sure he doesnt die in prison, the lawyer continued. Al-Qeq is a correspondent for the Saudi-owned channel al-Majd, a network that broadcasts across the Arab world. He is the father of two children, and from the Dura village near Hebron in the south of the occupied West Bank. A group of fellow Palestinian journalists have launched a hunger strike in solidarity with al-Qeq. Issa Qaraqe, the Palestinian minister of prisoners affairs, also confirmed the detainees third lapse into a coma. He is now very weak and has lost considerable weight, Qarage told Al Jazeera, adding that the proposed court date is too far given his condition. Days after al-Qeq was transferred to the Afula hospital in northern Israel, he received treatment by force from physicians. OPINION: Israels torture method force-feeding A press release by a prisoners rights group, Addameer, quoted him as saying the Ethical Medical Committee of the hospital said he would be forcibly treated on January 10. Later that day, a group of jailers forcibly held his arms and legs, after which the doctors placed the IV in his vein, which was kept in his arm until January 14, Addameer said. Of the estimated 6,800 Palestinians behind bars in December, at least 660 were administrative detainees, according to Addameer. Officials from Afula hospital declined Al Jazeeras request for comment. The Israeli Knesset passed a law in June 2015 codifying force-feeding of hunger strikers. The move was met with criticism from international organisations, including the United Nations, and the Israeli Medical Association (IMA), which said that force feeding constitutes torture. Dr Tammy Karni, the IMAs ethics chief, has before said: Those who understand medicine realise that trying to force-feed patients on a prolonged hunger strike can result in worse damage than a continuation of the strike. However, Gil Siegal, a professor of law at Tel Avivs Ono Academic College, defended the practice. Even the United States allows force-feeding, not just in Guantanamo, but in prisons. Its the same in the United Kingdom. The legitimate debate over Palestinian political rights obfuscates this issue, he told Al Jazeera. W\hen youve saved the life of former hunger striker, is he happy or is he sad? I can say that theyre always happy, Siegel continued. Though there are specific examples, such as a do-not-resuscitate order, it is legitimate to save patients from themselves. Lawyer Abu Sneina said the journalist has no plans to end his hunger strike. He told me he will continue until the end, said Sneina. Follow Creede Newton on Twitter: @creedenewton The depths of an arctic winter have hit North Korea, with temperatures falling to lower levels than last year. Arctic air has been sitting over Mongolia for more than a week, but finally it slumped southeastwards, encouraged by a northwesterly wind from a developing storm system in the Sea of Japan. A sudden drop in temperature hit the northeastern Chinese city of Changchun, Jilin province, on Monday, lowering the prevailing -14C by nearly 6C. Jilin is a cold place in the winter and Changchun has an average daytime temperature of -10C. This, then, is cold even for Jilin. January is the coldest month, on average, in North Korea, but even so, Pyongyang should expect a daytime temperature of -3C. This Tuesday the highest temp was -11C, after a night that dropped to -17C. This happened immediately after a mere 5cm of snow fell, and represents a drop in temperature of 15C in 24 hours. In fact, on Tuesday the whole of North Korea recorded -11C at some point, a figure shrivelled by the following night when it dropped to -22C in the capital, colder still in the countryside. Wednesday has proved a little less cold, with one or two North Korean cities actually creeping above freezing, in the sunshine. This is a temporary reprieve this weekend looks very cold again. Palestinians say preventing workers from reaching West Bank settlements for jobs amounts to collective punishment. Israeli authorities have banned Palestinians from working in illegal Israeli settlements for the second day in a row south of Hebron and in the northern part of the occupied West Bank. Israel cited recent alleged stabbing attacks against settlers residing in the occupied West Bank contrary to international law as reasons for refusing to provide passes, which are issued on a day-to-day basis. According to Wajdi Swaiti, a construction worker from southern Hebron, Israels clampdown on Palestinians in recent months has affected them tremendously. These most recent Israeli crackdowns have forced us to be out of work for months to come, which affects our livelihood and our ability to raise our families, Swaiti told Al Jazeera. READ MORE: Rights group blasts Israeli settlements Israeli authorities heightened security measures to prevent Palestinians from accessing the illegal settlements from the specialised roads leading there. About 26,000 Palestinians work in the settlements, nearly 10,000 of them without proper permits. Palestinian human rights campaigner Tahseen Elayyan told Al Jazeera that Palestinians often find themselves in a catch-22 situation. Palestinians want to work to raise their families, but often find themselves forced to work in illegal Israeli settlements built on their own stolen land. They have no other choice but to work there, Elayyan said. An army official said the measure would be evaluated daily. Security measures will continue in the Israeli communities in the areas of Bethlehem, Hebron, Nablus, and some of the communities in the area of Ramallah, the army spokesperson said on Tuesday. Ghassan Daghlas, the Palestinian Authority official in charge of monitoring Israeli settlement policies in the occupied territories, said part of the reason more Palestinians were working in settlement construction was because it is easier to obtain a work permit. Palestinian labourers who seek work inside Israel must go through extensive security checks, and endure long hours at Israeli crossings. Elayyan said the recent ban of Palestinian workers in Hebron reflects a policy of collective punishment for alleged stabbing attacks. Daghlas agreed. As long as we have no independence and our borders with the outside world are controlled by Israel, we will always be punished for whatever reason the Israelis think of. Follow Ali Younes on twitter @ali_reports Mass destruction of Arab homes by Kurdish forces is under way in northern Iraq a situation that may amount to war crimes, a human rights group says. Kurdish forces bulldozed, blew up and burned down thousands of homes in Arab villages to avenge perceived support for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group after capturing the areas, Amnesty International said in a report released on Wednesday. Satellite imagery corroborates evidence of mass destruction, Amnesty said. This is part of a drive to reverse past abuses by the Saddam Hussein regime, which forcibly displaced Kurds and settled Arabs in these regions, the report alleged. Arab residents who fled from their homes are barred by Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) forces from returning to areas retaken from ISIL, it said. KRG forces appear to be spearheading a concerted campaign to forcibly displace Arab communities by destroying entire villages in areas they have recaptured from [ISIL] in northern Iraq, said Amnestys Donatella Rovera, who carried out field research in northern Iraq. The forced displacement of civilians and the deliberate destruction of homes and property without military justification may amount to war crimes. Dindar Zebari, head of the KRGs committee to respond to international reports, refuted the allegations. Our forces have followed all standards of human rights and humanitarian laws in the fight against ISIL in Iraq, Zebari told Al Jazeera . On civilian displacement, we had discussions with Amnesty months ago. He said the Kurdish administration has helped about 700,000 internally displaced Iraqi Arabs over the past two years, adding that most cannot go back home because it is still not safe, and basic services such as education and healthcare are not available. The destruction of homes and buildings was the result of fierce fighting with ISIL, he said. On the frontlines there are several challenges The nature of the warfare has led to much of this destruction, said Zebari. ISIL seized control of about one-third of Iraq in the summer of 2014. Kurdish Peshmerga forces have since driven the fighters back in the north of Iraq with the help of air strikes from a US-led coalition, expanding their control to include ethnically mixed territories that they claim as their own. Amnesty said thousands of Arab civilians who fled fighting were struggling to survive in makeshift camps with no homes left to return to. By barring the displaced from returning to their villages and destroying their homes, KRG forces are further exacerbating their suffering, said Rovera. OPINION: Arabs in the eye of history Amnesty said it documented evidence of the war crimes in three provinces: Nineveh, Kirkuk and Diyala, which Peshmerga forces captured from ISIL between September 2014 and March 2015. All three are outside the borders of the autonomous Kurdish region. Critics accuse Iraqi Kurdish leaders of wanting to incorporate territory into their autonomous region, and depopulating them of Arabs aids that effort. All I know is that when the Peshmerga retook the village the houses were standing and later they bulldozed the village, Amnestys report quoted Tabaj Hamid villager Maher Nubul as saying. There is nothing left. They destroyed everything for no reason. In an October report, Amnesty accused Kurdish armed units in northern Syria of razing Arab and Turkmen villages, actions it said amounted to war crimes. Residents express anger and grief following the attack on Charsadda university which left 20 people dead and 50 injured. Local residents and officials have expressed anger and grief after unidentified gunmen entered the Bacha Khan University in northwest Pakistan and opened fire on students and teachers, killing 20 people and wounding at least 50 others. Fakhar-e-Alam, 37, a cook at a school hostel, was one of those killed in Wednesdays attack on the university complex in Charsadda, in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. Speaking to Al Jazeera hours later, Shah Hussain remembered what his his son had told him before leaving for work earlier that morning. He told me: I have guests coming today and I must get to work as soon as possible. It is my responsibility to take care of them, said Hussain. When the gunmen attacked the hostel, he took his guests to a room and locked the door behind them in an attempt to hide them from the terrorists. Once he did that, he ran to close the gate where he was shot dead by a gunman. Pakistan army says deadly university attack over My son would always make sure to take care of his guests. This was a matter of pride for him and, look, he even died protecting his guests. The university, named after the founder of an anti-Taliban Awami National Party and a Pashtun activist, Abdul Ghaffar Bacha Khan, was hosting 600 visitors for a poetry recital on the anniversary of the founders death. The university was always under threat because of its association with the Awami National Party and Bacha Khan. The [Pakistani] Taliban staged minor attacks at the university in the past as well, said Zaheer Iqbal, former assistant director of planning and development at Bacha Khan University. Security has always been poor at the university. It was, without doubt, an easy target for the terrorists. I knew my life was in danger at the time of my employment at the university, I was unsure every morning whether I would come back home alive, which is why I quit my job. The mastermind of the deadly 2014 attack on the Peshawar Army Public School, Umar Mansoor, from the Pakistani Taliban, initially claimed responsibility for the attack in a Facebook post on Wednesday. But the claim was later denied by the the groups spokesman, Mohammad Khorasani, who condemned the the attack in a statement, calling it against Sharia. Take matters in hand Witnesses to Wednesdays attack described horrific scenes of violence, but also recalled attempts by staff and students to fight back against the gunmen. Among those who tried to counter the attack was Hamid Hussain, 37, an assistant professor who taught organic chemistry at the university, Students say that he was shot dead as he tried to shoot back at the attackers. I saw him pulling out his pistol and running towards the scene. He fired at the militants, but was immediately shot dead, a student, Saad Shafqat, told Al Jazeera. We will all do the same. He left a message behind for us before dying. If the government [and] security officers cannot provide us with security, we will take matters in our own hands. Hussain leaves behind a wife and two children. My sister is [devastated] after hearing about the death of her husband. The entire town is in tears, we are all mourning. Something needs to be done. We cant keep losing our loved ones, said Naseem Akhbar, Hussains brother-in-law. He will be remembered for his bravery. He took the bullets in an attempt to save his colleagues and students. A district official, who wished to remain anonymous because he was not authorised to speak to the media, told Al Jazeera that residents of the district carry guns for their safety as the security situation is getting worse by the day. I dont blame them, why wouldnt they carry guns if attacks like these happen every now and then? Weve been asking for a security team in the district and security checks for a very long time now, but nothing so far, he said. This university was under threat for a very long time, everyone knew. Even the intelligence team received a warning about this attack, but no action was taken. Many people were ready to leave their homes and use their own weapon to fight the terrorists in the university, including me. #Bloodandtearsonly Many expressed their anger and grief at the Pakistan government through a Twitter hashtag #Bloodandtearsonly as the university attack brought back grim memories of the 2014 Peshawar school attack which killed more than 150 people, mostly children. ? # BloodAndTearsOnly ? Dear leaders This nation wants solution to this bloodshed of u cant provide the same then u have no right to rule, wrote a Twitter user, @Mashal1144 . Pakistan observes a day of mourning amid the attack and candlelight vigils were held for the victims in Peshawar and elsewhere in Pakistan. Follow Shereena Qazi on Twitter: @ShereenaQazi At least 20 people dead after gunmen storm Charsadda university in northwest Pakistan. At least 20 people have been killed in an attack that lasted six hours at a university in northwest Pakistan, according to an army spokesperson. Attackers scaled a wall and cut through barbed wire on Wednesday morning at the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, about 140km from the capital Islamabad. The attack left at least 50 people injured. A security official said the death toll could rise to as high as 40. The operation is over and the university has been cleared, Pakistan Army spokesperson General Asim Bajwa told Reuters news agency. Four gunmen have been killed. Attackers entered the university complex in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan and opened fire at students and teachers in classrooms and hostels, according to police officials. There were conflicting statements from the Pakistani Taliban, as one commander claimed the attack, but the groups spokesperson later disassociated the Taliban from the attack, saying it was un-Islamic. Students told local media they saw several young men wielding AK-47 guns storming the university housing where many students were sleeping. The university has over 3,000 enrolled students and was hosting an additional 600 visitors on Wednesday for a poetry recital on the death anniversary of the Pashtun activist Abdul Ghaffar Bacha Khan, the universitys vice-chancellor said. Abdul Ghaffar Bacha Khan was known for his nonviolent protest opposing British rule over India. Around 200 students have been safely evacuated from an examination hall in the university, Provincial Public Health Engineering Minister Shah Farman said. Local authorities have announced the closure of all education institutions across Charsadda until January 31. Earlier, as police and soldiers rushed to the campus, the attackers traded gunfire with the troops and several explosions were heard from the area of the university. The army said the attackers were contained in two university blocks before being killed. Television footage showed heavy military presence at the university, troops rushing in and people fleeing. Students spoke of one hero teacher, Syed Hamid Husain, fighting back against the intruders, shooting his weapon in a bid to protect the students. Geology student Zahoor Ahmed said his lecturer had warned him not to leave the building after the first shots were fired. He was holding a pistol in his hand, said Ahmed. Then I saw a bullet hit him. I saw two militants were firing. I ran inside and then managed to flee by jumping over the back wall. Teachers in the province were given permission to carry firearms in the classroom after the December 2014 attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar. On Tuesday, a suicide bomber blew himself up close to a police checkpoint in the Jamrud area of northwestern Pakistan, killing at least 10 people and wounding more than 20. At least 144 people, most of them children, were killed when armed men attacked the 2014 attack on the Peshawar school. Last month, Pakistan executed four men linked to the school massacre which left more than 130 school children dead. The executions, which officials said were carried out by hanging at a prison in the city of Kohat, were the first in connection with the December 16 attack. Gunmen storm Charsadda university in northwest Pakistan in attack that leaves dozens of casualties. At least 20 people have been killed, including students and a professor, in an attack on a university in northwest Pakistan. Attackers scaled a wall and cut through barbed wire on Wednesday morning at the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, about 140km from the capital Islamabad. A security official said the death toll could rise to as high as 40. The Pakistani army confirmed that all attackers were killed as the operations to clear the campus ended six hours after the attack began, leaving more than 50 people injured. The operation is over and the university has been cleared, Pakistan army spokesperson General Asim Bajwa told Reuters news agency. Four gunmen have been killed. Attackers entered the university buildings in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan and opened fire at students and teachers in classrooms and hostels, according to police officials. Students told media they saw several young men wielding AK-47 guns storming the university housing many students who were sleeping. One faction of the Pakistan Taliban, the Dara Adma Khel splinter group, claimed responsibility for the attack. However, the chief of the Pakistan Taliban, Fazlullah, condemned the attack in a statement, adding that those using the groups name would be brought to justice. The university has more than 3,000 enrolled students and was hosting an additional 600 visitors on Wednesday for a poetry recital on the anniversary of the death of Pashtun activist Abdul Ghaffar Bacha Khan, the universitys vice chancellor said. Around 200 students have been safely evacuated from an examination hall in the university, Provincial Public Health Engineering Minister Shah Farman said. Local authorities have announced the closure of all education institutions across Charsadda until January 31. Earlier, as police and soldiers rushed to the campus, the attackers traded gunfire with the troops and several explosions were heard from the area of the university. The army said the attackers were contained in two university blocks before being killed. Television footage showed a heavy military presence at the university, troops rushing in and people fleeing. Ambulances were at the scene and the wounded were being taken to hospital. Shabir Khan, a lecturer in the English department, said he was about to leave the hostel for the department when the shooting began. Most of the students and staff were in the classes when the firing began, Khan said. On Tuesday, a suicide bomber blew himself up near a police checkpoint in the Jamrud area of northwestern Pakistan, killing at least 10 people and wounding more than 20. At least 144 people, most of them children, were killed when armed men attacked the Army Public School in Peshawar in December 2014. Last month, Pakistan executed four men linked to the school massacre which left more than 130 school children dead. The executions, which officials said were carried out by hanging at a prison in the city of Kohat, were the first in connection with the December 16 attack. Former Alaska governor and running mate to John McCain in 2008 says Trump would kick ISILs ass. Former US vice presidential candidate and reality TV star Sarah Palin has given her backing to Republican frontrunner Donald Trump. The former governor of Alaska on Tuesday told supporters gathered at a rally in the US state of Iowa that Trump would kick ISIS ass, referring to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group. He is from the private sector, not a politician, Palin said in an animated speech after joining the business mogul and former host of TVs The Apprentice onstage, later asking the audience if she could get a hallelujah. Palin was running mate to US senator John McCain during his unsuccessful bid for the presidency in the 2008 election, which was won by current President Barack Obama. She said there was nothing wrong with Trump being a multibillionaire and that it did not make him an elitist, citing all the time he had spent with construction workers as a real-estate developer. As Trump stood alongside, Palin said: The status quo has got to go, adding the political establishment had been wearing political correctness kind of like a suicide vest, the Reuters news agency reported. Greatly honoured In a statement before the event, Trump said he was greatly honoured by the endorsement. She is a friend, and a high-quality person whom I have great respect for. Trump has led national opinion polls among Republicans for months but is in a tight contest with Ted Cruz, a Canadian-born senator for Texas, for the support of Iowa Republicans, who lean conservative and whose evangelical Christians comprise a major voting bloc. Palin, who often discusses her Christian faith, is popular among that group and endorsed Cruz when he ran for the US Senate in 2012. Cruz responded to her switch of allegiance with magnanimity. Regardless of what she does in 2016, he tweeted, I will always be a big fan. Despite differences, Lavrov and Kerry expect peace talks between Syrian government and rebels to start this month. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said the talks between the Syrian government and opposition groups should start by the end of January as planned, but the invitation list remains a sticking point. Lavrov met on Wednesday with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Switzerland to bridge the divide, but failed to find agreement. We have provided our proposal, the US did the same, and now the members of the Syria opposition groups also provided their proposal on the invitation list, Lavrov told reporters. He stressed that it was now up to UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura to come up with a solution. Contrary to the position held by Washington, Lavrov reiterated that the armed groups Jaish al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham are not acceptable as invitees, labelling them terrorist organisations. But despite the failure to agree on the invitation list, Lavrov said neither he nor Kerry had thought about postponing the talks, which are scheduled to start in Geneva on January 25. The political process will begin, we hope, as soon as possible, at the end of January, he said. We dont know the actual date yet, but we are going to go forward and support the recommendations, particularly the ones made by Mr Staffan de Mistura, UN special envoy for Syria. The UN Security Council is obliged to make sure that this meeting of all the Syrian actors and players takes place soon and we hope very much that it will be in this month. Kerry did not make any comments on Wednesday, but his spokesman John Kirby said in a statement that the two men had discussed plans for the UN-led negotiations between the Syrian parties on January 25 and the importance of maintaining progress toward a diplomatic solution to the crisis in Syria. READ MORE: US takes control of Rmeilan airfield in Syria Before leaving Washington on Tuesday, Kirby had acknowledged that there is still quite a bit of work that needs to be done to get the meeting to occur between Syrian President Bashar al-Assads regime and representatives of the opposition. In Wednesdays meeting, Kerry called for Russia to use its influence with Assad to ensure immediate, unimpeded and sustained humanitarian access to all Syrians in need, Kirby said, particularly in besieged communities such as Madaya, where deaths from starvation have been reported. Lavrov said the pair confirmed the need to resolve the humanitarian problem in Syria. Russian air strikes in Syria have killed more civilians than ISIL fighters, results from monitoring groups indicate. Russian air strikes, which began in September 2015, have killed at least 1,000 people, including more than 300 children, monitoring groups said. At least 1,505 people have been killed in Russian air strikes since they started in September 2015. We have documented their names and can say at least 346 of them were children and only at least 47 were fighters, Bassam al-Ahmad, spokesperson for the Violations Documentation Centre in Syria (VDC), told Al Jazeera on Wednesday. The VDC is an independent, non-governmental organisation that has been monitoring the conflict in Syria since April 2011. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the death toll at 1,015, adding that 238 of those killed were children. The Observatory also said that at least 1,141 fighters had been killed, including fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group. First Russian air strike targeted civilians Khalid, a volunteer from the Syria Civil Defence, said civilians were the target on the first day Russia launched its air strike campaign on September 30. Hearing Russian on the radio? We knew straight away that this was a different type of attack. The targets were 100 percent civilians. A whole neighbourhood was destroyed in Talbiseh, including 60 homes of civilians, Khaled said. Known also as the White Helmets, the Syria Civil Defence is a group of volunteer rescuers formed in 2013 that now numbers more than 2,700 volunteers. Campaign is against ISIL Russia says the goal of its military operation in Syria is in response to a request by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and on the basis of a decision granted by its parliament. Russia launched its military operation in Syria in September 2015, and it says the campaign is against ISIL and al-Nusra front groups. According to Russias official news agency, TASS, the air campaign consists of 69 warplanes and helicopters. Death toll in Russian raids on Syrias Idlib nears 100 Russias defence ministry says it also uses its planes to drop humanitarian aid to civilians in besieged areas. Since January 15, transport aircraft of the Syrian Air Force has projected 50 tonnes of cargos with food products and articles of first necessity by the Russian P-7 parachute platforms, the ministry said in a press release. In an interview with the the German newspaper Bild, Russian President Vladimir Putin said his countrys aim in the Syrian conflict was to prevent another Iraq or Libya. One should try anything to support the legitimate rulers in Syria. But this does not mean that everything can just stay the same. Once the stabilisation of the country has progressed, a constitutional reform has to follow, and then early presidential elections. Only the Syrian people can decide who should govern the country in the future. The Syrian conflict has killed at least 250,000 people, according to the UN, and more than half of Syrias prewar population of 22.4 million has been internally displaced or have fled abroad. Construction of five hydropower dams and plants cancelled as Russian state energy company fails to deliver cash. Kyrgyzstan has denounced two multibillion-dollar hydropower projects with Russia that were designed to decrease the resource-poor, mountainous nations reliance on energy imports and turn it into an importer of electricity. With Moscow apparently unable to fund the massive, $3.2bn projects that could boost the economy of Russias strategic ally in the region, experts say China may be interested. However, neighbouring, downstream Uzbekistan vocally resisted the projects, predicting a full-scale war over water in the arid, overpopulated ex-Soviet region located between China, Iran, Afghanistan and Russia. Kyrgyzstans parliament said in a brief statement on Wednesday that the project to build five hydropower dams and plants on the Naryn river was scrapped. The river flows into the Syrdarya, one of the two rivers that provide most of the water for more than 60 million residents of ex-Soviet Central Asia. The decision followed the Kyrgyz governments announcements in late December that Russia failed to finance the construction due to a deepening economic crisis caused by falling oil prices and Western sanctions over Crimea. RusHydro, a Russian energy company that was supposed to finance the construction, could not provide an immediate comment on the projects denunciation. READ MORE: Environmental cost of Kyrgyzstans gold mine The cascade was designed in the Soviet era, when five Central Asian republics were part of a regional energy and irrigation system. Moscow boosted massive irrigation projects and reclamation of Central Asian steppes and deserts for urban development, and the disastrous policies have led to the desiccation of the Aral Sea, once the worlds fourth-largest inland body of water. After the 1991 Soviet collapse, Uzbekistan raised the price of its natural gas exports, and Kyrgyzstan started accumulating water in its existing dams to generate electricity in cold winter months despite fierce objections of downstream farmers in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. But as the West and China vied for influence in the region that Moscow still considers its backyard, the Kremlin sought to revive ties with Kyrgyzstan even though it went through two regime changes in 2005 and 2010. Moscow opened an airbase near the capital, Bishkek, and offered a package of projects that included membership in a Moscow-led free trade bloc and the completion of the Naryn hydropower plants. To Russia this was mostly a geopolitical project to show its influence, and with all the oil wealth we had this gesture could be seen as a splendid, positive feature of Russian imperialism, Daniil Kislov, a Moscow-based expert on Central Asia, told Al Jazeera. However, Central Asias most populous state objected to the plans. Control over water resources in the republics of Central Asia may lead to a full-scale war in the region where depleting water supply, ineffective irrigation and desertification force millions to leave their homes in search of work in Russia and elsewhere, Uzbekistan said in October. Uzbek President Islam Karimov urged the United Nations earlier to assess the projects effect on the region. Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan have been at odds for decades. Hundreds were killed in clashes between ethnic Uzbeks and Kyrgyz in southern Kyrgyzstan in 1990 and 2010. Kyrgyz officials reportedly said that they would start looking for new investors and China seems like the most likely one. The Chinese look like the only potential investors, because given the recession of their economy, a billion dollars or two is still nothing to them, Kislov said. China has already invested billions of dollars in infrastructure projects, oil and gas pipelines in Central Asia, and built a power transmission line that links Kyrgyzstans industrially developed north to poorer, agricultural southern regions. Police says more than 160 shops selling headscarves are also closed as part of a fight against foreign influences. Police in Tajikistan have shaved nearly 13,000 peoples beards and closed more than 160 shops selling traditional Muslim clothing last year as part of the countrys fight against what it calls foreign influences. Bahrom Sharifzoda, the head of the south-west Khathlon regions police, said at a press conference on Wednesday that the law enforcement services convinced more than 1,700 women and girls to stop wearing headscarves in the Muslim-majority Central Asian country. The move is seen as part of efforts to battle what authorities deem radicalism. Tajikistans secular leadership has long sought to prevent an overspill of what it sees as unwelcome traditions from neighbouring Afghanistan. Last week, the countrys parliament voted to ban Arabic-sounding foreign names as well as marriages between first cousins. The legislation is expected to be approved by President Emomali Rahmon, who has taken steps to promote secularism and discourage beliefs and practices that he sees as foreign or a threat to the stability of Tajikistan, Radio Liberty said. READ MORE: Tajikistan poised to slide back towards war In September, Tajikistans Supreme Court banned the countrys only registered Islamic political party, the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan. Rahmon has ruled Tajikistan since 1994 and his current presidential term is expected to end in 2020. In December, the parliament granted the president and his family life-long immunity from prosecution, giving Rahmon the title Leader of the nation and officially designating him the founder of peace and national unity of Tajikistan. The country of 7.1 million people has struggled with poverty and instability since independence from the Soviet Union more than two decades ago. It remains heavily dependent on Russia, where the majority of Tajik people go for work. According to unofficial estimates, there are more than 2,000 Tajiks fighting in Syria. Under a deal with Kurdish group, activists say US will use airfield to support fighters against ISIL in northern Syria. Correction: An earlier version of this story eroneously showed a photo the Prince Sultan airbase in Saudi Arabia instead of the Rmeilan airfield in Syria. US troops have taken control of Rmeilan airfield in Syrias northern province of Hasakah to support Kurdish fighters against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a spokesperson for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) told Al Jazeera. The airfield near the city of Rmeilan, which will become the first US-controlled airbase in Syria, was previously controlled by the US-backed Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG). The airfield is close to Syrias borders with Iraq and Turkey. Under a deal with the YPG, the US was given control of the airport. The purpose of this deal is to back up the SDF, by providing weapons and an airbase for US warplanes, Taj Kordsh, a media activist from the SDF told Al Jazeera on Tuesday. This airport was previously controlled by the YPG for over two years now. This strategic airport is close to several oil bases one of the biggest in this area. Rmeilan airport was previously used for agricultural purposes by the Syrian government, he said. Previous reports published by the Syrian Local Coordination Committees say that the US has been preparing and expanding Rmeilan airport for a while now. When asked by Al Jazeera, a US CENTCOM media operations officer did not confirm or deny the reports. Kurdish-Arab coalition in Syria forms political wing The US has previously supplied the SDF with weapons. It also backs the group with its air strikes in their fight against (ISIL) in northern Syria. The SDF was founded in Syrias mainly Kurdish northeastern region in October 2015, and is made up of at least 15 armed factions mostly fighters from the YPG and the Free Syrian Army. The fighters include Christians, Arabs and about 500 foreign fighters, Kordsh said, adding that some groups in Aleppo and Idlib pledged allegiance to the SDF last month. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor also reported on Tuesday that the US had taken control of the airbase. Sourcing activists, the Observatory said the airfield is still being prepared for use by the US. An Indian electrician risks life and limb to siphon off electricity for poor areas in a city crippled by power cuts. Editors note: This film is no longer available for online viewing. Loha Singh, a 28-year-old electrician in the Indian city of Kanpur, is renowned for his expertise in stealing electricity. Some see him as a modern-day Robin Hood, siphoning off electricity from the grid and providing free connections in poor neighbourhoods. In the face of crippling power cuts, his skills enable homes, factories and businesses to function normally. However, things may be about to change. The citys electricity supply company has a new boss, Ritu Maheshwari, who is determined to clamp down on theft. It costs billions of rupees in lost revenue and holds back vital infrastructure upgrades. She dispatches raid teams to catch electricity thieves, dole out fines and cut off illegal connections. Although initially successful, the clean-up efforts prompt protests and violence in neighbourhoods where people feel unjustly targeted. Adding to Maheshwaris problems, a local politician rallies against her during a summer of acute electricity shortages. Will she succeed in changing the system or will her campaign be derailed? Powerless provides a fascinating insight into the politics of electricity in one of the worlds fastest-growing economies, where the need for power is rising rapidly and around 300 million people lack access altogether. FILMMAKERS VIEW By Fahad Mustafa We spent about two years in Kanpur shooting this film. Our crew was a bit of novelty on the streets people in Kanpur had not seen a film crew, nor, for that matter, foreign people. This meant that there would frequently be mobs of people demanding to see the star of the shoot, and they would not believe that we were documenting the life of Loha Singh. Trust was a major issue in the beginning, especially in neighbourhoods where electricity theft was rife. As we spent more time in Kanpur, however, people understood that we did not mean harm, and opened up to us. Most told us how they were forced to steal electricity, as the state authorities typically ignored the poorer neighbourhoods. Similarly, the viewpoint of Kanpur Electricity Supply Company [KESCO] is often misunderstood and the engineers and officers at the company were only too happy to show us the challenges that they faced in the battle to supply electicity once they became acquainted with us. Through the eyes of Loha Singh and Ritu, we got a very nuanced picture of an overwhelming and very visible crisis. In many ways electricity was a metaphor or a meter for underlying social and economic problems. It was a situation where those who had the means and the resources had power. Those who did not had to rely on people such as Loha Singh. There is growing discussion and debate in India and in the world on how to combat poverty. Most of what we saw in Kanpur highlighted how complex and drawn out this fight is going to be, given the entrenched and pervasive nature of poverty. The ingenuity and the will of people, however, to bring about positive change was extremely heartening. In the worst of situations, people cooperated to find ways to escape the vicious cycle. Students greeted poet and civil rights activist Nikki Giovanni with a standing ovation Tuesday night. About 400 students filled the Reitz Union Grand Ballroom to hear Giovanni speak as part of UFs Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration. She spoke about Donald Trump and the importance of voting. Giovanni, 72, opened her speech with one of her poems, entitled Note to the South: You Lost, which talked about the Civil War and how the South was on the wrong side. They always seem to forget that, she said. Giovanni, who said her great-grandmother was a slave, encouraged black students to continue to fight for racial equality. You are the after segregation; my generation is the before, she said. You think that somebody should like you, and we think, Damn, you got here. She encouraged students to defend and vote for causes important to them, such as Planned Parenthood and the legalization of marijuana. We all have to vote, she said. I dont care what you vote for. When she mentioned Trump, Giovanni spoke against the racist speech she said he uses. I know that Donald Trump is crazy; I think Americans are crazy, Giovanni said. Let America be great again? What the hell is that? Greter Gonzalez, a 19-year-old UF public relations sophomore, said she thought Giovanni was inspirational. Shes definitely a character, Gonzalez said. Shes very entertaining, but also educational. Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now She said she was excited to attend Giovannis speech, and it was an eye-opening experience. In the short term that she talked, she taught us a lot, Gonzalez said. Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@alligator.org and follow her on Twitter @k_newberg. Poet and writer Nikki Giovanni reads her poem titled Note to the South: You Lost, to a packed audience in the Reitz Union Grand Ballroom on Tuesday night. Giovanni spoke on black history, racism in the U.S. and other topics. A recent study showed feral swine cost the Florida cattle industry about $2 million a year. The study led by Samantha Wisely, a UF Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences associate professor of wildlife ecology and conservation explained that Floridas cattle industry loses the money due to a phenomenon called rooting, by which feral swine, or pigs, hunt for food. The swine are often found on cattle ranches because hunting permits in the southeastern U.S. allow them to be there. In the process of turning over soil, swine can dig about two feet deep, which completely buries and destroys the soil, Wisely said. This makes the grass that could grow toxic to cattle. In the 14-month study, Wisely said she compared areas that had been rooted with areas that were unrooted. She discovered rooted areas had a higher percentage of plants cattle couldnt eat. Basically, they reduce the amount of food cattle can eat, Wisely said about the swine. The way cattlemen make money is by increasing the weight of cattle; if they dont have enough grass, they dont put on enough weight. - Jessica Rodriguez A UF student is studying how hunger affects playfulness in dogs for his senior thesis. James Jimenez, a 21-year-old UF psychology senior, said he is collecting data on dog behavior and playfulness for a research study through UFs Animal Behavior and Welfare Lab and Oregon State Universitys Human-Animal Interaction Lab. The study measures a dogs playfulness after it has eaten and again when it hasnt been fed for several hours. He said he started researching at the lab his sophomore year. He wanted to research something students wouldnt learn about in an average psychology class. Jimenez said he collects data by playing with dogs of students and Gainesville residents. The research is based off a 1998 study on cats levels of play in relation to hunger. Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now Basically thats what were replicating, just in dogs, he said. Typically, theyre going to be more playful, because when youre interacting with them, they expect some kind of food. - Katelyn Newberg Gainesville Police arrested a Newberry woman early Monday night after authorities said she coordinated a robbery that later turned into a stabbing. At about midnight Saturday, April Lauren LeBlanc, 34, robbed her drug dealer after she said he sold her fake drugs, according to a police report. LeBlanc and three other people knocked on the mans door, located in the 5000 block of SW 17th Place. The man thought there were customers outside and opened his door. Once inside, one of LeBlancs friends stabbed the man in the back and then sliced his chin with a large butcher knife, according to the report. During the fight, LeBlanc stole a cellphone from someone in the mans home. She later told police she had planned the robbery Friday but didnt expect it to be violent, according to the report. Police arrested LeBlanc on two charges of armed robbery and one burglary charge. Authorities took her to the Alachua County Jail where, as of press time, she remains in lieu of an $85,000 bond. - Martin Vassolo Gainesville Police arrested a UF freshman early Tuesday morning after police said he drove his truck into a gas station. At about 1 a.m. Tuesday, Cameron Dane Collins, 18, drove his truck into a support beam at the Shell gas station situated at the corner of Archer Road and Southwest 34th Street, according to a police report. Collins hit the beam going about 20 miles per hour, said 34-year-old cashier Angel Worgiss. She said the impact from the crash shook her stores windows and left Collins front-right fender hanging from his truck. After the crash, Collins walked across the parking lot to find the bathroom, and Worgiss called police. Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now When police arrived, Collins was sitting in his truck with a key in the ignition, according to the report. Collins is listed as a student in the UF directory. Police measured Collins blood-alcohol levels to be .178 and .184. Police arrested Collins on a charge of DUI and took him to the Alachua County Jail where he was released Tuesday afternoon on his own recognizance. - Martin Vassolo A study published Tuesday found up to 10,000 species of insects throughout 50 North Carolina homes. That includes between 32 to 211 species per home, with variations of spiders, beetles and wasps, according to the study. Most surprising was that some groups of these arthropods were found in all the houses, Matthew Bertone, the lead author of the study, said. Still, scientists say these numbers are nothing to worry about. I think there probably would be some fear associated with this, Bertone said. We want to stress that most of these organisms are small and harmless. William Kern, a UF associate professor of urban entomology, believes the species found in Florida homes could differ from those in the study. He said Florida has different species of household insects, especially when the temperature is higher. When you are running central heating, you are going to dry out the environment and there will be more insects coming in the home, he said. In addition, Kern said the species variations including booklice, silverfish and German cockroaches would also depend on the type of living space. Multi-structure dwellings, like apartments or dormitories, tend to have higher pest quantities than single-family homes, Kern said. He said these insects only pose a possible danger to people who are allergic to the protein that arthropods carry. If they werent considered before, they shouldnt be considered now, Kern said. Contact Meryl Kornfield at mkornfield@alligator.org and follow her on Twitter @merylkornfield. Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now Community leaders will gather Wednesday evening for Welcoming Diversity: A Community Action Forum against Islamophobia and Intolerance. Guests will discuss Islamophobia, interfaith relations, the Syrian refugee crisis and the role of media in shaping public perception of these issues. The event starts at 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Thomas Center, situated at 302 NE Sixth Ave. Iman Zawahry, an affiliated faculty member of the UF Center for Global Islamic Studies, said misguided people sometimes believe Muslim faith and scripture tell them to kill. We always say theyre hijacking our religion, she said of violent Muslims, taking the name of Islam as if it is a violent religion. Zawahry said she wants to arm everybody with knowledge and answer any questions they might have about Islam. Terje steb, director of the Center for Global Islamic Studies, said the forum will focus mostly on Gainesville residents. Were not going to change national politics, he said, but we want to make sure that our local community is a welcoming community. steb also emphasized the importance of welcoming refugees. Saying no one can come in is an unfair and un-American way to deal with the problem, he said. About 150 guests said they were attending on the events Facebook page as of press time. We dont want this to be an endpoint, but rather a starting point for continuous activism within the local community, he said. Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now On the Reitz Union North Lawn Wednesday afternoon, Impact Party announced its executive candidates for Student Governments Spring 2016 elections. To a crowd of about 200, Impact Party President Will Smith announced Susan Webster, 22, as the party's candidate for Student Body President. Joining her on the party's executive ticket are Brendon BJ Jonassaint, 21, for Student Body Vice President, and Kishan Patel, 20, for Student Body Treasurer. Webster, a UF international studies senior, serves as UF Student Senate President and a senator for District A. She said she hopes to make changes to help serve students and help make UF a top-10 institution. I should be elected your Student Body president because I know that I will be able to fight for you," Webster said, "not only on the university level but in Tallahassee and in (Washington) D.C." Jonassaint serves as a Cabinet Liaison under Student Body Vice President Kevin Doan. He has previously served as a preview staffer. The UF health science junior said he hopes to improve student life. I think I should be elected because of my passion for the university and my passion for helping students move forward, helping students out in general, he said. Patel, a UF industrial and systems engineering sophomore, serves as a sophomore senator and was the former Access Party Treasurer. He decided to run with Impact because he said Access Party was unable to compromise in Senate. Im really moving toward tangible change for the students, he said. The Impact Party is all about tangible change. Elections will be Feb. 16 and 17 from 8:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Student Body President, Student Body Vice President, Student Body Treasurer and 50 student senators, who will represent their academic year (freshman, sophomore or graduate student) or academic colleges, will be elected for a one-year term. Students who want to run, or slate, with a party can sign up Sunday from noon to 6 p.m., Monday from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. or Tuesday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the Reitz Union Grand Ballroom. Contact Melissa Gomez at mgomez@alligator.org and follow her on Twitter @MelissaGomez004. Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now Contact Caitlin Ostroff at costroff@alligator.org and follow her on Twitter @ceostroff Executive Ticket Student Body President and Vice President Student Body Treasurer Senate Seats (50) Accounting (1) Agricultural (3) Architecture (1) Building Construction (1) Business Administration (3) Dentistry (1) Education (1) Engineering (4) Fine Arts (1) Freshman (3) Graduate (10) Health & Human Performance (1) Journalism (2) Law (1) Liberal Arts & Sciences (6) Medicine (1) Nursing (1) Pharmacy (1) PHHP (1) Sophomore (6) Vet-Med (1) Slating (Reitz Union Grand Ballroom) Jan. 24: Noon to 6 p.m. Jan. 25: 9 a.m. to 7 p.m Jan. 26: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Elections (Various poll locations on campus) Feb. 16 and 17: 8:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. From left, Impact Party student body treasurer candidate Kishan Patel, 20, Impact Party student body president candidate Susan Webster, 22, and Impact Party student body vice-president candidate Brendon Jonassaint, 21, announce their candidacy to a crowd of students on the Reitz Union North Lawn on Jan. 20, 2016. I was devastated after logging onto Twitter on Thursday morning to discover what many were already talking about: Actor Alan Rickman passed away at 69 after suffering from a bout with cancer. His death has put a few things in perspective: First of all, its been made clear to me that many people didnt even know who Rickman was, other than being the guy who played the greasy-haired and morally ambiguous character of Snape in the Harry Potter films. Thursday morning, when I turned to the person next to me to ask if theyd heard about Rickmans death, they gave me a confused glance and asked if I had known the man personally. (Unfortunately, I had not.) This shouldnt be too surprising to me, and its understandable. There will always be people who dont know about the existence or works of others, no matter how famous or widely discussed the person might be. Im certain its possible to find some fortunate, uninformed soul in the vastness of the U.S. who might give you a dumbfounded look when Donald Trumps presidential campaign is mentioned. It has unfortunately been made clear to me that the celebrities we love, the actors and authors we love, will someday pass away. All the characters we love to read about, the personalities we identify with, chat about and crush over will one day leave this world. Its a pretty darn bleak thought, really. Rickman has been part of my life since I first watched him play the dramatically long-suffering character of Alexander Dane in Galaxy Quest as a middle-schooler. I loved him then with his disdainful humor and his mellifluous voice, and Ive loved him since. In contrast, I hated the character of Snape. He uses his unhealthy obsession over a girl as his motivating force in life, is absolutely horrible to Neville and Hermione for no reason I can tell other than to be a jerk and never possesses the spine to truly tell Harry why he acted so spitefully. Nevertheless, Rickman did a wonderful job playing him, a fact that helped warm me up to Snape through the years. For those of us who have seen Rickman in more roles than just that of Snape, here are a few of my favorite moments of his acting: Rickman had a long and fruitful career in theater before going into movies as an actor in the Royal Shakespeare Company. He played a number of literary acting roles in his lifetime, and I fully recommend anyone who enjoyed his slippery, elegantly voiced portrayal of Snape to go explore his other works. Rickman played the genteel and heartbreaking Col. Brandon in the 1995 movie version of Jane Austens Sense and Sensibility. Brandon has to wait a long time to get his love, but hes one of the most well-intentioned heartthrobs youll find in an Austen novel. If you want to see him as a true romantic hero, this is the movie to watch. Another of my favorite Rickman roles is his epic portrayal of the Sheriff of Nottingham in the 1991 film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. The movie is a loose adaptation of the classic tale of Robin Hood, mixing action and adventure with wisecracking humor. Rickman received the British Academy of Film and Television Arts award for best actor in a supporting role for his dastardly deeds as sheriff and does a stellar job of playing the character as an intriguing mix of hilarity and insanity. This past week has been a stark reminder that the much-loved celebrities in our lives will eventually pass on, just as we all will. The inevitability of death makes their passing no less saddening, but thankfully the art they created helps all of us remember them. Sally Greider is a UF English and public relations junior. Her column appears on Wednesdays. Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now In the 10 minutes I could bear to watch Sundays Democratic debate, I was struck by Bernie Sanders speech namely, his accent. Apart from his distinct pronunciation of a few vowels and his intonational and rhythmic patterns typical to New York English, Sanders speech mostly perked up my ears because of one feature: its lack of the sound /r/. Granted, this is somewhat of an over-generalization, because there is no English accent in which the /r/ sound is completely absent. Rather, in some accents, /r/ is not pronounced when it follows a vowel and forms the final part of a syllable. Hence, /r/ sounds that start a syllable and precede a vowel are always pronounced. In linguistic terminology, /r/-type sounds are called rhotics and generally involve a fairly complicated articulation, which is why children struggle to acquire these sounds and generally master them last. The term rhotic is also of utmost importance to the classification of accents in English because it provides a crucial point of division. Arguably one of the greatest divisions in English is between rhotic and non-rhotic accents, which is to say our speech and accents are immediately distinguishable based on the pronunciation, or lack thereof, of /r/-like sounds. This is why, to my ears, Bernie Sanders non-rhotic accent sounds so foreign and so marked. If we think in terms of English accents throughout the world, there is great disparity in /r/ pronunciation. The English accents of England, the Caribbean, Africa, Australia, New Zealand and some coastal portions of Americas east coast are overwhelmingly non-rhotic, whereas the accents of Canada, India, Scotland, Ireland and the rest of the U.S. are generally rhotic. In accents that are non-rhotic, troubles generally arise because of so-called mergers, in which two separate words become homophones. This also serves as a test for the status of your accent. But why does this occur? And furthermore, how could it be so randomly spread throughout the world? Getting to the history of this sound, there was once a period in which every English speaker pronounced /r/ sounds in every word, no matter their position within a syllable. However, in the later parts of the 18th century, English underwent a transition: Some speakers started putting more emphasis on vowels before /r/ and sinking the /r/ sounds themselves. These pronunciations were originally associated with lower, working-class identities, but likely per rapid urbanization the English of major cities in England was quickly transformed, and the vast majority of accents in England became non-rhotic. Scotland and Ireland never underwent this transition, which explains the pronunciation of /r/ in their accents. However, areas of the world that endured sustained contact with England such as relevant parts of Africa, Australia and the Caribbean inherited /r/ drop and have maintained it up to the present. Returning to the original accent in question that of New York: What accounts for the lack of /r/, its most famous feature? Historical linguists posit that this pronunciation derives from the citys upper class imitating the prestigious accents of London. To vastly oversimplify the phenomenon, this pronunciation caught on and became the standard in the city. To bring things full circle, sociolinguistic studies conducted in the second half of the 20th century revealed that the general public in New York perceived the complete drop of /r/ as a marker of the lowest social classes, and many natives consciously pronounced /r/ sounds so as not to appear lower-class. So we can glimpse, with a little humor and irony, how in just the span of a few centuries the absence of /r/ sounds has been considered a marker of the working-class, then prestigious enough to merit imitation, then back to its original lowly status. Say this without an /r/: poor r. This all goes to show that the speech sounds of any language have to be analyzed and understood in the context of power and prestige at specific points in history, as well as the collision of fate and phonetics. This is all to say that Im feeling the Bern pronounced bun. Jordan MacKenzie is a second-year UF linguistics masters student. His column appears on Wednesdays. Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now The effects of the health crisis currently unfolding in Flint, Michigan, will be felt for years to come. This is not a bold, overly negative prognosis: It is a tragic reality reinforced by science or, rather, the lack thereof. Although the news from Flint has been steadily building for months (or years, depending on how you quantify the buildup to tragedy), coverage of lead poisoning in the citys water reached a crescendo last week after President Obama signed an emergency declaration for the city on Saturday. This declaration will allow the city to receive federal aid money to help alleviate the situation but, by most accounts, it will be far from enough. The situation devolved into a partisan issue following comments made by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clintons during the closing moments of Sundays Democratic debate. Slamming Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, Clinton took him to task for allowing the situation to escalate under his watch. Clintons critical comments were compounded by a press release from the Bernie Sanders camp, which called for Gov. Snyder to resign. Because of the conduct by Gov. Snyders administration and his refusal to take responsibility, families will suffer from lead poisoning for the rest of their lives, the press release reads. Children in Flint will be plagued with brain damage and other health problems. The people of Flint deserve more than an apology. Both Sanders and Clinton are right on several accounts. Gov. Snyder and his administration indeed all but facilitated this tragedy, and their efforts to rectify it are coming too little, too late. Whats more, any efforts on their part cannot undo the unpredictable, irreversible physical and mental damage that is going to afflict the children of Flint in the coming decades. Where theyre wrong and were disappointed Bernie did not rise above this sort of thing is in the rush to damn and accuse rather than heal, resolve and reform. There is an obvious and pressing need to hold someone accountable for the unforgivable oversights that have backed Flint residents into a corner. It is evident that much of the blame lies at Snyders feet, but when viewed comprehensively, the safeguards meant to prevent this very sort of incident were bungled at nearly every level of governance. On both a state and federal level, environmental agencies consistently opted to go with the more cost-effective options rather than the safer but more costly and time-consuming alternatives. Blame the Snyder administration if you will, but dont forget the Environmental Protection Agencys complicity in permitting the Flint government to pump water from the Flint River, which was long known to be unhealthy. There is no safe amount of lead for the human body, especially for young children and infants. With that in mind, what can be done for the 8,657 children under 6 years old in Flint, as well as those who have yet to be born? The answer is, tragically, not much. Ideally, the federal and Michigan governments will establish relief funds and programs to clean the water. There will also likely be initiatives to help the towns parents and children adjust to the new physical and mental needs they never would have had to deal with if government officials had done their jobs properly. But no amount of money can take away from the pain and heartbreak facing this town in the years to come. What is needed now is reform in the widest sense, generosity and, just maybe, a degree of faith. Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now Dubai-based beauty mogul Huda Kattan is everywhere these days. Her Huda Beauty false lashes are one of the top-selling items worldwide for Sephora, and thanks to her more than 10 million Instagram followers, she's one of the most wide-reaching voices in international beauty. And last week The New Yorker wrote a feature on Kattan breaking down just how much influence she has in the beauty world. In the piece, writer Kayleen Schaeffer reveals that Kattan received more than 1,000 products at her office last December alone, sent in hopes that she will promote the companies on her Instagram or blog. Kattan also says she gets "three to four emails a week from very serious and good companies" attempting to poach her as a brand ambassador. While Kattan hasn't signed with any brands yet, her massive influence in undeniable: "She can create a trend simply by posting about it," writes Schaeffer. The New Yorker makes a good point about Kattan: She's not just one of the many beauty bloggers who found her passion in makeup all on her own. Before starting her own business, Kattan was a professional makeup artist in Los Angeles (where she went by the name Heidi, a result of being raised in the Western world), working with celebrities like Eva Longoria and Nicole Richie. So it really shouldn't be a surprise that Kattan has so much sway when it comes to influencing the beauty-obsessed. Plus, Kattan, a Muslim woman who told The New Yorker that she identifies as a "spiritual person," has a captive audience in an area that wasn't yet saturated with beauty bloggers. And aside from her ginormous social-media following, her YouTube videos rake in views that range from the hundreds of thousands to more than two million. Kattan says that she moved from Los Angeles to Dubai to become the most famous beauty blogger in the Arab world. "I was focused," says Kattan. "I knew exactly what I wanted." And there's more than enough proof that the beauty world definitely wants her. Head over to The New Yorker to read the entire article. How to Contour: 2005 .. The South Sudan Humanitarian Response Plan for 2016, which was officially launched today in Juba, requests US$1.3 billion to respond to the most life-threatening needs of 5.1 million of people across South Sudan. A total of 114 humanitarian organizations, including international and national NGOs and UN agencies have projects in the plan. Speaking at the []http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Appa-sourceTheAfric... AR's Editor Joe Shea Talks About Elections On Iranian TV Bear Stearns Saved By Fed As Lehman Bros. Falters; Major Bank Failure Looms Over Wall Street, Sends Markets Into 200-Pt. Dive Lie Upon Lie Five Years Into the Iraq War The Administration Still Churns Out Lies by Randolph Holhut A Small Tragedy Even at 90, As Friends Turn Cool She Knows the Show Must Go On by Joyce Marcel I'll Take Me Imagine John Wayne or Arnold In Heels, Silk and a Girdle by Elizabeth Andrews Sen. Nelson Calls For New Fla. Primary; Gov Crist Backs 'Do-Over' Who'll Win? Ask Spock Spock.com Engine Predicts Winners By Site Searches; It Can be Wrong by Jay Bhatti Chatting Up The Cat God Gave Me Dominion Over Him But I Think He's a Non-Believer by Constance Daley Death of a Thug The Life and Horrors of Suharto by Andreas Harsono ___________________________ This Just In Sierra Club: McCain Ducked All 15 Key Votes On Green Laws (AR) A Work By AR's T.S. Kerrigan Is Chosen As 'Best Poem' By Wordpress Site Murder At Mile 63 The Deadly Assault and Bush Administration Cover-Up by S. Eben Kirkesby and Andreas Harsono 5427 14th St. West, Bradenton, FL 34207 $6.99 Fish Fridays! Manatee Co.'s Only 24-Hr. FREE Wi-Fi Paid Advertisement On Native Ground AFTER 5 YEARS, WE'RE STILL LIED TO ABOUT IRAQ by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Next week is the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. And it is likely that sometime in the next couple of weeks, the 4,000th American soldier will die in Iraq. [MORE] Momentum OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. - It's 1931, and a 14-year-old girl is standing alone on a stage. She's small and lively with dark curly hair, widespread hazel eyes, slender wrists and an open, eager face filled with the wonder of performing. Her name is Rose, and one day she will be my mother. But now she is performing an Eugene O'Neill monologue called "Before Breakfast" for a ladies' club in a wealthy suburb of Long Island. [MORE] One Woman's World COMFORTABLE WITH MYSELF by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- I'm not sure but I think I may be socially incorrect. [MORE] On Native Ground ENOUGH FOR A WAR, NOT FOR A PEOPLE by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Last week, the National Governors Assn. met in Washington, D.C. One of the tasks the NGA had on its agenda was to ask President Bush to increase federal spending on roads, bridges and other public works projects as a way to stimulate the economy. He rejected their pleas out of hand, claiming that infrastructure projects wouldn't offer any short-term economic boost. [MORE] Brasch Words BEWARE THE SELF-REVERENTIAL PRESS by Walter Brasch BLOOMSBURG, Pa. -- Shortly before the primary votes this past week, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter called Sen. Barack Obama's surge to the Democratic nomination "inevitable." It also called for Hillary Clinton to "start her campaign for Senate majority leader." [MORE] Constance A CONVERSATION WITH MY CAT Constance Daley ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. -- Normally, when the cat starts his evening rant of meowing continuously until he makes his point, I just take it as long as I can, pick him up, and put him in the garage for the night. He doesn't want to go, but the meowing stops and I don't care if he likes it or not. [MORE] Momentum OUT OF STRUGGLE, ART by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Here we are again at the crossroads of art and social change, having the opportunity to watch good and great films about the lives of women in support of the Women's Crisis Center. [MORE] Campaign 2008 HOW TO PREDICT SUPER TUESDAY II WINNERS? ONLINE SEARCH by Jay Bhatti NEW YORK, March 4, 2008, 7:00PM ET -- With the outcomes of the Texas, Vermont, Ohio and Rhode Island primaries to be decided tonight, how possible is it that online searching can predict who will win tonight's primaries? [MORE] One Woman's World DON'T VOTE; IT ENCOURAGES THEM by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- Call me angry and disgusted but don't call me un-American because I won't be voting come November. [MORE] On Native Ground BUSH AND THE KEYBOARD COMMANDOS by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- As the days tick down toward the eventual departure of President George W. Bush from the White House, it's a hopeful sign that most Americans are no longer moved by his Administration's constant exploitation of terrorism for political gain. [MORE] Momentum WHICH AMERICA DO YOU LIVE IN? by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- It's a little confusing. [MORE] Make My Dat THE LAWYER THAT ATE NEW YORK by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- I used to know a guy who, quite literally, didn't get hyperbole. He didn't understand exaggeration. As a result, he missed most jokes that came his way. [MORE] On Native Ground FIDEL RETIRES: NOW THE COLD WAR IS REALLY OVER by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Maybe now, we can finally say the Cold War is over. [MORE] Make My Dat THE LAWYER THAT ATE NEW YORK by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- I used to know a guy who, quite literally, didn't get hyperbole. He didn't understand exaggeration. As a result, he missed most jokes that came his way. [MORE] One Woman's World POLITICS IS NO PARTY by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- Are you having a hard time focusing your eyes? Do you have faint red spots all over your body? Is there a ringing in your ears and do you see wavy lines when you look at your television set? Do your hands shake when you try to hold a cup of coffee? And have you recently been forgetting what day of the week it is - or what year? [MORE] Make My Day FOR BETTER OR WORSE ... A LOT WORSE by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- "Marriage: It's Only Going to Get Worse." [MORE] Constance YOU CALL THESE RIGHTS? by Constance Daley ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. -- When you express an opinion you hope to persuade others to your point of view. It doesn't always happen but still, opinion writers try. [MORE] Momentum THE BRIDGE WOMAN by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. - Out there in America - yes, still - is a generation of women who were born in the 1940s, raised in the 1950s, and who came to radical consciousness in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I am one of them. Hillary Clinton is one of them. [MORE] On Native Ground OBAMA AND MY GENERATION by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- I originally planned on voting for Dennis Kucinich in the Vermont Primary on March 4. [MORE] The Willies: WARNING: THIS MEDICATION MAY MURDER YOUR FRIENDS by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla. -- You've heard the warnings, haven't you? Stop Prozac and you may take a shotgun, an Uzi or an AK-47 and mow down your family and friends, or even a whole classroom full of your fellow students. You didn't? Well, that warning is not on the bottle, but like countless mass-murder incidents before it, Friday's shootings at Northern Illinois University, as well as the Virginia Tech shootings that killed 32 last year, was probably precipitated by the effect of stopping medications that suppress anger and other powerful emotions but do not relieve the underlying cause. Isn't it time we started warning people - or stopped prescribing these medicines? [MORE] One Woman's World DON'T KNOCK ON MY DOOR by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- I wish I could feel delight in my poet's mansion being like Grand Central Station all the time, but I can't. And I wish my place was such a place that someone would one day write: "Her door was always open and she always made you feel all fuzzy and warm in her presence. She could make a cup of coffee seem like a banquet." [MORE] Reporting: Panama PANAMA'S VIOLENT LABOR UNREST INTENSIFIES Mark Scheinbaum PANAMA CITY, Panama, Feb, 15, 2008 -- After just one day of relative calm, wildcat construction strikes by some members of Panama's largest union flared up again Friday morning, four days after a police sniper shot one worker. More than 140 demonstrators have been injured and at least 500 arrested, authorities say. [MORE] Brasch Words TO STIMULATE ECONOMY, BUY A CHINESE-MADE U.S. FLAG by Walter Brasch BLOOMSBURG, Pa. -- Walking down Main Street, pushing a grocery cart loaded with clothes, toys, and appliances was Marshbaum. Fastened to the right front corner of the cart was an American flag tied onto a three-foot ruler. [MORE] Make My Day THE TOOTH, AND NOTHING BUT THE TOOTH by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- To commemorate the death of noted shark exploder Roy Scheider, and the "Jaws" movies that resulted in Erik never setting foot in the ocean again, we are reprinting this column from 2003. Shark Experts 0, Sharks 1 [MORE] Momentum THE WINTER OF MY DISCONTENT by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. - As I write this, it's raining ice. Maybe a half a foot of snow and ice has already landed up here in the woods of Dummerston. Our cars are encased in it, and the door to the house is blocked. The satellite dish that brings in our Internet service quit about 20 minutes ago - frozen solid. [MORE] The Willies AMERICA TO HILLARY: GET OUT! by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla., Feb. 13, 2008 -- Sen. Hillary Clinton has adopted the Rudy Giuliani strategy, and it's working - for Sen. Barack Obama. It turns out to be the strategy all Democrats are seeking - an exit strategy. But it's not for Iraq. It's for her exit from the race for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination. [MORE] Constance CONFESSIONS OF A DISAPPOINTED VOTER by Constance Daley ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. -- A week ago at just about this time, I completed an article and was about to submit it as scheduled to The American Reporter. I was feeling rather elated, ready to show up on Super Tuesday morning, firmly touch the X next to Rudy Giuliani's name and get on with my day. He was my choice; he would get my vote. [MORE] Reporting: Florida SIERRA CLUB SET TO SUSPEND FLA. CHAPTER by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla., Feb. 10, 2008 -- The national Sierra Club is set to suspend its Florida chapter after years of divisive infighting, the president of the national club told Florida members in a letter delivered to some this weekend. It is the first time in its 116-year history that such a step has been considered by the club, according to news reports. [MORE] One Woman's World PLANT A NEW WORLD THIS SPRING by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- For a little while, the men will just have to toss and turn in their fear-free-women beds. For a small space of time Hillary Clinton will just have to trudge on toward the White House without my faint applause in the background. [MORE] On Native Ground VERMONT AND THE 5 STAGES OF CONSERVATIVE GRIEF by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- First, Vermont tried to convince the nation to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney. [MORE] Make My Day REBEL WITHOUT A TONGUE by Erik Deckers INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- Kids' brains work in amazing ways. At times, they can grasp complex concepts and make impressive discoveries. Other times, you have to wonder how we ever survived as a species. [MORE] The Willies FOR DEMOCRATS, NOW IT'S ABOUT RACE, INCOME AND GENDER by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Feb. 6, 2008 -- It's not a good time to be a Democrat. As the Super Tuesday results demonstrated, the presidential race between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton has divided the partly along clear racial, income and gender lines - the very distinctions the party has sought to erase in principle but has emphasized in its pursuit of diversity. [MORE] Momentum SUPER TUESDAY BLUES by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- Super Tuesday has come and gone and I still can't get excited about the upcoming presidential elections. [MORE] The Willies ON THE BRINK OF HISTORY, YOUR PUSH IS NEEDED by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla., Feb. 5. 2008 -- I'm expecting a sea change tonight. I believe that for the first time in this nation's history we will once and forever banish racism as the deciding factor in the destiny of African-Americans, and indeed adopt diversity as our path to the future. [MORE] Campaign 2008 AT 88, EVERY VOTE REALLY COUNTS by Ted Manna DENVER, Feb. 5, 2008 -- Pearl Turner will caucus for Mitt Romney tonight in Denver. [MORE] One Woman's World STAND BY YOUR WOMAN by Elizabeth T. Andrews CARTERSVILLE, Ga. -- The black vote. The gay vote. The fundamentalist vote. The Hispanic vote. [MORE] An AR Special SUSPECTS IN BENAZIR ASSASSINATION HAVE TIES TO MUSHARRAF by Ahmar Mustikhan WASHINGTON, D.C. -- When Gordon Brown this past Monday feted coup-leader-turned-President Pervez Musharraf at 10 Downing Street, Britain's new prime minister probably didn't ask the Pakistani dictator a question that is now on many minds: Did you order the murder of Benazir Bhutto? [MORE] Momentum TO THE VERMONT DELEGATION: WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR US LATELY? by Joyce Marcel DUMMERSTON, Vt. Back when President George W. Bush and Dick Vice President Dick Cheney were building up to their loathsome war in Iraq, very few people were brave enough to call the bullies' bluff. [MORE] On Native Ground IF BUSH HAS HIS WAY, WE'LL NEVER LEAVE IRAQ by Randolph T. Holhut DUMMERSTON, Vt. - In his final State of the Union address on Jan. 28, President Bush cautioned against accelerating U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq, saying that it would endanger the process that has been made over the past year. [MORE] Campaign 2008 CLASH OF COMMENTS AND PROTESTORS AT CLINTON, OBAMA RALLIES IN DENVER by Ted Manna DENVER, Feb. 1, 2008 -- At least four presidential campaigns of both partiers rolled into in Denver this week ahead of the Feb. 5 "Super Tuesday" primaries in 22 states, but it was the Democratic presidential contenders who drew the big crowds and duked it out Wednesday. If sheer numbers are any indication, Sen. Barack Obama - preceded by a buoyant and beautiful Caroline Kennedy - won the round handily. He is the overwhelming favorite to win the Colorado primary next Tuesday. [MORE] The Willies WHY THE FLORIDA PRIMARY STINKS by Joe Shea BRADENTON, Fla., Jan. 30, 2008 -- I was with my wife and daughter driving the back way from Miami home to Bradenton when we stopped at a McDonald's in Clewiston, the only big town along the vast shore of Lake Okeechobee, the state's precious freshwater reservoir. The McDonald's had three televisions at a central seating area, each tuned to a different network, and our table was in front of CNN as the very first election results started to pour in around 7:30PM. With them, almost as counterpoint, suddenly came such an overwhelming odor of cow plop that my wife started to throw up as we all ran to the parking lot. [MORE] Passings: Suharto DEATH OF A KEMUSU THUG by Andreas Harsono JAKARTA - A few minutes after hearing that former president Suharto had died in his hospital bed, Marco, a militia leader in downtown Jakarta, raced to Suhartos house, wearing his jungle camouflage and began guarding the Suhartos residence on Cendana Street. [MORE] Constance I REMEMBER YOU by Constance Daley ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga.. -- It seems to be more often lately that the sentiment is spoken but it's always been out there: "You never get over the death of your child." This is true. But the heartfelt expressions come from some who cannot fathom the notion of losing a child; their own child is who is in their mind, not another mother's child. [MORE] A media outlet associated with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) on Tuesday released a eulogy for "Jihadi John, a member of the armed group who gained notoriety for his filmed execution of hostages, the monitoring organization SITE reported. The deceased was identified as Mohammed Emwazi, a British citizen of Arab origin. The U.S. military said in November it was "reasonably certain" it had killed him in a drone strike. Emwazi was described in ISILs Dabiq magazine by his nickname "Abu Muharib al-Muhajir. "On Thursday, the 29th of Muharram, 1437 [Nov. 12, 2015], Abu Muharib finally achieved shahadah [martyrdom] for the cause of Allah, which he had sought for so long, as the car he was in was targeted in a strike by an unmanned drone in the city of Raqqa, destroying the car and killing him instantly," Dabiq said. Emwazi became the public face of ISIL and a symbol of its brutality after appearing in videos showing the murders of U.S. journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley, U.S. aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig, British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, Japanese journalist Kenji Goto and other hostages. Sotloff's mother, Shirley Sotloff, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that she hadn't heard about the IS announcement but assumed Emwazi was dead following the Army's announcement last fall. "It's good," she said. "I'm glad that he's gone, but it doesn't bring back my son." Shown in the videos dressed in black, a balaclava covering all but his eyes and the bridge of his nose, Emwazi became one of the world's most wanted men. Born in Kuwait in 1988, Emwazi was taken to Britain by his family when he was 6 years old and eventually studied computer programming in London. The U.S.-British missile strike believed to have killed him was months in the preparation but came together at lightning speed last November as two U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drones and one British MQ-9 cruised above the Syrian town of Raqqa, according to U.S. officials. Wire services President Barack Obama vetoed on Tuesday legislation that would have nullified a federal rule designed to protect smaller streams, tributaries and wetlands from pollution. In his veto message, Obama defended the rule. He said pollution from upstream sources ends up in the rivers, lakes and coastal waters near where most Americans live. He also said the rule would clarify the scope of the Clean Water Act and protect those resources. "The rule, which is a product of extensive public involvement and years of work, is critical to our efforts to protect the nation's waters and keep them clean," Obama said. Its pretty simple all water is connected. Even kids understand that, Clean Water Action, an environmental advocacy group, said on its website. The health of our rivers, lakes and bays depend on the streams and wetlands that flow into them. Many farmers and businesses had countered that expanding the scope of waters subject to the act's jurisdiction was a power grab that would lead to greater permitting requirements for landowners and greater legal liability. They called on Congress to intervene. Two Supreme Court rulings left the reach of the Clean Water Act uncertain. Those decisions in 2001 and 2006 left 60 percent of the nation's streams and millions of acres of wetlands without clear federal protection, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, causing confusion for landowners and government officials. The veto was expected. The House voted to void the rule last week. The Senate passed the resolution last November. Neither chamber appears to have enough votes to override the president's veto. The Associated Press Opposition protesters erected burning roadblocks and shattered windows in a section of Haiti's capital on Tuesday to press for new elections less than a week before a Jan. 24 presidential and legislative runoff. On the second day of protests that began Monday, a few thousand people joined the demonstration in downtown Port-au-Prince, marching through narrow streets and occasionally chanting: "The revolution has started, get your gun ready." People threw rocks, smashing windshields and the windows of a bank. They also overturned vendors' stalls to block law enforcement vehicles. Campaigning for Haiti's presidential runoff kicked off earlier this month, but only government-backed candidate Jovenel Moise is participating. Opposition presidential candidate Jude Celestin is boycotting the Jan. 24 vote, arguing he has no chance to win because the deck is stacked against him by Haiti's electoral machinery and interference by the international community. Celestin leads an opposition alliance alleging "massive fraud" in favor of Moise, outgoing President Michel Martelly's chosen successor. Moise won nearly 33 percent of the vote in the disputed Oct. 25 first round that was endorsed by international monitors. Martelly has been ruling by decree since January 2015. The Haitian National Police dispersed the demonstrators with tear gas before they arrived at Haiti's Parliament, where senators were discussing a resolution to potentially postpone Sunday's vote and set up a verification commission. Lawmakers in Haiti's upper house expect to vote on the matter Wednesday. Haiti's influential Chamber of Commerce issued a Tuesday statement saying it was concerned about the electoral crisis and called for a recent special commission's recommendations to be adopted, including the redesign of Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council. Martelly told reporters at a conference of foreign ministers visiting Haiti that he was ready to vote Sunday and would ensure that security was in place to ensure safe balloting for citizens. Martelly, who is barred from seeking a consecutive term and is due to leave office Feb. 7, argues that the opposition has spread unsubstantiated allegations about "massive fraud" to improve their chances at gaining power. Electoral council authorities also insist that the vote will take place as scheduled. They have said Celestin's name and photo will appear on ballots because he never officially withdrew from the race. The United Nations, the United States and the Organization of American States have said they support holding the final round this month so a transfer of power to a new leader can take place by the Feb. 7 constitutional deadline. The Associated Press Shabir, 22, suffered brain damage after being hit in head by a tear gas shell during the 2010 uprising in Kashmir. Shahid Tantray SRINAGAR, Kashmir On a cold evening last December, Sajad limped home and sat in his living room under a dim tungsten bulb. He pulled a cigarette packet out from his black woolen cloak. Within fifteen minutes Sajad, 20, had impatiently smoked two, letting ash fall to the floor. He had just finished a day of work at the Grand Mosque market of Srinagar in the Indian-controlled region of Kashmir, where he sells used clothes off a cart. That neighborhood carries strong associations. Last August, about a mile away from where he now works, Sajad was shot in the leg by a solider during a protest. The Grand Mosque area is known for anti-India activity, and thousands, including Sajad, have been part of rallies that have at times become violent. That wasnt Sajads first clash with law enforcement agencies. Since 2009, police have filed four cases against him for war against the state and rioting. In February 2013, he was held for 45 days at Kotbalwal prison, 350 kilometers from Srinagar, before a court order released him. After he spent a month in police custody, his family realized something was different about him. He was beaten up and may have been hit in the head, says Ghulam, his elder brother. Later we noticed, he would laugh unnecessarily, look puzzled, be in tense moods and complain of headaches. He stopped working. News Story not available This story has been published on: 2022-10-20. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. This story is no longer available on our site. On June 22, 2007, an Afghan man was sent to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. That is perhaps the only fact in Haroon al-Afghanis case that all agree on; others are disputed by his relatives, who are speaking to the media for the first time. In official documents, almost nothing certain is known about Afghanis background and activities. Yet he has been held for more than eight years without being charged. Afghani is a so-called forever prisoner, a detainee at Guantanamo who has not been charged with a crime but has not been cleared for transfer. Nor does he even have a lawyer. At a time when President Barack Obama is repeating his desire to close down the prison and other prisoners are being released in trickles, the existence of someone like Afghani a virtual mystery man in official documents is a reminder of the legal morass that the U.S. overseas prison has found itself in. Afghani arrived in Guantanamo as George W. Bushs administration was already shipping people out of the prison. The Department of Defense announced at the time it had transferred a dangerous terrorism suspect to Guantanamo Bay. The U.S. alleged that Afghani was a senior member of Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin, (HIG), an Afghan insurgent group led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a warlord who helped end the Soviet occupation in the country. Afghani is also said to have been a courier for alleged senior Al-Qaeda operations planner Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, who was also transferred to Guantanamo from CIA custody in 2007. Iraqi is charged with war crimes. Afghani lived in Pakistan and used to travel to Afghanistan to visit his relatives and farmland. According to the U.S., the Afghan National Directorate of Security captured Afghani in Farm-e-Hada area in Nangarhar province on Feb. 4, 2007. He was taken with six men also suspected of being HIG associates, according to a report by Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO), which oversees the prison and assessed the detainees. But that claim comes from just one source, identified in JTF-GTMO report footnotes as TD-314/08910-07, a CIA report serial number. The information comes from an unidentified human source. The -07 denotes the year 2007. The classified reports were published by WikiLeaks. Often prisoners and their lawyers dispute the reports for banking on unreliable testimony or point out that they contradict other evidence and statements. In Afghanis case, a footnote states that his capture date was inaccurately first reported as March 2007. A family member of Afghanis believes that he was taken from a house near Jalalabad, Afghanistan. I think he was alone while captured, the relative said. The JTF-GTMO states that among Afghanis personal items were vehicle registration [and] miscellaneous papers reportedly recovered in Jalalabad following detainees arrest. There is a further accusation by the U.S. that Afghani was an improvised explosive device expert in charge of cells targeting U.S. and coalition forces. This intelligence comes from two sources, identified only as CIR 316/00242-07 and IIR 6 105 4594 07. CIR could be a criminal investigative report from the Department of Defense investigative task force, and IIR indicates a non-CIA report. Al Jazeera asked an expert recognized as such by the Guantanamo military commissions not familiar with Afghani to review his JTF-GTMO file. The expert (who asked not to be identified, to avoid jeopardizing professional relationships) said the file on Afghani reminds me of the broad swath of disparate bits of [information] from various interrogations done over years and documented often by newly initiated persons in the JTF overseen by newish [and] temporary supervisors. The expert added that it is plausible that a notable guy like Abd al Hadi al Iraqi would have trusted a native speaker as a courier [because] Al-Qaeda leadership knew even the best linguist Arabs spoke Dari, [Pashto], Urdu and Farsi with an accent and could not hide in plain site like natives. Afghani fluently speaks Arabic, Pashto and Farsi, Al Jazeera understands. Moreover, the expert said, there was not much integration of Al-Qaeda Arabs with Afghans or Pakistanis in operation or combat matters, for two main reasons: lack of trust and language barriers. In short, the expert said, Afghanis JTF-GTMO report was pandering and wishful writing. Dark money is a bipartisan weapon. And with both parties locked in a campaign funding arms race, dark money groups are multiplying and thriving at both ends of the political spectrum. But, during the 2012 election cycle, conservative dark money groups that reported expenditures to the FEC outspent liberal ones by about 8 to 1, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Dark moneys political role was enabled by the Supreme Courts Citizens United v. FEC decision, which allowed corporations, including certain types of nonprofits, to fund ads expressly urging the election or defeat of federal candidates. That decision overturned previous restrictions on corporate spending to influence election outcomes. Campaign finance reform activists argue that voters should know the identity of donors behind political advertising in order to evaluate its merits and discern which special interests have a stake in an elections outcome. Fred Wertheimer, the founder and president of Democracy 21, has said that history makes clear that unlimited contributions and secret money are a formula for corruption. And in a portion of the controversial Citizens United decision, eight of the nine Supreme Court justices agreed that disclosure of money in politics was important because transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages. But supporters of anonymity in politics counter that the Federalist Papers and Thomas Paines Common Sense were published anonymously during the countrys founding. Lawyers at the Wyoming Liberty Group have argued that throughout American history, anonymous political speech has been the scorn of entrenched powers and the saving balm of emerging voices. And the Center for Competitive Politics has argued that disclosure comes with a cost, including the potential to chill speech and for donors to be harassed. The three Republicans and three Democrats who comprise the nations primary regulator of campaign funding, the FEC, are divided over the degree to which dark money is a problem. At the same time, the Internal Revenue Service regulates nonprofit organizations and can revoke a nonprofits tax-exempt status if a group is deemed undeserving. But in recent years, only a handful of 501(c)(4) nonprofits social welfare groups by law have had their tax-exempt status revoked for being too political. The Department of Justice can also criminally prosecute knowing and willful violations of campaign finance law, although this, too, is rare. Although journalists have developed strategies to track usually long after the fact contributions by some nonprofits and labor unions to dark money groups, if an individual donates to a dark money group, there is essentially no public paper trail to follow. This story is from the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative media organization in Washington, D.C. Read more of its investigations on the influence of money in politics or follow it on Twitter. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, facing protests, lawsuits and calls for his resignation over drinking water contamination in Flint, on Tuesday night apologized to the citys residents and called for the state to spend $28 million on fixes. "We are praying for you, we are working hard for you and we are absolutely committed to taking the right steps to effectively solve this crisis," he said in his State of the State address. "To you, the people of Flint, I say tonight as I have before: I am sorry, and I will fix it." Snyder committed $28 million more in the short term to dealing with the lead contamination that has left Flint residents unable to drink unfiltered tap water. He announced the deployment of roughly 130 more National Guard members to the city and promised to quickly release his emails regarding the crisis that has engulfed his administration with criticism from across the country. His aides pledged that, by the end of the week, officials would visit every household in Flint to ensure they have water filters. Snyder devoted much of his 49-minute evening address to the GOP-led Legislature to the disaster as hundreds of protesters demonstrated outside the Capitol. Many of his other priorities were shelved from the speech due to the crisis, though he did address the mounting financial problems in Detroit's state-overseen school district. He outlined a timeline of the "catastrophe" dating to 2013, and blamed it on failures at the federal, state and local level, but also said: "I let you down. You deserve better. You deserve accountability. You deserve to know the buck stops here with me." The images of an impoverished city where no one dares to drink the water have put Snyder on the defensive and forced him to step up his efforts to help. The governor, who previously apologized for regulatory failures and for an underwhelming initial response, has rejected calls for his resignation and said he received incorrect information from two state agencies. In recent weeks, he declared a state of emergency, pledged more state funding, activated about 70 National Guardsmen to help distribute lead tests, filters and bottled water, and successfully sought $5 million in federal assistance. But to many people, those steps took way too long. The new round of funding announced Tuesday, which requires approval from the GOP-led Legislature, is intended as another short-term step while Snyder works to get a better handle on the long-range costs. He plans to make a bigger request in his February budget proposal. The $28 million would pay for more filters, bottled water, school nurses, intervention specialists, testing and monitoring. It also would replace plumbing fixtures in schools with lead problems and could help Flint with unpaid water bills. The crisis began when Flint, about an hour's drive from Detroit, switched its water source in 2014 to save money while under state financial management. Michigan's top environmental regulator resigned over the failure to ensure that the Flint River water was properly treated to keep lead from pipes from leaching into the water. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who attended the address, said Snyder's contrition "does not mitigate the crime that has been committed." The Associated Press The U.S. Supreme Court is considering multiple appeals from lawyers trying to keep a Texas inmate from execution Wednesday evening for a slaying 15 years ago that the man claims was accidental. Richard Masterson, 43, would be the first inmate put to death this year in the nation's busiest death penalty state, where 13 lethal injections in 2015 accounted for nearly half of the 28 executions nationwide. Masterson's case has recently drawn the attention of Pope Francis, who has reinforced the Catholic Church's opposition to capital punishment. Masterson was sentenced to death for the January 2001 strangulation of Darin Shane Honeycutt, 35, a female impersonator Masterson met at a bar. He testified at his Houston trial that Honeycutt's death was the result of an accidental asphyxiation during sex and not an intentional killing. Evidence showed Masterson stole Honeycutt's car, dumped it in Georgia and was arrested at a Florida mobile home park more than a week later with another stolen car. That car belonged to a Tampa, Florida, man who testified that he was robbed by Masterson but survived a similar sex episode in which he was choked. At least four appeals on Masterson's behalf were before the Supreme Court. His attorneys are arguing that Honeycutt's death was accidental or the result of a heart attack, that a Harris County medical examiner whose credentials have been questioned was wrong to tell jurors it was a strangulation, that Masterson's earlier lawyers were deficient for failing to discover that information and that his prolonged drug use and then withdrawal while in jail contributed to his "suicide by confession" when he spoke to police about the slaying. Lawyers also contend that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied Masterson his rights to due process and access to the courts by refusing their challenge to a new state law that keeps secret the identity of the provider of pentobarbital that Texas prison officials use for lethal injections. State lawyers argued that Masterson's attorneys offered no scientific evidence about Honeycutt's death that was not previously raised and rejected, including by jurors at Masterson's trial. According to court filings, besides confessing to police, Masterson told a brother he killed Honeycutt and wrote to Texas' thenAttorney General Greg Abbott in 2012 acknowledging the slaying. "I meant to kill him," Masterson wrote to Abbott, who is now Texas' governor. "It was no accident." Masterson has a long drug history and a criminal record beginning at age 15. Court documents showed he ignored advice from lawyers at his 2002 trial and insisted on telling jurors he met Honeycutt, who used the stage name Brandi Houston, at a bar and they went to Honeycutt's Houston apartment, where, Masterson said, the chokehold was part of a sex act. Honeycutt's body was found Jan. 27, 2001, after friends became worried when he failed to show up for work. Masterson also told jurors he was a future danger an element they had to agree with in order to decide a death sentence was appropriate. At least eight other Texas death row inmates have executions scheduled for the coming months, including one set for next week. The Associated Press Asylum seekers in the northern English town of Middlesbrough believe they are easy targets for racist abuse because they have been housed in properties that almost all have red front doors, a local support group manager said on Wednesday. The houses there are owned by a subcontractor of G4S, an outsourcing giant that has been embroiled in a series of scandals over alleged incompetence and abuses. After a report about the red doors appeared on the front page of Wednesday's Times newspaper in Britain, a spokesman for G4S said the subcontractor, Jomast, would repaint the doors. Jomast said it was "ludicrous" to suggest it practiced discrimination. Asylum seekers described having eggs and stones thrown at their windows, dog excrement smeared on their doors and racist jibes shouted at them, The Times reported. Britain has not seen migrants in the same huge numbers that arrived in other European countries last year, but public concerns over immigration are running high, and tensions have risen in some communities with large numbers of migrants. "Many of our asylum seekers feel the red doors make them a target," said Pete Widlinski, the manager of Justice First, a local group that offers support to asylum seekers. He said that he and others raised the issue with G4S and Jomast several times but that the asylum seekers' concerns were ignored until now. Immigration Minister James Brokenshire said he ordered an urgent audit of housing for asylum seekers in northeastern England which is provided by G4S under a government contract. "Anything which identifies asylum seeker accommodation to those who may wish to harm those accommodated in the properties must be avoided," he told Parliament, urging anyone who suffered racist abuse to contact the police. The Times quoted Ahmad Zubair from Afghanistan as saying that he repainted his front door white to stop the abuse but that a Jomast worker repainted it red, citing company policy. "Asylum houses have red doors. Everyone knows that," Zubair was quoted as saying. "People were shouting outside the house, calling us hate words, throwing things at our windows." The Times said it identified 168 houses owned by Jomast, 155 of which had red doors. Reporters spoke to people living at 66 of the properties with red doors and found that 62 of them housed asylum seekers of 22 nationalities. Stuart Monk, the owner and managing director of Jomast, said paint was bought in bulk for use at all its properties a common practice among landlords. The G4S spokesman said Jomast confirmed that the majority of houses where asylum seekers lived have red doors and agreed to repaint them so there would be no dominant color. The Times said Middlesbrough has one asylum seeker for every 173 residents the highest concentration anywhere in Britain. Widlinski said that a far-right group organized a rally in the town on Saturday to call for refugees not to be let into the country and that only 30 people turned up, some of them from other towns. The controversy over the red doors is the latest in a string of public relations disasters for G4S, one of the largest private employers in the world, with about 611,000 employees. G4S has been involved in a string of scandals. It got into trouble over its handling of a deadly riot at an immigration detention center in Australia in 2014, and earlier this month it fired four workers over alleged use of unnecessary force against young offenders in the U.K. Wire services As'ad's Bio As'ad AbuKhalil, born March 16, 1960. From Tyre, Lebanon, grew up in Beirut. Received his BA and MA from American University of Beirut in pol sc. Came to US in 1983 and received his PhD in comparative government from Georgetown University. Taught at Tufts University, Georgetown University, George Washington University, Colorado College, and Randolph-Macon Woman's College. Served as a Scholar-in-Residence at Middle East Institute in Washington DC. He served as free-lance Middle East consultant for NBC News and ABC News, an experience that only served to increase his disdain for maintream US media. He is now professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus. His favorite food is fried eggplants. " " A caged Tibetan mastiff in Beijing awaits inoculation. China Photos/ Getty Images It's difficult to breathe. A thick, frothy pool of saliva in your mouth swishes unpleasantly back and forth across your tongue. You would like to drink it -- at this point any sort of liquid, even warm spit, might help ease your maddening thirst and dehydration -- but the muscles in your throat won't allow you to swallow. As you lie there, partially paralyzed, sick from fever and thirst, each labored breath becomes a chore. Frequent hallucinations and your mind's growing instability make it clear that the end is coming soon. This isn't an excerpt from a horror novel. It's what happens to a person who contracts rabies and doesn't receive prompt treatment. Advertisement Rabies is a deadly virus found on every continent except Antarctica. It affects both animals and people and is typically transmitted through the saliva of an infected animal by a bite or contact with an open wound. It's also one of the world's oldest infectious diseases. Cases of rabies date back to the dawn of recorded history. More than 4,000 years ago, the ancient Mesopotamians documented cases of rabid dogs and steeply fined their owners. In the third century B.C., Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote about transmission of the disease. In the 1500s, people commonly made pilgrimages to Liege, Belgium, seeking protection from rabies by Saint Hubert, the patron saint of huntsmen [source: RabiesFreeWorld]. It wasn't until the late 19th century, however, that an effective cure was found. In 1885, French scientist Louis Pasteur saved the life of a young boy who had recently been bitten by a rabid dog. Pasteur had been working on a rabies vaccine for several years and had recently cured infected animals in his laboratory. By promptly administering the young boy this new, then-untested vaccine, Pasteur saved the child's life and turned rabies into a treatable disease. However, the vaccine was, and still is, only viable as a preventive measure or for those who have recently contracted the virus [source: Cohn]. Pasteur may have created a vaccine, but he didn't eliminate the disease. Rabies is still a very real threat to animals and people all over the world. Click over to the next page to see exactly how rabies works and what it does to those unlucky enough to get it. YEREVAN, JANUARY 20, ARMENPRESS. U.S. President Barack Obama telephoned his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday to extend his condolences over recent terror attacks, Erdogans office said. Armenpress reports the aforementioned, referring to Anadolu news agency. Obama condemned last weeks suicide attack in Istanbul that killed ten German tourists, as well as a car-bombing in Diyarbakir, southeast Turkey that killed six, the presidents office said. The leaders reiterated their determination to cooperate against the IS and PKK. YEREVAN, JANUARY 20, ARMENPRESS. On 13 January 1990, after Armenian massacres in Sumgait in February 1988, less than 35 thousand Armenians remained from 300 thousand Armenian community of the Azerbaijani capital. Mass killings of Armenian population began in Baku: Hundreds of people were killed and disabled. It is not only accepted but also not allowed to speak on the reasons why in the evening of 19 January 1990 troops entered Baku. Entry of troops to Baku helped to stop the massacre of not only Armenians but also the whole Christian population. Aliyev clan pays tribute to the honor of insurgent killers 26 years after the mentioned events. Aliyev clans state propaganda machine created a so-called Tragedy of January 20 myth connected with today impudently claiming that troops killed the "Independence and freedom" fighters of Azerbaijan. During 3 day-long massacres in Azerbaijan's capital, hundreds of Armenians were brutally killed. Azerbaijani nationalists were killing not only Armenians, but also Lezgians, Ossetians and Georgians. Besides, the wave of violence was raised against the Russian population of the city. On the night of January 20, 1990, one week after the massacre, Soviet troops entered Baku. Azerbaijani fighters were firing on the Soviet troops, resulting in the deaths of 28 Soviet soldiers and wounded another 100 Soviet soldiers. According to the official data of Azerbaijan, 131 civilians were killed during "The events of January 20. However, Soviet special purpose units found a well which was filled with bodies of Russian and Armenian citizens. Azerbaijan called Azerbaijani murderers and fighters Shehids (martyrs) killed during the entry of Soviet troops and as the result of Armenian self-defense. Armenians were killed and burnt under applauses of the violent crowd in Azerbaijan, children, women and old people were thrown out of the balconies and occupied their apartments and properties. Bakus Armenian community of 300 thousand, which had a big role in Azerbaijans economy and culture, stopped its existence. Losing everything, survivors of the massacre became refugees. Azerbaijan's anti-Armenian massacres that started in the whole area of the country resulted in 500 thousand Armenians becoming refugees. Azerbaijani murderers killed also Russians, Ukrainians, Jews, as well as Azerbaijanis, who had the courage to save some Armenians. Azerbaijans committed heinous crime against humanity remains unconvinced. These crimes were not condemned either by Azerbiajani SSR or USSR leadership and also further leaderships of the Republic of Azerbaijan refused to release archival material on the January events. Armenian massacres and forced evacuation in Baku is fully involved in a legal concept Genocide defined by the convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Last year, international migrants sent almost $600 billion back to their home countries, with much of that money coming from the United States. These cross-border exchanges, sometimes known as remittances, allow people living and working abroad to support their families back home and are a vital financial tool for millions around the globe. However, the popular service remains expensive, slow and nontransparent at a time when other financial products, thanks to tech advancements, have come down in price. The money transfer organizations that dominate the business charge high fees and often offer scandalous exchange rates, resulting in a regressive tax on the world's poor. In a world of globalized supply chains, in which trillions of dollars change hands every day, we can do more to drive down the costs of small remittances, which are often essential for the well-being of the recipients in workers' home countries. India, for example, receives twice as much in international remittances as it does in foreign direct investment. Sure, banks and money-transfer organizations will point to anti-money-laundering laws and U.S. concerns about terrorism financing as justifications for the high costs of international transfers. But lack of transparency in pricing and excessive fees don't hurt the real malefactors. In fact, they could do the reverse by driving even legitimate remittances underground. In rich countries like the United States, both regulation and new technology have brought much greater visibility and efficiency to the pricing of mortgages, credit cards and bank fees. The changes have resulted in cost savings and increased choice for consumers in these areas. In the United States today, technology companies like Square and PayPal, for instance, allow us to fling money across the table at a restaurant to settle a bill, or across the country to support our children in college. These services cost little or nothing and complete their transactions near-instantly. But the remittance industry remains an island of opacity and high costs despite tech advancements. Every year, hundreds of thousands of workers in the United States send money back home to family in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America. The amounts are typically small perhaps $200 at a time and transfer fees average 5% of the total, according to the World Bank. That cost has changed little in recent years, and even rose slightly in 2015. The U.S. and Mexico are two neighboring countries that will conduct more than half a trillion dollars in trade in goods this year. You better believe that the multinationals conducting that trade aren't paying 5% transaction fees to send money north and south of the border. Globally, the cost of remittances is just under 9% of the value of transactions, according to the World Bank. Four years ago, leaders at the G-20 resolved to bring it down to 5% or less, but too little progress has been made. We need to pull back the veil on the international money transfer industry in order to accommodate the "New Americans" who send their hard-earned wages to finance food, housing, health, and education for their families back home. That is why I recently teamed up with Dr. Noel Maurer, an associate professor at George Washington University, to take an in-depth look at who uses international money transfers. The white paper, "Mobile Money /Global Money: An In-depth Look at Modern Day Money Transfers," examines international money transfers and the significant difference they make in the lives of people around the world. Regulatory hurdles and the lack of formal banking institutions in many parts of the world are just two of the obstacles to the international money transfer space moving forward. But these obstacles can be met head-on. Regulators should task remittance organizations with delivering accurate consumer information upfront. Before any green exchanges hands, remittance senders and receivers alike should know how much the transfer will ultimately cost, how long the transaction will take and where they can access remittance money in their respective countries. Any legal framework that covers remittances should apply equally to all service providers. Such nondiscriminatory regulation will foster a more competitive market. If we want banking to reach the worlds poor, there is no reason for the remittance system to be stuck in neutral. And if we want to make banking work for everyone and to be seen to work for everyone bringing transparency and efficiency to this vital lifeline for the world's poor would be a good place to start. Arkadi Kuhlmann is the founder and chief executive of Zenbanx. He can be reached on Twitter at @arkadikuhlmann. Apple Pay made a big splash when it arrived in late 2014, but has made few ripples since then, as consumers stuck to their old payment habits and banks in international markets proved reluctant to provide their support. One of Apple's earliest U.S. partners, Union Bank & Trust Co. in Lincoln, Neb., has decided that it's time to take back the reins of its mobile strategy. "Apple Pay works well, but it has been slow with merchants because of the cost and concerns over how to retool to accept the service," said Alan Fosler, a senior vice president at the $3.2 billion-asset bank. The institution has joined a bank-branded mobile wallet project with Prairie Cloudware, a digital payments technology company based in Omaha, Neb. The initiative, which doesn't have a specific timetable, is integrating a Prairie product called Digital Payments Guardian and the bank's Fiserv Premier-driven core processing platform. "We believe that with Prairie Cloudware we can move the mobile wallet to a status where it's widely accepted by merchants," Fosler said. Union's complaints about Apple Pay are not unusual. While it has a slick user experience, it's too inflexible in opening its tech to other developers, it's expensive and it doesn't give banks much control over their approach to the mobile wallet, critics say. Several large banks have the power and resources both to build their own branded wallet and push Apple for concessions. To be clear, Union is not ditching Apple Pay it is an example of a community bank that has found a way to open up its options as mobile wallets evolve. One of the main sticking points about Apple Pay for banks is the "top of wallet" position. Apple Pay defaults to the first card customers enroll, leaving banks without a lot of control over how their brand is presented. Union will use Digital Payments Guardian to support its mobile wallet for Android users, positioning its bank-issued Visa cards as a "top of wallet" option. Banks are most concerned about being "top of wallet" in third-party digital wallets, said Zil Bareisis, a senior analyst at Celent. "The implications of branding and loss of control are other important concerns," Bareisis said. Apple controls how its devices use Near Field Communication, making Apple Pay the only NFC wallet on its platform. But Android supports a technology called host card emulation, which enables any developer to create a contactless mobile wallet without needing to access the handset's secure element. "Android and host card emulation give the banks more control and opportunity to offer their own branded solutions to the market," Bareisis said. "Working with specialist vendors in this space can help manage the costs and complexity." Prairie's Digital Payments Guardian will act as a vault, enabling storage for credit, debit, store-branded and gift cards. The technology will be delivered as Web-based and hosted software-as-a-service, which is designed to speed time to market and control deployment costs. Mobile payments now fit a retailer's technology strategy due to the combination of existing merchant relationships, EMV-driven upgrades to contactless acceptance, and the cloud-delivered technology for mobile payments and tokenization, Fosler said. "With Prairie Cloudware, the merchant doesn't have to change anything they are doing, they don't have to retool and invest a lot to accept" Union's wallet, Fosler said. By contrast, Apple Pay debuted a full year before the card networks' October 2015 deadline for EMV acceptance, which served as a catalyst for terminal upgrades. The current environment is much more welcoming than that faced by earlier mobile wallets, including Softcard and Google's original Google Wallet, both of which were discontinued (the Google Wallet brand lives on as a P-to-P app). "First the telcos tried the mobile wallet and it didn't work. Now the tech companies are taking their stab at it," said Doug Parr, chief revenue officer of Prairie. "But until you satisfy two of the three parties the consumer, merchant or the bank it's going to be hard." As the original owners of the payments relationship, banks are better positioned than companies outside of financial services to lure merchants and consumers to mobile payments, according to Parr. "What underpinned debit and credit cards originally is the trust in banks," he said. But there's also a battle within the banking industry to add mobile payments as a feature of existing mobile banking apps. Most of the early bank-led mobile wallets have involved large institutions or credit union collaborations. As is the case with a lot of bank technology trends, regional and community banks are challenged to do more with less, which is where Prairie sees an opportunity for its offering. Once the Union project is done, the vendor hopes to serve a market for community bank-branded mobile wallets. "Bank branded wallets should not just be limited to banks with a thousand people on IT staff and an eight-figure budget," Parr said. The project between Union and Prairie still has limitations, most notably that it can work only on Android smartphones. "The iOS question is an interesting one. Apple has yet to open access to its [NFC ecosystem] to third parties," Parr said. But there is hope, if Apple's approach to Touch ID is any precedent. When it was introduced, Apple's fingerprint reader was closed off to third-party developers. That changed, but not quickly. "Touch ID took over 18 months to open up to developers like Prairie Cloudware," Parr said. The emergence of the bank branded mobile wallet is going to be one of the big considerations for the next year, according to Thad Peterson, a senior analyst at Aite Group. "The benefit for the bank is it more closely links the payment function with their online banking capability and lessens the risk of defection," Peterson said, adding consumers can automatically provision the wallet with the bank's payment product, simplifying onboarding when compared to loading cards into an operating system or device-based wallet. "The possible downside is the user experience at the point of purchase. The bank needs to look at the elegance of Apple's solution and strive to get as close to that as they can." The business case for small banks to offer a proprietary wallet is questionable, however, Peterson said. "It's more work and the potential return when compared to the value delivered by an operating system or device based wallet is probably fairly low," he said. He added that the bank's brand is preserved in the card with device and operating system wallets, which is displayed at the time of transaction and the user experience is good. "It will be hard for a small bank to beat that with their own offering." It takes a global village to kill Israelis. The recipe is well known. Begin with the lie that Islam is the religion of peace. Take U.N. (that is, U.S.) money and hire jihadis to teach small children Jews should all be killed. (First taught to the Moslem Brotherhood by Eichmann himself, sent by Hitler to launch the modern jihadi movement -- read here, and here). Take Saudi money and staff every mosque with Wahhabi imams. Use oil wealth to brainwash vulnerable teenagers with Islamic supremacist idealism and promise endless sex in heaven if they kill a Jew. Flood the P.A. territories with billions of dollars in international aid, turning the entire place into one giant welfare state of entitlement and rage. And then give the jihadis Facebook, to spread the message: go out and kill a Jew today. With detailed instructions on how to do it. The wave of stabbings in Israel are a Facebook-fueled intifada. And once it is tested in Israel, it will be coming to an American street near you. Israelis are fed up. They cant stop the U.N. from supporting jihad. They cant stop the Saudis. They cant stop Europe and America from sucking up to the Arab world by throwing money at the Palestinians with no strings attached (like: drop the anti-Semitic BS or no cash). Zuckerberg is the step too far. The story broke in the Jewish press Sunday, and is beginning to be reported more widely. The crowd funding project explains: What's the most effective way to murder Jews? The answer to this shocking question can be found on many Arabic Facebook pages: spray the knife with anti-insect poison before stabbing and other anatomic directions for more effective stabbings are being posted daily. On countless other pages it is also very easy to find incitement to murder of Israelis and praises for Jew killers that become cultural heroes. Tens of thousands have written to Facebook asking, demanding, begging Zuckerberg to stop supporting jihadi murder. He refuses. The Facebook reply? "Thank you for taking the time to report something that you feel may violate our Community standardswe reviewed the page you reported for containing a credible threat of violence and found it doesnt violate our Community standards." So Israelis are fighting back with a class-action lawsuit filed against Facebook on behalf of some 20,000 Israeli signatories. The Complaint alleges that Facebook is much more than neutral internet platform or a mere publisher of speech because its algorithms connect the terrorists to the inciters. Facebook actively assists the inciters to find people who are interested in acting on their hateful messages by offering friend, group and event suggestions and targeting advertising based on peoples online likes and internet browsing history. Additionally, Facebook often refuses to take down the inciting pages, claiming that they do not violate its community standards. Calling on people to commit crimes is not constitutionally protected speech and endangers the lives of Jews and Israelis. Shurat HaDin will pursue the claims against Facebook on behalf of its 20,0000 clients until Facebook makes it will not allow itself to serve as a tool for terrorists to transmit their rabble rousing messages to their followers and that incitement to anti-Semitic violence will not be tolerated on its website. For once, Israelis have also decided to fight back in the court of public opinion. The anti-terror group Shurat HaDin has launched a campaign called Zuckerberg Dont Kill Us. They are trying to raise $30,000 for good old fashioned billboards to go up around Palo Alto, where Zuckerberg lives, to shed light on what he is doing. (So far they have raised a measly $21,000 far fewer dollars than the people reading this column). What is going on with Facebook? The answer can be found in the Zuckerberg response to San Bernardino. His statement: I want to add my voice in support of Muslims in our community and around the world. After the Paris attacks and hate this week, I can only imagine the fear Muslims feel that they will be persecuted for the actions of others. If you're a Muslim in this community, as the leader of Facebook I want you to know that you are always welcome here and that we will fight to protect your rights and create a peaceful and safe environment for you. Notice Zuckerberg does not mention San Bernardino other than hate this week. He does not condemn Islamic extremism. And most significantly, he does not say that Facebook will do everything possible to stop jihadis from using Facebook to incite and organize murder. Instead, he assures Muslims he will fight to protect their rights and welcome them on Facebook. (hat tip Mike Gwiliam) Zuckerberg does not have a leg to stand on. The Israelis are correct; Facebook is quite willing to remove postings they consider hateful. Their rules state You will not post content that: is hate speech, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence. Facebook software tracks private postings that use keywords used by sex offenders, in order to prevent crimes before they happen. They could do this with jihadis inciting and boasting of murder, but they wont. The contrast with Facebook taking down pages that offend liberal causes is there for all to see. In a remarkable display of the speed at which social media activism can work, online feminist organizers managed, after only a week's worth of work, to get Facebook to promise to revise its approach toward misogynist hate speech. The efforts started on May 21, when Soraya Chemaly, Jaclyn Friedman, and Laura Bates wrote an open letter on Huffington Post to Facebook demanding that the company take anti-woman hate speech on its site as seriously as it does racist hate speech and images deemed too sexual, which are routinely banned (including breastfeeding pictures). After a week of an email and Twitter campaign, Facebook responded late yesterday with an openly apologetic letter and a promise to do better. An example of what Zuckerberg does censor from Facebook: Just yesterday the social media platform removed an image posted to the Facebook fan page for A Voice for Men. It was an infographic that addressed the notion of rape culture and the 1 in 4 rape statistic, in part by citing the actual number of reported rapes at three major United States universities. In the lead-up to the last election, after complaints from the Obama campaign Facebook removed this posting about Benghazi from a Navy SEALs Facebook page (hat tip Eric Wemple): Obama called the SEALS and THEY got bin Laden. When the SEALs called Obama, THEY GOT DENIED. It was removed three times before Facebook admitted they had no right to remove political speech. Mark Zuckerberg doesnt just have the blood of Israelis on his hands. He is knowingly and purposefully supporting Muslim murders of enough people for Zuckerberg to bathe in their blood from head to foot. He has the nerve to tell us he is fighting Islamophobia and brazenly assures Muslims they are welcome on Facebook. The Israelis are not the only ones who want this to stop. Enough. Enough to have vicious enemies from seventh century nightmares reborn in the Facebook Age. We must stop empowering them with high tech propaganda tools. We must stop this liberal collusion with murder. Facebook is a line in the sand. Zuckerberg must not be allowed to get away with this. A more detestable regime than Saudi Arabia could not be found. Arguably the most repressive regime on earth. An absolute monarchy. A Wahhabist theocratic nightmare that arms ISIS. Only North Korea may be worse, and North Korea does not put women in burqas or have any areas where female genital mutilation (FGM) is practiced. It is a close call. At least North Korea does not ban alcohol. Make no mistake about it: Shi'a Iran, as bad as it is, is nowhere near as oppressive as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). There are churches in Iran, albeit persecuted. There are none in the KSA. Not even a facade of tolerance. If Iran and the Shi'a-led Hezb'allah are the world's chief exporters of terror, it is because they are more competent than Sunnis, not because their tyranny is darker than the KSA's Wahhabism. The Saud family came from the Arabian interior (the Najd) to overrun the west coast of the peninsula (the Hejaz the historic center of Islam) in 1925. The Najd had survived mostly immune from imperial expansion basically because it was a useless wasteland that no one thought worth conquering, a unique honor it shares only with Antarctica. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire, followed by British meddling, eventually led to the Saudi takeover of the whole area from their chief rival, the Husseins of Mecca. The present worldwide depression let's call it what it is, not a recession is partly the direct result of Saudi manipulations. Fracking, particularly in the United States, was on the verge of making the USA independent of oil imports. Europe, Latin America, Oceania, and China were all starting to frack. As technology got cheaper, Saudi Arabia knew that, left unchecked, one day the world would break free of Muslim oil extortion, and their cash cow would be kaput. The KSA, which produces little else, would be back to selling sand, and the Quranically approved as healthful camel urine but since dromedaries are not unique to the peninsula, even that market would be lost to them. The Saudis have been at this oil price manipulation game for over 40 years. The OPEC nations, led by the KSA, created a worldwide recession with the oil embargo in 1973, to protest Israel's victory in the Yom Kippur War. Afterward, the price of oil would double. Nations that were on the verge of a middle-class breakthrough, like Brazil, were throttled back to poverty after the enormous price-gouging. The USA became frozen as a net importing nation. This set back Westernization, and the Industrial Revolution, for decades in the emerging world. Initially, to keep oil prices up, the Saudis would drop production by 75%. However, the artificially high cost of oil led to massive exploration. North Sea oil came online. The Saudis were starting to run budget deficits, and they blinked. They decided to drop prices and sell more oil to break the competition. The '80s price drop crushed the nascent shale industry for decades here in the USA. American energy independence was forestalled, as the Saudis wanted. The low price of oil eventually gave way to price increases as Chinese industrialization came online with massive demand. By 2008, oil was at $145 a barrel. Of course, the 2008 crash brought some relief to that. At the same time, fracking was taking over and competing with Saudi crude. There was serious talk of the USA becoming oil-independent. The KSA was in a real fix, and everyone knew it. Small nations, like Ireland, were pondering becoming oil-rich. Ojala! Even the detested Jews were swimming in oil. In 2014, the Saudis decided to dump oil on the market at low prices again in order to drive foreign competitors out of business, as they had in the 1980s. Once the American frackers were broke, once the cost of Israeli drilling became prohibitive, and after everyone else was shut down, the Saudis could ratchet up the price all over again. This would also have the benefit of destroying the hated Shi'a mullahs of Iran, with their nuclear program that threatens the Sunni KSA. A poorer Iran would mean no Iranian nukes to worry about. No Iranian sponsorship of Syria's Assad. Price-fixing at its worst. Were this done inside a country, it would be illegal. The Saudis get away with it because they are independent. The price drop has had a massive effect on the market. Some U.S. frackers went bust. Brazil's Petrobras is selling assets on a fire sale. Much of China's and Brazil's economies has collapsed. Chinese oil firms took a massive hit. The economic devastation you see all around, as markets collapse, is due in no small part to the KSA's manipulations manipulations that have throttled progress for decades. However, the Saudis have made a major blunder this time. Technology is still making fracking cheaper. So a considerable number of frackers are waiting out the storm. Once the Saudis raise prices, American exploration will be back online quickly. The KSA is fighting a losing battle. Worse yet, any increase in prices will also help Iran's budget. It seems the KSA is stuck at the bottom of the price graph, damned no matter what its monarch does. In five years, the KSA's foreign reserves are expected to be emptied out. Already, the KSA is dropping internal subsidies on electricity and domestic gasoline. The local people are upset. Upset Muslims means violent revolution. For over forty years, this blight of a tribe has caused recessions, caused depressions, and damaged the planet's economy. They got wealthy by re-impoverishing an emerging Third World, starting with the artificially created 1973 oil crisis. They have used their oil wealth to sponsor terrorism (as has Iran). Rather than investing wisely in industry to pick up market slack to become a modern diversified economy, they have invested instead in subsidizing mullahs, arming Salafist extremists in Syria, and exporting Islam around the world. Now they have no options. Any increase in prices will restart American, European, and Chinese frackers. Failure to increase prices will bankrupt them. As a further blessing, we Americans will no longer have to hear the caterwauling idiocies of environmentalist Chicken Littles screaming about "peak oil." What the USA can do is protect its fracking industry by severely taxing any oil imports under $50 a barrel. This may upset some free marketers, but the price of oil is rigged. We should rig it in our favor, and insulate ourselves from Saudi manipulations. Good riddance to the KSA a corrupt, vicious regime! May their next chief export be bottled camel urine. I wish America had never gotten involved with them. Mike Konrad is the pen name of an American who is neither Jewish, Latin, nor Arab. He runs a website, http://latinarabia.com, where he discusses the subculture of Arabs in Latin America. He wishes his Spanish were better. It is hard to overstate the significance of the latest revelations about the national security catastrophe caused by Hillary Clintons private email server. The nations highest-level secrets were kept on an unsecure server that is believed to be have been hacked by multiple overseas parties. These revelations come from the nations Intelligence Community Inspector General Charles McCullough III, not some partisan. He is a nonpolitical official who was confirmed by the Senate and entrusted with keeping our intelligence agencies honest. For those readers who have not yet familiarized themselves with the revelations, Catherine Herridges exclusive report at Fox News must be read. (Incidentally, Herridge deserves a Pulitzer Prize for her ongoing coverage of this story, though given the leftist bias usually seen in the Pulitzers, this is unlikely to happen unless Hillary actually is indicted which is now far from unthinkable.) McCulloughs report was supplied to senior members of oversight committees in Congress, which almost certainly means that it was legislators who leaked the explosive contents to Herridge. His letter indicates that the highest-level secrets, called Special Access Programs (SAP), were found in emails on the homebrew server. These secrets are so profound that McCullough himself had to obtain special permission to read the emails that were available to hackers in the employ of foreign nations and terror organizations. People and programs were put at risk. We may never know who dies, and which multi-billion-dollar programs had to be junked, but such consequences are reasonably to be predicted by exposure of secrets at this level. So what has been the Clinton campaigns response? Herridge received the following: Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said, "This is the same interagency dispute that has been playing out for months, and it does not change the fact that these emails were not classified at the time they were sent or received. It is alarming that the intelligence community IG, working with Republicans in Congress, continues to selectively leak materials in order to resurface the same allegations and try to hurt Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Fallon is spreading this line to friendly sources, as well. It is all they have got: .@brianefallon says Clinton emails werent classified when sent or received accuses Intel IG of working w/ GOP to leak selectively Andrea Mitchell (@mitchellreports) January 20, 2016 So the IG is part of a vast right-wing conspiracy! And inverting logic, the ultra-secret contents werent classified because they werent marked as such. Ahem, emails are marked because they are secret; they are not secret because they are marked. Clinton's outright initial denial that her server contained classified informtaion is now a joke. The FBI has access to the same report. A decision not to make a criminal referral when the nations beyond-top-secret intelligence has been exposed would discredit the FBI as a politicized agency. Given the personal history of James Comey and the 150 special agents reportedly involved in the investigation, I would wager a substantial sum that a criminal referral will result. Charles Krauthammer: From some people I have talked to, this is worse than what Snowden did because he didnt have access to SAP. The reason its [so sensitive] is if its compromised, people die, he said. It also means that operations that have been embedded for years and years get destroyed and cannot be reconstituted. This is very serious. Krauthammer said this update makes it unlikely the Department of Justice will wave it away: Petraeus, as was mentioned earlier, he pled guilty because precisely this kind of information he shared. And I dont see, given the fact that he is the inspector general of the intelligence community who was writing this officially to the intelligence committee heads in Congress that there is any way to contradict this. It is not a news story. This is an investigative story. And now its in the hands of the FBI. Its hard to imagine that the Department of Justice will ignore this or wave it away. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders has surged to a 27-point lead over Hillary in New Hampshire. She is looking more vulnerable than ever, and the Obama administration is forced to consider its options. Going all out in defending Hillary is unlikely, given the bitter personal history and factional rivalry for control of the Democratic Party. At least Hillary likes orange. Piers were originally built for the purpose of getting people and cargo from the boat to the shore without getting their feet wet, before they developed into pleasure devices. Some of the first pleasure piers were built in Britain during the early 19th century. At that time, the railways were expanding and tourists from all over the country were flocking to coastal resorts. But at many resorts the sea was not visible from land when the tide was out, prompting resort owners to build long piers so that holidaymakers could promenade over and alongside the sea at all times. Now fitted with shops, restaurants, carnival rides and dance floors, they have become an integral part of every beach town culture. Since the early Victorian period, piers have been popular attraction in Britain as well as in North America. They are places where people gather, have fun or a leisurely walk above the ocean waters. Many piers are now historic treasures featuring some of the areas oldest architecture and vestiges of the past. Modern ones feature unusual architecture and artistic design. Here are some of the most noteworthy and beautiful piers around the world. Scheveningen Pier The Scheveningen Pier, in the Dutch town of Scheveningen near The Hague, has an unusual design. The pier has two levels, the lower deck being a closed-in section while the upper one is open to the elements. Its farthest end branches out into four terminal sections called islands with shops, restaurants, a food boulevard, a casino, banquet and meeting rooms, and 60 meter high tower with viewing platform and facilities for bungee jumping. The 380-meter pier was built in 1959. Photo credit: www.scheveningenbeach.com Photo credit: Elvin/Flickr Photo credit: Naveen Narain/Flickr Photo credit: Dennis Burger/Flickr Ryde Pier The pier in the town of Ryde, on the Isle of Wight, off the south coast of England, is the world's oldest seaside pier. This timber-planked promenade was opened in 1814, and is 681 meters in length. It is possible to drive along the pier, and there is car parking on the large pier head. Photo credit: Chris Eason/Flickr Photo credit: woottonbridgeiow.org.uk Photo credit: woottonbridgeiow.org.uk Southend Pier Southend Pier in Southend-on-Sea, a seaside resort town in Essex, England, is the longest pleasure pier in the world with a length of 2.16 km jutting into the Thames Estuary. The pier was originally built of wood in 1830, then replaced with a new iron pier in 1889. Photo credit: Focushaus/Flickr Blankenberge pier The pier of Blankenberge in the Belgium town of Blankenberge was built in 1933. It is made of concrete and sticks 350 meters into the North Sea. Blankenbergse pier was the first pier on the Atlantic coast of the European continent. Photo credit: www.blankenberge.be Birnbeck Pier Birnbeck Pier on the Bristol Channel in North Somerset, England, is the only pier in Britain that connects to an island the Birnbeck Island, a 1.2 hectares rocky island just to the west of Worlebury Hill. The grade II listed pier was opened in 1867. Currently it is closed to the public and is now listed as an endangered building. In fact, part of the pier collapsed as recently as 30 December 2015. Photo credit: Mark Robinson/Flickr Photo credit: Sharon Garland/Flickr Progreso Pier The pier in port city of Progreso, in the Mexican state of Yucatan, is the longest pier in the world. Built with reinforced concrete, the pier juts out into the Gulf of Mexico for a distance of 6.5 km. The unusually long length is necessary to allow large ships to dock since the Yucatan coast is very shallow. The pier was originally 2,100 meters long and was constructed between 1937 and 1941, replacing a wooden pier that was built in the beginning of the last century. In 1988, an additional 4,000 meters was added to its length increasing the piers cargo and container vessels handling capacity. (Previously featured on Amusing Planet). Photograph of the Progreso Pier taken from the International Space Station in 2014. Photo credit: goista.com Kastrup Sea Bath Kastrup Sea Bath is part of the Kastrup Strandpark waterfront park on the east coast of Amager in Copenhagen, Denmark. Its an outdoor swimming poor that sits at the end of a hundred-meter-long wooden pier extending into the Baltic Sea. The wooden structure is shaped like a conch, scrolling up and around gradually increasing in height until it culminates in a five-foot high diving platform. The circular wall faces away from the sea and acts as a shelter, protecting swimmers from the wind. (Previously featured on Amusing Planet). Photo credit: White Arkitekter Umhlanga Pier The Umhlanga Pier in the resort town of Umhlanga, north of Durban, South Africa, is a short pier with a design that looks like the ribcage of huge animal. It was called one of the most beautiful pier in the world by CNN. Photo credit: CNN Photo credit: Leon Homan/Flickr Busselton Jetty Busselton Jetty is the longest wooden pier in the southern hemisphere, stretching almost 2 km out to sea from the town of Busselton, Western Australia. The jetty was built in 1853 so that cut timber could be transported to ships. The jetty was extended numerous times until the 1960s, ultimately reaching a length of 1841 m. The jetty features a rail line along its length, a relic of the railway line into Busselton from Bunbury. The line now carries tourists along the jetty to an underwater observatory which opened to the public in 2003. Photo credit: Frederick/Flickr Clevedon Pier The Clevedon Pier in Somerset, England, was once described as "the most beautiful pier in England" by the English poet Sir John Betjeman. The pier was built during the 1860s to attract tourists and provide a ferry port for rail passengers to South Wales. It still functions as a landing stage for steamers and is a popular attraction for tourists and anglers. Photo credit: Chris Frewin/Flickr Photo credit: Nick/Flickr St. Petersburg Pier The St. Petersburg Pier was a landmark attraction extending into Tampa Bay from downtown St. Petersburg, Florida. The Pier featured a five-story inverted pyramid-shaped building housing shopping, dining, nightlife, fishing, boat rentals, weekly festivals, and an aquarium. The pier was demolished last year so that a new one could be built. Photo credit: www.tampabay360.com Photo credit: tampabayisawesome.com Rotonda a Mare Rotonda a Mare in Senigallia, Italy, was opened in 1933 and soon became a popular attraction. During World War II the Rotunda served as military warehouse, but once the war was over, it once again became the center of social life. The pier features a round concert hall where many famous Italian artists have performed. Photo credit: Andrea Sartorati/Flickr Los Muertos Pier The Los Muertos Pier in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, is a new pier inaugurated in 2013. It was designed by architect Jose de Jesus Torres Vega and features a beautiful spiraling promenade. Photo credit: www.puerto-vallarta-rentals.com Photo credit: www.puerto-vallarta-rentals.com Sellin Pier Sellin Pier is in the Baltic seaside resort of Sellin on the German island of Rugen. The pier has a restaurant near the beach over the water and has a diving gondola The original pier was 500 meters long and was built in 1925 after the previous pier caught fire. During the 1950s through the 1970s it became the site of a popular dance hall. Prolonged neglect however caused the pier to be dilapidated and had to be demolished in 1978. The current pier was rebuilt based on models of the old pier and opened in 1997. The new pier is 394 meters long. Photo credit: Raico Bernardino Rosenberg/Flickr Photo credit: elbfoto/Wikimedia Photo credit: Jean-Luc/Wikimedia YEREVAN, JANUARY 20, ARMENPRESS. Permanent Representative of Armenia to the United Nations, Zohrab Mnatsakanyan gave a speech on January 19 during the open debate of the UN Security Council titled Protection of Civilians. As Armenpress was informed by the Department of Press, Information and Public Relations of Armenia Foreign Ministry, Ambassador Mnatsakanyan stressed, that Armenia shares the concern of the Secretary General about the disturbing challenges for the protection of civilians in conflict-affected areas, which remain persistent as ever. While the humanitarian aspects of affected populations are of high concern, basic physical security of civilians continues to be wracked. The persistently rising numbers of civilian casualties call for a resolute action, he said. Ambassador Mnatsakanyan also emphasized, that the question of accountability requires amplified consolidation of the Council in demonstrating resolve against parties, responsible for denying basic security or humanitarian relief to affected populations. The idea of enabling the UN peace operations with a mandate for a preventive, protective and tactical use of force to protect civilians under threat of physical violence needs to be given thorough consideration. The reputation of the Organisation is judged not by words of condemnation, but by deliverable protection. Strengthening the capacities of field missions, including those of the relevant regional organizations, remains an on-going priority. Last, but not least, protection of civilians in armed conflicts is closely tied to the prevention of mass atrocities, including the crime of genocide. A culture of assessing every crisis situation affecting civilian populations through the prism of massive crimes, including the crime of genocide, should be further cultivated within the Organization, underscored Zohrab Mnatsakanyan. The Ambassador of Armenia referred to the recent situation in the region, stressing that Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh have been experiencing significant challenges to the security of its civilian populations as a result of the on-going disregard by Azerbaijan to respecting and upholding the 1994 cease-fire agreement. Increasingly, Azerbaijan continues to target civilians across the line of contact with Nagorno Karabakh and the border with Armenia. As a result of intensified cease-fire violations and massive shelling of populated areas with the unprecedented use of heavy artillery, considerable damage has been inflicted on the livelihoods of the bordering villages. In September 2015 three women have been killed by Azerbaijani fire. Armenia strongly deplores the purposeful acts of Azerbaijan to violate the cease-fire regime and damage the on-going peace process within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairmanship. Once again, Armenia urges Azerbaijan to heed the calls of the international community and agree without delay to establish an investigative mechanism into the cease-fire violations, and to withdraw snipers. By rejecting such mechanism, Azerbaijan bears full responsibility for the violations and the escalation of tensions, Ambassador Mnatsakanyan stressed. In conclusion, Ambassador Mnatsakanyan underlined, that the on-going negotiations for the peaceful settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairmanship is a positive example of effective utilization of the capacity of regional organizations in conflict resolution. Armenia highly commends the support of the international community, of the United Nations and of the Secretary General rendered to the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairmanship in the peaceful resolution of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. He stressed that Azerbaijan should be denied the attempts to undermine the efforts of the Co-chairs or to engage in forum and mediation shopping. The open debate was presided by Jose Luis Cancela, Deputy Foreign Minister of Uruguay. Representatives of about eighty state members, including Deputy Foreign Ministers of Spain and Ukraine, as well Jan Eliasson, United Nations Deputy Secretary-General, Christine Beerli, Vice-President of the International Committee of the Red Cross took part in the Debate. Back in 2010, Google pulled its already limited services out of China. Everybody moved to other search engines and Android phones shipped without the Google Play Store, or the Android Market as it was known back in those days. There was, of course, a reason for giving up such a gigantic and lucrative market. That reason was censorship that they felt was draconian and infringed on a moral right of the people to information. As an act of rebellion of sorts, they ignored demands by the government to censor more content and instead directed traffic to their Hong Kong operations, which were not censored. Naturally, it didnt take long for Googles services to get the boot from just about every ISP around. To add insult to injury, Googles servers and the operations of multiple human rights operatives suffered a cyber attack from within China. When the government finally pulled the plug, Google made no move to reverse that. Just like that, Google decided that getting into a market twice the size of the United States population wasnt worth the trouble. Despite all that happened, Google is hiring for a good number of positions and gearing up to break back into the Chinese market in a big way. Already, there is talk of building a custom app store compliant with government demands, as well as censoring the Google search engine and figuring out which core Google services can be offered without constituting a violation. A market that big and a product as useful as Googles services are a match that simply cannot be ignored. Advertisement American companies may not be used to having to comply with censorship demands as they operate abroad, but its a consideration that must be taken into account. Google learned this lesson the hard way in China and now apparently feel they have the manpower and resources, as well as the knowledge and experience, to give it a real shot this time. Google plans to comply with all applicable requests in order to stay in business in China. No exact timeline was stated for the rollout, nor whether Google would have to negotiate with the Chinese government beforehand. Android 6.0 Marshmallow was released about three months ago and still, there arent many devices running this version of the operating system. Motorola has been updating some of their devices to this version, it is probably easier for this company, as their devices run an almost uncustomized version of the OS. A couple of weeks ago, the company announced that the update was ready for the newest Moto G in India, although it might take some time before it reaches most devices. Now, the company has announced that they will start updating the second-generation Moto G, the one that was released in 2014 in that country, as well. Once again, lets remember that updates are rolled out in stages, so it might take some time before users see the notification in their device. Once they get the notification message regarding this update, they just need to select Yes, Im in and the software will be downloaded, afterwards, users just need to select Install Now to start that process. Those who havent received the notification could check if the update is already available in the About section of the Settings menu, where they will find information regarding System Updates. In either case, Motorola recommends having over 50% of battery life and a Wi-Fi connection to save on data expenses. Advertisement Android 6.0 brings improvements such as a new app permission system, which lets users have more control of their phone. Theres also Doze mode, which improves battery life and Google Now On Tap provide contextual information of whats displayed on screen. Theres a new way to handle Do Not Disturb mode and improvements have been made to the Volume controls. Internally, theres a new way to control removable storage and a few other improvements. Moto Assist will get new modes including Sleeping and Meeting, as well as Driving and Home, so the app can change how the phone behaves under certain conditions. Motorola Migrate will no longer be available after the update, as the company considers its functionality to be somewhat redundant, and Motorola Alert will also disappear although those who really want the app can download it from the Play Store. Android 6.0 Marshmallow was released to the general public in late 2015, but for many manufacturers it takes some time before the updates are ready for their portfolioof devices. One such manufacturer is HTC, which have seemingly chosen this week to release Android 6.0 Marshmallow for both the 2014 flagship device, the HTC One M8, and the 2015 flagship, HTC One M9. We have been seeing reports of Android 6.0 Marshmallow released for the HTC One M8 first over the last few days and now its the turn of the newer HTC One M9 to receive the penultimate version of Android, 6.0. We are seeing that HTC and some of the Canadian carriers have released the over-the-air update to Android Marshmallow for the HTC One M9. Its been made available for the Rogers, Wind Mobile, Videotron and SaskTel carriers, although customers on Bell and Telus, plus others, will have to wait a little longer before receiving their update. For the HTC One M9, the update brings about it a number of new features as part of Android. The new operating system includes improved embedded power management features in the shape of Doze plus the operating system has the ability to suspend infrequently used applications. Doze is designed to shut down many power-consuming features of the device when it is idle, so when the handset is sitting by itself with the screen locked. Doze will shut down AutoSync, location sensors and similar when the device is not being moved, but will reactivate these features once the handset is picked up and used. Other new features include the ability to finely control application permissions, which is now embedded into the operating system rather than a manufacturer added option. Android 6.0 Marshmallow also includes Google Now on Tap, the ability to ask Google for help based on the contents of the screen. HTC have also improved the camera application as well as included the generic performance improvements and bug fixes across the board. Advertisement For the software update, customers should drop into device Settings, then About, then Software Update. The device will typically download a smaller update first of 130 MB or so, which is a preparation update before the full 1.3 GB update package to Android 6.0 Marshmallow is downloaded. If customers are on a limited bandwidth plan, we would strongly recommend downloading the total of 1.4 GB or so over a Wi-Fi network rather than your data bundle! At this juncture we dont know when the update will be arriving for Canadas other carriers but we will let you know when it arrives. The Galaxy S7 handset(s) is expected to arrive at the end of next month. Samsung is expected to introduce their new flagship(s) during the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, as they do every year. A number of leaks / rumors have leaked regarding the upcoming Galaxy S7 devices, and it seems like Samsung will introduce more than one handset at the same time, like they did last year. The Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge will quite probably launch at the same time, and the Galaxy S7 Edge+ may join them as well. That being said, the Galaxy S7 has just surfaced on AnTuTu, and it follows the lead of the Galaxy S7 Edge which popped up on the site earlier this month. Now, according to the information from AnTuTu, the Galaxy S7 (SM-G930F) will feature a 5.1-inch QHD (2560 x 1440) display, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. This particular version of the handset is powered by the Exynos 8890, not the Snapdragon 820, although the company will probably release both variants of the device. The phone will ship with a 12-megapixel rear-facing camera, as some leaks have been saying. The 5-megapixel front-facing shooter is placed on the front of this phone, and Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow will come pre-installed on the device according to this info. Samsungs TouchWiz will come pre-installed on top of Android, if Samsung doesnt opt to change its name or something of the sort. Advertisement Considering the fact that this information comes from AnTuTus Weibo page, we dont have any benchmark scores to share at this point, only the specs. These specifications actually go hand-in-hand with the most leaks weve seen in the last couple of weeks. The handset will almost certainly going to resemble Samsungs 2015 flagship line, and some rumors are saying that it will resemble the Galaxy Note 5 the most, but it will be smaller, of course. This means that Samsung will, once again, use the metal + glass design, and a physical home button will be located below the display. That is pretty much it, if any additional leaks surface, well let you know, stay tuned. Google has always been known to be a canine-friendly company, but the one thing that apparently had escaped the notice of the media all along was a little paragraph tucked away amidst all the corporate jargon on the companys investor relations website detailing the code of conduct that bounds the tech giant and its army of employees around the globe. Unbeknownst to the media that has been covering the company for years, the webpage actually devotes an entire paragraph detailing its Dog Policy that spells out in no uncertain terms that love for mans best friend is a part and parcel of Googles official company policy. According to the text, Googles affection for our canine friends is an integral facet of our corporate culture. We like cats, but were a dog company, so as a general rule we feel cats visiting our offices would be fairly stressed out. Google is apparently pretty cool with the idea of its employees bringing their canine companions to work, where they are taken care of by caregivers. Of course, the animals need to be amiable and not go around the office barking, chasing or otherwise scaring or disturbing people looking to get some actual work done. Reports even indicate that many Google buses actually have Dog Friendly signs on them, but apparently nobody ever bothered to find out, in all these years, if it is just an informal understanding between dog lovers working at Google and the companys management, or an actual official company policy that is important enough to merit a mention on the companys investor relations page. Advertisement The whole issue came to light when at the ongoing World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, the CEO of Welltower, Mr. Thomas DeRosa, said that he believes that as part of their CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) initiatives, major corporations should offer daycare for the elderly parents of their employees, by setting up in-house systems for the same. According to him, it was Googles dog-friendly policy that inspired him to suggest that something similar be done for seniors who need private care for their age-related frailties, but cannot really afford the prohibitive costs associated with the same. Google has been going full-tilt on their educational efforts for some time now, from specialized Google apps for class to Chromebooks customized for student use. Despite some criticism and controversy, Google has forged on in creating new services for schools. One such service rolled out in May of 2015, called Expeditions, uses Googles Cardboard platform to give students immersive VR tours of locations they wouldnt otherwise be able to see. With the Expeditions Pioneer Programs introduction in September, schools could ask Google to pay them a visit and receive enough kits to immerse entire classes in the same destination at once, as well as some instruction on how to proctor the tours. Over 100 tours in scenic places like Mars and the Great Wall of China were moved within reach of students worldwide. The Pioneer program is currently in pilot status in the United States, Canada and Swedne. Thus far, the program has been considered a runaway success, with over 500,000 students having participated. Google has announced they are rolling out a dedicated app for Android for the service in order to streamline the experience. Interested educators and administrators can sign up to be authorized to give the new app a spin in beta status. Educators using the app would, from there, use it in class and let Google know how the experience was. Suggestions, bug reports and student input are all welcomed. The beta program is on a limited approval basis, meaning not all schools that apply will receive clearance to download the app or the promise of a visit from a Pioneer Program crew. As the experience is worked on, more and more destinations will be added over time. Advertisement On that note, Google announced alongside the dedicated Android app that they would be adding two new destinations. A tour of Buckingham Palace, made in collaboration with the UKs Royal Collection Trust, is now available, as well as a tour of Australias Great Barrier Reef customized by Sir David Attenborough. Of the new destinations, Buckingham Palace is also available for Cardboard users outside of the education sphere through a 360 degree YouTube video. YEREVAN, JANUARY 20, ARMENPRESS. A group of heavily-armed terrorists stormed Bacha Khan University in Charsadda on January 20, killing at least 25 people and wounding dozens as the army hunted for any gunmen still holed up on the campus. Armenpress reports Dayli Pakistan publication informed about the aforesaid. Law enforcement agencies and rescue teams rushed to the university campus, while eye witnesses said that gunfire was also heard from university premises. Four major blasts were also heard from inside. According to reports, the university campus and hostels were evacuated and people from surrounding areas were instructed to avoid coming closer to the university. Security officials said the death toll could rise to as high as 40 as army commandos cleared out student hostels and classrooms. Four of the attackers have been neutralized by Pakistan army, security officials told Daily Pakistan. Rescuers said 19 bodies had been recovered including students, guards, policemen and at least one teacher, named by media as chemistry professor Syed Hamid Husain. There are reports that fifty severely injured people have been admitted to district headquarter hospital so far. Four security guards and a professor were also among the injured. Earlier this week, HTCs UK unit had promised that it will start rolling out the much-awaited Marshmallow update to the companys 2014 flagship smartphone, the One M8, within 48 hours. While the Taiwanese company did not give any ETA for the update to go live in the rest of Europe that is precisely what seems to be happening now, according to reports doing the rounds of the internet. The update seems to be available for both carrier-branded versions as well as unlocked, SIM-free iterations of the device, so if youre a One M8 user residing in continental Europe, chances are, the new software is already available for your device. If the update notification is yet to arrive, you can check for it manually by going over to Settings > About > Software Updates on your One M8 handsets. The One M8 is HTCs flagship smartphone from 2014, and even though its almost two years old, it continues to be a stellar device in its own right. The smartphone may not have brought in the kind of volumes that HTC would have ideally liked it to, but it does pack in some solid hardware and happens to be a fairly decent performer. The Asian version of the One M8 has already started receiving the latest software, while over in the US, Sprint and T-Mo are slated to roll out Android 6.0 to the handset this week itself. Native Marshmallow features like an app permissions manager, native support for fingerprint scanner, Google Now on Tap, an all-new app drawer and more intuitive volume controls can be expected to come as part of the new software, along with some tweaks in the user interface. Advertisement The One M8 was HTCs flagship smartphone from 2014, as mentioned already. The device features a 5-inch 1080p Super LCD3 display with Cornings Gorilla Glass 3 protection, and is powered by Qualcomms MSM8974 Snapdragon 801 chipset. The One M8 comes with 2 GB of RAM along with a choice of either 16 or 32 GB of internal storage. It features a dual 4-megapixel camera set-up at the back, along with a secondary 5-megapixel front camera for selfies, etc. The handset originally shipped with Android 4.4 KitKat, but was updated to Lollipop last year. It seems, all we hear about these days is 5G networks. We know that 5G is the future, and can solve a number of problems that networks are having now with 4G LTE. Verizon has already noted that they will be rolling out their 5G network this year, and have a 5G network available at their headquarters in New Jersey up and running by the end of January. The question remains, what vendor will they use for the hardware? And it appears that Kumu Networks is one of those vendors. Kumu Networks is a company that was founded in 2012 and uses self-interference cancellation or SIC technology. This technology is able to isolate the receiver from the transmitter. This in turn, eliminates noise and frees the receiver to receive external signals. While some carriers are looking to use SIC technology to help with small cells for backhaul on their networks, others are looking at it for 5G networks. In fact the company has already done a field trial with Deutsche Telekom as well as SK Telekom in 2015. Advertisement Recently, Kumu raised $25 million in funding. The funders included Cisco, Swisscom, Deutsche Telekom, NEA, Khosla Ventures, Third Point Ventures and Verizon Wireless. Since October of 2013, Kumu Networks has raised a total of $45.4 million in funding. Its worth noting that currently, Kumu Networks has no products available for purchase, therefore there is no revenue coming into the company. They are looking to use the money raised in these rounds of funding to continue developing their technology. Verizon is a pretty note worthy name here, at least for those of us in the United States. As it is the only US carrier that helped fund Kumu Networks. Deutsche Telekom (the majority owner of T-Mobile US) is also pretty noteworthy. Verizon has already stated that they are working with their existing partners including Ericsson, Cisco, Nokia, Alcatel-Lucent, Samsung and Qualcomm on 5G. Both with their network as well as devices that will be able to work on the 5G network. 5G, unfortunately, is still a few years away at least from main adoption. But it appears that the ground work is definitely underway. In the world of smartphone displays, there are two technologies that the big brand rely upon to deliver a crystal clear and vivid experience, LCD and OLED. The latter has become a luxury inclusion from the likes of Samsung with their Super AMOLED displays, which make excellent use of organic LEDs to deliver vibrant displays with deep blacks and punchy colors. Both LG and Samsung know what theyre doing with OLED however, and a few years ago the two of them started battling it out for devices with new designs using flexible OLED displays. This was first the Galaxy Round and the G Flex, and while LGs G Flex 2 released last year certainly had more of a pronounced curve in its overall look, Samsungs Galaxy S6 Edge used the technology to create a good-looking device. If this latest patent is go on though, LG is looking to one-up Samsung in a big way. Patently Mobile is reporting that LG has been given a design patent for a smartphone display that totally wraps around both sides of the device. The design patent outlines a standard, yet blocky, design of a smartphone with information on the display on both sides of the display. Receiving a patent for something and producing an end product are two very different things. Presumably, LG is filing such a patent to ensure that they can launch a product further down the line without Samsung getting in the way. A device like this might also be a little difficult to use as an product, software will need to determine when someone is holding the device and not activate the sides of the display, for instance. Advertisement Regardless, LG seems to be looking to Plastic OLED and Flexible OLED displays to try new things. Smartwatches like the G Watch R and Watch Urbane get such good battery life and offer a fully-circular display through their use of P-OLED, and during CES 2016 the company was able to show off a display that was able to be fully-rolled, just like a newspaper or sheet of paper. With one more patent from LG, it looks as though there are big launches from both Samsung and LG concerning flexible displays in the near future. Apple and Google have always been rivals of one another with active users, profit shares, and worldwide global distribution at the forefront with these two companies. So its nothing new when we hear about these two trying to upstage one another. In fact, when we here Apple most of us can conclude immediately that the opposite of Apple would be Google. Both tech giants have successful mobile phone divisions as well as web browsers while each company also has an array of tech products in many different markets as well as profits that soar towards the sky. But there are times when one out does the other in one form or another in what will always be a back and forth venture. In the latest of news from both Google and Apple, Google has claimed king of global app downloads, with downloads as much as twice that of Apple according to 2015 statistic app metrics company App Annie. Google was able to more or less accomplish this with its expanding market reach growing and developing its market within different countries such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, Turkey, and Mexico. These countries accounted for nearly half of Androids overall download growth. With numbers like these and seeing its overall user base growing substantially its no wonder Google was recently seen acquiring quite a bit of office space for its sibling division YouTube. Advertisement Although its clear that Googles empire is growing, having around 200 million downloads versus that of Apples 100 million downloads, Apples App Store still managed to bring in more revenue than the Google Play Store. Apples App Store revenue growth can be thanked due to its user base in China, U.S and Japan accounting for nearly 90 percent of its increase. The more important contributor China, grew its iOS downloads 20 percent from Q4 2014 to Q4 2015 and even doubled its revenue. The UK in is in fourth place globally for its iOS downloads as well as revenue, giving Apple that extra edge over Googles hold on app downloads. Along with Apples global increase in music revenue, which is 2.2 times higher in 2015 than 2014, the report also shows that wearables and TV were among the most popular platforms for apps and is a space that we all should be watching for in the future. We can obviously see that Google and Apple have such a strong influence on one another that its seen from all corners of the globe. Even as we look on and see the two tech giants duking it out, we the consumers are the ones who will ultimately benefit as prices lower and technology advances. At the Galaxy Note 5 launch event in July last year, Samsung Electronics had teased the Gear S2 smartwatch, but the device was eventually unveiled by the company on the last day of August during IFA in Berlin, Germany. As it turned out, Samsung introduced not just one, but as many as three different versions of the Gear S2, namely, the Gear S2, Gear S2 Classic and Gear S2 3G. While the first two variants come with only Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, the Gear S2 3G comes with cellular connectivity, as is evident from the name. At least some of the variants of the smartwatch now seem to be heading to India, if reports in the countrys mainstream national media are to be believed. Thats because Samsung has reportedly send out invites for a press event scheduled to be held on Thursday, January 21st, at an upscale hotel in Gurgaon, Haryana, which happens to be a suburb of the national capital, New Delhi. While the invite doesnt specifically mention the Gear S2, the picture on the invite speaks a thousand words. The media is also reporting that the company is expected to launch its $100 VR headset, the Gear VR, at the same event, but the official invite does not seem to include any clues on the front. Earlier reports had indicated that the South Korean company may bring the Gear S2 as well as the Gear VR to the country sooner rather than later, and the latest developments now seem to confirm that for the most part. Advertisement Taking a quick look at the Gear S2 range of smartwatches from Samsung, the device comes in three avatars, as mentioned already. All the variants come with circular Super AMOLED displays that measure 1.2-inch in diameter, resulting in a pixel density of 302 dpi. The Gear S2 of course, is Samsungs very first smartwatch with a circular display, and while the 3G version is powered by the Snapdragon 400 SoC from Qualcomm, the other two come with Samsungs in-house Exynos 3250 under the hood. All variants, however, come with 512 MB of RAM and 4 GB of internal storage, and feature rotating bezels along with a number of sensors including an accelerometer, a gyroscope, a heart rate monitor, an ambient light sensor and a barometer. Xiaomi Mi 5 has been surfacing all over the internet for quite some time now. Xiaomi was actually expected to unveil this handset months ago, but the company has opted to wait for the Snapdragon 820 to become available. According to the companys exec, Mi 5 will be announced next month, after the Chinese New Year, and it will be fueled by the Snapdragon 820 SoC. Thats pretty much it as far as official confirmations go. We have, however, seen tons of leak, and a new piece of info has just surfaced. According to a new rumor which comes from China, the Mi 5 could be priced above 3,500 Yuan ($532). Now, this seems a bit strange considering Xiaomis previous flagships were quite a bit more affordable, and Xiaomi is known for keeping the prices down. This is not the first pricing leak weve seen lately, previous info claimed the device will cost between 2,499 Yuan ($380) and 3,000 Yuan ($456), depending on the version you decide to get. Well let you choose which information you want to believe, but we somehow doubt Xiaomi will price their handset at 3,500 Yuan, at least not the basic variant, but well see. Advertisement The Xiaomi Mi 5 is said to ship in two variants, the standard variant will ship with a metal frame which will be placed in-between two pieces of glass. This variant of the Mi 5 will allegedly ship with 3GB of RAM and a 1080p display, and the higher-end model will sport an all-metal build, and will come with 4GB of RAM and a QHD display. Both variants of the phone are rumored to sport 5.2-inch displays, and 3,600mAh batteries. The 16-megapixel shooter will probably be available on the back of the Mi 5, and an 8-megapixel camera will be available up front. Android 6.0 Marshmallow is expected to come pre-installed on the Mi 5, along with the companys MIUI 7 OS. Force Touch display is also a possibility here, and so is the Ultrasonic Fingerprint Scanner. That is pretty much it as far as rumors go, the phone will launch next month, and if any new info surfaces, well make sure to let you know. YEREVAN, JANUARY 20, ARMENPRESS. 57 deaths were registered in the Armed Forces of the Republic of Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh Defense Army in 2015, which were mainly caused by rival shooting on the contact line. Armenpress reports Armenia's Defense Ministry Spokesperson Artsrun Hovhannisyan published the data on his Facebook page. Taking into account the different numbers that are circulated and sometimes groundless speculations over them, we decided to present the death cases that occurred in the Armed Forces and their causes. The data is summed considering also the process of investigation, precise qualifications and so on. 57 death cases have been registered in the Armed Forces of the Republic of Armenia and NKR Defense Army in 2015, which are mainly caused by rival activities (sniper shootings, subversive and other actions). This resulted in death of 38 servicemen, 2 servicemen died as a result of a car crash, 2 died from disease, 1-murder, 6-suicides, accidents-4, death caused by violation of regulations of military service-3, mine explosion-1, Hovhannisyan wrote. YEREVAN, JANUARY 20, ARMENPRESS. The information stating that the official web pages of the Republic of Armenia embassies have been hacked does not correspond to reality. Armenpress reports that the aforementioned was posted on the official Facebook page of the Republic of Armenia Foreign Ministry. Azerbaijani hackers made massive attacks at the web pages of Armenian embassies and in order to prevent the development of the attacks, based on safety principles, the operation of the official websites has been temporarily suspended by the Republic of Armenia Foreign Ministry specialists. Corresponding activities are being carried out to restore the natural activity of the web pages within a short period of time. (ANSA) - Davos, January 20 - EU Economic Commissioner Pierre Moscovici said Wednesday the European Commission has no quarrel with Italy. "The Commission can't be accused of acting against Italy - this is absolutely wrong," he said, adding he respects Italy, a founding member of the European Union, and Premier Matteo Renzi's reform drive. "There is no war (with Italy)," he said. "We must lower the tensions and work together with maximum objectivity," he said on the sidelines of the January 20-23 World Economic Forum in the Swiss town of Davos. Renzi "is an ambitious, reform-minded leader. The European Commission has had many opportunities to demonstrate its appreciation of those reforms. We need a positive relationship," he said. "(Commission President Jean-Claude) Juncker spoke his mind because he felt the Commission was unjustly criticized. But we understand (Renzi's) situation and we want to discuss it," Moscovici said. "What other country benefits from all the flexibility contained in the Stability Pact, including the clause on investments and structural reforms? None," Moscovici said. Italy is asking for more leeway to offset the cost of migrant rescue and reception, and this "must be taken into consideration", he added. "No, one cannot say this Commission is hostile to Italy," he concluded. Renzi said Tuesday Italy's regained stature as a major European player meant its critics and partners would simply have to "deal with it". And as Italy was set to tap a new envoy to Brussels to help address charges that the EU felt it was lacking a clear interlocutor, a key ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, European People's Party (EPP) caucus leader Manfred Weber, fed the row by saying Renzi was undermining the EU's credibility. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, with whom Renzi traded barbs over migrants, economic flexibility, banks and State aid Friday, meanwhile denied accusations the EC had been slacking, saying that 11 of its new projects involved Italy. Amid the flap, the Milan bourse suffered again as banking stocks plunged but the head of bourse regulator CONSOB, Giuseppe Vegas, denied the notion that Italy was coming under specific speculative attack. As the controversy continued, government sources said Deputy Industry Minister Carlo Calenda will on Wednesday be tapped as Italy's new ambassador to the European Union, replacing Stefano Sannino. Calenda's appointment will be formalised at a cabinet meeting Wednesday night, they said. Calenda is the first career politician to be named as envoy to Brussels after a string of career diplomats. Renzi said on Facebook that Italy has regained its leadership role and that those who do not like it must "deal with it". The premier made the comments in the wake of heated exchanges Friday between Rome and Juncker, who has blasted Renzi for allegedly offending the EU executive. "Italy is increasingly open and attractive for international investment," Renzi said, "with major global companies that have decided to bank on our country, like Cisco, whose chiefs I met this morning. "(This is) the best answer to those who... would prefer to have us be weak and marginal, as often happened in the past, unfortunately. "They should deal with it. Italy is back, (and it's) more solid and more ambitious". Weber, ignoring Renzi's demand, ramped up the pressure after Juncker's unsually outspoken attack Friday. The EPP caucus leader said "Renzi is jeopardizing the credibility of Europe to the benefit of populism". Weber told the European Parliament "when we see that Italy is not willing to help Turkey unless there is a trade-off, all that hurts Europe, its strength and credibility". Italy is resisting a three-billion-euro package to help Turkey cope with Syrian migrants over concerns that national governments, and not the EU's common fund, may foot too much of the bill. Juncker, for his part, said governments that are critical of the EU executive should take a look at themselves first. "Without common action, a European policy on migration, Schengen will not survive," said Juncker, who on Friday blasted Renzi for allegedly offending the EU executive at "every opportunity". "Some governments are quick to attack Brussels, but they should look in the mirror, they are Brussels too", said the EC chief. Juncker told the European Parliament it was "not true" that the EC "has not been sufficiently active". He said "the investment plan is already in action, 40 billion euros have already been mobilised". Juncker stressed that "11 of the projects are in Italy". He added: "To those who ask me to resign for failing on the migrant crisis, I say I don't agree and one shouldn't lose heart but work together, united". Amid the fall-out from the Italy-EU row on the Milan bourse, where Monte dei Paschi di Siena hit a new low amid another widespread collapse of banking stock, CONSOB chief Vegas said that the recent strong declines in Italian bank shares were due to general market volatility rather than any concrete new developments. Banks that have come under the lens of the European Central Bank (ECB) for their bad loans portfolios continued to tumble on Tuesday. "It does not even make sense to concentrate on these banks, because the situation is general," Vegas said. He also ruled out a "specific" bourse attack on Italy. Meanwhile one of the points of contention between the EU and Italy, State aid to steelmaker ILVA, will be made the target of a probe on Wednesday, EU sources said. The probe will concern aid for production and not an environmental clean-up, they said. The undersecretary for European affairs, Sandro Gozi, said the government was having to fight growing disappointment in and indifference to the EU. (ANSA) - Rome, January 20 - Industry Minister Federica Guidi on Wednesday welcomed a European Commission probe into suspected State aid for steelmaker ILVA, saying Italy would prove it acted correctly. "Italy will continue to collaborate with the European Commission to demonstrate the correctness of its interventions on ILVA," she said, calling the probe a formality. She added: "it is very positive that the Commission has recognised the importance of public funds being needed to tackle the environmental emergency and the relevant infringement proceeding, opened for years." The EU opened the probe to establish whether financial support complies with norms banning State aid to industry. The Commission said it would "assess in particular whether the eased access to financing awarded to ILVA to modernise its works at Taranto has given it an advantage over competitors." It said that "given the urgency of decontaminating the site, the Commission also foresees guarantees that will allow Italy to immediately carry out the environmental clean-up". (ANSA) - Rome, January 19 - Italy's Constitutional Court gave the green light on Tuesday to a referendum on drilling for oil and gas in Italy, a decision welcomed by regional councils and environmental groups concerned about the effects of offshore drilling on marine ecosystems. The referendum will cover the duration of authorisations to explore as well as already authorised drilling of fields. It was proposed by regional assemblies who are objecting to drilling platforms because of worries about seismic stability and the environment. "The campaign against drilling starts straightaway," Puglia Governor Michele Emiliano told journalists after the court's decision. ANSA parliamentary sources said on Tuesday that Premier Matteo Renzi's government was mulling a specific modification to its "Unblock Italy" infrastructure projects decree related to the duration of drilling, which will be the focus of the referendum approved by the court. Environmental group Green Italia said the court had given the people a chance to express their voice and it urged Renzi's government not to intervene to try to prevent the poll. "It will be the citizens who will decide if they want these drilling platforms in front of the beaches that live off tourism and if they want to say yes instead to another idea of energy politics, based on the use of renewable energy," Green Italia said in a statement. YEREVAN, JANUARY 20, ARMENPRESS. Head of Armenia-Greece Parliamentary Friendship Group, Vice President of Armenian National Assembly (NA) Eduard Sharmazanov, being on a business visit in Greece, met with the President of the Hellenic Parliament Nikolaos Voutsis. Sharmazanov congratulated Nikolaos Voutsis on being elected as President of the Hellenic Parliament. Eduard Sharmazanov highlighted the centuries-old warm and friendly Armenian-Greek relations. He expressed a hope that inter-parliamentary bilateral relations will continue to develop in the future as well. As Armenpress was informed from Armenian NA Vice Presidents staff, the sides stressed the importance of reciprocal visits and close business contacts. At the beginning of the last century, Armenians and Greeks were subjected to genocide in Ottoman Turkey because of being Christians. We appreciate the fact on Hellenic parliaments recognition of the Armenian Genocide and its adoption of the bill on the fight against racism and xenophobia due to which the denial of the Armenian Genocide was criminalized. It should be noted that Ottoman Parliaments Greek members were the first with Armenians to raise the issue of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Turkey. Greeks and Armenians should unite their efforts in the struggle against Turkish denial, Eduard Sharmazanov mentioned. Nikolaos Voutsis expressed satisfaction that Armenia's parliament unanimously adopted the declaration condemning the Genocide of Greeks and Assyrians in Ottoman Turkey on March 24 last year. Touching upon the NKR conflict, NA Vice President stressed that Armenia sees the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict exclusively by peaceful means; in the format of the OSCE Minsk Group. Eduard Sharmazanov considered unacceptable the attempts to change the negotiating format. The President of Hellenic Parliament noted that Greece supports the efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs. (ANSA) - Rome, January 20 - Italian motorway authority ANAS opened an investigation on Wednesday to determine responsibility for problems in implementation of an emergency weather plan after hundreds of motorists were blocked on the A3 highway in Calabria on Tuesday. Despite the fact that snow had stopped on Wednesday and the A3 was back to normal, ANAS and the highway patrol set up checkpoints to enforce the required snow tires or chains on board between Padula and Falerna. Approximately 200 motorists on the tract of the A3 between Cosenza and Altilia Grimaldi were assisted by ANAS late Tuesday and early Wednesday after being blocked by heavy snows. "It's unacceptable that hundreds of motorists were blocked for several hours on a highway," said ANAS President Gianni Vittorio Armani. "It's clear that something didn't work". Armani said an initial analysis pointed to a lack of or a delayed implementation by ANAS of checks to ensure that motorists had the required snow tires or chains. The checks are necessary since the A3, not being a toll road, doesn't have barriers that would otherwise allow for a rapid closing of the highway in case of emergency. In Sila, temperatures on Wednesday dropped to 20 degrees below zero with snow accumulations of up to 80 centimetres. Lake Cecita in Caigliatello and Lake Arvo in Lorica were frozen solid. Meanwhile, north in Molise, schools remained closed in 20 cities with icy conditions causing difficulty on roadways. (ANSA) - Davos, January 20 - EU Economic Commissioner Pierre Moscovici said Wednesday the European Commission has no quarrel with Italy. "The Commission can't be accused of acting against Italy - this is absolutely wrong," he said, adding he respects Italy, a founding member of the European Union, and Premier Matteo Renzi's reform drive. "There is no war (with Italy)," he said. "We must lower the tensions and work together with maximum objectivity," he said on the sidelines of the January 20-23 World Economic Forum in the Swiss town of Davos. Renzi said Tuesday Italy's regained stature as a major European player meant its critics and partners would simply have to "deal with it". And as Italy was set to tap a new envoy to Brussels to help address charges that the EU felt it was lacking a clear interlocutor, a key ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, European People's Party (EPP) caucus leader Manfred Weber, fed the row by saying Renzi was undermining the EU's credibility. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, with whom Renzi traded barbs over migrants, economic flexibility, banks and State aid Friday, meanwhile denied accusations the EC had been slacking, saying that 11 of its new projects involved Italy. Amid the flap, the Milan bourse suffered again as banking stocks plunged but the head of bourse regulator CONSOB, Giuseppe Vegas, denied the notion that Italy was coming under specific speculative attack. As the controversy continued, government sources said Deputy Industry Minister Carlo Calenda will on Wednesday be tapped as Italy's new ambassador to the European Union, replacing Stefano Sannino. Calenda's appointment will be formalised at a cabinet meeting Wednesday night, they said. Calenda is the first career politician to be named as envoy to Brussels after a string of career diplomats. Renzi said on Facebook that Italy has regained its leadership role and that those who do not like it must "deal with it". The premier made the comments in the wake of heated exchanges Friday between Rome and Juncker, who has blasted Renzi for allegedly offending the EU executive. "Italy is increasingly open and attractive for international investment," Renzi said, "with major global companies that have decided to bank on our country, like Cisco, whose chiefs I met this morning. "(This is) the best answer to those who... would prefer to have us be weak and marginal, as often happened in the past, unfortunately. "They should deal with it. Italy is back, (and it's) more solid and more ambitious". Weber, ignoring Renzi's demand, ramped up the pressure after Juncker's unsually outspoken attack Friday. The EPP caucus leader said "Renzi is jeopardizing the credibility of Europe to the benefit of populism". Weber told the European Parliament "when we see that Italy is not willing to help Turkey unless there is a trade-off, all that hurts Europe, its strength and credibility". Italy is resisting a three-billion-euro package to help Turkey cope with Syrian migrants over concerns that national governments, and not the EU's common fund, may foot too much of the bill. Juncker, for his part, said governments that are critical of the EU executive should take a look at themselves first. "Without common action, a European policy on migration, Schengen will not survive," said Juncker, who on Friday blasted Renzi for allegedly offending the EU executive at "every opportunity". "Some governments are quick to attack Brussels, but they should look in the mirror, they are Brussels too", said the EC chief. Juncker told the European Parliament it was "not true" that the EC "has not been sufficiently active". He said "the investment plan is already in action, 40 billion euros have already been mobilised". Juncker stressed that "11 of the projects are in Italy". He added: "To those who ask me to resign for failing on the migrant crisis, I say I don't agree and one shouldn't lose heart but work together, united". Amid the fall-out from the Italy-EU row on the Milan bourse, where Monte dei Paschi di Siena hit a new low amid another widespread collapse of banking stock, CONSOB chief Vegas said that the recent strong declines in Italian bank shares were due to general market volatility rather than any concrete new developments. Banks that have come under the lens of the European Central Bank (ECB) for their bad loans portfolios continued to tumble on Tuesday. "It does not even make sense to concentrate on these banks, because the situation is general," Vegas said. He also ruled out a "specific" bourse attack on Italy. Meanwhile one of the points of contention between the EU and Italy, State aid to steelmaker ILVA, will be made the target of a probe on Wednesday, EU sources said. The probe will concern aid for production and not an environmental clean-up, they said. The undersecretary for European affairs, Sandro Gozi, said the government was having to fight growing disappointment in and indifference to the EU. (ANSA) - Rome, January 20 - Threats from terrorism will not lead to Italy abandoning the rule of law, Italian Justice Minister Andrea Orlando said Wednesday in his annual address to parliament. He said Italy should abolish the criminal offense of illegal immigration. "The principal threat that our country, like other EU countries, must deal with today is that of jihadist terrorism - a threat that puts public security and the penal system under pressure," Orlando said. Terrorism is "a challenge that puts the state of law to the test but from which the state of law and therefore jurisdiction must emerge stronger". Although new categories of criminal offense have been introduced to help fight terrorism, the government believes "that this battle can only be won by reinforcing cooperation between states and with the European Union, because one must respond to a global threat with tools built at least on a continental dimension". Nevertheless Orlando said it is "disappointing" that Brussels hasn't made significant steps toward setting up an effective European Prosecutor's office that would be independent with real investigative powers. "Unfortunately, at least so far, resistance, diffidence, inertia and jealousy have prevailed. There is no independence of the Prosecution with regard to member states, very limited powers of investigation on a restricted number of crimes..." That was why the minister on behalf of Italy "said no to an organ that would only have hindered national judicial authorities' work. There is a point beyond which the low intensity of solutions is only a hypocritical cover for national selfishness," he said. On migration Orlando said Italy should abolish the criminal offense of illegal immigration. "I am convinced that the crime of illegal immigration has to be abolished as confirmed by the opinions such as those of the national anti-mafia and anti-terrorist prosecutors and of the head of the national council of magistrates (CSM)". It has been decided not to delay on that but "to propose a complex measure that would concern those repatriated on the one hand and the time frame for recognition of refugee status on the other," he added. "Reform is often hindered by unfounded concerns, or justified ones that are manipulated, or by distorted perceptions," he said, and "the offense of illegal immigration is one of these cases". Orlando said that under the current government controversy over Italy's judicial system has become part of a "wider debate over the destiny of our democracy" rather than the source of political clashes that was for a long time in the past. (ANSA) - Rome, January 20 - Silvio Berlusconi on Wednesday described Premier Matteo Renzi's government as an "illegitimate regime". The three-time premier and leader of the opposition centre-right Forza Italia (FI) party also said he intends to continue in front-line politics even though he is 79. "We are in a country that is slave to an illegitimate regime," Berlusconi said at a book presentation. "Renzi is there against the will of the voters". Former Florence mayor Renzi came to power in February 2014 after ousting his predecessor, fellow Democratic Party (PD) member Enrico Letta. "Renzi puts his men everywhere, as seen with the finance police," added Berlusconi. "It's a real regime". Berlusconi also said he felt obliged to keep campaigning. "My sense of responsibility forces me to stay on the field out of love for Italy, without any personal ambitions," he said. "If I'm not there, we (the centre right) will become the third pole behind the PD and the (anti-establishment) 5-Star Movement". Berlusconi on Wednesday also said that the "worst cancer of our democracy is the Italian judiciary". The ex-premier has had a long series of legal problems and has frequently accused magistrates of attacking him for political reasons. (ANSA) - Strasbourg, January 20 - European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Wednesday requested an extraordinary summit of European leaders to address the migrant crisis. The next extraordinary summit in February will be primarily devoted to the United Kingdom's bid to renegotiate its relations with the EU to avert a Brexit. Juncker said "I am worried that we won't have enough time to address the issue of refugees in a sufficiently in-depth way, so I advise (European Council) President (Donald) Tusk to envisage half a day more for the refugee issue". (ANSA) - Brussels, January 20 - There will be no negative fallout from a "lively exchange" between Italy and the European Commission, EC President Jean-Claude Juncker told reporters Wednesday. "Relations between the Commission and the Italian government, between commissioners, and between myself and my Italian colleagues and the premier (Matteo Renzi) are good," he said. "There was a lively exchange, but this is normal in times of democracy and will have no consequences," Juncker said. Last week Juncker blasted Renzi for offending the EU executive at "every opportunity". There has been tension between Rome and Brussels in recent months over several issues, including the refugee crisis, budget flexibility and bank rescues. Renzi said on Facebook Tuesday that Italy has regained its leadership role and that those who do not like it must "deal with it". (By Paul Virgo). (ANSA) - Rome, January 20 - There will be no negative fallout from a verbal scuffle between Italy and the European Commission, EC President Jean-Claude Juncker told reporters Wednesday. "Relations between the Commission and the Italian government, between commissioners, and between myself and my Italian colleagues and the premier (Matteo Renzi) are good," he said. "There was a exchange of masculine, virile words, but this is normal in times of democracy and will have no consequences," Juncker said. Last week Juncker blasted Renzi for offending the EU executive at "every opportunity". There has been tension between Rome and Brussels in recent months over several issues, including the refugee crisis, budget flexibility and bank rescues. Renzi said on Facebook Tuesday that Italy has regained its leadership role and that those who do not like it must "deal with it". He returned to the issue on Wednesday, saying that the European Union was a great opportunity if the bloc drops the path of financial austerity. "Europe is a great opportunity if it abandons the path of austerity and takes the road of (budget) flexibility," Renzi told the Senate ahead of a vote on his government's Constitutional reform bill to overhaul Italy's political machinery. Economic and Financial Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici tried to take the heat out of the row on Wednesday, saying the Commission has no quarrel with Italy. "The Commission can't be accused of acting against Italy - this is absolutely wrong," he said, adding he respects Italy, a founding member of the European Union, and Premier Matteo Renzi's reform drive. "There is no war (with Italy)," he said. "We must lower the tensions and work together with maximum objectivity," he said on the sidelines of the January 20-23 World Economic Forum in the Swiss town of Davos. On Tuesday a key ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, European People's Party (EPP) caucus leader Manfred Weber, fed the row by saying Renzi was undermining the EU's credibility. But Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert on Wednesday denied that the German government was behind criticism of Renzi. "When Jean-Claude Juncker speaks, he speaks as president of the European Commission," Seibert said. Later on Wednesday the cabinet is set to appoint Junior Industry Minister Carlo Calenda as Italy's new ambassador to the European Union, replacing Stefano Sannino. Calenda will be the first career politician to be named as envoy to Brussels after a string of career diplomats. (ANSA) - Brussels, January 20 - There will be no negative fallout from a verbal scuffle between Italy and the European Commission, EC President Jean-Claude Juncker told reporters Wednesday. "Relations between the Commission and the Italian government, between commissioners, and between myself and my Italian colleagues and the premier (Matteo Renzi) are good," he said. "There was a exchange of masculine, virile words, but this is normal in times of democracy and will have no consequences," Juncker said. Last week Juncker blasted Renzi for offending the EU executive at "every opportunity". There has been tension between Rome and Brussels in recent months over several issues, including the refugee crisis, budget flexibility and bank rescues. Renzi said on Facebook Tuesday that Italy has regained its leadership role and that those who do not like it must "deal with it". Economic and Financial Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici tried to take the heat out of the row on Wednesday, saying the Commission has no quarrel with Italy. "The Commission can't be accused of acting against Italy - this is absolutely wrong," he said, adding he respects Italy, a founding member of the European Union, and Premier Matteo Renzi's reform drive. "There is no war (with Italy)," he said. "We must lower the tensions and work together with maximum objectivity," he said on the sidelines of the January 20-23 World Economic Forum in the Swiss town of Davos. On Tuesday a key ally of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, European People's Party (EPP) caucus leader Manfred Weber, fed the row by saying Renzi was undermining the EU's credibility. But Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert on Wednesday denied that the German government was behind criticism of Renzi. "When Jean-Claude Juncker speaks, he speaks as president of the European Commission," Seibert said. Italian government sources said Deputy Industry Minister Carlo Calenda will on Wednesday be tapped as Italy's new ambassador to the European Union, replacing Stefano Sannino. Calenda's appointment will be formalised at a cabinet meeting Wednesday night, they said. Calenda will be the first career politician to be named as envoy to Brussels after a string of career diplomats. (ANSA) - Rome, January 20 - The Senate on Wednesday approved the government's bill to change the Constitution to overhaul Italy's political machinery with 180 votes in favour, 112 against and one abstention. The bill now returns to the Lower House for definitive approval. Premier Matteo Renzi has said a referendum will be held in the autumn to ratify the reform, which features a controversial transformation of the Upper House into a leaner assembly of local-government representatives. "Today is the day in which what seemed impossible becomes possible," Renzi said on his Twitter account. Before the vote, Renzi confirmed that he will retire from political life if he loses an autumn referendum on Constitutional reform. "I repeat here: if I were to lose the referendum I would consider my career over because I deeply believe in the value of the dignity of politics", he said. Renzi told Senators their "gesture" in voting to supersede the Senate "has no equal not only in Italian history but in the history of the EU". Renzi said that, with its reform scrapping the Senate as equal to the House, the government isn't "touching the system of checks and balances envisaged by the Constitution, we aren't changing the role of the Italian president as defined by the founding fathers. "This reform makes the parliamentary system less constrained," he added. "In these years, dear Senators who have voted for this reform, they have shouted at you: you're passing reforms behind closed doors but the people is not with you. "Well, we're going to see what side the people is on this reform" in the referendum. "We'll see if the citizens think like those who are betting on failure or on those who are betting on the future of Italy". Renzi praised former president Giorgio Napolitano, saying the reformist drive his government has embarked on would not be possible without him. Renzi referred to Napolitano's speech in 2013 after Napolitano reluctantly agreed to be re-elected for an unprecedented second term and blasted Italy's political class for not addressing the country's problems. "If it had not been for that speech in April 2013, this reform would not exist and this parliamentary term would not be running," Renzi said. Renzi told the Senate Wednesday that since he formed his government in February 2014 politics has regained its primacy over economic and financial phenomena. "Italy is not doing very well, but better because in two years politics has shown that by believing, things can be done," Renzi said. He said "after years of inebriation of technical acronyms, of politics being subaltern to economic and financial phenomena, years of political apathy, politics has regained its proper place". (ANSA) - Paris, January 20 - "Stabilising Libya today is the central element to stop Daesh (ISIS)," Italian Defence Minister Roberta Pinotti told reporters Wednesday on the fringes of an anti-ISIS coalition meeting in Paris. In this context the formation of a Libyan coalition government is "good news," she added. "Obviously there still is fragility that we are aware of, but this is a fundamental starting point as the stabilisation of Libya today is the central element to stop Daesh," she said. YEREVAN, JANUARY 20, ARMENPRESS. US embassy in Armenia issued a statement over the resignation of Human Rights Defender of the Republic of Armenia. Armenpress reports the statement reads, We note with regret Karen Andreasyans decision to step down as Armenias Human Rights Ombudsman. He has been a tireless and effective champion for those who were defenseless; those who feared their voices might be silenced if they voiced unpopular messages; and any Armenian who fought for his or her rights as a citizen to be respected. We wish him the greatest success in his future endeavors. He will remain a friend, colleague, and contact of the U.S. Embassy and the U.S. Government. Mr. Andreasyans work was buttressed by the professionalism and dedication of the staff at the Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman. One of Mr. Andreasyans lasting legacies will undoubtedly be the expansion of the number, and the quality, of staff at this invaluable Armenian institution, which we trust will continue to serve the best interests of the Armenian public under his successor. We are committed to maintaining our close cooperation and partnership with the Office and its staff on issues related to the protection of human rights in Armenia. We look forward to working with the new Human Rights Ombudsman. The United States remains dedicated to working with the Armenian Government and our Armenian partners to advance the cause of democratic development and human rights in Armenia. Our ultimate goal has been, and will remain, a democratic and prosperous Armenia, living in security and peace with its neighbors. (ANSA) - Vatican City, January 19 - Pope Francis could visit the Great Mosque of Rome on January 27, the president of the Union of Islamic Communities in Italy (UCOII), Izzedin Elzir, said Tuesday. "A delegation representing the community at Rome mosque will meet in the Vatican this afternoon to reaffirm and underscore the importance of the dialogue with the Catholic Church that has been taking place for decades," the imam told Catholic broadcasters Tg2000 and inBlu Radio. "Today it is necessary to highlight the importance of this dialogue more than ever before," Elzir concluded. On Monday ANSA reported that the pope might visit the mosque in Rome - allegedly the largest place of Muslim worship in Europe - during the course of the special Holy Year of Mercy. Francis would be the first pope to visit the mosque, which was inaugurated in 1995. Italian FM stresses need for joint anti-ISIS efforts At meeting with Serbian and Albanian counterparts (ANSAmed) - TIRANA, JANUARY 20 - Italian foreign minister Paolo Gentiloni stressed Wednesday that ''no country can feel immune'' from radicalization, terrorism and foreign fighter risks, and that joint efforts including the intelligence services were required. He was speaking at a press conference after a trilateral meeting with Albanian foreign minister Ditmir Bushati and his Serbian counterpart Ivica Dacic. ''Albania is a positive model in which people of different religions live and with significant commitment to work against radicalization, a factor for stability in the region,'' he added. (ANSAmed). Migrants: change Dublin rules to save Schengen, Italian FM In Tirana for trilateral with Albanian and Serbian counterparts (ANSAmed) - TIRANA, JANUARY 20 - Italian foreign minister Paolo Gentiloni said Wednesday that the Dublin Regulation should be changed to prevent risks to the Schengen zone. Speaking at a press conference in the Albanian capital after a trilateral meeting with his Albanian and Serbian counterparts, he underscored that Italy ''has long held that these are regulations thought up a quarter of a century ago for a much lower number of migrants than those today''. The Dublin Regulation is a European Union law that determines which member nation is responsible for processing the requests of asylum seekers from outside the union, generally the country where an asylum seeker first enters the union. Serbian foreign minister Ivica Dacic noted that 600,000 people crossed his country last year to reach northern Europe, but that ''Europe has not had a single response; some countries took unilateral actions''. ''An influx of this size,'' Gentiloni said, ''must be managed together in the EU and repatriation must have shared organizational and economic burdens, as should border management. Otherwise, there is the risk of a domino effect and decision by (individual, Ed.) countries, and this will put in question Schengen'', an agreement to abolish border controls among the European nations that have joined. (ANSAmed). Libyan stability to stop ISIS, urge Italian defense minister 'Not preparing military intervention alone' (ANSAmed) - PARIS, JANUARY 20 - Italian defense minister Roberta Pinotti said Wednesday at a meeting of the anti-Islamic State (ISIS) coalition defense ministers in the French capital that stabilization in Libya is key to stopping the terror movement. In speaking to reporters, she said that the recent formation of a national unity government was good news for this reason. ''There is obviously fragility, which we are aware of, but it is a fundamental starting point because the stabilization of Libya is today the central element to stop ISIS,'' she added. ''There is no doubt that after victories in Iraq and Syria and after separating the Caliphate - since with the taking of Sinjar (in northern Iraq, Ed.) we are dividing this territory that was previously united - the attempt is to expand into Libya. And so we must stop ISIS from gaining ground there.'' Pinotti stressed that ''there is obviously a strategy that must be drawn up with the Libyan government. This is today the fundamental issue'', adding that Libyans are the ones who must intervene. ''The important thing is to work with those on the ground'', just as what happens in Iraq, she said, ''and with more difficulty in Syria''. Any intervention by international forces, including Italy, will have to be decided on the basis of ''the needs that Libyans see on the ground and want''. Pinotti underscored that Italy ''is not preparing alone'' any military intervention in Libya, but is ''working in coalition'' with groups of countries in coordination with the UN. ''What we have reiterated yet again today is that it is recognized also by allied countries and that we are willing to take on leadership, a guiding role due to the knowledge we have of Libya and its proximity, since much of what affects Italy - from security problems to migrants and interests - is connected with Libya,'' she said. (ANSAmed). Italian events program kicks off in Turkey 'To move country closer to EU', says Ambassador Mattiolo (by Cristoforo Spinella) (ANSAmed) - ISTANBUL, JANUARY 20 - In an event on Tuesday, the Italian Embassy in Ankara announced the cultural events, political forums and investment exhibitions to be held this year by Italian institutions in Turkey. ''The events that we will organize, thanks to the excellent synergy between all Italian institutions in Turkey, aim to highlight the best of our country, especially in the cultural and economic fields,'' ANSAmed was told by Italian Ambassador to Turkey Luigi Mattiolo on the sidelines of the presentation of the 'Italian Horizons for 2016' program of events. ''There are events such as Italian Language Week, which will be held in the autumn on the theme 'Italian and Creativity: Brands and Traditions, Fashion and Design' as a way to seek out the roots of Italian-made products and valorize them further,'' Mattiolo said. ''We want to continue with the collaboration between Italy and Turkey to contribute in a concrete manner to Turkey's drawing closer to the EU community. There will be a third bilateral summit, hosted this year by Turkey, and a new edition of the dialogue forum between the two societies.'' The program of musical events is especially full and opened on Monday evening with a piano concert by Stefano Bollani at the auditorium of the Middle East Technical University in Ankara. Over the year there will be space for several genres, from classical music to jazz. In March, Italy will take part in the 23rd edition of the European Jazz Festival in Izmir, an event created on the suggestion of the Italian consulate and organized in collaboration with local cultural institutions and which will assign scholarships. Another prestigious event on Turkey's Aegean coast will be the international Festival of Music in Izmir, held in the ancient city of Ephesus with a concert at the Library of Celsus. A retrospective on Giorgio De Chirico will be held at Istanbul's Pera museum in February. Oscar-winning Paolo Sorrentino's 'Youth' will be screened in late January in Ankara and several film festivals are planned, including the 7th edition of the 'Appointment with Italian Cinema' in late November in collaboration with the Istituto Luce Cinecitta, to present a preview in Turkey of seven feature films that will appear in 2016 in the largest international festivals. Actors and directors will take part. The promotion of relations between the two countries will focus on the economic sector, with appointments on investment opportunities in Turkey for Italian enterprises in sectors including healthcare, infrastructure and transport as well as agriculture and flower nurseries, ahead of the Expo in the sector this year in Antalya. (ANSAmed). PARIS - Italian defense minister Roberta Pinotti said Wednesday at a meeting of the anti-Islamic State (ISIS) coalition defense ministers in the French capital that stabilization in Libya is key to stopping the terror movement. In speaking to reporters, she said that the recent formation of a national unity government was good news for this reason. ''There is obviously fragility, which we are aware of, but it is a fundamental starting point because the stabilization of Libya is today the central element to stop ISIS,'' she added. ''There is no doubt that after victories in Iraq and Syria and after separating the Caliphate - since with the taking of Sinjar (in northern Iraq, Ed.) we are dividing this territory that was previously united - the attempt is to expand into Libya. And so we must stop ISIS from gaining ground there.'' Pinotti stressed that ''there is obviously a strategy that must be drawn up with the Libyan government. This is today the fundamental issue'', adding that Libyans are the ones who must intervene. ''The important thing is to work with those on the ground'', just as what happens in Iraq, she said, ''and with more difficulty in Syria''. Any intervention by international forces, including Italy, will have to be decided on the basis of ''the needs that Libyans see on the ground and want''. Pinotti underscored that Italy ''is not preparing alone'' any military intervention in Libya, but is ''working in coalition'' with groups of countries in coordination with the UN. ''What we have reiterated yet again today is that it is recognized also by allied countries and that we are willing to take on leadership, a guiding role due to the knowledge we have of Libya and its proximity, since much of what affects Italy - from security problems to migrants and interests - is connected with Libya,'' she said. Mideast: 154 ha. south of Jericho Israeli 'public property' According to military radio.Peace Now talks about 'confiscation' (ANSAmed) - TEL AVIV, JANUARY 20 - Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon has authorized that 1500 dunam (or some 145 hectares) of land south of Jericho in the West Bank be declared State-owned property, military radio reports. According to the radio, the decision will be formally announced in the coming weeks. Peace Now has denounced that it is the ''widest'' such initiative since August 2014. According to the NGO - which spoke about 'confiscation' - the land in Jericho ''was taken by settlers years ago for farming purposes''. ''Constant land confiscations by Netanyahu's government are a diplomatic catastrophe'', added Peace Now. ''The government's decision is another step in the direction of destroying the two-State Solution''. For the organization, the premier ''has started a silent annexation of the C Area'' of the West Bank. (ANSAmed) ROME - Saudi ambassador Rayed Krimly said Wednesday that he had invited Pope Francis to visit the Grand Mosque of Rome. Krimley is head of the Islamic Cultural Center of Italy - in charge of the management of Rome's Grand Mosque - and head of the center's delegation that met with the Pope in the Vatican on Wednesday to officially invite him to visit the mosque. ''His Holiness warmly received and accepted the invitation,'' according to a statement issued by the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia. The Pope received the Muslim delegation shortly before 9 AM in the Paul VI hall prior to the general audience. ''Regardless of whether we are Muslims, Christians or Jews, we are all in the same boat and we can enjoy peace and prosperity if we remain united,'' Ambassador Krimly said. ''United in fostering tolerance, dialogue, mercy and compassion. United in a rejection of the evils of hatred, extremism and terrorism.'' ''Christian Arabs, like European Muslims, are an authentic, integrated part of their countries,'' he added. The delegation also included the two vice presidents of the center, the Egyptian and Moroccan ambassadors Amr Mostafa Helmy and Hassan Abouyoub, the center's secretary general Abdellah Redouane and the head of the center's committee for inter-religious dialogue, Yahya Pallavicini. ''Recognizing the moral and spiritual leadership of His Holiness in celebrating the Jubilee of Mercy,'' the Saudi embassy noted, ''and reiterating Muslims' widespread commitment to promote the values of dialogue and beneficial cooperation with worshippers of every faith, the delegation extended an official invitation to His Holiness to visit the center at an appropriate date for His Holiness.'' The Vatican spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, said that the invitation had been accepted ''with gratitude and it will be considered. The Pope will see what to do.'' Lombardi urged caution in discussing the dates for the visit, though Vatican sources noted that it might be April 10 (a Sunday). After on Sunday visiting the synagogue of Rome, the third pope ever to enter the Grand Temple, Pope Francis thus will soon be going to the Grand Mosque of the capital, the largest place of Muslim worship in the West. He will be the first pope ever to do so. The Grand Mosque was funded by Saudi's King Faysal, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques of Mecca and Medina. The project was entrusted to the Italian architect Paolo Portoghesi and it took over 20 years to build it: from 1974 to 1995, when it was inaugurated. It will be a step of enormous significance for Pope Francis in the direction of dialogue and peaceful coexistence between religions, amid radical jihadism that is causing bloodshed across the world. On Tuesday, the Pope will receive Iranian president Hassan Rouhani and the Qatari emir is also expected to visit the Vatican in the near future. Pope invited to Rome Mosque 'Caution' on dates says Lombardi (ANSAmed) - VATICAN CITY, JANUARY 20 - Pope Francis on Wednesday received a delegation from the Rome Mosque who officially invited him to visit it. The pope would be the first pontiff to visit the mosque, which is the largest outside the Islamic world, Russia and India. Planning on both sides for the historic visit has been in the works for 10 months. The aim is for it to take place during the Jubilee Year of Mercy, the theme of which - as Pope Francis himself highlighted at the opening of the Holy Year on December 8 - is common to both faiths. Vatican Spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said the pope welcomed the invitation "with gratitude and it will be considered, the pope will see what to do". He added: "I would be absolutely cautious about talking of dates". On Tuesday two dates were mooted, January 27 and April 10. (ANSAmed). YEREVAN, JANUARY 20, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia Hovik Abrahamyan received Head of the Mission of the Asian Development Bank in Armenia David Dole, who completes his tenure in Armenia. Head of the Government highly appreciated David Doles activities in Armenia. In his words, a number of important programs have been and are now being implemented by the cooperation between the Government of the Republic of Armenia and ADB. The PM particularly highlighted the construction of North-South highway, M6 Vanadzor-Alaverdi-Georgian Border Interstate Road Rehabilitation and Improvement Project, as well as projects aimed at ensuring seismic safety of schools. Hovik Abrahamyan expressed gratitude to Dole for his work and effective cooperation with the Government of Armenia. As Armenpress was informed from Information and Public Relations Department of the Government of Armenia, David Dole thanked Hovik Abrahamyan for cooperation and stated that during his tenure considerable achievements have been recorded in bilateral cooperation thank to effective collaboration with the Government members. In his words, the construction program of North-South highway is the best example of cooperation between the Armenian Government and ADB, which will gain a new momentum this year. David Dole expressed conviction that partnership between Armenia and ADB will be continuous in the future. At the end of the meeting PM Abrahamyan presented David Dole with Prime Ministers nominal watch and wished him new success. (by Cristoforo Spinella) ISTANBUL - Turkey's foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu warned on Wednesday that if the EU did not help refugees in Turkey and cooperate with his country, ''these people will come to you''. Concerned and irritated by the obstacles put down by Brussels for the 3 billion euros in funding for an agreement on migrants and refugees, Turkey stressed that it had already spent 8 billion euros to manage 2.5 million Syrians who had crossed its border. ''The method that they will use is an internal issue for the EU,'' said Minister for European Affairs Volkan Bozkir on a visit to Strasbourg. He urged Brussels to resolve its internal problems and maintain the promises it made in late November, since Turkey has done its part as much as possible so far. Ankara has for the first time granted work permits to refugees and tightened visa requirements for Syrians, which it holds will substantially limit the influx to Europe. The work permit regulation, authorized on Friday, foresees that those who have been in the country for at least six months can request a permit in the province in which they are registered as refugees, giving them access to services and better protection against exploitation. This will serve as an incentive not to attempt the often-fatal Aegean crossing to Greece. The other measure is the restoring of a visa requirement for Syrians arriving by sea of air, which came into force on January 8 after six years of unrestricted circulation. The bureaucratic obstacle aims to curb the exodus of refugees currently staying in Lebanon and Jordan, who leave for Turkey due to the difficult conditions in those countries and the possibility to attempt the crossing to Europe. It is also a way for curb arrivals from Egypt and Libya, among whom Ankara holds there are many jihadists. (ANSAmed) - TUNIS, JANUARY 20 - Social unrest has flared up again in Tunisia a few days from celebrations for the fifth anniversary of Ben Ali's ouster. The protest began after a young unemployed man, Ridha Yahyaoui last Saturday died in Kasserine after he climbed on an electricity pylon during a sit-in at which he had threatened to commit suicide. His name had been scrapped from a list of new hires drafted by the regional department for education. Hundreds of demonstrators over the past few days gathered in front of the governorate's offices to claim their right to work, with a break on Monday. Then yesterday, when they were banned from staging another sit-in in front of the governorate, they started hurling stones and clashing with security forces, sparking an uprising that widened across the city, forcing the interior ministry to declare a curfew in Kasserine from 6 pm until 5 am. Two demonstrators tried to kill themselves by jumping from the building's roof (they were saved by rescuers) while officers used tear gas to disperse the crowd. Many public buildings and stores were shut down and the army was deployed to protect the governorate's offices. A number of citizens joined demonstrations called by the jobless, complaining about the region's marginalization and demanding more transparency. Overall yesterday 23 were slightly injured, including four security officials and 246 people were forced to seek treatment after they inhaled tear gas. The region of Kasserine, not far from the border with Algeria, is among the least fortunate among Tunisia and it is where Mount Chambi, a jihadist stronghold, is located. Youth unemployment in the region reaches about 27% while the national unemployment average is 15.3%. (ANSAmed) The cyber security system of Romania still has weaknesses but the authority in charge of it has a few suggestions for its improvement, said Friday Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos, after meeting with Minister of Communications and Information Society, Raul Marius Bostan."We also had a discussion about the system of cyber security, where Romania still has lets say, weaknesses. We have this authority in charge of cyber security and we will see what steps we can take this year. This authority has some proposals to improve the cyber security environment in Romania ", Dacian Ciolos said.The Minister of Communications and Information Society, Raul Marius Bostan, said Romania needs a cyber-security law and that the law will be published for public debate."The cyber security law we will put it into the public debate. We need a law of cyber security. Romania has become, lately, also a target. From this point of view we are ready and we have an action plan quite precise, according to the cyber security strategy. We have divisions prepared to ensure cyber security. It is in vain that we build infrastructure and invest in internet platforms, we do nothing for interoperability and data registers if we are not able to protect ourselves, "said the minister.He added that there are, at present, IT failures at government level to be corrected."At the same time, we discussed the IT malfunctions at government level. We have problems, we know and I am sure that to adjust an intranet of the government, a civil servant on ICT who should be capable and be good at governmental level cannot be paid with a regular salary.As you know in this industry, wages are very high and in order to have capable people in the public sector we need to think about the process. He will be introduced in the single wage law, but we should also find solutions for the special departments to deal with the government IT systems ", Bostan argued, according to Agerpres. The Prosecutor General's Office has called for starting a criminal investigation against a former Interior Minister of the late communist regime. The latter is charged with complicity to crimes against humanity. In 1985, dissident Gheorghe Ursu died in Militia custody, from the savage beating he suffered at the hands of investigators. The engineer's family sought justice as early as 1990, but military prosecutors have refused to examine his case. It's been 26 years now and Romanian authorities still haven't answered the questions asked by dissident Gheorghe Ursu's family. The Foreign Minister Lazar Comanescu said on Tuesday that Romania must be pragmatic in the relations with the Russian Federation pointing out that, beyond the issue of the Russian intervention in eastern Ukraine, there are 'specific issues' on which Bucharest and Moscow can continue their dialogue, Agerpres reports.'The relationship with Russia is one about which I would say it is quasi-similar to the relationship that the other Member States of the European Union or NATO have with the Russian Federation. We must be pragmatic. Beyond what I mentioned, obviously there are specific issues on which we can continue the dialogue. I refer, for example, to the economic issues, " Comanescu said at TVR.He noted that Romania should continue cooperation with Russia and with the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization.As regards other issues related to the way in which Russia is involved in the situation in eastern Ukraine and Crimea, the head of Romanian diplomacy underlined the need for Moscow to meet their commitments under the agreements of Minsk and the rules of international law. Romania proposes to have a NATO naval force in the Black Sea. The measure is found in the Romanian Defense Ministry's strategic priorities posted on the government website.The chapter "The establishment of multinational structures in the territory" states: "The launch of the initiative for the creation of NATO naval force in the Black Sea, named Allied Fleet in the Black Sea / Black Sea Flotilla".According to the source, efforts will begin in February 2016 and the deadline for completion is in October of the same.Source :hotnews.ro At an extremely sensitive moment in the relations between Romania and Norway generated by the Bodnariu family situation, whose five children were taken by the Norwegian State, an essential step is undertaken by Antena 3.The petition initiated by Antena 3 to have the Bodnariu children restored to their family has already collected an impressive number of signatures: over 112,000 signatures!Given this huge emotion, the solidarity of tens of thousands of people, the somewhat belated but still essential involvement of the Romanian diplomacy and of lawmakers in an effort to have the children release, are sure to have an outcome.We always appreciated Norway's profile as a very solid country economically, we were curious to see who leads a government that supports such large deviations of the institution taking care of the children in the country.We were quite surprised to see a woman as Prime Minister of Norway. The mother of two children. Erna Solberg is her name. Did this respectable politician and head of government ask herself for a second how it would be like for her children to be taken away and put for adoption to another family?The Meeting Point will show exclusively show the reply received via Erna Solberg government cabinet office from the Ministry of Child and Family:Do you know about the huge debate and protests for the Bodnariu family?We know that this case has been the subject of debate and protests abroad. The Ministry of Children, Equality and Social Inclusion and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Directorate of Children, Youth and Family received letters demanding interventions, in addition to several media requests in connection with this case.Has any authority from Romania asked to have official discussions with the Norwegian government?The Ministry of Children, Equality and Social Inclusion held a meeting with the Romanian ambassador this week. Next week there will be a meeting with the delegation of the Romanian Parliament.What is your opinion on the Bodnariu case?I cannot comment on a specific case about child protection nor can the Ministry. The Ministry of Children, Equality and Social Inclusion is responsible for the general policy related to child protection, local authorities for child protection are responsible for the way in which they manage individual cases.Please keep in mind that the Ministry has no authority to intervene or give instructions to local child protection services. Specific cases are subject to a strict confidentiality and only the parties have access to the documents in the dossier.An impartial committee of local authorities with social responsibilities or the District Court are responsible for issuing an order of protection. These committees cannot receive instructions from abroad.A protection order is necessary and in the best interests of the child. Placing a child outside his family without parental consent is a measure of last resort. An order of protection is issued only when the child is the subject of serious negligence, ill-treatment or abuse.I want to emphasize that religious practices as such are not a reason to place the child for adoption without parental consent.For your information, both the media in Norway and in Romanian have reported that parents were accused of violence against their children.Best regards,Elisabeth JohansenCommunication Advisor and Web EditorThe Ministry of Children, Equality and Social InclusionDepartment of Communications YEREVAN, JANUARY 20, ARMENPRESS. Austrian chancellor Werner Faymann declared on January 20 about its plan to cap the number of people allowed to claim asylum this year at less than half last year's total. Armenpress reports, citing Reuters, hundreds of thousands of people have streamed into this country of 8.5 million since September, when it and Germany threw open their borders to a wave of people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Afghanistan and elsewhere. The vast majority of arrivals simply crossed the country on their way to Germany, but a fraction have stayed. Roughly 90,000 people, or more than 1 percent of Austria's population, applied for asylum last year. Public fears about immigration have fueled support for the far right, and calls for a cap on the number of migrants by members of the center-right People's Party within the coalition government have grown. The government plan announced on January provides for the number of asylum claims to be restricted to 1.5 percent of Austria's population, spread over the next four years. Breaking down the four-year cap, the statement said the number of asylum claims would be limited to 37,500 this year, falling annually to 25,000 in 2019. YEREVAN, JANUARY 20, ARMENPRESS. Patients suffering acute respiratory infections continue to recover and be discharged from hospitals of Armenia. Majority of the patients receiving treatment at intensive care units have been moved to wards of somatic departments. 174 citizens who suffered acute respiratory infections have been discharged from hospitals on January 20. 129 of them were under 18. Pneumonia had been diagnosed for 82 of them, 36 of who are children. 6 patients are switched onto breathing apparatuses. Health Ministry of the Republic of Armenia informed Armenpress about this. According to the Ministry, the two death cases that occurred on January 20 were conditioned by delayed application for treatment. YEREVAN, JANUARY 20, ARMENPRESS. Ministry of Nature Protection of Armenia will set a special working group which will engage in the activities of organizing the exportation of not free or partially free wild animals. A meeting was held at the Ministry of Nature Protection on January 20, attended by the members of Save the animals of Gyumri zoo initiative and Deputy Minister of Nature Protection Khachik Hakobyan. During the meeting the sides discussed the problems of privately owned zoo of Gyumri, the condition of the animals and the opportunities to transport them to other countries. Spokesperson for the Armenian Ministry of Nature Protection Tehmina Arzumanyan told Armenpress about this. As you may know there is an issue of taking the two bears and lions of Gyumri zoo to a safer place. The Foundation for the Preservation of Wildlife and Cultural Assets applied to the Ministry of Nature Protection in order to get permission for taking the bears to Romania. The permission has already been given, and soon the bears will be transported to Romania, she said. Tehmina Arzumanyan noted that both the Ministry of Nature Protection and Save the animals of Gyumri zoo initiative have launched negotiations with partner organizations of different countries (Russian Federation, Georgia) aimed to solving the problem. That working group must engage not only in solving the problems of the mentioned animals, but also in the elaboration of legislative initiatives regulating that sphere, she added. Armenpress had touched upon the problems of Gyumri zoo back in October, 2015. The British Daily mail also referred to the issue in an article published on January 19. YEREVAN, JANUARY 20, ARMENPRESS. Foreign Minister of the Republic of Armenia Edward Nalbandian, who paid an official visit to Podgorica on January 20, met with the President of Montenegro Filip Vujanovic. Greeting the Armenian Foreign Minister, the President of Montenegro highlighted the first high-level visit from Armenia to Podgorica, expressing conviction that the agreements reached in the scope of the visit will foster bilateral partnership in various spheres. I have had several meetings with the President of friendly Armenia, Serzh Sargsyan within the framework of international conferences and I hope that this visit will further activate bilateral visits and cooperation, he mentioned. As Armenpress was informed from the Department of Press, Information and Public Relations of MFA Armenia, thanking for the reception, Edward Nalbandian conveyed best wishes of the President of the Republic of Armenia and invitation to visit Yerevan to the President of Montenegro. During the meeting the sides stated that the traditional friendly relations between the peoples of Armenia and Montenegro serve as firm basis for the development of relations and for full utilization of existing potentials. Ways to organize high level visits, activate trade and economic relations, hold business forums, and boost decentralized cooperation were discussed. In this context, the interlocutors highlighted revising the cooperation agreement signed between Yerevan and Podgorica back in 1978 and establishment of communication between the administrative units of the two countries. Edward Nalbandian and Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration of Montenegro, Igor Luksic held negotiations in Podgorica. The meeting in tete-a-tete format was followed by talks with the participation of the delegations. Greeting the Armenian Foreign Minister, the Foreign Minister of Montenegro found it symbolic that the Foreign Minister of friendly Armenia is the first Armenian Foreign minister to visit Podgorica, and expressed conviction that the visit will give a new impetus to bilateral relations. Expressing gratitude to Igor Luksic for the invitation and hospitality, Minister Nalbandian said, Your visit to Armenia in 2013 set grounds for establishing continuous political dialogue between our states. Now I am glad to be in Podgorica: first official visit from Armenia to Montenegro. During the negotiations the sides discussed issues of bilateral interest, highlighted the organization of high level visits, expansion of legal framework, promotion of trade and economic relations, easing entry visa regime, activation of interaction between people, development of cooperation in the spheres of education, science, culture, tourism and high-tech. Deputy Prime Minister of Montenegro introduced the foreign priorities of his country, developments on the Balkan Peninsula, and the position of his country on them. Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Montenegro exchanged ideas over regional and international urgent issues, particularly the implementation of agreements over Irans nuclear program, developments in the Middle East and fight against terrorism. Armenian Foreign minister introduced the efforts of Armenia and OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs made for the peaceful settlement of Nagorno Karabakh conflict. Joint press conference was followed by the meeting of the Ministers. On the same day Edward Nalbandian held a meeting with the President of the Parliament of Montenegro, Ranko Krivokapic. Foreign Minister of Armenia introduced the events organized throughout the world dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide and their significance to the head of the Parliament of Montenegro. Afghan Air Force receives first four A-29s The U.S. Air Force delivered four A-29 Super Tucanos to the Afghan Air Force Jan. 15 at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Afghanistan. Eight combat-ready attack pilots and a handful of maintainers graduated Dec. 17, 2015, and have returned to Afghanistan after a year of training with the 81st Fighter Squadron at Moody Air Force Base, Georgia. The pilots are the first of 30 who will be trained by the 81st FS in the next three years. The U.S. Air Force had no qualified A-29 pilots or maintainers prior to the start of the program, and stood up the 81st FS. These Airmen have been responsible for developing all the tactics and ways to instruct the students. The A-29 program has been an integral part of the U.S. governments overall Building Partnership Capacity efforts around the world and immediately supports the development of an indigenous air force in Afghanistan, said Brig. Gen. Christopher Craige, the commanding general at Train, Advise, Assist Command-Air. This rapidly developed program for Afghanistan is unique for the A-29 development because this is the first time (U.S. Air Force) pilots and maintainers have been trained as instructors to conduct training for Afghan students in the United States. The 81st FS instructors will be deployed to TAAC-Air where theyll advise their counterparts on continued development of close air support, aerial escort, armed overwatch and aerial interdiction in the coming months. Designed to operate in high temperatures and in extremely rugged terrain, the A-29 is highly maneuverable fourth-generation weapons system capable of delivering precision-guided munitions. It can fly at low speeds and low altitudes, is easy to fly, and provides exceptionally accurate weapons delivery, Craige said. It is currently in service with 10 different air forces around the world. The A-29 program was designed to help Afghan pilots gain an advantage by providing close air support to friendly forces engaged in combat on the ground. Training pilots on the A-29 in the U.S. provides them an opportunity to learn how to employ this weapon system and defend Afghanistan from insurgents, he said. This is a fighting aircraft which will destroy the centers of enemies in the country, said Col. Bahadur, the Afghan Air Force public affairs officer, through an interpreter. This aircraft has the ability of transferring weapons like rockets and machine guns. This fighting aircraft will provide security and combat support from the ground units in ground operation. Security cooperation provides a means for the Air Force to help international partners build airpower capabilities and fill operational needs, increase access, shorten response time and affect the strategic calculus of potential adversaries. Through sustained security cooperation activities, the Air Force works to build a network of global partners who have the capacity and capabilities to respond to contingencies effectively and efficiently. All the latest Ashbourne news. Ashbourne is an historic market town in Derbyshire. Situated on the southern edge of the Peak District, it is known as the 'Gateway to Dovedale' and the 'Gateway to the Peak District'. Ashbourne is famous for the annual Royal Shrovetide Football Match, which has been played since at least 1667, although its origins may date back centuries earlier. Ashbourne became a Fairtrade town in March 2005. The popular Tissington Trail, which follows the route of the former Ashbourne to Buxton railway, starts on the edge of town. Keep up to date with the latest news from the town by signing up for our newsletter. by Paul Dakiki The leader of the Lebanese Forces supports the candidacy for president of his former enemy. Lebanese Forces and the Change and Reform bloc have the largest number of Christian MPs. Maronite Patriarchate of Bkerke is "happy and relieved". The Lebanese Parliament has failed to elect a president since May 2014. Some Christians and Muslims resist. Beirut (AsiaNews) The explicit support by Lebanese Forces chief Samir Geagea to ex General Michel Aoun as candidate for the presidency is raising some hope but also causing some shock. Until January 18, both were presidential candidates: the first, Aoun, head of the Change and Reform bloc, close to Hezbollah; the second close to the Future Movement led by Saad Hariri, a Sunni. Behind the scenes, Iran backs the former, whilst Saudi Arabia supports the latter. On January 18, Geagea decided to withdraw his candidacy and support Michel Aoun, his long-time enemy. Some analysts say that this turn toward Aoun and Hezbollah stems from a calculation of the value of Irans return in international arena after the nuclear deal and the end of the embargo. Others claim that Geageas "turnaround" and his "betrayal" of Hariri are due to personal issues: Hariri, along with the Saudis, decided to throw his support behind the candidacy of another Christian leader, the head of the Marada party, Sleiman Franjieh, without informing his political ally. Still, the Aoun-Geagea alliance is seen as a first step towards reconciliation among Christian lawmakers, divided behind their own candidate. Lebanese Forces and Change and Reform have the largest number of Christian MPs. At the Maronite patriarchate in Bkerke, the patriarchal vicar Boulos Sayah said that Geageas decision to support Aoun is an event that must be definitely considered. Speaking to the LOrient-Le Jour newspaper, Sayah said: "We are happy and relieved. As it ought to be, we appreciate this rapprochement between the two great factions of Christian representatives. At the same time, we appreciate any rapprochement among Lebanese in the service of Lebanon. " Ordinary Lebanese and the Patriarchate hope that the alliance can overcome the impasse in which the country has fallen. Since May 2014 parliament has failed to elect a new president due to divisions among the parties and among the Christian components. There is however some resistance, first of all in the Christian camp. Kataeb (Phalange Party), led by Sami Gemayel - who was hoping to run was supposed to make a statement about Aoun. For now, Gemayel said that he "would examine the decision." Saad Hariri, head of the Sunni al-Moustaqbal bloc, praised the reconciliation between Aoun and Geagea, but reaffirmed his support for Franjieh. Some al-Moustaqbal MPs left immediately for Riyadh to study the next move. To convince the various groups to elect Aoun, members of his party - including Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil, Aouns son-in-law - are meeting the leaders of the other parties, including Speaker Nabih Berri, head of the Shia-based Amal party, and Walid Jumblatts Socialist Party. In todays General audience, Francis spoke about the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. The common baptism of Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants is an eloquent sign of a source of faith recognised by all. We are invited to rediscover this, and do so together, going beyond our divisions." Vatican City (AsiaNews) During his General Audience this morning in the Vaticans Paul VI Hall, Pope Francis, reflecting on the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, told the 10,000 people assembled that, by virtue of their baptism, Christians, Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants, form a royal priesthood and a holy nation. This means that we have a common mission, which is to pass on to others the mercy we received, starting with the poorest and the most abandoned." The popes inspiration comes from the biblical text proposed this year for the event, namely the First Epistle of Peter (1 Peter 2: 9-10), where he says, "But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own, so that you may announce the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. This passage, the pontiff noted, "was chosen by a Latvian ecumenical group, commissioned by the World Council of Churches and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. In the middle of Rigas Lutheran Cathedral there is a baptismal font dating back to the 12th century, back to the time when Latvia was evangelised by Saint Meinhard." "That font, he added, is an eloquent sign of a source of faith recognised by all Christians in Latvia: Catholics, Lutherans and Orthodox. Such origin is our common Baptism. The Second Vatican Council says, Baptism therefore establishes a sacramental bond of unity which links all who have been reborn by it (UR, 22). The First Epistle of Peter is centred on the first generation of Christians to make them aware of the gift they received in Baptism and of the requirements it entails. We too, in this Week of Prayer, are invited to rediscover this, and to do so together by going beyond our divisions." "First of all, sharing Baptism means that we are all sinners and that we need to be saved, redeemed, and delivered from evil. It is this negative aspect that the First Epistle of Peter calls darkness where it says, God called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. This is the experience of death that Christ made his own, and which is symbolised in Baptism by the immersion in water, and followed by the re-emergence, symbol of resurrection to new life in Christ. When we Christians say that we share a single Baptism, we say that all of us Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox share the experience of being called out of the merciless and alienating darkness by the encounter with the living God, full of mercy. All of us in fact, unfortunately, experience egoism, which generates division, closemindedness, and contempt. Starting over with the Baptism means rediscovering the source of mercy, a source of hope for everyone, so no one is excluded from God's mercy. No one is excluded from God's mercy." "Sharing this grace creates an unbreakable bond between us Christians, so that, by virtue of the Baptism, we can really consider all of us brothers and sisters. We are really a holy people of God, even though, because of our sins, we are still not a fully united nation. Gods mercy, which works in Baptism, is stronger than our divisions. It is stronger. To the extent that we welcome the grace of mercy, we become ever more fully God's people, and become capable of proclaiming to everyone his wonderful works, starting from a simple and fraternal witness of unity. We Christians can announce to everyone the power of the Gospel by committing ourselves to share the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. This is a concrete show of unity among Christians: Protestants, Orthodox and Catholics." "In conclusion, dear brothers and sisters, all of us Christians, by the grace of Baptism, have received mercy from God and have been welcomed into his people. Everyone, Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants, we form a royal priesthood and a holy nation. This means that we have a common mission, which is to pass on to others the mercy we received, starting with the poorest and most abandoned. During this Week of Prayer, let us pray that all of us disciples of Christ can find ways to work together in order to bring Gods mercy to every part of the earth." The Business Side of Green Blog is where Peter Arpin gets to interact with the community on an ongoing basis. Here, Peter will share his thoughts and ideas when it comes to helping our community move towards a more sustainable future. Peter is also looking for your ideas and thoughts to promote and share through the Arpin Broadcast Network and its affiliates, Arpin Group, Arpin Van Lines and Arpin International Group. Mgr Paul Hinder led the ordination ceremony of Fr Darick Paul D'Souza and Fr Arun Raj Manuel. Both priests were born into Indian immigrant families for whom the Church is "the spiritual home". Indeed, those who live abroad call the Christian community home amid a cultural environment of different traditions". The best evidence that different religions can coexist "is based on the daily expression of Christian life." Abu Dhabi (AsiaNews) Although a minority religion in the Gulf States, Christianity "continues to be fertile in terms of vocations. The evidence lies with the ordination of two priests of Indian origin, Fr Darick Paul D'Souza (Karnataka), and Fr Arun Raj Manuel (Kerala), said Mgr Paul Hinder, apostolic vicar of southern Arabia. The overjoyed prelate told AsiaNews that these are the first Christian ordinations ever in the history of the UAE, a real treat for the whole community." The ordination of the two Capuchin priests was held on 8 January, feast day of the Lords Baptism. Mgr Hinder said that some 4,000 people attended the service, excited by the extraordinary event. The two priests were born in India, but moved to the Emirates when they were very little, following their parents emigrate who had come for work. "Here 80 per cent of the population comes from abroad, the vicar noted, in search of a better future for their families and their children. For these people, the Church represents a spiritual hearth, he explained. Those who live abroad call the Christian community home amid a cultural environment of different traditions. Although Fr Darick and Fr Arun belong to two Catholic families from India, probably what triggered "their vocation was when I was ordained bishop. For both that was something really important, something unexpected. " The apostolic vicar said that after his appointment, the two youths approached him for help to "recognise their vocation and guide them on the path of Christian mission. But I could not guarantee their presence here in the Vicariate, because of the civil laws of this country. " Eventually the two future priests chose to return to their parents dioceses and join the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin. "They underwent their priestly training there." For the ordination ceremony, Mgr Hinder asked the provincials to organise the event in Abu Dhabi. "The superiors accepted, he explained, and so the ceremony was held here. The two young men were very to be ordained where they grew up and where their vocation grew. For Catholics, their celebration was a real joy and thousands wanted to take part. " After the Mass, the priests thanked the community from whom they received support to see their vocation grow." As present, they are back in India. "Next Sunday (24 January) another ceremony awaits them in their respective parishes. A period of apostolate will follow in the community. But noting rules out that they might come back in the future to the Gulf States. " As for co-existence of the Christian community in a majority Muslim area, the bishop noted that "the most important thing is bearing witness to the faith in the workplace, with neighbours, in everyday life. What matter is being honest and bearing witness with ones attitude to the Christian doctrine." By Pamela Palmater Special to The Post This holiday season rabble.ca has partnered with Aboriginal Legal Services of Toronto to launch a campaign urging Canadians to take up implementing the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a New Year's resolution for 2016. Here's how. Let's start with Recommendation #93. This week we are talking about how new Canadians can serve an important role in reconciliation between Canada and Indigenous peoples through Recommendations #93 which provides as follows: We call upon the federal government, in collaboration with the national Aboriginal organizations, to revise the information kit for newcomers to Canada and its citizenship test to reflect a more inclusive history of the diverse Aboriginal peoples of Canada, including information about the Treaties and the history of residential schools. The vast territory that is now known as Canada is really a collection of territories forming a vast ecosystem that has been governed by diverse Indigenous Nations, like the Mi'kmaq, Wolastoqiyik, and Haudenosaunee, since time immemorial. It is critically important to reconciliation that all Canadians understand the true history and current reality of this territory, including new Canadians. All Canadians are in fact newcomers when considered in the context of the many thousands of years that Indigenous Nations have occupied these lands. The only difference being that newer Canadians may feel detached from the wrongdoings of the past. Neither the citizenship test, nor the information kit for immigrants contains sufficient information about the origins of Canada to afford immigrants a true understanding of why they are also implicated in reconciliation. It is critical that new Canadians understand that it is a privilege to live in Indigenous territories and that all of the benefits of their new citizenship come directly from the historical and ongoing dispossession and oppression of Indigenous peoples. Amendments to the information kits and citizenship tests will help, but it is not enough. Newcomers need to understand that the very lands, waters, natural resources, wealth and power claimed by Canada, was not earned, but instead stolen from Indigenous peoples. Canada's Indian policy was to eliminate and assimilate Indians by any means including physical, biological and cultural genocide. If we are to move forward with true reconciliation, then the connection between Canada's dark past and the current bleak reality for Indigenous peoples must be part of every Canadian's education, but especially new Canadians who may feel detached from the actions committed before their arrival. Why is this important? If new Canadians don't know that being on these lands, drinking the water, and enjoying the many social benefits all come from Indigenous lands and resources, they will be less likely to honour their legal obligations to address this injustice. A full understanding of what it means to uphold the laws of Canada will include an explicit recognition that those laws include the treaties and laws of Indigenous Nations. Canada's continued failure to implement treaties has contributed to their poverty. Canada's laws and Indigenous laws require that this injustice be remedied and new Canadians, like all Canadians, have an obligation to act. Reconciliation not only requires truth-telling, but concrete actions to remedy the injustice. It requires reparations not just apologies. It requires exposing the history so we can change the future. Canada's very sovereignty is entirely dependent on the original and legitimate sovereignty of Indigenous Nations. Therefore, new Canadians and Indigenous Nations are tied together to protect and maintain these lands for our collective future generations. Do you work or volunteer with organizations that help establish immigrants to Canada? If so, you can use the report and materials published by the TRC to help educate new Canadians. You can help lead reading or discussion groups on the TRC report in partnership with Indigenous peoples and/or their respective organizations. The TRC report could be made part of every welcome package provided to newcomers at your organization. Do you work or volunteer at a local church, community group, library, school, university, or other venue which is accessed by the public? You could help facilitate lectures, work-shops or talking circles with Indigenous speakers to help more people learn about Canada's history and current realities. You could post information about related events being held by others. Many Indigenous communities and organizations also have their own materials that could also be shared. Do you have access to a computer or are engaged in social media online? This is an excellent means to access even more new Canadians. You could research online discussion groups, forums and pages dedicated to new Canadians and share the TRC report, online articles, and links to Indigenous webpages and information sites. Seeking direction and guidance from the Indigenous Nation(s) local to your area will help ensure that this is done in a respectful way. Reconciliation is much more than answering a few questions in a citizenship test -- it requires reparations that could be led by new Canadians. Pam is a Mi'kmaw lawyer and member of Eel River Bar First Nation. She was a spokesperson and educator for the Idle No More movement and partners with other activists to advocate for social justice in Canada. She currently holds the position of Chair in Indigenous Governance at Ryerson University. This piece was orginally published in rabble.ca. See http://rabble.ca/news/2015/12/heres-how-you-can-help-new-canadians-understand-their-role-reconciliation I hope your 2016 is off to a good start. Heres a quick look back at 2015. The HBIC TV reality series (previously known as Ultra Rich Asian Girls) shifted its focus towards business pursuits and charitable events for season 2. Versace Home, Nordstrom, Cicino and Wardrobe Apparel opened their doors to luxury shoppers. Dinner by Design (brought to you by the Deighton Cup organizers) was pleasant surprise and was packed with fashionistas. The Little Black Dress Gala and Brilliant used fashion shows to raise money for charities. Student groups hosted well run fashion shows like: BCITMA, JCI and Van Styles III. New Cover Modeling Competition selected three hopefuls to compete in China and conservative yet fashionable Middle Eastern outfits made their debut on a Hijabi runway. Photo caption 01: Brilliant, Favorite Charity Fundraiser When is a fashion show not a fashion show? When its Brilliant! Stylists, models, dancers and musicians volunteer their time to create a memorable event for the benefit of St. Pauls Hospital each year. 2015s theme was fairy tales. Designers De Volk & Gosche provided a modern twist on Little Red Riding Hood (shown above). 02: Nordstrom, Favorite Grand Opening Nordstrom spared no expense announcing their arrival. The evening started with a red carpet reception at the Art Gallery. Robson Square ice rink was transformed into a world class runway and VIP guests were granted access to the store a day before the public. Appetizers and drinks flowed freely and Sean Jones band kept guests kicking up their heels in the shoe department. 03: Melissa, Favorite Sidwalk fashionista Melissa isnt a model. We met randomly at the Luxury/Supercar Weekend. Her outfit has many thoughtful details: White fingernail polish to match her blazer. Tiny padlocks on her heels and purse. 04&05: Ashley & Asel , Favorite Model (tie) A good model makes outfits look great. A great model has a wonderful personality. Both ladies were kind-hearted, smart and provided me with stunning pose after pose. Visit R!c's website: www.SidewalkRunway.com or follow him on instagram.com/sidewalkrunway_com or Twitter @RunwaySidewalk All images are copyright protected. Re-posting or re-production of images is strictly forbidden without written consent. Gothenburg, it sounds like he has PR, but does not want to stay in Australia. He says he lives in India, but wants a way to retain Australian PR, without staying here much.He will be eligible for the Subclass 157 Resident Return visa, which will allow him to travel outside Australia for only 3 months.After a while, if he leaves for more than 3 months, he could easily lose his PR, unless he can show being absent for a compelling and compassionate reason.He seems to want to have indefinite stay in India, while staying an Australian PR, for whatever reason. G'day, I am a Dutch citizen that studied zoology (bachelor's) and tropical biology & conservation (post-graduation certificate) between 2010-2014 at James Cook University in Townsville. After I finished my degrees I have tried to get employment at national parks and wildlife sanctuaries in Queensland. It is my dream and ambition to work with and for Australian wildlife. Because of the limited amount of jobs and the law that Australian organizations have to try to hire an Australian before they can hire a foreigner I was unsuccessful and when my international student visa ran out at the end of 2014 I returned back to the Netherlands. I used to be a volunteer as a wildlife carer in Townsville for North Queensland Wildlife Care (NQWC) during my studies and when I got back to the Netherlands I contacted the board of NQWC to see if there is a need for a wildlife rehabilitation center in Townsville. They were very enthusiastic about my plans because they have been looking for years for someone to start such a center. The center would be a pre-release site for sick, injured and orphaned native wildlife. So no zoo like Billabong sanctuary that is already in Townsville. No animals would be kept just to be on display for the public. Once rehabilitated they will all be released back into the wild. Because a center like this would be partially dependent on donations and grants I want to open it as a non-profit only. I am also not looking to make any money out of it but I would in time have to pay myself a low and basic salary. I have inherited money that I would like to use to open this center and I have contacted a couple of mara registered immigration agents over the last year and they have suggested a couple of ways for me to come back to Australia and do this but quite frankly I found the plans too risky and none of them could guarantee me the much needed working visa at the end of the two years. They wanted me to return on a two-year student visa, open and start the center and just hope that at the end of those two years that immigration would grant me the much needed working visa. The total sum of these plans (study, set-up center, personal living and running costs of center) would exceed $100.000,- and that is money that I am willing to spent if it would be >95% sure that it would be successful. The agents were honest and told me that they did not have experience with setting up a non-profit this way and could not give me any guarantees. My questions, after this long intro, are: does anyone have any suggestions to a better plan? Does anyone know a mara registered immigration agent that has experience with setting up non-profits? I have been told that immigration only looks to the economical value to the Australian economy for businesses set up by students and this center would have an environmental value to Australia and perhaps in time I could employee Australian citizens but that would probably take a few years. The center would be run by volunteers, preferably from the local community. I'd like the center to have an educational value to the kids of the local community and a scientific value to Australia's wildlife as well. I have the support of the board of NQWC and have no doubt that once it is there it would be embraced by the local community. I am willing to spend all my money to realize my dream and spend the rest of my life saving Australia's wildlife but I can only spend the money once so I need to have a plan where I don't end up empty handed and back in the Netherlands after two years. Who can help me or knows someone that can? All the help and advise will be much appreciated! Kind regards, Piet Stutterheim Ps I have had a successful skill assessment done as a 'zoologist' by VETASSESS. Hello everyone,This is my first post on the forum although I have been reading and gathering info for a while. I will try to make this as short as possible.I am an australian Citizen, born in aus and lived there my whole life until just under 3 years ago when I moved to Italy (I have dual citizenship).I met my partner here in Italy, he is italian in 2013 and we had an ongoing friendship/relationship and dec 26th 2014 I moved into his house here in Italy and we have been living together ever since.So we are going to apply for the 309/100 visa, I am the sponsor obviously, pretty much we want to live in aus and be close to my family while we start our own family, or at least that's the idea.I am applying online and have these documents...Scans of...Passport for both of us (2 mine, 1 his)His expired old passportMy birth certHis birth cert with translationMy electrol roll card (with our address dated 04/15)Recent passport photos or both of usBoth our national ID cardsMy au drivers licence (prob don't need)x2 types of italian police checks for him with translationsMilitary conscription completion cert for him with translations10 photos of us together including other people, from our holidays etcScreen shots of emails sent to each other just from the filtered inbox view dating 02/2015 till nowMedical results addresses to me at our home dated 02/15Residence certificates both sent to me and him from the comune/council accepting my change of address and acknowledging us living together dated 02/2015Header from our joint bank account that includes our loan for our house with both our names and our addressInsurance for our holiday paid by me with matching bank statementFlights for our holiday paid by him with matching bank statementA bill sent to me for hospital recovery in Switzerland paid by him with bank statement. (It was alot* will add a few bills or documents with his name and address also proving we live in the same houseOther small payments made (food etc) including bank statements to show we share our money even when we had separate bank accountsForm 47sp to do onlineForm 80 to do onlineForm 40sp to do onlineRelationship details formA joint statement of our relationship history and future plansOn request888 stat dec from my parents, best friend, our mutual long time friend, his parents etcMedicals to be done in MilanMore documents with same addressesReceipts of household items etc paid by either him or meI think that's it.... So what do you all think? Am I good to go or is it not substantial or missing items??Thanks for taking the time to read my visa life storyCheers We got behind the handlebars of TVS' flagship Apache RTR 200 to bring you an early assessment, straight from the manufacturer's test track at Hosur. The Apache RTR series features TVSs top-of-the-line bikes, with sporty styling, quick performance and able handling all on the menu. On paper, its clear TVS has gone the whole hog with the new Apache RTR 200, providing several options to meet varying customer requirements; be it in terms of carburettion or fuel-injection, ABS assist for the brakes or the premium Pirelli or TVS soft compound Remora tyres. All in the family Visually, the RTR 200 retains its Apache family identity, yet has improved on the earlier RTR. The first thing you notice is the compact dimensions. The 200 is more butch than earlier RTRs, the 160 and 180, that makes for a more hunkered down, meaner attitude. The front bears resemblance to the Ducati Streetfighter, and the 200's headlight is crested by a smartly turned out, fully digital instrument cluster. The console packs in plenty of features, including a cascading tachometer at the top, easily read speedometer, shift-light beacon, 0-60kph timer and fastest lap-time timer. The Apache RTR 200 is a well-built motorcycle, and gives the impression TVS is already drawing on learning to improve its bikes, from famous German technology partner, BMW Motorrad. The RTR 200 holds a high-quality feel and attention-to-detail is apparent; in little things such as a neatly bisected fuel tank, carefully crafted filler-lid and a dust cover to protect the rear disc brake from road grime. The control levers are smart on the new TVS, buffed alloy and with a nice solid feel, although we felt the absence of a clutch play adjustment nut when riding the bike, being unable to take up some cable slack without asking for a set of spanners. The Apache RTR 200 comes with clip-on bars, soft and comfy palm grips, and switches that work well. The mirrors are broad, familiar as TVS units, that offer good rear view. Edgy tank extensions lean forward to the Apache RTR 200s dinky oil-cooling radiator. The tank leads back into a split seat. A smartly designed belly cowl sits below the engine bay, and much of the motorcycle is black, including its flank panels, alluminium alloy-encased engine and elegant 10-spoke alloy wheels; the front telescopic forks are golden. Another visual high point is the purposeful, double barrel, under over format exhaust. Much of the exhaust is stainless steel, starting from the cylinder as the bent-pipe snakes downwards. The RTR 200 will be sold in matte finish yellow, red, white, grey or black, with a glossy black shade option. Theres generous use of light alloy on the motorcycle, seen in the footrest and steering head region. NHTSA The targeted units are those from the 2012 and 2013 model years. Apparently, this is not the first time the American company is facing this kind of issue, as last year it had to recall more than 456,000 Lincoln MKZ, Ford Fusion and Fiesta models because of the same problem.According to the US auto safety regulators, 73 drivers reported problems with latches. While one driver reported an injury when a door rebounded after an attempt to close it, others had to tie the doors down to keep them shut or even stopped driving their Focuses as they feared the doors might open while traveling.This is an extreme safety hazard, and it is just a matter of time until someone falls out of a moving vehicle and is killed or injured, a Ford Focus owner reported to theafter the drivers side door latch suddenly failed and the door flew open. The driver also called Ford, which stated that it was aware of a number of failures but would not do a recall.John Cangany, Ford spokesman, stated that The Focus latches are a similar design to those on the recalled cars, but they were made by a different parts supply company. We are working with the agency to understand how these differences may affect the latches.The NHTSA will now investigate how often the problem happens, and if needed, it will inform Ford about a recall, as Detroit News reports.Ford Motor Company drew a lot of attention lately as it boasted about having an excellent 2015, having become Americas best-selling brand once more and, most recently, because its 350 horsepower monster Focus RS rolled off the production line The statue of General P.G.T. Beauregard and the Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and Liberty monuments apparently still hold a special meaning for a lot of the citys residents, but the Council had other plans for them when it voted six to one in favor of the decision to have them removed. According to their decision, the monuments were nuisances.That didnt go down well with some folks who began to harass the contractor chosen for the job. David Mahler, the owner of the H&O Investments company that was hired by the city hall to carry out the operations, says that ever since the announcement had been made public, he started receiving threatening phone calls.As a result, he decided to let go of this contract, but it would appear his decision came a little too late. Yesterday morning as Mr. Mahler came to work, he found his $200,000 car that was parked in front of the building burned down to a pile of ashes. Up to that night, it was a custom-painted white Lamborghini Huracan; on Tuesday morning, it turned into a black, unrecognizable rubble of charred metal and molten plastic and rubber.While there is still an ongoing investigation, you cant help but feel the two events are connected. Lamborghinis do have a tendency to burst into flames, but they usually do it while running. And were pretty sure the owners of the Lambos that ended up torched before hadnt received death threats just a few days prior to the happening.WDSU, the media reporting this incident, stays on the safe side and only presents the people who oppose the decision based on the artistic value of the four monuments. But even though art can have very strong effects on an emotional level for those it comes into contact with, we all know that should the investigation prove it was a criminal action, the suspects wont be found in an art gallery. The new package is offered on Silverado 1500 LTZ Z71 crew cab models and features exterior camo graphics, the Realtree logo embroidered on the front-seat headrests, special blackout trim, black bow ties, off-road assist steps and 20-inch black wheels with all-terrain tires.The car also has some more additional equipment for off-roading, such as the Z71 off-road package with Rancho monotube shocks, Hill Decent Control, an underbody shield, the G80 auto locking rear differential, standard four-wheel disc brakes with Duralife brake rotors, new phone integration, 4G LTE Wi-Fi connectivity, new wireless phone charging or new available remote locking tailgate.The capability of Chevy trucks has always enabled customers to go where they want to go, and thats the inspiration for the new Silverado Realtree Edition. Personalized for the outdoorsman, this great-looking, very capable Silverado offers another choice for customers looking for a truck with style, capability and dependability, Sandor Piszar, director of Chevrolet Truck Marketing, commented.Bill Jordan, Realtree Designer and President, stated that Working with the team at Chevrolet on this new Realtree Edition Silverado really brought home to me just how important the right truck is for outdoor enthusiasts [...] This truck has the perfect combination of features, comfort and safety - whether youre driving around town, on the highway or off-road.The 2016 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 comes with an all-new design, LED lighting, advanced connectivity and improved customer-focused technologies.Under the hood lies either the 5.3-liter engine or the most powerful engine in a light-duty truck, the 6.2-liter V8 mill developing 420 horsepower and 460 lb-ft (624 Nm) of torque. Thanks to advanced technologies such as direct injection, Active Fuel Management, and continuously variable valve timing, the car offers the best V8 fuel economy in a pickup, 23 mpg (10.2 l/100km) in 5.3-liter models.The new Chevy Silverado Realtree is available for purchase starting spring 2016. While Co-founder and CEO Sunil Paul is not joining GM, 20 other ex-Sidecar employees will, including co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Jahan Khanna.It is not yet known how much the giant American carmaker paid for the ride-hailing pioneer, but according to some rumors, it was less than the $39 million that Sidecar raised before closing its gates because it couldnt compete anymore with Uber and Lyft.The San Francisco-based company introduced the concept of peer-to-peer car-sharing in 2012, allowing anyone eligible to offer rides to passengers who asked for it via a smartphone app. At the time, it had barely any competition, as Uber was only offering rides between users of its mobile app and licensed limousine drivers. A year after Lyft entered the market, Uber launched its own ride-sharing service, UberX.Apparently, this was the moment when Sidecar lost its advantage and began to struggle even more. In early 2015, the company shifted from transporting passengers to goods, but it all came to an end in December when the two co-founders, Sunil Paul and Jahan Khanna, announced that Sidecar would cease all its operations on the last day of 2015 Buying the ride-hailing company is only a small step for GMs big plans of introducing its own set of transportation services. Called Maven, the project will allow owners of GM cars to give rides to other passengers who are commuting in the same direction, as Bloomberg reports.General Motors already filed to trademark the Maven name in November 2015, and the application described Application software for connecting vehicles drivers and passenger and for coordinating transportation services; software for use in planning, monitoring and controlling urban transportation. Contemporary artist Rachel Ducker, mostly known for her human-like figures, contributed to this project by adhering 48,000 copper tacks to half of the Q30s bodywork, creating a striking carpet-like appearance. To understand the difficulty of the challenge, find out that each Copper tack took approximately 10 seconds to adhere to the cars body, meaning that the exhibit took 8,000 minutes to build.Continuing the flowing theme, one of Rachels human-like steel wire figures leans out of the side window, and with its two-tone colored hair flowing outwards, it gives you the impression that the car is moving and brings the entire project to life.Copper was not chosen randomly, but thanks to its ability to radiate a variety of different shades depending on the light conditions and angle of viewing.A self-confessed car enthusiast, Rachel stated that When Infiniti first approached me to see if we could work together I jumped at the chance. My work is all about energy and movement and to put my fingers alongside such a well-designed car as the Q30, have me the opportunity to combine both of my passions.It is amazing to see how the copper tacks provide a dramatic effect to how the light reflects across the bonnet and down the shoulder lines. It creates a striking flow as you move around the car. I really like Rachels work and how she portrays movement to bring her models to life, Simon Cox, Infiniti designer, commented.The carmaker also opened a display area inside the show where the Q30 continued to be the centerpiece, part of a photographic display taken during a recent test drive in Lisbon.The Q30 Car-Art will be on display outside the entrance to the show from Tuesday, January 19, to Sunday, January 24. Dr. Mir was the one to confirm the diagnostic, but it looks like the two fractures are not as bad as Miller's team feared in the first place. The Australian rider underwent surgery to reduce the fractures and stabilize them with plates and screws under the supervision of Dr. Eugenio Gimeno.Miller will remain under observation in the hospital for the next 48 hours. So far, Miller's presence in the first pre-season test at Sepang is uncertain, with the medical team saying that his condition will be assessed nearer to that time.On social media, Jack Miller revealed that he had not crashed at the Bellpuig motocross circuit. He was forced to roll off the throttle up-ramp, to avoid colliding with another rider who had lost control of the bike.The incident occurred before a triple jump, and Miller's landing was a very hard one, with the force of the impact breaking the bones in his ankle.The doctors will examine him ahead of the Sepang test and determine if he can put enough weight on the right leg to support his body through the turns.Michael Bartholemy, Team Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS Principal, also told motogp.com , Jack was unfortunate to sustain an injury so close to the start of pre-season testing, but riders need to train and there is always some risk when you train on the MX bike. The good news is that the injury is not quite as severe as we first thought and that the surgery was successful.For a normal person the recovery period after such an injury would be long, but racers arent normal people and Im sure Jack is keen to get back on a bike as soon as possible. What is important now is that we monitor his recovery and that he rides again only when he is fit enough to do so, even if that means him missing the first of the MotoGP pre-season tests in Sepang.Anyway, it looks like Sepang is not exactly the biggest problem for VDS in MotoGP. It looks like the team is not yet certain about what package Honda will provide for 2016, and the mechanics are trying to figure out how to work with the new electronics. Even if Miller misses the Sepang test, Tito Rabat should provide enough feedback for a base setup, with the second test at Phillip Island hopefully setting things straight, and having both riders on the track. It is not yet known how many Porsches Seinfeld is selling, but they represent about 10 percent of his collection.The first one to go under the hammer is a 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder, a car with quite a history behind it. Apart from all its racing history, the 550 Spyder is also known as the car that James Dean crashed and died in at the age of 24.Seinfeld's 550 Spyder is expected to fetch somewhere between $5 and $6 million.The second car is a 1958 Carrera Speedster, one of only 151 ever built, and one of only thirteen finished in a unique green called Auratium. This one is expected to fetch at least $2 million.A 1974 Porsche 911 Carrera is joining the other two, and its estimated sale price is between $1.2 and $1.5 million. Also with a vast racing history behind, the car was the first of fifteen RSRs built specifically to compete in the International Race of Champions in 1973 and 1974.Ive never bought a car as an investment. I dont really even think of myself as a collector. I just love cars. And I still love these cars. But its time to send some of them back into the world, for someone else to enjoy, as I have, Jerry Seinfeld stated.David Gooding, President of Gooding & Company, said that We are grateful and honored to be entrusted with these superb examples of the collection of Jerry Seinfeld, these cars epitomize the highest of quality and pedigree. Jerrys keen eye for significant Porsches, the care and pride he takes in maintaining his spectacular collection and his enthusiasm and passion for the Porsche marque, makes this one of our most thrilling sales in our companys history. TDI South Koreas Ministry of Environment has rejected Volkswagens proposed fix for itsengines with emission issues. Along with the rejection, the Ministry of Environment has decided to bring the local executives of the German company to court with criminal complaints.The government officials stated that the fix proposed by Volkswagen lacked key information, and thus is unacceptable. This is not the first lawsuit that Volkswagen AG is up against because of the Dieselgate situation, as the German company is facing charges in US courts as well. Furthermore, shareholders and customers might take Volkswagen to court in civil lawsuits.South Korea already fined Volkswagen with the equivalent of $12.3 million, The Wall Street Journal informs. The company is also ordered to recall more than 125,000 vehicles in the Asian country to fix the emission control devices on the Dieselgate-affected TDI engines.However, the South Korean government asked the German company to show how it would improve its emissions on the affected cars without diminishing fuel efficiency. The German carmaker did just that on January 6, 2016, the deadline to propose its fix, but the South Korean officials rejected it because it did not fully comply with their requests.If the Volkswagen executives charged by the South Korean government are convicted, they risk up to five years in jail and a fine of up to 30 million won, the rough equivalent of $2.5 million.Audi Volkswagen Korea has already replied to the South Korean governments demands and stated that they will offer explanations on their proposed fix. The South Korean car market is significant to the German corporation, as nearly a third of all cars imported into the country last year were Volkswagen and Audi models. The imports in South Korea have increased significantly after a free-trade deal in 2011 cut duties on vehicles imported from Europe. HP According to the Dutch at DeTelegraafs Autovisie , Spyker plans to show an electric car at this years Geneva Motor Show. Their report reminds us of a collaboration between the Dutch brand and American manufacturer Volta Volare. The latter is specialized in electric aircraft and parts for electric cars, so theres a real possibility that Spyker will show an electric vehicle in Geneva this spring.Spyker exited restructuring last summer and announced at the time that it was working with Volta Volare on developing electric cars. Back then, the two companies discussed a merger and promised to unveil further details on a later date. That never happened, but the 2016 Geneva Motor Show could finally bring the rebirth of Spyker cars.Meanwhile, Spykers American partner, Volta Volare, has already showed the prototype of an electric airplane for private use. The aircraft is made in Oregon with a carbon fiber composite construction, has four seats, and features an extended-range electric powertrain. The extended-range part of the powertrain means that theres an onboard internal combustion engine used as a generator for the crafts 300electric motors.For the time being, it is unclear whether the future exhibit at Spykers stand will be a full-on electric vehicle or an extended-range electric vehicle, but we know it brings a new car made by the Dutch company. However, theres a long road from concept car to reality, and that path is pretty expensive.The same motor show will also bring the rebirth of the Gumpert brand, another car company specialized in high-end, high-performance vehicles. Along with previous financial issues, the two companies also share the fact that they used to source Audi V8 engines for their early models.Spykers electric rebirth might not make everyone happy, but the most vocal critics of the brands decision to make electric cars instead of supercars probably couldnt afford either of them. Meanwhile, in the USA, theres a company that puts Corvette engines in Fisker Karma models, so theres a slight balance in the automotive world. SUV While Hoerbiger, the German supplier in question accused of not meeting its part of the deal, isnt solely to blame for the late appearance of Teslas electric, its inability to deliver the promised quality in the signature door system was one of the major setbacks that pushed the launching date so late.The Germans were awarded the contract almost two years ago, in February 2014, but according to Tesla, they were unable to offer a satisfactory solution for the SUVs doors system in over a year. In May 2015, Tesla Motors was forced to terminate the contract and look for a new supplier.Hoerbiger specializes in hydraulic systems for trunk lids, liftgates, convertible tops and all other sorts of similar mechanisms, so its expertise seemed to fit the bill. However, the lawsuit filed by Tesla says that the proposed prototypes suffered from numerous issues like oil leaks, overheating, and did not open with the speed or symmetry required by the car maker.The lawsuit isnt an attempt from Tesla Motors to try and get a refund from Hoerbiger for the precious time (and millions of dollars) its inability to provide the necessary solution cost the company, but rather a defensive move. You see, the Germans too felt they were wrongfully dissed and asked Tesla to continue their collaboration over the course of Model Xs life. Whats more, they also claim that Tesla should pay them damages according to the initial contract signed by the two parties.In a statement obtained by Automotive News , a Tesla Motors spokesperson said, We were forced to file this lawsuit after Hoerbiger decided to ignore their contracts with us and instead demanded a large sum of money to which they are not entitled. We will vigorously prosecute this case.Tesla had already paid Hoerbiger $3 million in compensations, but the Germans feel the sum isnt enough and are asking for more. Now the tables have turned and Tesla is the party asking for payments covering the damages - of course, in case it actually wins the trial. The dispute will be settled by the U.S. District Court of Northern California at a yet undisclosed time. San Diego International Airports new consolidated Rental Car Center officially opened for business today. The 2-million-square-foot Rental Car Center houses most of the rental car companies serving the airport, including national brands, as well as local, independent and small business rental car companies, in one central location off Pacific Highway. Currently, 14 rental car company brands are operating out of the facility, which can accommodate up to 19 brands in total. The facility has room for more than 5,000 cars, according to the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority. The new facility replaces the group of buildings on Harbor Drive that have housed most rental car companies serving the airport. Now all rental car customers will be carried to and from the terminals in 16 new alternative-fuel shuttles owned and operated by the Airport Authority. This fleet replaces the approximately 81 shuttles now operated by the rental car companies. When I look at the new Rental Car Center, I see a facility that does it all, said Robert Gleason, San Diego County Regional Airport Authority Board Chair. It improves the customer experience from start to finish; it helps us maximize use of our 661-acre footprint in a sustainable way; and it bolsters the airports role as a key economic driver. Consolidating the rental car companies into one building will help reduce rental car traffic on Harbor Drive. The new shuttle buses will operate almost exclusively on a new interior airport roadway, according to the Airport Authority. With this facility, were helping to ease congestion on Harbor Drive while reducing the airports overall carbon footprint, said Thella F. Bowens, the Airport Authoritys president/CEO. The building, which is a candidate for LEED Silver certification, also features a quick-turn around area with 15 car wash bays and 72 gas filling stations, which are available to all the car rental brands in the facility. PAUL OATES LET'S just call it as it is. Provided the local members of parliament keep supporting the prime minister and his government, the District Services Improvement Program (DSIP funds keep coming. They have become slush money local members can use as they wish. DSIP program has the dual purpose of ensuring those who support the government are financially rewarded and providing a re-election fund for these members. Feedback from the kunai roots is that, at each level of the DSIP financial food chain, everyone involved takes a large cut out of any funds that trickle down. By the time some of these funds actually reach the local level, ineffective management and malfeasance disposes of the residue before anything positive is achieved. 20 January 2016 14:44 (UTC+04:00) By Sawomir Sierakowski Poland has now emerged as the latest European battleground in a contest between two models of democracy liberal and illiberal. The overwhelming election victory in October of Jarosaw Kaczynskis far-right Law and Justice party (PiS) has led to something more akin to regime change than to a routine turnover of democratically elected governments. Prime Minister Beata Szydos new administration has purged the civil service (including public radio and television), packed the Constitutional Court with sympathizers, and weakened the Courts capacity to strike down legislation. In response, the European Commission has launched an official inquiry into potential violations of the EUs rule-of-law standards. Moreover, Standard & Poors has, for the first time, downgraded Polands foreign currency rating from A- to BBB+ and warned of perhaps more cuts to come as it accuses the government of weakening the independence and effectiveness of key institutions. Growing doubts about the commitment of Polands new rulers to democracy has deepened the slump in Polands stock market and contributed to a depreciation of the Polish zoty. Poland is the largest European Union country to embrace illiberalism; but it is not the first. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbans government has been at odds with the EU for several years over his open politicization of Hungarian institutions, while Robert Ficos government in neighboring Slovakia has pursued a similar brand of raw majoritarianism. What accounts for this contempt for democratic norms in some of Europes newest democracies? Throughout the 1990s, the promise of EU membership framed a process of root-and-branch political and economic reform in Central and Eastern Europes previously closed societies. And, following these countries accession to the Union in 2004, the gap between them and the old EU members seemed to be closing. Indeed, during the eight years of center-right rule that preceded the PiSs victory, Poland emerged as a model European student, recording the strongest economic growth in the OECD. Yet the EUs post-communist members were bound to experience a crisis of liberal democracy sooner or later, owing to a fundamental legacy from their communist past: the absence of the concept of a loyal opposition legitimate adversaries to be debated, rather than traitorous enemies to be eliminated. Unlike in the West, where, broadly, a left-right socioeconomic cleavage shapes politics, the main split in the post-communist democracies is between proponents of an open versus a closed society. In a political order defined by the traditional left-right divide, people on both sides, however vociferously they may disagree, rarely question their opponents political legitimacy. Thanks to liberal constitutional frameworks including judicial independence, the separation of powers, and freedom of speech replacing, say, a left-leaning government with a right-leaning one is unlikely to transform the country or its political system. But in a political system defined by the open-closed divide, the two sides disagree about which is which: It is always the other who seeks a closed society. The same dynamic that helped Vladimir Meciar, Slovakias nationalist former prime minister, win elections in the 1990s helped former Czech President Vaclav Klaus, an economic arch-liberal, secure victories in the 2000s. In practice, however, the open-closed cleavage enables those who actually do espouse illiberalism including Orban (who has explicitly called for an illiberal state based on the Chinese and Russian models) and Kaczynski (who, tellingly, rules from behind the scenes) to dismantle the constitutional framework that permits a peaceful rotation of power. A single election can thus transform the entire political system, as appears to be the case in Hungary and now Poland. The question is what drives voters to support the closed camp. In countries with a weak or long-interrupted tradition of liberal constitutionalism, an explosion of nationalism usually follows the establishment of democracy. The politics of identity prevails, and, unlike that of social welfare, it is not amenable to compromise. The result is a kind of permanent Kulturkampf, in which rigidly binary thinking gives rise to trumped-up claims and conspiracy theories. Of course, post-communist countries are not alone in their vulnerability to illiberalism. Other factors such as globalization, economic uncertainty, an influx of refugees, and security risks like terrorist attacks can cause voters to turn against liberal democracy. All of these factors not to mention confrontation over Ukraine with Russia, which is financing many of Europes far-right parties are at play today in Europe. Even before the refugee crisis worsened sharply last year, avatars of the closed society Frances National Front and the United Kingdom Independence Party won elections to the European Parliament in two of the Wests ostensibly best-developed democracies. The question now is how to stop this destructive trend from engulfing Europe? The answer is straightforward: cooperation and integration. When countries fear a loss of sovereignty, whether because of globalization or an influx of refugees, their first instinct often is to turn inward, even if it means renouncing liberal principles and institutions. But no liberal democracy can survive for long without liberals. And no illiberal democracy can succeed to the extent that it closes itself off to cooperation. The primary purpose of European integration at its inception was to safeguard the continent from war. Today, its main purpose is to protect democratic politics in the face of economic globalization. A more integrated EU can play a central role in resolving existing crises, safeguarding against future ones, and reinforcing liberal norms. In fact, despite rising nationalism, a move toward increased integration appears to be in the cards. If Poland opposes that tendency, it will find itself on the outside, overwhelmed by economic forces it cannot control and Russias corrosive influence. A new iron curtain in Europe, this time between liberal and illiberal democracies is a grim prospect. Although Poland is not a regional leader, it does wield influence, owing to its large and healthy economy and its strategic role as a buffer between Russia and Western Europe. This is particularly important with respect to Ukraine, whose independence is viewed by Polish leaders as a precondition of Polands own. But, given the developments in Hungary and elsewhere, European leaders must now draw a line in the sand in defense of Europes open society. Today, the EU is testing Poland, and Poland is testing the EU. Poland and Europe can win only if the EU does. Copyright: Project Syndicate: The Polish threat to Europe --- Follow us on Twitter: @Azernews 20 January 2016 11:15 (UTC+04:00) By Gunay Camal Human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, whos famously married to Hollywood star George Clooney, this time choose Azerbaijan as a target in her bid to catch up her husbands fame. Clooney, who earlier appeared in a case against a Turkish politician refusing the so-called Armenian genocide, has offered to take the case of jailed Azerbaijani journalist Khadija Ismayilova to the European Court of Human Rights. Mrs. Clooney, whose international profile was raised when she married American actor George Clooney in Italy, seems trying hard to prove all that she also can be a celebrity and likely with the advice of Armenian lobbyists targeted the Turkic states in her path of fame. Anti-Turkic activities indeed helped Amal, a Lebanese by origin with close roots to large Armenian community in her motherland, to get distinguished in her lawyer career. Amal Clooney took on the controversial case in early 2015 and was part of a team representing Armenia against Turkish politician Dogu Perincek, chairman of the Turkish Workers' Party, convicted by Switzerland for denying the so-called Armenian genocide. In October last year, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled it is not a crime to deny mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turkey in 1915 was a genocide". Thus, Mrs. Clooney in her first attempt failed to rival her Oscar winner husband, but this scandalous case, to be true, enormously raised her popularity. So, deeply committed to anti-Turkic ideals Amal Clooney now has taken to Azerbaijan, first to prove her loyalty to Armenian lobbyists and second, to undersign another big case without caring who wins. Mrs. Clooney, strongly keeping her shattered background as human rights fighter, has decided to indulge into fighting for human rights even not knowing exactly who she is defending. In her televised interview for VOA she did not name even her client, just calling her courageous women. Khadija Ismayilova, or the courageous women as Amal Clooney named, in fact was enough courageous to make money by illegal means while working for Radio Liberty. Khadija, working at the media structure financed by the U.S. Congress, was able to make illegal money by inking commercial deals and covered her spivvery with the so-called fight against corruption. One may hope, Mrs. Clooney would have got time apart star couple life to read the related materials over the case before announcing a war against Azerbaijans judiciary system. Not last but least rises a question, why Azerbaijan? Why Amal Clooney decided to turn her eyes to this country, mainly referred as the land of complete tolerance, at a time when the world seethes with news of Syrian refugees, whose rights are ignored, or Armenian journalists in jail. She could also fight for the human rights of over one million Azerbaijani refugees and IDPs, whose rights were grossly violated, who were deprived of their homes and even a visit to the graves of their beloved turned into the life imprisonment in the occupant Armenia, so much loved by Amal Clooney. Obviously, Mrs. Clooney may even now guess her next failure, but she as an ambitious lawyer knows very well that will help her to add coins into her fame box. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 20 January 2016 10:45 (UTC+04:00) Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev and his spouse Mehriban Aliyeva visited the Alley of Martyrs on January 20, the Day of National Mourning, to pay tribute to the victims of the bloody January 1990 tragedy. The president laid a wreath at the Eternal Flame memorial. The National Anthem of Azerbaijan was also performed by a military orchestra of Azerbaijans defense ministry. State and government officials, leaders of religious communities, ambassadors of foreign countries and representatives of international organizations functioning in Azerbaijan also attended the commemoration ceremony. Azerbaijans Prime Minister Artur Rasizade, Parliamentary Speaker Ogtay Asadov and Head of the Presidents Administration Ramiz Mehdiyev also took part in the ceremony. Hundreds of civilians were crushed or injured by the Soviet troops in Baku on January 20, 1990, on an order from the USSR leadership that was trying to maintain the Communist regime in Azerbaijan and strangle the national liberation movement. The invasion was launched at midnight and was committed with brutality; even children, women and the elderly were not spared. As a result of the intrusion of troops into Baku and regions of the country, 133 people were killed, more than 700 wounded, and about 800 illegally arrested. -- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 20 January 2016 11:27 (UTC+04:00) The date of 20 January, 1990 is written in blood for Azerbaijanis across the world, for it commemorates the day when peaceful demonstrations in Baku were violently suppressed by the Soviet troops. During an operation which began from January 19th night and continued into January 20th, 26,000 hostile and aggressive-minded Soviet special forces called "Alfa" entered Baku and committed atrocities against the Azerbaijani people. They stormed and murdered hundreds of civilians without declaring a state of emergency, on an order from the USSR leadership that was trying to maintain the Communist regime in Azerbaijan and strangle the national liberation movement. Protesting against such infringement of the countrys Constitution, hundreds of civilians joined a meeting, with the result that almost 133 of them were killed and over 700 were injured, 841 illegally arrested and five went missing. -- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 20 January 2016 12:39 (UTC+04:00) The actions of those who try to aggravate the situation in Azerbaijan, under the pretext of social problems, will be assessed legally in line with laws, the vice-speaker of Azerbaijans parliament, Bahar Muradova, told reporters on January 20. There is nothing unnatural in peoples expressing dissatisfaction with social problems and applying to relevant structures, said Muradova. No one can be condemned of doing that. However, if someone tries to aggravate the situation in the country, under the pretext of social problems, and harm the relations between the people and the state, their actions will be legally assessed in accordance with the law, she added. Muradova noted the state and relevant structures have a strong and clear stance on the matter. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 20 January 2016 12:06 (UTC+04:00) A state-wide moment of silence was observed for the Black January victims at 12:00 (local time) across Azerbaijan on the day of national mourning on January 20. Ships, cars, and trains sounded sirens throughout the country to remember victims of the January 20, 1990 tragedy. Baku residents have been visiting the Alley of Martyrs since early hours of January 20 to pay tribute to Azerbaijan`s valiant sons and daughters. On January 20, 26,000 strong Soviet troops entered the Azerbaijani capital Baku from several directions, invading the city in a desperate, brutal and yet futile attempt to strangle the growing independence movement and to prevent the fall of the Soviet Communist regime in Azerbaijan and punish ordinary people who had rallied on the streets to voice their legitimate protest against the violation of their homeland's territorial integrity. Some 137 people were killed, 611 were wounded, 841 were illegally arrested, and five went missing as a result of the intrusion of troops into Baku and other regions of the country. The 20th of January, 1990 is marked in the modern history of Azerbaijan as one of the most tragic days of the country, and at the same time as a heroic page. -- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 20 January 2016 12:50 (UTC+04:00) By Nigar Orujova Azerbaijan, known in the world as the oil producing country, is keen on reviving its production facilities. While projects on creation of industrial parks around the country are successfully realized, a new industrial equipment plant can be constructed near Baku. Constructed by AzeriSteel Garadag Metal Construction Plant, the facility will produce equipment for oil, gas, petrochemical, food and pharmaceutical industries based on advanced technologies. The plant will cost an estimated 32 million euros, creating more than 700 jobs. Presenting the project to the public, Deputy Economy Minister Niyazi Safarov said that design and engineering work within the project will be carried out by German engineering company EPC Group. The company will also provide the new enterprise with technological support. Production of equipment for oil and gas industries is still profitable for energy rich Azerbaijan. Moreover, the country can export its products to other countries engaged in hydrocarbons. Earlier, economy expert Ogtay Hagverdiyev said that, in the current situation with low oil prices, the industry should be science-driven. One of the main fields in this connection may be connected with oil as well, but not with extraction, he added. "There is a tendency in decrease of oil extraction. However, it [production] will not stop entirely. For this reason, we have to process the crude oil, create a large petrochemical complex, and obtain modern rival products from this oil with a view to enter the world market. We should use oil as a raw material in the country," Haqverdiyev said. Currently, the state gives a priority to production of competitive industrial products and equipment in Azerbaijan. AzeriSteel has become one of the leading companies in the country for the production of complex metal structures. The project was financed through a soft loan in the amount of 10 million manats allocated by the National Entrepreneurship Support Fund. In general, the Fund has allocated soft loans worth more than 410 million manats to finance 130 projects of modern industries with total cost of 981 million manats. More than 115 enterprises as part of these projects have already been already launched. Another mechanism of the state support to entrepreneurship development is Azerbaijan Investment Company which is a shareholder in the plant for the production of industrial equipment. AzeriSteel plant that started activity after reconstruction in 2011, has production capacity of 5,000 tons of products per month. __ Nigar Orujova is AzerNews staff journalist. Follow her on Twitter: @o_nigar Follow us on Twitter: @AzerNewsAz 20 January 2016 13:40 (UTC+04:00) By Nigar Orujova The government of Azerbaijan continues measures to control prices that were increased following the depreciation of the national currency in December-end. For this end, 12 monitoring groups have been created to control prices of products entering the minimum consumer basket. The groups were created by the Labor and Social Protection Ministry, Minister Salim Muslimov told the state television AzTV. Four groups are operating in Baku, while the rest monitors the price changes in the regions of the country. The monitoring groups are investigating prices twice a week on Tuesday and Friday and sending this information to the Ministry. He went on to add that the Economy Ministry also controls the level of price increase. Artificial overpricing is one of the actual problems in Azerbaijan that has recently faced economic challenges due to low crude prices. Increase in prices was expected as Azerbaijan could not fully provide itself with food products. However, the depreciation also affected goods produced in Azerbaijan, and the state actively fights against artificial overpricing. The minister further noted that in European countries, particularly in Northern Europe, there is a maximum price limit for products included in the minimum consumer basket, and these prices are monitored. This is necessary from the point of view of antitrust policy, and avoid cartel agreement, said Muslimov. If you release [the price] without control, monopolies and cartel agreements may arise, which will lead to higher prices. Controls over the prices of goods from the consumer basket, presidential decree on the VAT exemption for import, production and sale of grain, flour and bread, as well as the activities of the Economy Ministry are aimed at preventing an artificial increase in prices, the minister said noting that these measures are designed to support the population by increasing their income. The General Directorate for Combating Corruption is also carrying out necessary measures investigate cases of artificial overpricing. Unemployment benefits to be increased Unemployment benefits will be increased by 30-40 percent in Azerbaijan, Muslimov said. President Ilham Aliyev gave the relevant instructions and it is likely that the Cabinet of Ministers will make the necessary changes in the near future, he said. The minister also raised the issue of retraining unemployed people. There are professional training centers in Baku, Ismayilli and Goychay cities, another one will be opened in the city of Ganja soon, he said. Citizens visiting these centers receive monthly benefits and funds for transportation costs. Previously they amounted to 22 manats, but I think that now in total they will exceed 100 manats. Muslimov said that currently the main task is to provide citizens with at least a temporary place of work. New projects, which will help create new jobs are needed so that citizens would be able to receive salaries in the same amount, said the minister. __ Nigar Orujova is AzerNews staff journalist. Follow her on Twitter: @o_nigar Follow us on Twitter: @AzerNewsAz 20 January 2016 13:16 (UTC+04:00) By Laman Sadigova Today, one of the main issues for the CIS is a joint counteraction to terrorist threats, said Sergey Lebedev, Chairman of the Executive Committee - CIS Executive Secretary. Of course, on the agenda is the question of joint efforts to counter terrorist threats, Lebedev said. The threat of international terrorism, unfortunately, persists, and its manifestations are obvious. We can see terrorist attacks killing humans in the Middle East and in Europe every day. He further voiced a belief that the CIS states will strengthen cooperative measures to counter terrorist threats. In particular, Lebedev said that the heads of special services of the CIS countries and heads of security agencies already scheduled joint meetings. the CIS Executive Committee will host a meeting of a group of experts on 20-21 January to discuss the harmonization of the CIS draft program of cooperation in combating terrorism and other violent manifestations of extremism for 2017-2019 and related resolutions of the of the CIS Council of the Heads of State. The need for the program stems from the desire of the CIS countries to respond adequately to changes in the operational environment reharding the fight against terrorism and other violent manifestations of extremism. While drafting the program the experts took into account the universally recognized principles and norms of international law, international obligations of the CIS member states and their national legislations, and also the status, trends and dynamics of the development of the situation regarding the fight against terrorism and other violent manifestations of extremism in the CIS countries and in the world. Sergei Lebedev took part in a meeting of the CIS Plenipotentiaries Council on 19 January, during which Kyrgyzstan's CIS chairmanship concept was presented. Chairmanship of the CIS was transferred to Kyrgyzstan from Kazakhstan. This year the CIS Plenipotentiaries Council is headed by Kyrgyzstan's plenipotentiary in the CIS, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Kyrgyzstan to Belarus Kubanychbek Omuraliev. --- Follow Laman Sadigova on Twitter: @s_laman93 Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz The Crocodile Prize has its own program and schedule to execute. Its dates of entry and the closing date need to be broadcast. The dates for the publication of the Anthology, the declaration of winners as well as the award presentation need to be known. Writers and contributors are kept in suspense and tired of waiting to know when the only literary competition in Papua New Guinea will commence for this year. The passion of writing for the bigger Crocodile Prize in 2016 seems to have gone in vain. But it really is time to pick-up from what we left last year. OUR fingers are still on holiday and unwilling to pick up a biro or engage a keyboard to brainstorm ideas about the vacation. It should have commenced in the last month of last year. In fact it has been delayed for almost a month. My experience with the Crocodile Prize was that for last year entries commenced on 19 December 2014. But weeks have passed and nothing has appeared in PNG Attitude declaring when the Prize will commence. The most important thing is that entries for the various categories of writing should have commenced for the 2016 competition. They should already be abundant. Since the scheduled closing date for the competition falls at the end of June, we only have five months to go. Several articles written by Keith and Phil were like a warning call. They were even a challenge to individuals and institution in PNG to see literature as a paramount tool for development and civilisation. Some of the sentiments in the articles conveyed an inferred notion for Papua New Guineans to honour the responsibility entrusted in them to execute the contest in 2016. We do not want PNG literature to be drowning; we want to see it swimming strongly through the rivers of Papua New Guinea as it has done these past five years. Keith and Phil undertook a worthy cause to enrich our writers and encourage them to express their views openly without fear or favour. Most of our writings entered for the Crocodile Prize were well edited and we saw those articles in published books. This was another terrific indication of how significant the Crocodile Prize has been. What Keith and Phil have done for our nation will remain as a legacy. The crocodile swam for five years. Is it still swimming today in the waters of Papua New Guinea? Or is it drowning? Who is responsible to rescue the swimming crocodile and call the Crocodile Prize home? When will the competition commence? 20 January 2016 12:25 (UTC+04:00) By Aynur Karimova As economic sanctions imposed on Iran over its nuclear program were lifted, the country has finally realized its old dream of getting back its frozen assets from foreign banks. Abdolnaser Hemmati, the CEO of the National Bank of Iran (known as Bank Melli Iran or BMI), said that frozen assets of the bank at the Deutsche Bundesbank were freed. "Following the move, 17 BMI subsidiaries will be able to work abroad," Fars news agency reported on January 19. Deutsche Bundesbank authorized BMIs branch in Hamburg, and the BMIs Dubai branch has also been freed of transaction barriers previously in place under sanctions. "Measures have been taken to launch the London branch of the BMI. Only a UK permit is left to be issued," he added. Mir Business Bank CJSC, a BMI branch in Moscow, can also resume its full operations, according to Hemmati. "In one week, all BMI branches abroad will be operational," he stated. Western sanctions were lifted on Iran after the IAEA, the international nuclear watchdog, said Iran had complied with a deal designed to prevent it developing nuclear weapons on January 16. The day after, Iranian sources said over 1,000 letters of credit (LCs) had been opened for Iranian businesses. Iran is also expected to join the SWIFT soon. The country expects the removal of western sanctions to enable the country to trade through international financial systems, receive its frozen assets, and resume oil trade on international markets. There were speculations that the value of the countrys assets frozen in overseas banks amount to above $100 billion, meanwhile Iranian officials have repeatedly rejected these huge figures. Russian TASS quoted a U.S. officinal on January 17 that the amount is about $50 billion. -- Aynur Karimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Aynur_Karimova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 20 January 2016 13:13 (UTC+04:00) By Aynur Karimova After the removal of economic sanctions on Iran, which were imposed due to the country's nuclear program, Tehran is seeking new markets for exporting its blue fuel. Iran, the world's second largest natural gas holder, sees neighboring countries as its new markets for gas export. CEO of the National Iranian Gas Export Company Alireza Kameli said Kuwait and the UAE are among main gas export destinations of Iran in the post-sanctions era. "Also, Iran is going to export 65 million cubic meters of gas to Iraq per day, which will increase in the warm season," Mehr news agency quoted Kameli as saying on January 18. Speaking about Iran's sixth cross-country pipeline, which will connect to two pipelines in Iraq (one to Baghdad, second to Basra) Kameli said Iran will be exporting 30 million cubic meters of gas to Baghdad province and 35 million to Basra province. "Iraq has the facilities ready and the only major problem to inaugurate them is related to security issues," he added. Touching upon the exports to Pakistan, the official said that despite this country's lack of commitment regarding the completion of the Peace Pipeline, 780 kilometers of which fall within the countrys soil, Iran is not going to sue the country, preferring friendly relations. Iran and Pakistan signed a gas agreement, according to which Pakistan was set to import 22 million cubic meters per day of natural gas from Iran through the Peace Pipeline as of 2015. However, Pakistan has not yet managed to establish its section of the pipeline. The pipeline is to carry 21.5 million cubic meters of gas per day to Irans neighbor. Commenting on Iran gas export to Turkey, Kameli said that until the current lawsuit filed by Turkey against Iran receives a court ruling, Tehran will not hold any negotiations with Ankara to boost the export. Turkey has filed a lawsuit against Iran in International Arbitration Court, accusing its eastern neighbor on selling gas at high price and delivering low volume. Iran has obligation to export about 10 billion cubic meters a year of gas to Turkey. Kameli further added that the Iran-Oman underwater gas pipeline will be completed in 1.5 years. The agreement on this pipeline was signed two years ago. Iran will export 28 million cubic meters of natural gas per day to Oman - part of it will be consumed by the country, while the rest will be turned into LNG and exported on behalf of Iran. Commenting on Iran-India talks, he said Iran will hold negotiations with Indian customers in near future. "A 1,300-km pipeline is going to be stretched by Indian companies to carry the gas to the south-Asian country," Kameli noted. Iran is producing about 700 million cubic meters of gas per day, while the country is planning to increase this volume to 1,300 million cubic meters of gas per day by 2020. -- Aynur Karimova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Aynur_Karimova Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 20 January 2016 12:49 (UTC+04:00) For the first time in five years, an Iran Air plane fueled up at Paris Orly Airport and was able to reach Tehran without having to stop for fuel on the way. As the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is put into practice, Iranian airplanes are now freed from a restriction to receive fuel in Paris, IRIB news agency reported on January 20. Iranian airplanes had been denied fuel in Paris since 2011 due to economic sanctions the West had imposed on Iran on allegations of suspicious nuclear activities. In a joint statement on Jan. 16, the EUs High Representative Federica Mogherini and Irans Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif announced the implementation of the JCPOA and the removal of economic sanctions on Iran. According to the statement, EU has confirmed that legal framework, providing for lifting of its nuclear-related economic and financial sanctions, is effective. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz by Larry Smith Last November, a regional conference in Guyana focused on abolishing the death penalty, which many Caribbean territories - including the Bahamas - want to keep on the books. Sponsored by the European Union, the conference went completely unnoticed here. The main conclusion was that, although capital punishment did not deter crime, public support for it was closely linked to fear. As our murder rate rises to ever more frightening levels - which the authorities seem helpless to deal with - it is easy to see why ordinary citizens want to strike back. There is a strong sense that criminals are undermining our society. Former cabinet minister Leslie Miller recently excoriated the chief justice for pointing out that - under current law - it would take a massacre before the death penalty could be carried out here. Miller is one of a growing number of Bahamians who have had close relatives or friends murdered in recent years. He dismissed the judge's comment as ridiculous and stupid because it sent the wrong message to criminals. "Its sad that the courts are upholding the view that you have to have a massacre to consider you to be eligible for the death penalty. We must fight fire with fire. We have to wipe them out. Its either them or us, Miller said in typical bombastic style. Another politician who has lost a close relative to crime is DNA chief Branville McCartney. And he has been equally insistent on the need for executions. How many more must die, he said recently, "before lawmakers do what is necessary to protect the public? Fundamentalist preachers are even more unyielding. Consider this comment from Bishop Walter Hanchell: "As we can see from scriptures, the penalty for murder is death..state killings should and must be resumed in order to rid the community of wicked persons, who have lost their right to live in our society." But all of these comments amount to spitting in the wind. There is a global trend towards abolition of the death penalty. Today, nearly two-thirds of all the countries in the world no longer execute people. Many CARICOM nations retain capital punishment on the books, but judges - whether at the Privy Council in London or the Caribbean Court in Trinidad - have gradually made the penalty almost impossible to carry out. The last executions in the region were carried out in St Kitts and Nevis (2008), the Bahamas (2000), and Trinidad and Tobago (1999). In St Kitts, the number of murders increased in the year following the 2008 execution. In Trinidad, after an appeals court determination limiting executions, the murder rate fell. Multiple studies have shown that while capital punishment does not deter crime, it does run the risk of executing innocent people. And abolitionists argue that the death penalty is often used in a disproportional manner against the poor and minority groups. As lawyer Dion Hanna has pointed out Its very easy to convict someone under our legal system who may be innocent, and there is no redress, unless you have public campaigns to overturn a decision, and we dont have that kind of culture in the Bahamas. So the death penalty really is a dangerous weapon in the hands of the legal system. According to a 2007 study by the United Nations and the World Bank, the causes of high crime rates in our region include the easy availability of guns, urban chaos, income inequality, and the prevalence of gangs, organised crime and drug trafficking. As the court which abolished South Africa's death penalty in 1995 said: We would be deluding ourselves if we were to believe that the execution of...a comparatively few people each year...will provide the solution to the unacceptably high rate of crime. ... The greatest deterrent to crime is the likelihood that offenders will be apprehended, convicted and punished. It is that which is presently lacking in our criminal justice system." Delegates at the Guyana conference called on Caribbean countries to formalise the unofficial moratorium on the death penalty that currently exists and respect international human rights laws. They argued that public opinion in favour of executions was not a major obstacle to achieving this. Public support for the death penalty does not necessarily mean that (it) is right, an EU statement said, pointing to historical precedents where gross human rights violations had the support of a majority of the people, but were condemned vigorously later on. In dealing with crime, it was seen as far more important to strengthen the judicial system, while advancing public education on the issue of punishment. One of the top speakers at the Guyana conference was Navnit Dholakia, who was born in Africa and educated in India before emigrating to Britain in the 1950s. He is a member of the UK All Party Parliamentary Committee on Abolition of the Death Penalty. Do we follow public opinion or do we lead? Dholakia said in Guyana. "What do we mean when we talk about public opinion? Do politicians go around asking for a referendum on every issue the answer is no. Change, he said, can only happen if governments take the lead. The last time this issue was officially addressed in the Bahamas was in 2011, when the Ingraham administration amended the law to define just what crimes would be eligible for the death penalty. They include killing a uniformed officer or judge, and killing during a rape, robbery, kidnapping or act of terrorism. Burt the consensus among judges and legislators is that hanging is over here. We have a current de facto abolition of the death penalty, and it would be much better if politicos and religious leaders restrained themselves from pandering to public fears and talking nonsense. Common sense should tell us that a handful of executions following years of delay (from a handful of convictions) will have no meaningful effect, particularly on those we would most like to be deterred - like gangsters. Fixing the justice system is far more important than imposing the death penalty. Bakersfield, CA (93308) Today Partly to mostly cloudy. Low near 65F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Partly to mostly cloudy. Low near 65F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph. The Seneca County Board of Supervisors' leadership team slammed a new lawsuit filed by the Oneida Indian Nation that attempts to block construction of Lago Resort & Casino in Tyre. Chairman Gary Westfall, Majority Leader Robert Shipley and Minority Leader Cindy Garlick Lorenzetti issued a joint statement Tuesday night saying the latest legal challenge is "against the people and best interests of Seneca County." "Our county has never received one cent from any casino or gaming facility," the leaders said. "We are outside the 10-county exclusivity zone that was created for the Oneidas. So they don't have to provide us with any revenue, as they do those 10 counties in their exclusivity zone. And now they want to prevent Seneca County from receiving any revenue from Lago Resort & Casino." They added, "It's time for the Oneidas to stop the nonsense and end these frivolous lawsuits." The new lawsuit claims the process used by the state Gaming Commission to select Lago was illegal. The Oneidas want the selection nullified, which would strip Lago of its casino license. The Oneidas oppose the project because they fear it would cannibalize existing casino revenues. The tribe operates two casinos in upstate New York Turning Stone Resort Casino in Verona and Yellow Brick Road Casino in Chittenango. "This lawsuit is simple: we are asking the court to force the Gaming Commission to enforce and respect the law that is responsible for upholding," the nation said in a statement. Joining the Oneidas as petitioners are Tyre residents who oppose Lago's construction. Casino Free Tyre says the casino would affect the environment and the town's rural character. The trio of Seneca County leaders repeated their calls for the creation of an upstate gaming coalition that would work to promote the region's casinos. Despite the new lawsuit, they're hopeful that they can work together with the tribe. "We once again ask the Oneidas to join us in that effort," they said. A recent Kern County case in which oral swab evidence was used to convict a man of driving under the influence is being watched by law enforce Ashers Baking Company has enlisted the help of human rights lawyer Professor Christopher McCrudden as it prepares to appeal against an anti-gay discrimination ruling. Last May, Belfast County Court hit the bakery with a 500 fine for injury to feelings after it refused to make a pro-gay marriage cake for would-be customer Gareth Lee due to the owners Christian beliefs. At the time, the McArthur family, who own Ashers, said it would appeal against the decision, an appeal which will now be heard on 3 and 4 February. According to The Belfast News Letter, the appeal will primarily be fought on Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and argue that the McArthurs were within their rights not to make the cake as it was against their Christian beliefs. McCrudden, who is professor of human rights and equality law at Queens University Belfast and William W Cook global law professor at the University of Michigan Law School, is a specialist on human rights. He joins the team headed up by David Scoffield QC and funded by the Christian Institute (CI), a body which exists to promote Christianity in the UK. Simon Calvert, spokesman for the CI, said: We are delighted to have such a formidable legal expert join an already strong team. Professor McCruddens experience and knowledge of human rights and equality law will be of incalculable assistance. Were confident that Ashers grounds of appeal are strong. There are a number of areas where the county court simply misapplied discrimination law. Ashers lawyers will also show how the courts approach breached the right of a person not to be compelled to express views to which they have a strong objection. Ashers Baking Company runs a chain of shops around Belfast and produces a range of breads, cakes and sausage rolls. Jestic Foodservice Equipment, the food manufacturing machinery company, has been awarded the sole UK distribution right to Sveba-Dahlen machinery. The Swedish bakery machinery manufacturer awarded the contract for both its Sveba-Dahlen and Glimek brands effective from 1 January. The company produces a comprehensive range of equipment for the baking industry, including provers, ovens and dough-handling equipment. In 1964, it invented the rotary rack oven and today claims to be a world leader in bakery equipment development. The move came after the company decided it wanted to distribute both its brands in the UK through a single company, with the Sveba-Dahlen brand formerly traded through Benier UK and Glimek through Scobie McIntosh. Meanwhile, Jestic was looking to expand into new markets including the bakery sector, and approached Sveba-Dahlen coincidentally at the right moment. Steve Loughton, managing director at Jestic Foodservice Equipment, said: About a year ago we decided we wanted as a company to expand our market presence. Sveba-Dahlen was looking to bring both its Sveba-Dahlen and Glimek brands under one roof and we fitted the bill. Jestic also recently announced its commitment to entering the bakery market and will add an exclusive bakery section as part of an extension of its menu development kitchen. Loughton added that the company would be investing in training its engineers and said: Weve expanded our selling team to have a specialist bakery colleague. Manufacturer of hotplate equipment, Sugden Limited, has secured a deal worth 1m to sell its muffin-making equipment to America. The hotplate manufacturer, based in Barrowford, Lancashire, has a new partnership with AMF Bakery Systems of Virginia. Sugden said of the deal: Working together, the companies can supply bakeries around the world with complete production lines capable of turning out up to 26,000 English muffins an hour. Sugden produces hotplates used to make traditional savouries such as crumpets, pancakes, potato cakes and English muffins. Following the sudden death of its co-founder Barry Mulholland last year, Sugden was acquired by Baldwin Engineering Holdings of Heywood. Chris Baldwin, who is now managing director of both companies, has focused on driving export sales and has said that he expects to triple Sugdens turnover in the year ahead. Export focus He added: Sugden had an international reputation and occasional big orders, but turnover was up and down. We knew that we could improve this dramatically by looking to export markets. The partnership with AMF has given us access to bakeries throughout the USA and Asia Pacific. This year we have been to the US and Australia twice, as well as China and Malaysia, to meet potential customers. We expect exports will represent between 30% and 60% of our future business so are extremely important to our growth. The company has also boosted orders in the UK with the launch of its new multiplant system, which allows greater flexibility in crumpet and pancake manufacturing. French patisserie producer Brioche Pasquier has added Paul Thompson to its UK foodservice team as sales manager. Thompson has eight years of baking industry experience, with companies including Delice de France and Maison du Pain, and has been in the foodservice business for more than 30 years. Speaking of his appointment, Thompson said: Brioche Pasquier is a well-established name in bakery, and Im excited to join the company at a time when its looking to strengthen its presence within UK foodservice. Thompson has also held roles with 3G Food Service and Simple Simon. Last year Brioche Pasquier expanded its catering range with its Bulles de Fruits line of frozen choux buns, and also launched a range of savoury baked products, in a bid to move into the snack market. AURORA | Wells College students who want to make their mark in the business world can now major and graduate with a bachelor's degree in business. The 148-year-old college founded by financier Henry Wells, founder of Wells Fargo Bank and American Express, announced the new major this month after five years in the making. The major offers a full course load of business theory, management, marketing, branding and experiential learning for those who wish to start a business, develop and market a product, or lead a socially conscious enterprise. "Some students arrive focused on a specific career such as marketing, human resources, finance or international business, while others plan to become entrepreneurs or they would like to build business knowledge and skills that they can apply in their family's business," said Kevin Miles, director of the Sullivan Center for Business and Entrepreneurship. Two years ago, the college approved a business minor. With the announcement earlier this month of the major, students have the option of combining their interest in other topics with the state-approved degree. The business major maximizes offerings already in place at the college work study in student cafe The Grind, Wells' 4+1 MBA program with Clarkson University and an in-development program with Lehigh University, plus relationships with local Cayuga County businesses. By the second semester of their sophomore year, students must declare a major. And, if they wish, Miles said, students may individualize the major "in effect, customize their field of study." This year, the college anticipates as many as 10 percent of its graduates will leave campus with a business degree in hand, with an expected doubling of enrollment in the program in four years. "It's part of the entire Wells experience," Miles said. "Students receive an excellent education at the school with a strong foundation in liberal arts and current business theory, and will develop skills required today by business." Opportunities exist for crossover classes with the Center for Sustainability and the Environment and the economics program, as well as international study. "There are opportunities for studying abroad all over the globe," Miles said. The major requires students sign up for an internship, where they'll gain firsthand experience in the day-to-day business world. With so many Wells alumni well-positioned in business, Miles said, students have a network in place to establish relationships with potential to extend past a semester-long internship. "Internships are not limited," Miles said, adding that he's known students who've taken as many as five. Students will take business classes in the multidisciplinary "innovation lab," a bright, windowed room on Zabriskie Hall's second floor. There, modular furniture moves easily to create collaborative work spaces as a ticker flashes a real-time feed of stock quotes on one wall while four clocks on another provide the time in financial centers around the world. A three-part speaker series invites successful entrepreneurs to campus to discuss their careers. This semester's first speaker is Laura Ornstein, coordinator of the New York State Sustainable Business Council, who will present the "Role of Business in Designing a Sustainable Economy." Creating positive social impact is a priority for many Wells students, Miles said, and the annual business idea competition during Entrepreneurship Week draws a large number of student competitors. For that week, students fine-tune business plans, interface with prominent guest faculty and tweak their communication skills before making final presentations for judges. As many as 14 percent of the college's entire student body participates, with approximately 70 percent of those being non-business majors, Miles said. Program faculty actively involved in business are set to teach classes and include a corporate financial officer, a practicing business lawyer, a venture capital entrepreneur and an international business person. These individuals will "provide actual, current examples and case studies based on the current experience of the faculty," Miles said. "We're always monitoring what's happening in business," he said of creating a dynamic theoretical perspective and academic curriculum. "Wells students will develop the knowledge and build the skills required to develop a career in virtually any type of business that they desire. The experiential learning component of the Wells education provides a means through which students can explore specific careers or industries and through which they can begin to apply their knowledge and skills." WEST POINT, N.Y. (AP) A court-martial has begun for a West Point cadet accused of sexually assaulting a fellow cadet. The trial of 23-year-old Cadet Lukas M. Saul of Ithaca, New York, is underway Wednesday at the U.S. Military Academy. He's accused of engaging in inappropriate contact with a cadet without her consent three times between March and December 2012. In preliminary action, defense lawyers asked the 12 Army officers on the panel if they are aware of critical comments by elected officials about the Army's handling of sexual assault cases. The judge later excused seven officers, leaving a panel of four men and one woman. Saul didn't graduate with his class last year. He's been on administrative leave since August. The charges carry a maximum punishment of dismissal from the Army, forfeiture of pay and confinement for life. SYRACUSE | It's official Onondaga County Sheriff Eugene Conway declared heroin a countywide epidemic. The first of many planned steps started Jan. 19 with a combined press conference with Onondaga County Health Commissioner Indu Gupta. They announced two programs designed to help get users off heroin and other opiates and also announced a community wide forum. That forum, Opiate & Heroin Epidemic: Our Problem, Our Solutions, took place the following day in the Civic Center's Carrier Theater, Syracuse. The county's drug task force hosted experts in addiction, public health, law enforcement, medicine, treatment, community partners and families of those affected. A 21st century aspect of this epidemic is the mixing of synthetic prescription drugs and heroin. Opium is made from a specific type of poppy flower pod. This is then processed to create morphine or heroin. Society-wide problems with opium in the United States date back to the 1850s. Each problem has been treated with a new drug that then becomes more addictive. Opium was treated with morphine, morphine was treated with heroin and heroin was treated with methadone. One of the two new programs includes the use of a new drug that so far has not been found to be habit forming. It is a long acting 28 to 30 days opioid blocker called Vivitrol. It has been around since 1980 and used successfully with alcohol addiction. It was originally developed to treat heroin addiction but came in the form of a daily pill. In 2006, the extended-release version was approved by the Food and Drug Administration specifically to treat alcoholism. So, now it has circled back to its original purpose. Gupta stressed that addiction is a disease and should be treated as such and that counseling is so imperative that it should start even before detox. She emphasized counseling and support for people going through addiction because attaching stigma to drug abuse can stop people from getting help. Conway said he supports the Angel Program created by Gloucester, Massachusetts Police Chief Leonard Campanello. It allows for community members struggling with addiction the ability to contact law enforcement for help, including possible transportation to the treatment facility. But, more importantly, the help comes in the form of an introduction to a person called an angel who helps the individual throughout the treatment process. The angel could be a person recovering from addiction or someone who is familiar with addiction, treatment and recovery, Conway said. So, for a person or family looking for help in addressing addiction, law enforcement would be of assistance as part of the recovery plan. Conway agreed with Gupta that addiction needs to be treated as an illness. Since heroin is in every level of society, one of the programs is designed to help incarcerated addicts. People using drugs can end up in jail. If they are willing, they could opt into a program that uses Vivitrol. The idea is to time this shot with a person's release date so that trying to use doesn't work once out of the system. The best case scenario is for the individual to go into a treatment program upon his release, increasing his chances for success. The long acting aspect is very important, as historically people often forget to take medications, Gupta said. People have to be willing. This isn't going to be forced on anyone. Conway noted more and more crime is related to illegal drug use as well as prescription drug abuse. He said he plans to engage with Cayuga County Sheriff David Gould and other police agencies to share his support of these two programs. SKANEATELES | Educators in the Skaneateles Central School District took time to celebrate briefly this week when the state Education Department released graduation rates for 2015. The report showed local rates going from 93 to 96 percent and spotlighted a dramatic increase in graduation rates for local students with disabilities from 43 percent in 2014 to 81 percent in 2015. After complimenting staff, administrators moved on to address important questions about how to improve in a way that is helpful to all students. There is much to be proud of in what these numbers reflect from kindergarten to commencement, and I offer my most sincere thanks and appreciation for the work that sits behind the success of our students, Superintendent Ken Slentz said in an email to staff. He then asked: How do we capture, memorialize and replicate in context those practices that resulted in the successes of the students? Are students graduating ready and well, in that they have exceeded the state minimum requirements, have had meaningful co-curricular and extracurricular experiences as well as job shadowing, internship and externship experiences, and are increasingly balanced across the six dimensions of wellness such that they will be truly advantaged in their post-secondary lives? High School Principal Gregory Santoro praised the collaboration of teachers, parents, administrators, and local businesses and organizations that helped the majority of Skaneateles students reach the goal of graduation. He noted that there is some fluctuation every year due to the cohort. These high school graduation rates are for the 2011 cohort, students who entered 9th grade in 2011. Graduation rates can be influenced by all kinds of things, including late entry of students. If we have kids here four straight years, we have a really good shot at helping them succeed," Santoro said. "If we have them only one year, which happens some years more than others, we have more of a challenge. Statewide, the overall graduation rate for the 2011 cohort increased to 78.1 percent, up 1.7 percentage points from 76.4 percent for the 2010 cohort. The data were presented during the Board of Regents meeting Jan. 11. While the Skaneateles numbers are overall fantastic, Santoro quickly turned to the four percent who did not graduate. We are concerned about them, Santoro said, and that is where improvement must take place. He also stressed that it is important to dig deeper to improve the experience and outcomes for those who do graduate. For example, he said, we need to know if they are achieving all they can achieve. Did we help them find their pathways? Were they well? Are they ready? We have much more we can do in terms of collaboration and relationship building. Santoro said he is also concerned about the percentage of students who are struggling with stress and anxiety. It is about much more than academics, he said. Slentz, in his note to staff, vowed to spend much of the year focusing on the two questions above and interrogating the data on our college and university students to see if those who enter in fact persist and complete their studies. For those who did complete their studies, he seeks to know what specific actions, programs and opportunities were most beneficial and must be replicated. For those that didnt or dont persist and complete, he seeks to ask, Why not? What could we have done differently or better to give these students a great likelihood of success? In the meantime, though, Slentz urged staff to take the time to relish the truth of these statistics and to think about that one student or those students from that class of 2015 that you know that you connected with and made a difference for. They are grateful even though they may not tell you that explicitly. Their success is your success, thereby making me grateful to work alongside of you as we seek to ensure that the members of the class of 2016 graduate and graduate ready and well. SKANEATELES | During a Skype session between pals in Kazakhstan and Skaneateles, Kazakh teacher Tatyana Arendarenko told a group of Skaneateles mothers about a strange tradition that takes place in Petropavlovsk, Kazakhstan. A group of Kazakh people, Arendarenko told the mothers, will jump into the river and go for a swim in January when the air temperature is -5 degrees Celsius but feels closer to -30. That tradition is not so strange, the mothers told the teacher, as Skaneateles has a similar custom in the form of the Polar Bear Plunge that takes place in a couple of weeks with people dipping into the chilly Skaneateles Lake water to raise money for three community organizations. "We are happy to see you all in our favorite place in Skaneateles," Arendarenko said from the computer as the Skaneateles group huddled around the setup in the middle school library. The exchange seemed like a reunion among relatives who had not seen one another in quite some time, and in a way, it was. After the two groups of middle school-aged students first connected more than two years ago, the Kazakh group visited Skaneateles for two weeks in the summer of 2014. The two groups exchanged letters, packages, emails and Skype sessions since then, and they communicated again Friday morning as the Skaneateles group prepares to host their Kazakh peers another time this summer. Middle School Librarian Sharon O'Connell, who helped the students start the Multicultural Club after they wanted to find pen pals to connect with, noted it is a different group that will visit this time around, as Arendarenko has different students in her class and even the first Skaneateles students are now sophomores. "We're planning a more simple trip," she said. "They're not going to be able to do as much." O'Connell said she plans to meet the Kazakh group at the airport either at John F. Kennedy International Airport or Newark Liberty International Airport and then give them a brief tour of the city if they are up for it after the long flight. Then, after taking the train to Penn Station, the group will ride a bus to Skaneateles, where the Kazakh group will visit for another two weeks. 'We'll have a great time," O'Connell told Arendarenko via Skype. "We'll send you pictures, and you send us notes." The students gathered in the library to talk to their Kazakh peers around 7:45 a.m. close to 7 p.m. in Kazakhstan, where Arendarenko and her students gathered in the teacher's home. The students also opened a package from their Kazakh peers and handed out the gifts that were labeled with their names. Once the students had to go to their class Arendarenko joked that she and her students had to get ready for bed at that point their mothers took over the computer to talk to the teacher and students. Many of them hosted students two years ago and had met Arendarenko. The Kazakh students introduced themselves to the group, and O'Connell made notes as to which of them might fit best with which Skaneateles family. For example, one girl expressed an interest in art and may likely be paired with the family of Deidre Aureden, the program director at the Schweinfurth Art Center in Auburn. "We'll find a nice home for you," O'Connell told each of the students. "Know that we're looking forward to hosting you, and we welcome you." Plain food packing linked to increased snacking In the first academic study into the effects of plain packaging unhealthy has found that removing labelling and advertising could in fact increase consumption of these types of foods. Conducted by researchers from a number or institutions including Grenoble Ecole de Management in France and published in Volume 49 of the Food and Quality Preference Journal, the study was broken down into three components in order to ask the following questions: Would plain packaging make someone less likely to purchase an unhealthy food item? Would plain packaging decrease the chances of someone consuming an unhealthy food item? If a food package was plain but contained the phrase low-fat how much would someone eat of that food? A total of 342 participants were involved in all three parts of the study. The participants were a mix of male and female business school students. Perhaps unsurprisingly the scientists discovered when the participants were presented with both plain and normal packaged food (M&Ms) the students were more driven to purchase the non-plain packaged item. Once the students had the food however, the male students ate more from the plain packaged option than from the packaged one. The female students also ate more M&Ms from the plain package which just stated that it was low-fat than the regular packaged option. In drawing their conclusions from the study the scientists said the tendency for the men to eat more could be because deactivating the marketing components of an unhealthy snack packaging deactivates the inhibition system associated with it. The scientists have recommended further studies occur before definitive conclusions can be drawn. The Polk County Sheriff's Office is conducting a homicide investigation. Deputies responded to a wooded area near Sand Mine Road and Island Club West in Davenport on Tuesday after receiving a report of a body being found by a resident just after 4 p.m. The victim has been identified as 38-year-old Alexander Vigo Jr. of Davenport. Authorities said Vigo was shot, but an autopsy has been secheduled to confirm the cause of death. Detectives said Vigo had last been seen by a family member Sunday night at about 9:30 p.m. Detectives are seeking the communitys help. Anyone with information about Vigos recent activities or associates is urged to contact the PCSO at (863) 298-6200. Callers who want to remain anonymous and be eligible for a cash reward are asked to call Heartland Crime Stoppers at 1-800-226-TIPS or go to www.heartlandcrimestoppers.com. Polk County detectives have solved two cold-case murders that happened six years apart. Until now, there were no suspects in either murder. Ernest Allen Jr. was gunned down during a robbery at his home auto repair shop on North Lincoln in 2008. His father had all but given up hope that his killers would be found. "I didn't think they were going to find 'em," Ernest Allen Sr. said. "I didn't think were going to find 'em." But it happened. On Wednesday, investigators announced they have two people already in jail. Reeshamaha Pearson and Kaheem Bennett, who were 16 and 15 years old at the time. Pearson is currently serving a prison sentence for burglary and grand theft, while Bennett is being held for trial after he was charged in 2015 with attempted first-degree murder, armed robbery with a firearm, armed kidnapping and more. Police say it took lots of hard work and cooperation from the public to solve the crime. "I think moms, dads, grandmothers and aunts and uncles and brothers and sisters quite frankly just got fed up with the amount of violence that was occurring," Chief Larry Giddens said. Fear of the suspects, particularly Bennett, kept people from speaking out. "He had garnered such a reputation on the streets that he...his street name was Cutthroat," Sgt. Brian Wallace said. Police say Bennett was actually the target in the second murder, which happened January 2014 at a Chevron gas station on West Memorial Boulevard. They say Jamal Fleming, who was a passenger in the car, was outside pumping gas when he was shot by someone from the direction of North Brunnell Avenue. Bennett was inside the car at the time. Fleming was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person during a wave of gang-related shootings. Sidney Lee Mells, who is already in jail on other charges, is now charged with Fleming's murder. Ernest Allen Sr. said he is elated by the arrests. "The feeling is great, great, great," he said. "It seems like I got a new life want to keep on living." A grand jury indicted all three suspects last Thursday in both cases. Lakeland police say the number of shootings in the northwest part of the city are way down, thanks to anti-gang efforts both by police and the community. Awesome Astronomy: Five Planets Align for Oregon, the Coast This Month Published 01/19/2016 at 8:23 PM PDT By Oregon Coast Beach Connection staff (Oregon Coast) The interstellar fun begins tonight, and sadly it probably can't be seen due to cloudy skies. However, a unique alignment of five planets will grace the skies above inland Oregon and the coast from now until February 20. (Photo above: Manzanita at night, looking at how the five planets will align). It all happens in the chilly pre-dawn sky, with Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Mars and Saturn placing themselves in the sky on a slight arc, seen in a southerly direction - mostly southeast. They will cover a large area of the sky, so try to find a view unobstructed by trees. This will make the Oregon coast particularly inviting, once the weather clears at night. Also look for the stars Spica and Antares in the same area. Mercury will be the most difficult to see as it will be the faintest, but Venus will stand out as the brightest sky fairly low on the horizon. Look just to the left and slightly below of Venus to help guide you to Mercury. Some astronomers are saying it may require binoculars to see, but the rest of the planets will be bright enough. The no-shows are Pluto, Neptune and Uranus but these are not visible with the naked eye in the first place. You can often spot them with a telescope, however. Uranus can sometimes be seen with the naked eye if conditions are dark enough. In Oregon and around the Pacific Northwest, scientists say start peeking out about 45 minutes before sunrise, and the planets should still be visible until about 7:30 a.m. Oregon Coast Lodgings for this event - Where to eat - Maps - Virtual Tours Around the Oregon coast, some headlands to the southeast may block the view just slightly. For best results, head to a high vantage point such as Cape Foulweather by Depoe Bay, the pullouts between Yachats and Cape Perpetua, Ecola State Park at Cannon Beach or even atop Cape Kiwanda (although this is not advisable to climb at night unless you are armed with plenty of light-making gear). LIkely the best viewpoint will be the Neahkahnie overlooks by Manzanita. Flat beaches far from headlands to the south may produce good viewing as well, such as Waldport, Newport, Cannon Beach and Manzanita. See more Oregon Coast Weather. More About Oregon Coast hotels, lodging..... More About Oregon Coast Restaurants, Dining..... Coastal Spotlight LATEST Related Oregon Coast Articles Back to Oregon Coast Contact Advertise on BeachConnection.net All Content, unless otherwise attributed, copyright BeachConnection.net Unauthorized use or publication is not permitted Dr. Erika Nowak, a herpetologist at Northern Arizona University, will discuss what it is like to be a snake researcher in a world that doesnt give these important predators the respect and admiration they deserve at tonight's Northern Arizona Audubon Society meeting. She will describe her transition from being a rattlesnake management expert to being integrally involved with recovery actions for federally threatened gartersnakes and leading other snake research projects along the way, including assisting in a Finnish viper study. In her presentation to NAAS, Nowak will give an overview of how she came to be the snake ecologist who was recently thanked for her intense dedication to the [gartersnake] species, and describe how she and her students study snakes. She will discuss humans perceptions of snakes, why snakes are important components of the ecosystem and how they are threatened (or are threats). She will provide an update on the NAU Gartersnake Program, which includes collaboration on an Arizona State University MS thesis project at Bubbling Ponds Fish Hatchery in Page Springs. And, she will explain what to do if you have a rattlesnake in your yard and want it to stay alive when it leaves. While conducting graduate work on rattlesnakes, Nowak also began research on narrow-headed gartersnakes in Oak Creek Canyon between Flagstaff and Sedona. Based in part on her research, it became clear that populations of this aquatic specialist were declining throughout their range in the US and in 2014, narrow-headed gartersnakes and Northern Mexican gartersnakes were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Since 1999, Nowak has been growing a research program at NAU involving undergraduate and graduate students in hands-on conservation work for both species. Part of this program currently under development is a Flagstaff-based captive breeding facility for narrow-headed gartersnakes. Nowak earned a BS in Wildlife Biology from Cornell University (1991), and her graduate degrees from Northern Arizona University (MS in Biology, 1998; PhD in Biology, 2009). Her Masters thesis research was on the biological effects and management effectiveness of nuisance rattlesnake translocation. Her PhD research investigated the ecological impacts of provisioning food and water to rattlesnake prey in human-developed areas in national parks. She currently is a herpetologist with the Colorado Plateau Research Station, holds an adjunct faculty position in the Department of Biological Sciences and is the Assistant Curator of Herpetology at NAU. She is also a board member of Habitat Harmony, Inc. A member of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Viper Species Group, these days Nowak leads a mark-recapture program for rattlesnakes at Montezuma Castle and Tuzigoot National Monuments, and provides rattlesnake ecology awareness and safe handling classes for federal, state and private organizations. The meeting will be held at Shepherd of the Hills/Benson Hall beginning at 7 p.m. It is free and open to the public. Coupon Queen to speak at library Flagstaff Public Library will host author Susan Samtur, known as The Original Coupon Queen, Monday, Jan. 25, at 6:30 p.m. at the Downtown Library, 300 W. Aspen Ave. Samtur's talk is free and open to the public. She will discuss how to reduce grocery costs by 50 percent or more with her money saving methods. Samtur was an elementary school teacher and has four sons. While bringing up four children on a budget, she began collecting coupons to save money. She and her husband Steve began a magazine, Refundle Bundle, in 1973. She has written three books, the best selling Cashing in at the Checkout, Coupon Magic and The Super Coupon Shopping System that brought her recognition as the "Coupon Queen." Her national media tours included repeated appearances on major television shows including Live With Regis and Kathy Lee, Good Morning America, The Today Show and more. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Authorities are searching for a Houston man indicted on charges related to the production of child pornography. John Ferguson, 36, is wanted for the production, receipt, access with intent to view and possession of child pornography, U.S. Attorney Kenneth Magidson announced Wednesday. Ferguson is believed to have fled to avoid being arrested on the charges. A criminal filed last month alleges Ferguson was accessing numerous files from a website known to contain child pornography. Authorities seized several items, including computers, from his residence during a search warrant and allegedly found more than 1,000 videos and 13,000 images of child pornography. How to submit a tip Call the Crime Stoppers tip line (713) 222-TIPS Call the FBI Houston Field Office (713) 693-5000 Submit a tip online tips.fbi.gov See More Collapse The charges allege that an underage girl is seen being sexually assaulted in some of the videos. The images and videos seized were sent to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The organization found that Ferguson had produced several videos, according to the charges. The child in the video was also identified, with help from the FBI. Ferguson is a 5-foot-10 white male weighing approximately 180 pounds. He has brown hair and blue eyes. Investigators think he may be driving a older model, silver, two-door Ford Focus. Anyone with information on Ferguson's whereabouts should call the Crime Stoppers tip line at (713) 222-TIPS or the FBI Houston Field Office at (713) 693-5000. Tips can also be submitted online at tips.fbi.gov. In elementary school, Trey Pitre surprised himself by reciting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s entire "I Have a Dream" speech during a class presentation. "It kind of flew out of my mouth," said Pitre, a 17-year-old Memorial High School student. The message of equality and freedom that resonated with Pitre as a child took on a different meaning as a young adult celebrating King's birthday during the 30th annual Port Arthur MLK Support Group brunch Monday at the Robert A. "Bob" Bowers Civic Center. "As a young African-American man, times have become hard for us," Pitre said. The Rev. Donald Hayes Jr. stood before a crowd of about 1,100 brunch attendees and stressed the need for justice. "Young black men are hunted and gunned down by appearing to look suspicious," Hayes said. RELATED: Were you 'Seen' at the MLK brunch in Port Arthur? Hayes' voice boomed from the podium, as he told the audience that black men can be killed for simply carrying a bag of Skittles and Arizona ice tea, alluding to the 2012 shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. Lucy Dennis, a 56-year-old Port Arthur native, sat in the crowd with a few friends. She has come to the brunch on and off since Hargie Faye Savoy started the MLK Support Group at the request of Coretta Scott King in 1986. As a self-employed hair braider and self-published author, Dennis said she never thought of her successes in terms of the odds being stacked against her. "I just knew what I had to do to take care of my children," she said. "I guess that's part of being a black woman." Dennis grew up on the west side of Port Arthur. As a child, she remembered a strong sense of community in her neighborhood. There was a school, a library, a YMCA. Now, she looks at the west side and sees no school and no stores. She said the sense of community disappeared as a result of desegregation. "It was about equality, but as we branched out, we lost our community," she said. RELATED: Photos from the MLK parade in Beaumont Pitre, the high school student, is involved in a variety of community service activities and has helped serve food at the MLK brunch for four years. His plan is to graduate high school, go to college in Iowa and then open his own kinesiology business. "My parents always said if you can get away from Port Arthur, please do, because there's nothing here for you," Pitre said. The message for a need of economic support that might entice young men like Pitre to remain in his hometown rang out in Hayes' sermon. Hayes called for Port Arthur residents to "accept responsibility" for the city and support local, black businesses. MHeath@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/mheath31 In the lower court ruling on Arpaio's lawsuit, appellate Judge Nina Pillard said the sheriff's lawsuit is based on the contention that allowing people who arrived in this country illegally as children to remain without fear of deportation will lead to more crime in Maricopa County and burden his officers and jails. But Pillard, writing for the three-judge panel, said the sheriffs contentions "are unduly speculative'' and "rest on chains of supposition and contradict acknowledged realities.'' And without any proof he or his agency will be harmed, Pillard said there was no basis for a lawsuit. The lawsuit, filed in 2014, challenges three deferred action programs that would allow millions of people here illegally both to remain and work. That includes the original Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program implemented in 2010. At last count, nearly 800,000 requests to remain and work had been approved nationwide, including more than 28,000 in Arizona. Arpaio charged that the programs are "unconstitutional abuses of the presidents role in our nations constitutional architecture, and exceed the powers of the president within the U.S. Constitution.'' And he said even if Congress has granted some power to the president to decide how to enforce immigration laws, these two programs exceed that delegated authority. But the court never addressed those arguments, saying Arpaio has no legal right to even make them. In a prepared statement, attorney Larry Klayman, who represented Arpaio, said he and the sheriff were "disappointed'' the justices did not take up their case. But Klayman said Arpaio's views still will be considered through an amicus brief to be filed with the high court in the Texas case. Klayman, founder and attorney for Freedom Watch Inc., also took a slap of sorts at the justices for ignoring Arpaio's arguments and instead focusing on the case brought by the states. "More establishment-type Republicans on the court seem to focus more on working with state governments rather than a maverick like Arpaio,'' Klayman said in his statement. But he said if the justices side with Texas and the other states, that would "provide the same relief that Arpaio asked for.'' --HOWARD FISCHER This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Researchers at Caltech believe our solar system deserves a ninth planet again. But theyre not nominating Pluto. Two scientists at the Pasadena, Calif., college announced theyve found evidence of a new planet. Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown made the discovery using mathematical modeling and computer simulations. They have not yet observed the far-out planet, which would take between 10,000 and 20,000 years to orbit the sun. For now, the heavenly object has been given the visionary name Planet Nine. SEE THIS: NASA releases heavenly new photos of Pluto Brown says there theres no debate that this discovery qualifies as a planet and not a dwarf planet like Pluto. The world has a mass 5,000 times that of Pluto. Planet Nine is just hard to see since it orbits at an average distance of 2.8 billion miles from the sun. "There have only been two true planets discovered since ancient times, and this would be a third, Brown said, in a statement from Caltech. It's a pretty substantial chunk of our solar system that's still out there to be found, which is pretty exciting. Pluto was demoted from planet to dwarf planet in 2006, under the reasoning that it has not cleared the neighborhood around its orbit and is not a satellite, and Brown played a key role in that controversial decision. READ MORE: New photos reveal a complex world at the end of the solar system The Pluto ruling also meant Brown's discovery of UB313, initially thought to be the 10th major body in the solar system, was also a dwarf planet, according to a 2006 report. "All those people who are mad that Pluto is no longer a planet can be thrilled to know that there is a real planet out there still to be found," Brown said in the Caltech release. "Now we can go and find this planet and make the solar system have nine planets once again." The United States is facing physician shortage in the not-so-distant-future. The Association of American Medical College found physician demand will surpass supply by approximately 46,000 to 90,000 physicians due to an aging population and increasing number of insured individuals. Despite this deficiency, medical students are fighting for a limited number of residency slots. Currently, there are 175 medical schools across the United States, and the number is growing to combat the looming physician shortage. However, medical school enrollment has increased 25 percent since 2002 with an all time-high of 20,630 enrollees in 2015, according to AAMC. In 2007, The Association of American Medical Colleges implored states to increase the number of medical graduates by 30 percent by 2015, according to PEW Charitable Trusts. Residency slots have not increased at nearly the same rates, leaving medical students without a residency position stuck in limbo. In March 2015, The National Resident Matching Program had a rather successful year matching graduates with residency slots. NRMP measures a successful match based on two criterion volume and how well it matches the applicants and program directors' preferences. NRMP found an overall position fill rate of 95.7 percent. While 2015 marked the most successful match on record, it begs the question what about the remaining 4.3 percent? Increasing the number of residency slots is not a simple feat. The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 limits the number of residencies Medicare is able to fund. Medicare helps cover the financial costs associated with training each resident, which the AAMC estimates is approximately $150,000 each year. Therefore, states and healthcare facilities have to pay for residency slot creation, and a large portion of hospitals do not have residency programs or necessary Medicare funding. Many states are implementing measures to encourage hospitals to create residency programs. For example, Texas offered hospitals $150,000 planning grants and an additional $250,000 to develop the programs. Those hospitals already equipped with residency programs could apply for $65,000 to add slots. Additionally, Texas designated $56 million to help expand residency programs through 2018. Some members of the medical community claim the United States is granting too many residency slots to non-U.S. citizens. According to the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduate, of the 12,482 students who participated in the 2014 Match, 7,334 IMG participants were not U.S. citizens. Of this cohort, 49.5 percent of 3,633 participants received first-year residency positions. In July 2014, the American Osteopathic Association passed a resolution imploring the medial profession to push forth federal legislation granting U.S. medical school graduates priority of U.S. residency positions. Robert Goldberg, DO, dean of the Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine in New York, said, "Theres a collision between the numbers of graduates of U.S. medical schools and the limited number of residency positions currently in the United States." In 2015, Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-NY) and Charles Boustany Jr. (R-La.) proposed The Residency Physician Shortage Reduction Act of 2015. The legislation would increase the number of Medicare direct medical education and indirect medical education slots. The bill mandates National Health Care Workforce Commission to submit a report to Congress by Jan. 1, 2018, listing physician shortage specialties. The bill also increases by the number of residency slots nationally by 3,000 each year between 2017 through 2021 for a total of 15,000 slots. Under the legislation, one-third of the new residency slots are allotted to teaching hospitals training over their cap, and at least 50 percent of the remaining available slots each year must be allocated for shortage specialty residency slots the National Health Care Workforce Commission identified in their report. Tokyo-based PENTAX Medical, a leader in endoscopic imaging, participated in Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Global Health's Mbarara Gastrointestinal Unit Program and donated a complete endoscopy tower consisting of a video gastroscope, a video processor and a monitor. Here are five takeaways: 1. Massachusetts General Hospital launched the program after Samson Okello, MD, reached out to MGH-CGH about a significant rise in gastrointestinal cases among patients. 2. Dr. Okello serves as a clinical lecturer and designate physician at Mbarara University Teaching Hospital in Uganda. 3. Kathleen Corey, MD, director of the MGH Fatty Liver Clinic and the MGH Gastrointestinal Unit, traveled to Uganda to train Mbarara Hospital's staff on how to effectively evaluate patients for gastrointestinal issues. 4. Norman Shizuaki Nishioka, MD, director of endoscopy for MGH, contacted PENTAX Medical about providing equipment for the program. 5. "With the expanding rollout of antiretroviral therapy in Uganda, many people are living longer lives, well past their thirties and forties," said Dr. Okello. "As such, we needed to shift our medical focus on developing the infrastructure to treat non-communicable diseases, including gastrointestinal cancers a focus urgently needed." More articles on GI/endoscopy: GI physician leader to know: Dr. Manoj Mehta of Gastroenterology Consultants of The North Shore 5 most read GI/endoscopy stories: Week of Jan. 11 Jan. 15 Zacks lowers Endoscopic to "sell" rating: 4 notes More than a dozen children served by Chicago-based Sinai Health System will decorate a banner to send to former Bulls superstar Michael Jordan to thank him for his gift to support healthcare for children. Mr. Jordan sued supermarkets Dominick's and Jewel-Osco for the unauthorized use of his name in an advertisement more than six years ago. He said in December he would donate the proceeds of the $8.9 million settlement awarded to him to 23 charities in Chicago that serve inner city kids, including those served by Sinai Health System. Sinai Health System has announced it will use the funds it receives from Mr. Jordan to expand and enhance services in three program areas to improve the lives of children in some of Chicago's most underserved communities. These programs include: Children's behavioral health. Sinai Health System is currently the largest provider of mental health services for western Chicago communities. For 23 years, the health system has offered outpatient therapy for children and their families through its Under the Rainbow program, a community mental health center housed in Mount Sinai Hospital. More than 85 percent of participating children have experienced life-altering violent and traumatic events resulting in mental health and behavioral disorders, as well as school problems, according Richard Macur-Brousil, Psy.D, a psychologist and the director of the Under the Rainbow program. Mr. Jordan's gift will support capital improvements to provide a more inviting environment and better outcomes for children, including renovated play-therapy rooms with child-friendly furniture, art, music and supplies, and upgraded audio-visual equipment. "Most of the kids have been traumatized," says Dr. Macur-Brousil. "Part of the therapy is to help them express the frustration, hopelessness, helplessness, sadness, depression and anger that gets triggered in the multiple types of trauma they've experienced in their very short lives. They aren't like adults where they can speak about it a lot of times they have to play it out." Dr. Macur-Brousil explained the children often use dolls to describe their emotions or demonstrate a trauma. Under the Rainbow caregivers also use trays of sand as part of therapy, as the comforting feeling of the sand in children's hands often helps them open up, according to Dr. Macur-Brousil. Playing musical instruments and drawing are other activities the children engage in at the program. Pediatric asthma. In Chicago, asthma rates are well above national averages, particularly in minority and disadvantaged communities. A portion of Mr. Jordan's gift will support the development and expansion of Sinai Urban Health Institute's nationally recognized pediatric asthma research and treatment program. Support for new mothers and babies. Sinai Health System's labor and delivery unit welcomes approximately 2,500 babies each year, the second highest number of any hospital system in Chicago. A portion of Mr. Jordan's gift will be used to purchase new prenatal, labor and delivery equipment at Mount Sinai Hospital and Holy Cross Hospital. The gift will also help support Sinai Community Institute's intensive prenatal program, Better Birth Outcomes, which helps reduce the incidence of infant mortality, morbidity, prematurity and low birth weight. Note: This article was updated on 1/22/16 with photos of the banner signing and addition information about Under the Rainbow. Federal health officials are taking steps to make it harder for consumers to obtain insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act after the government's enrollment deadline, according to a report from The New York Times. Here are six things to know about the steps. 1. Federal health officials are not allowing special enrollment periods "for people who choose to remain uninsured and then decide they need health insurance when they get sick," Kevin Counihan, CEO of the federal insurance marketplace, said Tuesday, according to The New York Times. 2. In total, federal health officials plan to cut six out of several dozen special enrollment periods, including two for certain lawfully present noncitizens who experienced "system errors" and "processing delays" when they used the federal health insurance exchange website HealthCare.gov, according to the report. 3. At the same time, the report notes, the government is promising to clarify eligibility standards and strengthen enforcement to prevent abuse of special enrollment periods. For instance, President Barack Obama's administration said it will ensure consumers who have recently moved can only use a special enrollment period if they are planning to permanently relocate, according to The Hill. 4. According to The New York Times, federal health officials appear to be tightening rules for special ACA sign-ups for several reasons: To drive consumers to sign up for insurance coverage by the Jan. 31 deadline To prevent an influx of large numbers of sick people from entering the market in the middle of the year To convince insurers to enter or stay in the public insurance marketplace To minimize rate increases in 2017 and beyond 5. The federal government's steps come after complaints from insurance companies. Insurers have contended consumers have signed up late for insurance coverage when they become sick and need care, and this drives up costs for people who sign up during the regular open enrollment period, according to The New York Times. 6. The insurance industry acknowledges the newest steps being taken as an important jumping off point, but it is not completely satisfied, according to The Hill. With the newest steps, The Hill notes, federal health officials would still allow people with an "exceptional circumstance," such as a serious medical condition, to sign up after the deadline. "While this is an important first step, more needs to be done to validate special enrollment requests. It's critical that there is a process in place to avoid potential abuse of special enrollment periods in order to ensure a stable, affordable market for consumers," Clare Krusing, a spokeswoman for America's Health Insurance Plans, wrote in a statement, according to The Hill. More articles on healthcare finance: For-profit hospital stock report: Week of Jan. 11-15 MedPAC approves 340B payment proposal: 3 things to know 8 recent hospital outlook and credit rating actions We hate to sound like a teetotaler, but if you need alcohol to enjoy a rafting trip through the Grand Canyon wilderness, something is wrong with your sensory circuits. The fact that it is consumed in the Canyon at all is a wonder. That it is abused regularly on the river says boatloads about a culture of artificial overstimulation that has lost its sense of natural wonder, not to mention its self-control. But as reported earlier this month, the culture of the river has long included alcohol as a source of release and celebration after surviving a difficult rapids or just making it to the end of a strenuous day. But its abuse can lead to tragedy. In 2013 a Colorado woman who had been drinking disappeared from her campsite and was later found drowned. And alcohol-fueled incidents of sexual abuse and harassment by National Park Service river guides and other employees have gone on for a decade, according to recent reports. The National Park Service a year ago banned alcohol from it trips. Some commercial companies also ban alcohol, and those that allow it usually restrict it to passengers, who must bring their own supply. The private trips, which are drawn by lottery, have no formal rules on alcohol, But in light of the risks that a river trip already presents, it might be time for the Park Service to cut off the booze entirely. Given the Canyons status as a national park, the chance to float the river through it is a privilege, not a right. Privileges come with responsibilities, and when the latter are ignored or compromised, its appropriate to take a timeout from a culture of alcohol that seems especially out of place. As for the sexual harassment and abuse, we want to make it clear that alcohol abuse does not excuse or absolve the perpetrators and their supervisors of responsibility. The Department of the Interior Inspector Generals investigation found not only that the abuses by Park Service employees were longstanding but that supervisors and other administrators were slow to respond, if at all. Some victims reported careers that were disrupted and even some resignations due to the hostile work environment on the NPS trips. It took a group letter by the victims to new Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell to get someone outside the Park Service to finally take the matter seriously, and we hope the Park Service has learned its lesson. As the national parks mark their 100th birthday this year, we can celebrate Americas best idea while remembering that the people who protect these special places have a duty to protect and respect their colleagues, too. All departments of Allentown, Pa.-based LeHigh Valley Health Network have been asked to reduce budgets as the system prepares for changes that "will affect other parts of the organization," reads a letter sent to employees, according to The Morning Call. The budget reductions come as LVHN prepares to close five medical offices that operate within the Lehigh Valley Physician Group, which is one of the largest in the nation, according to the report. The following offices will close, according to The Morning Call. ExpressCare at the Health Center (East Allen Township, Pa.) Careworks Allentown LVPG Family Medicine Forks Township (Pa.) LVPG Family Medicine Moorestown (Moore Township, Pa.) LVPG Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery-Muhlenberg (Bethlehem, Pa.) The letter said the budget reductions and decision to streamline physician practices is a result of a decline in patient admissions and inpatient acute surgical admissions, as well as declining reimbursement from Medicare and Medicaid, according to the report. The network reported a shortfall of $267 million for Medicare and medical assistance in fiscal year 2015, according to report. Yet, The Morning Call notes, LVHN still posted revenue of $1.9 billion for fiscal year 2015, a 13 percent increase over the prior year. More articles on finance: Physicians Realty Trust posts $152.8M in Q4 investments Nebraska lawmakers reveal Medicaid plan UAB Health System CEO responds to Alabama's request for $157M boost in Medicaid funding Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, attributes much of its financial success in recent years to its accountable care organization and other long-term care initiatives, according to The Columbus Dispatch. The pediatric hospital posted strong finances in 2014, with its operating surplus hitting a record $285 million. That growth continued into 2015, when the hospital reported revenue of $2 billion for the first time. Much of the hospital's success has come from its involvement in Partners for Kids, an ACO that includes about 320,000 children in southeastern and central Ohio. More than 1,000 physicians work with the ACO to coordinate care for young patients. Nationwide Children's CFO Tim Robinson told The Columbus Dispatch that the ACO and other long-term care initiatives had helped the hospital reduce losses associated with caring for Medicaid patients. Nationwide Children's posted a surplus on its Medicaid population in 2014, according to the report. More articles on healthcare finance: Missouri hospital ceases operations: 5 things to know Average cost per inpatient day across 50 states 40 things to know about healthcare costs Lawmakers have tried and failed three times to expand Medicaid coverage in Nebraska. Now, lawmakers have disclosed a new plan to cover the Medicaid gap population in the state, according to The Associated Press. The potential bill "would use federal Medicaid dollars to buy private health coverage for residents without access to an employer-sponsored plan, and would pay a worker's share of premiums if an employer does offer coverage," according to the report. It would cover approximately 77,000 adults without children. Sen. John McCollister (R) said the bill would boost Nebraska's economy by creating more healthcare jobs and helping the uninsured stay healthy. Yet other senators remain unsure about the bill and its ultimate implications. "Every single conservative in the Legislature opposes Medicaid expansion," said Sen. Bill Kintner (R), according to the report. Southern Palmetto Hospital, a 53-bed hospital in Barnwell, S.C., will close its doors on Thursday, according to a WRDW report. Hospital officials said the facility is closing due to a decline in patient volume and an increase in uncompensated care costs. Despite efforts to improve collections and become more efficient, the hospital has been operating at a loss, according to the report. Although the hospital will cease operations on Thursday, the shutdown may only be temporary. Southern Palmetto issued a statement to The Augusta Chronicle that said the hospital's "current ownership is seeking alternatives for the continuation of healthcare in the community though no plans for the future have been approved." Southern Palmetto CEO Michael Patterson told The Augusta Chronicle the final decision to close the hospital was made Monday, and employees were notified on Tuesday. The hospital's 90 full-time and 28 part-time employees will receive two weeks severance pay, according to the report. More articles on healthcare finance: Missouri hospital ceases operations: 5 things to know Average cost per inpatient day across 50 states 40 things to know about healthcare costs In May 2015, Boston Medical Center completed its go-live of Epic's EHR. The hospital's ambulatory go-live was the last department to start using the new platform, which the hospital named eMERGE. After a $100 million investment, Arthur Harvey, vice president and CIO of Boston Medical Center, says the first nine months of using Epic are moving along "quite well." Here, Mr. Harvey discusses the EHR selection process, the EHR market for Boston and academic medical centers, and health IT's biggest challenge. Note: Answers have been lightly edited for style and clarity. Question: What was your selection process like when deciding to switch EHRs? Did you gather request for information/proposals from multiple vendors? Why did you decide to switch vendors? Why did you ultimately decide to go with Epic? Arthur Harvey: We were formerly a best of breed shop and were looking for a way to improve interoperability between our various clinical systems as well as to replace a couple of products that we felt we had outgrown. We decided that we wanted to go with a single vendor solution where that vendor could provide inpatient, outpatient, emergency department, perioperative and revenue cycle management with the caveat that we would not implement everything at once. IT performed an initial pass to determine which vendors could support an institution like ours and provided the selection committee with three finalists to choose from. The actual selection committee was very heavy on clinical and operational leaders and had very few IT people on it. After evaluating the three finalists we decided that Epic was the best fit for our organization due to experience with academic medical centers, feature set and robust infrastructure. Q: Many key hospitals in Boston like Lahey Health and Partners HealthCare use or are switching to Epic's EHR. Did the fact other major hospitals and health systems also use Epic play a role in Boston Medical Center's decision to adopt Epic? AH: Not really. We were the first ones of that group to implement Epic, although we knew what was going on around town. The fact that Epic did have a lot of AMC customers across the country that were satisfied was certainly a factor in our decision. Q: Boston Globe reports Boston Medical Center's Epic upgrade cost $100 million. Can you comment on if the implementation was on budget, under budget, over budget, etc. How would you defend this investment to outsiders looking in? AH: We were on budget after taking into account some scope changes that we decided to implement during the project. The real question about doing a project of this size is where will the value come from when you are done? We felt that our project would provide for a better clinician experience, better consistency in our workflows and clinical care, and a platform that better enabled us to analyze data to improve care and operations. Q: Why do you suspect some hospitals' and health systems' implementations go over budget? AH: There are lots of possible reasons for this, although probably the biggest two are difficulty in controlling scope and over-customization. We were fortunate to have very supportive clinical leadership who we involved early and often. This helped us get to a scope and level of customization that we could handle within our budget but still ensured that what we built would take care of the clinicians' key needs. Q: Since May's final go-live, how has the adoption gone? What lingering issues or complaints remain? What benefits have you already started seeing? AH: The adoption of Epic has gone quite well. We have more requests for enhancements than we anticipated, but we have dealt with the majority of the actual defects at this point. In hindsight, we should have been a bit more transparent on our governance on these items so that there was more clarity around what we planned to do next. One of the easiest benefits to see is improved uptime and scalability. We have almost no unplanned downtime at this point, and the system performance is better than many of the solutions that have been replaced. In addition, we are seeing an improvement in the consistency of our data from patient to patient. Q: What are your thoughts/reactions on the end of the meaningful use program? AH: I am mostly interested in what they are going to replace it with. While there were certainly challenges with the actual implementation of MU, it did generate a lot of activity around computerization and standardization. It did put a fairly heavy burden on both health IT vendors and hospital IT staffs. Hopefully we will see changes going forward that encourage meaningful improvements and take into account the difficulty in implementing the changes. Q: Any other thoughts or comments you'd like to share about Boston Medical Center, Epic or health IT? AH: The most important thing in health IT is the people you have doing the job, both the technical folks and the clinicians we work with. We are lucky to have a good, dedicated team here at BMC. The challenge that all of us in health IT face is that there is more demand than supply for these people, turnover is high, and we are struggling to create new health IT professionals. More articles on health IT: CMS' Andy Slavitt hints at the end of MU: 6 things to know athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush administers CPR to man suffering heart attack The new MU: What's next for providers and EHRs Jonathan Samples, cofounder of Carrollton, Ga.-based Across Healthcare, began his career in healthcare nearly 20 years ago, working for a small company that would grow to become Greenway Health, one of the largest ambulatory EHR vendors in the industry today. Mr. Samples recently left Greenway to start Across Healthcare with cofounder Jason Colquitt, both for a change of pace and to be able to offer the industry a solution he saw many companies need. "We looked at the industry and saw there was a tremendous amount of innovation," Mr. Samples says. "There are a lot of different companies that need to advance what they're offering, but one of the problems they run into is there aren't enough people to help them who understand all of healthcare's moving parts and how they fit together." Capitalizing on that niche, the two began Across Healthcare in hopes of offering their expertise to help companies advance at a faster pace, deciding on the name because of their desire to connect companies' needs with solutions and make sure information effectively flows across the compartmentalized parts of the industry. Mr. Samples spoke with Becker's Hospital Review about what's changed in healthcare since his early days with Greenway and the future of Across Healthcare. Question: What kind of solutions do you offer customers? Jonathan Samples: Our typical client is either an EHR company or a company that wants to do business with a health record company, so that might be a clinical research company trying to pull information out of an EHR or communicate information back and forth. Or it may be something as simple as a company that comes to us and says I need an effective way to remind my patients about appointments, whether through text messaging or email or voice reminders. We really engage with those clients and help from a strategy standpoint. One of the services we provide to them is determining which direction they should go in, what technology they should use to get there and what's the best path to get them there. We can come in with those solutions and actually build the product to meet those needs for the client. We have a great team of business analysts, product designers and testers that can really deliver a solution. Our philosophy is take great technology and some really good domain expertise and you'll be able to deliver efficient, higher quality solutions. We're also offering perspective on best practices, trying to identify the best and most efficient mechanism to share data and communicate with these different systems. So we are providing knowledge in how data is stored and structured and what industry standards are. Then there's a lot of real-world expertise in terms of the real-world application versus how those solutions work in theory. Q: What have you seen change in how companies operate since your early days with Greenway Health? JS: One interesting thing is when you're a startup and basically self-funded, you really start asking yourself a lot of questions about exactly what you need to spend money on. We've embraced a lot of open-source software; we've also embraced a lot of cloud infrastructure. Do we need to buy a server or can we just use Microsoft's cloud or Amazon's cloud? As a startup now, I can have a world-class data center at Microsoft or Amazon for less than $100 a month whereas in the past we would've had to built those out and spent millions of dollars in infrastructure investment. Now, a credit card and a couple of clicks I have that same world-class infrastructure replicated on both coasts in just a few minutes. Q: What are Across' plans for the next year? JS: We've got contracts on the table to grow about 30 percent to 40 percent in the next year. We don't really see that slowing down as the word gets out and we're networking more we're seeing that grow because the demand is there. I think a lot of people in healthcare now are starting to look past the a lot regulatory changes and say "OK, we're past that. How do we move our products along where they're more usable and connected?" Those companies are looking for people who can help deliver on those solutions. More articles on health IT: Study assesses CrowdMed's diagnostic-crowdsourcing capability 10 startups to know for 2016 Google-backed UK 'robot doctor' startup nets largest series A funding in Europe's history at $25M The following hospital and health system CEO moves were reported by Becker's Hospital Review in the last week. They are listed below, beginning with the most recent. 1. Chuck Orlando was named interim CEO of Sylvan Grove Hospital in Jackson, Ga., and its sister facility, Griffin, Ga.-based Spalding Regional Hospital. 2. The clinically integrated network established last year by six Michigan health systems named one of its board members, William Mayer, MD, president and CEO. 3. Dan Bonk, CEO of Aspen (Colo.) Valley Hospital, is leaving his post. 4. The National Quality Forum appointed Helen Darling interim president and CEO. 5. Louis Kraml, CEO of Bingham Memorial Hospital in Blackfoot, Idaho, resigned from his post. 6. Rick Toomey, president and CEO of Beaufort (S.C.) Memorial Hospital, will leave his post at the end of 2016. 7. Barnabas Health, based in West Orange, N.J., made several changes and additions to its senior leadership. Joe Hicks, president and CEO of the Barnabas Health Behavioral Health Center and Network, will retire Jan. 31. Deanna Sperling, RN, CNO of Barnabas Health Behavioral Health Center and COO of the Barnabas Health Behavioral Health Network, was named president and CEO of the Barnabas Health Behavioral Health Center in Toms River, N.J. Michael Mimoso, interim president and CEO of Community Medical Center in Toms River, will become the permanent president and CEO. John Brennan, MD, president and CEO of Newark (N.J.) Beth Israel Medical Center and Children's Hospital of New Jersey, has accepted a position with Marietta, Ga.-based WellStar Health System as executive vice president, effective Feb. 5. Darrell Terry Sr., COO of NBIMC and CHoNJ, will serve as interim president and CEO, effective Feb. 5, while a national search is conducted for Dr. Brennan's replacement. 8. Melissa Memorial Hospital in Holyoke, Colo., named Trampas Hutches CEO. 9. Ronald Reed, president and CEO of Mercy Iowa City (Iowa), will retire this year. The fourth Democratic debate in Charleston, S.C., Sunday evening touched on guns, Wall Street and foreign policy. However, since Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) released details of his health plan hours before the debate, it focused heavily on healthcare. Joining Sen. Sanders on the stage was former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley. The debate was hosted by NBC News and YouTube. Here are four takeaways on healthcare from the debate. 1. Affordable Care Act All candidates agreed the ACA has brought about positive change in getting more Americans health insurance coverage. However, while Ms. Clinton and Mr. O'Malley agreed the country needs to build and improve on the ACA by decreasing out-of-pocket costs and capping prescription drug costs, Sen. Sanders stressed there is considerably more work to be done, and wants to address it with a slightly different approach through his newly-released universal healthcare plan. Ms. Clinton accused Sen. Sanders of wanting to "tear up" the ACA. Sen. Sanders responded, "No one is tearing [the ACA] up, we're going to go forward. But what the secretary neglected to mention, not just the 29 million who still have no health insurance, that even more are underinsured with huge copayments and deductibles," he said. "We're not going to tear up the ACA. I helped write it. But we are going to move on top of that to a Medicaid-for- all system." 2. Universal healthcare All candidates backed the idea of universal healthcare. "I am absolutely committed to universal healthcare," Ms. Clinton said. "I have worked on this for a long time, people may remember that I took on the health insurance industry back in the '90s, and I didn't quit until we got the Children's Health Insurance Program that insures 8 million kids." Mr. O'Malley called attention to the all-payer system that has been successful in Maryland. "Instead of attacking one another on healthcare, we should be talking about the things that are actually working. In our state, we have moved to an all-payer system. With the ACA, we now have moved all of our acute care hospitals, that driver of cost at the center, away from fee-for-service...We pay them based on how well they keep patients out of the hospital," he said. "That's the future." Sen. Sanders said universal healthcare is a main tenet of his campaign. "That's what our campaign is about. It is thinking big. It is understanding that in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, we should have healthcare for every man, woman and child as a right," he said. 3. Prescription drug abuse Ms. Clinton proposed a comprehensive approach to put about $1 billion annually toward helping states deal with the opioid and heroin epidemic. She also called for allowing police officers, firefighters and others to be able to administer the antidote drug to heroin overdose. "We have to move away from treating the use of drugs as a crime and instead, move it to where it belongs, as a health issue. And we need to divert more people from the criminal justice system into drug courts, into treatment and recovery," she said. Sen. Sanders agreed addiction should be treated as a disease and implied mental health and addiction treatment would be part of his universal healthcare plan. He also added, "There is a responsibility on the part of the pharmaceutical industry and the drug companies who are producing all of these drugs and not looking at the consequence of it." 4. Financial influence on healthcare policy Both Sen. Sanders and Ms. Clinton agreed the campaign finance system needs to be reformed. "It's because we have a campaign finance system that is corrupt, we have super PACs, we have the pharmaceutical industry pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into campaign contributions and lobbying, and the private insurance companies as well," Sen. Sanders said. "What this is really about is not the rational way to go forward it's Medicare for all it is whether we have the guts to stand up to the private insurance companies and all of their money, and the pharmaceutical industry." Ms. Clinton countered, saying she is also for campaign finance reform, but she believes there are many reasons we have the healthcare system we have today. "I know how much money influences the political decision-making," she said. "That's why I'm for huge campaign finance reform. However, we started a system that had private health insurance. And even during the ACA debate, there was an opportunity to vote for what was called the public option. In other words, people could buy in to Medicare, and even when the Democrats were in charge of the Congress, we couldn't get the votes for that." See the full debate here. More articles on leadership and management: Bernie Sanders releases universal health plan: 6 things to know The 2016 presidential election: 7 thoughts 6 practices of superbosses Mental health officials in Los Angeles are increasingly making use of urgent care centers to treat patients with mental health crises instead of jail beds or psychiatric emergency rooms, according to the Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles County now has five urgent care centers and plans to open four more in the next couple years, according to the report. The centers provide short-term care for patients and can keep them for up to 23 hours. The county's centers accepted more than 27,000 visits last fiscal year, which cost about $28 million, according to the report. The centers are funded with state mental health funding and Medi-Cal, California's Medicaid program. The urgent care centers did take awhile to catch on, according to the Los Angeles Times. Police originally didn't bring patients there because the centers could not accept people with serious medical issues, who are extremely intoxicated or who are aggressive, according to the report. However, after meeting with the contractor that runs three of the county's five centers, police have steadily increased the number of patients they bring to the urgent care centers, according to the report. The trend has lifted some pressure off regular emergency rooms and psychiatric departments, though sometimes people seen at the urgent care centers must be placed in inpatient care, according to the report. One of the best benefits? Families now have access to mental health care on nights and weekends, or whenever a crisis hits. More articles on integration and physician issues: British physicians pause 2nd strike to negotiate Physicians receive less aggressive end-of-life care, study finds 6 statistics on physician satisfaction at work Three Baltimore police officers have been charged in an alleged assault on a juvenile that occurred at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore, according to The Baltimore Sun. Officer Duane Williams Jr., was charged with second-degree child abuse, second-degree assault and misconduct in office. He was suspended without pay. Officer Bijay Ranabhat was charged with misconduct in office, and Officer Lonnie White Jr., was charged with perjury and misconduct in officer. They were both suspended with pay. Police said the alleged assault occurred more than a year ago on Jan. 14, 2015, but no further details were released by police or prosecutors, according to the report. More articles on healthcare industry lawsuits: California hospital to pay $3.2M to resolve Stark Law allegations Former medical director awarded $1.5M in lawsuit against Missouri hospital 7 latest healthcare industry lawsuits, settlements News coverage from Israel is often distorted if measured against the 'Code of Ethics' guidelines of journalism. The origins of bad news about a country thus lie with numerous foreign media. This project exposes one of many methods used.Bad News from the Netherlands has raised major international interest since it appeared on the web in October 2007. Many thanks are due to all those who have contributed news, ideas and financing. Support us to expand this project.Act against the biased media: start a bad news blog about another country. If you want to use this layout, please contact us at the e-mail address below. Do It Yourself The "Bad News Movement" is not a franchise, but consists of independent initiatives of which Bad News from the Netherlands is the first. Yet as the initiator of the movement, we would like to make a few suggestions to those who want to establish similar projects: 1. Always keep in mind the target of the blog: showing only negative items about a country makes its society aware of how some of their media distort the image of Israel. 2. Focus on items from leading sources such as the government, major media, well-known institutions. 3. Do not concentrate on one or a few areas. Deal with as many major aspects of the country as possible: government, politics, justice, media, culture, civil society, etc. 4. Do not exaggerate issues beyond what is mentioned. A collection of bad news is bad enough without blowing up the facts. Let the facts speak for themselves. 5. While one can draw part of the information from the more sensational papers, let them not dominate the blog. 6. Do not emphasize ethnicity of people where it is irrelevant to the issue. 7. When necessary, provide comments on issues which require it, but try to present the majority of issues without comment. David H. Newman, MD, a prominent emergency room physician at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, has been arrested and charged with sexually abusing two female patients, according to The New York Times. In one case, Dr. Newman is accused of drugging a 29-year-old female patient and then grabbing her breasts and ejaculating on her body. The woman told authorities she went to the emergency room at Mount Sinai Jan. 12 for shoulder pain. She said nurses gave her pain pills and a shot of morphine and then Dr. Newman came into her room and gave her another shot of morphine. She told investigators she felt Dr. Newman grab her breasts and then ejaculate on her body while she was slipping in and out of consciousness, according to the report. On Saturday, a second woman came forward with accusations against Dr. Newman. She told investigators Dr. Newman groped her breasts on Sept. 21 when she went to the emergency room with a cold. Dr. Newman was charged with sexual abuse and forcible touching in connection with the January incident and charged with sexual abuse in connection with the September episode. Mount Sinai issued a statement to The New York Times saying Dr. Newman has been suspended from the hospital and that he has not provided patient care since the investigation began. Dr. Newman is a well-known physician who has been featured in publications such as the Wall Street Journal. The 45-year-old physician published a book "Hippocrates Shadow: Secrets From the House of Medicine" in 2008, and he gave a TED talk called "Truth That Lasts" in 2012, according to the Washington Post. More articles on healthcare industry lawsuits: 3 police officers charged in connection with juvenile assault at Baltimore hospital California hospital to pay $3.2M to resolve Stark Law allegations Former medical director awarded $1.5M in lawsuit against Missouri hospital Downers Grove, Ill-based Advocate Health Care and Evanston, Ill.-based NorthShore University HealthSystem plan to join forces and create the largest health system in the state. However, that plan was put on hold in late 2015, when the Federal Trade Commission got involved. In 2014, the two health systems unveiled plans to come together and create a new health system called Advocate NorthShore Health Partners, which would include more than 4,000 hospital beds and employ more than 45,000 workers. Although Advocate and NorthShore say the merger would lead to cost savings and quality improvements, the FTC disagrees. In December, the FTC authorized action to block the planned NorthShore-Advocate merger, and the Illinois Attorney General joined the FTC in the matter. The two health systems subsequently agreed to temporarily halt the transaction while the FTC conducts its antitrust review. Becker's Hospital Review recently caught up with NorthShore President and CEO Mark Neaman to get his insight on the merger and the challenges to the transaction. Question: What initially sparked partnership discussions between NorthShore and Advocate? Mark Neaman: We, NorthShore and Advocate, had previously discussed partnership options, but it was seeing the rapid transformation of healthcare that prompted us to put those conversations into action. There are things that both of our systems do really well, and we saw the opportunity to bring our strengths together to improve the health of the communities we serve. Our merger and the creation of Advocate NorthShore Health Partners align with the goals of the Affordable Care Act to deliver better outcomes at lower costs. It creates a merged entity that can absorb risk and support the broad geographic coverage essential for employers and insurers. Maintaining the status quo has driven our healthcare system into its current state, and it will take new delivery models and ways of looking at healthcare to change it. Q: What are the main goals of the proposed NorthShore-Advocate merger? MN: We believe that by bringing together our two organizations, we will lower costs and expand access to care throughout the area. ANHP will add to the diversity and competition within the Chicago healthcare market as we introduce a delivery model, in concert with insurers, that will improve outcomes while making care more affordable. At every step, this is a win-win for those who matter most our patients. Q: The FTC argued the combination of NorthShore and Advocate would create an entity that controls the majority of general acute care inpatient hospital services in the combined organization's competitive market. In what ways do you disagree with the FTC's analysis and conclusion regarding market share? MN: First and foremost, the FTC's assumptions regarding the Chicago market are based on an antiquated product model inpatient admissions and a completely gerrymandered area. They've erased some hospitals just a couple of miles away, while ignoring that people travel across a region populated by 8 million people and 75 hospitals for care. The Chicago healthcare market is diverse, expansive and full of competition. ANHP has a combined 22 percent market share in the Chicago area. After nearly 15 months and millions of documents handed over, we received a standard complaint from the FTC a complaint that upholds the status quo and fails to take into account the healthcare environment in which we actually live. ANHP is pro-competition and pro-consumer, and by challenging its creation, we believe the FTC is putting the status quo ahead of what is in the best interests of consumers. Q: You and Jim Skogsbergh, president and CEO of Advocate, will serve as co-CEOs for a period of time if the deal is finalized. What are the main benefits of the co-CEO arrangement? MN: For the first two years after the merger is complete, having two CEOs at the helm for a defined period of time makes the most sense in terms of the work that will need to be done. Jim and I both know our organizations, and the marketplace, well. Bringing our collective institutional knowledge to the table will be important in ensuring a smooth transition from two systems to one. One man was killed and a woman was injured outside Escondido, Calif.-based Palomar Medical Center when an 89-year-old suddenly accelerated his car while driving past the hospital entrance, according to CBS 8. John Marin, age 89, was driving a 2000 Toyota Tacoma by the hospital entrance Jan. 16. He abruptly accelerated and hit two people James Donaldson and Elena Cendejas. Mr. Donaldson, age 63, had been treated at PalomarMedicalCenter for another ailment and was being pushed in a wheelchair when Mr. Marin hit him. One witness, Ken Johnson, claimed Mr. Donaldson was dragged 100 feet before Mr. Marin stopped, according to Fox 5 San Diego. Mr. Donaldson died from collision injuries. Ms. Cendejas, age 67, was pushing Mr. Donaldson in the wheelchair when she was hit. Although she was injured, she is in stable condition at Palomar Medical Center. Mr. Marin, the driver, was not injured and has not been charged at this time. Police are still investigating the collision. More news and analysis: Bernie Sanders releases universal health plan: 6 things to know Planned Parenthood files lawsuit over undercover abortion videos Week in review: 12 biggest healthcare stories this week To continue following the latest news and information for Bedfordshire and surrounding areas, simply enter your full postcode below Strong bidding is expected on a landmark office building in Belfast's Titanic Quarter, which has gone on sale with a guide price of 29m. Titanic Quarter's decision to put its Gateway building on the market makes it the biggest office asset to come on the market in a decade. The Grade A office is home to a service centre for Citibank employing nearly 2,000 people. CBRE managing director Brian Lavery said: "The Gateway Offices is the largest office investment offered to the market in the last decade. It is one of the most prominent office buildings in Belfast and with prime rents expected to increase from 16 per sq ft to 18 per sq ft in 2016, it presents a great investment and asset management opportunity for investors to capitalise on a buoyant office sector." He said there was a lack of Grade A office space for potential new employers. "As a consequence, we expect strong bidding for the Gateway Office investment and anticipate it to be the first major sale of 2016." Titanic Quarter commercial director James Eyre described the Gateway offices as "an excellent investment opportunity". Loans held by Titanic Quarter in Ulster Bank were last year sold to the US fund Davidson Kempner, which is likely to be looking to extract value from its acquisition. Last year, Invest NI announced plans to provide mezzanine financing to property developers building Grade A offices. The threat of withdrawal from the EU by the UK is the "biggest cloud on the horizon" for food and drink firms in Northern Ireland, it has been claimed. Representatives from the sector have called for more debate on the issue of a 'Brexit' later this year. Farmers are also concerned that the UK government would not make up for the loss of subsidies from Europe in the event of the UK voting to leave the EU. Michael Bell, director of the Northern Ireland Food and Drink Association (NIFDA) said he was "very concerned" over what he said was a lack of debate over the impact Brexit would have on Northern Ireland. And he said the sector was also in need of an export marketing body. "We have enjoyed steady and sustained growth within the local food and drink industry over the past 10 years, and the outlook is positive as we aim to create a further 15,000 jobs within the sector by 2020. "This planned expansion will be greatly accelerated by the creation of a dedicated export marketing body, which would help local companies to access new markets." But he added: "The biggest cloud on the horizon is the 'Brexit'. "The EU is a major export market for us, and we would have concerns that a 'Brexit' could potentially hinder growth potential for the local industry." Food and drink is Northern Ireland's biggest manufacturing sector, with sales of over 4.5m. Around 100,000 jobs are supported by the sector, including farming, retail and distribution, and fishing. Analysis by think-tank the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) in the Republic last year suggested business in Northern Ireland and along the border would be worst hit by a Brexit. Michael Bell discussed the impact of a Brexit on the sector during an event hosted by Danske Bank. The bank is holding the 'Advantage' series of talks to give clients the opportunity to hear from leading lights in industry sectors. Chief executive Kevin Kingston said: "Food and drink is a sector where Northern Ireland punches well above its weight and where the strength of our produce and the innovation of our food and drink companies is leading to success and recognition around the world. "Danske Bank is forecasting growth of around 2% for the food and drink sector over the course of the next year, but we continue to believe the sector has potential to do much more." Dr Edgar Morgenroth, a research professor at ESRI, has said business in Northern Ireland would be worst hit by changes to the export relationship with the Republic in the event of a Brexit. And in an interview with the Belfast Telegraph this month, Agriculture Minister Michelle O'Neill said: "I believe that the people of the North should have their say, but I think Brexit could be bad for agriculture, bad for agri-food." She added: "Sometimes it's easy to say too many European regulations - you can understand where people are coming from, but I don't think that our interests are best served out of Europe. I think our interests are best served in Europe." A forlorn Chinese investor gestures in front of an electronic board showing stock information at a brokerage earlier this month The risk to the world economy posed by slowing Chinese growth cannot be discounted, a Northern Ireland economist has said. China's economic growth edged down to 6.8% in the final quarter of 2015 as trade and consumer spending weakened, dragging full-year growth to its lowest level in 25 years. The slowdown has led the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to cut its growth forecasts for the next two years. In its latest World Economic Outlook, the IMF predicted world growth of 3.4% this year, followed by 3.6% in 2017. This is a cut in growth of 0.2% in each year from when the agency published its last forecasts during October. Growth has fallen steadily over the past five years as China's Communist Party has tried to steer away from a worn-out model based on investment and trade toward self-sustaining growth driven by domestic consumption and services. A number of Northern Ireland companies have targeted China for growth, with economic development agency Invest NI leading a trade mission there last year. A spokeswoman for the agency said there were still opportunities for firms in China. "Exporting is important to a company's continued success and to the growth of the Northern Ireland economy," they added. "But exporting also has its challenges, and unfortunately can be impacted by global conditions outside of anyone's control. "Invest NI will always encourage companies to undertake full due diligence and analysis before entering any market, and while conditions in China currently appear challenging, there still remain opportunities for those businesses with the right products to meet China's consumer demands." The spokeswoman also said there were plans for Invest NI to lead another trade mission to China this year. Portadown bakery Irwin's has announced a deal to supply Irish biscuits to a Chinese supermarket, and meat firms Karro and Dunbia are to send pork products to the Asian country. But David Dobbin, chief executive of Dale Farm, warned that falling demand in China has already hit its bottom line. PwC chief economist Esmond Birnie said Northern Ireland exports to China had reached around 90m in 2013-14, the most recent figures available, with around 25m being sent to Hong Kong every year. "Whilst the 6.5%-plus rate still looks very impressive, it is well below the trend and many commentators think the "true" rate of underlying expansion is much lower," he added. "This matters for the West, given that China has been such a driver for total global demand." He said the value of exports to China meant that it was a "not insubstantial" market for Northern Ireland and added: "The real big issue is whether turbulence in China, allied to the financial impact of a very low oil price, could tip world trade and growth back into recession. That grim possibility is not an inevitability but cannot be discounted." The IMF kept its forecasts for the UK economy unchanged at 2.2% this year and in 2017. Chancellor George Osborne said the UK faced a "dangerous cocktail of new threats", including recessions in Brazil and Russia and rising Middle East tensions. Levis 501 jeans cost on average 46% more for women than for men Retailers could be called to Parliament to face questioning after research suggested high street stores are charging up to twice as much for products aimed at women than men. The women's rights charity, The Fawcett Society, has accused stores of a "sexist rip-off". Analysis of hundreds of products found the cost of clothes, beauty products and toys for females are routinely higher than equivalent items pitched at males. In one case, Tesco charges double the price for 10 disposable razors which are pink. And women's Levi's 501 jeans were found to cost an average of 46% more than men's, despite having the same waist and leg length. The investigation by The Times newspaper follows a similar probe in the United States last year which also uncovered major discrepancies in pricing of products aimed at men and women. The British study found that children's scooters were 5 more expensive in pink than in blue. And online retailer Amazon was selling a Playmobil pirates ship for 12.59, while the female-oriented 'fairy queen' ship cost 14.99. Maria Miller, chairwoman of the Women and Equalities Committee, said: "Retailers need to explain how they can be charging such different prices for items which look identical. "This is just the sort of thing the committee can consider and make sure that in this instance retailers are made to account for what appears to be price discrimination based on sex." She added: "I think many women will understand the point that is being made, particularly when it comes to clothing and toiletries. "Sometimes the difference in price is noticeable, but I think an independent piece of research like this, an investigative piece of journalism, has really shone a spotlight on how widespread this problem appears to be." Glyn Roberts, chief executive of the Northern Ireland Independent Retail Trade Association said: "It's the first time that we have come across something like this. "As a rule of thumb, this sort of thing shouldn't be the case, regardless of who it's sold to. I can only speak for independent retailers - what the multiples do is another matter. "It's an accepted principle that the product sold to any gender should be the same price." The group that represents major stores here, the Northern Ireland Retail Consortium, did not comment. Across all products with different prices, those pitched at women were 37% higher on average, according to The Times. Sam Smethers, chief executive of the Fawcett Society, said: "These findings are shocking because they show just how systematic it is across the retail industry. "They didn't just find one or two examples. Some are targeted at adults, some at children, it includes clothing, toiletries and so on - it really is a wide range of products, and they found a 37% mark-up on average for products that were marketed as being for women or for girls. It is a big rip-off. It is a sexist rip-off and we have all just got to see through it and start demanding something different." Tesco told The Times: "A number of products for females have additional design and performance features. We constantly review our pricing policy." French tyre giant Michelin has said that it is not currently in discussions with the drinks firm Bushmills over future use of its site. According to reports, Bushmills had visited the Ballymena site of Michelin with a view to using it when the company leaves in 2018. But a spokeswoman for Michelin said: "Michelin is not in any ongoing discussions with Bushmills or any other company." The firm announced in November that it would be withdrawing from Ballymena, with the loss of 860 jobs. It pointed to falling sales and the high cost of doing business in Northern Ireland - particularly steep energy prices - as factors behind the decision. It was another setback for Ballymena after tobacco giant JTI Gallaher's announced that it would be closing with the loss of around 500 jobs in 2017. And the company spokeswoman said: "Michelin is currently going through a 90 day consultation period following the previous announcement that our Ballymena factory will be wound down in 2018. "The focus of the business at this present moment in time is purely on the wellbeing of our staff and exploring all options to help them find new employment when the time comes." DUP North Antrim MLA Ian Paisley said that JTI Gallaher's site on Galgorm Road had also received visits from companies interested in carrying out production on it. He added: "I welcome the idea of any company expanding or opening in my constituency and I'd actively encourage anyone who's looking at either of these sites." Bushmills - which is now owned by Jose Cuervo in Mexico - has filed a planning application for expansion of its existing site in the Co Antrim village. The outside of the Hampton Hilton hotel in Liverpool Belfast is to get a new hotel brand, as Hampton by Hilton sets up in the city centre. The new, three-star brand - similar in style to Jurys Inn - is to set up in Hope Street in the latest opening by hotel mogul Lord Rana. City councillors approved plans for the proposed 179-room hotel on Hope Street at last night's planning meeting. Lord Rana also operates a Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Hotel Ibis, Ramada Plaza and serviced Cordia apartments in the city, through his Andras House operation. News of the new arrival - a sister of the Hilton Hotel, of which there are two, in Belfast and Templepatrick - came at a presentation by commercial property agents CBRE. Janice Gault, head of the Northern Ireland Hotels Federation, described Hampton by Hilton as a "strong product slotting into the three to four star category with a good reputation. Hilton now has 13 brands and Hampton by Hilton has had a very successful rollout in the UK and the USA. "It's good to have new brands in town, as it increases interest in the city." CBRE head of research, Marie Hunt, said the hotel sector in Northern Ireland had enjoyed a busy year in 2015, with 75m worth of deals in which 10 hotels were sold. The hotels sold included Co Fermanagh's Lough Erne Resort and Belfast's Fitzwilliam Hotel, sold for around 6m and 17m respectively. But she said the present volume of new hotels proposed for Belfast - up to 20 are in planning - could result in oversupply. "We are urging caution, as there is potential for oversupply if all hotel schemes in the planning process materialise." Ms Gault said Belfast was expected to have around 1,000 new bedrooms by the end of 2018 from current levels - an increase of around 25%. But she said there could be demand for the rooms as Belfast redoubled efforts to find new business in the conference and meeting sector. Plans were submitted last year for a 179-bedroom development next to Lord Rana's newly refurbished and branded Holiday Inn business on Hope Street, formerly Days Hotel. He told the Belfast Telegraph in October: "We have an international franchise. I am not at liberty to disclose the name at this stage, but it's a very well-known international brand." Paul Collins, head of brokerage in the hotels division of CBRE Ireland, said Lord Rana showed flexibility in his approach to hotel brands. "Lord Rana is a great believer in international brands and he remains flexible on which brands to choose. "He has InterContinental Hotels Group hotels (the Holiday Inn Expresses), an Accor Hotel (the Ibis) and the Ramada. "In summary, he chooses the appropriate brand for the appropriate property and location." Building work will start on other new hotels in Belfast in 2016 including Hastings Hotels' Grand Central at the former Windsor House, and the Hill family's Bedford Hotel behind the City Hall. Beannchor Group will also begin its second Belfast hotel, the Bullitt at the former Lagan House. About Me Bagsy Born Beeston, Notts 1946, my family moved to Dorset 1959. Joined the Royal Navy age 15 years and 50 days serving 10 years. In frigates firstly then over 5 years in the Submarine Service as a Seaman/Diver, reaching the dizzy heights of Leading Seaman, before leaving to join the Merchant Service, working in Ocean Salvage and Harbour Tugs, passenger / cargo ships, trials vessels, etc. Qualified as Mate (Chief Officer) in 1976 and as Master (Captain) in 1978. For my final 20 years of 47 I worked in the Offshore Oil Industry initially on the drilling rig Stena Hunter, then the accommodation barge Borgland Dolphin and finally the Floating Production Platform Buchan Alpha. On the rigs I forged a number of long lasting friendships several of whom shared some of my extensive travels. Setting foot on Caymen, Bermuda, Bahamas and The Azores in March 2013 brought my countries / autonimous regions total to 148. The best, undoubtedly, was Antarctica, followed by Australia, Mongolia, Belize, Zimbabwe, China and Madagascar, in no particular order. Love to all our readers, your in my thoughts. Bagsy View my complete profile Kristina Rihanoff after she was evicted from the Celebrity Big Brother house. Only 10 housemates remain in the Celebrity Big Brother house after Kristina Rihanoff was evicted and David Bowie's ex wife, Angie, walked out. The 66-year-old former model departed the show due to illness - she is the third celebrity to quit and pack her bags. After demanding an exit from the show on Monday's programme, in the diary room she yelled and insisted: "Get me a car and let me be gone, if you want to be cheap get me an Uber," and "I want to leave now! Get me my stuff! Give me my stuff! Now!" Spending the night in the spare bedroom, the next day before quitting Bowie saw the doctor, spruced herself up, and when she rejoined the others told them she had a temperature of 103F (39C). In the diary room Bowie said on her departure: "I am so sorry that I got sick and so very very sorry to have to leave the show. Just now they said the sweetest thing 'stay here we will look after you don't leave'. "Bye bye everyone - see you." A Channel 5 spokesman said: "After being unwell for a few days, Angie Bowie has decided to leave the Celebrity Big Brother house." Bowie had originally decided to stay in the house following the news that her former husband had died of cancer. On Monday American producer David Gest also quit due to medical reasons - he joined Kim Kardashian's good friend Jonathan Cheban, who left last week, citing its "bad vibe". Dancer Kristina, joined Nancy Dell'Olio and Winston McKenzie in being voted off the show by viewers. The pregnant Strictly Come Dancing star was visibly happy at being booted out of this year's programme, saying "yes" as the result was announced. Talking after her eviction the 38-year-old Russian said: "I am over the moon; it was all I have been praying for in the last few days. "The arguments became so vicious - it is not my cup of tea at all. I am really happy to leave; it is the right moment because it was getting very difficult for me." Danniella Westbrook, John Partridge and Tiffany Pollard, who were also facing eviction, were all saved by the public. Blur's Damon Albarn will appear at the Royal Festival Hall in June Music with Damon Albarn, fashion from Vivienne Westwood and poems by Simon Armitage form a new programme of events marking the First World War centenary. Part of the spectacular sea of ceramic poppies at the Tower of London will also feature when it goes on display at St Magnus Cathedral in Orkney to commemorate the Battle of Jutland. The events will be based around the anniversary of the Battle of the Somme and are put together by 14-18 NOW, the UK's official arts programme to commemorate the Great War. The programme involves 140 artists, 80 new artworks, and will include events in all parts of the UK with organisers hoping it will be enjoyed by as many as 20 million people. Highlights include Blur frontman Albarn who will appear when the Africa Express project presents the Syrian National Orchestra for Arabic Music with guests at the Royal Festival Hall on June 25. Africa Express brings together musicians from different cultures, genres and generations in a bid to break boundaries and offer a new perspective on Africa and its music. The Syrian National Orchestra for Arabic Music first appeared with Albarn in Damascus in 2008 before featuring on a Gorillaz record and later joining the group on a world tour which included shows in Syria and Lebanon. Albarn said: "We're so used to seeing Syria through the prism of news, which is entirely a negative thing. This concert will give a completely different perspective. "It's a truly miraculous sound they create. There's a whole choir, there's strings, there's soloists, there's amazing percussion. It's a really dynamic and joyous sound." A key theme of the programme is the changing role of women, and an exhibition called Fashion & Freedom at Manchester Art Gallery will see leading female fashion designers - including Westwood and Roksanda - explore the impact this shift had on fashion at the time. It was when women "lost the corset and gained the bra", according to Jenny Waldman, director of 14-18 NOW. There will be new poetry by Simon Armitage reflecting on the Somme, presented as part of the Norfolk & Norwich Festival. Armitage is choosing around six photographs from a collection of 100,000 at the Imperial War Museum and he will base his writing on those images. Elsewhere, the poppy sculpture Weeping Window from the installation Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red - by ceramic artist Paul Cummins and designer Tom Piper - seen by millions at the Tower of London, will go in display in Orkney from April 22 to June 12. This visit is part of an expanded UK-wide tour, and the sculptures will also be presented in Lincoln Castle, Caernarfon Castle and the Black Watch Museum, Perth. Ms Waldman said: "An incredible range of artists have created new works that bring the stories of the First World War to life, and show how this global conflict still affects the world today." Sam Smith said he felt 'like I have to shine some sort of light on it' Sam Smith has said he was left "speechless" after a friend was allegedly racially abused. The singer, who has been nominated for the best original song Oscar for James Bond theme Writing's On The Wall , said he never thought such a thing would happen in London. He told his four million Twitter followers that he felt he had to "shine some sort of light on it". It is unclear what exactly happened and Smith, 23, does not refer to a precise time or location. In a series of tweets, he wrote: "Just experienced my friend getting verbally abused racially in London. I am absolutely SPEECHLESS. "I never ever ever ever thought that would happen here. Absolutely speechless and hurt. "I feel like I have to shine some sort of light on it. The police were so unhelpful in the situation and its deeply shocked me. "Humans are HUMANS. "I feel like I have to say something. I'm just so upset. So UPSET." A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said they were "aware" of the tweets, but were unable to comment further. Sir Elton John has revealed he is going to scale back his touring to spend more time with his children. The singer, who has two sons with his husband David Furnish, said he does not like being away from his family for long periods of time. And he said he will be doing "fewer gigs in the future" to ensure he can be home with his two sons, three year-old Elijah and five year-old son Zachary, who has just started school. He told BBC Radio 4's Front Row that he tries to juggle his touring schedule around parenting. He said: "It's all based around the half terms now, and Zachary has started school, he started in September, half term has just finished. He is back at school now. "He came to Toronto, but he came to LA, New York and Las Vegas, and I saw him there. They love travelling, they are used to it because they travelled when they were babies. "But yes it is all based around half terms now. "I am going away to Japan and Australia and various places for like five weeks and it is going to be very hard, I have never been away from them for that long. I will never be away from them for as long again." Sir Elton, whose 33rd album Wonderful Crazy Night is out next month, said he will be doing "fewer gigs in the future". And talking about fatherhood, he added: "I love doing the school run. Yesterday I picked him up at 3.10pm and I love that, it is part of my life now. "They know what I do, they understand it, but while I'm away David will be here and he will be parenting and they will always have somebody to read them a story at 6.30 at night every night. "When you have children they become the most important thing, it all revolves around them." Lord Justice Weir issued the ultimatum after it emerged that disclosure of the documents on the killing of Sean Brown had been delayed again - this time due to "inconsistencies" in how the papers have been security-checked A judge has ordered police to hand over files required for an inquest into the death of a murdered GAA official. Lord Justice Weir issued the ultimatum after it emerged that disclosure of the documents on the killing of Sean Brown had been delayed again - this time due to "inconsistencies" in how the papers have been security-checked. A review hearing of the stalled inquest was told that names blanked out in one document were not redacted in others. Mr Brown (61) was abducted and shot by loyalist terrorists after locking up a GAA club in Bellaghy, Co Londonderry, in May 1997. The RUC investigation into the murder has been subject to heavy criticism from both the Police Ombudsman and the now defunct cold case review unit, the Historical Enquiries Team. Judge Weir, who is conducting a review of 56 outstanding legacy inquests held up in the Coroner's Court, delivered a damning critique of the PSNI's approach to disclosure after being informed of the latest problem. After hearing that Coroners Service lawyers had spotted the issue, Lord Justice Weir questioned whether the police could be "bothered" to do the work properly. He told a lawyer representing the PSNI that it was not the Coroners Service's job to "mark your homework". "Redaction is supposed to be taken seriously," he said. "That means redaction on one page should be the same on the next page. Redactions should not vary depending of the state of digestion of the person carrying it out on any one day." Issuing a two-week deadline for the handover of 34 files deemed non-sensitive, the judge made clear that he would not tolerate further delay. "This isn't a place where people come in and do things at their own speed," he said. "They do them when I say they are to be done." Martin Wolfe QC, representing the PSNI, said that he would work to resolve the inconsistencies. "I will put my shoulder to the wheel to ensure it is done," he added. In regard to "sensitive" case files, Mr Wolfe said he would aspire to complete their disclosure by early summer. Judge Weir, noting that he had to compile a report on his review exercise for Lord Chief Justice Declan Morgan, again responded in strong terms. "I don't think he (Sir Declan) will want to hear much from me about your aspirations," he told Mr Wolfe. "He will want me to tell him what you are going to do." Karen Quinlivan QC, representing Mr Brown's family, said the disclosure issues in the case were "symptomatic" of the problems besetting many of the outstanding legacy inquests. She claimed the PSNI "ignored" previous deadlines for disclosure issued by now retired senior coroner John Leckey. "This is one of the features (of the legacy cases) - the PSNI make commitments which they do not fulfil, routinely," she added. Mr Brown's son Damian was among other family members watching proceedings from the public gallery at Laganside Courts in Belfast. Afterwards he said he would wait to assess if the judge's order brought progress. "We'll just have to wait and see," he added. The family's solicitor, Niall Murphy of KRW Law, said the handover order represented a "massive step forward". "That we stand here, so many years on, not having received a scintilla, a single page, of evidence from the police, to now be told that the police are ordered to comply with a High Court judicial direction, is very welcome indeed," he insisted. PSNI officers and forensic officers investigate. Police have said that the roads will remain closed for the next few hours. Photo: Kirth Ferris/Pacemaker Press PSNI officers and forensic officers investigate. Police have said that the roads will remain closed for the next few hours. Photo: Kirth Ferris/Pacemaker Press PSNI officers and forensic officers investigate. Police have said that the roads will remain closed for the next few hours. Photo: Kirth Ferris/Pacemaker Press PSNI officers and forensic officers investigate. Police have said that the roads will remain closed for the next few hours. Photo: Kirth Ferris/Pacemaker Press Collect picture of Eddie Girvan, the 70-year-old man found dead in his Station Road home in Greenisland last night. Pacemaker Belfast 19/01/2016 PSNI officers and forensic officers investigate. Police have said that the roads will remain closed for the next few hours. Photo: Kirth Ferris/Pacemaker Press Collect picture of Eddie Girvan, the 70-year-old man found dead in his Station Road home in Greenisland last night. Pacemaker Belfast 19/01/2016 Pictured is police officers and forensics at the scene of an incident on Station Road in Greenisland on January 19, 2016 ( Photo by Kevin Scott ) Collect picture of Eddie Girvan, the 70-year-old man found dead in his Station Road home in Greenisland last night. Pacemaker Belfast 19/01/2016 Pictured is police officers and forensics at the scene of an incident on Station Road in Greenisland on January 19, 2016 ( Photo by Kevin Scott) Police officers and forensics at the scene of an incident on Station Road in Greenisland on January 19, 2016 (Photo by Kevin Scott) The discovery of a 67-year-old man's body in his Greenisland home on Monday night was sparked by a strange sequence of events, the Belfast Telegraph has learned. The dead man has been named as Eddie Girvan, who lived at Station Road in the Co Antrim town. The pensioner was found dead in a chair on the ground floor of his property, with his hands tied and with a stab wound to the chest. The discovery was made after police entered the property on Monday night at around 9.30pm. They had gone directly to the house after earlier arresting a person in Belfast on what is believed to have been an unrelated matter. Enquiries with the arrested person then prompted police to visit Mr Girvan's address. When officers got to the pensioner's home they found the doors locked. After gaining entry, they found Mr Girvan dead in the chair, the victim of a brutal attack. A post mortem is expected to determine the time of death. Three people, including a 29-year-old woman and two men, aged 23 and 24, have been arrested in Belfast on suspicion of murder. They are being interviewed at Musgrave police station in Belfast. Locals say Eddie Girvan is the father of Belfast-born actress and assistant director Amanda Girvan, who appeared in TV series Give My Head Peace and I Fought the Law. Mr Girvan was said to be a very private man who collected antiques. According to neighbours he collected Rolex watches and other valuable antiques including old guns, but the police insist robbery is not a line of inquiry they are pursuing. Mr Girvan had a number of CCTV cameras around his property, in the porch and in an upstairs bedroom. The PSNI also want to trace the movements of Mr Girvan's silver Hyundai car, which was seen driving dangerously towards Belfast and was later found in the Verner Street area of the city. Detective Chief Inspector John McVea is the officer leading the investigation. He said: "A post mortem examination will take place to confirm the exact cause of Mr Girvan's death. However, I can confirm that, at this time, we are treating his death as murder. "An incident such as this is unusual for a community like Greenisland and I am appealing to local people for their assistance. "Detectives are making house to house enquiries because we need to speak to those local people who knew Eddie Girvan and saw him in the past few days. "I also want to hear from anyone who saw or heard any activity at Mr Girvan's home at 162 Station Road over the past weekend until Monday morning around 7am." The detective added: "My final appeal point is about Eddie Girvan's car, a silver Hyundai Sonata, registration number MKZ 9818. I need to hear from anyone who saw this silver car any time over the weekend, either in Greenisland or Belfast until it was recovered in the Verner Street area of the city in the early hours of Tuesday morning. "We know it was spotted being driven dangerously along the motorway between Rathcoole and Belfast. "This is a shocking crime and our sympathies today are with Mr Girvan's family and friends. "It is too early to say why Mr Girvan was killed. Anyone with information is asked to contact detectives at Seapark on the non-emergency number 101. Alternatively, anyone who does not want to provide their details can phone the independent charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111." The community in Greenisland has been left in shock following the murder. Just a few doors up the street from Mr Girvan's house is the Hairways salon belonging to Julie Bell. She said she heard the news yesterday morning and could not believe it, as Eddie regularly came into her salon for a coffee. "I spoke to Eddie last Wednesday," said Julie. "He always came in here for a coffee and a chat. I can't believe anyone would do this. "He was a character and has been living here for over 40 years. It is desperate this has happened in such a quiet area. "Eddie was separated and has two daughters. He was very nice but also very lonely. "His cat, Sam, would always come here to be fed and would sleep here most of the day. He used to be a plumber but hasn't worked in years. "I simply cannot believe he is gone. It is very sad indeed." Another neighbour, who did not wish to be named, said the police were at Mr Girvan's house last week. However, the PSNI would not confirm this. Alliance MLA Stewart Dickson said he was shocked by the death of Mr Girvan, a man he knew well. Mr Dickson said: "This stretch of road is a quiet residential area and this death will stun people there. I am very shocked and saddened by this incident, particularly as I knew the deceased well, as did many people in the area. This death will be hard to fathom for the whole community. My deepest condolences are with this poor man's family and friends at this most traumatic of times. "I would appeal to anyone with information on this sad incident to contact police immediately." Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square, London is lit green by Tourism Ireland in celebration ahead of St Patrick's Day. Matt Alexander/PA Wire . A woman enjoys the day at the Mayor of London's St Patrick's Day Parade and Festival in London. Daniel Leal-Olivas/PA Wire. A woman enjoys the day at the Mayor of London's St Patrick's Day Parade and Festival in London. Daniel Leal-Olivas/PA Wire. People dressed up at the Mayor of London's St Patrick's Day Parade and Festival in London. Daniel Leal-Olivas/PA Wire. A participant at the Mayor of London's St Patrick's Day Parade and Festival in London. Daniel Leal-Olivas/PA Wire. People dressed up at the Mayor of London's St Patrick's Day Parade and Festival in London. Daniel Leal-Olivas/PA Wire. A woman waves an Irish flag at the Mayor of London's St Patrick's Day Parade and Festival in London. Daniel Leal-Olivas/PA Wire. A woman waves an Irish flag at the Mayor of London's St Patrick's Day Parade and Festival in London. Daniel Leal-Olivas/PA Wire. People at the Mayor of London's St Patrick's Day Parade and Festival in London. Daniel Leal-Olivas/PA Wire A bystander takes a photo of a elephant float at the Mayor of London's St Patrick's Day Parade and Festival in London. Daniel Leal-Olivas/PA Wire. A mobile figure of St. Patrick at the Mayor of London's St Patrick's Day Parade and Festival in London. Daniel Leal-Olivas/PA Wire. People gather at Trafalgar Square at the Mayor of London's St Patrick's Day Parade and Festival in London. Daniel Leal-Olivas/PA Wire. A girl holds an Irish flag at the front of a band at the Mayor of London's St Patrick's Day Parade and Festival in London. Daniel Leal-Olivas/PA Wire. People celebrate at the Mayor of London's St Patrick's Day Parade and Festival in London. Daniel Leal-Olivas/PA Wire. People celebrate at the Mayor of London's St Patrick's Day Parade and Festival in London. Daniel Leal-Olivas/PA Wire. A group of girls at the Mayor of London's St Patrick's Day Parade and Festival in London. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday March 15, 2015. Daniel Leal-Olivas/PA Wire. A woman waves an Irish flag at the Mayor of London's St Patrick's Day Parade and Festival in London. Daniel Leal-Olivas/PA Wire. People dressed up at the Mayor of London's St Patrick's Day Parade and Festival in London. Daniel Leal-Olivas/PA Wire. Bolivian traditional dancers take part in the Mayor of London's St Patrick's Day Parade and Festival in London. Daniel Leal-Olivas/PA Wire. Retired professional boxer Barry McGuigan at the Mayor of London's St Patrick's Day Parade and Festival in London. Daniel Leal-Olivas/PA Wire. Edinburgh Airport control tower in Scotland illuminated green as it is among more than 100 international landmarks turning green to mark St Patrick's Day. Glasgow's SSE Hydro Arena and Armadillo in Scotland illuminated green as they are among mo Edinburgh Castle in Scotland illuminated green as it is among more than 100 international landmarks turning green to mark St Patrick's Day. SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - MARCH 17: Patrons celebrate St Patrick's Day at the Orient Hotel on March 17, 2015 in Sydney, Australia. March 17th commemorates Saint Patrick and the arrival of Christianity in Ireland, as well as celebrating Irish heritage and culture. (Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images) SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - MARCH 17: Patrons celebrate St Patrick's Day at P.J. O'Brien's Irish pub on March 17, 2015 in Sydney, Australia. March 17th commemorates Saint Patrick and the arrival of Christianity in Ireland, as well as celebrating Irish heritage and culture. (Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images) SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - MARCH 17: Patrons celebrate St Patrick's Day at P.J. O'Brien's Irish pub on March 17, 2015 in Sydney, Australia. March 17th commemorates Saint Patrick and the arrival of Christianity in Ireland, as well as celebrating Irish heritage and culture. (Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images) The Meridian Line at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, south east London, is decorated green by Tourism Ireland to celebrate St Patrick's Day, which is on Tuesday 17th March. The Colosseum in Rome joins Tourism Irelands Global Greening, to celebrate the island of Ireland and St Patrick. Ciara Kelly photographs Gareth Maguire on a mobile phone by the Meridian Line at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, south east London, which is decorated green by Tourism Ireland to celebrate St Patrick's Day, which is on Tuesday 17th March. The iconic Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, illuminated in green as part of Tourism Irelands Global Greening initiative to celebrate the island of Ireland and St Patrick. Cabot Tower on Signal Hill, St Johns, Newfoundland and Labrador (Canada), joins Tourism Irelands Global Greening, to celebrate the island of Ireland and St Patrick. The Allianz Arena, home to Bayern Munich, illuminated in green as part of Tourism Irelands Global Greening initiative, to celebrate the island of Ireland and St Patrick. Kayakers float on the Chicago River after being dyed green ahead of the St. Patrick's Day parade in Chicago, Saturday, March 14, 2015. (AP Photo/Paul Beaty) Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square, London is lit green by Tourism Ireland in celebration ahead of St Patrick's Day, on Tuesday 17th. The Sky Tower in Auckland, New Zealand, illuminated in green as part of Tourism Irelands Global Greening initiative, to celebrate the island of Ireland and St Patrick. SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - MARCH 17: Patrons celebrate St Patrick's Day at the Orient Hotel on March 17, 2015 in Sydney, Australia. March 17th commemorates Saint Patrick and the arrival of Christianity in Ireland, as well as celebrating Irish heritage and culture. (Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images) SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - MARCH 17: Patrons celebrate St Patrick's Day at the Orient Hotel on March 17, 2015 in Sydney, Australia. March 17th commemorates Saint Patrick and the arrival of Christianity in Ireland, as well as celebrating Irish heritage and culture. (Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images) Christ the Redeemer illuminated in green to celebrate the upcoming Irish festivity of Saint Patrick's Day, atop Corcovado hill in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on March 15, 2015. AFP PHOTO / YASUYOSHI CHIBAYASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP/Getty Images The Cibeles Fountain and Palacio de Comunicaciones in Madrid, illuminated in green as part of Tourism Irelands Global Greening initiative, to celebrate the island of Ireland and St Patrick. SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - MARCH 17: Patron celebrate St Patrick's Day at the Harbour View Hotel on March 17, 2015 in Sydney, Australia. March 17th commemorates Saint Patrick and the arrival of Christianity in Ireland, as well as celebrating Irish heritage and culture. (Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images) Coca-Cola London Eye on London's South Bank is lit green by Tourism Ireland to celebrate St Patrick's Day, which is on Tuesday 17th March. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city??s annual spectacular St Patrick??s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city??s annual spectacular St Patrick??s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city??s annual spectacular St Patrick??s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city??s annual spectacular St Patrick??s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city??s annual spectacular St Patrick??s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city?s annual spectacular St Patrick?s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon meets some of the participants. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city?s annual spectacular St Patrick?s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon meets some of the participants. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city??s annual spectacular St Patrick??s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city??s annual spectacular St Patrick??s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city??s annual spectacular St Patrick??s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city?s annual spectacular St Patrick?s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon meets some of the participants. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city??s annual spectacular St Patrick??s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city?s annual spectacular St Patrick?s Day parade and concert. Sandra and Trevor McKeeman Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city??s annual spectacular St Patrick??s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city?s annual spectacular St Patrick?s Day parade and concert. Mayumi Itoh at the parade Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city??s annual spectacular St Patrick??s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city?s annual spectacular St Patrick?s Day parade and concert. Baby Yuji Itoh Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city??s annual spectacular St Patrick??s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city??s annual spectacular St Patrick??s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city??s annual spectacular St Patrick??s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city??s annual spectacular St Patrick??s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city??s annual spectacular St Patrick??s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city??s annual spectacular St Patrick??s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city??s annual spectacular St Patrick??s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city??s annual spectacular St Patrick??s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city??s annual spectacular St Patrick??s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city??s annual spectacular St Patrick??s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city?s annual spectacular St Patrick?s Day parade and concert. Councillor Tierna Cunningham Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city??s annual spectacular St Patrick??s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city??s annual spectacular St Patrick??s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city??s annual spectacular St Patrick??s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city??s annual spectacular St Patrick??s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city??s annual spectacular St Patrick??s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city??s annual spectacular St Patrick??s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city??s annual spectacular St Patrick??s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city??s annual spectacular St Patrick??s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city??s annual spectacular St Patrick??s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city??s annual spectacular St Patrick??s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city??s annual spectacular St Patrick??s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city?s annual spectacular St Patrick?s Day parade and concert. Belfast Lord Mayor with Citybeat?s Stephen Clements and Sara?Neil. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city?s annual spectacular St Patrick?s Day parade and concert. Highland dancers on stage Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city?s annual spectacular St Patrick?s Day parade and concert. Highland dancers on stage Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city?s annual spectacular St Patrick?s Day parade and concert. Irish dancers on stage Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city?s annual spectacular St Patrick?s Day parade and concert. Boyband 'HomeTown' play at Custom house Square Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city?s annual spectacular St Patrick?s Day parade and concert. Boyband 'HomeTown' play at Custom house Square Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city??s annual spectacular St Patrick??s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Pictured from the McCullough school of Irish dance are Ellan Cross and Cora Rose Corry with Naomi McMullan. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Tuesday 17th March 2015 - St Patricks' Day Celebrations 2015 - Belfast Pictured is Ellie and Erin Kane during St Patricks' day celebrations in Belfast that take place in front of a crowed of thousands who have lined the streets amid the celebrations Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Tuesday 17th March 2015 - St Patricks' Day Celebrations 2015 - Belfast Pictured is St Patricks' day celebrations in Belfast that take place in front of a crowed of thousands who have lined the streets amid the celebrations Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Tuesday 17th March 2015 - St Patricks' Day Celebrations 2015 - Belfast Pictured is St Patricks' day celebrations in Belfast that take place in front of a crowed of thousands who have lined the streets amid the celebrations Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Tuesday 17th March 2015 - St Patricks' Day Celebrations 2015 - Belfast Pictured is Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon during St Patricks' day celebrations in Belfast that take place in front of a crowed of thousands who have lined the streets amid the celebrations Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Tuesday 17th March 2015 - St Patricks' Day Celebrations 2015 - Belfast Pictured is St Patricks' day celebrations in Belfast that take place in front of a crowed of thousands who have lined the streets amid the celebrations Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Tuesday 17th March 2015 - St Patricks' Day Celebrations 2015 - Belfast Pictured is St Patricks' day celebrations in Belfast that take place in front of a crowed of thousands who have lined the streets amid the celebrations Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Tuesday 17th March 2015 - St Patricks' Day Celebrations 2015 - Belfast Pictured is St Patricks' day celebrations in Belfast that take place in front of a crowed of thousands who have lined the streets amid the celebrations Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Tuesday 17th March 2015 - St Patricks' Day Celebrations 2015 - Belfast Pictured is St Patricks' day celebrations in Belfast that take place in front of a crowed of thousands who have lined the streets amid the celebrations Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Tuesday 17th March 2015 - St Patricks' Day Celebrations 2015 - Belfast Pictured is St Patricks' day celebrations in Belfast that take place in front of a crowed of thousands who have lined the streets amid the celebrations Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Tuesday 17th March 2015 - St Patricks' Day Celebrations 2015 - Belfast Pictured is St Patricks' day celebrations in Belfast that take place in front of a crowed of thousands who have lined the streets amid the celebrations Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Tuesday 17th March 2015 - St Patricks' Day Celebrations 2015 - Belfast Pictured is St Patricks' day celebrations in Belfast that take place in front of a crowed of thousands who have lined the streets amid the celebrations Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Tuesday 17th March 2015 - St Patricks' Day Celebrations 2015 - Belfast Pictured is St Patricks' day celebrations in Belfast that take place in front of a crowed of thousands who have lined the streets amid the celebrations Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Tuesday 17th March 2015 - St Patricks' Day Celebrations 2015 - Belfast Pictured is St Patricks' day celebrations in Belfast that take place in front of a crowed of thousands who have lined the streets amid the celebrations Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Tuesday 17th March 2015 - St Patricks' Day Celebrations 2015 - Belfast Pictured is St Patricks' day celebrations in Belfast that take place in front of a crowed of thousands who have lined the streets amid the celebrations Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Tuesday 17th March 2015 - St Patricks' Day Celebrations 2015 - Belfast Pictured is St Patricks' day celebrations in Belfast that take place in front of a crowed of thousands who have lined the streets amid the celebrations Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Tuesday 17th March 2015 - St Patricks' Day Celebrations 2015 - Belfast Pictured is St Patricks' day celebrations in Belfast that take place in front of a crowed of thousands who have lined the streets amid the celebrations Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Tuesday 17th March 2015 - St Patricks' Day Celebrations 2015 - Belfast Pictured is Jinxing Lin, Axel Beauvisage during St Patricks' day celebrations in Belfast that take place in front of a crowed of thousands who have lined the streets amid the celebrations Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Tuesday 17th March 2015 - St Patricks' Day Celebrations 2015 - Belfast Pictured is St Patricks' day celebrations in Belfast that take place in front of a crowed of thousands who have lined the streets amid the celebrations Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Tuesday 17th March 2015 - St Patricks' Day Celebrations 2015 - Belfast Pictured is St Patricks' day celebrations in Belfast that take place in front of a crowed of thousands who have lined the streets amid the celebrations Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city?s annual spectacular St Patrick?s Day parade and concert. Boyband 'HomeTown' play at Custom house Square Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city?s annual spectacular St Patrick?s Day parade and concert. Boyband 'HomeTown' play at Custom house Square Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 17th March 2015 - St Patrick's Day Carnival parade and Concert in Belfast city centre. Thousands of people descended on Belfast city centre today (17 March) to enjoy the city??s annual spectacular St Patrick??s Day parade and concert. Organised by Belfast City Council, the family-friendly celebrations were officially started by Lord Mayor Nichola Mallon who led the high-energy carnival parade, created by BEAT Carnival. Picture by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye. Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Tuesday 17th March 2015 - St Patricks' Day Celebrations 2015 - Belfast Pictured is St Patricks' day celebrations in Belfast that take place in front of a crowed of thousands who have lined the streets amid the celebrations Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Tuesday 17th March 2015 - St Patricks' Day Celebrations 2015 - Belfast Pictured is St Patricks' day celebrations in Belfast that take place in front of a crowed of thousands who have lined the streets amid the celebrations Picture - Kevin Scott / Presseye Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Pictured from the McCullough school of Irish dance are Ellan Cross and Cora Rose Corry with Naomi McMullan. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Pacemaker press 17/3/15 Belfast St Patrick's day celebrations. Thousands of people descended on belfast City centre to celebrate St Patricks day. The event organised by the Belfast City Council is a great family day out taking a modern yet traditional look the annual festival. Picture Mark Marlow/pacemaker press Expelled DUP councillor Ruth Patterson has claimed St Patrick was a "former Protestant" as she calls on those planning a flag protest on St Patrick's Day to "re-think" their plans. The former DUP councillor has been a strong supporter of the flag protests since the council voted for its removal from Belfast City Hall in 2012. In November she was expelled from the party over an interview in this newspaper in which she lambasted the party leadership for parachuting junior minister Emma Pengelly into the Assembly seat vacated by Jimmy Spratt. She will now stand against her as an Independent in the South Belfast constituency. In a blog post ahead of the planned flag protest due to take place on St Patrick's Day she said there was no "strategic or political purpose" in the protest. Tricolour has 'nothing to do with St Patrick' When challenged on her change of mind she claimed St Patrick's day was "naked sectarianism." She said the Tricolour has "nothing to do with St Patrick" before claiming he was a former Protestant. She said: "I don't want the Unionist people brought in to a situation whereby they are seen to be the bad guys. "St Patrick's day brings along with it naked sectarianism. We see hordes of marauding youths running around Belfast City Centre Draped in Tricolours. "At the end of the day the Tricolour has nothing to do with St Patrick, St Patrick himself was a former Protestant." When challenged that St Patrick, the Patron Saint of Ireland, lived 1000 years before Protestants existed following the Reformation, she said: "Yes he may have but he was a Christian man in his beliefs. I see him as being a former Protestant." She added: "I've been brought up with understanding St Patrick came from Christian faith and taught the faith throughout the whole of Ireland. "Whilst we want to celebrate St Patrick's Day n Northern Ireland there always seems to be a group of people who hijack the day and turn it into something that it shouldn't be." Flag protest leaflet campaign While she insisted in the interview that she is happy for the weekly Saturday flag protests to continue - she revealed that she did not agree with the Unionist leaflet campaign ahead of the flag protests back in 2012. Up to 40,000 leaflets were distributed in a joint operation carried out by DUP and UUP activists. She said: "I had no part in the leaflets. I certainly did not agree with that in any shape or form. "They came from within the DUP but I can quite categorically say as I sat in our room within city hall I said to my party group under no circumstances will I take anything to do with the production of these leaflets, payment or delivery of these leaflets. "She added: "You cannot lead people to the top of the hill and not go over the top with them. I feel the DUP did that at the time. "I'm very much you lead from the front if your people are prepared to come in behind." Eileen Leslie Greer was awarded a medal and certificate signed by Prime Minister David Cameron at her nursing home A former Queen's University lecturer who was part of Bletchley Park's top secret team of intelligence analysts during the Second World War has been honoured for her role. Eileen Leslie Greer was awarded a medal and certificate signed by Prime Minister David Cameron at her nursing home. The 98-year-old worked at Bletchley Park, the intelligence centre that cracked the German Enigma code and is credited with shortening the war by two to four years. Greer used her talents as a fluent German speaker to help break enemy communication codes. In her early 20s, the linguist had been a lecturer at Queen's University Belfast. While she was working at the university, war broke out and she later explained that this was more serious "than teaching German". With the encouragement of her professor at Queen's, she offered her services to the Government. She became one of the thousands of women who spent their days trying to break the code of German messages. Bletchley Park was cloaked in near complete secrecy and is only popularly known today because of films such as Enigma (2001) and The Imitation Game (2014). Its role was to crack the Nazi communication codes, transmitted through Enigma and Lorenz cipher machines, and then use the information in a way that did not betray to the Germans that their communications had been compromised. Born to an Irish family in London, Ms Greer, known as Leslie, moved to Dublin as a baby with her family. Ms Greer is the daughter of a barrister and the granddaughter of a Trinity College Dublin professor. Now living in a nursing home in Ballsbridge, Dublin, Ms Greer said: "We set up this small group of people who read all the stuff in German and knew what it all meant." They gave their findings to Stuart Milner-Barry, a code-breaking chess player. "The work was on the whole boring," she recalled in her room in St Mary's Home on Pembroke Park, surrounded by books including Seamus Heaney's Open Ground, pastel illustrations by her late husband Patrick, and some family photos. "We had one or two things come in that really got us all on our seats, for instance when something happened that showed the Germans were deciding to start something with Russia, everybody got excited." It was also important to watch for anything relating to north Africa, she said. After the war, Greer continued working for the Foreign Office and was awarded the MBE. "I think it was because I was in South America and the Queen or someone must have thought it was desirable," she said. Mandela Hall could be demolished campaigners fear, after Queen's University Belfast (QUB) announced plans to build a new students' centre. Nearly 3,000 people have signed a petition opposing the redevelopment of one of Northern Ireland's best-known live music venues. Radiohead played one of their biggest secret shows there in the 1990s and Shine nightclub attracted some of dance music's best acts. Michael McFerran, a music lover from Ballymena, Co Antrim, expressed dismay. He said: "Mandela Hall isn't just a venue in the students' union. It's one of the best live music venues in all of Northern Ireland. "Along with the Speakeasy and Bar Sub they have nurtured musical talent in Belfast and beyond for the last few decades and a new students' union building without these venues would be utterly tragic for the musical landscape of the north." Queen's University has placed a tender for an architect-led design team for an integrated student centre. It said: "The project will redevelop the existing Students' Union site to provide a new purpose-built integrated student centre which addresses the identified accommodation needs, providing a stimulating and engaging environment for the undergraduate and postgraduate student population." The brief for the new building envisages a total area of approximately 11,000 metres-squared over a number of floors and the total cost will exceed 24 million. Shine nightclub has hosted scores of famous names. Future Radio 1 presenter Annie Mac attended while she was a student. At one time it was home to one of Belfast's biggest techno nights. In 1997 Radiohead were on the cusp of becoming the biggest band on the planet but held a warm-up gig in the intimate Mandela Hall to try their new material with a small number of lucky fans. Since then the venue has been synonymous with live music. A Change.org petition said: "Please support us to prevent the possible closure of a venue that has hosted massive student club nights, comedy shows, DJ sets, live concerts and everything in between by some of the biggest names in the business." A PSNI spokesman told the Belfast Telegraph that the crimes had happened in the Newtownabbey, Carrickfergus and Antrim areas Men in Northern Ireland have been blackmailed over video footage of them performing sex acts. The victims were duped into recording themselves performing or participating in sex acts and then threatened with their online publication. Some felt so embarrassed by the so-called "sextortion" that they sent money by wire transfer to accounts in west Africa, police said, adding this usually involved a Western Union transfer to an account in the Ivory Coast. A PSNI spokesman told the Belfast Telegraph that the crimes had happened in the Newtownabbey, Carrickfergus and Antrim areas. Detective sergeant Neil Maxwell said there had been an increase in these crimes and they involved men of all ages. He added: "We want anyone who has been the victim of this type of crime to come forward. "Do not feel pressurised into paying money as this is unlikely to resolve the issue. "We are seeing an increase in these types of crime and we can help you. "Finally, don't do anything online that you wouldn't be prepared to do in public. "There is no such thing as privacy on the internet and unfortunately there are criminals out there who are only too willing to exploit people for money." Internet blackmail is increasing across Northern Ireland, with at least two cases reported every week. In the last six months of 2015, detectives dealt with 62 incidents of cyber blackmail, targeting males of all ages. The victims, who range from teenagers to men in their 60s, fell prey to criminal gangs based in Nigeria, the Philippines and Ivory Coast. Scams, which often follow weeks of grooming, involve victims sending indecent or sexually explicit photographs or videos of themselves and then being blackmailed to stop the footage being released to family or friends. The issue of online blackmail hit the headlines last June when Co Tyrone teenager Ronan Hughes took his own life after what his family described as a "relentless" campaign of bullying by a Nigerian gang. The 17-year-old, from Clonoe near Coalisland, was duped into posting intimate photos online after receiving pictures of a girl. He was then blackmailed for 3,000 by criminals who threatened to upload the images to his friends' Facebook pages. Other cases reported to police since June include a 46-year-old man who was asked to pay 300 to a crime gang in Nigeria, an 18-year-old man who was blackmailed for 300 by someone in the Philippines, and a 28-year-old man who was asked for 9,000 (6,600) by an extortionist traced to Africa. Sinn Fein's Gerry Kelly may be called to give evidence at the inquest into Gareth O'Connor's death, a Coroner's Court has heard. The MLA could be asked to explain enquiries he made about alleged IRA involvement in the murder of the father-of-two. Mr O'Connor (24) disappeared in 2003 on his way to sign bail over the border on a charge of Real IRA membership. His body was found two years later in a car pulled from Newry canal. His family allege he was killed by the IRA, but this has been denied. A preliminary hearing at Belfast's Laganside Court was told that the victim's father claimed Mr Kelly attended their house on two occasions and offered assurances that the IRA was not involved. Gerry McAlinden, counsel for the Coroners Service, said: "If he did what he is alleged to have, he did carry out some investigations and came back to the family. It may be relevant to ascertain from him the nature of those enquiries." An inquest for Mr O'Connor was halted last year when it emerged the murder suspect had mistakenly been issued with a so-called on the run (OTR) letter. Mr Kelly had been the "postman" for the document that stated that the individual was no longer wanted, the court was told. The inquest was stopped to allow police to assess if a prosecution was possible after the Government announced it would no longer stand over the OTR letters. Police have yet to question the murder suspect, who lives in the Republic. The OTR scheme came to public prominence in 2014 after the prosecution of a man for the murder of four soldiers in an IRA bombing in Hyde Park, London, in 1982 was halted when it emerged he received one of the letters in error, when he was in fact wanted by the Metropolitan Police. Co Donegal man John Downey (63), who denied involvement in the bombing, walked free from the Old Bailey when the judge ruled that his arrest had been an abuse of process. Jean McConville was dragged screaming from her children in west Belfast in 1972 by a gang of up to 12 men and women after being wrongly accused of informing to the security forces (handout/PA Wire) The family of a mother-of-ten abducted and murdered by the IRA have cleared the first stage in their High Court battle to gain access to the findings of a police investigation. Disappeared victim Jean McConville's children were granted leave to seek a judicial review over the continued non-disclosure of the Historical Enquiries Team's draft report into her killing. Ruling that they had established an arguable case, a judge acknowledged their "enormous suffering" throughout the last 43 years. Mr Justice Maguire said today: "They have waited extremely patiently over an unconscionable period of time to discover more about the circumstances of their mother's disappearance and death." Mrs McConville was seized by the IRA from her Divis Flats home in west Belfast in December 1972 after wrongly being accused of acting as an informer. Following her abduction she was shot dead and then secretly buried. Her body was only discovered on a Co Louth beach in 2003. Three years later the Police Ombudsman concluded that a proper investigation into the murder was not carried out for more than two decades. Seven of Mrs McConville's children are involved in the legal action aimed at forcing the PSNI to publish the contents of the HET report. Counsel for the Chief Constable stressed that the findings will be made available once there is no risk of prejudicing any prosecutions. But the McConville family insist they would be happy to see a redacted version if that ensured no threat to criminal proceedings. Their barrister, Danny Friedman QC, argued that any police shortcomings before or after the abduction identified in the report should not be used as a reason for continuing to withhold it. He cited claims by the victim's son, James McConville, that the police in the guise of the HET are continuing to fail the family. Mr McConville, in an affidavit, stated: "Our lives have been devastated by the murder of our mother and the widespread failure of the authorities to investigate." He added that provision of the report would help achieve a resolution and closure. Leave to apply for a judicial review was granted on grounds that non-disclosure was allegedly unreasonable and in breach of an Article 2 obligation under the European Convention on Human Rights. Commending the family for their approach to the legal challenge, Mr Justice Maguire added: "No-one could possibly accuse the applicants in this case of rushing into proceedings, or expecting a miracle or anything of that type." The case will now advance to a full judicial review hearing later this year. Police inspecting the scene at The Glengannon Hotel, near Dungannon where Seamus Dillon, was gunned down (PA/file) A senior judge has questioned the commitment of parties involved in outstanding Troubles inquests in Northern Ireland, insisting a culture of serial postponements must end. Lord Justice Weir is conducting an intensive review exercise of 56 long-delayed cases, covering 95 deaths, still locked in the region's coronial system. The stalled inquests include killings carried out by both paramilitaries and security forces - many involve claims of collusion or state wrongdoing. Almost half of the cases date back more than 40 years. On the third day of the two-week review, the judge expressed frustration that many inquests had been previously listed for full hearing only to suffer postponement after postponement. The time taken by the police to security-vet and disclose classified case files has been highlighted as a main cause of delay. "The system used in the past of fixing dates for inquests in the hope that people will pull stops out to get ready for the given date hasn't worked," said Lord Justice Weir. He considered this "unusual" and noted that parties involved in criminal trials did usually manage to stick to hearing dates. "That sense of commitment and urgency seems to have been absent," he added. "Dates have come and gone and families have been disappointed on successive occasions and we have to put a stop to that." While police commanders have argued that they are not properly resourced to conduct the mammoth disclosure task, some bereaved families have accused the police of deliberately obstructing some of the probes. Lord Justice Weir made his remarks during a review hearing for the case of murdered doorman Seamus Dillon. Mr Dillon, 45, was gunned down outside the Glengannon Hotel in Dungannon, Co Tyrone in December 1997. The former paramilitary prisoner and father-of-three from Stewartstown, Co Tyrone, was murdered hours after Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) leader Billy Wright was shot dead inside the Maze prison. The killing was believed to have been a sectarian revenge attack carried out by Wright's associates. Mark Mulholland QC, representing Mr Dillon's widow Martina, said the case clearly involved allegations of state collusion. As Mrs Dillon watched from the public gallery at Laganside courts in Belfast, Judge Weir said a claim that a senior police officer warned some businesses in Dungannon of an imminent attack, but not the proprietor of the now-closed Glengannon, would be explored when the inquest was eventually listed. The review hearing was also told that letters sent to a number of people originally considered suspects in the shooting, asking them to co-operate with the inquest, had been met with negative responses. Noting an indication from legal parties that the case could potentially be listed within the next year, the judge urged lawyers to work hard to ensure it does progress to hearing as soon as possible. During a separate hearing into the death of Francis Bradley in 1986, the judge said the State was obligated under human rights legislation to ensure it was adequatley resourced for the inquest process. The 20-year-old's death in Castledawson is shrouded in controversy over allegations that the military were operating a shoot to kill policy at the time. However, an inquest has been delayed by resourcing issues at the Coroners Service and Ministry of Defence, it was claimed. Judge Weir said: "It is not a coroner who has obligations to fulfil under Article 2 (of the Human Rights Convention) but it is the State. "Just as the coroner needs to be adequately resourced so do the police and Army - that's the State." He said political leaders had, to date, been unable to find another mechanism to deal with controversial long-running cases. "This is not a problem for the Coroners Service. This is a problem for Government," the judge added. After the short hearing at Laganside court complex, solicitor Fearghal Shiels, representing the Bradley family, hit out at the delays. He said: "The MoD with their infinite resources have abjectly failed to progress this inquest since specific requests were made to them concerning disclosure some 18 months ago." Forgotten images of Lawrence of Arabia have been unearthed in Belfast. A British scholar and soldier, TE Lawrence was made famous by his Great War exploits in the deserts of the Middle East. He mobilised the Arab Revolt in the First World War before dying in a motorcycle crash. His amazing life was captured in 1960s Hollywood biopic Lawrence Of Arabia. Less well-known is that Lawrence's life was documented in a biography by Belfast-born author Harford Montgomery Hyde. His book Solitary In The Ranks: Lawrence Of Arabia As Airman And Private Soldier was published in 1977. A set of 58 photographs and notes on Lawrence, which were Hyde's working notes, were found in the archives of the Public Record Office Northern Ireland (PRONI). They include Lawrence sitting on the Brough Superior SS100 motorcycle on which he crashed in Dorset in May 1935. He died six days later aged 46, two months after leaving military service. They were discovered by PRONI staff member Colin Shaw when he was researching an inquiry. "The more I investigated Lawrence's background, the more intrigued I became," he said. "For somebody who died at a relatively young age, he achieved so much. He was a practising archaeologist in the Middle East before he joined the Army. I was fascinated by his distinguished military career." Lawrence was best known for his Great War exploits in the Middle East, when he helped promote rebellion against the failing Ottoman Empire. Dressed in native attire, he travelled long distances by camel over the dunes of what is now Jordan. His aim was to help the Arabs achieve military success that would lead to post-war self-government, although his masters in London had very different plans for the region once the Ottomans had been defeated. Lawrence had trouble readjusting to post-war life. He renlisted in the RAF, and then the Royal Tank Corps, under pseudonyms. He also refused a knighthood, worked for Winston Churchill, and unlike the 6ft 3in Peter O'Toole who played him in the movie, was only 5ft 5in. Hyde had a notable background too. A barrister, he served as a politician and was elected three times as Unionist MP for North Belfast. He lost his seat after calling for the decriminalisation of homosexuality. Hyde penned a range of other books, including biographies of past Prime Ministers Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain. Lawrence Of Arabia, directed by David Lean, was released in 1962 and won seven Academy Awards, including the Oscar for best picture. Two men accused of attempted murder had also tried to hijack a taxi using a pizza cutter, a court has heard. William John Paul (32) and Derek Armstrong (26) are charged over attacks that culminated in a number of people being taken to hospital with serious injuries. Paul, of Harmin Drive in Newtownabbey, is accused of wielding a samurai sword, glass bottle and another sword during clashes at Woodvale Drive, north Belfast, on Sunday. He faces two counts of attempted murder, attempted wounding and threats to kill. Paul is further charged with counts of possessing an offensive weapon in public, inflicting grievous bodily harm with intent, attempted hijacking, two common assaults, criminal damage and two counts of theft. Entering the dock at Belfast Magistrates Court with what appeared to be bandaging around his arms, he spoke only to confirm he understood the charges. He was remanded in custody until Friday. Armstrong, of Cosgrave Court in the city, appeared on seven charges, including attempted murder, attempted hijacking, possessing an offensive weapon, common assault, criminal damage, the theft of a wallet and stealing 200 in a burglary at Glencairn Way. His face heavily bruised and cut, he nodded to indicate he understood the charges. A detective who opposed Armstrong's bid for bail claimed the defendant had known most of the witnesses and injured parties for most of his life. He also told the court a taxi driver was targeted after picking up two men from an address on the Limestone Road. A struggle broke out when his passengers produced the pizza cutter, threatened the driver and told him to hand over the car, it was claimed. Both men then fled, police said. A prosecution lawyer alleged that phone records linked the two accused to the incident. She revealed that a text Armstrong is suspected of sending read: "We are ditching this taxi. Want to rob him with a pizza slicer?" After his co-accused had allegedly indicated his consent, it was claimed that he continued: "No sweat... you throw knife at his throat, we take his motor." Armstrong's solicitor Matt Higgins argued that the case involved three incidents and stressed the severity of his client's injuries, including seven staples in his head. "He has made a counter allegation that he was the victim of an assault," Mr Higgins told the court. "He wants to make a complaint to seek prosecution of the alleged injured parties." However, refusing bail, District Judge Fiona Bagnall cited risks of interference with witnesses and reoffending. She remanded Armstrong in custody to appear again on February 16. A report commissioned after Stormont's Fresh Start deal has set out a raft of proposals to cushion the effect of long-delayed benefits changes Northern Ireland will have the best "belt and braces" system to help protect people from the impact of welfare reform, it has been claimed. A report commissioned after Stormont's Fresh Start deal has set out a raft of proposals to cushion the effect of long-delayed benefits changes. Its author, renowned benefits specialist professor Eileen Evason, said: "There is not another part of the UK with a belt and braces system in place to help people through this." The report proposes that cash originally earmarked to help people due to lose in cuts to tax credits could instead assist those hit by the introduction of Universal Credit, after plans to slash tax credits were abandoned. Universal Credit is replacing a number of benefits and Disability Living Allowance (DLA) claimants are expected to move over to Personal Independent Payments (PIPs) over a three-year period. A special helpline will be established for rejected claimants, as well as extra payments for some who lose out from the changes. There will also be a series of supplementary payments to carers, people with ill health and families on low incomes. Her report includes recommendations for Stormont to pilot strategies to tackle food poverty, potentially through a network of community food shops, social stores and supermarkets. The Executive has agreed to allocate 585m over four years to top up UK welfare arrangements in Northern Ireland, with a review in 2018/19. Some receiving enhanced disability payments could lose out from the shift from DLA to PIPs, and the report by Professor Evason recommended automatic supplementary payments to those eligible - covering the shortfall for up to one year. They would kick in once losses are worth more than 10 a week and be expected to cover three quarters of the loss. People with a conflict-related injury would receive extra points, making them more likely to qualify for the extra relief. Many people are carers for those receiving DLA and there is concern those who do not qualify for PIPs will lose their allowance to pay for care. The report recommended that carers should receive an extra payment to cover their financial loss for a year. Changes to the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) also caused Prof Evason concern. She said a supplementary payment should be made for a year to a claimant who loses out, subject to certain conditions. Stormont will not introduce the bedroom tax, brought in for other parts of the UK. A despairing 79-year-old man with Parkinson's Disease who is being moved out of a Co Down care home that is shutting down has warned he will only be forced out over his dead body. Leslie Wallace is one of six residents still living at the Four Seasons Donaghcloney Care Home just outside Banbridge. His family must find him a new home within weeks as the facility is closing at the end of February. But he told his relatives and the home's management that a move to another care facility will be "over my dead body". Now Mr Wallace's family fear that the turmoil of leaving the home will be too much for their father, who has advanced Parkinson's disease and fractured hips. Three more residents will leave the home by the end of this week, leaving Mr Wallace as one of three still to relocate. Last night he told the Belfast Telegraph: "All this business has really upset me. I told them all that I didn't want to go, that it was too much for me - but what do you do about it? "The place is closing at the end of February but they haven't got a place yet to suit me or my daughters. I don't want to go too far away from them. "This home was very good and the staff were very good to me and I've just got settled here. Now I have to move." One of Mr Wallace's daughters, Amanda Wallace-Plews, said that her father had been living in Donaghcloney Care Home since last summer. She added: "My father told the social worker last Monday that he wasn't leaving and he meant it. But the system really has bullied him to leave. "He's been told that he's not staying and that's just the way it's going to be. "He's not impressed at all. They have tried to find buyers for some of the other homes to keep them open, but it seems like they are throwing Donaghcloney to the wolves." Four Seasons Health Care said last November that it was closing seven of its care homes in Northern Ireland because they were no longer financially viable. The decision impacted on 254 patients and 393 staff. Alternative home care providers were found to take over three of the threatened homes, but Donaghcloney, Victoria Park and Stormont in Belfast will close by the end of next month. A consultation process on the proposed closure of the Garvagh care home is set to begin after it failure to be taken under new management. A spokesman for Four Seasons Health Care said: "We regret the upset caused by the closure of any of our homes. "These homes were simply financially unsustainable and therefore the process of consultation with residents, families and the relevant authorities was undertaken. "We are in ongoing contact with Mr Wallace and his family with a view to identifying suitable alternative accommodation as Donaghcloney home prepares for closure." A spokesperson for the Southern Health and Social Care Trust added: "The Trust has assigned individual key workers to work closely with each of the residents and their families currently living in these facilities to ensure that they receive safe, high quality care in a suitable environment which meets their individual needs." Sophie was last seen in the Belvoir area of south Belfast Missing 16-year-old Sophie Hunter has turned up safe and well. Police and the family of the teenager had appealed for help on finding her on Wednesday after she was last seen in the Belvoir area of south Belfast on Tuesday morning. On Thursday morning police confirmed that the teenager had turned up safe and well on Wednesday night. A teenager shot outside a Belfast hospital over 40 years ago may have been killed by a soldier, a coroners' court has heard. Patrick Crawford, 15, was hit while walking through the grounds of the Royal Victoria Hospital in August 1975. At a preliminary hearing in Belfast's Laganside court it was revealed that ballistics evidence suggested the teenager had been shot by a high velocity rifle, contradicting a confession gleaned from a man who claimed to have used a handgun. It was also revealed that a pathologist commissioned by the now defunct Historical Enquiries Unit had found the trajectory of the bullet indicated it had been from an elevated position. Mark McGarrity, barrister for the next of kin, said: "The concern is that the person who fired that bullet may have been a member of the Army." The case is being heard as part of a major review into legacy Troubles-related deaths by High Court Judge Mr Justice Weir. Northern Ireland's Attorney General John Larkin QC granted a fresh inquest into Patrick's death after representation from his family. An inquest in December 1979 recorded an open verdict, the court was told. Judge Weir said: "The first coroner seems to have forward to the jury the statement of admission by the person who said they had used a handgun "It could not have been very helpful." It also emerged the man who made the confession was not prosecuted in relation to Patrick's death but was later jailed for 10 years in connection with other offences including weapons and explosive charges. Judge Weir said it was important to make progress in the historic case and to ensure that any vital evidence such as bullet fragments recovered from the scene were "carefully preserved". He said: "This happened in 1975. It was a long time ago, 40 years. "Everyone can expect this will probably come in to be reviewed in a matter of months." Peter Coll, barrister for the PSNI, said he understood the desire to move the case forward but was unable to provide a definitive timeline for the disclosure of documents. He said: "It is an old case but in one way it is a new case only recently opened by the Attorney." A sister and two of Patrick Crawford's brothers were present in courtroom number 13 for the brief hearing. Outside Maggie Crawford described how his death, which came three years after their mother was shot dead in similar circumstances, had rocked the family. She said: "Patrick was only a young lad. Nobody had a bad word to say about him. He was on his way home to babysit when he was shot. "He was actually walking arm in arm with two women because he had seen soldiers hiding in the hedges and he was afraid. "His death had a major impact on our family - especially after our mother was killed in similar circumstances three years before. "It devastated our family." They have also appealed for any witnesses to come forward. Ms Crawford added: "We are grateful somebody is finally listening to us now. "If anyone saw anything or knows anything about what happened could come forward we would greatly appreciate it." Theresa Villiers would not be drawn on the benefits of an EU exit for Northern Ireland Theresa Villiers has refused to be drawn on the benefits for Northern Ireland of an EU exit, amid concerns over differences of opinion within her team. The Northern Ireland Secretary is reported to be considering campaigning against the UK's continued membership of the European Union during the forthcoming referendum. In contrast, Northern Ireland Minister Ben Wallace told MPs he believes a reformed EU is "where the United Kingdom wants to be". Labour urged Mr Wallace to reassure the Northern Ireland executive and public about the country's future within the EU given the "mixed messages" from him and his ministerial boss. And Democratic Unionist Sammy Wilson tried to push Ms Villiers to back a British exit, referred to as Brexit, as he noted the positives of leaving. The MP for East Antrim asked Ms Villiers: "While the devolution of corporation tax will be important in growing the Northern Ireland economy, would you also agree that a vote to leave the EU would help the Northern Ireland economy insofar as it'd release 18 billion every year for expenditure on public services, would enable us to enter trade agreements with growing parts of the world and would release us from the stifling bureaucracy of Europe?" Ms Villiers replied: "Well, I'm afraid you're tempting me to engage in arguments which are rightly a matter for everyone in this country when they get to vote on that referendum. "We promised a referendum in our manifesto, that's what we're going to deliver." Margaret Ritchie, the Social Democratic & Labour Party for South Down, earlier asked Mr Wallace: "Would you encourage your colleague (Ms Villiers) to argue for a yes vote in the EU referendum?" Mr Wallace replied: "I think there's a temptation in front of me. I think what I'd say is certainly up to date, membership of the European Union has been good for Northern Ireland. "I hope and support the Prime Minister's efforts in achieving reform. "A reformed EU is where the United Kingdom wants to be, an EU that works to the benefit of everyone in the United Kingdom, and I think if we can achieve that then we can take advantage of being neighbours of Ireland - one of the biggest economic partners of Northern Ireland - to make sure the economy can go from strength to strength." Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary Vernon Coaker also warned there is "very real concern" in the country about the impact of leaving the EU on trade and investment. He told Mr Wallace: "You will know there's very serious concern in Northern Ireland about a possible Brexit, i n particular because of the fact that it's the only part of the UK with a land border with another EU country. "Can I also press you to ask if you'd reassure the executive and the people of Northern Ireland about this in view of the mixed messages on Brexit emanating from the ministerial team - in particular your views as opposed to the secretary of state." Mr Wallace replied: "There is no mixed message. "Both myself and (Ms Villiers) are keen for the EU to produce some reforms as is the Prime Minister's strategy and when those reforms - and maybe you know what the EU is agreeing, maybe you have a special hotline - are presented to this House then we'll be able to make a decision. "For my part, I believe in the past that membership of the EU has been good for Northern Ireland." Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is heald at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for 18 year old Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com The Funeral of Ellen Finnegan takes place at St Malachy's church in Castlewellan, Co Down on Tuesday. Ellen Finnegan died in a blaze in her flat above the family's butcher's shop on Saturday. Pacemaker Press 19/1/2016 Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com The Funeral of Ellen Finnegan takes place at St Malachy's church in Castlewellan, Co Down on Tuesday. Ellen Finnegan died in a blaze in her flat above the family's butcher's shop on Saturday. Pacemaker Press 19/1/2016 Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com The Funeral of Ellen Finnegan takes place at St Malachy's church in Castlewellan, Co Down on Tuesday. Ellen Finnegan died in a blaze in her flat above the family's butcher's shop on Saturday. Pacemaker Press 19/1/2016 Bartley Finnegan (right) carries the coffin of his daughter Ellen who died in a house fire over the weekend The Funeral of Ellen Finnegan takes place at St Malachy's church in Castlewellan, Co Down on Tuesday. Ellen Finnegan died in a blaze in her flat above the family's butcher's shop on Saturday. Pacemaker Press 19/1/2016 A grieving father led hundreds of mourners in an emotional farewell to his daughter who died in a fire on Saturday. Bartley Finnegan lost his only daughter Ellen (18) in the blaze in Castlewellan, Co Down, in the early hours of Saturday morning on what was also the third anniversary of his wife Nicola's death from bowel cancer. The funeral service was held in St Malachy's Church, just across the street from his flat above his butcher shop in Lower Square. Ellen was in an upstairs bedroom when the fire broke out at around 4am on Saturday. Outside the shop many people had left flowers with tributes. Family, school friends and neighbours wept and comforted each other as the teenager's coffin was carried in to the church. The choir of Assumption Grammar School, where Ellen was an upper sixth student, sang for their friend. Fr Sean Cahill led the service and said "our memories of Ellen will always be of one young and vibrant woman". He recounted how the last words Ellen had spoken to her father had meant so much. Speaking in front of the congregation, he said: "I believe it was very special for you, Bartley, to be able to cherish that message, she wished you a good holiday on your planned trip: 'I love you, daddy... daddy, I love you'." Father Cahill described Ellen's love of sport and said she also had a love for music and had enjoyed singing in a folk choir and playing the drums. Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Ellen Finnegan with mass card for her late mother Nicola Kevin Scott / Presseye Ellen Finnegan with mass card for her late mother Nicola Kevin Scott / Presseye Ellen Finnegan with mass card for her late mother Nicola Kevin Scott / Presseye Pictured is the service held for Ellen Finnegan at Assumption College in Ballynahinch where she was a pupil Kevin Scott / Presseye Ellen's friend since childhood Sinead Sweeney Kevin Scott / Presseye An outpouring of grief at Castlewellan among the school friends of much-loved teenager Ellen Finnegan (pictured) who died in a fire at her home in Castlewellan A window in the flat which was smashed at the property The house where the blaze took place Friends of Ellen console one another Cliff Donaldson Requiem Mass is heald at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for 18 year old Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Requiem Mass is held at St Malachy's Church, Castlewellan for Ellen who died in a fire at her house in the Co. Down village. Picture: Matt Mackey - Presseye.com Matt Mackey - Presseye.com / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Ellen Finnegan with mass card for her late mother Nicola He added: "She was too young, not yet 19 years old. Ellen hadn't had time to find her way in life, even if university places were opening up for her. She had no time to plan the bright career she might have embarked on. "Given Ellen's talents and personality, she could have had a career in public relations, social services, communications, management. All careers opening up that were closed so dramatically." Friends of Ellen also laid tributes in front of the packed church, with many struggling to hold back tears as they read them. One read: "To you, Ellen's friends, she simply loved you all. We know she would want you here in your rightful place today. "Ellen, you lit up our lives with your grin and your passion for life, your larger than life personality and your affinity to us all. You truly were your mother's daughter. We ask everyone to pray for Bartley and continue to pray for him in the difficult times ahead. We ask everyone to pray for Ellen's family, both living and dead, especially her mum. You were only here for a short time but you left a lasting impression." Another tribute prayed for the emergency services who had fought to save Ellen's life on Saturday, saying: "Their job has been a difficult one but done with compassion and professionalism". After Ellen's coffin was carried out of the church, a procession of hundreds followed up the hill for the burial. Three young friends of Ellen who had been in the procession spoke to the Belfast Telegraph after the service. One praised the "massive support from everybody". "Most of us couldn't even fit in the church," he said. "Everybody loved her. She was bubbly, never ever in a bad mood." A second added: "You saw how many were walking up the street there. Everyone's just a bit stuck for words at the minute." And a third friend insisted: "Just seeing her on a night out you just knew you were going to have a good night. Just seeing her really did bring a smile to people's faces. It really did bring out the best in people and I've noticed this has brought out the best in people today too." A man has been arrested in Cork in connection with Tuesday's 2CB incident. Three people have been released without charge after two searches at separate addresses in Cork today. The man is currently being held at Bridewell Garda Station after gardai discovered MDMA at an address in Finbarrs Place in Cork. The three men who were released without charge are aged, 21, 23 and 25 years old. Earlier today a man who says he was the first person to come on the scene of the house party in Cork where a number of people took designer drug 2CB has described it as one of one of the scariest" nights of his life. An 18-year-old man is in a critical condition and three others remain in hospital after taking the drug 2CB, an ecstasy substitute, at the party. Gerard Banks, a passerby, has told how he became concerned when he heard shouting. Read more Read More When he went to the front window to investigate, he saw blood on the walls, floor, and curtains, and he asked one of the partygoers to let him inside. Last night was one of the scariest and most surreal nights of my life, he wrote on his Facebook page. Read more: Drugs minister admits designer drugs like 2CB may not be illegal I was walking [past] late last night and heard crazy shouting in a house. So me and a friend looked in the window to see is everyone ok. The bedroom was covered in blood, walls, floor, bed and even curtains. We shouted in to see is everyone OK. A man arrived at the window clearly on drugs and in a state of shock. We asked is everyone ok. He replied: yes, everything is fine. So we said there is blood everywhere, someone must be hurt, can we check to make sure no one is hurt? He said yes and opened the door. When we went in it was like a scene from CSI. Blood all over the walls, floors, couches and a man and a woman naked covered in blood shouting and screaming badly hurt and clearly in a state of dementia. The man was smashing the house up, blood was everywhere. The house was destroyed. There was a man on the floor in cardiac arrest with major breathing problems and the man who let us in [was] sitting on the chair in shock. Mr Banks directed paramedics to the scene when they arrived. In shock, me and my friend took control of the room. My friend started helping the man in cardiac arrest on the floor. I had to control the room to let my friend help the man on the floor in safety. It was surreal a naked man and woman dancing naked on the chairs as a man was having cardiac arrest on the floor. I was the man who left the guards and paramedics into the house. It was surreal. Students in Cork are being warned to remain vigilant after six young people were hospitalised after consuming the drug at the party. Whatever drugs those people were on last night was scary, Mr Banks said. They didnt even know they were covered in blood and badly hurt, they didnt even know there was a man dying on the floor. I havent slept a wink all night. Im still in shock to be honest. These people did not seem like bad people just like students out partying which is the most worrying thing about this new drug and its side effects. Its really scary stuff and we need to make everyone aware of its dangers. Everyone in the house was rushed to hospital We were all delighted to see the man in cardiac arrest leave in an ambulance in a stable state. One night of taking this new drug has probably ruined the lives of these people for a long time to come. A spokesperson for the HSE has described 2CB as a new psychoactive substance similar to those products previously sold in 'head-shops'. HSE addiction services manager for Cork and Kerry David Lane said it was not safe to consume head-shop type substances. Mr Banks added: Im putting out a big appeal for everyone in Cork to be aware of the dangers of a new drug on our streets called 2CP." A man who says he was the first person to come on the scene of the house party in Cork where a number of people took designer drug 2CB has described it as one of one of the scariest" nights of his life. An 18-year-old man is in a critical condition and three others remain in hospital after taking the drug 2CB, an ecstasy substitute, at the party. Gerard Banks, a passerby, has told how he became concerned on Tuesday night when he heard shouting. When he went to the front window to investigate, he saw blood on the walls, floor, and curtains, and he asked one of the partygoers to let him inside. Last night was one of the scariest and most surreal nights of my life, he wrote on his Facebook page. I was walking [past] late last night and heard crazy shouting in a house. So me and a friend looked in the window to see is everyone ok. The bedroom was covered in blood, walls, floor, bed and even curtains. We shouted in to see is everyone OK. A man arrived at the window clearly on drugs and in a state of shock. We asked is everyone ok. He replied: yes, everything is fine. So we said there is blood everywhere, someone must be hurt, can we check to make sure no one is hurt? He said yes and opened the door. When we went in it was like a scene from CSI. Blood all over the walls, floors, couches and a man and a woman naked covered in blood shouting and screaming badly hurt and clearly in a state of dementia. The man was smashing the house up, blood was everywhere. The house was destroyed. There was a man on the floor in cardiac arrest with major breathing problems and the man who let us in [was] sitting on the chair in shock. Mr Banks directed paramedics to the scene when they arrived. In shock, me and my friend took control of the room. My friend started helping the man in cardiac arrest on the floor. I had to control the room to let my friend help the man on the floor in safety. It was surreal a naked man and woman dancing naked on the chairs as a man was having cardiac arrest on the floor. I was the man who left the guards and paramedics into the house. It was surreal. Students in Cork are being warned to remain vigilant after six young people were hospitalised after consuming the drug at the party. Whatever drugs those people were on last night was scary, Mr Banks said. They didnt even know they were covered in blood and badly hurt, they didnt even know there was a man dying on the floor. I havent slept a wink all night. Im still in shock to be honest. These people did not seem like bad people just like students out partying which is the most worrying thing about this new drug and its side effects. Its really scary stuff and we need to make everyone aware of its dangers. Everyone in the house was rushed to hospital We were all delighted to see the man in cardiac arrest leave in an ambulance in a stable state. One night of taking this new drug has probably ruined the lives of these people for a long time to come. A spokesperson for the HSE has described 2CB as a new psychoactive substance similar to those products previously sold in 'head-shops'. HSE addiction services manager for Cork and Kerry David Lane said it was not safe to consume head-shop type substances. Mr Banks added: Im putting out a big appeal for everyone in Cork to be aware of the dangers of a new drug on our streets called 2CP." Geraldine Gittens, Irish Independent Taoiseach Enda Kenny has been accused of allowing homelessness to become a national crisis and only taking action with an election looming. After the plight of families in emergency accommodation was played out on television, Mr Kenny was forced to defend the Government's handling of the unprecedented numbers of mothers, fathers and children living in hostels, B&Bs and hotels. Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin said the Taoiseach should be ashamed that more than 1,500 youngsters have nowhere to call home. "You allowed the crisis to escalate. You allowed it to become the national crisis that it is," he said. Under the barrage of criticism the Taoiseach set out in numbers the actions taken to try to solve the deepening crisis and said local authorities have been given cash, targets and orders to build social housing. "This is an issue that is not acceptable," he said. "The actions being taken here by the Government ... speaks for itself of the extent of the challenge here and how the Government have had to rebuild a construction sector that had collapsed entirely." Mr Kenny said 5,800 people have been assisted under an agreement to stop landlords pressuring tenants to leave homes and 6,000 working families were helped with welfare to stay in their homes. He said 300 sites for social housing are being worked on at the moment and last year 2,000 people were housed, mostly in Dublin, in buildings once left empty or boarded up. Mr Martin said the numbers mean nothing, with 12 councils not building any social houses last year and a promise a few months ago of 500 modular homes but none yet built. He also said changes to the rent supplement payment was a waste of 55 million euro. The opposition leader also called for the Government to order the bad-bank Nama to have a 50-50 split in social housing and homes for the market. The agency has promised 20,000 homes but only 2,000 will go to social housing. Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams told the Taoiseach it is patently untrue that the Government was addressing the crisis. "You said that you would deal with the issue - isn't that strange a few weeks out from an election," he said. Mr Adams said in the first nine months of 2015, 28 local authority homes were built while 5,100 people are in homeless accommodation including 1,638 children. "No doubt some of those children will read the 1916 Proclamation in their classrooms during this centenary year. What will it mean to them? What does it mean to the Government?" he said. "We know where the Government stands of course. They would rather cherish all the bankers than all of the children of the nation equally. They would rather US style tax cuts than help those in need of a home. "An Taoiseach must step up and acknowledge that homelessness is a direct consequence of Government policy. The fact is they do not acknowledge homelessness as a priority and they have refused to build social and affordable homes." Earlier, Minister for Public Expenditure Brendan Howlin said the conditions highlighted in RTE's My Homeless Family programme on Monday night were not acceptable and that solving the homelessness crisis would be the social imperative of the next government. The masked gunman managed to escape on foot leaving his weapon and bicycle at the scene A gunman who opened fire in a raid on a Dublin post office was tackled to the ground by two men. The masked gunman entered the post office at Woodbine Park, Blackrock, shortly after 2pm on Tuesday and threatened staff before firing a number of shots at the glass security screen on the counter. Shortly afterwards, as the gunman emerged from the premises, a man working in the vicinity grappled with the armed raider. In the struggle, the gunman lashed out and hit the courageous man on the head with the weapon. Blood flowed from the victim's head as he continued to struggle with the gunman. A second man then jumped in to tackle the gunman. During the struggle, the handgun fell to the ground and was kicked away. The two men and the gunman ended up on the ground as the two have-a-go heroes tried to pin the robber to the footpath. But the raider managed to break free and run off, leaving his gun and a bicycle at the scene. A woman who works in a grocery shop next door told called the gardai as the raid was in progress. "Four or five men came running into the shop and told us to call the guards because there was a guy with a gun in the post office," said the woman (24). "I heard bangs but I didn't know it was shots. The man was still in the post office when I rang the guards. "A man outside the post office managed to knock the gunman to the ground when he came out. He got hit on the head by the gunman and there was a big gash in his forehead. "I think he must have knocked the gun out of his hand and another man stood on it. "The gunman was wearing a balaclava mask. Another man also helped to tackle him." "The man with the gash on his head was taken to hospital. Those two men who tackled the gunman are definitely heroes. "They put their own life at risk to protect other people," she added. Another woman working in a shop nearby said the gun used by the armed raider was "a big one". Mary Creed said: "When I came out of the shop I saw the handgun lying on the ground and there was a man standing over it who appeared to be waiting for the guards to arrive. It was a very big handgun," she said. She said the two men who tackled the robber were "brilliant" and "very brave". Health chiefs have set out significant failings in the care of a baby and his mother six years after the newborn's death. Baby Joshua Keyes died in the maternity unit of Portlaoise hospital on October 28 2009 with a review revealing concerns over how the foetal heart rate monitor was interpreted, the delay in delivery and an absence of foetal blood sampling. Criticisms have also been made of the care and support provided to Joshua's parents Shauna Keyes and Joseph Cornally following their baby's death. The standard of care for the mother and baby was investigated independently in 2014 to establish the facts of the case and give hospital management a list of improvements they could make to help prevent a repeat. But the report is being published at the request of Ms Keyes and her partner. The 24-year-old mother described the publication as closure. "It's just about getting to the point now where I can close the door on all this and try to move on with my daughter," she told RTE radio. Ms Keyes said the experience had matured her and that her son's short life would leave a profound legacy for other mothers and babies. "I'm very very proud of Joshua. He didn't get to grow up or speak or show us what he's made of but he certainly left his impact on the world," she said. Aside from the clinical care issues, Ms Keyes raised concerns following her baby's death about access to Joshua and that she was told she could only have a limited amount of time with him. The family also thought the coffin used by the hospital was too small and that their baby appeared to be squeezed in. Baby Joshua was also dressed in the clothing used in the special care baby unit where he was taken for intensive care after the birth but the family were not allowed to wash and change him. The grief-stricken mother had also been told she would be given handprints, footprints and a lock of hair with a booklet but only got a footprint and they were not allowed to photograph him out of the coffin. In a statement, the Health Service Executive (HSE) and the Midland Regional Hospital at Portlaoise reiterated an unreserved apology to the Keyes family over the care and the distress caused by the prolonged wait for the review. Baby Joshua died about an hour after being born by Caesarean section. He suffered oxygen deprivation. Twenty three recommendations were made, all of which the HSE said have been implemented in the maternity unit in Portlaoise including extra staff, foetal blood sampling, mandatory training for foetal heart monitoring equipment and new guidelines on the use of oxytocin, which is used to aid labour. Other changes include bringing the Coombe Women and Infants University Hospital on board to manage Portlaoise maternity services, hiring a fourth consultant obstetrician in 2014 and seeking to appoint two other consultants to work in both hospitals and to appoint more neonatologists, again for both hospitals. The HSE said the review of baby Joshua's death is also being used to improve maternity services in all hospitals including clinical guidelines on sepsis management, treatment of critically ill women during pregnancy and after birth, standards in response to bereavement and management of miscarriage. Early warning systems are also to be used in all 19 maternity units. Issues over maternity services in Portlaoise have been raised on several occasions in recent years and reviews of another 130 births where concerns were raised are under way. The HSE added: "Many families have been affected by adverse outcomes in our maternity services over the past number of years. "The HSE deeply regrets the distress and anguish caused to these families for its failure to respond in a timely and empathetic way to these issues. "It is Shauna and Joseph's expressed wish that the publication of Baby Joshua's report will assist in ensuring that recommendations will be implemented nationally, and most importantly to prevent unnecessary suffering, injury and loss of life." The latest guidance was never published after the Department of Health forced Nice to stop its work into safe staffing last summer A&E departments may be understaffed as much as half of the time, according to leaked documents. Guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) into safe staffing levels in A&E - which was never published following intervention by Government officials - says departments can be overstretched. It sets minimum ratios for nurses to patients, and points out how hospitals should not draft in staff from other parts of the hospital to fill gaps, due to their lack of expertise in A&E. It also says there must be a "red flag" warning system for when departments are getting too full and are struggling to cope. The 58-page document leaked to the Health Service Journal (HSJ) - titled Safe staffing for nursing in A&E departments: NICE safe staffing guideline - follows on from draft guidance published in January 2015 by Nice. The latest guidance was never published after the Department of Health forced Nice to stop its work into safe staffing last summer. A 28-page appendix accompanying the guidance, where experts discuss the need for a new calculation to work out staffing ratios rather than using a "historical average" of patient attendance figures, has one section called "issues with current practice". It says the historical average method is " not adequate to meet demands". It adds: "Specifically, staffing levels may not meet demand approximately almost half of the time." The guidance also sets minimum safe staffing levels. It says there should be two nurses to one patient suffering major trauma and two nurses for every one patient suffering a cardiac arrest. There should also be one nurse for every cubicle in A&E triage, and one for every two patients in the resuscitation area. For priority ambulance calls, there should be one nurse for every patient. The guidance also calls for a "red flag" system to be introduced as a "warning sign that something may be wrong with nursing staff levels". Examples may include delays of more than 30 minutes in providing pain relief, delays of more than 10 minutes in meeting patients' toileting needs and delays of more than 30 minutes in meeting patients' hydration or nutrition needs. Patients suffering falls, a crowded A&E department, patients going missing and patients leaving the A&E department against advice would also constitute "red flags". The document also said data should be recorded on staff having to miss breaks or working extra hours (paid and unpaid). Ministers are known to be against the setting of staff-patient ratios in the NHS, despite research showing that low staffing contributes to excess deaths and poorer outcomes for patients. The responsibility for safe staffing work has been transferred from Nice to another organisation, NHS Improvement. An email exchange last summer between Nice's chief executive Sir Andrew Dillon and Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt's office led to Nice ditching its plans to make public its research on safe staffing levels. Released under freedom of information laws, the email from Mr Hunt's private secretary Kristen McLeod said "it could be confusing for staff and the public if Nice were to release one piece of work on safe staffing now without any context and in isolation of any final guidance on safe staffing levels". A spokeswoman for Nice said of the latest leak: "Nice has not published guidance on safe staffing in accident and emergency departments and doesn't intend to do so." The decision to suspend Nice's safe staffing work was criticised by high-profile figures including Sir Robert Francis QC, who led the public inquiry into failings at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust. Labour's shadow health minister, Justin Madders, said of the leak: "Safe staffing levels are essential for patient safety and were a key recommendation of the Francis report. "The Government's decision to block these guidelines from being published is deeply concerning and raises a lot of questions about the ability of experts to give independent advice to the NHS. "Documents being leaked in this way goes to the heart of whether the Tories can be trusted to run the NHS. How can they expect to have the confidence of patients, the public and staff if they can't be honest with them?" Julie Bailey, founder of Cure the NHS, whose mother was a victim of the problems at Mid Staffs, said: " As a group we remain shocked and concerned that the Government and NHS England suspended Nice's work on safe nurse staffing, a key recommendation of the Francis report that we fought so hard for. "Safe staffing and nurse-to-patient ratios are essential to ensure patients do not suffer as our relatives did at Mid Staffordshire." Donna Kinnair, director of nursing, policy and practice at the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), said: "These guidelines were put together by experts, looking at strong evidence, who found a very clear relationship between the number of registered nurses and patient care. "The evidence for the importance of having the right number of nurses, and the right ratio of nurses to health care assistants, would have led to new recommendations and guidance on the safe range of nurse staffing levels. "These recommendations would have exposed shortages, and this would have had financial consequences. It is concerning that these consequences may have been a factor in the decision to scrap this important work." A Department of Health spokeswoman said: "A comprehensive programme of work on safe staffing is being led by NHS Improvement and full guidance will be published later this year." International Development Secretary Justine Greening has insisted airdropping aid to besieged Syrian towns would be a "last resort" after the United Nations urged Britain and allies to consider the idea. Ms Greening said there were significant difficulties with the tactic - including the risk that the supplies would end up in the hands of the forces laying the siege. The comments came ahead of a crucial international summit in London next month on the response to the Syria crisis, where Britain is aiming to secure funding pledges, and action to boost economic opportunities for refugees in the region. David Cameron is due to push the agenda at the World Economic Forum in Davos over the coming days. On Friday he will jointly host an event with Queen Rania of Jordan encouraging business and political leaders to take "practical steps" to create jobs in countries that have taken in large numbers displaced by the raging civil war. Ms Greening, who visited the region last week, said the average length of time people remained a refugee was now 17 years, and the London conference had to address "long term issues of jobs and education". Many communities in countries like Jordan were struggling to cope with sharp population increases, and needed help with issues such as economic infrastructure, schools and refuse systems. Proposals on the table include allowing more Syrians to run businesses in refugee camps and trade with host communities, and generating investment at preferential rates by institutions such as the World Bank. Ms Greening told a briefing for journalists that the summit on February 4 - co-hosted by the UK, Norway, Germany, Kuwait and the UN - would seek pledges of aid funding for the next two to three years - rather than for a single year as was usually the case. She was asked about a letter from UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs Stephen O'Brien, in which he argued that "all options need to be in the table" in relation to airdrops for besieged towns facing starvation. Mr O'Brien suggested the UK and US military could carry out airdrops without following UN guidelines, which state that permission has to be obtained from Bashar Assad's government. "Given the appalling level of need in Syria and our collective responsibility to act, I believe we have reached a moment where all options need to be on the table," he wrote. Ms Greening said the UK was "working with the UN generally to make sure we try and access some of these harder to reach and besieged areas". Pointing out that Madaya, which recently faced a crisis, was only a short distance from the capital Damascus, she said: "They (airdrops) would really be something that would be a last resort because they are something that is less effective in getting aid to people, and of course often less safe. In the end what we need to do is actually frankly have the actors on the ground." Ms Greening added: "We are not ruling anything out, but the key is making sure that we can actually achieve what we are trying to do. "Some of the difficulties of dropping from air are clearly you have to do it from height to be safe, that then creates real challenges on being able to target effectively. "Obviously you do not want to drop from significant height aid to areas where it can drop in the wrong place and be helping to feed and support the very people who are helping to besiege town. "It is a significant operation... There is no getting away from the fact that we should be seeing international humanitarian law adhered to and we continue to see making sure that regime complies with it as one of the key things we need to see progress with." Labour backbencher Jo Cox said: "The UN has asked the Government to put 'all options on the table' to help starving Syrians, and this should include contingency planning for UK airdrops. "The priority has to remain securing a lasting ceasefire and political transition but as the humanitarian crisis in Syria worsens and Assad continues to refuse ongoing access to many besieged communities airdrops should not be ruled out." Mohammed Rafiq was found guilty of conspiracy to traffic at Leeds Crown Court A factory owner who employed large numbers of Hungarians as a "slave workforce" in a bed-making firm which supplied retailers like John Lewis, Next and Dunelm Mill has been found guilty of people trafficking. Mohammed Rafiq was found guilty of conspiracy to traffic at Leeds Crown Court, officials confirmed, and will be sentenced next month. A jury was told how an investigation into Kozee Sleep, based in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, and its subsidiary Layzee Sleep, based in Batley, began after two Hungarians, Janos Orsos and Ferenc Illes, were arrested over human trafficking allegations. Large numbers of Hungarian men were employed at Rafiq's Kozee Sleep factory, supplied to them by Orsos. At the beginning of the trial in October, prosecutor Christopher Tehrani QC said Rafiq knew Orsos's organisation would source him "cheap slave labour to work at Kozee Sleep and Layzee Sleep factories". Mr Tehrani said Rafiq was " aware of the circumstances of the Hungarian nationals who were working at these sites and went along with their exploitation as a slave workforce". "The prosecution submits that this course of offending demonstrates a persistent campaign of exploitation involving many Hungarian men over a prolonged period of time." Rafiq, 60, of Thorncliffe Road, Staincliffe, denied a single count of conspiracy to traffic individuals within the UK. The court said he will be sentenced on February 12. Rafiq's conviction is reported to be the first of a company boss for human trafficking offences in the UK. The court heard how ethical audits by leading high street retailers failed to spot what was going on. Mr Tehrani said the firm supplied companies including Next Plc, the John Lewis Partnership and Dunelm Mill. He said: "As part of the contract, Kozee Sleep was required to adhere to each company's policies re ethical trading, which included how they treated persons who worked on their premises." Mr Tehrani said each firm conducted regular ethical audits before May 2014 but he said: "Nothing untoward had been uncovered during those audits." The men were promised good wages, housing and food would be provided in the UK but, once in West Yorkshire, they found themselves living in shared, cramped and squalid accommodation with a large number of others. They were made to work at the respective businesses and other places for long hours, working anything between 10 to 16 hours per day, five to seven days per week. Prosecutors said the men received 10 to 20 per week plus each house they were living in would receive about 20 a day for food. The jury was told how one man, Robert Bodo, came to Batley from Hungary in January 2010 and was taken to live in a property in the town called Gothic House where 40 to 50 people were living and he shared a room with three others. Mr Tehrani said inspectors found the house was in "a horrendous state". Mr Bodo was at Kozee Sleep for three-and-a-half years where he worked a minimum of 60 hours a week or he had to do extra work somewhere else. The prosecutor said he was paid 10 every Friday by Orsos. When he found out Orsos was being paid 3 an hour by the firm, Mr Bodo tried to leave but "couldn't as Janos Orsos had his national insurance and bank card". Mark Kovacs came to the UK in January 2013 and was put in a two bedroom house in Rand Place, Bradford. Mr Tehrani said: "There were mattresses in every room. During the four months he lived in this property, Mr Kovacs estimates that between 25 and 42 people were living in the premises at any one time." He was later moved to a three bedroom flat in Ravensthorpe, Dewsbury, where, when he moved in, 30 people were living. Mr Kovacs "escaped Mr Orsos's clutches" with the help of a charity called Hope for Justice. Janos Orsos and Ferenc Illes were jailed for five years and three years respectively in 2014 after admitting people trafficking offences. Soldiers speaking to some of the migrants that were on four boats that landed at the RAF air base at Akrotiri in Cyprus More than 1 million has been spent in three months on migrants who landed on a UK military base in Cyprus, new figures show. Boats containing 115 Greece-bound migrants - 67 men, 19 women and 29 children - arrived on the shores of RAF Akrotiri on October 21. Defence Minister Penny Mordaunt told MPs that the emergency response, security, construction of a temporary camp and support costs have amounted to 1,122,972. The UK Government reached an agreement to ensure asylum claims of the travellers, mostly Syrians and Palestinians from refugee camps in Syria and elsewhere, would be dealt with by the Cypriot authorities. Food, water and bedding was provided by military personnel in the immediate aftermath. There were disturbances at the temporary camp at RAF Dhekelia and the migrants were given a week to decide whether to seek asylum in Cyprus - a member state of the European Union - or be deported. Ms Mordaunt also said the travellers at the camp in Dhekelia have "regular access to medical, dental and other health facilities as required" while Cyprus has recently started to offer education for children and adults. Further figures suggest around 2 million has been spent on welfare and education for a group of migrants whose boat was brought ashore to British territory on Cyprus in 1998. Labour's Tulip Siddiq, in a written question, asked about the cost to British taxpayers of housing and supporting migrants who arrived in October 1998 and October 2015 in the RAF Dhekelia and RAF Akrotiri sovereign base areas. Ms Mordaunt replied: "T he total recorded cost to date to the public purse for housing and supporting the migrants who arrived onto sovereign base areas administration land on October 21, 2015, is 1,122,972. "This includes the initial emergency response, security costs, construction of the transit facility and ongoing support costs. "Those costs which relate to the support and welfare of the migrants will be counted against the Government's targets for overseas aid. "An element of this total includes estimated costs that are to be paid in arrears." Ms Mordaunt also said: " It is not possible to provide an exact sum spent in total on the migrants who arrived in 1998. "The costs of the provision of welfare and education, based on recent data, is around 165,000 euros (127,000) per year." A top private school has scrapped its traditional uniform to accommodate "gender dysphoric" pupils. Brighton College said it has axed the 170-year-old code to meet the needs of youngsters who see themselves as the opposite sex from their biological gender. Instead, the school is introducing a "trouser uniform" and a "skirt uniform" for pupils up to age 16. Girls who have gender dysphoria will be able to wear a tweed blazer, tie and trousers, while dysphoric boys will be able to wear a skirt, bolero jacket and open-neck blouse. At least one pupil has already taken up the option, Brighton College said, while a handful of other families have made inquiries on behalf of their own children. The move is in reaction to a changing society which recognises that some children have gender dysphoria and do not want to lose their emotional gender identity at school, the college said. Headmaster Richard Cairns said: "This change follows requests from a small number of families. It ties in with my strong personal belief that youngsters should be respected for who they are. If some boys and girls are happier identifying with a different gender from that in which they were born, then my job is to make sure that we accommodate that. My only interest as headmaster is their welfare and happiness. "The college's approach is different from most other schools, which have tended to give transgender children personal leeway with uniform. Brighton College has instead decided to abolish the notion of boys' and girls' schools altogether. Traditional uniform will be worn but the type of uniform will be a matter for the individual boy or girl, always assuming parental support." Sixth-former Fred Dimbleby said he was proud to attend a school where "there is no concept of the norm, of conformity and of the expected way to be". "Everyone has supported this move and I think that there is a real sense of unity, from the headmaster to the youngest third former, about this idea," he said. "I also know that students who are gender fluid, or for any reason decide to change the uniform that they wear, will be accepted, supported and encouraged by the whole school. "I think it would be great if all schools took up this idea. Secondary school is such a formative period for people so it's important to encourage people to be who they are and who they want to be." Sixth-former Amy Arnell said that when the change was announced no one was surprised, adding: "There is just no reason not to do it if it makes people feel more comfortable about themselves." Yvette Cooper said there is no need to wait for the outcome of the second inquest into Poppi Worthington's death A second police force should take over the investigation into the death of toddler Poppi Worthington in an attempt to " salvage some prospect of justice", ministers have been told. Former shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper also insisted there is no need to wait for the outcome of the second inquest into her death. She joined Labour MP John Woodcock ( Barrow and Furness) in calling for the police investigation to continue under the lead of an outside force. Mr Woodcock urged ministers to order a thorough independent investigation similar to those conducted into the deaths of Peter Connelly, known as Baby P, and Victoria Climbie. He said such a move would show the Government "values Poppi's life as greatly". Paul Worthington was found to have sexually assaulted his 13-month-old daughter. High Court family judge Mr Justice Peter Jackson ruled that the 48-year-old - on the balance of probabilities - "perpetrated a penetrative ... assault" on Poppi. But he will not face criminal action unless new evidence comes to light. Poppi collapsed with serious injuries at her home in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, in December 2012 and was rushed to hospital, where she was pronounced dead. Cumbria Police have been criticised for their handling of the case. Speaking in the Commons, Mr Woodcock told Home Office minister Karen Bradley: "The combined failure of several agencies is every bit as serious as those which contributed to the deaths of Victoria Climbie and of Baby Peter in Haringey. "Will the Government make clear that it values Poppi's life as greatly by ordering now a similarly thorough independent investigation into how the failings happened? "Will they, as the second inquest is continuing, order a separate force to come in and take over the investigation into Poppi Worthington's death to try to salvage some prospect of justice for her life?" Labour's Ms Cooper added to Ms Bradley: "Can I urge you to keep pursuing this case yourself and not to be deterred by the process that is taking place, and also particularly to clarify what is the situation about the police investigation now because surely we don't need to wait for the inquest for police investigation to be continuing? "The (Independent Police Complaints Commission) is, I understand it, just verifying whether the police previously did the right job or not. "What we need is a police investigation now into this individual case and could that be done by an alternative police force?" Opening her reply to an urgent question on the case, Ms Bradley said the IPCC has investigated Cumbria Police's handling of the original investigation. She said: "The IPCC report is completed but cannot be released yet so as not to prejudice the second inquest." Ms Bradley added: "This Government is committed to tackling child sexual abuse but I know that's of little consolation to the family of Poppi Worthington." Mr Woodcock outlined his questions for an inquiry and the continuation of the police investigation involving a new force. He added: "And what will the Government do to ensure the safety of the Worthington children and all of the children in the community in Barrow, given that Paul Worthington is still walking free?" Ms Bradley said there was an investigation by Ofsted in 2015 into Cumbria social services, which found it was "inadequate". She added: "The Department for Education is currently in the process of intervention into Cumbrian social services to ensure that child social services are properly working in Cumbria and that all children in Cumbria have the support and the protection that they so rightly need. "We do need to learn lessons from this case but we need to wait for that second inquest. "The Attorney General has granted that second inquest and until that inquest is completed we will not have the full facts. "You will also know that, in order for the case to be reopened, new evidence will need to come to light, which may or may not be the case depending on the IPCC inquiry and also the second inquest. "But this is an operational matter which I as the minister will not be able to intervene on." In response to Ms Cooper's questions, Ms Bradley insisted she will "get to the bottom" of Poppi's death and learn all lessons. She said: "We owe it to Poppi Worthington; we owe it to all other children in that situation." Ms Bradley reiterated that there would need to be fresh evidence for a new police investigation but offered to write to Ms Cooper to provide more information when she receives it. Labour called for the IPCC's draft report to be released although M Ps later heard it appears to have been leaked to the media. Labour MP Sue Hayman (Workington) told Ms Bradley: "One thing that concerns me about the IPCC report is that it appears to have been leaked to the press, which is of a great concern." Mr Woodcock could be heard saying: "The BBC have it." In reply, Ms Bradley said: "I'm not aware that it's been leaked but I will look into that matter and that maybe when I meet (Mr Woodcock) we could have a discussion then when we've got more information about what has happened. "But I agree, if that report has been leaked that is absolutely shocking. That should not have happened." Shadow attorney general Karl Turner also supported calls for a "separate police investigation" by a new force. Conservative former children's minister Tim Loughton said of Poppi's case: " This sounds like a depressingly familiar catalogue of failure and cover-up." Stewart Jackson, Tory MP for Peterborough, asked Ms Bradley: "Isn't it troubling though, and don't we need a review into the interface between the family courts and public agencies, that the latter used public money in order to try and stifle debate and hide transparency and openness in respect of this using the family courts? "Isn't it time we reviewed that because openness and transparency is the best disinfectant to solve these sorts of issues in the future, to make sure something as terrible and awful as this never happens again?" Ms Bradley said she would discuss the issue with Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary Michael Gove as it was a matter for his department. Keith Vaz, Labour chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said: "The crucial relationship is between the police and social services and the crucial process is that information should be passed on immediately. "If that is done then these terrible acts can be discovered even more efficiently." Ms Bradley said Mr Vaz had made an "incredibly important point", noting that work is ongoing to improve this in order to protect children. The crisis-hit steel industry has been dealt a fresh blow with news of more job losses. Sheffield Forgemasters started consultations on 100 redundancies, just days after Tata cut 1,050 jobs mainly at Port Talbot in south Wales. The company said reduced activity in the traditional oil and gas sector, the slowing down of growth in the global economy and an international collapse in steel prices had adversely affected its results for 2014. The Sheffield company said caution expressed in its 2013 financial results had proved well founded, as it experienced a tougher global business environment. Forgemasters also cited acute pricing pressures from international competitors combined with high UK energy costs as key factors. A statement said: "The company's need to restructure the business means consultation on up to 100 redundancies across all its divisions has begun, with the emphasis on creating a more streamlined operation, better able to operate in the tough economic environment." The announcement was made as it published accounts for the 18 months to December 2014, which showed a loss for the first time since a management buyout in 2005 - 9.4 million. Sheffield Forgemasters chairman Tony Pedder said: "The storm clouds which seem to gather periodically over the steel and steel-related sectors are once again evident. A confluence of factors has made trading conditions for our sector particularly challenging for several months and this has led to difficult decisions for us. "Of particular concern has been reduced activity in the traditional oil and gas sector, with oil prices down to a level that is deferring much potential new investment. "This combined with a slowing of global economic growth has led to a scarcity of orders for our engineering products and an international collapse in steel prices, affecting our ingot and bar sales. "For the first time, we have traded at a loss despite the best efforts of all in the company. "In this situation, the company must continue to look to all sources of support. We have been working with our major customers, suppliers and in particular, our secured lender, with whom we have concluded an extension to our financing facility. This will provide adequate funding for the business through to end March 2017." Roy Rickhuss, Community's general secretary said: "Every sector of the UK steel industry is caught up in the current crisis. We keep saying that delays in implementation of support and a lack of swift and decisive action by Government only puts more steel jobs at risk. Today's announcement by Sheffield Forgemasters just increases the number of steelworkers and their families worried about their futures. "We will be meeting with the company in the coming days to examine and test their proposals, mitigate the impact on jobs and ensure a sustainable future for the business. "The spectre of the UK's cosy relationship with China hangs over the entire steel industry. The Prime Minister needs to stand up to China and stand up for our steel industry. When the UK steel industry is cut out of procurement deals such as at Hinkley Point, or sees its Government cheerleading for China's market economy status then it's no wonder the industry is in crisis. We need to see evidence that Government is committed to the long-term future of UK steel making and that needs a lot more short-term action." Harish Patel, Unite's national officer said: "World class companies like Sheffield Forgemasters need urgent support and a level playing field with their international competitors if they are to survive. "It wasn't that long ago that Government ministers pulled the plug on a loan that would have allowed Sheffield Forgemasters to invest in new equipment making it more productive. "The Government now needs to right that wrong by guaranteeing that British companies such as Sheffield Forgemasters are never again excluded from tendering for British infrastructure projects. "If it's made for Britain then it should be built using British steel. Firms such as Forgemasters should be looking forward to helping build the new gas and nuclear power plants which are in the pipeline, not left fighting for their survival on an uneven playing field." Shadow business secretary Angela Eagle said: "These latest job losses will be devastating news for the workers affected especially given the uncertainty that they've endured as the plant restructures to secure its near-term future. There is also a loss to the wider economy due the high-quality and specialist nature of the steel produced at the plant which is of strategic importance to our national security. "The Government must take faster and more decisive action to assist, especially on relief for business rates and high energy costs." Meanwhile, French energy giant EDF, which is building a new nuclear power station at Hinkley in Somerset, said the UK does not currently have the capability or capacity of producing the very largest forgings required by the power station, so these will have to be sourced from outside the UK. There will be opportunity for suppliers, including those in the UK, to compete in the supply of forged components for the turbine generators and in other items such as pumps, motors, valves and the like. Construction at Hinkley Point C will provide 25,000 jobs in the UK, 1,000 apprenticeships, and more than 60% of the project's construction value is expected to come from British companies. "Hinkley Point C is a big opportunity for UK steel, as well as for UK construction and manufacturing more widely," said EDF. A Government spokesman said: "It has been a challenging time for the steel industry facing tough global economic conditions. We will work with local partners to help anyone made redundant find new jobs as quickly as possible. "We understand that Sheffield Forgemasters is taking this step to restructure the business to secure its long-term future and welcome the news that its lending facility has been extended. "The Government has taken clear action to help the steel industry, through cutting energy costs, taking action on imports, Government procurement and EU emissions regulations, meeting key steel industry asks." A Yemeni man inspects the damage at a site reportedly hit by Saudi-led airstrikes in the capital Sanaa on January 6, 2016. Nearly 6,000 people have been killed since March, according to UN figures. At least 2,795 of them are civilians. AFP PHOTO / MOHAMMED HUWAISMOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP/Getty Images Yemeni blind and disabled people shout slogans during a demonstration to protest after a centre for the blind was reportedly destroyed by Saudi-led airstrikes in the capital Sanaa on January 6, 2016. Nearly 6,000 people have been killed since March, according to UN figures. At least 2,795 of them are civilians. AFP/Getty Images A Yemeni man inspects the damage at a site reportedly hit by Saudi-led airstrikes in the capital Sanaa on January 6, 2016. Nearly 6,000 people have been killed since March, according to UN figures. At least 2,795 of them are civilians. AFP PHOTO / MOHAMMED HUWAISMOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP/Getty Images Yemeni blind men shout slogans during a demonstration gathering disabled people to protest after a center for the blind was reportedly destroyed by Saudi-led airstrikes in the capital Sanaa on January 6, 2016. AFP/Getty Images Yemeni blind men hold a banner during a demonstration gathering disabled people to protest after a center for the blind was reportedly destroyed by Saudi-led airstrikes in the capital Sanaa on January 6, 2016. Nearly 6,000 people have been killed since March, according to UN figures. At least 2,795 of them are civilians. AFP PHOTO / MOHAMMED HUWAISMOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP/Getty Images Employees walk on the rubble of the Chamber of Trade and Industry headquarters after it was hit by a Saudi-led airstrike in Sanaa, Yemen, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed) David Cameron has been accused of silently dragging Britain into another conflict in the Middle East without parliamentary approval or oversight. Angus Robertson, the Scottish National Partys leader at Westminster, said the Prime Minister should admit to British involvement in Saudi Arabias invasion of Yemen where the UK is providing arms, training and advice. The call comes as new figures released by the Government show that British bomb and missile exports to Saudi Arabia have increased by 11,000 per cent from 9 million to 1 billion over three months last year. Saudi Arabia has been accused of war crimes by human rights groups and the legality of British military assistance to the country has been questioned by campaigners. Thousands of civilians have been killed in Yemen, including a large number by the Saudi air force and theyve done that using British-built planes, with pilots who are trained by British instructors, dropping British-made bombs, who are coordinated by the Saudis in the presence of British military advisors, Mr Robertson said during Prime Ministers Questions. Isnt it time for the Prime Minister to admit that Britain is effectively taking part in a war in Yemen that is costing thousands of civilians lives and he has not sought parliamentary approval to do this? Read more Expand Close A Yemeni worker looks at the damage at the Noor Centre for the Blind after it was reportedly destroyed by Saudi-led air strikes in the capital Sanaa on January 5, 2016. AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A Yemeni worker looks at the damage at the Noor Centre for the Blind after it was reportedly destroyed by Saudi-led air strikes in the capital Sanaa on January 5, 2016. AFP/Getty Images Read More The Prime Minister rejected the suggestion that the UK was taking part in the conflict but admitted that British advisors had a role in Saudi Arabia. I think the Right Honourable Gentleman started in a serious place and then wondered off. Its in our interest to back the legitimate government of Yemen. We have some of the most stringent arms control procedures of any country in the world, he replied. Just to be absolutely clear about our role: were not a member of the Saudi-led coalition, British military personnel are not directly involved in the Saudi-led coalitions operations, personnel are not involved in carrying out strikes, directing or conducting operations in Yemen or selecting targets and were not involved in the Saudi targeting decision making process. But yes do we provide advice, help and training in order to make sure that countries actually do obey the norms of humanitarian law? Yes we do. Saudi Arabia is intervening in Yemen to fight Houthi rebels, who control the countrys capital but are not internationally recognised as its government. The Kingdom was asked to join the conflict by the countrys Government, which has been pushed out of much of the countrys heartland. Read more Expand Close A general view shows the rubble of the building of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry which was destroyed during air strikes on the capital, Sanaa, on January 5, 2016. AFP PHOTO / MOHAMMED HUWAISMOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A general view shows the rubble of the building of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry which was destroyed during air strikes on the capital, Sanaa, on January 5, 2016. AFP PHOTO / MOHAMMED HUWAISMOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP/Getty Images Read More Criticism of the Saudi military operation have however included the bombing of multiple hospitals run by the charity Medecins Sans Frontieres and the deaths of thousands of civilians, including 130 at a single wedding. While international observers have recognised abuses on all sides, in late December UN human rights chief Zeid Raad al-Hussein said that a disproportionate number of attacks of civilians in Yemen had come from the Saudi-led invasion force. I have observed with extreme concern the continuation of heavy shelling from the ground and the air in areas with high a concentration of civilians as well as the perpetuation of the destruction of civilian infrastructure in particular hospitals and schools by all parties to the conflict, although a disproportionate amount appeared to be the result of airstrikes carried out by Coalition Forces, Mr Zeid said. Human rights group Amnesty International UK has also accused the Government of ignoring overwhelming evidence of civilian targeting by the Saudi Arabian air force. Expand Close Yemenis look at destruction in the street following air strikes on the capital, Sanaa, on January 5, 2016. AFP PHOTO / MOHAMMED HUWAISMOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Yemenis look at destruction in the street following air strikes on the capital, Sanaa, on January 5, 2016. AFP PHOTO / MOHAMMED HUWAISMOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP/Getty Images "Angus Robertson has raised an important point about the UKs involvement in Saudi Arabias indiscriminate bombing campaign in Yemen, a campaign were told involves British advisers actually located in the Saudi control room, said Allan Hogarth, the groups head of Policy and Government Affairs. "Thousands of Yemeni civilians have already been killed in a barrage of indiscriminate Saudi airstrikes in the country and whatever advice Britain has been giving to the Saudis has apparently done little to prevent this appalling death toll. "Meanwhile, the UK is selling billions of pounds worth of weapons to the Saudis in the full knowledge of the grave risk that theyll be used to kill Yemeni civilians. Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close An employee inspects a room inside the Chamber of Trade and Industry headquarters after it was hit by a Saudi-led airstrike in Sanaa, Yemen, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed) AP A man uses his mobile to take pictures of the rubble of the Chamber of Trade and Industry headquarters after it was hit by a Saudi-led air strike in Sanaa, Yemen, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed) AP An employee inspects a building destroyed by Saudi-led air strikes in Sanaa, Yemen (AP) TOPSHOT - Yemeni construction workers walk with their rollers for painting in the the capital, Sanaa, on January 5, 2016. AFP PHOTO / MOHAMMED HUWAIS / AFP / MOHAMMED HUWAISMOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp An employee inspects a room inside the Chamber of Trade and Industry headquarters after it was hit by a Saudi-led airstrike in Sanaa, Yemen, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed) "Instead of brushing aside Mr Robertsons questions, the prime minister should immediately suspend export licences for all further UK arms bound for Saudi Arabia and allow a full investigation into allegations of serious breaches of international humanitarian law by Saudi Arabia in Yemen. The family of three victims of the Glasgow bin lorry crash have launched a bid for a private prosecution of driver Harry Clarke. Six people died when the vehicle went out of control in Queen Street in December 2014. A Fatal Accident Inquiry (FAI) held last year heard Mr Clarke lost consciousness at the wheel and that he had a history of health issues - including a previous blackout in 2010 when at the wheel of a stationary bus - but had not disclosed his medical background to his employers or the DVLA. The Crown Office has consistently said that there is insufficient evidence in law to raise criminal proceedings against Mr Clarke but the families of the victims disagree. It was revealed during the FAI that some families intended to launch a private prosecution if the Crown Office would not take action. Lawyers for the family of Jack and Lorraine Sweeney and their granddaughter Erin McQuade have confirmed a Bill for Criminal Letters has been sent to the Crown Office that they hope will lead to a private prosecution. The rare Bill for Criminal Letters seeks the agreement of Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland QC to pursue the case but lawyers said it can still continue and be ruled on by High Court judges without his approval. A statement from the Sweeney and McQuade family lawyer said: "Paul Kavanagh, Gildeas solicitors, intimates on behalf of the relatives of Jack and Lorraine Sweeney and Erin McQuade that a Bill for Criminal Letters was delivered to the Lord Advocate today. "We have sought the concurrence of the Lord Advocate and look forward to receiving a response within seven days. "This is the initial process that the family hope ultimately will lead to the prosecution of Henry (Harry) Clarke in the criminal courts." A spokesman for the Crown Office said: "The Lord Advocate has received a Bill of Criminal Letters and will give it due consideration. "The Crown position on this will be made clear to the families and the court when appropriate." Last month, Mr Mulholland insisted it would have been ''wrong'' to prosecute Mr Clarke. He said he knew the decision not to charge the 58-year-old was ''not a popular one'', adding he was aware of the feelings of the victims' families on the matter. The sheriff who oversaw the FAI ruled that the accident might have been prevented if the driver had ''told the truth'' about his history of blackouts. Sheriff John Beckett QC found Mr Clarke ''repeatedly lied in order to gain and retain jobs and licences'', and ''deliberately concealed relevant information from the DVLA''. Stephenie Tait, Jacqueline Morton and Gillian Ewing also died in the tragedy which was marked with a memorial service in Glasgow last month. A Scottish Government spokeswoman confirmed an application for public funding towards the private prosecution has been made. She said: "Scottish ministers have received further information in support of an application for public funding towards a private prosecution from lawyers acting on behalf of the families of the Glasgow Bin Lorry tragedy, and will now consider this closely." A peer told the Lords about his own experiences in jail as he called for better education for prisoners. Lord Hanningfield said with half the prison population illiterate, greater priority needed to be given to teaching inmates to read and write. The non-affiliated peer said most prisoners had no idea what the House of Lords was, and one fellow inmate assumed all members had a castle. Lord Hanningfield was sentenced to nine months in prison in 2011 after being found guilty of nearly 14,000 worth of expenses fraud. He served a quarter of the sentence in jail. Opening a debate on what measures the Government was taking to improve education in jail, Lord Hanningfield told fellow peers: "I think you are all aware that I have been in prison myself. "When I was first sent to prison, after I got over the terrible shock of it, I thought I had better try and do something with myself, and so I spent a lot of time researching and talking to fellow inmates about how they got there. "And I found that so many, particularly of the of the young ones, were really unable to read or write, and the illiteracy amount in prisons is over 50%, I have since been told. Education in prison needs to be brought-up the agenda enormously. Education is right at the bottom of the profile in prisons now." The peer said one fellow inmate assumed he had a castle and asked if he could use it for a rave. "I found it very difficult, as you might imagine, in my initial days in prison. It's quite difficult for me to talk about it now. I really found it quite extraordinary, for example, general knowledge is very absent in a lot of prisoners. "Hardly anyone had ever heard of the House of Lords, and I am not really quite surprised at that. So many people, for example, asked me where it was and, what did it do? "And someone imagined that every Lord has a castle, because someone asked me if they could borrow my castle for a rave later on. "Some of these people are rather intelligent and they could have a much better future if we could only do more for them, and we need to think how we can do more, both in education and training in prison," he said. The Bishop of Peterborough, the Right Rev Donald Allister, called for reform, saying: "We talk about a patient-centred NHS, what about a prisoner-centred prison service?" Government whip Baroness Evans of Bowes Park thanked Lord Hanningfield for talking about his experiences as she insisted "education must be at the heart of our prison system if we are to rehabilitate effectively". Lady Evans said the Government was investing 1.3 billion in prisons to improve standards of rehabilitation, and a review of education in jail was under way. A British court has ordered that four Syrian refugees living in "The Jungle" should immediately be brought to the UK to live with relatives in a "groundbreaking judgment", the Refugee Council has said. The case could set an important legal precedent that could allow many other refugees wanting to cross the Channel from Calais to come to Britain. The young men - two teenagers, a 17-year-old and his mentally ill 26-year-old brother - all faced "intolerable" conditions in the sprawling camp and were desperate to be reunited with their siblings in the UK, the Immigration and Asylum Tribunal in central London heard. They have a legal entitlement to come to the UK to seek asylum because their relatives are already legally living here. However, under EU law known as the Dublin regulation they would only be allowed to join their relatives in Britain if they had already applied for asylum in France. But lawyers in Britain successfully argued that because of bureaucratic failings in France and the refugees' entitlement to a family life under Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights, they should immediately be brought to Britain and their asylum applications processed here. Refugee Council policy manager Judith Dennis said the judgment was a "welcome light" for refugees seeking protection in Europe and who are trying to reach relatives. She said: "Everyone has the right to live in safety with their loved ones. European governments must work together to ensure families are reunited safely and speedily, especially when it comes to children and other dependent family members." The Home Office had fought the application and plans to appeal it, the Refugee Council said. But it is understood the order will apply immediately meaning the four refugees can travel over from Calais now. The judgment, to be handed down in full at a later date, effectively means French authorities will be bypassed as the applications are handed over directly to the British. Michael Fordham QC, representing the applicants, told the hearing on Monday the case could open the door to other applications from refugees at the camp hoping to come to Britain. He said: "It will apply to others - certainly, I would say, any unaccompanied minor in this camp with a sibling in the UK. And I don't shrink from that. "You are only deciding these cases so you know things like how long they have been there and the assessment of their needs. "I'm not asking you to give a ruling that will be some general protective principle that does not regard those things." But he added: "Suppose you have only been there a week, my argument is the same. This is intolerable for a day." The court heard that all the men have been traumatised, that several of them suffer from post traumatic stress disorder and that squalid conditions at the camp are aggravating these health problems. Mr Fordham said the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said the camp amounted to "an undignified and intolerable situation". The United Nations special representative on migration Peter Sutherland branded the camp "a stain on Europe" and "living hell", the court heard. George Gabriel, from campaign group Citizens UK, said: "This judgment highlights that there are safe, legal routes to reconnect families using the Dublin III regulations, and we hope will allow other families to be reunited." He added: "Now government and the French authorities must act to ensure no more children are driven into the hands of people smugglers or become so desperate they take terrible risks to reach the safety of the UK. "We know this is just the start of work to ensure the most vulnerable are protected and are pleased with this positive outcome; it will help us to continue to fight for justice for those who are in most need through no fault of their own." Karl Pike, from the British Red Cross, said the government needed a "more ambitious" response to the refugee crisis, saying "a 'business as usual' approach won't work". He added: "Instead of putting obstacles in the path of people who have a right to be safe with their families, there must be more accessible routes to safety for refugees." Steve Symonds, from Amnesty UK, added: "It should be a matter of shame that these desperate family members had to resort to the courts. "Despite the squalor and misery of so many in Calais and Dunkirk the UK government has doggedly maintained its refusal to share responsibility with France and other EU countries - even in the case of refugees with family long settled in the UK, including British citizens." A Home Office spokesman said: "We will study the full judgment in detail. "We stand by the well-established principle that those seeking protection should claim asylum in the first safe country they reach. The court still requires these individuals to claim asylum in France before they can come to the UK. "Any request to unite family members under the Dublin Regulation is carefully considered. Where someone seeking asylum elsewhere in the EU can demonstrate they have close family members legally in the UK, we will take responsibility for that claim." The Islamic State (IS) group has confirmed the death of the British terrorist who became known as Jihadi John. Mohammed Emwazi had been reported killed in an air strike last November, with US forces saying they were "reasonably certain" he was dead. IS has now released what appears to be an obituary to the fighter, who it calls Abu Muharib al-Muhajir, in the latest edition of its magazine Dabiq. A smiling picture of the militant, who appears unmasked looking towards the ground, accompanies the text, which is written in tribute form to a man they describe as an "honourable brother". Emwazi shocked the world when he appeared in a video in August 2014 in which he condemned the West and appeared to behead US journalist James Foley. He emerged again in a number of other videos released by IS, including those in which American reporter Steven Sotloff and British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning were murdered. Early last year the militant was identified as Kuwait-born Emwazi, a computer programming graduate who grew up in London. Following the US military's report that Emwazi had been targeted, David Cameron hailed his apparent death as a "strike at the heart" of the extremist group. The Prime Minister claimed the move was "an act of self defence" and "the right thing to do". Emwazi was not thought to be a major tactical figure within the ranks of IS but his consistent appearance in their bloody videos meant he had a high propaganda value for the extremists. He was killed when the car he was in was targeted by a drone, according to the English language magazine Dabiq. The young Emwazi attended Quintin Kynaston Community Academy in north London and was described by his former headteacher as a " hard-working aspirational young man". It later emerged he may have been bullied at school. He went on to gain a degree in information systems with business management from the University of Westminster. Emwazi worked at one point with an IT firm in Kuwait during a stint in the Gulf and was described by a former boss as "the best employee we ever had" and a "calm and decent" person. But Emwazi was known to intelligence services in the UK since at least 2009 and had been on a list of potential terror suspects. Campaign group Cage claimed Emwazi had been harassed by British security services, driving him to extremism, but later admitted it made mistakes in its handling of the issue. Downing Street described Cage's claims at the time as "reprehensible". An investigation is under way to establish how the tent fire started A man believed to have been homeless has been found dead next to a burning tent. He was found when fire crews were called to a railway arch in Irwell Street, Salford, Greater Manchester, in the early hours of Wednesday. The scene, close to Salford Central railway station, was cordoned off for forensic investigations. One building site worker close to where the body was found said he had seen homeless people sleeping rough under the railway arches. He said: "I don't know who found him, I didn't know the chap. He was homeless, living under the bridge. I saw about three (homeless people) going in." Another worker said: "I've seen all the police here this morning but I know nothing about it. They were there about 6am this morning when we arrived." Forensic officers could be seen taking pictures inside the secluded archway as police manned the entrance. A spokeswoman for Greater Manchester Police said: "We were called at around 1.20am to Irwell Street, Salford, to reports that a tent was on fire under a railway bridge. "We recovered a man's body next to a tent. We don't know the cause of the fire yet but investigations are ongoing." Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service confirmed they were called to the railway arches at the junction of Irwell Street and Trinity Way. Two fire engines from Manchester Central station were called to the scene at 1.18am and used a hose to put out the fire. One homeless man, David Palmer, 37, said he believed the victim was a middle-aged man called Lawrence who had been beaten up before being set alight. He said: "I heard that kids beat him up and set him on fire. I was going to go there last night, it could have been me." He added that people who were rough sleepers sought shelter underneath the arches "to keep warm". Greater Manchester Police were unable to verify Mr Palmer's claims. The allegations are being treated as attempted abductions, police said A man posing as a police officer has made a series of attempts to abduct schoolgirls. On Monday and Tuesday morning four girls between the ages of 11 and 14 were approached by the man, who was wearing normal clothes but tried to convince them he was a police officer. Children in Hornsey, north London, are being warned to get away as quickly as possible if they are approached by someone claiming to be an officer but who has no identification. Chief Inspector Jude Beehag-Fisher said: "It would be unusual for police officers in plain clothes not to identify themselves by showing a warrant card, and members of the public are entitled to ask to see one. "Any child approached by someone in the street in similar circumstances to these incidents, that are not shown any identification that the person is a police officer, should get away from them as quickly as possible, they should shout for help and make sure they tell a parent, teacher or other person in authority as soon as possible. In an emergency always dial 999." Three girls were approached between 7.50am and 9am on Monday, and another just before 8am on Tuesday. None of them were hurt. A statement from Scotland Yard said: "At this early stage of our inquiries the allegations are being treated as attempted abductions." Extra police patrols are being carried out in the area and officers have spoken to local schools. The suspect is aged between 20 and 30, black, has short, dark hair and was wearing a jacket with the hood up. A Haringey Council spokesman said: "Incidents of this nature are rare in Haringey, though we fully understand the concern this has caused for parents. "Pupil safeguarding is a priority for the council and for all local schools and there is a clear focus on ensuring all pupils are aware of 'stranger danger'. "We are of course supporting the police in their investigation." Scotland Yard has refused to apologise to Field Marshal Lord Bramall over a dropped nine-month investigation into historical claims of sex abuse. The 92-year-old war veteran saw his home raided after allegations were made by one man, known as Nick, before police admitted there was insufficient evidence and announced on Friday night that they had dropped the case. Lord Bramall dismissed a lengthy statement from the force as "purely the police justifying themselves", but said he would accept an offer from a senior officer to meet with him and explain what happened. Assistant Commissioner Patricia Gallan said: "I fully recognise how unpleasant it may be to be investigated by the police over allegations of historic abuse. "For a person to have their innocence publicly called into question must be appalling, and so I have every sympathy with Lord Bramall and his late wife and regret the distress they endured during this investigation." A storm erupted over the force's treatment of the D-Day veteran, with London mayor Boris Johnson among those calling for him to receive an apology. Ms Gallan said she will meet Lord Bramall at the end of a wider police investigation into historical abuse claims, called Operation Midland, and explain the force's conduct. In a statement issued through his lawyer today, the retired Army chief said: " I've got nothing to say, this is purely the police justifying themselves and that's up to them. I am glad to say they have offered a senior officer to come and see me and I am willing to speak to them." Ms Gallan insisted police would be put off investigating claims if they had to apologise when inquiries did not end with a suspect being charged. "The Metropolitan Police accepts absolutely that we should apologise when we get things wrong, and we have not shrunk from doing so," she said. "However, if we were to apologise whenever we investigated allegations that did not lead to a charge, we believe this would have a harmful impact on the judgments made by officers and on the confidence of the public. "Investigators may be less likely to pursue allegations they knew would be hard to prove, whereas they should be focused on establishing the existence, or otherwise, of relevant evidence." In her statement on Wednesday, which came after days of fierce criticism of the inquiry, Ms Gallan said the claims against the peer were "one part of a detailed set of allegations" and so it was not possible to clear him "as quickly as we would have liked". She went on: " The possibility of an apology has been raised, and I thought it was important for the Metropolitan Police to respond publicly. This is an unusual step for us to take, but I think it is in the public interest for me to explain the dilemmas faced by policing in this regard. "We have many serious allegations referred to us every year that we have a duty to investigate. It is, of course, a principle of British justice that everyone is equal before the law so that duty must apply equally to all, irrespective of their status or social standing. We always endeavour to investigate impartially and to follow the evidence without fear or favour." On Tuesday, Lord Bramall's son, Nicholas Bramall, called for his father's anonymous accuser to be investigated. In a letter to the Daily Telegraph he said the key witness, known as Nick, had been "peddling unsubstantiated and uncorroborated information" that had left his 92-year-old father's distinguished reputation "tainted with the stench of abuse". Crispin Blunt said respect for the law would 'fly out the window' if a ban is implemented A Conservative former minister has "outed" himself as a poppers user, as sweeping new powers banning the substance cleared the Commons. Crispin Blunt warned he and many gay men were "astonished" by the Government's plan, adding respect for the law would "fly out the window" because of the ban. Home Office Minister Mike Penning told the Commons he has offered a "compromise" which will mean poppers are banned but a review will be undertaken to see if it should be overturned. A final decision taken by Home Secretary Theresa May and Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt will be made before the summer, Mr Penning said, before the Psychoactive Substances Bill received an unopposed third reading. The Bill creates powers to make all psychoactive substances illegal with listed exceptions instead o f forcing each new legal high to be individually banned as they are created and sold. It bars the production, distribution, sale and supply of legal highs - imposing a maximum seven-year prison term on convicted offenders. A Labour-led amendment to exempt poppers from the banned list was defeated by 309 votes to 228, a majority of 81 during report stage in the Commons. Conservative MP Crispin Blunt says he uses poppers and banning them would be "fantastically stupid". https://t.co/bhyPLBTSLm BBC Newsbeat (@BBCNewsbeat) January 20, 2016 Peers will have to examine amendments made by MPs before the Bill can become law. Speaking in the Commons, former justice minister Mr Blunt said: "There are some times when something is proposed which becomes personal to you and you realise the Government is about to do something fantastically stupid and I think in those circumstances one has a duty to speak up. "I use poppers, I out myself as a popper user, and would be directly affected by this legislation and I'm astonished to find that it's proposing to be banned and, frankly, so were many other gay men. "If I follow my own mindset reaction to this it simply serves to bring the whole law into disrepute. "Choosing to ban this, which I have been using and I know has been used ... for decades, then respect for the law is going to fly out the window for people if that's the drug that they use." He noted warnings indicate there will be increased use of class A and B drugs plus increased transmission of sexually transmitted infections. After the vote, Mr Blunt told BBC Radio 4's PM programme: "Frankly I don't think most MPs will have known the detail of this legislation. They trust their colleagues on either side who do take a keen interest, either a leading interest or get themselves involved in issues ... " Pressed on whether he would keep using poppers, Mr Blunt said: "I have to obey the law. Personal possession is not going to be made a crime under the law, the issue of supply will be made a crime. "I imagine now that gay men who use these things will be stocking up ... and then they will be able to be legally supplied again." Conservative David Davis, a former shadow home secretary, said in the Commons : "I understand it's intended not to victimise current users of this drug but it does put them in a position where they might be susceptible to blackmail if they are a public figure dealing with a criminal. "So it does seem to me that it will criminalise people who it does not intend to criminalise." Shadow home office minister Lyn Brown said she was afraid that banning the products would "push their use underground and away from regulatory controls that currently exist". Keith Vaz, Labour chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, added: "To ban then un-ban sends a powerful message out to a section of our community that they are not being listened to and to experts who have given evidence to us that they are wrong." Tory Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) said poppers help LGBT couples achieve intimacy that would be more difficult without the drug's muscle-relaxing properties. Mr Freer said it therefore has an important emotional and mental health benefit, although he backed the ban. During the third reading, Mr Penning said of the Bill: " I think it will save lives. As a father I can only imagine what others have gone through that have had their loved ones taken away from them or badly damaged. "I also panicked like hell when my daughters went to university. They're really sensible kids, they understood everything but they also could easily have been dragged into the situation that 'this is safe'. "It wasn't safe and we've made sure that everybody knows that now." The youngster made the error during an English lesson at a Lancashire school A 10-year-old Muslim boy was quizzed by police after mistakenly writing that he lived in a "terrorist house" rather than a "terraced house". The youngster made the error during an English lesson at a Lancashire school, and the following day police arrived at his home to interview him and examine the family laptop. The boy's family said the incident on December 7 had shocked them and asked for the police and school to apologise. His cousin, who has not been named to protect the schoolboy's identity, told the BBC: "You can imagine it happening to a 30-year-old man, but not to a young child. "If the teacher had any concerns it should have been about his spelling. "They shouldn't be putting a child through this. He's now scared of writing, using his imagination." She added that she initially thought the incident had been a joke. A spokeswoman for Lancashire Police said: "This was reported to the police but was dealt with by a joint visit by a Pc from the division and social services, not by anyone from Prevent. "There were not thought to be any areas for concern and no further action was required by any agency." Since last July teachers have been legally obliged to report any suspected extremist behaviour to police as part of the Government's Prevent anti-radicalisation strategy. At the time the Department for Education (DfE) issued advice for schools and childcare providers on how to meet the new requirement - known as the Prevent duty. It said: "Schools and childcare providers can also build pupils' resilience to radicalisation by promoting fundamental British values and enabling them to challenge extremist views. "It is important to emphasise that the Prevent duty is not intended to stop pupils debating controversial issues. "On the contrary, schools should provide a safe space in which children, young people and staff can understand the risks associated with terrorism and develop the knowledge and skills to be able to challenge extremist arguments." Schools are expected to assess the risk of children being drawn into terrorism, which can include support for extremist ideas that are "part of terrorist ideology". In October last year, figures obtained by the Press Association revealed that eight people were being referred to de-radicalisation schemes every day. Between June and August 2015, 796 individuals - including some 312 aged under 18 - were reported to the Government's Channel programme for possible intervention. The statistics further revealed that there was a marked fall in referrals - 349 in July, compared with 120 in August - when schools closed for the summer. Channel, which was first piloted in 2007, is a key part of Prevent, which is itself a strand of Contest, the acronym given to the multi-pronged national counter-terrorism programme. It aims to provide support at an early stage to people who are identified as being vulnerable to being drawn into terrorism. The biggest spenders were the Conservatives, with 15,587,956 The Conservatives spent more than 1.2 million on Facebook advertising during the general election campaign, records have revealed. Tory spending on the social networking site massively outstripped Labour, which spent just 16,454, documents released by the Electoral Commission show. A series of invoices set out details of what the Conservatives received for their cash, with bills for campaigns for individual MPs as well as "4040 likes" and "page likes". Labour gave Facebook 1,027 on a "tea towel giveaway - website conversations" and 696.59 on "Hell Yes - donations", a reference to the phrase then Labour leader Ed Miliband used in an interview with presenter Jeremy Paxman in which he declared: "Hell yes, I'm tough enough". The company earned 1.37 million from across the political spectrum over the course of the campaign. Parties are not bound by any rules on advertising spending on social media as long as they report it to the Electoral Commission. Overall, p olitical campaigns spent a total of almost 40 million on the 2015 general election, the figures revealed. Biggest spenders were the Conservatives, with 15,587,956, ahead of Labour's 12,087,340, the Liberal Democrats' 3,529,106 and Ukip's 2,851,465, said the Electoral Commission. The total of 39,023,564 outstripped the 34,463,890 spent on the 2010 campaign by almost 5 million. But 2015 was still cheaper than the record-breaking 2005 campaign when 42 million was lavished on wooing voters. In all, 57 parties and 23 non-party campaigns spent money on the 2015 election, but only six spent more than 250,000, according to the Electoral Commission figures. The Scottish National Party reported spending of 1,475,478 and the Greens 1,131,018. The figures mean the Conservative campaign cost 1.38 for each of the 11.3 million votes they won, while Labour spent 1.29 for each vote, Liberal Democrats 1.46, the SNP 1.01, Greens 98p and Ukip just 73p. Conservative spending was down on the 16.7 million reported in 2010 and the cost of the Liberal Democrat campaign was cut from almost 4.8 million at the previous poll. But Labour increased spending sharply on the 8 million spent by Gordon Brown in his unsuccessful battle to hold on to power in 2010. Any political party that stands more than one candidate at the election is required to submit a campaign expenditure return to the commission. Reported spending for parties does not cover some costs such as staffing, and candidate spending is reported separately. A property developer has said front doors will be repainted after concerns the homes of asylum seekers have been marked out in red, exposing them to racism and vandalism. An urgent review of homes in the North East has been ordered by the Home Office over the properties in Middlesbrough which are owned by Jomast, a subcontractor of services giant G4S. One Iranian asylum seeker told how he had been plagued by youths throwing eggs and prostitutes banging on his windows. Mohammed Bagher Bayzavi, 58, who lives in Union Street, said: "Everyone here knows the red colour is Jomast. Change the colour - anything but red." Jomast and G4S have denied the claim red paint has been used deliberately for the doors of properties housing asylum seekers, saying the colour has been used on "many" houses. G4S said in a statement: " There is categorically no policy to house asylum seekers behind red doors. Our subcontractor Jomast has used red paint across across many of its properties and it's grotesque to equate this with any form of discrimination. "Although we have received no complaints or requests on this issue from asylum seekers we house, in light of the concerns raised Jomast has agreed to address the issue by repainting front doors in the area so that there is no predominant colour." Jomast said its accommodation is inspected frequently by the Home Office and meets the required standards. Managing director Stuart Monk said the paint is usually bought in bulk for use across all properties, adding that it is "ludicrous to suggest that this constitutes any form of discrimination". According to an investigation by The Times, of the 168 Jomast houses it identified in two of Middlesbrough's most deprived areas, 155 had red front doors. The newspaper spoke to people living at 66 of the red-door houses. It said 62 were home to asylum seekers of 22 nationalities. Of the four remaining properties two housed "former asylum seekers" and two housed British citizens. The paper said one woman claimed yobs shouted: "F*** you dirty women. Get out of our country." Another said a National Front logo was carved in their red front door. Immigration minister James Brokenshire said in a statement: "I am deeply concerned by this issue and I have commissioned Home Office officials to conduct an urgent audit of asylum seeker housing in the North East. "I expect the highest standards from our contractors. If we find any evidence of discrimination against asylum seekers it will be dealt with immediately as any such behaviour will not be tolerated." Suzanne Fletcher, a local resident who chairs the Liberal Democrats for Seekers of Sanctuary, said the issue has been raised previously with the Home Affairs committee, the National Audit Office and former Redcar MP Ian Swales. She said some asylum seekers may not have reported attacks because they are "frightened of jeopardising their case". Other people living in the area said they had not experienced any problems. Somali asylum seeker Hassan Abukar, 25, shares a house with a red door in Essex Street with two Sudanese men. Asked if locals knew about asylum seekers typically living in accommodation with red front doors, he said: "Everyone knows. It's not a problem for me. I have no problems here." Rahumullah Ahmedi, 36, in nearby Costa Street, said he had experienced no racism or harassment in Middlesbrough, and he knew of some asylum seekers housed by Jomast who did not have red front doors. It is unacceptable for asylum seekers to flee persecution and end up facing hate in Britain, the Refugee Council said. Head of Advocacy Dr Lisa Doyle said: "It's completely unacceptable that asylum seekers - already the victims of persecution and unimaginable horror in their home countries - are being subjected to further abuse here in Britain, the very place they hoped to find safety." Amnesty International said the Government must take some responsibility for negative attitudes to asylum seekers. The organisation's refugee and migrant rights programme director Steve Symonds said: "No-one should have to live in fear of having dog excrement smeared on their door or stones thrown at their windows. "We welcome the Home Office's pledge to review this, but ministers must face the fact they cannot absolve themselves from all responsibility when by their own rhetoric and policies they have demonised asylum seekers and other migrants. "This only encourages such hateful acts while discouraging victims from seeking the support and protection they need." Mr Monk said Jomast is obliged to log complaints but had not been made aware of any regarding the issue. Asked about a case in which an asylum seeker claimed they had repainted their door white but were told by an official it had to be changed back because it was "not company policy", Mr Monk said he could not comment as he was not aware of the particular circumstances. He told Sky News that it is possible the attem pt to repaint the door might not have been carried out "effectively with the result that it was probably not looking very satisfactory". Following the news on Wednesday he said the firm had decided to take action. He said: " We think that this has been blown out of all proportion but we are responding to it, and we are going to repaint the doors to make sure there isn't a predominant colour. I don't see what more we can do." MPs have called for an independent investigation into the death of toddler Poppi Worthington along the lines of the inquiries into Victoria Climbie and Peter Connelly - known as Baby P. And there were demands in the House of Commons for a second police force to reopen the investigation into the 13-month-old's 2012 death, after Cumbria Police were criticised for their handling of the case. A High Court judge found on Tuesday that, on the balance of probabilities, Poppi's father, Paul Worthington, sexually assaulted his daughter shortly before her death, but said the 48-year-old will not face criminal action unless new evidence comes to light. After being summoned to the Commons to answer questions about the case, Home Office Minister Karen Bradley confirmed that, for the police case to be reopened, there would have to be fresh evidence from a second inquest being carried out into the little girl's death or an Independent Police Complaints Commission report into the original Cumbria Police investigation. Ms Bradley promised that ministers would "learn lessons" from the tragedy, but said they would not have the full facts until the second inquest is completed. Poppi collapsed with serious injuries at her home in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, in December 2012 and was rushed to hospital where she was pronounced dead. Mr Justice Peter Jackson found that Cumbria Police carried out no "real" investigation for nine months, as senior detectives thought a pathologist "may have jumped to conclusions" in her belief the youngster had been a victim of abuse. Following her burial in February 2013, t here is now said to be an "absence of evidence'' to find out how Poppi died, or definitively prove if or how she was injured. Mr Worthington was arrested in August 2013 and questioned on suspicion of sexual assault but was not charged with any offence. He strenuously denies any wrongdoing. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has previously said it conducted "a thorough review of the evidence" but decided it was insufficient to provide a realistic prospect of conviction. A Downing Street source said Prime Minister David Cameron was "shocked" by the judge's ruling. Barrow and Furness Labour MP John Woodcock told the House of Commons: "The combined failure of several agencies is every bit as serious as those which contributed to the deaths of Victoria Climbie and of Baby Peter in Haringey. "Will the Government make clear that it values Poppi's life as greatly by ordering now a similarly thorough independent investigation into how the failings happened? "Will they, as the second inquest is continuing, order a separate force to come in and take over the investigation into Poppi Worthington's death to try to salvage some prospect of justice for her life?" And f ormer shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper also insisted there was no need to wait for the outcome of the second inquest into her death. She told Ms Bradley: "Surely we don't need to wait for the inquest for police investigation to be continuing. The IPCC is, I understand it, just verifying whether the police previously did the right job or not. "What we need is a police investigation now into this individual case and could that be done by an alternative police force?" Ms Bradley said the IPCC report had been completed but could not be released for fear of prejudicing the second inquest. Labour MPs called for the draft report to be released, claiming that a copy had already been leaked to the media. And she told MPs: "We do need to learn lessons from this case but we need to wait for that second inquest ... I n order for the case to be reopened, new evidence will need to come to light, which may or may not be the case depending on the IPCC inquiry and also the second inquest. "But this is an operational matter which I as the minister will not be able to intervene on." Ms Bradley said there had been an inspection by Ofsted in 2015 into Cumbria social services, in which it was found to be "inadequate". As a result, the Department for Education was currently in the process of intervening to ensure child social services are working properly in the county. Liberal Democrat former justice minister Sir Simon Hughes told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "If the justice system is about not just justice for the deceased but to make sure that the welfare of the children who are still alive is best looked after, then it must be in the interests of justice that there is a review now as to whether there was any criminal liability for anything that led to the death of this poor little child." Asked if the Prime Minister would back a second force reopening the investigation, his official spokeswoman said: "This is an issue where we will continue to engage with the local authorities and the police to look at if there is anything more that should be done or any lessons to be learned." Lawyers for the father of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence have made a last ditch attempt to stop the retirement of a senior police officer who is facing a misconduct claim. Commander Richard Walton, who leaves Scotland Yard today, was accused of meeting with an undercover officer who had gathered information about the Lawrence family during the public inquiry into the teenager's death. The senior officer's retirement means that he will not face disciplinary proceedings over the claim. Lawyers for Neville Lawrence have written to Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe asking him to suspend the officer and stop his retirement. Police watchdog the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) previously found that Mr Walton has a case to answer for alleged misconduct over the meeting with the officer. The lettter from law firm Hodge, Jones and Allen said: "Without any suspension there is a real risk that Commander Walton will avoid sanctions as a result. We consider that the IPCC conclusions provide enough justification that it is in the public interest to suspend Commander Walton immediately in order to allow him to face disciplinary proceedings. "There is a strong public interest in ensuring that any disciplinary sanctions are followed through, in order that the police are seen to be held accountable for their actions. Permitting Mr Walton to resign would cause serious damage to the reputation of the Metropolitan Police Service." In 2014 Mr Walton was temporarily moved from his job leading the force's counter-terrorism command, following the publication of a damning report by barrister Mark Ellison QC into the original Lawrence murder investigation. Mr Ellison revealed that an undercover officer - known as N81 - held a meeting in 1998 with Mr Walton, who was then an acting detective inspector working on Scotland Yard's Lawrence review team, responsible for making submissions to the Macpherson Inquiry, the probe into the appalling failures in how the 18-year-old's racist murder was investigated. Mr Walton was alleged to have met the undercover officer and ''obtained information pertaining to the Lawrence family and their supporters, potentially undermining the (Macpherson) inquiry and public confidence". It was also claimed that he provided inconsistent accounts to Mr Ellison's review team. Aspiring architect Mr Lawrence was murdered by racists in Eltham, south-east London, in April 1993 and it took nearly 20 years for two of the gang of up to six killers to be brought to justice. The Ellison report disclosed that in the late 1990s, N81 infiltrated a group which was apparently working to influence the Lawrence family's justice campaign to further its own agenda. Feedback from N81 to his unit, the shadowy Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), touched on personal details concerning the Lawrence family, such as comments on the separation of Stephen's parents, Doreen and Neville. It was claimed that a meeting was set up between N81 and Mr Walton, which was described as a ''fascinating and valuable exchange of information''. A Yemeni man inspects the damage at a site reportedly hit by Saudi-led airstrikes in the capital Sanaa on January 6, 2016. Nearly 6,000 people have been killed since March, according to UN figures. At least 2,795 of them are civilians. AFP PHOTO / MOHAMMED HUWAISMOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP/Getty Images A Yemeni man inspects the damage at a site reportedly hit by Saudi-led airstrikes in the capital Sanaa on January 6, 2016. Nearly 6,000 people have been killed since March, according to UN figures. At least 2,795 of them are civilians. AFP PHOTO / MOHAMMED HUWAISMOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP/Getty Images Yemeni blind men shout slogans during a demonstration gathering disabled people to protest after a center for the blind was reportedly destroyed by Saudi-led airstrikes in the capital Sanaa on January 6, 2016. AFP/Getty Images Yemeni blind men hold a banner during a demonstration gathering disabled people to protest after a center for the blind was reportedly destroyed by Saudi-led airstrikes in the capital Sanaa on January 6, 2016. Nearly 6,000 people have been killed since March, according to UN figures. At least 2,795 of them are civilians. AFP PHOTO / MOHAMMED HUWAISMOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP/Getty Images Employees walk on the rubble of the Chamber of Trade and Industry headquarters after it was hit by a Saudi-led airstrike in Sanaa, Yemen, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed) Yemeni blind and disabled people shout slogans during a demonstration to protest after a centre for the blind was reportedly destroyed by Saudi-led airstrikes in the capital Sanaa on January 6, 2016. Nearly 6,000 people have been killed since March, according to UN figures. At least 2,795 of them are civilians. AFP/Getty Images The UK's arms companies have cashed-in on Saudi Arabias military campaign in Yemen by ramping up arms sales to the countrys autocratic government by over a hundred times, new figures show. Sales of British bombs and missiles to the Saudi Arabia surged to over 1bn just three months last year, according to an official record of arms export licences quietly released by the Government this week. The sales, up from just 9m in the preceding three-month period, have occurred while the oil-rich autocracy conducts a military campaign in its neighbours territory, where the United Nations has said a humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding. Saudi Arabia is intervening in Yemen to fight Houthi rebels, who control the countrys capital but are not internationally recognised as its government. The Kingdom was asked to join the conflict by the countrys Government, which has been pushed out of much of the countrys heartland. Criticism of the Saudi military operation have however included the bombing of multiple hospitals run by the charity Medecins Sans Frontieres and the deaths of thousands of civilians, including 130 at a single wedding. While international observers have recognised abuses on all sides, in late December UN human rights chief Zeid Raad al-Hussein said that a disproportionate number of attacks of civilians in Yemen had come from the Saudi-led invasion force. I have observed with extreme concern the continuation of heavy shelling from the ground and the air in areas with high a concentration of civilians as well as the perpetuation of the destruction of civilian infrastructure in particular hospitals and schools by all parties to the conflict, although a disproportionate amount appeared to be the result of airstrikes carried out by Coalition Forces, Mr Zeid said. The United Nations and the charity Action Aid have also said that around two-thirds of civlians casualties in the war have been caused by air strikes. Read more Expand Close A Yemeni worker looks at the damage at the Noor Centre for the Blind after it was reportedly destroyed by Saudi-led air strikes in the capital Sanaa on January 5, 2016. AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A Yemeni worker looks at the damage at the Noor Centre for the Blind after it was reportedly destroyed by Saudi-led air strikes in the capital Sanaa on January 5, 2016. AFP/Getty Images Read More The exact figure for British arms export licences from July to September 2015 was 1,066,216,510 in so-called ML4 export licences, which relate to bombs, missiles, rockets, and components of those items. The arms are exported with the consent of ministers, who must sign off all licences for weapons. In mid-December the British Government was threatened with a legal challenge by campaigners, who warned that the decision to continue supplying Saudi Arabia with bombs despite apparent violations of international law could be unlawful. David Cameron however on Monday moved to defend arms British support for the operation, arguing that the UK had the strongest export controls in the world on weapons. First of all, our relationship with Saudi Arabia is important for our own security. They are opponents of Daesh and the extremism and terror [they spread], he told BBC Radio 4s Today programme. Expand Close A general view shows the rubble of the building of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry which was destroyed during air strikes on the capital, Sanaa, on January 5, 2016. AFP PHOTO / MOHAMMED HUWAISMOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A general view shows the rubble of the building of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry which was destroyed during air strikes on the capital, Sanaa, on January 5, 2016. AFP PHOTO / MOHAMMED HUWAISMOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP/Getty Images Read more Read More In terms of our arms exports I think we have some of the most stringent controls anywhere in the world and Ill always make sure theyre properly operated. Were trying to do everything we can to make sure that the work done by Saudi Arabia is properly targeted and its right that we should do that. Were working with them and others on behalf of the legitimate government on Yemen. In November foreign secretary Phillip Hammond said he wanted to sell even more munitions to Saudi Arabia. Expand Close Yemenis look at destruction in the street following air strikes on the capital, Sanaa, on January 5, 2016. AFP PHOTO / MOHAMMED HUWAISMOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Yemenis look at destruction in the street following air strikes on the capital, Sanaa, on January 5, 2016. AFP PHOTO / MOHAMMED HUWAISMOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP/Getty Images Wed always like to do more business, more British exports, more British jobs and in this case very high end engineering jobs protected and created by our diplomacy abroad, he told the BBCs Newsnight programme when asked about the issue. Read more Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close An employee inspects a room inside the Chamber of Trade and Industry headquarters after it was hit by a Saudi-led airstrike in Sanaa, Yemen, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed) AP A man uses his mobile to take pictures of the rubble of the Chamber of Trade and Industry headquarters after it was hit by a Saudi-led air strike in Sanaa, Yemen, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed) AP An employee inspects a building destroyed by Saudi-led air strikes in Sanaa, Yemen (AP) TOPSHOT - Yemeni construction workers walk with their rollers for painting in the the capital, Sanaa, on January 5, 2016. AFP PHOTO / MOHAMMED HUWAIS / AFP / MOHAMMED HUWAISMOHAMMED HUWAIS/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp An employee inspects a room inside the Chamber of Trade and Industry headquarters after it was hit by a Saudi-led airstrike in Sanaa, Yemen, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed) Read More He admitted that the weapons were being used in Yemen but said that Saudis deny there have been any breaches of international humanitarian law. But human rights group Amnesty International UK accused the Government of ignoring overwhelming evidence of civilian targeting. These figures are deeply worrying, showing that the UK continued to despatch huge amounts of weaponry to Saudi Arabia despite overwhelming evidence that the Saudi war machine was laying waste to Yemeni homes, schools and hospitals, said Allan Hogarth, the groups head of Policy and Government Affairs. As officials were signing off these sales, hundreds - possibly thousands - of Yemeni civilians were dying in a terrifying barrage of indiscriminate Saudi airstrikes in the country. Instead of burying their heads in the sand over Saudi Arabias behaviour in Yemen, Downing Street should immediately suspend export licences for all further UK arms bound for Saudi Arabia, and allow a full investigation into allegations of serious breaches of international humanitarian law by Saudi Arabia in Yemen. Roy Isbister, head of the NGO Saferworld's arms unit, told the Independent that the UK was breaking its obligations under international law. It is inexplicable that the day after the Prime Minister says there is no military solution to the situation in Yemen, the Government releases these truly stunning figures. A billion pounds worth of bombs to the Saudi air forcethe same air force that the UN says is responsible for multiple attacks on schools, hospital, markets and civilian infrastructureruns directly counter to the UKs obligations under national, EU and international law," he said. Clearly, all sides to the conflict in Yemen are guilty of abuses. However, the UK Governments incredible level of material support directly to Saudi Arabia patently undermines its claims to operate one of the most rigorous arms export control regimes in the world. A Government spokesperson said: We operate one of the most rigorous and transparent arms export control regimes in the world with each licence application assessed on a case by case basis, taking account of all relevant information, to ensure compliance with our legal obligations. No licence is issued if it does not meet these requirements. We regularly raise with Saudi Arabian-led coalition and the Houthis, the need to comply with international humanitarian law (IHL) in Yemen. We monitor the situation carefully and have offered the Saudi authorities advice and training in this area." Health experts are calling for action to ensure children under five are move active More than nine out of 10 under-fives are not active enough to be healthy, experts have said as they called on the Government to "embed" exercise in young people's lives. Figures show just 9% of children aged two to four meet the current guidelines of having at least three hours of physical activity per day. The British Heart Foundation National Centre for Physical Activity and Health (BHFNC), based at Loughborough University, is now calling for measures to support more exercise. Experts said being active is proven to support brain development, improve bone health and muscular development, as well helping develop social and cognitive skills. The centre wants to see exercise embedded in policies so it is part of everyday life at home, in early years settings such as nurseries, and in the community. Health professionals should also track the physical activity levels of children during their early years, it said. Elaine McNish, director of the BHFNC, said: "This manifesto outlines how we can create an environment for our children that encourages them and stimulates them to be active. "This manifesto is a call to policy makers to ensure that early years settings are supported to create active environments. "We know that active children are more likely to become active adults so it's vitally important to get it right at the beginning to give children opportunities to play from a young age and develop a lifelong love of being active." Lisa Young, project manager for prevention and behaviour change at the British Heart Foundation, said: "We know that physical activity is an important component of a healthy lifestyle for everyone and the under-fives are no different. "Developing a love of being active from a young age is important as we know active children become active adults, and active adults are healthier adults." Official unemployment figures will show whether the downwards trend is continuing Unemployment has fallen to a near eight-year low and a record number of people are in work, official figures have shown. The jobless total fell by 99,000 in the three months to November to 1.6 million. This week's raft of job losses in the steel industry will not feed through for months. Tata announced more than 1,000 redundancies on Monday, while Sheffield Forgemasters said on Wednesday that 100 jobs are set to be cut from its 700-strong workforce. The official data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that unemployment has fallen by 239,000 over the past year. The claimant count has also fallen - down by 4,300 last month to 785,900, the lowest since March 2008. Employment has reached a record 31.3 million, a rate of 74%, increasing by more than half a million over the past year and by 267,000 in the latest quarter. Almost 23 million people are in a full-time job, 436,000 more than a year earlier, while 8.4 million are working part-time, up by 152,000. The number of workers in part-time jobs wanting a full-time post is 1.2 million, down by 21,000 in the latest three months. Economic inactivity, counting people on long-term sick leave, looking after a relative or who have given up looking for work, fell by 93,000 to just under nine million, the lowest since the spring of 2014. The inactivity rate for women reached a record low of 27%. The record high was 44% in 1971, when most employment records started. Average earnings increased by 2% in the year to November, down by 0.4%. Other figures showed that job vacancies have increased by 13,000 to a record high of 756,000. ONS statistician David Freeman said: "These results show the labour market continued to strengthen in the autumn. "The employment rate, at 74%, was the highest on record, as was that for women, while the rise in the number of people in work - 276,000 on the quarter - was the third highest on record. "Real earnings continued to grow, albeit at a slower pace than in mid-2015." Employment Minister Priti Patel said: "This is a record-breaking set of figures and has got 2016 off to a fantastic start. "There are now more people in work than ever before and wages are growing - a credit to hard-working Brits and businesses alike. "And in a further demonstration of the strength of the UK labour market, today's figures show there are a record three-quarters of a million vacancies. "We will build on this throughout the coming year - doubling childcare for working parents and introducing the new National Living Wage - ensuring that everyone has increased financial security and the opportunity to get on and succeed in life." Prime Minister David Cameron said: "Unemployment is now below where it was before the recession. We must stick to our plan to keep delivering jobs and security for people." A Welsh Government spokesman said: "Over the last year Wales has seen the joint largest reduction in the unemployment rate of anywhere in the UK - down 22,000. "However, this week's Tata announcement has been a stark reminder of the challenges to Wales in a global market. "Later today the Business Minister is chairing a high-level taskforce charged with drawing up an action plan to support the workforce and the local supply chain. "The Welsh Government has a strong relationship with industry in Wales, working in close partnership over many years. We will continue working tirelessly to provide support during this challenging time." During Prime Minister's Questions, Mr Cameron said the unemployment rate was now lower than at the start of the recession. "Over the last year we have actually seen more people in work in every region in our country and that is something that is welcome," he said. "The latest figures show unemployment falling by another 99,000 and we have today in our country a record number of people in work ever in our history and a record number of women in work," he added. "Since I have become Prime Minister 2.3 million more people in work." Sadie Hartley was found stabbed to death at her home (Lancashire Constabulary/PA) A woman charged with the murder of a 60-year-old businesswoman has made her first appearance in court. Sarah Williams, 34, of Blacon, Chester, is accused of killing Sadie Hartley, who was found stabbed to death at her home in Sunny Bank Road, Helmshore, Lancashire, on Friday evening. Williams, of Treborth Road, was flanked in the dock at Blackburn Magistrates' Court by two female prison officers and stood with her head bowed throughout the three-minute hearing. Wearing a grey shirt, grey trousers and black pumps, she spoke only to confirm her full address and date of birth before she was remanded in custody ahead of a preliminary hearing at Preston Crown Court on Friday. Earlier, she covered her face with a cream cardigan as she was led in handcuffs from the prison van into the building. No pleas were entered to the allegation she murdered Ms Hartley on Thursday January 14. Several explosions were heard as gunmen attacked a university in Charsadda in north-west Pakistan An attack on a university in Pakistan which left at least 20 people dead has been ended by security forces. The attackers triggered a heavy gun battle with police and army troops in a town near Peshawar, but officials said the operation to clear the site had now finished, and that four gunmen were killed. The attack stirred grim memories of the Peshawar school attack in 2014 that killed more than 150 people, mostly children, and shocked the nation. It also prompted the Pakistani prime minister to pledge the country will wipe out the "menace of terrorism". The attack began shortly after the Bacha Khan University opened for classes in the town of Charsadda, some 21 miles outside Peshawar, said deputy commissioner Tahir Zafar. As police and soldiers rushed to the campus, the attackers traded gunfire with the troops and several explosions were heard from the area of the university. The attackers were later contained inside two university blocks where the troops killed them, the army said. A chemistry professor and a student were among those killed, said Mr Zafar, adding that it was not initially clear how many attackers managed to penetrate the campus. Television footage showed heavy military presence at the university, troops rushing in and people fleeing. Ambulances were at the scene and the wounded were taken to hospital. Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif vowed to fight to the end and destroy the Taliban and other militants. "We are determined and resolved in our commitment to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland," Mr Sharif said. A Taliban leader, Khalifa Umar Mansoor, claimed responsibility for the attack. Mansoor, who was the mastermind behind the Peshawar school attack, said a four-man Taliban team carried out the assault. He said it was in revenge for the scores of militants the Pakistani security forces have killed in recent months. However, a spokesman for the main Taliban faction in Pakistan later disowned the group behind the attack, describing the assault as "un-Islamic." Mohammad Khurasani also denied earlier reports that he had endorsed Mansoor's claim and said that those who carried out such attacks would be tried before an Islamic, or Sharia court. Such statements from among the Taliban are not uncommon since the group has many loosely linked factions and is indicative of the deep divisions and splits among the insurgents. The Bacha Khan University is named after the founder of a liberal, anti-Taliban political party. The Pakistani Taliban have in the past targeted the party for its anti-militant policies. But, in a surprise finding, both the real and sham treatments showed a 40 per cent improvement in the severity and frequency of hot flushes at the end of eight weeks of treatment. The benefits were sustained at six months after treatment. The University of Melbourne study, funded by the NHMRC and supported by Jean Hailes for Women, is the largest of its kind to date. It was published in Annals of Internal Medicine. Acupuncture is a traditional Chinese medicine treatment where thin needles are inserted into the body at specific points. A group of 327 Australian women aged over 40 who had at least seven moderate hot flushes a day, were enrolled into the study. Half the group was given 10 sessions of standard Chinese medicine acupuncture. The other half received fake or sham acupuncture, that is, stimulation of the skin using blunt-tipped needles, which has a milder effect without penetrating the skin. Lead author of the study, the University of Melbournes Dr Carolyn Ee, a general practitioner trained in Chinese medicine, said there were several plausible explanations for the improvement in both groups. She said the placebo effect is one possible reason and attending a clinic to talk about symptoms could help and that hot flushes tend to improve spontaneously with time. This was a large and rigorous study and we are confident there is no additional benefit from inserting needles compared with stimulation from pressuring the blunt needles without skin penetration for hot flushes, Dr Ee said. If women want to consider having acupuncture for hot flushes, they should know that although previous studies show it is better than doing nothing, our study demonstrates that needling does not appear to make a difference. Women with breast cancer or who have had both ovaries removed were not included in the study. These women suffer hot flushes that are more severe and often earlier in life, so we think they warrant specific research because breast cancer survivors cant take Hormone Replacement Therapy, Dr Ee explained. She stressed that while acupuncture is a relatively safe treatment, women should also discuss other treatment options for their hot flushes with their doctor. Previous studies have shown acupuncture is effective for chronic pain, including low back pain, neck pain, and osteoarthritis; tension-type headache; chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting; period pain; and hayfever. Dr Mandy Deeks, Deputy CEO of Jean Hailes for Womens Health and a psychologist, said the study highlighted the importance of women talking about health issues. A convoy of trucks loaded with supplies heads out in Syria. In the besieged city of Deir el-Zour, supplies are running so short that people are selling their property for food or an exit permit (AP) Islamic State has freed 270 people it captured last week during intense fighting with Syrian government forces in the country's east, according to a UK-based activist group. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that 50 more civilians are still being held. The freed civilians were released in the village of al-Baghalieh, north of the besieged city of Deir el-Zour. Over the weekend, IS militants launched a heavy offensive to take the city, which is controlled by the Syrian government deep inside IS territory. More than 100 people were reported to have been killed in the fighting. Syrian state news agency SANA said government forces have so far managed to repel the advance on Deir el-Zour, with the help of Russian airstrikes. Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump received a key endorsement from conservative heavyweight Sarah Palin, giving the billionaire businessman a boost less than two weeks before voting begins in Iowa. "Media heads are spinning," Ms Palin said after taking the stage at a Trump rally at Iowa State University. "This is going to be so much fun." She said that, with Mr Trump as president, America would no longer apologise. "No more pussy-footing around," she said, adding that Mr Trump would allow the military do its job and destroy the Islamic State group. "He's going rogue left and right. That's why he's doing so well." "I am greatly honoured to receive Sarah's endorsement," Mr Trump said, announcing the support of the former Alaska governor and former running mate of Senator John McCain in his 2008 bid for the White House. "She is a friend, and a high-quality person whom I have great respect for. I am proud to have her support." Mr Trump's national political director Michael Glassner previously worked with Ms Palin, who was a virtual newcomer to the national political arena when Mr McCain named her as his running mate. She has since risen to prominence as one of the most outspoken conservatives in the party, and signed on as a Fox News TV commentator after resigning as Alaska's governor in 2010, a job she held until last year. Earlier on Tuesday, Mr Trump received an endorsement from the daughter of film star John Wayne. Standing in front of a life-size, rifle-toting model of the actor in full cowboy gear, Mr Trump accepted the endorsement of Aissa Wayne at the John Wayne Birthplace Museum in Winterset, Iowa. "America needs help and we need a strong leader and we need someone like Mr Trump with leadership qualities, someone with courage, someone that's strong, like John Wayne," she said. Pressure is building on EU leaders to overcome their differences and tackle the refugee emergency amid criticism that Europe's migrant strategy is unravelling fast. The head of the EU's executive commission expressed concern that a summit of EU leaders on February 18 and 19 would be too focused on keeping Britain inside the bloc, and he recommended that government heads give equal focus to the challenges posed by the migrant influx. "I'm rather worried that we won't have enough time to tackle the refugee question in sufficient depth," European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said. His call came as countries in northern Europe, the preferred destination of many of the more than one million people who arrived last year seeking sanctuary or jobs, began calling for caps on the number of migrants that should be allowed to enter. European Council president Donald Tusk, who chairs EU summits, warned earlier this week that the EU's passport-free travel area could break apart if the migrant strategy is not sorted out within two months. The commission has floated a plan aimed at coping with Europe's biggest refugee emergency in more than half a century. Ideas include a relocation plan to distribute refugees among EU nations, which would be strung out over two years, plus a fast-track visa and EU membership process for Turkey in exchange for stopping people leaving for Europe. The commission also advocates tougher measures to return people who do not qualify for asylum, and has boosted funding of the Frontex border agency. Mr Juncker lamented the lack of national action, saying "we would do better if we implemented what has been decided". The mass arrivals last year, mostly through Greece from Turkey, overwhelmed border authorities and reception centres and raised tensions between EU neighbours as they struggled to respond. More than 2,000 people are still arriving daily, according to EU figures, and numbers are expected to accelerate as spring arrives. A spokeswoman for the UN refugee agency said that around 2,000 migrants continue to cross from Macedonia into Serbia daily, even with temperatures plunging to a low of minus 19C this week. Meanwhile, Austria's deputy chancellor, Reinhold Mitterlehner, was quoted as saying that his conservative party wants to cap migrant entries to no more than 40,000 per year. Close to 90,000 refugees applied for asylum last year in Austria. Germany's president, Joachim Gauck, called for limits to the number of people entering, saying that ceilings are "morally acceptable" if Europe is to continue helping those in need. Speaking at a conference in Davos, Switzerland, Mr Gauck said the EU's rules on freedom of movement throughout the bloc "can only be guaranteed if movement is controlled at the external borders". A blast has caused deaths close to the Russian embassy in Kabul A bomb blast has killed at least seven people and wounded around 25 others in an attack close to the Russian embassy in the Afghan capital Kabul. The police chief for Kabul, General Abdul Rahman Rahimi, said the seven civilians included two women. No Russian embassy employees were injured, the Russian foreign ministry confirmed. It said the building had sustained "insignificant" damage. The attackers, driving a car packed with explosives, targeted a minibus belonging to Kaboora Productions, which is a subsidiary of one of Afghanistan's biggest media organisations, Moby Group, Gen Rahimi said. The bus was taking employees home from the company's office in central Kabul when the attack took place. Rajab Noorzayi said his daughter Zeinab worked for Kaboora Productions and was on the bus at the time of the attack. "I'm looking for her but the police say everyone has been taken to hospital," he said. Afghan troops fighting the Taliban across most of southern Helmand province desperately need reinforcements, security officials have said. Provincial police chief General Abdul Rahman Sarjang said that government forces are also facing serious challenges in Helmand's capital, Lashkar Gah. He said the Afghan forces "are exhausted" and need reinforcements. He also warned that a lack of coordination between the army and police is hampering progress in the fight. He said the Taliban are making serious stands in seven districts - Sangin, Gereshk, Khanashin, Musa Qala, Nawzad, Washer and Marjah - and that at least three districts of the capital are also under threat. Helmand is a strategic region for the Taliban. It borders Pakistan and grows opium, the raw material for most of the world's heroin. General Sarjang added: " We need fresh police and soldiers because our men have been fighting for the last month or two." Afghan police fight on the front line across Afghanistan, often without the equipment and back-up of the army, which means casualties are higher. General Sarjang said he was in contact with central authorities in Kabul and was confident fresh reinforcements would be deployed soon. Taliban gunmen have been targeting districts across Helmand for weeks, stunning government forces that have been under-prepared, under-manned and under-equipped, according to civil and military officials. Sangin district was besieged for weeks until the ferocity of the fight in late December sparked fears that it could fall to the insurgents. The United States conducted airstrikes on Taliban positions, the UK rushed special forces advisers to the area, and the Afghan military dropped food and ammunition to soldiers and police who were surrounded in their base. A photo from November showing St Elijah's Monastery on the outskirts of Mosul, Iraq (AP) Satellite photos have confirmed fears that the oldest Christian monastery in Iraq has been destroyed by Islamic State. St Elijah's Monastery stood as a place of worship for 1,400 years, including most recently for US troops. Earlier this month, satellite imagery firm DigitalGlobe used a high resolution camera to take photos of the site, and then compared them with earlier images of the same spot. Before it was razed, the partially restored stone and mortar building stood fortress-like on a hill above Mosul. Although the roof was largely missing, it had 26 distinctive rooms including a sanctuary and chapel. One month later, photos show "that the stone walls have been literally pulverised", said imagery analyst Stephen Wood, CEO of Allsource Analysis, who pinpointed the destruction between August and September 2014. "Bulldozers, heavy equipment, sledgehammers, possibly explosives turned those stone walls into this field of grey-white dust. They destroyed it completely," he said. Catholic priest Rev Paul Thabit Habib, 39, stared in disbelief at the before and after images at his office in exile, in Irbil, Iraq. "Our Christian history in Mosul is being barbarically levelled," he said. "We see it as an attempt to expel us from Iraq, eliminating and finishing our existence in this land." The Islamic State group, which now controls large parts of Iraq and Syria, has killed thousands of civilians in the past two years. Along the way, its fighters have destroyed whatever they consider contrary to their interpretation of Islam. St Elijah's joins a growing list of more than 100 religious and historic sites looted and destroyed, including mosques, tombs, shrines and churches. Ancient monuments in the cities of Nineveh, Palmyra and Hatra are in ruins. Museums and libraries have been pillaged, books burned and artworks crushed. Built in 590, tragedy struck at St Elijah's in 1743 when as many as 150 monks who refused to convert to Islam were massacred by a Persian general. In 2003 St Elijah's shuddered again - this time a wall was smashed by a tank turret blown off in battle. Roman Catholic Army chaplain Jeffrey Whorton, who celebrated Mass on the monastery's altar, was grief-stricken at its loss. "Why we treat each other like this is beyond me," he said. "Elijah the prophet must be weeping." At the Vatican, spokesman Rev Federico Lombardi, noted that since the monastery dates back to the time Christians were united, before the break with Orthodox and Catholics, the place would be a special one for many. "Unfortunately, there is this systemic destruction of precious sites, not only cultural, but also religious and spiritual. It's very sad and dramatic," he said. Oscar-winning actor Jamie Foxx has played super villains and anti-heroes on screen - the role of super hero he apparently saved for real life. Foxx has told how he and another man pulled a man from his burning truck moments before it became engulfed in flames. The incident happened near Foxx's Southern California home, and the actor met the victim's father on Tuesday. The California Highway Patrol said the pick-up went off the road in Ventura County then went into a ditch, rolling over multiple times and becoming engulfed in flames with a male driver trapped inside. Foxx said he heard the crash from his house, called 911, and ran to the scene. He said another man, an off-duty paramedic who was driving by, had large emergency medical technician scissors that the two used to break the truck's window, cut the man's seatbelt and pull him out. The actor said "within five seconds" the truck went up in flames. He said he told the man: "You've got to help me get you out, because I don't want to have to leave you. You've got angels around you." Foxx told reporters after meeting Brad Kyle, the father of the 32-year-old victim Brett Kyle: "I don't look at it as heroic. I just look at it like, you know, you just had to do something. And it all just worked out." Brad Kyle said he had been shown surveillance video of the crash scene, and he saw several cars passing by without helping. "I just kept watching it and going 'My god, my god, he didn't have to do a thing,' " Mr Kyle said, breaking into tears as he spoke. "I think we all hope that we can do something when the time is there. But the question is, do we act or do we fear for our own life? He did not." Brett Kyle has broken bones and a punctured lung, but he is expected to survive. The CHP could not confirm Foxx's involvement, but the agency did say two witnesses helped extricate the driver, giving similar details to Foxx's account. The name of the paramedic who stopped and helped was not immediately available. Foxx won an Academy Award for playing Ray Charles in 2004's Ray, was the villain Electro in 2014's The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and the title renegade slave in 2012's Django Unchained. This photograph taken from a mobile phone shows Pakistani security personnel taking position outside the Bacha Khan university following an attack by gunmen in Charsadda, about 50 kilometres from Peshawar, on January 20, 2016. Gunmen have attacked a university in northwestern Pakistan, injuring at least three people, and are still on the rampage, security and school officials told AFP in the latest assault to hit the militant-infested region. AFP PHOTO / A MAJEEDA Majeed/AFP/Getty Images This photograph taken from a mobile phone shows Pakistani security personnel taking position outside the Bacha Khan university following an attack by gunmen in Charsadda, about 50 kilometres from Peshawar, on January 20, 2016. Gunmen have attacked a university in northwestern Pakistan, injuring at least three people, and are still on the rampage, security and school officials told AFP in the latest assault to hit the militant-infested region. AFP PHOTO / A MAJEEDA Majeed/AFP/Getty Images Pakistani rescuers shift an injured victim outside the Bacha Khan university following an attack by gunmen in Charsadda, about 50 kilometres from Peshawar, on January 20, 2016. Gunmen have attacked a university in northwestern Pakistan, injuring at least three people, and are still on the rampage, security and school officials told AFP in the latest assault to hit the militant-infested region. AFP PHOTO / A MAJEEDA Majeed/AFP/Getty Images Pakistani rescuers shift an injured victim at a hospital following an attack by gunmen in the Bacha Khan university in Charsadda, about 50 kilometres from Peshawar, on January 20, 2016. At least 21 people died in an armed assault on a university in Pakistan on January 20, where witnesses reported two large explosions as security forces moved in under dense fog to halt the bloodshed. AFP PHOTO / A MAJEEDA Majeed/AFP/Getty Images A Pakistani army armoured vehicle (R) enters the Bacha Khan university following an attack by gunmen in Charsadda, about 50 kilometres from Peshawar, on January 20, 2016. At least 21 people died in an armed assault on a university in Pakistan on January 20, where witnesses reported two large explosions as security forces moved in under dense fog to halt the bloodshed. AFP PHOTO / A MAJEEDA Majeed/AFP/Getty Images This video still image taken from Dunya News/ WAQAT News shows police and emergency personnel outside Bacha Khan University, the scene of a shooting on Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016 in Charsadda, Pakistan. Police say gunmen stormed the university, killing a professor and several others. Police and army exchanged gunfire with the attackers and several explosions were heard from the area of the Bacha Khan University, about 21 miles from Peshawar. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack. (Dunya News/ WAQAT News via AP) This video still image taken from Dunya News/ WAQAT News shows police and emergency personnel outside Bacha Khan University, the scene of a shooting on Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016 in Charsadda,, Pakistan. Police say gunmen stormed the university, killing a professor and several others. Police and army exchanged gunfire with the attackers and several explosions were heard from the area of the Bacha Khan University, about 21 miles from Peshawar. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack. (Dunya News/ WAQAT News via AP) This video still image taken from Dunya News/ WAQAT News shows police and emergency personnel outside Bacha Khan University, the scene of a shooting on Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016 in Charsadda,, Pakistan. Police say gunmen stormed the university, killing a professor and several others. Police and army exchanged gunfire with the attackers and several explosions were heard from the area of the Bacha Khan University, about 21 miles from Peshawar. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack. (Dunya News/ WAQAT News via AP) Pakistani rescuers shift an injured man to a hospital following an attack by gunmen in the Bacha Khan university in Charsadda, about 50 kilometres from Peshawar, on January 20, 2016. At least 21 people died in an armed assault on a university in Pakistan on January 20, where witnesses reported two large explosions as security forces moved in under dense fog to halt the bloodshed. AFP PHOTO / A MAJEEDA Majeed/AFP/Getty Images This video still image taken from Dunya News/ WAQAT News shows police and emergency personnel outside Bacha Khan University, the scene of a shooting on Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016 in Charsadda,, Pakistan. Police say gunmen stormed the university, killing a professor and several others. Police and army exchanged gunfire with the attackers and several explosions were heard from the area of the Bacha Khan University, about 21 miles from Peshawar. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack. (Dunya News/ WAQAT News via AP) Pakistani rescuers shift an injured man to a hospital following an attack by gunmen in the Bacha Khan university in Charsadda, about 50 kilometres from Peshawar, on January 20, 2016. At least 21 people died in an armed assault on a university in Pakistan on January 20, where witnesses reported two large explosions as security forces moved in under dense fog to halt the bloodshed. AFP PHOTO /Hasham AHMEDHASHAM AHMED/AFP/Getty Images A Pakistan army helicopter flies over the Bacha Khan University, which is under attack by gumen in Charsadda town, some 35 kilometers (21 miles) outside the city of Peshawar, Pakistan, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. Gunmen stormed Bacha Khan University named after the founder of an anti-Taliban political party in the country's northwest Wednesday, killing many people, officials said. (AP Photo/Mohammad Sajjad) Pakistani rescuers shift an injured man to a hospital following an attack by gunmen in the Bacha Khan university in Charsadda, about 50 kilometres from Peshawar, on January 20, 2016. At least 21 people died in an armed assault on a university in Pakistan on January 20, where witnesses reported two large explosions as security forces moved in under dense fog to halt the bloodshed. AFP PHOTO /Hasham AHMEDHASHAM AHMED/AFP/Getty Images Pakistani troops and rescue workers gather at the main gate of Bacha Khan University in Charsadda town, some 35 kilometers (21 miles) outside the city of Peshawar, Pakistan, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. Gunmen stormed Bacha Khan University named after the founder of an anti-Taliban political party in the country's northwest Wednesday, killing several people, officials said. (AP Photo/Mohammad Sajjad) Pakistani troops clear way for an ambulance transporting a lifeless body of a victim from Bacha Khan University in Charsadda town, some 35 kilometers (21 miles) outside the city of Peshawar, Pakistan, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. Gunmen stormed Bacha Khan University named after the founder of an anti-Taliban political party in the country's northwest Wednesday, killing many people, officials said. (AP Photo/Mohammad Sajjad) Pakistani rescuers shift an injured man to a hospital following an attack by gunmen in the Bacha Khan university in Charsadda, about 50 kilometres from Peshawar, on January 20, 2016. At least 21 people died in an armed assault on a university in Pakistan on January 20, where witnesses reported two large explosions as security forces moved in under dense fog to halt the bloodshed. AFP PHOTO /Hasham AHMEDHASHAM AHMED/AFP/Getty Images Pakistani rescue workers carry an injured student on arrival at a hospital following an attack by gunmen at Bacha Khan university in Charsadda, about 50 kilometres from Peshawar, on January 20, 2016. At least 21 people died in an armed assault on a university in Pakistan on January 20, where witnesses reported two large explosions as security forces moved in under dense fog to halt the bloodshed. AFP PHOTO / Hasham AHMEDHASHAM AHMED/AFP/Getty Images Pakistani rescuers carry coffins at a hospital following an attack by gunment at Bacha Khan university in Charsadda, about 50 kilometres from Peshawar, on January 20, 2016. Gunmen have attacked a university in northwestern Pakistan, injuring at least three people, and are still on the rampage, security and school officials told AFP in the latest assault to hit the militant-infested region. AFP PHOTO / Hasham AHMEDHASHAM AHMED/AFP/Getty Images An ambulance transports the body of a victim while Pakistani troops gather at the main gate of Bacha Khan University in Charsadda town, some 35 kilometers (21 miles) outside the city of Peshawar, Pakistan, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. Gunmen stormed Bacha Khan University named after the founder of an anti-Taliban political party in the country's northwest Wednesday, killing some people, officials said. (AP Photo/Mohammad Sajjad) Pakistani troops arrive at Bacha Khan University in Charsadda town, some 35 kilometers (21 miles) outside the city of Peshawar, Pakistan, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. Gunmen stormed Bacha Khan University named after the founder of an anti-Taliban political party in the country's northwest Wednesday, killing some people, officials said. (AP Photo/Mohammad Sajjad) An ambulance carrying injured victims enters a hospital following an attack by gunmen at Bacha Khan university in Charsadda, about 50 kilometres from Peshawar, on January 20, 2016. At least 21 people died in an armed assault on a university in Pakistan on January 20, where witnesses reported two large explosions as security forces moved in under dense fog to halt the bloodshed. AFP PHOTO / Hasham AHMEDHASHAM AHMED/AFP/Getty Images Pakistani rescuers shift an injured man at a hospital following an attack by gunmen at Bacha Khan university in Charsadda, about 50 kilometres from Peshawar, on January 20, 2016. At least 21 people died in an armed assault on a university in Pakistan on January 20, where witnesses reported two large explosions as security forces moved in under dense fog to halt the bloodshed. AFP PHOTO /Hasham AHMEDHASHAM AHMED/AFP/Getty Images Pakistani police and onlookers gather in front of a hospital following an attack by gunmen at Bacha Khan university in Charsadda, about 50 kilometres from Peshawar, on January 20, 2016. At least 21 people died in an armed assault on a university in Pakistan on January 20, where witnesses reported two large explosions as security forces moved in under dense fog to halt the bloodshed. AFP PHOTO /Hasham AHMEDHASHAM AHMED/AFP/Getty Images Pakistani rescuers shift an injured man into a hospital following an attack by gunmen at Bacha Khan university in Charsadda, about 50 kilometres from Peshawar, on January 20, 2016. At least 21 people died in an armed assault on a university in Pakistan on January 20, where witnesses reported two large explosions as security forces moved in under dense fog to halt the bloodshed. AFP PHOTO /Hasham AHMEDHASHAM AHMED/AFP/Getty Images A Pakistani army soldier searches a room covered in blood at Bacha Khan university following an attack by militants in Charsadda, about 50 kilometres from Peshawar, on January 20, 2016. At least 21 people died in an armed assault on a university in Pakistan on January 20, where witnesses reported two large explosions as security forces moved in under dense fog to halt the bloodshed. AFP PHOTO / A MAJEEDA Majeed/AFP/Getty Images Pakistani army soldiers rescue people from Bacha Khan university following an attack by militants in Charsadda, about 50 kilometres from Peshawar, on January 20, 2016. At least 21 people died in an armed assault on a university in Pakistan on January 20, where witnesses reported two large explosions as security forces moved in under dense fog to halt the bloodshed. AFP PHOTO / A MAJEEDA Majeed/AFP/Getty Images Pakistani army soldiers carry a victim at Bacha Khan university following an attack by militants in Charsadda, about 50 kilometres from Peshawar, on January 20, 2016. At least 21 people died in an armed assault on a university in Pakistan on January 20, where witnesses reported two large explosions as security forces moved in under dense fog to halt the bloodshed. AFP PHOTO / A MAJEEDA Majeed/AFP/Getty Images The Taliban has claimed responsibility for a gun attack on a university in Pakistan, killing at least 19 people. Police and army officials exchanged gunfire with the attackers and several explosions were heard from the area of Bacha Khan University in the town of Charsadda, 20 miles from Peshawar. Pakistani TV stations broadcast footage showing a heavy military presence at the university, troops rushing in and people fleeing. Ambulances were at the scene and the wounded were being taken to hospital. Police official Tariq Khan said the assault began shortly after the university opened on Wednesday morning. The Bacha Khan University is named after the founder of a liberal, anti-Taliban political party. The Pakistani Taliban has in the past targeted the party for its anti-militant policies. The Pakistani army said the attackers have been contained and four of them have been killed. The brazen assault harked back to a December 2014 Taliban attack on a school in Peshawar that killed more than 150 people, mostly children. Deputy commissioner Tahir Zafar said a chemistry professor and at least one student were among those killed. Pakistan's north west and its lawless tribal regions bordering Afghanistan is a highly volatile region. Pakistani forces have been carrying out a major operation against the Taliban and other militants there since 2014. Last month, as the country marked the first anniversary of the Peshawar school attack, the military claimed "phenomenal successes" in the war and said it had killed around 3,500 insurgents since launching the operation. The school attack, which was claimed by the Pakistani Taliban, horrified the country and led the government to lift a 2008 moratorium on the death penalty. Pakistan hanged four militants last month who were sentenced to death over the attack. Jada Pinkett-Smith said she would not attend or watch this year's Oscars ceremony (AP) Amid calls for an Oscars boycott over its all-white acting nominees and Spike Lee and Jada Pinkett Smith both announcing they would sit out this year's ceremony, the academy's president promised major changes. Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences President Cheryl Boone Isaacs pledged more diversity, and quickly, after both Lee and Pinkett spoke out. Lee said he "cannot support" the "lily white" Oscars, while Pinkett Smith also said she would not attend or watch the event in February. Pinkett Smith, whose husband Will Smith was not nominated for his performance in Concussion, said it was time for people of colour to disregard the Academy Awards. "Begging for acknowledgement, or even asking, diminishes dignity and diminishes power," she said. "And we are a dignified people and we are powerful." Last year's all-white acting nominees also drew calls for a boycott, though not from such prominent individuals as Lee and Pinkett Smith. Whether it had any impact or not, the audience for the broadcast, hosted by Neil Patrick Harris, was down 16% from the year before, a six-year low. Ms Isaacs has made a point of presenting a more inclusive show this year. The February 28 broadcast will be hosted by Chris Rock and produced by Django Unchained producer Reginald Hudlin and David Hill. When Oscar nominations were announced on Thursday, Ms Isaacs acknowledged she was "disappointed" that all 20 acting nominees were again white and promised to "continue the conversation" on diversity. She has worked to diversify membership for the academy, which a 2012 study by the Los Angeles Times found is overwhelming white and male. But on Monday, Ms Isaacs was more explicit and promised an examination of the academy and a more intense drive to diversify. "This is a difficult but important conversation, and it's time for big changes," she said. "The Academy is taking dramatic steps to alter the make-up of our membership. In the coming days and weeks we will conduct a review of our membership recruitment in order to bring about much-needed diversity in our 2016 class and beyond." Many critics expected nominations for Idris Elba for Beasts Of No Nation and Benicio Del Toro for Sicario. The NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton also failed to earn a best picture nomination, and Ryan Coogler's acclaimed Rocky sequel Creed scored a nomination only for Sylvester Stallone. Later, Lee clarified that he never used the word "boycott", but that he is simply not going to attend the ceremony. He reiterated that he believes the larger issue is Hollywood's hiring practices, saying the focus on the Oscars "is a misdirection play". Instead, he argued for a version of the NFL's Rooney Rule, which stipulates that a minority coach must be interviewed for any head coaching vacancy. The annual Ag Management Expo at Southeast Community College, which was held Tuesday, is meant to not only connect agriculture-related companies to area farmers and ag students, but to also teach current students how to plan such events. Dennis Toalson, instructor in the SCC agriculture program, said 48 agriculture business sales students last quarter sold contracts to about 32 companies that set up booths in the Truman Center gym for the expo, ready to answer questions, sell product and hand out freebies. An additional 30 students this quarter also helped put on the expo on by signing people in, setting up tables and chairs, distributing surveys about the quality of the event, serving lunch and tearing everything down. Weve learned a lot, said Ashlyn Schmidt, a student in the agriculture business sales class. We learned how to organize things and plan ahead of time to put on a big event. While in college, get involved. Do stuff. Go out and meet new people. Do new things. Schmidt said the event offers excellent opportunities for agriculture students to talk with potential employers or for future agriculture students to familiarize themselves with area companies and the current landscape of the agriculture field. More people need to come, Schmidt said. Toalson estimated 390 students came through the expo during its run time from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Area farmers, stakeholders and other community members also attended. The ag expo gives business people in the greater Beatrice area a chance to go one-on-one with farmers and sell their ware, so to speak, Toalson said. It showcases our college to the community and it showcases businesses. Expos and trade shows have been the backbone of ag selling for years. The expo is 10 years old. Toalson said organizers moved it to the college three or four years ago under the condition it would be an educational endeavor in that students had parts in planning and organizing it and gaining skills theyll use for the rest of their lives. Taylor Hood, who studies agriculture with a focus on livestock production at SCC, said he visited most of the booths. Its cool to learn about the local businesses, Hood said. For a livestock kid, its kind of tough because theres not a lot of that here. It was nice to talk to banks and insurance companies. He said hes thought about becoming an ag lender or a salesman of agriculture products. Its cool for kids to get out and talk to everybody, Hood said. I think thats the emphasis of SCC is to get out and explore your options. Representatives of Stine Seed Company said far more people attended this expo compared to last years. Lots of students stopped by and were very inquisitive and asked good questions, they said. Vance Dake said the expo is helpful because it helps him learn about new technology, such as drones, and the changes in products. He learns what works for people and what doesnt, he said. Dake rents out his longtime family farm in Harlan County to tenant farmers. Christie Rice, finance and communications director of the Beatrice Area Chamber of Commerce, said the expo serves as a one-stop shop for farmers who have the opportunity to book seeds for the following year and take care of other business. Nearly one year before the annual expo, SCC and the Agriculture Business Committee of the Beatrice chamber start discussing potential guest speakers. This year, Nebraska State Climatologist Al Dutcher talked to groups about the 2016 weather outlook and John Fulton of Ohio State University spoke about the future of ag equipment and precision ag technology. The keynote speaker was Allen Featherstone of Kansas State University, talking about how lessons from the 1970s and 80s can be applied to the future. Toalson said that of the graduating student body in the SCC agriculture program, 20 percent go back to work on their family farms, 20 percent go on to a four-year college and 60 percent find a job in the agriculture field. Track Palin, pictured in September 2008 - the son of Sarah Palin was arrested in a domestic violence case (AP) The oldest son of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin was arrested in a domestic violence case in which his girlfriend was afraid he would shoot himself with an AR-15 assault rifle. Track Palin, 26, was charged with assault, interfering with the report of a domestic violence crime and possessing a weapon while intoxicated following the incident on Monday night at the Wasilla, Alaska, home of his parents, where he lives, according to an affidavit by police. The girlfriend told authorities she was punched in the face by Palin, who is the oldest child of Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee and a conservative leader. The charges were filed on Tuesday, the same day Sarah Palin appeared in Iowa to endorse Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump. Court documents say the victim, Track Palin's girlfriend of one year, had bruising and swelling around her left eye, and she said her right knee hurt after he kicked her. Palin family lawyer John Tiemessen declined to comment on the matter other than to say that respect for the family's privacy is appreciated "as Track receives the help that he and many of our returning veterans need". Track Palin spent a year deployed in Iraq with the Army, after he enlisted on the sixth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. According to the three-page affidavit, both Palin and his girlfriend called the emergency dispatcher that night. Police officer Andrew Kappler wrote that he arrived at the Wasilla home and found Track Palin walking outside and talking on a phone. The officer said Palin had an injury to his right eye and surrounding area, smelled strongly of alcohol and acted with escalating hostility, prompting Mr Kappler to put him in handcuffs. The affidavit says other officers found the girlfriend hiding under a bed inside the home and crying. The affidavit says the woman said Palin struck her with his fist on the left side of her head near her eye. She said he then kicked her in the knee. Palin held the rifle, with the barrel just away from his face pointed to the side, the affidavit states, and the woman told police Palin was yelling: "Do you think I won't do it?" The girlfriend "was concerned that he would shoot himself and ran outside and around the house," the affidavit says." It is not the first encounter with the law for Palin or other members of his family. In September 2014, he and other Palins were involved in a brawl that broke out at a party in Anchorage. No arrests were made, and no-one wanted to press charges. But according to a police report, Palin had blood around his mouth and his hands. He was belligerent until his mother told him to talk to a police officer. Brotli algorithm will allow Google's Chrome browser to compress information up to 26 per cent faster Google Chrome is about to get much faster, because of a small change to the browsers algorithm. The company is rolling out a new technology called Brotli, which will allow the program to compress data up to 26 per cent faster. It will take the place of Zopfli, the existing engine, and bring huge speed bumps to everyone using the Google-owned browser. Google says that the technology will also allow people to get lower data transfer fees and reduced battery use, because it cuts out the amount of information that computers have to download. The company didnt say when the new technology would be rolled out, but its expected to arrive in the next few weeks. By default, Googles Chrome automatically downloads and installs new updates, so its likely that the browser will get a boost without you even noticing. Google engineer Ilya Grigorik said that Brotli compression is coming to a Chrome browser near you, and that it was ready to be pushed out to the public. The company hopes that other browsers will pick up the technology and that it will becoming a new data format, speeding them all up. Independent A Beatrice man previously convicted of sexual assault appeared telephonically in Gage County District Court Wednesday for a hearing he requested in attempt to have property seized in the case returned to him. Joseph J. Buttercase, 34, requested that various items from the case be returned. The motion was denied by District Court Judge Paul Korslund, largely due to the fact theres a current federal case pending against Buttercase for possession of child pornography. Buttercase was sentenced in 2012 for a July 2011 rape and assault he committed in his Beatrice home. The Nebraska Court of Appeals upheld the 2012 conviction and sentence of Joseph Buttercase, stating the court correctly exercised its authority to limit evidence submitted at trial and in overruling a motion for new trial. Buttercase was sentenced to 26-41 years in prison by Gage County District Court Judge Paul Korslund on Dec. 4, 2012 after being convicted of first degree sexual assault, third degree domestic assault, strangulation and false imprisonment in an August 2012 jury trial. The 31-year-old Beatrice man, appealed the sentencing, claiming the court erred by not including evidence of the victims past sexual history or testimony from a neighbor from the morning after the assault into court as evidence. He also said the sentence was excessive. The appeal was denied. Buttercase was sentenced to 20-30 years for the sexual assault, a class II felony; 4-5 years for false imprisonment; 20 months to five years for strangulation; and one year for third degree domestic assault. All counts are to be served consecutively. During a search of Buttercases home following his arrest, investigators found a video camera located near his bed as well as a computer. Spectators watch as a medium-range rocket is displayed during Indias Republic Day parade in New Delhi last year. Security forces arrested four suspected Islamic State operatives after intelligence reports showed possible attacks prior to this years event, Jan. 26, 2015. Security forces in north India have been put on high alert following the arrests of four suspected Islamic State (IS) operatives from Uttarakhand state late Tuesday. The four suspects Akhlaq-ur-Rehman, Mohammad Osama, Azim Shah and Mehroz were planning to carry out strikes in the ongoing Ardh Kumbh religious conglomeration in Uttarakhands Haridwar town and some key locations in Delhi ahead of the countrys Republic Day on Jan. 26, police said Wednesday. The suspects were arrested from a hideout in the Manglaur area of Haridwar district in a joint operation by the Delhi Polices Special Cell and the countrys Intelligence Bureau, police said. The four accused were in touch with a former Indian Mujahideen (IM) operative, who is now a key member of Ansar-ut-Tawhid fi-Bilad al-Hind (AuT), an India-based jihadist outfit formed in 2013, an investigating officer told BenarNews on condition of anonymity. The official added that AuT was operating in conjunction with the IS. Al-Qaeda arrests The arrests of the alleged IS members came a day after a Delhi Police team picked up a suspected operative of the al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) from the Mewat region of northern Indias Haryana state. Abdul Sami, a native of Jharkhand states Jamshedpur city, was the fifth suspected AQIS member arrested by Indian police in the past two months. A court on Wednesday remanded Sami, who was allegedly trained in Pakistan, to police custody until Feb. 1. Police last month arrested Mohammed Asif from Delhi, Zafar Masood from Sambhal district of Uttar Pradesh and Abdul Rehman from Jagatpur in eastern Indias Odisha state, followed by the arrest of Bengaluru-based cleric Maulana Anzar Shah on Jan. 6. The arrests marked the Indian polices first successful raid on the AQIS since its formation in 2014. Republic Day threat The raids followed intelligence reports that the two militant outfits were planning to launch strikes in India ahead of the countrys Republic Day celebrations, which will be attended by French President Francois Hollande in New Delhi, police said. Indian security agencies, which long denied the presence of IS in the country, turned the heat on the terror group following the Nov. 13 Paris attack and the online release last month of a IS manifesto, titled Black Flags from the Islamic State that claimed India was on the outfits radar for attacks. Security agencies said they were investigating an anonymous postcard apparently from the IS that threatened to kill Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar. It was discovered in a post office in Goa last week. Manhunt underway Indian Police did not rule out the possibility of IS and AQIS pursuing terror plots in the country in collaboration with Pakistan-based militant outfits such as Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM), which has been blamed for the recent attack on the Pathankot Air Force Station in Punjab. We are still interrogating (the suspects). There is a possibility of more militants hiding in the country. We are trying to ascertain their roles, Delhi Police Special Cell Commissioner Arvind Deep told BenarNews. He refused to divulge more information, saying it could interfere with the ongoing investigation. K.B. Singh, Odishas director general of police, told BenarNews that a massive manhunt continues for suspected AQIS members hiding in the state. A similar operation kicked off in Jharkhand following Samis arrest on Monday. We cant rule out the possibility of more Jharkhand natives being involved (with AQIS). We are working on it, the states Superintendant of Police, Ashwani Sinha, told BenarNews. New Delhi-based security analyst retired Maj. Gen. Satbir Singh said there is reason to believe that the IS, Al-Qaeda and other militant outfits including AuT, LeT and JeM were helping each other. These groups are not isolated but are inter-connected, inter-operational and inter-functional. Their main strategy is to indulge in low-intensity, less-expenditure war. These groups believe they need to make inroads in India to attain success, he told BenarNews. Singapore arrested and deported these Bangladeshi men on charges they are linked to terrorist groups including the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. Dhaka police authorities report that 14 of 26 Bangladeshis deported from Singapore late last year on charges of terrorism and maintaining links with groups such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State are in custody. On Wednesday, Singapores Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) issued a statement confirming the arrests of 27 and deportation of 26 Bangladeshi migrant workers, terming them radicalized. The remaining Bangladeshi national is serving a jail sentence for attempting to leave Singapore illegally after learning about the arrests and will be returned to Bangladesh after completing his sentence. Dhaka Metropolitan Police spokesman Maruf Hossain Sardar told BenarNews that Singapore deported the Bangladeshi workers between November and December 2015. Fourteen of them have been tied to suspicious activities; they have been in jail. We have been conducting extensive questioning. If found guilty, the workers would face serious consequences, Sardar said. He said the 12 others had been released, but their movements are being tracked. Weekly meetings All 27 were arrested between Nov. 16 and Dec. 1, 2015, but Singapore announced the action on Wednesday. Singapore authorities claim officers recovered an Islamic State training video. Twenty-six of them were members of a closed religious study group that subscribed to extremist beliefs and teachings of radical ideologues like Anwar al-Awlaki. They supported the armed jihad ideology of terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, MHA said in a statement. The remaining Bangladeshi national was not a member of the group, but was found to be in the process of becoming radicalized and was supportive of extremist preachers. He also possessed jihadi-related material. The group members shared extremist material discreetly among themselves and held weekly meetings and gatherings where they discussed armed jihad and conflicts that involved Muslims, according to the statement. They also carefully targeted the recruitment of other Bangladeshi nationals to grow their membership, MHA said. Members were encouraged to return to Bangladesh and wage armed jihad against the Bangladeshi government. They had also sent monetary donations to entities believed to be linked to extremist groups in Bangladesh. Investigations disclosed that while several members of the group had considered carrying out armed violence overseas, they were not planning any terrorist attacks in Singapore. Some group members admitted they believe they should participate and wage armed jihad on behalf of their religion. Several of them contemplated travelling to and participating in armed jihad in the Middle East, according to the statement. Thousands go to Singapore The Bangladesh Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training, about 600,000 Bangladeshi workers have gone to Singapore since 1980, but many have returned home. Most Bangladeshis work in the construction and shipping industries or work as cleaners. Migrant workers rights activists say the entire Bangladeshi community should not be blamed for the extremist views of a handful of workers in thousands. Maybe a handful of the Bangladeshi workers [are] involved in extremism and radicalism; they should face punishment. But the Bangladeshi workers are very law abiding and industrious. Most of them are poor and go to Singapore, sending huge amounts of money home. Extremism is not their agenda, Saiful Haque, the chief of Warbe Development Foundation, an organization dedicated to protecting Bangladeshi migrants rights, told BenarNews. Another important issue is: the Bangladesh authorities should find out the root cause of radicalization and address that, he said. A Bangladeshi worker serving in a construction company in Singapores West Coast area told BenarNews that Bangladeshi workers fear massive job losses. He asked to remain anonymous as he could lose his job for talking to media. He said many Bangladeshis owe thousands of dollars to recruiting agencies who get them jobs in Singapore. Why should we get involved in terrorism and extremism? The manpower supplier of other countries have been carrying out propaganda that the Bangladeshis are militants. If we lose the job on suspicion or prejudice, it will be a great injustice on us, he said. The government should punish the wrongdoers, but wholesale allegations are unjust, he said. A blog carrying the name Bahrun Naim was live on the internet for a few hours on Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016. A blog under the name Bahrun Naim, the alleged mastermind of the Jan. 14 attack in Jakarta, was accessible for several hours Tuesday, as Indonesian leaders discussed revising the nations antiterrorism laws to give law enforcement greater ability to pre-empt such attacks. The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology on Saturday shut down some 11 radical websites and several social media accounts where users were expressing support for Thursdays attack, which left four civilians and four attackers dead. But the Bahrun Naim blog reappeared under the same name, with a different address. In a post called Advice for Viewers it claimed that a group called Junud Daulah Islam (JDI) had targeted police and foreigners to retaliate against Densus 88, the elite police anti-terrorism unit, for allegedly killing hundreds of Muslims. It further claimed that JDI had issued a warning through Santoso, a shadowy figure widely considered Indonesias most dangerous militant, thought to be hiding in the forests of Central Sulawesi with a band of 30 followers calling themselves the Eastern Indonesia Mujahideen (MIT). In November, a video appeared online with Santosos still image and a voice similar to his threatening to attack the headquarters of the Jakarta police and fly the flag of the Islamic State (IS) from the Presidential Palace in Jakarta. Monitoring Meanwhile, President Joko Jokowi Widodo met with legislative and executive officials to review the National Antiterrorism Law of 2003 with an eye toward improving national safety. Cabinet Secretary Pramono Agung said the government has detected suspicious activities since November. But there are parts of the Antiterrorism Law which do not allow the government to take action, he said. For example, he said, the law blocks investigators from using materials believed to have been used to train bomb-makers as evidence. The leaders also discussed changing the law to allow law enforcement to crack down on people who have returned to Indonesia after training with militant groups in foreign countries. In December, the head of Indonesias National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT) gave two different figures for the number of Indonesians who have gone to Syria and Iraq. Intelligence data says 800, whereas police have a tally of 384, he said. More than 169 have already come home, Saud Usman Nasution said. Fifty-three Indonesians have died in the Middle East, among them four suicide bombers, he said. National Police chief Gen. Badrodin Haiti said he supports changing the law because police can observe those returning from Syria or Iraq but cannot to arrest them unless they were to commit terrorist acts, according to the Jakarta Post. He told Reuters that the country was bracing for the return of more experienced fighters who may be capable of carrying out more sophisticated attacks. The Jan. 14 assault included two pistols and 11 homemade bombs. The perpetrators were neutralized in less than 30 minutes, CCTV footage reveals. Al Chaidar, a terrorism analyst from the University of Malikussaleh Aceh, stressed that the revision should be focused on dealing with acts that lead to terrorism. And most importantly, the government should issue a law or regulation defining and listing terrorist or banned organizations. Through the list, the public can find out which organizations are banned. So people understand that by joining the organization, they could be arrested, he said. Trained in prison Analysts were also concerned that at least three of the people involved in the attack had recently served time in prison and been further radicalized there. Alleged mastermind Bahrun was convicted of owning illegal weapons and ammunition in 2010 and was released from prison in 2011. Police believe he has joined the IS in Raqqa, Syria. Afif, alias Sunakim, who has been identified as the man photographed pointing a gun a people during the attack, had been sentenced to seven years in prison and was freed last August. In prison, he prayed and cooked together with Aman Abdurrahman, a man convicted in a 2004 bombing, according to Taufik Andrie, the research director of the Institute for International Peacebuilding, a Jakarta NGO. Once he was out of prison, he was even more militant, right? Taufik commented. Ansyaad Mbai, the former chief of the National Counter Terrorism Agency (BNPT), urged the government to form special prisons for inmates linked to terrorism cases so they are not as likely to train other prisoners. He said there were at least a dozen convicts released at the end of 2015 who should be monitored for potential terrorism links. Taufik said some former convicts immediately disappear, move with their families and do not report to the authorities, violating terms of their parole. Zahara Tiba and Arie Firdaus contributed to this report Developers of a Buddhist park and local officials should ask Muslim residents for input before going ahead with the project in a historically sensitive area of the Deep South, an Islamic leader and academic said. A sketch of the proposed Buddha Monthon Pattani Park, to be located in Pattani province, shows a Buddha statue at least three stories tall as its central feature. For Muslims, building a big Buddha image is an important issue. Muslims cannot accept a construction of big Buddha image in this area, Waedue-ramae Mamingji, chairman of the Islamic Committee of Pattani, told BenarNews. There are a lot of things that we will co-develop to bring about prosperity, peace, happiness to the Deep South. Therefore I call on agencies or parties involved to review the plan for the sake of peace, he said. Private developers envision building a 160 million baht ($4.6 million USD) Buddha Park on 40 acres on a scenic cape in Pattani. In a meeting on Jan. 17, developers and provincial officials discussed the park design along with plans to establish a project committee and a fund-raising scheme. Multiple cultures Pattani province has a mixed population of ethnic Chinese, Thai and Malay-Patani people, and 87 percent of its almost 720,000 residents are Muslim. Malay-Patani claim they owned the kingdom of Patani Darussalam, comprising what is now Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat and four districts of Songkla province, for hundreds of years before it was annexed by the then-Kingdom of Siam in 1902. A separatist insurgency waged by different armed groups and factions has wracked the region for years, claiming at least 6,500 lives since January 2004. Waedue-ramae said residents were not bothered by temples constructed in Tambon Naruesamilae, which is the heart of what had been Darrussalam. But the huge Buddha and park will not be accepted as easily, he said. In the past, we were like brothers. We respected each other on this land of multiple cultures. But to build a big Buddha image is inappropriate because we have Muslims around and we shouldnt create hard feeling among Buddhist Thais and Muslim Thais, Waedue-ramae said. Worravit Baru, who represented Pattani in the Senate, said the province should ask for opinions from local Muslims before allowing the Buddha Park. I would like to ask the developers, building this for what reason, and how important it is. There are quite a number of ways to promote Buddhism rather than adhering to religious symbol which may cause a religious rift, he said. Dont think when people do not protest, it means they agree. We shouldnt push them to align with the other side. We are reconciling for peace. All of us should realize this point, he said. Questioned by reporters in Bangkok on Tuesday, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-o-cha recommended the province avoid any possible religious conflict. This project must be lodged through the ministry of interior, this is the ministrys responsibility, Prayuth told reporters at the Government House. Whatever can be done to create [mutual understanding], please find a way to make it happen, Prayuth said. I just want to make sure there will not be conflicts between two religions. A flyer features an artists sketch of the Buddha Monthon Pattani Park project on a 40-acre land plot. Local voices Pattani Buddhist Sarawuth Srisong, 47, said the project should not cause disharmony. The construction of Buddha Monthon Park should not cause any problems. Thais of two faiths are friends. We help each other whenever we have religious ceremonies, he said. But the province must promote understanding of the project to Muslim community and that the park may be used for public purposes for both religions. However, Pattani Muslim Hasuena Wae-doloh, 45, said she is uncomfortable with a huge Buddha image at the park. But if this project was to be built elsewhere that would be fine, she said. A developer who asked not to be named told BenarNews that he may need to change the proposed name of the project because Buddha Monthon Pattani Park can be translated as a Buddhas precinct of Pattani. I admit the naming of Buddha Monthon Pattani sounds gigantic and intruding. But if people feel offended and as I talked to the province, we can rename the project Stupa of All Thai Hearts, the project with a big Buddha image and a quiet place for people who seek tranquility, he said. LINCOLN Nebraska State Treasurer Don Stenberg is encouraging seventh and eighth graders to enter the 14th annual Why I Want to Go to College writing contest for a chance to win a Nebraska Educational Savings Trust (NEST) scholarship and a ticket to the May 1 Storm Chasers game at Werner Park in Papillion. The annual writing contest is sponsored by the Nebraska State Treasurers Office and the Omaha Storm Chasers. Three winners will be chosen in each of Nebraskas three U.S. Congressional districts, and three winners will be selected from outside Nebraska. First-place winners will each receive a $2,000 contribution to a NEST college savings plan. Second-place winners will each receive a $1,000 contribution to a NEST plan, and third-place winners will each receive a $500 contribution to a NEST plan. Nebraska winners and their families will receive tickets to the May 1 game. The writing contest is an ideal opportunity for seventh- and eighth-grade students to reflect on their educational goals and their future career possibilities, Stenberg said. At the same time, the contest is an opportunity for students to practice good writing skills, to learn to express themselves clearly and persuasively, and to begin saving for college or to add to their existing savings. Stenberg asked school administrators, teachers, and parents to encourage students to enter the contest and to learn more about saving for college. Students in public schools, private schools, and home schools are invited to enter. Families easily can save for college for their children and grandchildren through the Nebraska Educational Savings Trust, the state-sponsored college savings program that allows for tax-free investments and tax-free qualified withdrawals. Nebraska account owners qualify for up to $10,000 a year in state income tax deductions, Stenberg said. A total of 1,064 entries was received last year. As in the past, preliminary judging will be done by students and faculty in the College of Education at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and final selections will be made by Treasurer Stenberg. Entries are due March 18. Contest rules are available at https://treasurer.nebraska.gov/csp/scholarships/essay/college/2016/contest-announcement The following rules apply to entries: Must be focused on the students educational goals and dreams for the future. Must be students original work. Must be typed, double spaced on 8 by 11-inch paper. Must be accompanied by required cover sheet. * Must be no more than 750 words in length. Must be postmarked by March 18, 2016. Winners will be notified in late April. Mail entries to Megan Burdek, Omaha Storm Chasers, 12356 Ballpark Way, Papillion, NE 68046. The previous poll on Eastern NC NOW showcased what are many of OUR Constitutional Republic's certain obstacles to remain viable, where the top encumbrance to that continuance as a functioning Republic was the Biden /Harris Wide Open Southern Border. Understanding this overwhelming concern to real America citizens: Do you believe it important to challenge the veracity of those legislated concerns of Democratic Socialists by transporting Illegal Migrants to their Sanctuary cities, counties and states for their direct care? Yes; test the depth of their sense of well being by giving Democratic Socialists an opportunity to enact all Sanctuary provisions in their communities to test how much they truly do care. No; the Biden /Harris Wide Open Southern Border Project is designed to only inundate "Red States" to begin their Demographic Upheaval for the benefit of we Democratic Socialists, our politics. A team of scientists from Germany, USA, and Russia, including Dr. Mark Borodovsky, a Chair of the Department of Bioinformatics at MIPT, have proposed an algorithm to automate the process of searching for genes, making it more efficient. The new development combines the advantages of the most advanced tools for working with genomic data. The new method will enable scientists to analyse DNA sequences faster and more accurately and identify the full set of genes in a genome. Although the paper describing the algorithm only appeared recently in the journal Bioinformatics, which is published by Oxford Journals, the proposed method has already proven to be very popular -- the computer software program has been downloaded by more than 1500 different centres and laboratories worldwide. Tests of the algorithm have shown that it is considerably more accurate than other similar algorithms. The development belongs to the field of bioinformatics -- a cross disciplinary field of science. Bioinformatics combines mathematics, statistics and computer science to study biological molecules, such as DNA, RNA, and protein structures. DNA, which is fundamentally an information molecule, is even sometimes depicted in computerized form (see Fig. 1) in order to emphasize its role as a molecule of biological memory. Bioinformatics is a very topical subject; every new sequenced genome raises so many additional questions that scientists simply do not have time to answer them all. Specialists' time, as well as the specialists themselves, is worth its weight in gold. This is why automating processes is key to the success of any bioinformatics project, and these algorithms are essential for solving a wide variety of problems. One of the most important areas of bioinformatics is annotating genomes -- determining which particular DNA molecules are used to synthesize RNA and proteins (see Fig. 2). These parts -- genes -- are of great scientific interest. The fact is that in many studies scientists do not need information about the entire DNA (which is around 2 metres long for a single human cell), but about its most informative part -- genes. Gene sections are identified by searching for similarities between sequence fragments and known genes, or by detecting consistent patterns of the nucleotide sequence. This process is carried out using predictive algorithms. Locating gene sections is no easy task, especially in eukaryotic organisms, which includes almost all widely known types of organism, except for bacteria. This is due to the fact that in these cells, the transfer of genetic information is complicated by "gaps" in the coding regions (introns) and because there are no definite indicators to determine whether a region is a coding region or not. The algorithm proposed by the scientists determines which regions in the DNA are genes and which are not. A Markov chain (a sequence of random events, the future of which is dependent on past events) studied in known genes can be used for this. The states of the chain in this case are either nucleotides or nucleotide words (k-mers). The algorithm determines the most probable division of a genome into coding and noncoding regions, classifying the genomic fragments in the best possible way according to their ability to encode proteins or RNA. Experimental data obtained from RNA give additional useful information which can be used to train the model used in the algorithm. Certain gene prediction programs can use this data to improve the accuracy of finding genes. However, these algorithms require a training set involving type-specific training of the model. For the AUGUSTUS software program, for example, which has a high level of accuracy, a training set of genes is needed. This set can be obtained using another program -- GeneMark-ET -- which is a self-training algorithm. These two algorithms were combined in the BRAKER1 algorithm, which was proposed jointly by the developers of AUGUSTUS and GeneMark-ET. BRAKER1 has demonstrated a high level of efficiency. The developed program has already been downloaded by more than 1500 different centres and laboratories. Tests of the algorithm have shown that it is considerably more accurate than other similar algorithms. The example running time of BRAKER1 on a single processor is ?17.5 hours for training and the prediction of genes in a genome with a length of 120 megabases. This is a good result, bearing in mind the fact that this time may be significantly reduced by using parallel processors, and this means that in the future the algorithm may be able to function even faster and generally more efficiently. Tools such as these help to solve a variety of different problems. Accurately annotating genes in a genome is extremely important -- an example of this is the global 1000 Genomes Project, the initial results of which have already been published. The project was launched in 2008 involving researchers from 75 different laboratories and companies. As a result, sequences of rare gene variants and gene substitutions were discovered, some of which can cause disease. When diagnosing genetic diseases, it is very important to know which substitutions in gene sections cause the disease to develop. Under the project, genomes of different people are mapped, especially their coding sections, and rare nucleotide substitutions are identified. In the future, this will help doctors to diagnose complex diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. BRAKER1 enables scientists to work effectively with the genomes of new organisms, speeding up the process of annotating genomes and acquiring essential knowledge about life sciences. Source: Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology SAN FRANCISCO - Twitter feeds went down for hours on Tuesday in many part of the world in one of the worst outages in the 10-year history of the messaging platform. The popular one-to-many messaging service fired off a tweet shortly after 6pm GMT saying the issue "has now been resolved," and thanking people for their patience. Twitter said the issue "was related to an internal code change" and added that "we reverted the change, which fixed the issue." The company offered no additional details. The online monitor DownDetector showed the number of users reporting outages surged between8am GMT and 2pm GMT, and then appeared to subside by 4pm GMT. A spokesperson for Twitter Europe confirmed the site was down, while users in South Africa, Brazil, the Philippines, Nigeria and Uganda also reported problems accessing the site with the hashtag #twitterdown on Facebook. Users in affected countries were met with the message: "Something is technically wrong." Some users managed to post to Twitter despite the outage -- and #twitterdown was the top trending topic on the network. "So #twitterdown was trending when Twitter was down?!" one astonished user tweeted. Others made light of the outage, with one tweeting, "#twitterdown was the worst. I had to go on Facebook to make fun of the people on Facebook." After a shutdown lasting about an hour on Tuesday morning, the site was back online in London and Paris -- but users in both cities experienced intermittent service in the afternoon. Users elsewhere, including Russia, were also still experiencing problems. The shutdown was also the butt of jokes from some social media channels, with British TV channel E4 posting on its Facebook page: "Twitter is down. Worker productivity hits record levels. UK is out of recession!!!" Rick Devens, a US radio host, posted on Facebook: "We may never get back some of the clever thoughts I had during this tragic outage." Twitter has regularly suffered outages since its launch in 2006, but generally of a shorter duration. Its social media rivals Facebook and Instagram have also had to deal with periodic shutdowns. During a site breakdown in July 2012, frustrated Twitter addicts were unable to post for two hours due to problems at its data centers. Twitter shares have tumbled 20 percent on the New York stock exchange since the start of the year. Some reports have said it may scrap the 140-character limit that has kept its posts pithy for the last decade. Tech news website re/code reported this month that tweets of up to 10,000 characters could be available from March, winning a mixed response from users. Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey did not confirm the plan, but said the company is "not going to be shy about building more utility and power into Twitter." The site continued to lose money over the first three quarters of last year. In October, it reported a third quarter loss of $132 million, on a disappointing 11 percent year-on-year increase in regular users to 320 million. Source: AFP The Independent Agency Search & Selection Company (IAS) has partnered with Spanish based SCOPEN Africa to provide in-depth and comprehensive research amongst South African marketers into client-agency relationships. The study, conducted by SCOPEN Africa, is being done for the first time in South Africa and is the first time that a study analyses the local marketing and advertising industry in such a comprehensive and robust way. Both the IAS and SCOPEN Africa have been working with marketers and agencies globally for more than 20 years. The first study was launched in Spain 35 years ago, has been conducted for the past decade in various countries around the world and has a record of 11 markets that have been analysed including China, India, Singapore, Spain, Portugal, UK, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Mexico. More than 2,500 chief marketing officers (CMO) have been interviewed globally. The study is used by companies to understand market trends and by agencies to gather data on how they are perceived by clients. Market trends, agency perception Cesar Vacchiano, CEO of SCOPEN Africa, says interviews are conducted with marketing heads of leading brands as well as directors and CMOs. The study analyses market trends and dynamics, client needs from agencies and how they compare with the rest of the world. In addition, agency perception and performance are analysed with prospective and current clients. Cesar Vacchiano, CEO of SCOPEN Africa "I have known Johanna McDowell, the MD of the IAS, for more than nine years, and she has an understanding of marketing in South Africa. I believe that for a project of this magnitude, it is better to have a local partner and she is a specialist in her field. In addition, the data will be of benefit to both the IAS client and agency subscriber. In terms of value, our relationship with the IAS is bringing a local and international understanding." In launching SCOPEN Africa in South Africa, the study provides in-depth information on agencies perceptions, taking into account their history, communication and new business activity and agencies performance as their current clients evaluate their service. The study is also able to compare the performance of agencies in different markets and even provide an international benchmark for the global networks. Confidentiality for SCOPEN Africa is paramount. The information and aggregate responses from clients about their agencies is not divulged to competitor agencies, so their integrity remains intact. "All the data is important and they trust us to run the project as we do in other countries. We have been received positively around the world because what we produce is unique to the industry and helps provide guidance to marketing and advertising firms around the world. The studies effect change and help businesses and economies grow," says Vacchiano. McDowell adds, "The quality of the industry research that SCOPEN produces is unmatched in the world. To be able to bring this research process to South Africa for agencies is a highlight for IAS and is very much in line with our investment strategy of bringing international marketing brands and companies to South Africa, and indeed Africa. The response from agencies during this launch week has been overwhelmingly positive and I am delighted that we will be able to implement SCOPEN fieldwork from next month." There's no doubt this is the year of the podcast. It's been dubbed one of the top trends for 2016 . With its forward-thinking, 'do it all' attitude, little wonder that Primedia has hopped on the bandwagon. "What we've seen over the past three years alone, globally and in SA, has been a shift towards greater listener time spent on video as well as audio. Especially in talk radio, with missed shows you can now playback at a time that suits you through SoundCloud. This figure has jumped up to hundreds of thousands every month, proving the consumer demand for it." That's the opening from Karl Gostner, Primedia Broadcasting's general manager, when we caught up for a quick chat on Primedia's move into other forms of communication, such as podcasts. Podcast popularity Gostner explains the popularity of podcasts boils down to the fact that they offer greater depth of content engagement, something listeners of talk radio are keen on as they tend to phone in with their comments and take the conversation further on social media. Podcasts mean they can now do so even if they missed the initial broadcast. So, as a consumer, you get to embrace time-shifted listening and immerse yourself more deeply in the content. In explaining how podcasts differ from other business talk radio programming/on-air interviews, Gostner speaks of an episode of Primedia's Face-to-face with Success podcast series that featured designer Thula Sindi. On-air the interview would be current and topical, based on hard news. The podcast format, however, meant the interview could delve deeper than the surface facts and explore Sindi's personal journey - which makes for more insightful, engaging content. The length of the interview helps with this. Primedia's Face-to-face with Success podcast series comprises just such bite-sized interviews with prominent, successful and sometimes controversial South Africans. Mike Abel of M&C SAATCHI ABEL was a recent interviewee - listen to his featured interview on the agency's growth from start-up to 'Agency of the Year' in just five years below: You'll notice the podcasts offer a tighter format, new for the South African market as it is chunky and more readily consumable. Adrenaline for the ears The fact that the team has time to edit a 90-minute interview down to an 8- to 12-minute podcast means you get the best possible distillation of facts: "It's like a balsamic reduction of the content; pure adrenaline for the ears," confirms Gostner. This is a sign of the dramatic shift locally. With South Africa's growing middle-class, there's a strong interest in how people have made the leap and changed their life. These stories are inspirational and aspirational and offer a strand in the South African cycle, to celebrate success of the past two decades in the country as well as to build on that going forward. But don't expect your typical 'top boardroom businessman' success story. Those featured in the podcast are from all walks of life, such as music producer Oskido. The podcasts prove that there's more than luck involved in making it as success (usually) doesn't come easy - you have to have a passion for what you do and work extremely hard at honing your talent. The benefit of shared success stories Gostner speaks of the strong nation-building aspect involved in sharing business success stories. In many corporate cases, culture kills success. That's why Primedia Broadcasting is based on a culture of success and celebration, of sharing and promoting what's really going on in the business world in order to inspire others, either just at the point of success or at the point of giving up. That's because success stories usually come with an inflection of difficulty and the trials it takes to finally make it. That's what really inspired others: Realising they're not the only ones struggling to get things right, and that it can be done. It's all about evolving the way we tell stories, says Gostner, and broadcasting is just a part of that. Look at EWN (Eye Witness News), for example. Over three years it has become so much more than just a radio news portal - it's competing with the biggest and best, currently the fourth biggest new website nationally. Today, effective storytelling means you have to stay on top of trends and connect with consumers where they are - that means being active on social media as well as exploring new mediums of sound and sight in order to tell better stories. Gostner shares an example of how Primedia recently did so - instead of merely reporting in their radio bulletins that legendary pianist Abdullah Ibrahim had performed in Church Square, photographer Andiswa Mkosi was sent to capture the moment visually and the article was shared on 702's website. Proof that broadcast audiences are morphing, and broadcasters are keeping pace. For more on Primedia Broadcasting click here or visit their website. Why a good reputation and brand can lead to more sales. As a business owner, CEO or MD, you're likely to be overly concerned with your sales performance but less so with your brand and reputation. This is because getting to market or staying competitively in the market is what pays the bills (and keeps your shareholders happy); the other is a nice-to-have... a logo, a fancy pay-off line, engaging website and a few nice things that someone said about you on social media. Right? Wrong. In an increasingly digital world, your brand and reputation are as much assets to your business as your staff, infrastructure and IT. And something to be aware of as, if it sours, it can bite you, badly. Remember how quickly the public shared damning video footage of KFC staff hosing down chicken pieces on a concrete floor? Or what about the curious case of the plagiarised hummingbird cushion and Woolworths? Both demonstrate how fast bad news can be shared online, and emphasises the necessity of keeping your reputation (read: your service, standards, values and ethics) intact. What's a reputation, anyway? It's the collective view of what your stakeholders i.e.: your customers, suppliers, staff, shareholders, etc. think of you. Accurate or not, it's the perception that they have formed either by interacting with your business directly, or indirectly via others. While you can control the former by maintaining high standards; ensuring your staff represent you properly and that your after-purchase service is top-notch, the latter is more challenging as your current and future customers' opinions can be significantly influenced by third parties, including the media, bloggers as well as friends and family. Some of whom may not be your fans... Coupled with the explosion of communication channels that can spread (good and bad) news in milliseconds, it's in your best interest to know what your stakeholders think of you, and then to play a proactive role in influencing their views if it's not what you'd like, or thought, it to be. Listen... When last did you audit your business online to see what is being said about it? The internet is the world's biggest focus group, so simply using Google search, Twitter or Facebook can yield hundreds of conversations instantly - some you may not even be aware of. For instance, as a consumer brand, someone may have started a '#Love' or '#Hate' group. What about Hello Peter? When was the last time you looked to see if you're hot or not? Trawling these platforms could reveal a new insight, or you could find that a disgruntled customer has taken to Facebook to spread unfounded vitriol. Being aware of any potential flare-ups provides an opportunity to right or explain any wrong, while positive posts verify you're doing something that your customers like - consider it free market research. Direct the conversation Both B2C and B2B businesses have a wealth of tools available to them to use to promote what they do and influence what people think. For starters, there is the company website; its blog; social networks like Linked-In, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook or newsletters. Or, you can engage relevant bloggers and media to help share your content for you (providing it's newsworthy and interesting to the wider public, of course). Each can be used strategically to positively position your business, communicate your message and ultimately drive viable leads and enquiries. But do ensure that your content clearly ties back to your USP, enhances your values and builds your brand. How? Have a clear idea of what your strategic intent is and how that translates into your marketing and communication plans. Simply posting content for content's sake does not a good strategy make. And, if the tone doesn't reflect your business offering perfectly, is too generic, or worse, is badly designed or written, then it's a wasted effort and could do more harm than good. It's also a reputational sin to ever claim you are the "best", "first", "most" or "greatest" if you're not. Do your homework by looking at what the competition sell, and how they are promoting it; then differentiate your offering by playing to your unique strengths. This immediately gives you an edge and allows you to build a brand and reputational image around an area of expertise vs. being the best or most (which customers are often sceptical about, anyway). As Oscar Wilde said "Be yourself; everyone else is already taken". Sage advice. Be bold with your opinion Building a reputation isn't for wallflowers. It means taking risks, putting yourself out there and taking a stand on a particular issue. After all, you want your customers and other stakeholders to buy into what you are saying (and selling). Package this into engaging content - a blog post, for instance, which can be shared on your or your company's Linked-In or Twitter feed - and begin to slowly shape opinions and perceptions. Developed in line with an SEO strategy that identifies what your customers are searching for online, your well-packaged thought leadership content can also help claim your position on Google. Few people look beyond the first page of searches, so you want to be seen where your customers are looking. Know your purpose Having an opinion and sharing it is one thing, but it must align to why you're in business in the first place. Otherwise you'll build a brand that isn't about you at all. Ask yourself these four questions, and if you struggle, you may not be clear on your strategic intent: 1. What do you do? 2. Why do you do it? 3. What solution do you offer your customers? 4. What do you do that proves this? Question two is often where the difficulty comes in. Without having a sound understanding of why you do what you do, you may be miscommunicating your message and potentially losing leads and sales. Does all of this effort generate a return? In the long-term, yes. Reputation is cultivated; not bought. It isn't a quick win, it's a slow race that builds trust and credibility. It's the long-term goal not the short-term fix and should be as much a part of your strategy from the get-go as your sales projections and financial forecasts are. But you'll need to work at it steadily by producing valuable and authoritative content, engaging your staff to buy into your vision and values and listen on and offline to understand what the word on the street about you is. In so doing, you'll give your stakeholders good cause to buy into you. And once they've bought into and trusted you, there is more chance that they will end up buying from you. Which as an entrepreneur, MD or CEO is what you really want, anyway. RALEIGH In an October decision, the state's highest court reinstated a ban on registered sex offenders using certain social media websites, finding that the ban as written does not violate the free speech protections in the First Amendment.Lester Gerald Packingham was convicted of taking indecent liberties with a child in 2006 and was required to register as a sex offender. Two years later, the state passed a law banning sex offenders from using Internet social media sites on which minors could create profiles. To enforce this law, the Durham Police Department examined profiles on Facebook and MySpace and found one created by Packingham.At trial, a Superior Court judge rejected Packington's claim that the law was unconstitutional. After being convicted by a jury, Packington received a suspended prison sentence and was placed on probation for a year. He appealed.The N.C. Court of Appeals overturned Packingham's conviction, finding that the law was unconstitutional, as it "is not narrowly tailored, is vague, and fails to target the 'evil' it is intended to rectify" because it "arbitrarily burdens all registered sex offenders by preventing a wide range of communication and expressive activity unrelated to achieving its purported goal."On appeal, the N.C. Supreme Court took the case, and in September 2014 held oral arguments.A key question before the high court was whether Packingham's use of Facebook amounted to conduct or speech."First Amendment protection of speech is extended to conduct only when the conduct in question 'is inherently expressive,'" explained Justice Robert Edmunds, writing for the court."In contrast, a regulation that governs conduct while imposing only an incidental burden upon speech 'must be evaluated in terms of [its] general effect.' An incidental burden on speech is permissible 'so long as the neutral regulation promotes a substantial government interest that would be achieved less effectively absent the regulation.'Edmunds concluded that using social media sites amounted to conduct, not speech."The essential purpose of [the law] is to limit conduct, specifically the ability of registered sex offenders to access certain carefully-defined Web sites. This limitation on conduct only incidentally burdens the ability of registered sex offenders to engage in speech after accessing those Web sites that fall within the statute's reach. Thus we conclude that [the statute] is a regulation of conduct."The Court of Appeals also concluded that the law was overly restrictive. Four of the N.C. Supreme Court's seven members did not agree."While we acknowledge that defendant has identified some areas in which the statute could have been drafted even more narrowly, we conclude that the statute is sufficiently narrowly drawn," wrote Edmunds."In his brief and argument to this Court, defendant lists numerous well-known websites that he contends he could not access legally. In considering those and other similar sites, we find that even where defendant is correct, the Web offers numerous alternatives that provide the same or similar services that defendant could access without violating [state law]."Edmunds noted that Packingham and other registered sex offenders could share pictures using Shutterfly and post their resumes on Glassdoor, as those sites required users to be at least 18 years of age.The majority rejected Packingham's claim the statue was too vague, finding that under any reasonable interpretation of the statue, it applied to Facebook, which is the site Packingham was convicted of using.Justices Robin Hudson and Cheri Beasley dissented."This statute completely bars registered sex offenders from communicating with others through many widely utilized commercial networking sites. Therefore, in my view, it primarily targets expressive activity usually protected by the First Amendment," Hudson wrote.Hudson in particular found the majority's reliance on a 1968 U.S. Supreme Court case about the express conduct in burning a draft card to be mistaken. Instead, Hudson said she would analyze the law using the U.S. Supreme Court's traditional free speech jurisprudence."Here, there is no dispute that the state's purported concern - protecting minors from exploitation by registered sex offenders using the Internet - qualifies as a legitimate and significant government interest. The central question, then, is whether [the state law] 'burden[s] substantially more speech than necessary' in support of that interest."I conclude that it does."Justice Sam Erwin IV, who was not a member of the court when the case was heard, did not participate in the ruling.The case is State v. Packingham, (366PA13). RALEIGH "We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified." So said the Greek storyteller Aesop more than 2,500 years ago.That quotation and a related notion, "be careful what you wish for," came to mind recently when opinion editors of the state's largest newspapers reacted to comments published in one of their news articles.The story developed from a 2014 state budget provision that allowed Treasurer Janet Cowell to spend $1.2 million on pay raises for 25 "key" investment employees. As reported in the Raleigh News and Observer and Charlotte Observer , those raises - ranging from $13,750 to $87,872 - were based on legislative authorization to "establish market-oriented compensation plans" for employees with specialized skills or knowledge.Before writing the article, reporter David Ranii asked the John Locke Foundation for reaction to the raises. "When there is a market for a certain type of employee, it probably makes sense for a government to use market-based pay," I said during the course of a short interview. Ranii also quoted me in the story as saying that the elimination of standard government job security for employees receiving market-based raises represented a good trade-off.There's no dispute about the quotations. Ranii got them right.Left on the cutting-room floor and out of the story was another point of emphasis: Because other employees in the Office of State Treasurer would continue to be paid based on more traditional government pay schedules, it would be important for Cowell's team to have specific metrics to justify the pay raises.Taxpayers would be ill-served, and fellow state employees would be more likely to grumble, if the raises appeared to be based on patronage or some other form of political favoritism rather than objective measures of the employees' job performance.The day after Ranii's story appeared, his editorial page responded . Citing my quote about "market-based pay," the unnamed editorial writer opined:"It seems some public employees are created more equal than others. Namely, high-ranking executive types, especially those who handle large amounts of money or work closely with lawmakers."For those folks, N.C. conservatives always seem ready to justify pay raises by citing the market; we must pay the market rate for top talent."The editorial goes on to lambast lawmakers and Gov. Pat McCrory for failing to apply the same logic to public school teachers. Downplaying large-scale pay hikes approved in recent years, especially double-digit percentage increases for early-career teachers, the writer's disdain focused primarily on a "measly" $750 bonus for experienced teachers in the most recent state budget.Left unstated in the editorial itself, but spelled out directly in the headline that appeared on the websites of both the Charlotte and Raleigh newspapers: "Time to pay North Carolina's teachers the market rate."One suspects that the editorial writer considered this a "gotcha" moment: Those hypocritical conservatives rely on the word "market" only when it suits them. When the time comes to apply market-based principles to teachers, those same conservatives remain silent.There are multiple ways to respond to the editorial's flawed analysis. One involves a rebuttal of the notion that recent actions from the governor and General Assembly have no basis in application of market principles to teacher pay. I'll leave that response to others. The state's outgoing budget director, Lee Roberts, and the governor's education adviser, Catherine Truitt, addressed that issue in a published response to the newspapers More interesting to this observer was the fact that the December 16 editorial headline closely resembled this one: "Pay Teachers a Market Wage." That headline accompanied a July 17 column at CarolinaJournal.com from Terry Stoops , the John Locke Foundation's top public education expert.Yes, five months before a newspaper editorial writer accused North Carolina "conservatives" of ignoring the notion of applying market principles to teacher pay, a "conservative" N.C. publication called for the application of market principles to teacher pay.Here's where Aesop's admonition comes in handy. The editorial writer seems to believe that an application of market principles to teacher pay would lead to a large across-the-board pay increase for North Carolina's teachers. "The market certainly says teachers should have a more substantial raise," the editorial suggests. "We've fallen to 47th in teacher pay, and teacher turnover is rising."Yet the writer betrays an unfortunate ignorance of markets. Let's set aside for now two glaring problems associated with that quote: reliance on misleading average teacher pay rankings and a misreading of the state's teacher turnover reports . Instead, let's examine how market principles would apply to teacher pay.Teachers would not see base pay and pay raises based almost exclusively on years of experience. Instead, factors such as the teacher's subject area, training, and willingness to work in hard-to-staff schools all would influence her salary. In addition, pay based on market principles would incorporate some measurement of the teacher's classroom effectiveness.A pay system based on markets could allow those with special skills, effective training, proven results, and the desire to work in the toughest circumstances to earn much higher pay than those lacking those attributes. A pay system based on markets would help school systems compete more effectively with private- and other public-sector employers in attracting and keeping top talent.A pay system based on markets would fly in the face of most proposals put forward by teachers unions and the state's education establishment. Those groups tend to promote policies that "ensure uniform pay regardless of teachers' aptitude or training," as Stoops pointed out five months before the newspaper editorial's publication.While one might hope that the editorial board of the state's largest newspapers would welcome benefits that would flow from market-based teacher pay, this observer is more inclined to believe that the authors of the recent editorial would be sorry if their wishes were gratified. It looks like you have reached this page in error ... The content you are looking for has either moved, or if you typed in the address there might have been a mistake. If you believe there has been a technical error please let us know. Most Popular Destinations As you know, the Snyder administration of Michigan poisoned an entire city of people in the name of austerity which should give pause to any nominally-human being, but Fox News host Heather Nauert believes there's something else at play. via Media Matters HEATHER NAUERT (HOST): Class action lawsuit set to be filed against Michigan Governor Rick Snyder and other leaders in that state, as frustration over a water crisis in Flint, Michigan intensifies today. National Guard troops called in to help deliver clean water after Flint's water supply was contaminated with very dangerous lead, as any parent would know about that because that's one of the top things that doctors look for in young children. So let's bring in Fox News anchor Gregg Jarrett. Gregg, as an example of how political this is now getting, the mayor of Flint, Michigan at the White House at this hour, meeting with Valerie Jarrett. The White House is going to be naming a czar. Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders weighing in in the Democratic debate coming down on Republicans about this. GREGG JARRETT: Because it raises issue of class and race. Sixty percent of the residents of Flint, Michigan are black. Forty-one percent live below the poverty line. They're going to the White House because they want a federal emergency disaster declaration to get federal funds but they're likely not going to get it. NAUERT: Well this is a way they could potentially get more black votes in the coming election. I suppose it is natural that people would want to vote for a leader who promises not to give their children brain damage, but that clearly isn't what Heather Nauert was implying. Representative government has completely broken down in Michigan under Governor Snyder's emergency management law where citizens pay their taxes and, in return, they're poisoned. Some people would consider that to be a problem. Others see a call for "free stuff." Heather Nauert may or may not have been an extra on the set of They Live. RALEIGH Is unemployment ever voluntary? I don't ask the question in order to blame unemployed people for their fate. On the contrary, understanding the full range of causes of unemployment is required before policymakers can effectively combat it.I'll bet you know at least one person who has chosen to leave a job in order to change careers, return to school, or relocate for family or personal reasons. I'll bet you know at least one person who has chosen not to engage in paid work for a time, perhaps because he or she is caring for a young child, a sick relative, or an elderly parent.Now think about cases in which people don't leave jobs or the labor market entirely, but instead take jobs that pay less than they could make. Some do it because of hours or working conditions. Others do it because they expect to derive greater pleasure or satisfaction from the lower-paying job than they would from a higher-paying one.To recognize that people actively choose their paths through the labor market is not to say that they always get what they want. In many situations, the choices they make are between unattractive alternatives - take the higher-paying job and neglect a family responsibility, for example, or take the lower-paying job and struggle to pay the bills. My point here is merely to observe that even in desperate times, facing unforeseen challenges or recovering from painful mistakes, workers still possess agency. They aren't passive victims. They respond. They learn. They adapt.Conservatives apply this lesson in ways that liberals find distasteful or abhorrent. Here in North Carolina, state lawmakers and the McCrory administration have tightened time limits and benefit caps on unemployment insurance and, more recently, restored some work requirements on food stamps that were suspended during the Great Recession.The goal was to retain the state's short-term role in providing immediate relief for dislocated workers and their families while combating the long-term dependency that public assistance can breed.Testifying last year on Capitol Hill, University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan made an important observation that North Carolinians need to think about.Mulligan said.Workers on unemployment-insurance benefits, for instance, regularly turn down job offers at salaries that would boost their weekly incomes a bit but are significantly below what they earned before being laid off. As a matter of fact, that's what the UI program is supposed to enable, for a time. It allows recipients some space to weigh all their alternatives, rather than having to take the first job that comes along. After a while, however, this advantage becomes a disadvantage. Perhaps the industries where they previously worked aren't going to rebound. Perhaps what they really need to do is relocate to find work, or change careers even if that necessitates earning less for now.Mulligan's empirical work demonstrates that government relief can work as an implicit tax on employment - because recipients have to give up so much cash or in-kind benefits to take a job that the marginal benefit of doing so, while not zero, is so low that recipients feel they are better off remaining on the dole and hoping for better luck tomorrow.North Carolina's recent reforms take the work of Mulligan and other labor economists seriously. The early indications are promising. Since mid-2013, our employment-population ratio has gone up by a full percentage point, to 57.6 percent in November 2015, which is a higher rate of improvement than the national average and three times that of the Southeast region.Let's hope the trend continues. These are tough issues. There are no easy answers. That's because there are no easy questions. President Obama signed an emergency declaration for Flint, Michigan which was co-signed by all but one member of the Michigan delegation. Representative Justin Amash (R) refused to sign the president's declaration for assistance because of some cockamamie constitutional objection. "While the U.S. Constitution does not authorize the federal government to intervene in an intrastate matter like this one, the State of Michigan should provide comprehensive assistance to the people of Flint," Amash said. "The residents who were harmed deserve an independent, nonpartisan investigation, and the persons responsible for this crisis must be held accountable." Setting aside the nonsensical constitutional objection Representative Amash pulled out of his ass, how exactly does he see the state providing "comprehensive assistance" to Flint? The state poisoned them. The state made the decision to give them contaminated water in an effort to save a few bucks. Governor Rick Snyder (R) and his emergency managing henchmen exposed a city of 100,000 people to possible brain damage. Does Representative Amash truly believe the Snyder administration should be trusted to investigate themselves? We don't often see situations where federal intervention is more appropriate than it is right now. The people of Michigan cannot trust Governor Snyder and his emergency managers who are not accountable to anyone but the governor. Furthermore, if the Snyder administration was willing to expose tens of thousands of people to brain damage in the name of austerity, who can say with any authority that Governor Snyder will not skimp on relief? The poisoning of Flint will ultimately cost the state demonstrably more money than was saved by pumping contaminated water into Flint in the first place. (Cartoonist - Pat Bagley) In other news, the Supreme Court has decided not to hear a third challenge to Obamacare on constitutional grounds because it was passed using budget reconciliation. Thank merciful Christ. Meanwhile, GOP presidential candidate and sometimes-senator Marco Rubio explains that he bought a gun to shoot ISIS. Rubio explains why he purchased a fire arm recently. Explains that it is the last defense between his family & ISIS https://t.co/2AkdTHZ5yh Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) January 17, 2016 RUBIO "If ISIS were to visit us or our communities at any moment the last line of defense between ISIS and my family is the ability that I have to protect my family from them or from a criminal or anyone else that seeks to do us harm." It probably goes without saying that ISIS is not preparing to invade the United States or target Rubio's home residence, especially since he's never home, but even if that were the case I just don't think Rubio and his pistol are going to stop them. I have no idea if Rubio actually believes this horseshit. I don't know if he believes anything he says. Everything he says feels so rehearsed there's hardly any emotion or inflection at all. As we've been over many times before, gender cannot and should not be reduced to a binary of genitals when reality is so much more complex than that, but that is exactly what Washington state Representative Graham Hunt (R) hopes to accomplish. In his own words, and very specifically, state Rep. Graham Hunt is afraid of the presence of penises attached to what he believes are the wrong bodies. Hunt has introduced a bill that would allow any public or private entity to ban transgender people from their facilities if they have a penis when they aren't suppose to have a penis as determined by that entity. Ive tried to make this about genitalia, Hunt admitted to the Heritage Foundations Daily Signal. If you dont have the parts if you dont have the plumbing, then you dont go in. In an interview earlier this month, Hunt made clear he sees male genitals as a security concern in and of themselves. If youre non-operative or pre-operative, having access to a facility that is different from the genitalia that you have, thats where the security concerns come in. And who will inspect their bodies? State Representative Hunt has seemingly discounted the existence of pre-operative transgender men or he does not consider them to be a threat because they don't have a penis. By extension, he also apparently believes that persons who have a penis are automatically a "security concern." Underlying all of this is an implication that only persons with male genitalia are capable of sexual abuse or assault. There are plenty of male victims of abuse who would tell you otherwise if society gave them space to do so. In short, Washington state Representative Graham Hunt (R) has absolutely no idea what he is talking about. As it stands, the only people in America who seem to be hyper-focused on genitals and transgender bodies are straight, white, conservative male lawmakers. What's wrong with them? Are they the real security concern? If you asked me I'd say state lawmakers who want to scrutinize and monitor the genitalia of your children are a security concern. This article originally appeared in Forbes.com Unemployment insurance (UI) reform in North Carolina continues to be the gift that keeps on giving. The 2013 UI reform, made possible by the Republican-dominated General Assembly and Governor Pat McCrory, will enable $240 million in tax savings for state employers in 2016 alone, thanks to a UI Trust Fund that has grown to over $1 billion. In addition, the Tar Heel State's 2013 tax reform bill will once again lower the corporate income tax rate, from 5% to 4% (it was 6.9% prior to 2013).North Carolina employers certainly aren't complaining, but that wasn't the case just a few years ago. In January 2013, North Carolina's unemployment insurance program was in terrible shape. Like most states, North Carolina had borrowed funds from the federal government to cover increased unemployment benefits during the great recession. This resulted in $2.75 billion of debt to Washington and stiff federal UI tax hikes on state employers. Meanwhile, North Carolina was experiencing an unemployment rate above the national average.Making matters worse, North Carolina's Division of Employment Security (DES) (the agency that oversees the UI program) was a mess. A 2012 news investigation found DES's claim accuracy was the worst in the country, rife with fraud. The call center was answering less than 5% of its incoming calls. Benefit appeals took seven months on average.But 2013 was a landmark year, featuring two major changes which turned around the unemployment program and the agency that runs it.In February of that year, Governor McCrory signed a bill that reduced the maximum amount and duration of unemployment benefits to levels in line with those of neighboring states. This triggered the cutoff of long-term federal UI benefits being moved up by six months.The resulting savings enabled the state to pay off the feds by May of this year. Without the changes, North Carolina would not have paid off the debt until 2020.Predictably, however, the reaction from the media and talking heads was fierce and uniformly negative. The New York Times' Paul Krugman declared the reforms to be part of a "war on the unemployed."Ironically, in his 2010 economics textbook, Krugman expressed an opposing sentiment. "Public policy designed to help workers who lose their jobs can lead to structural unemployment as an unintended side effect," wrote Krugman, explaining that granting more generous benefits "reduces a worker's incentive to quickly find a new job."Indeed, there is a very important moral dimension to consider. Through misguided programs with unintended consequences, our government has fostered a wave of debilitating dependency. As American Enterprise Institute President Arthur Brooks wrote recently, "While the tide of dependence for the poor has crept forward, work has receded."With its UI reforms, North Carolina decided to stop participating in this trend. Now, the Tar Heel State has added jobs at a rate higher than neighboring states and the national average.Because of the early debt payoff, employers will save more than $2.5 billion over the next four years. While North Carolina's highly touted income tax reforms garnered much media attention, these cuts will actually put more money in a shorter time back into the state's economy.For individual employers, the early debt payoff has freed money for job creation and capital investment that will lift wages. As reported by the Winston-Salem Journal: "According to the U.S. Labor Department data, the average employer paid $554 per covered employee toward the $2.15 billion debt in 2013, as well as $247 in 2014 toward what was then a $980.9 million debt."Under the federal government's repayment plan, UI tax costs per worker on businesses would have tripled by 2019, draining hundreds of millions in funds annually that otherwise could have been reinvested in the businesses to create jobs. The interest payments alone would have totaled close to half a billion dollars.Due to the reforms, however, the federal UI tax hikes were halted in 2014, and dropped back to standard rates after the debt was paid off last year. The result has been significant tax relief for job providers.The second major change in 2013 was the recalibration of DES under the leadership of former state House Speaker pro-tempore Dale Folwell. Today, the call center answers 97% of incoming calls, up from a dismal 5%, and the average appeals process has been driven down to just 74 days from seven months.DES also cracked down on fraud. Prior to 2013, benefit checks were regularly sent out to new claimants before the former employer could verify the reason for unemployment. Folwell reversed that process to ensure benefit recipients were fully eligible before receiving a check. New legislation now also requires claimants to show photo ID to collect unemployment checks.In 2012, the U.S. Department of Labor determined from a random sampling that only 12% of unemployment benefit recipients in NC were actually legally eligible. By June of 2015, that number had increased dramatically to 58%.Today, North Carolina's fiscal health is in far greater shape than it was in 2012, thanks to bold unemployment insurance reforms that will enable an additional $240 million in tax relief for state employers in 2016. For a roadmap to UI reform, states should look no further than North Carolina, where a crackdown on fraud has saved tax dollars and early debt repayment has enabled massive savings for job creators.Garland S. Tucker III is the CEO of Triangle Capital Corporation, a publicly traded company based in Raleigh. Brian Balfour is Policy Director of the Civitas Institute, a Raleigh-based think tank. "Portions were taken to them from Joseph's table, but Benjamin's mess was five times as much as any of theirs. So they drank and were merry with him." Genesis 43.34 Ive been gone a while from the blogging scene. Some of my more regular readers no doubt noticed but did not hassle me about it. Thank you for that. Sinc... 6 years ago BISMARCK, N.D. A Glendive radioactive waste landfill operator thinks some bad actors in the oil fields are illegally disposing of radioactive waste and hiding it in North Dakota landfills and that it may be too late for the environment. Gary Ebel, who owns Buckhorn Energy and operates Oaks Disposal, fears that what North Dakota is doing now under its new radioactive waste program that started Jan. 1 may be too late for the environment. Ebel said that as soon as North Dakota started talking about permitting radioactive waste landfills he noticed a drop in the amount of treatment plant waste going out of state to certified-radioactive landfills, such as his own. His company, which is regulated by Montanas Department of Environmental Quality and recently upgraded its landfill to handle higher levels of radioactive material, pulled the Oil and Gas Divisions available reports for treatment plants and created a bar graph to define the disposal trend. Ebel said the results were startling: Despite the amount of total waste remaining relatively stable, the amount transported to radioactive-certified facilities dropped from a high of 71 percent in August 2014 to 25 percent in July. The volume hasnt changed all that much, so the question is, where did it end up going? If its not going out of state, its been turned back in state, Ebel said. Slowed drilling isnt an explanation, either, he said. Much of the waste handled by treatment plants is generated by production of oil, meaning it tends mostly to be sludge from storage tank bottoms. The North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources reported last week that oil production, despite a low rig count, was slightly up during the month of November. This treated sludge has been studied by Argonne National Laboratories, which wrote the report that led to the states new radioactive waste disposal program. In the 2014 report, the sludge was found to contain an average of 75 pCi of radiation, with a low of 3 pCi and a maximum of 1,300 pCi. Ebel said the data is especially troubling because some treatment plant operators show theyve never sent any waste to radioactive-certified landfills. He suspects some bad actors are skirting the rules and hiding radioactive waste in North Dakota landfills, possibly by illegally blending it to bring down the radioactive reading. The problem is that treatment operators get a permit from the Oil and Gas Division and report activity on a form that doesnt distinguish whether the solid waste is radioactive or not, only where it goes for disposal. State health officials says they are working to close a wide gap in the reporting of potentially radioactive waste disposal from North Dakotas oil production and what is happening to it has been difficult to track. As much as 100,000 tons a year has existed in reporting limbo from when total waste generated is recorded by the Oil and Gas Division and when the State Health Department records how much radioactive waste is shipped to specialized landfills out of state. Those new Jan. 1 regulations are expected to bring order to the situation. Ebel said the waste from North Dakota has declined significantly, by more than half. However, its been difficult to track, according to state officials especially because the amount produced has not been monitored for radioactivity. "NDIC (Oil and Gas Division) does not regulate TENORM and will not regulate TENORM even with the new rules being put in place," spokeswoman Alison Ritter said of the technically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive materials. As a result, the health departments radiation control licensing program collects truck manifests to track how much radioactive waste goes out the back door, without any way of knowing what went through the front door in the first place. The waste, which is generated by 16 treatment plants that handle sludge from oil storage tanks, drilling mud and contaminated soil, is transported to out-of-state radioactive certified landfills. Scott Radig, who manages the health departments waste program, said that era of the right hand not working with the left should end now that the state has new rules for handling radioactive waste. Radioactive waste, measuring up to 50 picocuries, may be deposited in specialized landfills in North Dakota though no operator in North Dakota has yet applied for a permit. Until a certified-radioactive landfill is permitted, the old protocol still stands: Nothing higher than 5 pCi can legally be disposed of anywhere in North Dakota. Radig said a team last week began inspecting treatment facilities to find out where treatment plant waste has been going. Starting now, its very clear that records do need to be kept, where the waste was generated and where its disposed, along with analytical information that confirms the waste was tested for radioactive content, Radig said. Darrell Dorgan, spokesman for the North Dakota Energy Industry Waste Coalition, said he's "amazed and pleased" the health department is working to get a handle on the waste, but remains skeptical of its ability to regulate at the 50 pCi level. "They don't have any idea where it is now, and it's only going to get worse," Dorgan said. Kurt Rhea is general manager of Secure Energy Services, which operates both treatment and a special waste landfill north of Williston, reports that for every ton it takes to its own permitted landfill for non-radioactive waste, it ships 2 to 3 tons to radioactive-certified landfills. If 100 percent of the waste never goes out of state (from some treatment plants), then I dont know whats going on or if theyre purposely not complying, Rhea said. His company screens every load that comes in for radioactivity and tracks by volume what is transported out of state or remains here, according to Rhea, who noted most companies act within the law. Jeff Burrier, engineering vice president for E360, which operates treatment at the Prairie Disposal landfill near Tioga, is one treatment operator with no record of out-of-state disposal. Burrier said his company deals primarily with stabilized drill cuttings, not sludge, acceptable within its disposal permit. Potentially radioactive filter socks are sent away, he said. Ebel said he sent his findings to the health department and other state officials. Radig said he cant verify the findings because, until recently, hed never seen the Oil and Gas reports that Ebel used to clock the disposal trends. It did, however, partly spur last weeks inspections, but also raised the question of whether Ebel is being self-serving and trying to create more business for himself, Radig said. The health department will continue its inspections, look at records and conduct some sampling, even as it begins developing reporting forms for treatment waste, according to Radig, who also said he cant speculate on what would happen if the department verifies Ebels concern that radioactive waste is hiding in North Dakota landfills. Ebel said his company invested hours and expense to show potential disposal issues with radioactive waste. He said it points to the need for the health department to slow down before permitting a radioactive-certified landfill, since it has so little information about the waste already generated even as it plans to ratchet up allowable waste to 50 pCi. They need the systems in place to protect the environment. It could take a year to develop all that, he said. Scratching noises came from inside the boxes, some of which were shifting in the snow as the unseen occupants became restless to make a break for it. "Jumpin' beans," Jay Groskreutz said to nobody in particular. Young kids, nervous with anticipation, edged closer, encouraged by adults such as Groskreutz to flip open the flaps. When they did, snow flew, the kids squealed and wings scraped furiously against cardboard. Montana's Missouri River between Fort Benton and Loma is the new home for 125 wild Merriam's turkeys. Upon their recent release the birds, weighing between 10 and 20 pounds, flapped their wings hard through 2-degree-below zero air to reach the tops of cottonwood trees where they perched. The Jan. 9 release was part of an ongoing effort to augment local wild turkey populations along rivers in north-central Montana to create more hunting and wildlife viewing opportunities for the public, said Cory Loecker, a Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks wildlife biologist who oversaw the wild turkey release. "Not everybody is an elk hunter," said Loecker, as a handful of the newly freed turkeys perched in a tree overhead. The Merriam's wild turkeys are transplants from Nebraska, captured by Nebraska Game and Fish on behalf of Montana FWP. They spent more than two days in 24-by-24-by-12-inch boxes and were raring to get out by the time their release rolled around. "It's pretty exciting to watch them come flying out of there," said Rick Vukasin, vice president of the Great Falls chapter of Safari Club International. SCI and the National Wild Turkey Federation are working with FWP to establish the turkeys. In 2008, 94 turkeys were released on the Missouri River near Cascade, and 91 birds were set free last year on the Teton River, about 5 to 10 miles north of the two locations on the Missouri River where the 125 birds were freed. The two rivers connect at Loma. "It's like the Missouri (River) Breaks where they come from," Loecker said. "They'll expand up and down the Missouri here, no problem." Prior to the release of birds on the Missouri and Teton rivers over the past two years, out-of-state birds had not been used to augment Montana populations since the 1950s, Loecker said. "So it's a pretty big deal," he said. In the past, surplus turkeys from southeast Montana have been used to bolster populations in north-central Montana. Pockets of Merriam's turkeys are located in southeastern and Eastern Montana, and eastern turkeys are located in northwestern Montana. Turkeys are not native to the state, and have been introduced at various times since the 1940s and 1950s, Loecker said. But at this time, there's no in-state surplus of Merriam's turkeys, which prompted FWP to look to Nebraska for birds, Loecker said. The ranch where the turkeys were trapped has a population of 400. "You can't even tell you put a dent in 'em," Loecker said of the robust Nebraska population after the turkeys bound for Montana were trapped. "So it's great for those landowners and that agency down there to let us expand our populations here for hunting and wildlife viewing for this part of Montana. Otherwise, you never know, we might be waiting another 10 to 20 years for a surplus of Merriam's in our state." A caravan led by a pickup pulling a trailer filled to the brim with boxes holding wild turkeys left Great Falls at around 9 a.m. for a 45-mile trip to private land at two locations along the Missouri River between Fort Benton and Loma, where the birds would be set free. "Pretty cool, uh?" BC Caffyn told one youngster whose face was sprayed with snow when one of the turkeys took flight. Caffyn is president of Last Chance Gobblers, the Helena branch of the National Wild Turkey Federation. He described introducing wild turkeys to the area as working on the future. "This gives the kids some place to hunt, and something to hunt, when they get of age," he said. Loecker and Jake Doggett, an FWP upland game bird specialist, drove 700 miles to Chadron, Neb., to pick up the turkeys, which were captured in walk-in traps by Nebraska Game and Parks. They turned right around and traveled home to Montana and were ready to release the bird's two days later. General spring and fall turkey hunting seasons are in place in the eastern part of Great Falls-based Region 4, in the Lewistown area, but hunting in the areas where the turkeys were reintroduced in recent years on the Missouri and Teton rivers is in the spring, and it's a gobbler-only season that requires a special permit. Typically, five to 10 tags are issued a year. Locations for the turkey releases were chosen because landowners were willing to have them and allow hunting, and it's good turkey habitat, Loecker said. In the summer, turkeys feed on berries, insects and flowering plants, Loecker said. In the winter, they can scratch for grain in nearby fields. The cold doesn't phase the 18- to 19-pound toms and 10- to 12-pound hens. "They're pretty darn hardy," Loecker said. And the river corridors have trees where the turkeys can roost. At one of the locations for the release, several birds settled high in the treetops as a coyote crossed a snow-covered grain field in the distance. "If you watch them going into the trees, it's amazing," Caffyn said. BUTTE Butte High School was evacuated at 9:56 a.m. Tuesday after a school secretary received a computer-generated bomb threat via telephone. It immediately followed a bomb threat called into the Butte-Silver Bow County Courthouse at 9:55 a.m., according to police. Authorities say the two incidents are related. It was a computer-generated voice, said Principal John Metz, back in his office after the entire school including faculty, staff and students was allowed back into the buildings by 10:43 a.m., when the school was deemed safe. Authorities pulled the fire alarm to alert the entire school to evacuate. We followed our protocol to evacuate the school, Metz said. According to the police, its the exact same one the courthouse got. We follow our protocol, regardless of the situation. Safety is number one for our kids. BHS administrators Wes Peters, Chuck Merrifield, Brenda Floreen and Metz searched the grounds as teachers followed their own roster-check procedure with their classes in the parking lots and other designated areas. Once the school is evacuated, we the administrators go back to make sure everyone has left, said Metz. We check the bathrooms, tunnels, every little nook and cranny and that takes some time. Then after we do it, the police department and fire department comes in and checks also. By 10:50 a.m., administrators sent out text alerts to notify parents that their children were safe and back in the building. Parents sign up with the school to receive either text alerts, voice messages or email messages or all three whenever an emergency occurs in the district. Butte High, a class AA school with an enrollment of 1,200, covers an entire city block, from Utah Street on the east to Main Street to the west. It took us about an hour to make sure everything was okay, said Metz. Its a big school and you cant ever be too safe. Superintendent Judy Jonart, who immediately went to campus when the call came in, said administrators and staff followed protocol properly. Everything was very orderly and the kids were well-behaved, she added. Chemistry teachers Maureen Driscoll and Colleen Fogerty, class rosters in hand, were among several faculty overseeing their classes in the south parking lot. Fogertys seniors were reviewing for their chemistry final when the fire alarm sounded, as semester finals starts Wednesday and runs through Friday. Youve got to treat every threat as if its legitimate, said Driscoll, shivering in the 18-degree temperature. Unless students already wore a Hoodie or other jacket, many were left out in the cold without a coat for the long wait. West Elementary fifth graders, wearing hair nets, white aprons and winter coats, were among the evacuees. They were visiting Butte High family nutrition teacher Judy Bryants cooking class, where they were in the middle of making carrot muffins for the Farm-to-Cafeteria Harvest of the Month program. We took a second to grab our coats, said Bryant, minutes before leading her young charges back into the building after getting the all-clear signal. Its the first time in Metzs 11 years as an administrator that Butte High received a bomb threat. Its so disruptive, Metz said. Some of our poor kids were standing out there in the cold. But when we get something like that, we always follow through. Already have an account? Log in here RCMP are looking for a dangerous man who may be in the Brandon area. We need your support! Local journalism needs your support! As we navigate through unprecedented times, our journalists are working harder than ever to bring you the latest local updates to keep you safe and informed. Now, more than ever, we need your support. Starting at $4.99/month you can access your Brandon Sun online and full access to all content as it appears on our website. or call circulation directly at (204) 727-0527. Your pledge helps to ensure we provide the news that matters most to your community! Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 20/01/2016 (2464 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Her body frozen and fractured, Kristen Hiebert clawed and fought her way through a snow-packed ditch and up a steep embankment to save her daughters life, according to the woman who found the duo. Tina Dubyts was travelling from Brandon to Killarney, where she works as a lab technician, early Monday morning when something caught her eye on Highway 23 approximately one kilometre east of Dunrea. I thought I saw a hand, Dubyts said. Then I noticed there was a piece of wood missing off the bridge on the side of the road, so I decided to turn around because it was so cold. Dubyts said she remembers looking at the temperature gauge in her vehicle showing -19 C outdoors at approximately 6:50 a.m. when she first saw Hiebert. After circling back, she noticed a young woman clinging to a guard rail. All I could see was her trying to pull herself up to get attention, Dubyts said. Dubyts said Hieberts injuries became prevalent as soon as she got out of her vehicle to help the Boissevain resident. Immediately, she noticed broken arms, a large gash on her head and severe frostbite. It was, however, what Hiebert was saying that caught Dubyts attention the most. She just kept saying, My daughter. My daughter. My four-year-old, Dubyts said. At that point, Dubyts said she still couldnt make out where the vehicle was. She flashed her phone into the south ditch of the highway and revealed a damaged vehicle. All I could see was the car smashed, Dubyts said, getting choked up with emotion. Im thinking the worst and I couldnt see the little girl. Dubyts ran down the ditch and found the girl, Avery, lying outside the vehicle wearing only one winter boot. She quickly grabbed Avery and climbed back up the steep terrain. Dubyts said it was difficult to climb the ditch, but adrenaline kicked in. By this point, several other drivers had stopped at the scene. Dubyts said a woman, who identified herself as a nurse, helped get Avery into the back of her SUV where the she was stripped of her frozen clothes and wrapped in a blanket. She was frozen, Dubyts said. She was in pain and shock. Then she went back for Hiebert. Two men who stopped at the scene grabbed Hiebert under the armpits while Dubyts wrapped her arms around Hieberts legs and the trio carried her to the SUV. Dubyts said she was concerned about moving Hiebert because she could tell she had multiple fractures, but getting her out of the cold as quickly as possible was the priority. She was freezing, Dubyts said. She was in socks and her clothes were frozen. It was between minus -18.8 C and -21.7 C in the 12 hours ending at 7 a.m. on Monday in Pilot Mound, the closest weather station, according to Environment Canada. Once in the vehicle, Dubyts said they focused on keeping the 26-year-old mother and her daughter awake before an ambulance from Ninette arrived less than 15 minutes after the initial 911 call. It was terrible, said Dubyts, who also has a four-year-old child. She actually pulled herself up that hill with broken bones. Its like a horror show. Dubyts said STARS air ambulance arrived in Killarney at nearly the same time as the ambulance from Ninette. Hiebert was airlifted to Health Sciences Centre in Winnipeg. An HSC spokesman said there was no update on Hieberts condition on Tuesday. Shes the strongest person I know because with broken arms she pulled herself up onto that guard rail and got herself up that steep hill, Dubyts said. I have no idea how she did it. Pure adrenaline to save her kids life. Dubyts spoke to the family briefly and they believed the duo might have been in the ditch for as many as 11 hours. A GoFundMe page called Kristen and Avery Recovery Fund was set up for the family on Tuesday. The page notes Hiebert initially crawled to her daughter and covered her with her body to keep her warm as she waited for help. After help didnt come throughout the night, Hiebert crawled to the road with two broken arms, a broken neck, broken ribs and a broken leg, the page states. Hiebert is going through multiple surgeries, while Avery is reported to be in stable condition with no broken bones. More than $7,500 had been raised in the first six hours of the page being up. It can be viewed at gofundme.com/eek4b8b8. ctweed@brandonsun.com Twitter: @CharlesTweed HELENA A 63-year-old polygamist and child molester who eluded authorities for more than a decade has returned to jail in Helena. Thomas Emil Sliwinski on Tuesday afternoon appeared on a bail jumping warrant field in 2004 in Lewis and Clark County Justice Court. It was his first local court appearance after authorities captured him in Mexico at the end of October. Sliwinski, convicted for having sex with his young stepdaughter in 2003, stabbed himself while officers worked to apprehend him. He was subsequently taken to a San Diego hospital, where he received surgery and other treatments for his wounds. During his brief appearance in court via television from the county jail, Sliwinkski stood with the assistance of a walker. Officials booked him into the detention center Monday morning. He is being held on $100,000 bond. Sliwinski faces a felony charge of bail jumping and a petition to revoke his suspended sentence on charges of criminal endangerment and tampering with evidence. He is set to have an initial appearance in district court on Wednesday. Sliwinski was charged with sexual intercourse without consent in December 2000 after one of his wives, who was also his stepdaughter, left him after 11 years of marriage. She revealed Sliwinski's polygamist lifestyle to authorities, which she said included having sex with her and her younger sister before they reached the age of 16. Sliwinski and his wives lived in the Wolf Creek area. Sliwinski was later kicked out of his sex offender treatment program. As a result, prosecutors filed a petition to revoke Sliwinski's probationary sentences. Sliwinski also failed to register as a sex offender. A hearing regarding the petition was to be held on Sept. 2, 2004, but Sliwinski failed to appear. A warrant was issued that day for revocation of his suspended sentences for the underlying felony offenses of criminal endangerment and tampering with physical evidence. A second warrant was issued locally for bail jumping in September 2004. Federal authorities had issued an arrest warrant for unlawful flight against Sliwinski. The warrant was dismissed with prejudice on Nov. 24 after the U.S. Attorney's Office argued the warrant's purpose was to assist in the apprehension and arrest, which was completed. Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 20/01/2016 (2464 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. What is it about the Manitoba government, and its seeming inability to build a drama-free bridge in Brandon? Much like the 18th Street Thompson Bridge that was completed in 2010 years late and millions over budget now the First Street bridge project has suddenly become an embarrassment as well. Albeit a minor one. The NDP government failed to get an access agreement with the Canadian Pacific Railway for construction work that began late last year on the First Street bridge. That has delayed construction for a full three weeks while the government and CP rail worked out an arrangement. As the Sun reported, CP Rail discovered construction equipment operating on its property near the bridge on Dec. 30, upon which time the company asked the contractor, PCL Construction, to cease work. Upon further investigation, it appears there was a miscommunication that led the contractor, who was working on behalf of Manitoba Infrastructure and Transportation, to believe an agreement was in place with CP, when in fact it was not, CP Rail spokesman Andy Cummings told the Sun. MIT executive director Ruth Eden refused to describe the situation as a work stoppage, rather that the work on the bridge had slowed. It was just in the vicinity of the rail line where the work ceased and then the contractor slowed down in other areas, but they were still doing some work on site, Eden said. Were working with PCL to get them back on track and to get them going and get progress going as quickly as possible. Nonetheless, there was no major work being done on site since that order came down. And finally, 19 days later, CP and MIT reached an agreement to allow the construction company to ramp up the bridge demolition. We can only imagine what the province had to promise in order to get the deal done. Surely CP Rail knew it had the province over a barrel, and could demand concessions on pretty much anything, lest this little snippet of information get out. Which it did. In the meantime, PCL employees had to wait on the sidelines for three weeks. That kind of delay costs a company a lot of money, and in this case there was no good reason for it. The province seems to have simply forgotten to do its due diligence. Arent there processes in place to prevent these kinds of oversights? Eden also said that it took 19 days to come to an agreement with CP because the design for the project moved quickly and some details werent available until recently. If that is true, Manitobans should be a bit concerned about the slap-dash way the province is conducting infrastructure building and repair. We say this because the whole process seems rushed. Sure, the critics can laugh about how slow the wheels of government turn, and how long it takes to get anything accomplished when government is in control of a project. But the NDP is a party doing anything, and promising anything, to get re-elected in April. Millions of dollars in funding announcements and program promises have been coming out the yin-yang for the last several days although thankfully, as of today, a blackout on any new government announcements has finally begun. Construction work during an election cycle can be a double-edged sword for a government. Traffic delays have the potential to greatly annoy motorists, but voters witnessing actual work being done in a community can positively affect an election vote as well. The fact that bridge work was going forward without all the details in place, and without proper clearance from CP Rail, would seem to indicate that the project has been fast-tracked. All for the benefit of re-election. For the sake of our pocketbooks, lets hope the First Street bridge doesnt turn into bridge boondoggle No. 2. 1,245 new jobs have been announced at four separate companies this morning. Some 800 positions are being created at Nua Healthcare over the next three years. The jobs are in new residential and day care facilities around the country for people with intellectual disabilities. Environmental services company Veolia is creating 300 positions over the next five years at its operations across Ireland. Another 100 high-tech jobs have been confirmed at online marketing company Boxever in Dublin. Some 45 positions have been announced at online research company Netigate in Cork. Nua Healthcare said the 20 private disability care homes will be constructed in the south of the country over the coming three years. The expansion plans were revealed at the official opening of the private operators Glenview House in Kilmallock, Co Limerick. The six-bed facility will be staffed by up to 30 carers giving round-the-clock support to adults with special needs. Nua Healthcare said 300 of the jobs will be created this year as part of its three-year expansion plan. Edward Dunne, chief executive of the company, said the investment was down to huge demand for their services over recent years. Todays announcement is a major step towards making our service more accessible to individuals nationally, he said. The ability to do so is testament to the incredible work of our committed team and partners in such a specialist sector. Nua Healthcare already employs more than 800 staff at 28 locations around the country. Veolia Ireland country director Pat Gilroy said the company would be creating 300 jobs over the next five years as the company targets double digit growth. "As we transition to a low carbon economy, it is imperative that companies can access environmentally sustainable solutions," he said. "We are setting out to do just that, providing businesses in Ireland with the means to manage their resource needs more efficiently and grow with us in a circular economy. "Following a recent 450m deal, we are already set to operate Mayo Renewable Power, Irelands largest independent biomass power plant which opens in 2017 that will help provide Ireland with 6% of its renewable energy needs." Boxever plans to create 100 new jobs primarily among data scientists & software engineers in Dublin. The company provides "data science and omni-channel personalization solutions" for clients including Aer Lingus and Emirates. In January 2016, Netigate opened up a new international office in Cork, Ireland "In 2016 we will continue focusing on product development, says Tobias Thalback, CEO of Netigate. "We have a lot of exciting news for all our customers, existing and new. "Netigate will continue to deliver the most powerful, and easiest-to-use survey and insight platform on the market." Locals in Clondalkin in Dublin say they are shocked at the violent murder of father-of-one from the area. Kenneth OBrien was dismembered and his body was dumped in a canal in a suitcase. The 33-year-old man was reported missing on Friday, and his torso was found by passers-by in the Grand Canal near Celbridge, Co Kildare, on Saturday afternoon. His death may have been because of a disagreement. He has been described as a man who adored his family and worked hard to provide for them. People who live near his Clondalkin home expressed their shocked at his death. I cant comprehend it, said a local man. I cant understand people, going to extremes like that. I dont know whats going on in their minds. Another said: Its such a tragedy. Its quite a disgusting death for anybody to get. Kenneth OBrien had recently returned from Australia and was last seen in the early hours of Friday when he left his home on the Lealand Road in Clondalkin saying he was going to work. Kenneth OBrien Mr OBrien was identified using DNA analysis after his killers decapitated him and cut off his hands, arms and feet. Superintendent Gerry Wall described the victim as a normal man going about his business and looking for work. The murder squad investigating his disappearance, murder and the dumping of his body have no indication why he was killed, the senior officer said. It is a particularly gruesome crime and the brutality of it could not be overstated, Supt Wall said. Gardai reiterated their appeal for the publics help in the case. Officers urged people to check buildings to see if there is anything unusual, including if a room or equipment was disturbed or if the premises are in any way different from when they left. Gardai have already had more than 80 calls as they worked to identify Mr OBrien but again appealed for anyone who was in or around the Grand Canal near Ardclough on Friday and early Saturday to contact them. Detectives said they are keen to speak to anyone who may have observed, seen or had any contact with Mr OBrien since the early hours of Friday morning when he left Lealand Road in Clondalkin or can assist in tracing his movements. The dark-coloured suitcase containing the dismembered body was pulled from the water 500 metres from Ardclough, beside the Lyons Estate, on a stretch of towpath popular with walkers and cyclists. It is believed Mr OBrien was murdered elsewhere. He had worked as a JCB driver in Australia and it is understood he left his Clondalkin home saying he was leaving for work. A passer-by who went to the assistance of people who are thought to have taken 2C-B in Cork has described arriving at the scene. He said that he saw blood on the walls and carpet at the rented house on Pouladuff Road. Five men and a woman, aged from 18 to 37, were rushed to Cork University Hospital. An 18-year-old was remains critically ill in hospital while three others are in a stable condition. According to the Irish Examiner, the alarm was raised at around 4am when a couple passing the house became concerned when they saw at least one man dancing naked and apparently hallucinating on the street. Speaking to Neil Prendeville on Corks RedFM, he said it was "one of the scariest and most surreal nights of my life". He said: I was walking past late last night and heard crazy shouting at a house. So me and a friend looked in the window to see is everyone OK. The bedroom was covered in blood, walls, floor, bed and even curtains. We shouted in to see is everyone OK. A man arrived at the window clearly on drugs and in a state of shock. We asked is everyone OK. He replied: Yes, everything is fine. So we said there is blood everywhere someone must be hurt can we check to make sure no one is hurt. Eyewitness Gerard Banks. Pic: Facebook He said yes and opened the door. When we went in it was like a scene from CSI - blood all over the walls, floors, couches and a man and a woman naked covered in blood shouting and screaming badly hurt and clearly in a state of dementia. The man was smashing the house up, blood was everywhere. The house was destroyed. There was a man on the floor in cardiac arrest with major breathing problems and the man who let us in sitting on the chair in shock. In shock, me and my friend took control of the room. Michal Krzeslak and Gerrard Banks, who went into a house party on Pouladuff Road to help people. My friend started helping the man in cardiac arrest on the floor. I had to control the room to let my friend help the man on the floor in safety. It was surreal.. a naked man and woman dancing naked on the chairs as a man was having cardiac arrest on the floor. I was the man who left the guards and paramedics into the house. It was surreal.. . myself my friend, gardai and paramedics were all in shock. I have huge respect for the Gardai and paramedics who were on the scene. I made a statement with the gardai last night and will be doing so again today. Whatever drugs those people were on last night in Pouladuff Road was scary. They didnt even know they were covered in blood and badly hurt, they didn't even know there was a man dying on the floor. I havent slept a wink all night, Im still in shock to be honest. These people did not seem like bad people just like students out partying which is the most worrying thing about this new drug and its side effects. Its really scary stuff and we need to make everyone aware of its dangers. Everyone in the house was rushed to hospital. I have never seen so much blood. He added: Please share the message and lets warn Cork about the dangers of this new drug. The HSE has issued a warning about the danger posed by the pills. "These drugs can be sold in tablet powder or liquid form and are consumed at parties or clubs for their stimulant, mood altering and in some cases, aphrodisiac effect," said a HSE statement. "However, it is generally reported that these drugs can have serious side effects both from a psychological and physical viewpoint. "Such side effects include paranoia, hallucinations (both auditory and visual), gastrointestinal effects and kidney problems. "Young people are advised that there is no quality control on these drugs. "There are problems with purity and contaminants, and there is no way of checking that what is purchased or consumed is the intended substance. "Given the serious side-effects experienced by the young people in Cork, the HSE Addiction services are issuing a warning about possible contaminated party pills and advise people not to consume any unknown substances that they are offered at this time." The Mater Hospital in Dublin is urging the public to stay away from its emergency department due to high numbers and long waiting times. In a statement this lunchtime it has said - where possible - people should attend their GP first - or the Rapid Injury Clinic in Smithfield for minor injuries. By Daniel McConnell, Political Editor Mary Cowen, the wife of former Taoiseach Brian, has blasted former Fianna Fail minister Mary Hanafin on social media over comments she made in relation to last weekends Ard Fheis. Mrs Cowen, in a closed private discussion group for Fianna Fail members, launched the attack on Ms Hanafin earlier this week saying she is trying to dictate party policy even though she is not a member of Dail Eireann. The Irish Examiner has confirmed that Mrs Cowen did post the criticisms of Ms Hanafin in the online group, which is members only. Mrs Cowen, or Mary Molloy Cowen as she is named on Facebook, strongly criticised the current Blackrock councillor, claiming that party leader Micheal Martin should "watch his back". Mrs Cowen also made a number of references to Ms Hanafin's regular appearances on radio and in the media in recent days. Remarks by Ms Hanafin to the Irish Independent that she had been approached by grassroots members who said they wanted her to influence party policy. But in the private Fianna Fail group, entitled The Official Fianna Fail registered members discussion page, Mrs Cowen launched her attack on Ms Hanafin. The message was posted to the group of 1,000 members yesterday evening, but has since been removed. "Have just read the Irish Independent and I see an article about Mary Hanifin (sic) stating that Fianna Fail members have called on her to influence party policy." The Facebook post continues, claiming that Ms Hanafin is not elected yet and she is running the party. And it adds: Michael Martin better watch his back as there wouldnt be to (sic) much loyalty there!!!!!! The comments from the former first lady of Irish politics drew responses from other members of the group, in which Mrs Cowen further criticised Ms Hanafin. She seems to be getting plenty of air and press time, she says. And in response to a comment from a member that Ms Hanafin is never a team player, Mrs Cowen replies: Thats for sure. Ms Hanafin did not respond to queries from the Irish Examiner and neither did Mrs Cowen. There have been longstanding animosities between the Hanafin and Cowen camps. Ms Hanafin was demoted by Mr Cowen when he became Taoiseach in May 2008 and she in turn became a vocal critic of Cowens style of leadership in the wake of the collapse of that Government. Most pointedly, Ms Hanafin made very pointed criticisms of Mr Cowens decision making as leader in an RTE documentary, which angered many close to the former leader. A lawsuit by two Billings residents who are alleging an insurance company unlawfully denied their medical claims could affect hundreds of other Montanans. In late December, state District Judge Gregory Todd certified as a class action case a civil suit filed against USAA Casualty Insurance Company by Peter Byorth and Ann McKean, both of Billings, on behalf of themselves and others in similar situations. The class action case could affect an estimated 100 to 700 other Montanans, court records said. Byorth and McKean, both injured in separate car crashes, claim USAA illegally denied their medical coverage based on file reviews that concluded medical treatment was not necessary and based on coding errors. Billings attorneys John Heenan and Colette Davies, who represent Byorth and McKean, said USAAs actions are a breach of contract and violate Montanas Unfair Trade Practices Act. Similar lawsuits against USAA in other states indicate its more profitable for them to keep the status quo than to come into compliance with the law, Heenan said. We want USAA to be held accountable for its business practices, he added. In September 2015, USAA settled for $4.2 million a similar class action case involving three medical providers and an insured party in Washington. The company denied any wrongdoing and settled to end litigation, court records said. USAA has appealed Todds ruling to the Montana Supreme Court. The company is based in San Antonio, Texas, and markets insurance to American servicemen and women and their families. Roger Wildermuth, USAAs spokesman, said the company employs its Medical Bill Audit process to preserve member benefits by identifying medical charges that are excessively high, duplicative of other charges and possibly unrelated to a particular accident. By identifying billing inaccuracies and other inappropriate charges, the process also helps prevent fraud. USAA, Wildermuth continued, takes allegations attacking its process seriously. We will continue to defend it when challenged, he said. The company also disagrees with Todds class action certification and is appealing, Wildermuth said. This procedural decision does not address the merits of the plaintiffs claims, which remain very much in dispute, he said. USAA, Heenan said, makes it a practice to serially delay and deny or pay less than they owe on claims because it knows it is difficult for the consumer to do anything about it. Policy medical coverage typically runs between $5,000 and $10,000, is paid promptly and without regard to fault and the insured gets help immediately, Heenan and Davies said. The benefit is one of the easiest to collect in such policies, they said. But when a claim is denied or delayed, its difficult to get lawyers to represent clients because of the work involved for a relatively small amount, Heenan said. And they (the company) know that, he added. Incidents lead to complaint In 2011, Byorth was riding his bicycle when he was hit by a car making a U-turn, Davies said. Byorth was seriously injured and had to have spinal fusion surgery, she said. The drivers insurance company promptly paid $100,000 in coverage, but that was not enough to cover all of Byorths expenses, Davies said. Byorth also had a USAA policy with a $10,000 medical pay benefit. USAA repeatedly denied Byorths claims, which totaled about $85,000, Davies said. Only after Byorth filed a complaint with the states insurance commissioner did USAA pay the $10,000, she said. McKean also suffered injuries when her vehicle was rear-ended at a stoplight in 2014. McKean had $10,000 in a medical pay benefit through USAA, which denied her claims, Heenan said. The decision to sue USAA, Heenan said, came after he got frustrated in trying to get McKeans claim paid promptly. He walked down the hall to Davies office and told her he didnt know why McKean was having such trouble getting her claim paid. Davies realized that she had encountered a similar experience with USAA in representing Byorth, he said. Once we filed the case, you wouldnt believe how many lawyers have contacted us to say, Oh my gosh, I represent someone like that. I had no idea this was going on, Heenan said. Heenan and Davies allege in court records that USAA referred claims to a company called Auto Injury Solutions to prepare file reviews that would uniformly conclude that medical treatment was not necessary. USAA used AIS sham file reviews that concluded Byorths and McKeans treatments were not medically necessary to deny their claims, the complaint said. The company also created artificial barriers to prevent policy holders from collecting medical benefits, they said. In particular, USAA denied Byorths benefits on the basis of coding errors even though the medical records associated with the bills clearly showed the bills were related to the subject accident, the complaint said. In addition to alleging breach of contract, the lawsuit accuses USAA of violating the states Unfair Trade Practices Act. The law, Heenan said, is like a bill of rights for insurance consumers and requires companies to promptly and fairly pay claims and to investigate claims before they deny them. Insurance companies, Heenan said, cant deny a claim, make a consumer jump through the hoops of hiring a lawyer and filing a complaint, finally pay the claim and say, no harm, no foul. Other plaintiffs Todds order said other plaintiffs in the class action suit are those who were insured by USAA from April 2007 to April 2015 and who had their claim denied after a file review by AIS or because of an asserted coding error. USAA has said in court records that 154 medical claims have been submitted by Montana consumers in the past three years. In a recent court filing seeking to stop further work on the case pending appeal of the class certification, USAA said more than 700 Montanans could potentially be class members. To identify a list of class members would require hundreds of hours and would be a wasted effort if the certification order is overturned or modified, USAA said in its filing. When Anglos share price plunged in March 2008, its former Director of Treasury says he was asked to find ways to improve its corporate deposits. Matt Cullen has been giving evidence in the trial of four former bankers accused of misleading investors and depositors in Anglo Irish Bank. They have all pleaded not guilty to engaging in transactions in 2008 to make the former banks deposits look 7.2bn stronger than they were. They are: Willie McAteer Anglos former finance director, John Bowe, who used to be responsible for funding Anglo, Denis Casey former chief executive of Irish Life & Permanent and its former group director Peter Fitzpatrick. Mr Cullen told the jury about a transaction between Anglo and Irish Life & Permanent that resulted in a 750m increase to Anglo's corporate deposits for their half-yearly report. When Anglos shares plummeted in March 2008, Matt Cullen said a decision was made to show a strong corporate number for their half-year report. In other words, they wanted the market to see the bank was secure. He said it was difficult to get funding at the time, and he was asked to approach other Irish banks for help. He said that led to a back-to-back transaction with Irish Life & Permanent, whereby Anglo transferred 750m that was directed back via Irish Life Assurance as a corporate deposit. Mr Cullen said Anglos Chief Executive David Drumm later asked him to secure a similar transfer of up to 7bn before their end-of-year report, and he subsequently authorised it. Willie McAteer Anglos former Finance Director, John Bowe, who used to be responsible for funding Anglo, Denis Casey former Chief Executive of Irish Life & Permanent and its former Group Director Peter Fitzpatrick all deny conspiring to defraud investors and depositors. A man was sentenced on Tuesday in District Court for selling methamphetamine near a Billings high school in 2013. Judge Gregory Todd sentenced Clinton Donta Bradley, 37, to concurrent five-year terms in the custody of Montana Department of Corrections and ordered he pay a total fine of $1,500 to a drug forfeiture fund. Bradley was convicted on a felony count of criminal distribution of dangerous drugs on or near school property and a felony count of criminal distribution of dangerous drugs. In December 2013, Bradley sold meth to a confidential informant within 1,000 feet of Central Catholic High School, at 3 Broadwater Ave., according to charging documents. They go on to say that about a week later, he again sold meth to an informant at a different location. Todd also gave Bradley concurrent six-month sentences to the county jail for misdemeanor counts of criminal possession of drug paraphernalia and obstructing a peace officer, while dismissing a misdemeanor domestic abuse charge. That sentence is to run concurrent to the distribution sentence. In an unrelated case, Todd also on Tuesday sentenced a Billings man for choking his ex-girlfriend in June 2015. Emery Thomas Castro received a three-year sentence into DOC custody for one felony count of partner or family member assault. As part of a plea agreement, Todd also dismissed an alternative felony count of aggravated assault and misdemeanor charges of violation of a no-contact order and criminal destruction of or tampering with a communication device. Charging documents say that Castro arrived at his ex-girlfriend's house and yelled at her. The woman had a protective order against him and told him she'd call the police. He then choked her, causing her to lose consciousness twice, and she eventually ran to a neighbor's house to call police, according to court documents. NEW DELHI: India has raised the price at which it will buy new season wheat from local farmers in 2023 by 110 rupees... KARACHI: Sectors like textile and cement that hold contracts to export abroad could benefit the most from making the... A man who was released after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting a teenage girl is back in jail after trying to stay in the same house as the victim, authorities say. An arrest warrant was issued for Louis Allen Carter, 47, earlier this month. A detective said that he made arrangements with the 16-year-old victim's mother to stay at their house, according to court documents. Carter was originally charged with a felony in October for sexually assaulting the girl. Charging documents stated that Carter repeatedly touched the girl inappropriately. He later told the girl that he wanted to take her virginity and sent suggestive text messages, despite the girl's resistance. The girl's mother filed a temporary restraining order against Carter in June but later filed the paperwork to drop it, according to court records. Carter initially pleaded not guilty but changed his plea on Jan. 12. In exchange for a guilty plea, he faced a recommended sentence of 10 years with the Montana Department of Corrections with half of that time suspended. Carter was released on his own recognizance Jan. 12 after his changed plea. The release order included a stipulation of no contact with the victim. The following day, prosecutors filed a petition to revoke his release. According to the petition, Carter had called the victim's mother from jail and asked her to pick him up. They spoke about Carter staying in the same house as the victim. Carter also discussed consuming alcohol and marijuana, according to the document. Video surveillance footage showed that the victim's mother met Carter upon his release. Carter appeared in court Friday for an initial hearing on his arrest warrant. He is currently in the Yellowstone County Detention Facility on $20,000 bond. At an October court hearing, a prosecutor noted that Carter had a previous conviction for sexually assaulting a child and was investigated multiple times for sex offenses. He does not appear on the Montana Department of Justice's Sexual or Violent Offender Registry or the national online database. A sentencing for the original offense is set for March 29. PARIS: Qatar, the controversial host of the football World Cup, is a key US ally in the Middle East that is rich in... A Wyoming man was arrested Friday by the Park County Sheriffs Office after the discovery of 7 dead horses on the mans property. The discovery prompted the issuance of an arrest warrant for the man on 13 counts of animal neglect. Michael Aaron Wood, a 39-year-old Clark, Wyo., resident, was arrested Jan. 15, after the discovery of seven dead horses on Woods property and an additional six horses that displayed signs of neglect, according to a press release from the Park County Sheriffs Office. An anonymous report of six to seven dead horses on Woods 112 Crossfire Trail residence was called in to the Park County Sheriffs Office at 9:15 a.m. Jan. 7, prompting the immediate dispatch of a deputy to the location, according to the press release. Wood could not be found, but five dead horses were initially discovered, with six live horses in several corrals. The deputy did not observe any food or water available for the horses. When Wood was located later in the day, he admitted that he couldn't afford to feed the horses and admitted that he realized some of them had died due to a lack of feed, according to the press release. Wood said "he had been trying for some time to get rid of a number of the horses but had not had any luck finding anyone to take them," according to the press release. Wood claimed to have placed an advertisement in a local newspaper and had attempted to contact a local rescue organization with no success," according to the release. After the discussion with Wood, the case was turned over to the county attorney, and the sheriffs office began locating caretakers for the remaining horses. A search and seizure warrant was executed Jan. 9 on the Crossfire Trail property, leading to the discovery of two more dead horses and the seizure of the remaining six live horses to be put under the care of Park County. Wood was arrested at 1:30 p.m. Friday and is being held in the Park County Detention Facility. In the press release, Park County Sheriff Scott Steward said, In these hardship situations, the Livestock Board can assist livestock owners in finding suitable caretakers or buyers as long as the current owner can prove ownership. In extreme cases, the board will seize the animals as strays, he said. Americorps VISTA worker Emily Aerts is halfway through her year-long commitment with the Home Center, and on Tuesday she went public with a project designed to make Billings renters smarter about their housing choices. The free eight-hour rental education program, set for three days in mid-March at a yet-to-be-announced site, is designed to give renters tools to handle more than a dozen issues, including maintenance, credit, budgeting, rental scams, inspections and neighborliness. On Tuesday afternoon, Aerts held a two-hour open house at the Billings Public Library to help people learn about the new rental education program. Among the items she lugged to the open house: a thick binder containing the course curriculum, a project shes been developing for the past three months. One statistic that lets Aerts know the course will be helpful: The vacancy rate among Billings rentals is about 1 percent. Openings are often snapped up quickly, she said, pointing out the importance of savvy shopping. They are having a difficult time finding places to rent, she said. A 2014 survey of Billings renters indicated that 71 percent of respondents had a difficult time finding an adequate rental, with an average of four months required to find a place. Nearly half of Montana renters spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent, she said. Some renters also reported experiencing difficulty asking their landlords for what they need, including repairs and the quick refund of the renters security deposit. The new course will also offer tips to help renters with criminal backgrounds to secure housing, she said. A group of landlords, property managers and social service providers have volunteered to teach portions of the course, which will be held three consecutive evenings in March. Aerts said shes looking for even more presenters, as well as people willing to donate items needed for the workshop, from binders and pens to highlighters, gift cards and snacks. As a way to help drum up interest Tuesday, Aerts asked the 30-40 people who attended the workshop to participate in a simple exercise she called Needs v. Wants. Participants divided cards with housing qualities such as updated kitchen, garage, fenced yard, pet friendliness and more than a dozen other considerations into must-have, like-to-have and dont-really-need piles. They were then asked to select the top five in the must-have pile and then the next five after that. Identifying those top-10 needs can go a long way toward renting the right apartment or house, Aerts said. The new program, Aerts said, will provide more tools to both new and current renters, which the Home Center believes will lead to stronger renters, improved access to housing, fewer vacancies, fewer evictions and an overall stronger community. To register for the program, which will be repeated in June and quarterly after that, stop by the Home Center, 3124 First Ave. N. Each class will be limited to 15 participants. More information is available by calling 406-657-8289. Visit the Home Center online at www.nwmt.org/billings-home-center. The Home Center is described as a one-stop shop for renters and homebuyers. Learn more about other Home Center programs by calling 406-206-2717. KYIV: Several explosions were heard Monday morning in Kyiv, exactly a week after Russian missile strikes on the... TEHRAN: Iran has once again rejected allegations that it has supplied Russia with weapons "to be used in the war in... TAMPA, Fla. There's a scary disconnect between the somber warnings you hear privately from military leaders about the war against the Islamic State and the glib debating points coming from Republican and Democratic politicians. The politicians fulminate about defeating the terrorists, but they don't talk much about the costs or sacrifices that will be required. The generals and admirals, who have been at war for 15 years, know that success can't be bought cheaply. Defeating this enemy will require a much larger and longer commitment by the United States than any leading politician seems willing to acknowledge. My visit here last week to the headquarters of Central Command, which oversees all U.S. military activities in the Middle East, came as part of a conference organized by the Center for Naval Analyses, which provides research to the Navy and other services. The ground rules prevent me from identifying speakers by name, but I can offer a summary of what I heard. It's not reassuring. Military leaders know that they are fighting a ruthless adversary that has adjusted and adapted its tactics as the U.S. and its partners have joined the fight over the past 18 months. The jihadists have lost about 25 percent of the territory they held in mid-2014, but they have devised innovative methods to compensate for their weakness. Super-sized car bombs Some examples illustrate the agility of Islamic State commanders: They have used tunnels and other concealment tactics to hide their movements; they have developed super-sized car bombs, packing explosives in bulldozers and other heavy equipment and sending them in waves against targets; they have deployed small drones for reconnaissance and may be preparing armed drones; they have used chemical weapons, such as chlorine and mustard gas, on the battlefield and may expand use of such unconventional weapons. U.S. commanders have learned how difficult it will be to create a Sunni force that can help clear and hold territory in Iraq and Syria that's now controlled by the Islamic State. Sunni tribal leaders mistrust the U.S. and doubt American staying power. American efforts to avoid casualties and resist "boots on the ground" reinforce the sense that the U.S. is pursuing a strategy of containment, not victory. One painful learning experience has been the Pentagon's $500 million "train and equip" program to build a Syrian opposition force that can help assault the Islamic State and hold territory afterwards. That effort was collapsed last year because many expected recruits didn't show up and the few who did were mauled on the battlefield. Among the lessons learned are the difficulty of finding and training mature fighters; the shifting and unsteady combat environment in Syria; and the difficulty of working with regional partners, such as Turkey, that have their own agendas. Decades of war The deeper lesson is that training a reliable military force that adheres to Western norms and standards is the work of a generation, not a few months. The U.S. desire for quick results is an exercise in frustration and disappointment. The sobering reality of this conflict that politicians (and the American public) seem least willing to face up to is that it will require a decades-long commitment. Paradoxically, America's determination to protect its troops can be self-defeating. Allies and adversaries see U.S. forces living in secure compounds, eating fancy chow and minimizing their exposure to potential terrorist assaults. The U.S. may say it's fighting alongside its allies, but on the ground, it often looks different. Actually living and fighting alongside our partners in Iraq and Syria will be much more dangerous, but it may be the only way to build a solid alliance that can someday eradicate the extremists. Contrast these stern admonitions from the commanders who have lived the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts with the upbeat talk from political leaders. President Obama pledged that "priority number one is protecting the American people and going after terrorist networks" and then said a few moments later that these networks "do not threaten our national existence." That sends a mixed message one that Hillary Clinton has echoed in her campaign. Republican rants about the Islamic State are even worse, in that they promise total victory without suggesting the level of commitment and sacrifice involved. The GOP responses sound tough, from Donald Trump's "bomb the hell out of them" to Sen. Marco Rubio's assurance in last week's debate that "the most powerful military in the world is going to destroy them." The next president is going to inherit an expanding war against a global terrorist adversary. The debate about how best to fight this enemy hasn't even begun. More than a year after the accident, Justin spoke publicly about his ordeal. Credit:Eric Conover/Hazleton Standard-Speaker via AP "My clinical thought is very simple: you have to be warm to be dead," Dr Coleman told the Standard-Speaker in Pennsylvania. Dr Coleman ordered paramedics to start performing CPR on the man who had no pulse, no blood pressure and by all appearances had taken his last breath half a day before. And, almost a year later, on Monday, Justin Smith held a press conference to thank him. Justin Smith was in a coma for two weeks after being found frozen on the side of the road. Credit:Eric Conover/Hazleton Standard-Speaker via AP Justin Smith's improbable survival tale is a story from the cutting edge of emergency medicine, and indeed, the edge of life itself. Thanks to new technology and an ever-evolving understanding of what it means to be dead, doctors are increasingly able to bring "frozen" people back from the brink. And they're starting to take advantage of the same mechanisms that allow the body to withstand seemingly lethal cold to save a whole host of other patients - victims of gunshots, heart attacks and spinal injuries; premature babies on the verge of brain damage - who might otherwise be considered beyond rescue. The secret that saved Justin - and countless others - lies in the way the body slows down as it gets colder. According to Outside magazine, metabolism slows by about 5 or 7 per cent for every 1-degree-Celsius drop in body temperature. John Fletcher, left, president of the Lehigh Valley Hospital-Hazleton talks about treatment of Justin Smith, seated third from right, with Gerald Coleman, his father Don Smith, and Dr James Wu, right. Credit:Eric Conover At 35 degrees, a person will begin to shiver uncontrollably. At 32 degrees, their lips will turn blue and their speech will slur. At 27 degrees, they'll lose consciousness. By the time their temperature plunges below 20 degrees, their heart will stop beating altogether. It's an alarming course of events, but in some cases, like Justin Smith's, it can save a person's life. When a person's body chills at the right rate, the associated slowing of metabolic processes will protect them from the other effects of exposure. Their lethargic cells don't require as much oxygen, so the fact that their heart has slowed and their breathing stopped is dangerous rather than deadly. These people hang in a sort of suspended animation, seemingly dead by all the standard measures, but not irreversibly gone. If the patient is discovered before their heart stops, and their doctor knows to begin CPR immediately, as Dr Coleman did, they have a decent chance of making it. Justin Smith, of McAdoo, Pennsylvania, had been walking home from an evening out with friends about 9.30pm on February 20 when something happened - he thinks that he tripped - and he fell into the snow. When his father found him, his body temperature was under 20 degrees. "All signs lead us to believe that he has been dead for a considerable amount of time," a paramedic had said in a phone call to the hospital, the Standard-Speaker reported. But Dr Coleman ordered them to start CPR anyway, acting on an ICU truism: "You're not dead until you're warm and dead." "Something inside me just said, 'I need to give this person a chance,' " Dr Coleman told the Standard-Speaker. "This is probably going to be a futile effort," he recalled acknowledging to the paramedic. "But I think we need to do our best for him." So they did their best. For two hours, emergency staff pumped Justin's chest and puffed breaths into his open mouth until he could be flown - through a dire snowstorm - to another hospital branch in Allentown, Pennsylvania, WNEP reported. Once in Allentown, doctors pumped him full of warm, oxygenated blood using a treatment called extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). Early that evening, his heart began to beat on its own. No one was sure, though, how his brain might have been affected by the prolonged period without oxygen. Conventional medical wisdom says that the human brain can withstand just four minutes without oxygen before cells begin to die. But Justin's case was anything but conventional. When he awoke from his coma two weeks later, he was disoriented and weak. But his brain was unharmed. In the end, the night in the snow cost Justin his toes and both pinkies (all of which were amputated due to frostbite) but, incredibly, not his life. He was released from hospital in March and returned home on the first of May. He is now enrolled at Penn State University and is finishing his degree in psychology. "I consider myself a miracle," he said in an interview with the Standard-Speaker. Dr Coleman told the newspaper that Justin is the coldest person known to have survived exposure-related hypothermia. "We may have witnessed a game changer in modern medicine - medicine moves forward in extraordinary cases," Dr Coleman said. "His survival is a paradigm change in how we resuscitate and how we treat people that suffer from hypothermia." That change is already in the works. There are countless headlines and a growing body of research about techniques that help bring nearly-frozen people back from the brink. "We've learnt that there really is no temperature so low that you shouldn't try to save someone," University of Manitoba thermophysiologist Gordon Giesbrecht, informally known among hypothermia scholars as "Professor Popsicle", told Outside magazine. A 2012 review article in the New England Journal of Medicine found that 50 per cent of hypothermia patients who were treated with ECMO recovered, even if they had been in cardiac arrest for an extended period of time. If those patients became hypothermic before their oxygen levels dropped too low, they could even escape most long-term damage. Still, the authors note, there's a surprising lack of standardisation at hospitals when it comes to treating hypothermia. Not all facilities have access to ECMO machines, and not all doctors are even aware of the treatment. The truism "you're not dead until you're warm and dead" still isn't practised everywhere. But medicine moves fast. Even as hospitals work to adopt new ways of treating hypothermia patients, lessons from those same patients are already being applied in a swath of other areas. If extreme cold can keep a person's organs alive even as they lie frozen in the snow, the reasoning goes, then why can't it be used to preserve the organs of people who wound up in the emergency room? It can, maybe. At the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre, the New Scientist reported in 2014, surgeons are experimenting with pumping a saline solution into the arteries of patients suffering from critical gunshot and knife wounds to bring down their body temperatures. "We are suspending life, but we don't like to call it suspended animation because it sounds like science fiction," said Samuel Tisherman, a surgeon who is leading the trial. "So we call it emergency preservation and resuscitation." The procedure buys more time to treat the patient's injuries. After doctors have staunched the flow of blood and repaired the damage, they can gradually re-warm their patient by returning regular blood back into their veins. Theoretically, it would work not just in gunshot victims, but in people suffering from a whole host of other problems that stop or interrupt blood flow to their brains. The idea of chilling a person to save them is not entirely new - as early as the 1960s, surgeons in Siberia were known to put babies in snow banks before operations, according to The New York Times. And doctors have used therapeutic hypothermia while treating paediatric heart patients for a while now. But the idea of swiftly replacing a patient's blood with salt water - cooling and effectively "killing them" to save them - is still somewhat radical. It was first demonstrated by University of Arizona-Tucson surgeon Peter Rhee and his colleagues during trials on pigs in 2000. "After we did those experiments, the definition of 'dead' changed," Dr Rhee told the New Scientist. "Every day at work, I declare people dead. They have no signs of life, no heartbeat, no brain activity. I sign a piece of paper knowing in my heart that they are not actually dead. I could, right then and there, suspend them. But I have to put them in a body bag. It's frustrating to know there's a solution." Currently, the technique is only being practised in human trials at UPMC and the University of Maryland School of Medicine (where Tisherman is a professor). And it's not without controversy. For one thing, doctors can't get consent from patients before they try the as-yet unproven therapy, since it's only used in emergency situations. For another, a study sponsored by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute that used a salt solution in trauma patients without their consent was shut down in 2009 because patients seemed to die more quickly, without offering much health benefit, according to the Baltimore Sun. On the other hand, it's assumed that most patients who wind up in the ER would opt for an experimental procedure when the alternative is almost certain death. And researchers from a number of institutions told The New York Times in 2014 that they've perfected the procedure in studies with pigs and dogs. About 90 per cent of animals survived in most recent trials, the Times reported. Dr Tisherman has not published the results of his trial yet, but lives are already being saved using a "hypothermia treatment". A procedure that lowers body temperature by about 6 degrees is now the standard of care for premature infants and babies who have suffered brain trauma, the Wall Street Journal reported in 2013. By placing infants on a blanket filled with a cool liquid until their temperature falls and their heart rate slows, doctors gain about 72 hours to treat a health crisis while protecting the brain from harm. The procedure may have saved young Mariela Lopez, who was born just 2.2 kilograms heavy and not breathing one day in 2013. For more than a decade the rare overseas flight to depart or land at Canberra International Airport was an occasion. There was for example, a "great buzz of excitement" when not one but three jets flew into the city in 2007, while waiting for fog to clear in Sydney. Managing director of Canberra Airport Group Stephen Byron says the new facilities are equipped to handle up to eight million passengers a year. Credit:Karleen Minney And it was always a big deal when ACT Rugby Union chartered planes from the capital to New Zealand during finals, bringing customs officers in and flying fans out. Canberrans are mourning the death of one of the city's most familiar faces and decades of fleeting but memorable interactions. Ian "Scrubby" Stokes, better known to many as the Dickson window washer, died at the Ainslie Village although little is known about the circumstances of his death. Ian Stokes at work on the corner of Northbourne Avenue and Barry Drive in 1999. Credit:Graham Tidy Stokes was seen washing cars at his usual location last week, the intersection of Antill and Northbourne Avenue, although many noted his deteriorating health. Hundreds of Canberrans have remembered him as a kind and caring man who worked hard despite his many challenges. On a day that honored civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., Montana Gov. Steve Bullock took action to advance human rights in our state. Citing the Montana Constitutions provision the dignity of the human being is inviolable, Bullock on Monday issued an executive order barring discrimination in state government hiring. He also ordered that state contracts be written to ban hiring discrimination by businesses that provide goods or services to the state. Of course, state and federal laws already aim to protect people from discrimination based on race, gender, religion and other characteristics. But Bullock expanded protections specifically to cover pregnancy, childbirth, U.S. military veterans, genetic information, and people who are gay, lesbian, transgender or bisexual. Bullock ordered that all hiring must be on the basis of merit and qualifications. Bullock pointed out how discrimination in hiring can affect all Montanans, not just the individuals targeted: Montana is likely to face a worker shortage over the next decade, and this shortage will be exacerbated by discrimination that drives away talented and trained workers who want to live in a place where they are free from discrimination and harassment," he said. Workplace protections are linked to greater job commitment, improved workplace relationships, increased job satisfaction and improved health outcomes of employees, Bullock said. State employees found to have violated the new nondiscrimination and nonharassment policies will be subject to discipline, including possible termination. The Department of Administration has the task of writing and promulgating the new policies under Bullocks order. One might wonder if pregnancy discrimination is a problem. It was according to at least two dozen women who filed complaints with the Montana Human Rights Commission last year. Montanas U.S. veterans of Iraq and Afghan wars have had an unusually high jobless rate. No discrimination can be tolerated as these heroes seek to return to productive civilian life. The most controversial protection is for LGBT folks. A bill that would have added sexual orientation and sexual identity to state anti-discrimination law was killed in committee immediately after its first hearing in the 2015 Legislature. The Billings City Council rejected a nondiscrimination ordinance covering hiring, housing and public accommodations on a 6-5 vote in 2014. However, four other Montana cities Missoula, Butte, Bozeman and Helena have adopted laws in recent years that ban discrimination based on sexual orientation or sexual identity. Small wonder that Billings ranked behind those cities in the Human Rights Campaigns annual Municipality Equality Index released in December. Missoula rated a perfect 100 score for its city laws, city employment policies and law enforcement. Billings received a score of 20, which included 12 points because the Billings Police Department reported hate crime statistics to the FBI and 5 points for having a city Human Rights Commission. Among the Montana cities ranked, only Great Falls was lower with a score of 14. Excluding any group of people from the same protections enjoyed by the general population limits the growth and future success of our city and state. LGBT folks dont deserve special protection, they deserve the same protection from discrimination in employment that other Montanans expect. We commend Bullock for using his executive authority to further the constitutional guarantee of equality for all under the Big Sky. I am honored to stand up for all Montanans to ensure that no one is denied full and equal participation in our states workforce based on discrimination and intolerance, Bullock said in announcing his order. Amen, governor. The Onion's top news, circa 2013: "Print Dead at 1803." On Tuesday, it helped put the nail in the coffin. The satirical news site just agreed to sell a chunk of itself (as well as sister properties including ClickHole and The A.V. Club) to Spanish broadcaster Univision Communications. The reported price tag of about $US200 million ($291 million) for a 40 per cent stake in the Onion's parent company values the whole enterprise in the range of $US500 million. The home page of the Onion: The satirical news website has been valued at more than some of the serious newspapers it parodies. Credit:Fairfax Media To put that in perspective, it's twice what Jeff Bezos paid for the Washington Post in 2013. You read that right: The Onion -- whose top stories on Tuesday included ``NCAA Investigating God For Giving Gifts To Athletes" and "Average Male 4000% Less Effective In Fights Than They Imagine" -- garnered a higher valuation than the Washington Post did. And the storied Financial Times isn't worth all that much more, having agreed to sell itself last year to Japanese publisher Nikkei for $US1.3 billion. The Boston Globe? Forget about it. The paper (and affiliated media assets) sold for a mere $US70 million back in 2013. The numbers make more sense though when you consider the eyeballs these different media properties attract. The Onion's collection of sites draw in more than 25 million monthly unique users each month. The Financial Times has around 740,000 subscribers in print and online. The Washington Post hadn't yet adopted a digital subscription model at the time of Bezos' purchase, but weekday circulation stood under 500,000. The Globe was working with less than 250,000 including digital editions, at the time of its sale. On those grounds, perhaps the Onion is getting shortchanged. The Queensland government has increased its accelerated spending in Townsville to $187 million in an infrastructure program it says will employ 430 people in the north, in the wake of 237 job losses at Clive Palmer's Yabulu nickel refinery. Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk was in Townsville on Wednesday meeting with affected Queensland Nickel workers and her cabinet's Working Queensland committee. Ms Palaszczuk announced on Wednesday an additional $126 million would be added to the $61 million that was announced in the government's accelerated works program on Sunday. Among the infrastructure projects identified were the upgrade of Berth 4 at the Port of Townsville. The Iranian nuclear deal, which entered into force over the weekend, is significant having the potential to restrict Irans ability to develop the technology required to build a nuclear weapon. While welcome, we have to remain realistic about the deals limitations, and we need to maintain a healthy degree of scepticism in our dealings with Iran. There was understandable praise for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, signed in Vienna last July. The agreement needs to be recognised for what it is, however a limited deal, focused on only one aspect of Irans concerning behaviour rather than what we might wish it to be. The announcement follows four months of community consultation and an expert panel assessment of six shortlisted sites. Credit:Glenn Campbell Australia must continue to steadfastly oppose Irans human rights abuses, its inciting language towards the United States and Israel, its support of the brutal Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, and its sponsorship of terrorism. When Iran tests ballistic missiles which it has done a number of times since the nuclear deal was signed, seemingly in violation of Security Council rulings we should speak up. If a reasonable elector looks at the arguments, she would probably accept that we are unlikely to be able to rely on private cars in a 2050 Canberra of half a million and more people. The reason is not that petrol is going to be too expensive. The current evidence is that there will be oil in abundance for a long time. Nor is it that cars themselves will become too expensive. They are getting cheaper and cheaper. It won't be long before we see the first new car for sale under $10,000. Perhaps I've already missed the announcement. I have been asked several times what my own opinion is. I don't really have one, but I do have the somewhat simple-minded view that the government is there to govern. I do not know whether or not the ACT government is correct in planning for light rail within the city. But it is unquestionably its job to make that kind of decision. If it gets it badly wrong, and the issue is important to enough people, then it may lose office. Jeremy Hanson and the Liberal Opposition are certain that this is and was the wrong decision, and they will campaign on that theme. Andrew Barr and his government, having committed themselves, will tell us, confidently and repeatedly, that light rail is our future. Although the ACT elections are nine months away, these months represent the gestation of the decisions we will make in October. There will be more than the usual electoral fuss during the coming year, and themes will start to stand out. One of them will certainly be the wisdom of the Labor government's having taken up so enthusiastically and forcefully the provision of light rail as a new form of mass transit for our city. The principal reason is that while we can add cars almost indefinitely, we cannot do the same to our roads and parking spaces. Parking is going to grow steadily more expensive, and that will push drivers to consider whether or not they might as well go by public transport. An additional reason will be the decreasing average speed on our roads. Sydney is at gridlock now in some parts of that large city and any crash on the urban motorways means long delays for the drivers there. We will experience our own tamer version of that crisis before long. A focus on the provision of more public transport seems sensible enough. Why light rail and not more buses? One obvious reason is that the buses will have some of the same problems as cars unless they have completely dedicated lanes. Why not widen more roads to provide them, as is happening slowly? That is very expensive, and it simply changes the place where the bottlenecks occur. In fact, anything to do with the problem of getting people to and from work in a large city is expensive. Light rail is in no way the cheapest solution, but it is probably faster and able to move more people. It all depends on which experts you listen to. We have to assume that the ACT government has listened to them all, at least in the early stages. It must have considered the O-bahn bus system in Adelaide, where the buses have their own permanent way, and rejected that in favour of light rail. We need to remember that the O-bahn way (12km only) is a small part of the Adelaide bus system, which relies on public roads for the buses, as in Canberra. If she also accepts all that, the next question the reasonable elector might ask is why the first light-rail corridor is from Gungahlin to the City. Capital Metro says that Gungahlin is growing five times faster than the rest of Canberra and that light rail is part of a larger plan to improve the Northbourne Avenue precinct. I guess that another reason is that the land acquisition there is relatively cheap. When I was at the University of Canberra we had discussions with a much earlier ACT government about our losing some campus land in the interest of improved rapid transit to the city from Belconnen. A later notion was a Belconnen-UC-ANU- Civic-CIT-Russell- Airport corridor, which had the advantage of a lot of tertiary staff and student customers throughout the day, rather than just at peak times. The obvious disadvantage is expense, especially in the vicinity of the CBD. A music festival in the Byron hinterland has put some of the furrier locals at an increased risk of disease, a new report has found. The report, published this month, links the "aversive behaviour" of a number of the koalas observed to Bluesfest Byron Bay, where the koalas moved away from their home-range area, "perpendicular to and away from staging areas where music was played", the report showed. Crowds flock to the annual Bluesfest Byron Bay. Credit:Edwina Pickles "For koalas to get up and leave their home-ranges is quite significant," author of the report and managing director of Biolink Ecological Consultants, Steve Phillips, said. "Koalas are very particular about what they eat and where they live so, if they're bombarded by this low noise, it's potentially coming from a bigger koala. They're going to pack up and leave; they fear it," he said. A promising school choice experiment started in Montana on Jan. 1, but bureaucrats have banned most of the choices. The Legislature passed a scholarship tax credit program last year, making Montana the 43rd state to adopt a school choice program. It offers a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for contributions to private, nonprofit student scholarship organizations. Families of K-12 students can apply to these organizations for aid. Families pick the private school of their choice, and the scholarship organization sends the money to the school. But a new rule adopted by the Montana Department of Revenue in December stifles the opportunities that the Legislature intended to foster. It says a school can't be eligible to participate in the program if it is "owned or controlled in whole or in part by any church, religious sect or denomination." In other words, religious schools need not apply. By excluding religious schools, the department is shutting out more than two-thirds of Montana's private schools, reducing the program to a dim shadow of genuine choice. Discriminatory rule The department is being sued over this discriminatory rule. In federal court, a lawsuit was filed by a Missoula couple whose son attends a Christian school, along with the Association of Christian Schools International, whose members include 10 schools in Montana. The plaintiffs are represented free of charge by Pacific Legal Foundation, a watchdog that litigates for individual rights, including school choice. Everyone who values educational choice for all kids has a stake in this challenge. All families (not just rich ones) deserve options when deciding how to educate their kids. And research has demonstrated that school choice programs improve quality of education. This result fits with our basic notions of free enterprise. Competition spurs innovation, increases quality, and encourages efficiency. That's as true in the classroom as it is in the grocery aisle. Opponents typically brand school choice as a betrayal of the public school system. But our loyalties should lie with our kids. And the best thing we can do for kids in public schools is to prod those schools toward greater excellence. Competition does just that. The department can't rewrite a school choice statute to remove most of the choices. Only the Legislature can revise its own laws. And this law expressly prohibits scholarship organizations from favoring certain types of private schools over others. In fact, the Department of Revenue is supposed to disqualify scholarship organizations that discriminate in this manner. Instead, the department is mandating discrimination. Constitutional violation Worse yet, the department's bald discrimination violates the U.S. Constitution, which forbids targeting religious people and institutions for unfavorable treatment. The exclusion of religious schools and their prospective students from the school choice program is no less offensive to the Constitution than racial segregation. The department justifies this injustice by ducking behind the Montana Constitution, which forbids public funding of religious institutions. But the scholarship program doesn't pump public funds into religious schools. It is funded exclusively with private donations. Plus, the scholarship funds do not flow to religious schools by government edict. The independent choices of students and parents determine where the private scholarship money will go a far cry from purposeful government funding of a religious institution. Montana bureaucrats should discard this unjust restriction. If they don't, the judiciary must do so for them. A push to ban Labor MPs, officials and Young Labor members from accepting subsidised trips from the Israel lobby has provoked a backlash in the party, with one group branding it "totalitarian". Fairfax Media revealed on Tuesday that a motion on next month's NSW conference agenda proposes the ban while Benjamin Netanyahu's government "continues settlements, refuses a Palestinian state [and] brutally mistreats Arab residents of the West Bank". The proposed ban on subsidised trips was an "outrageous infringement", said Greg Holland. "To do so in the circumstances is an insult to the Australian community who support our party," the motion, put forward by the group Labor Friends of Palestine, says. (Mr Abbott denied Christians would be given preferential treatment, saying: "It's those who can never go back that we're focused on.") Cr Cornish goes on to "strongly question the Liberal Party's direction in regard to conservative values". "It currently shows little difference with the aims and objectives of the Labor Party, that being the removal of religion and replacing it with government founded [sic] tolerance of everything, climate control, over control of our everyday life and the erasing of our heritage and way of life through wanting to change our flag and changing our head of state to a corruptible president," he says. Cr Cornish also attacks Lindsay MP Fiona Scott over last year's leadership change that saw Mr Turnbull become Prime Minister. "Fiona Scott was only elected due to the hard work and support of Tony Abbott," he writes. "His many campaign visits to Lindsay along with his 'sex appeal comment' got Fiona just over the line, only to have her stab him in the back for his hard work and party loyalty." Cr Cornish has been approached for comment. Meanwhile, Liberal fighting is set to explode in the seat of Hughes, where Sutherland Shire councillor Kent Johns is preparing to challenge incumbent Liberal MP Craig Kelly. Supporters of Mr Kelly, a right winger, are predicting Cr Johns, from the left, will be embarrassed when he is required to give evidence in court in an apprehended violence order matter involving the state MP for Holsworthy, Melanie Gibbons. The February 29 hearing will examine allegations that a member of the Moorebank branch, Jose Stojcevski, yelled "I'll kill you" at Ms Gibbons during a meeting in October last year. Mr Stojcevski's lawyer has previously dismissed the allegation as "unfounded, frivolous and vexatious". But the hearing will come shortly after the close of nominations for the seat on February 19 and amid the preselection process. Cr Johns said he could not comment on a court matter. As well, later this month a supporter of Mr Kelly, Liverpool councillor Peter Ristevski, is facing a Liberal Party disciplinary hearing. On January 29, Cr Ristevski - vice president of the Moorebank branch - will be given 10 minutes to argue before the state executive why he should not be suspended over a radio interview he gave last November. During the interview, Cr Ristevski mentioned Ms Gibbons' 2012 conviction for failing to lodge election donation returns, for which she was placed on a 15-month good behaviour bond. Cr Ristevski also mentioned a brawl over the attendance at a party fundraiser for Ms Gibbons of his friend, convicted criminal Tony "The Falcon" Atanasovski. Cr Ristevski said in the interview that Atanasovski disputed claims that party officials had torn up his credit card payment at the fundraiser and said the party had in fact accepted his contribution. He said this "could open up a can of worms for [Ms Gibbons]". The Liberal Party has since sent a $160 cheque to Atanasovski - effectively returning his donation, which it claims was never processed. Atanasovski has referred the matter to the NSW Electoral Commission, saying the party breached funding laws by not issuing him a receipt. It has asked the commission to investigate Ms Gibbons over the fundraiser. The commission is conducting a preliminary review. The full email from Cr Cornish Liberal Party Values It is with great sadness I write to you today to inform you of the betrayal of Liberal Party values at both Local and Federal Government levels. At the September Mayoral elections in Penrith Council, left wing Liberal Councillors did a deal with Labor to elect a Labor Mayor over a Liberal Party member. I find this to be a betrayal of the Liberal Party membership and values. If the members of the Liberal Party wanted Labor in power they would have joined the Labor Party not the Liberal Party. What concerns me even more is the Labor person they voted for is from the left of Labor who previously worked for a far left wing Labor state Senator. This gifting of power to Labor reeks of self interest and ignores the values of the Liberal Party reducing Liberal Party membership from influencing policy and decisions to being mere booth workers and puppets, much like the Labor Party. In regard to our Federal Government there has already, quietly, been major policy changes that most would consider more Labor than Liberal. Our sovereignty has been signed away at the United Nations by Malcolm Turnbull, Julie Bishop and Senator Marise Payne. Now UN laws override Australian laws thus dictating what countries our refugee and immigration intake come from. Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott agreed to take in 12,000 persecuted minority refugees, mostly being Christian, Malcolm Turnbull has already changed that to being 12,000 mostly Muslims, who clearly do not assimilate to the Australian way of life and our laws. I, as are many, am deeply disappointed in the Member for Lindsay Fiona Scott for voting against Tony Abbott as prime minister. Fiona Scott was only elected due to the hard work and support of Tony Abbott. His many campaign visits to Lindsay along with his sex appeal comment got Fiona just over the line, only to have her stab him in the back for his hard work and party loyalty. Our children and grandchildrens futures rely on the decisions that are made today. I stand by the democratic principle that Government is there to represent the majority bearing in mind the needs of the minorities not the other way around. I strongly question the Liberal Partys direction in regard to conservative values. It currently shows little difference with the aims and objectives of the Labor Party, that being the removal of religion and replacing it with government founded tolerance of everything, climate control, over control of our everyday life and the erasing of our heritage and way of life through wanting to change our flag and changing our head of state to a corruptible President. The majority of members of the Liberal Party are Conservative. However only an elite few are permitted to vote for candidates for elections and policies, these positions are tightly held by the factions. Factions are Parties within Parties. Labor veteran Wayne Swan has cast confusion over prostate cancer testing guidelines that were designed to settle 20 years of controversy over when and if men should be tested for the fatal condition. The first official guidelines on testing for prostate cancer recommend that men are not routinely screened for prostate cancer and do not need digital rectal examinations, but that those aged between 50 and 69 should be offered the test every two years. Former federal treasurer and prostate cancer survivor Wayne Swan. Credit:Jeffrey Chan They represent a truce between clinicians, researchers and advocates, who have been at loggerheads over whether the benefits of the test outweigh its harms, particularly among men who are not at high risk of developing the condition or those aged over 70. Men should be fully informed about the benefits and harms associated with the PSA test, which overdiagnoses prostate cancer in 20 to 40 per cent of men who produce high measurements of prostate-specific antigen, the guidelines say. The life of acclaimed Brisbane actress Carol Burns will be celebrated at a public memorial next month at QPAC. Ms Burns, who passed away after a brief illness in December, was well known to Queensland audiences for her critically acclaimed performances on stage including Private Lives, The Glass Menagerie and Design for Living. Acclaimed performer Carol Burns will be remembered in a public memorial on February 8. Credit:BroadwayWorld Australia/Facebook She began her professional career as a founding member of Queensland Theatre Company alongside Geoffrey Rush and Bille Brown before going on to star in a string of hit television roles. But most people remember her for her star turn as Franky Doyle in the iconic Australian television series Prisoner. A former Bandidos president has been fined and banned from Brisbane's nightclub district for threatening to kill a bouncer on New Year's Day. George Bejat, 29, pleaded guilty to a single public nuisance charge in the Brisbane Magistrates Court on Wednesday. A former Bandidos bikie has been banned from the Fortitude Valley party precinct over a death threat he made to a bouncer. Credit:Paul Rovere Police prosecutor Senior Constable Alice Faunce-De Laune said Bejat threatened to "break the bones" of the bouncer at The Met in Fortitude Valley after being denied entry because he was drunk. Defence solicitor Peter Shields argued that a person abusing a bouncer for being refused entry or the use of strong language in the nightclub precinct at 2.20am was "not unusual". Forensic testing will be carried out on a car believed to be connected to the disappearance of Melbourne teenager Cayleb Hough. Cayleb, 17, has been missing for one month, in which time he has not accessed social media, his mobile phone or bank account. He was last seen about 6am on Sunday, December 20, and has missed Christmas, New Year's Eve and a significant family event. Police believe the Chelsea Heights teenager was last seen travelling in a blue 2003 Ford Falcon XR6 sedan, with registration SOG 812 and a black bumper bar. A group of Aboriginal people says it has set up a "refugee camp" at Perth's Heirisson Island to protest against what it claims is the state government supporting international refugees before helping WA's homeless people. The group of about 60 people, led by Nyoongar man Herbert Bropho, has been camping at the Swan River island for around a month, with more tents appearing each week. Greg Martin, Herbert Bropho and Aaron Hubert believe Heirisson Island should be returned to its traditional owners. Credit:Heather McNeill It follows camping protests staged at the island in 2012 and 2015 objecting to the state government's $1.3 billion native title offer to the Nyoongar people, the closure of remote Aboriginal communities and traditional land rights. A Helena woman indicted in a large methamphetamine conspiracy admitted she helped distribute meth she got from a Fishtail man who prosecutors say trafficked at least 178 pounds of the drug. Rinda Lee Morgan, 43, pleaded guilty to possession with intent to distribute meth during a hearing in U.S. District Court in Billings on Wednesday. A plea agreement calls for a conspiracy count to be dismissed at sentencing. Prosecutor Colin Rubich said that while Morgan tried to vastly minimize" her role in the conspiracy, she admitted to Drug Enforcement Administration agents that she received about 10 ounces of meth from Merrill Clark Gardner, of Fishtail, the organizations leader. However, Rubich said, the investigation found that Morgan actually received and distributed about three pounds of meth she got from Gardner. Gardner, 61, pleaded guilty in November to a conspiracy count and is awaiting sentencing. Prosecutors said Gardner trafficked at least 178 pounds of meth he stored on nearby property and shipped hundreds of thousands of dollars in drug proceeds in a truck back to his Arizona supplier. Gardner was arrested in June 2015 after agents found more than six pounds of meth and $103,340 in cash on or near his property. Rubich called Morgan an active distributor and a key member of a wide-ranging conspiracy to import and distribute meth in Montana from January 2013 to June 18, 2015. Morgan would travel to Gardners Fishtail home to get meth and to deliver drug proceeds, Rubich said. She then would deliver meth to three others who would redistribute the drug in Helena and surrounding area. While serving a search warrant on Morgans home, investigators found drug paraphernalia that was covered in meth residue, a scale that had meth residue and a half-ounce of meth, Rubich said. A lab analysis found the meth was 95 percent pure, he said. Morgan told the judge she was involved in the conspiracy from about January 2014 to when Gardner was arrested. Morgans co-defendant, Brett Wade Clouse, 36, of Absarokee, has pleaded not guilty to charges and is awaiting trial. Morgan faces a mandatory minimum five years to 40 years in prison and a $5 million fine. U.S. District Judge Susan Watters set sentencing for May 4. Morgan remains in custody. Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams 62nd Precinct BensonhurstBath Beach Honey, Im home A sly thief looted a mans Cropsey Avenue apartment while he was home on Jan. 12. The sneak crept into the mans rental between Bay 14th Street and 17th Avenue at 8 am through an unlocked kitchen window on the ground floor. Once inside, the nogoodnik snatched the mans jewelry collection before fleeing, according to police. The victim later told police he was home the whole time, but said he didnt hear or see anything suspicious during the home invasion, cops said. Bling and bogies Cops are hunting a burglar wanted for ransacking a womans W. Third Street apartment on Jan. 13, taking jewelry and cigarettes. The victim told police that she left her home between Quentin Road and Kings Highway at 8 am, and returned at 10 pm to find her valuables had been snatched. The snake nabbed two pairs of earrings and a pack of cigarettes, after slithering in through a window, cops said. Mystery cash More than $1,000 vanished mysteriously from a womans Kings Place apartment on Jan. 12. The victim told police that she left her home near Kings Highway at 7 am, and returned later to find $1,500 in cash had disappeared. All the windows and all the doors at the apartment were locked throughout the day, and nothing was broken, according to police. However, the victim said her landlord, who shes not on the best terms with, does have a key, cops said. Tool time Some crooks ripped off a 21st Avenue construction site to the tune of more than $8,000 in stolen equipment on Jan. 14. A worker told police that the raider broke into the site between Benson Avenue and 86th Street at 10:50 pm through a wooden fence. The burglar made off with a pipe cutter, hammer drills, screwdrivers, and other materials, cops said. Robbery fail Cops busted two would-be robbers who they say beat a man on Cropsey Avenue on Jan. 13. The victim told police he was near Bay Parkway at 4:52 am when the suspects jumped him. One of the men allegedly slugged the victim in the face, while the other attempted to grab his phone and bag, albeit, without success, cops said. The suspects did, however, manage to take the mans drivers license, earning themselves a robbery charge in the process, according to police. Colin Mixson Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams 88th Precinct Fort GreeneClinton Hill Bathroom blunder A bathroom bandit snuck into the ladies room of a Lafayette Avenue store and stole a womans wallet out of her bag on Jan. 15. The woman told police she entered the empty bathroom of the store near Rockwell Place at 5:50 pm and left her belongings outside of the stall while she did her business. But she wasnt the only one for long she heard someone with pink pants enter and leave. When she went to go wash up, she discovered her wallet was missing from her bag, said reports. Bejeweled A thief looted a Myrtle Avenue jewelry store sometime overnight on Jan. 11. The sleepy-eyed shop owner told police she closed her shop near Clermont Avenue at 10 pm on Jan. 11, and went home. She was awoken from her sleep by a call from her alarm company at 4:30 am the next day alerting her to a break-in. The nogoodnik had entered the store through either the unlocked front or back doors and stole three gold bracelets, rings, and necklaces, police said. Elevator assault Some goon roughed up a woman in the elevator of an apartment complex on Navy Walk on Jan. 11 and made off with her purse and phone. The victim told police she was in the elevator of the building near Tillary Street at 7:25 pm when a man got on at the second floor and did not let her get off the lift when she attempted to exit. The villain tripped the victim and she hit her head, according to reports. The brute then punched the woman in the face while she was on the floor and got off on the fourth floor, fleeing down the stairs with her purse containing her phone, $200 in cash, and keys, said police. The victim, who was taken to the hospital for stitches and two loose teeth, said she had never seen the guy before. Shoved A pair of punks pushed a guy to the ground as he was walking to school on Waverly Avenue on Jan. 14. The young scholar was on the way to class near DeKalb Avenue at 8:10 am when two scoundrels shoved him to the pavement, said police. The duo snatched a Samsung mobile phone from his pocket and fled down Waverly Avenue toward Fulton Street, according to reports. Petrol plunder A dirtbag lifted a womans belongings from her car as she was filling it up at a gas station on Myrtle Avenue on Jan. 7. The driver said she was pumping gas at the station near Classon Avenue at 10:30 am when she noticed that her passenger-side door and trunk had been opened. She got back in her vehicle, and once she arrived at Adams Street, she discovered that her bag which contained her drivers license, debit card, headphones, and charger was missing, said reports. Lauren Gill "Every Little Bit Counts" excited me because it is such a fun, fun song and tonally different from the weirder, darker stuff I usually do. The basic idea is there's a stuffy world, in this case the news, and Nic comes in like Willie Wonka or the Cat in the Hat and has a bit of fun with it. Crazily and coincidentally, while shooting on the set Nic told me he once did a thing like this in real life - he was walking somewhere and there was a news crew interviewing a man opposed to gay marriage, and Nic popped in and said something in the mic. If someone by chance taped that newscast he'd love a copy. RAWLINS An inquest is expected in the death of a woman who caught fire while working at the bar she owned in Rawlins, even as test results are not yet back from the Wyoming crime lab. Carbon County Coroner Paul Zamora said once the evidence returns form the crime lab, he and the Rawlins Police Department will review it and conduct a coroner's inquest into the manner of death for 47-year-old Denise King Martinez. Martinez died in November, days after she somehow caught fire at the County Six Bar. Crime lab results were expected last month, but now Zamora said it could be February before evidence is returned. Zamora did not say what prompted his decision to conduct an inquest. Calgary's Sled Island Festival returns for its 10th year this summer from June 22 - 26 in multiple venues spread around the Canadian city. Although its first wave of artists won't be announced till February 9, this year's fest will be curated by Peaches. Besides Peaches' selections as curator, there will be over 250 additional bands, along with comedy, film, and art. by Tatiana Tenreyro photo: The Coathangers @ Burgerama 2014 (more by Debi Del Grande) Atlanta's The Coathangers celebrate their 10th anniversary this year and are back with their fifth studio album, Nosebleed Weekend, which is out April 15 via Suicide Squeeze. The record was produced by Nic Jodoin and the first single, "Make It Right," is reminiscent of the garage rock sound of 2014's Suck My Shirt yet slightly rougher, showcasing Stephanie Luke's raspy vocals. They'll be stopping by NYC with Tijuana Panthers at Baby's All Right on March 29. Tickets are on sale now. They're playing a couple of other shows, but official tour dates have not been announced yet. All dates are listed below. --- The Coathangers - Nosebleed Weekend tracklist: 1. Perfume 2. Dumb Baby 3. Squeeki Tiki 4. Excuse Me? 5. Make It Right 6. Nosebleed Weekend 7. Watch Your Back 8. Burn Me 9. I Don't Think So 10. Down Down 11. Hiya 12. Had Enough 13. Copycat The Coathangers - 2016 Tour Dates: 03/29 - Brooklyn, NY @ Baby's All Right * 04/06 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Echo 04/22 - Norman, OK @ Norman Music Festival Looking for the big games to watch in Week 9? We have them right here. As freezing temperatures force people to get creative to stay warm, the team investigates a cold-blooded case in Deja Vu on NCIS. Its one that ends up being from Bishops past, a human-trafficking ring she thought she had helped shut down years ago. The people involved in this ring are cold-blooded as they make clear to the women they hold to make sure they cooperate but fortunately, Bishop is able to put the pieces together and figure out when someones trying to lead them on a wild goose chase and find the killer. NCIS Recap: Can Bishop Solve a Case from her Past?>>> Dear President Truman. I mean Harry. I mean Sir. Not only is Bishop writing a letter to a dead president, she stumbles over what to call him in said letter. Since She and Jake Hit the Skids and She Doesnt Keep a Journal, She Doesnt Have Many People to Talk to. Who better than the founder of the modern-day NSA? The last couple of days really sucked. Not because it was cold frostbite comes with living in D.C. but because it made me reconsider every reason I became a federal agent, both NSA and NCIS. As tough as 2015 had been, the last couple of days put everything into perspective for Bishop. Losing anyone in uniform is difficult. We encounter it here too often. Based on everything I was learning, Ramos was someone to be admired. This was a young woman, a young sailor who had her whole life ahead of her and she wanted to serve. She wanted to help put away a gang member. She wanted to do the right thing. Based on everything I was learning, Ramos was someone to be admired. I work with people now who have nothing but courage and determination. Truman was once quoted as saying, America wasnt built on fear. It was built on courage, imagination and unbeatable determination to do the job, she notes. Bishop Admits the Case was Affecting Her Vision As an analyst, she feels she should have seen things more clearly, especially with two women missing and the trail still cold. Remembering What the Traffickers Were Capable of Left Bishop Wondering if Her Help Isnt Good Enough How do we keep going? She writes. How do we put away one knowing there are 50 more waiting to be caught? She became a federal agent to help, but what if thats not enough? NCIS: 13 Times Abbys Outfits Were on Point>>> Some people like pushing paper. We couldnt allow this case to get bogged down in Washington bureaucracy. We needed answers fast. Theres Another Difference Between Bishop and Jake: He Loves Pushing Paper. Maybe I should have paid more attention to our differences sooner, she acknowledges. All I can do now is look forward, forward to working with the best team in the world, to be the best agent I can be. The case made her want to work harder, she concludes. Yes, she wishes she could have saved the women they lost and stopped Connors from the beginning, but all she can do is look forward. NCIS season 13 airs Tuesdays at 8pm on CBS. (Images courtesy of CBS) In this episode of Teen Wolf, Codominance, Noshiko takes drastic measures to save Kira from herself, Scott and Stiles take a road trip hoping to rescue Kira from a group of nasty shapeshifters, and Theo comes face-to-face with The Beast. Kiras mother has taken her daughter to the desert in New Mexico to battle Skinwalkers, a group of very powerful shapeshifters who also happen to be incredibly hot despite their ratchet hair and heavy makeup. 7 Characters We Want to See Return on Teen Wolf >>> The Skinwalkers Kira engages in some impressive swordplay but is bested and winds up pinned to a rock by a spear. They sense she is afraid, not of them but for herself. Noshiko asks if they can help her. They say theyll give it the old college try, but if they cant, Kira will stay and become one of them, which basically entails walking in the dust under the sun forever. Scott Turns His Back on Liam Back in Beacon Hills, Liam finally faces Scott. He informs his Alpha that the Chimeras are alive and somewhat well. He also lets Scott know that Theo is the one who brought them back and now they are one big, happy pack. Scott already knows and he doesnt have time to chat, but when Liam says Hayden is one of them, it stops Scott in his tracks. He asks Liam if shes okay, and Liam admits that his girlfriend is alive but not necessarily okay. Scott, having learned from Kiras dad that shes in a place called Shiprock, is on his way to bring her back. Liam wants to help, but Scott isnt exactly ready to forgive and forget, so he tells the werewolf boy wonder to stay put and do nothing. Stiles is outside trying to get the old Jeep up and running, and Scott tells him that Liam wants to help. Stiles encourages Scott to make Liam more of a priority. He is the only other actual werewolf and Scotts Beta. If you want to get the band back together, you dont leave out the drummer. Youd think Scott might consider taking his friends advice and letting Liam come on their road trip, but they take off and leave the kid behind. The Beast of Gevaudan Theo and Tracy are chasing down The Beast. They arent trying to catch it, not yet anyway. Like all the things that go bump in the night in Beacon Hills, The Beast is hanging out at the high school. Tracy and Theo spot the words Damnatio Memoriae on some lockers. Theo figures the Dread Doctors are trying to get their creation to remember what it once was. Tracy is interested in the teenager underneath, but Theo says the Dread Doctors dont care. They needed a body because they couldnt resurrect The Beast out of thin air, and the kid underneath is just a side effect. Tracy questions what happens when The Beast of Gevaudan remembers what it is. Ah, somebodys been doing their homework. Theo doesnt know what the future holds, but he is certain that the creature doesnt even know it turns back into a human during the day. Tracy tells Theo she read that The Beast killed 113 people, but Theo says the number is closer to 500. The Doctors show up, knock Tracy out and tell Theo to leave; hes got his pack. But Theo isnt satisfied because hes not really an Alpha. His eyes dont have that lovely red glow. Technically, hes not even a real werewolf. In the midst of this little family squabble, The Beast makes his big entrance. The thing is as terrifying as an MTV budget will allow. In the case of Teen Wolf, less is usually more. The Beast looks like low-budget CGI. Its snarling and caring a human head, which seems to scare the shit out of Theo and Tracy who has regained consciousness. But the Doctors and their super-sized killing machine vanish into thin air, and Tracy and Theo are left unharmed. One thing is certain: Scott is going to need a bigger boat. Kiras Future Looks Decidedly Bleak The Skinwalkers have given Kira a time-out to nurse her wound, but Noshiko says they will test her that night. Kira asks if theyve mentioned fixing her, to which her mother responds, They have their methods. Kira discovers that this wont be a speedy recovery. It could take months, even years. Kira isnt thrilled at the time commitment, but Noshiko reminds her daughter that shes a Kitsune; shes got centuries. Not a huge comfort when youve got a smoking hot boyfriend waiting for you. This kind of long-distance relationship isnt ideal. Kiras mother reminds her daughter that shes got bigger problems than boy trouble. If Kira cant get her dark side under control, it will consume her, and thats apparently not a good thing. Teen Wolf: Theres a Huge Problem with Hayden But Heres How to Fix It >>> The Forgotten Monster On their way to New Mexico, Scott does a little light reading. Damnatio memoriae was a practice first used by the Romans. If someone was deemed a traitor or, for Teen Wolf purposes, damned the Senate would erase them from history by destroying any documents bearing their name or statues with their visage. In 1598, the practice was used for a serial killer known as the Demon Tailor, who liked to eat small children. To this day, nobody knows his real name. The Dread Doctors resurrected a killer so foul, he had to be erased from history, a killer who became a werewolf. Yikes. After discussing demented serial killers, Scott tells Stiles that he thinks Malia has found her mother. Scott says Braeden is helping Malia plan something she doesnt want to tell them about, and Scotts chemosignals tell him that Malias planning to kill her mother. Kiss and Tell Scott should have taken young pup Liam along because hes struggling to stay out of trouble. After Liam spots Hayden with Theo, Mason has to talk him off the ledge by reminding Liam of his promise to his Alpha. Liam may have to exercise some self-control, but that doesnt stop him from questioning Hayden as to why shes hanging out with a complete psychopath. Hayden reminds Liam that Theo brought her back to life, and shed prefer not to die again. Also, Corey and Mason are still drawn to each other. Mason seems to like those bad boys. He refuses to date Corey but still engages in some face sucking in the locker room. Corey tries to reassure Mason that Theo is looking out for all of them. Corey questions if Theo is looking for the last Chimera. Oh, Mason. Thats sooo two episodes ago. Corey informs Mason that Theo calls the insidious presence that promises to kill them all The Beast. Kira Faces Down Her Demons Kira heals and is good to go. Time for her to take the tests the Skinwalkers have for her. Think Divergent meets The Hunger Games with some Clan of the Cave Bear and Buffy the Vampire Slayer thrown in for good measure. It looks like Kira passes with flying colors, which is a good thing since her boyfriend decided to work out all his issues with his bestie instead of coming to her rescue. Obviously, Kiras a bad-ass who doesnt need anyone to rescue her, and it was time for Stiles and Scott to resume their bromance. Scott shouldnt have believed Theo, Scott knows Stiles acted in self-defense, Scott feels bad that his friends are always in danger and its his fault, blah, blah, blah. But just as Kira thinks shes heading home, the Skinwalkers reveal that she didnt pass the test; The Fox did. Kira yields the sword, but The Fox yields her. Kira asks what the hell thats supposed to mean, and the Skinwalkers says she has no control, no hope, without them. They decree that she will stay and become one of them. Mommy was down with this plan at first if it meant Kira would live, but shes had a change of heart. If the Skinwalkers want Kira, theyll have to go through Noshiko to get her. Oh, and a werewolf, because Scott and Stiles finally arrive. The whole gang piles into the Jeep and takes off. Unlikely Allies and a Blast from the Past Scott arrives home and finds out that his mini-me and Mason have found out that Theo is searching for a blind Alpha, Deucalion. Corey kisses and tells. Lydias subconscious is still wandering around getting cryptic advice from Meredith, while her body remains in a catatonic state. Malia kicks the crap out of Theo, but he promises he can help her find Deaton. All she has to do is put her trust in him and the Dread Doctors. Teen Wolf airs Tuesdays at 10pm on MTV. (Image courtesy of MTV) latest news October 3, 2022 Dee Gambit Hundreds if not thousands of new and returning TV shows and movies are released every month your options of what to watch are endless. Variety, they say is ... In 2015, bathroom retailers took part in Ideal Bathrooms highly popular Race to Dubai incentive. This year Ideal Bathrooms are going a step further with the new Race to Mauritius! There are tropical beaches, pure white sand, and sapphire waters for beach lovers. Theres a world of natural wonder, culture, history, adventure, sports, spas and shopping. Tropical luxury and extravagance at its best and Ideal Bathrooms retailers could be there. The incentive works the same as last year. However, it will be running for the full 12 months of 2016, with all orders placed from the 1st January going towards an individuals turnover target. The more the retailer orders, the closer they move to joining Ideal Bathrooms for a stunning trip of a lifetime. Following registration, customers are set an individual target and are then ready to start their race. Each customer has their own unique race microsite to check their progress over the year until the finish date of 24th December 2016. The concept of The Race to . certainly struck a chord with our retailers says Ideal Bathrooms Commercial Director, Danielle Lillis. This years incentive retains the same theme which proved so exciting last year, and the beauty and luxury on offer in Mauritius will undoubtedly be a huge attraction to all those with a love for travel to amazing destinations. We look forward to receiving registrations from existing and new customers who would like to join us in our Race to Mauritius. To sign up for the Race to Mauritius simply visit Mauritius.idealbathrooms.com Padres stun Phillies as big brother gets best of little brother The San Diego Padres stunned the Philadelphia Phillies in NLCS Game 2, scoring eight unanswered runs in a victory that evened up the playoff series. A series of monthly coffee mornings has launched in Burnham-On-Sea to raise funds for the towns Friends of Burnham Hospital. The regular coffee mornings are being held on the third Saturday of every month at Burnhams Methodist Church in College Street throughout 2016. The Methodist Churchs Dorothy May said that the third Saturday of each month is set aside for a chosen charity to use the premises to raise funds for their work. Pictured: The Friends of Burnham Hospital holding their first coffee morning of the year Campaigners say they are considering lodging an appeal against the governments devastating decision to allow a row of overhead power lines across Somerset, including the Burnham-On-Sea area. National Grids 35-metre high pylons will stretch from the proposed Hinkley Point C power station near Burnham-On-Sea to Avonmouth, passing by local villages including Mark, East Huntspill and Rooksbridge. Paul Hipwell, Chairman of the protest group No Moor Pylons, told Burnham-On-Sea.com: I would like to think we have enough support locally to appeal this decision through a judicial review, but I dont know how wed fund it. Tens of thousand of pounds would be needed and we just dont have that level of funding. I think there are grounds for an appeal, having waded through the governments 360-page report about the decision, he said. Its only when you get to page 340 that theres a mention of the alternatives to pylons, but theres no consideration of the social or environmental costs. We will be discussing this with our MP, James Heappey, to assess the next steps. Although a small section through the Mendips will be underground, protesters wanted the entire route to be buried under the Bristol Channel but the higher cost led to this being ruled out. Burnham-On-Seas MP James Heappey, pictured, said: This is a devastating decision that is utterly at odds with the views of local people. Of course Hinkley C is an important piece of national infrastructure and of course it must be plugged in to the national grid but, in my view, there was never sufficient debate over whether to go underground or under the sea. Throughout, it has simply been the cost of going under the sea that has been seen as the barrier. However, the cost of that technology is reducing all the time as it is being widely employed in interconnection projects and in the Western Link between Scotland and North West England. We could and should have directed that it be used for this project too. Thousands of Somerset residents have participated in the consultation and then then public enquiry; packed village halls along the route of the line cannot have left National Grid nor the Planning Inspector in any doubt at just how unwanted these pylons are. I pay tribute to those who were involved in the fight from the very beginning regardless of todays decision, parish councillors and campaigners along the route have served their communities unstintingly. There is now a short period in which to consider the merits of a Judicial Review but this is not a straightforward process and the chances of success are slim. I hope to meet with parish and district councillors in the coming days to discuss that option. The estimated 500 million budget for the work will be funded through levies on customers energy bills, adding an estimated 22 pence per year to a typical households bill. Altico Capital, a non-banking finance company (NBFC) promoted by Clearwater Capital, Abu Dhabi Investment Council and Varde Partners, is looking to invest about Rs 2,500 crore every year for the next five years in the Indian real estate market. In the current financial year, Altico has done 11 deals and is looking at another three to four, which will take its investment to around Rs 2,500 crore, said Sanjay Grewal, its chief executive officer. Altico lends money for mid-income housing projects in Tier-I cities, through structured senior secured debt. "In the next two to three years, the real estate sector would need a significant amount of funding. Hence, we will focus on the sector. We might look at other appropriate and compelling sectors and strategies," said Grewal. Altico's average size is around Rs 150 crore but it would also like to do deals of Rs 200 crore to Rs 300 crore also. "We would want to have a loan book of $1.5 billion by FY20 and $1 billion by FY18," he said. According to him, the company typically lends to developers with attractive projects through multiple strategies that optimise diversification and minimise sales, approval and execution risks. Last year, Altico Capital and Piramal Fund Management co-invested about Rs 600 crore, in equal measure, across multiple projects of Bengaluru-based real estate company Century Real Estate Holdings, in one of the largest structured debt transactions. Altico also lent Rs 450 crore to a joint venture project of Sumer Group and Radius Developers in Mumbai last year. PE firms turn to realty Private equity firms have set up a number of real estate-focused NBFCs in the past couple of years that compete. Piramal Fund Management, Xander NBFC and the NBFC floated by KKR and Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC are some of the prominent ones in this space. Real estate accounts for 17-20 per cent of their deals. "There is a requirement of $15 billion of funds in real estate every year and scope for everybody," Grewal said. Altico has seen deals totalling around $7 billion in the past year and has taken proposals of another $1 billion to its investment committee. It is expected to end up doing $350-400 million of deals every year, he said. Grewal said the company would draw down Rs 450 crore from Washington-based IFC in the current year as equity capital and raise Rs 2,000 crore as debt in FY17. Altico has an equity capital base of Rs 2,000 crore. Altico could also look at alternative fund structures in the future and was in talks with investors on this, he said. De Beers group company Element Six Technologies Ltd (ESTL), which produces synthetic diamonds, has initiated legal action against its Singapore-based competitor IIa Technologies (IIa), over alleged infringement of patents used to make such lab-grown diamond material. De Beers has been the worlds premier supplier of rough diamonds for many decades. ESIL says some of its patents for proprietary synthetic diamond products and their manufacturing methods have been infringed upon by IIa. These are related to production of material which has a combination of high-optical transparency in the visible and infra-red spectral regions and low-crystalline stress. BATTLING FOR PATENT De Beers group company Element Six Technologies claims IIa Technologies has infringed patents for synthetic diamonds manufacturing Might claim damages in millions of dollars Both IIa and De Beers group company Element Six are market leaders in synthetic diamonds Might disrupt synthetic diamond supply globally To continue to be able to invest in research and development, we depend on our ability to protect the intellectual property resulting from this research, development and innovation, said Walter Huhn, chief executive officer of ESIL. In response, IIa Technologies CEO Vishal Mehta told Business Standard, We believe we are not in any way infringing on Element 6s claims. In addition, we will challenge the validity of their patents, IIa Technologies has entered its appearance in the High Court in Singapore and will vigorously defend itself. We will keep our companys focus on the development and growth of diamonds for our customers. We would like to express our appreciation for the customers and partners that have stood by us and re-affirm our continued support to them to build a healthy Grown Diamond eco system worldwide. said Mehta. The clash between the two might affect supply of synthetic diamonds, of which India is a large consumer. IIa supplies these in the name of grown diamonds to a number of processors in Surat and Mumbai. Incidentally, the Bharat Diamond Bourse has banned use of synthetic or grown diamonds on its premises. Synthetic diamond material has many remarkable properties hardness, high melting point and heat conduction, optical transparency and electrical conduction. Harnessing these and refining the synthesis process has enabled the development of tooling applications in activities such as drilling and mining, as well as emerging applications such as high frequency speakers, radiation sensors, optics, water sanitation and even quantum computing. The vast majority of diamond material used in industry or technology is synthetic in origin. For home buyers who find their investments stuck in delayed projects, the Real Estate Regulatory Bill is expected to be a game-changer, besides having far-reaching consequences for the real estate sector as a whole. Once implemented, the Bill will bring transparency and accountability in the sector that is notorious for its opacity. More important, the proposal to set up a real estate regulatory body in every state will provide buyers a forum to register their grievances against erring developers. At present, buyers have little option but to resort to street protests to put pressure on developers who fail to meet deadlines. The final draft of the Bill approved by the Cabinet in December has made it mandatory for developers to deposit at least 70 per cent of the proceeds from sales in an escrow account to meet the cost of construction. In the earlier draft, developers only needed to put 50 per cent of the sales amount in a separate account. Diversion of funds meant for one project to another has been the main cause for construction delays. In addition, to protect the interest of consumers in very small projects, the Bill's ambit has been widened to include all constructions with 500 square metres or more, instead of the earlier requirement of 1,000 square metres. Further, developers will also not be allowed to introduce structural changes without the consent of at least two-thirds of the buyers in any project. This has been done to prevent incidents like the ones involving DLF and Supertech where the were taken to the courts by buyers for changing the layout of the project without their permission. Experts welcome the change. "Not only will it protect the consumer but also encourage the individual buyer, both domestic and international, to invest in the real estate market," says Anshuman Magazine, chairman & managing director, CBRE South Asia. However, any respite for home buyers is unlikely anytime soon. The Bill, which was first introduced in Rajya Sabha on August 14, 2013, was referred to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Urban Development for its recommendations. The final draft of the Bill was approved by the Cabinet in December, but it will still take a few years from the time the Bill is passed by Parliament before the Real Estate Regulatory Authority is in place. The onus will be on the states to set up an authority and make rules within six months of the notification of the Act. It will also be up to the states to set up additional benches of appellate tribunals if required for speedy adjudication of grievances. A new provision has been created for imprisonment of up to three years in case of promoters and up to one year in case of real estate agents and buyers or monetary penalties or both for violation of the appellate tribunal's order. Abhishek Goenka, leader (real estate tax), PwC India, says: "Coming on the back of the major foreign investment policy changes, this Bill is another step forward towards attracting more investments and creating a transparent and well defined framework for the sector to operate in. However, increasing the limits for the amount to be held in an escrow to 70 per cent appears restrictive and some of the other changes such as the one to do with the minimum size of the project may negatively affect sentiment in the sector." Builders also say the Bill should only cover new projects and not have a retrospective effect. Besides, they also want the Bill to address the issue of regulatory delays in getting approvals for projects. The government should make it easier for developers to do business in the sector by bringing about a time-bound approval mechanism for projects from government bodies, says Magazine. Others agree. The Bill would have been more effective had all the approving authorities been brought under its purview, says Sam Chopra, founder & chairman, RE/MAX India. Maruti Suzukis export to Sri Lanka, its biggest foreign destination last year, is losing speed after an increase in import duty by the island nation two months earlier. Last year, Sri Lanka overtook Marutis hitherto top export markets of Chile and Philippines, after the government there had reduced the duty. The move acted as a stimulus for demand and India emerged a big beneficiary. The pent-up demand following the duty relaxation last year has been served. There was also advancement of purchase, and market growth in Sri Lanka was abnormally high. After the reversal of import duty, the short-term surge in demand ended, said a Maruti spokesperson. As new imports would become expensive, sales dropped but are expected to normalise soon, the spokesperson added, without disclosing the number of units shipped. In November, the import duty on 1,000cc vehicles was increased from 50 to 70 per cent, impacting Maruti's WagonR, for instance. Import duty on vans was increased from 85 per cent to 150 per cent. Marutis Alto and Celerio models are in high demand in Lanka. In the past, Maruti had contemplated setting up an assembly unit in Lanka. Its export there has fluctuated with changes in the tax structure. Lanka was Marutis biggest market in 2011-12. The company has a distributor there, which operates through a network of at least 20 retail outlets and 15 workshops. Maruti also trains the service staff. Maruti, this countrys largest car maker, is the second largest exporter of passenger vehicles from India, after Hyundai. Close to a tenth of production is exported to markets in Asia, Africa and Latin America. In the passenger vehicle export market, a weak demand is quite often offset by a surge in demand from others. Economic and political changes are the usual causes. Changes in regulations also impact the export numbers. For instance, Sri Lanka grew last year but the markets in Algeria and Britain declined for Maruti. Expansion of the export portfolio by addition of the Ciaz, Ertiga, DZire and Swift models led to five per cent growth in shipments by Maruti in the April-December period (first nine months of this financial year), to 96,841 units. Compact cars form a large chunk of exports for Maruti, which last year also started shipping the bigger vehicles like the Ciaz and Ertiga. The company is now preparing to ship its latest hatchback, the Baleno, to various destinations. In February 2014, when Facebook acquired WhatsApp for a whopping $19 billion, the messaging platform was earning only around $15 million in annual revenue but had a user base of around 450 mn, with a million getting added each month. The revenue was primarily from the annual subscription fee, of around $1, the company was charging users in selected countries after rendering one year of free service. Now, with WhatsApp having decided to make it free for users, it indicates that garnering revenue by charging the users was never the prime focus of its monetisation strategy. With the company now part of social networking site Facebook, the most valuable asset on the WhatsApp platform is the free user-generated data, mostly generated real-time, by close to a billion users that it has worldwide, without paying for it. They were not making any money actually because every year they were basically extending the service, telling the customers we are waiving the $1 fee, says Dippak Khurana, founder and chief executive of mobile advertising network Vserv. Id say this is in sync with Facebooks philosophy. Today, if I am consuming a service of Facebook, I know the platform is free to me. Now, in the same manner, WhatsApp is also another Facebook service, and by making it free to users, theyve made it sync with all their offerings. While announcing WhatsApp would be free to users, the company has said its model of charging an annual subscription fee did not work well because many do not hold any debit or credit card. The messaging platform, one should note, has more numbers of users in developing countries than in the developed world. Such users, while joining the platform, have always a fear in their mind that they might lose access to their contacts after the first year. That jeopardises the most important assets that social platforms like WhatsApp have, the number of users. Beside, the only numbered willing to pay for the service range from one to 10 per cent. Assuming it has around 800 million users across the world, the annual revenue would have been $8-80 mn. Which is really nothing compared to the huge money Facebook paid to acquire it, says Mahesh Murthy, marketer and founder of Pinstorm. First of all, it was never a big revenue stream. Second, if they charge for it, there was a real danger people would leave and move to the competition like Telegram, Viber, WeChat, etc. Rather, Murthy says, the business model WhatsApp is now talking about, to license the platform to corporates, looks more viable. For example, if Flipkart wants to chat with its customers on Flipkart, they will charge the businesses that way, which will fetch them more money. Having a platform like WhatsApp, where close to a billion users interact with their contacts real-time, positions Facebook in an enviable position to understand the consumer interests, and leverage that for sharper advertisements on its own platform. For example, if someone just bought a car or returned from a holiday abroad, and is sharing the information with friends on WhatsApp, that data can be leveraged on the Facebook platform for targeted advertisements which best serves the user requirement at that moment. If you look at it this way, WhatsApp is the factory where data gets collected for Facebook. And, the cost of that data collection is insignificant as against the monetisation happening on the Facebook platform, added Khurana of Vserv. There is a lot of consumer intent and interest which is captured on WhatsApp. Experts also say that in the case of internet platforms, traditionally, the real challenge has been charging the users, even if after offering a premium service. For example, Yahoo! Messenger was a free service when it was started in 2000; even Yahoo! Mail was. They tried to come out with premium versions but there were hardly any takers, is one observation. Some of WhatsApps global competitions have been adopting different monetisation strategies instead of charging a subscription fee. For example, instant messaging platform Line monetises by selling the users stickers and emoticons. Viber is also monetising the platform by selling stickers and other digital products. Though WhatsApp is so far the leader in the instant messaging space in India, competitions like WeChat, Viber, Line and Hike have been catching up. Pricol Limited, a leading manufacturer of automotive components, will invest around Rs 500 crore to support company's consolidated revenue target of Rs 3,000 crore by 2020. After unveiling company's new brand identity, Vikram Mohan, Managing Director, Pricol Limited said that this new identity reflects its core values and strategic focus in its businesses in India and abroad. Mohan said that Pricol is a market leader globally in several segments, but not many knew about it. For instance, the company is the world's second-largest manufacturer of Driver Information Systems (DIS) for the two-wheeler segment, India's largest manufacturer of automotive pumps for the two-wheeler segment, the world's fourth-largest manufacturer of Instrument clusters for tractors and off-highway vehicles, India's largest manufacturer of telematics solutions for tractors and off-highway vehicles. The company will focus on entering newer markets through acquisitions, tapping new product segments. Pricol would invest around Rs 500 crore in acquisitions, mainly in Germany and US, and plans to set up faculties in Vietnam and Mexico till 2020. Mohan said the target companies' revenues could be between Rs 250 crore and Rs 400 crore. The acquisitions would be made to enhance customer access, market access and even to have access to technology. Recently, Pricol acquired Melling do Brasil, an automotive powertrain manufacturing company in Brazil (renamed later to Pricol do Brasil). The company serves domestic and international customers such as Volkswagen, FIAT, General Motors, Harley Davidson, and Mack Trucks. The debt-free company will fund the investment through internal accruals and debt, said Mohan. He added, of Pricol's total turnover (consolidated annual revenue for 2014-15 was Rs 1,150 crore), export contributes around Rs 300 crore. By 2020 the company expects around 40 per cent of the revenue will come from exports. Pricol currently has eight manufacturing units and seven business offices across the globe, including India, Indonesia, the US, Brazil, Germany, Singapore and Japan. Reliance Infrastructure's consolidated net profit increased by mere 2% to Rs 463 crore for the quarter ended December 31, 2015 against Rs 452 crore in Q3 FY15. The company's cement business and Mumbai Metro continue to incur loss at Rs 44 crore and Rs 49 crore respectively. The total income dropped by 8.20% to Rs 4,395 crore against Rs 4,788 crore. This was primarily due to reduction in net income from power business which was dipped by 13.26% to Rs 2,832.25 crore compared with Rs 3,265.38 crore. Besides, the income from EPC and contracts business also fell by 33% to Rs 484.13 crore against Rs 728.01 crore. Its employee benefits expense rose by 5.74% to Rs 335.04 crore against Rs 316.85 crore while the depreciation and amortisation surged to Rs 249.57 crore against Rs 219.01 crore, a rise of 13.95%. The company stock on BSE was closed at Rs 454.75 down 4.13%. The company has acquired management control (36.5%) of Pipivav Defence and it was launched the asset monetisation of its 5.6 MTPA cement business, 11 road projects of 1,000 km and Mumbai power business. The company CEO Lalit Jalan said the company's net debt stood at Rs 28,000 crore as on December 31, 2015. He however, informed that the company will be net debt free by March 2017. The company expects to earn Rs 9,000 crore through the amortisation of 11 roads and Rs 5,000 crore from cement business. Jalan said the company is bidding for smart city projects. According to him, the company has signed non binding term sheet with PSP Investmeents of Canada for 49% stake sale in Mumbai power business and expects binding offer by end of the financial year. Ishan Singh has a few buzz words and inflection point is one. He will repeat it until he is blue in the face because he believes in it. Singh, part of the Mumbai Angels network, believes the start-up community has reached an inflection point where it has evolved and will see smarter with original ideas, and not those with a similar model in developed markets, crop up all over the country. Mumbai Angels is a network based out of here, that provides starting capital for tech companies "Entrepreneurs will now look towards Tier-II cities for solutions because that's where the high-spending consumers actually reside," said Singh. The former vice-president of WNS Global Services explained that such as Zivame, a lingerie e-commerce portal, see more sales in Tier-II cities than metros because of growing product awareness. Consumers in smaller towns may not have access to the product in brick and mortar stores but have disposable income to rival the metros and can increase volume growth. "Niche e-commerce will also find a lot of traction in Tier-II cities, Babychakra being one," he said. Not only does the portal allow customers to shop for baby products but also creates a community, which in turn generates content, making it sticky. A lot of the activity is by those from Tier-II cities. "Technology-led inclusion will have a tremendous impact on the ecosystem," he said. Budding entrepreneurs trying to solve pain points, which will serve a bigger market, will get a further shot in the arm as the number of incubators has also increased. "Microsoft, for example, is trying to institutionalise new ideas," Singh added. Microsoft Ventures Accelerator in Bengaluru, for example, offers a mentor network of over 150 people, technology and access to investors. The accelerator has a self-publicised success rate of 65 per cent. The angel networks in smaller cities have started to mushroom. "The number of people becoming angels has increased as well. These networks have now become more structured. They have staff with specialised expertise and a centralised decision making approach," he said. Singh made nine investments in 2015 and expects to make a similar number in 2016. "I invest about Rs 10-15 lakh if the company works. One of my latest was BookEventz," he said. Bookeventz, formerly Urbanresto, is an event organising company which helps customers find venues for events, and provides the vendor a tool to build its internal system and packages to present to the customer. A transparent system, he explained, means price-rigging goes out of the window. The company tries to organise a market populated by agents and inflated fees. "The investment didn't come easy. The company approached us six months ago and we kept an eye on their sales. We put in money when we were satisfied," he said. He refused to comment on the size of the investments. While bullish on the future of certain companies, he believes that start-ups specialising in robotics will still have to bide their time. "Labour is still cheap in India and unlike developed markets, we can afford to hire people to do what a machine can do," he said. Singh does expect to make some exits soon. "Typically, exits come when the company reaches Series-C round of funding. A few are approaching the stage and I have a few offers," he said as he signed off. Former tax commissioner Cory Fong is taking over as communications director for MDU Resources Group Inc. The company announced Fong will replace Rick Matteson as head of communications on Feb. 1. Matteson is serving as interim director of investor relations before retiring. Cory has a strongly established background in politics. He is well-connected, is adept at building and maintaining relationships and is good at respectfully bringing people together on issues, said MDU Resources CEO David Goodin. Cory will help us manage government regulations that impact, or have the potential to impact, our operations. Fong will direct the companys legislative activities and work with industry organizations on behalf of the company. "It's a great company and it's just a tremendous chance for me. I'm just really looking forward to being a part of that organization," Fong said. "I just think it's a really good fit for my background." Fong is currently a public affairs senior specialist at Odney marketing firm in Bismarck. Prior to that, he was state tax commissioner from 2005 to 2013, deputy commissioner for the North Dakota Department of Commerce, deputy secretary of state and director of elections. Fong has a bachelors degree in political science and speech communications from Gonzaga University. Sugar mills in Uttar Pradesh, often at a disadvantage to peers in states like Maharashtra due to a higher sugarcane price, are set for a sweeter time. While the (state government-set) cane price is to stay unchanged, mills are making seven per cent more sugar for every quintal of cane crushed, thanks to a rise in area under high-yielding varieties and a somewhat warmer winter. The warmer winter this year could be a problem for the standing wheat and mustard crop but is a boon for sugarcane. The average recovery (percentage of sugar derived from cane crushed) is set to touch an all-time high of 10.25 per cent in this sugar season (started October 2015), up seven per cent from the previous years average. Recovery till January 18 was almost 10.1 per cent. "UP mills will have a lower cost of production compared to last year, as the cane price is unchanged. Undoubtedly, this is a big benefit. The greater recovery is due to change in cane varieties and suitable weather," said Tarun Sawhney, vice-chairman and managing director of Triveni Engineering and Industries, which has seven mills in UP. Sawhney, also president of Indian Sugar Mills Association (Isma), added the negative fallout of this phenomenon in UP will be in the form of an addition to the country's sugar stockpile. India has had bumper sugar production for several years, resulting in lower prices and inability of the industry to pay farmers for cane. UP mills last year made 9.55 kg of sugar from every quintal of cane. The same quantity will give them 10.25 kg this time and this comes as sugar prices have started showing signs of rising. The average wholesale price has risen by Rs 200-400 a qtl between January 1, 2015, till this Wednesday. The UP government has kept the cane price payable to farmers unchanged at Rs 280 a qtl. So, mills' realisation from each quintal of cane crushed is better in UP this year. Sanjay Tapriya, director with Simbhaoli Sugars, said: Mills and farmers have worked together to change cane varieties. These have better recovery and yield, helping both. Balanced rainfall also helped. The 0.5 to 0.6 per cent recovery means a five to six per cent increase in sugar revenues, most of which will go to (improve) the bottom line of companies. Officials said in the 2015-16 season, the high yielding Co-0238 variety was planted on 0.4 million hectares in UP, about 55 per cent more than in the 2014-15 season. In the past three years, the total area under this higher-yielding variety has risen at least four-fold. The yield of Co-0238 is around 80 tonnes a ha; it is 65-70 tonnes for other varieties. Sugar recovery is also better from these new varieties. The long and dry winter from September 2015 helped in early maturing of cane in UP and the near-absence of showers ensured no waterlogging in what was planted in low-lying areas. The absence of moisture in the fields during September-January and the huge gap between day and night temperatures helped in boosting the recovery, an Isma official said. Some Dalit leaders in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) today demanded a judicial or a Central Bureau of Investigation enquiry into the suicide of Hyderabad Central University student Rohith Vemula, but its senior leadership tried to diffuse the controversy by insisting it wasn't a Dalit versus non-Dalit issue. While some Dalit leaders in the BJP were critical of the "insensitive statements" issued by their colleagues and pointed at the lack of representation that Dalits have in party hierarchy (see chart below), Human Resources Development (HRD) Minister Smriti Irani slammed "the malicious intent to incite passions and present the suicide as a caste battle." She defended her ministry for having forwarded the letter by Union Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya to the university, which she said was done in consonance with laid-down procedures, and claimed the issue of Dalit suicides had been raised by a Congress MP during the UPA-2 rule as well. Irani implored that all concerned should await the report of the ministry's fact-finding team and the completion of police investigation. The minister said Dattatreya himself is a Yadav, while the ABVP student that was beaten up allegedly by Vemula and his associates is also an OBC. Irani didn't let on the government strategy on the issue that has earned it much bad press, but sources said the investigation might bring out the fact that Vemula wasn't a Dalit but from an OBC caste. BJP General Secretary P Muralidhar Rao said that Vemula suffered from psychological problems, while some other spokespersons insinuated that Vemula wasn't a Dalit at all. BJP Scheduled Caste Morcha chief Dushyant Kumar Gautam defended Rao. He demanded a judicial enquiry into the suicide, but said: "It is intriguing that somebody as strong willed as Vemula, who indulged in anti-social demonstrations, should have committed suicide." Gautam said, indicating at the possibility of foul play. Much hinges on whether Vemula was an OBC or a Dalit as Dattatreya has been booked under the prevention of atrocities against Scheduled Castes Act. That the party has stressed the OBC identity of Dattatreya and the ABVP leader has its sub-text in northern India's Dalit-OBC politics. Apart from its new found Dalit support during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections where the party won nearly half of all seats reserved for Scheduled Castes, the BJP also been trying to reach out to the Other Backward Castes of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in recent years. It has sizeable non-Yadav OBC support base in UP. Late last year, party chief Amit Shah had set up a dedicated OBC morcha for the first time in BJP's history and with an eye on UP assembly polls in 2017. Parties like Samajwadi Party and Rashtriya Janata Dal, which command sizeable OBC support base, have been muted in their criticism of the government on the issue. Today, Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati demanded an inquiry. However, a handful of BJP's Dalit leaders have been critical of statements by Rao and others. These Dalit leaders point to lack of participation of Dalits among BJP's office bearers and in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's council of ministers as a reason for the failure of the party and government to handle the issue sensitively. There isn't a single Dalit in BJP chief Amit Shah's team of 39 office bearers. But party sources pointed out that the party couldn't find able replacements after officer bearers like Thawarchand Gehlot and Ram Shankar Katheria joined the council of ministers. "The suicide note of Vemula resonates with me. I could empathise with him. It was as if I had suffered all that he did," former BJP SC Morcha chief Sanjay Paswan said. Paswan along with some Dalit MPs, who didn't want to be identified, have sought the PM's intervention. "Strong steps need to be taken by the party and the government. The PM needs to intervene and reach out to Vemula's family. A CBI inquiry should be ordered," Paswan said. Ground inspections are passe for the Indian power sector which is set to deploy drones to cut costs and improve efficiency. Heralding a technological leap in power transmission, the companies, especially state-owned Power Grid, would now use drones for monitoring project development in critical areas. Senior officials in power ministry said Power Grid got approval from a committee comprising the ministries of defence, home affairs, power and allied departments. While Power Grid confirmed the development, it did not share details. Government officials said among private companies Sterlite Grid has also applied for using drones to monitor its projects. Sterlite is the largest private operator of independent power transmission systems in the country. HAWKS EYE After used in e-commerce for deliveries and weddings, drones are being considered by the power sector for cheaper and efficient project monitoring Two power transmission companies state-owned Power Grid and private sector major Sterlite Grid, apply for permission Power Grid received approval last week, Sterlite hopes to get go-ahead soon Projects in inaccessible areas like hilly terrains in Jammu and Kashmir and north-east to benefit immensely Drones are unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) which can be remotely controlled or can fly autonomously through software-controlled flight plans. While advanced flying robots used in defence can do various things, the drones to be used by power sector would be simpler ones with cameras to capture photos and record videos. Power transmission companies, which usually have to build infrastructure in inaccessible areas, have applied for drones to reduce their maintenance cost. Sector experts said that with increasing thrust on delivering transmission projects on time, developers are increasingly deploying aerial technologies. The power ministry has initiated an incentive scheme for transmission projects which get commissioned ahead of schedule. The government in July 2015 issued an order that transmission projects won under tariff-based competitive bidding (TBCB) and those awarded to Power Grid for system strengthening would start getting transmission charge from the date of commercial operations, even if it is ahead of the schedule. Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd (PGCIL) is likely to use drones for its project in difficult terrains, said an executive. The company is likely to experiment drones at two-three sites for now, mostly in hilly areas and in the north-east, he said adding that drones are cheaper and more efficient than hiring helicopters for aerial monitoring. A typical transmission tower is 100 meter-tall above the ground. Sector executives said drones would be used to capture work progress at construction sites and facilitate speedy response during emergency. Many inaccessible areas are covered under the national grid. For instance, Sterlite Grid has tied up with US-based Burns & McDonnell to implement a transmission line between Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir with the help of heli-crane. It is in discussions with a US-based aviation company to use heli-crane for a transmission project in India for the first time. Drones are catching up in other infrastructure sectors as well. National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) recently signed MoU with National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) under Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and North East Centre for Technology Application and Research (NECTAR), Department of Science and Technology for use of spatial technology for monitoring and managing highways across India. NECTAR uses UAVs for acquiring aerial images for infrastructure planning. This technology will be useful in monitoring construction progress, road asset management, feasibility and project report preparation, assessment, etc. After being used extensively in movie shoots, drones caught the fancy of other sectors when a restaurant in the US used them for pizza delivery. An e-commerce giant has sought the governments permission to use them for product deliveries. Nowadays, drones are being used not only by private metrological agencies and forest and agricultural research bodies, but also in grand Indian weddings. The Indian Chamber of Commerce (ICC) has urged the Odisha government to reduce the floor price of iron ore offered through e-auction in the state to the cost of production level to improve the viability of steel industry in the state. In a letter to the Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, the ICC said, although steel prices have fallen drastically in India, the domestic iron ore prices have not come down correspondingly. It said, while the cost of mining iron ore hovers below Rs 500 per tonne, the iron ore is being sold to the steel industry in the range of Rs 1000 to Rs 1850 per tonne, making their operation unviable and forcing them to operate at low capacity. As a result the mining companies are earning huge profits while the steel industry bleeds on account of high input cost. It may be noted, the state owned Odisha Mining Corporation reported profit of Rs 1,487 crore on sales of Rs 1881 crore in 2014-15 and profit of Rs 500 crore on sales of Rs 1,116 crore during April to November 2015-16. National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC) also reported profit of Rs 9,787 crore on sales of Rs 12,347 crore in 2014-15 and profit of Rs 2,814 crore on sales of Rs 3,407 crore in the first half of 2015-16. To ensure steady supply of iron ore to the steel industry, ICC has suggested increasing the iron ore production to the rated capacity of mines and selling of inventory through e-auction with cost of production as floor price. In Odisha, the rated capacity of mines is pegged at 90 million tonne per annum, but in the current year, the annualised production rate is estimated at 50 million tonne or 55 per cent. Similarly, out of total 128 million tonne iron ore stockpile in the country, Odisha's share is largest at 77 million tonne. The high inventory is not because of lack of demand for the ore in the country, but on account of reluctance of steel industry to buy ore at high prices. Pointing out anomalies in the collection of royalty on iron ore in the state, ICC said, royalty is being charged on the highest grade of ore found in a mine whereas it should be charged on the grade of ore actually mined in a deposit. This is also pushing up the cost of iron ore, it added. The industry body also pleaded for expediting auction of iron ore mines for end use industry and finalisation of roadmap for auction of non-captive mines. ICC said, imposition of 30 per cent export tax on iron ore has encouraged value addition of iron ore within the country, but the steel makers are not taking this opportunity to step up domestic use of the ore fearing operational loss due to high input cost. It, however, urged the government to maintain the export tax on iron ore. Some relief in electricity rates to industrial units in Maharashtra is likely in the near future. Fearing exodus of units to neighbouring states due to high rates, the industries department has pleaded their case with its energy counterpart. It has said lack of quality and affordable power is proving difficult for the bulk of units and that the rate of Rs 8.23 a unit for extra the high voltage (high tension) category was the highest in the country. The comparative rates are Rs 6.8 in Karnataka, Rs 6.35 in Gujarat, Rs 6.6 in Andhra Pradesh, Rs 6.9 in Madhya Pradesh, Rs 5.75 in Chhattisgarh and Rs 5.10 in Goa. SOME RELIEF Effective rate in Maharashtra for high-tension industry consumers is 16-38% Rate further increased as they have to pay 95 paise as fuel adjustment surcharge Industries department pleads for allowing industrial units to purchase electricity from power exchanges State energy department assures to bring down rate by moving to the power regulator In sum, it says, the effective rates in Maharashtra are 16-38 per cent higher than in other states. The rise has been 20 per cent between June and December 2015. Industries minister Subhash Desai, at an interaction with representatives of industrial units on Tuesday evening in the present of energy minister Chandrashekhar Bawankule, also asked that they be allowed to directly buy from power exchanges, on the lines of what is allowed in Gujarat, Andhra and Tamil Nadu. He told this newspaper Bawankule had assured relief of Rs 1,750 crore would be given in rates for units in backward and remote areas and in the Vidarbha and Marathwada regions. Also, average rates would be reduced by 60p a unit from April, after the state power distribution company, MahaVitaran, stops recovering a fuel adjustment surcharge of 95p a unit. Bawankule also said industrial units could avail up to a 26 per cent rebate if they functioned between 6 pm and 6 am. MahaVitaran will file a petition in this regard next month at the state electricity regulatory commission. Earlier, the Indian Merchants Chamber asked the ministers for plugging of leaks in power distribution. The association of captive power producers pleaded for lower electricity duty. The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved amendments to the power tariff policy that aims to tighten regulations for setting rates and promote clean energy. The policy, which is governed by the Electricity Act, was under revision since 2011. It has nearly 30 major amendments and a few minor ones, aimed at ensuring uninterrupted supply to all consumers by 2021-22. To bring down rates, the policy suggests several measures, including microgrids for remote villages and small power plants near coal washeries. It has a provision for sale of un-requisitioned power in the spot market through power exchanges. "The proceeds will be shared among power producers and the state with which it has signed the sale pact," said Piyush Goyal, minister of state for coal, power and renewable energy. The policy allows cost pass-through for use of imported and e-auctioned coal that producers of power in projects awarded through auctions have to use because of a shortfall in contracted supply by Coal India. State electricity regulatory commissions must reserve a minimum percentage for purchase of solar energy, so that it reaches eight per cent of total energy consumption, excluding hydro electricity, by March 2022. New coal- or lignite-based thermal power plants after a specified date are to "establish/procure/purchase renewable capacity as prescribed by the central government". Existing plants can set up such capacity subject to approval of procurers. No inter-state transmission charges and losses are to be levied for renewable energy till notified by the central government. All inter-state transmission projects will be developed through competitive bidding, except projects of strategic importance, those involving technical up-gradation or those needing urgent completion. Power ministry officials said the list of exceptions had been reduced to bring more investment into the sector. POWERING INDIA Aims to ensure uninterrupted power supply to all by 2021-22 New rules for setting rates and to promote clean energy Microgrids for remote villages and small power plants near coal washeries Allows sale of un-requisitioned power in the spot market Mandatory minimum purchase for clean energy Allows cost pass-through for use of imported and e-auctioned coal All new inter-state transmission projects through competitive bidding Smart meters compulsory for consumption over 200 units "Competition will reduce the cost of transmission and lead to timely execution of projects with flexibility to meet emergencies. The consumer will benefit from competition and efficiency in transmission pricing," said Goyal. Intra-state transmission projects above a cost threshold will be developed by state governments through competitive bidding. "It shall be compulsory for consumers to use smart meters with consumption over 500 units per month by December 2017 and with consumption over 200 units per month by December 2019," said the policy statement. The central commission has been given the right to introduce norms for ancillary services necessary for maintaining power quality, reliability and security of the grid, including the method of sharing charges. India's biggest buyers of bad loans are predicting record business for the industry this quarter as central bank incentives prod banks to speed up efforts to cut stressed assets. Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Raghuram Rajan set lenders a March 2017 deadline to clean up their balance sheets and gave those completing a deal by this March consent to spread losses from the distressed-asset sale over two years. The measures may encourage disposal of bad debts worth as much as Rs 40,000 crore ($5.9 billion) before April, according to Edelweiss Asset Reconstruction, the top ... The Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana is likely to see a higher interest from private general insurers, with one authority to implement the scheme and availability of localised risk coverage. companies feel this will be beneficial since, unlike earlier where there was a claim subsidy, this scheme would offer premium subsidy and be more affordable for farmers. Last week, the Union Cabinet approved the scheme. A uniform premium of two per cent is to be paid by farmers for all kharif crops and 1.5 per cent for all rabi crops. For annual commercial and horticultural crops, it will be five per cent. The rest of the premium will be paid by the government, with no upper limit on the subsidy. executives said, by contrast, the Modified National Agricultural Scheme (MNAIS) had a high premium rate and farmers could not afford it. There were multiple schemes NAIS, MNAIS and weather-based crop insurance with different implementing authorities. Now, with one scheme, it will be easier for us to be a part of it, since it covers almost all conditions, said the chief executive of a mid-size private general insurer. Further, companies said, as all states have been asked to implement it, insurers will find it easier to be a part of the scheme. Sanjay Datta, chief of underwriting and claims at ICICI Lombard General Insurance, said theyd be keen to join. Adding of catastrophic events to this cover, such as protection from cyclone impact, would be beneficial. It is anticipated that there would be clusters formed of districts to implement the scheme. Senior officials said how these were classified would define how the premiums would be fixed. Insurers would wait for the contours of the classification before deciding to join. Anuj Tyagi, member of the executive management at HDFC ERGO General Insurance, said as farmer premiums would be down, the uptake of policies would be high. Use of technology being mandatory would improve operational efficiencyThe Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana is likely to see a higher interest from private general insurers, with one authority to implement the scheme and availability of localised risk coverage. Insurance companies feel this will be beneficial since, unlike earlier where there was a claim subsidy, this scheme would offer premium subsidy and be more affordable for farmers. Last week, the Union Cabinet approved the scheme. A uniform premium of two per cent is to be paid by farmers for all kharif crops and 1.5 per cent for all rabi crops. For annual commercial and horticultural crops, it will be five per cent. The rest of the premium will be paid by the government, with no upper limit on the subsidy. Insurance executives said, by contrast, the Modified National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (MNAIS) had a high premium rate and farmers could not afford it. There were multiple schemes NAIS, MNAIS and weather-based crop insurance with different implementing authorities. Now, with one scheme, it will be easier for us to be a part of it, since it covers almost all conditions, said the chief executive of a mid-size private general insurer. Further, companies said, as all states have been asked to implement it, insurers will find it easier to be a part of the scheme. Sanjay Datta, chief of underwriting and claims at ICICI Lombard General Insurance, said theyd be keen to join. Adding of catastrophic events to this cover, such as protection from cyclone impact, would be beneficial. It is anticipated that there would be clusters formed of districts to implement the scheme. Senior officials said how these were classified would define how the premiums would be fixed. Insurers would wait for the contours of the classification before deciding to join. Anuj Tyagi, member of the executive management at HDFC ERGO General Insurance, said as farmer premiums would be down, the uptake of policies would be high. Use of technology being mandatory would improve operational efficiency and will be beneficial to both farmers and insurers. Allotment of land to Ramakrishna Mission, New Delhi to further expand their welfare activities . . The Union Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has given its approval for Allotment of land measuring 82 sq. mtrs. Situated in South West of Plot No. 17/80A and 18/80A to Ramakrishna Mission Krishna Market, Paharganj, New Delhi to further expand their welfare activities at the prevailing rates. . . Background: . . The Ramakrishna Mission had requested the Government for allotment of a small incidental plot of land admeasuring 82 square meters adjoining to their existing allotment in Krishna Market, New Delhi to further expand their welfare activities. The said land is lying vacant and is prone to encroachment and illegal activities. . . Cabinet approves amendments in Power Tariff Policy to ensure 24X7 affordable Power for all . . The Union Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has approved the proposal of the Ministry of Power for amendments in the Tariff Policy. For the first time a holistic view of the power sector has been taken and comprehensive amendments have been made in the Tariff policy 2006. The amendments are also aimed at achieving the objectives of Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojana (UDAY) with the focus on 4 Es: Electricity for all, Efficiency to ensure affordable tariffs, Environment for a sustainable future, Ease of doing business to attract investments and ensure financial viability. . . Highlights of Amendments are: . . Electricity:. . 24X7 supply will be ensured to all consumers and State Governments and regulators will devise a power supply trajectory to achieve this. . . Power to be provided to remote unconnected villages through micro grids with provision for purchase of power into the grid as and when the grid reaches there. . . Affordable power for people near coal mines by enabling procurement of power from coal washery reject based plants. . . Efficiency:. . Reduce power cost to consumers through expansion of existing power plants. . . Benefit from sale of un-requisitioned power to be shared allowing for reduction in overall power cost. . . Transmission projects to be developed through competitive bidding process to ensure faster completion at lower cost. . . Faster installation of Smart meters to enable Time of Day" metering, reduce theft and allow net-metering. . . Lower power cost by creating transmission capacity for accessing power from across India. . . Environment:. . Renewable Power Obligation (RPO): In order to promote renewable energy and energy security, 8% of electricity consumption excluding hydro power, shall be from solar energy by March 2022. . . Renewable Generation Obligation (RGO): New coal/lignite based thermal plants after specified date to also establish/procure/purchase renewable capacity. . Affordable renewable power through bundling of renewable power with power from plants whose PPAs have expired or completed their useful life. . . No inter-State transmission charges and losses to be levied for solar and wind power. . . Swachh Bharat Mission to get a big boost with procurement of 100% power produced from Waste-to-Energy plants. . . To release clean drinking water for cities and reduce pollution of rivers like Ganga, thermal plants within 50 km of sewage treatment facilities to use treated sewage water. . . Promotion of Hydro projects through long term PPAs and exemption from competitive bidding till August 2022. . . Ancillary services to support grid operation for expansion of renewable energy. . . Ease of Doing Business: . . Generate employment in coal rich Eastern states like Odisha, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh etc. by encouraging investments. States allowed to setup plants, with up to 35% of power procured by DSICOMs on regulated tariff. . . Remove market uncertainty by allowing pass through for impact of any change in domestic duties, levies, cess and taxes in competitive bid projects. . . Clarity on tariff setting authority for multi-State sales. Central Regulator to determine tariff for composite schemes where more than 10% power sold outside State. . . These amendments will benefit power consumers in multiple ways. While reducing the cost of power through efficiency, they will spur renewable power for a cleaner environment and protect India's energy security. They would also aid the objectives of Swachh Bharat Mission as well as Namami Gange Mission through conversion of waste to energy, usage of sewage water for generation and in turn ensure that clean water is available for drinking and irrigation. . . These amendments will ensure availability of electricity to consumers at reasonable and competitive rates, improve ease of doing business to ensure financial viability of the sector and attract investments, promote transparency, consistency and predictability in regulatory approaches across jurisdictions. It will further facilitate competition, efficiency in operations and improvement in quality of supply of electricity. These holistic amendments to Power Tariff Policy which complement schemes like UDAY will ensure the realization of Hon'ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi's vision of 24X7 affordable power for all. . . Dear Annie: You must know that for every letter that you get, you only hear half of the story. I read the letter from "Wife on the Outside," who said her husband talks to his mother negatively about her. I hope that my wife reads that and follows your advice to go to counseling. I am a loving husband and father, and tired of accusations of disloyalty. I love my wife. When my mother asks me how she's doing and my answer is, "She is very unhappy," I am not being disloyal. I am being truthful. But my wife doesn't like it. My wife drinks a lot of wine in the evening. When she is no longer sober, she becomes nasty to the point where she is unbearable. She refused to go for counseling, so I went alone. My counselor recommended that I attend Al-Anon, and I plan to go back soon. My wife does not consider herself an alcoholic. If there is any way you can help convince her to get counseling, I would be very grateful. -- Suffering Husband Dear Suffering: Your wife didn't write to us, and we are unlikely to convince her of anything, since she is unwilling to admit she has a problem. Our advice is for you: First, please stop telling your mother that your wife is unhappy. While we know that Mom can be a source of support, your marital problems are not really her business. If your wife considers it "disloyal," then you must stop confiding in Mom. If you need to talk to someone, go back to your counselor. Second, we hope you will return to Al-Anon meetings and learn the limits of what you can do in this situation and how you can help yourself cope. Living with someone who abuses alcohol can be both difficult and exhausting. We'll be thinking of you. Passion still aflame Dear Annie: I read your column every day, and I've been finding myself feeling sorrier and sorrier for women in their 40s and 50s. So many letters are about men who can't anymore and women who don't want to anymore. The message seems to be that sex has to end the minute a woman hits menopause. And that's absolutely not true! Last week, I had lunch with two women who have been my friends since high school. We are all in our early 70s, and every one of us agreed: Sex has been better in the last 15 years than ever before. Come on, women! So our bodies don't look as awesome as they used to. So our sweethearts are a bit flabby. If two people love each other, they should still enjoy giving and taking pleasure. And, take it from us three women, you'll look years younger with that glow in your cheeks and that sparkle in your eyes. -- Old Broads in Vermont Dear Vermont: Whatever they are putting in the water up there, you ought to bottle it. Bless you for pointing out that loving someone makes the effort worthwhile. (Annies Mailbox is written by Kathy Mitchell and Marcy Sugar, longtime editors of the Ann Landers column. Today's column is adapted from one in 2009. Email questions to anniesmailbox@creators.com or write to Annie's Mailbox, c/o Creators Syndicate, 737 Third St., Hermosa Beach, Calif. 90254.) Cabinet approves policy on Promotion of City Compost . . The Union Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has given its approval for a Policy on Promotion of City Compost. . . Under the policy, a provision has been made for Market development assistance of Rs. 1500 per tonne of city compost for scaling up production and consumption of the product. Market development assistance would lower MRP of city compost for farmers. Compost from city garbage would not only provide carbon and primary/secondary nutrients to soil but also help in keeping the city clean. Eco-Mark standard for City Compost would ensure that environment friendly quality product reaches the farmers. . . Composting can reduce the volume of waste to landfill/dumpsite by converting the waste into useful by-products. This also prevents production of harmful greenhouse gases (especially methane) and toxic material that pollutes groundwater apart from polluting the environment. City Waste composting would also generate employment in urban areas. . . Fertilizer companies and marketing entities will also co-market City Compost with chemical fertilizers through their dealers' network. The companies will also adopt villages for promoting the use of compost. Government Departments and Public Sector undertakings will also use City Compost for their horticulture and related uses. . . Concerned Ministry/Department will carry out IEC campaigns to educate farmers on the benefits of city compost and will take steps to increase setting up of compost plants across all States. The Agricultural Extension Machineries including KVKs of ICAR will also make special efforts in this regard. Agriculture Universities and KVKs will also take up field demonstration activities using City compost for which D/o Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmers Welfare will assign targets to them. . . A joint mechanism will be set up by Department of Fertilizers, Ministry of Urban Development and Department of Agriculture to monitor and facilitate availability of adequate quantity of City Compost at terms mutually agreeable between compost manufacturers and Fertilizer Marketing companies. They will also be authorised to resolve any co-ordination related issue that may arise. . . Initially, marketing and promotion of city compost is proposed to be done through the existing fertilizer companies. In due course, compost manufacturers and other marketing entities recognized by the concerned State Government may also be included for the purpose with the approval of Department of Fertilisers. The market development assistance shall be routed through the entity which is marketing it. . . EPCES Delegation of SEZs Meet Commerce Minister . . A Delegation of Export Promotion Council for EOUs and SEZs (EPCES) led by Shri P.C. Nambiar, Chairman, EPCES had met Mrs. Nirmala Sitharaman, Honble Minister of State for Commerce & Industry on January 19, 2016 for resolving the issues of EOUs and SEZs. EPCES delegation comprised of senior representatives of Reliance Industries Jamnagar SEZ, Adani Port & SEZ, Tata Steel SEZ, DLF Ltd., Serum Institute of India Ltd, P.P. Jewellers, Phoenix Infocity, J. Matadee Free Trade Zone, ION Kharadi Panchshil Group. . . Initiating discussions, Shri P.C. Nambiar, Chairman, EPCES informed that Imposition of MAT/DDT on SEZs has dented the investor friendly image of SEZs, created uncertainty in the minds of foreign & domestic investors and has adversely affected the growth, investments, employment and exports from SEZs in India and resulted in loss of valuable foreign exchange earning of the country. He requested that MAT should be totally withdrawn or at least reduced to its original rate of 7.5%. . . Mrs. Nirmala Sitharaman, Minister of State for Commerce & Industry informed that due to imposition of MAT/DDT there has been slowdown in SEZ sector in terms of growth in SEZs. Ministry of Commerce & Industry is in the process of identifying the reasons for this slowdown in SEZ Sector. The Minister assured the members of the Delegation that Ministry of Commerce & Industry has already taken up this issue with Ministry of Finance. . . As regards Proposal for abolition of all Direct Tax Benefits for SEZs not operationalized before April, 2017, Shri P.C. Nambiar, informed that Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) is considering this proposal. . . In case, this proposal for abolition of all Direct Tax Benefits for SEZs not operationalized before April, 2017 is also implemented, this will further dent the investor friendly image of SEZs and weaken the SEZ Scheme further. It was requested to extend the Sunset Clause on SEZs upto 2023. The Commerce Minister informed that the issue has already been taken up with Finance Minister to remove the Sunset Class on SEZs. Nasscom has also taken up this issue. . . Commerce Minister Ms. Nirmala Sitharaman also assured the delegation to look into the matter raised by them regarding Preferential Rates of FTAs to import from SEZs by DTA importer use of land in Non-Processing Area, and Dual use of land in Non-Processing Area. . . Ex-post-facto approval on the approach adopted by India at the Tenth Ministerial Conference of the WTO held in Nairobi, Kenya during 15-19 December 2015 . . The Union Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has given its ex-post facto approval for the approach adopted by India at the Tenth Ministerial Conference of the WTO held in Nairobi, Kenya during 15-19 December 2015. . . Background . . The outcomes of the Conference, referred to as the 'Nairobi Package' include Ministerial Decisions on agriculture, cotton and issues related to least developed countries (LDCs). These cover a Special Safeguard Mechanism (SSM) for developing countries, public stockholding for food security purposes, a commitment to abolish export subsidies for farm exports and measures related to cotton. Decisions were also made regarding preferential treatment to LDCs in the area of services and the criteria for determining whether exports from LDCs may benefit from trade preferences. A Ministerial Declaration was also adopted. . . In the run-up to the Nairobi Conference, it became clear that the Conference would determine the future of the Doha Round of trade negotiations. While the Round is very important for greater integration of developing countries in the global trading system, a few developed countries were strongly opposed to the continuation of the Doha Development Agenda (DDA). India took the stand that the DDA must continue after the Nairobi Conference and no new issues must be introduced into the WTO agenda until the DDA has been completed. The Nairobi Ministerial Declaration acknowledges that members "have different views" on how to address the future of the Doha Round negotiations but noted the "strong commitment of all Members to advance negotiations on the remaining Doha issues." . . In view of the reluctance of developed countries to agree to continue the Doha Development Agenda post-Nairobi, India negotiated and secured a re-affirmative Ministerial Decision on Public Stockholding for Food Security Purposes honouring both the Bali Ministerial and General Council Decisions. The decision commits Members to engage constructively in finding a permanent solution to this issue. . . Similarly, India negotiated a Ministerial Decision on another very important issue which recognizes that developing countries will have the right to have recourse to an agricultural Special Safeguard Mechanism (SSM) as envisaged in the Doha mandate. Members will continue to negotiate the mechanism in dedicated sessions of the Committee on Agriculture in Special Session. The WTO General Council has been mandated to regularly review the progress of these negotiations. This is a crucial decision in view of the differing views about the future of the Doha Round. . . Members also agreed to the elimination of agricultural export subsidies subject to the preservation of special and differential treatment for developing countries such as a longer phase-out period for transportation and marketing subsidies for exporting agricultural products. The Ministerial Decision also contains disciplines to ensure that other export policies are not used as a disguised form of subsidies. These disciplines include terms to. limit the benefits of financing support to agriculture exporters, rules on state enterprises engaging in agriculture trade, and disciplines to ensure that food aid does not negatively affect domestic production. Developing countries have been given a longer time to implement these rules. . . Another Ministerial decision extends the relevant provision to prevent 'evergreening' of patents in the pharmaceuticals sector. This decision would help in maintaining affordable as well as accessible supply of generic medicines. . . India supported outcomes on issues of interest to LDCs including enhanced preferential rules of origin for LDCs and preferential treatment for LDC services providers. India already provides substantial preferences in these areas to LDCs. . . Another area under negotiation in Nairobi dealt with the rules on fisheries subsidies. Like India, several other countries had strong reservations on this issue due to the lack of clarity. This was in tune with India's position. There was no outcome in this area of the negotiations. A group of 53 WTO members, including both developed and developing countries, also agreed on a timetable for implementing a deal to eliminate tariffs on 201 Information Technology products. Duty-free market access to the markets of the members eliminating tariffs on these products will be available to all WTO members. Though not a party to the Agreement, its benefits will also be available to India. . . India signs Financing Agreement with World Bank for US$ 250 million for Bihar Kosi Basin Development Project . . The Financing Agreement for World Bank (IDA) assistance of US$ 250 million for Bihar Kosi Basin Development Project was signed between Government of India and the World Bank on January 20, 2016 at New Delhi. . . The Financing Agreement was signed by Mr. Raj Kumar, Joint Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs on behalf of Government of India and Mr. Onno Ruhl, Country Director in India, on behalf of the World Bank. The Project Agreement was signed by Mr. Shishir Sinha, Development Commissioner, on behalf of Government of Bihar. Ms. Aparna Bhatia, Director (MI), DEA anchored the ceremony held at North Block, New Delhi. Representatives from State Government and the World Bank, among others, were present. . . The objective of the project is to enhance resilience to floods and increase agricultural production and productivity in the targeted districts in the Kosi River Basin, and to enhance Bihars capacity to respond promptly and effectively to an eligible crisis or emergency. . . The primary beneficiaries will be rural producers and households in the Kosi River Basin who are regularly exposed to floods. This includes farmers who lost their agricultural lands due to the silt deposits brought by the 2008 Kosi River Flood as well as farmers in the project area that are currently without access to irrigation and other technologies, improved agricultural practices and an adequate transport network. . . Project Components: The project has five components: (i) Improving Flood Risk Management; (ii) Enhancing Agricultural Productivity and Competitiveness; (iii) Augmenting Connectivity; (iv) Contingent Emergency Response; and (v) Implementation Support. . . It is a loan for an implementation period of 5 years. Government of Bihar is the implementing agency. . . Memorandum of Understanding between India and United Kingdom in the field of Public Administration and Governance Reforms . . The Union Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has given its ex-post facto approval for the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed in November, 2015 between India, and United Kingdom for Cooperation in Public Administration and Governance Reforms. . . The form of co-operation under the MoU will be in areas like sharing good governance practices in public administration, User led service design, Reducing bureaucracy in service delivery, Government Process Re-engineering, Building and developing staff capability, Public Grievance Redress Mechanism, Local Government Reforms, Reforms towards strengthening of social security, Collaboration in strategies for promotion of ethics in Government, Collaboration between Government and Industry on staff management, Mechanisms for public engagement, Crisis and Disaster Management and Digital transformation of Government. . . A Joint Working Group on Public Administration and Governance will be responsible for implementation of the MoU. . . The MoU will help in understanding the system of customer oriented public service delivery in UK with reference to rapidly changing environments in the area of public service management and enable in replicating, adapting and innovating some of the best practices and processes in the Indian Public Service Delivery System, leading to improved public service delivery in India. . . The First Joint Working Group (JWG) meeting under the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) is scheduled to be held later this month in London. . . Background:. . Provision of Citizen-Centric Online Services is the foundation of an efficient public administration system. It leads to transparency and accountability in the governance and fosters equitable growth. . . Government of India has taken up a goal of quantum shift in online delivery of Government Services across the country. This aims to further Government's efforts at revamping of Public Administration system, Public Grievance Redress Mechanism, ushering in e-Governance, Digital India, etc., more so in the context of the goal of 'Minimum Government with Maximum Governance' through e-Governance based Citizen Centric End-to-End On-line Services. . . As part of its efforts in seeking international collaboration for initiatives in Good Governance and Administrative reforms, DARPG has so far entered into bilateral MoU with China, Malaysia, Singapore and with Brazil and South Africa (trilateral). The recent MoU with United Kingdom is a step in that direction as UK also ranks high in the UN E-Government Survey. . . More than 600 delegates to participate in the 19th National Conference on e-Governance in Nagpur beginning tomorrow . . More than 600 delegates are expected to participate in the 19th National Conference on e-Governance beginning in Nagpur, Maharashtra tomorrow. This will include 150 delegates from Maharashtra and 250 from other States including as many as 50 participants from the Private Sector. Addressing a press conference in Nagpur today on the eve of the two-day Conference, Smt. Usha Sharma, Additional Secretary, Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) said students and faculty members of local Engineering and Technology Institutes will also hold discussions during the six plenary sessions over the next two days. . . The Conference will include an Exhibition and brainstorming sessions by subject experts. Four books on e-Governance will be released during the inaugural session. The Union Minister for Road Transport & Highways and Shipping Shri Nitin Gadkari will be the Chief Guest while the Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh will be the Guest of Honour at the Inaugural Function. Secretary, Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) Shri Devendra Chaudhry will also address the Inaugural Session. . . Smt. Usha Sharma said the National Awards for e-Governance for the Year 2015-16 will be presented during the Valedictory Session of the Conference. Eighteen awards, including ten Gold and eight Silver under various categories, will be given away by the Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Shri Devendra Fadnavis on Friday, January 22, 2016. . . Lauding the host city Nagpur, Smt. Usha Sharma said it is a matter of great pride to hold this prestigious conference. Maharashtra State Government took the initiative for hosting what would be the first National e-Governance Conference in the state, she added. Smt. Usha Sharma expressed the hope that the clean and green city of Nagpur will be a strong contender among the 98 cities vying for inclusion in the first stage of the Smart Cities project. . . The two-day Conference is being organized by the DARPG and Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), Government of India in association with the Government of Maharashtra. . . PSLV-C31 Successfully Launches India's Fifth Navigation Satellite IRNSS-1E . . ISRO's Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, PSLV-C31, successfully launched the 1425 kg IRNSS-1E, the fifth satellite in the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) today morning (January 20, 2016) from Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR, Sriharikota. This is the thirty second consecutively successful mission of PSLV and the eleventh in its 'XL' configuration. . . After the PSLV-C31 lift-off at 0931 hrs (9:31 am) IST from the Second Launch Pad with the ignition of the first stage, the subsequent important flight events, namely, strap-on ignitions and separations, first stage separation, second stage ignition, heat-shield separation, second stage separation, third stage ignition and separation, fourth stage ignition and satellite injection, took place as planned. After a flight of about 18 minutes 43 seconds, IRNSS-1E Satellite was injected to an elliptical orbit of 282.4 km X 20,655.3 km inclined at an angle of 19.21 degree to the equator (very close to the intended orbit) and successfully separated from the PSLV fourth stage. After injection, the solar panels of IRNSS-1E were deployed automatically. ISRO's Master Control Facility (at Hassan, Karnataka) took over the control of the satellite. In the coming days, four orbit manoeuvres will be conducted from Master Control Facility to position the satellite in the Geosynchronous Orbit at 111.75 deg East longitude with 28.1 deg inclination. . . IRNSS-1E is the fifth of the seven satellites constituting the space segment of the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System. IRNSS-1A, 1B, 1C and ID, the first four satellites of the constellation, were successfully launched by PSLV on July 02, 2013, April 04, 2014, October 16, 2014 and March 28, 2015 respectively. All the four satellites are functioning satisfactorily from their designated orbital positions. . . IRNSS is an independent regional navigation satellite system designed to provide position information in the Indian region and 1500 km around the Indian mainland. IRNSS would provide two types of services, namely, Standard Positioning Services (SPS) - provided to all users - and Restricted Services (RS), provided to authorised users. . . A number of ground stations responsible for the generation and transmission of navigation parameters, satellite ranging and monitoring, etc., have been established in eighteen locations across the country. In the coming months, the remaining two satellites of this constellation, namely, IRNSS-1F and IG, are scheduled to be launched by PSLV, thereby completing the entire IRNSS constellation. . . Six laning of Aurangabad Bihar/Jharkhand Border BarwaAdda section on NH-2 in Bihar and Jharkhand . . The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, has given its approval for development of the six laning of Aurangabad Bihar/Jharkhand Border BarwaAdda section on National Highway-2 in Bihar and Jharkhand. . . This work will be under the National Highways Development Project (NHDP) Phase-V. The approval is in BOT (Toll) mode on Design, Build, Finance, Operate and Transfer (BOT/DBFOT) basis. . . The cost is estimated to be Rs.4918.48 crore including cost of land acquisition, resettlement and rehabilitation and other pre-construction activities. The total length of the road will be approximately 222 kms. . . The main object of the project is to expedite the improvement of infrastructure in Bihar and Jharkhand and also in reducing the time and cost of travel for traffic, particularly heavy traffic, plying on the Aurangabad Bihar/Jharkhand Border BarwaAdda section on National Highway-2 in Bihar and Jharkhand. . . The development of this stretch will also help in uplifting the socio-economic condition of the concerned regions of the State and would also increase employment potential for local labourers for project activities. The project is covered in the region of Aurangabad Bihar/Jharkhand Border BarwaAdda section in Bihar and Jharkhand. . . Swapping of Airports Authority of India land at Mumbai with land of Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai for relocation of Cemetery . . The Union Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has given its approval for swapping of Airports Authority of Indias (AAI) land out of land demised to M/s. Mumbai International Airport Pvt. Ltd. (MIAL) at CSIA measuring 2960.90 sqm. with equivalent land of Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) for relocation of Cemetery. . . Swapping of the land with MCGM will enable M/s MIAL to complete the development work of CSIA, Mumbai. Further, shifting of the cemetery to new location will result in its operationalization. Since both the AAI land and the private land proposed to be swapped are of the same size and are adjacent to each other, as also the circle rate of the land is same, there is no financial implication on the Government. However, the cost on account of mutation of the alternate land after swapping shall be borne by M/s MIAL. . . Work starts on Eastern Peripheral Expressway . . The work of Eastern Peripheral Expressway which was held up due to land acquisition problems has kick-started on the Palwal side after the release of enhanced compensation by the NHAI as awarded by the Arbitral Tribunal. The farmers are now handing over the land to NHAI in Palwal district. Chairman, . . Chairman, NHAI is reviewing the Project with NHAI officers on almost a daily basis.He has also taken a meeting with all DCs/DMs on 05.01.2016. Another meeting with Commissioner Rohtak, Meerut and Gurgaon & DMs/DCs of Sonepat, Baghpat, Ghaziabad, Gautam Budh Nagar, Faridabad and Palwal districts is to be held today. A meeting of all 5 Contractors M/s Sadbhav Engineering Ltd., M/s Jai Prakash Associates Ltd., M/s Ashoka Buildcon Ltd., M/s Oriental Structural Engineers Pvt. Ltd. and M/s Gayatri Projects Ltd. has also been held in NHAI headquarter and the Chairman, NHAI has impressed upon them the need to plan ahead with military-precision so as to complete the project in 400 days as desired by Honble Prime Minister. All Contractors have mobilized their resources including manpower and machinery. . . Chief Secretaries of Uttar Pradesh and Haryana have again been requested to ensure that there is no obstruction to NHAI work. It is now likely that the problems in other areas will also be resolved very soon. Further, to monitor the project on real time basis, a web based APP" has been developed and the photos of the running work shall be uploaded which can be viewed for monitoring by NHAI HQ. . . In the wake of the shooting threat that sent Bismarck State College into a lockdown last week, school officials are evaluating campus security. They say some of the procedures in place before the lockdown worked well in action Thursday. Law enforcement arrived, BSC's crisis management team assembled, alerts went to students and employees implemented what they learned during emergency trainings. "It was a perfect day because no one got hurt, and the perpetrator got caught," President Larry Skogen said. But officials have already identified areas to improve. For one, they now realize they need a plan for students with special needs such as diabetes, Skogen said. Thursday's lockdown took four hours, during which time those students couldn't necessarily access their medical supplies in another location on campus. "We need to think through that," Skogen said. Without being told, staff stepped up and contacted the families of students with special needs to ensure they would be picked up promptly as buildings were cleared, Campus Safety and Security Manager Duane Johnson said. BSC's crisis management team, which consists of 15 administrators and staff from a variety of departments, plans to debrief Friday. Johnson said they will discuss communication efforts, law enforcement's response and visitors on campus. Other items warrant discussion too, including whether to prepare a meal post-crisis for students who reside on campus, he said. Plus, some staff and faculty in a different building from their offices needed a way to get their car keys so they could leave campus. Meanwhile, law enforcement continue to investigate the incident, which started when the FBI got word that someone posted a tweet threatening to shoot up a school library. The FBI traced the phone used to make the tweet to the BSC campus. A 16-year-old suspect was taken into custody that afternoon after he was stopped headed north on U.S. Highway 83. An FBI spokesperson on Tuesday declined to release the name of the suspect or provide additional details about the lockdown, citing the ongoing investigation. As soon as Johnson learned of the threat Thursday morning from the FBI, he took the first steps to launch a response. "I called the Bismarck Police Department and asked them to send several units up here, just in case," he said. Johnson has been at BSC only 18 months, but he has relationships with a number of local officers having worked for other law enforcement agencies for 15 years. He said he knew the shift commander on duty with the Bismarck Police Department, who trusted that he was serious about the threat and dispatched officers right away. Johnson also called the school's crisis management team together and sent BSC's other licensed police officer to the library, which was targeted in the tweet. He joined that officer soon after and served as a liason between local law enforcement and the school through the lockdown. The team sent alerts to students' phones and emails and posted updates on social media, attempting to squash false rumors that shots were fired. After the all-clear was issued, Skogen sent an email to students outlining the day's events. He said he knew they had a terrible day and wanted to let them know what happened beyond the short alerts they received during the incident. During the past year, Johnson has gone building by building offering active shooter training to employees. Some also have received training in how to handle bomb threats, as well as first aid, CPR and automated external defibrillators. The crisis management team met as recently as December to conduct a drill for a potential emergency. "By the time we faced a real-world scenario, the team had sat around the table and made these decisions," Skogen said. Both he and Johnson said they felt better prepared for another emergency after handling Thursday's event. "You couldn't have planned it any better for a learning tool," Johnson said. Mark Hart, the hedge fund manager whose bets against US subprime mortgages and European sovereign debt proved prescient, said China should weaken its currency by more than 50 percent this year. A one-off devaluation would allow policy makers to "draw a line in the sand" at a more appropriate level for the yuan, easing pressure on China's foreign-exchange reserves and removing an incentive for capital outflows, according to Hart, who's been betting against the currency since at least 2011. China should devalue before its $3.3 trillion hoard of reserves shrinks much ... Chennai-based Bachi Shoes, in which Tata International holds 76 per cent equity stake, launched FeetScience on Wednesday, shoes meant exclusively for the domestic market. This is the second brand from the Bachi Shoes stable in the last five years; the company is among the countrys largest suppliers of footwear to some of the worlds biggest brands such as Clarks, Elefanten, Kickers, Stone and Bones and others. Priced between Rs 800 to Rs 3,000, the FeetScience line of shoes will be retailed online and compete with international labels such as Nike, Adidas, Skechers and others. In 2010, Bachi Shoes had launched another brand, Language, both as a luxury footwear brand and a flagship retail store in Chennai. The newly launched FeetScience however, will be marketed mostly through online marketplaces. For this the company is borrowing a leaf out its parent companys copybook. Tata International holds the license for Aerosoles, an international footwear brand, which it launched in India in November 2014. It currently sells on e-commerce platforms and select retail outlets. Bachi Shoes plans to do the same with FeetScience, hoping to reach out to shoe buyers across the country. The company that logged in sales of around Rs 258 crore in 2014-15 and is planning to close the current fiscal with revenues of around Rs 300 crore, says it will invest in four new lines of production. It says that it is investing close to Rs 40 crore in capacity building initiatives across its plants in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. Bachi Shoes is hoping to gain a foothold in the 2.1 billion-strong Indian footwear market, as estimated by research firm, ICRA. Shoes are big business in India. The country comes in third after China and the US in shoe sales. However per capita consumption figures are still low. For India it is 1.66 a year while the global average is 3 and it is 6 a year, for developed countries. Companies spot a huge scope for growth and Bachi Shoes too is banking on that. V Muthukumaran, chief executive officer, Bachi Shoes Ltd, said that the company has set a target of growing around 15-20 per cent in the next three years. While exports will continue to be the dominant contributor to the companys bottomline, he hopes domestic brands will play a significant part in future growth too. According to the report by ICRA, India is the second largest global producer of footwear after China, accounting for 9 per cent of the global annual production. The bulk of its production is consumed at home. The report says, India annually produces close to 2.1 billion pairs of shoes of which, about 90 per cent are consumed internally while remaining are exported primarily to European nations. Muthukumaran says that at present exports account for around 99 per cent of the companys sales revenues. The biggest buyers for Bachi Shoes are in Europe, especially in the UK. The company over the next five years wants the domestic market to contribute at least 20 per cent of its total sales. In value terms, the ICRA report says, the Indian footwear sector is estimated at Rs 50,000 crore, the domestic market accounts for Rs 32,000 crore while exports make up the rest with Rs 18,000 crore. The large domestic base and the potential it holds out are akin to magnets for global brands. And several, such as Charles Allen & Keith, Skechers and others, have been drawn into the country to set up retail outlets in recent years. Plus there are many brands that have thrown in their lot with the rapidly growing and bustling online marketplaces. However, shoes online is a tough task. For one, customers prefer to walk in a shoe before making a purchase and secondly, shoe sizes vary according to styles and brands. Getting customers to report the right size can be quite a challenge. Muthukumaran says that would be one of the big challenges for the brand, but he is confident that the Tata name backing the brand will help. Customers looking for quality and comfort, he believes will pick them up and keep coming back for seconds. For first timers, there is always the reassurance of the brand being backed by the Tatas. Apart from being available online, the brand will be sold directly to schools and other relevant institutions. FeetScience emphasises three core attributes Scientific, Energetic and Empathetic, said Muthukumaran. He added that the target is to sell at least 500,000 pairs per year in three years, while as a company the target is to grow at around 15-20 per cent. The company says that it currently has the capacity to produce 10,000 pairs of shoes a day. This will go up to around 16,000-17,000 pairs a day. Founded in 1974 by former Parliamentarian, P S Rajagopal Naidu, Bachi Shoes began life as a tannery, manufacturing and exporting finished leather. It was only as recently as 2002 that the company got into shoe manufacturing and started supplying to global labels. Over the next decade or so, the brand wants to reinvent itself one more time, from being a supplier to the premium labels to creating one of its own. Now, those are big shoes to fill in. Traditionally, the third quarter is weak for information technology (IT) services companies due to the large numbers of holidays in North America and Europe. Balanced against that, the rupee fell significantly in the December quarter and a weaker rupee is supposedly good for IT companies. Quite a few companies have released their results and forecast, including four of the majors, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys, Wipro and HCL Tech. All of them have complained about a difficult operating environment. TCS also had to cope with specific exposure to Chennai, where the floods proved massively disruptive. So, it failed to meet expectations. It is very unlikely that TCS will be able to match last year's performance where it registered 15.5 per cent revenue growth in 2014-15 over 2013-14. Wipro also had significant Chennai exposure but was not as badly hit. Infosys did better than TCS, at least in perceptions. However it had very low revenue growth (less than seven per cent) in 2014-15. Both Infosys and TCS will end up, with full-year revenues that are approximately the same. Both will also land net profit margins in the region of 22-23 per cent of revenues and so their profits should also be similar. However, Infosys has seen its share price up by nine per cent in the past year and the share has gained since the results were declared. TCS has seen its share price down by nine per cent and it's lost ground since the Q3 results were declared. However, TCS trades at a higher PE of 22x, while Infy is around 17x. Wipro and HCL Tech have more or less met market expectations, which were low-key. Wipro's performance was slightly below consensus, while HCL Tech was marginally over consensus. Both stocks saw selling. But, the results were released into a market, which was plunging because sentiment had collapsed. So, it's tough to know what the actual impact of the results were. There is an existential problem for Indian IT companies now. A falling rupee did not noticeably boost revenues. The old commodity model of labour arbitrage appears to be outmoded. Companies can no longer rely on volume-based earnings, with stable maintenance contracts, and enable expansion of revenue through the hiring of more manpower. The cloud-based era requires much less in the way of that sort of labour-intensive support and it does require more creative solutions, which Indian IT firms might struggle to deliver. They need to upgrade their skills and become smaller, smarter organisations. IT services has to re-invent itself. Perhaps these firms can seek domestic business with the government making encouraging noises about Digital India and Smart Cities. Alternatively, they need to find new revenues streams. Reinvention will take time and the winners may not be the current market leaders. In fact, new players will almost certainly, come to the fore. It is difficult for the investor or the trader to pick those future champions. In the meantime, investors could continue to hold a basket of IT stocks on the shotgun principle - some of those stocks will be winners. They should also see Indian IT as a reasonable way to get exposure to the US economy and the US is one of the few regions which is not doing too badly. The author is a technical and equity analyst Pitching for significant changes in norms governing venture capital (VCs) and private equity (PE) funds, a Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) panel has recommended favourable tax regime and steps to bring long-term funds from domestic and foreign investors. Apart from calling for favourable taxation framework and ways to unlock domestic capital pools, Infosys founder Narayana Murthy-led panel has also recommended promoting onshore fund management and reforming the current Alternative Investment Fund (AIF) regime. The report from the 21-member panel says streamlining of regulatory issues can see AIFs attracting flows up to two per cent of the countrys gross domestic product (GDP). The report says a thriving AIF segment is critical if the governments start-up policy has to succeed. Last week, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a slew of initiatives, including three-year tax and compliance breaks, to support start-ups and entrepreneurs. Among the key recommendations are introduction of a securities transaction tax (STT) at an appropriate rate on all distributions of AIFs and elimination of withholding taxes. Post STT, investors be provided a tax-free income from AIFs. Reforming the AIF regulatory framework for venture capital, private equity and angel capital will play a key role in success of the start-up policy, says the report. The capital regulator has sought comments from the public till February 10 on the issue. The report suggests Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) should clarify that investors in the holding companies are not subject to the indirect transfer provisions. Such measures will help attract foreign investors to India-centric PEs and VCs. Further, the committee advocates for parity in STT for PE and VC investments (including AIFs registered with Sebi) with the taxation of investments in listed securities. The tax suggestions with respect to making pass through effective without a 10 per cent leakage, non taxation of capital invested as deemed income, clarity on indirect transfers at fund level and safe harbour effectiveness for Indian management teams of AIFs is much needed. Further, other recommendations on taxability of income of AIF as capital gains as against business income will avoid unnecessary litigation and build in more certainty, said Girish Vanvari, partner and national head of tax, KPMG in India. Among the members on the panel were Sanjay Nayar, CEO of KKR, Ajay Piramal chairman of Piramal Group, Manish Chokhani, chairman, TPG Growth and Manish Kejriwal, managing partner, Kedaara Capital. The committee also recommended that the investment gains of AIFs should be deemed capital gains and losses incurred by AIFs should be available for set-off to their investors. The report aims to simplify the tax and regulatory implications of AIFs and the suggestions pave ways for the fund managers activities to be more practical and easy. There were multiple practical challenges on taxation of all the categories of AIFs which have been presented effectively in the report and practical solution are also offered, said Hemal Mehta, senior director, Deloitte. According to the report, large capital pools from pensions, insurance, DFIs, banks, and charitable institutions which currently constitute only around 10 per cent of the total private equity and venture capital invested in India annually, should contribute more to develop the AIF industry. The AIF industry has not been able to take-off well thus far. Till September in the year 2015 (three quarters), AIFs invested less than Rs 6,000 crore. AIFs investment is not even one-tenth of mutual funds. The venture capital and private equity industry has contributed considerably to Indias economic growth. Between 2001 and 2015, venture capital and private equity of more than $103 billion was invested in Indian companies. These investments were made in more than 3,100 companies across 12 major sectors, including those critical for the countrys development, says the report. The committee, which was set up in March 2015 by Sebi, met four times before submitting its report. As the field of Alternative Investment Funds has a wide canvas, the committee will meet again to discuss and make recommendations in other areas like the novel instrument of crowd-funding, business development companies and related topics, said Narayana Murthy in the report. Vice-President M. Hamid Ansari will pay an official visit to Brunei Darussalam from 1-3 February at the invitation of HRH Crown Prince Mohamed Bolkiah of Brunei Darussalam. This will be the first high level visit from India since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries in 1984. Vice President will be accompanied by a Minister of State, four Members of Parliament, senior officials and media. India and Brunei have always enjoyed close friendly and cordial relations which are marked by mutual respect and understanding on various bilateral and multilateral issues. Both countries are linked by history, culture and traditions spanning a millennium. Exchange of regular visits have added to the momentum of the relations. There is a lot of goodwill and respect for Indian professionals, particularly teachers and doctors in Brunei. Brunei is an important partner for India in ASEAN and besides contributing to our energy security, hosts a 10,000-strong Indian community HRH, the Crown Prince will host the Vice President during his visit to Brunei. VP will have an audience with His Majesty, the Sultan of Brunei; and the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade and H.E. the Speaker of the Legislative Council will call on the Vice President. Vice President Ansari will also address the Indian Community at a reception and deliver an address at the University of Brunei Darussalam (UBD). In his meetings with the Brunei leaders, Vice President Ansari will discuss bilateral issues/cooperation pertaining to civil aviation, trade and investment, hydrocarbon and natural gas, information and communication and space cooperation, cooperation in ASEAN, EAS and other multilateral fora. MOUs in the field of Health and Defence co-operation are likely to be signed during the visit. Defence Minister Khawaja Asif has assured the National Assembly that Pakistan under no circumstances would join a military alliance against Iran. Array Asif said that 'Pakistan has the second largest Shia population in the after Iran, so how can we even think of joining an anti Shia military alliance.' Array Acknowledging the existence of fault lines between the Sunni and Shia sects, Asif stressed that the government's efforts would remain focused on promoting religious harmony, both within the country and elsewhere in the region. Array He added that the 34 nation Saudi led coalition was still evolving but it was unclear how this coalition would work and what precise role its members would be playing. Array Asif clarified several times that Pakistan would never commit its military to any alliance against another Muslim country. At least 21 people were killed and over 30 others injured as heavily-armed terrorists today stormed the Bacha Khan University in Pakistan's restive northwest Khyber- Pakhtunkhwa province and opened indiscriminate fire on the students and teachers. The death toll is expected to rise as several injured are being treated in nearby hospitals. The security forces have neutralised all the terrorists. Following are the top developments in the terrorist attack today on the Bacha Khan University, located in Charsadda, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Two gunmen have reportedly been killed. 1. 3000 students enrolled in the university 2. According to Geo TV, one chemistry professor killed after being shot in head 3. Evacuation of campus currently on 4. Terrorists entered form the back-gate as the security at the front-gate was high 5. Two guards were injured at the gate 6. Extensive firing continues in the area and heavy contingents of elite force have been deployed, including aerial support given by Army choppers 7. Pashtun independence activist Bacha Khan Baba died on January 20, 1988. It is his death anniversary today 8. Helicopters called in to assist the operation 9. Panic stricken parents have gathered outside the University 10. Five persons, who suffered minor injuries, have been shifted to District Headquarters Hospital, Charsadda, for treatment 11. Army contingents have also arrived at the scene and firing is continuing 12. According to the Dawn, a rescued student claims that 60 to 70 students had been shot in the head by the attackers. The student added that the attack is reminiscent of the Army Public School Peshawar attack in December 16, 2014. 13. More than 50 injured, security forces say. Injured being taken to hospital, Geo Tv reports. 14. Nine injured at the hospital 15. Operation on inside and outside campus 16. No proper roads around university, only farms 17. At the time of attack, an event regarding death anniversary of Pashtun politician Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, known as Bacha Khan, was being attended by a large number of students inside the university 18. Media persons are not being allowed inside 19. Armed assailants scaled the university walls and opened fire 20. Multiple blasts were heard along with heavy gunfire 21. Pakistani journalist Talat Hussain tweets: Eyewitnesses say 'dozens killed'. Terrorists had a free hand for 50 mnts. Now terrorists are in one block 22. Talat Hussain tweets: Very serious development. Spoke to a stranded teacher who said intense firing and total chaos at campus 23. Dawn tweets: DIG Saeed Wazir says two attackers have been killed 24. Dawn tweets: Rescue officials say some 50 students have been rescued from the premises 25. Dawn tweets: An Edhi volunteer says he has seen the bodies of at least 15 persons 26. Pakistan Army helicopters are monitoring the situation from the air to provide better spatial awareness to the forces conducting the operation on ground 27. Edhi source claims 15 dead 28. University professor, Hamid Hussain, was killed in the attack 29. According to Express Tribune: The vice chancellor has said more than 3,000 students are present at the premises, while several girls are inside hostels. Members of staff also remain within the building. More than 50 students have been evacuated. 30. Death toll claims run from 15-60 killed 31. Fear of militants fleeing to nearby fields. Army troops out for search 11: 41 am (IST): Two loud blasts heard from inside the university 11: 48 am (IST): A large number worried parents have thronged the hospital looking for their children 11: 50 am (IST): Geo News reports Shakeel Farman Ali reported that 90 percent of the buildings have been cleared in the campus 11: 53 am (IST): Panic sets in inside the campus. Eye-witnesses say not enough ambulances to bring out severely injured and dead 11: 55 am (IST): Rescue officials say some 50 students have been rescued from the premises 11: 57 am (IST): Dawn tweets: 8-10 terrorists still inside the school 12: 02 pm (IST): Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif: Sacrifices made by Pakistan will not go in vain. Those who kill innocent students and civilians have no religion. 12: 03 pm (IST): 11 blasts till now 12: 05 pm (IST): According to Express Tribune: Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has claimed responsibility for the attack on Bacha Khan University. TTP commander, Omar Mansoor, said that the attack was carried out by four attackers. 12: 08 pm (IST): According to Express Tribune: Seven people have been killed in the attack so far, while casualties are feared to rise 12: 09 pm (IST): Six dead bodies recovered 12: 12 pm (IST): Asim Bajwa tweets: Two more terrorists who were firing from inside the Block cordoned by Army troops, shot & killed. Op continues 12: 14 pm (IST): Emergency declared in hospitals 12: 20 pm (IST): Asim Bajwa tweets: Snipers killed 2 more terrorists on roof top,total Terrorist killed so far 4.All buildings&roof top taken over by Army.op continues-3 12: 21 pm (IST): Total four terrorists killed so far Array 12: 28 pm (IST): Provincial minister Shaukat Yousufzai has said that over 20 people have been killed 12: 35 pm (IST): Chairman Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Imran Khan to leave for Charsadda shortly 12: 40 pm (IST): Express news: 17 dead bodies recovered 12: 45 pm (IST): President Mamnoon Hussain condemns terrorist attack 12: 48 pm (IST): clearance of university block by block continues by Army troops.No firing being heard 12: 50 pm (IST): Express Tribune reports, majority students residing in the boys hostel are dead: student 12: 57 pm (IST): DIG Mardan says: 21 people have been killed, over 30 have been injured. We fear some of the militants have fled into the nearby fields. Army troops have been sent to search for them Array 1:27 pm (IST): Express Tribune reports, 200 students evacuated so far from examination hall: K-P Public Health Engineering Minister Array 1:30 pm (IST): Express Tribune reports, Children pulled out from schools in Peshawar amid threats 1:30 pm (IST) Geo TV reports, every room is still being cleared and operation still underway. Following are the top developments in the terrorist attack today on the Bacha Khan University, located in Charsadda, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Two gunmen have reportedly been killed. According to the Pak media, around 60 to 70 students have been shot in the head. Around 90 percent of the buildings have been cleared on campus. 1. 3000 students enrolled in the university 2. According to Geo TV, one chemistry professor killed after being shot in head 3. Evacuation of campus currently on 4. Terrorists entered form the back-gate as the security at the front-gate was high 5. Two guards were injured at the gate 6. Extensive firing continues in the area and heavy contingents of elite force have been deployed, including aerial support given by Army choppers 7. Pashtun independence activist Bacha Khan Baba died on January 20, 1988. It is his death anniversary today 8. Helicopters called in to assist the operation 9. Panic stricken parents have gathered outside the University 10. Five persons, who suffered minor injuries, have been shifted to District Headquarters Hospital, Charsadda, for treatment 11. Army contingents have also arrived at the scene and firing is continuing 12. According to the Dawn, a rescued student claims that 60 to 70 students had been shot in the head by the attackers. The student added that the attack is reminiscent of the Army Public School Peshawar attack in December 16, 2014. 13. More than 50 injured, security forces say. Injured being taken to hospital, Geo Tv reports. 14. Nine injured at the hospital 15. Operation on inside and outside campus 16. No proper roads around university, only farms 17. At the time of attack, an event regarding death anniversary of Pashtun politician Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, known as Bacha Khan, was being attended by a large number of students inside the university 18. Media persons are not being allowed inside 19. Armed assailants scaled the university walls and opened fire 20. Multiple blasts were heard along with heavy gunfire 21. Pakistani journalist Talat Hussain tweets: Eyewitnesses say 'dozens killed'. Terrorists had a free hand for 50 mnts. Now terrorists are in one block 22. Talat Hussain tweets: Very serious development. Spoke to a stranded teacher who said intense firing and total chaos at campus 23. Dawn tweets: DIG Saeed Wazir says two attackers have been killed 24. Dawn tweets: Rescue officials say some 50 students have been rescued from the premises 25. Dawn tweets: An Edhi volunteer says he has seen the bodies of at least 15 persons 26. Pakistan Army helicopters are monitoring the situation from the air to provide better spatial awareness to the forces conducting the operation on ground 27. Edhi source claims 15 dead 28. University professor, Hamid Hussain, was killed in the attack 29. According to Express Tribune: The vice chancellor has said more than 3,000 students are present at the premises, while several girls are inside hostels. Members of staff also remain within the building. More than 50 students have been evacuated. 30. Death toll claims run from 15-60 killed 31. Fear of militants fleeing to nearby fields. Army troops out for search 11: 41 am (IST): Two loud blasts heard from inside the university 11: 48 am (IST): A large number worried parents have thronged the hospital looking for their children 11: 50 am (IST): Geo News reports Shakeel Farman Ali reported that 90 percent of the buildings have been cleared in the campus 11: 53 am (IST): Panic sets in inside the campus. Eye-witnesses say not enough ambulances to bring out severely injured and dead 11: 55 am (IST): Rescue officials say some 50 students have been rescued from the premises 11: 57 am (IST): Dawn tweets: 8-10 terrorists still inside the school 12: 02 pm (IST): Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif: Sacrifices made by Pakistan will not go in vain. Those who kill innocent students and civilians have no religion. 12: 03 pm (IST): 11 blasts till now 12: 05 pm (IST): According to Express Tribune: Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has claimed responsibility for the attack on Bacha Khan University. TTP commander, Omar Mansoor, said that the attack was carried out by four attackers. 12: 08 pm (IST): According to Express Tribune: Seven people have been killed in the attack so far, while casualties are feared to rise 12: 09 pm (IST): Six dead bodies recovered 12: 12 pm (IST): Asim Bajwa tweets: Two more terrorists who were firing from inside the Block cordoned by Army troops, shot & killed. Op continues 12: 14 pm (IST): Emergency declared in hospitals 12: 20 pm (IST): Asim Bajwa tweets: Snipers killed 2 more terrorists on roof top,total Terrorist killed so far 4.All buildings&roof top taken over by Army.op continues-3 12: 21 pm (IST): Total four terrorists killed so far 12: 28 pm (IST): Provincial minister Shaukat Yousufzai has said that over 20 people have been killed 12: 35 pm (IST): Chairman Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Imran Khan to leave for Charsadda shortly 12: 40 pm (IST): Express news: 17 dead bodies recovered 12: 45 pm (IST): President Mamnoon Hussain condemns terrorist attack 12: 48 pm (IST): clearance of university block by block continues by Army troops.No firing being heard 12: 50 pm (IST): Express Tribune reports, majority students residing in the boys hostel are dead: student 12: 57 pm (IST): DIG Mardan says: 21 people have been killed, over 30 have been injured. We fear some of the militants have fled into the nearby fields. Army troops have been sent to search for them This is a developing story and will be updated as we receive updates. State Republican leaders said the partys convention this spring is likely to feature several competitive races but the important thing is to come together after the dust settles. Roz Leighton, executive director of the North Dakota Republican Party, told a crowd of about 15 party members Tuesday at the Bismarck Municipal Country Club that the party is in strong position to continue its dominance. The party has competitive races for governor and state auditor so far and could potentially have more than one candidate seeking the nomination for insurance commissioner, according to Leighton, who said shes also heard of potential GOP challengers for the offices of state superintendent of public instruction and U.S. House, although none have publicly announced yet. Leighton said the partys in a better position than the Democratic-NPL Party, which has had no statewide candidates announce so far. When you dont have Democrats to fight with, you can sometimes fight with yourselves, Leighton said. North Dakota Republican Party Chairman Kelly Armstrong stressed the importance of coming together after the state convention, scheduled for April 1-3 in Fargo. The party expects to have nearly 2,000 delegates at the convention. Were going to fight, and were going to debate, Armstrong said. Republican hold two-thirds majorities in both legislative chambers and holds every elected office in the state Capitol and two of three seats in the congressional delegation. Leighton said its important the party doesnt get complacent or weaken itself with any infighting but continues to try and win more offices. She said the party is also working to improve its voter identification efforts across the state to better target likely voters. We have identified some areas where we can pick up seats, Leighton said. Robert Haider, executive director of the North Dakota Democratic-NPL Party, said candidates will begin to come forward in the next few weeks. We have some folks that are committed. Well certainly have some top-tier statewide candidates," said Haider, who declined to give names but characterized the multiple candidates as well-known individuals. Following are the top developments in the terrorist attack today on the Bacha Khan University, located in Charsadda, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, where around 3000 students are enrolled. Charsadda is a district in Pakistan's northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and has been a scene of several militant attacks during the past decade. 1. 3000 students enrolled in the university 2. Five injured in the attack so far, have been rushed to hospital 3. According to Geo TV, one chemistry professor killed after being shot in head 4. Evacuation of campus currently on 5. Terrorists entered form the back-gate as the security at the front-gate was high 6. Two guards were injured at the gate 7. Extensive firing continues in the area and heavy contingents of elite force have been deployed, including aerial support given by Army choppers 8. Pashtun independence activist Bacha Khan Baba died on January 20, 1988. It is his death anniversary today 9. Helicopters called in to assist the operation 10. Panic stricken parents have gathered outside the University 11. Five persons, who suffered minor injuries, have been shifted to District Headquarters Hospital, Charsadda, for treatment 12. Army contingents have also arrived at the scene and firing is continuing 13. According to the Dawn, a rescued student claims that 60 to 70 students had been shot in the head by the attackers. The student added that the attack is reminiscent of the Army Public School Peshawar attack in December 16, 2014. Following are the top developments in the terrorist attack today on the Bacha Khan University, located in Charsadda, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Charsadda is a district in Pakistan's northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and has been a scene of several militant attacks during the past decade. 1. 3000 students enrolled in the university 2. According to Geo TV, one chemistry professor killed after being shot in head 3. Evacuation of campus currently on 4. Terrorists entered form the back-gate as the security at the front-gate was high 5. Two guards were injured at the gate 6. Extensive firing continues in the area and heavy contingents of elite force have been deployed, including aerial support given by Army choppers 7. Pashtun independence activist Bacha Khan Baba died on January 20, 1988. It is his death anniversary today 8. Helicopters called in to assist the operation 9. Panic stricken parents have gathered outside the University 10. Five persons, who suffered minor injuries, have been shifted to District Headquarters Hospital, Charsadda, for treatment 11. Army contingents have also arrived at the scene and firing is continuing 12. According to the Dawn, a rescued student claims that 60 to 70 students had been shot in the head by the attackers. The student added that the attack is reminiscent of the Army Public School Peshawar attack in December 16, 2014. 13. More than 50 injured, security forces say. Injured being taken to hospital, Geo Tv reports. 14. Nine injured at the hospital 15. Operation on inside and outside campus 16. No proper roads around university, only farms 17. At the time of attack, an event regarding death anniversary of Pashtun politician Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, known as Bacha Khan, was being attended by a large number of students inside the university 18. Media persons are not being allowed inside 19. Armed assailants scaled the university walls and opened fire 20. Twenty seven male Bangladeshis working in Singapore have been arrested for supporting the armed jihad ideology of terrorist groups such as Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Al-Qaeda. The men, who were working in the construction industry here, were detained arrested under the Internal Security Act (ISA) last year. Among them some had considered waging armed jihad overseas but they were not planning any terrorist attacks in Singapore, reports The Daily Star. All 27 have had their work passes cancelled and 26 of them have since been repatriated to Bangladesh. The Union Cabinet on Wednesday gave its approval for allotment of land measuring 82 square meters to the Ramakrishna Mission. The Ramakrishna Mission had requested the government for allotment of a small plot of land measuring 82 square meters adjoining to their existing allotment in Krishna Market, New Delhi, to further expand their welfare activities. The said land is lying vacant and is prone to encroachment and illegal activities. Attacking the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over the suicide of a Dalit scholar from the University of Hyderabad, the Congress Party on Wednesday said the Government of India was totally guilty for what had happened "If students won't express their opinion in Universities, then where will they? ABVP misused the office of HRD minister.. I think the government of India is totally guilty on what happened," Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit told ANI here. Array "I think that the students demand is completely genuine. Mrs. Irani is more guilty than the vice-chancellor. Vice-chancellor is guilty of not applying his mind perhaps tried to butter his own position by following Government of India's order. Smriti Irani has done things that are unconstitutional. She is an incapable fascist minister," he added while blaming Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani of putting undue pressure. Resonating similar sentiments Congress Spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi condemned the incident in the strongest possible language. "After exoneration, if a person is convicted then it is purely because of pressure from two Ministers and Ministries.This is because a political entity like the ABVP was involved. It is only because two central ministers were involved, it is to treat a person who is a protected categorically under the ST/SC Act," he added. Trying to shield the human resource development minister the BJP on the other hand alleged that an opportunist Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi is trying to score some political brownie points out of a very tragic incident in the University of Hyderabad. BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said the Congress and other political parties have become politically bankrupt now, adding that their move to play politics over the Dalit scholar's suicide was a testimony to the fact. Another BJP leader Siddharth Nath Singh said the leaders of various political parties are visiting the Hyderabad University not for humanity or Dalit cause, but for their own political interests. Array "They have no interest on the Dalit cause or humanity as such. If they had, I may ask all of them, including the TMC leaders, Arvind Kejriwal, Rahul Gandhi and also Sitaram Yechury...what happened in May 2015 when three Dalits were shot by the TMC leaders in Nadia district of West Bengal? Nobody went there. Why did not anybody go to Kaliachak? It was a security issue," he added. Array The Congress vice-president, who visited the University of Hyderabad yesterday, said that the varsity Vice Chancellor Appa Rao and Union Minister Bandaru Dattatreya created the situation that made Rohith Vemula, a Dalit scholar studying there, kill himself. Array "I agree with the students here. Rohith committed suicide but the conditions for his suicide were created by the VC and the minister," Gandhi said. Array Rohith Vemula, who belonged to Guntur district of Amravati, was found hanging in his hostel room on Sunday. He was doing his PhD in science technology and society studies for the past two years. Array The protests escalated yesterday over Rohith's suicide with activists demonstrating outside the residence of Dattatreya, who has been accused of abetment of the Dalit scholar's suicide and demanded his resignation. Though 'Straight Outta Compton' star O'Shea Jackson Jr. could not make it to the Oscar nominations, he made it clear that he will not be boycotting the Oscars this year. The 24-year-old actor, who plays his father Ice Cube in the N.W.A biopic, told in an interview at the 'Critics' Choice Awards' that the voters are entitled to their own opinions, "just like you and I," reports E! Online. Adding to this, the star said that he will be there to represent the movie, which stands up for an award for original screenplay. 'Boycott the Oscars' began with the #Oscarssowhite movement on the social media (reemergence of last year's hashtag) and gained momentum when Jada Pinkett Smith and Spike Lee made it publicly known that they would not be attending the program this year because of the lack of diversity in the nominations. This is the second year in a row that the conversation over the lack of diversity is being addressed. Reiterating the demand for sacking of Minister of State for Labour and Employment Bandaru Dattatreya and Hyderabad University Vice-Chancellor Appa Rao, the Congress Party on Wednesday backed writer Ashok Vajpeyi, who returned D. Litt honours conferred on him by the varsity as a mark of protest against the Dalit scholar's suicide. "Since the incident took place in Hyderabad University and that too due to the pressure on the VC by the HRD Ministry, he has returned his D. Litt. Writers and poets are free to express their thoughts. The BJP earlier used to say that 'award wapasi' was taking place due to the Bihar polls, but there are no polls going on at the moment. So, whom will they hold responsible?" Congress leader Shakeel Ahmed told ANI. Array "It is very clear that the BJP's student wing had troubled him (Rohit). It is only after pressure from Dattatreya and Smriti Irani's ministry that the Vice Chancellor took such a step. All the three: the VC, Dattratreya and Union HRD Minister are responsible for this. The demands that they should step down from their posts is valid," he added. Vajpeyi had earlier returned the Sahitya Akademi Award in protest against the murder of renowned writer M.M. Kalburgi. Rohith, a second-year research scholar of Science, Technology and Society Studies Department, and others were suspended from the hostel last year following allegations that they attacked Sushil Kumar after the screening of a controversial documentary 'Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai'. Earlier this month, five students were thrown out of the hostel after they accused the university authorities of denying them access to campus facilities, except their classrooms and workshops. The 28-year-old from Andhra Pradesh's Guntur district was found hanging at the hostel room of one of his friends around 7:30 p.m. on Sunday. All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief Asaduddin Owaisi on Wednesday said that Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani was refusing to accept that it was the letter of Minister of State for Labour Bandaru Dattatreya that triggered the death of Rohith Vermula, the dalit scholar from the University of Hyderabad that committed suicide. "In the light of statement issued by the HRD minister, I am totally amazed and shocked that their minister concerned has completely ignored the core issue of Rohith's death. She has deliberately avoided saying that it was the letter of her Union Labour Minister which triggered this whole thing," Owaisi said. "I condemn this vicious, clandestine operation that is going on by the Hindutva forces throughout the country whereby they are wrongly justifying Rohith's death by connecting it with Yakub Memon's death," he added. Earlier, under-fire Smriti Irani asserted that the suicide of Rohith Vemula was not a Dalit versus a non-Dalit confrontation and attempts were being made to 'ignite passion' in the case of the Dalit scholar's death across communities. "This is not a Dalit versus non-Dalit issue as some people are trying to portray. There has been a malice attempt to ignite passions and present this as a caste battle it is not. This is an issue which is being investigated by local police and sub judice in the High Court," she said. She also attempted to shift the blame on the previous UPA regime and said things would have been in place at the moment had the Congress taken action then. Irani attempted to defend Dattatreya, who has been charged with abetting Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula's suicide. Meanwhile, the Congress Party demanded an apology from her over her assertion and said that her argument only exposes the BJP's anti-SC, anti-poor and intolerant mindset. "Her argument of Dalit vs Non Dalit exposes the anti-SC, anti-poor and intolerant mindset of the BJP even further. We ask her to apologise," Congress spokesperson Deepender Hooda told ANI. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, who visited the University of Hyderabad yesterday, said that the varsity Vice Chancellor Appa Rao and Union Minister Bandaru Dattatreya created the situation that made Rohith, a Dalit scholar studying there, kill himself. The protests escalated yesterday over Rohith's suicide with activists demonstrating outside the residence of Dattatreya, who has been accused of abetment of the Dalit scholar's suicide and demanded his resignation. The Union Cabinet on Wednesday gave ex-post facto approval to the approach adopted by India at the Tenth Ministerial Conference of the WTO held in Nairobi, Kenya, on December 15-19, 2015. The outcomes of the conference referred to as the 'Nairobi Package' included ministerial decisions on agriculture, cotton and issues related to least developed countries (LDCs). These cover a Special Safeguard Mechanism (SSM) for developing countries, public stockholding for food security purposes, a commitment to abolish export subsidies for farm exports and measures related to cotton. Decisions were also made regarding preferential treatment to LDCs in the area of services and the criteria for determining whether exports from LDCs may benefit from trade preferences. A Ministerial Declaration was also adopted. In the run-up to the Nairobi Conference, it became clear that the Conference would determine the future of the Doha Round of trade negotiations. While the Round is very important for greater integration of developing countries in the global trading system, a few developed countries were strongly opposed to the continuation of the Doha Development Agenda (DDA). India took the stand that the DDA must continue after the Nairobi Conference and no new issues must be introduced into the WTO agenda until the DDA has been completed. The Nairobi Ministerial Declaration acknowledges that members "have different views" on how to address the future of the Doha Round negotiations, but noted the "strong commitment of all Members to advance negotiations on the remaining Doha issues". In view of the reluctance of developed countries to agree to continue the Doha Development Agenda post-Nairobi, India negotiated and secured a re-affirmative Ministerial Decision on Public Stockholding for Food Security Purposes honouring both the Bali Ministerial and General Council Decisions. The decision commits mmbers to engage constructively in finding a permanent solution to this issue. Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani has left for Switzerland where he will participate in the 46th Economic Forum at Davos from January 20 to 23. Array leaders will convene at the meeting in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, under the theme 'Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution'. Array Over 40 heads of state as well as 2,500 business and society leaders are expected to attend the forum, reports Tolo news. Array Critical current challenges, such as security, climate change,'new normal' global growth and commodity prices, are among the key issues on the agenda. Array It is expected that Ghani will meet Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Vice President of United State Joe Biden on the sidelines of the summit. Array This comes after the second Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) of Afghanistan, Pakistan, the United States and China on the Afghan peace and reconciliation process that was held in Kabul. A former North Dakota National Guard official is urging the states U.S. senators to vote against legislation he calls anti-refugee. Murray Sagsveen, a retired National Guard brigadier general, urged Sens. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., and John Hoeven, R-N.D., in a letter not to support the American Security Against Foreign Enemies Act of 2015, passed by the House in November. The bill would require additional security checks on refugees from Iraq and Syria. Our government has established a very rigorous screening process for refugees from Syria. This process is the most intensive vetting applied to any group of travelers seeking to enter the United States, Sagsveen said. Offering refuge to those facing persecution and violence is a bedrock American tradition. We should not abandon our values based on misinformation and fear. The legislation was passed in the House following terrorist attacks in Paris in November that killed 130. The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs on Wednesday approved six-laning of the Highway-2 on the Aurangabad-Jharkhand border. It will come under the Highway Development project 5. "It will be developed on the Build-operate-transfer (BOT) mode at an estimated cost of Rs. 4,9 18 crore," said Union Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad. He said, "This is an important step in improving and expediting infrastructure between Bihar and Jharkhand. Expressing grief over the loss of innocent lives in the terrorist attack on Bacha Khan University in Pakistan, former union minister and Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Wednesday said Islamabad is bearing the fruits of what it deliberately incubated in the country at one point of time. Tharoor, who was the Minister of State for External Affairs in the UPA regime, said terrorism should be condemned wherever it occurs. "In this case, the Pakistanis are the victims, in other cases in our country Pakistani's are the perpetrators. The sad truth is that the phenomenon of terrorism was at one point deliberately incubated in Pakistan. The result is there for all of us to see," Tharoor told ANI. "I hope that this tragedy and terrible loss of life will sharpen the desire of the Pakistani authorities to wipe out all such sources of terror and violence from their country. We have seen that those, who perpetrate attacks against India, are allowed to flourish and those attacking Pakistan are acted against," he added. In Pakistan, heavily-armed terrorists today stormed the university in Pakistan's restive northwest Khyber- Pakhtunkhwa province and opened indiscriminate fire on students and teachers. As per latest reports, the security forces have neutralised the armed terrorists inside the campus. At least 21 people have been killed and over 30 others injured in the attack. Over 3,000 students were present inside the university to mark the death anniversary of Khudai Khidmatgar Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan alias Baacha Khan, who died on January 20, 1988. The financing agreement for World Bank (IDA) assistance of USD 250 million for Bihar Kosi Basin Development Project was signed between India and the World Bank on Wednesday. Array The financing agreement was signed by Raj Kumar, Joint Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs on behalf of Government of India and Onno Ruhl, Country Director in India, on behalf of the World Bank. The Project Agreement was signed by Shishir Sinha, Development Commissioner, on behalf of Government of Bihar. Aparna Bhatia, Director (MI), DEA anchored the ceremony held at North Block, New Delhi. Representatives from State Government and the World Bank, among others, were present. The objective of the project is to enhance resilience to floods and increase agricultural production and productivity in the targeted districts in the Kosi River Basin, and to enhance Bihar's capacity to respond promptly and effectively to an eligible crisis or emergency. The primary beneficiaries will be rural producers and households in the Kosi River Basin who are regularly exposed to floods. This includes farmers who lost their agricultural lands due to the silt deposits brought by the 2008 Kosi River Flood as well as farmers in the project area that are currently without access to irrigation and other technologies, improved agricultural practices and an adequate transport network. The Congress Party on Wednesday demanded an apology from Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani over her assertion that the suicide of Rohith Vemula was not a Dalit versus a non-Dalit confrontation and said that her argument only exposes the BJP's anti-SC, anti-poor and intolerant mindset. "Her argument of Dalit vs Non Dalit exposes the anti-SC, anti-poor and intolerant mindset of the BJP even further. We ask her to apologise," Congress spokesperson Deepender Hooda told ANI. "She should read the letter written on December 18, 2015, wherein Rohith wrote to the VC alleging the derogatory remarks that the ABVP activists were hurling at the SC students in the university. We completely disagree with the kind of defence and arguments which she has provided and we want action to be taken," he added. The Rohtak MP further said that Irani was just trying to pass the buck on Minister of State for Labour Bandaru Dattatreya. "Smriti Irani saying that she is bound by certain rules and protocols that if an MP or a minister writes to her, she has to forward that letter to the University, she cannot hide behind that rule or protocol because saying that Bandaru Dattatreya has asked her to do something wrong but she just passed on is no excuse. Being a minister, she has to apply her mind," he said. "She is just trying to pass the buck on Bandaru Dattatreya. I am not satisfied by this answer at all. She has to take responsibility for her own decisions and her ministers' decisions," he added. Earlier, the HRD Minister asserted the suicide of Rohith was not a Dalit versus a non-Dalit confrontation and attempts were being made to 'ignite passion' in the case of the Dalit scholar's death across communities. "This is not a Dalit versus non-Dalit issue as some people are trying to portray. There has been a malice attempt to ignite passions and present this as a caste battle it is not. This is an issue which is being investigated by local police and sub judice in the High Court," she told the media here. She alleged that the suicide note of Rohith, which was being circulated across the media, was not the authorized copy and read out a quote from the original letter in which no political organisation or politician was being held responsible for his fate. She also attempted to shift the blame on the previous UPA regime and said things would have been in place at the moment had the Congress taken action then. Irani attempted to defend Bandaru Dattatreya, who has been charged with abetting Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula's suicide. The HRD Minister drew the attention of the media to the letter written by Congress MP Hanumantha Rao and said that he wanted a probe to be ordered on the death of students from the Telangana region. "Bandaru Dattatreya was not the only MP, who had raised concerns about the University of Hyderabad. I am in possession of a letter written by Shri Hanumantha Rao ji, Congress MP, on November 17, 2014. In this letter, he had claimed that in the past four years, not the present VC but the earlier VC appointed by the Congress Government, there have been suicides by the students from the Telangana region who were from marginalized communities," said Irani. "He has in his letter to the ministry written that he wants a probe to be ordered," she added, while asserting that the University had been asked to give a clarification in this regard. The Congress has been demanding the resignations of the HRD Minister, Minister of State for Bandaru Dattatreya and Hyderabad University Vice Chancellor Appa Rao over the Dalit scholar's suicide. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, who visited the University of Hyderabad yesterday, said that the varsity Vice Chancellor Appa Rao and Union Minister Bandaru Dattatreya created the situation that made Rohith Vemula, a Dalit scholar studying there, kill himself. "I agree with the students here. Rohith committed suicide but the conditions for his suicide were created by the VC and the minister," Gandhi said. Vemula, who belonged to Guntur district of Amravati, was found hanging in his hostel room on Sunday. He was doing his PhD in science technology and society studies for the past two years. The protests escalated yesterday over Rohith's suicide with activists demonstrating outside the residence of Dattatreya, who has been accused of abetment of the Dalit scholar's suicide and demanded his resignation. An explosion has been reported near the Afghanistan Parliament in Darul Aman Road, Kabul in front of Russian embassy in Kabul and many are feared injured. According to TOLOnews, eyewitnesses say that it was a suicide car bomb that went off in front of Russian embassy. Reports also state that the attack was targeting the Russian Ambassador's convoy, and that it was a truck bomb. Many are feared to be injured, although causalities remain unknown at present. Array Meanwhile, fire-fighters have arrived in area as a building in front of Russian embassy is ablaze. Former Jammu and Kashmir DGP M. M. Khajuria on Wednesday dubbed the terrorist attack on the Bacha Khan University a revenge against the Pakistan Army's claims that they have eliminated Taliban from the country. Array "This is a revenge attack against the Pakistan Army to refute its claims that they have eliminated Taliban. By these attacks, they want to convey the message that they are still active in the region and they can attack," Khajuria told ANI. "Most probably the attack has been planned by the Tehreek-i-Taliban, I hope they will claim the responsibility also," he added. Khajuria also condoled the death of innocent students. Condemning the attack, the former top cop hit out at Pakistan for supporting the terror outfits. Khajuria said the moot point here is that Pakistan has to take a call that there is no good or bad terrorist. "Any form of terrorism has to end. If you show your sympathy towards Jaish and Masood, this acts a morale booster for other terror outfits," he added. In Pakistan, heavily-armed terrorists today stormed the university in Pakistan's restive northwest Khyber- Pakhtunkhwa province and opened indiscriminate fire on students and teachers. As per latest reports, the security forces have neutralised the armed terrorists inside the campus. At least 21 people have been killed and over 30 others injured in the attack. Array Over 3,000 students were present inside the university to mark the death anniversary of Khudai Khidmatgar Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan alias Baacha Khan, who died on January 20, 1988. Given the favourable agro-climatic conditions and rich agriculture resources, the Food Processing Industries sector is fast developing in Manipur. However, the state still depends on other states for essential commodities. Kourouhanba Spices Industries, which is an upcoming brand of spices in the state, has come as a boon for the jobless youths of Moidangpok and Keithelmanbi villages. The industry based at New Keithelmanbi was launched on November 16, 2015. Presently, the new industry manufactures several products such as chicken masala paste, garam masala, vegetable masala, chilli powder, ginger powder, jeera powder, turmeric powder, coriander powder, fish masala, meat masala, kitchen queen, mustard powder and coarse mix spices. Potshangbam Kulachandra is the Chief Executive Director of the company. He is a B.Tech in Food Technology and M. Tech in Bio Technology from Jadavpur University. His dream to open a agro based food industry led him to resign from Regional Agricultural Marketting Corporation in 1990 and venture into spices . All the raw materials used for the spices are from the forest products which are free from in-organic chemicals, except two components of Jeera and Cardamon which are being imported from other states. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif both vehemently condemned the deadly attack on the Bacha Khan University near Peshawar, but the New York Times appeared confused mistaking the former with the premier of the Islamic Republic. . "Narendra Modi called the university assault in Pakistan a "cowardly attack of the terrorists" #BachaKhanUniversity," The New York Times tweeted earlier. But, almost two hours later, they tweeted a correction... "Correction: Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan called the #BachaKhanUniversity assault a "cowardly attack of the terrorists," the tweet read. However, most of the internet did not seem to note the seemingly innocent yet significant blunder as the name mix-up went mostly unnoticed. Earlier, Prime Minister Modi strongly condemned the terror attack at the Pakistani university and offered his condolences to families of the deceased. Security forces have ended a gun and bomb attack on a university in north-west Pakistan in which 19 people were killed and 17 injured. Four suspected attackers also died in a battle that lasted nearly three hours at Bacha Khan University in Charsadda. Pakistan President Mamnoon Hussain has condemned the deadly terrorist attack on Bacha Khan University in Charsadda district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province where at least seven people have been killed so far and 12 others injured. A rescued student said that majority students residing in the boys hostel are dead, The Express Tribune tweeted. Director-General of the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Asim Bajwa said that block by block clearance of the university is underway by the Army troops and no firing is being heard currently. Meanwhile, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chief Imran Khan will leave for Charsadda shortly. In total, 11 blasts have been reported till now and a state of emergency has been declared in the hospitals. An Edhi volunteer said he has seen the bodies of at least 15 people, Dawn tweeted. At the time of attack, an event regarding the death anniversary of Pashtun politician Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, known as Bacha Khan, was being attended by a large number of students inside the university. Armed assailants scaled the university walls and opened fire in the morning today. The attack is reminiscent of the deadly Army Public School attack in Peshawar in 2014. Peshawar DIG Saeed Wazir has said that two attackers have been killed in the terrorist attack at Bacha Khan University in Charsadda district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and the rescued students said that around 60 to 70 others have been shot in the head by the gunmen. Dawn News tweeted that at least three to four security guards are injured, an eye-witness who managed to come out of the premises said. Pakistani journalist Talat Hussain tweeted that dozens have been killed, according to eyewitnesses. Terrorists had a free hand for 50 minutes and now they are restricted to one block. An Edhi volunteer said he has seen the bodies of at least 15 persons, Dawn tweeted. Rescue officials say some 50 students have been rescued from the premises. Armed assailants scaled the university walls and opened fire in the morning today. Multiple blasts were heard along with heavy gunfire. At the time of attack, an event regarding the death anniversary of Pashtun politician Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, known as Bacha Khan, was being attended by a large number of students inside the university, Geo TV reports. Helicopters called in to assist the operation while panic stricken parents have gathered outside the University. Some of the parents are said to have gathered outside the hospital where the injured students are being treated. Extensive firing continues in the area and heavy contingents of elite force have been deployed, including aerial support given by the Army choppers. Further details are awaited. A company planning a multibillion dollar pipeline project that would move hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil from the state moved one step closer to construction Wednesday following permit approval by North Dakota regulators. North Dakota Public Service Commission members approved the siting permit for the Dakota Access Pipeline, which has been under review for more than a year. The pipeline is to be built by Dakota Access LLC, a partner of Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners. The 1,168-mile, 30-inch diameter pipeline begins in western North Dakota near Stanley and would end near Patoka, Ill. This project will take trucks off the road and provide a safe alternative to crude by rail, Commissioner Chairwoman Julie Fedorchak said. Only two of the three commissioners voted Wednesday; Commissioner Randy Christmann removed himself from review of the project earlier this month due to a conflict of interest. The company is negotiating with Christmanns mother-in-law for an easement on a portion of her property. Energy Transfer Partners issued a statement to the Forum saying it was pleased with the PSCs decision and hopes to achieve a similar outcome in Iowa. Dakota Access Pipeline is an important energy infrastructure project that will provide a more direct, cost-effective, and safer manner to transport the currently constrained supply of light sweet crude oil out of the production areas in North Dakota to refining markets around the country, it said. South Dakota and Illinois regulators have issued permit approval in their states. Approval is still pending in Iowa. When completed, the Dakota Access Pipeline would transport as many as 450,000 barrels per day of Bakken crude with a future capacity of 570,000 barrels per day. Tentative plans are to begin pipeline construction in the spring and have the line in service by late this year. The route through North Dakota extends approximately 358 miles and passes through seven counties: Mountrail, Williams, McKenzie, Dunn, Mercer, Morton and Emmons. The pipeline has an overall cost of $3.78 billion; $1.4 billion of the total cost would be invested in North Dakota. Fedorchak said the project had an exhaustive review process, with hearings held in Mandan, Killdeer and Williston. She said reclamation and protection against leaks were major priorities during the review process, leading to approximately 40 safety and reclamation requirements being included in the permit. Among the items required in the permit include a monitoring system to be installed, monitoring 24 hours a day from a Texas site and remote shutdown capability in the event of a leak. Emergency response equipment also will be located in Bismarck, Epping, Williston and Watford City. "We looked extensively at the safety plans, Fedorchak said. We listened to the public input and the company listened to the public input. The companys most recent numbers put easements secured along the North Dakota portion of the route at 88 percent. Commissioner Brian Kalk said the review process went well and that its important to continue to build energy infrastructure to get product to market. This is the right decision, Kalk said. Steve Cortina, a representative for the Local 563 Laborers Union, was among several members present Wednesday who applauded the decision after the vote was taken. The union represents members in North Dakota and Minnesota. Cortina said between 300 and 500 jobs would be created for the construction phase of the project in North Dakota. Its a huge boost, Cortina said of the project. He said the union has supported the project for months and it would keep workers busy as infrastructure build out continues in the state. Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has claimed responsibility for the attack on Bacha Khan University Charsadda district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province where at least 15 people have been killed so far and 20 others injured. TTP commander, Omar Mansoor, said that the attack was carried out by four attackers. Meanwhile, Director-General of the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said four terrorists have been killed so far. All buildings and roof tops have been taken over by the Army, he added. Around 90 percent of the buildings have been cleared on campus. Army operation is underway as over 3,000 students are reported to be inside premises, Express Tribune reports. In total, 11 blasts have been reported till now and a state of emergency has been declared in the hospitals. An Edhi volunteer said he has seen the bodies of at least 15 persons, Dawn tweeted. At the time of attack, an event regarding the death anniversary of Pashtun politician Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, known as Bacha Khan, was being attended by a large number of students inside the university. Armed assailants scaled the university walls and opened fire in the morning today. Extensive firing continues in the area and heavy contingents of elite force have been deployed, including aerial support given by the Army choppers. The attack is reminiscent of the deadly Army Public School attack in Peshawar in 2014. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday condemned the terror attack at Bacha Khan University in Pakistan and expressed condolences to the families of the deceased. "Strongly condemn the terror attack at Bacha Khan University in Pakistan. Condolences to families of the deceased. Prayers with the injured," Prime Minister Modi tweeted. In Pakistan, heavily-armed terrorists on Wednesday stormed the university in Pakistan's restive northwest Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province and opened indiscriminate fire on students and teachers. At least 21 people have been killed and over 30 injured in the attack. Over 3,000 students were present inside the university to mark the death anniversary of Khudai Khidmatgar Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan alias Baacha Khan, who died on January 20, 1988. The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has claimed responsibility for the attack. An operation launched by security forces against terrorists is underway in Naina Batpora area of Pulwama. The gunfight erupted between terrorists and security forces in the area last night. The Army, Special Operations Group (SOG) of Jammu and Kashmir Police and CRPF in a joint operation cordoned off Naina Batpora village after information about the presence of militants was received. The militants reportedly fired upon the forces triggering off a gunfight. Firing resumed at around 6:30 this morning. Three Hizbul Mujahideen militants are believed to be trapped inside the village. Scores of worshippers are reportedly trapped inside a local mosque where they were listening to sermon when the gunfight suddenly erupted. They are reported to be safe. Security has been beefed up outside the University of Hyderabad after the suicide of the Dalit scholar has invited various political leaders to visit the varsity and express their solidarity with the protesting students. While Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi visited the university yesterday, CPI (M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury and YSR Congress Party leader Jagan Mohan Reddy are scheduled to visit the University of Hyderabad today. Meanwhile, the students of the University continued their protest in the varsity premises demanding action against Vice-Chancellor Appa Rao, Minister of State for Labour and Employment Bandaru Dattatreya and ABVP leader Susheel Kumar. The students of the prestigious Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) also began a one-day hunger strike here on Tuesday to express solidarity with their colleagues of the Hyderabad University. Rohith, a second-year research scholar of Science, Technology and Society Studies Department, and others were suspended from the hostel last year following allegations that they attacked Sushil Kumar after the screening of a controversial documentary 'Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai'. Earlier this month, five students were thrown out of the hostel after they accused the university authorities of denying them access to campus facilities, except their classrooms and workshops. The 28-year-old victim from Andhra Pradesh's Guntur district was found hanging at the hostel room of one of his friends around 7:30p.m. on Sunday. Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has condemned the attack on Bacha Khan University in Charsadda district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and said that the sacrifices will not go in vain. "Those who kill innocent students and civilians have no religion," Sharif said. Two attackers have been killed in the terrorist attack, according to Peshawar DIG Saeed Wazir. Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has claimed responsibility for the attack. Rescued students said that around 60 to 70 others have been shot in the head by the gunmen. Dawn News tweeted that at least three to four security guards are injured, an eye-witness who managed to come out of the premises said. Pakistani journalist Talat Hussain tweeted that dozens have been killed, according to eyewitnesses. Terrorists had a free hand for 50 minutes and now they are restricted to one block. An Edhi volunteer said he has seen the bodies of at least 15 persons, Dawn tweeted. Rescue officials say some 50 students have been rescued from the premises. Armed assailants scaled the university walls and opened fire in the morning today. Multiple blasts were heard along with heavy gunfire. At the time of attack, an event regarding the death anniversary of Pashtun politician Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, known as Bacha Khan, was being attended by a large number of students inside the university, Geo TV reports. Helicopters called in to assist the operation while panic stricken parents have gathered outside the University. Some of the parents are said to have gathered outside the hospital where the injured students are being treated. Extensive firing continues in the area and heavy contingents of elite force have been deployed, including aerial support given by the Army choppers. Further details are awaited. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Wednesday directed his federal ministers to reach Charsadda, where terrorists attacked the Bacha Khan University killing 21 people. Prime Minister Sharif, who arrived in Switzerland to lead his country's delegation at the 46th annual meeting of the Economic Forum in Davos, directed Pervaiz Rashid, Abdul Qadir Baloch and Baleeghur Rehman among others to rush to reach Charsadda to take stock of the situation emerged out of the terrorist attack, Radio Pakistan reports. In Pakistan, heavily-armed terrorists today stormed the university in Pakistan's restive northwest Khyber- Pakhtunkhwa province and opened indiscriminate fire on students and teachers. As per latest reports, the security forces have neutralised the armed terrorists inside the campus. At least 21 people have been killed and over 30 others injured in the attack. Array Over 3,000 students were present inside the university to mark the death anniversary of Khudai Khidmatgar Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan alias Baacha Khan, who died on January 20, 1988. Some 500 participants, including senior judges, lawyers and leaders from the region, will gather in Singapore tomorrow for an inaugural conference to discuss how Asia can come together to harmonise its diverse, disparate commercial laws. The two-day "Doing Across Asia: Legal Convergence in an Asian Century" conference organised by the Singapore Academy of Law (SAL) is the largest of its kind in Asia to bring together multiple stakeholders to focus on an issue often viewed by CEOs as one of the biggest impediments to cross-border in Asia - the region's fragmented legal landscape. Surveys of CEOs across the region often pointed to inconsistent regulatory standards, inefficient court systems, and poor enforcement of judgements, among the stumbling blocks to cross-border trade and commerce, and for pushing up the costs of doing business in the region. Through the conference to be held at the Raffles City Convention Centre, the SAL hopes to spark a sustained conversation among members of the judiciary, legal, and business communities, initially in key cities in the region, on the imperative for Asia's commercial laws to move in the same direction, to aid rather than impede business. The conference will see the launch of the Asian Business Law Institute (ABLI), a permanent research institute that will conduct research and propose practical solutions to support the convergence of Asian commercial laws. The ABLI will also serve as a forum for intellectual collaboration among judges, lawyers, businessmen, academics and policy-2 makers in the region. The SAL's President, the Honourable Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, will unveil its first Board of Governors at the opening day of the conference. The SAL's legal convergence initiative has also received support from the region's leading judiciaries, corporations and law firms, as well as the Singapore's Economic Development Board. Some notable speakers at the conference include Mr Henri de Castries, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, AXA; Mr Simon Israel, Chairman, SingTel; Ms Marjorie Yang, Chairman of leading global textile and apparel manufacturer Esquel Group; the Honourable Chief Justice Robert French AC, High Court, Australia; the Honourable Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma Tao-li, GBM, The Court of Final Appeal, Hong Kong SAR, and the Honourable Senior Judge Zhang Yongjian, Supreme People's Court, China. Chief Justice Menon will deliver the opening address while Singapore's Minister for Home Affairs and Minister for Law, Mr K Shanmugam SC, will deliver the closing address. Commenting on the SAL's initiative on legal convergence, CJ Menon said: "The law is indispensable to business. Business actors transact in the shadow of the law and depend upon the legal system to uphold bargains and enforce agreements. But the transnationalisation of trade has made it imperative that the legal systems of the world accommodate and adjust to this new reality by developing the means to ensure that regulatory arbitrage does not end up becoming an impediment to the growth of trade. "It is against this backdrop that we are convening this conference. It is meant to serve as a platform for open and thought-provoking discussions on how we might, together, tackle some of the common challenges of the borderless transnational trading environment we are rapidly moving towards." He added that Singapore, with its strong judicial precedents and established legal system, is well placed to drive these ground-breaking initiatives to build an integrated system for resolving regional commercial disputes. CJ Menon also believes that legal convergence is an imperative if Asia is to fully exploit the extent of its economic expansion and to achieve its vision of an Asian century. The Chairperson of SAL's Steering Committee on legal convergence Mrs Lee Suet-Fern, who is also Managing Partner, Morgan Lewis Stamford LLC, said: "With the conclusion 3 and launch of a flurry of regional trade and economic pacts, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Asean Economic Community, the time has come to remove legal barriers to cross-border business. We hope our first conference on legal convergence will lead to more awareness of the urgency for the region to get its act together to remove legal obstacles to free trade and commerce. We need region-wide participation, acceptance and implementation of all the good ideas which we will, no doubt, hear at the conference, if legal convergence is to become a reality." Mrs Lee said the convergence of Asian business laws will help the region to sooner realise the benefits of the various regional economic and trade pacts that politicians and policy-makers had spent years negotiating. Some of the issues that will be discussed at the conference include the role of legal and regulatory frameworks for businesses across Asia, how Asia can learn from global harmonisation initiatives, and issues with regards to enforcement of foreign judgement rules in ASEAN, Australia, China and India. Six Dee Technologies, a telecom software company has invested an undisclosed amount into mobile advertising network mXpresso, to develop state of the art products, services and technology for the Mobile Advertising Ecosystem. mXpresso, a mobile advertising network was co- founded by Ampreet Singh, Rajesh Nair, (earlier Co-Founders of Networkplay Media) and Jatin Kapoor ( Ex SeventyNine.mobi) together with Amit Relan and Dhiraj Gupta (Ex Nokia Networks) earlier this year. The company has been helping global and Indian mobile app developers and owners to expand their reach and usage through quality app download campaigns using hyper specific targeting and enabling engagement through it's worldwide network of publishers. mXpressohas also partnered with leading DSP's, DMP's and Exchange's to enable more than 500+ brands in India and South East Asia to reach their target group and meet marketing objectives. mXpresso is working on adtech products integrating telecom operator assets into advertising eco system. Leveraging the cross-domain expertise of its founders will enable mXpresso to integrate best of both telecom and advertising industries in a win-win relationship. "Our market positioning will further strengthen with this partnership, the mXpresso skilled team has conceptualized innovative and disruptive products for the mobile-adtech space and this association has helped manifest our go to market strategy. Brands in turn will now be able to reach out to a far better quality of customers with a significantly larger lifetime value for the brand." said Ampreet Singh, CEO mXpresso. mXpresso will be a part of Six Dee Technologies, a tech enterprise catering to the telecom sector since 2002, with operations in 45+ countries across five continents. The company will be working directly with advertisers, networks, agencies and have relationships with top publishers globally. Abhilash Sadanandan, Managing Director and CEO of Six-Dee Technologies said, "With investments into mXpresso, we are enhancing our capabilities and will expand our product portfolio from being a pure telecom solution provider to leaders in mobile ad-tech space. We will utilize our mobile tech experience and leverage a team of world class domain experts that comes to us via this association to take a strong product portfolio to the market that will add value to every stakeholder in the advertising ecosystem." Leveraging 6Ds telecom experience and superior product building experience, mXpresso will bring relevance to brands, publishers and agencies in the advertising ecosystem. Over the next couple of months the company has planned to launch a line of products relevant for the industry. This funding will also help mXpresso scale the and launch operations in couple of high-growth markets. Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukbir Singh Badal today flagged off the first train to Varanasi from the Jalandhar City railway Station under the Mukh Mantri Tirath Yatra Scheme. Another train to Varanasi will start from Ludhiana. Besides this, 11 more Tirth Yatra trains are planned to start in January and February under this scheme. Speaking about the initiative, Badal said, "This initiative of Chief Minister Mr. Parkash Singh Badal would strengthen communal harmony in the state. It was a blessing to flag off the yatra train to Varanasi, a microcosm of Hinduism. Famed as one of the oldest inhabited cities of the world, Kashi is sanctified by religion." He also interacted with the pilgrims on the train, who thanked the Punjab Government for this noble scheme. "It was heart warming to interact with the pilgrims about their beliefs and importance of this abode of Shiva in their lives. We have always respected all the religions alike as we believe that all the religious paths lead to the same God," said Badal. Answering a question about the Panama incident, Badal said the Punjab Government had raised the issue and had been assured by the External Affairs Ministry that all possible steps would be taken on the issue. He also directed the police department to immediately start the crack down on illegal travel agents. He also appealed to media houses not to publish advertisements of illegal travel agents in the interest of the common man. Talking about development initiatives by the Punjab Government, Badal said that Punjab is the first power surplus state across the nation, besides having unmatched road and air connectivity. Prominent amongst those present on the occasion were cabinet ministers Ajit Singh Kohar, Sohan Singh Thandal, Bhagat ChunniLal, CPS Pawan Kumar Tinu and K.D. Bhandari, MLA Manoranjan Kalia, District Planning Committee Chairman Gurcharan Singh, Chairman Dilbah Hussain, Principal secretary (Transport) R. Vekatratnam, Deputy Commissioner K.K.Yadav, IG Arpit Shukla, DIG S.K.Verma, Police Commissioner Jalandhar Yurinder Singh Hair. Mukh Mantri Tirath Yatra Yojana is yet another attempt of the Punjab Government to preserve and promote the majestic and secular culture of Punjab. Other initiatives taken up by the Punjab Government include: . The attainment of heritage city status for the holy city of Amritsar. An amount of Rs. 69 crores has been allocated to preserve the monuments, mute testimonials of Punjab's glorious heritage. . Facelift of Sri Harminder Sahib's facade at an outlay of Rs. 211 crore. The second phase for the same is underway. . Preservation of Darshani Deori (opening step), at Darbar Sahib with its original and extensive ivory work has been accomplished. Array . Preservation of architectural marvel of BungaRamgarhia (situated between Sri Guru Ram Das langar hall building and Sri Harmandir Sahib parikarma) as a heritage building with the support of Heritage Management Services, Noida. Array . To present the 500-year old glorious legacy to the millenials of Punjab, the Punjab government has built Virasat-e-Khalsa at Sri Anandpur Sahib. The project spread in 100 acres has costed Rs.250 crores. Array . The SAD-BJP government has built a Victory Memorial in the memory of Banda Bahadur at Chapparchiri near SAS Nagar at a cost of Rs 6.2 crore. A 328 feet high burj has been built as a memorial of 1711 misls. . To commemorate the sacrifices of Sikhs in the tragic war of May 17, 1746, a memorial has been built at the ChhotaGhallughara site at Kahnuwan in Gurdaspur district at an outlay of Rs. 18 crores. . The Punjab Government has also built Wadda Ghallughara site in village Kup Rohira in Sangrur District at a cost of Rs.24.70 crore, in the honour of martyrs of 1762 genocide. . Punjab Government has allocated Rs 180 crores for Ram Tirath, the sacred ashram of Bhagwan ValmikiJi. . The construction of Jang-e-Azadi Memorial, in the commemoration of the martyrs of the freedom struggle, is underway at Amritsar. . The Punjab Government has announced the construction of Sri Guru Ravidas Memorial at Kuralgarh on the expanse of 13 acres with an investment of Rs. 50-60 crores. . The Punjab government had approved Rs 24 crores for Baba Jiwan Singh Memorial to be erected at Sri Anandpur Sahib near Virasat-e-Khalsa. . The Badal government has taken an initiative to build BhaiMardana Memorial at Ferozepur. Project cost is estimated to be Rs 11 crores. The Memorial will also house a Sangeet Academy and a Satsang hall. Array . Sri Guru Granth Sahib World University spread over 100 acres has come up at Fatehgarh Sahib. Jointly conceived by ShiromaniGurdwaraParbandhak Committee and Punjab Government, this university provides teachings of Sikh religion besides other religions. Array . The Punjab government in consultation with the Sikh historians has finalized to strengthen the route of Sri Guru Gobind Singh Ji's journey from Anandpur Sahib to Sri Talwandi Sabo. The renovation of this heritage marg, with an expense of Rs. 30 crores, has been underway. EOM Array . Punjab Government under the tutelage of CM Mr. Prakash Singh Badal has always ensured communal harmony in the state while ensuring respect for all religions in the state. Following are the top developments in the terrorist attack today on the Bacha Khan University, located in Charsadda, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Two gunmen have reportedly been killed. According to the Pak media, around 60 to 70 students have been shot in the head. Around 90 percent of the buildings have been cleared on campus. 1. 3000 students enrolled in the university 2. According to Geo TV, one chemistry professor killed after being shot in head 3. Evacuation of campus currently on 4. Terrorists entered form the back-gate as the security at the front-gate was high 5. Two guards were injured at the gate 6. Extensive firing continues in the area and heavy contingents of elite force have been deployed, including aerial support given by Army choppers 7. Pashtun independence activist Bacha Khan Baba died on January 20, 1988. It is his death anniversary today 8. Helicopters called in to assist the operation 9. Panic stricken parents have gathered outside the University 10. Five persons, who suffered minor injuries, have been shifted to District Headquarters Hospital, Charsadda, for treatment 11. Army contingents have also arrived at the scene and firing is continuing 12. According to the Dawn, a rescued student claims that 60 to 70 students had been shot in the head by the attackers. The student added that the attack is reminiscent of the Army Public School Peshawar attack in December 16, 2014. 13. More than 50 injured, security forces say. Injured being taken to hospital, Geo Tv reports. 14. Nine injured at the hospital 15. Operation on inside and outside campus 16. No proper roads around university, only farms 17. At the time of attack, an event regarding death anniversary of Pashtun politician Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, known as Bacha Khan, was being attended by a large number of students inside the university 18. Media persons are not being allowed inside 19. Armed assailants scaled the university walls and opened fire 20. Multiple blasts were heard along with heavy gunfire 21. Pakistani journalist Talat Hussain tweets: Eyewitnesses say 'dozens killed'. Terrorists had a free hand for 50 mnts. Now terrorists are in one block 22. Talat Hussain tweets: Very serious development. Spoke to a stranded teacher who said intense firing and total chaos at campus 23. Dawn tweets: DIG Saeed Wazir says two attackers have been killed 24. Dawn tweets: Rescue officials say some 50 students have been rescued from the premises 25. Dawn tweets: An Edhi volunteer says he has seen the bodies of at least 15 persons 26. Pakistan Army helicopters are monitoring the situation from the air to provide better spatial awareness to the forces conducting the operation on ground 27. Edhi source claims 15 dead 28. University professor, Hamid Hussain, was killed in the attack 29. According to Express Tribune: The vice chancellor has said more than 3,000 students are present at the premises, while several girls are inside hostels. Members of staff also remain within the building. More than 50 students have been evacuated. 11: 41 am (IST): Two loud blasts heard from inside the university 11: 48 am (IST): A large number worried parents have thronged the hospital looking for their children 11: 50 am (IST): Geo News reports Shakeel Farman Ali reported that 90 percent of the buildings have been cleared in the campus 11: 53 am (IST): Panic sets in inside the campus. Eye-witnesses say not enough ambulances to bring out severely injured and dead 11: 55 am (IST): Rescue officials say some 50 students have been rescued from the premises 11: 57 am (IST): Dawn tweets: 8-10 terrorists still inside the school 12: 02 pm (IST): Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif: Sacrifices made by Pakistan will not go in vain. Those who kill innocent students and civilians have no religion. 12: 03 pm (IST): 11 blasts till now 12: 05 pm (IST): According to Express Tribune: Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has claimed responsibility for the attack on Bacha Khan University. TTP commander, Omar Mansoor, said that the attack was carried out by four attackers. 12: 08 pm (IST): According to Express Tribune: Seven people have been killed in the attack so far, while casualties are feared to rise 12: 09 pm (IST): Six dead bodies recovered 12: 12 pm (IST): Asim Bajwa tweets: Two more terrorists who were firing from inside the Block cordoned by Army troops, shot & killed. Op continues 12: 14 pm (IST): Emergency declared in hospitals 12: 20 pm (IST): Asim Bajwa tweets: Snipers killed 2 more terrorists on roof top,total Terrorist killed so far 4.All buildings&roof top taken over by Army.op continues-3 12: 21 pm (IST): Total four terrorists killed so far This is a developing story and will be updated as we receive updates. Bismarck State College learned some things last week that werent part of the lesson plans. When a threatening tweet prompted the lockdown of the school, students, faculty and staff found themselves in a situation they thought they would only read about in a newspaper or see on television. Instead they were in a scary position in locked classrooms for more than three hours. Fortunately, all ended well with no one injured and no damage done to the school. The crisis plan by BSC and the training by the Bismarck Police Department apparently worked well. Police went room to room checking for a possible gunman, patted down whoever was in the room and released them. Its not pleasant being frisked and the thought that someone in the room might be planning to do harm is frightening. Two students in the Jack Science Center sought refuge in storage room. "We were freaking out," Gwen Lee told reporter Amy R. Sisk. She added they felt like "sitting ducks" in the 20-by-15 foot room. There were a lot of scared people across campus. They had a right to be as there was a lot of uncertainty about what was happening, even the ability to communicate by smartphones and other devices didnt provide a complete picture of the situation. The event wasnt just scary for those trapped on campus as friends and relatives waited to find out if everyone was safe. The BSC administration was relieved when the crisis ended and pleased with how it was handled. Counseling was offered for anyone trying to deal with the emotional impact of the lockdown. Theres a review process now for BSC, discussing what went well and what improvements can be made to their emergency plan. One issue being discussed by BSC is how to provide for special needs students who may need special equipment or food. The police are no doubt doing the same, looking for ways to improve their response. One request might be better communication people locked in classrooms wanted as much information as possible as quick as possible. That can be difficult in a crisis situation, but its worth review. BSC officials also plan to meet with police to review how the situation was handled. The police, college and those locked in classrooms deserve praise. They handled the situation in a calm and professional manner. The response of the police should be reassuring for Bismarck-Mandan residents. A young suspect was arrested in the case, another indication law enforcement is ready to act. One sad lesson from the lockdown is that Bismarck and North Dakota arent immune from the problems other parts of the country have suffered. One positive were prepared. Following are the top developments in the terrorist attack today on the Bacha Khan University, located in Charsadda, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Two gunmen have reportedly been killed. According to the Pak media, around 60 to 70 students have been shot in the head. Around 90 percent of the buildings have been cleared on campus. 1. 3000 students enrolled in the university 2. According to Geo TV, one chemistry professor killed after being shot in head 3. Evacuation of campus currently on 4. Terrorists entered form the back-gate as the security at the front-gate was high 5. Two guards were injured at the gate 6. Extensive firing continues in the area and heavy contingents of elite force have been deployed, including aerial support given by Army choppers 7. Pashtun independence activist Bacha Khan Baba died on January 20, 1988. It is his death anniversary today 8. Helicopters called in to assist the operation 9. Panic stricken parents have gathered outside the University 10. Five persons, who suffered minor injuries, have been shifted to District Headquarters Hospital, Charsadda, for treatment 11. Army contingents have also arrived at the scene and firing is continuing 12. According to the Dawn, a rescued student claims that 60 to 70 students had been shot in the head by the attackers. The student added that the attack is reminiscent of the Army Public School Peshawar attack in December 16, 2014. 13. More than 50 injured, security forces say. Injured being taken to hospital, Geo Tv reports. 14. Nine injured at the hospital 15. Operation on inside and outside campus 16. No proper roads around university, only farms 17. At the time of attack, an event regarding death anniversary of Pashtun politician Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, known as Bacha Khan, was being attended by a large number of students inside the university 18. Media persons are not being allowed inside 19. Armed assailants scaled the university walls and opened fire 20. Multiple blasts were heard along with heavy gunfire 21. Pakistani journalist Talat Hussain tweets: Eyewitnesses say 'dozens killed'. Terrorists had a free hand for 50 mnts. Now terrorists are in one block 22. Talat Hussain tweets: Very serious development. Spoke to a stranded teacher who said intense firing and total chaos at campus 23. Dawn tweets: DIG Saeed Wazir says two attackers have been killed 24. Dawn tweets: Rescue officials say some 50 students have been rescued from the premises 25. Dawn tweets: An Edhi volunteer says he has seen the bodies of at least 15 persons 26. Pakistan Army helicopters are monitoring the situation from the air to provide better spatial awareness to the forces conducting the operation on ground 27. Edhi source claims 15 dead 28. University professor, Hamid Hussain, was killed in the attack 29. According to Express Tribune: The vice chancellor has said more than 3,000 students are present at the premises, while several girls are inside hostels. Members of staff also remain within the building. More than 50 students have been evacuated. 11: 41 am (IST): Two loud blasts heard from inside the university 11: 48 am (IST): A large number worried parents have thronged the hospital looking for their children 11: 50 am (IST): Geo News reports Shakeel Farman Ali reported that 90 percent of the buildings have been cleared in the campus 11: 53 am (IST): Panic sets in inside the campus. Eye-witnesses say not enough ambulances to bring out severely injured and dead 11: 55 am (IST): Rescue officials say some 50 students have been rescued from the premises 11: 57 am (IST): Dawn tweets: 8-10 terrorists still inside the school 12: 02 pm (IST): Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif: Sacrifices made by Pakistan will not go in vain. Those who kill innocent students and civilians have no religion. 12: 03 pm (IST): 11 blasts till now 12: 05 pm (IST): According to Express Tribune: Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has claimed responsibility for the attack on Bacha Khan University. TTP commander, Omar Mansoor, said that the attack was carried out by four attackers. 12: 08 pm (IST): According to Express Tribune: Seven people have been killed in the attack so far, while casualties are feared to rise 12: 09 pm (IST): Six dead bodies recovered 12: 12 pm (IST): Asim Bajwa tweets: Two more terrorists who were firing from inside the Block cordoned by Army troops, shot & killed. Op continues 12: 14 pm (IST): Emergency declared in hospitals 12: 20 pm (IST): Asim Bajwa tweets: Snipers killed 2 more terrorists on roof top,total Terrorist killed so far 4.All buildings&roof top taken over by Army.op continues-3 12: 21 pm (IST): Total four terrorists killed so far Array 12: 28 pm (IST): Provincial minister Shaukat Yousufzai has said that over 20 people have been killed 12: 35 pm (IST): Chairman Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Imran Khan to leave for Charsadda shortly This is a developing story and will be updated as we receive updates. Following are the top developments in the terrorist attack today on the Bacha Khan University, located in Charsadda, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Two gunmen have reportedly been killed. According to the Pak media, around 60 to 70 students have been shot in the head. Around 90 percent of the buildings have been cleared on campus. 1. 3000 students enrolled in the university 2. According to Geo TV, one chemistry professor killed after being shot in head 3. Evacuation of campus currently on 4. Terrorists entered form the back-gate as the security at the front-gate was high 5. Two guards were injured at the gate 6. Extensive firing continues in the area and heavy contingents of elite force have been deployed, including aerial support given by Army choppers 7. Pashtun independence activist Bacha Khan Baba died on January 20, 1988. It is his death anniversary today 8. Helicopters called in to assist the operation 9. Panic stricken parents have gathered outside the University 10. Five persons, who suffered minor injuries, have been shifted to District Headquarters Hospital, Charsadda, for treatment 11. Army contingents have also arrived at the scene and firing is continuing 12. According to the Dawn, a rescued student claims that 60 to 70 students had been shot in the head by the attackers. The student added that the attack is reminiscent of the Army Public School Peshawar attack in December 16, 2014. 13. More than 50 injured, security forces say. Injured being taken to hospital, Geo Tv reports. 14. Nine injured at the hospital 15. Operation on inside and outside campus 16. No proper roads around university, only farms 17. At the time of attack, an event regarding death anniversary of Pashtun politician Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, known as Bacha Khan, was being attended by a large number of students inside the university 18. Media persons are not being allowed inside 19. Armed assailants scaled the university walls and opened fire 20. Multiple blasts were heard along with heavy gunfire 21. Pakistani journalist Talat Hussain tweets: Eyewitnesses say 'dozens killed'. Terrorists had a free hand for 50 mnts. Now terrorists are in one block 22. Talat Hussain tweets: Very serious development. Spoke to a stranded teacher who said intense firing and total chaos at campus 23. Dawn tweets: DIG Saeed Wazir says two attackers have been killed 24. Dawn tweets: Rescue officials say some 50 students have been rescued from the premises 25. Dawn tweets: An Edhi volunteer says he has seen the bodies of at least 15 persons 26. Pakistan Army helicopters are monitoring the situation from the air to provide better spatial awareness to the forces conducting the operation on ground 27. Edhi source claims 15 dead 11: 41 am (IST): Two loud blasts heard from inside the university 11: 48 am (IST): A large number worried parents have thronged the hospital looking for their children 11: 50 am (IST): Geo News reports Shakeel Farman Ali reported that 90 percent of the buildings have been cleared in the campus 11: 53 am (IST): Panic sets in inside the campus. Eye-witnesses say not enough ambulances to bring out severely injured and dead 11: 55 am (IST): Rescue officials say some 50 students have been rescued from the premises 11: 57 am (IST): Dawn tweets: 8-10 terrorists still inside the school 12: 02 pm (IST): Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif: Sacrifices made by Pakistan will not go in vain. Those who kill innocent students and civilians have no religion. 12: 03 pm (IST): 11 blasts till now 12: 05 pm (IST): According to Express Tribune: Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has claimed responsibility for the attack on Bacha Khan University. TTP commander, Omar Mansoor, said that the attack was carried out by four attackers. This is a developing story and will be updated as we receive updates. Following are the top developments in the terrorist attack today on the Bacha Khan University, located in Charsadda, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Two gunmen have reportedly been killed. According to the Pak media, around 60 to 70 students have been shot in the head. Around 90 percent of the buildings have been cleared on campus. 1. 3000 students enrolled in the university 2. According to Geo TV, one chemistry professor killed after being shot in head 3. Evacuation of campus currently on 4. Terrorists entered form the back-gate as the security at the front-gate was high 5. Two guards were injured at the gate 6. Extensive firing continues in the area and heavy contingents of elite force have been deployed, including aerial support given by Army choppers 7. Pashtun independence activist Bacha Khan Baba died on January 20, 1988. It is his death anniversary today 8. Helicopters called in to assist the operation 9. Panic stricken parents have gathered outside the University 10. Five persons, who suffered minor injuries, have been shifted to District Headquarters Hospital, Charsadda, for treatment 11. Army contingents have also arrived at the scene and firing is continuing 12. According to the Dawn, a rescued student claims that 60 to 70 students had been shot in the head by the attackers. The student added that the attack is reminiscent of the Army Public School Peshawar attack in December 16, 2014. 13. More than 50 injured, security forces say. Injured being taken to hospital, Geo Tv reports. 14. Nine injured at the hospital 15. Operation on inside and outside campus 16. No proper roads around university, only farms 17. At the time of attack, an event regarding death anniversary of Pashtun politician Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, known as Bacha Khan, was being attended by a large number of students inside the university 18. Media persons are not being allowed inside 19. Armed assailants scaled the university walls and opened fire 20. Multiple blasts were heard along with heavy gunfire 21. Pakistani journalist Talat Hussain tweets: Eyewitnesses say 'dozens killed'. Terrorists had a free hand for 50 mnts. Now terrorists are in one block 22. Talat Hussain tweets: Very serious development. Spoke to a stranded teacher who said intense firing and total chaos at campus 23. Dawn tweets: DIG Saeed Wazir says two attackers have been killed 24. Dawn tweets: Rescue officials say some 50 students have been rescued from the premises 25. Dawn tweets: An Edhi volunteer says he has seen the bodies of at least 15 persons 26. Pakistan Army helicopters are monitoring the situation from the air to provide better spatial awareness to the forces conducting the operation on ground 27. Edhi source claims 15 dead 28. University professor, Hamid Hussain, was killed in the attack 29. According to Express Tribune: The vice chancellor has said more than 3,000 students are present at the premises, while several girls are inside hostels. Members of staff also remain within the building. More than 50 students have been evacuated. 11: 41 am (IST): Two loud blasts heard from inside the university 11: 48 am (IST): A large number worried parents have thronged the hospital looking for their children 11: 50 am (IST): Geo News reports Shakeel Farman Ali reported that 90 percent of the buildings have been cleared in the campus 11: 53 am (IST): Panic sets in inside the campus. Eye-witnesses say not enough ambulances to bring out severely injured and dead 11: 55 am (IST): Rescue officials say some 50 students have been rescued from the premises 11: 57 am (IST): Dawn tweets: 8-10 terrorists still inside the school 12: 02 pm (IST): Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif: Sacrifices made by Pakistan will not go in vain. Those who kill innocent students and civilians have no religion. 12: 03 pm (IST): 11 blasts till now 12: 05 pm (IST): According to Express Tribune: Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has claimed responsibility for the attack on Bacha Khan University. TTP commander, Omar Mansoor, said that the attack was carried out by four attackers. 12: 08 pm (IST): According to Express Tribune: Seven people have been killed in the attack so far, while casualties are feared to rise 12: 09 pm (IST): Six dead bodies recovered 12: 12 pm (IST): Asim Bajwa tweets: Two more terrorists who were firing from inside the Block cordoned by Army troops, shot & killed. Op continues 12: 14 pm (IST): Emergency declared in hospitals 12: 20 pm (IST): Asim Bajwa tweets: Snipers killed 2 more terrorists on roof top,total Terrorist killed so far 4.All buildings&roof top taken over by Army.op continues-3 12: 21 pm (IST): Total four terrorists killed so far 12: 28 pm (IST): Provincial minister Shaukat Yousufzai has said that over 20 people have been killed 12: 35 pm (IST): Chairman Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Imran Khan to leave for Charsadda shortly 12: 40 pm (IST): Express news: 17 dead bodies recovered 12: 45 pm (IST): President Mamnoon Hussain condemns terrorist attack 12: 48 pm (IST): clearance of university block by block continues by Army troops.No firing being heard 12: 50 pm (IST): Express Tribune reports, majority students residing in the boys hostel are dead: student This is a developing story and will be updated as we receive updates. British Chancellor George Osborne and Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley reached a number of agreements on Tuesday to build on the economic relationship between the UK and India - focussing on financial services, infrastructure and technology. The agreements, made at the eighth UK-India Economic and Financial Dialogue (EFD) in London, represent the shared ambition to strengthen mutual cooperation and further boost trade and investment between the two nations. Osborne said:"The agreements we've made today are another important step in deepening economic ties between Britain and India. Working together across infrastructure and financial services we will be able to solve key shared challenges which will help us create growth in both of our economies.I want to thank Arun and his team for travelling to London and for making today's talks a success, as we bring our two great economies closer together." Agreements reached during the EFD included: Indian National Infrastructure Partnership The agreement will see the UK government support the delivery of major infrastructure projects in India across key sectors including smart cities, renewable energy and railways, all of which are vital for India's future growth. This initiative will support India's development and may also present significant new commercial opportunities for UK businesses offering expertise in infrastructure delivery and financial & professional services. Liberalising the Indian Legal Services Market India will press ahead with liberalising the Indian legal services market to allow foreign lawyers the right to operate in India. This will act as a catalyst for international investment in India and give businesses the access they need to international legal advice. It will also bring new opportunities for the UK profession, who will benefit from being offered similar rights to those that Indian firms already enjoy in the UK, allowing them to enter partnerships with Indian firms and bring their specialist expertise to India. Rupee Bond Commitments Both sides welcomed the prospect of a pipeline of rupee bond issuances in London by Indian corporates, and agreed that the first such public sector issuance would be by the Indian Railway Finance Corporation. This will help build on the success of rupee bond issuances in London by the International Finance Corporation, and demonstrates the UK's position as a partner of choice for the world's fastest growing economies. As the rupee markets build, London's capital markets will play a key role in financing India's continued rapid economic growth. Fintech tie-ups Both nations agreed to substantially strengthen links between the leading FinTech communities in India and Britain. This includes significant joint commitments to high-profile FinTech trade missions between the two nations and major steps towards UK FinTech companies helping to deliver 'digital India', covering priority areas like access to finance for micro-enterprises. FirstGroup to provide shuttle busses at Indian IT park FirstGroup, the leading Transport operator in the UK and North America, is to operate employee shuttle buses at the Hinjewadi IT Park in Pune, India. The five year contract will commence in April 2016 initially at Hinjewadi and is expected to expand across the country. The Group will use its shuttle bus expertise from existing First Transit operations in North America and is working with local partner, bus manufacturer Tata, who will maintain the vehicles. The Tintometer commits to 1m investment in India Lovibond Tintometer - a leading UK supplier of water analysis equipment based in Wiltshire - has committed to setting up a factory and sales service operation in Hyderabad with the aim of enhancing the production of instruments and chemical reagents to meet the rapidly growing demand for high quality water testing products in India. Tintometer will be investing over 1 million pounds in this project over the first three years. Pell Frischmann win consulting contracts in Mumbai London based consulting engineering firm Pell Frischmann has announced winning three major contracts in the Mumbai region. The contracts have been awarded by the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) and will see Pell Frischmann evaluating the detailed project report and bid process management of the 33 km Mumbai Coastal Road project, alongside two contracts for major Waste Water Treatment Works located in Mumbai suburbs. Dryden Aqua to install 5,000 drinking water systems in rural communities in 500,000 pounds deal Edinburgh based Dryden Aqua, a marine biological company specializing in water quality and treatment technology, has secured a contract to install their product in 5,000 rural community drinking water systems in India during 2016. The current project is valued at 500,000 for this year, with the technology improving the availability of clean drinking water in these communities. FinTech accelerator 'startupbootcamp' to set-up in Mumbai Recognising the development of the Fintech sector in India, Startupbootcamp FinTech, the leading UK based accelerator focusing on financial services innovation, will soon launch a branch in Mumbai. This new branch will enable the growth of the overall FinTech ecosystem in India and foster the next generation of innovative startups in this exciting region. Diabetacare agrees 500,000 partnership with King George's Medical University in Lucknow Diabetacare has procured a partnership project for Diabetes Services in King George's Medical College, Lucknow - India's largest Hospital with over 3600 inpatient beds. The contract will see Diabetacare invest approximately 500,000 over a two year period, with nurses being trained to become specialist nurses in diabetes - directly supporting Prime Minister Modi's National Skills Development Mission. DelAgua sign 700,000 pound water testing deal in West Bengal UK based water testing company Del Agua has won a 700,000 pound contract from the Government of West Bengal to run a water testing programme for the entire state for one year. This project will help safeguard the local population from various water contaminants such as arsenic and fluoride. CDE Global and Bhartia Family win 1 million processing plant contract A joint venture between CDE Global - a leading supplier of washing equipment for quarries and mines - and its Indian partner Bhartia Family, has won a contract worth 1 million to design, engineer and install a processing plant for the waste from construction and demolition. This green technology will be used to convert waste into high quality high value materials. Templar Executives Ltd agree security training partnership UK based Templar Executives Ltd have partnered with Cyber Security Integrators (India) Pvt Ltd. to provide online and specialised Cyber security training and advisory services to Indian corporations and government agencies. It is seen as in one of the first 'Cyber Value Exchange' initiatives between UK and India. Darktrace open up in Mumbai Cambridge head-quartered security firm Darktrace is announcing that its award-wining 'Enterprise Immune System' technology will become more easily available to the Indian market as it opens an office in Mumbai. Apollo Hospitals to partner with Health Education England Apollo Hospitals, India and Asia's largest healthcare group, have signed a memorandum of understanding with Health Education England (HEE) to promote co-operation and interaction in healthcare education between India and the UK. The partnership will aim to deliver the highest possible quality of care to the patients in UK, India and the region, while enhancing the quality of education and exposure to students. BRC Global Standards to expand into India BRC Global Standards - a leading food safety and quality certification programme - is launching an expansion in India in 2016. To capitalise on India as one of the fastest growing countries for their market, the firm is looking to appoint a local representative and opening an office in India. When there's Shakespeare and his Macbeth, blood-shed and bruises are inevitable. Bollywood actor Kunal Kapoor is the victim this time, who is shooting for Malayalam filmmaker Jayaraj's forthcoming trilingual 'Veeram' reportedly which has its roots dipped in Shakespeare's 'Macbeth.' Posting a picture with his cuts and bruises, the 38-year-old actor tweeted: "Side effects of shooting sword fighting sequences for a week. Bruised battered but loving it # Veeram" The flick spins around a martial arts form called Kalaripayattu and the 'Rang De Basanti' actor will essay a warrior in it. Vice-President Hamid Ansari will be visiting Thailand from February 3-5 at the invitation of the Prime Minister of the Royal Kingdom of Thailand. This is the first Vice-President level visit from India after a gap of 50 years. The Vice President will be accompanied by a high-level delegation including a Minister of State, Members of Parliament and senior officials. During the visit to Bangkok from February 3-5, the Vice-President is expected to have an Audience with Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn and meet the Thai leadership including the Prime Minister of the Royal Kingdom of Thailand. The Vice President is expected to deliver a speech at the prestigious Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok on the topic 'From Look East to Act East: India's Partnership with Thailand and ASEAN'. He is also expected to address the Indian community in Thailand at a reception hosted in his honour by the Ambassador of India to Thailand. The Vice President is also likely to visit the city of Chiang Mai in northern Thailand on February 5 where the Governor of the province will be hosting a banquet in his honour. He will also visit the Royal Development Study Centre on Sustainable Development. India's excellent relations with Thailand are an important and integral component of India's strategic partnership with ASEAN. India's 'Act East' policy is complemented by Thailand's 'Look West' policy in bringing the two countries closer. Sustained high level bilateral exchanges and regular meetings of bilateral institutional mechanisms have provided a major fillip to India-Thailand relations and achieved progress in key areas of cooperation such as security, defence, commerce, science and technology and education. India and Thailand have strong economic synergies and the diversifying profile of growing bilateral trade and investment reflects the growth and maturity of the two economies. Extensive people-to-people contacts are central to the India-Thailand relationship. In 2015, more than 1 million Indian tourists visited Thailand and over 100,000 Thai tourists visited India. Cutting across party lines, the Indian political fraternity joined hands against the terror attack on the Bacha Khan University in Pakistan .... 1. Prime Minister Narendra Modi: Strongly condemn the terror attack at Bacha Khan University in Pakistan. Condolences to families of the deceased. Prayers with the injured. 2. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee : Tragic news of so many students shot dead in Bacha Khan University, Pakistan. Prayers 3. Aam Aadmi Party, Ashutosh : If reports coming from Bacha Khan University is true, then it is most tragic, it's a crime against humanity and should be stopped at any cost. Is it true that 60-70 students are shot in their head in Peshawar? This is insane.These are criminals/need to be dealt with accordingly. The world should unite to fight this kind of terror? They are monsters. What Pakistan has done to India is paying the price for that. 4. Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister, Shivraj Singh Chouhan: Brazen attack on innocent students in Pakistan has shaken the conscience of civilized world. Terrorists have again shown animal instincts. Time has come when all nations should come together, leaving aside petty differences to put down monster of terrorism without further delay. Such attacks again & again send wake up call to all countries that terrorism should never be used as an instrument of state policy. 5. Congress leader, Shashi Tharoor: In this case, the Pakistanis are the victims, in other cases in our country, Pakistanis are the perpetrators. The sad truth is that the phenomenon of terrorism was at one point deliberately incubated in Pakistan. The result is there for all of us to see. I hope that this tragedy and terrible loss of life will sharpen the desire of the Pakistani authorities to wipe out all such sources of terror and violence from their country. Array 6. Congress leader R.P.N. Singh: I strongly condemn this horrifying attack. Condolences to all the one's who lost their lives in the university. It is most horrifying and brutal that children and students are being attacked. But in this hour of tragedy, we stand with the Government of Pakistan. This is something the whole world needs to fight against terrorism. We have said many times that there is nothing like a good terrorist or bad terrorist, terrorists are terrorists. Pakistan has suffered these kinds of attacks and that is why we always said that all institutions, all systems of terror need to be dismantled. Array 7. BJP leader Shahnawaz Hussain: It is very unfortunate. The roots of terrorism are in Pakistan, which should be eradicated completely. We sympathise with the victims. Array 8. Skill Development and Entrepreneurship Minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy: This is terrorism, which is aimed at creating an atmosphere where influence of organisations like IS or Lashkar-e-Taiba increases. There is a need to start an international drive against terrorists active in Pakistan, which will have to be carried out by the Pakistan Government. We know that the world's most wanted terrorist Osama bin laden was hiding in Pakistan for over a decade, and to consider that the Pakistani Government was not aware about it, would be wrong. Pakistan will have to fight terrorism Array 9. INC India: Our thoughts and prayers are with families of those killed in the terror attack. Array 10. Naveen Jindal ?@MPNaveenJindal: The terrorist is extremely horrendous. Prayers for the safety of students, faculty and staff. With pollution in Yamuna river affecting the water supply in the capital, Delhi Chief Secretary KK Sharma has written to his Haryana counterpart DS Dhesi to take necessary steps and has assured that hygienic water will be supplied through tankers to the affected areas. Due to rise in ammonia level in the raw water supply from the river Yamuna, production of potable water at Wazirabad and Chandrawal plants has been affected. Array The matter of deterioration of quality of raw water supply to the Delhi plants has been taken up by the Delhi Government with the concerned Haryana authorities. Array Sharma has written a letter to Dhesi bringing the above position to his notice and has sought his intervention for taking necessary steps to ensure not to let entry of pollutants' in river Yamuna while coming to Delhi. Array As the same time the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) has been assured that the corrective measures are being taken up to stop the entry of the pollutants coming from Haryana drains into the river course and the situation is expected to improve soon. Array In fact, raw water quality is being continuously monitored at half an hour intervals in DJB's laboratories to check the ammonia levels. As soon as the ammonia levels reach treatable limits, the plants will be made operational. Array The affected areas are: NDMC area, North Delhi, North West Delhi, Central Delhi and parts of West and South Delhi. The localities affected are Chandni Chowk, Jama Masjid, Civil Lines, Subhash Park, Mukherjee Nagar, Shakti Nagar, Adarsh Nagar, Model Town, Jahangir Puri, Wazirpur Industrial area, Punjabi Bagh, Gulabi Bagh, Hindu Rao, Jhandewalan, Motia Khan, Pahar Ganj, Karol Bagh, Old Rajinder Nagar, Naya Bazar, East & West Patel Nagar, Malka Ganj and their adjoining areas. Array Water tankers will be available at telephone nos. , 29941825 (Sarita Vihar), 26100644 (R.K.Puram), 29234746, 29234747 (Grater Kailash-I), 23814338, 23810930 (Chandrawal Water Emergency), 27304656 (Ashok Vihar Water Emergency), 27700789, 27700474 (Holambi Kalan), 25274679, 25275259, 25275260 (Paschim Vihar), and 1916, 23538495, 23527679 (Central Control Room). Reliance Industries' (RIL) consolidated net profit including exceptional items rose 38.7% to Rs 7290 crore on 23.9% decline in revenue to Rs 73341 crore in Q3 December 2015 over Q3 December 2014. The result was announced after market hours yesterday, 19 January 2016. RIL attributed the decline in top line during the quarter to fall in benchmark (Brent) oil price. Exports from India operations declined 37.5% to Rs 36564 crore in Q3 December 2015 over Q3 December 2014 due to lower product prices in line with lower feedstock prices, the company said in a statement. RIL's standalone gross refining margins (GRM) increased to a seven-year high at $11.5 per barrel in Q3 December 2015 from $7.3 a barrel in Q3 December 2014. Strong gasoline and naptha cracks, seasonal rebound in middle distillates cracks, robust demand growth and sourcing of advantageous crude helped boost refining margins, RIL said in a statement. RIL's Chairman and Managing Director Mukesh D. Ambani said that the benefits of low crude oil and energy prices for the company's downstream businesses cleary outweighed the impact of these factors on its upstream segment, reflecting in the record earnings for the quarter. RIL's outstanding debt as on 31 December 2015 was Rs 178077 crore compared to Rs 160860 crore as on 31 March 2015. Cash and cash equivalents as on 31 December 2015 were at Rs 91736 crore. UltraTech Cement and Axis Bank are scheduled to announce their Q3 December 2015 results today, 20 January 2016. Indian Bank announced that its board of directors at a meeting held yesterday, 19 January 2016, accorded approval to the bank to raise Basel III compliant Tier II bonds for Rs 1100 crore in one or more tranches in the current or subsequent years based on the requirement. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 19 January 2016. Dhanlaxmi Bank said that its board of directors will meet on 29 January 2016, to inter- alia, consider the proposal for raising further equity shares on preferential allotment basis and seek shareholders' approval for the same. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 19 January 2016. BASF India reported net loss of Rs 106.38 crore in Q3 December 2015, higher than net loss of Rs 39.59 crore in Q3 December 2014. Total income from operations (net) rose 15.76% to Rs 1131.70 crore in Q3 December 2015 over Q3 December 2014. The result was announced after market hours yesterday, 19 January 2016. Deep Industries' net profit rose 139.31% to Rs 13.33 crore on 102.03% growth in total income from operations (net) to Rs 52.69 crore in Q3 December 2015 over Q3 December 2014. The result was announced after market hours yesterday, 19 January 2016. Powered by Capital Market - Live News At least 15 people, including four gunmen, were killed when terrorists stormed the Bacha Khan University in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Wednesday, Dawn reported citing sources from the Edhi Foundation emergency assistance service. The gunmen opened fire at students and faculty members who had gathered in a school on the varsity campus for a poetry recital to commemorate the anniversary of the activist and leader after whom the school is named. Lt General Asim Bajwa, the Pakistan army spokesperson, said on Twitter that four attackers had been killed and that government troops had resumed control of all buildings and rooftops. There were conflicting reports from the site initially with CNN news placing the toll at seven. "It's not yet clear how many of the dead are attackers and how many are civilians," a CNN report said. Meanwhile, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif condemned the attack in the "strongest terms". "...Sharif is deeply grieved over the sad incident of terrorists' attack on Bacha Khan University... which has reportedly resulted in the loss of precious human lives and injured many others," a statement from his office said. "While condemning the cowardly attack of the terrorists, the prime minister said those killing innocent students and citizens have no faith and religion," the statement said. "We are determined and resolved in our commitment to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland. The countless sacrifices made by our countrymen will not go in vain," the statement quoted Sharif, who is currently in Zurich, as saying. State-run PTV quoted a police official as saying that three armed men entered the university premises and opened fire. Heavy firing took place inside Bacha Khan University in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's Charsadda town as security forces, rushed to the site, engaged the armed assailants in a gun fight, witnesses said. Several people also heard explosions, a media report said. A woman inside the university told Dawn that intense firing could be heard. --Indo-Asian News service pku/dg I moved to the Bismarck-Mandan area in August of 2010 from Kingman, Ariz. In all my time of going to school in Arizona I heard of one child that had head lice. Children could not return to school until they were confirmed to be nit free. This common sense policy keeps spread to an absolute minimum. Since moving to the Mandan side of the river in 2015 lice have entered our home five times! The last time, almost a month ago it came home on my stepdaughter who tends to keep to herself, this enabled it to go a week (estimated) before we discovered it. By that time there were multiple bugs and numerous nits! The lice also spread to our 2-year-old. We went through the normal protocols of bag all clothes, stuffed animals, bedding, high heat in dryer for 60 minutes, toys, vacuum, steam clean, boil hair items and of course comb, comb, comb. With three daughters and a wife the combing is a relentless task. I have spent hundreds of dollars on RID only to find that most lice in North Dakota are now resistant to it. Whenever a new nit or bug was found my wife would break out in tears. She is the most OCD person I have ever met and I assure you we follow every step so each new discovery is a massive blow to morale. It took three weeks to clear our home of lice. At least 19 Myanmar nationals, including seven children, were arrested on Wednesday from West Bengal's Malda district for entering India without valid documents, police said. The group of two men, 10 women and seven children were arrested in the early hours of the day from Malda Town railway station by the Government Railway Police (GRP). "The group entered India through Bangladesh around 10 days ago and planned to travel to Delhi in search of work. They do not possess any travel documents and hence we apprehended the men and women," said a GRP officer. "While the adults were presented in a court, the children's case has been forwarded to the juvenile justice board," added the officer. At least 27 Bangladeshi nationals, who planned to take part in extremist activities in other countries, including their homeland, were arrested in Singapore, the island state's Ministry of Home Affairs said on Wednesday. The arrests were made by the Internal Security Department, Xinhua reported. All 27 male Bangladeshis, working in the construction industry in Singapore, were arrested under the Internal Security Act (ISA) between November 16 and December 1 2015. The work passes of them were cancelled and 26 of them have been repatriated to Bangladesh, MHA said. The remaining one person currently serves a jail sentence for attempting to leave Singapore illegally after learning about the arrests of his fellow group members. He will be repatriated to Bangladesh upon completion of his sentence. Other 26 were members of a closed religious study group that subscribed to extremist beliefs and teachings of radical ideologies like Anwar al-Awlaki. They supported the armed jihad ideology of terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The remaining Bangladeshi was not a member of the group, but was found to be in the process of becoming radicalised and was supportive of extremist preachers. He also possessed jihadi-related material, added MHA. The group members took measures to avoid detection by the authorities. They shared jihadi-related material discreetly among themselves, and held weekly meetings and gatherings where they discussed armed jihad and conflicts that involved Muslims. They also carefully targeted the recruitment of other Bangladeshi nationals to grow their membership. A significant amount of radical and jihadi-related material like books and videos, including footages of children undergoing training in what appeared to be terrorist military camps, were recovered from the possession of the group, MHA said. Several members also had a shared document containing graphic images and instruction details on how to conduct "silent killings" using different methods and weapons. The Singapore government takes a very serious view of any form of support for terrorism and will take firm and decisive action against any person who engages in any activity in support of terrorism, said the MHA. An 80-member joint family living in Agashe village near Virar in Maharashtra has suddenly come into prominence after all of them voluntarily pledged to donate their bodies or organs and tissues. Headed by retired farmer Baptista Lopes, the East Indian Christian family was inspired by a talk by Puroshottam Patil-Pawar, the chief trustee of the Bapusaheb Patil-Pawar Charitable Trust which runs NGO Dehmukti Mission that creates awareness on eye and cadaver donations. Starting with the 82-year old patriarch Baptista, four members have already signed pledges to donate their full bodies, while the other 76 will donate organs or tissues. "Around 20-odd family members either live or work elsewhere, but they have agreed to come and pledge their donation in due course," said Baptista's son Elvis Lopes, a 60-year-old retired private company employee. The Lopes family is one of the rare and huge single joint families in the coastal Konkan region with around 100 members living peacefully and happily in one single wadi in Agashe village, around five km from Virar station. "When we heard Patil-Pawar's simple and scientific explanations on the benefits of body or organ donation, we were impressed and convinced to do our bit. In fact, on January 10, when most of my family was present, a majority raised their hands in the auditorium," Lopes told IANS. Speaking to IANS, Patil-Pawar said: "The Lopes family asked me to speak about the topic on which we are campaigning and creating awareness. It was on January 10, when the family was marking the 25th death anniversary of their former patriarch Bascao Dinya Lopes who died in 1991 at the age of 79." After that, around 60 Lopes family members filled up forms pledging tissues like eyes and skin, and organs like blood, lungs, kidneys, intestines, heart, pancreas, liver, bones and bone marrow, and four members including Baptista pledged their full bodies. The rest, some not living there currently, or the 12 minors -- the youngest to pledge is only 12 years old and others including school and college going children -- have announced their intention to sign up after they become majors. Charged by the cause, Patil-Pawar said the Lopes family members were now enthusiastically reaching out to other villagers and also their own distant relatives in other parts of Maharashtra and elsewhere to make similar pledges. French President Francois Hollande visits India as guest of honour at the Republic Day parade on January 26. Is the visit a sign of the coming of age of Indo-French relations? It's been almost two years to the date from Hollande's first visit to India as president. In the interregnum, a lot has changed around the world and in bilateral relations. The world is confronted with its biggest geostrategic challenge in the shape of the Islamic State (IS), which has emerged as a major threat to peace and security around the world and whose agents have already carried out numerous attacks in France, the US and many other countries. The IS attacks in the Middle East have also led to the biggest refugee crisis since the Second World War and over a million refugees have landed in the European Union. Hundreds more have perished in their attempt to cross the Mediterranean Sea, seeking the safety of Europe. The situation of the world economy is hardly any better, as over the last year or so it has been rattled by the Chinese tsunami and a European economy that seems stuck in low, jobless growth, with very few bright spots, including India, which seem to be keeping the global economy afloat. With its expected GDP growth of about seven percent this year, India has kept its place as the fastest growing large economy in the world for the second year running. Businesses from around the world, including France, are now looking at India with renewed expectations. Ever since India elected Narendra Modi as prime minister in May 2014, there seems to be a new spring in the step of Indian relations with France. Modi was in France twice in 2015, once on a bilateral visit in April and then again in November for the Climate Change Summit in Paris. Besides, Indian and French leaders have taken time out for bilateral discussions at practically all multilateral events like the UN General Assembly meeting in New York in September and the G20 meet in Antalya, Turkey, in November. Anyone looking for signs of this new sense of purpose and direction in the relationship needs to only look at fresh movement in the long-pending deal over the purchase of the French Rafale multi-role medium range combat aircraft. After having been stuck for nearly seven years, when in January 2012, India finally opted for Rafale as the aircraft that would become the new backbone of the Indian Air Force, with 128 fulfilling the role, the French government and Rafale-manufacturer Dassault were hoping it would be only a matter of a few months more to close the deal and begin the supply of the aircraft. On his first visit to France, at a joint press conference with Hollande in Palais Elysee, Modi sprung a surprise and announced that India would buy 36 Rafales in fly-away condition, saying that the terms of this deal would be finalised shortly. The announcement came as a big relief to Dassault, which was on the verge of closing down the Rafale assembly line as it had no firm orders on hand from anywhere. Eight months later, as Hollande reaches India, hopes are high that the deal would be sealed during this visit with clear timetables for delivery of the aircraft and setting the scene for a bigger defence deal between the two sides. Modi sees a big role for the French in creating a real manufacturing hub in the country, especially in areas where the French are normally strong, notably railways, aviation, defence, automobile, nuclear power etc. During his visit to France in April last year, Modi highlighted several times the focus of his government in improving the manufacturing sector and with several very aggressive incentive schemes to get the Indian private sector and foreign companies as well to invest more aggressively in order to boost the manufacturing capacities in the country. Besides, Make in India, France is an equally good and logical partner for India in the implementation of several other projects that the country has been focussing on. One of the most important areas for enhanced bilateral cooperation in the urbanisation of India. In the smart city project, the French have already evinced interest in undertaking the work in three cities. Another key area where France could lend a helping hand to India is the country's power sector, in conventional, nuclear as well as renewable energy sources. The biggest boost in this collaboration was received during the Climate Change Summit. At the event, India, along with dozens of other nations, launched the International Solar Alliance, aimed at pooling resources and technologies to boost the solar energy power plants throughout the nations that are blessed with adequate number of sunny days. So far, the Indo-French business relationship remains overwhelmingly dominated by the behemoths, with very little engagement of the smaller companies, which ironically make up the bulk of both Indian and French economies. The small and medium enterprises (SMEs) sector is involved only in small volumes of trades in very traditional segments such as textiles, food, gems and jewellery. But the reluctance of more SMEs to trade or do business with each other has led to a stagnation in Indo-French trade, which has been hovering around the seven billion euro mark for almost all of the past decade, despite several ambitious targets set by leaders on various occasions. This pales in comparison to the trade between India and Germany or India and the UK, both of which are nearly thrice as high as that of France. The new focus areas of India could be the big breakthrough in this relationship which could help take the bilateral trade to the next level and give the bandwidth which has been missing from this crucial relationship for a long while. (Paris-based Ranvir S. Nayar is managing director of the Media India Group. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at r.nayar@mediaindia.eu) Afghan President Ashraf Ghani left Kabul on Wednesday to attend the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, a statement released by his office here said. During the two-day visit Ghani will meet NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen, and heads of several states and economic entities to exchange views on matters of mutual interest, Xinhua reported. On the sidelines of the meeting, a trilateral meeting between Afghanistan, Pakistan and the US will be held to exchange views on the situation in Afghanistan, and peace and stability in the region and the world, the statement added. It was not just the quintessential Victorian era poison, arsenic that Queen of Crime Agatha Christie used in her deadly murder-plots to kill-off characters. Her toxic arsenal comprised over 30 compounds including "examples of native Indian plants as sources for her poisons", says British chemist and author Kathryn Harkup. In "A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie", Harkup sheds light on how the author gained the know-how on the lethal compounds while working as a dispenser in Britain and weaved them into her brilliant novels. "The most underrated aspect of Christie, in my opinion, is how many different poisons she used. There is an assumption that she just used arsenic, but she used over 30 different compounds to kill her characters," Harkup told IANS in an email interaction while in India to attend literary fests in Kolkata and New Delhi. Dame Agatha Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. She has to her credit over 80 novels and short stories. Her 125th birthday was commemorated worldwide on September 15, 2015. Christie's considerable knowledge of chemistry and the nitty-gritties of poisons was amassed during her professional years in a pharmacy during both World Wars. "I have looked into the Ayurveda system of medicine during my research, as Christie used examples of native Indian plants as sources for her poisons. "Christie would have used atropine, strychnine and aconitine in the preparations she made as an apothecaries assistant. All of these compounds can be obtained from plants that are native to India. I looked at example of the use of these compounds in the Ayurveda system, particularly atropine," Harkup, whose visit was sponsored by the British Council, revealed. For example, in "4:50 from Paddington", aconitine (monkshood/aconitum napellus) is the central agent, strychnine (strychnos nux vomica) in "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" and atropine (datura) in "The Cretan Bull" or "Caribbean Mystery", said Harkup. While delving deep into the scientific basis of the use of poisons by Christie, Harkup was amazed by the phenomenal effort the author had put in to clear her apothecaries exams. "The most interesting thing I learnt was how much studying she had done for her apothecaries exams. She had to learn theoretical and practical chemistry as well as about pharmacy and how to make up prescriptions. She even practised the Marsh Test (the test for arsenic) in preparation for her exams which surprised me." In fact, the author's most treasured review was from The Pharmaceutical Journal where they praised her book "The Mysterious Affair at Styles" for its scientific accuracy, even though women were not seen as great leaders in science in Christie's day, according to Harkup. She singles out thallium (featured in "The Pale Horse") and eserine (featured in "Curtain") as major evidence of Christie's breadth of knowledge. "Thallium, which was so little known about at the time she was writing that doctors consulted her novel for accurate descriptions of poisoning symptoms. Eserine was a drug I had never heard of until I read Christie. Eserine has a fascinating history from its discovery in West Africa to its use in medicine today," Harkup explained. Respected for her knowledge and accuracy, Christie was also ahead of her time in some instances. "She used ricin to kill three people in the short story "The House of Lurking Death". Christie was writing almost 50 years before anyone had been murdered using this poison (as far as we know). Unfortunately, because there were no other cases that she could draw on, some of the science is not very accurate. "Anyone trying to mimic Christie would not be a very successful murderer if they used the method in this story," Harkup pointed out. Published by Bloomsbury, "A is for Arsenic" also looks at why certain chemicals kill, how they interact with the body, and the feasibility of obtaining, administering, and detecting these poisons, both when Christie was writing and today. "I hope the book can be seen as not just a science book but also about history and social aspects of science as well as Agatha Christie and her work," added Harkup whose next book is on the science behind Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. (Sahana Ghosh can be contacted at sahana.g@ians.in) Vatican City, Jan 20 (IANS/AKI) The teachings of the Bible require Christians to give succour to the poor, Pope Francis said on Twitter. "The Gospel calls us to be close to the poor and forgotten, and to give them real hope," the Pope tweeted. His @Pontifex account is published in nine languages and now has over 22 million followers. --IANS/AKI py/vt The union cabinet on Wednesday gave its ex-post facto approval for the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between India and Britain for cooperation in public administration and governance reforms. The meeting of the union cabinet was chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "The form of co-operation will be in areas like sharing good governance practices in public administration, user led service design, reducing bureaucracy in service delivery, government process re-engineering, building and developing staff capability, public grievance redress mechanism, local government reforms, reforms towards strengthening of social security, collaboration in strategies for promotion of ethics in government, collaboration between government and industry on staff management, mechanisms for public engagement, crisis and disaster management and digital transformation of government," an official release said. A joint working group on public administration and governance, which is scheduled to meet later this month in London, will be responsible for implementation of the MoU. "The MoU will help in understanding the system of customer-oriented public service delivery in UK with reference to rapidly changing environments in the area of public service management and enable in replicating, adapting and innovating some of the best practices and processes in the Indian Public Service Delivery System, leading to improved public service delivery in India," the release said. The cabinet on Wednesday gave post facto approval to the stand India has taken on food security at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting held in Nairobi in December last year. "The union cabinet has given its post facto approval for the approach adopted by India at the 10th ministerial conference of the WTO held in Nairobi, Kenya, during December 2015," a commerce ministry statement here said. "These cover a Special Safeguard Mechanism (SSM) for developing countries and public stock holding for food security," it added. The G-33 group of developing countries has called for an effective special safeguard mechanism for developing countries, and for changing the rules relating to public stockholding for food security purposes. Developed countries want elimination of export subsidy given by countries like India to boost their agriculture exports. On the other hand, India, along with other developing nations, is pushing for special safeguard mechanisms which would help in protecting the interests of poor farmers in case of sudden surges in imports or fall in commodity prices. At the WTO ministerial meeting in December, India proposed either amending the formula to calculate the food subsidy cap of 10 percent, which is based on the reference price of 1986-88, or allowing such schemes outside the purview of subsidy caps. At least eight people were killed and 27 injured when a suicide car bomb went off near the Russian embassy in the western part of the Afghan capital of Kabul on Wednesday. The attacker targeted a minibus carrying local media workers, Xinhua quoted Kabul Police Chief General Abdul Rahman Rahimi as saying. Seven civilians, including two women, died in addition to the bomber while 25 civilians were wounded as a result of the explosion, Rahimi said citing initial information. The number of casualties may rise as the victims were shifted to different hospitals, Rahimi noted. The suicide blast occurred at around 5.10 p.m. along Dar-ul-Aman road. The attacker rammed his sedan into a minibus running along the four-line road, witness Jamal Formuli told Xinhua. Some bystanders were among the casualties. The number of people aboard the targeted bus was not immediately clear. Security forces have cordoned off the area. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. The blast came months after the Taliban militants announced some private TV channels as their targets over what they said were unbalanced reports and siding with the government. I write to you and your readers today to express my sincere appreciation for the support and encouragement which North Dakotas student councils and schools have shown throughout my recent campaign to become North Dakotas State Student Council president. As I have said many times, it is both a great honor and privilege to represent the students of North Dakota and the member schools of the North Dakota Association of Student Councils. It is right here in North Dakota where I have learned to exhibit the values of honesty, integrity, respect, conservatism, and hard work. Throughout my term as president of the NDASC, I will work to unite our association, and provide North Dakotas students with the opportunities and recognition which they deserve. In my first month in office, I have worked with the NDASC team to gather input from our member schools through an online survey, expand the associations social media base, and launch a long-awaited website, which can be found at www.nodakstuco.com. I am dedicated to working for my constituents, and with only a year in office, I hope to lead our association and the students of North Dakota to a more connected, and involved future. The NDASC will achieve these goals under my leadership by evolving to become a much more active association of students for North Dakota. As a member of the State Superintendents Student Cabinet, to which I was appointed in April of 2015, I have had the unique opportunity to represent the views of North Dakota students as they pertain to our classrooms. It is with honor that I am now able to extend my representation of all that North Dakotas young people have to offer, out of the classroom and into our student councils. China and the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC) are committed to working closely to conclude a comprehensive free trade agreement (FTA) within 2016, the two sides announced. In a joint press release, the Chinese ministry of commerce and the GCC Secretariat said the two sides resumed their FTA talks on Sunday and "substantively concluded in principle the negotiations on trade in goods" on Tuesday. The two sides said they have decided to accelerate the negotiation process and hold the next round of talks in the second half of February. The announcement came as Chinese President Xi Jinping is in Riyadh for the first state visit to Saudi Arabia by a Chinese head of state in seven years. During Xi's talks with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud on Tuesday, the two leaders welcomed the restart of the China-GCC FTA talks, saying they were "delighted" to see the substantive progress that has been made. They also agreed to establish the FTA as soon as possible. China and the GCC, which includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, began their FTA talks in July 2004, and the process was suspended in 2009. The second edition of co-located technology fairs -- SPS Automation India, Motek and Control India -- will take place this year on April 7-9 at the Gujarat University Exhibition and Convention Centre. The fairs made their debut in Gujarat capital city Gandhinagar last year, with support from the state government, a statement said here on Wednesday. The three trade fairs, which drew attention to high-quality manufacturing technologies, envisage to take the Indian manufacturing sector a step closer to government's 'Make-in-India' vision by bringing the required technology in industrial, factory and process automation as well as quality control solutions to this industrial hub in Gujarat. The exhibitions are being jointly organised by Messe Frankfurt Trade Fairs India together with German companies Mesago Messe Frankfurt GmbH and P.E. Schall GmbH. At the centre of a row over Dalit research scholar Rohith Venmula's suicide, central minister Bandaru Dattareya on Wednesday clarified that he did not put pressure on University of Hyderabad to suspend any student. He said he only forwarded two representations he received from the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) to the union ministry of human resources development. The minister of state of labour and employment said he received a representation from the ABVP on August 10, 2015 and forwarded it to the HRD ministry with a covering letter hoping that the situation in the campus will change for better. Dattatreya, who is a member of the Lok Sabha from Secunderabad, said he received another representation on August 29 and forwarded it to the HRD ministry. "I have in no manner influenced any decisions made by the University of Hyderabad in this case directly or indirectly by simply forwarding these two representations to a concerned ministry. My role was only limited to forwarding these two representations. I would have happily forwarded representations of any other student body if they were to have approached me," he said in a statement. Dattatreya extended his heartfelt condolences to Rohith's family. "Since my entry into politics in the 80's, I have always been a leader connected to the downtrodden and all sections of the society on a daily basis, whether or not in any position of power. Taking representations from common people, constituents and forwarding them to concerned ministries is what I consider my earnest responsibility by being an elected representative," he added. Bollywood actress Deepika Padukone on Wednesday launched a new watch of Swiss watch brand Tissot named Chemin des Tourelles here at its Connaught Place boutique. "I have shared a very special association with Tissot. I have been with it for almost seven or eight years now. It's one of those brands that I started endorsing right from the beginning of my career when I was just a model. I think that says a lot about the faith that they have had in me as an artist and as a person and now it's like family," Deepika, who is also the brand ambassador of Tissot, told IANS. With its name taken from a street in Le Locle, Switzerland, Tissot Chemin des Tourelles compliments the brand's years old expertise with its contemporary design. The range of the watch is between Rs.42,400-Rs.65,000. Talking about her preference, Deepika, who donned an all red ensemble at the event, said she usually likes to prefer the classic collection of watches. "I like the ones that have gold detailings or a black and gold mixture. Most of the times I end up wearing the classic collection," she said. Deepika who has been a trendsetter in showbiz says all credit for her looks goes to her team. Asked whether her looks are specially designed for bringing out new trends, the "Bajirao Mastani" actress said: "I have heard about this a lot. But I want to give all credit to my make-up artist and hair stylist and also to directors because what am I doing? I'm just giving it to them (fans). But they (team) are really the minds behind them. I remember when I did 'Om Shanti Om', every bride wanted that look and when we did 'Love Aaj Kal', every girl wanted those kurtis. Now after 'Ram-Leela', everyone looks for those earrings. "So it's not a conscious effort to set a trend but I think when sometimes you are true to the film and your character and everything falls into place, then these things happen. When 'Piku' was released, the 'bindi' and 'kajal' became a trend." The actress said during her childhood she also followed actress Kajol's "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai" look when she was in school. "I remember when I was in school and 'Kuch Kuch Hota Hai' had released, at that time I had a drawer full of hairbands in my house as it had become a trend at that time. So trends keep on changing," she said. The Delhi government on Wednesday told the Delhi High Court that it will accommodate MCD pensioners who have not been paid for over two years under its old age assistance scheme. The pensioners have been deprived of their pension due to fund crunch in the three municipal corporations in Delhi. Justice B.D. Ahmed and Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva were told by the Delhi government that it provided financial assistance to the elderly and disabled and that it can accommodate more people in the two categories. The bench then asked the civic agencies to provide the government the list of names and other details of people not getting funds under the MCD schemes to know the eligibility criteria for the government schemes. The bench was informed that there was a cap of 4.3 lakh people eligible to get pension. Of this, 384,545 have been remitted assistance till December last year. The pension to the balance cases is withheld subject to verification of their living status, the exercise likely to be completed by January 31, said the government. "So far total expenditure of Rs.456.96 crore have been incurred against the budget allocation of Rs.600 crore," said the Delhi government in its affidavit. The bench asked the government to review the cap, and increase it if needed. Under financial assistance for people with special needs, the Delhi government said assistance had been remitted to 56,672 people by December. The total expenditure incurred so far was Rs.82.13. NGO Social Jurist through advocates Ashok Agarwal and Khagesh Jha said civic bodies had discontinued old-age pension for the last two years due to financial crunch. In the circumstance, the only option was that Delhi government should take upon the liability to pay the pension. The bush dogs, one of the most enigmatic of the world's canid species and classified as "near-threatened" globally by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, are proliferating in Panama, new data shows. The findings of the data from photos taken by automated camera traps in remote areas of the central American country were reported in a paper published in the journal Canid Biology & Conservation. "The bush dog is one of the rarest species that we photograph," said one of the researchers Ricardo Moreno from Yaguara Panama-Sociedad Panamena de Biologia in Panama. Bush dog populations have declined by up to 25 percent in the past 12 years, according to an estimate by the International Union for Conservation of Nature that has classified it as "near-threatened" globally. However, unlike other some other carnivores in Panama, such as jaguar, puma and coyote, bush dogs do not appear to be directly persecuted by humans. The main threats that the canid specie faces are habitat loss and encroachment, the study noted. Bush dogs are short-legged and stubby, standing only about a foot tall at the shoulder. They live mainly in tropical forests but have also been recorded in fragmented and altered habitats. Hunting in packs of up to 10 animals, bush dogs give high-pitched whines to maintain contact and yap like puppies when they chase their prey. They feed mostly on large forest rodents like agoutis and pacas. Fierce for their size, a pack of six once was seen chasing a tapir, an animal almost 20 times a bush dog's weight. Although active by day, bush dogs are remarkably hard to see and are very rarely reported even where they are known to occur. Bush dogs are seldom seen throughout their range in Central and South America and Panama is the only country in Central America where the specie is known to occur, aside from a few unconfirmed sightings in easternmost Costa Rica near the Panamanian border. "We think that it will soon cross the border into Costa Rica," Moreno said. As the World Economic Forum kicked off on Wednesday in Davos, some European Union (EU) research organisations, officials and scholars expressed their will to advocate cutting-edge research at the forum. European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science Carlos Moedas and European Research Council (ERC) president professor Jean-Pierre Bourguignon underlined Europe's efforts to attract top scientists. Moedas commented that it will be important to discuss the EU's role in the fourth Industrial Revolution at Davos this week, Xinhua reported. "One thing is for sure, there will be no revolution without supporting the kind of interdisciplinary, frontier research that will lead to innovation in European industry and manufacturing," he said. Set up in 2007 by the EU, the ERC is the first European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. The ERC strives to attract top researchers across the world to come to Europe. To date, it has funded more than 5,500 top researchers at a variety of stages in their careers. According to the ERC, Europe faces a serious challenge: How can it attract the brightest researchers from outside Europe and reverse brain drain? Under the new EU research and innovation programme, Horizon 2020, the ERC has a budget of over 13 billion euros ($14 billion), the ERC allows first-class researchers to pursue their cutting-edge ideas in fields such as cancer therapy, climate change or nanotechnology. The World Economic Forum (WEF), which has taken place annually since 1971, is one of the most recognized platforms for discussion of pressing global issues. With the overarching goal to "improve the state of the world", the forum gathers over 2,500 participants, bringing together political, business, scientific and civic society leaders from around the world. Can not finding signs of life at a place on Earth that closely resembles the area on Red Planet a bad news for those trying to find life on the Martian surface? Yes, say researchers, suggesting that the failure to find active microbes in the coldest Antarctic soils on Earth has implications for search for life on Mars. Jackie Goordial, post-doctoral fellow at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, has spent the past four years looking for signs of active microbial life in permafrost soil taken from University Valley in Antarctica where extremely cold and dry conditions have persisted for over 150,000 years. The reason that scientists are looking for life in this area is that it is thought to be the place on Earth that most closely resembles the permafrost found in the northern polar region of Mars at the Phoenix landing site. The research team carried out several tests, both in the field (where they failed to find evidence of carbon dioxide or methane - a gas used by all living things - in the soil) and then back in the lab at McGill University. The tests, however, failed to show any signs of active life. "I have been trying to cheer her up by telling her that not finding life is important too," said Lyle Whyte, Goordial's supervisor, in a paper appeared in The ISME Journal. However, "it is hard for both of us to believe that we may have reached a cold and arid threshold where even microbial life cannot actively exist," Whyte noted. University Valley is one of the coldest, oldest and driest places on Earth. "We couldn't detect any microbial activity within these samples," Whyte pointed out. According to Goordial, they don't know if there is activity beyond their limits of detection. "If conditions are too cold and dry to support active microbial life on an analogous climate on Earth, then the colder dryer conditions in the near surface permafrost on Mars are unlikely to contain life," the authors added. "Additionally, if we cannot detect activity on Earth, in an environment which is teeming with microorganisms, it will be extremely unlikely and difficult to detect such activity on Mars," Whyte continued. On a positive note, however, the researchers add that this suggests that any microorganisms that may be transported to Mars from Earth by mistake are unlikely to be able to survive on the Martian surface, something that is of current concern for planetary protection. Riding on a powerful batting performance, including a century from opener Aaron Finch, Australia posted a formidable 348/8 in the fourth One Day International (ODI) against India at the Manuka Oval here on Wednesday. Finch scored a run-a-ball 107 and posted an opening partnership of 187 runs with David Warner (93) to lay the foundation of a big total. Steven Smith (51) also posted a useful contribution in the middle order before Glenn Maxwell (41) came up with the fireworks towards the end to give the Australian innings a superb finish. Pacers Ishant Sharma (4/77) and Umesh Yadav (3/67) came up with a flurry of late wickets to keep the Australian total below the 350-run mark. India had batted first in the three previous matches, losing by five wickets, seven wickets and three wickets respectively to give Australia a decisive 3-0 lead in the five-ODI series. Electing to bat after winning the toss, Australia skipper Steven Smith saw his decision vindicated as openers Finch and Warner tormented the Indian bowling. Yadav started off on a promising note, bowling a maiden in the opening over of the Australian innings and smiled to himself as he walked over to his fielding position. That was one of the few occassions the Indian bowlers could afford to smile over the course of the next 49 overs. Bhuvneshwar started the next over with a full length delivery which drifted onto the legstump. Finch promptly glanced the ball off his pads to dispatch it to the boundary and kick-off the Australian run spree. Warner, who replaced Shaun Marsh in the Australian XI after returning from paternity leave, was the more aggressive among the Australian openers. The left-hander smashed 12 boundaries and a six during his 92-ball knock. Finch gave Warner good support from the other end as the hosts kept the scoreboard ticking at healthy rate, helped on by some inconsistent fielding performance by the visitors. The Australian blitzkrieg claimed a victim in umpire Richard Kettleborough when the Englishman was hit on the right leg by a Finch straight drive in the 17th over. Kettleborough limped off the field and was replaced by Australian official Paul Wilson. Warner was looking well set for a well-deserved century before being bowled while trying to hoist a slowish, incoming delivery from Ishant over mid-wicket. But that proved to be no respite for the visitors as Finch soon brought up his century, playing Yadav to midwicket for a single. Finch finally sent back by Yadav when he mistimed an attempted pull shot. The ball found the upper edge of the bat and went up in the air as Ishant pulled off a comfortable catch. Mitchell Marsh, promoted up the order to the number three slot, did not seem to be in his elements on the day. He produced a sxeries of ill-timed shots that mostly found the fielders before being dismissed by Umesh for a 42-ball 33. But Indian hopes of containing the Australians to a manageable total soon disappeared as Smith and Maxwell smashed the bowlers all around the ground. Smith hit four boundaries and three sixes in a 29-ball 51 and Warner had six boundaries and a six in his 20-ball innings. The Indian bowlers hit back late in the innings, claiming five wickets in the last six overs. But by then, the Australians had already ste themselves up for a formidable total. Five people were injured when armed men stormed a university in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Wednesday, a media report said. Heavy firing was on inside Bacha Khan University in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's Charsadda town, witnesses said. Several people heard explosions, Dawn reported. State-run PTV quoted a police official as saying that three armed men entered the university premises and opened fire. Television reports added that a large contingent of security forces had reached the site and wwere engaging the assailants in a gun battle. A woman inside the university told Dawn that intense firing was under way. --Indo-Asian News service pku/dg As battles loom within the Republican Party over endorsements for a number of statewide and legislative contests, including a three-way race for governor, the state GOP chairman is urging unity when the dust settles. Were going to fight. Were going to debate. Were going to have vigorous conversations, and theres going to be people competing against other Republicans for slots, chairman Kelly Armstrong said Tuesday during a party luncheon in Bismarck, hours before GOP district conventions began in Fargo. The key to this is when we get through this whole process, we come together as Republicans, he added. Of the nine statewide offices on the June 14 primary ballot including governor, which is an open seat for the first time since 2000 because Gov. Jack Dalrymple isnt seeking re-election at least two will be contested at the GOP state convention April 1-3 in Fargo. Seeking the endorsement for governor are Bismarck state Rep. Rick Becker, Fargo businessman Doug Burgum and Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem. Becker and Stenehjem have said they will abide by the partys endorsement, but Burgum said he intends to run in the primary whether he wins the nod or not. Delegates also will decide between two GOP hopefuls for state auditor, former Bismarck Tribune publisher Brian Kroshus and Public Service Commission accounting manager Josh Gallion. GOP Executive Director Roz Leighton said state Superintendent of Public Instruction Kirsten Baesler also could face an endorsement challenge from Joe Chiang, a teacher at Four Winds High School in Warwick. In a phone interview Tuesday, Chiang said there is something being discussed but its informal at this point. U.S. Rep. Kevin Cramer doesnt face a declared challenger at this time though perennial candidate DuWayne Hendrickson of Minot has a Hendrickson for Congress 2016 Facebook page and Leighton said she doesnt expect endorsement challenges for U.S. Sen. John Hoeven, state Treasurer Kelly Schmidt or Public Service Commissioner Julie Fedorchak. So far, Greater North Dakota Chamber vice president Jon Godfread is the only GOP candidate for state insurance commissioner. Leighton said Republicans will focus on protecting and picking up legislative seats, including in the Red River Valley, where a pretty massive voter identification project and get-out-the-vote effort is just getting under way. With Republicans holding all statewide offices with the exception of U.S. Sen. Heitkamp, Democrats also plan to focus their efforts on legislative seats. We think we have a favorable map this year. There are a lot of Republican incumbents that were looking forward to running against, Executive Director Robert Haider said. Leighton noted Democrats had no announced candidates for statewide office as of Tuesday, and she praised how Republicans have come together to work on legislative races. When you dont have Democrats to fight with, you can sometimes fight with yourselves, she said. Haider said the party is confident it will have candidates for all statewide races, and as soon as theyre ready, theyll be announcing. Democrats district conventions begin Feb. 16. Leighton said she expects about 2,000 delegates to the GOP state convention, about the same as in 2012. (Reach Mike Nowatzki at (701) 255-5607 or by email at mnowatzki@forumcomm.com.) The UN should focus on peace-building initiatives as the lasting solution to protect civilians during armed conflict and after, rather than making the task a part of the transitory peacekeeping operations, according to India. In his first address to the Security Council, India's newly appointed Permanent Representative Syed Akbaruddin said Tuesday, "Efforts at peace building should be initiated right at the beginning and the cause of the armed conflict addressed through national reconciliation and inclusive political processes giving all sections of society a stake in peaceful co-existence." Speaking at a debate on protection of civilians in armed conflict, Akbaruddin said the world body should "consider dis-aggregating the complex multidimensional nature of the UN peacekeeping mandates, and address issues confronting protection of civilians in armed conflict situations through focused peace-building activities, so that the transition to a post-conflict society can be sustainable." Because protection of civilians is primarily a national responsibility, he said that "contribution to national capacity building rather than intervention mechanisms should be the priority." Invoking the heroism of Gurbachan Singh Salaria, an Indian Army captain who was killed during the UN operations in Congo during the 1960s, Akbaruddin, said however that peacekeepers have and will continue to rise to the defence of civilians when they are in danger. "Even though the notion of 'Protection of Civilians' was not part of the mandate" of the UN peacekeeping operations then, Akbaruddin said, Salaria and about 45 Indian soldiers made the supreme sacrifice to protect civilians. Salaria of the Gurkha Rifles led his company in December 1961 against the secessionist Katanga forces loyal to Moise Kapenda Tshombe, who were on a mission to encircle the UN headquarters in Elisabethville, now known as Lubumbashi. With bayonets, khukris and hand-grenades, they charged the much large force of Katanga gendarmes routing them. Tshombe, a supporter of Belgian colonialists, opposed the UN and its peacekeeping operations to restore peace in newly independent Congo. Salaria was posthumously awarded India's highest military honor, theParam Vir Chakra. Akbaruddin pointed out that it took the UN 35 years to recognise his sacrifice with a Dag Hammarskjold Medal. Akbaruddin reinforced the case for the Council consulting with troop-contributing countries. "As a developing country with years of peacekeeping experience, we feel frequent and regular consultation between the Council, the Secretariat and Troop Contributing Countries will enhance the credibility and effectiveness of the Council in protecting civilians," he said. The lack of consultations hurts "the troop contributing countries who put their troops lives at risk in the service of the UN," the host countries, the Council and, ultimately, the entire UN. Last month, the Council acknowledged that the consultation process with troop contributors was flawed and called "importance of substantive, representative and meaningful exchanges." (Arul Louis can be contacted at arul.l@ians.in) Delhi Police's special cell showing to media the four terror suspects who were arrested from Haridwar. Photo: PTI Image via Shutterstock Delhi Police has arrested four suspected terrorists -- reportedly linked with the Islamic State terror outfit -- from Haridwar in Uttarakhand on Wednesday for plotting attacks in the capital and nearby areas. The four suspects -- Akhlaq ur Rehman, Mohammad Osama alias Adil, Mohammad Azimu Shaan and Mehraj -- were arrested on Tuesday based on specific information by central intelligence agencies. "All the suspects belong to Haridwar from where they were arrested on Tuesday. We produced them in a court in Delhi today (Wednesday) which sent them to 15 days police custody," said Special Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) Arvind Deep. The suspects had plans to carry out bombings during the ongoing Ardh Kumbh in Haridwar, in Roorkee-Haridwar bound trains, in Delhi and some parts of the Capital Region (NCR). The Ardh-Kumbh started on January 1 this year and will end on April 30. During the four-month religious congregation, over five crore pilgrims are expected to visit the district to bathe in the holy Ganga river. On the first major bathing day on January 14, close to 10 lakh devotees took a dip in the Ganga. Police claimed that the arrested people were in touch with Shafi Armar, who handles recruitment for Ansar Al Twahid, the Indian offshoot of the terror group. "We got an input from intelligence agencies that some people are planning attacks on Roorkee-Haridwar bound trains and some other locations in Haridwar and NCR," Arvind Deep said. The official said a specific team including police inspectors Neli and Hridaynath was set up under the supervision of Additional Commissioner of Police Alok Kumar and Deputy Commissioner of Police P. S. Kushwah and they thwarted a possible attack after the arrest of the four people. Deep said further investigation was on to unearth the whole plot. The officer also praised Uttar Pradesh Police for helping them in the operation. Abu Dhabi, Jan 20 (IANS/WAM) The Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and visiting French foreign minister on Wednesday discussed ways of enhancing bilateral ties of friendship and cooperation to serve interests of the two countries. Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius held talks on the sidelines of Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week 2016. Sheikh Mohamed and Fabius also touched on the strategic relations between the two countries and means to advance UAE-France friendship. The two also exchanged views on the agenda of the Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week 2016 and the UAE's role in promoting renewable energy sources and its contributions along with other countries to finding modern, sustainable solutions for developing and sustaining energy sources. --IANS/WAM py/vt Gurgaon's deputy mayor Parminder Kataria has been booked for the second time on charges of raping a divorcee after promising to marry her, police said on Wednesday. The woman had filed a similar complaint in October last year. The woman said she had filed a rape complaint on December 11, 2015, against Kataria at the women police station here, but alleged that police refused to register the case. The case was registered after the woman's lawyer Pradeep Kumar sent legal notice to Gurgaon's Deputy Commissioner of Police Deepak Saharan for contempt of the Supreme Court's directions. The woman alleged that Kataria visited her house in December and again sexually assaulted her. On October 24, 2015, the woman had filed a case of rape and criminal intimidation against Kataria and two others. Later, on December 1, she filed an affidavit in the district court, saying she has known to Kataria and his family and did not want any action against them. Kataria has currently been granted an interim bail. Assistant Commissioner of Police Dharna Yadav said the woman has changed her statements many times since the first FIR was registered. "She has alleged that the accused came to her house and raped her again in December. We are investigating the case," the police official said. Vice President Hamid Ansari will visit Brunei and Thailand from February 1 to 5, it was announced on Wednesday. This will be the first visit by an Indian vice president to Brunei and the first in 50 years to Thailand. During his visit to Brunei from February 1 to 3, he will meet the Sultan of Brunei Hassanal Bolkiah, secretary (east) in the external affairs ministry, Anil Wadhwa, said at a media briefing here. "Brunei has become an important partner and ally for India in the Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations)," Wadhwa said. "Brunei has played a very important role as India-Asean coordinator from 2013 to 2015," he added. He said Brunei supported India's stand on Jammu and Kashmir and its candidature for permanent membership of the UN Security Council. "Trade volume between India and Brunei is about $1 billion most of which is made up of crude oil and potentially gas requirements can also be met from Brunei," Wadhwa said. "Petroleum products as well as organic chemicals, metal ores and scraps are the other commodities that we import from Brunei," he said. "Our main exports to Brunei consist of transportation equipment, meat and meat products and gems and jewellery." He said that during the visit, the issues that would come up for discussion are civil aviation, space, trade and investment, ICT and hydrocarbons. Memorandums of understanding (MoUs) are expected to be signed on health and defence cooperation, Wadhwa said. Ansari will also address members of the Indian community. There are over 10,000 Indian professionals in Brunei and, according to Wadhwa, there is a great deal there for them, particularly those who were working as teachers and doctors. Ansari will then visit Thailand from February 3 to 5 at the official invitation of Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha. Apart from holding a meeting with Prayut, Ansari will also have an audience with Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, who is a scholar in Sanskrit, Wadhwa said. Ansari will deliver a speech on India's Look East and Act East policy at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok and also address members of the Indian community. India-Thailand trade now stands at around $8.66 billion. Ansari will also briefly visit the city of Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. "The relationship between India and Thailand has traditionally been very close," said Wadhwa, adding that Thailand was an important partner in India's strategic partnership with Asean. During his visit, Ansari will be accompanied by a minister of state and four members of parliament. Hundreds of endangered Olive Ridley turtles, besides a bottlenose dolphin, were found dead on Puri beach in Odisha on Wednesday. The turtles were lying scattered stretching from Digabarini and Chakratirtha Road on the Puri beach Wednesday morning, said a forest official. The actual cause behind the death of sea turtles is yet to be ascertained. The carcass of the dolphin was sent for post-mortem examiantion, the official added. Puri district collector Arabind Agarwal said the concerned departments were directed to ascertain what has caused the mass death of the turtles. Sources said the turtles might have been killed by trawlers operating illegally in the sea. Meanwhile, renowned sand artist Sudarsan Pattnaik has created a sand sculpture of turtles with message "Give us space to live" at Puri beach. "Today I found hundreds of dead turtles at Puri beach. I felt sad to see these turtles and never seen such a huge number of dead turtles at a beach. So, I have created some live size turtles, appealing to the government through my sand sculpture to find out the cause of death of turtles and protect these sea animals," said Sudarsan Pattnaik. The Odisha coast is one of the main mass nesting sites on the world map for the Olive Ridley turtles. Three sites -- Gahiramatha, Devi Mouth and Rushikulya Mouth -- in the coastal zone are world famous for mass nesting of turtle. Recently, scores of whales were washed ashore on the Chennai beach. Despite all efforts by fishermen, at least 45 of them died while the rest were rescued and pushed back into the sea. Expressing solidarity with the protesting Hyderabad university students, the Trinamool Congress on Wednesday said it was part of the fight against "intolerance". A two-member Trinamool MP delegation, led by its leader in the Rajya Sabha Derek O'Brien, spent a long time at the university campus on Wednesday and addressed the students demanding justice for Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula who committed suicide. O'Brien and Trinamool Lok Sabha member Pratima Mondal had flown to Hyderabad from Kolkata on Tuesday. Extending support to the agitating students, O'Brien countered allegations that Rohith's death was being politicised. "If showing solidarity with students is a political act, yes, we are politicising the issue. If supporting a students' movement is politicisation, so be it. If demanding justice for Rohith is politicisation, so be it." Promising that his party would ensure that the incident remained in the collective memory of the nation, O'Brien said: "Rohith, if you are watching, we will continue to fight on your behalf. We need more Rohiths in the fight against intolerance." Extending support to the World Medical Association (WMA), the Indian Medical Association (IMA) on Wednesday demanded the release of Ahmed Said, an Egyptian surgeon arrested for his involvement in a protest. "IMA stands in solidarity with WMA in this cause and strongly condemns this act by the Egyptian authorities. IMA demands the release of Ahmed Said on account of basic human rights," said IMA secretary general K.K Aggarwal. Egyptian authorities have jailed Said for his involvement in a protest in 2012. The move has been widely criticised by the international medical community. India on Wednesday successfully put into orbit in textbook style its fifth navigation satellite called IRNSS-1E powered by its own PSLV rocket. India's successful launch - its first this year - has now moved it closer to joining a select group of nations possessing their own satellite navigation systems. The Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) consists of a constellation of seven satellites of which five - IRNSS-1A, IRNSS-1B, IRNSS-1C, IRNSS-1D and IRNSS-1E-have been put into orbit till date. Exactly at 9.31 a.m., the 44.4-metre high Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) rocket weighing 320 tonnes blasted off into the morning sky with an orange flame tailing it. Gathering speed every second, the rocked zoomed ahead amid cheers of ISRO officials and a media team assembled at the rocket port here. At the rocket mission control room, Indian space scientists with bated breath remained glued to their computer screens to watch the rocket escape the earth's gravitational pull. Just over 19 minutes into the flight, the PSLV rocket detatched from IRNSS-1E. Soon after the ejection into the orbit, the satellite's solar panels were deployed. The satellite's control was taken over by the Mission Control Facility (MCF) at Hassan in Karnataka. The MCF will manage the satellite's orbit and fire the on-board motors till it is placed in its slotted orbit. The Indian space agency's officials earlier told IANS that the concept of IRNSS has been proved a success by the signals received from the first four orbiting navigation satellites. According to officials, two more navigation satellites will be launched soon to complete the launch of seven satellites required for a fully functional system. The IRNSS system also includes two satellites on the ground as stand-by. Each satellite costs around Rs.150 crore while the PSLV-XL version rocket costs around Rs.130 crore. The seven rockets would involve an outlay of around Rs.910 crore. The space agency's officials said IRNSS system was unique in the sense that it comprises of only seven satellites while other similar systems in the world have more than 20 satellites. However, while other systems are global, the Indian system is regional in nature. Once fully operational, the IRNSS will provide accurate position information service to users across the country and the region, extending up to an area of 1,500 km. While ISRO is silent on the system's strategic application, it is clear that the IRNSS will be used for defence purposes as well. The IRNSS is similar to the global positioning system (GPS) of the US (24 satellites), Glonass of Russia, and Galileo of Europe, China's Beidou. While GPS and Glonass are fully functional global systems, the Chinese and the Japanese systems are offering regional coverage whereas Europe's Galileo is yet to be operational. The IRNSS will provide two types of services - standard positioning service and restricted service. The former is provided to all users whereas the later is an encrypted service for authorised users. India suffered an astonishing batting collapse to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory as Australia bounced back from a difficult situation to win the fourth One Day International (ODI) by 25 runs at the Manuka Oval here on Wednesday. Set a formidable target of 349 runs, India folded up for 323 despite centuries from Shikhar Dhawan (126) and Virat Kohli (106). The visitors were seemingly coasting to victory with the score reading 277/1 in the 38th over. But Dhawan's dismissal triggered a collapse and the visiting team lost nine wickets for 46 runs to be all out in 49.2 overs. Australia now lead the series 4-0. The fifth and last ODI will be played in Sydney on Saturday. Australia have now won 19 games on the trot. This is the longest winning streak at home by any team since the formidable West Indies registered 18 consecutive victories in the 1980s. Kohli also created a bit of history for the visitors, becoming the fastest batsman to hit 25 ODI centuries, displacing Sachin Tendulkar from the top of the pile. The 27-year-old has taken 162 innings to complete the feat, while Sachin needed 234. Pacer Kane Richardson played a crucial role in Australia's victory with a five-wicket haul, including four in his last four overs. Fellow pacers John Hastings (2/50) and Mitchell Marsh (2/55) claimed two wickets each while off-spinner Nathan Lyon (1/76) copped a bit of punishment before bagging the wicket of rookie Gurkeerat Singh Mann. The Indians were off to a flying start with the in-form Rohit Sharma going after the Australian bowling. Rohit has been in superb form in this series and was on song here as well, plundering 41 runs off 25 balls with two boundaries and three sixes. But the Mumbai right-hander virtually gifted away his wicket, while attempting to play a Richardson delivery which was going down the legside. Australian wicketkeeper Matthew Wade produced a superb diving effort to give the hosts the breakthrough. But the Indians asserted their domination after that as Dhawan and Kohli stitched together a mammoth 212-run partnership. The two Delhi batsmen laid the foundation for an Indian victory before Dhawan was finally undone by a change of pace by Hastings. The left-hander tried to cut a shoulder-high delivery but was fooled by the slower pace and could only find George Bailey at backward point. India captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni (0) lasted all of three balls before edging one to Wade in the last ball of the over. Kohli was next to go, coming down the track to hit Richardson to Australia skipper Steven Smith at mid-off. The visitors continued to lose wickets at regular intervals after that. Although Ravindra Jadeja (24) tried to turn the tide with a brave effort, it did not prove to be enough. Earlier, riding on a powerful batting performance, including a century from opener Aaron Finch, Australia posted a formidable total of 348/8. Finch scored a run-a-ball 107 and posted an opening partnership of 187 runs with David Warner (93) to lay the foundation for a big total. Smith (51) also made a useful contribution in the middle order before Glenn Maxwell (41) came up with the fireworks towards the end to give the Australian innings a superb finish. Pacers Ishant Sharma (4/77) and Umesh Yadav (3/67) came up with a flurry of late wickets to keep the Australian total below the 350-run mark. Electing to bat after winning the toss, Smith saw his decision vindicated as openers Finch and Warner tormented the Indian bowling. Warner, who replaced Shaun Marsh in the Australian XI after returning from paternity leave, was the more aggressive among the Australian openers. The left-hander smashed 12 boundaries and a six during his 92-ball knock. Finch gave Warner good support from the other end as the hosts kept the scoreboard ticking at a healthy rate, helped by some inconsistent fielding by the visitors. The Australian blitzkrieg claimed a victim in umpire Richard Kettleborough when the Englishman was hit on the right leg by a Finch straight drive in the 17th over. Kettleborough limped off the field and was replaced by Australian official Paul Wilson. Warner was looking well set for a well deserved century before being bowled while trying to hoist a slowish, incoming delivery from Ishant over mid-wicket. Finch was dismissed by Yadav soon after completing his century when he mistimed an attempted pull shot. The ball found the upper edge of the bat and went up in the air as Ishant pulled off a comfortable catch. But Indian hopes of containing the Australians to a manageable total soon disappeared as Smith and Maxwell smashed the bowlers all around the ground. Smith hit four boundaries and three sixes in a 29-ball 51 and Warner had six boundaries and a six in his 20-ball innings. The Indian bowlers hit back late in the innings, claiming five wickets in the last six overs. But by then, the Australians had already set themselves up for a formidable total. Scientists from across the globe attended the first day of an international conference on plasma in Lucknow on Wednesday. The two-day international conference on 'Plasma Science, Technology and application (ICPSTA-2016)' is being organised by the Amity School of Applied Sciences, Amity University in collaboration with CEERI-Pilani. Prominent attendees include well known German plasma physicist Professor DHH Hoffmann, TU Darmstadt, Germany and keynote speaker Padmashri Prof. P. I. John, Meghnad Saha Chair in Plasma Science and Technology, Institute for Plasma Research, India along with Professor J. Jacoby, Goethe University, Frankfurt, Professor Nishimura, Osaka University, Japan, Professor AW Cross, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK, Dr. Ram Prakash, CSIR-CEERI, Pilani, India. Dr. S. Mukherjee, Institute of Plasma Research, India inaugurated the conference by lighting the lamp. Delivering the keynote address of the session, Professor PI John spoke on various aspects of plasma, including the timeline of recent developments in the field. He said that in the field of nuclear fusion there was need for a lot of research and in the near future we will see worldwide collaboration in this field. Chief guest Professor Hoffmann discussed how the conference was already a success for him, because of the inquisitive students whose questions showed their piqued interest in plasma. He also discussed briefly how the plasma technology can be useful in finding the answer to many technological problems of the day like plasma-based catalysts, for smoke-reduction etc. He said that a large number of people think that Nuclear Fusion is the main part of plasma science but plasma science also plays an important role in other fields like medical and environment. The Islamic State (IS) terrorist group released 270 out of the 400 people it had kidnapped when its militants stormed a town in Syria's eastern province of Deir al-Zour earlier this week, a monitor group reported on Wednesday. The 270 released people were kids under 14, and men over 55 years old, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. It added that 130 men between the age 15 and 55 were still held by the IS militants, who will interrogate them on charges of cooperation with the Syrian government in the town of Bughailiyeh. Aside from the originally captured 400 men, the UK-based watchdog group which relies on a network of activists on ground said the IS group captured 50 other people over the past 24 hours during raids in Bughailiyeh in the countryside of Deir al-Zour. Upon storming Buhailiyeh last week, the IS militants had killed as many as 280 people, mostly women and children, and tossed their bodies in the Euphrates river in the countryside of Deir al-Zour, near Iraq. The IS attack on the neighbourhood was carried out earlier on Saturday, with several suicide bombers blowing themselves up at government forces' positions. The attack came amid renewed battles between the IS and the Syrian military forces in several areas of Deir al-Zour, including the vicinity of the main airbase near the Iraqi borders. Government officials condemned the massacre in the town, and pledged the government forces will soon recapture it. Rome, Jan 20 (IANS/AKI) Italy is ready to help the newly-announced Libyan unity cabinet restore peace and security and stem the turmoil that has engulfed the North African country, foreign minister Paolo Gentiloni has said. "We have before us a real opportunity to stabilise the country, which must be grasped by everyone. Italy is ready to do its share to support Libya," Gentiloni said. His comments came after a meeting in Rome on Tuesday with the UN special envoy to Libya, Martin Kobler. Both earlier also hailed the creation of the 32-member unity cabinet headed by Prime Minister Fayez Mustafa al-Sarraj, after two years of talks between rival factions. Gentiloni said he and Kobler agreed the list of cabinet ministers was "a decisive step, to be considered by all Libyan parties as the start of a positive phase for the country". Security in Libya and political, economic and humanitarian support to the chaos-wracked country were at the centre of a summit held in Rome on Tuesday, attended by ministers from 18 countries and delegates from three international organisations the Italian foreign ministry said. Also present at the Rome summit were delegates from Libya's Tunisia-based Presidential Council, which includes representatives from its two rival parliaments, the foreign ministry said. Italy's Premier Matteo Renzi said in December that Libya was "an absolute priority" and risked becoming "the next emergency". --IANS/AKI py/dg Actor-producer John Abraham, who is likely to take action in Bollywood to an altogether new level with "Rocky Handsome", plans to remake the film in Tamil and Telugu. John told IANS: "We would like to remake this film in the south. We have got superstars who are interested in doing this film in the south. Someone from Hyderabad saw this film and two-three actors in Tamil and Telugu filmdom are very interested in remaking this film because it's a very commercial project. So, we are very excited about it." The actor didn't wish to reveal the names of the southern stars who are interested in remaking "Rocky Handsome", but said: "The only fear is how we cope with this action because this action is too high-intensity." Directed by Nishikant Kamat, the Hindi film features John and Shruti Hassan, who last featured together in "Welcome Back". While the action in "Rocky Handsome" looks extremely diverse, John said he trained for martial arts Tai chi and Aikido in Thailand. "I trained myself for Tai chi and Aikido... I trained in those art forms for a month for 14 hours a day in Thailand with a master. We trained hard. I wanted to learn the art forms... I am playing with knives, and it's very difficult," the 43-year-old said. Talking about the film's USP, John said: "The USP of the film is the action that's backed by the emotions or the emotions that are backed by the action. With 'Rocky Handsome', I just felt that any amount of good action is worthless without the right and requisite emotion. "When we look at Hollywood films, we always talk about the James Bond kind of films and we say, 'Why can't we do the same?' I guess 'Rocky Handome' is the answer to Hollywood, where you can say, 'Here's the action and here's the action hero that could match up to all of you'," he added. Hours after a Delhi court ordered the CBI to return the documents it seized from Delhi Secretariat in December, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday sought an "explanation" from the Prime Minister's Office over the CBI's raid. "After today's CBI court order directing release of (documents) seized from CMO (chief minister's office), PMO owes an explanation to the nation since the CBI reports to PM (Prime Minister Narendra Modi," he tweeted. A court on Wednesday directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to release documents seized from the office of the principal secretary to Kejriwal, Rajendra Kumar, and wondered how a regular case was registered against the official on the basis of oral information. Delhi's Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia called the CBI raid of December 16 "politically motivated" and sought an apology from the prime minister for it, saying it was directed at Kejriwal's office. "Modi should now appologise" and admit the raid was wrong, Sisodia said. He said the court had categorically observed that it was improper to seize files not related to Rajendra Kumar and also the "in" and "out" register of the chief minister's office. Delhi's ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) said the court order exposed Modi government's blatant misuse of the CBI as Kejriwal was the target of the raid, not his principal secretary. AAP Delhi unit convenor Dilip Pandey said the raid was a ploy to unsettle the AAP government. "Rattled by humiliating loss in Bihar elections, the Narendra Modi government unleashed the CBI to terrorize the AAP government in Delhi," he said. Actor Kevin Spacey will join Nicholas Hoult in the upcoming film "Rebel in the Rye", which revolves around the life of author J.D. Salinger. Danny Strong is writing and directing the film, reports variety.com. Based on Kenneth Slawenski's biography "J.D. Salinger: A Life", the story follows Salinger as he prepares to write his classic novel "Catcher in the Rye". Spacey will play Whit Burnett, a professor at Columbia and editor of Story Magazine. He became a mentor and was the first to challenge the young Salinger, inspiring him to grow as a storyteller. Spacey can be seen next in the fourth season of "House of Cards". The lack of will on the part of the Punjab government and its agencies to curb the activities of unscrupulous immigration and travel agents who lure youth from the state by promising them immigration to western countries has again brought misery to a number of families. The illegal immigration racket has resulted in around 25 youth from Punjab going missing after the boat, in which they were trying to sail illegally to the United States, reportedly capsized near the central American country of Panama on January 10. One of the survivors gave information on the tragedy to his family last week. The Punjab government, led by Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, has just done the customary routine - urging the centre to intervene, setting up a control room to inform affected families and sending officials abroad to know about the missing youth. The Panama boat tragedy is nothing different from the Malta one of December 1996 in which 283 youth from Punjab went missing after their boat too capsized. "In the past nearly 20 years, after the Malta boat tragedy, chargesheet has not even been filed against the 29 travel agents who were booked by the CBI," activist Balwant Singh Khera, who set up the Malta Boat Tragedy Mission and has been pursuing the case, pointed out. While three accused were punished in Italy, those accused in India have remained free. Seven of these accused have died in the past two decades. In April 2002, another boat capsized near Turkey in which 20 youth went missing. The Punjab Prevention of Human Smuggling Act, which was passed in 2012 and notified the next year, was brought in to check illegal immigration from the state and save youth from falling into the trap of illegal agents. The law mandated that all immigration agents had to obtain a licence from the state government to operate there. However, hundreds of unregistered agents continue to operate unchecked. The illegal immigration industry, according to trade insiders, is worth between Rs 2,000 crore to Rs. 2,500 crore annually due to the craze among youth to settle abroad. "The Punjab government is responsible for taking action against fake immigration agents. The Panama incident has again shown that no action is being taken," former chief minister and Congress leader Rajinder Kaur Bhattal said. In April 2014, the North American Punjabi Association (NAPA) had brought to light the plight of Punjabi youth who were detained in a prison in Texas in the United States after being arrested for illegal immigration. The arrested youth, upset with the treatment being meted out to them, went on a hunger strike inside the prison. It is believed that over 15,000 youth from Punjab, who became part of the illegal immigration racket, are languishing in prisons in various countries. In the past, there have been instances of youth indulging in illegal immigration - called 'kabootarbaazi' (Pigeon flying). In 2010, the Punjab government sought the help of the central government to secure the release of 37 Punjabi youth who were languishing in prisons in Spain. (Jaideep Sarin can be contacted at jaideep.s@ians.in) A mob chopped off the hand of a man who was trying to flee after looting a bank in Bihar's capital on Wednesday, police said. Jitender Kumar was caught by villagers at Mahua village in Rupaspur area here when he was trying to flee after he looted Rs.1.70 lakh from the customer service centre of Bank of Baroda. "First, the angry villagers beat him up badly and then chopped off one of his hands as an instant punishment," a police official said. According to police, four armed criminals including Jitender Kumar, entered the bank's customer service centre and looted the amount. "After that all four of them opened fire but villagers chased them and one of them was caught, while the other three managed to flee." Patna Senior Superintendent of Police Manu Maharaj said that police rescued Jitender and admitted him to a hospital. Shaken by the nearly five months long agitation of Madhesis in the Terai region, the Nepal government has prepared an NRS.5 billion development plan for the southern plains of the Himalayan republic. Madhesis have been protesting against the newly adopted Constitution, which they perceive as the continuation of the immense discrimination their region has traditionally suffered from the Kathmandu-centric ruling elite. The development programme aims at creating physical and social infrastructures in the Terai region. Deputy Prime Minister Kamal Thapa, who holds charge of the foreign and federal affairs and local development portfolios, will on Thursday launch the ambitious Border Area Development Programme (BADP) at Bardibas, in Mahottari district of south-eastern Nepal. The five-year programme will initially target the development of proposed province number 2 - the heartland of the ongoing Madhesi agitation. It has eight districts of Sapatari, Siraha, Dhanusha, Mahottari, Sarlahi, Rautahat, Bara and Parsa. The region chosen for the programme has villages and towns bordering India. It has been lagging behind in life expectancy, literacy and per capita income values as compared to other regions of the country. Mentioning the objectives behind the programme, Thapa said: "Though the Terai is a plains area and accessible, it is backward in human development indices." Against the national HDI value of 0.540 for 2014, HDI for all of these eight districts is less than 0.500 while for some it is less than 0.400. HDI score closer to one indicates greater achievement than those closer to zero. The federal affairs and local development ministry said the Border Area Development Programme will be implemented in 107 Village Development Committees and seven municipalities in the eight Terai districts, and will run till the 2019-20 fiscal. "The programme is meant for areas that have fallen behind in Human Development Index," the ministry joint secretary Dhan Bahadur Shrestha said. "A budget of NRs.164 million has been allocated for the programme during this fiscal." At the current exchange rate, 160 Nepali rupees (NRs.) equal 100 Indian rupees (INR). Shrestha said the programme will focus on building local road networks, small-scale irrigation systems, agriculture, drinking water facilities, sanitation, community infrastructure, environment conservation, energy, schools, sub-health posts, toilets, skill development and social awareness. "Provisions are in place for employing local resources for the programme," he said. The federal affairs and local development ministry will coordinate the programme while a central monitoring and evaluation committee, a programme-direction committee and a district programme implementation coordination committee will be formed for ensuring effectiveness, Shrestha said. District and village development committees will lead programme implementation operations with the participation of the local people, he added. The unrest in Nepal's southern Terai has been going on unabated for almost five months with the protestors demanding equal rights, inclusive representation of the Madhesi population in various state organs and access to the development endeavours. Over 55 people, including protestors and police personnel, have been killed during the Madhesi agitation. The Madhesis' major demand is for the formation of two provinces in the Nepali Terai -- the Madhes extending from the Mechi river in the east to the Narayani river in mid-western Nepal, and Tharuhat pradesh from the Narayani to the Mahakali river in the west. The Madhesis are also demanding, among other things, a redrawing of the boundaries of the provinces in the Himalayan nation as proposed in the new Constitution; and representation in parliament on the basis of population. Significantly, the Nepal Terai has almost 51 percent of the country's population and yet gets only one-third of seats in parliament. The Madhesis also seek proportional representation in government jobs and restoration of rights granted to them in the interim constitution of 2007 which the new charter has snatched away. The new Nepali Constitution was promulgated on September 20 last year. The Nepalese government is to receive four Chinese passenger aircraft in accordance with the bilateral agreement between Beijing and Kathmandu, an official said on Wednesday. Under the bilateral deal signed between state-owned Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC) and AVIC International, the state-owned Chinese plane manufacturing company, Kathmandu is to purchase six aircraft from the company, Xinhua quoted Tourism and Civil Aviation Minister Ananda Prasad Pokharel as saying. Nepal has already purchased two aircraft MA60 and Y-12e. The remaining four passenger planes are to be received by the Nepal government soon. The government has already made payment for manufacturing the planes through the China Exim Bank, the minister said. Pokharel reaffirmed the commitments of the Nepalese government to purchase the Chinese planes under the agreement between the NAC and AVIC International signed on November 29, 2012. Pokharel said China's assistance for the construction of Pokhara Regional International Airport is one of the important aspect of bilateral cooperation in aviation sector. Chinese Ambassador Wu Chuntai said the Chinese leadership has taken the "good neighbourhood policy" focusing on sharing technology, experiences and making investment in neighbourhood. Wu said cooperation between the AVIC International and NAC was a good example of the Chinese policy towards Nepal. Nepal Airlines managing director Sugat Ratna Kansakar said the NAC has limited planes to fly both domestic and international flights so it decided to purchase the Chinese planes for domestic flights. He added that the NAC also plans to start flights to China's major cities, including Guangzhou, Shanghai and Kunming, in the near future as it only has a service to Hong Kong. The AVIC International vice-president Xu Bo said the company was ready to provide all necessary assistance to the Nepal Airlines Corporation for smooth operation of the aircraft. While many politicians tend to avoid the labels liberal or progressive, Democratic presidential candidate and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders proudly self-identifies as a socialist. While at the University of Chicago in the early 1960s, Sanders joined the Young Peoples Socialist League, the youth affiliate of the Socialist Party of America, and has remained a outspoken advocate for socialism ever since. But exactly what kind of socialist is Sanders? Faced with the prospect, albeit unlikely, that an avowed socialist may actually become the Democrats nominee for president, I thought it would be helpful for Americans to understand the particular brand of socialism advocated by Sanders. My intention is to summarize his views in a way that is not only fair, but that Sanders himself would agree with. In order to do that Ive attempted to use his own words as much as possible and to avoid directly stating what I find objectionable about his views (Ill save that for another day). Heres what you should know about the socialism of Bernie Sanders: Sanders is a Democratic Socialist Sanders does not identify with the Marxist-Leninist wing of socialism (and no, hes not a communist), but self-identifies as a democratic socialist. In Democratic Socialism: A Global Survey, Donald F. Busky explains the term this way: Democratic socialism is the wing of the socialist movement that combines a belief in a socially owned economy with that of political democracy. Sometimes simply called socialism, more often than not, the adjective democratic is added by democratic socialists to distinguish themselves from Communists who also call themselves socialistsdemocratic socialists wish to emphasize by their name that they disagree strongly with the Marxist-Leninist brand of socialism. Sanders advocates for an American style of socialism Although Sanders frequently points to Nordic countries when explaining how socialism can work, his desire is to expand and continue the American style of socialism advocated by Franklin Delano Roosevelt (whether FDR should be considered a socialist is debatable, but Sanders seems to think he wasat least to some extentand finds it commendable). Sanders identifies FDRs 1944 State of the Union speech as one of the one of the most important speeches ever made by a president. In that speech, FDR outlined what he called a second Bill of Rights: We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed. Among these are: * The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation; * The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation; * The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living; * The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad; * The right of every family to a decent home; * The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health; * The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment; * The right to a good education. This is the foundational basis for Sanderss political views and policy objectives: So let me define for you, simply and straightforwardly, what democratic socialism means to me. It builds on what Franklin Delano Roosevelt said when he fought for guaranteed economic rights for all Americans. Sanders is also something of a economic nativist, opposing most forms of globalization, including free trade and offshore production. Last September he wrote on Twitter: Ive got a message for corporate America: if you want us to buy your products, you better start producing them here in the United States. Sanders believes in social ownership of economic profits A common misunderstanding is that all socialists advocate for the state to own the means of economic production. In the twentieth century, nationalization of industries was certainly a common feature of socialism (such as in the Soviet Union). But that is not what Sanders is advocating (at least not on a broad national scale). As he has explained, I dont believe government should take over the grocery store down the street or own the means of production, but I do believe that the middle class and the working families who produce the wealth of America deserve a decent standard of living and that their incomes should go up, not down. I do believe in private companies that thrive and invest and grow in America, companies that create jobs here, rather than companies that are shutting down in America and increasing their profits by exploiting low-wage labor abroad. While Sanders proposes to provide government assistance to workers who want to purchase their own businesses by establishing worker-owned cooperatives, he appears to mostly believe the best approach to social ownership is for government to regulate and redistribute economic profits both to workers and to society in a way that he deems to be fair. Sanders advocates for a variety of single-payer systems paid for by the government While Sanders does not necessarily want the government to own the means of production, he does want the government to control the mean of paying for certain aspects of life, such as healthcare and education. For example, he advocates for a Medicare-for-all single payer health care system and the right to go to a public colleges or university tuition free (and by free he means paid for by the taxpayers). Sanders believes in regulation and redistribution to achieve economic fairness While allowing businesses to be privately owned, Sanders brand of socialism advocates the use of government regulation and mandatory wealth redistribution to achieve economic equity in society. On the regulation side, this would include determining the minimum level of workers pay and benefits (i.e., $15 a hour and mandatory family leave) as well as limits on how much profits companies can earn (Democratic socialism means that we have government policy which does not allow the greed and profiteering of the fossil fuel industry). Additionally, Sanders proposes increasing taxes, both on individual and on corporations, so that the government has more money for the purposes of redistribution (e.g., he proposes a top rate on individual income of 52 percent). Sanders wants to put (by force if necessary) the democratic in Democratic Socialism Democratic socialism, to me, does not just mean that we must create a nation of economic and social justice, says Sanders, It also means that we must create a vibrant democracy based on the principle of one person one vote. To achieve this goal he would put restrictions on free speech related to elections (e.g., by overturning Citizens United), have publicly funded elections, and demand that everyone 18 years of age is registered to vote end of discussion. Abu Dhabi, Jan 20 (IANS/WAM) The Ninth World Future Energy Summit, one of the major events of Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week 2016, opened here on Wednesday. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, ruler of Dubai, and Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, crown prince of Abu Dhabi, attended the opening ceremony of the summit. Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, crown prince of Dubai, was also present at the event. The World Future Energy Summit, dedicated to advancing future energy, energy efficiency and clean technology, is expected to have as participants government leaders, thought leaders, entrepreneurs, investors and thousands of visitors coming together to experience the latest developments in future energy. --IANS/WAM py/dg Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and RJD chief Lalu Prasad on Wednesday targeted the Narendra Modi government at the Centre for intolerance in the country that resulted in the suicide by a Dalit student in Hyderabad. "Desh mein aaj rajnitik intolerance ka mahaul hain and usi ka result hain ki ek Dalit chatra ne atmahatya kiya (There is an environment of political intolerance in the country that resulted in the suicide by a Dalit student)," Nitish Kumar said. "It is a matter of serious concern that intolerance has increased in the country," he said after attending an all-party condolence meeting for late CPI leader A.B. Bardhan. RJD chief Lalu Prasad also attended the condolence meeting. Lalu Prasad, meanwhile, directly attacked the BJP and the RSS over the suicide. "For the BJP and the RSS, Dalits and the minorities have no place and what happened in Hyderabad is an example of it. Humiliation, mental torture and victimisation of a Dalit student has again exposed the real character of the BJP and the RSS in case of Dalits," he said. Both leaders said Bardhan always wanted a larger unity of like-minded people to fight against forces threatening the unity, integrity and social harmony of the country. "We should be alert and ready for a big fight ahead, and for this, we have to work for a grand alliance across the country on the lines of Bihar... if possible a grand alliance bigger than Bihar," Nitish Kumar said. Without naming the BJP or the RSS, he said forces that have emerged in the post-liberalisation phase have created an environment of intolerance which poses a danger to growth in the country. Nitish Kumar demanded an impartial inquiry into the suicide. Vatican City, Jan 20 (IANS/AKI) God looks beyond appearances and into people's hearts and knows that there is no saint without a past, Pope Francis has said. "The Lord looks into the heart," Pope Francis said in a sermon at the Vatican's Santa Marta hotel, where he lives. "We are often the slaves of appearances and allow ourselves to pursue appearances: But God know the truth," the Pope said. The life of the biblical King David showed that even in the lives of the saints there are temptations and sins, the pontiff said. "He became a saint after living a long life during which he sinned," Francis said, describing David as "a great sinner but a repentant one". "The life of this man moves me -- it makes us think of our own lives," he said. "It makes me think that during the Christian journey, the journey the Lord has invited us to undertake, there is no saint without a past and so no sinner without a future," he said. --IANS/AKI py/dg A court here on Wednesday extended till February 1 the police custody of Maulana Anzar Shah, a suspected member of the Al Qaeda terror outfit arrested by Delhi Police. Shah was earlier presented before Additional Sessions Judge Reetesh Singh on the expiry of his 14-day police custody. The police told the court that Shah needed to be quizzed to unearth the conspiracy as well as the funding of the terror outfit. Defence counsel Akram Khan, however, argued that the police should first inform the court about the investigation so far since the accused was sent in police custody earlier. Shah was arrested on January 6 by the anti-terrorist Special Cell from Bengaluru on the charge of plotting to carry out a series of terror strikes in the country. He was sent to police custody till January 20. Primary classes in Delhi government schools will not be held for three days from January 21 to 23 due to cold weather conditions here. The Delhi government has also directed private schools to amend their timings, and has issued directions to government schools to delay the start of other classes by one hour, an official communique said on Wednesday. "Due to ongoing cold weather and the weather forecast that temperature of Delhi may decrease further, it has been decided that primary classes (class KG to class 5) will remain suspended from January 21-23," a notice from the Directorate of (DoE) stated. Dense fog engulfed the national capital on Wednesday morning with the minimum temperature settling at 9 degrees Celsius. According to the circular, the morning shift and the general shift in government schools and government-aided schools will start an hour later than the usual time. Similarly, the evening shift will close and hour early. All private and unaided schools have been advised to amend their timings accordingly. Noida and Ghaziabad administrations had on Tuesday ordered closure of schools for two days in the wake of the intense cold. Yoga guru Ramdev has expressed interest in using produce from Maharashtra's forests for his ayurveda company, officials said on Wednesday. Ramdev met state Forest Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar late on Tuesday and expressed a desire to provide a broader market to medicines prepared by processing the forest produce. Mostly collected by the tribal communities, the forest produce helps them lead a better life. Ramdev assured that he would source honey, amla, aloe vera, giloh plant and other products from the forest department. The Patanjali group, founded by Ramdev in 2006, and the state forest department will soon sign an MoU by which the department will get a fixed amount for the forest produce, Mungantiwar said at the meeting. The yoga guru estimated that there could a minimum annual turnover of around Rs.240 crore from the sale of forest produce, benefitting the tribals living in forests across the state. Forest department officials will now hold another meeting in Haridwar with Patanjali officials to finalise the deal. Mungantiwar said the state government has launched the Shyamaprasad Mukherji Janvan Yojana under which the Joint Forest Management Committee provides a wider selling platform to ayurvedic medicines. Besides, Ramdev sought support for his group's plans to plant two crore saplings on July 3 this year with the help of 300,000 volunteers. He also announced plans to construct a huge Food Park in Nagpur, on the lines of the Patanjali Food Park in Haridwar. At least 3,000 people were killed in Russian airstrikes in Syria since September 30, 2015, a Syrian monitor group reported on Wednesday. The airstrikes killed a total of 1,015 civilians, including 238 children under 18, 640 men and 137 women, Xinhua cited the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights as saying. Additionally, the UK-based monitoring group said the strikes killed 893 militants with the Islamic State (IS) group and 1,141 others from various jihadi groups, including the Al-Qaeda linked Nusra Front. Officials in Syria or Russia have yet to comment on the toll. The Russian air force has been backing the Syrian ground force with airstrikes since September 2015. Government officials in Syria said the strikes were effective in curbing the expansion of the radical groups in the war-torn country. The Sri Lankan government on Wednesday strongly condemned the terrorist attack on a university in northwestern Pakistan in which 21 people were killed and dozens injured. "Our thoughts and prayers are with those affected by this deplorable terrorist attack," Xinhua news agency quoted a foreign ministry statement released here. "Sri Lanka condemns terrorism in all its forms and manifestations and wishes to reiterate support toward all efforts to combat this scourge." Terrorists from the Tehreek-e-Taliban group have claimed responsibility for Wednesday's terrorist attack in Pakistan where militants opened fire on students and teachers in classrooms and hostels. Sri Lanka on Wednesday said it will begin discussions on trade and petroleum sales with Iran next month as economic sanctions against Tehran have been lifted. A high level delegation from Iran will arrive here in February as the country looks to re-commence petroleum and petrochemical sales to Colombo, Xinhua news agency reported. "We are entering the post sanction era, it is time to upgrade our bilateral relations, including economic relations," said the new Iranian Ambassador to Sri Lanka, Mohammed Zaeri Amirani. According to Sri Lanka's commerce department, bilateral trade between the two countries surpassed $1 billion in 2011 and 2012. Trade declined thereafter due to unconditional decrease of imports from Iran. As a result, last year's bilateral trade stood at $188 million. "Iran is looking to supply medicine, medical equipment, agricultural machinery such as tractors, fertilizer, bitumen, and petrochemicals to Sri Lanka," the ambassador said. As protests continued for the fourth day at University of Hyderabad over a Dalit research scholar's suicide, the central government said on Wednesday that this was not a "Dalit versus non-Dalit issue". Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani said there was a "malicious attempt to project it as a caste battle". Another central minister, Bandaru Dattatreya, insisted he did not influence the university to suspend Rohith Vemula - who killed himself - and four other students. "There has been a malicious attempt to project the issue as a caste battle. The truth is that, it is not," Irani told the media in New Delhi, in her first reaction to the raging row. She said the case was being "misrepresented". "It's not a Dalit versus non-Dalit confrontation," she said, adding there had been media debates suggesting that Vemula mentioned the names of people and organisations who forced him to commit suicide. She flashed a letter, saying it was the only document police got while investigating the case. She also read out a few lines from the letter, suggesting what was being widely projected was not the truth. The other suspended students, who continued their protest on the campus, condemned Irani and accused her of trying to twist the facts. The Joint Action Committee (JAC) for social justice, an umbrella of student groups, continue its protest at the university that remained shut. The protesters have vowed not to allow classes till Vice Chancellor Appa Rao resigns and justice is done to Rohith's family. A two-member committee sent by the human resource development ministry continued its probe for a second consecutive day. Minister of State for Labour Dattareya, who represents Secunderabad in the Lok Sabha, clarified that he did not put pressure on the university to suspend any student. He said he merely forwarded two representations he got from the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) to the human resource development ministry. Dattatreya extended his heartfelt condolences to Rohith's family. Politicians meanwhile continued to swarm the campus for the second day. On Wednesday, CPI-M general secretary Sitaram Yechury sought President Pranab Mukherjee's intervention. The president is Visitor of the university. Addressing the students, Yechury demanded the sacking of central ministers Irani and Dattatreya and also the vice chancellor, saying all three were part of a criminal conspiracy. He called the probe ordered by the ministry an eyewash, saying a judicial or CBI investigation should be ordered. When Republican Party of India leader Ramdas Athawale came to the campus, he had to face the ire of students who asked him to first withdraw support to the BJP-led NDA government. Police escorted him out. YSR Congress party chief Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy also met the students and demanded action against the guilty. Trinamool Congress MPs Derek O'Brien and Pratima Mondal also met the students. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal will visit Hyderabad on Thursday to meet the family of Rohith, an official told IANS. Palestinian Demonization of Jews Continued Throughout 2015 | Main | Pragmatic and Self-Critical Palestinian Official Claims the U.S. Created ISIS (Again) January 20, 2016 In International NY Times, Property Dispute is Big News, Dafna Meir's Murder Ignored In a prominently placed article on the top of page-two, The International New York Times today published more than 1,100 words concerning property disputes in Jerusalem's Old City ("'Hornet's nest' in Old City"). The lengthy, erroneous and misleading article is accompanied by a huge four-column and six-inch high photograph of Palestinian women and children in their home from which they are threatened with eviction. The caption reads: Nazira Maswadi, left, with her daughter, Alia Maswadi, right, and two grandchildren at the home in Jerusalem's Old City from which they face eviction. "This is all I have," Nazira Maswadi said. Meanwhile, three days after 39-year-old Israeli Dafna Meir lost everything including her life, The International New York Times has not printed one word about her. On Sunday, Meir was stabbed to death in her own home in the West Bank settlement of Otniel in front of at least one of her children. Renana, Meir's 17-year-old daughter, reportedly fought with the 15-year-old Palestinian attacker and screamed for help. We have earlier noted that the day after she was killed, The International New York Times chose to publish a three-paragraph news brief on anti-Christian graffiti in a famous Jerusalem church. But not a word about Meir. The International New York Times has chosen to feature and highlight Palestinian women and children maybe facing evictions from their homes due to failure to pay rent, and to entirely ignore an Israeli woman murdered at home, along with her children, some of who were at home during their mother's killing. Below is a sampling of images of Dafna Meir and her children, ignored by The International New York Times. Some of the children of Daphna Meir mourn with their father at their mother's funeral, Jan. 19 (photo by Xinhua) Daphna Meir Posted by TS at January 20, 2016 03:04 AM Guidelines for posting This is a moderated blog. We will not post comments that include racism, bigotry, threats, or factually inaccurate material. Post a comment Dozens of Syrian families started returning to homes in a rebel-held district south of the capital Damascus on Wednesday, following a successful truce between the government and the rebels, the media reported. Dozens of families started returning to their homes in the western and eastern districts of al-Qadam neighbourhood in the framework of the "national reconciliations", Xinhua reported. The pan-Arab al-Mayadeen TV said 5,000 people were expected to return to al-Qadam, where the rebels and the government forces agreed on a truce, called by the government "reconciliation". It will allow the rebels to be enlisted in pro-government militia and they will be responsible for the security in that neighbourhood. Several truces and evacuation of rebels have taken place recently in Syria, particularly around Damascus, in the latest effort by the government to clear insurgent groups from the vicinity of the capital. The government concludes such truces by laying tight siege on rebel-held areas to force the rebels to abandon their positions under negotiated deals, largely mediated by the UN. Terrorists stormed a university in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region on Wednesday, a media report said. Heavy firing was on inside Bacha Khan University in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's Charsadda town. Several people heard explosions, Dawn reported. State-run PTV quoted a police official as saying that three armed men entered the university premises and opened fire. Television reports added that a large contingent of security forces had reached the site. A woman inside the university told Dawn that intense firing was under way. The woman sought help. --Indo-Asian News service pku/rd Actress Tori Spelling has been sued by credit card company American Express for failing to make payment for months. According to the lawsuit, Spelling owes $37,981.97 in credit. An auto-payment of $1,070 was rejected by her bank Wells Fargo on June 26 last year. She also failed to pay the minimum amount of $1,477 on August 18, 2015. American Express is demanding the remaining balance to be paid plus interest and return payment fee of $27, reports aceshowbiz.com. Spelling, best known as Donna Martin on her dad's hit show "Beverly Hills, 90210", has revealed about her financial troubles in the past. In 2013, she had said that she and and husband Dean McDermott could not afford a vasectomy after the birth of their fourth child. Two separatist guerrillas were killed on Wednesday in a gunfight with the security forces in south Kashmir's Pulwama district, a police official said. "Two militants belonging to the Hizbul Mujahideen - identified as Riyaz Naik and Lateef Dar - were killed in a gunbattle with the security forces today (Wednesday) in Naina Batpora village," the official told IANS here. He said the house used as a fortified bunker by the separatists was destroyed in the gunfight. "We suspect the body of a third militant was buried under the debris," he added. Troops of the 55 Rashtriya Rifles, 182 and 183 battalion of Central Reserve Police Force and special operations group of the state police surrounded the house of Abdul Salam Wani in Naina Batpora on Tuesday evening after a tip-off on guerrillas hiding there. When the security forces asked the guerrillas to surrender, they resorted to indiscriminate firing that triggered the gunfight, police said. Two separatist guerrillas were killed on Wednesday in a gunfight with the security forces in south Kashmir's Pulwama district, a police official said. Two civilians were injured in an explosion after the gunfight ended, and one of them one died later. "Two militants belonging to the Hizbul Mujahideen - identified as Riyaz Naik and Lateef Dar - were killed in a gun battle with the security forces today (Wednesday) in Naina Batpora village," the official told IANS here. He said the house used as a fortified bunker by the separatists was destroyed in the gunfight. "We suspect the body of a third militant was buried under the debris," he added. The police officer identified the deceased civilian as Parvaiz Ahmad Guroo, 26. Troops of the 55 Rashtriya Rifles, 182 and 183 Battalions of Central Reserve Police Force and Special Operations Group (SOG) of the state police surrounded the house of Abdul Salam Wani in Naina Batpora on Tuesday evening after a tip-off that guerrillas were hiding there. When the security forces asked the guerrillas to surrender, they resorted to indiscriminate firing that triggered the gunfight, police said. While the villagers alleged the security forces fired at protestors gathered at the spot after the gunfight, police said the two people were injured in a grenade explosion as the area residents began to remove the debris of the house. An SOG vehicle was torched by agitated protestors in Kakapora town of Pulwama district as the news of the civilian's death spread in the area. Tension prevailed as senior civil and police officers rushed to the spot to defuse the situation. THE CHINA-PAKISTAN AXIS Asia's New Geopolitics Andrew Small Random House India 347 pages; Rs 399 "If India invades Pakistan, we would be willing to respond. If India launches air strikes on Pakistan, we would be willing to respond. If India threatens Pakistan with nuclear weapons we may even be willing to extend our nuclear umbrella to Pakistan, though we wouldn't be the first ones to use the 'n-word'. But when it's Pakistan that causes the problem we can't back them. What could we say after Mumbai? They obviously had military training. We couldn't defend that." These words by a Chinese expert perfectly echo the popular perceptions about the nature of the China-Pakistan relationship. Andrew Small's book The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia's New Geopolitics is a culmination of six years of work. It aims to provide "a starting point for thinking through the most important issues at stake" to understand the underpinnings of this relationship. The book achieves its stated aim through two means. One, it analytically explores this "all-weather friendship". Two, it provides an expansive view of the evolution of the enigmatic relationship between the two countries. Off to a tentative start in the 1950s, the Sino-Pakistan relationship first changed course after India provided asylum to the Dalai Lama in 1959. It assumed a slightly different nature after India and Pakistan conducted nuclear tests. The book deals with these issues by way of seven chapters that cover the India-centric nature of this relationship, China and Pakistan's relationship with Afghanistan, the nuclear programme, troubles with terrorism, geo-economics and trade, and China's evolution into a regional stabiliser. The chapters dedicated to the Chinese war on terror, the Sino-Pakistan nuclear collaboration and the grand economic projects between the two sides are the highlights of the work. In explaining China's worries in Xinjiang - China's only Muslim majority province - Mr Small shows that Beijing's tendency to attribute any act of violence in the region to separatists blur the line between terrorism and activism. In turn, the chapter successfully proves to the reader the credibility problem that China faces in dealing with the region. While describing the joint effort to help the mujahideen in the 1980s against the Soviets, the author rightly concludes that the legacy of this era is the "rise of a state apparatus" that manages well-trained and well-armed militant groups. The chapter on the Sino-Pakistani nuclear collaboration presents the complex roles played by Russia, India, and the USA that led to nuclearisation. The chapter begins like a thriller. Beginning in Tripoli, two plastic bags containing step-by-step instructions to assemble a bomb are handed over to the personnel responsible for disarmament efforts in Libya. The deal cut by Muammar Gaddafi with the UK and US to ensure the lifting of sanctions against Libya resulted in this handover that exposed A Q Khan's proliferation of nuclear technologies in the black market. Further, a number of documents in these plastic bags were in Chinese, thereby confirming the collaboration between the two countries. The author goes on to explain the history and the factors behind this collaboration that has ensured an "unusual level of trust between the two countries". One important myth that Mr Small debunks (as he did in an interview to this newspaper on December 11, 2015) is of an "all-weather friendship" by citing China's lack of military adventurism on Pakistan's behalf and its response (or lack thereof) during the Kargil war or the Mumbai terror attacks. This is in spite of China providing Pakistan its "ultimate means of self-defence", the Bomb. The chapter on economic issues is titled "The trade across the roof of the world", a reference to the claim made about the Sino-Pak friendship - via the completion of the Karakoram Highway - being "higher than the highest mountain". This section reflects on how the rise of Chinese economic might has not resulted in strengthening of the economic ties, i.e., close political ties have not translated into closer commercial ties. In contrast, Sino-Indian trade in 2015 stood at $73 billion, whereas the Sino-Pak trade numbers tell us a disappointing story. Another noteworthy aspect of the book is the research process the author follows. Relying largely on interviews, the book is laced with juicy anecdotes. The risk of entering the gossip-zone, however, is mitigated with the help of perspectives from multiple sources from different sides. In fact, the author ensures the reader that he has "two separate reliable sources for all interview-based claims". In spite of thin cultural and economic relations, the China-Pakistan axis has proven to be resilient, and India has been dealing with this since the 1960s. Mr. Small's book fills a much-needed gap in this lesser-known area of study. A pertinent conclusion that he draws is about China's inability to maintain alliances and about how Pakistan is the only country that has managed to fill this lacuna. Hence, the book is particularly relevant for anyone who wishes to understand this complicated relationship. Several important events have occurred since the publication of the first edition of the book, a key one being the start of the multi-billion dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Although the project is billed as a commercial venture, it has major geopolitical significance. So, one must wait to see how CPEC can change the coordinates of this axis. Not all data is private, even in the European Union (EU). A traditional right to privacy has translated into a technology scene which lags the United States in information-sharing. Facebook and Alphabet, the former Google, are in the European Commission's crosshairs. But another European trait, a distrust of monopolies, may liberate data for purposes like medical research and even new ways to do banking. Europe's competition czar, Margrethe Vestager, is on the case. At the DLD Munich conference on January 17, she emphasised the plight of internet users whose data was effectively being sold to pay for services. She warned that if a few firms had a stranglehold on useful private data then other companies could find it hard to compete. New data-sharing rules governing the relationship between Europe and the United States are expected on January 31. Many headlines have focused on controlling government access to personal information, but how to make companies share data is another facet of the debate. There are some areas in which privacy concerns shouldn't apply. One is metagenomics, the study of genetic material in the environment. The average human has up to 1,000 external organisms accounting for as much as two kilograms of body mass, according to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor Kevin Slavin. Analysing how these occur in public places can improve healthcare and doesn't obviously raise privacy worries. Samples collected from US subway stations have proved revealing and Carlo Ratti, another MIT professor, suggested at the DLD event that human sewage holds similar promise. In finance, meanwhile, strict data protection rules come with the territory. But Neelie Kroes, a former EU competition commissioner, reckons Europe missed a big opportunity to compete head-on with US carmakers and she doesn't want financial services innovators to suffer similarly. The so-called PSD2 directive, once adopted, will force big banks to give qualified third parties access to customer data. That's a bone of contention between American banks and upstart providers of account aggregation services. European fintech firms could soon have freer rein. Europe suffers disadvantages in tech relative to Silicon Valley, including geographic fragmentation and much scarcer funding. The EU's restrictive attitude to data-sharing has mostly been another. At least in some domains, that may change - and sewage could show the way. Nikhil Srivastav is one of the unsung heroes in the effort to clean up what must be, by almost any yardstick, one of the world's dirtiest countries. Mr Srivastav, 28, is a diligent researcher and expert on the subject of open defecation. More than half of India's population defecates in the open. The numbers have not come down much despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi's bold target of building 110 million toilets and making India free of this practice by 2019. Research shows that people in India seek to build enormous open-pit latrines because they fear the 'polluting' aspects in caste terms of closing and emptying them, even long after the faeces has decomposed. Indian open-pit latrines are thus not as affordable as those built in Bangladesh, say, where less than five per cent of the population defecate in the open. Even those households in India that have new toilets often tend not to use them. Late last year, a national survey showed that less than half of the toilets built in the Swachh Bharat mission are being used for defecation, but doing duty instead as small granaries or as store rooms. The issue is deathly serious because widespread open defecation in India often leads to contamination of the water supply. In turn, repeated bouts of diarrhea suffered by many toddlers in India contribute to high numbers of children dying before they reach the age of five and malnutrition and impaired learning abilities among those who survive. Mr Srivastav, like other experts in the field, believes that the Indian government needs to recast its effort to communicate the benefits of not defecating in the open. "They (the government) are counting the number of toilets instead of counting the number of open defecators," says Mr Srivastav, who has done recent field trips to Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu, and argues that even the emphasis in television advertisements on it being a safe way for women to go to the toilet rather risk molestation outdoors has backfired. "We have found that people believe toilets are for the infirm and women." During China's Great Leap Forward in the 1960s, Mao Zedong's obsession with catching up with the west prompted cadres seeking to win a competition to claim they had sowed wheat that was so thick that children could stand on top of it. In fact, in an early example of Photoshopping, cadres had made children stand on benches, as Jasper Becker reports in his book on the famine. In the photos sent back to Beijing as examples of the success of so-called close planting mandated by the leadership, no one could tell the difference. Swachh Bharat also risks becoming an exercise in meeting numerical targets in terms of building toilets while the social ill of open defecation remains unchecked. Between April and December 2015, 7.68 million toilets were built in rural households across India, a significant increase from the roughly five million built in the last full year of the previous government, 2013-2014. But, usage patterns remain unchanged and anecdotal evidence suggests the government's big push might even be contributing to corruption since in many cases, funds are being funneled through village leaders without adequate administrative oversight to see that toilets are actually being built or are functional. Mr Srivastav, who works with Rice, a not-for-profit that seeks to understand the lives of poor people, reports that in Rajasthan a pradhan (village head) showed him two photos of the same toilet with two different people belonging to different households. "It had been Photoshopped. That's because of these ambitious targets," he says. There may be toilets for girls in every school in the country as this government reports at regular intervals, but many are not functional. Mr Modi credited his government with this achievement in his rousing speech to the diaspora at Wembley last year, but Mr Srivastav has found that several schools have toilets that don't function because they are not maintained, are broken or have no water. "Many times when they are functional, they remain locked and are opened only for teachers or for visitors to use. This has been (my experience) several times," Mr Srivastav says. A similar "it's broken, and let's take credit for fixing it" approach applies to the Congress-led government's Right to Education campaign. Enrollment in schools is up at record levels, though this is partly because parents across India are realising the importance of educating their children, but learning outcomes are about as poor as ever with about half the children in class 5 struggling with the curriculum of a class 2 student, according to the annual survey done by Pratham, the educational non-governmental organisation. As Ambit Capital's Saurabh Mukherjea reports after a trip to rural Uttar Pradesh, the bright side of India is seeing "yellow tempos taking kids to private schools, including plenty of girls." The grim side, he says, is the widespread failure of governance and associated organised corruption in rural India. Despite all the publicity accorded the Swachh Bharat initiative, no one in the government has approached the researchers at Rice to seek information on the usage and adoption of toilets in rural India. Under Diane Coffey and Dean Spears, the organisation has arguably done the best research on how widespread open defecation is in India and the social attitudes that make it so prevalent. Given the damaging impact on public health from defecating in fields and by the roadside in urban areas, a government so publicly casting about for big ideas ought to have done so by now. Altogether 19 Myanmar nationals, who were reportedly going to Delhi in search of job, were arrested from a railway station in this district, a GRP official said today. The 19 Myanmarese, including 11 women and 5 children, were found loitering suspiciously at Samsi station last night when GRP personnel questioned them, Inspector-in-charge, Malda Town GRP, Krishnagopal Dutta said. They were arrested after it was found that they did not have any travel document, he said. During questioning, it was learnt that they had come to Bangladesh from their country around 10 days ago and entered West Bengal through Hili border in South Dinajpur district, Dutta said. They planned to take a train from Samsi to Katihar in Bihar and subsequently reach Delhi in search of job, he added. Accusing the Maharashtra government of failing to curb farmers' suicides, two farmers from Vidarbha region, honoured with prestigious awards instituted by the state, today announced that they would return their prizes. The farmers' decision comes in the backdrop of several writers, artists, historians, scientists and other eminent personalities returning their awards over other burning issues in the country. 70-year-old Moreshwar Zhade from Wadona and Hemant Shendre from Sawargaon, both in Chimur taluka of Chandrapur district in Vidarbha are recipients of 'Sheti Nishtha' and 'Krish Bhushan' awards given by the state government. "Maharashtra government has completely failed to curb the rising suicides by farmers in the state. Therefore, we have decided to return our awards to the Divisional Commissioner, Nagpur on Friday," they told reporters here. "We had won prizes for increasing productivity. But over the years, our incomes are shrinking, leaving us under debt burden and poverty," they said. Zhade, who holds 15 acres of farmland, had received the 'Sheti Nishtha' award for good farming practices. In 2002, he was given 'Krishi Bhushan' award by the state Agriculture Department. "I was given a medal and certificate. I will return them to the Nagpur Divisional Commissioner on January 22," said Zhade. Shendre, who is in his fifties, had won 'Sheti Nishtha' and 'Krishi Bhushan' awards in 2004 and 2010 respectively. "I won the coveted award for high production of 117.59 quintals of paddy in one hectare," Shendre, who owns 12 acres of farm, said. Shendre said although the award carried cash, now he was in no position to return the cash to the government. "There was a cash component of Rs 10,000, but now I am in no position to return that amount. So, I will give back only the certificates and medals," said Shendre. Shetkari Sanghatana leader Ram Newle was also present at the press conference. Heavily-armed Taliban suicide attackers today stormed a prestigious university and opened indiscriminate fire on students and teachers, killing at least 25 people and wounding 50 others in Pakistan's restive northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. The gunmen entered the Bacha Khan University named after iconic leader Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan alias Baacha Khan in Charsadda, some 50 kms southwest of Peshawar, and opened fire on students and teachers in classrooms and hostels, police said. Blasts and heavy gunfire were heard from inside the campus where a poetic symposium was in progress to mark the death anniversary of Baacha Khan who died on January 20, 1988. Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf Party leader and provincial lawmaker Shaukat Yousafzai said that 25 people, including a professor, were killed and around 50 others injured in the terrorist attack on the University. The injured were shifted to hospital. An emergency has been declared in all hospitals in the town. All schools have been closed in the area. Today's attack comes a little over a year after Taliban militants massacred over 150 people, mostly students, in an assault on an army-run school in Peshawar in December, 2014. Yousafzai said between four to 10 attackers were involved in the attack. "Such cowardice attack could not shake the resolve of the Government in the fight against terrorism," he said. Soon after the attack, a large contingent of security forces rushed to the site and started evacuating students. Pakistan Army troops also rushed to the University from Peshawar and started operation. Army spokesman Lt Gen Asim Salim Bajwa tweeted that four terrorists were killed during operation launched by security forces to clear the University. "Snipers killed 2 more terrorists on roof top, total Terrorist killed so far 4. All buildings & roof top taken over by Army...," he tweeted. "Clearance of university block by block continues by Army troops." Earlier, two terrorists who were firing from inside the university block were shot and killed by the army. The terrorists were contained in two blocks within the university and troops, commandos are participating in the operation. The army said that operation has been completed and all the terrorists were killed by the security forces. It said clearance operation is underway in the campus. Army helicopters are hovering over the University. Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan claimed the responsibility for the attack and said it was carried out by four attackers. A spokesman of the militant group called media houses and said it was revengefor those killed by security forces since Peshawar school attack. The attacks would continue, he warned. University Chancellor Dr Fazal Rahim said there were over 3,000 students inside the university along with an additional 600 guests who had arrived to attend a poetic symposium to mark the death anniversary of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. Three persons was killed and over 50 others sustained injuries after multiple blasts rocked a fireworks plant in east China's Jiangxi Province early today, local authorities said. The first blast ripped through a workshop of Hongsheng fireworks factory in Kunshan village, Guangfeng district, Shangrao city at around 0:30 am, said the city's emergency management office. Several blasts followed. Three persons were killed while one was listed missing, state-run Xinhua agency reported. Rescuers have managed to pull out 21 people who were trapped in the dormitory area of the plant and sent them to hospital. More than 1,000 people nearby were evacuated to safe areas after the blasts that injured as many as 53 people. Shock waves damaged some villagers' homes followed by sporadic minor blasts at the scene. The plant and all other 31 fireworks in Yangkou Township of Guangfeng have production permits. The executives of the plant were held by police for investigation, the report said. The Guangfeng area boasts of a history of more than 300 years in fireworks production. The local rescue headquarters will work out a plan to help those whose homes were damaged sustain the upcoming freezing cold weather. Jiangxi is forecast to embrace the coldest weather since 1992 between January 23 and 26, with temperatures in mountainous areas plunging to minus 13 to 11 degrees Celsius. In an explosion a week ago at an illegal fireworks plant, at least 10 people were killed in central China's Henan Province. Four kindergarten teachers have been arrested China for needle pricking over 20 schoolchildren to discipline them, the local procuratorate said today. Parents in Siping City of northeast Jilin province went to the police in November after they discovered red pinholes on their children's waists, legs and heads. One victim had 50 pinholes throughout the body, a forensic test showed. Five teachers were detained by the police. Four of the teachers were arrested for further investigation and one is out on bail. Nearly 40 child labourers were rescued from five local bag manufacturing units today. "On a tip-off, a joint team of district administration and police raided five places in Pandharinath area and rescued nearly 40 children employed in these units," Childline's local director, Wasim Iqbal told PTI. All the children are aged between 8-12 years and majority of them belong to West Bengal and Bihar, while one of them said that he hailed from Nepal. The children were shifted to a local shelter home. Iqbal said cases will be filed against owners of these units under relevant section of the Child Labour Act. Childline works in tandem with police for the protection of the rights of children. The Centre is likely to add five more states to take the overall strength to 18 in a group of states which have been jointly dealing with all ISIS-related activities in the country. Gujarat, Jharkhand, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Haryana are likely to be added in the existing group of 12 states and one union territory -- Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Jammu and Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Assam, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Delhi, official sources said. The group of states, in close coordination with the central government, deals with ISIS-related activities, share information and take action. It has become necessary to include a few more states into the group as ISIS-related activities have been witnessed in these states too, the sources said. The Delhi Police have arrested four youths from Uttarakhand for their alleged terror activities which were being done with inspiration of ISIS terror acts. Uttarakhand is yet to be part of the group of states. On Saturday last, top security officials of 12 states and Delhi had held a meeting, which was chaired by Home Minister Rajnath Singh, and reviewed the situation arising out of some Indian youths getting attracted towards ISIS and how to deal with the emerging challenge. With increased activities of ISIS supporters online, the government has asked the states to remain alert against the possibility of 'lone wolf attack' in the country. The threat of ISIS was discussed threadbare at the meeting of top officials of central intelligence and investigative agencies and police. "ISIS threat is real. As per our input, the days leading to the Republic Day is crucial. We have instructed everyone to be alert against the possibility of 'lone wolf attack' anywhere in the country," a senior government official had said. A 'lone wolf' terrorist is one who indulges in violence in support of some group, movement or ideology but works alone, outside of any command structure and without material assistance from any group. As many as 71 high-rise buildings in the vicinity of Rajpath will be shut down either partially or completely on or before January 25 in view of Republic Day celebrations where French President Francois Hollande will be the chief guest. A senior police officer said they will partially or completely shut down 71 high-rise buildings in the vicinity of Rajpath on or before January 25. "The same number of buildings were shut down partially or completely before last year's Republic Day celebrations too, in which US President Barack Obama was the chief guest. But in 2014, we had to shut around 45 of them," said the officer. The decision to increase the number of buildings to be sanitised was taken in view of security reasons and because threat perception is high this year, especially after the terror strike in Paris, the officer said. It is not that Rajpath is visible from the floors or rooftops of all the 71 buildings but they are considered potential spots for launching projectiles, the officer said. Police will take over these buildings and sanitise every nook and corner manually, following which snipers will be positioned on the rooftops. "We are taking over these buildings at least a day before because we need daylight to check them. It is a tedious process because checking each building may take anywhere between four to six hours. Every room, even washrooms are checked for objects raising suspicion. Once checked the rooms are sealed," the officer added. Police in the national capital and neighbouring states will also keep a vigilant eye on "drones", which have been perceived as a major threat to security, especially in view of the Republic Day celebrations. "The subject of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), commonly referred to as drones, was taken up as a priority in the latest Inter-State Coordination Meeting, held last week. "Delhi Police Chief (B S Bassi) has asked his force and police departments of the neighbouring states to keep a vigilant eye on drones, as they have been perceived as a major threat to security, especially in view of Republic Day," a senior police official said. The matter attained priority after a UAV was spotted near IGI Airport here around three months ago but its source or handler could not be tracked by the police, following which Delhi Police announced a reward of Rs 1 lakh last month for any information about it. The Inter-State Coordination Meeting, chaired by Bassi, was attended by the top brass of police departments in Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand, the official added. The Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) and National Green Tribunal's Pune bench have declared the vast green expanse of Aarey Milk Colony in north Mumbai as an eco-sensitive zone, a decision which Yuva Sena President Aditya Thackeray has welcomed. Thackeray's praise, however, has raised eyebrows as the area has been a Shiv Sena stronghold and residents of hamlets inside the Aarey Milk Colony had opposed the move. Anil Valvi of Shiv Sena represents the area in the municipal corporation. The Assembly segment of Jogeshwari East which covers it too is represented by Sena leader and Minister of State for Housing Ravindra Waikar. In a tweet, Thackeray said, "Very happy and relieved that Aarey has been declared as eco-sensitive zone by MoEF and NGT. We are very fortunate to have an eco-sensitive, rich biodiversity forest in our lovely city, we must prevent those who want to exploit it". A spurt in construction activities inside the Aarey Milk Colony has led to protests by environmentalist groups. Raj Thackeray-led MNS had opposed the proposal for building Metro III carshed in Aarey Milk Colony. The decision puts a question mark on the fate of the carshed project. The state government had in November informed the MoEF and NGT that it proposed to declare the land around Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP), which borders on Aarey Milk Colony, as an eco-sensitive zone. The MoEF had then marked the eco-sensitive zone area of 4 km from the SGNP boundary. The area in question now covers about 6,110.629 hectares. Environmental activists and groups had been arguing that the area houses or is frequented by leopards and other wild animals. Anti-Corruption Bureau today conducted simultaneous searches at different properties in the state, allegedly belonging to a senior official of state Excise and Prohibition department, and found assets worth Rs 1.50 crore, disproportionate to known sources of his income. The Directortorate General of Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) Andhra Pradesh, said in a press release that its sleuths conducted simultaneous raids at several places in Hyderabad, East Godavari, West Godavari, Krishna and Guntur districts. "A case of disproportionate asests was registered against Mamillapalli Adiseshu (55), Asistant Commissioner of Excise & Prohibition, who is now working as Chief Manager of Andhra Pradesh Beverages Corporation Ltd, Chagallu in West Godavari district," it said. During the searches, the authorities found that he owned one flat at Vijayawada, eight plots at Kakinada of East Godavari district, Bikkavolu of West Godavari district and Nallapadu in Guntur district, seventeen land documents for the extent of 22.65 acres, cash of Rs 2.82 lakhs at his residence, bank balance in different banks for Rs 28 lakh, fixed deposit of Rs 5.5 lakh, one Honda car, one Pulsar bike, gold 540 grams and silver 2.5 kgs, 24 promissory notes for Rs 30 lakh together with blank cheques. Searches are still on. Some promisory notes are yet to be calculated and two bank lockers yet to be opened. ACB is in the process of arresting Adiseshu and producing him in a special court in Vijayawada, the release said. In the wake of Peshawar University attack, National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah today said Pakistan should wake up and forge friendship with India to defeat terror forces even as he observed that there are elements in both countries who do not want peace between them. "For God's sake, wake up and start friendship with India and only together we will be able to fight these elements," he said in a message to Pakistan while referring to the Peshawar attack. "It is a big tragedy in Peshawar, this being the second attack. I think Pakistan realises that terrorism is on the rise and therefore I request that country to wake up and start friendship with India. Otherwise these elements will destroy democracy here and as well as democracy there. We should not wait any longer," he said while talking to reporters here. The former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister said "these attacks will take place unless we get together to fight them because they need to be fought will all power at our command". He said there anti-people elements in two countries who do not want good relation between India and Pakistan. "There are elements. I had made it clear. There are elements in Pakistan and even in our country who do not want peace between two countries, because they are making money for it. They are becoming richer and richer. So, why should they have peace. But for the larger population, this is a menace," Abdullah said. He said "for the interest of the people and the government of the two sides, we need to get together and fight this menace with all the power that we have. Chinese firm LeEco today said it hopes to grab a spot among the top three smartphone players in India within this year, on the back of its disruptive technology. The company, which launched three new handsets today, said it would also bring its ecosystem of devices and services including televisions and smart cycles to the Indian market later this year. "We are very confident of our disruptive technologies. The specifications are world-class and the pricing is very competitive. We aim to be among the top 3 players in India in 2016," LeEco India COO Smart Electronics Business Atul Jain told reporters here. Asked which players he expected to dislodge from the tally, Jain said it could be anyone -- Samsung, Micromax or Intex. India is one of fastest growing handset markets globally and is poised to overtake the US soon. According to research firm IDC, shipments in India grew 21.4 per cent year-on-year to 28.3 million units in the July- September 2015 quarter. Samsung led the tally with 24 per cent share, followed by Micromax (16.7 per cent), Intex (10.8 per cent), Lenovo Group - Lenovo and Motorola (9.5 per cent) and Lava (4.7 per cent). Talking to PTI, Jain said India will be a "critical market" for LeEco. "We have launched our products in the US and India apart from China and we will go to the other markets as well. But India market will be critical for us," he said. He added that the company will expand its portfolio of products and bring its televisions and smart cycles to India within this year. The aim is to provide consumers with new alternative of ecosystem based products consisting of platform, content, devices as well as applications, he said. Founded in 2004, the Beijing-headquartered firm has a number of businesses, spanning from Internet TV, smart gadgets, large-screen applications, e-commerce and Internet-linked super-electric cars. The company has already partnered Yupp TV and Eros in India for content sharing. The company has launched three new devices -- Le Max (Rs 32,999), Le1S (Rs 10,999) and Le Max Sapphire (Rs 69,999). The devices will be available February onwards on Flipkart through flash sales. About LeEco: LeEco, formerly known as Letv, is a global pioneering internet and technology company with multiple internet ecosystems across content, devices, applications and platforms. Founded in November 2004 by Jia Yueting and Liu Hong, LeEco employs more than 14,000 people and is the world's first video company to go public with a market capitalization of more than $12 billion USD. Headquartered in Beijing, China, it has regional headquarters in Hong Kong, Los Angeles, and Silicon Valley. With 'Breakthrough Technologies, Comprehensive Ecosystem and Disruptive Pricing' as the guiding principle, LeEco is engaged in a myriad of businesses, spanning from Internet-based Super TV and Superphones, video production and distribution, smart devices/accessories and large-screen applications, to e-commerce and even connected super-electric cars . The company also features one of the world's largest content libraries, comprising of movies, TV dramas, entertainment shows, sports and music, which can be conveniently viewed on LeEco products, including the Superphones, Super TVs, and in the near future, LeAuto. Breaking the barriers of industries, LeEco provides personalized products and services for an enhanced user experience at disruptive prices. Media contact: Aaron Samuel Aaronsamuel@le.Com +91-9686100143 LeEco, India Source: Le Ecosystem Technology India Pvt. Ltd. Beautifully designed with an elegant, all-metal unibody and a 5.5-inch screen, the Le S3 doesn't cut any corners on what matters most. Featuring a Qualcomm(R) Snapdragon (TM) 652 processor, the Le S3 delivers unrivaled performance for its category. It also over-delivers on the camera with a 16 MP main and an 8 MP selfie camera, which can be activated with the highly responsive and intelligent fingerprint scanner. The Le S3 combines the power of CDLA and Dolby Atmos(R) with in-box Type-C CDLA earphones for the ultimate audio experience. The Le S3 is available in gold, gray and rose gold for $249, and includes a 3-month EcoPass membership. EcoTVs: Ranging in screen sizes, LeEco's TV's are one of China's leading smart TV brands, selling more than 7 million units over the past three years. The ultimate experience in home cinema, the uMax85 boasts a huge 85-inch display housed in a slim industrial design packed with superior technology features including industry-leading Full Array, 448 Active Local Dimming Zones, HDR, Dolby Vision(TM), Fluid Motion 1920 Display Technology and Harmon Kardon(R) Audio. The uMax85 will be available on November 2 at LeMall.Com for $4,999 and comes with a 12-month free EcoPass membership. The artfully designed Super4 X Series houses premium technology in an ultra-slim frame built from the finest-grade aluminum alloy materials and features an ultra-narrow bezel. Available in a range of screen sizes including 43, 55 and 65 inches. These ecotvs feature HDR, Harman Kardon speakers and 3GB RAM and 32GB* of storage. The Super4 X Series ecotvs will be available on November 2 at LeMall.Com. - 43-inch - $649 with 3-month free EcoPass membership - 55-inch - $899 with 12-month free EcoPass membership - 65-inch - $1,399 with 12-month free EcoPass membership Both ranges of ecotvs feature LeEco's eui experience, and signature LIVE and Le apps, which offer customized viewing and seamless integration with LeEco ecophones. All ecotvs offer advanced voice search and Harman Kardon speakers*, as well as Android(TM) TV and Google Cast(TM) technology. More Innovative Technologies, Built for Today's Life and Tomorrow's Lifestyles: LeEco also previewed its vision of connected screens that includes smart bikes, virtual reality and self-driving electric vehicles. As part of India's Act East policy, Vice President Hamid Ansari will embark on a five-day tour of Brunei and Thailand from February 1 to carry forward India's bilateral engagements with the two South East Asian countries. The Vice President is going to Brunei first at--the invitation of crown prince Haji Al-Muhtadee Billah, Secretary (East) in the Ministry of External Affairs Anil Wadhwa told reporters here. This will be the first-ever visit to Brunei by an Indian Vice President since the establishment of diplomatic relations in May, 1984. Ansari will hold talks with Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah and Billah on issues of bilateral and multilateral significance including civil aviation, space, trade and investment, hydrocarbons, information and communication, Wadhwa said. Cooperation in ASEAN and East Asia Summit and other multilateral fora will also be on the agenda, he said, adding a couple of MoUs on health and defence cooperation will also be signed during Ansari's visit. He will deliver an address at the University of Brunei Darussalam and meet the Indian community. Brunei is home to around 10,000 Indian expatriates and most of the professionals there are doctors and teachers. The country is an important partner for India in ASEAN and exports crude oil and petroleum products, Wadhwa said. From Brunei, Ansari will go to Thailand on February 3 at the invitation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, making it the first visit by an Indian Vice President after a gap of 50 years. In Thailand, Ansari will hold talks with Chan-o-cha and have an audience with Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn. He will also deliver a speech at the Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok on Look East and address the Indian community at a reception to be hosted by the Indian Ambassador to Thailand. On the last day of his stay in Thailand, Ansari will make a brief visit to the city of Chiang Mai, near Myanmar, where its Governor will host a banquet in his honour. He will also visit the Royal Development Study Centre. Ansari will be accompanied by a high-level delegation including a minister of state, 4 MPs and senior officials, Wadhwa said. (Reopens DEL 34) Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had visited Brunei in 2013 to participate in the 11th ASEAN India Summit and East Asia Summit. The Sultan of Brunei paid a State visit to India in September 1992 and the Indian resident diplomatic mission was opened in Brunei in 1993. Wadhwa said both the countries are linked by history, culture and tradition, adding the political contacts have periodically strengthened. India is third largest destination for Brunei's exports, Wadhwa said, adding that the trade volume between the two countries is around USD one billion. In the past two decades, with regular political exchanges, growing trade and investment, India's ties with Thailand have evolved into a comprehensive partnership. The India-ASEAN Agreement on Trade in Goods was implemented in January 2010 and the India-ASEAN FTA in Services and Investments was signed in September 2014 and came into force in July 2015. Two Trinamool Congress leaders of South 24 Parganas district Arabul Islam and Kaiser Ahmed, who were suspended over a year ago in connection with their alleged involvement in two murder cases, were today reinstated by the party. Islam's six-year suspension was withdrawn by the TMC today during a party meeting here which was presided by district party chief Sovan Chatterjee, party sources said. The TMC strongman was suspended on October 28, 2014 in connection with the murder of a person of another faction of TMC at Deota. Ahmed, who belonged to the other faction and was a zilla parishad, was expelled from the party in connection with the killing of yet another TMC worker. He was reinstated today, the sources added. Burkina Faso police today were questioning several people, including four seen talking to the jihadist gunmen who killed 30 people after storming a top hotel and a cafe in the capital, Ouagadougou, a security source said. Two of the 30 dead, around half of them foreigners, have still not been identified, "one black person and one white," prosecutor Maiza Sereme told AFP. She said French and US investigators were working with local police on the probe, as well as experts from Canada and police from Niger. A video recovered in the four-star Hotel Splendid targeted in Friday's attack shows "four people communicating with the jihadists. We identified and found them. They are being interrogated," a security source told AFP on condition of anonymity. Another security source added that police had detained four Niger nationals as well as more than a dozen members of a Tuareg rebel group, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA). Meanwhile Italy's Mario Giro, the under-secretary for foreign affairs, laid a wreath at the Cappuccino cafe near the Splendid hotel where a nine-year-old Italian boy was killed along with 25 other victims of the attack. "There were many people killed, of many nationalities," Giro said. "We must not forget, so this never happens again." "Burkina was hit because it's an example of democracy in this region and in Africa and because it's traditionally been a place where Christians and Muslims live together," Giro said. Among the four Niger citizens detained was a contender for next month's presidential elections, Adal Rhoubed, a doctor of Tuareg origin who runs a clinic in Tahoua in western Niger and who supporters said travelled to Burkina as part of his electoral campaign. The security source who spoke to AFP said the Niger nationals were pulled in for questioning "to check their identities and schedule." Some 15 members of the MNLA were detained for questioning in different parts of Burkina Faso, "some then freed and others not." Police were also reported to be making arrests in a refugee camp sheltering Malians in Mentao, near the town of Djibo, where an elderly Australian couple were kidnapped at the weekend. Residents of the remote, rural community opened a Facebook page after the capture of "the doctor of the poor", Dr Ken Elliot, and his wife Jocelyn, on the night of January 15-16. Advertising industry watchdog ASCI will investigate campaigns by pan masala brands featuring celebrities for violation of its code in the wake of Delhi government asking stars such as Ajay Devgan and Shah Rukh Khan, among others, not to promote such items. "Complaints against such advertisements have been received by ASCI and are being looked into. ASCI will approach the concerned advertisers to take necessary corrective action post decision by our Consumer Complaints Council," Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) Secretary General Shweta Purandare said in a statement. She said while products like pan masala and supari are not banned for sale or from advertising by law, "the ASCI code does not permit the use of celebrities in advertisements of products which by law require health warning on its pack or cannot be purchased or used by minors". On January 18, the Delhi Government had written to several Bollywood personalities including Ajay Devgan, Shah Rukh Khan, Saif Ali Khan, Govinda, Arbaaz Khan and Sunny Leone, asking them not to endorse pan masala products as they contain areca nuts, a potential cancer causing agent. ASCI said it would investigate into the pan masala ads and ensure that there is no violations of its code of self-regulation. As per rules and regulation laid by food and safety regulator FSSAI mandates that statutory warnings as 'Chewing of Pan Masala is injurious to health' and 'Chewing of Supari is injurious to health' are mandatory to be printed on the pack as well as for the ads, it added. "It has been observed that large number of Pan Masala brands are in potential contravention of the advertising codes under ASCI's Chapter III," it added. Chapter III is to safeguard against the indiscriminate use of advertising in situations or promotion of products which are regarded as hazardous or harmful to society, individuals, particularly minors. Moreover, its clause 2 also specifies that advertisements of products which, by law, either require a health warning in their ads or cannot be purchased by minors "should not feature personalities from the field of sports, music and cinema". "It is important that the advertisers as well as celebrities are aware of this clause of ASCI code and sensitised to this issue so that they can advertise in a responsible manner," said ASCI. Three British schoolgirls who fled from their homes in east London nearly a year ago to join the Islamic State (IS) terror group in Syria are feared to have been killed after their families lost all contact with them. Shamima Begum, 16, Kadiza Sultana, 17, and Amira Abase, 16, all of whom attended Bethnal Green Academy in east London, ran away from home in February last year to join another school friend who had left in December 2014. All of them were married off to men approved by the terrorist group to become so-called "jihadi brides", with two becoming widows within months of arriving in Syria, their families believe. Tasnime Akunjee, solicitor for two families of the girls who left last year, said: "The families are beyond words in terms of their levels of worry. They were children when they made the decision to go and we as a society should treat them as victims of grooming". "The last message from the girls was a very short one, saying that bombs were going off fairly close and that communications were likely to be disrupted," she said. In communications with their families in London, the girls say that IS has banned the use of mobile phones in the stronghold of Raqqa. Communications with the outside world via internet cafes and services such as Skype were permitted by IS. One of the three teenagers had reportedly been in regular contact with her parents until recently. Their last communication with their families in the UK came in mid-December 2015 and all said they were living in Raqqa, which is now the focus of a US-led bombing campaign. In March last year Scotland Yard commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe had said the teenagers could return home without fear of being prosecuted for terrorism, as long as no evidence emerged of them being engaged in violence. Their families had hoped they may return but the hope is now fading. UK education secretary Nicky Morgan went to the girls' east London school yesterday to launch a new anti-extremism website - Education Against Hate - to counter the threat posed by IS propaganda in Britain. The Cabinet today cleared ex-post facto the stand taken by India on food security at the last meeting of the World Trade Organisation held in Nairobi. "Cabinet has given ex-post facto approval for the approach adopted by India at Nairobi WTO meeting. The outcomes of the Conference, referred to 'Nairobi Package' include ministerial Decisions on agriculture, cotton," an official statement said today. "These cover a Special Safeguard Mechanism (SSM) for developing countries & public stock holding for food security," it said. The Tenth WTO Ministerial Conference concluded in Nairobi in December. India wants a permanent solution on the issue of public stock holding for its food security programme. It had proposed either amending the formula to calculate the food subsidy cap of 10 per cent, which is based on the reference price of 1986-88, or allowing such schemes outside the purview of subsidy caps. The food security issue is related to several developing nations which provide subsidised foodgrains to the poor. Stating that monetary policies alone cannot change the world, RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan today said the governments need to create an underlying framework for growth in the long term for the world economy. He also downplayed concerns about China and said that the good thing about China is that they keep making fresh efforts to resolve their economic problems. Speaking here at the WEF Annual Meeting, the RBI Governor said the governments across the world need to realise that there are various other tools to carry forward reforms and boost growth. "The good across the world is that we have realised that monetary policies are not going to change the world and there are much more to the reforms. "Not just enabling but also creating the underlying framework for growth is the one which will take us a long way," he said. He, however, refused to comment on whether the US Federal Reserve would hike the rate again. "I can't comment on Fed," he said. "Problem is monetary policies get into all... Risks do build up when we change the monetary policy stance," he said, while adding that there have been cases when impact has been seen on oil prices. He also raised concerns over the reverse impact on asset prices when the rate stance change and said there are bigger concerns such as those emanating from the corporates getting into over-leveraging of loans. On concerns from China, Rajan said China has kept changing its models. The pre-financial crisis model did not work. Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia today claimed the Centre is not "capable enough" to run Delhi Police and reiterated the AAP government's demand to hand it over the city dispensation. The Delhi High Court today asked why the Union government has a "step-motherly" attitude towards the national capital on an issue pertaining to the recruitment of new personnel of Delhi Police. Reacting to the court's observation, Sisodia said, "For the last 10 months, we have been saying that the Centre has a "step-motherly attitude towards Delhi. "Centre is not capable enough to run Delhi Police as it is not practical for them to run the large force single-handedly." The deputy chief minister alleged that Delhi is not on the priority list of the BJP-led Central government as their party is not in the power in the national capital. In the past, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to hand over the control of Delhi Police to his government. Delhi High Court while hearing a case pertaining to the recruitment of new Delhi Police personnel, said, "You (the Centre) are taxing people for the money, it is not coming out of your pockets. Everyone is paying... But are they getting safety in return." "Don't know why the Centre is not interested in better policing in Delhi. Why this step-motherly attitude," it said. Tamil Nadu Governor K Rosaiah today told the Assembly that phase-II of Chennai Metro Rail project covering 88 km is being fast-tracked and outlined progress in other schemes including infrastructure projects. "Preparatory works for Phase-II of Chennai Metro Rail Project covering a total length of 88 km along three corridors at an approximate cost of Rs 44,000 crore is being fast-tracked for JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) assistance," he said adding "this would help the State to further strengthen the Metro Rail network in Chennai." In June 2015, Metro Rail, for a stretch of 10.15 km between Koyambedu and Alandur here was launched by Chief Minister Jayalalithaa. As regards the opening up of passenger services in the remaining sections of Chennai Metro, he said, it would "commence shortly." On other infrastructure projects, he referred to the Comprehensive Road Infrastructure Development Programme under which sanction was accorded for Rs 14,841 crore worth projects in the last four and a half years. Also, a World bank assisted TN Road Sector Project-II is being implemented at an outlay of Rs 5,171 crore, he said. Under the Chief Minister's Solar Powered Green House Scheme, work for construction of three lakh houses was taken up at a cost outlay of Rs 5,940 crore in the past four and a half years. Rural infrastructure development work focused on water supply, sanitation and upgradation of roads was taken up to improve basic amenities in villages under the TN Village Habitation Improvement Scheme (THAI), he said. An empowerment and poverty alleviation initiative, "Pudhu Vazhvu" Project Phase-II will be launched shortly at an estimated cost of Rs 900 crores, he said. A long time ago in a country far, far away, Chinese authorities managed to obtain a copy of America's ultimate cultural weapon, a blockbuster movie with enough special effects to wow an entire planet. Summoned to a small theatre in the southern city of Guangzhou in 1980, artist Song Feideng was shown "Star Wars" and instructed to transform it into a traditional Chinese comic book, known as a "lianhuanhua", to promote scientific achievement to China. Song was one of the first people in China to see George Lucas' magnum opus, at a time when it was still banned -- a marked contrast to the status of the series' most recent instalment in a market Hollywood increasingly sees as crucial to success. "The objective was to take the world's advanced science and popularise it in China," Song, who worked for a state-owned publisher at the time, told AFP. He replaced the movie's X-wing spacecraft with Soviet rockets and jet fighters. In one illustration, Luke Skywalker wears a cosmonaut's bulky spacesuit, while rebel leaders are dressed in Western business suits. Darth Vader appears alongside a triceratops. At the time, China was emerging from the isolation of the Mao Zedong era and "Star Wars" had still not been granted a release by Communist authorities, three years after it hit Western cinemas. The movie "was very novel, very exciting", Song said, adding that he felt as if he had seen a "glimpse of the world". The project came amid a brief flowering of Chinese science fiction following Mao's decade-long Cultural Revolution, when the arts were reduced to glorifying the Communist Party. Mao's decision to send intellectuals to work in the countryside had badly affected basic scientific research. Song spent the period on the then poverty-stricken Hainan island, producing propaganda slideshows. Science fiction has had a fraught history in China, where genre pioneer Ye Yonglie once called it "one of the barometers of the political climate". Shortly after the 1977 US release of "Star Wars", the Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily attacked it as a fantasy that demonstrated how Americans' "dissatisfaction with reality" had pushed them to "seek comfort in an illusory fairyland". But the following year, as China began to reopen to the world, Beijing declared sci-fi critical to rehabilitating the country's sciences, releasing a flood of almost 1,000 new titles. MOSS POINT, Mississippi -- Art McClung will remain the Moss Point police chief after the Columbus, Miss., City Council voted to hire Oscar Lewis as the city's new chief, Moss Point alderman Wayne Lennep told The Mississippi Press Wednesday. McClung had been one of the finalists for the position. Columbus councilmen voted 3-2 Tuesday night to hire Lewis after spending two hours interviewing candidates and another 15 minutes in executive session, according to WTVA in Columbus. Lewis is currently the chief of police in Waynesboro and had previously spent 20 years with the Columbus PD. McClung has been the Moss Point chief for just over a year. McClung was appointed to the Moss Point post on Jan. 5, 2015, after a sometimes contentious battle to replace former chief Keith Davis, who resigned in June 2014 to become chief of the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources Marine Patrol. He was appointed as interim chief after Davis resigned, but in August 2014, Moss Point aldermen voted 4-3 to hire Calvin Hutchins as the new chief. Mayor Billy Broomfield, however, vetoed that decision, saying he didn't believe Hutchins had the requisite amount of administrative experience. In September 2014, a motion to override the veto failed to garner the five votes necessary to pass. After some aldermen sought and received an attorney general's opinion which supported Broomfield's right to veto the initial vote, aldermen voted unanimously to appoint McClung in January of last year. McClung's wife is from the Columbus area. Columbus had been seeking a replacement for former chief Tony Carleton, who resigned in November following the police-involved shooting death of Ricky Ball on Oct. 16. A deputy head of the Chinese Cabinet's Taiwan Affairs Office has been placed under investigation for apparent corruption amid renewed scrutiny of Beijing's policies toward the island following its election of a new independence-leaning president. The ruling Communist Party's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said in a brief statement that Gong Qinggai is suspected of "serious violations of discipline," which is usually a euphemism for graft. No other details were given. The announcement dated yesterday came three days after Taiwanese voters elected Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party as president, although there was no indication of any connection between the two events. Multiple online reports speculated that Gong's problems were related to the hiding of personnel assets, feuding within his family and his relationship with disgraced officials from Fujian province where he previously worked. In a statement on its website, the Taiwan Affairs Office said it "resolutely embraced" the investigation of Gong and would continue policing itself for discipline violations. Whatever triggered Gong's investigation, Chinese President Xi Jinping is believed to be highly dissatisfied with the Taiwan Affairs Office's failure to win over Taiwan's 23 million people to China's goal of political unification. Although China largely held back in commenting on the election, it has since restated its opposition to Taiwan's formal independence and said it welcomes contacts only with those who accept Beijing's "one-China principle" that casts the island and the mainland as part of a single Chinese nation. Tsai has refused to endorse that view, although she has promised to make no change in the status quo of de facto independence and said neither side should provoke the other. She has also pledged to utilize all existing channels of communication, although whether she can do so without explicitly endorsing China's stance, also known as the "'92 consensus," remains unknown. "It looks as if China would demand Tsai come out and endorse the '92 consensus, but there is room for negotiation," said Huang Jing, a China expert at Singapore National University's Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. Tsai defeated Eric Chu of Taiwan's China-friendly Nationalist Party, who had hoped to succeed outgoing President Ma Ying-jeou after eight years of Nationalist rule. Skepticism over Ma's push for closer economic ties with China was a major factor in the result, with young voters in particular fearful of an erosion of the island's competitiveness and their future earning potential. Anti-China sentiment also helped the Democratic Progressive Party gain a majority in the national legislature for the first time. The loss may prompt Xi to exert greater personal control over Taiwan policy, as he has done with the economy and foreign affairs. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Saudi King Salman today attended a ceremony to mark the opening of a joint-venture refinery, a symbol of Beijing's deepening involvement in the Middle East. The event took place in the Saudi capital Riyadh on the second day of Xi's first visit to the region. He was to depart later in the day for Egypt and will also travel to Saudi Arabia's rival Iran. The YASREF refinery, in Yanbu Industrial City on the Red Sea, is 62.5-per cent held by Saudi oil giant Aramco, while China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (Sinopec) holds the balance. "YASREF represents both companies' focus on driving downstream growth," the refinery said in a statement. Saudi Arabia is China's biggest global supplier of crude, and state-owned Saudi Aramco says expansion into refining and chemicals fits the kingdom's goal of economic diversification. The policy has been given added urgency by a plunge in the kingdom's oil revenues. YASREF is one of five joint-venture refineries in Saudi Arabia. Another four are overseas, including one in Fujian, China. Salman in December said he had ordered economic reforms to diversify sources of income and reduce high dependence on oil. Global crude prices have collapsed from above $100 a barrel in early 2014, trading below $28 on Wednesday. To cope with a record budget deficit, the kingdom broke with its decades-old generous welfare system and raised fuel, electricity and other prices. Government spending has also been cut, there is talk of a value-added tax in the tax-free nation, and state assets including Saudi Aramco could be privatised. Trade between the Gulf nations and China, the world's second-largest economy, has been growing. Two-way commerce between China and Saudi Arabia alone reached USD 69.1 billion in 2014, according to China's official Xinhua agency. Although China depends on the Middle East for its oil supplies, it has long taken a low-profile approach to the region's diplomatic and other disputes, only recently beginning to expand its role, especially in the Syrian crisis. Before Xi's visit, a Chinese analyst said Beijing would do what it can to ease soaring tensions between Saudi Arabia, the region's main Sunni power, and its Shiite rival Iran. China will provide USD 210 million soft loan to Nepal to construct a regional airport in Pokhara as part of the country's efforts to develop its aviation sector and avoid a situation similar to one faced during the ongoing blockade of border with India by Madhesis. "If Nepal has been able to develop its air service in a credible way, we would not have to face shortage of essential goods during blockade in the southern border," Nepalese Tourism Minister Ananda Prasad Pokharel said. He was referring to the blockade led by Madhesis, mostly of Indian-origin, who are opposed to the new Constitution. "Our national flag carrier needs wide body and cargo aircraft to strengthen our air service so as to making the country self-reliant," he said. Pokharel said that the government is working in partnership with the government of China to develop and expand airports in the country so as to improve its air service. China has agreed to provide USD 210 million soft loan to construct Pokhara Airport as a regional airport, he said. Pokhara, the second largest city of Nepal, is considered as tourism capital of the country. Once the loan agreement is signed between Nepal and China this year, the airport will be completed within four years, he said. Similarly, China has also shown interest in assisting Nepal to expand Gautam Buddha Regional Airport in Lumbini. He was speaking at a symposium on Nepal-China cooperation in civil aviation sector organised by Asia Pacific Daily to mark the 60th anniversary of establishment of diplomatic relations between Nepal and China. On the occasion, Chinese Ambassador to Nepal Wu Chuntai said that China is eager to assist and help Nepal in strengtheningher civil aviation sector. China wants to share benefits of its economic growth with its neighbours, he said. China can assist Nepal in capacity building, infrastructure development and air safety, he pointed out. He said that China also wants to help Nepal in promoting its tourism. China has gifted 2.5 million of petroleum products to Nepal and also agreed to supply one third of its petroleum demands, breaking 40-year monopoly enjoyed by India in petroleum sector. Sanjiv Gautam, Director General of Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal said that China has provided two small and medium aircraft to Nepal on grants. These include a 50 seater MA 60 aircraft and another 413 E 19 seater aircraft. China has also agreed to supply four more aircraft on soft loan to strengthen the capacity of the Nepal Airlines, the national flag carrier of the country, which is facing shortage of aircraft. Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis today directed the officials to complete all the works taken up under 'Jalyukt Shivar' programme, which aims at ensuring enough irrigation for farms through local-level water conservation measures, by March 31 this year. "I have directed officials to complete all the works by March 31 in a more focused way," Fadnavis said after a video conference with the divisional commissioners and district collectors. He reviewed scarcity situation, fodder availability, allocation of water tankers and compensation distributed to farmers. He directed the Konkan divisional commissioner to support the initiative of Magsaysay awardee Dr Rajendra Singh for rejuvenation of five rivers in the coastal region. "This year, the government has selected 5200 villages for Jalyukt Shivar programme along with farm ponds scheme to provides farm pond to everyone without any conditions," he said. He asked the district administration to work with the aim of making every village of Maharashtra scarcity free. (REOPENS WRG74) The Chief Minister, in his speech, said the Shamrao Peje Arthik Mahamandal would be revived and a sum of Rs 50 crore provided for it in the upcoming budget. The Nagpur-Mumbai expressway project would be undertaken only after taking into confidence farmers, who are likely to lose their land to the venture, he said. "We will hold discussions with all the affected farmers and then only take a decision," the Chief Minister said. Police have foiled a 56-year-old Somalia national's bid to enter into a "contract marriage" with a 26-year-old local woman and arrested him along with his compatriot and a woman mediator today. "This is a case of contract marriage racket wherein two city-based women, along with a Somalia national Mohd Ismail Muse, induced and lured a woman to arrange a contract marriage of her 26-year-old daughter with another Somalian Ali Ali Mohammed, during his stay in India, for Rs 1 lakh," DCP (south zone) V Satyanarayana said. On a tip-off, South Zone police conducted a raid at the residence of a suspected woman mediator, Anwari yesterday and rescued the 26-year-old woman from getting trafficked, the DCP said. Mohammed came to India in October last year on a medical visa for his son's treatment. His friend Muse was staying in Tolichowki area here after getting married to a local woman for the last 20 years, police said. Muse came into contact with one Parveen (another mediator), who is into arranging contract marriages of poor brides with Arab nationals, by inducing and luring their parents who are facing financial hardships. Anwari and Parveen allegedly lured the mother of the 26-year-old, promising her Rs 1 lakh for marrying off her daughter. Accordingly, yesterday, Muse along with Parveen and Mohammed reached the house of Anwari. However, after seeing Mohammed, the young woman's mother turned down the proposal, following which she was restrained in a room and threatened, police said. The woman managed to escape and lodged a complaint at Madannapet police station. During the course of investigation, police arrested Muse, Mohammed and Anwari today while efforts are on to trace Parveen. Hyderabad police had in the past busted several "contract marriage" rackets in Old City area wherein such marriages were performed aided by fabricated documents, besides similar rackets wherein pimps fix alliances and foreigners purchase "brides" for sexual exploitation. The modus operandi of such agents is to trap minor girls from poor families, by luring them with money and then practically selling them off to foreigners with the help of priests who solemnise "marriages" using fabricated documents. The special CBI court here today dismissed an application filed by one of the accused seeking a copy of the result of polygraph test on former BJP MLA Dhruv Narayan Singh in RTI activist Shehla Masood murder case. Judge Rajiv Kumar Ayachi rejected the plea. "CBI has given a clean chit to Singh on the basis of polygraph test. So we sought a copy of the test report to know on what ground Singh has been cleared," Sunil Simbhal, the counsel of main accused Zahida Pervez, said. Shehla was shot dead near her house in Bhopal on August 16, 2011. Zahida has been charged with hiring killers to kill Shehla as she was jealous of Shehla's alleged close relations with the former MLA Singh. CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury today said the party is currently not discussing the issue of alliance in poll-bound West Bengal even as he charged the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the BJP with indulging in "match-fixing". The Polit Bureau (PB) and the Central Committee (CC) of the CPI(M) will take an appropriate decision on electoral alliances in the state at an appropriate time, he said. "CC and PB, we have said, will take an appropriate decision at an appropriate time. We are not discussing alliances now," Yechury told PTI here when asked about demands from some CPI(M) leaders for a tie-up with the Congress in the polls to take on TMC. The Central Committee and the Polit Bureau are likely to meet next month, he said. Talking to reporters earlier, Yechury alleged a "straightforward match-fixing" between BJP and the TMC. "Trinamool Congress says 'save us from CBI inquiry'. BJP says 'support us in Parliament'. It is a straightforward match-fixing," he said. As for the CBI issuing notice to a Trinamool MP in connection with the ongoing inquiry into Saradha chit fund scam, Yechury said some TMC leaders are already in jail and that one more is added to it. "Now, the Centre has to do the job. That is where the agreement is done between TMC and the Centre," he alleged. Meanwhile, he also condemned the terror attack on a prestigious university in Pakistan's restive northwest Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, in which at least 25 people were killed and 50 others wounded. "What this (NDA) government is doing to check cross-border terrorism (from Pakistan)," Yechury asked. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had not offered any gratification to voters in the assembly elections last year and no offence of bribery was made out against him, a New Delhi court has said while dismissing a criminal complaint seeking his prosecution. The court's order came while refusing to direct the police to lodge an FIR against Kejriwal for allegedly exhorting voters to take bribe from Congress and BJP and vote for Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the last assembly elections in 2015. "In the given case, the accused (Kejriwal) has not offered any gratification to the voters for casting votes in favour of his party. He has merely stated that allurements are generally offered by some parties, if offered this time, do not refuse the same but cast vote in favour of his party. He himself has not offered any gratification in lieu of casting votes in favour of his party," Metropolitan Magistrate Babru Bhan said. "In my considered opinion, no offence is made out against the accused. Hence, the application of the complainant under section 156(3) CrPC and the complaint is hereby dismissed," the magistrate said in the four-page order. The court passed the order on the complaint of advocate Ikrant Sharma who had alleged that during election campaign in January last year, Kejriwal had abetted the voters of Delhi for accepting illegal gratification from BJP and Congress as a reward for casting their votes. The court referred to section 171B of the IPC where offence of bribery in relation to elections has been defined which says that accepting either for himself or for any other person any gratification as a reward for exercising any electoral right is an offence of bribery. It said that for abetment of this offence, a person must instigate a voter to accept the gratification for exercising his electoral right. Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani has made a "wrong statement" regarding the protests in Hyderabad Central University over the alleged suicide of a Dalit scholar and the ongoing row in the institution, student leaders spearheading the agitation claimed here today. "We would like refute each and every point," a leader of the agitating students said. The students held consultations after Irani addressed a press conference in New Delhi. He said the Dalit and student movements have come together in the university following the alleged suicide of Vemula Rohith Chakravarthi. The minister mentioned that an executive council in the university had Dalit representatives but the body only had a co-opted SC member, he said. On Irani's statement that a Congress leader (MP Hanumantha Rao) had also written on issues concerning the university, he said the minister should direct the university to implement the SC and ST sub-plan. The minister stated that the suicide note of Rohit was the only document made available to her but the deceased had written to the Vice Chancellor earlier, he said. The issues should not be made a BJP versus Congress issue as it is an issue of Rohit's alleged suicide and human rights, according to him. The minister described the punishment given to the student as "lenient" but "social boycott" and "institutional murder" cannot be "lenient", the student leader said. The students demanded the arrest of all those figuring in the FIR including Vice Chancellor Appa Rao Podile. The protesting students also burnt an effigy of the minister inside the campus. (Reopens BOM 24) Hyderabad Lok Sabha member and MIM president Asaduddin Owaisi, while speaking before the protesting students tonight, said Irani should have visited the varsity. "We were expecting the minister would say 'I am coming to Hyderabad. I want to meet Rohit's mother. I want to meet those boys who are sitting on strike for the last 15-16 days. I want to hear first-hand from them.' This would have been a right step in the right direction. Instead (she was) exonerating everyone, giving a clean chit to the Vice Chancellor who is equally responsible for what happened to Rohit," said Owaisi, who had addressed the students yesterday too. Alleging that BJP was opposed to egalitarian idea of India, he said such attempts should be foiled. Mounting pressure on the Centre, the Congress' students wing NSUI today burnt the effigy of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in protest against the death of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula in Hyderabad. "Prime Minister Narendra Modi should have dismissed Union labourminister BandaruDattatreya as his name figures in the FIR over the allegedsuicide of Dalit student Rohith Vemula. Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani should have also been shown the way as she, in order to shield her cabinet colleague, has refused government intervention on the issue," Mukesh Dhangar, NSUI state General Secretary said. The NSUI led a large procession of students from BSA College to New Bus stand area here. Dhangar said that a "deterrent action" must have been taken against the Hyderabad University Vice Chancellor by now, as the Dalit scholar was not only expelled from the university but no action was taken in spite ofhis several request letters for relief to the Deputy Registrar of the University. The NSUI leaderalso criticized Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP)for its role in the incident. "Onone side ABVP claims itself to be custodian of student community and on the other side, a student leader of ABVP had incited Rohith to commit suicide as his name figured in the FIR," he said. He noted that the student outfit will take the fight from roads to the Parliament if justice did not prevail. "NSUI would protest from roads to Parliament, if the harassment of students in different universities of the country is not prevented by the government," he said. V Rohith, a Dalit PhD scholar, was found hanging at the Hyderabad Central University's hostel room on January 17, triggering protests from fellow students as well as other educational institutes in various parts of the country. The issue took a political turn with allegations that the extreme action by Rohith was a result of discrimination against dalit students at the behest of Union Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya, who had written a letter to HRD Minister Smriti Irani, seeking action against their "anti-national acts". JACKSON COUNTY, Mississippi -- The quick response and actions of a trio of Jackson County deputies saved the life of an eight-day-old infant last Saturday. According to Sheriff Mike Ezell, deputies Nathan Fisher and Christian Pitalo, along with Sgt. Mitchell McMillian, responded to a call of a choking infant on Smith Avenue in the Virginia City community about 3:30 p.m. Saturday. When they arrived, the officers found an eight-day-old baby girl who was unresponsive, blue in color and with her eyes rolled back in her head. Fisher began clearing the child's airway and administered life-saving techniques, with Pitalo also assisting in clearing the child's airway. Ultimately, the child began to cry and color returned to her face. She was turned over to Acadian paramedics, who transported the child to Ocean Springs Hospital, where she is "currently doing fine," according to Ezell. "The officers' quick response and ability to administer aid and lifesaving measures in a stressful situation saved the life of this child," Ezell said. "The actions of these officers reflect greatly upon their person and the Jackson County Sheriff's Department." Protests intensified at the Hyderabad Central University today over the alleged suicide of a Dalit research scholar even as more politicians headed to the campus, demanding resignation of Union Minister Smriti Irani. Under attack, the university Vice Chancellor claimed there had been "no pressure" from Union Ministers or the HRD Ministry to act against the youth but offered to facilitate talks to restore peace on the campus. CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury, spokesperson of TMC Derek O'Brien and YSR Congress president Y S Jaganmohan Reddy interacted with the students, who have been on warpath demanding justice for 26-year-old Vemula Rohith Chakravarthi who was found hanging in his hostel room on Sunday. Police took into preventive custody some activists of the pro-CPI All India Students Federation (AISF) when they tried to hold a demonstration near the residence of Union Minister of State for Labour and Employment Bandaru Dattatreya, who has been accused of being responsible for the death. Yechury said the incidents in the HCU are part of a larger issue of BJP's alleged "game" of turning the country into a 'Hindu Rashtra' and demanded resignation of HRD Minister Smriti Irani and an "independent inquiry" into the incident. "It is part of the larger issue of intolerance. Intolerance is also part of the larger issue. The larger issue is transform this secular, democratic, republic of India as our Constitution says, into what they want, a rabidly intolerant fascistic Hindu Rashtra. That is the larger game," the CPI(M) leader alleged while talking to reporters. "We are saying let there be an independent inquiry. It could be judicial, non-judicial, but something which is not foisted by the same minister who has through her pressure created this situation and the unfortunate suicide. So let that be there and all those who are part of this conspiracy, I would call, it's a criminal conspiracy, according to the new law we passed in Parliament, they must be tried according to the criminal offence," he said. "The HRD Minister has to go," Yechury said. He also said that his party would represent to the President, who is the visitor of the university, and ask him on what basis the HCU was conferred the best university award by him last year. He said his party MP from Kerala, T N Seema, has written to the President saying that it is not morally tenable for her to continue as a member of the court of the university in the prevailing situation unless the vice chancellor is dismissed by the court. O'Brien said TMC would coordinate with other parties in supporting the agitating students. "This is the fight for justice versus injustice. This is intolerance. There is a documentary evidence from whatever we have seen that clearly points to pressure, ruthless kind of pressure. Parliament is closed now but we will bring Parliament here," he said. "Chief Minister of Delhi is coming, we are coordinating with all the politial parties. The boys want the support. We said we will help them to coordinate with all the parties who want to come here. More will come", O'Brien said. RPI leader Ramdas Athawale, whose party is an ally of the BJP, also visited the campus but was "asked to leave" by a section of students. Vice Chancellor Appa Rao asserted that there had been "no pressure" from Union Ministers or the HRD Ministry to act against the youth. He also claimed that the youth did not mention his suspension as the reason for the extreme step in the suicide note and that he had favoured leniency for the students allegedly involved in the ABVP leader attack in view of their background so that they could continue to get their scholarship to pursue their studies. "I am not sure whether suspension has really been the cause for suicide. At least not from the face of the suicide note as left by the student," he said. Rao said he was deeply disturbed by the loss of a precious life and the disruption of academic activities. He also sought to distance the HRD Ministry and the two ministers Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya from the decisions taken by the University which allegedly forced Rohith Vemula to commit suicide. "There was no pressure. We took the letters received as routine letters," he said, adding, "there was no phone call from either of the ministers or any ministry official". Rohit was among the five students suspended by the varsity over the alleged assault on a ABVP student leader Sushil Kumar in August last year. Last month, the HCU authorities denied them access to hostel and other buildings on the campus, except classrooms and workshops. The other four students continued their sit-in at a make-shift tent on the campus, where Rohit was also holding protest from last month terming their suspension as "undemocratic. The incident has snowballed into a major row with BJP's rivals wading into it and demanding the removal of Irani and Dattatreya, accusing them of being responsible for the death. The agitating students are demanding resignation of Dattatreya, removal of Vice Chancellor Rao, Rs five crore compensation to Rohit's family and employment to a member of his family, besides revocation of suspension of four students. Rallying under the banner of Joint Action Committee for Social Justice, the protestors alleged that the five students were suspended following a written communication by Dattatreya to the Union HRD Ministry. However, dismissing allegations against him, Dattatreya had earlier said, "Anti-social, anti-national activities were going on in the university. ABVP activists were beaten up. At that time, ABVP gave a representation. I forwarded the representation to the Ministry (of HRD). I don't know what action they did. BJP or I have nothing to do with the incident." Striking a conciliatory note, the Vice Chancellor offered to facilitate talks with the students to understand their concern and resolve matters in an amicable manner. In an appeal, he said, "We are all saddened by the tragic incident in which we have lost the life of one bright student Vemula Rohit Chakravarthi. Let us also join together in sharing the grief with his family members." "We also have to note and learn the ways and means to avoid such incidents on our campus. Let us pledge to give our time and thought process to prevent recurrence of such incidents that disturb the peace on the campus," he said. "As this semester is a shortened semester and we have a hectic schedule ahead, let us not miss out on class work, research and administrative work from today. It is appealed to all members of the university to put all our heads together and learn to work in this crisis situation," Rao said. It is further appealed that a group of senior faculty colleagues and dean, students welfare, need to engage in discussions with the students to understand their concerns, resolve matters in an amicable manner and also to pre-empt such issues of the students in future, Rao added. (REOPENS BOM9) BSP MP Veer Singh, Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) leader Ramchandra Paswan and AAP leader Ashish Khetan were among the politicians who met the protesting students at HCU and expressed solidarity with them. The BSP MP, who was sent by party's chief Mayawati, demanded strict punishment against those "responsible" for the alleged suicide of the student. Fresh protests today rocked the Hyderabad Central University over the alleged suicide of Dalit student, Rohith Vemula, even as several politicians headed to the city including YSR Congress leader Y S Jaganmohan Reddy and CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury. A group of students carrying placards and raising slogans protested in the tense University campus this morning. Besides Hyderabad many cities across the country including in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune and Chennai were rocked by protests yesterday. Reddy and Yechury are scheduled to meet the protesting students of the University today. The suicide by the dalit student Rohith Vemula has snowballed into a major issue with BJP's rivals wading into it and demanding the removal of Union Ministers Smriti Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya, accusing them of being responsible for the death. Rahul Gandhi had yesterday led the multi-party charge attacking the government and the Vice Chancellor Appa Rao, saying, "The VC and the Union Ministers in Delhi have not acted fairly. This youngster was put in so much pain that he had no option but to kill himself." Though he did not name Irani, who had just over the week attacked Rahul in his constituency Amethi of failing youths there, the reference was obvious to her against the backdrop of ministry's action which is blamed for the suicide by the dalit research scholar on Sunday night. Various political parties and leaders have blamed Labour Minister Dattatreya's letter of August 17 last year to Irani seeking action against the "anti activities" of a students union and the alleged assault of an ABVP leader and a series of five communications from the HRD Ministry between September 3 and November 19 demanding follow up action for the suicide. The HRD ministry, however, has rejected allegations that it had put any pressure on the University relating to either suspension of Rohith or keeping him out of the hostel. The communications, it maintained, was not aimed at putting pressure but was in compliance with the standard protocol adopted in accordance with the Central Secretariat Manual of Procedure whenever a "VIP Reference" is received. As the opposition stepped up its attack on the Modi government over suicide by a dalit student in Hyderabad, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today said an "environment of intolerance" led to the incident while Congress demanded that the Prime Minister break his silence. With no let up in protests against the suicide in Hyderabad and other cities, former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister and NC chief Farooq Abdullah said there should be a central probe immediately and warned the Centre that the incident will blow out of proportion and will be difficult to control if this was not done. BSP chief Mayawati, a former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, demanded legal action against Union Ministers Smriti Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya over the suicide by Rohith Vemula, a research scholar at Hyderabad Central University (HCU) on Sunday. As a steady stream of political leaders visited the HCU campus, Trinamool Congress MP Derek O'Brien said his party would coordinate with other parties in supporting the agitating students. "This is the fight for justice versus injustice. This is intolerance," he told reporters in Hyderabad. "It's a matter of concern for the country that a dalit student is forced to take his life over his unpleasant treatment," Nitish Kumar told reporters in Patna. "The forces that have emerged in the post-liberalisation phase has created an environment of intolerance in the society which poses a danger to growth in the country," the JD(U) leader said in a veiled dig at the BJP-led NDA government. Congress spokesperson Deepender Singh Hooda demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi "break his silence and take concrete action" in this case and sack Dattatreya. The Congress, however, did not press for resignation of Irani but insisted on a probe by a sitting high court judge against her. "The attitude of the ministers against Dalit student Rohith Vemula was grossly condemnable and undemocratic. The party demands strict legal action against two central ministers(Irani and Dattatreya) and the VC(Appa Rao), who forced Rohith to commit suicide," Mayawati said in a statement. Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah targeted Irani andDattatreya over the incident, alleging that such a "condition" was created by them. CPI-M General Secretary Sitaram Yechury said the incidents in the HCU are part of a larger issue of BJP's alleged "game" of turning the country into a 'Hindu Rashtra' and demanded resignation of Irani and an "independent inquiry" into the suicide. Activists of Youth Congress and Trinamool Congress today burnt effigies of Union ministers Smriti Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya and demanded their removal from the cabinet over the alleged suicide by a Dalit research scholar in Hyderabad Central University. The TMCP staged the protest rally in College street area, while the youth Congress staged the rally outside the Governor's house in the city and demanded resignation of HRD Minister Smriti Irani. A Dalit PhD scholar was found hanging in his hostel room located on the University of Hyderabad campus on January 17. Union Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya and Hyderabad University Vice Chancellor were named in an FIR over the alleged suicide of the dalit student, triggering massive protests and demands for their removal from respective posts. Days after a 68-year-old woman pilgrim died in an elephant attack at Sabarimala, Kerala High Court today sought the opinion of Animal Welfare Board of India and state Forest Department on parading tamed elephants during festivals at the hill shrine of Lord Ayyappa situated in dense forest. The Devaswom Bench of the court comprising Thottathil B Radhakrishnan and Anu Sivaraman also directed the Travancore Devaswom Board to inform its stand regarding parading of the caparisoned elephant as part of the Makaravilakku and Araattu festivals in the holy shrine dedicated to Lord Ayyappa. It directed the Devaswom Board to also ascertainthe views of the temple's tantri and chief priest in this regard. The woman devotee was seriously injured when a tamed elephant attacked her during a temple festival and she succumbed to injuries at a hospital. The court has taken up the matter suo motu. In the backdrop of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pitch for expansion of organic farming across the country, a prominent farm activist has urged Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to ban the use of chemicals in 14 suicide prone districts of the state. "All the 14 districts of Maharashtra affected by farmers' suicide should be declared as organic farming zones, thus banning use of chemicals in form of fertilisers, pesticides, micro nutrients and other toxic substances used in cultivation and post cultivation processes," activist Kishor Tiwari said. "This will reduce the cost of cultivation by over 50% and is only way to provide safe and poison free food to the people," said the president of Vasantrao Naik Sheti Swavalamban Mission, which was constituted as a task force to redress the hardship of farmers. "The acute distress in more than 5 million cotton growing dry land farms at present is a result of a complete failure of chemical farming. It has not only increased debts and cost of cultivation but also caused soil degradation," he added. Tiwari, who has been accorded the status of Minister of State, said, chemicals also increases resistivity of viruses causing epidemic attacks. Unregulated use of chemicals and unsafe technology has been one of the main causes of farmer suicides. "Thus, to address the distress in farmers' suicide prone areas, sustainable agriculture and a holistic non-chemical farming is only ray of hope," he said. Tiwari also runs an NGO Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJS) which works for widows of farmers who commit suicides because of financial problems. There is a deep partnership between innovations in the US and startups in India, Indian Ambassador to the US Arun K Singh has said, days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the ambitious Startup India programme in New Delhi. "There is a deep partnership between innovation spaces like Silicon Valley and startups in India, so we are trying to see how to promote that. In the last couple of years, there has been a lot of energy in the startup domain in India," Singh told Geekwire.com in an interview yesterday. The top Indian diplomat is currently visiting Seattle to meet officials of the top American companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Boeing and Starbucks. "It is important that I go out and meet with these companies to understand what they are doing and just get a sense for the possibilities." "We want to figure out how to use technology to enable empowerment in India - to enable the poorest sections of society to be able to access opportunity, and to enable us to address our challenges while minimising use of resources," he was quoted as saying by Geekwire. India, he said, is trying to see how "we can use e- commerce to enable us to contribute" to the economic and social processes in India. Responding to a question on H-1B visas which are popular among Indian IT companies, Singh said it is up to the US to decide but referred to the immense contributions being made by Indian techies who come to the US on this work visas. "They are making an important contribution. I get the sense that US companies find the Indian H1-B workers extremely useful for them to be able to meet their objectives," he said. On Saturday, Modi launched the Startup India programme to boost digital entrepreneurship and announced Income tax exemption to startups for three years. The government will set up a fund with an initial corpus of Rs 2,500 crore and a total corpus of Rs 10,000 crore over four years. Defence ministers from seven countries fighting the Islamic State group vowed today to step up their operations and destroy the jihadists' "power centres" in Iraq and Syria. Speaking after talks in Paris, US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter said the coalition's main aim was to crush what he called the IS "tumour" in Iraq and Syria by "collapsing its two power centres in Raqa and Mosul." The second aim, said Carter, was "to combat the metastasis of the ISIL tumour worldwide," using an alternative name for IS. Russia -- a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad -- was not invited to the Paris meeting, where hosts France and the United States demanded it stop bombing Syrian opposition forces fighting IS. But in Zurich, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Syria peace talks would start "in the next few days" after a meeting with US counterpart John Kerry. "The Russians are on the wrong track strategically and also in some cases tactically," Carter said. "We don't have a basis for broader cooperation (with Russia)," Carter said. In contrast, Lavrov said Russia was willing to "more closely coordinate our actions" with the coalition to facilitate aid deliveries in Syria. The meeting in Paris included defence ministers from the United States, Australia, Britain, France, Germany and Italy. Carter announced an unprecedented meeting of 26 defence ministers in the anti-IS coalition, plus Iraq, to be held in Brussels in three weeks and warned that he would demand increased efforts. "Every nation must come prepared to discuss further contributions to the fight and I will not hesitate to engage and challenge current and prospective members of the coalition as we go forward," he said. Carter has repeatedly urged other countries in the approximately 60-member coalition to step up their participation in the military effort, particularly Arab and Gulf countries that are more focused on fighting Iran-backed forces in Yemen. The ministers were keen to tout progress in their campaign. "Daesh is retreating, it is time to increase our joint efforts by implementing a coherent military strategy," French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told reporters. But the coalition faces a rapidly spreading threat from IS around the world, notably in Libya where political chaos has allowed the group to build a 3,000-strong force. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif stressed there could be "no military solution" to the war. "We need a political solution," Zarif told an audience at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today demanded an explanation from the PMO for the raid at Delhi Secretariat on the ground that it reports to the Prime Minister, on a day a city court directed CBI to return to the AAP government documents seized in the raid. Lashing out at CBI, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia even demanded an apology from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, alleging that the "politically-motivated" action was carried out at his behest to defame the Chief Minister's Office. Sources said the Delhi government is contemplating to move court seeking "strict action" against the CBI officers who were part of the raid at the Delhi Secretariat on December 15. "After today's CBI court order directing release of docs seized from CMO (Chief Minister's Office), PMO owes an explanation to the nation since CBI reports to PM," Kejriwal tweeted. Claiming that the court order is vindication of Delhi government's stand on the raid, Sisodia demanded that there should be action against CBI officers who were part of the raid. "The Prime Minister should apologise to the country for the politically-motivated raid. Action should also be taken against the officers who misled the PM and raided Kejriwal's office and took wrong files from there. The raid was to defame the office of Chief Minister." Earlier, CBI came under a scathing attack from the city court which directed it to return documents sought by the Delhi government seized during recent raids on the office of Kejriwal's principal secretary Rajendra Kumar, saying the agency "cannot be clothed with divine powers" to flout its own rules. "From the day one, we have been repeatedly saying that the CBI's raid was politically motivated. With the court order today, it has been proved now. The court has also observed that this raid was at the CM's office. "In court, CBI failed to prove the connection between allegations relating to an issue from 2007 to 2013 to the files of 2015-16 based on which they carried out the raid," Sisodia said. He claimed the files CBI had seized included those belonging to IT, Food & Supply and Transport Departments besides the In and Out registers of CMO and some files relating to transfer and postings. (Reopens DEL 68) CBI had raided Kumar's office during which entry of officials and staff was banned on third floor from where Kejriwal runs his government. The agency had registered a case against Kumar and others on the allegations that he had abused his official position by "favouring a particular firm in the last few years in getting tenders from Delhi government departments". The CBI raid was strongly criticised by Kejriwal who held the Prime Minister responsible for the action and said it was meant to target him and not his principal secretary. He even called Modi a "coward and psychopath". CBI had earlier told the court that the raid at Kumar's office was not aimed at the Delhi government but against an alleged corrupt officer who had misused his official position. The case against Kumar was lodged for alleged offences under section 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC and under provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act. Deputy Election Commissioner Sandeep Saxena today reviewed the poll preparedness and the law and order situation in West Bengal where Assembly elections are scheduled to be held this year. Saxena, who had arrived in the city yesterday from Guwahati, held a series of meetings with all the district magistrates and later with Chief Secretary Basudeb Banerjee and DGP G M P Reddy. What transpired in the meeting was not, however, known as there was no official briefing. Official sources said Saxena took stock of law and order situation in the districts and sensitive pockets in those areas. The full bench of the Election Commission lead by CEC Nasim Zaidi visited Kolkata last month to review the poll preparedness and the ongoing revision of electoral rolls in the state. Zaidi had then said it is their endeavour to hold next year's Assembly polls in West Bengal in free, fair and peaceful manner and deploy central forces and IT-friendly efficient and smart observers for smooth conduct of election process. BILOXI, Mississippi -- Ocean Springs businessman and one-time mayoral candidate Scott Walker has been released from federal prison after serving one year and almost two months for public corruption convictions. The Sun Herald reports Walker and his wife, Trinity Ryals Walker, wore broad smiles in photos of themselves together posted Tuesday on their Facebook pages. By Wednesday morning, the photo had more than 200 "Likes." The story did not indicate how the newspaper confirmed Walker was released from the federal prison camp in Pensacola, Fla. According to the FPC Pensacola website, Walker is still an inmate and not scheduled to be released until March 21. In 2014, U.S. District Judge Keith Starrett sentenced Walker to 18 months in prison after he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the government and fraud. The conspiracy plea came in a case that also involved his father, Bill Walker, former director of the state Department of Marine Resources. The two conspired to supply $210,000 in federal money from the DMR to the Land Trust for the Mississippi Coastal Plain, which then used the money to buy a waterfront lot Scott Walker owned. Mississippi Press staff writer Warren Kulo contributed to this report. India's leading squash player Dipika Pallikal started off on a strong note in the Granite Open, beating Egyptian qualifier Nouran El Torky 3-1 in the first round of the USD 25,000 PSA world tour event here. The Indian won 11-4, 9-11, 11-2, 11-7 in a match played Tuesday night. Playing an Egyptian is always tricky and 17th-ranked Dipika realised it too as she played a tight game to keep down the enthusiasm of the world number 61. Despite the disparity in the rankings, Nouran put up a good fight. After Dipika comfortably had the first game, the Egyptian clawed back with an early lead to grab the second. With some great shots and perfect control of the proceedings, last year's runner-up did not allow the advantage to leave her grip from there. There were lots of 'let' calls as the match wore on but the Indian showed her prowess in the front court to finish off the match in style. In the quarterfinals, Dipika plays another Egyptian Salma Hany Ibrahim, who is seeded fifth. With a number of Indian-origin ministers in his cabinet as well as a big Indian diaspora population in his country, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau today said diversity is Canda's greatest source of strength and is propelling the country into a bright future. In a special address at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2016 on the transformations driven by the Fourth Industrial Revolution, he recounted the accomplishments of the first three industrial revolutions but warned that "new technology is always dazzling, but it needs to serve the cause of human progress". He pointed out that technology will not determine the future, but "our choices and leadership" will. "I believe in positive and ambitious leadership," he said, adding that the "Fourth Industrial Revolution will not be successful unless it creates opportunities for the billions who are unable to be here today". "In Canada, we get this. We need societies that recognise diversity as a source of strength and not of weakness," Trudeau said and called upon on governments to support the private sector. He also cited Silicon Valley as a model of creativity. "When diverse ways of seeing and thinking come together, they spark creativity. Diversity is something leaders can do much about," the Canadian Prime Minister said. When the first Syrian refugee families arrived in Toronto, Trudeau said he welcomed them as new Canadians and as the future of the Canadian economy. "Diversity is the engine of investment; it generates creativity and enriches the world. We know this in Canada," he added. The Prime Minister noted that people respond to a positive and inclusive vision of society. "The result is creativity that enriches Canada and the world. It makes me profoundly optimistic and confident," he said. "We have a diverse and outstandingly creative population, great education and infrastructure, social and financial stability and a government willing to invest in the future. We have remarkable confidence. We believe in progress and we are willing to work hard to get there," he said. Further, an upbeat Trudeau noted that some people say it is impossible to change inequality. "Others insist that climate change is a lost cause; they maintain that catastrophe is unavoidable unless we give up economic growth," he added. "Some maintain that people of different cultures and languages cannot live together and that diversity is dangerous. I don't believe in this," he said. During his election campaign, Trudeau said he and his team made a strategic decision to present a positive vision. "We decided that, by presenting a positive vision, not only would we be able to get elected, we would have a strong and inclusive mandate to provide a government for Canadians. We wanted to bring forward what Canadians want to be, rather than what we are afraid of," the Prime Minister said. He also noted that it is easy to get elected by playing up to divisions and negativity. "Once you get elected through dividing people, it become hard to govern... The primary responsibility of any government is to keep its citizens safe, but also to keep them free and true to our values. Getting this balance right in a responsible way is what people are looking for," he said. According to him, some politicians choose the path of cuts and austerity, but he believes in the opposite. "We need to invest in our people, our infrastructure and education so our citizens can be full participators in the global economy," Trudeau said. It is important to have a government that understands that investing in new opportunities is about investing in the future, he added. A drone strike believed to have been carried out by the United States killed two Al-Qaeda suspects in a jihadist stronghold in southeast Yemen, military sources said today. The unidentified suspects were travelling in a vehicle in the town of Qoton in Hadramawt province when they were targeted, the sources said. The United States is the only country known to operate armed drones over Yemen, home to what it considers to be Al-Qaeda's most dangerous affiliate. It has kept up strikes on jihadists during months of fighting between pro-government forces and Iran-backed Huthi rebels who control the capital. Al-Qaeda has exploited the turmoil to tighten its grip on parts of southeast Yemen, seizing Mukalla, capital of Hadramawt province, in April. The Saudi-led coalition that has been supporting pro-government forces fighting the Huthis and their allies has not targeted the jihadists so far. But Yemeni Prime Minister Khaled Bahah said on Tuesday that confronting the extremists was inevitable in the future. Engineering consulting PSU EIL has evinced interest in becoming a partner in the proposed mega refinery planned by the Indian Oil Corporation, Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum. "EIL is keen to participate in the project and talks are in advanced stage", IOC Director (refineries) Sanjiv Singh said. However, the exact form of participation, whether in the form of equity or anything else was to be finalised, he said. EIL had earlier participated with the IOC to work on some basic designs and R&D, Singh told PTI here. The three PSUs have decided to set up a mega refinery on the western coast in Maharashtra with a capacity of more than 18 mtpa. Singh said this would be the biggest grassroot refinery in the country and the quantum of land required would be between 5,000 to 7,000 acres. The proposed refinery would cater to the southern part of the country. The IOC official said that the government was very positive about the move taken by the three PSUs. Besides the refinery, there would be a petrochemicals complex as well to be built deploying Indian technology. A Mauritanian Al-Qaeda jihadist, on death row until his escape on New Year's Eve, was re-arrested after crossing the Guinea-Bissau border into Guinea, security sources said today. "Cheikh Ould Saleck, was on the run for three weeks, and from Mauritania entered Senegal then Guinea-Bissau," a high-ranking police source who asked not to be identified told AFP. He said Ould Saleck, 31, was arrested last night near the border there, but security sources in Guinea and Guinea-Bissau said he was nabbed inside Guinea, not far from the border. A Mauritanian source said the escaped prisoner would "soon" be extradited back home. Prior to his arrest, Ould Saleck, on death row since 2011 over an Al-Qaeda plot to assassinate Mauritania's president, was last seen by fellow inmates at Nouakchott's central prison at midday on December 31. His absence from evening prayers that day alerted his fellow inmates, who went to fetch him and found his cell locked. A guard smashed open the door and found a flag of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the group's north African franchise, according to a prison source. Ould Saleck's wife and sister, who visited him often in prison, were arrested on January 4 in Nouakchott. Three Mauritanians and a Guinea Bissau national, armed with automatic weapons, were arrested near the border yesterday by Guinean police, according to Guinean security sources who did not confirm that Ould Saleck was among them. The EU has just two months to tackle its migration crisis before a new spike in numbers this spring, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, whose country holds the bloc's rotating presidency, said today. "Let me be clear: the current numbers aren't sustainable. We are running out of time. We need a sharp reduction in the coming six to eight weeks," Rutte told the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. "When spring comes you might see a spike again in the numbers so we have to tackle this before then," Rutte added. His comments came a day after EU President Donald Tusk made a similar warning about the pressure of time, noting "worrying" figures that more than 2,000 people a day were coming to Europe over the Christmas period. European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker told a conference in Strasbourg that a summit of EU leaders in February, likely to be dominated by Britain's reform demands, should have extra time added on to discuss the migration crisis. In 2015, more than one million refugees and migrants made the perilous journey to Europe -- half of them Syrians fleeing a civil war that has been raging for nearly five years. The influx has imposed huge strains on the 28-nation European Union, threatening the passport-free Schengen zone as countries restore border checks, and causing tensions over which countries should take in asylum seekers. Rutte said that during the six-month Dutch EU presidency he wants to ensure that a deal with Turkey on curbing migrant numbers is rapidly put into place, while work should start with Lebanon and Jordan so that refugees are well treated. Plans for a new EU border and coastguard force will also be pushed through in the first half of 2016, he said. Foreign Direct Investment flows into India nearly doubled in 2015 while the US emerged as the top host country for FDI last year, the UN's trade agency said today. Global FDI flows "unexpectedly" increased significantly by 36%, according to the annual report of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development released. "Global FDI unexpectedly increased significantly to $1.7 trillion and this is closer to the pre-crisis level and it is the highest since the global financial and economic crisis," said James Zhan, UNCTAD's Directorof the Division on Investment and Enterprise. Just ahead of the release of the report on global investment in 2015 and forecasts for 2016, Zhan said, "The bad is that part of this global FDI are not really in the productive sector and is due for either inversion or corporate reconfiguration." Developing economies, as a whole, saw their FDI reaching a new high of $741 billion -- 5% higher than 2014, the report said. Asia remained the largest FDI recipient region in the world, surpassing half a trillion US dollars and accounting for one-third of the global FDI flows, it said. The US bounced back as the top host country for FDI in 2015 with FDI worth $384 billion, the report said. The US is followed by Hong Kong ($163 billion), China ($136 billion), Netherlands ($90 billion), the UK ($68 billion), Singapore ($65 billion), India ($59 billion), Brazil ($56 billion), Canada ($45 billion) and France ($44 billion) as the top 10 FDI host economies of the world. FDI flows to the developed countries bounced back sharply reaching their second highest level ever at $936 billion. In Africa, Latin America as well as transition economies there was a decline in FDI last year partly because of stumbling commodity prices and regional instability. FDI flows are expected to decline in 2016, UNCTAD said. This reflects "the fragility of the global economy, volatility of global financial markets, weak aggregate demand and significant deceleration in large emerging economies", it said. Elevated geo-political risks and regional tensions could further amplify these economic challenges, the report said. About $200-$250 billion of the $1.7 trillion global FDI was in the form of reconfiguration of business when companies restructure themselves by changing their headquarters from one region to another due to change in family ownership, avoiding tax or for political reasons. The assets of that company is then counted as FDI in the original country. "If we discount this part of the FDI which reflects corporate reconfigurations then global FDI still increased between 15-17% in 2015 and the main reason for this increase was the sharp growth of cross border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) which increased by 61%," Zhan said. "FDI flows are not sufficient in productive sector. That's our major concern," the UN official said. India's FDI investment increased from $33.9 billion to $59.4 billion which marks a 75% increase while green field investments have increased from $25.4 billion to $64 billion recording an increase of 152%, the report said. "Measures taken by the government to improve the investment climate have had an impact," the report stated. "But bear in mind when we talk of greenfield investment we talk about announced deals and that means that actual FDI flows are in the future or in the making. And some of them may not realise also," Zhan said. However, globally cross-border M&As were largely responsible for the increase in FDI while greenfield investments registered little change in value terms -- 0.9% -- from 2014. Greenfield investments still remain larger than cross border M&As -- this is because of the low level of M&A in 2014. Australia produced yet another scintillating batting performance led by a superb century by Aaron Finch as the home team posted 348 for eight in the fourth One-day International against India here today. Finch along with David Warner (93) also put on a solid 187-run opening stand, while skipper Steven Smith (51) contributed with a quickfire half-century and Glenn Maxwell (41) played a cameo towards the end of the innings at the Manuka Oval. Finch's run-a-ball 107, studded with nine fours and two sixes, was his seventh ODI hundred, while Warner (93, 92b, 12X4, 1X6) scored his 13th ODI fifty as they flayed the Indian bowling to all parts of the ground. This was after Australian won the toss and elected to bat first on a cloudy and windy morning. The hosts made two changes to their side with Warner returning from paternity leave and Nathan Lyon included in the side in place of Scott Boland. India made just the one change with Bhuvneshwar Kumar coming in the place of Barinder Sran. Surprisingly, Ravichandran Ashwin did not make the cut again. Finch and Warner started off proceedings against Umesh Yadav (3/67) and Kumar (0/69). The UP medium pacer Kumar shred the new ball on his return to the eleven after the Perth ODI. but looked rusty from the very beginning. While Yadav was again off the mark as the Australian openers got off to a rousing start. Warner, in particular, looked like he had never been away and smacked three fours in the fourth over bowled by Kumar and then handed out the same treatment to Yadav an over later. The 50-mark came up for the duo in the 7th over, off just 38 balls, inclusive of nine boundaries. Ishant Sharma (4/77) was introduced into the attack in the 6th over, and he just about managed to slow down their scoring. Gurkeerat Mann (0/24) was also brought on early in the 12th over, but the two batsmen couldn't be stopped. Warner reached his fifty off just 46 balls, in the 14th over, while Finch reached that mark off 61 balls in the 23rd over. Ravindra Jadeja (0/51) came on to bowl in the 17th over and was taken for 15 runs in his very first over, signalling an off day for the left-arm spinner. The Australian scoring continued to race as the 100-mark came up in the 17th over, with Rishi Dhawan (0/53) impressing in the middle overs. (REOPENS FGN 12) Ajinkya Rahane split his hand webbing in the 20th over, whilst fielding, and left the field to receive medical care. He didn't return for the remainder of the innings, and with four stitches to his right hand, will bat in the run-chase if deemed necessary. He was the second casualty of the day with umpire Richard Kettleborough getting hit in the 6th over earlier on, off a Finch drive on his right leg, and leaving the field for medical care. Paul Wilson then joined John Ward (who wore a helmet thereafter) on the field, while Sam Nogajski took over as the third umpire. Meanwhile, Warner-Finch breached the 150-mark in the 26th over, and were looking set to continue plundering runs. But Ishant broke the partnership in the 30th over, an inside edge onto his stumps dismissing him in the 90s. Mitchell Marsh (33 runs, 42 balls, 3 fours) was promoted up the order, but he didn't make the requisite impact at number three. At the other end, Finch reached his century off 97 balls in the 34th over, but was out soon after, caught by Ishant off Umesh, as the run-rate seemed to be slowing down. Australia had reached 237/2 in the 40th over, and thereafter stepped on the accelerator as Smith (51 runs, 29 balls, 4 fours, 3 sixes) arrived at the crease. He smacked a quickfire ninth ODI fifty, off only 27 balls, as the innings went into high gear. A flurry of wickets fell thereafter, including Marsh and Smith gone in the 45th and 46th overs, respectively, but it wasn't enough to slow down their march. Even George Bailey (10) and James Faulkner (7) couldn't make much of an impact, but then Glenn Maxwell (41, 20b, 6X4, 1X6) provided a final flourish, as the hosts stole 111 runs in the last 10 overs. Three cases of Zika virus, Florida's first, were recorded in people who had recently traveled in Latin America, health authorities said today. The first two cases were found in Miami-Dade County, in people who visited Colombia in December. The thir case, in Hillsborough County, involved a person who traveled to Venezuela last month, Florida Health Department spokeswoman Mara Gambineri said. "We encourage Florida residents and visitors to protect themselves from all mosquito-borne illnesses by draining standing water, covering their skin with repellent and clothing, covering windows with screens," Gambineri said. No cases have yet been confirmed of infections contracted in the United States, though the virus has quickly spread across South America and the Caribbean in recent weeks. The Zika virus, which is transmitted by mosquitoes, cannot spread between humans. But for pregnant women, the virus can be transmitted to the fetus, triggering brain damage like microcephaly in which the brain and skull are abnormally small. The virus often produces flu-like symptoms (fever, headaches and joint pain) as well as skin rashes and conjunctivitis. Those symptoms appear within three to 12 days of the mosquito bite. In 80 percent of cases, the infection goes unnoticed, and it is very rarely fatal. Last week, the United States warned pregnant women to avoid travel to 14 countries and territories in the Caribbean and Latin America because of the virus. There have been 26 travel-related cases of Zika virus in the United States since 2007, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A former deputy Communist Party chief in China's volatile region of Xinjiang was sentenced today to 12 years in prison for corruption. Yang Gang was the communist number two in Xinjiang from 2006 to 2010, and had held positions within the party's senior ranks in the resource-rich far western region since 1999. From 1998 through 2012, Yang "took advantage of his posts" in Xinjiang and elsewhere to help others secure development projects, sales and promotions, the Third Intermediate People's Court of Beijing said on its verified social media account. The probe against Yang was announced in 2013, part of a high-profile crackdown on graft under President Xi Jinping. The campaign has brought down numerous senior officials, notably former security chief Zhou Yongkang - although critics say it is used for political infighting. Yang received almost 14 million yuan (now USD 2.1 million) in bribes in the preceding five years, at times aided by his wife and son, the court said. He had been given a relatively light penalty because he had confessed and paid back his ill-gotten gains, it added. Xinjiang, the homeland of the mostly Muslim Uighur minority, is the scene of sporadic bloody violence which the government attributes to separatist religious extremists. Rights groups and exile organisations accuse Beijing of discriminating against Uighur culture and religion, saying it is a root cause of the unrest. GRETNA, Louisiana -- The man convicted of killing and dismembering a Bourbon Street dancer in 2012 has been denied a new trial. Tuesday's ruling came in the case of Terry Speaks, who was convicted in June of second-degree murder in the death of Jaren Lockhart. NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune reports that Speaks' attorney, John Benz, argued that the verdict would likely have been different if jurors had heard from federal inmate Elijah Sanford. Sanford alleged two of his fellow inmates lied when they testified that Speaks admitted to killing Lockhart. State District Judge Stephen Grefer in Gretna ruled that the murder case hadn't relied solely on the testimony of the two inmates. Speaks was sentenced to life in prison. His former girlfriend, Margaret Sanchez, is awaiting trial in the case. With the arrest of four persons with suspected ISIS links from Manglour in Uttarakhand, Delhi Police today claimed to have unearthed a terror plot to target the ongoing Ardh Kumbh Mela at Haridwar, particularly trains heading there and some strategic locations in the national capital. The suspects, identified as Akhlaq ur-Rehman, Mohammed Osama, Mohammed Azim Shah and Mehroz were arrested from Manglour town in Uttarakhand's Haridwar district yesterday and produced in a court here today which sent them to 15 days' police custody, Special Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) Arvind Deep said. "The four suspects were tracked down with inputs from a central intelligence agency. They had planned to carry out terror attacks at the Ardh Kumbh mela, trains heading towards Haridwar passing through Roorkie and some strategic locations in Delhi," Deep said. According to sources, the suspects were allegedly in contact of a former Indian Mujahideen operative, who later went for training in Syria and is presently believed to be a key member of Ansar-ut Tawhid fi Bilad al-Hind (AuT) which has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). One of the suspects, Akhlaq, is also being questioned in connection with the attacks at Pathankot. Meanwhile, their involvement in all possible networks, including the AuT-ISIS, is being verified, the source said. The suspects have been booked under provisions of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. Special Commissioner Arvind Deep refused to comment on the outfit which the suspects belong to but said, "The national capital faces threat until the entire module is busted." Delhi was put on high alert and security was stepped up earlier this month after the Special Cell received input about the presence of some Jaish-e-Mohammed key members in the city two days after the attack at Pathankot. On Monday, two persons with suspected al Qaeda links were detained from Mewat in Haryana. However, Delhi Police Special Cell has so far claimed to have arrested only one. Senior officials have also reviewed the security today in view of upcoming Republic Day celebrations, an official added. The girl's father, an officer in the state agriculture department had approached the city police who after vigorous counselling successfully managed to convince the girl about the true identity of her friend. In December, 2014, the NIA arrested Mehdi Masroor Biswas, an electrical engineer posted in Birbhum who hailed from Bangalore, as he was tweeting to recruit for the ISIS. The over 60 persons who would be recruited include a few chartered accountants to monitor crimes like bank frauds and share market-related wrong-doings. Kumar during his earlier stint as the Joint Commissioner of Police in charge of the Special Task Force in 2009 had employed ethical hackers. According to sources in the Kolkata Police, the data gathered and the results of monitoring of suspected accounts would be shared with other law-enforcement agencies like the National Investigation Agency (NIA). A high-level French team is set to meet senior officials of the Navy soon to brief them about the naval version of fighter jet Rafale as India works on the design of its next indigenous aircraft carrier - Vishal. Defence sources said that during the meeting, the French side will give a presentation on the various aspects of the naval version of Rafale and the benefits it will bring at a time when the Air Force will operate Rafale too. The Air Force is set to acquire 36 Rafales under a government-to government deal. The development comes when the Navy is in the design phase for the next aircraft carrier. Sources said that India has written to four countries, including France, seeking proposals for the design of the aircraft carrier that will have over 50 planes on board. While India currently operates two aircraft carriers INS Vikramaditya and INS Viraat, the latter is set to be decommissioned soon. The country's first indigenous aircraft carrier Vikrant is already under construction in Kochi and is scheduled to be handed over by end of 2018. Sources said that one of the basis of the design will be the aircraft component of the carrier. "At this moment, we are doing with what we have," the sources said. The Navy will deploy MiG 29K fighter aircraft on Vikrant. However, it is not clear if the Navy will stick to MiG 29K or go in for a new aircraft for Vishal. As per the Navy's plan, Vishal would be a 65,000 tonnes aircraft carrier and will be about 300 metres long and about 70 metres in width. While the exact propulsion system for it has not beeen decided, sources indicated it could well be a nuclear one. "Given the long life cycle of a carrier, about 50 years, the cost of the nuclear propulsion will be recovered as nuclear means longer duration and better availability," the sources said. George Clooney has added his voice to the growing protest against the lack of diversity at this year's Oscars nominations, saying "African Americans have a real fair point" about the industry not "representing them well enough". Hollywood celebrities like Lupita Nyong'o, David Oyelowo, Jada Pinkett Smith and Spike Lee have spoken out against the white Oscars as people of colour failed to get nominated in the all four acting categories and the directing category for the second year in a row. Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs issued a statement saying she was "frustrated about the lack of inclusion." Clooney, 54, said the issue was bigger than the Oscars nominations as enough representation was lacking in the industry for African Americans. ".... I don't think it's a problem of who you're picking as much as it is: How many options are available to minorities in film, particularly in quality films?," Clooney told Variety in an interview. The actor said there were a lot of points that needed to be looked at including the pay disparity between male and female stars, against which Jennifer Lawrence and Patricia Arquette have raised their voices. "I think that African Americans have a real fair point that the industry isn't representing them well enough. I think that's absolutely true. "Let's look back at some of the nominees. I think around 2004, certainly there were black nominees - like Don Cheadle, Morgan Freeman. And all of a sudden, you feel like we're moving in the wrong direction. There were nominations left off the table," Clooney said. The star said "Creed", "Concussion", "Beasts of No Nation" and "Straight Outta Compton" could have been nominated along side. "... And certainly last year, with 'Selma' director Ava DuVernay - I think that it's just ridiculous not to nominate her. "But honestly, there should be more opportunity than that. There should be 20 or 30 or 40 films of the quality that people would consider for the Oscars. By the way, we're talking about African Americans. For Hispanics, it's even worse. We need to get better at this. We used to be better at it. Bollywood star Akshay Kumar, who attended Asin Thottumkal and Rahul Sharma's wedding here, says the marriage was a simple but lovely affair. Asin, 30, and Rahul, 39, married in a private ceremony here last evening. Akshay is also glad that he was instrumental in the actress and Micromax founder's meeting and wished them a long and happy married life. "It was a nice affair. Everything went off very well. Asin and Rahul are very private people. Everybody has respected their privacy. It was a very simple affair and today they are very happy and I am very happy that I played the Cupid. I hope that they live like this forever," Akshay told PTI. The actor was one of the early birds to reach the venue and be a part of the wedding. The duo tied the knot first in a Christian wedding and then settled down for a North Indian ceremony in the evening. Asked whose side he represented at the wedding, the actor, one of the first invitees, said, "I was from both the sides." Akshay, 48, is currently in Delhi to promote his upcoming film "Airlift", which releases this Friday, along with co-star Nimrat Kaur and director Raja Krishna Menon. "It's just a coincidence that I was in Delhi during her wedding. If I would have been in Mumbai, I would have flown to attend the wedding," said Akshay about his "Khiladi 786" co-star. Goa Police is yet to trace the origins of the letter which threatened to harm Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar. "We are still inquiring into the origins of the letter. The inquiry is going on," Inspector General of Police (IGP) V Renganathan told PTI today. He said security has been beefed up across the state and all precautions are being taken. On asked whether the letter purportedly signed by ISIS, could be a prank, he said probe is underway into all aspects but the threat has been taken seriously. The postcard letter was received last week by State Secretariat in Porvorim near here with ISIS written at the bottom. The Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) has already began probe and the letter has been sent to all police stations across the coastal state. Meanwhile, BJP has condemned the act. "If the threat is true then it is sending very bad signal for the country," BJP Goa spokesman Dr Wilfred Mesquita said. Congress party has also demanded thorough investigation into the source of the letter. "Threat letter received by Goa government should be investigated. Defence minister's weekend visits to the state without proper security in place is also posing threat to the people of Goa as he is getting vulnerable for such attacks," Congress' Goa spokesman Durgadas Kamat said. "But the incident can also be looked at from a different angle whether this has been done deliberately by the elements who want to divert the attention of the citizens from Goa government's misdeeds on the governance front," he commented. A police sub-inspector, arrested by ACB for allegedly demanding bribe of Rs 35,000, was suspended by state DGP today. "Sub-Inspector Vikram Naik has been placed under suspension by the Director General of Police," Superintendent of Police (South) Shekhar Prabhudessai told PTI. Naik, attached to Ponda police station, was booked last week for allegedly demanding Rs 35,000 from a man who was accused of abetting an absconding accused. The ACB had booked Naik under the Prevention of Corruption Act after recorded conversation purportedly that of the PSI seeking illegal gratification was produced before the agency. Nobel Laureate Prof Amartya Sen today said government's help was needed to run the Presidency University, but it should not dominate the institution. "Presidency would certainly want government's help, but (it should) not (be) dominant," Sen said at a lecture at the university here. At a special convocation, Sen was given an honorary D.Litt by the university where he had studied economics at the undergraduate level and is now adviser to the chairman of Presidency University Mentor Group. Talking about his college days, he said the general idea during that time was to accept any kind of belief that would come from any side. "Tolerance is a very great virtue and right now in India, we need it very badly," he said, adding that there was a need for sceptical tolerance just like poet Henry Louis Vivian Derozio who didn't have enmity with any group, but questioned every group. During his lecture, the economist said democracy was not a majoritarian rule. "Now if you think about India, when we say that democracy may be under some threat... What are the issues? Well first of all, democracy is not just a majoritarian rule, it also involves minority rights, it involves liberty and liberty of expressions and so on," he said. Accepting a request of the Ramakrishna Mission, the government today decided to allot its ashram here additional land adjacent to its existing campus. The Union Cabinet today approved allotment of land measuring 82 sq m to the Mission in the Paharganj area. The land is next to its existing facility and it has been alloted to "expand their welfare activities at the prevailing rates," an official statement said. The Mission had requested the government for allotment of a small incidental plot of land in Krishna Market to further expand their welfare activities. The land is lying vacant and is prone to encroachment and illegal activities, the statement said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had last year visited the Ramakrishna Math and Mission headquarters at Belur Math in West Bengal which had reportedly turned down his request to join the monastic order thrice in the past. To augment road infrastructure in Bihar and Jharkhand, the government today approved a Rs 4,918-crore project to widen stretches on National Highway 2 running through the two states. "The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA), chaired by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has given its approval for development of the six-laning of Aurangabad-BarwaAdda section on National Highway 2 in Bihar and Jharkhand," an official statement said. This work will be under the National Highways Development Project (NHDP) phase-V. The approval has been given in BOT (build, operate, transfer) (toll) mode on design, build, finance, operate and transfer (BOT/DBFOT) basis. "The cost is estimated to be Rs 4,918.48 crore, including land acquisition, resettlement and rehabilitation and other pre-construction activities," the statement said. Total length of the roads will be approximately 222 kms. The aim is to expedite the process to bolster infrastructure in Bihar and Jharkhand and reduce time and cost of travel for traffic on the Aurangabad-BarwaAdda section on National Highway 2 in Bihar and Jharkhand. This is expected to help uplift the socio-economic condition of the region concerned and increase employment potential, the statement said. Government is looking into possibilities of setting up new petrochemical complexes near the 16 petroleum refineries in the country, Fertiliser Minister Ananth Kumar said today. The petrochemical industry is a sunrise industry having a size of Rs 6 lakh crore and there is a huge potential to raise its capacity substantially, Kumar said. "...We should milk the crude as much as we can. So we are looking into the possibilities that petrochemical complexes can come near the 16 refineries in the country. We are evaluating all the options," Kumar said. Under the Petroleum, Chemicals and Petrochemical Investment Regions (PCPIR) policy, the government had approved the setting up of four PCPIRs such as Vishakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, Dahej in Gujarat, Paradeep in Odisha and Cuddalore in Tamil Nadu. The Minister was speaking at the National Awards for Technology Innovation in Petrochemical and Downstream Plastics Processing Industry, organised by the Central Institute of Plastic Engineering and Technology (CIPET). He said the country needs more value addition of the refinery output so that the polymer industry grows up fast, and creates new products and does import substitution. Emphasising on the plastic sector, Kumar said after information-technology and biotechnology the new buzz word in the country should be plastic technology. He said the government will provide full support to the petrochemical industry. In this regard, he added that a lot of work has been done on reverse SEZs with some countries. Greece's privatisation agency announced today it had accepted a $402.4 million bid for 67 per cent of the Port of Piraeus by China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO). "Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund (HRADF)'s Board of Directors evaluated the improved economic offer, taking into account the two existing valuations for (the Piraeus Port Authority) and decided to declare COSCO (Hong Kong) Group Limited as the preferred investor," the privatisation agency said in a statement. It called the deal, which also includes 350 million euros of investment into the port plus revenues of 410 million to go to the state, "a very important milestone" in the Greek government's privatisation programme. The COSCO was the only bidder for the majority stake in the port, Greece's largest and one of the busiest in Europe. Denmark's APM and Container Terminals Services of the Philippines had also expressed interest in Piraeus, but did not submit bids. COSCO through a subsidiary manages the two main container terminals at the port under a 35-year concession signed in 2008, with the objective of making Piraeus a key port of entry for Asian goods into Europe. The privatisation of the port has been postponed several times in recent years, with the arrival of the leftist government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras putting it on ice last year. But as part of an $94 billion bailout last year needed to keep Greece in the eurozone, Tsipras agreed to move forward on the privatisation of a number of companies. Workers at the port have recently gone on strike and demonstrated against the sale at what they feared would be too cheap a price. The Greek government plans to keep a stake in the port, which is listed on the Athens stock exchange. The Jharkhand High Court today allowed police request to submit its report in-camera on the reported abduction of 35 children by Maosist in Gumla district. The division bench headed by Chief Justice Virendra Bhatt agreed to the submission of Additional Advocate General Ajit Kumar that Additional Director General of Police (Operation), S N Pradhan, sought to submit the report in-camera as it carried some secret matters. Asking the senior police officer to submit it in the chamber of the chief justice tomorrow, the court said if the report was found to be secret it would not be opened in the court but the matter would be taken into account while deciding the PIL. Pradhan and some other police officials were present in the court. The court had on April 23 last year taken suo motu cognisance on a newspaper report that 35 children were abducted by Naxalites in Gumla district and converted it to a PIL. It also appointed Advocate Sumeet Gadodia as amicus curiae. Terming the report as alarming and shocking, the court directed serving of notices to various departments of the Centre and the state. Delhi High Court today asked the AAP government here to review the pension schemes for aged and disabled people and explain why there was a cap on the number of beneficiaries. The court's observation came after Delhi government said it was running two welfare schemes to provide financial assistance to around 4.35 lakh elderly people and about 56,000 disabled people who are economically weak. The government also said it could accommodate more persons under its old age scheme, subject to vacancies in the cap of 4.35 lakh people currently benefiting from it. A bench of justices Badar Durrez Ahmed and Sanjeev Sachdeva then observed that as no reason was indicated for the cap on number of beneficiaries under the old age scheme, the government may re-examine and review the upper limit, "particularly in light of actual number of people requiring this assistance". The court had sought the government's response on whether it had any financial assistance scheme for old persons, since the municipal corporations in the capital were unable to pay the beneficiaries of their schemes. The bench observed that the municipal bodies "do not have the financial wherewithal to provide stipends" under their old age pension schemes which have not been shut down formally, but had no beneficiaries "for all practical purposes." The court made the observation after East MCD said that though it has not discontinued the scheme, it can no longer pay the stipends due to lack of funds. The court then directed the corporations to provide the government with the list of names and other details of persons who are not receiving funds under the MCD schemes so that they may meet the eligibility criteria for the government schemes. As the government was running the two schemes, the court disposed of the PIL filed by NGO Social Jurist through advocates Ashok Aggarwal and Khagesh Jha claiming that the municipal bodies had stopped paying pension under the old-age/ widow/disabled persons pension and stipend scheme. Delhi government, in its affidavit filed by additional standing counsel Santosh Kumar Tripathi, has said that under its old age scheme it pays Rs 1500 per month to people aged 70 years and above and Rs 1000 per month to those aged between 60-69 years. Additional benefit of Rs 500 per month is being given to people who belong to SC/ST category and minorities who are aged between 60-69 years, the affidavit said. In its order, CIC had asked the Lieutenant Governor to take necessary remedial measures to ensure strict compliance with the eligibility norms and to obtain a comprehensive note on disbursal of pension money by the three corporations so that necessary action can be taken against those not eligible. The mayor of North Corporation was also directed to find out how many pensions were granted on recommendations of councillors in violation of eligibility norms and to initiate steps to stop such disbursals. In her plea, Shobha Vijender said that CIC has exceeded its jurisdiction in passing the order which was "without any legal sanction and is devoid of merit". "Order has been passed by CIC in excess of the exercise of the power confered upon by the RTI Act. The order has been passed without taking into consideration the relevant legal and factual spect of the case. "CIC does not have the authority to pass any direction/ observation about functioning, administration, dispensation of duties etc. By any government authority and how they function and perform their work," the plea said. "NDMC has its own rules and procedure on the subject of sanction of stipened to senior citizens, widows, handicapped etc. And has absolute power to grant or reject sanction pemsion despite their being recommendation by the Councilor. Rules and regulations of NDMC were not even considered by IC while passing the order," it added. The Calcutta High Court today expressed unhappiness at the manner and pace of investigation by an officer of Kolkata Police in a case under anti-narcotics law. Justice Siddhartha Chatterjee directed Kolkata Police authorities to decide on the action contemplated against the investigating officer (IO) and inform the court about it by tomorrow. The IO had allegedly not mentioned any date of the statement taken from the accused who has prayed for dropping of charges against him, under Section 161 of CrPC and that he had also annexed the same in the case diary. The accused was arrested under NDPS Act. The IO has also not been able to arrest or track the main accused in the case. Appearing before the court, the Deputy Commissioner (detective department, special) said that departmental proceedings had been initiated against the officer. The court was, however, not pleased and observed that it may take a long time and that the authorities should submit by tomorrow the nature of action being contemplated against him. One Melvin Smith had been arrested in connection with a narcotic substance-related case in 2012, who named one Bijay Mahato during interrogation. Mahato was also arrested though nothing had allegedly been found from his premises, as per his petition before the high court. Mahato, who was granted bail later, had moved the high court seeking discharge in the case on the claim that he was innocent and had been framed. The IO had allegedly not mentioned the date of Mahato's statement under Section 161 of CrPC. Actor Idris Elba has called on UK politicians to give black actors more television opportunities, otherwise they will end up being "thrown on the scrapheap". The "Luther" star urged better representation of women, disabled people and people of different races, reported the BBC. He is convinced that he would never have scored a lead TV role if he stayed in Britain, where he would have been stuck with best friend roles or "cop sidekick parts". "I knew I wasn't going to land a lead role. I knew there wasn't enough imagination in the industry for me to be seen as a lead. "In other words, if I wanted to star in a British drama like Luther, then I'd have to go to a country like America. And the other thing was, because I never saw myself on TV, I stopped watching TV. Instead I decided to just go out and become TV. Afzal Usmani, a key member of the terror outfit Indian Mujahideen, was today convicted and sentenced by a magistrate's court here to five years' imprisonment for escaping from the special MCOCA court in September 2013. "His nephew Javed Khan was also sentenced to five years in jail," special public prosecutor Vaibhav Bagade said. Usmani, a known car thief, fled from the special Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act court here on September 20, 2013 and was rearrested by state anti-terrorism squad on October 28, 2013, from near the Indo-Nepal border. He is facing trial here for sending e-mails, alongwith others, on IM's behalf to media organisations in which the terror outfit took responsibility for various blasts. Bagade said Usmani was convicted for the offences of escaping from custody and forgery, while Javed was convicted for harbouring Usmani after the escape. In the trial which lasted more than six months, the prosecution examined 12 witnesses while the defence examined three witnesses on its side. According to the police, Usmani was involved in stealing four cars which were used to transport explosives to Ahmedabad and Surat. He was also charged with planting bombs. A series of 21 blasts rocked Ahmedabad on July 26, 2008, killing 56 people and injuring over 200. Many of the blasts targeted the city bus service and two blasts took place inside the premises of hospitals about 40 minutes after the initial series of blasts. Between July 28 and 30, 2008, 26 unexploded bombs were found at various locations in Surat. Two cars filled with material required for making explosives and detonators were also found. Indian Medical Association (IMA) today demanded immediate release of Egyptian vascular surgeon, Ahmed Said, who has been arrested along with four others by authorities in Egypt for participating in a 2011 protest. The statement came following a release issued by World Medical Association (WMA) in support of Said. "IMA, the largest organisation of doctors in India, stands in solidarity with WMA in this cause and strongly condemns this act by the Egyptian authorities. IMA demands the release of the Dr Ahmed Said and others on account of basic human rights," IMA secretary general K K Aggarwal said. According to release issued by IMA, Egyptian authorities jailed and reportedly tortured Said and four others claiming their involvement in protests that took place four years ago. This has been widely criticised by the international medical community, and would set a dangerous precedent if not dealt with immediately, it said. Amid increasing Chinese influence in Maldives, India has assured the archipelago nation that New Delhi will remain its net security provider. The assurance was given during a meeting held between visiting Maldivian Defence and National Security Minister Adam Shareef and his Indian counterpart Manohar Parrikar here last evening. The two sides also decided to deepen and broaden their defence cooperation, defence sources said. "We have told them that we will continue to be their net security provider besides helping them in other areas like health, education among others," the sources said. The development comes at a time when the Chinese are increasing their footprints in the Maldives. China is funding several infrastructure projects across the Maldives. The Maldivian government's electoral pledges, like building a bridge between capital Male and the airport island of Hulhule and development of its main international airport, hinge on soft loans being considered by Beijing. Chinese businesses, mostly state-owned corporations, have recently forayed into the Maldives with investments in areas such as the upmarket luxury tourism industry. The Maldives also held its second investment forum in the Chinese capital last November. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had, during her visit to the Maldives in October 2015, said that India will always be the net security provider to the Indian Ocean country. She had, however, stressed that it was important to insulate both the countries from trends towards radicalisation and terrorism. India, with its swelling middleclass and rapid urbanisation, could fill the gap left by the slowdown in China, a top Australian minister said today. "Other opportunities in the region, particularly in ASEAN countries, particularly in India, will hopefully meet the hole that has been left by the slowdown in China," Josh Frydenberg, Resources Minister said. "(India) haven't gone through the urbanisation and development that China has but under the (Narendra) Modi government they're very intent on following that path," he told Sky . Frydenberg predictedurbanisation and a growing middle class in India toopen doors for Australia after gloomy economic from China, the world's second largest economy. He reassured the resource dependent economies thatthe fundamentals in the global economy wouldstill support commodities despitethe International Monetary Fund cutting its global growth forecasts for the third time in less than a year. The minister further citedthatthe IMF's global growth forecasts of 3.4 per cent in 2016 and 3.6 per cent in 2017 were still very strong. "Iron-ore shipments to China hit a record in December as the world's second-largest economy increased its steel exports to India", Frydenberg said. Hesaid thatAustralian economy could also expectstrong growth prospects in tourism withthe fast growingIndian middle class. For the first time in 25 years, China's economy grew at its slowest pace at 6.9 per cent in 2015, sparking global concerns over the health of the world's second largest economy and its impact on investors. Twitter today said thousands of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are advertising on its platform, making India one of its fastest growing SMB market across the world with average monthly spend per advertiser growing 60 per cent. The micro-blogging website opened up its self-service ad platform to India in September last year and in the last four months, thousands of Indian SMBs have advertised on Twitter and the average monthly spend has grown 60 per cent per SMB advertiser, Twitter Head of SMB Sales (Asia-Pacific) Emily Huo told reporters here. She, however, did not gave the exact number of SMBs using the platform to advertise. "India is one of Twitter's fastest-growing SMB markets worldwide and, in just four months, is already our third largest SMB market in Asia Pacific, after Japan and Australia," she said. She added that with Startup India initiative, India is one of its top priorities now. "We just launched a Twitter handle which specifically teaches businesses of best practices and we have also launched our marketing website to help educate business and the points mentioned there are relevant to India," she said. India has a flourishing entrepreneurial culture with over 51 million registered SMBs according to a Zinnov market research report in January 2015. "We're excited to work with the Indian SMB community to help them achieve their business goals and reach over 320 million Twitter users worldwide," she said. Asked about the company's plans for smaller cities, she said, "There are different ways to outreach the smaller markets. We do a lot of online marketing, we can also potentially partner with local players in this space. So all of that we are definitely exploring." She said Twitter has a consolidated marketing team at present in Singapore and it will expand that. "We will look into the demands for it (having a marketing team in India) as there is still a lot of work and momentum that we have today. We are open to having a marketing team in India but no promises as of now," she said. India today successfully launched its fifth navigation satellite IRNSS-1E on-board the workhorse PSLV-C31 here, taking another step join a group of nations equipped with own satellite navigation systems like the US-based Global Positioning System (GPS). In a precise textbook launch, the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) C 31 blasted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) here, about 110 km from Chennai at 9.31 AM and released the satellite into the orbit 19 minutes and 20 seconds later. President Pranab Mukherjee congratulated the ISRO team on the launch. "Heartiest congratulations to ISRO team on the successful launch," he said. Lauding the "dynamism and determination" of ISRO scientists, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said they have made the country proud. "Congratulating the dynamism & determination of @isro & our scientists on successful launch of PSLV C31 & putting IRNSS-1E in orbit precisely", he said on twitter. "Spoke to the scientists at @isro & congratulated them on their accomplishment today. Our scientists keep making us proud", Modi said. IRNSS-1E is the fifth navigation satellite in the IRNSS space system, comprising seven satellites, which would be on par with US-based GPS once the full complement of spacecraft is launched. As the rocket soared into the clear blue sky at the end of the 48 hour countdown, all the four stages of PSLV executed their functions as programmed, to the joy of ISRO scientists at the mission control centre. After the satellite's injection into geo synchronous transfer orbit (GTO), the two solar panels of IRNSS-1E will be automatically deployed in quick succession. The Master Control Facility in Hassan (Karnataka) would then take control of the satellite to perform orbit raising operations. Though the earlier four satellites would be sufficient to start operations of the IRNSS system, the remaining three would make it more "accurate and efficient", he said. Congratulating the ISRO team for the success of the launch, a beaming ISRO Chairman A S Kiran Kumar said, "Today with this new year we are starting the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite fifth launch, fifth of the seven satellite constellation. With this satellite in place, within our country we will be able to get 24/7 provisional a good positional accuracy". On the future launches, Kiran Kumar said, "We have a long way to go. This year we are planning to launch the earth observation satellites." "Let me congratulate the entire ISRO team for the work they have done and we are having a long way to go. We have got two more satellites to be launched in this constellation, which would happen in next couple of months", he said from the Mission Control Centre. He said the ISRO scientists intended to complete this year the launch of GSLV-Mark III which will carry heavier satellites into geo-stationery transfer orbits. "And, we have a long way to go. And I would like to remind all my colleagues, while we have started the new year with success, we need to dedicate ourselves for completing the task on hand", he said. Mission Director B Jayakumar said, "ISRO starts the New Year with a grand success. IRNSS-1E has been injected very precisely into the intended orbit. We have employed the most powerful vehicle for this launch with that able to carry the satellites. We have three variants in PSLV and with this launch we have completed 33 launches in PSLV." "With this, the uniqueness is 11,11,11. The core alone version 11xL variant is 11 and generic variant is 11. It is first Mission for ISRO in new year", Jayakumar said. IRNSS-1E has configuration similar to its predecessors IRNSS-1A, 1B, 1C and 1D and carries two types of payloads -- navigation and ranging payloads. The navigation payload will transmit navigation service signals to the users and operating in L5-band and S-band, while the other comprises a C-band transponder that facilitates accurate determination of the satellite range. IRNSS-1E has a lift-off mass of 1,425 kg and carries Corner Cube Retro Reflectors for laser ranging and a highly accurate rubidium atomic clock (also part of the navigation payload of the satellite). The four satellites already launched include IRNSS-1A on July 1, 2013, IRNSS-1B on April 4, 2014, IRNSS-1C on October 16, 2014, IRNSS-1D on March 28, 2015. ISRO scientists plan to put all the seven navigation satellites in to the orbit by March 2016. The mission life of IRNSS-1E is 12 years. Amid fears of the global economy edging close to recession, India and UK have agreed to open up trade and markets to support growth, carry out structural reforms and address issues related to cross-border tax evasion. After talks between India's Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and UK Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, the two nation's agreed to boost economic ties particularly in areas of infrastructure and financial services and renewed pledge for autonomical exchange of tax information from 2017. "From the Indian point of view, we were extremely interested in having the British investors look at infrastructure investments in India for which various possibilities were discussed," Jaitley said after the talks. India, he said, is "extremely keen that large British companies, particularly involved in infrastructure financing, start investing in Indian infrastructure". The two nations will work together for developing an India-UK partnership fund under the umbrella of National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) recently created in India. "This fund will seek to increase flows of private sector capital and expertise alongside multilateral support into Indian infrastructure," a joint statement issued after talks said. The world's fifth largest economy will work on development of smart cities in India. New Delhi is also looking at London for issuance of rupee-denominated bonds to get UK investors to fund its infrastructure projects. "The possibility of their investing, either directly in projects or through the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) that we have created, were both discussed," Jaitely told reporters at the Indian High Commission here. With the IMF warning of global economy being close to recession with 3.4 per cent growth this year, the two sides said they "remain concerned that global growth is falling short of expectations and that the risks to the global outlook have increased". "In this regard we stand ready to take the necessary steps to open up trade and markets to support growth and jobs, and agree on the importance of structural reforms and pursuing credible fiscal policies," the joint statement said. The joint statement talked about advancement of cooperation in a range of sectors including infrastructure financing, addressing issues of cross-border tax evasion/ avoidance besides opening up of the Indian legal sector to foreign lawyers. "The UK and India share a common commitment to address cross-border tax evasion and avoidance. Both sides have committed to the Common Reporting Standards (CRS) on Automatic Exchange of Tax Information and will begin exchange in 2017," the statement said. "We call on other countries to meet the commitments they have made and to implement the new standard on time," it said. During the talks, which included senior representatives from Finance Ministries, Central Banks and key regulators of both countries, the two leaders discussed ways to strengthen the Indo-UK existing economic partnership in order to further boost trade and investment, and to build on the success of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's recent summit with his British counterpart David Cameron in the UK. "Given the fact that even in a somewhat difficult global scenario, India is managing a reasonable growth rate, this is one of the better options that investors have and that kind of a sentiment gets really echoed in the meetings with the investors that we had. Of course, the investors are also keenly watching which way our reform process in India goes," Jaitley said. The two nations agreed to work together on building commercial and regualtor-to-regulator links that can underpin further fintech growth in both countries. "The UK and India agreed to renew the existing mandate of the India-UK Financial Partnership, and building on the re-establishment of the CEO Forum," the statement said, adding that potential areas of interest for the India-UK Financial Partnership could be reinsurance, international use of the rupee, role of financial technology, financial inclusion, investor protection and green finance. "The global economy is facing serious challenges and therefore the estimates of global growth also have been repeatedly lowered. Compared to how various countries across the world have been doing, India's growth rate despite these challenges is probably the highest in the world among major economies," Jaitley said, in reference to his meetings with investors at Goldman Sachs and London Stock Exchange. As a follow up on Prime Minister Modi's announcement during his UK visit last November on the listing of Rupee bonds in London, the minister said, "theUK is very keen for these to be listed in London and broadly the economic and financial dialogue was carried further". During the dialogue, the two sides recognised that as the leading financial centre in the world and in the view of successful issuance of Masala bonds issued by the International Finance Cooperation last year, London will be an attractive location for issuance of rupee-denominated bonds. "The bonds, which were first announced during the visit of Prime Minister Modi to the UK in November, illustrate the crucial role that the UK's capital markets can play in an enhanced economic relationship with India, with UK investors providing financing for the transformation of India's infrastructure and continued rapid economic growth," the statement said. India and the UK also agreed that the development of deeper markets in rupee-linked products, and the increasingly sophisticated relationship between the Indian and UK financial sectors, are important underlying factors in fostering an enduring economic and financial partnership. (Reopens FGN 21) Both sides agreed to continue working closely on the development of smart cities in India. "We will continue to build on and further embed the existing Technical Assistance Partnerships that were announced during Prime Minister Modi's recent visit to the UK, and to continue working together on research collaboration and other measures to support India's 100 Smart Cities programme," the statement said. While noting the strength of the economic outlook for both countries, the two sides expressed concern that global growth is falling short of expectations and that the risks to the global outlook have increased. "In this regard we stand ready to take the necessary steps to open up trade and markets to support growth and jobs, and agree on the importance of structural reforms and pursuing credible fiscal policies in order to raise living standards," it said. India and the UK also agreed to work together with the aim of developing an Indo-UK partnership fund under the umbrella of the NIIF. The fund will seek to increase flows of private sector capital and expertise alongside multilateral support into Indian infrastructure. The working group to be established will report back within the course of 2016 on a proposed fund strategy and delivery approach, the statement said. "As part of this, India and the UK also both recognise the importance of identifying the sector or sectors where there is greatest potential for developing sustainable project pipelines, and of developing a supportive institutional environment for investment and delivery," it said. India and UK today welcomed the passing of IMF quota reforms by the US Congress saying this will make the multilateral institution stronger and more legitimate. "We are pleased that the US Congress has agreed to ratify the 2010 reforms of IMF quota and governance, which will make the IMF a stronger and more legitimate institution," said a joint statement issued after a meeting of India's Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and UK Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne. The US Congress had last month passed a legislation approving long-pending quota reform of International Monetary Fund (IMF) that will give more voting rights to emerging economies like India and China in the functioning of the organisation. The Washington-headquartered IMF reviews members' quotas once in five years and the last such review took place in December, 2010. India has already consented to its quota increase under the review. The 2010 reforms were originally propelled by Washington, and the White House, under President Barack Obama, has repeatedly endorsed them. However, the US Congress has refused to sign the deal, with some legislators not wanting to contribute more money to the IMF and others concerned about any erosion to the dominant US role at the Fund. Once the review takes effect, India's share will increase from the current 2.44 per cent to 2.75 per cent, following which the country will become the eighth largest quota holder at the IMF, up from the 11th position. Emerging economies like India, China, Brazil and Russia have been asking for increased voting rights in IMF, which would reflect their growing share in world economy. The IMF quota reforms are aimed at giving more voice and voting power to the emerging economies with regard to the functioning of the multilateral body. Domestic drug firms Cipla, Emcure, Hetero and Natco have inked pacts with Bristol-Myers Squibb and a United Nations-backed public health organisation MPP to produce and sell generic daclatasvir in 112 countries. Bristol-Myers Squibb's daclatasvir is a novel direct- acting antiviral that is proven to help cure multiple genotypes of the hepatitis C virus (HCV). Generic companies Cipla, Emcure, Hetero and Natco have signed non-exclusive, royalty free agreements with Bristol-Myers Squibb and the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) to produce and sell daclatasvir in 112 low- and middle-income countries, the companies said in a joint statement. "Given the burden of hepatitis C, MPP worked quickly to forge agreements with generic companies. Cipla, Hetero and Emcure are long-term partners working with us to develop generic HIV antiretrovirals. We welcome Natco, a new collaborator, to the MPP and hope to have other companies on board as well," MPP Executive Director Greg Perry said. MPP is assessing applications from several other companies and expects to grant further sub-licences soon, he added. The sub-licences follow MPP's announcement of its first hepatitis C licensing agreement, signed with Bristol-Myers Squibb in November 2015, and mark the first time that generic manufacturers have worked through a non-profit, public health organisation to increase access to new hepatitis C medicines for developing world patients. Between 130 million and 150 million people worldwide are estimated to have hepatitis C. The vast majority lives in low- and middle-income countries. The MPP licence allows generic manufacturers to develop fixed-dose combinations that offer the potential to treat all of the six major genotypes of hepatitis C (HCV). Commenting on the development Cipla, Chief Medical Officer Jaideep Gogtay said the company is pleased to once again work with the MPP to bring new classes of drugs to people who need them the most in developing countries. "We look forward to collaborating with MPP to improve access to these medicines in India and elsewhere," Natco Vice Chairman & CEO Rajeev Nannapaneni said. Emcure, Head of Strategy Vik Thapar said the licence will help the company to distribute daclatasvir to low- and middle-income countries at affordable prices. The MPP is a United Nations-backed public health organisation working to increase access to HIV, viral hepatitis C and tuberculosis treatments in low and middle income countries. Hours after Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani produced P Hanumantha Rao's letter to target Congress over Rohith Vemula's suicide on Hyderabad Central University campus, the senior Congress leader hit back saying the young Dalit student would not have taken his life had the HRD ministry taken "appropriate steps" on his letter. "The minister (Smriti Irani) had received my letter in November 2014 itself. (But) She did not bother about my letter all these days. What was she and the government doing all these days? She remembered my letter only when (Union Minister Bandaru) Dattatreya also wrote a letter. Had the government acted on my letter, Rohit would not have taken such an extreme step," Rao, a Rajya Sabha MP, told PTI here. His rebuttal came soon after Irani sought to downplay the letter of Dattatreya, who had sought action on the issue of clash between two student bodies and the "anti-national activities" in the varsity, and her ministry's five communications to the university as a follow-up, which have been blamed for the suicide. Referring to Rao's letter seeking her intervention over various issues including suicide by students of marginalised communities in four years due to "alleged caste discrimination", Irani told reporters in Delhi that Rohith could have been alive had Congress fixed the problem four years ago. She has said that six letters were sent to the varsity by her ministry even on the complaint of Rao. However, Rao accused Irani of shirking her responsibility as a minister. "I wrote (the letter) in 2014. It is not necessary what happened during the (tenure of the) previous government. What have you done after you have taken over? Why have you not taken any action? Why did you follow up only when Dattatreya wrote letter to you? You are responsible for Rohith's death. Why did you delay taking action? It is only on ABVP's request (that) you have taken action against Harijan students," the MP said. On Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi's visit to the HCU yesterday, Rao said "Rahul visited the varsity on humanitarian grounds". Rohith, a Phd scolar, allegedly hanged himself in a hostel room of the HCU on Sunday. He was among the five students who were suspended by HCU in connection with the alleged assault on an ABVP student leader Sushil Kumar in August last year. A deadly Islamic State group assault on Deir Ezzor has seen the jihadists tighten their siege on the eastern Syrian city and left residents terrified and fearing the worst. Fierce clashes have relentlessly rocked the city's northern edges after a multi-front offensive on Saturday that cost the lives of dozens of people. IS jihadists overran Al-Baghaliyeh, one of the last areas on the city's outskirts known for the production of food. The extremists now control 60 per cent of Deir Ezzor city, intensifying a siege that had already caused fear and hardship for the roughly 200,000 people still living inside. Around 70 per cent of the city's remaining residents are women and children, according to the United Nations. "People are afraid, the situation is very difficult," said Attiyeh, a resident of Deir Ezzor who spoke by phone from the city. "Food and vegetables are rare, and we're starting to have problems with bread," he added. He referred to reports circulated by state media that IS fighters had killed 300 civilians. "If the city falls there will be a massacre," he said. On Saturday, IS launched a bloody offensive on Deir Ezzor, with dozens of its fighters carrying out suicide bomb attacks as they stormed government positions. The attack and subsequent fighting has killed at least 120 government forces, many of whom were executed by IS, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor. The group also said at least 70 IS fighters had been killed in the assault and clashes, with the jihadists seizing territory inside and outside of the city's northwestern tip. In addition, the Britain-based monitor said the jihadists had killed at least 85 civilians and kidnapped 400 more. Ghaleb al-Haj Hamdo, 23, told AFP he can still hear the boom of clashes nearby, reminding him of the violence wreaked upon his city at the weekend. "I am afraid of a massacre that will repeat itself over and over if Daesh invades our neighbourhood," Hamdo told AFP by phone, using an Arabic acronym for IS. Fearing fresh violence, residents are limiting their activities around the city at night, said the university student, who lives in the central Al-Joura district. The masked British militant dubbed "Jihadi John" was killed in a US-led drone strike last November in the Syrian town of Raqqa, the dreaded Islamic State terror group has confirmed. The militant group published an obituaryin its online propaganda magazine 'Dabiq' for the terrorist, whose real name was Mohammed Emwazi but went by the name Abu Muharib al-Muhajir. Emwazi, 27, was known as the executioner of the IS appearing masked in a string of videos showing the beheadings of Western hostages. The US military had said it was "reasonably certain" it had killed Emwazi in the IS-stronghold of Raqqa. At the time of his reported death in November, Prime Minister David Cameron said targeting Emwazi had been "the right thing to do". Three drones - one British and two American - were involved in the strike. One of the American drones hit the car, and it is believed there was one other person in the vehicle. Kuwait-born Emwazi had appeared in beheading videos of victims including UK aid worker David Haines and taxi driver Alan Henning. The article lists Emwazi's participation in various IS military conquests and praises his work. "His harshness towards the kafir was manifested through deeds that enraged all the nations, religions, and factions of kafir, the entire world bearing witness to this," the author writes. The publication also claims that Emwazi was known for his "mercy, kindness, and generosity towards the believers, his protective jealousy for Islam and its people, and his affection towards the orphans". Emwazi, dressed in black with a balaclava covering all but his eyes, came to the world's attention when he appeared in an IS video brutally murdering US journalist James Foley. He later appeared in videos of the beheadings of US journalist Steven Sotloff, British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, and in November 2014, that of American aid worker Peter Kassig. The 'Dabiq' article describes how Emwazi was able to sneak out of Britain, "Right under the nose of the much-overrated MI5 British intelligence agency, Abu Muharib together with his companion in hijrah carefully and secretly made their departure, utilising every means available to them". More than 750 people from the UK are thought to have travelled to support or fight for terrorist organisations in Syria and Iraq, and approximately half of those have returned. The Islamic State group has published an online photo tribute to the Muslim extremists who killed 130 people in Paris, including pictures of two unknown men identified as Iraqis. Belgian federal prosecutor Thierry Werts said today investigators "didn't know them at all," referring to two men identified by their noms de guerre as Ali Al-Iraqi and Ukashah Al-Iraqi. Al-Iraqi in Arabic means "the Iraqi." The photo display in Dabiq, the IS propaganda magazine, also shows suspected Paris attack ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud and eight other men in battle dress. Fugitive suspect Salah Abdeslam is not among them, an omission Belgian jihadi watcher Pieter van Ostaeyen said may be due to IS's desire to honour only those extremists slain in the November 13 bloodbath and its aftermath. Israel, a top tourist destination in the world, is eyeing 50 per cent growth in holiday-makers from India, an emerging market for the West Asian country, mainly in the "MICE" and leisure segments. "Israel is an emerging tourist destination in India and witnessed a growth of 13 per cent in 2015. About 40,000 Indians travelled to Israel in 2015. Seeing this growth, we have tripled the marketing budget for India in 2016, to USD 3 million, to tap travel agents and direct consumers. "We are confident that in 2016 more Indians will choose Israel as their favourite holiday destination," Israel Ministry of Tourism (IMOT) Director General Amir Halevi told reporters here. Israel is expecting a 50 per cent growth in Indian tourist arrivals this year, he said. "Initially, our focus is to tap big cities in India before penetrating deeper into the country to promote Israel as a tourist destination. India is the top source market for Israel in Asia and we want to tap the huge opportunities available here," he said. El Al, the flag carrier of Israel, provides direct connectivity to India, from where the airline is seeing an increase in bookings, he said. IMOT is in discussion with the Civil Aviation Ministry and Indian carriers for launching direct flights to Israel from India, Halevi said. El Al currently operates four weekly flights between Mumbai to Tel Aviv. Israel, which mainly attracts pilgrims, wants to promote itself as MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions) and leisure destinations, he said. "We will have more tourism promotions and activities than ever in India and target travel trade and end-customers through various marketing tools. "We will also target end-consumers through marketing on digital platforms. We are sure that through robust strategies we will see a favourable growth in tourist arrivals from India this year. We are also looking at associating with Bollywood to promote Indian films in Israel," IMOT India Director Hassan Madah said. Israel has set a target of attracting one lakh sightseers from India by the end of 2017, he added. Some of the tourist attractions in Israel are Dead Sea, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Eilat, Nazareth, Haifa, Akko, Massada and Negev Desert. wash bid exe board.jpg Four of the members of the Washington Borough BID Executive Board, from left: Jeff Smith, Janelle Miele, Monika Hamburger and Greg Fliegauf. (Special to Lehighvalleylive.com) Three incumbents were recently re-elected to the Washington Borough Business Improvement District's board of directors, while three newcomers were selected and joined the board in January. Incumbents re-elected are Bob Dell Elba, Monika Hamburger and Jeff Smith. Hamburger was once again chosen as the president of the board at the January meeting, with Ed Rossi continuing as vice president along with fellow vice president Jeff Smith. Newcomers to the executive board are Greg Fliegauf, treasurer, and Janelle Miele, secretary. Newly elected to the regular board are Michael Yates, Lee Hill and Douglas Jerman. In addition, former board members Stan Prater and Tracy Fazzolari rejoined the board, filling two open slots. Israel's domestic security agency said today it had thwarted a plot by the son of the chief of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah to recruit Palestinians to attack Israel. The Shin Bet agency and the Israeli military said Jawad Nasrallah, the son of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, solicited a Palestinian online who recruited other Palestinians into a militant cell. Another Hezbollah operative instructed the cell about using explosives, training suicide bombers, gathering intelligence on security forces and purchasing weapons, they said. An Israeli military court indicted five Palestinians from the area of Tulkarem, in the West Bank, who were planning a shooting attack against Israeli forces with Hezbollah backing. Shin Bet said in a statement that Hezbollah is trying to "ride the wave" of ongoing Palestinian attacks on Israelis. Hezbollah did not comment. Over the past four months, there have been near-daily Palestinian attacks on Israelis that have killed more than 25 people. Some 146 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire, of which 101 have been identified by Israel as attackers. The rest were killed in clashes with troops. The latest violence occurred early today, according to the army, when a suspected Palestinian gunman shot and lightly wounded an Israeli soldier in the Tulkarem area. The army said it was unrelated to the alleged Hezbollah cell in the area. Troops fired back as the gunman fled, the army said, and a search is underway. Israeli officials blame the ongoing violence on a Palestinian campaign of incitement. Palestinian officials say it stems from frustration over Israeli occupation. Actress Kate Winslet feels her "Titanic" co-star Leonardo DiCaprio will "probably" win his first Oscar at next month's ceremony. DiCaprio is nominated in the best actor category for his performance in "The Revenant". Even though her own "Steve Jobs" co-star Michael Fassbender is also vying for the title, Winslet, 40, said one can "sort of feel" the win will belong to DiCaprio, reported the BBC. "I think you can sort of feel it, and I think that everyone wants it for [DiCaprio]," said Winslet, who is also an Oscars front-runner for best supporting actress for her act in "Steve Jobs". "It would be amazing. It's also slightly difficult for me to, because Michael Fassbender has been nominated, and I was his right hand woman for three months whilst we were making Steve Jobs, and I saw how hard he worked. I think his performance is so extraordinary. But I think, you can sort of feel the temperature. It's probably going to be Leo's year." Winslet was speaking at the London Critics Circle Film Awards. She collected her best supporting actress award for "Steve Jobs", just one week after winning the same prize at the Golden Globes. Multiple Oscar-nominated director-writer Ettore Scola, considered one of the last greats of Italian cinema, has died aged 84. Scola, who had been in a coma since Sunday after being admitted to the cardiac surgery unit of a hospital in Rome, died on January 19, reported BBC . His 1974 work "A Special Day", which he wrote and directed, received Best Foreign Film and Best Actor nominations for star Marcello Mastroianni. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said Scola was a screen "master". His death left a "huge void in Italian culture", Renzi tweeted (in Italian). He entered the industry in 1953 as a screenwriter and got his first chance as director in 1964 with "Let's Talk About Women" - an innovative work of nine vignettes in which Vittorio Gassman plays different characters who seduce women. Scola directed 41 films and wrote the screenplay for almost 90 movies. He performed both roles in "A Special Day", featuring Mastroianni and Sophia Loren as neighbours who meet during Hitler's visit to Italy in 1938. His other works include "We All Loved Each Other So Much" (1974), "Ugly, Dirty and Bad" (1976), "The Family" (1987) and "The Dinner" (1998). He was a member of the jury at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival. Film director Ettore Scola, a leading figure in Italian cinema for more than three decades, has died at the age of 84, local media reported. Scola's work included "A Special Day," a 1977 Oscar- nominated movie featuring Marcello Mastroianni as a persecuted radio journalist and Sophia Loren as a sentimental housewife, meeting against a backdrop of rising fascism in 1930s Italy. He also wrote and directed "We All Loved Each Other So Much," a 1974 comedy-drama about the post-war lives of three partisans fighting for the liberation of Italy. Scola died in Rome's polyclinic yesterday, where he had been in a coma since Sunday after being admitted to the hospital's cardiac surgery unit, press reports said. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi paid tribute to Scola, saying he was a "master" of the screen, "with an ability that was as incredible as it was razor-sharp in reading Italy, its society and the changes it went through." After entering the movie industry as a screenwriter in 1953, Scola got his first chance as director in 1964 with "Let's Talk About Women" - an innovative work of nine vignettes in which Vittorio Gassman plays different characters who seduce women. He directed 41 films over nearly 40 years, according to the Internet movie database, IMDb. Paolo Mereghetti, the Corriera della Sera daily's cinema critic, said Scola was a distinctive "political" voice in Italy's postwar cinema. A former member of the Italian Communist Party, Scola even became minister of culture in a "shadow" cabinet set up by party leaders in 1989. "He understood where Italy was going, and few cinema directors have that insight," Mereghetti told the television channel Sky TG24. Italian group BTP has said it had signed a preliminary agreement with Iran to build five hospitals, just after the lifting of economic sanctions against Tehran in a deal over its nuclear programme. Pessina Costruzioni will build the first three 1,000-bed hospitals in Tehran. Two other 500-bed facilities will be provided in Rasht and Nishapur. Italian industries have high hopes following the lifting of sanctions against Iran on Saturday after the nuclear deal took effect. In November, deputy economic development minister Carlo Calenda led a large business delegation to Tehran representing 178 companies, 20 business associations and 12 banking groups. "Italy was Iran's leading economic and trade partner before the sanctions," Italian economic development minister Federica Guidi stressed a few months ago, seeking to ensure her country regains that position. Before the sanctions took effect, trade between the two countries amounted to 7.0 billion euros ($7.7 billion), compared with about 1.6 billion euros at present, including 1.2 billion in Italian exports. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is expected to visit Italy and France from January 25 to 27. His visit was originally scheduled for mid-November but was postponed because of the attacks in Paris. A blue-beacon installed SUV of a senior IPS officer was stolen in the wee hours today from Noida prompting police to launch a massive manhunt in the wake of the security alert for Republic Day. Officials said the white Tata Safari bearing registration number CH-01 GA 2915 of ITBP Inspector General (IG) Anand Swarup was stolen from his Sector-23 residence at around 3:30 AM. They said the guard on duty in the complex alerted about the missing vehicle after which an FIR was lodged by the officer in Sector 24 police station in Noida. The vehicle was parked late last night after it came back from Delhi, they said. Swarup, a 1992-batch Indian Police Service officer of Uttar Pradesh cadre, is posted as IG (Provisioning) at the headquarters of the border guarding force in Delhi. ITBP has instituted a court of inquiry into the incident, they said, adding the IG was posted in Delhi few months back on transfer from Mussoorie. Officials said the SUV was purchased few months back and has a blue beacon, a two-star police IG plate and an ITBP flag in the front. The police are making all efforts to trace the vehicle in the wake of the recent Pathankot attack where terrorists had overpowered an Punjab police SP riding a similar vehicle to reach the IAF base before launching the deadly strike. There have been instances in the past when vehicles with beacon, including during the Parliament attack, were used to launch terror attacks by hoodwinking security officials. The National Capital Region is already on high alert in view of the Republic Day celebrations. Jammu and Kashmir Governor N N Vohra stirred a hornet's nest with his statement that Ranbir Penal Code (RPC), the state's criminal law, should be brought under purview of the NIA act that could give extraordinary powers to the central probe agency to take over any terror case. The state, which is under Governor's rule at present, enjoys a special status whereby no Act can come into force automatically until it is ratified by the state Assembly. In their reactions today, the state's opposition parties--National Conference(NC) and CPM --did not favour Vohra's suggestion and said any such move should not be allowed while ruling PDP, an alliance partner of BJP, said it would react after studying the statement of the Governor. In his address at the 7th foundation day of the NIA yesterday, Vohra said the Union Home Ministry should take urgent steps to ensure that NIA's legal framework is suitably modified to enable effective investigations in terror cases. "The existing Schedule to the NIA Act also requires to be reviewed for enlarging the list of offences to particularly cover those under the Ranbir Penal Code, Arms Act, NDPS Act, Explosive Substances Act and Cyber Terrorism offences, among others," he said. Inclusion of Ranbir Penal Code, which is a substitute to Indian Penal Code(IPC) in Jammu and Kashmir, means that National Investigation Agency (NIA) can take over any case registered under anti-terror law Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act as well as RPC. Under the NIA Act, which came into force after the 2008 Mumbai attack, the agency can take over any case related to terror suo-motu except for Jammu and Kashmir where it requires permission of the state government before taking up the investigation. Both PDP and NC have been opposing giving sweeping powers to NIA to take suo motu cognisance of terror-related cases in the state. PDP leader Nayeem Akther said that his party requires time to study the statement of the Governor and that it will come out with its response later while NC spokesman said that the party will not support any such move. "The Governor should leave such decision to be taken by a popularly elected government," the spokesman said. CPM leader and MLA Mohammed Yusuf Tarigami saw the statement as a move to encroach upon the autonomy of the state. "This is an attempt to encroach on whatever autonomy is left," Tarigami said. A deputy jailer accused of raping a female inmate in the district jail here was arrested today, police said. The female prisoner, hailing from Uzbekistan, who was lodged in Maharajganj district jail had registered a complaint against deputy jailer, DN Gupta, on July 3 last year. In her complaint, the woman had alleged that Gupta raped her, they said. Meanwhile, Superintendent of Police of Maharajganj district, Bharat Singh Yadav, handed over the case to Deputy SP Rachana Mishra for investigations. After a detailed probe, charges against Gupta were prima facie found to be true and local police arrested him. With literary heavyweights like Canadian poet and novelist Margaret Atwood, author Ruskin Bond, US photographer Steve McCurry, Harvard historian Niall Ferguson and Stephen Fry from Britain, the famed Jaipur Literature Festival is poised to begin here tomorrow. The annual five-day jamboree, one of the largest free literary festivals in the world, which has lined up over 222 participants has been held at the 17th century Diggi Palace ever since its inception in 2006. Police have made elaborate security and traffic regulation arrangements to manage the heavy crowd and ease subsequent traffic congestion. Even before it began the event witnessed a hint of controversy with the Rajasthan High Court today hearing a PIL that sought for a change in the venue, directed the state government to submit within a week a report on arrangements made for the festival. A huge crowd turnout and resulting traffic snarls witnessed in the venue over previous years prompted the plea. Last year a session by the former President A P J Abdul Kalam attracted the largest crowds and festival organisers had to close entry to the venue. According to Jaipur police commissioner Srinivas Rao Janga elaborate security arrangements have been made for the Festival for which the permission has already been granted. "We have made all arrangements for the security. Special arrangements for traffic regulation are also in place," Janga told PTI. Meanwhile, writer and historian William Dalrymple, who is a co-director of the Festival along with Namita Gokhale, said he hopes to see "more coverage on literature this year". "I hope literature gets more coverage this year than the cooked up controversies," he said. From an impressive line up of speakers, Dalrymple said he looks forward to sessions by the big poster authors including Margaret Atwood, who would deliver this year's keynote address besides Thomas Piketty, Stephen Fry, David Grossman and Niall Ferguson. "I'm looking forward to the dust up between Shashi Tharoor and Niall Ferguson on the Empire and Anthony Sattin's session on Young Lawrence. Of the more offbeat things, I look to hearing Cyprian Broodbank, the archaeology professor from Cambridge talking about Neanderthals, Irving Finkel talk about the Noah's Arc," the 'White Mughals' author told PTI. The Jaipur festival itself will be hosting two Caribbean writers -- Kei Miller, who won the Forward prize for poetry and Booker prize winner Marlon James. Apart from Caribbean literature, JLF also promises a great deal of history and partition literature, which according to Dalrymple is a reflection of what is being published the most. Last year in September, a series of purported emails were leaked between author Aatish Taseer and Dalrymple. In the exchange, Taseer has allegedly refused an invitation to the JLF because Dalrymple did not take note of Taseer's latest novel, "The Way Things Were", which has just been recently released in the United States. Reacting to that controversy, Dalrymple said, "We invite the greatest authors in the world, most come and some don't. That's up to them and I respect it. Some authors hate literature festivals, there is no diktat that you must appear in Jaipur". "We have the greatest authors in the world; the greatest minds of the world from Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, Yale, the Booker winners, the Sahitya Akademi winners, the Nobel winners," he said. The line-up of prominent speakers at the 2016 edition of JLF include Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramaniam, Israeli author David Grossman, Bosnian American author Aleksandar Hemon, Irish author Colm Toibin, and Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion Secretary Amitabh Kant. Not just the writers, the festival will see giants from a plethora of backgrounds including Mahatma Gandhi's grand daughter Tara Gandhi Bhattacharjee, French economist Thomas Piketty, lyricists Javed Akhtar and Gulzar, British archaelogist Cyprian Broodbank, Philogist Irving Finkel, photographer Steve McCurry and more. Amongst prominent Indian authors are Anuja Chauhan, former Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid, Alka Saraogi, Ashok Vajpeyi, Harish Trivedi, Urvashi Butalia, Jerry Pinto, Anjum Hasan, Ila Arab Mehta and Madhav Hada. A total of 18 new titles are set to be launched during the festival such as Kanishk Tharoor's 'Swimmer among the Stars', 'The Ballad of Bant Singh' and 'The Tears of the Rajah' by Ferdinant Mount. Bollywood too shall have a fair share of representation at the literary gathering, with director-producer Karan Johar revealing snippets of his life, while discussing his biography 'An Unsuitable Boy'. BJP MP Shatrughan Sinha will be seen in a talk about his biography, 'Anything But Khamosh: The Shatrughan Sinha Biography' on January 25. Kanhaiya Lal Sethia Award for Poetry, Shri Dwarka Prasad Agarwal Award For Upcoming Hindi Writer and Oxford Bookstore Book Cover Prize are some of the awards to be given out during the course of the festival. As a part of ZEE JLF's ongoing partnership with Rajasthan Tourism, two evening events have been organised at the Amber Fort and the Albert Museum. 'Piya Behrupiya', an adaptation of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night will be performed at The Albert Museum on January 22 at celebration of the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare. Noted actor-playwright Girish Karnad will read his works during 'Time and the Indian Imagination' at Amber Fort, on January 23 followed by Sufi music by Mir Mukhtiyar Ali. "We are delighted to bring some of the best music, theatre and poetry and showcase these against the backdrop of over a 1000 years of Indian architecture and heritage in Rajasthan," Sanjoy Roy, Festival Producer said. The literary festival will regale audiences with an elaborate line-up of music acts. 'Book Mark', a two-day parallel event in its third year now, will bring together publishers, agents, rights holders and literary content producers from across the world from Jan 21-22 at the Narain Niwas Palace here. The Janpath Hotel, a facility run by public sector undertaking India Tourism Development Corporation (ITDC), is likely to be put on sale through auction. "It (Janpath Hotel) may be put on sale. It would be through the auction mode," a Tourism Ministry source said. The Hotel is centrally located and is about 20 kms from the International Airport, two kms from New Delhi Railway Station, and one km from Connaught Place. It is also among a few state-run hotels making a profit of 2-4 crore annually. Meanwhile, the Government has also proposed to privatise eight loss-making hotels run by the Corporation, a PSU under the Tourism Ministry. Currently, ITDC runs 16 hotels including 3 in Delhi and remaining in Jammu, Ranchi, Bhubaneswar, Puri, Patna, Bhopal, Bharatpur, Jaipur, Guwahati, Pondicherry, Mysore and Itanagar. During NDA's first stint in power between 1999 and 2004, the then Vajpayee government had divested 18 ITDC hotels, bringing down the number of state-run hotels from 34 to 16. Besides, the network of hotels, ITDC also runs 11 transport units, nine duty-free shops at airports and seaports. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa today requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take immediate action to secure the release of six fishermen arrested by Sri Lanka and a total of 68 fishing boats. "I write again to bring to your notice two more incidents of apprehension of six Indian fishermen by the Sri Lankan Navy on January 17 and 19," she said in a letter to Modi. Terming the incidents a "rude shock," she said the arrests have taken place at a time when Tamil Nadu was eagerly awaiting the return of 104 fishermen whose release was announced by Sri Lanka after months of incarceration. Though their release has been announced, "It must not be forgotten that 66 fishing boats and gear, which are the basic requirement for fishermen to earn their livelihood, have not been released yet," she said. Of the total of 68 boats in Sri Lankan custody, two boats belong to fishermen held in the past few days and 66 boats are owned by fishermen arrested previously by Sri Lanka. On the recent arrests, she said three fishermen in a mechanised boat from Kottaipattinam in Pudukottai District were apprehended by Sri Lankan Navy on January 17 and three others in a motorised country craft from Sethubavachatram in Thanjavur District were apprehended on January 19. "The right to fish in the traditional waters of Palk Bay which has been historically enjoyed by our fishermen in Tamil Nadu is now being continuously denied by the Sri Lankan Navy," she alleged. "I request that these boats and gear, the only means of livelihood of the fishermen, are restored and returned to our fishermen in a refurbished condition by the Government of India at the earliest," she said. She requested him to immediately direct officials of External Affairs Ministry to take expeditious action to secure the release of six fishermen along with 68 fishing boats. Two top US bankers said today that the oil price collapse is likely to help economies long-term, even as markets slump in reaction. JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon said he is still hoping the stock rout of early 2016 that worsened today will turn out to be only a "speedy adjustment" that does not signal a major global slowdown. "You've got to separate fluctuations in the market from the economy," Dimon told CNBC in an interview broadcast from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Lower oil prices benefit some leading economies, such as India and Japan, as well as US consumers, even as they prompt sovereign wealth funds from petroleum-dependent countries to liquidate investments to raise funds, he said. Dimon's remarks were echoed by Goldman Sachs chief financial officer Harvey Schwartz, who said that the oil slump may not translate into "a real drag on long-term economic activity." "It feels like the degree to which the market is focused on the energy exposure has managed to discount the longterm tailwinds to the consumer in a reduction of costs across the globe," he told an analyst conference call. The comments came as global stock markets registered another bruising session, with leading bourses in Europe and New York off between 2.5 per cent and 4.0 per cent. Kazakhstan has called an early election for parliament, moving up the vote to March 20 instead of waiting until next year. In setting the new date today, President Nursultan Nazarbayev said it would help the Central Asian country deal with the economic pressures resulting from the low oil price and slowdowns in neighboring China and Russia. The early vote also was seen as aimed at getting the election out of the way and a new parliament in place in case the economic downturn leads to any social discontent. The current parliament is dominated by Nazarbayev's party Nur Otan, which won 81 percent of the vote in the 2012 election. Nazarbayev, who has held power since the 1991 Soviet collapse, was last re-elected in 2011 with 96 percent of the vote. As the indefinite fast by Kerala Congress (Mani) leader Jose K Mani, MP, over falling rubber prices entered the third day here today, another MP from the party sought the immediate intervention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in resolving the issues raised and ending the protest. In a letter to Modi, KC(M) Rajya Sabha member Joy Abraham warned that the protest here may turn violent and go out of control in case the health of Mani deteriorated. Abraham urged the Prime Minister to take necessary steps to find a solution to the farmers' long pending demands that a remunerative price be ensured for natural rubber. Meanwhile, Mani, who is staging protest in front of the statue of Mahatma Gandhi with a large number of farmers, said that as a member of parliament, he was committed to the cause of farmers and cannot ignore their hardships. Mani, son of Kerala Congress (M) supremo and former Finance Minister K M Mani, said he had also written to the Prime Minister seeking his intervention to find a lasting solution to the problems of rubber farmers. His major demands include complete ban on import of rubber, pegging of prices of rubber at Rs 200 per kg and Rs 500 crore allocation from Central Price Stabilisation Fund to grant subsidy to thousands of farmers completely depending on rubber for their livelihood in the state. He also sought a complete reorganisation of rubber board and waving tax on rubber farmers till the product gets a reasonable price. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today appeared in a court here in connection with a case for allegedly holding a rally without required permission during the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. On December 9 last year, the Kurla court had granted Kejriwal permanent exemption from appearance in the case. However, Magistrate Richa Khedekar had directed the AAP leader to appear today for furnishing a bail bond. The magistrate today allowed the Delhi CM to leave after his aide Satish Jain stood as his surety. The rally in Mankhurd was held to campaign for AAP candidates Meera Sanyal and Medha Patkar, which the Mumbai Police has claimed was "unscheduled" and held without priorrequisite permissions from traffic police following which a complaint was filed against Kejriwal and others in March 2014. Kejriwal had approached the Bombay High Court seeking quashing of the FIR and exemption from appearing before the Kurla metropolitan magistrate. But the HC asked him to appear before the magistrate and seek permanent exemption from appearance from that court. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today flew down to Mumbai and appeared before a local court in connection with a case for allegedly holding a rally without required permission during the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Kejriwal was present in the court for about 70 minutes and left for Delhi shortly after the hearing. On December 9 last year, the suburban Kurla court had granted him permanent exemption from appearance in the case. However, the magistrate Richa Khedekar had directed the AAP chief to appear today for furnishing a bail bond. The magistrate today allowed the Delhi CM to leave after his aide Satish Jain stood as a surety for him. Co-accused Meera Sanyal also filed a permanent exemption application on medical grounds. The court is likely to pass its order on the plea next week. The lawyer of social activist Medha Patkar, another accused in the case, informed the court that she was in Delhi. Kejriwal had held the rally to campaign for Sanyal and Patkar. AAP supporters had gathered outside the court building and several hoardings of him dotted the area. After the hearing, Kejriwal also met the lawyers at the Kurla court bar association. Police have claimed that his rally was "unscheduled" and held without prior requisite permissions from traffic police. Kejriwal had earlier approached the Bombay High Court seeking quashing of the FIR and exemption from appearing before the magistrate, but the HC refused to quash the FIR and asked him to appear before the magistrate and seek permanent exemption from appearance from that court. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal will visit the University of Hyderabad tomorrow to meet the students and family members of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula who committed suicide. Kejriwal, who was scheduled to visit Bengaluru for undergoing naturopathy treatment for his chronic cough on January 22 for ten days, has deferred his visit and will now go there on January 27. "The Chief Minister will visit the University of Hyderabad tomorrow to meet the students and the family members of the Dalit scholar who committed suicide," said sources in Delhi government. AAP leaders Ashish Khetan and Ashish Talwar today reached Hydrabad to meet protesting students there. Kejriwal had yesterday demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi sack HRD Minister Smriti Irani, Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya and apologise to the nation over the suicide by the Dalit student, questioning their "interference" in the internal affairs of the institution. Rohith, a PhD scholar, who committed suicide on Sunday night, was among the five research scholars who were suspended by the University in August last year over an alleged assault case. They were also kept out of the hostel. The issue took a political turn with allegations that the extreme step taken by Rohith was a result of discrimination against dalit students at the behest of Dattatreya, following his letter to Irani, seeking action against their "anti-national acts". Meanwhile, Kejriwal will go to Bengaluru for undergoing naturopathy treatment for his chronic cough on January 27 for ten days instead of January 22. US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met today in hopes of resolving differences over who is eligible to join UN-mediated peace talks for Syria due to begin next week. Those differences have threatened to delay the start of the negotiations. The State Department said the two men had discussed plans for the negotiations that the UN special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, hopes to convene in Geneva on January 25 and "the importance of maintaining progress toward a diplomatic solution to the crisis." But, while both sides said they did not support a delay in the talks, it was not immediately clear if the differences had been resolved. "We do not have any kind of thoughts about changing the beginning of the talks from January to February," Lavrov told reporters. "This is the position of Russia and the USA." "The political process will begin, we hope, in the nearest future, during January," he said. "Various dates have been named, but the final decision will be taken by the Secretary-General of the United Nations on the advice and recommendations of his special envoy Staffan de Mistura." Lavrov added that the main topic of conversation with Kerry was "coordination," primarily about terrorist organization, which would be left out of the political process as well as a ceasefire that is envisioned to take effect once the negotiations begin. In the meeting, Kerry also called for Russia to use its influence with Syrian President Bashar Assad "to ensure immediate, unimpeded and sustained humanitarian access to all Syrians in need," State Department spokesman John Kirby said, particularly in besieged communities like Madaya, where deaths from starvation have been reported. The negotiations between the Assad government and the opposition are to be the first step in a proposed 18-month political transition for Syria, which has been mired in civil war for four years. Differences over which Syrian opposition groups should be labeled terrorists and barred from the negotiations and the ceasefire have led to concerns that the talks may have to be postponed. Russia and Iran, which back Assad, have immense differences with Saudi Arabia, other Arab states, the United States and Europe over which opposition groups should be considered terrorists and therefore excluded from an 18-month political transition process the UN has endorsed. US Secretary of State John Kerry has warned both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan against indulging in trade of nuclear weapons, saying there will be "all kinds of NPT consequences" if Riyadh went ahead with any such plan. Such a strong warning from Kerry comes amidst media reports that Saudi Arabia is trying to buy nuclear weapons from Pakistan. Top Pakistani leaders have in recent weeks warned Iran of serious consequences if it attacked Saudi Arabia, which many analysts see a nuclear threat from Islamabad to Tehran. "Sure we've heard those things. But you can't just buy a bomb and transfer (a nuclear bomb)," Kerry told CNN. "There's all kinds of NPT consequences. I mean, there are huge implications of that," Kerry said, referring to the strong nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). He was asked, "The Saudis (are) not even ruling out the possibility, given their concern about this nuclear deal with Iran, they could go forward and buy some - maybe buy a nuclear bomb, maybe from Pakistan, you've heard those concerns." Pakistan is already under the radar of the community for its previous nuclear proliferation activities and leaking the nuclear weapons technology to countries like Iran, Libya and North Korea. "Saudi Arabia knows, I believe, that that is not going to make them safer, nor is it going to be easy because the very things that Iran went through, they would then be subject to with respect to inspection, NPT and so forth," Kerry said. "House of Cards" actor Kevin Spacey is set to star with Nicholas Hoult in "Rebel In The Rye", the drama about the formative years of "The Catcher In The Rye" author JD Salinger. "Empire" executive producer Danny Strong is directing the script, he adapted based on the Kenneth Slawenski biography "JD Salinger: A Life", reported Deadline. Hoult, 26, was set last fall to play Salinger as he progressed toward writing the seminal novel of the 20th Century. Spacey, 56, will play Whit Burnett, a professor at Columbia and editor of Story magazine. He became a mentor and was the first to challenge the young Salinger, inspiring him to grow as a storyteller. Aiming to mobilise some big ticket investments, Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar will visit China tomorrow during which he will hold talks with the ruling Communist Party officials besides addressing a business roundtable here. Some MoUs are also expected to be signed during the roundtable as part of the three-day visit by Khattar, who is arriving from Japan after projecting Haryana as a "land of opportunities and enterprise". The Friday roundtable here will witness a participation of a number of top Chinese investors, officials here said. Khattar is also scheduled to address a similar business event in Shanghai before flying home. The chief minister is due to meet senior officials of the the Communist Party of China (CPC) here besides China's top billionaire and investor Wang Jianlin, who heads the multi- billion dollar Chinese real estate business firm Dalian Wanda. The CPC has hosted a number of chief ministers from India including of Gujarat,Madhya Pradesh,Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka as the two countries promoted more interactions between the Chinese provincial governments and their Indian counterparts. Khattar's meeting with Wanda is regarded as significant as the group has plans to invest about USD three billion in India. Last year, Wanda has visited India and met Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Officials said Haryana, which is already a hub of a number of Chinese firms located in Gurgaon, looks to clinch the deal with the offer of huge tract of land for Wanda's plans to build a Chinese industrial and business park. Delhi Police has not been able to achieve full implementation of ambitious Crime and Criminal Tracking Network System (CCTNS) as its request seeking leased line is pending with the Home Ministry, the force has claimed. In its submission before the Central Information Commission here, the Delhi Police said in order to implement the CCTNS, there is requirement of leased line of sufficient bandwith and other Information Technology infrastructure facilities like servers etc. The CCTNS was launched by UPA Government in the aftermath of 26/11 Mumbai attack to interconnect and computerise every police station in the country. The police has said proposal for a leased line has already been moved and is "pending" in MHA, Information Commissioner Sudhir Bhargava noted as he conceded their request to give two more months to comply with October 10, 2013 order of the Commission. In the order, the Commission had directed the Delhi Police Commissioner to ensure within three month that Delhi Police website starts publishing daily diary entry number of the complaints received at respective police stations of Delhi Police, status of complaints and outcome of complaints. RTI applicant R K Jain has approached the Commission seeking to know whether the order has been complied with. Not getting satisfactory information, he approached the Commission where Delhi Police has sought repeated extensions to implement CCTNS. India's own Light Combat Aircraft Tejas will enthrall the audience at Bahrain International Airshow starting tomorrow as the country hopes to explore potential export opportunities. The two Limited Series Production (LSP) planes will give a flying display through a series of aerobatic manoeuvres such as 8-g pull, vertical loop, slow fly past and barrel roll. "It is important that indigenous aircraft fly outside India in international air shows. HAL is proud to be associated with the design, development and production of Tejas. We have set-up a state-of-the-art, environmentally controlled, dedicated division at Bengaluru for production of LCAs," T Suvarna Raju, CMD of HAL said. Tejas is a single-engine, light-weight, highly agile, multi-role supersonic fighter plane. It is a 4.5 generation aircraft with supersonic capability at all altitudes. Indian Air Force plans to acquire 120 Tejas aircraft, with 100 of them having major modifications to its strike, radar and mid-air refuelling capabilities. Though DRDO has developed a naval version of Tejas, the navy is seeking a more powerful engine, besides other changes. Pakistan has already put its combat aircraft JF 17, built in collaboration with China, in the open market. Sri Lanka had recently denied reports that it had evinced interest in the Pakistani plane. A Lashkar-e-Toiba militant was killed in an overnight gunbattle with security forces while a civilian died in the firing by law enforcing agencies on local youths, protesting violently after the encounter, in Pulwama district of south Kashmir today. LeT militant Shariq Ahmad Bhat, a resident of Awantipora area in the district, was killed in encounter with security forces in Naina Batapora village of Pulwama, an army official said. The official had earlier said that two militants were killed in the gunbattle but only one body was recovered from debris of the house where Bhat was hiding since yesterday. One AK assault rifle and some ammunition has been recovered from the scene of the gunbattle which began last night following information about the presence of militants in the area, the official said. "As the security forces were searching the debris, local youths indulged in stone-pelting and set ablaze a police vehicle," a police official said. He said the security forces opened fire following which one youth died and five others were injured. The deceased has been identified as Parvaiz Ahmad, the official said, adding that those injured have been shifted to various hospitals in Srinagar. (Reopens DES13) Meanwhile, a police officer was also injured in the clashes in Pulwama which ensued after the gunbattle. Deputy Superintendent of Police Nazir Ahmad sustained fracture in his leg and was rushed to Bone and Joint Hospital Barzullah for treatment, the police official said. Linda Perry has apologised for criticising Lady Gaga's Oscar nomination for writing "Till It Happens to You". In a series of tweets, the famed songwriter apologises for thinking Gaga did not write enough of the song to be worthy of the nomination. "Normally I wouldn't respond to all this but I don't know I'm feeling spunky. There was another artist that originally was gonna sing #TIHTY," she wrote. Perry said Diane Warren penned the track and Gaga only changed one line from "till you got a hole ripped in your soul" to "till you're at the end, the end of your rope." The songwriter then emphasized that she meant no disrespect and was only "stating the truth." "I love Gaga so much respect and love this song that has nothing to do with anything. Why did Gaga get credit? Maybe because... Diane wanted to ensure her support in promoting the song. Gaga is a very smart business woman she knew a song written by Diane Warren... Would be up for an Oscar... Macedonia has closed its border with Greece to migrants, police in Skopje said today, blocking the path of hundreds trying to reach northern Europe. "The border is closed," a senior Macedonian police official told AFP, while a police spokesman in northern Greece said it had been closed since yesterday evening, leaving about 600 migrants stranded at the frontier. The Skopje police official said the move stemmed from problems with Slovenian trains that had disrupted the flow of migrants, but the Slovenian rail company Slovenske Zeleznice (SZ) insisted they were running as normal. While the SZ website reported today that technical problems had disrupted traffic at the crossing with Croatia and trains were being replaced temporarily with buses, a SZ spokesman told Slovenian agency STA that migrants "have been travelling undisturbed so far". Serbia meanwhile said that from today, it would only allow migrants to pass through the country if they were specifically seeking asylum in Austria or Germany. Last week Austria signalled that it would follow neighbouring Germany's lead and begin turning back any new arrivals seeking to claim asylum in Scandinavia. The Serbian minister for migrants issues, Aleksandar Vulin, said in a statement that migrants "will not be able to continue with their journey unless they express intention to seek asylum on the territory of Austria and Germany". In the Presevo reception camp in southern Serbia, an AFP photographer said the temperature dropped to minus 15 degrees Celsius today morning. He said fewer migrants were at the camp than on previous days -- apparently due to the hold-up at the Greece-Macedonia border. Leading children's charities had warned yesterday that young refugees were at serious risk from the bitterly cold Balkan weather, as figures showed 31,000 migrants had arrived in Greece already this year. UNICEF, the UN Children's Fund, released a warning that children arriving in southeast Europe were "physically exhausted, scared, distressed and often in need of medical assistance". Mirjana Milenkovski, a spokeswoman for the UNHCR in Serbia, said today that they had seen an increasing number of people with flu or respiratory infections, but refugees were being provided with better clothing, medical care and other assistance where needed. Asking Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take a cue from UK government's warning that migrants on spousal visas who fail to speak English may face deportation, Shiv Sena today said madrassas in India should be barred from using Urdu and Arabic as medium of instruction and they should be replaced with English and Hindi. The ruling ally also took a swipe at PM and his ministerial colleagues, saying while they might succeed in getting investments into the country by touring other nations, from where would the courage come to fight enemies within the country. The party also said that the government should show courage and bring in the Uniform Civil Code and start the construction of Ram Temple in Ayodhya. "The British government is not wrong in thinking that Islamic State militants use uneducated Muslim women to propagate their ideas. Prime Minister Narendra Modi should take cues from the British government...," the Sena said in an editorial in its mouthpiece 'Saamana'. "India will benefit if the government can show courage like British Prime Minister David Cameron and bar madrassas from teaching in Urdu and Arabic and instead impart education in English and Hindi languages," it opined. Notably, the UK government had recently warned that migrants on spousal visas who fail to speak English may face deportation, as it announced a new 20 million pound fund to improve the language skills among migrant Muslim women. "Not only our PM, but other ministers and politicians keep visiting foreign nations and talk of bringing industries, trade, talent, culture to India. We will eventually succeed in it, but from where we will get the courage to fight the enemies within the country," the Sena asked. Cameron yesterday unveiled plans for tougher new English language requirements to prevent segregation of members of the Muslim community. New rules will mean that from October this year migrants coming to the UK on a five-year spousal visa with poor or no English skills will have to take a test after two and a half years to show they are making efforts to improve their English. Dr Ambedkar Foundation, an autonomous body under Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, has sanctioned over Rs 9 crore to Maharashtra government for development of Deekshabhoomi at Nagpur, where Babasaheb B R Ambedkar embraced Buddhism. The Centre is currently commemorating Ambedkar's 125th birth anniversary year. "Sanction of the competent authority is accorded for incurring an expenditure of Rs 9,41,39,276 for the repair work of Deekshabhoomi at Nagpur where B R Ambedkar converted to Buddhism along with his followers on October 14, 1956. "Fifty per cent of the sanctioned amount Rs 4,70,69,638 is released to the Nagpur District Collector for the development activities at Deekshabhoomi in connection with the 125th Birth Anniversary of Dr B R Ambedkar. The remaining amount will be considered for release based on the progress of the work," read the sanction order. Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who wants to put Deekshabhoomi on the global tourist map, has asked the Nagpur Improvement Trust to develop a master plan for Deekshabhoomi. Deekshabhoomi is a sacred monument and is regarded as a Buddhist place of pilgrimage. The biggest stupa in Asia has been erected in the memory of Ambedkar, regarded as the architect of the Indian Constitution, at this place. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today condemned the killing of students in terrorist attack at a university in Pakistan. "Tragic of so many students shot dead in Bacha Khan University, Pakistan. Prayers," Banerjee said in her official Twitter handle. At least 20 persons were killed and about 50 others injured today after heavily-armed terrorists stormed Bacha Khan University and opened indiscriminate fire on students and teachers in Pakistan's restive northwest Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today condoled the killing of students in terrorist attack at a university in Pakistan. "Tragic of so many students shot dead in Bacha Khan University, Pakistan. Prayers," Banerjee said in her official Twitter handle. At least 20 persons were killed and about 50 others injured today after heavily-armed terrorists stormed Bacha Khan University and opened indiscriminate fire on students and teachers in Pakistan's restive northwest Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. The state government today approved the Meghalaya Ordinance Amendment 2016 for augmentation of the State Contingency Fund to the tune of Rs 305 crore for meeting the various urgent demands of the state. "We have approved the proposal for augmenting the contingency fund by another Rs 200 crore, which is at Rs 305 crore," Chief Minister Mukul Sangma told reporters after a cabinet meeting held here. He said, "This will be through an ordinance since there is no session (of the State Legislative Assembly) at the moment and this corpus of contingency which is proposed to be augmented will be effective till March 31." According to the Chief Minister, earlier, the Corpus of the Meghalaya Contingency fund had been fixed at Rs 105 crore and through an augmentation from the earlier figure of Rs 75 crore in 2004. He informed this year, out of the Rs 105 crore which is available as corpus for the Meghalaya Contingency Fund, the government is left with only around Rs 2.9 crore. "Therefore with number of proposals coming from various line departments, to meet the committed liabilities of the government and which are raised out of urgent demand, the cabinet has decided to increase this contingency fund from Rs 105 crore by another 200 which is Rs 305 crore," he added. The cabinet also approved the revision of the property tax in local bodies under the Meghalaya Municipal Act, 1973 which will enable generation of additional revenue of around Rs 5.32 crore. "With the implementation of the new system of assessment and taxation, the Shillong Municipal Board is likely to generate additional revenue of around Rs 5.32 crores," Urban Affairs Minister Ampareen Lyngdoh said. "This will on one hand help in bringing the revenue gap and on the other hand will lead to upgradation and improvement of the level of urban services in Shillong city," she said. Based on the recommendation of Second Municipal Valuation Committee constituted by the state government, the Urban Affairs department had come up with a new Unit Area Based Self Assessment System for assessment of properties in Shillong Municipal Board. Brazilian health officials say the number of cases of microcephaly, a rare brain defect in babies, has risen to 3,893 since authorities began investigating the surge in cases in October. Fewer than 150 such cases were seen in all of 2014. The Health Ministry has said the surge is linked to Zika virus, a mosquito-borne disease similar to dengue. The ministry's emergency response official, Wanderson Oliveira, said most of the cases of microcephaly remain concentrated in Brazil's poor northeastern region. However, the developed southeast where Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo are located is the second hardest-hit region. Oliviera spoke at a press conference today. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued an alert advising pregnant women to avoid travel to Latin American countries with Zika outbreaks. Independent MLA from Langate Sheikh Abdul Rashid today criticised the protests carried out by Kashmiri Pandits over the issue of their exodus from the Kashmir Valley 26 years ago. Rashid accused Kashmiri Pandits of "defaming majority community" and "working against interests of their own state". He said that time had come to tell Kashmiri Pandits "loud and clear" that their "shameful campaign" was unacceptable. He said if the Kashmiri Pandits are entitled for huge packages, jobs and all other facilities, why should not internally displaced Muslims and those forced to migrate to Pakistan Occupied Kashmir be treated at par with Pandits. Rashid also questioned the claims of Kashmiri Pandits about genocide of the community. Yesterday, Kashmiri Pandits observed the 26th anniversary of exodus from their homes in the Valley. A mob today chopped off a hand of a 35-year-old person caught looting Rs 2.5 lakh in cash from a bank here. Four armed miscreants had looted the money from the Mahuabagh branch of Bank Of Baroda under Rupaspur Police Station here, a statement by the office of the Director General of Police said. Locals caught one of the miscreants, identified as Jitendra Pandit, red handed and cut off his left hand, it said. Police later seized Rs one lakh from his possession and sent him to Patna Medical College and Hospital. Raids were on to net the three others, the statement said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi today strongly condemned the terror attack at a university in Pakistan and expressed condolences to the families of the deceased. "Strongly condemn the terror attack at Bacha Khan University in Pakistan. Condolences to families of the deceased. Prayers with the injured," he tweeted. Heavily-armed Taliban militants stormed the prestigious university in Pakistan's restive northwest Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province this morning, firing indiscriminately on students and teachers. At least 25 people were killed and about 50 others injured in the attack as per the latest information. According to officials, up to 10 attackers were believed to be involved in the attack. Pitching for significant changes in norms governing venture capital and private equity funds, a Sebi panel has recommended favourable tax regime and steps to bring in long-term funds from domestic and overseas investors. The suggestions of the committee, chaired by Infosys founder N R Narayana Murthy, come at a time when the government is pursuing its ambitious 'Start-up India' initiative to bolster entrepreneurship and create more jobs. Apart from calling for favourable taxation framework and ways to unlock domestic capital pools, the panel has also recommended promoting onshore fund management and reforming the current Alternative Investment Fund (AIF) regime. A key proposal is for introduction of Securities Transaction Tax (STT) for private equity and venture capital investments. Venture capital funds and private equity funds with fund managers domiciled in India, that have been registered with Sebi post 2012, have been classified as AIFs. According to the committee, an appropriate rate of STT could be introduced "on all distributions of AIFs, investment, short-term gains and other income and eliminate any withholding of tax. After STT, income from AIFs should be tax free to investors". Recommendations by the committee can be a 'game changer' for attracting investments into the AIFs, Girish Vanvari, Partner and National Head of Tax at KPMG in India said. To ensure that investors do not pay more tax than they would, had they made the investments directly themselves, the panel has suggested for making tax 'pass-through' work effectively. The exempt income of AIFs should not suffer tax withholding of 10 per cent. Investment gains of AIFs should be deemed to be 'capital gains' in nature. To ensure that there are not too much hassles in attracting overseas funds, it has said the government should clarify the rules for investment by non-resident Indians (NRIs) in AIFs on a non-repatriation basis. Clearing the ambiguity in this regard would help NRIs invest in AIFs using funds in their rupee accounts, among others. "Once implemented, the recommendations will help attract significantly more capital from offshore and Indian investors into Indian private equity and venture capital," the panel, which submitted its report to Sebi, said. Sebi had constituted a 21-member standing committee 'Alternative Investment Policy Advisory Committee' in March 2015 with the mandate to prepare a new regulatory framework for start-ups and alternative investments. Sanjay Nayar, chief executive officer of KKR India Advisors, Ajay Piramal Chairman, Piramal Group; Devinjit Singh MD, Carlyle Group; Arvind Mathur President, Indian Private Equity & Venture Capital Association, are among the members of the panel. Between 2001 and 2015, venture capital and private equity funds worth over USD 103 billion flowed into Indian companies. The money was put in over 3,100 firms across 12 major sectors. The capital markets regulator has sought comments from the public till February 10 on the report. The committee has recommended wide-ranging reforms to help unlock diverse domestic sources of capital such as domestic pension funds, insurance companies and charitable endowments. It has also susggested for making safe-harbour effective for managing funds from India. To attract foreign capital by having fund managers based in India, it is important that their operations in India are not treated as permanent establishments under Double Taxation Avoidance Agreements (DTAAs), the committee has suggested. Currently most fund managers of offshore funds manage their investments from offshore locations rather than from India. This is a disadvantage to both them and India. The panel said that proactive measures need to be taken to attract fund managers to India due to the beneficial impact on the Indian economy and the creation of a robust eco-system to boost entrepreneurship, job creation and GDP growth. "In order to sustain the continued growth of the AIF industry, the path ahead requires reforms in the enabling regulatory framework for AIFs," the panel noted. According to Vanvari, tax suggestions with respect to making pass through effective without a 10 per cent leakage, non taxation of capital invested as deemed income, clarity on indirect transfers at fund level and safe harbor effectiveness for Indian management teams of AIFs is much needed. "Further, other recommendations on taxability of income of AIF as capital gains as against business income will avoid unnecessary litigation and build in more certainty. The measures suggested to attract foreign capital into AIF is also laudable," he added. The suggestion on exemption from service tax on services for raising funds from overseas investors can also be a big boost, Vanvari said. "All in all if properly executed, these recommendations will go a long way in strengthening AIFs in India thereby channelsing more capital into the development of the country," Vanvari noted. The University of Cambridge has agreed to explore prospects for cooperation with Andhra Pradesh Government in the field of education. Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu today met Cambridge University Vice-Chancellor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz in Davos and the two discussed issues related to education, the State Government's Information and Public Relations Department said in a statement here. The meeting took place on the sidelines of World Economic Forum's 46th annual summit that began in the Swiss town today. Naidu sought co-operation of Cambridge University to transform Andhra Pradesh into a centre of education. Responding to this, Borysiewicz agreed to send a delegation to Andhra Pradesh to study the prospects for cooperation between the two sides, the statement added. Asked whether he has sought a report from the Kerala government, Naidu said "Law and order is a state subject and I am very concerned as an I&B minister." "What is required is not a bill alone, but a bill with strong political will, and administrative and investigative skills so that you can take a strong action," he said. The Minister said leaders of the Congress party, in their election campaigns, have said that there was no need of an outsider for Uttar Pradesh. "Does it require to have an outsider for the country?" he said, without naming anyone from the Congress. He said what was the problem, if the Prime Minister has said that he is elected from Varanasi and Uttar Pradesh is his adopted state? "They are trying to invoke the local feeling against the Prime Minister. He is elected by the people of the country and Gujarat is in India only. It is not in Italy. Irrespective of caste, creed, sex, religion, India is one," he said. Defending Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Ramazan-Diwali comment, he said the Prime Minister had said that "there should not be any discrimination and everybody should get the electricity on every festival". Hitting out at the Congress, he said, "You are soft on terror. This is my charge on Congress party and its supporters. You take objection to Army Chief comments. It shows where your sympathy lies." He also hit out at the SP government for its "lacklustre approach" towards the Centre's housing scheme, saying the Union government is "ready to give money" to the Uttar Pradesh but there was no response from the state government. Seeking to win over the agitating Madhesis, the Nepal Government has unveiled a nearly Rs 5 billion plan for the development of over 100 remote villages in Terai region bordering India which has been badly hit by the protests over the new Constitution. The Rs 4.92 billion five-year programme, scheduled for a formal inauguration in Mohottari district tomorrow, will run till fiscal year 2019-20 to develop physical and social infrastructure in the region. "The programme is meant for areas that have fallen behind in Human Development Index," Joint Secretary at the Ministry Dhan Bahadur Shrestha was quoted as saying by the Kathmandu Post. A budget of Rs 164 million has been allocated for the programme this fiscal year, he said. The Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development said the Border Area Development Programme (BADP) will be implemented in 107 village development committees and seven municipalities in eight Terai districts. The BADP will be implemented in Parsa, Bara, Rautahat, Sarlahi, Mahottari, Dhanusha, Siraha and Saptari districts --- the heartland of the ongoing Madhesi agitation. The programme will focus on areas of local road networks, small-scale irrigation, agriculture, drinking water, sanitation, community infrastructure, environment conservation, energy, schools, sub-health posts, toilets, skill development and social awareness. The region has been lagging behind in life expectancy, literacy and per capita income values compared to other areas of the country. The Human Development Index of the eight districts is below the national average 0.540, with the index of some even falling under 0.400, the daily said. The announcement of the package is seen as a government's plan to win over the Madhesi community to make them withdraw their months-long protests over the Constitution, the daily said. Nepal is facing acute shortage of cooking gas, petroleum products, medicines and other essentials due to blockade imposed on the southern border of the country as a result of the protests by Madhesis, largely of Indian-origin. Madhesis, who share strong cultural and family bonds with Indians, demand demarcation of provinces, fixing of electoral constituencies on the basis of population and proportional representation. So far, more than 50 people have died in the agitation. Amid intense political fight between their parties, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has received "very touching" New Year greetings from West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee which he reciprocated and got a thanks message from the "Didi". "Received very touching New Year greetings from @MamataOfficial ji & that too in Gujarati! I thank Mamata Didi & wish her a great 2016," Modi tweeted. Soon after, Mamata tweeted, "Glad you liked the New Year greetings I sent you in Gujarati. Thanks too @narendramodi ji for the greetings you sent me in Bengali." The bonhomie between Modi and Mamata came amidst an open fight between her party Trinamool Congress and BJP over the recent violence in Malda. Trinamool Congress, whose government recently prevented a BJP delegation from visiting the violence-hit area, has alleged that the saffron party was trying to "communalise" the Malda incident. BJP, on the other hand, has alleged that Mamata Banerjee was playing the "dirtiest vote bank politics" in Malda as she was trying to "communalise" issues by using "extremist forces". Mamata has also accused the Modi government of "non-cooperation" and alleged that it had curtailed funds for various projects in the state. "Had there been full cooperation of the Centre, huge employment opportunities could have been generated in the state," Mamata said recently. "In spite of this (non-cooperation), we have created employment opportunities for a few lakh of people," she had claimed. National Green Tribunal Chairperson Justice Swatanter Kumar today said the green panel has achieved global recognition for its "progressive" approach on environmental issues rather than merely as a tribunal adjudicating disputes. Highlighting expeditious disposal of the cases relating to environmental protection and conservation of forests by NGT, the former Supreme Court judge said students from different parts of the world were now coming to NGT to witness its functioning. "NGT is being looked upon internationally in a different way than mere a Tribunal which is adjudicating disputes. It is being noticed as a progressive Tribunal. A lot of law students from different institutions of the world are doing internships in NGT," Justice Kumar told reporters. Lauding the media for its "balanced approach" on reporting of orders of the green panel, Kumar said such a support on the issue of environment helped the institution to have the right kind of projection. He also said that the Tribunal was mulling ways to devise a charter to deal with the media and would soon designate an officer to share information on important orders and judgments. The NGT Chief said the Tribunal will hold an international conference here in March on global environmental issues and organise a South Asia Workshop on 'Compliance and Enforcement of Multilateral Environmental Agreement'. The conference and workshop would be held under the aegis of the United Nations Environment Programme in collaboration with Ministry of Environment and Forests, Ministry of Water Resources from March 4 to 6. [Todays guest post by Andy Cavadino is part of our paid blogging program. Andy is a primary school teacher in Leeds, England.] The author as a child in Ward 48, Leeds General Infirmary The High Court in Belfast recently ruled that abortion laws in Northern Ireland contravened human rights. The ruling, by Mr. Justice Horner, states that cases of fatal foetal abnormality were entitled to exemptions in the law. Currently, Northern Ireland does not allow abortion in such circumstances. I wouldnt expect anyone from outside the British Isles to know about its sovereignty so heres a simplified version: Basically, you have the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The Republic of Ireland (or Eire) is a different country. Belfast is the capital of Northern Ireland, so part of the UK. However, there are differences in the law in the four countries of the UK and abortion law, until now, has been stricter in Northern Ireland than the rest of the UK. Now, Northern Ireland faces pressure to legalize abortion for fatal foetal abnormality. What does that mean? No chance of the baby being born alive? The baby wont live long after birth? Secular Pro-Life has written about these tragic cases before. Many parents prefer to avoid abortion even in dire circumstances, and perinatal hospices have arisen to meet their needs. They find solace in being able to hold their baby following delivery, take photographs to remember the child, and conduct a funeral. But of course, other parents seek out abortion, hoping to bring a quick, painless end to a horrific circumstance. Both reactions are completely understandable. My main issue is this: What if the doctors are wrong? It happened to this girl and this family. And a similar thing actually happened to me. I was misdiagnosed with a permanent life-limiting brain injury following an accident at 12 years old. I ran out into the road and was hit by a Mercedes (if youre going to do something, do it in style!). I was thrown up in the air and landed on my head. Over the next 25 days on intensive care, I was literally seconds away from death on many occasions, both due to head injuries and other complications. In fact, on one occasion, my life was saved because a medical student had happened to read something about magnesium and irregular heart rates in the New Scientist the night before. It was about 6 months before I returned to school. The incident has left me with epilepsy, which isnt nice, but thats pretty much it. I got 5 A grades at A level. Im a qualified teacher. I play guitar and bass with professional musicians, holding my own at charity events. Im not in a vegetative state, unable to move properly, like the doctors told my family I could be, based on the scans. When I was hospitalized, scans showed huge areas of potential brain damage. My prognosis was very poor. Nevertheless, my family made the decision to consent to several dangerous surgeries. As I improved, the hospital arranged for families of children with a similar initial prognosis to meet me and my family, to encourage them not to give up and withhold treatment, to give them hope that their child could pull through. Prenatal diagnosis is a similarly imperfect science. Scans arent always accurate. What if the diagnosis is wrong? Youll never know if you go through with an abortion, just like my parents would have never known that Id recover so well if they had given up hope and let nature take its course instead of pursuing risky, but ultimately life-saving surgery. I dont judge the families who choose abortion in the face of a lethal diagnosis. Its heart-wrenching and emotional and I cant begin to fathom the pain that theyve been through, nor what my parents went through. I hope that my child never faces a premature death, whether before birth or at whatever age. But if the worst comes to pass, I firmly believe that every child deserves a chance. Its not easy. But you never know what can happen. A Special NIA Court today jailed 21 people who were found guilty in a case of seizure of weapons from an arms training centre of Popular Front of India (PFI) at Narath in Kannur district in April 2013. While convict Abdul Aziz was awarded seven years jail term, the rest 20 were sentenced to five years imprisonment each by NIA Special Judge S Santhosh Kumar. The court, which found them guilty under various sections of IPC, Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA, Arms Act and Explosives Act, also imposed a fine of Rs 5000 each on the convicts. In default, they will have to undergo jail term for six months more. The court acquitted Kamaruddin as the charges against him could not be proved. Arguing for maximum punishment to the guilty, NIA prosecutor P G Manu cited a Kerala High Court ruling in a terror case which said "sympathy has no role in dealing with terrorist case". Though the counsel for the accused pleaded that there was no casualty in the case, the judge said, "There is no casualty because of the action of police." On April 23, 2013, a police team had raided a house in a coconut farm in Narath and seized arms and ammunition and 21 mobile phones. 22 activists of PFI and Secular Democratic Party of India were arrested in connection with the seizure. The state government had handed over the case to NIA. Police had suspected that the arrested people had connections with some extremist organisations, including Indian Mujahideen. Nigeria's state-run oil firm today said it had shut two refineries in the southern city of Port Harcourt and Kaduna in the north because sabotage to crude pipelines. The plants were shut on Sunday because of "breaches" to the Bonny-Okrika supply line to Port Harcourt and the Escravos-Warri pipeline to Kaduna, the company said in an emailed statement. Nigeria's minister of power Babatunde Fashola said yesterday the country was losing some USD 2.3 million a day to attacks on gas facilities and lost electricity production. The military said separately it would no longer tolerate the sabotage and blamed it on "criminal elements who are bent on destroying the nation's strategic assets". Supporters of former Niger Delta militant Government Ekpemupolo, also known as "Tompolo", are believed to have been behind a series of strikes on pipelines in Delta state at the weekend. A court in Lagos last Thursday ordered his arrest on theft and money laundering charges totalling more than USD 175 million. Despite being Africa's number one oil producer, Nigeria has relied on imports of petroleum products because of a lack of domestic refining capacity. Fuel shortages are commonplace. But as part of moves to overhaul the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the government has been working to improve capacity at the country's under-performing state-owned refineries. The four facilities in Port Harcourt, the Delta town of Warri and Kaduna have a combined capacity to process 445,000 barrels of crude per day. Throughout last year they were operating at just a fraction of that. The NNPC said in the statement that before the closure, the Port Harcourt refinery was processing more than 4.1 million litres of petrol per day while Kaduna was producing about 1.3 million litres. Warri was "still on stream" and producing just over 1.4 million litres of petrol daily, it added. "In response to the unexpected setback, we have activated comprehensive remedial measures to sustain the prevailing stability in the supply and distribution of petroleum products across the country," the company said. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said today there could be no military solution to the devastating war in Syria and said further confrontation with Saudi Arabia was in no one's interest. "There is no military solution to the (Syrian) crisis. We need a political solution," Zarif told an audience at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos. Iran is a major player in this year's edition of the Davos meeting, just days after Tehran sealed a historic deal ending punishing sanctions by the West over its nuclear programme. But a US decision on Sunday to reimpose some sanctions, this time over Iran's missile programme dampened the proceedings, with Zarif calling the move "bizarre". "I find it rather bizarre that the United States expresses concern over the Iranian missile programme, which is defensive and does not violate any current international regulation," Zarif said, addressing an audience of bankers and top business figures. Zarif also urged Saudi Arabia to not choose conflict as tensions between the two countries reach boiling point. "I think our Saudi neighbours need to understand that confrontation is in the interests of no one," he said. "There is no reason to panic, my friends," Zarif said, addressing the Saudis directly. "Iran is there to work with you, Iran does not want to exclude anybody from this region," he said. Hyderabad Central University (HCU) Vice Chancellor Appa Rao, who is at the centre of a raging controversy over suicide by a dalit student following his suspension, today asserted there had been "no pressure" from Union Ministers or the HRD Ministry to act against the youth. He also claimed that the youth, Rohith Vemula, did not mention his suspension as the reason for the extreme step in the suicide note and that he had favoured leniency for the students allegedly involved in the ABVP leader attack in view of their background so that they could continue to get their scholarship to pursue their studies. "I am not sure whether suspension has really been the cause for suicide. At least not from the face of the suicide note as left by the student," he said. Rao said he was deeply disturbed by the loss of a precious life and the disruption of academic activities. He also sought to distance the HRD Ministry and the two ministers Smriti Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya from the decisions taken by the University which allegedly forced Rohith Vemula to commit suicide. "There was no pressure. We took the letters received as routine letters," he said, adding "there was no phone call from either of the ministers or any ministry official". The HRD ministry had written as many as five letters to Hyderabad University on Labour Minister Bandaru Dattareya's complaint regarding "anti national activities" on the campus and the "violent attack" on the ABVP leader Susheel Kumar. The Ministry has maintained it was standard procedure on such "VIP references". Asked why there were discrepancies in the interim report and the final report which called for suspension, Rao said the interim report was made without talking to the "so called victim". He claimed that it was later decided that the punishment would be "mellowed down" in view of the background of the students as a semester suspension would have denied them the scholarship and would have virtually made impossible for them to continue their studies. The VC appealed to the students to resume academic activities and "not give space for any political games". He offered to hold talks with students to resolve the issues raised by them and called for collective efforts to avoid recurrence of such incidents in the future. Rao said that the mother of ABVP leader Susheel Kumar, who was allegedly beaten up by students including Vemula, had filed a case in the High Court. The court in return had several times asked the University about what decision it had taken on the complaint, he said. (REOPENS DEL18) In an appeal, Rao said, "we are all saddened by the tragic incident in which we have lost the life of one bright student Vemula Rohith Chakravarthi. Let us also join together in sharing the grief with his family members." "We also have to note and learn the ways and means to avoid such incidents in our campus. Let us pledge to give our time and thought process to prevent recurrence of such incidents that disturb the peace of the campus," he said. "As this semester is a shortened semester and we have a hectic schedule ahead, let us not miss out on the class work, research and administrative work from today. It is appealed to all the members of the University to put all our heads together and learn to work in this crisis situation," Rao said. He said that a group of senior faculty colleagues and Dean, students welfare, need to engage in discussions with the students to understand their concerns, resolve matters in an amicable manner and also to preempt such issues of the students in future. Earlier, a group of students carrying placards and raising slogans protested in the tense University campus this morning even as several politicians including YSR Congress leader Y S Jaganmohan Reddy and CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury met the protesting students. Besides Hyderabad many campuses across the country including in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune and Chennai were rocked by protests yesterday. The suicide by the dalit student has snowballed into a major issue with BJP's rivals wading into it and demanding the removal of Irani and Dattatreya, accusing them of being responsible for the death. Rahul Gandhi had yesterday led the multi-party charge attacking the government and the Vice Chancellor, saying, "The VC and the Union Ministers in Delhi have not acted fairly. This youngster was put in so much pain that he had no option but to kill himself. China's population climbed to 1.37 billion last year, 6.8 million higher than in 2014 but childbirths dropped by 320,000 in the same period despite relaxation of the one-child policy since 2013 showing the reluctance of couples to have a second child. Around 16.55 million children were born in China in 2015, about 320,000 fewer than the previous year despite relaxation of the family planning policy in 2013. The total population of the Chinese mainland stood at 1.37 billion in 2015, 6.8 million higher than in 2014, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said today. Population experts previously predicted that about 1 million more newborns should be born in 2015 than were born in 2014 due to the easing of the one-child policy in 2013 to allow more couples to have a second child. Experts also expected the total number of newborn children to hit 18 million in 2015, state-run Global Times reported. "The decrease in the number of newborns was caused by the low childbearing intentions of women in ideal childbearing age and shrinking number of those at the ideal age," Huang Wenzheng, a former Harvard University assistant professor and expert on population, told outlet yicai.Com. China has permitted couples to have two children from this year, scrapping its one-child policy of 35 years. Huang said that the impact of allowing all couples in China to have a second child was overestimated. He expected that the number of births in 2017 is unlikely to exceed 17 million. Echoing Huang, Yao Mei-xiong, deputy head of the Centre for Population Census of the Fujian Province Bureau of Statistics, said that China's population is set to experience negative growth every year after 2025, yicai.Com reported. Zhai Zhenwu, chairman of the standing council of the China Population Association under the National Health and Family Planning Commission, told the Global Times that the impact of the relaxed policy will not be felt fully until 2016. As all couples are now allowed to have two children as of January 1, the number of newborn second children will likely exceed 1 million, he said. China introduced its family planning policy in the 1970s, and the government began limiting most couples to having one child in 1980. The country relaxed the policy for the first time in 2013 by allowing couples to have a second child if either parent was an only child. According to the NBS, the male population reached 704 million while the female population was about 670 million, leaving a male-to-female ratio of 105.02 to 100. The bureau's statement also said that the number of people over the age of 65 reached 143 million, accounting for 10.5 per cent of China's overall population in 2015. Meanwhile, the size of the labour force - people aged 16 to 59 - in proportion to the overall population decreased for the fourth year in a row. Though China is still in the demographic dividend period, the country must work harder to tackle the foreseeable problems caused by an aging society and a shrinking labour force, Zhai said. Opposition parties, including DMK and DMDK today boycotted Governor K Rosaiah's address to Tamil Nadu Assembly by staging a walk out, moments after he began his speech over the government's handling of recent floods and other issues. As soon as Rosaiah began his inaugural address for the 2016 session, greeting the members for the new year and Pongal, opposition leaders, including DMK floor leader M K Stalin, CPI floor leader M Arumugam, CPI (M)'s A Soundararajan and Krishnaswamy (Puthiya Tamilagam) stood up and tried to raise some issues. As Soundararajan tried to read out something from a prepared text, DMDK members, including Parthasarathy, and Vijayadharani (Cong) too tried to raise some issues. Soon, all of them staged a walk out even as Governor continued his address to the House. Talking to reporters outside the House, Stalin criticised the government over its handling of the recent floods and several other issues. Soundararajan also hit out at the government on the flood issue and its failure to get the nod for bull-taming sport jallikattu. Manithaneya Makkal Katchi members, rebel DMDK members, however, did not join the opposition in their boycott. Agri-logistics firm Origo Commodities today said it has entered into the retail segment and will sell rice, pulses, spices, fruits and vegetables. The company has also launched retail brand 'OrigoFarms' for selling staples from Hyderabad, to start with. Origo Commodities has plans to launch OrigoFarms products in a phased manner in Pune, Bengaluru, Chennai and Delhi NCR, the company said in a statement. The products will be sold through large format retailers such as HyperCity, Spar and other stores in Hyderabad. "In keeping with our commitment to enable an effective agri-supply chain across the country for grains and perishables, we are happy to bring our expertise in logistics handling, procurement and quality assaying to offer high standard pulses and produce through retailers to households," said Sunoor Kaul, Director, Origo Commodities. Every OrigoFarms product has been procured using Origo's traceable value chain, wherein every package can be traced back to the farm from where it was grown. "Every product under the OrigoFarms brand has been carefully selected for freshness and nutrient content as the company has strived to bring in traceability into the line. "Our network of farmers, FPOs (Farmer Producer Organizations) and co-operatives ensures that the farmer-organization relationship is key to providing consistent and best quality produce," said Mayank Dhanuka, Director, Origo Commodities. Origo Commodities is post-harvest solutions and warehouse management services company in India. It operates over 350 warehouses and has over 3.5 million tonnes of commodities with a value of USD 1.5 billion under management. Its services include commodity handling, collateral management and procurement services to farmers, producers, processors and corporate houses. :Over 400 government college teachers were arrested today when they tried to stage a demonstration before the Deputy Director of collegiate education here, seeking implementation of various demands. Their demands include filling of vacant posts in various government-aided colleges and fixing proper pay scale and grade for those who joined after January 2006 based on their merit, police said. The teachers also demanded that the Government fill vacant posts of vice-chancellors to various universities. The teachers from Coimbatore, Erode, Tirupur and Nilgiris districts partcipated in the agitation. Pakistan has conducted a successful flight test of the indigenously-developed Air Launched Cruise Missile 'Ra'ad' with a range of 350 km, enabling it to achieve air-delivered strategic stand-off capability both on land and at sea, the military said. The state-of-the-art Air Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM) 'Ra'ad' (Thunder) is equipped with highly advanced guidance and navigation system that ensures engagement of targets with pin-point accuracy, the Inter-Services Public Relations said in a press release. "The Ra'ad ALCM enables Pakistan to achieve air-delivered strategic stand-off capability on land and at sea," it said. The terrain-hugging low level flight maneuvers enable it to avoid detection and engagement by contemporary air defence systems, it said on the flight test held yesterday. Pakistan President Mamnoon Hussain and the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif have congratulated the scientists and engineers for their achievement on the conduct of a successful flight test of the missile, the statement said. Director General Strategic Plans Division, Lieutenant General MazharJamil, termed the flight test as a major step towards complementing Pakistan's deterrence capability. "Achievement of this milestone will surely enhance strategic stability and contribute to peace in the region," he said. He also expressed full confidence over the training standards and operational preparedness of Pakistan's strategic forces. According to reports, yesterday's test flight was the fifth of Ra'ad ALCM since the fourth one on February 2, 2015. In a heroic act, a Pakistani chemistry professor in his 30s today lost his life while trying to protect his students using his licensed pistol against armed Taliban militants who stormed the university. Assistant professor Syed Hamid Hussain, 34, fought back against the terrorists as he warned students not to leave the building of the Bacha Khan university in Charsadda, some 50 kms southwest of Peshawar. Students spoke of the hero teacher, who flashed his pistol but was gunned down by the militants besides 24 others, media reports said. Geology student Zahoor Ahmed said his chemistry lecturer had warned him not to leave the building after the first shots were fired. "He was holding a pistol in his hand," he said. "Then I saw a bullet hit him. I saw two militants were firing. I ran inside and then managed to flee by jumping over the back wall." Another student told television reporters he was in class when he heard gunshots. "We saw three terrorists shouting slogans and rushing towards the stairs of our department," he said as he described seeing the chemistry professor holding a pistol and firing at the attackers. "Then we saw him fall down and as the terrorists entered the (registrar) office we ran away," said the student. President Mamnoon Hussain confirmed Hamid was among the deceased and condoled his death. Netizens took to social networking sites like Twitter to hail the lecturer as a "martyr". "Martyr of #education: Prof Hamid who was killed by terrorists in #BachaKhanUniversity #Pakistan," tweeted journalist and academic Raza Ahmad Rumi. The official Facebook page of the university also said Hamid was among those killed. Teachers in northwest Pakistan were given permission to carry firearms in the classroom after the Peshawar school carnage of December 2014 in which Taliban militants killed over 150 people, mostly children. Expressing solidarity with the victims of the terrorist attack at Bacha Khan University in Pakistan, which claimed 21 innocent lives, a group of students from universities across Delhi held a silent candle march at Jantar Mantar here today. The students under the banner of National Students Union of India (NSUI) condemned the attack and expressed sadness over the killing of innocents. At least 21 people were killed by heavily-armed Taliban suicide attackers who stormed a prestigious university in restive northwestern Pakistan and opened indiscriminate fire. "Any act of terrorism is an attack on humanity and is highly condemnable. Killing innocents shows how cowardly these terrorists are and it saddens us to see how in the midst of these extreme ideologies, innocents suffer," said NSUI national president, Roji John. Asking all progressive youth organisations from across borders to unite and raise their voices against terrorism, John said, "The time has come to stand against terrorism. All the countries have to come together to create a world without terrorism." The student activists raised their concerns over the security of innocent people which is always "at stake" and asked governments of all nations to ensure the security of their citizens. "It is always innocent people who suffer the most. Every country should ensure the security of its citizens, so that innocent people do not suffer," said national secretary, NSUI, Haseeba. Pakistan's nuclear warheads which are estimated to be between 110-130 are aimed at deterring India from taking military action against it, a latest Congressional report has said. The report also expressed concern that Islamabad's "full spectrum deterrence" doctrine has increased risk of nuclear conflict between the two South Asian neighbours. "Pakistan's nuclear arsenal probably consists of approximately 110-130 nuclear warheads, although it could have more. Islamabad is producing fissile material, adding to related production facilities, deploying additional nuclear weapons, and new types of delivery vehicles," Congressional Research Service (CRS) said in its latest report. In its 28-page report, the CRS noted that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is widely regarded as designed to dissuade India from taking military action against it, but Islamabad's expansion of its nuclear arsenal, development of new types of nuclear weapons and adoption of a doctrine called "full spectrum deterrence" have led some observers to express concern about an increased risk of nuclear conflict between Pakistan and India, which also continues to expand its nuclear arsenal. CRS is the independent research wing of the US Congress, which prepares periodic reports by eminent experts on a wide range of issues so as to help lawmakers take informed decisions. Reports of CRS are not considered as an official view of the US Congress. "Pakistan has in recent years taken a number of steps to increase confidence in the security of its nuclear arsenal," said the CRS report authored by Paul K Kerr and Mary Beth Nikitin. Moreover, Pakistani and US officials argue that, since the 2004 revelations about a procurement network run by former Pakistani nuclear official A Q Khan, Islamabad has taken a number of steps to improve its nuclear security and to prevent further proliferation of nuclear-related technologies and materials, it said. A number of important initiatives, such as strengthened export control laws, improved personnel security, and nuclear security cooperation programmes, have improved Pakistan's nuclear security, the CRS said. "However, instability in Pakistan has called the extent and durability of these reforms into question. Some observers fear radical takeover of the Pakistani government or diversion of material or technology by personnel within Pakistan's nuclear complex," the CRS said. "While US and Pakistani officials continue to express confidence in controls over Pakistan's nuclear weapons, continued instability in the country could impact these safeguards. Furthermore, continued Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapons development could jeopardise strategic stability between the two countries," it concluded. According to CRS, Pakistan has asserted that continued exclusion of the country from the NSG "would adversely affect regional peace, security and stability," as well as "undermine the global non-proliferation regime." According to the US law, the United States could apparently advocate for Pakistan's NSG membership without congressional approval. Ambassador Olson testified on December 16, 2015, that the Obama Administration is "not negotiating...A civil nuclear cooperation agreement with...Pakistan." However, press reports indicate that the United States is considering supporting Islamabad's NSG membership in exchange for Pakistani actions to reduce perceived dangers associated with the country's nuclear weapons programme, it said. Donald Trump received a big boost to his presidential ambition after Sarah Palin, top Republican leader and former vice presidential candidate, endorsed the candidature of the real estate tycoon just 13 days before the caucuses in the key US state of Iowa. "I am proud to endorse Donald J Trump for President of the United States of America," Palin, a Tea Party icon, told a cheering crowd of Trump supporters at a rally in Iowa yesterday. "Media heads are spinning! This is going to be so much fun!... Are you ready to make America great again?" Palin asked cheering crowd making her surprise announcement. Her support is the highest-profile backing for Trump so far. It came the same day that Iowa's Republican governor, Terry Branstad, said he hoped that Texas Senator Ted Cruz would be defeated in Iowa. The February 1 caucuses are a must-win for the Texas senator, who is running neck-and-neck with Trump in state polls. Trump said he is proud to receive Palin's endorsement. "Sarah Palin's support is a testament to my message to 'Make America Great Again'," he said. Palin served as the Governor of Alaska before being selected as Senator John McCain's Vice Presidential nominee in 2008. As the first ever female Vice Presidential candidate for the Republican party, Palin is a highly influential, decorated public figure having been named as one of the Smithsonian Institute's 100 Most Influential Americans of all time. CNN said although Palin's national clout has diminished since her last time on the presidential campaign trail, she remains a popular political icon on the right and her support marks a significant seal of approval as Trump seeks to woo conservative voters. In his speech, Trump said he would "love" to have Palin serve in as a Cabinet member in his administration. "She really is somebody who knows what's happening and she's a special person. She's really a special person and I think people know that," he said. The Rajasthan High Court has asked the Advocate General of the state to file a response to a PIL seeking shift of the venue of the Jaipur Literature Festival, which is scheduled to start tomorrow, citing concerns of security for VVIPs and possible hurdle for a trauma centre nearby. A division bench of the HC has asked the state government to file the reply in seven days. The PIL was filed after the area Deputy Commissioner of Police also gave a report favouring shift of the JLF venue at a heritage hotel citing concern regarding less parking space, insufficient space to accommodate the crowd, lack of fire-fighting and narrow access for fire fighters at the site of the event. The old heritage hotel near Swai Man Singh Hospital of the city is a permanent venue of the literary event. It was alleged in the petition that the event will be a hurdle for a newly-opened trauma centre due to VIP movements. It was also alleged that the space is meant only for accommodating 3000 persons while more than 10,000 persons had visited the festival every day last year. The state government recently transfered the DCP who gave the report suggesting the venue shift. The judicial commission of inquiry probing into the chit fund scam cases in Odisha issued notices to the government today seeking details about all non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) dealing with money laundering activities in the state. The commission, headed by former judge of Orissa High Court Justice M M Das, has also asked the state government to furnish details of any action taken against any NBFC operating in violation of provisions of the RBI Act 1934 and the Prize Chits and Money Circulation Scheme (Banning) Act of 1978. The Commission's notice came while adjudicating over a petition filed by an advocate of the High Court alleging that several NBFCs are operating their business in the state violating statutory provisions. The commission, set up by the state government in July 2013, is probing to identify individuals and entities indulging in illegal activities of money collection and to find out involvement of any influential persons in protecting and promoting such activities in the state. A Muzaffarnagar court today rejected the bail plea of a Samajwadi Party leader in the murder of a property dealer. District Judge B S Kakkar rejected the plea of Sudheer Goel, saying "there is no case of bail here", according to government counsel Dushyant Tyagi. Goel, a former SP district treasurer, and his son Amit were booked by the police for the murder of a local property dealer Aamir Alam, who was shot dead in Khatoli area of Muzaffarnagar on 22 October last year. Hundreds of protesters broke through police lines today to get into Moldova's Parliament after it approved a new government to end months of deadlock between the president and the legislature. Before the vote, protesters massed outside Parliament waving the Moldovan flag and yelling "early elections" as lawmakers met. After the vote, their numbers swelled to thousands who massed outside the Parliament and scuffled with police officers before forcing their way in. They yelled "Cancel the vote!" and "Thieves!" Police later pushed the protesters back but they forced their way into the legislature again. Some police officers were beaten by demonstrators, Radio Chisinau reported. Earlier, Parliament had approved the pro-European government of Pavel Filip, the technology minister and a former candy factory manager, with 57 votes. The pro-Russian opposition boycotted the vote. As the session got underway, lawmakers from the Socialists' Party booed, blew whistles and blocked off part of the Parliament. In the end, Filip merely announced his Cabinet. He later said he was committed to Moldova, an impoverished former Soviet republic of about 4 million, joining the European Union. Moldova signed a political and trade association agreement with the EU in 2014, something Russia opposed. Parliament had to approve a government by January 29 or face being dissolved. Lawmakers dismissed the previous government in October amid corruption allegations. Moldova has been locked in political turmoil since up to USD 1.5 billion went missing from three banks prior to the 2014 parliamentary elections. Publisher and philanthropist George Weidenfeld, who devoted himself to improving understanding between faiths and peoples, died today in London. He was 96. A statement from his office said Weidenfeld died in his sleep after a brief illness. Weidenfeld was a member of the House of Lords who had recently launched an initiative to help save Christians facing persecution at the hands of Islamic State extremists in the Middle East. He had been born in Austria and fled his native country at the start of World War II to avoid Nazi persecution of Jews. Weidenfeld said his work on behalf of persecuted Christians was an effort to thank British Quakers for helping him when he first arrived in Britain. He had a lengthy career in publishing and also wrote newspaper columns and books. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier today praised Weidenfeld's commitment to better understanding between the major religious faiths. "As a bridge-builder he devoted all of his energy toward issues that are still as topical as ever: the dialogue between the faiths to Europe's relationship with Israel to European integration. He fought for values and ideals even when he faced resistance," Steinmeier said in a statement. He praised Weidenfeld's "versatility, wit and intelligence." Weidenfeld was the co-founder of the publishing house Weidenfeld & Nicolson. The firm gained notoriety in 1959 for publishing the British edition of Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita," despite the threat of prosecution for obscenity. No legal action was taken, and the book's strong sales put the publishers on a secure financial footing. Weidenfeld is survived by his wife, a daughter, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Punjab NRI Affairs Minister Tota Singh today expressed grief and sorrow over the demise of young boys from the state, who lost their lives in a boat tragedy near Panama while travelling to the US. While asserting that all fake travel agents who were behind the incident would be brought to book, the minister appealed to the people of Punjab not to send their wards abroad through such fake agents. Meanwhile, he said that the Punjab Government has achieved a breakthrough by disposing off nearly 76.09 per cent cases pertaining to NRIs in a limited time frame. He further said that the NRI Commission had received a total of 1,163 applications during in December 2015, of which 885 already been disposed while the remaining would be solved soon. The NRI and women's wing of Punjab Police has disposed off 95 per cent cases, he noted. The NRI wing has received 10,490 complaints of property, marriage and other disputes. As many as 736 cases were registered and 1,010 were resolved by mutual understanding till date, he added. Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi today accused Rahul Gandhi of trying to "create gulf" in the society over the alleged suicide of a Dalit scholar at Hyderabad Central University and said no minister is going to resign. The Union Minister of State for Minorities Welfare also said the Congress Vice President was "politicising" the student's death. Naqvi slammed the Gandhi scion for trying to "create gulf in the society" on the pretext of the suicide of the scholar when a probe was already in progress. "It is most unfortunate to generate storms for political gains and that too by a pivot of the political outfit which was thrown out of power by almost the entire nation". "No minister is going to resign as the hue and cry being generated by disappointed opposition politician (Rahul) was a proof of immense intolerance, and an undesired attempt to divide the society on the basis of casteism and communalism," he said. Congress vice president and his associates by adopting "cheap politics have an inclination to create hurdles in the development programs launched by NDA government as they have done in recent session of Parliament," the union minister said. Rohith Vemula, who committed suicide on Sunday night, was among the five research scholars who were suspended by Hyderabad Central University in August last year and also one of the accused in the case of assault on a student leader. They were also kept out of the hostel. The MoS also clarified on the demand for minority status for Aligarh Muslim University saying "AMU is a central institution and the matter in this regard was pending in the court hence raising the issue on various forums by different forces was beyond reason and against the spirit of the law." He stated that there were 12,000 registered minority institutions in India and out of that 2600 alone were in UP while double of the said figure existed as unregistered institutions and, protection and assistance as per constitutional provisions was being provided for the welfare of the minority communities. The Union Minister also expressed concern over Islamic State's (IS) emergence in India saying "Indians have understood that IS was not an ideology but a conspiracy to demolish humanity and the entire world is united to combat and crush the menace." He also disclosed that the Central government has sanctioned construction of a four-lane highway between Rampur and Kathgodam covering over 90 kms which might cost about Rs 1000 crore. The proposed construction would facilitate tourists to travel to Nainital and other nearby hilly spots. Union Minister Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore today inaugurated the construction work of the All India Radio (AIR) station at Abdullahpur here and said that it would be built in around two years. Construction of the radio station on the 6,180 sq mt land is expected to be over in around two years, the Union Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting said. As of now it would be an FM radio station only but the Centre is mulling to later start a Doordarshan Kendra here too, Rathore said. The people of Meerut have been demanding an AIR station and Doordarshan Kendra for the last three years and the local MP Rajendra Aggarwal had placed this demand in the Lok Sabha too, he said. Speaking to mediapersons, Rathore said, "The country faces threat not from external but internal elements and the opposition are creating an atmosphere of fear which is harming the society." The Union minister said that the local traders spoke to him about issues regarding labour laws, trouble in securing bank loans, land acquisition, airports etc and he would try his best to resolve those. Reliance Communications today said it has paid Rs 5,383.84 crore as spectrum liberalisation fee to DoT for radiowaves in the 800/850 MHz band held by it in 16 telecom circles. "RCom has on January 20, 2016 paid an aggregate amount of Rs 5,383.84 crore as liberalisation fee to DoT in relation to spectrum in the 800/850 MHz band held by it in 16 telecom circles," the company said in a statement. "The Kolkata High Court, vide its judgment dated January 14, 2016, has already directed that RCom is not required to furnish any bank guarantees for disputed OTSC, as required by DoT." On Monday, Reliance Communications and Reliance Jio Infocomm entered into spectrum-trading and spectrum sharing agreements allowing Reliance Jio to now get spectrum in 850 MHz band from RCOM in 9 Circles, enabling it to offer 4G LTE services. Spectrum trading will happen in 9 circles; subsequently Reliance Jio and RCom will share spectrum in 17 circles. Sources said eventually, spectrum sharing to be done in all 22 circles (to begin with, 17 circles in Phase 1 as RCom is still awaiting 800 MHz spectrum liberalisation demand letter from DoT in 4 circles where there is no market price benchmark [Rajasthan, Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu) and in last circle, J&K, there are some technical considerations which are being sorted out. As per sources, RCom got immediate payout of Rs 4,500 crore from Rel Jio, and these proceeds were used to pay the Spectrum liberalisation cost. Access to enhanced spectrum footprint in the 800 MHz band will complement RJIL's LTE services rollout, providing increased network coverage and superior service quality The spectrum arrangements between RJIL and RCom will result in network synergies, enhanced network capacity and optimise spectrum utilisation and capex efficiencies. Both operators see considerable savings in operating costs and future investment in networks. Sources said that in all circles where RCom's spectrum holdings come down to 1.25 MHz post spectrum trading deal with Reliance Jio, the company will be get 3.75 MHz of 800-850 MHz band spectrum from MTS once it proposed merger with the Russian firm is completed. In November, India's fourth-largest telecom operator RCom announced acquisition of Sistema's Indian telecom unit in an all-stock deal that will create an operator with 118 million subscribers. As per the deal, SSTL will hold about 10 per cent stake in RCom and pay off its existing debt before closing the deal. Russian tycoon Vladimir Evtushenkov-controlled AFK Sistema currently holds 56.68 per cent stake in SSTL while Russian government owns 17.14 per cent interest. Shyam Group has 23.98 per cent stake and the rest is owned by small investors. SSTL offers mobile telephony services under MTS brand across nine telecom circles in the country. Union Minority Affairs Minister Najma Heptulla today expressed regret over the alleged suicide of a Dalit student at the Hyderabad Central University, saying such incidents should not happen and the reasons that led him to take the extreme step must be found out. "I do not know the details. I read about it in the flight and I cannot react on it more than that I regret what has happened. What led the youth to take such a step will be found out by the people there who are trying to find out the reason. "Such incidents should not happen. We want to provide a good future to our children and we are making endeavours on that front. We do not want such incidents to happen. I sympathise with his parents and it has to be found out as to why this incident happened," Heptulla told reporters here on the sidelines of a function. The Union minister said the government does not differentiate the people on the basis of caste, creed or religion and children should only be seen as children. "We should not divide the children in terms of upper caste, lower caste or Dalits. Our country has seen enough division. We should see the children as they are only as children our heart bleeds for all, not just for minority, and it does not differentiate on the basis of caste, creed or religion," she said. Heptullah, who yesterday called on PDP president Mehbooba Mufti at her residence in Gupkar, said the meeting was apolitical and government formation in the state was not discussed. "I had known Mufti sahib personally and had worked with him. I had been with him, with the party, in Jammu and Kashmir since 1986. It was my duty to offer condolences on his demise, so I went to his residence. "And you all know that when we go to someone's home for offering condolences, we do not eat anything there or talk about other things." she said. "Neither I talked to her (Mehbooba) on this nor was there any mention (of politics). I only offered my condolences to her and talked about those aspects of Mufti sahib's life which I know of," the Union minister said. Rohith Vemula, who committed suicide on Sunday night, was among the five research scholars who were suspended by the Hyderabad Central University in August last year and also one of the accused in the case of assault on a student leader. They were also kept out of the hostel. The incident has triggered protests by students in many parts of the country. Turkish authorities have arrested two more people with suspected links to the suicide bomber who killed 10 Germans in Istanbul last week, raising the number of arrests to 12, the state-run agency reported today. The two suspects, who weren't identified, were detained in the city of Sanliurfa, near the border with Syria, on Saturday, the Anadolu Agency reported. A court in Istanbul charged them with premeditated murder and membership in a terror group today, it said. Ten Syrians were charged with membership in a terror group and ordered jailed pending trial on Sunday. The suicide bomber set off the explosion near a group of German tourists on Jan. 12, just steps away from the landmark Blue Mosque, killing ten of them. Fifteen other people were wounded in the blast. Turkish officials say the bomber was affiliated with the Islamic State group. No group has claimed the attack. The bomber has been identified as Nabil Fadli, a Syrian national born in 1988 who had registered as a refugee with a migration agency in Istanbul a week before the attack. Officials haven't disclosed any information on the suspects or say what links they have to the bomber. Helicopter gunships sweep low around Russia's air base on the Syrian coast and long-range air-defence missile systems tower at the base's edge as warplanes take off one after another. The sound is deafening. Russia's heavy airstrikes in Syria continued on Wednesday, days ahead of the hoped-for start of talks on how to end one aspect of the country's five-year-old war, where government forces fight rebels, and militants including the extremist Islamic State have seized substantial stretches of territory. Even though the front line is dozens of miles (kilometres) away and the area around the base is tightly controlled, the Russian military methodically patrols to make sure there is no ground threat. Soldiers toting assault rifles stood guard around the base as air force personnel bustled under the warplanes wings, attaching bombs and missiles for the next sorties. Since Russia launched its bombing campaign in Syria on September 30, its warplanes have flown over 5,700 missions. The number is remarkable for a force comprising just a few dozen warplanes. The Russian military brought a group of Moscow-based reporters to the base Wednesday to see the operation. Defence Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said, by the afternoon, Russian warplanes had flown about 40 sorties, with each aircraft typically hitting three to five targets on a single run. In the early stages of the bombing campaign, planes struck only one target during each mission. Combat sorties continued after nightfall at the same high tempo, with speeding jets lighting up the night sky with their engine exhausts. Since the Associated Press first visited the Hemeimeem base in October, the Russian military has put a second runway into service and has deployed powerful S-400 air defence weapons. Asked how long the Russian air campaign may last, Konashenkov said only that Russia's goal is to strike extremist infrastructure in support of Syrian government troops. "They have shown some good results in defeating terrorist groups," he said. The Russian military has insisted it is targeting the Islamic State group and other extremists and has angrily dismissed Western accusations that it is hitting moderate rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad. Moscow also has rejected claims that its aircraft have hit civilians, insisting that all casualties have been at extremist facilities away from populated areas. The Russian military said today it had bombed the Syrian province of Deir Ezzor after a deadly Islamic State assault saw jihadists tighten their siege in the region. "The Russian operation conducted military operations only in the provinces of Latakia and Deir Ezzor in light of unfavourable weather conditions and to avoid risks for the civilian population," Russian agencies quoted military spokesman Igor Konashenkov as saying. Konashenkov added that Russian warplanes had struck 57 targets in 16 combat sorties in these two provinces in the last day. The military spokesman also said Russia had delivered 50 tonnes of humanitarian aid to the besieged city of Deir Ezzor on January 15. More than 40 tonnes of humanitarian cargo were delivered earlier this week to the blockaded eastern Syrian city, the defence ministry said yesterday. IS launched a bloody offensive on Deir Ezzor on Saturday, with dozens of its fighters carrying out suicide bomb attacks as they stormed government positions. The assault came as the regime sought to advance in northern Aleppo province, capitalising on a Russian air campaign that began on September 30. The jihadists now control 60 percent of the city of Deir Ezzor, intensifying a siege that had already caused fear and hardship for the roughly 200,000 people still living there. Around 70 percent of the city's remaining residents are women and children, according to the United Nations. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said late yesterday that IS had released 270 of more than 400 civilians it had abducted during its assault on Deir Ezzor. The Russian military said yesterday its jets had struck 579 "terrorist targets" in 157 combat sorties in the Aleppo, Raqa, Latakia, Homs, Hama and Deir Ezzor provinces. President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi today congratulated Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) for the successful launch of IRNSS-1E, the country's fifth navigation satellite. "Heartiest congratulations to ISRO team on successful launch of navigation satellite IRNSS-1E #PresidentMukherjee," the President tweeted. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that he spoke to scientists and congratulated them on the successful launch. "Spoke to the scientists at @isro & congratulated them on their accomplishment today. Our scientists keep making us proud", he said. "Congratulating the dynamism & determination of @isro & our scientists on successful launch of PSLV-C31 & putting IRNSS 1E in orbit," the Prime Minister tweeted. India successfully launched its fifth navigation satellite IRNSS-1E on-board the workhorse PSLV-C31 from Sriharikota, taking another step to be on par with US based Global Positioning System (GPS). Syria's largest opposition coalition today named an Islamist rebel chief backed by Riyadh as its chief negotiator for peace talks slated to open on January 25 in Geneva. The coalition of political and armed opposition groups demanded the exclusion of other parties from the talks and a halt to the Syrian army's bombardment and sieges of populated areas. It has appointed Mohammed Alloush, a political leader of as the Saudi-backed armed group Jaish al-Islam, as its chief negotiator, the coalition's general coordinator, Riad Hijab, announced at a conference in Riyadh. He said Asaad al-Zobi, a general who defected from the army, will serve under Alloush as head of the delegation, with Syrian National Council chief George Sabra as his deputy. A 33-member opposition "supreme committee" was formed at a landmark meeting last month of Syrian opposition groups in the Saudi capital. Hijab insisted the committee's delegation should be the only opposition representative at the talks, aimed at bringing an end to a five-year-conflict that has cost more than 260,000 lives. "We will not go to negotiations if a third party or person is added," he warned. Hijab also said that "we cannot go to negotiations with our people dying of hunger and under shelling" by pro-regime forces. Countries pushing for a peace deal for Syria, including the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran, have struggled to agree on the list of opposition delegates. Russia and Iran, Saudi Arabia's regional rival, are the main supporters of President Bashar al-Assad. Moscow wants the participation of Damascus-tolerated opposition groups. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said yesterday that the Riyadh-based committee was "the concerned body, and nobody else can impose on them who should represent them" in negotiations. Riyadh in December brought together about 100 representatives at the meeting of Syria's main political opposition and armed factions. They agreed to negotiate with the regime but insisted Assad step down at the start of any political transition. The Islamic State jihadist group, which has seized large parts of Syria and Iraq, and the Al-Qaeda affiliated Al-Nusra Front were excluded from the Riyadh meeting. Kurdish fighters were also left out. A newly formed secular Kurdish-Arab alliance, the Syrian Democratic Council, last week demanded its own seat at the negotiating table and said it would not be grouped with the Riyadh body. Fresh protests by students from universities across Delhi over the alleged suicide by a Dalit research scholar today rocked the national capital, following which 30 of them were detained by police. While a delegation of students, who had yesterday staged a protest at Jantar Mantar and outside the office of the HRD Ministry, visited Hyderabad University campus today to express solidarity with the agitating students there, scores of them continued their demonstrations here. A group of students under the banner of Krantikari Yuva Sangathan (KYS) gathered at the Connaught Place's Central Park where 30 of them were detained. According to police officials, keeping law and order situation in mind 30 agitating students were detained and released hours later. Jamia Millia Islamia students also took out a rally on the campus in solidarity with the expelled Dalit students of Hyderabad University, and to protest the suicide of Rohith Vemula, one of the expelled students. Imran Khan, a member of the Jamia Students Forum, said Rohith committed suicide due to the unbearable stress put on him by the university administration. While another student, Meeran Haider, demanded that the HRD Minister resign and the vice-chancellor of Hyderabad University be dismissed. Twenty-six-year-old Vemula Rohit, a PhD scholar, was found hanging in a room at the Central University's hostel on Sunday. He was among five research scholars who were suspended by Hyderabad Central University (HCU) in August last year and also one of the accused in the case of assault on an ABVP leader. They were also kept out of the hostel. The suspension was revoked later. Union Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya and Hyderabad University Vice Chancellor were named in an FIR over the death of the scholar, which triggered massive protests and demands for their removal from their posts. Earlier in the day, hitting back at political rivals, HRD Minister Smriti Irani had accused them of attempting to "instigate" students all over the country on the issue and dismissed demands for her resignation. Vigilance has been heightened at the ongoing Ardh Kumbh mela and security beefed up around vital installations in the district after four youths with suspected terror links who were allegedly planning to launch an attack here were nabbed, police said today. Security around sensitive and crowded spots, including Har Ki Pairi has been tightened, Inspector General of Police G S Martolia, in charge of the security for the mela, said. Four youths with suspected terror links who were allegedly conspiring to strike in the mela area were held by a joint team of Delhi Police Special Cell and Uttarakhand police last night from Manglour town in Haridwar district. IG Martolia said all vehicles coming to Haridwar besides hotels and lodges in the district are being checked to keep a tab on dubious people. Visitors to temples are on CCTV surveillance and senior police officials are patrolling the mela areas 24x7,he said. A special vigil is being kept around vital installations and at points bordering the neighbouring states like Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh with patrolling and frisking being intensified, he said. Bomb disposal squads andintelligence personnel are maintaining a constant vigil in the mela area and all intelligence inputs received are being analysed, he said. Senior police officials, including IG Martolia, later visited Laksar railway station near Roorkeeand all the check posts and police stations between Laksar and Haridwar to take stock of security arrangements there, a release from DIG Ardh Kumbh's office said. Shiv Sena today ridiculed BJP's mission of winning the next year's Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on its own steam and said the latter is living in "fool's paradise" if it believes it can achieve the electoral objective. The regional party, a key constituent of the BJP-led ruling alliances in Maharashtra and at the Centre, said signals emanating from the saffron partner indicate it wants to go solo in the BMC polls, marking the start of a fresh round of war of words between the allies. Maharashtra BJP President Raosaheb Danve had on Monday said his party's aim is to unfurl its flag atop the BMC, indicating intention to contest the polls sans Shiv Sena. He had also evaded queries related to pre-poll tie-up with Sena. "They (the BJP) are living in fool's paradise if they think they will win the BMC polls. Their statements, that they will win the polls, indicates they have no plans to ally with us. "Good they have alerted us well in advance this time and not like the Assembly polls (in 2014) when they had back stabbed us," senior Sena leader Ramdas Kadam told reporters here. "If they say they will unfurl their flag over the BMC, I wish to tell them we will sit on their chest and hoist our flag there. Let them try and stop us," asserted a combative Kadam. The Uddhav Thackeray-led party is ruling the country's richest civic body, which boasts of an annual budget in excess of Rs 30,000 crore, for over two decades in alliance with BJP. Asked about a BJP leader's statement that the party will win at least 120 seats (well above half-way mark) in the BMC polls, Kadam quipped, "Why only 120? The BJP should say they will win all the seats." The Sena currently has 89 Corporators in the 227-member civic body, while its ally BJP has 32. The rest are divided between Congress (52), Sharad Pawar's NCP (13), Raj Thackeray-led MNS (27) and others. BMC will go to polls early next year along with some other big corporations in the State. Meanwhile, Sena President Uddhav Thackeray chaired a meeting of party legislators at his residence 'Matoshree' in suburban Bandra this evening. However, the agenda of the meeting was not known. Singapore has deported 26 Bangladeshi migrant workers late last year and jailed one for supporting "the armed jihad ideology" of terror groups like Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, authorities said today. The men, who were working in the construction industry here, were detained between November 16 and December 1 last year, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said. Investigations showed that they supported the armed jihad ideology of terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Some of them had considered waging armed jihad overseas, but they were not planning any terrorist attacks in Singapore, said the MHA. The 26 deported were members of a closed religious study group that subscribed to extremist beliefs and teachings of radical figures like Anwar al-Awlaki, an American and Yemeni Islamic lecturer alleged to have ties with militant group Al-Qaeda. Awlaki was killed in a drone strike in Yemen in September 2011. The Bangladeshi authorities were informed of the circumstances of their repatriation. The jailed man was not a member of the study group, but was discovered to have been undergoing radicalisation. He supported extremist preachers and possessed jihadi-related material. He was jailed for attempting to leave Singapore illegally. He will also be repatriated once he completes his sentence. In the course of their arrests, the Internal Security Department recovered a "significant amount" of radical and jihadi-related material, such as books and videos containing footage of children undergoing training in what appeared to be terrorist military camps. Several members also possessed a shared document with graphic images and instruction details on how to conduct "silent killings" using different methods and weapons. An excerpt from the document, which depicts in a graphic manner how one can attack and kill with stealth. The group members took measures to avoid detection by the authorities, sharing jihadi-related materials discreetly and holding weekly gatherings to discuss armed conflicts involving Muslims, said MHA. "They also carefully targeted the recruitment of other Bangladeshi nationals to grow their membership," it said. A number of members admitted that they believed they should participate in and wage armed jihad on behalf of their religion. Several contemplated travelling to the Middle East to take part in the ongoing conflict. "Members were encouraged to return to Bangladesh and wage armed jihad against the Bangladeshi government. They had also sent monetary donations to entities believed to be linked to extremist groups in Bangladesh," said MHA. Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena today gave a six month's deadline to officials to resettle over 44,000 remaining war-displaced people in the country's Tamil-dominated northern province. The announcement came as a follow up action to Sirisena's visit to a displaced camp in Jaffna during the Christmas period last month. Over 44,000 displaced would now be resettled within six months after the identification of suitable lands, officials said on the deadline set by Sirisena. According to the officials, 5732 people of 1688 displaced families are currently living in displaced camps while 11,073 families of 38,283 displaced people still live with their relatives. Nearly 300,000 people were displaced from the north during the final military battle between the LTTE and the government in 2009. They were housed in displaced camps with international assistance. The final settlement of the war-displaced is another reconciliation measure by Sirisena's government which succeeded the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime. The advent of Sirisena in January last year saw several conciliatory steps being taken towards the welfare of the Tamil minority. Travel restrictions to the north were lifted while private lands held for military purposes came to be released. Yet the Tamils remain unhappy as more needs to be done to bring in normalcy to the war-ravaged province. Sri Lanka's northern province witnessed a 26-year-long civil war which ended in 2009 when government forces defeated the Tamil Tiger who were fighting to create a separate state for Tamils in north. Fears of slow economic growth, including in emerging markets, and concerns over rising terror attacks have cast a shadow over the WEF annual gathering as the rich and influential deliberate on ways to boost global economy. With leaders from various countries, including US Vice President Joe Biden descending at this Alpine town, security measures have been beefed up by the Swiss authorities amid rising terrorism concerns. Meeting under the theme of 'Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution', this year's WEF meet would see participation of about 2,500 individuals, including political leaders and business honchos. The sluggish growth in China, whose economy expanded at the slowest pace in 25 years at 6.9 per cent last year, is likely to be a talking point at this annual meet of the rich and the powerful. The security situation has become tougher this year in the wake of terror attacks in Paris and other places in recent months. The Swiss Parliament has given its approval for deploying up to 5,000 Army personnel for the annual WEF meeting. Flagging off various risks to the world economy, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday trimmed the global growth forecast for 2016 to 3.4 per cent from 3.6 per cent estimated earlier. Besides, the projection for growth in 2017 has been cut to 3.6 per cent, down from 3.8 per cent forecast three months ago. "India and the rest of emerging Asia are generally projected to continue growing at a robust pace, with some countries facing strong headwinds from China's economic rebalancing and global manufacturing weakness," IMF said. The multilateral agency has warned of substantial risks to global growth from a slower Chinese expansion, a stronger US dollar, collapsed oil prices and political turmoil wreaking havoc on struggling economies like Russia and Brazil and across the Middle-East. (REOPENS FES131) In a message to the World Economic Forum, Pope Francis today urged leaders "not to forget the poor". He asked business leaders' to see creation of jobs as an essential part of their service to the common good alongside producing wealth and improving the world. "The present moment offers the world a precious opportunity to guide and govern the transformations associated with the fourth industrial revolution in a way that builds inclusive societies," the Pope said in his message. However, he said it brings diminished opportunities for employment that also brings with it a responsibility among leaders to create jobs, tackle inequality and help solve society's complex crisis. On the risk that the fourth industrial revolution poses to labour markets, the Pope said, "Clearly there is a need to create new models of doing business that, while promoting the development of advanced technologies, are also capable of using them to create dignified work for all." The Pope encouraged leaders to seize the opportunities that the Fourth Industrial Revolution presents and said WEF can become a platform for the defence and protection of creation and for the achievement of a progress which is healthier, more human, more social and more integral. The AAP today said the special court's order to release documents seized during CBI's raid on Delhi Secretariat has vindicated its stand and has "exposed blatant misuse" of the investigating agency by the Centre. "Special Court's order about release of documents, which were seized by the CBI during a raid on Delhi Secretariat, has only vindicated AAP's stand that the target of CBI raid at Delhi Secretariat was Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and not Rajendra Kumar. "The court order has made clear that the CBI had arbitrarily seized documents from Chief Minister's office, which were not related to the case which they claimed they were investigating. The court's order today has completely exposed Modi government's blatant misuse of the CBI," an AAP spokesperson said. CBI was today directed by a Special Court to return some documents seized by it during the raids at the office of Kejriwal's Principal Secretary Rajendra Kumar to the Delhi government. Reacting to the court order, AAP's Delhi unit Convenor Dilip Pandey said that the CBI raid was a ploy to "unsettle" the popular Aam Aadmi Party government. "AAP's consistent fight against BJP had exposed its politics of hatred. Rattled by humiliating loss in Bihar elections, Narendra Modi government had unleashed the CBI to terrorize the AAP government in Delhi," he said. "The BJP-led government at the Centre also knew that the Delhi government had initiated a probe against monumental corruption in DDCA under Finance Minister Arun Jaitely. They also knew that there was ample evidence on record that could create trouble for Jaitley. The CBI raid was aimed at seeing the DDCA probe file and terrorize the bureaucrats so that no action is taken in the DDCA scam," Pandey claimed. "CBI and the Centre, both had denied it categorically, but today's court order has exposed how CBI is still working as a political tool of the party in power," Pandey added. The party asked why did the CBI seized documents which had no connection with the case it was investigating and were solely related to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's work. "Does it not show that, contrary to your claim, the target of the CBI raid was Arvind Kejriwal and not Rajendra Kumar? "You (Modi and the BJP) had promised to make CBI an independent investigative agency, doesn't today's order flatten your claim? Was that another election jumla," the spokesperson added. A group of students belonging to SFI and AISF were arrested today when they attempted to stage a demonstration here seeking immediate action against Union Minister Bandaru Dattatreya over the suicide of a Dalit scholar in University of Hyderabad. Police said they arrested 23 students, including eight girls, who raised slogans against the Central Government over the issue. Students of Government Law college here boycotted classes and staged a demonstration over the issue in their campus. They raised slogans against Dattatreya and union HRD Minister Smrithi Irani, police said. Fairy tales such as Beauty And The Beast are much older than previously thought and are actually thousands of years old, academics found in research published today. Their analysis indicates that Beauty And The Beast and Rumpelstiltskin are around 4,000 years old while Jack And The Beanstalk can be traced back more than 5,000 years. Anthropologist Jamie Tehrani from Britain's Durham University and folklorist Sara Graca da Silva of New University Lisbon used techniques initally used in biology to study 275 Indo-European stories. Their findings suggest that folk tales existed in oral tradition long before they were put down in writing. This backs up a theory put forward by one of the most famous fairy tale tellers in history, Wilhelm Grimm of the 19th century Brothers Grimm. "Although most scholars agree on a very old ancestry, this view is not without disagreement," Da Silva told AFP. "Our results support Grimm's view and suggest that a substantial number of tales have existed in Indo-European oral traditions long before they were first written down." The pair even found that one tale, The Smith And The Devil, dated back 6,000 years to the Bronze Age. The research appeared in the journal Royal Society Open Science. A suicide bomber struck a minibus near the Russian embassy in downtown Kabul today, killing four people in the latest deadly attack in the Afghan capital despite an international push to jumpstart Taliban peace talks. The powerful bombing heard across Kabul also left 24 people wounded, though it was not immediately clear if the embassy was the intended target. No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attack, which comes just two days after a second round of a four- country meeting in Kabul aimed at reviving talks with the Taliban. "A suicide attacker rammed into a civilian minibus on Darul Aman road and there have been casualties," Kabul deputy police chief Sayed Gul Agha Rohani. The interior ministry, which earlier reported that the explosion was caused by a suicide bomber, said the bombing left four people dead and 24 others wounded. The road links downtown Kabul to the historic war-damaged Darulaman Palace, built by Afghan King Amanullah Khan. The loud explosion sent a plume of smoke rising in the sky, with ambulances and firefighters rushing to the scene which was littered with charred debris. Delegates from Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States convened in the Afghan capital Monday for a one-day meeting seeking a negotiated end to the 14-year Taliban insurgency. The first round of the so-called "roadmap" talks was held in Islamabad last week as the four nations try to lay the groundwork for direct dialogue between Kabul and the Islamist group. Taliban representatives were notably absent in both rounds and analysts caution that any substantive talks are still a long way off. The Taliban has stepped up attacks on government and foreign targets in Afghanistan this winter, when fighting usually abates, underscoring a worsening security situation. Observers say the intensifying insurgency highlights a push by the militants to seize more territory in an attempt to wrangle greater concessions during talks. At last week's talks in Islamabad an Afghan government spokesman said Pakistan would unveil a list of Taliban members who are ready for talks, but no names have so far been released. Pakistan -- the Taliban's historic backers -- hosted a milestone first round of talks directly with the Taliban in July. But the negotiations stalled when the insurgents belatedly confirmed the death of longtime leader Mullah Omar, sparking infighting within the group. Afghanistan sees the support of Pakistan as vital to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table. Suspected operative of Al Qaida in Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) Syed Anzar Shah, arrested for allegedly radicalising youths for terror activities in India, was today remanded in police custody till February 1 by a Delhi court. Shah was produced before Additional Sessions Judge Reetesh Singh after expiry of his police custody and the Special Cell of Delhi Police sought extension of his remand saying he was required to be interrogated further to ascertain the identity of his other associates. The police told the court that Shah was to be quizzed to unearth the entire conspiracy as well as funding of the terror outfit. Advocate Akram Khan, who appeared for Shah, argued that the police should first inform the court as to what they have done during the earlier police remand of his client. The court after hearing the arguments said that sufficient grounds were mentioned in the application of the police seeking extension of Shah's remand. Besides Shah, four other accused-- Mohammed Asif, Abdul Sami, Zafar Masood and Mulana Mohd Abdul Rehman Kasmi-- have been arrested in connection with the case. Police had earlier said that Rahman ran a madrassa in Uttar Pradesh where several students were enrolled and he was allegedly trying to radicalise them for terror activities. It had claimed that Masood was propagating the terror agenda of AQIS among the youths and trying to attract them towards the terror outfit. While Asif (41), was held from Seelampur in north-east Delhi, Rahman (37) was arrested from Jagatpur area of Cuttack in Odisha, police had said. They have been booked under provisions of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. According to special cell, Rahman is suspected to have international links in countries like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Dubai. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange could face questions from Swedish prosecutors "in the coming days" at his hideout in the Ecuadoran embassy in London, Ecuador's President Rafael Correa said today. Correa did not give a date for the interrogation over a 2010 rape allegation, which Assange denies, but said it would happen "very soon." "We hope in the coming days Mr. Julian Assange will be interrogated by Ecuadoran authorities on the basis of questions and requests from Swedish prosecutors," the president told a press conference. Assange fled to the embassy in 2012 to escape extradition proceedings. The 44-year-old Australian refuses to travel to Sweden to answer the allegation, saying he fears he would then face extradition to the United States and trial over the leaking of hundreds of thousands of classified US military and diplomatic documents in 2010. After a three-year stalemate, Ecuador and Sweden signed a legal cooperation deal last month that clears the way for Assange to be interrogated at the embassy. UPDATE The U.S. Department of Education released a pair of proposals related to Pell Grants designed to ensure that the federal higher education loan program helps more students obtain college degrees more quickly. Whether those proposals, released Tuesday, will succeed in making it into the federal budget is pretty unclear, however. One proposal, dubbed Pell for Accelerated Completion, would extend students eligibility for Pell Grants to a third semester, allowing more of them to take courses year-round and not stop their academic work during the summer. Thats what happens under the current Pell structure for many students, according the department. The department stated that this would provide about 700,000 students in higher education an additional $1,915, on average, for college completion. The other On-Track Pell Bonus plan would lift the cap on the maximum Pell Grant award by $300 for students who take at least 15 credits per academic semester. That would help students stay on track to get associate degrees in two years, assuming 60 credits for such degrees, and to get bachelors degrees in four years, assuming those degrees require 120 credits. The plan would help 2.3 million students next year get college degress more quickly, according to the department. The two new Pell proposals will help students to accelerate progress towards their degrees by attending school year-round and encourage students to take more credits per term, increasing their likelihood of on-time completion, the department said in a fact sheet. The Pell Grant program has about $28.5 billion in federal support, and the maximum grant a student can receive under Pell is $5,845 is for one academic year. So whats the cost of the two proposals released today? Around $2 billion for fiscal 2017, according to the Education Department. Its very questionable whether the proposals will get traction in Congress. Getting the Pell Grants system stabilized has been a tricky act for lawmakers recently, with funding shortfalls a major concern in recent years. Congress debated reauthorizing the Higher Education Act last year, and Pell Grants were a part of that discussionincluding a provision to make the grants available for use year-round. But unlike the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, legislators havent gotten around to renewing it. (That might change soon , however, if Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., the chairman of the education committee and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the panels top Democrat have their way.) UPDATE: In a conference call with reporters, U.S. Undersecretary Ted Mitchell expressed optimism that Congress would take the proposals seriously because of the importance of higher education and its links to the workforce, saying, These are bipartisan issues. These are not Democratic issues or Republican issues. Mitchell also said that the proposals were influenced by some initiatives at the state level, and singled out a pilot of performance-based scholarships from MDRC, a nonprofit research organization, as one such initiative. During his State of the Union address earlier this month, President Barack Obama urged Congress to make college more affordable for students and help ensure that students arent stuck in the red because of higher education debt. He cited the idea of tuition-free community college, not Pell Grants specifically, in his speech. The department has been fairly active in this policy area. Late last year, for example, the department announced it was creating a $20 million pilot program for Pell Grants that would be earmarked for high school students taking dual-enrollment courses . And the leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton, said during a debate last year that Pell Grants should also be made available for students to defray living expenses . Follow us on Twitter at @PoliticsK12 . Syria peace talks are expected to begin within a few days, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said today, adding that Moscow was ready to cooperate closer with the United States on Syria aid supplies. Lavrov, who met his US counterpart John Kerry in Zurich today in a bid to create momentum for Syria peace talks to kick off as planned on January 25, rejected suggestions the negotiations might be delayed until February amid disagreements over who will represent the opposition. "We are sure that in the next few days, in January, these talks should begin," he told reporters. He stressed though that the United Nations was leading the process and the start date would ultimately be determined by UN chief Ban Ki-moon and his envoy on Syria Staffan De Mistura. The planned negotiations are meant to help end a conflict that has claimed more than 260,000 lives since it began nearly five years ago. But disagreement over who will represent the opposition has cast a shadow of doubt over whether the UN-brokered talks will begin on schedule. Lavrov meanwhile said today that he and Kerry had discussed the thorny issue of Russia's air strikes in Syria. He said Moscow was ready to coordinate more closely with the US-led coalition to help facilitate aid deliveries inside the war-torn country. "We spoke about how the Russian airforce, when planning its actions, takes into account the programmes that the UN humanitarian organisations, the Red Cross and other NGOs carry out," Lavrov said. "We said that we will be ready to more closely coordinate our actions with the American coalition in this direction," he stressed. Earlier today, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Russian air strikes had killed more than 1,000 civilians, including more than 200 children, in Syria since they began in September. Russia is a staunch ally of the Syrian government and has coordinated its strikes with Damascus, saying it is targeting IS and other "terrorist" groups. But activists and rebels accuse Moscow of focusing more on moderate and Islamist opposition fighters than IS. A coalition led by Washington has also been carrying out strikes against IS in Syria since September 2014, but it does not coordinate its raids with Damascus. Those strikes have killed 4,256 people since they began, among them 322 civilians, including over 90 children, according to the Observatory. Kerala Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala today asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take strict action against those who were involved in the alleged suicide by a Dalit student in Hyderabad Central university. He also demanded removal of Union Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya against whom an FIR was registered in the case. Meanwhile, a group of activists today expressed solidarity with agitating students across the country demanding action against those responsible for the death. Around 25 activists, including women, held a meeting in front of the state Secretariat here this evening and condemned the Centre's attitude towards the issue. They also carried placards, with slogans demanding justice to Rohith Vemula. The deceased, Rohit Vemula, was among five research scholars suspended by Hyderabad Central University in August 2015 and also one of the accused in the case of assault on a student leader. They were also kept out of the hostel. The body of Rohit was found hanging in the university's hostel room in the campus on January 17. The Afghan Taliban said today they were searching for a man who cut off his wife's nose, condemning the attack as "un-Islamic", after online images of the young woman sparked widespread outrage. Mohammad Khan has been on the run since he attacked his wife Reza Gul, 20, with a pocket knife on Sunday, severely disfiguring her face. The couple lived in restive Ghormach district in the northwestern province of Faryab, which is largely under Taliban control. Khan is believed to have fled to an area near the border with Turkmenistan, local residents told AFP. "We are searching for the husband and want to find out what made him take such action," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told AFP, rejecting local media reports that Khan had joined the militant group. Local Taliban official Noor Mohammad branded the attack as "un-Islamic". He said the group, who deprived women of many of their basic rights during their five-year rule, were "outraged by this incident". "We are trying to find the husband," Mohammad added, without elaborating on what the militant group, known for their brutal justice, would do to Khan if they found him. The incident is yet another example of the endemic violence against women in Afghan society, despite reforms since the hardline Taliban Islamist regime was ousted in a 2001 US-led invasion. The Afghan government has vowed to protect women's rights but failed to prevented violent attacks. In areas under Taliban control, the militant group often act as arbitrators of justice, and they had previously intervened in Gul's case to stop the persistent domestic abuse. Gul was married off five years ago as a teenager and was regularly beaten by her husband, forcing her to flee to her parents' home in a Taliban-controlled area, she previously told AFP. While there, she said, the insurgents made her unemployed husband swear on the Koran that he would not hurt her again. But soon after she returned to him, he sliced off her nose. Gul is currently in hospital in Faryab along with her two-month-old daughter. Provincial authorities in Faryab are making arrangements to send Gul to Turkey for reconstructive surgery, which is not available in Afghanistan. "The Turkish officials have promised that they will help in sending her to Turkey for treatment," Mohammad Marouf Samar, the province's acting health director, told AFP. "We are trying to get her national identification card and passport so she can travel," said Ahamad Javed Bedar, spokesman for the provincial governor. Tata Steel today said it has signed an in-principle agreement with the Quebec government to develop iron ore deposits in the Canadian province, a move that can help the steelmaker reduce its raw material costs. It relates to the provincial government's participation with TS Global Minerals Holdings', a Tata Steel group firm, in direct shipping ore project (DSO Project) in the Schefferville area. Both parties will also work on developing the transit for iron ore, a key raw material used in making steel, from Arnaud Junction to the multi-user dock of the Port of Sept-Iles. "Premier of Quebec Philippe Couillard, accompanied by the Minister of Economy, Innovation and Exports Jacques Daoust, announced the signing of an Agreement-in-Principle between the Government of Quebec and TS Global Minerals Holdings," Tata Steel said in regulatory filing. Tata Steel (India & South East Asia) managing Director T V Narendra signed the agreement on behalf of the firm on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. "This undertaking should lead to a decision, before March 31, 2016, with respect to a government participation in the DSO Project in Schefferville area, in the North Shore region. "Parties also agreed to cooperate in creating favorable conditions in the transit activities of iron ore from Arnaud Junction to the multi-user dock of the Port of Sept-Iles," the filing said. Commenting on the agreement, Couillard said: "To date, Tata Steel Group has demonstrated its social responsibility by ensuring the participation of local communities in execution of its project, and in particular, participation of Aboriginal communities. "It is in fact one of the key principles of the Plan Nord and one of the motivating factors for us to undertake discussions with a view to becoming a key partner in the development of the company's deposits." Tata Steel, through its subsidiary Tata Steel Minerals Canada, is also completing a DSO project in Schefferville, in which the firm has invested more than 1 billion Canadian dollars (about USD 1.5 billion). The company also plans to develop its DSO deposits in Quebec with the Government of Quebec. DSO project involves mining, crushing, washing, screening and shipping the sinter fines and pellet fines to Tata Steel's European steel making facilities. Tata Steel Group Finance Director Koushik Chatterjee said: "We are pleased to explore opportunities to collaborate with the government of Quebec in this challenging time for the mining industry. Heavily-armed terrorists today stormed a university in Pakistan's restive northwest Khyber- Pakhtunkhwa province and opened indiscriminate fire on students and teachers, killing one professor and injuring at least 10 persons. At least three gunmen entered the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, some 50 kms, south west of Peshawar, and opened fire on students and teachers in classrooms and hostels, media reports said. "Armed men stormed into the university premises early this morning," police said, adding that two explosions were heard inside the building and firing was still going on. Geo TV reported that Professor Hamid of chemistry department was killed while 10 other persons were injured. "A teacher ofthe varsity after evacuation said Chairman Chemistry Department Hamid has been martyred by the firing of the militants," it said, adding the terrorists barged into Hamid's room and fired at his head, killing him instantly. At least 10 persons, including security guards, sustained multiple injuries in the terrorist attack, police said. The injured were shifted to hospital. An emergency has been imposed in all hospitals in the town. University Chancellor Dr Fazal Rahim said there are over 3,000 students present inside the university along with an additional 600 guests who are present for a poetic symposium to mark the death anniversary of Khudai Khidmatgar Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan alias Baacha Khan who died on January 20, 1988. The terrorists barged into the university where the event was being attended by a large number of students. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's Member of Provincial Assembly Arshad Ali said the attackers entered the university after scaling its walls, Dawn reported. It quoted a woman inside the university as saying that intense firing is underway. Citing DSP Charsadda, the state-run PTV said that three armed men entered the university premises and opened fire. A large contingent of security forces had reached the site and started evacuating students. Army troops, police and personnel of Elite Force engaged the militants into gunfight. Security forces are not sure how many terrorists are holed up inside the university. The Taliban militants massacred over 150 people, mostly students, in an attack on an army-run school in Peshawar in December, 2014. Text message reminders can help reduce people's blood pressure by encouraging patients to collect and take their medication and educate them about hypertension and its treatment, a new study has found. Researchers from the Oxford University in UK and University of Cape Town in South Africa conducted a study on over 1300 adults with high blood pressure in the Cape Town area. They compared text message reminders and interactive text messaging to a control group receiving standard care. Patients were randomly split into three equal-sized groups. All patients received written information about high blood pressure and healthy living. The first group then received weekly messages at a time and in the language they chose (Afrikaans, English, or isiXhosa). The messages, designed in consultation with people in low-income communities in the area, encouraged patients to collect and take their medication and educated them about hypertension and its treatment. Extra messages were sent to remind people when medicine was ready for collection or when they had a clinic appointment. The second group received the same text messages but were able to interact with the automated service by calling to change or cancel appointments or change the language or time of the messages. The third group received standard care. Health workers used mobile phones linked to blood pressure measuring devices to collect health information about patients, and text messaging was managed automatically. After twelve months, all three groups had reduced blood pressure. However, those who had received text messages had a slightly greater reduction in their blood pressure and were more likely to have achieved a controlled blood pressure. Those who had had reminders were also more likely to have taken their medicine at least 80 per cent of the time - almost two thirds of those getting information messages reached that standard compared to just under half of those receiving standard care. "The improvements seen were equivalent to those expected from intensive one-to-one behavioural counselling, which is usually more expensive," said Andrew Farmer from Oxford University. "When we consider that those good at sticking to treatment are 20 per cent less likely to die prematurely than those who don't manage that, any relatively low-cost intervention that helps people manage their high blood pressure successfully can save the very real personal, social and economic costs of the disease," he added. The findings were published in the journal American Heart Association journal Circulation. In a relief to the textiles sector, government today said it has initiated the process of settlement of Rs 3,000 crore dues related to some 'blackout and left-out' cases which found no mention in the Amended Technology Upgradation Fund Scheme (ATUFS). "The process of settlement of dues related to the old cases has started," Textile Secretary Rashmi Verma said. Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI) Secretary General Binoy Job said the quantum of liabilities under the blackout and left-out period cases was around Rs 3,000 crore. The settlement of the committed liabilities had been a grey area after the government did not mention anything about it when it notified ATUFS for textile sector last week. The Union Cabinet approved the ATUFS in December in place of the Revised Restructured TUFS (RRTUFS) for technology upgradation of textile industry, a move expected to boost job creation and exports in the sector. During 2010-11, the RRTUFS was suspended for 10 months but eventually restored as a closed-ended scheme and restricted to future sanctions and committed liabilities reported by banks for sanctions already issued. The closed ended scheme was introduced without sufficient notice from the government for preparation on part of lending institutions, according to industry officials. Those who had invested in those 10 months in the so- called blackout period were left out and are still awaiting a decision on the eligibility of TUF scheme. Union Textile Minister Santosh Gangwar said the ministry may approach the Cabinet seeking approval for the much-awaited new national textiles policy that seeks to create 35 million jobs and boost exports to over USD 300 billion. "The draft policy is ready and discussions are on. We hope to place it before the Union Cabinet in a month's time," Gangwar said at the inauguration of the India International Garment Fair (IIGF) here. The government had earlier said the policy may be unveiled after last year's Union Budget. However, the discussions with Ministries like Finance and Labour got stuck over financial incentives and relaxation in regulations, leading to delay in framing of the policy. The new policy aims to achieve USD 300 billion textiles exports by 2024-25 and envisages creation of additional 35 million jobs. It also aims to address concerns of adequate skilled work force, labour reforms, attract investments in the textile sector, and to provide a future road map for the textile and clothing industry. Keeping in view various changes in the textile industry on the domestic and international fronts and the need for a road map for the textile & apparel industry, Ministry of Textiles had initiated the process of reviewing the National Textile Policy, 2000. The IIGF has attracted 809 buyers from across the globe, 350 buying agents and 200 visiting buyers. There are 322 participants. Expressing the concerns of the garment export industry, AEPC Chairman Ashok G Rajani said: "Exporters are concerned with zero duty access in EU market by Vietnam. Vietnam exports are likely to grow faster due to implementation of zero duty from 2017, even as India faces import duty of 9.6 per cent. "Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) allows export opportunities in Vietnam to US with a benefit of 17-30 per cent export duty relief. While India-EU Broad-based Trade and Investment Agreement (BTIA) are yet to be finalized, exporters are expecting faster conclusion of the talks so that they can compete with Bangladesh and Vietnam". Garment exports posted a 5 per cent growth in December to USD 1.44 billion even as overall exports dipped 14.75 per cent. In the April-December 2015-16 period, exports of ready made garments increased 2.8 per cent to USD 12.47 billion. Three policemen were killed by suspected jihadists in an overnight attack in central Mali, police and military sources told today. Shortly before of the attack, in a televised speech to mark the 55th anniversary of the Malian army, President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita had paid tribute to "some of our valiant soldiers, some of the worthy sons of our country (who) paid with their lives in this patriotic commitment", insisting that "their sacrifice is not in vain". The three policemen were shot dead in an overnight attack near the town of Mopti while on duty, a military source in Mopti told AFP. Confirming the attack, a local police official said the trio were ambushed about 60 kilometres (40 miles) from Mopti, once a popular tourist destination. "They went into an area that is difficult to access," said the police source. "The terrorists set an ambush and they were caught in the ambush." Two soldiers and a guard were killed in separate attacks in northern and central Mali on Friday. Northern Mali fell under the control of jihadist groups linked to Al-Qaeda in 2012. The Islamists were largely ousted by a French-led military operation launched in January 2013, but large swathes of Mali remain lawless and prone to attacks. In November last year, 20 people, 14 of them foreigners, were killed in an attack claimed by jihadist groups on the Radisson Blu hotel in the capital Bamako. No-frills carrier Tigerair will start additional flights from Hyderabad and Tiruchirappalli to Singapore between April 25 and June 15. The carrier, a subsidiary of Singapore Airlines Ltd, has decided to operate one seasonal additional flight each from both places after seeing good response from passengers during peak seasons. "From April 25 to June 15, 2016, the airline will increase flight frequency on its Hyderabad-Singapore route, taking the total count to seven weekly flights while Tiruchirappalli-Singapore route would have a total of 14 weekly flights," Tigerair said in a press release today. The move is part of Tigerair's growth strategy in the Indian market and its commitment to meeting increasing demand from travellers in India, it added. "Tigerair has always viewed India as an extremely significant part of our global network as we realise the potential and opportunities that the market has to offer," Teh Yik Chuan, Director (sales and marketing) at Tigerair Singapore, said. The frequency on the Hyderabad-Singapore and Tiruchirappalli-Singapore routes has been raised on account of overwhelming response from these markets during the peak season, he noted. "As of November 2015, more than 9,24,000 Indian travellers have visited Singapore, registering 7.4 per cent growth," Singapore Tourism Board Area Director (India & Sri Lanka) Bridget Goh said. India is among the top five visitor markets for Singapore, with over 9,43,000 Indian travellers in 2014 and the average length of stay being 6.8 days, she added. Tigerair operates 44 weekly flights to Singapore from six places in India -- Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Lucknow, Kochi and Tiruchirappalli. The airline has also announced an all-inclusive return fare to Singapore from Hyderabad starting from Rs 11,599 and the offer is applicable on tickets booked from January 20 to January 31. The travel period will be from March 9 to April 16. The total electorate in Tamil Nadu has been put at 5.79 crore with the addition of 12.33 lakh voters and women outnumber men, according to final electoral rolls done ahead of assembly polls due in a few months. As per the final rolls released today, women out numbered men and 47 Indian citizens living abroad have been enrolled, state Chief Electoral Officer Rajesh Lakhoni said in a release. The special summary revision was carried out with January 1, 2016 as the qualifying date and there is a net addition of 12.33 lakh electors. Out of the total electorate, 2.91 crore voters are women, 2.88 crore men and the third gender 4,383. "For the first time, we are sending SMS to eight lakh new voters who have given their mobile phone numbers with information of their polling stations and other related details," Lakhoni told PTI. As a special feature, all first-time electors will be given an information brochure "Voter Guide," with necessary information about voting processes along with Electors Photo Identity Card. The assembly constitutency with the highest number of electors is Sholinganallur in Kancheepuram district (which is also a suburb of Chennai) with 5,75,773 voters. The lowest number of voters are in Kilvelur (SC) in Nagapattinam district with 1,63,189 voters. Thirumangalam constituency in Madurai has the highest number of "service voters" (like the armed forces) with 2,402 electors. The rolls are available on website http://elections.Tn.Gov.In. "Eligible persons not finding their names in the electoral rolls can apply for inclusion. We encourage people to apply online at http://elections.Tn.Gov.In," the release added. We know that the Every Student Succeeds Act , which passed with big bipartisan support, doesnt force states to stick with or adopt the Common Core State Standards. So what does it actually ask for when it comes to this particular issue? The short answer is that the standards language in ESSAthe latest iteration of the Elementary and Secondary Education Actstrikes a delicate compromise thats kind of complicated to wrap your mind around. So what did the Democrats get? ESSA calls for states to adopt challenging academic standards (thats the same language that the previous version of the law, the No Child Left Behind Act, used). But ESSA goes a little further, saying that these standards must be aligned with what students need to know to take credit-bearing courses in college, or with state career and technical education standards. In fact, this is one of the Obama administrations favorite talking points about the lawtheyre really excited that, in their view, it sticks with the whole idea of college- and career- readiness. When ESSA was being negotiated, however, some Democrats had actually wanted to go even further, requiring state higher education institutions to sign off on standards, just like they have to under NCLB waivers, advocates said. But that didnt fly with the GOP team. What did the Republicans get? The secretary is specifically prohibited from coercing states to adopt a particular set of standards, including Common Core. In fact, thats in ESSA more than once. And the law includes a line saying that nothing in the legislative text gives post-secondary institutions the authority to determine specific state standards. (Which I would assume means that colleges cant write the standards themselves, or point to some existing set of standards, and then force the rest of the state to go along with whatever they pick.) Heres where it seems to get complicated: ESSA allows the department to provide more clarification on standards in regulation. And they could ask post-secondary institutions to take a look at the standards their states are pitching and make sure that they will get students ready for the academic or working world beyond high school. That would essentially require in regs what negotiators reportedly couldnt get into actual legislation. Its not an out-of-the-blue ask, its what states essentially have needed to do for the past few years. Still, it could prove controversial. So where will the department decide to come down? Some folks want the department to provide some specificity to make sure states know what to do and that standards will truly prepare kids for the future. For instance, Scott Sargrad, the director of standards and accountability for the Center for American Progress, urged the department to provide more guidance on standards during a public meeting on ESSA last week. But, given the sensitivity around standards , others are hoping the department will just leave well enough alone. Mike Petrilli, the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and a common-core supporter who has been critical of the administrations role in promoting the standards, is crossing his fingers that the administration will use a light touch here. I really think the Department should simply restate the legislative language on this. Change not a single word! Please for the love of God! he wrote in an email. We should find out more in coming months. Standards are one part of the law that will be subject to negotiated rule making. That means a bunch of interested parties show up at the department and try to hash out an agreement in person. And in the end, it may not matter much one way or the other, if most states to decide to stick with the standards they have now, whether thats common coreor something else. This only has the potential to become a sticking point if lots of states decide to change their expectations dramatically. Follow us on Twitter at @PoliticsK12 . BSF's camel contingent will continue to march in the ceremonial Republic Day parade here after all. In an afterthought, the contingent of camels caparisoned in rich bridal attire and silver bracelets jingling has been finally called in to march down the Rajpath, keeping alive the 66-year-old tradition of the country's main parade on January 26. With less than a week to go for the national event, the iconic contingent today took part in dress rehearsals for the first time after it was made to skip the same exercise on January 17 and 18. The four-footed contingent, colourfully bedecked, are a major attraction at the parade every year. Officials said the Border Security Force authorities were informed yesterday evening by the Ministry of Defence to mobilise their squad and participate in the drill at the Rajpath today morning. "The camel contingent today participated in the dress rehearsals for the first time. The squad has been here for the last about three months but no intimation for participating in the rehearsals for January 26 parade were made earlier. It skipped the scheduled and notified rehearsals held on January 17 and 18," the officials said. The 90-camel contingent, 54 with troops and the rest with band personnel, first became part of this national festival celebration in 1976 after it replaced a similar squad of the army which had been participating in the Republic Day parade since it first took place in 1950. The BSF is the only force in the country to have these majestic and elegantly dressed four-legged animals for both operational and ceremonial duties. They are used by BSF personnel for patrolling along the Thar desert running along the Indo-Pak International Border in Rajasthan. The contingent had been the intrinsic part of the parade at the Rajpath every January 26. "The contingent has been practising at other facilities till now and it can surely give its best by putting its best foot forward in the last few days before January 26," officials said. According to tradition, the lead camel contingent on Republic Day showcases smartly dressed and large-moustached and armed BSF border guards, the second follows with bandsmen in beautiful multi-colour dresses on the back of the camels playing martial music. "The camel contingent may also now be included in the Beating the Retreat ceremony to be held on January 29 where they stand on the ramparts of the North and South Blocks on Raisina Hill," officials said. A Turkish court today sentenced a woman to almost a year in jail for making an obscene hand gesture at President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in an anti-government protest in 2014, reports said yesterday. Filiz Akinci was convicted of making an offensive hand gesture at Erdogan -- then prime minister -- while his bus was passing on his way to a rally for local elections in the western city of Izmir in March 2014. In the sixth hearing of the trial today, the court in Izmir sentenced Akinci, an economist and a mother-of-two, to 11 months and 20 days in jail, Dogan agency reported. The court had originally sentenced her to six months in jail, but doubled it because the "victim" was a public official, Dogan added. Akinci's sentence was eventually reduced by ten days due to her "good behaviour" during the trial. She was also ordered to pay USD 590 in legal costs to Erdogan's lawyer Sema Cansu Bozkurt Sutcu. "I am not guilty. I didn't commit any crime," Akinci told the court, breaking down into tears when the verdict was read out. The Vijayawada police today arrested two automobile dealers for allegedly selling duplicate spare parts of Mahindra brand. Police spokesperson Sambasiva Rao said that a team led by sub-inspector B Srinivas of Governorpet police station raided the shops belonging to M Raghava Reddy and T Gopi on Monday. Duplicate Mahindra king pins rods, brake linings, tractor kit, bearings, air filters and oil filters were seized and the two shop owners were arrested. A spelling mistake has landed a 10-year-old Muslim boy in the UK in trouble. The boy, whose has not been identified, was questioned by the police in north west England for mistakenly writing that he lives in a "terrorist house" instead of "terraced house" during an English lesson in school. It emerged that was a spelling error as he meant to write terraced house, in reference to an architectural style in England of rows of identical homes with shared side walls. The boy was interviewed by Lancashire Police at his home in Accrington, Lancashire, the following day and the family laptop was examined. "This was reported to the police but was dealt with by a joint visit by a PC from the division and social services, not by anyone from Prevent. There were not thought to be any areas for concern and no further action was required by any agency," a Lancashire Police statement said. The UK government's anti-radicalisation Prevent strategy and the 2015 Counter Terrorism and Security Act places a statutory duty on schools and colleges to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism. Teachers have been legally obliged to report any suspected extremist behaviour to police since July. The boy's family have said that they were left shocked by the incident, which took place on December 7, and want both the school and police to apologise, BBC reported. "You can imagine it happening to a 30-year-old man, but not to a young child. If the teacher had any concerns it should have been about his spelling. They shouldn't be putting a child through this. He's now scared of writing, using his imagination," the boy's cousin has said. Miqdaad Versi, assistant secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, the UK's largest umbrella group for Islamic associations, said he was aware of dozens of similar cases taking place in schools around the country. "There are huge concerns that individuals going about their daily life are being seen through the lens of security and are being seen as potential terrorists rather than students," he said. Britain today announced a slew of investments to deepen trade and economic ties with India in the infrastructure and financial services sectors, a day after Finance Minister Arun Jaitley held talks with his UK counterpart. UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, said the discussions as part of the eighth UK-India Economic and Financial Dialogue (EFD) will further boost trade and investment between the two nations. "The agreements we've made today are another important step in deepening economic ties between Britain and India. Working together across infrastructure and financial services we will be able to solve key shared challenges which will help us create growth in both of our economies," Osborne said. "I want to thank Arun (Jaitley) and his team for travelling to London and for making today's talks a success, as we bring our two great economies closer together," he said. The UK's Treasury department released a series of agreements reached during the EFD held yesterday. Under the Indian National Infrastructure Partnership, the UK will support the delivery of major infrastructure projects in India across key sectors including smart cities, renewable energy and railways, all of which are vital for India's future growth. This initiative will support India's development and may also present significant new commercial opportunities for UK businesses offering expertise in infrastructure delivery and financial and professional services. India will press ahead with liberalising the Indian legal services market to allow foreign lawyers the right to operate in India, the UK's Treasury department said. This will act as a catalyst for international investment in India and give businesses the access they need to international legal advice. It will also bring new opportunities for the UK professionals, who will benefit from being offered similar rights to those that Indian firms already enjoy in the UK, allowing them to enter partnerships with Indian firms and bring their specialist expertise to India. Both sides welcomed the prospect of a pipeline of rupee bond issuances in London by Indian corporates, and agreed that the first such public sector issuance would be by the Indian Railway Finance Corporation. This will help build on the success of rupee bond issuances in London by the International Finance Corporation, and demonstrates the UK's position as a business partner of choice for the world's fastest growing economies. As the rupee markets build, London's capital markets will play a key role in financing India's continued rapid economic growth, the department said. Both nations agreed to substantially strengthen links between the leading FinTech communities in India and Britain. This includes significant joint commitments to high-profile FinTech trade missions between the two nations and major steps towards UK FinTech companies helping to deliver 'digital India', covering priority areas like access to finance for micro-enterprises. REOPENS FGN 36 FirstGroup, the leading Transport operator in the UK and North America, will operate employee shuttle buses at the Hinjewadi IT Park in Pune. The five-year contract will commence in April, 2016 initially at Hinjewadi and is expected to expand across India. The group will use its shuttle bus expertise from existing First Transit operations in North America and is working with local partner, bus maker Tata, who will maintain the vehicles. Lovibond Tintometer - a leading UK supplier of water analysis equipment based in Wiltshire - has committed to setting up a factory and sales service operation in Hyderabad with the aim of enhancing the production of instruments and chemical reagents to meet the rapidly growing demand for high quality water testing products in India. Tintometer will be investing over 1 million pounds in this project over the first three years. London-based consulting engineering firm Pell Frischmann has won three major contracts in the Mumbai region. The contracts have been awarded by the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) and will see Pell Frischmann evaluating the detailed project report and bid process management of the 33-km Mumbai Coastal Road project, alongside two contracts for major Waste Water Treatment Works located in Mumbai suburbs. Edinburgh-based Dryden Aqua, a marine biological company specialising in water quality and treatment technology, has secured a contract to install their product in 5,000 rural community drinking water systems in India during 2016. The current project is valued at 500,000 pounds for this year, with the technology improving the availability of clean drinking water in these communities. Recognising the development of the Fintech sector in India, Startupbootcamp FinTech, the leading UK-based accelerator focusing on financial services innovation, will soon launch a branch in Mumbai. This new branch will enable the growth of the overall FinTech ecosystem in India and foster the next generation of innovative startups in this exciting region. Diabetacare has procured a partnership project for Diabetes Services in King George Medical College, Lucknow - India's largest hospital with over 3,600 inpatient beds. The contract will see Diabetacare invest about 500,000 pounds over two years, with nurses being trained to become specialist nurses in diabetes - directly supporting Prime Minister Narendra Modi's National Skills Development Mission. UK-based water testing company Del Agua has won a 700,000-pound contract from the government of West Bengal to run a water testing programme for the entire state for 1 year. This project will help safeguard the local population from various water contaminants such as arsenic and fluoride. The president of the UN General Assembly said today that he is "cautiously optimistic" about negotiations on a Syria peace deal because the main powers with a stake in the conflict share the goal of defeating Islamic State extremists. Mogens Lykketoft also told The Associated Press that wealthy nations, particularly in Europe, should have done more sooner to help Syrian refugees survive in their overburdened regional host countries, such as Jordan and Lebanon. Lykketoft, who is from Denmark, told AP that that he is saddened by "xenophobic feelings and fears" expressed by some in Europe in response to the influx of hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees in recent months. On internal UN politics, Lykkehoft said he hopes the next UN chief will be a woman, which would be a first for the world body. A woman as the world's top diplomat "would be a brilliant idea," provided she meets the criteria for the job, he said. The term of the current UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, expires at the end of this year, and Lykketoft has been lobbying for greater transparency and General Assembly involvement in selecting candidates. Currently, permanent members of the UN Security Council play a key role in the selection. During his visit to Jordan, Lykkehoft visited the Zaatari camp for Syrian refugees and met with Jordan's King Abdullah II. UN-mediated talks on a political solution for Syria are due to begin next week, but delays are possible because of disagreement over which Syrian opposition groups should be allowed to attend. US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met today, but it was not clear if they managed to resolve their differences. Both sides said they did not support a delay in the talks. Once the talks begin, "we have reason to be ... Cautiously optimistic" because world powers and regional players such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran have a "very important common interest" in defeating IS, he said. This common goal "is what should be guiding us toward the roadmap" for a political settlement, he added. At the same time, the world must spend far more money and resources to help war refugees and those displaced by natural disasters, he said. A UN panel estimated in a recent report that USD 40 billion is needed in humanitarian aid worldwide each year, but that only USD 25 billion is being spent. Lykkehoft said the missing USD 15 billion amounts to a tiny fraction of global wealth and that spending the money now is preferable to facing new waves of migration. US crude tumbled below USD 28 a barrel in Asia today, hitting new 12-year lows, after the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned that the oil market could "drown in oversupply". West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the US benchmark, fell to levels last seen in September 2003, striking USD 27.55 a barrel at one point. At around 0500 GMT, the contract was trading at USD 27.68, down 78 cents, or 2.74 per cent. WTI had closed at USD 27.13 on September 23, 2003, after hitting an intra-day bottom of USD 27.10. Brent crude -- which briefly fell below USD 28 on Monday to levels not seen since November 2003 -- was 48 cents lower at USD 28.28. "The IEA report played a big part in the price decline," said Phillip Futures analyst Daniel Ang, adding that this underscored the current "bearishness in the market". He also said the WTI February contract was due to expire later in the week, which could have prompted traders to roll over their positions to the March contract. The IEA said Tuesday oil prices are set to fall further this year as supply vastly exceeds demand, with major oil exporter Iran's return to the market offsetting any production cuts from other countries. "Can it go any lower?" the IEA said. "Unless something changes, the oil market could drown in oversupply. So the answer to our question is an emphatic yes. It could go lower." The market has been awash with supplies owing to high production levels in the United States and in the OPEC cartel, which last year rejected calls to slash output as it looks to maintain its market share. Prices have crashed about 75 per cent since mid-2014, hit by a perfect storm of a supply glut, weak demand, a slowing global economy and a strong dollar. The oil crisis has caused ructions across global markets, wiping trillions of dollars off valuations, with weak demand for the commodity signalling weakness in economies. The tumbling prices have also led to major energy firms scaling back or cancelling investment and projects, and laying off thousands of workers. "Clearly there is a further focus on the potential for Iranian additions to daily supply," said Michael McCarthy, chief market strategist at CMC Markets Australia. "On top of that, there are further concerns that there's a stockpile to be cleared in Iran now that sanctions have been lifted," he told AFP by telephone from Sydney. "Coming on top of a very fragile pricing environment, that's clearly had an impact." Iran on Monday ordered a boost to crude production a day after the West lifted sanctions on the country in response to Tehran's compliance with a deal on curbing its nuclear programme. Iran's National Iranian Oil Company said it had ordered output to increase by 500,000 barrels per day. The country currently produces 2.8 million barrels per day and exports just over a million. "It's the supply side that is getting the focus at the moment. The demand aspect is a longer term proposition for the market," added McCarthy. "We're now outside fundamentals and for that reason it is very difficult to forecast where it will stop. When markets panic, they become unpredictable. The US and French defence ministers today condemned Moscow's role in the Syria conflict, saying Russian jets should stop targeting the opposition forces fighting the Islamic State group. "The Russians are on the wrong track strategically and lso in some cases tactically," said US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter after a meeting in Paris of seven defence ministers in the coalition fighting IS. "We don't have a basis for broader cooperation (with Russia)," Carter said. His French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian said, for his part: "We hope that Russia will concentrate its efforts against Daesh (the Arabic acronym for IS) and stop bombing the groups of the uprising (against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad) who themselves are fighting Daesh." At the same time today, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia was ready to work more closely with the US-led coalition to help facilitate aid deliveries inside Syria. Speaking after talks with his US counterpart John Kerry in Zurich, Switzerland, he said: "We spoke about how the Russian air force, when planning its actions, takes into account the programmes that the UN humanitarian organisations, the Red Cross and other NGOs carry out. "We said that we will be ready to more closely coordinate our actions with the American coalition in this direction." He also said UN-brokered Syria peace talks would begin "in the next few days" in Geneva. Lavrov rejected suggestions that the negotiations, tentatively set for January 25, might be delayed until February amid disagreements over who will represent the Syrian opposition. "We are sure that in the next few days, in January, these talks should begin," he told reporters. The US Navy is launching a carrier strike group to be powered partly by biofuel, calling it a milestone toward easing the military's reliance on foreign oil. But critics, including environmentalists, say biofuel production is too costly and on a large scale may do more harm than good. Most of the group's ships will run on a mix of 90 per cent petroleum and only 10 per cent biofuels, though that could change. The Navy originally aimed for the ratio to be 50/50. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack were scheduled today to inspect the ships before they set sail off San Diego. "In 2010, we were losing too many Marines in convoys carrying fossil fuels to outposts in Afghanistan, and the prohibitive cost of oil was requiring us to stop training at home in order to keep steaming abroad, a dangerous and unsustainable scenario," Mabus said in a statement. The Defense Department uses 90 per cent of the energy consumed by the federal government, spending billions of dollars annually on petroleum fuels to support military operations. All military branches are looking to cut their ties to foreign oil as part of a national security strategy. Since 2008, the Navy has cut oil consumption by 15 per cent since 2008 and the Marine Corps has reduced it by 60 per cent. The Navy is aiming to draw half its power from alternative energy sources by 2020 so ships can refuel less, stay out at sea longer and no longer be at the mercy of fluctuating oil prices and oil-producing nations, Mabus said. The federal government has invested more than USD 500 million into drop-in biofuels, which can be used without reconfiguring engines. The fleet also includes nuclear vessels, hybrid electric ships and aircraft powered partly by biofuels. The Navy in 2009 called for ships to run on 50 per cent biofuel and 50 per cent petroleum. After that, the price for a barrel of oil topped USD 100 and has since dropped to as low as USD 29 a barrel. Some of the biofuel comes from beef fat from the Midwest. Similar contracts are in the works to fuel ships elsewhere. Retired Navy Capt Todd "Ike" Keifer, who has published a study on the Navy's plan, said he does not believe the Navy will ever get "any meaningful quantities of cost-competitive biofuels." "Biofuels sound good, but it turns out that making carbohydrates (biomass) into hydrocarbons (ideal fuels) is a very laborious and wasteful process that is far more costly and much harder on the environment than producing fossil fuels," he said. The US today strongly condemned the terror attack on a university in Pakistan's restive northwest, saying it will stand "side-by-side" with the country in its fight against terrorism. "The United States strongly condemns today's attack on Bacha Khan University in Charsadda. We offer our deepest condolences to the victims and their families during this time of grief," State Department Deputy Spokesman Mark Toner said. "It is particularly appalling that these terrorists continue to attack educational institutions, targeting Pakistan's future generations," Toner said. "The United States stands with the government and people of Pakistan and their efforts to create a secure, stable, and prosperous country, and we will stand side-by-side with Pakistan in its fight against terrorism," he said in a statement. Heavily-armed Taliban militants stormed the prestigious university in Pakistan's restive northwest Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province this morning, firing indiscriminately on students and teachers. 20 people -- 18 students, a professor and a staffer -- and four terrorists had been killed in the attack. Cross-posted from High School & Beyond . UPDATED The GED Testing Service has decided to lower the pass rate for its high school equivalency exam, a move brought on by its recognition that students who passed the latest, tougher version of it were doing better in college than high school graduates. The move, first disclosed Wednesday by the Atlanta Journal Constitution , will allow states to lower the passing score on the GED from 150 to 145. The GED Testing Service projected that if all states choose to use the new lower passing score, 100,000 people could pass one or more subjects of the test, and 25,000 could be eligible for a GED credential by passing all four sections. The company issued a recommendation that states grant retroactive passage to those who failed with the previous score of 150, but each state can make its own decision. States are expected to release details on Jan. 26 about how theyll handle the change. Current pass rates dropped significantly after Pearson and the American Council on Education, who make the test, released a more difficult version to reflect the Common Core State Standards. Fewer people are taking the GED , too, since the new version made its debut in January 2014. More are taking new, competing equivalency tests , the HiSET and the TASC. Robert Schaeffer, the public education director for the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, said the GED is an important pathway to opportunity for young adults, and the new version made accessing those opportunities more difficult. Lowering the passing score is a move in the right direction, he said. States are taking different approaches to the new passing score. GED Testing Service spokesman CT Turner said that some will start using it right away, others wont use the new score until March, and some might not use it at all. Others will use the lower cut score retroactively, granting passage to those who didnt reach the previous passing score. Not all states confer diplomas for GED passage, but those that do could decide to confer diplomas retroactively. Georgia is one such state: It will grant diplomas retroactively to students who failed the GED with a cut score of 150, according to the Journal Constitution. The decision to lower the passing score came from analyzing longitudinal data, Turner said. Tracking student performance into college, the company noticed that in several states, fewer students who passed the GED needed remedial coursework than those who earned high school diplomas. In Oregons community colleges, for example, far fewer GED-passers needed remediation in math or language arts than those who earned high school diplomas. The GED Testing Service noted a similar pattern in Rhode Island and in North Dakota, he said. The GED Testing Service aims to set its passing rate to reflect the achievement of the typical high school graduate, and the data showed that a revision was needed, Turner said. We wanted to make sure that the cut score is on par with the average graduating high school senior, Turner said. Thats what policymakers and the public expect from the GED: that it reflectsbut isnt ahead ofthe curve for high school performance. He rejected the idea that the company erred when it set the original cut score at 150. We did it based on sound research. We had a technical advisory group, we did a norming study. The only difference here is that in the past, we wouldnt have had this information for years and wouldnt have been able to make an adjustment so quickly. Now we have the data to take into account, very quickly, the actual performance of adult learners, what theyre doing once they pass, and how theyre performing. Said FairTests Schaeffer: If thats not admitting they set the bar too high, then I dont know what is. The GED exam is unchanged; the only change is that the passing score will be lowered, making it more inclusive, Turner said. Along with the lower passing score, the GED Testing Service is introducing another change, too. Instead of just one cutoff pointpassing or not passingit now has three. A score of 145 will connote high school-level skills. A score of 165 will signify college readiness, and come with a recommendation that people who score at that level skip remedial work or placement tests, and enroll in credit-bearing classes. A score of 175 will connote not just college readiness, but college-level skill, and will come with a recommendation that students receive credit for coursework in the subjects in which they received those scores. Since the GED covers math, language arts, science, and social studies, scores of 175 in each subject could suggestat colleges that decide to accept itthat students automatically earn three credits in math, three credits in science, three credits in social studies, and one credit in language arts, Turner said. Ten percent of those who have taken the GED since January 2014 have scored a 175 or higher in one or more subjects, Turner said, so that means there could be college credit waiting for them. Jeff Carter, the executive director of the National Council of State Directors of Adult Education, predicted that reaction to the GEDs move to lower the passing score will reflect a tension in his field. The tricky part for us is that tension, he said. None of us want to present unnecessary new barriers to adult students, but at the same time, we all think there need to be high standards. Having healthy debate about that is something we need to continually do. The US-India Business Council (USIBC) and Indian IT industry body Nasscom hosted a meeting with members of the US Congress to discuss the opportunities and challenges, including those around visa, for Indian technology firms. The meeting, held yesterday, saw participation from Nasscom member companies and five US Congress members -- Ami Bera, Brendan Boyle, Derek Kilmer, Billy Long and Juan Vargas. The delegation, led by Congressman Bera, will also meet senior government officials and business leaders to gain a deeper understanding of the opportunities for collaboration between the countries. Bera, who is the only Indian American currently serving in Congress, is also the Co-Chair of the House India Caucus in the US House of Representatives. "This meeting was important because it gave Indian tech companies an opportunity to showcase the contributions they have made to the US economy. We emphasised that the Indian IT sector, which is a USD 148 billion industry, is the crown jewel of the Indian economy and, as such, is extremely important to the US-India bilateral relationship," USIBC President Mukesh Aghi said in a statement. Congressman Bera said the visit provided great insight into the opportunities the US and India have to strengthen and grow their technology sectors. "I look forward to continued discussions about expanding foreign direct investment and market access to help grow our economies and deepen US-India ties," he added. Sources said the recent hike in visa fee was also discussed. The US, under the 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, has imposed a special fee of USD 4,000 on certain categories of H-1B visas and USD 4,500 on L1 visas. Almost all Indian IT companies would pay between USD 8,000 and USD 10,000 per H1B visa from April 1, when the next annual H1B visa filing session starts, thus making it quite economically unsustainable for them. According to Nasscom, this is expected to have an impact of about USD 400 million annually on India's technology sector. Slamming the ruling Congress-led UDF and opposition CPI(M)-led LDF for 'ruining' the state, BJP today launched its much hyped political yatra ahead of the coming Assembly elections in Kerala from this northern-most district. Senior BJP leader and Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu flagged off the 'Vimochana Yatra' led by party's state president Kummanam Rajasekharan at Uppalla. The yatra would cover 140 constituencies across the state and conclude in state capital on February 10. After its better show in the recent civic elections, BJP is looking to open its account in the Assembly elections in the state, which has been ruled by UDF and LDF alternatingly. Rajasekharan has recently been appointed state president, to steer the party in the election-bound state. Speaking on the occasion, Naidu lashed out at successive governments of UDF and LDF that ruled the state, accusing the two fronts of having ruined the state over the years. He saidleaders of both UDF and LDFwere involved in corruption and pursue appeasement policy. Naidu said BJP's vision was all-round development and justice for all, devoid of special affinity towards any particular section. The party-led central government's aim was to have housing for all by 2022, he added. Naidu also took a dig at Congress and CPI(M), who are rivals in the state, but has no qualms in joining hands in West Bengal and New Delhi. Terming as "unfortunate" the suicide of Rohit Vemula, a research scholar at the Central University of Hyderabad,Naidu charged Congress with indulging in "misleading propaganda" over the incident. The authorities will take action on the basis of the investigation report, he said. Hitting back at Congress, he said the party that failed to respond when eight students of the university committed suicide during the tenure of the UPA was "celebrating" the issue now under the pretext of"compassion for Dalit community". On the Centre's approach to Kerala, he said it fully supported the Rs 5,187 crore Kochi Metro Rail project and had extendedRs 600 crore till date, he said. Noted film actor Suresh Gopi read out a pledge at the function presided over by senior party leader O Rajagopal. The political yatras of Congress led by KPCC President V M Sudheeran and CPI(M) led by politburo member Pinarayi Vijayan are presently winding up across the state. (Reopens DEL 54) Shah came to the limelight after he scripted the party's stupendous victory in Uttar Pradesh in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls as it bagged 71 seats of the total of 80 while another two were won by its ally Apna Dal. Shah was in-charge of UP affairs during the time. Party veterans L K Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Yashwant Sinha and Shanta Kumar have raised a banner of revolt on the way the party was being run for the past few months. They had also sought to find the reasons behind the party's loss in Delhi and Bihar assembly elections. Shah faces a tough challenge of steering the party to victory in the upcoming assembly elections due in Assam, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Kerala in the next few months. He also faces the challenge of assembly elections in crucial states like Uttar Pradesh, besides in Punjab, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, where polls are due in early 2017. (REOPENS DEL26) Raking up Ishrat Jahan case, the political resolution said the new facts that have emerged have "exposed" Congress' dubious role in compromising national security for petty political ends. "Yet Congress party does not betray any remorse or self- introspection. Their leaders are seen brazenly rubbing shoulders with secessionist and ultra-Leftist elements who are demanding vivisection and destruction of Bharat," a party statement said quoting the resolution. It also took at dig at electoral understanding between Congress and the Left in West Bengal, saying they have done so in their desperation to stop BJP's exponential growth. The "cynical and irrational" opposition of Congress and some other parties to the government's transformative agenda, including the GST bill, has resulted in enormous damage to the country, it alleged. A sacred giant turtle venerated as a symbol of Vietnam's independence struggle has died, state media said, prompting an outpouring of grief and fears the death bodes ill for an upcoming communist leadership handover. The reptile, a critically endangered swinhoe softshell turtle, occupies a key mythological role in Vietnam -- in the past the turtle generally surfaced only rarely, with its sightings deemed auspicious. Some scientists believe it was one of only four turtles -- better known as Yangtze giant softshells -- in existence. Two are in China and the other lives in a different lake in Hanoi. It was found dead in Hoan Kiem lake in central Hanoi late yesterday, the state-run Tuoi Tre newspaper said. The turtle, which weighed about 200 kilogrammes (440 pounds), was said to be between 80 and 100 years old. Its demise was widely mourned on Vietnamese-language blogs and social media, with many warning it was a bad omen for upcoming changes in the ruling Communist Party, which begins its five-yearly congress on Thursday. "This is bad for many people in Hanoi," said the Thanh Nien newspaper. Vietnam's authoritarian rulers will choose a new party leader, president and prime minister at the party congress. In a story taught to all Vietnamese school children, the sacred turtle of Hoan Kiem is the custodian of the magic sword of Le Loi, a 15th century rebel leader who vanquished Chinese invaders. Although officially an atheist country, many Vietnamese are deeply superstitious. "I feel empty. My children, grandchildren will only know the turtle from legend," online commentator Duong Nguyen wrote on the popular VNExpress site. Reports about the turtle's death first appeared in state media late yesterday, but some were taken down apparently under pressure from communist authorities. The turtle's body is being kept at a temple on a small island in the lake pending an official decision on how to proceed, state media said, adding that embalming was being considered. Vietnam said China has moved an oil rig into disputed waters in the South China Sea in a move that could result in a repeat the 2014 stand-off between the communist neighbors. Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Hai Binh said in a statement posted on the ministry's website late Tuesday that Vietnam has raised concerns with China over the movement of Haiyang Shiyou oil rig, and has demanded that China stop any drilling and remove the oil rig from the area where the two countries' continental shelves overlap that have not been demarcated. "Vietnam demands that China not conduct any drilling activities and withdraw Hai Duong 981 oil rig from this area," he said, using the Vietnamese name for the oil rig. "Vietnam reserves all its legal rights and interests in the area in accordance with international law," he said. The oil rig was at the center of a stand-off between the countries in May 2014 when China parked the rig off Vietnam central coast. It was towed away more than two months later, but the incident sparked deadly anti-China riots in Vietnam and plunged bilateral relations to their lowest point in years. The move of the oil rig into disputed waters also comes as more than 1,500 delegates from Vietnam's ruling Communist Party gather in Hanoi on Wednesday for a once every five-year congress that will select the country's new leaders and set development plans for the next five years. Maintaining that the alleged suicide of a Dalit student and ongoing row in the Hyderabad Central University is "beyond issue of SCs", Trinamool Congress MP Derek O'Brien today said his party would coordinate with other parties in supporting the agitating students. "This is the fight for justice versus injustice. This is intolerance. There is a documentary evidence from whatever we have seen that clearly points to pressure, ruthless kind of pressure. Parliament is closed now but we will bring Parliament here," he told PTI. O'Brien, who was speaking in the HCU where he met the protesting students and expressed solidarity with them, said Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal would come to the HCU tomorrow, followed by the visit of a JD(U) delegation. "Chief Minister of Delhi is coming we are coordinating with all the political parties. The boys want the support. We said we will help them to coordinate with all the parties who want to come here. More will come", he said. Addressing the protesting students, he said political leaders would support the agitation to be led by the students. The NDA Government talked about 'digital India' but what happened in the HCU is "divisive India," he claimed. "This country has always prided itself in inclusion but now, we are making it, it is either my way or no way. On one side, his government talks about digital India. Digital India be gone, it is 'divisive India," he said. The TMC MP supported the students' demands, including compensation to the family of the Dalit student Vemula Rohit Chakravarthi, and providing a job to his family. (Reopens BOM6) The Trinamool Congress today termed the alleged suicide of a Dalit student a result of confrontation between "tolerance and intolerance". "This is a confrontation between tolerance and intolerance. This is a confrontation between justice and injustice," TMC national spokesperson Derek O'Brien said in a statement. The Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) will set up 13 night shelters in the city in which around 500 children of homeless people and pavement dwellers will be kept, the civic body today informed the Bombay High Court. MCGM, in an affidavit submitted before a division bench of Justices A S Oka and C V Bhadang, said initially 13 shelters will be constructed in different parts of the city in which 500 children will be accommodated during night time. The court was of the view that if policy permits, then some temporary structures can be set up under flyovers and homeless children can be accomodated there too. The HC was hearing a public interest litigation filed by NGO 'Homeless Collective' highlighting the plight of pavement dwellers. The petition has sought directions to the civic and state authorities to identify homeless persons and ensure adequate night shelters for them. The PIL contended that for every one lakh population in a city, there should be one night shelter as per National Urban Livelihood Mission (NULM). According to that norm, Mumbai should have 207 shelters. However, only nine night shelters are operating at the moment as opposed to the 25 that were promised in 2012, it said. A woman allegedly committed suicide by setting herself afire while her son was charred to death as fire engulfed their hut in Ranaghat of Nadia district, police said today. The youth, identified as Subhajit Roy, a first year college student, and his mother Chaina (38) were charred to death last night at Math Kumra village, they said. Chaina was rescued by the neighbours and rushed to a hospital where she died of her burn injuries in the early hours today, police said. The woman, in her dying statement, told the hospital authorities that she had poured kerosene and set herself on fire after an argument with her son over his non-attendance in computer classes. The fire spread and soon engulfed their hut as Shubahjit had fallen asleep after bolting his room from inside, the doctors said quoting her statement. Her husband Shyamal Roy was not present as he works in Mumbai as a construction worker, the police added. Meanwhile, an Air India spokesperson said that the minor fire (which broke out on the 22nd floor of AI building in Mumbai this morning) was brought under control in minutes by AI security, fire brigade and other agencies. Also, there were no casualties and the damage is being assessed. The top management is at the site and the CMD is also rushing to the site from Delhi, the spokesperson added. A 25-year-old man was beaten up and handed over to the police by a woman lawyer for allegedly eve-teasing her in a moving bus at Khatoli area here. The incident happened yesterday when the lawyer was travelling in a bus to Meerut when the accused Aaaz Mohammed started misbehaving with her, police said. The lawyer apparently beat him up and handed over the accused to the police. An FIR was registered against Mohammed (25), police said. In another incident, three people were injured in a clash between two groups over alleged eve-teasing and passing comments on girls at Pipalhera village under Titawi police station yesterday. The trouble started after one Rinku Singh passed comments on three sisters who were en route their work place, police said. Three persons, including the father of the girls who were injured have been admitted to the hospital, they said. The accused Rinku Singh is under custody, police added. Work on the ambitious Rs 5,763- crore Eastern Peripheral Expressway, with a plan to build it in 400 days, has kick-started after redressal of land acquisition issues, government said today. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had laid the foundation stone of the 135-km long Eastern Peripheral Expressway with an estimated cost of Rs 5,763 crore in November last year along with Rs 2,274 crore Western Peripheral Expressway and a eight-laning project worth Rs 2,129 crore. "The work of Eastern Peripheral Expressway, which was held up due to land acquisition problems has kick-started on the Palwal side after the release of enhanced compensation by the NHAI as awarded by the Arbitral Tribunal," a statement from National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) said today. The farmers are now happily handing over the land to NHAI in Palwal district, the statement said adding that Chairman, NHAI, Raghav Chandra has complimented Deputy Commissioner, Palwal for his support in resolving farmer issues. In a meeting with all five contractors of the project -- Sadbhav Engineering, Jai Prakash Associates, Ashoka Buildcon, Oriental Structural Engineers and Gayatri Projects, Chairman, NHAI "has impressed upon them the need to plan ahead with military-precision so as to complete the project in 400 days as desired by Prime Minister," the statement said. It said chief secretaries of Uttar Pradesh and Haryana have again been requested to ensure that there is no obstruction to NHAI work. "It is now likely that the problems in other areas will also be resolved very soon. Further, to monitor the project on real time basis, a web based 'APP' has been developed and the photos of the running work shall be uploaded which can be viewed for monitoring by NHAI headquarter," it said. Chairman of NHAI is reviewing the project with officers on almost daily basis, it said adding, the next meeting with Commissioners of Rohtak, Meerut and Gurgaon & DMs/DCs of Sonepat, Baghpat, Ghaziabad, Gautam Budh Nagar, Faridabad and Palwal districts is scheduled today. All contractors have mobilised their resources including manpower and machinery. The project on completion will help in decongesting the traffic in the national capital. According to information, NHAI has transferred Rs 1,530 crore for land compensation and of this Rs 1,335 crore has already been paid to people whose land were acquired. The project work has been divided into six packages - 21 km stretch in Sonepat-Baghpat, 24.5 km stretch in Baghpat-Ghaziabad, 24.5 km stretch in Ghaziabad-GB Nagar, 22 km stretch in GN Nagar, 21 km stretch in GN Nagar-Faridabad and 22 km stretch in Faridabad-Palwal. The project falls in Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari has said, "The government is committed to decongest Delhi. We have set an ambitious target. This is to complete the Eastern and Western Peripheral Expressway in 400 days." Earlier the deadline for the project was set as two-and-a-half years. Apple sells its iPhones, iPads and Macs in India through third party resellers, and industry analysts estimate that the Cupertino, California-based company has less than a 2 percent share in India's smartphone market, dominated by cheaper brands. The company has filed an application with India's Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion to open its own stores, Amitabh Kant, secretary at the federal trade ministry unit told . Apple also confirmed the application filing, but declined to give details. Its expansion plans in India come at a time when concerns about slowing growth in the United States and China, the world's most important market for smartphones, have weighed on the company's stock in the last few months. Shares in Apple, the world's most valuable company by market value, are down 28 percent from their peak in April last year. The company operates more than 450 stores in 18 countries. Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri told in October that Apple had 25 stores in China and was opening a new one roughly every month. Its plans for India have been held back due to restrictions on foreign investment in the retail industry, which require single brand overseas retailers to buy close to a third of the goods sold at their stores from local producers. Apple representatives held talks with Indian government officials about a relaxation of the 30 percent local-sourcing norms before filing the application, said a source familiar with the company's plans. Apple's plans come against the backdrop of initiatives unveiled by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who met with Apple chief Tim Cook during his U.S. visit last year, to boost foreign investments in India. In November, the government eased foreign investment norms in 15 major sectors, including relaxing the mandatory local-sourcing rule for foreign single-brand retailers in the case of "cutting-edge technology" products. Kant said his department would examine Apple's application in view of the changes made for local sourcing. For years, India has been a low priority market for Apple as spending power is weaker than in China, where the company's iPhones swiftly became must-have devices after their 2007 launch. But Apple is now looking to boost its market share in India's rapidly growing market, and the company's recent growing spend on advertising in the country has indicated an aggressive campaign to sell more. India is likely to overtake the United States to become the world's No. 2 smartphone market in 2017, according to research firm Strategy Analytics. The local smartphone segment is dominated by Samsung Electronics and India's Micromax. (Additional reporting by Manoj Kumar and Karen Rebelo; Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee and Susan Fenton) The U.S. Supreme Court has asked the Obama administration on whether it should take up a special education case stemming from a dispute over whether a 5-year-old girl with cerebral palsy could bring her doctor-prescribed service dog to school. The legal issue in the case of Fry v. Napoleon Community Schools (No. 15-497) is bit more technical than the dispute over whether a goldendoodle named Wonder could accompany and help the girl at school. The legal question is whether a 1986 federal statute that amended the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act requires families to exhaust procedures under the IDEA when they are suing under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 or the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Those latter statutes provide for damages, which the IDEA does not. Stacy and Brent Fry, the parents of Ehlena Fry, sued under the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act after the Napoleon district in 2009 barred Wonder from helping the girl, except for a short trial period when the dog was required to remain in the back of the classroom, court papers say. The school district said in court papers that E.F.'s individualized education program called for a human aide to assist her, so the dog wasnt necessary. The girls parents filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Educations office for civil rights, which investigated and concluded that the district was violating the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act. The parents, who had begun homeschooling E.F. during the conflict, declined to re-enroll her in the Napoleon schools following the OCR ruling, believing that the girl would face difficulties after the dispute. They continued to press their suit for damages under the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act, but they lost in two federal courts. Although damages are not available under the IDEA, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, in Cincinnati, held in the Fry case that a child with a disability who brings a damages claim under the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act must first exhaust IDEA proceedings when the injuries alleged can be remedied through IDEA procedures, or when the injuries relate to the specific substantive protections of the IDEA. Congress enacted a law known as Handicapped Childrens Protection Act of 1986 in response to a 1984 Supreme Court decision, in Smith v. Robinson, that the IDEA was the exclusive statute for a student with a disability to assert an education-related claim, even if a claim might exist under other federal disability laws or the Constitution. Congress wanted to make clear that families could press the rights of students with disabilities under other laws, such as the Rehabilitation Act. (The ADA came along later.) But the 1986 measure does require that if education-related claims brought under other laws are also available under the IDEA, then the family must exhaust state administrative remedies under the IDEA first. Some six other federal circuits have adopted a rule similar to that adopted by the 6th Circuit. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, in San Francisco, has ruled that whether a plaintiff could have sought relief available under the IDEA is irrelevant, and what matters is whether the plaintiff actually sought relief available under the IDEA. The Fry family urged the Supreme Court to take up their case to settle the conflict among the circuit appeals courts. In a brief order on Jan. 19, the Supreme Court asked the U.S. solicitor general to file a brief expressing the views of the federal government. It is a tactic the justices take with some regularity in special education cases. The solicitor generals office has no deadline for filing its views, and it will probably take at least several months to respond to the courts order. Photo: Brent and Stacy Fry with their daughter, Ehlena, and her service dog, Wonder. (American Civil Liberties Union photo.) By Pete Sweeney and Samuel Shen SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China's volatile stock markets fell more than 1 percent on Wednesday, though mounting chatter about imminent policy stimulus provided some support against the backdrop of a fresh slide in oil prices, which hit stock markets across the globe. Asian stocks were down sharply, and Wall Street saw its rally swamped overnight as U.S. crude sank beneath $28 a barrel for the first time since 2003, hammering energy stocks and boosting safe havens. The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index was down 1.1 percent by early afternoon after a 3.25 percent bounce on Tuesday. The CSI300 index of the largest listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen was down 1.4 percent, having risen 2.95 percent the previous session. Tuesday's jump was fuelled by expectations that the People's Bank of China (PBOC) would soon act to loosen monetary policy again after the latest data confirmed economic growth hit a 25-year low last year. The indexes are down 15-16 percent so far in 2016 after a series of sharp sell-offs. On Tuesday, the statistics bureau also released weaker-than-expected readings on industrial output and retail sales for December, while the Commerce Ministry said on Wednesday that foreign direct investment also fell in the final month of the year, and China's external trade faced relatively severe pressure in 2016. A new survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in China showed that the slowdown is hitting profits at more foreign companies operating on the mainland, and the vast majority believed China's growth would fall well short of the central bank's forecasts of 6.8 percent this year. Economic concerns have also weighed on China's yuan currency, which is down about 5 percent since August, encouraging a destabilising outflow of capital. The PBOC has acted aggressively to deter speculators from shorting the yuan. But two surprise devaluation moves from the central bank in six months and a cooling economy have only reinforced market expectations of further yuan weakness. On Wednesday, the PBOC set a firmer midpoint for the currency at 6.5578 per dollar, from which the spot rate can vary by 2 percent. The spot yuan was little changed from its previous close, and offshore the currency was just a little weaker, trading nearly 0.3 percent below the onshore rate. The impact of China's sluggish economy and weak yuan has also hit Hong Kong, where many international investors place their bets on China. The Hang Seng index was down 3.5 percent on Wednesday while the Hong Kong China Enterprises Index tumbled 4.9 percent. The Hong Kong dollar fell to an eight-year low against the greenback. HOLIDAY CASH A raft of new regulations have seen yuan trading volumes fall off sharply, pulling the gap between its onshore and offshore levels down from more than 2 percent in the first week of 2016. The gap was fuelling speculation and capital flight and damaging the credibility of China's currency management. Late on Tuesday, the central bank announced it would inject more than 600 billion yuan ($91 billion) into the banking system to help ease a liquidity squeeze expected before the long Lunar New Year in early February. Such a move is usual before the holidays and stopped well short of an actual cut in bank reserve requirement ratios (RRR), which would have freed banks to lend more. China's woes combined with the slump in commodities to prompt the International Monetary Fund to cut its global growth forecasts again on Tuesday. It warned the world's second-largest economy would see growth of only 6.3 percent in 2016. The government-backed China Securities Journal reported that Beijing had the policy space for further easing to support the economy, including raising deficit spending to around 3 percent of annual economic output. "The activity data, the domestic market sell-off and unsettled global financial markets require macro policies to stay accommodative for an extended period," wrote David Fernandez, head of Asia Pacific fixed income research at Barclays, in a note to clients. "We continue to look for two, 25 basis-point benchmark rate cuts in the first half of the year, and maintain our forecast of two RRR cuts." (Reporting by Pete Sweeney, Samuel Shen and Shanghai and Beijing newsrooms; Writing by Wayne Cole and Will Waterman; Editing by Kim Coghill) By Jonathan Saul LONDON (Reuters) - United Arab Shipping Company (UASC), in which Saudi Arabia holds a stake, is resuming business to Iran, becoming the latest shipping line to re-establish ties after the lifting of Western sanctions, the group told on Wednesday. A nuclear deal between world powers and Iran led to the removal on Saturday of international oil export prohibitions as well as restrictions on banking, insurance and shipping for Tehran. Kuwait-headquartered UASC, founded in 1976, said "the carrier started accepting shipments to and from Iran". "It is important to note that a number of sanctions are still in place, therefore, the ability to accept cargo volumes to/from Iran will continue to be based on UASC's strict internal compliance check, which is in line with the international laws and applicable sanctions," it said in a statement. With U.S. sanctions still in place, which exclude U.S. persons, banks and insurers from trading with Iran including dollar business, shipping and marine insurance sources say many foreign companies are likely to tread carefully. UASC, which has corporate offices in Dubai, is owned by the governments of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Iraq. Qatar holds a 51 percent stake in the group, while Saudi Arabia has a 35 percent stake with the remaining nations having smaller holdings. Sunni Muslim power Saudi Arabia cut relations with Shi'ite Iran earlier this month. The crisis erupted when Saudi Arabia executed a prominent Shi'ite cleric on Jan. 2 and Iranian protesters retaliated by storming and setting fire to the Saudi embassy in Tehran. In solidarity with Riyadh, Kuwait and Qatar subsequently pulled out their ambassadors from Tehran, and the United Arab Emirates downgraded its ties. Bahrain and two non-Gulf states, Djibouti and Sudan, severed relations completely. A source close to UASC told separately it was business as usual despite the tensions. "Historically, since the company's foundation, politics normally stayed away from the board room," the source said. "UASC is commercially managed." The source said UASC weathered Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, even with staff relocating for a while. "If you look at the shareholding nations' relationships ... they were not always at the best levels," the source said. "Meetings continued and services were normal," the source said, referring to the 1991 Gulf War in which a U.S -led coalition forced Iraq out of Kuwait. NEW OPPORTUNITIES UASC, which suspended all Iran business in April 2013, said it would initially service the Islamic Republic using smaller feeder ships via third parties that shipped containers to Iran from the United Arab Emirates. It aimed to resume direct calls as soon as possible. "For the shipping industry, the relaxation of sanctions is likely to create opportunities resulting in additional volumes due to the expected increase in infrastructure projects as well as the ability of Iranian consumers to access a wider range of foreign goods," UASC said in the statement. Iran had depended on foreign ships for much of its imports, but has relied more on land routes and its own commercial fleet, particularly since 2012, as layers of sanctions led to an exodus of Western shipping firms, causing supply disruptions. In August last year the world's number three line, France's CMA CGM, and number four, Evergreen of Taiwan, were the first to resume direct services to Iran. In late December MSC of Switzerland, the world's second biggest container shipping line, resumed direct calls. The world's biggest line Maersk said this week ?it was "looking into how and when we can resume container transportation services to/from Iran", without providing further details. German container line Hapag Lloyd said this week it would continue to offer only feeder services, which started in November, adding it would handle "all Iran cargo with utmost care in terms of compliance". According to consultancy Alphaliner, UASC's market share, based on fleet capacity, is estimated at 2.6 percent versus nearly 15 percent for Maersk. (Editing by David Evans) By Jonathan Saul LONDON (Reuters) - United Arab Shipping Company is resuming business with Iran following the lifting of Western sanctions, despite the deep-seated political rivalry between the Islamic Republic and Saudi Arabia, one of the shipping line's main shareholders. A nuclear deal between world powers and Iran led to the removal on Saturday of international oil export prohibitions as well as restrictions on banking, insurance and shipping. Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia has grave reservations about the lifting of sanctions on its main regional rival, with which it cut ties earlier this month after its Tehran embassy was attacked following Riyadh's execution of a Shi'ite cleric. Other Gulf nations which hold stakes in UASC also have difficult relations with Iran. But a source close to the shipping line made clear that for UASC, commercial considerations were more important than political difficulties. Kuwait-headquartered UASC told on Wednesday it had "started accepting shipments to and from Iran". "It is important to note that a number of sanctions are still in place, therefore, the ability to accept cargo volumes to/from Iran will continue to be based on UASC's strict internal compliance check, which is in line with the international laws and applicable sanctions," it said in a statement. With U.S. sanctions still in place, which exclude U.S. individuals, banks and insurers from trading with Iran including business denominated in dollars, shipping and marine insurance sources say many foreign companies are likely to tread carefully. UASC, founded in 1976 and with corporate offices in Dubai, is owned by the governments of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Iraq. Qatar holds a 51 percent stake in the group, Saudi Arabia has 35 percent and the remaining nations have smaller holdings. Sunni Muslim power Saudi Arabia cut relations with Shi'ite Iran earlier this month. The crisis erupted when Saudi Arabia executed a Shi'ite cleric on Jan. 2 and Iranian protesters retaliated by storming and setting fire to the Saudi embassy in Tehran. In solidarity with Riyadh, Kuwait and Qatar subsequently pulled out their ambassadors from Tehran, and the United Arab Emirates downgraded its ties. Bahrain and two non-Gulf states, Djibouti and Sudan, severed relations completely. The source close to UASC told it was business as usual despite the tensions. "Whatever makes sense commercially and whatever benefits customers are a priority. That is how UASC looks at this matter," the source said. "Qatar and Saudi being the largest shareholders in UASC clearly do not impact its commercial activities." "Historically, since the company's foundation, politics normally stayed away from the board room," the source said. "UASC is commercially managed." The source said UASC weathered Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, even with staff relocating for a while. "If you look at the shareholding nations' relationships ... they were not always at the best levels," the source said. "Meetings continued and services were normal," the source said, referring to the 1991 Gulf War in which a U.S -led coalition forced Iraq out of Kuwait. UASC said prior to cutting ties, the Iranian market represented around 2 to 3 percent of the group's overall business. The container market has been hit by a slowdown in demand from Asia, especially China. The sector is also suffering one of its worst recessions due to worries over the world economy and a surplus of vessels available for hire, leading shipping lines to seek what opportunities they can. NEW OPPORTUNITIES UASC, which suspended all Iran business in April 2013, said it would initially service the Islamic Republic using smaller feeder ships via third parties that shipped containers to Iran from the United Arab Emirates. It aimed to resume direct calls as soon as possible. "For the shipping industry, the relaxation of sanctions is likely to create opportunities resulting in additional volumes due to the expected increase in infrastructure projects as well as the ability of Iranian consumers to access a wider range of foreign goods," the UASC statement said. Iran had depended on foreign ships for much of its imports, but has relied more on land routes and its own commercial fleet, particularly since 2012, as layers of sanctions led to an exodus of Western shipping firms, causing supply disruptions. In August last year the world's number three line, France's CMA CGM, and number four, Evergreen of Taiwan, were the first to resume direct services to Iran. In late December MSC of Switzerland, the world's second biggest container shipping line, resumed direct calls. The world's biggest line Maersk said this week ?it was "looking into how and when we can resume container transportation services to/from Iran", without providing further details. German container line Hapag Lloyd said this week it would continue to offer only feeder services, which started in November, adding it would handle "all Iran cargo with utmost care in terms of compliance". According to consultancy Alphaliner, UASC's market share, based on fleet capacity, is estimated at 2.6 percent versus nearly 15 percent for Maersk. (Editing by David Evans and Giles Elgood) By Manolo Serapio Jr MANILA (Reuters) - Gold edged higher on Wednesday as a further fall in equities and oil burnished bullion's safe-haven draw, although slow physical demand from Asia kept the metal well under this month's peak. Asian stocks slid to a four-year trough as U.S. crude oil plumbed a fresh 2003 low, underlining worries about the global economy. The dollar also retreated. The International Monetary Fund cut its global growth forecasts for the third time in less than a year after China's economy grew at its slowest rate in a quarter of a century in 2015. Spot gold was up 0.4 percent at $1,091.36 an ounce by 0630 GMT. U.S. gold for February delivery gained 0.2 percent to $1,091.70 an ounce. "Gold's safe haven rationale is back in vogue," Citigroup analysts said in their 2016 commodities outlook, amid fears over the Chinese economy, weak equity markets and geopolitical tensions in the Arabian Gulf. "While geopolitical issues typically tend to be short-lived in terms of lending support to gold prices, we expect ongoing global macro concerns to lend support this quarter, added by a modestly more benign U.S. dollar outlook," they said. Gold scaled a two-month high of $1,112 an ounce on Jan. 8 and has traded below that level since, facing resistance at around $1,090 that some analysts attribute to slow Asian physical buying. Demand for gold in China, the world's biggest consumer, is seen dented by an economy that could slow further. Nomura expects the world's second-largest economy to grow at 5.8 percent this year against 6.9 percent in 2015. There is a modest premium to world gold prices in China, and prices in India, the second-largest gold consumer, are at a discount to the global benchmark, wrote HSBC analyst James Steel. But Steel said the ability of gold to cut the bulk of losses, persistent risk-off sentiment and a revival in the euro suggest further price gains. "The $1,100/oz is a stiff resistance level, however, and while we believe it will be overcome, it may take some time," he said. Spot silver was flat at $14.015 an ounce and palladium slipped 0.7 percent to $488.61. Platinum, which touched a seven-year low of $812.95 an ounce on Monday, dropped 0.6 percent to $818.50. (Reporting by Manolo Serapio Jr.; Editing by Christian Schmollinger and Anand Basu) NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. oil prices crashed to below $27 dollars on Wednesday for the first time since 2003, caught in a broad slump across world financial markets with traders also fearful that the crude supply glut could last longer. The slide of more than 25 percent in oil prices so far this year has piled more pain on oil drillers and producing nations alike, yet they continue to pump more oil into an oversupplied market. A Venezuelan request for an emergency OPEC meeting to discuss steps to prop up prices did not stem declines. Other delegates dismissed the idea, and previous requests from Caracas have led nowhere. "You need the low price to slow down shale much faster," said Bjarne Schieldrop, chief commodities analyst with SEB in Oslo. He added that a "very broad-based sell-off across assets and across the world" amplified pressure on oil prices. U.S. crude for February deliver, which expires at the end of the day, fell $1.45 to $27.01 per barrel, a 5.1 percent loss, by 11:20AM EST (16:20 GMT). It hit a low of $26.85. Brent futures for March delivery fell $1.16 to $27.60 a barrel, a 4 percent loss. The spread between the two benchmarks narrowed to 61 cents. World equities sank to their lowest level since 2013, and the index's fall so far in January is already 9.9 percent, the biggest drop since 2009. While the International Monetary Fund's chief economist warned that financial markets seemed to be over reacting to falling oil prices and the risk of a downturn in China, demand concerns compounded an already bearish energy market. The International Energy Agency warned that the world could "drown in oversupply" of oil in 2016, with Iran's exports adding to the excess. The selloff triggered a further round of heavy selling among the biggest U.S. shale drillers, with Continental Resources down nearly 15 percent and Whiting Petroleum down 12 percent as investors feared much of the sector would struggle to withstand a prolonged period below $30. "Today, the oil industry is near a survival line," Lukoil's chief executive Vagit Alekperov said. "Unfortunately we are cutting drilling." (Additional reporting by Keith Wallis in Singapore; Editing by Dale Hudson, Mark Potter and Adrian Croft) NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. oil prices crashed below $27 dollars a barrel on Wednesday for the first time since 2003, caught in a broad slump across world financial markets with traders also worried that the crude supply glut could last longer. Oil has fallen more than 25 percent so far this year, the steepest such slide since the financial crisis, piling more pain on oil drillers and producing nations alike. Yet they keep pumping more oil into an oversupplied market. Venezuela requested an emergency OPEC meeting to discuss steps to prop up prices, but other delegates dismissed the idea. A UAE shipping firm became one of the first to resume direct business with Iran after international sanctions on Tehran were lifted at the weekend, a reminder of how quickly more oil may flow. "The Iranians are clearly stepping it up to battle for market share in Europe," said John Kilduff, partner at Again Capital LLC in New York. Not only is that a major market for Saudi Arabia and Russia, but U.S. oil is now flowing unfettered to Europe for the first time, "so it's a battle royale." U.S. crude for February delivery, which expired at the end of the day, slid $1.91, or 6.7 percent to settle at $26.55. New frontmonth March futures fell nearly 4 percent on the day to close at $28.35 a barrel. Brent futures for March delivery fell 77 cents to settle at $27.88 a barrel, a 2.7 percent loss after pulling back from a new contract low of $27.10. The latest step lower, the 11th decline in 13 days for Brent, set off a new round of panic buying on bearish options, sending the oil volatility index to its highest level since early 2009 when the financial crisis was starting to ebb. Schieldrop, chief commodities analyst with SEB in Oslo, said a "very broad-based sell-off across assets and across the world" amplified pressure on oil prices. World equities sank to their lowest level since 2013. The MSCI World Equity Index has dropped 11.1 percent in January, which if sustained would be the worst monthly loss since October 2008, the month after Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. [MKTS/GLOB] On Tuesday, the International Energy Agency warned that the world could "drown in oversupply" of oil in 2016, with the lifting of sanctions against Iran allowing that country to add its exports to the global glut. The selloff triggered a further slide in shares of big U.S. shale drillers, as investors feared much of the sector would struggle to withstand a prolonged period with prices below $30. Continental Resources dropped more than 8 percent. But oil prices may keep falling until traders see they are "slow(ing) down shale much faster," said Bjarne, referring to the desire of Saudi Arabia and other OPEC producers to protect market share from U.S. shale producers. Energy market watchers expect the global crude glut to persist through at least the end of this year, adding to stockpiles that in some places are testing tank limits. U.S. commercial crude oil stocks are forecast to have risen by 3 million barrels last week. Data from the American Petroleum Institute, a U.S. industry group, was due later on Wednesday. (Additional reporting by Libby George in London and Keith Wallis in Singapore; Editing by Mark Potter, Adrian Croft and Frances Kerry) By Libby George LONDON (Reuters) - Oil futures extended their decline on Wednesday, with U.S. crude touching its lowest since 2003, as a global supply glut bumped up against bearish financial that sparked deeper worries over demand. U.S. crude oil dropped more than 4 percent in early trading, falling to as low as $27.32 a barrel. It regained ground to trade down 92 cents at $27.54 as of 1450 GMT. The contract settled down 96 cents, or 3.26 percent, in the previous session. "You need the low price to slow down shale much faster," said Bjarne Schieldrop, chief commodities analyst with SEB in Oslo. He added that a "very broad-based sell-off across assets and across the world" amplified pressure on oil prices. Brent futures fell by 80 cents to $27.96 a barrel, but dropped as low as $27.70 earlier in the day, not far from Monday's 12-year trough of $27.67. They settled up 21 cents, or 0.7 percent, in the previous session. A Venezuelan request for an emergency OPEC meeting to discuss steps to prop up prices did little to stem declines. World equities sank to their lowest level since 2013, and the index's fall so far in January is already 9.9 percent, the biggest drop since 2009. While the International Monetary Fund's chief economist warned that financial markets seemed to be over reacting to falling oil prices and the risk of a downturn in China, demand concerns compounded an already bearish energy market. The International Energy Agency warned that the world could "drown in oversupply" of oil in 2016, with Iran's exports adding to the excess. "It's a continuous story that pushes prices lower and lower," said Hans van Cleef, senior energy economist with ABN AMRO. "We should see an effect on production." Russia's largest private oil producer said on Wednesday it expects the country's output to drop for the first time in many years in 2016. "Today, the oil industry is near a survival line ... Unfortunately we are cutting drilling," Lukoil's chief executive Vagit Alekperov said. A report said Canada's oil-sands producers were now losing money on every barrel, while U.S. shale producers were "burning cash" at current prices. U.S. commercial crude oil stocks were forecast to have risen by 3 million barrels last week, a survey taken ahead of weekly inventory data showed on Tuesday. A report on stocks from the American Petroleum Institute, a U.S. industry group, is due later on Wednesday. (Additional reporting by Keith Wallis in Singapore; Editing by Dale Hudson, Mark Potter and Adrian Croft) By Libby George LONDON (Reuters) - Oil futures fell further on Wednesday, with U.S. crude touching its lowest since 2003, as a global supply glut bumped up against bearish financial that sparked deeper worries over demand. U.S. crude oil dropped more than 4 percent in early trading, falling to as far as $27.32 a barrel. It bounced back to trade down 70 cents at $27.76 as of 0945 GMT. The contract settled down 96 cents, or 3.26 percent, in the previous session. "You need the low price to slow down shale much faster," said Bjarne Schieldrop, chief commodities analyst with SEB in Oslo. He added that a "very broad-based sell-off across assets and across the world" would amplify pressure on oil prices. "With oil being fundamentally weak, it should be moving down even further." Brent futures fell by 75 cents to $28.01 a barrel, after trading as low as $27.77, not far from the 12-year trough of $27.67 hit on Monday. They settled up 21 cents, or 0.7 percent, in the previous session. Asian equities hit four-year lows during the day's trading, partly as oil itself curbed investor appetite for risky assets. European stocks also opened under downward pressure. While the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund warned that global financial markets seemed to be overreacting to falling oil prices and the risk of a sharp downturn in China's economy, demand concerns were piling on to already bearish energy market sentiment. The International Energy Agency, which advises industrialised countries on energy policy, warned on Tuesday that the world could "drown in oversupply" of oil in 2016, with Iran's exports piling into the excess. Markets were watching for signs that the price rout was stemming buoyant oil production, which has poured a record amount of crude into storage tanks worldwide. An analyst report said Canada's oil-sands producers were now losing money on every barrel sold, while others warned that U.S. shale producers "were just burning cash" at current prices. U.S. commercial crude oil stocks were forecast to have risen by 3 million barrels last week, a survey taken ahead of weekly inventory data showed on Tuesday. A report on stocks from the American Petroleum Institute, a U.S. industry group, is due later on Wednesday. Official data from the U.S. government's Energy Information Administration will be out on Thursday, a day late due to a public holiday. (Additional reporting by Keith Wallis in Singapore; Editing by Dale Hudson) By Sankalp Phartiyal NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Mustard output in Rajasthan, India's top producing state, will rise more than a fifth this year, according to a government estimate, but some farmers voiced scepticism of the forecast as lower sowing levels and a warm winter could hurt the crop. Despite planting lagging behind in India's parched farms during a hotter-than-normal winter, the first official estimate of Rajasthan state that accounts for about half of the country's total output of the oilseed, suggests yields could still be better than last year. India is the biggest vegetable oil importer in the world, spending more than $10 billion a year to buy mainly palm oil from Malaysia and Indonesia. Overseas purchases have been rising steadily as local output falls and a growing population consumes more fried food. An official at Rajasthan's agriculture department told on Wednesday output will likely rise 21.4 percent to 3.5 million tonnes in the planting season that began on Oct. 1, from a low base last year when hail and rains damaged crops. Farmers in the state have sown mustard on 2.4 million hectares, slightly lower than the acreage last year, the official added. Harvesting will start in March. Temperatures in parts of Rajasthan have begun to dip and farmers are hoping for rain soon. Cold weather is important to the growth of mustard plants, the main winter oilseed with the highest oil content. But Nandram Jakhar, a mustard farmer in the desert state in west India, said he still thinks his crop will be weaker due to the warm and dry weather. "But if it rains and the weather continues to be cold, there is some hope," said Jakhar. (Editing by David Evans) By Tim Hepher DUBLIN (Reuters) - European planemaker Airbus said on Wednesday it had delivered the first A320neo, a fuel-efficient upgrade of its best-selling jetliner, to German carrier Lufthansa. The delivery marks the culmination of a five-year plan to give a new lease of life to Airbus's profitable A320 narrowbody jet family by revamping it with new engines. The handover is a boost for United Technologies unit Pratt & Whitney, whose decision to develop a new generation of engines accelerated plane projects from Canada to Russia and triggered a heavyweight riposte from Airbus and Boeing. Both have amassed thousands of new orders and shored up their domination of the global jet market by refreshing their short-haul models, though Canada's Bombardier and Brazil's Embraer continue to compete hard for sales. But the arrival of the first re-engined jet coincides with a slump in oil prices that has sparked debate over the sustainability of demand for fuel-saving jets, as well as financial market losses caused by concerns over the economy. Aircraft financiers have been busy for the past few years bankrolling orders of the A320neo and Boeing's rival 737 MAX, due to enter service in 2017. But at the industry's annual gathering in Dublin this week, financiers have been split over what the slide in oil prices from $114 a barrel in June 2014, to barely $28 today, means for both demand and the revenues linked to the two revamped models. Brent crude fell 4 percent on Wednesday to $25.54 a barrel. "There's plenty of competition for A320neos, but it's not as keen as it once was," said Gueric Dechavanne, vice president for commercial aviation services at Collateral Verifications, an aircraft valuation company. "People are not willing to overpay for a plane; there's a lot more caution out there," he said. For some airlines and major leasing firms, the aircraft is still an effective hedge against a new rebound in oil prices. "It is just 15 months since oil was at $100, and that is not lost on airlines. The only way to manage that over the longer term is to have a modern asset, so I don't see any let-up in demand for new aircraft," Aengus Kelly, chief executive of AerCap, the world's largest independent lessor, said. "If a CEO of an airline is looking at taking aircraft for the next 12-14 years he will never trust in fuel staying at these prices." The jet was delivered after a delay of three weeks caused by what Airbus officials described as problems with documentation. Qatar Airways earlier refused to take the first aircraft, sacrificing its place at the head of the queue to a European rival, after balking at lingering teething problems. The plane is also offered with alternative engines supplied by French-American joint-venture CFM International, owned by Safran and General Electric. (Reporting by Tim Hepher; Editing by Mark Potter and Adrian Croft) Washington The case before the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday involved talk of politics and patronage in local government. It happened to involve a city government, but it could have just as easily been a school district, as well get to in a bit. Jeffrey Heffernan was a police detective in Paterson, N.J., in 2006 when a mayoral election was approaching. Heffernans mother asked him to pick her up a yard sign of her preferred candidate, Lawrence Spagnola. Heffernan went to a campaign distribution point where workers were giving out the signs. He was a friend of Spagnolas and wanted him to win, but Heffernan himself did not live in Paterson, so he stayed out of any active participation in the campaign. While Heffernan was picking up the sign, however, he was observed by a Paterson police officer who served on the security detail of the incumbent mayor, Jose Torreswho happened to be running for re-election. Word soon trickled back to the mayor, with an impression that Heffernan was campaigning for the mayors opponent. The next day, Heffernan was demoted from detective to patrol officer, and he was soon walking a street beat. His supervisors didnt hide the fact that they were demoting him for campaigning, even though their action was based on a misimpression, and they never asked Heffernan for his story. Heffernan sued for retaliatory demotion in violation of his First Amendment free speech and association rights. But he lost in a federal district court and in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, in Philadelphia. Those courts held that 3rd Circuit precedents foreclosed a First Amendment claim based on a mere perception of his speech or association, and that he had not actually spoken or associated with anyone in a way that prompted the actions against him. The Supreme Court agreed to hear his appeal in Heffernan v. City of Paterson (Case No. 14-1280). In their high court brief , Heffernans lawyers argue that a long line of the courts decisions on politics and patronage in government workplaces protects the officer. They also contend that public employees such as police officers and school workers are often inundated with requests for campaign contributions and other assistance. These requests often come from incumbent candidates, who wield considerable power over municipal personnel decisions, Heffernans brief says. If these employees cannot be reasonably confident that they will be protected from retaliation if their employer perceives an insufficient level of support, the pressures for political conformity will mount. The brief cites a Newark Star-Ledger article about the school board in nearby Elizabeth, N.J. One teacher told the paper that she would constantly get solicitations from members of the citys board of education, asking for money. There were dinners, cocktail events, testimonials and tables of tickets to be bought and sold. It was a nonstop stream of beseechings. During the oral arguments in the case at the Supreme Court on Tuesday, Heffernans lawyer met some harsh skepticism from several members of the court about whether the police officer had suffered any constitutional violation at all. He wasnt associating with anybody any more than he was speaking, Justice Antonin Scalia told Heffernans lawyer, Mark Frost of Philadelphia. He was doing neither one. ... He was associating with his mother, I suppose, in picking up the sign for her. But he was not expressing any political view. Scalia said that Heffernan was fired for the wrong reason, but theres no constitutional right not to be fired for the wrong reason. Frost said Heffernan doesnt need to speak, and he doesnt need to take a position to be protected by the First Amendment Theres a constitutional right, Justice Scalia, to be able to be free from patronage decisions and to not be discharged or demoted on patronage grounds, Frost added. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy didnt seem to accept that theory, and he wondered aloud what right Heffernan was trying to vindicate. But then seemed to answer his own question. Would it be fair ... to say that youre asserting the right to be free from government inquiry into and oversight of your views? he asked Frost, in reference to Heffernan. It was a theme Kennedy returned to several times. Ginger D. Anders, an assistant to the U.S. solicitor general, also argued in support of Heffernans case. We think [he] has been hurt in the constitutional sense because the way that the court has defined the right in question is the right not to be subject to a test of political affiliation when its not a reasonable job requirement, she said. Thomas C. Goldstein of Bethesda, Md., representing the city of Paterson, said the First Amendment protects an individual right and not against a government wrong. An employee cannot bring a First Amendment free speech claim that says, you know, I didnt actually engage in speech, but my employer thought I did, Goldstein said. Heffernan has a very sympathetic claim, Goldstein acknowledged. I get the fact that we are very concerned that public employees not be transferred or demoted, but we have other laws and other regimes that fill that gap. He said Heffernan had potential remedies in his collective-bargaining agreement as well as under New Jerseys civil rights laws. Goldstein met strong resistance from Justice Elena Kagan. She expressed concerns about partisan officials coming into office and replacing workers without strong political affiliations"every couch potato out there, she saidwith their own sympathizers, and that no First Amendment violation would occur under Goldsteins arguments. See, I had always thought that ... part of the reason we have these protections is because we worry the government is doing things for impermissible reasons, Kagan said. That the government wants to create a world of speech in which everybody agrees with it and nobody opposes it. And thats a fundamental tenet of what the First Amendment and all our cases are about. Near the end of the argument, Goldstein sought to make a broad point about the Supreme Courts line of cases about political expression in government. There is a real concern that is rooted in a history of the United States involving political patronage, Goldstein said. The court has never tried to extinguish politics from local government. And if you try to do that in New Jersey, we are going to be here a lot. Social media major Facebook has alleged that someone at telecom regulator Trai's office blocked email from its websites which people used for sharing their comments on differential pricing issue - a key issue of net neutrality. Facebook has launched a public campaign to defend its free Internet platform Free Basics in response to consultation paper floated by The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on regulatory framework for differential pricing for data services. The social media apprehends that the regulator may ban its Free Basics platform, which allows access to some websites and applications, and hence launched a massive campaign to gather support in its favour. According to sources, Facebook in a letter to the regulator, has said that despite clear and timely efforts by millions of Indians to send their comments, "someone with access to designated Trai email account appears to have blocked receipt of all emails from Facebook to that Trai account." It said that during its query its found that "on December 17 at 5.51.53 GMT, an individual with access to the Trai email account designated to accept comments took action that blocked Facebook from delivering any additional email to that address." Facebook said that the action by person prevented Facebook system from sending further responsive email to Trai. The last date for public comments on Trai paper was earlier December 30 which was later extended to January 7. As per Trai data it has received around 24 lakh comments till January 7. Releasing number of responses received through facebookmail.com and supportfreebasics.in, Trai has said that it received only 1.89 million while Facebook's claimed the number to be more than 11 million supporting its plan to make parts of the Internet available for free under 'Free Basics'. This is first ever consultation paper on which Trai has received maximum comments from people. An analysis of a record 24 lakh comments, as disclosed by TRAI to its consultation paper on differential pricing for data services, shows that 18.94 lakh replies are in support of Free Basics, of which 13.5 lakh views are through supportfreebasics.in and without the senders individual e-mail IDs while further 5.44 lakh comments have come from facebookmail.com. On the other hand, the Net Neutrality campaigners have submitted 4.84 lakh comments through forums like Save the Internet. Besides, there are comments from telecom and Internet service providers, industry bodies and individuals. The telecom operators, including Airtel, Vodafone, Idea, Reliance Communications and their respective associations, have supported differential pricing for data services, while Internet service providers have opposed the plan. "For the growth of data service, price differentiation for data services can be allowed," operators have submitted. Reliance Jio Infocomm though has not submitted its comments on the matter. A debate on net neutrality stirred across the country after Airtel decided to charge separately for Internet-based calls but withdrew it later after people protested. The debate heated up after Airtel launched free Internet platform Airtel Zero and later Facebook also launched its Internet.Org platform, renamed as Free Basics. Nasscom said issues concerning differential pricing for data services need careful consideration because of their possible impact on net neutrality. The IT industry body said data plans offered by telecom companies to the consumer have to be neutral between their own and competing Internet platforms and services. President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) for the successful launch of IRNSS-1E, the country's fifth navigation satellite. "Heartiest congratulations to ISRO team on successful launch of navigation satellite IRNSS-1E #PresidentMukherjee," the President tweeted. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that he spoke to scientists and congratulated them on the successful launch. "Spoke to the scientists at @isro & congratulated them on their accomplishment today. Our scientists keep making us proud", he said. "Congratulating the dynamism & determination of @isro & our scientists on successful launch of PSLV-C31 & putting IRNSS 1E in orbit," the Prime Minister tweeted. India successfully launched its fifth navigation satellite IRNSS-1E on-board the workhorse PSLV-C31 from Sriharikota, taking another step to be on par with US based Global Positioning System (GPS) It has been announced today that Nua Healthcare will create 800 new jobs over the next 3 years through the planned development of new residential and day care facilities. The Private Intellectual Disability Care Service providers will deliver 300 of the positions in 2016. Furthermore, Nua Healthcare also announced today that they will see a further 20 residential centres and associated day facilities being developed, increasing Nuas residential care capacity up to 280 individuals by 2019. The news was welcomed today by the Minister of State at the Department of Health, Kathleen Lynch at the official opening of the groups newest facility, Glenview House in Kilmallock, Co Limerick. This new 6-bed facility, which will be staffed by up to 30 social care professionals on rota will provide 24-hour care to adults with special needs with complex support requirements. Glenview House is the first of 7 facilities to open in the greater Munster region and marks the expansion of Nua Healthcare beyond its historical base in Leinster. Minister Lynch commented, "I am delighted to officially open Nua Healthcares newest facility in Limerick. Intellectual Disability care is a key priority in the health sector and the services offered by Nua Healthcare in support of the HSE is invaluable in the Munster region and beyond. "I welcome their commitment to, and investment in providing high quality services for both children and adults with complex support needs across the country and the job creation in local communities to meet these needs." CEO at Nua Healthcare, Edward Dunne added, "Our service model and approach has experienced huge demand over the past number of years and todays announcement is a major step towards making our service more accessible to individuals nationally. The ability to do so is testament to the incredible work of our committed team and partners in such a specialist sector." Source: www.businessworld.ie The Silicon Republic has today reported that Smart payments company, Cayan will be creating 50 jobs for Belfast with the opening of their new headquarters in the city as part of a 3m investment by the US-based company. Cayan has been in Northern Ireland since 2013, where it currently employs 134 staff, but it will now add a further 50 employees with the opening of its sci-fi themed headquarters in the City Quays 1 development. It is reported that the new positions will be split between its customer support and software engineering divisions with aims of expanding its current product, Genius, a point of sale payment platform developed in Belfast. Additionally, further job opportunities are expected to be announced this summer. Source: www.businessworld.ie It was been announced today that Musgrave Group is to acquire Wexford based foodservice business, C.J. OLoughlin Quality Foods. The acquisition is conditional on clearance from the Irish Competition and Consumer Protection Commission. C.J. OLoughlin Quality Foods has been in operation in the South East for over 50 years. Musgrave Group CEO, Chris Martin said, "C.J. OLoughlin Quality Foods is an excellent strategic fit for our business and complements our market-leading foodservice offer. "As a long-standing successful family business, C.J. OLoughlin Quality Foods has much in common with Musgrave and we look forward to working with Charlie and all of the team as we build on the success of the business and work together to support our customers." Source: www.businessworld.ie A new MortgageSaver product has been launched by Bank of Ireland today which will provide those saving for a first time mortgage with a bonus of up to 10% on their savings. The new product is designed to help first time buyers on the full journey towards home ownership, particularly those finding the requirement of a mortgage deposit challenging. This comes after new research conducted by Red C on behalf of Bank of Ireland showed that the majority of those planning to enter the property market (70%) are saving to buy or build a home within the next two years. Furthermore, 36% of respondents are planning to buy a property on their own, and four in five respondents (80%) are currently saving for the deposit. Fifty three per cent of respondents said that given the choice, they would prefer either a fixed rate or a combined fixed and variable rate for their mortgage, with 22% saying they would prefer a variable rate and 25% undecided. The average figure which respondents said they would borrow is 240,000. Location is the most significant priority, however the size/number of bedrooms is of increasing importance. The majority (85%) of first time buyers surveyed said that they are paying rent, with the average monthly figure of just under 700 an increase of 60 on similar research conducted last year. Head of Savings & Investments at Bank of Ireland, Brian Vaughan commented, "Residential data is showing that in many parts of the country monthly mortgage repayments are now lower than rental requirements, so while there is a logical rationale to buy a home, its harder than ever for first time buyers to save. "Recent analysis also reveals that house prices regionally are still increasing, so across Ireland the issue of raising a deposit for a home is becoming more challenging." Source: www.businesssworld.ie It was announced today that the inaugural Completely Retail & Leisure Marketplace Ireland Exhibit will be returning to Dublin this year with over 600 representatives from the leading Irish and UK retail firms expected to attend. The event will take place on Tuesday 23rd February at The Printworks, Dublin Castle. Eason, Home Retail Group, Omniplex Cinemas, Insomnia, H&M and Homestore & More are just a sample of the local and international retailers who will be in attendance. The exhibit aims to create opportunities in Irelands retail property market. Head of Retail at Savills, Larry Brennan today commented, "Irelands economic recovery is having a positive knock-on effect on the retail sector. Strong employment growth is positively influencing consumer sentiment which is now at a 10 year high and retail sales are continuing on an upward trajectory. "Consequently, strong demand for retail space on prime high streets and shopping centres both in Dublin and in the main regional cities remains high." Source: www.businessworld.ie About us UK shares fell on Wednesday, giving up their gains from the previous session, as a downbeat outlook from mining stock BHP Billiton cast a gloomy shadow over a battered sector. BHP Billiton said that it expected no recovery in iron ore or coal prices in the next few years, with global markets suffering from oversupply and a slowdown in China, the world's biggest metals consumer. The stock was down 6.5 percent, with a cut on its iron ore guidance after a dam disaster at its Brazilian joint venture adding pressure. Price target cuts from broker Investec also hit the already battered sector, with the FTSE 350 Mining index hitting its lowest point since August 2003, down 4.7 percent. Glencore, Anglo American, Rio Tinto and Antofagasta fell between 2.9 percent and 5.9 percent. "That bleak stance has maybe dented the FTSE's mining sector, Billiton, Glencore, Anglo American (are) the top three fallers ... it doesn't bode particularly well," IG market analyst, Alastair McCaig, said, noting that the sell-off in Asian markets had also hit European equities. The UK blue-chip FTSE 100 index hit a two-year low, dropping 2.7 percent to 5,720.37 points by 0932 GMT, although it slightly outperformed the broader European market. Oil companies also fell following another slump in the price of oil, which dropped more than 3 percent towards $27 a barrel, its lowest since 2003, on persistent worries about oversupply. The FTSE 350 Oil and Gas index was down 3.5 percent, while oil major Royal Dutch Shell, which said that it expected its takeover of BG Group to go through within weeks, dropped 4.7 percent. Royal Dutch Shell also said that it expected full-year core earnings of $10.4-10.7 billion, slightly below a company- provided consensus of $10.8 billion. Acquisition target BG Group retreated 2 percent, while sector peer BP was down 2.6 percent. The only FTSE consituent to make gains was precious metals miner Randgold Resources, advancing 0.4 percent following a price target upgrade from broker Investec. Among mid-caps, pub chain operator J D Wetherspoon plunged 7 percent, set for its biggest daily loss since 2010, after the company warned that 2016 profits would be at the lower end of analysts' expectations. (Reuters) Source: www.businessworld.ie The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday said it would take up the Obama administrations policy offering relief for undocumented immigrant parents of children who are U.S. citizens. The case may also affect a related policy regarding undocumented children, and is connected to a larger debate over immigration policies that has drawn in students, educators, and schools in multiple ways. The administrations 2014 policy, Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA), was challenged in a lawsuit by 27 states, led by Texas, that argued the administration exceeded its administrative powers and violated a provision in Article II of the U.S. Constitution that the president must take care that the laws be faithfully executed. A federal district court in February 2015 blocked the DAPA policy from taking effect, holding that the states likely had valid claims under the Administrative Procedure Act. A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, in New Orleans, ruled 2-1 in November to uphold the injunction. Besides likely violations of the APAs notice-and-comment requirements, the majority held that the policy was manifestly contrary to a federal immigration statute. President Barack Obamas administration sought a fast-track appeal in the Supreme Court, on the theory that if the court didnt take up the case this term, the end of the presidents term in January 2017 would doom the policy. U.S. Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. told the justices in a brief in that the the nationwide injunction blocking the DAPA policy has far-reaching and irreparable humanitarian impact. It bars approximately 4 million parentswho have lived in this country for years, would pass a background check, are not priorities for removal, and have a son or daughter who is a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident,'from requesting deferred action under the guidance and receiving authorization to work lawfully, Verrilli said. In so doing, it has a profound effect not only on those parents but also on their children. The solicitor general cited a study estimating that there are 6.3 million children who live in a household with a DAPA-eligible mother or father, and of those, 5.5 million are U.S. citizens. And Verrilli added that although the states did not challenge the administrations 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) guidance on providing similar treatment to undocumented immigrants who arrived as children, the 5th Circuit courts expansive reasoning places a cloud over the deferred action accorded to more than 600,000 people under that policy, all of whom came here as children and many of whom have never known another home. Texas and the 26 other states had urged the high court not to take up the case (and had sought to slow down the briefing to push the case from possible consideration in the courts current term), but the justices had signaled they were likely to grant review. Texas told the court that Obama was being especially candid when, shortly after the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security issued the DAPA guidance last year, the president said, I just took an action to change the law. DAPA will directly impose substantial costs on the states associated with issuing additional drivers licenses, Texas said, and it will also require additional spending on health care, law enforcement, and education. Texas ... spends over $9,000 annually to educate each unauthorized alien who attends public schoolas required by Plyler v. Doe , the state said in reference to the landmark 1982 decision that public schools must educate undocumented children. In a single year, Texas spent almost $60 million on education costs stemming from unlawful immigration, the state told the court. The case, United States v. Texas (No. 15-674), is expected to be argued in April and decided by late June. On December 18-19, 2015 the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan, Serzh Sargsyan and Ilham Aliyev, held a meeting in Bern, Switzerland. The Bern meeting came after an interlude of more than a year. The latest bilateral meeting at the presidential level took place in Paris on October 27, 2014 on the initiative of Frances President Francois Hollande, following previous meetings on September 4 in New Port, Wales on U.S. Secretary of State John Kerrys initiative, and in Sochi on August 10, hosted by Russias President Vladimir Putin. The talks began with a meeting between Armenias and Azerbaijans Ministers of Foreign Affairs Edward Nalbandian and Elmar Mammadyarov, as well as the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group Igor Popov of Russia, James Warlick of the United States, and Pierre Andrieu of France, as well as the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office, Andrzej Kasprzyk. Sargsyan and Aliyev then held a tete-a-tete meeting, in which the parties discussed steps aiming to reduce tension in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone and possibilities to move forward with the resolution of this issue. In Bern, Sargsyan also had a meeting with Didier Burkhalter, the Head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) of Switzerland. During the weeks preceding the Bern meeting, tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan had escalated to levels not seen since the cease-fire in 1994. In particular, on December 8, 2015, the armed forces of Azerbaijan carried out tank shelling, which marks a new feature of Azerbaijans tactics. Concerns over the use of tanks were also voiced by Nikolay Bordyuzha, the Secretary General of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). In a joint statement adopted on December 3, 2015 in Belgrade, Russias Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Frances State Secretary for European Affairs Harlem Desir, concluded that the status quo has become unsustainable and condemned the use of mortars and other heavy weaponry. This concerns were apparently addressed to Azerbaijan. In this context, the Deputy Director of the Yerevan-based Caucasus Institute Sergey Minasyan argued that Azerbaijan shows a clear tendency of escalating the situation around Nagorno-Karabakh before important meetings. He claimed that Azerbaijan undertakes such actions to demonstrate its dissatisfaction with the current status quo in the conflict and to change existing realities. As to the outcome of the talks in Bern, Nalbandian, speaking for the Armenian side, declared that the sides presented their approaches to different principles of the settlement of the Karabakh issue, but that Azerbaijans standpoint matches neither that of Armenia, nor the proposals of the Minsk Group co-chairs. Nalbandian also claimed that Azerbaijan cannot get rid of the delusion that it can translate the use of power, the escalation of the situation, into a negotiation tool. On behalf of the Azerbaijani side, however, Mammadyarov declared that the holding of the meeting itself should be considered a positive development. On December 19, 2015, the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs released a press statement, highlighting that the summit created an opportunity for the presidents to clarify their respective positions during their one-on-one meeting. Commenting on the summit, Warlick stated that the parties did not move closer to reaching an agreement. However, based on the fact that the Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents still consider it important to talk to each other, Warlick hopes that the co-chairs will manage to arrange a new meeting during 2016. In turn, Burkhalter noted that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict could only be resolved by a comprehensive negotiation process and called on the parties to reinforce dialogue and to refrain from any act of violence or provocation. The South Caucasus, according to Burkhalter, is a priority region of Switzerlands peace policy commitment. Image attribution: www.sixmoment.com, accessed on Jan 18, 2016 Washington A new pair of reports uses international comparisons to show how any accountability system that fails to take professional development into consideration might be fighting a losing battle. The studies, funded by the National Center on Education and the Economy, were led by researchers Ben Jensen and Minxuan Zhang. Both researchers presented on their work at a forum held here Thursday, and both reports boil down to a single point: School accountability needs to factor in the quality of teacher professional development. School improvement equals professional learning, Jensen said. The Jensen-led report, produced by Australia-based think tank Learning First, looked at the PD systems in British Columbia, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Singapore, four high-performing systems. (High performance is measured by student achievement on PISA exams.) Zhang, a professor at Shanghai University and director of its Institute of International Comparative Education, focused exclusively on Shanghai. The reports offer a lot to digest, but they examine some of the commonalities between high-performing systems: Career ladders, strong teacher induction, and consistent, quality, teacher-led PD. For all of these people, professional learning is central to their jobs. It is not an add-on. It is not something done on Friday afternoons or on a few days at the end of the school year, the Jensen report states. The career ladders are used to ensure that more-experienced teachers help guide and develop younger teachers. In Shanghai, for example, a mentoring teacher is held accountable for how well he or she mentors a new teacher, the teaching practices of the new teacher, and the performance of the new teachers students. If these indicators are not improved, the mentor will miss out on promotion, the Jensen report notes. That accountability runs throughout the system, including principals and other administrators. In addition, Zhang said, China makes sure to layer PD throughout instruction. Teachers are encouraged to write and reflect so they can figure out why some things work and can share it, he said. (My colleague Sarah Sparks offers more details about the Shanghai system here, including a look at how teachers are turned into researchers.) For the systems to operate effectively, though, it requires letting teachers collaborate to help develop training that works for them. This is a profound shift for many systems given the efforts to develop precise school performance measures over the past few years, the Jensen report says. It requires faith and trust in the people making professional judgments. If these systems show promise, why arent they more prominent in the United States? Some states and districts, such as Iowa and Baltimore , have implemented career-ladder systems, but there hasnt been a widespread diffusion. One obstacle is time. Teachers in the U.S. spend more time on face-to-face instruction than any other country with the aforementioned system, according to data collected from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD): In British Columbia, which only slightly trails the U.S. in face-to-face time, professional learning appears to be worked into every nook and cranny available. One case study from the Jensen report offers a glimpse at an elementary school where the principal acts as the primary substitute teacher so that her faculty could spend time on classroom observation; she also supports teacher-led PD groups. And what about money? Recent studies have found that the U.S. actually spends a lot of money per teacher on professional development, without tracking its effectiveness. Much of that PD, focused on workshops and outside trainings, may not even be helpful to the people (teachers) using it. Viticia Thames, an education consultant at the World Bank, brought up another concern: If a system requires that effective teachers help develop other effective teachers, is there a model for instruction? We havent really taken the time to develop objective measures of what quality instruction looks like, Thames said. There are at least a couple well-known teaching frameworks, the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) and Charlotte Danielsons Framework for Teaching , but any district that wants to create a system from scratch will need to put in a great deal of time and effort, Thames said. Are we actually going to ask districts across the country to take on that laborious task? Panelists brought up other concerns about implementing some of these systems: If every district or state has its own career ladder, doesnt that hamper comparisons? What safeguards are there to ensure that promotion isnt simply the result of favoritism? Are there enough teachers to spare for training and PD? Marc Tucker, president of the NCEE (and an opinion blogger for Education Week) said at the panel that the difficulties the U.S. might face in learning from other countries shouldnt be a roadblock to experimentation. There are examples of things that cost less, produce better, and create more equity, Tucker said. Were damn fools if we dont go and see what theyre doing. More on professional development: Follow Ross Brenneman on Twitter for more news and analysis of the teaching profession. Fighting between the two armed groups first broke out last year on 27 November, just over one month after the signing of the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) on 15 October between the government and eight of the countrys more than 20 ethnic armed organisations (EAOs). The RCSS/SSA-S signed the NCA but the government excluded the TNLA from the NCA and did not allow them to sign it. Sai Hseng Murng, a spokesperson for RCSS/SSA-S said: There was another episode of fighting which occurred this morning [and] the fighting has not stopped until now." He claimed that the TNLA troops had attacked the RCSS/SSA-S and were advancing further into RCSS/SSA-S controlled areas every day. The TNLA Information Department posted on their Facebook page on 18 January that fighting had broken out between TNLA Battalion No. 256 and RCSS/SSA-S troops, but claimed that it was because the RCSS/SSA-S troops had trespassed into TNLA controlled territory. On social media the TNLA said: The RCSS troops entered our area, thats why the fighting happened. According to a Mizzima report on 19 January Mai Aik Kyaw, a spokesperson for the TNLA, said that the RCSS/SSA-S was not previously operating in the disputed area, but had arrived in the middle of November and was now fighting alongside Burma Army troops. He described the atmosphere as tense and predicted there could be future clashes. The RCSS/SSA-S claimed that three TNLA soldiers had been killed in the recent clashes. No further details were available about the casualties. On 18 January there were also two clashes between the groups in northern Shan State, at Koong Hawd Village, Hsipaw Township and at Tawsang Village, Kyaukme Township. Sai Hseng Murng told SHAN that the RCSS/SSA-S had sent letters to the TNLA several times requesting a meeting to discuss the conflict. He said: A few days ago, we sent them a letter again, but we never received a response from them about the talks. We [ethnic groups] dont want to have problem among each other, he added. On 16 December SHAN reported that the RCSS/SSA-S held a meeting with the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC), a coalition of ethnic armed groups of which the TNLA is a member, to discuss the clashes between the RCSS/SSA-S and the TNLA. By SAI AW / Shan Herald Agency for News (S.H.A.N) Edited in English by Mark Inkey for BNI The publication of the report entitled Justice Delayed, Justice Denied coincided with the one-year anniversary of the rape and murder of two ethnic Kachin teachers in northern Shan State. On 19 January 2015, Maran Lu Ra, age 20, and Nan Tsin, age 21, were sexually assaulted, beaten and stabbed to death in their bamboo house inside a church compound in the village of Kawng Kha, 20 miles east of Muse in northern Shan State. Seng Zin, Joint General-Secretary of KWAT said: Why do we have to keep silent? This is the publics voice. We have to stand on the womens side, on behalf of all. While local police have yet to identify or arrest a perpetrator, and the government has cleared the military of any involvement in the crime, the report identifies the primary suspect as the commanding officer of the Burma Army troops stationed in the village. Police allegedly questioned some, but not all of the soldiers in the area, and interrogated the commanding officer only briefly. Forensic evidence from the crime scene was also reportedly collected unsystematically: suspicious items were placed in shopping bags, hairs of the perpetrators stored in unsealed envelopes, bloody fingerprints not collected for analysis, and no DNA tests were performed on bodily fluids collected at the crime scene. In a statement released on 19 January to accompany the report's launch KWAT General Secretary Moon Nay Li said: The governments priorities were clear in the Kawng Kha caseprotect the military at all cost. The murder in Kawng Kha is one of four incidents profiled in the reportothers include the forced disappearance of a 28-year-old Kachin woman, Sumlut Roi Ja, in 2011; the murder of a 14-year-old Kachin girl, Ja Seng Ing, in 2012; and the rape and murder of a 28-year-old Shan woman, Nang Khaek, in 2015. KWAT and LAN fear that the impunity which has accompanied these incidents will become a catalyst for recurrence of gross human rights violations in the future. The report states: A key factor causing sexual violence is the large number of Burma Army troops deployed throughout the ethnic states. It also says that if the army reduced its presence in ethnic areas it would demonstrate that the army was sincerely seeking a negotiated political solution to the conflict. Like other rights groups, KWAT also advocates reform of the 2008 Constitution to eliminate structural barrier[s] to justice in Burma, such as the militarys power over executive and judicial institutions. Seng Zin highlighted how government officials were protected by Article 445 of the 2008 Constitution, which protects them from prosecution for actions committed whilst they were employed by the government. She said: If a soldier commits a crime while he is serving, he cant get punished by anyonehe was doing his duty, she said of the existing law. Because of this kind of article, the military can get impunity. Last month, the 'Former Presidents Security Bill' was also proposed to Burmas parliament, promising immunity to ex-presidents for any crimes committed while in office. The legislation was not openly challenged by the leadership of the National League for Democracy (NLD), which won the majority of seats in Burmas general election in November and is due to take power in March of this year. In the statement accompanying the report Hkawng Lum, a lawyer working with LAN, said that such an amnesty law would not protect President Thein Sein from prosecution for war crimes in an international court bound by the Geneva Convention which dictates that civilians must be humanely treated in times of armed conflict. By SIMMA FRANCIS / Shan Herald Agency for News (S.H.A.N) Edited in English by Mark Inkey for BNI Her Universe makes amazing, nerdy women's fashion (for example, and also). The company was founded by self-described fangirl Ashley Eckstein, a voice actor who appears in "Star Wars: The Clone Wars," out of frustration with the lack of women's clothing at Comic-Cons. The company will now publish science fiction as well, launching with six novels in 2016. They're open to submissions, too. Her Universe Press has six novels lined up for 2016. The first one, "Weirdest," was written by Heather Nuhfer, who writes for comic books like My Little Pony, Scooby-Doo and Wonder Woman. Despite her success in comic books, Ms. Nuhfer said she was grateful for the opportunity to work with Her Universe Press because of its focus on strong female characters. "I feel like I've had a hard time breaking into publishing as a woman," she said. "I write a lot of 'girl properties,' so there are extra steps to get out of 'Pink Town.'" But her agent was reluctant to take the novel to Her Universe Press and wanted to go to an established publisher instead. "We had talked about taking it to other publishers," she said, "but for me, it seemed like a no-brainer to push through with Ashley because of her passion for making it a great project." Narrowing a Gap in the Sci-Fi Universe: One Fangirl Giving a Voice to Others [Gregory Schmidt/New York Times] (via IO9) A female teacher in Turkey was sentenced to almost a year in prison today for hurting President Tayyip Erdogan's feelings. She made an "ugly gesture" with her hand towards the leader at a political rally in 2014, and in Turkey it's against the law to criticize official leaders, even if it's with a quick hand movement. The teacher isn't the first to be under fire by Turkey's sensitive leader. Last February BloombergBusiness reported that Erdogan had charged 67 people for insulting him including Miss Turkey, who'd written a satirical poem about the president which was an average of one person for every three days since he'd been elected president in 2014. When is hurricane season? Here's what you need to know in South Texas COURTNEY SACCO/CALLER-TIMES The 600 Building, on the corner of Leopard Street and Upper Broadway Street, is being eyed for redevelopment as apartments with some commercial space. SHARE CALLER-TIMES FILE From left to right, Wilson Plaza East, the 600 Building and the Wells Fargo building. Michael Zamora/Caller-Times The 600 building, with its unique concrete sunscreens covering the windows, could become 126 apartment units, if all goes according to a developers plan. By Kirsten Crow of the Caller-Times An emerging downtown neighborhood may grow into uptown, with office space being replaced with living space. The 600 Building which has towered on the bluff for more than 50 years, looking over downtown and out to the bay could see a massive transformation into 126 apartments, complemented by commercial space on the ground floor, if all goes according to a developer's plan. On Tuesday, a city board that oversees the downtown tax increment reinvestment zone funds approved a total of $2.56 million in incentives to bolster developer Marcel Wisznia's plans to convert the 600 Building into a mixed-use development. One of the packages approved was of $1.26 million in incentives, representing $10,000 per apartment, as part of an initiative promoting residential living downtown. Also approved was a 10-year development agreement, valued at $1.3 million. It permits the developer to keep a portion of the development's higher taxes levied on its appreciated value during the agreement. The incentives are provided through tax increment reinvestment zone funding, which draws a portion of appreciated property value from the greater downtown area, then reinvests those dollars back into the greater downtown area. Wisznia expects a snowball effect with projects. "I'm convinced that with that first step with a building like this once we occupy it, once we stabilize it, then other surrounding building (owners) will say, 'Well, perhaps there is a better use for the building than what it is being used for,' " he said. The 600 Building is also eligible for federal and state historical tax credits, Wisznia added. The sale isn't yet finalized, but Wisznia envisions the 600 Building, located at Upper Broadway and Leopard Street, as apartments that would promote an urban lifestyle. They would be marketed to young adults and empty nesters, as well as those interested in having a second home, Wisznia said. In addition to commercial space on the ground floor, the plans include a concept Wisznia referred to as "beta,"a specific area where residents could rent workspace. Ellen Blasingame, property manager of the 600 Building, noted Tuesday that the building has not been sold, adding that developers have until June to make a decision about whether or not to move forward with the purchase. Wisznia said he anticipates closing on the property in September or October. "We are extremely optimistic and are working hard to make sure that we turn this dream into a reality," he said. "But it doesn't happen by itself it's step by step by step." It's thought that project construction would take about 15 months. Wisznia is originally from Corpus Christi. His father, Walter Wisznia, was the architect for several well-known buildings in the city, including the Nueces County Courthouse and the Wells Fargo building, he said. Mayor Nelda Martinez, who serves on the reinvestment zone board, described the proposal as a catalyst project that would lead to further "multipliers supporting revitalization." "We sure do like the Wisznia name continuing to be part of the landscape of Corpus Christi, Texas," she added. Twitter: @CallerCrow SHARE By Natalia Contreras of the Caller-Times A man who refused to cooperate with Border Patrol agents Monday was later found to have an undocumented immigrant in his vehicle, officials said. According to a U.S. Border Patrol news release the man had approached the Falfurrias checkpoint on North U.S. Highway 281 in a Nissan Juke. When agents told the man to continue to another inspection area, the man refused. The man was detained by agents and after investigation they found a man from Mexico, hiding in the cargo area of the vehicle, the release states. The condition of the man hiding in the vehicle is unknown and additional information about the man driving the vehicle was not available Wednesday. Twitter: @CallerNatalia SHARE CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Thurma Hilton is helping coordinate a site for Trinity Institutes national conference at All Saints Episcopal Church. By Fares Sabawi of the Caller-Times Thurma Hilton believes the only way for people of different cultures to reach understanding is to have an educated discussion. She's hoping Trinity Institute's three-day live webcast can begin that conversation. All Saints Episcopal Church will be one of more than 100 sites in the United States and Canada that will host the webcast starting Thursday, titled "Listen for a Change: Sacred Conversations About Racial Justice." Hilton, the steering committee chairwoman, said this is the first time the church will be participating in the theological forum, but Trinity Institute's 45th time coordinating the national conference. Because race is a sensitive topic, Hilton said it's beneficial to discuss the issue from a theological standpoint. "People tend to engage in deep listening or holy listening," Hilton said. "It enables individuals to sit and express themselves fully without being judged." Michele Norris, journalist and former host of the NPR broadcast "All Things Considered," will give the keynote address at Trinity Wall Street Church in New York City. Throughout the conference, people listening to the discussions in Corpus Christi can email questions to the panelists which can be answered in real-time. Following the webcast each day, Hilton said the church will host a reflection discussion featuring local speakers. "We'll discuss what we've heard and how we feel about it," Hilton said. The format is set up to give listeners context about the United States' race issue before reacting to the issue. "The people presenting are people who have dedicated their lives to studying this issue," Hilton said. "This conference will frame our discussion and give us the back to how we got where we are." Hilton hopes that attendees leave All Saints Episcopal Church with more understanding while recognizing they are taking part in a national conversation. "It's truly powerful to know there are thousands of people sitting down at the same time (around the nation) discussing a major issue," Hilton said. "I think it can have nothing but a positive impact." Twitter: @Caller_Fares if you go What: Trinity Institute's "Listen for a Change: Sacred Conversations About Racial Justice" Where: All Saints Episcopal Church, 3026 S. Staples St. When: Webcast begins Thursday, will conclude Saturday Cost: $55 for individuals, $85 for couples. Payment includes two days of lunch, child care and registration packets. Information: 361-855-6294 or visit www.allsaints-cc.org GABE HERNANDEZ/CALLER-TIMES Park Ranger Janelle Rand walks around the Big Tree Jan. 13 at Goose Island State Park in Rockport. SHARE GABE HERNANDEZ/CALLER-TIMES A acorn root is located near The Big Tree Jan. 13 at Goose Island State Park in Rockport. GABE HERNANDEZ/CALLER-TIMES People talk next to The Big Tree Jan. 13 at Goose Island State Park in Rockport. GABE HERNANDEZ/CALLER-TIMES A winding road leads to The Big Tree Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016, at Goose Island State Park in Rockport. GABE HERNANDEZ/CALLER-TIMES A close up of the bark of The Big Tree Jan. 13 at Goose Island State Park in Rockport. By Esther Hackleman ROCKPORT Hurricanes. Wildfires. Droughts. Humans. Through it all, a coastal live oak known simply as The Big Tree remains. Rooted for more than 1,000 years the iconic tree is the darling of Goose Island State Park and backdrop of family photos spanning decades. The tree is so beloved, it has its own hashtag #TheBigTree and saw about 151,000 visitors last year. "How often do you get to see a 1,000-year-old tree?" asked Houston native Carolyn Bardin. Bardin admired the tree's gnarly limbs and impressive crown, which spans 89 feet into the air. The green state park sign at Bardin's hip said the tree stood while Spanish explorer Alonso Alvarez de Pineda mapped the Texas coastline in the 1500s. It stood while Union troops burned the town of Lamar less than a mile away during the Civil War. It stood while Bardin snapped a photo with her cellphone. "We need to preserve it as long as possible," Bardin said. "It's showing its age." Long before the state began acquiring the land for the now 402-acre park in 1931, forces were at work to keep the tree standing. The tree's natural preservation is due in part to its location, Park Ranger Janelle Rand said. Nestled amid a gathering of live oaks that provide a barrier from harsh winds, The Big Tree has survived anywhere from 40 to 50 hurricanes, park rangers estimate. That protection is enhanced by the elevated land, which keeps saltwater from drowning the base of the tree though it stands near Saint Charles Bay. On the other hand, if the ground receives less than 2 inches of rain per month, park rangers will bring out a 500-gallon tank to water the tree. During heavy droughts, volunteer firefighters from surrounding departments have quenched its thirst. The Big Tree surprised park rangers Jan. 8 when an acorn seedling sprouted less than 20 feet from its trunk. The Big Tree sprout came after one of the Coastal Bend's rainiest years on record. "Often it's hard to measure the health of the tree other than comparing it to the ones around it, but the fact that it sprouted acorns is special for a tree its age," Rand said. Park rangers are not the one only celebrating the continued life of the tree. Each year, the South Texas Alliance of Indigenous People gather to bless the tree. Its prayer ceremony continues a tradition of respect and awareness often lost on a generation preoccupied with technology, Larry "Running Turtle" Salazar said. "There are lessons within the tree," said Salazar, who has been attending the Blessing of The Big Tree since he was a boy. "There's teachings within the whispers of the wind that so many have forgotten." The Big Tree continues to stand, sharing those lessons in silence with those who visit, Salazar said. "If you stop and listen, you will feel it." Twitter:@Caller_Esther THE BIG TREE FACTS The Big Tree at Goose Island State Park was named the State Champion Coastal Live Oak (Quercus virginiana) and is one of the largest in the nation. Trunk circumference: 35 feet 1.75 inches Average trunk diameter: 11 feet 2.25 inches Crown spread: 89 feet Height: 44 feet The wires seen throughout its limbs provide support and serve as a lightning rod. The Big Tree has scars from a beehive and two large branches felled by a hurricane. A fence prevents the soil from getting too compact from footsteps, which could keep the tree from receiving water and nutrients. Source: Goose Island State Park SOCIAL MEDIA Share your photos with The Big Tree using #VivaCC and #TheBigTree for a chance to see them on Caller.com and in VivaCC. Brands have emerged as one of the most important and possibly wealthiest patrons of the arts, replacing royalty and rich, powerful individuals as primary supporters. Zayn Khan, Southeast Asia chief executive at global design and innovation consultancy Dragon Rouge, says that brand-artist collaborations can be powerful if there is a natural link between the vision of the brand and the vision of the artist. Brands create narratives or at least they should, and great art also tells stories, he adds. When there is alignment between the two points of view, you can get real synergy. Or better yet, magic. Alex Wilson, Co-CEO at Flamingo Group, says the approaches of brands as patrons continue to evolve. At a basic level, sponsorship of events provides a gain in credibility, image and creative credentials, he adds. What Andy Warhol called cultural capital. Wilson notes that brands have certainly matured and evolved as patrons in the Asia-Pacific region and that many still retain an element of creative control in return for their support. In April, Lenovo staged an art exhibition in Singapore, bringing together 10 of the countrys rising artists to create a series of artworks across 10 different locations. Without sharing specifics, Nazia Hayat, global engagement programs manager at Lenovo, says that the campaign in Singapore managed to achieve a lot on a number of levels. The brand also saw it as an opportunity to work with the creative community. Technology has always opened up new avenues for artists to explore and at times even push the boundaries of art itself, Hayat says. We felt this technology could do exactly that, Hayat adds. In searching out artists to work with, Lenovo was selective, with criteria based on whether the person would be a good fit for the brand and the usage of its product. In addition, the artists signed a contract with the companys agency, which stipulated the scope of work and commitment to the project to protect the company from any potential issues. In November, Taiwanese PC maker Asus launched a global campaign to promote its ZenFone 2 smartphone. The photo collaboration competition was fronted by popular Instagrammer Robert Jahns and invited people to share an image of their own by reimagining an image from Jahns gallery. Asus and the ZenFone have a modern image that fits with my kind of work, says Jahns. I was free to create and always had a voice in terms of establishing what I was not comfortable doing. Khan says that in order for brand-artist collaborations to succeed, there needs to be a link between the art and the brands positioning, promise, values and personality. And if its part of a campaign, then the two must work hand-in-hand to achieve similar objectives, he adds. In this sense, art can be a medium, just like print or digital, albeit much more engaging and thought-provoking. When art is employed in a token way, Khan notes, and there is no real strategic link with the brand, then its more of a gimmick or a stunt. It might create some short-term buzz, but it does neither party any long-term good. Jonny Stark, Asia-Pacific SVP at Razorfish, warns against throwing money at influencers or creators without thinking about whether it makes sense for the brand. For Asus, it was a case of us approaching Jahns and saying we love what you do and working out how the brand could help and co-create something together, Stark adds. When playthings become political However, there are also cases where artists in their work use brands or their products independently what happens then? Since 2013, Greek artist Nikos Papadopoulos has been using Playmobil toys to create dioramas on issues such as refugee migration in Europe and the Greek financial crisis. Playmobil shut down his first fansite on the grounds of trademark infringement and the political use of their products. After negotiations, the second site now features a disclaimer disavowing Playmobils involvement. "The notion of a brand that makes and sells play characters policing how people play with them is in the realm of the absurd. I imagine they would disagree with the violence children inflict on those characters every day. Alex Wilson, Flamingo Group When artists commandeer brands, I think they are within their rights as cultural anthropologists and commentators, says Khan. Whether its Warhol using Heinz or Papadopoulos using Playmobil, these are legitimate artistic expressions. Khan adds that there is little that brands can do, and to shut down every artist that uses or alludes to a brand in their work would be, in his view, an attack on fundamental freedom of expression. Wilson agrees, adding that Playmobils threat of legal action for copyright infringement is misguided and a case where the brand assumes any artwork using them is akin to advertising. To me, the notion of a brand that makes and sells play characters policing how people play with them is in the realm of the absurd, he adds. I imagine they would disagree with the violence children inflict on those characters every day. The case of artist and activist Ai Weiwei, a critic of Chinese authorities, who claimed Lego refused to supply a large quantity of bricks for an art exhibition in Australia, is more complex. Lego is wary of discrimination with the artist but also the activist, adds Wilson. Whilst from a policy perspective Lego has been clear on their objections, the choice to become embroiled on social media and to politicise the brand is their own downfall one that is not invited by the artist nor the art itself. Lego eventually changed its policy after weeks of criticism. Wilson adds that brands need to accept that when artists use their brand, it takes on a meaning that is out of their control. Given all modern art concerns itself with a discourse on capitalism, theres a high chance brands will be used as a critique of that system, including consumption and its excesses, he says. Khan says that brand owners should let the artists be and move on. Or if the artist has picked up on a profound hypocrisy with your brand, then do something about it, he adds. Seifert, a 37-year veteran of the company, will retain his role as CEO and chairman of Ogilvy & Mather North America and will continue to be based in New York. In his new post, Seifert will partner with Tham Khai Meng, worldwide chief creative officer, who will also become co-chairman of the Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide board. Young also announced an expansion of responsibilities for two of O&Ms regional directors. Paul Heath, chairman and CEO of Asia-Pacific has been named executive director for global business development, and Paul ODonnell, chairman and CEO of EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) will take on the post of executive director for agency transformation. Seifert, 58, has helmed Ogilvy's North America business for the past seven years. He is credited with reinvigorating the region via substantial revenue growth and strong talent recruitment. Prior to leading North America, Seifert was responsible for a portfolio of 25 global clients, totaling nearly $1 billion in revenue. He has worked throughout the agencys network in client leadership and general management positions in the US, Bangkok and Singapore. Young will stay on in a non-executive role and will continue to work with Ogilvy and parent company WPP on key clients. As has been previously reported, Young will be joining his alma mater, Oxford University, as Warden. David Ogilvy has been my hero since I joined the agency as a summer intern in 1979, Seifert said. I am blessed to have colleagues who are my dearest friends, and clients who put so much trust in our work for them. I want to thank both Miles and [WPP CEO] Martin [Sorrell] for their confidence in giving me this extraordinary responsibility. I will never take it for granted, and do all I can to live up to what David Ogilvy expected from every leader of this amazing company. Young called Seifert an "exemplary Ogilvy citizen". His values and the brands values are indistinguishable," Young added. "And if you talk to his clients you will find a fan club united in admiration of him. An honest essay has numerous characteristics: original thinking, a good structure, balanced arguments, and plenty more. But one aspect often overlooked is that an honest essay should be interesting. It should spark the readers curiosity, keep them absorbed, make them want to stay reading and learn more. An uneventful article risks losing the readers attention; whether or not the points you create are excellent, a flat style, or poor handling of a dry subject material can undermine the positive aspects of the essay. The matter is that a lot of students think that essays should be like this: they believe that a flat, dry style is suited to the needs of educational writing and dont even consider that the teacher reading their essay wants to search out the essay interesting. You might want to have online essay editor service to boost your confidence in writing with an error-free output. Academic writing doesnt need to be and shouldnt be bland. The excellent news is that there is much stuff you can do to create your essay more attractive, while youll be able only to do such a lot while remaining within the formal confines of educational writing. Lets study what theyre. Have an interest in what youre writing about Dont go overboard, but youll be able to let your passion for your subject show. If theres one thing bound to inject interest into your writing, its being fascinated by what youre writing about. Passion for a subject matter comes across naturally in your essay, typically making it more lively and fascinating and infusing an infectious enthusiasm into your words within the same way that its easy to talk knowledgeably to someone about something you discover fascinating. Include fascinating details Another factor that may make an essay boring maybe a dry material. Some topic areas are naturally dry, and it falls to you to form the article more interesting through your written style and by trying to seek out fascinating snippets of knowledge to incorporate, which will liven it up a small amount and make the data easier to relate to. A way of doing this with a dry subject is to create what youre talking about that seems relevant to the critical world, as this is often easier for the reader to relate to. Emulate the fashion of writers you discover interesting When you read lots, you subconsciously start emulating the fashion of the writers you have read. Reading benefits you a lot, as this exposes you to a spread of designs, and youll start to require the characteristics of these you discover interesting to read. Borrow some creative writing techniques Theres a limit to the quantity of actual story-telling youll do when youre writing an essay; in the end, essays should be objective, factual and balanced, which doesnt, initially glance, feel considerably like story-telling. However, youll apply a number of the principles of story-telling to create your writing more interesting. consider your own opinion Take the time to figure out what its that you think instead of regurgitating the opinions of others. Cut the waffle Rambling on and on is dull and almost bound to lose the interest of your reader. Youre in danger of waffling if youre not completely clear about what you wish to mention or havent thought carefully about how youre visiting structure your argument. Doing all your research correctly and writing an essay plan before you begin will help prevent this problem. Editing is a vital part of the essay-writing process, so edit the waffle once youve done a primary draft. Read through your essay objectively and eliminate the bits that arent relevant to the argument or labor the purpose. employing a thesaurus isnt always a decent thing Avoid using unfamiliar words in an essay; theres too great a likelihood that youre misusing them. You may think that employing a thesaurus to seek out more complicated words will make your writing more exciting or sound more academic, but using overly high-brow language can have the incorrect effect. Avoid repetitive phrasing Please avoid using the identical phrase structure again and again: its a recipe for dullness! Instead, use a variety of syntax that demonstrates your writing capabilities and makes your writing more interesting. Mix simple, compound, and complicated sentences to avoid your paper becoming predictable. Use some figurative language Using analogies with nature can often make concepts more accessible for readers to know. As weve already seen, its easy to finish up rambling when youre explaining complex concepts mainly after you dont know it yourself. One way of forcing yourself to think about a couple of pictures, present it more simply and engagingly is to form figurative language. This implies explaining something by comparing it with something else, as in an analogy. Employ rhetorical questions Anticipate the questions your reader might ask. One of the ways ancient orators held the eye of their audiences and increased the dramatic effect of their speeches was by using the statement. A decent place to use a statement is at the top of a paragraph, to steer into the following one, or at the start of a replacement section to introduce a brand new area for exploration. Proofread Finally, you may write the top interesting essay an instructor has ever read. Still, youll undermine your good work if its plagued by errors, which distract the reader from the particular content and can probably annoy them. Yoga Design Lab launches its eye-catching yoga mats in Canada. The innovative yoga brand has been shaking up the industry south of the border with yoga mats described by Harper's Bazaar and Fitness Magazine as 'stunning works of art. Designed in Bali by a Canadian surfer/yogi named Chad, who sold all his stuff and moved there to launch the idea in 2014. "I was seated in the back of a packed yoga class while on vacation in Ubud, Bali. Looking around, all I saw was a sea of unoriginal, massed produced, solid colored mats. My thinking was, there must be a way of creating a highly functional product that was also aesthetically beautiful. So the journey began. Long story short, I sold my stuff in Vancouver, packed up a couple bags and moved to Bali with the goal of creating a stunning line of yoga products that inspire more people to get excited about yoga. Really looking forward to finally launching the brand in Canada. Its a special moment for me. Chad - YDL Founder Blending fashion-forward design elements with innovative functionality and bio-renewable consciousness is key to the Yoga Design Lab approach. The Combo Mat construction is unique on the market and a process that took over a year of development to create. Many yogis have commented on how the unique construction has improved their practice and the ultra luxurious feel helps guide them gently into the blissed out state experienced in yoga. Combined with the uber-colorful prints, the mats have already garnered a growing US celebrity following. The mats consist of a natural tree rubber base that is bonded it to a luxurious sueded microfiber surface, thus the mat solves one of the biggest problems in yoga - slipping with sweat. The goal was to create a mat the became even grippier with sweat - ideal for hot yoga, power yoga, ashtanga, etc. Tuesday, January 19, 2016 at 9:00PM Its been a banner year for online shopping in Canada as the industry experienced 20% growth in online sales in 2015. The combined online share sales in November and December of last year totaled 9.84%, according to MasterCard SpendingPulse. Both months bested last years 8.6% record as online sales in November reached 9.7%, the highest in Canadian e-commerce history; that is until December came in a retail sales climbed up to 9.9%. These figures, MasterCard says, demonstrates the omnishopper in consumers. Omnishoppers use different devices or in-store technology to shop. Hoping to help ease that experience is MasterCards digital payment platform MasterPass. This allows you to pay for things using any device you have on-hand, and with the security youve come to expect from MasterCard. The platform promises to securely stores payment and shipping information, which you can easily access, too. All you need to do when you check out using the Buy with MasterPass button and then log into your account. Three college students who first met while attending a Catholic high school in Florida have launched a scholarship fund to help others experience faithful Catholic education at a Newman Guide college. As we went off to different colleges, we kept in touch and found time to catch up whenever we returned [] Our Promise: Welcome to Care2, the world's largest community for good. Here, you'll find over 45 million like-minded people working towards progress, kindness, and lasting impact. Care2 Stands Against: bigots, racists, bullies, science deniers, misogynists, gun lobbyists, xenophobes, the willfully ignorant, animal abusers, frackers, and other mean people. If you find yourself aligning with any of those folks, you can move along, nothing to see here. Care2 Stands With: humanitarians, animal lovers, feminists, rabble-rousers, nature-buffs, creatives, the naturally curious, and people who really love to do the right thing. You are our people. You Care. We Care2. Runners & walkers dash around Delphi The Do It In Delphi Dash was Saturday morning with the 5K walk/run beginning downtown on the Courthouse Square. The... Special prosecutor issues report on Liggett campaign The Comet sponsored a sheriffs candidate debate on Sept. 29. After the debate, Sheriff candidate and deputy Tony Liggett provided... Delphi Council member Conner resigns post It has been an upward struggle for Delphi City Council member Gayle Conner to represent her constituents as witnessed at... Being on the market since 2008, its time for Fiats compact people carrier and its commercial variant to get a facelift. The Qubo/Fiorino duo was scooped during cold weather testing in Sweden. Although the prototypes were camouflaged, its evident that the bulk of the changes will concern the front end. From what we can tell, the new model will sport a redesigned grille, front bumper and head lights in a way that reminds the bigger Doblo, which was also revamped last year. Based on the Grande Punto platform and built at Fiats plant in Bursa, Turkey, the pair will reportedly get a new generation of engines that comply with Euro 6 emission standards. With the Doblo having set a precedent of being sold in North America rebadged as the RAM Promaster City, rumor has it that FCA is considering doing the same with the Qubo and Fiorino. While the models sold in Europe and South America are expected at the Geneva Auto Show, well have to wait and see if the conglomerate decides it should make it over to the US and Canada. Photo Credits: CarPix for CarScoops Photo Gallery A new report says that the advanced Cadillac CT6 plug-in hybrid will be imported into the United States from its Chinese production facility. According to Bloomberg, while the CT6 will be produced at both the marques Detroit-Hamtrack Assembly Plant and in China, only the Chinese facility will be tasked with building the plug-in hybrid variant. When importation of that model commences, it will become just the second GM model imported into the U.S. from China following on from the Buick Envision. According to the president of a Californian consulting firm, Eric Noble, Longer term, we should see more of this because GMs Chinese operations have every capability required to provide cars for North America. They would import here instead of from Europe because Chinese consumer tastes align more closely to American tastes than Europes ever did. A key reason why Cadillac is keen on importing a Chinese-built model into the U.S. rather than the other way around is that the Chinese government slap imported cars with high taxes, like for the Cadillac SRX crossover. It therefore makes more economic sense to switch things around and build cars in China and then export them internationally. The Cadillac CT6 plug-in hybrid will combine a 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder petrol engine with an electric variable transmission incorporating two electric motors and an 18.4 kWh lithium-ion battery pack. All up, the model is expected to produce 335 hp and 432 lb-ft of torque. PHOTO GALLERY The French premium brand revealed the revamped version of its best-selling model, which has an array of cosmetic and mechanical changes. The new DS3 has been redesigned to meet DSs new corporal identity, with a fresh face now featuring the DS-Wings hexagonal grille, matching the LED headlamps with the characteristic light signature. The rear lights have been also updated, now being LED items with a 3D pattern. The French MINI rival will be available with six petrol and two diesel engines. The petrol range includes the PureTech 1.2-litre three-cylinder unit, both in naturally aspirated and turbocharged versions (82hp-110hp-130hp), the four-cylinder 163hp 1.6-litre turbo unit and a 208hp version of the same engine in the hot Performance variant. The diesel range includes the 1.6-litre BlueHDi in 100hp and 120hp version, with the latter equipped with a six-speed manual gearbox. An environmental-friendly version of the BlueHDi 100 will return just 79g/km of CO2 emissions but if you prefer a petrol engine instead, the PureTech 82 can return as low as 99g/km of CO2 emissions. Inside there is a new infotainment system compatible with Apple CarPlay and MirrorLink for Android devices on a seven-inch touchscreen. DS has also equipped their entry-level model with an Active City Brake system, which can apply the brakes if it detects potential risks at speeds of up to 30km/h to avoid a collision or limit the consequences of one. New trims and interior design themes are here to make the new DS3 feel more premium and stylish, with the classic watchstrap seat upholstery finding its way here from the bigger models. There are also more personalization options than ever, with 78 body/roof combos available, 10 roof decals on the hatchback, four canvas roofs on the cabrio version and 15 alloy wheel designs. As for the Performance version, the 208hp range-topper will be available for the first time in both the hatch and cabrio bodystyles and will feature a standard Torsen limited-slip differential. The suspension is lowered by 15mm and the front and rear tracks have been widened by 26mm and 14mm respectively. DS says that the Performance returns 125g/km of CO2 emissions without providing any performance figures. The new DS3 is expected to be launched across Europe in February, with the Performance following a few months later. DS3 & DS3 CABRIO DS3 PERFORMANCE Opel is refuting claims that the its Zafira MPV was knowingly tuned to cheat emissions testing, much like the VW Group did. Belgian channel VRT aired a report that suggested the diesel Zafiras nitrogen oxide emissions were up to nine times above the EU limit of 80 mg of NOx per km. Following the tests, the vehicles were installed with software updates at a dealership during a routine service and, in subsequent tests, NOx dropped to 2.5 and 2.8 times the legal limits, significantly lower than previously, yet still not compliant to official figures. VRT outfitted the cars with undercover cameras and claimed that mechanics could be heard discussing their belief that the software was created to help improve emissions. According to Opel however, the software fix was simply related to the diesel exhaust fluid controller, which was sending out wrong signals and illuminating a warning light unnecessarily. It says that only 309 vehicles in Belgium were impacted by the software update. The manufacturer issued an official response: Opel clearly rejects the claim of VRT News that Opel dealers have been modifying software in the Zafira Tourer 1.6 diesel that changes the emission behavior [sic] of these vehicles. The mentioned service update has nothing to do with changing emission levels. This does beg the question whether there is an Opelgate, too, or a TV station trying to making hay from the publicity raise by the VW scandal? Only proper testing by authorities can determine that, and itll be interesting to learn what is really going on. Story references: The Financial Times PHOTO GALLERY Herzog admitted that he got tired of what currently passes for VR fairly quickly, he said. What was more convincing was animated films, he added. Digitally created landscapes and events made a better impression on me. Nevertheless, Herzog believes that VR is a singular experience with the potential to become more than just an extension of cinema or 3-D cinema or video games. It is something new, different, and not experienced yet. That is because VR upsets the normal structures and relations of cinema, in that its technological disruption supersedes the artistic process. According to Herzog, human culture has traditionally dreamt up its narratives first, then sought out the means of production to materialize them. You have the content first, and then the technology follows suit, he told House. In this case, we do have a technology, but we dont have any clear idea how to fill it with content. As such, were left seeking experiences that can best be expressed in virtual reality, which was the case with Herzogs 2010 documentary, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, analyzing some of Earths earliest paintings on the walls of Frances Chauvet-Pont-dArc Cave. Once skeptical of 3-D, Herzog felt that 3-D was necessary for that film because paintings, thirty-two thousand years back in time, were not on flat walls in the cave but on wildly undulating ones. That said, Herzog is not exactly in love with technological disruption. His next documentary, Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World, premiering this weekend at the Sundance Film Festival, seems sanguine about the Internets potential to bring humanity together in technocratic utopia. Hes particularly critical of video games. I dont see anyone who is addicted to films, but I do see young people addicted to video games, Herzog said. It is so bad that now rehab centers have started. Cinema is over when the film is over, the credits are over, and the doors open and you are pushed out into the street and its still day out there, he added, noting earlier in the conversation that cinema is also the most intense way to express our inner condition. So far, virtual reality is struggling to replicate that intensity of expression, said Herzog. Oculus Story Studio technical director Max Planck told Cartoon Brew as much last year at a screening of their short, Henry. Were still in a novelty phase, somewhat stuck with the trappings of film, Planck admitted. Short forms that I have seen look fairly convincing and fairly good, but I do not see a real, big form of expressing the state of our existence, Herzog told House. Quoting the Prussian war theoretician Carl Von Clausewitzs famous aphorism Sometimes war dreams of itself Herzog reframed Clausewitzs rhetorical question for VR: Does virtual reality dream of itself? Do we dream or express and articulate our dreams in virtual reality? Herzog regards his query as indicative of the inherently ambiguous nature of human experience, which leads to the most fascinating but very disturbing possibility that we do live in a virtual reality all the time anyway, in some sort of virtual ambiguity, he said. Do we already live in a virtual reality? Herzog wondered. Did Rome, in antiquity, live in some sort of virtual reality? Although Herzog concluded that the answers to these philosophical questions remain to be found, he nevertheless emphatically argued that the world reveals itself to those who travel on foot not through a VR experience of someone traveling by the same means. We were made as humans to travel on foot, and sometimes very large distances, or as nomadic people, Herzog said. Strangely enough, the only time I got the feeling I was not caught in a virtual reality is when I travelled on foot. (Herzog photo: Shutterstock.com/Lev Radin) Photo: Facebook Andrew Panton will have one last chance to see his dog before it is euthanized later this week. Jake, a Presa Canario, was ordered put down following a BC Supreme Court decision rendered earlier today. Panton received the judgement via email. Jake was ordered euthanized following the fatal attack on a 12-year-old lhasa apso/Wheaton terrier, Charlie, while the dog was being walked by its owner in Peachland on New Year's Day 2015. Panton voluntarily surrendered Jake and his other dog, Buddy, right after the attack and has fought the regional district's claim both dogs need to be euthanized ever since. Last year, the late Justice Anne Wallace ordered that Jake be euthanized, while Buddy, an American bulldog cross that was also involved in the attack, was determined to be less of a threat and was returned to Panton with specific conditions. In a fight to save Jake, a dog he called one of the loves of his life, Panton went back to court in December to appeal Wallace's decision. "The bottom line here is Jake is going to be put down in the next two days. Just making the arrangements to have a final visit with him," said an emotional Panton in an interview with Castanet. "They will not be taking me to the vet to have him put down, which is kind of sad. I wish he could see me instead of some stranger before he goes, but that won't be the case." Along with trying to spare Jake's life, Panton successfully fought the impound fees the Regional District of Central Okanagan was trying to impose against Buddy. "(Dog owners) will now know that the regional district can't bully them with the threat of long-term confinement and the costs involved with that confinement," said Panton. "That's always been the regional district's first ploy when you come in to meet them when they seize your dog. "Even if you do go to court and even if you do get the judge to release the dog back to you, you are going to have to pay all impound fees up to that date. It was the first thing they threatened me with... it's just what they do. That's their number one tactic to try and get you to sign your dog over to be put down." Panton adds he hopes this opens people's eyes to the fact they can fight and win. "Buddy is home, safe and happy," he said. For past Castanet articles on this case, click here. Kin Race Track is home, sweet home to a handful of homeless people. While negotiations have been going on between the City of Vernon and the Okanagan Equestrian Society over the site, some of the city's down and outs have moved into the dilapidated horse stables in order to keep warm. Clothes and blankets hanging above stable doors appear to signify a person is occupying that particular box. A large metal drum sits in the middle of the stable rows, apparently used for fires, along with one chair, a pickaxe, a hammer and a crowbar. I've got a really nice place, said one man, who admitted living at the site. We're hoping more people move in here. There's lots of room. He said at least four boxes were occupied but that more than four people were living on the premises. He said there was not always room at homeless shelters around Vernon. That could be true, according to Kelly Fehr, program director of the John Howard Society for the North Okanagan-Kootenay region, although he suspects other reasons. Our outreach team was there about a month ago, said Fehr. The individuals out there did not want to come in. I assume they are active in their addiction, said Fehr, although he added there could be many reasons the group is living outdoors, including mental health issues, violent behaviour or just getting out of prison. Meanwhile, neither the city or the society appear eager to force the latest tenants out. We are aware that there are people in and around the stable area but we can't confirm if these people are transient or homeless, said Darren Lees, senior bylaw compliance office for the city. The stables are the responsibility of the (Equestrian) Society. City spokesperson Tanya Laing-Gahr said bylaw officers do have a protocol when responding to homeless camps on public property. However, on private property or on property that is leased/managed by a third party, it is the responsibility of the property owner/lease/property manager to take the lead on addressing the issueand in the case of illegal activities, to contact the RCMP rather than City bylaw officers. Technically, they are city lands, countered Ed Woolley, spokesperson for the equestrian society. Woolley was unaware anyone was living in the stables. If people in unfortunately circumstances choose to live in a horse barn, I don't feel all that eager to turf them out. He said the city could decide what to do if it became a liability issue. Recently, the society was handed a new offer for the track land that city officials hope will lead the way to brokering a deal. The offer will be put to a board meeting this week, said Woolley, although he is doubtful it will spell the end of the deadlock. The matter will also come up for discussion at the rescheduled annual general meeting of the Okanagan Equestrian Society on Jan. 31. Woolley said even if the offer appears to be acceptable, it is too late to schedule a vote on it at that meeting. Photo: The Canadian Press By Dr. Constantine Passaris Canada has always had a soft spot for refugees who have shaped our nation's history, fuelled its economic growth, defined its social fabric and influenced its political direction. This tradition began most significantly in 1783 with the arrival of United Empire Loyalists seeking safe haven from the American Revolution. About 33,000 settled in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, with another 2,000 to Prince Edward Island and 10,000 or so more to modern day Quebec and Ontario. They were followed in the 19th century by, among others, Poles, Ukrainians and Jews who fled from oppression and persecution and wound up building Canada into the great nation it is today. Canadians have long been known and recognized not only for humanitarian actions but also for understanding the passion and value refugees bring. In 1986, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees conferred the Nansen Medal upon the people of Canada in recognition of that tradition which since the Second World War has welcomed waves of refugees from Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Uganda, Chile, China and Vietnam, to say nothing of the many displaced Europeans who sought a better post war life here. The Syrians are but the most recent manifestation and there is no reason to expect they will not, like those who came before, work hard to build a better life and a richer, stronger Canada. In what has become the world's largest humanitarian crisis in close to 70 years, more than four million people have fled Syria since the conflicts there began. In 2015, more than one million crossed into Europe and Canada has committed to accepting 25,000, close to 7,000 of whom have already arrived, during the next few months. By chance and while on a weeklong working visit to Greece last month, I encountered two busloads of these people, and they were not what one would assume to be typical refugees. Most were well nourished and part of healthy young families. They were elegantly dressed, articulate and had money. They doted on their children, buying them sweets, chocolate bars and pop. Clearly, they were a segment of the Syrian middle class fleeing their war torn country in search of political stability and economic opportunity. There was nothing about them to justify the mythical rhetoric that refugees are a security risk, a drain on the public treasury and a burden on our health care system. Canada screens diligently and carefully for security and health risks. In fact, coming to Canada as a refugee is twice as difficult as being admitted as an economic migrant. This is because admission as a refugee in Canada requires United Nations certification. Further, applicants need to possess the human capital and work skills that will lead to successful integration in our society and economy. The arrival of the latest wave of Syrians in the past few weeks is more than an act of collective Canadian compassion. It is an investment a tool for addressing our population challenges that in turn gives us the manpower necessary to fuel our economic growth. Expect this wave of refugees, just as those who came before have done, to empower us with their entrepreneurial talents, start new businesses, invest, spend on homes, cars and other items, join our workforce and enrol in our schools. All of this will grow our economy. In short, the Syrian movement will, similar to the influx of previous waves of refugees throughout our history, become a driver of population growth and economic activity. The arrival of Syrian refugees to Canada will be both a humanitarian triumph and an economic lift off Dr. Constantine Passaris is a professor of economics at the University of New Brunswick and a national research affiliate of the Prentice Institute for Global Economy and Population at the University of Lethbridge. Troy Media Photo: Darren Handschuh It would appear that Vernon is finally seeing a drop in the price of gas, with the cost of a litre of petrol dipping below the $1 mark this week. Residents have taken to social media over the past few days to express their frustration of the seemingly lack of a price drop despite a barrel of oil hovering around the $30 mark. Until Tuesday, Vernon motorists were paying 104.9 per litre, while places like Kelowna had already broken the $1 a litre mark. As of Wednesday morning, the price at the pump in Vernon had fallen to 96.9 at most stations, matching the prices in Kelowna and bringing some relief to frustrated drivers. However, even with the drop, some are still questioning why Kamloops which is only 90 minutes down Highway 97 - is much lower at 84.9. According to gasbuddy.com, Prince George is sitting at 81.4. Calgary is reporting some prices as low as 66.9 and Edmonton is selling the liquid gold for mere 63.9 cents a litre. Vancouver, with its hefty transit taxes, is currently at 103.9 cents a litre. Photo: Contributed - RCMP Chase RCMP responded to a report of a break-in at the Peoples Drug Mart in Scotch Creek on Jan. 15. At 4:20 a.m., a Dodge pickup reported stolen from Kamloops was used to ram a wall and gain entry to the pharmacy. Two unidentified men wearing gloves and dark clothing then attempted to remove the ATM machine, but were unsuccessful. After leaving the pharmacy, the men were involved in a single-vehicle rollover on Squilax-Anglemont Road, west of Scotch Creek. The investigation is continuing, and police are asking anyone who has knowledge of this crime or may have see the suspects walking in the area or along Highway 1 to call Chase RCMP at 250-679-3221 or CrimeStoppers. If you have just started your journey in an online casino or are looking for a new site to play,... Workshops, NESHAP and optimisation Dr Michael Clark By Published 20 January 2016 The US NESHAP regulations provided a rich talking point at Cemtech Americas 2015 and discussions continued during the associated Technical Workshop. At the forthcoming Cemtech Middle East & Africa Technical Workshop on 8-10 February 2016, attention turns to the progressive levels of optimisation and understanding their interaction. The turn of the year is a very busy time for the Technical Forum, CemNet and ICR. Along with everything else, the festive season brings additional demands beyond technical considerations of the manufacture of cement, but at a time when there is a lot happening. Cemtech Americas 2015, with the associated Technical Workshop, marks the start of this busy period in early December. No sooner has this conference concluded, than thoughts turn to Cemtech Middle East and Africa in early February with less than two months between the two very important events and the festive season in between. NESHAP regulations and compliance in focus Speakers at Cemtech Americas, which took place in Orlando, USA, on 7-10 December 2015, presented a range of very good and interesting papers, thus maintaining the high standards to which delegates have become accustomed. The impact of increased regulatory responsibilities and adapting plant operations to new environmental rules formed a key part of proceedings. The New National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) regulations for conventional cement kilns came into force in September 2015, with a further 12 months being required to demonstrate compliance. If a kiln is firing alternative fuels it is considered as a Commercial Industrial Solid Waste Incinerator (CISWI) kiln and the compliance deadline is February 2018. This had been expected in the US for some time but now applies for most kilns with the clock ticking to demonstrate compliance. This, and in particular, the possibilities to comply with mercury emissions were also major topics of conversation during the Cemtech Americas Technical Workshop. As part of the main conference, Al Linero of Koogler & Associates (USA) delivered an excellent paper on the options to comply with mercury emission limits in Florida. For conventional kilns those limits are 55lb of mercury/Mt of clinker produced, based on 30-day average emissions. For CISWI kilns they will be 11mg of mercury/dry standard cubic metre of exhaust at seven per cent O2 (ie virtually the same emission rate, according to the EPA). In Florida the mercury content of limestone is not an issue. The main mercury input source is fly ash added to raw mix to raise the alumina content of the kiln feed and clinker. Mr Linero emphasised the importance of mercury speciation (elemental or combined mercury) in continuous mercury emissions monitoring and how this changes dependent on whether the kiln is operating in combination with the raw mill or the raw mill is standing alone. The raw mill is a very good scrubber of mercury: mercury captured in the raw feed can be removed, thereby breaking the mercury cycle and enabling the plant to meet its emissions limits. In the US this is referred to as dust shuttling. Technical Workshop talks Back in the Technical Workshop these options were discussed in detail along with some interesting solutions to mercury compliance that are being promoted in the US. One such solution is from Mercury Capture Systems, whose proposition is for a thermal desorbtion gas reactor. This involves heating the cement kiln dust (CKD) to volatilise the mercury and then directing the volatilised fumes to a modified particulate scrubber with a constantly-recirculating stream of reagent catalyst. In the normal configuration, vaporised mercury is carried into the scrubber and then removed from the gas stream through contact with an aqueous reagent catalyst solution. No doubt that should work, but one problem with such a solution is that this is a standalone system, which might require extra manpower and will require additional thermal energy. However, the suggestion to use this to clean fly ash of mercury before adding it to the raw mix is sound. More concerning are the companys assertions regarding the true cost of dust shuttling. It claims that CKD is essentially the same as clinker with an equivalent value to clinker, neither of which is true. It also states that it is usual for raw mill capacity to be a limitation of the cement manufacturing process, which it is not. Furthermore, the company claims that there are losses of clinker or cement production with dust shuttling, which again there are not. A more impressive proposition is the Scheuch Ex-Mercury solution with the separate preheater to which the dust is delivered independently of the kiln feed (see ICR January 2016). This is a robust process which operates continuously with the kiln with virtually no additional manpower or thermal energy requirements. However, it does involve major plant modification with associated capex implications. Scheuch acknowledges the effectiveness of dust shuttling but has developed a different solution due to the quantity of dust that can be involved. One interesting point of discussion is why extract (shuttle) dust when the raw mill is better at absorbing mercury? This is because with a three-fan kiln and raw mill system some of the exhaust is always going to the filter. The filter efficiently captures mercury on the bags and the mercury that directly reaches the filter is added to the mercury that has been absorbed in the mill. So this dust has a greater concentration of mercury than the mill product because it has mercury from more of the exhaust gas stream. Therefore, this is the material stream to shuttle to break the mercury cycle. To bypass some of the downcomer exhaust gas is a further improvement to the mercury abatement process as that is where the mercury is most concentrated in the process. From a technical perspective the moderator thinks the new NESHAP regulations are a wonderful development. Irrespective of the environmental improvements they will deliver, they also make us think about and develop an understanding of the complexities of the cement manufacturing process. Only when we have developed that understanding can we identify the best solutions to meet the new NESHAP requirements. Exploring the progressive levels of optimisation That brings us to considerations of the forthcoming Cemtech Technical Workshop in Dubai. This three-day, classroom-based course will follow the theme of the progressive levels of optimisation (as discussed in Technical Forum, ICR January 2016). The workshop will begin by looking at raw materials and their preparation, moving on to the fuels for firing a cement kiln and the ventilation of the exhaust gases from the process. An understanding of all these processes and how they interact is necessary to control and optimise the cement kiln process. The intention of the Dubai workshop will be to provide and enhance that understanding of the individual processes and their interaction. We have already received positive feedback regarding our thoughts on level 1 optimisation relating to raw materials, as presented in the previous Technical Forum. The above considerations of NESHAP and emissions control and mitigation illustrate the importance of level 3 optimisation, relating to exhausting the gases from the cement manufacturing process. No aspect of the cement manufacturing process can be considered in isolation. All the different aspects interact with one-another. We will be seeking to explore this in the workshop in Dubai in February, as well as at the Cemtech Asia, Europe and Americas conferences later this year. Zambia: New Ndola plant under planning 20 January 2016 The Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines Investment (ZCCM-IH) is planning to establish a 5000tpd cement plant in Ndola, the Times of Zambia reports. ZCCM-IH Chief Executive Officer, Pius Kasolo, said the plant, which would be set up at Ndola Lime in the Copperbelt, would be completed in three years. We have diversified and we are planning to set up a cement plant in Ndola with an initial investment of about US$600m," Dr Kasolo told the national daily. The company will be generating its own energy from the cement plant, he added. Dr Kasolo further explained that the finances for the project were being put in place and the feasibility studies had been conducted. Published under This service applies to you if your subscription has not yet expired on our old site. You will have continued access until your subscription expires; then you will need to purchase an ongoing subscription through our new system. Please contact The Chanute Tribune office at 620-431-4100 if you have any questions The Board of Partners of E. Merck KG has appointed two new members of the Executive Board of Merck KGaA: As of April 30, 2016, Udit Batra (45), Head of the Life Science business sector, and Walter Galinat (59), Head of the Performance Materials business sector, will become new members of the Executive Board while retaining their previous business responsibilities. Bernd Reckmann (60), currently the Executive Board member responsible for Life Science and Performance Materials, will retire on conclusion of the Annual General Meeting on April 29, 2016. Walter Galinat joined Merck in 1976 as an apprentice. After earning a degree in Business Administration, in 1984 he moved to Taiwan, where he built up the local Merck subsidiary. He returned to Germany in 1994, became head of the Laboratory Products division, and in 1996 assumed the leadership of Eurolab, Merck's former laboratory distribution business. He was appointed head of the former Liquid Crystals division in 2007 and became CEO and President of todays Performance Materials business sector in 2010. Udit Batra was awarded a PhD in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University and started his career at MSD in 1996. Prior to joining Merck, Batra worked for Novartis as Head of Global Public Health and Market Access for Vaccines and Diagnostics, as Global Head of Corporate Strategy, and as Country President of the pharmaceutical business in Australia. He joined Merck in 2011, taking over the leadership of the Consumer Health business. In March 2014, he was appointed CEO and President of Merck Millipore, the Merck Life Science business. Bernd Reckmann started his career at Merck in 1986 in Diagnostics research, took over functions in marketing and sales, and was head of the Life Science Products division from 1998 to 2004. Reckmann, who holds a PhD in biochemistry, then became responsible for strategic innovation projects, moved as Managing Director to Korea in 2005, and upon his return to Germany in 2007 was appointed to the Executive Board. Over the past ten years and under the leadership of Karl-Ludwig Kley, Merck has transformed itself from a classic, regionally focused supplier of pharmaceutical and chemicals into a global science and technology company. Since the beginning of 2015, the company has been organized into three business sectors - Healthcare, Life Science und Performance Materials. With today's personnel decisions, each will be directly represented on the Executive Board. As of April 30, 2016, the Merck Executive Board will comprise the following members: Stefan Oschmann (Chairman of the Executive Board and CEO), Belen Garijo (CEO Healthcare), Udit Batra (CEO Life Science) and Walter Galinat (CEO Performance Materials) as well as Kai Beckmann (Chief Administration Officer) for Human Resources, and Marcus Kuhnert (CFO) for Finance. Parade steps off Audio Article For the first time since 2019, marching bands, classic cars, dance troupes, scouts and politicians made their way along Midlothian Turnpike for the annual Midlothian Day Parade on Saturday, Oct.... The Illinois Department of Revenue will hold off on issuing any new property tax exemptions for hospitals while the courts resolve whether a law that details how to get those tax breaks is unconstitutional. The moratorium affects five hospital systems that have pending applications before the revenue department: a NorthShore University HealthSystem's medical office in Lake Forest, Mercy Hospital and Medical Center in Chicago, Swedish Covenant Hospital in Chicago and Peoria-based Methodist Services, which has two requests. Advertisement In the meantime, they may be required to continue paying property taxes on the properties in question, legal experts said. The agency's hands are tied after an Illinois Appellate Court earlier this month struck down as unconstitutional a 2012 law that created guidelines for granting charitable exemptions to hospitals. The value of a hospital's charitable services has to be greater than the hospital's estimated tax liability for it to be considered tax-exempt. Advertisement The revenue department has awarded tax exemptions to 221 hospitals since the law was passed, said Terry Horstman, an agency spokesman. The exemptions can be a financial hardship for some communities. Adventist Bolingbrook Hospital, for instance, received tax-exempt status in 2012. By law, the hospital also was entitled to a $7 million refund for property taxes paid between 2008, when the hospital opened, and 2011. Schools and other government bodies said they couldn't afford to repay the hospital all at once and set up installment plans. The law was thought to have ended a long controversy over the substantial tax benefits that hospitals enjoy as not-for-profit institutions. In 2004, the revenue department revoked the tax-exempt status of a prominent Catholic hospital in Urbana after it was criticized for its aggressive debt-collection tactics. The decision created a lot of uncertainty in Illinois, which led to the legislative action. Now it is likely the Illinois Supreme Court will be asked to address the issue. "I think the Supreme Court will accept an appeal," said Ares Dalianis, a tax lawyer at Franczek Radelet in Chicago who represents school districts. "It's too big an issue of public policy." asachdev@tribpub.com Twitter @ameetsachdev More than 200 employees of Republic Windows and Doors staged a sit-in in 2008 to demand wages they earned, severance pay and earned vacation time after the company shut the factory with little notice. (M. Spencer Green / AP) More than seven years after workers staged a sit-in at Republic Windows and Doors, becoming national symbols of protest amid the sweeping layoffs of the economic crisis, they are getting the last payment due to them for the factory's abrupt closing. The National Labor Relations Board announced Wednesday that it will distribute to 270 union workers $295,000 in back pay stemming from labor law violations. The settlement, the result of a lawsuit against the company's insurer, was ordered last month by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of the Northern District of Illinois. Advertisement Each of the workers will get two weeks of pay, based on the wages they were earning when the plant closed, said Leah Fried, representative of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers. "It's a big victory; we are still winning," said Armando Robles, who led the six-day occupation of the Goose Island factory in December 2008. Robles, who was a maintenance worker at Republic, expects to get about $1,200. Advertisement Armando Robles, center, shown in 2013, was a maintenance worker at Republic Windows and Doors. He led the six-day occupation of the Goose Island factory in December 2008. (Nancy Stone / Chicago Tribune) Robles and more than 200 fellow employees at Republic Windows staged the sit-in to demand wages they earned, severance pay and earned vacation time after the company shut the factory with little notice. The company filed a Chapter 7 bankruptcy petition in December 2008 to liquidate, and workers received $1.75 million to cover pay, accrued vacation and penalties for violations of the federal WARN Act, which requires employers to give 60 days' notice of plant closings. The workers filed charges of unfair labor practices with the National Labor Relations Board in 2009 after it was discovered that, less than a month before closing the Goose Island factory, Republic's owners had quietly set up a new company, Echo Windows LLC, a window and door manufacturing plant in Red Oak, Iowa. In a 2011 decision, the NLRB found Republic's owners violated federal labor law when they moved operations to the "alter ego" company in Iowa and neglected their obligations to the union as the collective-bargaining representative. Republic was ordered to pay $1.55 million in back pay to the workers. The claim was submitted to the bankruptcy court. The former chief executive of Republic Windows and Doors, Richard Gillman, was charged with stealing money from the company. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced in 2013 to four years in prison. Fried said the $1.55 million in back pay was the amount the union believed was due the employees during the 11 weeks that they were out of work and that Echo was operating. "However, ongoing bankruptcy procedures made full or partial compliance with the order unlikely until a successful suit against the employer's insurer made additional assets available for the repayment of debts," the NLRB said in its announcement. It added: "While the employees did not receive full back pay, obtaining partial compliance in this case is a victory for workers who have been waiting for a remedy since 2008." The victory is unusual because workers rarely get money in bankruptcy proceedings, Fried said, as they are usually last on the list of creditors to get paid back. Advertisement "Businesses close all the time, and there are a lot of employers out there that are dishonest and cheat their workers," Fried said. "But in this case, they were able to fight back and not only win back what they were owed but also win this additional settlement. "When workers are organized and fight back, they win," she said. Meanwhile, the New Era Windows cooperative on the Southwest Side that Robles founded with a small group of other Republic workers in 2013 is growing. Robles said the company recorded $750,000 in revenue last year, up from $205,000 its first year. New Era now has 14 owners after two resigned and one died, plus four employees, he said. "I would like to encourage anyone who has been in a situation like us that they fight and they demand their rights," he said. "They have nothing to lose." aelejalderuiz@tribpub.com Twitter @alexiaer If you're an architecture wonk (or even if you're not), I suggest that you take advantage of the fact that admission to the Art Institute of Chicago is free for Illinois residents through Feb. 11. The free days will allow you to see a neat little show about an avant-garde Dutch magazine that celebrated Frank Lloyd Wright while his reputation in the U.S. was near its low ebb. The show, titled "Our Most Distinguished Outcast: Frank Lloyd Wright and 'Wendingen', " is tucked away in the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, a hush-hush oasis for scholars off the museum's grand staircase. The first part of the show's title, a quote from the eminent architecture critic Lewis Mumford, refers both to Wright's enormous talent and the pariah status that hung over him long after 1909, when he abandoned his wife of 20 years and their children and ran off to Europe with a client's wife. Advertisement In America, such behavior sparked a huge scandal. But to architect Hendrik Wijdeveld, editor of the monthly art magazine Wendingen, Wright was a beacon of forward-thinking modernism. Radical buildings like his Unity Temple in Oak Park, which transformed the industrial material of concrete into something spiritual, pointed the way to a new synthesis of function, structure and expression, one that was in tune with the equally progressive buildings of the Amsterdam School of Architecture. For Wright's Dutch devotees, his lack of popularity in America could be explained by his departure from aesthetic conventions rather than the moral strictures he'd violated. The admiration was mutual, even if the Dutch were more enamored of Wright than he was of them. Advertisement "We have a common cause," Wright wrote in a 1922 letter to the Dutch architect Hendrik Berlage. Wendingen, which was published from 1918 to 1932, devoted eight issues to Wright one in 1921, with a dazzling cover of diagonal bars and a circle by the Russian constructivist artist El Lissitzky. Then, in 1925, came seven consecutive issues on Wright, filled with tributes by leading modernists on both sides of the Atlantic, among them the Dutch architect J.J.P. Oud, who wrote that "Wright, the artist, had achieved what Wright, the prophet, had professed." The magazines, which are in the collection of the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, form the heart of the show, which was organized by Anna Feuer, a senior acquisitions assistant. Feuer, 24, grew up in Chicago's Wicker Park, and graduated from Walter Payton College Prep and Oberlin College, where she majored in art history. She got the idea for the show, she told me, from an issue of Museum Studies, the Art Institute's journal, which discussed special items in the libraries' collections. El Lissitzky's masterful Wendingen cover was the one that drew her in. "I knew nothing about the magazine," she said. "When I saw there was a special series of issues on Frank Lloyd Wright, I thought that would be a good exhibition." She was right, even if the display is super old-school. The magazines are laid out in eight transparent cases, with printed text you bend over to read. But the text is lucid and the magazine covers are a visual feast square in format, with Japanese binding, and done in styles ranging from art nouveau to De Stijl. One cover tries earnestly, but unsuccessfully, to evoke Wright's distinctive "Cherokee Red" paint color. The issues draw us back in time to the aesthetic ferment of the 1920s, when, as the architect Erich Mendelsohn put it, the cool, analytic objectivity of De Stijl, led by Piet Mondrian, vied with the emotional and romantic individualism of the Amsterdam School. We get tastes of the Asian influence that permeated the rise of modernism, mostly notably in Wright's East-meets-West, earthquake-resistant Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. We learn that Wendingen, fittingly, means "turning" or "upheaval in Dutch. There are some faults. The text says incorrectly that Wright's American popularity sank because of his affair with a maid. And the exhibition could have told us more about the architecture of the Amsterdam School; an accompanying iPad or laptop display could easily and inexpensively address that shortcoming. Even so, this is fine small show, and it's especially worth seeing in conjunction with another small Art Institute exhibit, "The City as Image: The 1909 Plan of Chicago," whose subject, ironically, is the document associated with much-quoted phrase "make no little plans." The highlights of the "City as Image" are the monumental watercolors of American artist and illustrator Jules Guerin. They form the enduring image of Daniel Burnham and Edward Bennett's great plan. Advertisement The juxtaposition of the two shows is telling: In seeking to remake Chicago and, by extension, other American cities, Burnham and Bennett looked to Paris for inspiration. In seeking to remake architecture, the Dutch looked to the U.S. in general and Wright in particular. Aesthetically, at least, the former went backward, the latter forward. Of such trans-Atlantic crosscurrents are great cities and great buildings made. "Our Most Distinguished Outcast: Frank Lloyd Wright and 'Wendingen,' " through Feb. 16, Ryerson and Burnham Libraries (libraries are open on weekdays only); "The City as Image: The 1909 Plan of Chicago," through March 27, Gallery 24, both at the Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan Ave. 312-443-3600 or www.artic.edu. Blair Kamin is a Tribune critic. bkamin@tribpub.com Twitter @BlairKamin Bernie Sanders greets members of the crowd at a campaign event Tuesday in Carroll, Iowa. (Andrew Harnik / Associated Press) Reporting from CARROLL, Iowa Fresh off a strong debate performance and buoyed by rising poll numbers, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders returned to Iowa with an air of vindication. "We began this campaign some nine months ago. The media was saying, 'Bernie Sanders, he's an interesting guy, he has interesting ideas but he's a fringe candidate. We already have the anointed candidate, the inevitable candidate,'" Sanders told hundreds of supporters gathered Tuesday afternoon at a winery here. Advertisement "Well, a lot has happened in the last nine months," he said, "and the inevitable candidate is not quite so inevitable." The crowd roared in support. Advertisement Sanders, the professorial democratic socialist with an unruly cloud of white hair and wildly gesticulating arms, smiled and nodded in approval. It's a heady time for the independent Vermont senator. On Thursday, a Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll found Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton leading him by 2 percentage points among likely Iowa caucus-goers, well within the poll's margin of error in the state that holds the first nominating contest in the nation in less than two weeks. The news out of New Hampshire, which holds its primary eight days later, was even better he has led Clinton in six of the seven polls that had been taken this year. A CNN/WMUR poll released Tuesday had him ahead, 60% to 33%. On Sunday, in the last Democratic debate before the caucuses, Sanders aggressively confronted Clinton. On the stump, Sanders connects with the frustrations of liberal voters who are tired of Washington politicians and establishment politics in the same way that GOP front-runner Donald Trump connects with those on the right. Sanders rails against injustices that he says are harming working families: the economy is "rigged," the disparities in income and wealth among Americans are "grotesque," wages are "too damn low," lax campaign finance rules are "undermining American democracy." Sanders doesn't criticize Clinton by name, but he draws several distinctions with her, noting he did not vote for the Iraq war, has never been paid six-figure speaking fees by Goldman Sachs and does not support super PACs. "I don't represent the billionaire class; I never have. I don't represent corporate America; I never have," Sanders told about 200 supporters at a barn in Fort Dodge, Iowa, on Tuesday morning. He said when he kicked off his campaign, he was told he needed a super PAC to compete but refused. Advertisement "We decided to do it the old-fashioned way reach out to middle-class families and ask for their help," he said, adding that he was stunned by the end result 2.5 million individual contributions that averaged $27. According to the Des Moines Register, which tracks the candidates in Iowa, Sanders has spent nearly twice as much time in the state as Clinton has. Sanders said he has spoken in front of about 40,000 Iowans, and he hopes to make it to 50,000 by the Feb. 1 caucuses. Indeed, many in the crowd, such as Mike and Terry McCarville of Manson, had seen him speak before and were committed supporters. "There's no difference between the Democrats and the Republicans they're all establishment politicians. He's not," said Mike McCarville, 62. "He's not bought and paid for. That's the biggest thing." seema.mehta@latimes.com Twitter: @LATSeema "There is instance after instance, like, 'I plan on building upon what President Obama did,' " said Todd. "Whether "it was Dodd-Frank, whether it was health care, and it was clearly designed to say, 'Bernie Sanders, he's not wrapping himself in Obama.' " Children walk home after classes at Pullman Elementary School on Jan. 14, 2016, in Chicago's Pullman neighborhood, which has been declared a national monument by President Barack Obama. (Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune) As Chicago nears the first anniversary of Pullman's designation as the city's first national monument, officials say restoration plans will start picking up speed soon. At first glance, not much seems to have changed. The National Park Service has emblazoned its trademark arrowhead banner on the visitor center it shares with the Historic Pullman Foundation. A cozy cafe has opened and serves coffee in the historic district. Advertisement Behind the scenes, however, plans to rejuvenate the former luxury rail car manufacturing neighborhood on the Far South Side are gradually materializing, including one of the first steps toward restoring arguably the park's most identifiable landmark the administration building and a couple of major exhibits. Pullman rejuvenation projects On Feb. 19, the monument's one-year anniversary, the National Park Service and several of its partners will gather in the visitors center to elaborate on what's to come in Pullman's renaissance. Advertisement "If someone were go to Pullman, today, the question is: What are they going to see that's different?" said Lynn McClure, Midwest regional director of the National Parks Conservation Association. "I'm going to say maybe not a whole lot on the surface. The real action or change will start in the spring, and that change is happening over the next one to five years." The Illinois Historic Preservation Agency and the National Park Service secured $2 million in state money to test the 12.5-acre former factory grounds that encompass the administration building. The home of the Pullman Palace Car Co.from the late 19th to mid-20th century, the land is now a brownfield site, and its industrial past raises questions about whether soil and groundwater on the property may be contaminated. The agencies, which partnered with the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, are awaiting test results of soil samples collected in the fall. The Illinois EPA could supervise volunteer cleanup efforts as soon as this spring, paving the way for the administration building, a sprawling red-brick structure marked by an iconic clock tower, to be renovated into the new visitors center. The administration building has been largely dormant since it and much of the factory district were damaged in a 1998 arson. However, the National Park Foundation, the park service's philanthropic arm, has raised almost $8 million for work on the monument. Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 39 The renovated Clock Tower and Administration Building in Chicago's Pullman neighborhood is seen through a corroded gate on Feb. 10, 2015. President Barack Obama was scheduled to designate Pullman Historic District as a national monument Feb. 19 when he travels to Chicago. (Zbigniew Bzdak, Chicago Tribune) The preservation agency also mapped out preliminary restoration efforts for a 1911 steel rail car used by Robert Todd Lincoln the son of Abraham Lincoln when he was chairman of the board of the Pullman Palace Car Co. The rail car, named Advance, was donated to the state by the Canadian National Railroad. The historic Hotel Florence could be upgraded with a grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation and American Express for the repair and restoration of the hotel's many stained-glass windows. "It may not appear that a lot is going on, but compared to a lot of other national parks, we're moving at light speed," said Paul Labovitz, the park's acting superintendent. Enamored by the neighborhood's history and intimate sense of community, Larry and Carol Lagadinos traded the warmth of Fort Worth, Texas, to retire among the celebrated row houses of Pullman. The couple witnessed the designation of the monument five months after they bought their house and put off winter travel plans to follow the happenings in the historic neighborhood. Advertisement "We really thought this first winter we'd be going away," Carol Lagadinos said. "And now we don't want to go away. We want to be here in spite of the cold because there's just too many exciting things happening. Like, I'd be really mad if I missed the one-year celebration." Another group involved in Pullman neighborhood renovations is the Bielenberg Historic Pullman House Foundation. The foundation is guiding the Pullman House Project, and it aims to add several new exhibits that interpret life in Pullman during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Over the past three years, the Bielenberg foundation has been fixing up its first exhibit the home of Thomas Dunbar, a carpenter who went on to serve as head of manufacturing, and the Historic Pullman Foundation has provided some period-appropriate furnishings. A visitor holds a badge at the Historic Pullman Foundation visitor center in the Pullman National Monument on Jan. 14, 2016, in Chicago. Last year a portion Chicago's Pullman neighborhood was designated a national monument run by the National Park Service. (Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune) The National Park Service appropriated last week $180,000 for fiscal year 2016 for Pullman National Monument's first budget, said Christine Powell, a spokeswoman for the park service. The park will get yearly appropriations in addition to the opportunity to compete for additional federal funds for maintenance, seasonal hiring and special projects. "It's sort of the envy among the smattering of new national monuments," McClure said. "For the past two years now, a lot of new national parks have been established, and in my opinion none are in as good shape as Pullman." Even before the National Park Service handed down a financial plan, park Ranger Sue Bennett became the monument's first permanent employee, overseeing the site with help from Labovitz, who also serves as superintendent at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. They will add young, seasonal ranger interns to the staff over the summer. Bennett established a rapport with several area schools, including Gwendolyn Brooks College Preparatory Academy, formerly the Pullman Free School of Manual Training, in an effort to involve local people, Labovitz said. Advertisement "We'd love to recruit young people in the Pullman community to help us tell the story," Labovitz said. Although there aren't exact attendance numbers for the monument's first year, Labovitz said several thousand tourists visited the temporary Pullman visitors center. The center has videos on the neighborhood's history through today's preservation efforts and a number of local artifacts, including furniture from the Pullman Mansion on Prairie Avenue and an 1896 award that named Pullman "the world's most perfect town." Staff in the information center recently added a world map and a container of pins in hopes of plotting global visitors. "Some people from Germany, Sweden, England will come here with an address on a letter that they got from a relative who worked for Pullman," said Michael Shymanski, president of the Historic Pullman Foundation. "They'll try to track down the house they live in, the cemetery they're buried in. It's just fascinating." Outside of the visitors center, tourists are mainly limited to self-guided walking tours throughout the neighborhood. Labovitz said all of the monument's partners have seen an increase in visitors. The 42nd annual Historic Pullman House Tour had a record year with roughly 2,000 visitors touring the 120-year-old landmark homes, which range from executive mansions to 14-foot-wide worker cottages. As in past years, proceeds from the tour are converted to grants for restoration and preservation projects in the Historic Pullman District. Advertisement The Lagadinos opened their doors for the first time to participants in the home tour. Larry Lagadinos has admired neighborhood houses for their distinctions as much as their history. "Every house has a set of stories," Larry Lagadinos said. "Some are newer, some are different. Some people don't touch 'em, some people modernize them." Other projects in the works: Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > Pullman Artspace Lofts, affordable housing geared toward artists and their families, plans to build on a vacant lot east of South Langley Avenue, between 111th and 112th streets, and between two vacant row houses. Work is scheduled to start in early 2017. Construction is expected to start in spring on a retail strip on 111th Street, west of Doty Avenue. A Chipotle and a Potbelly Sandwich Shop will be among the tenants in the initial row of five shops. Several Chicagoland transit entities are collaborating on the Pullman Transportation Plan, a report funded by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, that will explore public transportation issues for an anticipated increase in visitors to the national monument. The plan is expected to be completed by the end of the year. Advertisement Metra is exploring improvements to its Metra Electric District line, including 103rd, 107th, 111th and 115th/Kensington stations, and it will invest $150,000 this year in its 111th Street station (the closest to the monument) to replace the platform deck boards, replace or repair the station house, and rebuild the staircase and hand railings. The Chicago Department of Transportation is expected to convene public meetings this spring to discuss developing a bicycle infrastructure plan to complement the 95th Street Red Line station, Pullman and other areas of interest in southeast Chicago. tbriscoe@tribpub.com Twitter @_TonyBriscoe The Alma Mater statue at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. (Michael Tercha / Chicago Tribune) For the second year in a row, University of Illinois is poised to freeze tuition for new in-state undergraduates next academic year, a decision aimed at attracting students who have been leaving the state as costs have increased and the state's financial outlook is uncertain. The decision carries more financial risk than last year, however, as it comes during a statewide budget stalemate now in its seventh month. Like all of Illinois' public universities, U. of I. has not received state funding for operations since the fiscal year began in July. Based on last year's appropriation, the state is $640 million behind in payments to the university, plus another $31 million for student financial aid. Advertisement U. of I. trustees plan to vote on the proposed tuition rates at Thursday's board meeting in Chicago. President Tim Killeen said he is recommending the tuition freeze despite uncertainty about state funding. Even when a budget is approved, there could be significant cuts to higher education. Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner had proposed a 31 percent cut to higher education, while the budget Democrats sent to the governor included a 6.5 percent cut. Advertisement "Our financial challenges cannot detract from our core mission opening our doors wide to provide the opportunities that propel students into life and supply the human capital that is critical to move our state forward," Killeen said. If approved, new students would pay the same tuition as this year's freshmen: $12,036 at the Urbana-Champaign campus, $10,584 at the Chicago campus and $9,405 in Springfield. The total cost is more than double that, however, when mandatory student fees and housing are added, and students in some of the more popular programs such as engineering and business will continue to pay higher tuition. Mandatory fees will remain at current levels at the Chicago and Springfield campuses and increase slightly at Urbana-Champaign, while housing costs will increase. State law requires that the tuition charged to freshmen remain unchanged for four years, though fees and housing can increase. International students would see a tuition hike under the proposal, with those at the Urbana-Champaign campus paying a base rate of $28,502. International students in some programs would pay even more, with engineering students charged $37,782. Last year's tuition freeze was the first time in more than two decades that U. of I. students didn't pay a higher rate to attend the state's flagship school. In the prior 20 years, annual U. of I. tuition hikes ranged from 1.7 to 16 percent. The tuition freeze is aimed at helping middle-class families whose incomes are not low enough to qualify for financial aid but not high enough to cover costs on their own. In recent years, Illinois students have turned down the U. of I. to attend other Midwest institutions that offer competitive tuition even for nonresidents and better financial aid packages. U. of I. Vice President Christophe Pierre said tuition remains high compared with other public universities, and he acknowledged that prior large increases priced the university out of the market for some students. Advertisement "We have to become more competitive with our peers," Pierre said during a trustee committee meeting Wednesday. "High tuition and fees are putting a burden on low-income, and also, increasingly, middle-class families ... We are losing a number of Illinois applicants to out-of-state institutions." He also cautioned that future tuition freezes may be untenable with the state's precarious budget outlook. "The state budget may threaten our ability to hold down student costs in the future," he said. After last year's tuition freeze, the number of in-state freshmen at the Urbana-Champaign campus grew this fall by 563 students, to 5,490. That's about 72.6 percent of the freshman class of 7,565 students. The number of international students in the freshman class also grew, to 1,124 students. Across the university's three campuses, in-state enrollment increased by 10.2 percent, from 10,272 to 11,315. The U. of I. is not alone in its decision to freeze or even lower tuition, as universities nationwide are under pressure from families to lower costs after years of hefty hikes. Northern Illinois University will keep tuition at this year's rate of $9,465. Advertisement Western Illinois University trustees voted to reduce tuition costs by 3 percent to $8,541 for new students in the next academic year. Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago increased tuition by 8.3 percent per credit hour for the next academic year. A student taking 30 credits would pay $10,470 a year. At U. of I., annual student fees would be unchanged at $3,092 for UIC and $2,016 for the Springfield campus. At Urbana-Champaign, students would pay $3,022, a $4 increase from the current academic year to cover transportation costs previously approved by students. Undergraduate room-and-board, based on a standard room and meal plan, would increase 2.7 percent, to $10,612 annually at the Urbana-Champaign campus. At UIC, the cost would be $10,960, up 2.2 percent, and in Springfield, students would pay $7,400, a 0.7 percent increase. U. of I.'s tuition announcement came as a new coalition of students, administrators, union and business interests called for lawmakers and Rauner to reach an agreement to free up funds for higher education. In a Springfield news conference, the group argued a lack of funding has left students in limbo and as they try to cobble together money to pay for school without state grants, while entire universities have been pushed to the brink of catastrophe. Advertisement Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > The Rauner administration has remained cool to the pleas for help, arguing in memos to lawmakers that universities suffer from bloated administrative costs and poor financial oversight. The most recent letter, sent Tuesday, took particular aim at Chicago State University, where officials have said the school could run out of money to pay employees as soon as March. Richard Goldberg, Rauner's deputy chief of staff for legislative affairs, argued the South Side public school must first put in place changes to cut spending before it would receive money from the state. "Recent reports of wasteful spending, corruption and low academic performance at Chicago State are plentiful," Goldberg wrote. "Sadly, minority and disadvantaged students are among the worst served at Chicago State." Higher education advocates argued that while there is room to cut costs, refusing all state support is an extreme reaction. "The response has been a war of attrition that has completely cut the universities from all of their food, and we're kind of just waiting around to see which organs fail last," said Brandon Hudspeth, a political science student from Springfield who attends the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. jscohen@tribpub.com Advertisement Twitter @higherednews A Chicago Fire Department dispatcher has been reassigned from 911 duties after he was arrested and accused of beating his girlfriend and having a gun without a firearms identification card, officials said. Charles Reed, 35, is charged with misdemeanor domestic battery and misdemeanor possession of a firearm without having a FOID card. The victim did not want to pursue felony charges, police said. Reed was arrested around 8:55 p.m. Monday in the 5700 block of South Emerald Avenue after the woman called 911 and said he had hit her in the face and had a gun, according to authorities. The woman was taken to St. Bernard Hospital and Healthcare Center. Police asked evidence technicians to check his weapon for evidence and take photos of the woman, according to authorities. Reed was transferred from the 911 floor after the Office of Emergency Management and Communications learned of Reed's arrest, according to spokeswoman Melissa Stratton. His job had included dispatching fire equipment and ambulances. On Sept. 5, Gary police arrested Reed for allegedly going 69 mph in a 35 mph zone and faced six charges, including operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated. A judge issued a bench warrant for Reed after he failed to appear for a hearing in November, according to court documents. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated and was given a suspended jail sentence and probation. He also was ordered to pay court costs and attend alcohol counseling. He was represented in the case by Roy Dominguez, formerly the sheriff of Lake County in Indiana. Reed had been scheduled to work at OEMC on the date he was arrested in Gary but called in sick, Stratton said. She said the agency was not aware of Reed's arrest or his failure to appear in court. She said an investigation was underway and Reed would remain reassigned until it was done. Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner on Wednesday launched a years-in-the-making all-out assault on the Chicago Teachers Union, pushing a state takeover of the city's public school system while contending his onetime ally Mayor Rahm Emanuel had "failed" to get the job done. Democrats, including House Speaker Michael Madigan and Senate President John Cullerton, quickly decried the plan, which also would allow the district to declare bankruptcy. They each accused Rauner of using Chicago Public Schools' financial crisis as a new avenue to push his efforts to curb union power while diverting attention from the lack of a state budget. Advertisement And so the political dynamic surrounding CPS quickly mirrored the impasse in state government: Both sides are digging in over deep-seated ideological differences and playing the blame game over who's responsible for the mess. Meanwhile, a solution remains elusive as rhetoric passes for progress in dealing with CPS finances, leaving thousands of schoolchildren, their parents, teachers and administrators in distress. For CPS, money woes are a recurring problem that has drawn in the rest of the state every 15 to 20 years. The last time was 1995, when Republicans who ran state government handed control of the city's schools and some financial flexibility to then-Mayor Richard M. Daley. But Daley, using powers agreed to by the GOP, reduced teacher pension payments, and today soaring retirement funding is the major factor in the financial problems the school district faces. Advertisement Even before he was governor, Rauner was a strong critic of the Chicago Teachers Union, and the legislation his top allies in the General Assembly proposed took aim at the labor group. The proposal would allow the governor's hand-picked State Board of Education chief to replace the mayor's appointed school board until the district's finances were deemed fixed. The state panel would have the power to negotiate a new teachers' contract if none is reached in current talks, or oversee a union contract that could be broken if the district filed for bankruptcy. If the measures were to pass, some Republicans privately acknowledged that the state would be more willing to come up with some money to help close what is estimated as a $480 million deficit. It also would lead to the promise of a new elected school board in the future, a concept pushed, ironically, by the teachers' union, though union contributions to candidates would be barred. The greater likelihood is that the measures will go nowhere in a legislature tightly controlled by city Democrats. If CPS is forced to close schools and make massive job cuts, Rauner can take cover by arguing he gave Emanuel and Chicago Democrats a choice in rescuing public education, only to be rebuffed by supporters of the status quo. In backing the new legislation offered by House Republican leader Jim Durkin, of Western Springs, and Senate GOP leader Christine Radogno, of Lemont, Rauner also ratcheted up his criticism of Emanuel. It was part of a continued theme by Rauner, who in recent weeks has sought to take advantage of souring public opinion toward the mayor following the November release of the video of the 2014 shooting of Laquan McDonald, a black teen, by Jason Van Dyke, a white Chicago police officer. "He's failed on public safety, he's failed on schools, he's failed on jobs in the neighborhoods, he's failed on taxes, he's failed on reforms. And I'm tired of it. We have to take action," Rauner said of Emanuel, accusing the mayor of being "afraid" of the CTU. "I believe if we get involved, we can take on the teachers union in Chicago," Rauner said. "(Emanuel) caved in the teachers strike 41/2 years ago, and he's sending the message right now (in contract talks that) he's going to give them what they want and then say, 'State, pay for it.' We are not going to let that happen," the governor said. Advertisement The seeds of Rauner's proposals can be found in what Rauner has billed as his "Turnaround Agenda," which includes provisions that would allow sharp curbs on collective bargaining with public worker unions, eliminate the requirement that prevailing union wages be paid on public works projects and put more of the onus on injured workers to prove their workers' compensation claims are justified. Those are items Rauner has said are key to resolving the state government stalemate, but they also have been nonstarters with Democrats allied with labor unions and trial lawyers. Though no friend of the CTU, Emanuel also has rejected Rauner's efforts to enlist the mayor's help to try to get Democratic lawmakers to back union-weakening laws in exchange for cash assistance to the schools and the city. One measure would add CPS to a state financial oversight law that it is exempted from but applies to all other Illinois school districts. Radogno, the Senate GOP leader, said the oversight of a state finance authority outside Chicago's political culture was needed. "We're trying to change that status quo. We don't feel like we've had a good look at what's going on in Chicago Public Schools. Everybody is sort of inbred in terms of the political system," Radogno said. Illinois House GOP leader Jim Durkin, Senate GOP leader Christine Radogno and state Rep. Ron Sandack field questions during a news conference on Jan. 20, 2015, at the James R. Thompson Center in Chicago about legislation they are introducing for a state takeover of Chicago Public Schools. (Anthony Souffle, Chicago Tribune) "There is no support to bail out Chicago or its schools if they're not going to help themselves and if they're not going to engage in a discussion to help the entire state," she said. Another measure would allow school districts such as CPS to declare bankruptcy, which could allow it to void union contracts. Illinois law does not allow local governments, including school districts, to file for bankruptcy. Advertisement Rep. Ron Sandack, of Downers Grove, the House Republican floor leader who has long backed legislation allowing for municipal bankruptcy, called CPS "a dying employer right now. The system is absolutely collapsing on itself. To do nothing would be unconscionable." But Democrats quickly assailed the Chicago school proposals as well as questioning the motivations behind them. "Giving control of our children's future to a governor who can't pass his own budget, who is racking up billions in unpaid bills and who is crippling higher education across the state makes zero sense," Kelley Quinn, Emanuel's spokeswoman, said while the mayor was attending a conference in Washington, D.C. Gov. Bruce Rauner donates blood during a Red Cross blood drive at Union Station in Chicago on Jan. 20, 2016. (Antonio Perez, Chicago Tribune) "With just a few weeks to go before delivering a second (state) budget address without having passed his first budget, it's clear the Republicans in Springfield are trying desperately to distract from their own failures," she said. Jesse Sharkey, CTU's vice president, said during a break in contract negotiations that Rauner's actions were "very disruptive and unhelpful to the bargaining process right now." "It's a disruption and it's also a stunt, because last time I checked Rauner doesn't have anywhere near enough votes in the legislature to move any of the things he's talking about," Sharkey said, adding that he believed the city was negotiating "seriously" and talks had been "productive." Advertisement Democrats accused Rauner, a former private equity investor, of calling for a CPS bankruptcy to try to help financial advisers and bankers or to push for creation of more charter schools. And Madigan raised the specter of Flint, Mich., and noted the controversy over lead found in the city's water supply there as a result of a state oversight board's decision. Cullerton, a key Emanuel ally, called the GOP legislation a "ridiculous idea." "This is not going to happen. It's mean-spirited and evidence of their total lack of knowledge of the real problems facing Chicago Public Schools," Cullerton said. "The unfair treatment of pension systems by the state is the immediate cause of CPS' financial problem. That situation ought to be addressed rather than promoting this far-fetched notion that the state is somehow in the position to take over Chicago schools," he said. Cullerton was citing the mayor's top complaint: City taxpayers pay for Chicago teacher pensions through property taxes while also paying for teacher pensions outside the city through state income taxes. Advertisement Escalating required contributions to the teachers' pension fund are driving the Chicago Public Schools cash shortfall. In each of the past two years, pension contributions by CPS have topped $600 million, nearly triple what was required in previous years when the district was given state permission to make lower payments even as the retirement fund shortfall grew larger. The increased CPS pension contributions, coupled with state reductions in payments to the fund, further strained an already tight budget. This year, the required contribution from CPS is $676 million. The state is paying about $12 million into the fund, compared with more than $62 million last year. Forrest Claypool, who Emanuel appointed to serve as CPS' chief executive, has argued the state should start contributing more to the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund. But critics note that for years CPS shortchanged the fund. For a decade under Daley, CPS made no payments to the fund, albeit with state permission. Claypool called the GOP proposals "a sideshow" and a "reckless smokescreen" that distracted from the district's recent demands that lawmakers change how Illinois schools are funded and bail out CPS. "CPS is taking steps to fix everything within our fiscal control and keep as much money in our classrooms as we can," Claypool said in a statement. "CPS and the CTU leadership are working feverishly to reach a deal that would cut costs while preventing midyear layoffs, the district is going to market with $875 million in bonds and we're on the verge of even deeper cuts to the bureaucracy," he said. Advertisement CTU's Sharkey and some Democrats also questioned the timing of Rauner's criticism and the Republican legislation coming just before CPS goes to the bond market. The legislative proposals were announced as Fitch Ratings again downgraded the school district's debt this week. Fitch cited a litany of factors, including CPS' limited ability to raise revenue, difficult union negotiations and a "lack of material progress" in efforts to stitch up a yawning budget gap. Standard & Poor's downgraded the district's debt by two notches last week. CPS officials say the borrowing is crucial to keep the debt-laden system afloat, though market conditions mean CPS could pay a steep premium. Mike Griffith, a school finance strategist with the Education Commission of the States, said school districts filing for bankruptcy is "a rarity." By his count, only six school districts have filed for bankruptcy since 1954. The last one, which he said came in the early 1990s, was a tiny system in Missouri. Griffith noted that a municipal bankruptcy is different than a personal bankruptcy because it would turn over to a federal judge the control of school district operations. "I think everyone looking at it definitely sees it as a last resort, because they could dramatically lower teacher pay. They could force you to close a lot of schools, to sell those buildings, to do many steps that people would be reluctant to do," he said. Advertisement The city's schools have been under the state's emergency oversight before. In 1980, a district fiscal crisis that prompted banks to withhold loans from CPS prodded state lawmakers to create the Chicago School Finance Authority to supervise schools. CPS had to submit a balanced budget to the authority, which had power to keep school doors closed until it approved or rejected district spending plans and contracts. That arrangement lasted until 1995, when a Republican-led legislature gave Daley the control of CPS that he wanted. Tribune reporter Hal Dardick contributed. kgeiger@tribpub.com jjperez@tribpub.com rap30@aol.com Judge Barry G. Williams denies the prosecutors motion to force Porter to testify against three fellow officers in Freddie Gray case. (Kevin Richardson/Baltimore Sun video) (Baltimore Sun) The next trial of a Baltimore police officer in the death of Freddie Gray could begin as early as next month after a judge on Wednesday rejected a request from prosecutors that could have tied up the cases in the state appeals court indefinitely. Judge Barry G. Williams questioned prosecutors' motives for asking him last week to compel Officer William G. Porter to testify against all five of his fellow officers who are facing trial. Until then, they had said Porter was a witness against only two officers. Advertisement Williams said prosecutors appeared to have a "dual purpose" for making their request one being to stall the trials. He denied the motions. Porter has been ordered by Williams to testify in the trials of Officer Caesar R. Goodson Jr. and Sgt. Alicia D. White, and Porter's appeal to block that order is tied up in the Court of Special Appeals. That court will not hear his appeal until March, and could take months to decide. Advertisement Joseph Murtha, an attorney for Porter, said calling his client to testify at the rest of the trials of Officers Edward M. Nero and Garrett E. Miller and Lt. Brian W. Rice was a "disingenuous pretext for the purpose of getting a postponement." Prosecutors said that they had not previously contemplated calling Porter at all of the trials, but adjusted their strategy after Porter's trial last month ended in a mistrial. "We tried to learn something from our experience in trying Officer Porter," Chief Deputy State's Attorney Michael Schatzow told Williams. "We think we have the right to change our mind, and we acknowledge we are changing our mind." Nero's trial is tentatively slated for Feb. 22, with Miller to follow on March 7 and Rice on March 9. But an attorney for Nero indicated Wednesday that he had a scheduling conflict, and Miller and Rice's trials are not likely to move forward just two days apart. Gray, 25, suffered a severe spinal cord injury in police custody last April. The six officers were charged May 1 and indicted by a grand jury the next month. All have pleaded not guilty. Nero, Miller, Rice and White attended the hearing Wednesday; Porter and Goodson did not. In September, prosecutors called Porter a "necessary and material witness" against Goodson and White. Williams ordered six separate trials and scheduled Porter to be tried first. Prosecutors' plans were complicated last month when the jury in Porter's trial was unable to reach a verdict on any of the four charges against him and Williams declared a mistrial. Advertisement The judge ruled that Porter would be retried in June. Goodson's trial was scheduled to begin this month. Porter was subpoenaed to testify, but invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination with his charges still pending. Williams granted prosecutors' request to force Porter to take the stand, under a form of limited immunity, in both Goodson and White's trials. Porter's attorneys immediately sought an injunction from the Court of Special Appeals to block him from testifying, and Goodson's trial was postponed pending a decision. Williams postponed White's trial on Wednesday. Prosecutors said last week they were moving to have Porter compelled to testify at each of the remaining trials. In court Wednesday, Schatzow said prosecutors now believe Porter's testimony would help the state prove reckless-endangerment charges against Nero and Miller and manslaughter and assault charges against Rice. Porter gave a statement to investigators in which he explained arriving on the scene as Gray was being put into a police van. Advertisement Schatzow said Porter's testimony would help show Gray was not secured in a seat belt and establish a timeline for when Gray was injured, which would help jurors understand the officers' culpability. But Williams said he had scrutinized Porter's statement and testimony, and questioned whether Porter's statements about the officers' actions at those stops were "admissible and relevant." Williams noted Porter said he had turned away from the van to deal with a crowd forming while the other officers were still handling Gray. Williams also chastised prosecutors for not concluding earlier that Porter would be a witness at "every single case." Murtha, Porter's attorney, noted that prosecutors gave immunity to other officers on the scene who were not charged at all, at least one of whom had a "bird's-eye view" of what occurred, and could just as soon call those officers to the stand as Porter. "What they want to do is take [Porter] hostage for five cases, then torture him in his own trial," Murtha said. He said prosecutors were "exploiting their privilege." Advertisement Schatzow acknowledged that prosecutors' position had changed but said it is the state's prerogative to call witnesses of its choosing and a judge shouldn't "interfere with the state's ability to make reasoned judgments about who may or may not be necessary." "This is the state's attorney's office's decision to make," Schatzow said. "Once they make it, and make it in good faith, we're done." He said that a decision by Williams to deny the state's request to call Porter would be "premature" and that the relevance of his testimony was a matter to be taken up at trial. Attorneys for Nero, Miller and Rice spoke only briefly at the hearing, but argued in filings that the state was trying to "avoid trying the most factually and legally tenuous cases first." Granting the prosecutors' motion to compel Porter to take the stand in their trials, they said, "would in essence reward the State for its tactical inadequacies and utter disrespect for the Defendants' constitutional rights." "If someone is to be blamed for not having sufficient foresight, that should be me," Schatzow said. But he said prosecutors were allowed to change strategy because it was in the "public interest." Advertisement Williams said it was "also in the public interest" that the defendants' rights be protected. Rice's attorney noted that his client is a father of four who has not been paid by the Police Department since he was suspended pending the outcome of his case. Gene Ryan, president of the union that represents Baltimore police officers, applauded the judge's ruling. "Williams' decision to deny the prosecution's request to force Officer Porter to testify was a positive one for the defense and we look forward to moving this process ahead," he said in a statement. jfenton@baltsun.com krector@baltsun.com What's next Advertisement With the trials of Baltimore Police Officer Caesar R. Goodson and Sgt. Alicia D. White on hold, the trial of Officer Edward M. Nero is tentatively scheduled for Feb. 22. The Court of Special Appeals is scheduled to hear arguments in the appeal of Officer William G. Porter in early March. By Chet Scheltema and Vivian Mao Dezan Shira & Associates, Shanghai WFOE Holding Company Every investor of a WFOE in China will have to select the formal investor shareholder of the entity. The shareholder could be the ultimate beneficiary of all activities in China or could be an intermediary structure, otherwise known as a holding company. Historically, investors may have been able to obtain certain preferential tax benefits by locating a holding structure in a legal jurisdiction that has negotiated a favorable tax treaty with China, such as Hong Kong. While this continues to be a reason to consider using an intermediary holding structure to establish ones WFOE, the analysis is no longer as straightforward as it once was. Many countries home to traditional foreign investors (the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Ireland, etc.) have negotiated favorable tax treaties with China, eliminating the need to locate a holding company in jurisdictions such as Hong Kong. In any case, the ability to qualify for favorable tax benefits has become more difficult, as Chinese authorities have become wise to abuses and moved to close loopholes. RELATED: Strategic Considerations when Establishing a WFOE in China, Part 1 Besides the potential tax benefits of utilizing a holding company, there remains a simple, straightforward reason to seriously consider establishing an intermediary holding structure to invest your WFOE in China. The simple reason is that, if at any later stage the investors wish to change the shareholders of the WFOE as might occur during a restructuring or divestiture it would be much simpler and faster if done outside China. Changing the formally registered shareholder of a WFOE under registration in China normally requires a tax clearance, potentially requires a formal valuation of the WFOE, and then requires the formal updating of the registration records of the WFOE with relevant Chinese government agencies. All of this could take months, give rise to substantial tax liabilities needing to be settled before being able to move forward, and the change of shareholder could in theory be blocked by Chinese authorities. In contrast, completing all of the steps necessary to restructure or divest ones ownership of a WFOE could be completed in days if conducted in certain jurisdictions. For this reason alone, investors in a WFOE should consider using an intermediary holding structure in an administratively friendly jurisdiction. Of course, one should consider all relevant factors in determining whether to utilize an intermediary holding structure, including the requirements of such jurisdiction and the impact upon the investors business globally. WFOE Corporate Name While any corporate name might suffice in a western jurisdiction at least temporarily until a more suitable one is found one would be wise not to choose hastily in China and to devote time and attention to selecting an appropriate corporate name for several reasons. Principally, changing the name is effectively the same as redoing the incorporation process, so it behooves investors to get it right from the beginning. The option of using a doing business as name is not normally available in China, although a Chinese corporation may have an English name, besides its Chinese name, which could be carved into its business chops just like its Chinese name. However, it is only the Chinese name that is legally binding and effective. The Chinese corporate name is an important initial consideration for other reasons that a foreign investor may not initially consider. Every corporate name contains the city of registration, and certain city names carry status and credibility that may be important when conducting sales, business development, government relations, or when finding investors. A recent client found himself in a debate and argument with his local sales team, because the local team felt the name Shenzhen was inhibiting their sales efforts with government agencies in Beijing, whereas the foreign investor felt the time and expense of reincorporating in Beijing just to obtain Beijing in the name would not be justified. The formula for determining a Chinese corporate name is rigid, offering little flexibility. There are normally four basic elements in the following order: (i) unique name, (ii) industry sector (e.g., manufacturing, consulting, trading, etc.), (iii) the city of incorporation (e.g., Beijing, Shanghai, etc.), and the corporate structure (e.g., limited liability company, partnership, etc.). For instance, a companys name might be ABC Trading (Shanghai) Limited Company. Originality is usually only possible in the initial few characters. Since Chinas corporate registry is national, desirable characters are quickly secured by others, leaving few options. Besides these structuring limitations, the Chinese language presents further pitfalls. Characters may have multiple pronunciations and meanings, so one must choose carefully. A previous client had to rethink its choice of name when it was discovered that the first choice was also the widely accepted translation into Chinese of an infamous European dictators name. Of course, this is a problem in any language, and readers are probably familiar with the well-known example of the introduction of Chevys Nova coupe into Spanish speaking countries, where no va means doesnt go in Spanish, but the Chinese language presents its own particular challenges. RELATED: Corporate Establishment Services from Dezan Shira & Associates WFOE Registered Address In order to receive permission to incorporate a WFOE, MOFCOM generally still requires evidence of a twelve month lease at an address authorized to let to foreign investors for purposes of incorporation. While it is true that local authorities may from time to time relax this requirement when approving incorporation, especially if one established in a special investment area or in a special custom zones, the general rule remains the same across China. And there are several reasons why the selection of a registered address and office lease is of strategic importance. One basic reason is that it will determine the tax jurisdiction in which the WFOE is registered attempts to change jurisdictions later can meet resistance, and the requirements necessary to make a move become disruptive to operations and business activities. Each Chinese tax jurisdiction, and there may be many in any given city, will jealously guard its tax revenue, so when the WFOE announces it would like to move to another tax jurisdiction, in-charge tax officials may seek to delay or prevent the transfer, often depending upon how much revenue the WFOE is generating in the current tax jurisdiction. And there may be financial risks in such a move. A tax clearance will be required before any move may be made, and unhappy in-charge tax officials may make a point of searching for and uncovering previously unpaid taxes. Finally, because the books will need to be closed to proceed with the tax clearance, business activities may be interrupted. Another reason to consider the registered address is that some Chinese tax districts lack experience dealing with international clientele and cross-border transactions. This could adversely affect the WFOEs ability to conduct business. Additionally, the sophistication of tax districts can vary even within an otherwise international city. For instance, Beijing and Shanghai are divided into numerous tax districts, and the overwhelming majority of multinationals and WFOEs in Beijing would be located in Chaoyang and Haidian. Although still located within Beijing, other tax districts may have little experience working with cross-border transactions. In one instance, one client seeking to remit monies from a less international tax district back to its headquarters in Europe discovered that the local tax bureau did not have Austria in its system, and so the transaction was delayed a week while authorities worked to add it. So while it may initially seem attractive to set up shop in a development zone or city or district seeking to entice investors with promises of benefits and special treatment, including potentially the option to use a virtual address, it may be more strategic in the long run to make the investment in a tax jurisdiction with an established record of handling international transactions. In the final article of this three-part series, we focus on VAT, corporate governance, and provide some concluding remarks on establishing a WFOE in China. About Us Asia Briefing Ltd. is a subsidiary of Dezan Shira & Associates. Dezan Shira is a specialist foreign direct investment practice, providing corporate establishment, business advisory, tax advisory and compliance, accounting, payroll, due diligence and financial review services to multinationals investing in China, Hong Kong, India, Vietnam, Singapore and the rest of ASEAN. For further information, please email china@dezshira.com or visit www.dezshira.com. Stay up to date with the latest business and investment trends in Asia by subscribing to our complimentary update service featuring news, commentary and regulatory insight. An Introduction to Doing Business in China 2015 Doing Business in China 2015 is designed to introduce the fundamentals of investing in China. Compiled by the professionals at Dezan Shira & Associates, this comprehensive guide is ideal not only for businesses looking to enter the Chinese market, but also for companies that already have a presence here and want to keep up-to-date with the most recent and relevant policy changes. How to Restructure an Underperforming Business in China In this issue of China Briefing magazine, we explore the options that are available to foreign firms looking to restructure or close their operations in China. We begin with an overview of what restructuring an unprofitable business in China might entail, and then take an in-depth look at the way in which a foreign company can go about the restructuring process. Finally, we highlight some of the key HR concerns associated with restructuring a China business. Adapting Your China WFOE to Service Chinas Consumers In this issue of China Briefing Magazine, we look at the challenges posed to manufacturers amidst Chinas rising labor costs and stricter environmental regulations. Manufacturing WFOEs in China should adapt by expanding their business scope to include distribution and determine suitable supply chain solutions. In this regard, we will take a look at the opportunities in Chinas domestic consumer market and forecast the sectors that are set to boom in the coming years. You are here: Home Flash A surge in Chinese travelers helped maintain a boom in New Zealand's accommodation sector in November last year, according to figures from the government statistics agency Tuesday. Guest nights across the country for November were up 4.6 percent from a year earlier, making the 20th straight month of growth, said Statistics New Zealand. "Guest nights continued to rise this month, with the South Island leading the way when compared with November 2014," business indicators manager Clara Eatherley said in a statement. Domestic guest nights were up 5.2 percent, and international guest nights were up 3.8 percent. For the year ended November 2015, national guest nights were up 4.8 percent from the November 2014 year. Chinese tourists drove a record rise in the number of overseas visitors to New Zealand in November, Statistics New Zealand said last month. Visitor arrivals were up 11 percent year on year to 300,500 in November, with the biggest increase from China - up 35 percent to 36,700. Visitors from China were the highest-ever for a November month, twice as high as November 2013. In the year ending November, visitor arrivals reached a record 3.09 million, up 9 percent year on year, with Australia contributing 1.32 million, China 344,900, and the United States 240,000. Flash China and Saudi Arabia agreed to lift their bilateral ties to a comprehensive strategic partnership on Tuesday, eyeing more industrial capacity cooperation. Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) is awarded with Abdulaziz Medal by Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud after their talks in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Jan. 19, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] The two countries signed a Memorandum of Understanding in industrial capacity cooperation after Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud held talks with visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping. The document also said they will jointly pursue the China-proposed "Belt and Road" initiative. "I believe it will deepen the mutual strategic trust, lead to greater achievements in our mutually beneficial cooperation, and help facilitate and broaden our shared interests in international and regional affairs," Xi said on the upgrading of the bilateral ties. The King said that the two peoples will benefit from the elevated ties and that Saudi Arabia supports the "Belt and Road" initiative. The "Belt and Road" initiative refers to the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road, proposals put forward by Xi in 2013 to boost interconnectivity and regional development. The Chinese president arrived in Saudi Arabia Tuesday on the first stop of his three-nation tour of the Middle East, as the world's second-largest economy seeks closer political and economic ties with the region. It is the first state visit by a Chinese head of state to Saudi Arabia in seven years. Xi will also travel to Egypt and Iran on his first overseas visit this year that lasts from Jan. 19 to 23. The two leaders agreed to boost strategic communication, maximize the synergy of their development plans, build a stable long-term energy cooperation, and promote dialogues between the civilizations. They also pledged to make the China-initiated Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank a win-win financing platform whereby regional interconnectivity can receive a boost. The two leaders said they appreciate the progress made in the China-Gulf Cooperation Council Free Trade Area talks, and agreed that the free trade area should be established as early as possible. The two countries signed a slew of cooperation deals after the talks between their leaders, covering sectors such as energy, communications, environment, culture, aerospace, science and technology. The Chinese president was awarded the King Abdulaziz Medal by Salman, the highest order in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is China's biggest global supplier of crude oil and its biggest trading partner in West Asia and Africa. In 2013, China became the biggest trading partner of Saudi Arabia for the first time. Two-way trade reached 69.1 billion U.S. dollars in 2014, growing by 230 times over that of 1990 when the two countries established diplomatic ties. In their joint statement on establishing a comprehensive strategic partnership, China and Saudi Arabia vowed to increase cooperation in security as well as regional and international affairs. The two countries said they resolutely oppose terrorism in any form that threatens world peace and stability, and that they are "against linking terrorism with any religion or religious sect." China appreciates Riyadh's support for the establishment of a United Nations counter-terrorism center and supports the efforts of Saudi Arabia and other countries in combating terrorism, the statement said. On the Syria issue, they expressed deep concern over the grave situation in the country, while renewing their calls for a political settlement to the issue in a peaceful manner as soon as possible. The two countries also stressed that humanitarian aid and relief to the Syrian refugees should be continued, encouraging the international community to provide greater support. China and Saudi Arabia also affirmed their stance on support for the unity, independence and sovereignty of Yemen, while calling on all social, religious and political sects in the country to maintain their national solidarity. "Any decision that may cause social disruption and chaos in Yemen should be avoided," the statement said. The two countries voiced their support for the legitimate regime of Yemen and for the resolutions of the UN Security Council as well as the proposals of the Gulf Cooperation Council on Yemen. On Palestine, China and Saudi Arabia said they support the establishment of an independent, unified state of Palestine with full sovereignty, with East Jerusalem as its capital. In addition, the two countries agreed to seek political solutions to regional hotspot issues, and support the establishment of a zone free of nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. You are here: Home Flash Twenty Egyptians held captive by Libyan militia groups were released and received by Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi at the Cairo international airport, state-run Ahram online reported on Tuesday. "We won't leave any Egyptians in danger in Libya or anywhere else," Sisi told journalists at the airport. Sisi said that in cooperation with the Libyan army, the held Egyptians were released, according to Ahram. The Egyptians, who came from the same village in the governorate of Minya in Upper Egypt, were abducted in the city of Al-Jufrah, 750 km from Libya's capital Tripoli, earlier January. Libya has witnessed a drastic escalation of violence after the 2011 turmoil which toppled Muammar Gaddafi. Despite the Egyptian government travel warnings, the turmoil-stricken Arab country is an ideal destination for thousands of Egyptian workers, many of whom are hired in the construction sector. In 2015, the Islamic State (IS) militant group beheaded 20 Egyptian Christians and one Ethiopian Christian near the Libyan city of Sirte. Flash The U.S. Supreme Court announced Tuesday that it would hear the case that challenges President Barack Obama's executive actions to shield millions of illegal immigrants from deportation. A young boy holds U.S. flags as immigrants and community leaders rally in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 20, 2015. [Photo/Xinhua] The court will review a ruling by the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in November that upheld the decision by U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen in Brownsville, Texas to halt Obama's actions. Obama issued an executive order in 2014 to shield about 5 million illegal immigrants from deportation, a move that bypassed the Republican-dominated Congress. The action was directed at people who have no criminal records and whose children are U.S. citizens. Under the order, they will get working permits and receive some federal benefits. Obama already issued a similar order in 2012 to exempt those who became illegal immigrants as children from deportation. There have been more than 600,000 people who have successfully applied for this program. The Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision on the immigration case at end of June. If Obama wins the case, he will preserve one of the key legacies in his eight-year presidency. This will also shape the debate on immigration among presidential candidates in this election year. Facing insurmountable opposition in the Republican-controlled Congress, Obama has repeatedly resorted to the issuance of presidential executive orders to take actions on critical issues such as healthcare reform, immigration, and gun control. The Republicans have blasted such actions as unconstitutional because they bypassed Congress that is the sole lawmaking body. Flash Citing a "very serious situation with acute shortages of shelter" in south-east Niger where some 100,000 people have fled to escape Boko Haram violence, the United Nations refugee agency Tuesday appealed for urgent humanitarian assistance and funding to help those that have been uprooted. "Our team in Niger describes the situation as very serious with acute shortages of shelter and non-food items for the displaced," Adrian Edwards, spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told journalists in Geneva today. These newly displaced include local villagers, internally displaced people (IDPs), people who have been displaced several times, and Nigerian refugees, according to a recent UNHCR team visit. "UNHCR is redirecting available resources to meet the urgent shelter and other assistance," Mr. Edwards said, calling on donors for extra support to help this vulnerable population. The agencys current Niger operation is about half funded with $24.9 million received against overall requirements of $51 million. While struggling to cope with the humanitarian needs, UNHCR and partners have conducted a more comprehensive registration to simplify needs identification, delivered food in south-east Nigers Diffa region, and offered health care and sanitation. However, many newly displaced, who have sought shelter alongside Nigers National Route No. 1, are without protection by the Niger army. Moreover, they do not have adequate access to water sanitation, shelter and school. "Providing assistance and shelter is all the more difficult because people are living in spontaneous sites rather than in a camp environment," warned Mr. Edwards. The conflict in north-east Nigeria has forced more than 220,300 people to find refuge in neighbouring countries such as Niger, Cameroon, and Chad since 2013. In Niger, insurgent incursions had displaced an estimated 50,000 people within the country, according to UNHCR. Flash Dozens of Syrian families started returning to their homes in a rebel-held district south of the capital Damascus on Wednesday, following a successful truce between the government and the rebels, local media reported. State news agency SANA said dozens of families started returning to their homes in the western and eastern districts of al-Qadam neighborhood in the framework of the "national reconciliations." Meanwhile, pan-Arab al-Mayadeen TV said 5,000 people are expected to return to al-Qadam, where the rebels and the government forces agreed on a truce, called by the government "reconciliation," which will allow the rebels to be enlisted in pro-government militia and will be responsible for the security in that neighborhood. Several truces and evacuation of rebels have taken place recently in Syria, particularly around Damascus, in the latest effort by the government to clear the vicinity of the capital from insurgent groups. The government concludes such truces by laying tight siege on rebel-held areas to force the rebels to abandon their positions under negotiated deals, largely mediated by the UN. China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group 2016-01-15 Subversion of State Power Subversion of state power (Chinese: ), according to article 105, paragraph 1 of the Peoples Republic of Chinas Criminal Law, is defined as whoever organizes, plots, or acts to subvert the political power of the state and overthrow the socialist system. The ringleaders or those whose crimes are grave are to be sentenced to life imprisonment, or not less than 10 years of fixed-term imprisonment; active participants are to be sentenced from not less than three years to not more than 10 years of fixed-term imprisonment; other participants are to be sentenced to not more than three years of fixed-term imprisonment, criminal detention, control, or deprivation of political rights. Furthermore, article 113 and article 56 indicate whoever commits the crimes may also be punished by having his property confiscated and deprived of political rights. 1. Zhou Shifeng (Head of Feng Rui Law Firm), was arrested on 8th January in suspicion of subversion of state power by Tianjin public security bureau and is currently detained at Tianjin No.1 Detention Center. 2. Wang Quanzhang (Lawyer of Feng Rui Law Firm), was arrested on 8th January in suspicion of subversion of state power by Tianjin public security bureau and is currently detained at Tianjin No.2 Detention Center. 3. Wang Yu (Lawyer of Feng Rui Law Firm), was arrested on 8th January in suspicion of subversion of state power and is currently detained at Tianjin No.1 Detention Center. 4. Dr. Liu Sixin (Feng Rui Law Firm administrative assistant) was arrested on 8th January in suspicion of subversion of state power by Tianjin public security bureau and is currently detained at Tianjin No.2 Detention Center. 5. Li Shuyun (Lawyer of Feng Rui Law Firm), was arrested on 8th January in suspicion of subversion of state power by Tianjin public security bureau and is currently detained at Tianjin No.1 Detention Center. 6. Zhao Wei (Kao La)(assistant of lawyer Li Heping), was arrested on 8th January in suspicion of subversion of state power by Tianjin public security bureau and is currently detained at Tianjin No.1 Detention Center. Inciting subversion of state power Inciting subversion of state power (Chinese: ), according to article 105, paragraph 2 ot the Peoples Republic of Chinas Criminal Law, Whoever instigates the subversion of the political power of the state and overthrow the socialist system through spreading rumors, slandering, or other ways are to be sentenced to not more than five years of fixed-term imprisonment, criminal detention, control, or deprivation of political rights; the ringleaders and those whose crimes are grave are to be sentenced to not less than five years of fixed-term imprisonment. Furthermore, article 113, paragraph 2 and article 56 indicate whoever commits the crimes may also be punished by having his property confiscated and deprived of political rights. 1. Lawyer Xie Yanyi, was arrested on 8th January in suspicion of inciting subversion fo state power by Tianjin public security bureau and is currently detained at Tianjin No.2 Detention Center. 2. Lawyer Xie Yang, was arrested on 9th January in suspicion of inciting subversion fo state power by Changsha public security bureau and is currently detained at Changsha No.2 Detention Center. 3. Lawyer Bao Longjun, was arrested on 8th January in suspicion of inciting subversion fo state power by Tianjin public security bureau and is currently detained at Tianjin No.2 Detention Center. Obstructs a witness from giving testimony or instigates another person to give false testimony, destroy or forge evidence According to article 307 of Chinese Criminal Law Whoever, by violence, threat, bribery or any other means, obstructs a witness from giving testimony or instigates another person to give false testimony shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years or criminal detention; if the circumstances are serious, he shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than three years but not more than seven years. Whoever helps any of the parties destroy or forge evidence, if the circumstances are serious, shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than three years or criminal detention. Any judicial officer who commits any of the crimes mentioned in the preceding two paragraphs shall be given a heavier punishment. 1. Gao Yue (assistant of lawyer Li Heping), was arrested on 8th January in suspicion of destroy evidence by Tianjin public security bureau and is currently detained at Tianjin No.1 Detention Center. As of 14 January 2016, 317 persons are affected, in which 33 lawyers and acitivists are still detained or in status of disappearance. <> Lawyer Zhou Shifeng http://chrlawyers.hk/en/content/zhou-shifeng Lawyer Wang Quanzhang http://chrlawyers.hk/en/content/wang-quanzhang Lawyer Wang Yu http://chrlawyers.hk/en/content/wang-yu Lawyer Bao Longjun http://chrlawyers.hk/en/content/bao-lungjun Lawyer Li Shuyun http://chrlawyers.hk/en/content/affected-non-human-rights-lawyerslaw-fir Zhao Wei (Kao La) (assistant of lawyer Li Heping) http://chrlawyers.hk/en/content/affected-non-human-rights-lawyerslaw-fir Lawyer Xie Yanyi http://chrlawyers.hk/en/content/xie-yanyi-0 Lawyer Xie Yang http://chrlawyers.hk/en/content/xie-yang Gao Yue (assistant of lawyer Li Heping) http://chrlawyers.hk/en/content/affected-non-human-rights-lawyerslaw-fir Dr. Liu Sixin http://chrlawyers.hk/en/content/affected-non-human-rights-lawyerslaw-fir <> http://on.fb.me/1OsuHVc <> 1. Hu Shigen, was arrested on 8th January in suspicion of subverting state power by Tianjin public security bureau and is currently detained at Tianjin No.1 Detention Center. 2. Liu Yongping, was arrested on 8th January in suspicion of subverting state power by Tianjin public security bureau and is currently detained at Tianjin No.1 Detention Center. China Aid Media Team Cell: (432) 553-1080 | Office: 1+ (888) 889-7757 | Other: (432) 689-6985 Email: [email protected] For more information, click here The CRRC Corp stand at the Metro China 2015 expo in Beijing. [Photo/China Daily] As security issues become a concern for Chinese railway projects in Southeast Asian countries, China's railway expansion in the region will help improve local security capability by enhancing regional connectivity, an expert said. Over the last two months, China's railway projects expanded quickly among ASEAN countries. After the China-Lao railway project's early December groundbreaking ceremony in Vientiane, it launched the China-Thailand railway projects ceremony in Ayutthaya two weeks later. The China-Indonesia railway project will start this week. However, the recent terrorist attack in Jakarta, which left eight people dead, set off alarm bells in the region. Security issues become a potential challenge facing Chinese railway projects in the future. While China's expanding its economic engagement with the world, the safety of Chinese citizens and Chinese projects also face challenges in places with major security concern. For instance, three executives from China Railway Construction Corporation were among the hostages killed in a terrorist attack in Bamako, Mali in November. "It depends on the project's location and choice of country. Countries with weak security apparatus would encourage potential terrorists to attack," said Kavi Chongkittavorn, a senior fellow at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand. "ASEAN is facing polarization among its dialogue partners which will impact on its overall relationship, so ASEAN has to manage these relations," Chongkittavorn said. "Connectivity will facilitate economic and people-to-people exchanges within ASEAN, and help with security cooperation and intelligence sharing in the matter of counter terrorism in the region. To face the existing and possibly increasing security challenges in Southeast Asia, it is pivotal to make sure that there are good cooperation among Chinese railway companies, both government officials and stakeholders at the ground levels. To maintain peace and security in the region ASEAN is required to deal with the threats in two ways covering the real-time, physical threat and the underlying condition that leads to the physical threat, Bangkok Post reported." Kumar Ramakrishna, head of policy studies in the Office of the Executive Deputy Chairman, S Rajaratnam School of International Studies says,"Extremists, the Islamic State in particular, have successfully expanded their influence into Southeast Asia through several channels: ideology, existing terrorist groups in the region, returning IS fighters and those who have no previous organizational connection with the IS. "Enhanced intelligence co-ordination is needed on terrorists' identities, movement, logistics and funding pipelines between and within governments in the region." Following the deadly attacks in Indonesia, its neighbors including Malaysia and Singapore, have declared tightened security. Malaysian police soon raised the alert to the "highest degree". Increased security measures are in place at public locations such as shopping malls and tourist spots. Extra precautionary actions will be implemented in border areas to prevent possible infiltration by terror elements. The Immigration Bureau of Thailand is setting up special teams to examine passports at airports more thoroughly as the government seeks to increase efforts to tackle global terrorist threats and transnational crimes, a week after the attack in Jakarta. Interior view of the Palace of Longevity and Health (Shou Kang Gong) in the Palace Museum, also known as the Forbidden City, in Beijing, China, October 8 2015.[Photo/IC] The Palace Museum in Beijing, often referred to as the Forbidden City, has launched a new way of promoting itself internationally, by hosting traditional Chinese cultural events aboard luxury cruises operated by global industry giant Royal Caribbean International. Shan Jixiang, the museum's director, said related gifts and products will be on display on many ships, and experts from the famous site will also give guest lectures on board, covering its collections, history and an overall appreciation of Chinese art. The cooperation will start on the Ovation of the Seas, the company's newest ship which launched in the United Kingdom in April and which will be based in Tianjin from June. Shan said visitor numbers to the museum have doubled in the past decade and officials are anxious to promote the attraction even wider. Yet still, he underlined just half a percent of its treasures stored on site are on public display. "The cooperation is a win-win situation for everyone, as it means more audiences around the world can be introduced to Chinese culture while on board," he said. Liu Zinan, Royal Caribbean's president for China and North Asia, called the arrangement so much more than just a joint promotion, it represents a significant cultural development which ultimately will be extended throughout the company's fleet, he said. Royal Caribbean is also inviting experts from the museum to suggest how the huge former palace can be best promoted on its ships, and this could even extent to permanent decoration. "We are sure the museum's culture will be welcomed on board, judging by the response already to lectures given on Quantum of the Seas by our staff last year," Liu said. Royal Caribbean operates four cruises in China and during Spring Festival, the giant Quantum will sail from Shanghai to Japan and South Korea. A new children's English learning course, Poptropica in China based on cartoon characters, is being launched for those aged between 6 and 12, by Pearson Plc. The world's largest educational company is expanding its traditional publishing business to digital services to meet the demand from the younger generation. Pearson said it is hoping the new course will reach more children at Chinese schools as most current courses, including Big English and Longman English Link, are adopted by institutions and international schools in the country. There are 600 million Chinese parents in China and more than 45 percent would enroll their children in English learning courses. Gu Shengzu, vice-chairman of China Democratic National Construction Association, gave six suggestions concerning crowd-funding platforms and projects to promote innovation and entrepreneurship. Internet finance are financial products combining the traditional finance industry and information technology. It has become a buzzword in China and is facing new challenges against the "new normal" backdrop in recent years. More than 500 people from the government, banks, and high-tech corporations have attended the 2016 Internet Finance Annual Meeting last Saturday, sharing opinions on the future direction of Internet finance development. Hosted by the China Internet Association, China E-finance Industrial Alliance, and the Committee of Internet finance of the China Internet Association, the meeting had the theme of "new drive, new face, and new progress" of Internet finance. The six suggestions on crowd-funding put forward by Gu in the meeting are as follows: 1. It is essential for crowd-funding platforms to conduct investigation on its projects thoroughly and its crewmembers shall also carry out relevant background research. Moreover, accountability should be enhanced, in order to improve the security of crowd-funding projects. 2. Crowd-funding platforms should adopt the mode of "lead investor + followed investor", which means professional investment institutions and experienced investors take the roles of leading investor, helping identify risks, and others can follow and learn from them. 3. Carefully go through current incubators and Group Innovation Spaces (GIS) to preserve the better ones, strengthen the risk management process, and connect mass entrepreneurship with crowd-funding platforms. GIS can make consulting centers for entrepreneurs an online service, enriching the service range and enhancing the efficiency of resource utilization. 4. Build the capital market into a pyramid. The spire of the pyramid is the main board, followed by the growth enterprise market, and crowd-funding, which corresponds to angel investment and venture capital as the bottom. 5. Push forward the credit reporting of big data, using the strength of the third-party and reducing asymmetric information. Gu said that almost all the risks come from asymmetric information, so it is necessary to build a credit reporting system online. In this case, the third party (e.g. lawyers, accountants, and rating agencies ) can supervise crowd-funding platforms, while credit-reporting platforms are required as the basic measure to accomplish online credit reporting system. 6. Enhance the transformation of the regulatory system, especially regulations of function and risk. Gu said that the main problem arises in regulation because blind spots still remain. "In the past, whenever we loosened our regulation there would be chaos and whenever we tighten the regulation we abandoned flexibility. We need to prevent such occasions in the future," said Guo. BEIJING - China's exports in January may return to negative growth following a sporadic rise in December buoyed by seasonal factors, a Ministry of Commerce (MOC) official said on Wednesday. The country's exports in yuan-denominated terms climbed 2.3 percent year on year in December after five months of contraction, official data showed last week. "Exports' performance in January may be poor given the climb in December was helped by seasonal factors as exporters chose to sell more products before the year end for a better result in 2015, squeezing January's exporting share," MOC spokesperson Shen Danyang told a press conference. Despite the expected setback at the beginning of 2016, Shen said he is confident exports will experience "sound development" this year as the central government's pro-growth measures take effect. China unveiled measures in 2015 to improve customs clearance processes, reduce taxes, and encourage cross-border electronic payments. BEIJING - Chrysler will recall 2,334 of its imported 2008 Jeep Grand Cherokee and Jeep Commander vehicles in China after finding ignition module defects, the country's quality watchdog said on Wednesday. The affected Grand Cherokees were manufactured between March 21, 2007 and May 12, 2008, and the Commanders were manufactured between April 3, 2007 and May 12, 2008, said the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine in a statement on its website. Chrysler said the defective ignition modules may cause engine failure and result in safety risks, said the statement. The company has promised to replace the faulty components free of charge after a recall starting Jan 28. Internet giant Alibaba's cloud computing arm Aliyun released its big data service platform during its computing conference held on Tuesday, which indicates that the company will start to roll out a complete industry chain regarding data services. A number of new products have been rolled out on this platform. It will provide a big data computing service named Max Compute, with which users will be able to process within six hours 100 PB of data which is equal to 100 million high-resolution movies. Aliyun will also provide an analytical database on this platform, allowing various-dimension analytics and search, using only 100 milliseconds to search among 10 billion data categories. A full set of big data development tools have been released during the conference, which will help users to collect, develop and manage data and complete a number of other functions. Aliyun also proivde mobile analytics service on the platform, which will enable users to make mobile applications "smarter". Also released during the conference are Aliyun's visualized data tool, machine learning product and intelligent speech interactive service, among others. The company also announced a number of strategic partnerships with companies and institutions such as China Meteorological Administration, openstack technology provider 99Cloud, and NVIDIA Corporation, among others. A civilian flight-tracking system the Philippines plans to install in the South China Sea is illegal, the Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday. It also said Manila is igniting tension by accusing China of sending radio messages to Philippine commercial aircraft flying toward a Chinese island. "The allegations from the Philippines are intentionally flaring up regional tensions with unconcealed purpose," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hong Lei said. "China has indisputable sovereignty over the Nansha Islands, including Zhongye Island. Any activities carried out by the Philippines on occupied Chinese territory are illegal," Hong said. Philippine officials said on Monday they had received two radio warnings identified as originating from the Chinese navy when they flew a plane close to a Chinese island in the South China Sea on Jan 6. The plane was actually flying toward another Chinese island, Zhongye Island. The Philippines illegally occupied some Chinese islands in the South China Sea, including Zhongye Island, in the 1970s. The Philippines also said on Monday that it would install a civilian flight-tracking system on Zhongye Island. The automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast machine, which identifies aircraft positions using satellite signals, will be operational by November, said Rodante Joya, acting director of the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines. Joya said the system was part of a broader $209 million effort to more than double the country's commercial flight radar coverage. Hong on Tuesday also rebuffed remarks by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in an interview with the Financial Times about Japan's "concern" over China's construction on some of its islands in the South China Sea, and its attempt to explore oil and gas in the East China Sea. The spokesperson said such activities are all within areas of Chinese sovereignty. Government looks at ways to help top talent connect with Chinese programs, institutes China is looking at removing career barriers for top foreign talent eligible to work at research institutions, colleges and universitiesa move expected to make more opportunities, such as research projects or jobs, accessible to highly qualified foreigners. Zhang Jianguo, director of the SAFEA. CHINA DAILY Zhang Jianguo, director of the State Administration of Foreign Expert Affairs, said China will further enhance its attractiveness to global talent in the coming five years. "We will encourage establishing a recruitment mechanism within research institutions, colleges and universities that will take job applications from around the world," said Zhang. "We will also draft a regulation to guide foreign experts to participate in national science and technology programs, as well as being leaders of important research projects." "We will also encourage foreign experts to participate in the selection of China's science and technology awards equally with their Chinese colleagues," Zhang said. Gao Xiang, spokesman of the administration, said barriers exist for three reasonslimitations created by bureaucracy, lack of transparency in current policies and the Chinese language barrier. "In the past, some jobs in China could only be taken by Chinese employees within their own system. Some research projects were not open for applications from foreign talents," Gao said. "There have been some changes in certain research institutes or universities, yet it is not a formalized government policynot to mention that many foreign talents have little understanding of the changes." Gao said another area of complaint involves the language. "In China, even if some foreign talents can apply for research project funds, they must submit papers in Chinese. This is a disadvantage for them," said Gao. Ralf Altmeyer, a German virologist who is managing director at the Helmholtz Institute of Biotechnology at Shandong University, agreed. Requiring Chinese as a working language does create challenges for foreign experts doing scientific research, Altmeyer said, suggesting that application forms be made available in English. Wang Huiyao, president of the Center for China and Globalization, a Beijing think tank, added that other barriers should also be removed to keep foreign talents in China. "Many foreign scientists and researchers might have very limited information, say on education for their children," he said. A worker stands on scaffolding on a construction site in Rizhao city, Shangdong province, on April 15, 2015. [Photo/CFP] China's working-age population saw its largest decline in modern China's history in 2015, a trend that worried demographers and economists. Defined as people between 16 to 60, the working-age population fell by a record 4.87 million, more than the population of Ireland, to 911 million, sharper than 2014's fall of 3.71 million, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. Declining birthrates have produced repeated slumps in the working-age population since 2012. In 2011, the groupdefined then as those 15 to 59 years oldtotaled 941 million, or 69.8 percent of the population. By the end of 2015, it had dwindled to 66.3 percent. The NBS adjusted the definition of working-age in 2013 to include people aged 16 to 60. "The dwindling working-age population affects everything from the property market and automobile market to the larger issues of China's innovation and creativity in the future. The trend set the stage for the government's decision late last year to shift to a two-child policy," said Liang Jianzhang, a demographer who had long advocated the relaxation. The situation is so grim that he recently even suggested that China should encourage women to allow routine artificial insemination. Cai Fang, vice-president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, has long argued that the demographic change reduced the country's potential growth rate to 6.2 percent from 2016 to 2020. Another sign of labor pool shrinkage can be seen in the supply of migrant workers. Last year, 169 million rural residents left their hometowns to seek jobs in cities, up just 0.4 percent from 2014. In the first nine months, the growth was zero. People older than 60 accounted for 16.1 percent of the population by the end of 2015. Migrant workers are having lunch in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong province on May 16, 2013. [Photo/CFP] China is set to introduce a real-name registration system for migrant workers to better protect their rights in cases of salary cuts or pay defaults, according to a document issued by the State Council. Cases of salary cuts or pay defaults involving migrant workers increased by 34 percent in the first three quarters of 2015, partly due to the ongoing economic downturn, according to the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, saying such cases and other violations of workers' rights are still rampant. Main contractors of engineering projects would be required to sign labor contracts with migrant workers in the first place before the start of construction work, said Qiu Xiaoping, vice-minister of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security. The government would promote "proxy of wage payment", in which salary payment for migrant workers employed by sub contractors are all entrusted to main contractors and banks, he said. Enterprises must also open special accounts at banks that are only used for salary payment for migrant workers. Qiu said the government would step up its efforts in cracking down on pay defaults of migrant workers, aiming to achieve "zero pay defaults" by 2020. He warned that any companies found guilty of defaulting on pay would be blacklisted in terms of their credit across the country and serious offenders are also likely to be prosecuted for their criminal liabilities. According to the business news website Yicai.com, only 30 percent of manufacturing companies can pay wages on time. Many such companies are facing financial strain and have to lay off large numbers of workers. In 2014, there were 274 million migrant workers in China, with an average monthly income of 2,864 yuan ($572.8), according to a National Bureau of Statistics report released in April 2014. The report said 0.8 percent of the migrant workers, or 2.19 million, did not receive their pay on time. The average salary amount in default was 9,511 yuan. More than 60 percent of the migrant workers did not sign labor contracts with employers. The Fourth Ring Road in Beijing in a morning rush hour. City authorities are working on solutions to ease the pressures on traffic in the city. [Zhuo Ensen / For China Daily] Beijingers lost as much as 7,972 yuan on average to traffic jams last year, the highest in the country, said a report. Published by Didi Kuaidi, China's largest ride-hailing application and its partners, the report revealed Beijingers on average spent 52 minutes travelling 19.2 kilometers daily between their home and office. White-collar workers in China's mega cities - Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Shanghai - were those who lost most money to congestion. The cost ranged between 7,972 yuan and 6,324 yuan per person in the four cities whose residents are among the best paid employees in China. Research based on data collected on Didi Kuaidi's online platform showed that not only those in mega cities suffered from poor traffic conditions. The report said residents in second-tier cities spent 37 minutes on average between home and work with a travelling speed of 23 km/h due to congestion. The speed was even slower than first-tier cities' 24 km/h. ZHANGJIAKOU - Zhangjiakou is drafting plans to improve air quality as it prepares to co-host the 2022 Winter Olympics with Beijing, the Zhangjiakou government said on Wednesday. Environmental experts from Tsinghua University have been invited to assist in developing the Air Quality Improvement Plan for 2016-2022 for the city, officials with the city government said. One goal is to keep the amount of PM2.5 particles within 25 micrograms per cubic meter. The current average PM2.5 density is 34 micrograms per cubic meter, figures with Zhangjiakou environment bureau show. Hou Liang, Party secretary of Zhangjiakou, said the goal will force the city to further cut industrial emissions and improve industrial and energy structure. Since 2010, Zhangjiakou has cut steel production capacity by more than 8 million tons, and cement production by 4.58 million tons. Zhangjiakou will host most of the snow events for 2022 Winter Olympics. Hedva Almog (left), deputy mayor of Haifa Municipality in Israel, poses with Zeng Yi, head of the government delegation from Chengdu, Sichuan province, after presenting a photo album of her city. [Photo by Huang Zhiling/chinadaily.com.cn] Haifa, the largest city in northern Israel, is encouraging its residents to visit Chengdu so they better understand their sister city in China's Sichuan province, officials said while meeting a Chinese delegation on Tuesday. The Israeli people would be impressed by Chengdu, which is best known for its pandas and ancient history, the officials told a government delegation from Chengdu. The two cities have conducted frequent official exchanges since establishing the sister city tie in 2013. Home to some 271,000 people, Haifa is the smallest city in the world with three Nobel Prize laureates, while Chengdu is a top tourist destination and center of science and technology in southwest China with 14 million residents. Aviva Shpigelshtein, deputy secretary-general of Haifa Municipality, has visited Chengdu twice since the sister city tie was forged. "I have seen pandas twice and have been impressed with the Du Fu Thatched Cottage, and the Jinsha Site Museum," she said. The cottage commemorates Chinese poet Du Fu (AD 712-770), while the museum houses relics unearthed from an archaeological site dating back some 3,000 years. Endorsing Shpigelshtein's view, Hedva Almog, deputy mayor of Haifa Municipality, said people from her city would like Chengdu because Jewish people value the preservation of ancient culture. The deputy mayor also extended an invitation for Chengdu business people to invest in research and development at the Haifa Life Sciences Park, the country's first dedicated business park. "It would be a win-win solution thanks to the wisdom of the Jewish and Chinese people," she said. State Councilor Wang Yong will attend the commencement ceremony for Indonesia's first high-speed railway project during his visit to the country from Wednesday to Friday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said on Wednesday. Wang will meet with Indonesia President Joko Widodo and will attend the ceremony launching the joint project that will connect Jakarta to Bandung about 150 kilometers away, Hong said. Wang is visiting Indonesia at the invitation of the country, he said. There is "very good momentum" in the development of the China-Indonesia relationship and the two countries working together in constructing the railway will enhance their practical cooperation in infrastructure and develop their comprehensive strategic partnership, he added. The highest designated speed for trains on the new railway will be 300 kilometers per hour, according to China Railway, who led an organization of companies that signed the agreement with their Indonesian counterparts to form a company to run the project on Oct 16, 2015. The railway will improve Indonesia's infrastructures and enhance interconnectivity, said Hong. Haifa will encourage its residents to visit Chengdu to better understand their sister city in China's Sichuan province, said officials from Haifa Municipality in Israel. They believe Israeli people would like the Chinese city which is best known for its pandas and ancient history. They made the remarks while meeting a government delegation from Chengdu with which they established the tie in 2013. Since then, frequent exchanges have been conducted between Chengdu, a famous tourist destination and center of science and technology in Southwest China, and Haifa, the smallest city in the world with three Nobel Prize laureates. Home to some 271,000 people, Haifa is the metropolis of the north in Israel. Aviva Shpigelshtein, deputy secretary general of Haifa Municipality, has visited Chengdu twice since the tie was forged between the two cities. "I have seen pandas twice (in a base with more than 100 captive pandas in Chengdu) and have been impressed with the Du Fu Thatched Cottage (which venerates Du Fu (AD712-770), one of the greatest Chinese poets in ancient China) and the Jinsha Site Museum (which houses the logo of China Cultural Heritage unearthed from an archaeological site dating back to some 3,000 years)," she said. Endorsing her view, Hedva Almog, deputy mayor of Haifa Municipality, said people from her city would like Chengdu because Jewish people value the preservation of ancient culture. The deputy mayor also extended her invitation for business people in Chengdu to invest in the Haifa Life Sciences Park which is her country's first dedicated business park, building their research and development centers there. "It would be a win-win solution thanks to the wisdom of the Jewish and Chinese people," she said. Chuan-I Wang (left), a chef from the Grand Hotel in Taipei, and Wang Hao, executive chef at the Central Hotel Shanghai, show their specialty dishes before the two catering firms signed a deal for cooperation in Shanghai on Wednesday. GAO ERQIANG / CHINA DAILY Shanghai's gourmets will soon have the opportunity to try signature dishes from the Grand Hotel in Taipei, Taiwan - including Madame Chiang Kai-shek's favorite red bean muffin - without flying all the way across the Straits. The Taiwan-style dishes will be available at the Central Hotel Shanghai for five days starting on March 23, the result of a cooperative agreement reached by the two hotels on Wednesday. In May last year, during their visit to Grand Hotel, delegates from Central Hotel Shanghai suggested a collaboration. Later, in October, Central Hotel brought its well-known hairy crab dishes there, and won great popularity among local aficionados. About 130,000 yuan ($19,700) in sales revenue was generated during the weeklong crab dish offering. "The crab dishes offered at the Grand Hotel made a hit in the local market, and this March we are going to provide Shanghai people, as well as Taiwan businesspeople in Shanghai, our special dishes," said Johnson Chiang, president of the Grand Hotel. "Fine food is the best way to promote cross-Staits communication. It is hoped that our communication will be long lasting," Chiang said. The two hotels plan to communicate regularly on an annual basis, said Zhang Guosheng, general manager at Shanghai Wang Bao He Co, the parent of Central Hotel Shanghai. According to Chiang, the five-star Grand Hotel is well known for its delicate Taiwan-style dishes. It's red bean muffin is tailored to the requirements of Madame Chiang Kai-shek (Soong Mei-ling). The Grand Hotel, Taipei, known in Chinese as the Yuanshan Great Hotel, was established in 1952. Built in classic Chinese style, it's a local landmark that witnessed Chen Yunlin, then-president of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits, deliver his first formal speech on his visit to Taiwan in 2008. "After the exchange of signature dishes, the two hotels can also share their customers and management resources," said He Jianmin, a professor of tourism management at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. About 4.15 million trips were made to Taiwan by tourists from the Chinese mainland in 2015, estimated to have resulted in sales of 230 billion New Taiwan dollars on the island last year, according to a report from www.taiwan.cn, which is affiliated with the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council. About 300,000 people from Taiwan live and work in Shanghai. Central Hotel Shanghai - or literally Wang Bao He Great Hotel in Chinese - is a four-star hotel of Shanghai Wang Bao He Co. Wang Bao He is a time-honored brand in Shanghai that serves signature crab dishes and rice wine. Its history can be traced back to 1744, when a tavern called Wang Bao He was opened by Wang Guichen near the current Chenghuang miao, or City God Temple, in Shanghai close to the same time Wang Bao He Wine Workshop launched in Shaoxing, Zhejiang province. This file photo shows mainland tourists in Taiwan. [Photo/Xinhua] Taiwan has become one of the most popular travel destinations for mainland residents during the winter holiday season thanks to an increase in the quota allowed for tour groups. The island's tourism authority has raised the daily quota from 5,000 a day to 8,000 between Nov 21 last year and Feb 19 to cope with the growing demand for travel during Spring Festival, which falls on Feb 8. The authority raised the quota for tour groups several times in 2014 and allowed visits by tourists from more mainland regions. Residents in 47 mainland cities can now visit Taiwan as individual tourists. As cooperation has strengthened between the two sides, cross-Straits tourism has boomed in recent years. Zhang Hui, public relations representative at online travel agency Ctrip, said the raised quotas had led to a 50 percent increase in customers to Taiwan so far this year compared with last year. In 2015, more than 4 million mainland tourists visited Taiwan, surpassing those from Japan to become the biggest spenders. Taiwan's Economic Daily News reported on Jan 10 that each mainland traveler spent on average $232.15 a day in the first three quarters of last year, higher than the average of $221.45 spent by Japanese. It is the first time that mainland tourists have taken the top spot since Taiwan opened up its group tourism to these visitors in 2008, and to individual mainland tourists in 2011. Taiwan and mainland residents need visa-like entry permits for cross-Straits visits. Ni Yongjie, deputy director of the Shanghai Institute of Taiwan Studies, referring to Taiwan's leadership election last weekend, said, "The mainland has always encouraged cross-Straits exchanges and cooperation, before or after the island's political transition." "I hope the new (Taiwan) government can consider the traveling demands of people from both sides and continue to launch favorable policies." Visitors inspect Chinese products at a recent Chinese commodities expo held in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. Photos Provided to China Daily A Saudi businessman offers perfume samples to Chinese visitors at the China-Arab States Expo held in Yinchuan, Ningxia, in September 2015. Two light rail trains stop at the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia in October 2014. The city railway, which started operation in 2010, was built by China Railway Construction Co. Respect, trust, cooperation benefit residents of both countries Twenty-six years after China and Saudi Arabia established diplomatic relations, the countries are advancing in a range of strategic initiatives to benefit both their residents and those of the Eurasian landmass. Strategic cooperation between the two on the economic front, marked by top-level exchanges and agreement, have picked up speed over recent years. Saudi Arabia is a founding member state of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which was first proposed by China. President Xi Jinping attended the opening ceremony of the bank in Beijing on Saturday. In addition, a joint statement between China and Saudi Arabia released in 2014 clearly pledged their commitment to cooperating to build the Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road - the two parts of the Belt and Road Initiative launched by Xi in 2013. During his visit to Saudi Arabia and a series of meetings with senior officials from Jan 6 through 8, Vice-Foreign Minister Zhang Ming said China "has consistently viewed the China-Saudi Arabia relationship from a strategic perspective and with long-term vision". The senior diplomat stated China's readiness to begin cooperation in production capacity with Saudi Arabia within the framework of co-building the Belt and Road. In its response, Saudi Arabia said it is willing to become China's partner in building the Belt and Road, which is expected to reinforce collaboration in fields such as energy, trade and infrastructure. Top-level exchanges between the two countries have been smooth and frequent, and this has led to a robust growth of mutual political trust. Early in 2014, Xi hailed Saudi Arabia as "China's good friend, brother and partner" in the Middle East and Gulf region when meeting with then Crown Prince Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud when the now king visited Beijing. Foreign Minister Wang Yi has attributed the fast development of the countries' ties to three key factors - mutual respect and trust, mutually beneficial cooperation and the friendship between the two peoples. "Although China and Saudi Arabia have differing histories, cultures, social systems and development paradigms, they have always treated each other equally and paid respect and trust to each other, which has ensured the bilateral relationship has advanced in the right direction," Wang said in an interview with Saudi media in 2014. In April 2015, Xi and the Saudi king talked by phone, and Xi said the rapidly developing relationship between China and Saudi Arabia has "become one of the important bilateral ties in their respective external relations". Within the context of the complicated and ever-changing current international and regional situations, it is necessary for the two countries to deepen cooperation in all fields, Xi said. Salman said he and the Saudi government attach great importance to the further development of relations between the countries, and will promote strategic cooperation between the two to lift their bilateral relations to a new level. Surging trade volume On the trade front, Saudi Arabia remains China's leading global supplier of crude oil and largest trading partner in the Gulf region, and China has become the largest trading partner of Saudi Arabia. The trade volume between the countries has surged rapidly from $290 million in 1990 to $69.1 billion in 2014. China's main exports to Saudi Arabia are clothing, mechanical and electronic products and textiles, while China mainly imports crude oil, liquefied petroleum gas and primary plastics from Saudi Arabia. In the first half of 2015, crude oil exports from Saudi Arabia to China reached 26.3 million metric tons, a year-on-year increase of 9.2 percent, according to China's ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Li Wencheng. Two-way collaboration in boosting the innovation of science and technology is also underway. On Sept 11, 2015, a signing ceremony was held in Yinchuan in the Ningxia Hui autonomous region to co-build a technology-transfer center between the two countries. Xinhua contributed to this story. zhangyunbi@chinadaily.com.cn (China Daily 01/20/2016 page10) A rare photo shows chairman Mao Zedong attending a tea party celebrating VDay in Chongqing on Sept 4, 1945.[Photo provided to China Daily] Rare images from Taiwan of contributions made by common Chinese in the resistance against the Japanese invasion are part of book out in March, Yang Yang reports. The historian Li Hua discovered a treasure trove of images about the mainland on his visits to Taiwan since 2010. The materials form the basis of Memories of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, a book to be launched in March. It was a year earlier that he decided to travel to Taiwan after his colleagues attended a cross-Straits book fair in Xiamen, an eastern city on the mainland. The fair's hosts, Xiamen International Book Co, enabled Li's visits to several museums in Taiwan. His main purpose was to enrich the Democratic Parties History Museum of China in Chongqing. At Academia Historica and Taiwan Film Institute, he was amazed to find tens of thousands of rare photos of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1937-45) and historical events such as negotiations between the Communist Party of China and the Kuomintang in Southwest China's Chongqing city in 1945. "They were generous to let us see the original photos instead of copies. We were so excited that we read the catalogs for three consecutive days, trying to pick photos to buy," Li, 63, who is curator of Chongqing's Red Cliff Revolutionary History Museum, says of his Taiwan trips with colleagues. Jack Black and Kate Hudson pose for a photo at the premiere of 'Kung Fu Panda 3' in Shanghai on Jan 18, 2016. [Photo/caokaoxiaoxi.com] Stars of the English and Chinese versions of "Kung Fu Panda 3" have gathered in Shanghai for the premiere of the animation in China. Jack Black, who returns to play panda Po in the English version, joined Kate Hudson on the red carpet. Kate Hudson plays a new panda Mei Mei who's obsessed with Po. Meanwhile, Jackie Chan returns to the franchise for both the English and Chinese versions. He voices for Master Monkey in the English version and Po's biological father in the Chinese version. The kung fu star hoping for more movies like this to help foreigners understand China: "I'm very delighted to see foreign production companies engage in making Chinese animations, helping to spread Chinese culture. So I'm always ready to provide voices for characters in these films." Actor Huang Lei, who voices Po for Chinese audiences and superstar pianist Lang Lang, who plays on the film's soundtrack also joined the event. The latest installment of the franchise follows Po as he reunites with his biological father and works to train a village of pandas to fight against an evil ancient spirit. It opens in Chinese theaters on Jan 29. Chinese President Xi Jinping started a five-day trip to the Middle East on Tuesday. The timing of President Xi's Middle East visits to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran indicates China's diplomacy has entered its "Middle East time". This is of great significance, as the region is wracked by crises and conflicts. The Middle East is China's biggest overseas energy supplier and a key part of the Belt and Road Initiative, and the region has great influence on the global situation. Xi's visit this time is crucial to bilateral, regional and global relations, and it is an important part of China's overall diplomatic deployment. China doesn't intend to seek exclusive interests or contend for hegemony in the region. It seeks to encourage conflicting parties to manage their differences so that peace and stability can be established in the region. As to bilateral relations, China adheres to the principles of mutual respect and win-win cooperation and advocates dialogue and cooperation to promote peaceful development. Xi's visit aims to deepen the cooperation pattern between itself and the countries concerned and forge new cooperation in infrastructure construction, trade and investment, and space technology. Gao Weiwei (right), a lecturer, talks to students about the human body at a summer camp focusing on sex education. The camp, believed to be the first of its kind in Shanghai, was established in 2009. [Zhang Dong / for China Daily] A middle school invigilator in Taixing, East China's Jiangsu province, died of a heart attack while she was watching over an examination on Jan 14, Xinhua reported. As she was at the back of the classroom the students did not notice until the exam was over, when they immediately called for help and the emergency services. The students are not to blame for the invigilator's death, but they might have been able to save her life if first aid was taught in schools, says Guangzhou Daily on Tuesday: It is both unfair and inaccurate for some people to accuse the students of being "cold-blooded" about the invigilator's death, because they tried their best the minute they discovered she was in distress. The teacher herself may have underestimated her condition and so did not ask the students for help. Students are always told to abide by the rules while taking an exam, and they are supposed to focus on the test without being distracted. When they did discover that the invigilator was in need of assistance, they lacked any first aid knowledge and so had to call for help, which they did. Providing first aid requires not just a good Samaritan spirit but also the necessary skills. Such training is still insufficient and sometimes absent in many Chinese primary and middle schools, which should pay more attention to teaching students first aid and invite medical professionals to enhance students' practice. Migrant workers walk out of the Haozhou Railway Station, East China's Anhui province, Jan 18, 2014.[Photo/CFP] The tragedy in xi'an, Northwest China's Shaanxi province, in which a migrant worker died on Jan 13 trying to get the pay he was owed has once again drawn attention to the problem of migrant workers asking for wages overdue. People.com.cn said on Tuesday: According to the Xi'an public security bureau's official micro blog, Li Jiafu, a 37-year-old migrant worker from Sichuan province, came to the construction site where he worked with his wife and other co-workers to ask for the wages he was owed by the contractor. After they failed to reach a consensus, the contractor Lv got in his car to drive away. When Li grabbed the handle of the car door to stop him, Lv reportedly started driving, dragging Li along the ground. Li later died in hospital. Lv has been detained and the incident is being investigated. This tragedy should not only remind migrant workers to defend their rights and interests in a proper way for their own safety, but prompt governments at all levels to guarantee migrant workers' legal rights and interests. In recent years, the central government has reiterated that employers should not withhold the wages of migrant workers. The relevant authorities should all strengthen their efforts to enhance their supervision of employers, and make it more convenient for migrant workers to safeguard their rights and interests. Some employers still maliciously default on employees' wages, which forces workers to try and demand the money they are owed. There are always reports about migrant workers trying to get the pay they are owed, especially before Spring Festival every year. Migrant workers have to take their wages back home when they go, and to achieve that goal sometimes they have to resort to extreme means. Some like Li even lose their lives. The authorities are already aware of the extent of this problem, and it's good to see that maliciously defaulting on wages will be punished according to the law, but they need to ensure employers abide by the law to prevent such tragedies. Stewardesses celebrate after China successfully carried out test flights of two commercial airliners on Jan 6 at a newly built airport at Yongshu Jiao in China's Nansha Islands. [Photo/Xinhua] Vietnam and the Philippines have protested against China's test flights to its newly built airstrip on Yongshu Jiao in the Nansha Islands despite China's reiteration that the flights are within China's sovereignty. Hanoi said the flights were provocative actions that threaten regional stability and restrict the freedom of navigation and overflights in the South China Sea. It even denied that China had properly informed it of the test flights. Both accusations are groundless. China's airstrip is on its sovereign territory and serves humanitarian purposes, including emergency landings and maritime rescue, and China informed the Vietnamese ahead of the test flights, as was clearly explained by China's foreign ministry last week. At 5:46 pm (Beijing Time) on Dec 28, the Flight Inspection Center of the Civil Aviation Administration of China informed the Ho ChiMinh Flight Information Region of the flight plan and other technical information of the Chinese civil aircraft involved, in accordance with relevant regulations and international practices, the ministry said. As such, the blatant denial by the Vietnamese is not only ill-advised but also ill-intentioned. It is especially inappropriate as China and Vietnam have made concerted efforts to establish good neighborly relations. Manila, for its part, also said the Chinese flights had heightened tensions and anxiety in the region and could spark armed conflict in the disputed waters. This is alarmist talk which, together with the Vietnamese accusations, is intended to play up China's island reclamation activities. Their irresponsible behavior will not contribute to peace and stability in the waters instead it only ratchets up tensions. Since last year, countries such as the Vietnam, the Philippines, the United States and Japan have formed a chorus criticizing China's island reclamation work. They have deliberately ignored the fact that some countries in Southeast Asia, the Philippines and Vietnam included, have over the years illegally seized and occupied Chinese islands and islets in the South China Sea. They have not only launched reclamation work on those islands and islets but also militarized them. The US has never said a word about such blatant infringements on China's sovereignty and territorial integrity. But China was still willing to shelf disputes and pursue joint development of the waters with countries involved in the disputes because the country has always looked to the larger picture of regional peace and stability. Last year, China completed reclamation work on some islands and islets of its Nansha Islands, which is its legitimate right, as the work was undertaken in its territorial waters. It also repeatedly explained that the island reclamation will mostly meet various civilian needs including maritime search and rescue, disaster prevention and mitigation, meteorological observation, ecological conservation, and navigation safety. This shows China is actually shouldering more international obligations and responsibilities. Unfortunately, China's explanation and goodwill have fallen on deaf ears again. China's stance on the South China Sea remains consistent: It is working with Southeast Asian nations to negotiate a code of conduct for the South China Sea. However, the recent misleading responses from Hanoi and Manila to China's test flights show these countries are trying to aggravate tensions in the waters and then pass the buck to China for the resulting frictions. Their repeated provocations concerning China's sovereignty and territorial integrity have strained ties with Beijing, which cannot possibly serve their interests nor contribute to regional peace and stability. China needs a peaceful environment for its economic and social development, and it is still willing to cultivate friendly ties with Vietnam and the Philippines, as good-neighborly relations are an important part of its diplomacy. China's goodwill should not be returned with ill will. Its bilateral ties with Hanoi and Manila should not be taken hostage by differences and disputes. Friendly consultation and proper management of differences are the only way to resolve the South China Sea disputes. The author is a senior writer with China Daily. wanghui@chinadaily.com.cn Wang Xiaoying/China Daily President Xi Jinping started his first tour of the Middle East on Tuesday, during which he will visit Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran. After fully assuming the country's leadership in March 2013, Xi has visited many countries, which signify China's increasingly maturing all-round diplomacy. And that is precisely why Xi's visit to the Middle East, which is also his first foreign tour in 2016, has acquired additional importance. The visit, to begin with, highlights the strategic importance of the Middle East for China's Belt and Road Initiative. The initiative, comprising the Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, is aimed at creating a community of shared economic dividends and destiny along both the routes. The Middle East, which is a bridge between China and Europe, is a vital link in the success of the initiative. Besides, the Middle East has about 60 percent of the world's energy reserves and encircles the most important shipping route. The importance of the Gulf of Aden, the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz for the global economy is often compared with that of a throat for a human body. In addition, the Middle East has a lot of potential to deepen cooperation with China. Middle East countries in general have economic structures that are complementary to that of China's. For example, the Middle East lags behind in infrastructure and manufacturing industries but has huge oil reserves while China is just the opposite. Therefore, China needs the Middle East to secure its energy supplies and implement its strategic projects. Moreover, since the Middle East is important for the rest of the world too, any volatility in the region will have a global impact, including on China. China is committed to strengthening its energy and industrial cooperation with Middle East countries, and since Iran and Saudi Arabia both are major energy suppliers for China, some new oil agreements with them can be expected during Xi's visit. Egypt may not be as rich in energy resources, but it has a population of 80 million. And since youths account for quite a high percentage of that population, the country's growth potential is high. All the three countries on Xi's itinerary have huge demands for infrastructure construction, such as railways, expressways and power stations. And China can help them meet these demands both in the short and long terms. That's partly why Xi is paying a visit to the Middle East at a time when Iran and Saudi Arabia are involved in a diplomatic row, which started when Riyadh arrested and executed Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr on charges of terrorism. However, the political row between Teheran and Riyadh is not expected to influence their separate friendly ties with China. China enjoys a unique advantage in the Middle East, because unlike other powers it has never sought to portray itself like an empire. It treats Middle East countries as equal partners instead of imposing its own logic upon them, which allows it to play a bigger role in helping prevent regional disputes from escalating into major conflicts, if not settling them for good. The author is former Chinese ambassador to Iran and an expert in Middle Eastern studies. The article is an excerpt from his interview with China Daily's Zhang Zhouxiang. Migrant workers are considered by many Chinese cities to be a drain on resources. But that is not the case in Zhangjiagang, Jiangsu province, where the local government launched a points-ranking system to integrate "new citizens" in 2012. Included in the program to turn them into permanent residents is community service. "We launched the system three years ago, amid a national shortage of labor, to attract more technicians to Zhangjiagang," said Hui Hong, deputy-director of the city's new citizen affairs center and a key architect of the system. Zhangjiagang also pioneered an electronic system of helping migrant workers, or new citizens as they are known in the city. Scanning a code with a smartphone, workers can look for job vacancies, houses to rent and other crucial information. "I feel the city is very friendly to us," said Li Shuo, 28, a plumber from Zhangqiu, Shandong province. "Everything is ranked, including such things as medical insurance and education for our children. "Transparency is the most important thing that makes the scoring system function well," Li added. "I know my score, my position in the rankings and most importantly how I can increase my score. This involves learning new techniques and serving the community. Zhangjiagang has about 1.6 million residents, half of whom are migrant workers. Since the scoring system was launched, more "new citizens" are deciding to settle in the city. "We are not short of workers," Wu Huifang, deputy-general manager of Yonggang Group, a steel enterprise in Zhangjiagang that employs about 12,000 migrant workers, said. New citizens enjoy not only welfare benefits, but also legal rights such as the ability to vote and participate in discussions on public policies. "That makes true citizens," Wu said. According to Hui, about 500 migrant workers have moved their permanent residential registrations from their hometowns to Zhangjiagang since the program was launched. More than 10,000 new citizens enjoy medical insurance, and about 26,000 children from migrant families attend schools through the program. "We will adjust the scoring system to the needs of the people," Hui said. "The new citizens have a stronger desire to send their children to good schools. That's what we are working on in the future." Tangshi Primary School is the largest for children of new citizens. The government has invested more than 200 million yuan ($31.4 million) in the school since 2012. About 74 percent of its 2,638 students are from migrant families. The Ascott Ltd, CapitaLand's wholly owned serviced-residence business unit, will make its global network of serviced residences available on Alitrip, an online travel service platform under Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group. The Singapore-based international serviced residence owner-operator already has 24 of its China properties with 4,300 apartment units available for booking by Alitrip users through a directly operated online flagship store. Ascott will list its global network of more than 26,000 apartment units operating in over 60 cities on the one-stop online travel platform by June. The partnership will allow Ascott to deepen access to over 100 million Chinese travelers currently served by Alitrip. The announcement of Ascott followed the signing of memorandums of understanding between the Singapore Tourism Board and several leading Chinese digital and mobile services, including Alitrip, Tuniu and Baidu, in October. Chinese are among Ascott's top customers at its properties globally with revenue surging by 36 percent year-on-year, according to statistics released by Ascott. Chinese travelers have become increasingly tech-savvy and independent. They prefer to customize their travel itineraries rather than joining tour groups. Lee Chee Koon, Ascott's chief executive officer, believes Ascott's serviced residences are ideal for Chinese families, who enjoy the privacy of individual bedrooms and the convenience of a kitchen within a spacious apartment. "We foresee further growth in independent travelers. Our strategic partnerships with Alitrip and Tujia.com International reinforce Ascott's commitment to create a seamless O2O (offline-to-online and online-to-offline) experience for our guests as we reach out to these hundreds of millions of Internet and smartphone users in China," Lee says. Ascott invested in Tujia.com International to harness growth opportunities in the O2O space in August 2015. The company has over 26,000 operating serviced residence units in key cities in the Americas, Asia-Pacific, Europe and the Gulf region, as well as over 16,000 units under development. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi salutes to audience at an event organized by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) during his visit in Guwahati, capital of Indian northeastern state Assam, Jan 19, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] NEW DELHI -- Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi Tuesday kicked off campaign for the assembly polls in the northeastern state of Assam by slamming the Congress party which has been in power in the state for the past 15 years. "Those who could not do anything in the last 15 years expect me to do everything in 15 months. None of the promises made to people of Assam for 12 to 13 years have been fulfilled. It has become a fashion not to give account of your own work but blame others," Modi said. The prime minister, who was addressing a political rally in the state's Kokrajhar district, promised fast-track development in the state. "My three-point programme for Assam is - development, development, development," he said. The country's main opposition party Congress has been ruling Assam for the past 15 years. However, India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has seen an increase in its support base in the past two years and has won half of Assam's 14 parliament seats in 2014. Experts say it's a 50-50 chance for the BJP in Assam, and unless it ties with some regional parties, the party will not be in a position to muster majority in the assembly polls. But the party has not yet spelt out any pre-poll alliance. BUJUMBURA- Unidentified riding a motorcycle Monday evening shot dead three officials in a bar at Bwiza, near the Burundian capital Bujumbura city center, before riding away, the Burundian police spokesman said Tuesday. "It was yesterday (Monday) around 17:45 (15:45 GMT) when unidentified gunmen riding a motorcycle shot dead three persons with a pistol in a bar at the 6th Avenue in Bwiza, before riding away their motorcycle," said Burundian Police Spokesman Pierre Nkurikiye. According to him, the three victims include a police officer, a senior official at the Burundian education ministry and a chief of Gatete village in the country's southern province of Rumonge. Nkurikiye indicated that four persons as well as some other people working in the bar and some people who were taking drinks in the bar were arrested for further investigations. He added that corpses of two men were discovered Tuesday morning at Rubirizi in palm trees in Mutimbuzi district in Bujumbura Rural province, some 12 km west of the Burundian capital Bujumbura, where they had been dumped by unidentified persons. Nkurikiye stressed, "Investigations have been launched and we hope that it is possible to identify all phone numbers that rang the broker the day he disappeared from sight." He added that the suspect who exploded a grenade in Gatumba town in Bujumbura Rural province on Dec. 1, 2015, killing three persons and injuring seven others was arrested on Monday in a bar in Kinyinya in Gatumba town. "The suspect admitted to have blasted the grenade," said Nkurikiye. The US-China Business Council (USCBC) is calling for the continued building of strong, mutually beneficial commercial ties between the US and China. The statement of action priorities issued on Tuesday by the USCBC board said it aims to focus the efforts of both governments on the top priorities for American companies that conduct business with China. It was the fifth such report issued by the USCBC board. John Frisbie, president of USCBC, said some of the issues raised in previous statements have seen progress, citing the cybersecurity issue during President Xi Jinping's successful state visit to the US last September. At the same time, the USCBC report believes progress remains insufficient on other critical issues, including several new concerns that have recently developed. In a conference call on Tuesday evening, Frisbie believes that Xi and President Barack Obama would be able to discuss some of the outstanding issues on the margins of the G20 Summit in China this fall. Mark Fields, president and chief executive officer of Ford Motor Co and chairman of the USCBC, said in a USCBC press release on Tuesday, "Success in meeting the global challenges of today depends greatly on how the US and China come together in support of common goals. We look forward to working with both governments to advance these policy priorities." The priorities set in the statement include four major goals to further solidify the foundation for mutually beneficial commercial relations: reduce trade barriers and enforce globally accepted trade rules; ensure competitive neutrality and improve transparency; strengthen intellectual property rights protection; and adhere to mutually beneficial innovation policies. The statement reiterated a call to finalize a high-standard Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) in 2016. "A BIT provides one of the best opportunities to reduce investment barriers in both countries, ensure a level playing among all enterprises, and improve protections for US and Chinese investors in each other's markets," the statement said. A slowing Chinese economy, at 6.9 percent in 2015, is making headlines, and Frisbie said USCBC members have seen that slowdown in their revenue numbers. But he said it's important to realize that a slowing China is still delivering growth for American companies, citing a survey four months ago that found 40 percent of respondents saying they were still enjoying double-digit revenue growth in China. China's annual 30 percent contribution to global growth, and a middle class that will double in the next decade are some of the factors that US companies are optimistic about their China operations. China is still growing faster than most of the emerging markets, according to Frisbie. Contact the writer through chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com John Styles (left), CEO at MD Anderson Proton Therapy Center, shakes hands with Adam Sun, CIO at Concord Medical Services Holdings, after signing an agreement to open its China Referral Office on Tuesday in Houston. [MAY ZHOU / CHINA DAILY] The University of Texas MD Anderson Proton Therapy Center announced on Tuesday that it has partnered with China's Concord Medical Services Holdings Ltd to establish a China referral office in Beijing. The office will be dedicated to providing free services to Chinese patients who are seeking proton therapy with MD Anderson's application and treatment process. It aims to help Chinese patients overcome the distance and language barriers and provide them with the best medical experience available. Concord Medical, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, began working with MD Anderson PTC in 2012, according to Adam Sun, CIO at Concord Medical. The company acquired 19.98 percent of MD Anderson PTC Houston Management, LP (PTCHM) shares in 2012 and gained a controlling interest in August of last year by purchasing additional shares from a general partner. This makes Concord Medical the second-largest shareholder of MD Anderson PTC, where the internationally acclaimed MD Anderson Cancer Center remains to be the majority shareholder with a 51 percent interest. Concord Medical has appointed Sun as chairman of the board of directors at PTCHM. According to Matthew Palmer, director of proton therapy development at MD Anderson PTC, proton therapy is an advanced type of radiation treatment using a beam of protons to deliver radiation directly to the tumor, destroying cancer cells while sparing healthy tissue. It is primarily used to treat cancers in the head and neck, brain and prostate, as well as pediatric cancers. Entering its 10th year of operation, MD Anderson PTC treats 800 patients a year on average. About 10 percent are international patients from more than 200 countries, and close to 20 patients came from China in 2015, said Palmer. "Three years of working together has proved that the partnership is not only economically sound but also benefits Chinese cancer patients tremendously," Sun said. "As one of the most advanced radiotherapy technologies, proton therapy has significant advantages in local control rates, secondary reactions, and decrease of the long-term side effects. "We hope to expand our circle of influence, help more patients by establishing the referral center, and provide the best quality of life to cancer patients," said Sun. According to Sun, the average five-year survival rate for Chinese cancer patients is over 30 percent, much lower than the US average of over 70 percent. China's cancer patients number 4 million, and the demand for quality cancer treatment is high. The Texas Medical Center, especially the MD Anderson Cancer Center, has seen an increasing number of Chinese cancer patients seeking treatment in recent years. Getting to Houston, however, has proved daunting to many. "The referral office will be led by Concord Medical's vice-president Fu Leizhu, and will be staffed by numerous clinical doctors, nurses, medical professionals, and other professionals," said Sun. "We hope we can help Chinese cancer patients benefit from MD Anderson Cancer Center's advanced medical services and research achievements." "Our plan is to open the office with Concord in China to provide a storefront directly to patients," said John Styles, CEO at MD Anderson PTC. "We hope to make it easier for patients by bundling travel, lodging and consultation together in China." Styles said "it makes sense strategically to have Concord become an owner because Chinese cancer patients can certainly benefit from proton beam technology. There have been some announcements of opening proton therapy centers in China but not a lot of treatment available in China. In some areas in China, head and neck cancers are much more rampant than in the US. Through Concord, we hope to be able to help to provide this therapy to Chinese patients." Sun said that due to high demand for proton therapy, Concord Medical is also building proton therapy centers in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. The three centers will be set up and operated according to MD Anderson PTC's standards and protocols. "We want to introduce proton-beam technology to China with the help from MD Anderson PTC. This will directly benefit patients in China," said Sun, adding that the first center is expected to be completed in 2018. Sun said that Concord Medical will also ally with other distinguished tumor-treatment hospitals in China and MD Anderson PTC to launch clinical research programs for many other diseases, and validate proton therapy's clinical advantages. In addition, Concord Medical plans to expand MD Anderson PTC by doubling its capacity in Houston down the road. Contact the writer through mayzhou@chinadailyusa.com UNITED NATIONS - UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday welcomed the announcement that a new unity government has been nominated in Libya under a UN-backed plan. Earlier on Tuesday, Libya's Presidential Council announced the formation of the Government of National Accord of Libya. The new government, headed by Fayez Al-Serraj, comprises 32 ministers and four deputies to the prime minister. It will assume its powers after the House of Representatives' approval. "This marks an important step towards the implementation of the Libya Political Agreement and the resolution of the crisis in the country," said a statement by Ban's spokesman. Ban said he looks forward to the endorsement of the new government so that it can address the challenges facing the country, according to the statement. "The Secretary-General reiterates his call on all Libyans to support the implementation of the Libyan Political Agreement so that Libya can continue its democratic transition," it said. Libya has been suffering severe political crises with two rival parliaments and governments, amid escalating violence and growing militant extremism. The presidential council was formed under a UN-backed agreement signed by Libya's rival political parties on Dec 17 in Morocco. The agreement said that the council must name the government within 30 days after its signing. However, the council on Sunday has postponed the announcement of the government in order to complete "further arrangements." NEW DELHI - India successfully launched the fifth of a constellation of navigation satellites on Wednesday, as part of a programme that will reduce dependency on the United States' Global Positioning System (GPS) and other networks. India's plan is to have seven satellites that will provide navigational information over the country and upto 1,500 kilometres (932.06 miles) around the mainland, Indian Space Research Organisation said. The American GPS, Russia's Glonass and Europe's Galileo have dozens of satellites to provide information across the globe. China is also building its own global positioning system, known as Beidou or COMPASS. The satellite IRNSS-1E was launched into orbit by a locally developed spacecraft from the Sriharikota space centre in southern India. Over the next few days, scientists will carry orbital manoeuvres to place the satellite into a geosynchronous orbit, ISRO said in a statement. Two more satellites are planned to be launched over the next several months, it said. India's regional navigation system will provide open navigational information to all users but also restricted services to the military. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated the scientists for their determination in setting up a home-grown navigational system. "Our scientists keep making us proud," he said in a Twitter post. Afghan Foreign Minister Salahuddin Rabbani will visit China from Jan 25 to Jan 28, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei announced on Wednesday. Both countries "attach great importance" to the official visit, Rabbani's first to China as Afghan foreign minister, and the first high-level visit between China and Afghanistan this year, Hong said. Chinese leaders will meet Rabbani, and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who invited Rabbani, will discuss various issues with his Afghan counterpart, Hong said. The China-Afghan relationship "has kept going forward", said Hong. The two countries last year celebrated the 60th anniversary of their diplomatic ties and the Year of China-Afghanistan Friendly Cooperation. "We hope the visit will help implement the consensus between the two countries' leaders, plan the development of this year's bilateral relationship, push bilateral cooperation in economic and trade, security, culture and international and regional affairs, and strengthen the two countries' strategic partnership," said Hong. German Chancellor Angela Merkel addresses the Christian Social Union (CSU) meeting in the southern Bavarian resort of Wildbad Kreuth near Munich, Germany, January 20, 2016. [Photo/Agencies] BERLIN -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel stressed on Wednesday that a European solution was needed to resolve the current refugee crisis despite calls for capping refugee influx from her own conservatives. While attending a conference of her Bavarian allies, the Christian Social Union (CSU), Merkel once again rejected a rapid policy change which includes setting up an upper limit on the number of refugees entering Germany. The chancellor said she wanted to reduce the refugee arrivals "appreciably and sustainably", but reiterated that in order to achieve the goal, people should start with combating the causes of flight and find a European solution for the crisis. "It's of utmost importance to talk to each other in such challenging times" even there are different opinions, she said, referring to the existing differences with its sister party CSU over the refugee issue. Merkel is facing renewed pressure from her own conservatives to reduce the influx of asylum seekers arriving in Germany, after a record inflow of over 1 million last year sapped their support. The CSU has demanded a cap of 200,000 migrants a year and pushed for a quick government solution to the refugee problem. "If Austria introduces a ceiling, there would be more refugees coming to Germany," said CSU leader Horst Seehofer. CSU Secretary-General Andreas Scheuer believed that Germany should follow Austria to introduce a limit on the number of asylum seekers accepted. Merkel, however, warned that the decision of Austria would add difficulties to negotiations with Turkey concerning the refugee crisis. Nations must learn about each other via direct exchanges, Shanghai scholar says Nobody understands the power of language in building a bridge between the Chinese and Arabs better than Zhu Weilie, a leading scholar of Arabic studies and the winner of many awards for his translations of famous Middle Eastern works. Zhu, a passionate lover of Arab culture and a professor at Shanghai International Studies University, still teaches at the age of 75.He is currently leading his students in translating of Saudi Arabian books. Egyptians look through books at the 2016 Egyptian Exhibition on Chinese Books in Cairo on Tuesday. Yu Yilei / China Daily Zhu strongly advocates the need to reinforce direct translation and even interaction between the Chinese and Arabian communities "as much as possible". "We have often come to know each other via third parties, including the Western media, rather than through direct exchanges. It is a problem that looms large even in the translation of classical pieces," Zhu noted. His decades long dedication to the translation of Arabic works has earned him many awards from home and abroad. One of the most recent was the King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz International Award for Translation, announced by Saudi Arabia on May 13, 2014. "He has a prominent role in building cultural bridges between Arab and Chinese cultures," the award citation said. Zhu has led or participated in the translation of many famous works from Arabic, including Islamic classics such as Khatmil Quran and Sahih al-Bukhari, as well as more contemporary works such as Give Back My Heart by the Egyptian writer Yusuf Sibai. As many publishers are taking more Chinese books to markets abroad, Zhu stated his opposition to translations by Chinese who work alone. " Such books could be co-published with local publishers, who have good taste and vision. ... The whole process of publishing and circulation should involve local people," Zhu said, citing his recipe for boosting the popularity of Chinese books overseas. China's publishers "should adapt to the national conditions in the destination countries, (similar to) what they do at home" along with an assessment system-that includes seminars with local experts and media - to fine-tune publishing plans, he added. Commenting on China's recent ambition to boost at home academic research on separate countries and regions in the world, Zhu cited the dire need to "nurture talent and produce more reliable and feasible books". zhangyunbi@chinadaily.com.cn China and Saudi Arabia may develop closer economic cooperation and stronger trade ties this year, as their products are complementary and they have reached a consensus on the Belt and Road Initiative, according to Chinese exporters and commerce officials. The initiative includes the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, proposed by President Xi Jinping in 2013, covers about 4.4 billion people in more than 60 countries and regions. Zhi Luxun, deputy director-general of the Commerce Ministry's Department of Foreign Trade, said oil trade lies at the heart of their business ties. But Saudi Arabia's surging demand for upgrading its infrastructure - such as oil refineries, roads, airports, and oil tanker and container ports - is also providing opportunities for Chinese project contractors and manufacturers. China exports mainly construction machinery, manufacturing equipment, steel, electronics, textiles, garments and household appliances to Saudi Arabia. Chinese-made passenger vehicles and trucks have also become popular in the region. In addition to crude oil, petrochemicals and fertilizer, Saudi Arabia's exports to China include marble, olive oil and sesame seed products. "State-owned enterprises, such as Sinochem and China Communications Construction, as well as Wison Engineering Services - the country's largest private petrochemical engineering, procurement and construction contractor - diversified their operation strategies in Saudi Arabia and other markets in the Middle East as they transformed from goods and equipment suppliers to construction project providers and investors," said Zhi. The country's largest truck manufacturer by revenue, China National Heavy Duty Truck Group, based in Jinan, Shandong province, has a 50 million yuan ($7.6 million) deal to deliver 46 heavy tractors and multi-functional tractors to a Saudi oil company in March. The vehicles are designed for work in deserts and extremely hot weather. The company expects to export more new-energy, heavy-duty trucks, as well as trucks for military use, to the Saudi Arabia in the long-term. Contact the writer at zhongnan@chinadaily.com.cn Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) meets with Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Secretary-General Abdul Latif Bin Rashid Al Zayani in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Jan 19, 2016. Xi arrived on Tuesday for a state visit to Saudi Arabia, the first stop of his three-nation tour of the Middle East. [Photo/Xinhua] RIYADH - Visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping met in Riyadh on Tuesday with Secretary-General Abdul Latif bin Rashid Al Zayani of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC) and the two sides agreed to boost trade and energy cooperation. Xi, on a state visit to Saudi Arabia, said China is willing to carry out comprehensive energy cooperation with the GCC countries and be a long-term, stable and reliable energy market for the six-member bloc. The Chinese president suggested the two sides also deepen cooperation in infrastructure, telecommunications, power generation, investment, aerospace, and nuclear and renewable energy. China welcomes the resumption of and substantial progress in the China-GCC free trade talks and hopes that the free trade area will be up and running as early as possible, he said. Zayani, for his part, said that all GCC members support forging closer ties with China. They all agree that the free trade talks should be advanced, he said, adding that they are happy to see the virtual conclusion of the negotiations on trade in goods. The GCC, he said, expects more cooperation with China under the Belt and Road Initiative, a vision Xi put forward in 2013 to boost interconnectitity and common development along the ancient land and maritime Silk Roads. Xi, whose country seeks to boost friendly ties and practical cooperation with the Middle East, arrived in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for the first leg of his three-nation tour of the region, which will also take him to Egypt and Iran. Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) meets with Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Iyad Ameen Madani in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Jan 19, 2016. Xi arrived here on Tuesday for a state visit to Saudi Arabia, the first stop of his three-nation tour of the Middle East. [Photo/Xinhua] RIYADH - Visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping met with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Secretary-General Iyad Ameen Madani in Riyadh on Tuesday to discuss regional issues and cultural exchange. Xi, on a state visit to Saudi Arabia, said that the OIC is a symbol of unity for Islamic countries and has made significant contribution to cooperation among them. China and the OIC, in more than 40 years of friendly exchanges, have found a way for different cultures, religions and social systems to get along. China welcomes the organization to serve as a bridge facilitating the development of ties between China and Islamic countries, Xi said. Xi said China appreciates the OIC's denouncement of terrorist attacks that took place in China, and is willing to build on common interests so as to have closer ties and grow together with Islamic countries within the framework of the "Belt and Road" initiative. The "Belt and Road" initiative was put forward by Chinese leaders in 2013 to facilitate interconnectivity and regional development. Xi said that there should be more dialogues between Chinese and Islamic cultures and that there should be more international cooperation to facilitate the resolution of the Palestine issue. China is willing to coordinate with Islamic countries on regional and global issues, Xi said. Iyad said that the OIC highly values its relations with China, and that it appreciates China's position on Middle East issues. The OIC expects China to play an even greater role on Middle East and African affairs. Xi arrived in Saudi Arabia Tuesday on the first stop of his three-nation tour of the Middle East, as the world's second largest economy seeks to boost political and economic ties with the region. Visitors inspect Chinese products at a recent Chinese commodities expo held in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. Photo Provided to China Daily Respect, trust, cooperation benefit residents of both countries Twenty-six years after China and Saudi Arabia established diplomatic relations, the countries are advancing in a range of strategic initiatives to benefit both their residents and those of the Eurasian landmass. Strategic cooperation between the two on the economic front, marked by top-level exchanges and agreement, have picked up speed over recent years. Saudi Arabia is a founding member state of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which was first proposed by China. President Xi Jinping attended the opening ceremony of the bank in Beijing on Saturday. In addition, a joint statement between China and Saudi Arabia released in 2014 clearly pledged their commitment to cooperating to build the Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road - the two parts of the Belt and Road Initiative launched by Xi in 2013. During his visit to Saudi Arabia and a series of meetings with senior officials from Jan 6 through 8, Vice-Foreign Minister Zhang Ming said China "has consistently viewed the China-Saudi Arabia relationship from a strategic perspective and with long-term vision". The senior diplomat stated China's readiness to begin cooperation in production capacity with Saudi Arabia within the framework of co-building the Belt and Road. In its response, Saudi Arabia said it is willing to become China's partner in building the Belt and Road, which is expected to reinforce collaboration in fields such as energy, trade and infrastructure. Top-level exchanges between the two countries have been smooth and frequent, and this has led to a robust growth of mutual political trust. Early in 2014, Xi hailed Saudi Arabia as "China's good friend, brother and partner" in the Middle East and Gulf region when meeting with then Crown Prince Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud when the now king visited Beijing. Foreign Minister Wang Yi has attributed the fast development of the countries' ties to three key factors - mutual respect and trust, mutually beneficial cooperation and the friendship between the two peoples. "Although China and Saudi Arabia have differing histories, cultures, social systems and development paradigms, they have always treated each other equally and paid respect and trust to each other, which has ensured the bilateral relationship has advanced in the right direction," Wang said in an interview with Saudi media in 2014. In April 2015, Xi and the Saudi king talked by phone, and Xi said the rapidly developing relationship between China and Saudi Arabia has "become one of the important bilateral ties in their respective external relations". Within the context of the complicated and ever-changing current international and regional situations, it is necessary for the two countries to deepen cooperation in all fields, Xi said. Salman said he and the Saudi government attach great importance to the further development of relations between the countries, and will promote strategic cooperation between the two to lift their bilateral relations to a new level. Li Xiangdong, head of Muyang Egypt. Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn. China's leading feed machinery manufacturer Muyang will make Egypt its base in Africa and the Middle East because of the country's great location and abundant labor. With its expertise in producing silo, it will help Africa solve the waste in storage and transportation by offering silo that could meet the needs of both African States and farmers, the company said. Muyang Co Ltd, the largest Chinese feed machinery manufacturer by revenue, cooperating with the China-Africa Development Fund, established Muyang Egypt Industry S.A.E with a joint contribution of $74 million in the China-Egypt Suez Trade and Economy Cooperation Zone in March 2013. The planned annual output of Muyang Egypt is 5 million tons of silo storage capacity, 6,000 tons of structure steel, 50 sets of feed machinery with an annual sales value of $150 million. And the operation of its first phase began in December 2015. For the first phase of the company's project in Egypt, the company concentrates on the storage structures to solve the problem of great food waste in storage and transportation in Africa, Li said. "While some countries are troubled by lack of food, there is great waste in storage and transportation due to lack of proper facilities. Even some food aid provided by the international community is wasted in the transportation process," he said. While producing large storage structures for African governments, the company will also produce those with capacities of 100 tons or even 10 tons for African farmers to ensure that their harvest can be properly stored. These small storage structures will also go with drying facilities, he said. Li Xiangdong, head of Muyang Egypt, said the company's decision to establish factories in Egypt is a response to the Chinese government's Belt and Road Initiative. "The Chinese government's preferential policies offer us a very good investment environment," he said. He said the company's product can easily be transported to its markets in the Middle East and the whole African continent from the gulf of Suez and the cheap labor cost also reduces the cost, adding that the time saved in transportation improves the efficiency of engineering companies like Muyang. houliqiang@chinadaily.com.cn President Xi Jinping's trip to the three Middle Eastern countries - Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran - is the first in years for top Chinese leader personally getting involved in state diplomacy in this region. The trip is significant both for China and the regional countries in substantial terms in the areas of energy, security and economic matters. For one thing, the tree countries are all heavyweights in the volatile region and play critical roles in the stability in the Middle East. Egypt is traditionally the biggest player in the Arab world and remains a force to reckon with despite the volatility following the Arab Spring revolution three years ago. Saudi Arabia is the Sunni leader in the Islamic world and currently leading a coalition of muslim countries fighting terrorism. Iran, as the leader of the Shiite community, has a population of nearly seven million with a potentially tremendous market and is a major player both in fighting the IS terror organization and the Syria crisis. The Chinese leader's tour also came at a critical juncture. The IS is spreading its terror to Europe and Asia such as France and Indonesia, despite the intensification of US air raids and the participation of Russian forces. Saudi Arabia and Iran recently have been at a diplomatic war and literally severing their ties, partly due to long-term religious differences and political distrust. At the same time, Iran is enjoying newly found fresh air following the lifting of international sanctions. On a bilateral level, the significance of President Xi's visit is mutual - there's every reason for Beijing to further its ties with the Middle East and the regional countries are also warmly welcoming a stronger Chinese presence in this region. China relies on overseas market for 60% of its annual oil consumption and the Middle East is the major source of its energy import. As China works to reduce its reliance on coal to against increasingly intolerable air pollutions, the consumption of oil and gas is expected to increase. A reliable relationship with oil-producing countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran is naturally a necessity. China also needs to work with those countries in pushing for its grand initiative of "One Belt One Road", which is to build road and economic links from China to Europe by focusing on infrastructure investment and manufacturing capacity building. China is handling with an overcapacity in its manufacturing sector, which can potentially be exported to developing countries who desperately need to strengthen such a sector. Xi's trip to Iran is especially well-timed, right after the removal of economic sanctions on Iran by the international community over its controversial nuclear program. The President's direct engagement with Iranian leaders will give China leg up in doing business in this investment-hunger country. China is the largest trading partner of Tehran and is now also the first country which sends its top leader to the new land of opportunities. For regional countries, they have been calling for a greater Chinese role in the region, given China rapidly becoming the second largest economy and the largest trading nation of goods in the world. Saudi Arabia is even looking at a prospect that, as the US reduces its oil import with more and more self-reliance, China will inevitably become the largest importer of Saudi oil products. Strengthening the all-round relationship with China is completely in the national interests of Saudi Arabia. No wonder the local media is urging the country to learn from their rivals including Israel and Iran to educate more Chinese-speaking researchers and establish China study centers to better understand China. Egypt, following years of chaos, is struggling to secure financial assistance and investment, something few countries but China can offer. Egyptian Ambassador to Beijing Madgy Amer said the two Beijing and Cairo will sign deals worth at least 1.7 billions of US dollars to support Egypt's dwindling foreign reserve and financial lending ability to businesses. Many observers have admitted that China enjoys strong "soft power" in the Middle East thanks to Chinese non-intervention policy and respect for individual countries to explore their own way of development. Besides, China emphases stability above almost everything, refusing to engage itself in games of playing one against another in a region of multiple players. There're calls for China to play a larger role, even a military one, in maintaining the regional order and fighting terrorism. That thinking is not entirely unjustifiable. For example, China is the largest investor in Iraq but there's little it can do when the country is savaged by the IS and its interests under threat. But it is a demonstration of habitual mentality which stresses very much the employment of military power, something China loathes. China will certainly encourage countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran to seek reconciliation in stead of confrontation, as that's the common interest for every nation including China as well as the regional rivals. Stability is necessary for economic growth, which in turn boosts stability. Given time, the Chinese approach of diplomacy and negotiation could prove more impactful than bombing and regime changes. On January 19, Chinese President Xi Jinping started a state visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Arab Republic of Egypt, and Islamic Republic of Iran at the invitation of Saudi Arabia King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al Sisi, and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Xi's Middle East tour marks China's first major diplomatic event in 2016, which is of great significance, and the world is paying much attention to it. The New Year comes with wishful thinking. 2016 marks the first year of China's 13th Five-Year Plan and a crucial year for implementing the Belt and Road initiative. Xi's Middle East visit reinforces Beijing's comprehensive diplomatic policy. The Middle East countries stand at a key junction along the Belt and Road and are China's important partners for building a community of energy cooperation. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran are major states in the Middle East. The three countries and China share common development expectations that are intersecting with the Chinese Dream and aligning their development strategies. Middle East people and the Chinese expect Xi's visit to be successful, acting as a bridge opening a new chapter for regional relations. Comments by Xu Xiujun, associate researcher with the Institute of World Economy and Politics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; comics drawn by Chi Ying Chinese national flags are seen fluttering in Cairo on January 20 before Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives for a state visit to Egypt. [Photo by Hou Liqiang/chinadaily.com.cn] CAIRO - Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday hailed the historic friendship and fruitful cooperation between China and Egypt and called for greater concerted efforts to promote bilateral ties. In his dedication to a special issue of the China Today magazine's Arabic edition, Xi noted that over the past 60 years China and Egypt have maintained sound and steady development of bilateral relations and "set a model for China-Arab and China-Africa relations as well as for South-South cooperation." Since ancient times, the people of China and Egypt, both among the world's oldest civilizations, have carried out friendly exchanges and promoted mutual understanding through the land and maritime Silk Roads, Xi noted, recalling that Egypt was the first Arab and African nation to establish diplomatic ties with the People's Republic of China. Noting that the two sides agreed in 2014 to build a comprehensive strategic partnership, Xi emphasized that China always treats and promotes its relationship with Egypt from a strategic and long-term perspective. "We are ready to work with the Egyptian side to carry forward our traditional friendship, learn from each other, and deepen our practical cooperation in various fields under the Belt and Road Initiative, so as to let our people share development benefits and enjoy a better life," Xi added. The special issue was dedicated to the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Egypt, and released in Cairo on Wednesday before Xi arrives for a state visit to the Arab country. Xi's Egyptian counterpart, President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, also offered a dedication to the magazine, in which he extended his warm welcome for Xi's visit. "Egypt treasures its close ties with China," he wrote in the message, expressing the hope that bilateral relations will enjoy continuous and sound development in various fields. Cairo will actively respond to Xi's call for reviving the Silk Roads, and welcomes more Chinese investment in its building of a "new Egypt," added the president. Egypt will work with China to achieve common interests and future development, which will also benefit the entire humanity, al-Sisi wrote. The Arab edition of China Today has been published by China International Publishing Group since 1964. It is the only Arab-language comprehensive monthly magazine in China. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi (R front) greets Chinese President Xi Jinping (L front) upon his arrival in Cairo, Egypt, Jan 20, 2016. Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Cairo Wednesday for a state visit to Egypt, the second leg of his three-nation Middle East tour. [Photo/Xinhua] CAIRO - Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived on Wednesday for a state visit to Egypt, the second leg of his three-nation Middle East tour. It is the first time in 12 years that a Chinese president visits Egypt, a leading country in the Arab world, Africa and the Islamic world. The visit, which comes at the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and Egypt, is expected to chart out the future of the two countries' relations, said Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Ming, adding that the visit will be a "milestone." Xi is scheduled to hold talks with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi and meet with Prime Minister Sherif Ismail and other leaders during the visit. Egypt was the first Arab and African state to recognize the People's Republic of China and establish diplomatic relations with Beijing in 1956. The bilateral ties are enjoying sound momentum. Al-Sisi paid a visit to China in December 2014 during which the two countries elevated their relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership. Xi met al-Sisi again when the Egyptian president was in Beijing to attend events marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II in September 2015. Bilateral trade between China and Egypt reached a record high of $11.6 billion in 2014. The two-way trade amounted to $9.67 billion in the first three quarters of 2015, up 13 percent year-on-year, according to Chinese Ambassador to Egypt Song Aiguo. Egypt is one of the founding members of the China-proposed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and also vowed to vigorously participate in China's Belt and Road Initiative, believing that the initiative has provided an important opportunity for Egypt's renewal. Decision reflects importance regional bloc attaches to Beijing, commerce minister says Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) meets with Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Secretary-General Abdul Latif Bin Rashid Al Zayani in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Jan 19, 2016. Xi arrived on Tuesday for a state visit to Saudi Arabia, the first stop of his three-nation tour of the Middle East. [Photo/Xinhua] China and the Gulf Cooperation Council have resumed frozen negotiations on their free trade agreement and will conclude the pact later this year, both sides said on Wednesday. Observers hailed the move, which will open an extremely rich market for China, as a "big breakthrough" made during the visit by President Xi Jinping to the Middle East. Xi arrived in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, on Tuesday at the start of the first visit to the country by a Chinese head of state in seven years. He will also visit Egypt and Iran. News of the breakthrough came after Xi met with GCC Secretary-General Abdul Latif bin Rashid Al Zayani on Tuesday in Riyadh. Xi told Zayani that China is willing to be a long-term, stable and reliable energy market for the bloc. Zayani said all GCC members expect to raise the bloc's ties with China to the level of "special strategic partnership". Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng said on Wednesday that the free trade agreement talks were restarted as the GCC's talks with another 16 countries remain frozen, reflecting the importance the regional bloc attaches to Beijing. Gao added, "We believe this is an important move for the GCC to further strengthen its strategic partnership with China, and also a key decision to further improve China's comprehensive cooperation with the GCC." Li Guofu, head of the Middle East Department at the China Institute of International Studies, said the agreement, once signed, will open up to China a market of six rich countries, which mainly rely on imports. The GCC is a political and economic union of six Gulf Arab states Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Li said, "Chinese goods will be very competitive there, and will be transferred to neighboring regions through the bloc." Li Shaoxian, a senior expert in Middle East studies at Ningxia University in Yinchuan, the Ningxia Hui autonomous region, said, "I expected President Xi's visit to push forward the FTA talks, but I didn't dare to hope they would restart immediately. ... It's a big surprise." A news release issued by the Ministry of Commerce and the GCC Secretariat on Wednesday said the Chinese government and the GCC "resumed negotiations on Jan 16 and substantively concluded in principle the negotiations on trade in goods on Jan 19". China and the GCC have decided to "accelerate the pace of negotiations" and hold the next round in the second half of February. They will also "conclude a comprehensive Free Trade Agreement within 2016". Gao said the GCC is the largest source of China's oil imports and the second-largest market for construction projects for China. "That's why China and the GCC decided to start bilateral FTA talks in 2004," he said. Oil giants plan to explore business opportunities together in the Middle East petroleum industry China Petroleum and Chemical Corp, Asia's largest refiner, signed a strategic agreement on Wednesday with the Saudi Arabian Oil Company, also known as Saudi Aramco, to further explore business opportunities in the Middle East country's oil and gas industry. The agreement was signed during President Xi Jinping's three-nation tour of the Middle East, as the world's second-largest economy seeks closer political and economic ties with the region. The deal came after construction began on the second phase of a major Red Sea oil refinery, a joint venture between China Petroleum and Chemical Corp, or Sinopec, and Saudi Aramco with the first phase becoming fully operational in April, Sinopec said in a statement. The venture, Yanbu Aramco Sinopec Refining Co, estimated to cost nearly $10 billion, covers an area of about 5.2 million square meters. It will process 400,000 barrels of heavy crude oil per day. Aramco will hold a 62.5 percent stake in the plant, and Sinopec will own the remainder. Large oil imports China exports textiles, and mechanical and electrical products to Saudi Arabia, still in small volumes, but it imports a large quantity of crude oil from the petroleum-rich country. China's crude oil imports rose by more than 12 percent last year to 800,000 barrels per day. Experts said China has more to offer, since the world's largest energy consumer has a strong manufacturing capability in oil refining equipment and highly advanced technologies of petroleum processing. Though Saudi Arabia, the world's major oil exporter and China's largest oil supplier, is rich in fossil-fuel resources, it relies heavily on refined oil imports and is determined to expand into downstream petrochemical businesses. Xu Xiaojie, an economics researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said China has vast experience in oilfield service and in manufacturing oil refining equipment, potential fields of cooperation between the two countries. "Saudi Arabia may prevent investors from participating in resource exploration and development, but it has huge potential for growth in technology and engineering services, which Chinese petrochemical companies can help provide," he said. China's oil processing capacity reached 750 million metric tons in 2014, accounting for 15.6 percent of the world's capacity second only to the United States while its ethylene production hit 20 million metric tons, 13 percent in the world's total capacity. Xu said that export of petrochemical technologies and equipment may become the countries next "calling card" as Chinese companies are encouraged to expand overseas presence. Contact the writer at lvchang@chinadaily.com.cn China's Global Newspaper Sorry, the page you requested was not found. Please check the URL for proper spelling and capitalization. If you're having trouble locating a destination on Chinadaily.com.cn, try visiting the Chinadaily home page Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) and Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud inaugurate the operation of the Yasref oil refinery, a joint venture between Saudi Aramco and China's Sinopec in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Jan 20, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] RIYADH - After attending the launch ceremony of the Yasref oil refinery, China's largest investment project in Saudi Arabia, President Xi Jinping on Wednesday wrapped up his visit to the kingdom, which was lauded as "historic." Xi's two-day state visit has witnessed an upgrade of China-Saudi Arabia relations and stepped up energy cooperation between the two countries. STEPPING UP ENERGY COOPERATION Accompanied by Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the Chinese president attended the ceremony at the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center in Riyadh to remotely inaugurate the operation of the Yasref oil refinery, a joint venture between Saudi Aramco and China's Sinopec. Xi said that energy cooperation between the two countries has brought tangible benefits to both peoples. The launch of the refinery, he said, conforms to not only the Saudi national development strategy, but also China's strategy of carrying out cooperation with countries in the regions outlined in the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative, a vision Xi put forward in 2013 to boost interconnectivity and common development along the ancient land and maritime Silk Roads. As a full-conversion refinery covering 5.2 million square meters in the industrial city of Yanbu on the west coast of Saudi Arabia, Yasref plays a fundamental role in the future of Yanbu industries, the company said. It is the first overseas refinery Sinopec has built. The two companies signed the agreement in early 2012 with a total investment of nearly 10 billion U.S. dollars. Aramco holds 62.5 percent of the stake while Sinopec holds 37.5 percent. Energy cooperation is a key element in Xi's visit, during which the two leaders agreed to build stable long-term energy cooperation. Meanwhile, when meeting with the head of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC), Xi said that China is willing to carry out comprehensive energy cooperation with the GCC countries and be a long-term, stable and reliable energy market for the six-member bloc. Saudi Arabia is China's biggest foreign supplier of crude oil and biggest trading partner in West Asia. Two-way trade reached 69.1 billion dollars in 2014, growing by 230 times over that of 1990, when the two countries established diplomatic ties. (Photo : Reuters) China has warned foreign governments to respect it judicial sovereignty and stop interfering in its internal affairs. Advertisement China reacted on Thursday, Jan. 14, after the United States called for the release of arrested human rights lawyers, cautioning the U.S. to stop interfering in its internal affairs. Most of the detained lawyers were arrested on subversion charges, according to the rights group Chinese Human Rights Defenders. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement Mark Toner, the deputy spokesman of the U.S. State Department, said on Wednesday, Jan. 13 that the U.S. government is concerned about China's continuing crackdown against human rights lawyers. "The United States urges China to drop these charges and immediately release these lawyers, and others like them, detained for seeking to protect the rights of Chinese citizens," Toner said during a news briefing. In response, China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said that "Foreign governments should respect China's judicial sovereignty and refrain from interfering." This issue of human rights has always been a source of tension between the world's two largest economies. A Swedish man was detained recently in China for committing acts which are damaging to the country's national security. However, Hong made it clear that China will work with officials at the Swedish embassy to carry out consular work on this matter. He emphasized that the government together with the judicial departments and relevant Chinese authorities are going to safeguard the interests and legitimate rights of every foreign citizen staying in China. Lei added that any dispute concerning this matter will be answered in accordance with the law. Advertisement TagsMark Toner, US-China relations (Photo : Getty Images) Davis has now been charged with first-degree murder, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, possession of a weapon by a prohibited persona and disorderly conduct with a firearm. Her bond has been set at $1.5 million. Advertisement An arrest has been made in connection with the drastic Arizona road rage shooting of a Chinese exchange student that resulted in another car collision injuring five more people. Holly Davis, 32, has been arrested by Tempe police with three charges including first-degree murder. Davis' vehicle was reportedly involved in the collision at a busy intersection last Saturday. She allegedly got out of the vehicle and fired multiple shots towards the other car, which student Yue Jiang was driving. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement According to Tempe police Lt. Michael Pooley, Jiang tried to drive off. However since she had been shot several times, she eventually lost control of the car and crashed into another vehicle. The other vehicle was carrying five passengers including a pregnant woman and three children. Davis is alleged to have also pointed her gun to Jiang's passenger, who sustained minor injuries following the crash. Jiang was taken to a nearby hospital where she died. Meanwhile, the family of five passengers involved in the accident did not suffer serious injuries. Davies reportedly fled the crime scene in a silver Volkswagen Passat, but was taken to custody moments after. According to the Arizona Republic, Davis tried to eliminate all evidence, hiding her car and weapon before going to her Mesa apartment to shower and wash her clothes. However, investigators discovered shell casings in her apartment matching those at the shooting scene. They also found a disturbing note expressing a desire to engage in violence. Davis has now been charged with first-degree murder, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, possession of a weapon by a prohibited persona and disorderly conduct with a firearm. Her bond has been set at $1.5 million. Jiang was reportedly driving home with her boyfriend, who is also from China, after doing some shopping, before the tragedy happened. Advertisement TagsArizona Road Rage, Arizona, Arizona Road Rage Shooting, Holly Davis, Yue Jiang (Photo : Getty Images) Meituan-Dianping has made history after raising about $3.3 billion in an online fund raising campaign. Advertisement Chinese food delivery startup Meituan-Dianping announced on Tuesday that it has raised a whopping $3.3 Billion in a fresh round of fund raising. By doing so, the company made history as this is perhaps the largest amount raised by an internet startup company in the world. This mammoth round of fund raising was led by Tencent, DST Global and TBP Capital. Singapore's Temasek Holdings and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board also participated in the fund raising. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement With this funding, Meituan-Dianping's market valuation is believed to have surpassed the $18 billion mark. Meituan-Dianping, now spearheaded by Meituan.com founder Wang Xing, will most likely use these funds to support its massive expansion and attract China's coupon-addicted smartphone consumers. Interestingly enough, this funding comes just a few months after a merger between Meituan.com and Dianping.com, making the newly formed company -- Meituan-Dianping -- an undisputed leader in China's online-to-offline commerce industry. Both Meituan.com and Dianping.com were fierce competitors for years, cutting into each others business - something that investors of both companies thought will prove unsustainable for both companies in future. Eventually, leading to their merger in October 2015. Although Meituan-Dianping is now considered a leader in online-to-offline market, but it still faces stiff competition from Alibaba-controlled 'koubei' and Baidu-backed 'Nuomi.' Both Alibaba and Baidu are expected to make heavy investments in these companies in the coming months. According to Techcrunch, Baidu announced in June 2015 that it would invest more than $3 billion in its startup company Nuomi. Advertisement TagsMeituan-Dianping, Meituan.com, Dianping.com, koubei, Nuomi (Photo : Reuters) Chinese President Xi Jinping and Saudi Arabia monarch King Salman have signed economic deals and memoranda of understanding as both nations stregthen diplomatic ties. Advertisement Chinese President Xi Jinping and Saudi Arabia monarch King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud have inked 14 economic deals and memoranda of understanding covering energy, industrial capacity cooperation as well as the Belt and Road initiative, among others, during the President's first stop in his five-day Middle East tour. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement The state-run Saudi Press Agency has reported that the deals signed by President Xi and King Salman on Tuesday included establishing guidelines for consultations on fighting terrorism and establishing bilateral cooperation in building a nuclear reactor. The two nations also signed agreements on telecommunication, energy, and aviation, Xinhua reported. Xi's five-day, 3-nation tour in the Middle East is his first visit to the region as president of the world's largest country. He will also make stops in Egypt and Iran. Political observers say the President's state visit is a way to raise China's political presence in the troubled region and signal a confirmation of support to diplomatic ties with the Saudi Arabian government which was forged 26 years ago. "Since China and Saudi Arabia forged diplomatic ties 26 years ago, our relationship has developed by leaps and bounds, with mutual political trust deepening continuously and rich results in cooperation in various fields," Xi said in his remarks as reported by China's official Xinhua news agency. Xi said he expected a 'fruitful outcome' from his visit such as elevating mutual cooperation in various sectors to a whole new level and strengthening the collective cooperation between China and GCC nations. The GCC nations comprise the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council to which Saudi Arabia belongs. China and Saudi Arabia released a joint statement voicing willingness to build a strong, comprehensive and effective strategic partnership as well as boost diplomatic ties which includes pursuing their joint development strategies. Diplomatic ties were forged between Beijing and Riyadh in 1990. Annual trade between the two nations has reached a peak of $69.1 billion in 2014. President Xi, together with the monarch, will attend an inauguration of an energy research center in Riyadh on Wednesday Following the inauguration, the two leaders will proceed to the remote Gulf Coast to open a refinery which is a joint venture of state-owned Saudi Aramco and China Petrochemical Corporation. Advertisement TagsChinese President Xi Jinping's Middle East tour, Saudi Arabia monarch King Salman, Saudi Press Agency, China- Saudi diplomatic ties (Photo : YouTube) Swedish activist Peter Dahlin has confessed to breaking China's national law through his activities. Advertisement Swedish human right activist Peter Dahlin on Tuesday made an appearance on Chinese state TV and confessed about breaking the law through his organization 'China Action.' Like Us on Facebook Advertisement Peter Dahlin is reported to have been detained by authorities on Jan. 4 as he was about to board a plane for Thailand. According to state media agency, Peter Dahlin's organization China Action has been accused of instigating confrontation and gathering information to distort report. China Action was founded by Peter Dahlin with the aim of providing direct legal aid to people suffering alleged human rights violations in the country. The organization also provided assistance to lawyers who offer legal aid in rural areas of China. "I violated Chinese law through my activities here, I've caused harm to the Chinese government, I've hurt the feelings of the Chinese people. I apologies sincerely for this and I'm very sorry that this ever happened," Dahlin said. He added that he has been treated well by Chinese authorities and has been given proper food as well as good amount of sleep. Dahlin's detention on Jan. 4 coincided with a crackdown on Beijing based legal firm 'Fengrui', which has equally been abused of subversion by the authorities. According to Xinhua, Dahlin is linked to this legal firm. He was reportedly collaborating with one of the prominent lawyers in this firm to establish an organization in Hong kong. Dahlin has also been accused of providing funds to activist Xing Qingxian, who reportedly helped son of detained lawyer Wang Yu to elope the country. Meanwhile ,officials from the Swedish embassy have been allowed to meet Dahlin for a brief time. Sweden has officially said that it is still looking into the case. Advertisement TagsPeter Dahlin, CCTV (Photo : YouTube Screenshot) China plants to build its very first floating nuclear power plant that can go to different locations, anchor offshore, and generate power. It is targeting to complete the project by 2020. Advertisement China is reportedly building the country's first floating nuclear plant, which would be able to go to different sites and anchor offshore to generate power. It is targeting to complete construction by 2020. China General Nuclear (CGN) is expecting the small offshore modular to be used for different purposes. The reactor's construction is set to begin in 2017 and is targeted to start producing electricity three years afterward. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement CGN revealed that the development of ACPR50S has been approved by the National Development and Reform Commission. The project is a part of the country's strategy as listed in the 13th Five-Year Plan for innovative energy technologies. The Plan also includes building over 100 nuclear power plants over the next 10 years. Pushing ahed with its ambitious plan, the Chinese government will allocate more than USD $100 billion to build seven reactors between now and 2030. It also targets to produce more than 350 GW nuclear power, build up to 400 nuclear reactors and generate an income of more than a trillion dollars by 2050. The small modular reactor reportedly has the capacity of up to 200 MW, enough to supply electricity to an island. It can also be used for other long-term projects such as seawater desalination as well as oil and gas exploitation. This, however, is not the first of its kind. The US Navy owns about a hundred nuclear-powered ships. However, the Chinese small reactor is designed to supply power supply offshore and not onboard. Aside from the floating nuclear reactor, China is also testing other types of technologies to cater to the different needs of the nuclear market -- large light water reactors, fast reactors and molten salt reactors, to name a few. Other than the ACPR50S, CGN is also working on a reactor designed for land called ACPR100. The small reactor can power a large-scale industrial park in remote mountainous areas. This and other issues will be discussed at the Platts Nuclear Energy Conference on February 17 at Capital Hilton in Washington, DC. Advertisement TagsEnergy, Nuclear Power Plant, Chinese General Nuclear, ACPR50S, small nodular reactor (Photo : Getty Images) A group of Chinese workers in Vietnam escape rioters protesting against a Chinese oil rig which has been erected in South China Sea in 2014. Vietnam is demanding that China removes and stop any oil rig activities in the disputed waters as another standoff may occur. Advertisement Vietnam has raised concerns after China allegedly moved an oil rig into disputed waters in the South China Sea. Vietnam has called on China to withdraw as it could result in a recurrence of the 2014 standoff between the two nations. According to Vietnam's foreign ministry spokesman Le Hai Binh, China moved its Haiyang Shiyou 981 oil rig to an area outside of Tonkin, an area where the two countries' continental shelves overlap and have not been demarcated, on Jan. 16. Binh said that China should immediately stop the movement; else it could lead to another standoff. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement Speaking on behalf of Vietnam, he demanded that China stops any drilling activities and removes the Hai Duong 981 oil rig from the area. Binh added that all the legal rights and interests of the area is laid out by international law. In 2014, the same oil rig was moved into the disputed waters by a unit of China National Offshore Oil Corp. causing tension between the two nations. The incident sparked anti-China protests in Vietnam that left five people dead. More so, hundreds of Chinese and foreign-owned factories were looted and burned during the protests. In a separate event, Vietnam also accused China of violating international law by landing a plane on a newly built airstrip on the disputed Spratly Islands. However, China denied the violation citing that flights were within China's sovereign territory and were exempted from international civil aviation procedures. China's foreign ministry described the accusations as "unfounded." Advertisement TagsVietnam, territorial disputes School attack in Pakistan leaves at least 30 dead 20 January, 2016 by Gregory Tomlin , | CHARSADDA, Pakistan (Christian Examiner) Taliban militants have launched a devastating attack on a university in Pakistan, killing at least 30 people and leaving many dozens injured under the cover of a thick fog. Gunmen scaled the walls of the university and slipped into the open air compound at Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, roughly 200 miles west of the country's capital of Islamabad and only 30 miles from Afghanistan, at 9:30 a.m. Jan. 20. They opened fire on the students, shooting both men and women indiscriminately, witnesses said. Pakistan's security forces responded almost immediately to the scene and killed the four gunmen. Around noon, an official from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province said at least 30 people on the campus were dead, but one eyewitness said he had counted at least 50 bodies, many executed with shots to the head. Ambulances took many of the wounded away for treatment at a local hospital, but the more seriously wounded were transported to Peshawar, the provincial capital, for treatment. According to the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper, a commander with the Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP), Umar Mansoor, said his group was responsible for the attack. Mansoor's group was also responsible for an attack on an army school in Peshawar a little more than one year ago. That attack claimed the lives of 132 children. The attack, however, might not have been sanctioned by the group's supreme leader. The main spokesman for the Taliban, Mohammad Khurasanik, claimed it was not responsible because the attack was "un-Islamic," perhaps exposing a rift in ideology in the group. "Youth who are studying in non-military institutions, we consider them as builders of the future nation and we consider their safety and protection our duty," the statement from Khurasanik said. The conflicting accounts may be the result of the loose-knit alliances characteristic of the TTP, formed in 2007 to oppose the encroachment of government troops from Islamabad in the area. The group reportedly wants to establish an Islamic caliphate over the whole of Pakistan. Taliban leader Mullah Fazlullah is said to favor attacks like the one on the school because the schools vestiges of western influence are "soft targets." Since 2008, the TTP has attempted to export its terror. The group claimed responsibility for the failed Times Square car bombing in New York in 2010, according to the National Counterterrorism Center. Christian leaders in Pakistan today condemned the attack on the school, saying that the young people killed had a right to an education. Rev. Fr. Emmanuel Yousaf Mani and Executive Director Cecil Shane Chaudhry, both with the National Commission for Justice and Peace, issued a joint statement calling the attack senseless. They said the event "has caused shock and bereavement in different parts of the country." "The government of Pakistan is ranked second in the world among the countries with the highest school dropout and an international organization's research shows that only 5 percent of the students reach higher education in Pakistan. It is essential for the government to take the necessary action to provide safety and security to all educational institutions in order to protect the brilliant minds working to shape a better and intellectual Pakistan," they said in the statement. They also said the Catholic Church stood with the people of Charsadda. Attacks on schools are becoming more common. In April 2015, Al-Shabaab militants from Somalia attacked Garissa University (which in reality is more like a small teacher's college). They killed 147 students, but before they did they asked which students were Christians. Those who were Christian were executed immediately. Pastor accuses Southern Baptist leader of 'lobbing spit wads' at GOP frontrunner Donald Trump Editorial Staff | 19 January, 2016 by Joni B. Hannigan LYNCHBURG, Va. (Christian Examiner) When the head of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission Russell Moore just a few weeks ago opined that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz represented the "Jerry Falwell" wing of evangelical voters, he couldn't have known Donald Trump would be the keynote speaker at Falwell's Southern-Baptist affiliated Liberty University Monday, January 18. Moore didn't acknowledge his characterizations, however, in a blistering string of one-line tweets aimed at both GOP presidential frontrunner Trump and Liberty University's president Jerry Falwell Jr., who introduced Trump as similar to his late father, long considered a leader of America's moral majority. Trump is rightly accused of not acting very Presidential at times, but Dr. Moore does not fare any better with his sub-tweeting barbs, the mocking tone of which gives one the impression that Dr. Moore is sitting in the balcony lobbing spit wads at the Republican Party frontrunner. "Absolutely unbelievable," Moore responded to a comment he re-tweeted in which Falwell said in his introduction of Trump, "By their fruits ye shall know them. Donald Trump's life has borne fruit." As Moore has continued to openly criticize Trump's remarks at Liberty some Southern Baptists have expressed concern about the ERLC leader's remarks. Rick Patrick, an Alabama pastor who is a publisher of the SBC Today blog and founder of Connect 316, an organization that defines itself as "traditionalist" Southern Baptists, told Christian Examiner that Moore is inappropriate in his criticism of Trump. "While I prefer both Cruz and Rubio to Trump, I am concerned that Dr. Moore is singling out only one party's frontrunner for 99 percent of his criticism," Patrick said. Noting the organization Moore is employed by, the ERLC, is supported by funding given by Southern Baptists who give to the Cooperative Program the way Southern Baptists supports missions, seminaries, and ministries Patrick charged "Moore's anti-Trump campaign" with irregularities. "Why are we applying a full court press against the frontrunner of the only major party whose platform is pro-life, pro-prayer and pro-marriage?" he asked rhetorically. Ken Skelton, a Tennessee pastor, said in a Facebook post about Moore's remarks, "Our ERLC President should be Pro-Life. 60 million babies are dead (and) euthanasia is permitted in at least two states. The ERLC President should be at the front of the line leading us in the fight for life. Instead he picks on the Donald." In an interview with Christian Examiner, Skelton added that he believes Moore picks on Trump more than any other candidate and, "I don't think of him as being the greatest evil of all candidates." It would be more helpful if Moore, as the ERLC head, stuck to the moral issues that Southern Baptists agree on, said the Tennessee pastor. So far, what he has seen is "name calling," Skelton said, referring to it as a "bit juvenile," for someone with Moore's stature. "In public, I really think we ought to think it through and be careful about what we are saying," Skelton said. "We can do better than getting onto Trump." ERLC PANEL Commenting on Moore's history of involvement in this political race, Patrick told Christian Examiner that a few months ago Moore invited both Democratic and Republican candidates to an ERLC panel apparently on the basis of their polling numbers. Ironically, Patrick said, Moore is now in the "unenviable position of having to invite Donald Trump to join him on a panel." At the civil forum Moore hosted in August 2015 in Nashville, Moore interviewed GOP presidential hopefuls former Gov. Jeb Bush and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, just two days prior to the first Republican Presidential debate. In a press conference after the interviews, Moore said he had invited all candidates polling at 10 percent or higher to the forum, including Hillary Clinton, whom he said declined. As for Southern Baptist GOP candidates, specifically former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Sen. Ted Cruz, and Gov. Rick Perry, Moore told Christian Examiner he did not invite them because that would have turned the forum "into a moment of identity politics instead of a time of conversation." Patrick said Moore's behavior on social media has caused concern. "Trump is rightly accused of not acting very Presidential at times, but Dr. Moore does not fare any better with his sub-tweeting barbs, the mocking tone of which gives one the impression that Dr. Moore is sitting in the balcony lobbing spit wads at the Republican Party frontrunner," said the Alabama pastor. The criticism Moore directed at Liberty, Patrick said, is confusing. "Liberty University has a history of inviting guest speakers from all walks of life, including a Mormon, a Jewish Socialist, and a Seventh Day Adventist. This time, apparently, they went too far by inviting a self-professed Presbyterian," he speculated. Trump isn't the first presidential hopeful to come under fire for talking about the Christian faith at Liberty. In 2012 Republican Mitt Romney spoke of a shared "Christian conscience," leading to discussions about whether Liberty could be accused of not distinguishing the Mormon religion from that of Christianity. In response to both Romney's and Glenn Beck's appearance at Liberty, Falwell brushed aside concerns at the time, saying the university has speakers from every faith. In a January 18 interview with CNN, Moore said he does not have an issue with Trump being invited to speak at Liberty, but said someone should have taken a "moment to say" that "one is not made right with God" by having the belief that there is nothing for which he needs forgiveness. Moore told Yahoo senior political correspondent Jon Ward that "portraying this lost soul as a brother in Christ is not only doing wrong to Trump himself, it preaches an anti-gospel" to those who listen to what he says. "The problem is with allowing Trump to present himself as a man of faith and character, without calling him out on both," Moore said. MORE MOORE ON SOCIAL MEDIA ? Moore last month blasted the real-estate mogul for his statement about closing the border to all Muslims, suggesting his idea as "reckless, demagogic rhetoric" in a column. The ethics leader's tweets indicate, however, he has more than a passing discomfort with Trump's proposed policies. ? As Trump pulled out ahead of the other nominees for the sixth GOP debate January 14 in North Charleston, South Carolina, Moore tweeted: "Why I will Never Vote for Donald Trump." The link is to an opinion piece in the New York Times by Peter Wehner. The same day Washington Post published a blog by Moore, "Sorry, the Bible doesn't promise to make America great again" refuting a campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again," used first by Ronald Reagan, and popularized again by Donald Trump who has bought the rights to use the trademarked phrase. ? Also on January 14, Moore tweeted: "I am here at the presidential debate. The undercard starting now." Several more tweets about Trump follow, to include: "During break, Trump and Carson chatting on stage, amiably it seems," "this crowd booing Trump," "Donald Trump seems kind of low-energy in this debate," "Trump never leaves the stage during commercial breaks," "There's a lady behind me here who must be Trump's biggest supporter. Man, does she have vocal chords." ? Apparently leaving Charleston after the debate, Moore tweeted a photo of a closed off space which appears to be inside an airport. "This is what happens when Mr. Trump won't let you hitch a ride on his plane ..." TRUMP AND EVANGELICALS Another well-known religious leader, Franklin Graham, in an interview with Fox News Greta Van Susteren has pledged to not endorse any candidate for the 2016 election and instead talked about his renewed commitment to hold prayer rallies in 50 capitol cities across the nation. "No question there are many who do like him and there are many who are still studying him, but as you know, I'm staying out of it," he told Van Susteren when she asked what evangelicals think of Trump. Rubio talks religious liberty after atheist voter poses question 20 January, 2016 by Gregory Tomlin , | WAVERLY, Iowa (Christian Examiner) Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio doesn't want to push his faith on anyone, the candidate said in response to an inquiry from an atheist during a town hall meeting in Iowa Jan. 18. During the meeting, Jason Scott, a member of the Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation, a litigious anti-Christian organization, posed a question to Rubio about what his role in religious affairs would be if elected president. Scott said Rubio's new campaign advertisement, which talks about his faith throughout the 30-second commercial, has raised concerns about the candidate's favoritism toward Christianity and his willingness to impose his views on others such as atheists, which Scott described as "one of the fastest growing voting blocs." Scott said he wanted to hear from candidates about how they would protect the rights of non-theists or atheists. Rubio said all Americans have the right to believe whatever they want or nothing at all and to express their faiths in the public square. Politicians can't, however, he said, coerce anyone. "I can't force you to be a Christian," Rubio said. "Christianity is a free gift and we Christians believe that salvation is a free gift that has to be willfully accepted. You can't force it on people. You have a right to believe in whatever you want. Now, I am going to share my faith, especially when I am asked. Because, my faith influences who I am and every aspect of my life." Rubio also said he hopes people will understand that he can't form his political opinions without his faith influencing him, and that's what Americans should hope for in a president. "You shouldn't be worried about my faith influencing me. In fact, I think you should hope my faith influences me and here's why. You know what my faith teaches me?" Rubio asked. "My faith teaches me that I have an obligation to care for the less fortunate. My faith teaches me that I have an obligation to love my neighbor. My faith teaches me that I have an obligation for those who are hungry to help try to feed them; for those that are naked, to help clothe them. My faith teaches me that I have an obligation that I need to minister to those in prison. My faith teaches me that I have an obligation that if I want to serve Jesus that I have to serve." Rubio then seemed to hit back at the current climate of political and religious discussion in America, in which he believes there is pressure on Christians to remain silent. He said America, if he is elected, will be a place "where no one is forced to violate their conscience." That means, he said, "[N]o one is going to force you to believe in God. But, no one is going to force me to stop talking about God. I am not going to force you to pray. I am not going to force you to go to church. I am not going to force you to espouse beliefs that you don't have. But, no one is going to take away my right and your right to live out the teachings of your faith no one." Rubio did not say that America has always been a Christian nation, a frequent point of criticism for many candidates from the Freedom from Religion Foundation. He said, however, that Judeo-Christian values generally influenced the United States. To think otherwise proves "you don't know history," Rubio said. "I am not saying you, I am just saying in general. This nation was founded on the principle that our rights come from our Creator. If there is no creator, then where did your rights come from? That's why it is important for us to understand that and we are going to protect the rights of Americans to continue to believe that." Scott posted Rubio's comments on his YouTube channel under the title, "Marco Rubio: Pastor in Chief?" Opinions on Rubio's reply have been generally positive. Some, who claim to be atheists, also wrote comments indicating the answer was acceptable to them. Sitting around a long table in the English Ministry (EM) room, Reverend John Kim, the head pastor of World Agape Mission Church, and Pastor Timothy Yoo, the EM pastor, shared their stories about the Korean and English ministries of WAMC, and the journey that it took to build WAMC to be the church it is today. Currently, 80-90% of the students in EM choose to stay near Los Angeles for college instead of going out of state because they want to stay at WAMC and continue to serve. 85-90% of the EM members regularly tithe, and many of them attend early dawn prayer with the Korean ministry (KM). At one side you hear people screaming, !, and on another side you hear, Jesus! Were praying in different languages but were all praying together with one heart, Pastor Yoo said. What was the secret to the health of this church and the devotion of its members? Discipleship. WAMC was actually first started with discipleship. Reverend Kim started the church 38 years ago with a group of youth and young adults, and discipled them. During a time in which other churches did not have youth ministries, Reverend Kim decided to invest wholly and solely in the younger generation. As they shared life together, these young people grew in their knowledge and love for the Lord, and some committed to serving as a full time minister at WAMC, one of whom was Pastor Yoo. So how exactly did you guys share life together? I asked, wanting more details. Laughing, they told me, We lived together. Reverend Kim built a dormitory for his 10 disciples and himself to live in, and together they ate, talked, laughed, cleaned, prayed, and shared everything together. When Reverend Kim had events to go to, he would ask Pastor Yoo to drive him there. I was pretty much his chauffer, Pastor Yoo said with a smile, joking. But it was because I drove him to these places that I was able to observe how he does ministry and how passionate he is. Both pastors agreed in saying that the key to creating a church atmosphere in which the KM pastors and EM pastors can work together and build each other up is discipleship. As Reverend Kim lived with his disciples and invested in them whole heartedly, his disciples, in turn, were able to learn his heart and develop their own passion for the church. Then, as Pastor Yoo committed to EM ministry, there was no room for tension or clashes in opinion because at that point, the two of them already shared the same mindset about how to do ministry. I dont consider any of my pastors as inferiors. They are my partners, and our boss is God, Reverend Kim said. If older members of the congregation had oppositions about how some pastors were leading ministry, Reverend Kim said that he would try to shield them from these oppositions. I try to help the 1st generation Korean members of our congregation to understand that 2nd and 3rd generation members just learn and interact differently, he explained. I asked Pastor Yoo how he disciples his own followers today. Do you also live with them in a dormitory? I asked. Reverend Kim responded, The times are different. The dorm system worked back then, but it wouldnt work now. Pastor Yoo agreed, and said that instead, his discipleship training consists of 6 meetings per week. That seemed like a heavy number of meetings. But, Pastor Yoo said, most of his disciples come an hour or two early, and stay a little later after meetings as well. He said they spend about 20 hours per week together, sharing life in that way. When confronted with the argument that a language barrier might hinder other churches relationships between KM and EM, Reverend Kim responded, I think that if someone is loved, they will know it. Both Reverend Kim and Pastor Yoo exhorted the church leadership to invest in and love on the younger generation. There is no quick-fix or easy solution to creating faithful leaders in the church. But through loving discipleship and long-term investment, God can use current KM leaders to raise up passionate disciples and future leaders of EM to partner in building His kingdom together. "Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you." John 13:14-15 This is one in a series of interviews with southern California pastors who either serve in English ministry (EM) or have a heart for the intergenerational relationship between Korean ministry (KM) and EM. As the generation of the Korean church is shifting from the first to the second generation, what are the obstacles that are hindering the English ministry from flourishing? How can EM and KM pastors work together to build up the second-generation church? These are among the many questions that these pastors grapple with, and that Christianity Daily is hoping to wrestle together with through these interviews. A man claiming to be a U.S. citizen has been detained by the North Korean government on espionage charges, CNN reported January 11. The man who has been identified as Kim Dong Chul was interviewed by a CNN reporter in a hotel in Pyongyang, the countrys capital. Mr. Kim told the reporter than he had resided in Fairfax, Virginia before moving to Yanji -- a city in China near the North Korean border -- in 2001. He commuted daily to Rason, located in the northeastern region of North Korea, where he headed a international trade and hotel services company. He said he began spying on behalf of South Korean conservative elements in April 2013 who injected me with a hatred toward North Korea by bribing residents to collect information on North Koreas military and nuclear program. He was arrested in October 2015 while meeting with a former North Korean soldier to collect a USB memory stick and a camera containing military secrets. CNN released a picture of Kims US passport. The U.S. State Department declined to comment on the matter, explaining in an email to CNN that "speaking publicly about specific purported cases of detained Americans can complicate our tireless efforts to secure their freedom." I have fond memories of fall 2008. Having recently earned my PhD, I had just begun my academic career at Westmont College in Southern California. Since it was a presidential election year, I decided to focus my social psychology course on the psychology of political attitudes: how they are formed, how they are maintained, and how they can predict voting behavior. Much like the Westmont faculty, about half of the students in my class were self-described liberals, and about half were self-described conservatives. This ideological diversity made for lively discussions. At the start of the semester, the whole classmyself includedbelieved that our particular political viewpoint was the most faithful to Christianity. Sure, politics dont replace faith, one student admitted. But, come on, Dr. Cleveland, you have to admit that [my partys] values best reflect the values of Jesus. He wasnt the only one. Many of my students insisted that their political attitudes were informed by an untainted reading of Scripture and unsusceptible to biasthat is, social factors that influence our attitudes beyond our awareness. Social psychologists call this the bias blind spot. We can easily point out other peoples biases, but we have a hard time seeing our own. I wanted to agree with my students; its natural for Christians to insist that only our Jesus bias informs our political attitudes. To admit that perhaps some other bias has polluted our worldview not only undermines the legitimacy of our Christian worldview; it also challenges the integrity of the faith that we closely associate with our worldview. But over the semester, as ... 1 You have reached the end of this Article Preview You have reached the end of this Article Preview To continue reading, subscribe now. Subscribers have full digital access. Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here. Catholic Psychotherapy Association to Hold National Conference in Austin, Texas, April 14-16, 2016: The Face of Mercy: The Healing Path of Catholic Psychotherapy AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 20, 2016 / All are invited to attend, especially psychologists, therapists, social workers, priests, religious, seminarians, and psychology students. This year's speakers include Fr. Timothy Gallagher, Dr. Pat Fagan, Fr. Paul Check, Dr. Gregory Popcak, Sue Baars, Allison Ricciardi and more! Topics include "Clinical Discernment: When Faith and Trauma Intersect," "The Healing Power of Affirmation," "Charity and Clarity: The Catholic Church, Therapists, and Individuals with Same-Sex Attraction," and "Forgiveness & Inner Healing: A Psychotherapy of New Beginnings." Special Features Include: Daily Mass, Rosary, and Confession Opening Mass celebrated by Bishop Joe Vasquez, Bishop of Austin Pre-Conference Day of Reflection - Reverend Timothy Gallagher, O.M.V. Networking CPA Dinner - Keynote, Dr. Patrick Fagan, Heritage Foundation CPA Conference Welcome Reception and Social Luncheon Reverend Paul Check & Dr. Michael Horne Exceptional Speakers and Topics (See website for the schedule) Student Panel Discussion, Continuing Education Credits (Pending), and Vendors WHEN: April 14-16, 2016 WHERE: Austin Marriott North, 2600 La Frontera Blvd. Austin, TX 78681 REGISTRATION: More Information or questions: Testimonial about a past conference, LPC-Intern, Patricia Harris, EdD said: "I am so glad to be part of CPA now as a new member. This was my first conference experience and it's been a true blessing. I work in a private practice and I needed the support and a way to integrate my Catholic spirituality. I have found all the knowledge, support and prayer that I have needed in this conference and I will be back. I am so glad that God opened the door when I asked and He answered by showing me the CPA." CPA Background: About ten years ago a few Catholic therapists started meeting together to mutually support each other living out their Catholic faith in their professional work. They delighted in finding other like-minded therapists who had a similar dream of finding, networking, and applying their Catholic faith to their profession. They then formed the Catholic Psychotherapy Association and currently have about 200 members. Members enjoy networking with other Catholic therapists, opportunities for conferences and continuing education units, and receiving prayer support and wisdom from other therapists. Share Tweet Contact: Sue Cyr, Catholic Psychotherapy Association , 214-685-1079AUSTIN, Texas, Jan. 20, 2016 / Christian Newswire / -- The Catholic Psychotherapy Association is holding their conference this year in Austin, Texas, April 14-16, 2016, with the conference theme: The Face of Mercy: The Healing Path of Catholic Psychotherapy. Registration at the Early Bird rate ends 1/31/16 at www.catholicpsychotherapy.org . Seminarians attend free!All are invited to attend, especially psychologists, therapists, social workers, priests, religious, seminarians, and psychology students. This year's speakers include Fr. Timothy Gallagher, Dr. Pat Fagan, Fr. Paul Check, Dr. Gregory Popcak, Sue Baars, Allison Ricciardi and more! Topics include "Clinical Discernment: When Faith and Trauma Intersect," "The Healing Power of Affirmation," "Charity and Clarity: The Catholic Church, Therapists, and Individuals with Same-Sex Attraction," and "Forgiveness & Inner Healing: A Psychotherapy of New Beginnings."Special Features Include:Daily Mass, Rosary, and ConfessionOpening Mass celebrated by Bishop Joe Vasquez, Bishop of AustinPre-Conference Day of Reflection - Reverend Timothy Gallagher, O.M.V.Networking CPA Dinner - Keynote, Dr. Patrick Fagan, Heritage FoundationCPA Conference Welcome Reception and SocialLuncheon Reverend Paul Check & Dr. Michael HorneExceptional Speakers and Topics (See website for the schedule)Student Panel Discussion, Continuing Education Credits (Pending), and VendorsWHEN: April 14-16, 2016WHERE: Austin Marriott North, 2600 La Frontera Blvd. Austin, TX 78681REGISTRATION: www.catholicpsychotherapy.org More Information or questions: infocatholicpsychotherapy@verizon.net Testimonial about a past conference, LPC-Intern, Patricia Harris, EdD said: "I am so glad to be part of CPA now as a new member. This was my first conference experience and it's been a true blessing. I work in a private practice and I needed the support and a way to integrate my Catholic spirituality. I have found all the knowledge, support and prayer that I have needed in this conference and I will be back. I am so glad that God opened the door when I asked and He answered by showing me the CPA."CPA Background: About ten years ago a few Catholic therapists started meeting together to mutually support each other living out their Catholic faith in their professional work. They delighted in finding other like-minded therapists who had a similar dream of finding, networking, and applying their Catholic faith to their profession. They then formed the Catholic Psychotherapy Association and currently have about 200 members. Members enjoy networking with other Catholic therapists, opportunities for conferences and continuing education units, and receiving prayer support and wisdom from other therapists. UNC excavation crew in Galilee region of Israel uncover first known depictions of biblical heroines An excavation team in Israel has discovered the first known depiction of two biblical heroines from the Old Testament. World to reach 8 billion people in November, India to unseat China as most populous in 2023: UN By Nov. 15, the worlds population is projected to reach 8 billion, and by 2023, India is projected to surpass China as the worlds most populous country, according to a new report from the United Nations. Single, non-religious young adults are most unhappy Americans post-COVID-19: report Young adults under 35 who are single and non-religious report the highest levels of unhappiness since the COVID-19 pandemic began and since 1972, when the General Social Survey began measuring levels of happiness among Americans, a new analysis from the Institute of Family Studies suggests. A homeless woman has been offered shelter by the Vatican after she gave birth outside its gates The Vatican has invited a homeless woman to stay after she gave birth on a piece of cardboard near St Peter's Square, according to The Washington Post. The woman is said to be considering the offer after Italian police stopped to help her as she gave birth just outside Vatican territory at 2am on Wednesday morning. Temperatures were near freezing at the time. "When I got close I saw that the baby was already born and was still attached by the umbilical cord to the mother," one of the responding officers, Maria Capone, told the Associated Press. "With my colleagues we tried to warm them up. We covered them with our uniform jackets." Pope Francis' Papal Almoner knew the baby's mother and father, who are both Romanian, as they sometimes showered at facilities his office had built for the homeless. Monsignor Konrad Krajewski visited the mother and baby at a nearby hospital and offered them a place to stay. She is yet to decide whether to accept, according to Vatican spokesperson Rev Federico Lombardi. Francis has become known for his focus on the poor and the homeless. A new shelter on the outskirts of St Peter's Square was opened last year and within days Francis visited the centre to spend time with and speak to inhabitants. On his tour of the US last year, he famously declined an invite for lunch with politicans in favour of a meal with local homeless people. Anti-gay discrimination persists in Vietnam despite lifting of same-sex marriage ban Gay people in Vietnam, particularly the youth, continue to suffer discrimination and stigma, a year after the lifting of the ban on same-sex marriage, according to reports. The Southeast Asian nation was hailed as a leader on gay rights in the region when it officially lifted its ban on gay marriage in 2015. The law, however, does not go as far as recognising same-sex unions and granting LGBT couples with equal marriage rights or protections. "Same-sex marriages can now take place though the government does not recognise them or provide legal protections in cases of disputes. The government abolished fines that were imposed on homosexual weddings in 2013,'' Bloomberg reported. On top of this, discrimination and bullying are still a problem today and continue to harm particularly the LGBT youth in the country, according to local media. The country's English-language youth newspaper, which published a report on the anniversary of the lifting of the ban, stated that many young gays are still subjected to insults, intimidation and beatings in the country's schools. "When they beat me, they insulted my parents for having a gay son," said Le Minh Triet, a student, who was reportedly driven to attempt suicide by his tormentors. "Nobody helped me,'' he said, according to Thanh Nien News. Almost half of LGBT students in Vietnam faced serious stigma in schools. Some students even reported being victimised by school staff, according to a UNESCO report on bullying on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity across the Asia-Pacific. "No other country in Southeast Asia has taken as big a step toward accepting same-sex marriage as Vietnam,'' Phil Roberston, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch said, according to TIME. While this is still limited, he said the change in policy is expected to have a positive impact especially on the country's stagnant economy. Last year, bookings have increased by as much as 50 percent compared to previous years, attributing many of these to the influx of LGBT travelers from abroad, said Nguyen Anh Tuan, owner of Gay Hanoi Tours "[The new law] indicates to everyone that Vietnam is opening up more and welcomes everyone,'' he said. "Vietnam is changing very quickly and there are bigger gay communities and gay events.'' Of approximately 90 million people living in Vietnam, at least as many as 1.65 million people between the ages of 15 and 59 are estimated to be LGBT, reports say. Austrian police receive complaints of sexual, physical assault by young migrants on local schoolgirls The Austrian police are investigating a report of sexual and physical assault perpetrated by four underage asylum seekers against three Austrian teenage school girls for months at the Scholassstrasse Middle School in Salzburg. The teenersthree of them from Afghanistan, aged 14, 15 and 16, as well as a Syrian boy aged 16have all been suspended after the school headmistress made a complaint to police, Mail Online reported. The assault reportedly involves attacks and groping that started in November as well as verbal abuse and suggestive comments, said one of the victims who complained to the police, Austrian news agency Kronen Zeitung reported. It said the incident happened during the wake of sex attacks in Cologne, Germany. According to the report, the girls were "repeatedly groped, but the final straw came when there was an attack so severe it forced action." The paper said the 14-year-old victim was often hit by the 15-year-old boy, including an incident where she was hit so badly from behind that she smashed her head onto a desk. She was again attacked Wednesday morning by the same boy smashing her against a locker so hard that the police were called, according to Kronen Zeitung. "They took the victim and the accused to the station where the full story then came out. After hearing of her ordeal, police then expanded the investigation.'' Police in Salzburg said they are looking now into accusations of sexual assault, grievous bodily harm and making threats. All the boys have been given asylum but have been suspended. Despite the allegations, local education officials in the city reportedly played down the incident, saying it was nothing more than a few slaps in the corridor and "a few obscene comments that were speedily dealt with.'' The alleged sex assault happened after waves of sex attacks have been reported across continental Europe. After hundreds of women were attacked by migrants in Germany during the New Year celebrations, reports of similar crimes also emerged from a number of other main cities. Authorities and media have been accused of covering up the incidents for fear it could cause anti-immigration sentiments, reports said. British SAS troops wearing burkas sneak into ISIS heartland, call in U.S. airstrike, killing top jihadist commander British commandos are now literally dressing to kill as part of coalition efforts to defeat the terror group Islamic State (ISIS). A senior ISIS commander was blasted to pieces following a recent U.S. airstrike called in by members of a British Special Air Service (SAS) team, who posed as wives of Islamic militant leaders, dressing up in burkasthe traditional attire of Muslim womento sneak into Raqqa, the jihadist organisation's de facto capital in Syria. Since they were covered from head to toe like Muslim women, the elite troopers were able to hide assault weapons, grenades and ammunition under their garments. The SAS members were able to access the ISIS stronghold with the help of local Syrians who are working with the secret service to help defeat the jihadist group. The elite forces were driven to the ISIS territory using a Toyota pick-up truck, the preferred vehicle of the jihadi murderers. Once they reached the ISIS-controlled town, the British commandos located the house of a senior ISIS leader. They transmitted this information to a U.S. Air Force AWAC mission control aircraft circling thousands of feet above the area. The American spy plane then fed this information to a U.S. Reaper drone, which fired within seconds a Hellfire missile into the ISIS leader's house, immediately vaporising the structure. An anonymous source told the Daily Star that Islamic militants trooped to the streets and put the town on lockdown after the missile attack, complicating the SAS forces' mission. "Gunmen were on the streets stopping everyone, lining people up against the walls and threatening to kill anyone who had helped the 'spies'," the source recounted, as quoted by The Express. After the lockdown, ISIS gunmen spotted the elite forces, but the British commandos engaged them in a fierce firefight. "Just as the British soldiers were getting back into a minivan several gunmen ordered them to stop. The troopers ignored the warnings and were about to drive off when the jihadis opened fire," the source recounted. "The SAS jumped out of the vehicle, lifted up their burkas and opened fire. It must have been a massive shock to the gunmen. One was killed instantly and two others ran off. The firefight gave the SAS just enough time to break contact with the ISIS gunmen and escape," the source added. Colombian church claims pastor was saved from knife-wielding attacker by 'power of God' A Pentecostal church in Colombia is claiming that a knife-wielding attacker was stopped in his tracks by the power of God as he was about to murder the pastor. A video taken from security cameras at the Pentecostal church in Bosa, a district of the capital, Bogota, shows the man sitting down in one of the plastic chairs at the front of the church before leaping up and running at the pastor, Pedro Pablo Martin, brandishing a knife. However, he stops in his tracks when the pastor repeats "There is power in the name of Jesus". The man falls to the floor and begins twitching. Members of the congregation rush forward and stand over him, repeating the same phrase. The church uploaded the footage with the caption: "Hooded man attacks a minister but he is overcome by the power of the Holy One's name." Officials claimed the assailant had told the minister before the sermon he was there to kill him but was told to sit down and listen to the service. The church said in a statement: "We thank God for his faithfulness and mercy, we know that the angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them. Taste and see that the Lord is good; Blessed is the man who trusts him. "We have a God of power and his name is Jesus Christ, in the name of Jesus is power." While some commentators suggested that the incident had been staged, the pastor insisted in a radio interview the video was genuine. He claimed: "It's 100 per cent authentic. What happened was a display of the power of God protecting us from evil. "He told me, 'I'm here to kill you' before he attempted to attack me and I told him to calm down, sit down and listen to the rest of my sermon because I didn't really take him seriously. "I only realised how serious it was when I saw him come at me with the knife." He said the church had let the would-be attacker go after officials said they didn't want to press charges. Pastor Martin said: "I'm confident he won't try this again. I thought about making a formal complaint but I've decided to leave his fate in the hands of God." Eritrea: Calls for Orthodox Patriarch's release 10 years after government deposed him Orthodox Christians and human rights campaigners have today marked the 10th anniversary of the deposition of the Eritrean Orthodox Patriarch Abune Antonios with calls for his release. Eritrea is regarded as one of the world's most repressive countries and religion is strictly controlled. Government officials told Patriarch Antonios on January 20, 2006 that he was not longer the leader of the country's largest denomination. He was replaced by Bishop Dioscoros of Mendefera, who has since died and who was never recognised by the Orthodox communion. The government's action came after Patriarch Antonios called for the release of political prisoners and refused to excommunicate 3,000 members of his Church who opposed the regime. The Patriarch has been under house arrest since May 2007. He is allowed very few visitors and concerns have been expressed about his health. Metropolitan Seraphim, the head of the British Orthodox Church, told Christian Today: "We want to see him released." He said that the Orthodox Church was adamant that Antonios remained Patriarch but that talks aimed at securing his freedom had stalled. However, he said that he had been visited recently and found to be in good health. Eritrea's regime under President Isaias Afwerki has seen thousands of Eritreans imprisoned. Torture and forced labour are extensive. Between 1,300 and 2,000 people are imprisoned because of their religious beliefs, with the government torturing and beating religious prisoners, confining many in 20-foot metal shipping containers or underground barracks where some have been subjected to extreme temperature fluctuations. Only four religious groups are permitted to operate the Orthodox Church of Eritrea, Sunni Islam, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Evangelical Church of Eritrea. The government exercises tight control over their activities. Ex-pastor accused of raping teen arrested on return to US Former pastor Jacob Malone was arrested on suspicion of raping a teenager in his congregation when his plane touched down in the US on Monday. Malone, 33, was thought to be on the run but local police confirmed last week he was in Ecuador awaiting a return flight to hand himself in. The former pastor of Calvary Fellowship church in Exton, Pennsylvania, was taken into custody and is accused of rape, institutional sexual assault and other related charges according to The Philadelphia Enquirer. The married pastor allegedly molested and impregnated a teenage girl in his church who had lived with his family after moving to the area. The girl, who had known Malone and his family since the age of 12 while at his previous church in Arizona, moved with them aged 17. She was treated like an adopted daughter, according to one member of Calvary Fellowship. The abuse began in late 2014, just months after she moved in, the girl told police. She claimed Malone gave her alcohol twice when she had turned 18, and that once when she was intoxicated, he molested her. Malone resigned from his position in November 2015 after church leaders confronted him about the teen's pregnancy. "Our church's goal in difficult moments like this is to protect the innocents, first of all," said Bill Bateman, pastor at Calvary Fellowship. "And, number two, we strive to bring about repentance and restoration of the offender." Gospel for Asia may be probed by UK Charity Commission following financial mismanagement claims The Charity Commission has said it is assessing information it has received about the UK arm of Christian charity Gospel for Asia. The US-based charity founded by KP Yohannan has been hit by a string of revelations about its treatment of staff and volunteers and unanswered questions over its financial accounting. Its membership of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability was revoked after an ECFA investigation found numerous breaches of its code of conduct. Blogger Warren Throckmorton has claimed that $128 million in donor funds are unaccounted for at its US branch. A spokesman for the Charity Commission told Civil Society News it was assessing whether to look into the charity. "The Charity Commission is assessing the information provided to see what role there is for the Commission", the spokesman said. Two of GFA's four UK trustees are KP Yohannan and his son Daniel Punnose; the others are Paul Thompson and Rev Paul Blackham. GFA has previously issued an apology for the "pain and confusion we have caused" and sought to explain its position. However, Throckmorton has said its explanations are partial and unsatisfactory. Gunmen attack Pakistan university, at least 20 students confirmed dead A group of militants stormed a university in volatile northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday and killed at least 20 students, officials said, with firing inside the campus still going on and two explosions heard. A spokesman for the rescue workers said eight bodies had been recovered so far. Four of the gunmen have been killed by security forces and the army has contained the militants to two blocks inside the university, a spokesman for the army said on twitter. Police said earlier that other attackers were believed to be at large on the second and third floors of the campus buildings. The militants, using the cover of thick, wintry fog, scaled the walls of the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, before entering buildings and opening fire on students and teachers in classrooms and hostels, police said. Police inspector Wazir said 70 per cent of students had been rescued. "All students have been evacuated from the hostels, but militants are still hiding in different parts of the university and some students and staff are stuck inside," he said, adding that it was unclear how many gunmen were involved. Television footage showed soldiers entering the campus as ambulances lined up outside the main gate and anxious parents consoled each other. Pakistan, which has suffered from years of militant violence, has killed and arrested hundreds of suspected militants under a major crackdown launched after a massacre of 134 school children in December 2014 in the northwest. The 2014 school attack by six gunmen believed linked to the Pakistani Taliban hit a raw nerve in Pakistan and was seen as having hardened Pakistan's resolve to fight jihadist militants along its lawless border with Afghanistan. Vice Chancellor Fazal Rahim told reporters that the Bacha Khan University teaches over 3,000 students and hosted an additional 600 visitors on Wednesday for a poetry recital. Shabir Khan, a lecturer in the English department, said he was about to leave the hostel for the department when firing began. "Most of the students and staff were in classes when the firing began," Khan said. "I have no idea about what's going on but I heard one security official talking on the phone to someone and said many people had been killed and injured." Heroic Muslim teacher who saved Christians in al-Shabaab attack dies of injuries A Kenyan teacher who protected Christians from death at the hands of al-Shabaab terrorists in an attack before Christmas has died while undergoing surgery for his injuries. Salah Farah, deputy head of the Mandera township primary school, was on a bus with 60 other passengers which was stopped by the terrorists. He was one of several Muslims who refused to allow them to separate the passengers into Christian and Muslim groups, saying "Kill us all or leave them alone" and was hailed as a hero for helping save Christian lives. However, he was shot in the hand and the hip during the attack. He was receiving treatment in a hospital in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, but according to Kenya's Standard news service he died while in surgery. His body is being flown back to Mandera for burial. Inspector General of Police Joseph Boinnet said: "We provided a plane to fly the body home to Mandera for burial. This is because the deceased died while trying to shield innocent Kenyans. He is a true hero." Salah Farah's brother Rashid told The Star newspaper that he hoped his brother's death would help bring "religious harmony and encourage Kenyans to live in unity". It was reported at the time that al-Shabaab fighters had been crossing into Kenya in groups of six to 15 and that the largest group seen in the area comprised 30 fighters. They were attempting to radicalise villagers, without success. Al-Shabaab's worst attack in Kenya has been its massacre of students at Garissa University on April 2 last year, in which 152 people died including four gunmen. Survivors spoke of merciless executions by the attackers, who stalked classrooms and dormitories hunting for non-Muslim students. India: 12 arrested for 'converting to Christianity' Twelve people accused of converting to Christianity have been arrested and imprisoned in India, according to UCA news. The group including a blind man, his wife and their three-year-old child were arrested on 14 January during an evening meeting in Dahar village, Madhya Pradesh. Seven of the 12 were released on bail on 17 January. "We did not know why we were arrested and sent to jail," said one of the group, Janu Bai, after being released from prison. On the evening of their arrest they had gathered to celebrate Markar Sankrati, the Hindu harvest festival, she said. A group of Hindu radicals surrounded the home of Shankar Singh, where the 12 had gathered, accusing them of converting to Christianity, before they "informed the police, who arrived and booked us," Singh told UCA news. In Madhya Pradesh, religious conversion is restricted by state law, and it is a criminal offence to convert through force, allurement or fraudulent means. Conversion without informing the government is also punishable according to the law. Bai said that although the group follow the teachings of Jesus, they had not converted to Christianity. "There was no conversion activity and no attempt to convert anyone," Singh said. He suspected the arrests were a part of a conspiracy against him. Describing his faith, Singh said he has "faith in Jesus and regularly pray[s] to him". "Experiencing the love of God", with the help of some ministers, had transformed his life, he added. "Later I began to follow Jesus but am not a member of any church." Richard James, of the Rashtriya Isai Mahasang, a Christian forum in Madhya Pradesh, said "police were hand in glove with the right-wing Hindu activists" who made the accusations of conversion. They have been "unleashing a reign of terror against minority groups, especially Christians" since the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party government took power more than a decade ago, he said. India: 8,000 Christians targeted by violence and persecution in 2015, report says An Indian Christian organisation has claimed there were more than 200 major incidents of anti-Christian hate speech and persecution in the country last year. According to the Catholic Secular Forum's (CSF) report, India Christian Persecution, seven Protestant pastors and one lay person were killed in 2015. It says the total number of victims of violence, including women and children, is around 8,000, and many churches were damaged or destroyed. The report, sent to Christian Today, claims the central state of Madhya Pradesh tops the list for anti-Christian violence, followed by Tamil Nadu in the south of India and Jharkand in the east. Christians are sometimes accused of offering inducements for conversion to Dalit people and Madhya Pradesh has strict anti-conversion laws which it has recently tightened. CSF head Joseph Dias says in the report that "forced conversion is not in any way the aim of the Christian faith". Figures given in the CSF report for overall violence are higher than those given in the Open Doors World Watch list, which ranks India as 17th in the list of countries where Christians' lives are endangered. Open Doors says that in 2015: "More than 350 Christians were physically attacked, at least nine Christians were killed for their faith and at least three women were raped in the reporting year. Attacks mainly come from Hindu extremists, although extremist Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists and Maoists have all targeted Christians." The Hindu nationalist ideology espoused by the ruling BJP party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing combination of social movement and paramilitary group, has led to hostility toward Christians in some areas. This is complicated by the appeal of Christianity to tribal and Dalit people; the RSS is opposed to conversions out of Hinduism and its offshoots have staged elaborate "ghar wapsi" conversion ceremonies for Christians and Muslims wanting to return as they describe it to Hinduism. ISIS massacres '300 civilians,' kidnaps 400 others as it launches attack on Syrian city, capturing parts of it Islamic State (ISIS) fighters have partly captured Syria's eastern city of Deir Ezzor after a massive assault, killing "around 300 civilians" in an onslaught described by Syria's state news agency SANA as a "massacre" based from reports coming from residents of the city. If confirmed it would be one of the highest tolls for a single day in Syria's nearly five-year war, the Daily Mail reported. The ISIS militants have also abducted at least 400 civilians including women and children after capturing a new territory, according to activists from the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. "After their attack on Deir Ezzor yesterday, ISIS abducted at least 400 civilians from the residents of the Al-Baghaliyeh suburb it captured and adjacent areas in the northwest of the city," Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said. "Those abducted, all of whom are Sunnis, include women, children and family members of pro-regime fighters," he added. They were transported to areas under ISIS control in the west of Deir Ezzor province and to the border with Raqqa province to the northwest. On Saturday alone, ISIS fighters killed at least 85 civilians and 50 regime forces in Deir Ezzor, the Observatory said. The ISIS has posted a statement announcing its capture of Deir Ezzor. The jihadi group claimed its forces have gained control over the radio tower, several warehouses and neighbourhoods in the outskirts of the city. It also claimed that its fighters have killed "dozens" of soldiers loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. "The battles are ongoing until now and we ask Allah for victory and consolidation," the ISIS said in its statement. According to the Observatory, the ISIS has so far gain control of around 60 percent of Deir Ezzor city, capital of the province of the same name in an oil-rich region bordering Iraq. Sporadic fighting between ISIS and regime forces continued Monday in the northwest of the city, the Observatory said. Russian warplanes carried out airstrikes in support of Assad's fighters in Al-Baghaliyeh overnight, it said. The Syrian regime still controls parts of the provincial capital and a nearby military airport despite repeated attacks from ISIS, the Observatory said. ISIS releases new photos of another man accused of being gay pushed off rooftop to his death The extremist group Islamic State (ISIS) has posted sickening images that show how it executed another man accused of homosexuality by throwing him off the top of a building in al-Furat province in Syria. The ISIS claimed that the unidentified victim was arrested and subjected to a trial at an Islamic court before his execution, the Daily Mail reported Photographs released by the terror group showed the man, blindfolded with hands bound, being led up a flight of stairs towards the roof of a tall building. Then he was made to stand on the edge of the roof while several guards watch on. A large crowd of civilians and fighters could also be seen waiting on the ground for the horrific punishment to be carried out. The victim appeared to have been pushed off the roof top to his death. ISIS considers homosexuality un-Islamic and has killed more than 30 people for being gay, according United Nations estimates. Many of the executions of men accused of homosexuality were all carried out in front of a large crowd. The ISIS has released several propaganda videos and images that show alleged homosexuals being thrown off tall buildings and stoned to death in front of a baying crowd. In September last year, ISIS publicly executed nine men and a 15 year-old boy in Syria for being homosexual. Seven of those men were shot dead in Rastan, in the Homs province in central Syria, while the two men and the teenager were executed in the town of Hreitan in northern Aleppo, the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights reported. In one of its "rooftop executions'' in the same year, children as young as 10 and 15 years were shown with some bloodthirsty mob stoning two men alleged to be homosexual. The U.N. Security Council conducted its first discussion on the plight of gay people last year following continued attacks by the ISIS against LGBT members in the Middle East. Jessica Stern, executive director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, has proposed special strategies to combat attacks against gay people, including specific U.N. action to relocate those most in need, the Daily Mail said. Lord Weidenfeld, who helped save Middle Eastern Christians, dies aged 96 Tributes have been paid to Lord Weidenfeld, whose death at the age of 96 has been announced. Lord Weidenfeld fled the Nazis in Austria as a young man and joined the BBC as a wartime political commentator. He then founded the publishing company Weidenfeld & Nicolson with Nigel Nicolson in 1949. Among their early successes were Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, Isaiah Berlin's The Hedgehog and the Fox and James Watson's The Double Helix. He continued his involvement in the company until his death. He was involved last year in funding Operation Safe Havens, a Barnabas Fund project aimed at resettling Middle Eastern Christians from conflict-hit regions. He told the BBC's Hard Talk programme last October that he had done so partly to repay a debt of gratitude to a British family who had taken him in when he left Austria. "I feel very grateful to Christians who saved my life when I had to leave Nazi Austria as a 19-year-old, and a family of evangelical Christians took me in as a son," he said. He said he felt "inadequate help" was being given to those fleeing ISIS and had said to himself: "I must do something about it." The family who took him in were members of the Plymouth Brethren. Lord Weidenfeld told The Times: "It applies to so many of the young people who were on the Kindertransports. It was Quakers and other Christian denominations who brought those children to England. "It was a very high-minded operation and we Jews should also be thankful and do something for the endangered Christians." Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis said: "I am so deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Lord George Weidenfeld, a towering figure in the Jewish community whose legacy will be one of wonderful public service, generosity and compassion." Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt of the Conference of European Rabbis said: "Lord Weidenfeld was a man who epitomised community service and leadership while his perception of the new challenges facing Europe was both unique and powerful." He added: "One of Lord Weidenfeld's last acts rescuing Christian families from Syria and Iraq and resettling them elsewhere exemplifies the legacy of a man we should all endeavour to replicate." The former Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks, said: "I remember a remarkable interview he gave to a newspaper on his 92nd birthday. The interviewer said to him, 'Most people if they reach your age think about slowing down. You seem to be speeding up. Why is that?' He replied, 'When you reach 92 you begin to see the door closing, and I have so much to do before the door closes that, the older I get, the faster I have to go.' And he meant it. Every few months he would be on the phone with another brilliant idea and, whatever he undertook to do, he did. He was bold, he was visionary, he was hard working, and he was fun. He was a giant, and without him the world will seem a smaller and less vivid place." The Marquess of Reading, Patron of Barnabas Fund, said: "Lord Weidenfeld was a dear and trusted friend to the Jewish and Christian communities and was instrumental in bringing them together in recent months to support the suffering Church in the Middle East at their time of greatest need. His lasting legacies include the establishment of the Weidenfeld Fund in return for the kindness of Christians who rescued him from the Nazis in the 1930s. His support of the Barnabas Fund's Operation Safe Havens' initiative is a testimony to his commitment to fostering friendship between Jew and Christian." Marco Rubio defends the right to have, and not to have, a faith Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio has said that he will fight for an America where no one has to violate their conscience and everyone has a right to believe what they want. Speaking in Iowa on Monday, Marco was asked a question by Justin Scott, an atheist from Waterloo, on his recent advert, which focussed on the Republican candidate's faith rather than policy. Scott said that atheists and non-theists are "looking for somebody that will uphold their rights as Americans, and not pander to a certain religious group." To this, Rubio said: "You have a right to believe whatever you want, and I congratulate you on believing whatever you want." Emphasising this point, he went on to say: "I can't force you to be a Christian. Christianity is a free gift. We believe that salvation is a free gift that has to be wilfully accepted." He said he would champion a nation in which "no one is forced to violate their conscience which means no one is going to force you to believe in God, but no one is going to force me to stop talking about God." Rubio, whose Roman Catholic faith has become a prominent feature of his campaign, unapologetically said his faith "is the single greatest influence in my life", but that it's not something to be feared by atheists. "I am not going to force you to pray, I am not going to force you to go to church, I am not going to force you to espouse beliefs you don't have," he said. "But no one is going to take away my right or your right to live out the teachings of your faith. No one." Rubio added that rather than fearing that his faith may influence his politics, Scott should hope for it, as it is the very driving force behind his concern for the less fortunate, the hungry, and those in prison. Commending Scott for asking the question, Rubio said: "I respect very much your willingness to stand up and ask that question because I know that you are a small minority here that share that view, but you have a right to, and that is what makes this such a great country." Just 12 days before the Iowa caucus, Rubio is currently holding third place in the state according to the polls-plus model, with 13 per cent of the vote. Ted Cruz is leading the poll with 51 per cent, followed by Donald Trump with 29 per cent. MPs outraged despite assurances that Sunday schools will not face Ofsted inspections Assurances that Ofsted inspectors will not inspect Sunday schools have failed to satisfy Christian MPs who today expressed outrage at the government's "astonishing" and "worrying" proposals. Ahead of a well-attended and lively debate this morning, David Cameron wrote to Tory MP Gerald Howarth saying the government "is not proposing to regulate institutions teaching children for a short period every week such as Sunday schools or the Scouts". However MPs told Christian Today they were deeply dissatisfied with the response. Catholic MP Sir Edward Leigh, who led the animated debate, said he anticipated the government's angle but he remained unhappy. "It is the cumulative effect we're worried about," he said after the debate, reflecting concerns raised by a number of MPs from all parties. They pointed out that children often not only attend Sunday schools but also church services and community groups which would take them over the six to eight hour threshold set by the government, after which they would be eligible for inspection. "The only response I will satisfied with is these proposals are completely abandoned," Conservative MP Fiona Bruce told Christian Today. She said the move could well be illegal and a breach of the European convention of human rights (ECHR) which "excludes any discretion on the part of the state to determine whether religious beliefs or the means used to express such beliefs are legitimate". Labour's faith envoy Stephen Timms joined at least 20 other MPs from his and other parties in condemning the policy as "deeply unattractive". "This measure would make Ofsted the state regulator of religion," he said during the debate. "It is simply wrong to suggest that someone who is deeply religious should as a consequence be regarded by the authorities as suspect," he told Christian Today afterwards. A number of MPs referred to "huge concern" expressed by constituents and Christian groups who had written to them. CARE, a Christian policy organisation that has campaigned against the regulations, said they were "more Big Brother than big society". "If the State is granted power in the form of Ofsted inspection of church activities we are talking about a radical and alarming altering of the established relationship between church and state," said CARE's CEO Nola Leach. "How can it be right to make Ofsted inspectors the new custodians of British values and able to decide whether or not some aspect of Christian teaching is right or wrong? This has serious implications for free speech." Today's debate comes after Sir Michael Wilshaw, head of school inspection body Ofsted, said all religious groups training children for more than six to eight hours per week would be forced to register and would be inspected if concerns were raised about their teaching. Education minister Nick Gibb today confirmed that "if an institution is teaching children intensively they will need to register". Pope Francis ambushed over whether Israel should be recognised as Jewish state The head of the delegation of Israeli rabbis present at Pope Francis' visit to Rome's Great Synagogue has revealed he put him on the spot over the Vatican's relationship to Israel. Rabbi Dr Ratzon Arusi told the Arutz Sheva news service that during the visit he turned to the Pope and asked him to declare that the Vatican recognises Israel as the state of the Jewish people. He said the Pope, clearly embarrassed, responded with silence. Francis used his visit to the synagogue to condemn religious violence, saying: "The violence of man against man is in contradiction with any religion worthy of this name, in particular the three great monotheistic religions [Judaism, Christianity and Islam]. "Conflicts, wars, violence and injustices open deep wounds in humanity that call on us to strengthen our commitment to peace and justice. Neither violence nor death will ever have the last word before God." Rabbi Arusi told Arutz Sheva: "The Church ignores the state of Israel as the state of the Jewish people, they talk about the Holy Land, but not about the state of Israel. "Therefore during the meeting with the rabbis after the public event, I turned to the Pope and I told him that we appreciate his words against anti-Semitism, but today there is a new and very fierce anti-Semitism built on the basis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." Referring to the British politician whose support for the state of Israel was crucial to its establishment, he said he had urged the Pope to be "the Balfour of the Catholic church, and since the land of Israel is the Holy Land and they recognise our birthright, they should declare that the state of Israel is the state of the Jewish people by virtue of the Bible, without diminishing the rights of the Palestinians to a state". Arusi said the Pope was "very embarrassed by my request, he was never told that directly, and afterwards he smiled but didn't say a thing". He added: "I think that the time has come for them to indeed recognise the state of Israel as the state of the Jewish people." The recognition of Israel as a Jewish state is a highly controversial issue as it has implications for the country's sizeable Arab population, which includes Christians and Muslims. Rome's recognition of the Palestinian state has infuriated right-wing activists, with Israel calling the accord a hasty move that could damage prospects for advancing a peace agreement and impact its future diplomatic relations with the Vatican. Pope Francis set to become first pontiff to visit the Great Mosque of Rome Pope Francis is to be the first Pope to enter the Great Mosque of Rome, according to the president of the Union of Islamic Communities in Italy (UCOII). Although the Vatican is yet to confirm the proposed visit on the 27 January, Pope Francis is receiving a delegate from Rome's Grand Mosque today, when the invitation is expected to be formalised. The visit to the Grand Mosque one of the largest Islamic places of worship outside the Arab world would follow the Pope's historic visit to Rome's Great Synagogue on 17 January. Imam Izzedin Elzir, president of the UCOII, has emphasised the significance of the meeting in the current global political climate. "Today more than ever it's necessary to stress the importance of this dialogue," he said in an interview with Catholic broadcasters TG2000. "There's no doubt that the pope's visit will help this process." The Pope's visit to the mosque the ninth time a pontiff would have visited an Islamic house of worship would be "an important gesture which shows that religions dialogue, talk to each other, [and] visit each other's places of worship," Elzir added. The imam echoed Francis' previous statement that those who use the name of God to justify killing have "nothing to do with religion, but are instead pursuing political interest and power." Elzir also praised the Pope as "not only good for the Christian world but for all mankind, because he's addressing issues dear to believers and non-believers." Pope John Paul II was the first Pope to enter a mosque, visiting the Grand Umayyad Mosque in Damascus in 2001, where the remains of John the Baptist are said to lay according to Islamic tradition. Switzerland criticised for confiscating cash, valuables of migrants before allowing them to enter Switzerland has come under fire over its law that mandates officials to confiscate belongings of asylum seekers upon their entry into the country. The law is similar to those proposed in Denmark, where authorities are allowed to seize migrants' cash and other individual items worth more than 10,000 kroner. Danish MPs is expected to vote on the proposal later this month, according to reports. The U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) based in Geneva and human rights groups have condemned the Swiss law and a similar proposed legislation in Denmark, warning this sends a "worrisome'' signal that "could fuel fear and xenophobia, as millions of Syrian refugees continue to seek shelter," TIME reported. The Swiss law allows officials to seize cash or valuables above $1,000. In 2015, more than 100 refugees were affected by the rule with about $200,000 being seized in total. "Swiss law states that asylum seeking refugees who have money have to contribute to the costs that they cause while being here. And that's why we take their valuables away once they arrive in Switzerland,'' Government spokeswoman Lea Wertheimer said, BBC reported. The Danish proposal, on the other hand, requires asylum seekers to hand over assets in excess of $1,000 to pay for their stay. Sentimental items such as wedding rings are not included in the plan. The refugees may also receive their valuables back, but only if they make a request and leave within seven months of arriving, it said. "[It is] a daylight robbery,'' said Stefan Frey from the Swiss Refugee Council, BBC reported. "This is unworthy. This has to change.'' A Syrian man also reportedly told Swiss television he had been forced to sell his house to pay people traffickers to help his family flee the conflict in their country, but the money left over was taken when he arrived in Switzerland. "Seems that it is their right to take it away. They gave us a receipt. The others promised that the money would be returned, but until now this has not happened,'' said the Syrian man, BBC said. Word of Life Church attack: They beat us with electrical cord, says surviving brother The teenager whose brother was beaten to death in their Word of Life Church in upstate New York testified against his half-sister in court yesterday. Christopher Leonard's brother Lucas was killed and Christopher himself was treated for injuries to most of his body in the attack, which involved their own parents. The assault, which began late on October 11 in the church's "sanctuary room" and lasted more than 10 hours, was initiated because Lucas Leonard wanted to leave the congregation, District Attorney Scott McNamara said. The teenager's testimony came during a hearing for his half-sister Sarah Ferguson, 33, in New Hartford Town Court. He spoke quietly in court and kept his head down while answering questions from attorneys. Christopher was giving his first public account of the event that led to his hospitalisation and his brother's death. Six people have been arrested, including the brother's parents and half-sister, Sarah Ferguson. He was beaten until he was put in another room with earplugs and earmuffs to hide him from the sound of what was then unfolding. "It hurt everywhere", he said. When he was brought back to the sanctuary where the beating had taken place, he found his brother collapsed on the floor. The spiritual "counselling session" was a response to Lucas' desire to leave the Word of Life Christian Church, which is a small and highly controlling congregation in upstate New York. Leonard testified that after an eight-hour Sunday service on October 11, his family were asked to stay behind by the Pastor Tiffanie Irwin to "talk about what we had done. Lucas and I." He estimated that the beating he received lasted over six hours, during which he was pummelled with fists and whipped with a four foot, folded electrical cord. He suffered injuries to his torso and genitals. When he found his brother, he and a church leader tried to revive him. Leonard was barred from riding in the family car to the hospital with his brother. He was taken by a member of the congregation but did not go inside. Instead, they drove him back to the church, where they made a bed for him on the second floor. He went to sleep, although it hurt to breathe and he was vomiting repeatedly. Police have said his parents refused to tell them where he was and a former congregation member finally told them over the phone after they had searched for hours. McNamara said: "I can't imagine the stress he was under to go into the courtroom... to testify against his sister." The teenagers' parents, Bruce Leonard, 65, and Deborah Leonard, 59, have been charged with first-degree manslaughter in the death of Lucas Leonard. They are being held at Oneida County Correctional Facility in lieu of $100,000 bail. Ferguson is charged with assault in the second degree in the beating of Christopher. She is being held at Oneida County Jail in lieu of $50,000 bail. Congregation members Joseph Irwin, 26, Linda Morey, 54, and David Morey, 26, are also charged with second-degree assault in connection with Christopher Leonard's beating. They have been released after posting $50,000 bonds. Irwin, Ferguson, both Moreys and the teenagers' father, Bruce Leonard, are said to have been the primary assailants, The defendants are scheduled to appear again in court on December 15. The Word of Life Christian Church is a reclusive community in New Hartford, a town of 22,000 people. Once a lively and joy-filled house of worship, former members have described its decline into a place of fear and intimidation. Additional reporting by Reuters. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A report funded by a national hotel industry group attacks Airbnb, the popular couch surfing service, for running "illegal" and "unregulated" hotels in major cities around the country, including Houston. The American Hotel & Lodging Association released a study by Pennsylvania State University's School of Hospitality Management that tracked data from Airbnb over a 13-month period in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Miami, Houston, Dallas, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. The study found that nearly 30 percent of the revenue generated from hosts comes from people who are operating as full-time landlords, or 360 days a year. New York, Miami, Los Angeles and San Francisco were the cities with the largest number of full-time operators, the study found. Individuals or entities renting out two or more residential properties on Airbnb account for 17 percent of hosts and drive nearly 40 percent of the revenue in those markets, according to the study. The study shows that in Houston there are 30 full-time operators, who rent out their space for at least 360 days a year, generating $3 million in revenue during the 13-month period studied. The total number of hosts is 956, generating $11 million in revenue total. In Houston, the report found, there are 83 hosts who operate three or more properties and 82 that have two units. "This study shows an explosion in activity among multi-unit hosts and the rise of full-time operators in each of the 12 markets we analyzed. Further, operators renting out three or more units represent a disproportionate share of revenue with only 7 percent driving more than $325 million in the period studied," said John O'Neill, the Penn State professor who directed the research. He is director of the school's Center for Hospitality Real Estate Strategy. A statement from Airbnb claimed that the hotel association was launching a coordinated attack and the report uses misleading data to make false claims. "Airbnb is succeeding for the very simple reason that our hosts -- the vast majority of whom are middle-class people sharing their homes in order to create supplemental income -- provide guests authentic, transformative experiences," Airbnb representative Nick Pappas said in the statement. "The data in this report appears to be deeply flawed and paints an inaccurate picture of the Airbnb community." Airbnb says that in Los Angeles 80 percent of listings are booked fewer than 90 days a year; 80 percent of Seattle's listings are booked fewer than 90 days a year and in New York City the median number of nights booked per listing is 42. Data for Texas cities were not immediately provided. The Penn State report used data that analyzed available listings on Airbnb through a program called Air dna, which tracks the company's revenues and operations and provides pricing and revenue data to Airbnb operators. All data exclude shared rooms and apartments and unique units, such as boats, tree houses and tents. The study was funded through a grant of nearly $100,000 from the hotel association's foundation, with additional funding through the American Hotel & Lodging Associaton, which covered both the purchase and sorting of the data and the time Penn State researchers spent analyzing the data. O'Neill of Penn State said this report is the first phase in research on the effect of Airbnb. Courtesy of Weingarten Weingarten Realty has made a property acquisition in the River Oaks area that will allow it to expand its redevelopment plans for its iconic River Oaks Shopping Center. The Houston-based real estate investment trust purchased the Pier One store at 1935 West Gray. Buc-ee's, the fast-growing convenience store/gasoline station/and deli chain known for its clean bathrooms, has sued its brisket supplier for "unilaterally" raising the cost of barbecue. Buc-ee's says the increase in brisket prices has cost the chain $550,000. Buc-ee's, which is based in Lake Jackson and has grown to 24 locations in central and southeastern Texas, filed the lawsuit earlier this month in Brazoria County against it brisket supplier, Sadler's Smokehouse. LONESTAR LIFE: How 20 Texas icons got their names The two companies made an agreement in 2013 on how they'd buy and price select smoked brisket, according to the lawsuit, which included a copy of the pact. The deal included a provision that the price could not change unless Sadler's sent a written notice to Buc-ee's if it had a "significant change in circumstances" such as higher freight costs, according to the lawsuit. If the two companies couldn't agree on a new price, representatives of both companies were to meet to discuss brisket prices at Buc-ee's office in Lake Jackson. And if they couldn't strike a deal after that, either company could terminate the contract for sandwich meat, according to Buc-ee's. The chain, which sells both chopped beef and sliced beef sandwiches, said it never received a request to boost the cost of brisket and ended up paying more than agreed to. Buc-ee's is asking the court to require Sadler's to provide an accounting of brisket purchasing and supply activity between Oct. 1, 2014 through Nov. 1, 2015. These are some of the many things you can buy at Buc'ee's: Jeff Nadalo, general counsel for Buc-ee's, said in an e-mail that the company has no comment. Sadler's Smokehouse was founded in 1948 selling smoked meat to the public from a small stand in Henderson, Texas, according to its website. BOOMING BUSINESS: Dallas area finally gets its first Buc-ee's location While the company stayed in Henderson, it decided to focus on its fast-growing wholesale business. In the Houston area, Sadler's pit-smoked meats are available from several retailers including Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, Fiesta Mart and Brookshire Bros. Sadler's Smokehouse did not return a call seeking comment. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Wild & Scenic Film Festival 2009 W. Gray, cechouston.org The Citizens' Environmental Film Festival on Tour stops in Houston. Each night, 11 short documentaries will be screened at River Oaks Theatre. 7 p.m. Wednesday and Jan. 28 Houston Iranian Film Festival Multiple venues; mfah.org The 23rd edition of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston's longest-running film festival will showcase seven movies selected in collaboration with Tom Vick of the Freer and Sackler Galleries, the Smithsonian Institution's museums of Asian art; Carter Long of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and Barbara Scharres of the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago. Friday, Feb. 2 Discovery Green 1500 McKinney, discoverygreen.com ROCKY: Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) is a kind-hearted and uneducated boxer from Philadelphia who gets his one shot at greatness and love. Free. 7 p.m. Thursday River Oaks Theatre 2009 W. Gray, landmarktheatres.com LABYRINTH: After her baby brother is taken by the Goblin King (David Bowie), teenage Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) sets out to rescue him. Directed by Jim Henson. Midnight Friday and Saturday 14 Pews 800 Aurora; 14pews.org DEMOCRATS: Documentary director Camilla Nielsson is given astonishing access to Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's political inner circle as a new constitution is drafted, negotiated and signed into law. The film shows the back-and-forth battles between two sworn political enemies who must work together for the common good, as they produce a document to steer the country toward founding principles that will define its future. 7 p.m. Friday Rice Cinema 6100 Main, film.rice.edu INGRID BERGMAN, IN HER OWN WORDS: A captivating look behind the scenes of the remarkable life of a young Swedish girl who became one of the most celebrated actresses of American and world cinema. Free. 7:30 p.m. Friday GASLIGHT: Years after her aunt was murdered in her home, a young woman moves back into the house with her new husband. However, he has a secret that he will do anything to protect, even if it means driving his wife insane. Free. 7 p.m. Saturday Museum of Fine Arts, Houston 1001 Bissonnet; mfah.org TALES: One of Iran's leading women directors, Rakhshan Bani-E'temad, tells interlocking stories of disparate (predominantly female) characters, weaving together incidents and personalities who appear in more than one story. (Farsi with English subtitles.) 7 p.m. Friday MELBOURNE: Peyman Moaadi and Negar Javaherian star in this Hitchockian film about an Iranian couple moving to Australia. As they prepare, characters come and go, while the hustle and bustle hides a dreadful reality. (Farsi with English subtitles.) 7 p.m. Saturday 316: An aging woman (Sara Vazirzadeh) narrates her life story through memories dominated by the shoes belonging to those she loved. Even though audiences do not see the faces of each character, the emotional reaction is just as rewarding as the film unfolds. (Farsi with English subtitles.) 8:45 p.m. Saturday IN JACKSON HEIGHTS: For his 40th film, venerable documentarian Frederick Wiseman immerses us in the vibrant, diverse neighborhood of Jackson Heights in Queens, N.Y., where immigrants from dozens of countries, with more than 150 languages spoken, live and work. 5 p.m. Sunday The University of Texas System will pay about $450 million over the next 30 years for 300 acres near the Texas Medical Center, a site where Chancellor William McRaven said he wants to "astound people with our boldness." McRaven, facing opposition to the project from University of Houston officials and some lawmakers, on Wednesday told a legislative committee that the price, which includes debt service, is a good deal. In an email, a UT spokesman said the purchase price is "just over" $200 million. "You're looking at undeveloped property 3.5 miles from the Texas Medical Center and we got it below market price," McRaven said. THE BACKLASH: Senator says UT's Houston land purchase an 'affront' UT's plans to expand in Houston, announced late last year, have alarmed University of Houston leaders and some state lawmakers. Some have called the move an "invasion" that could siphon research funding and faculty from the city's rising research school. The concerns have not slowed UT, which closed on the first 100 acres last week. U.T. System Board of Regents McRaven rejected the idea, floated by opponents of the plan, that he is acting without consulting lawmakers or state higher education leaders. A donor "came forth" with the property and UT jumped at the opportunity to have a "blank canvas" in the nation's fourth-largest city. Mcraven said he wants to develop an "intellectual hub" on the site. UH REACTION: Regents alarmed by UT plan for Houston UT is working to organize a task force, which will spend the next year molding a vision for the land. Members of that task force -- which could include representatives from the University of Houston, Texas Southern University, the state's Higher Education Coordinating Board and the mayor's office -- will be asked to "leave their preconceived notions about higher education...at the door," McRaven said. McRaven is scheduled to make his pitch for the project to the state's higher education coordinating board on Thursday. Texas colleges regularly ranked among the best in the country. See where they landed in the latest rankings from Niche in the gallery above. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Houston-area service members are active in waters throughout the world in Navy ships, submarines and aircraft. Naval Aircrewman (Mechanical) 2nd Class Ricky Foster of Pasadena spent December at Naval Air Facility Misawa in Japan. Fire Controlman 2nd Class Stephanie Drake of Pearland is aboard USS Carney in the Mediterranean Sea offshore Spain. Pearland offers $1,000 arson reward The Pearland Fire Marshal's Office is investigating the burning of a red 2006 Ford Escape XLT Dec. 28 in the 2300 block of Roy Road. The city has posted a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of the person or persons responsible. Contact the Pearland Fire Marshal, 281-997-4650, for details. Retired Friendswood police chief dies Retired Friendswood Police Chief J.M. "Mitch" Wright passed away Jan. 8. He was 92. Wright guided the Friendswood Police Department from 1963 until his retirement in 1989. Funeral arrangements are pending. Local preservationists honored in League City Preservationists Ed Linck and Jerry Dornak were recognized for their work restoring Old St. Mary Church, 630 E. Main, at the Jan. 12 League City council meeting. From 1994 to 2011, Linck and Dornak worked to give Old St. Mary Church a face lift, installing a new foundation and returning the original bell to the steeple. Restoration also included a new roof, cross, electrical wiring, heating, air conditioning, landscaping, wall coverings, floor refinishing and wall restoration. Nature Center open for late-night visitors Visitors can explore Baytown Nature Center's grounds after dark during the Full Moon Hike, 6 p.m. Jan. 23 at 6213 Bayway Drive. For information, call 281-420-7130 or email Christina.Butcher@baytown.org. Texas City, La Marque council to meet Jan. 21 Peter Dunn Jr., president of Dunn Heat Exchangers, will provide an overview of local industry and economic development at the Texas City-La Marque Community Advisory Council meeting, 5-7 p.m. Jan. 21 at the Nessler Center, 2010 Fifth Ave. N. RSVP to Jose Boix, 409-945-0492 or jaboix@aol.com. Angleton adventure park hosts cookoff Michael Kelly and the City Limits Band will perform at a barbecue and chili cookoff Jan. 29-31 at Tuff Compound, 8400 Texas 35 in Angleton. Visit www.tuffextreme.com for details. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Ready, set, fish. It's that time of year to dust off the fishing poles, pick up some bait and snag a few rainbow trout at Bane Park. On Friday morning, Jan. 15, Texas Parks & Wildlife loaded trucks from its hatcheries and brought 9,300 trout to some lakes in Harris County Precinct 4's parks, including Bane, 9600 W. Little York. The precinct's park director, Dennis Johnston, said anglers eagerly anticipate this annual effort. More Information Want to fish? Where: Bane Park, 9600 W. Little York When: 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Friday; 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Information: www.hcp4.net/community/parks. Texas Parks and Wildlife: For more on the department's fishing program and how to purchase fishing licenses, visit tpwd.texas.gov/fishboat/fish See More Collapse "The fishermen watch for the announcement of when and where they will deliver the fish," he said. "People are always waiting for them when they get here." Johnston said everyone has their favorite lures, which range from corn and marshmallows to spinners and salmon eggs. He anticipates that Bane's banks will be covered with people for the next two months as they try to make catches. "It's now or never for the rainbow trout," he said. "Fish them by January and February, because come March, they'll be gone. Fresh trout, you can't get any better than that." The daily limit is five trout per angler, with no minimum length. There is no charge to fish at Precinct 4 parks, but anglers age 17 and older must have a valid Texas fishing license with a freshwater stamp endorsement. The trout program dates to 1966, said Carl Kittel, fish hatchery program director for Texas Parks and Wildlife. Since trout are cold-water fish, "this is the only time of year that they do well," he said. "From late November to early March, we'll stock 150 different sites this year in Texas." The local effort is a partnership between Texas Parks and Wildlife and Precinct 4. The precinct contributes funds and Texas Parks and Wildlife purchases from contractors the fish, which are delivered temporarily to the organization's hatcheries before they are stocked around the state. "We get them just in time to distribute them," Kittel said. "It's a great opportunity, when the water is cold, for fishermen to catch something different. We want to provide a diversity of opportunities for anglers. "These are fish that you can catch with different bait, spinners and flies," he said. "It's a great way to practice fishing whatever way you want - and you're allowed to take them home to eat." Johnston said that there are ample opportunities to fish in Precinct 4 year-round. "All of our lakes are pretty well-stocked and managed," he said. "We get some pretty big fish." He said anglers can find black bass, catfish, crappie and sunfish once the trout are gone. "I took my grandson out a year ago, and he caught 24 sunfish," Johnston said. "He just had a ball, because he was steadily catching something. He was just beaming." Johnston said that Cypress Creek, while not part of the state stocking program, also offers opportunities for fishermen who want to stay close to home. "They're elbow-to-elbow fishing for white bass from now until the second weekend in March," Johnston said. Johnston advises individuals and families with children to come out and try catching trout in January and February. "There's nothing like being a kid and bringing home the bacon, providing the fish for dinner," he said. "That's a great feeling for a kid. This is a great family activity, and a great way to get kids hooked on fishing." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Stuart Ross' "Forever Plaid" is one of the most internationally popular off-Broadway musicals to hit the stage, and it's coming to the Houston Family Arts Center, 10760 Grant Road. This nostalgic, 1950's revue opens on the Garza Main Stage on Jan. 29 and runs through Feb. 21. Frankie, Jinx, Sparky and Smudge are The Plaids. On the way to their first big gig, their cherry red 1954 Mercury collided with a school bus, and The Plaids were killed instantly. Now, they've come back to Earth for one final performance. The Plaids will sing some of the greatest hits of the 1950s, including "Three Coins in the Fountain," "Chain Gang," and "Heart and Soul." Performances of "Forever Plaid" are Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., and 3 p.m. Sundays. Tickets are $26 for adults, $22 for seniors and $15 for students. Tickets are on sale now and may be purchased online at www.houstonfac.com, or by phone at 281-587-6100. Special pricing is available for groups of 10 or more. L.I.F.E. Take day trip to Galveston Attendees at Lone Star College-CyFair's Learning, Inspiration, Fellowship and Enrichment program can take a road trip to Galveston for a little culture. The L.I.F.E. programs are free and meet 10-11 a.m. Wednesdays in Room 131 of the library, 9191 Barker Cypress, unless otherwise noted. On Jan. 27, join the Academy for Lifelong Learning for a bus trip to Galveston to visit the Bryan Museum. Participants must be at least 50 years old to ride the free bus. The cost for the museum is $8 and film $4 (exact change $12 preferred, checks acceptable) to be paid at signup. Riders must be in the parking lot in front of the library by 7:30 a.m. at the latest. The bus leaves at 7:45 a.m. Lunch will be up to the participants. A short film shown at 2 p.m. is "The Great Storm." The bus will depart promptly at 3 p.m. to return to campus. Call 281-290-3214 for L.I.F.E. program information or go to LoneStar.edu. THEATER Play shows impact of loss Playhouse 1960 will present "Rabbit Hole" now through Jan. 30 on Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. This play, written by David Lindsay-Abaire, was the recipient of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Becca and Howie Corbett have everything a family could want, until a life-shattering accident turns their world upside down and leaves the couple drifting perilously apart. The play deals with the ways family members survive a major loss, and it includes comedy as well as drama. Mature language is used. Tickets are available at www.playhouse1960.com.Prices are $18 for adults and $15 for seniors (55&) and students. Tickets can also be purchased at the door prior to the performance. Playhouse 1960 accepts credit cards, cash or check. Playhouse 1960 is a nonprofit community theater located at 6814 Gant Road in Houston, one mile south of FM 1960 on Cutten Road. TEXAS HISTORY Historian details book about river The keynote speaker at the January meeting of the North Harris County Branch of the American Association of University Women will be historian Margie Crisp. The public is invited to attend. The event will be Jan. 21 at 7 p.m. at Greenwood Forest Residents Club, 12700 Champion Forest Drive in Houston. Admission is free. Crisp received the Texas State Historical Association's Ron Tyler Award for the Best Illustrated Book on Texas History in 2012 for "River of Contrast: The Texas Colorado," a book researched, written and illustrated by her. Most noteworthy is perhaps her 800-mile journey on and along the Colorado River by foot, kayak, boat and float, beginning at the edge of the Caprock Escarpment and ending at Matagorda Bay. Crisp will talk about some of the things she learned of the history and historical importance, ecology, geology cultural importance, and conflicting issues surrounding the Colorado River as a result of this trip. Crisp, a nationally exhibited artist, will also explain the techniques she used in her book to create more than 50 hand-colored linocuts, lithographs, silkscreen prints, and photographs illustrating the river and its diverse inhabitants. For more information, visit http://nharriscounty-tx.aauw.net. RODEO Go Texan hosting own cookoff The Houston Metro Go-Texan-Cy-Fair Committee of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo will host its 27th annual Bar-B-Que and Chili Cookoff & Auction from Jan. 22-24 at Traders Village. Those who are interested in entering the cookoff are encouraged to register online at www.eventbrite.com/e/17784201024 to reserve their space and can do so up until the day of the event. The entry fee for the barbecue cookoff teams is $150 and includes a 40-foot-by-40-foot space. Contestants are allowed to cook any meat of their choice and can learn more about the rules by contacting the committee at metrogotexancyfair@gmail.com. There will also be a number of items available at the auction including art pieces from the 2015 Grand Champion art contest winner. The money raised annually during this event helps provide many opportunities for CFISD children. Traders Village is located at 7979 North Eldridge Parkway in Houston. CENTRUM Journey during 'Sing Along'' The audience will take an imaginary journey to Africa during the "Sing Along Africa" interactive show performed at 10 a.m. on Jan. 23 at The Centrum by Impande Ye Africa. Admission is free. The show aims to educate and entertain through songs, games, dancing and music as it presents the languages and cultures of different tribes and historical African landmarks. The show is sponsored by The Centrum Arts League and presented by Cypress Creek Foundation for the Arts and Community Enrichment. The Centrum is located at 6823 Cypresswood Drive in Spring. Visit www.cypresscreekface.org or call 281-440-4850. MOVIES Quote along with Monty Python A quote-along event for "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" is set for 7 p.m. on Jan. 23 at Alamo Drafthouse Vintage Park. During the movie party event, the audience is encouraged to shout out the selected lines of the film which will be subtitled, karaoke-style. Sword props will be provided. Alamo Drafthouse Vintage Park is located at 114 Vintage Park Blvd, Bldg H, Ste J in Houston. Visit www.drafthouse.com or call 713-715-4707. CHILD REARING Conference gives tips on child care Child behavioral expert Dr. Charles Fay will host a conference on Jan. 26 about practical advice and steps for parents, educators and mental health professionals on how to effectively handle unruly children. The conference will be held at Lone Star College University Park Campus, from 8:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Attendees will gain new strategies for teaching responsibility, preventing power struggles, setting limits and promoting enthusiasm for learning. Admission is $99 per person and seating is limited, so early registration is recommended. For more information, visit www.loveandlogic.com or call 800-338-4065. ART Visit annual faculty exhibit Lone Star College-CyFair's Art Department will showcase the creative talent of art faculty in photography, painting, drawing and ceramics this spring in the Bosque Gallery. In addition to seeing the annual exhibition on display Jan. 26-Feb. 18, guests can stop by the Jan. 28 artist reception from 4:30-6:30 p.m. to meet the faculty and learn more about the college's art program and classes. The Bosque Gallery is located in the Center for the Arts building on the Barker Cypress campus at 9191 Barker Cypress. For gallery hours and information, go to LoneStar.edu/bosquegallery or call 281-290-5273. DANCE School teams show off skills CFISD dance teams from all 10 district high schools will showcase their spring contest routines at CFISD Dance Showoffs, a one-time event on Jan. 30 from 4-6:30 p.m. at the Berry Center. Gates open at 3 p.m. and tickets may be purchased at the door for $10. For more information, call 281-897-4080. The Berry Center is located at 8877 Barker Cypress in Cypress. Submit your events to cyfairneighborhoodnews@gmail.com. In an effort to help the area's more than 4,000 homeless residents, the Harris County Sheriff's Office has started a new outreach program. The Homeless Outreach Team provides transportation to transitional housing or doctor's appointments and offers food, water, clothing, bedding and hygiene kits. The team's primary goal is to help the homeless find housing. "Typically, our day revolves around helping people who cannot help themselves," sheriff's Lt. Robert Henry said. "We help people in need of housing, mental-health care. It's very fulfilling. It's a nontraditional police role. It's satisfying to be able to help our community in this way." Henry, a 33-year veteran at the sheriff's office, started the program in November after seeing the growing need in the community. "It's been a career-long goal of mine to help people who are mentally ill and to help people who are homeless, and sometimes there's a cross connection between the two," he said. The idea behind the outreach team is to help the homeless population rather than continuously arresting them for loitering, Henry said. "We're excited about it because No. 1, it's the right thing to do," he said. "We have a responsibility as human beings to help others." In 2011, the Harris County Sheriff's Office began its Crisis Intervention Response Team to respond to calls involving mentally disturbed residents. In the last four years, the team has diverted 1,400 mentally ill residents from jail to a psychiatric setting. The Homeless Outreach Team is a spinoff and expansion from that. In October, Henry approached Sheriff Ron Hickman with the idea. "The sheriff really supported us on this," Henry said. "He told us, 'I see your vision, go do it.' " Henry said he often saw the boomerang effect of ticketing and jailing homeless panhandlers. "If you can't afford breakfast, you probably cannot afford a ticket," he said. "And if you don't pay the ticket, it turns to a warrant. We find you again because you have no alternative, and now you have a warrant for your arrest. So, our first responder is taking a homeless person downtown to the jail to get booked in." Upon a person's release from jail, the cycle started again. "We are criminalizing homelessness when really it's not anyone's choice," Henry said. "It's a very sad place to be. I don't think anyone woke up and said, 'I want to be homeless.' " The number of financially unstable households in the northwest region continues to grow with the population, said Rebecca Landes, vice president of program services at Northwest Assistance Ministries. Hundreds of families and seniors struggle to pay for basic needs, primarily food, she said. NAM has also increased its homeless prevention services by 6 percent from a year ago. Through several grants and partner agencies, including the sheriff's office, NAM helps homeless families find affordable housing. The Homeless Outreach Team is possible thanks to private donations from two Texas residents who gave a total of $140,000 to the sheriff's office to start the program. The money has been used to purchase a van to transport the homeless to transitional housing or medical appointments. In addition, the van is used to deliver supplies, including food, water, bedding, clothing and hygiene kits. In addition, the sheriff's office purchased a four-wheel drive vehicle to help harder-to-reach homeless encampments to deliver supplies or transport individuals. From Nov. 2 to Dec. 15, the outreach team received 122 calls for services. The outreach team helps countywide, but the first focus has been on the area near FM 1960 and Interstate 45. "We have plans to move west out to Cypress and the Katy area along the 1960 corridor," Henry said. From Nov. 2 to mid-December, the team has helped to house 20 people. "That's a big deal," Henry said. "It may take six months to house one person." The team is getting a good response from the area's homeless community. "Once we engage them and approach them and they realize we aren't going to hurt them or arrest them, they calm down and listen to what we have to say," Henry said. "And because we're law enforcement, they take us seriously." To contact the Homeless Outreach Team, call 281-587-0654 or email the team at homelessoutreach@sheriff.hctx.net A man was recaptured Tuesday, after slipping away Jan. 15 from a Harris County courthouse where he was undergoing sentencing for a separate charge. Courtney Lyons' exit from the courthouse came in the form of a bathroom break, during which he slipped away and never returned. Drive down Campbell Road, Tanner Road or North Gessner in Spring Branch and you are likely to encounter potholes. It's the same scenario for motorists in the Houston Memorial area, with potholes along parts of Memorial Drive, Gessner Drive and the Interstate 10 feeder road, to name a few. But now some help has arrived, courtesy of Mayor Sylvester Turner's plan to create a 24-hour turnaround for pothole repairs in the city. Turner spelled out his ambitious plan during his Jan. 4. inaugural address. Under the plan, potholes that are reported to the city's 311 information line will be accessed and addressed by the next business day, and repaired within 24 hours. "It's critical that our infrastructure keeps pace with our growth and development," Turner said. "Right now we're playing catch-up." Houston City Councilwoman Brenda Stardig, whose District A includes Spring Branch, knows that all too well. "It's been pretty bad and it takes anywhere from a month or two, in my estimation, to get a pothole filled," she said. "We get a lot of complaints through our office and 311." Stardig said she supports Turner's pothole plan, which she called "a great commitment to our citizens in addressing their concerns." Last year, Houston City Council designated a $10 million fund specifically for street repairs to address the backlog. Each year, crumbling roads and bridges cost each Houston driver almost $1,900 in auto repairs, wasted fuel and accident costs, the mayor said. Houston City Councilman Greg Travis, whose District G includes Memorial, said he supports the mayor's pothole plan. But he wondered whether the program was too ambitious. "I think it's a good idea. I do think the 24-hour (timeframe) is bit ambitious," Travis said. "People would be satisfied if they knew the potholes would be filled within a week. "If you don't meet that goal, people will think that you don't meet their expectations. "They may think it's (pothole plan) a failure, when it's not a failure," he said. Stardig said she's concerned about "quality versus the quantity" of the road repairs. "I don't want to jeopardize quality for the sake of getting the quantity done," she said. But Turner's plan to repair all potholes reported to the city within 24 hours "shows he's taking the lead on the issue, Stardig said. "We have 644 square miles in District A, and in Spring Branch under the current circumstances it was taking a long period of time (to fill potholes), so much so that the last Council appropriated $10 million to get the job done. And we're still here trying to accomplish the same thing." "This is the role of government," she said. "We're here to serve and take care of the infrastructure of the city. "I am anxiously awaiting the result to see what happens." Agustin Bravo, manager of Reginelli's Pizzeria on Kingsride Lane in the Memorial area, said he welcomes the help with roads. "On Gessner the traffic is really bad from 3-6 p.m., and taking the feeder (road) of I-10 is also bad," said Bravo, who has six pizza delivery drivers. Traversing bad roadways, he said, "is not good for your car." Turner said the program has been a success, pointing to the latest reports from city staff. Of the pothole cases created from Jan. 4-10, he said, 96 percent were filled by the next business day. To report a pothole or road repair issue, call the city's 311 hotline. U.S. Coast Guard members from the vessel Cutter Stratton intercepted a semi-submersible carrying cocaine off the coast of California near San Diego last year. This video was a top 10 nominee for the Coast Guard's video contest for 2015. From April to August last year, the Cutter Stratton crew intercepted 16 metric tons of cocaine worth over $540 million. For their work the crew was awarded the Director's Award for Sustained Distinguished Service from the Executive Office of the President, Office of National Drug Control Policy. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The madam of a brothel that operated in Houston's East End for years was sentenced to life in federal prison Wednesday for her role as the leader of an international sex-trafficking ring that forced women and girls into prostitution. Hortencia "Tencha" Medeles, 70, was convicted during a trial last year that exposed operations at Medeles's three building complex on Telephone Road. PROSTITUTION STING: Houston Police officer among 19 charged in prostitution bust A cantina was located downstairs, and hidden doorways and staircases led to a brothel upstairs where 17 rooms were rented out for sex. Read about the disturbing scene that has remained frozen in time after the brothel was shut down in Dane Schiller's first person account on HoustonChronicle.com. Cody Duty/Houston Chronicle The number of men to come through there is staggering, with records presented in court showing rooms were rented out 64,296 during a 19 month period ending in 2013. That is far more people than it would take to fill Minute Maid Stadium's nearly 41,000 seats. Medeles was sentenced by U.S. District Judge David Hittner. THE BACKGROUND: Raids against sex trafficking ring land 13 behind bars Houston is a major hub for sex trafficking due to its size, proximity to the border and large immigrant population. The ring was built on the backs of women and teenagers who were smuggled into the United States from Mexico and Central American by smooth talking pimps who promised them love and marriage. When they got to Houston, however, they were beaten, raped and threatened that they as well as their families back home would be killed if they did not perform or tried to escape. "These girls came to the U.S. looking for their American dream, but instead they found their American nightmare," Assistant U.S. Attorney Ruben Perez told jurors during Medeles's trial. "It took guts for those girls to come here before you and tell you what happened to them." THE TRIAL: Woman comes face to face with accused sex trafficker At least 40 people have been prosecuted in connection with the brothel or other sex trafficking rings that are related to the case against Medeles. One man, Alfonso Diaz Juarez, remains a fugitive and is on the run from a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to his capture. "What occurred here was absolutely modern day slavery," said Special Agent Shauna Dunlap, of the FBI's Houston Division. " These women and young girls were forced to commit unspeakable acts in deplorable conditions inside this cantina, and others," she continued. "The longer Diaz-Juarez eludes justice, the greater the chance more women may be victimized." The FBI asks that persons with information about trafficking to contact the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373- 7888. See the above photo gallery for an exclusive look inside the remains of Medeles's brothel and cantina. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A Houston man now sitting in a North Dakota jail is the prime suspect in a fatal hit-and-run earlier this month in Montrose. Matthew Alan Putterman, 28, is charged with failure to stop and render aid in the Jan. 8 death of Michael Hill, 21. Hill was struck by a passing car about 12:30 a.m. while in the intersection of the 400 block of Westheimer. Witnesses told police the driver, who fled, didn't slow down for the red light and failed to yield to Hill, who had the right-of-way. According to the criminal complaint against Putterman, the witnesses couldn't give police the license plate number or a description of the driver. They said the car was a dark-colored, four-door vehicle. On Jan. 14, Canadian border patrol agents stopped a dark blue Hyundai Sonata with damage to the front left side. The driver was Putterman, who was crossing over from North Dakota and "acting suspiciously," according to the criminal complaint. They found a small amount of marijuana in the car and took him into custody. The Canadian agents discovered text messages on Putterman's cell phone about being involved in an accident but claiming he didn't think the victim had died. Putterman was returned to North Dakota and questioned by authorities there. He told authorities he was going to Canada to fix his vehicle after he was involved in an accident near Katy, according to the complaint. Putterman has denied being involved in an accident in Houston. On Tuesday, he was being held in Pembina County, N.D., where he is charged with tampering with evidence. It wasn't known when Putterman will be brought back to Texas. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A Houston teen was sentenced Wednesday to 40 years in prison for murder in the death of his step-grandfather. Carino Ratcliff, 18, pleaded guilty in November to using a hammer to kill Jimmy Lee Boyd, his grandmother's husband. Boyd's decomposed body was found in a retention pond in northwest Houston on May 20, 2014. Prosecutors said the 61-year-old man was killed a week earlier when he was strangled, beaten and had his throat slit. His body was found with his left cheek bone caved in, among other injuries, on an embankment near a section of White Oak Bayou near De Soto and T.C. Jester. RELATED: Three charged with capital murder after body found During a sentencing hearing Wednesday, Ratcliff's defense lawyer worked to show that the teen was unduly influenced by his sister and her boyfriend, both of whom have also been convicted in connection with the death. Cierra Jacobs, 21, pleaded guilty in November to tampering with a human corpse in exchange for a 10-year-sentence. Her boyfriend, 22-year-old Juan Lopez, was sentenced to life without parole after being convicted in October. "Juan Lopez admitted to the actions here," said Ratcliff's defense attorney Mervyn Mosbacker. "Juan Lopez is the instigator of the violence." Prosecutors said Ratcliff, Lopez and Jacobs hatched a plan to kill Boyd so they could live at his home with their grandmother, who Boyd was separated from. "The day that he was killed, Jimmy Boyd's guns and a generator were being sold at a pawn shop," said prosecutor Charles Brodsky. "Within hours of his death." Several of Ratcliff's family members asked visiting Judge Reagan Clark for leniency during the hearing. "He has shown remorse," said sister Brianna Holmes. "Carino wishes he had been strong enough to withstand Juan's intimidation." RELATED: Houston's headlining crimes of 2015 After the judge announced his ruling, Holmes and other family members said they plan to appeal the decision because Ratcliff could have asserted a defense of being under duress and because Clark had been the judge in Lopez's trial. "I feel like the decision had already been made," Holmes said. During the sentencing, the judge called the murder one the most horrendous crimes that he had ever seen and said he was disgusted by "the callous mutilation of a human life." "Someone slit Jimmy's throat after he was dead," the judge said. "Now how callous is that?" Ratcliff will have to serve at least 20 years in prison before he is eligible for parole. Mexican officials have recovered another lost Fast and Furious gun. Turns out El Chapo had it. A .50-caliber rifle was found in the hideout of the worlds most notorious drug lord Joaquin El Chapo Guzman, according to Fox News. The anti-material weapon is strong enough to take out cars or other unarmored vehicles. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate OMAHA, Neb. A volunteer for Ben Carson's presidential campaign died Tuesday after being hospitalized with injuries suffered in a car accident in western Iowa that hurt three other campaign workers. Carson was in South Carolina at the time of the Tuesday morning accident and suspended his campaign events. An official for a hospital in Omaha, Nebraska, said the Carson campaign volunteer, 25-year-old Braden Joplin, a student at Texas Tech, died late Tuesday afternoon. Campaign spokesman Jason Osborne said the crash occurred when a van carrying three Carson volunteers and a paid staffer flipped onto its side on an icy road and was hit by another vehicle. The others in the van were treated at a hospital in Atlantic, Iowa. Carson posted a picture of himself and Joplin on Twitter Tuesday night, writing: "Rest In Peace Braden Joplin. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family." In a statement released by his campaign, Carson wrote: "One of the precious few joys of campaigning is the privilege of meeting bright young men and women who are so enthusiastic about their country that they will freely give of their time and energy to work on its behalf. America lost one of those bright young men today." Chris Cook, spokesman for Texas Tech University, said the death of Braden Joplin was a great loss. "The loss of life, especially one of our own, is always tragic. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends of Braden during this difficult time." Other presidential candidates from both parties, including Republican Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz and Democrat Martin O'Malley, also offered condolences on Twitter. And Democratic contender Bernie Sanders paid tribute at the beginning of a rally in Iowa City, Iowa. "I have a lot of respect for any young person who gets involved in the political process," Sanders said. "Our hearts go out to the family of the young man." Austin's St. Edward's University announced Tuesday that it would opt out of Texas' "campus carry" law. The Board of Trustees' unanimous vote made the Catholic university the 16th private Texas college to opt out of the law passed by the Legislature last year. "St. Edward's University today announced it will continue its long-standing policy of prohibiting weapons on campus," a statement on the St. Edward's website reads. "University leadership believes concealed handguns on campus present significant concerns and are not conducive to a positive learning environment." The decision is supported by a campus-wide consultation that included discussion with students, faculty and staff members, according to Director of Communication Mischelle Diaz. "The opinions expressed during the discussion sessions with students, faculty and staff also supported opting out of Campus Carry," Diaz said. "The university board of trustees reviewed all of the feedback and voted unanimously to opt out." The law, which is scheduled to take effect this fall, allows concealed handgun license owners to bring guns onto campus and into school buildings, but allows universities to designate areas where weapons are prohibited. The law allows private schools to opt out and bar weapons from their campuses. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A big order of tacos helped authorities capture the most wanted man in Mexico and the United States, Joaquin El Chapo Guzman, according to The New York Times. The 6-month search for the most infamous drug lord most of the world had ever seen, brought Mexican marines to Los Mochis, in Sinaloa, Guzman's home state, on Jan. 8. RELATED: The many alleged lovers of El Chapo Guzmans last stop in his flee was in January, at a home owned by one of his chief tunnel diggers that had been on the authorities' radar, the NYT reported. The New Year kicked off with evidence the drug lord may be visiting soon when authorities intercepted phone conversations which discussed the arrival of a visitor aliased as a grandma and aunt, the report said. RELATED: Report: Mexican drug lord 'El Chapo' Guzman got erectile dysfunction treatment while on the run Mexicos Special Forces kept an ear to the ground until getting their final piece of evidence a large food order. Just two blocks away, a big order of tacos was picked up after midnight on Jan. 8 by a man driving a white van, like the one believed to be driven by Mr. Guzmans associates, witnesses said, according to the New York Times report. Hours later, at 4:30 a.m., the marines stormed the compound, meeting a knot of doors and fierce resistance from gunmen. RELATED: New video released of raid to capture Mexican drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman During the siege, the escape artist cartel leader managed to flee yet again, through an escape hatch hidden behind a closet mirror. This breakaway wouldnt last long as Guzman was recaptured on Highway 15 headed toward Guasave, the Times reported. Guzman is currently being held in the Antiplano prison where he escaped from in July while the Mexican government has started an extradition process to get Guzman to the United States. mmendoza@mysa.com Twitter: @MaddySkye PLYMOUTH, N.H. - Ken Wiaren and his wife, Joanne, came to the Panther Pub in this mountain town Monday evening in the hopes of making their choice for president. Wiaren, 57, a retired police officer from nearby Orford, supported eventual Republican nominee Mitt Romney in the 2012 primary. This time around, he said, he was looking for someone more conservative. After weeks of researching the candidates, however, Wiaren said he was torn between U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. "I think Cruz is honest, and I like what he stands for, but I'm not sure," Wiaren said from a table in the corner of the restaurant. He was there to hear Cruz, who was on the fifth of 18 New Hampshire stops on a tour that has highlighted the Texan's viability but also shown the challenges that he faces, especially in states such as this snow-covered one. For months, Cruz has focused his campaign on Iowa, which votes first and is full of evangelical Christians and others who love the senator's tea party brand of conservatism. But as he has gained steam in national polls, Cruz has redoubled his efforts in second-voting New Hampshire, which usually goes for more moderate Republicans and this year has been dominated by businessman Donald Trump. The thinking, Cruz's supporters say, is that a strong performance in the Granite State - even if an outright victory is unlikely - will preserve momentum that comes out of Iowa and provide a springboard to South Carolina and the rest of the race. "We have an opportunity here to cement the idea that Ted Cruz is the conservative candidate," said former New Hampshire House Speaker Bill O'Brien, who is helping head Cruz's state leadership team. "We can send a message." O'Brien, who lost the speakership in 2012 but remains in the House, said Cruz has managed to expand his base of social conservatives to include libertarians, who helped former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul finish a strong second last time around. Ron Paul's son, Rand, has not caught on this year, creating an opening for Cruz, O'Brien said. Recent public polling has shown Trump still dominating the field, with Cruz in the second tier with Rubio, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. But there have been recent signs that Cruz is making progress, including earlier this month when a super PAC supporting neurosurgeon Ben Carson abruptly disbanded and its staffers pledged to support Cruz. "Conservatives are uniting behind Ted Cruz, and I'm one of them," said one of the staffers, veteran New Hampshire operative Sam Pimm, in an interview. Applause on the stump Cruz's stump speech also has drawn loud applause at crowded venues on every stop of his tour, including in Plymouth, where the Wiarens said they were impressed by specifics about what he would do on his first day in office - rescind executive orders, investigate Planned Parenthood and begin to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem - as well as his position against Common Core, the federal education standards. Cruz also has benefited from an unusual dynamic three weeks ahead of the Feb. 9 primary, strategists say: Rubio, Kasich, Christie and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush are duking it out for the mantle of the establishment candidate in New Hampshire, while several conservatives competing with the Texas senator have either dropped out or are not competing. "Usually it's the other way around, with lots of conservatives and one establishment pick," said Dave Carney, an unaffiliated New Hampshire-based strategist who supported former Texas Gov. Rick Perry in 2012 and advises current Gov. Greg Abbott. Perry's 2012 campaign focused on Iowa and, when he underperformed there, barely made a dent in New Hampshire. This year, he is among the conservatives who already have dropped out. "Cruz hasn't really done anything to do well in New Hampshire," Carney said. "It's just that he's the last one standing. And now he could do really well." Trump is the big challenge Still, if Cruz has benefited from one unusual dynamic, he has run into a buzzsaw of another: Trump. The businessman has loomed over the first two days of Cruz's five-day tour - including Monday, when the duo campaigned within 20 miles of each other. The day before, at the first stop of Cruz's trip, at an Italian restaurant in Milford, the first question from the crowd was about Trump. Then, before a town hall Monday in Washington, population 1,123, Cruz escalated his criticism of Trump in a news conference, saying the businessman was no Ronald Reagan. And Monday night, at a town hall in Whitefield, Cruz went further than he has before publicly in calling Trump a fake conservative. "The stakes are too high. We cannot get burned again." Given Trump's polling lead, some strategists expected Cruz to write off New Hampshire. But after a two-month absence from the state, the senator's bus tour is meant to send a message about his competitiveness. The campaign has 10 paid staffers in the state, as well as a residence for volunteers, and the candidate is planning to return here after the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses, said Ethan Zorfas, Cruz's state director. Whether Cruz is making inroads among supporters of Trump and his other rivals is an open question. After a Monday campaign stop at a diner in Keene, Malia Boaz, 64, who lives in Westmoreland but spent 30 years in Texas and volunteered on Cruz's 2012 Senate campaign, said she loved him but would be voting for Trump. "We need a bulldog," Boaz said. But a few hours later, at the Panther Pub in Plymouth, a different voter reached a very different conclusion. Asked whether he had been won over, Ken Wiaren did not hesitate. "He sealed the deal," he said with a smile. "I'm voting Cruz." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The billionaire founder of Beal Bank in Plano has snatched up Tom and Cinda Hicks 25-acre Crespi estate in Dallas, one of the most expensive ever sold in Texas, according to realtors and news reports. The asking price for the home was originally set at $135 million before dropping $100 million, according to Culture Map, and billionaire Andy Beal had been looking into another property before deciding on the Crespi estate. This estate is the most expensive single family home sold on the Texas real estate market in recent years (by far), according to multiple media outlets. The Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University reported the most expensive home currently on the market in Texas that they are aware of is listed at $50 million. However, many luxury real estate properties are not entered into widely used real estate listing databases, so they can be hard to track. Of course some large ranches have sold for more. For example, the Waggoner Ranch was listed at $725 million. RELATED: Top 25 landowners in America Beal, a divorced father of six children, is worth $10.3 billion, according to Forbes 400 ranking. Tom and Cinda Hicks bought the estate 16 years ago from the Crespi family. The Crespis originally built the home in 1938 with the help of architect Maurice Fatio. The building has had several renovations since then. Hicks owned the Texas Rangers from 1998 to about 2010. RELATED: Former Texas Rangers owner Tom Hicks giant Dallas estate on the market for $100 million The estate, located in the highly-regarded Preston Hollow neighborhood, has a main home by itself that spans more than 50,000 square feet. The estate also has a 6,400-square-foot guesthouse and a 9,194-square-foot recreation building. RELATED: Texas' iconic Waggoner Ranch for sale for $725 million The property has amenities such as a kitchen with a French range valued at $65,000, a library featuring French paneling from the 1820s, a 500-bottle wine storage room, a conservatory and a movie theater. According to the Dallas Morning News, the home also has a full basement under the primary home and a seven-car garage. Scroll through the slideshow above to see photos of the stunning complex. twhite@mysa.com Twitter: @tylerlwhite The summers final Live on the Waterfront concert was held Wednesday evening at Prince Arthurs Landing. The popular series in Thunder Bay has completed nine weekly shows that began on July 13. Wednesdays concert was unique as it was held one hour later in the evening to mesh with the 10 p. Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images The Two Minutes Hate against Ted Cruz for his New York values comment is now stretching into a week. Never mind that Cruz, speaking at last weeks Republican presidential debate, was quoting Donald Trumps own claims that he was open to legalizing gay marriage (long before most Democrats were)and supported both gays in the military and partial-birth abortion because of his New York background. As Trump put it in a 1999 interview: Ive lived in New York City and Manhattan all my life . . . so my views are a little bit different [than] if I lived in Iowa. Some Republicans, like Larry Kudlow and Long Island congressman Peter King, joined in the Cruz criticism; Kudlow even invoked the specter of anti-Semitism. Well, heres one half-Jewish, Marco Rubio-supporting, New York Republicanwith politics closer to Peter Kings than to Ted Cruzswho doesnt buy it. The spin from Cruz critics and Trump himself is that the Texas senator somehow impugned the heroism of the New York cops and firefighters who risked their lives on 9/11. Theres no denying that Trump played this angle brilliantly at the GOP debate, and that Cruz was uncharacteristically unprepared. But everyone knows or should know that Cruz wasnt talking about the values of the NYPD or FDNYor of people in Queens, Staten Island, or Levittown. He was talking about the New York values of the liberal Manhattan elites who look down their noses at cops and firemenand at Peter King. In speaking of those whose values are socially liberal but also focus around money and the media, Cruz obviously wasnt targeting the working stiffs in New Yorks own version of flyover country, but rather the powerful who helicopter above them en route from the city to the Hamptons. In other words, Cruz was making a populist appeal, taking on an establishment perceived as at once culturally revolutionary and economically royalist. What better shorthand for the worldview of this elite than Manhattan values, or, more loosely, New York values? Of course, Cruz opened himself up to charges of hypocrisy. Hes raised money from Wall Street, his wife worked for Goldman Sachs, and his economic policy proposals, unlike Trumps, are quite popular in the boardrooms. Many of Cruzs Republican critics are Northeast urbanites, and their condemnations sometimes crossed into a condescending putdown of the boob vote that Cruz is said to be courting. This hint of class biasironically reflective of many of the attacks on Trump for his appeal to the same working-class voterswas in many ways more forthcoming than the cops-and-firemen routine. Conservatism has a strong and defensible anti-populist tradition. This attitude holds that the most talented peoplethose who gravitate to cities and who rise to positions of power on Wall Street or become trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Artshould run the country. But going back at least as far as William F. Buckleys contention that hed rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phonebook than by Harvards faculty, a countervailing strain of conservative populism has gained strength. The talented people, on this thinking, have gotten all the big things wrong, and in doing so, theyve increasingly driven ordinary people into the conservative ranks. Count me among these populist conservatives. Ive been loathe to join in bashing Trump, and Im equally reluctant to join the Cruz bashers now. Conservative anti-populists are free to differ, of course, but they should come out and make their case frankly instead of casting themselves as defenders of the September 11 heroes. To save the jobs of Central Parks carriage-horse drivers, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio and city council speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito have developed a plan that involves destroying the livelihood of the citys pedicab drivers. De Blasios elaborate proposal to buildat the citys expensea state-of-the-art equine facility in Central Park capable of stabling 70 horses and housing their carriages is meant to mollify animal-rights activists, to whom hed promised to eliminate the horse-carriage industry entirely. The bar on pedicabs accepting fares within the park south of 86th Street emerged as a last-minute coda to the perverse horse-carriage compromise, and was probably thrown in as a sweeteneror sopto the Teamsters union, which represents the horse-carriage workers. Pedicab operators have plied their trade in the city for nearly 15 years. What started out as unauthorized wildcatting by rowdy ex-bicycle messengers has matured into a registered and licensed aspect of the midtown tourist experience. Today, a number of pedicab companies offer tours of Central Park, typically charging around $25 per hour, per person. Viewing pedicabs as competition, the horse-carriage industry sought an outright ban on them in 2005. At a recent protest outside City Hall, 50 pedicab drivers noisily protested de Blasios deal. Sekou Koita, a pedicab driver from West Africa, complained that the pedicabs cause no problems, we have no accidents. They are picking on us because we are a small business, we have no money. Pedicab driver Rovshan Charyyev is from Turkmenistan. He studies psychology at City College when he is not pedaling tourists around Central Park for six hours a day. I dont understand why they want to take away my job, he said. I work very hard, it is an honest business: the fares are posted. I am licensed. When asked about the pedicab ban, which would affect some 200 drivers, Mark-Viverito shrugged. Look, this is a very large city, and there are many opportunities throughout the city, she said. Her Antoinettish callousness to the pedicab drivers plight is stunning, especially since the speaker had praised the imminent passage of a law protecting the jobs of grocery workers for at least 90 days following the takeover of their stores in a merger. That law, she said, protects hardworking New Yorkers who find themselves in a vulnerable position through no fault of their own. Mark-Viveritos hypocrisy highlights a paradox inherent to the progressive doctrine that she shares with de Blasio. Both claim the moral high ground when ideas are at issue; both are sanguine when it comes to the effects of these ideas on real people. In the name of the noble ideal of affordable housing, for instance, the city uses eminent domain in downtown Brooklyn to evict thousands of middle-class residents. In the name of the noble ideal of school equity, the city fights to shutter charter schools whose mission is to educate impoverished minority youth. And in the name of the noble ideal of kindness to animalsand to salvage a silly campaign promisethe city will put 200 pedicab drivers out of work. Maybe if we were in a union like the horse drivers, they wouldnt do this, noted Koita. Typically, workers look to unions to protect them against exploitation by their bosses. In the inverted logic of de Blasio and Mark-Viveritos progressive New York, private workers wish for a union that could protect them from the government. Photo by Elvert Barnes Women in Online Work program pentru femeile care isi doresc sa munceasca in companii internationale, de la biroul de acasa When medical marijuana became available this month in New York, Brittany Barger was one of the first patients to navigate the states rules and make it through a dispensary door. When youre as sick as I am, youll try anything, said Barger, who has ovarian cancer that has spread through her 27-year-old body. New Yorks program one of the strictest out of the 23 states that allow medical marijuana has had a widely anticipated slow beginning, but there are signs its gaining momentum. The state Health Department says more than 165 patients have now qualified, a figure thats more than doubled in a week but is still just a sliver of the potential patient pool. More than 225 doctors have now taken the state-required training, up from about 150 last week. As of Saturday, all eight dispensaries that opened around the state Jan. 7 have seen patients, sometimes more than anticipated, operators say. The Health Department is extremely pleased with the programs launch, spokesman JP OHare said. Still, some would-be patients say theyre stymied, unable to get access to any of the doctors prepared to see them. The state hasnt released physicians names, although a few have announced themselves publicly. The Health Department said this week it would soon give a list to practitioners, though not to the public, citing security concerns. While some other states medical marijuana programs also have faced questions about accessibility, New York is one of the few states to require physician training. New York also allows only cannabis extracts in pills and liquids, not pot in joints or brownies, a provision echoed only in Minnesota. And New Yorks 10 qualifying illnesses also exclude some conditions other states allow, such as chronic pain in itself. The requirements surprise some patients who call Etain Healths dispensaries in Kingston (asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk)and Albany, which saw their first few patients late this week,(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk) the company said. We expected a very slow start, said Chief Operating Officer Hillary Peckham, who feels theres a learning curve, but I dont think its something that cant be overcome. Meanwhile, patient traffic, in the dozens, is beating expectations at Columbia Cares Manhattan dispensary, CEO Nicholas Vita said. There have been a handful of patients at Vireo Health of New Yorks dispensary in suburban White Plains and at PharmaCannis facilities near Buffalo and Syracuse, the companies said. Bloomfield Industries would say only that it has seen patients in its two dispensaries, also in the Syracuse and Buffalo areas. All the operators are slated to open more facilities, for a total of 20. State officials say they responded to patients interest while providing for closely supervised, carefully calibrated products. But to patients like Donna Romano, theyre too hard to get. During years of living with multiple sclerosis, Romano has found ways to get pot that she finds relieves her pain and muscle stiffness. She hopes pharmaceutical-grade products will help even more. But the Syracuse resident hasnt found a nearby physician whos prepared to certify her for the drugs. Its frustrating, its aggravating, and some people are losing hope, said Romano, 60. While some doctors are supportive of medical marijuana, others are concerned about a drug that remains illegal under federal law and fear patients might abuse the system to get it, says Dr. Michael T. Goldstein, an ophthalmologist and president of the New York County Medical Society, a Manhattan physicians group. Dr. Margaret Lewin, a Manhattan primary care physician, is taking a middle path. She plans to take the course to learn about the products, but not to prescribe them, as she thinks specialists will become experts on them. But shell consider referring people to such doctors once Im more knowledgeable, she said. Barger, the cancer patient, went to the dispensary hoping for an alternative to painkillers that had come with serious side effects. Fighting a cancer unsuitable for surgery and unresponsive so far to chemotherapy, shed lost 100 pounds because she couldnt keep food down. Simply seeing a movie became a major undertaking. While noting its early to draw conclusions, she says that since she started using a cannabis vaporizer and capsules, shes needed fewer pain pills, feels more relaxed and has her appetite back. The biggest plus, she says, has been joining her family for meals. With this, Im hoping to have more good days, she said, and be able to check some more stuff off my bucket list. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. The half brother of a man serving two life sentences in a deadly 2012 Indianapolis house explosion that devastated a subdivision is facing a weekslong trial for his alleged role in the blast, which prosecutors say was a scheme to collect a big insurance payout. Jury selection is scheduled to begin Tuesday in the trial of Bob Leonard, who faces two counts of murder as well as arson and conspiracy charges. Prosecutors allege Leonard, 57, took part in a plot involving four others to collect $300,000 in insurance by filling up the house of his half brothers then-girlfriend with natural gas. A microwave apparently set to start on a timer sparked the Nov. 10, 2012, blast that killed neighbors Jennifer and John Dion Longworth and destroyed or damaged more than 80 homes. Leonards half brother, Mark Leonard, was convicted in July of murder, arson and conspiracy charges and sentenced to two life sentences plus 75 years without parole. Authorities said he was the mastermind behind destroying the home of Monserrate Shirley and enlisted her, Bob Leonard and two other men. Shirley pleaded guilty last year to two conspiracy charges. Her cooperation led to charges against two alleged co-conspirators, Glenn Hults and Gary Thompson, who face a joint June trial. Shirley testified against Mark Leonard during his trial and is expected to do so against Bob Leonard, said Denise Robinson, a deputy Marion County prosecutor who will try the case, which was moved to northeast Indianas Allen County due to pretrial publicity. Bob Leonards attorneys did not respond to requests from The Associated Press for comment. His trial is expected to last about five weeks, include some 2,000 pieces of evidence and about 160 prosecution witnesses, Robinson said. Robinson said she cannot characterize Bob Leonards precise alleged role until the trial starts, but noted it will differ from his half brothers by relying more heavily on conspiracy law because Bob Leonard wasnt the schemes alleged mastermind. In this case youre dealing with someone weve alleged was brought into the situation, or hired into the situation, as opposed to someone who had the direct planning and the direct motive himself, Robinson said. Shirley testified that Mark Leonard told her that his half brother had agreed to help destroy her home for $10,000. Hell do anything I ask, Shirley said her then-boyfriend said of Bob Leonard. Court documents filed with Shirleys plea agreement indicate Bob Leonard may have helped remove a gas fireplace valve and a gas line regulator and may have set a microwave timer to ignite the explosion. Authorities allege there were two unsuccessful attempts to destroy Shirleys home before the third attempt succeeded. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday issued draft guidelines to medical device makers on how to protect patients from cybersecurity vulnerabilities in their devices. Cybersecurity threats to medical devices are a growing concern, the agency said in a statement. The exploitation of cybersecurity vulnerabilities presents a potential risk to the safety and effectiveness of medical devices. The draft guidance, which is not legally binding, recommends companies take a number of actions, including monitoring and assessing risk, coordinating efforts by companies, government and other groups do disclose vulnerabilities, and taking measures to address cybersecurity risk early. Most cybersecurity vulnerabilities are considered routine and can be remedied by updates or patches which would not need to be reported under the proposed guidance, the agency said. Companies would be required to report vulnerabilities that could compromise clinical performance of the device and risk a patients health. The guidance covers how companies should monitor devices once they have been cleared for marketing. The agency previously issued guidance for companies still in the development stage to help inform design choices. Joshua Corman, founder of I Am The Cavalry, a cybersafety advocacy group who worked with the FDA on the guidance, said he was extremely encouraged by the agencys action. I have found the FDA has been very forward thinking to get out in front of this and not wait for proof of harm before acting, he said. The proposed guidance will be open for public comment for 90 days, after which the FDA will issue final guidance. The agency is holding a public cybersecurity workshop at its headquarter in Silver Spring, Maryland on Jan. 20-21. The workshop will focus on unresolved gaps and challenges that have hampered progress in advancing medical device cybersecurity. (Reporting by Toni Clarke in Washington; editing by Paul Simao and David Gregorio) The U.S. Transportation Department and 17 automakers have reached agreement on efforts to enhance safety, including sharing information to thwart cyberattacks on their increasingly wired vehicles. Automakers including General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Corp. also agreed to reform the way they report fatalities, injuries and warranty claims to the government. The companies agreed to keep meeting regularly to exchange information and identify emerging safety issues. Today DOT and the automakers represented here are taking a strong stance in favor of a new approach, an approach that leans heavily on being proactive and less heavily on being reactive, U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx in Detroit Friday at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. The company executives, including General Motors Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV Chief Executive Officer Sergio Marchionne had met with Foxx in Washington in December. The transportation secretary asked the companies to come up with voluntary measures they could agree to outside the traditional regulatory framework. Best Practices On cybersecurity, the companies and regulators agreed to suggest best practices, share lessons learned and find ways to engage researchers to identify emerging threats. Theyll work with the information sharing and analysis center the auto industry established last year. Last fall, we took an unprecedented step in getting in the same room, to get more proactive and less reactive., Foxx said. Real safety is finding and fixing defects before someone gets hurt rather than punishing them after damage is done. The automotive effort is based on practices at the Federal Aviation Administration, where airlines participate in a safety management system that has dramatically reduced plane crashes, Foxx said. GM is proud to be part of the effort, Barra told reporters in Detroit. Improved Recalls I do think well look back and see this as very historical, Barra said. Theres a strong sense of commitment on everyones part to focus on safety. Fiat Chrysler is in the middle of a companywide effort to improve safety thats included a doubling of vehicle-safety staff, better use of analytics to quickly identify potential defects, and a campaign to improve the numbers of cars repaired in company recalls, Marchionne said in a statement today. Fiat Chrysler remains committed to the continued development and democratization of safety technologies that help mitigate the impact of driver error the root cause of most crashes, Marchionne said. It will continue to engage in a collaborative industry approach which leverages the strength and knowledge of all participants to promote these principles. The news follows an announcement yesterday in Detroit that the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration will allow automakers with safe autonomous vehicles to apply for exemptions to certain rules. Its part of the new approach by the agency designed to ensure government doesnt stand in the way of technological progress. Self-Driving Cars Regulators also announced their intention to award about $4 billion in grants to fund demonstration projects that can help speed the development of self-driving cars. Last year, 10 companies committed to make automatic emergency braking standard in all new vehicles. The companies made the commitment rather than waiting for a federal mandate, NHTSA Administrator Mark Rosekind said at a speech in Detroit Tuesday. All of the good news at the auto show in Detroit this week, including record sales and profitable companies hiring more American workers, had been tempered by record numbers of recalls and a series of record-breaking fines. The proactive approach to safety should work to make everyone safer, Foxx said. If it doesnt, NHTSA will still be ready to enforce the law. Make no mistake, NHTSA stands ready to use all of its tools, including its enforcement and regulatory authority, to protect public safety, Rosekind said on Tuesday. We have no hesitation to do so when it is necessary. Copyright 2022 Bloomberg. Dale Arnold, who worked for Wisconsin plastics maker Flambeau, chose not to take his work-sponsored health assessment and biometric screening. The company responded by pulling his insurance coverage. Like many employers, Flambeau uses a wellness program to cut insurance costs by encouraging healthy employee habits. In the past, submitting to on-site tests of blood pressure, body-mass, and cholesterol meant saving a few hundred dollars. Now companies such as Flambeau have gone a step farther, denying healthcare entirely to those who dont participate. People like Arnold must instead pay for more expensive coverage through the governments COBRA program. According to several federal courtsincluding one that ruled in favor of Flambeauthis is all perfectly legal. In a case filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the U.S. government argued that Flambeaus wellness program didnt comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, which limits companies from requiring medical exams or personal health information from workers. Denying employer-sponsored coverage crosses the line from voluntary to coercive, the EEOC contended. Not so, said a federal judge in Madison, Wisc., who ruled on Dec. 31 that employers can deny coverage without violating the ADA as long as the data gleaned from the wellness program is used for purposes of overall health coverage. In this case, the screenings helped Flambeau determine the risk of its insurance pool. The EEOC says it is reviewing the decision. Samuel Bagenstos, a professor at the University of Michigan, claims the ruling turns voluntariness on its head. It would make it all but impossible to enforce the voluntariness requirement for requests for medical information, Bagenstos said. In that sense its probably the wrong reading of the statute. Over the last few years, wellness programs have become a popular way for companies to try to curb rising healthcare costs. Employers spent a record $693 per employee on such initiatives last year, up from $430 the previous year, according to data from Fidelity Investments. Wellness programs, an umbrella term for employer-supported initiatives to improve and promote employee health, were one of the most popular benefits last year, with three quarters of organizations surveyed by the Society for Human Resource Management offering some sort of program. Successes have been claimed. Companies that require health care surcharges for smokers, for example, say employees subsequently cut tobacco use, a recent SHRM survey found. Yet, despite the popularity of wellness programs among employers, their efficacy is unclear. Participation rates hovered at 24 percent in 2014, according to Gallup research which concluded that, when employees dont engage, the programs definitely dont work. Moreover, such programs tend to see results only over the long term. Researchers in a seven-year study at PepsiCo found that participation was associated with lower health-care costs, but only after the third year. To spur workers to buy into wellness and all its health benefits (and savings for the company), its common for employers to offer a reward of money toward health insurance premiums. In the Flambeau case, the company wasnt seeing results, so it upped the ante from a $600 credit to threatening a health insurance cutoff. Stephen Alfred Di Tullio, a lawyer for Flambeau, praised the court ruling, saying that from the get go they always felt this program wasnt discriminating. Employees have been getting roughed up in this nascent fight. The Flambeau decision was their second defeat after suing employers who got creative in pushing wellness programs. In 2012, a federal appeals court in Atlanta found in favor of an employer, using the same reasoning about the ADA to affirm a lower court ruling. In response to the confusion, the EEOC last spring put out proposed guidelines, drawing hundreds of critical comments from all sides. Under the new guidelines, the maximum penalty an employer can impose on non-participating workers is 30 percent of the total cost of employee-only coverage. Youre seeing a real tension to basically incent people to live healthier lives so that they can use insurance less, and lose less days at work, and be more productive, said Paul Secunda, a professor of law at Marquette University, who specializes in labor and benefits law. On the other hand theres the medical privacy concerns of individuals. Secunda agreed with Bagenstos that the reasoning in the federal cases is wrong. People on all sides expect more legal activity. The EEOC has two other lawsuits pending that challenge employer programs. Its new guidelines, which take effect next month, are also likely to trigger additional court fights. Employers will have to wait and see what happens, said Steve Wojcik, vice president of public policy at the National Business Group on Health, a nonprofit that represents large employers. I think the bigger picture for this is that the EEOC should clarify through the regulatory process what it means. Copyright 2022 Bloomberg. Biggest Snubs for 2016 Oscars Include 'Straight Outta Compton,' Ridlely Scott and More Caption:LOS ANGELES, CA - JANUARY 14: An image is displayed onstage of the nominees for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role during the 88th Oscars Nominations Announcement at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on January 14, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo : Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images) It would appear that the Academy Awards were to acknowledge the best of the best in 2015. Even though last year was stuffed with a series of great films, there were some odd developments regarding the nominees. While some nominations were to be expected (such as The Revenant and its astounding 12 noms), there were some surprising snubs, like Straight Outta Compton's small presence in the nominee circle and Ridley Scott missing out for The Martian for Best Director. Seeing so much talent get unrecognized has come as a surprise to the film community. With the information obtained from USA Today, and Cinema Insiders, let's go over some of the major categories and discuss who and what has been snubbed. The nominees for Best Picture are The Big Short, Bridge of Spies, Brooklyn, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Martian, The Revenant, Room and Spotlight. The surprising snubs in this category go to Carol, Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Straight Outta Compton. It would appear that a record-breaking sci-fi film would at least reach the nominee status of Best Picture, but it can't be denied that Mad Max was a visually stunning production. Carol has been reviewed with praise by some 20 critics. Star Wars: The Force Awakens is the highest grossing film of last year. Straight Outta Compton was the run-away hit and loved by critics and fans alike. All three films are nominated in several other categories, but not for best picture. The Best Director nominations included George Miller (Mad Max), Lenny Abrahamson (Room), Alejandro G. Inarritu (The Revenant), Tom McCarthy (Spotlight) and Adam McKay (The Big Short). In this category, the biggest snub is dealt to Ridley Scott for The Martian. The Martian has taken home a slew of critic's awards throughout the award season. One of the most prestigious nominations Scott received during the award season was the Directors Guild Award (DGA), which practically guarantees, at the very least, an Oscar nomination. But this time around, no dice for Ridley Scott, leaving some to wonder if the Exodus whitewashing backlash had something to do with it. For Best Actor, the nominees are Bryan Cranston for Trumbo, Eddie Redmayne for The Danish Girl, Leonardo DiCaprio for The Revenant, Matt Damon for The Martian and Michael Fassbender for Steve Jobs. Snubs in this section include Will Smith and Johnny Depp. It was clear that Depp was a shoe-in for an Oscar nomination per his Screen Actors Guild (SAG) nomination. SAG noms are usually synonymous with Academy Award nominations. Black Mass is Depp's first role that doesn't involve comedy, or director Tim Burton. The film was a great way for Depp to break out of that pattern, but the Academy didn't see it that way. The same goes for Will Smith. He has had a slew of mediocre films in the last few years, so his role in Concussion was a breath of fresh air. It revitalized our belief in him as an actor. Unfortunately, the academy didn't care. Instead of adding him to the roster of the world's most worthy actors, he was shut out. Finally, Best Supporting Actor includes Mark Rylance for Bridge of Spies, Sylvester Stallone for Creed, Tom Hardy for The Revenant, Christian Bale for The Big Short and Mark Ruffalo for Spotlight. Of course the snubs in this category for Idris Elba and Benecio Del Toro. Another actor that has been nominated for a SAG award, will also be on the outside looking in. Idris Elba, who many thought would snag a nomination for his role as a West African warlord in Netflix's Beast of No Nation, has also been shut out of the Oscar race. Leaving many to wonder if being Netflix affiliated was the reason for this. Benecio Del Toro shocked audiences with his role in Denis Vilenuve's Sicario. No one knew he would have such an integral role in the film. The SAG recognized his work in the movie which again was certain to lead him through to the Oscars, but that was a no-go this time around. 2016 The Classical Art, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. TagsAcademy Awards Oscar Nominations, Academy Awards The Revenant, Academy Awards Oscar Snubbed, Straight Outta Compton Snubbed, The Martian Best Director, Ridley Scott Oscar Snubbed Musicians of Hartford Symphony Orchestra Agree to Wage Concessions Imposed by Management Bishop Jay Ramirez of Kingdom Life Christian Church in Milfrod, CT speaks to demonstrators opposed to Connecticut's Same-Sex Civil Union law during the Rally for Marriage 2005 at the Capitol building in Hartford, Connecticut. The rally, sponsored by the Family Institute of Connecticut, drew thousands of people to Hartford. (Photo : Bob Falcetti/Getty Images) The musicians of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, in an effort to save the company from collapse, have agreed to a wage concession. Management has added that it was essential for the musicians to take the cut in order for the symphony to survive. Per Steve Wade, an oboist in the ensemble's ranks, said to the press Monday night that vote came as the product of extensive talks held on Sunday. The musicians union then notified chairman Jeffrey Verney and music director and conductor Carolyn Kuan. Hartford's new mayor, Mr. Luke Bronin, also said: "The Hartford Symphony Orchestra is a vital cultural asset, not only for the City of Hartford but for our entire region. I'm grateful to the outstanding musicians of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, to the HSO's staff and Board, to the HSO's patrons and supporters, to our world-class conductor, Carolyn Kuan, and to everyone whose commitment and sacrifice made it possible for Hartford to remain a center of creative, groundbreaking, professional symphonic music." It's been reported that the union faced a strict deadline at midnight on Monday. If the orchestra failed to accept $450,000 in wage concessions then management threatened to shut down the symphony. For music director Carolyn Kuan, the orchestra valued her efforts to help preserve the ensemble by sacrificing her pay to equal the pay cut faced by the musicians. They said, "This gesture shows her commitment to the success of HSO and the success of its mission, which is to provide Greater Hartford with the best in symphonic music. News of the orchestra staying afloat is certainly a positive outcome for the faltering company but is part of the waning funds experienced by symphonies across the U.S., from the Metropolitan Opera to the Seattle Symphony (who just received a generous donation by the wildly famous Taylor Swift). Congratulations to the HSO and hopefully these efforts will sustain the company for years to come. For now, have a peak into the orchestra below. 2016 The Classical Art, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. TagsHartford Symphony Orchestra, Carolyn Kuan Alexander Hamilton Bio Writer Ron Chernow on Lin-Manuel Mirandas Hit Hip Hop Broadway Musical Lin-Manuel Mirandas face is now so synonymous with Alexander Hamilton that you could put him on the ten dollar bill and no one would object. Where Miranda is the man who wrote the musical about Hamilton, Ron Chernow is the man who literally wrote the book on Alexander Hamilton. And by book we mean biography that the musical was based on. Now, Chernow is opening up about the hot new hip hop Broadway musical. Recently, Ron Chernow opened up to Playbill about how Lin-Manuel Miranda adapted his work for the Broadway stage and how it lent itself to a hip hop musical: The book had been optioned for a movie in Hollywood three times and, as so often happens, disappeared into a black hole. Lin started by telling me that Hamilton's story was a classic hip-hop narrative. Needless to say, I had no idea what he was talking about. I know now. But I didn't know then. I'm a little more hip now than I was at that point. I think Hamilton worked for hip-hop because there was something so driven about him. He's constantly talking and writing and reading and doing things, and so the pulsating hip-hop music and lyrics really match the tempo of his life. And [Lin] asked me on the spot to be the historical advisor. He said, "I want the historians to take this seriously." Chernow went on to discuss his role as advisor on the musical, adding: First order of business was simply my pointing out errors. As time went on, I commented about the portraits of the different characters, motivations, the dynamics of the different relationships, the dramatic arc. Hamilton is currently playing at the Richard Rodgers Theater located at 226 West 46th Street between Broadway and 8th. 2016 The Classical Art, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. TagsAlexander Hamilton, Hamilton, Bio, Writer, Ron Chernow, LIn-Manuel Miranda, Hit, Hip-Hop, broadway, Musical AKRON, Ohio -- An Akron man was sentenced Wednesday to five years in prison for failing to disclose he had HIV before he had a one-night stand with a 23-year-old man. Jeffrey Boatright, 27, cried as he was led from the courtroom in handcuffs after being sentenced by visiting Summit County Judge James Kimbler. "All my life I've tried to help anyone I could," Boatright said. "I didn't purposefully try to harm (the victim)." Boatright was convicted of felonious assault at a trial that ended Dec. 11. Defense attorney Pat Summers said Boatright will appeal the case. "There are some issues that need to be litigated," Summer said. Summers asked for probation. He said Boatright volunteered at HIV clinics as a counselor. "It's very hard to justify the jury's verdict given how hard Mr. Boatright has worked to counsel people with HIV," Summers said. Assistant Summit County Prosecutor Nik Buckmeier asked for a six-year sentence. He argued that Boatright spread HIV to the man who will deal with the illness for the rest of his life. "It affects every part of his life," Buckmeier said. The man testified during the trial that he had been tested shortly before he and Boatright had a one-night stand. Both were going through relationship difficulties at the time. The man said Boatright told him he had no sexually-transmitted diseases before they had sex in November 2014. The 23-year-old had previously tested negative for HIV. Two weeks after his encounter with Boatright, he was diagnosed with HIV. Prosecutors said during the trial that Boatright first tested positive for HIV in 2011 when giving plasma. The Summit County Health Department tried to contact Boatright to tell him but he repeatedly ignored calls and skipped meetings. He gave plasma again in 2012 and was told at the plasma center that he had HIV. Summers argued during the trial that Boatright was never notified that he had HIV. The victim in the case attended Wednesday's hearing and wrote a statement to the judge. He did not speak at the hearing. Kimbler noted the difference between typical felonious assault cases-- stabbings and shootings-- and the HIV disclosure law before handing down his sentence. "In stabbings, wounds heal; in shootings, the wounds heal," Kimbler said. "The victim in this case lives with the results forever, until he dies." It's the fourth HIV-disclosure case in Summit County since the law was enacted in 2000. All ended in conviction. AKRON, Ohio -- A Lakemore woman is accused of sending nude photos and videos to her daughter's 14-year-old ex-boyfriend. Dodi Wade, 47, is charged with importuning and disseminating material harmful to juveniles, both fifth-degree felonies. She is being held in the Summit County Jail until her Wednesday court appearance. Wade is accused of sending numerous sexually explicit videos to the boy's cellphone between Nov. 22 and Dec. 25, according to court records. She also asked for the boy to have sex with her several times during text-message exchanges, according to court records. The boy's mother searched his old cellphone on Jan. 5 and found sexually-charged text messages and graphic videos, according to police reports. The woman then reported the incident to police, who launched an investigation. She turned over her son's old cellphone to investigators, police reports say. Wade's son, Cory Wade, said the accusations against his mother are false. "My mother did not do anything and the facts have been falsified by the police department," Wade said. "They told my mother no charges would be brought up by police. Both parties concerned explicitly said the matter had been handled three weeks ago. "As soon as she went to fill out paperwork, they arrested her. I want them to realize they are causing my family grief to the point my siblings can not go to school now." MACEDONIA, Ohio -- A few campaign signs, plucked from the grass at the Villas of Taramina retirement community, have led to a criminal trial involving Macedonia's newly elected mayor, a newly elected city councilman, a local business owner and an 81-year-old man. Mayor Joseph Migliorini, Councilman Kevin Bilkie, Councilman Nick Molnar and former Law Director Joseph Diemert have all been subpoenaed to testify before a jury next Tuesday in the case of Fred Quigley, who removed Migliorini's yard signs from common areas in his retirement community, claiming they violated the community's rules on sign placement. Before Migliorini took office, he asked police to press criminal charges against Quigley, who had a history of public disputes with Migliorini. Quigley was charged with four misdemeanor counts of improper use of property and has since asked for a jury trial in the case. The mayor could face questions about a different sign stealing incident, however, in which he declined to press charges. Two people have also been called to testify from a sign-stealing case two weeks earlier, when authorities had declined to press charges. Here's the background: City balks on records request, while politicians blame opponents City Councilman Nick Molnar set up a sting operation that caught a man stealing Migliorini's campaign signs on video in October. When cleveland.com requested the police report, the city delayed the release for a week. Diemert, a longtime friend of Migliorini, later released a redacted version. Meanwhile, Molnar shared a Facebook post that blamed City Councilwoman Sylvia Hanneken, who was running against Migliorini for mayor, and his opponents for the theft. One unredacted reference in the report included last name Nolan and listed the location of the theft as Molon Labbe CrossFit, owned by Mark Nolan. Nolan, who told cleveland.com that he had no affiliation with either campaign, has now been called to testify in Quigley's trial along with Macedonia Police Sgt. Aaron Clelland and Diane James, who filmed the video. The mayor said in an interview Tuesday he decided not to press charges in the first sign theft because of the apology he received. "That individual came forth and made a public apology and a contribution to the cancer society," Migliorini said, without naming Nolan. "I think that all three of us both agreed that was as much as we wanted." Quigley arrest quickly publicized When police found Quigley removing campaign signs from his retirement community two weeks later, Migliorini directly reported the theft to news media and attached a copy of a police incident report with Quigley's name unredacted. "I am taking the liberty of putting a very hot story in your lap on the eve of the election," Migliorini wrote in a Nov. 2 email to cleveland.com. "Fred Quigley, a Hanneken Supporter was caught on Friday 10/30/15 by multiple residents stealing campaign signs from Migliorini, Molnar and Bilkie from yards and common areas inside of the Villas of Taramina.' Police found several signs inside Quigley's garage, according to the report. Quigley said he had only removed signs from common areas; Villas of Taramina rules state that political signs cannot be displayed in common areas. Migliorini owns the subdivision and said that he had received permission from his homeowners association to place the signs on the common ground. Disputes between Miglorini and Quigley date back years Rancor between Quigley and Migliorini became public in 2011 when Quigley erected a flag pole in advance of the Fourth of July. Migliorini, acting as homeowners association president, ordered Quigley to remove the flagpole in accordance with rules prohibiting full flagpoles. The flag pole story made national news headlines, and Migliorini eventually changed his position on the subject and allowed Quigley to keep his flagpole. Quigley has complained since that he has had terse exchanges with Migliorini and has struggled to earn cooperation of the homeowners association. Migliorini disputes that claim and says the flag pole incident is behind him. "I mean the flag pole issue has been resolved to the degree that the residents in the Village of Taramina are the ones that are satisfied with how the situation was handled," Migliorini said. " The chips fell where they fell. I am fine with it." Quigley's attorney declined to comment until the trial. CLEVELAND, Ohio - A new transportation plan completed by the nonprofit University Circle Inc. aims to improve traffic and pedestrian safety in one of the liveliest and most rapidly developing urban centers in the Great Lakes region. In a broad sense, the $275,000 study tries to envision how a successful Cleveland district can avoid strangling on its own growth and destroying the attractive qualities that are leading to its rapid development. The University Circle mobility plan calls for raised crosswalks, or "speed tables" on East 105th Street, Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and East Boulevard, an area identified as a future "connector" for Case Western Reserve University's main campus and CWRU's Maltz Performing Arts Center at the Temple-Tifereth Israel. Instead of prescribing more parking garages and additional traffic lanes that would attract more and more cars, the plan takes the view that lanes need to be reduced in some cases, and that there's already plenty of parking. It just needs to be managed intelligently to serve visitors, employees and residents. The plan's goal is to make it easier for visitors, residents and employees to find parking, to get around on shuttles or bikes, to use mass transit and to walk safely from place to place. Wanted: walkability "We look at the fact we have 50,000 workers, 10,000 residents and 3 million visitors a year," said Chris Ronayne, president of University Circle. "We're trying to create a transit-oriented neighborhood, a walking-friendly neighborhood, and a park-once place. Our infrastructure ought to meet the same world-class aspiration that our architecture meets." The newly finished report coincides with plans by developers to build 1,500 apartment units in University Circle over the next few years, and follows an earlier analysis of parking. The transportation analysis will lead to the appointment of a traffic management specialist who will help implement the plans, Ronayne said. It also proposes revamping 11 key intersections that pedestrians and vehicles have to share around major institutions including Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Cleveland Institute of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland and John Hay High School and the Cleveland School of the Arts. Authored by the consulting firm of Nelson Nygaard, the same firm that performed a traffic analysis for the current renovation of Public Square in downtown Cleveland, the new study calls for trimming traffic lanes where possible and eliminating "slip lanes" and "pork chop islands" that create shortcuts for motorists at intersections. The plan would also eliminate right turns on red and give pedestrians priority in traffic-light sequences at a number of intersections. "There will be a capital plan to neck down intersections that are beasts of infrastructure, unkempt and unsafe," Ronayne said. The city's Planning Commission approved the proposals in concept in December, although Ronayne said that specific improvements would be designed in detail and brought back to city officials for approval on a case-by-case basis. The starting point The first such project will be $274,000 in improvements on the north side of the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and Carnegie Avenue. University Circle Inc. is raising public and private money for the project. A page from University Circle's mobility plan details how the nonprofit would tame the Carnegie-MLK Dr. intersection, one of the worst spaghetti bowls in the city. The plan calls for decreasing traffic lanes, eliminating cut-throughs and "slip lanes" for cars, widening curb extensions and pedestrian refuges and other physical changes that favor pedestrians and bicyclists. The redesign will install a larger traffic island to decrease the distance to be traversed on MLK by students walking to John Hay High School and the Cleveland School of the Arts from a Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority bus and rapid transit terminal on the east side of the intersection. Today, it's an area motorists often zoom through, sometimes contending with students who cross against the light. University Circle hopes to start building the improvements at the intersection in July. Other intersections identified for near-term improvements include Euclid Avenue at Mayfield Road, next to the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, Euclid Avenue at East 115th Street in the Uptown development, and Euclid Heights Boulevard at Cedar Road. All four intersections are heavily used by public high school students, or students of Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Institute of Art. Accident statistics compiled from the UCI mobility plan. University Circle and Nelson Nygaard based the mobility plan in part on crash statistics gathered by the Ohio Department of Transportation, and on two rounds of public meetings and outreach in 2014 and 2015, and discussions among participants in a 20-member steering committee. Crash stats The accident statistics, as cited in the final study, show that between 2010 and 2014, some 694 crashes occurred at major intersections in University Circle. A map embedded in the report documented accidents between 2010 and 2012 in University Circle and adjacent areas, of which 27 involved injuries to pedestrians, 24 involved injuries to bicyclists and one involved a fatality, which occurred on Euclid Avenue in Uptown. No further details on the accidents were readily available. "Clearly, a priority is reducing the number of incidents," Ronayne said. "Most are sideswipes and fender-benders because of confusing intersections." University Circle's new traffic plans will piggyback on other public improvements including RTA's $200 million Euclid Avenue bus rapid transit HealthLine, completed in 2008. Other big transportation investments completed recently in University Circle include the $15 million Little Italy Red Line Rapid station on Mayfield Road and the new $18.5 million transit hub completed at the foot of Cedar Glen at Carnegie Avenue. University Circle also saw the completion of a new intersection at East Boulevard, MLK Drive and East 105th Street, replacing the former "Suicide Circle" west of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. For Ronayne, the transportation analysis shows how University Circle can maintain its momentum as one brightest spots of growth in the city. "It is the next stage of evolution for University Circle," he said. AVON, Ohio -- All 35 members of the Avon police force wear body cameras to let the public see that "we have nothing to hide." Lt. Dan Fischbach told city council Tuesday night that the force had experimented with several different models before deciding on the one now worn by members of the force. The whole package, including cameras and software, cost $20,000. Fischbach noted that the city's police vehicles also have dashboard cameras, which work in concert with the body cameras. He said the body cameras can be turned off and on by the police officer and are only used during arrests and vehicle stops. "Officers could be on patrol for hours and have nothing going on," he explained. "There is no point in taping hours of nothing consequential." Police Chief Richard Bosley said in today's society, where it seems everyone has a video camera, he would rather his own police officers be able to document incidents on their own. "There was a study that showed 93 percent of the complaints against police officers were dismissed when police had video cameras to show what happened," he said. The video is downloaded into a computer server at the police station at the end of every shift and made available to the public, though Bosley said that can present problems. "We have to black out personal information, when a suspect gives his social security number perhaps," Bosley said. "That could be tricky." In cases of arrests where the video could be needed for court, Bosley said the video is burned onto a DVD for permanent storage. In other business, council voted to advertise for bids for the widening of Chester Road to five lanes from Ohio 83 to the edge of the Cabela's property, about 1,300 feet. Cabela's is paying to have the Chester Road widened to five lanes in front of its property. Eventually the road will be widened all the way to Jaycox Road. Council also authorized the repaving of Ohio 83 from Detroit Road to the Avon Lake city line. Avon Lake is expected to approve the repaving from the city limits to Lake Road. Eighty percent of the cost is being paid by Northeast Ohio Area Coordinating Agency and the cities would pay for the rest. Avon will pay $259,672 for repaving its 1.5 miles of road while Avon Lake would pay $174,000 for its 2.4 mile section of Ohio 83. Why is Avon paying more to pave a shorter distance of Road? Because the road is wider in Avon, up to five lanes in parts, and drops down to two lanes in much of Avon Lake. Anna T., borrowed from Day Dreamer for our South American voyage, raises the Suriname flag. by Paula Deshaies, Guadeloupe Happy smiles to be here, especially in a Dutch-style bakery. Not too much tension, though. Paramaribo is a place where a Temple and a Mosque coexist peacefully side by side. Maroon village Not many English-speaking cruisers pass this way, so the book exchange didn't hold much for us. Greg and our car-rental guy, Richi. Transactions took place at his house, and he picked some oranges from his tree for us when we returned the car (rented for $10/day). The Suriname River and its small tributaries is the only transportation for many. The lovely Suriname was cool, calm, and foggy in the morning. River Breeze Marina - a nice little place run extremely well by Gabi, a former (and to-be-again) cruiser. There's nothing remarkable about most of the blah cement buildings downtown, but the old Dutch buildings are quite charming. There are lots of colorful mosques throughout the cities and towns. There are lots of colorful mosques throughout the cities and towns. One thing that struck us was the generous amounts of stuff available in Paramaribo, especially compared to Guyana and even many Caribbean islands. The guys at Beni's Christmas palace were quite taken with our cruising lifestyle, and gave us some free gifts. The stores here, mostly run by Chinese or Hindustani folks, are either a mish-mash of any & everything or a bizarre combination of goods. Among our favorites were the backpack-flipflop store and the furniture & motorcycle parts store (left below). We couldn't get enough of Li Rong Mall, near our marina, with its friendly workers (below right). The stores here, mostly run by Chinese or Hindustani folks, are either a mish-mash of any & everything or a bizarre combination of goods. Among our favorites were the backpack-flipflop store and the furniture & motorcycle parts store (left below). We couldn't get enough of Li Rong Mall, near our marina, with its friendly workers (below right). One-stop shopping for your weapons and your gift-bags. We're not in Kansas anymore, given the proximity of these items (see the video). No need for price tags when you can just write the price on a cabbage with a Sharpie. I guess presentation isn't everything when it comes to the vegetable display... No need for price tags when you can just write the price on a cabbage with a Sharpie. I guess presentation isn't everything when it comes to the vegetable display... Not exactly the same standards here as in the US. The guy in this meat store was kind enough to tell us "you don't want those..." when we asked about the pork tenderloin. Just outside the view of the camera were two jaded-looking Asian guys chain-smoking behind the register. Not exactly the same standards here as in the US. The guy in this meat store was kind enough to tell us "you don't want those..." when we asked about the pork tenderloin. Just outside the view of the camera were two jaded-looking Asian guys chain-smoking behind the register. Traffic was worse in Paramaribo than in another other place we have visited so far, and much to reminiscent of the DC area! Scooters just drive on sidewalk; it's so much easier. Traffic was worse in Paramaribo than in another other place we have visited so far, and much to reminiscent of the DC area! Scooters just drive on sidewalk; it's so much easier. In our tiny rented car, those of us in the back seat came to dread the far too frequent drempels. The roads in the city were full of potholes. Outside of the city, roads were just as bad, if not worse. Some, like the road to the Brownsberg Nature Center were unpaved bauxite. The buses all have crazy names like many in the Caribbean, but those in Suriname also have images of celebrities. The buses all have crazy names like many in the Caribbean, but those in Suriname also have images of celebrities. The people here use what they have on hand, and the forest is plentiful. Builders use cement forms held up by sticks. Speaking of making due... good luck with those jury-rigged jumper cables, guys!! The shaved-ice man in Domburg square actually shaved his ice with a wood plane. Speaking of making due... good luck with those jury-rigged jumper cables, guys!! The shaved-ice man in Domburg square actually shaved his ice with a wood plane. We'd probably seen just one or two escalators since leaving the US. Here, Nicole and Anna are in their "formal wear," which they could not wait to change out of (Anna had already chucked the sandals I loaned her in favor of flipflops). Checking-in to Suriname requires stops at three places, including the Maritime Authority Suriname. The guys at MAS will not let you in if you are too informally dressed. Men must be in pants and collared shirts. Women's skirts can't be above the knee and shoulders must be covered. Food-shopping is hit or miss. Everything in the stores is dirt cheap, but the selection can be lacking. How can an entire country not have raisins? There were almost no US brands in any store, though we did one KFC and one McDonalds. Most restaurants were local eateries. Our favorite lunch spot had fantastic rotis, and the neon-orange dessert turned out to be quite tasty. Most restaurants were local eateries. Our favorite lunch spot had fantastic rotis, and the neon-orange dessert turned out to be quite tasty. Life on the Suriname River was good to us. Look for more posts to come on our trips to Nieuw Amsterdam, The Brownsberg Nature Preserve, and the Pikin Slee Resort in the jungle, upriver. Suriname... it was hard to leave you. Life on the Suriname River was good to us. Look for more posts to come on our trips to Nieuw Amsterdam, The Brownsberg Nature Preserve, and the Pikin Slee Resort in the jungle, upriver.Suriname... it was hard to leave you. Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana... most of us had not heard much of these countries a year ago. They sound like they should be in Africa and Asia. They are, of course, three tiny countries in South America, and they're the only ones other than Portuguese-speaking Brazil in which Spanish is not the national language.English is the language of Guyana, once known as British Guyana. Unsurprisingly French is the language of French Guiana, which is actually not an independent country but a part of France. And then there's Suriname, formerly known as Dutch Guyana. It's official language is still Dutch. It felt odd to travel to South America and find people speaking Dutch. Suriname is a quirky little place that we found hard to leave.I sound like a broken record detailing Suriname's history because it's similar in many ways to so many other Caribbean countries. Originally inhabited by Arawaks, Arawaks conquered by the Caribs, subsequent colonization by European powers (the Dutch and the English), becoming part of a European state (Netherlands in 1948), and gaining independence (1975). The Dutch and English both set up plantation societies here in the 17th century, with a 1667 treaty sorting out that the Netherlands got to keep Suriname and the English got to keep the city of New Amsterdam, a quaint little spot that they renamed New York.Like many of the Caribbean countries, Suriname has a terrible history of importing blacks from Africa as slaves for the plantations. After slavery was outlawed in 1863, contract laborers were brought in from Indonesia, India, China, and the Middle East.This history has led Suriname to be one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse countries in the world today. It doesn't seem exactly like a melting pot; there are still tensions between ethnic groups. Its seems more like a stew really, with diverse groups maintaining their separate identities but getting along together.While still a plantation society, many African slaves escaped to the jungle. There, they established settlements that remain today, largely unchanged. The life in these Maroon villages is the most primitive we have seen, and we were told that they come closer to the old way of life in Africa than any place in Africa today.Walking around the capital city of Paramaribo, we could see the diversity in all the different faces. We never got used to hearing them all speaking Dutch. In the city, English is spoken by many. We didn't have much trouble communicating, and everyone was very friendly and helpful. Over half the population, including those in the Maroon villages speak Sranan, also known as Taki Taki. This creole language is a fusion of English, Dutch, Portuguese and Central and West African languages.Back when we lived in Virginia, Greg was friends with a former US government official serving in Suriname. Before our venture to this country, Greg emailed him to invite him to visit us there. His response was a solid No. It turns out he spent much of his appointment trying to get a certain drug-dealing, murdering thug put in jail. The guy is now the President. He was pretty certain he'd end up in jail if he set foot in the country.In 1980, the burgeoning independent government was overthrown in a coup. Unsuccessful counter-coups were attempted in the following years, with a military take-over by leader Desi Bouterse in 1982. His rise to power included the blatant execution of 13 prominent citizens at Fort Zeelandia, an event called the December Murders. Conveniently, his Surinamese government granted him amnesty for these crimes.Bouterse continued a dictatorial reign, made easier by the "Telephone Coup," his dismissal of the government in 1990 by phone. Out of power for a period of time, Bouterse returned as president after the 2010 elections. We understand that the wheels of his recent re-election were greased by bringing half the population onto the government payroll. The resulting troubling economic situation has lead to recent devaluations of the currency.Political and economic troubles aside, Suriname is a delightful country. It was great to see the striking differences between the city, the small-town country-side, and the subsistence living in the Maroon villages. Unfortunately, although the people in the capital city are very friendly, the Torarica hotel at the only anchorage near Paramaribo was not at all friendly. They absolutely refused to let us use their dock even for an hour. And they were pretty rude about it. So if you're cruising, just skip Paramaribo and head eight miles upriver to Domburg, where the River Breeze Marina could not be more welcoming.Forthcoming will be numerous posts highlighting much of our travel in the country. In the meantime, here's a general preview. Atlantic City's mayor said on Tuesday that bankruptcy was "back on the table" after New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie vetoed legislation considered essential to the distressed gambling hub's tax base and cash flow. "If the state is not able to come up with the funding we need within the next few weeks, we will have no choice but to declare bankruptcy," Mayor Don Guardian said in a statement. The seaside city's gambling industry, facing increased competition from neighboring U.S. Northeastern states, lost four of its 12 casinos in 2015. The legislation called for casinos to make fixed payments in lieu of taxes and would have added a measure of stability to the city's rapidly shrinking property tax base. Lawmakers first passed it in June. Nearly five months later, Christie vetoed it but said he would consider signing it with certain changes he required. It's a slowdown immediately apparent in data released earlier this week. Singapore's non-oil domestic exports (NODX) contracted 7.2 percent on-year in December, accelerating the decline from November's 3.4 percent fall. Exports to China fell nearly 19 percent on-year in December. "We all know there's a slowdown in the region and the Chinese economy has slowed down. And it has impacted on very many countries. They're buying much less raw materials," Chan said. "For Singapore, because we are a trans-shipping hub this would immediately impact on us as the volume of cargo that would go through." Veteran diplomat Chan Heng Chee, an ambassador-at-large for Singapore, told CNBC that the resulting drop in China's appetite for raw materials was particularly painful. This makes Singapore particularly susceptible to the weakness in China's economy, the world's second largest, which last year grew at its slowest pace in 25 years. Buying and selling goods is a crucial driver of growth for Singapore's economy: companies based on the island supply components that go into smartphones made in China and the shipping industry helps transport raw materials across the world. Wholesale and retail trade makes up nearly 20% of gross domestic product. The economy of tiny Singapore is taking a big hit from the slowdown in China, an impact coming just as the city-state is struggling with a homegrown demographic squeeze. "Singapore is aware that this year the numbers may not look so good and we're trying to see what we can do about it to make ourselves more competitive and perhaps to see what to do about rising costs," said Chan, whose previous positions have included a 1996-2012 stint as Singapore's ambassador to the U.S. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has also kept an eye on the city-state's rock-and-hard-place position. "Costs have been rising. This is an expensive place to do business in terms of wages manufacturing in that sense gets hit and that's noticeable in the figures," Ganeshan Wignaraja, an advisor to the ADB's office of the chief economist, said last week. "On the demand side, you have the close link with the People's Republic of China. Singapore makes many components and some of the goods that go into the phones and the other things China makes, like electronics," he said. "Added to that, you've had in the last couple of years sluggish U.S. demand, another big customer." The picture is complicated by the city-state's looming demographic crunch. By 2030, the number of people over the age of 65 in the city-state is expected to double, making up around 20 percent of the population. At the same time, fewer babies are being born. Singapore's fertility rate was only 1.2 births per woman in 2013, according to World Bank data. That's not just below the replacement rate of 2.1, it's below even famously aging Japan's rate of 1.4 and puts the city-state only fourth from last globally. It's not a recipe likely to produce enough workers to keep costs down. "We had hoped to resolve this problem of falling birth rates and aging by opening up our borders and allowing immigrants to come in. It would help. But there has been a pushback," Ambassador Chan said. "I think Singaporeans have indicated that they find the increase in the population of immigrants in recent years to be something they are not comfortable with." Indeed, resistance to an influx of immigration was likely a driver of the ruling People's Action Party's (PAP) relatively weak performance in the 2011 election. In that election, the PAP's share of the vote slid to its lowest-ever at 60.1 percent and the opposition parties won a record six seats out of parliament's then total 87. Since then, the pace of immigration has been slowed sharply. In 2015 elections, the PAP, which has ruled since the city-state's independence in 1965, won around 69.9 percent of the vote, taking 83 of the expanded parliament's 89 seats. While the market is certainly not cheap with the average stock in the selling at 16.8 times earnings and more than 50 percent of stocks down 20 percent from their highs it's not totally hopeless. In this roller-coaster market, is there any hope for investors who want to dip their toe into investing right now? "That's what happens after a prolonged correction like the one we have been having, that's what the bear has done to so many stocks," the " Mad Money " host said. Jim Cramer spent a lot of time going over charts this weekend, and he was left depressed. That may be your best hope in this treacherous, income starved landscape. An employee of Tupperware Brands on the production line in Joue-les-Tours, France. Cramer said that the only methodical way to make an informed and calculated risk with stocks right now is with dividends, also known as yield protection. Often, investors will stocks with higher yields to be a good bet in times of downturn because regardless of how the stock performs, the yield will provide a recurring rate of investment return. "A solid yield would help you preserve capital on the downside while allowing you to catch any rally that might finally come your way," Cramer said. (Tweet This) Read more from Mad Money with Jim Cramer Cramer Remix: This group is as bad as oil Cramer: Don't bother buying. It's capital preservation time Cramer's game plan: Cash is king next week Cramer warned that when looking for stocks with higher yield, some can be dangerous. For instance, there are plenty of stocks that yield more than 5 percent in the oil patch. But with oil prices dropping as fast as they are, they should be avoided. Then there are stocks like Caterpillar , which yields 5 percent. But with its business so ingrained with China, what happens if China doesn't turn around? "I want a dividend stock where I can confidently buy more into weakness," Cramer said. With this in mind, Cramer was able to recommend only a couple of stocks: AT&T , Verizon , General Motors , Tupperware , EPR Properties , Ventas and Cedar Fair . Cramer recommended Verizon not only because it has a 5 percent yield, because it has better growth than AT&T, and has a lot of promise with FiOS and upside from its recent AOL acquisition. Another 5 percent yielder is General Motors, which raised its guidance considerably, boosted its quarterly dividend and added a $9 billion buyback plan in the last quarter. Cramer knows that the juicy yields of these stocks won't stop the market from going down, but they do offer enough protection to preserve capital while waiting for the sell-off to end. "That may be your best hope in this treacherous, income-starved landscape that increasingly feels like an endless daytime horror show," Cramer said. Security at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, is always tight and this year has proved no exception with the Swiss police testing drones over the mountain resort though what exactly they were being used for remains a mystery. Peter Vanham, the media lead for WEF, spotted the drone flying over the area where the event is taking place and tweeted a picture. TWEET A spokesperson for the regional police confirmed to CNBC that the force was "demonstrating" drones but declined to say for what reason. It's unclear whether these were being used for surveillance and security purposes for this year's WEF, or whether they were being trailed for other events. The idea of security forces using unmanned aircraft is gaining traction. Last year, U.K. counterterrorism police agreed to use drones for surveillance at London airports. Drones can be fitted with high-quality cameras that can live-stream video footage and get to hard-to-reach areas. While it has not been confirmed whether the Davos were being used for security, they were deployed just days after the head of the regional police said that the force had increased security after major terrorist attacks last year across the world. "The bombings in Paris last November represent a new sort of threat for WEF, and require new measures," Walter Schlegel, the regional police force head in charge of security at WEF, said in an article on the state-backed news site Swissinfo. Meanwhile, another Davos attendee spotted a private drone flying around that he claimed was eventually taken down by police, according to his tweet. There is a no-fly zone currently in operation around Davos. TWEET The police force did not comment on this incident. It is not the first time that people have been in trouble at the WEF for using drones. Last year, three journalists for British broadcaster the BBC were questioned by police for using drones at the event. At the time of the event, the BBC confirmed that their journalists "mistakenly took a drone into a no-fly zone area". Steve Bronstein | Photographer's Choice | Getty Images A $250 million acquisition probably sounds like a lot to many employees of privately held companies. But for startups backed by big venture capitalist money, even a deal that big can be a financial bloodbath for employees. Case in point: Re/code spoke to a half dozen former employees of flash sale site Gilt Groupe in the two weeks since its $250 million acquisition by Hudson's Bay Company was announced. And at least three of them lost more than $10,000 as a result of the deal. The outcome is a stark reminder that buying shares in a startup you work for is often a riskier financial bet than it may seem, even at a company as hot as Gilt once was. The story of Gilt, which was once valued by investors at more than $1 billion, also serves as a cautionary tale for the 100-plus startups with valuations of $1 billion or more today: That number on paper can vanish in, essentially, a flash. Gilt spokeswoman Jennifer Miller, who is leaving the company in March, declined to comment. By early last year, when Gilt raised a last-ditch $46 million investment, Gilt employees Re/code spoke to assumed the company's eventual outcome would be financially disappointing, but not as bad as it actually turned out. Hudson's Bay is paying $2.17 for each common share of Gilt, according to documents Gilt provided to shareholders. About $1.71 is going to be paid up front, while the remainder is paid out over time because it is held in an escrow account in case of unforeseen liabilities on the part of the seller. More from Re/code: Meet Wired's 20 tech insiders of the 2016 campaign Apple TV designer Ben Keighran is leaving Why your next car is likely to have its own cell service Since its founding in 2007, Gilt has regularly awarded employees stock options when they are hired and sometimes when they are promoted. Stock options give the holders the right to purchase stock in the company in the future at a pre-determined price per share called a strike price. I spoke to employees who joined in 2009 and 2010, some only a little more than a year after Gilt was founded and when it still had fewer than 100 employees. While employees who joined prior to 2009 received a strike price that turned out to be below the $2.17-per-share sale price, all Gilt employees who joined in 2009 or later received a strike price that turned out to be more than the sale price. For example, people who started working at Gilt in the first half of 2009 received options with a strike price of $2.24, according to documents. That strike price later rose to at least as high as $25 a share at the height of Gilt's growth and popularity. watch now Why does this matter? When these former employees left Gilt after several years, they had three months to decide whether or not they wanted to exercise their right to buy the stock. Some didn't, either because they didn't have the money or didn't trust the company was in a good spot. But several former employees told me that it was common for peers and some managers to talk about this decision as a no-brainer in 2012 and 2013, though the company's senior leadership and HR group were careful never to express an opinion one way or the other. "On a good sales day, managers on the business side would say things like, 'Your shares are going to get you a house someday,'" one former employee said. This environment had an impact on several employees, who were dealing with stock options for the first time, and who chose to buy their shares at a strike price of $2.24 a pop or higher. While that may not have been an exorbitant sum for those who only held a few hundred shares, it was for many when you factor in taxes that had to be paid at the time. watch now Every day seems to bring another round of tumbling global stock markets, but at least one country's shares are jumping. Iran's stock market is having a big week, up 5 percent despite plunging oil prices after international economic sanctions against the country were lifted over the weekend. The Tehran Stock Exchange is still down almost 40 percent from its peak in January 2014, but now that sanctions related to Iran's nuclear program have evaporated, market-watchers inside the Islamic Republic are seeing the money pour back in. CEO Ramin Rabii of Turquoise Partners, one of Iran's largest brokerage firms, described the mood among investors as "euphoric." A trader speaks with a stock market official beneath the electronic board at the Tehran Stock Exchange, Sept. 15, 2010. Caren Firouz | Reuters "Stocks picked up this week, clearly in anticipation of money from outside the country flowing into stocks," he said. Turquoise Partners actively manages 90 percent of all foreign money that flows into Iran's stock market. Most of that money comes from Europe and the Middle East. The fund is focused mainly on Iran's commodity sector and consumer stocks. "Because commodities are out of favor right now, we are concentrating on the potential of the Iranian consumer," said Rabii, who makes investing decisions for Turquoise. The firm has holdings in Iran's pharmaceutical and telecom sectors. Turquoise is also keeping an eye on Iranian banks and financial stocks as banking sanctions melt away. Rabii said he's surprised by the media attention that is often so concentrated around Iran's oil sector. While the low price of oil is certainly hurting the country's economy, it has less of a effect on the Tehran Stock Exchange. Because the state owns many of the oil companies, they are not listed on the exchange. However, with oil trading at multiyear lows in the high $20s per barrel, much of the world's attention in financial markets is indeed focused on Iran's energy industry. If Iran floods world oil markets with more crude oil, those already low oil prices are very likely to drop further. Buying JPMorgan Chase ' stock could help investors protect themselves from this volatile market, Brennan Hawken of UBS Investment Bank said Tuesday. "At this point, there is only one of the bulge-bracket investment banks trading above tangible book value. That's JPMorgan, which has been a little bit of a safe haven to the extent any of these stocks have been safe havens in the market like this," the analyst told CNBC's "Power Lunch." The biggest U.S. bank by assets reported fourth-quarter earnings per share of $1.32 on revenue of $23.7 billion on Thursday. Analysts expected JPMorgan to post earnings per share of $1.26 on revenue of $22.86 billion, according to a Thomson Reuters consensus estimate. Read More Big banks continue retreat from mortgages JPMorgan's stock fell slightly Tuesday. However, Larry McDonald, managing director and head of the U.S. macro strategy at Societe Generale, said Tuesday he believes U.S. banking stocks face risk from overseas. "I feel a lot better about U.S. banks today than any period in last five years, but you have to look at credit default swaps on South Africa, Brazil, Petrobras; these things are moving very fast. That's really driving bank price risk in terms of stocks of banks," he told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street." He also noted that risks from lower oil prices are weighing on the banking sector as well. U.S. crude closed at $28.46 a barrel, its lowest settlement since September 2003. Read More Banks' falling book value could invite activists UBS' Hawken, however, said that oil only constitutes a small portion of the books within big banks. "They're often very, very small portions of the balance sheet. In the example of the money centers, the BofAs, JPMorgans of the world, you're talking about 2, 3 percent of loan books. They're building reserves and holding reasonable amounts of reserves against them. And to a large degree, these are investment-grade credits. They're not really the things you need to be too worried about at this stage," he said. Philippe Lopez | AFP | Getty Images One of Hong Kong's staunchest pro-Beijing lawmakers said a bookseller's tearful confession on state television to a hit-and-run accident more than a decade ago in China is unlikely to appease public concerns that he may have been abducted. The Sunday evening broadcast on China Central Television ended months of mystery over the fate of Gui Minhai, a naturalized Swedish citizen, after he was last seen in October outside his apartment in the Thai seaside town of Pattaya. In the strongest statement yet by anyone in Hong Kong's pro-China camp, Legislative Council President Jasper Tsang said the taped confession by Gui was not enough. "The China Central Television (CCTV) report did not seem to be able to calm the public. As the case drags on, there will be more speculation," Tsang said late on Monday. watch now He said if more details did not come to light, the Hong Kong government should seek assistance from the central government in Beijing. CCTV could not be reached for comment. Since late last year, four other associates of the Hong Kong-based publisher that specializes in selling and publishing gossipy political books on China's Communist Party leaders have been unaccounted for. Hong Kong police confirmed late on Monday that they had been advised by authorities in China's southern Guangdong province that one of them, British passport holder Lee Bo, was in the mainland. Police said Guangdong officials also sent them a letter from Lee addressed to the Hong Kong government, and that Lee's wife confirmed the writing was his. Police said it was similar to one he purportedly sent to his wife in which he said he "voluntarily" went to the mainland. International Concerns The disappearances have prompted fears that mainland Chinese authorities may be using shadowy tactics that erode the "one country, two systems" formula under which Hong Kong has been governed since its return to China from British rule in 1997. "We should not speculate and criticisms should be based on fact," Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying said on Tuesday. "I and SAR government are also very concerned about the case." Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said on Tuesday that he had nothing more to add about Gui's case as Chinese media had already given a "rather detailed" report on his case. On Lee's case, he said he "did not understand" it. watch now Five years on from the start of the bloody civil war in Syria, Saudi Arabia's Prince Turki Al-Faisal told CNBC that the global community has "done nothing" to help. Speaking to CNBC from the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, the influential member of the Saudi Arabian royal family said there had been little progress over Syria, where President Bashar Assad is battling both rebel groups and the so-called Islamic State for control of the country. The civil war has prompted hundreds of thousands of Syrians to flee their home country on top of the 260,000 people estimated to have died in the conflict so far, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Prince Turki Al Faisal Win McNamee | Getty Images News | Getty Images "The world community has been sitting back and doing nothing," Prince Turki told CNBC on Tuesday. "Now there is talk of the Vienna process (Syrian peace talks) and I don't know why, when it comes to the Middle East, it's always a process...(but) we want finality. The world community has the means to put an end to this massacre. Russians, the Americans, the Saudis, the Iranians, the Turks and Europeans, we all have the military, financial and political means to say 'enough is enough.' Stop the fighting, that's the important thing, stop the killing." Iran, 'fix your act' Saudi Arabia and neighboring Iran are involved in Syrian peace talks although both countries are dealing with a dispute of their own. Relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, two Middle Eastern powerhouses divided down religious sectarian lines with Sunni-majority Saudi at odds with Shia-led Iran, have been strained of late following the Saudi execution of a leading Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. Prince Turki said Saudi Arabia had severed diplomatic relations with Iran "because of what they have done" but said both countries were involved in the peace process for Syria. "I don't see any problem in doing something together there," he said, although he added he didn't know when diplomatic ties would be restored. The Iranian foreign minister is also attending Davos this year, and Prince Turki, who is both a former intelligence chief in Saudi Arabia and ambassador to the U.S., was asked what kind of message he would have for him. "Fix your act, remove your troops from Arab territories; they've just admitted to having 200,000 IRGC (Armyof the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution) troops all over the Arab world, why are they there? They should get out, they're the cause of problems there." Trouble at home? Despite the sharp plunge in commodity prices around the world, Australia's finance minister told CNBC that the economy was not ready to give up on a key pillar of the country's economic model resources altogether. "The Australian economy is clearly an economy in transition from resource investment-driven growth to broader drivers of growth," Mathias Cormann told CNBC on Wednesday. "(But) we're not diversifying away from resources. Part of the reason the economy continues to grow strongly is that our export volumes in terms of resources have actually increased very strongly and that is on the back of significant resource investment in recent years," he said. Despite the sharp plunge in global commodity prices on the back of slowing demand from China, Australia's economy grew more than expected in the third quarter as a sharp increase in mining activity boosted net exports, data released in December showed. watch now watch now watch now It's barely a month since global leaders reached a landmark deal to bring climate change under control but now the hard work has begun over how to actually reduce countries' and companies' carbon footprints, business and energy leaders told CNBC. In December, leaders met in Paris for the United Nations' COP21 climate change conference where they agreed to legally binding deal on limiting greenhouse gas emissions. The deal, signed up to by 195 countries, aims to limit global temperature increases to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and for more developed countries to assist poorer ones in achieving that. A month after the deal was signed, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change told a CNBC panel at the World Economic Forum (WEF) that now's not the time for celebration. COP21 did surpass my expectations but before we sit here and congratulate ourselves I think the success is not yet on the table," she told CNBC's WEF panel and audience on Wednesday. "Because whether Paris is successful is going to depend on how we interpret and how we act upon the very strong signals that came out of Paris, we need to keep that in mind. (The deal) was the easy part and now comes the difficult part." The demonization of fossil fuels? CNBC's panel on business and climate change, with speakers Stuart T. Gulliver, Feike Sijbesma, Christiana Figueres, Steve Sedgwick and Doug McMillon. World Economic Forum The COP21 deal is ambitious, aiming to effectively eliminate carbon emissions in future. One global industry affected at first-hand from such a target is the fossil fuel sector. Figueres said it was important that oil and gas companies were not demonized. "(We should not be) demonizing anybody, whether it's a country or the fossil fuel industry, it doesn't help." "I have been very consistent that the oil and gas industry has to play its part, there is no other way. They sit on access to capital, technology and a mass of engineers who can all be moved over to the new economies while they transition out." Stuart Gulliver, chief executive of HSBC, told the CNBC panel that it was "not a question of leaving the fossil fuel industry behind." "Oil and gas companies are major tax contributors to many countries. We cannot isolate these companiesso there has to be an orderly transition" or government budget could be impacted, Gulliver warned. "What I think is dangerous is this thought there is suddenly some binary moment where everybody effectively abandons the oil and gas and mining companies, it's certainly not workable for a lot of the emerging economies," he said. Corporate commitments Companies are proving that they can lead the way when it comes to going green. One multinational company moving towards a more environmental business practice is Walmart. The company has three big goals, including being supplied with renewable energy, to eliminate waste and to sell more products that are sustainably packaged. In 2010, the company set the goal of eliminating 20 million metric tons of greenhouse gases from its system. It recently announced that it had achieved an elimination of 28 million metric tons. President and Chief Executive Officer of Walmart Stores, Doug McMillon, told CNBC that the company was planning to improve on those targets going forward. "What we're trying to do is to use the size and skill of the company to make a difference in the world and to lead by example and to set an example, and at the same time influence those that we do business within our supply chain, large and smallacross the gamut of products that we sell." Feike Sijbesma, chief executive of Dutch nutrition and materials firm DSM agreed that the growth of a company could accompany green policies. "Growth of the economy and growth of profits in companies can go together for a change, it's not like we have to go back to ancient times and all be very cold, that is not necessary. Today, the technology is available to make the transition from the fossil age to the bio-renewable age we're entering right now." Opportunities were present in China in terms of water and waste management, innovation and automation, Tricoire said. "There is plenty of good news coming from the mainland (China) for a company like ours. There's a big focus on energy efficiency to fight pollution and emissions after these big commitments from the government," he told CNBC on Wednesday. Jean-Pascal Tricoire, chief executive of multinational electricity and energy management company Schneider Electric told CNBC that a push towards greener practices in China was leading his company to re-position its strategy on the mainland. A push for greener policies and technologies in China after it pledged to cut carbon emissions at the United Nations COP21 climate change conference in December has become an opportunity for companies operating in the country. In December, global political and economic leaders met in Paris for the United Nations' COP21 climate change conference where they agreed to legally binding deal on limiting greenhouse gas emissions. The deal, which was largely led by both China and the U.S., includes a target to limit global temperature increases to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and also for more developed countries to assist poorer ones in achieving that target. Feike Sijbesma, chief executive of Dutch nutrition and materials group DSM told CNBC that the materials industry was in a state of flux as the world transitioned from the "fossil age" to the "bio-renewable age." "We at DSM have invested a lot in that and we are fully prepared for that transition and I think it's really happening now." Despite corporate preparation for a new era of renewables, geopolitical and macroeconomic events such as the lower price of oil and slowdown in China have made companies more aware of cost-savings before a downturn really hits home. DSM's Sijbesma said that a cost-cutting program at DSM was progressing "fairly well." "I hope that the fundamentals in China remain in place and that the growth in China will hopefully not disappoint us too much." Reflecting on the COP21 conference in Paris, Sijbesma believed that "real progress" "I think we really made a stepping stone for a new future and the low oil price and carbon pricing (which is an excellent moment to introduce that right now) will introduce this transition to a new age." Net outflows from emerging markets (EM) weren't just bigger than expected last year, there's more pain to come this year, the Institute of International Finance said. Emerging markets faced a whopping net $735 billion in capital outflows in 2015, including unrecorded flows from net errors and admissions, the IIF, a global financial industry association said Wednesday. In October, the IIF had projected $540 billion in net outflows, the first net negative figure since 1988, although that forecast didn't include unrecorded flows. This year isn't likely to be much better, IIF said, forecasting total net capital outflows of $448 billion including net errors and omissions. The finger is pointed squarely at China, although some of the outflows may have been from mainland corporates trying to be prudent. "While most emerging markets have been under pressure, the dominant driver behind this sea-change in emerging market capital flows has been flows to China," the IIF said, citing "retrenchment" of $110 billion of non-resident capital. "The 2015 outflows largely reflected efforts by Chinese corporates to reduce dollar exposure after years of heavy dollar borrowing, as expectations of persistent renminbi appreciation were replaced by rising concerns about a weakening currency," it said. "China also experienced rising resident capital outflows, as domestic investors sought to move money overseas, and so did other major emerging markets, including Korea, Russia, and South Africa," IIF said. A migrant woman and her children waits on a railway track after Hungarian police sealed the border with Serbia near the village of Horgos, Serbia, September 14, 2015, near the Hungarian migrant collection point in Roszke. Marko Djurica | Reuters Brussels is to scrap rules that make the first country a refugee enters responsible for any asylum claim, revolutionising the bloc's migration policy and shifting the burden from its southern flank to its wealthier northern members. The "first-country" requirement is the linchpin of the EU refugee system. But it has become politically toxic for EU leaders as Germany and other states criticise frontier countries such as Greece and Italy for failing to register and shelter the 1.1m people that have poured into Europe from the Middle East and North Africa. The policy essentially broke down last year, when Germany waived its right to send hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers back to other EU member states, but exhorted its reluctant partners to shoulder more responsibility. watch now The European Commission has concluded the rule which is part of the Dublin regulation is "outdated" and "unfair", and will be scrapped in a proposal to be unveiled in March, according to officials briefed on its contents. The move could oblige some EU members such as Britain to take in many more refugees, since it would become harder to send them back to neighbouring countries. It could also increase the pressure on EU members to back a formal quota system and common asylum rights and procedures to spread the burden across the union. European Council president Donald Tusk on Tuesday warned that the EU had "no more than two months to get things under control" or face "grave consequences". Changing the rules on who is responsible for refugees when they arrive would mark a victory for Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi, who has repeatedly argued that the law is unfair and that other member states should do more to help with the refugee crisis. Replacing the "first country of entry" principle is likely to prove technically and politically tricky. Countries in northern Europe such as the UK are net beneficiaries from the status quo, able to transfer asylum-seekers back to other EU states quickly. Although the UK has an opt-out on EU migration policy, it has opted into the Dublin rules for this reason. Europe's economy is in the best shape in six years though progress in the recovery is slow, the chief executive of Credit Suisse told CNBC. "I think Europe is in the best position it has been since 2010," Tidjane Thiam told CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday. His comments come as Europe traded sharply lower on Wednesday, taking cues from a weak session in Asia and fresh lows in the oil markets. The pan-European STOXX 600 stumbled around 3 percent in early deals, with all major European benchmarks also down in excess of 2 percent. U.S. stock index futures pointed to a sharply lower open, with Dow futures sinking in excess of 300 points. "I've never been optimistic on Europe. I'm actually quite on the record as a euro bear, so I think that the fact that I swing to a positive here I hope is meaningful," he added. The euro zone economy grew 0.3 percent in the third quarter of 2015, a slowdown from the 0.4 percent recorded in the previous quarter. Billionaire financier George Soros has warned that the European Union is on the "verge of collapse" over the migrant crisis and is in "danger of kicking the ball further up the hill" in its management of the issue which has seen more than a million migrants and refugees arrive in the region in 2015. In an interview with the New York Review of Books, Soros added that the German Chancellor Angela Merkel is key to solving the crisis. Merkel led Europe's response to the migrant crisis, opening Germany to the refugees that had travelled from the Middle East, in particular Syria, to try and find a new home in Europe. The decision by the German leader marked a sea-change in her policy. In the interview, Soros said he welcomed Merkel's move. "There is plenty to be nervous about," the financier said. "As she (Merkel) correctly predicted, the EU is on the verge of collapse. The Greek crisis taught the European authorities the art of muddling through one crisis after another. This practice is popularly known as kicking the can down the road, although it would be more accurate to describe it as kicking a ball uphill so that it keeps rolling back down." "Merkel correctly foresaw the potential of the migration crisis to destroy the European Union. What was a prediction has become the reality. The European Union badly needs fixing. This is a fact but it is not irreversible. And the people who can stop Merkel's dire prediction from coming true are actually the German people. " "Now it's time for Germans to decide: Do they want to accept the responsibilities and the liabilities involved in being the dominant power in Europe?" Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif World Economic Forum Diplomatic relations between two of the Middle East's powerhouses may be at a new low but a military conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia is not a possibility, Iran's foreign minister said on Wednesday. Relations between the two countries, which are largely divided down sectarian lines with Shiite-majority Iran vying for influence in the Middle East against Sunni-led Saudi Arabia, hit a low point earlier this month following the Saudi execution of a leading Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. In retaliation for the execution, the Saudi embassy in Tehran was attacked and, despite condemnation from the Iranian government on the attack, Saudi severed diplomatic relations. A war of words has followed but Iran's foreign minister tried to assuage fears that a deeper military conflict could be brewing. "(Will there be a war?) No. I think our Saudi neighbors need to realize that confrontation is in the interest of nobody," Javad Zarif said, speaking at a panel on Iran's future at the World Economic Forum in Davos. "There is no threat coming from Iran to any of its neighborsand are prepared to engage with confidence-building measures with our neighbors." Hopes of a new era of economic prosperity and political inclusion emerged over the weekend when 10 years of sanctions against Iran were lifted after the country convinced international inspectors that it had curtailed its nuclear ambitions. The ending of sanctions against the country, which have isolated it economically and diplomatically, came after a landmark nuclear deal between Iran and global powers. Zarif said that the origin of the breakdown in relations with Saudi Arabia came in 2013 when a preliminary nuclear deal was reached, making Saudi Arabia nervous. "I want to make a point though that since the agreement in Geneva in 2013 our Saudi neighbors have been panicking but there is no need to panic, our friends. Iran is there to work with you and Iran doesn't want to exclude anyone from this region. There is no need to engage in a confrontation." Zarif said those that had attacked the Saudi embassy were being prosecuted but that Saudi had been "looking for an excuse to break diplomatic relations." "We should try our best, as Iran has done, to exercise self-restraint and to come to our senses and engage in serious discussions." He added that extremism and terrorist groups such as the so-called Islamic State were a common enemy that needed to be defeated. More hostility with its neighbors is the last thing Iran needs as it takes the first steps to get its beleaguered economy, isolated by a decade of sanctions, back on track. Mohammad Agha Nahavandian, chief of staff of the Presidency of the Islamic Republic of Iran, told the WEF audience that Iran had the potential to see its gross domestic product (GDP) expand 8 percent. "Iran has the potential to come out of this recession and sanctions with a growth rate of 8 percent, that's feasible, being mindful of the fact that there are so many global companies who have expressed interest in the energy sector, ICT and transit routes in Iran, be it railway, roads or airways," he said. "Of course, there are things to be done and the administration is mindful of the fact that the business environment has to improve a great deal and we've already started that," he added. ISIS has allegedly cut its fighters' salaries by as much as 50 percent, according to newly-leaked internal documents from the jihadist group, which controls parts of Syria and Iraq. The documents, obtained and translated by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, a research fellow at the Middle East Forum who studies the Islamic State, showed the salaries were halved at the end of last year. "So on account of the exceptional circumstances the Islamic State is facing, it has been decided to reduce the salaries that are paid to all mujahideen by half, and it is not allowed for anyone to be exempted from this decision, whatever his position. Let it be known that work will continue to distribute provisions twice every month as usual," reads the document. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the cuts were directed primarily at fighters in the city of Al-Raqqa, the de facto base of the Islamic State. The Observatory added on its website that the decision had apparently stirred feelings of resentment among the Syrian militants, who believe their salaries have been cut in order to increase foreign fighters' salaries, who are already paid double. ISIS soldiers earn between $400 and $1,200 a month, plus a $50 stipend for their wives and $25 for each child, according to the Congressional Research Service. Landlords operating illegal hotels are raking in big bucks on Airbnb, according to a new study, funded by the hotel-lodging industry. The study found that multi-unit hosts, who operate two or more units, accounted for nearly 40 percent of Airbnb's total revenue for the year of $1.3 billion or roughly $500 million in revenue. The study, released Wednesday, was conducted by researchers at Penn State University's School of Hospitality Management, and the American Hotel & Lodging Association paid for the data. The association is a trade group and has been critical of Airbnb in the past. Airbnb disputes the research. The study also found nearly one-third of Airbnb's $1.3 billion in revenues over a year, or $378 million, came from full-time operators renting out their units for 360 days per year in 12 of the nation's largest metro areas. Broken down individually, that amounted to $142,331 that each host earned using Airbnb. The new data suggests a lot of activity on Airbnb centers around homes and properties that are owned by professional or commercial landlords, rather than individuals or families renting out their primary homes for short-term rentals. "Unfortunately, this report shows a troubling trend as a growing number of residential properties are being rented out on a full-time, commercial basis, in what amounts to an illegal hotel," said Katherine Lugar, chief executive of the association. She went on to say that Airbnb is being used as a "platform for dodging taxes, skirting the law and flouting health and safety standards." However, the San Francisco-based start-up disputed the study and said, "The overwhelming majority of Airbnb hosts are middle-class people who occasionally share the only home in which they live," said a spokesman in an email to CNBC. "This study shows the hotel industry gets what it pays for, which in this case is a specious study intended to mislead and manipulate." Read MoreIn latest battle, Uber notches win over New York City The second-term Republican, who devoted most of his annual State of the State speech Tuesday night to the emergency in Flint, also pledged greater transparency. He said he would release on Wednesday his own emails regarding Flint's water, which became contaminated with too much lead when the city switched its water source in 2014 as a cost-cutting measure. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder said he had failed Flint residents but pledged to take new steps to fix the city's drinking water crisis, starting with committing millions in state funding and deploying more National Guard members. Michigan National Guard Staff Sergeant William Phillips of Birch Run, Michigan, helps Flint resident Amanda Roark and her son Dash take bottled water out to her vehicle after she received it at a Flint Fire Station January 13, 2016 in Flint, Michigan. "I'm sorry most of all that I let you down," Snyder said in the 49-minute address, which came as his administration is engulfed in criticism from across the country and as hundreds of protesters demonstrated outside the Capitol. "You deserve better. You deserve accountability. You deserve to know that the buck stops here with me. Most of all, you deserve to know the truth, and I have a responsibility to tell the truth." The lead contaminationwhich can lead to behavior problems and learning disabilities in children and kidney ailments in adultshas left Flint residents unable to drink unfiltered tap water. The National Guard, state employees, local authorities and volunteers have been distributing lead tests, filters and bottled water. Snyder aides pledged that by the end of the week officials would visit every household in Flint to ensure they have water filters. Democrats said Snyder only recently admitted the magnitude of the fiasco, at least three months too late. "This is the kind of disaster, the kind of failure to deliver basic services that hurts people's trust in government," House Minority Leader Tim Greimel said. In his speech, Snyder committed $28 million more in the short term to pay for more filters, bottled water, school nurses, intervention specialists, testing and monitoringon top of $10.6 million allocated in the fall. The money also would replace plumbing fixtures in schools with lead problems and could help Flint with unpaid water bills. The new round of funding, which requires approval from the GOP-led legislature, is intended as another short-range step while Snyder works to get a better handle on the long-range costs. He plans to make a bigger request in his February budget proposal. Snyder also announced the deployment of roughly 130 more National Guard members to the city and revealed his appeal of President Barack Obama's denial of a federal disaster declaration for the area. "To you, the people of Flint, I say tonight as I have before: I am sorry, and I will fix it," he said. Migrants are not to blame for sexual attacks and terrorism incidents across Europe, the Swedish prime minster told CNBC, just days after his country introduced tighter border controls. Reports of a rise in sexual assault incidents across major European cities from Cologne to the Swedish capital Stockholm have been blamed by a number of politicians and campaign groups on the influx of migrants to the continent. But Stefan Lofven, the prime minister of Sweden said that the migrants should not be blamed for attacks in Sweden. "Sexual harassment is not automatically binding to migration and immigration. We have had sexual harassment in Sweden for many, many years, unfortunately," Lofven told CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday. "What it now takes is to be very clear that this is not appropriate, it is absolutely out of line and we need to take a very clear message now to show to these young girls and women they are of course entitled to walk in the city without sexual harassment." The outlook for the world may be uncertain but that shouldn't mean companies and governments should "get paralyzed," the chief executive of Dutch electronics giant Philips told CNBC. Speaking from the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos on Wednesday, Royal Philips Electronics chief executive Frans van Houten retained a generally positive outlook, adding that the tech sector would keep doing its bit to contribute to the world economy. "The world is an uncertain place, and that is concerning, I think it's also the big topic here at Davos, but that doesn't mean that we then should get paralysed," he told CNBC. "Tech can help population health, make health more accessible, more affordable. Tech can also get people get more included in the economy and contribute and drive growth, and growth and wealth are great contributors to a safer world." watch now watch now watch now The Russian government is planning to privatize state banking assets but the timing is not so good, the president of VTB Bank, one of Russia's largest lenders, told CNBC on Wednesday. "I spoke to the prime minister and ministers in the government and they seem to be very much eager to continue privatization but the timing is perhaps not the very best," Andrey Kostin said. Speaking to CNBC from the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Kostin said there were a number of reasons why the government was keen to progress with a plan to sell stakes in key state assets. "They want to do it to get extra cash for the budget and also perhaps ideologically they want to continue the program of privatization. As Russia's recession continues against a backdrop of low oil prices and lower oil revenues for the state, there has been talk at the highest levels that the Kremlin could consider selling stakes in state banking assets such as VTB and fellow partly state-owned counterpart, Sberbank. Photographer | Collection | Getty Images The Russian state owns a majority 60.9 percent stake in the second-largest Russian banking group VTB and holds 50 percent of the share capital plus one voting share in Russia's largest lender Sberbank. VTB's Kostin said the government could sell up to a 10 percent stake in VTB within existing laws "or they could go beyond (that)." "I don't think it will change anything if the government sells 10 percent but if they go further and the government stake is below 50 percent it might change something I'm prepared to work with any shareholders." Singapore arrested 27 Bangladeshi construction workers under the city-state's Internal Security Act (ISA) for allegedly encouraging armed jihad against the Bangladeshi government, the Ministry of Home Affairs said. Twenty-six of those arrested were members of a closed religious study group that supported armed jihad, the MHA said in a statement. "Members were encouraged to return to Bangladesh and wage armed jihad against the Bangladeshi government. They had also sent monetary donations to entities believed to be linked to extremist groups in Bangladesh," the statement said. "A number of the group members admitted that they subscribed to the belief that they should participate and wage armed jihad on behalf of their religion. Several of them contemplated travelling to and participating in armed jihad in the Middle East. Additionally, some of the group members supported the violent actions of extremist/terrorist groups that killed Shi'ites because they considered Shi'ites to be 'deviant.'" Around 89 percent of Bangladesh's population of around 169 million is Muslim and most are Sunni. The MHA said the group members took measures to avoid detection by authorities as well as sharing jihadi-related material among themselves and targeting recruitment of other Bangladeshi nationals to increase their membership. If your college applications are all submitted, congratulations! Now roll up your sleeves. With applications in, you have the bandwidth to make a last-ditch effort to land scholarships that will help pay for school. Hero Images | Getty Images With tuition, room and board at four-year public colleges and universities averaging nearly $20,000 even for in-state applicants, and private schools charging an average of nearly $44,000, landing scholarships is crucial for many students. And it can be some of the most lucrative things a student can do, said Mark Kantrowitz, publisher and vice president of strategy for cappex.com, a college search website. "The typical high school senior will match anywhere from 50 to 100 scholarships using any of the [online national search] services," Kantrowitz said. And once students have written a few applications, it becomes easier to reuse what they have, he said, so subsequent applications take less time. The process may seem arduous, Kantrowitz said, but if a student spends 10 hours applying for scholarships and wins a $500 award, that is equivalent to earning $50 an hour. Often, he said, scholarships with smaller awards or ones that require essays attract fewer applicants, boosting your odds of winning. Cappex is just one of several national scholarship databases, including fastweb.com, bigfuture.collegeboard.com, scholarships.com and the scholarship search area on petersons.com. All of them provide extensive listings of scholarships available across the country. watch now Those listings offer a wealth of choices, but another place to find attainable scholarships at this point in the year is your local area, said Lisa Micele, director of college counseling at the University of Illinois Laboratory High School in Urbana, Illinois. Her office is "being bombarded with the local ones right now," she said. "We have seen with our local ones that they are not being picked up by the search engines," so the application pool is smaller, or the scholarships require that "you must live in Champaign County or in our school district." The organizations sponsoring these scholarships tend to want to benefit the community around them, Micele said. These scholarships may offer smaller awards, but Micele cautioned against passing them by. "If you think you are going to find some national scholarship right now that's going to give you a full ride, that's kind of hard," she said. And there is no reason a student can't apply for and win multiple, smaller awards. "The students you hear about who get a gazillion dollars apply to everything," Micele said. Many students start the scholarship search around the time they finish their applications, but Micele encouraged younger students and their families to think about starting earlier. It is much easier to choose among colleges you know you may be able to afford than to have to opt for a backup school because you find out late that your favorite is financially out of reach. Claudia McKenzie, now a sophomore at Stanford, started her search as a junior in high school. She found that some of the essays she wrote for college applications could be repurposed for scholarships, and that made the process more efficient, she said. McKenzie used the national databases but was more successful with local scholarships, including one she won for $48,000 over four years. "You are up against a much smaller pool" for local scholarships, she said, adding that you are also more likely to be invited to interview for the award, so you can highlight things on your resume and "make yourself stand out as an individual." Beware of college policies One issue to be aware of with scholarships is that they can affect other aid you may be receiving. Some aid, like the income-based federal Pell grants, are not affected by any other source of funding. And about 80 percent of colleges will first reduce the loans they offer you by the amount of an outside scholarship, then cut grants only if your outside scholarship exceeds your loans, Kantrowitz said. The remaining colleges, though, will reduce their own grant aid if a student receives an outside scholarship, Kantrowitz said. "Scholarship displacement," as that practice is known, "is one thing the scholarship providers don't like," he said. In awarding money to students, scholarship grantors are trying to make college more accessible, he added. However, when colleges leave all their loans in place in the face of new scholarship aid, "there is no net financial benefit" to students. For that reason, it is a good idea to be certain of a college's policy regarding outside scholarship money. Some list their policy on their websites, but for others, the financial aid office may be the best resource. Students who are weighing offers from two schools may find that a difference in policy tips the scales for them, Kantrowitz said. For her part, McKenzie found that her scholarships covered her expected student contribution at Stanford, but because the awards she won exceeded that amount, Stanford counted the remainder as an offset to the university's grant aid. (Stanford's policy is described on its website.) McKenzie was able to use some of her scholarship funds for things like a new computer when hers broke, she said, but the policy was frustrating. Don't be afraid of the financial aid office. You are not going to get a negative mark against you in the admissions office if you call up and say, 'Can we talk about my aid package?' Lisa Micele director of college counseling at the University of Illinois Laboratory High School The long-awaited Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the European Union (EU) and the U.S. would be a boon for the global business, the head of one Germany's biggest companies told CNBC on Wednesday. "I think TTIP would be a terrific help for the world economy, so therefore I hope the U.S. and Europe get along on all these different aspects they still have to solve. I believe it could really drive economic growth in Europe and the U.S.," Frank Appel, the Chief Executive Officer of Deutsche Post DHL said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Wednesday. TTIP negotiations for a free trade agreement between the U.S. and the European Commission, the executive wing of the EU, have been ongoing since 2013. The deal is controversial due in part to the potential eradication of subsidies and other support given to domestic and regional businesses. In October, hundreds of thousands of people protested in Berlin against the planned deal, saying it was anti-democratic and would lower food safety, labor and environmental standards. CAZENOVIA, N.Y. Kenneth C. Gardiner has joined Cazenovia Colleges board of trustees. He will serve on its investment, finance, and audit committees. Gardiner, a partner at Dannible & McKee, LLP, has worked in accounting for more than 30 years. He is the partner-in-charge for assurance services, quality control, technology, and services to construction contractors at the firm. We are very pleased to have Ken joining our board, Margery A. Pinet, interim president of Cazenovia College, said in a news release. His accounting and employee-benefits background will be a great asset to our financial and accounting-related committees. A graduate of Le Moyne College, Gardiner has numerous professional and community organization affiliations, including chairman and president of the Greater Syracuse Business Development Corporation, chairman of the New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants Construction Contractors Committee, and treasurer of the board of directors for the Onondaga County Water Authority. Contact The Business Journal News Network at news@cnybj.com 180116NEW ELECTORAL COMMISSIONER VISITS BOUGAINVILLE By Aloysius Laukai The newly appointed Electoral Commissioner who replaces, ANDREW TRAWEN,PATILIAS GAMATO arrived in Buka today to sign a Memorandum of Agreement between the PNG Electoral Commission and the Autonomous Bougainville Government. The signing was done in Buka this afternoon. The MOA will strengthen the partnership between the PNG Electoral Commission and ABG in terms of the preparations for the upcoming 2017 National Elections. New Dawn FM understands that the PNG Electoral Commission is yet to settle outstanding bills from service providers for the 2012 General Elections. The former Bougainville Electoral Commissioner, REITAMA TARAVARU had earlier released the figure at TWO MILLION KINA. Ends 200116 ROLLOVER SOON By Aloysius Laukai The ABG Minister for Finance, Planning and Treasury and member for Motuna/Huyono/Tokunutui, ALBERT PUNGHAU yesterday explained why payments to service providers are still pending. Speaking on NEW DAWN FM last night, MR. PUNGHAU said that the Finance Department will rollover funds soon for services to be paid. He said that the ABG Budget was approved by the National Minister for Finance last week and just needed the accounts to be opened for the payments to be made. New Dawn FM understands that the Government Books close at the end of December and re-opens in March the following year. Ends Ellen is an assistant city editor for spring 2017. She has reported on the Missouri General Assembly and Columbia city government for the Missourian. Reach her at: eccg25@mail.missouri.edu or in the newsroom at (573) 882-5720 Follow this search Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Save Manage followed notifications Close Followed notifications Please log in to use this feature Log In Don't have an account? Sign Up Today Types of obituaries The Missourian publishes two types of obituaries family obituaries and life stories. A family obituary is the version submitted by a funeral home or family. Please see the submission form for details on cost and deadlines. Family obituaries A life story is a closer look at a person's life and involves a reporter contacting family and friends. Life stories are based on newsworthiness and consent of the family. Life stories. Visit these 9 enduring favorites over Homecoming weekend Here are just nine of Columbia's true cultural and culinary institutions, all worth visiting this weekend. Experience Uganda as God works in us, and New Hope Uganda. March 10, 2015 - Barry C. Brown (left) moves a massive tube into place before using a Vactor Combination Truck to remove water from potholes to make way for asphalt as a Division of Public Works makes its way down Riverdale near Shelby Drive filling large potholes that recently opened up from the freezing weather. (Mike Brown/The Commercial Appeal) SHARE By Wayne Risher of The Commercial Appeal Memphis Public Works Director Robert Knecht doesn't think Memphis roads are as bad as a new study implies. Knecht said he'd rate a majority of Memphis roads in at least fair condition, and roads that have been resurfaced in recent years are in even better shape. The city repaved about 685 lane miles -- more than a tenth of 6,818 lane miles of city-maintained roads -- from July 1, 2012 through June 30, 2015, Knecht said. Public Works crews had a banner year filling potholes in fiscal 2015, patching 79,260 potholes in the year ending last June 30, compared to 47,504 the previous year. "I think a majority of our streets are in fair condition, and we have a lot of streets that are in good condition because we've resurfaced a lot of streets in the past few years," Knecht said. Knecht was reacting to a report by transportation research group TRIP (The Road Information Program) that found 23 percent of local- and state-maintained major urban roads in Memphis are in poor condition compared to 20 percent in Chattanooga, 9 percent in Nashville and 6 percent in Knoxville. Statewide, 11 percent of major urban roads are in poor condition, showing signs of deterioration including potholes, ruts and cracks, TRIP says. TRIP and American Automobile Association Memphis held a news conference Tuesday to discuss the study. TRIP says a new federal surface transportation program will help by increasing highway funding by 15 percent, but won't solve the problem. The study points out the inability of Congress to agree on a long-term source of adequate funding to fix the nation's transportation infrastructure, but TRIP didn't wade into the discussion about increasing Tennessee fuel taxes. Knecht said he wasn't sure what data was used by TRIP, but it appeared the report dealt more with state highways and interstates. A TRIP spokeswoman said the numbers were based on Federal Highway Administration statistics. TRIP said 52 percent of major roads in Memphis were in poor or mediocre shape, compared to 36 percent in Chattanooga, 20 percent in Nashville and 14 percent in Knoxville. The report said costs of road deficiencies, including higher vehicle operating costs, congestion-related delays and traffic crashes, ranged from $1,821 a driver in Memphis to $1,282 in Knoxville. Knecht said the city has made progress on road repaving and responding quickly to citizen complaints about potholes. Potholes reported to the city are fixed in an average of two days, better than the city's goal of five days, he said. He expects the city to keep improving. "Mayor Strickland is very focused on our core services. Resurfacing streets and maintaining streets are very important in that grouping. There's going to be an ongoing focus on doing what we can in that area," Knecht said. One bright spot for Memphis: The city was nowhere close to making TRIP's list of 25 urban regions with the poorest major roads. The list, released last summer, started with cities at 42 percent of roads in poor condition and topped out with San Francisco-Oakland at 74 percent. By Kevin McKenzie of The Commercial Appeal This spring will mark the second year since the app-based transportation firms Uber and Lyft rolled into Memphis. The San Francisco-based companies harness smart phone technology and peoples private cars to make inroads into territory that had been reserved for closely regulated local taxi firms and others in the vehicle for hire industry. Few know that industry better in Memphis than Ham Smythe IV, president of the local Yellow Cab, Checker Cab and Premier Transportation Services companies. Ride the Roo, a bus with a kangaroo on top that shuttles between Overton Square and Cooper-Young, is one of Premiers recent innovations. His father, William Hamilton Smythe III, is chairman and owner of Yellow Cab while he owns the other firms with Memphis roots dating back to the 1850s. How have Uber and Lyft changed the vehicle for hire industry in Memphis? Smythe IV said the influx of transportation network firms has been a challenge, but one thats being met. We now accept trips by app, by text, by phone calland even by fax, Smythe said. Our weekly Business Q&A answers your questions about business and customer service in Memphis. Have a question? Submit it to Kevin.McKenzie@commercialappeal.com. By Bob Mehr of The Commercial Appeal In the wake of David Bowie's death earlier this month, concert tributes have been announced (or expanded) the world over, from New York City to London. Musicians in the Bluff City will be offering up their own salute, and helping benefit St. Jude in the process, with Saturday night's "Memphis Does Bowie!" event. "Everyone was struck by Bowie's death; he meant so much to so many people," says musician Graham Winchester, who put the concert together. "I wanted to pay tribute to him but also pull something else in that a lot of people cared about, and thought of St. Jude. I thought about how global Bowie's reach was, and how global St. Jude's reach is. And that maybe it could all be turned into something positive that helps people." Winchester initially booked the concert at Minglewood Hall's smaller 1884 Lounge, but the response both from musicians wanting to participate and fans buying pre-sale tickets was so strong that the show was moved to the venue's main room. Nearly 20 acts are to slated perform, including Jack Oblivian (who will be backed by the original lineup of his Tennessee Tearjerkers), Super Witch, The Incredible Hook, The Subtractions and Lorette Velvette, Brian Sharpe, Zigadoo Moneyclips, Tiffany Harmon, the new project from Clay Otis and Luke White, and Winchester's own band. "Bowie's career was so ever-changing, and went through so many eras, so many different types of music and that's reflected in the really diverse group of people that reached out to perform," says Winchester. "There are so many bands playing this that have never even shared a stage before. So the show will be bringing these different crowds and different micro-scenes in Memphis together, which is really in the [spirit] of Bowie's music." Most of the artists are slated to do two to four songs with Winchester expecting the set list to include some 60-plus numbers in total. "I have a precise schedule I drew up to make sure everyone gets their songs and we keep the show moving," says Winchester. "Toward the end of the night the sets may get a little longer, but we'll end with a big finale with everyone doing 'Heroes.'" Tickets are $15 and the concert starts early and promptly at 6 p.m. (and will end by midnight, as it's an all ages show). The event will also feature art vendors, the Amurica photo booth, and booths set up to do Bowie-inspired face painting with proceeds from that going to St. Jude as well. "Bowie was affected by cancer and St. Jude brings families here for that reason," says Winchester. "This show is a way for musicians to get a release playing his music and for fans to enjoy those songs while doing something positive for the community and St. Jude." Go to minglewoodhall.com for tickets or more information. Experience Cash Efforts to erect a statue of Memphis and American music icon Johnny Cash get a further push starting this week, with the first of three fundraising concerts set to continue monthly though March. Announced last May, a coalition of Memphis music enthusiasts, historians, and community organizers have been working on getting a Cash statue placed at the intersection of Cooper and Walker streets. The location, site of the former Galloway United Methodist Church, is where Cash and his band the Tennessee Two played their first show in late 1954. The local groups participating include Rhodes College's Mike Curb Institute for Music, Cooper Walker Place, the Visible Music College, Legacy Memphis, the Cooper-Young Community Association, and filmmaker/pop culture preservationist Mike McCarthy. The $75,000 project will be created by noted sculptor Bill Beckwith and set to see a marker unveiling on May 1 2016 the 60th anniversary of the release of Cash's first Sun Records single, "I Walk the Line" with the statue erected in 2017. The sculpture which will be 7 feet tall with a 4-foot base, and modeled on a photo of Cash from his late-'50s heyday will be done by Mississippian Beckwith, who has established himself as the go-to artist for Memphis and Mississippi legends. He's created busts and statues of Elvis Presley for Tupelo's Fairpark District, B.B. King for his hometown of Indianola, William Faulkner at Oxford's city hall, and Jim Henson and Kermit the Frog for the Greenville, Mississippi, library. The upcoming concert the series is being billed as "Experience Cash" will take place on January 26 at Cooper Walker Place. The first show will feature music from John Paul Keith and opener Dan Montgomery. The February 26 show will be headlined by Amy LaVere and Will Sexton and with opener Vanessa Silberman. On March 26, Deering & Down and Nancy Apple will perform. The February 26 show falls on what would've been Cash's 84th birthday and the evening will include the performance of a short play called "Cash Rising" with actor/musicians playing Cash and the Tennessee Two (also on February 25, participating restaurants in Cooper-Young and neighboring areas will be giving ten percent of that night's dining proceeds to the historic statue and marker fund). Doors for the concert open at 7 p.m. Music starts at 8 p.m. Donations of $5 are suggested. Memphis Made will be providing beer. For more information go to guerrillamonster.com. SHARE By Yolanda Jones of The Commercial Appeal A 23-year-old woman was injured by shattered glass as she and a friend were shot at as they entered a Downtown apartment building over the weekend, police said. No arrests have been made in the incident. The woman's family is offering a $5,000 reward through CrimeStoppers for information about the suspects, said Buddy Chapman, the head of CrimeStoppers for Memphis and Shelby County. According to a police incident report, officers responded to an aggravated assault in the 100 block of Madison Avenue at 4:45 a.m. Sunday. The victims told police that they were walking into the apartment building when they noticed three men following them in what appeared to be a white Dodge Charger. "The victims advised that after they asked the suspects why they were following them. One of the suspect's got out of the vehicle and shot at them multiple times striking the front glass door of the building and fled the scene traveling eastbound," according to police. The woman cut her foot on the glass that shattered, police said. She was taken to Methodist University Hospital in noncritical condition. The 24-year-old man with her was not injured. The victim said Thursday in an email that she was shot in the foot and not cut by glass. She also disputed other information in the police report. She said she and the man with her never spoke to the suspects in the car and that the car following them was not a Dodge Charger, but a Mercury Marquis. Police said the investigation into the incident is ongoing. Anyone with information is asked to call CrimeStoppers at 901-528-2274. By Kayleigh Skinner of The Commercial Appeal A former Memphis police officer has been indicted on oppression and misconduct charges, according to Shelby County District Attorney Amy Weirich. Derrick Abdul-Wakil, 44, was indicted by a grand jury this week on official misconduct and official oppression charges for fondling himself in front of a 23-year-old woman, Weirich said. He allegedly touched himself in front of the victim, a motorist he stopped and made sit in the front seat of his patrol car in January of 2014 on I-240 near Lamar, Weirich said. Abdul Wakil will be tried in April on similar charges of soliciting sexual exploitation and official misconduct in a case involving 14-year-old girl. In Feb. 2015, Abdul-Wakil offered the girl a ride as she was walking to school while he was in uniform inside a marked patrol near Walker and Neptune in South Memphis, investigators said. The girl told police that when she accepted and got inside the car, Abul-Wakil appeared to masturbate with a jacket over his lap while touching her face and looking at her thigh. Both victims told officials he appeared to touch himself underneath a jacket. Abdul-Wakil resigned from MPD in March 2015. January 16, 2016 - The future of Mud Island is still a matter of debate for Memphis officials. The Riverfront Development Corp. received five responses from groups interested in redeveloping Mud Island under a partnership with the city of Memphis. (Jim Weber/The Commercial Appeal) SHARE By Tom Charlier of The Commercial Appeal The Riverfront Development Corp. on Wednesday will begin sorting through proposals from five groups interested in redeveloping Mud Island River Park in a partnership with the city of Memphis, officials with the nonprofit agency said. A committee of the RDC's board of directors will meet to review the responses to a request for qualifications and conceptual proposals that arrived in time for last Friday's deadline. The committee will decide "if any or all" of the five respondents go will move forward in the selection process, RDC president Benny Lendermon said. Lendermon declined to identify the groups or provide information about their proposals for the 34-year-old park in front of Downtown. But he said the respondents included a mix of local and out-of-town interests. "It's a very diverse group of responses," Lendermon said. One group that has been publicly identified is RVC Outdoor Destinations, a firm headed by Memphis businessman Andy Cates. The company last week posted plans online envisioning lodging, a water park, aerial tour and a prominent fountain, extending Greenbelt Park to the southern end of the island, as well as making major improvements or changes to Mud Island Amphitheater, the Mississippi River Walk, the Mississippi River Museum and the pedestrian bridge above the monorail. The city-subsidized RDC operates the river park and other amenities along the Mississippi under a contract with Memphis. The Mud Island facility, agency officials say, is deteriorating, underused and in need the type of extensive repairs and improvements that only a private partner can provide. Although he hasn't reviewed details the proposals Lendermon said he's encouraged by them. "Again, the whole issue is dollars and cents," he said. "If someone needs 100 million dollars from the city to do what they want to do, then that proposal doesn't look as good as it did before." The RDC committee, headed by Memphis Convention & Visitors Bureau President Kevin Kane, is expected Wednesday to approve a document that will be sent to respondents making it to second phase of the selection process. The document will request more detailed information on the ownership of the groups, their financing and the concept and timetable of their proposals. Whichever group, if any, is selected would negotiate a long-term operating agreement with the city, which will retain ownership of the river park. "That'll be the lengthy part," Lendermon said. Oct. 23, 2015 - The Shelby County Election Commission votes to certify the results of the Oct. 8 city elections. By Linda A. Moore of The Commercial Appeal A committee charged with trimming down the list of more than 40 candidates seeking to become Shelby County's administrator of elections presented three top candidates to the election commission on Tuesday, including one from Tennessee. The committee recommended that Tammy Smith, assistant administrator of elections in Wilson County, Tennessee; Scott Daisher, election ballot programmer in Warren, Ohio; and Linda Phillips, the former Tippecanoe County, Indiana assessor be interviewed for the job formerly held by Richard Holden, who retired in December. Smith, who is already certified with the state Division of Elections, was the committee's frontrunner, said commission member Steve Stamson, chairman of the selection committee. Commissioner Norma Lester said Smith was well-thought of by election officials in the state. The commission agreed to interview Smith, a former administrator of elections in Macon County, Tennessee, first and decide then if the remaining candidates would be interviewed as well. The salary for administrator of elections is $107,000 annually. There was concern from commissioner Dee Nollner that with presidential primary elections in March, the county needed someone who could "hit the ground running." Stamson had unsuccessfully attempted to keep the meeting to select the candidates closed to the public, a position he defended during the commission's voter candidate services meeting on Tuesday. "My committee was not attempting to hide anything from anybody," he said, noting that the county has a policy on how information is released. "I didn't feel right about disclosing anybody's personal information without the county authorizing it." The election commission is seeking a replacement for Holden, who retired after a controversial tenure. Under his leadership thousands of voters received incorrect ballots, which led to an overturned election and a three-day suspension for Holden, and in last October's city election, results delays dragged on into the night. Both the Memphis City Council and the Shelby County Commission approved no-confidence resolutions over his performance. Holden retired just as state Rep. G. A. Hardaway called for his "immediate firing" and a "full criminal investigation" into his years with the commission. Early voting schedule set for presidential primary The Shelby County Election Commission approved on Tuesday the March 1 presidential primary and Shelby County election early voting schedule. Early voting will begin on Feb. 10 at the Shelby County Office Building, 157 Poplar. Hours at that location will be 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays and Saturday, Feb. 13. Hours on Saturday, Feb. 20 will be 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Early voting at satellite locations will run Feb. 15-23. Those hours will be weekdays from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday. Marco Rubio SHARE By David Royer of The Commercial Appeal Florida senator and Republican presidential hopeful Marco Rubio attended a private fundraising event in Memphis on Tuesday night. Rubio was set to visit the home of Dr. Bill and Carole West, according to an invitation. Attendance was $1,000 per person or $1,500 per couple. A photo reception was $2,700. State Sen. Brian Kelsey, a Rubio supporter, said Tuesday that Rubio would be visiting five states, and there was no opportunity for press availability at the brief Memphis stop. A Real Clear Politics average of polling data showed Rubio in third place in the GOP race with support from 11.8 percent of voters, behind Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Tennessee's presidential primary is set for March 1. An honor to have Sen. Rubio in Memphis tonight. Our next President! Posted by Brian Kelsey on Tuesday, January 19, 2016 The ruling orthodoxy on college campuses these days is political correctness. Universities have become incubators of intellectual uniformity. Many elite colleges seem determined to eliminate any Republican or conservative influence from their faculty lounges. As this blog has previously reported, 96 percent of all campaign contributions from Ivy League faculty and employees in the last election went to Barack Obama. At Princeton, according to an analysis by the university newspaper, only one faculty member and a janitor donated to the campaign of Mitt Romney. At Bowdoin, a top liberal arts institution, 100% of the donations went to Obama. And the trend cannot be explained as support just for the nation's first black President. It is wider than that. Federal Election Commission data for the period of 2011 to 2014 shows that 99% of the political donations of Cornell's College of Arts and Sciences went to liberal campaigns. To put this in perspective, compare Cornell to Kazakhstan. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, that nation has been ruled by one man, Nursultan Nazarbayev. He has a perfect electoral record. After his reelection last April with over 97% of the vote, Nazarbayev felt compelled to publicly apologize for his margin: "I apologize that for super-democratic states such figures are unacceptable: 95 percent participation and more than 97 percent [of ballots cast for him]. But I could do nothing. If I had interfered, I would have been undemocratic." So the odds of finding a conservative faculty member at Cornell are slightly less than the odds of finding any opposition to Nursultan Nazarbayev in Kazakhstan. Sacha Baron Cohen made a funny movie (Borat) about Kazakhstan. Couldn't we also use a satire about Cornell? That's why stand-up comedy is vital to college campuses. Stand-up comedians, like medieval jesters, are needed to ridicule the regnant political orthodoxy, to disclose its contradictions, and to pierce its sanctimony. Faculty members won't do so, because they are the advocates of that orthodoxy. Administrators won't because they either advocate it, or lack the spine to oppose it. That leaves it up to Jerry Seinfeld and company. But many of them have gone on strike. By Richard Locker of The Commercial Appeal NASHVILLE A pair of state lawmakers a Memphis Democrat and a Knoxville area Republican filed a bill Tuesday to abolish the state's Achievement School District at the end of the current school year. The ASD was created by the legislature in 2010 as an arm of the state Department of Education to take over schools whose students rank in the lowest 5 percent statewide in terms of academic achievement and ultimately to move them into the top 25 percent. The ASD currently runs 29 schools 27 of which are in Shelby County through charter school management companies under contract with the ASD. But Rep. Antonio Parkinson (D-Memphis), and Sen. Frank Niceley (R-Strawberry Plains) filed House Bill 1787/Senate Bill 1797 Tuesday to abolish the ASD, questioning what Parkinson calls its lack of accountability in its failure to improve student performance as rapidly as the Shelby County Schools' Innovation Zone. "The ASD is eating up schools like Pac-Man now but not moving any off the list of low-performing schools. That's not accountability," said Parkinson, a longtime critic of the ASD. "This year the Achievement School District's budget was $93 million. At $93 million, we're not getting the return we're looking for." The bill's preamble cites a study published by Vanderbilt University last month that compared gains in student achievement at schools under the ASD's control and those in the Shelby County Schools' iZone, both of which were established in the same year. Through their first three years of operation, the study found student achievement improved fast in the SCS iZone. Local school districts create innovation zones and channel additional resources and more autonomy to low-performing schools to help improve student performance. But iZone schools remain part of, and under the control of, the local school district. The bill provides that schools taken over by the ASD would be placed in innovation zones of the school districts where they are located, and money spent on them by the ASD would flow to the school district. The local school districts would be able to retain the charter-school management companies running each school if they chose. Gov. Bill Haslam's administration and Republican legislative leaders favor keeping the ASD in place. But Parkinson said he believes the bill has a chance at winning legislative approval. "This is not Democratic legislation. My Senate co-sponsor is Sen. Frank Nicely. We expect it to have a robust shot," Parkinson said. Nicely could not be reached for comment Tuesday evening. The bill has not yet been scheduled for committee review in either the House or Senate. The full text of the bill is online here. State Rep. Mark Pody, R-Lebanon, speaks meets with supporters at the state Capitol in Nashville, Tenn., on Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016, for his proposal to exclude Tennessee from the U.S. Supreme Court's gay marriage ruling. Pody said he was undeterred by a projected loss of $8.5 billion in federal funds if the Legislature enacts the measure. (AP Photo/Erik Schelzig) By Richard Locker of The Commercial Appeal NASHVILLE A state legislative committee on Wednesday killed a bill that attempted to block same-sex marriage in Tennessee. The bill failed in the House Civil Justice subcommittee on an unrecorded voice vote in which there were more "no" votes than "yes" votes to advance the bill. After the vote, the bill's sponsor, Rep. Mark Pody (R-Lebanon), said the bill is dead. The Tennessee Natural Marriage Defense Act, House Bill 1412, would have declared last June's U.S. Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage in all states "void and of no effect" in Tennessee and forbid state and local agencies and officials from "giving force or effect" to the ruling in effect prohibiting county clerks from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. It also required the state attorney general to defend any state or local government official against any lawsuit arising from their refusal to comply with the Supreme Court ruling. David Fowler, a former state senator who now heads Family Action Council of Tennessee and who led the campaign in support of Tennessee's anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment, testified briefly before the subcommittee and said he's not sure the bill is the best way to challenge the law. Fowler has scheduled a press conference Thursday at which he will announce details of a lawsuit being filed in state court "over the application and implications" of the Supreme Court ruling "to the continuing validity of Tennessee marriage license laws." The eight-page bill consisted of a seven-page preamble of 48 "whereas" paragraphs that attempt to legally justify the effort to block the Supreme Court ruling, followed by one page of law. The bill was mostly based on the Tennessee Constitutional Amendment ratified by voters in 2006 that declared the marriage "of one man and one woman" the only legally recognized marriage in the state, even if performed in another state. The amendment won 81 percent of the vote but since that time, public opinions have indicated that public attitudes toward same-sex marriage have changed. A statewide Vanderbilt University poll conducted in November found that 52 percent of Tennessee registered voters said they "strongly" or "somewhat" oppose same-sex marriage, 32 percent "strongly" or "somewhat" support it and 14 percent neither support nor oppose. Pody said the 2006 amendment was drafted by Tennessee lawmakers in anticipation of an eventual U.S. Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage. Pody asked Jeff Cobble, an attorney from Greeneville, Tenn., to present part of his case to the subcommittee. Cobble told lawmakers the dispute "is a separation of powers issue. I can tell you as a student of the Constitution ... that there is nothing in federal law ever, ever, ever that gives the federal courts or the federal government constitutional jurisdiction in the field of marriage." Pody presented an amendment that would require every application for a marriage license to be submitted to the state Department of Health's vital records office, which would in turn tell the clerks to deny a license to same-sex couples. The subcommittee's debate was largely over constitutional principles and federal versus state rights. Rep. Mike Carter (R-Ooltewah) said the bill was essentially an attempt at "nullification" but no other nullification attempt has succeeded. Carter said he favors a court challenge. Rep. Bill Beck (D-Nashville) moved the bill to a summer study but if failed for lack of a second. The TVA's Allen Fossil Plant in Memphis SHARE By Tom Charlier of The Commercial Appeal TVA has tentatively decided to spend $3.5 million to permanently seal a decades-old impoundment containing thousands of tons of ash from its soon-to-be-retired Allen Fossil Plant in Southwest Memphis. Under a plan outlined in an environmental document, the Tennessee Valley Authority would use a method called closure in place for the west ash impoundment at the plant. The impoundment, now dry, would be graded and then covered with a synthetic liner and a soil-and-vegetation cap to prevent seepage, with drainage improvements and long-term groundwater monitoring also provided. TVA will discuss the closure at a public meeting set for 5:30 p.m. Thursday at the Bridges building, 477 N. 5th in Memphis. The federal agency, which provides wholesale electricity for a seven-state region, last month issued draft environmental impact statements detailing options for dealing with impoundments containing fly ash, bottom ash, boiler slag and other "coal combustion residuals" at its 11 coal-fired plants. During 2013, the last year for which figures are available, TVA's plants generated 4.2 million tons of ash and residuals, which can contain arsenic and other toxins. TVA's ash ponds have attracted greater scrutiny ever since a catastrophic dike failure at the agency's Kingston Fossil Plant in East Tennessee in 2008 sent 1.1 billion gallons of coal-ash slurry spilling across 300 surrounding acres, damaging homes and poisoning rivers. The west impoundment at the 57-year old Allen plant presents no such threat, according to TVA. For decades it received fly-ash slurry from the plant's three boiler units, but it was pumped dry more than 20 years ago and has since received only minimal amounts of ash. An estimated 250,000 cubic yards of dry ash and other residuals remain. The west impoundment is considered closed and not subject to rules issued last year by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the draft impact statement says. Still, officials are pursuing permanent closure of the pond "in accordance with TVA plan objectives," it says. TVA now pipes ash from the Allen units to a pond east of the older impoundment. The east impoundment will be studied and closed after the Allen plant is retired in 2018. For the west impoundment, the draft impact statement also assessed the option of closure by removal digging up the ash and residuals and transporting them by truck to a landfill. That option would cost $25 million, compared to $3.5 million for closure in place, and it would create more air pollution in the form of dust and truck emissions, according to TVA. The removal option also would take longer and increase the chances of accidents related to the deep excavation of ash. Despite the findings in the draft impact statement, Scott Banbury, conservation programs coordinator for the local chapter of the Sierra Club, said the west impoundment might not be secure from floods, earthquakes and other threats. He also said in an email that TVA should have conducted more studies of the groundwater beneath the impoundment and the fish in nearby McKellar Lake. The Allen plant is scheduled to be retired by December 2018 and replaced by a $975 million natural gas-fired plant under construction less than a half-mile away. TVA opted to retire Allen and several other coal-fired units under an agreement to settle alleged violations of the federal Clean Air Act. The Commercial Appeal files January 20, 1953 A trio of Kellogg Sales Co. executives indulged in close harmony at a daylong Peabody conference on Jan. 20, 1953. E.T. Swan (center), president of Kelloggs, said he was singing the praises of the firms breakfast foods. Joining in were Clyde Yarbrough (left) of Memphis, vice president in charge of the Southern Division, and E.P. Leaver of Battle Creek, vice president and general manager. About 135 attended the conference, wearing circus barker costumes in keeping with the meetings sideshow setting. SHARE Jan. 20 25 years ago: 1991 Kellogg Co. has canceled plans for its $1.2 billion cereal plant in Hickory Hill. Instead corporate executives told Memphis and Shelby County officials, they will modernize the company's existing plant in Memphis, spending between $12 million and $15 million this year. Kellogg, based in Battle Creek, Mich., had delayed construction of the new plant because of a dramatic slowdown in ready-to-eat cereal sales. But during a meeting in Battle Creek on Friday, its board of directors decided to "discontinue" the project and invest instead in renovating and expanding production capacity at its five existing U.S. plants. 50 years ago: 1966 The Mid-South Coliseum board looked favorably yesterday on a proposal to build a monument to honor Elvis Presley but said it would have to have more details before taking any official action. The City Beautiful Commission has proposed that a fountain be built near the coliseum to honor the Memphis entertainer. Mrs. Russell Wiener, concertmaster of the Memphis Symphony and chairman of the committee seeking approval for the fountain, outlined the proposal to the Coliseum board at yesterday's meeting. 75 years ago: 1941 Winds of 105 winters have whipped through the magnolias and against the oldest building in Memphis, the Eugene Magevney home at 198 Adams. The site of the first Catholic mass ever celebrated in Memphis is now being restored to its original state by the Memphis Park Commission. 100 years ago: 1916 R.W. Ramsay Sr. yesterday assumed his duties as president of the Rotary Club, succeeding J.J. Thornton. Phil Pidgeon, J.T. Hinton, J.A. Alexander, William H. Lumsden, John McCleary, W.B. Holly, S.J. House Jr. and J.A. Lamb are the other new officers. 125 years ago: 1891 The Protestant Pastors' Association is appealing to all its members to preach on the evils and crime prevalent in Memphis. The special cause of alarm this time is the violation of the Sunday laws but a feeling that crime of all kinds is rife and on the increase makes the ministers uneasy about the future mortal tone of Memphis. Workers power wash the side of the Crosstown Concourses building. By Jennifer Pignolet of The Commercial Appeal Christian Brothers University is looking to partner with Shelby County Schools for a 450-student high school at Crosstown Concourse in Midtown, leaders of the two institutions said Tuesday. SCS Superintendent Dorsey Hopson made the announcement during a school board work session Tuesday night. CBU President John Smarrelli Jr. was at the meeting and spoke to the board briefly. CBU is a partner in a newly formed nonprofit group called Crosstown High School Inc. Smarrelli said he will chair the board for the nonprofit, which would have members from several Crosstown partners. That board would operate a magnet school at the Crosstown development, which is undergoing a $200 million renovation. Smarrelli emphasized that the school would still be an SCS school. "We at CBU are very committed to this community," he told the board. "When we saw this as an opportunity, our first (thought) was, let's make this a Shelby County School." Hopson said increasing the options for high-quality schools is a top priority for SCS in a push to keep students in the district and pull in students who might otherwise go to private school. He said the Crosstown school would open in the 2017-18 school year. The SCS board could vote as early as next week on an agreement between the SCS board and Crosstown High School Inc. to operate what's known as a contract school. The framework would mirror SCS' partnership with the University of Memphis to operate Campus School, an elementary school on the university's campus. That school offers priority to the children of university staff members, and then accepts students based on proximity to the school and academic performance. CBU already partners with SCS at Maxine Smith STEAM Academy, a middle school, but it does not have an independent governing board. SCS board members said Tuesday they were generally in favor of the idea of partnering in a high school at Crosstown, but urged the administration to take a cautious and thoughtful approach. Members had concerns about diversity at the school and the need for an independent governing board. "It's not that we don't need a small school, high-quality option in Crosstown," board member Miska Clay Bibbs said. "That's not the case. It's more so around what type of framework we're going to use to make it successful for the district." Per the draft of the agreement, at least 35 percent of the 450 students enrolled in the school would qualify for free and reduced lunch. Several board members questioned that number, noting that nearly 80 percent of SCS students hit that benchmark, so 35 percent would not be representative of the district's student body. Several board members, including chairwoman Teresa Jones, also expressed concerns about harming other high schools in the area, particularly East High School, which has already had problems with low enrollment. "I wouldn't want to make any decision that's going to negatively impact them," she said. Hopson said he shared many of the same concerns, and said he would sit down with Smarrelli to refine the proposed agreement. Crosstown leaders had previously sought a charter school to lease anywhere from 50,000 to 75,000 square feet on the fourth and fifth floors. Gestalt Community Schools had been one of the first institutions committed to lease space in the building, but the system of K-12 college-prep charter schools pulled out of the deal in October. Sears constructed the building in the late 1920s at North Watkins Street at North Parkway and kept adding on, but since the early 1990s the building has stood vacant and blighted. The renovation is targeting medical, art-related, educational and retail tenants. December 18, 2013 - In this file photograph a FedEx jet taxis to the Memphis hub. SHARE By Daniel Connolly of The Commercial Appeal It was a miscalculation by Collierville, rather than a failure by FedEx Corp., that prompted a report that said the shipping giant did not meet its 2014 payroll goals at the World Technology Center, the town's economic development director says. John Duncan, Collierville's economic development director, says his report last year to a meeting of Collierville's Industrial Development Board on FedEx's payroll numbers was wrong and the shipping giant met its payroll goals that year under the terms of a tax-break agreement. Duncan's April 30 report was a key element of The Commercial Appeal's story last Sunday about FedEx's compliance with the tax break requirements. In the original report, Duncan wrote that FedEx was obligated to a payroll of $241 million, but that in 2014 the company had paid $209.5 million. "That was the first IDB compliance meeting that I ran and that calculation was simply an honest, clerical error, on my part," Duncan wrote in an email this week. Minutes from the April 30 meeting of the Industrial Development Board show members used Duncan's report as a basis for discussion that day. Duncan wrote in an email this week he miscalculated FedEx's payroll requirement, and that it wasn't $241 million, but $157.5 million, and he said that means FedEx exceeded the standard. FedEx spokesman Patrick A. Fitzgerald said the company has always been in compliance with its payroll obligations for every year it's been under a tax break agreement with the town. FedEx opened its Collierville information technology campus in 1998. The company's tax break agreement is scheduled to expire in January 2019, according to a lease document. The global shipping giant is seeking an additional 20 years of tax breaks in exchange for keeping the technology center in Collierville. FedEx is the biggest employer in Collierville and the largest employer in the Memphis area generally. The company has raised the possibility that it will leave if it doesn't get the support. The situation reflects broader trends around the country: Governments vie with one another to land jobs, particularly high-paying ones like those available at the FedEx center. Critics of the proposed FedEx tax deal, including aldermen Tom Allen and Billy Patton say it favors the company, rather than the town or other taxpayers. Supporters of FedEx say the company plays a pivotal role in the town and if Collierville doesn't deliver the public support the company wants, another community might. The town's Industrial Development Board is scheduled to discuss and vote on FedEx's proposed additional tax break at 11:30 a.m. Thursday at Collierville Town Hall, 500 Poplar View Parkway. If the Industrial Development Board approves a tax break deal, the town's Board of Mayor and Aldermen would take it up at a meeting Monday. SHARE By Jane Roberts of The Commercial Appeal Ken Hoover made a plea to the Germantown school board Tuesday night to consider charging tuition for nonresident students, showing studies that he said prove it has no bearing on enrollment. The topic came up at the end of the work session, and delayed the start of the business meeting. In the end, Hoover got nowhere. The discussion was to continue in the business meeting until board member Lisa Parker made a motion to remove it from the agenda. The motion was quickly seconded by Natalie Williams. The board voted 3-2 to eliminate the discussion. Board member Hoover was hoping for consensus this time on tuition. At his prompting, the board has tangled twice on the issue, both in 2014. He backed the argument up this time by a list of districts in Tennessee that allow tuition, including, by his research, six of the top 10 achieving public systems in the state. Memphis City Schools charged tuition to students who lived outside its boundaries for years. The practice changed when the city and county districts consolidated. All the public systems in the county now offer free tuition to students who reside in Shelby County. While Germantown Superintendent Jason Manuel said he is not opposed to tuition per se, he said a district competing as closely as it is with Collierville can't afford to alienate any families. "We have two school districts within a mile of each other," he said, noting the difference in ACT scores is a hair's breadth 24 at Collierville and 24.1 at Germantown. "And one is about to have a $99 million high school." Manuel also noted that if 34 students left, the district would lose $138,000 in state funding. "Tuition is not going to balance that," Manuel said. Parker said she did not believe in adding another layer of bureaucracy to the district, noting tuition would require more central office staff. "This board is not for adding additional staff. This is not a good investment, and I do not believe we are going to make as much money as we think." The board met first in a work session, followed by the business meeting. Hoover has said before that he doesn't like the arrangement because it can mean discussion in the work session has to be cut off. "I think the board in its entirety realized we had not finished the discussion," he said, fighting to keep the discussion on the agenda. Parker persisted with her motion to eliminate it, "to save the embarrassment of it going down the tube," she said, glowering at Hoover. Also Tuesday, the board voted to amend the budget to give teachers and staff a onetime bonus this winter. It also voted 5-0 to approve a contract with US Bank for custodial services on the board's OPEB (other post-employment benefits) trust. Although that vote included a reprimand from Mark Dely, who said he did not appreciate being asked to vote on contracts that had not been competitively bid. Hoover agreed. The bonus pay will mean $300 for nonteaching staff in the district's five schools and $500 for teachers, including those who are the top of the pay ladder and have not had a raise in at least four years. It will cost the district $330,000, which will come out of larger-than-expected sales tax receipts. SHARE By Josh Rogin In exchange for the release of four American prisoners, the Obama administration agreed to free seven Iranians in U.S. custody and stop trying to arrest 14 others, two of whom the U.S. government had accused of funneling weapons to the Bashar al-Assad regime and Hezbollah in Syria. For years, Iran's privately owned Mahan Air has been using its planes to bring soldiers and arms directly to the Syrian military and the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah by flying them from Tehran to Damascus, according to the U.S. Treasury Department. In 2013, Treasury sanctioned Mahan's managing director, Hamid Arabnejad, for overseeing the company's efforts to evade U.S. and international sanctions and aiding the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps' elite Quds Force. "Arabnejad has a close working relationship with IRGC-QF personnel and coordinates Mahan Air's support and services to the paramilitary group," the Treasury Department said. "He has also been instrumental in facilitating the shipment of illicit cargo to Syria on Mahan Air aircraft." According to the Iranian state media organization FARS, Arabnejad is one of the 14 Iranians who no longer will have Interpol red notices out on them, which are meant to ensure their arrest and extradition to the U.S. on charges that will now also be dropped. The executive order he is sanctioned under is for support for terrorism. In 2011, the U.S. sanctioned the entire airline for ferrying personnel and arms for the Revolutionary Guards Corps and Hezbollah, which it officially considers a terrorist organization. The White House declined my request for comment on whether Arabnejad was among the de-listed Iranians, but did not dispute the 14 names on the FARS list. Mahan Air is "yet another facet of the IRGC's extensive infiltration of Iran's commercial sector to facilitate its support for terrorism," the Treasury's under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, David Cohen, told Bloomberg News at the time. A 2012 press release from the Treasury says, "Iran used Iran Air and Mahan Air flights between Tehran and Damascus to send military and crowd control equipment to the Syrian regime." Hezbollah and the Assad government coordinate with Mahan Air during their attacks on Syrian civilians and opposition groups, the Treasury Department said. According to the Iranian news service, another Iranian who will no longer have to look over his shoulder when traveling around the world is Gholamreza Mahmoudi, also a top official at Manar Air. When Treasury sanctioned Mahmoudi in 2012, it said he worked closely with Arabnejad to evade sanctions and purchase new aircraft. Last May, as the Iranian nuclear deal was being finalized, Mahan Air was able to purchase nine used Airbus commercial airliners, taking advantage of a relaxation of sanctions that came with an interim agreement Iran struck with Western powers. Experts say that the new lifting of the Interpol "red notices" essentially arrest warrants on Arabnejad and Mahmoudi further reduces pressure on Mahan Air and, by extension, on the Assad regime and Hezbollah, even though their U.S. Treasury Department sanctions remain in place. "The one big impediment for them to run their business abroad was the red notice, not the U.S. sanctions," said Emanuele Ottolenghi, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank that has advocated tough sanctions on Iran. "Clearly it was not impossible for them to travel. The fact they are no longer on the red notice means that as long as they don't try to come to the U.S., they will probably live their professional lives unencumbered." The lifting of the red notices also has a symbolic effect, he said, by telling countries and companies around the world that it's OK to look the other way as Mahan Air helps the Assad regime and Hezbollah. "These guys have been working day in and day out flying arms to Assad regime," said Ottolenghi. "This is another signal that there will be no consequences for this airline and the crimes they are responsible for." A U.S. official told me Saturday that the U.S. removed any Interpol red notices and dismissed any charges against 14 Iranians for whom it was assessed that extradition requests were unlikely to be successful. President Obama spoke about the Iran prisoner swap Sunday and said none of the seven released Iranians were charged with terrorism or any violent offenses. "They are civilians," he said. But Obama didn't mention the 14 who no longer have international arrest warrants, including the Mahan Air executives. "We remain steadfast in opposing Iran's destabilizing behavior elsewhere, including its threats against Israel and our gulf partners, and its support for violent proxies in places like Syria and Yemen," Obama said. The administration has repeatedly said that the Iran nuclear deal and the prisoner swap were separate events, pursued through parallel tracks of diplomacy. But there's concern on Capitol Hill that the effort to stop the Revolutionary Guards Corps' violent activities is suffering in the wake of the nuclear agreement. "This flawed deal is only entrenching Iran's military and security forces that run the country. Now more than ever, we need a policy of backbone, not backing down," House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Ed Royce said Saturday. On the other hand, Treasury did go forward Sunday with sanctions on Iran's ballistic missile program that had been delayed because of the prisoner negotiations. The return of the American prisoners, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, is of course good news, and the Obama administration believes the costs of the trade were worth the benefits. But some of those costs could be felt by the Syrian people, who had no say in the trade, got nothing from it and are still begging for more international support to stop Assad's slaughter of civilians. Josh Rogin is a Bloomberg View columnist. SHARE By Rachel Marsden PARIS Iran effectively rejoined the international community a few days ago, as longstanding U.S. and European sanctions were lifted and the country was granted access to $32 billion of its previously frozen assets. It's the razing of the Berlin Wall all over again, as another country is opened up to the global market without any shots being fired. But why isn't there nearly as much celebration over Iran's economic liberation as there was with the fall of the Soviet Union? Russia even kept its nukes. In Iran's case, there's been much hand-wringing over the mere possibility it will develop nuclear weapons. Some argue that Russia isn't a rogue state, but Iran is. I agree that Russia isn't a rogue state, but it was certainly portrayed as one during the Cold War era, which was rife with drills involving children hiding under their desks in the event of a Soviet nuclear attack. Could we consider the possibility that perhaps the hyperventilation and fear have been overplayed in both cases? The difference in Western attitudes toward the Soviet glasnost and perestroika (that is, economic opening and restructuring) and today's Iran is that when the Soviet Union broke apart, there was a feeling that the communists had lost and the West had won. With Iran, there's a feeling that the Iranians are the winners, because apparently getting Uncle Sam's boot removed from your neck means you have succeeded in screwing him over. Why are some people so insecure as to always frame things in a binary win-lose paradigm? It's quite possible for Iran and the West to benefit equally from an economic detente. Iran just participated in a prisoner exchange with the U.S., and last month it handed over its enriched uranium to Russia under terms of the nuclear deal with the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany. The concept of face-saving is particularly important in Iranian culture. How much more could be asked of Iran right now? U.S. presidential candidate and international businessman Donald Trump, who has made it clear he thinks the Iran deal is horrible, has expressed discontent that one of the first economic overtures Iran made after the lifting of sanctions was to Europe's aerospace consortium, Airbus, for 114 new commercial aircraft. The loser in that deal would be American competitor Boeing, which had lobbied against the tightening of sanctions on Iran. Look, you can't act harshly toward a country for years, then demand that it do business with you particularly in a free market. The whole idea of free trade is that you get to choose who you want to deal with. Business deals are like marriages: Once you're engaged in one, the actions of your partner will largely determine whether you're happy or miserable. You definitely want to avoid getting hitched to a control freak who's going to tighten the screws the moment the honeymoon is over or grant a higher regulatory power (a mother-in-law, for instance) the authority to hold your relationship hostage. Some people are already complaining that lifting sanctions and granting Iran access to previously frozen money will mean that it has more to spend on weapons and "exporting terrorism." But Iran doesn't throw its weight around anywhere except in the Middle East, which isn't exactly full of choirboys unequipped to fend for themselves. Besides, the "exporting terrorism" fear hasn't stopped the sale of billions of dollars in U.S. and European military equipment to Saudi Arabia, a genuine exporter of terrorism. That country's support of the so-called "Syrian rebels" gave rise to the Islamic State terrorists, who are now being targeted most effectively by Russia, with critical assistance from ... Iran. Misconceptions and double standards currently abound in the Iran situation, with hot takes by pundits and political candidates distorting the truth. I've even heard some say that President Barack Obama is "giving" the Iranians money, or that Iran will simply spend its newfound windfall on bombs or terrorists. Maybe everyone should just give it a rest for awhile and focus on trying to make some money. Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist and former Fox News host based in Paris. Select Commodity All Ajwan Alasande Gram Almond(Badam) Alsandikai Amaranthus Ambada Seed Amla(Nelli Kai) Amphophalus Antawala Anthorium Apple Apricot(Jardalu/Khumani) Arecanut(Betelnut/Supari) Arecanut(Betelnut/Supari) Arhar (Tur/Red Gram)(Whole) Arhar (Tur/Red Gram)(Whole) Arhar Dal(Tur Dal) Ashgourd Astera Avare Dal Bajra(Pearl Millet/Cumbu) Bajra(Pearl Millet/Cumbu) Balekai Bamboo Banana Banana - Green Barley (Jau) Bay leaf (Tejpatta) Beans Beaten Rice Beetroot Bengal Gram Dal (Chana Dal) Bengal Gram(Gram)(Whole) Ber(Zizyphus/Borehannu) Betal Leaves Bhindi(Ladies Finger) Bitter gourd Black Gram (Urd Beans)(Whole) Black Gram Dal (Urd Dal) Black pepper BOP Bottle gourd Bran Brinjal Broken Rice Broomstick(Flower Broom) Bull Bunch Beans Cabbage Calf Capsicum Cardamoms Carnation Carrot Cashewnuts Castor Seed Cauliflower Chapparad Avare Chennangi Dal Cherry Chikoos(Sapota) Chili Red Chilly Capsicum Chow Chow Chrysanthemum Chrysanthemum(Loose) Cinamon(Dalchini) Cloves Cluster beans Cock Cocoa Coconut Coconut Oil Coconut Seed Coffee Colacasia Copra Coriander(Leaves) Corriander seed Cotton Cotton Seed Cow Cowpea (Lobia/Karamani) Cowpea (Lobia/Karamani) Cowpea(Veg) Cucumbar(Kheera) Cummin Seed(Jeera) Custard Apple (Sharifa) Dalda Dhaincha Drumstick Dry Chillies Dry Fodder Dry Grapes Duck Duster Beans Egg Elephant Yam (Suran) Field Pea Firewood Fish Foxtail Millet(Navane) French Beans (Frasbean) Galgal(Lemon) Garlic Ghee Gingelly Oil Ginger(Dry) Ginger(Green) Gladiolus Cut Flower Goat Gram Raw(Chholia) Gramflour Grapes Green Avare (W) Green Chilli Green Fodder Green Gram (Moong)(Whole) Green Gram Dal (Moong Dal) Green Peas Ground Nut Oil Ground Nut Seed Groundnut Groundnut (Split) Groundnut pods (raw) Guar Guar Seed(Cluster Beans Seed) Guava Gur(Jaggery) He Buffalo Hen Hippe Seed Honge seed Hybrid Cumbu Indian Beans (Seam) Indian Colza(Sarson) Isabgul (Psyllium) Jack Fruit Jaffri Jamun(Narale Hannu) Jarbara Jasmine Jowar(Sorghum) Jute Kabuli Chana(Chickpeas-White) Kacholam Kakada Kankambra Karamani Karbuja(Musk Melon) Kartali (Kantola) Khoya Kinnow Knool Khol Kodo Millet(Varagu) Kulthi(Horse Gram) Lak(Teora) Leafy Vegetable Lemon Lentil (Masur)(Whole) Lilly Lime Linseed Lint Litchi Little gourd (Kundru) Long Melon(Kakri) Lotus Lotus Sticks Lukad Mahedi Mahua Mahua Seed(Hippe seed) Maida Atta Maize Mango Mango (Raw-Ripe) Marasebu Marget Marigold(Calcutta) Marigold(loose) Mashrooms Masur Dal Mataki Methi Seeds Methi(Leaves) Millets Mint(Pudina) Moath Dal Mousambi(Sweet Lime) Mustard Mustard Oil Myrobolan(Harad) Neem Seed Niger Seed (Ramtil) Nutmeg Onion Onion Green Orange Orchid Ox Paddy(Dhan)(Basmati) Paddy(Dhan)(Common) Papaya Papaya (Raw) Patti Calcutta Peach Pear(Marasebu) Peas cod Peas Wet Peas(Dry) Pegeon Pea (Arhar Fali) Pepper garbled Pepper ungarbled Persimon(Japani Fal) Pigs Pineapple Plum Pointed gourd (Parval) Pomegranate Potato Pumpkin Raddish Ragi (Finger Millet) Raibel Rajgir Ram Rat Tail Radish (Mogari) Raya Resinwood Rice Ridge gourd(Tori) Ridgeguard(Tori) Rose(Local) Rose(Loose) Rose(Loose)) Round gourd Rubber Sabu Dan Sabu Dana Safflower Sajje Same/Savi Season Leaves Seemebadnekai Seetafal Seetapal Sesamum(Sesame,Gingelly,Til) Sesamum(Sesame,Gingelly,Til) She Buffalo She Goat Sheep Snake gourd Snakeguard Soanf Soapnut(Antawala/Retha) Soji Soyabean Spinach Sponge gourd Squash(Chappal Kadoo) Sugar Sugarcane Sunflower Sunhemp Suram Surat Beans (Papadi) Suva (Dill Seed) Suvarna Gadde Sweet Potato Sweet Pumpkin T.V. Cumbu T.V. Cumbu Tamarind Fruit Tamarind Seed Tapioca Taramira Tender Coconut Thinai (Italian Millet) Thogrikai Thondekai Tinda Tobacco Tomato Toria Tube Rose(Double) Tube Rose(Loose) Tube Rose(Single) Turmeric Turmeric (raw) Turnip Walnut Water Melon Wheat Wheat Atta White Peas White Pumpkin Wood Yam Yam (Ratalu) Select State Select Market DO YOU have a Boulevard Aristide-Briand near you? Or do you send your child to school in a Jules-Ferry or a lycee Emile Combes? If so, you are already familiar with key names in the construction of the French Republic. Between them, these three politicians were responsible for free state schooling, obligatory education for girls and the rock of state neutrality towards religion on which la Republique is built: the principle of laicite. The term is very much in the news, with a new laicite charter being introduced into schools this autumn alongside classes in morale laique. Presenting the charter, Minister for Education Vincent Peillon explained: Everyone is free to have his own opinions but no one has the right to contest teaching content or miss a class in the name of religious precepts. Public debate over the Muslim community in France pops up in the news regularly and is nearly always related in one way or another to perceived challenges to this element of the Constitution. Peillons remarks refer also to repeated evangelist pressure to alter class content, in particular regarding the theory of evolution. A recent example was the proposal to swap two Christian holidays with Jewish and Muslim ones: confusing whether France was secular or multi-religious. Left and Right politicians often unite to initiate laws to protect laicite. Once the source of conflict with the Catholic Right over private education funding, the principle, an important element in the integration process, regularly generates ill feeling these days among extremist sectors of the Muslim community. That is why, a century after the original 1905 law, several new laws have been passed to protect it. First, a few explanations. Laicite does not translate well. Secularity is close but confusing. Laicite is not easy to define either. It has evolved over two centuries and is evolving still. The concept was born of the Revolution, which guaranteed freedom of conscience to all and first separated State and Church. Napoleon backtracked, signing a concordat with the Vatican in 1801 that was to poison Church-State relations during the 19th century and put laicite on the back burner for much of it. (For historical reasons, this concordat still applies in Alsace and Moselle.) Having been suppressed by the Vichy regime (along with liberte, egalite, fraternite without which laicite could not function), the principle was cast in the constitution of the Fourth Republic in 1946 the State is indivisible, laic, democratic and social and remains firmly in that of todays Fifth. To understand the concept is to go a long way towards understanding the French. Maybe it could be defined as their permanent search for a delicate balance between sharing what they all hold in common, the Republic, and catering for diversity. It is the principle that protects both personal and collective liberty and, as such, is the responsibility of both State and citizen. The indivisibility of the State is the States refusal to recognise any religious or ethnic community. France is one. There are two major dates in the history of laicite: 1881 and 1905. In 1881-82, Minister of Education Jules Ferry decreed school to be publique, gratuite et laique state-run, free and non-clerical. Teaching in French to a national programme provided children, whatever their linguistic background or beliefs, with the theoretical possibility of equal opportunity. It created a framework in which adults could bring no pressure to bear on pupils to adhere to any philosophy, religion or political idea. That remains the basis of the French educational system today. The 1905 law, engineered by Emile Combes and Aristide Briand, enforced the neutrality of the State and State institutions through the separation of the Churches and the State. Since that date, the State recognises no religion and therefore cannot directly fund any either. If the same law grants the individual total liberty and privacy regarding beliefs, there is one condition: they must not disturb public order. Given the repeated trauma that religion has caused in Frances recent history from the Wars of Religion to the expulsion of the Huguenots and the Dreyfus affair this means no proselytising and nothing that could be remotely interpreted as such. It also explains why, in France, religious belief is far more than a private matter. Things spiritual belong to the realm of intimacy. It is extremely unusual to see anyone wearing any conspicuous religious symbol in public. To do so is perceived as a deliberate act, a message to others. It is unthinkable to ask someone what their religion is and most people will be frankly embarrassed by anyone saying what theirs is. When Nicolas Sarkozy publicly announced he had appointed Frances first Muslim prefect, he sent shockwaves throughout the land. Knowing this helps in understanding intense French reaction to young girls wearing veils. It is seen not only as an unacceptable way of bringing religion into the public sphere, but also a form of peer pressure on other girls to do the same. Which takes us back to Jules Ferry and neutrality in the classroom. This insistence on the privacy of beliefs was of course also reinforced after World War II by the fate of Frances Jews under the Vichy regime, and the obligation to publicly show their religion by wearing the yellow star. As a result of the trauma of State responsibility in their deportation and extermination, no statistics may be made regarding peoples religious beliefs, ethnic origin or colour. All citizens are not only equal, but remain neutral in the eyes of the State. The mosque debate The 1905 law was finally well accepted by both Catholic and Protestant churches in France, who benefited financially when the State handed existing buildings and their costly maintenance over to local authorities. But the State cannot fund new religious buildings. Hence the mosque-building debate and recent legislation allowing local authorities to contribute. For with generous donations from Saudi Arabia and Muslim foundations abroad pouring in, the inherent risk of encouraging fundamentalist movements to develop in France is obvious. Under the Nicolas Sarkozy government, the training of imams in France to Republican principles was considered. But the State cannot finance religious education either. The impasse has been paradoxically circumvented by the Catholic University offering courses, and Algerian imams due to work in France being trained in French and laicite at the government-funded Institut Francais in Algiers. Conspicuous symbols and full-face veils After a number of potentially inflammatory cases in which some schools were confronted with Muslim girls wearing Islamic headscarves, legislation was passed in 2004 banning the wearing of any conspicuous religious symbol or sign in state schools. Never specifically aimed at the Muslim community (kippas, large crosses and Sikh turbans fall under the same category), the new law, despite fears it would be perceived as discriminatory and arouse further reaction, had the almost immediate effect of calming the situation, though some veiled Muslim girls and turbaned Sikhs found their way to private schools. But this legislated solely for public schools, not privately run establishments. In March of this year, Fatima Afif, an employee dismissed in 2008 from the privately run Baby Loup creche in the Yvelines for refusing to remove her headscarf, won on appeal for wrongful dismissal on the grounds of religious discrimination. New legislation is now under consideration to cover pre-school structures and religious symbols in the workplace, none of which are currently covered by law. When, in late July, a police officer in the town of Trappes stopped a fully veiled young women for an ID check in the middle of Ramadan, he did not know he was unleashing days of rioting. But Cassandra, 22, was not infringing any law on laicite. This time it was the one against dissimulating the face in the public sphere, put into effect by the Sarkozy government in 2011. Introduced ostensibly as anti-terrorism legislation, many felt its real purpose was more anti-veil. In fact, the number of women in France wearing the niqab is extremely small, and the number of women fined likewise. Laicite with an adjective The latest solution of Frances politicians to calm the debate has been to add adjectives. Sarkozy invented laicite positive, in which the government took into account the existence of religious groups in France. He created a representative Muslim council, through which to address the Muslim community in France. Representative of only a portion of Frances Muslims, many of whom are non-practising, it has created more problems than it has solved. The Hollande government has coined laicite apaisee, a low-profile approach in which negotiation would replace legislation as the best way of winning over those who regard the principle with suspicion. True laicistes believe the principle cannot survive any moderating tags. It must exist alone. Universities oppose campus headscarf ban proposal In early August, Le Monde published a report signed by members of the Haut Comite de lIntegration (HCI), a body no longer briefed to deal with laicite since the creation of a separate mission last April. It called for a Muslim headscarf ban in universities. Government replies were swift but hardly in unison. Minister of the Interior Manuel Valls stated evasively that the subject needed to be considered, while Genevieve Fioraso, Minister for Higher Education, warned that we should avoid problems where there are none. For Gerard Blanchard, president of La Rochelle University, and vice-president of the national CPU, Conference des Presidents dUniversite, laicite is not an issue on his campus or anywhere in France. We have 14% foreign students in La Rochelle, mostly from South East Asia, and we only ask women students to take off their veils in science laboratories, for safety reasons. That has never posed a problem. The University Presidents Conference has issued a public statement against any specific university ban. For Blanchard, the over-mediatised debate that burst upon us mid-summer is without foundation. He is adamant that he has never had a complaint from a teacher. An environmentalist, he is far more concerned by pressure that could be brought on teachers to introduce non-scientific versions of the origins of the universe into the syllabus. No university teacher should ever have to submit to any pressure on the content of his teaching. Jean-Loup Salzmann, president of the CPU, and president of Paris XIII, in the heart of Seine- Saint-Denis, one of the most multi-cultural universities in France, firmly believes in laicite, but sees no need for new laws on the campus. His main concern is elsewhere. He is angered by the incongruity of the State promoting laicite on the one hand, while financing the Catholic universities on the other. Expressing a personal opinion, he said: The main issue for these young Muslim women, who have enough problems coping with family pressure, is to achieve independence and emancipation through their studies, whether they wear a veil or not. An anti-veil law would achieve the opposite of what we want. Many of these women would then not have access to university at all. How the principle of laicite is applied today NICOLAS Cadene, chairman of the Observatoire de la Laicite, a watchdog committee created last April by President Francois Hollande to report on how the principle of laicite is applied in France today, spoke to Connexion. Can you define this difficult concept for our readers? Laicite is a principle which allows us all to live together. It is not a ban on religion or religious practices. On the contrary, it guarantees believers and non-believers alike the freedom to express themselves, to practise or not to practise a religion as they choose, on condition that public order is not disturbed. The State adopts an attitude of total impartiality towards citizens, who are all equal in the eyes of the State. Do the current religious bank holidays not favour one religious group? Christian festivals have, for the majority, become traditional holidays with little religious significance. Still, the State does not want to be seen as favouring one religion over another. In 1905, there was no Muslim population. But I dont think this poses a real problem. Employees can use their RTT (recuperation of unpaid overtime in the form of days off) as they wish. The Stasi Commission (set up by President Jacques Chirac in 2003) went a long way towards identifying issues in the workplace. We shall build on that. The conspicuous religious symbols ban was seen as directed only at women. Is that not a form of discrimination? If people set out to present themselves in a way which is obviously a proselytising or a provocative attitude, that is not acceptable. It is not so much what people wear or their physical appearance, as the reason behind the choice. This is one of the subjects we shall be working on. Islam has no clerical hierarchy. Isnt the laicite legislation trying to apply to individuals a law aimed at an institution? Doesnt the 1905 law need to be adapted? Not at all. The principle enables us all to live together. But, of course, we must avoid situations in which one group feels stigmatised by the law. That is one of our major subjects of reflexion. But there is no question of adapting the principle to new circumstances. It is one of bringing people to understand that laicite is not a ban on religious practice but a system of personal freedom and helping them to adapt to the principle. There has been talk in the press over banning the Islamic headscarf at university. [The full-face veil is already banned anywhere in public]. The State has a duty to protect minors from any form of ideological persuasion, hence the headscarf ban in schools. University is a world of adults. But the Republic has a duty to protect its citizens against the dangers of extremism. Some people attribute to laicite powers it simply does not have. There is an urgent need for strong political action, at state and local level, in order to resolve the many problems the threat of extremism has brought to certain sectors of society. The Observatoire has published its first report, a history and background to the concept. What else has it achieved? We helped draw up two important documents: the laicite charter and the syllabus for non-religious morality for schools. Both take effect this year. In addition, our report has pinpointed situations needing close attention in public administrations and local authorities (non-Metropolitan France included), as well as in the private sector. How do you see your work developing? We need a better definition of laicite that reiterates the States position of neutrality and is more clearly understood by all, in France and at an international level. We are drawing up guidelines for the application of laicite and religious practice in the workplace, and in the wake of the Baby Loup issue [see main article], for pre-school structures. We must show people how to react to situations. Overreaction is one of the major problems we face, when so much could be achieved by negotiation and taking things calmly. Ed Vaizey is an entertaining man to talk to. The Arts Minister does not, however, amuse all commentators. According to Peter Oborne, writing on Saturday in the Daily Mail, There are, generally, two types of Government ministers. We have those who attempt substantial positive changes to the way we live such as Michael Gove when he was Education Secretary or Iain Duncan Smith as he tackles the insidious culture of welfare dependency. Of course, this inevitably involves courage, risk-taking and making enemies. Then there are those who seek the easy route. Arts Minister Ed Vaizey falls into this second category. This was confirmed this week when a host of luvvies from the arts world sycophantically congratulated him for becoming the longest ever serving Arts Minister, having completed five-and-a-half years in the job. Their grovelling praise simply proves that Vaizey has been their puppet. In this interview, Vaizey agrees that on the whole the arts vote Labour, but adds that it is useful to be able to talk to them, and offers a staunch defence of Tracey Emin, one of the artists denounced by Oborne. The Arts Minister also makes a point few other members of the Government would have the audacity to voice, even if it occurred to them: Theres a lot of merit in not doing too much. Government does not always demand the exercise of superhuman courage and energy in order to save the nation from mortal peril. There is a place for the less heroic virtue of avoiding doing harm, while winning support for modest measures of improvement. So the Arts Minister implies: and it is this less confrontational style which perhaps accounts for David Camerons continued occupancy of 10 Downing Street. Vaizey began by identifying the artists of the works on the walls of his office, at the Parliament Street end of the vast Edwardian block once monopolised by the Treasury: Lucian Freud. Paul Nash. John Hubbard, who taught me to swim. I had this fantasy, when I first became Arts Minister, that Id put John Hubbard, whos a very old family friend, on my wall, and hed suddenly come back into fashion. And absolutely nothings happened. ConHome: Is he still alive? Vaizey: He is still alive. ConHome: You should insist on a major retrospective at Tate Modern. Vaizey [moving on to another work of art]: Damian Hurst. ConHome: Whats that strip of, um, green perspex? Vaizey: Ive no idea. Its been on my wall for two years. He consults a folder. Its Jyll Bradley, Green/Light (zips). When I first became Arts Minister I asked this rather formidable lady who runs the Government Art Collection, I said to her, I want this, I want that, and she turned to me and said: We are not an Argos catalogue. ConHome: She wanted first to tell you what you might be lucky enough to obtain. Vaizey: Yes. ConHome: And you have a piano [strictly speaking, a keyboard bearing the Bluthner name]. Are you already a pianist? Vaizey: No. I havent played the piano since I was eight. Im having my first piano lesson next week. ConHome: The general belief is that people in the arts hate the Tories. Is this still true? Vaizey: Well all things being equal, I think the arts would vote Labour, on the whole, yes. I went to Gilbert and Georges studio the other day, and despite their liberal use of expletives in their art, I think the thing that would shock the arts establishment most is their very large poster of David Cameron on their wall. ConHome: Thats really subversive. Vaizey: Thats what subversive is in the arts. To be a Conservative is to be a subversive. ConHome: Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, who made that party political broadcast for Labour I think its strange that it persists, this kind of behaviour. I wonder whether artistic people who are in fact deeply Conservative, or conservative, just dont really talk about politics very much? Vaizey: Yes, I think theyre either apolitical or they dont get involved. The Left has always lent itself to large-scale posturing and abstract ideas, so people speak out. And poor old Tracey Emin got a lot of flak in the arts world when she said shes going to vote Conservative. And again its probably the most radical political statement made by an artist in the last 50 years. ConHome: Youre still a chum of hers? Vaizey: Yes. ConHome: Because according to Oborne, Vaizey is a keen fan of Tracey Eminno honest Conservative Arts Minister would have anything to do with such a meretricious figure as Emin.' Vaizey: Well I think that first of all its an honour to be in his orbit. I was thinking about this. Why would a Conservative like Tracey Emin? First of all shes an artist who came out in support of the Conservatives, very prominently, in 2010 and in 2015. Secondly she comes from a modest background and has become a hugely successful artist. Thirdly shes an entrepreneur: she runs her own business, she employs people. She not only sells her own art but theres a wider Tracey Emin brand. So she grows people and pays her taxes. And she raises millions for charity, particularly the NSPCC, every year. Which of those traits would a Conservative dislike? ConHome: Well what a Conservative would dislike is the unmade bed. Vaizey: The other great irony is you will find, if you walk into any contemporary art gallery or the Frieze Art Fair, a legion of quite prominent Conservative supporters, all of whom collect contemporary art. ConHome: There was the letter in The Times from a lot of people congratulating you on overtaking Jennie Lee and becoming the longest-serving Arts Minister. Perhaps youre carefully understating the level of Conservative support now. Vaizey: No, no, Ive never hidden the fact that I think the arts community as a whole is left-wing. But to be serious for a second, I wanted to do this job because I grew up in a cultural world and I care about it, and to be fair to them, they have met me half way. So what the arts world values most of all is recognition, that people appreciate the value of what they do. They know thats the case with me and they certainly know its the case with John Whittingdale as well. And so, you know, lots of unpopular decisions that we had to make, I dont think have been greeted with the level of hostility they might have been, because people feel they can talk to us. ConHome: What were these unpopular decisions? Vaizey: Well, funding cuts. Its always about funding. If you reduce funding, youre unpopular. If you increase it, youre popular. ConHome: When are we going to get this White Paper of yours? Vaizey: In the spring, which as you know in Whitehall runs from February to November. ConHome: I see. Between now and November. Vaizey: Im hoping we can get it out in the next few months. There is a draft almost ready for circulation. ConHome: And have you written the draft? Vaizey: I have contributed a lot to it. ConHome: And can you give any idea of whats going to be in it? Vaizey: Yes. There have been extensive blogs. ConHome: Yes, I did cast an eye over a blog. There were four points in it. Vaizey: Some of its rather policy-jargony. So firstly, its about the role that culture plays in creating places that people want to live, work and visit The second thing is access to the arts Thirdly we need to be much more creative about funding And we need to recognise the huge impact that culture has on Britains image around the world. Those are the four main things. I can tell Ive inspired you. ConHome: What are the things youre most proud of having achieved so far, during this record-breaking period of office? Especially as you had four years before to think about it, as well as a lifetime before that when you were familiar with the world of the arts. Vaizey: Well I think I would be quite self-critical. To a certain extent I havent wanted to achieve too much, if that doesnt sound too perverse. Theres a lot of merit in not doing too much ConHome: Very good. I havent heard that from a minister for years. Vaizey: in carrying on as normal, rather than suddenly coming up with your own wheezes and programmes that suddenly upend everything. So in that sense Im proud of that. In terms of funding, although we had to cut the grant-in-aid to the Arts Council, we did increase the amount of money from the Lottery into the arts and heritage. I think there are two programmes on heritage Im proud of. One was to encourage them to set up a fund to celebrate anniversaries. I was extremely frustrated when the anniversary of the King James Bible came round and nothing really was being done. I found it very frustrating when the people running Waterloo 200 came in and it wasnt easy to access funds. So weve put aside a pot of money so that any organisation that wants to commemorate a significant national anniversary can go to them. And the other thing I got out of George was a fund for the repair of our cathedrals. 20 million. And the third heritage thing Im really proud of is the separation of English Heritage Youve now got Historic England, which is the regulator, doing the listings, and English Heritage, which is a charity with an endowment of 80 million, so it can now run itself with a proper focus on the buildings it looks after. On the arts side, Im most proud of leaving the Arts Council alone. But also we introduced these things called Music Education Hubs, and Im really proud of that, and the In Harmony programme, which is really intense orchestral music tuition with kids from very socially excluded backgrounds. Weve also achieved something called the Cultural Gift Scheme, which sounds a bit boring, in fact I can see you sighing as I say it. ConHome: I have such bad manners. Vaizey: For years people said, why can I only give something if Im dead? So weve set up a scheme where you can give an object to the nation and set it against income tax. ConHome: Who are your heroes? Vaizey: Gosh. Before this interview I thought Id better be able to remember which was the last play I saw, and the last film. My heroes are really quite prosaic. My parents are my heroes. Im very conservative in my career, in the sense, you know, my father [John Vaizey, ennobled in Harold Wilsons resignation honours in 1976, died 1984] was involved in politics and my mother [Marina Vaizey, art critic] was involved in the arts, and Ive combined them. ConHome: But you were never Labour were you? Because your Dad eventually, having supported Labour, was one of a number of distinguished figures who moved from the Left to the Right about the time Margaret Thatcher became Conservative Leader. Vaizey: Hugh Thomas ConHome: Paul Johnson, Kingsley Amis When you were asked which Shakespeare character youd like to play, you said Falstaff. Poor old Falstaff had rather a sad end: I know thee not, old man: a crushing put-down. But I suppose he had a lot of fun on the way. Vaizey [patting his tummy]: You wouldnt need to put any extra padding on. How loyal the Conservatives were at PMQs. They asked David Cameron helpful questions about todays fall in the employment figures, compulsory English lessons, the return of secondary picketing, and Trident submarines putting to sea without nuclear weapons: both these last proposed by Jeremy Corbyn. Nigel Dodds (DUP, North Belfast) asked a very helpful question about unconditional support for the people of the Falkland Islands. Cameron replied that the honourable gentleman has put it better than I ever could: a conspicuous piece of flattery, but also a public acknowledgment that he values the DUPs support. Here too, the idea of giving only conditional support to the islanders had been raised on Sunday by Corbyn. Why were the Conservative eurosceptics so silent? Why did we not hear from these defenders of parliamentary sovereignty? For it is surely in Parliament that they should be seizing every opportunity to make the argument. Enoch Powell would not have been so reticent. Only John Baron (Con, Basildon and Billericay) ventured to strike a dissenting note. He complained that he has yet to receive a response from Cameron to his request made in November for a meeting to discuss the EU renegotiation. Cameron replied that Baron has slightly made up his mind already on the EU, and I dont want to take any more of his time than necessary. It was extremely rude of the Prime Minister to pretend that Baron might be too busy to see him, when the reverse is the case. But here too was a sign of prime ministerial confidence, or at least of prime ministerial sang froid. He reckons Baron to be such a marginal figure that other Tory backbenchers will smile rather than bristle at the put-down. There is at present no proper parliamentary opposition to Cameron. Neither his own party nor the Opposition shows the slightest ability to hold him to account. The Labour leader sounds more and more like geography teacher with out-of-date opinions, his mindset regarded with ill-concealed embarrassment by most of his colleagues in the staff room. Corbyn complained that nurses will have to take out student loans in order to get trained. Cameron pointed out that two out of three people who want to train as nurses are turned away, with the result that we have to import vast numbers of nurses from other parts of the world. The Prime Minister accused the Leader of the Opposition of being so short-sighted and so anti-aspiration, and said the Tories are the party that wants to uncap university places. Corbyn not only had no reply to this: he gave no sign of understanding that a reply is needed. He appears to have stopped thinking in 1983. Such prime ministerial dominance amounts to a subversion of our parliamentary system, which used to draw so much of its vitality from the possibility that there could be a general election at any time: a check on power which was removed by the Fixed Term Parliaments Act of 2011. Helpful questions from Tories, and futile ones from Corbyn, leave Cameron the monarch of all he surveys. Close In Hawaii, a baby was born with microcephaly, a condition with a small head that has not developed properly in the womb. As the mother had lived in Brazil for a short while in 2015, she had become infected with Zika virus. On Saturday, Tom Skinner, a spokesman for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, confirmed the case. "There is no indication at this point that there is any Zika virus circulating in Hawaii. But I think it is important for us to understand that there are going to be imported cases of Zika to the United States, and we won't be surprised if we start to see some local transmission of the virus," he added, according to Al Jazeera America. For the first time an American mother who had once contracted the Zika virus has given birth to a child with microencephaly, in US soil, according to CNN. Last year, the number of microcephaly births reported from Brazil's hospitals were almost 3,500 in only the last quarter, compared to 147 births in the whole of 2014. The Brazilian doctors noticed that the mothers of the microcephaly birth defect babies had been infected with the Zika virus at some point of pregnancy, which tends to make the link between the virus and the illness clear. See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare Close Do you get easily distracted at your workplace? Then you might belong to the higher intelligence level, says a new report by Steelcase, a workplace solutions company. The company analysed data gathered by neuroscientists and psychological researchers and built up a unique report. "Employers are always on the lookout for the brightest people available, however, the difficulty to withstand multiple tasks and distractions in the office affects smart people in the same way as everyone else, if not more," said Bostan Ljubic, vice president of Steelcase. The brighter ones are those that have a tougher time deciding which tasks are more important, which might make them distracted, as well as fill them with "a feeling of inadequacy and inability to deal with the workload as a whole," psychiatrist Ned Hallowell told the Telegraph. About 10,000 employees from 17 countries were studied. Apart from the link between distraction and intelligence, the team discovered that their inability to focus is most probably due to technology in the workplace, making the average office worker become distracted once in every three minutes. "The ways in which we work are changing more rapidly than ever before and the brain is being subjected to stresses and distractions which can lead to overload and statistics show that distractions in the workplace are on the rise," Ljubic said. "While our higher-level cognitive skills distinguish us from other mammals, being attuned to what's going on around us is also embedded in our evolution, a key to survival," the researchers wrote. "This means that today's way of working has become a Catch 22: We're taking our natural inclination to be distracted and training our brains to be even more so." See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare Close A Portuguese pharmaceutical firm is currently in hot water after a tragic botched drugs trial in Rennes, France left one volunteer dead and five others hospitalized in an 'unprecedented case' of failed drugs experiment involving human lab participants. "I have no knowledge of a comparable event. I was deeply moved by their suffering," remarked French minister for social affairs, health, and women's rights Marisol Touraine after being informed of the tragedy as mentioned in a report by New York Times. The volunteer who recently died at a French hospital was initially deemed 'brain-dead' after succumbing to severe multiple side effects in a clinical drugs trial conducted by Biotrial, a private laboratory, for Portuguese drug company Bial in Phase I of the experiment. The other five previously healthy participants are currently receiving serious medical attention due to severe neurologic conditions that developed after the drug trial. The trial volunteers are reportedly stable. "Four patients are showing neurological disorders and the fifth patient, who has no symptoms, is under observation. Three patients are in a very serious condition, raising fears of irreversible disability. The MRI revealed necrotic and hemorrhagic brain lesions," said neurology professor Dr. Pierre-Gilles Edan of Rennes University Hospital as quoted by Medscape. According to ABC Australia, 90 of the 108 individuals who volunteered to take part in the experiment were administered with a newly developed painkiller in varying doses. Others were simply given placebos. The six affected patients were reportedly those who received the highest dose of medication. Because of the public outcry over the incident, French law enforcement authorities were forced into action and launched a criminal investigation into the case. It also brought into public light the ethical debate on testing new drugs on human, albeit paid, volunteers. "On my behalf and the behalf of Bial, I would like to express my deepest apologies to the family of the volunteer who died after participating in the Phase I trial of our experimental molecule," Bial CEO Antonio Portela said as he expressed his profound shock after the situation was made public as quoted saying by Yahoo News. See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare Close The first US case of an infant born with microcephaly linked to mosquito-borne Zika virus infection was documented at an Oahu hospital in Hawaii according to a report confirmed by American health authorities. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suspected that the birth defect was likely due to a viral infection that the baby acquired while inside the mother's womb. The mother reportedly fell ill with the virus during her stay in Brazil in May last year. "The mother likely had Zika infection when she was residing in Brazil in May 2015 and her newborn acquired the infection in the womb. Neither the baby nor the mother was infectious, nor there was never a risk of transmission in Hawaii," said the State Health Department of Hawaii in an official statement as quoted by CNN. Recently, a dramatic spike of mosquito-borne diseases has plagued the Latin American nation causing a widespread public alarm. As a response, Brazilian health officials delivered a stern warning to Brazilian couples to delay pregnancy as cases of infants born with damaged brains were reportedly caused by the mosquito-borne virus. "There's no indication at this point that there's any Zika virus circulating in Hawaii. But I think it's important for us to understand that there are going to be imported cases of Zika to the United States, and we won't be surprised if we start to see some local transmission of the virus," told CDC spokesman Tom Skinner as mentioned in a news report by Al Jazeera. To avert future cases of Zika virus-related infections, CDC issued travel alert to dissuade US pregnant women from traveling to a number of health-risk Caribbean and Latin American countries with huge documented cases of severe birth defects associated with mosquito-linked viral infections. The areas covered in the travel alert include places like Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Suriname, and Venezuela. According to CBS News, microcephaly is a serious birth defect where the baby's head is smaller than the normal size leading to limited cognitive development or, worse, mental retardation. See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare UoH Administration, MHRD And BJP Complicit In The Death Of Rohith Vemula By Academics for Democracy 20 January, 2016 Countercurrents.org We the members of academics for democracy are devastated by the passing away of Rohith Vemula whose decision to take his own life is a direct consequence of the despicable act of Hyderabad university to socially boycott 5 Dalit Research scholars by succumbing to the uncalled intervention of MHRD because of political pressure by BJP. Details of the whole affair as investigated by joint action committee for social justice, University of Hyderabad chapter make it clear that despite the initial investigation by the proctorial board which could not find any evidence of any wrong doing by the members of Ambedkar Student Association (5 scholars were members of ASA), UoH constituted a new inquiry by forming a so called sub-committee which violated it's own constitution to prosecute the students. This was done under pressure after a letter from Smriti Irani to the vice chancellor asking for an explaination. The letter from the BJP MP from Secunderabad and Minister for Labour and Employment, Bandaru Dattatreya to Smriti Irani exhorting action from MHRD only smacks of uncalled and highly repressive political interference in university spaces. The whole affair is remarkably similar to the APSC affair at IIT Chennai. There were several serious lapses in the whole inquiry:- 1) Charges about protesting against capital punishment of Yakub Menon (which is by no means an illegal act) were brought in. 2) Defendants were not given a chance to present their case 3) Witness testimonies were selectively used. These lapses give a clear indication of discrimination against the members of Ambedkar Students association. The university further paid no attention to the strike staged by the suspended students and the Vice Chancellor of university had refused to even talk to the protesting students (inspite of Rohith asking the VC to give them poison instead of humiliating them like this just a week ago). Rohith's brave yet devastating decision to take his own life is a direct result of the false prosecution of the 5 scholars by university administration. Hence we believe that the administration, MHRD and by extension BJP (who seem to be taking special interest in any student groups whose ideas do not support the ruling Hindutva ideology) are directly complicit in the death of Rohith. In strongest possible terms, we condemn this act of UoH and believe it has maligned itself as a public university. We would like to further express our anguish at the continued tradition of labeling any dissenting voice and opinions as anti national and using this to suppress these opinions and expressions of dissent through political channels We also express solidarity with the ongoing struggle of Ambedkar Students Association and would like to express our condolence to family, friends and students struggling against discrimination in Hyderabad Central University." Alok Laddha, V. S. Sunder, R Mannivannan, Padma Venkataram, Nityanand Jayaram, Gita Jayaraj, Abdul Rahiman P K and Bernard Sami on Behalf of Academics for Democracy 15,000 strong Hindu Swabhiman Sena Getting Readied In Western UP, Reports TOI By Countercurrents.org 20 January, 2016 Countercurrents.org Photo Credit: Times Of India Fuelled by the ideology of a self-styled god man Swami Narsinghanand Saraswati a 15,000 strong Hindu Swabhiman Sena is getting readied in Western Uttar Pradesh (UP) to wage war against the so-called Islamic State (ISIS), which it believes will occupy western UP by 2020 reports Times of India (TOI) in an exclusive investigative report. TOI reporters Sandeep Rai & Uday Singh Rana trecked through the region and report that about 50 training camps are giving training men and women, boys and girls. The report says "its leaders claim there are already 15,000 "soldiers" who are ready to die to safeguard their faith." The report also says "the outfit has even enlisted child soldiers, some of them as young as eight years old. All were being taught to use swords and firearms. Of the 50 known training camps, some are clandestine and others, like those at Bamheta and Rori, are openly teaching men and women, boys and girls, to be ready "for when the enemy strikes". There are three known training camps in Meerut city and five in Muzaffarnagar district alone. Kamlesh Tiwari, the Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha leader whose controversial remarks triggered riots in West Bengal's Malda, is a follower of Saraswati. TOI further reports: Hindu Swabhiman's leaders, Chetna Sharma, who is also a member of the VHP's Durga Vahini, told TOI : "Our motto is simple catch them young. We have over 50 training centres all over western UP. Our students are from ages eight to 30. We don't give guns and swords to children straight away. For the first six months, we train them mentally. We teach them verses from the Gita. Hindus must not be afraid of death because we are reborn. The children here are fearless." Seema Kumari (name changed), 8, said, "I am learning to fight because our mothers and elder sisters are threatened. I have to protect them as well as myself." Swami Narsinghanand Saraswati, the Hindu ascetic whose ideology fuels the outfit's work, stays in the temple where a board proclaims, "Yeh teerth Hinduon ka pavitra sthal hai. Musalmanon ka pravesh varjit hai. Aadesh Mahant Baba Narsinghanand Saraswati." (This temple is a holy place of Hindus. Entry of Muslims is prohibited. By order of head priest Baba Narsinghanand Saraswati). Once known as Deepak Tyagi, Saraswati was a member of the Samajwadi Party till 1995 and was a "huge fan" of Mulayam Singh Yadav. Twenty years ago, after a woman from his community committed suicide over a sex racket, he changed his allegiance and became an ascetic. Today, his hero is Veer Savarkar, who coined the term "Hindutva" in 1923. Kamlesh Tiwari, the Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha leader whose controversial remarks triggered riots in West Bengal's Malda, was a student of Saraswati's. Saraswati believes that the Darul Uloom in Deoband, UP, is the ideological fountainhead of the ISIS and "war has already begun". So intense is his hatred for the ISIS that Saraswati has no qualms in stating, "I think an extremist outfit, like the ISIS, should exist for the Hindus. The only answer to the ISIS is an HS a Hindu State. We want to match their level of extremism and fight fire with fire. I don't have the means to build an organization of that scale but with the help of Hindus, who believe in my cause, I will achieve it soon. We have pistols and they have rocket launchers. We need better weapons so that our army can be trained. That is how the ISIS got so big. Local business leaders helped them. Hindus from all over the country will help us too." Saraswati says they have started a mass contact programme. "We have been addressing two panchayats per month, on average. At the panchayats, I ask my Hindu lions to be brave and make sure they keep weapons with them at all times. During the Muzaffarnagar riots, we went to the ground and asked people to be armed. All these politicians, who claim credit for saving Hindus, are lying." He points to a slogan on the wall and reads, "Hindu Sheron, shaan se jeena hai toh shaan se marna seekho. (Hindu lions, if you want to live with pride then learn to die with pride). I am preparing my people for civil war. Neither the state government nor Narendra Modi can stop the civil war from coming. It is better to die fighting to protect our loved ones." All of this is happening under the nose of the administration. But IG Meerut Zone, Alok Sharma, confessed he had no idea of the operation. "We do not have any report on such activity taking place. I will certainly look into the matter," he told TOI on Monday. Anil Yadav, a former professional wrestler and martial artist who runs an akhara in Ghaziabad's Bamheta village, said the "work" will not stop now, come what may. "We run most of these camps as akharas and it is not illegal to do so. However, we prefer to run some camps in secret. We don't want the police to shut them down. My students follow a strict regime and are trained in the martial arts. They are also trained in the use of firearms. Even if a child wants to learn how to use a gun, we teach them. Within six months, a student can branch out and start a training camp on his own. Within two years, we have trained 15,000 kids. Imagine what we can achieve in five." Taharrush Is Rape-Game: From Cairo To Cologne, And Damascus To Dhaka By Taj Hashmi 20 January, 2016 Countercurrents.org Thanks to the IT Revolution and the Globalization Process, we're familiar with hitherto unknown concepts and expressions; so many of them have already entered our vocabulary. Taharrush Jama'i is one of them. Of late, sections of the Western media and society have learnt what this Arabic expression is all about. It stands for collective harassment or rape game aka taharrush el-jinsi or sexual harassment of women by groups of men in public places. Male sexual harassment of women is normative across North Africa, Middle East, and South Asia and in many other underdeveloped parts of the world. The recent incidents of mass molestation, groping and rape of Western women purportedly by Syrian refugees in Cologne (Germany) on the New Year's Eve have turned the expression viral. Germany, Sweden, Norway and some other West European countries have taken proactive actions to address the problem of mass-molestation of women by Arab refugees. European leaders, especially Angela Merkel, have decided to resolve the problem through re-education of Muslim refugees about European culture, gender issues, norms and values and stringent punishment, including deportation, for further taharrush. Meanwhile, there has been a surge in anti-refugee protests and revenge attacks in Germany. Cologne city administration has barred Arab refugees from using public swimming pools. Alarmingly, a cartoon in French satirical cartoon magazine Charlie Hebdo, portraying the drowned Syrian child Alain Kurdi as a rapist, followed sexual attacks in Cologne! Europeans are now dead against taking any more Muslim refugees. As media reports, a total of 751 people have filed 676 criminal complaints against rowdy refugees in Cologne alone, while Angela Merkel has already vowed to review asylum rules and make it easier to deport foreign criminals. I hope the re-education programmes and stringent punishment for sex offenders would work, eventually. However, it's not that easy to re-educate people about something, which due to age-old beliefs and practices they indigenise as something integral to their culture. Thanks to the literal and convoluted understanding of the holy texts of Islam, some Muslims believe uncovered women are available; and those who want to protect themselves from sexual advances and molestation/rape by strangers in public places, should wear hijab or cover themselves completely with burqas. However, as appears on YouTube videos, Arab men not only molest uncovered/Westernized women at home, they do molest Hijab- and even burqa-clad women in various Arab countries. During the anti-Mubarak uprising in 2011, Arab men didn't spare hundreds of hijab-wearing Egyptian women from their taharrush at the Tahrir Square. Same thing happened to hundreds of women in the anti-Morsi rallies in 2013. As subjective interpretations of the Islamic texts promote misogyny, patriarchy, polygamy and child marriage, so do they legitimise molestation of women, maids and uncovered women among Muslims. Misogynist promoters of patriarchy justify subjugation of women in every sphere of life, sexually, socially, economically, and politically. There are thousands of sexist demagogues and pseudo-Islamic scholars throughout the Muslim World. Some Al-Azhar and Saudi clerics, Dr. Zakir Naik of India, and Maulana Delwar Hussain Saidi of Bangladesh may be mentioned in this regard. While Naik has publicly defended sexual molestation of non-Muslim captive women and slave girls, Saidi publicly demanded the total seclusion and subjection of women, in the recent past. He believes no chaste woman works at offices, or even in the police force in Bangladesh. No wonder, the notion of availability and loose character of uncovered women has got wide currency among Muslims everywhere. There has been endemic taharrush attacks on Bangladeshi women at home, work and public places. Every year scores of Bangladeshi women get molested in public places in the early dawn of 21st February (The Shaheed Day), and on the eve of the Bengali or Christian New Year's Day, or whenever vandals get an opportunity to do so. Powerful or well-connected individuals or gangs, and even policemen in police lockups rape women in Bangladesh, on a regular basis, with total impunity. Despite the official ban on mullahs' right to issue fatwas or judgments to punish people in informal village courts (Salish), mullahs and village elders regularly punish and humiliate poor women, including victims of rape and molestation as adulteresses and seductresses. However, unbeknownst to many, mullahs don't call the shots; they simply listen to rural and urban elders, who also promote patriarchy and defend rapists and molesters. One may recall, a few years back Zainal Hazari, an influential Bangladeshi MP from Feni, organized a big demonstration in Dhaka against Badhan, a female victim of taharrush by rowdy men on the New Year's eve near Dhaka University. Hazari and his followers blamed her provocative role for the sexual assault. Hazari later wrote a book in Bengali, Badhaner Bichar Chai, demanding Badhan's trial for taking part in New Year Celebrations with men, not related to her. I cite this example to highlight the overpowering influence of patriarchy, which defends sexual harassment by blaming the victims. One also recalls a male student of Jahangir Nagar University near Dhaka, who publicly bragged about raping 100 fellow students with impunity, in the recent past. There are loopholes in the legal system that has so far failed miserably in protecting the honour and dignity of women in Bangladesh. Here, as elsewhere in South Asia, Eve-Teasing is the euphemism for sexual harassment of women. The prevalent mild and misleading expression proves the society doesn't take sexual harassment as a violent crime that denigrates and dehumanizes women. Instead of punishing the sex offenders, patriarchy and the hyped up philosophy of political Islam promote gender-segregation and virtual invisibility of women in public places as the solution to rape and molestation of women. I think it's time to address the issue by making a comparative appraisal of how developed countries in the East and West address the problem of sexual harassment of women, and what's lacking in Bangladesh and elsewhere in the Muslim World in this regard. The society as a whole, and even the legal system in Bangladesh seem to have shied away from considering sexual harassment as a serious offence or crime. It's strange but true, in accordance with the Penal Code of 1860, Eve-Teasing in Bangladesh is nothing more than teasing, annoying or irritating women in public, as we are used to watching in South Asian cinema. Nothing could be more frivolous than considering verbal abuse, indecent exposure, groping and molestation of women as teasing. Although Bangladesh has amended the Penal Code of 1860 with regard to Eve-Teasing, the new law (The Prevention of Cruelty Against Women and Children Act, 2000, 2003 & 2009) does not give adequate protection to the victims of sexual harassment. The Act doesn't provide death penalty or life term for rape. Surprisingly, the 2003 amendment of the Act provided five to ten years of imprisonment for sexual harassment only if a woman is forced to commit suicide as a direct consequence of somebody's wilful dishonour/sexual harassment/ assault. The amendment actually denied the remedy of sexual harassment of non-contact nature. In a judgment in early 2011, the court gave some ambiguous directives to the police, local administration and lower courts to take drastic actions against Eve-Teasers. Again, non-application of the law against sexual harassment has remained the main factor behind the pervasive acts of sexual harassment in Bangladesh. It's sad but true; paradoxically despite having higher gender equality score in South Asia, Bangladeshi women have remained vulnerable to sexual harassment and rape. Very similar to women in the Arab World, Bangladeshi women have remained victims of patriarchy, archaic law and inadequate enforcement of the law against sexual molestation and rape. The writer teaches security studies at Austin Peay State University. Sage has recently published his latest book, Global Jihad and America: The Hundred-Year War Beyond Iraq and Afghanistan The Revenant: Historical Distortions And Sensationalism Of The True Odyssey Of Hugh Glass By Jerome Irwin 20 January, 2016 Countercurrents.org The true odyssey of Hugh Glass is a stupendously-thrilling action drama of one mans tenacity to survive under the most horrific conditions that also serves as a lofty modern morality teaching of how redemption, forgiveness and transcendence can overcome the use of brute violent retribution and revenge. Unfortunately, the Glass odyssey needs no further violent sensationalism for the sheer sake of sensationalism, factual distortion or revisionist history as portrayed by Hollywoods latest action drama The Revenant. The Revenant, based in part on Michael Punkes The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge, claims to be a true story, loosely-based on the legend of Hugh Glass, a Scots-Irish American frontiersman who, in 1823, was among the first Europeans to explore the Upper Missouri River in present-day Montana, North & South Dakota and Platte River area of Nebraska. However, every time another violent action Hollywood film comes along, such as The Revenant, and employs the disclaimer of being loosely-based on the truth, its a sure-fire red flag warning that Hollywood is about to again play fast and loose with the historical record, as written by its Director Alejandro Inarritu and Screen Writer Mark Smith whove employed their own brand of artistic license in The Revenant. Serious students of Western American frontier history, and especially that of The Saga of Hugh Glass, are all too aware of this given reality in Hollywood film-making, as reflected by the oft commonly heard dismissive critique What else do you expect? Thats Hollywood! Yet such a disclaimer shouldnt always let Hollywood off the hook so easily from being accountable to the actual real factual record of whatever it is that is being portrayed. When this writer, for one, first learned of the production of The Revenant, a wave of great excitement and anticipation welled up because of what the Saga of Hugh Glass represents to not only Americans but people the world over in the 21st century, plagued as we all are by so much terror, violence and retribution; because the Hugh Glass epic is one of the most remarkable folk hero tales of human survival, endurance and resourcefulness that culminated in a lofty parable of how retribution and revenge can turn into forgiveness and transcendence. Yet The Revenant seemingly totally missed this most critically-important conclusion to the Hugh Glass epic tale. Though The Revenant does make a credible attempt to factually document variously aspects of the account, as much as is possible, given the many disparities and contradictions in the Hugh Glass folk legend, several serious falsehoods are embedded within the film that are flat-out falsehoods that inexcusably detract from the authenticity of the film. For starts, though Hugh Glass is known to have lived with the Pawnee Indians years before he joined the General Ashley Fur Expedition in 1823, some nineteen years after the Lewis & Clark Expedition, and learned many survival skills from the Pawnee that held him in good stead during his eventual harrowing survival tale, he did not have a Pawnee teenage son who accompanied him on the Ashley Expedition as portrayed in The Revenant. Furthermore, the son was not killed by John Fitzgerald when he and Jim Bridger stayed back with Hugh Glass after he had been mauled by a grizzly bear and lay on the verge of death. When Fitzgerald and Bridger eventually abandoned Hugh Glass, thinking he was already dead or near-death, and stripped him of all the weapons, equipment and clothing he would need for his ultimate survival that alone created enough burning desire and motivation in Hugh Glass to fuel his basic instinct to survive and inflict retribution upon the two frontiersmen. No other contrived cinematic device was needed. So the films contrived murder scene between John Fitzgerald and the Pawnee youth was totally unnecessary artistic license, apparently inserted solely for the purpose of pandering to yet more sensationalized, senseless murder and violence that would sell more movie tickets. Perhaps the most grievous historical transgression of all made by Director Inarritu and Screenwriter Mark Smith was when they inserted the blatantly untrue scene of a vicious knife fight that ensued between Hugh Glass and John Fitzgerald that, in point of fact, never ever happened. This fantastical make-believe violent scene totally denigrates and negates the most powerful moral of the Hugh Glass saga that forgiveness can ultimately transcend revenge. Hugh Glass never did kill John Fitzgerald after he survived his harrowing wilderness ordeal where he had to crawl and stumble for months over several hundred miles of wild plains before floating on a makeshift raft several hundred miles more down the Missouri River until he reached Fort Kiowa that was located near present-day Chamberlain, South Dakota. Once he had sufficiently recovered his health, Glass then traveled for the next two years hundreds of miles more to the U.S. Army Post at Fort Atkinson, Iowa where Fitzgerald by then had enlisted in the U.S. Armys Sixth Brigade, to confront him and retrieve the rifle that Fitzgerald had originally taken from him. Since Fitzgerald was a U.S. soldier Hugh Glass quickly realized that if he killed him, Glass himself would have been executed for killing a soldier. So Glass constrained his desire for revenge and instead was satisfied when Fitzgerald returned his rifle. Glass furthermore also travelled hundreds of miles more to track down Jim Bridger to where he was in Montana but also, in the end, forgave him for his cowardly deed because of his youth at the time. So The Revenant totally missed the whole redeeming point to this epic tale when it bastardized the ending with Hugh Glass murder of Fitzgerald. One last glaring transgression was the decision to film The Revenant in the frozen wastelands of Canadas Far North. The Hugh Glass survival story actually took place on the plains and prairies of present-day Montana, North & South Dakota and Platte River area of Nebraska, not the snow-bound, heavily wooded, rugged mountainous terrain of Canada. The choice of such a setting further detracts from the authenticity of the real story had it otherwise been filmed in some more appropriate setting. Over the years, the Glass survival odyssey has been novelized and embellished in numerous books and dramas, among which include: The Song of Hugh Glass that appeared in A Cycle of the West, a collection of five epic poems (called Songs), written over a thirty year span by John G. Neihardt. Each poem written as enjambled heroic couplets. Written in 1915, The Song of Hugh Glass is one of the five songs brilliantly recounted by Neihardt. The Deaths of the Braves, written by John Myers Lord Grizzly, written by Frederick Manfred The Saga of Hugh Glass: Pirate, Pawnee & Mountain Man, written by John Myers Myers Man in the Wilderness, the 1971 action film starring Richard Harris Apache Blood, the 1975 film also loosely-based on the Glass story of revenge (Directed by Vern Piel, starring Dewitt Lee) Most creative treatments of the High Glass story have focused solely or mainly on the aspect of revenge. But in the current 21st century, with so much rampant terror, violence and revenge being carried out against peoples everywhere, what the world desperately needs most at this moment are not more books and films that herald revenge but that instead herald forgiveness and transcendence. Unfortunately, The Revenant falls far short! Jerome Irwin, North Vancouver, B.C. Canada erome_irwin@yahoo.com Alphabets Of Suicide Of Rohith Vemula By P Victor Vijay Kumar 20 January, 2015 Countercurrents.org Look what is happening around in Brahmin circles ?! The upper caste imbecile groups try to moderate the unprecedented uproar in intellectual circles raised against the incident. They bring out certain flabby arguments and main stream media goes all over to cry for them. A notable telugu media group(ABN Andhrajyothi) brings out a video clip of argument by Rohith with ABVP peanut-brained activists. He says " I have torn ABVP banner becoz it is in saffron colour. I hate this saffron colours and all that associated hindu and hindutva crap which attacks minorities and dalits in this country. I get infuriated seeing saffron anywhere. I will tear all that saffron wherever it is ...SO WHAT ? tagged by the media like its unpalatable to the friends of Rohith ! , which, in fact, they forget that it is the same reason why Rohith is admired for. Rohith is a miniature of Ambedkar, who hated by all but stood alone in every front for the cause. The Brahmin circles routinely bank up on a formula of sympathising a calm-going innocent victim and do not qualify any victim as a victim unless he complies with this rule and does not demonstrate any aggression at any particular moment.. They start circulating another video on how Rohith cannot be legally termed as Dalit. In their nomenclature, if Dalit gets converted into Christianity or Islam, he is no more dalit; if Dalit has one parent as non-Dalit, he is no more Dalit. The materiality of the reason is not important for them while we very much can afraid how true these rumours are. Let us presume Rohith is not a legalised Dalith . So what next ?Ambedkar married a brahmin and his children have one parent only as Dalit. It is thus very funny thing to shout Look, your father is a BC, though your mother is an SC ! . Let us dig more common sense into this question. Endogomy is an illicit baby of Brahminism. For a Dalit parent, having broken this endogomy and moving with a different pattern of married life, does not make him non-Dalit, forcing him anyway to relinquish the kind of backwardness inflicted on them for the ages, the kind of social circle they have, the kind of identity they have, the kind of treatment they face in everyday life and the kind of network they have. Ambedkar encouraged inter-caste marriages does not mean every inter-caste marriage is a non-caste entity. Stray incidents of inter-caste marriage does not qualify to be Exogomy in society. Ok, we will go another step forward and argue father gets a dominant role in family and hence he entrusts his entire legacy to his kin. On the same page, Brahminical manuvadi ignore that, they defy glorification of any Brahmin having inter-caste marriage too. We have abundant evidence in front of us that the Patriarchy is highly prevalent in society. And the kind of Patriarchy we compare with that of Non-Dalit families, one would find a visible difference. And what they have grossly neglected is that there is a class also attached to Rohith. This even makes presumed position of applicability of Patriarchy in the cases like him makes null and void. The upper caste circles always have observed their father as a vanguard of caste and mother as a sexual gateway of caste. This is not the case with Dalits, because, basically, they are casteless in treating the family as an institution. They cant climb up the ladder of caste society on any sociological gimmick like marriage. This is the reason dalit do not get boggled down by social mobility amongst them, while upper castes do. The inter-caste marriages in Dalits is countably less, as they dont have an access to an upper caste life partner and , as such, the momentum for them in caste layers gets constricted and handful of inter-caste marriages wont bring a visible change in their lives nor in their patriarchical system. It might go over the peanut-brained Hindutvavadis learning the fact that, most of the Dalit families , are engaged in production relations jointly and not singly unlike upper caste family institution. Dalit families do not protect their girls or boys while they look for the wed-lock matches , not for want of impurity but for want of security limited by disbelief. So, finally, the point what Manuvadis trying to make is Is Rohith 100% Dalith or 75% Dalith ? and look what is that they want Give him only less than 100% credit ! Thats fine we are willing to give him less than 100% credit, but, explain us, is brahminism in this case is not 100% grotesque ?! Do you say that Dattatreya is less demonic than 100%, or do you want to convey loyalist VC is less cruel than 100%, or do you want to prove that Yale Graduate Minister is just a cute Barbie Doll ?! For them, I am confident, they recognise only one Dalit in India i.eBangaruLaxman and wait for moderatingDattatreya role with his caste as an OBC man ! This article is endeavoured to be written in as simple language as possible just to let us know our Dalit brethern what kind of stupid Alphabets of a murder they are interrogating and appreciate to what level Brahminism can stoop to. Finally, the violence card they borrow from petty-bourgeoisie sections. Rohith is being labelled as Left-Naxal by right-wingers. First of all, in todays world, you will see every dalit born is a mild or strong anti-establishment person, being direct victims of caste system. If Rohith is a naxal, simple question in your legal terminology is - why did he not commit offence by killing you ? This is the same anology this grotesque state used for torturing Prof. Saibaba, a Delhi University teacher, 90% physically disabled. The culture of blaming victim by attaching a label has been coming into our caste system for ages. The moment one recognises that Dalit is a victim of untouchability , the punishment of demeaning gets legitimised if you label them they are impure . Brahminism in India, unlike in any other country, plays a sabotaging role in killing common sense of Indian minds. Marx and Ambedkar are completely anti-establishment thinkers and there is nothing wrong in that. Majoritarianist minds want uniform conformity with them by everyone on the earth, which is nothing but stereotyping individuals, going against all principles of development of a society. Now, we shall touch base with what makes one to resort to self-immolation and self- destruction. The poor farmers in Telangana, Rayalseema, Bundelkhand, Maharashtra are committing suicides in large scales. The driving factors , at a macro level, - depression and frustration, non-visibility of a solution, social shaming, prolonged and unending pain( There are anti-class elements who try to romanticize these suicides for their gains ).Rohith is a man who lived through out his life with no hope for development. He remained as a typical scape-goat in the manuvadi system. He did not have a political leader in his pocket to write on his behalf to MHRD. He did not have an external supporting group like RSS. It is pertinent to note that till date, there are 9 deaths of Dalit students occurred due to suicides in HCU and this is not an incident in isolation. Rohith is actually a man of courage and conviction which can be seen from his firm replies to ABVP activists in the video clip and makes every progressive thinker proud. The way he has written a suicide note Man is reduced to number, to a vote and to his immediate identity and he has never been considered as a glorious mind raised from the star dust in every field brings out the level of maturity he has. The kind of ambition he has to become a writer reveals his optimistic attitude and diverse thinking. For me, Rohith is not a coward.He believed in Ambedkar . He studied the Dalit scripts himself and found him as a Dalit Marxist without flinching or mincing words. He made Dalit an adjective arming the revolutionary thinkers. His sin was he was not blindly driven by any specific dogmatic ideology and could not come to terms with the situation beyond a point. Probably, he must have chose this a form of fight as he could have got disillusioned of a final solution in the tough brahminical system. You may label him anything by arithmetical measurement of caste suppression and try to moderate the sympathy showering on him from all corners. But you cannot ignore the apparatus used for hair splitting which is nothing but Brahminism and this Brahminism is campaigning alphabets of logic of murder trivialisingRohith issue with a forgotten notion that the mystical feeling for pro-public opinion, they create in the large urban middle class sections has an answer and that stays in the form of Ambedkar , whom Rohith emulated through out his life ! P Victor Vijay Kumar is a CFO of an infrastructure company, by profession. A dalit writer cum critic. Any reader may feel free to reach the author for any clarifications or questions here or on his facebook account P V Vijay Kumar or to his mail ID pvvkumar@yahoo.co.uk ) The Right To Tell The Government To Go to Hell: Free Speech In An Age Of Government Bullies, Corporate Censors And Compliant Citizens By John W. Whitehead 20 January, 2016 Countercurrents.org Free speech is not for the faint of heart. Nor is it for those who are easily offended, readily intimidated or who need everything wrapped in a neat and tidy bow. Free speech is often messy, foul-mouthed, obscene, intolerant, undignified, insensitive, cantankerous, bawdy and volatile. Unfortunately, our appreciation for a robust freedom of speech has worn thin over the years. Many Americans have become fearfully polite, careful to avoid offense, and largely unwilling to be labeled intolerant, hateful, closed-minded or any of the other toxic labels that carry a badge of shame today. Weve come to prize civility over freedom. Most of all, too many Americans, held hostage by their screen devices and the talking heads on television, have lost the ability to think critically. Societies that cherish free speech relish open debates and controversy and, in turn, produce a robust citizenry who will stand against authoritarian government. Indeed, oppressive regimes of the past have understood the value of closed-mouthed, closed-minded citizens and the power inherent in controlling speech and, thus, controlling how a people view their society and government. We in the United States have a government with a ravenous appetite for power and a seeming desire to turn the two-way dialogue that is our constitutional republic into a one-way dictatorship. Emboldened by phrases such as hate crimes, bullying, extremism and microaggressions, the government is whittling away at free speech, confining it to carefully constructed free speech zones, criminalizing it when it skates too close to challenging the status quo, shaming it when it butts up against politically correct ideals, and muzzling it when it appears dangerous. Free speech is no longer free. Nor is free speechstill considered an inalienable right or an essential liberty, even by those government entities entrusted with protecting it. Consider some of the kinds of speech being targeted for censorship or outright elimination. Offensive, politically incorrect and unsafe speech: Disguised as tolerance, civility and love, political correctness has resulted in the chilling of free speech and the demonizing of viewpoints that run counter to the cultural elite. Consequently, college campuses have become hotbeds of student-led censorship, trigger warnings, microaggressions, and red light speech policies targeting anything that might cause someone to feel uncomfortable, unsafe or offended. Bullying, intimidating speech: Warning that school bullies become tomorrows hate crimes defendants, the Justice Department has led the way in urging schools to curtail bullying, going so far as to classify teasing as a form of bullying, and rude or hurtful text messages as cyberbullying. Hateful speech: Hate speechspeech that attacks a person or group on the basis of attributes such as gender, ethnic origin, religion, race, disability, or sexual orientationis the primary candidate for online censorship. Corporate internet giants Google, Twitter and Facebook are in the process of determining what kinds of speech will be permitted online and what will be deleted. Dangerous, anti-government speech: As part of its newly unveiled war on extremism, the Obama administration is partnering with the tech industry to establish a task force to counter online propaganda by terrorists hoping to recruit support or plan attacks. In this way, anyone who criticizes the government online is considered an extremist and will have their content reported to government agencies for further investigation or deleted. The upshot of all of this editing, parsing, banning and silencing is the emergence of a new language, what George Orwell referred to as Newspeak, which places the power to control language in the hands of the totalitarian state. Under such a system, language becomes a weapon to change the way people think by changing the words they use. The end result is control. In totalitarian regimesa.k.a. police stateswhere conformity and compliance are enforced at the end of a loaded gun, the government dictates what words can and cannot be used. In countries where the police state hides behind a benevolent mask and disguises itself as tolerance, the citizens censor themselves, policing their words and thoughts to conform to the dictates of the mass mind lest they find themselves ostracized or placed under surveillance. Even when the motives behind this rigidly calibrated reorientation of societal language appear well-intentioneddiscouraging racism, condemning violence, denouncing discrimination and hatredinevitably, the end result is the same: intolerance, indoctrination and infantilism. Thus, while on paper, we are technicallystill free to speak, in reality, we are only as free to speak as a government official or corporate censor may allow. However, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, if we no longer have the right to tell a Census Worker to get off our property, if we no longer have the right to tell a police officer to get a search warrant before they dare to walk through our door, if we no longer have the right to stand in front of the Supreme Court wearing a protest sign or approach an elected representative to share our views, if we no longer have the right to voice our opinions in publicno matter how misogynistic, hateful, prejudiced, intolerant,misguidedor politically incorrect they might bethen we do not have free speech. What we have instead is regulated, controlled speech, and thats a whole other ballgame. Just as surveillance has been shown to stifle and smother dissent, keeping a populace cowed by fear, government censorship gives rise to self-censorship, breeds compliance, makes independent thought all but impossible, and ultimately foments a seething discontent that has no outlet but violence. The First Amendment is a steam valve. It allows people to speak their minds, air their grievances and contribute to a larger dialogue that hopefully results in a more just world. When there is no steam valvewhen there is no one to hear what the people have to sayfrustration builds, anger grows and people become more volatile and desperate to force a conversation. The problem as I see it is that wevelost faith in the average citizen to do the right thing. Weve allowed ourselves to be persuaded that we need someone else to think and speak for us. The result is a society in which weve stopped debating among ourselves, stopped thinking for ourselves, and stopped believing that we can fix our own problems and resolve our own differences. In short, we have reduced ourselves to a largely silent, passive populace, content to watch and not do.In this way, we have become our worst enemy. As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once warned, a silent, inert citizenry is the greatest menace to freedom. Freedom requires courage. As Brandeis noted, Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty. Rather, they were courageous, self-reliant men, with confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning applied through the processes of popular government. In other words, the founders did not fear the power of speech. Rather, they embraced it, knowing all too well that a nation without a hearty tolerance for free speech, no matter how provocative, insensitive or dangerous,will be easy prey for a police state where only government speech is allowed. What the police state wants is a nation of sheep that will docilely march in lockstep with its dictates. What early Americans envisioned was a nation of individualists who knew exactly when to tell the government to go to hell. About John W. Whitehead: Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His book Battlefield America: The War on the American People(SelectBooks, 2015) is available online at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org. America's Arab Allies Debate Need For Genocide Against Infidels' By Eric Zuesse 20 January, 2016 Strategic-culture.org Two key allies of the United States are the fundamentalist-Sunni governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia two fundamentalist Sunni countries whose ruling families are (like the U.S. Government) hostile to countries that are ruled by Shiites, particularly Iran and Syria. (In Syria, most Shiites, including the leader Bashar al-Assad, are called Alawites.) Qatar is owned by the anti-Shiite Thani family; Saudi Arabia is owned by their friends the anti-Shiite Saud family. All of the Arabic royal families are Sunnis who support one-another, and the leading family of them all, and the world's wealthiest by far, are the Sauds. Here are photos of the royals of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Bahrain, relaxing together in 1959. Here a book (p.48) notes that, Through intermarriage with Al-Thani line, Al-Khalifa [Bahrain's royals] remain perhaps the second most powerful and influential tribe in Qatar. And, here was a news-report that CNN refused to air because it showed Saudi soldiers using American tanks against Shiites in Bahrain who were peacefully demonstrating for Shiites to have rights in Bahrain; another report there shows the fired reporter herself, courageously talking about American censorship. The U.S. Government is trying to shut off Russian oil and gas westward into Europe (that's one reason why Obama perpetrated a coup in Ukraine to switch Ukraine against Russia and close down Russia's pipelines through Ukraine to Europe), and replace it with oil and gas northward into Europe from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, both of which are top buyers of U.S. weaponry. According to various measures, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela have the most oil (and Saudi oil is the world's cheapest to extract, so it's far more valuable); and Russia and Iran have the most gas. Qatar is #3 on gas, and Iran is #4 on oil. So: those are the actual giant players. Syria's Assad blocks the construction of a Qatari gas-pipeline into Europe, and of a Saudi oil-pipeline into Europe; Europe is by far the world's largest energy-market. So, there's a Sunni-versus-Shiite war, between Sunni royals and Shiite governments; and Assad also blocks Obama's plan to replace Russian oil-and-gas sales with Sunni oil-and-gas sales. Militarily, Sunni nations boost sales of U.S. weaponry, whereas Russia is America's biggest competitor in the weapons-sales markets, and supplies weapons to Shiite countries. So: it's U.S. and the Sunni royals, versus Russia and the Shiite leaders. If there will be another world war, those are already the principals in it. Each of those Sunni royal families owns, within his (and females are their property, so only males own things there) country, key news-media (TV networks, newspapers, etc.), and other means of educating the public to be a subject that the ruling family accepts and approves. The Thanis own Al Jazeera TV, which broadcasts a Westernized line in English for Western PR, but a more traditional Arabic tribal and Islamic line in their native Arabic, to keep their subjects in line. Here, on Al Jazeera Arabic, is a debate concerning whether to exterminate Alawites. English subtitles have been added so that Westerners can understand what the Thanis are presenting to their countrymen. The program-host favors extermination of Syria's Shiites called Alawites (especially Assad), but the program's guest is arguing to the contrary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULtNYSUqYHw&feature=youtu.be Other friends of the Sauds are yet another top buyer of U.S. weapons, the six fundamentalist Sunni royal families of UAE, United Arab Emirates (6 Emirates, or royal rulers), where the royal TV operation is the Middle East Broadcasting Center in Dubai. Here, on that TV network, and again with added English subtitles, is a debate between a Saudi progam-host and a Saudi jihadist: https://www.facebook.com/yasir.qadhi/posts/10153508393238300 or http://www.almasdarnews.com/article/terrorist-interviewed-on-saudi-tv-video/ That Saudi jihadist, interned in a Saudi re-education camp, explains to his Saudi program-host, why he wants to kill Saudis who violate the Quran, more even than he wants to kill foreigners who do. (Wanting to kill non-Saudis is okay to the Saud family, but wanting to kill Saudis isn't supported by them, unless the killer is a Saud, who is authorized to condemn people to death for apostasy or any reason.) The program host tries to persuade that jihadist to go to Afghanistan or the U.S. or some other country, to kill non-believers; but the jihadist replies, What does Allah say? He says kill the close infidel. The jihadist opens by saying that the grave of the Prophet Muhammad in Saudi Arabia must be destroyed because people go there to worship, and the Quran prohibits idol-worship. The question as to whether Muhammad's grave is an idol isn't dealt with at all in the Quran; so, some Muslims kill each other over such differences. The jihadists, like any fundamentalist in any faith, always presume the harshest reading of their Scripture, in this case the Quran. The jihadist says that visiting Muhammad's grave is shirk, or a violation of God's will. The interviewer, who is approved by the ruling family, says that whereas visiting other graves is forbidden, visiting Muhammad's grave isn't. The jihadist says that, since his host disagrees with his interpretation, he (at 4:09 on the video) would strangle the host to death if he were in a position where he could. Saudi Arabia is the world's biggest buyer of U.S.-made weapons, and, when U.S. Presidents meet the Saudi King, the President of the U.S. bows before him. That's just a ritual, designed to display to everyone who is boss, and who is servant. The Saudi King also organizes the other Sunni heads-of-state. In December 2015, he organized a 34-nation+ new Sunni version of NATO, to conquer Iran. It might produce lots of added arms-sales for America. The Sauds also have always been anti-Russian, and that's very important to the U.S. Government, which especially prioritizes defeating Russia, above even defeating the leaderships in Russia's allies Iran and Syria. Russia possesses nuclear weapons, so the U.S. won't yet invade Russia. The U.S. and Russia are by far the world's two largest arms-exporting countries. The competition is no longer between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, because the latter ended in 1991, but the competition now only against Russia continues on, in order to gain market-share in armaments, and in international power. So: the U.S. Government calls Russia the most aggressive' nation in the world. A considerable build-up in the news' media preceded that demonization campaign. The U.S. President certainly wouldn't bow to Russia's Vladimir Putin. King Saud is the world's wealthiest person, and the Saud dynasty was started before the U.S. even existed: 1744. He buys his weapons mainly from the U.S., but also from UK and France. The supposed ideological difference between the democratic' U.S. and the Sunni dictatorships, has no impact upon America's geostrategic moves. Everything now is business relationships. Ideology has become relevant only for PR purposes, to fool the public. That's the reason why the U.S. has no problem with its chief arms-purchaser being a slave nation where women are only property who can be raped with impunity, and where the only issue about genocide is whether its main target is Shias, or else might include also Sunnis and Christians. The U.S. Government is all-business, now. And America's business is to defeat Russia; anything else is just PR. Vladimir Putin is to be demonized, rather than to be bowed to; the American people are to accept that the American President can bow to the Saudi King but not to a demon' such as the popularly elected President of Russia. The American people have to accept it, because they don't know what's really happening. As U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush said in private when his subordinates, at the end of the Cold War against communism, advised him that America's efforts to defeat Russia were now over and America should welcome Russia as a new ally and possible friend: To hell with that! We prevailed, they didn't. His subordinates followed through on that, and so did every U.S. Administration since, but especially that of Obama. This business isn't really about cash; it's about raw conquest. GHW Bush set the tone, and his successors have been tuned to it, consistently: it has emerged as an essential part of the post-Cold-War United States, an empire set upon expansion into what had been Russia. And, increasingly, the gloves are off it's brutal, and not only in the Middle East. And it is getting extremely dangerous. Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity. 7312 Eagle Crest Blvd - Source: Google Street View SHARE By Susan Orr of the Courier and Press Fifth Third Bank says it will close its Eagle Crest branch in Evansville as part of a previously-announced plan to consolidate or sell about 100 branch offices. Employees and customers at the branch, 7312 Eagle Crest Boulevard, have been notified of the closing, said bank spokesman Dave Hosick. The branch is expected to close in April. Hosick said employees will have the chance to transfer to another local Fifth Third office. "We feel confident that we're going to be able to find them positions at a nearby location," Hosick said. In addition to Evansville, two other area branches will also be closing: Nortonville in Hopkins County, Kentucky; and the east-side office in Marion, Illinois. Hosick said the bank does not anticipate any more local branch closures. "We're fully committed to that market." Automated teller machines will remain in operation at the three locations after the branch closures, he said. Cincinnati-based Fifth Third first announced its branch closure plans last June. At that time, the bank also said it planned to sell about 30 parcels of land it had been holding for future branch development. The company said it was making the move because more of its customers are banking online, so the bank doesn't need as many branch offices. In October, Fifth Third announced the first wave of branch reductions, saying it would sell off its retail banking operations in St. Louis and Pittsburgh, while continuing to have a commercial banking presence in both markets. That move involved selling 12 branch offices in St. Louis and another 17 in Pittsburgh. Hosick said the Southern Indiana branch closures are part of the second and final wave of closures related to last year's announcement. According to Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis data, Fifth Third has 24 branches in the Evansville market, which includes all or portions of eight counties in Indiana and Kentucky. Based on deposits, Fifth Third holds the top market share in Evansville, just ahead of Old National Bank. SHARE Jamon I. Randolph By Richard Gootee of the Courier and Press Evansville police said they arrested a Tennessee man Tuesday night after he tried to flee a traffic stop. The man was identified as Jamon I. Randolph, 28. He is listed in Vanderburgh County jail records as a Bartlett, Tennessee, resident. Officers spotted Randolph driving in a "reckless manner" near the intersections of Washington and Weinbach avenues, according to a police department news release, and tried to stop the vehicle in a nearby parking lot about 9:30 p.m. As the officer slowed to initiate that stop, Randolph reportedly accelerated out of the parking lot, drove onto South Lincoln Park Drive and was finally stopped again this time without incident on Washington Avenue, according to the news release. Police found a loaded handgun on Lincoln Park Avenue that Randolph is accused of discarding during the chase. Inside the car, police also found a backpack with more than $11,000 in it, according to the news release. Police also discovered that Randolph's driver's license had been suspended. He faces charges of possession of a handgun without a permit, resisting law enforcement and reckless driving, as well as several other traffic offenses. He is initially being held without bond, according to online jail records. SHARE By Zach Osowski Two Evansville schools could be spared state takeover if the Indiana State Board of Education approves a resolution at its meeting next week. Caze Elementary School and Washington Middle School are both named in a memo released by the state board in advance of Tuesday's meeting, as is another school not based in the area West Side Leadership Academy out of Gary. Both local schools are on the verge of a sixth straight "F" grade, which would make them eligible for a state takeover. Those takeovers wouldn't happen if the resolution is approved by the board of education. The resolution states the board members have had meetings with all three schools and members are satisfied they are heading in the right direction, despite being on the verge of another failing grade on the ISTEP. "During these public hearings, the schools demonstrated to the board outstanding work taking place by the students, teachers, staff, administrators, school corporations, third-party partners and communities to improve the educational outcome of students attending these schools," the resolution reads. The resolution goes on to say "current turnaround efforts will continue to be supported at these schools should they receive placement in the lowest category or designation of school improvement for a sixth consecutive year for the 2014-15 academic year." Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp. Superintendent David Smith said, if approved, he "applauds the state board" for the resolution. In 2012, the EVSC entered a partnership with nonprofit Mass Insight Education to create the Transformation Zone to provide additional resources to implement strategies and conditions to increase student achievement. "So we will continue down that pathway because we know it works," Smith said. "It's slow. It's tedious. But it also yields significant results as we've seen from other schools in our Transformation Zone. And as we've seen from the state adopting it as an intervention model for other schools throughout the state." Smith also said he hopes the General Assembly, department of education and Indiana State Board of Education acknowledges that no one not an individual, school or corporation should be penalized for this year's "flawed ISTEP assessment." The school grades for the 2015 ISTEP will be released at the meeting on Tuesday. Efforts in the state legislature to protect schools and teachers from bad grades have been ongoing.. The issue of failing schools eligible for state takeovers has been raised in debate on Senate Bill 200, which would allow for schools to use as their most recent benchmark either the 2014 ISTEP grade or the 2015 grade whichever is higher. Some lawmakers wondered if it would count against a school if one got an "F" on the 2014 test and then received an "F" on the 2015 test. The answer, so far, is yes. This resolution by the board of education could help, if approved. At two public hearings last August for Caze and Washington, community members, students, teachers and administrators spoke on behalf of each school and overwhelmingly pleaded for the state to allow continued local control to improve student success. At both hearings, Smith presented recommendations to the state board in lieu of possible takeover. For Caze, a prekindergarten through fifth-grade facility, Smith asked that officials be allowed to continue supporting student success through the Transformation Zone. Caze is one of the five schools with that designation. At Washington, a 6th-8th-grade facility, Smith recommended that the state board allow the new director of school support, Tammy Dexter, help officials achieve a "B" school accountability grade in three years. Other EVSC schools that have been in danger of state takeover preceding a potential sixth consecutive F accountability grade include Lincoln Elementary School, McGary Middle School and Glenwood Leadership Academy. McGary broke the failing grade cycle in 2013-14 by earning a "D." And the state board approved allowing continued local control for Glenwood and Lincoln. SHARE By Zach Osowski INDIANAPOLIS After several unsuccessful attempts in the past, lawmakers are once again hearing a bill allowing Sunday alcohol sales, which proponents call convenient and opponents call dangerous. House Bill 1399, authored by Rep. Tom Dermody, R-LaPorte, was heard by the House Public Policy Committee on Wednesday. The bill is the latest effort by lawmakers to allow Hoosiers to buy alcohol on Sunday at stores. Dermody proposed a similar bill last year but it never got to a full House vote. This year's bill is similar, but has some changes, the biggest being that hard liquor would be allowed to stay on shelves instead of behind a counter in a grocery store. Despite the clear battle lines between liquor stores, who oppose the bill, and grocery stores, who favor it, Dermody said his legislation isn't a compromise. "We're just trying to allow Hoosiers to do seven days a week what they currently do six days a week," Dermody said. Rep. Terri Austin, D-Anderson, is a co-author on the bill. She said it doesn't make any sense for Indiana to ban the purchase of alcohol at stores when you can go out and drink at a bar or restaurant. She said Indiana is the only state in the nation that allows drinking at a bar, restaurant or sporting event but bans buying alcohol while shopping on Sundays. But there would be some changes to how grocery stores sell alcohol if the bill is passed. Alcohol displays would be banned in certain areas of the store usually frequented by children, such as near candy or cereal. Most of the alcohol would have to be contained to a single, clearly defined aisle. The bill would also require clerks selling alcohol at grocery or drug stores to go through alcohol server training the same training required of liquor store employees. Spokespeople for grocery stores and alcohol distributors overwhelmingly support HB 1399 because it would be an extra day of sales for them. John Elliot, from Kroger, said Sunday is their second busiest day of the week. "We're simply asking to sell something we sell safely and responsibly for six days a week on the seventh day," he said. Liquor store officials oppose the bill, saying the sale of alcohol needs to be closely regulated, which they claim the bill doesn't take into account. Patrick Tamm, president and CEO of the Indiana Association of Beverage Retailers, said alcohol is dangerous and allowing more opportunities for people to purchase it is irresponsible. Tamm said liquor stores are more closely regulated because they offer alcohol exclusively and that regulation should be extended to the big box stores as well. He said HB 1399 would be devastating to liquor stores in Indiana. Dermody disputed those claims, saying liquor stores could benefit from being open an extra day, adding that Indiana is losing money when people go to another state to buy alcohol and do their grocery shopping. Dermody said that's common in his home town, which is a 25-minute drive from Michigan. "When you vote for this, don't vote for the liquor stores or the big box stores," Dermody said. "Place your vote for Hoosiers." The bill will be voted on by the public policy committee next week. Dermody said some tweaks will be added to the bill, including prohibiting the sale of alcohol at self-checkout lanes. SHARE Nick Morgan shovels snow Wednesday, January 20. "This is when Evansville is at it's prettiest," the Minnesota native said. By Richard Gootee of the Courier and Press More than three inches of snow fell at the Evansville Regional Airport overnight, the product of the first of two winter storms that will sweep through the area. Meteorologists from the National Weather had warned Tuesday that the entire region could see substantial snow totals up to five inches from the system. The snow shut down schools and was expected to make the Wednesday morning commute hazardous, though as of 6 a.m., Evansville-Vanderburgh County 911 dispatchers reported few problems. Roads throughout the area, including those that had already been plowed were still snow covered Wednesday morning as lingering snow showers continued to fall. However, the snow showers are expected to push out of the area early this morning, and the weather service has already canceled the Winter Storm Warning that was set to go until noon in Vanderburgh County. Indiana State Police Sgt. Todd Ringle encouraged drivers to continue to reduce their speed and be cautious in the snowy conditions. However, he too said there were not many issues at least early in Wednesday's commute. He noted Evansville troopers worked two slide-offs before 7 a.m. -- one on Interstate 64 and one on U.S. 41. In addition to drivers being responsible, he noted that road conditions were probable better because unlike Thursday night's expected storm there was no ice associated with the first round of snow. "So far, so good this morning, Ringle said just before 7 a.m., "I really thought we'd be much busier but things so far have been very quiet." Ringle went driving on some of the area's highways early Wednesday and said at that time fellow motorists were exercising the correct caution, noting that his top speed was 35 mph and he "didn't have any issues at all." He urged drivers to still remain careful around roads that appeared plowed and said that all roads will have the potential to be "snow-covered, slick and hazardous," all day on Wednesday as road crews make progress cleaning the road. "Those roadways are still extremely slick," he said about treated highways. Up until the snow stops, Ringle said, the No. 1 priority of snow removal is to simply keep pace with Mother Nature. As the snow finally comes to an end this morning, crews will finally be able to make real progress. "We need to give them, several hours if not half the day to get the roadways back to where they are going to be really safe," Ringle said. " Secondary roads could remain a problem into Thursday because of the overnight snowfall, Ringle advised. The second system forecasters have their eyes on should come to the area Thursday evening. That expected winter storm is expected to bring a mix of rain, sleet and freezing rain and snow Thursday evening before changing over to snow overnight and into Friday. Wednesday's high is expected to reach the high-20s under mostly cloudy skies. Wind chill readings are expected to stay above the 20-degree mark for most of the day. For a period of time on Thursday, the mercury should actually rise above the freezing mark, hence why Thursday's precipitation is expected to start out as at least a rain mixture. #tristatewx Tweets Royal Commission report Coward punch on workers rights It was snuck out at the height of the holiday season so it would provoke the least public outrage. The report from the prejudicially named Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption capped off an orchestrated witch hunt of the leadership of the organised labour movement launched in 2014 by then Prime Minister Tony Abbott. It lasted 20 months and cost $43 million but that was money well spent in the eyes of the enemies of trade unions and the interests of the working class. Its recommendations go way beyond mechanisms supposedly designed to prevent a few opportunist bad apples from rorting their positions. The proposed changes to the industrial relations regime gut workers rights in the workplace and seek to convert every trade union into a yellow union. The report now sits on CEO bookshelves alongside the Productivity Commissions report on the Workplace Relations Framework. If enacted, the impact of these documents on the rights of ordinary Australians would be devastating. As expected, Turnbull welcomed the report but tried to put a novel spin on it. The inquisition sought to re-invigorate the trade unions, according to the smooth-talking PM. Does anybody seriously believe that Malcolm Turnbull and his Liberals want stronger unions? acting opposition spokesperson on industrial relations, Mark Dreyfus, asked. They dont. They want weaker unions so they can attack conditions like penalty rates. The report forces a moment of truth on Turnbull & Co. They dont want a WorkChoices election of the sort they got in 2007. But expectations from the corporate sector have swelled since those days and they are impatient to lay the killer punches to workers rights. Theyre not happy that the decision about Sunday penalty rates is to be left to the Fair Work Commission. At the very least, they want a submission from the government recommending a cut to the pay of the countrys lowest wage earners. Employers pile on pressure The bosses are feigning disappointment. Heydons report didnt call for a ban on all pattern bargaining whereby trade unions seek to negotiate common terms in enterprise agreements in more than one enterprise. They would like unions to be exposed to competition from unions that usually cover other occupations. All in the interests of members, of course! And they want any special role for unions in enterprise bargaining scrubbed from industrial relations legislation. Having achieved so much with the recent anti-worker reports, employers are in no mood to back off. Still, the gains from the Royal Commission need to be converted to reality. This wont be straight forward. It was a convoluted piece of theatre to arrive at a pre-determined outcome. It denigrated individuals and cast a stain over the trade union movement in order to undermine the legitimacy of trade unionism all, in the final analysis, to boost profits. That was its ideological thrust. The Labor Party is being pushed to abandon its links to the trade unions; indeed to renounce its own history as a product of the unions. Heydon claimed that the revelations of the Royal Commission were the small tip of a very large iceberg and that misconduct in the trade union movement is widespread and deep-seated. There was a recommendation for criminal or civil action against 37 individuals, including trade union officials as well as against the AWU and the CFMEU, which was undoubtedly the special target of the Royal Commission. Echoes of the Cole Commission But, as Heydon himself points out, A finding of a Royal Commissioner is an expression of opinion, not a determination of legal rights. (Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption Report, 2015, Vol 1, [p.139]). For example, Queensland was a special focus of the Commission but only one out of the states several hundred trade union officials and organisers was referred for prosecution. The Commission was carefully designed not to drag employers and other big wigs into the spotlight but, despite the glaring class bias of the proceedings, two Queensland corporate executives had to be referred. Lurid headlines in the Fairfax press about the CFMEU receiving $700,000 from a labour hire company associated with underworld figure George Alexis turns out to be the recovery of underpaid wages that were promptly forwarded to the workers involved. Other allegations and police actions have already fallen over. Like the Cole Royal commission before it, the latest witch hunt is long on smear but short on proof and any sense of justice. The objectives The latest attacks are means to an end. The attack on penalty rates is the test case of a change in the balance of class forces with other objectives clearly on the minds of the capitalist ruling class. They want to reconfigure trade union structures into corporate entities in order to wipe democratic processes and open up leaderships to massive civil court actions. They want a Registered Organisations Commission essentially an ABCC for the entire trade union movement and the creation of a boosted Australian Building and Construction Commission to try and crush the CFMEU. Fines for taking anything but legally constricted action will go through the roof. Heydon recommends they go from $10,600 for individuals to $216,000 and $360,000 for reckless actions. Unions will be barred from paying such crushing fines. The current campaign to bankrupt the more miltant trade unions would be switched into hyper-drive. They want to wipe union representation from superannuation boards and have unfettered access to the funds they control. The fact that industry funds with union representation consistently deliver better outcomes for members is immaterial. They want to get their hands on the workers deferred wages for investment (speculation). They want to turn members against union leaderships with allegations about widespread corruption. It should be kept in mind that we live in a system based on theft of the fruits of the labour of others. Capitalism, by definition, is corrupt. Some elements in the unions will be infected with this, but organised labour does not infiltrate organised crime; crime seeks to infiltrate organised labour. Due to capitalisms very nature, workers historically suffer the consequences of its crises. But the system has arrived at an impasse; there is now very little boom in the boom and bust cycle. Disarming the organised working class is thus essential if a widespread austerity program and virtual slavery in the workplace are to be imposed. It has to be said, the bosses have made great advances to this end. Class collaboration The ground for this disarming was laid by the Hawke-Keating government and its Prices and Incomes Accord. Briefly, the Accord, between the ACTU and the Labor government, provided the means of locking the unions into the governments economic policy. It involved a commitment to cooperate with employers, to replace struggle with consensus, and to severely restrict unions rights to make claims on behalf of their members. Workers were committed to help the interests of all Australians, which turned out to mean their employers. It was class collaboration on the phoney basis of common interests between all people, both the tiny group of exploiters and the masses of exploited. It led to unions becoming party to an agreement, for the first time in Australian history, by which they applied for a reduction in the purchasing power of wages and salaries on the false notion of job creation. The then ACTU Secretary Bill Kelty stated in the Australian Financial Review in 1985 that employers were just lucky that they have a government and unions prepared to accept the need for profits, accept the need for growth on the basis of money being put in the hands of the employer. Kelty, along with his then ACTU sidekicks Simon Crean and Martin Ferguson are now giving advice to the Labor Party on the ways and means of distancing itself from the unions. Inherent in capitalism Exploitation and crises are inherent in the operation of capitalism. It is the economic and political system which is responsible for the present crisis. As long as governments shore up capitalism, no one particular government, irrespective of superficial points of difference, will be able to put an end to the present, deep crisis. What we are witnessing now is a sharpening of the constant struggle against the incessant attempts of employers to reduce the share of profits going to the workers in the form of wages. Basis of unity In the face of such a threat, there is an urgent need for left and progressive unity on policies of struggle for the rights and needs of working people. It is time to go back to basics. Some principles toward this fundamental goal of unity are: Organisations involved must be approached on the basis of equality, mutual respect and honesty; There must be consultation at each step of the process to ensure agreement on policies and tactics; There has to be adherence to decisions made and the carrying through of decisions; An atmosphere needs to be created in which the results of decisions and steps taken can be frankly discussed and evaluated. The road to unity, the creation of class conscious trade unionism and solidarity will be a long and complicated one but the first steps must be taken. The alternative path of capitulation leads to fascism. Joan Williams an outstanding Communist Comrade Joan Williams would have turned 100 years of age on Invasion Day. Born in Coolgardie, WA on January 26, 1916, Joan Williams a great poet, revolutionary and a Communist, died on June 21, 2008. Joan developed as a poet writing under the name of Justina Williams. She was awarded the Order of Australia in 1996 for service to the community as a writer, particularly in the areas of peace, social equality and protection of the environment. Joan campaigned against the presence of the US military base on North West Cape near Exmouth in the 1970s and much later the first Iraq war in 1991, in which her poem, Not in my name is an internationally recognised anti-war clarion for peace activists to this day. Not in my name, my womans name, not one drop of blood be shed for oil that makes some billionaires and sets the Middle East aflame . But in my name, in every womans name,send home great armies of the black and dispossessed, warships and frigates turn around. Peace in my name! The CPAWA branch pays its respects to Joan as one of those true communists who dedicated their lives to the working class struggle. Comrade Joan Williams, your example lives on! Gooda blasts card in annual report Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Mick Gooda has taken aim at the federal governments new healthy welfare card and work-for-the-dole scheme in his annual Social Justice and Native Title report. Social Services Assistant Minister Alan Tudge promoting the card. Mr Gooda said the two programs, which came out of a review by mining billionaire Andrew Forrest, would not help Indigenous people and said a human rights approach was needed to welfare programs. He said both programs should be voluntary and allow people the choice to opt in. In August, the government announced Ceduna in South Australia would host a trial for new debit card accounts that allow spending only on certain items. Mr Gooda said the card did not address the underlying causes of alcoholism, drug use and problem gambling. These reforms will significantly impact on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples because of our overrepresentation in the welfare system, he wrote. In the coming months, the Australian government must meaningfully engage with our people about the design and implementation of the healthy welfare card and the work-for-the-dole program in remote communities. Limiting peoples ability to access their welfare payments in cash does not address the reasons for this harmful behaviour, including poverty, trauma, and lack of education. Mr Gooda made 21 recommendations, including that the Western Australian government should not close any remote Aboriginal communities without proper consultation. And he addressed the anxiety and confusion caused by deep cuts to Aboriginal programs and organisations through the Indigenous Advancement Strategy (IAS). Mr Gooda also considered some human rights issues for Indigenous people with disability, recommending that the Closing the Gap targets consider disability as an area for action and that First Nations disability support organisations ensure they are culturally competent, as the NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) rolls out. In the report, Mr Gooda calls for all states and territories to establish Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander childrens commissioners and for child welfare targets to be added to the Close the Gap campaign. Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care (SNAICC) chair Sharron Williams told the Koori Mail that Mr Goodas discussion of cuts to services through the IAS was spot on. If government cuts funding to services and SNAICC how can we continue to do the job were required to do? she said. SNAICC was created as a result of the Bringing them Home report, to speak for and have a strong national voice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. If you reduce our capacity to do so, and if you reduce the capacity of service providers in the community, our people are going to suffer. Funding cuts have a profound impact on how we deliver services. The IAS was very destructive to many Aboriginal organisations, which were defunded or had to reduce what they were able to provide on the ground. Its been a double whammy. The federal government has reduced SNAICCs capacity to influence and removed community organisations ability to do their jobs. Ms Williams said that when Aboriginal children were nine times more likely to be in out-of-home care than other children, then you had to realise there was something profoundly wrong with current practices. We are not addressing the problems, she said. Government is continually saying, This is really serious. We have to build faster ambulances, doing things in a reactive rather than preventative manner. We should be strengthening the capacity of families, so we can care better for our children at home and in our communities. Opposition Indigenous Affairs spokesman Shane Neumann said Mr Goodas report showed the need to refocus policies towards working with Indigenous people and creating meaningful consultation. Weve seen a pattern of chaos, confusion and neglect, which Mr Gooda has made clear in his report, he said. The thing that really strikes me is the urgent need to increase genuine consultation with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The government needs to re-fund the National Congress of Australias First Peoples. Congress has two new leaders who are very capable, and the elected representatives. You have to listen to the people who are elected, not just a handpicked group. The trouble with this government is that it doesnt listen to peak bodies. It picks and chooses who it listens to, rather than taking advice from those delivering front-line services. Koori Mail Radioactive racism in the wild west Youd be forgiven for thinking Western Australia was the Wild West. The announcement from the WA government that it planned to close 150 Aboriginal remote communities came hot on the heels of plans to gut the Aboriginal Heritage Act. Residents from the Aboriginal community of Oombulgurri, which was closed and demolished by the Western Australian state government. The changes to the Aboriginal Heritage Act have two main objectives: one is to make it easier for Aboriginal heritage sites on the Aboriginal Heritage Register to be delisted; the other is to make it harder to get Aboriginal heritage sites listed in the first place. One of the key factors in a site getting and staying on the register is proving an ongoing connection to the site a logistical factor made much harder if people are being forcibly removed from remote communities. Pastor Geoffrey Stokes, a Wongutha man from Kalgoorlie, was out hunting one day near Mt Margaret when he encountered a mining company, Darlex, literally about to dig into a cave an Aboriginal heritage site. This particular site had been lodged with the Department of Aboriginal Affairs by the Goldfields Land and Sea Council 23 years earlier but had not been officially registered. The company was about to destroy the site without having gained permission or consulting with the Aboriginal custodians and had no requirements to do so because the site did not appear on the register. On inquiries made to the Department of Aboriginal Affairs (DAA) about this site, it was revealed that something like 10,000 sites have been lodged but never registered. This is how the system works. Traditional owners can lodge a site with the DAA and the Department may or may not register it depending on how busy they are over a period of about two decades. Once it is registered, a mining company can then apply to destroy it anyway, but rest assured that if its registered youll be consulted about the sites impending doom. However, if you dont visit the site regularly, under a changed Aboriginal Heritage Act, its likely to be deregistered aka no one is coming to talk to you before they destroy your heritage. Im reminded of being at a mining conference in WA where the then Minister for Mines and Petroleum gave a keynote presentation. He ended by inviting everyone to stay around for a raffle the prize is a free Aboriginal Heritage clearance. The miners roared with laughter. The Minister re-used the joke when calling the raffle allowing us to record this sick joke about the religion and culture of Australias first people. When played back to him in Parliament, he scoffed and said it was taken out of context. Mulga Rocks Just around the corner from Mt Margaret is Mulga Rocks the site of the latest uranium mine proposal by a company that has recently changed its name to Vimy Resources. Vimy is like an all-star cast with a former Fortescue Metals Group executive as director, a former Liberal MP on the board of directors and generously funded by Twiggy Forrest. Vimy recently submitted a scoping study for Mulga Rocks, which is near Kalgoorlie and adjacent to the Queen Victoria Springs an A-Class Nature Reserve. In submissions made to the scoping study, the DAA provided comment in response to the proposal saying the company should minimise impact to Aboriginal heritage, should consult with the DAA and the Central Desert Native Title Service, and suggesting that some sites may still be under the protection of the not-yet-gutted Aboriginal Heritage Act. The company responded: No Native Title Groups claim the areas and no traditional owners undertake any traditional activities in the area. That comment was based on a 1982 study by an American anthropologist using a dubious methodology. The anthropologist just asked around in the nearest town (150 kilometres away), a process that identified at least one family who used to go out, and no further inquiries were made about that family. The family survived and live in the area but are yet to be consulted. Neighbouring communities and interested communities are yet to be consulted and the company refuses to consult, stating the project wont impact anyone so theres no need. The closest community to the proposed Mulga Rocks mine is called Coonana and it has been on the governments hit list of communities to close down for many years. Slowly but surely the WA government has cut all funding to the community, which is now virtually a ghost town. Coonana is a refugee community people who have been moved from community to community over generations. Known as the Spinifex people, they came across the border from South Australia following the nuclear weapons tests at Maralinga and Emu Field in the 1950s. The government used to kick Aboriginal people hitching a free ride west off the train, but then had a bright idea: give Aboriginal people a free ride west and get them off the atomic bomb testing sites permanently. The dislocation that began during the atomic bomb tests is very much alive today. The starving of services at Coonana should sound alarm bells about what this government is capable of doing. At Oombulgurri in the Kimberley, the strategy was to demolish houses: no resettlement, no alternative housing, nothing. As the country tries to heal from centuries of displacement and bad government policy, this government is creating another generation of displaced people. The plans to shut 150 remote Aboriginal communities are much more secretive the Premier Colin Barnett has promised consultation but refused an invitation from the Kimberley Land Council to join a joint Land Councils meeting about the closures in early 2015. Proposals to use royalties money from the mining industry to meet the funding shortfall have been quashed by the Premier. As the mining boom crashes and the governments focus is on supporting industry rather than communities, we are expecting further attacks on communities and culture to make it easier and cheaper for mining companies to get projects off the ground. Discrepancies In addition to proposed changes to the Aboriginal Heritage Act, the WA government last year released a draft Heritage Bill 2015, covering the protection of all WA heritage sites except Aboriginal sites of significance. Professor Ben Smith, from the University of WA, and a spokesperson for the Australian Archaeological Association (AAA), told the ABC last August that the discrepancies and contradictions between the two proposed sets of changes were untenable. He noted that in the new Heritage Bill, the decision to add or remove a site will remain with the minister for heritage, while in revisions to the Aboriginal Heritage Act the decision will be left with a senior public servant. We have a watering down of the Aboriginal Heritage Act, Smith said, whereas we have continued the strength of non-Aboriginal preservation. The AAA also raised concerns about a tiered approach to fines for those who damage sites. Smith said under proposed changes to the Aboriginal Heritage Act, an individual found to be damaging an Aboriginal site on their first offence will face a fine of up to $100,000: If a corporate body is found to have damaged a registered Aboriginal site, in the first instance they will be fined up to $500,000, with the maximum penalty of $1 million only levelled for repeat offenders. In contrast, the Heritage Act doesnt make provision for first and second fines if an individual or a body corporate damages a piece of non-Indigenous state heritage, they instantly face a $1 million fine. Smith said: Why would we want a tiered structure? If you damage any piece of Aboriginal heritage, you are committing a crime of great seriousness, just as if you damage any piece of Australia heritage. Why is one subject to a lesser process? Its extraordinary in an international context. How will these be perceived by UNESCO? Phil Czerwinski, chair of the WA Association of Consulting Archaeologists, said all heritage sites should be treated equally. We seem to want to protect white fella heritage better than we want to protect black fella heritage, he said. A petition against changes to the Aboriginal Heritage Act is posted at: aboriginalheritagewa.com under the latest-news section. Mia Pepper is the Nuclear Free Campaigner at Conservation Council WA, and Deputy Chair of the Mineral Policy Institute. First published in the Chain Reaction section of national magazine of Friends of the Earth, Australia, edition # 124, September 2015, foe.org.au/chain-reaction The Beacon Indigenous Grandmothers organise against unjust removals An official Australian narrative has developed around the seeming insolubility of the third world statistics of Australias First People. This narrative pushed by the mass media and political parties across the spectrum, is being accepted by many Australians. It is past time to challenge this vilification of the worlds oldest living culture and confront the causes of our intransient racism which translates to assimilation by stealth. In capitalist Australia the only beneficiaries of the official narrative and present policies attacking Indigenous land rights and culture, are powerful mining and monopoly interests and the governments that support them. Building the struggle to recognise and defend Indigenous rights to land and culture must be a priority. Aboriginal people themselves take up the fight through initiatives like Grandmothers Against Removals (GMAR), an organisation formed in 2013 by a group of Indigenous grandmothers to challenge the daily abuse of Indigenous families rights by government agencies. A little known fact today is that, on any night across Australia, there are more Indigenous children in state out-of-home care than there were during the period of the Stolen Generation. There are more than 15,000 Aboriginal children presently in out-of-home care and 32,000 parents are deemed to be unable to look after our own children. This is approximately a third of children in out-of-home care, yet Indigenous Australians make up approximately 3% of the Australian population. On the 6th anniversary of Sorry Day, in February 2013, a group of Indigenous grandmothers met in Tamworth, NSW, and formed Grandmothers Against Removals (GMAR). Since then their simple initiative has become a national resistance movement against the racist and systemic practice of removing Indigenous children from their families, communities and culture. The Grandmothers were angered by state child protection agencies who they believed deliberately ignored extended family and community networks willing to care for Indigenous children deemed to be at risk. GMAR, together with the Ombudsmans Office, developed a set of guiding principles, How to Work with Aboriginal Families, Individuals and Communities. These principles have now become a rallying creed for Grandmothers Against Removal Committees, which have sprung up across the country over the last three years. Late last year, Grandmothers Against Removals held a public meeting at Redfern Town Hall to begin organising a protest in February 2016 in Canberra, against the mass scale of removals of Indigenous children across Australia (see details this page). Removals of Indigenous children, the meeting was told by a GMAR spokesperson, are not happening in line with legislation which requires state agencies to notify family members before removing Indigenous children. The Aboriginal Placement Principal is included in the relevant child protection Acts to enable extended family members to care for children who may be at risk. It states that the child protection agency must first look for Aboriginal family members to care for any Indigenous child suspected of being at risk. The Grandmothers and elders present told the meeting, that in Aboriginal culture and law if an individual or family drop the ball, there are others there to pick it up and support them for as long as it takes. One grandmother responded to the cultural racism inherent in judgements made about neglect and abuse in Indigenous families by pointing out that if we cant do it the way they do, doesnt mean its wrong. Rather than attempting to support the placement of Indigenous children with their grandparents or another family member, members of GMAR and the audience reflected on their experience of child care agencies interrogating families and looking for reasons not to place children with them. The children, the meeting heard, were placed instead with white families and restricted from contact with their Indigenous families by distance or the often arbitrary conditions placed in the Care Plans formulated by state agencies. This is resulting in long-term separation of Indigenous children and their families. Audience members pointed out that traumatic consequences for the child and family result from a billion dollar child protection industry that vilifies Aboriginal families and fails to recognise and support Aboriginal culture. Similar practices in the past led to intergenerational trauma as Indigenous children were cut off from their culture and language. From their experience, the Grandmothers present at the Redfern meeting were unanimous in their belief that no lessons had been learnt from the Stolen Generation. Indigenous people at the meeting rejected the stereotyping of Aboriginal families as drug addicts and alcoholics. This stereotyping has led to the phenomenon of hidden shame amongst Aboriginal people. Not dissimilar to the generalised shame that the NT Intervention has caused Aboriginal men who were tarred with one brush as child molesters and consumers of pornography. The incidence of domestic violence and institutionalised child abuse in society as a whole has not had a similar outcome for other sections of our community. The Grandmothers explained that many Indigenous people do not know their rights and are unable to insist on these being respected. A spokeswoman pointed out, Our people do not believe they have human rights ... we need to educate them, you can ask to have a support person with you when DOCS visit. We need to stop the blackmail of people to sign off on Care Plans by false promises of early restoration if they sign straight away. The goal of assimilation began with colonisation and is the ultimate result of ongoing discriminatory practices like those being opposed by the Grandmothers. Back door adoptions are being encouraged by the use of legislation which allows white foster parents to adopt children after a certain length of time. This is in the context of the ongoing failure of governments to support Aboriginal families in crisis, (employment programs cut, land rights reversed, Aboriginal organisations defunded, Indigenous legal and health services closed etc): it is a continuation of assimilationist policies. Indigenous audience members revealed that many Indigenous Australians will avoid ticking yes to questions about their Aboriginality on government forms because this can make them a target for racist assumptions about their ability to raise their children. Grandmothers Against Removals is planning a nationwide protest in Canberra between February 11 and 13 we need to join our voices to become a very loud voice work collectively to implement a restoration program and place child protection issues back in community control. Instead of spending money on home care services it should be spent on family preservation. The Canberra protest is timed to coincide with the anniversary of Sorry Day and demands all our support to make governments accountable for the billion dollar industry that has been created around child removals. As one audience member commented, Stop these departments coming in and making our families dysfunctional. Latin America has to fight and win! For now, Argentina is lost and Venezuela is deeply wounded, divided and frustrated. Virtually everywhere in socialist Latin America, well-orchestrated and angry protests are taking place, accusing our left-wing governments of mismanagement and corruption. What was gained during those years of hard work and sacrifices is suddenly evaporating in front of our eyes. And there seems to be no way to stop the trend in the foreseeable future. Whatever magnificent work our governments have done have been smeared. Western propaganda and its local serfs belittle the achievements of our people. In several countries, revolutionary zeal has almost entirely vanished. It is clear, even with an unarmed eye that great progress had been made. Those of us who knew Ecuador two decades ago, (then a depressing country, humiliated and torn by disparities and racism), are now impressed by its wonderful social services, free culture and modern infrastructure. Indigenous people of Bolivia are proudly in possession of their own land. Venezuela has been inspiring the entire Latin America and the world by its internationalism and determined struggle against Western imperialism. Chile, step by small step, has been dismantling the grotesque legacy of Pinochets dictatorship, moving firmly towards socialism. There are hundreds of great and inspiring examples, all over the continent. In less than two decades, Latin America converted itself from one of the most depressing parts of the world, to the most progressive one. A few years ago, it really seemed that the Empire had finally lost. There was no way that South Americans would want to go back to the days of darkness. The achievements of socialism were too obvious, too marvellous. Who would want to go back to the gloomy nihilism, depressing feudal structures and the fascist client-state arrangements? Then the Empire re-grouped. It gathered its local lieutenants, its lackeys, and began striking back with deadly force. All the means of imperialist propaganda were applied. The goal was to convince people that what they see is not actually real. Another objective was to subvert, to torpedo most of the achievements. We lost elections? What nonsense! It was clean economic and political terror unleashed against us, and it was the most vicious propaganda, which began forcing out the left wing governments of Latin America from power! The world was watching, still demanding more Western-style democracy, more concessions. The West administered a Fifth Column that damaged Latin American revolutions, after infiltrating both media and brains in Caracas, Buenos Aires, even Quito. It consisted especially of the liberals and those so-called progressive forces; the same people who tried to burry the Cuban revolution after the Soviet Union had been destroyed by Western imperialism. The same people actually who were cheering the demolition of the Soviet Union itself. They kept pushing for anarchism and for some formulae of participatory economy, in fact for their own concepts, for Western, white concepts, for something that most of Latin American people who fought and won their revolutions never asked for! Jealous and petty, they hate the true powerhouses of resistance against Western imperialism: Russia, China, Iran or South Africa and in fact, even Latin America itself. Latin American people have always been intuitively longing for big, strong governments, like those in Cuba and those that lately emerged in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. And their natural allies should have been those countries from other, non-Western parts of the world, with powerful people-oriented leadership, not some European and North American individuals representing grotesque and defunct movements and intellectual concepts. In several countries, Latin America lost its way and again got derailed by Western demagoguery. Suddenly there was almost nothing left here of Chinese or Russian or Vietnamese ideas, nothing of internationalism, only Western soft liberal egotists and countless irrelevant marginal groups. History was forgotten. It was simple, decisive and powerful action by China that single-handedly saved Cuba, when the island-nation was hit by the Gorbachev and Yeltsin disasters. I wrote about it a lot, and Fidel quoted me, agreeing in his Reflections. It was the Soviet Union that stood in solidarity with almost all revolutionary movements of Latin America throughout the 20th century. And it was Russia that was backing Chavez during the countless Western attempts to overthrow his government. Playing with anarchism, liberalism and Euro-socialist concepts brought several Latin American revolutions to the brink of absolute calamity. South America is at the frontline. It is under attack. There is no time for the flowery theories. I know Latin American revolutionaries. I have met many, from Eduardo Galeano to several Cuban and Sandinista leaders. I also met many of the South American elites. One day, not long after Evo Morales came to power in Bolivia, I spoke to a man, a member of one of the leading families, which has in its ranks Senators, owners of mass media outlets, as well as captains of local industry. We will get rid of Morales, he told me, openly. Because he is a dirty Indian, and because we will not tolerate lefties in this part of the world. He was not hiding his plans he was extremely confident. We dont care how much money we have to spend; we have plenty of money. And we have plenty of time. We will use our media and we will create food and consumer goods deficits. Once there is nothing to eat, once there are food lines in all the major cities, as well as great insecurity and violence, people will vote him out of power. The elites said: We will get rid of Morales. They tried and tried, but they were not successful, because there was great solidarity with the government of Evo Morales, coming from countries like Brazil and Venezuela. It was clearly the concept used by the Chilean fascist economic and political right wing thugs, before the 1973 US-backed coup against President Salvador Allende. Uncertainty, shortages, and if everything failed then a brutal military coup. In Bolivia the elites tried and tried, but they were not successful, because there was great solidarity with the government of Evo Morales, coming from countries like Brazil and Venezuela. When the Right tried to break the country to pieces, pushing for the independence of the richest, white province of Santa Cruz, Brazilian President Lula declared that he was going to send the mightiest army in the South American continent and defend the integrity of the neighbouring country. It is beasts, and actually extremely powerful beasts, who are heading the opposition in South America. And to be frank, we can hardly speak about an opposition. These are oligarchs, landowners, Christian (many from the Opus Dei) demagogues and military leaders. In many ways they are still the true rulers of the continent. Nothing except brute force can stop them. They have unlimited financial resources, they have a propaganda machine at their disposal, and they can always count on the Empire to back them up. In fact it is the Empire that is encouraging, training and sustaining them. Violations of democracy and human rights! the opposition yells, whenever our governments decide to hit back. It is not that we are lately hitting back really hard, but any retaliation is packaged as brutal. What do we in fact do? We arrest just a few of the most outrageous terrorists those who are openly trying to overthrow or destabilise the state. But when they, the elites and their armies, came to power, they cut open peoples stomachs, and threw them from helicopters straight into the sea. Their death squads violate children in front of their parents. Female prisoners are raped by specially trained German shepherds dogs, and tubes with starved rats are inserted into their vaginas. Entire movements and parties are liquidated by fascist South American battalions of death (some of them trained in the United States), but we must use some nice and clean tactics and democratic means to prevent them from grabbing power again? The white, racist, colonialist Christian implants from Europe have been forming so-called South American elites. They are actually some of the cruellest human beings on Earth. Thanks to them, before our latest wave of Revolutions, Latin America suffered from the greatest disparities on earth. Tens of millions of its people were murdered. It was racially divided. It was plundered. Its veins were, and to a great extent still are, open to borrow from the terminology of the great storyteller Eduardo Galeano. My friend Noam Chomsky wrote about it extensively. I wrote about it in several chapters of my two latest books: Exposing Lies Of The Empire and Fighting Against Western Imperialism. Others have as well. How can people still listen to those mass murderers, with a straight face? One thing cannot be disputed: only a big and powerful government and its army could now defend its people. Latin American revolutionary leaders were given a mandate by the people, and they have no right to back up, to betray. Indecisiveness could prove lethal. Referendum after referendum, people expressed their support for the revolutionary Proceso, in Venezuela and elsewhere. Year after year the fascist opposition has been showing spite for the voices of the people, the same spite it has demonstrated for centuries. Sabotage after sabotage was administered, one treasonous act after another committed. As was promised by the Bolivian elites, the Venezuelan capitalist bandits paralysed their country by shortages. Even rolls of toilet paper became a deficit. All too familiar Like in Chile before 1973! The message is clear: you want to be able to wipe your ass, then betray socialism! Or: You want to eat? Then down with the legacy of Chavez! The will of the people is being humiliated. The elites are spitting straight into the faces of the majority. Some citizens are now voting for the right, simply because they are exhausted, because they are scared, because they see no solution. They are voting against their own will (as they used to in Nicaragua during the reign of Aleman), because if they vote for their own candidates, they would be made to eat shit, literally. But solutions are there! They are available. Instead of listening to some Euro-centric gurus from Slovenia or New England, the Latin American governments should ask for help and lean on such countries as Russia and China, immediately joining alternative financial institutions, forging defence treaties, working on energy and other deals with those who are actually standing up against Western imperialism. Latin America should never lose its independence. But with proven good friends and true powerful alliances, independence is never lost. Our leaders should shed their dependency on the Western Left. Mainly because the Western Left does not exist anymore, with some tiny, miniscule exceptions that proves the rule. What remain are a huge army of liberals, and then a tremendous multitude of selfish beings defending their own interests and concepts. They are horrified of those who are truly fighting and winning; therefore they openly hate Russia, China and other non-Western nations. Frankly, they are racist. Such people cannot inspire or impress anybody, and so they are trying their luck at the distant shores, diluting determination and perverting the essence of the South American revolutions. This is the time to be focused. South America should fight, with all its might. It is not easy, but its treasonous families, those who are destroying the precious lives of tens of millions of human beings, should be identified, arrested and tried. It should be done immediately! What many of them are actually doing is not being in opposition. They are interrupting the democratic process in their own countries, selling their homelands once again to foreign powers and international capital. Mass media outlets that are spreading misinformation, lies and foreign propaganda should also be immediately identified. They should be exposed, confronted, and if their goal is to destroy the socialist fatherland, shut down. Again, this is no time for liberal niceties. Freedom of expression has nothing to do with the freedom of using newspapers and television stations to spread fabrications, fear and uncertainty, or to call for the direct overthrow of democratically elected governments. And in South America, entire huge international newspaper and television syndicates have been working for years and decades for one single and deadly goal to smear and liquidate the Left, and to deliver the entire continent back to the racist, fascist foreign imperialist rulers. It has all gone too far, and it has to stop. A few months ago, I was riding on the impressive Sao Paulo metro system, together with my Cuban friend. It is much better than any public transportation network that I have seen in Europe or in the United States, I exclaimed. But people in Brazil think that it is total shit, commented my friend, laconically. How come? I was shocked. Because they are told so on the television, and because they read it in the newspapers. Yes, thats how it is! Free art, including opera, given to the Brazilian public, is nothing more than crap, if one reads the mainstream Brazilian press. Free medical care, no matter how (still) imperfect it is, is not even worth praising. Free education in so many South American countries New transportation networks, free or heavily subsidised books, brilliant parks with brand new libraries that are mushrooming in Chile and Ecuador Financial support for the poor, the fight to keep children in school, the fight to save the environment, countless programs to protect indigenous communities Nothing, nothing, and absolutely nothing is positive in the eyes of the pro-Western South American propagandists! This has become one huge counter-process, financed from foreign and local sources, aimed at discrediting all those great achievements. Corruption!!! That is the new battle cry of the elites and their lackeys. Accusations of corruption are fabricated or inflated against all governments of the left: Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, Evo Morales of Bolivia, even Michelle Bachelet of Chile. Cristina Kirchners back was almost broken by constant corruption charges. But how on earth could anyone take such accusations seriously, if they are coming from those who have been plundering, for over 500 years, their own continent on behalf of Europe and then the United States and multi-national corporations? Like locust, the right-wing families have been looting all the natural resources, while forcing people into near slave labour. Under horrendous feudal and fascist rulers, Latin America was converted into the pinnacle of corruption moral and economic. Nothing was left intact, and nothing remained pure. In order to survive in such a vile system, people had to bend, twist, and manoeuvre. Now these same bandit clans that have been destroying the continent are smearing, pointing fingers at the governments that are, step by step, trying to reverse the trend and serve the people. The same bastards that were bombing restaurants and hotels in their own countries, planting bombs on passenger airliners, and assassinating thousands of innocent people, are talking about morality. Are our people, our governments, expected to reach, to achieve total purity in just one or two decades, after the entire continent had been functioning for over 500 years as a bordello of Western colonialism and imperialism? Are we going to allow ourselves to be on the defensive when facing those who robbed and raped almost everything and everybody in Latin America? Yes, the people of Latin America were brutalised for several long centuries. They went through unimaginable suffering. They lost everything. But they never gave up. Since the holocaust performed by Spanish, Portuguese and other European barbaric conquerors, they have been rising, rebelling and fighting for their scarred land. Pablo Neruda wrote a tremendous poem Heights of Machu Picchu. Eduardo Galeano wrote Open Veins of Latin America. It is all there, in those two tremendous works. The fight goes on, to this very moment. Most of the power is now, finally, in the hands of those who are determined to fight for the interests of their people. We have no right to be defeated. If we do, hundreds of millions will lose their future and their hope. Such an opportunity would not come back. It is here, for the first time in 500 years! Millions died to bring it here. If the Revolution is crashed now, it may not return in full force for who knows how many years. In simple terms it means that several more generations would be lost! We have to counterattack now. What are we waiting for? Of what are we afraid? That the biggest terrorist on Earth the West would brand us as undemocratic? That the same West that has, for centuries, overthrown our governments, murdered our leaders as well as simple men, women and children would not give us its stamp of approval? That we would be criticised by those countries, which are still looting, violating, lying and ruining? Our friends, our allies are not in the West. We all know how lukewarm was the support given to Venezuela, Cuba or Ecuador in Europe and North America by those progressive forces, and how hostile was the mainstream. We have to wake up and join forces with those who are now standing proudly and with great determination against Western imperialism and market fundamentalism. There is no time for experiments. This is the fight for our survival! As I wrote earlier, in order for the Revolutions to continue, we need big governments, determined cadres, loyal armies and mighty allies. We also need huge Latin American solidarity, true unity and integration. One monolithic South American block in fraternal embrace with other truly independent countries. This is an extremely serious moment, Comrades! This is damn serious. Anarchism and the concepts of the factories administered by workers will not save us right now. Argentina has fallen, but Venezuela is still standing. Each creek, each boulder has now to be defended, be it in Brazil, Uruguay, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Venezuela, Nicaragua or Cuba. We have to be tough, we have to be alert, and we cannot do it alone! Venceremos nuevamente, camaradas! globalresearch.ca Indonesia snubs Saudi anti-terror coalition ... Then its capital gets hit Indonesia joins a growing list of countries beyond the Middle East region reportedly hit by the Islamic State group or its affiliates. Is it a case of IS simply going global, or is there something else to the latest incident in Indonesia? On the face of it, the attacks this week in downtown Jakarta the Indonesian capital of 10 million people are similar to those carried out in Paris last November, albeit with much less deadly results. Both involved a team of suicide bombers and gun attacks. In the Paris attacks, some eight armed men killed 130 people when they struck at various public venues on November 13. This week in Jakarta up to 15 assailants armed with explosives and rifles managed to kill only two civilians; the other five reported dead were attackers who were shot by police or blew themselves up. From the terrorists point of view, the Jakarta operation was a failure. That failure was partly due to the vigilance of Indonesian police, who had increased security across the capital in recent weeks due to what they said was the interception of terror communications. Jakarta deputy police chief Budi Gunawan was quoted by The Wall Street Journal as saying that a homegrown Islamist network in the Java city of Solo had been plotting terror attacks with jihadists based in Syria. We detected communications between a Syria group and the Solo group, said Gunawan. Following the Jakarta violence, the IS group reportedly claimed responsibility. The question is: whats behind the uptick in IS-affiliated activity in Indonesia? Police reportedly made several arrests against suspected IS operatives in recent weeks. Indonesia is no stranger to terrorism carried out by Islamist groups. Between 2000 and 2009, there were six major terrorist atrocities. The biggest one was the bombings in the tourist resort of Bali in 2002 which killed over 200 people. But for the past five years, the country has enjoyed relative peace. Author and expert on Indonesia Jeremy Menchik told France 24 in an interview that the relative quiet in the worlds fourth largest nation has been achieved because of the countrys relatively democratic transition having been able to co-opt dissident Islamist groups. With a population of over 240 million, Indonesia is the worlds most populous Muslim country. While the country suffered from a brutal dictatorship under Suharto from 1965 until the late 1990s, it has since managed to steer a more benign, inclusive and secular political path. Under President Joko Widodo, elected in 2014, Indonesia has managed to contain its erstwhile radical Islamist problem. One month ago, on December 17, Saudi Arabia launched a 34-Islamic nation anti-terror coalition, with an ostentatious announcement in the Saudi capital Riyadh. The surprise initiative was welcomed by Washington and London, although it was greeted with scepticism by many observers given the documented role that the Saudi rulers have had in funding and arming terror groups, including the Islamic State and other Al-Qaeda-linked militants. Sceptics noted that the Saudi-led coalition of 34 Islamic nations appeared to be hastily cobbled together, with some of the nominal member countries later saying that they had not been consulted by the Saudis in its formation. Not included in the Saudi initiative of the anti-terror Islamic bloc were Iraq and Iran, perhaps unsurprisingly given the Saudi antagonism with these mainly Shiite countries. Even more pointedly, two major Islamic nations, Algeria and Indonesia, explicitly declined to participate in the Saudi-led alliance. Given the prominence of Indonesia as the worlds biggest Muslim country, the Saudi initiative was thus dealt a severe public relations blow by Jakartas refusal to sign up. It is believed that Saudi Arabia has been behind the funding of radical Islamist groups within Indonesia going back several years, according to the Financial Times. With that in mind, the Indonesia authorities most likely snubbed the Saudi anti-terror coalition last month for precisely the same reasons that many analysts dismissed it. Seeing it as a cynical public-relations gimmick by the Saudis who are trying to burnish their badly tarnished international image over suspected links with terrorism, particularly in Syrias five-year conflict. That raises the plausible conjecture that the terror attacks this week in Jakarta by an IS-connected group may have been orchestrated as a form of retaliation against the Indonesian government for its embarrassing snub against the Saudis last month. If the Saudis and Western intelligence are indeed in some murky way driving jihadist terrorism for their geopolitical agenda, then it stands to reason that such terror groups could be manipulated by these same protagonists in Indonesia or anywhere else for that matter. A terror attack in the heart of Jakarta, apparently carried out by the IS group, would serve as a sharp warning to Indonesia over its derisory putdown of the Western-backed Saudi anti-terror coalition. The sudden uptick in Islamist terror activity in Indonesia and the failure of the attackers in Jakarta to inflict greater damage suggest that the assault was hurriedly planned. As in the orders to the operatives were hastily dispatched and acted on. That would fit with the theory that the Saudi sponsors of terrorism were looking for a quick counter to Indonesia undermining their anti-terror charade last month. RT Towards the collapse of Saudi Arabia In one year, the new king of Saudi Arabia, Salman, 25th son of the founder of the dynasty, has managed to consolidate his personal authority to the detriment of other branches of his family, including the clan of Prince Bandar ben Sultan and that of the old King Abdallah. However, we dont know what Washington has promised the losers in order to dissuade them from making attempts to regain their lost power. In any case, certain anonymous letters published in the British Press lead us to believe that they have not abandoned their ambitions. Forced by his brothers to nominate Prince Mohamad ben Nayef as heir, King Salman quickly isolated him and restricted his powers to the advantage of his own son, Prince Mohammed ben Salman, whose reckless and brutal nature is not restrained by the family Council, which no longer meets. De facto, he and his father govern alone, as autocrats with no counter-power, in a country which has never elected a parliament, and where political parties are forbidden. In terms of its interior policy, the regime favours only the Sunni or Wahhabi half of the population, and discriminates against the other half. Prince Mohammed ben Salman advised his father to have Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr decapitated because he had dared to defy him. In other words, the state condemned to death and executed the leader of the opposition, whose only crime was to have formulated and repeated the slogan Despotism is illegitimate. The fact that this leader was a Sheikh of the Shia movement only reinforces the feeling of apartheid against non-Sunnis, who are forbidden a religious education, and also forbidden to enter into public service. As for non-Muslims, about a third of the population, they are not allowed to practise their religion and can not hope to receive Saudi nationality. On the international level, Prince Mohammed and his father, King Salman, are implementing policies based on those of the Bedouin tribes of the kingdom. This is the only way of understanding both their continued financing of the Afghani Taliban and the Lebanese Movement of the Future, the Saudi repression of the Revolution in Bahrein. Incidentally, we should note that the execution of Sheikh al-Nimr follows the creation of a vast anti-terrorist Coalition of 34 states led by Riyadh. Since we know that the victim, who always stood against the use of violence, was convicted for acts of terrorism, we may conclude that this Coalition is in fact a Sunni alliance against all other religions. Prince Mohammed took it upon himself to launch the war against Yemen on the pretext of helping President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who had been overthrown by an alliance between the al-Houthi movement and the army of ex-President Ali Abdallah Saleh. In reality, the war was waged in order to seize the oil fields and exploit them with Israel. Predictably, the war went wrong, and the insurgents launched incursions inside Saudi Arabia, where the army fled, abandoning its equipment. Saudi Arabia is therefore the only state in the world which is the property of a single man, governed by this autocrat and his son, who refuse any form of ideological debate, who will not tolerate any form of opposition, and who accept only tribal serfdom. What has for many years been considered a residue of the past called to adapt to the modern world has thus progressively congealed until it has become the very definition of an anachronistic kingdom. The fall of the House of Saud may be provoked by a reduction in the price of oil. Incapable of reform, the kingdom is borrowing hand over fist, to the point that according to financial analysts, it will probably collapse within two years. The decapitation of Sheikh al-Nimr will have been the straw that broke the camels back. The fall of Saudi Arabia is now inevitable because there is no hope left for the people who live there. The country will be plunged into a mixture of tribal revolts and social revolutions which will be far more murderous than the previous Middle-Eastern conflicts. Far from acting to prevent this tragic end, the US protectors of the kingdom are awaiting it with impatience. They continually praise Prince Mohammeds wisdom, as if encouraging him to make even more mistakes. The US objective is now to divide the country into five states. Wahhabism is the state religion, but the power of the Saud family, both interior and exterior, depends exclusively on Sunni tribes, while it subjects all other populations to apartheid. King Salman (80 years old) leaves the exercise of power to one of his children, Prince Mohammed (30 years old.) The Prince has seized control of the countrys major companies, has declared war on Yemen, and has just executed the leader of the opposition, Sheikh al-Nimr. Information Clearing House Tensions, repression in Turkey On January 12, a suicide bombing, evidently carried out by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or Daesh as it is called in Arabic, killed ten German tourists in a historic square in downtown Istanbul, Turkey. This bombing, and another carried out shortly thereafter in Diyarbakir, in the heavily Kurdish southeast of the country, have raised tensions in this country of 78 million to boiling point, and have led to threats of more repression of the governments many critics. Suicide bombing, Istanbul, Turkey. The bombing in the Sultanahmet district, within sight of the beautiful Blue Mosque and a major tourist area, was carried out by a Syrian ISIS member. In addition to the dead, there were many people injured. Speculation locally is that ISIS wishes to disrupt Turkeys lucrative tourism industry. Last year, there were several deadly bombings, also attributed to ISIS, that were aimed at Turkeys large and disaffected Kurdish population. There the motive appears to be related to the fact that Kurdish militia in Northern Syria have become recognised as one of the most effective forces fighting against ISIS in that countrys civil war. A bombing on July 20 in Suruc killed 33 young Kurds who were meeting to organise support for the besieged people of Kobani, across the border in Syria. Then on October 10, another bombing targeted a pro-Kurdish rally in Ankara, Turkeys capital, killing at least 102 people, including several political leaders of the opposition organisations that had organised the rally. After those bombings, Kurdish and left-wing organisations in Turkey fiercely denounced the conservative Islamist government of President RegepTayyip Erdogan, of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), accusing it of possible complicity in the bombing attacks, or at least of negligence in preventing them. This time, the accusations were repeated with greater intensity. Before the latest bomb attacks, a group of more than a thousand academics and intellectuals from 89 different universities, most of them Turkish but including distinguished international scholars such as Noam Chomsky, David Harvey, Emmanuel Wallerstein and Slavoj Zizek, sent a strongly worded open letter to Erdogan demanding that he prioritise the fight against ISIS/Daesh and return to negotiations with the Kurdish Workers Party (known by its Kurdish initials, PKK). In fact, Erdogan had earlier received credit for involving the PKK in peace negotiations to end the decades-long standoff between the Kurdish leftist group and successive Turkish governments. However, on June 7, 2015, Erdogans party, the AKP, lost its parliamentary majority when it was taken by surprise by the electoral advance of another left-wing, mostly Kurdish party, the Peoples Democratic Party, or HDP. This prevented Erdogan from moving forward on his plan to change Turkey into a presidential dominated republic instead of a parliamentary democracy. After that, Erdogan, accusing the HDP of being a stalking horse for the PKK, essentially scuttled his peace approach and soon had the relationship between the government and the Kurds on a war footing once more. As the level of violence between the military and the PKK rose again, Erdogan and his Prime Minister, Davud Ahmetoglu, called a snap election on November 1, 2015, in an atmosphere in which the opposition HDP and its press were under harassment and repression by the government. Unsurprisingly, the AKP majority was restored, though the HDP was not driven from parliament. Erdogans critics voiced suspicions that the government, which has played a major role in efforts to overthrow Syrias President Bashir Al Assad, had made a de facto alliance with violent Islamist factions in Syria, and was making a minimum effort against ISIS while concentrating the militarys major resources against the Kurds. The suspicion also arose that ISIS was funding itself by shipping oil out of Syria into Turkey, finding ready purchasers there while the government turned a blind eye. The United States, meanwhile, has developed a de facto military alliance with Kurdish fighters in Northern Syria whom the Obama administration sees as the most effective anti-ISIS force. As the Syrian Kurdish militia is seen as closely allied to the PKK, this complicates US relations with Turkey, its ally in NATO. Erdogan has wanted to declare a no-fly zone over northern Syria, something Obama opposes. Responding to these pressures, the Turkish government has made recent moves to hit ISIS targets in Syria and Iraq. Erdogan has gotten his country into a complicated situation. But the bold and aggressive response to criticism remains his hallmark. In response to the academics who signed the open letter, Erdogan has called them complicit with terrorism and is evidently going after them with repressive moves. He has asked academic authorities in Turkey to require that universities fire all signatories of the letter, who may also be prosecuted for their words. He is unable to fire the international signatories, but he can insult them. He accused Noam Chomsky, the distinguished linguist and trenchant critic of imperialism, of having a colonialist mentality. Erdogan challenged him to come to Turkey and present his views and have them refuted. Chomsky declined the invitation. Meanwhile, on Wednesday, a notorious Turkish gangster, Sedat Peker, called for signatories of the academic letter to be killed. He was quoted in the English-language edition of the opposition daily paper Hurriyet saying, We will let your blood [flow] in streams and we will take a shower in your blood. Peker was active in supporting Erdogans AKP in the November elections and is considered a government ally. Needless to say, his comments elicited further pointed protests from the opposition. Peoples World Culture & Life The year that was Well, we survived last year, and now were back to see what calamities and catastrophes the capitalist system has in store for those of us who are not super-rich! The last-named are the infamous 1% that owns most of the worlds wealth. They used to be called the ruling class, but the 1% at least recognises the fact that, numerically, theyre a lot smaller than the working class. Not a fact I suspect that they want us common folk to dwell on lest we decide to do something about it. Of course, something else they dont want us to think about too much is the grim fact that a lot of people did not even survive the year. They were victims of war, terrorism or raging poverty. The imperialist powers instigated wars beyond number in their profit-driven quest to take over global resources, destroy regimes trying to be independent of imperialist control, or just to secure their own corporate investments. For the people in the former Socialist countries of Eastern Europe, the last few decades have been particularly distressing. First they were disillusioned with the supposed benefits the counter-revolutionary colour revolutions brought them unemployment, inflated prices, racism, etc. In a few countries there were successful attempts to return to Socialism. But the possibility of a return to Socialism was sufficient for the capitalist regimes the counter-revolutions had installed to resort to their ultimate defence: fascism. Subversion, spontaneous riots by gangs of armed thugs, often brought in from other countries, and overt interference by EU and US politicians saw numerous openly fascist regimes installed from the Baltic States to Hungary to Ukraine. Atrocities by the regime installed in Ukraine led to the creation of two self-proclaimed anti-fascist republics in the east of the country, and they have been waging a defensive war against the fascist regime in Kiev ever since. The killing of civilians has become normal over the last few years, and not just in Ukraine, as drone attacks and other hi-tech forms of warfare too often proved to be unable to distinguish friend from foe, so killed indiscriminately. Special forces that carried out assassinations or provoked real or phoney civil wars also became the norm. In fact, last year, we learned that US Special Forces were actually present, often clandestinely, in almost all of the worlds countries except China and Russia. For them we saw a ramped up Cold War. Chinas economic might (despite hickups in the stock market) now threatens US hegemony around the globe. Throughout 2015, crisis followed crisis in the capitalist world as a stumbling global economy met a push by the most reactionary corporations for war with either Russia and/or China. NATO moved forces into Eastern Europe in preparation for war with Russia. In the East, the US and its client Japan tried to provoke war with China over its resistance to US efforts to dominate Chinas coastal waters. However, the days when what the imperialism wants, imperialism gets are long gone. The US couldnt even get its European allies to agree on boycotting Russian trade! The countries of South America linked in the Mercosur trade agreement, are defying the US in a region it long considered its own backyard. China and Russia are developing new transport routes for energy supplies and world trade generally across Asia without reference to the USA. The BRICS states Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa are building a global trade, banking and investment network that is not dependent on the US. A new Panama Canal deeper than the existing US-owned canal is being built by China and Russia through Nicaragua. It will profoundly affect both global transport and American hegemony. At the same time the worlds people are increasingly standing up to imperialism and opposing the plethora of wars that imperialism is trying to force on the planet. Already, the wars that imperialism has provoked have generated a refugee crisis in Europe as people flee their homes in the Middle East to escape death and destruction. Millions of people have been displaced while capitalist governments, instead of ending the wars that cause the crisis, put forward band-aid solutions, offering with great fanfare to take some thousands of the millions of refugees. In Australia last year, Tony Abbott, the reactionaries choice as PM, proved to be so unpopular with the electorate that the Coalition had to dump him or face certain defeat. Without bothering with the inconvenience of a national election, they kicked him out and replaced him with the well-spoken, suave Malcolm Turnbull, who announced he would retain all his predecessors policies. So no real change at all. Despite that, so hated was Abbott that Turnbulls support soared on a wave of relief. We can confidently expect that situation not to last as the Abbott-like nature of Turnbulls policies impacts on peoples lives. The reactionaries (including Turnbull) are still dragging their feet on climate change, despite Turnbulls window dressing efforts at the Paris Climate Change Conference where he tried hard to make it appear that his government was willing to take serious steps on this issue. Meanwhile, in Australia at both federal and state levels the Libs continued Abbotts attack on vital programs. They have savagely cut funding for refuges for women and children escaping domestic violence, and cut funding for the arts. The concept of free tertiary education has been abandoned and now they are pushing for secondary education to follow suit. TAFE has been wrecked and replaced by a host of fee-charging private colleges more interested in making money than in educating anyone. The Libs have no plans at state or federal level to fund effective public transport or to develop renewable energy. Government reluctance to seriously embrace renewable energy will adversely impact Australias capitalist economy in coming years. Everywhere they can, corporate interests are trying to replace government involvement in running the affairs of the nation, arguing that private enterprise is more efficient and even cheaper. This corporatisation of the country is coming to a peak with the attempt to replace Medicare with private, for-profit health care, US-style. They also want to remove the government subsidies on pharmaceuticals, leaving consumers to the tender mercies of the market. The greed of capitalists really does know no limits. However, this massive, hugely damaging shift in how Australia functions is not yet a done deal. Even where the privateers have been successful so far as in privatising our rail system, for example a future government that puts the peoples needs and interests first can always restore them to public ownership and control by nationalising them once again. 2016 is shaping as another year of intense struggle as the people resist the implementation of this corporate agenda. And resist they must and assuredly will! "A group of ... aggressive people got out on the streets of Donetsk, and some seemed to be local, others had accents that seemed to ID them as Russian. They seemed to be from Russian cities like Rostov. They came out and put out Russian flags; they took down Ukrainian flags. They surrounded the district council building, and they stormed the building. ... wanted to make this man Pavel Gubarev mayor. People were shouting 'Russiya!' and started taking down Ukrainian flags." UP9/Wikimedia Apparently, no one told them governments don't run on Capture the Flag rules. Continue Reading Below Advertisement Our source knew plenty of people who wound up supporting the separatist cause, including the guy who pulled their national flag down from the council building. A month or two before, these people had all just been her fellow citizens. In less time than it takes to earn an Introduction to Psychology credit, their political differences had made the leap from amiable disagreements to people dying in the streets. "There was a meeting of some pro-Ukrainian people, a demonstration on the 13th of March in the central square. A big fight broke out, because at one point ... a young boy was severely cut. The kid died of the stab wound." Distribution king David Dicker has revealed his plans to build a super-fast car for rich guys. The New Zealand Herald last weekend reported the story after a private tour of Dickers remote rural property in New Zealands Canterbury province. The 587-hectare site has been decked out to realise the IT mogul's dream of building the worlds fastest track car one that can go as fast as any Formula 1 car, if not faster. "It's a Formula One car with fenders," Dicker told the Herald. "I've wanted to build my own car since I was 20. But it's really expensive. You need to make your money first. But now I can do it." The founder of the Sydney-headquartered distributor revealed to the newspaper that he has built a 3km private track, a factory and an airport-style control tower at the site, as well as bringing in satellite dishes, an industrial automotive robot, two autoclaves for making carbon fibre parts, 3D printers, high-tech milling lathes and other professional motorsport equipment. The factory is home to a Ferrari, Lamborghinis, Porsches and a GP2 Series single-seater race car. Google Maps photo of Dicker's New Zealand property, with testing track and other vehicle-building facilities Dicker already has a design for his dream car, named the the F Zero. Engineers are currently working on the blueprints with the vehicle to be produced by one of his companies, the New Zealand-registered Rodin Cars Ltd. Calling it a vanity project", the IT channel identity is aiming to end up with a light carbon fibre car around 600kg that will cost about NZ$650,000 to NZ$1.2 million to buy. The F Zero, which will exceed speeds of over 300km/h, is not expected to be street legal nor approved for racing, with Dicker careful to say that its not a racing car: It's a track car. That's a big difference. It's not regulated by anyone." With such a hefty price tag, Dicker told the Herald that the target market will be rich guys, obviously, who want to go to a track in something quicker than anyone else has". CRN contacted David Dicker but he wished not to comment further on his plans, citing that the project was still in its very early days. With the nearest neighbour more than a kilometre away, the local council approved Dickers grand plans on the condition that no public events be held at the track (Google Maps). The property, named Wandle Downs, is owned by Dickers wife Delwyn Dicker, who, according to LinkedIn, is listed as a company director of Rodin. The Herald reported that Dicker spends four to five months each year at the isolated property near the village of Waiau. The basic farmhouse he stays in is a stark contrast to the lifestyle in his other home in Dubai, but the newspaper said there are future plans for luxury accommodation. At least 10 F Zero cars need to be sold every year for the project to become viable, with Dicker targeting 30 to 40 vehicles annually, and a road version to come later. "I'm not here to make money. I'm doing it for myself," he told the Herald, which said any profits would be invested back into vehicle development. When asked how much the project has cost so far, Dicker referred the Herald to his accountant. EMC general manager of channel sales Chris Trevitt has resigned after 11 years with the company. The news comes off the back of EMC managing director Alister Dias announcing his departure yesterday to take the top job at VMware. Trevitt told CRN he wasn't ready to comment on his next position, but was considering a number of options. An EMC spokesperson told CRN that Trevitt will be replaced by general manager of telecommunications and service providers Mark Fioretto and director of federal public sector Brett Harris. Fioretto will manage the channel business for service providers, systems integrators and alliances, and Harris will manage the mid-market, inside sales and distribution. The latest development leaves EMC's executive team in a similar position as subsidiary VMware, who was left without a managing director or channel manager after Duncan Bennet and John Donovan left within two months of each other. EMC president of Asia Pacific and Japan David Webster will take over the local operations until a replacement is found for Dias. Trevitt joined EMC in 2005 as a commercial account manager. During his career with EMC, he was also an enterprise account director and general manager of South Australia and Western Australia before moving to the top channel position in 2014. One of Trevitts biggest changes was bringing in Avnet to join Ingram Micro as a local distributor, knocking out Westcon in the process. He also oversaw the distribution strategy of EMCs channel-only hyper-converged appliance, VSPEX Blue, giving distributor rights first to Avnet then Arrow Electronics. Prior to EMC, Trevitt was an account manager for seven years at IBM. Update: EMC's response on who will take over Trevitt's duties has been added. IBM Australia has hired MobileIron's former Asia-Pacific head of sales to run ANZ sales for Big Blue's mobile group, MaaS360. Tim Youm started in the newly created position on 4 January. IBMs MaaS360 is the most robust cloud-based mobility management platform for mobile and PC, offering solutions to help securely mobilise the workforce and addresses concerns around unified device management, application and content access and mobile threat management," he told CRN. I truly believe it is the answer to providing an easier and more effective way to enable enterprise mobility for both the IT community and end users. IBM business partners have a real opportunity in ANZ to close the gap and address those key challenges being seen and I am passionate about helping drive this forward with our IBM business partners in 2016, said Youm. IBM MaaS360 is an enterprise mobility management solution that aims to make working in the mobile world simple and safe. Previously known as Fiberlinks MaaS360 cloud-based offerings, the solution was acquired by IBM and rebranded into IBM MaaS360 for an undisclosed amount in 2013. Technology consulting firm Ignia has hired former Microsoft executive Steve McNally as a director. McNally joins the Perth-based company after two years as state director for Microsoft in Western Australia. He was also state manager for Dimension Data for three years and national sales director for Optus-owned Alphawest. Most recently, McNally was executive general manager for Dimension Data-owned Oakton overseeing the business operations of development of executive teams. His new national role will see McNally extending and diversifying Ignias platform of products, services and solutions. Ignia has built a strong reputation on its deep domain knowledge and technical expertise, seeing remarkable growth due to its ability to innovate and remain at the forefront of change, said McNally. Im looking forward to progressing our strategic agenda and delivering tangible outcomes to our key stakeholders and clients. Ignia placed No.22 in the 2015 CRN Fast50 with a revenue of $12 million. The company also picked up a number of awards at Microsofts partner conference in September, including Excellence in Industry and Platform Innovation and Excellence in Mobility and Devices. Channel programs News VAR Spearheads $20 Million Contract With VA For Crisis Communications Platform Lindsey O'Donnell Share this AtHoc, a division of BlackBerry, on Monday unveiled a $20 million multi-year contract extension to support the Department of Veterans Affairs' enterprise-wide crisis communications platform. Four Points Technology, a Chantilly, Va.-based value-added reseller that focuses on data center infrastructure, mobility and security, will spearhead the deployment of AtHoc's networked crisis communications platform to support the VA's notification system and personnel accountability system. Four Points Technology's commitment to the VA stems from the company's own president and CEO, David Gilchrist, a service-connected disabled veteran who provided oversight for the instruction and supervision of more than 200 personnel during his last active duty assignment. [Related: 10 Cases At CES That Were More Than Just Fashion Accessories] "As a service-disabled veteran-owned business, our focus is on supporting the VA," Joel Lipkin, chief operating officer at Four Points Technology, told CRN. "We act as the prime contractor, we deliver the maintenance and support for the AtHoc software, and as we roll forward, we anticipate we'll have the opportunity to work with the VA to enhance the offering of AtHoc technology further." The contract, which became effective in September, will run 39 months and extends the original contact between AtHoc and the VA, formed in 2010. San Mateo, Calif.-based AtHoc, which was acquired by BlackBerry in September, touts its networked crisis communications platform as a secure cloud platform with an array of applications leveraging mobility, hybrid cloud and the IP network to facilitate real-time collaboration in crisis situations. The platform will extend protection to more than 600,000 VA personnel and expand the scope and functionality of the VA personnel accountability system. In addition to enabling alerts across phones, pagers, FAX machines and desktops, the platform also allows for integration with other VA systems such as digital media systems. "The VA took an innovative approach to what they needed. They needed to be able to alert all their employees and contractors, and they needed to be able to account for all their employees during a crisis," said Dubhe Beinhorn, vice president of federal sales at AtHoc. This platform will be extremely useful during crisis events, which the VA has seen in the past with Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and the Washington, D.C., Navy Yard shooting in 2013. But the platform will also have important implications for the VA at local levels, when the VA needs to communicate with employees and deliver up-to-the minute information about operational status. "AtHoc's system allows you to partition the software down to certain local levels or even buildings, [which] enables the autonomous operation of everything from a single local point," said Beinhorn. "More often and specific to the VA [are] incidents occurring in VA medical centers across the country that are centric to where that event is." Four Points Technology's Lipkin stressed that the contract indicates how BlackBerry, is reaping the benefits of its recent acquisitions of both AtHoc and mobile device management company Good Technology, which the Waterloo, Ontario-based company bought in November as part of a strengthened focus on software and services, as opposed to hardware. "As a reseller, it is really interesting to see BlackBerry, AtHoc and Good Technology coming together under one umbrella," said Lipkin. "It's an extremely strong play, especially for the federal government in the mobility space. You now have the device and security aspect, with AtHoc's best of breed notification and emergency management system." Lipkin added that Four Points Technology, which was founded in 2002, has seen an array of changes in the federal government vertical with the transformation of mobility, particularly in the crisis communications space. "We're definitely seeing the intersection between the cloud, big data and mobility, and how that enables us to better offer cloud-based back end solutions. ... Mobility is a really fascinating place to be right now," he said. PUBLISHED JAN. 19, 2016 Cloud News Cloud Defection: VMware Loses Former AWS Evangelist Brunozzi To Stealthy Silicon Valley Startup Kevin McLaughlin Share this Simone Brunozzi, the cloud evangelist VMware hired away from Amazon Web Services nearly two years ago to boost its hybrid cloud business, has left the virtualization vendor to join a stealthy startup, CRN has learned. Brunozzi, who was vice president and chief technologist for hybrid cloud at VMware, told CRN on Wednesday that he's now chief technology officer at MosaixSoft, a San Francisco-based cloud computing startup. Although VMware wanted him to stay, Brunozzi said, he decided to join MosaixSoft because it gives him an opportunity "to pursue something that really excites me." [Related: After Extended Period Of Turmoil, Can VMware Right The Ship With vCloud Air Hybrid Cloud Service?] "Leaving VMware was my decision, driven by what I wanted to do, and we parted ways very amicably," said Brunozzi, who revealed his departure from VMware in a Jan. 8 blog post. VMware's hiring of Brunozzi in February 2014 was hailed as a major coup for the vendor, which had just launched its own public cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service the year before and needed a high-profile advocate to help promote it. Yet VMware's public cloud, now known as vCloud Air, has struggled to gain share in a marketplace dominated by AWS, Microsoft, Google and IBM. According to partners, VMware arrived late to the market and was slow to add credit card signup and consumption-based pricing to the vCloud Air offering, which made it a tough sell. Brunozzi is the latest high-ranking vCloud Air executive to leave in recent months, following Riccardo Di Blasio (senior vice president of sales and marketing) and Mathew Lodge (vice president of cloud services), who departed last fall. A VMware spokesman told CRN that the vendor is replacing Brunozzi's role with a number of existing members of its vCloud Air team. "In the past few years, we have built a strong team of cloud architects that will assume Simones responsibilities," said the spokesman. MosaixSoft is still in stealth mode, so Brunozzi declined to discuss its technology or market focus. The startup's founder and CEO, Brett Galloway, previously spent six years at Cisco Systems, joining the networking giant in 2005 after its $450 million acquisition of wireless LAN vendor Airespace. MosaixSoft has landed an unspecified amount of funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Menlo Park, Calif. Barry Eggers, founder and partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, told CRN that his firm led the Series A round, describing it as "an above average size given the quality of the team and CEO." Brunozzi joined AWS in 2008 as a senior technology evangelist, a role that included serving as the public face for the public cloud giant at an early stage of its development. He played a key role in developing AWS' business in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and one former colleague described him as "the poster child for AWS." Jeff Aden, executive vice president of marketing and strategic development at 2nd Watch, a Seattle-based AWS partner, has worked with Brunozzi and described him as "a highly passionate guy who was articulate about the technology and what it would do for your business." While VMware has said it's still committed to developing vCloud Air, the exodus of top-level leadership suggests that the service isn't carrying as much weight in the industry as it once did, according to some of the Palo Alto, Calif.-based vendor's partners. EMC, which owns about 80 percent of VMware but is in the process of being acquired by Dell, hatched a plan last October to combine vCloud Air with its Virtustream cloud business in a 50-50 joint venture. But VMware shares plummeted after the deal was announced, and VMware pulled out of the joint venture in December. PUBLISHED JAN. 20, 2016 Components & Peripherals News Intel Sixth-Generation vPro Processors Target Commercial Segment With Enhanced Security, Performance Lindsey O'Donnell Share this In the "modern workplace," analysts say, employees are looking for a mixture of portability, style, security and performance in their new PCs -- and Intel's new sixth-generation Core vPro processors, which the company revealed Tuesday, are aiming to provide just that. The new sixth-generation Core vPro processors, built for desktops, 2-in-1s and ultrabooks in the commercial segment, offer 2.5 times the performance, three times the battery life and a 30-times increase in graphics performance over a 5-year-old system, according to Intel. "Millennials are opting not to work at places where they don't have the right tools, and are moving around, and blurring the line between work and home life," said Patrick Moorhead, president and principal analyst of analyst firm Moor Insights & Strategy, Austin, Texas. "PCs in this environment need to be thin, light and attractive, as well as high-performance. For the first time, the industry is seeing these high-quality, responsive and attractive machines." [Related: Intel CEO Bullish On Q4 Data Center, IoT Investments Despite PC Struggles] Intel's Core vPro and Core M vPro processors focus specifically on hardware-enhanced security for the enterprise. In addition to enhanced performance and graphics, these processors tout the Intel Authenticate Solution, which is a hardware-enhanced multifactor authentication solution designed to strengthen identity protection on the PC, making computers less vulnerable to identity and security credential attacks. Through the Authenticate Solution, which is compatible with Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10, employees no longer need to employ passwords to gain access to their PCs. This solution works by using three factors simultaneously -- something users know, like a personal identification number; something they have, such as a mobile phone; and something they "are," like a fingerprint. "Intel and nearly every major player in the PC and mobile computing space have lots to be proud of this week. ... The new vPro processor family brings huge leaps forward in power, speed, battery utilization and graphics capabilities from Intel," said Douglas Grosfield, president and CEO of Five Nines IT Solutions, a Kitchener, Ontario-based MSP. "The multifactor authentication capabilities in the hardware-enhanced Intel Authenticate means IT departments can enforce security an order of magnitude more effectively than previously possible." The vPro chips will also be in Intel's Compute Stick, which transforms monitors and televisions into personal computers by plugging into an HDMI port. The new Compute Stick version will ship next month, starting at $399, according to Intel. According to Intel, companies like Acer, Asus, Dell, Lenovo, HP and Panasonic will release enterprise-ready devices featuring the new Intel processors. PUBLISHED JAN. 19, 2016 Components & Peripherals News Brother Jumps Into Amazon Dash Program Jimmy Sheridan Share this Amazon made its Dash Replenishment program a reality Tuesday, announcing the first devices that have become part of the Internet of Things initiative. The new connected devices are led by printers made by Brother, which has more than 45 compatible printers that will work with the program, according to Don Cummins, senior vice president of marketing for Brother International, based in Bridgewater, N.J. The program, which utilizes Amazon-compatible automated IoT devices, will also include a General Electric washing machine and a Gmate SMART blood glucose monitor. The program allows a device owner to set up a device so that it can automatically order physical goods such as ink or toner from a Brother printer - when the machine is running low. [RELATED: Brother Strengthens Mid-Market Play With New Scanners] We are excited to work with the Amazon Dash Replenishment Service, and be a part of its official launch, Cummins said in a statement distributed by Seattle-based Amazon. However, the program is seen benefiting home users and home-office workers more than businesses, Cummins said in an interview Tuesday with CRN. Cummins said Brother and Amazon reached out to each other last spring, at a time when the printer manufacturer wanted to utilize its new monitoring capabilities and Amazon wanted to launch an IoT-based version of Dash. Now, Cummins revealed that the Brother printers that will now work with Amazon Dash will be compatible with the program, as well every future network enabled-printer released by his company. The value is most likely not there for larger business accounts because they probably have a deeper, more valuable service with contracted solution providers, Cummins said. Rather, the program will provide monitoring and ordering capabilities for home users and home-office workers that simply werent there before, he added. The GE and Gmate products, and others, will be ready to be used by the end of January and can be activated when the owner signs up for the service on Amazon.com, according to the Amazon statement. New brands, including Purell soap and home goods manufacturer Whirlpool, have also joined the program, making use of the application programming interface that has been made public and can be utilized by everyone from large manufacturers to individual hobbyists, the Amazon statement said. Amazon anticipates that more devices will become part of the program over the rest of the year, according to Daniel Rausch, director of Amazon Devices. At Bayer, we believe human ingenuity can shape the future of agriculture. For more than 150 years, weve used science and imagination to advance health and nutrition. And together, we can achieve so much more. Whats possible begins with what we can imagine. Were committed to a world where biodiversity thrives in harmony with humankind. Where hunger and climate change are terms relegated to history books. Where farms are more sustainable, with plants that are more adaptive and resilient, to help improve life for families and communities. In short, where agriculture is part of the solution. As a new leader in agriculture, we have the opportunity and the responsibility to grasp this moment. To continue moving humanity forward by tirelessly shaping whats possible. Four ships sailing short cruises means Asia is the number one regional market for Costa in 2016, according to the 2016-2017 Cruise Industry News Annual Report. Asia, the brunt of sailings being from China, will just surpass Costas Mediterranean capacity, which is down roughly 10 percent year-over-year as the Italian brand will shift a fourth ship to China. Northern Europe remains the brands third largest market, followed by the Caribbean. About the Annual Report: The Cruise Industry News Annual Report is the only book of its kind, presenting the worldwide cruise industry through 2025 in 350+ pages. Statistics are independently researched. Learn more by clicking here. The report covers everything from new ships on order to supply-and-demand scenarios from 1987 through 2021+. Plus there is a future outlook, complete growth projections for each cruise line, regional market reports, and detailed ship deployment by region and market, covering all the cruise lines. New for 2016-2017 based on customer feedback are detailed Chinese market statistics and projections. Order the 2016-2017 edition today. Valletta cruise port in Malta saw a big increase in passengers in 2015, leading to a record-breaking year for the popular port. A total of 668,277 passengers were recorded on 306 cruise vessels calling on Valletta. This was an increase of 150,683 passengers (29.1%) on the previous year (2014). The previous record was set in 2012, with 608,786 passengers being recorded. As per NSO statistics, which exclude embarking passengers, the 2015 landed passengers amounted to 600,156 (2014: 471,554). This exceeds the previous record year in 2012 (562,812), by circa 6%. The busiest month in 2015 was October with 105,164 passengers. Several busy cruise days were recorded during the year with the busiest day being July 22 with over 13,500 passengers. Stephen Xuereb, CEO of Valletta Cruise Port said, Improving the infrastructure on Quays 4/5 and a proposed extension towards Barriera Wharf is critical to the continued growth of the industry in Valletta. Valletta Cruise Port is currently working on these plans in order to meet the challenges that lie ahead. 2016 is looking very positive and Valletta is expected to welcome an unprecedented 740,000 passenger movements. It is indeed an exciting time for Valletta Cruise Port. Advocacy group I Am the Cavalry is urging organizations that manufacture and distribute medical devices to adopt a cybersecurity version of the Hippocratic Oath. The group, which advocates for better security in life-impacting computers like those used in modern cars, medical devices or critical infrastructure, has published an open letter to the health-care industry, calling for a commitment to five principles when creating, using and maintaining medical devices. Those principles are security by design, collaboration with security researchers, ensuring that evidence of potential failures is captured and preserved for later analysis, safeguarding critical elements under the assumption that they'll operate in adverse conditions and providing easy-to-install security updates. These principles are similar to the ones listed in the Five Star Automotive Cyber Safety Program that I Am the Cavalry proposed to the auto industry in 2014. The group's open letter to medical device manufacturers and other health-care industry stakeholders goes into specific details about how to achieve those five goals. The recommendations include: avoiding unprotected remote access, supply chain rigor, avoiding known flaws, implementing known methods and processes of receiving vulnerability reports and interacting with external security researchers, providing incentives for external researchers, tamper-resistant logging, isolation and segmentation of components, securing the update process and more. Security researchers have found serious vulnerabilities in many types of medical devices in recent years, including flaws that could allow hackers to alter the dosage of insulin and drug infusion pumps or remotely access pacemakers to deliver potentially deadly shocks. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has taken note of these issues and seems decided to drive some change. Earlier this week the agency published draft cybersecurity guidance for medical device manufacturers, specifically focused on planning for, assessing and responding to vulnerabilities. Some manufacturers are already on board with the proposal. Germany-based Drager, a company that produces patient monitoring technologies, has had a coordinated vulnerability disclosure policy since last year and views I Am the Cavalry's proposals as the basis for establishing cybersafety norms in the medical device industry. ANSONIA Chalk it up to teenage insensitivity, ignorance or impudence. But an Ansonia High School student sparked a federal investigation when he substituted ISIS for the United States of America during the morning Pledge of Allegiance. Local police did not charge the 15-year-old boy with a crime, but turned the matter over to the Department of Homeland Security, said Ansonia police Lt. Andrew Cota. ISIS is the term often used for the Islamic State terrorist group also known as ISIL. The incident occurred before the Christmas break, Cota said. The boy, who was not identified by police because he is a juvenile, is no longer at the high school. He has been assigned to classes in a modular building that is part of the Robert E. Zuraw Administration Center on Grove Street. John R. Williams, a New Haven-based civil rights lawyer, believes everyone overreacted in the incident which is exactly what the terrorists want us to do. He said the student should have been sent to the principals office, been given a stern lecture and maybe a couple of hours of detention. To call the cops and Homeland Security is really out of line, Williams said. Homeland Security referred comment to the FBI, which did not immediately respond Wednesday. The U.S. Attorneys office declined comment on the incident. Ansonia Police Chief Kevin Hale said the matter is closed as far as the department is concerned. He said a person may have First Amendment rights to free speech and to use the word ISIS, but that doesnt mean you can yell fire in a crowded movie theater. Cota said in a release Thursday, The Ansonia Police received a complaint from the Ansonia High School Administrators on October 9 of 2015. The SRO completed a report and we forwarded it off to Homeland Security as we would with any case that we feel needs to be brought to their attention. We are no longer investigating this matter. The allegation is that the male was allegedly making pro ISIS statements during the Pledge of Allegiance. As this is a juvenile matter there is no much information there is no other information being released. Mayor David Cassetti described the behavior as an isolated incident, and he said parents should not be concerned. The mayor said his teenage daughter, Jennifer, who attends Ansonia High, was neither kept home nor missed school as a result of the incident. School officials and Board of Education members referred all comment to Floyd Dugas, their Milford-based lawyer. Dugas said the school took the action they deemed appropriate out of an abundance of caution. He said federal privacy laws prevent him from commenting further. The youths mother, whose name is being withheld by Hearst Connecticut Media, chastised the school for taking such action during a recent Board of Education meeting. Her remarks were recorded on tape and transcribed into the boards minutes, both of which were reviewed by Hearst. Several attempts to contact her were unsuccessful Wednesday. The mother, in addressing the Board of Education, said her son was not taken out of school because of discipline or ill behavior (but) because the principal ... was allowed to be irrational and make an impulsive decision. She maintained on the recording that her son did not breach any of the codes of conduct, did not misbehave; the thing that he was alleged was not even founded. It was not true. She said that if it had been founded, it was also an exercise ... of his ... rights to be able to say what he needs to say. He never threatened anybody, he never harmed anyone ... She further claimed her son was removed from Ansonia High School because the educational environment ... became hostile. She repeated that while her son has never been aggressive, hostile, disrespectful, a threat to anyone in a school environment, (the issue) is now pushed through the federal investigation. BRIDGEPORT Gunfire in the East End had the police investigating Tuesday night as a man was treated for gunshot wounds at Bridgeport Hospital. Dispatch reports said the shooting happened at about 10 p.m., and that the person who was shot was taken to the hospital in a private vehicle. A bill supporting continued restoration of Long Island Sound is moving closer to a vote in the U.S. Senate. U.S Senators Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, both D-Conn, said Wednesday the bipartisan legislation passed the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, bringing it one step closer to full Senate passage. The Long Island Sound Restoration and Stewardship Act combines two complementary water quality and shore restoration program authorizations at previous authorization levels of $40 million and $25 million per year. The legislation also provides additional focus, oversight and coordination of federal activities related to the restoration of Long Island Sound. This historic measure helps protect and preserve one of our nation's most precious and important natural treasures-- providing immense environmental and economic benefits to Connecticut and the country, Blumenthal said. Sen. Murphy added Were one step closer to ensuring the restoration and long-term health of Long Island Sound. The Sound is an unparalleled economic driver for Connecticut, generating billions for the state annually in tourism, fishing and boating. Its home to hundreds of diverse species of wildlife, and its 1,300 square miles of coastline are the site of happy memories for my family and countless others across the state, Murphy said. In 1985, the EPA, in an agreement with New York and Connecticut, created the Long Island Sound Study, an office under the Environmental Protection Agency charged with advancing efforts to restore the sound and address low oxygen levels and nitrogen levels that have depleted fish and shellfish populations and have also hurt shoreline wetlands. In 1990, the Long Island Sound Improvement Act was signed into law, providing federal dollars to advance Sound cleanup projects, including wastewater treatment improvements. Federal funding has enabled significant reductions in the amount of nitrogen entering the Long Island Sound from sewage treatment plants, by 35,000,000 lbs. per year as of 2013. It has also restored at least 1,548 acres and protected 2,580 acres of habitat land. N.Y. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-NY, added The beaches and waters of the Long Island Sound are a natural treasure and an economic engine for the whole region that draws families, boaters, tourists and anglers to our shores. That is why we must do everything we can to pass this legislation that will restore and protect the Long Island Sound for current and future generations. Over 9 million people live along the Sounds coast and 24 million people live within 50 miles of it. Although decades of overdevelopment, pollution, dumping of dredged materials and releases of untreated sewage have severely hurt the Sounds water quality, the Sounds economic contribution, including from sport and commercial fishing, boating, recreation and tourism, is estimated to be between $17 billion and $37 billion annually. Cuba to participate in Spanish Tourism Fair Cuba will participate from January 21st through the 24th in the 36th edition of the International Tourism Fair (Fitur 2016) of Madrid, one of the main tourism markets for the island. Considered a leader in Latin America and second in terms of prestige, according to specialized media, it is a meeting point for professionals interested in positioning their tourism products and strengthening links with tour operators and travel agents in the region. Headed by Tourism Minister Manuel Marrero, the Cuban mission will provide information to visitors about the islands main destinations: Varadero, Trinidad, the northern keys of Villa Clara, Cayo Coco and Cayo Guillermo, Holguin and Santiago de Cuba. According to a communique by the Tourism Ministry (Mintur), visitors to the Cuban stand will also know the attractions of the city of Havana, venue of the International Tourism Fair, FitCuba 2016, dedicated this time to Canada as guest country and to culture as product. Also present at FITUR will be executives of the hotel chains Group Gaviota, Cubanacan, Gran Caribe, Islazul, Habaguanex, Melia Hotels, Iberostar, NH, Barcelo, Blau, Blue Diamonds and Accor; of the reception agencies Havanatur, Cubatur and Gaviotatours, and the tour operator Havanatur, as well as of Paradiso, Amistur and Caracol. According to the National Bureau of Statistics and Information, from January to November 2015, 95,279 Spanish visitors arrived in Cuba, a figure higher than the 70,584 registered in the same period of 2014, and that placed that European market as sixth globally for the Caribbean nation. Double murder trial day 4: A star witness for the prosecution backed out in the courtroom State Board of Education lays down law on race, gender teachings School boards will have to follow new requirements for notifying parents about policies involving access to bathrooms and locker rooms. Sydney Neely Beale Street has remained a popular Memphis destination for tourists and locals alike for over a hundred years. Late nights in Downtown Memphis draw hundreds of people under the neon signs that light up one of the most popular tourist destinations in Tennessee Beale Street, also known as the Home of Blues and the Birth Place of Rock an Roll. Despite its historic roots in African American culture, only about 20 percent of the businesses on Beale are owned by African Americans. A aIt is pathetic when you think about it in the early days the whole damn city was black,aA At the same time, Memphisa population is 63 percent black and 29 percent white. - Lew WinstonA A aIt is pathetic when you think about it in the early days the whole damn city was black,a said Lew Winston, the owner of the Blew Note Bar & Grill. aThey let one owner get too many businesses down here. It should be one business for one person that would have allowed for more black businesses.a Only five of the 24 businesses on Bealeas busiest section, between Second and Fourth Street, are owned by African Americans, and only three are owned by women. Lewas Blew Note Bar & Grill, Memphis Music, Strange Cargo, and Eel Etc. Fashions represent the only black owned businesses on Beale Street, while Dyers, Alfreds, and Silky Oa Sullivanas represent the only businesses owned by women. aWe may not be many, but we are mighty,a Joellyn Sullivan, the owner of Silky Oa Sullivanas, said about the minority and female run businesses on the street. According to Ty Agee, who has been the president of the Beale Street Merchants Association for six years, the owner of Miss Pollyas Soul City CafA, Beale Street is the soul and the backbone of down- town, and itas got a life and a personality of its own. Agee said the businesses on Beale Street are owned by many men and women of different ethnicities according to Agee. aThere is diversity here,a he added. Two hundred years before Beale Street became the popular tourist site that it is today, it was a place for free or runaway slaves to freely stay or mingle after the civil war. Freed slaves and sharecroppers fled their farms for Memphis bringing blues, gospel, and country with them in search of economic opportunities.Irish, Italians, Germans, and Jews also made their way towards Memphis. aThe combination of immigration from the Delta and emigration from Europe all mixed into what made Beale Street the flavorful community it was at the turn of the last century,a said Jimmy Ogle, a Memphis historian, University of Memphis graduate, and the chairman of the Shelby County Public Records Commission. During the 1950s most of the businesses on Beale Street were owned mostly by white emigrants,while the patrons were majority African Americans. More than 60 years later, the business on Beale Street have changed from hardware stores to bars and clubs, but ownership has not. aBeale Street during the middle of the 20th century grew up as the main street of Black Memphis, the main street of Black America,a said Ogle. aThe important thing was the face of Beale Street was black.a Oncesegregationended, African Americans left Beale Street to shop at stores that they could not before, such as Goldsmiths. As African Americans began to shop elsewhere. Beale Street was fenced off, businesses on Beale Street were boarded up, and began to decay. The only building that remained open was A. Schwab, and customers had to enter from the alley. By 1979 there were more peo- ple living in jail in downtown Memphis than residentially, with 500 living downtown and 1000 in jail. According to Ogle,the Memphis city leadersa mindset was to build a bigger jail. In 1983, Beale Street par- tially opened and businesses began to breathe life back into the street where Elvis Presley, Danny Thomas, B.B. King, Tina Turner, and other had walked and performed. aNow there are 23,000 people living downtown, 115 restaurants, 15 museums, and Beale Street is the number one revenue gross- ing tourist attraction in Tennessee with all the clubs, and music, and selling a lot of booze,a Ogle said. Downtown Memphis continues to grow and expand, but the business ownership on Beale Street still reflects that of the 1950s with less than half of the businesses on Beale Street accurately represent- ing the population in Memphis. The University of Memphis's $53 million Centennial Place is the lastest addition to the school master plan. It has 24 six-bedroom apartments, 300 single and doubleoccupancy rooms that are expected to house about 800 students. Each room is fully furnished and has two shared bathrooms and a kitchen, furnished with basic appliances. Austin Anderson The University of Memphis's $53 million Centennial Place is the lastest addition to the school master plan. It has 24 six-bedroom apartments, 300 single and doubleoccupancy rooms that are expected to house about 800 students. Each room is fully furnished and has two shared bathrooms and a kitchen, furnished with basic appliances. The Tennessee Board of Regents is withholding the final payment to the contractors who built the University of Memphisa newest student residence hall a an amount that could be up to $2 million. The contractor may also be charged $1,000 for each day the project was late. Centennial Place, the $53-million dorm completed last week, was more than six months behind schedule, according to U of M and TBR officials. Rentenbach Constructors Incorporated, the Knoxville based company that builds many of the TBRas facilities, was informed months ago that they were behind schedule, said Dick Tracy, TBRas executive director of faculties development. aA lot of things happened,a Tracy said. aJust in the contractors scheduling. He had issues with some of the subcontractors, thatas what really got them behind. We started notifying him when we felt like he was going to be behind schedule... they are not disputing they were behind.a Bad weather played a role in the delay, Tracy said. But Rentenbach exceeded the number of inclement weather days allowed in its contract with TBR. While Centennial Place was ready for students to move into Tuesday, the building is not finished. aIn their contract, they are penalized $1,000 a day for every day they are late from the original completion date, which was sometime in May,aA Tony Poteet assistant vice president campus planning and design at the U of M. There are parts of the new dorm that are useable but have not been finalized. For example, there may be a wall that is not yet painted or wood is still scuffed that needs to be finished. aHeas got a lot of work still to doa mostly exterior stuff.a Tracy said. There are no plans for a to sue Rentenbach, Tracy said. aI know theyave spent a lot of their own money to finish the job without adding additional charges to us,a he said. aThe contractor has never questioned that he is behind schedule.a Along with holding back the final payment, TBR is also calculating how much money they would have earned had the new dorm been open on time. Rentenbach could be charged this amount, which is called aliquidated damages.a aWeave been assessing them at the daily rate since July of 2015,a Tracy said. Construction is not an exact science, said Poteet assistant vice president campus planning and design at the U of M. aOur contractor had a lot of difficulty getting the piers in the ground and getting the concrete frame completed,a he said. aThey may have underestimated what their subcontractors performance could be.a While the Centennial Place was right on budget, the contractor agreed to pay for late fees in the event the project was late, Poteet said. aIn their contract, they are penalized $1,000 a day for every day they are late from the original completion date, which was sometime in May,a he said. The contract is held between the Tennessee Board The University of Memphis cut the ribbon for the new Centennial Place apartment style dorms. By Austin Anderson BAILEY CLARK University of Memphis President David Rudd and Student Government President David Knowles, center, cut the ribbon for the opening of the new dorm, Centennial Plac Columns of blue and grey balloons marked the entrance to the Centennial Placeas grand opening as spectators tried to shake off the frigid 32-degree weather with hot chocolate and cookies once inside. University of Memphis President M. David Rudd began the festivities by stating some of the most critical learning happens outside traditional spaces and scheduled experiences. aCentennial place is a welcoming, important addition to aA rapidly changing campus and community here at the University of Memphis,a Rudd said. aItas an exciting time to be a part of this university. Each and every step we take is consistent with a vision for the U of M as a national, urban-serving research university deeply committed to an innovated education and one not bound by residential walls. One deeply connected to this city,A which is thriving.a President of the Student Government Association, David Knowles, was glad to see the residence hall finally open. aItas like meeting someone youave been waiting to meet for a long time,a Knowles said. aTo me this is a big deal. This has been manifesting itself the whole time Iave been at the University of Memphis, and itas just great to see this finally built up. Austin Anderson Living area in Centennial Place apartments Once a resident advisor for Richardson Towers, which is soon to be demolished, Knowles was often consulted for a studentas perspective on Centennial Place during its construction. aWords cannot express how grateful and honored I am to have this opportunity,a Knowles said. After his speech, Knowles explained why Centennial Place will be a much better fit for U of M students than Richardson Tower. aFor one, itas a newer establishment,a Knowles said. aIt offers more space for activities.a One activity Centennial Place seems to be specifically built for is studying. The residence hall contains two asmart classrooms,a many private study areas, various study rooms, and even agreen spaces.a aThe collaboration rooms are a good sign of the mixing of education and living in the same place,a said resident and mechanical engineering major Noah Middleton. aThatas what I like.a Fellow mechanical engineering freshman and Centennial resident Kenneth Crawford has also enjoyed his stay at Centennial Place so far. aThe environment is very nice and itas better than any dorm Iave ever seen,a Crawford said aItas a very professional environment. It seems like itas got more use to it than just having people live here.a Freshman Resident Marshal Hayes, believes the acoolesta part is what lies downstairs. aI actually just found out thereas a kitchen downstairs the other day,a the computer science and German major said. aI had no idea.a Venkatesh Varma, a business information and technology graduate student, was visiting Centennial Place during the opening ceremony and enjoyed the festivities. aI think Centennial hall is very great place for the students to stay,a 25-year-old Varma said. aThe refreshments are awesome and the live music is so wonderful.a Knowles believes that kind of first impression is pertinent to the future of U of M. Austin Anderson The University of Memphis's $53 million Centennial Place is the lastest addition to the school master plan. It has 24 six-bedroom apartments, 300 single and doubleoccupancy rooms that are expected to house about 800 students. Each room is fully furnished and has two shared bathrooms and a kitchen, furnished with basic appliances. aWhen a student comes to the U of M and theyare told ahey youare probably going to be staying at Richardson Towers,a they go inside Richardson Towers and look at it and say aoh this is an older building,a Knowles said. aIf they come to the Centennial theyare going to say athis is what I have to look forward to.a A lot of people pick their institutions depending on dorms, gyms, and food. This is a big, big step for us at the University of Memphis.a Stuck between wanting a voice but feeling like the voice of individuals dont count, students like 18-year-old Nikki Graham often avoid voting. I feel like voting is a waste of time, Graham said. Theres a slim chance of getting who you want to represent you. Apparently, Graham isnt alone in feeling like the votes of young people dont matter. The number of those voting under the age of 30 fell significantly between 2008, when Americans elected the first black president, and 2012, according to the Center on Civic Learning and Engagement. Steve Mulroy, a 50-year-old law professor at the University of Memphis, said that young people typically dont vote because they tend to feel like they have less at stake in the outcome of elections. That attitude may change in the upcoming 2016 presidential elec- tion, he said. If Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nomination, more young people will likely vote, Mulroy said. Itll be the first time a female candidate has had a serious chance of winning the White House. Mulroy calls the 2016 presiden- tial election a first election, similar to the election of President Obama in 2008, which galvanized the youth vote. He said that figuring out how to increase the number of voters in the 18 to 29 age range is essential. The political strategist who figures that out will run the electoral table and transform the nation, probably for the better, Mulroy said. He thinks that in the upcoming presidential election, young voters will lean toward the Democratic frontrunner. Young people tend to be concerned about social injustices, and more impatient for government to take an active role, Mulroy said. Zackary Northcutt, a 19-year- old engineering student, blames the Electoral College for making young people feel like their votes dont matter. Northcutt isnt currently registered to vote, and he said he probably wouldnt register any time soon. Our voice is just a minute fraction in the grand scheme of things, he said. However, not all students believe that young people should shirk their voting responsibilities. Charles Uffelman, a 22-year- old political science student who recently worked as a field organizer and strategist for the A C Wharton mayoral campaign, he said young people just want to be informed about their vote. Ive noticed that young people want to hear from the candidates, and meet them and ask them questions, Uffelman said. In the mayoral campaign, I saw many more young people volunteering for campaigns than older people. Uffleman said that more young people will likely vote in the 2016 presidential election than they did in 2012. Im not sure if we will beat 2008, but the opportunity for the first female nominee could draw large numbers, he said. Only time will tell. Uffelman also said that people who are pessimistic about millennials simply arent paying attention. Its hard to get everyone registered to vote right after they become eligible at 18, he said. Dont buy into the hype that our generation isnt involved or doesnt care. We care, and we care a lot more than young people have in the past. BAILEY CLARK New app LiveSafe will allow students and faculty to record crimes as they happen to send to the campus police. Next semester the University of Memphis will roll out a new app that will allow students and faculty to discreetly and quickly report on-campus crimes. The new app is the latest effort in an series of upgrades aimed to improve campus safety in the wake of recent campus shootings across the United States. This news comes after a $400,000 plan bytheUofMtoreplaceall door locks on campus with dead bolts that can be locked from the inside. The goal is to prevent potential incidents before they occur. A aThe security of this campus is our number one prioritya -David Knowles, President of Student GovernmentA A Known as LiveSafe, the app will cost the University $51,666, with an annual cost of $17,222 over the next three years. David Knowles, president of the Student Government Association, believes this app is an innovative way to help student safety. aThe security of this campus is our number one priority,a he said. aWhen most people think of Memphis, they think of high crime and The First 48. We believe this app will help this campus be a safer environment.a The LiveSafe app will allow students to tell campus police of crimes happening at the U of M. The app will also allow students to send pictures, video and audio to police. It also has whatas called a aPanic Button,a which will allow campus police to know your exact location in the event of a crime. LiveSafe also includes a Command Dashboard, which will allow safety officials to monitor and respond to students at a faster rate. aWe think this is a great feature because sometimes you may not be able to reach your phone if something takes place,a Knowles said. aIf someone has a weapon right next to you, taking your phone out and calling campus police wonat be an option.a Several school across the United States have already partnered with LiveSafe, including Virginia Tech, Cincinnati, University of Southern California, Kentucky, and Virginia Commonwealth. The founders of the LiveSafe organization include a mugging victim and a survivor of the Virginia Tech shootings. While the price has been set, who exactly is fitting the bill is still being worked out, Knowles said. aOur goal is to have as much money as possible come from the SGA,a he said. aHopefully by next semester everything will be figured out.a The news of the app has received mixed reviews from students. Fowler Jones, a junior at the University, believes this app is totally unnecessary. aHow can an app help me if Iam getting robbed,a he asked. aI feel like Iam wasting my tuition. I could probably contact campus police just as fast without an app.a Maher Soliman, junior, agrees with Jonesas statement. aIf it costs that much to make, it should be something top of the line. This seems like something thatas not even remotely helpful,a he said. University of Memphis College of Education is changing its teacher preparation pro- gram with funding from the University-School Partnerships for the Renewal of Educator Preparation consortium, a beneficiary of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grant. The Gates Foundation will dedicate $34.7 million over the course of three years to five new- ly-formed Teacher Preparation Transformation Centers that plan to bring educators and K-12 school systems together, to share teaching methods and data and to ensure suitable practices. This grant will help the U of M continue to transform and redesign the undergradu- ate teacher education programs said Nicole Thompson, assistant chair for Program Development, InstructionandCurriculum Leadership, as well as the co- chair of the Engaged Scholarship Committee, It is a challenging but rewarding profession, however the high accountability and pressures associated with it can make teaching incredibly difficult work, said Thompson. The pay is low and the demand is high. According to Thompson, the shortage of prepared teachers is not only the schools being included in receiving this grant, but is a nationwide issue and believes the grant will guide the progression of teachers and their students. The grant will be supporting faculty as they engage in specific processes, said Thompson. It will enhance the experiences teacher candidates have as they complete their programs of study within the college. The U of M is one of the partner universities in the U.S. PREP consortium headed by Texas Tech University, where the Teacher Transformation House Center is located and is the lead center for the grant thats being implemented. For the 2015-2016 academic year, Memphis is offering a pilot version of the model that the University is hoping to transition into and according to Dean Rakow, this is the model undergraduate teacher education program that is being offered. Heidi Ramirez, chief academic officer of Shelby County Schools explains the money being pro- vided is intended to support the teacher education program, as it undergoes transformation and scales the model to all undergraduate programs. The money could also go towards professional development for faculty, materials for teacher candidates and mentor teachers, technology, data gathering and anaylsis, said Ramirez. These are all possible expenditures. According to the U of Ms statement on the Gates grant, it will transform the way they train teachers and its U.S. PREP partners focuses on common key drivers: building competency through practice, a commitment to continuous improvement, effective teacher educators and robust partnerships with K-12 school systems and the communities they serve. Thompsonexplainedthat being more effectively prepared and having more sustained and focused clinical experiences from the start of their teacher education program, teacher candidates will be better equipped to plan, instruct, assess and support K-12 student learning overall. The goal is to develop an authentic and goal-driven university school partnership that will enable both entities to work together in producing high-quality, classroom ready teachers that meet the needs of the communities served, said Thompson. By the end of the grant cycle, we will have made the change. As countless people clamour for a recipe they think might bag them a mate, others are starting to wonder: do we need to worry if our partner leaves the house with cookware? by Samantha Selinger-Morris Never shy of giving offence, Scot Nat MP (and ex leader) Alex Salmond is crowing about the 1,800 fee he received for appearing on the BBCs Have I Got News For You 300 more than the amount paid to Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg and Labour MP Diane Abbott for enduring the jibes and condescension of Ian Hislop and Paul Merton. Salmond remarks: They must be operating a payment-by-results scheme. Never shy of giving offence, Scot Nat MP (and ex leader) Alex Salmond (pictured) is crowing about the 1,800 fee he received for appearing on the BBCs Have I Got News For You Corbyn The Musical receives its world premiere at Waterloo East Theatre in April, chronicling a fictitious motorcycle journey undertaken by the young Jeremy through Communist East Germany in the 1970s with his then girlfriend, Diane Abbott, riding pillion. Who might play the well-nourished Ms Abbott? I hear ex-Kids Company boss Camila Batmanghelidjh was mentioned, possibly in jest. Twice-married Cheryl Fernandez-Versini, 32, says she will keep her grand-sounding name after she is divorced, leading some to suspect unkindly that her little-known husband Jean-Bernards name was part of his attraction. Twice-married Cheryl Fernandez-Versini (pictured) says she will keep her grand-sounding name after she is divorced Its more important-sounding than her birth name Tweedy or previous married name Cole. I dont think she should be judged harshly. Women often keep married names that appear grander than their own. Would Georgia Arianna Ziadie have appeared on Im A Celebrity... if she hadnt been known as Lady Colin Campbell? Lord Prescott, who regrets failing the 11-plus in his youth, is understandably prickly when his qualifications are mocked. Responding to jibes on Twitter, the former deputy prime minister fires back at his critics: I went to Oxfords Ruskin College, got an economics degree at Hull University... and am an honorary professor in climate change. When the latter qualification predictably is greeted by derision, he snaps back: When youve helped to negotiate a world treaty to combat climate change, Ill stop laughing too. He must resist rising to the bait. Gyles Brandreths tongue-in-cheek suggestion that the Hokey Cokey should be Englands new national anthem on the basis that it was a favourite of the Queen Mother is dismissed by former BBC royal correspondent Michael Cole, who says: The Hokey Cokey began as a parody of the Roman Catholic rite of Holy Communion the clue is in the initials. 'This Protestant satire on the Catholic celebration of Mass somehow became a party dance but its origins, as an expression of religious intolerance and hatred, makes is hardly suitable for uniting our nation. Chancellor George Osbornes recent setbacks his rosy views on the economy have proved unduly optimistic have not blunted his wit. Is the Government content to stand back and watch British steel-making collapse? With 1,000 more redundancies announced on Monday, bringing the jobs lost in the sector to more than 6,000 since August, thats what it looks like. But if so, ministers will be making a fatally short-sighted mistake. For there is far more at stake than the remaining 30,000 jobs in steel-making or the many more that depend on them vital though these are to the economies of towns where there are few alternative sources of employment. The truth is this is an essential strategic industry, whose importance to defence, construction and the wider manufacturing sector cannot be exaggerated. Tata announced on Monday it had axed 1,000 jobs at its steel plant in Port Talbot (pictured) and four more sites Are we prepared to see it go the way of our nuclear generating sector, leaving our children and grandchildren at the mercy of overseas suppliers? This paper is deeply wary of state intervention in free markets. But the current glut of steel has nothing to do with fair trade. It has come about because of the downturn in China, whose Communist regime is dumping its surpluses on world markets at knockdown prices. Meanwhile, our Governments slavish adherence to carbon emissions targets has forced up energy prices, exacerbating our steel-makers problems. Instead of just wringing its hands, it should be moving heaven and earth to see the industry through the crisis. This means offering loan guarantees and reliefs from carbon taxes and business rates and insisting, like other EU steel producers, that domestic suppliers get preference over imports. Above all, it means piling pressure on Brussels to impose anti-dumping tariffs. Or are ministers so afraid of losing Chinese support for our nuclear programme and HS2 that they darent upset Beijing? The kow-towing must stop. Chancellor George Osborne has rightly called for a march of the makers to boost manufacturing and reduce our reliance on service industries. As he shouldnt need telling, precious little can be made without steel. Betrayed by secrecy If Cumbrian police and other authorities had their way, the public would have known nothing about 13-month-old Poppi Worthingtons death until 2029. Only after a three-year cover-up, contested by the Mail and other media groups, are we able to report the serial failures that let Poppis father escape prosecution for subjecting her to a vile sexual assault shortly before she died. Blunders and cover-ups: If Cumbrian police and other authorities had their way, the public would have known nothing about the death of 13-month-old Poppi Worthington (pictured) until 2029 This grim case highlights, once again, the vital role of a free Press in ensuring that no Britons death can be hushed up to suit the Establishment. A bleak midwinter As the IMF warns that a tide of migrants is overwhelming Europe, threatening jobs and social cohesion, it emerges that 31,244 have arrived by boat in Greece so far this month. Thats 21 times more than in the whole of January last year. If this is the influx in midwinter, its anyones guess how many more will exploit fatally lax controls in the peak migration months to come. No wonder the in campaign wants the EU referendum out of the way before the IMFs worst fears become reality. A graduate who started a clothing brand with just a 6,000 loan is turning over more than 250,000 a year later. Tom Cridland, 25, from Fulham, London, specialises in sustainable fashion, which he claims will last for 30 years, after launching his self-named label in 2014. Now Tom has opened his first store this week on King's Road, Chelsea, and has seen the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Craig wearing his designs - despite not receiving any financial help from his CEO father and accountant mother. Tom, from Fulham, London started a clothing brand with just a 6,000 loan is turning over a quarter of a million pounds a year later. Pictured with girlfriend Debs Marx who handles the financial side of the business Tom had a better start than most budding entrepreneurs with father Jonathan Cridland the CEO of Lumie, which produces a light-up bodyclock, and mother Manuela, who set up her own accountancy firm. But his parents refused to give him any handouts to start the business. He told FEMAIL: 'My dad told me it was either a graduate job or a start-up loan which is quite right. 'He didn't give me any money. It's got to be you on your own.' But his father's experience proved useful when one of the requirements of getting the 6,000 government loan was to have a business mentor. Tom said he obviously chose his father as he has his son's 'best interests at heart'. And although his mother was initially sceptical of his career choice, the success of his business has proved it was worth the leap of faith. Tom Cridland, left at the launch of his brand in January last year, launched his clothing company after landing a 6,000 loan for start-up businesses He told FEMAIL: 'My mother wanted me to be an accountant. 'I think all mothers want their children to be safe. Let's just say I'm earning more than an accountant would at my age. I'm earning more than 25,000.' But Tom is working 'seven days a week' to keep the business going. And it's girlfriend of six years, Debs Marx, who handles the financial side with Tom declaring himself 'useless' in that area. He said his parents are now very supportive of his choice, but would have been just as supportive had he not been so successful. Climbing the ladder as his parents did is important to Tom who claimed his dad also had no help when starting out in business. Tom said: 'He's worked hard and he never got any money himself from his father.' Lumie clocks are sold internationally and the company has a new worth of 577,000. Tom started his brand after spotting a gap in the market for a men's label that only produced trousers. He's since managed to turn the label into a success and has had famous faces like Daniel Craig wear his navy chinos which cost 69, pictured His brand is based on sustainable over the throwaway and his clothing costs upwards of 65. However he believes it's a wise investment as his items are built to last, saying: 'It's better cost per wear rather than buying some tatty rubbish.' Tom came up with the idea of his label after finishing university in 2013, despite it being a world away from his degree subject. He said: 'It was nothing to do with fashion or business, it was about entrepreneurship. Tom Cridland, 25, started his self-named label in 2014 has this week opened his first store on King's Road, Chelsea. Tom pictured outside 'I came up with the idea of being a trousers brand. I spotted that gap in the market and thought it could be interesting.' Tom applied for a government loan for start-up businesses and was given 6,000. He said: 'I was thrilled when they gave it to me but it's nothing to start with at all.' Tom was confident though and it wasn't the first time he's been successful in the retail business, He first designed clothing aged 18 and sold nearly 3,000 worth of T-shirts in a single week, donating all the profits to medical humanitarian organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres. In June he branched out, introducing the 30 Year sweatshirt at 65. While he had suggestions from critics of how he could guarantee an item for 30 years when he's only 25 himself, he stated it was down to the craftsmen behind the scenes. Tom says that not only is it built to last, but it even comes with a 30-year guarantee so wearers can get it repaired any time, free of charge. Claiming it's 'no gimmick', he said: 'It's important to go back to an era where clothes were made with care.' Tom is half-Portuguese and the clothing is made in Portugal. He said: 'The artisans we have partnered with use an old school technique of traditional knitting that forms loops on the backside of the sweatshirts fabric.' Ben Stiller, pictured with wife actress Christine Taylor, has also donned his classic chinos after being sent a pair by the brand Nigel Olsson, Elton John's drummer left, is now a friend of Tom's as well as a fan of the trousers with other members of Elton's band wearing them too The 30 Year sweatshirt, worn by models, left and right, promises to last three decades and will be repaired for free if there's any wear or tear. Tom thinks it's a better investment than some 'tatty Primark rubbish' but it would be steep for some at 65 Other features which apparently help the jumper last longer are 'double reinforced sleeve seams' and a 'silicon finishing treatment' which prevents fabric from shrinking over time. And he's continued his theme by releasing the 30 Year T-shirt but it's his trousers which have secured him a famous following. Tom's seen his chinos worn by silver-screen royalty as well as Robbie Williams, Stephen Fry and Ben Stiller. Tom said: 'I've been plucky and picked names off a dream wish list. I've got in touch and said "do you like the look of these trousers?"' And when the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and Bond himself Daniel Craig replied to say they were, it was a 'dream come true' for Tom and his flourishing business. Nigel Olsson, Elton John's drummer, is now even a friend of Tom's as well as a fan. Tom runs the business with girlfriend Debs Marx, left on the couple's graduation day from Bristol university. He hopes to double his turnover by next year Tom, pictured with girlfriend Debs Marx, found his critics arguing that 'it's not a sustainable business, fashions change'. 'But I don't think white T-shirt and chinos will go out of fashion,' he insists Although Tom's success might sound staggering at a young age, he has friends in many top jobs, with some going on to work for the top five law firms in the country. He said: 'Two of them work for the 'magic circle' law firms and one of them works for Morgan Stanley.' But he admitted that wouldn't be creative enough for him to do. Tom said: 'My best friends would hate for me to say it's not interesting. 'I could never do what they do.' Only two months ago savvy Tom also set up his own PR company to avoid paying someone else for the job. Tom had previously heard that some brands were making clothes to last only a certain period, so the customer would need to buy more, and said he wanted to rail against this. Some people have asked where a clothing company go when the items don't wear out. Others have argued that it's not a sustainable business as fashions change. 'I don't think white T-shirt and chinos will go out of fashion,' Tom argues. It was an unimaginable family tragedy on a day that shocked Britain. And almost two years after the speedboat accident that killed her husband and daughter and took her left leg, Victoria Milligan, 44, reveals a resilience and drive that is nothing short of inspirational. The personal trainer, who lives in south west London, has learned to walk again with a prosthetic limb and now admits she has channelled her grief into mastering running - and says she is even open to the prospect of finding love again. Victoria Milligan lost her husband Nick and daughter Emily in a boat accident in 2013. Now Victoria is focused on her running with the 'blade' she had fitted on the lower half of her left leg Victoria with daughters Oliver, left, who was uninjured in the crash and Amber, right, who was left with scars on her left thigh and hand Victoria, centre, with, from left to right, Emily, Nick, Olivia, Kit and Amber. The family were on holiday in Cornwall on Nick's speedboat when the accident occurred Victoria, who is running a 10K race with her specially designed running blade, told FEMAIL: 'I'm much less scared of failure now then before the accident. Life is for living.' She was on holiday in Cornwall with her family in May 2013, when they had an outing on her husband's boat in the Camel Estruary. The family were thrown overboard into the water and suffered terrible injuries as the out-of-control boat circled over them at high speed. Only Olivia, now 13, survived unscathed. Sky executive Nick, 51, and their daughter Emily, eight, died. Victoria lost the lower part of her left leg, Kit, now seven, needed 12 operations to save his right leg and Amber, now 14, was left with scars on her left thigh and hand. Yet despite the agonising events of that day, Victoria still visits Cornwall regularly and, speaking to FEMAIL from a small village near Padstow where the accident happened, said: 'I feel very comfortable down here, I feel their presence here. 'The worst thing that happened in my life happened here but it was an accident, it wasn't Cornwall or the sea's fault.' Victoria with Olivia, left, Amber and Kit, right, in the Cornish Air Ambulance after raising 250,000. Victoria now regularly fundraises for the organisation In fact she feels 'close to them' being by the sea and still takes the children to Cornwall and even into the water. Nick had been driving the boat with the kill cord - to stop the boat in emergencies - wrapped around his leg. When he quickly went to the toilet, Victoria took over and hadn't attached the cord because she presumed he would take over. But instead when he returned he wanted to go round the water one more time and took the wheel out of Victoria's hand. He pulled the steering wheel down with maximum turn, maximum throttle - unaware the kill cord was not attached. Victoria says that focusing on her body and health is a way of giving her a sense of control over life Victoria wears a prosthetic lower left leg and despite some days being unable to wear it and struggling to get around just on crutches, she hasn't let it stop her from learning how to compete in races While suffering intense grief, Victoria also had to come to terms with her changed body, but she addresses with this with her typical frank understatement. On losing her leg, she said: 'Thank goodness, I didn't realise just how difficult it would be at the start [to be an amputee]. 'If it had happened another day it would have been the end of my world. But my injury completely paled into insignificance.' She has been left with grief that 'comes and goes when you're least expecting it.' She said: 'It can be anything that starts me off. I've learned now if I feel the waves of grief, let them wash over you because you'll come out of it. 'Grief is all consuming at the beginning, I know now I'm not always going to feel down, if I'm in a low it's not going to be forever.' She said: 'I'll always have thoughts and memories of them, I'm keeping them alive.' Victoria said she's no longer 'putting peanut butter in the basket,' one of Emily's favourites, like she was a year later but she still finds herself spotting gifts she knows she would have loved. Victoria didn't realise how difficult it would be to be an amputee as she was focused on her loss. But she said if it had happened on a different day it would have been the 'end of my world' 'I never will be able to believe she's not here,' she said. But Victoria admits that she is now able to enjoy moments which remind her of Emily, without being shattered by pain. She said: 'I can eat garlic bread now and smile, which was her favourite, when before that would have sent me to the floor in a ball crying.' Victoria also notes that the accident had another effect on her - it removed her fear of failure. So while she has always been physically fit, she was never a keen runner. The first thing was being fitted with her prosthetic leg and two years later she was fitted with a 'blade', a carbon-fibre running blade which provides the energy return needed to run. Victoria said: 'Walking on a prosthetic is hard enough but running is harder. You have to give yourself the confidence to put all your weight through a prosthetic.' Victoria, who appeared on Lorraine, this month says she has lost her fear of failure since the accident And it was a new goal which she wanted, so she challenged herself first to run one step at a time, and then to run to the edge of the road, and then to run a kilometre. Now she is taking on the 10K Cancer Research Winter Run this month. 'For me it's just been about very slowly getting up the confidence,' she said. 'I kept pushing myself through my physical barrier.' Victoria is in the final weeks of her training and is running to raise money for Child Bereavement UK, a cause which is close to her heart after the accident. Her son Kit has been going with her on smaller runs, and she feels lucky that he was able to have his leg saved through surgery. I find when you're not in control of anything that happens to you, you can be in control of your body and your health She was holding him in the water when the boat hit so while she lost her left leg, his right leg was badly injured. The 10K run is not an easy task for Victoria because even the slightest sore or cut on her stump can mean she has to leave the prosthetic off for days at a time, which leaves her using crutches and struggling to get around. She said: 'I'm so used to doing things myself, not being able to make myself a cup of tea - I've had to relinquish control.' But friends and family are there ready to help out on those occasions. Victoria has also set up a website to help other bereaved families, and is also writing a book which is part-memoir and part-advice book, but the run on January 31 is her next challenge. For now she is far from looking for romance but she admitted that the 'right person' were to come along, she would be open to sharing her life with someone new. But she said they would have to be able to take on three children as well her disability. She said: 'We're not really in control of what happens in life. 'I find when you're not in control of anything that happens to you, you can be in control of your body and your health.' As Maika grows older she is expected to get scoliosis and have seizures The condition affects her movement and development and there is no cure Doctors diagnosed her with the rare condition Rett syndrome She lost her ability to crawl, feed herself and was not responding After developing at a normal rate for six months, she started to decline She developed breathing problems and was in hospital for three months Their daughter, Maika, has four toes with one foot smaller than the other Marc and Dana Beckett of Queensland fell pregnant with twins though IVF Little Maika Beckett will never run or play with her friends, or attend a regular school. The two-year-old, from Queensland, has the rare and heartbreaking Rett syndrome: a condition that affects girls and impacts all movement and development. Maika's mother Dana Beckett told Daily Mail Australia that she and husband Marc first noticed there was something wrong with their adorable daughter when, at around six months old, rather than develop at the same rate as her twin brother Marley, Maika appeared to be going backwards. Heartbreaking diagnosis: Maika, who is two and a half, has Rett syndrome: a neurological condition that impacts her movement and development Adorable twins: Maika (right) and her twin brother Marley (left) were born through IVF after their parents Marc and Dana Beckett struggled to conceive Sibling love: Maika was born with breathing problems and was born with Fibular hemimelia, a rare birth defect that means she has one foot smaller than the other with only four toes She started playing with her hands a lot, but she could still pick up toys and everything like that, she said. But she wasnt really acknowledging us, we would say Maika and she wouldnt really respond to us. They took Maika, who is now two and a half, to her paediatrician, who said her symptoms indicated she was slower at learning and sent them home. 'Going backwards': Maika was not developing at the same rate as her twin and started to lose the skills she had acquired Learning difficulties: Marc and Dana took Maika to a paediatrician who told them she was just slower at learning Signs of Rett syndrome: Maika lost skills such as crawling and feeding herself and started to play with her hands WHAT IS RETT SYNDROME? Rett syndrome is a genetic disorder that affects all body movement. In Australia, is affects one female in 9,000 births. Development appears normal until the child is six to 18 months old. It causes loss of speech and acquired skills. People with the condition can have repetitive hand movements. Rett syndrome goes in stages of development loss and stability. It can lead to scoliosis or seizures. Treatment can be done to help slow the rate of movement loss, including physiotherapy and occupational therapy. Source: betterhealth.vic.gov.au Advertisement We left it at that for a little bit but things got really bad, Mrs Beckett said. She wasnt able to do anything for herself. Maika had begun to lose the skills she had developed. She stopped crawling and pulling herself up on her feet, and when she sat up she would fall over. Mrs Beckett took her back for testing, and six weeks later doctors confirmed Maika had Rett syndrome. Its a neurological disorder so she wont talk, she wont feed herself, she wont walk, Mrs Beckett said. People with Rett syndrome can also develop number of other conditions including scoliosis and seizures. There is no cure. Heart-breaking: The diagnosis was devastating for Marc and Dana who waited six weeks for the test results Day by day: Maika sees a physiotherapist and does cccupational therapy, but there is no cure for Rett syndrome Marley and Maika were born at 36 and a half weeks. Maika was born with four toes on one foot which was smaller than other. She was diagnosed with Fibular hemimelia, a rare birth defect where part of the fibular bone is missing, but doctors said they could extend her leg when she was about five to six years old. The twins came home, but soon after Maika started to have breathing issues that would see her skin turn blue. Staying together: The family spent three months in hospital after the twins were born as Maika developed breathing problems A father's love: When Maika struggled with a breathing episode her skin would turn blue and she was put on a breathing monitor That was really scary for me and Marc, we took her back to the hospital and they admitted her for three months, Mrs Beckett said. Episodes were probably about 10 to 15 seconds where you notice her going blue and not moving or responding. As a first time mum and dad we were quite frantic and scared. The family spent three months in hospital until Maika was able to be sent home with a breathing monitor. Ongoing treatment: Maika and her family will move to Brisbane so they are closer to medical facilities and support for the family Raising awareness: Rett syndrome is very rare and Mrs Beckett said some doctors had not heard of it Her condition means the family, who are moving from Townsville to Brisbane to be closer to medical facilities and support, take each day as it comes. Maika had physiotherapy and occupational therapy, which can help slow the progress of movement loss. Rett syndrome is so rare that some of the doctors the Becketts consulted had heard of it. They hope by sharing their story they will be able to raise awareness. October is Rett syndrome month which is marked with the colour purple. Family unit: It is hard for the Becketts to think about the future and they take each day as it comes A woman who used sunbeds until she was 'red raw' for 25 minutes at a time only stopped when she developed malignant melanoma. Danielle Dyer, 28, from Southampton, Hampshire, became addicted aged 16 when she would have 'sunbed competitions' with friends to see who could get the deepest tan. Naturally pale and freckly, Danielle was diagnosed with a malignant melanoma aged 21 and now warns others against sunbed use after enduring four gruelling operations. Scroll down for video Danielle Dyer 28, from Southampton, Hampshire started using sunbeds aged 16 and would have 'sunbed competitions' with friends to see who could get the deepest tan, pictured Danielle, right, as a teenager with friend Brooke Duncan Now Danielle only uses face tan following her skin cancer diagnosis and although she still likes to look bronzed, prefers a more natural colour, pictured on a recent night out Danielle told FEMAIL: 'Looking back now, it was the worst thing. I definitely was addicted to them. 'At one point I was going on and getting burned so severely but I thought "Oh well," because it turned into a tan.' Danielle now wears factor 50 every day on her face and arms, even in winter months, and over her entire body during the summer to protect her skin. She said: 'It makes people look healthier but I can't go out in the sun now, I learned the hard way.' She first tried out tanning booths while in high school because she was 'really pale' and 'the fashion was to have a tan'. The teenager started using sunbeds frequently, often going on her college break, and would compete with friends for the deepest tan. She began with six minutes but had built up to 20 to 25-minute sessions at least three times a week by the time she was 17. Since 2011 it has been illegal for under-18s to use tanning salons in the UK. She said: 'When you get off the sunbed you might be a bit red. I got to the point of being red raw. Danielle would use the sunbeds for up to 25 minutes regularly in her teens which left her skin red but she was not concerned as it later turned into a tan, Danielle pictured now Danielle, pictured right aged 16 when she started using sunbeds, said tanning 'makes people look healthier but I can't go out in the sun now, I learned the hard way' Danielle, pictured without fake tan, is naturally pale and freckly. She now realises she was dangerously addicted to using sunbeds 'I remember being so burnt but I went still back two days later.' At the time, her parents didn't approve but they were unaware exactly how much she was using the sunbeds. She said: 'My mum Debbie used to say "You shouldn't go on them." But I'd still want to be browner. I think it makes you feel better having a tan.' Danielle continued to sunbeds most weekdays and would also regularly go on holiday to chase the sun. However it was returning from a trip to Tenerife aged 20 that her mother prompted her to see a doctor. Danielle recalled: 'She pointed out a mole on my leg and said "That needs checking out".' She visited her GP who was concerned by warning signs such as discolouration, bleeding and itchiness. She was referred to a dermatologist who removed the mole for a biopsy, which left her with a two-inch scar. The results came back as a stage two to three malignant melanoma, which didn't concern Danielle until the dermatologist explained it was a form of cancer. Danielle's mother spotted a mole on her leg when she used sunbeds heavily and told her to get it checked out by her GP. It was removed, leaving a scar (pictured right) and was later diagnosed as a malignant melanoma After having the mole removed and lymph nodes near it also removed Danielle was given the all-clear but told about the dangers of sun beds, she now just uses fake tan Danielle, pictured when she used sunbeds at least three times a week, preferred to be tanned as it was the fashion. However she now hates looking back on the old photographs and thinks she looks 'awful' Danielle, right, now wears factor 50 every day on her face and arms, even in winter months, and over her entire body every day in summer to protect her skin She said: 'It was scary but I didn't know what it was. I was quite young and not too worried. She asked me "do you go on sunbeds?" 'I lied and said "no" but my mum was there and she told her I did. THE RISKS OF USING SUNBEDS Teenagers who use sunbeds are nearly twice as likely to be diagnosed with the most dangerous form of skin cancer as those who have never been to a tanning salon, a study has found. The earlier sunbed use begins, the greater the risk of developing a deadly melanoma before the age of 40. Those who start before they turn 20 are 88 per cent more likely to be diagnosed with a deadly melanoma than people who have never used a sunbed. Studies suggest that people up to the age of 25 may be more sensitive to the dangers of UV radiation, which is emitted from sunbeds at more intense levels than found in natural sunlight. Of sunbed users diagnosed with skin cancer between the ages of 18 and 29, some 76 per cent were likely to have developed the condition as a direct result of using UV booths. But for those diagnosed around ten years later, up to the age of 39, only 13 per cent of cases could be attributed to sunbeds. The Cadogan Clinic in London. Advertisement 'She gave me a lecture about sunbed use. 'It was the first time I thought, "I've caused a lot of damage" 'That was the point when I stopped using sunbeds. Anything with the C-word is scary.' Danielle needed three more operations to remove the skin around where the mole had been and the lymph nodes in the right side of her groin. Danielle said: 'It hadn't spread internally but it was starting to, so they removed them as a precaution.' She was then given the all-clear following surgery. Despite her diagnosis, Danielle still had friends who went on sunbeds. She said: 'Until it happens to you, you don't bother,' but she added, 'They weren't as extreme as me.' She now works as a beauty therapist at Firvale Aesthetic Clinic in Southampton, founded by Dr Carolyn Berry, and urges others not to use sunbeds. Now Danielle stays completely out of direct sunlight and avoids holidays during July and August, preferring to go in cooler months with boyfriend Nathan Jacobs, 33. She still likes to look bronzed but only uses fake tan. And she admits she now hates looking back at the photographs from the height of her addiction. While single people lie about how much sex they're having Couples lie about having an orgasm at the same time Research says most of us lie at least once or twice a day and the biggest lies are often told to those we love the most. People lie about sex for two basic reasons: to protect a partners feelings or to make our sex lives sound more interesting than they actually are. How many of the following 10 common fibs are you guilty of? Men are less likely to lie about faking an orgasm than women with around 60 per cent believed to fake it on a regular basis Our sex is just as exciting as it was in the beginning Sex can get better the longer youre together in that its more intimate, loving and caring. But more exciting? Thats highly unusual. Passion, lust and excitement need novelty to ignite. No matter how many new things you try, its still the same body youre having sex with all those years in - and your brain and body know it. Ironically, its the couples who have the best relationships that suffer the most from a lack of desire. Desire and love need very different things to keep them going, says US psychotherapist Ester Perel. Love thrives on closeness, emotional security and predictability while lust feeds on uncertainty and forbidden things. Most couples accept that sex moves from erotically charged to intimate and loving in return for having a great relationship. So while you can say Our sex is just as good as it was in the beginning albeit in a different way, most people are simply protecting their partners feelings by saying its just as exciting. Yes honey, I had an orgasm when you did The whole coming together myth has been around forever and refuses to budge, despite evidence that consistently tells us simultaneous orgasm is rare. Couples might tell each other they don't speak to others about sex problems - but a recent survey found 63 per cent had confided in someone else about issues in the bedroom There are several reasons why. Firstly, most women take much longer to orgasm than men do, so hes often done before weve even got to the halfway point. Secondly, were talking split second timing given that both his and her orgasms generally last under a minute. We have sex all the time A recent large, reputable study, the 2012 National Survey of Attitudes and Lifestyles, found the average married couple have sex less than once a week. Thats a far cry from the 2.5 times a week figure thats bandied about and one hell of a lot lower than couples who claim to be doing it every day. Believable at the start perhaps but not when youre a few years in. Of course I dont talk about our sex problems to anyone else In a recent US survey, 63 per cent of people said theyd confided in a third party about a problem in a long-term relationship while 73 per cent said someone else confided in them. Around 37.7 per cent of the problems discussed were about sex and 50.8 about sexual infidelity. Ive never faked an orgasm If its a man saying this, theres a very strong chance its true (though men do fake orgasm, its far less frequent). If its a woman, its almost definitely a lie. Men orgasm 90 per cent of the time during intercourse while women orgasm just 25 per cent of time, according to most research. Statistics vary wildly on how often women pretend to orgasm when they havent but a plausible figure is around 80 per cent of women have faked orgasm at some point while 60 per cent fake on a regular basis. Why do women continue to fake, when there are justifiable, biological reasons why orgasm is more difficult for us? According to a recent study of women aged between 18 and 31, there are four main reasons: not wanting to hurt our partners feelings, fear of admitting to being less than sexually perfect, to tip ourselves over the edge and to end sex. I never watch porn Various studies have confirmed what most of us always suspected: between 95 and 98 per cent of men have watched porn. But they arent the only ones. Fifty-five per cent of women watch some kind of erotica once a month, 40 per cent watch porn weekly and 96 per cent have watched it with a partner at some point. I dont masturbate This depends on who is making the claim. Research in the 1950s by Kinsey reported that 92 per cent of men masturbate compared to 58 per cent of women. More recent research 2010 by Debbie Herbenick in 2010 from Indiana University suggests men arent quite as solo sex obsessed as previously thought. Partners might lie to each other about how often they watch porn but recent figure show women are almost as likely to be watching it Herbenick found 68.6 per cent of men and 51.7 per cent of women aged 25 to 29 had masturbated in the last month. I dont even own a vibrator, let alone use one Fifty-two per cent of females use a vibrator regularly and around 80 per cent of women in the UK own a vibrator. Thats a good thing because research indicates women who use sex toys have higher libidos and orgasm more easily. Theres less reason to have to lie about this one because younger men, at least, are far less threatened than older men. Sex expert Tracey Cox revealed the lies many tell to their significant other More than 40 per cent of women in the same study had used a vibrator during sex with a partner. I only ever think about having sex with you Given 96 per cent of British men and 90 per cent of British women fantasise (The British Sexual Fantasy Research Project of 19,000 people) and most of these fantasies revolve around someone other than a current lover, its fairly safe to assume anyone saying this is telling porkies. Thats not to say they dont fantasise about sex with you though. In another study, half the respondents said they fantasised about sex with their current partner a statistic backed up by previous research. Of course Im having more sex than you are, Im single and youre married People in long-term relationships often look at their single friends with envy, imagining them having loads of lovely, lusty sex. The reality is single people have far less sex than married people do, even those whove been together for a long time. Research from a study of nearly 6000 people aged 14 to 94 found 61 per cent of singles hadnt had sex in the past year compared to 18 per cent of married people. Only five per cent of singles aged between 25 and 59 had sex two or three times a week compared to 25 per cent of married people. Jennifer Dodsworth, 30, an HR business manager, resorted to subterfuge to procure her daughter Jasmine, seven, with a place at the most coveted school in South Shields, Tyne and Wear Jennifer Dodsworth felt a mixture of excitement and trepidation on her daughters first day at primary. Yes, four-year-old Jasmine was lucky enough to be attending the most coveted school in the area, but deep down her mother knew she wasnt entitled to be there. Why? Because the family live five miles away, which puts them firmly outside the over- subscribed schools catchment area. Jennifer and her husband Richard had resorted to subterfuge to procure their daughter a place. They hatched a plan as Jennifer sheepishly puts it to use Richards mothers address, which was on the same street as the school. In order to do so without attracting attention, Richard changed all official records of his residence at the family home before re-registering himself as living at his mothers. After their application had been successful, he promptly reinstated all his records back to their home while continuing to live in their own property throughout. Underhand? Undoubtedly. But the Dodsworths arent alone in adopting spurious methods to secure their childs entry to their chosen school. As the admissions deadline passed last week, a report found that competition for spaces is so stiff that more than 100 primary schools nationwide only admit pupils living within 300 yards or a two-minute walk away. A rising birth rate, fuelled by migration, means that one in eight children will miss out on their first choice of primary with London and Birmingham among the worst affected areas. As a result, more and more parents are being driven to desperate measures. The number of investigations into suspicious applications rose almost 11-fold between 2008 and 2013. A recent survey claimed as many as 18 per cent of parents have fraudulently rented a property near to a school so they are on paper at least within its catchment area. Many more pretend to be religious in order to get their child into a faith school. Other parents use even more underhand tactics. Almost half have chosen a specific nursery because they think it will help them win a place at their chosen primary school despite the rules to the contrary. Primary school places are a postcode lottery and if you live in an urban area with a growing population in England it is incredibly difficult to get your child into a good or even a not so good school, says Ed Rushton, founder of school checking service FindASchool. Jennifer Dodsworth, 30, an HR business manager, discovered this in autumn 2011 when trying to find Jasmine, then only three, a primary school near her home in South Shields, Tyne & Wear. Our closest schools didnt have good reviews, says Jennifer. We wanted to give Jasmine the best possible start in life. Harton Primary School five miles away on the other side of South Shields had a Good Ofsted rating and offered altogether better prospects. It had a lot of money invested into it and everyone wanted their children to go there, says Jennifer. It also feeds into an excellent senior school, which meant Jasmine would have the chance to excel throughout her academic career. So, Jennifer suggested that Richard, 36, an operations manager and her husband of seven years, register as living at his mothers address. As Richard filled in the necessary forms to take himself off the electoral roll and report his change of address to his bank and the DVLA, Jennifer admits their consciences were pricked. We knew it was underhand and it was totally out of character, but we researched what we were doing to make sure it wasnt illegal and convinced ourselves that wed done nothing wrong, she says. Amabel Gilding moved in with her mother in Norfolk so that her daughter, four-year-old Adelaide (together left), could go to a Church of England school in the area. Meanwhile, Emma Woodthorpe registered her address at her mother's property so that her six-year-old daughter Harriet (together right) could attend a better school In fact, the legal implications of the Dodsworths behaviour are far from clear. Many authorities are unsure whether lying to secure a school place is an offence under the Fraud Act and the chance of prosecution is virtually non-existent. To date, only one council has attempted to bring a prosecution against a mother for lying about an address on her childs school admission form, though the case was eventually dropped. Nor to the fury of those who do play by the rules will the child in question lose their school place if caught out, though lying parents are warned they face that risk. Ultimately, if a four-year-old has already started school, they are unlikely to be taken out, says Rushton. With precious little comeback, it is no wonder so many parents are taking chances. Jennifer and Richard had to break the news to his mother that her son was moving in. At first, she thought we were genuinely trying to fiddle the system, says Jennifer. But when we explained our reasoning she was supportive. We didnt stand to gain anything from the Government except our daughters school place. Which, many might argue, is precisely the point. The process was not straightforward. The schools admissions team said they werent convinced by our application because Jasmine was still registered at our address. They were obviously on to us a bit, which made us nervous, but we were halfway through the process so thought we might as well carry on. We had to offer further proof that Richard was the legal guardian of Jasmine. So we changed our child benefits claim from my name to Richards as well. Two months later, they were offered a place. We were delighted, but didnt go shouting from the rooftops as a lot of parents were disappointed their children had not got in, says Jennifer. But other mums on Facebook groups were discussing the possibility of using the same sort of methods we had used to get their children into a good school, so I knew I wasnt alone, though I felt a bit bad. Jennifer spent the next few months drilling her daughter, now seven, not to blow their cover. I told her to say she lived at her grandmothers house and that she walked to school if anyone asked so she would collaborate the story. Amabel Gilding moved in with her mother, Antonella Parker-Hall (left) when her choices of school - within a mile of her Norwich home - were denied. Amabel and her husband Corey (pictured) are now planning to convert outbuildings at her parents' home in Pulham Market, Nolfolk, so their daughter Adelaide can stay at the school But then Jennifer knew she had to come clean to the teachers in order to receive correspondence, so on the third day of term she sent in Jasmine with a letter that explained the family had moved since applying for her place and provided the school with their new address. I didnt want to tell the school in person in case they realised what I was up to, says Jennifer. I worried Id done something wrong and shied away from the situation. The school has seemingly accepted her explanation and she insists other mothers who slowly learned the truth as Jasmines reception year progressed have empathised and that many are similarly duplicitous. No one has judged. Of Jasmines four closest friends, three dont live in the catchment area either, says Jennifer. I dont know how they got in, except that one has grandparents in the area. After Jasmine started school, Richard moved his details on the electoral roll, bank and driving licence back to their home address. We didnt hear a word from the council, says Jennifer, but admits ironically that their tactics have backfired now they are actually trying to move house. We are struggling to increase our mortgage because we cant prove that Richard has lived in this property for more than five years, says Jennifer. But Jasmine is top of her class. You have to do whatever you can when it comes to whats best for your child. Applying for schools is a stressful business, with 40 per cent of parents saying it made them feel anxious. Almost a fifth start considering their options before their child has even turned one. It seems the rise of tiger parenting in which parents are hellbent on the pursuit of excellence when it comes to their children means they are no longer prepared to plump for whatever state school the postcode lottery throws up. And the 5 billion that the Department for Education announced in 2013 to fund extra school places barely seems to have made a dent in the money needed to accommodate their desires. Emma Woodthorpe with her daughter Harriet, six Catherine Evans baptised her four-year-old twins Dylan and Amelia when they were three months old so they could attend their local faith school despite not being religious herself. I dont feel bad about it at all my childrens education is important and if you dont say your children are baptised on the enrolment form they have less chance of getting in, says Catherine, 34, a stay-at-home mother whose two older children, Hannah, 14, and Cerys, 11, were also baptised so they could attend Town Church primary, three miles from the family home in Aberdare, South Wales. There are several other schools closer to us, but the ratings arent as good. At Town Church school, the teachers have been there a long time and there are lots of activities. They include assembly prayers and a weekly church service, but that didnt put off Catherine. My parents baptised me purely so I could go to the same school and Im not religious. They dont force it on you. She and her husband from whom she separated two years ago first had to persuade their local vicar of their godly intentions. When I said I was baptised, he didnt ask any other questions. If he had, Id have told him my reasoning, though it probably wouldnt have gone down well, she says. Shes not wrong. So many people are assuming a religion to get into popular faith schools that some churches have started taking registers at weekly services to assess the authenticity of parents beliefs. The heavily oversubscribed St Lukes Church of England primary school in Kingston, Surrey affiliated with the parish church is a case in point, with pushy parents attending church services purely to get a place. Playground hysteria set in, says the churchs vicar, the Rev Martin Hislop, who started insisting that parents attend two services a month for 12 months before school admission. Some families were not staying after signing the register and others irritated my parishioners by talking through the services. In the end, he decided to change the schools admission rules to base it on proximity to the school rather than religious belief. Emma Woodthorpe, 36, was so desperate to send her six-year-old daughter Harriet to a school with like-minded children from similar backgrounds that she registered as living at her mothers address to be within her chosen primary schools catchment area a 45-minute commute from her home. I wanted her to go to a school with children from good backgrounds, says Emma, managing director of a climbing company from Sandon, Essex. All five local schools I visited felt large and cold. I wanted an environment for Harriet where she could be nurtured and get the support she deserved. The only way you can get into a good school is by registering next to it. So Emma put herself on the electoral role at her mother Yvonnes house near Chelmsford, Essex, in autumn 2013, so Harriet could go to a school rated Outstanding by Ofsted in September 2014. There were only 19 pupils to a class and the reception teacher had been there for 12 years. I knew instinctively that Harriet would be happy there, says Emma, whos separated from Harriets dad David, 41, a furniture store manager. Jennifer and Richard Dodsworth put a different address on the application form for their daughter Jasmine's (left) school so she could get into the one of their choosing. Meanwhile, Amabel Gilding moved out to the countryside from Norwich, and in with her parents, to secure a place at a primary school for Adelaide (right) But it meant an 11-mile commute through winding country roads twice a day. If I went on the main roads the rush hour traffic meant the journey took an hour, says Emma. I had to leave at 7.45am every morning and Harriet has missed play dates and parties after school because were not able to stay. The other mums couldnt believe I would travel so far and when Harriet started I felt like an outsider. But it was worth the sacrifice. At the schools I could have sent her to the children seemed glued to computer games. I wanted a countryside environment where children were free to play outdoors. Harriet is thriving. It is the best decision I have ever made. Amabel Gilding went one step further and moved in with her mother when her two choices of school both within a mile of her Norwich home were denied. Instead, four-year-old Adelaide was allocated a place at a school rated Unsatisfactory by Ofsted, with up to 90 pupils per class. I was upset, horrified and in tears, says Amabel, 25. This school was in such a horrible area that someone was murdered round the corner recently. There was no way I was prepared to send her there. How could any parent? Yet if we wanted to stay in Norwich, we had no choice. So SHE and her husband Cory, 24, an engineer, moved 20 miles to her parents sought-after village of Pulham, Norfolk, so Adelaide could attend the Church of England school there. It was wonderful, but the price of property made renting in the area impossible, says Amabel, who married Cory last July and is heavily pregnant with their second child. So, their only option was to move in with Amabels mother Antonella, 47, and stepdad Colin, 39. Cory, Adelaide and I had to share a bedroom. As a newly married couple it was tough. I didnt want to leave the city and Cory had to find a new job. Mum is lovely, but it was a shock to the system having someone continually checking on us. Last summer, her parents took out a 40,000 loan to convert the outbuildings of their house into a two-bedroom cottage for Amabels family to live in, with building work expected to finish in six weeks. Its hardly an ideal start to married life, but its worth it, says Amabel. Adelaide is so happy at her new school and Id do anything to ensure she gets the education she deserves. On Wednesday morning, Bauer Media Group confirmed the closure of Australian women's magazine Cleo after 44 years on the shelves. The announcement came after a week of rumours surrounding the iconic publication and revealed a renewed digital focus on new-look teen magazine Dolly, which will now be bi-monthly. But sources tell Daily Mail Australia that the future is 'still being discussed' and reveal that Dolly will be operated by a team of just four staff members - despite the increased workload and new cross-platform format. Scroll down for video End of an era: After a week of rumours, Bauer Media Group have confirmed the closure of iconic Australian women's magazine, Cleo, after 44 years on the shelves Moving on: In a statement released by on Wednesday morning, Acting CEO Andreas Schoo said that while they 'considered all the options', the publication simply wasn't 'commercially sustainable for the longer term' It was also revealed that editor Lucy Cousins, who will depart the company, and the editorial team, had no idea the news was coming. In a statement released by on Wednesday morning, Acting CEO Andreas Schoo said that while they 'considered all the options', the publication simply wasn't 'commercially sustainable for the longer term.' 'I would like to thank Lucy Cousins and all of the Cleo editorial team for their ongoing dedication to the magazine over the years,' Mr Schoo wrote, adding that the closure will not impact Cleo Singapore, Malaysia or Indonesia. Relaunch: Mr Schoo said the company now planned on placing an increased focus on Cosmopolitan and teen magazine Dolly, of which they announced a digital relaunch Unsure: Sources tell Daily Mail Australia that the future is 'still being discussed' and revealed that Dolly will be operated by a team of just four staff members - despite the increased workload and new cross-platform format Reports over the past week indicated a bleak future for the magazine, after its website was shut down without fanfare last month. 'We will also be announcing plans today to relaunch Dolly as a digital first property, with a focus on mobile video, social media and e-commerce supported by restructured print and digital editorial teams to ensure we are generating the vest in market content,' he said. 'Our always on approach will be complemented by a new look print product, taking Dolly from monthly to bi-monthly, relaunching as a high quality, valued-packed companion to the digital and social platforms, covering major trends, fashion, beauty and issues affecting young women today.' Farewell: Ita Buttrose (left) was the first editor of Cleo magazine and Lisa Wilkinson (right) was Cleo's youngest ever editor at the age of 21, who wrote a blog post farewelling the magazine on Wednesday morning The last issue of the Australian magazine will go on sale on February 22. Former editor Lisa Wilkinson bid farewell to the magazine in a blog post on Wednesday morning, labelling it 'a magazine of your times, and a key driver in changing those times for the better.' 'At your best, you were fun, informative, lusty and liberating, and several generations of Australian women are in your debt. While it's sad that our daughters no longer need you, it doesn't mean that you failed, but that you, and we, succeeded,' she wrote. Back in time: Cleo magazine's first edition was published in November 1972. Pictured above is the cover 'Generations of Australian women are in your debt': Pictured is supermodel Elle MacPherson on the cover of Cleo magazine in 1984 'For those of us who really knew you, we bid you a fond farewell. We will miss you.' In the 12 months leading up to September 2015, the publication's readership had declined by 16 per cent, according to Roy Morgan research. Cleo's first edition was published in November 1972 and was started up by veteran journalist Ita Buttrose at the helm with the late media mogul, Kerry Packer. It featured articles that empowered women, covering topics from 'What happens when you have a hysterectomy?' to 'Contraception: What you need to know'. In 1975, the magazine published its first male centrefold of actor Jack Thompson. No more Bachelor of the Year: Notable winners of the competition include Osher Gunsberg (left) in 2004, comedian Andy Lee (centre) in 2006, actor Firass Dirani (right) in 2010 The issue from December 2015 featured Australian model Shanina Shaik on the cover The story of Cleo's rise was told in the ABC television series, Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo, starring Offspring star Asher Keddie as Buttrose. The magazine has catapulted the careers of Australia's most respected media personalities, including Channel Nine's Today show host Lisa Wilkinson who became editor of the publication at the age of 21, and Mamamia founder Mia Freedman. For its time, Cleo was forward-thinking with its controversial sealed section that had more explicit and mature content. The Hart sisters, Jess and Ashley, got together for this intimate cover Cover girls of Cleo magazine include models Cindy Crawford (left) and Bambi Northwood Blyth (right) An example of sealed section topics including orgasms, nipples, breast size, sexual habits and libido, according to a 1984 cover with supermodel Elle MacPherson on the front. In 1987, the magazine's Bachelor of the Year competition was introduced, with AFL player Matt Buntine crowned last year's winner. Three cheers for Katy Colins, who instead of taking to her bed with a bumper bar of Cadburys Fruit & Nut after her fiance abandoned her at the altar, sold up and went on a three-year round-the-world trip which has turned into a publishing deal. Her book, The Lonely Hearts Travel Club, is released tomorrow, and it details her adventures of self-discovery in Thailand, India and Nepal. Katy, 30, says of the experience: His decision, though devastating at the time, was the wake-up call I needed. The reason Im so taken by her story is that a very similar thing happened to me in my early 30s. Wake up call: Being dumped can be good for you, because it makes you reevaluate your life and set out on journeys of self-discovery (file image) Like Katy, I was deeply traumatised but being unceremoniously dumped by the man I thought was The One was the best thing that ever happened to me. It was the shock I needed to make me re-examine my existence and it led to me meeting the man I have no doubt really will see me all the way to my grave. Inevitably, the circumstances are slightly different: my boyfriend and I were not planning a 20,000 wedding. But we were living together, something Id foolishly taken as a sign of commitment. He was a classic Heathcliff figure: tall, dark, handsome and as intense as a double espresso. He was also intriguingly troubled and from a complex background the classic rough diamond. With hindsight, I can see I was deluded. He could brood for Britain and was given to wanton acts of self-destruction, which I interpreted as wildly romantic gestures. When he left out of the blue and went to live on the other side of the world, it was as if I had been struck by lightning. I simply couldnt comprehend what was happening. Through naivety, stupidity, wishful thinking whatever I had simply not seen it coming. In the days and weeks that followed, I remember, like Katy, having an overwhelming desire to escape the wreckage of my life. I sold my flat, my car and changed jobs. Like Katy, I travelled, often alone, and I read books and signed up for art classes. I also did a lot of thinking. I thought about the mistakes I had made, about why things had gone so badly wrong. I had a few very stern conversations with myself. I reconnected with neglected friends, made a few new ones, and one or two errors, too. Most of all, I resolved never again to let my heart get the better of my brain even if it meant spending the rest of my life alone. Better a solitary existence, I would tell myself, than reliving all that agony. It was during one of those trips that I met the real love of my life: my husband. I wasnt looking for romance, and nor was he. In fact, it was most unexpected: no one who knew us would ever have matched us. He, a former President of the Oxford Union with a love of opera and politics and a successful career as a journalist already under his belt. Me . . . well, none of the above. Yet from the moment we went on our first date to a restaurant he was an hour late, but luckily Im so greedy I waited, and besides, the waiter kept bringing me glasses of prosecco from the gentleman who is on his way my heart and head were in agreement: this one was a keeper. Every girl should have a Katy Colins moment when theyre forced to ask themselves what they really want out of life. Because, as she and I have discovered, you really can shape your reality and if you get it right, it can be better than even your wildest dreams. Midwife's turning me off! If Sunday nights episode of Call The Midwife is a taste of things to come, Id say the series has run its course. With or without Helen George in a leotard or her underwear, the script seems to have been hijacked by a committee of National Childbirth Trust officials. It was less TV drama and more a public information campaign promoting the importance of womens gynaecological health. Next week: why breast is best. I cant wait. With or without Helen George in a leotard or her underwear (pictured), the script seems to have been hijacked by a committee of National Childbirth Trust officials The High Street isnt sexist, even if products aimed at women do cost more. If were gullible enough to pay almost half again for a packet of razors just because theyre a pretty colour, why shouldnt retailers take advantage? Besides, everyone knows theres no need to buy your own: just borrow your partners. Snub worse than a veil Theres much debate over whether we should ban the veil in schools, courts and other public institutions. My view is that theres nothing wrong with a head covering; its hiding the entire face thats problematic. But there is something I find far more offensive than any kind of veil. And thats the refusal of some male Muslim parents to shake the hands of female teachers. I have heard of this happening on several occasions to women teachers, and have witnessed it myself once. It is beyond insulting. If you are happy for your children to accept the excellent free education this country has to offer, then you should also be prepared to shake the hand male or female of the people who work so hard to provide it. Ive never met Baroness Mone, and Im sure shes a perfectly nice woman. But someone should tell her that, as a newly elevated person of public standing, she ought to start taking her image a bit more seriously. Of course, she is entitled to holiday, but being photographed permanently gadding about in Barbados shes been there three times in the past three months is not a good look for a woman whos supposed to be a peer of the realm. Baroness is not just a pretty title to put on your letterhead, you know. Ive never met Baroness Mone, and Im sure shes a perfectly nice woman. But someone should tell her that, as a newly elevated person of public standing, she ought to start taking her image a bit more seriously My daughter took a nasty tumble at the weekend. At first, I was reluctant to let her agonies interfere with Sunday lunch, but eventually my conscience got the better of me and I took her to our nearest A&E, at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. We arrived equipped for the long haul and, indeed, the place was packed. But instead of the expected three-hour wait, we were in and out within an hour. The medic who treated her showed no signs of being overworked or disenchanted. In fact, she could not have been kinder or more professional. Perhaps someone should tell the BMA. Way hotter than Kate All women, when we get to a certain age, have that thing where we look back at pictures of ourselves in their 20s and think: Wow! I actually looked quite nice. And yet at the time, of course, we never realised it. I wonder if Princess Anne has that? Because judging by this snap of her aged 23, she could have knocked those Middleton girls into a cocked hat. Judging by this snap aged 23, Princess Anne could have knocked those Middleton girls into a cocked hat Who cares if MI5 has been voted best gay-friendly employer? I dont mind whose bed our spies sleep in as long as they keep me safe in mine. In America, fans of presidential hopeful Donald Trump are wearing T-shirts with the inspirational slogan: We shall overcomb. Seriously, how dangerous can he be? Lessons in being ungrateful When my parents emigrated to Rome in the Seventies to escape the Winter of Discontent, they spoke not a word of Italian. My mother tells how once, after a meal, she ordered strawberries and cream for pudding. Fragole con panna, she asked for, triumphantly, and was rewarded with a dish of beans and bread: fagioli con pane. I was home-schooled by my mother until I had learned enough of the lingo to be accepted by the local primary school. At no point do I recall the authorities offering any sort of help not that my parents expected it. It was assumed that since we had come to live in Italy, wed make an effort to fit in which we did. Certainly, if the Italian prime minister had announced a policy promising 20 million for free Italian lessons to help economic migrants such as my mother, I am certain she would gladly have taken up the offer. I am also certain he would not have been accused of racism, xenophobia or sexism, as has just happened to our Prime Minister for making the same suggestion here. Then again, that was the Seventies and the world hadnt yet gone completely mad. It was the photo that sent every fan girl into meltdown - and now actor Jake T. Austin has discussed finding love with the girl that showered him with tweets for five years. Shortly after sharing a snap of himself kissing Danielle Caesar, 22, from New York, who has been a fan of Jake for five years, the A-lister opened up about their relationship. Speaking to People, the 21-year-old Disney star said: 'We're young and having fun just getting to know each other. 'It doesn't matter how you meet someone on set, in a coffee shop, at school or in the business. Sometimes you connect with people at the right moment and you just click.' Scroll down for video Fangirl Danielle Caesar has seen her wildest dreams come true after she starts dating her celebrity crush Jake T. Austin who shared a snap of them kissing with the caption: 'I'm crazy for her' Social media went into meltdown after Jake, who is famous for his role as Max Russo in Disneys Wizard of Waverly Place alongside best friend Selena Gomez, shared a loved-up snap on his Instagram page to prove the romance. Taking to social media, Jake shared a picture of himself and Danielle locking lips. He captioned the snap, which he shared with his 1.3m followers: 'I'm crazy for her.' Danielle also posted the picture on her own Instagram account, which she has since made private, and captioned it: 'Every love story is beautiful, but ours is my favourite.' Since then, thousands of fangirls have commented, many jealous and others inspired by Danielle to bag their own celebrity crush. One wrote: 'She has been tweeting him for five years straight because she was a fangirl and she made it! She is his gf OMG!', another added: '@harrystyles please can this be us?'. Danielle Caesar, 22, from New York, left, has been a fan of Disney heartthrob Jake, 21, right, for five years and regularly tweeted him to let him know Danielle first met the star in Planet Hollywood, New York, and got a photo with him back in 2011 Jake, right, who is famous for his role as Max Russo in Disneys Wizard of Waverly Place alongside best friend Selena Gomez, left, and David Henrie, centre Danielle first tweeted her heartthrob in 2009, writing: 'You're amazing; sorry just thought you should know that :)' As the years went on, she bombarded him with more tweets, such as: 'Me & @jaketaustin are getting married. Shh he doesn't know it yet ;) yes I know I'm a freak :D', and 'I'm gonna deff try & meet youu this summer!! [sic]'. According to Capital FM, Danielle first tweeted her heartthrob in 2009, writing: 'You're amazing; sorry just thought you should know that :)' As the years went on, she bombarded him with more tweets, such as: 'Is it bad that I wanna kiss you right now? ughh you're so freaking hot', and 'I'm gonna deff try & meet youu this summer!! [sic]'. She made her dreams a reality in 2011 when she met the star in Planet Hollywood, New York, and got a photo with him. After that, Jake, who played Jesus Foster on ABC Familys The Fosters, began following her on Twitter and four years later they are an item. Other fangirls took inspiration from Danielle's story, hoping they would now have a chance with their celebrity crushes, Harry Styles or Justin Bieber One user wrote: 'All I can say is that she is goals she went from super fangirl to girlfriend in 5 years Congrats to you girl you are my inspiration [sic] The Twittersphere went into meltdown after the news broke, with many fangirls saying their love story gave them hope Jake has been acting since 2002 when he appeared in commercials and got his start in showbusiness in 2004, when, at the age of nine, he was cast as the voice of Dora's cousin Diego on the Nickelodeon series Dora The Explorer. He become a household name when he landed the role in 2007 as the youngest of three wizard siblings in the Wizards Of Waverly Place alongside Selena Gomez. He was part of the ensemble cast for four years and helped the show take home an Emmy Award for Outstanding Children's Program in 2009. Jake also starred alongside Emma Roberts in Hotel For Dogs in 2009. Jake also stars as Jesus Foster on the family drama series The Fosters, alongside actresses Maia Mitchell and Teri Polo, which is produced by Jennifer Lopez and is about a same-sex couple and their children. He also landed a major voiceover role in 2011 as Fernando in hit films Rio and Rio 2, as well as starring in New Years Eve and Law and Order. He was named among Latino's Brightest Stars Under 25 by Latina magazine, has penned a screenplay called Kings of Suburbia and has presented an award at the Teen's Choice Awards. Jake, who splits his time between LA and New York depending on his work, also lends his support to various charities. MailOnline has contacted a spokesperson for Jake T. Austin and is awaiting comment. Jake, at the age of nine, was cast as the voice of Dora's cousin Diego on the Nickelodeon series Dora The Explorer, which cemented his status in Hollywood Jake regularly posts dapper snaps on his Instagram where his hundreds of thousands of fans compliment his good looks and sharp style He become a household name when he landed the role in 2007 as the youngest of three wizard siblings in the Wizards Of Waverly Place alongside Selena Gomez The couple are now fielding offers from a number of 'amazing' women Together they created the page 'Baby Daddies looking for Kiwi Surrogate' When they decided not to adopt the men had trouble finding a surrogate Mark Edwards and Christian Newman have been together for a ten A gay couple who spent half of their decade-long relationship yearning to be parents have turned to the internet for help, using social media to find a 'baby mama' to carry their first child. Mark Edwards, 33, and his fiance Christian Newman, 32, created a Facebook page, Baby Daddies looking for Kiwi Surrogate, almost a week ago after a friend suggested that they use the internet to broaden their search. They have since attracted more than 800 followers and are fielding offers from multiple women who have volunteered to make the couple's dream come true by bringing their first child into the world. Mark Edwards(left) and his fiance Christian Newman(right) have spent half of their decade-long relationship yearning to be parents and turned to social media to find a 'baby mama' to carry their first child The couple, who found the adoption process to be too difficult, said after ten years together they are more than ready to start their family and now just need 'a baby Mumma[sic] or a surrogate' to help put their plan into motion. 'We are excited for 2016... as our plan is to start a family and we're hoping you can help,' they wrote. Mr Edwards explained that babies are already play a huge role in his life as he and his father run a company that specialise in stylish baby prams. The happy couple said they love keeping fit, spending time on the beach and travelling as well as socialising with friends and family, including their two young nieces. The happy couple said they love keeping fit, spending time on the beach and travelling as well as socialising with friends and family, including their two young nieces They said after ten years together they are more than ready to start their family and now just need 'a baby Mumma[sic] or a surrogate' to help put their plan into motion After watching many of their friends become parents themselves, the couple said they often hoped that they too will be blessed with a family and now feel it is finally within reach. Several women have expressed their interest publicly, while others have also contacted the couple privately to discuss the process. 'We are super stoked to be chatting to a couple of amazing women so far,' they wrote on Wednesday. 'It's really touching that people out there are willing to help out!' Several women have expressed their interest publicly, while others have also contacted the couple privately to discuss the process After watching many of their friends become parents themselves, the couple said they often hoped that they too will be blessed with a family and now feel it is finally within reach The couple created the page almost a week ago after a friend suggested that they use the internet to broaden their search for a surrogate Their page, which has more than 800 followers, has been inundated with messages of support for the couple Mr Edwards and Mr Newman predicted that they would be hit with a slew of 'ignorant and negative' comments from people 'too narrow minded to understand our desire to have kids', but were pleasantly surprised to find their page had been inundated with messages of support. 'It think it is amazing what you are doing. You will so enjoy parenthood. Good luck with the search,' one social media user wrote. After reading about the story of one Manchester mum, who blushed after her daughter blurted out the words: 'You shout cock, Daddy' in the middle of a supermarket, MailOnline readers have been sharing their own similarly awkward moments with their offspring. Emma Gill, 37, from Manchester posted on Facebook earlier this week that her daughter Chloe shouted the words at her dad Lee while out shopping. Chloe had, in fact, been trying to urge her father to say 'cock-a-doodle-doo', with her, but it somehow all come out the wrong way. Scroll down for video Mikaela Lodder, from Hampshire, told Femail about her sons Julian, 3, right, and Laurence, 1, from Hampshire...Julian calls his favourite sheep, pictured in his left hand, a 'dirty bugger' The sheep, which Julian has had since he was eight months old, is known as bugger - until he gets dirty... Cheeky boys: Wendy McLaughlin, from Wolverhampton, says sons Mason, left, and Regan, right, now six, have given her plenty of laughs including the time Regan stood up on a crowded train and said: 'Can anyone give me a seat please?' Prepare to blush if you board a train with these twins: Fair-haired Regan McLaughlin, above with his brother Mason, also once asked a ticket inspector who'd just come out of a toilet: 'Have you just had a wee?' Emma can take heart however in the fact that she's certainly not alone as the hilarious snippets below - sent to Femail from parents of children still getting to grips with the English language - show. Wendy McLaughlin, from Wolverhampton, says she felt a flush of embarrassment when one of her twin sons, Regan, now 6, shouted on a packed train: 'Can anyone give me a seat please?' when he was a pre-schooler. Transport seemed to bring out his cheeky side, says Wendy, adding that on another occasion, after the ticket inspector came out of the train's toilet, Regan announced loudly to the inspector - and the whole train: 'Have you just had a wee?' Mikaela Lodder, who has two sons Julian, three, and Laurence, one, and a baby on the way, reveals how her oldest child has a pet name for his cuddly toy sheep. The Hampshire mum says: 'He calls him "bugger" and has done since he was eight months old. 'The first time Julian dropped his "bugger" in a puddle was when he was 1.5 yrs old while walking through the forest. 'In the car going home he held it up high and said: "Look Mummy, dirty bugger." I couldn't stop laughing and still do when thinking about it.' Charlotte Smich (left) from Lincolnshire also told Femail about a cherished but embarrassing anecdote from when her daughter (pictured right) was a pre-schooler and offered to wipe her mother's bottom in public After sharing her story Emma was flooded with replies from other parents who were eager to offload tales of their own embarrassing moments with their kids Chloe, pictured with her dad Lee, when she was younger left him red-faced after an outburst in the fruit and vegetable aisle at the supermarket Jill Binks revealed to Femail that her youngest son, then around 8, once said, out of the blue, to her: 'Mum your problem is you're a nymphomaniac.' When she asked him if he knew what that meant, he said: 'Of course I do. You always think you're ill.' Dad Barry Smart also divulged another cringe-worthy encounter, this time one that left him blushing in front of his wife. He says: 'One day my boy, Joshua-Theo, who was five at the time came down the stairs and asked me where the porn was.' He reveals that he replied, already blushing, 'what porn?'. Barry continues: 'I was thinking to myself, oh Lord, has he seen something that he shouldn't of?' 'Thankfully, Josh then went back upstairs and returned with a chess pawn. 'I could not tell you how relieved I was what he meant but did I feel sheepish when he was asking that question, especially in front of my wife.' Charlotte Smich from Lincolnshire, now living in Munich, Germany, also told Femail about a cherished but embarrassing anecdote from when her daughter was tiny. 'My favourite is being in a packed waiting room with my three-year-old daughter who had just started using the toilet properly with my helping her to wipe her bottom afterwards. 'I said to her "Mummy has to go to the toilet, alright?" and she jumped up and said loudly and clearly "Alright Mummy, and I'll clean!"' Little William Allen, 3, pictured with his older sister Molli-Jayne got a little confused with the words stick and dick, says mum Paula Allen, from Halstead in Essex Don't mention the moustache! Katie Willis, a mum-of-two from Wroughton near Swindon, pictured with her daughter Freya, had an embarrassing encounter with her eldest daughter in a cafe When Trisha Chakma's little boy - who's just about to turn four - first started talking he couldn't say stick...and you can guess what he said instead. 'He used to say dick instead of stick. The first time we heard him, it was quite shocking and very embarrassing.' It seems dick is quite an easy word to confuse, as another mum, Paula Allen from Halstead, Essex, discovered: 'My little boy, William, is three and he struggles with his speech a little bit so some words he tries to say don't always come out quite right. She continues: 'In the middle of a queue in the bank, he shouted really loudly "Mummy, I feel dick." 'I went bright red and while I was searching for something for him to be sick into he kept shouting what sounded like: "feel dick, feel dick." Some people were giggling, some were shocked, most found it funny.'" My daughter once held my face between her two dainty hands and said at the top of her voice, in public: 'Mummy, when I'm an old lady like you, will I grow a moustache too?' I was 27 at the time...I wanted to die. Kate Willis from Wroughton Staying with the toilet humour, Tracy Horner's son has made her blush on more than one occasion thanks to his biscuit habit. 'Mummy, Can I have one of those things granny gives me...a knob job!' The little chap actually meant hobnob. Another reader, Samantha Cosgrove, told us that her son Dylan - now 16 - almost got her family into trouble with a couple of more mature ladies when the family shared a train table with them: 'My son and I were on a train with a table between us and two ladies. 'Dylan was four at the time and he loudly pointed out: "Mam, that lady has a 'tushash' (moustache) like my grandad's.'" The story didn't end there though; Samantha says 'When the other lady fell asleep, he again announced loudly: "Mam, that lady's snoring and giggled.'" Facial hair seems to offer an avenue of mischief for youngsters, as Katie Willis, a mum-of-two from Wroughton near Swindon, will testify. 'My daughter Freya - four at the time, now 12 - once held my face (all lovingly) between her two dainty hands while we were in a coffee shop and said at the top of her voice: "Mummy, when I'm an old lady like you, will I grow a moustache too?"' Katie adds: 'I was 27 at the time...I wanted to die.' Dutch mother-of-three Suzanne Temminck, who's studying law in Rotterdam, says that her son Lucas - now 7 - once announced in a very quiet restaurant 'what colour the poo his brother had just done was while there was a moment of silence in the (entire) restaurant.' She consoles: 'It's nice having kids but sometimes you just wish some things didn't happened.' Suzanne adds that she posts her son's observations - and insults - on Facebook, which raise a laugh with her friends. Jodie Ditcher's son Cody (left) gave his teaching assistant a poke and announced that witches were real Sarah Dean's son Harry made her cringe when he mistook a man wearing an eye patch for a pirate Charlotte says that she had hoped that being in Germany might have meant those around her didn't understand but adds: 'Experience shows that when you don't want everyone else to understand, they do... I have to admit I didn't wait around to see, I just ran and locked myself in the loo and cried with laughter.' Angela Dixon also commented about a trip to the chemists that turned her cheeks a shade of red: 'My young son once said about Tampax in a shop to a lady: "My mummy puts these up her bottom"' For Nicky Wild, it was her own underwear that saw her wince, after her daughter decided to wear it to nursery. She says: 'My daughter had my thong on over her nappy but hidden by her dress! 'It was only when one of the nursery assistants went to change her nappy, that my thong was found. Very embarrassing!' Emma Gill's Facebook post about the cock-a-doodle-do supermarket faux pas saw a whole string of parents posting their own anecdotes in the comments section below her post, with some howlers making the light of day. Sarah Dean recalled a cringe-worthy moment from when her son was a toddler. 'When my little boy Harry was two he was into pirates. We walked past a man in John Lewis wearing an eye patch and he shouted 'Aaaarr', like a pirate.' Jodie Ditcher shared an experience that left her 'rather embarrassed'. 'When my son Cody first went to school he said to a teaching assistant that I really didn't like: 'See Mum, I told Auntie Mel that witches were real, because you said the woman in breakfast club was a witch.' Vogue's legendary creative director Grace Coddington has revealed that she is stepping down from her position after almost 30 years, effective immediately. A spokesperson for Vogue confirmed that the 74-year-old fashion legend will be stepping back from her day-to-day position at the publication, instead taking on the role of creative director-at-large, while working on other projects outside the publication as she has no plans to retire. 'I really love Vogue, its been in my life always, they discovered me as a model at 19,' she told Business of Fashion. 'Im not running away from Vogue, because it has opened so many doors.' New projects: Grace Coddington, who is pictured at the Anna Sui Spring 2016 show in September, has revealed that she is stepping down from her role as creative director of Vogue after nearly 30 years Vogue is not currently looking for someone to take on the role of creative director as Grace is still contracted to produce at least four editorial spreads a year for the magazine. She will continue to have an office and an assistant at Vogue's headquarters at One World Trade Center in New York City. However, Grace has hit the ground running in terms of her other projects and is already planning on developing a fragrance with Comme des Garcons. 'It will be nice to collaborate, and nice to go out [and] give talks to people,' she said. 'Its just another approach. Im certainly not going into retirement. I dont want to sit around.' And there is certainly no bad blood between Grace and famed Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour. Power couple: The 74-year-old said Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour is supportive of her decision. The two are pictured at the Calvin Klein Collection Spring 2016 fashion show in September Fashion history: Grace, who was born in Wales, began her career as a model when she was 17 years old. She worked with Anna at British Vogue in the '70s before she hired her as the creative director of Vogue in 1988 The fashion star revealed that she and Anna discussed her desire to pursue other avenues in her career in great deal before she decided to step down from her position. Grace, who was born in Wales and began her career as a model, worked with the Anna at British Vogue in the '70s. She has stuck by the 66-year-old's side for 28 years after she was hired by the newly-appointed editor-in-chief in 1988. While planning her next moves, Grace approached the agency Great Bowery about representing her and signed with them after she realized she 'needed some help from the outside'. Always an icon: 'I didnt want to be pigeonholed into just styling a shoot, I wanted to do something beyond,' Grace said of signing with the agency Great Bowery 'I didnt want to be pigeonholed into just styling a shoot, I wanted to do something beyond,' she explained. However, the icon has done far more than just style shoots in her illustrious career. She appeared in the 2009 documentary The September Issue and became somewhat the star of the film, which chronicled Anna and her staff's production of the September 2007 issue of Vogue. Three years later she published her memoir, Grace, which is being adapted into a film by the A24, the company behind The Bling Ring and Ex Machina. Elisabeth Murdoch couldn't contain her glee while on a night out with her Turner Prize-winning boyfriend Keith Tyson. The 47-year-old daughter of media mogul Rupert Murdoch was photographed confidently strolling alongside her artist beau and flashing onlookers a beaming smile. Despite keeping a respectable distance from her man, mother-of-four Elisabeth had made an effort for their evening date, stepping out in a collarless navy coat, skin-tight leather leggings and suede high-heeled boots. TV executive Elisabeth Murdoch couldn't contain her glee while on a night out with her Turner Prize-winning boyfriend Keith Tyson The Sydney-born TV executive, whose 250 million fortune makes her one of the most eligible women in Britain, appeared to be going make-up-free and was seen casually tucking her light blonde hair behind her ears. Meanwhile, Lancashire-born painter Keith looked relaxed in a long black overcoat, a burgundy jumper with a dip-dye hem and brown corduroy trousers. The 46-year-old, sporting neat facial fuzz, slicked back his grey hair. The 47-year-old daughter of media mogul Rupert Murdoch was photographed confidently strolling alongside her artist beau and flashing onlookers a beaming smile Despite keeping a respectable distance from her man, mother-of-four Elisabeth had made an effort for their evening date, stepping out in a collarless navy coat, skin-tight leather leggings and suede high-heeled boots The pair's blossoming romance has raised eyebrows in certain society circles because Keith is the best friend of Elisabeth's former partner. Heiress Elisabeth, named one of the most powerful women in the UK back in 2013, dated restaurateur Mark Hix until they broke off their nine-month relationship in August. The 52-year-old celebrity chef told The Mail On Sunday that he was surprised to discover Elisabeth had moved on with his close pal but has decided to not let the situation sour their friendship. 'Elisabeth is with someone new, who is a friend of mine,' he said. 'They knew each other a bit before but they got to know each other better through me. 'I wouldn't say the break-up was ideal, but now I don't mind about their new relationship or that it is with a friend of mine. 'We see each other all the time and we're the best of pals.' Claire Neate, Keith Tyson and Elisabeth Murdoch attend the GQ Men Of The Year Awards at The Royal Opera House in September Elisabeth, began seeing Mark, a well-known figure on the London social scene, just months after ending her 13-year marriage to PR guru Matthew Freud, with whom she has two children. Bizarrely, all the parties were spotted at the Ciroc GQ Awards at the Royal Opera House in September Matthew hosted the after-party, Mark arrived for the awards alongside jewellery designer pal Stephen Webster, while TV executive Elisabeth and Keith also walked along the red carpet. Keith won the 20,000 Turner Prize in 2002, with an exhibition of humming machines and large-scale paintings about the mysteries of the universe. He has previously spoken of battling a gambling addiction before winning the prize, one of the most coveted and controversial in the art world, and has since moved to Brighton. The father also warns that teaching children that they are awesome will result in them being unfulfilled adults From allowing children to go to sleep with with their cellphones to constantly assuring them they are 'amazing', Dr. Leonard Sax is lifting the lid on all the common mistakes parents are making while raising their kids in the modern world. In his new book, The Collapse of Parenting, the family physician and psychologist from Exton, Pennsylvania, argues that children today are suffering because their parents are no longer the ones in charge. The father urges parents to reverse the all-to-common trend by setting solid ground rules for their children by teaching them humility and the appropriate times to use their smartphones, using examples that he has seen in his own practice. 'I wrote about an office visit with a 10-year-old boy who is sitting and playing a game on his mobile phone, ignoring me and his mom as I'm talking with his mom about his stomach ache,' he recalled. 'And his mom is describing his stomach ache and the boy says, "Shut up, mom, you don't know what you're talking about." And he laughs.' Scroll down for video Take charge: Psychologist and family physician Dr. Leonard Sax says parents need to set ground rules with their children - including family meals without common distractions such as cellphones Dr. Sax noted that after the boy's flagrant show of disrespect, his mother did nothing but look a 'little embarrassed'. 'That would have been very unusual in 1990 or 2000,' he explained. 'It is now common: children, girls and boys, being disrespectful to parents, being disrespectful to one another, being disrespectful to themselves, verbally and otherwise.' The premise of the book, which debuted in late December, is that parents and educations are hurting children by treating them like grown-ups, however, Dr. Sax reiterated that parents should expect their children to be mature and behave. 'I think that's what it means to treat someone like a grown-up, among other things, although the phrase to treat someone like a grown-up is ambiguous. It's not about the abdication of authority,' he said. Dr. Sax gave an example of of parents who chauffeur their children to visit various schools but ultimately let them make the final decision about their education. Saving today's youth: Dr. Sax, who is also a father living in Exton, Pennsylvania, argues that children today are suffering because their parents are no longer the ones in charge 'I know of cases where the kid was clearly making the wrong decision and the parents knew it but nevertheless felt completely powerless to overrule their child,' he explained. 'The child is the one who suffers.' The doctor went on to say that the same is true in regards children as young as 10 years old having a cellphone in their bedroom at 2am. Dr. Sax doesn't believe their should be any wiggle room when it comes to tweens and teens having access to their smartphones all night long. 'You take the device at night and you put it in the charger, which stays in the parents' bedroom,' he said. 'No child should have a phone in their bedroom unsupervised.' Dr. Sax noted that his recommendation is the official teaching of the American Academy of Pediatrics in guidelines published in October 2013, however, parents are wary to discipline their children when it comes to technology. You would be astonished, or maybe you wouldn't be, how many parents find that an impossible recommendation,' he said. 'They feel that they have no authority over their child in many domains.' Expert opinion: Dr. Sax shares his parenting tips in his new book The Collapse of Parenting Dr. Sax also cited research that shows it is important for children to have family meals with their parents every day without any distractions - especially cellphone use. 'Not doing that indicates that time spent at home with parents is the least important priority. It doesn't matter. It can be overlooked and forgotten,' he explained. Dr. Sax maintained that designating family meal times at homes teaches children that 'family matters'. 'So many kids are in the race to nowhere, trying to add things on to their resume through extracurricular activities with no sense of why,' he added. 'They just burn out at 15 years of age.' Dr. Sax advised parents to also forbid children from listening to their earbuds in the car because it stops them from engaging with their mothers and fathers. 'That time in the car is precious,' he said. 'The time in the car is for you to listen to your child and your child to listen to you.' 'My nine-year-old daughter and I know the lyrics to almost every song from Mary Poppins,' he noted of the time he spends with his child in the car. However, the same thing goes for adults. Dr. Sax said parents should enjoy their time with their children and try to get outdoors with them while resisting the urge to multi-task during their bonding sessions. As for raising children who will become fulfilled adults, Dr. Sax said it is time to stop putting children on pedestals and treating them like they are utterly amazing. 'The first thing is to teach humility, which is now the most un-American of virtues,' he said. 'When I meet with kids I ask them what they think it is and they literally have no idea. I've done that from third grade through 12th grade. The high school kids are more clueless than the third-graders. 'They have been indoctrinated in their own awesomeness with no understanding of how this culture of bloated self-esteem leads to resentment.' Dr. Sax said he has seen it first hand, recalling a girl who was constantly told she was amazing and is now resentful as a 25-year-old adult because she is working in a cubicle for a low wage and she's written two novels and she can't get an agent. It may have been her 51st birthday but Sophie, Countess of Wessex spent her special day remembering her late friend. Sophie looked chic in an all navy ensemble as she joined Lord Montagu of Beaulieu's family and friends at a service of thanksgiving four months after his death. The renowned car collector and founder of the National Motor Museum died aged 88 after a short illness in September. Sophie Wessex spendt the afternoon of her 51st birthday with society figures at Lord Montagu of Beaulieu's memorial service at Westminster Abbey Mother-of-two Sophie joined her friends at the service of thanksgiving at St Margaret's Church, Westminster Abbey, to remember Edward Montagu. The third Baron of Montagu of Beaulieu founded his legendary museum at his estate in the New Forest, Hampshire in 1972. Sophie chatted to the new Lord Montagu - the late peer's eldest son - 54-year-old Ralph Montagu, and his wife. His eldest son Ralph will inherit his title and estate. He is also survived by his wife Fiona, daughter Mary, 51, and his youngest son, Jonathan, 39. Sophie Countess of Wessex with the new Lord Montagu - the late peer's eldest son, 54-year-old Ralph Montagu - and his wife Sophie chats to Lord Montagu, who will inherit his father's estate. The renowned car collector and founder of the National Motor Museum died aged 88 after a short illness in September Sir Jackie Stewart, left, and Veteran broadcaster Nicholas Parsons, right, also attended the service of thanksgiving at St Margaret's Church, Westminster Abbey, to remember Edward Montagu Lord Montagu's widow, Fiona, adds a splash of colour to her outfit with a bold pink scarf According to a statement released by the estate at the time: 'It is with deep sadness that we announce the death of Edward, 3rd Baron Montagu of Beaulieu. 'He died peacefully at his home on August 31 2015, aged 88, after a short illness. 'He is survived by his wife of more than 40 years, Fiona, his son and heir Ralph, 54, daughter Mary, 51, and second son Jonathan, 39. 'In accordance with his wishes, the estate and visitor attractions are continuing to operate as usual. 'An estate funeral will be held at Beaulieu, followed by a memorial service at St Margarets, Westminster for his friends in London and further afield. 'The dates of these are to be advised.' The 12th Duke of Marlborough with his wife, Marquess of Blandford, at the event Dan Snow with his father John Snow at St Margaret's, Westminster where friends in London and further afield gathered to remember the late Lord He inherited the Beaulieu Estate following the death of his motoring pioneer father, John Montagu, when he was two years old. His birth on October 20 1926 came as a relief to his father who, aged 61, was desperate for an heir to his title and the estate. In a sad twist, John Montagu died soon after his longed-for sons birth, leaving Beaulieu to be run by his widow and trustees until Edward reached 25. Young Edward boarded at St Peters Court school in Broadstairs, Kent. He was due to go on to Eton but the Second World War intervened and he and two of his sisters were evacuated to Canada. He belatedly took up his place at Eton on his return to England before joining the Army and then, aged 21, reading modern history at New College Oxford. In his second year at university, an altercation between the Bullingdon Club and the Oxford University Dramatic Society led to his room being wrecked, and he felt obliged to leave. Rather than retreat to his family estate, he went into advertising and public relations where his first job was to launch the classic comic Eagle. Lord Montagu developed his National Motor Museum at his stately home Beaulieu in the New Forest A keen party-goer, Lord Montagu enjoyed rubbing shoulders with the artistic and bohemian set as well as being part of normal society. On his 25th birthday in 1951, he took over the Beaulieu Estate, but found the 1,500 a year he could expect from his inheritance would barely cover the running costs. He would later say: 'In 1951, to any sensible, rational being, the house was a white elephant. The wise solution was to get rid of it. 'For me, however, neither entirely sensible nor rational, that was unthinkable.' He eventually opened the house to the paying public. Lord Montague of Beaulieu driving his veteran 1903 DeDion Bouton car with the Hon Elizabeth Scott His estate said he 'played as hard as he worked', with a passion for foreign travel, wind-surfing and competing in historic motorsport events. He also adored theatre, opera, gourmet restaurants and parties, which he continued to enjoy in his advancing years. Lord Montagu was first married in 1959 to Belinda Crossley. They had a son, Ralph, in 1961 and a daughter, Mary, in 1964. Their marriage ended in 1974, after which he wed Fiona Herbert. They had a son, Jonathan, in 1975. Elder son Ralph succeeds to the barony. Last year saw Kendall Jenner cement herself as the globe's most in demand supermodel, but 2016 looks set to be even more successful for the star. Kendall, 20, kicked off the year with a Mango shoot and just a week later, the reality TV star-turned-supermodel has also lent her good looks to Estee Lauder's new campaign. The social media sensation stars in the brand's Knockout Eye Collection campaign video - and shares her ultimate guide to being as successful as she is on social media. Kendall Jenner is already having a successful 2016 after being unveiled as the star of a new Estee Lauder campaign video The short video opens with the model laying in bed as she says: 'People ask me how to make their videos go viral like mine - and I'd like to help.' 'Firstly, keep your private life public,' she says as she throws open her curtains to the flashes of paparazzi cameras and the screams of adoring fans. Kendall then displays her very pert posterior as she dances at the window in her knickers and vest top for a few seconds whilst her fans watch her from the ground below. Her next piece of advice? 'Always look your best but keep it real,' she says as her false eyelashes fall off. Kendall Jenner reveals the secrets to her global stardom as she bares her pert derriere wearing skimpy pajamas in the new campaign video The short video opens with the model laying in bed as she says: 'People ask me how to make their videos go viral like mine - and I'd like to help' Kendall waves to her fans and paparazzi who watch her from the ground below One of Kendall's top tips to making videos go viral like hers? 'Firstly, keep your private life public,' she says 'And finally,' she continues - whilst applying the brand's Sumptuous Knockout Mascara - 'try reinventing something...' She then throws her phone in the air and pulls a pose as she shouts: 'Look! A no-handed selfie!' She then asks: 'Ready to give it a try? I'll be watching...', before attempting the move again and dropping her phone on the floor. This is just the latest in a string of successes for Kendall, who has modelled for top brands including Chanel, Bottega Veneta, Fendi and Givenchy, among many others. In late 2015, she was named the most influential girl in the world, alongside her sister, Kylie, by Time magazine. Her next piece of advice? 'Always look your best but keep it real,' she says She then throws her phone in the air and pulls a pose as she shouts: 'Look! A no-handed selfie!' She then asks: 'Ready to give it a try? I'll be watching...', before attempting the move again and dropping her phone on the floor This is just the latest in a string of successes for Kendall, who has modelled for top brands including Chanel, Bottega Veneta, Fendi and Givenchy And Kendall's coups were rewarded at the end of last year when fashion bible Vogue.com officially hailed her and best pal Gigi Hadid supermodels. The website featured an entire article - entitled We Overuse the Term Supermodel, but Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid Really Are Worthy of the Title - to prove it. Following in the footsteps of 90s supermodels Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, Kate Moss, and Cindy Crawford, the social media savvy duo are the next generation of supermodels. Vogue pointed to their countless high fashion campaigns, strong social media presence, beauty endorsements and runway history as evidence. 'What truly makes Kendall and Gigi super material is the interest they generate off-duty,' writes Janelle Okwodu. 'Bombshells next door, they are even better known for their selfie skills than for their work with the pros. Within the industry, the pair have garnered criticism and praise in equal measure.' Kendall has also been hitting the party circuit in recent weeks, heading out to Mr. Nice Guy, a hotspot in Hollywood, alongside a gaggle of her close pals, this week. Ooh la la! Kendall Jenner proved she had a racy side as she hit the town in Los Angeles on Monday night In da club: The supermodel, 20, headed out to Mr. Nice Guy, a hotspot in Hollywood, alongside a gaggle of her close pals Kendall ditched her favoured laid-back look for a seriously daring plunging black top, which gave her fellow revellers a glimpse at her cleavage. She matched the number with an edgy leather biker jacket and a pair of mustard high-waisted trousers, but left the heels at home and opted for a pair of comfy trainers. Kendall was joined by one of her BFFS, Hailey Baldwin, who also didn't skimp in the style stakes. The model, 19, opted for a more dressy look, mixing a sheer top and mini-skirt with killer thigh-high heels. Bizarrely, the girls were joined by Scott Disick, who split from Kendall's sister Kourtney in 2015 after nine years together. The reality star didn't seem to want to stay under the radar as he rocked an outlandish fur-trimmed coat. Back to work: Kendall is gearing up for a hectic series of fashion weeks - and will have a waxwork of her on display in London's Madame Tussauds He was joined by R&B badboy Chris Brown, who drove the pair away from the club after their night of partying. It'll be the last night of partying for Kendall for the next few weeks - the beauty has a series of fashion weeks across the globe to walk in. If that wasn't enough, bosses at Madame Tussauds have revealed the 20-year-old will get a wax makeover for an upcoming exhibition to coincide with London Fashion Week 2016. The catwalk queen met with sculptures in London so they could re-create her cover girl looks and looked thrilled as she chose out her statue's finer details. The reality TV star will appear on display alongside her best pal and fellow supermodel Cara Delevingne. Fans will be able to take a selfie with the kooky fashion favourite on the catwalk in a Yves Saint Laurent dress, while Kendall will appear backstage. Anna Wintour will also be immortalised in wax for the exhibition. Dr. Younan Nowzaradan was able to treat the swelling, and Chad went on to get down to 441lbs after losing 260lbs in one year After his weight loss surgery, he risked permanently damaging the junction between his stomach and intestines by skipping his medication He lost his job due to his weight and relied on his is wife Ayesha, 32, and their two children Taqua, 10, and JoJo, nine, to take care of him A 700lb man who had weight loss surgery in the hopes of saving his relationship with his family further risked his life after undergoing the procedure by not taking his required medication - because he claimed he couldn't afford it. On Wednesday night's episode of TLC series My 600lb Life, Chad Dean, 42, Hagerstown, Maryland, lost 260lbs in one year, but he almost permanently damaged the area where his stomach meets his intestines in the process when he stopped taking his prescribed medication because of its cost. Three months after the life-saving procedure, Chad was quickly shedding pounds, but he was afraid to tell his Houston-based surgeon Dr. Younan Nowzaradan that he was unable to eat solid foods. Scroll down for video Worn out: Chad Dean (pictured) feared his 700lb body would cost him his family and maybe even his life on Wednesday's episode of My 600lb Life Amazing transformation: Chad went from 701lbs (L) to 441lbs (R) over the course of one year thanks to his life saving weight loss surgery When Chad ended up in the hospital with swelling at the connection point of his stomach and intestines, Dr. Nowzaradan was furious at him for not following his orders, noting that his desire to do whatever he wanted was the reason his weight spiraled out of control in the first place. Dr. Nowzaradan was able to reverse the damage and stretch the narrowing of the junction so Chad could eat, and after one year on his weight loss journey, Chad got down to 441lbs. However, at the start of the show Chad was so morbidly obese that he relied on his wife Ayesha, 32, and their two children Taqua, 10, and JoJo, nine, to wait on him hand and food. 'It's not what my kids deserve,' he told the cameras. 'Their lives now revolve around me.' Out of control: Chad had gotten so large that he had to rely on his wife Ayesha, 32, and their two children Taqua, 10, and JoJo, nine, to take care of him Switching roles: The father-of-two relied can be seen asking his 10-year-old daughter Taqua to get him a soda His 10-year-old daughter admitted that she wanted her father to lose weight so he would actually be able to go outside and play with her. 'That would be like my ultimate, number one dream. I'd be so happy,' she said. At the start of the episode, Taqua fetched him soda and adjusted the ottoman for his feet, happily doing whatever he needed when he called. However, Ayesha was upset that her daughter was carrying the 'burden of being a parent' when she was only 10 years old. Only wish: Chad's daughter said her number one dream was for her father to be able to go outside and play with her How much is too much? Chad worried that his wife would get sick of taking care of him and eventually leave him 'She doesn't mind doing the things, but it bothers me,' she explained. 'She's 10 years old. She should be able to be a kid. She should be able to do what kids do.' Chad said he didn't know why he couldn't stop eating, but he felt 'worthless'. He revealed that his weight had almost always been an issue for him because his mother used food as a way to show him her love. In high school, he was so large that his grandmother had two sew two uniforms together so he could play football, and by the time he graduated he weighted 400lbs. Chad's weight continued to spiral out of control when he got a job driving trucks because he gorged on junk food and drank a 12-pack of soda a day while on the road. After his weight reached 500lbs, Chad's leg gave away when he tried to get into the truck and he was no longer able to work as a driver. Ayesha was forced to go and got a job while Chad sat around and ate all day. 'There's a lot of days I wonder if this is the day Ayesha has had enough,' he admitted. 'What's her breaking point before she finally says I can't do it no more?' Ayesha told the cameras that this is not the Chad she fell in love with, noting that 'this Chad gave up on himself'. Growing problem: Weight was always an issue for Chad because when he was growing up his mother gave him food to show him her love Not right: Chad's wife Ayesha, who can be seen making him dinner, said it bothered her that her daughter had taken on the burden of a parent at such a young age Scary thoughts: Chad said he knows that if he doesn't break his eating cycle he may lose his family or die Chad's wife broke down as she explained that she was fighting to keep her family together. 'The kids shouldn't have to bury their father,' she said tearfully. Chad knew he had to do something about his weight or he risked losing his family and maybe even his life. 'If I don't change the cycle one of two things are happening: Either my family is going to leave me or else my body is going to give out and I am going to die,' he said. Happier times: Chad and his family posed in front of the Christmas tree before his weight really got out of control Emotional moment: Ayesha broke down in tears thinking of her children having to bury their father Everything is a struggle: Chad, who could no longer bathe himself, struggled to get on the bed so his wife could clean him More than a wife: Chad said it is 'humiliating' that his wife has to clean him, while she noted that he can't do anything for himself And while Ayesha is worried about Chad being a burden on their daughter, he was concerned that he was just another person she has to take care of in addition to Taqua and JoJo, who is autistic. 'My wife has to take care of me and clean me because I can't do it by myself. It's humiliating,' he said. This type of life, that's not a marriage No one should have to be like this. 'We have two kids, and I feel like I am just another kid that she has to take care of,' he added. 'I feel very guilty of that.' Ayesha told the cameras that she loves Chad, but he can't do anything for himself. Tired out: Chad was so exhausted after his 'bath' that that he had to go back to bed right after Last hope: Chad and his family moved to Houston, Texas, so he could meet with weight loss surgeon Dr. Younan Nowzaradan, who specializes in obesity 'I didn't pay it any mind until it started getting to the point where he couldn't get up to go to the bathroom,' she admits. Chad was filmed wearing nothing but his underwear as he struggled to turn his body over on the bed so his wife could clean him. He said he was so exhausted after his 'bath' that he had to go back to bed. 'You start to wonder how long it is going to be until she starts to think, "He's too much of a burden on me,"' he said of his wife. Making it work: The doctor told Chad that he had to lose 40lbs on his own before he would see if he would qualify for the surgery. Chad can be seen eating a healthier meal Drastic measures: During his weight loss surgery, Dr. Nowzaradan decreased the size of his stomach by 90 per cent Risky business: A month after his surgery, Dr. Nowzaradan learned that Chad wasn't taking his medication and he wasn't able to eat solid foods because the junction between his stomach and intestines was swollen Total makeover: When Chad got down to 492lbs he started going on job interviews again because he wanted to be able to provide for his family In order to get Chad help, they sold their house and moved to Houston, so Chad could work with Dr. Nowzaradan, who specializes in weight loss for the morbidly obese. While they check into a hotel until they found a home, Chad met with Dr. Nowzaradan and learned that he weighed 701lbs. The doctor noted that he turned his wife and children into a family of enablers. If he really wanted to qualify for the surgery, Dr. Nowzaradan told him that he would have to lose 40lbs in one month. Chad lost exactly 40lbs and during his surgery Dr. Nowzaradan decreased the size of his stomach by 90 per cent. Four months after he started his weight loss journey, Chad was down to 612lbs. However, it was difficult for him to watch his daughter eating cheese snacks while he was on a liquid diet. But Chad was soon walking without a cane and was finally able to enjoy some time with his kids at the park. Still struggling: During one interview with a trucking company, Chad realized he wasn't able to do the job because he couldn't lift himself into the cab of the truck Working harder: Chad used his psychical struggles as motivation to lose more weight. He can be seen working out with his personal trainer Right attitude: After he was unable to lift himself into the truck, Chad headed right to the gym, so he could get stronger Chad knew he was supposed to be able to eat small amounts of solid food at this point, but it made him sick to eat. After having an endoscopy and learning that the area between his stomach and intestines was swollen, Dr. Nowzaradan fixed the issue and urged him to start taking his medicine. A month later Chad had lost a total of 141lbs since his surgery and 190lbs since he started his journey. When Ayesha came down with a cold, Chad was able to help around the house and take care of her for a change. Chad told her he was truly sorry for not being the man he was supposed to be, and she forgave him. Meanwhile, he realized he wanted to start proving for his family again. New luck: Chad and Ayesha went shopping so Chad could get some new clothes to wear on job interviews Big difference: In less than a year, Chad had gone from an 8X to a 4X - a size he had not worn since he was in high school Happier than ever: Chad, who lost 260lbs in one year, ended up getting a job working for a car rental agency When he got down to 492lbs, he went on an interview with a trucking company and was told that he had to be able to live 100lbs. However. Chad was unable to lift himself into the truck's cab. Instead of being defeated, Chad used the moment as motivation and headed straight to the gym. In order to prepare him for job interviews, Ayesha and Chad went to the mall to get him new clothes. In less than a year, Chad had gone from a size 8X to a 4X - a size he had not worn since he was in high school. Chad ended up getting a job at a car rental agency, and while he is happy to employed, he realized he was glad he didn't get the truck driving job because that is how he put on weight before. During his final weigh-in with Dr. Nowzaradan it was revealed that he lost a total of 260lbs and weighed 441lbs. Chad was finally able to enjoy time with his family outside of the house, and the doctor told him he was expected to reach his goal weight within six months. Pregnant women who have traveled to regions where the Zika virus is prevalent should be tested for the infection, according to new guidance from US health officials. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said doctors should ask pregnant women about their travel and certain symptoms. And, if there are signs of infection or reason to believe the fetus may be affected, the woman should be tested and ultrasounds should monitor the baby's development, the CDC recommended. Zika is spread through mosquito bites - with outbreaks currently in the Caribbean and Latin America. The tropical virus has been linked to microcephaly, a birth defect in which the head is smaller than normal - and the brain may not have developed properly. There is no vaccine for the virus, but a developer said it created a genetically modified mosquito that reduces the number of mosquitoes spreading Zika in Brazil. The CDC announced new guidance for doctors whose pregnant patients may have traveled to regions with a tropical illness linked to birth defects. Officials say doctors should ask pregnant women about their travel and symptoms, and test them for an infection with the Zika virus, which is spread through mosquitoes (file picture) Zika virus is common in parts of Africa and South East Asia, but since 2007 there have been various outbreaks outside of the disease's comfort zone. It spread to South America in 2014, before reaching Mexico and the Caribbean last year. The first US case was reported in Texas at the start of January Oxitec, a UK-subsidiary of US synthetic biology company Intrexon, said it developed a self-limiting strain of the Aedes aegypti mosquito. The male mosquitoes were modified so that their offspring will die before reaching adulthood or being able to reproduce. The company said it saw strong results in controlling the population of the Aedes vector that carries Zika and also the dengue virus. Zika infections typically only cause a mild illness - if at all. Most people with Zika don't develop symptoms, but those that do usually only develop a fever, rash, joint pain and red eyes. Those symptoms rarely last longer than a week. However, there's mounting evidence that the infection can cause birth defects if acquired by a pregnant woman. ZIKA VIRUS AND ITS SYMPTOMS No vaccine or medications are available to prevent or treat Zika infections. A cousin of fellow mosquito-borne virus dengue fever, Zika was believed to have milder symptoms. About 1 in 5 people infected become ill and can develop fever, rash, joint pain, or conjunctivitis. Other common symptoms include muscle pain and headache. The illness can last anywhere from several days to a week and rarely results in death or hospitalization. Scientists are now investigating potential links between Zika and microcephaly - a congenital condition which causes abnormal brain growth. During the first week of infection, Zika virus can be passed from an infected person to another via mosquito bites. Source: CDC Advertisement Microcephaly is usually rare - but more than 3,500 babies with the condition have been reported in Brazil since October. Officials are still investigating the connection to Zika. The defect can also be caused by genetics, as well as exposure during pregnancy to alcohol and certain germs and toxic chemicals, health officials caution. Yet, in the Brazil cases, most of the mothers appeared to have been infected during their first trimester. However, CDC officials have said that there is some evidence the birth defect can occur later in pregnancy. The CDC issued guidance last week that women should consider postponing trips to 14 destinations. Those places include Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Suriname and Venezuela. Women who are trying to get pregnant - or thinking of getting pregnant - were also advised to talk to their doctors before traveling to those areas. They were also advised to take extra precautions to avoid mosquito bites. CDC director Dr Tom Frieden disclosed the agency's priority was to alert pregnant women to the situations, though there are a lot of lingering questions. Dr Frieden said: 'There's a lot we don't know.' There is no vaccine for the Zika, but a developer said it created a genetically modified mosquito that reduces the number of mosquitoes spreading the virus in Brazil He added that health officials are still trying to determine how much Zika is in the affected areas - or how likely it is that Zika infection in pregnant women can lead to the defect. There may even be another factor that plays a role in whether the child develops the birth defect, he said. Health officials have said that no such infections have occurred in the US - except for one in the US territory of Puerto Rico. The type of mosquitoes that can carry the virus are found in the southwestern US. That mosquito can also spread other viruses hat cause dengue fever and chikungunya. Over the past year, there have been more than a dozen confirmed cases among US travelers - including two pregnant women in Illinois. In Hawaii, one of the women with a confirmed Zika case had a baby birth with the birth defect. Hawaii health officials said she was likely infected while living in Brazil. A new genetic marker that can predict a woman's chances of developing ovarian cancer Scientists have discovered a new marker that can predict a woman's chances of developing ovarian cancer. The disease is particularly deadly, responsible for more deaths than any other gynecological cancers. But a new study suggests a potential avenue for early detection of this difficult-to-spot disease. Women who carry an inherited mutation in the BRIP1 gene are more than three times more likely to develop ovarian cancer than women who lack this genetic flaw, researchers say. They hope their findings will pave the way for a new genetic test to identify women at greatest risk of the disease. Professor Paul Pharoah, professor of cancer epidemiology at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, said: 'Our work has found a valuable piece of the puzzle behind ovarian cancer and we hope that our work could eventually form the basis of a genetic test to identify women at greatest risk. 'Finding these women will help us prevent more cancers and save lives. 'This would be important in a disease like ovarian cancer, which tends to be diagnosed at a late stage when the chances of survival are worse.' Ovarian cancer accounts for only about three per cent of all cancers in women, according to the National Cancer Institute. Every year 13,000 American women die of this malignancy. Meanwhile in the UK that figure is around 5,000. When discovered at an early stage, treatment can be effective and a woman's chance of survival is greatly increased. Unfortunately, many women will have no symptoms or only mild symptoms, the kind that do not motivate her to see her doctor, until the disease has reached an advanced stage. To learn more about predicting risk of this disease, a research team led by Cancer Research UK scientists used next generation gene sequencing techniques to examine the DNA of more than 8,000 white European women. Participants in the study included roughly 3,250 women diagnosed with ovarian cancer, 3,400 women who did not have cancer, and 2,000 women who had a family history of the disease. WHAT ARE GERMLINE MUTATIONS AND HOW DO THEY CAUSE CANCER? When it comes to genetic diseases, including cancer, germline mutations play an important role, the American Society of Clinical Oncology explains. Germline mutations, also called inherited mutations, are changes that occur in a reproductive cell - any cell that will become either an egg or a sperm - or in the zygote, the combination of egg and sperm, while still in the single-cell stage. Because these DNA flaws occur in our root genes, germline mutations are incorporated into every cell of our bodies. By contrast, somatic mutations occur over our lifetime and affect only single cells. That said, they can be passed onto resulting cells when the mutated cell divides. A solitary mutation generally doesn't lead to cancer, usually for a malignancy to occur it takes multiple mutations over a lifetime. This is why older people are more likely to develop cancer; they've had a lifetime of opportunities for genetic flaws to build up. While acquired or somatic mutations make up the bulk of cancer cases, malignancies caused by germline mutations account for about five percent to 10 per cent of all cancers. Advertisement In particular, the team searched for germline mutations in four genes: BRIP1, BARD1, PALB2, and NBN. In the past, small scale investigations of ovarian cancer patients had uncovered mutations in these genes and so researchers believed them to be linked to an elevated risk of developing a malignancy. Gathering the data, the researchers analyzed the results and estimated lifetime risk of developing ovarian cancer to be 3.4 times greater for women who carry the BRIP1 genetic mutation compared to those who don't. Among every 1,000 women, then, 18 will develop ovarian cancer during her life, yet this increases to 58 for women who have a flaw in her BRIP1 gene. By the researchers' calculations, women who carried the BRIP1 mutation were also more likely to be diagnosed at an older age with an aggressive cancer that had already entered a late stage. Nell Barrie, Cancer Research UK's senior science information manager, said: 'Research like this, which looks at inherited genetic changes and how they can affect a woman's risk, is vital. 'We urgently need ways to detect ovarian cancer early, as the cancer is often diagnosed when it's too late for effective treatment because the cancer has already spread. 'We hope this research will lead to a reliable way to spot women at a high risk, so they can be monitored to find any signs of the disease at an early stage.' In an editorial accompanying the study, which was published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, two oncologists who did not contribute to the research questioned whether a gene panel should form part of some patients' screening. 'An important and basic challenge for implementing multiplex panel testing in clinical practice is the need to obtain reliable estimates of cumulative/absolute cancer risks,' wrote Doctors Judith Balmana and Susan Domchek in their editorial. After a night of heavy drinking, the hangover paranoia can rear its ugly head. Consumed by the fear, a drinker recovering from the night before, may feel the urge to apologize for their bad behavior. But, scientists may have an explanation for alcohol-fueled rude and aggressive outbursts. Some people are hardwired to be terrible drunks, their study revealed. A genetic mutation in the serotonin 2B receptor makes those people prone to impulsive behavior, the team at the University of Helsinki concluded. The mutation called HTR2B Q20 is found in 2.2 per cent of the population. Lead study author Dr Roppe Tikkanen said: The results indicate that persons with this mutation are more impulsive by nature even when sober, and they are more likely to struggle with self-control or mood disorders. More than two per cent of people have a mutation on the serotonin 2B receptor gene - which causes them to be rude, irresponsible, reckless and prone to impulsive behavior when drunk, scientists revealed Impulsivity can enhance performance in certain areas of life but it is also a key feature in many neuropsychiatric disorders. The serotonin 2B receptor gene had previously been linked to impulsivity. The team of scientists set out to examine the effects of HTR2B Q20 on temperament, impulsive and aggressive behavior both while sober and under the influence of alcohol. While one gene rarely explains a large proportion of complex phenotypic traits and human behavior', the scientists investigated the possibility of finding at least some effect of the mutation on behavior. They study examined two groups from a population sample. The first group was comprised of Finnish carriers of the mutation 57 per cent of whom were men. The second was comprised of healthy control subjects all of whom were men. The scientists found that carriers of the genetic mutation demonstrated aggressive outbursts, got into fights and behaved impulsively while under the influence of alcohol. They also got arrested for driving under the influence more often than those in the control groups. The mutation - called HTR2B Q20 - affects people's impulsive control when sober, as well, and also makes them more prone to mood behaviors, the study found While those with the mutation were not alcoholics per se, they had a tendency to lose behavioral control under the influence of alcohol. HTR2B Q20 carriers also had a higher prevalence of mood disorder symptoms and emotional deregulation. Alcohol causes higher levels of dopamine to be released which activates the brains reward center. But HTR2B Q20 carriers have a smaller number of the receptors that play a role in controlling impulsive behavior. The study said: The findings may elucidate the role of the serotonin 2B receptor in the health of any given population. Moreover, increasing knowledge of the function of the serotonin 2B receptor may lead to new pharmacological innovations, since no medications specific to it are presently available. British children are twice as likely to be short-sighted than they were fifty years ago, researchers have found. Nearly a fifth of teenagers in the UK today need glasses for short sight - more than double the rate in the 1960s. Experts suspect that a lack of natural daylight may be to blame, with children today more likely to be indoors staring at a computer screen than playing in the park. Spending just an extra hour a day in the sunshine each day should improve a childrens sight, eye experts say. British children are twice as likely to be short-sighted than they were 50 years ago, new research warns Scientists at Ulster University tracked more than 1,000 children over six years, and compared it to results from similar studies in the 1960s. They found that the number of children with myopia - the medical term for short sight - has rocketed in the last five decades. Writing in the journal PLOS One, they said: The proportion of myopes in the UK has more than doubled over the last 50 years in children aged between ten and 16 years, and children are becoming myopic at a younger age. Short-sightedness causes distant objects to appear blurred while close objects are seen clearly. The new study, the largest ever to track childrens vision over time, found that myopia is most likely to develop between the ages of six and 13 years. The researchers found that 16.4 per cent of children aged 12 to 13 are now short sighted, more than double the rate of 7.2 per cent of those aged 10 to 16 in the 1960s. Among a slightly older group, aged 18 to 20, researchers found that 18.6 per cent are now myopic. In the 1960s, just 14.4 per cent of those aged 12 to 21 had short sight. Ulster Universitys Professor Kathryn Saunders, lead author of the study, said: These results give us a clear picture of how childrens eyes are developing. Experts suspect a lack of natural daylight may be to blame, with children today more likely to be indoors staring at a screen than playing in the park . They advise youngsters spend an extra hour outside each day 'Ultimately [it] could enable us to inform how optometrists practice and give advice to parents to help them protect their childrens precious eyesight, such as recommended ages for eyesight testing or specific risk factors that should indicate a sight test is needed.' She added: Other studies have shown that the increase in myopia is far too rapid to be down to simple genetic factors and so we know there must be something else adding to the risk. People have been looking at environmental factors and at the moment they are focused on how much time children are spending outdoors. There is some evidence that just an hour extra spent outdoors every day can protect children from developing myopia. Researchers believe that the less time spent outdoors, the higher the chance of developing myopia. Short-sightedness causes distant objects to appear blurred while close objects are seen clearly Professor Saunders said: Eyesight is effect by levels or vitamin D and hormones - and being in outdoor light changes the level of these in our body. We are keeping on testing these kids and one of the side arms of the study is to look at their vitamin D levels and the effects those levels have. Short sightedness is becoming a major problem in the Far East. In South Korea, for example, 96.5 per cent of 19-year-olds are myopic, and in China 85 per cent of university students need glasses. Chinese authorities are even testing transparent classrooms in a bid to increase childrens exposure to natural light. Some experts think a similar increase in eyesight problems is likely in Britain if children do not regain a love of the great outdoors. A study in China reported a 23 per cent reduction of myopia in children who spend an extra 40 minutes each day outside in the sunshine. A similar study at Ohio State University in the US tracked 500 school children from the age of eight. After five years 20 per cent of the children were diagnosed with short sight - and the only environmental factor that linked them was the amount of time they spent outdoors. An Australian study of 4,000 children came back with similar results, with scientists finding that those who spent less time outside were at greater risk of developing myopia. In hunter-gatherer societies that live mainly outdoors, including groups studied in Gabon, experts have found that only 0.5 per cent of adults are afflicted by short-sight. Mike Bowen, director of research for the College of Optometrists, said last night: From this research we are seeing a clear increase in the prevalence of children with myopia. As the shock over yet another jolting terror attack on students in Pakistans Khyber Pakhtunkhwa sunk in, the implications of the blood-bath for the India-Pakistan interplay became clearer. The tragedy has opened another window for India to drive home the point that a one-dimensional approach to dealing with terrorism will not work for Islamabad. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was quick to condemn the terror strike on Bacha Khan University as it came days after the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot was attacked. A security official examines a suicide bombing site in Islamabad (file photo). Despite the Pakistan governments assurances, endorsed by Rawalpindi, on punishing Jaish-e-Mohammed leadership for Pathankot, New Delhi remains sceptical if the Kashmir terrorists would be dealt with by Islamabad in a similar manner to the Pakistan Taliban. The deadly wave of terrorism in the sub-continent has travelled swiftly this month from Mazar-e-Sharif to Pathankot, passing through Jalalabad and Charsadda. It strengthens the Indian position that any dialogue between India and Pakistan should be focused on terrorism which has overtaken all other pending issues. The recent terror strikes are almost falling into a pattern. The attack on the Indian Consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif was followed by the Pakistani diplomatic outpost in Jalalabad being stormed. The Jalalabad incident happened just when the Mazar-e-Sharif was being linked to Pakistan. Whenever the India-Pakistan foreign secretary talks resume, Islamabad will walk into the dialogue as a victim of terrorism. India will flag the fact that terrorism is a multi-faceted monster. A positive outcome is possible if Pakistan walks the talk on its assurances to India. Unlike the despondency-ridden past, the leadership on the either side has made the right noises. New Delhi has refrained from accusing Pakistan directly for the Pathankot attack. The Narendra Modi government has gone to the extent of allowing Pakistani investigators to verify claims on Jaish-e-Mohammeds involvement in the Pathankot attack on the ground. Despite a deluge of anti-India remarks on the social media after the Bacha Khan attack, the Pakistani leadership has avoided making any reference about India. The conspiracy theorists in Pakistan, however, had a field day as expected in building stories around the latest terror strike by pointing fingers at India. The fact that the mastermind of the Peshawar school attack Umar Mansoor of Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) owned the strike amid conflicting claims also reflected the deep roots of terrorism within the country. As the details of the attack trickled out, the symbolism of the terror strike on the university named after Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, known as Frontier Gandhi on this side of the border, was not lost in India. A close associate of Mahatma Gandhi, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the towering Pathan, had died on this day in 1988. The general buzz in the security establishment in New Delhi was that by striking in a brazen manner the Pakistan Taliban has demonstrated its ability to carry out attack despite the military action by the Pakistan army. The experts also viewed the development as a fallout of the events in Afghanistan where Pakistan, China and the United States are pushing the Taliban to come on negotiating table for a political settlement aimed at buying lasting peace. New Delhi has noted how Pakistan is on a reconciliatory trip. Apart from backing truce talks with the Taliban in Afghanistan, it has proposed to mediate between Saudi Arabia and Iran. On the eastern border, it has offered to address Indias concern on the Pathankot attack instead of contesting the charge. The winds of change have been acknowledged, but positive vibes are wrapped in an apprehensive cloak considering the fact that the Pakistan jihad factory was establish to wage war against India. In another difference from the past, Pakistans military establishment and the political leadership have given a public impression of being on the same page on the foreign policy. The January 2 terror attack on the Pathankot airbase has reopened the Pandoras box of fault lines that delineate the dynamics of the India-Pakistan relationship. The actionable evidence given by the Indian government to Pakistan suggests the involvement of a militant organisation, Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) from Pakistan, and for once Islamabad has not issued a blanket denial. Attacks Immediately after the audacious attack, the Pakistan government offered its condolences as well as full cooperation. Pakistan has offered to cooperate with India after the Pathankot attack Emphasising Pakistans willingness to strengthen the goodwill PM Narendra Modis December 25 visit to Lahore displayed, it is in addition a confirmation of Pakistans commitment to eliminate terror within and without. And that is where there is not merely an overwhelming scepticism, but also a need to ask questions to which there are no satisfactory answers. Pakistan, having lost almost 60,000 people in the last decade, as per the South Asian Terrorism Portal, is in a fight to eliminate terrorism in its myriad forms all over Pakistan. And while the militarys Zarb-e-Azm seems to have dealt a crushing hand to different sections of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan in the FATA, on Pakistans western border, not much has changed regarding militant organistations that ostensibly operate against India. The debate over state-run, non-state actors and rogue elements have muddied the narrative to such an extent that no clear policy seems to have emerged. The civilian-military consensus on dealing with terrorism is the driving force behind the National Action Plan, which came into existence after the Peshawar massacre of 144 people, mostly children - unarguably the most horrific terror attack in Pakistans history. While there is a decrease in terror attacks within Pakistan, it still needs to clearly define its position regarding terrorism in general, for itself and the wider good of the neighbourhood. Pakistans demand to have a resolution to the Kashmir issue, Sir Creek and the Siachen Glacier is legitimate. Indias blatant rejection of any proposal to arrive at a solution acceptable to both parties and the people of Kashmir is preventing a new dynamic between the two nuclear-armed nations with a history of four wars. Regarding Kashmir as its jugular vein, Pakistans civilian and military establishments have always been categorical in their demand to resolve the Kashmir issue, which to many overly-optimistic Pakistanis would be complete annexation of Indian-occupied Kashmir to Pakistan through a UN intervention. Narratives There is another part of Pakistans populace that recognises the right of self-determination for Kashmiris, an idea that is anathema to the Indian military and civilian establishment, thus deepening the mistrust between the two countries. Amid the jostling narratives exists the tool of jihad, of a freedom-fight to liberate the Muslim-majority Kashmir from India. The debacles of armed interventions in Kashmir, mixed with a proxy war by state-sponsored jihadis have sullied Pakistans legitimate demand to resolve the Kashmir issue. Pakistan, which has learnt no lessons from its strategic intervention in the Afghan war as an American ally against the godless Russians, needs to re-strategise its stance vis-a-vis Kashmir. Questions The sealing of offices and arrests of JeM members raise the uneasy question: why are banned militant organisations allowed to rename and rebrand themselves and operate with impunity in Pakistan? Why are people like Masood Azhar, with a history of India-centric terrorism, taken into protective custody, in line with the security agencies cosmetic handling of known militants? While cases like that of the alleged mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks receive shoddy legal attention because of lack of evidence and absence of testimonies of witnesses, there is little or non-existent attention to banned groups that hold huge rallies to incite violence against India and other infidels. As the civilian and military leadership of PM Nawaz Sharif and COAS Raheel Sharif appear united to eliminate terrorism without any classification of good and bad terrorists, the India-centric militants seem to be on bottom of the list of Pakistans bad guys. That is what Pakistan needs to have a long and hard look at. As Pakistan and India embark on a new phase of their relationship, it is imperative to leave no stone unturned to dispense justice to the victims of the Pathankot attack. The collection of evidence, apprehension of suspects, and formation of strong cases and prompt trials would display Pakistans willingness to dissociate itself from the allegation of categorisation of terrorism, of turning a blind eye to India-centric terror, and of classification of good and bad militants. Whereas it is important to keep the peace with its neighbour, and lessen hostilities in the region, Pakistan must act for the sake of Pakistan. Pakistan needs to end all forms of terrorism for Pakistan. Only then will it find peace within and outside its borders. The University of Hyderabad (UoH), which is a stones throw from the plush hi-tech area of Hyderabad, continues to be a war zone three days after PhD student Rohith Vemula allegedly committed suicide over a social boycott on campus. Amid the demonstrations, a section of students have alleged that two Dalit organisations on the campus - the Ambedkar Students Association (ASA) and the Dalit Students Union (DSU) - are at loggerheads and claim that the internal differences among the two groups could have led to Rohiths suicide. Rohith is a member of the ASA. NSUI members stage a protest over Rohit Vemulas death in Bengaluru The two organisations have had their set of differences. In August-September 2015, there was an altercation between the two groups. Rohith also was part of the fight, a student told Mail Today on the condition of anonymity. Doubts over Rohith being a Dalit have also crept up after his birth certificate surfaced. While he is said to belong to the Dalit community, the birth certificate shows otherwise. Protests showed no signs of abating on Wednesday as students from various organisations stood united and boycotted classes for the third consecutive day. We are extending our full support to the protest and the agitation will go on indefinitely till all our demands are met, DSU activist Suman Damera said. The campus resembled a fortress with a large posse of policemen deployed on the premises to prevent the protests from taking an ugly turn. We had imposed Section 144 on Sunday on the campus. Tensions are still high, but the section has been temporarily revoked, a senior police officer said. A fact-finding team of the Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) visited the university on Wednesday, but the agitating students dismissed it. The team was here for a very short period. One day is not enough to ascertain facts about the case. Moreover, the team is from the MHRD itself. It is like saying the judge itself is the murderer, ASA activist Abhijeet told Mail Today. Earlier in the day, Union HRD minister Smriti Irani said the issue was a non-Dalit issue. She also said Congress MP Hanumantha Rao had written to the ministry in November 2014 expressing similar concerns. The Congress MP, on the other hand, said he had failed to get any response to his letters from the ministry. Dismissing Iranis statement that the issue was a non-Dalit one, Abhijeet said the minister was just trying to divert attention. The tinderbox that was Pulwama finally burst into flames today after the death of a civilian protester. Parvez Ahmed Guroo died after security forces opened fire on people who were protesting against the killing of a local militant in an encounter with security forces. On learning of the incident, former J&K Chief Minister Omar Abdullah tweeted: " RIP Parvez Ahmed Guroo. May your soul rest in eternal peace.#Kashmir". According to a police spokesperson, the special operation group (SOG) of Jammu and Kashmir, Army and the CRPF cordoned off Naina village in south Kashmirs Pulwama area on Tuesday evening after receiving information about the presence of a militant there. Pulwama was cordoned off by security forces to catch a militant (Picture for representation). Police said during the operation they rescued 50 civilians who were trapped in the area. On Wednesday morning, when the troops asked the militant to surrender, he resorted to firing and that triggered the gunfight, said the police. The gunfight ended after the Hizbul Mujahideen militant Shakir Ahmed Bhat was shot at about 10am. His death angered locals and they started protesting, chanting pro-independence slogans. Protesters also entered into clashes with the police and security forces and threw stones at them. To control the situation the security forces opened fire, said spurces. The three youths, one of them Parvez Ahmad Guroo, were hurt in the firing. Guroo succumbed to his injuries. Later, thousands of people participated in the funeral procession of the slain militant and the protester. A man with a history of mental illness has managed to travel from Madhya Pradesh to China without any documents. Authorities were left baffled after he managed to make a difficult journey of 2,500 km without any trouble. The temple worker from Madhya Pradesh, who has a history of mental illness, was missing for three years before turning up a few months ago in a small town in China. He had been living there for almost six months. The temple worker from Madhya Pradesh, who has a history of mental illness, was missing for three years before turning up a few months ago in a small town in China. (Picture for representation). The man, identified as Chandra Mohan from Guna in Madhya Pradesh, who worked as an assistant to a temple priest, was detained in the city of Anning, a small town in southwestern Yunnan province, six months ago, after local authorities found him without proper documents and in a state of mental illness, according to officials. The local authorities had been trying for all that time to establish his identity. Mental illness After being alerted to the case this week, the Indian Consulate in Guangzhou obtained documents to establish his identity and submitted them to the Chinese authorities on Tuesday, initiating the process of his repatriation. He was detained as early as June last year, following which the Yunnan provincial authorities tried - and failed - to establish his nationality, unsure of whether he was from India, Bangladesh or Pakistan. In January, an Indian citizen in Yunnan's provincial capital Kunming, who was called on by the local government to speak with Chandra, managed to ascertain that he was from India. The Indian Consulate in Guangzhou was alerted and they sent over documents to the authorities this week. Nobody knows how, why and when he landed up in China, Consul General in Guangzhou, YK Sailas Thangal, told India Today. Porous borders What complicated matters was his mental state, and that he also didn't speak Hindi. We have now established his identity and have received the documents from India last evening. We are taking a humanitarian approach and hope to send him back to India, it is just a matter of time, Thangal added. Indian and Chinese authorities are puzzled how he managed to enter China. He was last seen at the Guna train station. Since he wasn't carrying a passport, officials suspect it was unlikely that he took a flight and might have probably entered China through Myanmar. There are several land crossings along the Myanmar-Yunnan border that are famously porous and are known to be used as smuggling and trafficking routes. Chinese authorities have indicated they are willing to release and repatriate him and not press charges for illegally crossing over into China, citing his mental state. The move was spearheaded by Cabinet Secretary Pradeep Kumar Sinha The Department of Personnel and Training has asked for the views of various ministries to review the work being done by over 100 Central government officials. Several babus are under the scanner for non-performance as their work is being assessed. The officials under watch are from the ministries of Defence, Health and Family Welfare, and Commerce among several other departments. The move is part of instructions from Cabinet Secretary Pradeep Kumar Sinha, who emphasised the need for rotation of officers working in sensitive and non-sensitive posts, and called for a review of nonperforming officers to ensure probity. R-Day surprise The last-minute decision to include the camel contingent in the Republic Day parade came as a pleasant surprise for the Border Security Force. A decision was taken earlier to drop the traditional camel contingent that has been part of the parade for last 66 years. The development did not go down well with the force. With less than a week to go for the event, the iconic contingent took part in dress rehearsals for the first time after it was made to skip the same exercise on January 17 and 18. Shah will be back With Amit Shah set to be re-elected as BJP president, the process for election to the top job got underway on Wednesday following issuance of notification of the poll schedule. Nominations for the post of party president would be accepted on January 24 and scrutiny will take place the same day. The election, if required, would be held on January 25. Shahs tenure at the helm of the party is ending on January 23 and he is likely to be re-elected unopposed. If he is re-elected, this would be the first full tenure for Shah. Extended tenure Officers on foreign postings and central deputation can now have an extended run of seven years instead of the existing five-year tenure on such postings. Further, the departments will be empowered to form rules to have deputation tenures longer than seven years by amending the relevant recruitment rules of such deputation posts accordingly. The move comes after various ministries and organisations approached the Department of Personnel and Training for relaxation of the fiveyear deputation tenure condition citing exigencies. Brunei bonding As part of Indias Act East policy, Vice President Hamid Ansari will embark on a five-day tour of Brunei and Thailand from February 1 to carry forward Indias bilateral engagements with the two Southeast Asian countries. The Vice President is going to Brunei at the invitation of crown prince Haji Al-Muhtadee Billah. This will be the first-ever visit to Brunei by an Indian Vice-President since the establishment of diplomatic relations in May, 1984. They might be making big bucks, but when it comes to shelling out money for social causes their actions dont match the earnings. Only half of India's private companies are fulfilling their corporate social responsibility obligations. And government-run public sector undertakings fare even worse. As corporate houses fail to spend the obligatory two per cent of their net profit on social causes, many government schemes are suffering from a fund crunch. Sachin Tendulkar at the launch of an ICC-Unicef corporate social responsibility initiative Members of Parliament have raised the issue of lack of money to execute work under schemes like Adarsh Gram Yojana. As per the current provisions of Companies Law, certain categories of profitable companies are required to shell out at least two per cent of their three-year annual average net profit towards CSR initiatives. A study by Crisil said that compliance with two percent CSR spending is low even among government companies, as only 43 per cent of PSUs adhered to the rule. While 40 per cent of PSUs spent less than 1.5 per cent, 30 per cent could not spend even 1 per cent of their profits. The study revealed that small listed companies outpaced their bigger counterparts in spending on corporate social responsibility in the current fiscal so far, taking the total amount spent to Rs 6,800 crore as against Rs 12,000 crore that they could have spent. As per the study, 53 per cent of companies with an annual sales turnover between Rs 100-500 crore spent two per cent or more on CSR as compared to 50 per cent of those with a turnover between Rs 500-10,000 crore spending the same amount on CSR. A 1.25 km-long underground tunnel in the very heart of Connaught Place could turn into a major security threat due to the negligence of the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC). The service tunnel, which holds all of Connaught Places water, electricity and communication cables, has been robbed eight times since October 2015. At least 715 metres of Mahanagar Telephone Nigams (MTNL) cables, worth approximately Rs 11 lakh, have been sliced and stolen. Of the eight overnight thefts reported so far, the last occurred on January 15 this year. The 1.25-km underground tunnel holds all of CPs water, electricity, and communication cables What is worrying is that the tunnel, which runs below CPs Middle Circle, is tucked right under hundreds of popular shops and restaurants. The Rajiv Chowk Metro Station, Palika Bazaar, Odeon and PVR Plaza Hall all stand above it. With this sensitive facility remaining unguarded, anti-national elements could easily use it for terrorist acts. NDMC Chairperson Naresh Kumar reportedly went to the site after the January 15 incident to check the security loopholes that are leading to frequent incidents of theft. Mail Today tried to contact Kumar several times for comment, but he did not return our calls or reply to our texts. Theft MTNL PRO Sanjay Vats told Mail Today: On the night of January 14, our linesman reported to us that 691 phone lines in the G Block, F Block, CP and Palika bazaar have stopped functioning. NDMCs senior superintending engineer and our officials went inside the tunnel immediately and realised that thieves had done their job once again. We have filed FIRs with the Connaught Place Police Station every time there has been a theft. We have also written letters to the NDMC to upgrade their security. Unfortunately, our requests are not being taken seriously, he said. Another MTNL area officer said: All entry gates, lock doors and assets of the tunnel belong to the NDMC and it is their responsibility to guard the tunnel. It is surprising how they are being so negligent. The very heart of Delhi has been left unguarded. The phone lines in G Block, F Block, CP and Palika Bazaar area are still dead, he added. Assessment When contacted, NDMC Secretary Chanchal Yadav said: We are aware of the incidents and have arranged for 24x7 monitoring of the tunnel with more guards and CCTV cameras. Our assessment is that this could be the handiwork of insiders - like service providers who come for maintenance. Yadav, though, could not explain how thieves got lucky eight times. A senior Delhi Police official, when asked to comment on the issue, said they have received a few complaints and are investigating the matter. We understand that Delhi is on high alert and antinational elements can use the tunnel for terror acts but we have deployed enough staff round the clock to keep a check on such activities, he said. The tunnel - an engineering marvel - cost the NDMC over Rs 265 crores and took nine years to build. It is the only such tunnel in the country. Various service lines - electricity, water supply, irrigation, fire-fighting system etc - are laid out in a colour-coded fashion. This makes it easier to detect faults and correct them at a moments notice. It was a part of the Connaught Place Redevelopment project which was conceived in 2004 and scheduled for completion ahead of the Commonwealth Games in 2010. However, it could only be completed on the eve of the NDMC centenary celebrations in early 2014. Engineers India Limited was the project consultant. Atul Bhargav, president of the New Delhi Traders Association (NDTA), said: It is sad that after incurring so much expenditure and finishing the project after a decade, NDMC is not guarding it properly. The best security agencies should be employed to safeguard the tunnel. Ardh Kumbh terror plot foiled Four suspected ISIS terrorists, who were allegedly plotting a terror strike during the ongoing Ardh Kumbh at Hardwar, have landed in the police net following a joint operation by intelligence agencies. The Special Cell of Delhi Police on Wednesday arrested four people from Manglour in Uttarakhand. Officers claimed that the Delhi Police unearthed a terror plot to target the Ardh Kumbh Mela. The four suspected ISIS terrorists arrested by Delhi Police Special Cell from Hardwar The suspects, identified as Akhlaq ur-Rehman, Mohammed Osama, Mohammed Azim Shah and Mehroz, were brought to Delhi and produced in a court, which sent them to 15-day police custody. The suspects were tracked down with inputs from a central intelligence agency. They had planned to carry out terror attacks at the Ardh Kumbh Mela, trains heading towards Hardwar passing through Roorkee and some strategic locations in Delhi, Special Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) Arvind Deep said. According to sources, the suspects were allegedly in contact with a former Indian Mujahideen operative, who later went for training in Syria and is currently believed to be a key member of Ansar-ut Tawhid fi Bilad al-Hind (AuT), which has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. Deputy Mayor of Gurgaon Parminder Kataria denies the allegations Gurgaon Deputy Mayor Parminder Kataria is facing a second complaint of rape, from the same woman who accused him in October last year. Hawa Singh, PRO, Gurgaon police, said: We received the complaint from a 40-year-old woman through e-mail levelling charges of rape and criminal intimidation against Parminder Kataria on January 18. We have registered an FIR under sections 376 and 506 of IPC and investigation is on. No arrest has been made so far. When contacted, Kataria refuted all allegations saying he was being implicated in the case. I am hurt because of such baseless allegations. It has been done to malign my image, Kataria told Mail Today over the phone. The complaint alleges that Kataria committed the crime on the night of December 11. He allegedly came to the victims house and asked her to forget things from their past. The victim said that he promised to marry her and started misbehaving with her. When she tried to raise an alarm, Kataria allegedly raped her. He has also tried to delete data and photographs from my mobile phone and laptop, the victim said. Kataria and his accuser have known each other for the past year, and he had given her a job as a manager in his Bhim Nagar office. Over six months Kataria established a physical relationship with her on the pretext of marriage and also with the promise of getting her a job with the MCG using his political connections. However, the relationship soured when Kataria failed to live up to his promises. The victim registered an FIR against him accusing him of rape on October 24 last year. Kataria has been evading arrest for two and a half months thanks to his strong political connections, and has allegedly been pressuring her to withdraw the case. I complained to each and every influential person - from the SHO of women police, to the Gurgaon police commissioner, the Haryana DGP and even the CM. But no one helped me for two and half months. I realised that no one would listen my call so I withdrew the first FIR, victim said. After a Mail Today report exposed how official vehicles issued to the Haryana government are always on the run, a Haryana minister has asked the transport commissioner to remove his official drivers from duty and ordered a probe into the extensive use of government cars. Other ministers may soon follow suit, our sources said. While eight official vehicles belonging to Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar cover less than 20,000 km in a month, cars allotted to other Cabinet ministers are covering more miles than all of the CMs cars put together, according to the governments response to an RTI query. An RTI reply has revealed that cars allotted to some Haryana ministers are running close to 28,000 kilometres a month Cars allotted to some of the cabinet ministers are running close to 28,000 kilometres a month, the same as four round trips from Gurgaon to Chandigarh, burning fuel worth more than Rs 1.82 lakh. Some of these cars cover over 15,000 km every month on average. If we do the maths, this is the distance equivalent to driving from Gurgaon to Chandigarh and back. On the other hand, the chief minister, who has eight cars, covers 17,000-19,000 kilometres in a month. After the report, Agriculture Minister Om Prakash Dhankar has written to the transport department asking it to take action. Dhankar also asked the department to conduct a probe into the matter. It is desirable to conduct an inquiry to check unauthorised use of vehicles, he said. Dhankar, whose official car ran over 24,000 kilometres in October, also proposed in his letter to pay the bill for car usage. Bill for private coverage, if any, regarding the two vehicles allotted to the undersigned may be sent for making payment of the same as per rules, Dhankar wrote. According to sources, the state government is scanning the log book and fuel bills of all government vehicles after Dhankars decision. Some other ministers may follow his move. Acknowledging Mail Todays story, the Haryana minister called for transparency and fairness and thanked RTI activist Jagjit Singh Walia for bringing the issue to light. The total usage of two cars allotted to Haryana Education Minister Ram Bilas Sharma was nearly 28,000 km in the month of July and the government paid a fuel bill of Rs 1.82 lakh. His Toyota Fortuner and Maruti SX4 covered 25,360 km, 22,028 km, 25,454 km in the months of August, September and October respectively. His fuel bill for four months came to a whopping Rs 6.20 lakh with an average of Rs 1.55 lakh a month. The CMs eight cars consumed fuel worth Rs 90,000 during the same period. Similarly, cars allotted to other ministers are also being overused. State minister Krishan Kumars car runs 18,524 kilometres per month on an average. Haryana Public Health Engineering Minister Ghanshyam Sarafs average car usage is 17,782 kilometres per month. Minister of State for Food and Supplies Karandev Kambojs cars are running 16,926 km per month on average. However, cabinet ministers claimed that extensive usage of cars is an indication that the ministers are working hard and are connected to the people. RTI applicant Jagjit Singh Walia had demanded an inquiry into the matter. 'THE COUNCIL MOVED ME AND THE CHILDREN INTO AN EMERGENCY B&B WHEN WE WERE LEFT WITH NOWHERE TO LIVE' Felicia was forced to move out of her family home and into temporary accommodation with her children after her husband disappeared Felicia Kourtis, 51, found herself homeless when one day her husband left leaving her with two children and more than five months of unpaid rent. The plan had been that she would stay in their London home with the children and he would find a separate place nearer to his work where he could have the children over at the weekends. But he suddenly moved out and she received a phone call from their landlord saying they owed 10,000 in rent. 'The man I thought was my friend, the father of our two beautiful children and our sole financial support completely disappeared,' she said. 'I was utterly floored! My husband always had complete control of our finances but he hadnt paid the rent in over five months.' They were forced to leave their home and the council moved them into an emergency accommodation near Heathrow airport. She says: 'The council moved us into an emergency B&B and it all became too much for the children, three of us sharing a room with no privacy. 'A man we had never met before waited at the door. He gave us some bed linen, a set of keys, and led us to the room that would become our home for the next few months. A single room with three beds, one chair, a small refrigerator and a basin. 'I remember thinking: it's only temporary and telling the kids to try and think of it like camping.' 'I felt increasingly helpless and the stories I heard from the other residents who lived there, like that, for more than a year left me feeling completely hopeless and almost frozen with fear,' she adds. Then she approached Shelter online and was given legal advice and help to find a new home. 'Shelter not only gave me the power to fight for what I needed to take care of my family, they fought alongside me! I felt everything was going to be okay, I didnt need to be afraid because we were no longer be invisible,' she adds. Shelter's helpline adviser, Nadeem Khan, said: 'A break-up can happen for any number of reasons, but it's always an incredibly stressful and upsetting time, without the added fear of becoming homeless as well. A 72-day deadline has been set to save 4,000 jobs at a struggling Scunthorpe steel plant and other sites run by Tata Steel. The Indian-owned manufacturer has privately set March 31 as the final date to decide the future of the unprofitable facility which could see it either closed or sold. Last month it announced it was in talks with investment firm Greybull Capital, which has stepped in with a plan to buy the business. Hit hard: Britains steel industry has been in crisis since being devastated by a flood of cheap imported steel which has mainly come from China The proposal came weeks after Tata had said it will axe 1,200 jobs at Scunthorpe, which makes a type of specialist steel that is no longer profitable to produce. The two parties are in talks which are progressing well. However, a potential deal depends on separate talks being agreed between Tata and the unions. This includes closing the existing final salary pension plan, a remnant from the firms heritage as British Steel. Workers will switch to a less generous defined contribution scheme. Britains steel industry has been in crisis since being devastated by a flood of cheap imported steel which has mainly come from China. Lower growth there has left it with excess steel and it has been exporting this to Europe. Prices are at a ten-year low due to the record amount of Chinese exports and the problem has been compounded by UK firms paying some of the highest energy costs and green taxes in the world. Yesterday Tata said 750 jobs would go at its Port Talbot plant in South Wales along with 200 in support functions. A further 100 jobs are at risk at steel mills in Trostre in West Wales, as well as Corby and Hartlepool in England. The Scunthorpe plant makes a type of specialist steel known as long products, which is used by rail firms to make tracks, and beams for the construction industry. Tata wants to focus on producing sheet steel. Greybull is in exclusive talks having beaten off interest from private equity firms. Tata Steel has been trying to sell the struggling unit since last year, but was dealt a blow in August when commodity producer Klesch Group withdrew. The queue of well-dressed Parisians in fur hats and cashmere scarves snakes around the curved edifice of the glass-roofed Grand Palais in the 8th arrondissement of Paris. They wait patiently with tickets in hand, in anticipation for their turn to be allowed in to see the Picasso Mania exhibition and their last chance before the retrospective of 18th century painter Elisabeth Louise Vigee-LeBrun closes. Once the rope is removed at the first security check, guests have to pass through airport-style security gates, undergo a bag search and open their coats to show security staff they are not concealing anything. This type of bag and body search has become par for the course in Paris and everyone is learning to live with the new restrictions. One shopper said: The security is making people more scared, but not making them feel any safer. Life has changed in Paris, but the terror attacks in the City of Light on November 13 have also meant businesses are suffering because fewer people are going out and tourism has collapsed. Back in London at St Pancras station getting ready to board a Eurostar train bound for Paris, the departure hall is empty and echoey and there is no queue at passport control. Leisure trips have been postponed, cancelled or just not booked in the first place. Although the business class lounge is hustling and bustling as normal, figures from the train services, due next month, are expected to reveal a slowdown. It is not cross-channel travel for business that has been damaged but demand for weekend breaks. Long-haul flights have also been affected. Japan Airlines has simply stopped flying between Tokyo-Narita and Paris for lack of passengers. Bookings have dropped by 60 per cent. Officially, the service is only suspended until the end of February and JAL still serves Paris from Haneda, its other Tokyo airport, where seat take-up is down 40 per cent. Figures from airline data firm ForwardKeys reveal international flight bookings fell 54 per cent in December. Earlier this month budget airline EasyJet revealed figures on how full its planes are they fell by 1.8 percentage points to 86.6 per cent, the most significant drop in two years, which was due to falling demand for Paris flights. Airlines and Eurostar are doing the odd sale here and there but many are hoping to sit it out and wait for a recovery even if it takes months. Gert Zonneveld, an analyst at broker Panmure Gordon, said the impact after an event like November 13 lingers. He added: Look at Madrid and London following attacks normally the impact is for at least a few months. Experts suggest the hotel sector has seen bookings decline by nearly a third. Many hotels are offering discounts in a desperate attempt to attract visitors. Cecile Danielo, regional head of contracting at hotel booking tracking firm JacTravel, says January is usually a quieter month for trips to the city anyway but demand is nevertheless down on last year. For those who do wish to travel there are even bargains to be had. Danielo says: We have noticed a shift in booking patterns to higher star-rated hotels owing to price reductions. Unfortunately restaurants cant offer such big discounts. The fate of 23-year old restaurant chain Chez Clement was sealed by the lack of visitors after the attacks. Although the businesss recent performance had been poor, the atrocity tipped it over the edge and it wen into administration earlier this month. Show of strength: President Francois Hollande announced that 5,000 extra police will be added to the existing forces by next year Unsurprisingly, given that Paris restaurant attendance halved in the days following the mass murder, and was still down over 20 per cent in the latter weeks of 2015 compared with the same period the previous year. Retailers are also feeling the pinch, particularly those in luxury goods. Burberry finance boss Carol Fairweather last week said: The attacks affected sentiment generally in terms of tourism. Luxury giant Richemont, which owns Montblanc and Cartier, also reported problems in the French capital, which dragged down quarterly sales in Europe by 3 per cent. Earlier this month Paris marked the first anniversary of the terror attacks that saw 17 people murdered across the French capital, including 11 members of staff at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. President Francois Hollande announced that 5,000 extra police will be added to the existing forces by next year in an unprecedented strengthening of French security. Central Paris itself, on the surface, looked like business as usual. Queues outside its galleries, people milling around the glass pyramid above the Louvre, and the shops and cafes on the Left Banks St Germain des Pres are as busy as you would expect on a rainy January. But for many Parisians more police will just add to the feeling that the city wont be able to get back to normal as one of the worlds leading tourism destinations. A 30-something English professional, who has worked in the city for five years, says: The mood has changed since November. Everyone in their twenties and thirties knows someone who knows someone who was killed People are not going out as much. Its like the lights have gone out. However there are rays of light. According to online home-rental site Airbnb, Paris was in its top five cities for New Year. Chris Bown at research firm Hotel Analyst adds: History tells us that consumers have, by and large, short memories when it comes to terrorist and security shocks. City markets tend to recover quickly, so long as the disruptive incidents are seen as a one-off. Until recently you may not have heard of Crickhowell, a picturesque town nestled in the Brecon Beacons. But after a group of local traders created a movement to take on the taxman in protest of the paltry UK tax paid by big businesses, it's a place you're not likely to forget. The Welsh shopkeepers are attempting to shame HM Revenue & Customs into changing the loopholes which allow the likes of Google, Caffe Nero and Amazon to legally avoid paying UK corporation tax. It's an experiment which they hope will spread to other towns and force the Government to change UK tax laws. Shopkeepers from Crickhowell are taking the town offshore in protest of the taxes paid by multinationals The town appeared in a documentary on BBC Two last night called The Town That Took On The Taxman. Presenter Heydon Prowse who described himself as 'foolhardily optimistic' at the start of the show, followed the group of traders as they took on the tax system and spread the word. Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire and Leek in the Peak District are already on board, and there is plenty of interest already among others. Last year Amazon paid 11.9 million in tax on sales of 5.3 billion while Caffe Nero hasn't paid anything since 2007. Compare this to the 137,000 paid out by Number 18, Crickhowell's local cafe, over the past five years and you begin to see why the local people are taking a stand. But they don't want to be seen in the same light as the multinationals, instead they want HMRC to treat them in the same way and they say they want a level playing field. The problem isn't with taxation, they say, it's that there is 'one rule for the small guys and one for the big multinational companies'. The 'Fair Tax Town' movement has been formed by local traders to shame HMRC into changing the system At the start of the documentary making a change seems a long way off with one tax specialist explaining to the traders how HMRC will 'negotiate with the big companies but they don't need to negotiate with you - they can stamp on you'. But despite this they aren't put off and with trips to the Isle of Man and Amsterdam, the band of business owners get a crash course in the tax industry and the loopholes out there in order to try and stamp out tax avoidance in the UK. They set up a company in the Isle of Man and are taught how a 'Dutch Sandwich' loophole is created (by setting up a company sandwiched between the UK and a tax haven) and how to use Intellectual Property (IP) to reduce the profits they declare and in turn the corporation tax they pay. As the tax specialist in Amsterdam, who helps multinationals to lower their tax bills tells them 'it's a choice of every citizen' to pay tax. Not only are the tax loopholes of the multinationals exposed, the trials and tribulations of creating and maintaining a movement such as this are shown in the documentary. The main fear from other people in the town is that local services such as roads, schools and hospitals would fail if everyone agrees to stop paying corporation tax. As Irena Kovaleva, who owns the optometrist and ice cream parlour, says when describing tax avoidance: 'We should be above it, if someone drops little it's up to them'. Local businesses led by Steve Lewis (pictured) in the Powys town have set up an offshore company But Steve Lewis, leader of the group, points out that although they plan to copy the same tax avoidance rules - they're doing it for different reasons, to get noticed and to force HMRC into changing the law for everyone. It's designed as a threat to the taxman to close this loophole or face hundreds or thousands of UK towns going offshore. After months of planning and rallying support from people in the town, they eventually take the idea to James Harra, HMRCs Director General of Business Tax. Harra isn't able to promise the same treatment as the multinationals - who often have individual people working on their accounts - so the group seek independent advice and are told that in order to have a chance of being successful they need to spread the message. Now, the Fair Tax Town movement is spreading across the country and has a website full of practical advice and guidance on how to join. Other towns are being encouraged to join the movement in order to force the taxman into making changes Although Prowse says the Welsh town is an 'unlikely home for the start of a national revolt', it's also described as a 'small town with a rebellious spirit'. This is because it isn't the first time Crickhowell has hit the news for making a stand against big businesses. Recently local people rallied together against a Co-op being opened in the Grade II listed Corn Exchange pub. Local people could buy shares in the pub, of 50 each, and they raised 500,000 to successfully buy it. Prowse says he has a feeling that the traders 'won't back down' and although there aren't currently any multinationals in the town's high street, they aren't far away. High streets across the UK are a 'dying breed' and that's the reason this fight is important, both to the people of Crickhowell and small towns throughout the UK. Today, Money Mail launches a major campaign to stop savers pensions being destroyed by desperate politicians. After weeks of investigations, it can expose the alarming details behind a government plot to raid savers pensions for billions of pounds. Plans being discussed by senior civil servants in the Treasury could remove almost all the benefits of putting money aside for retirement. Under the spotlight: George Osborne is plotting to raid savers pensions for billions of pounds George Osborne, the Chancellor, is being urged to swoop on middle-class pensioners tax breaks in the Budget due in eight weeks time. His advisers are still toying with radical ideas and no final decision has yet been made on whether to launch the raid. Money Mail implore the Chancellor to see sense. He must resist the cuts completely. If he fails to heed our call, Mr Osborne could kill off Britains savings culture in a single stroke. A betrayal of diligent savers, who would see their predicted retirement wealth plummet overnight, would be the most disastrous move of his political career. For a Tory Chancellor to punish traditional Conservative voters for their hard work, thrift and prudence would be seen by many as an unforgivable betrayal an own goal which would rob Mr Osborne of his dream of becoming prime minister, and could even cost his party the next election. The attack on tax-free pension saving The Tories secretive plot centres on tax relief. Every year, the Government forgoes 34 billion of income tax on money that is paid into pensions. Savers currently benefit from tax relief at the same rate as they pay income tax whether 20 per cent, 40 per cent or 45 per cent. It means there is not a penny of tax to pay on pension contributions until you take them out in retirement, at which point many people typically have lower incomes and would therefore pay tax at a lower rate. With tax relief, a basic-rate taxpayer saving 250 a month into a pension for 25 years would be almost 40,000 better off than if they had used an Isa. A higher-rate taxpayer gets a 70,000 boost. The rules also allow 25 per cent of the pot to be taken tax-free the reward for tying up money until at least age 55. But this arrangement is now under threat. Mounting pressure on the public purse led Mr Osborne to announce a reform consultation in July. Shattered dreams: An attack on Britain's pensions would damage savers chances of a richer retirement The threats to your pension The changes being considered are as significant as the pension freedoms introduced last year. A paper published last summer gave what experts called the nuclear option: treating pensions like Isas. Tax relief would be scrapped completely, but savers would be able to take all their money out tax-free after age 55. At the moment, only the first 25 per cent is tax-free. The Treasury admitted to Money Mail that this option is still on the table. But it would be catastrophic massively reducing the incentive to save for millions. And could any saver trust future governments to resist a U-turn that led to their funds being taxed again? If tax relief isnt scrapped entirely, our investigations have found that ministers are also considering an equally damaging alteration. Insiders are saying that tax relief could be kept but cut to as little as 20 per cent for everyone. For basic-rate taxpayers those who politicians love calling the squeezed middle such a move would completely remove the attraction of pensions. It is likely that they would remain 20 per cent taxpayers in retirement, so there would be very little to gain by locking away money until age 55. Without an incentive to save for old age, many people would either spend their cash or put it in Isas, which are accessible at any time. For most higher-rate taxpayers it would mean being taxed twice: once as they save and then again when they withdraw the money in retirement. The move could kill off company pensions. Executives would withdraw and employers would reduce their offerings to the minimum allowed by law. And young people struggling to buy a house and support a family might also give up, causing a mass exodus from pension schemes. Could the lifetime allowance or tax-free lump sum also be cut? Money Mail can also reveal that other drastic options have been discussed in secretive meetings in Whitehall. One is to cut the lifetime allowance the amount allowed in a pension before a punitive 55 per cent tax is applied. The cap is already falling to 1 million in April. While this sounds like a lot of money, reducing it would hit millions of middle-class professionals such as accountants, engineers and senior managers who save a few hundred pounds a month. And converting 1 million into an income would provide a 65-year-old around 55,000 a year before tax which wont provide a millionaires lifestyle. Another cut would be a punishing cap on pension wealth. A further option is scrapping the tax-free lump sum. The ability to take 25 per cent of the pot tax-free in retirement is one of the most popular attractions of a pension. But it costs 4 billion a year and could go. So today we call on George Osborne to stop and think. We urge him to retain tax relief for pension savings. He must resist the urge to treat pensions like Isas. He must keep the tax-free lump sum, or risk a backlash from 12 million people with money in pensions who have long looked forward to the windfall when they retire. Sight loss: Peter Bennetts is frustrated Peter Bennetts is used to being patient. In the 46 years since he started to lose his sight, his disability has meant he has missed out on many of the little conveniences of modern life. The 60-year-old has resigned himself to the fact that everyday tasks, such as banking, take longer. The technology many take for granted is simply not set up for use by blind people. So it came as wonderful news in February 2014 when his bank, RBS, promised talking cash machines in almost all its branches by the end of 2015. Users could plug in headphones and a voice would explain what was happening on the screen. The pledge was made live on the radio by RBS chief executive Ross McEwan after Peter had phoned in to complain. But today he is still waiting. The banking giant has quietly delayed the machines introduction until the end of 2017. Money Mail can also reveal that HSBC, which has one of the largest ATM networks in Britain, is behind with its roll-out. The banks claim that the hold-ups are outside their control. But vulnerable customers have been left feeling like second-class citizens. Campaigners say banks are focusing on reeling in new customers, spending money on freebies and perks at the expense of improving systems for the vulnerable. As well as delaying vital new technology, every day they close two branches that serve as a lifeline to many. It led thousands of people with a disability to complain last year to the Financial Ombudsman Service. James Daley, founder of the campaign website Fairer Finance, said: Banks need to remember that they provide an essential service and have a social responsibility to ensure all their customers can easily get access to their accounts. Unfortunately, they are prone to prioritising their bottom line over their social duties. By law, banks must ensure that vulnerable customers are not disadvantaged when carrying out their banking. For example, they must give customers who have sight problems statements in large print or in braille. Those who have hearing problems should be offered help such as a sign language interpreter in meetings with staff. Yet many companies seem to be doing the minimum as they try to lure new customers. In the past year, RBS has rolled out a new current account offering 3 pc cashback on phone bills, gas and electricity. And HSBC has offered a perk of 120 to customers who switch to its current account. The ombudsman says bank staff are often poorly trained or fail to send security details such as PINs in formats that customers with sight problems can read. Deaf customers have been told to use the phone to manage their accounts. And those with conditions such as Alzheimers disease have been asked to use fiddly key pads as they battle with automated telephone services. For the blind, talking cash machines would help immeasurably. They work just like normal ATMs, but include sockets where customers can plug in headphones. A voice prompts users to enter details into a specially designed keypad, reads out their balance and so on. Talking cash machines have been around for more than a decade in RBS subsidiaries in other parts of the world. In the U.S., Citizens Bank in which RBS held a stake until October introduced them in 2004. Similarly, every HSBC cash machine in the U.S. talks. But like RBS, HSBC has also broken a promise to bring the ATMs to the UK by the end of last year. THE BROKEN VOW The boss of RBS, Ross McEwan, promised that talking cash machines would be up and running throughout Britain by the end of last year. In February 2014, he went on the Radio 4 programme You And Yours after Peter Bennetts (right) phoned in to complain. Mr McEwan said: We need to do a lot better for people like Peter. We are completely revamping our fleet of ATMs at the moment. We had hoped to have that finished by the end of 2014, but its now going to be 2015. Not for a want or desire from our perspective, but the suppliers have had difficulties. Thats our issue and I take that fully on board, but well have those in by the end of 2015. Now its 2016 and the ATMs are still yet to appear. To withdraw money, Peter, who was a local government education officer until his vision deteriorated, must walk ten minutes to his local NatWest branch in South Shields, South Tyneside. He has to queue sometimes for 20 minutes or more to speak to the counter staff. Peter says: Ive banked with RBS for 42 years. But I feel I am being treated like a second-class citizen. For blind and disabled people, familiarity is key. It would be difficult to move to a different bank and, quite frankly, I really dont understand why I should. Fazilet Hadi, director of the Royal National Institute of Blind People, says: We are disappointed that RBS has failed to meet their own target, but we continue to work closely with them to ensure the roll-out happens as soon as possible. A spokesman for RBS says: The delay in talking ATMs has been caused by an issue with our suppliers, but we are working hard to get this in place as quickly as possible. An HSBC spokesman says: We are disappointed not to have introduced talking ATMs for our customers in 2015. In the late 1980s, three Sydney men including a TV newsman vanished, presumed killed, along the clifftops near the city's famous Bondi Beach. But more than 25 years since much-loved TV weatherman Ross Warren, Frenchman Gilles Mattaini, and local John Russell disappeared, their murderers still have not been caught. That's led former Kyle and Jackie O newsreader Geoff Field, who was shaken by Mr Warren's murder, to issue an emotional plea for their murderers to be brought to justice. 'It just hit me really hard what happened to him (Ross) - it could've been me!' Mr Field told Daily Mail Australia. 'Someone out there knows something. If they've got a moral compass... they should come forward'. Scroll down for video Geoff Field, Kyle and Jackie O's longtime former newsreader, has issued an emotional plea for the murderers of TV presenter Ross Warren and Gilles Mattaini and John Russell to be brought to justice Murdered: WIN 4 Television newsreader Ross Bradley Warren went missing on July 22, 1989. His keys were found at Marks Park, near Bondi, and his body was never found There is a $100,000 reward for information that leads to the convictions of the killers of Mr Warren, Gilles Jacques Mattaini (left) and John Alan Russell (right) Mr Field is pictured partying as a young media worker in Wollongong where he knew television presenter Ross Warren who was killed in mysterious circumstances at Marks Park All three men vanished near Marks Park, between Bondi and Tamarama beaches in Sydney's east. The park was known them to be a 'gay beat' , a spot where men 'cruised' for sex and companionship. Mr Warren, who traveled in the same Wollongong media circles as Mr Field, was last seen waving goodbye to a friend on Oxford St, in the city's CBD on July 22, 1989. Mr Warren had planned to visit two friends that weekend but he never turned up and his mates became worried. After a considerable search days later they found his car keys wedged between rocks below Marks Park. His brown Nissan Pulsar was parked nearby. The 25-year-old's body was never found and investigators failed to fully investigate his death at the time. A senior detective suggested he had slipped on moss and fallen into the ocean to his death. 'I think it's disgusting and disgraceful this case hasn't been investigated much more thoroughly,' Mr Field said. 'Even though it (homosexuality) was legal when I arrived (in Sydney) it was hard to live your life as an openly gay man. 'I feel very sorry for Ross that he had to live a separate life and he was bashed and killed.' Mr Field was working at 2WL in Wollongong as a young journalist while Mr Warren was presenting on the local television network. 'Wollongong's a small place,' said Mr Field, who is involved in a documentary about the deaths, Killing Off The Beat. 'Everyone knew who was gay or who wasn't in those days. It was like a secret society. 'We weren't close friends but I knew of him and it just hit me really hard when I heard what happened to him.' If circumstances had been different, Mr Field said during those times, he too could have been the victim of violence. 'I feel very sorry for Ross that he had to live a separate life and he was bashed and killed,' Mr Field said Mr Field (pictured, red circle) travelled in the same media circles as Mr Warren in the Wollongong media. Above, he is pictured during his time at 2WL radio Mr Field (right, pictured while on holidays in London recently) said he thought it was 'disgraceful' the cases weren't investigated more thoroughly Mr Warren's death was investigated along with the cases of Mr Mattaini and Mr Russell in a 2005 inquest administered by Magistrate Jacqueline Milledge. Mr Mattaini, 27, went for an afternoon jog on September 15, 1985 and was never by his family or friends again. Mr Russell's body was found crumpled at the bottom of the cliff underneath the park on November 23, 1989. The inquest found Mr Warren and Mr Russell were murdered and there was a 'strong possibility' Mr Mattaini had met foul play too. Throughout the inquest, accounts emerged of gay-bashing gangs threatening to throw people off the cliff near Marks Park and around Bondi. 'I threw a fag off a cliff at Bondi,' the inquest quoted a person of interest saying. 'I've jumped on [bloke's] head (sic) you wouldn't believe [we're] always going out bashing fags'. Another account said: 'We were walking, just jump up and look at the bushes, just see 'em going for it..."Oh you dirty man." 'And they would just keep going. I went, "Ooh", screamed at them. They must have been that involved in it they blocked out all the noise. 'The waves were heaps big and it was freezing. 'I had my new Boks from America on that day too, I had blood all over 'em.... went up and I go "Oooo".... come up and grabbed a handful of hair and went, "dirty f***in' maggot". 'He should have gone the cliff that night be he didn't... we went down and put a cigarette butt out on his head.' Marks Park was then a popular 'gay beat' in the years after homosexuality was legalised in New South Wales where men would 'cruise' looking for companionship and sex All three men vanished in the vicinity of Marks Park, with Mr Russell's body found crumpled on the rocks below Hetereosexuals were also victims of the 'gay bashing gangs'. One man was described by the inquest as 'not gay but very much heterosexual' when he was brutally attacked on a night out. 'It was simply a matter of him being in the vicinity of North Bondi, the wrong place at the time.' 'Don't think for one moment that this type of crime is only visited on homosexuals.' None of the three men's killers have been found. New South Wales police issued an $100,000 reward for information which leads to the arrest or conviction of the person or people responsible for their deaths. A NSW police spokesperson said the matter was with the Unsolved Homicide squad and urged anyone with information to contact police. The Killing Off The Beat documentary is expected to be released later this year and a crowdfunding effort is underway to get it off the ground. 'It's not too late to come forward,' Mr Field said. Finnish police are investigating 15 alleged sexual assaults in Helsinki on New Year's Eve, reportedly carried out by 'groups of men of foreign appearance'. One rape, two attempted rapes and 12 sexual assaults all allegedly involved '10-20 men with foreign backgrounds' who roamed around the city centre on New Years Eve, a police report said. The incidents reflects similar events in Cologne, Germany where more than 800 complaints regarding sexual assaults, rape and robbery have been filed in connection with New Year's Eve. Finnish police are investigating 15 sexual assaults reportedly carried out by '10-20 men with foreign backgrounds' who roamed around Helsinki city centre on New Years Eve The Helsinki police report said they had received reports of one rape, two attempted rapes and 12 cases of sexual harassment by several groups of 10-20 men with foreign backgrounds who roamed around the city centre during New Year celebrations. Those suspected of the offences were asylum seekers or men with foreign characteristics, it said. 'The sexual harassment consisted of groping and squeezing of the victims' bodies and licking of their faces, committed by the suspects of the crimes,' the report said. 'The individuals in these groups possibly had a premeditated tactic in which some of the suspects had surrounded the victim and some had carried out the activities that fulfil the characteristics of a crime,' it said. 'In three of the cases, we have identified suspects who are all asylum seekers. The suspects in the other cases also have foreign characteristics', Detective Superintendent Jonna Turunen said. Chaos: The reports of One rape, two attempted rapes and 12 sexual assaults in Helsinki, echo those that took place on New Year's Eve in Cologne (pictured) In addition, security guards hired to patrol the city on New Year's Eve told police there had been 'widespread sexual harassment' at a central square where around 20,000 people had gathered for celebrations. Three sexual assaults allegedly took place at Helsinki's central railway station on New Year's Eve, where around 1,000 mostly Iraqi asylum seekers had converged. 'Police have... received information about three cases of sexual assault, of which two have been filed as complaints,' Helsinki police said in a statement. However, statistics show that asylum seekers allegedly carrying out rapes are in minority in Finland. Finnish authorities said out of the more than 1,000 rapes reported to police in 2015, only around 10 suspects were asylum seekers. Last year, about 32,000 asylum seekers came to Finland, most of them from Iraq and Somalia, well up from the 3,600 in 2014 and putting a strain on the recession-bound Nordic country. A television director with credits on Law & Order and other shows has pleaded guilty to child pornography charges in New York. Westchester County District Attorney Janet DiFiore says 51-year-old Jason 'Jace' Alexander pleaded guilty Tuesday to promoting a sexual performance by a child and possessing an obscene performance by a child. Prosecutors say digital files showing minors engaged in sex acts were found on computers at the director's Dobbs Ferry, New York, home. The married father-of-two could face up to seven years in prison when he is sentenced on May 3. Guilty: Jason 'Jace' Alexander (pictured, left in his police mugshot and, right, at Trump National Golf Club in 2013) has pleaded guilty to child pornography charges. He posted a video online of a young girl masturbating According to a police report seen by the New York Post, Alexander published a short film on the file-sharing site Torrent showing a 12-year-old girl performing sex acts in June. Another video found on his computer showed a six-year-old girl masturbating. Alexander had directed more than a dozen episodes of Law & Order since the mid-1990s. He also did work on The Blacklist and Rescue Me. He is the only child of Emmy-award-winning actress Jane Alexander and his stepfather is director-producer Edwin Sherwin, who has also directed episodes of Law & Order. Alexander is married to actress Maddie Corman, who has also starred in Law & Order and Maid in Manhattan. Lengthy career: Married father-of-two Alexander, 51, has been working as a director in the TV business for 21 years. He is pictured at Nantucket Film Festival with actors Paul Rudd and Celia Weston The couple have two 11-year-old twin sons. His 21-year career also includes a television movie about Jodi Arias, the woman whose murder trial gripped the nation as she was accused of murdering her lover. In addition to directing, he also worked as an actor starring in Eight Men Out with John Cusack and Charlie Sheen. In 1994 he played the role of a robber in the hit show Clueless, and in 1988 he appeared in Crocodile Dundee II as a hobo. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is joining international law firm Greenberg Traurig as chair of its cybersecurity and crisis-management practice. Giuliani, 71, is leaving Houston law firm Bracewell & Giuliani, which will rename itself Bracewell. In 2005, Giuliani helped open a New York office for the firm. Greenberg Traurig said Tuesday that Giuliani will work with its government-regulatory, cybersecurity and data-privacy lawyers. He'll also advise Executive Chairman Richard Rosenbaum. Scroll down for video Attorney and former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani is joining international law firm Greenberg Traurig as chair of its cybersecurity and crisis-management practice, a representative of the firm announced Tuesday. Giuliani is seen in October 2014 Rosenbaum said in a statement: 'Our strategic focus on crisis management, white collar criminal defense, cybersecurity and governmental investigations will be enhanced in a major way by bringing the Mayor to the Greenberg Traurig family. 'He has long been one of the most important and influential lawyers and leaders in this country, and will now be bringing to our clients his unparalleled experience in all areas of legal problem-solving and crisis management, as well as his unique geopolitical insights.' Giuliani was mayor of New York from 1994 to 2001. His crisis-management skills got a major test during the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the city. He said in a statement: 'Having reached the goal we set out to achieve ten years ago in establishing a new law practice in New York, we look forward to joining a global platform that addresses the complex needs of today's multinational clients. Giuliani was mayor of New York from 1994 to 2001. His crisis-management skills got a major test during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the city. He is seen in this 2002 photograph 'Greenberg Traurig has visionary leaders who clearly understand that the practice of law in today's world is inextricably intertwined with the worldwide political, social and security issues of the moment. 'We will work closely together to implement and grow this vision.' Giuliani ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. Bracewell's press release said Giuliani's departure was 'by amicable agreement.' Its firm-wide managing partner Mark C. Evans said in a statement: 'After a decade in which Rudy helped us build what is now a very successful and thriving New York office, we thank Rudy and wish him our very best.' Giuliani said in a statement: 'One of the main goals I had in joining Bracewell was to help the firm build a strong presence in the New York legal market. 'By any measure, we have achieved that objective and I'm proud of the success the New York office has had and will continue to have. Republican Mary Dye, who has been forced to apologise after asking a group of teenagers if they were sill virgins A state lawmaker has shocked high school pupils in Washington after asking them about their virginity during a Planned Parenthood meeting. Republican Mary Dye from Pomeroy, in rural southeastern Washington meet with six students from the Pullman area teen council chapter of Planned Parenthood. They had been visiting Dye's office with Rachel Todd, a worker from Planned Parenthood, so the politician could give them a deeper understanding of laws and advocacy. But the teenagers were left stunned when Dye asked if the students were virgins. She even suggested to another one that was not as she had lobbied for expanded health insurance of birth control. She even then went on to share her experiences about sex and making the right choices, according to the Seattle Times. Ms Todd, 29, who works for Planned Parenthood in Greater Washington and North Idaho, said: 'After she made the statement about virginity, all of my teens looked at me. 'And I said, "You don't have to answer that. You don't have to answer that." 'It was incredibly disrespectful and inappropriate.' While one of the students, 18-year-old Alex Rubino, added: 'It seemed kind of insane for her to say that, especially on the record, to constituents.' Later in a statement, a spokeswoman for the House of Republicans confirmed the incident and later Dye was forced to issue a statement apologizing. She said she was only trying to talk about empowering women and making good choices. But she admitted: 'My comments may have come across as more motherly than what they would expect from their state representative. 'If anything I said offended them or made them feel uncomfortable, I apologise.' A businessman has been ordered to pay more than $15 million for a luxury penthouse that boasts unrivalled ocean views of Queensland's famous Surfers Paradise - but he will not get to keep it. Charlie Caltabiano, who started cherrypicker rental business Force Corp in 1994 and was once worth $100 million, was taken to court by Juniper Property Holdings after he failed to pay $16.85 million for the developer's Soul penthouse on the sandy strip. The developer initially agreed on a settlement date for September 10, 2012, for the property, but Mr Caltabiano did not meet the deadline, or two further deadline extensions, despite having paid a $1.683 million deposit on the 'off the plan' apartment. Scroll down for video Gold Coast businessman Charlie Caltabiano has been ordered to pay more than $15 million for a luxury penthouse that boasts views of Queensland's famous Surfers Paradise. Above is the apartment now Juniper had marketed the Soul development as a 'modern high-rise residential, retail and commercial complex', and on top of it was a four-floor penthouse. which would be constructed in the years following April 2006. The penthouse had a total floor area of 1,043 sqm, with 519sqm of an internal living area and a 425 sqm outdoor area with extensive water views of Surfers Paradise. But Juniper went into receivership in 2012, with Pricewaterhouse Coopers appointed to handle the Soul development, Property Observer reported. In court documents, Mr Caltabiano argued the sale contract was void as he was misled by sellers about the true value of the apartment. Charlie Caltabiano, who started cherrypicker rental business Force Corp in 1994 and was valued at $100 million, was taken to court by Juniper Property Holdings after he failed to pay $16.85 million for the penthouse In court documents, Mr Caltabiano argued the sale contract was void as he was misled by sellers about the true value of the apartment. The penthouse was bought by billionaire casino mogul Tony Fung, from Hong Kong Mr Caltabiano claims he was told by the seller a nearby and similar apartment, Jade penthouse, had sold for $20 million and the penthouse at iconic Q1 had been bought for $7.8 million but it was only half the size of the Soul penthouse. HOW BUSINESSMAN LOST A $16.85 MILLION APARTMENT Charlie Caltabiano agreed to pay $16.85 million for a Gold Coast penthouse He paid the $1.683 million deposit but failed on three occasions to settle the Soul penthouse deal with sellers In 2012, Soul's developer Juniper took Mr Caltabiano to court, claiming he had failed to pay up But the businessman claims he was misled on the price of the penthouse, which overlooks Surfers Paradise Supreme Court Judge David Jackson ruled in Juniper's favour on Friday and ordered Mr Caltabiano to pay Juniper $14.1 million plus interest of $1.5 million Advertisement But there was no evidence to prove his allegations. Mr Caltabiano said he did not try and seek independent advice on the price of the Soul penthouse, but Supreme Court of Queensland Judge David Jackson found this hard to believe. 'In my view, it is commercially illogical and inherently improbable that in deciding upon a $16.85 million purchase the defendant would not have obtained such advice,' Judge Jackson said on Friday, according to court documents. 'This is where the defendant's story is incredible.' Judge Jackson ruled in Juniper's favour and ordered Mr Caltabiano to pay $14,132,246 plus interest of $1,471,509. But the developer may be waiting a long time before it sees the money as creditors claim Mr Caltabiano has debts of more than $100 million with seven of his former businesses now in liquidation, the Gold Coast Bulletin reported. The Soul penthouse was eventually sold to billionaire casino mogul Tony Fung, from Hong Kong, for just $7 million last year by real estate agents McGrath Broadbeach. Mr Caltabiano claims he was told by the seller Jade penthouse had sold for $20 million and the penthouse at iconic Q1 had been bought for $7.8 million but it was only half the size of the Soul penthouse A $1,600 Yorkshire terrier that was stolen from a Florida pet store and traded for crack cocaine has been found safe. Largo police said video surveillance at the store All About Puppies captured a man stuffing the 9-week-old puppy down his sweater and leaving on January 12. A tip led detectives to 38-year-old Wayne Junior Barfield, who was arrested last Friday and charged with grand theft, failure to appear on a charge of no valid drivers license, and resisting an officer without violence. Doggone! Wayne Junior Barfield (left) has been charged with grand theft for allegedly swiping a $1,600 Yorkshire terrier puppy (right) from a Florida pet store and trading it for crack Puppy heist: The pooch was stolen on January 12 from All About Puppies, a popular pet store in St Petersburg, Florida Say, 'Cheese'! A surveillance camera caught the alleged dog-napper stuffing the tiny 2-pound pooch down his sweater and walking away A press release put out by law enforcement says Barfield traded the 2-pound pooch for crack and cash at a shopping plaza in St. Petersburg. When questioned by police about the dog's whereabouts, Barfield reportedly admitted to giving it to someone, but he would not tell them who that person was. Luckily for the owners of All About Puppies, the Yorkie was micro-chipped. On Wednesday morning, they got a call from an animal hospital in St Petersburg saying the pooch has been found. Bridget Royal, a manager at the pet store, told Tampa Bay Times the tiny Yorkie is sick, but she is expected to recover. Royal said that a couple had purchased the stolen pup at some point over the past week, but on Saturday she fell ill and her new owners took her to the St Petersburg veterinary clinic for treatment. A staffer at the hospital recognized the Yorkie from news reports and checked her microchip number, which returned a match. Royal recalled that on the day of the dog's abduction, Wayne Barfield came by the store and was asking about the pooch. Furry find: More than a week after the theft, the Yorkie turned up at a veterinary clinic. A couple who had bought the pet took her in for treatment after she got sick The manager answered his questions and moved on to another customer, after which Barfield left. A short time later, store employees noticed that the pricey pooch was nowhere to be found. All About Puppies was offering a $1,000 reward for the Yorkie's safe return. Barfield was being held on more than $5,300 bail. North Carolina officials have denied parole for a former Ku Klux Klan leader convicted of using a crossbow and a razor-tipped arrow to kill a black teenager three days after Christmas in 1992. The Charlotte Observer reports the North Carolina Parole Commission denied parole for 56-year-old Russell Hinson, who was convicted in 1993 of killing 16-year-old Felicia Houston. Department of Public Safety spokesman Keith Acree said Tuesday that the commission made its decision last week and Hinson had been notified why parole was denied. Hinson was sentenced to life behind bars after he shot 16-year-old Felicia Houston with razor tipped arrows fired from a crossbow - described by prosecutors at the time as 'a weapon out of the Middle Ages'. Former Ku Klux Klan leader Russell Hinson (left), who was sentenced to life in prison for murdering 16-year-old Felicia Houston (right), has had his request for parole denied Hinson, now 56, who called himself the 'Exalted Cyclops' of the KKK, was said to be looking for revenge after a black drug dealer sold him $70 worth of cocaine, which he thought was overpriced. Court records show Houston was walking down the sidewalk at a Monroe apartment complex with two cousins when she was shot through the chest. An all-white jury deadlocked over whether Hinson should get the death penalty, and he was sentenced to life in prison. His friend and co-worker Guy Brown, who drove him around the neighborhood, tried to talk him out of shooting at Houston and her two cousins, saying they were 'only girls'. Before firing an arrow at the unsuspecting teenagers: 'I don't care... One of them is going to pay.' One struck Houston who crashed to the ground and, according to her cousin, screamed: 'I'm shot, I'm hurt!' Hinson shot the teenager with razor tipped arrows off Burke Street (file photo) in Monroe, North Carolina This latest parole review was Hinson's second after he was denied by the independent Post Release Supervision and Parole Commission three years ago. He claims to have found God six years ago in prison, where he helps teach masonry classes and has made several black friends, his uncle Dennis Long told the Charlotte Observer. He said Hinson expressed remorse at killing Houston and deserves a second chance but the slain teenagers friends and local authorities think he should be kept off the streets. 'It was an absolutely cruel and heartless killing,' said Union County District Attorney Trey Robison, 'She was targeted because of her race and for no other reason.' Felicia's father Eugene says he has forgiven Hinson but does not believe he should be released, saying: 'He got life... he should do life.' Hinson, who once called himself the 'Exalted Cyclops' of the Ku Klux Klan (file photo), says he has found God and made many black friends in prison Under state law, when those convicted of first degree murder are up for parole, they are subjected to review every three years. Of 217 cases last year, only four were approved, according to the Observer. Hinson obtained a permit for the KKK to march in Monroe, where the racist group had a large presence, in 1987. The same year he pleaded guilty to attacking a black man who he claimed 'like white girls' and had a white room mate. In 1989, he split from the KKK after he was arrested on an 'intimidation charge' relating to the same assault. His victim Felicia was said to be a good student who wanted to become a nurse and regularly helped two elderly neighbors cross the street. An all white jury found him guilty of first degree murder after deliberating for two and a half hours. They were reported to be deadlocked over whether to give him the death sentence. A woman has been arrested after allegedly jumping into an SUV and stabbing Denver's fire chief. Marlene Zacevich-Rodriguez, 42, leaped into Chief Eric Tade's black unmarked vehicle on Tuesday afternoon and knifed him in the hand and the leg, police said. The 24-year veteran of the fire department ran to his nearby headquarters for help before being taken to hospital. Marlene Zacevich-Rodriguez (left) was arrested after allegedly jumping into Denver's Fire Chief Eric Tade's (right) SUV and stabbing him Chief Tade was wounded in the hand and had a superficial cut to his right leg, but was released from hospital on Tuesday evening. Zacevich-Rodriguez was arrested on suspicion of aggravated assault and has been identified by witnesses. Police are yet to discover a motive and are looking into whether the woman knew the married father-of-three, who has served as head of Denver's fire department since 2010. She allegedly stabbed Chief Tade just after 1.30pm as he was parked at the side of a busy avenue in central Denver. Video obtained by 9News and taken moments after the stabbing showed a man trying to stop the fire chief's SUV as it rolled slowly down a street. Chief Tade ran from the scene (pictured) to the nearby fire department headquarters before being taken to hospital. He was released on Tuesday evening Denver Fire Department spokeswoman Melissa Taylor said: 'The motive is unknown at this time. We have alerted all of our firefighters as to the situation that occurred so that they can be aware, but we are really, really fortunate that these injuries were not more serious.' Zacevich-Rodriguez is still being held by the police. She was arrested in 2009 for driving under the influence and other traffic-related charges. She was also convicted of domestic violence in 2005 and misdemeanor assault in 2000, the Denver Post reported. When Donald Trump's Taj Mahal casino opened in Atlantic City in early 1990, it was considered the largest and highest-grossing casino in town. It cost $1 billion to finish. Michael Jackson performed at the opening ceremonies. It contained five high-end restaurants, including a Hard Rock Cafe. A Japanese baccarat player lost $10 million in one single tournament. But the business defaulted on its loans after just six months - and then went bankrupt by July 1991 - with the current Republican presidential front-runner left holding the bag. In the bankruptcy filing, Trump was listed as 'sole shareholder.' So says The Washington Post in a lengthy, detailed portrait of the casino's construction and downfall, with Trump at the helm. The Post published the story despite a direct threat of a lawsuit from Trump himself. Scroll down for videos Donald Trump's Taj Mahal in Atlantic City was the source of a controversial 1991 bankruptcy filing that left still-lingering bitterness in the city Trump with Michael Jackson, who performed at the opening ceremonies on April 5, 1990 According to the report, Trump has repeatedly 'play[ed] down his personal role' in the casino's bankruptcy, including documents in the story that detailed a host of bitterness he left behind in the city along the way. The story even includes Trumps testimony before New Jersey's Casino Control Commission as he was trying to obtain a license, arguing that 'Its easier to finance if Donald Trump owns it. With me, [investors] know theres a certainty they would get their interest.' Asked about the chances of failure, Trump said at the time, 'We can have a depression. The world could collapse. We could have World War III. I mean, a lot of things can go wrong. I dont think they will.' In a Post interview, Trump said the casino eventually proved to be a financial success despite the 1991 bankruptcy filing, and defended his use of junk bonds based on the poor economy at the time. 'I didnt want to have any personal liability, so I used junk bonds. I accept the blame for that, but I would do it again,' Trump told the paper, while denying 'represented a personal failing.' 'This was not personal. This was a corporate deal. If you write this one, Im suing you,' he said. The casino and hotel is still open on the Atlantic City Boardwalk - barely. A plan to close the business just last month was averted only after union workers agreed to a new plan and billionaire Carl Icahn infused it with a fresh investment of $20 million. Trump campaigning at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. on Monday The real estate tycoon has dominated the 2016 Republican presidential race since shortly after entering it last June Trump had spent months in the late 1980s in trying to buy the Taj Mahal while it sat unfinished, owned by entertainer Merv Griffin. When he finally gained control of the building, he added it to two other casinos he already owned in the city - Trump Plaza and Trump's Castle. But the developer still needed a gaming license from the state - as well as the ability to successfully persuade them that he could pull off the $1 billion venture. At a February 1988 license hearing, Trump said he could make the project successful because of the prominence of his name - meaning he could raise cash through prime-rate loans instead of riskier junk bonds. 'Im talking about banking institutions, not these junk bonds, which are ridiculous,' Trump said, according to transcripts quoted in the Post report. 'The funny thing with junk bonds is that junk bonds [are] what really made the companies junk.' But prime-rate loans were never granted, despite the regulators' approval for the business, prompting Trump to turn to junk bonds anyway. The Post report calls the move 'the biggest gamble of his career,' since he agreed to 14 percent interest loans, or about 50 percent more than expected. Trump's difficulty in securing prime-rate bank loans eventually doomed the casino and resort Trump also owned two other casinos in Atlantic City - Trump Plaza and Trump's Castle - giving him three casinos to keep afloat through uncertain times and a mountain of debt. The Plaza and the Castle declared bankruptcy in March 1992 The business unraveled after Trump could not meet his accumulated debt payments on his three Atlantic City casinos, sending the Taj Mahal into default on its interest payments for the junk bonds. The Chapter 11 bankruptcy for which he filed in July 1991 was the 'first and most significant of the four that his companies have experienced,' according to the Post. The Plaza and The Castle also filed for bankruptcy in March 1992. Trump's mixed business record has repeatedly surfaced on the campaign trail this season, but the candidate's knack for creating controversy - along with reluctance from his rivals to attack him - has largely kept the issue on the sidelines. He has also been careful to emphasize that he has never personally filed for bankruptcy. But the Post was unsparing in its verdict: 'Trump took extreme risks in a shaky economy, leveraged the Taj deal with high-cost debt, and ignored warnings that Atlantic City would not be able to attract enough gamblers to pay the bills, documents and interviews show.' The paper documents a long trail of bitterness towards him in the town from city and state officials who say the tycoon's current statements do not match the past reality. The Taj Mahal casino and hotel narrowly avoided closure at the end of last year, surviving only thanks to union concessions and fresh investments, but it remains in danger of becoming the fifth of Atlantic City's 12 casinos to close 'When I read and hear him say he was beloved in Atlantic City, that was before [the bankruptcy]. He remembers to perceive how he started, not how he was perceived when he left,' Steven Perskie, a former state lawmaker and chairman of the state gaming commission, told the Post. 'His claims now just are not credible,' said Roger Ros, publisher of a gaming industry magazine in Las Vegas who told the paper he followed Trump's ventures in Atlantic City as well as his current presidential campaign. While Trump avoided personal bankruptcy, he was eventually forced to surrender half of his share in all three casinos as well as personal assets such as his nearly 300-foot yacht. In the third Republican presidential debate, in October, Trump defended his business record and insisted his acumen made him qualified to run the nation's finances. Elliot, 21, says he was tormented by five officers and was taken to hospital A British student has told how he was arrested, beaten and humiliated by five Belgian police officers after his arrest on a night out in Brussels. Elliot Meredith, a student at Bath Spa University, says he was battered and bruised in the alleged attack - and left with a black eye, swollen nose and cuts on his face. The 21-year-old, from Crewe, Cheshire, was working as a graphic design intern FleishmanHillard in the Belgian capital when a night out with friends ended with him being tormented by officers. Battered and bruised: University student Elliot Meredith, 21, claims to have been beaten up by five police officers for two hours in Brussels, before being released without charge. He was left with a black eye, swollen nose and cuts scattered over his face Shaken: The police officers eventually took Mr Meredith to hospital for treatment on his injuries After his ordeal, Mr Meredith posted on Facebook: After a work night out, while ordering food in a takeaway on Sunday morning, I was violently arrested, taken to a police station and systematically physically and mentally abused over a two-hour period. The night involved repeated beatings whilst being handcuffed. At one point, five police officers launched a sustained violent attack to the face and body while I cried for them to please stop and asking them what I had done. He went on: I was asked to have a fight with one officer in an attempt to make a case against me for assault. Unwillingness to do so and pleading with them for it to stop, they simply laughed and he attacked me anyway. Eventually, the police officers took Mr Meredith to hospital for treatment on his injuries. Scarred: The student was arrested while on a night out with friends in the Belgian capital, before being taken to the Saint-Gilles police station But during the journey he claims he was held in handcuffs and restrained in a choke hold. He said one officer continued to beat him in the back seat of the patrol car. The torture was not just physical but also involved elements of degrading mental torture, the damage from which will last far longer than the physical scars. Elliot Meredith, 21 I thought I was going to die, he continued. The torture was not just physical but also involved elements of degrading mental torture, the damage from which will last far longer than the physical scars. Because I had been crying out of fear and in search of mercy, I was made to kneel on the floor and shout repeatedly I am a little girl, I am a little girl while the assembled night duty police officers all stood by laughing at me. With many other abuses too emotional to mention, thankfully two hours after it began, the night of cruelty, abuse and violence was finally over and I was released into the street without any formal charges or explanation for why I had been detained. 'Torture': Mr Meredith claims he was repeatedly beaten during the horrific night, after being handcuffed. He said he was at one point challenged to fight one of the police officers Mr Meredith has lodged a complaint against the police department involved, the Saint-Gilles station, and Brussels public prosecutors office has launched an investigation. This is a disgusting incident, said the students lawyer, Zouhaier Chihaoui. This is not just abuse, this is torture. We will certainly complain to the examining magistrate. Police say forensic investigations show her order of events is not true A Georgia woman lied when she told police her eight-year-old daughter was killed by a bullet from a gun that accidentally discharged after it fell off a table, authorities say. Police were called to a home in Dallas, Paulding County on October 17 and found Sharia Lynch dead with a bullet wound to the head and her mother Marsha Lynch suffering from a gunshot wound to the leg. The 45-year-old told deputies a semi-automatic handgun had fallen from a table and discharged when it hit the floor, sheriff's Sergeant Ashley Henson said in an emailed statement. Marsha Lynch (left) is charged with obstruction of law enforcement, and Quincy Lynch (right) faces charges of involuntary manslaughter and reckless conduct over the death of eight-year-old Sharia Lynch As Sharia Lynch (pictured) was being taken to a life flight helicopter, her condition worsened and the ambulance was rerouted to Wellstar Paulding Hospital. Sharia Lynch died on the way to the hospital Lynch said the bullet hit her in the leg and then hit her daughter, Sharia, in the head, Henson said. As Sharia Lynch was being taken to a life flight helicopter, her condition worsened and the ambulance was rerouted to Wellstar Paulding Hospital. Sharia Lynch died on the way to the hospital. Forensic pathologists with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation crime lab said the autopsy showed the bullet hit Sharia Lynch's head first and then hit Marsha Lynch's leg, Henson said. That means the story about the gun falling off the table is not true, he added. He said authorities still believe the shooting was accidental, but they believe Marsha Lynch's son, 23-year-old Quincy Lynch, was holding the gun when it fired. Jail records show Marsha Lynch was arrested January 5, and Quincy Lynch was arrested January 12. Police were called to a home (pictured) in Dallas, Paulding County on October 17 and found Sharia Lynch (pictured) dead with a bullet wound to the head and her mother Marsha Lynch suffering from a gunshot wound to the leg Marsha Lynch is charged with obstruction of law enforcement, and Quincy Lynch faces charges of involuntary manslaughter and reckless conduct, Henson said. Henson said both of them have bonded out of the Paulding County jail. Phone numbers could not immediately be found for them, and it wasn't clear if either had a lawyer who could comment on the charges. Henson said the reason it took several months to determine what happened is because detectives asked that GBI firearms examiners analyze the gun. Mary Breth, 25, is accused of sending a nude picture to an underage student A high school substitute teacher in Ohio was suspended after she was accused of sending a nude photo and flirtatious text messages to an underage student. The inappropriate text messages are alleged to have been sent to a student at Anna High School in Anna, Ohio over the course of three years. According to the Sidney Daily News the communication went on from 2013, when the student was 14 years old, until November 2015, when the alleged nude photograph was sent. The photo was reported to show Mary Breth, 25 wearing just underwear with her arms covering her breasts. Breth is due to be charged with contributing to the unruliness or delinquency of a child and summonsed to appear in Shelby County Probate Court Juvenile Division, according to the Daily News. The Shelby County sheriff's office received calls on January 6 and 7 with reports of the communication, and an investigation was initiated on January 8 after Breth and the student were identified, the Daily News wrote. Mary Breth, right, is accused of sending inappropriate text messages to a student at an Ohio high school where she worked as a substitute teacher. Pictured here with her husband Mary Breth, left, pictured here with her husband, is accused of sending a nude picture of herself to an underage student Chief Deputy Jim Frye told the Daily News all the evidence had been destroyed by January and that Breth would be charged based on her confession to the alleged crime. 'All we had to go on was the child, the parents of the child and the confession of the teacher. If we didn't have her confession we would probably not had a case at all. At that point it would have been all hearsay and without evidence to prove the allegation we would not have had enough to charge her with,' Frye said. Mary Breth, left, pictured here with her husband, was suspended from her job as a substitute teacher in Ohio after sending inappropriate text messages to a student Face of a child abuser: Paul Worthington (pictured) was found to have sexually assaulted his 13-month-old daughter shortly before she died. But he is set to escape prosecution because of a series of blunders A father found to have sexually assaulted his 13-month-old daughter shortly before she died is set to escape prosecution. In a case that has been mired in official secrecy, it was finally revealed yesterday that a family court judge ruled Paul Worthington had brutally abused his daughter Poppi, who died in hospital hours later. But a catalogue of blunders by police, social workers and medical staff mean that despite the legal ruling Worthington, 48, is unlikely to face any criminal action. The failure to bring him to justice has been compounded by a three-year cover-up in which the authorities tried to suppress any public knowledge of what happened to Poppi. Details of her death in December 2012 were revealed for first time yesterday with the publication of findings by High Court family judge Mr Justice Peter Jackson. Poppi died from injuries sustained shortly after her father, who had earlier been watching pornography on his computer, took her into his bed at the family home in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria. But no proper police investigation began until the following August and Worthington, a supermarket worker, denies any wrongdoing. In his ruling, Mr Justice Jackson said: The situation is one in which a healthy child with no medical condition or illness was put to bed by her mother one evening and brought downstairs eight hours later by her father in a lifeless state and with troubling injuries. Suggestions by medical experts brought in by police and supported by Worthington had said that Poppi might have been suffering from an infection but Mr Justice Jackson said this theory vanished like frost in May even before it was examined in court. He said the girls death occurred after the father perpetrated a penetrative... assault on Poppi, adding: It is not possible to reconstruct the exact sequence of events that led to Poppis collapse without a truthful account from the father. When Poppis body was examined by doctors, she was found to have suffered a broken leg. The judge said her parents must have noticed Poppi had suffered injury and they were responsible for failing to get medical help. Poppis mother, who cannot be named for legal reasons, wept in court in Liverpool as Mr Justice Jackson said Poppi had suffered a grave paedophile attack. In a case that has been mired in official secrecy, it was finally revealed yesterday that a family court judge ruled Paul Worthington had brutally abused his daughter Poppi (pictured), who died in hospital hours later Scene: Poppi died from injuries sustained shortly after her father, who had earlier been watching pornography on his computer, took her into his bed at the family home in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria (pictured) FOUR YEARS OF BLUNDERS AND COVER-UPS BY THE AUTHORITIES Poppi Worthington (pictured) died after being found lifeless at her home in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria October 20, 2011: Poppi Worthington, one of twins, born in Barrow-in-Furness. December 12, 2012: Ambulance called to family home, 05.56am. Poppi declared dead at hospital, 07.07am. Police and doctors observe bleeding but nappies and clothes are not collected and are lost. Officers do not secure the house as a crime scene and senior officers do not visit. Neither parent is detained. The laptop Poppis father Paul Worthington used to watch pornography in the hours before the death goes missing. Cumbria Council strategy meeting. Paediatrician with responsibility for safeguarding, identified as Dr W, says Poppi suffered from chronic constipation. This is not supported by evidence but police and social workers accept this version as fact. December 18: Pathologist Dr Alison Armour calls police to say Poppi may have been sexually assaulted. They fail to order forensic testing of samples and items seized from the home. January 9, 2013: Social workers decide there will be no further action. June 25: Dr Armour completes her post mortem report. Delay is later called extraordinary. She finds Poppi died as a result of rape, either because of suffocation or cardiac arrest. August 21: Forensic scientist Michael Scarborough says tests ordered by police on material collected at time of the death show Poppis DNA on a swab from her father. August 27: Both Poppis parents arrested. Social workers ask the grandmother to supervise contact between children and parents. October 23: Social workers take the five surviving children into foster care away from Cumbria. February 4, 2014: Cumbrias Local Safeguarding Children Board decides there are no grounds for a serious case review. March 28: Mr Justice Peter Jackson delivers ruling condemning police, social workers, doctors and the coroner but is kept secret because of potential prosecutions. Draconian reporting restrictions placed on press and media. June 27: Cumbria council applies for secrecy order to keep all facts about the death, including Poppis name, suppressed for 15 years. October 21: Inquest lasts seven minutes. No information disclosed. January 16, 2015: CPS says there is insufficient evidence to bring criminal charges over Poppis death. November 11: Mr Justice Peter Jackson orders new fact-finding hearing. November 25: Heavily censored version of judges findings released. It lists 12 failings by police, social workers and medical staff. January 19, 2016: Finding that Poppi was assaulted by her father published at last. Advertisement However, the judges finding, made on the civil law basis of the balance of probabilities, cannot be used to bring a criminal prosecution, which requires that a crime be proved beyond reasonable doubt. So Worthington, who did not attend the hearing, is unlikely to face court unless new evidence comes to light. Cumbria Police said they have no plans for a new investigation but refused to comment further even though officers had been accused of basic blunders in their handling of the case. Barrow and Furness Labour MP John Woodcock said the case was sickening and demanded that Cumbria Police should answer for their conduct. The failures of the police to investigate Poppy Worthingtons death are truly sickening. This shocking failure needs to be dealt with comprehensively, he said. He called on temporary Chief Constable Michelle Skeer to go public with the truth about Poppis death and the police investigation. Her father Paul Worthington was arrested on suspicion of sexual assault after her death but never charged Mr Worthington, pictured leaving a previous hearing, may never face criminal proceedings over Poppi's death HOW THE DAILY MAIL FORCED THE VEIL OF SECRECY TO BE LIFTED The facts about Poppis case have been made public only after an 18-month legal fight by the Daily Mail and other media groups. Police, social workers, council officials, Paul Worthington and even the coroner attempted to restrict reporting. Cumbria council sought a court order that would have banned publication of any details of the case for 15 years. As the Daily Mail and other media groups fought the unprecedented request, Poppis name was not revealed until more than 21 months after her death and Mr Worthingtons name was kept from the public until December 2014. Only last November were some details of the official failings disclosed. The publication at last of the full legal findings yesterday is a victory for the Mail, the media, and the publics right to know. Advertisement He also led calls for the case to be re-examined by another force, saying Cumbria Police were not fit to manage the investigation. Unfortunately the prospect of justice for Poppi... has been made remote by the incompetence of individual officers. A new force should come in right now and do whatever they can to salvage this tragic case, he said. Police, social workers and medical staff had already been accused of 12 major blunders in the case. For instance, items from Poppi and the family home were not preserved for forensic tests. No forensic medical examination was carried out at the time of Poppis death. No paediatrician with specialist knowledge of sex abuse cases was brought in. And it was several months before Poppis parents were formally interviewed and statements taken from potential witnesses. Yesterday further instances of neglect and incompetence were revealed. A detective chief inspector refused to allow forensic testing of items taken from Poppis home and two officers took no action when told by the pathologist that she suspected an illegal assault on Poppi. In a statement through his lawyers yesterday, Worthington said he did not accept the findings of the court and did not hurt his daughter. Why won't police answer any questions about their bungling in the Poppi Worthington case? By Sara Smyth and Steve Doughty Despite intense anger over their handling of the case, Cumbria Police refused to answer questions on Poppi Worthington yesterday. The force remained silent on the alleged blunders by officers, who are accused of failing to protect evidence that could have resulted in criminal charges being brought against the girls father. Instead, they released a statement that they could not comment on the case until an official Independent Police Complaints Commission report is released. But the IPCC said it would not release its report until all the legal proceedings have finished a process which could take up to a year. Cumbria Police referred itself to the IPCC in 2014 and three officers Detective Chief Inspector Mike Forrester (left), Detective Inspector Amanda Sadler (right) and one other were the subject of an investigation Last night, Barrow and Furness MP John Woodcock raised concerns that Cumbria Police are failing to react responsibly to an issue of national importance. Mr Woodcock said that as a direct result of the actions and attitudes of three Cumbria officers, the evidence needed to bring charges against Paul Worthington has been lost. I urge the Chief Constable and the Police Commissioner not to hide behind the unpublished but completed official investigation into this and speak now about the deathly mistakes that they made, he said But a police spokesman said to comment now could prejudice future legal proceedings. When asked what was meant by prejudice the press officer was unable to answer. The force referred itself to the IPCC in the summer of 2014 and three officers Detective Chief Inspector Mike Forrester, Detective Inspector Amanda Sadler and one other were the subject of an investigation. In his judgment, released for the first time yesterday following a civil case involving the local council, Mr Justice Peter Jackson found that, on the balance of probabilities, Paul Wothington had abused Poppi (pictured) DCI Forrester was suspended and subsequently retired on a pension of up to 53,000-a-year at the age of 48. DI Sadler and the other officer are still working for Cumbria Police. In yet another understatement, the force said one of the active officers will be subject to performance proceedings that will take place in secret. A spokesman said the officers failings would not be dealt with at a public misconduct hearing because they were to do with poor job performance. Cumbrias Police and Crime Commissioner Richard Rhodes said he too could not comment. He refused to answer questions on the case and issued a statement saying: It is not appropriate for me to make further comment at this time whilst we are waiting for the outcome of the coroners inquest, IPPC investigation and police misconduct hearings. Ruth Wariner was the thirty-ninth of her father's forty-two children, growing up on a farm in rural Mexico, where authorities turn a blind eye to the practices of her community. She lived in ramshackle house without indoor plumbing or electricity. After Ruth's father - the man who had been the founding prophet of the colony - was murdered by his brother in a bid for church power, her mother remarried, becoming the second wife of another faithful congregant. At their church, preachers teach that God will punish the wicked by destroying the world and that women can only ascend to heaven by entering into polygamous marriages and giving birth to as many children as possible. That is what life was like on Colonia LeBaron, the polygamous compound in Chihuahua, Mexico, where Ruth lived until she ran away at the age of 15, taking her three younger siblings with her. Scroll down for video Ruth Wariner, pictured left as a girl with her three younger siblings, who she eventually fled with Ruth (the smallest child in the middle) with her mom Kathy and some of her older siblings Her harrowing story is told in intricate detail in her memoir The Sound of Gravel including the heartbreaking moment Ruth realized she had to leave her mom behind. Her mother was married to the founding prophet of the colony, an honor that made her feel 'anointed'. 'They brought her in and made her feel special,' she told People. 'She had a place in the world. That was her comfort zone - the only life she had ever known.' The women in the church were taught to turn a blind eye to any wrongdoing by their husbands - believing marriage was their only ticket into 'the kingdom of heaven'. Therefore, when Ruth started being physically and sexually abused by her stepfather, it was ignored. 'They also rationalized the abuse,' she said. 'It was like 'Hey, it's not big deal. It's not like he's raping these girls.' In their minds it just wasn't that bad.' When Ruth (pictured above in an undated photo) was eight, the abuse by her stepfather started Ruth's mom Kathy (pictured with some of her offspring) was taught that women could only go to heaven if they were married and had as many children as possible 'I never liked [my stepfather], and hated him after I turned eight. That's when he'd sneak into my bedroom during the nights he stayed with my mom and touch me,' she told the New York Post. 'I was promised me ice cream if I kept quiet, but I told my mom - multiple times - what he was doing. 'Each time she told me that we needed to practice forgiveness. It crushed my soul that my mother wouldn't leave him. But in our religion, women needed to be married to get into heaven, so she stayed.' It wasn't until Ruth's mother decided to move the family away from their stepfather, to her own mother's house in California, that her life changed. The experience became a glimpse into what life could be like outside of the compound. 'I finally had a chance to be a kid, having fun on the playground, eating Lucky Charms cereal, watching cartoons, listening to Simon & Garfunkel and Elton John,' she said. 'All things we hadn't been exposed to.' But the feelings of security vanished when she had to return to the compound in Mexico. Ruth (pictured in a recent Facebook photo) is now 43 and has published a memoir about the horrors of living in a polygamist colony In her book The Sound of Gravel Ruth details the harrowing childhood that led up to her leaving the compound when she was 15 with her three younger siblings 'I knew my life wouldn't be happy if all it amounted to was having several children by a shared household,' she writes in her book. 'I wanted love, but mom couldn't teach me how to get that because she didn't know herself. 'She couldn't show me how to be happy, only how to survive.' Ruth and her three younger sisters - who were aged 12, ten and eight at the time - lived with her grandmother for four years after running away from the compound. By the time Ruth was 19, she managed to get a home of her own for her and her sisters for the very first time. She threw herself into education and began taking community classes - skipping sleep so that she could finish her homework. She earned a GED and graduated college before going on to obtain a master's degree. Ruth is now married and works as a Spanish teacher in Portland. She credits her three sisters as being the inspiration to tell her story after they began asking questions about their mom. Ruth, left, with one of her brothers at the compound in Chihuahua, Mexico, where they were brought up Ruth now lives in Portland, Oregon (pictured) where she lives with her husband Alan, a sales consultant 'I wanted them to know our history,' she said of her sisters. 'Where we came from, what happened to our mom.' Ruth says the process of writing the book was healing for her. 'It was cathartic, there was a release of a lot of pain,' she said. 'Writing about my mother, as an adult, helped me to understand her situation better and have more compassion for her. I was able to see her in a different light.' Her stepfather died three years ago. 'Somehow, I've learned to forgive him. Sometimes I look back on my life and think, 'Really? Did this happen?' But I've tried to let go of the anger inside of me,' she tells The Post. 'I'll never forget when, a few months before my mother died, she told me she loved me words I don't think I had ever heard from her before. 'Ruthie, I need to tell you that I'm so sorry,' she said. 'I'm sorry for everything that you've gone through. I do feel like things have gotten better. Don't you think so?' she asked, crying hard. Remarkably, Ruth says, she has found a way to forgive her mother. 'I think I had to create my own definition of forgiveness,' she explains. Devastated family members have paid tribute to the man who was shot dead inside a police station, allegedly after he ran in with a large knife. The deceased has been identified as 45-year-old father David Petersen, a New Zealand born man from Sydney west, who allegedly threatened officers with his weapon at Quakers Hill police station on Tuesday. The incident was witnessed by a 12-year-old boy who was in the station foyer. Mr Petersen was reportedly shot in his upper left chest and died at the scene. His shocked relatives are remembering Mr Petersen, who worked as a scaffolder, as a man who loved his family and put everyone before himself. His young nephew wrote an emotional post on Facebook, explaining that he is desperately hoping Mr Petersens death is all a sick joke'. Scroll down for video The deceased has been identified as 45-year-old father David Petersen, a New Zealand born man from Sydney west, who allegedly threatened officers with his weapon at Quakers Hill police station before he was shot His shocked relatives are remembering Mr Petersen, who worked as a scaffolder, as a man who loved his family and put everyone before himself. His young nephew wrote an emotional post on Facebook, explaining that he is desperately hoping Mr Petersens death is all a sick joke' His shocked relatives remember Mr Petersen as a man who loved his family and put everyone before himself' A 12-year-old boy (pictured) and mother-of-two Bindy Sproule witnessed the horrific moment a knife-wielding man was shot dead inside a police station The man, believed to be in his 40s, reportedly lunged at an officer with a knife before he was shot in the chest From a police station to a crime scene: An officer ducks under police tape at Quakers Hill police station, where a man was shot dead on Tuesday after allegedly threatening officers in the foyer I keep laying here, waiting for you to call me and say its all a sick joke, the young man wrote. You were my idol growing up, the bloke I wanted to be like, the one I always wanted to impress. Mr Petersen has been remembered as a man who helped to guide his younger relatives and would always support people in their darkest moments. As we got older you told me partying wasnt everything and you were proud of the man I had become, wrote his nephew. In my darkest moment you were there for me, you got me back on my feet. You gave me my first tool belt and the job that would mould the awesome life I have now. You were my second father, the one that always pulled me up. His nephew has promised to look after the mans children, explaining I will watch over the girls till my last breath. I will always remember you as the man who loved his family and put everyone before himself. Rest easy, uncle Dave, you are finally at peace, he wrote. Mr Petersen has been remembered as a man who helped to guide his younger relatives and would always support people in their darkest moments' The body of the man was removed from the station in a white van shortly after 6pm on Tuesday evening A witness to the violent death was a mother who was holding her baby boy as she watched on in horror. She says Mr Petersen lay dying on the floor of a police station, blue in the face, moments after he was shot in the chest by a senior officer. Bindy Sproule, 29, was across the road of Quakers Hill police station in Sydney's west on Tuesday morning when she heard officers shouting loudly, followed by a single, echoing gunshot. 'The man was given plenty of time to cooperate with police but he chose not to. I saw him lying there dying, blue in the face, and I know police did the right thing' Ms Sproule told Daily Mail Australia. 'They gave him fair warning, I don't expect them to act different if anybody these days is going around with this kind of behaviour - it was a bit of a suicide mission if you ask me.' A 12-year-old boy also witnessed the violent incident, but police will not confirm whether he was inside or outside the station - only that he was interviewed and a 'witness to some part of it.' Police are investigating the deceased man's white Holden sedan, which remains parked outside the station Mother-of-two Bindy Sproule, 29, watched on as the knife-wielding man lay dying on the floor, blue in the face. She says he was given 'plenty of time to cooperate with police' before he was shot dead Fairfax claims the young boy was inside the foyer of the police station at the time of the shooting at around 10.30am on Tuesday. Ms Sproule said police quickly began first aid on the dying man while waiting for emergency services to arrive. 'He was lying on his left side in the recovery position ... they all responded immediately and were performing first aid within seconds of the shot,' she said. 'Considering the circumstances they worked brilliantly.' A white van reversed into the police station to remove the body from the building shortly after 6.00pm, obstructing any view of a stretcher or the deceased's identity. Daily Mail Australia understands the man who was shot lived in Quakers Hill, just a short distance from the station. As of 7pm Tuesday, no family members had been formally identified. After the incident the boy, a toddler, Ms Sproule and another woman stayed at the police station, while the two adults spoke with police after the confronting experience. Investigators said the man of Pacific Islander appearance in his 40s confronted officers with 'large knife' after driving to Quakers Hill police station in a white Commodore on Tuesday morning. After a short confrontation in the foyer, a Sergeant with 24 years experience shot the man dead with what police believe was a single bullet about 10.30am. The road has been re-opened while investigators prepare to remove the deceased's car (pictured right) Police rescue officers decked out in white carry pieces of equipment out the front of the police station where Tuesday's events occurred Police work with a tow-truck operator to secure the man's car and remove it from the crime scene Several ambulances and the CareFlight helicopter arrived at the scene but the man could not be revived Earlier, a policeman and paramedic were seen wheeling a stretcher outside Quakers Hill police station where the shooting occurred Locals at the scene told Daily Mail Australia they were shaken by the shooting, just metres away from homes, a pre-school and the train station Workers inspect the crime scene where a man in his 40s wielding a large knife was shot on Tuesday The man walked into the foyer of the Quakers Hill police station, on Lalor Rd, on Tuesday morning. Quaker's Hill is pictured inset= 'The officer who fired the shot is very distressed,' Assistant Commissioner Denis Clifford (pictured) said 'The officer who fired the shot is very distressed,' Assistant Commissioner Denis Clifford said at a media conference. Investigators told reporters they are not sure of the man's identity or his motives. Police are investigating the deceased's white Holden sedan, which remains parked outside the station and expect to reopen the road at around 4.30pm so the car can be removed. Several ambulances and the CareFlight helicopter arrived at the scene but the man could not be revived with CPR. An initial report from paramedics said he had been shot in the upper left hand side of the chest. No officers were injured. Locals have been shaken by the shooting. 'Scary, I was very scared, I was really scared,' said Fiona Deregt, who lives 20 metres from the police station. She was home with her two young sons when the shooting occurred. 'Police helicopters started circling and then I got a phone call from my dad and he told me what happened. 'We've been pretty well locked in for safety, I was quite shocked, I was like 'wow'. 'We went out to look but police told us to go back inside. Assistant Commissioner Denis Clifford told reporters: 'The officer who fired the shot is very distressed' Assistant Commissioner Clifford said on Tuesday afternoon police still did not know the reason behind the incident The area swarmed with paramedics and police officers and the sound of sirens filled the air, according to witnesses Lalor Road resident Brenda Dries walked out to see what the commotion was about. 'The road was blocked and I saw the ambulance and fire brigades arrive, I heard a person with a knife was shot.' The veteran of 33 years with Corrective Services was concerned for family members. 'When I told my grand-daughter she was shocked.' The police station is just opposite a pre-school - which reportedly went into lock down - as well as a busy railway station. Witnesses gawked as sirens filled the air, buses were diverted and helicopters buzzed the site. A relative of a worker at the station was the first to provide an account of what happened at the station. The relative told Radio 2GB the man had approached the station with a knife, threatened officers and was shot after a confrontation. The assistant commissioner said he unaware of rumours the man may have asked officers to shoot him. He said it was not terror related. A critical incident team from State Crime Command's Homicide Squad will now investigate the circumstances surrounding the incident. A brief is being prepared for the coroner. Police officers stand outside of the Quakers Hill Police Station in Sydney Detectives and senior officers are photographed inspecting the crime scene on Tuesday morning Roadblock: Police taped off the area surrounding their own police station after the confrontation A CareFlight helicopter and ambulances were called to the scene at Lalor Road, which was taped off by police Jeremy Hunt, pictured attending a cabinet meeting yesterday, has promised an extra 2billion a year for GPs in a desperate attempt to stave off a revolt Jeremy Hunt has promised an extra 2billion a year for GPs in a desperate attempt to stave off a revolt. The Health Secretary is also pledging to reduce doctors paperwork, ease their workload and potentially even scale back surgery inspections. His announcement came days before a crisis meeting of senior GPs who will demand an end to carrying out routine home visits. Family doctors will vote on whether they should stop going out to see patients at home unless they are given significantly more NHS cash. These include home visits, going to see elderly residents in care homes or filling in sick notes, which doctors claim are too costly and time-consuming. Last night Mr Hunt attempted to offer an olive branch by promising an extra 1.8billion for GPs by 2020, describing them as the jewel in the crown of the NHS. The money is intended to enable surgeries to employ extra staff so they can open for longer and offer more appointments. Managers may also choose to offer golden hello bonuses to GPs to entice them to fill vacant posts. Mr Hunt said he will announce next month measures to help reduce paperwork, enabling GPs to spend more time with patients. Controversially, he also pledged to streamline inspections of surgeries by the Care Quality Commission watchdog, implying that they would be scaled back. Mr Hunt is under attack from all sides of the medical profession and only yesterday narrowly averted a second wave of strikes by 40,000 junior doctors. The British Medical Association agreed to call-off next weeks two-day walk-out while they attempt to thrash out a new contract with Government officials. Mr Hunt said: General practice is the jewel in the crown of the NHS. I am determined that we will address growing pressures on GPs and do even more to support the profession.' He added: Well continue to reduce the burden of bureaucracy in general practice, and the Care Quality Commission will be looking at what more they can do to streamline their inspections. GP services this year received 7.3 billion, about 13.7 per cent of the NHSs annual budget of 100,360. By 2020/21 this will have increased to 9.2 billion - but it will actually be a slightly smaller slice of the NHSs total budget. This will have also risen to 118 billion following a boost from the Treasury but the proportion allocated to GPs will be just 12.9 per cent. Officials insisted that this money is only part of the story as GPs will receive further extra cash from local health trusts, which will be announced later this year. Mr Hunt is under attack from all sides of the medical profession and only yesterday narrowly averted a second wave of strikes by 40,000 junior doctors. Above, junior doctors from University College Hospital, London, strike on January 12 Only this week an analysis of the Governments own figures showed that 10 million patients were struggling to get an appointment. The snapshot survey of 854,000 adults found that a fifth were having to wait at least a week to see their doctor. At the Special Conference in Blackfriars, Central London, on Saturday next week, representatives of Local Medical Committees will hold a series of votes including the restriction of routine services Joyce Robins, of Patient Concern said: Refusing to do home visits would be extraordinary. I wouldnt have thought it would be anything a decent GP would even consider. What on earth are patients supposed to do if they are ill at home? The whole point of having a family doctor is that its someone who you know and trust. Referring to GPs stopping care home visits, she added: Doctors should not just give up on patients who go into care homes GPs will also vote on refusing to work more than 48 hours a week and reducing the number of appointments they carry out each day. If passed, the issue will be further discussed by the professions powerful union the British Medical Association who may adopt it as formal policy. A spokesman for David Cameron, pictured leaving Downing Street today, has insisted no formal proposals have been tabled The UK will 'strongly' protest changes to EU migration rules that mean asylum seekers have to make a claim to stay in the first country they arrive in. Under the so-called Dublin Convention, refugees have to claim asylum in the country they first enter and they can be returned there under EU rules. But bureaucrats are set to try and push a change on Britain as David Cameron attempts to complete his renegotiation on Britain's membership of the EU next month. The ultimatum from Brussels is expected to include a new push for Britain to take tens of thousands of migrants as part of a quota system in return for the right to deport people who reach the UK to claim asylum after travelling through several other countries. It could throw the Prime Minister's renegotiation of Britain's EU membership into turmoil ahead of the referendum. Reforms to the Dublin protocols had been due for debate on March and today a No 10 spokesman today insisted no proposal had been put to Britain so far. At a briefing with journalists, International Development Secretary Justine Greening said: 'Yes, we would be concerned and strongly against any change against on initial country status that we have got right now.' Britain has resisted signing up to a quota system on the basis it will draw more migrants from a war torn Middle East. Instead, the Government has gone to refugee camps to rescue the most needy. But reports from Brussels emerged last night indicating Britain would be told to join a controversial quota scheme to take new arrivals from Greece or Italy or face being stopped from using EU deportation rules to its advantage. The United Nations has estimated one million people will try and get into Europe this year, either by sailing across the Mediterranean or walking through the Balkans - an area currently suffering from freezing winter weather. Eurosceptics last night accused the EU of 'mafia-style blackmail' to force the UK to submit to their refugee relocation plan. More than 12,000 people have been removed from Britain to other EU countries under these rules since 2003 a figure the Home Office has boasted is 'many more than we have received in return'. But in proposals to be officially unveiled in March, the Dublin Regulation would be overhauled to include a mandatory mechanism sharing would-be refugees arriving on the frontline between EU member states. European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker today said he wanted an additional summit added to European leaders' schedule specifically discuss the migration crisis. Because the talks on Britain's membership of the EU, Mr Juncker said he was 'rather worried that we won't have enough time to tackle the refugee question in sufficient depth'. If the Dublin regulations were changed would mean that, if Britain wanted to be able to deport asylum seekers who have travelled through other EU countries first, it would have to take refugees. Justine Greening, pictured last week visiting refugees in Lebanon, has said Britain will strongly resist any change to the system of asylum applications in Europe Tory MEP David Campbell Bannerman, of Conservatives for Britain, last night told the Mail: 'This is a complete disgrace. It's clear we no longer have control of our borders, just the controls the EU allows us if we are lucky. 'The linkage between the two is mafia-style blackmail.' An EU source said: 'The UK retains the right to choose whether or not they participate in the new system.' Meanwhile, Austria has put a cap on the number of refugees it wants to accept - 37,500 this year and a total of 127,500 through 2019. The numbers were announced after a meeting of federal ministers and provincial governors. Chancellor Werner Faymann said the figures are a 'guideline' while deputy chancellor Reinhard Mitterlehner called it an 'upper limit'. The two officials are from the two parties that make up Austria's coalition government. Officials said the government will be examining legal options on how it can react if those numbers are exceeded. Mr Faymann called the decision an 'emergency solution', but said Austria 'cannot accept everyone applying for asylum'. Asylum applications in the surged in 2015, according to figures from the International Monetary Fund and they are expected to grow further this year Migration last year was driven by a huge surge in the number of people fleeing Syria, while numbers from Afghanistan also surged Not included are the 90,000 applications from last year, of which many are still being processed. THE DUBLIN RULES STRETCHED TO BREAKING POINT BY THE MIGRANT CRISIS The Dublin Convention is an EU law which requires refugees arriving in Europe to claim asylum in their country of arrival. It applies across the EU, while Switzerland, Norway and Iceland have also agreed to apply the provisions. Denmark has its own deal with the EU on the rules. The convention was signed in Dublin in July 1990 and came into force for 12 countries in October 1997. Dublin II was created in 2003, expanding on the original provisions. The goal of the laws is to discourage people from illegally travelling across Europe. The explosion of the migrant crisis in 2015 strained the convention to breaking point as countries in south and east Europe were deluged with hundreds of thousands of migrants escaping conflict in a matter of months. Several countries, including Germany, temporarily suspended the convention. Advertisement The European Council president warned yesterday that the EU will face the collapse of its Schengen border-free travel area unless migration policy is sorted out before the March summit. Donald Tusk told MEPs: 'We have no more than two months to get things under control.' EU migration commission Dimitris Avramopoulos told a committee of MEPs that the 'Dublin Regulation'must be 'revised very deeply' to include a mechanism to distribute asylum seekers 'quasi-automatically'. He said: 'The Commission will make a proposal by March of this year. Dublin should not be any more just a mechanism to allocate responsibility, but also a solidarity instrument among member states. 'In particular they need to have distribution key system under which applicants would be quasi-automatically distributed to a member state. 'Dublin must be revised very deeply. When Dublin was adopted the situation and the landscape was very different, things have changed. 'The ones who defend the old Dublin, I wonder whether they really understand the situation today.' Meanwhile more migrants are arriving in Greece the gateway to the EU by boat each day than the figure for the whole of January last year. In the first 18 days of 2016, 31,244 people have come ashore on the country's islands at a rate of 1,735 a day. Some 1,472 migrants were recorded crossing the Aegean in the whole of January last year. More than 12,000 people have been sent to other EU countries from Britain since 2003. Pictured: Migrants from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan walk this week in very cold weather, through snow in Macedonia to a camp The International Organization for Migration warned the surge suggests the number arriving in Greece in 2016 'may significantly exceed the record 853,650 migrants' who arrived last year. Although the number is down on the 108,742 that arrived in December, it has set off alarm bells that the situation is much worse than a year ago. Westminster insiders said the revelations made the prospect of David Cameron holding his EU referendum in June even more likely. Number Ten is concerned that, if this summer brings an influx even greater than last year, it could tip the contest in favour of the Leave campaign. And the world's financial watchdog warned last night that Europe is being overwhelmed by a 'tide' of migrants and the jobs market may be unable to cope. The IMF said the EU was struggling to absorb the vast numbers of new arrivals and a strong response was 'critical'. But Brussels officials plan to link deportation scheme to the controversial refugee quota, which Britain has so far resisted signing up to Cabinet minister Chris Grayling, who is expected to be a leading figure in the campaign for Britain to leave the EU, also warned there were 'some really difficult times ahead for countries in central Europe in dealing with the incredible flow of migration that just continues day by day, week by week'. The surge in the number arriving on the Greek islands shows that the deal where EU countries agreed to hand over 2.1billion to Turkey to stem the flow has failed to make a difference. Austria has announced that its army will start carrying out thorough identity and bag checks of every migrant arriving at the main border crossing with Slovenia from today. Britain has spent more than 1MILLION on an emergency camp for migrants who made it to an RAF base on Cyprus but are banned from coming to the UK More than 1million has been spent looking after migrants who landed at an RAF base in Cyprus three months ago, it emerged today. Boats containing 115 Greece-bound people - 67 men, 19 women and 29 children - arrived on the shores of RAF Akrotiri on October 21. Ministers have refused to resettle the group to Britain in case it creates a new migrant route into Britain. Figures released by the Ministry of Defence last month said one of the group had been imprisoned, 60 had moved in Cypriot communities and 54 were still on the base. Those still there have been housed in a 'transit facility' outside the military garrison. Defence Minister Penny Mordaunt told MPs that the emergency response, security, construction of a temporary camp and support costs have so far amounted to 1,122,972. But shadow defence secretary Emily Thornberry said: 'It is completely inappropriate for a military base to be used as refugee camp. 'This is a question of leadership. 'We need a serious strategy for dealing with the refugee crisis, but these figures suggest that the Government is more interested in throwing money at the problem than in coming up with a genuine solution.' Police chiefs are set to put civilian volunteers in uniforms and hand them sweeping powers to investigate crimes and issue on-the-spot fines. Under plans being unveiled today by the Home Secretary, unpaid members of the public will also be allowed to detain suspects for 30 minutes, interview victims and take witness statements. The civilians, who will be known as Police Community Support Volunteers, could even patrol with beat bobbies to help police forces keep communities safe. Under plans being unveiled today by Home Secretary Theresa May, police chiefs are set to put civilian volunteers in uniforms and hand them powers to investigate crimes and issue on-the-spot fines (file picture) They will differ from Special constables, who have full police powers and are usually paid expenses, and Police Community Support Officers, who are paid and have some police powers. But the controversial shake-up has sparked accusations of policing on the cheap. Some 17,000 police officer posts have been cut since 2010. Police Federation chairman Steve White said: We have seen no convincing arguments on the need to provide powers above or beyond those that already exist to police staff and volunteers. Special constables and a significant army of volunteers up and down the country do sterling work, but they should not be a replacement for sworn-in professional officers. Police forces avoided budget cuts in Novembers spending review following stark warnings from senior officers in the wake of the Paris attacks, but the Home Office still has to find savings of 5 per cent. Theresa May is set to announce the package of measures giving chief constables the power to hand more responsibility to support staff and volunteers. Under plans being unveiled today by Home Secretary Theresa May (pictured), unpaid civilians will be allowed to detain suspects for 30 minutes, interview victims and take witness statements She will outline a dramatic expansion of the role, which will be available to 7,000 members of the public. Currently, volunteers are only able to carry out support duties such as working in CCTV control rooms or staffing inquiry desks. But the uniformed civilians are set to be given the same powers as paid Police Community Support Officers. These include being able to detain suspects for 30 minutes until a constable arrives, requiring the name and address of a suspect, issuing fines for graffiti or disorder and seizing alcohol or illegal drugs. Experts in computing or accounting could also help police investigate financial and cyber-crimes. Police chiefs in Hampshire and Gloucestershire have already launched a pilot scheme to attract volunteers with digital skills to support detectives investigating online crime. A number of core powers would be reserved for police officers, including making arrests, carrying out stop-and-searches, intercepting communications and conducting counter-terror operations. Mrs May said: Police officers across the country carry out a wide range of duties, keeping the public safe and ensuring justice for the most vulnerable members of society. We value the essential role they play, but they cannot do this on their own. We want to help forces to create a more flexible workforce, bring in new skills and free up officers time to focus on the jobs only they can carry out. But shadow home secretary Andy Burnham said: George Osborne has broken his promise to police and is inflicting real-terms cuts. This sounds like a back-door means of filling those cuts and could lead to policing on the cheap. But she attacks radical Islamist preachers who have been able to speak to students unchallenged Nicky Morgan says shutting down debate 'is not something we want to see in this country Nicky Morgan has waded into the row over Oxfords Cecil Rhodes statue, warning students campaigning to have it removed that they should not shut down debate. The Education Secretary is the most senior public figure to become involved in the dispute after the universitys chancellor Lord Patten said students who werent prepared to engage with controversial moments in history should think about being educated elsewhere. The row began when Oriel College agreed to consult on the future of a statue commemorating the vast sums of money the 19th century politician donated to the university. Education Secretary Nicky Morgan (pictured) waded into the row over Cecil Rhodes statue, warning students to not 'shut down debate' Campainers have branded Oxfords Cecil Rhodes statue 'racist' because Rhodes was a colonialist Campaigners have branded the statue racist because Rhodes was a colonialist. Asked yesterday if she thought the statue should stay or go, Mrs Morgan said: I think thats a matter for Oxford to be honest ... [Its]better actually to have the debate about what happened in the past and to realise that weve moved on as a country. She added: Just shutting down debate is not something we want to see in this country. The campaign to remove the Rhodes statue has sprung from a wider no-platforming trend on campuses, which seeks to ban offensive speakers. For example, student campaigners tried to ban feminist Germaine Greer from speaking at Cardiff University over her views on transsexuals. Mrs Morgan also said: What campuses should be doing is ... having someone like Germaine Greer on campus and challenging her. But she added: There is a difference between having open debate and inviting on to campuses and schools people who actually want to incite hatred. Speaking at Bethnal Green Academy in East London, Mrs Morgan attacked radical Islamist preachers who have been able to speak to students unchallenged. Mrs Morgan continued: Its about developing resilient young people and I think those who dont have that resilience, dont have that critical thinking, that confidence, that self-esteem, are going to be more vulnerable to being preyed upon or to being groomed online than those who have had those skills developed. A recent investigation by the Mail revealed how representatives from CAGE the group which referred to Jihadi John as a beautiful young man have toured Islamic university societies, making inflammatory speeches. Mrs Morgan was speaking ahead of a debate at the Oxford Union last night on the fate of the statue. Hospitals and schools are exploiting immigration rules to hire cheap foreign labour and undercut British staff. Nurses, doctors and teachers from overseas are paid significantly less than UK workers, a damning report revealed yesterday. It raises fresh concerns NHS trusts and education authorities are flying in thousands of migrants to do jobs on lower wages. Migration Advisory Committee has released a report which says says the problem is 'predominately' with the public sector, with non-EU nurses and medical practitioners being paid around 6,000 less Findings by the Home Offices Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) that the problem predominantly occurs in the public sector will make uncomfortable reading for David Cameron. In the summer, the Prime Minister vowed to curb migration by tightening up visa rules because it was frankly too easy for private firms to hire workers from abroad. But the report found that non-EU nurses and medical practitioners were paid around 6,000 less than the average salary for UK workers of similar age and experience, while secondary school teachers were paid 2,000 less. It said: If any undercutting is taking place it appears to be largely confined to the public sector. The MAC was tasked to address concerns about the rising number of migrants employed in the UK, specifically looking at those entering under the so-called Tier 2 route for skilled non-EU workers. Among the reports recommendations are forcing employers to pay workers from outside Europe a minimum 30,000 up from 20,800 to stop potential undercutting of local staff, and ordering companies to pay a 1,000-a-year skills levy for every non-EU worker. Some 151,000 non-EU workers and their families come to Britain each year on Tier 2 visas. Those numbers would be cut by 27,600 almost one fifth under the changes. But crucially, the proposals would not affect the hordes of EU citizens who work in Britain under free movement rules. Report found secondary school teachers paid 2,000 less than those of similar experience or age Ministers are under massive pressure to get a grip on Britains borders after net migration hit a record 336,000 in November. Professor Sir David Metcalf, the economist who chairs the committee, said significant changes were needed to reduce the use of migrant labour. Figures showed there were 31,000 nurses and 9,000 secondary school teachers from outside Europe working in the UK. Sir David suggested they were often hired at the bottom of a pay band, irrespective of their age, qualifications and experience potentially saving employers thousands of pounds. He said his minimum salary proposal would strike the right balance between economic prosperity and limiting migration. But the report warned that the impact could be limited if companies simply switch their recruitment to migrants from within the EU where there are no restrictions. The proposals have been submitted to Home Secretary Theresa May. The Institute of Directors urged the government to reject them, saying: This will send a message around the world that the UK is no longer open to international talent. For more of the latest news from Iran visit www.dailymail.co.uk/iran One of the American prisoners freed in Tehran decided to stay in Iran It is not known where the other four are currently residing Six of the seven had dual citizenship and many had family living in the U.S. for three of the Iranians confirmed they're still in America None of the Iranians freed in the prisoner swap have returned home and could still be in the United States, it has been reported. The seven former inmates, who were released as part of a deal with the Islamic republic, did not show up to get a flight to Geneva, Switzerland, where the exchange was set to take place on Sunday. Three of the Iranians have decided to stay in the United States, ABC reported, with some moving in with their families. However it is not known where the other four are. Three of the Americans who had been detained in Iran - Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian, former U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati and Christian pastor Saeed Abedini - left Tehran at around 7am the same day, but weren't met by their counterparts in Switzerland. Scroll down for video Family and friends embrace Bahram Mechanic (in the blue jump suit) and Khosrow Afghahi (in the tan jacket) at Federal Detention Center Houston, Texas, on Sunday. It has since been revealed that none of the Iranian prisoners freed from U.S. custody have flown back to Iran Daily Mail Online have contacted the State Department for comment. Six of the seven have dual citizenship and all of them had been convicted or charged with crimes related to selling sensitive equipment to Iran. Their conduct violated the strict trade embargoes that were lifted over the weekend. Three of them Bahram Mechanic, 69, Khosrow Afghahi, 72,and Tooraj Faridi were part of an alleged conspiracy in Texas to illegally export equipment and supplies. According to the Department of Justice, the items were frequently used in a wide range of military systems, including surface-air and cruise missiles. Many of them have families living in the United States. Afghahi's attorney, David Gerger, told ABC the pardon was the right decision and that his client never posed any threat. 'Right now, Mr. Afghahi is spending some precious time with his family in the United States... and probably getting the first good night sleep and hot cup of coffee he's had in nine months. An attorney for Mechanic said the former inmate has decided to stay with his family in Texas Afghahi's (pictured) attorney, David Gerger said the freed prisoners was spending some much needed time with his family. He added that he will soon be deciding where he will go He added: 'As far as next steps, the family will be making all those decisions as soon as possible.' An attorney for Mechanic, Joel Androphy, said his client is also spending time with family in Texas. Kent Schaffer, Faridi's attorney, also his client has no plans to ever leave the United States, and is staying in Houston for the forseeable future. ABC News was unable to confirm the plans or locations of other Iranians freed in the so-called 'prisoner swap.' It is not known what has happened to the remaining prisoners, They are: Nader Modanlo, Arash Ghahraman, Nima Golestaneh and Ali Saboonchi. The fourth American freed was Nosratollah Khosravi-Roodsari, who did not travel on the plane that departed Tehran on Sunday. The fifth American, Matthew Trevithick, who went to Iran in September to study Farsi at a language center affiliated with Tehran University, was seen in photographs in the Boston Globe returning to family in Massachusetts on Sunday. The suspected mastermind of the Jakarta bombings has purportedly uploaded a terror manifesto calling for more attacks using rudimentary weapons such as screwdrivers and broken glass. Authorities named militant Bahrun Naim as the mastermind behind last week's bombings where two civilians and four militants were killed in the heart of the Indonesian capital. Naim is thought to be in Syria and researchers said he had praised the 'coordination' of the Paris terror attacks in a blog post last November. He reportedly re-activated his blog on Monday and uploaded a series of hateful messages on January 18 where he called on his followers to attack their enemies. 'Use a screwdriver... use a kitchen knife... even use broken glass,' said one part of the diatribe calling on his followers to 'kill' enemies. Scroll down for video Authorities named militant Bahrun Naim (pictured) as the mastermind of the Jakarta bombings - said to have pulled the strings of the poorly organised attack from Syria These pictures show a man brandishing a gun in the chaos of last week's Jakarta attacks Police said they suspect a suicide bomber was responsible for at least one of the blasts. Smoke can be seen after an explosion near a Starbucks Another post uploaded on Monday praised last week's attacks and named police and foreigners as the targets of last week's attack. It claimed the attacks were an act of revenge for killings by an Indonesian police force group he called 'Jesus 88', which the Jakarta Post said referred to counterterrorism force Densus 88. Dr Sidney Jones, director of the Jakarta-based Institute of Policy Analysis and Conflict, told Daily Mail Australia the posts were authentic. 'He's encouraging people to use any means at their disposal to attack the enemy,' Dr Jones said from Singapore on Wednesday. A leading scholar in south-east Asian terrorism, Dr Jones said intelligence agencies had known Naim was 'trouble' since he left Indonesia for Syria in January 2015. In November, he posted a blog titled 'Lessons Learned From The Paris Attacks' where he praised the work of the killers at the Bataclan theatre and elsewhere in the French city in November. According to Dr Jones, in the blog he urged his Indonesian audience to study the planning, targeting, timing, coordination, security and courage of the killers. Shocking images captured the moment the second suicide blast went off in the Indonesian city of Jakarta One of the two posts on Naim's blogs was accompanied by this image of Santoso, an Indonesian terrorist (centre) Naim was pegged as an architect of the Jakarta bombings by Indonesian police last week although some experts said he was more of a conduit between the Islamic State and local Indonesian groups. Professor Greg Barton, the director of the Global Terrorism Research Centre at Monash University, described Naim as the link between the Islamic State leadership and Indonesia. 'My feeling is Bahrun Naim is following instructions from high up in the IS chain of command,' said Prof Barton. 'No doubt he wants to prove himself to his IS superiors but it is likely that the intent to act goes well beyond Naim - he is the conduit between the IS leadership and Indonesia. 'Therefore the threats are to be taken seriously. It's an appeal to lone wolf attacks - but it doesn't mean they're not also working to something Before his departure to Syria, Naim was a known radical and former internet cafe owner who, according to a CNN profile last week, was jailed for 2.5 years for illegal possession of ammuntion. Thad Vogler banned and then brought back tipping at his two San Francisco restaurants A San Francisco restaurateur who eliminated tipping at his two restaurants has brought it back after losing the majority of his tipped staff. Thad Vogler decided in early 2015 to introduce a no-tipping policy at his restaurants Bar Agricole and Trou Normand and to raise prices by 20 percent. As tipped staff no longer depended on gratuity, kitchen staff were treated to a pay rise that was meant to equalize wages among the restaurants' workers. But as a result of the new policy, Vogler lost 70 percent of his tipped staff, he told CNNMoney. "They became more and more disgruntled, and we started to experience turnover," he said. "We were spending a lot of time and energy hiring and training, and rehiring and training." According to CNNMoney, servers' earnings went from $35-$45 to $25-$35 an hour after the no-tipping policy was put in place. The 20 percent price hike would have had to been doubled to cover the increased expenses the tipping elimination brought on, Vogler told CNNMoney. Trou Normand in San Francisco is one of the restaurants in San Francisco that eliminated and then re-instated tipping "Unless we raised prices considerably more, we were expecting servers to take a dock in pay; that was an egregious oversight on my part," Vogler said. CNNMoney reported that even as tipping is expected again at the two restaurants, the prices remain higher than before the experiment. "We lowered prices, but not the full 20 percent,' Vogler said. "We are still committed to paying the kitchen more." Kitchen staff make up to 25 percent more now than in 2014, according to CNNMoney. Sir Jeremy Heywood's department launched commission to look at how to undermine FOI Top civil servant Sir Jeremy Heywood was branded Sir Cover-Up yesterday as a former minister revealed the culture of secrecy is alive and kicking in Whitehall. Sir Jeremy, the Cabinet Secretary and head of the civil service, stands accused of trying to undermine the publics right to know about what is going on in Government. A commission launched from his department is looking at how to undermine the Freedom of Information Act, which has been used by members of the public and the Press to reveal embarrassing waste, corruption and largesse using taxpayers cash. But Lord McNally, who was in charge of the FOI Act during the Coalition, said Sir Jeremys Cabinet Office is deeply hostile to being open about what it is doing. He accused the commission of being a rigged jury stuffed with the executives chums who are known opponents of the Act, adding: The culture of secrecy is alive and kicking. Yesterday in the Commons, Liberal Democrat chief whip Tom Brake demanded an end to the commissions efforts to hobble the Act with charges for information and new powers for ministers to veto requests for information. He said Sir Jeremy was known as Sir Cover Up and attacked him for warning of the chilling effect of the right to know on civil servants. Lord McNally, who is also a Lib Dem, said claims of a chilling effect were nothing more than a myth propagated by Whitehall mandarins for which there was no evidence. I certainly didnt find any chilling effect in the nature of the advice I received, he said. I think its a myth. It is an excuse put forward by people who have made up their minds. He said Lord Kerslake, who last month said the default in Whitehall was to conceal, to hold back, had made himself deeply unpopular with his mandarin colleagues and that he would be drummed out of the brownies for what he said. Lord McNally made his comments before a Labour inquiry into how the FOI Act should be protected or extended. He launched a savage attack on the governments own commission on the future of the legislation, describing it as a rigged jury made up of opponents of the right to know. The former minister said he had fought Tory attempts during the Coalition to weaken the Act, but as soon as they won an election outright they set up the commission, which he said was an executive assembling its chums. He revealed that the Tories led by former Cabinet Office minister Lord Maude had opposed his plans to extend the FOI to private companies who provide public services. And he said that, in an attempt to kill it off, they tried to get responsibility moved from him in the Ministry of Justice to the hostile Cabinet Office. Lord McNally, who was in charge of the FOI Act during the Coalition, pictured, said Sir Jeremys Cabinet Office is deeply hostile to being open about what it is doing Lord McNally said ministers and officials saw the release of too much information as deeply embarrassing. But in fact it can help the public, such as the recent FOI release of details of prisoners being released by mistake, which he said had led to better checks. And he said the FOI had saved money because officials think twice about extravagant expenditure. Nothing that had been revealed put national security at risk, it was just inconvenient for those in power. Lord McNally also said there were no examples of the industrial use of FOI complained of by Commons leader Chris Grayling. He concluded: The dangers of secrecy far outweigh the dangers of greater transparency. Lord Wills, a former FOI minister under Labour, said the culture of secrecy in Whitehall was corrosive, and claimed the Cabinet Office is always looking for opportunities to weaken the Act. Liberal Democrat chief whip Tom Brake (pictured) demanded an end to the commissions efforts to hobble the Act with charges for information and new powers for ministers to veto requests for information He said he fought off attempts by both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown to emasculate the legislation and said former Home Secretary Jack Straw once asked him whether he was sound on the Act. Mr Straw is a known opponent of the FOI Act. The former minister said he never saw any evidence of the chilling effect of the Act. And he added: People are fed up with the culture of not owning up to anything. Government has been too complacent for far too long. Sir Jeremy has claimed officials are wary of writing down policy advice because they fear their frank comments to ministers could be exposed to the public by the transparency law. But Mr Brake, the MP for Carshalton and Wallington, argued the chilling effect only happened because senior officials constantly warned of the impact of the law. In effect, people self-censor, rather than their actions being curtailed because the measure is actually chilling, he said. He pointed out that policy discussions were revealed only in very limited circumstances or when the arguments for disclosure are overwhelmingly in the public interest. He praised the FOI law for exposing abuse, inefficiency and waste in the public sector. He said: Just as strong FOI legislation is a good barometer for the health of any democracy, any attempt to dilute FOI legislation represents a threat to it. We are more dependent on FOI and the Freedom of Information Act than ever before when it comes to holding the Government to account, he added. Mr Brake said the law must apply to the activities of the Royal Household including spending by the Queen, the Prince of Wales and other members of the Royal Family. A series of so-called spider letters by Prince Charles sent to government ministers were released under FOI because they were deemed to be in the public interest. But the law has been changed to exempt Royal correspondence and the Royal household is not covered by the Act. Viscount Weymouth with his wife Emma McQuiston The BBC 1 documentary All Change At Longleat helped expose Viscount Weymouths quarrels with his father, the delightfully dotty Marquess of Bath. His mother, meanwhile, allegedly asked him if he was sure about ruining 400 years of bloodline by marrying the half-Nigerian daughter of an oil tycoon. Now Lord Weymouth, whose name is Ceawlin Thynn, appears to have fallen out with one of his family trustees so spectacularly that the case has ended up in the High Court in London. Ceawlin, 41, who took over the running of the 10,000-acre Wiltshire estate and safari park from his 83-year-old father Alexander in 2010, is taking the action against Richard Parry, head of family law at Farrer & Co, a firm which has acted for the Queen. Ceawlin wants new blood in the family trust, one of his friends tells me. He will be asking the court to remove Parry as a trustee of three trusts forthwith and, in a highly unusual move, is seeking an order forcing Parry himself to pay the costs of this legal action. Parry, who is said to charge 650 per hour, is a highly regarded solicitor with more than 30 years of experience and his clients include many prominent figures. The law industrys bible, Chambers And Partners, described him as a first-class lawyer, person and judge of people and cases. A spokesman for Farrer & Co tells me: Richard will be defending his position. It has been his intention for some time to retire as a trustee and he has made an application to the court to assist the smooth transition. Ceawlins relationship with his father became strained after a series of disagreements. The biggest was over the decision by Ceawlin and his wife, Emma, to remove some of Lord Baths garish murals, which his father had painted for him and his sister when they were children. Lord Weymouth, whose name is Ceawlin Thynn, 41, took over the running of the 10,000-acre Longleat estate and safari park in Horningsham, Wiltshire (pictured), from his 83-year-old father Alexander in 2010 Lord Bath who was known for his harem of 75 wifelets, or lovers failed to attend the couples wedding in 2013. His real wife, Anna, was also absent. Lord and Lady Bath claimed they had already accepted an invitation to another reception. Ceawlin was said to have stopped his mother from seeing his 14-month-old son, John, to prevent the child being contaminated by her racism. The marchioness, 71, who lived with her lover in France until his recent death, later denied she was a racist and said she had absolutely nothing against her daughter-in-law. Broadcasting Minister Ed Vaizey was generous in his praise for Idris Elba, after introducing the smouldering Luther star at a Commons event calling for greater diversity on television. Its not often Idris gets to share a platform with someone better looking and more charismatic than him, but I thought he coped well, said Vaizey. So what DO 1 million fans see in Poppy? When model-cum-actress Cara Delevingne reached ten million followers on Instagram last year, she stripped off and covered herself in fruit. Thankfully, her older sister, Poppy, kept her bikini on when she celebrated her own milestone yesterday. Celebrating reaching one million followers on the photo-sharing website, the social media savvy socialite, 29, announced: 1 million followers. Has the world gone mad?!! Thank you, to all you loons, for your constant support & LOVE. Im one lucky ducky. Poppy shouldnt be so hard on herself. Given the number of half-naked photos she posts of herself such as this one of her on holiday, right what more can she expect? Celebrating reaching one million followers on Instagram, Poppy Delevingne, 29, shared this photograph of herself in a bikini. She wrote: 1 million followers. Has the world gone mad?!! Thank you, to all you loons' Even David Camerons staunchest critics would concede he is the master of the daytime television sofa. But not everyone swoons at the PMs affable, laid-back demeanour. According to Gordon Browns admittedly discredited spin doctor Damian McBride, Cameron managed to upset a family of swing voters while appearing on GMTV in the run-up to the 2010 election. He was recording a live interview with a couple called the Charltons when he launched into an impromptu attack off-camera on the (Labour-supporting) presenter Fiona Phillips. According to Gordon Browns spin doctor Damian McBride, David Cameron managed to upset a family of swing voters while appearing on GMTV ahead of the 2010 Election. He was recording a live interview with a couple when he launched into an impromptu attack off-camera about Labour-supporting Fiona Phillips (above) Says McPoison: [The family] were charmed by Cameron. He came into their home and was very pleasant. But when Fiona Phillips did a link, saying, Well be back with David Cameron and the Charltons after the news, Cameron did this thing. They went off air and apparently Cameron reclined in his seat and said, Oh, I cant stand that woman! to this family. He thought he was being chummy. But they would have thought: We love Fiona Phillips. Theres an added poignancy to the latest Comic Strip Presents comedy Red Top screened this week, as the late Rik Mayalls son Sidney, 27, makes a brief appearance. Rik, who died aged 56 in 2014, was one of the founding members of the long-running comedy strand and appeared in 19 of its productions between 1983 and 2012, including the last before his death, Five Go To Rehab. Director Peter Richardson, who co-founded the Comic Strip, which launched the careers of Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, says of Sids role: It was lovely to have Sid in the production, particularly as hes not even an actor. Hes a drummer. Full-length fur and lace flares: It has to be Nancy... Sven-Goran Erikssons former girlfriend Nancy DellOlio wore lace flares to a Mayfair hotspot After suffering the indignity of becoming the first housemate to be evicted from the Celebrity Big Brother household via the public vote over the weekend, Sven-Goran Erikssons former girlfriend Nancy DellOlio might have been expected to keep her head down. Fat chance. The fiery 54-year-old Italian used her new-found freedom to hit Mayfair hotspot Sexy Fish on Monday, clad in a bizarre, flared jumpsuit made entirely of black lace and featuring a keyhole cut-out to better emphasize her embonpoint. She topped off the ensemble with a full-length fur coat and a trowel-load of make-up. No doubt Nancy is already drawing her own theories as to why she was evicted. My previous partner couldnt cope with my popularity, she once said of one unknown suitor. Men often find it difficult to cope with a woman who is the centre of attention. Does that apply to CBB viewers, too? Osborne's 'unparliamentary' jibe Noting that his socialist opponent John McDonnell intends to tour Britain with the equally Left-wing former finance minister of Greece, Yanis Varoufakis, Chancellor George Osborne joked: The only thing they have in common is that they have both lost their marbles! But po-faced Labour backbencher Kate Osamor protested that Osbornes jibe was very unparliamentary and reflected the Tories callous attitude to people with mental illness. Presumably she didnt get the allusion to the Elgin Marbles. Downton's Dan hits fashion front row He broke the nations heart when he was killed off in Downton Abbey. Now actor Dan Stevens, who played the much-loved Matthew Crawley in the TV series, is bouncing back with a starring role in the film Beauty And The Beast, in which he plays the Beast alongside Emma Watsons Belle. As if that wasnt enough, the 33-year-olds good looks and slimmed-down frame which he shows off here in a bespoke suit have also helped him become a model for Giorgio Armani, whose show he attended yesterday in Milan. As he rubbed shoulders with Hollywood star Russell Crowe on the front row, Highclere Castle must have seemed a distant memory. Michael Fallon (pictured) is to announce a commitment to carrying out NATO exercises in Poland Britain is to send 1,000 troops to Poland in a show of solidarity against Russian aggression. Defence secretary Michael Fallon will announce the commitment to NATO exercises in the country today following talks with his Polish counterpart at a military summit in Paris. The timing of the move will also be seen as an attempt to persuade the Polish government to soften its opposition to David Camerons demand for benefit curbs as part of his renegotiation of Britains relationship with the EU. Poland has been a leading critic of the plan to prevent EU migrants claiming benefits in this country for four years. But in recent days, Polish president Andrzej Duda has been making conciliatory noises, saying: We need to reach a compromise in order to preserve the UKs place in the EU. We think it would lead to a big crisis and even a collapse if the UK left the EU. Mr Fallon will say: The long history between our countries is deeply rooted. This troop commitment demonstrates the UKs vital work with Nato allies, including Poland, to ensure our collective forces are primed and ready, and sends a clear message to our allies that we are ready to respond to any threat. The defence secretary will also reveal that RAF jets have nearly trebled their strikes against Islamic State (IS) in recent weeks. Between May and October last year the monthly average of UK strikes was 29 - but this figure soared in December to over 80. In the first week of January alone there were 31 strikes on fanatics in both Syria and Iraq. Jihadists were wiped out as they fired machine guns and hid in underground tunnels near Raqqa plotting their next attack. The move is made in the face of Russian aggression, but will also be seen as a way of getting Polish to soften on its opposition to the benefits curbs David Cameron wants as part of the EU renegotiation Mr Fallon will say: We have made strong progress in recent weeks. Now the campaign is moving into a new phase where we aim to systematically dismantle IS s structure and capabilities. An Italian doctor who wants to carry out the world's first head transplant has called on billionaires like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to help fund his project. Sergio Canavero said he believes the world's richest people should fund the operation he plans to carry out on Russian scientist Valery Spiridon, 30, who suffers from a muscle-wasting disease. Dr Canavero previously said the operation will change the course of history and could lead to new developments for previously incurable conditions, such as Mr Spiridonov's muscular atrophy. Scroll down for video Doctor Sergio Canavero (pictured right) believes the world's richest people should fund the operation he plans to carry out on Russian scientist Valery Spiridon, 30, (left) who suffers from a muscle wasting disease Mr Spiridonov, who suffers from Werdnig-Hoffman disease, said: 'If I manage to replace my body and if everything goes well, it will allow me to be free of the limitations I am experiencing' RT reports he said: 'I'm asking today Russian billionaires and also foreign billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, who is already sponsoring much of this life extension research, and this is certainly about extending life, to finance, to bankroll the first head transplant in Russia on Valery Spiridonov.' The doctor said Russia needs to help Mr Spiridonov, as he cannot receive a donor body in China on biological and ethical reasons - so they need to conduct the operation in Russia or another European country. Doctor Canavero claims a successful outcome of the surgery is possible, particularly in light of recent experiments his colleagues have conducted in China and South Korea. In the video link conversation exclusively published by RIA Novosti, Doctor Canavero told Mr Spiridonov about a full head transplant on a monkey carried out by his partner Ren Xiaoping in China. Dr Canavero previously said the operation will change the course of history and could lead to new developments for previously incurable conditions, such as Mr Spiridonov's muscular atrophy Not rushing: Spiridonov previously said he will only consent to the surgery if it is '99 per cent' likely to succeed He said: 'The monkey survived perfectly without injury for 24 for 20 hours before being euthanized, because of course we didn't want to keep the animal alive.' Canavero added the Chinese have already conducted the first human head transplant, but refused to show photos as proof. The bizarre plan to remove Mr Spirdonov's head first came to light last year, and since then the pair attended a conference together in America to try and convince the medical world that the plan is more than a publicity stunt. But RT reports Canavero was heavily criticized for his views at the annual surgeons' meeting in Annapolis, USA, held in summer 2015. Although he spoke of the allegedly successful experiments carried out on mice by his Chinese colleague, Ren Xiaoping, the audience were not convinced. A lifelong sufferer of the rare genetic Werdnig-Hoffman muscle wasting disease, Mr piridonov (pictured) said he wants the chance of a new body before he dies Mr Spiridonov, who suffers from Werdnig-Hoffman disease, said: 'If I manage to replace my body and if everything goes well, it will allow me to be free of the limitations I am experiencing.' He admitted previously: 'I am not rushing to go under the surgeon's knife, I am not shouting - come and save me here and now. 'Yes, I do have a disease which often leads to death, but my first role in this project is not that of a patient. 'First of all, I am a scientist, I am an engineer, and I am keen to persuade people - medical professionals - that such operation is necessary. 'I am not going crazy here and rushing to cut off my head, believe me. 'The surgery will take place only when all believe that the success is 99 per cent possible. 'In other words, the main task now is to get support for Canavero from the medical community, to let him go on with his methods and to improve them within these two coming years.' The men hope to carry out the operation in 2017, if 'all goes according to plan'. It has been claimed that detectives from a taxpayer-funded probe investigating British troops for alleged crimes during the Iraq War threatened to arrest a soldier if he refused to co-operate (file photo) Detectives from a taxpayer-funded probe that is investigating British troops for alleged crimes during the Iraq War threatened to arrest a soldier if he refused to co-operate, it was claimed last night. The soldier was quizzed on his doorstep by two ex-police officers over an incident he was involved in a decade ago but when he refused to answer their questions he was told he could be arrested. That threat is believed to be just one of the tricks being used by a team of 145 investigators working for the Iraq Historical Allegations Team (IHAT) to persuade soldiers to talk. They are tasked with filtering the claims and also quizzing former and serving soldiers. Typically, two detectives turn up on the doorsteps of veterans and hand them a letter asking them to give evidence about their involvement and the role of other soldiers. But the investigators many of whom are ex-police officers paid up to 33 an hour are then exploiting the opportunity to quiz the soldiers on the spot, without offering them any legal advice, it was claimed. In cases where the troops were not at home, even their wives and girlfriends have been harassed about the incidents, it can be revealed. Serving soldiers have also disclosed how they were hounded at their barracks by detectives who were let on to the base by commanding officers. The investigators, who can earn up to 1,300 a week, also allegedly introduced themselves by their former police rank, even though they are civilians, to try to get immediate answers from soldiers. Colonel Richard Kemp (pictured), who commanded forces in Afghanistan, said: [The investigators] should be more closely supervised they shouldnt be trying to trick soldiers.' SNIPER INVESTIGATED... FOR FAILING TO WARN JIHADI TRYING TO KILL HIS COMRADES A British soldier looks out for insurgents in Iraq A British sniper is under investigation for killing an Iraqi insurgent who was about to throw a grenade at a military base because he did not shout out a warning. He faces scrutiny over the death even though it was the mans third attempt to kill and maim British soldiers. The soldier who is still serving and spoke to a military pressure group on the condition of anonymity received a letter informing him that details of the incident had been passed to the Iraq Historical Allegations Team, which was probing the death, it is claimed. Yesterday, details of the incident remained unclear, and the account from campaigners UK Veterans One Voice could not be verified. But it is understood that the man contacted the group for advice on how to respond to the investigation. In an account of his case published on the UK Veterans One Voice website, it says an insurgent was shot dead while trying to kill troops by attacking a major UK base. A former soldier who interviewed him wrote how the same insurgent tried to target British soldiers three weeks in a row by firing a rocket propelled grenade. The first time the grenade fell short of the base, but the second time the base was hit, although no one was hurt. Fire was not returned on either occasion. The day before the third attack, a patrol including the sniper was sent out from the base to hide. When the man later appeared and raised his weapon to fire it, the sniper responded and shot him. The account said: No warning was required under the rules of engagement. Confirming that they it interviewed the sniper, a spokesman for the group said: It was a totally legitimate shot. Advertisement They did not inform the soldiers that they were able to seek legal advice, nor did they assess their mental well-being before questioning them, it is claimed. A source said: They threatened one soldier on the door with arrest if he didnt answer questions. They are making very dire threats to persuade people to talk to them, and they are certainly not being given access to solicitors. In many cases they are not checking if the soldiers are medically fit for questioning. IHAT arrive at the barracks, introducing themselves as a detective chief superintendent and make out they are a policeman. And the soldiers often dont know if they are being questioned as a witness or as a suspect. Some of these soldiers are currently deemed unfit for duty because of the psychological trauma theyve gone through, yet they are deemed fit enough to sit through an inquiry. Colonel Richard Kemp, who commanded forces in Afghanistan, said: [The investigators] should be more closely supervised they shouldnt be trying to trick soldiers. Ive spoken to soldiers who have said the investigators have pretended to need to see them directly to give them the letters. Theyve told how their families have been harassed, which has created an additional stress. These are honourable men, until proven otherwise. The fact they will respond to orders should not be exploited like this. A spokesman for the group UK Veterans One Voice said: Their methods should be questioned. They pounce on people and they do not have the power to threaten them. 'The manner in which IHAT are conducting the investigations is very questionable. They are very heavy-handed. Details of the tactics came after it emerged the 57.2million IHAT probe is looking into more than 1,500 allegations of abuse and unlawful killing. Up to 280 soldiers have been hounded already and thousands more could be dragged before inquiries into incidents that occurred more than a decade ago. Soldiers many of whom are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder have faced up to five investigations into one incident alone and have spoken of how they have been hung out to dry by the Army. Lawyers are also set to mount more than 1,100 compensation claims, which could cost taxpayers tens of millions. There are fears that the relentless pursuit by law firms to prosecute war heroes could damage morale in the military and affect future recruitment. An IHAT spokesman said last night that it had not been made aware of any complaints about how its personnel conduct their investigations. Viacom and CBS said in a statement 'the suit is without merit' It also criticizes the amount of money Redstone, 92, has been paid over the past two years - $22 million from CBS and $24 million from Viacom The lawsuit, filed by E.F. Greenberg, says the companies put their personal loyalty to Mr. Redstone ... ahead of their fiduciary duties' A shareholder has filed a lawsuit against Viacom and CBS claiming CEO Sumner Redstone is 'physically and mentally incapacitated' Viacom and CBS are being sued by a shareholder who claims they are protecting CEO Sumner Redstone who is no longer fit to run the companies. The lawsuit, filed by E.F. Greenberg on Tuesday in Delaware Chancery Court, says that the companies 'put their personal loyalty to Mr. Redstone (in particular, and secondarily to [Shari] Redstone) well ahead of their loyalty and respective fiduciary duties they owe and owed to Viacom and/or CBS and their respective shareholders.' It also criticizes the amount of money Redstone, 92, has been paid over the past two years - $22 million from CBS and $24 million from Viacom. The lawsuit, which dates back to October 1, 2013, alleges that during that time Redstone has been 'physically and mentally incapacitated' and as a result 'certainly unable to fulfill the responsibilities for which he was paid.' Variety reports that the suit is asking for 'repayment of the tens of millions, an order that the board must acknowledge Redstones alleged incapacity and termination of compensation to Redstone.' Viacom and CBS said in a statement 'the suit is without merit.' Scroll down for video This suit comes on the heels of one filed for similar reasons by Redstone's ex-girlfriend Manuela Herzer. Late last year Redstone parted ways with Herzer almost 20 years after the pair split. She soon filed a suit asking to be restored as his caretaker arguing that he was 'mentally incompetent' describing him as a 'living ghost' and 'tragic figure.' Herzer's attorney Pierce ODonnell released a statement on Tuesday after the latest lawsuit was filed, saying; 'This shareholder derivative lawsuit is the inevitable result of the unlawful, orchestrated campaign to cover up Mr. Redstones lack of mental capacity and failing health. 'Like the CBS and Viacom shareholders, my client Manuela Herzer is an innocent victim of this shameful conduct. 'She will continue with all her might to press her lawsuit to be restored as Mr. Redstones legitimate health care guardian.' Herzer, 51, was banned from the billionaire media mogul's Beverly Park mansion in October for reasons that remain unclear. She began dating the Viacom and CBS CEO - who is worth an estimated $6.4billion - in the 90s, and remained a close friend and confidante after the two split, moving to a house just down the street from him. Six weeks prior, Redstone had kicked out his live-in lover of four years Sydney Holland, 44, after learning she was having an affair. At the same, Redstone appeared to be getting closer to his family, with whom he has long had a tumultuous relationship. Vanity Fair spoke with a source who said at the time: 'All of a sudden on Monday there were a bunch of lawyers and house staff standing around, and she walked back in the house and it was communicated to her that Sumner doesnt want her there anymore.' The source then added that Herzer was shocked when she got the news, and quickly grew concerned as to who would care for the 92-year-old mogul. 'She doesnt know why shes not there anymore, and theres no one around. No family. Nobody responsible. Theres a driver and a nurse supposedly running the show,' they said. Redstone's daughter Shari disputed these claims however, and said there is nothing to worry about. 'Two of Sharis three children [Brandon and Tyler Korff] visited Sumner immediately; the third [Kimberlee Korff] called from the East Coast and is seeing him next week,' said Shari's spokesperson Nancy Sterling. 'Shari also flew out to see her father [last Wednesday] and everyone was excited to be able to spend time together again as a family.' In an interview with Vanity Fair earlier this year, Herzer said of meeting Redstone: 'I was so enamored. I could do no wrong. He was just for me the greatest thing since sliced bread. There was no age at that point.' She then added; 'This is the nicest guy Ive ever met... I felt a connection to him that was really like - I cant explain. It was this chemistry.' Redstone meanwhile said of Herzer: 'I have known Manuela for over 20 years. She and her children are family to me. Her house in LA is five minutes away from my house and I get to see her frequently. Manuela is one of the smartest women I have ever met.' Herzer's teenage daughter Kathrine currently stars on the show Madam Secretary - which airs on CBS. The sudden departure of Herzer echoes what happened last month to Holland, with whom Herzer was incredibly close. The Hollywood Reporter spoke with Holland's attorney Brad Rose at the time who said: 'Sydney Holland and Sumner Redstone have had a caring and wonderful relationship for over five years. 'While Sydney would have liked the relationship to have lasted for many more years to come, relationships are dynamic and ever-changing and for a whole host of circumstances, the couple has parted ways.' He then added: 'While rumor and innuendo will undoubtedly surface as a consequence of this breakup, at this time, Ms. Holland is very upset and has no further comment.' Shortly after, 49-year-old actor George Pilgrim came forward saying he had been having a relationship with Holland in an interview with Vanity Fair. He claimed she would fly down to where he lived in Arizona and spend the day with him, but always fly back on her private jet and never spent the night. Redstone was last seen in public at a birthday party thrown for him in May by Holland and Herzer at a restaurant in Bel Air. Many in the industry had grown concerned over the past few years about the power Holland and Herzer have over the aging billionaire, especially after Redstone's former driver wrote a piece for The Hollywood Reporter in May detailing his work duties. Tim Jensen claimed that Holland had him withdraw over $1million while he worked for Redstone between 2011 and 2012 which he then gave to a handful of women. In April 2011, he also claimed he took Redstone and Holland to dinner and learned the businessman had set up a trust fund in her name. 'It had become pretty clear... that Holland had aligned herself with Redstone and was reaping significant financial benefits,' he wrote. 'I had heard various rumors about Holland from people on staff and learned that she had been known as Sydney Stanger and was the co-founder of The Inner Circle, a VIP social club that advertised matchmaking services.' He added: 'Within my first year, I witnessed how Holland utilized Redstone's wealth. She asked him to donate money to several charities in her name. Redstone also said he was financing her Rich Hippie Productions, which Holland said would be a full-scale film and production company. 'By the end of 2011, Holland appeared to me to have taken charge of Redstone's personal life, and many of us working at the house felt that she had gained significant decision-making power. 'My days at work would start with text messages or phone calls with instructions - not from Redstone or a staff member but from Holland - as to what my responsibilities for the day would be. I was still driving Redstone to events and dinners in the Paramount car. 'But now I was spending much more time doing things at Holland's direction that, in my experience, are not the usual tasks of a studio executive driver's job.' Jensen said the relationship between him and Holland began to sour and he was let go in 2012, but refused to accept the $36,000 he would be paid to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Around the same time Jensen detailed his time working for Redstone, the New York Post claimed to have found an email between Holland and a former attorney in which she was allegedly told she was 'good for between $9million and $10million' because of her relationship with Redstone. Herzer said in her Vanity Fair interview that she would be shocked if Holland was not in Redstone's will. 'I mean, five years of your life with a man every single day like that. I have to tell you, would she be there if he wasnt doing something for her? Probably not. But does she love him? Absolutely. I dont have a doubt in my mind,' said Herzer. 'For her its a job almost, its a job. 'I know its hard to believe, because Ill tell you why. Because up to now shes had a great life. She has a great life. She lives in a beautiful mansion. She has beautiful things.' There is also the question of Alexandra Red, the baby girl Holland adopted while she was dating Redstone. Though at the time a Viacom rep said that Redstone had nothing to do with the child, a source told the New York Daily News: 'They cut the last name on purpose so the media doesnt find out. They are not telling anyone.' Redstone was married twice before his relationship to Holland, first to Phyllis Gloria Raphael from 1944 to 1999 and later to Paula Fortunato from 2002 to 2009. Fortunato, who is 39 years younger than Redstone, received $5million - $1million for every year the couple was married. A heartbreaking honeymoon tragedy in Adelaide has claimed the life of a British man and seen his husband banned from funeral arrangements because their same-sex marriage isn't recognised. Marco Bulmer-Rizzi is mourning the death of his husband David but Australian law has effectively stopped him from playing any role in the funeral. David died on Saturday during the last stop on their Australian honeymoon, when he fell down stairs and cracked his skull, according to a Buzzfeed report. His death certificate will read 'never married' and all decisions surrounding the death had to be approved by his father-in-law and not his widowed husband. 'Please help me in getting David's death certificate to show we were married,' Marco Bulmer-Rizzi has written on Facebook, as he launched a campaign to try and overturn the ruling. Marco and David Bulmer-Rizzi pictured in the Greek Islands last year during a family celebration of their marriage. David, 32, died after a fall during their Australian honeymoon but is not recognised as married The happy couple pictured at their wedding last year. David Bulmer-Rizzi died in Adelaide after a fall last weekend but documents say he was 'never married' Marco Bulmer-Rizzi is battling authorities in Australia who refuse to recognise his marriage to late husband David who died in a fall in South Australia during their honeymoon Mr Bulmer-Rizzi, 38, told the website Buzzfeed how he found his husband after being woken by a loud bang. 'I turned on the light and he was lying at the bottom of the stairs in a blood bath,' he recalled. After he was pronounced dead the funeral director told the widower he couldn't be involved in the arrangements because of local laws. Further confusing the issue is that different legislation is in place across the country. Two states (South Australia and Western Australia) and the Northern Territory do not recognise same-sex marriages from other countries, Mr Bulmer-Rizzi was informed. 'I was completely overlooked,' he said. 'I wasnt the next of kin. Every single question I was asked, whether or not I wanted David cremated, whether or not I wanted David to have a service, or be washed, even the cost of the coffin they were to use, after I gave my answer Davids father was consulted.' The couple, from Sunderland in England's north-east, was married in June last year. Before heading to Australia for their honeymoon in December, they had relatives join them in the Greek islands for a celebration and posted their happy memories across social media. The couple was married in England in June last year before a Greek Islands celebration with family and friends ahead of the ultimately fateful honeymoon in Australia The matter has caused a political row in Australia with the Greens calling on the federal government to recognise same-sex marriages performed overseas. 'It's appalling that a grieving husband is being treated this way. It really is degrading and humiliating and an example of the cruel nature of this element of Australian law,' Senator Robert Simms said. A man who was arrested after cracking a joke about his suitcase at a Brooklyn hotel last month has been stranded since. Jhanzaib Malik was flirting December 22 with a Sheraton employee as he waited to check in, the New York Daily News reported. Malik declared 'That's the bomb,' referring to the piece of luggage, according to the newspaper. Jhanzaib Malik was flirting December 22 with a Sheraton employee as he waited to check in. Malik declared 'That's the bomb,' referring to the piece of luggage Malik -- who originally hails from Pakistan but was living in South Africa before the incident -- was arrested and charged after the woman contacted law enforcement. He was let out of Rikers Island January 2 following an 11-day stint, the New York Daily News reported. According to the newspaper, his visa was revoked and his passport was held. Roger Asmar is representing the 24-year-old and told the New York Daily News: 'The way this case is being handled is crazy. 'The state department takes his visa, while the DA's office keeps his passport. 'How can he leave the country when he has a pending case?' Malik has said: 'I just came for vacation and my stupid joke led to all this. I was just flirting. I'm a flirty guy.' Malik -- who originally hails from Pakistan but was living in South Africa before the incident -- was arrested and charged after the woman contacted law enforcement Malik is facing a falsely reporting an incident misdemeanor charge, with his falsely reporting an incident felony charge dismissed, the New York Daily News reported. According to the newspaper, Malik has been let go from his airline job, is thousands in debt to Asmar, and has been cut off financially by his furious relatives. The New York Daily News reported he is currently renting out a Jackson Heights, Queens room. He told the newspaper: 'I just came for vacation and my stupid joke led to all this. A California snowboarder narrowly escaped being buried alive after triggering an avalanche during a back country jump on Friday, in a dramatic moment that was captured on video. Christian Mares, 29, told Daily Mail Online he was out snowboarding with some friends at Sugar Bowl Ski Resort near Lake Tahoe when the accident happened. While at Sugar Mountain, Mares decided to do a jump off a cliff into the steep slope below, in an area with almost untouched snow that Mares said was not far from the resort's lift. In video filmed by Mares and fellow snowboarder Matt Shaffer for Heckler Magazine, Mares can be heard deliberating before taking the plunge. 'Alright, I guess we'll see how this f*****g goes' says. 'The more speed the better I'm pretty sure,' Shaffer replies. 'Stay rowdy as f***.' As he heads for the edge of the cliff, Christian Mares is unaware he's about to be buried in an avalanche The landing goes well, but triggers an avalanche that sets a mass of snow rushing towards Mares In the video, Mares struggles to keep upright as he is surrounded by the rushing mass of snow The leap off the cliff goes well, but as Mares lands an avalanche is instantly triggered. The video shows the mass of snow pulling Mares along for a half minute before he comes to a stop. 'There was no time to think,' Mares told Daily Mail Online. 'As soon as I realized I was in an avalanche, I was trying to get to the trees to grab on to them.' 'I was preparing to get buried, so I covered my head and made a pocket around me so that I'd be able to breathe,' Mares said. 'I was buried chest deep. But then I saw sunlight.' Finally coming to a stop, Mares realizes he is fine and sighs in relief as he waits for his friends to arrive 'That just happened. They're probably s******g their pants up there,' Mares says as he realizes he survived the avalanche Mares' friends hurry down to help him and are excited to see he survived the avalanche, which was triggered after a daring jump Mares described the feeling of being in an avalanche as similar to swimming in rushing water. 'It's like a moving river. You can swim in it.' Mares was lucky and escaped the ordeal with a sprained ankle. He said he usually carries avalanche gear, but that he left it at home that day. She sits atop the hood of a Muscle Car wearing an eye-popping fishnet skirt, flanked by women twerking in swimsuits and towering high heels. It may look like a scene from Santa Monica beach, but this video was filmed in an upmarket suburb in Melbourne, and the rapper hails from a small town in New Zealand. Hucci Luv has been accused of trivialising black American culture in her song 'S****h', but the Australian based artist told Daily Mail Australia her critics have missed the mark. 'Although a majority of my musical influence comes from black hip hop it is not my intention to trivialise what hip hop truly stands for.' Hucci Luv's video 'S*****' is laden with graphic hip hop tropes and references, including scantily-clad women dancing around Muscle Cars She acknowledged that hip hop was birthed from societal conditions she could 'never understand as a white woman,' but said by that token all white rappers could be accused of social appropriation. On Tuesday Hucci was slammed in a scathing review from Noisey, who accused her of 'lacking self-awareness.' 'Make no mistake, the Weave S**** is audio-blackface Hucci Luv, as an artist, is offensive,' the unflattering article reads. The video, filmed in Collingwood, is laden with graphic hip hop tropes and references, however she said this is a result of her growing up around hip hop music. The Melbourne based rapper has been slammed this week and accused of being racist and offensive She said she 'never meant to trivialise what hip hop truly stands for' The New Zealand born rapper believes the controversy stems from concerns of gender, not race The article drew comparisons between Hucci and another Australian-born artist, Iggy Azalea, who has also been accused of adopting 'black' culture in her music. But Hucci believes the storm of controversy stems from concerns of gender, not race. 'I have had a land slide of hate from men and I really believe this is more of a gender issue. We all know if a white dude was in that video it would not harbour this much hate.' She said its 'curious a video portraying a sexually confident female has attracted so much anger from a male audience', and clarified she makes no apologies for this. 'I will never apologise for being a very proud female.' Hucci said she has been inundated with online-hate from a male audience since the video was thrust into the spotlight The article drew comparisons with Australian-born artist Iggy Azalea, who has also been accused of adopting 'black' culture in her music The video and Noisey article have divided social media, with some claiming it was never meant to be taken literally and others accusing her of racism. And Hucci sought to clarify the video always supposed to be tongue-in-cheek. Jada Pinkett Smith is thanking the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences just one day after she announced she would be boycotting their annual awards show, the Oscars. Shortly after Jada revealed her plans to skip the ceremony, Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs released a statement saying that the group had a plan in place to make sure a more diverse group of nominees would be included in the future. 'I would like to express my gratitude to the Academy, specifically Cheryl Boone Isaacs, for such a quick response in regard to the issue at hand. I look forward to the future,' wrote Jada on her social media accounts Monday night. Jada did not however have any comment about statements made by Alexis Arquette and Janet Hubert attacking the actress and her husband after she announced her boycott. Scroll down for video Gratitude: Jada Pinkett Smith (left at Golden Globes) has thanked the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science (president Cheryl Boone Isaacs right) one day after announcing she was boycotting the Oscars Statement: 'I would like to express my gratitude to the Academy, specifically Cheryl Boone Isaacs, for such a quick response,' wrote Jada on social media Isaacs, who in addition to being president of the Academy is also one of the invite-only group's few non-white members, said in a statement on Monday; 'Id like to acknowledge the wonderful work of this years nominees. 'While we celebrate their extraordinary achievements, I am both heartbroken and frustrated about the lack of inclusion. This is a difficult but important conversation, and its time for big changes. 'The Academy is taking dramatic steps to alter the makeup of our membership. 'In the coming days and weeks we will conduct a review of our membership recruitment in order to bring about much-needed diversity in our 2016 class and beyond.' She then added; 'As many of you know we have implemented changes to diversify our membership in the last four years. 'But the change is not coming as fast as we would like. We need to do more, and better and more quickly.' Pinkett Smith revealed she would not be attending in a video posted to Facebook, but praised host Chris Rock in her speech, saying; 'Hey Chris I will not be at the Academy Awards and I will not be watching. 'But I cannot think of a better man to do the job in hand this year than you my friend. Good luck and to the rest of you, nothing but love, always.' Nothing: Jada did not respond to recent attacks however from Alexis Arquette and Janet Hubert (above with Will Smith in Fresh Prince of Bel Air promo still) Hubert meanwhile filmed a scathing public response to Jada's announcement that she would be boycotting the awards, despite having worked with her husband Will for years on the popular sitcom. In a video she too posted on Facebook, Hubert said; 'First of all, Miss Thing does your man not have a mouth of his own with which to speak? 'The second thing, girlfriend, theres a lot of sh*t going on in the world that you all dont seem to recognize. People are dying. 'Our boys are being shot left and right. People are starving. People are trying to pay bills. And youre talking about some f*****g actors and Oscars. It just aint that deep. 'And heres the other thing: For you to ask other actors, and other black actresses and actors, too, to jeopardize their career and their standing in a town that you know damn well you dont do that. And heres the other thing: They dont care. 'They dont care! And I find it ironic that somebody who has made their living, made their living and made millions and millions of dollars from the very people youre talking about boycotting just because you didnt get a nomination, just because you didnt win.' Hubert then when a step further and called out Will Smith by claiming he refused to negotiate for salary increases alongside the entire cast of Fresh Prince back in the day. 'Well karma must be a bitch, cause now here you are,' says Herbert. 'Here you are, youve had a few flops and you know there are those out there who really deserved a nod.' She then criticizes both his performance and accent in the film Concussion, which some pundits had thought might land him an Oscar nomination. Allegation: Arquette, a transgender actress and activist, claimed Jada and her husband Will were both gay in a Facebook post Claim: Arquette alleged that Will Smith and Benny Medina (above in 2008) had been intimate On Tuesday, Arquette went even further and alleged that Will and Jada were both gay. 'When Jada comes out as Gay and her beard husband admits his first marriage ended when she walked in to him **** servicing his Sugar Daddy Benny Medina ..then I will listen to them,' writes Arquette. Arquette later added in the comment section; '"She" being his FIRST wife. Paid off, silent.' Will's first marriage to Sheree Zampino ended in divorce in 1995 and he married Jada two years later. Medina is a powerful Hollywood manager who has worked with stars including Jennifer Lopez and Tyra Banks. Arquette, whose sister Patricia won an Academy Award in 2014 for her performance in Boyhood, went on to write in her post; 'Will threw a fit on the set of Six Degrees of Separation when he was required by the scene to kiss Anthony Rapp. 'He persuaded the director to shoot the back of his head in frame. Blocking the non existent lip lock entirely. 'F*** him.Gays have enemies.They lurk in gilded closets.Outing is healthy.You are either with or against us.You decide.Today.' Arquette later revealed in a comment on the post that she had audition for Rapp's role in the film, noting that 'it would have been a different story on set' if she had been in the movie. Arquette also said of her decision to speak out; 'I used to think Michelangelo Signorile was wrong for outing. I'm completely for it now.Too many bullied teens dead.' Signorile is a gay activist who has long been credited as a pioneer in outing celebrities and other famous individuals, most notably being the first to report that David Geffen and Liz Smith were homosexuals. He also outed billionaire Malcom Forbes soon after his death. A shocking 1 in 12 criminals go on to commit another offence within three weeks of being released from prison, it has been revealed. Extraordinary new figures show that more than 5,000 convicts were barely outside the jail walls before they struck again. It means thousands of innocent victims are suffering crime, including serious violence and sex attacks, at the hands of thugs who have just walked free. A shocking 1 in 12 criminals go on to commit another offence within three weeks of being released from prison, it has been revealed (file photo) On Monday, anti-crime campaigners said the public would be appalled at the scale of offending carried out by those who had been out of prison a matter of days. Damning statistics seen by the Mail reveal that in 2013 the latest year available 8.6 per cent of all released prisoners were later convicted for an offence committed in their first 18 days of freedom. Shadow Justice Minister Andy Slaughter said the figures show how the Government are 'failing' Shadow Justice Minister Andy Slaughter said: The public will be horrified to learn that almost one in ten prisoners go on to commit more crime in little more than two weeks after their release. The Government has promised for five years to cut reoffending but these figures show just how seriously they are failing. Mr Slaughter, who uncovered the figures from Parliamentary questions, said: Under the Tories our prisons are have become more violent, dangerous, drug-infested and out of control. Michael Gove must take immediate action and face up to crisis in our prisons. Tory MP Philip Davies, a member of the Commons Justice Select Committee, said: This is absolutely scandalous. There are thousands of people who are completely unnecessary victims of crime because if the criminals had still been locked up finishing their full sentences they would not have been out causing harm. This shows that letting prisoners out early is utterly unacceptable. In 2013, some 60,300 adults and juveniles were released from jails in England and Wales after serving custodial sentences for committing crimes. Of these, 8.6 per cent re-offended within 18 days a total of 5,185 miscreants. A re-offence is defined as a crime that is proven through a court conviction, caution, or reprimand or final warning for juveniles. The figures will provide fresh impetus for Michael Gove, who has called for a revolution over prisons, bolstering rehabilitation and educating inmates to end the lock 'em up or let 'em out debate. The figures will provide fresh impetus for Michael Gove (pictured) The Justice Secretary has condemned sky-high re-offending rates and proposed major reforms of the prison system in a bid to break the cycle of crime where, for many criminals, the jail gates become a revolving door. But Mr Gove risks infuriating the Right of the Tory party with proposals that could be dismissed as 'soft'. Nearly half of prisoners released from jail go on to commit further offences, Government figures indicate. The proportion of adults re-offending in 2013 was 45.8 per cent around 27,000 although this was down from 49.4 per cent in the first year of the Coalition government in 2010. For juveniles, 1,300 were released and 66.5 per cent roughly 800 re-offended. The National Audit Office has found reoffending in England and Wales costs the taxpayer up to 10billion a year. Prisons Minister Andrew Selous said: Our prison system needs reform. It fails to rehabilitate or make sure criminals are prevented from offending again. A two-year-old boy has tragically died from serious head injuries after a concrete wall collapsed on top of him at his family's hobby farm. Little Matthew Vietheer was crushed when the brick wall toppled over him at a property in Irongate, near Toowoomba in south-east Queensland around 6pm on Tuesday. The toddler was treated at the scene by paramedics before he was airlifted to Lady Cilento Children's Hospital in Brisbane where he was rushed into intensive care. But shortly after 11am on Wednesday, the little boy died in hospital from his injuries. Scroll down for video Matthew Vietheer (pictured) has tragically died after a concrete wall collapsed on top of him at a hobby farm Little Matthew (pictured) with his mother Helen Hoffman, father Troy Vietheer and older brother Authorities are now investigating how the wall came to fall onto the boy. His parents - Helen Hoffman and Troy Vietheer - were able to pull their son to safety after he became trapped beneath the brick wall at the piggery, Nine News reported. Emergency services arrived at the property after the family raised the alarm when Matthew was found with critical head injuries. The family stayed by Matthew's bedside where he was understood to have undergone a number of surgeries, with a specialist paediatrician claiming his condition had improved overnight, The Chronicle reported. However, by Wednesday morning, a Queensland Police spokesperson confirmed to Daily Mail Australia Matthew died and his death is being treated as a workplace accident. Matthew (pictured) with his father Troy, who stayed by his son's bedside overnight after he suffered injuries The toddler was airlifted to a Brisbane hospital on Tuesday night where he was rushed into intensive care The brick wall had collapsed on the little boy at a property (pictured) in Queensland, near Toowoomba His parents were able to pull their son to safety after he became trapped beneath the brick wall It had collapsed around 6pm on Tuesday, and he was then airlifted from the Irongate property The spokesperson said his death is not being treated as a criminal matter, but as a workplace accident. 'It certainly is a traumatic set of circumstances, and our hearts go out to the family concerned,' Stephen Johns, Senior Operations Supervisor for the Queensland Ambulance Service said at a press conference on Wednesday, Yahoo7 reported. 'It's traumatic not only for the family, but also for our paramedics that respond to cases like that,' Mr Johns said. Workplace Health and Safety Queensland is investigating the incident, while police are preparing a report for the coroner. Emergency services arrived at the property after the family raised the alarm when Matthew was found with critical head injuries The two-year-old boy died at the hospital at about midday on Wednesday to his serious head injuries Marvel comics gave a five-year-old boy suffering from a blood disorder super hero treatment. Dan Levy struggled with how to tell his son that he needed to have surgery for a metal disk to be inserted into his chest that would allow easier treatments for his blood disorder, hemophilia A. He came up with a creative idea that he hoped would help his then three-year-old son Max cope with the idea of surgery. 'We had just seen the movie 'Iron Man' few days before,' Dan Levy told NBC News. Iron Max: Marvel comics recently featured Max Levy in their Invincible Iron Man comic book as a nod to his battle with hemophilia A. In an effort to help him cope with the idea of having a metal chest surgically inserted in his chest for treatment, his father came up with the idea of Iron Max The adorable little boy (left) is featured in the December 2 issue of the Invincible Iron Man comic book (right). His father used the hashtag #IronMax to update family and friends on Twitter about his progress Iron Man is Max's favorite comic book character, and even more now after being featured in it 'I said to him, 'Do you remember the scene where Tony Stark takes the port, takes the arch reactor out of his chest and puts the new one in? ... you're going to get one of those.' In response, Dan Levy shared that his son said: ''I get to be Iron Man''. Using the hashtag #IronMax, Dan Levy and his wife would update friends and family on Twitter about their son's progress from the hospital. His older sister, Zoe, was inspired to create calendars featuring photos that she, her friends or Max captured, in order to support the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and other children with the disease that Max has. She has raised more than $8,000 from the calendar sales. Shortly after Marvel heard about Max's story and his sister's work and reached out to their father. One of the top writers at Marvel, Brian Michael Bendis, told Dan Levy that his son was going to appear in one of their Invincible Iron Man comic books. His older sister, Zoe (above), was inspired to create calendars to support the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and other children with the disease that Max has. She has raised more than $8,000 'I'm not a crier, I'm not it was literally the first time, I just came into the room, and I just wept,' Dan Levy told NBC News of his reaction. 'It's been a year and half of ... honestly not great, this kid deserves a win. 'Since he's been a baby he's been told what he can't do and now its sort of kind of neat to see what he can do and he can be anything he can be a superhero. 'That's just the coolest thing.' In his December 2 comic book appearance, Iron Max is pictured meeting Iron Man, and it also shows him trying on the famous Iron Man armor. He also received some kind words of encouragement from Iron Man's billionaire alter ego, Tony Stark. When his father, Dan Levy, heard that Marvel was going to feature his son, he said: 'I'm not a crier, I'm not it was literally the first time, I just came into the room, and I just wept.' Above Dan Levy is pictured next to his son, Max, and his wife Dan Levy said: 'Since he's been a baby he's been told what he can't do and now its sort of kind of neat to see what he can do and he can be anything he can be a superhero. 'That's just the coolest thing' 'I think it's pretty cool being in a comic book. Like it's really really cool,' Max told NBC News. 'I'm making (other children) not scared because there's a kid whose a superhero and they would like to be that I guess ... maybe some people are that.' In addition to the little boy having a comic book drawing of himself featured, Marvel also placed his photo in the back to encourage other sick children with his story. 'Say hello to 5-year-old Max Levy, a young kid who's making a big difference,'the caption reads. 'Since heroes belong in comic books, we couldn't resist giving Max a cameo in ours!' His father also thinks this will help other children with Max's same disease. 'This can help other kids with hemophilia and people with other diseases or just to raise awareness and money,' Dan Levy told NBC News. 'I really genuinely think that this is just the beginning of something amazing for him.' Advertisement It was a happy scene in Montgomery, Alabama on Tuesday as the families of about 150 airmen welcomed their loved ones who were returning home from deployment overseas. The returning service members, who had been away from home for four months, belonged to the 908th Airlift Wing Reserve Unit and two C-130 aircraft and had recently completed missions in Southwest Asia. 'It feels great. It feels amazing. I've been waiting on this for a minute. Feel good,' said returning airman Laboris Williams to the Alabama News Network. 'I'm overjoyed, and just so thankful to God that he's made it back safe,' Williams' mother Linda Bowling told the station. Pierson Hill, 9, holds a sign as he waits for his father to return from a four-month deployment at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama Clarke Hill, 7, holds up a sign while waiting for his father, Staff Sgt. Timothy Hill to come home from a four-month deployment Lt. Col. Elliott Stoffregen III kisses Stacy Thomas after arriving from a four-month deployment on Tuesday Staff Sgt. Timothy Hill gets off a C-130 as he arrives from a four-month deployment at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery on Tuesday First Lt. Jimmy Gillie embraces his wife, Krystie, after arriving from a four-month deployment to Montgomery, Alabama Family members watch as a C-130 flies over Maxwell Air Force Base, bringing home airmen from a four-month deployment overseas Master Sgt. Anthony Lewis greets his son, Alex, 5, wife, Sarah Lewis and 19-month-old Gunnar after arriving from a four-month deployment A fellow airman: First Lt. Jimmy Gillie throws his son Sam, 2, up in the air after arriving from a four-month deployment overseas One of two C-130 aircraft returning from a four-month deployment to Southwest Asia to Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery Capt. Daniel Cutting kisses his daughter Carson Cutting, 1, on the forehead after arriving from a four-month deployment First Lt. Heather Kindred embraces David Kindred after arriving from a four-month deployment to Montgomery, Alabama Under new visa rule changes due to take effect in April, Australians working in Britain may not be allowed to stay there indefinitely if they are on a lower income. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that it will mean non-European workers will have to earn at least 35,000 ($72,000) a year if they are to be allowed to settle for longer than six years in the UK. Its a move that will apply to those outside the European Economic Zone in an effort to sever the connection between those working and staying permanently in Britain. Scroll down for video Australians working in Britain may not be able to stay there indefinitely if they are on a lower income (stock image) The British governments push to reduce migration numbers would see the numbers of non-European skilled workers settling in Britain drop each year from 60,000 to 20,000 under the change. Australians make up one of the top nationalities that are given work visas in Britain, along with the likes of Indians and Americans. A spokeswoman for Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade told the Sydney Morning Herald that Australia had made representations to the British government about the migration changes. A petition that has been lodged with the British Parliament against the change has so far generated more than 70,000 signatures. However, it will need to reach 100,000 signatures if it is to be debated in Parliament. Under new rule changes due to take effect in April non-European workers will have to earn at least 35,000 ($72,000) a year if they are to be allowed to settle for longer than six years in the UK (stock image) This follows a report in December from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade that suggested the tightening of UK visa rules discriminates against Australians and could undermine the 'unique' bond between the two countries in the long term. The report, a copy of which was obtained by News Corp, surveyed 100 Australian businesses operating in the UK and two-thirds said changes to visa rules would impact the ability to recruit Australians. Currently, Australians who are hired by a UK firm and don't have the correct visa need to return home to switch visas. This is not the case for other nationalities. 'The UK's refusal to allow in-country switching deters employers and discriminates against Australians,' the report stated. More than half of the businesses surveyed, which staff between 10 and 10,000 people, said new visas would impact investment in the UK. 'The UK's visa changes are making this country a less welcoming destination for Australians,' the report stated. 'This potentially harms the UK's image and reputation in Australia, and might even in the long term undermine the unique Australia-UK bond.' It also came after the Australian High Commission warned that new visa changes would cause 'structural damage' to bilateral relations between the two countries. Home And Away star Johnny Ruffo has pleaded guilty to five charges after driving while his licence was cancelled in an unregistered vehicle. The 2011 X Factor Australia finalist has admitted to a string of driving offences, including driving while his licence was cancelled. Ruffo, 27, was caught driving an unregistered and uninsured white Audi S5 through Sydney's city centre in September last year. Scroll down for video Home And Away star Johnny Ruffo (pictured) has pleaded guilty to driving while his licence was cancelled The 2011 X Factor Australia finalist, who drives a white Audi SS Coupe was caught driving an unregistered and uninsured white Audi S5 through Sydney's CBD in September last year The soap star's lawyer, Nic Angelov, pleaded guilty to five separate charges on his client's behalf in Sydney's Downing Centre Local Court on Wednesday morning. This comes after Ruffo faced court in December after racking up $3253 worth of speeding fines in just seven months. The 27-year-old fronted the Downing Centre Local court in December to ask the Magistrate for an annulment on five driving charges after he failed to appear in November as he was 'sick,' The Daily Telegraph reported. Ruffo (pictured), who earns $2000 per week, was placed on a six-month good behaviour bond in March last year for driving an uninsured vehicle 'I was speeding while I was driving and it was just a miscommunication between myself and the people that open my mail,' Ruffo said. 'Don't speed while you're driving.' The star plays Chris Harrington in the long-running soap Home and Away. Limited availability, minimal marketing, 'animal-style', a secret menu and cheap prices seem to be the key for selling out of a product before your store even opens. On Wednesday, US burger chain In-N-Out opened a pop-up restaurant in Sydney's Surry Hills for four hours only, and only announced the event the day before. Hundreds of people lined up from 4am on Wednesday and travelled from as far away as Newcastle, 162km north of Sydney, for a bite of the 300 burgers available during a four-hour opening window, and they were all sold out in advance. Scroll down for video Fast food fans flocked to an In-N-Out Burger pop-up restaurant in Sydney on Wednesday The number of people who lined up for the fast food was in the hundreds, and the number of available burgers was allocated almost an hour before the pop-up opened Diners could choose from different burgers, chips and a drink - a menu smaller than that available in the US, where In-N-Out is from The In-Out-Burgers that were served to customers in Sydney on Wednesday, including the well-known among fans 'Double-Double' burger The secret to In-N-Out's popularity could be due to several reasons. First up, there's the matter of limited availability - with the pop-up restaurant only open for four hours, people wanted to get in while they could. There also ended up being only 300 burgers available - leading to reports of people trying to get others to buy them the fast food or trying to buy them off those who managed to get a burger. It's also rare - the only other way for an Australian to get their hands on an In-N-Out burger would be to travel the US, making for an expensive meal. The In-N-Out pop-up has visited Australia before, with the last event held in January 2015 Hundreds of people lined up for the chance to get their hands on In-N-Out, with the line snaking around street corners Many of those who lined up were disappointed when they were told there were not enough burgers available to serve them all The restaurant also has a not-so-secret 'secret menu', where customers can personalise their order with options like 'animal-style'. That option involves adding melted cheese and grilled onions to menu items such as fries. Other choices in the secret menu include adding chopped chillis to burgers, Neapolitan thickshakes, mustard grilled burger, patties protein-style burgers, and 4x4 burgers - a way to quadruple the patties and cheese in a burger, according to Hack the Menu. It may also have helped that prices on the menu available in Australia were cheap. A 'Double-Double' - one of the most popular burgers among In-N-Out fans - was on sale for $5, and a hamburger could be bought for $3. Prices for the In-N-Out menu items which were available in Australia for a very short time on Wednesday A picture of the 'Double-Double' burger, along with price and a review was posted to Facebook group 'The Fatties burger appreciation society Some of those in line had begun queuing at 4am, others travelled from as far away as Newcastle In-N-Out fans sit down to enjoy their meal at lunch time on Wednesday at the pop-up burger joint in Surry Hills There's also the novelty factor - In-N-Out is something that otherwise can't be had in Australia. Along with that comes bragging rights for foodies and burger fans - as seen by the many social media posts made when those lucky 300 got their hands on a burger on Wednesday. In-N-Out was established in California in 1948, and has also become well known for not using any frozen products, meaning that all of their menu items are produced fresh. Another factor that appeals is the simple menu, with chain choosing to focus on burgers, shakes and fries rather than branching it. Operating only in six of the 51 U.S. states is another factor to the scare nature of the fast food. And nearly 70 years after the first In-N-Out opened, the chain remains family owned, Business Insider Australia reported. It is also are reported to provide workers with fair wages, and have been endorsed by celebrities such as Gordon Ramsay, has been reported to call their burgers 'extraordinary'. Fast food enthusiasts outside the temporary burger joint on Wednesday afternoon Staff at the pop-up joint serve customers their burgers after what was for some, a long wait in line Drinks are prepared for service at the Surry Hills pop-up venue, held in the Dead Ringer restaurant In-N-Out is a burger chain from the US which only has outlets in several states in the west of the country Lupita Nyong'o is the latest star to address the complete lack of diversity among this year's acting nominees for the Academy Award. The actress, who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 2014 for her performance in 12 Years a Slave, wrote on Instagram; 'I am disappointed by the lack on inclusion in this year's Academy Award nominations. 'It has me thinking about unconscious prejudice and what merits prestige in our culture.' Nyong'o did not however say she would be boycotting the awards like fellow actress Jada Pinkett Smith and fellow Oscar recipient Spike Lee, but did write; 'I stand with my peers who are calling for change in expanding the stories that are told and the recognition of the people who tell them'. Scroll down for video Speaking out: Lupita Nyong'o criticized the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for their lack of diversity in this year's nominees (above with fellow winners Matthew McConaughey, Cate Blanchett and Jared Leto in 2014) Thoughts: 'It has me thinking about unconscious prejudice and what merits prestige in our culture,' Nyong'o said of the absence of non-white acting nominees In her Instagram message Nyong'o also quoted author James Baldwin, writing; 'Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.' The year Nyong'o won the Oscar was the last time that the acting nominees were not all white actors, with Chiwetel Ejiofor and Barkhad Abdi also receiving nods from the Academy. Nyongo's 12 Years a Slave director Steve McQueen, who is black, also picked up Best Director and the film won Best Picture. He has also weighed in on the row. Telling the BBC: 'It cant be about box office, because I think black actors and stories along those lines have done very, very well, obviously. 'So its about executives in cinema and film studios, television, cable networks, giving those storylines and those actors a fair bite.' 'I think racism has a lot to do with it, but also the whole idea of people not being adventurous enough in thinking outside of the box as such.' Many pundits assumed that after there were no non-white acting nominees last year things would change when the nominations were announced last week, especially given the number of string choices and performances. Idris Elba, who had won multiple critics awards and been nominated for a Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award for his performance in Beasts of No Nation was perhaps the most glaring omission, along with the lack of a Best Picture nomination for the critically and commercially successful N.W.A biopic Straight Outta Compton. The Academy also ignored the critically-lauded performances of promising newcomers such as transgender actress Mya Taylor for her work in Tangerine, Teyonah Parris in Lee's new film Chi-Raq and O'Shea Jackson Jr., Corey Hawkins and Jason Mitchell who were the young stars of Compton. And the Creed team of Michael B Jordan and director Ryan Cogler were shut out by the Academy yet again after they were showed no love two years ago for their work on the highly-praised Fruitvale Station. Act of rebellion: Magic Mike XXL star Pinkett Smith released a video Monday announcing she would not be attending the Academy Awards due to a lack of diversity among this year's nominees Jada Pinkett Smith publicly addressed the issue with a video on her Facebook page which helped kick-start the debate about this year's lack of diversity. The Magic Mike XXL star said she would not attend the ceremony over the issue. Delivering a powerful speech, she said: 'I can't help ask the question: is it time that people of color, recognize how much power and influence we have amassed that we no longer need to ask to be invited anywhere.' 'I ask the question have we now come to a new time and place, where we recognize that we can no longer beg for the love, acknowledgement or respect of any group. 'That maybe it is time that we love, respect and acknowledge ourselves in the way we are asking others to do, then that that is the place of true power. I'm simply asking the question.' Airing her thoughts on the Academy's neglect to nominate any people of color in the top categories she said: 'Here is what I believe, the Academy has the right to acknowledge whomever they choose, to invite whomever they choose and now, I think that it is our responsibility now, to make the change. Likely no-show: Chi-raq director Spike Lee also said he would be skipping the ceremony Speaking out: Honorary Oscar winner Spike Lee announced his decision in a lengthy Facebook post on MLK day Jada, whose husband Will Smith has received other award nominations for his role in Concussion, then inferred the only way to overcome the situation was for people of color to do things themselves. She said: 'Maybe it is time we pull back our resources and we put them back into our communities and to our programs, and we make programs for ourselves and that acknowledge us in ways that see us in ways that we see fit, that are just as good, as the so called mainstream ones. 'Here is what I do know - begging for acknowledgment, or even asking diminishes dignity, and diminishes power, and we are a dignified people and we are powerful and lets not forget it.' 'Let's let the Academy do that with all grace and love and let's do us differently. I have got nothing but love.' Sending a message to Chris Rock, who is presenting this year, and has already branded the ceremony the 'white BET awards' she added: 'Hey Chris I will not be at the Academy Awards and I will not be watching. 'But I cannot think of a better man to do the job in hand this year than you my friend. Good luck and to the rest of you, nothing but love, always.' Several stars have backed Pinkett Smith's stance with directors Spike Lee and Michael Moore both vowing to boycott the awards alongside the actress. Lee, the director of Do the Right Thing and 2015's Chi-Raq who holds an honorary Oscar, said: 'How Is It Possible For The 2nd Consecutive Year All 20 Contenders Under The Actor Category Are White? And Let's Not Even Get Into The Other Branches'. '40 White Actors In 2 Years And No Flava At All. We Can't Act?!' Moore said: 'The idea that we could go two years in a row, where 40 actors could be nominated and none of them were black, is just crazy.' British actor Idris Elba - who didn't receive a nomination for his role in Beasts of No Nation - addressed the issue in a speech to politicians in London on Monday. 'We need to counter what everybody has, see the lay of the land and see who has which careers in TVwho makes TV, and who is allowed on TV and when they get the opportunity which roles do they play, on and off screen,' he said. 'You have to ask the question: are black people normally playing petty criminals? Are women always the love interest or talking about men? Are gay people always stereotyped? Are disabled people ever seen at all?' Actor David Oyelowo expressed his disappointment during his speech at a gala honoring Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs. Not pulling any punches: George Clooney, pictured here with his wife, said that the film industry was moving in the wrong direction on the diversity issue The 39-year-old British actor - who was overlooked for his portrayal of Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma last year - broke from his prepared words at the King Legacy Awards in Los Angeles, where he was presenting Boone Isaacs with an award named after civil rights icon Rosa Parks. 'For 20 opportunities to celebrate actors of color, actresses of color, to be missed last year is one thing; for that to happen again this year is unforgivable', he declared. 'The Academy has a problem. Its a problem that needs to be solved.' David pointed out that the fact two of the top films at the global box office - Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Ride Along 2 - are led by black actors made the snub all the more ludicrous and a complete misrepresentation of today's society. He continued: 'This institution doesnt reflect its president and it doesnt reflect this room. I am an Academy member and it doesnt reflect me, and it doesnt reflect this nation.' On Tuesday's episode of The View, host Whoopi Goldberg, who won an Oscar in 1991 for Ghost, offered her take on the proposed boycott, saying she was upset that the subject of under-representation of minorities in film was being trotted out only once a year, during the awards season. 'Every year we get all fired up and then the rest of the year nobody says anything,' Goldberg stated, adding that while she won't be boycotting the ceremony, she intends to continue talking about the underlying issue. 'Im tired of seeing movies where no one is represented except a bit of the population, not all of it,' she said. Speaking to Variety on Tuesday, two-time Academy Award winner George Clooney said he believed Hollywood as an industry was 'moving in the wrong direction.' 'If you think back 10 years ago, the Academy was doing a better job. Think about how many more African Americans were nominated.... And all of a sudden, you feel like were moving in the wrong direction,' the 54-year-old actor and director said. Oscar nominee Don Cheadle weighed in on the debate with a Twitter joke directed at this year's host Chris Rock. 'Yo, Chris. Come check me out at #TheOscars this year. They got me parking cars on G level,' he wrote. However, not all those speaking out have been on the side of Pinkett Smith. Janet Hubert, who portrayed Will Smith's original Aunt Vivian on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, has released a video berating the star. Tough spot: Comedian Chris Rock is hosting this year's Oscar ceremony amid the diversity row Hosting tips: Golden Globes host Ricky Gervais tweeted his advice to Oscars host Chris Rock on Tuesday 'First of all, Miss Thing,' begins Hubert her tirade, 'does your man not have a mouth of his own with which to speak? 'The second thing, girlfriend, theres a lot of sh** going on in the world that you all dont seem to recognize. People are dying. 'Our boys are being shot left and right. People are starving. People are trying to pay bills. And youre talking about some f*****g actors and Oscars. It just aint that deep. 'And heres the other thing: For you to ask other actors, and other black actresses and actors, too, to jeopardize their career and their standing in a town that you know damn well you dont do that. And heres the other thing: They dont care. 'They dont care! And I find it ironic that somebody who has made their living, made their living and made millions and millions of dollars from the very people youre talking about boycotting just because you didnt get a nomination, just because you didnt win. 'That is not the way life works, baby ... You aint Barack and Michelle Obama. Yall need to get over yourselves.' Alexis Arquette also wrote a very controversial Facebook post in response. 'When Jada comes out as Gay and her beard husband admits his first marriage ended when she walked in to him **** servicing his Sugar Daddy Benny Medina ..then I will listen to them. The transgender actress later added in the comment section: '"She" being his FIRST wife. Paid off, silent.' 'Heartbroken': Academy boss Cheryl Boone Isaacs, seen announcing the nominees with actor Jon Krasinski on January 14, said on Monday the Academy is taking 'dramatic' steps to become more diverse Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs said in a statement on Monday that changes were coming which would hopefully result in a more diverse group of nominees, and Academy members, in the years to come. Isaacs, who in addition to being president of the Academy is also one of the invite-only group's few non-white members, said in a statement on Monday; 'Id like to acknowledge the wonderful work of this years nominees. 'While we celebrate their extraordinary achievements, I am both heartbroken and frustrated about the lack of inclusion. This is a difficult but important conversation, and its time for big changes. 'The Academy is taking dramatic steps to alter the makeup of our membership. 'In the coming days and weeks we will conduct a review of our membership recruitment in order to bring about much-needed diversity in our 2016 class and beyond.' She then added; 'As many of you know we have implemented changes to diversify our membership in the last four years. 'But the change is not coming as fast as we would like. We need to do more, and better and more quickly.' This year's Academy Awards, which are being hosted by Chris Rock, will be held on February 28 in Los Angeles. Golden Globes host Ricky Gervais has advised Rock not to stay silent on the diversity issue but instead to use the live show to address it. 'If I were @chrisrock, I wouldn't be considering boycotting the Oscars,' the controversial British comedian wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. 'I'd be thinking 'this s*** is live. I can do some serious damage.' A coal merchant, who was adopted as a child, decided to find out about biological parents and discovered he is the firstborn son of a Malaysian sultan. Keith Williams, from Carmarthenshire in South Wales, learned of his royal connection in Asia after tracing his real mother to Peterborough. But it was too late for the 64-year-old to make contact with the 33rd Sultan of Perak, as his father died 32 years ago. Keith Williams meeting his half sister Her Royal Highness Ku Ess in Malaysia as part of a documentary A picture of Mr Williams' father Almarhum Sultan Idris Shah ibni Almarhum Sultan Iskandar Shah Mr Williams was adopted as a two-year-old and had no idea about his bloodline 6,000 miles away. He said: 'When I was 13 my mother told me I was adopted. I'd never given it a thought. I never imagined I was related to a royal family from the other side of the world. 'It's like a story from a Disney film, and if someone had told you this story in the cafe or by the bar you'd tell them to get out.' His meeting with Elizabeth Rosa, his biological mother, eventually led to the discovery of his father's incredible status. Ms Rosa had been a trainee nurse in Surrey when she became pregnant. Mr Williams, who now lives in Penygroes, said: 'When she was doing her training, she met this man. He was studying in London. They went out together for quite some time. 'She found out she was pregnant, expecting me. Because she was there under the council's care she had to come home as soon as she discovered she was pregnant. So she came back to Llanelli. Trying to find the man she loved, but he'd gone. Mr Williams was adopted as a two-year-old and had no idea about his bloodline 6,000 miles away The hilltop palace of Istana Iskandariah in Malaysia. It was the home of the Sultan of Perak before he died 'She gave me photographs which show how he lived out there. He was connected to the royal family and was made a sultan back in 1963.' The man she met in London was from Malaysia and became her boyfriend for a short while. That man was Almarhum Sultan Idris Shah ibni Almarhum Sultan Iskandar Shah, who served as sultan from January 1963 until January 1984, when he died of a heart attack. The father of three's incredible findings were the subject of an S4C documentary, Fy Nhad y Swltan (My Father the Sultan). Mr Williams, known as Keith y Glo (Keith the Coal) was born in Llanelli and spent more than 20 years working in his adoptive father's coal business, but in later years embarked on a voyage of discovery in a bid to trace his biological roots. Mr Williams visited the tomb of his father in Malaysia (pictured) for an S4C documentary called Fy Nhad y Swltan (My Father the Sultan) The 64-year-old, who has six granddaughters, eventually discovered his biological father was actually a member of the Malaysian monarchy. Filming a documentary for S4C, Mr Williams and his youngest son, Timothy, visited Malaysia to find out more about his father's side of the family. On his travels Mr Williams encountered difficulties as he tried to make contact with the family, but met his half-sister, Her Royal Highness Ku Ess. He believes their reluctance to meet him could stem from a fear that he could lay claim to his father's title and fortunes. ISIS applauded the the mass shootings in San Bernardino and praised the actions of the Muslim attackers in the latest addition of their English magazine. The terrorist group published an article in the 13th installment of Dabiq that celebrated the deaths of 14 people on December 2, 2015. In reference to the suspects Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, the publication says 'not only did they leave behind their comfortable lifestyle, but prior to the operation they left their baby daughter in the care of others knowing that they likely wouldn't see her again in this life.' They also confirmed the death British fighter 'Jihadi John', in a bizarre obituary, that praises him as an 'honourable brother' and highlights his 'sincerity, ambition and enthusiasm'. Scroll down for video ISIS applauded the the mass shootings in San Bernardino and praised the actions of the Muslim attackers Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik (pictured) in the latest addition of their English magazine ISIS also confirmed the death of British fighter 'Jihadi John', saying that he was killed in a drone strike in their Syrian stronghold of Raqqa in November The attacks in Paris are also referenced with pictures of the killers superimposed on images from the crime scenes. British intelligence agency, MI5, was also targeted, with ISIS describing them as 'much-overrated'. The obituary of 'Jihadi John' said he was killed in a drone strike in their Syrian stronghold of Raqqa in November. Born Mohammed Emwazi, he was known as the balaclava-clad executioner who appeared in a string of videos showing the beheadings of Western hostages. The group said the 27-year-old was killed on November 12 'as the car he was in was targeted in a strike by an unmanned drone in the city of Raqqa, destroying the car and killing him instantly' The US military had said at the time that it was 'reasonably certain' he had been killed in the strike. The obituary, naming him Abu Muharib al-Muhajir, claims he was 'originally from the northeast of the Arabian Peninsula, while his mother originated from Yemen'. It continues: 'At a young age, the honorouable brother travelled with his family to London. This would become a place he grew to hate along with its kafir [non-Muslim] people, whose customs were far-removed from the praiseworthy values he was much accustomed to. 'It was through the mercy and blessings of Allah that Abu Muharib attained the gift of a sound aqidah [creed] and correct manhaj [methodology] despite residing in one of the centres of kufr [non-belief] and despite the increased presence of deviants calling to the gates of Jahannam [hell].' The obituary, naming him Abu Muharib al-Muhajir, claims he was 'originally from the northeast of the Arabian Peninsula, while his mother originated from Yemen' This annotated image posted online by anti-ISIS activists Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently claims to show where Emwazi is believed to have been killed (circled), just yards from the group's headquarters in Raqqa On his last attempt to leave the UK for Kuwait, Emwazi was stopped at the airport and kept for questioning by MI5, the obituary claims. It says he 'presented himself as unintelligent, as was his method when dealing with intelligence agencies'. Emwazi was refused permission to travel in early 2013, and at that point he disappeared. Investigators believe that it was then that he travelled to Syria to join the terror group. The obituary boasts that he escaped to join ISIS in Syria 'right under the nose of the much-overrated MI5 British intelligence agency'. It continues: 'Depending upon Allah alone for success, [Emwazi] with his companion embarked on a long and strenuous journey that totalled approximately two months and involved trekking the mountain ranges of Europe and its marshy farmlands, sneaking across borders and being detained by the authorities of various nations on at least two occasions.' The 27-year-old was killed on November 12 'as the car he was in was targeted in a strike by an unmanned drone in the city of Raqqa, destroying the car and killing him instantly', according to the terror group It later adds: 'It was [Emwazi's] sincerity, ambition and enthusiasm to work and tire himself for Allah's sake that granted him prominence, as he grew to be loved and respected by many.' Emwazi first came to the world's attention when he appeared, dressed all in black and wearing a balaclava that covered everything but his eyes, in a video in which he brutally executed American journalist James Foley. Videos showing the beheadings of U.S. journalist Steven Sotloff, British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, and the American aid worker Peter Kassig followed. HOW PILOTS SITTING IN NEVADA 'EVAPORATED' JIHADI JOHN IN SYRIA The United States deployed Reaper drones carrying Hellfire missiles in August to Incirlik Air Force Base in Southern Turkey. The base, which is just outside the town of Adana is only 30 miles from the Sryian frontier and 200 miles from the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa. The Reaper drones are controlled by US Air Force pilots in Creech Air Force Base outside Las Vegas in Nevada more than 7,000 miles from the conflict zone. The unmanned aircraft are controlled via satellites, which stream real-time pictures back to the pilot in the United States. According to the US Department of Defence, the MQ-9 Reaper drone 'is designed to execute time-sensitive targets with persistence and precision'. Pentagon Press secretary Peter Cook said: 'US forces conducted an air strike in Raqqa, Syria, on November 12, 2015 targeting Mohamed Emwazi, also known as 'Jihadi John' (file photo) It has a range of about 1,150 miles and can fly at 230mph up to a height of approximately 50,000 feet. The aircraft has the ability to linger over its target for up to 24 hours. It can carry AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, GBU-12 Paveway II and GBU-38 Joint Direct Attack munitions. The killer has been a priority target for both British and American authorities who have been intercepting thousands of phone calls, emails and other electronic communications in a bid to identify his location. Once he was spotted entering his car in the ISIS stronghold of Al-Raqqa, a decision was made to target him with a 44,000 Hellfire missile which vaporised him moments later. Advertisement Convicted killer is due to be executed by lethal injection in Texas tonight Trial heard that the victim had died from asphyxiation during a sex game Richard Masterson is due to be executed today after he was convicted of murdering drag queen Darin Shane Honeycutt, 35, who had had met in a Texas bar in 2001 A man who is set to be put to death today for strangling a transvestite during a sex game has filed a desperate court plea claiming his victim died from a heart attack. Richard Masterson was convicted of murdering drag queen Darin Shane Honeycutt, 35, who had had met in a Texas bar in 2001. During his trial he testified that Honeycutt - who went by the stage name Brandi Houston - had accidentally died during erotic asphyxiation while having sex. But jurors at the trial were convinced Masterson intentionally strangled the victim, stole his car and fled to Florida before being arrested with another stolen car. The 43-year-old is set for lethal injection on Wednesday evening. Lawyers for Masterson made a last ditch appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, which is considering multiple actions on behalf of the convicted killer after lower Texas and federal courts failed to block his execution. His attorney filed a motion of stay of execution to the US Supreme Court, claiming that Honeycutt 'died of a heart attack, making his death accidental and not a homicide at all.' The grounds for filing the Supreme Court petition are that Masterson 'is actually innocent, the state suppressed evidence of Mr. Masterson's innocence, and Mr. Masterson's prior lawyers were incompetent when they did not notice the evidence of his innocence,' his attorney Gregory Gardner said. Since Masterson was convicted of murder, new information has surfaced, including that 'the state's medical examiner was a fraud who was unqualified to opine on the decedent's cause of death,' says the petition. Gardner argues that Harris County medical examiner Paul Shrode was wrong to rule Honeycutt's death a result of strangulation and that Shrode had missed 'basic principles' during his autopsy and claimed the examiner's findings had been skewed by Masterson's confession,The Intercept reported. In Masterson's most recent appeals, Florida pathologist Dr. Christena Roberts reviewed Shrode's work and concluded his autopsy was incomplete and conclusions were unsupported by evidence. She found that Honeycutt had 'severe coronary artery disease,' which could have caused his death during a sexual encounter. Scroll down for video Shrode had noted the victim had a 90 percent blockage of one artery in his heart, but had discounted the possibility he could have died from heart failure. Gardner also argues that his client's former lawyers had been deficient for failing to discover the autopsy information before the trial. Honeycutt had been discovered by a friend, lying upside down on his bed in his apartment on January 27, 2001, two days after he met Masterson in a gay bar. His ID and red Ford Escort were missing. The 43-year-old is set for lethal injection on Wednesday evening at a Texas prison (stock picture) The following day, Masterson was seen driving off in a red Ford Escort which he dumped in Georgia. He was arrested in a Florida mobile home park more than a week later after a Tampa man testified to a similar choking episode. He said he'd met Masterson in a gay bar and went home with him, but had been choked by him until he passed out. When he woke up his car was missing. After his arrest, Masterson confessed to Houston police he had killed Honeycutt by strangling him in a sleeper hold and was sentenced to death after a two-day trial in 2002. His execution scheduled today will be the first this year in the nation's busiest death penalty state, where 13 lethal injections in 2015 accounted for nearly half of the 28 executions nationwide. But the convicted killer's lawyer claims that the confession of his client, a long-time drug user, while in custody amounted to 'suicide by confession'. 'Mr. Masterson's case presents a perfect storm of attorney incompetence and neglect combined with a severely mentally ill, suicidal defendant who did not kill anyone,' Gardner said in a filing to the high court. Lawyers also contend that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied Masterson his rights to due process and access to the courts by refusing their challenge to a new state law that keeps secret the identity of the provider of pentobarbital that Texas prison officials use for lethal injections. Masterson's lawyers put a petition to the Supreme Court for an 11th-hour reprieve yesterday State lawyers argued that Masterson's attorneys offered no scientific evidence about Honeycutt's death that hadn't been previously raised and rejected, including by jurors at Masterson's trial. 'He is simply attempting to present identical facts under a different legal theory and using different experts in order to pass off the allegation as 'new,'' Erich Dryden, an Texas assistant attorney general, told the justices. According to court filings, besides confessing to police, Masterson told a brother he killed Honeycutt and wrote to Texas' then-Attorney General Greg Abbott in 2012 acknowledging the slaying. 'I meant to kill him,' Masterson wrote to Abbott, who is now Texas' governor. 'It was no accident.' Masterson had a long drug history and criminal record beginning at age 15. Court documents showed he ignored advice from lawyers at his 2002 trial and insisted on telling jurors he met Honeycutt and went to the victim's Houston apartment where Masterson said the chokehold was part of a sex act. Masterson also told jurors he was a future danger an element they had to agree with in order to decide a death sentence was appropriate. His case has recently drawn the attention of Pope Francis, who has reinforced the Catholic Church's opposition to capital punishment. Another Catholic anti death-penalty activist, Sister Helen Prejean, wrote on Twitter that she has 'serious doubts about Richard's guilt.' Security company G4S knew asylum seekers were having their doors marked in red paint four years ago leaving them exposed to racism and hatred, MPs heard today. Home Affairs Select Committee chairman Keith Vaz and former cabinet minister Alistair Carmichael slammed G4S after it emerged that one of the company's subcontractors, Jomast, had painted homes red so employees knew which were occupied by asylum seekers. Would-be refugees from Syria and eastern Europe said they had been targeted as a result, with one woman claiming that yobs shouted: 'F*** you dirty women. Get out of our country.' Another said a National Front logo was carved in their red front door. Scroll down for video Controversial: Security company G4S knew asylum seekers were having their doors marked in red paint four years ago leaving them exposed to racism and hatred, MPs heard today. Pictured: Mohammed Bagher Bayzavi, an Iranian asylum seeker who lives in a house with a red door in Union Street, Middlesbrough Torment: The asylum seeker said he has been repeatedly targeted by locals because of his door Both MPs called for further action than the audit promised by Immigration Minster James Brokenshire because G4S is consistently in the public eye for 'all the wrong reasons'. Mr Vaz said his committee had regularly expressed concerns about the Government 'Compass' contract to run accommodation for asylum seekers, which G4S controlled in Middlesbrough where the red paint concerns were raised. During an urgent question on the matter, Mr Vaz told the Commons: 'G4S as this House knows are serial offenders in respect of these breaches. 'Though with the greatest will in the world in your committee to make sure something is going to be done, I don't believe that an audit is going to be sufficient. 'If there is an acceptance that these doors were painted in a certain colour, that is appalling and it should have been discussed and discovered earlier. 'Will you undertake that when that audit is complete you will either give a statement to the House or come to the select committee with its findings?' Mr Brokenshire replied: 'There is a practice amongst some social housing providers to actually paint in a particular colour for maintenance issues but it's precisely those factors that I will want to understand as part of the audit of not simply what has happened in the North East but also on the inspection regimes and the processes that we have in place to identify that appropriate issues and standards and complaints are being dealt with.' Meanwhile, Mr Carmichael said G4S knew for four years about the practice but did not do anything about it because they did not receive complaints. Concerns: Asylum seeker James Momoh, 40 from Liberia, outside the red door of his home in Middlesbrough Issue: Asylum seeker Amos Kadema, 41 from Zimbabwe, outside the red door of his home in Middlesbrough Upset: Mohammad Bagher Beyzavi from Iran sits in the window of his red-door property in Middlesbrough The Liberal Democrat MP said: 'It's in fact my understanding that concerns about this practice of painting doors red were first raised in 2012 by my Liberal Democrat colleague and then-Middlesbrough councillor Suzanne Fletcher. 'She's pursued that issue doggedly ever since and it's largely due to her efforts that the matter has now come to light today. 'She was told by G4S that they had received no complaints so there was no need to take any action. 'That could manifestly not be the case and does that not raise in your mind perhaps a suspicion at least that an audit is somewhat less than is going to be required? 'Yet again G4S have come to public attention for all the wrong reasons and yet again they have been found wanting.' Mr Brokenshire replied: 'This issue of complaints and when this was first known to G4S was something that I did discuss with the chief executive this morning and it is a matter that he has committed to examine further and get to the bottom (of) for their satisfaction as to how they have handled this matter. 'But it is a question I think of doing the audit that I have commissioned urgently to see what the situation on the ground is, to understand how the inspection and audit regime has been conducted thus far. 'And obviously I will want to reflect on what that tells me.' Outrage: Home Affairs Select Committee chairman Keith Vaz (left) and former cabinet minister Alistair Carmichael slammed G4S for letting subcontractors, Jomast, paint homes belonging to asylum seekers red Policy: Asylum seekers in poor parts of Middlesbrough have been forced to live in houses with red doors It comes after asylum seekers forced to live in the '1930s Germany' conditions launched an impassioned plea to be allowed to change the colour doors of their homes. Hundreds of refugees have been living in the instantly recognisable homes, in a move which has been compared with the yellow stars that the Nazis forced Jews to wear. The coloured doors make homes occupied by the refugees in poor areas of Middlesbrough easy to identify and have been blamed for numerous attacks in which people were victims of racist abuse. Asylum seeker Mohammed Bagher Bayzavi, 58, said that the home he lives in - which is owned by property firm Jomast - has been targeted by local youths throwing eggs and bottles, and prostitutes who knock on the windows in the middle of the night. 'Everyone here knows the red colour is Jomast,' he said today. 'Change the colour - anything but red.' Mr Bayzavi, who fled Iran three years ago, said neighbours whose homes did not have red doors were not targeted. Both Jomast and G4S, which holds the Government contract to house asylum seekers, insisted that there was no deliberate policy to make them live in houses with red doors - but today agreed to repaint the homes in order to remove any possibly stigma. A former local MP compared the red paint to the yellow stars that Jews were forced to wear in Nazi Germany. Ian Swales, previously Liberal Democrat MP for Redcar, said the doors were a 'mark of separation' that 'reminds you of Germany in the 1930s'. In February 2014 he confronted a G4S executive over the issue during a parliamentary hearing, but the policy was not changed. After the latest revelations, Mr Swales said: 'I thought it was shocking. I assumed the management of G4S would be equally shocked and would do something about it. To find out nearly two years later that nothing's been done is appalling.' Rundown: In some areas the only houses not boarded up are those where asylum seekers are living Andy McDonald, Middlesbrough's Labour MP, added the red doors were 'a way of marking people out that is reprehensible'. The Home Office has launched an urgent review into the issue and is due to issue a report within a few weeks. The properties are owned by Jomast, a subcontractor for G4S owned by Stuart Monk, who is paid millions of pounds a year to provide accommodation for thousands of asylum seekers. According to the Sunday Times Rich List, Mr Monk is worth an estimated 175million. Asylum claimants at more than a dozen Middlesbrough addresses said that Jomast's red doors were an easy target for racists - and described incidents including the smearing of dog excrement against doors, and eggs and stones being thrown at windows. A National Front symbol was scratched into the front door of one house another and at another, women cowered inside as thugs hurled racist jibes, calling them 'dirty women' and shouting, 'Get out of our country.' 'They put us behind red doors. When people see them, everyone knows it means asylum seekers. It's like saying we're not the same as you,' one man told The Times. The man, who lives in a terrace house with Liberian James Momoh, 40, claimed they had been targeted on several occasions. He said he was attacked by a man with a ten inch knife as he left his home in August. He tried to kill me, he said. He followed me into the house and I shut the kitchen door to stop him attacking me and rang 999. This red door affects our life. When we open it, we have to watch our back in case we meet someone trying to do something. We have had eggs thrown at the door, they bang on the windows and we get abuse. Stigma: Afghans Ajmal Kadari, left, and Rahumullah Ahmedi, right, said that asylum seekers were recognisable thanks to their red doors Property: Yazid Bahi, from Algeria, is another asylum seeker living in a house with a red door Fears: Manthri Ranasing, from Sri Lanka, said he and his family were racially abused once a week An Afghan migrant said that when he and his housemate repainted their red door white, workers from Jomast said it was 'against company policy' and painted it red again. Manthri Ranasing, a refugee from Sri Lanka, said he and his family had suffered racial abuse on a weekly basis and was also burgled by yobs. The 39-year-old came to Britain with his wife Sagarika, 37, and two children Abhisheler, 11, and seven-year-old Othini, because he fear for his life in his war-torn homeland. He said today: 'I like it here, my wife and I volunteer at the local Methodist group, we feel part of the community but some times we don't feel safe and that is because of the red door on our home. 'We know that round here if you see a red door you know an asylum seeker is living in that house, it has made us a target for people who are racist. 'I have people banging on my door saying we don't belong here three or four times a month, it is horrible and very disrespectful. 'One time we returned home and the laptop had been stolen and the door had been broken. I call the police every time something happens but there is nothing they can do.' He compared the red door policy to the Nazi yellow star, adding: 'I think there should be plans put in place to change the colour of the doors - and in the long term, to address the visa system.' Street: Part of the area of Middlesbrough where a lot of asylum seekers have been sent to live Demolition: Much of the neighbourhood is set to be knocked down and redeveloped in coming years Bawav Ali and Hatam Jwamevi, two young Iranians who fled on foot to the UK, now live with six other men in a small Middlesbrough home. Mr Ali, 24, said: 'I feel that living behind a red door will make us unsafe, we are worried about what will happen as a lot of people do not like that we are from another country. 'It would make us feel a lot safer if our door was changed as it would not make us stand out as much.' He added: 'We are living in fear in our homes that we are going to be attacked, but that is still 200 times better than being in Iran.' Anger: Former MP Ian Swales compared the policy to the yellow stars worn by Jews in Nazi Germany Mr Jwamevi, 18, added: 'Everyone around here knows that if you have a red door you are an asylum seeker. I am worried people will shout words at us, call us names or get more violent.' Indian DJ Jagjeet Singh, 31, who has lived for four years in a semi-derelict street with his wife and four children for four years, said he would change the colour of the door if he was allowed to by the landlord. 'Some people bang on the door, the windows, it's not good,' he said. 'I hate [it], but what can I do?' A few asylum seekers insisted they had not had problems with their neighbours despite living in houses which have the distinctive red doors. Afghan Ajmal Kadari, 37, said: 'I like it here. I think they are wonderful people.' Several neighbours expressed disgust at the way the asylum seekers had been targeted by yobs because of their red doors. Local resident Joan Wilson, 85, said: 'To put a marker on them like red doors is just wrong, I have lived on a street with many aslyum seekers who come and go but I can say they are the most welcoming and friendly people I have ever met.' And Kenny Slater, 65, said he had seen thugs shouting, 'Get back to where you came from,' to refugees who could be identified by their housing. But one neighbour said that there was no deliberate policy to stigmatise asylum seekers, claiming the landlords simply 'bought a whole load of paint', and added that local youths did not just torment refugees. Mr Brokenshire, the immigration minister, said that he was deeply concerned by the findings and announced an urgent audit of asylum-seeker housing in the North-East. He added: 'I expect the highest standards from our contractors. If we find any evidence of discrimination against asylum seekers it will be dealt with immediately as any such behaviour will not be tolerated.' Speaking in the House of Commons this afternoon, the minister said: 'I have spoken to the CEO of G4S this morning and he has assured me neither they nor Jomast have a policy which states asylum seeker property should be identified in this way. 'Jomast does accept the company uses red paint across its portfolio of properties.' During the ensuing debate, Mr Carmichael pointed out that G4S had known about the red doors for four years without taking action because they 'had received no complaints'. The Liberal Democrat MP added: 'Yet again G4S have come to public attention for all the wrong reasons and yet again they have been found wanting.' Mr McDonald, who represents the local area, said it would be 'simply not acceptable' for the contractors to take up to three months to repaint the doors, as has been suggested. Controversy: Contractor G4S has promised to repaint the doors of asylum seekers' homes (file photo) A G4S director said last week that fewer than 20 per cent of Jomast's properties were used for asylum housing. A company source said that such houses had front doors of many colours. However, of 168 Jomast houses identified by The Times in two of Middlesbrough's poorest districts, 155 had red front doors. When reporters spoke to people living at 66 of the red-door properties, it emerged that 62 were home to asylum seekers. Of the four non-asylum properties, two housed former asylum seekers and two were home to British citizens. Newcastle City Council is today checking all the Jomast properties in the city which house asylum seekers to see whether they have the same red doors as in Middlesbrough. CHEQUERED PAST OF GIANT OUTSOURCING FIRM G4S G4S is one of Britain's biggest outsourcing firms, holding a large number of multi-million-pound Government contracts to provide security and other services. However, the company has become embroiled in multiple controversies over the past few years even before the latest row over asylum seekers living in houses with red doors. In 2012, G4S was forced to admit that it was unable to fulfil its contract to provide security at the London Olympics, with 3,500 troops having to be called in at the last minute to cover the shortfall. The next year, an inquest jury found that Angolan deportee Jimmy Mubenga was unlawfully killed after he died while being transported home by G4S guards on a British Airways flight in October 2010. The three guards were acquitted of manslaughter. The company was also criticised in 2014 after it emerged that it had used residents of immigration detention centres as cheap labour, paying them just 1 an hour to work as cleaners. And last week three G4S employees were allegedly caught on camera abusing inmates of a young offenders' institute in Kent. Advertisement Jomast and G4S, which has a contractual duty to 'recognise that the safety and security of [asylum seekers] must not be jeopardised', have consistently denied that most asylum claimants in Middlesbrough are in properties with red doors. A spokesman for G4S said it was 'grotesque' to equate the colours of certain exterior doors with the suggestion of enforced segregation or apartheid. He said: 'There is categorically no policy for G4S to house asylum seekers specially in houses painted with red front doors. 'Our subcontractor Jomast has no policy to paint asylum seeker doors a particular colour, although they do accept that the majority of their doors, for both private and asylum accommodation, are painted red. 'Although we have received no complaints or requests on this issue from asylum seekers we house, in light of the concerns raised Jomast has agreed to address the issue by repainting front doors in the area so that there is no predominant colour. 'Our asylum accommodation is inspected frequently by the Home Office and has been found to meet the required standards.' Local resident Suzanne Fletcher said that she had repeatedly tried to raise the issue over the past four years but had been unable to persuade the contractors to change their policy. She told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'In September 2012 we asked G4S if they would do something about the red doors and they replied that they had no intention of doing anything about it.' Ms Fletcher said the asylum seekers had been 'so worried that it marked them out' for attacks. 'The police obviously have done everything that they can do but because asylum seekers are so vulnerable, they are frightened of jeopardising their case, things haven't always been reported.' After the news of the asylum seekers' red doors came to light today, campaigners were quick to condemn the policy. Labour MP Chuka Umunna said: 'If, following the Home Office audit, these claims are proven, this story is a scar on our country.' Steve Symonds of Amnesty International UK added: 'The fact that asylum seekers can be identified by the colour of their front doors further stigmatises people who are already marginalised, and for many it could have echoes of the persecution they have fled.' Lindsay Cross, who runs a refugee charity in the North-East, said she was 'shocked that it didn't occur to anyone that it was a bad idea'. The asylum seekers are not allowed to work while they wait to find out whether they will be able to stay in Britain, but are given housing, provided by private firms but funded by the Government, and an allowance of 37 a week. No matter where they enter the UK, they are distributed around the country to ensure that no one area Super-casinos, golf clubs... and asylum seekers: The 235million property empire of tycoon whose firm houses would-be refugees Boss: The houses are owned by Jomast, a company controlled by property tycoon Stuart Monk, pictured Property tycoon Stuart Monk has become one of the wealthiest people in the North-East of England by building up a 235million housing empire over more than four decades. He founded his company Jomast, wholly owned by himself and his family, in 1971 when he was barely out of school and the firm now makes millions of pounds in profit for the Monks every year. But the businessman has not escaped controversy - he has been accused of profiting from the poorest members of society by snapping up State funding. In addition, he has been involved in a number of major projects which have not come to fruition, including a super-casino and the restoration of a historic theatre. He today insisted that he had not built his business on the backs of the poor, telling Sky News: 'We think this has been blown out of all proportion. 'I have been in business for 45 years doing a very good job - we employ a lot of people, the profits we have made have not been from asylum seekers.' Mr Monk, 69, lives in a luxurious manor house on the edge of the North York Moors - a far cry from the run-down streets where hundreds of asylum seekers are housed in his properties. The property, which dates back hundreds of years, boasts extensive landscape gardens and was described in a book of 1808 as 'a neat and desirable country residence for a genteel family'. He shares the house with his wife Jennifer, 63, who is the only other director of Jomast Limited. The couple are believed to have two adult children, Stephen and Jane, who both work for Mr Monk's firm as well as holding sizeable shares in the company. Contrast: Mr Monk lives in this manor house on the edge of the North York Moors with his family Project: Mr Monk inside the Globe Theatre in Stockton, one of several plans he has been involved in which have not come to fruition The family's wealth is estimated at 175million, putting them at number 11 in the latest Sunday Times Rich List for the North-East. Jomast, which owns 235million of assets and made a 9million profit in the latest financial year, is spearheading efforts to regenerate the rundown Gresham area of Middlesbrough. But while local residents wait for the plans for come to fruition, dozens of houses have been given over to asylum seekers waiting to see whether or not they will be allowed to stay in Britain. Mr Monk's company was contracted by G4S to provide accommodation for every asylum seeker in the North-East. It is not known exactly how much Jomast is making from its asylum seeker tenants, but if the company is paid the same as the equivalent landlords in other parts of Britain it is likely to be making at least 8million a year. Despite the profits made by the firm from asylum seekers, the company prefers to advertise its portfolio of luxury properties such as the Wynyard Golf Club in County Durham and the slick 100million Hartlepool Bay development. Other high-profile projects launched - but never completed - by Jomast include the construction of Middlesbrough's first super-casino. Property: Colin Montgomerie playing at the Wynyard Golf Club in County Durham, owned by Jomast The company was given the licence to build the 32million complex four years ago, but last year the city's mayor admitted that the completion of the casino, designed to attract jobs and tourism, was 'a bit unlikely'. Another Jomast project currently on pause is the refurbishment of the historic, art deco Globe Theatre in Stockton, which has already had 400,000 of Lottery money spent on it but now seems to have been delayed indefinitely. The GMB trade union recently named Mr Monk as one of several multi-millionaire landlord to make thousands from taxpayer-funded housing benefit. Local authority figures revealed that he raked in 210,000 a year from tenants who had to have their rent subsidised by the State. Jomast is accused of no wrongdoing over the asylum seeker furore, or any of its other projects. In a statement issued today through a Newcastle-based PR agency, Mr Monk said: 'Our accommodation is inspected frequently by the Home Office and has been found to meet or exceed the required standards. 'As many landlords will attest, paint is bought in bulk for use across all properties. It is ludicrous to suggest that this constitutes any form of discrimination, and offensive to make comparisons to a policy of apartheid in Nazi Germany. Former minister says the case should be A father accused of raping his daughter Poppi Worthington before she died may pose a risk to other children while he is 'still walking free', his local MP told the Commons today. John Woodcock also demanded police re-open an investigation into whether Paul Worthington, 48, caused the toddler's death to 'salvage some prospect of justice' for Poppi. Yesterday High Court judge Justice Peter Jackson ruled that Worthington probably sexually assaulted his 13-month-old daughter in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, shortly before she died in 2012. Mr Woodcock asked the Home Office to pursue the case and asked ministers what they would do to keep children safe in his constituency 'given Paul Worthington is still walking free'. Warning: Labour MP John Woodcock today, left, asked what would be done to protect children from John Worthington, right, who is accused of abusing his daughter Poppi before she died Tragedy: Poppi died after she was found with leg and internal injuries. The local MP called the police failures 'sickening' The Labour MP urged ministers to order a thorough independent investigation, saying Poppi's case was as serious as the deaths of Peter Connelly, known as Baby P, and Victoria Climbie. He told Home Office Minister Karen Bradley that it was the only way to show the Government 'values Poppi's life as greatly'. The house in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria where 13 month old Poppi Worthington was found 'lifeless' Mr Woodcock appeared emotional as he described how the child went to bed in December 2012 'perfectly healthy' and was 'brought down stairs by her father lifeless with troubling injuries'. He said: 'Justice Jackson was clear that Paul Worthington raped that child and she died soon afterwards'. Mr Woodcock outlined his questions for an inquiry and the continuation of the police investigation involving a new force. He said: 'And what will the Government do to ensure the safety of the Worthington children and all of the children in the community in Barrow, given that Paul Worthington is still walking free?' MPs today described her death as a 'depressingly familiar catalogue of failure and cover-up'. Police failed to investigate until eight months later - despite medical experts Poppi had injuries consistent with a sex attack - and her father is set to escape prosecution. In a series of failures after the toddler died police lost evidence like her nappy and bedding and last week the Crown Prosecution Service said they could not bring criminal charges. Opening her reply to an urgent question on the case, Ms Bradley said the IPCC has investigated Cumbria Police's handling of the original investigation. She said: 'The IPCC report is completed but cannot be released yet so as not to prejudice the second inquest.' Sir Simon Hughes has called for the criminal investigation into the death of Poppi Worthington to be reopened Ms Bradley added: 'This Government is committed to tackling child sexual abuse but I know that's of little consolation to the family of Poppi Worthington.' Former shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper also insisted there is no need to wait for the outcome of the second inquest into her death. Home Office minister Karen Bradley said she could not interfere in Poppi's case She told the minister: 'Can I urge you to keep pursuing this case yourself and not to be deterred by the process that is taking place, and also particularly to clarify what is the situation about the police investigation now because surely we don't need to wait for the inquest for police investigation to be continuing? 'The (Independent Police Complaints Commission) is, I understand it, just verifying whether the police previously did the right job or not. 'What we need is a police investigation now into this individual case and could that be done by an alternative police force?' A former justice minister has called for the criminal investigation into the father of Poppi Worthington to be reopened. A High Court judge ruled that 48-year-old Paul Worthington sexually assaulted the 13-month-old shortly before her tragic death in 2012. But his decision was given in a family court, which has a lower standard of proof than a criminal case, after a bungled police investigation led to no criminal charges being brought. Sir Simon Hughes, who was the Liberal Democrat Justice Minister under the coalition government, today said the 'very fact' the judge had made the findings public 'must give cause for the authorities who deal with criminal matters to look again at the evidence'. Sir Simon said 'justice demands' that the original decisions in the criminal investigation are reviewed and called for the Crown Prosecution Service to reopen the case. He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'I'm sure that they will review the case, I'm sure that that is the right thing that should happen. THE 12 BASIC ERRORS IN THE INITIAL POLICE INVESTIGATION 1) Items at the hospital Poppi was taken to were not preserved for forensic analysis 2) Items at the family home were not preserved for forensic analysis 3) The scene at the family home was not secured, with Poppi's last nappy being lost despite the presence of police officers 4) The detective inspector and another officer not visiting the home. According to national protocol, a senior officer should immediately attend the home to take charge of the investigation and ensure that evidence is intelligently preserved 5) No reconstruction with the parents at home so that their accounts could be understood and investigations focused 6) No forensic medical examination at the time of death. Swabs were not taken until post-mortem despite delays meaning forensic analysis can be prejudiced 7) No engagement of a paediatrician with specialist knowledge of investigating sexual abuse for there to be a physical examination of the child, a viewing of the home and a report for the pathologist 8) Dr Armour's initial views were not clearly passed on to the local authority for safeguarding purposes 9) The parents were not formally interviewed until August 2013 10) Neither parent's mobile telephone or Facebook accounts were analysed 11) Samples were not sent for analysis until after receipt of Dr Armour's full report 12) No statements taken from any witnesses (paramedics, nurses, doctors, family members) until September 2013. Advertisement 'If the justice system is about not just justice for the deceased but to make sure that the welfare of the children who are still alive is best looked after, then it must be in the interests of justice that there is a review now as to whether there was any criminal liability for anything that led to the death of this poor little child.' Poppi collapsed with serious injuries at her home in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, in December 2012 and was rushed to hospital where she was pronounced dead. Cumbria Police conducted no 'real' investigation for nine months, the family court judge found, as senior detectives thought a pathologist 'may have jumped to conclusions' in her belief the child had been a victim of abuse. The toddler was buried in February 2013, precluding a further post-mortem examination, after her body was released by the local coroner. There is now said to be an 'absence of evidence' to find out how Poppi died, or definitively prove if or how she was injured. Despite intense anger over their handling of the case, Cumbria Police refused to answer questions on Poppi Worthington yesterday. Instead, they released a statement that they could not comment on the case until an official Independent Police Complaints Commission report is released. But the IPCC said it would not release its report until all the legal proceedings have finished a process which could take up to a year. The force referred itself to the IPCC in the summer of 2014 and three officers Detective Chief Inspector Mike Forrester, Detective Inspector Amanda Sadler and one other were the subject of an investigation. DCI Forrester was suspended and subsequently retired on a pension of up to 53,000-a-year at the age of 48. DI Sadler and the other officer are still working for Cumbria Police. In yet another understatement, the force said one of the active officers will be subject to 'performance proceedings' that will take place in secret. A spokesman said the officer's failings would not be dealt with at a public misconduct hearing because they were 'to do with poor job performance'. Cumbria's Police and Crime Commissioner Richard Rhodes said he too could not comment. Mike Forrester (left), who was involved in the investigation, has since retired with a 53,000 pension. Amanda Sadler (right) is still on the force He refused to answer questions on the case and issued a statement saying: 'It is not appropriate for me to make further comment at this time whilst we are waiting for the outcome of the coroner's inquest, IPCC investigation and police misconduct hearings. 'Once these legal and statutory proceedings have concluded I will be holding the Chief Constable to account over this very serious matter.' Mr Worthington was arrested in August 2013 and questioned on suspicion of sexual assault but was not charged with any offence. He strenuously denies any wrongdoing. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has previously said it conducted 'a thorough review of the evidence' but decided it was insufficient to provide a realistic prospect of conviction. Advertisement Drivers faced tricky journeys today as freezing Britain was hit by fog and ice with temperatures down to almost -12C for the second day in a row. The Met Office has issued yellow be aware severe weather warnings for ice in Scotland and fog in the West Midlands as the landscape turned frosty. Dense freezing fog is expected to linger parts of England, with scattered light wintry showers forecast across the North and East later on. Swathes of the country shivered overnight as a widespread frost took hold and the mercury dipped to -11.6C in the Scottish Highlands. And forecasters said the Berkshire village of Upper Lambourn had the coldest night in England, where a low of -8.4C was recorded. Scroll down for video Stunning: A frosty start to the day at Daniel's Well on the River Avon in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, as the cold weather continues in Britain On the lookout: Two deer look across the frosty bracken at Richmond Park in South-West London this morning What a start: The sunrise is seen from Crook Peak near Weston-super-Mare in Somerset on a cold and frosty morning Frozen landscape: Will Flanagan, 36, explores the stunning icicles at Kinder Downfall near Hayfield in the Derbyshire Peak District today Eeries: Snow and mist in fields near Stirling on another cold day in Britain, although temperatures are expected to rise later this week Sub zero: Frosted over fields around Glastonbury Tor in Somerset as a risk of fog affecting the morning rush hour in Britain Good view for sheep: The sunrise as seen from Crook Peak in Somerset on another cold and frosty morning for Britain Peeping through: The shines through Knowlton Church in Dorset as it rises this morning after parts of the country shivered overnight Met Office forecaster Charlie Powell said: There are patches of quite dense freezing fog that can be quite nasty. And the ice in Scotland could be problematic. It will be a pretty wintry start for most. One area suffering bad driving conditions was Oxfordshire, where police reported blankets of fog around junction nine of the M40 at Wendlebury. In the same county at Nuneham Courtenay fire crews had to free a woman trapped after a two-vehicle smash in icy conditions on the B4015. But the smash caused long delays on the nearby A329. Another accident involving a motorbike was reported in Kidlington between the A4260 and A44. An accident in Cardiff left a car on its side with the roof cut off, while there were five severe delays on the motorways caused by accidents at 9am today. Going for a stroll; Canadian Geese navigate the frozen water at Epping Forest in North-East London as temperatures fell below freezing Impressive sight: Frost lies on the ground on the hillside surrounding Corfe Castle in Dorset today as Britain has another icy start Cracking the ice: A heron stands next to a frozen stream at Bushy Park in Richmond upon Thames, South-West London Waves: Surfers and dog walkers were the only people brave enough to visit the beach today at Sandsend in Whitby, North Yorkshire Morning walk: Commuters make their way across London Bridge this morning with Tower Bridge on the left and The Shard on the right Slippery surface: A cyclist takes care while making their way along a road at Richmond Park in South-West London this morning These were found on the M4 in Bristol, M6 in Warwickshire, M25 in Kent and Hertfordshire and M60 in Greater Manchester. On the railways, broken down trains were causing problems between Exeter and Exmouth in Devon and Barrow-in-Furness and Carlisle in Cumbria. Have you taken any photos of today's stunning weather? Please email them to: pictures@mailonline.co.uk Advertisement Overhead wire issues suspended Rugby to Northampton services and signalling problems were disrupting trains through Basingstoke and Strood. This week British Gas expects 260,427 calls to report boiler breakdowns, appliance issues and cold weather-related accidents such as burst pipes. The coldest spot in the UK overnight was Kinbrace in Sutherland, where the temperature was recorded as -11.6C at about 8am today. The Highland village had experienced the coldest night of the year so far with temperatures falling to -12.4C in the early hours of yesterday. Chilly: Parts of the St James's Park Lake in London freeze over today as temperatures dip below freezing again in the capital Morning has broken: Deer in the freezing frost at Richmond Park in South-West London today as temperatures struggled to get above zero Road accident: A car lies on its side with the roof cut off this morning after sliding on ice on Thornhill Road, a main route into Cardiff Winter outfits: These women were among the many commuters wrapped up warm as they walked across London Bridge this morning On the water: Ducks on a frozen pond in Appleby-in-Westmorland, Cumbria, which has suffered severe flooding over the past few months Up it comes: The sun rises over these frost-covered farmers' fields this morning at Dunsden in Oxfordshire Palace view: Another view of St James's Park Lake freezing over in London as the temperature in the capital only made it to -2.4C by 8am But residents of Kinbrace - one of Scotlands most frost-prone locations - have seen worse, with temperatures falling to -21.7C in March 2001. A Traffic Scotland spokesman said: A widespread frost is expected across Scotland, leading to icy stretches on untreated surfaces. When skies clear later the South and West are expected to enjoy bright, crisp spells - although temperatures will remain low. A band of rain is expected to arrive from the West tonight with icy winds. Any clear patches risk the return of freezing fog, especially in eastern parts. Towards the end of the week the weather is expected to warm up slightly as less cold air edges in, bringing rain with it. Temperatures could jump to 12C (54F) by Friday in parts of the South West, according to the Met Office. Orange hue: The sun rises over a smallholding with horses today at Emmer Green, a northern suburb of Reading in Berkshire Frozen pitch: Ice blankets Tooting Common in South London this morning as the capital wakes up to sub-zero temperatures White surface: Frost lies on the ground on the hillside surrounding Corfe Castle in Dorset as swathes of the country shivered overnight Red sky in the morning, shepherds' warning: The sun rises over the fields of Dunsden in Oxfordshire this morning Spectacular: Sunrise from Crook Peak in Somerset on a cold and frosty morning, with the temperature dipping down to -5C locally Quite a view: The sun rises over the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol on one of the coldest days of the year so far Chilly: Lea Jones, a nurse from Wolverhampton, tweeted this image of her 'sitting in the car drinking a cup of tea waiting for it to defrost' A spokesman said: After a warm December temperatures are now slightly lower than average, but are expected to increase at the end of the week. Next week looks to be changeable, with showers and winds broken up by dryer and brighter interludes. Some 18 flood alerts and warnings remain in England and Wales, although the most serious severe flood warnings have now been lifted. Freezing conditions at the weekend claimed at least two lives, when two mountaineers fell several hundred feet while climbing near Glencoe in Scotland. Experienced climbers Joe Smith, 23, and Simon Davidson, 34, were caught in a suspected avalanche. On alert: A Met Office weather warning for ice in Scotland and fog in the West Midlands (left) and 18 flood alerts and warnings (right) Feeling blue: These are the observed temperatures at 8am today from the MetDesk Home & Dry app, showing the -12C low in the Highlands Temperatures today: A UK temperature map for this morning shows South West England and the Highlands to be the coldest areas Tomorrow's outlook: It will be another cold start in the early hours of tomorrow, with temperatures set to plunge to -6C in Scotland Caitlin Ruddy, 15, was also killed after she was swept into freezing water from an exposed pier at Cullercoats Bay, near Newcastle. Three teenagers who were with the schoolgirl were also knocked into the sea but managed to escape unhurt. But the wintry weather was welcomed in Scotlands ski resorts, where more than 18,000 skiers took to the slopes last week. And retailers reported a surge in sales of heaters and electric blankets as the cold snap took hold after an unusually warm December. Meanwhile ramblers and photographers enjoyed spectacular icicles formed on waterfalls and gorges by the overnight freeze. And open-air swimmers braved the cold to take the plunge at the Serpentine Lido in Londons Hyde Park. Have you taken any photos of today's stunning weather? Please email them to: pictures@mailonline.co.uk A doctor at a renowned New York hospital threatened to have a female physician fired unless she had sex with him, according to lawsuit charges. Dr David Zagzag, chief of the neuropathology division at NYU Medical Center in Manhattan, New York, became obsessed with Dr Irina Mikolaenko after being appointed her supervisor in 2012, it is claimed. Harvard-educated Mikolaenko, who is married with children, claimed she went along with the demands of her married boss because of 'financial pressures at home'. Dr David Zagzag (right), chief of the neuropathology division at NYU Medical Center in Manhattan, New York, became obsessed with Dr Irina Mikolaenko (left) after being appointed her supervisor in 2012, it is claimed Zagzag, from Rego Park, Queens, allegedly told Mikolaenko how he became sexually aroused even by listening to her voicemails - and that he wore a lab coat to conceal his excitement. According to the New York Post, her lawyers said: 'Defendant Zagzag made it be known to plaintiff that if she did not have sex with (him), she would receive poor reviews and be terminated.' Court papers claim that Zagzag urged Mikolaenko to have sex with him in her office and once lured her to the hospital's lab for sex after technicians had gone home. But by 2014 she had started pushing back, the documents claim A year later, Zagzag is alleged to have walked into her office before blocking the door with a chair and threatening her with a poor performance review. According to the Post, the lawsuit documents claim Zagzag told her: 'If you want to have a good evaluation, we need to have sex so that I can feel better discussing you with the chair.' NYU Medical Center (pictured) confirmed Mikolaenko had been 'terminated' on February 8 last year from NYU's School of Medicine for 'misconduct and inappropriate behavior' She refused and, a week later, lost her job, the court papers claim. Mikolaenko says she suffered panic attacks, emotional distress, depression, paranoia and sleeplessness and is seeking an 'unspecified amount of money', the New York Post reports. NYU confirmed Mikolaenko had been 'terminated' on February 8 last year from NYU's School of Medicine for 'misconduct and inappropriate behavior'. In a statement given to the New York Post, it added: 'We have fully investigated her claims, and have found there to be absolutely no truth or merit to her outlandish allegations. NYU... will vigorously support and defend Dr. Zagzag and the School of Medicine against her manufactured accusations.' Debate first began in 2013 when former PM A Danish town has made it mandatory for pork to always be found on the menu at municipal canteens in the latest round of the country's debate over multiculturalism. The decision has engulfed councillors in Randers, central Denmark in the long-running 'meatball war', which was first ignited in 2013 when the former prime minister criticised nurseries that dropped pork from their menus. Despite a tiny fraction of nurseries not serving pork, anti-immigration groups have used the issue to champion Danish food and culture. It comes just a week after politicians debated whether to seize cash and valuables from refugees to pay for their resettlement. On the menu: Sales of pork products and live pigs in Denmark account for around five percent of the country's exports 'We will ensure that Danish children and youth can have pork in the future,' Randers town councilman Frank Nrgaard told Randers Amtsavis. 'We just want to ensure pork in our institutions for those who want it. This isn't about a general distrust of our institutions' leaders, but more and more places around the country are trying to sneak through [policies that say] there shouldn't be pork served in the institutions,' Nrgaard added. While the council said their aim was not to force anybody to eat anything that 'goes against one's belief or religion, the anti-immigration Danish People's Party (DPP) said it was 'unacceptable to ban Danish food culture'. 'The DPP is working nationally and locally for Danish culture, including Danish food culture, and consequently we also fight against Islamic rules and misguided considerations dictating what Danish children eat,' party spokesman Martin Henriksen wrote on Facebook. By contrast, a former integration minister from the Danish Social Liberal Party, Manu Sareen, accused the Randers politicians of 'wanting to impose a forced ideology... in this case on children.' 'Meatball wars': Randers Town Council has made it mandatory for pork to always be found on the menu at municipal canteens in the latest round of the country's debate over multiculturalism Debate: Former Danish PM Helle Thorning-Schmidt (pictured above in Randers) first ignited the row when she criticised nurseries for dropping pork from their menus in 2013 'It really is incredible what politicians... get involved in,' he wrote on Facebook. A survey run by tabloid Ekstra Bladet found that only 30 out of the country's 1,719 daycare institutions had either stopped serving pork or switched to halal meat, meaning meat that was prepared following Muslim rules. The DPP agreed in November 2013 to abandon a closely-fought mayoral campaign in suburban Copenhagen if the incumbent promised to serve more pork meatballs in public canteens, as well as bring back the town's official Christmas tree. Sales of pork products and live pigs in Denmarl account for around five percent of the country's exports. The legacy of the Iraq war has left Labour with the 'unelectable but unassailable' Jeremy Corbyn, Alastair Campbell warns today. Mr Campbell, one of the architects of Tony Blair's 1997 landslide, said the failure to plan for the succession had led to an 'uninspiring' field to replace Ed Miliband after Labour had slumped to defeat last year. Mr Campbell's intervention comes as Dame Margaret Beckett, who has published a review into why Labour lost, insisted Mr Miliband had been a good leader. Alastair Campbell today admitted the aftermath of Tony Blair's invasion of Iraq had led Labour to elect Jeremy Corbyn to lead the party even though he was 'unelectable'. In her review of Labour's last defeat, Dame Margaret Beckett insisted the party had failed to overcome myths about Labour's economic record Mr Corbyn swept to an unlikely victory in last year's leadership contest but has been embroiled in a series of rows with his party over foreign and defence policy. And writing in The Guardian, Mr Campbell said: 'I know that if Labour becomes an anti-American, anti-Nato, weak on defence, soft on terror, unilaterally disarming party of protest, along the lines that Corbyn appears to want to take it, then David Cameron's successor can expect a long haul in office. 'But, although I can and will defend Tony over Iraq, I also know that we cannot overlook the fact that widespread opposition to the war, and anger about the aftermath, played a big part in Corbyn's rise.' The former spin doctor criticised the 'step by step distancing' of Mr Blair's successors from the 'winning formula' which secured election success thee times. He said: 'Gordon moved a little away from New Labour, and lost. Ed moved much further away, and lost badly. And now we have Corbyn.' Mr Campbell added: 'Somehow we seem to have ended up with a leader who is unelectable but unassailable. 'Unelectable in the eyes of the non-political public, unassailable because he is exactly what those inside the bubble want: something different.' Dame Margaret's report into Labour's defeat acknowledges that Labour was 'badly beaten' in 2015 and faces 'huge challenges' to have a hope of winning in 2020, when the effect of boundary changes, an ageing electorate and the apparent entrenchment of the SNP in many of its former Scottish strongholds will make defeating the Conservatives even more difficult. Today, she told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme Mr Corbyn would need to achieve a second 'unexpected political miracle' to overcome the challenges faced by Labour at the next election. But outlining her review, she said Mr Miliband was a good leader hampered by other factors. Dame Margaret insisted her report had been 'honest' in facing up to why the party suffered a devastating defeat. She said the 'biggest single problem' for the party was its failure to be trusted on the economy, and condemned the 'nonsense' that the economic crash was Labour's fault. Dame Margaret added: 'I mean this is a myth, and we didn't successfully take it on and I think we still have to.' Labour also struggled to put across its pledges on immigration to voters against the 'thuggishness' of the Tory and Ukip strategy, she said. Dame Margaret said Labour had the 'right' policy but would have to 'feel our way' to an approach voters 'understand'. She said: 'The simple thuggishness of the Ukip and Conservative approach is easier to understand and we didn't overcome those communication difficulties.' Dame Margaret said Labour was 'badly beaten' under Ed MIliband, left at his resignation speech, in 2015. Mr Campbell has said decisions by Mr Blair, right, led to the election of Mr Corbyn in his place The report identified four explanations for the 2015 defeat consistently heard on the doorstep and from pollsters: Failure to 'shake off the myth' that Labour was responsible for the financial crash and to rebuild trust on the economy; Inability to convince voters on welfare and immigration; Perceptions that Mr Miliband was not as strong a leader as Mr Cameron; Fears that a minority Labour government would be propped up by the SNP. Although the report said it was 'unclear' whether fear of the SNP had swayed many votes, it said that 'scaremongering' by Conservatives - who made it a big feature of their campaign during the final weeks - may have reinforced the views of those who had already decided not to vote Labour. However, the document warned Labour's leadership to be cautious about 'plausible' but possibly unsubstantiated theories about the party's defeat. Although critics claimed that Mr Miliband had 'the wrong policies' and was 'too left-wing' and was out of tune with voters on deficit reduction, the report argued that in fact individual policies - like the energy price freeze and mansion tax - were popular and that the majority of people agreed that Conservative cuts were going too far. Far from seeing Labour as too anti-business, polls suggested that voters wanted them to be tougher on big business, said the report. Financial Secretary to the Treasury David Gauke said: 'Ed Miliband was heckled by voters when he claimed at the general election that Labour didn't spend too much taxpayers' money and had nothing to do with the financial crisis. 'Yet today Margaret Beckett, asked by Labour to learn the lessons of their defeat, is insisting it is a 'myth' that they borrowed and spent too much. 'At the same time, she is claiming Labour had the right policies on immigration and Ed Miliband was a brilliant leader. It is the mysterious low-pitched rumbling noise which has baffled a city for decades, keeping people awake at night with no definite explanation of what might cause it. Now the so-called Bristol Hum has apparently been captured on camera by one homeowner, who recorded the sound from his attic. Steve Burden, 36, who lives in Yate, Gloucestershire - around 12 miles from the centre of Bristol - said he had been hearing strange noises outside his home, and said the humming he recorded in his loft lasted for around 20 minutes. Steve Burden, 36, who lives in Yate, Gloucestershire, may have recorded the mysterious 'Bristol Hum' on an eerie video filmed in his attic Mr Burden said he had been hearing strange noises outside his home, and that it was 'freaking him out' In the eerie video, the sound of the wind and birds singing can be heard, with a low-pitched humming clearly audible behind them. However, when he shuts the window the contrasting silence is unnerving. 'I have been hearing some strange noises outside now for a bit,' the father-of-one said on the video. 'It has been happening over kind of ten minutes. 'I don't know what it is but there has been some strange cloud formations. 'It's freaking me out. I have heard about these noises in other places, but I never thought I would hear it in Bristol. I don't know what it is.' Reports of the so-called Bristol Hum have resurfaced every few years since the 1970s but no-one has been able to explain what causes it. A variety of different theories have emerged which all have common factors - although strangely, not everyone can hear it. Reports of the so-called Bristol Hum, which can apparently be heard in and around the city (pictured) have resurfaced every few years since the 1970s but no-one has been able to explain what causes it The humming is only audible indoors, it is a low, rumbling noise which is louder at night and is more common in more rural areas. The debate surrounding the hum was reignited after Mr Burden, who runs a flooring company from his loft, posted his footage online. 'I had no idea what it was or where it was coming from,' he said. 'There is a construction site nearby and I know there is some work going on there, but it really didn't sound like that.' Mr Burden said the sound lasted for around 20 minutes - and he hasn't heard it since. Hums have also been reported in Hythe, Hampshire, where 30 people complained to their council, and in Leeds, Manchester and Largs, Scotland. It has been estimated that where town hums are reported, only one in 50 people can hear them. Of the 105,000 people who have watched the latest video of the Bristol hum, not one said they could not hear anything on the recording. Wind turbines, power lines and even UFOs have been blamed for the noises, but last year French scientists said they had finally solved the mystery behind the hums. Fabrice Ardhuin of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique said the sound was actually caused by the pressure of waves vibrating on the ocean floor. He said they generated seismic waves which cause the Earth to oscillate and produce sounds which can last from between 13 to 300 seconds. Advertisement Google is offering a new virtual reality tour of Buckingham Palace so you can be guided around the Queen's residence from the comfort of your home. The Royal Collection Trust, the charity which manages the historic building, has teamed up with Google Expeditions to take users on a free virtual field trip of the palace from anywhere in the world, simply by using their smart phone, from today. And while the Queen hasnt had the chance to try out the experience for herself as she is still in residence at Sandringham, it is understood that she is aware of the project and has given it her seal of approval. Scroll down for video To the left of the room's fireplace, and what looks like a cabinet, is a secret door which leads to the Queen's private apartments. Above, Curator of Paintings for the palace Anna Reynolds opens the door Users can now take a free virtual field trip of Buckingham Palace from anywhere in the world, simply by using their smartphone The tour takes people on a trip through five of the 19 State Rooms the palace has to offer, including The Picture Gallery, above The Buckingham Palace Expedition contains material shot at the residence just last week, using 16 Google jump cameras on a circular tripod, each taking a different picture shot at the same time. These have been knitted together to make one seamless piece of panoramic footage which will allow anyone viewing it to experience the scene in every direction, as if they were in the room themselves. The high resolution technology is now so sophisticated that it is impossible to see the borders where the pictures are spliced together, offering viewers an uncannily realistic experience. Users will be taken on a guided tour of seven State Rooms, starting with the Grand Entrance where VIP visitors and carriages are greeted and boasts 104 pillars each hewn from a single block of marble excavated in Tuscany up the John-Nash Grand staircase and through to the Green Drawing Room, where a harpist entertained guests at William and Kates 2011 wedding. The tour then moves through to the Throne Room, the Picture Gallery and then the Ballroom where state banquets are held before finally concluding in The White Drawing Room, where a secret door leads to the Queens private apartments. Several segments are guided by members of palace staff Tony Johnstone-Burt, the Queens Master of the Household, and Curator of Paintings, Anna Reynolds. Users can learn both about the history of the palace, which began life as a smaller private home in the 18th Century, and how the State Rooms are used today by the Queen for official events. The Google Expeditions project already includes more than 150 trips to extraordinary locations around the world such as the Great Barrier Reef, Mount Fuji and the Borneo rainforest to Mars and the moon. But Buckingham Palace was chosen after children from the UK, Ghana, Canada and the US, where the Expeditions programme was road tested last year, were asked where they most wanted to look around. According to Googles Programme Manager, Jennifer Holland, the Queens official residence was by far and away the most requested location, as well as The White House and Space. Buckingham Palace was the number one spot that kids around the world wanted to see, she said. The palace is not just an historic residence, there is something quite mystical and majestic about it as the Queen lives there and it is a working royal residence. It is of endless fascination. Users can learn both about the history of the palace and are given a 360 view of State Room, The Green Room is pictured The tour includes a walk-through The White Drawing Room, above, where a secret door leads to the Queens private apartments The 360 Buckingham Palace experience can be viewed on the YouTube channel using a tablet or smart phone. Viewers simply need to move their device to watch the camera swing round the room, as if they were standing in it themselves. Users can also pop their smart phone in a Google Cardboard viewer, which has two plastic lenses that turns the footage into a complete virtual reality experience. These viewers were unveiled by the company last year costing less than 10. There is also a teacher-led, interactive version of the experience which is available to schools signed up to Google Expeditions Pioneer Programme. Further details of this are available at www.google.com/edu/expeditions/ Jemima Rellie, Director of Content and Audiences at the Royal Collection, said: Virtual reality technology is a game changer. It is the most immersive experience you can get without being at the palace. It wont replace visiting Buckingham Palace but is the next best thing if you cant go there. She added: It has all happened very quickly but has come together very well. The Queen is very much aware of the initiative. Ms Rellie said she didnt believe the virtual reality tour would affect visitor numbers at the palace, which opens each summer to the public when the Queen is in Scotland to raise funds for its upkeep. Around 500,000 people tour the residence each year. I think this experience will be a wonderful experience for those with an interest in the palace who might never be able to visit and encourage those who can to see it in person, she explained. She added: For schoolchildren, Buckingham Palace is one of the most iconic, magical buildings in the world. Were terrifically excited that, thanks to the VR potential of Google Expedition, children, their teachers and families can visit the palace wherever they live. Asked why they were investing so much in a free app, Googles Jennifer Holland added: We feel we have a moral obligation to offer these engaging and immersive experiences. The reaction we have already experienced for students who have used this technology to actually go to The Great Wall of China or go inside the body to see how blood flows has been immensely rewarding. It does seem to help them retain the information better. The chance to see inside the Queens own residence is hugely exciting. Marble Hall: The entrance with 104 pillars carved from one block of marble that was transported along the Thames Buckingham Palace wasn't always a palace and was a much smaller house called Buckingham Hall, which belonged to the Duke of Buckingham. It was bought by George III, whose son George IV commissioned architect John Nash to develop the rooms in the 1820s. Several segments are guided by members of palace staff including Tony Johnstone-Burt, the Queens Master of the Household (pictured), who begins the tour in the Marble Hall, above In the Marble Hall he was the floor lowered so the ceilings appeared higher and he created a magnificent staircase, which leads to the state rooms in the palace. The Marble Hall originally had 104 marble pillars, which were created from one block of marble. The block was transported along the Thames before it was taken to the palace by 17 horses. Grand Staircase: Impressive gold spiral staircase that is the most expensive feature in the entire Palace The room boasts the most expensive thing in the palace - the balustrade, which makes up the banister. The banister is made up of gilt bronze and is covered in gold. As people make their way up to the stairs from the Marble Hall it creates a magnificent feeling. The tour then moves through to the Grand Staircase, leads the way to the State Rooms, and boasts one of the palace's most expensive features, a banister made up of gilt bronze and covered in gold The Green Drawing Room: So-called because the walls have been hung with green silk, replaced every 30 years It's easy to understand why this room is called the Green Room. The walls have been hung with green silk, which is replaced every 30 years, and the room is decorated with green upholstery and ornaments. To the right of the door leading to the Throne Room hangs a picture of George III's three daughter who lived in the palace before it was a palace. The room was where a harpist entertained guests at William and Kates 2011 wedding. Users can also look around The Green Drawing Room which was originally the Duchess of Buckingham's Saloon before the home was made into a palace The room, which is decorated in green silk, was where a harpist entertained guests at William and Kates 2011 wedding. The silk is replaced every 30 years Throne Room: Queen Victoria's ballroom but now used for investitures and ceremonial receptions of dignitaries In the early years of the reign of Queen Victoria, it was also used by Her Majesty as a ballroom. The Queen was very fond of music and dancing, and before the death of Prince Albert in 1861, numerous concerts and balls were held at Buckingham Palace. Staff show users around the Throne Room, which was designed for investitures and ceremonial receptions of dignitaries. Her Majesty's throne is on the left and Duke of Edinburgh's throne is on the right The room was designed by a theatre designer and swags of curtains in the room look like they should be closed on stage Her Majesty's throne is on the left and the Duke of Edinburgh's throne is on the right. The room was designed by a theatre designer and swags of curtains in the room look like they should be closed on stage. Picture Gallery: Displays some of the greatest paintings in the Royal Collection including masterpieces by Canaletto The 47-metre room was designed as a setting for the George IV's magnificent picture collection. The theme of painting is echoed in the Picture Gallerys four marble chimney pieces. Both Dutch and Italian artists have created the majority of the paintings in the room, and one includes the View of Venice by Giovanni Antonio Canal, known as Canaletto. As part of the 360 Buckingham Palace experience, users see the 47-metre Picture Gallery, which was designed as a setting for the George IV's magnificent picture collection Today the gallery is used as setting for receptions hosted by The Queen and members of the Royal Family to recognise achievement in a particular walk of life or sector in the community The Picture Gallery has always served as one of the Palaces principal rooms for official entertaining. Today it is the setting for receptions hosted by The Queen and members of the Royal Family to recognise achievement in a particular walk of life or sector in the community. Ballroom: The hub for State Banquets and functions that was first opened to celebrate the end of the Crimean War At 36.6m long, 18m wide and 13.5m high, the Ballroom is the largest multi-purpose room in Buckingham Palace. It was opened in 1856 with a ball to celebrate the end of the Crimean War. One of the most extravagant rooms shown as part of the tour is the Ballroom, which was opened in 1856 with a ball to celebrate the end of the Crimean War The room is used for state visits and state banquets, where guests are served a four course meal and five types of wine before they are entertained by 12 pipers The Ballroom is the centre piece of a state visit or state banquet. The Queen, who sits at the top table, the event for 171 guests and the tables are covered in 5,500 pieces of silver and 1,000 Georgian glasses. Guests are served a four course meal and five types of wine before they are entertained by 12 pipers for the finale. White Drawing Room: The extravagant room with the Queen's secret door that leads to her private apartments The White Drawing is one of the most extravagant out of the 19 state rooms. The room, used for receiving guests, is decorated with yellow furniture and contains a gold piano bought by Queen Victoria, who played it with her husband. Other features include a desk from the 18th century and a secret door which leads to the Queen's private apartments. The White Drawing room is used for receiving guests, is decorated with yellow furniture and boasts huge chandeliers Advertisement The former fiancee of a woman who travelled the world and wrote a book after he jilted her at the altar is engaged again. Heartbroken Katy Colins quit her job, sold her house and her car and booked a one-way ticket to south-east Asia after her 20,000 wedding to Thom Soutter was called off at the last minute. But it emerged today that Mr Soutter, 30, now has plans to tie the knot with his new love, Alyson Mobey, 29. Tom Soutter (left) broke off his engagement to Katy Colins (right) shortly before their planned wedding, inspiring her to travel and write a book. It has now emerged he is engaged again to Alyson Mobey (left) Former Manchester Airport public relations worker Katy told earlier this week how the heartbreak of her split from Mr Soutter inspired her to write the book, The Lonely Hearts Travel Club. The 30-year-old said: 'His decision, although devastating at the time, was the wake-up call I needed. I had a good job, a lovely house and lived a comfortable lifestyle but it lacked adventure. 'That is something I hoped travelling half-way around the world on my own would give me, and luckily it paid off.' Mr Soutter, a legal worker in the City of London, said he wished his former fiancee well with her writing career. He told The Sun: 'I am very much looking forward to marrying Alyson.... it's a pity that a failed relationship from four years ago has been made so public now.' He insisted he gave Katy an 'amicable financial settlement' and they split up because they were both unhappy. The paper reported that he and Katy split after he admitted having an affair, breaking the news to her when she returned from a trip to Uganda. Katy said the heartbreak of the suddenly-ended engagement inspired the travelling and writing which led to her new book deal Despite having a good job and a home, Katy set off after the split and backpacked around south-east Asia and India Since she split from her former fiancee, Katy has trekked in the Himalayas (left) and travelled around South America (right) The couple met at Salford university before their engagement was called off weeks before the 20,000 planned ceremony and after guests had already told them they were coming. Mr Soutter had even told his friends and family on Twitter that he was 'celebrating 8 years with the soon to be Mrs Soutter'. But the relationship fell apart and he moved out soon after she returned from Africa and reportedly ended his affair soon after. It is understood he bought her out of her share of their home in Stockport, Greater Manchester and she set off to backpack around the world with a broken heart. Her heartbreak has since turned to the joy as she started writing a popular blog which she has led to her securing a three-book deal with Carina UK, part of world-renowned publisher Harper Collins. Katy says that, despite her initial heartbreak, she is now glad her planned wedding fell apart, as she has had so many experiences since Her new book is the first of three she has been signed up for and has been described as 'Bridget Jones goes backpacking' The 30-year-old, pictured at Machu Picchu in Peru, is looking forward to a career in writing after quitting her PR role when she left the UK Katy, from Formby, Merseyside, said: 'Ironically, an editor called me on what would have been our third wedding anniversary. It is poignant to think how far I'd come through hard work, being brave and wanting to live the biggest life I could.' Despite having her wedding dress still hanging, unused, in a wardrobe, she says Mr Soutter did her the biggest favour he could have by calling off the wedding, as she has since had so many great experiences. She added: 'I have climbed an active volcano in Chile, slept in a Thai jungle, got covered in Holi powder in India, skydived in France and even taken a flight past Mount Everest.' Mr Soutter went to work at a law firm in the Middle East after their break, where is believed to have met his new fiancee. The couple have since moved back to London. The Lonely Hearts Travel Club is available for pre-order now. It is released digitally on January 21. Katy, pictured in Thailand, says she has enjoyed experiences the like of which she would not have known had she not split up Her former fiance says he wishes her well with her writing career but would rather the details of their split had not been made public Julio Pino (pictured) is being investigated by the FBI over alleged links to ISIS, it has emerged A university professor in Ohio is being investigated by the FBI over alleged links to ISIS, it has emerged. Julio Pino, a history academic at Kent State University, is being probed by a joint terrorism task force over fears he could be recruiting students to the terror group. The associate professor, who has worked at Kent State for 24 years, insists he does not support ISIS and has not discussed the extremists during university lectures. According to the New York Daily News, the FBI has confirmed an investigation is underway - though Pino says neither the FBI nor the university had contacted him over the inquiry. KentWired reports that the investigation has already lasted 18 months while the FBI insists there is 'no direct threat to the university'. A number of faculty members and more than 20 of the professor's pupils have been interviewed as part of the investigation over his alleged involvement with ISIS. He told KentWired: 'From a legal standpoint, Im not aware that theyre going after me or charging me with anything. Im not aware of any kind of criminal investigation or charges or anything of that sort. 'I dont advocate that anyone else break the law, so Ill stand by that statement that I fulfill my duties as an American citizen by speaking out on issues that some people find controversial, of course, but no, I have not violated any laws that Im aware of or that anyone has informed me of,' he told the website. According to the New York Daily News, a university spokesman said: 'As this is an ongoing investigation, we will have no further comment. 'The FBI has assured Kent State that there is no threat to campus.' Pino has hit the headlines in the past for his controversial views on the Middle East and in 2011 shouted 'Death to Israel' during a lecture given by a former Israeli diplomat. KentWired reported that he is a Muslim who converted in 2000 and backs Palestinians in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Julio Pino (pictured), a history academic at Kent State University, is being probed by a joint terrorism task force over fears he could be recruiting students to the terror group Campaigners have branded statue at Oriel College racist because 19th century politician Cecil Rhodes was a colonialist 'If Rhodes must fall, so must Churchill,' he told students yesterday Hundreds of statues would have to be removed from university campuses if students insist on having only pure heroes, an Oxford University professor has warned. Nigel Biggar, professor of moral pastoral theology at Christ Church, criticised students calling for the removal of a memorial to Cecil Rhodes, during a debate yesterday. He said many historical figures such as Churchill, Gandhi and Lincoln had views that would now be considered unacceptable. Oxford professor Nigel Biggar (left) has told students campaigning to have this statue of Cecil Rhodes removed that many figures such as Churchill and Gandhi had views that would now be considered unacceptable Prof Biggar (seated second from right) criticised students calling for the removal of a memorial to Cecil Rhodes, during the debate He was speaking at the Oxford Union hours after Education Secretary Nicky Morgan warned students campaigning to remove the statue that it was important to remember uncomfortable events in the past, but said the best way to address them was to debate what happened. Mrs Morgan is the most senior public figure to become involved in the dispute. Oxford Vice Chancellor Louise Richardson and Chancellor Lord Patten have both made cases for the statue to remain. Campaigners have branded the statue racist because the 19th century politician was a colonialist. They claim that forcing ethnic minority students to walk past it amounts to violence. Professor Biggar said no historical figures had unblemished records and that if Rhodes had to go, so must Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln. At the end of the debate the audience of Oxford Union members, voted 245-212 for the statue to fall He said Oriel College should not cave into pressure and tear it down because this would mean hundreds of statues of other historical figures would also have to go. Professor Biggar said: First, if we insist on our heroes being pure, then we arent going to have any. Last year the shine on Mahatma Gandhis halo came off, when we learned of his view that Indians were culturally superior to black Africans. Should this blot out all his remarkable achievements? I think not. If Rhodes must fall, so must Churchill, whose views on empire and race were similar. And so probably must Abraham Lincoln. Campaigner and Rhodes scholar Ntokozo Qwabe told the debate: 'I will not be told that Im a hypocrite for taking money that was stolen from my people. This idea that money can buy our silence is exactly what the problem is' Education Secretary Nicky Morgan (left) has warned students campaigning to remove the statue that it was important to remember uncomfortable events in the past, while Oxford Vice Chancellor Louise Richardson (right) has made a case for the statue to remain While Lincoln liberated African American slaves, he doubted they could be integrated into white society and favoured their separate development their apartheid in an African colony. He added that claims that Rhodes was South Africas Hitler and carried out genocide lacked any historical foundation. He said: Rhodes was not racist. He didnt hold black Africans in general contempt. Campaigner and Rhodes scholar Ntokozo Qwabe told the debate: We are here to take back the money. We are here to at last have some dignity. I will not be told that Im a hypocrite for taking money that was stolen from my people. This idea that money can buy our silence is exactly what the problem is. At the end of the debate the audience of Oxford Union members, voted 245-212 for the statue to fall. A 27-year-old man who illegally dumped asbestos-laced fencing in a national park was tracked down by police after he accidentally left behind an old Mcdonald's receipt. One medium spicy jalapeno crispy chicken meal with a free limited edition coke glass was all it took for the Department of Environment Regulation in Western Australia to track him down. Samuel Michael Gossage was fined $10,000 in Armadale Magistrates' Court on Tuesday, as well as $1284.80 in cleaning costs and $660.30 for court costs, for dumping the fencing late at night at Korung National Park near Karragullen on 3 June last year. Samuel Michael Gossage, 27, illegally dumped asbestos-laced fencing in a Western Australia national park. Investigators were able to track him down using this old McDonald's receipt he accidentally left behind He was fined $10,000 and forced to pay nearly $2000 in other fees for illegally dumping the fencing Department investigators found the fast food receipt at the dumping site and were able to cross-check the time of purchase with the restaurant's drive-through CCTV footage. To make matters worse for Mr Gossage, he was also captured disposing the fencing by a grainy onsite concealed camera. Investigators were then able to identify him using the gathered evidence. The elements had rubbed away a large portion of Mr Gossage's $27.10 McDonalds order, but enough information remained untainted on the receipt for investigators to trace him. The Department of Environment Regulation's Acting Director General Kelly Faulkner said the judgement would serve as a strong-warning for any future would-be dumpers. 'This conviction makes it clear that severe penalties apply to anyone who illegally dumps waste across this State,' she said, according to a government statement. 'These penalties are in place because the illegal dumping of waste can impact on the health of people and the environment, and is costly for the community.' Individuals found guilty of illegal dumping can be fined up to $62,500 while corporations are at risk of a $125,000 penalty. To report illegal dumping, call the Department's 24-hour pollution watch hotline on 1300 784 782. Security cameras captured the moment police officers punched, kicked and choked protesters at a peaceful anti-capitalist demonstration. Two protesters were arrested and charged with violent disorder after police officers stormed the gathering outside a branch of HSBC in Cardiff in May last year. One of the men, Peter Simpson, 30, told Cardiff Crown Court that he had been elbowed in the face by an officer and later said police had brought the charges as a way to justify using excessive force. His claims appear to be supported by CCTV footage of the clash, which was released exclusively to Vice after Mr Simpson and his friend, Joshua Longbottom, 26, were acquitted last Thursday. The video, which was shown to the jury, shows officers charging through the outer doors to the bank into the vestibule where the protesters are stood. One officer is seen landing a number of punches on one of the protesters before he grabs another around the neck and forces him to the ground. Another officer later points a Taser at another demonstrator being pinned to the ground. According to Vice, Mr Longbottom is seen being held in a chokehold and Mr Simpson is picked up by the throat and slammed into the ground as he tries to approach his friend. Mr Simpson said he and his friend 'had not done anything' and that he was relieved the trial was over. 'My friend and I wouldn't have done anything but it was the fact the police jumped on him [which prompted] people's reactions,' he said. 'Police are acquiring more power from government. They tried to justify the level of force used by making false allegations.' Joshua Longbottom, left, and Peter Simpson, right, were both acquitted last week at Cardiff Crown Court Response: Police officers storm a peaceful anti-capitalist protest outside a branch of HSBC in Cardiff During the trial Mr Simpson told jurors: 'I was basically pushed back and I was elbowed in the face by an officer. I felt a sudden pain in my face. 'I remember not being able to breathe as I was essentially held by the throat. He was using his weight to push me up against the wall. 'Within a matter of seconds another officer turned towards me and delivered a strong strike to my legs. It knocked me straight to the floor. It felt like I was being attacked.' Following the case, Mr Simpson's lawyer, Raj Chada, said: 'The police definitely used excessive force when arresting my client. Shocking: The officers are seen punching, kicking and choking the demonstrators outside the bank 'I am glad that justice has finally been served and hope that Mr Simpson can now move on with his life.' South Wales Police's Superintendent Andy Valentine said he noted the decision of Cardiff Crown Court. He added: 'The role of South Wales Police officers centred on the initial policing response to the disturbance and the ensuing investigation. Advertisement Images of the famous Ritz Hotel in Paris after it was ravaged by a fire has emerged, showing the extensive damage to the It is feared the massive blaze may have at least in part a 200million refurbishment of the hotel, which is owned by billionaire businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed. Pictures show several rooms devastated by fire, in addition to the water damage as a result of the rescue efforts by dozens of firefighters, who spent hours battling the blaze on Tuesday. Damage done: Parts of the Paris Ritz Hotel have been completely destroyed by the fire, which ravaged the iconic building on Tuesday Heroes: Dozens of firefighters were called in to tackle the blaze in the Paris Ritz Hotel yesterday The fire may have at least in part a 200million refurbishment of the hotel, which is owned by billionaire businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed The cause of the fire, which struck on the seventh floor of the building and spread through the attic to the roof, was so far unknown, a fire services official said. Mr Al-Fayed, 86, had spent at least 200million honouring the hotel founder's promise of offering guests 'all the refinement that a prince could desire in his own home'. The Ritz, in the Place Vendome, was the place Princess Diana set off from on her last fateful car journey, which ended in tragedy in the Pont d'Alma underpass on August 31, 1997. Diana died alongside Mr Al-Fayed's son, Dodi Al-Fayed, and their driver, Henri Paul, who worked for the Ritz but had been drinking while on medication. Braving the heat: A firefighter faces the flames while they try to save the iconic hotel in the French capital Burning up: The cause of the fire, which struck on the seventh floor of the building and spread through the attic to the roof, is so far unknown, The Ritz was due to re-open in March following a three-and-a-half-year restoration, offering 142 suites and rooms for a minimum 800 a night. Yvon Bot, spokesman for the Paris fire brigade, said: 'The fire took hold of the top floors of the building. 'We are trying to prevent it from spreading to the roof and other floors.' Captain Bot said 15 fire engines and 60 firefighters were at the scene, arriving soon after the alarm was raised at 7am. 'An evacuation took place,' another fire service source said. 'Only workmen were around the building. Police are warning people to stay away from the area until the fire is under control.' There were 1,200 workers on site every day to reach completion, with 550 hotel staff still on the payroll. The private mansion was opened as a hotel in 1889, by the Swiss hotelier Cesar Ritz. Firefighters work on extinguishing a fire at the Ritz Hotel in Paris after a blaze broke out on the top floor Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed are seen inside the Ritz just minutes before they were killed in a car crash The private mansion was opened as a hotel in 1889 by the Swiss hotelier Cesar Ritz and was the first to have en suite bathrooms and electricity in every room It was the first hotel to have en suite bathrooms and electricity in every room, and inspired Irving Berlin's 1929 song Putting On The Ritz. Coco Chanel lived in a suite that bears her name, collaborating with the occupying Nazis, who loved staying at the hotel between 1940 and 1944. In August 1944, the American author Ernest Hemingway arrived in Paris on a tank and boasted about 'liberating' the main bar in the hotel. 'When I dream of afterlife in heaven, the action always takes place in the Paris Ritz,' Hemingway wrote. The refurbishment came amid growing competition from high-end hotels in Paris, such as the Bristol and Crillon. The Islamic State jihadist group has announced plans to halve the monthly salaries of its members in Syria and Iraq because of 'exceptional circumstances'. Releasing a statement to coincide with the decree, Syrian fighters will see their pay slashed from 280 to 140, a monitoring group said. The jihadist group strives to show that it operates a full-fledged state, with government institutions and hospitals - however, it is coming under increasing financial strain from coalition airstrikes. Those fighting for ISIS have had their salaries slashed after the cost of its war began to take its toll According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the statement said: 'Because of the exceptional circumstances that the Islamic State is passing through, a decision was taken to cut the salaries of the mujahedeen in half. 'No one will be exempt from this decision no matter his position, but the distribution of food assistance will continue twice a month as usual.' ISIS has declared a self-styled 'caliphate' across swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria, imposing its harsh interpretation of Islamic law. Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Observatory, said the salary cuts meant Syrian ISIS fighters would see their salaries drop to about 140 from 280 per month. Foreign fighters, who were paid double the Syrian militants, would have their monthly income reduced to 280, he told AFP. The financial strain could be a result of intensified air strikes on its oil infrastructure in Syria and Iraq. A US-led coalition is conducting an air war on the group in both countries, and Russian warplanes are also targeting the jihadists in Syria. Meanwhile the group yesterday also released 270 of more than 400 civilians it had abducted during its assault on the eastern Syrian city of Deir Ezzor. Those released included women, children under 14 years old, and the elderly, said Abdel Rahman. He said they had been freed after undergoing questioning by ISIS jihadists to determine whether they had ties to Syria's regime. 'They will not go back into Deir Ezzor city, but will be spread out among local tribes in the province.' The financial strain on the militants could be due to the intensified bombing campaigns being carried out by the UK (pictured), France, the U.S. and Russia ISIS is also fighting other rebel groups as well as warring with peshmerga in Iraq and the Syria Bashar al Assad government. Pictured is a French nuclear aircraft carrier deployed to the Middle East to fight ISIS However, ISIS still holds 130 civilians, mostly teenage and adult men, whom Abdel Rahman said were being questioned. 'If ISIS sees that they have no ties to the Syrian government, they will take a religious course and will be released.' ISIS launched a multi-pronged assault on Deir Ezzor city on Saturday, with dozens of its fighters carrying out suicide bomb attacks as they stormed government positions. The group is now in control of 60 percent of the city and has tightened its siege around it by capturing surrounding towns. An Argentinian actress who inspired her fans by posting pictured of her bald head following cancer treatment, has been abandoned by her husband just before a mastectomy. Lorena Meritano, 45, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in May last year, has already had her right breast removed, and is now due to remove her left breast and her ovaries. However, she revealed today, when she informed her husband of the operation, he responded by telling her he wants a divorce. Scroll down for video C word: Actress Lorena Meritano, 45, said her husband Ernesto Calzadilla, 41, is leaving her after she told him she needs to remove her left breast and ovaries Ms Meritano, a famous actress on her native continent, inspired fans across the globe when she posted photos of herself having gone bald after chemotherapy. Her husband Ernesto Calzadilla, 41, also an actor and former Mister Venezuela in 1998, had been by her side throughout the difficult period, and she frequently praised him on social media. But after Ms Meritano revealed that she needed to have her left breast and her ovaries removed in order to help prevent the return of the disease, he has now told her he wants to end the marriage. His announcement came before she was due to fly from her home in Colombia to Buenos Aires in Argentina where her the operation is due to be carried out. Selfie power: Ms Meritano, a famous actress in Latin America, inspired fans across the globe when she posted photos of herself having gone bald after chemotherapy The actress,born in Argentina and living in Colombia, is a hugely successful star of Latin American telenovelas, the soap operas that command huge followings throughout the continent Ms Meritano, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in May last year, has already had her right breast removed, and is now due to remove her left breast and her ovaries Ms Meritano announced the news in a social media video, saying: 'Today, Ernesto Calzadilla, who was my husband until today and who was supposed to be alongside me and support me through this process... 'Today, a few hours before my trip, he said he wants to separate from me, that he is leaving me, he is divorcing me, he's leaving the ship.' But she added that she was keeping her spirits strong, saying: 'I know God won't abandon me.' The actress, born in the Argentinian city of Concordia, is a hugely successful star of Latin American telenovelas, the soap operas that command huge followings throughout the continent. Ms Meritano is popular for her roles in shows including Escandalo (Scandal) and Pasion de Gavilanes (Hawk Passion), which is made in Venezuela. Her husband, also an actor and former Mister Venezuela in 1998, had been by her side throughout the difficult period, and she frequently praised him on social media, but he has now dumped her Rebecca Lacey, 28, was described as being 'over-familiar' with the Year 11 student - aged either 15 or 16 - during the dance before inviting him upstairs A female teacher who took a pupil back to her hotel room for the night after his school prom has been banned from the classroom. Rebecca Lacey, 28, was described as being 'over-familiar' with the Year 11 student - aged either 15 or 16 - during the dance before inviting him upstairs. The following morning she even dropped him off near his home so he could walk back. Lacey, who was an ICT teacher at Downend School in Bristol for five years, admitted behaving inappropriately on the night of June 26, 2014. She was banned from teaching indefinitely on Monday after Education Secretary Nicky Morgan agreed with the National College for Training and Leadership (NCTL) panel's findings. In their report to the Department of Education, they branded the incident 'very serious', insisting that prohibiting her from the classroom was in the public interest. The finding concluded: 'It is the panel's view that [Ms Lacey] must have realised just how ill-judged her conduct was and the way it would be regarded by members of the public who might learn about it. 'She sat alone with the pupil, on her account a vulnerable pupil, in the hotel room for the entire night. 'The panel finds it very difficult to understand how the teacher could possibly have thought, at that time, that what she did could conceivably be considered appropriate.' The report added that the incident represented a 'serious departure' from the personal and professional conduct expected from teachers. Education bosses were told Lacey allowed the 'vulnerable' teenager - known as 'Pupil A' - and other students to hug her goodbye. Staff saw her spending time alone with a single pupil on more than one occasion, including Pupil A, who was a member of her class. She also danced with 15 and 16-year-olds, with photos taken on the night showing pupils with their hands around her waist, the panel was told. Lacey, whose social network states she likes 'guys with tattoos and piercings', because 'something bout [sic] them that turns me on', admitted inviting Pupil A to her hotel room, insisting she did so as she was concerned for his 'safety and wellbeing'. She claimed they spent the night talking about 'family problems' but was 'anxious' about others finding out. It is not alleged there was any sexual activity between her and Pupil A. Lacey, who was an ICT teacher at Downend School in Bristol (pictured) for five years, admitted behaving inappropriately on the night of June 26, 2014. She was banned from teaching indefinitely on Monday after Education Secretary Nicky Morgan agreed with the panel's findings Lacey failed to report the incident to senior management the next day. When questioned by headteacher Will Roberts she denied the rendezvous happened three times. She was suspended when the allegations surfaced and resigned following an investigation by the school. The 28-year-old was hauled before a panel, which included NCTL chairman Martin Pilkington, teacher Phil Lloyd and councillor Gail Goodman, on January 7. They concluded that the episode constituted 'unacceptable professional conduct and conduct that may bring the profession into disrepute'. The panel finds it very difficult to understand how the teacher could possibly have thought, at that time, that what she did could, conceivably be considered appropriate. National College for Training and Leadership (NCTL) report It added that even in accepting Lacey's motivation for allowing Pupil A to stay in her hotel room, she made a 'gross error of judgement'. 'Her failure to disclose what had happened together with her subsequent denials suggests that she was well aware of the seriousness of her conduct,' their final report read. The NCTL panel also found Lacey misguided pupils in her teaching, including Pupil A, when it came to their GCSE ICT exam. As a result, 50 students had their coursework disqualified by the exam board OCR - meaning none received the qualification they had been studying for. Before being struck off, Lacey stressed that her career was 'the most important thing' in her life and that she wanted to continue working in teaching.. But Jayne Millions, on behalf of the Education Secretary, banned her from teaching indefinitely. She is now prohibited from teaching in any school, sixth form college, relevant youth accommodation or children's home in England. Mr Roberts, headteacher at Ms Lacey's former school, said her conduct was 'entirely unacceptable'. The shark could be seen attacking the tuna and chomping on the rope Advertisement This is the incredible moment a Great White shark breaches the waves to ravage tuna bait. The footage was shot by cinematographer Elke Specker during a five day trip to Guadalupe island, Mexico - a well known breeding ground for the fearsome shark. Specker said: 'I spent about six hours a day in shark cages for three days straight to capture the moment. Normally sharks only attack just below the surface. Food is the only way to bring them in close enough to be filmed. Chunks of tuna were tied to a rope and tossed in front of the cage.' The filmmakers' persistence paid off as the 15ft, 3,500 pound male leapt majestically in full view of the cameras. The dive marked Specker's first time first time being up close and personal with a Great White - the largest predatory shark in existence. 'It is awe inspiring and quite intimidating coming face to face with them. You know your time could be up at any second, if they really wanted you,' she said. But despite the sharks' immense power, the producer of ocean conservationist films is keen to make clear that we have no reason to fear them. 'Great Whites may seem fierce, but humans are far more dangerous to them than they are to us,' she added. A great white shark attempts to catch its prey in Guadalupe Island, Mexico. The shark breaches the water and latches on to the tuna which was attached to a rope and thrown in front of a safety cage. Close up: Cinematographer Elke Specker spent five days filming the sharks. Elke said: 'Normally sharks only attack just below the surface. Food is the only way to bring them in close enough to be filmed.' Persistence pays off: The 15ft, 3,500 pound male leapt majestically in full view of the cameras Taking the bait: The huge mammal swallows a chunk of tuna that was used to bring it closer. The dive marked Elke Specker's first time first time being up close and personal with a Great White - the largest predatory shark in existence. An alleged victim of Arshid Hussain, pictured seating in wheelchair, recorded police officers when she went to make a complaint about him A detective in the Rotherham abuse case was recorded by an alleged victim saying police wouldn't give evidence in case they got in trouble for not acting sooner, a court heard. Arshid Hussain is one of five men and two women standing trial over an alleged grooming ring in the South Yorkshire town from 1987 to 2003. Sheffield Crown Court heard that one of the complainants in the case recorded a policeman involved in the investigation on her mobile phone in 2013 as she spoke about Hussain. The woman, who is now 30, is said to have told police that she had been found having sex with Hussain aged just 14 on a day she was arrested for stealing. She asked police to look into whether there were any records from the police who found her, showing she was with the defendant, the Sheffield Star reported. But, in a transcript provided to the jury, DC Lee Robinson said: 'If they walked in there and they saw you were having sex on the floor and they know you're only 14 and they've seen this Asian male, if they put that in a statement, they know full well they're going to get in the s*** because why didn't they do something about that?' He went on: 'It may be that if we went to speak to that person, they might turn around and say, "I didn't see anything like that",' the court heard. He later added: 'Opinions have changed now. Now we identify that as child abuse. Before they'd see it as sort of a lovesick teenager who keeps going back to this fella.' Earlier in the trial, the jury heard that police allegedly missed the chance to spare another young girl an appalling sexual abuse ordeal by accusing her of lying when she turned to them for help. Seven people are standing trial over the alleged grooming ring. Pictured left to right: Qurban Ali, Arshid Hussein, Karen Macgregor, Shelley Davies, Majid Bostan and Sajid Bostan The 12-year-old was living in a social services run children's home when she told a member of staff about alleged abuse by older Asian men and police were alerted, the court heard. But instead of helping her out she said the police officer drove her to a country lane where he accused her of making up the allegations. Seven defendants are accused of a total of 51 offences involving 12 girls from the Rotherham area over a 16-year period from 1987 to 2003. The charges include rape, conspiracy to rape, false imprisonment, indecent assault and procuring under-age girls for sex. Arshid Hussain, 40, and his brother Basharat, 39, both from Goole, deny all the charges along with Qurban Ali, 53, Majid Bostan, 37, his brother Sajid Bostan, 38, Karen MacGregor, 58, and Shelley Davies, 40, all from Rotherham. The trial continues. A man who describes himself as 'mentally disabled' has been arrested for killing a 67-year-old grandfather for allegedly touching his pickup truck. German Heredia was out for a walk with his granddaughters and their dogs the evening of January 5, when they stopped because they saw some other animals. That's when 51-year-old Warren Buchanan reportedly confronted Heredia and accused him of touching his black pick-up truck. Scroll down for video Rage: Warren Buchanan, 51 (left), has been charged with manslaughter in connection to the January 5 fight that led to 67-year-old German Heredia's (right) death Investigators say the two men then got into a physical scuffle, with Buchanan hitting Heredia so hard the grandfather fell to the ground and then hit his head on the concrete. Heredia's 9-year-old granddaughter told authorities she heard a loud pop, saw Buchanan walk away with a large black bag and then ran to her grandfather who was lying helpless on the ground. Neighbors ran to the family's aid when they heard screams from the little girls. Heredia was rushed to Holmes Regional Medical Center in Melbourne and he died two days later of blunt force trauma to the head. Confrontation: Heredia was walking with his granddaughters and dogs near this property when Buchanan accused him of touching his pick-up truck and the two got into a scuffle Do not touch: Above, the black pick-up truck in question is towed from the crime scene after the fight Charges: Buchanan pictured above in court for a hearing. He has described himself as 'mentally disabled' 'When I went over there, the grandkid was sitting next to grandpa, crying and asking me to help him,' neighbor Mark Dansereau told WFTV. 'I waited with her until the police came.' 'They went over to check on him and he was laying on the ground unconscious, but even unconscious he was making some very bad noises,' neighbor Patsy Thompson told WESH. Buchanan was arrested Friday and faces a manslaughter charge in Heredia's death. It isn't clear if he has an attorney. He is being held on $50,000 bail. Lawyer: Zainab Al Qurnawi is representing the families of Iraqis who have launched claims of mistreatment against the British military An Iraqi lawyer is being paid 150 an hour by the Government to advise families who have launched claims of mistreatment against British troops, it has emerged. British-trained Zainab Al Qurnawi is representing the families of Iraqi civilians who were allegedly wrongfully killed during the Western invasion of the country. She is claiming money from the State as part of the investigation into UK soldiers - even though all of the troops involved have been cleared of any wrongdoing. Ms Al Qurnawi is one of the lawyers attached to the Iraq Fatality Investigations, a body set up to investigate the circumstances surrounding the deaths after a court ruled that a previous tribunal was not compatible with human rights law. The panel, which is headed by a retired judge, pays her 150 for every hour of work. Last year chairman Sir George Newman complained about the 'inordinate' among of resources being spent on the investigation. Ms Al Qurnawi told The Sun: 'Sir George did raise a query as to the number of hours spent on one aspect of the case. I provided a full explanation and the invoice was approved.' The solicitor runs QC Law Firm, which is based in Basra, the Iraqi city which was under the command of the British authorities for four years after the 2003 invasion. She was brought up and educated in Iraq, but moved to Britain a year ago to qualify as a solicitor practising English law. During her time in the UK, Ms Al Qurnawi worked for global law firm Clyde & Co, Shell and J.P. Morgan, before returning to her home country two years ago. Campaign: British troops in Basra in October 2004, more than a year after the Iraq invasion (file photo) IRAQI MAN SHOT AFTER MISTAKEN IDENTITY RAID ON HIS HOME The Iraq Fatality Investigations are currently considering the case of Muhammad Salim, who died in November 2003 after his house in Basra was raided by British troops. The raid on his home came after one of the Army's interpreters passed on a tip-off about a group of men who were apparently seen going into the house with a cache of guns and grenades. The British troops visited the address and got no reply from the inhabitants, so rammed their way through the gates with their Land Rover. Salim, who was inside, fired a number of shots at the soldiers, prompting an unnamed British sergeant to retaliate by shooting him in the stomach. He died in hospital the next day. It later emerged that the tip was based on false information provided by a family who had been feuding with Salim and his relatives over the ownership of some property. The Iraq Historic Allegations Team concluded that the individual troops had no case to answer, but Sir George Newman is currently compiling a report on Salim's death. Advertisement She boasts that she is 'one of the few Iraqi-qualified lawyers in both the common law and the civil law systems' - meaning that few other lawyers are likely to be available to represent the Iraqi families seeking compensation from the UK. Her firm says that it strives to provide 'Rolls-Royce services at Toyota prices', adding: 'Our ultimate goal is to be pragmatic and commercial.' Around 4,000 claims of mistreatment have been lodged against British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, costing the Government more than 30million so far. The allegations were initially investigated by the Iraq Historic Allegations Team, an independent agency within the Ministry of Defence. However, three years ago the High Court ruled that IHAT did not meet the requirements of the European Convention on Human Rights in all cases. In response, the Iraq Fatality Investigations panel was set up to probe a small number of cases which require a full investigation but do not involve criminal prosecutions. Four million migrants could reach Europe by the end of 2017, the International Monetary Fund has warned. In new forecasts, the organisation adjusted its estimates to conclude 1.3million people could move to Europe every year between 2015 - 2017. It added the Middle East refugees should boost European economic growth over the short term, but their longer-term impact would depend on efforts to integrate them. The IMF has predicted four million refugees will reach Europe by the end of 2017. Pictured is a migrant waiting to catch a train while wrapped in a blanket while trying to keep warm in Serbia Some 1.3million migrants have been forecast to arrive in Europe every year between 2015 and 2017 Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, explains at a panel session in Switzerland today that forecasts show Europe can expect to receive 1.3million migrants every year The study, to be presented at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this week, said: 'International experience with economic immigrants suggests that migrants have lower employment rates and wages than natives, though these differences diminish over time. 'Slow integration reflects factors such as lack of language skills and transferable job qualifications, as well as barriers to job search.' The report comes as governments across Europe wrestle with the political, social and economic implications of admitting huge numbers of migrants fleeing the conflicts in Syria and elsewhere. More than one million refugees flooded into Europe last year seeking asylum, and in many countries, the administrative apparatus for handling such a large influx is overwhelmed. Focused solely on the economic impact, the IMF study said economies in countries receiving the migrants would grow more at the initial stage, due to public spending to accommodate them. However, the IMF said: 'In the long run, the economic impact will depend on the speed of integration of refugees into the labor market.' The study acknowledged the deep worries over the possibility of migrants taking away local jobs, especially in a period of already elevated unemployment. It comes just a day after statistics showed an estimated 31,244 migrants have braved the deadly boat crossing over the Mediterranean Sea to Greece in the first 16 days of this year. The shocking statistic represents 21 times the number of migrants who crossed during the same period in January 2015, according to the International Organisation for Migration. It is expected that the number of new arrivals to Greece is likely to exceed the 853,650 migrants who crossed over to Greece by sea last year. Almost half [48 per cent] of the migrants who have made the journey are Syrian nationals, fleeing the longstanding war in their homeland. It is expected that the number of new arrivals to Greece is likely to exceed the 853,650 migrants who crossed over to Greece by sea last year The number of migrants heading to Italy has fallen since 2014, when 170,100 men, women and children managed to cross to Italy Children were coming ashore on the Greek island of Lesbos wearing only T-shirts and soaking wet after travelling on unseaworthy rubber dinghies, the charity Save the Children said in a statement 607 migrants have been rescued off the Italian coast, with many of the migrants trying to make the sea voyage from Libya. The number of migrants heading to Italy has fallen since 2014, when 170,100 men, women and children managed to cross to Italy. In contrast to the large volume of Syrians crossing to Greece, many of the migrants hoping to reach Italy are African. Nigerian, Eritrean and Somali refugees make up most of the new arrivals. Thousands of refugee children travelling along the migration route through Turkey and southeastern Europe are at risk from a sustained spell of freezing weather in the next two weeks, according to the United Nations. The U.N. weather agency said it forecast below-normal temperatures and heavy snowfall in the next two weeks in the eastern Balkan peninsula and the Middle East. 'Many children on the move do not have adequate clothing or access to the right nutrition,' said Christophe Boulierac, spokesman for the U.N. children's agency UNICEF. Asked if children could freeze to death, he told a news briefing: 'The risk is clearly very, very high.' Children were coming ashore on the Greek island of Lesbos wearing only T-shirts and soaking wet after travelling on unseaworthy rubber dinghies, the charity Save the Children said in a statement. 'Aid workers at the border reception centre in Presevo say there is six inches of snow on the ground and children are arriving with blue lips, distressed and shaking from the cold,' it said. It said temperatures were forecast to drop to -20 degrees Celsius in Presevo in Serbia and -13 degrees on the Greek border with Macedonia. Last year children accounted for a quarter of the one million migrants and refugees arriving across the Mediterranean in Europe, Boulierac said. A British woman is partially paralysed in her left leg after an operation in a Spanish hospital on her right one. Carolyn Emmett has no movement in her left leg after surgery on her right went badly wrong. Now, two years on from the botched operation, the 61-year-old still walks with a stick and suffers from depression. Pain: Carolyn Emmet, 61, has to walk with a stick after a botched operation on her right leg caused partial paralysis in her left one Before: She was given an epidural without her knowledge or consent at Benalmadena's Xanit International Hospital. She damaged a peroneal nerve, which she believes was due to metal leg supports used in surgery 'It has been a total nightmare. After the operation I suffered indescribable pain and had no movement in my left leg,' the mother-of-three told MailOnline. 'I couldn't walk for two months, drive for nine months and have still not had an apology from the hospital.' The image consultant, from Malaga, Spain, is suing Benalmadena's Xanit International Hospital for negligence for failing to accept responsibility for her injury. I couldn't walk for two months, drive for nine months and have still not had an apology from the hospital. A neurologist's report supports her claim the 'accident' occurred during surgery after she was given a pain relieving epidural without her knowledge. Mrs Emmett described an earlier epidural - during the birth of her first daughter - as an extremely bad experience, as it had left her paralysed for 12 hours after the operation. The report states she suffered damage to the peroneal nerve, which she believes was due to metal leg supports used during the operation. But the hospital has not accepted responsibility, despite the anaesthetist who administered the epidural paying her 1,200 in compensation. The anaesthetist even visited Mrs Emmett after the operation and brought a massage therapist with him - as well as an exercise bike. They also part-funded her rehabilitation with a 900 contribution towards 'hyperbaric chamber therapy'. The anaesthetist's lawyer and insurance company have agreed to pay 50 per cent of the damages sought if Hospital Xanit pays the other half. Compensation: She is seeking 10,000 to cover the expense of her rehabilitation and says she has to spend 300 a month on medicine Agony: But the hospital says Mrs Emmett's predicament is the result of a previous bone marrow injury and not the operation on her right femur in December 2013 Legal action: She is now suing the hospital to cover her expenses. While the anaesthetist has given her 1,200 personal compensation, the hospital has not admitted responsibility But the hospital insisted Mrs Emmett's predicament came about as a result of a previous bone marrow injury and not the operation on her right femur in 2013, which she denied. 'It is completely untrue. I have never had such an injury,' added Mrs Emmett. 'I feel frustrated, but most of all annoyed, because the hospital continually ignores my claims. 'Why if the anaesthetist feels sorry am I being ignored? It feels like the hospital keeps turning me down as a matter of course. 'I am only asking for 10,000 which I have spent on treatment and need moving forwards,' she added. Before the operation, Mrs Emmett loved flamenco dancing, but the operation has left her unable to dance - as well as 12kg heavier. A grandmother of two girls aged seven and 11, Mrs Emmett moved to Montejaque, near Ronda, Malaga, from Stratford-upon-Avon, five years ago with her husband, Kevin, 65. Her three adult children live in Canada, where she and her husband also spent many years due to his job. And while she was able to pay for the initial operation privately, the costs of her subsequent aftercare. She had to live in rental accommodation for six weeks after the operation and claimed she still spends 300 per month on medicine and is depression. Xanit Hospital declined to comment when approached by MailOnline due to 'data protection laws'. It was 1.30am on a scorching hot summer night when Isaac Bain woke up to find a bite on his arm. The teenager, then 14, called his mother Judi on the intercom to calmly inform her he had just been bitten by a Mulga Brown - one of the world's deadliest snakes. The two-metre reptile 'as thick as a man's wrist' was racing madly around the room where his four siblings were also sleeping, and he had begun vomiting and seeing black spots. The family of seven live on 94,000 acres of land in rural Queensland, 200 kilometres south of Charleville - with the nearest neighbours over 20 kilometres away. Judi Bain (right), 48, nearly lost her son Isaac (left), then 14, when he was bitten in the middle of the night on their isolated Queensland property by a Mulga Brown - one of the world's deadliest snakes 'There were three definite bites on the base of Isaac's thumb. He later said it felt like boiling water was flowing through his veins': Isaac's older brother ended up having to kill the Mulga snake (pictured) Unable to find a torch, Mrs Bain hopped on a quad-bike with her husband and sped to the nearby cottage where her children were sleeping - seeking solace from the heat in the only air-conditioned building on the farm. She arrived to find Isaac sitting calmly on his bed, as his older brother Daniel, then 17, attempted to deal with the extremely 'cranky' snake with the only tool in the room - a dusty old broom. 'The adrenaline and saving your child just takes over, I had the first bandage on Isaac before the snake was even caught,' Mrs Bain told Daily Mail Australia. 'There were three definite bites on the base of Isaac's thumb. He later said it felt like boiling water was flowing through his veins.' 'Daniel sort of had to get the snake away from the door for us to even get in and reach Isaac - he just waited till he had a good hit. Unfortunately the snake was killed, it was just too dangerous.' As the snake lay curling in a pool of blood, Judi began to fear for the life of her son, who had a large amount of toxic venom pulsating through his body. Battle scars: Isaac's condition rapidly deteriorated as his family drove him to the nearest ambulance. By the time he reached the hospital he was unresponsive and in a terrible state His urine was the colour of coke and his blood was the colour of rose: Isaac spent five days in intensive care in an induced coma as he battled the bite. At one point doctors suggested amputating his arm Calling the Royal Flying Doctor Services her property was too isolated to reach a local doctor or hospital she was devastated to learn that their one plane was broken down and out of action. The only way to get help was to hop in a car and begin the 200km journey to Charleville Hospital in pitch black, meeting the ambulance half way. We had 70 kilometres of very ordinary gravel to travel, eleven grids and livestock everywhere in pitch black with no mobile reception she said. It was very hairy ... I didnt know what I was going to do if Isaac didnt answer me. I did everything I could to actually save him. We didn't know how long since he'd been bitten. Flying through 120 kilometres in one hour, they finally reached the ambulance and Isaac was loaded on and whisked to the hospital his condition rapidly deteriorating. His urine was the colour of coke and his blood was the colour of rose, said Mrs Bain, who arrived at the hospital a short time later. He was totally unresponsive, he wouldnt do anything the doctors asked. She estimates it was at least four hours before he was given antivenom. Despite extensive scarring on his arm and hand, and a 'vicious assault on his kidneys,' Isaac's long-term prognosis is 'excellent' according to his mother. He has since become ambidextrous The suffering continued as Isaac spent the next five days in intensive care - put on dialysis for a time as his kidney's struggled to cope with the toxins filtering through his body from the deadly venom. As the muscle wasted away in his right arm he was taken to Toowoomba Hospital where he was placed in an induced coma for five days. It was there he was advised to fly to Brisbane Hospital, where they would be able to amputate his arm. As the family fervently prayed for his healing, things began to improve. Over the next twelve weeks in Brisbane, doctor's abandoned the amputation plans and started working on corrective surgery. Ten operations and two years of follow-up with doctors and occupational therapists later his future is now looking positive. Despite extensive scarring on his arm and hand, and a 'vicious assault on his kidneys,' Mrs Bain says his long-term prognosis is 'excellent.' 'It doesnt stop him from doing anything, hes become ambidextrous ... now he's a contract musterer, riding motorbikes and rounding up livestock.' Members of a Christian group have taken up arms in a bid to stop the Philippines becoming the new breeding ground for ISIS. The militia, who call themselves Red God's Defenders, formed in the mountains in the restive south of the country where the terror group is taking a stranglehold. Pictures show group burning the black flag of ISIS while fighters raise their weapons in celebration in a symbolic counter-offensive to the jihadist's propaganda machine. It comes less than a month after the jihadi group released its first video of a terror training camp in the Filipino jungle and a week after ISIS militants attacked Jakarta. Heated protest: Filipino members of the armed Christian group calling themselves Red God's Defenders burn an Islamic State flag in the mountains of Central Mindanao as they take up arms against the terror group The militia formed in the mountains in the restive south of the country where ISIS is taking a stranglehold In the video, several jihadi commanders are shown urging Filipinos to travel to Syria to join ISIS before revealing the group have already started their own terror camp in the Philippines. The footage shows the 'soldiers of the Caliphate in the Philippines' working on their fitness and agility by completing a series of assault course drills. The Filipino government has long said that support for ISIS in the Philippines was limited to local bandits claiming allegiance to the group. However, the latest propaganda video suggests that the jihadi group has earmarked the Philippines as a potential site for establishing further new bases. The group formed after ISIS released its first propaganda video of a terror training camp in the Filipino jungle and later attacked Jakarta in Indonesia in a growing sign the jihadis were gaining a hold in South East Asia Band of brothers: The group are training somewhere in the mountains of Central Mindanao in the southern Philippines as they show their strong opposition over attacks by ISIS against civilians Philippine security forces have expressed concern over an 'emerging threat' of terrorism after suicide attackers struck the Indonesian capital last week. It also comes after eight members of a criminal gang that pledged allegiance to ISIS were killed in a firefight with the military in the southern Philippines last month. The hour-long battle took place in Palimbang, a remote town in the south - home to the predominantly Catholic nation's Muslim minority and the scene of decades of conflict. The bandits were from Ansar al-Khalifa, a small group that declared its support for ISIS in a video circulated on the Internet last year, regional military spokesman Major Filemon Tan said. The larger Abu Sayyaf group has also pledged its allegiance to ISIS and is holding at least four foreign nationals hostages. Philippine security forces expressed concern over an 'emerging threat' of terrorism, after suicide attackers struck the Indonesian capital on Thursday. Members of armed Christian group calling themselves Red God's Defenders are seen on patrol The group is demanding millions of dollars in ransom for their safe release and have released several videos threatening them with execution. Tan said that five black flags similar to those used by Islamic State fighters were recovered from the bandits after the clash. Criminal gangs operate kidnap for ransom and extortion activities alongside Muslim and communist separatist campaigns in the restive south. The Abu Sayyaf, a group of several hundred fighters notorious for kidnapping foreigners for ransom, is also responsible for the worst terror attacks in the Philippines. A female asylum seeker helper working in a Hamburg refugee registration centre is poised to quit because of cheating, death threats and demands for a luxury life from the migrants. In a searing indictment of the behaviour of the refugees, the unnamed woman said her idealism had been eroded and virtually destroyed. At first she was enthusiastic and wanted to help out with processing the tens of thousands of migrants arriving in Germany on a weekly basis when they first began to arrive. The unnamed woman from Hamburg, Germany, claims her idealism had been eroded and virtually destroyed after working with the refugees. Pictured are a group of migrants making their way through Slovenia in October Now, she told the Welt am sonntag newspaper, she is disillusioned, disheartened and on the verge of quitting as the situation deteriorates. Describing how she applied for the job because it was 'exactly' what she wanted to do, she said her enthusiasm drained away in the first few days. She has worked at the centre since autumn 2015 and the newspaper said it had her identity - but would not reveal it at her request. 'Many of them are extremely demanding,' she explained. 'They come to me and ask to get an apartment and a fancy car and, best of all, even a really good job for them. 'If I try to explain to them that's not possible, they are often noisy or even really aggressive.' The woman said a group of Syrians and Afghans once said they would go on hunger strike unless she helped them move elsewhere. One Arab man even yelled at a colleague: 'We decapitate you!', she claimed. But what she considered as 'the worst' of their behaviour was their treatment of women, saying many of the male refugees did not take her seriously. Instead, they would simply dismiss what she would tell them and contact her male colleagues. 'For us women they have often only scornful looks - or just intrusive,' she added. 'They whistle loudly, say something to one another in a foreign language, laugh.' Migrants sleep wrapped in blankets inside a registration camp in Presevo, Serbia, amid plummeting temperatures She said there had been occasions when the refugees had taken photographs of the women without asking their permission first. She also said she has gone from wearing close-fitting clothes to 'wide-cut trousers' and tops with high necklines. The woman said that not all the refugees are the same. She explained many are friendly and grateful, but 'working with 90 per cent of them is rather awkward'. Meanwhile, German authorities said Monday that nearly all the suspects in a rash of New Year's Eve violence against women in Cologne were 'of foreign origin' as foreigners came under attack amid surging tensions. Ralf Jaeger, the interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia state, released initial findings of a criminal probe over the crime spree that has piled pressure on Chancellor Angela Merkel over her liberal stance towards refugees. 'Witness accounts and the report by the [local] police as well as findings by the federal police indicate that nearly all the people who committed these crimes were of foreign origin,' he said. Although no formal charges have been laid, Jaeger said the attackers emerged from a group of more than 1,000 'Arab and North African' men who gathered between the main railway station and the city's iconic Gothic cathedral during the year-end festivities. But reports they were responsible have led to a rash of racially targeted reprisals. Police said a mob attacked a group of six Pakistanis late Sunday in Cologne, two of whom had to be hospitalised. Shortly afterwards, five unidentified assailants attacked a 39-year-old Syrian national, injuring him slightly. said he landed on his side in the water The British backpacker who is feared dead after leaping from a bridge in Brisbane in a 'drunken stunt' has been named as Dale Rehr, 30, from Portsmouth. Mr Rehr had been drinking with a group of backpackers at Big Bird Hostel in Brisbane when he suggested they jump from the William Jolly Bridge at about 10pm on Sunday. Mr Rehr's friends have today spoken of their worry, saying how horrible they feel about egging him on to make the jump. Dale Rehr, 30, from Portsmouth, is feared dead after leaping from a bridge in Brisbane, Australia in a 'drunken stunt' after a night out with fellow backpackers on Sunday 'We feel horrible for egging him on to go and do it we thought he would be fine because we did it a couple of weeks ago,' one of his friends told the Courier-Mail. 'His flip-flops are still sitting upstairs; we're all shattered at the moment.' His employer in Brisbane told local media he had filmed three friends jumping from a nearby bridge two weeks prior, but had not jumped himself. 'He was the only one who didn't do it because he stayed there and filmed it because he said, 'I don't want to get in any trouble while I'm here in Australia',' Mr Rehr's employer Jake Meredith said according to the Telegraph. His friend Han Welvaarts, from the Netherlands, who filmed the jump said Dale - who agreed to jump with three other people - was 'pretty excited' and hastily threw himself from the bridge as about 15 other backpackers watched on. Mr Rehr had been drinking with a group of backpackers at Big Bird Hostel in Brisbane when he suggested they jump from the William Jolly Bridge at about 10pm on Sunday A major land and water search was scaled down on Monday night but efforts will continue on Tuesday morning Mr Welvaarts had his mobile phone out and was filming the group as the clambered on to the bridge, but said he could not watch the footage and handed it over to police Police helicopters, water police, and officers on bike and foot (pictured) are searching for the 30-year-old British national 'It lasted a few seconds before he came up then everyone was cheering,' he told Daily Mail Australia. 'When we looked at the water again Dale was gone.' He said the 'friendly, happy and outgoing' British national had fallen on his side but it was too dark to see if he had signalled for help when he surfaced. 'I wish I looked better at what he did but I thought everything was fine when he came up.' Queensland police said the 30-year-old business manager took a running jump 'three or four metres' from the edge of the bridge and launched into the Brisbane River, a known hotspot for aggressive bull sharks, around 10.30pm. Mr Welvaarts had his mobile phone out and was filming the group as the group clambered on to the bridge, but said he could not watch the footage and handed it over to police. 'I filmed the event but deleted the video a few hours later because I never wanted to see that again,' he said on Monday night. Police said the footage has been seized and will be reviewed as part of the ongoing investigation into the missing man's whereabouts. Jan Runhaar said that he and his friends told the 30-year-old not to jump in the moments before he went missing The search and rescue operation includes police helicopters, water police, and officers on bike and foot who have scoured the area Three friends who were with the 30-year-old man at the time notified emergency services when he vanished, who responded with a major overnight search Police said the group were intoxicated at the time, describing the event as a 'drunken stunt', but Mr Welvaarts, who refused to jump, said most of the group were not extremely intoxicated when they made their way to the bridge. 'We had some beers and I have no doubts it had an influence on the jump but it's definitely not like everybody was super wasted.' Mr Welvaarts said he contacted an ambulance as soon as the group realised the man, who he had grown close to after spending around two weeks together, had not resurfaced. Jan Runhaar said that he and his friends told the 30-year-old business manager, who had moved to Brisbane in late 2015, not to jump in the moments before he went missing. 'We were like no, no, no don't jump then he was running and jumping over the bridge and landed on his side,' he told Seven News. Police will investigate the cause of the incident in due time, a Queensland Police spokeswoman had earlier told Daily Mail Australia. Their focus is currently on the search and rescue while the man remains missing Police are still searching for the 30-year-old British national in the Brisbane River on Monday afternoon He said he saw Dale surface for around a second, with his hands outreached, before the British national slipped under the surface and vanished. It is believed the missing man, a keen iron man competitor and scuba diver, had volunteered to jump first 'for a bit of fun and to cool down'. The parents of the 30-year-old man were contacted on Monday morning Queensland time, around 11pm Sunday in London. 'They were quite upset, obviously,' Regional Duty Officer Inspector Sean Cryer told media on Monday morning. The man also has family in Brisbane, with police door-knocking to locate them. Authorities will not release the 30-year-old man's name until those relatives have been informed of his disappearance. Inspector Cryer said the man, who was recently travelling in New Zealand, had been staying at the hostel where the group had been drinking prior to the incident on Sunday. 'It's a very sad event, obviously,' Inspector Cryer said. 'It's tragic, it's really unfortunate 'They've come here to have a good time.' While Inspector Cryer said 'jumping into the river off a bridge is a silly thing to do', he said people had most likely been 'jumping off that bridge ever since they built it'. A major land and water search overnight found no trace of the man and is continuing on Monday While Inspector Cryer said 'jumping into the river off a bridge is a silly thing to do', he said people had most likely been 'jumping off that bridge ever since they built it'. 'Sometimes they live and sometimes they die,' Inspector Cryer said. 'People jump off bridges all over the world and it's a silly thing to do but young men sometimes engage in high risk activity.' Police have warned against such activity, advising that it is a criminal offence. The search and rescue operation includes police helicopters, water police, and officers on bike and foot who have scoured the area. Infrared on a police helicopter found no sign of the man. The 30-year-old foreign national was believed to have been with a group of friends at the time he jumped off in a 'drunken stunt' Both sides of the river will be searched by water police and officers on foot will conduct a land search A spokesperson for the British High Commission in Canberra also confirmed to Daily Mail Australia that consular staff are in contact with the man's family. 'We can confirm that local authorities in Brisbane, Australia, are searching for a British National reported missing on 17th January. 'Consular staff are in contact with the family in the UK and are offering support at this difficult time,' the spokesperson said. Earlier on Monday, a Queensland Police spokesman said the incident 'appears to have been a drunken stunt, unfortunately'. 'The man had been out drinking with a group in the hours before this incident.' Queensland Police are urging anybody with information which may assist them to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000. Inheritance: Stripper Veronica Beckham, 31 (pictured), has been accused of manipulating a 50-year-old HBO executive into falling in love with her and naming her the beneficiary of his 401(k), retirement plan, and life insurance policy right before he died last year A 31-year-old stripper has been accused of seducing a lonely HBO executive into leaving her his life savings, just six months after they met at a strip club in Atlantic City. Micky Liu, an IT director at the cable network, died last March at the young of age of 50 after struggling with obesity, a heart condition, diabetes and alcoholism. Three months after his death, Veronica Beckham says she first found out that Liu had named her the beneficiary of his 401(k) account, retirement plan and life insurance policy. But Liu's sister May Liu claims Beckham initiated a sexual relationship with the express purpose of milking her brother of his fortune. 'Beckham, as a professional exotic dancer, was adept at applying and using coercion and manipulation upon men,' May Liu alleged in Surrogate's Court documents filed last month, obtained by DNAinfo. 'Immediately after Beckham met Micky Liu, she preyed upon Micky Lius vulnerability by exerting influence over him in the form of moral coercion and by performing sexual acts on and with Micky Liu.' May Liu is demanding to have her brother's money returned, through the exact total of the inheritance is not mentioned in court documents. In her deposition, Beckham says she first met Liu in July 2014, at the Scores strip club in Atlantic City's Taj Mahal hotel. During their first meeting, Beckham says they hung out for about a half-hour in the club before leaving to spend some time with Liu's friends in the casino. After that, Liu returned to New York while Beckham flew to Florida to see her mother, who was sick. But the two kept in contact over the phone, with calls and text messages, and when Beckham had to return to New Jersey in August to end her lease, she says Liu paid for her ticket home. He also let her stay at his bachelor's pad in Midtown for a little more than a month as she settled her affairs. Despite Liu's sister's claims that the two had a sexual relationship, Beckham says they only ever were friends - though she does admit they talked about whether to become romantic at one point. 'We had more of an everlasting friendship,' Beckham said. During the 35 days she lived with Liu, Beckham says he let her sleep in his bed while he slept on the couch. She also went back to stripping, working about two to three times a week at the Scores club in Manhattan. Meeting place: HBO executive Micky Liu met Beckham at the Scores night club in Atlantic City (pictured) in July 2014, and died the following March. His sister is suing Beckham in an attempt to get back her brother's money Beckham moved back to Florida on October 2, and it was later that month that Liu started adding her to his will. On October 21, Liu made her the beneficiary on his 401(k) plan. Just three days later, he sent her a desperate email expressing his love and affection. 'Sweet Veronica, theres nothing in me that would ever say or do anything to intentionally hurt you. I love and care for you dearly. I wish you knew,' he wrote on October 24 at around 4am. Liu made Beckham the beneficiary of his life insurance police and his IRA in late January, the same month he traveled to Florida to visit her. But by then, it seemed that Beckham was becoming more and more distant with Liu, according to one of his email exchanges. 'I do worry about you,' he wrote in an email on January 20. 'And I miss you. Why is it taking you so long to get your phone replaced? Money? Need some? Im not used to not being able to contact you.' Liu passed away on March 17, 2015 - St Patrick's Day - and Beckham says she didn't learn of his death until more than a month later. She says it was three months before she learned of the inheritance he left her. Beckham declined to comment on the case when contacted by DNAinfo, but did have a few kind words for Liu. A .50 caliber rifle designed to shoot down a helicopter found inside El Chapo's Mexican hideout was sold through the government's failed Fast and Furious weapons program, it has been reported. The weapon, which typically requires a bipod to be fired because of the extreme recoil, was found inside the property in Los Mochis where the Sinaloa Cartel kingpin was recaptured on January 8. According to agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the serial number revealed the rifle came from the government program, Fox News reports. Scroll down for video A .50 caliber rifle found inside the hideout where El Chapo was recaptured this month was sold through the Fast and Furious weapon program, it has been reported (pictured, a similar rifle found elsewhere in Mexico) The massive rifle would have been used by henchmen stationed around El Chapo's hiding spot to take down Mexican helicopters sent to scout for him, officials said Fast and Furious was a so-called 'gun runner' operation, in which ATF agents from the Phoenix Field Division intentionally sold guns illegally to men they believed were supplying cartels. The hope was that the weapons could be tracked south of the border, where arms traders for the Mexican drugs gangs could be arrested, using the serial numbers as evidence. While the 15-month operation did lead to grand jury indictments against 34 suspected arms dealers, the ATF also lost track of 1,400 of the 2,000 weapons it sold. El Chapo was recaptured on January 8 in a shootout which saw five of his henchmen killed and one Mexican marine wounded The Fast and Furious program was only uncovered when border patrol agent Brian Terry, 40, a former U.S. Marine, was killed in a shootout with cartel members in December 2010. Two weapons found near to the scene of Terry's death were traced back to the operation, and were shown to have been bought by the Sinaloa Cartel - run by El Chapo. While it is unclear whether either of the weapons were used to kill Terry, their very presence at the scene set off a political chain reaction that led to then-Attorney General Eric Holder being found in contempt by Congress for failing to turn over documents relating to the program. Holder had previously stated that he had known about the operation for only a few weeks before Terry's death, but memos uncovered later showed he had been aware of it for at least a year. Barack Obama has long been criticized over his handling of the political fallout after using executive privilege over the documents Holder was asked to release, preventing further prosecution. In total, 34 of the 2,000 weapons sold under Fast and Furious were believed to be .50 caliber rifles of the kind found in El Chapo's hideout, Fox reports. Such weapons would be given to lookouts stationed on hilltops around hiding spots used by El Chapo, designed to prevent scouting runs by Mexican helicopters. If Mexican authorities did decide to send a helicopter in, then the sole purpose of these lookouts would be to take them down, security sources said. The Fast and Furious program involved ATF agents selling guns illegally in the hopes of ensnaring cartel arms dealers - but they ultimately lost track of 1,400 of the 2,000 weapons sold, leading to then-Attorney General Eric Holder to be held in contempt by Congress Federal agents say they found the weapon inside El Chapo's hideout (pictured) and are now testing more weapons to see where and how they were bought Federal officials said they are investigating how many of the weapons found at El Chapo's hideout originated in the U.S., and where and how they were purchased. Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, who escaped his cell at the Altiplano jail last July, was recaptured in a shootout earlier this month that killed five of his guards and injured one Mexican Marine. The billionaire cartel leader was tracked to a property in Los Mochis after exchanging a series of romantic texts with actress Kate del Castillo which authorities were able to track. He is now facing extradition to the U.S. for trial and almost certain imprisonment, having escaped from Altiplano, Mexico's most secure jail, twice before. However, his lawyers are appealing the move, which could take months to complete. A Georgia couple have been overjoyed by the birth of a baby boy, just 13 months after the tragic death of their conjoined twins. Robin and Michael Hamby gained national attention in December 2014 when they welcomed twin boys, Asa and Eli, who each had a heart, but shared a torso, arms and legs. While the Hambys held out hope for their sons' rare predicament, one heart was not strong enough to keep both alive, as the two shared a circulatory system, and they died after being taken off ventilators. Within months, Robin was pregnant, and on Monday she gave birth to a son, Seth Michael Hamby. Scroll down for video 'Ecstatic': On Monday, Robin and Michael Hamby welcomed a son, Seth (pictured), just 13 months after the death of their conjoined twins, who were born with an extremely rare condition Seth was born at a healthy 6 pounds, 6 ounces and measured at 19.5 inches. 'He has eaten and pooped and all the things you want babies to do,' Robin Hamby told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Michael Hamby posted on Facebook after the birth Monday: 'I'm ecstatic.' The couple credit their faith with getting through the death of their twins and onto the next stage in their life and family. 'The Lord blessed us with Asa and Eli last year and we miss them dearly,' Hamby said Monday. 'God is good and he decided to bless us again with Seth.' Robin and Michael Hamby gained national attention in December 2014 when they gave birth to twin boys, Asa and Eli (pictured), who each had a heart, but shared a torso, arms and legs Tragic: Asa and Eli died less than two days after they were born, after the twins were taken off a ventilator The couple ignored warnings by their doctors and gave birth to the twins, choosing to rely on their faith Michael and Robin Hamby, of Columbus, Georgia, relied on their faith, praying for another chance for the twins The couple defied medical advice to bring their conjoined twin sons into the world. Doctors had warned the two their sons condition - dicephalic parapagus - meant they had little chance of survival and could not be separated. However they persevered, relying on their faith. They chose the names Asa and Eli from the Bible. Asa, which means 'healer' or 'doctor' in Hebrew, was a king of Judah. Eli, which means 'ascended' or 'my God' in Hebrew, was a high priest of Israel. Sadly, the twins died less than two days after being born. Family: The Hambys daughter, Selah, turns 3 later this month. She is pictured here with her parents 'Let me tell you something, y'all,' Michael said following the death of his sons. 'I love the Lord even more than ever. I'm not mad at Him. 'I'm not hurt or anything of that nature when it comes to my boys because I know they are in Heaven and they are waiting on me.' Disgraced former San Diego mayor Bob Filner has insisted he never sexually harassed anybody despite pleading guilty and leaving office amid allegations of inappropriate behavior from numerous women. Filner, 73, has kept a low profile since he resigned less than nine months into a four-year term amid allegations of sexual harassment from more than 20 women in August 2013. But he recently contacted the Voice of San Diego saying he wished to offer his thoughts on veteran homelessness an issue he feels the citys current mayor is neglecting. And in the interview, Filner also took the opportunity to blame his victims for making up fantasies and insisted: I never sexually harassed anybody. Scroll down for video Bob Filner (pictured during his sentencing in December 2013) pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors and a felony but now, insists he never sexually harassed anyone despite widespread allegations from more than 20 women However, in October 2013, he pleaded guilty to forcing a woman into a headlock, kissing another against her will and grabbing the buttocks of a third. He was convicted of two counts of misdemeanor battery and one count of felony false imprisonment and sentenced to three years of probation. Filner also served three months under house arrest and even moved to Los Angeles to avoid the spotlight after the scandal. Now, asked if he was sorry for what happened, Filner said of course but claimed he couldnt get into it for legal reasons. Sexual harassment is a technical legal term that mainly has to do with employees, he told the Voice. Only the folks who worked for me could accuse me of that. The others had this inappropriate stuff. It was not sexual harassment and I never sexually harassed anybody by the way. Laura Fink (pictured in 2013, after speaking to San Diego city council about her encounters with Filner) branded Filner's lack of remorse 'predictable and pathetic' Filner's accusers included great-grandmother Peggy Shannon (left, with attorney Gloria Allred, in 2013) Filner (left) stands with attorney Earll Pott in the Superior Court of San Diego on October 15, 2013. He was charged with felony false imprisonment and two misdemeanor counts of battery involving three women He added: I said there was no sexual harassment and most of the things were made up, are fantasies. There are several lawsuits against San Diego by women who allege Filner sexually harassed or behaved inappropriately with them while in office, some of which have been settled. His accusers included Katharine Ragazinno, a retired Marine, Peggy Shannon, a great-grandmother who volunteers answering senior citizens' questions at City Hall and local businesswoman Dianne York. Some of the women involved in the scandal came forward recently to brand Filners lack of remorse pathetic. Bob Filner is dragging the good name and integrity of more than 20 women through the mud to try and salvage his disgraced reputation, Laura Fink told the San Diego Tribune. Fink, a political consultant, was among the first to go public with allegations against Filner. His lack of remorse and accountability is predictable and pathetic as is his desire to remain in the spotlight, she added. San Diegans paid a heavy price for his behavior, the least he could do for the victims and our city is go away. Filner resigned less than nine months into his term in August 2013. Pictured from left, attorney Gloria Allred, former Marine Katharine Ragazinno and nurse Michelle Tyler hold a press conference on August 30, 2013 Stacy McKenzie, a parks and recreation manager, is now suing Filner and the city. Hes in total denial, she told the Tribune. It shows he will never get better because he never takes responsibility for anything he does. McKenzie says Filner grabbed her in a headlock in front of fellow employees, rubbed her breasts and refused to let go and also asked her on a date. Thats sexual harassment, she said. But Filner also said he would have been able to fight the allegations against him in court if he had been given the resources. When you look at what, quote, I was charged with, you know, it was, really, nothing illegal, and it was just an attempt of the establishment to take back their city, which they did. He accused the press and Goldsmith of conflating the allegations to make it too costly to fight the charges in court. Filner claimed city leaders had been determined to oust him and that a bug was found in his office shortly after he was elected. He claimed it was put there by City Attorney Jan Goldsmith although former Police Chief Bill Lansdowne denied one was ever found when approached by the Voice. The Vatican has offered a homeless woman a place to stay after she gave birth on a piece of cardboard near St Peter's Square - but she is still considering the idea. Police stopped to help the woman after she gave birth in a square just beyond Vatican territory at about 2am today as temperatures were hovering around freezing. Hours later, a charity representative for Pope Francis offered her a place to stay for a year. The Vatican has offered a homeless woman a place to stay after she gave birth on a piece of cardboard near St Peter's Square One of the responding police officers, Maria Capone, said: 'When I got close I saw that the baby was already born and was still attached by the umbilical cord to the mother. 'With my colleagues we tried to warm them up. We covered them with our uniform jackets." They called an ambulance which took mother and child to a nearby hospital. Police stopped to help the woman after she gave birth in a square just beyond Vatican territory at about 2am today as temperatures were hovering around freezing Later in the day, Pope Francis' top charity official, Monsignor Konrad Krajewski, visited and offered the woman a place to stay for a year at a Vatican-owned residence for mothers and babies in need. The woman has yet to decide whether to accept the offer, according to the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi. 'I fully recognise how unpleasant it may be to be investigated by the police over allegations of historic abuse. For a person to have their innocence publicly called into question must be appalling, and so I have every sympathy with Lord Bramall and his late wife and regret the distress they endured during this investigation. 'The Metropolitan Police are clear that citizens are innocent until proven guilty, and our letter to Lord Bramall's lawyers now closes this investigation into the allegations against him. 'The possibility of an apology has been raised, and I thought it was important for the Metropolitan Police to respond publicly. This is an unusual step for us to take, but I think it is in the public interest for me to explain the dilemmas faced by policing in this regard. The Metropolitan Police have come under fire over their handling of the case involving Lord Bramall 'We have many serious allegations referred to us every year that we have a duty to investigate. It is, of course, a principle of British justice that everyone is equal before the law so that duty must apply equally to all, irrespective of their status or social standing. 'We always endeavour to investigate impartially and to follow the evidence without fear or favour. Where the evidence supports it, charges will be laid, and a jury will decide, not the police, and our language should always reflect this. The fact that after a full and impartial investigation the evidence did not support charges being laid, does not suggest that an allegation should not have been investigated. 'We have continued the investigation into the allegations against Lord Bramall until all relevant lines of enquiry have been examined, and recognising that they are one part of a detailed set of allegations. This has meant it has not been possible to complete the process as quickly as we would have liked, but that is an unfortunate consequence of the historic and complex nature of the allegations. An incomplete investigation would have served no one's interest. 'We have endeavoured to act with courtesy and professionalism at all times, recognising the impact on the person is acute, especially when their identity enters the public domain. That is why we continue to hold the view that the identity of an individual facing allegations of this kind should not be made public until and unless they are charged, save there is an exceptional policing purpose. We have never named Lord Bramall and only do so now because he has spoken publicly and disclosed that he was the subject of this investigation, and we have contacted his legal representative and shared this statement before making it public. Met Police's Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Steve Rodhouse, has been criticised over his letter to Lord Bramall's lawyer when the case was dropped 'The Metropolitan Police accepts absolutely that we should apologise when we get things wrong, and we have not shrunk from doing so. However, if we were to apologise whenever we investigated allegations that did not lead to a charge, we believe this would have a harmful impact on the judgments made by officers and on the confidence of the public. Investigators may be less likely to pursue allegations they knew would be hard to prove, whereas they should be focused on establishing the existence, or otherwise, of relevant evidence. 'Naturally, there will be occasions on which this does not lead to a charge, but the investigator's primary duty must always be to establish the evidence. It stands to reason that we cannot only investigate the guilty and that we are not making a mistake when we investigate allegations where we subsequently find there is no case to answer. 'I accept that we can always learn and improve. I accept too that the impersonal language we need to use in legal letters to a person's lawyer may suggest that we have no sympathy for those who remain innocent at the end of an investigation. That is absolutely not the case, but we must continue to remain dispassionate and not introduce any personal sentiment or comment on the quality or otherwise of the evidence. 'I also accept as Lord Denning said in a famous judgment that police officers are answerable to the law and to the law alone. The government has decided to set up a statutory public inquiry under the Hon Lowell Goddard precisely because of contemporary concerns about historic investigations. It is a powerful recognition of public disquiet about the thoroughness of attempts by the police and other agencies to investigate allegations of abuse. The Inquiry has already made clear that it will be investigating cases where there are allegations of child sexual abuse and exploitation involving people of public prominence associated with Westminster. This may include Operation Midland. The MPS will, of course, fully co-operate with the Inquiry and account for its actions wherever that is requested. Sondra Earle-Kelly, 51, was charged with aggravated domestic violence after allegedly battering her husband with nunchucks A woman has been arrested after allegedly beating up her husband with nunchucks after he refused to come to bed with her. Sondra Earle-Kelly, 51, was charged with aggravated domestic violence after police found her husband with blood 'all over him' and spattered up the walls of their home in Charlotte, South Carolina. The victim was watching television in the living room on Sunday evening when Earle-Kelly 'came in and asked him to go to bed with her', according to a police report. Earle-Kelly, who according to the Charlotte Observer had been taking Xanax that night, started throwing ceramic figurines at her husband in a furious rage, the victim told police. She 'kept coming at him, assaulting him with whatever she could pick up', he added. Earle-Kelly allegedly then picked up a pair of nunchucks and started hitting her husband in the face and head. When police arrived, she said she did not know why the apartment was covered in blood or how her husband had suffered his injuries. The victim, who police say appeared to have defensive wounds on his arms, refused to be taken to hospital. Earle-Kelly showed officers cuts on her abdomen that looked to be self-inflicted, police said. She was taken to hospital before being booked into Rock Hill City jail, where she was charged with aggravated domestic violence. Earle-Kelly spent the night in jail and was released on Monday on $15,000 bond. A doctor accused of the manslaughter of a young mother who died after giving birth by Caesarian section did not have the correct qualifications, a court heard. Primary school teacher Frances Cappuccini, 30, died of a heart attack after an operation to stop heavy blood loss at Tunbridge Wells Hospital, Kent, in 2012. Dr Errol Cornish, 68, a consultant anaesthetist from South Africa, is charged with gross negligence manslaughter and is currently standing trial at Inner London Crown Court. Frances Cappuccini, 30, (right) died of a heart attack after an operation to stop heavy blood loss at Tunbridge Wells Hospital, Kent, in 2012. Dr Errol Cornish, (left) 68, is charged with her gross negligence manslaughter Dr Cornish did not meet the standard of employment as a consultant anaesthetist in UK, anaesthetics expert Professor Philip Hopkins today told the court. He told the court: 'He had not undertaken a recognised training programme or gone through a process known as equivalence with the General Medical Council to make training outside the UK up to date with this country. 'He met the standard as a locum anaesthetist but not for the role he was fulfilling at the time. 'The trust should make efforts to appoint doctors who meet requirements for such a substantive post. 'I didn't see evidence of attempts to meet that standard. I didn't discover a record of professional development or professional clinical governance activities.' He went on to say that the trust should satisfy itself that they are not putting patients' lives at risk and he told the court that it did not meet the standards. The court also heard the standard of treatment Dr Nadeem Azzez gave Mrs Cappuccini fell well below that expected of a professional working on a labour ward The court also heard that the standard of treatment Dr Nadeem Azzez, who worked alongside Dr Cornish, gave Mrs Cappuccini after she gave birth to her second son Giacomo fell well below that expected of a professional working on a labour ward. Professor Hopkins said that if Dr Azeez called for assistance from a more senior medic sooner, the 30-year-old mother would have lived. The court also heard he was not qualified enough to take up the level of his post when he began in 2008 and since then had not received any professional training. Mrs Cappuccini died hours after having a Caesarean and subsequent surgery to stop postpartum bleeding at Tunbridge Wells Hospital in Pembury, Kent, on October 9 2012. Dr Azeez is not being prosecuted because he has left the country. Prof Hopkins told their trial that Azeez made errors before during and after the surgery, which led her to die hours later without regaining consciousness. They included: - Appearing not to have physically examined her before the surgery. - Failing to follow established practice by calling a consultant anaesthetist - a more senior doctor to him - to help intubate her after judging it would be difficult. - Delayed reintubating her after the surgery despite signs that she was struggling to breathe under the effect of the general anaesthetic drugs and failing to call for help from a consultant early enough. - 'Poor' record-keeping throughout his care of her. Prof Hopkins told the jury he was 'horrified when I saw the sequence of events' leading up to Mrs Cappuccini's death, a primary school teacher who was known as 'Mrs Coffee' by her pupils. Tragic: Frances Cappuccini, 30, known affectionately as Mrs Coffee to her pupils, died hours after giving birth Happy times: Mrs Cappuccini left behind her husband Tom (pictured) and their two sons Giacomo, two, and Luca, five He said Azeez's most serious error was failing to help her breathe adequately after surgery, which led to 'inadequate ventilation' that eventually caused her to have a heart attack and die. He told the court: 'The most important things (failures) are the most basic things - the things you teach on day one of anaesthetist training. 'He failed to secure and protect Frances Cappuccini's airway and failed to ensure that her breathing was adequate.' He added: 'If a consultant anaesthetist had been present with Azeez, Frances Cappuccini would not have died.' Dr Azeez was employed as a specialist doctor in anaesthesia that was introduced nationally by NHS in 2008. He received basic training at a university in Pakistan, and his degree was recognised by the General Medical Council. Professor Hopkins said: 'Often difficult to interpret a CV of doctor who has qualified overseas as terms to describe roles can vary between countries. Defendant: Dr Errol Cornish, 68, who is originally from South Africa (pictured arriving at an earlier court hearing), is accused of manslaughter 'What was lacking was a period of training equivalent to the core training that is undertaken in the UK. 'By September 2012 he had not obtained the correct qualifications. 'It means in order to be employed at that level he should have demonstrated equivalent competency. I have no evidence that he did. 'He was not qualified to that level to be at his post in 2008 when he began working at the trust. 'I can find no evidence of professional training or assessment to show his position had changed.' Professor Hopkins said he should have had a review with senior supervisors to see if there was any development that could be done and he did not undergo any in-house training in the two years since taking up the post. He told the court that his attendance at appraisals was poor, he missed meetings, and lacked in motivation. He said: 'If a doctor is lacking the motivation to keep updated, that is a a red warning flag that things might go wrong. 'It could be that a doctor is disillusioned with that career. He was set developmental targets, but he met none of these. 'It is expected that doctors attend governance meetings unless there is a reason not to.' Dr Azeez attended just one departmental governance meeting and only one and a half days external training, when 12 days are expected. A multi-source appraisal from patients and colleagues said Dr Azeez lacked communication and did not have the necessary FRCA qualification. 'Documentation I've seen is most unsatisfactory,' said Professor Hopkins. 'I would expect the people appraising him to provide training and what he should do if they had concerns about the training or attitude of a doctor. 'These concerns should have been escalated to the clinical director of the anaesthetic department. 'I've never seen a series of appraisals like this. Mrs Cappuccini lost more than two litres, which is around four pints, of blood after Giacomo was born at the hospital. The jury has been told that the tube helping Mrs Cappuccini to breathe during the operation had been removed by 12.30pm but, despite apparent difficulties with her breathing after that point, there were delays in reintubating her. She went into cardiac arrest at around 3.15pm and died at around 4.20pm. 'Best teacher in the world': Following her death, pupils paid tribute to Mrs Cappuccino in a book of condolence Residence: High walls surround the family home of Dr Nadeem Azeez, from Tunbridge Wells, Kent, who has now left the country Career: Mrs Cappiccino taught at Offham Primary School, near West Malling, Kent, (pictured) before she died The court heard that Mr Cornish went to help Azeez between 1pm and 1.50pm after being called by him, but is accused of failing to take steps to improve her care. Prof Hopkins told the jury that when Cornish arrived in the operating theatre 'it was still a recoverable situation', adding: 'He should have taken over the airway himself as the senior anaesthetist and he should have made preparations for her reintubation, asking (the assistants) to get the necessary equipment and he should have reintubated Mrs Cappuccini and ensured adequate ventilation.' Previous witnesses have said Mrs Cappuccini was only reintubated after another anaesthetist arrived. Prof Hopkins added: 'His (Cornish's) seniority compounded the failings - it makes them worse.' The prosecution alleges that Cornish and Azeez completely failed in what it said was their 'elementary task' to ensure Mrs Cappuccini safely came round from the surgery. Cornish, of Holmbury Park in Bromley, south-east London, has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter by gross negligence. Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust has pleaded not guilty to corporate manslaughter. The prosecution alleges that if one or both doctors are found to be grossly negligent, causing the death of Mrs Cappuccini, the trust can be said to have employed someone they knew or should have known was not suitably qualified or trained for their role. Asylum seekers in Norway are being sent on 'rape prevention courses' to help them understand cultural differences and Western women. They are taught how to interpret customs which may seem surprisingly liberal to them, such as the fact that a woman's choice of skirt is not an invitation to sex. Norway has been offering these courses for several years, but in the wake of the New Year's Eve mass sex attacks in Cologne, Germany, other countries have expressed an interest in them. Norway offers courses in 'cultural understanding' for newly arrived asylum seekers, the headline on the presentation reads;' what is sexual violence and rape' The aim of the course is to teach newly arrived migrants and refugees about Norwegian customs and laws, and what is acceptable behaviour towards women. 'She kissed him, it's an invitation to have sex,' says one of the participants, and receives an explanation from an instructor. This particular morning at the Ha reception centre in southwestern Norway, a dozen Syrian and Sudanese asylum seekers fidget in their seats in a small room as their group discussion starts. 'The idea behind this course is to talk about risk situations that can arise when it comes to rapes and sexual assaults,' says instructor Linda Hagen. 'We need your help so that we can together detect these situations.' Linda Hagen address Syrian and Sudanese asylum seekers during a courses to prevent violence against women in Ha, near Stavanger - the headline reads: 'perception of women and cultural codes' The group are asked questions such as : What is the difference between love and sex? What do these pictures of women projected on a screen bring to mind, one with bare shoulders and the other veiled? Can the use of violence be legitimate? How do you know if a woman is consenting to sex? The participants brainstorm scenarios where cultural differences may cause misunderstandings. Little by little, they warm up and begin to speak. 'If she wants come to my place, that means she's consenting,' says one Syrian. 'But if she's drunk, how can I be sure that she wants to sleep with me?' asks a Sudanese man. 'If she says no, I don't do anything against her will,' insists a third. Those attending all seem to agree the course is useful. 'For me, I have no problem because my city is an open city and my sister, my mum, they're very similar to (the women) here,' a 42-year-old Syrian says. 'But I have friends, they come from a different culture, from a strict family. For them, if any part of a woman is showing, it's a sign she wants to have sex,' he says. The need for the course - which is organised by Hero, a private company that runs 40 percent of Norway's reception centres - is exemplified when a video normally shown to secondary school students is screened. In the wake of the New Year's Eve mass sex attacks in Cologne, Germany(pictured), other countries have expressed an interest in Norway's 'rape prevention courses' for newly arrived migrants and refugees In the clip, a party is in full swing. Two teens are making eyes at each other and they kiss. The boy pulls the girl, visibly tipsy, upstairs to a room and locks the door behind them. He becomes increasingly physical with her, despite the signs of resistance she is displaying. 'No means no,' concludes the video. But the video meets with a range of reactions from the participants. 'He tricked her but the girl should also have been clear and said no and not gone upstairs with him,' says one. 'If a girl kisses me, I figure she wants to sleep with me,' says another. Linda Hagen intervenes, explaining: 'In Norway, it's quite common to hug, to entwine, to dance very closely without it necessarily leading to a sexual encounter.' 'Everyone is in agreement that rape is bad,' she later adds. 'But there are all these grey zones, these situations that are a little difficult to grasp... The problem can arise with any of us.' Hero launched its course after a series of rapes committed by foreigners in the southwestern town of Stavanger between 2009 and 2011. 'We invite the residents, both women and men, to have a dialogue about cultural norms and to take responsibility if they see something,' says Hero's director Tor Brekke. 'It's not a magic formula, it's just mostly about making an arena for dialogue.' The Cologne incidents are on everybody's mind: 766 police reports filed, including 497 for sexual assault, which police have blamed on Arab and North African men. 'In my opinion it's not men who did that. They're animals. They're sick people,' says Sulaiman Adel, a 42-year-old Syrian. 'We want German authorities to say who exactly did this, and not just say they're asylum seekers,' adds Shero Demir, a 35-year-old also from Syria. Newman denied plans and told campus community it had 'never been a goal to kick out first year students because they were not doing well' No students were dismissed after faculty members refused to submit a list of potential drop outs to the university president 'You just have to drown the bunnies put a Glock to their heads,' he said He told staff who objected to the plans they had to stop thinking of struggling students as 'cuddly bunnies' A Maryland university president has compared struggling freshman to 'cuddly bunnies' who should be drowned. The head of Mount St. Mary's University, made the unflattering comparison as he unveiled plans to cull students as a way to boost the official retention rate last year, leaked emails reveal. President Simon Newman said he wanted to use a survey to identify between 20 to 25 students during orientation who were likely to drop out - and dismiss them before Fall semester's cut-off date, campus paper The Mountain Echo reported. President Simon Newman, Maryland university president, has compared struggling freshman to 'cuddly bunnies' who should be drowned The proposal sparked major backlash among some faculty members who argued it could mean talented and potentially successful students were kicked out as it was impossible to tell who would be likely to make it based on just a few weeks performance. Newman was said to have acknowledged that 'there will be some collateral damage' but told staff: 'This is hard for you because you think of the students as cuddly bunnies. 'But you can't. You just have to drown the bunnies put a Glock to their heads.' However Newman's plans to ax the struggling students by September 25, 2015, was thwarted by staff who refused to supply his office with a list of names, the paper revealed. No students were ever dismissed. The Mount St. Mary president has since claimed in an email to the campus population last month that it had 'never been a goal to kick out first year students because they were not doing well.' He admitted that he was working hard to boost retention rates as the school naturally lost around a quarter of all freshmen in their first year. But he told The Washington Post that claims retention efforts were as simple as trying to dismiss people 'is a complete mischaracterization of the entire program.' Newman claimed the program was to identify struggling students which would allow the school to stage an intervention to help them decide if the university was right for them or if they would be happier at another school or community college before they built up a lot of debt. The head of Mount St. Mary's University had allegedly unveiled plans to cull students as a way to boost the official retention rate last year It would be 'a come-to-Jesus meeting, as it were,' he told the Post. "We noticed you haven't responded to the help is this really right for you?' Have this honest-to-God conversation then." But faculty and administrators at Mount St. Mary's said they had been 'deeply disturbed' by the plans after a senior administrator shared an email by Newman which confirmed that his short term goal for the survey was ' to have 20-25 people leave by the 25th [of Sep.]. 'This one thing will boost our retention 4-5%. A larger committee or group needs to work on the details but I think you get the objective.' Students were given an hour to fill a survey during orientation on August 22 which they were told would be 'a very valuable tool that will help you discover more about yourself.' The introduction explained that it would assess and determine 'motivation, success, and happiness.' 'We will ask you some questions about yourself that we would like you to answer as honestly as possible,' the survey stated. 'There are no wrong answers.' When other faculty members discovered the president's plans for the results of the survey, they were horrified. The email was shared with several faculty members including then-Dean Josh Hochschild who branded it 'deeply disturbing'. Newman told staff to stop thinking of struggling students as 'cuddly bunnies' and said sometimes 'you have to drown the bunnies' 'I already thought this survey was ill-conceived on many levels,' he wrote on the evening before the survey was to be administered. 'If one of the intended uses is to identify students to dismiss, I think it is unethical. How can we in good conscience administer this?' He also raised concerns that students were not aware of the implications the study. 'The survey's introductory paragraphs almost persuaded me,' he continued. 'This could be helpful to students, as part of a project of self-discovery. But now, it seems that some responses to this survey could lead to drastic decisions. 'There are no wrong answers'?!?!' The survey was then issued and filled in by students. The following month Newman spoke to a small group of staff including the director of the Veritas Symposium, Dr. Greg Murry, who had helped to administer the paper during orientation. Murry claims that on September 21, the university president asked him to compile a list of freshmen which the Symposium professors believed were not likely to complete their first year. He says he told Newman: 'We don't have enough information to determine that, and you might be kicking out some students who would make it.' To which the president responded that he should stop thinking of struggling students as 'cuddly bunnies' and said sometimes 'you have to drown the bunnies.' Newman's deadline was pushed back to October 2 to allow for the list of students' names to be submitted and sources say the Mount Cares Committee was also asked to provide freshmen to be dismissed. John Larrivee (left) an associate professor of economics, said Newman (right) - who took over as president last year - approached management of the university in a business-like blunt manner which could jar with the world of academia Eventually the plan failed as no list was ever received by the office of Newman, who was appointed president of the private university in Emmitsburg, Maryland in 2015. 'We simply ran out the clock,' Murry told The Mountain Echo. John Larrivee, an associate professor of economics, said Newman - who took over as president last year - approached management of the university in a business-like blunt manner which could jar with the world of academia. 'I could see, from a business person's perspective, some merit in helping students realize early that this is not the best place for them,' Larrivee told The Post. 'But for the Mount, we care deeply about all our students and it would have to be done out of concern for them.' Mount St. Mary's Board Chairman John E. Coyne III later hit back at the allegations against Newman calling them 'disturbing and inflammatory.' He claimed they had stemmed from a 'disgruntled employee' and an imaginative student. Mount St. Mary's, the second-oldest Catholic university in the country, has about 2,300 students. On its website, it describes itself as a school that 'cares.' Russia has showcased the devastating military might contained inside a Syrian airbase from where it has launched thousands of combat missions against rebel forces. Boasting of striking 579 targets in the past four days alone, the hangar is home to a highly-advanced arsenal of anti-aircraft weapons, warplanes and helicopter gunships. It is from here, in government controlled coastal Latakia, that the Russian military has waged war against the rebels in a bid to prop up the regime of its longtime ally Bashar al-Assad. The Russian posturing comes just days ahead of peace talks in Geneva aimed at finding a solution to end the bloodshed which has ravaged the country since 2011. Russian has showcased its military might with a guided tour of its airbase in Latakia (pictured), western Syria, from where it claims to have launched 6,000 airstrikes against Syrian rebels since September 30 A Russian Sukhoi Su-24M bomber drops its payload during a combat flight from the airbase in Latakia The Russian military joined the conflict in Syria in a bid to prop up its longtime ally Bashar al-Assad Today warplanes were taking off from the airbase one after another as Moscow pressed ahead with its air blitz days before scheduled peace talks. It comes as a monitoring group today claimed Russian airstrikes have killed 3,000 people, 1,000 of which were civilians, since it began its bombing campaign on September 30. Helicopter gunships were sweeping low around the base in the province of Latakia to prevent any possible attack. Even though the front line is dozens of kilometers away and the area around the base is tightly controlled, the Russian military methodically patrols the area to make sure there is no ground threat. Two heavy transport planes were parked near the main terminal as soldiers toting assault rifles stood guard, according to the Associated Press. Since Russia launched its air campaign in Syria on September 30, its few dozen warplanes have flown nearly 6,000 missions. The Russian military brought a group of Moscow-based reporters to the base today to see the operations. Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said that over the previous four days Russian warplanes had flown 157 sorties striking 579 targets in six Syrian regions. Since AP first visited the Hemeimeem base in October, the military has put a second runway into service and has deployed powerful air defense weapons. The towering launch tubes and massive radar arrays of the long-range S-400 missiles were visible at the edge of the base. The Russian military has said it is targeting ISIS and other extremists, and has angrily dismissed Western accusations of hitting moderate rebels fighting President al-Assad. Moscow also has rejected claims that its aircraft have hit civilians, insisting all casualties have been at extremist facilities away from populated areas. Maj Gen Konashenko said Syrian government forces backed by Russian airstrikes have retaken about 250 villages and towns from extremists. A Russian warplane lands at the airbase in Latakia after a combat mission. The bombers carrying out the airstrikes are just one component of a vast array of military might at Russia's disposal Russian military leaders claim their jets carry bunker buster bombs capable of piercing 23ft of rock Each target is verified through multiple intelligence sources, and every fifth target Russia hits is now chosen thanks to information from 'patriotic' opposition forces, he said. Konashenko said one particularly successful strike was conducted Tuesday in the Aleppo province, where a Russian Su-34 bomber hit a meeting of extremist leaders. Russian ordnance includes bunker-buster bombs capable of piercing 23ft of rock to destroy underground facilities, Konashenko said. And he claimed all Russian warplanes at the base are equipped with a sophisticated targeting system, allowing them to use even regular bombs with pinpoint accuracy. When Associated Press visited, Russian soldiers loaded humanitarian supplies onto a Syrian Il-76 heavy transport plane to be parachuted over Deir el-Zour, where government-held areas of the city have been blockaded by extremists for more than a year. The U.N. says living conditions there have deteriorated significantly, with reports of up to 20 deaths because of malnutrition. The Syrian government controls the military airport in the city, but activists claim the limited amount of aid that gets in typically goes to army officers and their allies, who sell it on the black market. The Syrian government and the opposition are set to open talks in Geneva on Monday in a bid to pave the way for a political settlement with a new constitution and elections in a year and a half. International negotiators, including the U.S. and its allies and Assad's backers, Russia and Iran, have failed to agree on which of the myriad Syrian militant groups should be part of political talks. The S400, pictured, has a maximum range of 250 miles and can intercept aircraft flying up to 90,000 feet As well as aircraft, it is also able to intercept cruise missiles and other potential airborne threats The SA-21 Growler can cover the airspace over RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, Tel Aviv, Israel and most of Syria The most visible difference at the Hemeimeem base since the AP visited in October was the presence of the S-400 air defense systems. Russia deployed the powerful weapons, capable of hitting targets 240miles away, after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane along the Syrian border on November 24. Turkey said it downed the jet after it violated its airspace for a few seconds, while Russia insisted its plane had stayed within Syrian airspace. It was the first time in more than half a century that a NATO nation had shot down a Russian plane. The Russian military quickly sent the S-400s to the base and warned that it would fend off any threat to its aircraft. Moscow also punished Turkey by imposing an array of economic sanctions, including a ban on the sale of package tours. To augment the air defenses, Russia has kept a navy ship carrying long-range air defense missiles off the Syrian shore. More than five years after 7-year-old Kyron Horman vanished without a trace from his Oregon school, the missing boy's stepmother is speaking out for the first time, insisting that she does not know what happened to her stepson. Terri Horman, 45, has been living under a cloud of suspicion, even though she was never charged in connection to Kyron's disappearance. In the wake of the tragedy, Horman's marriage has unraveled, she has become estranged from her daughter, and her community turned against her. In an exclusive interview with People Magazine and ABC's Good Morning America this week, the woman recounts her final moments with her stepson on the morning he disappeared, and her life was turned upside-down in the weeks and months that followed. Scroll down for video First interview: Terri Horman, 45, sat down with People Magazine to talk about the 2010 disappearance of her stepson, 7-year-old Kyron Horman Kyron, pictured here with Horman, vanished without a trace on the morning of June 4, 2010, after his stepmom dropped him off at his elementary school in Portland, Oregon Lingering questions: Horman says the last thing she remembers is the back of Kyron's head as he walked towards the door. She believes someone at school snatched him 'I saw him walking down to his room. My vision of him is the back of his head almost at the door,' Horman recalls. 'That's what I see when I sit here and think about him that's my last thought.' Shortly after 8am on June 4, 2010, Horman dropped off Kyron at his school in Portland, which was hosting a science fair that morning. The stepmom took photos of Kyron in front of his project, took a look at his classmates' work, and then left to run some errands with her young daughter, Kiara, in tow. That was the last time she saw the bespectacled 7-year-old boy with a gap-toothed smile. 'What if I had stayed for the whole fair and not left early?' Horman still wonders. 'I think somebody from school took him.' At 2.30pm that day, when Terri and her then-husband Kaine Horman, headed to the bus stop to meet Kyron from school, they learned from the bus driver that the second-grader was not there. Mrs Horman then called Kyron's elementary school and was told that he wasn't there either, even though his jacket and book bag still hung on a hook in a classroom. By that point, the boy had been unaccounted for for six hours. Kyron, pictured far left at age 7, turned 13 in September 2015. The images in the center and on the right are age-progression composites Cold case: Despite thousands of tips pouring in and a $50,000 reward being offered for information, there has been no trace of the boy anywhere Within hours, officials with the Multonmah Sheriff's Department launched a search for Kyron. Deputies were soon joined by hundreds of volunteers scouring the woods behind Skyline Elementary School. Despite their efforts, there was no sign of the boy anywhere. By the third day, Horman says police zeroed in on her and were watching her every more, although she was never officially named a suspect or a person of interest in the investigation. Several weeks later, Terri Horman failed a polygraph test - an outcome she has blamed on her emotional state. 'You're not supposed to give someone a poly of theyve not had any sleep or they're emotionally drained,' she tells People Magazine. Nearly two months after Kyron had gone missing, Horman's husband, Kaine, left her with their daughter after the couple had an explosive argument. A short time later, Horman says a stranger showed up at her door threatening to tell police she had tried to hire him to kill Kaine, unless she paid him $10,000. Horman contacted police to report the incident and avoided being charged in the murder-for-hire plot. Thinking back on her encounter with the alleged blackmailer, Horman now believes it was a scheme concocted by her ex-husband and police in an attempt to get a confession out of her. Family divided: In the weeks and months after Kyron's disappearance, Terri Horman (pictured second right) says their family, including the boy's biological mother, Desiree Young (second left), turned against one another Kaine Horman, Kyron's dad, left Terri less than two months after the child went missing. Their divorce was finalized in 2013 Horman, 45, pictured with her lawyer in August 2010, failed a polygraph test, which she blamed on her strained emotional state Terri has not spoken to Kaine or her young daughter from the day he left their home in his pickup truck in late June 2010. Their divorce was finalized in September 2013, and Terri is still waiting to be reintroduced into her daughter Kiara's life. In divorce papers, Kaine Horman said he believes Terri 'is involved' in Kyron's disappearance CNN reported. Kyron's biological mother, Desiree Young, has also said in interviews that she wanted to keep up pressure on the investigation into Terri Horman. Last year, Horman left Portland and moved to California, away from a group of people she calls 'the Haters' who have been hounding her both online and in person, ceaselessly asking her about Kyron's whereabouts. 'The answer is I dont know. That will always be the answer, because I dont know, she says. Horman has petitioned for name changes without success in the years since Kyron's disappearance. When she tried to change her name to Claire Stella Sullivan in 2014, Horman told a judge she needed a new name to start a new life without the stigma of Horman attached to it. At the time, she said she hadn't been able to find a job in four years, and she was worried about her safety after receiving threats. The 45-year-old woman still believes Kyron is alive, and she wants police to keep looking for him until he is found. Until you show me something, I will always believe, she says. Ami Ayalon (pictured), the former head of the Israeli secret service Shin Bet and commander-in-chief of the navy, was speaking with students at Kings College London when rioters burst in One of Britain's top universities had to be evacuated when violent protesters stormed an Israel society meeting and began rioting. Ami Ayalon, the former head of the Israeli secret service Shin Bet and commander-in-chief of the navy, was speaking with students at Kings College London in his new role as a peace activist when the campaigners - believed to be from KCL Action Palestine - burst in. Eyewitnesses described seeing the mob throw chairs, smash windows and set off fire alarms before the building was shut down by police. The incident comes amid growing concerns over the rise of intimidation and the suppression of free speech on British university campuses. Esther Endfield, from the KCL Israel Society - who were hosting the event with a group from the neighbouring London School of Economics, posted on Facebook: 'Never did I ever think that I would have to write a post like this, but in life sometimes you do things that you never expect. 'Protests by KCL Action Palestine at this event was inevitable but it was never inevitable that it would turn violent, not to the point that I have reported being assaulted to the police, which is also being investigated as under a hate crime.' She continued: 'When did it become so unsafe in one of the global universities in the world that we can no longer hold an event without being scared of our safety? 'What if KCL Action Palestine would have come to the event with questions and challenged the speaker in a respectful and peaceful manner?' The meeting had to be stopped after the rioters broke in. Eyewitnesses reported seeing two police cars, two vans and more than 15 officers race to the scene. A Met Police spokesman confirmed that officers attended following reports that demonstrators had gained access to the building but added that no arrests were made. The incident at Kings College (pictured) comes amid growing concerns over the rise of intimidation and the suppression of free speech on British university campuses Tonight Universities Minister Jo Johnson criticised the protesters. He told MailOnline: 'Britain and Israel share many important academic links and speakers must be able to address meetings peacefully. 'Our universities should be safe spaces for students to expand their minds, and there can be no justification for violent intimidation that curtails free speech.' The angry protest is the latest in a series of oppressive incidents reported at universities across the country. Iranian-born human rights activist Maryam Namazie faced intimidation from members of a student Islamic society when speaking at Goldsmith University in London. Students at Cardiff University also campaigned to ban Germaine Greer from speaking. A 15-year-old Pakistani boy who cut his own hand off to avoid being accused of blasphemy has said he does not regret his actions. The teenager had been attending a mosque in the east of Punjab province when the imam asked the gathering that anyone who did not love the Prophet Mohammad would raise his hand. Mishearing, the boy raised his hand and was accused of blasphemy in front of the crowd of some 100 people, and to atone for his 'sin', he went home and cut of his hand with a scythe. The 15-year-old had been accused of blasphemy in front of a congregation in a mosque in east Punjab, and to atone, he went home and cut his own hand off and presented it to the imam 'The imam asked those of us gathered in the mosque, "Whoever doesn't believe in the teachings of the Holy Prophet, raise your hand." So I did, but by mistake,' the teenager told the BBC. 'Then I realized I was being accused of blasphemy, so I returned home, chopped off my hand, put it on a tray, and showed it to the imam.' However, despite brutally chopping off his own hand, the teenager says he has no regrets, appearing to be defending it as a natural reaction to show dedication to Islam. 'Why should I feel any pain or trouble in cutting off the hand that was raised against the Holy Prophet?,' he asks. Pakistani police have since arrested the imam of mosque for inciting violence after singling out the teen in the crowd and calling him a 'blasphemer' in front of the congregation, endangering his life. Devotion: The 15-year-old claims he does not feel any pain and says he does not regret his actions The teenager used this grass cutter to chop off his own hand, after which he presented it to the imam on a tray Blasphemy is a highly controversial issue in Pakistan, and angry mobs have killed many people accused of insulting Islam in the majority Muslim country. The law does not define blasphemy but stipulates that the penalty is death, although a death sentence has never been carried out. Police filed anti-terrorism charges against Ahmed and arrested him on Saturday, police chief Ali said. 'Such illiterate imams of mosques should not be allowed to deliver speeches. His arrest is under the National Action Plan that hate speeches inciting violence are no longer allowed in this country,' Ali said. Human rights activists say accusations of blasphemy are sky rocketing because the law is often abused to settle personal grudges. Sajid Ali, a local resident, said the cleric was later released by police. An elderly couple have been left heartbroken after their lost dog was adopted by a new family who are now refusing to give her back. Sharon Robinson, 71, and her husband Larry, 73, were in Boston visiting his son when eight-year-old Tipsy escaped from their home in Stockton, California. They desperately searched for days, posting fliers around the city, contacting vets and trawling through lost-and-found websites. The couple eventually tracked down Tipsy, only to find that another family had taken their Shetland Sheepdog in - and will not give her back. Scroll down for video Dog-gone: Sharon and Larry Robinson's dog Tipsy escaped and was taken in by a new family, who have refused to give her back The Robinsons, pictured on their wedding day, were visiting family in Boston when Tipsy, eight, got away The couple eventually tracked down Tipsy, only to find that another family had taken their Shetland Sheepdog in - and they will not give her back Valley Humane Society in California took Tipsy from an animal shelter and gave her to a new family Tipsy escaped on December 5 and the Robinsons found out on January 12 that their dog had been adopted by a family that had lost their own Sheltie, Fox40 reported. Valley Humane Society had found Tipsy at an animal shelter in Stockton in December but she was not eating, so they took her to their rescue home instead. It was there where the new family found the dog, who does not have a chip and was not wearing a collar, and decided to take her home just after New Year. 'We looked every day. I even looked when I was sick, and they thought I was coming with pneumonia again,' Mrs Robinson said. 'I just want her back.' She offered to pay the new family back any fees they incurred while adopting Tipsy and pleaded for them to hand over her beloved pet, but they refused. 'Theyve loved her for a little over two weeks. Ive loved her for eight-and-a-half years,' she said. 'I might add we paid for her in the beginning and we had no intention of giving her away,' she added. Mrs Robinson said her husband's health is in decline and that Tipsy was his 'companion'. 'This is a sad situation and one that is heartbreaking,' she said. 'While I realize she should have had a microchip in place our medical bills took presence as we never thought we would need to deal with a situation like this.' Mrs Robinson is now considering taking legal action against Valley Humane Society. The Robinsons had not chipped Tipsy and she was not wearing her collar when she escaped from their home in Stockton, California Mrs Robinson offered to pay the new family back any fees they incurred while adopting Tipsy and pleaded for them to hand over her beloved pet, but they refused Man's best friend: Tipsy was Mr Robinson's 'companion' and his wife said the situation was 'heartbreaking' Melanie Sadek, executive director of Valley Humane Society, told Daily Mail Online that everyone at the center was also 'heartbroken' that they had passed Tipsy on. She said the rescue organization did not know the Sheltie had an owner and that they needed to find her a new home so she would settle down and start eating again. Ms Sadek said legal ownership had passed from Stockton animal services to Valley Humane Society and then on to the new family, meaning there was nothing she was legally able to do. The center are staying in touch with the new family - who are also said to be upset about causing distress to the Robinsons - in case they decide to hand back Tipsy. Ms Sadek added that just 26 per cent of the 5,000 dogs who pass through Stockton animal services every year are reclaimed by owners, and they do not have the facilities to hold on to every dog until someone comes forward. Nonetheless, Ms Sadek told Daily Mail Online Valley Humane Society had not experienced anything like this before. Russian airstrikes have killed more civilians than ISIS fighters since the country began its bombing campaign in Syria late last year, it has been claimed. The Kremlin's campaign to support its embattled ally Bashar al-Assad saw Putin launch airstrikes against his opposition in September 30. But since it began, the campaign has been plagued by accusations Russian warplanes are targeting moderate opposition forces and inadvertently killing civilians. And it comes as Moscow today claimed it has now carried out more than 6,000 bombing raids across the war torn country. Scroll down for video Some 40 people were killed and dozens more were injured when Russia bombed a marketplace in Ariha, north-west Syria in November (pictured). A monitoring group claims Kremlin bombs have killed at least 1,000 people It is claimed at least 40 people died when Ariha's marketplace was hit by a Russian airstrike. People were filmed trying to rescue survivors, and sobbing over the bodies of the dead in the aftermath The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights now claims Russian airstrikes have killed 893 ISIS fighters - and more than 1,000 civilians. In total, the organisation believes the Russian airstrikes have killed 3,000 people. The startling figures come just days before the Syrian government and the opposition are set to open talks in Geneva on Monday. The negotiations are meant to pave the way for a political settlement with a new constitution and elections in a year and a half. International negotiators, including the United States and its allies and Assad's backers, Russia and Iran, have failed to agree on which of the myriad Syrian militant groups should be part of political talks. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry were meeting in Switzerland Wednesday to try to resolve the differences over who is eligible to join the U.N.-mediated peace talks. Meanwhile, the Russian military today said it had bombed the Syrian province of Deir Ezzor after a deadly ISIS assault saw jihadists tighten their siege in the region. 'The Russian operation conducted military operations only in the provinces of Latakia and Deir Ezzor in light of unfavourable weather conditions and to avoid risks for the civilian population,' Russian news agencies quoted military spokesman Igor Konashenkov as saying. Russian claims to have struck more than 6,000 targets in Syria since its airstrikes began in September last year A Russian Sukhoi Su-24M bomber drops its payload during a combat flight from the airbase in Latakia Konashenkov added that Russian warplanes had struck 57 targets in 16 combat sorties in these two provinces in the last day. The military spokesman also said Russia had delivered 50 tonnes of humanitarian aid to the besieged city of Deir Ezzor on January 15. More than 40 tonnes of humanitarian cargo were delivered earlier this week to the blockaded eastern Syrian city, the defence ministry said yesterday. ISIS launched a bloody offensive on Deir Ezzor on Saturday, with dozens of its fighters carrying out suicide bomb attacks as they stormed government positions. The jihadists now control 60 percent of the city of Deir Ezzor, intensifying a siege that had already caused fear and hardship for the roughly 200,000 people still living there. A self-made multi-millionaire who was ordered to hand over half of his 210million fortune to his ex-wife has won the right to challenge the divorce payout. Randy Work, a former executive in Texas-based private equity company Lone Star, says it is wrong that his ex, Mandy Gray, 46, should get the same as him when it was he who made all the money. Today, a senior judge at the Court of Appeal granted him permission to challenge the payout ordered at the Family Court last year. But in barbed comments, Lady Justice King criticised the warring ex-couple's failure to settle a case which has already run up 3million in legal costs. 'Really it should not be beyond the wit of man with $300million to settle it,' she said. Randy Work (right) is appealing a divorce ruling which gave his wife, Mandy Gray (left) an equal share of the fortune he built up during a career in finance The court heard the couple met when they were in their early twenties and married in Los Angeles in 1995. They had good but modest jobs, said the judge, but all that changed when Mr Work was taken on by Texas-based private equity company Lone Star in 1997. He moved to Tokyo and, taking advantage of the depressed Japanese economy, built up a vast wealth, buying and selling real estate. He made around $7billion (5million) for investors and amassed a personal fortune amounting to $300million (210million). Senior judge Lady Justice King granted the tycoon the right to appeal but said the couple should be able to sort the divorce out between themselves They eventually moved back to west London in 2007. At the divorce court last year, Mr Work claimed that his 'exceptional contribution' to the couple's wealth should mean he gets more than her. But Mr Justice Holman found his contribution to the marriage was matched by that of his wife, who had uprooted to live with him in Japan. She was a good wife and homemaker and should get exactly the same as her husband out of the divorce, the judge found. Today, Mr Work's barrister Nicholas Cusworth QC took the case to the Court of Appeal, where he argued that Mr Justice Holman had got it wrong. He should have considered the sheer vastness of the sums Mr Work had made and decided that his contribution to the couple's finances was 'exceptional', he claimed Mr Work, 48, had started with nothing and made the couple incredibly rich, the barrister told the judge. 'The scale of the wealth generated in a 10-year period was $300million,' he said. It should all have resulted in the wife receiving only around a third of the value of the couple's assets, he claimed. Granting permission to appeal, Lady Justice King said Mr Work's complaints were 'arguable'. 'I have been persuaded that permission to appeal should be given in this case,' she said. 'It is arguable that the judge erred in his approach to the test [on exceptional contribution], in particular in not sufficiently considering the sheer quantum of the product.' A BBC journalist has been barred from travelling to the US with her family because of her dual British-Iranian nationality. Rana Rahimpour, a presenter at the BBC World Service, was halted from boarding a flight to New Jersey at Heathrow airport yesterday. Ms Rahimpour was planning to attend a surprise birthday in the US, a trip which would have included seeing her brother for the first time in over a year. The journalist tweeted this picture of herself crying next to her toddler daughter, writing: 'My fully British daughter can't attend her American cousin's bday cos her mum was born in Iran.' But she was told by US authorities that she could not enter the country under a new visa waiver programme, which excludes anyone from, or who has travelled to, 'terrorist havens'. H aving been stopped by Heathrow staff, Ms Rahimpour tweeted: '3 days after lifting Iraq sanctions, US denied Esta/visa waivers for me and another 2 British citzns cos we have Iranian nationality too.' She also tweeted a picture of herself crying next to her toddler daughter, writing: 'My fully British daughter can't attend her American cousin's bday cos her mum was born in Iran.' The episode is a result of new legislation passed by the US Congress recently which means certain dual nationals who could previously visit the US for 90 days without a visa must now obtain one. British citizens could previously enter the US without a visa as long as they have been cleared in advance under an electronic authorisation scheme known as Esta. The BBC World Service reporter said her Esta application was pending after she applied on Friday, but it was never approved. The new restrictions mean those who have travelled to Syria, Iraq, Iran and Sudan since 2011 will have to apply for a visa. Ms Rahimpour was planning to attend a surprise birthday in the US, a trip which would have included seeing her brother for the first time in over a year The BBC World Service reporter said her Esta application was pending after she applied on Friday, but it was never approved British citizens could previously enter the US without a visa as long as they have been cleared in advance under an electronic authorisation scheme known as Esta One Twitter user asked the reporter why she did not give up her Iranian passport. She replied: 'Because I am Iranian.' The 33-year-old told the Guardian: 'I just feel it's unfair, it's unfair to many Iranians. 'My cousins who were travelling with me and faced similar problems have left Iran 20 years ago, they don't know how to write or read Farsi and they are paying the price for the politics of a country that they have nothing to do with.' It comes after a British Muslim father's planned trip to Disneyland was ruined last month when he and his family were barred from boarding a flight to the U.S. Mohammad Tariq Mahmood, 41, his brother and their children, aged between eight and 19, said they were stopped at the departure gate at Gatwick airport and told their visas to the US had been revoked. He claimed the family were barred from flying 'because they are Muslim'. However, it later emerged that a Facebook page claiming links to radical Islamist groups was set up by someone who has lived at the family's postal address, according to ITV News. The account, which includes information suggesting it may have been published as a joke, was in the name of Hamza Hussain - a first name shared by Mr Mahmood's 18-year-old son. It reportedly lists the job titles 'supervisor at Taliban and leader at al-Qaeda'. When asked about the account, Mr Mahmood believed hackers may have been to blame, adding: 'That could be anything, maybe a mistake.' Applications for concealed weapon permits have skyrocketed in California in the wake of the San Bernardino shootings which saw 14 people killed during a terror attack. In San Bernardino County requests for permits have increased more than nine times, meaning the wait to get an appointment just to submit an application now stands at eight months. In neighboring Riverside County the wait now stands at 18 months after just two members of the police department were left to process the hundreds of applications being received each month. Requests for concealed carry gun permits have increased more than nine times in San Bernardino following December's terror attack which killed 14 people at the Inland Regional Center The wait just to get an appointment to apply for the permit is eight months in San Bernardino County, while in neighboring Riverside, the wait is 18 months after two people were left to deal with hundreds of applications The San Bernardino Sheriffs Department said it received 75 applications during the weekend following the attack, which took place on December 2, when it normally averages 10. By the end of the month, deputies had received 750 applications, compared to a monthly average of 80, USA Today reports. Captain David Teets, former head of the departments administrative division, said: 'Its been overwhelming. 'We have two folks who work in that department, and after the terror attacks, they were absolutely inundated with people wanting concealed weapons permits. 'We received hundreds of phone calls, voicemails and emails likely upwards of one thousand in the two weeks afterwards.' Teets said that he has been forced to draft in extra members of his department and volunteers in order to help speed the process up. Even so, a person wishing to submit an application today would be forced to book in for an appointment in September. Their application for a permit would only be submitted after that appointment, after which they would have to undergo further licensing measures before being granted their firearm. Captain David Teets, former head of San Bernardino's administrative division, described the surge as 'overwhelming', while Riverside Sheriff Stan Sniff said budget restrictions were behind the long wait times California has some of the strictest gun laws in America, requiring handgun permits to be submitted at least 30 days apart, a written examination for handgun purchasers, and a mandatory 10-day waiting period before the sale or transfer of any weapon. Meanwhile in Riverside, Sheriff Stan Sniff said that efforts to speed up the applications process would require him to pull staff off patrol duty, a move he is unwilling to take. Sniff said he is already in the midst of a budget battle with county leaders, and so is unlikely to get any funding for additional officers to assist. The surge for more gun permits in California follows a well-documented trend across the nation which sees gun sales soar in the wake of mass shootings. While gun owners are not required to register their firearms, making statistics on such trends patchy, applications for background checks - which are typically required to purchase firearms - provide a partial picture. Such data shows that sales increase markedly in the wake of the 1999 Columbine High School shooting, the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 and the Aurora cinema shooting in 2012. According to the New York Times, the best month for gun sales in U.S. history came immediately following the Sandy Hook school shooting, also in 2012. December last year, following the San Bernardino attacks, takes second place, according to figures. But while the figures are clear, debate rages around the cause for such a sales spike. On December 2, American Syed Rizwan Farook and his Pakistani wife Tashfeen Malik opened fire on the Inland Regional Center in California, killing 14 people Farook, who the FBI believes became radicalized online before meeting Malik, was supplied with the gun used to commit his atrocity by former neighbor Enrique Marquez Gun advocates, such as Larry Hyatt, owner of one of the biggest gun stores in the country, argue that calls for tighter gun restrictions follow such attacks motivates people to make purchases. He told the Christian Science Monitor: 'Once people start hearing about [gun control], they say, "Wow I was planning on doing this. I better do it now."' However, opponents say the political stalemate that inevitable follows mass killings forces people into making purchases they would otherwise not have considered. He said: 'Instead of passing responsible common sense laws to keep military grade weapons out of the hands of dangerous people including terrorists Congress has left civilians to join a dangerous arms race, and effectively be drafted into law enforcement duty in their private lives.' On December 2, American Syed Rizwan Farook and his Pakistani wife Tashfeen Malik stormed into the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino before opening fire on a holiday party being held for Department of Heath workers - where Farook worked. They killed 14 people before fleeing, leaving a homemade bomb behind which failed to explode. Home Office is reportedly planning appeal, but they may already have arrived by the time it is heard The immigration court has now ruled they can be brought to Britain Four Syrian refugees living Calais's notorious 'Jungle' camp can immediately be brought to the UK to live with relatives, a court has ruled. The case could set a legal precedent that allows many other refugees wanting to cross the Channel from France to come to Britain. The young men - three teenagers and a mentally-ill 26-year-old - wanted to be reunited with their siblings in the UK, London's Immigration and Asylum Tribunal heard. A court has found that four Syrians living in the 'Jungle' camp in Calais should be allowed to move to the UK The camp sprung up around the port of Calais, with migrants attempting to sneak onto lorries and vehicles It is understood that the court's order will come into effect immediately meaning the four refugees can travel over from Calais now. This is despite the fact that Home Office had fought the application and are said to be planning to appeal it. The four have a legal entitlement to come to the UK to seek asylum because their relatives are already legally living here. However, under EU law known as the Dublin regulation they would only be allowed to join their relatives in Britain if they had already applied for asylum in France. But lawyers in Britain successfully argued that because of bureaucratic failings in France and the refugees' entitlement to a family life under Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights, they should immediately be brought to Britain and their asylum applications processed here. The judgment therefore means the French authorities will be effectively bypassed as the applications are handed over directly to the British. Lawyers for the Syrians said the conditions in the camp were 'intolerable' and they should be brought to the UK It comes after a court case in which Michael Fordham QC, representing the refugees, said the case could open the door to other applications from refugees at the camp hoping to come to Britain. He said: 'It will apply to others - certainly, I would say, any unaccompanied minor in this camp with a sibling in the UK. And I don't shrink from that. 'You are only deciding these cases so you know things like how long they have been there and the assessment of their needs. 'I'm not asking you to give a ruling that will be some general protective principle that does not regard those things.' But he added: 'Suppose you have only been there a week, my argument is the same. This is intolerable for a day.' It is thought the legal ruling could open the door to other similar cases brought by others. File photo The court heard that all the men have been traumatised, that several of them suffer from post traumatic stress disorder and that squalid conditions at the camp are aggravating these health problems. The Refugee Council hailed the judgement as 'groundbreaking'. The organisation's policy manager Judith Dennis said: 'This judgement has shone a welcome light on the plight of refugees seeking protection in Europe who are desperately trying to reach their relatives. More than 1million has been spent looking after migrants who landed at an RAF base in Cyprus three months ago, it emerged today. Boats containing 115 Greece-bound people - 67 men, 19 women and 29 children - arrived on the shores of RAF Akrotiri on October 21. Ministers have refused to resettle the group to Britain in case it creates a new migrant route into Britain. Figures released by the Ministry of Defence last month said one of the group had been imprisoned, 60 had moved in Cypriot communities and 54 were still on the base. Some of the 115 migrants, some of whom were pictured through a fence shortly after their arrival October, are still on the RAF base Those still there have been housed in a 'transit facility' outside the military garrison. Defence Minister Penny Mordaunt told MPs that the emergency response, security, construction of a temporary camp and support costs have so far amounted to 1,122,972. But shadow defence secretary Emily Thornberry said: 'It is completely inappropriate for a military base to be used as refugee camp. 'This is a question of leadership. 'We need a serious strategy for dealing with the refugee crisis, but these figures suggest that the Government is more interested in throwing money at the problem than in coming up with a genuine solution.' The UK Government reached an agreement with Cyprus to ensure asylum claims of the travellers, mostly Syrians and Palestinians from refugee camps in Syria and elsewhere, would be dealt with by the Cypriot authorities. Food, water and bedding was provided by military personnel in the immediate aftermath. There were disturbances at the temporary camp at RAF Dhekelia and the migrants were given a week to decide whether to seek asylum in Cyprus - a member state of the European Union - or be deported. Ms Mordaunt also said the travellers at the camp in Dhekelia have 'regular access to medical, dental and other health facilities as required' while Cyprus has recently started to offer education for children and adults. Further figures suggest around 2 million has been spent on welfare and education for a group of migrants whose boat was brought ashore to British territory on Cyprus in 1998. Labour's Tulip Siddiq, in a written question, asked about the cost to British taxpayers of housing and supporting migrants who arrived in October 1998 and October 2015 in the RAF Dhekelia and RAF Akrotiri sovereign base areas. Defence Minister Penny Mordaunt, left, today said the costs for caring for the migrants had exceeded 1million in the three months since they arrived. Shadow defence secretary Emily Thornberry warned an RAF base was no place for refugees Ms Mordaunt replied: 'The total recorded cost to date to the public purse for housing and supporting the migrants who arrived onto sovereign base areas administration land on October 21, 2015, is 1,122,972. 'This includes the initial emergency response, security costs, construction of the transit facility and ongoing support costs. 'Those costs which relate to the support and welfare of the migrants will be counted against the Government's targets for overseas aid. 'An element of this total includes estimated costs that are to be paid in arrears.' Ms Mordaunt also said: 'It is not possible to provide an exact sum spent in total on the migrants who arrived in 1998. 'The costs of the provision of welfare and education, based on recent data, is around 165,000 euros (127,000) per year.' Britain vows to stand up to Brussel's 'blackmail' and resist a bid to force the UK into a refugee quota system The UK will 'strongly' protest changes to EU migration rules that mean asylum seekers have to make a claim to stay in the first country they arrive in. Under the so-called Dublin Convention, refugees have to claim asylum in the country they first enter and they can be returned there under EU rules. But bureaucrats are set to try and push a change on Britain as David Cameron attempts to complete his renegotiation on Britain's membership of the EU next month. More than 12,000 people have been sent to other EU countries from Britain since 2003. Pictured: Migrants from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan walk this week in very cold weather, through snow in Macedonia to a camp The ultimatum from Brussels is expected to include a new push for Britain to take tens of thousands of migrants as part of a quota system in return for the right to deport people who reach the UK to claim asylum after travelling through several other countries. It could throw the Prime Minister's renegotiation of Britain's EU membership into turmoil ahead of the referendum. Reforms to the Dublin protocols had been due for debate on March and today a No 10 spokesman today insisted no proposal had been put to Britain so far. At a briefing with journalists, International Development Secretary Justine Greening said: 'Yes, we would be concerned and strongly against any change against on initial country status that we have got right now.' Britain has resisted signing up to a quota system on the basis it will draw more migrants from a war torn Middle East. Instead, the Government has gone to refugee camps to rescue the most needy. But reports from Brussels emerged last night indicating Britain would be told to join a controversial quota scheme to take new arrivals from Greece or Italy or face being stopped from using EU deportation rules to its advantage. The United Nations has estimated one million people will try and get into Europe this year, either by sailing across the Mediterranean or walking through the Balkans - an area currently suffering from freezing winter weather. A 19-year-old Washington man has been charged with first-degree murder for allegedly shooting dead the mother of his ex-girlfriend because the woman opposed their relationship. Prosecutors say Austin Nelson was dating the 15-year-old daughter of Teresa Ryan behind the mother's back. When the girl finally broke up with Nelson, fed up with lying to her mother, Nelson snapped, KIRO TV reported. He allegedly shot Mrs Ryan outside the family's home in South Hill, just outside Tacoma, in front of her five-year-old daughter. Bitter over break-up: Austin Nelson, 19, has been charged with the first-degree murder of Teresa Ryan, 46, in South Hill, Washington, after Ryan reportedly stopped him from dating her daughter The 15-year-old - who has not been identified due to her age - was not at home at the time of the shooting. According to CBS, Ryan had just gotten home at the time of the attack. Nelson had allegedly been waiting for Ryan and approached her as she got out of her car. He shot her multiple times, police say. The Pierce County Sheriff's Department says Nelson also forced his way into the South Hill home and fatally shot a dog. Ryan's younger daughter was still in the car at the time of the shooting, but was not injured. Nelson, 19, was arraigned Tuesday in Superior Court on a charge of first-degree murder. He also faces charges of first-degree burglary and first-degree animal cruelty. He pleaded not guilty to all charges. Killed: Teresa Ryan was shot dead in front of her five-year-old daughter outside her Washington home Monday Austin Nelson, 19 (left), was arraigned Tuesday in Superior Court on a charge of first-degree murder in the slaying of Teresa Ryan, 46 (right) According to charging documents, Nelson began dating Ryan's 15-year-old daughter in September. However, Ryan told Nelson to stay away once she found out the two were together. The girl kept seeing Nelson, and at one point helped him sneak into the family home when everyone else was sleeping. On December 6, someone broke into the familys home in the 12000 block of 142nd Street Court East and stole guns, a vacuum and other items, The News Tribune reported. However, the Ryan family not report the break-in. The daughter then broke up with Nelson on January 8, 'telling him that she did not want to continue lying to her mother'. The girl then ceased contact, even when Nelson persisted. He allegedly threatened to vandalize her SUV. The girl then found two windows had been broken out and three tires flattened while her car was parked outside her school. She spoke to her parents, who then decided to call police, believing Nelson was responsible for both the break-in and the vandalism of the car. Scene: The shooting occurred around 8.15am Monday outside the Ryan familys home in the 12000 block of 142nd Street Court East Police say Ryan had just got out of her car (pictured) when she was confronted by Nelson. Her five-year-old daughter was on the backseat when she was shot and killed The girl told police on Sunday Nelson had threatened to post photos and videos of her online if she didn't give him money or marijuana. Graphic images were then posted to social media on Sunday. Ryan sent her daughter to stay at a friend's place that night, believing she should be away from the house. Then around 8.15am Monday, Ryan returned to her home with her younger daughter. A neighbor told police that she had an argument with a man in a black hooded sweatshirt. Police say Ryan was shot three times - once in the chest and twice in the back. Officials said five shots were also fired in the house, and one of the family's two dogs was shot dead. Ryan's five-year-old daughter ran from the car to a neighbor's house for help. One neighbor tried to chase the hooded man but was unsuccessful. Nelson was quickly identified as a suspect and arrested at his grandfathers house in Tacoma. Missing money: Valerie Barber, 56, wired herself cash which she borrowed from an exclusive school A headmasters personal assistant plundered more than 150,000 from an exclusive preparatory school by pressuring parents to pay fees directly into her bank account. Valerie Barber, 56, of Ealing, West London, also wired herself cash which she borrowed from the 18,500-a-year girls school over four years. The missing money was discovered only during an audit at Pembridge Hall School in Notting Hill, which educates the children of models, designers and TV stars. It is part of the Alpha Plus Group of independent schools and is the sister of neighbouring Wetherby School for boys, which was attended by Princes William and Harry. Barber sobbed in the dock at Isleworth Crown Court today as a judge told her she had avoided jail by a whisker after her repeated acts of dishonesty against her employer between 2010 and 2014. Martin Lewis, prosecuting, said: During the entire period records show she prevailed upon parents to pay monies into her own bank account rather than the school bank account. Money transferred from parents to her private account was essentially on a fairly regular basis on average 1,000-2,000 a time... This does involve a breach of trust, certainly over a lengthy period of time and repeated acts of dishonesty. Independent school: The missing money was discovered only during an audit at Pembridge Hall School (pictured) in Notting Hill, West London, which educates the children of models, designers and TV stars There does appear to have been some contrivance to avoid detection by pressuring parents to pay money into that account. It circumvented the schools involvement and made it more difficult for the school to detect. She has also transferred money from the schools bank account to her own. She certainly had funds in her account at the time... she was also receiving a salary. Amiot Vollenweider, for Barber, said her fraud had little prospect of success despite going on undiscovered for so long. With mother Diana in 1990: Pembridge Hall is part of the Alpha Plus Group of independent schools and is the sister of neighbouring Wetherby School for boys, which was attended by Princes William and Harry (pictured) It was a matter of luck rather than anything else that it was able to continue for four years, but frankly it was not sophisticated in the slightest, he said. Fraud: Barber sobbed in the dock in court today as a judge told her she had avoided jail by a whisker She was struggling both with her own depression and the fact that her husband was unable to work and the subsequently the financial burden was on her. She had a son serving in Afghanistan whose life she feared for and had a mother at the time suffering from Alzheimers who died in 2013. She turned, it would seem, to drinking excessively and what started out originally as a thought to simply borrow the money and pay it back, spiralled dramatically out of her control. Barber remains 30,000 in debt and is expected to be sacked from the school. She has paid back 26,104, including 5,000 to parents, the court heard. Sentencing, Judge Robin Johnson told her: Employers should be able to trust employees to act in an honest way, not for selfish gain. It took a long time for your crime to be discovered, and I accept that no blame was cast on anybody else... I consider I can avoid sending you to prison immediately by a whisker, but you come about as near to going to prison as you can. Barber pleaded guilty to one count of fraud by false representation. The judge handed Barber a 20-month sentence, suspended for two years, ordered her to complete 250 hours of unpaid work and to adhere to a three-month curfew. A hoverboard has been blamed for starting at house fire in California that killed two dogs, fire officials have said. The blaze, at a family home in Santa Rosa, broke out at around 5pm yesterday while the device was plugged into a wall socket to charge, fire crews said. Fortunately the homeowner, named locally as David Carpenter, was out at the time while picking up his daughter from soccer practice. A hoverboard has been blamed for starting a house fire in Santa Rosa, California, that killed two dogs and caused $250,000 worth of damage while the owner was collecting his daughter from soccer practice Hoverboards, which were one of the most sought-after gifts at Christmas, have become known for bursting into flames - with 17 states reporting at least one fire caused by them over the holidays (file image) Mr Carpenter told the Press Democrat that he usually takes his dogs with him to the soccer field, but decided not to on this occasion. According to neighbors, smoke and flames were pouring out of the upstairs windows while the two dogs were trapped inside. Ashley Haskins, who lives nearby, said her husband Dean and another neighbor attempted to get into the house to rescue the animals, but found the doors locked. Fire crews arrived shortly afterwards and broke in, finding a labradoodle and a Boston terrier in the living room before bringing them outside. Heartbreaking picture from the scene show fire crews attempting to resuscitate the animals using oxygen tanks on the front lawn, though they were unsuccessful. Santa Rosa Fire Battalion Chief Mark Basque estimates the blaze caused $200,000 to $250,000 in damage. A total of eighteen firefighters and four fire engines were required to extinguish the blaze. Hoverboards, which consist of a self-balancing board between two small wheels, were among the must-have Christmas gifts of 2015. The fires are thought to be caused by badly-wired lithium-ion batteries inside some cheap units, often manufactured in China, which can easily overheat and burst into flames (file image) However the devices, which range in price from $200 to $2,000, have become notorious for starting fires - with at least 17 of 50 states reporting at least one over the holidays. Three of America's four largest airlines have now banned the devices from check-in and carry-on baggage, while a leading manufacturer, Swagway, has been hit with a class-action lawsuit. Meanwhile, Australian consumer affairs minister Kelly O'Dwyer has been asked to consider a country-wide ban on the devices following a fire in Victoria. While the exact cause of the fires has not been established, it appears the fault lies with the lithium-ion batteries mounted inside. Millions of devices, from laptops to phones and e-cigarettes, are fitted with the batteries which are preferred to older nickel-cadmium units because they are more powerful, last longer, and do not develop a 'memory' if not fully charged each time. While the batteries are perfectly safe if undamaged and wired properly, there is concern that some hoverboards are being manufactured incorrectly, leaving them at risk. Good quality devices have special circuits that prevent the batteries from overheating or being overcharged, dramatically reducing the chance of catastrophic failure. However, poorly manufactured, non-branded units, often from China, usually do not have these additional safety systems. This bizarre footage shows the surreal moment a knifeman was allegedly struck down by God just before he tried to stab a priest. Video footage, filmed inside a church in Colombia, shows the would-be assassin jumping from his seat at the front of the congregation and pulling out a large knife as he runs at Pedro Pablo Martin. As he comes within inches of the priest, he stops in his tracks as the holy man shouts at him: 'There is power in the name of Jesus.' As the priest repeats the phrase, the mystery assailant removes his hood before falling to the floor, which has led some critics to dismiss it as a shameless bid by the church to gain more followers. Other worshippers rush to disarm him and recriminate him for his savage actions and repeat the words of the vicar. He then appears to suffer convulsions on the floor. The temple where the alleged incident took place - the Pentecostal IPUC Bosa in the Colombian capital of Bogota - showed no hesitation in posting the dramatic incident to its website. The footage was uploaded with the caption: 'Hooded man attacks a priest but he is overcome by the power of the Holy One's name.' A spokesman for the church said: 'We have a powerful God and his name is Jesus Christ. There is power in the name of Jesus.' A witness, who declined to be named, described the event as a 'miracle'. But critics dubbed the video a hoax and accused the church of disseminating the footage as a ploy to gain followers. The assailant, in a hooded top, is positioned in a seat at the front of the church in the Colombian capital He then rushed at the priest with a knife in the video that some say is a shameful ploy to attract new members But as he rushed towards the priest, he dramatically fell to the floor, still clutching the knife The priest at the centre of the debate insisted he had nothing to hide and the video was authentic. In a radio interview, he claimed: 'It's 100 per cent authentic. What happened was a display of the power of God protecting us from evil. 'He told me, "I'm here to kill you" before he attempted to attack me and I told him to calm down, sit down and listen to the rest of my sermon because I didn't really take him seriously. 'I only realised how serious it was when I saw him come at me with the knife. 'I invoked the Lord's name as an instinctive reaction and he demonstrated his power by removing the fury he felt so the man fell to the floor. 'I know we've been accused of faking all this but it's just not true.' He claimed police were called and searched the attacker for weapons but let him go after church officials said they did not want to press charges. The priest said: 'I'm confident he won't try this again. I thought about making a formal complaint but I've decided to leave his fate in the hands of God.' The other worshippers then got out of their seats and repeated the words of the vicar - 'there is power in the name of Jesus' The businessman who refuses to allow his Muslim workers special prayer breaks claims he was forced to act in order to prevent a $1 million loss for the company each year. Fifty three Muslim employees have walked off the job because they say their boss changed work practices on them which insulted their devout faith. But Dan Ariens, chairman and CEO of Ariens, a company which makes lawn mowers and snow blowers, tells Daily Mail Online in an exclusive interview that he will refuse to allow the disgruntled employees back to work unless they accept his decision to ban extra prayer breaks. Ariens, whose family set up the business more than 80 years ago, denies he was being insensitive to their religious needs and warns they may lose their jobs if they do not accept his terms. He reveals 'other non Muslim workers' complained to him privately about the exceptional time given to the 53 Islamic staff to be able to meet their religious obligations during shifts. The chairman and CEO of Ariens in Brillion, Wisconsin tells Daily Mail Online that special prayer breaks for Muslim workers will cost company $1 million a year 'It just throws 800 people in disarray. Think of the unfairness. Everybody gets two ten minute breaks, but some additional 50 people are getting more breaks of maybe five or twenty minutes,' says Ariens 'Now they have given us letters which tell us where to get help with unemployment. As far as I am concerned, I have been fired from my job over my religion,' Ibrahim Mehammed tells Daily Mail Online 'It just throws 800 people in disarray. Think of the unfairness. Everybody gets two ten minute breaks, but some additional 50 people are getting more breaks of maybe five or twenty minutes.' But the banned Muslim workers hit back saying they had been technically forced out of their jobs and insulted by the company's management. An Imam who leads prays at his Mosque with many of the workers said Ariens, if allowed, was setting a dangerous precedent which might lead businesses around the US to review the procedure of allowing Muslims time during work to pray. Ariens employs 2,000 people including 800 at its Brillion, Wisconsin plant. The company wants to force its Muslim employees to only pray during the two ten minute breaks allowed to all employees working eight hour shifts. But the 53 Muslims, mostly from Somalia and arrived at the plant last summer, say they cannot ignore the requirements of their religion which specifies the times that they must turn towards Mecca and prostrate to Allah. They have to have clean bodies and carry out the prayers at daybreak, noon, mid-afternoon, sunset and evening and each prayer lasts five minutes. But Ariens says some prayer breaks took key workers away from production assembly lines for up to twenty minutes. Ariens, speaking in the boardroom of the company's Wisconsin headquarters, said: 'We know those breaks aren't always (taking) five minutes for prayer because you can't physically walk to one end of the plant. Muslims are required by religion to turn towards Mecca, have clean bodies and carry out the prayers at daybreak, noon, mid-afternoon, sunset and evening and each prayer lasts five minutes Basher Mahamed (center) prays at the Islamic Center of Wisconsin in Appleton, Wisconsin. The longtime Ariens employee claims some fellow Muslims are using prayers to avoid work 'Everything else at work was great. The pay was fine and the people were good to us. Then they stopped us from praying when we have to and we have to lose our jobs,' reveals Ariens employee Maqdas Abdiqadir Chairman and CEO Dan Ariens made Sunday a deadline for Muslim employees to return to work, otherwise they will be deemed to have left their jobs on their own accord 'It is 365,000 square feet so it may take you ten, fifteen and we know in some cases twenty minutes. 'If they were to stay with those five minute breaks, it would cost us about a million dollars per year. 'Let's say an assembly line has ten people on it, if two walk off the job, the other eight are standing there because they work in a sequence. It is impossible and it is not a free for all. We work as a team.' He insists the resentful employees, who have walked out and have until January 25 to return to work or face losing their jobs, knew from the day they joined of the company's allotted break times. 'I am not a Muslim. I am not aware of the Muslim prayer times. I know that there is a faith. But I am not aware of the practice. 'But I do know that they were made aware of break times when they joined the company.' Ariens, who is a Catholic, was asked why he wasn't aware that Muslims were required to pray five times a day. He said: 'Do you know how many rosaries I do a day?' One worker who walked out says he and his fellow Muslims are being forced to choose between work and faith. Ibrahim Mehammed, 32, claims: 'They are not respecting our values and religion. 'The Koran says we have to pray five times a day and at what times this has to be done. 'These prayers are very important to us as we have to fully respect Allah and when they refuse us to pray at these times, we have no choice but to lose our jobs. 'Since most of us arrived in Brillion last summer, we have been treated very well and we get on with our non Muslim colleagues. 'They would step in for us when we went to pray and it was all OK. Nobody had any trouble at all until the company called us together last week and told us we couldn't pray anymore when we had to. 'It is crazy to ask us to pray out of the times that we have to. It wouldn't mean anything to us or to God. 'Now they have given us letters which tell us where to get help with unemployment. As far as I am concerned, I have been fired from my job over my religion.' Mehammed, a father of a seven-year-old daughter, adds: 'I will be able to feed my child even if I have no job, with God's will. 'Since the day I was born, I have only known how I am going to live through God. That will never change.' His colleague Dhar Mahed, 37, says: 'We are hard workers and we get on very well with everybody. 'Nobody complained to us about our prayers. People take breaks to go to the bathroom and nobody says anything about that. They can go as many times as they like. 'It is a shame that we are being put away from our jobs only because we are sincere and respectful Muslims and simply want to pray.' The crisis began soon after the influx of Somalian Muslims last summer who found work at the bustling plant through an employment fair and applied online. Up until then, the company says, there were only a handful of Muslim employees who left the production lines to pray. But with more than 50 additional Muslims demanding time to pray during work time, the management said the position became extremely difficult and they were not expecting new staff to make such demands. 53 Muslim employees walked off the job at Ariens, a lawn mower and snow blower factory, because they say company changed policy allowing daily prayers even Ariens wants to force its Muslim employees to only pray during the two ten minute breaks allowed to all employees working eight hour shifts But Maidas Abdiqudir, 32, who wears a headscarf, tells Daily Mail Online: 'When I applied for the job, I told them during my interview that I would need to have time during my work to pray. 'I came with my family from Minnesota and we found an apartment and started a new life here. 'I wouldn't have done that if I had known that they would stop me doing the most important thing in my life. 'Everything else at work was great. The pay was fine and the people were good to us. Then they stopped us from praying when we have to and we have to lose our jobs. 'I love my job. If they allowed me to pray, I would go back to work.' Assembly line workers at Ariens make $12.50 an hour - and many of the distraught Muslin workers say they have offered to 'punch in and punch out' on their attendance cards each time they leave their factory benches to pray and make up the time at the end of shifts, but the company says it would be unworkable. Hano Badan, 42, says fellow workers had told her they did not want her to leave and hoped the Muslim workers could find a solution with the management. 'But the company wants us to leave. They are not listening to the fact that we have no choice but to pray when we have to. They should have listened to us when we took the job in the first place.' The Islamic Center of Wisconsin in Green Bay is a mosque were several of Ariens' Muslim workers go to pray One of the longest serving Islamic workers, however, claims some of his fellow Muslims were using the prayers as an excuse to avoid work. Bashir Mahamed, 67, who has worked at Ariens for nearly ten years, says: 'There was no problem when there was just three or four of us. 'But when these large numbers came, I could see that the work was being affected. 'I know that some of the people were taking the time not to pray as they were not really practicing Muslims. 'But I am very happy with my job and I will carry on working there.' His Imam Mohamed Abdelazim of the Appleton Mosque, however, disagrees with him and says the workers took time only to pray. 'They have to pray at the designated times. The prayers are called Fajr, Dhuhr, Asr, Maghrib and Isha. 'If a Muslim does these prayers he is rewarded by God, but if he does them at times different from the Muslim calendar, then his rewards are less and less. 'They have to be on time. It is not good to try and tell these Muslim brothers and sisters to pray during their lunch breaks as these prayers will not be correct and acceptable.' Another Imam Hassan Abdi of the Green Bays Mosque, claims: 'This company has changed its policy towards Muslims after employing them. We do not understand why. 'Most of these brothers and sisters worship at my mosque and I believe they are in this situation because their employer wants to get rid of its Muslim workers. 'The times to pray are in the Koran. They have to do it. 'If this company does this, other bosses around America could see this as an excuse to get rid of its employees. This is a dangerous situation for us in this country.' But Ariens denies he is using the controversy over prayers as an excuse and says he is angered over claims on social media that his company's actions amounted to racism. It is believed that if a Muslim does the five daily prayers he is rewarded by God, but if he does them at times different from the Muslim calendar, then his rewards are less and less Imam Hassan Abdi of the Green Bays Mosque, claims: 'This company has changed its policy towards Muslims after employing them. We do not understand why' 'I will feel bad if they leave. We are a business... we are not a non-profit business. We are as family and a team. No one is fired,' says Ariens He says: 'They don't know us and they are baseless and wrong. They do not know us as a family business that has been here eighty years. 'We have all kind of diversity here in North East Wisconsin and we hire anybody who wants to come and work and be part of this family. 'We are not going to discriminate not hiring someone based on their faith. We don't do research to say that we shouldn't hire them because they are Somali or because they are Irish Catholics. That is discrimination. 'We are absolutely not discriminating because we are saying that we have seen they have relocated and looking for a job and we have a job open... let's see if we can put those two things together.' He insists the latest batch of Muslim workers have been treated fairly and professionally. 'We put them through orientation and training. So these 53... we have invested in them and trained them. We have brought them some skills and they have become good manufacturers and we would like this not to cause them to voluntarily leave us and quit.' He reveals if the 53 workers left their jobs, the replacements could be Muslims as long as they understood there were only two ten minute break times. 'I will feel bad if they leave. We are a business... we are not a non-profit business. We are as family and a team. No one is fired.' The CEO refuses to disclose his company's profits or turnover or how he estimated $1 million would be lost per year if the prayers were allowed to continue when the workers wanted. The company also has plants in Oxford, England and in Rygge, Norway. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission states that employers do not have to accommodate a religious practice if it causes 'undue hardship' to the company by decreasing 'workplace efficiency.' He wept as he pleaded guilty and now faces life in an Australian jail had arrived from a flight that originated in Abu Dhabi Ben Asadollahi Zoje was found with 2kg of MDMA at Sydney airport Ben Asadollahi Zoje (pictured) faces life in prison after he admitted trying to smuggle drugs into Australia A British man wept in court as he pleaded guilty to trying to smuggle drugs into the country, hidden among bath salts. Ben Asadollahi Zoje, who worked as a night club events promoter between London and Dubai, now faces life in jail after the court appearance in Sydney, Australia. Police said the 31-year-old was found with 2kg of MDMA - ecstasy - when he arrived at Sydney airport in May 2014 from a flight originating in Abu Dhabi. Customs officers who pulled Zoje aside found 100,000-worth of drugs - in a brown crystallised substance - hidden in five tins of bath salts. Chemical tests on the bath salts revealed the presence of ecstasy. According to the Sun, his mother Suzanne Cowper-Smith flew from her home in Kent to give evidence at the hearing. She said he became a different person after his career as a jockey ended when he broke his collar-bone. She is quoted as saying: 'Hes made a mistake and he knows what hes done. He says sorry all the time.' His lawyer claimed Zoje had been recruited as a courier for a drugs gang - but prosecutors insist he knew what he was doing. Two years ago, Zoje's father said he was 'shocked' by the charges, when he spoke to the MailOnline from Belgium. 'The biggest crime he's ever done is a driving offence,' he said. 'Oh my god, I am shaking.' Zoje's father, who did not wish to be named, said the 31-year-old had been in London until just days before his arrest and was not aware his son had flown to Sydney. Tim Fitzgerald, regional commander of the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service, said it was 'a particularly elaborate attempt' to get the drugs into Australia. 'Stopping drugs at the border is of the highest priority and ACBPS officers are always alert to people trying to illegally import drugs, no matter the concealment,' he said. Zoje was handed over to Australian Federal Police who are responsible for dealing with alleged offences at the airport. He was charged with importing a commercial quantity of a border controlled drug. Commander Wayne Buchhorn of Sydney airport federal police said authorities remained vigilant to prevent these type of drugs and other dangerous substances from being brought into the country. Customs officers who pulled Zoje aside found the drugs - in a brown crystallised substance - hidden in five tins of bath salts (pictured) The maximum penalty for smuggling a large amount of drugs into Australia is life in prison 'People bringing these drugs into Australia can be as creative as they like with their concealment, but the AFP and its partner agencies have a track record of identifying and adapting to trends, leading to arrests and disruptions,' he told Sydney's Daily Telegraph. Police said the alleged drugs would be weighed to determine their exact weight and street value. More than 10,000 people stood in line to hear Donald Trump speak on Wednesday in Tulsa, Oklahoma and an informal poll suggests a massive majority of them are rock-ribbed Trump supporters. DailyMail.com polled more than 350 people at random in the line that snaked around the Mabee Center at Oral Roberts University, posing questions to them in groups of 10 to 20 at a time. Of the registered voters who participated, 91 per cent said they plan to vote for Trump and came to hear their hero speak in person. That number stands in stark contrast with the results of a similar poll DailyMail.com conducted two weeks ago outside the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts in Burlington, Vermont. Just 43 per cent of that crowd said they were die-hard Trumpeters. MAD SCENE: Thousands of people snaked around the Mabee Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Wednesday morning to see Donald Trump speak and more than 9 in 10 said they are die-hard Trumpeters USA! USA! USA!: A wildly supportive crowd of about 10,000 waited for Trump amid patriotic shouts and cried of 'Make America great!' Using a show of hands in groups of 10 to 20 at a time, registered voters were asked if they were Trump supporters, anti-Trump partisans, or undecided voters. In Tulsa, just 5 per cent said they oppose Trump and came to see a public spectacle. In Burlington, the home town of Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders, that number was 26 per cent. Another 4 per cent in Tulsa said they were undecided but open to the possibility of voting for Trump in their state's primary, and in November's general election. Political analysts have wondered if Trump's massive crowds translate into pro-Trump voters, or if people are largely there to watch a spectacle. The results of Wednesday's survey, while not scientific, suggests Trump has a dedicated core of supporters in red-state America, and that the Burlington poll results were largely the product of Vermont's overwhelmingly liberal political base. A large proportion of the Vermont crowd were reportedly an organized claque of Bernie Sanders supporters who aimed to disrupt the rally. The Trump campaign responded by turning away people at the door who said they weren't supporters. MORE POLITE MOB SCENE: DailyMail.com polled a similar gropu in Vermont and found less than half of them were there to sing Trump's praises VERMONT FOR BERNIE: Hobb Reynolds (L) and Sadhu Prem (R) trolled The Donald while they waited to get into the Vermont event but it's unlikely the passed the loyalty-oath test at the door In Tulsa, there was no such effort. The Mabee Center seats more than 11,000, and it was largely filled. 'I can't tell you how much I've been looking forward to this day,' Carrie Sanders of Tulsa told DailyMail.com outside the Mabee Center. She said she arrived at 7:30 in the morning, hours before the doors opened to the public. 'We're all totally "in the tank" for Donald,' said Robert Sanders, who drove from the nearby town of Broken Arrow. He pointed to a group of 12 members of his extended family, all of whom gave a thumbs-up and applauded him. Of the handful of anti-Trump Oklahomans who showed up, only one would speak on the record. 'I'm clearly in the minority here,' said Sandy Smith of Tulsa, wearing a Ted Cruz button and a sheepish grin. 'There's more than one Republican who's capable of making America great again,' she said, as shouts of 'Trump! Trump! Trump!' erupted around her. This is the face of the doctor dubbed 'Sweden's Josef Fritzl', who drugged a woman with Rohypnol-laced strawberries, held her in secret bunker and allegedly raped her for six days. Martin Trenneborg faces trial on Monday accused of sedating his victim at her flat in Stockholm and driving her 350 miles to his secluded farmhouse in Kristianstad where he had spent five years building a 60 square foot soundproof room and planned to keep her for many years, it is claimed. But the 38-year-old lost his nerve when he saw news reports that the woman's friends had reported her missing and took her to a police station to tell them she was fine. Sweden's Fritzl: This is the face of Martin Trenneborg, who drugged and kidnapped a woman during their second date and drove her hundreds of miles to his secret bunker where he allegedly raped her repeatedly Kidnapper:The 38-year-old doctor drugged the woman, who is in her 30s, using strawberries laced with Rohypnol in her flat in Stockholm, before bringing her 350 miles to this 60 square metre bunker (pictured) The victim, who is in her 30s, is now struggling with the after effects of what happened to her, but is determined to see her kidnapper behind bars, her lawyer Jens Hogstrom told MailOnline. Mr Hogstrom said: 'She is in very bad shape. Since the kidnapping she has been treated for post-traumatic shock disorder. 'Now when the trial is coming up, her symptoms has escalated. She is having trouble sleeping with nightmares that reminds here about the time she was in the bunker. A brief noice or sight, anything that reminds her of those days can put her in a terrible condition. 'But she is determined to get through the trial and then try to get in with her life.' Mr Hogstrom said he had not met the accused n person, but he seemed to be an 'intelligent person'. 'He has planned the kidnapping and everything in the very closest of details for years,' he said. 'Despite being very intelligent one might wonder how his head works. All of his actions points in the direction that something must be terrible wrong inside that head of his.' Trenneborg's own lawyer told Germany's Bild newspaper that his client was 'an unhappy person'. 'He had no girlfriend. He has built the property and then brought a woman who was to be his girlfriend. He wanted to live with someone,' Mari Schaub said. Planned out: After he was caught, police found two rubber masks in Trenneborg's bedroom, which he reportedly intended to use as disguises during their journey from Stockholm to his home in Kristianstad Plan: Trenneborg had reportedly started building his 'bunker' in 2010, spending some eight hours per day working on finishing it in the summer of 2015. Pictured: Forensic investigators at the secluded farmhouse Locked up: The man used two enforced doors to prevent the women from escaping the bunker Project: The bunker even has a functioning toilet, and police believe the doctor had planned to keep at least one person there for 'several years' The victim's nightmare began when she met Trenneborg in her Stockholm flat in September on a second date. He is then alleged to have raped the woman while she was passed out in her home, before transporting her in a wheelchair to his car, Aftonbladet reports. Trenneborg then drove from Stockholm to his home, a large property in Axeltorp, a village outside Kristianstad, some 345 miles south of Stockholm, during which time he also injected her with a soporific to keep her sedated. Prosecutors say he had brought two rubber masks of an old woman and a man with a beard to use as disguises during the car journey, which police found in his bedroom. Upon arrival at the property he locked the woman in the prison-like dungeon and is accused of repeatedly raped her during six days in captivity. He denies raping her. Trenneborg - who Bild says is a GP and a member of Mensa - is believed to have built the bunker himself, with the purpose of keeping at least one person captive over a long period of time. The concrete-enforced walls are 12.5 inches thick and the bunker has a bedroom, toilet and a fully fitted kitchen with a fridge and cooker, Swedish police reports. The bunker even has a small, covered courtyard, where someone would be able to go outside without being seen by neighbours. He also withdrew blood and took vaginal samples from the woman which he tested at a lab in his place of work, later confessing that he did this to ensure she did not have any STDs. Evil: The doctor drugged the woman using chocolate-dipped strawberries, marking which of the berries he had laced with Rohypnol by drawing on the stem leaves Bizarre: The doctor is also believed to have forced the woman to take contraceptive pills (seen being held up in the picture) so he could have unprotected sex with her He is also believed to have forced the woman to take contraceptive pills so he could have unprotected sex with her. According to a police report seen by Swedish media, the woman was bound or cuffed for a majority of her time in captivity, including when the doctor raped her. After a few days the doctor drove back to the woman's home in Stockholm to bring her some personal possessions, only to discover that she had been reported missing and police had broken into her flat. The doctor is believed to have panicked, and brought the woman to Stockholm where they visited a police station together on September 18. Hidden: The bunker also has a small covered courtyard so the person held captive could go outside without being seen by the neighbours (pictured) Patient: The kitchen in the bunker, which the man had spent five years building on his rural property The layout of the bunker in the man's property, which had concrete enforced walls, a kitchen, toilet and bed Prosecutors say he forced her to tell police that she was safe and well, in order to call off the search, but officers grew suspicious and took her to one side. She then told them the full story of her horrific ordeal, after which the man was arrested. 'We believe his intention has been to keep the woman locked up for several years,' chief prosecutor Peter Claeson said in a statement. Patrick Ryan, 60, who is believed to have the longest list of convictions in Britain stretching back to the age of 14, clocked up his 630th offence by stealing breakfast from a cafe and urinating against the wall Britain's most prolific criminal who has cost taxpayers at least 3million and spent more than 25 years behind bars has notched up his 630th offence this week. Patrick Ryan, 60, who is believed to have the longest list of convictions in England and Wales stretching back to the age of 14, clocked up the latest offence by stealing breakfast from a cafe. The career criminal failed to pay for his meal and then urinated against the wall of the cafe in Thornton Cleveleys, Lancashire, while returning to his hometown of Preston following a stint in jail. He had just been let out of Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow and was returning home when, dressed in a hospital gown and white paper suit, he arrived at the eatery, ate breakfast and left without paying. Admitting theft at Blackpool Magistrates' Court, JPs heard about his lengthy list of convictions which is so long that police computers even have a 'do not print out' warning on it to save paper. As long as 100 pages, a judge at Preston Crown Court once confessed Ryan's rap sheet would take 'a very long time just to read it out.' The Home Office calculates that spending a year in jail costs the public purse 45,000, meaning his 25 years behind bars alone has cost taxpayers more than 1million. In the high-profile case of homeless Simon Frodsham, 45, in 2011 his solicitor told Blackpool Magistrates' Court that the 45 breaches to his ASBO had cost the public purse more than 2million. Assuming the bill for Ryan's 630 court appearances and arrests is at the very least on a par with Frodsham's 44 offences - that means the total bill for tackling his criminality is at least 3million. Ryan admitted the latest theft charge during today's court hearing and also found to be in breach of the terms of a sex offenders' order by failing to register his address. He was fined 110. Robert Castle, defending, told the court: 'This takes him to the 630 offence mark.' The court heard Ryan committed the offence as he returned to Preston from a stay at Barlinnie Prison. Mr Castle added: 'My client had a travel warrant to get to Preston. However, because of the floods, the train stopped at Motherwell and everyone had to get off. 'Alcohol was taken by Mr Ryan and he ended up in hospital before he continued his journey. The career criminal had just been let out of Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow (pictured) and was returning home to Preston when, dressed in a hospital gown, he arrived at the eatery, ate breakfast and made off without paying 'He then arrived in Preston and more drink was taken and he failed to pay for a meal and was arrested there. 'He then came to Blackpool where he was arrested for the cafe offence and the order breach.' During a previous appearance before the resort's magistrates, the court was told most of Ryan's offences had been for theft and were drink-related. More than 420 were for gaining meals and drink by fraud. A handful of his offences are sex related - and in February 2013 he was made the subject of a Sex Offences Prevention Order (SOPO), which banned him from having any contact with girls under 16. Ryan has six convictions for failing to comply with a SOPO. Dealing with such high intensity cases is seen as a 'massive drain' on Lancashire's dwindling police service. Rachel Baines, chairman of the county's Police Federation, said: 'An inordinate amount of time and money is being spent on bringing this offender [Ryan] to justice. 'This is time and money that could be better spent doing other things. 'Police time needs to be prioritised. With falling officer numbers, repeat offenders like this are a massive drain on our resources.' Last summer, magistrate Bob Hutchinson stepped down from the bench after 11 years in protest at the soft stance on bailing and fining criminals - which he blamed for undermining the local justice system. Today, the 60-year-old retired JP, said: 'People like this are an administrative drain on the system. 'Repeat offenders who keep coming back in for stealing 20 or 30 are a real problem. 'You have got to do so much work before you would consider sending them to prison.' Admitting theft at Blackpool Magistrates' Court (pictured), JPs heard about Ryan's lengthy list of previous convictions which is so long that police computers even have a 'do not print out' warning on it to save paper Nationally, police say dealing with prolific petty criminals is preventing officers from investigating more serious offences. Re-offenders could be responsible far as many as 77 per cent of all crimes, according to a study carried out in London. London City Hall statistics last year showed that the capital's most prolific criminals have cost taxpayers more than 163million in three years. They proved that 2,093 criminals singled out for special monitoring because of their serial offending still managed to commit 53,267 crimes during the 36-month period. The bill for dealing with their crimes cost the criminal justice system an average of nearly 55million a year - or 26,000 per offender each year. The capital's deputy mayor Stephen Greenhalgh said the figures demonstrated that too often efforts to tackle re-offending were failing. American veteran Norwood Thomas, 93, will fly to Australia next month to visit the long lost girlfriend he met during World War II A 93-year-old World War II veteran who recently reconnected with the woman he fell in love with while stationed in Great Britain, is flying to see her face-to-face for the first time in more than 70 years. Norwood Thomas, 93, plans to fly out to Adelaide, Australia next month to spend Valentine's Day with his long-lost love Joyce Morris, 88. Morris was 17 years old in the spring of 1944 when she met her 'Tommy' - a 21-year-old American solider stationed outside London. The two soon fell in love, but became separated after the war and never did have their happily ever after. But now they're getting a second chance at love thanks to the hundreds who chipped in to send Thomas to Australia to visit Morris, where she now lives. The couple were first reconnected through their sons two months ago, who set up a Skype call between the old friends. The conversation lasted two hours, and Morris expressed interest in seeing her old beau in person, but unfortunately Thomas lives on a fixed income so he felt he couldn't afford the trip. After that, a fund was set up to raise money and some 300 people donated to the campaign, in addition to others who mailed checks directly to Thomas' house. Scroll down for video Joyce Morris, 88, pictured during a recent Skype call with Thomas. Morris met Thomas outside London in the spring of 1944, but later moved to Australia The story gained so much publicity that Air New Zealand heard about Thomas' efforts and decided to send the veteran and his caretaker son Steve tickets. Soon they'll be flying first-class free of charge, so that Thomas can spend the most romantic day of the year with the girl that got away. 'Im numb,' Thomas told The Virginian-Pilot. 'I have no idea what my emotions are going to be once we meet face-to-face.' The re-connection was sparked after Morris asked her son if it was possible to find people on the internet and the two of them were able to find Thomas on the news because he had gone skydiving at 88-years-old. Morris' son contacted the reporter who covered the story about Thomas and the two sons were connected - the rest is history. Morris called Thomas before their sons set up a face to face but when they finally saw each other on the computer screen, the couple couldnt help but giggle like young loves. Fell in love: When they met, Thomas was 21 and Morris was just 17-years-old. The two fell in love shortly after and Thomas even asked Morris to be his bride. To his chagrin, she declined 'Tell me. Do you see me?' he asked. 'No, I cant see properly, no,' she said. 'Well, Ill tell ya, Im smiling,' he told her. 'Im sure you are,' she said, laughing, reports The Washington Post. Morris told Thomas her son had printed a picture of him from the war that was online and that upon waking she looks at the photo and says 'Good morning, Tommy.' Thomas told her, 'Just remember I will say good morning back to you.' 'I would love to be there to say in person,' he added. Thomas told Morris he thought that she had died in a 1996 TWA crash because he read there was a British nurse named Joyce on board. He's delighted to know that she is still alive. In this photo taken on November 6, 2015, Thomas Morris via Skype from his home in Virginia Beach, Virginia 'Im numb,' Thomas (pictured on November 6) told The Virginian-Pilot . 'I have no idea what my emotions are going to be once we meet face to face.' 'I was out with a friend, and being young, we had our eyes out for young ladies,' Thomas Told ABC Thomas took a moment to tell ABC about the first time he set eyes on his first love and how he couldn't shake her from his memory. 'We were on a bridge crossing the Thames when we looked down and saw these two fine, young ladies. We went down, paddled around the Thames in rowboats for a bit, later got some drink and food and Joyce and I just clicked.' The pair dated for a few months and Thomas remembered falling deeply in love with her, 'I think I fell in love with the way that she smiled,' he said. 'I'd always look at her and think, 'My God, that is one, sweet girl.' ABC reports that the young lovers were separated in June after Thomas was forced to leave for France for the Battle of Normandy. He saw her first: 'We were on a bridge crossing the Thames when we looked down and saw these two fine, young ladies. We went down, paddled around the Thames in rowboats for a bit, later got some drink and food and Joyce and I just clicked' 'My memory is very dim, but I remember that after the war was over and I went back to the U.S., we corresponded via letters for a little bit, and I did send her a couple of gifts,' Thomas said. Thomas added that he invited Morris to go to the United States to be his wife but she declined. 'She said she couldn't and that she was just getting into nurse's training, and I realized I had more feelings for her than she did for me,' he said. 'So I thought that if I couldn't have my first choice, I'd have my second.' Thomas ended up marrying a woman with whom he spent 56 years of life. He described her as being a 'very wonderful, strong woman.' Sadly, she died of lymphoma at age 75. After the heartbreak of losing his wife, Thomas began thinking of Morris more and more. 'She had always been on the fringes of my thoughts this whole time,' he said. 'She'd always pop up as a pleasant memory, and it turns out that she'd been thinking of me this whole time too. Her son looked me up on the Internet and contacted me. I found out she'd been living in Australia.' Morris recently surprised Thomas when she phoned him up and referred to him as Tommy. 'When she called me "Tommy," her nickname for me, Oh, my God, it stirred emotions that had been dormant for a long, long time.' 'I told her that I put her on a pedestal,' Thomas said. 'I called her the pure, untouched and unobtainable goddess. And there she stayed on that pedestal for the rest of my life.' A group that is acting as an attack dog on behalf of Hillary Clinton branded Bernie Sanders as a 'socialist' this week and said he has a history of entertaining 'wackadoodle' policy proposals. David Brock, founder of the pro-Clinton Super PAC Correct the Record, beefed up a longstanding claim that Sanders is unelectable and said Republicans would win the White House in November if Sanders is the Democratic nominee. 'He's a socialist,' Brock said during a TV appearance, according to the Wall Street Journal. 'Hes got a 30-year history of affiliation with a lot of wackadoodle ideas and parties.' Brock said, 'Think about what the Republicans will do with the fact that hes a socialist in the fall.' The Super PAC Brock leads is legally able to coordinate with the Clinton campaign on its messaging, though he said yesterday that he doesn't always run his plans by the candidate's staff. Scroll down for video A group that is acting as an attack dog on behalf of Hillary Clinton branded Bernie Sanders as a 'socialist' this week and said he has a history of entertaining 'wackadoodle' policy proposals Hillary Clinton's campaign is able to work with Correct the Record because of the way the PAC re-organized after she launched her campaign - but its founder, David Brock, says he campaign had nothing to do with its recent call on Sanders to release his health records Brock beefed up a longstanding claim that Sanders is unelectable and said Republicans would win the White House in November if Sanders is the Democratic nominee He said yesterday on Bloomberg's With All Due Respect program, which also airs on MSNBC, that the Clinton campaign wasn't involved in a previously reported plan to press Sanders to release his health records. Brock was supposed to launch the attack on the 74-year-old senator last weekend but didn't. He said yesterday that a report in Politico previewing the assault got the gist of his plans right, however. 'I was prepared to bring that up,' he said. 'I was scheduled to do a couple of interviews over the weekend in Charleston...so I was prepared to bring that up.' Sanders' campaign made a direct appeal to his supporters after the Politico report dropped and called it 'one of the most desperate and vile attacks imaginable' then asked for contributions to his White House bid. At the same time, Clinton's national chair, John Podesta, preemptively sought to distance the Clinton campaign proper from the affiliate's plans via Twitter. Podesta wrote: '.@davidbrockdc: Chill out. We're fighting on who would make a better President, not on who has a better Physical Fitness Test.' The Democratic candidates were gathered at a dinner in South Carolina ahead of the Democratic debate there the following evening as news of the rumored line of attack grew legs. A spokeswoman for Sanders told reporters that it was too bad Correct the Record was planning to go down that road. Clinton's national chair, John Podesta, preemptively sought to distance the Clinton campaign proper from the affiliate's plans via Twitter In the fundraising appeal Sanders' campaign manager Jeff Weaver said, 'Let me be very clear with you: Bernie is in excellent health.' 'But this personal attack is another example of a sickness in our democracy when it is so easy for millionaires and billionaires to buy up candidates and elections,' it said. Weaver later told ABC News that the campaign would indeed release Sanders' medical records. 'Yeah, of course,' Weaver told the network. 'Look hes been in the Congress. He has a regular doctor. We'll just get you the doctor's note. On Tuesday's broadcast of With All Due Respect Brock said he didn't take Podesta's tweet as a stand down order. 'I thought it was a friendly kind of amusing tweet,' Brock said. 'I mean it was already done in the sense that once the Politico put it out, I didn't have to do anything.' Brock noted that he was on CNN that weekend and wasn't asked about the report, 'So I couldn't do anything.' The Clinton campaign is able to work with Brock and Correct the Record because of the way the PAC re-organized after she launched her campaign. He said on Tuesday that Correct the Record is not an arm of Clinton's operation, though. 'We're not the campaign,' he said. 'We can coordinate. It doesn't mean everything we say and do is coordinated.' He also contended that the campaign is not responsible for his group's actions. 'I don't think so,' he said after he was asked the question. He referred to Podesta's tweet and said, 'I thought it was amusing but it was a disavowal of what I did, and they're entitled to do that and in fact they had nothing to do with it, so I think it was smart.' That raised a new question, however, what does he run through Clinton's team? 'I don;t want to get into what I do and don't check with them.' Brock said he doesn't want to reveal his 'strategy' and pointed to a previous statement in which he said, 'This has nothing to do with the Clinton campaign.' The statement, published in Bloomberg, also said, 'Correct The Record is not going to attack Senator Sanders on the issue of his medical records, nor am I. I've said nothing about the issue.' Brock seemed to imply in it that the Politco article was inaccurate, but admitted Tuesday that it wasn't. Clinton's physical fitness has also been brought up in the context of the 2016 campaign, but by Republicans like Karl Rove who have suggested that she downplayed a spill she took at the end of 2012. The fall resulted in a concussion and led to the discovery of a blood clot near her brain. The secretary of state at the time, Clinton declared a clean bill of health and went back to work. She resigned shortly afterward, however, and her husband bill revealed a year and half later that it took her 'six months of very serious work' to recover. The 68-year-old released her own health records in July after announcing her run for president and said she had 'no' lingering effects from the December 2012 medical emergency. Her doctor likewise declared a 'complete resolution of the effects of the concussion' she suffered. Sarah Palin got a rock star's welcom in Tulsa, Oklahma on Wednesday as she told a crowd of 10,000 that America is 'going to go to hell in a handbasket' and urged them in her trademark twang to vote on 'Soooper Tooooosday.' Palin endorsed Trump in a stream-of-consciousness stemwinder Tuesday during a rally in Ames, Iowa. The 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee was a no-show Wednesday morning at a smaller campaign stop in Norwalk, Iowa, as rumors swirled that a one-day political romance might already have turned sour. But she spoke for nearly 20 minutes in Tulsa at the Mabee Arena at Oral Roberts University, calling the Republican front-runner 'ballsy enough to get out there' and challenge politicians on both the left and the right. Scroll down for video RHYMING ROGUE: Sarah Palin rallied for Donald Trump in Tulsa, Oklahoma, saying 'we're in it to win it,' 'stump for Trump' and the 'status quo' has 'got to go' PARTNERSHIP: Trump unveiled Palin as his latest endorser on Tuesday and brought her to Tulsa to speak on his behalf for 20 minutes in front of 10,000 people CROWD-PLEASER: The raucous Oklahoma crowd gave Palin and Trump rock stars' welcomes Trump introduced her as 'a very special person, a wonderful person' and 'a really great friend.' Palin reprised her Ames speech Wednesday, rhyming her way through a blistering critique of the Obama administration and a firm defense of Trump. 'You patriots!' she yelled. 'You who know enough is enough. Enough of the status quo. It's got to go.' 'We need to be in it to win it!' she said later. 'Are you ready to stump for Trump?' Palin asked at one point. Thinking she had said 'stomp for Trump,' thousands of people in the arena started pounding their feet on the cement floors. Calling Trump's campaign a 'great awakening,' Palin warned that 'our country is going to we're going to go to hell in a handbasket!' She blasted the president as a feckless leader whom Americans should replace with 'a commander-in-chief who will respect our troops ... who will let them do their job and go kick ISIS ass! She also blasted Obama's Veterans Administration for the lax attention it has paid to wounded warriors and battle-fatigued veterans who return from war zones with PTSD and other ailments. SEA OF HUMANITY: This photo, shot from a hotel across the street from the Mabee Center, shows a crowd lining up in sub-freezing weather to see Trump hours before his arrival, when he was still in Iowa THE MOOSE (MAMA) IS LOOSE Palin wrote on Facebook Wednesday morning; 'Trading in the beautiful snow of Iowa for the red dirt of Oklahoma as planned, despite what the media is trying to spin up! Thank you Iowa - get out and caucus on February 1st!' 'MEXICAN': One protester disrupted Trump's rally with a message that Hispanics 'come in peace' She used her son Track Palin as Exhibit A. 'My son, a combat vet, having served in a striker brigade, fighting for you all, America, in the war zone,' she said 'but my son like so many others, they come back a bit different, they come back hardened, they come back wondering ... whether they are respected anymore. It starts at the top!' Criticizing the White House for its foreign policy especially with respect to Iran she said Obama is 'a weak-kneed capitulator-in-chief who doesn't know how to negotiate, and he has decided that from now on America is going to lead from behind.' 'What the enemy was doing was sending a message to the rest of the world ... they will capture, and America will kowtow, and America will apologize, and in the deal we will bend over and then say thank you.' 'Like I said yesterday in Iowa,' she wound up, 'No more pussyfootin' around!' Trump, sharing a large arena stage with an opening act for the first time,' delivered a variation on his standard stump speech including riffs on illegal immigration, trade, military power and jobs. He was interrupted four times by protesters, including one man wearing a bandana over his face and hoisting a clenched fist above his head, and another sporting a t-shirt with the handwritten message: 'We come in peace.' The man also wore a yellow star of David of the type Jews were required to wear in Nazi Germany with the word 'Mexican' emblazoned on it. Trump has earned enmity from liberals for his proposal to stem the flow of Mexican illegal immigrants with a new wall on America's southern border. 'I like him. I hope they do a couple more today,' Trump quipped after the first man became a minor nuisance, noting that news cameras had panned to show the size of his audience. 'BALLSY': Palin called Trump 'ballsy enough to get out there' and challenge politicians on both the left and the right NOT FEELING THE BERN: Trump said of Bernie Sanders that 'he's a wacko. He's a whack job but he's beating Hillary Clinton!' CHILL? DRILL! An audience member brought a tongue-in-cheek sign for Palin, who is fond of telling people who want her to 'chill' that America should instead 'drill, baby, drill' He denounced Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, over the FBI's investigation into the private email server she operated while she was secretary of state, and the alleged sweetheart deals she made with foreign nations in exchange for contributions to her family foundation. 'I don't know if Hillary is going to make it,' Trump said. 'She might not make it with the voters. She might not make it legally!' Trump noted that Clinton has begun to speak glowingly about Obama and the executive orders that are being challenged in federal courts. 'You know how she's so positive about the president? You know why? It's because she wants to stay out of the klink, that's why!' he said to a chorus of cheers. He also had choice words for Clinton's only realistic challenger, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. 'He's a wacko,' the real estate tycoon said of the avowed Democratic socialist. 'He's a whack job but he's beating Hillary Clinton!' The thousands in Oklahoma gave Trump a raucous welcome and sustained applause. Hearing a loud 'I love you!' from the group of supporters gathered in front of his podium, Trump squinted to locate the person who had yelled. 'I love you too,' he responded. 'Even though you're a guy.' Trump claimed the rally was attended by 15,000 people, and that officials had turned away 5,000 more. Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Wednesday forcefully defended the Obama administration's recent push to tighten gun control laws, calling them 'common sense steps' even as she announced the hiring of hundreds more federal agents to enforce existing laws. Lynch, testifying at a three-hour hearing by a Republican-controlled Senate Appropriations subcommittee that oversees Justice Department funding, said the actions President Obama announced on Jan. 5 were completely lawful and constitutional. 'I have complete confidence that the common-sense steps announced by the president are lawful,' Lynch said. 'They are consistent with the Constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court and the laws passed by Congress.' Scroll down for videos Attorney General Loretta Lynch testified Wednesday before a Senate Appropriations panel, defending the legality of the Obama administration's recent gun control initiatives and announcing millions of dollars in forthcoming funding requests to improve the enforcement of current gunlaws At a memorable White House press conference on Jan. 5, President Obama announced the initiatives, saying he had no choice to act because Congress has refused to do so At the same time, Lynch conceded that the Justice Department needs to improve the enforcement of existing laws. She blamed that on under-staffing and a backlog at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, as well as the agents who staff the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). The understaffing problem is so acute, Lynch testified, that the NICS system is only operational 17 hours a day - not 24. To address the problem, she told appropriators that the Justice Department next month will seek $80 million in its 2017 fiscal year budget to hire 230 more FBI agents to staff the NICS system, plus another 200 ATF agents to crack down on existing enforcement. Those requests will be accompanied - per Obama's Jan. 5 announcement - by requests for money to research gun safety technology and $500 million for mental health initiatives. The need for more agents is particularly important, Lynch said, because the Internet is exploding with illicit gun sales that are difficult to detect. In a Jan. 5 press conference at the White House, Obama announced many of the measures that he is implementing through executive action, circumventing Congress. Central to his plans was another initiative defended by Lynch on Wednesday - new guidelines to be issued by the ATF bureau to clarify which types of gun sellers require a federal license. Obama became emotional at the Jan. 5 press conference when recalling the December 2012 shootings at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. Lynch said the Justice Department needs funding for hundreds more federal agents to improve enforcement and staff the National Instant Background Check system Lynch is the first African-American woman to lead the Justice Department, and only the second woman. She was confirmed by the Senate last April Gun collectors and hobbyists - so-called 'kitchen table' sellers - would be exempt, but the new guidelines are aimed at requiring more gun sellers to register and undergo background checks. 'We do not have to accept this carnage as the price of freedom,' Obama said at the press conference, flanked by several gun control activists. 'We can find ways to reduce gun violence consistent with the Second Amendment... The gun lobby may be holding Congress hostage right now but they are not holding America hostage.' 'All of us need to demand a Congress brave enough to stand up to the gun lobbys lies. All of us need to stand up and protect its citizens. All of us need to demand governors and legislatures and businesses do their part to make our communities safer.' Republicans have howled at Obama's actions - and continued to do so again on Wednesday. Subcommittee Chairman Richard Shelby of Alabama - who faces a primary re-election challenge this year - led the charge, telling Lynch that the Justice Department 'is on notice.' 'This subcommittee will have no part in undermining the Constitution and the rights that it protects,' Shelby said. 'It is clear to me that the American people are fearful that President Obama is eager to strip them of their Second Amendment rights.' Shelby also took Obama to task for commuting sentences of criminals who used guns, saying it undermined law enforcement efforts. 'I don't know these individuals or why the president felt they needed shorter sentences....This sends a message to criminals: if you commit a crime with a gun, the president will not go hard on you,' he said. But Democrats on the subcommittee said the administration is on the right track in beefing up enforcement, boosting mental health programs and requiring more background checks. 'I represent a state with 39.1 million people. I can tell you that we want you to enforce the laws,' said Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, whose state was rocked by the Dec. 2 mass shooting in San Bernardino. Subcommittee Chairman Richard Shelby of Alabama tore into the Obama administration's actions regarding firearms at a Capitol Hill hearing on Wednesday Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware said his hometown of Wilmington has been greatly improved already by improved enforcement, allowing the city to increase the number of cleared and closed homicides from 10 percent a few years ago to 50 percent today. And Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, the subcommittee's top Democrat, noted the violence that has socked her hometown of Baltimore. 'For too long, Congress has failed to act on measures to keep us safe, including common sense reforms to close the gun show loophole, improve background checks for gun purchasers and strengthen mental health services,' Mikulski said. 'As appropriators, we put money in the federal checkbook... Sadly, deadly gun violence has become all too familiar in Maryland and across our nation. No one should be afraid to attend a religious service, go to school, visit a shopping mall or see a movie in a theater.' Lynch said she remains 'proud' of the Justice Department's record of enforcement, but conceded that errors are too commonplace. The murders of nine African-American churchgoers in Charleston, S.C. last June, for example, may have been prevented. Because of a glitch in the background check system, Lynch and FBI Director James Comey have both said that the alleged killer, Dylann Roof, was able to purchase the gun used in the shootings despite having a criminal record. A drunk man was arrested getting off a flight in New York this week after allegedly molesting a male passenger in the air, as the victim's wife sat in the next seat. Ricardo Caceres was arraigned in Brooklyn federal court on Sunday following the Hawaiian Airlines flight from Honolulu direct to JFK. According to court papers obtained by The New York Post, Caceres was drinking heavily on the flight and seated in an aisle seat. At some point during the flight - which is about 9.5 hours - Caceres grabbed the groin, chest and belt of the man seated in the middle seat next to him, witnessed by the man's wife, who was in the window seat. Incident under investigation: Ricardo Caceres was arrested getting off a Hawaiian Airlines flight in New York Sunday after allegedly molesting the man seated next to him, before exposing himself and masturbating 'The (victim) asked the defendant what he was doing,' according to a Brooklyn federal court complaint. Caceres is then accused of exposing himself and beginning to masturbate. 'The passenger and his wife both saw the defendant fully exposed, after which the passenger notified the flight crew,' court papers state, according to The Post. 'Two members of the flight crew responded, observed the defendant fully exposed with his pants off and instructed him to put his clothing back on, which the defendant did.' The crew are then said to have instructed Caceres to compose himself, which he did for the remainder of the flight. Once the plane touched down, Caceres was arrested as he got off by officers that were waiting for him, having been notified of the incident. Caceres was released on $25,000 bond, papers state. The victim has not been named. Nestle has lost its bid to reigster the shape of its four-finger Kit Kat as a trademark, after a High Court judge sided with rival Cadbury. Mr Justice Arnold analysed the confectionery giant's application after Cadbury objected, considering the issues relating to the 'distinctive character' of the 'three-dimensional shape' at a High Court hearing in London earlier this month. But Nestle failed to convince the judge, who ruled against the Swiss company on Wednesday. Ruling: A High Court judge has ruled the four-finger KitKat chocolate bar is not distinctive enough to be claimed by Nestle for its exclusive use after Cadbury objected to its attempt to trademark the shape The judge began deliberating on the dispute in 2014 - but had a break to allow judges in Europe to consider legal issues. He said aspects of European trademark law were 'unclear' and that he wanted clarification from the Court of Justice in the European Union before coming to a decision. Nestle had argued that even without its red and white packaging or the word KitKat embossed on the chocolate, the shape of the bar should be regarded as distinct. It said the shape had been roughly the same since Rowntree sold the first KitKat, then called the Chocolate Crisp, in 1935. Its name later changed to KitKat Chocolate Crisp and then to KitKat after the Second World War. Nestle, which is based in Switzerland and bought Rowntree in 1988, sells about 40million worth of KitKats a year in the UK. Following the ruling, Nestle bosses said they were disappointed and intended to appeal. A spokesman said the ruling opened the way for a rival to produce a similar-shaped four-finger chocolate bar. One lookalike called Kvikk Lunsj Norwegian for quick lunch already exists. The brand was launched in Norway in 1937 and is available in some UK shops. 'They couldn't call it Kit Kat but they could produce something in that shape,' the spokesman said. He added: 'Kit Kat is much loved and the iconic shape of the four-finger bar, which has been used in the UK for more than 80 years, is well-known by consumers. 'We believe that the shape deserves to be protected as a trademark in the UK and are disappointed that the court did not agree on this occasion. 'We are taking the necessary steps to appeal this judgEment.' Pleased: This could now open the way for Cadbury to create its own Kit Kat shaped bar He said the ruling did not affect Kit Kat bars produced in other shapes. Cadbury bosses said they were pleased with the ruling. A spokeswoman added: '(It) is in line with our contention that the shape of the Kit Kat bar is not distinctive enough to be protected as a trademark.' A two-year-old boy is feared dead six days after he went missing in freezing cold Tennessee. Noah Chamberlin has been the focus of a state-wide FBI-backed search in the town of Pinson and beyond almost a week after his grandmother lost sight of him during a Thursday afternoon stroll. Police are now hitting back at conspiracy theorists who speculate that the boy's parents Jacob and Destiny Chamberlin are behind the disappearance. Skeptics have been calling on officers to raid the family's home, with wild accusations claiming the child was covered in wet concrete or buried under an outhouse on the family property. 'We have interviewed the entire family multiple times. We can find no reason, none whatsoever, to discredit them,' Chester County Sheriff Blair Weaver said at a press conference on Tuesday, according to the Jackson Sun. SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO Noah Chamberlin, two, (pictured with his parents Jacob and Destiny, and his older sister) has been missing for six days after going on a stroll with his sister and grandmother in Pinson, Tennessee, on Thursday Police are now hitting back at conspiracy theorists who speculate that the boy's parents Jacob and Destiny Chamberlin (pictured with Noah and their daughter, his older sister) are behind the disappearance Neighbors insist Jacob and Destiny (pictured with their kids) are 'very Christian' and 'would never harm' Noah Noah (pictured on Santa's lap) was reported missing at 1.19pm on Thursday after he disappeared while on a walk in the woods behind his grandparents' Pinson home, law enforcement officials said Madison County Sheriff John Mehr added: 'The family has been cooperative and supportive. The FBI and TBI have been doing background and support (operations) for us. A behavioral science unit has been called in to assist.' Noah was reported missing at 1.19pm on Thursday after he disappeared while on a walk in the woods behind his grandparents' Pinson home, law enforcement officials said. His grandmother had taken him and his four-year-old sister on a nature hike when she said she lost sight of him. Authorities said the trio had sat down to talk while in the woods and when the grandmother turned around, he was gone. 'They sat down to talk and she was paying attention to the granddaughter, and when she turned around he was gone,' Madison County Sheriff's Office spokesman Tom Mapes said. 'She immediately went to look for him.' But as the search has stretched to nearly a week, officers have had to issue a plea to the public to desist from posting rumors on the police official Facebook group as it 'distracts' from their attempts to chase legitimate leads. One man wrote on the Chester County Sheriff's Office page: 'That little boy never went on a walk. It was just a story given to police.' The allegations come days after Weaver made a plea to the public for more volunteers to help search for the two-year-old who has been missing since Thursday. Defending the family, neighbors told local reporters Jacob and Destiny are 'very Christian' and 'could never' harm their children. Chester County Sheriff Blair Weaver (pictured on Sunday) said the family had 'no reason' to harm Noah Search crews looking to locate Noah from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and other agencies are pictured above on Sunday. As of late Sunday afternoon, Weaver said search crews had found no sign of him 'Jacob is a very Christian young man. He's very inspirational as far as believing in the good Lord,' Gary Rinks, owner of a truck business in the area, told WREG. Asked if Jacob and Destiny could have harmed Noah, Rinks replied: 'Under no circumstance. None whatsoever. He added: 'It truly upsets me very much so because I know the young man as he is. Like I say, a Christian man and he loves his family.' Police maintain they are confident the search and rescue mission will lead to bringing Noah home safe. 'We have total faith that we're going to find Noah and we're going to bring him home safe,' Weaver told WSMV. Due to frigid temperatures, the Chester County Sheriff's office initially called for a law-enforcement-only search. However, as time went on with no sign of Noah, Weaver asked for civilian volunteers to help with the search. 'Been cold, wet, muddy, lots of hills, lot of hard terrain, lot of swamps, lot of bottoms,' David Terry, one of the volunteers said of the search for Noah. Authorities said last week that his disappearance was not considered suspicious. Since Thursday, hundreds of volunteers along with law enforcement from several state and local agencies have canvassed the woods surrounding the home in search of the boy. Some volunteers have traveled from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida and Mississippi have joined in the search for Noah. On Saturday night, a candlelight vigil was held for the boy as Pinson residents remain hopeful the boy will be found. Mapes said on Sunday that an Amber alert has not been issued because the investigation is not a search for an abducted child but remains as one for a missing child, and asked for people to 'pray hard.' Since Thursday, search crews have canvassed the woods surrounding the grandparents' Pinson home. Authorities said Noah's disappearance is not considered suspicious Hundreds of volunteers along with law enforcement from several state and agencies have joined the search This morning, volunteers and churchgoers gathered at Pinson Baptist Church and prayed for the missing boy. 'Something like this happens which is tragic and you hate it, and yet in the middle of it you see people really do care,' pastor of the church, Rev. John Gaters said. 'They really, honestly care about this child, they care about this family. I'm amazed.' According to an endangered missing child alert for Noah, he is described as a white male with blonde hair and blue eyes who stands two feet tall and weighs 25 pounds. Noah was last seen wearing a long-sleeved gray shirt and blue jeans. Advertisement Aerial photographs show how western-backed Kurdish forces destroyed the homes of thousands of Arab families, in what Amnesty International branded a war crime. Kurdish forces fighting against jihadists in Iraq destroyed the homes of villagers who had fled the violence, in an apparent attempt to take revenge on communities they believed to be supporting ISIS. The destruction has forced thousands of people into makeshift camps, where they live in what the watchdog described as desperate conditions. An aerial image taken on June 23 2014 shows the Iraqi village of Tabaj Hamid before it was razed. A second image, taken on January 20 2015 shows the same village after it has been flattened, with just mounds of rubble and earth left behind where family homes once stood. Before and after: An aerial image taken on June 23 2014 shows the Iraqi village of Tabaj Hamid. A second aerial image taken on January 20 2015 shows the same village after it has been raised to the ground, with just mounds of rubble and earth left behind where family homes once stood Amnesty claims the destruction took place in areas of northern Iraq after they were recaptured from ISIS, which took over swathes of the country in 2014. All I know is that when the Peshmerga retook the village, the houses were standing, said father-of-11 Maher Nubul, who left his village in August 2014 before it was recaptured by the Peshmerga. We could not go back but could see it clearly from the distance. And later they bulldozed the village, I dont know why. There is nothing left. They destroyed everything for no reason. Airstrikes launched by the United States have been supporting the Kurdish forces including Peshmerga forces from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Kurdish militias in northern Iraq since August 2014. Other countries have also backed the forces with air support, training and weapons. But Kurdish forces have denied the allegations made against them, claiming that the destruction was the fault of ISIS and the international coalitions airstrikes. Many houses were destroyed because of clashes between Peshmerga forces and Daesh [ISIS] members in villages located in war zones, Dindar Zebari, a KRG official, told AFP. Bombing by the international coalition also caused the destruction of houses, and Daesh members rigged houses in the villages to blow up the Peshmerga forces. Allegations: Amnesty International accused western-backed Kurdish fighters of deliberately razing thousands of Arabs' homes in an apparent attempt to take revenge on communities they believed to be supporting ISIS. Pictured, a Kurdish Peshmerga fighter prepares his weapon at his combat position near to Mosul Dam, outside Mosul, Iraq Destruction: The London-based watchdog claims Peshmerga fighters destroyed the villages after retaking areas of northern Iraq from ISIS. A KRG official accused many of the owners of the ruined properties of working with ISIS. Pictured, Kurdish Peshmerga fighters take positions on the front line with militants, south of the oil-rich province of Kirkuk, northern Iraq He also accused many of the owners of the ruined properties of working with ISIS. On the arrival of Daesh members to these areas, a number of tribal leaders cooperated with Daesh and these villages became a source for terrorists. They stole the belongings of the citizens in these areas and killed many young Yazidis, he said, referring to ISIS campaign of mass slaughters, kidnappings and rapes against the minority group. Donatella Rovera, Amnestys Senior Crisis Response Advisor, said: KRG forces have a duty to bring to justice in fair trials individuals who are suspected of having aided and abetted IS crimes. But they must not punish entire communities for crimes perpetrated by some of their members or based on vague, discriminatory and unsubstantiated suspicions that they support IS. London-based Amnesty published a similar report about Kurdish forces in neighbouring Syria in October, also accusing them of war crimes. Conflict: Kurdish forces have denied the allegations made against them, claiming that the destruction was the fault of ISIS and the international coalitions airstrikes. Pictured, a propaganda video showing ISIS militants gathering in Iraq's Nineveh province Families: The destruction of homes forced thousands of people into makeshift camps, where they live in what the watchdog described as desperate conditions'. Pictured, an image shared by ISIS on social media in June 2014 allegedly shows militants taking position at an Iraqi border post on the Syrian-Iraqi border in Iraq's Nineveh province It said they had deliberately demolished civilian homes and forcibly displaced inhabitants with no justifiable military grounds. Despite initially protesting the allegations, the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) announced this week that it would prosecute four of its fighters accused of damaging property in a town recaptured from ISIS several months ago. Syrian Kurdish forces have also received air support and other backing from the U.S.-led coalition. The night before her endorsement, son Track, 26, was arrested for allegedly punching his girlfriend, 22, and threatening to kill himself Donald Trump says he told Sarah Palin to bring her son track's arrest and battle with PTSD at a rally yesterday. 'I said I think it would be a great forum. And I know she started the dialogue,' he said during a CNN interview. Trump told CNN's Don Lemon, 'I think it's a very important dialogue, because she told me that they're coming back, so many are coming back and they're, you know, they're under tremendous pressure and tremendous strain. There's no question about it.' In addressing Track's run in with the law during the Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Wednesday Palin appeared to excuse his behavior and chalk it up to post-traumatic stress disorder before shifting the blame to President Barack Obama and his 'disrespectful' treatment of veterans. Scroll down for video After shocks: Sarah blamed her son Track's recent arrest for domestic violence on PTSD during a speech supporting Donald Trump in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Wednesday (pictured above) Trump now says he told Palin to bring it up. 'I said I think it would be a great forum. And I know she started the dialogue,' he said during a CNN interview Track Palin (pictured above in recent months) was arrested on Monday after allegedly hitting his girlfriend and threatening to shoot himsel Her endorsement of the Republican front-runner for president had been overshadowed on Tuesday following news of her son's arrest the night before for reportedly beating his girlfriend and then threatening to kill himself. 'I guess its kind of the elephant in the room - because my own family, going through what were going through today with my son, a combat vet having served in a Stryker brigade, fighting for you all, America, in the war zone. But my son, like so many others, they come back a bit different. They come back hardened,' Palin said at the Wednesday rally. 'They come back wondering if there is that respect for what their fellow soldiers and airmen and every other member of the military have given so sacrificially to this country, and that starts at the top,' Palin said. She continued to say it's a 'shame' that military personnel come home and 'have to wonder if they're respected anymore'. 'So when my own son is going through what he goes through coming back, I can certainly relate with other families who kind of feel these ramifications of PTSD and some of the woundedness that our soldiers do return with, and it makes me realize more than ever, it is now or never for the sake of Americas finest that well have that commander in chief who will respect them and honor them,' she said. In the interview with CNN on Wednesday night, Trump said he suggested to Palin that she address the arrest. 'I told her it would be absolutely fine. I thought it would be appropriate. There was tremendous press and I think it's something that's very important to discuss, not even for her son, but for so many other sons and daughters that are coming back from the Middle East, where they have, you know, traumatic problems. They have tremendous problems,' he said. Asked by Lemon if it's fair to blame Obama for her son's issues, Trump said he thought so. 'Look, you know, everything starts at the top. He's the president. And I think you can certainly do that. From what I understand, they just -- and all you have to do is look at the Veterans Administration. Look at the bad -- the horrible care our vets get.' 'And you have to say, ultimately, it's the president's charge. It's the president's responsibility. He has to make sure that the Veterans Administration works. And it doesn't. Our vets are being treated horribly.' Obama's spokesman told reporters today that he does not know if the president is aware of Palin's remarks and he declined to ridicule her for making them. 'The reaction of some people I think, is to make light of some of the rhetoric that we see on the campaign trail, particularly from Governor Palin,' White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said. 'But, you know, the fact is, domestic violence is not a joke. Gun violence is not a joke. Problems with addiction are not a joke and the consequences, or I should say the sacrifices that many of our men and women in uniform make for our safety and security are not a joke.' Earnest went on to say that the 'administration is quite focused on' those issues. 'We take them all very seriously and they're many communities and families that are dealing with these very difficult challenges in a way that is sometimes is difficult to talk about publicly. In her speech, Palin also said Trump (who continues to raise questions about his evasion of the Vietnam draft) was just the kind of pro-military president America needs. 'When you love your freedom you thank a vet,' Palin said. 'And then you realize that our vets deserve a Commander in Chief that will let them do their job and go kick ISIS' a**.' Track Palin, 26, enlisted in the Army on September 11, 2007, and was deployed to Iraq the following year, as his mother was campaigning as John McCain's running mate in the 2008 election against then-Senator Barack Obama. Track was taken into custody by police in Wasilla, Alaska, at 10pm Monday after officers arrived at the Palin family home and found his girlfriend cowering under a bed. According to the unidentified woman, an intoxicated Track attacked her and pointed an AR-15 rifle at his own head as they argued over her ex-boyfriend and screamed he was going to shoot himself, shouting, 'do you think I'm a p---y? and 'do you think I won't do it?' Palin allegedly told officers he had become furious because (his girlfriend) was 'maintaining contact with an ex-boyfriend.' This latest chapter in the Palin family saga was all the more embarrassing for the former Alaskan governor as it overshadowed her endorsement of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. The police report from Wasilla describes a shambolic scene when police arrived and found the female victim with 'bruising and swelling around her left eye' claiming that Track had thrown her phone away when she tried to call 911. Unsatisfied: Palin implied that President Obama does not 'respect' or 'honor' America's troops in her speech. Pictured above in Detroit, Michigan on Wednesday Allegations: An investigation found he 'committed a domestic violence assault on a female and interfered with her ability to report a crime of domestic violence' Showtime: Despite Track's arrest, Palin endorsed Donald Trump Tuesday night in Iowa (above) This all happened at Sarah's Wasilla home according to court documents, and Track had a 0.189 blood alcohol level, according to police. 'I observed that the male had a visible injury to his right eye and the area around his eye,' Officer Andrew Kappler wrote 'His eyes were bloodshot and I detected a strong odor of alcohol on his breath and person. Upon contacting Palin, he was uncooperative, belligerent, and evasive with my initial line of questions.' Officers tried to ask the veteran why 911 was dialled by the woman and where she was. 'Palin stated that he didn't know where she was and denied that there was a firearm involved, but did state that there were several spread throughout the residence,' Kappler wrote in his report. 'Due to Palin's escalating hostility, the unknown whereabouts of the female 911 caller, and Officer safety, Palin was placed into handcuffs.' Timing: This arrest came the night before his mother very publicly endorsed Donald Trump for president (above with Bristol Palin, her the boyfriend Levi Johnston, Willow, Piper, Todd, Trig and Sarah Palin) Former love: Track, 26, was married in May 2011 to high school sweetheart Britta Hanson (couple center), but the two divorced a little over a year later Father/daughter moment: Track Palin pictured coming home to Alaska and being greeted by his daughter Kyla It was then that officers went into Sarah Palin's family home and discovered the girl under the bed, crying and hiding. 'She and her boyfriend of one year, Track Palin, left a different residence together and were arguing the whole way home,' Kappler wrote. 'Once they got to his home they argued in the car, then in the driveway. They were screaming and he was calling her names.' The woman told police that while she had not yet called 911, she had lied to Track and said she had to scare him off. Apparently this did not work. 'Palin approached (his girlfriend) and struck her on the left side of her head near her eye with a closed fist,' wrote Kappler in the report.' The argument got out of control and Track allegedly reached for his AR-15 rifle and began threatening suicide. Track's girlfriend ran out of the house after the young man started 'holding onto a gun, yelling 'do you think I'm a p---y?' and 'do you think I won't do it?' '(She) stated Palin 'cocked the gun' and was holding the rifle out next to him with his right hand near the trigger and his left hand near the barrel, with the barrel just away from his face pointed to the side,' states the detailed police report. '(She) was concerned that he would shoot himself and ran outside and around the house. She didn't see where Palin went, so she went inside and up the stairs, where she hid under a bed.' Track told police the argument began after he learned she had been speaking with an ex-boyfriend. The two had been to dinner and then visited his sister Bristol's home earlier in the night before the argument began at his mother Sarah's home. He also claims that the woman elbowed him during the fight, but she was not arrested or charged with any crime. Gawker was the first to report the news of Track's arrest, which came the night before his mother very publicly endorsed Donald Trump for president. Track Palin pictured in September 2008 She did not mention her son's legal troubles during her speech. The Wasilla Police Department said in a statement; 'Palin was arrested and charges of assault in the fourth degree (domestic violence), interfering with a domestic violence report, and misconduct involving weapons in the fourth degree were forwarded to the District Attorney's Office.' Palin family attorney John Tiemessen declined to comment Tuesday on the matter but did say that respect for the family's privacy is appreciated 'as Track receives the help that he and many of our returning veterans need.' Track posted $1,500 bail and is due in court on February 19. Track, 26, was married in May 2011 but divorced a little over a year later. He and his ex-wife Britta Hanson have a daughter Kyla who was born three months after their wedding. Hanson told Radar Online she was not involved in Monday night's incident or even aware of what happened between Track and the unknown woman. She also said of her ex; 'We are on speaking terms. We have a cordial relationship about our daughter. That is as far as it goes.' Track and the rest of his family had a run in with police a little over a year ago in September 2014 when a fight broke out at a party in Wasilla. Track also reportedly broke a rib in the incident, and during his interview with cops spelled his last name wrong at one point. Using the military alphabet he told officers it was spelled, 'Papa, Alfa, Lima, India, Mike, Oscar.' Students were among 304 people killed when the ferry sank in The parents of 92 students who died in the South Korea ferry disaster have been sent letters calling up their dead sons for military service. The boys were among 304 people killed when the Sewol ferry, carrying 476 people, sank off the south-western island of Jindo in April 2014. But now, the parents of 92 youngsters who attended Danwon High School in Ansan have received letters telling their dead sons to attend physical examination assessments before their conscription, which is compulsory for South Korean men. Tragedy: Rescue helicopters pictured flying over the Sewol ferry as it sank off the south-western island, Jindo Students from Danwon High School pay tribute to their peers who died when the ferry sunk in April 2014 A local mayor posted a message on Twitter saying a relative of one of the victims had cried all night after receiving the notice. The Korea Herald quoted a Facebook post of the father of one boy, which read: 'How could they not have bothered to confirm my son's death? 'The bureaucracy is so speedy and effective - only for this kind of thing to happen.' The Military Manpower Administration sent out the notices earlier this month to every man born in 1997, The Telegraph reports. It has apologised but said it tried to obtain a complete list of the victims, explaining they were never officially registered as deceased. A spokesman for The Military Manpower Administration said: 'We have tried to exclude the victims killed or missing in the Sewol disaster in the mailing list since July 2014. But we had no choice but to send the notices because we could not secure a list of the victims. 'We didnt send notices to the 27 victims whose deaths were formally registered.' Korea JoongAng Daily reports that by law, the public office handling a death case must report to the regional director where the dead person is registered. More than 300 people killed when the Sewol ferry, carrying 476 people, sank off the island of Jindo in 2014 In the ferry disaster, the head of the coast guard was required to report to the Mayor of Ansan to process the death reports. This did not happen because the coast guard was disbanded after the tragedy, according to Korea JoongAng Daily. The Military Manpower Administration said the high school and the Office of Government Policy Coordination would not provide a list of names either. The ferry tragedy shocked and enraged the country as it became clear that it was almost entirely man-made - the result of an illegal redesign, an overloaded cargo bay, an inexperienced crew and an unhealthy nexus between operators and state regulators. President Barack Obama used a triumphant speech before auto workers in Detroit on Wednesday to pledge federal support for the crisis-stricken city of Flint and chide officials for the 'tragedy' of lead-contaminated water there. Obama was in Detroit to tour the North American International Auto Show and celebrate the resurgence in the industry and the city at large, joking that he will need to buy a new car next year. But the crisis over lead-contaminated water in Flint, in the northern part of the state, was one of the first topics he tackled in his 50-minute address. 'I am very proud of what I've done as president, but the only job that's more important to me is the job of father. And I know if I was a parent up there, I would be beside myself that my kid's health could be at risk,' Obama said. Mindful that the Environmental Protection Agency may share some blame for the crisis, Obama reminded the audience that he has declared a federal emergency in Flint, directed federal resources to the city, and named a federal coordinator 'to make sure the people of Flint get what they need from their country.' Scroll down for videos President Obama spoke Wednesday before a United Auto Workers audience in Detroit - but discussed the water crisis in Flint near the beginning of his remarks Obama sits in a new Chevrolet Bolt electric car with Patrick Foley, controls manager for the Bolt EV at GM in Detroit, as he visits the 2016 North American International Auto Show in Detroit on Wednesday to highlight the progress made by the American auto industry The federal coordinator is Nicole Lurie, an assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, who was already in Flint on Wednesday. Obama did not address why he stopped short of declaring the city a major disaster area, which would have sent even more resources to the city. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder announced Wednesday that he plans to appeal that decision. Instead, Obama said he told Flint Mayor Karen Weaver in a White House meeting on Tuesday that he would 'have her back.' 'We're going to have all of the people in Flint's backs as they work their way through this terrible tragedy,' he said. 'It is a reminder of why you can't shortchange basic services that we provide to our people and that we together provide as a government to make sure that public health and safety is preserved.' Obama did not mention Snyder by name, nor the EPA, and did not join in growing calls for his resignation. Weaver, who was in Washington for a U.S. Conference of Mayors annual meeting, announced Wednesday she also would not call for Snyder to step down. In a brief press conference aboard Air Force One en route to Detroit, deputy press secretary Eric Schultz dodged reporters' questions about whether the EPA deserves blame or whether Snyder should resign, saying, 'Our view is everyone right now should be focused on the actual problem.' 'The Governor yesterday accepted responsibility for this. Clearly, the primary responsibility lies with local and state officials,' Schultz said. 'But that's not stopping the administration and this President from doing what they can to help support those response efforts.' Snyder apologized for the crisis during his State of the State address on Tuesday night and pledged $28 million in state funds to help fix it. On Wednesday, announcing his appeal of Obama's decision against a major disaster declaration, Snyder compared the crisis to a flood, saying that the city's lead-contaminated water is a 'natural catastrophe in the sense that lead contamination into water is a natural process.' For the rest of his speech, Obama portrayed himself as a leader who doesn't take the easy way out and didn't run for president to be popular, but to do what needed to be done. He says rescuing the U.S. auto industry and saving jobs during a recession needed to be done. President Barack Obama speaks at the UAW-GM Center for Human Resources in Detroit, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016, to highlight the progress made by the city, its people and neighborhoods, and the American auto industry. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) Obama greets well-wishers before his mid-afternoon speech President Barack Obama has lunch at the Jolly Pumpkin Brewery in Detroit, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016, with, from left, Teana Dowdell, autoworker at the General Motors Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly, Dr. Tolulope Sonuyi, Emergency medicine physician engaged with Detroit youth through violence prevention and intervention programs, part of Detroits efforts around the My Brothers Keeper initiative, and Tom Kartsotis, Founder, Shinola. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) President Barack Obama and Rep. Brenda Lawrence D-Mich., arrive in the snow on Air Force One at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016 in Romulus, Mich. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio) 'The year before I took office, the auto industry laid of 400,000. We were in a free fall,' Obama said. 'There were no private investors who were going to step up ... More than 1 million Americans would have lost their jobs. And not just in the auto industry. Their livelihoods were at stake as well,' referring to his decision to bail out the industry in 2009. Flint, which has faced widespread poverty in the wake of the U.S. auto industry's downfall during the 2000s, switched to Flint River water in April 2014 from a Detroit-run water system to save money. The families of three victims of the Glasgow bin lorry crash have launched their bid for a private prosecution of the driver Harry Clarke (pictured) The families of three victims of the Glasgow bin lorry crash have launched their bid for a private prosecution of the driver Harry Clarke. Six people died when the truck went out of control in Queen Street in December 2014. A Fatal Accident Inquiry (FAI) held last year heard Mr Clarke lost consciousness at the wheel and that he had a history of health issues - including a previous blackout in 2010 when at the wheel of a stationary bus - but had not disclosed his medical background to his employers or the DVLA. The Crown Office has consistently said that there is insufficient evidence in law to raise criminal proceedings against Mr Clarke but the families of the victims disagree. It was revealed during the FAI that some families intended to launch a private prosecution if the Crown Office would not take action. Lawyers for the family of Jack and Lorraine Sweeney and their granddaughter Erin McQuade have confirmed a Bill of Criminal Letters has been sent to the Crown Office that they hope will lead to a prosecution. The rare Bill for Criminal Letters seeks the agreement of Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland QC to pursue the case but lawyers said it can still continue and be ruled on by High Court judges without his approval. A statement from the Sweeney and McQuade family lawyer said: 'Paul Kavanagh, Gildeas solicitors, intimates on behalf of the relatives of Jack and Lorraine Sweeney and Erin McQuade that a Bill for Criminal Letters was delivered to the Lord Advocate today. 'We have sought the concurrence of the Lord Advocate and look forward to receiving a response within seven days. 'This is the initial process that the family hope ultimately will lead to the prosecution of Henry (Harry) Clarke in the criminal courts.' A spokesman for the Crown Office said: 'The Lord Advocate has received a Bill of Criminal Letters and will give it due consideration. 'The Crown position on this will be made clear to the families and the court when appropriate.' Last month, Mr Mulholland insisted it would have been 'wrong' to prosecute Mr Clarke. Six people died when the truck went out of control in Queen Street, Glasgow, in December 2014 (pictured) Victims: Those who died in the crash included Erin McQuade, 18, and her grandparents Lorraine Sweeney, 69 (pictured together, left), and Jack Sweeney, 67 (right), from Dumbarton, West Dunbartonshire Stephenie Tait, 29 (left), Jacqueline Morton, 51 (centre), and Gillian Ewing, 52 (right), also died in the accident He said he knew the decision not to charge the 58-year-old was 'not a popular one', adding he was aware of the feelings of the victims' families on the matter. The Sheriff who oversaw the FAI ruled that the accident might have been prevented if the driver had 'told the truth' about his history of blackouts. Sheriff John Beckett QC found Mr Clarke 'repeatedly lied in order to gain and retain jobs and licences', and 'deliberately concealed relevant information from the DVLA'. Stephenie Tait, Jacqueline Morton and Gillian Ewing also died in the tragedy which was marked with a memorial service in Glasgow last month. The alleged attacker of Darrian Amaker, who posted a powerful video of herself singing from her hospital bed after being brutally beaten by her boyfriend, can be revealed by Daily Mail Online as Jason Calvert. He has been indicted on six felony counts in Monroe County, New York, including the attempted murder of his 24-year-old girlfriend after the November 29 incident. According to court documents seen by Daily Mail Online, Calvert has also been charged with strangulation of the victim, robbery, assault and resisting arrest. On November 29, Calvert, 34, attacked his girlfriend at 3am at his home in downtown Rochester, according to a police statement. Calvert was in a dating relationship with the victim and she went to his apartment at his request that night, according to the complaint. Once in the kitchen, Calvert allegedly grabbed her and struck her repeatedly in the face with a closed fist. Mug shot: The alleged attacker of Darrian Amaker has been identified as Jason Calvert, 24. Calvert has been indicted on six felony counts following the November 29 incident. Calvert has been indicted on six felony counts in Monroe County, New York after the November 29 incident Horrible: Darrian Amaker claims she was almost killed by her boyfriend in November (above in hospital) Powerful: While in her hospital bed she recorded herself singing a sing about her horrifying experience that she posted on Facebook Amaker says that she endured a 10-hour beating at the hands of her 'Love'. 'She found her own way in the city, she dont take no more abuse,' sings Amaker Calvert then allegedly yelled at Amaker to wake her up and poured water in her mouth causing her to vomit The defendant then did slam the victim against the wall and floor of kitchen, intentionally causing serious physical injury, severe facial bruising and swelling to the victims face to the extent of both of her eyes swollen completely shut, while telling her Im going to kill you., the complaint reads. Calvert then allegedly yelled at her to wake her up and poured water in her mouth causing her to vomit. She was then dragged up several flights of stairs by Calvert to his attic apartment, according to the police statement, where he continued to beat her about the face and head. She was allegedly physically restrained during the assault and. only managed to escape at 8am when her attacker fell asleep. Calvert was arrested and arraigned on December 17 where he pled not guilty to the charges. He is currently being held on $50,000 bond and next due in court on February 3, according to the Monroe Country District Attorneys Office. According to court documents seen by Daily Mail Online, Calvert has also been charged with attempted murder, strangulation of the victim, robbery, assault and resisting arrest Calvert 'is a smart person but he had a temper', his roommate, David Copella, told Daily Mail Online. 'It was getting out of control,' Copella said. Copella added that he thought Calvert should have been on medication but he wasn't taking any. He said that Calvert had been dating Darrian Amaker for a few months when the attack took place. He said the couple met after Darrian would pass by the house and stop to chat to a young man with special needs who often sat out on the stoop with Copella and Calvert. 'They weren't just hanging out, [Calvert] really loved her,' the roommate said. Copella said he was just devastated the attack had taken place in the three-story home while he was asleep. He lives in the front portion of the house while the kitchen, where the attack allegedly took place, is in the rear. Copella said: 'Darrian is just the sweetest girl, she would find happiness in any situation and often just break into song mid conversation. 'I feel so bad for her, she is the last person who deserved this.' Yesterday Darrian posted a powerful message on Facebook. She says that last November she endured a 10-hour beating at the hands of her 'Love', and barely lived to tell the tale. 'He had planned it out; I was supposed to die,' she wrote in a message posted to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. 'I survived or escaped, whatever you want to call it, and spent four days in the hospital, eyes swollen shut, wondering why, wondering why.' In addition to her message she also sent video of a song she recorded about her experience just days after the horrific incident. 'She found her own way in the city, she dont take no more abuse,' sings Amaker. She later adds: 'She recalls the night she left him after his drunk attack... she never once looked back.' The powerful photo and song now has other women sharing their stories on the Facebook post, and offering encouragement to Amaker, who is still dealing with numerous issues after the attack. 'I asked my doctor why I look different in the mirror, assuming it's a psychological consequence of savagery,' she wrote in her message. 'Softly she remarked that all of my bones are bruised, quarter-inch ridges that I can feel - my face is different, it's one-half inch wider now.' She also said of her partner; 'I am physically safe now; my Love-no-longer has been formally charged by a grand jury with six felonies and faces many years as a prisoner.' According to public records, it appears Amaker is from Upstate New York, near Rochester. David Copella (above) Calvert's roommate, said he was just devastated the attack had taken place in the three-story home while he was asleep. He lives in the front portion of the house while the kitchen, where the attack allegedly took place, is in the rear Calvert struck Amaker in the face with a closed fist, slammed her against floor, p oured water in her mouth causing her to vomit and dragged her up the stairs Survivor: Amaker (above) also included a note about her situation and what people can do to help victims of domestic abuse As for what inspired her to make this video in one of her darkest hours, Amaker wrote; 'I don't generally record videos of myself but it was the only thing I wanted to do in the hospital. 'I insisted - it felt important and a small triumph to make something, salvage anything from my shipwrecked heart.' She closed by sending a message to everyone reminding them that domestic abuse affects everyone, even if they are unaware. 'Domestic violence is not a faraway issue. It affects people you know, cheerful people, people who sing, people who love,' said Amaker. Jailed: Financial adviser and attorney Jules Reich, 61, is pictured above in a booking photo following his arraignment on a second-degree murder charge A 61-year-old mergers and acquisitions expert has been charged with second-degree murder in the stabbing death of his wife after her lifeless body was discovered inside their $2.5million home in an exclusive New York suburb. Jules Reich appeared before a judge in Scarsdale Village Court for his arraignment Wednesday night and was ordered held without bail in connection to the slaying of his wife, Dr Robin Goldman, 58, in their 6,400 sq ft house. Reich's attorney, Kerry Lawrence, said a bail hearing had been scheduled for Friday, but he declined additional comment. A police source told the Journal-News that Reich called police at around 10am Wednesday to report that a woman was seriously injured inside their residence in Scarsdale. A law enforcement source told the New York Daily News that the killing occurred during a domestic dispute. 'This is not a random act, this was an isolated incident,' Scarsdale Police Captain Thomas Alpizio said. Court records show that after their daughter's wedding last summer, Reich filed for a divorce from Goldman, according to CBS New York. The details of the August divorce petition are still pending, Heavy reported. Reich was taken into custody and booked into the Westchester County Jail following his arraignment. Sources told the New York Post that the man had 'defensive wounds' on his arms. An autopsy was planned for Goldman, but the prosecutor's office said she suffered multiple stab wounds. Scroll down for video Reich, pictured in a second booking photo, was being held in jail without bail Thursday pending his bail hearing Friday Reich (left) was arrested Wednesday after his wife Robin Goldman (right) was stabbed to death inside their $2.5million home in Scarsdale, New York Investigators were searching the house hours after Goldman's body was found stabbed in the Scarsdale home Police investigators were spotted circling the home after the horrifying incident in the upscale New York neighborhood The couple's the five-bedroom, four-bath home, on Lincoln Road, was built in 1947 and includes a bath house, swimming pool and greenhouse on 1.3 acres of land Reich, pictured far left at a corporate event in 2013, is a Manhattan attorney and veteran mergers and acquisitions expert The couple's five-bedroom, four-bath home, on Lincoln Road, was built in 1947 and includes a bath house, swimming pool and greenhouse on 1.3 acres of land. Records show that financial consultant at WeiserMazars LLP Reich, 61, and Goldman, a pediatrician at the Comprehensive Family Care Center in the Bronx, New York, live on the property. The victim was also affiliated with Montefiore Medical Center and was an assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. 'Robin was a dedicated physician cherished by her colleagues as a positive and compassionate presence,' Montefiore hospital said. 'Her passion for medicine was an inspiration to those who worked with her. Her passing is a great loss for all of us, and we extend our heartfelt sympathy to her family, friends, patients, colleagues and students.' According to Reich's biography on WeiserMazars' website, the 61-year-old is a partner at the firm, 'advising corporations, startups, venture capital and private-equity firms in a broad range of industries on critical topics including mergers and acquisitions.' Reich received his law degree from Benjamin N. Cordozo School and Law and his Master of Law degree from New York University Law School. Over the course of his 20-year career in the financial industry, he has been involved in transactions totaling more than $45million, according to his bio. Scarsdale police also blocked off part of the road on which the couple lived while they were investigating The couple are believed to have four adult children who are all in their 20s. Their son Adam Reich was overcome with emotion as he told the New York Post that his mother was a wonderful woman. 'She was great, a great person, amazing,' he said. Both Reich and Goodman are said to be Jewish and both sat on a gala committee for Westchester Jewish Council. 'As a community, we are grief stricken and our hearts are filled with pain to know that Robin, who was so good, so sweet and so pious has so suddenly been taken from us,' said a statement from the Modern Orthodox Young Israel of Scarsdale, the synagogue Goldman attended. Neighbor Judy Raphael said: 'I'm living here 34 years - nothing like this has ever happened. 'It's a very safe neighborhood,' she added. 'This is very sad,' neighbor Martin Molot, 85, told the Daily News. Reich 'is a nice guy. He seemed so level-headed.' A security guard who worked at the hospital where Goldman was an employee said that her death will 'bring pain' to a lot of people. 'She was a very pleasant lady. She always smiled and said hello to everyone. Nobody ever said or felt anything bad about her. Not with that smile,' Kassim Ray, a security guard at the medical center, told The Post. Records show that financial consultant Reich, 61, and Goldman, a pediatrician at the Comprehensive Family Care Center in the Bronx, New York, live in the property Reich, a financial consultant, is in custody following the Wednesday morning incident at the couple's home (pictured) 'Ive worked here for three years and she was always very nice to me. I need to spread this news. Her dying is really going to bring pain to a lot of people,' Ray added. The last recorded homicide in Scarsdale was in 1977, when 23-year-old Yale graduate Richard Hrrin killed 20-year-old ex-girlfriend Bonnie Garland by smashing her head with a hammer as she slept in her parents' home, according to authorities. Joshua Bonehill-Paine, 23, was arrested after he posted a link on Twitter with an image of Auschwitz and a bottle of weed killer ahead of a neo-Nazi rally A neo-Nazi fanatic who was sent to prison after he posted a death camp image online is now being investigated after it emerged he has been sending out fan letters covered in sick doodles from his cell. Joshua Bonehill-Paine, 23, of Yeovil, Somerset, was imprisoned for inciting racial hatred after he posted a link on Twitter with an image of Auschwitz and a bottle of weed killer ahead of a neo-Nazi rally in London. Bonehill-Paine was jailed for three years and four months following a trial in December. But now just a month later he is being investigated by the Prison Service over letters sent from his cell to correspondents on the outside. In his letters, Bonehill-Paine mocks the British taxpayer for having paid 120,000 for his prison stay, while he drinks tea, smokes, eats and watches TV. Cartoon drawings of Hitler, the Twin Towers and Harold Shipman cover the envelopes he sent them in. He describes HMP Wandsworth as a 'gross hotel', adding that he has learnt things and made connections he never would have on the outside. The letters also detail Bonehill-Paine's desire to stand as an MP in Bradford five years after his release, by which time he will be legally allowed to do so. The Prison Service said it is investigating the 'unacceptable' letters and Bonehill-Paine will face disciplinary action. In his letters, he wrote: 'I intend to stand for election when I am out of here. I am thinking perhaps about taking a seat in Bradford. Bonehill-Paine was jailed in December for inciting racial hatred after he posted anti-semitic material online He denied the charge of publishing material to incite racial hatred, but was later found guilty of the crime 'You can stand for Parliament five years after time served in prison, there are many MPs with criminal records. 'I will never again put myself in the situation of being grassed up by snitches. 'Every move I make will be fully legitimate and legal. There are several books in the works about prison, ideology and life. 'I will write them over the next year. When I get out I intend to continue from where I left off, albeit from a legal perspective.' The letters also reveal a lack of remorse for his crimes, and show how easy prison has been for him. In his letters from jail Bonehill-Paine describes HMP Wandsworth (pictured) as a 'gross hotel', adding that he has learnt things and made connections he never would have on the outside He wrote: 'Prison is easy, albeit for somebody of strong character. Prison has not been too bad to me at all. 'I've made many new connections and have learnt so much that I wouldn't have otherwise known on the out. 'I have found it to be a land of opportunity and a haven of respite. Most people I have met are fully supportive and will be friends for life. For me, I take the ultimate victory in all of this. The letters detail Bonehill-Paine's desire to stand as an MP in Bradford five years after his release, by which time he will be legally allowed to do so 'I know that those left wing parasites are still spending all of their time on Twitter and the internet, imprisoned in a tomb of ignorance. 'I however am out here living life, earning valuable new skills and experience that these people couldn't begin to contemplate.' He added: 'For my trial, there has indeed been a victim. 'The British taxpayer will pay 120,000 for the nearly two years I am here drinking tea, smoking, eating and watching TV every day until they finally release me. 'Effectively this is like a really gross hotel for free board to stay. I do miss G n Ts though.' The letters were sent from two different prisons according to the footer at the bottom of the sheets of the paper: HMP Wandsworth and HMP Manchester. A Prison Service spokesperson said: 'We are investigating this unacceptable incident and have put measures in place to ensure this offender's mail is monitored by prison staff. 'Additionally, we will also take disciplinary action against the prisoner, which could see him being stripped of his privileges and being referred to the police for investigation.' Bonehill-Paine was jailed for inciting racial hatred after he posted anti-semitic material online. He did it in the run up to an anti-semitic rally against 'Jewification' in Golders Green, an area in North London known for its large Jewish population, last summer. He denied the charge of publishing material to incite racial hatred, but was later found guilty of the crime. The internet troll, who was a member of the National British Resistance, was arrested at his home on June 26 and brought to London where he was charged the next day. A Florida mother is being held by police after threatening to commit suicide before confessing that her four-month-old son's body was hidden inside a freezer at her home. Paola Vargas-Ortiz, 37, was detained by police in Miami on Sunday after she called them from the Seven Mile Bridge, which connects the Florida Keys, and threatened to jump off before hanging up. Officers used GPS to locate Ortiz and managed to talk her down from the bridge before cops found a baby seat and toys in her car and inquired about her child. Paola Vargas-Ortiz, 37, is being held by police after attempting to commit suicide on Sunday before admitting that the body of her four-month-old son was hidden in a freezer at her home in this gated community According to the Miami Herald, Ortiz first told police that she had already thrown the boy off the bridge, but after a search was launched she changed her story. She next told officers that the boy was safe at home with family, before finally confessing that his body was at her home in a freezer. Ortiz also confessed to having swallowed rat poison, and was taken to Fishermens Community Hospital in Marathon. After officers arrived at Ortiz' home, in a gated community in Homestead, to the south of Miami, they located the boy's body. Officers found Ortiz at around 3pm after she called to say she was going to kill herself before hanging up. They tracked her to Seven Mile Bridge (pictured) before talking her away from the edge According to Homestead Detective Fernando Morales, the corpse was sealed in a freezer that was separate from the main combined fridge-freezer. Coroners are now investigating the cause of the boy's death while Ortiz is undergoing psychiatric evaluation, police said. For more of the latest on Donald Trump visit www.dailymail.co.uk/trump makeover in 2008 during her campaign for vice Palin has been recognized for her style since her high Sarah Palin sported a $700 stylish bolero as she joined Donald Trump on the campaign trail this evening in Iowa. The former Alaska Governor offered her endorsement to the Republican presidential candidate asking the crowd 'Are you ready to stump for Trump? I'm here to support the next president of the United States Donald Trump.' Her decision to back Trump may not have been surprising, but the controversial politician's ensemble certainly raised the eyebrows of some of the conservative crowd. Scroll down for video Sarah Palin looked stylish as she joined Donald Trump on the campaign trail this evening in Iowa The 51-year-old grandmother wore an eye-catching beaded bolero from Milly which retails for $695, paired with patent-leather knee-high boots at the Iowa rally. Palin underwent a well-documented makeover during the campaign trail for the vice presidency under John McCain in 2008. The former Alaskan governor faced fierce criticism after the Republican party spent $150,000 on her brand new designer wardrobe. Gone were the 'hockey mom' jeans, replaced tailored suits from high-end department stores such as Saks and Neiman Marcus. She even wore a $2,000 cream silk Valentino jacket, worn in her convention speech and was said to have splashed out $22,000 in two weeks on a make-up artist. The 51-year-old grandmother wore an eye-catching beaded bolero from Milly which retails for $695, paired with patent-leather knee-high boots at the Iowa rally The former Alaska Governor offered her endorsement to the Republican presidential candidate as she joined him on the campaign trail Palin later promised to return her designer outfits after losing out on the vice presidential bid among the backlash. But it seems she developed a taste for luxury during her run. The controversial Republican has become somewhat of a style icon among her political peers. Eschewing the classic pantsuits of fellow Republican Carly Fiorina or Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Palin has shown her fashion flare cropped coats, colorful sleeveless dresses and Louboutins shoes. She has even been known to borrow from her daughter Bristol's wardrobe, wearing her sparkly white minidress to SNL's 40th anniversary special event. Today, she joined Trump on the campaign trail, calling him a 'rogue' candidate who is 'beholden to no one but we the people. Palin underwent a well-documented makeover during the campaign trail for the vice presidency under John McCain in 2008 and has since been seen in some eye catching outfits (right). She even borrowed Bristol's sparkly white minidress to SNL's 40th anniversary special event (left) Eschewing the classic pantsuits of fellow Republican Carly Fiorina or Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Palin has shown her fashion flare cropped coats, colorful sleeveless dresses and Louboutins shoes The one-time vice presidential candidate said a Trump presidency would mean 'no more pussyfootin' around.' 'Our troops deserve the best, you deserve the best,' she said at Trump's Ames, Iowa, rally tonight. 'He's from private sector, not a politician. Can I get a Hallelujah?' Palin, whose son Track is a veteran, told the troops to 'hang in there, help in on the way,' and asked her audience, 'Are you ready for a commander in chief who will let warriors do their job and go kick ISIS' a**?' Trump spoke before Palin, but took the mic one last time after her remarks to say, 'We're gonna give 'em hell.' The botched federal program known as 'Fast and Furious' was responsible for a .50-caliber rifle smuggled into Mexico and found at Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmans hideout, a new report revealed Wednesday. According to Fox News, agents from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms traced one of two of the massive guns found at the hideout to the U.S. program in which federal agents lost track of 1,400 guns that criminals were allowed to buy in Arizona. The federal sting operation was intended to track the guns once they were smuggled into Mexico. Scroll down for videos Mexican drug lord Joaquin Guzman is escorted by soldiers in Mexico City shortly after his arrest on Jan. 8 Guzman was captured on Jan. 8 in Los Mochis in a raid in which five of his bodyguards were killed and one Mexican marine injured. Officials found a wide variety of guns inside the hideout, including the two .50-caliber rifles. Fox News said they are still investigating the origin of the other weapons that were seized. Only 34 of the 2,000 guns in the Fast and Furious operation were .50-caliber sized, which Guzman gave his guards who were stationed on hilltops in case of a helicopter raid. The debacle was a huge embarrassment for the Obama administration, and prompted calls for the resignation of then-Attorney General Eric Holder, as well as congressional investigations. Guzman's new mug shot, six months after his high-profile escape Officials found a cache of weapons inside Guzman's Los Mochis hideout Holder was held in contempt of Congress after refusing to turn over documents, becoming the first U.S. attorney general to be held in criminal and civil contempt in 2012. Holder called the affair 'a politically motivated investigation in an election year.' A 15-year-old desperate to have a sex-change resorted to using an unqualified physician to undertake the procedure, leading to the arrest of the latter for failing to obtain parental consent first. The doctor, surnamed Tian, pleaded guilty to intentional assault on January 19 after performing the surgery while he was working as an intern at a medical beauty clinic in the Wuhou District of Chengdu, south-west China, according a report from People's Daily Online. It is reported that the procedure was failed which left Xiao severe injuries, although these are not detailed publicly in the interests of privacy. Justice: The doctor, Tian, pleaded guilty to assault on January 19 at Wuhou District People's Court Angry: Xiao Yuan's parents had no idea what was happened and did not consent to the teenager's surgery Xiao Yuan (not real name) travelled from his family home in Henan Province to Chengdu to have the surgery done after Tian agreed to it when they chatted over the internet in May last year. The teenager, who is reported to have felt uncomfortable with his male identity, is a fan of cosplaying and dressing up as female characters in addition to running an animation studio with his friends. Xiao's parents were said to have no idea that he had messaged Tian on the application QQ and the doctor had consented to completing the genital removal surgery. Tian is reported to have taken Xiao to the Korean Beauty Clinic in Wuhou when he arrived in the city, asking for his I.D. card but ignoring that Xiao was below legal age having been born in 2000. The teen's father was said to have learned about the operation when Xiao returned home and went to Chengdu himself to report the lack of parental approval to the local police. By not obtaining consent from Xiao's legal guardians, Tian was guilty of second-degree assault under Chinese law and the prosecutor approved his arrest, despite Xiao himself signing a disclaimer. Tian's own clinic shut down on the same day as his arrest by the Wuhou District Health Bureau. Stuggle: Xiao is said to be a fan of cosplay and often dresses up as female characters (file photo) During the trial, Tian told Wuhou District People's Court that he had performed gender reassignments on various people in the past and had not always asked to look at I.D. cards. "I did not know Xiao Yuan was only 15 years old until I was arrested", he said to the judge, but paid a total of 650,000 yuan (70,000) in compensation to Xiao's parents. A former hot pot waiter from China has been jailed for nearly two years after pouring a large bowl of boiling water over a customer who complained at his service. The man, who's identified by his surname Zhu, was sentenced on January 19 for his brutal assault in a restaurant in Wenzhou city, Zhejiang Province, last August, reports the People's Daily Online. Mr Zhu, aged 17 while carrying out the attack, was sentenced to 22 months imprisonment at the district court in the city and told to apologise for his actions to the customer, who suffered serious burns during the attack. Complaint: Ms Lin was dining with family when she got into an argument with the violent male waiter Violent: Ms Lin was dining at Mr Hot Pot restaurant when she was attacked in the evening of August 24 She received extensive burns to her face, neck, shoulders and back and the skin has already started to peel According to the report, the court showed leniency in Mr Zhu's sentence because he cooperated with the police and was only 17 years old at the time of the attack. On the night of the incident, the customer, who's identified by her surname Lin, was dining with her family at a branch of 'Mr Hot Pot' where Mr Zhu worked. The women, reportedly aged 29, got into a disagreement with Mr Zhu over the amount of water going into the hot pot - a popular Chinese dish where food is self cooked in boiling water. After the argument, Ms Lin was reported to have blogged about the incident on social media, which made the waiter angry. He asked her to delete it and she declined. Mr Zhu then went into the kitchen and came out carrying a plastic tub filled with boiling water. Shocking: The waiter (right) poured a bowl of boiling water over Ms Lin after she complained about his service He then pulled the woman backwards in her chair, knocking her head against a counter in the restaurant An angry Mr Zhu continued his attempt to attack the customer even six onlookers tried to restrained him Shockingly, the teen waiter proceeded to pour the whole contents onto her head and body. Not only that, he then dragged her to the floor off her chair and began violently attacking her. Two women dining with the victim immediately rushed to her assistance and dragged him away. He continued trying to attack the woman even after six people restrained him. Ms Lin was rushed to hospital for emergency treatment, the burns from the boiling water covered 24 per cent of her body, mostly her face. During the attack the whole incident was captured on the restaurant security cameras, which was quickly broadcast online and on Chinese media. Doctors at the hospital had to apply gauze to the raw skin and bandage it to prevent any possible infection Unstable: Mr Zhu may have an 'emotional disorder,' and 'depression' during the restaurant (pictured) attack The coverage of the story caused an online debate in China. While some people were cristising his behaviour, others questioned Ms Lin's attitude towards her waiter. Photographs of Ms Lin's injuries showed extensive damage to her skin and severe burns. Most of the burns were restricted to her face and neck. When Mr Zhu was arrested, he immediately admitted the attack. The hot pot restaurant has paid Ms Lin 400,000 Yuan (42,900) for her medical bills, but Mr Zhu did not pay a penny and was not willing to appeal, according to the report. After counselling, psychological experts said they believe Mr Zhu may have an 'emotional disorder,' with an 'impulsive personality,' and a 'predisposition to depression.' In the final stages of the trial, Mr Zhu only had one thing to say, and that was, 'I'm sorry.' they don't like as long as they oppose other party Republicans and Democrats are refusing to compromise, not because of conflicting beliefs, but because they simply do not like each other, researchers have claimed. They say feelings about opposing parties have 'never been more negative in the history of survey research.' They says this has left Congress deadlocked. Scroll down for video Republicans and Democrats are refusing to compromise, not because of conflicting beliefs, but because they simply do not like each other, suggests researchers. 'Why Washington Won't Work' discusses how politicians' and citizens' feelings towards the opposing party has become extremely negative over the years A new book, 'Why Washington Won't Work' discusses how politicians' and citizens' feelings towards the opposing party has become extremely negative over the years. 'Deeply negative feelings cause more trouble than deep ideological differences would,' Marc J. Hetherington, professor of political science at Vanderbilt University and co-author of 'Why Washington Won't Work', told Vanderbilt University. 'When you disagree with the other side on the issues, you can often find a middle ground. 'When you don't like the other side, you don't even talk to them.' 'Although citizens have it in their capacity to nudge officeholders toward compromise, they don't trust their opponents enough to push their side's representatives to compromise with those they increasingly view as the devil.' 'Why Washington Won't Work', also co-written by Thomas Rudolph from Illinois University, suggests that the dislike between politicians turns into distrust and then forms into an unwillingness to sacrifices their own beliefs and goals in order to meet in the middle. Other data revealed the 112th and 113th Congress (2011 to 2014) were the least productive since the 1940s, when researchers started measuring congressional productivity. American National Election Studies (ANES) has revealed that although feelings about ones own party has remained the same, their view towards the other party has become extremely negative. 'Surveys show that our feelings about the party we do not identify with have never been more negative in the history of survey research,' Hetherington said. 'To put the Obama-era scores in perspective, consider that the average favorability scores that Republicans gave atheists and illegal immigrants in 2012 are significantly higher than what they gave the Democratic Party.' DEMOCRAT VS. REPUBLICAN: WHERE THEY STAND ON ISSUES Economic Ideas Democrats: Minimum wages and progressive taxation. Born out of anti-federalist ideals but evolved over time to favor more government regulation. Republicans: Believe taxes shouldn't be increased for anyone and that wages should be set by the free market. Social and human ideas Democrats: Based on community and social responsibility Republicans: Based on individual rights and justice Stance on Military issues Democrats: Decreased spending Republicans: Increased spending Stance on Gay Marriage Democrats: Support (some Democrats disagree) Republicans: Oppose (some Republicans disagree) Stance on Abortion Democrats: Should not be made illegal; support Roe v. Wade (some Democrats disagree) Republicans: Should not be legal; oppose Roe v. Wade (some Republicans disagree) Stance on Death Penalty Democrats: While support for the death penalty is strong among Democrats, opponents of the death penalty are a substantial fraction of the Democratic base. Republicans: A large majority of Republicans support the death penalty. Stance on Immigration Democrats: A greater support overall for a moratorium on deporting - or offering a pathway to citizenship to - certain undocumented immigrants. e.g. those with no criminal record, who have lived in the U.S. for 5+ years. Republicans: Generally against amnesty for any undocumented immigrants and oppose order to put a moratorium on deporting certain workers and fund enforcement actions at the border. Advertisement 'Similarly, Democrats feel much better about Christian Fundamentalists, their frequent political adversaries, than they do the GOP.' This doesn't imply the majority of the American people are partisan, as there is no evidence that supports this notion. According to the ANES, there is still the same number partisans now as there were in the 80s and 90s, and less in the 50s and 60s. 'Why Washington Won't Work', also co-written by Thomas Rudolph from Illinois University, suggests that the dislike between politicians escalates into distrust and an unwillingness to sacrifices their own beliefs and goals in order to meet in the middle 'When asked, roughly the same percentage of Americans say they are 'moderate' as say they are 'liberal,' 'conservative' or even 'haven't thought enough about it,' explained Hetherington. In the 2012 election, more than 58 percent of eligible voters submitted ballots, which supports Hetherington and Rudolph's statement that regardless how disgusted voter are with other parties, they still show up to turn in a ballot. 'Turnout, for the most part, has been on the increase, not the decline,' Hetherington said. 'This is not the behavior of an ideologically alienated group of people.' The majority of American's have no qualms about sending representatives or ones they might not even like to Congress, just as long as they push back on the other party's initiatives once they get there, explained Hetherington, who noted Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky has built his recent career on that theory. 'His unwillingness to compromise may not have succeeded in making Barack Obama a one-term president, as was his stated goal, but it did improve his political fortunes immensely,' Hetherington said. The majority of American's have no qualms about sending representatives or ones they might not even like to Congress, just as long as they push back on the other party's initiatives once they get there, explained Hetherington, who noted Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky has built his recent career on that theory 'He moved from being Senate Minority Leader with 41 seats in 2009 to being Senate Majority Leader with 54 seats in 2015. 'What a handsome payoff for being a political roadblock.' Hetherington believes politicians need to stand up and earn the trust of all voters from every party in order for this back and forth battle to end. 'Absent trust, any bridges that form between the two sides are made of sand,' he said. In President Obama's seventh and final State of the Union address, he highlighted not only his own accomplishments but also what we need to accomplish in the future to succeed as a nation. 'The future we want - opportunity and security for our families; a rising standard of living and a sustainable, peaceful planet for our kids - all that is within our reach,' the president said. 'But it will only happen if we work together.' 'It will only happen if we can have rational, constructive debates.' Self-driving cars could know a lot more about you than you might think. Packed with sensors, they have the resources to record almost every part of your journeys and driving habits. And, according to some groups, autonomous vehicles will soon operate more like surveillance drones, collecting data from both drivers and the public. Self-driving cars will know a lot more about you than you might think. Packed with sensors, they have the resources to record almost every part of our journeys and driving habits. And, according to some groups, autonomous vehicles will soon operate more like surveillance drones 'The availability and resolution of imaging from satellites, drones, self-driving cars and more will continue to increase exponentially,' Sedicii Innovation CEO Rob Leslie, told conspiracy site InfoWars. 'This will drive the creation of ever more sophisticated analysis algorithms, products and companies.' Leslie will be an agenda contributor for the 2016 World Economic Annual Meeting in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland tomorrow. The Department of Transportation may soon require cars sold in the US to share data with other systems to help prevent accidents. Kit Daniels, writing for Infowars, said that it is plausible this technology will also allow police to gather speed data without the use of a radar gun. The Department of Transportation may soon require cars sold in the US to share data with other systems to help prevent accidents. Kit Daniels, writing for Infowars, said that it is plausible this technology will also allow police to gather speed data without the use of a radar gun And politicians could also accomplish their goal of taxing drivers by every mile they have driven. 'Car companies and their technology partners also have an interest in data collection which can be resold to third-parties for advertisement purposes,' he wrote. Software-driven cars also throw up new questions about who should control data generated by connected cars and drivers, forcing companies to take a clear stance on data privacy. A car is one's second living room today. That's private For instance, in June, Volkswagen's Audi said it will take a stringent line on guarding customers' data, in a thinly veiled swipe at rival Google. 'A car is one's second living room today,' Audi Chief Executive Rupert Stadler said at a business event last year in Berlin attended by Google Chairman Eric Schmidt. 'That's private.' 'The only person who needs access to the data onboard is the customer,' Stadler said, adding Audi 'takes that seriously.' Information about the location and speed of a car could be attractive to advertisers, insurance and communications companies who could use the data for their own commercial purposes. HOW VULNERABLE ARE SELF-DRIVING CARS TO HACKING? The self-driving cars being tested by the likes of Google use different combinations of components including ranging sensors, such as Light Detection And Ranging (Lidar) and radar remote sensing technology, GPS and stereo cameras. The Lidar sensors create a 3D map and allow the car to 'see' potential hazards by bouncing a laser beam off obstacles. From this, the car can accurately determine the distance and the shape of objects. Radar sensors, mounted on the bumper and boot, then monitor the speed of these obstacles and, when combined with the Lidar data, send signals to the car to make it slow down, stop or change direction. These cameras and sensors can be blinded by high-brightness infrared LEDs or lasers. Some cars get round this hack by filtering out the colour produced by these lasers, however, they can't stop 'wavelength-agile' lasers that randomly change colour, rendering any filtering useless. For one concept attack, an en expert used basic computer board, a laser pointer and a pulse generator. From a distance of up to 330ft (100 metres), he said it was possible to beam images of 'ghost' cars and obstacles to the sensors on the cars. Advertisement Software-driven cars also throw up new questions about who should control data generated by connected cars and drivers, forcing companies to take a clear stance on data privacy. Pictured is one of Google's self-driving prototype cars Germany's auto industry has lobbied regulators to take a restrictive line on data privacy, a step which could make it harder for software and telecom companies to establish a data-driven business case in the auto sector. 'The customer wants to be at the focus, and does not want to be exploited,' said Stadler. 'The internet, cookies and other data collectors are almost common courtesy.' Speaking at the same event, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said the Internet technology company wants 'essential' German expertise to realize its European automobile projects. The California-based company has worked with Audi, Adam Opel AG and Volkswagen AG in an 'Automobile Alliance' for about a year, Schmidt said. The remarks of the CEO of VW's flagship division echo a similar stance on privacy taken by rival Daimler which has, like Audi, developed an autonomous car. 'A car is one's second living room today,' Audi Chief Executive Rupert Stadler said last year at a business event in Berlin attended by Google Chairman Eric Schmidt. 'That's private' In an alternate universe, the arrows of time could run in the opposite direction of what we know, unfolding so that our known past exists during the far-off future of a distant world. A pair of scientists from the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who suggest this concept aren't the first to do so, but they've demonstrated how this phenomenon could arise based on simpler principles than previously examined. Using entropy as the basis for their model, the physicists have developed a way to show the spontaneous appearance of the arrows of time, and how they can flow in opposite directions. In the multiverse, pictured above, parallel universes could exist, with time running in opposite directions. A pair of scientists from the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a model to explain how this could happen based on simpler principles than previously examined HOW PARTICLE ACCELERATORS COULD FIND A PARALLEL UNIVERSE Cerns Large Hadron Collider has been operating at highest capability in recent months in search of miniature black holes. These are said to be a key sign of a multiverse'. If scientists are able to detect mini black holes are at the LHC at the predicted energies, it could prove the existence of extra dimensions and by extension, parallel universes. 'Just as many parallel sheets of paper, which are two dimensional objects (breath and length) can exist in a third dimension (height), parallel universes can also exist in higher dimensions,' Cern employee Mir Faizal from the University of Waterloo told Dailymail.com. 'We predict that gravity can leak into extra dimensions, and if it does, then miniature black holes can be produced at the LHC.' The LHC's record high energy now makes it possible to look for these mini black holes, and energy gravity may be even tracked disappearing into them. The new 'gravity's rainbow' theory, which says that space and time curve differently for particles of different energy, could explain why the LHC has yet to find any of these black holes. Advertisement In an interview with New Scientist, Sean Carroll of CIT, Pasadena and Alan Guth of MIT explain that, in the laws of physics, the direction in which time flows does not matter. By this explanation, time which runs backwards would still go in accordance with the laws. While humans have grown accustomed to the idea that events lead to other events in a particular order, Carroll says this is not the case. 'There's no such thing, at a very deep level, that causes [must] precede effects,' Carroll told New Scientist. In time as we know it, entropy a measure of disorder increases. On a universal scale, this means that 'the future is the direction of time in which entropy increases,' New Scientist writes. At a much earlier point in the life of the universe, like at the time of the big bang, entropy would be much lower, the researchers explain. In their model, which is not yet published, the researchers drop a fixed amount of particles into an infinite universe. The individual particles each have a randomly assigned velocity, and eventually, arrows of time spontaneously come about, according to New Scientist. Under these conditions, half of the particles will spread outward toward the edges of the cloud, increasing entropy. The other half will move toward the centre, decreasing entropy. Once these particles pass through the centre, they will continue on, heading outward toward the edge. They're referring to this idea as the 'two-headed arrow of time.' If an arrow of time emerges in one direction, the same will happen in the opposite. Regardless of the starting position, the researchers explained to New Scientist, the particles will all eventually move in the outward direction. The model shows that entropy can grow without limit, indicating that 'time zero,' would be the point of lowest entropy. This means that the direction of the individual arrows has no importance, because the cloud will always expand. To make a plausible model, the researchers must work to understand the initial state, when the particles are dropped into the infinite cloud, and entropy is both growing and shrinking at the same time. But, the basis of physics on the known direction of time makes it hard to determine its behaviour under different circumstances 'The point that Alan and I are trying to make is that it's very natural in those circumstances that almost everywhere in the universe you get a noticeable arrow of time,' Carroll told New Scientist. 'Then of course, you do the work of making it realistic, making it look like our universe. That seems to be the hard part.' The researchers say this model could apply to all of existence, including the multiverse. But, the model is not perfect, Andreas Albrecht, of the University of California in Davis, explained to New Scientist. 'They've created a world where they can slip certain notions in very easily,' Albrecht told New Scientist, regarding the team's model of the infinite universe, but says he likes the idea of double headed time. To make a plausible model, the researchers must work to understand the information gaps at the initial state, when the particles are dropped into the infinite cloud, and entropy is both growing and shrinking at the same time. The next big goal is to identify a prime number with 100 million digits M74207281 has exactly 22,338,618 digits - five million more than the last Prime numbers can only be divided by one and themselves A number dubbed M74207281 has been confirmed as the largest prime number ever identified. The prime - a number greater than one that is only divisible by one and itself is more than 22 million digits long. It begins with 200376, ends in 8646351 and has been described as a 'massive but entirely prime number'. Scroll down for video A number dubbed M74207281 has been discovered that is the largest prime number ever to have been identified. It is shown above in short form. If the full number was printed out with each digit measuring one millimetre, it would be 13.9 miles (22.3km) long - or the equivalent to 1,487 London buses in a row More simple prime numbers include, 2,3,5,7 and 13, but the search is on to find huge prime numbers, millions of digits long. The latest number was discovered by Curtis Cooper at the University of Central Missouri, who is involved in the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (Gimps). M74207281 has exactly 22,338,618 digits five million more than the previous 'biggest prime number,' which Professor Cooper discovered in February 2013. It was calculated by multiplying together 74,207,281 twos then subtracting one. The latest number was discovered by Curtis Cooper at the University of Central Missouri, who is involved in the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (Gimps). The number was identified by a computer using Gimps software. Thousands of computers are working together to crunch numbers (stock image) If it was printed out with each digit measuring one millimetre, it would be 13.9 miles (22.3km) long - or the equivalent to 1,487 London buses in a row. WHAT ARE MERSENNE PRIMES? A prime number must be greater than one, and is only divisible by one and itself. The first prime numbers are 2, 3, 5, 7, 11 and so on. For example, the number 10 is not prime because it is divisible by 2 and 5. Mersenne primes are rarer. A Mersenne prime is one taking the form 2P-1, where P is a prime. The first Mersenne primes are 3, 7, 31, and 127 corresponding to primes of 2, 3, 5, and 7 respectively. There are only 49 known Mersenne primes. Mersenne primes have been central to number theory since they were first discussed by ancient Greek mathematician Euclid in about 350 BC. They are named after a French monk, Marin Mersenne who in his lifetime between 1588 and 1948, famously estimated which values of P would yield a prime. It took 300 years and several important discoveries in mathematics to settle his conjecture. Advertisement The Gimps search is a group effort to spot new primes using computers. The software automatically crunches numbers to see whether they are prime and Professor Cooper uses 800 computers to search for record-breakers. One of his machines found M74207281 on 17 September, but a software bug meant an email notification of the discovery failed to be sent, meaning it went unnoticed for four months. Professor Cooper described this as an 'embarrassment' in an interview on the 'Standup Maths' YouTube channel. He told Matt Parker he got an email on the afternoon of 7 January telling him about the discovery. To prove there were no errors in the prime discovery process, the prime was independently verified by two computer programs and different hardware. 'A human has to take notice of the machine's discovery, so even though it was 17 September 17 when the computer found it, it was 7 January when Aaron - a person doing database maintenance - found it. That's the date of discovery.' Professor Cooper added: 'I still have the same excitement as when we were lucky enough to find the first one.' He has found four record-breaking prime numbers. He received a $3,000 (2,000) prize from Gimps for each discovery, New Scientist reported. The new prime number is a member of a special class of extremely rare prime numbers known as Mersenne primes. They take a certain form: 2 to the power of p, where p is also a prime, minus one. The Gimps search is a group effort to spot new primes using computers. The software automatically crunches numbers to see whether they are prime and Professor Cooper uses 800 computers to search for record-breakers (stock image of a calculator is shown) Mersenne primes were named for the French monk Marin Mersenne, who studied these numbers more than 350 years ago. There are only 49 known Mersenne primes the first are 3, 7, 31, and 127 - and the last 15 have been discovered thanks to Gimps. While the prime numbers are infinite and of little practical use, they prove the incredible capability of computers and there's also money to be won. Implantable mobile phones, 3D-printed organs for transplant and clothes and reading-glasses connected to the Internet will be fact by 2025. Such things may be science fiction today but they will be scientific fact by 2025 as the world enters an era of advanced robotics, artificial intelligence and gene editing, according to executives surveyed by the World Economic Forum (WEF). Nearly half of those questioned also expect an artificial intelligence machine to be sitting on a corporate board of directors within the next decade. Disruptive labour market changes, including the rise of robots and artificial intelligence, will result in a net loss of 5.1 million jobs over the next five years, a recent report says. Welcome to the next industrial revolution. After steam, mass production and information technology, the so-called 'fourth industrial revolution' will bring ever faster cycles of innovation, posing huge challenges to companies, workers, governments and societies alike. The promise is cheaper goods and services, driving a new wave of economic growth. The threat is mass unemployment and a further breakdown of already strained trust between corporations and populations. 'There is an economic surplus that is going to be created as a result of this fourth industrial revolution,' Satya Nadella, chief executive of Microsoft, told the WEF's annual meeting in Davos on Wednesday. 'The question is how evenly will it be spread between countries, between people in different economic strata and also different parts of the economy.' Robots are already on the march, moving from factories into homes, hospitals, shops, restaurants and even war zones, while advances in areas like artificial neural networks are starting to blur the barriers between man and machine. 5.1 MILLION JOB LOSSES PREDICTED DUE TO TECHNOLOGY Disruptive labour market changes, including the rise of robots and artificial intelligence, will result in a net loss of 5.1 million jobs over the next five years in 15 leading countries - and women will be worst hit, a major new study released at Davos has claimed. The projection by the World Economic Forum (WEF), which is holding its annual meeting in the Swiss ski resort this week, assumes a total loss of 7.1 million jobs, offset by a gain of 2 million new positions. Women will be the biggest losers as their jobs are often concentrated in low-growth or declining areas such as sales, office and administrative roles, the report said. The technology that will change work: The report found cloud computing, big data, robots and AI will cause the biggest changes. Advertisement One of the most in-demand participants in Davos this year is not a central banker, CEO or politician but a prize-winning South Korean robot called HUBO, which is strutting its stuff amid a crowd of smartphone-clicking delegates. But there are deep worries, as well as awe, at what technology can do. A new report from UBS released in Davos predicts that extreme levels of automation and connectivity will worsen already deepening inequalities by widening the wealth gap between developed and developing economies. Nearly half of those questioned also expect an artificial intelligence machine to be sitting on a corporate board of directors within the next decade.. here HUBO, a multifunctional walking humanoid robot performs a demonstration of its capacities next to its developer Oh Jun-Ho, Professor at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) during the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos. HUBO THE ROBOT One of the most in-demand participants in Davos this year is not a central banker, CEO or politician but a prize-winning South Korean robot called HUBO, which is strutting its stuff amid a crowd of smartphone-clicking delegates. Advertisement 'The fourth industrial revolution has potentially inverted the competitive advantage that emerging markets have had in the form of low-cost labour,' said Lutfey Siddiqi, global head of emerging markets for FX, rates and credit at UBS. 'It is likely, I would think, that it will exacerbate inequality if policy measures are not taken.' An analysis of major economies by the Swiss bank concludes that Switzerland is the country best-placed to adapt to the new robot world, while Argentina ranks bottom. There will be winners and losers among companies, too, as new players move into established industries with disruptive new technologies. That is something uppermost in the minds of Davos attendees such as General Motors CEO Mary Barra, who is confronting the threat of driverless cars - another science fiction that has become science fact - or bank boss Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase , facing competition from digital 'fintech' start-ups. Such innovations, coupled with the rise of robots in both the manufacturing and service sectors, could automate vast numbers of jobs. Oxford University researchers predicted in 2013, for example, that 47 percent of U.S. jobs were at risk. Such fears about technology destroying jobs are not new. The economist John Maynard Keynes famously cried wolf in 1931, by issuing a warning of widespread 'technological unemployment'. The economist John Maynard Keynes famously cried wolf in 1931, by issuing a warning of widespread 'technological unemployment'. The question is whether this time will be different, given the speed to change and the fact that machines now offer brain as well as brawn, threatening professions previously seen as immune, such as entry-level journalism or routine financial analysis. Pessimists fear this will hollow out middle-income, middle-class jobs on an unprecedented scale, with the WEF itself predicting that more than 5 million jobs could be lost in 15 major economies by 2020. But ManpowerGroup CEO Jonas Prising is more upbeat for the long term. 'If history is any indicator, we'll have more jobs being created in the end than are going to be destroyed,' he said. However, beyond the Davos talking-shop there are doubts about how well business leaders will actually plan for the future. 'When you have these very big levels of disruptive change you need some pretty serious thinking and action,' said Ian Goldin, professor of globalisation and development at Oxford University. Eccentric Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero claims researchers in China have successfully carried out a head transplant on a monkey. The ambitious scientist caused a media storm last year when he revealed his plans to attempt a human head transplant, saying it could be a cure for complete paralysis in a matter of years. Now, after working with the team in China and other researchers in South Korea, he suggests his plan is a step closer, thanks to the experiments on monkeys, mice and human cadavers. WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT: SCROLL DOWN FOR IMAGE OF THE MONKEY AND VIDEO Eccentric surgeon Sergio Canavero (pictured right) claims researchers in China have carried out a head transplant on a monkey, which could take him one step closer to performing a brain transplant on Russian scientist Valery Spiridon, 30, (left) who suffers from a muscle wasting disease He told New Scientist: 'I would say we have plenty of data to go on. 'It's important that people stop thinking this is impossible. This is absolutely possible and we're working towards it.' The experiments, which some will find upsetting, are to be published in future issues of scientific journals Surgery and CNS Neuroscience & Therapeutics, the latter of which is rumoured to be guest-edited by one of Canavero's collaborators. While New Scientist has not seen the seven papers, it said it has seen images and videos of the grisly procedures described by Canavero. One image seemingly shows a monkey with its head sewn on, reminiscent of the stitches in Frankenstein films. The trials, which some will find upsetting, are to be published in future issues of scientific journals Surgery and CNS Neuroscience & Therapeutics. One image seemingly shows a monkey with its head sewn on (pictured) although its authenticity has not been validated. MailOnline has contacted the researchers for clarification WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT: This video shows a mouse sniffing and moving its legs after reportedly having recovered from having its spinal cord severed and re-fused Canavero claims Xiaoping Ren at Harbin Medical University, China has successfully carried out a monkey head transplant, connecting the blood supply between the head and new body, but critically, not the spinal cord. He said the gruesome experiment shows that if the head is cooled to -15C a monkey can survive the procedure without suffering brain damage. MailOnline has contacted the researchers for more information and to corroborate Canavero's claims. 'The monkey fully survived the procedure without any neurological injury of whatever kind,' he said. However, without a connected spinal cord, the animal would have been paralysed at least from the neck down and was only kept alive for 20 hours after the operation, apparently, for undefined ethical reasons. It is not known whether the animal could feel pain in parts of its body after the procedure. While New Scientist has not seen the seven papers, it said it has seen images and videos of the grisly procedures described by Canavero. Pictured have previously been released (one example shown) of 'head transplants' in mice, performed by Xiaoping Ren at Harbin Medical University, China Mr Spiridonov, who suffers from Werdnig-Hoffman disease, said: 'If I manage to replace my body and if everything goes well, it will allow me to be free of the limitations I am experiencing' Ren said he conducted experiments on human cadavers in preparation for the surgery and tested ideas about how to prevent brain injury. SPINE 'GLUED' BACK TOGETHER It is already 40 years since the first monkey head transplant and since then an operation on a mouse has been carried out in China. But Dr Canavero claims all the necessary techniques already exist to carry out a full human head transplant. He believes he just needs to put the relevant techniques together to carry out the first successful operation. The new body would come from a normal transplant donor, who is declared brain dead. Both the donor and the patient would have their head severed from their spinal cord at the same time, using an ultra-sharp blade to give a clean cut. The patient's head would then be moved on to the donor's body and attached using a 'glue' called polyethylene glycol to fuse the two ends of the spinal cord together. The muscles and blood supply would be stitched up, before the patient is put into a coma for four weeks to stop them moving while the head and body heal together. During that time the patient would be given small electric shocks to stimulate their spinal cord and strengthen the connections between their head and new body. As the patient is brought out of their medically-induced coma, it is hoped they would be able to move, feel their face, and even speak with the same voice. Powerful immunosuppressant drugs would be prescribed to stop the new body from being rejected. In addition, the patient would require intensive psychological support. Advertisement He is said to have successfully carried out a head transplant on a mouse in 2013 and since then has repeated the 10-hour procedure more than 1,000 times. In the video link conversation exclusively published by Russian news agency RIA Novosti, Canavero said: 'The monkey survived perfectly without injury for 24 for 20 hours before being euthanised, because of course we didn't want to keep the animal alive.' Canavero added the Chinese have already conducted the first human head transplant, but refused to show photos as proof. Another video shows a mouse sniffing and moving its legs after reportedly having recovered from having its spinal cords severed and re-fused. Canavero said the procedure, carried out by C-Yoon Kim, at Konkuk University School of Medicine in South Korea, shows the spinal cord can re-fuse if it's cut cleanly and a chemical that preserves cell membranes, called polyethylene glycol (PEG), is used. However, as the video shows, the mouse is unable to move normally. Despite medical hurdles and scepticism from scientists about the release of details ahead of the research being published, Canavero is seeking funds to perform a human head transplant procedure and even plans on asking Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for cash. Last year he hit the headlines when he announced plans to operate on 31-year-old Valery Spriridonov, who has a genetic muscle-wasting disease. RT reported Canavero said: 'I'm asking today Russian billionaires and also foreign billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, who is already sponsoring much of this life extension research, and this is certainly about extending life, to finance, to bankroll the first head transplant in Russia on Valery Spiridonov.' Canavero added the Chinese have already conducted the first human head transplant, but refused to show photos as proof. Spiridonov (pictured) has previously said he will only consent to the surgery if it is '99 per cent' likely to succeed Now Trinh Hong Son, director of the Vietnam-Germany Hospital in Hanoi, Vietnam has offered to host the proposed operation. Doctor Canavero claims a successful outcome of the surgery is possible and Mr Spiridonov, who suffers from Werdnig-Hoffman disease, said: 'If I manage to replace my body and if everything goes well, it will allow me to be free of the limitations I am experiencing.' He admitted previously: 'I am not rushing to go under the surgeon's knife, I am not shouting - come and save me here and now. 'Yes, I do have a disease which often leads to death, but my first role in this project is not that of a patient. CRITICISM FOR THE PROPOSED HEAD TRANSPLANT Critics say Dr Canavero's plans are 'pure fantasy'. The Italian has been compared to the fictional gothic-horror character Dr Frankenstein and Arthur Caplan, the director of medical ethics at New York University's Langone Medical Centre, has described Dr Canavero as 'nuts'. Dr Hunt Batjer, president elect of the American Association for Neurological Surgeons, told CNN: 'I would not wish this on anyone. I would not allow anyone to do it to me as there are a lot of things worse than death.' Advertisement 'First of all, I am a scientist, I am an engineer, and I am keen to persuade people - medical professionals - that such operation is necessary. 'I am not going crazy here and rushing to cut off my head, believe me. 'The surgery will take place only when all believe that the success is 99 per cent possible. 'In other words, the main task now is to get support for Canavero from the medical community, to let him go on with his methods and to improve them within these two coming years.' The men hope to carry out the operation in 2017, if 'all goes according to plan'. Michael Sarr, editor of the journal Surgery, who is surgeon at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, said: 'If the so-called head transplant works, this is going to open up a whole new science of spinal cord trauma reconstruction.' Scientists say they finally have 'solid evidence' for Planet X, a true ninth planet on the fringes of our solar system. The gas giant is thought to be almost as big as Neptune and orbiting billions of miles beyond Neptune's path - distant enough to take 10,000 to 20,000 years to circle the sun. This Planet 9, as the two Caltech researchers call it, hasn't been spotted yet. Scroll down for video The gas giant is thought to be almost as big as Neptune and orbiting billions of miles beyond Neptune's path distant enough to take 10,000 to 20,000 years to circle the sun. HOW THEY FOUND IT Researchers inferred Planet X's presence from the peculiar clustering of six previously known objects that orbit beyond Neptune. They say there's only a 0.007% chance, or about one in 15,000, that the clustering could be a coincidence. Instead, they say, a planet with the mass of 10 Earths has shepherded the six objects into their strange elliptical orbits, tilted out of the plane of the solar system. Advertisement They base their findings on mathematical and computer modeling, and anticipate its discovery via telescope within five years. The two reported on their research Wednesday in the Astronomical Journal because they want people to help them look for it. 'We could have stayed quiet and quietly spent the next five years searching the skies ourselves and hoping to find it. 'But I would rather somebody find it sooner, than me find it later,' astronomer Mike Brown told AP. 'I want to see it. I want to see what it looks like. I want to understand where it is, and I think this will help.' Researchers inferred Planet X's presence from the peculiar clustering of six previously known objects that orbit beyond Neptune. They say there's only a 0.007% chance, or about one in 15,000, that the clustering could be a coincidence. Instead, they say, a planet with the mass of 10 Earths has shepherded the six objects into their strange elliptical orbits, tilted out of the plane of the solar system. During the solar system's infancy 4.5 billion years ago, they say, the giant planet was knocked out of the planet-forming region near the sun. Slowed down by gas, the planet settled into a distant elliptical orbit, where it still lurks today. Once it's detected, the researchers insist there will be no Pluto-style planetary debate. 'This would be a real ninth planet,' says Brown, the Richard and Barbara Rosenberg Professor of Planetary Astronomy. The six most distant known objects in the solar system with orbits exclusively beyond Neptune (magenta) all mysteriously line up in a single direction. Such an orbital alignment can only be maintained by some outside force, Batygin and Brown say. Their paper argues that a planet with 10 times the mass of the earth in a distant eccentric orbit anti-aligned with the other six objects (orange) is required to maintain this configuration. For the first time in over 150 years, there is solid evidence that the solar system's planetary census is incomplete 'There have only been two true planets discovered since ancient times, and this would be a third. 'It's a pretty substantial chunk of our solar system that's still out there to be found, which is pretty exciting.' They ought to know; one of them, Mike Brown, is the so-called Pluto killer. 'My daughter, Lilah, has suggested that we call it Pluto. 'That way Pluto can be a planet again,' he said of the discovery. 'We have found evidence that there's a giant planet in the outer solar system,' Brown told Popsci. 'By 'giant' we mean the size of Neptune, and when we say 'outer solar system' we mean 10 to 20 times farther away than Pluto.' Brown and Konstantin Batygin, a theoretical astrophysicist at Caltech who specializes in solar system dynamics, think Planet X formed in the early stages of the solar system, some 4 billion years ago, when the large planets (including Planet X) were still rocky cores. If Planet X's core had been able to stay in the inner solar system and carry out the rest of its formation, it could have accumulated enough gas or ice to become another giant like Jupiter or Neptune, the pair told Popsci. HOW WILL THEY PROVE FIND? The team has time on the one large telescope in Hawaii that is suited for the search, and they hope other astronomers will join in the hunt. Subaru, an 8-meter telescope in Hawaii that is owned by Japan. It has enough light-gathering area to detect such a faint object, coupled with a huge field of view -75 times larger than that of a Keck telescope. Advertisement But because the large cores of the other planets were packed so tightly in the inner solar system, there wasn't enough room for them all to develop, and Planet X was 'kicked out. 'There would have been a gas nebula around the solar system at the time that would have slowed it down as it plowed through the gas, putting it into this eccentric orbit,' Brown said. 'I could not imagine a bigger deal ifand of course that's a boldface 'if'if it turns out to be right,' Gregory Laughlin, a planetary scientist at the University of California (UC), Santa Cruz told Science. 'What's thrilling about it is [the planet] is detectable.' The team has time on the one large telescope in Hawaii that is suited for the search, and they hope other astronomers will join in the hunt. Subaru, an 8-meter telescope in Hawaii that is owned by Japan. It has enough light-gathering area to detect such a faint object, coupled with a huge field of view75 times larger than that of a Keck telescope. 'Although we were initially quite skeptical that this planet could exist, as we continued to investigate its orbit and what it would mean for the outer solar system, we become increasingly convinced that it is out there,' says Batygin, an assistant professor of planetary science. 'For the first time in over 150 years, there is solid evidence that the solar system's planetary census is incomplete.' Meanwhile, Brown and other colleagues have begun searching the skies for Planet Nine. Only the planet's rough orbit is known, not the precise location of the planet on that elliptical path. If the planet happens to be close to its perihelion, Brown says, astronomers should be able to spot it in images captured by previous surveys. The putative ninth planetat 5,000 times the mass of Plutois sufficiently large that there should be no debate about whether it is a true planet. If it is in the most distant part of its orbit, the world's largest telescopessuch as the twin 10-meter telescopes at the W. M. Keck Observatory and the Subaru Telescope, all on Mauna Kea in Hawaiiwill be needed to see it. If, however, Planet Nine is now located anywhere in between, many telescopes have a shot at finding it. 'I would love to find it,' says Brown. 'But I'd also be perfectly happy if someone else found it. That is why we're publishing this paper. We hope that other people are going to get inspired and start searching.' In terms of understanding more about the solar system's context in the rest of the universe, Batygin says that in a couple of ways, this ninth planet that seems like such an oddball to us would actually make our solar system more similar to the other planetary systems that astronomers are finding around other stars. If, however, Planet Nine is now located anywhere in between, many telescopes have a shot at finding it. First, most of the planets around other sunlike stars have no single orbital rangethat is, some orbit extremely close to their host stars while others follow exceptionally distant orbits. Second, the most common planets around other stars range between 1 and 10 Earth-masses. 'One of the most startling discoveries about other planetary systems has been that the most common type of planet out there has a mass between that of Earth and that of Neptune,' says Batygin. 'Until now, we've thought that the solar system was lacking in this most common type of planet. Maybe we're more normal after all.' Brown, well known for the significant role he played in the demotion of Pluto from a planet to a dwarf planet adds, 'All those people who are mad that Pluto is no longer a planet can be thrilled to know that there is a real planet out there still to be found,' he says. With their hands tightly bound, they were battered and stabbed seemingly without mercy before their broken bodies were left unburied by a Kenyan lagoon. It is a horrific scene of a prehistoric massacre that ended the lives of a group of 27 men, children and even heavily pregnant women 10,000 years ago. Experts believe the group of foragers was wiped out by rival hunter gatherers, who stabbed their victims and smashed their heads, knees and limbs with clubs. And the brutal slaughter may have been mankind's first mass killing. Scroll down for video The remains of a group of at least 27 men, women and children have been found to be the victims of a massacre that occurred on the shore of a prehistoric lagoon 10,000 years ago. The skeletons showed multiple injuries that suggest they had been beaten with wooden clubs (like the skull wound pictured above) The findings suggest vicious and bloody wars were waging between groups of early humans as they competed for territory and food. WHO WERE THE PREHISTORIC MASSACRE VICTIMS? The remains were found along what was the shoreline of a prehistoric lagoon 10,000 years ago in Nataruk, Kenya. At the time, Homo sapiens are thought to have been the only species left alive on the planet as our last rivals, the Neanderthals had died. Pottery found in the area suggests it was a popular place for foraging for the hunter gatherer societies that would have lived in the area. West Turkana was a fertile landscape at the time and the presence of pottery suggests the people who lived there may have been semi-settled. However, the massacre occurred long before farming is thought to have spread to the area. Fish bones found around the women's bodies also suggests they were fishermen, who were perhaps on their way back from retrieving a catch. Eight men and eight women - one of whom was heavily pregnant - were found along with six children, as well as five unidentified adults. Advertisement Until this discovery, many experts believed warfare developed around 6,000 years ago. Archaeologists stumbled across the grisly scene on the shore of what had been a prehistoric lagoon in Nataruk, 19 miles (30km) south west of Lake Turkana in Kenya. They found the remains, which included eight women and six children, lying on and close to the surface where they had been left after being murdered. Twelve of the skeletons were almost complete, while ten of them showed signs of horrific wounds. Several were found face down and most had severe fractures on their faces and heads while at least five had wounds on their bones that suggested they had been stabbed. Two men had stone blades lodged in their skulls and thorax, and many had been beaten so badly their bones in their hands, knees and ribs had been smashed. In particular, four of the group were found in strange seated positions, suggested their hands had been tied, including a woman who was in the late stages of pregnancy. The pregnant woman is thought to have been carrying a six to nine month old foetus in her womb when she was killed. The bones of her unborn foetus, which died in the attack, were discovered mingled with those of its mother. Horrifically her hands and feet appear to have been bound, and her knees broken before she was killed. Archaeologists stumbled across the horrific scene at a site beside what used to be a lagoon 10,000 years ago at a place called Nataruk, to the south west of modern Lake Turkana in Kenya (shown on map above) The skull of one of the men, who was found lying prone in the sediment of the ancient lagoon, showed multiple fractures (pictured). It appears he was smashed over the head and face with a blunt instrument such as a club The skeleton of one woman (left) was found to have the remains of a six to nine-month-old foetus inside her, suggesting she was heavily pregnant when she was killed. Her remains were found in a strange seated position (illustrated right) which suggests her hands and feet and been bound and her knees broken Many of the victims were found lying face down, probably where they had been killed (pictured). Sediment from the lagoon had then enveloped their bodies helping to preserve them. The skeletons showed multiple breaks and fractures on their head, hands, arms and legs which suggests they were brutally beaten to death Dr Marta Mirazon Lahr, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge who led the excavation, said the massacre has helped to shed new light on the origins of warfare. WHO WERE THE ATTACKERS? Whoever attacked and murdered this group of men, women and children left few clues as to who they were. If any of their own were killed in the encounter, they would certainly have buried them or carried them away. The only hint to their identity is the remains of razor sharp obsidian blades embedded in the remains of two of the victims. The black volcanic rock is not found locally, suggesting the attackers may have come from outside of the area seeking resources. Advertisement She said: 'The deaths at Nataruk are testimony to the antiquity of inter-group violence and war. 'These human remains record the intentional killing of a small band of foragers with no deliberate burial, and provide unique evidence that warfare was part of the repertoire of inter-group relations among some prehistoric hunter-gatherers.' Anthropologists have long suspected that the human capacity for organised violence is something we inherited from long ago in our evolutionary past. Chimpanzees, for example, will often band together to attack rival groups that can end in deaths. But the discovery at Nataruk, which is revealed in a study published in the journal Nature, provides firm evidence that conflict between early human hunter-gatherers did take place. Tiny obsidian bladelets found embedded in the skull of one of the skeletons (pictured) and in the thorax of another show the victims were stabbed or shot with arrows in the attack. They also provide some small clues that the attackers themselves were not local rivals as the stone is not available in the area This man, found lying prone in the lagoon sediments (pictured), had a stone blade embedded into the left side of his skull. Damage on the right side of the skull also suggest he was hit by a sharpened arrow shaft Some experts believe warfare only really became common among human groups with the rise of agriculture around 6,000 years ago, which triggered disputes over land and resources. IS THIS THE EARLIEST MASSACRE? Archaeologists believe this may be the earliest evidence of the intentional killing of a band of foragers to have been discovered. While there has been evidence of violence between prehistoric hunter gatherers found before, most tend to have been individuals or small numbers of people. However, remains of 23 bodies found at a graveyard in Jebel Sahaba in Sedan show evidence of violence and have been dated to between 12,000 and 14,000 years ago. But the fact they were buried, argue the researchers behind the new study on Nataruk in Kenya, suggests they were individuals who died separately or in small groups during raids or feuds. Advertisement However, this site predates this theory by 4,000 years. The site was discovered in 2012 in an area that had been a lake during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene. At the time, bands of hunters and fishermen are thought to have lived along its shores. Pottery found alongside the old shoreline, for example, suggests it was a popular spot for foraging. Experts believe the group they discovered may have been attacked by a rival band. It is possible they killed some of the men first before capturing the rest of the group and massacring them. The bodies of many of the victims fell into the water of the lagoon where they were preserved in the sediment and fossilised. Radiocarbon dating has helped to age the remains at between 9,500 and 10,500 years old, just after the end of the last ice age. Dr Mirazon Lahr said: 'The Nataruk massacre may have resulted from an attempt to seize resources - territory, women, children, food stored in pots - whose value was similar to those of later food -producing agricultural societies, among whom violent attacks on settlements became part of life. 'This would extend the history of the same underlying socio-economic conditions that characterise other instances of early warfare: a more settled, materially richer way of life. The hands of the victims were badly broken where as they had been beaten by their attackers (pictured) One of the men, found in a strange position (pictured) suffered a wound to his neck vertebrae that suggests he had been shot with an arrow before he was then clubbed to the side of his head, fracturing his skull Researchers said the discovery, which was found in the sediment of a long-dried up lagoon (pictured) provides firm evidence that conflict between early human hunter-gatherers did take place. Some experts believed warfare only developed between human groups as they settled down and began farming 6,000 years ago 'However, Nataruk may simply be evidence of a standard antagonistic response to an encounter between two social groups at that time.' At least 21 members of the group appear to have been adults - eight male, eight female and five of them were unidentified. The remains of six children were found mingled or close to those of four of the women. It appears the children and women may have been grouped together before they were battered to death, likely with wooden clubs. The remains of fish were also discovered scattered around some of the women's bodies, suggesting they had been attacked while carrying a catch from the lagoon. The position of the hands of some of the victims, like those of this woman (pictured), suggest they may have been bound before they were killed. The women and children were found grouped together. It suggests some of the men may have been killed before the women and children were captured and then massacred Some of the women were found in strange reclining or seated positions (pictured) with fractures on their knees and feet. It suggests they may have been hobbled, bound and then murdered. The remains of this female were found surrounded by fish, believed to have been a catch she had been carrying Two of the men were found to have obsidian arrow or spear tips embedded in their remains. The black volcanic rock can be easily worked to become razor sharp. One of these bladelets was found still embedded in the skull of a man and the entire front part of his head and face was smashed in. Dr Mirazon Lahr said: 'The man appears to have been hit in the head by at least two projectiles and in the knees by a blunt instrument, falling face down into the lagoon's shallow water.' She added the obsidian blades suggest the attackers were perhaps a foreign group who had invaded the victims' territory. A obsidian bladelet was found embedded in the left side of one of the men (pictured above), which suggests he had been shot with an arrow or stabbed with a spear before being brutally beaten to death She said: 'Obsidian is rare in other late Stone Age sites of this area in West Turkana, which may suggest that the two groups confronted at Nataruk had different home ranges Professor Robert Foley, from Cambridge University's Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies, said the findings provide new clues about human evolutionary history. He said: 'I've no doubt it is in our biology to be aggressive and lethal, just as it is to be deeply caring and loving. Could reduce heating bills by up to 40 per cent in tall buildings, experts say Smart windows that clean themselves could not only put an end to the tedium of wiping panes, but could significantly cut your heating bills too. British scientists have developed the windows, which are ultra-resistant to water, thanks to pencil-like microscopic structures engraved into the glass. Water simply rolls off the panes in spherical droplets, picking up dirt, dust and other contaminants while inadvertently cleaning the windows as the particles are carried away. Smart windows that clean themselves could not only put an end to the tedium of wiping panes, but could cut heating bills too. The various features of the invention are shown above A super-thin coating of an inorganic compound called vanadium dioxide also prevents heat loss from the windows during cold periods, which, the inventors claim, could reduce heating bills by up to 40 per cent. In hot weather, the film additionally prevents infrared radiation from the sun entering the building and raising the temperature. Vanadium dioxide is a cheap and easily available, meaning it's more sustainable then coating glass with silver or gold-based coatings which are used in current energy-saving windows. 'This is the first time that a nanostructure has been combined with a thermochromic coating,' said Dr Ioannis Papakonstantinou, who leads the University College London team behind the invention. British scientists have developed the windows, which are ultra-resistant to water, thanks to pencil-like microscopic structures (pictured under a scanning electron microscope) engraved into the glass THE BENEFITS OF SMART WINDOWS Self-cleaning: The windows are ultra-resistant to water, so rain hitting the outside forms spherical droplets that roll easily over the surface - picking up dirt, dust and other contaminants and carrying them away. This is due to the pencil-like, conical design of nanostructures engraved onto the glass, trapping air and ensuring only a tiny amount of water comes into contact with the surface. This is different from traditional glass, where raindrops cling to the surface, slide down slower and leave marks behind. Energy-saving: The glass is coated with a very thin film of vanadium dioxide, which during cold periods stops thermal radiation escaping and so prevents heat loss. During hot periods it prevents infrared radiation from the sun entering the building. Anti-glare: The design of the nanostructures gives the windows the same anti-reflective properties found in the eyes of moths and other creatures that have evolved to hide from predators. It cuts the amount of light reflected internally in a room to less than five per cent, resulting in less 'glare' to make a room more comfortable. Advertisement 'The bio-inspired nanostructure amplifies the thermochromics properties of the coating and the net result is a self-cleaning, highly performing smart window.' Thermochromism is the property of substances to change colour due to a change in temperature, and the effect reduces glare. The design of the nanostructures gives the windows the same anti-reflective properties found in the eyes of moths and other creatures that have evolved to hide from predators. It cuts the amount of light reflected internally in a room to less than five per cent, resulting in less 'glare' to make a room more comfortable. Dr Papakonstantinou continued: 'It's currently estimated that, because of the obvious difficulties involved, the cost of cleaning a skyscraper's windows in its first five years is the same as the original cost of installing them. 'Our glass could drastically cut this expenditure, quite apart from the appeal of lower energy bills and improved occupant productivity thanks to less glare. 'As the trend in architecture continues towards the inclusion of more glass, it's vital that windows are as low-maintenance as possible.' The scientists are in talks with UK glass manufacturers with a view to commercialising the concept. The design of the nanostructures gives the windows the same anti-reflective properties found in the eyes of moths and other creatures that have evolved to hide from predators. A file image of the compound eye and proboscis of a moth is shown above The first smart windows could reach the market in three to five years, depending on the level of industry support. Professor Philip Nelson, chief executive of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) which contributed 100,000 to the research, said: 'This project is an example of how investing in excellent research drives innovation to produce tangible benefits. US Army bosses have revealed new plans to mount laser weapons on high altitude drones. The Pentagon's missile defense chief says the 'time has come' for the technology, four years after the Air Force's laser equipped Boeing 747 test plane was abandoned. The drones will fly at 65,000 feet or higher and stay aloft for days. The drones would fly at 65,000 feet or higher and stay aloft for days or even weeks, circling known launch sites high in the atmosphere, ready to fire is a launch was detected (pictured, a current Predator drone). HOW THEY WOULD WORK The drones will fly at 65,000 feet or higher and stay aloft for days, far above any adverse weather conditions. They would be positioned above known launch sites so they could fire upon enemy missiles as they lift off. Advertisement They would be positioned above known launch sites so they could fire upon enemy missiles as they lift off. The plan is to see how the laser technology matures over the next three years to fit it on a high-altitude drone, Vice Adm. James Syring, the Missile Defense Agency director, said according to Defence One. 'We have significantly ramped up our program in terms of investment and talking about it more of what else needs to be done to mature this capability,' Syring said at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event in Washington. The Pentagon spent 16 years and $5 billion building the Airborne Laser, a heavily modified Boeing 747 jetliner with a bulbous chemical laser on its nose. In 2010, it shot down a missile in a test. 'It proved that this this concept could work,' Syring said. 'It proved that, given enough power, given enough beam quality, given enough altitude, intercept of a ballistic missile [at a] wide variety of ranges would theoretically be possible.' THE AIRBORNE LASER - A FIVE BILLION DOLLAR PROJECT The Pentagon spent 16 years and $5 billion building the Airborne Laser, a heavily modified Boeing 747 jetliner with a bulbous chemical laser on its nose. In 2010, it shot down a missile in a test. Aerospace and defence contractor Northrop Grumman produced the high-energy laser and Lockheed Martin are developing the beam and fire control system. 'This was the first directed energy lethal intercept demonstration against a liquid-fuel boosting ballistic missile target from an airborne platform,' the U.S. MDA said at the time. The Pentagon spent 16 years and $5 billion building the Airborne Laser, a heavily modified Boeing 747 jetliner with a bulbous chemical laser on its nose. It added: 'The revolutionary use of directed energy is very attractive for missile defence, with the potential to attack multiple targets at the speed of light at a range of hundreds of kilometres and at a low cost per intercept attempt compared to current technologies.' The test took place at Point Mugu's Naval Air Warfare Center-Weapons Division Sea Range off Ventura in California. MDA did not say what the range was. Providing round-the-clock defense would have required small fleets of 747s plus fighter jets for protection and tanker aircraft to keep everything fueled up. Advertisement The Pentagon spent 16 years and $5 billion building the Airborne Laser, a heavily modified Boeing 747 jetliner with a bulbous chemical laser on its nose. In 2010, it shot down a missile in a test. However,t he concept was flawed, and soon abandoned. Syring said power was the key to the new plans. 'You're going to need as much power as you can get to destroy as many boosters as you can,' Syring said. 'If you can balance that range, altitude, power and number of boosters you need to defeat to help augment our kinetic capability, you're thinking about the problem exactly right.' Initial trials of laser weapon revealed 'unprecedented power' of system, and it will now be tested against live targets at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico this year (artist's impression shown) SHIELDS UP! The AFRL is also working on a defensive laser shield. A 360-degree laser 'bubble' would surround a U.S. warplane. That bubble would disable or destroy anything that comes inside, like a missile or another aircraft. To invent such a shield, you'd need a turret that doesn't interfere with the aerodynamics of the warplane. A turret like that has already been successfully tested in partnership with Lockheed Martin and DARPA, the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Advertisement Air Force bosses have boasted combat lasers will be fitted to fighters planes by 2020. The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, or AFRL, is on track to demonstrate a working laser weapon on a fighter jet by 2020, it has revealed. 'It really is a national tipping point,' Kelly Hammett, chief engineer for the AFRL's directed energy directorate, told CNN. 'We see the technology evolving and maturing to the stage where it really can be used.' The military hopes that the new generation of weapons could lead to radical changes in the way wars are fought, with planes having unlimited ammunition - as long as they have enough power. 'You could have an unlimited magazine ... loitering aircraft that could address and access a wide variety of targets, Hammett said. 'I believe we'll have a directed energy pod we can put on a fighter plane very soon,' Air Force General Hawk Carlisle has claimed at the Air Force Association Air & Space conference in a presentation on what he called Fifth-Generation Warfare, according to Ars Technica. 'That day is a lot closer than I think a lot of people think it is.' The US Navy has already deployed a laser weapon at sea aboard the USS Ponce, capable of a range of attacks against small boats, drones, and light aircraft posing a threat, by blinding sensors or operators or heating elements to make them fail or explode. The weapons are expected to be used to shoot down drones. Other laser weapons are also being tested by the Office of Naval Research for use on helicopters to protect against man-portable anti aircraft missiles. Directed-energy weapons pods could be affixed to aircraft to destroy or disable incoming missiles, drones, and even enemy aircraft at a much lower 'cost per shot' than missiles or even guns, Carlisle suggested. The front runner for the Air Force system is believed to be called the High-Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System (HELLADS), and will create a laser small enough to be mounted on a plane, and is expected to be ready for use by 2020. General Atomics, the firm making, it, has revealed a full scale system is already under construction following tests. The AFRL is also working on a defensive laser shield. A 360-degree laser 'bubble' would surround a U.S. warplane. That bubble would disable or destroy anything that comes inside, like a missile or another aircraft. To invent such a shield, you'd need a turret that doesn't interfere with the aerodynamics of the warplane. A turret like that has already been successfully tested under Hammett at AFRL in partnership with Lockheed Martin and DARPA, the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. 'It's a huge deal,' Hammett said. Earlier this year the US Military Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) has revealed it has just completed the first tests of the system that could eventually see laser weapons added to drones and fighter jets. They say the weapons shows 'unprecedented power' and are about to begin testing it against live targets on firing ranges. White Sands Missile range, where the HELLADS laser system is set for field testing this summer. 'The goal of the HELLADS program is to develop a 150 kilowatt (kW) laser weapon system that is ten times smaller and lighter than current lasers of similar power, enabling integration onto tactical aircraft to defend against and defeat ground threats,' Darpa says. It said the secretive trials 'demonstrated sufficient laser power and beam quality to advance to a series of field tests. 'The technical hurdles were daunting, but it is extremely gratifying to have produced a new type of solid-state laser with unprecedented power and beam quality for its size,' said Rich Bagnell, yhe projects program manager. 'The HELLADS laser is now ready to be put to the test on the range against some of the toughest tactical threats our warfighters face.' Ground-based field testing of the HELLADS laser is now expected to begin this year as an effort jointly funded by DARPA and the Air Force Research Laboratory. Following the field-testing phase, the goal is to make the system available to the military Services for further refinement, testing or transition to operational use. The laser was developed by DARPA performer General Atomics The HELLADS program has been developing an electrically driven solid state laser at greatly reduced size and weight over lasers of similar power for tactical use. The laser was developed by DARPA performer General Atomics The weapons are expected to be used to shoot down drones. 'Enemy surface-to-air threats to manned and unmanned aircraft have become increasingly sophisticated, creating a need for rapid and effective response to this growing category of threats. 'High power lasers can provide a solution to this challenge, as they harness the speed and power of light to counter multiple threats.' However, they are also likely to be used on bombing raids to target precise locations. 'Laser weapon systems provide additional capability for offensive missions as welladding precise targeting with low probability of collateral damage.' Have you ever noticed that plane windows are always oval shaped and never square? It is probably something many fliers will have never stopped to consider - but a recent engineering video explains just why it is so vital they have their current shape. The simple yet important explanation is that dangerous levels of stress build up on the corners of square windows. A round window drastically reduces the chances of pressure building up. It is probably something many fliers will have never stopped to consider - but a recent engineering video explains just why it is so vital they have their current shape The video, produced by Real Engineering, uses diagrams to explain the flow of pressure through the cabin during a journey and show the circled points of a window that would have increased areas of strain The video, produced by Real Engineering, uses diagrams to explain the flow of pressure through the cabin during a journey and show the points of a window that would have increased areas of strain. Dai Whittingham, the Chief Executive of the UK Flight Safety Committee explained to MailOnline Travel: 'Square corners concentrate the stresses and can lead to fatigue failure of the structure. 'Designers prefer oval windows because they can get a larger viewing area which suits the biggest range of passenger sitting heights. 'The narrowest part of the oval will be designed to ensure the curve does not generate unsafe stresses in the surrounding material. 'Recently we have started to see some designers opting for more rectangular shapes, but these will always have curved corners.' Early jets such as the de Havilland Comet featured windows of a square design and suffered several accidents and fatalities as a result Early jets featured windows of a square design and designers only realised this scientific flaw after it was too late. This was tragically seen with the first commercial jet, the de Havilland Comet, which saw a plane disintegrate mid-air in 1954. The aircraft had square windows and an accident investigation discovered that one of the windows had been the source of a structural failure that killed everyone on board. The pressure differences inside and outside the plane had caused the fuselage of the aircraft to expand slightly, and with the temporary expansion, the jutting corners added to the stress. The de Havilland Comet had square windows and an accident investigation into one crash discovered that a window had been the source of a structural failure that led to the deaths of everyone on board The pressure differences inside and outside the plane had caused the fuselage of the aircraft to expand slightly, and with the temporary expansion, the jutting corners added to the stress Passengers were forced to reach for their oxygen masks after an Air Transat plane suffered a cabin pressure issue at 37,000 feet. The flight was en route from Mexico to Montreal, Canada. One passenger described how she could hear people in the cabin crying as it descended 7,000 feet in just two minutes. The captain was alerted to a depressurization issue while flying over Georgia in the U.S. Photos of the moment oxygen masks were deployed were shared on social media from the flight Passenger Marie-Eve said that the cabin crew were seen 'holding fire extinguishers' due to a 'burning smell' in the cabin. However Air Transat has said that these were actually oxygen cylinders. 'I was listening to a movie, we heard a bang and felt the cold air enter,' Marie-Eve told TVANouvelles.ca. 'Everyone turned backwards. It happened so fast.' Marie-Eve described the incident as 'intense' and says that she suffered issues with her ears due to the rapid descent. She also claimed people were crying in the cabin during the ordeal on the plane, which had earlier taken off from Cancun. The flight-tracking website FlightAware showed that the Boeing 737 was flying at 37,000ft when it descended to 30,000ft in two minutes 38 seconds. After stabilising at this altitude for around eight minutes, the pilot took the decision to fly lower, dropping to 25,000ft in the next three minutes. A spokesperson for the airline said that they are unsure why the masks came down as the situation was under control A spokesperson for the airline has described the descent as 'normal' in the situation, and told the Canadian news channel that they were unsure why the masks were deployed when the situation was under control. Flight TS415 made a safe landing at Montreal-Trudeau Airport. Speaking to MailOnline Travel, the spokesperson added: 'A temporary pressurization system failure occurred 90 minutes after takeoff, a technical malfunction that provoked the automatic deployment of passengers oxygen masks. 'In accordance with the aircraft manufacturers procedures, an emergency descent was initiated as well as the application of specific procedures, which helped to quickly regain cabin pressure control and rectify the situation. 'The rest of the flight to Montreal went smoothly. Aware of the concern caused by the circumstances, the pilot left the cockpit to explain the situation and clarify that everything was back to normal. 'Note that certain passengers could smell burning, due to the deployment of oxygen masks. In accordance with established procedures, flight attendants had oxygen tanks to assist passengers in need, and not fire extinguishers.' Passengers on the Air Transat flight from Mexico to Canada had a rough ride due to a depressurization issue in the cabin (file photo) Adam Twidell, an experienced pilot and CEO of PrivateFly, explained that the descent the passengers experienced would have been a dramatic one. He told MailOnline Travel: 'This would be a very aggressive descent for the passengers to experience coupled with the change in temperature, noise and vibration. 'An aircraft would normally descend at 2,000ft per minute. When pilots train for an emergency descent they will often have a rate of 10,000ft per minute. 'The urgency is to descend to a flight level [altitude] that will allow passengers to remove their oxygen masks and breathe normally. This is normally 12,000ft above the sea. 'The emergency masks will only provide oxygen for around 20 to 30 minutes. Any emergency descent is scary.' Ryanair's costs per passenger will continue to decline over the next two years, even if fuel prices stop falling, due to cheap financing and fixed costs spread over more seats, a senior executive said yesterday. A collapse in fuel prices is providing a boon for airlines, but industry observers have warned that other costs often drift upwards as savings on oil boost profitability and reduce the pressure for unpopular cuts. 'I wouldn't see our costs creeping up,' Chief Financial Officer Neil Sorahan said in an interview on the sidelines of the Airline Economics conference. Ryanair says its average unit cost is 29 (22) and claims it is around a third lower than Wizz Air's Ryanair's unit costs less fuel have fallen over the past two years. Asked if that would continue for the next couple of years, Sorahan said 'we would hope so'. He dismissed a suggestion by rival Wizz Air that Ryanair's costs were climbing as it shifts to more premium airports in a bid to attract more business passengers. Ryanair says its average unit cost is 29 (22) and claims it is around a third lower than Wizz Air's. 'The gap is going to widen,' Sorahan added. Fixed costs such as marketing would fall on a per passenger basis as the airline increases capacity by around eight percent a year. A deal with its largest hub, London's Stansted Airport, will cut costs per passenger as numbers grow. A major saving is the cost of financing. Ryanair issued 850million (653million) of bonds this year at a cost of 1.12 per cent. That low cost was described as 'quite staggering,' by Jimmy Dempsey, CFO at U.S. low-cost carrier Frontier Airlines at the conference in Dublin on Tuesday. Ryanair's costs per passenger will continue to decline over the next two years it was announced this week The issue left Ryanair's net cash at 976million (750million) at the end of September and Sorahan said the airline had the capacity to buy all 52 planes due for order in the year to March 2017 with cash. He said: 'We may finance some of the aircraft out of cash. We may top up some of that with some strategic financing.' Lower fuel costs combined with a push to improve customer service has helped Ryanair deliver record profits, but Sorahan said it was 'not a given' the airline would return cash to shareholders in the coming financial year. It returned 400million (307million) to shareholders in August via a share buyback and another 398 million earned from the sale of a stake in Aer Lingus in November. Sorahan said: 'We will most likely every year or every second year do something, be it a buyback or a dividend, depending on where oil is, where the markets are.' Ticking off all of those countries on your bucket list might not be so unattainable after all. It turns out that travelling to foreign places doesn't have to cost the earth... as long as you pick your moment. Booking.com has now released a list of the best times to travel to various holiday destinations, based on the average price of four-star accommodation for one night, in order to keep costs down. For instance, travelling to Las Vegas doesn't have to cost the earth as long as you do it in December, and a trip to Rome is significantly cheaper if you visit in September . Read on to discover the best places to travel to in every month of the year to keep costs down... January Melbourne December weather can be a little unpredictable in Melbourne, so January is prime time to go. While spending Christmas in Australia is both surreal and wonderful, December weather can be a little unpredictable in Melbourne, so January is prime time to go. Theres also no better antidote to those European winter blues, but if you want to go at the most cost-effective time, go just before the Australian Open starts. In 2015 the average price per night of four-star accommodation in the second week of January was only $161 AUD (77), compared to $215 AUD and $217 AUD (105) for the last two weeks respectively and 29 per cent cheaper than Melbournes most expensive week all year. February Hong Kong February is ideal for bargain-hunting since this is when most stores, malls and markets tend to offer great out-of-season sales Though Hong Kongs weather can be unpredictable, its dry and cool winter is largely filled with crisp, clear days that can be much more enjoyable than the citys hot, sticky summers. And, as a city with a reputation as a shopping utopia, its worth noting that February is ideal for bargain-hunting since this is when most stores, malls and markets tend to offer great out-of-season sales. Furthermore, February is outside of the peak tourist season, so youll see friendlier accommodation rates. The second week of February 2015 was 976 HKD (88), 37 per cent cheaper than the citys most expensive week falling across New Years Eve. March Buenos Aires Buenos Aires is at its best in March, when its just turning into autumn Buenos Aires is at its best in March, when its just turning into autumn but still warm enough not to need a jumper. At this time youll find an abundance of free events and street markets, in addition to the citys year-round elegant and vibrant appeal. The average cost of a stay in a four-star accommodation here during the first week of March 2015 was only 757 ARS (40), 30 per cent cheaper than the citys most expensive week all year. April San Francisco Visit San Francisco in April as the weather is fresh and sunny, with endless blue skies April is one of the most inviting months to visit the hilly, historic and unique Californian city of San Francisco as the weather is fresh and sunny, with endless blue skies and mild temperatures. Perfect weather for making the most of the citys many attractions, such as catching the ferry across the bay to Alcatraz or walking along the incredible feat of engineering that is the Golden Gate Bridge. The month is also ideal for beating the summer tourist rush and high season prices. The average price of a four-star accommodation during the first week of April 2015 was $207 USD, a hefty 50 per cent cheaper than the citys most expensive week. May - London The week before the May bank holiday in London will always see a price hike but the following week tends to be cheaper London is never going to be cheap and the week before the May bank holiday will always see a price hike but the following week tends to be cheaper. The first full week of May 2015 (after the May Day weekend) cost on average 150 per night, 25 per cent cheaper than the most expensive week of the year. For 2016, the May bank holiday falls on the May 2, so the weeks before and after will be the deal hunters best bet. June Beijing June sits on the cusp of the Beijing tourist season - and it's not expensive, either Just before Beijings oppressive summer heat hits, June sits on the cusp of the tourist season. Prices are still relatively low and the city not too crowded as there arent any big Chinese national holidays, plus the weather is hot but not unbearable. June 2015 saw reasonable rates compared to peak prices in October; the third week of June was 515 CNY (55), compared to the citys most expensive week, which cost 587 (63) CNY. July Sydney July boasts Sydney's lowest accommodation rates of just 79 per night in four-star hotels, on average Even though July is Sydneys winter, the citys subtropical climate means it is blessed with blue skies and pleasant temperatures even in its coldest months. This time of year also boasts its lowest accommodation rates, the second week of July 2015 being only $164 AUD (79), 44 per cent cheaper than the most expensive week. August New York The average price of four-star accommodation for the fourth week of August last year was 39 per cent cheaper than peak season New York summers are notoriously hot and stuffy but towards the end of August, temperatures tend to drop to a pleasant degree. The average price of a four-star accommodation for the fourth week of August 2015 was only $235 (166), 39 per cent cheaper than peak season in September. September - Rome A good time to go to Rome to get more bang for your buck is September Rome, like London, is rarely cheap, but a good time to go to get more bang for your buck is September. Avoid Augusts searing heat and Ferragosto (the traditional holiday which technically runs from August 15th until September and means many stores and restaurants are closed), and opt for the late summer temperatures and relaxed atmosphere of the following month. Its also perfect for saving money and getting the most out of the city, as the first week of September 2015 saw the average price of a four-star accommodation per night costing 121 Euros (93) in Rome drop 29 per cent from a peak in June. October - Cape Town By October, Cape Town's local flora is bursting into bloom and visitors can enjoy mild, sunny weather By October, Cape Town's local flora is bursting into bloom and visitors can enjoy mild, sunny weather and temperatures hover around the mid-twenties and the days lengthen as the month goes on. Its also not high season, so hotel rates are still reasonable, with the first week of October 2015 only 1331 ZAR (56), 36 per cent cheaper than the most expensive week of the year. November Rio de Janiero Spring in Rio spring brings sunshine, cheaper accommodation rates and fewer tourists Carnival in Rio may have its allure but as with Cape Town, spring brings sunshine, cheaper accommodation rates and fewer tourists. If you dont mind missing the festival excitement, November means more space to sprawl out on Rios golden beaches. The first week of November was 405 BRL (69), 31 per cent cheaper than Carnival week (591 BRL) and 37 per cent cheaper than the years most expensive week, costing 646 BRL (110), which fell over New Years Eve. December Las Vegas Its nightlife, party feel and endless shopping opportunities mean December suits Vegas down to the ground For a fun-filled, thrilling getaway in the run up to Christmas, Las Vegas is fantastic. Its nightlife, party feel and endless shopping opportunities mean December suits this city down to the ground. Joanne Froggatt wore a stylish navy jumpsuit as she appeared at a TCA panel on Tuesday. The Downton Abbey star looked chic as she chatted about her sinister new show Dark Angel at the Television Critics Association PBS panel in Pasadena on Tuesday. The 35-year-old is tackling a much darker role as a Victorian-era serial killer in the new ITV drama, which will air on PBS in the US later this year. Scroll down for video Stylish: Actress Joanne Froggatt wore navy blue jumpsuit as she appeared at the PBS Television Critics Association panel in Pasadena on Tuesday The British actress paired her stylish jumpsuit with strappy black stilettos as she chatted about the dark new role with producer Susanne Simpson and reporters. Joanne accessorized with two rings on each hand, and opted for natural makeup with light blush and a pink lip. The Downton Abbey star left her blonde hair down in soft waves. Joanne is making a big change, going from sweet Anna Bates to notorious real-life killer Mary Ann Cotton in the upcoming two-part drama Dark Angel. Chic: The British star looked lovely as she chatted about her new role as Victorian serial killer Mary Ann Cotton in the drama Dark Angel Talented: The Downton Abbey star wore he blonde hair in soft waves as she talked to the press Cotton, known as Britain's first serial killer, pulled herself out of poverty by marrying and poisoning a series of husbands and children in the 1800s. She got away with it for decades because Victorian society didn't believe women could be devious killers. The total number of Cotton's victims is unknown, but she killed at least 21 people in the mid-1800s, including three of her four husbands, 11 of her 13 children, and several of her stepchildren. After poisoning her many victims, she'd collect the insurance money and move on to the next wealthy target for years, before she was caught, convicted and hanged in 1873. Challenge: The actress said she had to 'put my money where my mouth is' after joking that she should play a murderer after playing beloved character Anna Bates for years Hit show: Downton's finale season is currently airing in the US on PBS Back in time: The actress will tackle another period drama in her new role as a Victorian serial killer The sensational role is a far cry from Joanne's part as the beloved Anna Bates in Downton Abbey. But Joanne told media on Tuesday she felt she had to 'put my money where my mouth is' after joking that she wanted to play a murderer after playing the beloved Anna for years, reports The Hollywood Reporter. 'People kept saying to me, 'What did I want to do after Downtown?' she said. Looking lovely: The 35-year-old flashed a big smile while promoting the show in LA 'I jokingly kept saying, 'Oh, I don't know something completely different. Play a murderer or something.' 'Then this script came along and I thought, 'Oh, I better put my money where my mouth is.' And Joanne said throwing herself into the new role helped distract her from the emotional finale of Downton Abbey. She began filming the new drama just two days after Downton wrapped. Challenge: Joanna said she wanted to stretch herself by playing a new character, explaining 'I get bored easily' Fan favorite: Downton Abbey has been a huge hit in the US 'It was lovely, actually, to have something to focus on, to go straight on to because I think I would have felt the weight of the end so much more if I hadn't had something to focus on straight-away so it was fantastic for me,' she explained. And the British star said she relished the challenge of get inside the mind of a killer and trying to understand her motivations. 'I get very easily bored so I like things to just keep me occupied,' she said. Dark Angel will appear in the US on PBS' Masterpiece later this year. Natural look: The actress looked lovely with soft blush and pink lipstick Going dark: The actress talked about her sinister new role with Dark Angel producer Susanne Simpson She may be back in Australia to promote her lingerie range. But Heidi Klum had her supermodel figure well under wraps as she touched down in the country on Wednesday. The 5ft 9in stunner sashayed her way through Sydney International airport in a loose-fitting patchwork jacket and jeans after her long-haul flight from Los Angeles. Scroll down for video Colour me happy! Heidi Klum makes a colourful entrance as she touches down in Sydney in a patchwork jacket and rainbow laces on Wednesday Ensuring all eyes were turned her way, Heidi made a colourful entrance thanks to her unique choice of footwear. The statuesque beauty, 42, traded in her teetering stiletto heels for an altogether more comfortable pair of sneakers which she made into a statement by adding rainbow laces. The unique choice co-ordinated with the multi-coloured embellishments stitched onto her jacket that was finished off with a fluffy red collar. She finished off her airport look with skinny-leg jeans and dark aviator shades while she toted an edgy army-print bag. Got it covered: The 42-year-old had her supermodel figure hidden under her loose-fitting jacket Different: The statuesque beauty traded in her teetering stiletto heels for an altogether more comfortable pair of sneakers which she made into a statement by adding rainbow laces What flight? Heidi's hair and makeup were effortlessly flawless with her long blonde locks falling loose across her shoulders in tousled waves Glowing: The German beauty's complexion appeared dewy and fresh with just a slick of pale pink gloss used to add a pop of colour to her pout Looking as though the 15 hours in the air had just flown by, Heidi's hair and makeup were effortlessly flawless. Her long blonde locks fell loose across her shoulders in tousled waves and her complexion appeared dewy and fresh with just a slick of pale pink gloss used to add a pop of colour to her pout. Heidi's flight seemed to be a comfortable - albeit long - one, with the former Victoria's Secret angel sharing two snaps of her cabin to Instagram. In one captioned: 'Australia ... here i come ! very excited' her legs are seen outstretched as she watches her personal TV. Thrilled: Heidi wrote on Instagram that she is 'very excited' to be coming to Australia Casual cool: She finished off her airport style with dark aviators and a tote bag Natural beauty: Heidi shared this makeup free in-flight selfie to Instagram Blooming lovely! She was welcomed to the country with a bouquet of red roses The German-born beauty was also greeted in style upon her arrival and was gifted a beautiful bouquet of red roses. Heidi is in the country to promote her lingerie line Heidi Klum Intimates, which she took over from fellow supermodel Elle Macpherson in 2014. She was in Australia to launch the line this time last year, and is expected to again make appearances in local department stores Myer and David Jones. Heidi's visit comes a month after her ex husband Seal was also visiting Down Under to spend the holidays with girlfriend Erica Packer. Long-haul: Her flight looked to be a comfortable one with plenty of leg room Back again: The supermodel was in Australia to launch her lingerie line this time last year The rumours surrounding her alleged romance with David Walliams won't die down. But Ashley James brushed them off as she spent the night mingling with stars as she went along to the glamorous launch night of Cirque du Soleil's Amaluna, marking the company's 20th anniversary at London's Royal Albert Hall on Tuesday. The gorgeous blonde, 27, cut a typically striking figure in her all-black ensemble as she drew attention to her assets. Scroll down for video Sticking to a classic: Ashley James wore a tight-fitting LBD as she attended the launch night of Cirque du Soleil's Amaluna, marking the company's 20th anniversary at London's Royal Albert Hall on Tuesday She encased her toned, tight curves in a thigh-skimming little black dress, cut straight across the chest to reveal her ample cleavage. As well as flaunting her enviable shape, she drew attention to her slim and toned pins, tanned from her recent getaway in Bali and elongated further with a chunky pair of Mary-Jane heels in patent black. While posing on the red carpet at the iconic London venue, the former Made In Chelsea star kept her chic tailored coat placed deftly on her bare shoulders like a cape, but she did remove it at one point to show off the sexy backless detail of the LBD. Ample: The 27-year-old flaunted her slender curves and generous cleavage in the revealing, sexy number Back view! The ex-Made In Chelsea star drew attention to her tiny waistline in the garment as she turned to reveal it was backless on the red carpet Gorgeous: She has recently returned from an envy-inducing holiday in Bali and showed off her sunkissed glow in the tiny ensemble Her honey blonde locks were swept up into an elegant and slightly retro do, half-up and with a high bouffant and the rest falling down in curls over her shoulders. The stunning model and TV presenter turned on the charm as she posed inside the event, oozing sophistication before joining other famous faces to watch the famous troupe do what they do. Ashley has recently returned from an idyllic getaway in Bali, which she kept her fans up to date with on a daily basis with plenty of bikini snaps and insights into her wardrobe. Her enviable trip came weeks after she was romantically linked with British comedian David Walliams. Pretty thing: Her blonde locks were coiffed in a lovely, slightly retro do, half-up and with a high bouffant and the rest falling down in curls over her shoulders Rumours began circulating after the pair enjoyed meal together - along with a few friends - at celebrity hotspot Sexy Fish in November. A source told The Mirror at the time: 'It's a slow-burner but David has made his feelings clear,' a source told the publication. 'He recently sent her a bunch of white roses and a card signed 'DW'. 'They hang out in a group with other people and she has been to his house with other friends. 'They are both very flirty and it's clear there's a huge attraction there but David is quite cautious about entering into another relationship.' David is single after finalised his divorce from Dutch model Lara on September 1. He has been jetting in and out of Australia for the past six weeks. And on Tuesday it seemed Ashton Irwin had a case of home sickness as he shared a precious flashback image of himself as a child cuddling up to his little sister Lauren. In the image the 5 Seconds Of Summer drummer was dressed in a matching set of pyjamas as he concentrated on his sibling. Isn't he cute! Ashton Irwin shared a precious flashback image of his younger self and little sister Lauren on Tuesday as he returned to Los Angeles The now 21-year-old is seen sitting comfortably with his back straight and legs bent in front of him as he read a children's book. In the throwback photo captioned: 'Me and @lauren_dawkins_, the She Looks So Perfect singer has short light brown hair which was spiked down the middle of his head. His younger sister, who is now 14, sits closely alongside Ashton as she points firmly to a page on the book. See more of the latest news and updates on the 5 Seconds Of Summer boys Stepping up: Hours earlier the 21-year-old revealed he had been taught how to play traditional American football as he posed with members from punk band All Time Low Back abroad: The 5SOS returned to the US after spending four days in Australia and two weeks in Bali While pulling a shocked facial expression, Lauren is dressed in a pale coloured one-piece with both sleeves and pants. Hours earlier, the 5SOS member, who is believed to be back in Los Angeles, revealed he had been taught how to play traditional American football as he posed with members from punk band All Time Low. In the group image, shared on his Instagram account, Ashton flashes a large smile while kneeling on the ground with one leg placed in front. Good times: The drummer attended the holiday destination with fellow band members Michael Clifford, Luke Hemmings and Calum Hood and rumoured girlfriend Bryana Holly Over? While in Bali Bryana sent social media into a frenzy when she took to Twitter to state she wasn't dating Ashton, but deleted the post minutes later The Australian returned to America over the weekend after enjoying a two week break in Bali with fellow band mates Calum Hood, Michael Clifford and Luke Hemmings, as well as rumoured girlfriend Bryana Holly. The blonde model had joined the band on their getaway after spending Christmas in Australia with Ashton and his family. But despite spending endless amounts of times together, 22-year-old Bryana sent social media into meltdown after she announced she was 'not' dating the international star, but deleted the tweet minutes later. The pair have since been pictured together while in Bali, suggesting they have rekindled. He's adored by millions of fans as the singer-guitarist of Australian pop band 5 Seconds Of Summer. And Luke Hemmings was looking every inch the rock star as he jetted into Los Angeles this week with a guitar slung casually over his shoulders. The Sydney-born front man, 19, looked travel-weary as he stepped out of international arrivals at LAX on Tuesday. Scroll down for video Rock star: 5 Seconds of Summer front man Luke Hemmings, 19, wore skinny black jeans and slung a guitar over his shoulders as he stepped out of Los Angeles International Airport on Tuesday Luke wore a casual ensemble of skinny black jeans and leather booths, with a dark grey T-shirt. He rounded off his look with a black baseball cap emblazoned with the word 'Headshotz' and dark sunglasses, which rested on his collar. Meanwhile, he lived up to his rocker reputation by slinging a guitar case over his shoulders - while also carrying a black leather gym bag. See more of the latest news and pictures of the 5 Seconds Of Summer boys Tired: The Sydney musician, sporting his trademark lip piercing, looked travel-weary after arriving at LAX During his a brisk walk from arrivals to his waiting car, a smiling Luke displayed his signature piercing on the left side of his lip. The musician also showed the early stages of a beard as he piled his bags and gear into the vehicle before being driven away. Eagle-eyed onlookers may notice that the thumb nail on his right hand appeared to be half-painted black. Hitching a ride: The musician piled his bags and gear into a waiting car before being driven away Last month, the two-time ARIA Music Award-winning band stripped naked for the cover of Rolling Stone and offered glimpse into their rock star lifestyle. Luke described in the interview how they would go to bars to mingle with some of their fans, which has resulted in plenty of intimate moments. The singer revealed: 'When you put four young dudes on a tour bus, playing theaters, then arenas, you're going to have sex with a lot of girls, I guess.' Superstars: Luke (left) formed 5 Seconds of Summer while at school in Sydney with bassist Calum Hood, 19 (second from left), guitarist Michael Clifford, 20 (second from right) and, later, drummer Ashton Irwin, 21, (right) When asked if he has ever had sex with multiple girls in the same night and/or multiple girls at the same time, Luke replied: 'The possibility is high.' Luke formed 5 Seconds of Summer back in 2011 with guitarist Michael Clifford, 20, and bass player Calum Hood, 19, at the private Norwest Christian College in the Sydney suburb of Riverstone. She plays the most beloved comic book supervillainess of all time. And Margot Robbie showed all sides of Harley Quinn's personality in the new trailer for Suicide Squad released on Tuesday night. The new clip, set to the tune of Queen classic Bohemian Rhapsody, shown at the very end of the Dawn Of The Justice League special aired on The CW. Showing her range: Margot Robbie portrays beloved supervillainess Harley Quinn in the new trailer released for Suicide Squad on Tuesday night Toward the end of the two-and-a-half minute action-packed clip, the 25-year-old Australian actress has the chance to show the quirky personality of the character beloved by comic book fans. As she is on a mission with several armed men, they could be seen walking slowly across a luxury retail storefront when glass shatters out of nowhere. Startled by the noise, Rick Flagg (played by Joel Kinnaman) turns around with his assault rifle pointed at her before he realises Harley was just shoplifting a shiny new clutch in the display window. Back at it: A humourous moment comes in the trailer when glass shattering could be heard as the 25-year-old Australian actress shows off her pert derriere while reaching in a display case Not pleased: Rick Flagg (played by Joel Kinnaman) is startled by the noise as he points his rifle at her and says: 'Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you people?' She's a charmer: In Harley's signature Brooklyn accent she said: 'We're bad guys, it's what we do' The 36-year-old actor asks her: 'Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you people?' Harley responds in her signature Brooklyn accent: 'We're bad guys, it's what we do.' Also featured in the clip, albeit not as heavily as the first trailer released back in July, is Jared Leto in his role as The Joker Sinister: Jared Leto was shown in his roll as The Joker just a bit in the clip as he could be seen slapping a man in the face while saying: 'I can't wait to show you my toys' Green with envy: The 40-year-old actor could be seen shooting a gun while dressed in a tuxedo and cackling Deja vu: A short scene from the original trailer could be seen as well as The Joker shows his sinister side Sweet ride: He could also be seen driving his shiny metallic pink Ferrari with Harley sitting in the passenger seat The famous baddie is shown momentarily in the trailer slapping a man on the face while saying: 'I can't wait to show you my toys.' The Joker is then shown shooting a rifle while dressed in a tuxedo and cackling before shown driving his shiny metallic pink Ferrari with Harley sitting in the passenger seat. The 44-year-old Oscar-winner has quite big shoes to fill as Joker predecessors before him include Jack Nicholson, Mark Hamill and the late Heath Ledger. Relaxing: Early on the trailer, the members of the Suicide Squad are shown before their transformations Leading man: Will Smith is shown in his role as Floyd Lawton, later Deadshot Hideous strength: Jay Hernandez (left) as Chato Santana/ El Diablo and Adewale Akinnuite-Agbaje (right) as Waylon Jones/Killer Croc Foreshadowing? As many of the members are grabbed at the beginning of the trailer, many fans have speculated if that was to show the microbombs being implanted within their heads just like in the comics The blockbuster movie derived from DC Comics is centred around a secret government agency who recruits imprisoned supervillains to perform missions swapped for clemency. At the beginning of the video, several members of the Suicide Squad are introduced as they are shown in prison before their transformations into supervillains including Harley, Will Smith as Floyd Lawton/Deadshot, Adewale Akinnuite-Agbaje as Waylon Jones/Killer Croc, Jay Hernandez as Chato Santana/ El Diablo. As many of the members are grabbed at the beginning of the trailer, many fans have speculated if that was to show the microbombs being implanted within their heads (in order to make sure they can be controlled by the agency) just like in the comics. Au naturel: Cara Delevingne is shown looking like a regular fresh-faced beauty Dark side: The 23-year-old British model makes quite the shocking transformation as she is shown as The Enchantress Perhaps the most shocking metamorphosis comes from Cara Delevingne, who looks like a completely innocent young woman before completely turning to the dark side as The Enchantress. One scene that really showcased Robbie's range as an actress is when she is surrounded by armed men and talks out loud to herself by saying: 'I should kill everyone and escape? '[Laughs] Sorry, it's the voices. [Laughs again] I'm kidding, that's not what they really said.' Multi-faceted: One scene that really showcased Robbie's range as an actor is when she is surrounded by armed men and talks out loud to herself Joking around: Harley says: 'I should kill everyone and escape? [Laughs] Sorry, it's the voices. [Laughs again] I'm kidding, that's not what they really said.' Origins: One quick flash shows The Joker dipping Harley into the vat of chemicals which no doubt begins her metamorphosis Also on Tuesday, a colourful poster was released for the action flick featuring the entire cast including Robbie, Leto, Davis, Smith, Akinnuoye-Agbaje and Kinnaman. The film also stars Jai Courtney, Scott Eastwood, Common, Adam Beach and Ike Barinholtz. Suicide Squad, directed by David Ayer, is set for release on 5 August. Coming soon: Suicide Squad is set for release on 5 August of 2016 She's an outspoken supporter of the Free The Nipple campaign. And this week Reign star Caitlin Stasey continued her ongoing protest against Instagram's controversial nudity policy - which allows men to pose bare chested but not women - by self-censoring a semi-topless picture. On Wednesday, the 25-year-old posted an image of herself pulling away her black top to reveal her right breast - but she notably obscured her nipple with a glint graphic. Scroll down for video 'Free The Nipple': Australian star Caitlin Stasey, 25, posted this self-censored photo to Instagram this week - part of her ongoing protest against the website's policy which bans topless photos of women, but not men This bit of editing follows the pattern set by many online campaigners, who censor their own photos to draw attention to the image-sharing website's censorship. One of Caitlin's followers observed: 'She has to do that to abide by IG [Instagram] posting regulations. Cause guys can show their nipples but not girls' (sic). This is the latest in a series of nude or semi-nude photos the former Neighbours star has shared on Instagram in protest against the website's nudity policy - as part of the 'Free The Nipple' campaign. 'Free The Nipple' is an equality movement started by activist and filmmaker Lina Esco, which resolves to give women the right to bare their chests in areas where it is normally discouraged by police or criminalised. Strong minded: Caitlin is happy to bare all but will only do so on her own terms The movement - which counts Girls creator Lena Dunham and supermodel Cara Delevigne among its supporters - recently began focusing its attention on Instagram, which only allows males to appear topless. The website came under fire for deleting posts by its users - including high-profile stars like Rihanna and Miley Cyrus - featuring female nipples, which critics claim is a sexist double-standard. Their Community Guidelines state that 'some photos of female nipples' are not allowed, with the exception of images 'of post-mastectomy scarring and women actively breastfeeding'. Happy: Feminist Caitlin is a keen supporter of equality movements, including 'Free The Nipple', which has been critical of Instagram's double-standards when it comes to nudity CEO Kevin Systrom last year blamed Apple for the censorship of nudity, claiming the App Store - where users can download the Instagram app - has strict policies when it comes to adult content. However, Melbourne-born Caitlin has remained defiant in her criticism of Instagram, posting a series of images which challenge or parody the image-sharing website's stringent guidelines. After a magazine cancelled her photo shoot last August because she refused to pose in her underwear, Caitlin posted a topless picture to her account to show she will only appear nude on her own terms. She added the defiant caption: 'Free the goddamn f****** nipple you puritanical fearmongers'. Wed? It comes after Caitlin posted a celebratory photo with beau Lucas Neff, 30, hinting they recently married Last year, she also shared a photo of herself wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the 'Free the Nipple' logo and an image of a woman's breasts with the nipples covered in black tape. Meanwhile, this week the Los Angeles-based star strongly hinted she'd married Raising Hope actor Lucas Neff, 30. On Monday, she posted several images which show the Chicago native carrying her over the threshold and the pair punching the pair with glee. Their close pal, actor Echo Kellum, took to Twitter to congratulate them, writing: 'Congrats to Lucas Neff and Caitlin Stasey on their marriage! They are the cutest!!! Proud to be y'all friend!' Caitlin and Lucus have yet to confirm their marriage. Many fans were shocked when she was announced to be playing the most famous female super hero of all time. And Gal Gadot certainly seems to be quite the fit for the iconic tiara. The beautiful 30-year-old actress was shown in the entire iconic warrior princess garb of the Amazon in the first look for Wonder Woman aired on Tuesday night. Scroll down for video Iconic: Gal Gadot could be seen in a first look for Wonder Woman aired on Tuesday night Legendary: The 30-year-old Israeli actress could be seen in full warrior princess garb for the iconic superheroine role The first glimpses into her portrayal of the highly-popular DC Comics character were shown during a half-an-hour special titled Dawn Of The Justice aired on The CW. In the short clip, Gadot looked every bit the superheroine donning the bronzed breastplate attached to a skirt along with the matching tiara. She completed the whole look with knee-high boots, bulletproof bracelets, sword and Athena's legendary shield. It is made clear that the upcoming superhero flick will be based around the origin story of Wonder Woman as many aren't as familiar with her beginnings in comparison to Batman or Superman. Taking the crown: The golden tiara definitely seemed to fit for the brunette beauty Springing into action: She was shown fighting off a few baddies in the sneak peak clip Pensive: Gadot seemed to be excited to tell the origin story of Wonder Woman as she said in the special: 'We're going to see her coming of age. Her entire history, what's her mission' The character comes from Greek mythology as she was born on this island in the Amazon called Themyscira (where she was known as Princess Diana of Themyscira according to the comics). Gadot seemed to be very excited about telling the tale of the iconic character's genesis as she said: 'We're going to see her coming of age. Her entire history, what's her mission.' It explained by DC Comics Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns that the Amazons are supposed to protect mankind but abandoned it because they did not see the effort as worth it, thus forcing Wonder Woman to venture into life on Earth. Partner in crime: Chris Pine could also be seen in the few clips riding horseback behind the superhero Gushing: The 35-year-old actor, who plays Steve Trevor in the flick, said: 'Telling a story like this now is pivotal and important. The story of a very important woman.' In once scene, Chris Pine could be seen in his role as Steve Trevor, as they ride horseback in a forest. The 35-year-old actor discussed what an important time it is for a character like Wonder Woman to pushed into the limelight as he said: 'Telling a story like this now is pivotal and important. The story of a very important woman.' Writer, director, actor and comic book enthusiast Kevin Smith, who was one of the hosts of the programme, also elaborated on the character's cultural impact. The 45-year-old funnyman explained: 'Wonder Woman has been around for 75 years. [She is a] feminist, cultural icon. Gorgeous: A different side of Wonder Woman (AKA Princess Diana of Themyscira) will definitely be shown in the flick as she is seen looking at her reflection Big night: DC Comics Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns (left) and writer/director Kevin Smith (right) hosted the half-an-hour special titled Dawn Of The Justice aired on The CW The film is being directed by Monster's Patty Jenkins as she will be the first woman to direct a comic book super hero film. The 44-year-old filmmaker also gave her thoughts on the importance of the character as she said: 'The greatest thing about Wonder Woman is how good and kind and loving she is, yet none of that negates any of her power.' Wonder Woman is set for release on June 23, 2017. It is currently being filmed in London. However Gadot could be seen in the role for the first time even sooner when blockbuster Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice hits screens on March 25. Highly-anticipated: Wonder Woman is set for release on June 23 2017 She has only been in Australia for a matter of hours, but Heidi Klum wasted no time in getting acquainted with the country's native wildlife. The 42-year-old supermodel shared a heart-warming video with her 2.4 million Instagram followers showing herself smiling next to a very cuddly koala on Wednesday afternoon. Appearing smitten, the America's Got Talent judge was keen to show off her furry friend to the world, captioning the video: 'Meet my new friend Harry!' Scroll down for video 'Meet my new friend Harry!' Heidi Klum shared a heart warming video with her more than 2.4 million Instagram followers of herself smiling next to a very cuddly koala on Wednesday afternoon in Sydney In the cute video, the German catwalk queen sports an ear-to-ear grin as she cosies up to her new friend who is perching in a tree branch in the Australian bush. Clearly not understanding the magnitude of the star before him - the friendly marsupial restlessly fidgets about, more concerned with grabbing for leaves than posing with Heidi for a snap. But the former Victoria's Secret Angel perseveres, trying to angle herself and the koala in the frame for the perfect selfie. Say cheese! In the cute video, the German catwalk queen sports an ear-to-ear grin as she cosies up to her new friend who is perching in a tree branch in the Australian bush 'Look how cute he is!' Clearly not understanding the magnitude of the star before him - the friendly marsupial restlessly fidgets about, more concerned with grabbing for leaves than posing with Heidi for a happy snap 'And here I am with little Harry in the bush!' she coos in the short clip. 'Look how cute he is! Do you like it with us here?' she gushes. In the video, Heidi looks radiant, despite only landing from her long haul flight from Los Angeles just a matter of hours before. Sporting a fresh yet minimal application of makeup, Heidi's signature blonde tresses fall in loose waves around her shoulders. Firm favourite: It's not the first time Heidi has cuddled up to the iconic Australian animal, sharing this image last year of herself in Australia when she was a fresh-faced 26-year-old at the height of her modelling fame It's not the first time Heidi has cuddled up to the iconic Australian animal. Heidi was in Australia to launch the line this time last year, and ahead of her arrival in the country she reminisced over her last trip Down Under when she was a fresh-faced 26-year-old at the height of her modelling fame. Posting a series of flashback photos of her trip 15 years prior, the famed supermodel was seen cuddling up to a koala once more as she visited an Australian zoo. Back Down Under! Heidi is back in Australia to promote her lingerie range Heidi Klum Intimates with local lingerie brand Bendon, which she took over from fellow supermodel Elle Macpherson in 2014 Heidi is back in Australia to promote her lingerie range Heidi Klum Intimates with local lingerie brand Bendon, which she took over from fellow supermodel Elle Macpherson in 2014. Touching down on Wednesday, the 5ft 9in stunner kept her famous figure well under wraps as as she sashayed her way through Sydney International airport in a loose-fitting patchwork jacket and jeans after her long-haul flight from Los Angeles. Ensuring all eyes were turned her way, Heidi made a colourful entrance thanks to her unique choice of footwear. Colour me happy! Touching down on Wednesday, the 5ft 9in stunner kept her famous figure well under wraps as as she sashayed her way through Sydney International airport in a loose-fitting patchwork jacket and jeans Casual cool: She finished off her airport style with dark aviators and a tote bag The statuesque beauty traded in her teetering stiletto heels for an altogether more comfortable pair of sneakers which she made into a statement by adding rainbow laces. The unique choice co-ordinated with the multi-coloured embellishments stitched onto her jacket that was finished off with a fluffy red collar. She finished off her airport look with skinny-leg jeans and dark aviator shades while she toted an edgy army-print bag. Glowing: The German beauty's complexion appeared dewy and fresh with just a slick of pale pink gloss used to add a pop of colour to her pout Model behaviour: Looking as though the 15 hours in the air had just flown by, Heidi's hair and makeup were effortlessly flawless. Looking as though the 15 hours in the air had just flown by, Heidi's hair and makeup were effortlessly flawless. Her long blonde locks fell loose across her shoulders in tousled waves and her complexion appeared dewy and fresh with just a slick of pale pink gloss used to add a pop of colour to her pout. Heidi's flight seemed to be a comfortable - albeit long - one, with the former Victoria's Secret angel sharing two snaps of her cabin to Instagram. In one captioned: 'Australia ... here i come ! very excited' her legs are seen outstretched as she watches her personal TV. Natural beauty: Heidi shared this makeup free in-flight selfie to Instagram Blooming lovely! She was welcomed to the country with a bouquet of red roses Long-haul: Her flight looked to be a comfortable one with plenty of leg room The German-born beauty was also greeted in style upon her arrival and was gifted a beautiful bouquet of red roses. The businesswoman is travelling without her four children Lou, six, Henry, ten, and Johan, nine, from her relationship with ex-husband Seal, 52, as well as daughter Leni, 11, from a previous relationship with businessman Flavio Briatore, 65. It has been a busy few weeks for the star as she and beau Vito Schnabel recently returned to Los Angeles after a romantic holiday break together in St. Moritz, Switzerland. They have been dating since 2014. Heidi's visit comes a month after her ex husband Seal was also visiting Down Under to spend the holidays with girlfriend Erica Packer. Back again: The supermodel was in Australia to launch her lingerie line this time last year There has been much speculation in the fashion world about who legendary photographer Mario Testino will want to feature when he guest edits the April edition of Vogue Australia. And it appears Australian beauty Jessica Hart has captured the attention of the famed snapper - and it's not hard to see why. The pair were seen striding arm-in-arm through Sydney's Bondi Beach as Mario directed a photo shoot for the iconic fashion journal, with Jessica, the epitome of utter perfection in a black bikini. Scroll down for video His new muse: Model Jessica Hart and photographer Mario Testino were seen striding arm-in-arm through Sydney's Bondi Beach on Wednesday during a shoot for Vogue Australia's April edition Showing off her enviable figure with an effortlessness reserved for models of her caliber, the 29-year-old sizzled in the plunging swimsuit while striding gracefully down the pavement. Showing off her ample assets in the plunging design, the former Victoria's Secret model no doubt had onlookers' pulses racing as she flaunted her impressive washboard abs and gym-honed physique. Clinging to the arm of the renowned photographer as she went barefoot, the pair looked like old friends as they chatted throughout entire journey, even sharing a laugh together with Jessica flashing her trademark gap-tooth grin. Getting pulses racing! Showing off her ample assets in the plunging design, the former Victoria's Secret model flaunted her impressive washboard abs and gym-honed physique Huddling under an umbrella held over their heads by an assistant, the Sydney-born lingerie model's long, lean limbs were sporting a deep sunkissed glow. Jessica wore minimal make-up with her thick blonde locks styled into loose tousled waves, and there wasn't a moment where she didn't look ready for her close-up. The girlfriend of Greek billionaire Stavros Niarchos III exuded her girl-next-door beauty while maintaining a high level of professionalism throughout the shoot. Jessica was later seen hot-footing if from location-to-location with the iconic lensman. If you've got it, flaunt it! Showing off her enviable figure with an effortlessness reserved for models of her caliber, the 29-year-old sizzled in the plunging swimsuit while striding gracefully down the pavement Walking closely behind the pair were Stenmark twins, Zac and Jordan, who went topless for the jaunt, showing off their impressive muscular torso's. It appears they will be accompanying Jessica in the upcoming feature. Meanwhile, Mario dressed for the sweltering 34 degree Celcius climes in a loose fitting shirt and shorts, which he paired with casual loafers. However, signs of the extreme summer heat was evident as he rolled up his sleeves to combat the high temperatures. Old friends! Clinging to the arm of the renowned photographer as she went barefoot, Jessica was seen flashing her trademark gap-tooth grin Vogue has been trying to fans guessing about who will be gracing the edition, sharing a number of ambiguous snaps ahead of the issue. One image shows a blonde, posing as she looks out over the iconic Sydney Harbour Bridge with the photo captured from behind. 'Guess who? A special guest is in Australia for our April issue shot by @mariotestino,' the magazine captioned the ambiguous shot posted on Tuesday. A second shot shows another blonde posing from behind once more, overlooking Bondi Beach. 'Guess who? Another special guest in Sydney for #MarioTestino's guest-editorship of #VogueAustralia's April issue,' the caption explained. Bronzed goddess! Huddling under an umbrella held over their heads by an assistant, the Sydney-born lingerie model's long, lean limbs were sporting a deep sunkissed glow It's not the first time Jessica has posed for Vogue Australia, having graced the cover of their January 2014 and March 2008 covers. She was also recently shot alongside Gigi Hadid by Bruce Weber for American Vogue. In recent weeks, Jessica has been travelling around Australia, exploring the country's landmarks and getting back to her roots. Earlier this month she visited the famous Kata Tjuta rock formation in the southern part of the Northern Territory, posing in tiny denim hot-pants. Killer body! Jessica wore minimal make-up with her thick blonde locks styled into loose tousled waves, and there wasn't a moment where she didn't look ready for her close-up Her travels perhaps inspired a recent Instagram post in which the globetrotting model, who moved to the States early in her career, claimed she was still proud to call Australia home. Jessica wrote: 'It wasn't until I moved to New York I felt the freedom to be myself, be different and not try so hard to be like everyone else. I'm Australian and proud of it! 'Unfortunately I had to leave my country, friends and family from a young age to make a dent in my industry or to even get noticed by the rest of my country (strange that). 'But it's a sacrifice I would make 10 times over to be where I am today.' She's a pro! The girlfriend of Greek billionaire Stavros Niarchos III, exuded girl-next-door beauty, maintaining a high level of professionalism throughout the shoot Mario, who has had some of the biggest names in film, fashion and royalty pose for him, will guest edit the upcoming April edition of Vogue Australia. The 61-year-old who is one of the most highly regarded photographers in the industry, having gained international recognition for his intimate portraits of Diana, Princess of Wales. He is also well known for his pictures of Kate Moss, whom he describes as his greatest muse. One of the most prolific photographers in the industry, Mario's illustrious career has spanned 35 years. While the subjects of his work often err on the side of international fame, his portfolio also includes those whom he encounters on his travels. On set: Jessica was later seen hot-footing if from location-to-location with the iconic lensman Mario's visit comes after a partnership was struck between Vogue and Destination NSW. Born in Peru, he abandoned his studies of Economics, Law and International Affairs to study photography in 1976. His work first appeared in Vogue in 1983, and the rest, as they say, is history. He has gone on to create images for international brands such as Chanel, Valentino, Calvin Klein and Mercedes Benz. Come fashion week, he is a motif in the front row, often seated next to supermodels and stars of the industry, such as Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell and Jourdan Dunn. 'Guess who?' Vogue has been trying to fans guessing about who will be gracing the edition, sharing a number of ambiguous snaps ahead of the issue 'Another special guest': A second shot shows another blonde posing from behind once more, overlooking Bondi Beach Tourist snap! In recent weeks Jessica has been travelling around Australia, exploring the country's landmarks and getting back to her roots Model behaviour: Earlier this month she visited the famous Kata Tjuta rock formation in the southern part of the Northern Territory, posing in tiny denim hot-pants Been there, done that! It's not the first time Jessica has posed for Vogue Australia, having graced the cover of their January 2014 Stephanie Davis and Jeremy McConnell's on-screen chemistry has viewers gripped to this series of Celebrity Big Brother. But despite admitting her increasing concerns about reuniting with her boyfriend Sam Reece once she leaves the house, the housemates are refusing to hide their true feelings for one another. Most recently, Jeremy, 25, opened his heart to 22-year-old Stephanie, admitting he'd unashamedly 'fallen in love' with her on national television as the pair had an emotional heart-to-heart on Tuesday. Scroll down for video 'I fell in love on TV': Celebrity Big Brother's Jeremy McConnell admitted his true feelings for Stephanie Davis in an emotional heart-to-heart on Tuesday In scenes which will air during Wednesday evening's episode, the Irish model declared his love for the actress to her face as he insisted: 'I'm not a player, I'm a gentleman', despite flirting with his fellow contestant who he knows is in a relationship. Addressing his in-house crush and then Big Brother, he said: 'I fancy you, I fancy her and what? What you going to do about it?' He then acknowledged the controversy surrounding the fact Stephanie is taken in the outside world and said: 'And I've been a **** and so what, I'll get over it. It's a f**king game show.' Adding: 'You put us in this s**t house and I find someone attractive. Yeah, I've fallen in love with her.' See more of the latest CBB news as Jeremy confesses his love for Stephanie Opening his heart: She was left gobsmacked as her in-house love interest declared his love for her during a private chat in the bedroom Candid confession: Jeremy, 25, told Stephanie, 22, that there's more to their relationship than sexual attraction as he made his feelings clear in scenes which will air during Wednesday night's episode Jeremy then changed his tone and spoke seriously about his attraction to Stephanie to her face, saying: 'You fall in love in a certain, weird place and you have a connection with people, it's good. It makes you stronger. It's something that we're not going to do ever again. 'We'll look back on this and say, "Yeah, we fell in love on TV". That's what happened with me any way. It's just another chapter in my life, innit?' She was evidently close to tears and pleaded with him to stop but he refused to and continued to open his heart. 'I don't care what people think': The Irish model said and the former Hollyoaks star struggled to come to terms with the reality of her admission 'I'm not a player': Jeremy insisted he's a gentleman despite his shameless and relentless flirting with Stephanie on screen despite knowing she has a boyfriend - Sam Reece of First Dates fame - in the outside world Jeremy continued: '[The fact I've fallen in love with you on TV] is true though. I don't care what people think. You know when you look at someone, your eyes don't lie. I look at you and I want to look at you more. I'm like a 10-year-old kid looking at you now. Now that's not normal. I'm 25 years old, do you know what I mean? 'There's something in you just like... I don't know. And it's not horny, it's not like that. It's literally just going on what your heart is talking to you, isn't it? I still gravitate towards you. The worst day was when I wasn't speaking to you.' The straight-talking star finished by admitting he's thankful his true personality has been portrayed on the show, claiming he's not the player he was made out before entering the house. He said: 'A lot of people thought I was a player coming in. That's not the case, I'm a gentleman.' Jeremy's candid confession comes days after Stephanie declared her love for him, shortly before admitting she's forgotten what he boyfriend's voice sounds like. Holding his head high: Sam is refusing to acknowledge his girlfriend's on-screen behaviour on social media Meanwhile, Sam - of First Dates fame - is continuing his defiant front on social media and has refused to acknowledge his girlfriend's on-screen antics since confirming they are indeed still a couple last week. However, Stephanie's housemate Scotty T's Twitter account - and the person managing it in his absence - made a sly dig at him on Tuesday. 'Off for a run.. Good songs to run to?' he enquired and his followers couldn't resist referencing his significant other's behaviour, suggesting Rihanna's Unfaithful and One Direction's Steal My Girl. The person behind Scott's page took it upon themselves to share a screenshot of the conversation alongside a comment which read, 'peak times'. As a glamorous lady, it's little wonder Tamara Ecclestone is keen for her daughter Sophia to learn the ways of pampering from a young age. The 22-month-old - who is a regular feature at her mother's beauty bookings - accompanied the socialite to her daily hair appointment in West London on Wednesday. Tamara, 31, served up a seasonal style lesson as she paired together two winter-wardrobe staples for the mother-and-daughter outing to her local blowdry bar. Scroll down for video Seasonal style: Tamara Ecclestone made a chic trip to her local hair salon in West London on Wednesday with her cherubic daughter Sophia She looked effortlessly chic in a camel-coloured coat which was tailored and double-breasted in design. The daughter of Bernie Ecclestone teamed the woolen cover-up with an all-black ensemble which comprised midi shift dress, thick tights and heeled thigh-high boots. The only accessory Tamara needed was her cherubic girl who looked excited for the day ahead as she sat on her mother's hip before walking confidently on her own two feet. Chic and cheerful: Tamara, 25, was a vision of smart winter style in a camel-coloured tailored coat and a pair of black heeled thigh-high boots Black is the new black: The mother-of-one teamed her winter staples with a black shift dress and thick tights Hair today: Although the socialite was on her way to a hair appointment, her glossy brunette locks already looked in great condition Despite making her way to a hair appointment, Tamara's glossy brunette locks already looked in great condition. She couldn't take her eyes off Sophia as the little one walked down the pavement. The youngster was wrapped up warm for the winter's day and sported a fur-trimmed cream coat, thick woolen tights and suede boots which were lined with fur. Her pride and joy: Tamara couidn't take her eyes off her 22-month-old daughter as they headed to the local blowdry bar A regular: Sophia is somewhat of a permanent feature to Tamara's hair appointments Sophia is sure to grow into a well-informed child as as well as her beauty introduction, she has some experience in buying art. She accompanied Tamara on an art spending spree in London last week. The pair's latest outing is somewhat of a novelty as they - along with Sophia's dad Jay Rutland - jetted out to Dubai for New Year's Eve, the same exotic locale the family spent last NYE. In 2015, the jet-setting trio enjoyed a record-number of holidays - including trips to the Bahamas, New York and city breaks across Europe, while they spent the festive period in Switzerland. He boasted about his savvy on the soccer field during his time on The Bachelorette. But it seems Michael Turnbull is not only an expert at skillfully kicking a ball around, but also adept at balancing himself on a paddle board. The 35-year-old reality star showed off his flexibility as he performed a number of advanced yoga poses while paddling around Sydney's idyllic Balmoral Beach on Wednesday. Scroll down for video It's a balancing act! Michael Turnbull showed off his flexibility as he performed a number of advanced yoga poses while paddling around Sydney's idyllic Balmoral Beach on Wednesday Showcasing his remarkable core strength as he took to the water, Michael remained skillfully balanced as he manipulated his body into a number of impressive yoga poses. Holding onto the board for stability, the social media enthusiast looked like a natural as he thrusted his physique into a handstand, before attempting a firefly pose which saw him balance his weight just on his two hands. Letting the results of his active lifestyle speak for itself, the former soccer player turned Bachelorette Australia runner-up showed off his washboard stomach as he made the most of the sunshine wearing a pair of grey shorts. Show off! Michael remained skillfully balanced as he manipulated his body into a number of impressive yoga poses while on a paddle board He's got it! Michael showcased his remarkable core strength as he performed a headstand He also flaunted his large collection of body art, which was inked across his muscular torso and forearms. As temperatures soared to 34 degrees Celsius on the day, Michael protected his eyes from the glare with a pair of dark sunglasses. Michael, who has his own Mychaelsquad website on it's way, appeared to be in his element as he indulged in the exercise, jumping into the water to cool off after working up a sweat. Keeping fit! Holding onto the board for stability, the social media enthusiast looked like a natural as he thrusted his physique into a handstand keeping fit Having a blast! He also flaunted his large collection of body art, which was inked across his muscular torso and forearms The former Bachelorette star, who is based in Brisbane, seems to be making the most of the sunshine while in Sydney. On Tuesday he went for a dip at Coogee Beach after heading out on a boat cruise around Sydney Harbour on Monday. During the star-studded cruise for a new app launch on Monday, the reality TV personality told Daily Mail Australia that he is single and ready to mingle, following his split from mother-of-one Katrina Vincent. However, he admitted he is not looking to dating apps such as Tinder to find his next romance - despite some people on there pretending to be him. 'I haven't bothered reporting them. I'm not going to be going on any online dating sites so if you see me, it's not me,' he said. Impressive! Michael appeared to be in his element as he indulged in some yoga poses Talented! He also attempted a firefly pose which saw him balance his weight just on his two hands Hold on! He was seen holding onto the board for stability before attempting the difficult poses As well as preparing to launch a motivational website named after his social media following, Mychael Squad, the reality star is also now releasing a range of empowering bracelets to sell on the platform. Speaking to Daily Mail Australia on Sunday, the television star told how he had teamed up with designers to produce five gold and gemstone bracelets to flog to fans with a portion of the sales being donated to charity. Each of the bracelets will represent something different, he said, with strength, love, friendship, gratitude and inspire among those already planned. Gliding: As temperatures soared to 34 degrees Celsius on the day, Michael protected his eyes from the glare with a pair of dark sunglasses Steady on: Letting the results of his active lifestyle speak for itself, the former soccer player turned Bachelorette Australia runner-up showed off his washboard stomach All in a days work! As he made the most of the sunshine he wore just a pair of grey shorts Speaking of his website, Michael described it as a 'safe, positive place' for fans to interact with one another. 'There's so much negativity out there on social media and it's just a safe, positive place where people can come and talk to each other. It's a judgement free place.' The site, which will be free to use, launches at the end of the month and will also include blogs about nutrition and education, he added. Aside from the project Michael has arranged a second charity date, claiming that a Perth-based fan had paid $13,000 to have dinner with him in aid of a cancer organisation. Busy man! As well as preparing to launch a motivational website named after his social media following, Mychael Squad, the reality star is also now releasing a range of empowering bracelets to sell on the platform She's been jetting across Europe this week to promote her new big screen project. And despite complaining of jet lag, Chloe Moretz pulled out all the stops for another day of promo for The 5th Wave on Wednesday, The 18-year-old actress wowed in a statement monochrome look as she hit Hotel Le Bristol in Paris for a photocall for the new film. Scroll down for video Ooh la la! Chloe Moretz pulled out all the stops for another day of promo for The 5th Wave on Wednesday, as she hit a photocall in Paris The Kick Ass star showed off her toned curves in her unusual top which featured frills and a halter-neck velvet trim. A pair of wide-legged, high-waisted trousers added to the chic vibe, while Chloe finished off her ensemble with a pair of studded strappy heels. Her short blonde locks were pushed back from her face while a pretty pink lip colour and dark smoky eyes meant the star was ready for her close up in front of the Paris cameras. Monochrome:The Kick Ass star showed off her toned curves in her unusual top which featured frills and a halter-neck velvet trim Ready for her close up:The 18-year-old added a pretty pink lip colour and smoky eye makeup Figure flattering look: A pair of wide-legged, high-waisted trousers added to the chic vibe Flawless from all angles: Chloe pulled out her best poses at the Paris photocall for her new action flick Earlier in the day the 18-year-old actress looked gorgeous in another winning look - rocking a blue velvet mini skirt as she hit Paris for a morning of interviews before her photocall. The blonde beauty ignored the chilly temperatures as she flaunted her legs in the tiny skirt. She accentuated her pins further with a pair of ankle-strap heels which also showed off her red pedicure. Another busy day! Chloe posed with her The 5th Wave co-stars Nick Robinson and Alex Roe All dressed up: Chloe looked gorgeous in a blue velvet mini skirt and strappy heels as she left her hotel in Paris on Wednesday for a day of promoting for her new film Chloe continued the glam vibe by tucking in a printed shirt with black trim into a skirt, while she kept out some of the winter weather by slinging a shearling-lined leather jacket around her shoulders. And it was all change again later in the day as the busy star swapped her glam look for a more casual ensemble, rocking a pair of cropped jeans with a striped red and blue top and a smart blazer. A pair of navy heels completed the chic look as the actress arrived for an interview at Fun Radio station. Chloe has been busy promoting her new film back home in the US and across Europe this month, and it appears her hectic schedule may have caught up with her as she shared an Instagram snap on Tuesday night, captioned 'jet lag in Paris.' Chic in the city: Chloe continued the glam vibe by tucking in a printed shirt with black trim into a skirt Keeping cosy: The 18-year-old actress kept out some of the winter weather by slinging a shearling-lined leather jacket around her shoulders Chloe is set to have a very busy year with four films coming out including The 5th Wave, Neighbors 2, November Criminals and Brain On Fire. Her latest, The 5th Wave, is centred around Chloe's character, Cassie Sullivan, who is trying to save her younger brother after four waves of increasingly deadly alien attacks. She also has another very exciting upcoming film in The Little Mermaid, which she recently signed up to. Another winning look: It was all change later in the day as the busy star swapped her glam look for a more casual ensemble Glam: The blonde beauty added a slick of lip stick and dark eyeshadow to complete her stylish ensembles Speaking to Jimmy Kimmel Live last week, the actress admitted of the anticipated film:'It definitely was one of the most exciting things Ive ever booked because its just something I grew up with.' She may have landed the exciting aquatic role, but no doubt it will be a challenge as she said she can't swim. Chloe explained: 'I mean, I can but Im not a strong swimmer. Maybe thats the new story a mermaid who learns to swim!' The 5th Wave hits theatres on January 22. Say cheese! The fun-loving actress pulled faces as she snapped selfies with fans outside Fun Radio station Coordinated: Chloe added a flawless red manicure which matched her red and blue look Mismatched: Not afraid to clash prints, Chloe sported a striped sweater beneath a navy blazer emblazoned with pinstripes and polka dots Denim dream: The actress finished the look with slightly distressed slim fit jeans which conceded inches above the ankle Little boost: The 5'4 in actress offered herself some heel height with sophisticated navy stilettos Daisy Lowe and Peaches Geldof's widower Thomas Cohen were pictured kissing while walking her dog Monty in North London on Wednesday. The outing comes amid reports the pair are 'growing closer than ever' and also in the same week that Thomas announces the release of his debut album. They looked incredibly at ease in one another's company as they giggled while on their outing, following their recent holiday to Miami. Scroll down for video Puckering up: Daisy Lowe and Peaches Geldof's widower Thomas Cohen were pictured kissing while walking her dog Monty in North London on Wednesday More than just friends? The pair were also seen holding hands as they put on a close display They spent New Year away with pals, including Rita Ora, where they were pictured letting their hair down in style at the party hotspot. Daisy, 26, who was close to Peaches, looked casually cool for the outing, teaming baggy ripped jeans with a pair of chunky military boots. She added a pop of colour with a green top and added a brown leather shearling jacket, which no doubt helped to keep her warm. A moment: Thomas was pictured gazing into Daisy's eyes as they stopped for a moment while crossing the road Smooch: It wasn't long before they moved in for a kiss while Monty the dog looked on At ease: The pair seemed incredibly comfortable with one another as they made the most of a day off Close: The pair lingered for a moment as their chemistry was plain to see Thomas wore similar hues in a tweed overcoat which had a fluffy collar and cropped black trousers as he showcased his trendy sense of style. He covered his eyes with a pair of tortoiseshell glasses and showed off his recently cropped choppy do. The musician wore a gold band on a chain around his neck, which was evidently close to his heart. A source told the Daily Mirror that things were starting to look up for rocker Thomas following the tragic death of his wife Peaches Geldof two years ago. Firm friends: Daisy was incredibly close to Peaches - the pair were pictured together, along with Tom at a screening of The Great Gatsby in Haymarket in May 2013 Daisy recently said of her late friend: 'I think about her a lot. She's very missed. Very loved. And I hope that she's happy happy up there. It's funny, I end up kind of talking to her a bit' Adding: 'I keep I still think I see her, or songs will come on and I will go, "I swear that you just put that on."' 'He is still so young, yet he has been bringing up two children on his own,' said the source. 'He has known Daisy for years, but they are a lot closer since the holiday in Miami. Its been great for Thomass friends to see him looking happy again.' MailOnline has contacted representatives for Thomas Cohen and Daisy Lowe and is awaiting comment. It's a busy time for Thomas who has just announced the release of his first solo material, which is out on May 6. It's all going on: The outing comes amid reports the pair are 'growing closer than ever' and also in the same week that Thomas has released his debut album She's giggly: Daisy, 26, who was close to Peaches, looked casually cool for the outing, teaming baggy ripped jeans with a pair of chunky military boots Trendy lad: Thomas, 25, wore similar hues in a tweed overcoat which had a fluffy collar and cropped black trousers as he showcased his trendy sense of style All in the details: He covered his eyes with a pair of tortoiseshell glasses and showed off his recently cropped choppy do He has written and recorded Bloom Forever, an album he first began working on in 2012, two years before his wife Peaches Cohen tragically died. Thomas was previously frontman of the band S.C.U.M. who released one album Again Into Eyes in 2011, but they split up four years ago. The former frontman of the band S.C.U.M. completed the deeply personal record last year, with the title track written about the birth of his second son. New project: Tom has written and recorded Bloom Forever, an album he first began working on in 2012, two years before his wife Peaches Cohen tragically died - it's out on May 6 It has undoubtedly been a tough couple of years for the father of three-year-old Astala and two-year-old Phaedra. Following Peaches' drug-related death in April 2014, the British musician and his young sons moved in with his parents Susan and Keith in East London. Along with getting support from his own parents, Thomas has remained close to Peaches' father Bob Geldof. Bonding: Daisy Lowe, 26, and Thomas Cohen, 25, are reportedly closer than ever after a fun-filled trip to Miami with pals to ring in the New Year And in the intervening time he has been pictured spending quality time with his father-in-law and Peaches' sisters on numerous occasions. Meanwhile, Peaches' longtime friend Daisy, opened up about her death in an interview with InStyle magazine. 'I think about her a lot. She's very missed. Very loved,' Daisy said. 'And I hope that she's happy happy up there. It's funny, I end up kind of talking to her a bit. I keep I still think I see her, or songs will come on and I will go, "I swear that you just put that on."' Tragic: Thomas has two sons with Peaches Geldof, who tragically lost her life in April 2014 Daisy is also close to Peaches' sister Pixie, who also joined her in Miami, and the three of them often spent time together thanks to their close showbiz circle and at various fashion events. Thomas set tongues wagging during the festive trip when he appeared in two suggestive Instagram snaps. In one, the former S.C.U.M rocker reclined next to a bath in his suite in Soho Beach House while a woman stuck her pert behind into the shot. A source later told MailOnline that the derriere in question belonged to model Daisy. Model behind: Thomas set tongues wagging during the trip to Miami when appeared in two suggestive Instagram snaps, including one that appears to include Daisy's derriere Pucker up: In the second image Thomas planted a kiss on the lips of a mystery person just out of shot The daughter of rockers Pearl Lowe and Gavin Rossdale has been single since her split with Ronnie Wood's son Tyrone in November. In the second image Thomas planted a kiss on the lips of a mystery person just out of shot. Thomas's trip with his late wife's sister and her showbiz pals comes just months after he caused a stir by embracing Peaches' and Pixie's younger half-sibling Tiger Lily in the surf on holiday in the South of France. Any suggestion of anything more platonic occurring between the pair was shrugged by a close pal of the Geldofs, who insisted they were like brother and sister and had found comfort in their friendship. It's been rumored recently that Diane Kruger and her longtime partner Joshua Jackson have split. And on Tuesday the 39-year-old was spotted without her beau once again as she stepped out in West Hollywood. The star had her hands full as she ran the solo errands, for which she was dressed casually in jeans and a sweater. Scroll down for video Laid-back: Diane Kruger kept comfortable in jeans and a sweater as she ran errands solo in West Hollywood on Tuesday Diane wore a form-fitting white sweater with navy blue stripes, which she coupled with a pair of fitted, light wash jeans. The skintight jeans showed off the actress's toned pins, and she paired those with brown Timberland boots. The blonde beauty carried a black, plaid jacket for the outing, and kept her make-up simple, showing off her natural beauty. She's got her hands full! The Inglourious Basterds star - rocking Timberland boots - was juggling a collection of papers and documents as she was spotted exiting her car She wore her long, blonde locks in a center part, and styled in soft waves, and had her hands full of papers and documents as she walked. Diane and Joshua celebrated their 10-year anniversary last year - but in recent months have hardly been seen together. The Fathers and Daughters actress spent the holiday season with her grandparents and family, as well as battling flu. Long time no see: The blonde beauty hasn't been photographed with her long term partner Joshua Jackson in weeks, and last shared this picture of them together almost two months ago Meanwhile, Joshua has had a hectic few months wrapping up filming on season two of The Affair, before heading on a three week trip to Japan, the Philippines and Dubai, filming a documentary. Diane's last photo of Joshua on her Instagram account was six weeks ago, where she posted a fun selfie with the actor of the pair sticking their tongues out. Joshua last put up a photo of his beloved nearly four months ago - congratulating her on her win for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival. Throwback: And Joshua has been away, working on his TV series The Affair, before traveling for a documentary. He last shared this photo of Diane almost four months ago He captioned the shot: 'Congrats to my beautiful girl on your best actress award!! Wish I could have been there.' Last month, sources close to the couple denied a report that Diane had been pictured 'kissing' her and Joshua's Sky co-star Norman Reedus in a New York dive bar. A source close to Diane told DailyMail.com: 'This story is completely fabricated and untrue.' Diane and Joshua, who are set to celebrate their 10 year anniversary this year, remain famously unmarried. She's been branded a fierce and intimidating boss by her former friend and employee Heather McDonald, but Chelsea Handler has revealed she likes to chill out too. The comedienne told Jimmy Fallon on Tuesday night that she was 'high for two days' after smoking with Willie Nelson. The 40-year-old's upcoming four-part documentary series on Netflix tackles four topics: marriage, racism, Silicon Valley... and drugs. Scroll down for video Flying: Chelsea Handler revealed on Tuesday's Tonight Show that she was 'high for two days' after smoking with Willie Nelson 'Oh my God, I was high for two days! I literally couldn't open one of my eyes,' she said of her interactive interview with the 82-year-old country legend. 'He has his own line of weed, for those of you who like weed. I was in a trailer with him - I think he lives in a trailer... he was so stoned he probably didn't even know I was there.' Tales of Handler's dabbling in the usually-pacifying plant is in stark contrast to the fire breathing that came just 24 hours earlier, when she appeared on Jenny McCarthy's Dirty Sexy Funny show and threatened a former writer who accused her of being an intimidating boss. Hot topics: The 40-year-old's upcoming four-part documentary series on Netflix tackles four topics: marriage, racism, Silicon Valley... and drugs Incapacitated: 'Oh my God, I was high for two days! I literally couldn't open one of my eyes,' she said of her interactive interview with the 82-year-old country legend Just hours after her ex-friend Heather McDonald said she lived in perpetual fear while working on her E! show, a furious Chelsea spewed on Sirius XM that the 'dirty loser' now had something to be genuinely afraid of. But on Tuesday night, a much more placid Handler was recalling her own fear - of not being able to come up with something to say to Willie. 'The worst part is, as an interviewer I'm supposed to be interviewing him. I'm talking to him and I didn't take into account that I was going to be completely disabled,' she said. 'So as we're talking I am like "Oh my God - what am I going to say next?" Disabled: The comedienne admitted she was struggling thinking of things to say, or just thinking in general Up in smoke: Chelsea claimed Willie - who has his own line of weed - was so stoned he 'probably didn't even know I was there' 'I was like: just keep talking!... looking at him, and he's not a big talker... so I was just like "I hope he keeps talking"... I'm so stoned. During the hour long documentary, Chelsea also traveled to Peru to try the psychedelic Ayahuasca. 'Ayahuasca is a plant drug that they do in the Amazon - you can do it wherever - they have these shamans that do it. Its supposed to be like this spiritual awakening drug, transformative, transcendent in certain ways,' she said. Don't try this at home: She revealed that she also traveled to Peru to try the psychedelic Ayahuasca, which had her 'vomiting out of both ends' 'You drink it, its like a tea, you do it with some guy who's yelling at you in Spanish. He's got trees, and if you're not focusing he'll hit you on the head,' she recalled. 'I'm like "I'm trying to get high too! Why are you yelling at me?" 'We went down to Peru and we did it. You vomit out of your mouth and out of...' she trailed off, gesturing behind her, before adding 'And Netflix paid for it, thank you guys.' Earlier on the Tonight show, Chelsea also discussed the marriage episode, explaining why she's never tied the knot herself. Spinster? Earlier on the Tonight show, Chelsea also discussed the marriage episode, explaining why she's never tied the knot herself Sign here: She signed autographs for waiting fans as she made her way to the taping 'I've never been married and I think that's a victory,' she said. 'I feel like now that I'm 40, I can see getting married. I mean, I've no viable options at all. But now that I'm passed the hump of people saying "when are you going to get married?" - 'cause I was so rebellious I was like "I'm not gonna marry anybody!" 'And no that no one is asking me I'm like "watch me get married! I'll get married, I'll get divorced and then I'll get married again - booyah!' The Netflix series will make its debut at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, which kicks off on Thursday. The other side: Tales of Handler's dabbling in the usually-pacifying plant is in stark contrast to the fire breathing that came just 24 hours earlier, when she appeared on Jenny McCarthy's Dirty Sexy Funny show and threatened a former writer who accused her of being an intimidating boss Advertisement The temperatures may have been dipping in London, but the cream of television's beauties didn't let it hinder their red carpet appearances on Wednesday night, nor did it dampen their spirits at the afterparty. Turning out for the annual, ultra-glamorous National Television Awards at The O2, blonde bombshells Holly Willoughby and Amanda Holden kept things classic in black and white floor-skimming frocks, while bold brunettes Vicky Pattison and Michelle Keegan went all out Hollywood glamour. Television's small screen beauties were certainly taking the red carpet by storm, competing just as much in the style stakes as some of them were for NTA gongs; though when the wins were all said and done, it was time for the stars to rub shoulders at the afterparty. Scroll down for video Television's finest: (From left) Holly Willoughby, Amanda Holden and Vicky Pattison were taking the red carpet by storm on Wednesday night, when they arrived for the annual National Television Awards at London's O2 All smiles: Michelle Keegan cut a slender profile, showing off her stomach as she spun 360 in a backless and belly-baring dress A touch on the Bollywood side, NTA-nominated Michelle dressed in an unorthodox belly-baring dress as she no doubt held high hopes that her nod would come to fruition. The former Coronation Street star arrived with her husband Mark Wright, cutely co-ordinating in navy, but left him on the sidelines while she enjoyed a few solo snaps before heading into the star-studded venue. Doing a 360 for the cameras, the NTA hopeful - who was nominated in the Best Drama category for Ordinary Lies - revealed a bralet at the back as her caped-style dress slashed just as much from behind as it did in the front. While breakfast TV presenter Holly's frock did more to cover up her shape, it did nothing to hide her curves and the blonde bombshell affectionately named 'Holly Willoughbooby' showed off her hourglass shape in bright white. See full coverage of the 2016 National Television Awards with more winners news and red carpet pictures Time party: Later at the afterparty, Vicky let her ladylike red carpet glory with a glass of wine in hand Struggling: Vicky seemed to throw caution to the wind on ladylike decorum after scooping with I'm A Celeb Marring her moment: The reality TV star cut a particularly elegant figure even so Awkward: Jungle queen Vicky Pattison had a slight misstep with her long hemline Britain's got style! Amanda and her BGT co-presenter Alesha Dixon (right) matched in black on the red carpet Ready to party: Amanda certainly seemed keen to let out her wild streak at the post-awards bash Giddy: Amanda flashed a lot of leg as she walked the red carpet with a split in the front of her dress THE 2016 NATIONAL TELEVISION AWARDS: THE WINNERS Talent Show: Strictly Come Dancing - WINNER The X Factor The Voice Britain's Got Talent Drama: Downton Abbey - WINNER Broadchurch Call the Midwife Dr Who The Fall Entertainment Programme: I'm A Celebrity - WINNER Alan Carr: Chatty Man Celebrity Juice Take Me Out Made In Chelsea Comedy: Peter Kay's Car Share - WINNER Still Open All Hours Cradle to Grave Benidorm Vicious New Drama: Doctor Foster - WINNER Poldark Black Work Humans Fortitude Daytime: The Chase - WINNER The Jeremy Kyle Show Pointless Fake Britain The Paul O'Grady Show Challenge Show: The Great British Bake Off - WINNER MasterChef The Apprentice The Island With Bear Grylls The Naked Choir With Gareth Malone Live Magazine Show: This Morning - WINNER Good Morning Britain Loose Women The One Show Lorraine Serial Drama: EastEnders - WINNER Coronation Street Emmerdale Hollyoaks Neighbours Serial Drama Performance: Danny Dyer (Mick Carter, EastEnders) - WINNER Jack P. Shepherd (David Platt, Coronation Street) Kieron Richardson (Ste Hay, Hollyoaks) Lucy Pargeter (Chas Dingle, Emmderdale) Adrian Lewis Morgan (Dr Jimmi Clay, Doctors) Factual Entertainment: Gogglebox - WINNER Top Gear Who Do You Think You Are? Countryfile Life Story Newcomer: Shayne Ward (Aidan Connor, Coronation Street) - WINNER Gemma Atkinson (Carly Hope, Emmerdale) Richard Blackwood (Vincent Hubbard, EastEnders) Ashley Rice (Dr Sid Vere, Doctors) Charles Venn (Jacob Masters, Casualty) Parry Glasspool (Harry Thompson, Hollyoaks) TV Presenter: Ant & Dec - WINNER Mel & Sue Marvin Humes Phillip Schofield Claudia Winkleman Drama Performance: Suranne Jones - WINNER Aidan Turner (Ross Poldark, Poldark) Gemma Chan (Anita, Humans) Michelle Keegan (Tracy, Ordinary Lies) David Tennant (DI Alec Hardy, Broadchurch) Jamie Dornan (Phil Spector, The Fall) International: The Big Bang Theory - WINNER Game Of Thrones Orange Is The New Black TV Moment of the Year Poldark Special Recognition Billy Connolly Advertisement Similarly, an ultra-glamorous Vicky - who's earned her spot on the NTA's red carpet thanks to an impressive win in the jungle last year - plumped for the same striking shape. She was far from the Australian outback and ramped up an old Hollywood image with flowing gown, though it proved to be pretty tricky for the former Geordie Shore star to walk in. Jorgie Porter's appearance, meanwhile, was close to stealing the limelight with a Kim Kardashian-inspired bodysuit flashing underneath, while a pregnant Emma Willis was more keen to keep certain things covered. Quite the contrary, television presenter Emma was doing her best to disguise her middle as she picked out a structured dress that skimmed over her baby bump. Time to celebrate: Holly (centre) looked like she would certainly be ringing in the celebrations after This Morning took the win Television's finest: (From left) Michelle Keegan, Jorgie Porter and Emma Willis were taking the red carpet by storm on Wednesday night, when they arrived for the annual National Television Awards at London's O2 Busy bee: Fresh from her two television jobs, pregnant Emma managed to look radiant, dressing her bump in a particularly stylish get up Shimmering: Hollyoaks star Jorgie Porter opted for a racy sheer skirt, which revealed her bodysuit beneath Having her moment: She spun around to reveal the full shimmer effect of her long frock Brotherly love: Her husband Mark Wright (left) was adorably matching her in navy blue She's a star: In one hand, the brunette carried a shimmering starburst clutch bag Fashion details: Her dress featured a lace bralet underneath, which was shown from behind Brave face: Jessica Wright put the heartbreak of Nanny Pat's death before Christmas to one side for her first red carpet performance Black beauty: The TOWIE star put on a racy display with a plunging dress that featured a black collar around her neck TOWIE babes: (From left) Lydia Bright, Chloe Sims and Danielle Armstrong were representing for TOWIE Stunner: Her dress showed off her stunning shape as she did turns on the carpet for the cameras Rocking a red lip: Ferne McCann was gorgeous with a deep cherry lipstick for the red carpet Cream of the crop: Ferne McCann (left) and her jungle pal Vicky Pattison (right) complemented each other in creamy colours In full bloom, the star wore flowers on her gown to distract from the fact that she's expecting her third child with husband Matt Willis in the next couple of months. Emma looked radiant despite recently juggling presenting jobs on The Voice and Celebrity Big Brother, along with her Heart radio show and two young children. One such television star who's also done the rounds on the small screen towards the end of last year, is Jorgie, who ended 2015 with an appearance on I'm A Celebrity. The petite blonde hopped over to ITV to feature in the Australian-outback reality show, which was quite a contrast to her regular home of Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks. Making her arrival: Strictly Come Dancing's Tess Daly turned out to support the annual TV event Still smiling: Despite being pipped for the Best Presenter nomination by co-star Claudia Winkleman, Tess was still smiling Looking cute: Doctor Who actress Maisie Williams was looking adorable in a full-skirted number Royal blue: Vogue Williams looked stylish on the red carpet on Wednesday night, as she lead the arrivals Elegant: The blonde carried a gorgeous long train behind her that skimmed the red carpet with shoes to match, and completed her outfit with dazzling Thomas Sabo jewellery Classic beauty: Hollyoaks star Nikki Sanderson chanelled old Hollywood glamour in an old the shoulder frock Corrie's finest: Catherine Tyldesley (left) and Kym Marsh (right) both opted for flowing black floor-skimmers Back with a bang: After a few years away from the red carpet, Coronation Street's Tina O'Brien was back with a bang Jorgie certainly wasn't in jungle mode on Wednesday night, as she channeled her inner Kim K and plumped for a shimmering sheer frock that flashed straight through to a strapless bodysuit. The blonde cinched in her middle with a metallic belt that helped to pull together the top-toe silver look, which also included shimmering shoes, a rocky ponytail cone and a studded head piece. Despite flying solo, Vogue Williams was owning her red carpet moment with crimson shoes on to lead the way and a glamorous waterfall skirt trailing behind her. Though keeping her neckline high, the stunning model's outfit was capped off with dazzling Thomas Sabo bracelets to add that final air of elegance. Vogue was without her estranged husband Brian McFadden, with whom she's said to have just spent Christmas despite their ongoing divorce after almost three years together. Queen of the carpet: Lady Colin Campbell made a very regal arrival and shared a kiss with her ex I'm A Celeb campmate Ferne McCann Princess dress: The star was wearing a tiara and a full length tulle skirt with her ensemble Ladies in red: Casey Batchelor (left) and Michelle Heaton (right) plumped for red carpet-ready crimson ensembles Old pals: Casey and her pal Luisa Zissman clashed colours in shades of red and violet as they hugged on the red carpet Screen siren: The reality TV babe was wowing in a scarlet colour, which featured a gorgeous sweetheart neckline Closely following her on the arrivals front, was reality TV beauty Jessica Wright, who put her heartbreak over Nanny Patt's death to one side as she made her first red carpet appearance. Jessica was smouldering in a floor-length black dress; her hair slicked back and her make-up contoured perfectly to highlight her best features. Her dress, which featured a blue lining and a racy split in the front, plunged to her middle to reveal her ample assets while a matching black collar detail added a little of-the-moment touch. Though she was representing the ITVBe programme along with co-star Danielle Armstrong, Jessica and her reality TV friends have not been nominated for an NTA this year. A rare night out: The Good Morning Britain crew, featuring (from left) Sean Fletcher,Kate Garraway, Charlotte Hawkins and Ben Shephard were enjoying a rare night out Dazzling: TV presenter Susanna Reid was outshining the stars in an ivory embellished dress Cute duo: Co-stars Susanna and Piers Morgan pulled their cheesiest smiles on a rare night off Feeling loose and loud: The Loose Women (from left) Jamelia, Katie Price, Andrea McLean, Kaye Adams, Gloria Huniford, Nadia Swalha, Jane Moore, Penny Lancaster, Sherrie Hewson, Coleen Nolan and Linda Robson were out in force, sure to tear up the red carpet Forget the weather: Penny Lancaster shed her top layer to show off her gorgeous nude-coloured outfit Demure: Katie Price was playing it safe for once, plumping for a black peplum hem dress Television favourite: National sweetheart Lorraine Kelly put her early mornings behind her and hit the red carpet Brunette beauty: Heida Reed looked exquisite in a velvet off-the-shoulder dress Co-stars: Poldark co-stars Aidan Turner (left) and Heida hit the red carpet together on the night Looking stylish: Boy George was looking fierce in an oversized black hat and patterned jacket Joker: Boy George showed his playful side when he stopped for pictures with winners Ant & Dec Winners: The 15-time NTA winners sandwiched in The Voice star for some cosy snaps One for the album: The flamboyant musician was suitably well-dressed for the occasion in leather and bright red shoes Vintage chic: Fearne Cotton was looking demure in a floor-length vintage looking frock Back at her best: Caroline Flack wore a peter pan collar monochrome dress for her appearance Losing out to the competition, including Made In Chelsea, I'm A Celebrity and Take Me Out in the Entertainment Programme category, the Essex-based show has not been given recognition this year. Among the lucky ones were 14-time National Television Award winners Ant & Dec, whose I'm A Celeb and Britain's Got Talent saw them nominated three times this year alongside their annual node for TV Presenter. They faced strong competition for their 15th win, with newcomers Marvin Humes for The Voice, and Claudia Winkleman for Strictly Come Dancing gracing the category this year, but walked away with another victory. Hoping to be recognised for Drama, Ordinary Lies' Michelle Keegan and Broadchurch's David Tenant were pitted against Hollywood royalty as 50 Shades Of Grey star Jamie Dornan was also recognised. The ultimate double act: Ant & Dec were hoping to make it a 15th year for the NTAs Awesome foursome: Ant joined wife Lisa Armstrong, along with Dec and new wife Ali Astall Handsome couple: TV duo Rochelle Humes and husband Marvin Humes have certainly earned their spot on the red carpet this year Cute twosome: Peter Andre and his wife Emily were matching in black as he wrapped an affectionate arm around her Adorable: Phillip Schofield and his wife Stephanie Lowe put an a very affectionate display TV fans: Newlyweds Ronan Keating and Storm looked delighted to be on the red carpet again Co-stars: EasEnders actors Luisa Bradshaw-White and Danny Dyer shared the moment together Exes on the red carpet: Megan McKenna and Scotty T's exes Jordan Davies and Ashleigh Defty shared a PDA at the event Who knew they were a couple? The duo appeared to be sharing something of a romance Cute couple: Michelle Heaton and husband Hugh Hanley shared the red carpet that night New to TV: The Apprentice's newest recruit Claude Littner showed his softer side beside wife Thelma Date night delight: Lisa Faulkner and partner John Torode lapped up the attention on the night Hands full: Cheeky chappy Eamonn Holmes was sandwiched in by Ruth Langsford (right) and Tess Daly (left) The stage was set for the NTAs early on Wednesday, with the Britain's Got Talent judges front and centre; no doubt busy keeping a close check on the cream of the television crop to hit the stage at the annual awards ceremony. Alesha Dixon and Amanda Holden - the fabulous female duo of the BGT panel who recently rejoined Simon Cowell and David Walliams for the forthcoming 2016 series - were sat beside each other. Behind them, Radio 1 DJ and, more recently, X Factor judge Nick Grimshaw was behind them beside last year's runners up Reggie 'N' Bollie, who were no doubt celebrating. Just that day, the Ghanian duo were given a recording contract by Syco boss Simon, after just missing victory in the 2015 final, competing in the X Factor Groups category, and ultimately losing out to Louisa Johnson. TV hunk: Aidan Turner is the man who sent the TV world into a frenzy in 2015 Specs appeal: Adorable Mark Wright was suited in his specs for the special occasion Bolder dressers: Graham Norton (left) and Rylan Clarke (right) showed off their style credentials He's back: Richard Blackwood was high off his return to EastEnders and therefore back on the red carpet Morning team: (L-R) BBC Breakfast's Sally Nugent, Carol Kirkwood, Charlie Stayt, Stephanie McGovern and Louise Minchin also made an appearance at the star-studded awards show Soap star pals: (L to R) Nadine Mulkerrin, Kieron Richardson, Charlie Clapham, Kirsty Leigh Porter and Jessica Fox all posed for a picture Fresh from the cobbles: Corrie's Kym Marsh (L) and Brooke Vincent (R) showed off their style credentials in their knockout numbers All together: (L to R) Penny Lancaster, Linda Robson, Gloria Hunniford, Jamelia, Nadia Sawalha, Kaye Adams, Jane Moore, Andrea McLean and Katie Price teamed up for a Loose Women snapshot Demure in black: Alison King (L) and Sally Lindsay (R) kept it chic in the classy ensembles as they headed to the drinks reception BFFs: TOWIE's Jessica and Danielle happily posed up a storm at the star-studded bash Social circle: The Essex beauties were also joined by Jess' sister-in-law Michelle Fancy that: Ricky Wilson bumped into Great British Bake Off winner Nadiya Hussain and her husband On-screen buddies: EastEbders' Riley Carter Millington, Emma Barton and Gillian Taylforth all scrubbed up well for the bash Catch-up: Les Dennis (L) and Billy Connelly (R) were deep in conversation at the after-party Pretty petals: Arlene Phillips wore a dress made out of real flowers. The bespoke dress was constructed especially for the event by world leading florist Joseph Massie and his team and all flowers are included in Homeopathic remedies Suave gent: James Nesbitt cut a dapper figure in his smart tux as he enjoyed the night's festivities Front and centre: Britain's Got Talent judges Alesha Dixon (left) and Amanda Holden (right) were front and centre inside The O2 Arena; scouting the talented TV stars The glitteratti: Susanna Reid and Piers Morgan were leading the Good Morning Britain line up on their rare night out Getting ready: Michelle Keegan (left) and Holly Willoughby (right) shared snaps as they got ready for the bash Earlier in the day, she shared a sweet photograph from her wedding day to celebrate husband Mark Wright's 29th birthday. But the attention was all back on Michelle Keegan hours later, as the smitten pair stepped out on the red carpet at the National Television Awards 2016 at London's O2 Arena on Wednesday night. The beautiful brunette opted for a daring ensemble, revealing her taut, toned abs in a unique top and skirt combination. Scroll down for video Daring to bare: Michelle Keegan flaunted her toned tum in a daring ensemble as she joined husband Mark Wright on the red carpet at the National TV Awards at London's O2 Arena on Wednesday The 28-year-old revealed almost her entire tanned midriff thanks to the twist-fronted glittering midnight blue top that met at her ample cleavage and fell back into an open cape. It was a different take on red carpet style for the star, who usually opts for pretty, figure-hugging dressing, showing that she is ready to start pushing the style boat out. The former Coronation Street actress teamed the revealing top with a low-waisted black full skirt, showing off her navel while completely obscuring her legs underneath the voluminous item. See more of the latest red carpet pictures from the 2016 National Television Awards Mixing it up: The 28-year-old traded her usual streamlined style for bold separates, including a twist-fronted glittering blue top and a full, flowing black skirt Works from all angles! She made sure to show off the delicate lace design of the back Cosying up: Birthday boy Mark - who turned 29 on Wednesday - looked incredibly sharp in his blue and black suit, teamed with sexy specs But it was the back of her outfit that was the most gorgeous, the blue top draping open to reveal a pretty lace black underlay. The brunette stunner wore her dark locks twisted into a high bouffant and low chignon for the evening, a classic glamorous night-time look, and she finished it off with small glitzy dangling earrings and a sultry, smoky eye. Birthday boy Mark looked devilishly handsome in his get-up, no doubt chose his deep blue and black attire to match his lovely wife's. Abs-tastic! The stunner didn't mind showing off pretty much her entire midriff in the separates Glamour: Michelle - who is nominated for the Drama Perfomance award - stuck to her favourite hairstyle for the evening, a high bouffant and chic chignon She's a star: Keeping her ensemble in the midnight theme, Michelle carried a small star-shaped glittering clutch He looked slicker than the average gent, teaming a tie-less white shirt with a deep blue and black jacket and slim-fitting trousers. The handsome former TOWIE star even added an accessory - a pair of square, thick-rimmed glasses - giving him a distinctly refined look. The happily married pair, who tied the knot in April last year, couldn't have looked happier as they posed together on the red carpet, enjoying themselves before the night kicked off. Sneak preview: Before hitting the red carpet, Michelle shared a glimpse of the back of her ensemble The National TV Awards celebrate the biggest and best shows in the UK, and Michelle was nominated in the Drama Performance category for her role in Ordinary Lies. Sadly, she missed out on the prize to Doctor Foster star Suranne Jones. Before taking to the red carpet, Michelle shared a sneak preview of her eye-catching ensemble, only revealing the sexy back while she sat on the floor of a hotel room after getting herself ready. Meanwhile, earlier in the day Michelle had gushed on Instagram for her spouse's 29th birthday. Happy birthday to my other half. @wrighty_ xxx A photo posted by michkeegan (@michkeegan) on Jan 20, 2016 at 4:15am PST She used a shot from the couple's wedding day to mark Mark's special day, whichi showed the newlyweds walking hand in hand back down the aisle after exchanging vows in the beautiful surroundings of St John Lateran church in Suffolk. Michelle added a loving caption to the snap, writing: 'Happy birthday to my other half. @wrighty_ xxx'. Mark has so far had a very relaxed birthday as he shared a selfie on his own Instagram page as he lounged around in bed. 'Doing nothing all day until I have to get ready for the NTAs later. #bedhair #dontcare,' the birthday boy wrote. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt call the Loz Feliz section of Los Angeles home. But starting in March the power couple will begin living in London, where the 52-year-old actor will be filming the sequel to his hit 2013 movie World War Z, according to UsWeekly. He both stars in and produces the science fiction extravaganza. Meanwhile, his 40-year-old wife will devote her time to humanitarian causes. Scroll down for video Crossing the pond: Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, seen here in November, will be moving to London in March, according to UsWeekly New town: The stars have yet to find a residence, however. 'They want to buy, but have yet to find a place that suits their needs,' a source told the publication The stars have yet to find a residence, however. 'They want to buy, but have yet to find a place that suits their needs,' a source told the publication. That's because the two need to have top security. 'Their wish list includes an underground drive-in entrance,' added an insider. For now, they may just rent, as they did in 2012 when they spent 15 months at the Whornes Place estate in London, which costs a reported $24,000 a month. She was in the country then to shoot Maleficent while he appeared in The Counselor. See more of the latest on Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt as they plan a move to London A new life: London is where the 52-year-old actor, seen here with Jolie while promoting By The Sea, will be filming the sequel to his hit science fiction movie World War Z The brood: As they did last time, the actors are bringing all of their six children - Maddox, Pax, Shiloh, Zahara, Vivienne and Knox; here five of the children (minus Maddox) are seen at the premiere of Kung Fu Panda 3 on Saturday As they did last time, the actors are bringing all of their six children - Maddox, Pax, Shiloh, Zahara, Vivienne and Knox. The children will most likely attend the Ly Lycee Francais school there. The Oscar winning beauty - who's current film is Kung Fu Panda 3 - has planned to spent a lot of time helping refugees. 'She plans to focus on political projects dealing with the ongoing refugee crisis in Europe,' said a source. The last film she worked on was First They Killed My Father: A Daughter Of Cambodia Remembers, which she has directed for Netflix. Filming took place in the fall and winter of 2015 in Cambodia and sons Maddox and Pax worked on the movie as well. The couple will also likely spent time at their estate Chateau Miraval which produces a line of their rose wines. Miami safe belonging to drug lord Escobar vanishes A safe buried under a $10 million Miami Beach mansion previously owned by late Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar has disappeared and police are investigating it as theft, the new owners said Tuesday. The new proprietors made the find as they demolished the striking, pink-colored mansion, which has its own pier and overlooks Biscayne Bay and the Miami skyline. "It was in the ground under some marble and was discovered by some of our workers, but before we even had a chance to remove it, it was stolen, so we've been working with the police on that," Jennifer Valoppi told reporters. The entrance of a house that used to belong to notorious Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar is pictured on January 13, 2016, in Miami Beach, Florida Diego Urdaneta (AFP/File) She and husband Christian de Berdouare, who bought the property in 2014, hired a team of workers to seek money, drugs or jewelry that may have been hidden in the walls or floors -- a common practice by Escobar in his homes. "It is part of the city's history, a dark chapter that is coming to an end today," Berdouare added, referring to the demolition of the mansion. The owners said that Escobar, the late Medellin cartel boss, had sometimes visited the house but did not live there permanently. New York horse-carriage deal sparks angry backlash A deal set to drastically limit horse-drawn carriage rides sparked a furious backlash in New York on Tuesday among pedicab drivers, park advocates and carriage drivers. Mayor Bill de Blasio promised to ban the carriage rides, beloved by tourists and immortalized in the movies, as soon as he took office two years ago, calling them "inhumane" to the horses. On Sunday, his office announced that a deal had been reached in principle that would halve the number of licensed horses and move all the rides into Central Park, off the streets of Manhattan. A coachman steers his horse-drawn carriage in New York on January 19, 2016 Jewel Samad (AFP) By October 2018, new stables will be renovated, estimated to cost the taxpayer millions of dollars, where just 75 horses are slated to be housed. The deal calls for a gradual reduction in the number of licensed horses from 180 to 110 by December 1, before further cuts by October 2018. The agreement, which needs to be debated and passed into legislation by the city council, would also ban dozens of pedicabs in Central Park from operating south of 85th Street, the northern limit of most tourists. "We're very pleased we've gotten to an agreement," de Blasio told reporters, defending the deal as "real progress." "Horses do not belong on the streets of the biggest city in the country, in the middle of midtown traffic. It's not fair and humane to the horses. It's not fair to drivers -- it creates congestion." But Christina Hansen, spokeswoman for the Horse and Carriage Association, stressed it was an agreement in principle only and that a lot of details still need to be worked out. "We are still in negotiations with the city... to make sure this big change makes sense for the industry," she said. She wants no changes to the number of horses allowed to operate until a city-owned building is properly renovated into a stable. "It is a complicated thing to build a stable in a park, and it is two and a half years away and there is no reason to limit our number of horses or shifts until then," she told AFP. The plan has also got the backs up of New Yorkers for Parks, an independent organization championing open spaces. It vowed to stop the deal from being passed into law. "Is that the best use of public parkland, and is it the best use of that much money?" asked Tupper Thomas, executive director of the organization. She said renovating the building into appropriate stables would cost the taxpayer at least $20 million. The pedicab industry called for a demonstration Tuesday outside city hall to denounce the deal that directly threatens their livelihood. "They will be out of work, essentially. Our industry has been completely left out of the discussion," said Peter Meitzler, co-founder of the New York City Pedicab Owners Association. "It's unethical." A coachman steers his horse-drawn carriage along Central Park in New York on January 19, 2016 Jewel Samad (AFP) Kurds destroyed thousands of Arab homes in Iraq: Amnesty Western-backed Kurdish forces fighting jihadists in Iraq have destroyed thousands of homes in an apparent bid to uproot Arab communities, actions that may constitute war crimes, Amnesty International said Wednesday. The rights watchdog said the destruction took place in areas of northern Iraq recaptured from the Islamic State group, which overran swathes of the country in 2014. The United States has carried out air strikes in support of forces from Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region since August 2014 and other countries have also backed them with air support, training and weapons. Destroyed homes in the village of Barzanke in Iraq's northeastern Diyala province, seen in a picture released by Amnesty International on January 19, 2016 Kurdish forces "appear to be spearheading a concerted campaign to forcibly displace Arab communities," Amnesty's Donatella Rovera said in a statement. "The forced displacement of civilians and the deliberate destruction of homes and property without military justification may amount to war crimes," she added. Destruction of homes and property theft have occurred frequently during the war against IS, angering residents whose support security forces need to hold recaptured areas, and sowing the seeds of future conflict. "Peshmerga forces from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Kurdish militias in northern Iraq have bulldozed, blown up and burned down thousands of homes in an apparent effort to uproot communities in revenge for their perceived support" of IS, Amnesty said. The rights group carried out a field investigation and interviewed witnesses. Satellite images also provided evidence of "widespread destruction", it said. - Harmful to anti-IS fight - Arab civilians who fled fighting have also been barred from returning home. Dindar Zebari, a KRG official, blamed combat for the destruction. "Many houses were destroyed because of clashes between peshmerga forces and Daesh members in villages located in war zones," Zebari said, using an Arabic acronym for IS. "Bombing by the international coalition also caused the destruction of houses, and Daesh members rigged houses in the villages to blow up the peshmerga forces," he said. Zebari also accused residents of affected areas of working with IS. "On the arrival of Daesh members to these areas, a number of tribal leaders cooperated with Daesh and these villages became a source for terrorists," he said. Colonel Steve Warren, the spokesman for the US-led operation against IS, declined to comment on the specifics of the Amnesty report but said that such actions harm the fight against the jihadists. "As government forces liberate territory... there's gotta be security for all of the civilian population," Warren told reporters. "These types of actions, if left unchecked, ultimately hurt the fight against Daesh. They increase the humanitarian crisis and they undermine the reconciliation efforts," he said. Amnesty documented evidence of "forced displacement and large-scale destruction of homes" by Kurdish forces in three Iraqi provinces: Nineveh, Kirkuk and Diyala. - Violations in Syria - The London-based rights group published a similar report about Kurdish forces in neighbouring Syria in October, accusing them of war crimes. It said those forces had deliberately demolished civilian homes and forcibly displaced inhabitants "with no justifiable military grounds". Syrian Kurdish forces have also received air support and other backing from the US-led coalition. In Iraq, IS was driving Kurdish forces back toward their regional capital Arbil in August 2014 when the US began carrying out air strikes against the jihadists, playing a key role in stopping their advance and later helping the Kurds regain ground. All three provinces where Amnesty said destruction of property took place are outside the borders of the autonomous Kurdistan region. But Kurdish forces gained or solidified control over areas in the provinces after federal troops fled IS's devastatingly effective offensive in June 2014. Iraqi Kurdish leaders want to incorporate territory from the provinces into their autonomous region, and depopulating them of Arabs aids efforts to maintain Kurdish control. Baghdad strongly opposes Iraqi Kurdistan's incorporation of the areas, which it wants to remain under federal control, but after fighting IS for the territory the Kurds are even more committed to keeping them. Internally displaced Arab Iraqis at a camp in Khanaqin, in Iraq's northeastern Diyala province, in a picture released by Amnesty International on January 19, 2016 Was 2015 hottest year on record? US to make big reveal US government scientists are widely expected to announce Wednesday that 2015 was the planet's hottest year in modern times, amid mounting concerns over the pace of climate change worldwide. Last year's global average temperature over land and sea surfaces is scheduled to be revealed at 11:00 am (1600 GMT), in a conference call between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the US space agency NASA and reporters. Scientists who track climate expect 2015 will beat 2014 for the warmest since the 1800s, particularly since NOAA announced in December that global heat records were broken in nine months of the year, including the last seven in a row. A man cools off at a water fountain in New York in 2015, where the month of May was recorded as the hottest in modern history according to US scientists of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Jewel Samad (AFP/File) The "first 11 months of 2015 were the warmest such period on record across the world's land and ocean surfaces," NOAA said in that report, the same kind it delivers each month, tallying the world's extreme weather events and temperature averages. Jake Crouch, climate scientist at NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information, added: "At this point we're virtually certain that 2015 will be the warmest year on record." Another group, Berkeley Earth -- a US non-profit organization that says it was founded by people who saw some merit in the claims of climate change skeptics -- has already released its findings. "2015 was unambiguously the hottest year on record," it said in a statement last week. "For the first time in recorded history, the Earth's temperature is clearly more than 1.0 C (1.8 F) above the 1850-1900 average." The group was previously more cautious than NOAA in anointing 2014 the hottest year on record. Berkeley Earth said its scientists determined that 2014 ended in a statistical tie with 2005 and 2010. This time, though, record highs in much of South America and the Middle East, and parts of the United States, Europe and Asia leave very little wiggle room. "Now, however, it is clear that 2015 is the hottest year on record by a significant margin," said executive director Elizabeth Muller. Specifically, 2015 exceeded the previous record-holder 2014 by 0.14 degrees Celsius, according to the global surface temperature average on land and sea for the year, it said. - A series of records - In a sign that the planet is warming faster than ever due to greenhouse gases spewed into the atmosphere when fossil fuels are burned, the 10 hottest years on record -- with the exception of 1998 -- have all occurred since 2000, NOAA says. Berkeley Earth framed it another way, pointing out that the Earth is about halfway to a milestone -- reaching the international target of seeing global average temperatures rise two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. The Earth "may begin to cross that threshold in about 50 years," said Berkeley Earth scientist Robert Rohde. NOAA has said that the only way for 2015 not to set new records would be if December were unusually cold -- 0.43 degrees Fahrenheit (.24 Celsius) colder than the coldest December on record, which came in 1916. For the United States alone, 2015 was the second warmest on record, NOAA said earlier this month. - Political climate - The United States, a leading world polluter, still grapples with the outsized presence of climate change deniers and skeptics in the halls of Congress. NOAA's announcement on Wednesday also comes against a backdrop of the recently completed Paris climate talks, at which the goal of capping global warming at 2 C above preindustrial levels was enshrined. In an editorial this month in the New York Times, former astronaut and NASA climate scientist Piers Sellers applauded that goal but, revealing he has pancreatic cancer, also lamented that he will not be able to see the solutions play out in his lifetime. "I think that future generations will look back on 2015 as an important but not decisive year in the struggle to align politics and policy with science," he wrote. "This is an incredibly hard thing to do." 2015 set to be the warmest year on record Alain BOMMENEL, Tamara HOHA (AFP) Wreckage of a motor-bike lies on the cracked riverbed of the Amadorio reservoir in Villajoyosa, Spain where the water is far below usual levels due to drought, on June 25, 2015 Jose Jordan (AFP/File) Most Chinese cities fail air quality standards in 2015: Greenpeace Nearly 300 Chinese cities failed to meet national standards for air quality last year, Greenpeace said Wednesday, despite marginal improvements in some of the worst-hit areas. China's cities are often hit by heavy pollution, blamed on coal-burning by power stations, heavy industry and vehicle use, and it has become a major source of discontent with the ruling Communist Party. The average level of PM2.5 particulates -- small enough to deeply penetrate the lungs -- in the 366 cities monitored was more than five times the maximum recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO), government data compiled by Greenpeace showed. Students wearing face masks to protect them from pollution walk across a street in Jinan, in east China's Shandong province on December 24, 2015 Of those monitored -- which include all of the nation's major cities -- a total of 293, or 80 percent, were higher than China's own looser national standards. China allows for a yearly average of 35 micrograms per cubic metre, versus the annual WHO standard of 10 micrograms per cubic metre. None of the cities in the survey met WHO standards. The capital Beijing was the 27th most polluted city with an average of 80.4 micrograms per cubic metre, a mere 3.3 percent decrease. Beijing had 26 days of "heavy air pollution" in the final three months of last year, according to Greenpeace. South of the capital, Baoding in the industrial heartland of Hebei province was China's second most polluted city in 2015, averaging 107 micrograms per cubic metre. "The principal reason for this higher frequency of smog in Beijing and surrounding areas this winter was wind and humidity conditions," Greenpeace said in a statement accompanying the figures. "Though weather conditions help smog develop, the origin of the pollution remains heavy coal burning across northern China." Despite years of chronic dirty air, Beijing only issued its first red pollution alert -- reserved for when authorities forecast an air-quality index of above 300 for at least three consecutive days -- in December. The Greenpeace statistics were based on official data from China's ministry of environmental protection. It makes current levels available online but does not publicly release historical data or averages. - Falling short - Air pollution levels in Shanghai, the country's financial centre, rose 3.1 percent in 2015 to 53.9 micrograms per cubic metre. The most polluted city, with a yearly average of 119.1 micrograms per cubic metre, was Kashgar, near the Pakistani border in the far western region of Xinjiang, which is often hit by dust and sand storms. Authorities expanded the list of cities monitored to 367 in 2015 from 189. Greenpeace excluded one city in its rankings because of data inconsistencies. Public discontent about the environment has grown in China, leading the government to declare a "war on pollution" and vow to reduce the proportion of energy derived from fossil fuels. But it has shied away from pledging to cut total national coal use. Premier Li Keqiang has admitted the government is not doing enough to tackle the massive public health problem. "The Chinese government is determined to tackle smog and pollution," Li said at the annual meeting of the country's rubber-stamp parliament in March. "The progress we have made still falls short of the expectations of our people." Despite the frank comments, China's leadership is still highly sensitive to grassroots efforts to highlight the problem. A scathing independent video on China's persistent air pollution, "Under the Dome," racked up hundreds of millions of views last year before it was taken offline as authorities clamped down. Cars drive below a blanket of smog on a heavily polluted day in Beijing on December 26, 2015 Greg Baker (AFP/File) Dominant Serena Williams poers into Australian Open third round Dominant world number one Serena Williams added a rare around-the-net shot to her repertoire Wednesday as she steamrolled Taiwan's Hsieh Su-wei on her way into the Australian Open third round. The six-time Melbourne Park winner and defending champion, who is gunning to equal Steffi Graf's Open-era record of 22 Grand Slam titles, blitzed Hsieh 6-1, 6-2 on Rod Laver Arena. She next faces Russian Daria Kasatkina with a potential quarter-final clash against arch-rival Maria Sharapova awaiting. Serena Williams of the US hits a forehand return to Taiwan's Hsieh Su-Wei during their women's singles second round match of the Australian Open, in Melbourne, on January 20, 2016 Peter Parks (AFP) "She was definitely a tricky opponent but it was a good match for me to play someone like that. I needed that," said Williams, who made her Grand Slam debut in Melbourne in 1998. Williams said she was pleased by her consistency and lack of errors, but possibly the first around-the-net she has ever played was a highlight. "You know, it's always cool to do something fresh and new," she said of the shot. "I don't know if I have done that. I could be wrong, but I definitely don't remember ever hitting a shot like around the net. So it was good." While happy at the achievement, she drew the line at attempting a "tweener", or crowd-pleasing between-the-legs shot which is one of Roger Federer's favourites. "Oh, I don't do those. I'm not good at those," she said. "I did when I was younger, and I was terrible at it. I know what I'm good at, and I know things I'm not gonna excel at. I'm definitely not gonna excel at that shot." - In the groove - Williams gave herself an "A" for effort as she battled past Italy's Camila Giorgi in the first round, easing concerns over an injured knee that troubled her in the build-up, but she didn't need to try as hard against Hsieh. On paper, the 90th-ranked Taiwanese was no match for Williams. She reached the tournament second week as a qualifier in 2008, but had only won two matches here since. Williams though was taking nothing for granted in only her second tour-level match since the US Open in September. Again wearing a canary yellow pleated skirt and matching midriff-baring shirt, she was slow to get going with her serve rusty but she held on to go 1-0 in front. Williams soon got into the groove and was moving well, pressuring the Hsieh serve with searing returns and a wild volley from the Taiwanese handed her the initial break to pull 2-0 clear. The 34-year-old American, who dropped only three matches in 56 last season, came under pressure in the third game but held firm to maintain the advantage before Hsieh finally got on the scoreboard for 1-3. As Williams warmed to the task, Hsieh's Grand Slam inexperience showed with the American breaking again to love then completing the set in 28 minutes. Williams was consistently firing down serves 30 kph (18.6 mph) faster than Hsieh and it was taking its toll, with weak returns opening up the court for the top seed who made the most of her opportunities and sealed the match with an ace. "I don't think I made that many errors today," said Williams. "And I moved much better, so slowly but surely feeling a little bit better." Williams won three majors -- the Australian and French Opens and Wimbledon -- last year which took her to within one of Graf's long-time record of 22. She claimed her first Australian Open in 2003, beating sister Venus in the final, and reached her sixth last year when she toppled Sharapova. Taiwan's Hsieh Su-Wei plays a forehand return against Serena Williams of the US during their women's singles second round match of the Australian Open, in Melbourne, on January 20, 2016 Peter Parks (AFP) Prosecutors to seek war crimes trial for LRA warlord War crimes prosecutors will Thursday seek to convince the International Criminal Court to put infamous Lord's Resistance Army commander Dominic Ongwen on trial on charges including keeping sex slaves in a rebel army. Known as the "White Ant", Ongwen faces 70 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role from 2002 to 2005 in the rebel group's reign of terror in northern Uganda, led by its fugitive chief Joseph Kony. A former child-soldier-turned-warlord, Ongwen was Kony's one-time deputy and one of the most senior commanders of the LRA, which is accused of slaughtering more than 100,000 people and abducting 60,000 children in a bloody rebellion against Kampala that began in 1986. A Ugandan daily carries a picture of former LRA second-in-command Dominic Ongwen, who was transferred to The Hague a year ago shortly after surrendering to US special forces operating in the Central African Republic Isaac Kasamani (AFP/File) In the five-day confirmation hearing starting on Thursday, prosecutors will lay out the charges to a three-judge bench seeking to show that the evidence is solid enough to put Ongwen in the dock. The judges will then have to determine whether Ongwen should stand trial. The prosecution will focus in particular on four attacks on camps housing people forced to flee the LRA's violence. More than 130 people -- many of them children and babies -- died in these attacks and dozens of others were abducted, prosecutors said in the court document containing the charges. "LRA fighters under the joint control of Dominic Ongwen... abducted civilians, forced them to carry looted items... shot at them and threatened them with acts of violence," the charges read. In one instance after an attack on the Odek camp, northern Uganda, in April 2004 in which at least 61 men, women and children were killed, "one individual was forced to kill an abducted man from Odek with a club and forced to inspect decomposing bodies, including that of his father," prosecutors said. - Sex slaves - Ongwen, who has been wanted by The Hague-based ICC since 2005 in the court's longest-running case, was originally charged with seven war crimes and crimes against humanity. The ICC's chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda however in December broadened the charges to 70 which now also include eight sexual and gender-based crimes. Kony, Ongwen and senior commanders of Ongwen's notorious Sinia brigade "pursued a common plan to abduct girls and women to serve as domestic servants, forced wives and sex slaves," prosecutors said. "The victims had no choice but to submit to rape, enslavement, sexual slavery and become forced wives," they said. Ongwen is further charged with using children under 15 years old to fight in the LRA rebel army. - Victim? - Born in 1975, Ongwen was transferred to The Hague a year ago shortly after surrendering to US special forces operating in the Central African Republic. President Barack Obama had deployed a small number of US troops to the region to aid the hunt for Kony, who remains at large. Washington had also offered a $5 million (4.5-million-euro) reward for Ongwen's capture. Experts believe Ongwen fled after falling out with Kony and almost being killed. The LRA first emerged in northern Uganda in 1986, where it claimed to fight in the name of the Acholi ethnic group against the government of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. But over the years the LRA has moved across porous regional borders: it shifted from Uganda to sow terror in southern Sudan before moving into northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, and finally crossing into southeastern Central African Republic in March 2008. Combining religious mysticism with an astute guerrilla mind and bloodthirsty ruthlessness, Kony has turned scores of young girls into his personal sex slaves while claiming to be fighting to impose the Bible's Ten Commandments. Ongwen's own troops were notorious for their punishment raids, during which they would slice off victims' lips and ears as a grim calling card. But rights groups say Ongwen was himself initially a victim -- abducted at 14 by the LRA as he was walking to school -- which may prove a mitigating factor, should he be found guilty at trial. ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda (C), in December broadened the charges against infamous Lord's Resistance Army commander Dominic Ongwen to 70 which now also include eight sexual and gender-based crimes Isaac Kasamani (AFP/File) Late court plea to spare US man in case watched by pope With moral support from Pope Francis, attorneys for a man scheduled to be executed Wednesday in Texas presented to the US Supreme Court their case for an 11th-hour reprieve. Richard Masterson, 43, admitted that he strangled Darin Honeycutt, a transvestite, in 2001 in Houston. However, Masterson says that the victim died of a heart attack during consensual sexual relations. Honeycutt asked to be choked to reach a state of erotic asphyxiation, a practice that deprives the brain of oxygen to reach a more intense orgasm. Masterson's lawyers put a petition to the Supreme Court for an 11th-hour reprieve yesterday On Friday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles refused a request for a stay of execution. Masterson, who is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection, would be the second person executed in the United States in 2016. On Tuesday, his attorney filed a motion of stay of execution to the US Supreme Court, claiming that Honeycutt "died of a heart attack, making his death accidental and not a homicide at all." In the petition, the lawyers say that Masterson's case "presents a perfect storm of attorney incompetence and neglect combined with a severely mentally ill, suicidal defendant who did not kill anyone." Since Masterson was convicted of murder, new information has surfaced, including that "the state's medical examiner was a fraud who was unqualified to opine on the decedent's cause of death," says the petition. "After consulting qualified medical experts, Mr. Masterson learned that the decedent did not die from strangulation... he died from a heart attack caused by a pre-existing heart condition." Pope Francis, a death penalty opponent, is closely following the case, said Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schonborn at a press conference Monday. Another Catholic anti death-penalty activist, Sister Helen Prejean, wrote on Twitter that she has "serious doubts about Richard's guilt." The grounds for filing the Supreme Court petition are that Masterson "is actually innocent, the state suppressed evidence of Mr. Masterson's innocence, and Mr. Masterson's prior lawyers were incompetent when they did not notice the evidence of his innocence," Masterson's attorney Gregory Gardner told AFP. Pope Francis reaffirmed his opposition to the death penalty in September when he spoke to Congress on a visit to the United States. At least 21 dead in 'Taliban' attack on Pakistan university Gunmen armed with grenades and Kalashnikovs stormed a university in northwest Pakistan Wednesday leaving at least 21 dead, in an attack with all the same hallmarks of a 2014 massacre at a nearby Peshawar school. Security forces killed all four attackers in an assault claimed by a Pakistani Taliban faction but branded "un-Islamic" by the umbrella group's leadership, who vowed to hunt down those responsible. Security forces said the young attackers had hidden in fields surrounding the Bacha Khan university in the northwestern town of Charsadda, taking advantage of fog that severely restricted visibility to enter the premises unnoticed. Pakistani army soldiers take part in a search operation at the Bacha Khan university following an attack by militants in Charsadda, about 50 kilometres from Peshawar, on January 20, 2016 A Majeed (AFP/File) A university security guard told AFP they had scaled a wall to enter the campus, apparently killing a caretaker in a school guesthouse before moving on to the boys' hostel. Police, soldiers and special forces swarmed the establishment from the ground and the air to shut down the assault, which also left 30 injured. Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif declared a national day of mourning for Thursday and directed the country's security agencies to hunt those responsible for the attack, his office said. Wednesday's attack spurred widespread outrage across Pakistan, with a candlelight vigil for the victims held in the southwestern city of Quetta and dozens of people protesting in the port mega-city of Karachi. Pir Shahab, superintendent of investigations in Charsadda, said the 21 dead included a chemistry lecturer who was later revealed to have died trying to shield his pupils, two gardeners, one caretaker, and 17 students. The four attackers killed by security forces were not included in the toll, he said. Pakistan army spokesman Lieutenant General Asim Bajwa told reporters in Peshawar that 18 students and two staff members had been killed, putting the number of deaths at 20. An AFP reporter saw pools of blood and overturned furniture at a the male students' hostel, where security forces had earlier cornered the four gunmen. Television images earlier showed female students running for their lives and witnesses reported at least two explosions. - Taliban infighting - Umar Mansoor, a commander of the Hakimullah Mehsud faction of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistani (TTP), claimed responsibility for the attack, though TTP's central leadership denied any involvement. "TTP strongly condemns today's attack and disassociates itself completely from this un-Islamic attack," spokesman Muhammad Khurasani said on Twitter, vowing that the group would bring those behind it to justice. Security forces believe Mansoor was the mastermind behind a similar attack on an army-run school in nearby Peshawar in 2014 that left more than 150 people dead, most of them children. After a public outcry, the military intensified an offensive in the tribal areas where extremists had previously operated with impunity, and the government launched a crackdown. The TTP's condemnation appeared to indicate continued infighting in the Pakistani Taliban, as the Islamic State group seeks to recruit its disaffected fighters. Bajwa said two cell phones were recovered from the scene and had yielded significant information about the attackers, he said. "They were in contact, one mobile phone was receiving calls even after a terrorist's death," Bajwa said, adding the perpetrators had Afghan simcards. An anonymous senior security official said the faces of the attackers were recognisable and their fingerprints had been taken, adding: "We hope we will soon identify them." The official said two of the attackers were teenagers while the others were in their early 20s, and all were heavily armed with Kalashnikovs and grenades. - Teacher hailed - Earlier in the day, Pakistanis were hailing Syed Hamid Husain, a chemistry lecturer who tried to protect his students by opening fire on the militants before being shot himself, as a "martyr" and "gentleman". Witnesses said the professor had been known as "The Protector" even before he died shielding his students. Geology student Zahoor Ahmed said the tutor had warned him not to leave the building after the first shots were fired. "He was holding a pistol in his hand," he said. "Then I saw a bullet hit him. I saw two militants were firing. I ran inside and then managed to flee by jumping over the back wall." "He would always help the students and he was the one who knew all their secrets... He was referred to by students as 'The Protector'," geology student Waqar Ali told AFP. Another student told reporters he was in class when he heard gunshots. "We saw three terrorists shouting, 'Allah is great!' and rushing towards the stairs of our department," he said. The gunmen's assault, which Amnesty International said could be branded a war crime, was also condemned globally, including by India, the EU and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. "It is particularly appalling that these terrorists continue to attack educational institutions, targeting Pakistan's future generations," said a US State department spokesman. Map locating Charsadda in northern Pakistan where gunmen attacked a university on Wednesday Rescuers carry an injured man to a hospital following the attack by gunmen in the Bacha Khan university in Charsadda, about 50 kilometres from Peshawar, northern Pakistan on January 20, 2016 An army helicopter arrives at Bacha Khan university in Charsadda, about 50 kilometres from Peshawar, northern Pakistan on January 20, 2016 following an attack by militants Aamir Qureshi (AFP) Security personnel take position outside the Bacha Khan university in Charsadda, about 50 kilometres from Peshawar, northern Pakistan on January 20, 2016 following an attack by gunmen A Majeed (AFP) 'The Cove' dolphin activist Ric O'Barry detained in Japan: supporters US animal rights activist Ric O'Barry who featured in "The Cove", a documentary about dolphin slaughter in a Japanese town, has been detained in Tokyo by immigration authorities after being denied entry to the country, his supporters said Wednesday. O'Barry, 76, was held by immigration officials at Toyko's Narita International Airport on Monday and interrogated repeatedly, they said, citing his lawyer. He was denied entry to Japan on a tourist visa, they said on his website "Ric O'Barry's Dolphin Project". Animal rights activist Ric OBarry, the central character in "The Cove", stands by the cove in Taiji town, known as the dolphin hunting village, in Wakayama prefecture, western Japan on November 1, 2010 Shingo Ito (AFP/File) O'Barry appeared in "The Cove", the Oscar-winning documentary which drew worldwide attention to the annual dolphin hunt in the small Japanese town of Taiji, and has frequently visited Japan and the fishing community to protest against the killing of the mammals. The Tokyo Immigration Bureau said it cannot comment on individual cases, citing privacy rules. It is not the first time O'Barry has been detained by Japanese authorities. Last September he was arrested near Taiji on the eve of the start of the controversial six-month dolphin hunt, for allegedly failing to carry his passport after being stopped by police. He was released the following night. In recent years, Japanese police have dispatched more officers to Taiji during the hunt in anticipation of possible clashes between locals and activists from conservation group Sea Shepherd. During the current detention immigration officials accused him of making "The Cove" movie and collaborating with Sea Shepherd, which he denied, the supporters said, citing his lawyer. O'Barry's attorney could not immediately be reached for comment. "I feel I am being used as a figurehead representing all Western activists," he said through his son, Lincoln O'Barry, on the website. The last social networking post by O'Barry himself is an Instagram photo with the comment: "Here we go again...", showing an immigration sign apparently at a Japanese airport, dated Sunday. Australians smash their way to 348-8 in ODI against India Australian openers Aaron Finch and David Warner led an all-out assault as they blasted their way to 348 for eight in the fourth one-day international against India in Canberra on Wednesday. Finch made 107 and Warner 93 in a huge opening stand of 187 before captain Steve Smith smashed 51 off only 29 balls and Glenn Maxwell 41 from 20 on a docile Manuka Oval wicket. Australia won the first three ODIs in the five-match series batting second, chasing down totals of 309, 308 and 295 with ease. Australian batsmen David Warner (L) and Aaron Finch touch gloves during their fourth ODI match against India, at the Manuka Oval in Canberra, on January 20, 2016 Mark Graham (AFP) Batting first on Wednesday, the Australians flew past 300 in the 46th over to set India a daunting run chase. The huge total was set up by the opening stand from Finch and Warner. Warner, who was playing his first match after taking two games off for paternity leave, batted out a maiden over to start the innings but soon began to find the middle of the bat. He was particularly harsh on recalled paceman Bhuvneshwar Kumar, who went for 0-69 from eight overs, and spinner Gurkeerat Singh (0-24 from three). He brought up his 50 from 46 balls with eight boundaries and a six as the Australians took complete control. Finch was more sedate than his partner, taking 61 balls for his half century, but he began to pick up the pace soon after, his innings especially damaging to umpire Richard Kettleborough, who was hit on the shin by a powerful on-drive and had to be replaced in the middle by Paul Wilson. Warner eventually fell for 93 when he tried to smash a good length ball from Ishant Sharma and was bowled off an inside edge. Finch fell when he skied a pull shot and was caught by Ishant Sharma. India took regular wickets to slow the scoring down until Maxwell teed off in the last two overs. S. Korean academic pleads not guilty to defaming 'comfort women' A South Korean academic accused of writing a book that defamed wartime sex slaves denied the charge in court on Wednesday, insisting her work was in the public interest. Park Yu-Ha, a professor at Seoul's Sejong University, was formally charged by prosecutors last November following an investigation prompted by complaints from a group of so-called "comfort women". Mainstream historians say up to 200,000 women, mostly from Korea but also other parts of Asia including China, were forced to work in Japanese military brothels during World War II. Park Yu-Ha, a professor at Seoul's Sejong University, talks to the media outside a court in Seoul on January 20, 2016 In "The Comfort Women of the Empire" published in 2013, Park challenged the dominant narrative in South Korea that all comfort women were dragged from their homes by Japanese soldiers. Park suggested the reality was more complex, with some of the women volunteering -- though without necessarily knowing what their eventual fate would be. The book also suggested some women forged an emotional bond with the soldiers they served, sparking an angry reaction from some surviving comfort women. "Park provided a different approach to explore this issue that had remained unresolved for so long," her lawyer said in court. "She wrote the book only for interest of the public," the lawyer was quoted a saying by the Yonhap news agency. As the result of a separate civil suit, Park was ordered by a court last week to pay nine former sex slaves a total of 90 million won ($74,000) in damages. She has appealed the decision. On Tuesday, Park said she would release the full text of her book online for free. The book blames the plight of the comfort women on the entire "patriarchal social system" in both Japan and South Korea that exploited poor, uneducated women. Park said some passages had been taken out of context to build the case against her. The hugely emotional comfort women issue has marred ties between Seoul and Tokyo for decades. The two neighbours reached an agreement last month to resolve the issue, with Tokyo offering an apology and a one-billion yen ($8.5 million) payment to South Korean survivors. Both governments described the agreement as "final and irreversible", but it has been criticised by surviving comfort women and their supporters in South Korea for Japan's refusal to accept formal legal responsibility. Hong Kong students skip classes to protest at 'pro-Beijing' appointment Students protested on the campus of Hong Kong's leading university Wednesday after a pro-Beijing official was appointed to a senior role, as fears grow of increasing political interference in education. Around 100 protesters left classrooms to rally at the Hong Kong University campus following the appointment of Arthur Li, known to be close with the government, as chairman of the university's governing council last month. The appointment taps into wider concerns that academic freedoms in the semi-autonomous Chinese city are under threat, particularly in the wake of student-led mass pro-democracy rallies in late 2014. A student sets up a banner during a rally at Hong Kong University on January 20, 2015 protesting against the appointment of Arthur Li, known to be close with the government, as chairman of the university's governing council last month Philippe Lopez (AFP) "We are conducting a class boycott in order to target unfairness in the system. Students have raised opposition to the appointment but the school's autonomy is threatened," student leader Yvonne Leung told protesters through loudspeakers. "It's an abuse of power," she said. Li, a member of Hong Kong's Executive Council, the top advisory body to the government, started his three-year term on January 1. He is close to the city's unpopular leader Leung Chun-ying, who is also the chancellor of all the city's universities. His appointment came after the university council rejected the nomination of liberal law scholar Johannes Chan as pro-vice chancellor at the university, sparking protests from staff, students and members of the public. Protesters vow to boycott classes for a week. Former British colony Hong Kong was handed back to China in 1997 under a deal that guaranteed the retention of its civil liberties and capitalist system for 50 years. But there are fears those freedoms are being eroded. In 2012 tens of thousands marched against plans for "national education", a government proposal to introduce Beijing-centric patriotic teaching in schools. The plan was later dropped. 12 months since Saudi King Salman acceded to the throne Here are key dates for the year since King Salman took the throne in Saudi Arabia in January 2015. - January 23, 2015: Salman accedes to the throne following the death of his half-brother King Abdullah. He chooses his nephew Mohammed bin Nayef as deputy crown prince, and promotes his son Prince Mohammed bin Salman to defence minister. - March 26: Saudi Arabia leads a military coalition in an air campaign against Shiite Huthi rebels and their allies in Yemen in support of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi. Coalition members later deploy troops in Yemen. Saudi Arabia's King Salman chairs a cabinet meeting in capital Riyadh - April 29: King Salman promotes Mohammed bin Nayef to crown prince after removing his half-brother Moqren. He appoints his son Mohammed bin Salman as deputy crown prince, putting him second in line to the throne. - May 13: King Salman snubs an extraordinary meeting between US President Barack Obama and Gulf leaders in response to a rapprochement between Washington and Tehran. - July 18: Saudi authorities announce the dismantling of an organisation linked to the Islamic State group, arresting 431 suspected members and foiling attempts to attack mosques and a diplomatic mission. - September 24: Around 2,300 pilgrims die in a stampede near Mecca, in the deadliest incident recorded during the annual hajj. Iran, which loses about 464 of its pilgrims, accuses Saudi authorities of being incompetent. Earlier that month, at least 109 people died when a crane crashed into the Grand Mosque in Mecca. - October 29: Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, sentenced to 10 years in jail and 1,000 lashes for allegedly insulting Islam, wins the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament. Saudi Arabia is also criticised for the rise in the number of its executions, which reach 153 by the end of 2015, up from 87 in 2014. - December 12: Saudi women are allowed to vote for the first time ever in municipal elections in which they also participate as candidates for the first time. Twenty women are voted in. - December 15: Saudi Arabia announces the launch of an anti-terrorism coalition of 34 Muslim countries. Five days earlier, Riyadh hosted a meeting of Syria's main opposition factions, whose representatives agreed to hold talks with President Bashar al-Assad's regime. - December 28: Saudi Arabia announces a budget deficit of $98 billion in 2015 due to a sharp drop in oil prices. - January 2: Saudi Arabia executes 47 people convicted of terrorism, mostly Sunnis linked to Al-Qaeda, but also including prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr, whose execution stirs a diplomatic crisis between the kingdom and Iran. Afghan Taliban search for man who cut off wife's nose The Afghan Taliban said Wednesday they were searching for a man who cut off his wife's nose, condemning the attack as "un-Islamic", after online images of the young woman sparked widespread outrage. Mohammad Khan has been on the run since he attacked his wife Reza Gul, 20, with a pocket knife on Sunday, severely disfiguring her face. The couple lived in restive Ghormach district in the northwestern province of Faryab, which is largely under Taliban control. Khan is believed to have fled to an area near the border with Turkmenistan, local residents told AFP. Reza Gul -- whose nose was sliced off by her husband -- receives treatment at a hospital in the northern Afghan province of Faryab, on January 19, 2016 Hasan Sirdash (AFP) "We are searching for the husband and want to find out what made him take such action," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told AFP, rejecting local media reports that Khan had joined the militant group. Local Taliban official Noor Mohammad branded the attack as "un-Islamic". He said the group, who deprived women of many of their basic rights during their five-year rule, were "outraged by this incident". "We are trying to find the husband," Mohammad added, without elaborating on what the militant group, known for their brutal justice, would do to Khan if they found him. The incident is yet another example of the endemic violence against women in Afghan society, despite reforms since the hardline Taliban Islamist regime was ousted in a 2001 US-led invasion. The Afghan government has vowed to protect women's rights but failed to prevented violent attacks. In areas under Taliban control, the militant group often act as arbitrators of justice, and they had previously intervened in Gul's case to stop the persistent domestic abuse. Gul was married off five years ago as a teenager and was regularly beaten by her husband, forcing her to flee to her parents' home in a Taliban-controlled area, she previously told AFP. While there, she said, the insurgents made her unemployed husband swear on the Koran that he would not hurt her again. But soon after she returned to him, he sliced off her nose. Gul is currently in hospital in Faryab along with her two-month-old daughter. Provincial authorities in Faryab are making arrangements to send Gul to Turkey for reconstructive surgery, which is not available in Afghanistan. "The Turkish officials have promised that they will help in sending her to Turkey for treatment," Mohammad Marouf Samar, the province's acting health director, told AFP. "We are trying to get her national identification card and passport so she can travel," said Ahamad Javed Bedar, spokesman for the provincial governor. Greenpeace India appoints new chief amid legal battles Greenpeace India said Wednesday it had appointed a new director to steer the group forward amid ongoing legal battles with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government. The campaign group said Ravi Chellam, an environmentalist who has worked with the United Nations Development Programme and wildlife organisations, assumed his role as executive director earlier this month. His predecessor Samit Aich resigned last June together with programme director Divya Raghunandan over their handling of sexual harassment complaints and a rape allegation, although neither was directly implicated in the cases. Greenpeace Executive Director India Samit Aich gestures as he addresses a press conference in New Delhi on May 21, 2015 Sajjad Hussain (AFP/File) "Ravi will anchor the NGO, which has been facing a series of challenges from a variety of government agencies, and renew the organisation's focus on campaigns," the group said in a statement. Greenpeace, which has been in India for 15 years, has been embroiled in legal battles with the Modi-led government over its funding and local operations, although it has managed successfully to defend itself. In the most recent case, the Madras High Court in November temporarily halted a government order cancelling the group's licence in the country, allowing it to continue operating. Earlier in 2015 New Delhi suspended Greenpeace's foreign funding licence and froze its domestic bank accounts for alleged rule violations. The environmental group later succeeded in removing those legal blocks. "Over the last year, Greenpeace India has had to defend itself against a barrage of charges, but has drawn strength from... the judiciary which has upheld our position time and time again," the group's new head Chellam said in the statement. Greenpeace says the authorities' actions are motivated by its criticism of the government, which it accuses of causing environmental degradation by excessive use of coal power, deforestation and nuclear projects. The group has also accused federal authorities of placing its campaigners on suspicious persons list after some were barred exit and entry into the country. China's Xi opens refinery with Saudi King Salman Chinese President Xi Jinping and Saudi King Salman on Wednesday inaugurated a joint-venture refinery, symbolising Beijing's deepening involvement in the Middle East and Riyadh's need for economic diversification. The event took place in the Saudi capital on the second day of Xi's first visit to the region. He later left for Cairo and will also travel to Saudi Arabia's rival Iran. The YASREF refinery, in Yanbu Industrial City on the Red Sea, is 62.5-percent held by Saudi oil giant Aramco, while China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (Sinopec) holds the balance. Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz (C) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) attend the inauguration of the Yanbu Aramco Sinopec Refining Company project in Riyadh on January 20, 2016 "YASREF represents both companies' focus on driving downstream growth," the refinery said in a statement. Billboards on a highway outside the ceremony showed Xi and Salman waving against a backdrop of the refinery. Saudi Arabia is China's biggest global supplier of crude, and state-owned Saudi Aramco says expansion into refining and chemicals fits the kingdom's goal of economic diversification. The policy has been given added urgency by a plunge in the kingdom's oil revenues. YASREF is one of five joint-venture refineries in Saudi Arabia. Another four are overseas, including one in Fujian, China. The YASREF refinery shipped its first diesel one year ago and has a capacity to refine 400,000 barrels of Arabian crude per day. Saudi Aramco and Sinopec also signed a framework agreement on cooperation, reflecting confidence "in the potential opportunities we can create together," said Saudi Aramco president Amin Nasser. - Growing trade - Sinopec's strengths in refinery and chemical technology would support the kingdom's drive to diversify its petroleum sector, said the company's chairman Wang Yupu. The ceremony, accompanied by a Chinese dragon and Arabian sword-dancing, took place in Riyadh at the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center (KAPSARC). Salman separately inaugurated that facility, which focuses on energy research and policy. Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi, who chairs KAPSARC's board of trustees, told the gathering the centre would "contribute to the diversification and expansion of the Saudi economy". Salman in December said he had ordered economic reforms to diversify sources of income and reduce the kingdom's high dependence on oil. Global crude prices have collapsed from above $100 a barrel in early 2014 to below $28 on Wednesday. To cope with a record budget deficit, the kingdom broke with its decades-old generous welfare system and raised fuel, electricity and other prices in its 2016 budget. Government spending has also been cut, there is talk of a value-added tax in the tax-free nation, and state assets including Saudi Aramco could be privatised. Trade between the Gulf nations and China, the world's second-largest economy, has been growing. Two-way commerce between China and Saudi Arabia alone reached $69.1 billion in 2014, according to China's official Xinhua news agency. Although China depends on the Middle East for its oil supplies, it has long taken a low-profile approach to the region's diplomatic and other disputes, only recently beginning to expand its role, especially in the Syrian crisis. Before Xi's visit, a Chinese analyst said Beijing would do what it could to ease heightened tensions between Saudi Arabia, the region's main Sunni power, and its Shiite rival Iran. Later, Xi was welcomed at Cairo airport by his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, with whom he will hold bilateral talks that focus on the economic sector. Bilateral trade between China and Egypt amounted to $11 billion in 2014, the bulk of it being Chinese exports to the biggest Sunni Arab country, state-run Al-Ahram newspaper reported. On Thursday, Xi is to visit Egypt's newly convened parliament, and will address a session of the Cairo-based Arab League. US, France condemn Russia's role in Syria The US and French defence ministers on Wednesday condemned Moscow's role in the Syria conflict, saying Russian jets should stop targeting the opposition forces fighting the Islamic State group. "The Russians are on the wrong track strategically and also in some cases tactically," said US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter after a meeting in Paris of seven defence ministers in the coalition fighting IS. "We don't have a basis for broader cooperation (with Russia)," Carter said. French Defence Jean-Yves Le Drian (R) addresses a joint press conference with US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter after a working meeting on the battle against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, on January 20, 2016 in Paris Alain Jocard (AFP) His French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian said, for his part: "We hope that Russia will concentrate its efforts against Daesh (the Arabic acronym for IS) and stop bombing the groups of the uprising (against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad) who themselves are fighting Daesh." At the same time on Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia was ready to work more closely with the US-led coalition to help facilitate aid deliveries inside Syria. Speaking after talks with his US counterpart John Kerry in Zurich, Switzerland, he said: "We spoke about how the Russian air force, when planning its actions, takes into account the programmes that the UN humanitarian organisations, the Red Cross and other NGOs carry out. "We said that we will be ready to more closely coordinate our actions with the American coalition in this direction." He also said UN-brokered Syria peace talks would begin "in the next few days" in Geneva. Lavrov rejected suggestions that the negotiations, tentatively set for January 25, might be delayed until February amid disagreements over who will represent the Syrian opposition. Russian air force strikes besieged Syrian city, delivers aid The Russian military said Wednesday it had bombed the Syrian province of Deir Ezzor after a deadly Islamic State group assault saw jihadists tighten their siege of the provincial capital. "The Russian operation conducted military operations only in the provinces of Latakia and Deir Ezzor in light of unfavourable weather conditions and to avoid risks for the civilian population," Russian news agencies quoted military spokesman Igor Konashenkov as saying. Konashenkov added that Russian warplanes had struck 57 targets in 16 combat sorties in these two provinces in the past day. Russia began an aerial campaign in support of Syria's government on September 30 last year The military spokesman also said Russia had delivered 50 tonnes of humanitarian aid to the besieged city of Deir Ezzor on Friday. More than 40 tonnes of humanitarian cargo were delivered this week to the blockaded eastern Syrian city, the defence ministry said Tuesday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, also reported heavy Russian strikes in Deir Ezzor near to where IS has launched a bloody offensive on the provincial capital. It said at least 13 people were killed in strikes on three locations in Deir Ezzor, with two children among the dead. It added that heavy clashes were continuing between regime and IS fighters. The monitor said IS jihadists had killed at least eight members of the pro-regime forces on Wednesday, including six who had been captured the previous day. At least one was beheaded. Another seven were killed in fighting with the extremists, the monitor said. IS launched its offensive on Deir Ezzor city on Saturday, with dozens of its fighters carrying out suicide bomb attacks as they stormed government positions. The jihadists now control 60 percent of the city, intensifying a siege that had already caused fear and hardship for the roughly 200,000 people still living there. Around 70 percent of the city's remaining residents are women and children, according to the United Nations. The Observatory said late on Tuesday that IS had released 270 of more than 400 civilians it had abducted during its initial assault on Deir Ezzor. The Russian military said Tuesday its jets had struck 579 "terrorist targets" in 157 combat sorties in the Aleppo, Raqa, Latakia, Homs, Hama and Deir Ezzor provinces. Russia began an aerial campaign in support of Syria's government on September 30. The Observatory said Wednesday that over 3,000 people had been killed in the strikes so far, including 1,015 civilians. It reported at least seven people, including three children, were killed on Wednesday in apparent Russian strikes in Idlib province, in northwest Syria, which is under rebel control. Moscow has dismissed allegations of civilian deaths in its strikes as "absurd". NY police officer on trial for shooting dead unarmed man The trial began Wednesday of a rookie New York police officer accused of manslaughter in the death of an unarmed black man whose shooting fueled nationwide protests against US police tactics. Peter Liang, 28, faces up to 15 years if convicted of manslaughter in the second degree, criminally negligent homicide, assault in the second degree, reckless endangerment and two counts of official misconduct. Liang fatally shot Akai Gurley, 28, the father of a young daughter, in a dimly lit stairwell of a Brooklyn housing project on November 20, 2014. New York Police Department rookie officer Peter Liang (C) arrives at a courtroom in Brooklyn, New York, on January 20, 2016 Jewel Samad (AFP) His death closely followed those of Eric Garner, a father of six in New York, and 18-year-old Michael Brown in Missouri, also at the hands of police. Brown's death sparked the first of angry and at times violent protests across America. Liang appeared in Kings County Supreme Court dressed in a suit, white shirt and gray tie. He made no remarks and sat silently next to his lawyers as jury selection for his trial began. It is rare for US police officers to face trial for actions carried out in the line of duty. The Asian-American officer was on the job just 18 months before the shooting. The trial is likely to last three to four weeks, Judge Danny Chun said. Jury selection is expected to continue Thursday and opening statements are scheduled next Monday. Liang and his partner were on a routine patrol of the Louis H. Pink Houses complex, the scene of two murders in one year, the night that Gurley was killed. Liang left the roof and walked down the stairs to the eighth floor. The lights were not working and at that moment Gurley and his girlfriend stepped into the stairwell, a floor below, when the elevator failed to appear. Liang opened fire and the bullet struck Gurley in the chest. - Missing minutes after killing - New York police immediately declared his death a "tragedy" and Commissioner Bill Bratton described Gurley as a "total innocent." Within hours Brooklyn district attorney Ken Thompson opened an investigation into Gurley's death, interviewing dozens of witnesses and inspecting the staircase multiple times. A grand jury's subsequent decision to indict Liang came in stark contrast to decisions by other grand juries in similar cases, particularly the death of Brown in Missouri and Garner in New York. Dozens of potential jurors spent Wednesday trying to be excused, citing reasons such as lack of fluency in English, a bad experience with the police or claiming to have read a lot about the case. Others said they had grown up surrounded by police officers and would be biased or unable to exercise fair judgment. "There was a lot of police misconduct recently, I don't think I can be fair," said one potential juror, who was excused. After Liang fired the bullet, he and partner Shaun Landau did not respond to radio contact for more nearly seven minutes, the New York Daily News reported. Kimberly Ballinger, the mother of Gurley's daughter, filed a wrongful death suit last May against the city, the two officers and the housing authority which runs the apartment building. A series of high-profile police killings in the US, usually of black men or youths, triggered a nationwide debate about police reform and penalties for officers who kill unarmed suspects. The US Bureau of Justice Statistics says that blacks accounted for 32 percent of all reported arrest-related deaths from 2003 to 2009, despite making up 13 percent of the population. Syria opposition names Saudi-backed Islamist top negotiator Syria's largest opposition coalition on Wednesday named an Islamist rebel chief backed by Riyadh as its chief negotiator for peace talks slated to open on January 25 in Geneva. The coalition of political and armed opposition groups demanded the exclusion of other parties from the talks and a halt to the Syrian army's bombardment and sieges of populated areas. It has appointed Mohammed Alloush, a political leader of the Saudi-backed armed group Jaish al-Islam, as its chief negotiator, the coalition's general coordinator, Riad Hijab, announced at a news conference in Riyadh. Syrian opposition coalition general coordinator Riad Hijab (pictured in 2012) insisted the committee's delegation should be the only opposition representative at the peace talks in Geneva Khalil Mazraawi (AFP/File) He said Asaad al-Zoabi, a general who defected from the army, will serve as head of the delegation, with Syrian National Council chief George Sabra as his deputy. A 33-member opposition "supreme committee" was formed at a landmark meeting last month of Syrian opposition groups in the Saudi capital. Hijab insisted the committee's delegation should be the only opposition representative at the talks, aimed at bringing an end to a five-year-conflict that has cost more than 260,000 lives. "We will not go to negotiations if a third party or person is added," he warned. Hijab also said that "we cannot go to negotiations with our people dying of hunger and under shelling" by pro-regime forces. Countries pushing for a peace deal for Syria, including the United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran, have struggled to agree on the list of opposition delegates. Russia and Iran, Saudi Arabia's regional rival, are the main supporters of President Bashar al-Assad. Moscow wants the participation of Damascus-tolerated opposition groups. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said Tuesday that the Riyadh-based committee was "the concerned body, and nobody else can impose on them who should represent them" in negotiations. Riyadh in December brought together about 100 representatives at the meeting of Syria's main political opposition and armed factions. They agreed to negotiate with the regime but insisted Assad step down at the start of any political transition. The Islamic State jihadist group, which has seized large parts of Syria and Iraq, and the Al-Qaeda affiliated Al-Nusra Front were excluded from the Riyadh meeting. Kurdish fighters were also left out. A newly formed secular Kurdish-Arab alliance, the Syrian Democratic Council, last week demanded its own seat at the negotiating table and said it would not be grouped with the Riyadh body. Syria's tolerated domestic opposition, the National Coordinating Committee for Democratic Change, belongs to the Riyadh grouping but on Wednesday slammed Alloush and Zoabi's appointments. It said it was "not acceptable for the head of the delegation and the chief negotiator to be affiliated with the armed opposition" and urged the make-up of the delegation be changed. US says Puerto Rico creditors should 'share sacrifice' US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said Wednesday that creditors holding Puerto Rico's $70 billion of debt should agree to sacrifices in a debt restructuring. With the US island territory in its 10th year of recession and the government forced to cut spending, "the people of Puerto Rico are sacrificing," Lew said after talks with local officials. "But unless that sacrifice is shared by creditors in an orderly restructuring, there is no path out of insolvency and back to growth," he said, according to prepared remarks. US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, pictured December 1, 2015, pledged to help Puerto Rico, short of a full bailout, and said the Treasury has a dedicated team that is working with Puerto Rico's economic managers "on a daily basis" Saul Loeb (AFP/File) Lew was visiting the Caribbean island of 3.5 million nearly three weeks after it defaulted on its debt and warned that it could miss larger payments in coming months without some relief from creditors. Unable to reach agreements on restructuring with bondholders, Puerto Rico, with the support of President Barack Obama's administration, is pressing the US Congress to pass legislation that would allow it to enter bankruptcy protection and force all of its creditors into talks together. Lew pledged to help the island, short of a full bailout, and said the Treasury has a dedicated team that is working with Puerto Rico's economic managers "on a daily basis." But he stressed that Congress needs to pass the bankruptcy legislation to begin turning the situation around. "This crisis is already imposing real hardship on the people of Puerto Rico in terms of basic health care, legal and education services, and significant unemployment," he said. West vows to crush IS 'power centres' amid fresh hopes for Syria peace talks Western leaders injected fresh urgency into the fight against the Islamic State group Wednesday, vowing to destroy its "power centres", while Russia announced crucial Syrian peace talks would begin within days. After meeting with key allies in Paris, US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter vowed to crush what he called the IS "cancer" by "collapsing its two power centres in Raqa and Mosul" and combating "the metastasis of the ISIL tumour worldwide." At the same time, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced Syria peace talks would start "in the next few days" after he met US Secretary of State John Kerry in Zurich. French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian (L) welcomes US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter on January 20, 2016, in Paris Alain Jocard (AFP) Iran also said it would throw its weight behind a political solution, with Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif telling the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Switzerland "there is no military solution to the crisis." Russia and Iran are accused of propping up their ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and Western powers say Moscow is indiscriminately bombing Syrian opposition forces fighting IS. "The Russians are on the wrong track strategically and also in some cases tactically," Carter said. "We don't have a basis for broader cooperation (with Russia)," Carter said. Lavrov, by contrast, insisted Russia was willing to "more closely coordinate our actions" with the coalition to facilitate aid deliveries in Syria. The meeting in Paris comprised defence ministers from Australia, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the United States. Carter announced an unprecedented meeting of 26 defence ministers in the anti-IS coalition, plus Iraq, to be held in Brussels on February 11 and warned he would demand greater effort. "Every nation must come prepared to discuss further contributions to the fight," he said. Carter has repeatedly urged other countries in the approximately 60-member coalition to step up participation in the military effort, particularly Arab and Gulf countries that are more focused on fighting Iran-backed forces in Yemen. - 'Daesh is retreating' - Ministers were keen to tout progress in the campaign. "Daesh is retreating, it is time to increase our joint efforts by implementing a coherent military strategy," French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told reporters. Daesh is another name for IS, which is also called ISIL. IS has lost around a quarter of its self-proclaimed caliphate, including the Iraqi city of Ramadi to US-backed local forces last month. A Britain-based monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said on Tuesday that IS has announced plans to halve the monthly pay of its members in Syria and Iraq. The financial strain could be a result of intensified air strikes on its oil infrastructure, a key source of revenue for the group. Separately, Colonel Steve Warren, a Baghdad-based spokesman for the US-led anti-IS coalition, on Wednesday said nine strikes in Iraq and Syria in recent months had led to the destruction of "tens of millions" of dollars in IS cash, much of it derived from illicit oil sales. Despite some successes, the coalition faces a rapidly spreading threat around the world, notably in Libya where political chaos has allowed IS to build an estimated 3,000-strong force. The West also lacks allies on the ground in Syria, since most opposition groups are focused on toppling Assad. US, Australian and French instructors have already trained 15,000 Iraqi soldiers, notably against improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and vehicle suicide attacks that are the IS weapons of choice. The Pentagon is currently pushing Iraq to launch an assault to recapture the city of Mosul from IS, and US Colonel Warren said Iraqi security forces would need help from "hundreds" of Western military trainers to do so. But Western forces remain reluctant to get too deeply involved, fearing a repeat of the quagmire of previous campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. Australia has already ruled out any increase to its military contribution, and Canada was pointedly absent from Wednesday's meeting after its new government said it would pull out of the bombing campaign. - Aid deliveries - IS showed its continued threat this week, taking 400 people hostage when it attacked the eastern Syrian town of Deir Ezzor. Some 270 have since been released. Russia said Wednesday it had bombed the area in the past day, and delivered 50 tonnes of humanitarian aid to the town. The Syrian Observatory confirmed the bombings and said heavy clashes were continuing between regime and IS fighters. Meanwhile, UN-brokered Syrian peace talks are tentatively set for next Monday in Geneva, despite disagreements over who will represent the opposition. Syria's largest opposition coalition on Wednesday picked Islamist rebel chief Mohammed Alloush, who has the support of Saudi Arabia, but it has demanded the exclusion of other parties, including Kurdish fighters who have been one of the most capable forces against IS. Iraqi security forces place the Iraqi flag above the Islamic State group flag on December 28, 2015 in front of the Anbar police headquarters after they recaptured Ramadi Ahmad al-Rubaye (AFP/File) US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter (L) shakes hands with French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian on January 20, 2016 in Paris Alain Jocard (AFP) Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif speaks during a special session of the World Economic Forum in Davos, on January 20, 2016 Fabrice Coffrini (AFP) A French Rafale fighter lands aboard the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier on November 23, 2015, part of the operation in Syria and Iraq against the Islamic State group Anne-Christine Poujoulat (AFP/File) UN reduces size of peacekeeping force in Ivory Coast The UN Security Council decided Wednesday to reduce the size of the UN peacekeeping force in Ivory Coast in light of an improved security situation and last October's successful presidential elections. The number of troops authorized for the UN Operation in the Ivory Coast was reduced from 5,437 to 4,000 soldiers, according to the resolution, which was adopted by unanimity. The mission also includes 1,500 police officers. A UN peacekeeper in Abidjan, Ivory Coast stands guard by a UN helicopter used to transport officials and journalists on January 3, 2011 Issuof Sanogo (AFP/File) UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was asked to report at the end of March on the drawdown and his recommendations on the mission's future. The government of the Ivory Coast wants all the UN peacekeepers out by the end of 2017 or early 2018. In the resolution, the council commends the government's role in staging transparent elections in October and congratulates Ivorians for displaying "their strong commitment to peace and democracy." It notes, however, that while "considerable" progress has been made in putting the Ivory Coast back on a path toward stability, there remains "a threat to international peace and security in the region." The resolution keeps in place an arms embargo, despite Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara's repeated demands that it be lifted. The embargo has been in effect since 2004, but was eased in 2012 to enable the training of the country's security forces. An embargo on diamond exports dating from 2005 was lifted in 2014. The Ivory Coast has been buffeted by crisis for the past decade, split by a rebellion in the north and controlled in the south by partisans of ex-president Laurent Gbagbo, who ruled from 2000 to 2011. Special UN representative Aichatou Mindaoudou said in a recent Security Council debate that the security situation in Ivory Coast was now stable. Millions in 'Daesh cash' destroyed in US strikes The US-led effort to fight Islamic State jihadists in Iraq and Syria has a new focus: bomb the "Daesh cash." Daesh -- a widely used Arabic abbreviation for the IS group -- have been hoarding millions of dollars in local currency and greenbacks across Iraq and Syria, much of it derived from illicit oil sales. Colonel Steve Warren, a Baghdad-based spokesman for the US-led coalition that has been fighting the IS group since August 2014, said nine strikes in Iraq and Syria in recent months have led to the destruction of "tens of millions" of dollars of this money. This August 9, 2015 US Air Force photo shows an F-16 Fighting Falcon in support of Operation Inherent Resolve A1C Deana Heitzman (US Air Force/AFP/File) "Striking these cash collection points hurts this enemy," Warren told Pentagon reporters in a video call Wednesday. "They operate on cash; there is no credit in ISIL," he added, using another alternative name for the jihadist group that seized huge regions in Syria and Iraq in 2014 and 2015. The US military has released videos of air strikes on what it says are cash-collection facilities. In a video of an attack on a building in Mosul earlier this month, vast plumes of what appears to be money can be seen fluttering into the sky following a huge blast. A coalition strike hit another cash collection facility in Mosul on Monday, Warren said. Evidence shows this focus on IS cash, combined with the continued bombing of oil trucks that ferry illicit oil around Syria, is hurting the jihadists' bottom line, Warren said. He cited press reports saying IS leaders have had to cut their fighters' salaries by as much as half. "A combination of taking away their ability to earn money by striking oil and taking away the money they have on hand by striking the Daesh cash really puts the squeeze on them," Warren said. Initial estimates are that the number of civilian casualties in the money strikes was less than 10, Warren said. Under pressure from critics who say the anti-IS campaign is moving too slowly, the Pentagon has indicated it is considering a wider array of targets even if these might cause civilian deaths, provided these attacks yield significant gains against the jihadists. "One of the burdens of command is to weigh the military value of a target versus the potential for civilian loss of life," Warren said. "These are tough decisions that commanders have to make." Israel begins construction on Jordan border fence Israel has begun construction on a security fence along its border with Jordan, the defence ministry announced Wednesday, its latest such barrier intended to keep out illegal migrants and militants. It will be the latest "security fence" built by Israel, including one separating it from the West Bank and another in the Golan Heights near Syria. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said when it was approved in June that the new fence was a continuation of a 240-kilometre (150-mile) barrier built along the Egyptian border which "blocked the entry of illegal migrants into Israel and the various terrorist movements". Israeli workers use excavators at the construction site of a new fence along Israel's border with Jordan in the Arabah valley on September 8, 2015 Menahem Kahana (AFP/File) "This barrier is intended to protect Israeli citizens against any security threat coming from Jordan," Arielle Heffez, a spokesman for the ministry, told AFP on Wednesday. In 2013, Israel erected a 240-kilometre electronic fence along its southern border with Egypt. The Jordanian fence will be "based on the models erected along the Egyptian border and the Golan Heights," the defence ministry said. It will include "roads, observation towers, operations rooms and other advanced means." Qaeda leader in Syria town assassinated: monitor A local leader of Al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate was assassinated by unknown gunmen on Wednesday, the latest in a string of killings of mostly hardline Islamist rebels, a monitor said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Iyad al-Adl, "emir" for the town of Ariha in northwestern Syria's Idlib province, was shot dead along with a second member of Al-Nusra Front. The Britain-based monitor said unidentified gunmen opened fire on the car in which the men were driving in a western neighbourhood of Ariha. A view of the Syrian town of Ariha, where Iyad al-Adl was shot dead along with a second member of Al-Nusra Front Ghaith Omran (Al-Maarra Today/AFP/File) The assassination is the latest in a series of targeted killings of senior Islamist rebels, including from the Al-Qaeda affiliate Nusra and its ally Ahrar al-Sham. Analysts say the killings could be the work of the regime or the Islamic State group, which considers all factions that have not pledged allegiance to it to be its rivals. At least 20 rebel commanders have been killed in the assassinations since early December in several parts of Syria, including central Homs province, southern Daraa and elsewhere in Idlib. Idlib province is held by the powerful "Army of Conquest" coalition of rebels including Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham. Rebel groups have regularly accused IS of having sleeper cells in their territory, but the jihadists have not openly claimed the assassinations. Backing Trump, a polarizing Palin overshadows GOP race American conservatives watching and sometimes wincing as "Mama Grizzly" Sarah Palin threw her support to Donald Trump were left wondering whether their movement to reclaim the White House in 2016 had received a shot in the arm -- or to the heart. Conservative icon Palin, the 2008 vice presidential nominee, delivered the endorsement heard round the US political world in a rambling, sarcastic and occasionally improvisational speech Tuesday with Republican frontrunner Trump at her side. It might pay critical dividends for the braggadocious celebrity billionaire as he seeks conservative credibility in the run-up to the February 1 caucuses in Iowa, where Americans cast the first votes in the nominating process. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump embraces former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin at Iowa State University on January 19, 2016 in Ames, Iowa Aaron P. Bernstein (Getty/AFP) But several conservative pundits and analysts warned that it could also shred efforts to install a core conservative as the next US president. If Palin helps Trump win, "emotionalist nationalistic populism will have officially -- perhaps temporarily -- supplanted principled, policy-driven, limited-government conservatism as the dominant strain within the American right wing," wrote commentator Guy Benson on conservative opinion website Townhall.com. Palin has been one of the movement's controversial luminaries over the past decade. She has retained the loyalties of many core conservatives, which could translate into votes for Trump as he faces a stiff challenge in Iowa from Tea Party favorite Senator Ted Cruz. "We need someone new... who can bust up that establishment, that can make things great again," Palin told the Trump crowd. "Media heads are spinning," she said in a mocking tone. "This is going to be so much fun." US media indeed have had a field day with Palin's appearance in the Trump spotlight. "I'm with stupid!" blared the New York Daily News, depicting the pair on its front page. - Rogue once again - Securing Palin's endorsement when he did may have been a stroke of genius for Trump, who managed to steal the thunder from a surging Cruz in a state critical for the senator's nomination chances. But several conservative pundits and strategists have sounded off about Palin's endorsement, warning that it could backfire on a movement that has struggled to define itself within the parameters of a 2016 presidential race that has thoroughly upended convention. "OMG. Sarah Palin has gone rogue," William Kristol, founder and editor of The Weekly Standard magazine, tweeted after Palin's speech, in which she used foul language, mocked President Barack Obama as a "weak-kneed" coward, and evoked disturbing terrorism imagery. Palin has praised Trump for months, and she could act as an important surrogate for him on the campaign trail. But is she helping Trump harness the anger that has boiled over within the Republican base, or merely grabbing more self-promoting attention? The endorsement has fueled speculation that Palin, a former governor of Alaska, might be offered a position in a Trump cabinet, should he win the White House. "She could play a position if she wanted to," Trump told NBC on Wednesday. Critics panned Palin for backing a political novice whom they accuse of once supporting government bailouts and abortion rights and donating to Democrats. "I couldn't disagree with her more," disillusioned conservative talk show host Glenn Beck fumed on Facebook. "Maybe the press was right about her." Conservative personality Tucker Carlson, founder of The Daily Caller, was left unconvinced that Palin would help Trump's primary chances. "She's not that impressive, she squandered this great political capital she had eight years ago and hasn't achieved really anything since -- and also she gives disjointed speeches," he told Fox News. After losing in 2008, Palin kept a hand in politics while turning to business endeavors, including reality television and a stint as a pundit on Fox News. Her endorsement of Trump appears to draw a line between core conservatives and those in the more reactionary, anti-establishment camp. Even Cruz, who lost out to Trump for her endorsement, acknowledged Palin is capable of having an impact. "She can pick winners," Cruz has said, a wry reference to her endorsement of him in his underdog 2012 Senate race. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin told the crowd on January 19, 2016 in Ames, Iowa, "We need someone new... who can bust up that establishment, that can make things great again" Aaron P. Bernstein (Getty/AFP) It has been valued at $30,000 but is expected to fetch a lot more Now the car is set to be auctioned off at the Philadelphia Auto Show The humble car was dwarfed by the SUVs used by the Secret Service It was the humble car that was dwarfed by Secret Service SUVs as it carried Pope Francis through the streets of Philadelphia. And now one of the two custom-made, black Fiat 500Ls, that were created for the Papal visit to the city last year is set be sold off later this month at the Philadelphia Auto Show. The sale of the car takes place on January 29 and the Max Spann Real Estate and Auction Company has valued it at $30,000. A custom-made black Fiat 500L that was used by Pope Francis on his visit to Philadelphia is to be auctioned off at the Philadelphia Auto Show later this month The sale of the car takes place on January 29 and the Max Spann Real Estate and Auction Company has valued it at $30,000 The small Fiat 500L was dwarfed when it travelled in a motorcade alongside the Secret Service's SUVs However, as the car was used by the Pontiff it is unknown how much the five door car will actually end up fetching. But any potential buyer should be aware that in terms of performance, it crawls from 0-60 in nine seconds but is economic as it does 33 miles to the gallon. Anyone looking to place a bid on the Fiat can do so in person or online on the day of the sale and the proceeds will benefit four charities run by the archdiocese of Philadelphia. Mr Spann, president of the auction company said: 'I think there's going to be tremendous interest. 'Being that it was used by the Pope, there are intangibles. So it is really hard to predict what price it will fetch. Pope Francis has picked more modest vehicles than his German predecessor who had a preference for a luxury Mercedes Popemobile Fiat Chrysler made two Fiat 500Ls for the pope's use in Philadelphia last year, with the US Secret Service providing the licence plates. Francis also used models of the same vehicle in New York and Washington during his inaugural US tour, drawing massive crowds and delighting Americans with his humble manner. Archbishop of Philadelphia, Charles Chaput, said: 'When we learned that these vehicles would be given to us, we wanted to find some way for the public to see them and answer Pope Francis's call to love and care for the poor.' While Donna Crilly Farell, who was part of the committee that organised the Papal visit to Philadelphia added: 'The Fiat is such an icon of Pope Francis's visit. 'Several Catholic charities will enjoy simply incomparable benefits as a result of the auction.' The second Fiat, which Catholic authorities said they may sell at the same auction, will go on display at the auto show, which runs from January 30 to February 7. In 2013, the Pontiff even called on priests to stop driving flashy cars and pick something more 'humble' The proceeds of the sale of the car will benefit four charities run by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia The archdioceses of New York and Washington said they also anticipated each taking possession of two Fiats made available for the pope in their cities, but had not decided what to do with them. Since succeeding Pope Benedict in 2013, the former cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina has eschewed some of the more ostentatious trappings of his office and has chosen to live in a Vatican guest house rather than the opulent papal apartments. He has also picked more modest vehicles than his German predecessor who had a preference for a luxury Mercedes Popemobile. In 2013, he even called on priests to stop driving flashy cars and pick something more 'humble'. He said: 'A car is necessary to do a lot of work, but please, choose a more humble one. If you like the fancy one, just think about how many children are dying of hunger in the world.' However, since using the Fiats on his US visits, the manufacturer says their brand image has been 'greatly enhanced' in the U.S. New studio boss Spacey fears new Hollywood hack "House of Cards" star Kevin Spacey said Wednesday his new role as a studio boss made him doubly fearful that material could be destroyed or leaked in a repeat of the Sony Pictures hack last year. "Obviously the Sony hack was a wake-up call for anyone in my industry, and I would think for anyone in any industry," Spacey told a debate on cybersecurity at the gathering of the rich and powerful in a Swiss ski resort that also featured Wikipedia's founder and the creator of the World Wide Web. "It caused a tremendous amount of damage, I was personally affected by it and obviously it became the point of a great amount of controversy and issues of how does a company go about protecting itself," he said. US actor Kevin Spacey, pictured on February 26, 2015, said he had to change his email address after his conversations with Sony were released by WikiLeaks following a massive hack Justin Tallis (AFP/File) Spacey said he had to change his email address after his conversations with Sony were released by WikiLeaks following the massive hack that involved the release of stolen data including many still-to-be-released films, and also revealed an executive's unflattering comments about Angelina Jolie. Taking over as head of Relativity Studios two weeks ago had made him acutely aware of the dangers of content being released against its creator's will. He said: "For me now, the issue of content protection, and protection of intellectual property is even more important. "From the artist's point of view, a person's IP is their identity, it is what they hold dear, it is the way we know their work. "We hope that as things go forward, artists will be able to protect that identity and they'll be able to get the kind of credit they deserve." Tim Berners-Lee, the Briton who created the first web page 25 years ago, told the debate in Davos that the problems facing those seeking to protect the Internet were immense. "No matter how smart you think you have been, there is always someone out there being paid a lot of money to figure out where you have slipped up," he said. Jimmy Wales, who founded the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, urged companies and states to start spending "big money" to secure their systems. Sudan MPs approve harsher penalties for rioting Sudan's parliament Wednesday amended its criminal law to increase the penalty for causing criminal damage during riots from six months in prison to a maximum five-year jail sentence. The changes come one week after deadly unrest at a town in the western Darfur region, in which at least six people were killed and local government buildings were reportedly damaged. Under the amendment, anyone causing criminal damage in a riot "incurs a penalty of prison for a period of no more than five years with a fine that is equivalent to the value of the damage", parliament speaker Ibrahim Ahmed Omer announced after the changes were approved by lawmakers. A Sudanese girl walks past a truck carrying soldiers in the West Darfur state capital of El Geneina on July 24, 2008 Khaled Desouki (AFP/File) Previously, anyone convicted of causing criminal damage faced either a six-month prison sentence, a fine or 20 lashes. If they a carrying an "object that could be used to cause death or serious harm", they will also face a one-year term. Last week's deadly violence in West Darfur state came as security forces dispersed a demonstration outside local government buildings during which protesters reportedly burned vehicles. Darfur has been mired in conflict since 2003, when ethnic insurgents rebelled against President Omar al-Bashir complaining that their region was being marginalised. Obama anger at Michigan water crisis President Barack Obama expressed anger Wednesday at a high-profile health scare in Flint, Michigan, where lead-tainted water is believed to have sickened residents. Wading into a debate that has seen local authorities accused of putting lives at risk by cutting corners and trying to save money, Obama said, "You can't short-change basic services that we provide to our people." "If I was a parent up there I would be beside myself that my kids' health would be at risk," said Obama during a stop in nearby Detroit. US President Barack Obama speaks on January 20, 2016 in Detroit, Michigan Brendan Smialowski (AFP) As part of cost-cutting, the city began drawing water from the Flint River in April 2014 rather than continuing to buy it from Detroit. Officials are accused of ignoring months of health warnings about the foul-smelling water as residents complained that it was making them sick. Obama declared a state of emergency in Michigan on Saturday, freeing up federal aid to help Flint, a city of 100,000 at the epicenter of the scare. More bodies identified at notorious US reform school Seven bodies have now been identified from 55 unmarked graves dotting the grounds of a reform school for boys in Florida closed in 2011 after former pupils reported decades of abuse, researchers said. The remains of another 14 bodies were "presumptive identifications," according to a final report by University of South Florida (USF) anthropologist Dr. Erin Kimmerle to be presented to state officials Thursday. Since 2012, scientists have worked on the site of the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida where young, mostly black youths were often abused, raped and even murdered, according to former pupils. Seven bodies have now been identified from 55 unmarked graves dotting the grounds of the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Florida, closed in 2011 Scott Olson (Getty/AFP/File) Kimmerle and her team have exhumed the remains of 51 bodies. The notorious reformatory opened in 1900 but was closed by officials after numerous complaints of mistreatment. The latest two youths identified were caucasians named as Loyd Dutton and Grady Huff, who died in 1918 and 1935 respectively, a USF statement said. They were able to positively identify seven of the bodies using DNA matches. Although the fieldwork has ended, Kimmerle will continue to liaise with authorities to try to identify more bodies using DNA. Puerto Rico prosecutor killed after arriving home from work SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) A prosecutor who worked at the main court in Puerto Rico's capital was killed at her house by gunmen who followed her home from work, police said Tuesday. Authorities said 42-year-old Francelis Ortiz was fatally shot as she arrived at her house in the northern coastal town of Rio Grande. She was married to an attorney and had a 5-year-old daughter. Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla condemned the killing and promised a swift investigation. Officials say they have no suspects. Justice Secretary Cesar Miranda told radio station WKAQ that authorities will review security cameras at Ortiz's home as well as any big cases she might have handled. Through DNA, family finds missing woman's remains, closure SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) As a county gravedigger, Andrew Trejo has helped numerous families bury their loved ones. Nearly 28 years after his mother disappeared, he will finally get to do the same. Last year, he and four other relatives gave DNA samples to be checked against unidentified human remains recovered by law enforcement agencies in Orange County, California, and elsewhere in the hopes of finding Kristyne Olivia Trejo, who left her family home in Santa Ana in 1988 and never returned. Their DNA turned out to be a match with a skull and arm bone found in 1989 in the desert of nearby San Bernardino County. Tina Costa, right, wipes her eye as she talks about her mother Kristyne Olivia Trejo, as her brother Andrew Trejo looks on during a news conference at the Santa Ana Police Department, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016, in Santa Ana, Calif. Orange County authorities say DNA collected from relatives of Kristyne Olivia Trejo matches material from bones found in 1989. Its the first success for Orange Countys Identify the Missing Day held last October, which collected cheek swabs from relatives of some 34 missing persons that could be compared to the DNA of unidentified human remains. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson) "I'm sad that we're not bringing her home alive, but at least we have her, and can properly lay her to rest and we can start the process of healing," Trejo told reporters. It's the first success for Orange County's "Identify the Missing" Day held last October by the coroner's division of the Orange County Sheriff's Department. Cheek swabs were collected from relatives of some 34 missing people to be compared with the DNA of unidentified human remains. Such events have also been held in Michigan, New York and elsewhere as investigators turn to ever-improving DNA technology to forge connections between people reported missing and unidentified remains. One of the challenges is geography. Relatives might report a family member missing in one jurisdiction, with a match later found in another state or county. Bob Hunter, deputy coroner investigator for San Bernardino County, said a similar DNA gathering event held last year in his county might soon yield a similar match to remains found in another California county. "There are so many unidentified people who need to be identified," Hunter said, adding that his county has remains of about 600 unidentified people. "This needs to be a national event annually for every county in the United States." There is an open homicide investigation in the death of Trejo, he said. Trejo, who worked as a waitress, was living with her parents and two children in Santa Ana when she disappeared after leaving for a group meeting for recovering addicts, Andrew Trejo said. He expected her back later in the day to attend a ceremony marking his completion of the fifth grade, but she never made it. For years, he would wait for her after returning home from school. He remembered how she loved oldies music and how pretty she was. Trejo said he knew how much she loved him and his younger sister. She would never have simply walked out, he said. After a while, he said he stopped believing she would return. "I always wondered what happened, how and who could have done this to her," he said. "If justice isn't served here, I know that the Lord will take care of it." Tina Costa, right, listens as her brother Andrew Trejo talks about their mother Kristyne Olivia Trejo, during a news conference at the Santa Ana Police Department, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016, in Santa Ana, Calif. Orange County authorities say DNA collected from relatives of Kristyne Olivia Trejo matches material from bones found in 1989. Its the first success for Orange Countys Identify the Missing Day held last October, which collected cheek swabs from relatives of some 34 missing persons that could be compared to the DNA of unidentified human remains. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson) Tina Costa stands near a picture of her mother Kristyne Olivia Trejo after a news conference at the Santa Ana Police Department, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016, in Santa Ana, Calif. Orange County authorities say DNA collected from relatives of Kristyne Olivia Trejo matches material from bones found in 1989. Its the first success for Orange Countys Identify the Missing Day held last October, which collected cheek swabs from relatives of some 34 missing persons that could be compared to the DNA of unidentified human remains. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson) Andrew Trejo looks at a picture of his mother Kristyne Olivia Trejo, after a news conference at the Santa Ana Police Department, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016, in Santa Ana, Calif. Orange County authorities say DNA collected from relatives of Kristyne Olivia Trejo matches material from bones found in 1989. Its the first success for Orange Countys Identify the Missing Day held last October, which collected cheek swabs from relatives of some 34 missing persons that could be compared to the DNA of unidentified human remains.. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson) Tina Costa, right, and her brother Andrew Trejo stand near a picture of their mother Kristyne Olivia Trejo, after a news conference at the Santa Ana Police Department, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016, in Santa Ana, Calif. Orange County authorities say DNA collected from relatives of Kristyne Olivia Trejo matches material from bones found in 1989. Its the first success for Orange Countys Identify the Missing Day held last October, which collected cheek swabs from relatives of some 34 missing persons that could be compared to the DNA of unidentified human remains. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson) Utah police nearly recaptured fugitive who killed officer SALT LAKE CITY (AP) A Utah police department is grieving for a fellow officer slain while working overtime to pay for his cancer treatments amid questions about why his shooter was on the streets in the first place, despite a long rap sheet. Officer Douglas Scott Barney, of Unified Police of Salt Lake County, was killed Sunday after coming across Cory Lee Henderson, who later died in a shootout with other officers. Henderson, 31, had walked away from a state-run parolee drug treatment center last month. It was his latest cycle through federal prisons and halfway houses as he faced multiple gun and drug-related charges over the past decade. Police talk at the scene of an officer-involved shooting, in Holladay, Utah, Sunday, Jan. 17, 2016. Utah police officer Douglas Barney was killed Sunday, after he was shot by a suspect who was later killed by police. (Scott Sommerdorf/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP) DESERET NEWS OUT; LOCAL TELEVISION OUT; MAGS OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT Gang investigators had tracked him to a Salt Lake City suburb Friday night, but missed capturing him, said Lt. Lex Bell of the Unified Police. "They're taking it a little bit hard," Bell said. Henderson had run a red light and crashed a car Sunday, then walked away. Barney, 44, who was responding after the crash, was found shot in the head, his gun still in the holster. The father of three teenagers was working an overtime shift he'd taken to help pay off debt from his bladder cancer treatments. He had been a police officer 18 years. Henderson also shot one of Barney's partners through both legs before he was killed. Officer Jon Richey, 51, was released from a hospital on Tuesday after his wounds were treated. Officers didn't know Henderson was a fugitive until hours after the shooting, Bell said. Police are often frustrated to see violent offenders out of jail weeks after arrest, he said. "We'll risk our life to find somebody. A month or two later, they go back on the street," he said. Henderson was released from prison on parole in April after serving a 14-month stint on a gun charge, but he violated his parole a two months later and a warrant went out for his arrest, court records show. He was picked up on drug and firearm charges in October. For the parole violation, Utah's parole board sentenced Henderson to two months in prison followed by a stint at a state-run drug treatment center. The board did not know federal prosecutors planned to file new charges against him. A new state law designed to put more drug offenders into treatment prevented the board from giving him a longer prison sentence, said Greg Johnson with Utah Board of Pardons and Parole. Henderson told his parole officer that he wanted to try the state treatment center because it works to get inmates jobs and housing, in addition to drug treatment. "I feel like I need a little more structure," Henderson said, according to an audio recording of the parole hearing. Federal prosecutors filed their drug and firearm charges in late November. He appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Evelyn Furse the following month, while he was still living at the drug treatment center. Prosecutors said that might not be the best place for him, noting that he had violated supervised release at least 10 times in the past. Furse acknowledged those concerns but said the treatment center sounded like a good opportunity, and decided to keep him there as he awaited trial. Within 10 days, Henderson checked out to look for work and never came back. He was with a woman during the Sunday car crash. She has since talked to police, but wasn't arrested or publicly identified since she could be a witness. She wasn't with him at the time of the shooting, police said. Police are planning a candlelight vigil to honor Barney and Richey for Wednesday, and Barney's funeral is set for Monday. Some 10,000 people are expected at the funeral for one of the first officers in the country to die on duty this year, and the first ever for the Unified Police Department since it formed in 2010 to serve communities in the Salt Lake City area. Bell had worked closely with the slain officer and said the two shared Twizzlers candy and their memories of their first patrol jobs last week. Even people he put in handcuffs appreciated Barney's sense of humor, his colleague said. "He's got them laughing before they ever go to jail," Bell said. ___ Ho reported from Las Vegas. Associated Press writer Hallie Golden in Salt Lake City contributed to this report. A Unified Police officer works a search of the neighborhood after an officer-involved shooting, in Holladay, Utah, Sunday, Jan. 17, 2016. Utah police officer Douglas Barney was killed Sunday, after he was shot by a suspect who was later killed by police. (Scott Sommerdorf/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP) DESERET NEWS OUT; LOCAL TELEVISION OUT; MAGS OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT Officers work a search of the neighborhood after an officer-involved shooting, in Holladay, Utah, Sunday, Jan. 17, 2016. Utah police officer Douglas Barney was killed Sunday, after he was shot by a suspect who was later killed by police. (Scott Sommerdorf/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP) DESERET NEWS OUT; LOCAL TELEVISION OUT; MAGS OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT A Unified Police officer works a search of the neighborhood after an officer-involved shooting, in Holladay, Utah, Sunday, Jan. 17, 2016. Utah police officer Douglas Barney was killed Sunday, after he was shot by a suspect who was later killed by police. (Scott Sommerdorf/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP) DESERET NEWS OUT; LOCAL TELEVISION OUT; MAGS OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT An officer works a search of the neighborhood after an officer-involved shooting in Holladay, Utah, Sunday, Jan. 17, 2016. Utah police officer Douglas Barney was killed Sunday, after he was shot by a suspect who was later killed by police. (Scott Sommerdorf/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP) DESERET NEWS OUT; LOCAL TELEVISION OUT; MAGS OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT Police talk at the scene of an officer-involved shooting, in Holladay, Utah, Sunday, Jan. 17, 2016. Utah police officer Douglas Barney was killed Sunday, after he was shot by a suspect who was later killed by police. (Scott Sommerdorf/The Salt Lake Tribune via AP) DESERET NEWS OUT; LOCAL TELEVISION OUT; MAGS OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT This undated photo provided by the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office shows Douglas Barney. Utah police officer Barney was killed Sunday, Jan. 17, 2016, after he was shot by a suspect who was later killed by police. (Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office via AP) GM buys defunct ride-hailing company Sidecar DETROIT (AP) General Motors Co. says it has acquired defunct ride-hailing company Sidecar. The terms of the deal weren't disclosed. Sidecar ceased operations on Dec. 31. GM says it will integrate some of Sidecar's employees and assets into its own urban mobility team. Sidecar, which was founded in 2012, offered three separate app-based services through its fleet of drivers: ride-hailing, car-pooling and deliveries. It operated in 10 U.S. cities, including Seattle and Boston, but struggled to compete with bigger rivals Uber and Lyft. Lightning beat Oilers 6-4 for 6th straight win TAMPA, Fla. (AP) The Tampa Bay Lightning have a season-high six-game winning streak. Next up their Stanley Cup Final opponents, the Chicago Blackhawks, who have won 12 in a row for a franchise record. Brian Boyle scored a go-ahead, short-handed goal in the third period to lead the Lightning over the Edmonton Oilers 6-4 on Tuesday night. The Lightning will host Chicago Thursday night in the Blackhawks' first game in Tampa since beating the Lightning in last season's final. "We turned the page on last year," Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said. "But the storyline is going to read, the Stanley Cup Finals a year later. Eighteen wins between the two. So, somebody's streak is going on." Edmonton Oilers right wing Nail Yakupov (10), of Russia, collides with Tampa Bay Lightning defenseman Braydon Coburn (55) during the first period of an NHL hockey game Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016, in Tampa, Fla. Yakupov had to helped off the ice. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara) The Blackhawks downed Nashville 4-1 Tuesday night to set the new team victory streak record. "They're probably the best team in the NHL right now," Palat said. "It's going to be tough. I think we've got to play better than today against them." The Lightning also got goals from Nikita Nesterov, Nikita Kucherov, Ondrej Palat, Vladislav Namestnikov and Alex Killorn. Zack Kassian, Mark Letestu, Leon Draisaitl and Iiro Pakarinen scored for Edmonton. "We're not going to win many games giving up six," Oilers coach Todd McLellan said. "I thought some of our grinders did their thing tonight. I wasn't overly impressed with a lot of our skilled players." The Oilers said center Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, hurt blocking a shot in Monday's 4-2 win at Florida, will miss six to eight weeks with a hand injury. Edmonton right wing Nail Yakupov needed help skating off the ice 5 minutes into Tuesday's game, but returned later in the period. Boyle gave Tampa Bay a 5-4 lead when he beat goalie Anders Nilsson to the puck and scored from the left circle at 7:42 of the third. Killorn added an empty-netter. "We beat ourselves," Letestu said. "Tonight we gave easy offense." After Draisailt scored during a two-on-one breakaway at 2:10 of the third, Pakarinen got Edmonton even at 4 when he beat Andrei Vasilevskiy from the right circle 2:19 later. Namestnikov extended the Lightning lead to 4-2 at 17:12 of the second when he reached from the behind net with his stick and knocked in the puck after Palat's left circle shot went high into the air off Nilsson and behind the goalie. Palat gave Tampa Bay a 3-2 lead at 6:09 of the second. Namestnikov set up the goal with a backhand pass while falling to the ice. Kucherov put the Lightning up 2-1 with 3:03 to go in the first on his 19th goal this season that extended his point streak to six games. Letestu made it 2-2 on a short-handed goal with 33.3 seconds left in the first. After Nesterov opened the scoring at 3:57 of the first, Kassian tied it just 88 seconds later. Lightning captain Steven Stamkos had an eventful game, getting two assists and making an errant pass that lead to the first Edmonton goal. He got a tripping penalty midway through the second for kicking the leg of Kassian Notes: Edmonton placed Nugent-Hopkins on injured reserve and recalled C Rob Klinkhammer from Bakersfield of the AHL. ... Oilers LW Lauri Korpikoski sat out his second straight game with a sore foot, the result of a blocking a shot Saturday against Calgary. ... Letestu has both of the Oilers short-handed goals this season. Tampa Bay Lightning left wing Ondrej Palat (18), of the Czech Republic, celebrates after scoring past Edmonton Oilers goalie Anders Nilsson (39), of Sweden, during the second period of an NHL hockey game Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara) Tampa Bay Lightning center Steven Stamkos (91) shots on Edmonton Oilers goalie Anders Nilsson (39), of Sweden, during the second period of an NHL hockey game Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara) Tampa Bay Lightning center Vladislav Namestnikov (90), of Russia, watches as his goal from behind the net gets past Edmonton Oilers goalie Anders Nilsson (39), of Sweden, during the second period of an NHL hockey game Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016, in Tampa, Fla. Defending for the Oilers is Justin Schultz (19).(AP Photo/Chris O'Meara) Tampa Bay Lightning right wing Nikita Kucherov (86), of Russia, celebrates with the bench after his goal against the Edmonton Oilers during the first period of an NHL hockey game Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara) Edmonton Oilers goalie Anders Nilsson (39), of Sweden, makes a save on a shot by Tampa Bay Lightning right wing Ryan Callahan (24) during the second period of an NHL hockey game Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara) Tampa Bay Lightning goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy (88), of Russia, makes a save on a shot by Edmonton Oilers defenseman Mark Fayne (5) during the first period of an NHL hockey game Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara) US wants more pressure on China to help on NKorea sanctions SEOUL, South Korea (AP) A senior U.S. diplomat stepped up pressure on China on Wednesday to cooperate on new, tough sanctions meant to make North Korea suffer for a recent nuclear test that raised worries about advancements in its bomb program. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in South Korea on a diplomatic push for tougher sanctions that can force change in the North. Key to those efforts is whether China, the North's last major ally and a veto-wielding U.N. Security Council member, will join in imposing any harsh punishment on the North. "We believe that China has a special role to play given the special relationship that it has with North Korea," Blinken told reporters after meeting with South Korean officials. Protesters hold placards with photos of U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken stage a rally demanding a restart of peace talks between two Koreas and six-party talks in front of the Foreign Ministry in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. Blinken is in Seoul following a weekend's trilateral meeting by U.S., South Korea and Japan in Tokyo over North Korea's recent nuclear test.(AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon) He said Beijing has "more influence and leverage" over Pyongyang than any other country because most its trade goes from, to or through China. Blinken flies to Beijing later Wednesday for talks on North Korea. During a meeting with South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se, Blinken said Seoul and Washington are working closely in New York with the United Nations Security Council. Yun said it is time for the international community to stand united to make North Korea face the consequences for its bomb test. "This is North Korea versus international community," he said. China is expected to join in some U.N. sanctions but won't likely go as far as to take steps that might lead to the collapse of the North's authoritarian government. China fears the onslaught of a wave of refugees and violence surging across the border, analysts say. North Korea says it conducted a hydrogen bomb test on Jan. 6. Many governments and experts remain highly skeptical about the North's claim, but whatever device North Korea detonated will likely push the country a step closer toward its goal of manufacturing a miniaturized warhead to place on a missile that can threaten the U.S. mainland. After the bomb test, the rival Koreas resumed psychological warfare with Seoul blasting anti-Pyongyang broadcasts from border loudspeakers, while Pyongyang does the same and also floats propaganda leaflets over the border by balloon, according to South Korean officials. Protesters raising placards with photos of U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken shout slogans during a rally demanding a restart of peace talks between two Koreas and six-party talks in front of the Foreign Ministry in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. Blinken is in Seoul following a weekend's trilateral meeting by U.S., South Korea and Japan in Tokyo over North Korea's recent nuclear test. The letters on the sign at right read: "We want the United States and South Korea to restart peace talks." (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon) U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, shakes hands with South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-Koo during their meeting at the Defense Ministry in Seoul, South Korea Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. Blinken is in Seoul following a weekend's trilateral meeting by U.S., South Korea and Japan in Tokyo over North Korea's recent nuclear test. (Kim Hong-Ji/Pool Photo via AP) Donald Trump receives key endorsement from Sarah Palin AMES, Iowa (AP) Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump received the endorsement Tuesday of conservative firebrand Sarah Palin, giving the billionaire businessman a potential boost less than two weeks before Iowa's kick-off caucuses. The endorsement comes as Trump is locked in a dead heat with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in Iowa. The two have been ramping up their attacks against one another as the election has neared. In the statement announcing the endorsement, Trump's campaign described Palin as a conservative who "helped launch the careers of several key future leaders of the Republican Party and conservative movement." The statement also quoted Cruz as once saying he "would not be in the United States Senate were it not for Gov. Sarah Palin. ... She can pick winners." Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, left, endorses Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a rally at the Iowa State University, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016, in Ames, Iowa. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer) "Media heads are spinning," Palin said after taking the stage at a Trump rally at Iowa State University. "This is going to be so much fun." Palin, the former governor of Alaska and 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate, said that, with Trump as president, America would no longer apologize. "No more pussy-footing around," Palin said. Campaigning in New Hampshire, Cruz said, "Regardless of what Sarah intends to do in 2016, I will remain a big, big fan of Sarah Palin." Palin endorsed Cruz in his 2012 Senate race in Texas and said as recently as last month that he and Trump were both in her top tier of candidates, making the endorsement a symbolic blow to Cruz who says Trump is not a true, consistent conservative and represents "New York values." Palin's remarks in Ames, Iowa, were signature Palin, combining the folksy charm and everywoman appeal that initially made her a Republican superstar with defiant taunting of a "busted" party establishment that she slammed for counting both Trump and herself out. Palin offered her full-throated support for Trump and slammed President Barack Obama as the "capitulator in chief." Trump, she said, would be a commander in chief who would "let our warriors do their job and go kick ISIS' ass!" She also took aim at the Republican establishment for "attacking their own front-runner" and offered a challenge to those who have suggested that Trump, whose positions on issues like gun control and abortion rights have shifted over the years, isn't conservative enough. "Oh my goodness gracious. What the heck would the establishment know about conservativism?" she said. "Who are they to tell us that we're not conservative enough? ... Give me a break." Trump, whose team had been touting a major, surprise announcement, praised Palin as "a friend, and a high-quality person whom I have great respect for" in a statement. "We're going to give' em hell," he said after her speech. Palin will also be joining Trump at two events Wednesday, including a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Palin was a virtual newcomer to the national political arena when Arizona Sen. John McCain named her as his running mate. She has since risen to prominence as one of the most outspoken conservatives in the party. She signed on as a Fox News commentator after resigning as Alaska's governor in 2010, a job she held until last year. Trump and Palin did not discuss how the endorsement had come about, but Trump's national political director Michael Glassner previously worked for her. The event came a day after Palin's oldest son, Track, was arrested in Wasilla, Alaska, in a domestic violence case in which his girlfriend told police she was afraid he would shoot himself with a rifle. Track Palin was charged with assault, interfering with the report of a domestic violence crime and possessing a weapon while intoxicated in connection with the incident. Earlier Tuesday, Trump received an endorsement from the daughter of movie star John Wayne. Standing in front of a life-size, rifle-toting model of the actor in full cowboy gear, Trump accepted the endorsement of Aissa Wayne at the John Wayne Birthplace Museum in Winterset, Iowa. "America needs help and we need a strong leader and we need someone like Mr. Trump with leadership qualities, someone with courage, someone that's strong, like John Wayne," she said. ___ Associated Press reporters Scott Bauer in Center Barnstead, New Hampshire, and Rachel D'Oro in Anchorage, Alaska, contributed to this report. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, left, endorses Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a rally at the Iowa State University, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016, in Ames, Iowa. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer) Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin endorses Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a rally at the Iowa State University, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016, in Ames, Iowa. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer) Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, joined by John Wayne's daughter, Aissa Wayne, speaks during a news conference at the John Wayne Museum, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016, in Winterset, Iowa. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) High court could give Obama his final chance on immigration WASHINGTON (AP) After seven years, 2 million-plus deportations, two executive actions and 720,000 "Dreamers" who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children, the bottom line on President Barack Obama's immigration record still remains an open question for many immigrants and their advocates. In the end, the U.S. Supreme Court may fill in the blanks. By agreeing to hear a challenge to Obama's immigration plan, the court on Tuesday raised hopes that Obama may have one last chance to make good on an unfulfilled promise to millions of immigrants, many of whom feel abandoned by his administration's recent deportation raids. FILE- In this Jan. 15, 2016, file photo, members of CASA de Maryland participate in a immigration rally outside the Supreme Court in Washington. By agreeing to hear a challenge to Obamas immigration plan, the Supreme Court on Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2016, raised hopes that Obama may have one last chance to make good on an unfulfilled promise to millions of immigrants, many of whom feel abandoned by his administrations recent deportation raids. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File) If the court sides with Obama, ruling that he has the authority to unilaterally shield up to 5 million immigrants from deportation through executive orders that bypass Congress, Obama would claim a sizable last win on an issue that has dogged him for years. His administration would, however, face another challenge implementing a complex program in a matter of month as Republicans vow to reverse it just as quickly. If the court rules against Obama, he could spend his last months in office making headlines for deporting people, rather than shielding them from deportation, as he had planned. At issue are Obama's executive actions to allow parents of U.S. citizens to stay in the country, along with an expansion of Obama's earlier program protecting people brought to the U.S. illegally as children known as Dreamers. Lower courts have put those programs on hold amid claims Obama exceeded his authority, but the Supreme Court agreed to have the final word. Advocates said they see the pivot point as a reflection of the seesaw nature of Obama's record on the issue. Despite his efforts to pass immigration legislation and use his executive power to protect some immigrants, his broader deportation policy led activists to label him the "deporter-in-chief" and left wounds some say won't be healed. Most recently, advocates were incensed by deportation raids targeting 121 Central American immigrants, arguing the raids sowed fear and skepticism in a community that could make it harder for advocates and the administration to persuade people to come forward later. Angela Maria Kelley, an immigration expert at the liberal Center for American Progress, likened Obama's policies to a "high school romance: One minute you're in love, the next you're being dumped. "It does feel like it can take on a bipolar presence in the community," Kelley said. The Supreme Court is expected to rule on Obama's executive action by late June. That would leave Obama with barely half a year to get the program up and running before his presidency ends. Most of the Republicans running to replace Obama have already vowed to tear up the program if elected. The Democratic presidential candidates have pledged to maintain or even broaden the measures. Obama's expanded program for people brought here as children was hours away from being launched last year when a judge put it on hold, so ostensibly, the administration could flick the switch on almost overnight with little additional preparation. But the much larger program for parents of U.S. citizens wasn't nearly as far along when the court shut it down. Ahead of the injunction, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had secured office space in Arlington, Virginia, for a new processing center, with plans to hire about 1,000 people to screen applications. But the administration would have to hire and train those workers, finalize the forms and application process, and disseminate that information to applicants. Administration officials predicted that could take anywhere from a few weeks to a couple of months. By comparison, it took 60 days to launch the initial program covering people brought here as children. "We're certainly interested in moving forward with implementing these executive actions as expeditiously as possible," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. Another hold-up could come from applicants, who would need to pull together application fees and documents proving they've been in the country for years. How quickly the government could process applications is another question. In the first six months of Obama's earlier program for people brought here as children, 200,000 were approved out of roughly 423,000 applications. Working against the president is deep uncertainty about what happens to those who apply for protection if a Republican who opposes Obama's actions wins the White House. New applications would almost certainly be halted, but immigration advocates predicted the next president would find it harder to retract work permits from those approved before Obama leaves office. "There's a real question right now of whether people are safe from deportation, not the least because in the last few weeks we've seen increased raids by the president," said Karen Tumlin, legal director at the National Immigration Law Center. "But folks are so eager to have the protections from family separation, if the chance does present itself, I would anticipate a tremendous outpouring of interest." China's Taiwan office deputy head under investigation BEIJING (AP) A deputy head of the Chinese Cabinet's Taiwan Affairs Office has been placed under investigation for apparent corruption amid renewed scrutiny of Beijing's policies toward the island following its election of a new independence-leaning president. The ruling Communist Party's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said in a brief statement that Gong Qinggai is suspected of "serious violations of discipline," which is usually a euphemism for graft. No other details were given. The announcement dated Tuesday came three days after Taiwanese voters elected Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party as president, although there was no indication of any connection between the two events. Multiple online reports speculated that Gong's problems were related to the hiding of personnel assets, feuding within his family and his relationship with disgraced officials from Fujian province where he previously worked. In a statement on its website, the Taiwan Affairs Office said it "resolutely embraced" the investigation of Gong and would continue policing itself for discipline violations. Whatever triggered Gong's investigation, Chinese President Xi Jinping is believed to be highly dissatisfied with the Taiwan Affairs Office's failure to win over Taiwan's 23 million people to China's goal of political unification. Although China largely held back in commenting on the election, it has since restated its opposition to Taiwan's formal independence and said it welcomes contacts only with those who accept Beijing's "one-China principle" that casts the island and the mainland as part of a single Chinese nation. Tsai has refused to endorse that view, although she has promised to make no change in the status quo of de facto independence and said neither side should provoke the other. She has also pledged to utilize all existing channels of communication, although whether she can do so without explicitly endorsing China's stance, also known as the "'92 consensus," remains unknown. "It looks as if China would demand Tsai come out and endorse the '92 consensus, but there is room for negotiation," said Huang Jing, a China expert at Singapore National University's Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. Tsai defeated Eric Chu of Taiwan's China-friendly Nationalist Party, who had hoped to succeed outgoing President Ma Ying-jeou after eight years of Nationalist rule. Skepticism over Ma's push for closer economic ties with China was a major factor in the result, with young voters in particular fearful of an erosion of the island's competitiveness and their future earning potential. Anti-China sentiment also helped the Democratic Progressive Party gain a majority in the national legislature for the first time. The loss may prompt Xi to exert greater personal control over Taiwan policy, as he has done with the economy and foreign affairs. Already, it was Xi's personal staff, rather than the Taiwan Affairs Office, that arranged a watershed November meeting between Xi and Ma in Singapore that was the first face-to-face contact between leaders of the two sides since they split amid civil war in 1949. "That may show that Xi thinks the TAO too conservative," Huang said. Xi has also made a sweeping anti-corruption drive his signature policy and rumors have long circulated about TAO officials facilitating private deals between Taiwanese and Chinese businesses, side-stepping the sort of checks usually required for approval. China's state-controlled media and opaque political system make it difficult to assess the rumors' validity. Still, some sort of shake-up is likely, observers say. "There's a tendency to think that Xi will have to find someone responsible (for the election result) in the Taiwan Affairs Office. He can't let people think that his own policy direction is the failure," said Alexander Huang, a political scientist at Taiwan's Tamkang University. The sides are now entering a wait-and-see period in the months before the May inauguration of Tsai, Taiwan's first female president. She is expected to spend the time picking her Cabinet and laying out her economic policies, with relatively little time spent on China relations. China during the same period will likely overhaul the Taiwan Affairs Office, if not its entire approach toward Taiwan policy at all levels, Huang said. "Everything is very sensitive right now," he said. While the focus may be on policy failures, the real reason that Taiwanese voters rejected the Nationalists lies in the fundamental difference between Taiwan's thriving democracy and China's autocratic one-party communist system that Beijing has refused to reform despite sweeping social and economic changes, said Zhang Lifan, a Beijing-based historian and independent commentator. "No doubt something went wrong with the mainland's policies toward Taiwan. But the key problem lies in the lack of democracy in the mainland and the Taiwanese voters were actually afraid that the situation would spread to Taiwan," Zhang said. Palestinians lambast Airbnb's West Bank settlement listings NOFEI PRAT, West Bank (AP) Like many vacation rental operators around the world, Moshe Gordon has listed his property on Airbnb, luring visitors with a stunning vista of desert landscape and boasting of proximity to both Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. What it doesn't mention is that the "cozy fully furnished" apartment, with its cable TV, Internet and hiking trails, is in a West Bank settlement. Airbnb is coming under Palestinian criticism for such listings, which some find misleading for failing to mention the property is on occupied land claimed by the Palestinians. Such criticism puts Airbnb in the crosshairs of an increasingly aggressive global boycott movement and has injected a dose of Mideast politics into the sharing economy. The Palestinians say that by contributing to the settlement economy, Airbnb, like other companies doing business in the West Bank, helps perpetuate Israel's settlement enterprise. Senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat sent a letter to Airbnb's CEO last week demanding the company cease working with settlers. In this photo taken Sunday, Jan. 17, 2016, Moshe Gordon sits outside his guest house advertised on Airbnb international home-sharing site in Nofei Prat settlement at the West Bank. Palestinians say that by contributing to the settlement economy, Airbnb, like other companies doing business there, is perpetuating the expansion of Israels settlement enterprise. The criticism puts the travel site in the crosshairs of a burgeoning boycott movement and highlights the intricacies of the sharing economy in a legal anomaly such as the settlements, where residents are Israeli citizens but the land is occupied. (AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov) "Any international company like Airbnb that profits from the occupation and from our blood must be held accountable and brought to justice," said Husam Zomlot, a Palestinian ambassador at-large and former adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The complaint coincides with the release Tuesday of a report by Human Rights Watch that said that businesses operating in settlements contribute to and benefit from "an inherently unlawful and abusive system that violates the rights of Palestinians." Israel captured the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem in the 1967 war and began building settlements soon after. While Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, the settler population in east Jerusalem and the West Bank has ballooned to almost 600,000. The Palestinians claim these areas as parts of a future state, a position that has wide global support. The Palestinians and much of the international community have grown impatient with Israel's settlement policies, saying the construction runs counter to the goal of establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel. On Monday, the European Union, Israel's largest trading partner, said that all its agreements with Israel must "unequivocally and explicitly" show that they cannot apply to occupied territories. The move followed a November decision to label Israeli products made in the West Bank. Many Israelis fear the step could be a precursor to a full-fledged ban on settlement products such as wines, dates and cosmetics, which make up a tiny percentage of Israeli exports but would set an ominous precedent. Also alarming to Israel has been an international movement calling for boycotts against settlement products or any company doing business in the West Bank. The so-called BDS movement claims responsibility for pressuring some large companies to stop or alter operations in Israel or the West Bank, including carbonated drink maker SodaStream, French construction company Veolia and international mobile phone giant Orange. Although the boycott movement's economic impact has been minimal, it has helped tarnish Israel's international image. While the Human Rights Watch report said it was not calling for a boycott, it urged businesses to cease their settlement operations. The report said Palestinian laborers in the settlements are often paid well below Israeli minimum wage, and that companies operating in settlements receive preferential treatment over Palestinian rivals. It followed repeated claims by World Bank and others that Israeli policy in the West Bank has stifled Palestinian development. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon rejected the report's conclusions as well as the criticism against Airbnb. "The Palestinians should stop whining and take their fate in their own hands and stop blaming Israel for their incapacity to build their own economy," he said. In an email, Airbnb said it "follows laws and regulations on where we can do business." It said it encourages guests to talk to their host about the listing before any trip and that the platform uses Google Maps to determine locations a website on which Jewish settlements, as well as Palestinian cities, are not listed with an affiliated country. Under its terms of service, Airbnb specifies that it will not accept responsibility for the accuracy of listings posted on the site, saying this lies with hosts. Airbnb, which charges users a service fee, also has listings in Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus and Moroccan-annexed Western Sahara, among other disputed territories. Listings there vary, with some marked only as a city, and others linked to Northern Cyprus or the unoccupied southern half. The few properties in Western Sahara are listed as in Morocco. Owners of Airbnb properties in the settlements reject the criticism. Even though Israel has never annexed the West Bank, they see their communities as essentially part of Israel and point to biblical history as proof of the Jewish connection to the land. Unlike Palestinian residents of the West Bank, settlers are governed by the same laws as residents of Israel proper and vote in Israeli elections. They also enlist for compulsory military service, pay taxes inside Israel and can serve in Israel's parliament. "It is Israel," said Gordon, who charges about $60 a night for his apartment. "I don't really understand the controversy here." Settlements stretching the entire length of the West Bank play host to Airbnb properties, according to the site's listings. Tourists can overnight in a desert camp in Judea and Samaria, the biblical name for the West Bank, or in a yurt in the Tekoa settlement. A perusal of more than two dozen listings showed very few reviews, indicating limited business which may also be connected to the fact that settlements periodically come under attack by Palestinian militants. Settler officials say there is a blossoming lodging industry in the settlements that has until now mainly targeted Israeli tourists. But with Airbnb experiencing growing name recognition among settlers, Miri Maoz-Ovadia, a spokeswoman for the Yesha settler's council, said she expects more settlement properties on the site. Mechanical trouble ruled out in deadly California bus crash SAN FRANCISCO (AP) Investigators found no mechanical problems with the Greyhound bus that crashed in Northern California, killing two passengers. California Highway Patrol Officer Chris Miceli says the investigation continues into the cause of Tuesday morning's accident on a rain-soaked San Jose, California, freeway. Eight other passengers and the driver were injured when the bus plowed into safety barrels and flipped on its side, coming to rest on the median divider. All are expected to survive. A California Highway Patrol investigator examines the scene of a fatal Greyhound bus crash, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016, in San Jose, Calif. The bus flipped on its side while traveling north on Highway 101, according to the San Jose Fire Department. (AP Photo/Noah Berger) Investigators earlier ruled out drugs or alcohol as a cause. Miceli says the driver told investigators he was tired and had bought a cup of coffee at a stop about 30 miles before the accident. A California Highway Patrol investigator moves personal belongings at the scene of a Greyhound bus crash that left two dead and at least eight injured on Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016, in San Jose, Calif. A Greyhound spokeswoman said the bus, which left Los Angeles Monday night, was carrying 20 passengers in addition to the driver. (AP Photo/Noah Berger) A California Highway Patrol investigator waalks past the license plate of a Greyhound bus that overturned Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2015, leaving two dead and at least eight injured in San Jose, Calif. A Greyhound spokeswoman said the bus, which left Los Angeles Monday night, was carrying 20 passengers in addition to the driver. (AP Photo/Noah Berger) In this photo provided by KGO-TV, officials work at the scene of a fatal bus accident Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016, in San Jose, Calif. The bus flipped on its side while traveling north on Highway 101, according to the San Jose Fire Department. (KGO-TV via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT Advertisement The oldest Christian monastery in Iraq, which had survived for more than 1,400 years, has been reduced to a field of rubble by ISIS fighters, satellite images confirm. St. Elijah's Monastery, south of Mosul, northern Iraq, has been completely wiped out by the Islamist terrorist, joining a list of dozens of historical and religious sites purposely destroyed by the group. Experts believe ISIS fighters would have used every measure available to destroy the monastery, which had most recently served as a place of worship for U.S. troops, including bulldozers, sledgehammers and possibly explosives. Scroll down for video Before: A satellite image taken in March, 2011, shows Dair Mar Elia, on the outskirts of Mosul, Iraq, before it was destroyed by ISIS After: This image taken in September 2014, shows the site of the 1,400-year-old Christian monastery reduced to a field of rubble The monastery was founded in the sixth century, making it 1,400 years old, and had most recently served as a place of working for Christian U.S. service members, pictured during a sunrise Easter Mass at Dair Mar Elia It is believed the 1,400 years old monastery was leveled at some point between August 27 and September 28 in 2014, after ISIS took control of the area in June that year. During it's reign of terror in Iraq and Syria, ISIS has forced out hundreds of thousands of Christians, threatening a religion that has endured in the region for 2,000 years. Along the way, its fighters have destroyed buildings and ruins historical and culturally significant structures they consider contrary to their interpretation of Islam. St. Elijah's has joined a growing list of more than 100 demolished religious and historic sites, including mosques, tombs, shrines and churches in Syria and Iraq. The extremists have defaced or ruined ancient monuments in Nineveh, Palmyra and Hatra. Museums and libraries have been looted, books burned, artwork crushed or trafficked. Destroyed: St. Elijah's Monastery, south of Mosul, northern Iraq, pictured in 2006, has been completely wiped out by ISIS Lost beauty: The monastery is pictured in 2009, as visitors assigned to the Logistic Civil Augmentive Program from Forward Operating Base Speicher, near Tikrit, Iraq, stand at the entrance after completing a tour History: U.S. Army forces tour St. Elijah's Monastery in 2008, during which time the ruins served as a place of worship for Christian soldiers Before it was razed, images show a partially restored, 27,000-square-foot religious building. Although the roof was largely missing, it had 26 distinctive rooms including a sanctuary and chapel. One month later, 'the stone walls have been literally pulverized,' said imagery analyst Stephen Wood, CEO of Allsource Analysis 'Bulldozers, heavy equipment, sledgehammers, possibly explosives turned those stone walls into this field of gray-white dust. They destroyed it completely,' he said. 'There's nothing to rebuild.' The monastery, called Dair Mar Elia, is named for the Assyrian Christian monk - St. Elijah - who built it between 582 and 590 A.C. It was a holy site for Iraqi Christians for centuries, part of the Mideast's Chaldean Catholic community. In 1743, tragedy struck when as many as 150 monks who refused to convert to Islam were massacred under orders of a Persian general, and the monastery was damaged. For the next two centuries it remained a place of pilgrimage, even after it was incorporated into an Iraqi military training base and later a U.S. base. Then in 2003 St. Elijah's shuddered again this time a wall was smashed by a tank turret blown off in battle. Iraqi troops had already moved in, dumping garbage in the ancient cistern. The U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division took control, with troops painting over ancient murals and scrawling their division's 'Screaming Eagle,' along with 'Chad wuz here' and 'I love Debbie,' on the walls. Long history: This photo taken in the 1920s shows a ceremony at the monastery where a Christian community thrived for centuries Before it was razed, the partially restored, 27,000-square-foot stone and mortar building stood fortress-like on a hill above Mosul No more: U.S. Army soldiers pictured at St. Elijah's Monastery during a visit arranged by Capt. John P. Smith, a chaplain with the 142nd Corps Support Battalion, in 2005 Memories remain: U.S. Army soldiers celebrate a Catholic Easter Mass at St. Elijah's Monastery in 2010 Holy place: A photo from 2008 shows the sanctuary of St. Elijah's Monastery, just south of Mosul A U.S. military chaplain, recognizing St. Elijah's significance, kicked the troops out and the Army's subsequent preservation initiative became a pet project for a series of chaplains who toured thousands of soldiers through the ruin. 'It was a sacred place. We literally bent down physically to enter, an acquiescence to the reality that there was something greater going on inside,' remembered military chaplain Jeffrey Whorton. A Catholic priest who now works at Ft. Bragg, he had to collect himself after viewing the damage. 'I don't know why this is affecting me so much,' he said. In his office in exile in Irbil, Iraq, the Rev. Paul Thabit Habib, 39, stared quietly at before- and after-images of the monastery that once perched on a hillside above his hometown of Mosul. Shaken, he flipped back to his own photos for comparison. 'I can't describe my sadness,' he said in Arabic. 'Our Christian history in Mosul is being barbarically leveled. We see it as an attempt to expel us from Iraq, eliminating and finishing our existence in this land.' 'A big part of tangible history has been destroyed,' said Rev. Manuel Yousif Boji. A Chaldean Catholic pastor in Southfield, Michigan, he remembers attending Mass at St. Elijah's almost 60 years ago while a seminarian in Mosul. On purpose: In addition to the monastery, ISIS has defaced or ruined ancient monuments in Nineveh, Palmyra and Hatra Down goes another one: St. Elijah's has officially joined a growing list of more than 100 demolished religious and historic sites, including mosques, tombs, shrines and churches Satellite photos confirm what church leaders and Middle East preservationists had feared: St. Elijah's, a 1,400-year-old monastery in Iraq, has been reduced to a field of rubble, yet another victim of the Islamic State's relentless destruction Heartbroken: Suzanne Bott, who spent more than two years surveying and restoring the site as a U.S. State Department cultural adviser in Iraq, leads a tour at St. Elijah's monastery in 2009 This Nov. 7, 2008, photo shows St. Elijah's Monastery on the outskirts of Mosul, Iraq, about 225 miles northwest of Baghdad AU.S. Army chaplain gestures toward the place where the 101st Airborne Division's 'screaming eagle' was painted above a door at St. Elijah's Monastery In this Nov. 7, 2008 photo, U.S. Army soldiers tour St. Elijah's Monastery on Forward Operating Base Marez in Mosul, Iraq 'These persecutions have happened to our church more than once, but we believe in the power of truth, the power of God,' said Boji. He is part of the Detroit area's Chaldean community, which became the largest outside Iraq after the sectarian bloodshed that followed the U.S. invasion in 2003. Iraq's Christian population has dropped from 1.3 million then to 300,000 now, church authorities say. The destruction of the monastery is a blow for U.S. troops and advisers who served in Iraq and had tried to protect and honor the site, a hopeful endeavor in a violent place and time. Suzanne Bott, who spent more than two years restoring St. Elijah's Monastery as a U.S. State Department cultural adviser in Iraq, reportedly cried when she saw the images. 'Oh no way. It's just razed completely,' said Bott. 'What we lose is a very tangible reminder of the roots of a religion.' Army reserve Col. Mary Prophit remembered a sunrise service in St. Elijah where, as a Catholic lay minister, she served communion. 'I let that moment sink in, the candlelight, the first rays of sunshine. We were worshipping in a place where people had been worshipping God for 1,400 years,' said Prophit, who was deployed there in 2004 and again in 2009. Snyder appeals Obama's denial of disaster aid for Flint LANSING, Mich. (AP) Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder asked President Barack Obama on Wednesday to reconsider his denial of a federal disaster declaration to address the drinking water crisis in Flint, saying its severity poses an "imminent and long-term threat" to residents. Obama declared an emergency qualifying the city for $5 million but determined it is not a disaster based on the legal requirement that such additional relief is intended for natural events, fires, floods or explosions. In his appeal letter, Snyder called it a "narrow reading" and likened the crisis to a flood, "given that qualities within the water, over a long term, flood and damaged the city's infrastructure in ways that were not immediately or easily detectable. This disaster is a natural catastrophe in the sense that lead contamination into water is a natural process." Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder delivers his State of the State address to a joint session of the House and Senate, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016, at the state Capitol in Lansing, Mich. (AP Photo/Al Goldis) He said the state and city cannot meet all the needs of Flint residents. He again painted a bleak picture of the city and said the "economic injury" from the crisis is significant. Snyder said the disaster will lead to years, potentially decades of health problems and economic losses as well as infrastructure repairs that "neither the city, county or state have the capacity to conduct." The second-term Republican, who devoted his annual State of the State speech Tuesday night to the emergency in Flint, planned Wednesday to release his own emails regarding Flint's water, which became contaminated with too much lead when the city switched its water source in 2014 as a cost-cutting measure while under state financial management. "I'm sorry most of all that I let you down," Snyder, whose administration is engulfed in criticism, said in address, as hundreds of protesters demonstrated outside the Capitol. "You deserve better. You deserve accountability. You deserve to know that the buck stops here with me. Most of all, you deserve to know the truth, and I have a responsibility to tell the truth." The lead which can lead to behavior problems and learning disabilities in children and kidney ailments in adults has left Flint residents unable to drink unfiltered tap water. The National Guard, state employees, local authorities and volunteers have been distributing lead tests, filters and bottled water. Snyder aides pledged that by the end of the week officials would visit every household in Flint to ensure they have water filters. Democrats said Snyder only recently admitted the magnitude of the fiasco, at least three months too late. "This is the kind of disaster, the kind of failure to deliver basic services that hurts people's trust in government," House Minority Leader Tim Greimel said. Flint Mayor Karen Weaver refused to call for Snyder's resignation while at the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in Washington, D.C., saying investigations should go forward. She said she wants Snyder to give Flint "the services and the money, the funds that we need to address the population." "People have said how they want things handled with him," Weaver said Wednesday. "I'm staying focused on what I need to get from him right now." In his speech, Snyder committed $28 million more in the short term to pay for more filters, bottled water, school nurses, intervention specialists, testing and monitoring on top of $10.6 million allocated in the fall. The money also would replace plumbing fixtures in schools with lead problems and could help Flint with unpaid water bills. The new round of funding, which requires approval from the GOP-led Legislature, is intended as another short-range step while Snyder works to get a better handle on the long-range costs. A House committee on Wednesday swiftly approved the spending bill, which could reach his desk next week after more legislative voting. He plans to make a bigger request in his February budget proposal. Snyder also announced the deployment of roughly 130 more National Guard members to the city, "To you, the people of Flint, I say tonight as I have before: I am sorry, and I will fix it," he said. Snyder, a former venture capitalist and computer executive who took office in 2011 billing himself as a practical decision-maker and a "tough nerd," has rejected calls for his resignation. He has previously apologized for regulatory failures and for an underwhelming initial response and on Tuesday outlined a timeline of the "catastrophe" dating to 2013, and blamed it on failures at the federal, state and local level. Michigan's top environmental regulator Dan Wyant resigned over the failure to ensure that the Flint River water was properly treated to keep lead from pipes from leaching into the water. Elevated blood-lead levels were found in two city zip codes. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who attended the address, said Snyder's contrition "does not mitigate the crime that has been committed." But Republican Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof said Snyder is a "real leader who took responsibility even though he did not cause the situation." The U.S. Justice Department is helping the Environmental Protection Agency to investigate, and GOP state Attorney General Bill Schuette has opened his own probe, which could focus on whether environmental laws were broken or if there was official misconduct. The EPA is under scrutiny for its role, too. ___ Associated Press writer Jesse Holland contributed from Washington. ___ Follow David Eggert at http://twitter.com/DavidEggert00 . His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/author/david-eggert . Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder delivers his State of the State address to a joint session of the House and Senate, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016, at the state Capitol in Lansing, Mich. With the water crisis gripping Flint threatening to overshadow nearly everything else he has accomplished, the Republican governor pledged a fix Tuesday night during his annual State of the State speech. (AP Photo/Al Goldis) Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder delivers his State of the State address to a joint session of the House and Senate, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016, at the state Capitol in Lansing, Mich. (AP Photo/Al Goldis) Protesters gather outside the state Capitol before Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder's State of the State address, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016, in Lansing, Mich. With the water crisis gripping Flint threatening to overshadow nearly everything else he has accomplished, the Republican governor again pledged a fix Tuesday night during his annual State of the State speech. (AP Photo/Al Goldis) Only On AP: Oldest Christian monastery in Iraq razed IRBIL, Iraq (AP) Satellite photos obtained by The Associated Press confirm what church leaders and Middle East preservationists had feared: The oldest Christian monastery in Iraq has been reduced to a field of rubble, yet another victim of the Islamic State group's relentless destruction of heritage sites it considers heretical. St. Elijah's Monastery stood as a place of worship for 1,400 years, including most recently for U.S. troops. In earlier millennia, generations of monks tucked candles in the niches, prayed in the chapel, worshipped at the altar. The Greek letters chi and rho, representing the first two letters of Christ's name, were carved near the entrance. This month, at the request of the AP, satellite imagery firm DigitalGlobe tasked a high resolution camera to grab photos of the site, and then pulled earlier images of the same spot. This combination of two satellite images provided by DigitalGlobe, taken on March 31, 2011, top, and Sept. 28, 2014, shows the site of the 1,400-year-old Christian monastery known as St. Elijahs, or Dair Mar Elia, on the outskirts of Mosul, Iraq. These satellite photos obtained by The Associated Press in January 2016 confirm what church leaders and Middle East preservationists had feared: The monastery has been reduced to a field of rubble, yet another victim of the Islamic State's relentless destruction. (DigitalGlobe via AP) Before it was razed, a partially restored, 27,000-square-foot stone and mortar building stood fortress-like on a hill above Mosul. Although the roof was largely missing, it had 26 distinctive rooms including a sanctuary and chapel. One month later photos show "that the stone walls have been literally pulverized," said imagery analyst Stephen Wood, CEO of Allsource Analysis, who pinpointed the destruction between August and September 2014. "Bulldozers, heavy equipment, sledgehammers, possibly explosives turned those stone walls into this field of gray-white dust. They destroyed it completely," he said from his Colorado offices. On the other side of the world, in his office in exile, in Irbil, Iraq, Catholic priest Rev. Paul Thabit Habib, 39, stared in disbelief at the before- and after- images. "Our Christian history in Mosul is being barbarically leveled," he said in Arabic. "We see it as an attempt to expel us from Iraq, eliminating and finishing our existence in this land." The Islamic State group, which now controls large parts of Iraq and Syria, has killed thousands of civilians in the past two years. Along the way, its fighters have destroyed whatever they consider contrary to their interpretation of Islam. St. Elijah's joins a growing list of more than 100 religious and historic sites looted and destroyed, including mosques, tombs, shrines and churches. Ancient monuments in the cities of Nineveh, Palmyra and Hatra are in ruins. Museums and libraries have been pillaged, books burned, artwork crushed or trafficked. U.S. troops and advisers had worked to protect and honor the monastery, a hopeful endeavor in a violent place and time. "I would imagine that many people are feeling like, 'What were the last 10 years for if these guys can go in and destroy everything?'" said U.S. Army reserve Col. Mary Prophit, who was deployed there in 2004 and again in 2009. Built in 590, tragedy struck at St. Elijah's in 1743, when as many as 150 monks who refused to convert to Islam were massacred by a Persian general. In 2003 St. Elijah's shuddered again this time a wall was smashed by a tank turret blown off in battle. Iraqi troops had already moved in, dumping garbage in the cistern. The U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division took control, painting over ancient murals and scrawling their division's "Screaming Eagle," on the walls. Then a U.S. military chaplain, recognizing its significance, began a preservation initiative. Roman Catholic Army chaplain Jeffrey Whorton, who celebrated Mass on the monastery's altar, was grief-stricken at its loss. "Why we treat each other like this is beyond me," he said. "Elijah the prophet must be weeping." At the Vatican, spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi, noted that since the monastery dates back to the time Christians were united, before the break with Orthodox and Catholics, the place would be a special one for many. He said it was the first news he had had of the destruction. "Unfortunately, there is this systemic destruction of precious sites, not only cultural, but also religious and spiritual. It's very sad and dramatic," Lombardi told the AP. ___ Mendoza reported from Santa Cruz, Calif., Alleruzzo reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Frances D'Emilio in Rome contributed to this report. ___ Follow Martha Mendoza on Twitter @mendozamartha FILE - In this Nov. 7, 2008 file photo, U.S. Army chaplain Geoffrey Bailey leads soldiers on a tour of St. Elijah's Monastery on Forward Operating Base Marez on the outskirts of Mosul, 360 kilometers (225 miles) northwest of Baghdad, Iraq. The oldest Christian monastery in Iraq, St. Elijahs stood as a place of worship for 1,400 years. Satellite photos obtained by The Associated Press confirm that the monastery in Iraq has been reduced to a field of rubble, yet another victim of the Islamic State's relentless destruction. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo, File) This photo taken in the 1920s shows a ceremony at the Mar Matai monastery in Mosul, Iraq, where a Christian community thrived for centuries. Satellite photos obtained by The Associated Press in January 2016 confirm the communitys oldest place of worship, the 1,400-year-old St. Elijahs Monastery, has been reduced to a field of rubble, yet another victim of the Islamic State's relentless destruction. (Otrakji family collection on mideastimage.com via AP) In this Nov. 7, 2008, photo, U.S. Army soldiers tour St. Elijah's Monastery on Forward Operating Base Marez on the outskirts of Mosul, Iraq. Maj. Geoffrey Bailey, now a US Army command chaplain in Kabul, Afghanistan, who led prayers and tours at St. Elijahs, said news of the destruction of the monastery by militants was incredibly disappointing. In the midst of the strife and suffering of combat, a symbol of hope set against the verdant hills of Mosul sprang forth and provided a momentary respite for weary sojourners, much like it had for...centuries prior. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo) In this April 3, 2010, photo released by the U.S. Army, soldiers celebrate a Catholic Easter mass at St. Elijah's Monastery on the outskirts of Mosul, Iraq. Before it was razed, the partially restored, 27,000-square-foot stone and mortar building stood fortress-like on a hill above Mosul. Although the roof was largely missing, it had 26 distinctive rooms including a sanctuary and chapel. Satellite photos taken after its destruction show that the stone walls have been literally pulverized, said imagery analyst Stephen Wood, CEO of Allsource Analysis, who pinpointed the destruction between August and September 2014. (Staff Sgt. Russell Lee Klika/U.S. Army via AP) In this Dec. 7, 2005, photo released by the U.S. Army, soldiers can see the city of Mosul, Iraq, from the top of the stairwell at St. Elijahs Monastery during a visit arranged by Capt. John P. Smith, a chaplain with the 142nd Corps Support Battalion. U.S. troops and advisers had worked to protect and honor the monastery situated on a Forward Operating Base, a hopeful endeavor in a violent place and time. (Sgt. Mitch Armbruster/U.S. Army via AP) This Oct. 1, 2006, photo provided by the U.S. Army Col. Juanita Chang shows St. Elijah's Monastery on the outskirts of Mosul, Iraq. This month, at the request of AP, satellite imagery firm DigitalGlobe tasked a high resolution camera passing over the site to grab photos, and then pulled earlier images of the same spot from their vast archive of pictures. Imagery analyst Stephen Wood, CEO of Allsource Analysis, confirmed that the monastery is has been completely destroyed and identified the date of destruction between Aug. 27 and Sept. 28, 2014. (Col. Juanita Chang/U.S. Army via AP) This March 26, 2005, photo provided by U.S. Army reserve Col. Mary Prophit shows U.S. service members during a sunrise Easter Mass at St. Elijah's Monastery, or Dair Mar Elia, in Mosul, Iraq. For 1,400 years the compound survived assaults by nature and man, standing as a place of worship most recently for U.S. troops. (Col. Mary Prophit/U.S. Army via AP) In this April 3, 2010, photo released by the U.S. Army, soldiers celebrate a Catholic Easter Mass at St. Elijah's Monastery on the outskirts of Mosul, Iraq. Satellite photos obtained by The Associated Press confirm the worst fears of church authorities and preservationists: Iraq's oldest Christian monastery has been completely wiped out since the takeover of Mosul by the Islamic State group. (Sgt. Shannon R. Gregory/U.S. Army via AP) FILE - This Nov. 7, 2008, file photo shows the sanctuary of St. Elijah's Monastery on Forward Operating Base Marez in Mosul, Iraq, about 360 kilometers (225 miles) northwest of Baghdad. Maj. Geoffrey Bailey, now a U.S. Army command chaplain in Kabul, Afghanistan, who led prayers and tours at St. Elijahs, said the monastery "provided troops a historical glimpse into the great history of Iraq and a chance to indirectly connect with the people who make the country culturally and sociologically rich and worth fighting for. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo, File) This Nov. 27, 2004, photo provided by U.S. Army reserve Col. Mary Prophit, shows Prophit, then a Major, at St. Elijah's Monastery in Mosul, Iraq. A library manager in Glenoma, Wash., Prophit remembered a sunrise service in St. Elijahs where, as a Catholic lay minister, she was able to serve communion. I let that moment sink in, the candlelight, the first rays of sunshine. We were worshipping in a place where people had been worshipping God for 1,400 years, she said. It gives me goosebumps right now. (Courtesy of Col. Mary Prophit/U.S. Army via AP) In this Aug. 19, 2009, photo provided by U.S. Army reserve Col. Mary Prophit, a bird nests in the ruins of St. Elijahs Monastery, or Dair Mar Elia, near Mosul in northern Iraq. St. Elijahs served as a center of the regional Christian community for centuries, attracting worshippers from throughout the region to pray with the priests who lived there. Tragedy struck in 1743, when as many as 150 monks were massacred by a Persian general because they refused orders to convert to Islam. For the next two centuries, partially damaged, it remained a place of pilgrimage, even after it was incorporated into an Iraqi and then a U.S. military base. (Col. Mary Prophit/U.S. Army via AP) FILE - In this Nov. 7, 2008, file photo, U.S. Army soldiers tour St. Elijah's Monastery on Forward Operating Base Marez in Mosul, Iraq, about 360 kilometers (225 miles) northwest of Baghdad. St. Elijahs has officially joined a growing list of more than 100 demolished religious and historic sites, including mosques, tombs, shrines and churches. The Islamic State group has defaced or ruined ancient monuments in Nineveh, Palmyra and Hatra. Museums and libraries have been looted, books burned, artwork crushed. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo, File) In this Aug. 19, 2009, photo provided by U.S. Army reserve Col. Mary Prophit, Suzanne Bott leads a tour at St. Elijah's Monastery, or Dair Mar Elia, in Mosul, Iraq. Bott spent more than two years surveying and restoring the site as a U.S. State Department cultural adviser in Iraq. Verifying images for the AP that show the destruction of the monastery, the University of Arizona heritage conservationist was quiet for a moment. Thats it. Its gone, said Bott. (Col. Mary Prophit via AP) In this Jan. 21, 2009, photo released by the U.S. Department of Defense, a soldier walks toward St. Elijahs Monastery at Forward Operating Base Marez in Mosul, Iraq. The Islamic State group, which broke from al-Qaida and now controls large parts of Iraq and Syria, has killed thousands of civilians and forced out hundreds of thousands of Christians, threatening a religion that has endured in the region for 2,000 years. Along the way, its fighters destroy anything they consider contrary to their interpretation of Islam. (JoAnn Makinano/Department of Defense via AP) In this Aug. 19, 2009, photo provided by US Army reserve Col. Mary Prophit, Suzanne Bott leads a tour at St. Elijah's monastery, or Dair Mar Elia, in Mosul, Iraq. Bott spent more than two years surveying and restoring the site as a U.S. State Department cultural adviser in Iraq. (Col. Mary Prophit via AP) In this Aug. 21, 2009, photo released by the U.S. Army, visitors assigned to the Logistic Civil Augmentive Program from Forward Operating Base Speicher, near Tikrit, Iraq, stand at the entrance to the ruins of St. Elijahs Monastery after completing a tour there, at Forward Operating Base Marez in Mosul, Iraq. The 1,400-year-old monastery has been reduced to a field of rubble, yet another victim of the Islamic State's relentless destruction. (MC1 (SCW) Carmichael Yepez/U.S. Army via AP) In this Aug. 19, 2009, photo provided by U.S. Army reserve Col. Mary Prophit, a soldier walks inside St. Elijah's Monastery in Mosul, Iraq. Satellite photos obtained by The Associated Press confirm what church leaders and Middle East preservationists had feared: St. Elijah's, a 1,400-year-old monastery in Iraq, has been reduced to a field of rubble, yet another victim of the Islamic State's relentless destruction. (Col. Mary Prophit/U.S. Army via AP) This Nov. 7, 2008, photo shows St. Elijah's Monastery on the outskirts of Mosul, Iraq, about 360 kilometers (225 miles) northwest of Baghdad. St. Elijahs served as a center of the regional Christian community for centuries, attracting worshippers from throughout the region to pray with its priests. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo) In this Nov. 7, 2008, photo, a U.S. Army chaplain gestures toward the place where the 101st Airborne Division's "screaming eagle" was painted above a door at St. Elijah's Monastery on Forward Operating Base Marez in Mosul, Iraq. The chaplain, recognizing the sites historical and cultural significance, kicked the troops out and the U.S. Army began a preservation initiative that became a pet project for a series of chaplains who led thousands of soldiers on tours through its weathered walls. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo) The Latest: Austria calls for EU asylum reform VIENNA (AP) The latest news on the influx of asylum-seekers and other migrants in Europe. All times local: 8:20 p.m. Austrian President Heinz Fischer is calling for a "more fair and balanced" asylum policy in Europe, as the number of migrants to Austria nearly quadrupled last year. Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi, right, talks to his Austrian counterpart Heinz Fischer prior to their meeting at the presidential palace in Carthage near Tunis, Tunisia, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. Fischer is on a 2-day state visit to Tunisia. (AP Photo) Fischer spoke in Tunis alongside Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi on Wednesday. He said proposals for reforming asylum policy would be debated in the country's parliament before being proposed to the European Union. "The goal is to achieve a more fair and better balanced asylum policy in Europe," Fischer said. Austria earlier Wednesday announced it is putting a cap on the number of refugees it wants to accept 37,500 this year and a total of 127,500 through 2019. Officials said the government will be examining legal options on how it can react if those numbers are exceeded. Last year the country received 90,000 requests for asylum, up from 25,000 a year earlier, Fischer said. He added that any reforms would still conform to international conventions on human rights. ___ 5:55 p.m. Officials from Serbia and Croatia say that only refugees who wish to seek asylum in Austria or Germany will be allowed to enter the two countries and continue their journey toward Western Europe. The officials said Wednesday that the new rule follows the Austrian government's decision to do the same. Serbian Labor and Social Care Minister Aleksandar Vulin said Austria's decision has been relayed by the governments of Slovenia and Croatia. In Zagreb, Croatia's Interior Minister Ranko Ostojic said authorities there will request migrants seeking entry to state which European Union country will be their final destination. Austria said Wednesday it has put a cap on the number of refugees it wants to accept 37,500 this year and a total of 127,500 through 2019. ___ 5:35 p.m. Hundreds of refugees are stranded at Greece's northern border with Macedonia, after Macedonian authorities stopped letting them through citing problems with transit flows further north on the Balkan route which have caused a chain reaction. Greek police say about 650 asylum-seekers from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan were stuck in a border camp Wednesday. People from those countries are recognized as refugees by Balkan countries and normally allowed through on their way to Germany and other wealthy European Union members. Several have been waiting since the Macedonian border closed to migrants late Tuesday. Macedonian authorities said the problem appears to be temporary, and started in Slovenia due to a disruption in the railway service that migrants use to reach Austria. As a result, they said, Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia stopped letting in migrants. ___ 5:25 p.m. Authorities say the number of people deported from Germany last year almost doubled to 20,888 compared with 10,884 in 2014. A further 37,220 people, mostly from western Balkan nations, took advantage of a financial assistance program and left voluntarily in 2015. The previous year the number of voluntary departures was about 20,000. Germany has stepped up deportations in a bid to reduce the overall number of migrants in the country amid an unprecedented influx of almost 1.1 million asylum-seekers last year. Bavaria, the state in which most asylum-seekers first set foot, deported 4,195 people last year, a fourfold increase on 2014. ___ 5:15 p.m. An international rights organization has called on Bulgaria's government to stop forcefully returning asylum-seekers from its borders before they have the chance to apply for refugee status. Human Rights Watch said Wednesday that Bulgaria has been summarily pushing back Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis as they cross the border from Turkey. It says its activists have interviewed 45 asylum seekers in six countries who described 59 incidents of summary returns from Bulgaria to Turkey between March and November 2015. Twenty-six people said they had been beaten by police or bitten by police dogs. All but one said they were stripped of their possessions, in some cases at gunpoint by people they described as Bulgarian law enforcement officials, and later pushed back across the border to Turkey. Bulgaria's interior ministry officials refused to immediately comment on the report. Last year, over 30,000 migrants entered Bulgaria illegally, almost three times more than in 2014. To prevent a further massive influx, the government deployed more police officers at the Turkish border and built a fence along a 33-kilometer (20-mile) stretch. ___ 5:05 p.m. Turkey's state-run news agency says authorities in northwestern Turkey have rounded up some 1,300 migrants who were allegedly preparing to make their way to Greece. Anadolu Agency said Wednesday the migrants from Syria and Afghanistan were picked up in a new sweep in the resort of Ayvacik, in Canakkale province, which is a main crossing point to the Greek island of Lesbos. Authorities also detained 17 suspected human traffickers during the raids, Anadolu said. The agency did not say when the operations occurred. Turkey a major transit point for migrants on their way to Europe and home to 2.2 million refugees from Syria is under intense pressure to stem the flow of migrants to Europe. ___ 3:20 p.m. The German government wants the number of migrants coming to the country to fall "significantly" after almost 1.1 million asylum seekers arrived last year. A spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel says the flow of refugees has already slowed this year, but a further reduction is needed. Steffen Seibert didn't say what number the government is aiming for and declined to comment on the cap announced Wednesday by Austria. Seibert told reporters in Berlin that a range of measures are needed to achieve the drop in migrant arrivals and urged European countries to make good on their pledge of giving 3 billion euros ($3.3 billion) to Turkey. He said the experience of wars in ex-Yugoslavia in the 1990s showed many refugees would also return to their home countries once conflicts end. ___ 2:55 p.m. Fifteen people have been arrested in Germany and Turkey as part of coordinated raids against people traffickers. German Federal Police say officers, including special tactical units, searched 16 premises in Germany Wednesday, arresting five people. Police in Turkey arrested 10 people during simultaneous raids. Turkey is the main transit country for migrants from the Middle East, Asia and Africa trying to reach Europe. ___ 2:25 p.m. Austria has put a cap on the number of refugees it wants to accept 37,500 this year and a total of 127,500 through 2019. The numbers were announced after a meeting Wednesday of federal ministers and provincial governors. Chancellor Werner Faymann says the figures are a "guideline" while Deputy Chancellor Reinhard Mitterlehner calls it an "upper limit." The two officials are from the two parties that make up Austria's coalition government Faymann heads the Social Democratic Party while Mitterlehner belongs to the centrist People's Party. Officials said the government will be examining legal options on how it can react if those numbers are exceeded. Faymann calls the decision an "emergency solution," but says Austria "cannot accept everyone applying for asylum." Not included are the 90,000 applications from last year, of which many are still being processed. ___ 2:15 p.m. Britain's government has ordered an investigation into alleged discrimination against asylum-seekers amid reports that many of the homes being provided for them have red front doors that mark them out for racial abuse. Immigration Minister James Brokenshire says the Home Office will launch an inquiry after an investigation by the Times newspaper found that most public housing for asylum-seekers from Syria and eastern Europe in the northeastern English town of Middlesborough had red front doors. The report quotes asylum-seekers as complaining that the distinctive paint singles them out as easy targets for vandalism. The services firm G4S, the contractor providing housing for asylum-seekers in the region, denies it has a discriminatory policy but said Wednesday it will repaint the doors so "there is no predominant color." ___ 1:30 p.m. The head of the European Commission is calling for EU leaders to make enough time to center on the refugee crisis during the next EU summit in February which was primarily to focus on British demands to reform the bloc. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told reporters on Wednesday that half a day was needed for the 28 leaders to assess the latest developments in the refugee crisis. Juncker said he was "rather worried that we won't have enough time to tackle the refugee question in sufficient depth." ___ 12:30 p.m. Subfreezing temperatures and snow have settled in over Central Europe, adding to the difficulties of migrants making heading to Western Europe but not deterring them from continuing their journeys. Liene Veide, a spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency, says around 2,000 migrants continue to cross from Macedonia into Serbia daily, even with temperatures plunging to a low of -19 (-2 F) Wednesday. She said many arrive without clothing or boots appropriate for the winter weather, and that some have pneumonia, fever or other illnesses. Still, she says most refuse hospitalization and insist on pressing on with their journeys. Meanwhile, temperatures plunged overnight Wednesday in Romania to the lowest of the year, with -29.5 C (-21 F) recorded in one town in central Romania. ___ 8:50 a.m. Before a refugee summit of national and regional government leaders, a senior minister says Austria wants to reduce the number of migrants entering the country to no more than 40,000 a year. Deputy Chancellor Reinhold Mitterlehner is cited in Wednesday's Kurier newspaper as saying that his conservative party advocates a figure of 30,000 over four years. The daily says Mitterlehner's Social Democratic coalition partners favor 40,000 over three years. Mitterlehner acknowledges that such restrictions still must be "legally clarified," in efforts to find a way that a person's right to asylum is not violated. Close to 90,000 refugees applied for asylum last year in Austria. Migrants walk from the Macedonian border into Serbia, near the village of Miratovac, Serbia, on Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016. Bracing cold temperatures hundreds of migrants continue to arrive daily into Serbia in order to register and continue their journey further north towards Western Europe. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu) A woman feeds ducks in a park in Warsaw, Poland, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016, as snow and a deep freeze have settled over Central Europe. Temperatures fell to minus 6 Celsius (21 Fahrenheit) in Warsaw on Wednesday. Elsewhere in Central Europe, winter weather is making the journeys of migrants into Europe more difficult, but apparently not weakening the determination of those seeking asylum in Western Europe. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski) Migrants carrying their belongings across a partially frozen stream as they walk from the Macedonian border into Serbia, near the village of Miratovac, Serbia, on Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016. Bracing cold temperatures hundreds of migrants continue to arrive daily into Serbia in order to register and continue their journey further north towards Western Europe. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu) Migrants walk in the so-called "Mahgreb Quarter" in Duesseldorf, Germany, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016. Police have arrested 40 men of North African origin in raids in the neighborhood last weekend linked to a long-running investigation of suspected organized theft. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner) Migrants carrying their belongings walk from the Macedonian border into Serbia, near the village of Miratovac, Serbia, on Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016. Bracing cold temperatures hundreds of migrants continue to arrive daily into Serbia in order to register and continue their journey further north towards Western Europe. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu) Migrants walk with their belongings from the Macedonian border into Serbia, near the village of Miratovac, Serbia, on Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016. Bracing cold temperatures hundreds of migrants continue to arrive daily into Serbia in order to register and continue their journey further north towards Western Europe. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu) Migrants carrying their belongings walk from the Macedonian border into Serbia, near the village of Miratovac, Serbia, on Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016. Bracing cold temperatures hundreds of migrants continue to arrive daily into Serbia in order to register and continue their journey further north towards Western Europe. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu) A mother holds her baby walk as they from the Macedonian border into Serbia, near the village of Miratovac, Serbia, on Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016. Bracing cold temperatures hundreds of migrants continue to arrive daily into Serbia in order to register and continue their journey further north towards Western Europe. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu) A mother holds her baby as they walk from the Macedonian border into Serbia, near the village of Miratovac, Serbia, on Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016. Bracing cold temperatures hundreds of migrants continue to arrive daily into Serbia in order to register and continue their journey further north towards Western Europe. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu) Migrants walk from the Macedonian border into Serbia, near the village of Miratovac, Serbia, on Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016. Bracing cold temperatures hundreds of migrants continue to arrive daily into Serbia in order to register and continue their journey further north towards Western Europe. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu) A migrants rides with his bicycle in the Calais refugee camp, northern France Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016. The bulldozers were used to clear a 100-meter-long strip of land between the camp and the highway. Up to 6,000 people were staying there in the fall, though the number has decreased recently. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler) US piles pressure on China to help with N. Korea sanctions SEOUL, South Korea (AP) A senior U.S. diplomat stepped up pressure on China on Wednesday to play a leading role in punishing North Korea for its recent nuclear test that raised worries about advancements in its bomb program. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in South Korea on a diplomatic push for tougher sanctions and punishment that can force change in the North. Key to those efforts is whether China, the North's last major ally and a veto-wielding U.N. Security Council member, will join in such moves. "We believe that China has a special role to play given the special relationship that it has with North Korea," Blinken told reporters after meeting with South Korean officials. South Korean First Vice Foreign Minister Lim Sung-nam, right, and U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken shake hands after speaking at a press conference following their meeting at the Foreign Ministry in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. U.S. and South Korean officials vowed to make North Korea pay a high price for its recent defiant nuclear test earlier this month that caused worries about advancement in the Norths bomb program. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man) He said Beijing has "more influence and more leverage" over Pyongyang than any other country because most its trade goes from, to or through China. "We are looking to China to show leadership on the issue," Blinken said. He flies to Beijing later Wednesday for talks on North Korea. During a meeting with South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se, Blinken said Seoul and Washington are working closely in New York with the United Nations Security Council. Yun said it is time for the international community to stand united to make North Korea face the consequences for its bomb test. "This is North Korea versus international community," he said. China is expected to join in some U.N. sanctions, but won't likely go as far as to take steps that might lead to the collapse of the North's authoritarian government. China fears the onslaught of a wave of refugees and violence surging across the border, analysts say. North Korea says it conducted a hydrogen bomb test on Jan. 6. Many governments and experts remain highly skeptical about the North's claim, but whatever device North Korea detonated will likely push the country a step closer toward its goal of manufacturing a miniaturized warhead to place on a missile that can threaten the U.S. mainland. After the bomb test, the rival Koreas resumed psychological warfare with Seoul blasting anti-Pyongyang broadcasts from border loudspeakers, while Pyongyang does the same and also floats propaganda leaflets over the border by balloon, according to South Korean officials. __ Associated Press video journalist Kim Yong-ho contributed to this report. U. S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, speaks to the media as South Korean First Vice Foreign Minister Lim Sung-nam, right, listens as they speak to the media following their meeting at the Foreign Ministry in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. U.S. and South Korean officials vowed Wednesday to make North Korea pay a high price for its defiant nuclear test earlier this month that caused worries about advancement in the Norths bomb program. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man) U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, shakes hands with South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-Koo during their meeting at the Defense Ministry in Seoul, South Korea Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. Blinken is in Seoul following a weekend's trilateral meeting by U.S., South Korea and Japan in Tokyo over North Korea's recent nuclear test. (Kim Hong-Ji/Pool Photo via AP) Protesters hold placards with photos of U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken stage a rally demanding a restart of peace talks between two Koreas and six-party talks in front of the Foreign Ministry in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. Blinken is in Seoul following a weekend's trilateral meeting by U.S., South Korea and Japan in Tokyo over North Korea's recent nuclear test.(AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon) Protesters raising placards with photos of U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken shout slogans during a rally demanding a restart of peace talks between two Koreas and six-party talks in front of the Foreign Ministry in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. Blinken is in Seoul following a weekend's trilateral meeting by U.S., South Korea and Japan in Tokyo over North Korea's recent nuclear test. The letters on the sign at right read: "We want the United States and South Korea to restart peace talks." (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon) U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken, right, walks with South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-Koo upon his arrival for their meeting at the Defense Ministry in Seoul, South Korea Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. Blinken is in Seoul following a weekend's trilateral meeting by U.S., South Korea and Japan in Tokyo over North Korea's recent nuclear test. (Kim Hong-Ji/Pool Photo via AP) The Latest: Taliban spokesman disowns university attack CHARSADDA, Pakistan (AP) The latest developments in a Taliban attack on university in northwestern Pakistan that killed 20 and triggered an hours-long gunbattle with the army and police before the assault ended. All times local. 5:15 p.m. A spokesman for the main Taliban faction in Pakistan has disowned the group behind a deadly attack on a university in a northwestern town near the city of Peshawar that killed 20 people. Pakistani troops and rescue workers gather at the main gate of Bacha Khan University in Charsadda town, some 35 kilometers (21 miles) outside the city of Peshawar, Pakistan, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. Gunmen stormed Bacha Khan University named after the founder of an anti-Taliban political party in the country's northwest Wednesday, killing several people, officials said. (AP Photo/Mohammad Sajjad) The spokesman, Mohammad Khurasani, says Wednesday's attack was "un-Islamic" and insists the Pakistani Taliban were not behind it. Such statements from among the Taliban are not uncommon since the group has many loosely linked factions. Khurasani, who also denied earlier reports that he had endorsed the Taliban claim by militant leader Khalifa Umar Mansoor, says that those who carry out such attacks should be tried before an Islamic, or Sharia court. Khurasani says that the Taliban "consider the students in the non-military institutions the future of our jihad movement" and would not kill our potential future followers. He also says Mullah Fazlullah, the head of the Pakistani Taliban had nothing to do with the attack. ___ 3:30 p.m. A Pakistani official says the army and police have finished their operation to clear Taliban gunmen following an attack on a university campus in the country's northwest. Twenty people have died in the assault. Provincial governor Sardar Mehtab Abbasi says Wednesday's attack is now over and that the troops have cleared the campus. Four attackers have been killed. Deputy Commissioner Tahir Zafar says the attack began shortly after the Bacha Khan University opened for classes in the town of Charsadda, some 35 kilometers (21 miles) outside Peshawar. After the attack, Pakistani army chief Gen. Raheel Sharif visited the university and the wounded in hospital. ___ 2:15 p.m. The Pakistani Taliban have claimed responsibility for a deadly attack on a university in a town near the city of Peshawar in the country's northwest. A Taliban leader, Khalifa Umar Mansoor, made the claim in a phone call to The Associated Press from an undisclosed location. Mansoor was the mastermind mind the December 2014 attack on an army-run school that killed over 150 people, 144 of them children. Mansoor says his four-man team conducted the assault at the campus in the town of Chasadda. He says it was in revenge for the scores of militants the Pakistani security forces have killed in recent months. The main spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, Mohammad Khurasani, also reiterated the claim of responsibility. ___ 1:50 p.m. Pakistan's prime minister has vowed to fight to the end and destroy "the menace of terrorism" as a major battle is unfolding in the country's northwest. Gunmen stormed a university campus in the northwestern town of Chasadda, near the city of Pershawar, killing at least 19 people. The attack triggered a gunbattle with police and army troops, which were quickly deployed to the scene on Wednesday. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was quoted on the website of the Daily Pakistan as saying in a statement: "We are determined and resolved in our commitment to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland." ___ 1 p.m. Pakistani officials say the death toll from a brazen attack on a university in the country's northwest has risen to 19, with several people wounded. Deputy Commissioner Tahir Zafar says the attack began shortly after the Bacha Khan University opened for classes on Wednesday in Charsadda town, some 35 kilometers (21 miles) outside the city of Peshawar. Heavy police and military forces were deployed to the area, and a gunbattle is underway. Hospital official Sher Akbar Khan says the hospital has received 19 bodies so far. Pakistani army says the attackers have been contained and that four of them have been killed. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack. A Taliban attack on a school in Peshawar in December 2014 killed over 150 people, mostly children. This video still image taken from Dunya News/ WAQAT News shows police and emergency personnel outside Bacha Khan University, the scene of a shooting on Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016 in Charsadda,, Pakistan. Police say gunmen stormed the university, killing a professor and several others. Police and army exchanged gunfire with the attackers and several explosions were heard from the area of the Bacha Khan University, about 21 miles from Peshawar. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack. (Dunya News/ WAQAT News via AP) Rubio has a late-bloomer strategy in GOP presidential race BETTENDORF, Iowa (AP) Under pressure to emerge as the Republican mainstream's presidential contender, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is increasingly relying on a national strategy as he lowers expectations for February's primary contests. He's betting big that Republican voters across the political spectrum will ultimately coalesce behind his candidacy in the state-by-state slog for delegates his team envisions for the months ahead. It's a strategy fraught with risk for Rubio, who's still fighting to break out among the pack of candidates looking up at New York billionaire Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. The outsider favorites are dominating in Iowa less than two weeks before the state's leadoff caucuses. Republican presidential candidate, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. is greeted by supporters as he arrives to speak to New Hampshire legislators, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016, at the Statehouse in Concord, N.H. (AP Photo/Jim Cole) For now at least, Rubio, a first-term senator, is embracing a patient approach that goes well beyond the four states with contests in February: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. Rubio in recent days has cast himself as a passionate evangelical conservative, a national security hawk, an empathizer of immigrants in the country illegally, and someone who can bring new voters to the Republican Party. This, as he jabs at Trump, Cruz and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, yet works to capture the anger and frustration that fuel their candidacies. "I won't be able to appeal to everybody on everything," Rubio told The Associated Press on Monday. "I want to get enough delegates to be the nominee." But that's exactly the theme he projected as he campaigned through Iowa this week before a trip to New Hampshire, where he hopes to rise from a cluster of so-called establishment alternatives to Trump and Cruz. "Too often, I think, as Republicans we have a bad choice," said Iowa state Sen. Jack Whitver, Rubio's state campaign chairman, introducing him at one of his many Iowa stops this week. The choice, he said, is often between "the establishment, moderate person that everyone says can win the election, or we have a true consistent conservative that everyone says can't win the election." "This year we don't have to make that choice," he said. "This year, we can have it all." Given Jeb Bush's continued struggles, some major Republican donors and elected officials see Rubio as their party's best candidate to defeat the leading Democrat, Hillary Clinton, in this fall's general election. But in a year when voters appear to be rejecting insiders, Rubio has struggled to tap the anti-establishment anger, putting him behind Cruz and Trump with time running out before the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses. Facing that reality, Rubio's team has conceded he's unlikely to win any of the first three contests: Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. No Republican in the modern political era has won the presidential nomination without winning one of the first three states. Rubio's team sees a path around that history: finishing in the top three in those states and surviving until March. That's when party insiders expect the race to become a long haul because of new rules that award delegates proportionally. The strategy also assumes some of Rubio's mainstream challengers will drop out out, leaving Rubio's mix of messages his tea party rise, national security background and abiding conservative social positions to allow him to unify the GOP. "Any preconceived notions you have from previous cycles are out the window," said California-based donor John Jordan, who is running a pro-Rubio super PAC. "Given that, I don't think it's necessary to win one of the early states." He calls this "a rolling national election." Rubio's team describes his message not as scattered, but as based on Ronald Reagan's "three-legged stool" with conservative approaches to economic, social and national security policy. Rubio emphasized his religious faith in Iowa, where he's running an ad highlighting his opposition to abortion rights and where he told voters in the more socially conservative northern part of the state that his Christianity is "the single greatest influence in my life." In more moderate eastern Iowa, Rubio asserted his credentials on military and foreign policy as unmatched in the field. "It's not even close," he said. And the 44-year-old son of Cuban immigrants pressed the point in Ottumwa that he can bring people into the party who normally don't vote for it. "We have some differences," Rubio said of the candidates in the field. "But it's a big tent." Yet when asked why he was more electable than Trump, he nodded to the raucous throngs that have flocked to Trump's rallies. "What he's tapped into is a real frustration that needs to be addressed," Rubio said. Ottumwa physician Michael Shaeffer, who asked Rubio what set him apart, wanted more, but still plans to support him. "We're not going to vote necessarily for the best person," Shaeffer said. "We're going to vote for the one with the best chance of winning." from the mainstream Mormon church when it outlawed polygamy Attorneys representing the towns, collectively known as Short Creek, say the case is the government's attempt to eradicate the church on Wednesday, prosecutors said the local government is entirely run by the leaders of the polygamist Mormon church Two polygamous towns in Arizona and Utah are corrupt communities where people are spied on and routinely denied basic services as a way to root out non-believers, federal lawyers said Wednesday during opening statements in a discrimination trial. An attorney for one of the towns, Colorado City, Arizona, countered that the case was filed because the government finds the dominant religion in the towns to be distasteful and wants it eradicated. 'Who is discriminating against who?' attorney Jeff Matura asked jurors. Scroll down for videos Hildale, Utah mayor Phillip Barlow, center, arrives at the Sandra Day O'Connor United States District Court on Tuesday for the trial against his town and it's sister city of Colorado City, Arizona The towns, collectively known as Short Creek, are on trial for allegedly violating the civil rights of non-believers. Above, Justice department prosecutor Sean Keveney, center, and his team of attorneys arrive at court on Tuesday The case marks one of the boldest efforts by the government to confront what critics have said is a corrupt regime in Colorado City and Hildale, Utah, where the dominant religion is the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The sect broke away from mainstream Mormonism when the religion disavowed polygamy more than 100 years ago. The trial will focus on allegations that the towns systematically denied housing, water services and police protection to people who do not adhere to polygamous-driven beliefs. U.S. Justice Department lawyers contended in their opening statement that both towns remain beholden to sect leader Warren Jeffs, even as he serves a life sentence in a Texas prison for sexually assaulting underage girls he considered wives. The lawyers also depicted the church's security operation and local police as paranoid entities that work in lockstep and violate the civil rights of non-believers. The two towns are situated on the border of Arizona and Utah. The town is mostly populated by members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints The leader of the church is Warren Jeffs (pictured above in 2006). While Jeffs is serving a life sentence for rape, he allegedly still runs the group from prison Above, citizens of the community pictured above earlier this year, after the area was hit with flash flooding Attorney Jessica Clark described how security officers have spied on people with cameras placed around Colorado City and Hildale, and staff members have been positioned on the outskirts of the towns to keep an eye on people arriving. She said the city cites a water shortage while denying building permits to non-believers but allows other buildings to be constructed for believers. 'All the entities work together seemingly for the benefits of FLDS and its leaders,' Clark said of the church. The communities deny the allegations and say religion isn't a motivating factor in decisions. Lawyers for the towns tried unsuccessfully to get a judge to bar evidence of polygamy, underage marriage and church teachings. Jeffs is not in the courtroom, but his presence loomed over the proceedings. The government says city officials assisted him while he was a fugitive and still follow his directives. A judge has said the Justice Department has evidence suggesting officers dropped off packages, letters and other items for Jeffs while he was a fugitive. 'His control of the cities and police continues today,' Clark said. Matura told jurors the U.S. Justice Department case was based on the false assumptions that religious people can't function properly in government jobs and that everyone who works for the towns is a member of the sect. Experts believe the trial will provide a rare glimpse into towns that for decades have been shrouded in secrecy and are distrustful of government and outsiders. Some witnesses are expected to invoke their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, as they did during depositions. Vietnam's Communists set to reinstall conservative as chief BANGKOK (AP) In a single-party communist state one would expect the process of picking the country's new leaders to be a smooth-sailing affair with no dramas. Not so this time. Despite the veil of secrecy that the party pulls around its inner workings, it is clear that the Communist Party's eight-day Congress set to open Thursday was the kind of political cliffhanger that would do a democracy proud, as a battle for power hinged on a last-minute procedural question. After weeklong deliberations, the congress of 1,510 delegates will select a new set of leaders to rule Vietnam for the next five years: the president, the prime minister, the chairman of the National Assembly, and most importantly, the party's general secretary, the de-facto national leader. He is first among equals in the Politburo that runs the country as well as in the party. In this May, 20, 2013, file photo, Nguyen Phu Trong, left, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, and Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung walk to the mausoleum of late President Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi, Vietnam. Vietnam's Communist Party Congress is set to open Thursday, Jan. 21, 2016. (AP Photo/Tran Van Minh, File) A rare and intriguing contest arose between 71-year-old incumbent Nguyen Phu Trong, a conservative party stalwart, and Nguyen Tan Dung, 66, a two-term prime minister with greater ambitions who projected himself as a pro-business, economic reformist. On Wednesday, just a day before the Congress was to open, Trong (pronounced "Chong") appeared to have secured his job, according to news leaked from party insiders, who declined to be named because they were not authorized to release such information. In keeping with the close nature of the proceedings, no confirmation of the news was immediately available. At the last preparatory meeting, it was agreed to sustain a controversial rule enacted in 2014 barring all but officially nominated candidates from consideration, with no new nominations allowed from the Congress floor. Trong was endorsed as the general secretary candidate earlier this month. Although the names on the official list were not publicly announced, word was leaked that on the slate with Trong would be two of Dung's (pronounced "Dzoong") allies for the posts of prime minister and president. The selection would be the sort of balancing act that is the usual outcome of the conclaves. Vietnam's next leader will play a key role in deciding the pace of Vietnam's economic reforms, which have brought a flood of foreign investment, a fledgling stock market and helped triple per capita GDP to $2,100 over the past 10 years. He will also shape Vietnam's relationship with China, its biggest trading partner, ideological ally and regional rival. Beijing has been expanding its territorial assertions in the South China Sea, but Vietnam has pushed back against those claims. And experts believe that regardless of who took the top spot, Vietnam's ratification of the U.S. Trans-Pacific Partnership trade initiative and pace of improving ties with the U.S. will continue. Every five years, delegates from around the country attend the congress to review and set national and party policies, and elect a new Central Committee. On one of the last days of the congress, the new Central Committee meets to elect a new Politburo from among its ranks and selects one of them as party general secretary. The country's three other top leaders prime minister, president and National Assembly chairman are nominated, but their actual selection is done by the National Assembly, which itself is elected about six months after the Congress. All this is done behind closed doors. No media are allowed to cover the proceedings, and in any case Vietnamese media are controlled by the government. It had not been a sure thing for Trong. Up until the past few weeks, Dung had been the odds-on favorite to take the top party post, even though Trong has several times in the past few years tried to undercut the popular Dung's growing political strength. Dung took on the pro-Trong Politburo several times, coming out on top. In 2012, the Central Committee rejected a Politburo vote that would have cast blame on him for mismanaging the economy. Another effort to diminish his power backfired when a vote of confidence was held by the Central Committee in early 2015 on the top 20 party leaders, and he led the pack with the top number of supporters. He also has been the target of murkier attacks, mostly through blog postings accusing him of nepotism and trying to tie him to corruption. "Mr. Trong is an ideologue, who has a PhD in 'party building.' As the party general secretary, his most important task is to maintain party unity and ultimately the party's hold on power," said Le Hong Hiep, a visiting fellow at Singapore's Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Dung, however, rose mainly through bureaucratic ranks, holding various positions from provincial governor, to governor of the State Bank, deputy minister of Public Security, deputy prime minister, and then prime minister. He also drew support from the business sector. Dung "is more result- and action-oriented, and less beholden to ideological dogmatism," Hiep said. Trong and his followers were worried that if Dung took over the party, he will further expand his patronage network, which in turn will likely lead to more corruption. "From the perspective of Mr. Trong's camp, the rise of Mr. Dung may therefore pose an existential threat to the Party's survival in the long run," he said. Still, Vietnam has collective leadership, and that means major decisions are made by the all-powerful Politburo that runs day-to-day affairs of the party and the country. Dung was more outspoken in his criticism of China's assertiveness in the South China Sea, said Murray Hiebert, a Southeast Asian expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "Trong has been less strident in his criticisms of Chinese behavior, but no one expects him to cozy up to Beijing in the face of tensions in the South China Sea," he said. And despite their differing styles, Hiebert said both men recognize that the party's survival "depends on continuing economic reform and global economic diversification." ___ Tran Van Minh in Hanoi, Vietnam, contributed to this report. In this July 7, 2015, file photo, Nguyen Phu Trong, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, speaks during a meeting with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. Vietnam's Communist Party Congress is set to open Thursday, Jan. 21, 2016. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File) In Vietnam, people have virtually no say in choosing leaders HANOI, Vietnam (AP) Vietnam's Communist Party will hold its 12th congress Jan. 21-28 to elect a new set of leaders for the next five years. Here's a look at how the process works. CENTER OF POWER Vietnam's 93 million people do not directly elect their top leaders, who are chosen by the Communist Party of Vietnam. Article 4 of Vietnam's constitution formally gives the Communist Party the right to rule the country. It controls the government, legislature, military, police, judiciary and virtually every public organization including farmers', youth and women's organizations. In this Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016, photo, vehicles drive past a sign marking the 12th Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam in Hanoi, Vietnam. This week, some 1,510 representatives of Vietnam's Communist party gather in the capital to pick the country's new leaders. (AP Photo/Hau Dinh) PARTY CONGRESS It is held every five years to elect the all-powerful party Central Committee, which this year will have 180 members, up from 175 currently, and the Politburo, which this year could be more than the current 16. It also chooses the party general secretary and endorses the nominees for the posts of the president, the prime minister and the chairman of the National Assembly, or parliament. The general secretary is the most powerful official in the collective leadership. The prime minister is considered No. 2 in the hierarchy. The president holds a largely ceremonial post although he is nominally the head of the military. SECRET AFFAIR The party congress is held behind closed doors in complete secrecy, except for the ceremonial opening and closing sessions that are broadcast live on state television. A total of 1,510 Communist Party delegates representing 63 provinces, ministries, government agencies and party commissions attend the party congress in the capital, Hanoi. The outgoing central committee issues a list of candidates for the new Politburo and the new central committee, which the congress members will then debate. These lists have more names than available positions, allowing for the delegates to vote on their choices. DO THE PEOPLE HAVE ANY SAY AT ALL? Not really. The people do elect the 500 legislators in the National Assembly, most of whom are Communist Party members, but it is mostly a rubber-stamp body. The new assembly, to be elected in May, will hold its first session in June, where it will formally select the president, prime minister and Cabinet members chosen by the party congress in elections that normally have only one candidate. Because of this process, Vietnam's government says that leaders are the people's choice. POWER STRUGGLE In the days leading up to the congress, there appeared to be a power struggle between General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong (pronounced "Nyu-en Foo Chong") and Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung (pronounced "Nyu-en Taan Dzoong"). Trong, 71, took over as secretary-general in 2011 even though he should have been ineligible for the post because of the compulsory retirement age of 65 from the Politburo. An exception was made to allow him to be re-elected to the Politburo and take over the top post. Unofficial reports leaked from party meetings say that Trong has been nominated as the sole candidate for General Secretary for a second term, effectively removing Dung from the race. In this May, 20, 2013, file photo, Nguyen Phu Trong, left, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, and Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung walk to the mausoleum of late President Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi, Vietnam. Vietnam's Communist Party Congress is set to open Thursday, Jan. 21, 2016. (AP Photo/Tran Van Minh, File) Greek seamen, farmers, protest planned pension reforms TEMPE, Greece (AP) Greek ferry crews launched a two-day strike Wednesday while hundreds of farmers prepared to block highways to protest unpopular draft pension reforms that will further cut incomes in the austerity-weary country. Unions representing practically all sectors of economic activity including private and public sector workers, lawyers, doctors, farmers and seamen fiercely oppose the reforms proposed by the radical left-led government. They say the cutbacks demanded by the country's bailout creditors, combined with further tax hikes, will eradicate more than three quarters of annual income for some professional groups, particularly farmers. Protesting farmers park their tractors at Girtoni road junction near Larissa city, central Greece, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. Hundreds of farmers are preparing to block highways to protest unpopular draft pension reforms that will further cut incomes in the austerity-weary country. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis) Hundreds of farmers drove their tractors towards key road junctions, which they plan to block in coming days. Convoys of about 800 tractors were heading through snow-covered countryside from the agricultural region of Thessaly in central Greece to Tempe Vale, a vital point on the main highway traversing Greece from north to south. "The (new) pension system will triple our contributions, and, with the taxes, the state will end up keeping 85 percent of our income," said farmer Antonis Fasfalis, 45, from the village of Platykambos. Farmers say the reforms will increase their social security contributions from 6.5 to 27 percent, while income tax will double going from 13 to 26 percent. "This year I will pay 4,000 euros ($4,350) in taxes, and next year it will be 10,000 ($10,870) with the new measures," said 60-year-old Constantinos Ougiaros, also from Platykambos. "There's nothing left to hope for, not even the roadblock protest I'm heading to," he said. "(Authorities) will leave us to tire ourselves out, and then we will leave without having achieved anything." In the northern town of Komotini, police fired tear gas at farmers who tried to break a cordon and meet the country's agriculture minister. In the nearby Kilkis region, farmers briefly blocked a highway while hundreds of tractors were parked at the Promahonas border crossing to Bulgaria, which farmers have threatened to close. A protesting farmer smokes his cigarette atop his tractor at Girtoni road junction near Larissa city, central Greece, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. Hundreds of farmers are preparing to block highways to protest unpopular draft pension reforms that will further cut incomes in the austerity-weary country. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis) Passengers make their way in front of an immobilized ferry at the port of Piraeus near Athens, on Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. Greek seamen have launched an anti-austerity 48-hour strike that has halted island ferry services, as bailout-reliant Greece is planning to drastically overhaul its troubled pension and social security system, among other reforms demanded by international creditors. (AP Photo/ Yorgos Karahalis) A man walks on a promenade as immobilized ferries are seen in the background at the port of Piraeus near Athens, on Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. Greek seamen have launched an anti-austerity 48-hour strike that has halted island ferry services, as bailout-reliant Greece is planning to drastically overhaul its troubled pension and social security system, among other reforms demanded by international creditors. (AP Photo/ Yorgos Karahalis) Seagulls perch on a rope in front of a moored ferry at the port of Piraeus near Athens, on Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. Greek seamen have launched an anti-austerity 48-hour strike that has halted island ferry services, as bailout-reliant Greece is planning to drastically overhaul its troubled pension and social security system, among other reforms demanded by international creditors. (AP Photo/Yorgos Karahalis) A man walks on a promenade as immobilized ferries are seen in the background at the port of Piraeus near Athens, on Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. Greek seamen have launched an anti-austerity 48-hour strike that has halted island ferry services, as bailout-reliant Greece is planning to drastically overhaul its troubled pension and social security system, among other reforms demanded by international creditors. (AP Photo/ Yorgos Karahalis) EU orders Belgium to recover $230 million from Duferco steel BRUSSELS (AP) The European Union is ordering Belgium to recoup $230 million from the Duferco steel group because of illegal state aid that distorted competition. Wednesday's ruling was the second case in short succession in which the EU competition office went after Belgium after it ordered the government to recover some $760 million in illegal tax breaks from 35 multinationals last week. EU Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said that even when steel companies across the EU are struggling with a crisis in the industry there was no point in providing state aid just to keep a company within a nation. Duferco received the aid between 2006 and 2011 but nevertheless withdrew most of its business from Belgium later. Vietnam demands that China remove oil rig HANOI, Vietnam (AP) Vietnam said China has moved an oil rig into disputed waters in the South China Sea, in a possible repeat of a 2014 stand-off between the communist neighbors. Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Hai Binh said in a statement posted on the ministry's website late Tuesday that Vietnam has raised concerns with China over the movement of Haiyang Shiyou oil rig, and has demanded that China stop any drilling and remove the rig from the area where the two countries' continental shelves overlap and have not been demarcated. "Vietnam demands that China not conduct any drilling activities and withdraw Hai Duong 981 oil rig from this area," he said, using the Vietnamese name for the oil rig. FILE - In this May 7, 2012 file photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, Haiyang Shiyou oil rig, the first deep-water drilling rig developed in China, is pictured at 320 kilometers (200 miles) southeast of Hong Kong in the South China Sea. Vietnam said on its Foreign Ministry's website late Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016, China has moved an oil rig into disputed waters in the South China Sea in a move that could result in a repeat the 2014 stand-off between the communist neighbors. (Jin Liangkuai/Xinhua News Agency via AP, File) NO SALES "Vietnam reserves all its legal rights and interests in the area in accordance with international law," he said. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei defended China's action at a regular news briefing in Beijing on Wednesday. "As far as I know, the operation of the HYSY 981 oil rig is being carried out in completely uncontested waters under China's jurisdiction," he said. "We hope the Vietnamese side will see this operation calmly and make joint efforts with China to properly handle maritime issues." The oil rig was at the center of a stand-off between the countries in May 2014 when China placed it off Vietnam's central coast. It was towed away more than two months later, but the incident sparked deadly anti-China riots in Vietnam and plunged bilateral relations to their lowest point in years. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said today that the move towards sustainable energy will help to end the military's dependence on foreign oil The U.S. Navy will today launch a carrier group partly powered by biofuels - some of which will be made from beef fat from the Midwest. Most of the group's ships, due to launch later today from San Diego, will run on a mix of 90 per cent petroleum and 10 per cent biofuels - a downgrade of the initial 50/50 ratio the Navy was aiming for. Critics say the plans are not cost effective and that creating biofuels is ultimately harder on the environment than extracting similar quantities of fossil fuels. But the Navy maintains that the move is critical in ending the military's dependence of foreign oil. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said: 'In 2010, we were losing too many Marines in convoys carrying fossil fuels to outposts in Afghanistan, and the prohibitive cost of oil was requiring us to stop training at home in order to keep steaming abroad, a dangerous and unsustainable scenario.' Bio-diesel can be relatively easily made from animal fat by rendering it, the same process used to make soap, and then refining it. Beef fat is usually the preferred material for this, since you get much more fat from a cow than you would from a pig or a chicken. Using animal fat to create fuel is significantly cheaper than using vegetable oil, since it is generally considered a waste product whereas vegetable oil has many other uses and so is more expensive to purchase, according to Extension. The Defense Department uses 90 percent of the energy consumed by the federal government, spending billions of dollars annually on petroleum fuels to support military operations. All military branches are looking to cut their ties to foreign oil as part of a national security strategy. Since 2008, the Navy has cut oil consumption by 15 per cent and the Marine Corps has reduced its usage by 60 per cent. The Navy is aiming to draw half its power from alternative energy sources by 2020 so ships can refuel less and stay out at sea longer. Such a move means the military would also no longer be at the mercy of fluctuating oil prices - which has topped $100 per barrel and dipped as low as $29 per barrel in the last six years. A move to greater sustainability would also end the military's dependence upon oil-producing nations, Mabus said. The carrier group, being launched in San Diego today, will be partly powered by biofuel rendered from beef fat - as well as electricity and nuclear power (file image) The federal government has invested more than $500 million into drop-in biofuels, which can be used without reconfiguring engines. The fleet launching today also includes nuclear vessels, hybrid electric ships and aircraft powered partly by biofuels. Retired Navy Capt. Todd 'Ike' Keifer, who has published a study on the Navy's plan, said he does not believe the Navy will ever get 'any meaningful quantities of cost-competitive biofuels.' He said: 'Biofuels sound good, but it turns out that making carbohydrates (biomass) into hydrocarbons (ideal fuels) is a very laborious and wasteful process that is far more costly and much harder on the environment than producing fossil fuels.' Environmental scientist Jesse Ausubel at The Rockefeller University in New York City said biofuels are renewable but not green as they require lots of land, fertilizer, pesticide and fuel to produce. AP Interview: Iran's top diplomat decries US 'coercion' DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) New U.S. sanctions over Iran's ballistic missile testing are an example of an American "addiction to coercion" despite improved relations and a historic nuclear deal, Iran's foreign minister said in an interview Wednesday. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, in Davos for the World Economic Forum, said the ballistic program was part of Iran's right to legitimate self-defense, and said the prospect of restoring U.S.-Iranian diplomatic relations remains "far away" despite the nuclear deal. His comments to The Associated Press came after the U.S. on Sunday imposed sanctions against 11 individuals and entities involved in Iran's ballistic missile program as a result of Tehran's firing of a medium-range ballistic missile, one day after the Obama administration lifted economic penalties against Iran over its nuclear program. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif gestures as he speaks during an interview with The Associated Press on the sideline of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. A prevailing sense of anxiety was in the air in the Swiss ski resort of Davos as the World Economic Forum kicked off Wednesday with delegates fretting about the turbulence in financial markets, slowdown in China and plunging oil prices. (AP Photo/Michel Euler) "We believe these sanctions are uncalled for. We believe the sanctions are illegal. They violate basic principles. The Iranian missile program is a legitimate defense program," Zarif said. "It shows that the United States has an addiction which has been very difficult for it to overcome," Zarif said. Washington, he said, suffers from an "addiction to pressure, addiction to coercion, addiction to sanctions." The United States insists Iran's ballistic missile tests violated U.N. sanctions sanctions that will remain in effect for at least eight more years under the terms of the nuclear accord. The U.S. administration has long argued that the nuclear deal does not cover other elements of Iran's allegedly bad behavior and that Washington will continue to press Iran to change its ways and punish it when necessary. Zarif countered that Iran spends far less than its neighbors on its military. "In addition, the United States sells tens of billions of dollars worth of military equipment to the region," he said. "So it's just preposterous to cry wolf about Iran's ballistic missile program while at the same time you are selling the United States is selling tens of billions of dollars worth of toys to our neighbors." He didn't specify, but the U.S. has been a big military supporter of Israel and Iranian rivals Saudi Arabia and Iraq. The end to sanctions is poised to provide a boon to Iran's struggling economy, and Zarif pointed to a "tremendous" response among business leaders many of whom are also attending the WEF. He put in a plug for Iran's workforce and relative stability in a region riven with conflict including Yemen and Syria. "We have deals that are being worked out with Airbus all sorts of companies from nuclear technology companies, to irrigation, green energy ... a whole range of them," he said, without elaborating. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who along with other top diplomats worked closely with Zarif to reach the deal, has indicated that he hopes Iran will take a positive role in resolving conflicts in places like Yemen and Syria. Zarif insisted his country has "always played a positive role" in those two countries. Iran backs Syrian President Assad and Yemeni Shiite rebels known as Houthis, who are fighting a Saudi-led coalition that backs the internationally recognized president. Asked about conservative voices within Iran, Zarif said: "Iran is not a monolith, I think Americans would recognize that ... just like the United States is not. So you have a difference of views among various political actors, among various parts of the population." Despite lingering tensions between Iran and the United States, he said, "the United States can take steps to overcome this mistrust," such as through implementation of the nuclear agreement. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif poses on the balcony after an interview with The Associated Press on the sideline of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. A prevailing sense of anxiety was in the air in the Swiss ski resort of Davos as the World Economic Forum kicked off Wednesday with delegates fretting about the turbulence in financial markets, slowdown in China and plunging oil prices. (AP Photo/Michel Euler) Publisher George Weidenfeld dies in London at 96 LONDON (AP) Publisher and philanthropist George Weidenfeld, who in his later years devoted himself to improving understanding between faiths and peoples, died Wednesday in London at 96. His office said Weidenfeld died in his sleep after a brief illness. Weidenfeld was a member of the House of Lords who had recently launched an initiative to help save Christians facing persecution at the hands of Islamic State extremists in the Middle East. He established a "safe havens" fund that made it possible for Christians to relocate. Born in Vienna, Weidenfeld studied at the University of Vienna before fleeing his native country in 1938, ahead of the start of World War II, to avoid Nazi persecution of Jews. He said his work on behalf of threatened Christians was an effort to thank British Quakers for helping him when he first arrived in Britain. He told the Jewish Chronicle in a 2009 interview that he had fought a duel with a Nazi student in 1937. He said it ended in a draw and that he looked his opponent up after the war and they shared a salami sandwich. Weidenfeld worked for the BBC as a political commentator and also wrote newspaper columns before he and British writer Nigel Nicolson in 1949 founded a publishing house, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, that eventually became quite successful. The firm gained notoriety in 1959 for publishing the British edition of Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita," despite the threat of prosecution for obscenity. No legal action was taken. The book's strong sales put the publishers on a secure financial footing but the controversy damaged Nicolson's political career. Their company became part of Orion Publishing Group in 1992. Nicolson died in 2004, but Weidenfeld remained active with the company until the end of his life. Weidenfeld & Nicolson was named "Imprint of the Year" at the Bookseller Awards in 2015, providing a fitting testament to his long career. Weidenfeld also was a strong supporter of Israel who for a year served as a director of the Israeli Cabinet and senior adviser to the Israeli president. Zionist Union leader Isaac Herzog praised Weidenfeld for his contributions to the "wellbeing, security and defense of Israel and the Jewish people." German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier praised Weidenfeld's commitment to better understanding between the major religious faiths. "As a bridge-builder, he devoted all of his energy toward issues that are still as topical as ever: the dialogue between the faiths to Europe's relationship with Israel to European integration. He fought for values and ideals even when he faced resistance," Steinmeier said. Pinchas Goldschmidt, president of the Conference of European Rabbis, said Weidenfeld showed a strong commitment to community service. "One of Lord Weidenfeld's last acts rescuing Christian families from Syria and Iraq and resettling them elsewhere exemplifies the legacy of a man we should all endeavor to replicate," the chief rabbi said. Weidenfeld is survived by his wife, a daughter, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. ___ Iran reformists call for reversal of candidate ban TEHRAN, Iran (AP) Iran's reformist political factions on Wednesday called on the constitutional watchdog to reverse its decision to disqualify large numbers of moderates and reformists from running in next month's parliamentary elections. Nine reformist political parties issued a statement noting that only 30 of the 3,000 reformist candidates fielded across the country were allowed to run by the Guardian Council, a watchdog dominated by hard-liners. Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the head of the council, was quoted by the semiofficial ISNA news agency as saying the body "will not be influenced by pressure." But his deputy, Siamak Rahpeik, said it's likely that up to 15 percent of those disqualified from running will be reinstated during the reviewing process. His comments were posted on the council's website. The Feb. 26 election will be a contest between moderate President Hassan Rouhani's supporters and his hard-line opponents. Reformists and moderates hope to form a coalition once their candidates survive the screening process. Hard-liners and conservatives are split into several groups, making them more vulnerable. Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, hinted at a possible reversal to the Guardian Council decision when he told State TV that "enthusiasm" should be drummed up ahead of the elections to increase voter turn-out. However, he said those who don't have faith in the ruling system should not be allowed to hold office. "Nowhere in the world do decision-makers allow those who have no faith in the system to run," he said. Barring moderates from running is seen as a tactic by hard-liners worried that Rouhani's success in lifting sanctions under a landmark nuclear deal with world powers will give moderates an electoral boost. Of over 12,000 hopefuls who applied to run in the February parliamentary elections, around 4,700 have been approved by the Guardian Council, which is responsible for vetting candidates. While some hard-liners and conservatives have also been barred, reformists have been most affected. Many were disqualified because they were not seen to be sufficiently loyal to the ruling system, as defined by hard-line council members. Rouhani has vowed to use all his constitutional powers to reinstate those barred, but it's not clear how he will be able to influence the process. "It's likely that political lobbying will reverse a limited number of disqualifications, but I doubt that there will be widespread reversal," prominent conservative analyst Amir Mohebian said. The council is now studying complaints from those barred. Reformists registered in large numbers, hoping that many will survive the screening process even if their best known figures are disqualified. Now they are expressing shock and frustration. "This is the biggest number of disqualifications in (Iran's) history," said one prominent reformist, Hossein Marashi. But he added that reformists won't boycott the vote. "We will stay to fight because we don't want extremists to grow," he said. Sudan: we 'will never relinquish' land disputed with Egypt KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) Sudan's president says that a stretch of land disputed with Egypt is Sudanese and that his government "will never relinquish any part of the national territories." At a speech on Tuesday, Omar Bashir highlighted Sudan's strong ties with its Egyptian "brothers" but said that documents and history prove that the Halayeb triangle, administered by Egypt since the 1990s, is indeed Sudanese. The dispute over the land, which juts inward from the Red Sea, dates back to the end of colonial times. Pressure mounts as EU migration strategy bogs down BRUSSELS (AP) Pressure built on Wednesday for European Union leaders to overcome their differences and tackle the refugee emergency amid criticism that Europe's migrant strategy is unraveling fast. The head of the EU's executive commission expressed concern on Wednesday that a summit of EU leaders on Feb. 18-19 would be too focused on keeping Britain inside the bloc, and he recommended that government heads give equal focus to the challenges posed by the migrant influx. "I'm rather worried that we won't have enough time to tackle the refugee question in sufficient depth," European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told reporters. Migrants walk from the Macedonian border into Serbia, near the village of Miratovac, Serbia, on Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016. Bracing cold temperatures hundreds of migrants continue to arrive daily into Serbia in order to register and continue their journey further north towards Western Europe. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu) His call came as countries in northern Europe, the preferred destination of many of the more than 1 million people who arrived last year seeking sanctuary or jobs, began calling for caps on the number of migrants that should be allowed to enter. European Council President Donald Tusk, who chairs EU summits, warned on Tuesday that the EU's passport-free travel area could break apart if the migrant strategy is not sorted out within two months. The commission has floated a plan aimed at coping with Europe's biggest refugee emergency in more than half a century. Ideas include the relocation plan to distribute refugees among EU nations, which would be strung out over two years, and more than 3 billion dollars over two years plus fast track visa and EU membership process for Turkey in exchange for stopping people leaving for Europe. The commission also advocates tougher measures to return people who don't qualify for asylum, and has boosted funding of Frontex border agency. A new European border agency plan is to be rolled out in March to protect the frontiers of countries unable or unwilling to do so. Juncker lamented the lack of national action, saying "we would do better if we implemented what has been decided." The mass arrivals last year, mostly through Greece from Turkey, overwhelmed border authorities and reception centers and raised tensions between EU neighbors as they struggled to respond. More than 2,000 people are still arriving daily, according to EU figures, and numbers are expected to accelerate as spring arrives. A spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency, said that around 2,000 migrants continue to cross from Macedonia into Serbia daily, even with temperatures plunging to a low of -19 C (-2 F) Wednesday. Liene Veide said many arrive ill-prepared, without clothing or boots appropriate for winter weather. Some have pneumonia, fever or other illnesses, but she said most refuse hospitalization and press on with their journeys. Temperatures plunged overnight Wednesday in Romania to the lowest of the year, with -29.5 C (-21 F) recorded in one town in central Romania Meanwhile Austria's deputy chancellor, Reinhold Mitterlehner, was quoted Wednesday as saying that his conservative party wants to cap migrant entries to no more than 40,000 per year. Close to 90,000 refugees applied for asylum last year in Austria. Germany's president, Joachim Gauck, called for limits to the number of people entering, saying that ceilings are "morally acceptable" if Europe is to continue helping those in need. Speaking at a conference in Davos, Switzerland, Gauck said the EU's rules on freedom of movement throughout the bloc "can only be guaranteed if movement is controlled at the external borders." ___ This story has been corrected to show that European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker called for time to be dedicated to the migrant crisis at an upcoming summit, not a new summit. The mistake was caused by an error in the official translation of Juncker's remarks. Migrants carrying their belongings walk from the Macedonian border into Serbia, near the village of Miratovac, Serbia, on Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016. Bracing cold temperatures hundreds of migrants continue to arrive daily into Serbia in order to register and continue their journey further north towards Western Europe. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu) Migrants carrying their belongings across a partially frozen stream as they walk from the Macedonian border into Serbia, near the village of Miratovac, Serbia, on Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016. Bracing cold temperatures hundreds of migrants continue to arrive daily into Serbia in order to register and continue their journey further north towards Western Europe. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu) Migrants carrying their belongings walk from the Macedonian border into Serbia, near the village of Miratovac, Serbia, on Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016. Bracing cold temperatures hundreds of migrants continue to arrive daily into Serbia in order to register and continue their journey further north towards Western Europe. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu) A woman feeds ducks in a park in Warsaw, Poland, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016, as snow and a deep freeze have settled over Central Europe. Temperatures fell to minus 6 Celsius (21 Fahrenheit) in Warsaw on Wednesday. Elsewhere in Central Europe, winter weather is making the journeys of migrants into Europe more difficult, but apparently not weakening the determination of those seeking asylum in Western Europe. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski) UK judge due to say whether Russia behind Litvinenko killing LONDON (AP) One day in 2006, a former KGB agent who claimed to know dark Kremlin secrets had tea with two Russian men at a London hotel. Three weeks later, he died of radioactive poisoning after making a deathbed claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered his killing. Moscow has always denied involvement, and almost a decade on, no one has been brought to justice. On Thursday, British judge Robert Owen will release the long-awaited findings of a public inquiry into the killing of Litvinenko and is likely to point a finger at elements in the Russian state. FILE - In this Thursday, Dec. 13, 2012 file photo, Marina Litvinenko, the widow of former Russian intelligence officer Alexander Litvinenko, speaks to the media as she leaves at the end of a pre-inquest review at Camden Town Hall in London. On Thursday Jan. 21, 2016, British judge Robert Owen will release the long-awaited findings of a public inquiry into the killing of Litvinenko _ and is likely to point a finger at elements in the Russian state. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham, File) ___ WHO WAS ALEXANDER LITVINENKO? Litvinenko's widow, Marina, told Owen's inquiry that her husband was a loyal intelligence agent who grew disillusioned with Russia's 1990s war in Chechnya and by what he saw as corruption within the FSB security service, successor to the KGB. He fled to Britain in 2000 and was granted asylum, becoming a vocal critic of Putin and his allies. When Litvinenko became violently ill in November 2006 at the age of 44, doctors were baffled. The cause would likely have remained a mystery were it not for a urine test conducted by a doctor, on a hunch, shortly before Litvinenko died. It revealed the presence of polonium-210, an isotope that is deadly if ingested in tiny quantities. Litvinenko's body was so radioactive that the autopsy was conducted by medics in protective clothing and ventilation hoods. A lawyer for the police said the killing may have exposed hundreds or even thousands of Londoners to radioactive contamination. ___ WHO KILLED HIM? British police have accused Dmitry Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoi, the two Russians Litvinenko met for tea, of carrying out the killing, sponsored by elements in the Kremlin. Both deny involvement, and Moscow refuses to extradite them. British detectives and scientists told the inquiry that a radioactive trail was left at hotels, restaurants and other sites across London visited by Kovtun and Lugovoi, a former FSB agent who is now a Russian lawmaker and was decorated by Putin for services to the nation. Many Russian officials had reason to dislike Litvinenko. His family says he was working for MI6, Britain's foreign intelligence service. He had accused the Russian government of involvement in a series of apartment building explosions in 1999 that were blamed on Chechen rebels, and alleged links between senior Kremlin figures and organized crime. ___ WHAT WILL THE JUDGE SAY? Owen heard from 62 witnesses over six months of public hearings and behind closed doors saw secret intelligence evidence about Litvinenko and his links to U.K. spy agencies. The judge is likely to name Lugovoi and Kovtun as the culprits, and says he has seen evidence of Russian state involvement. The big question is whether he will name Putin or people close to him as ordering the killing. John Lough, a Russia expert at the Chatham House think tank, said that Russia's "opaque" political system made it unlikely that Owen would be able to name names. "It seems very likely that the judge will conclude that there was the involvement of Russian state agencies, but I rather doubt that he'll be able to be more specific," Lough said. ___ WHAT COULD THE REACTION BE? Litvinenko's death soured British-Russian relations for years, and Russian involvement in Ukraine's civil conflict made things even worse, bringing sanctions on Moscow by Western countries including Britain. A finding of direct involvement in the killing by senior Russians could cause a further deterioration. But Owen's report comes as Russia and Britain are both involved in airstrikes against the Islamic State group in Syria. British diplomats believe Russia an ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad is key to ending that country's brutal civil war. Russia, its economy hurt by low oil prices, would like to see an end to sanctions. It may be in the interests of both Britain and Russia to limit the fallout from the Litvinenko killing. In any case, there may be little Britain can do to influence behavior in the Kremlin. The Soviet-era KGB didn't hesitate to kill its enemies on foreign soil, sometimes with obscure poisons Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov died after he was stabbed with a ricin-tipped umbrella on London's Waterloo Bridge in 1978. Some believe the Kremlin's attitude to opponents has changed little. Lough noted that Putin allegedly once told a Russian journalist "that he distinguished between enemies and traitors." "He said that with enemies you can find a common language and agree on things, but in the case of traitors, they need to be liquidated." ___ Follow Jill Lawless on Twitter at http://Twitter.com/JillLawless US Treasury Sec: Puerto Rico needs congressional action SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew stressed on Wednesday during a visit to Puerto Rico that congressional action is the only solution to pulling the U.S. territory out of its worsening economic crisis. He called on Congress to approve a restructuring mechanism to help the island deal with its $72 billion public debt. He also said some kind of oversight authority that respects Puerto Rico's system of self-government is needed. "Now is the time to act, and I'm here to further that effort," Lew said after meeting with Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla. "It would be a mistake for anyone to think there's a plan B that comes anywhere near to being as effective." U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew arrives for a press conference at the Vanderbilt hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. Lew traveled to Puerto Rico to meet with government officials. He urged Congress to pass legislation soon, saying the territory is "in the midst of an economic collapse." The White House says a federal bailout is not under consideration. (AP Photo/Carlos Giusti) His trip comes just days before members of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Insular Affairs are scheduled to discuss creating an authority to oversee Puerto Rico's finances. Republicans have been pushing for a federal fiscal control board similar to one that helped guide the District of Columbia through a fiscal crisis two decades ago. But some Puerto Rico officials have balked at the idea of the federal government having such oversight. Pedro Pierluisi, Puerto Rico's representative in Congress, said he expects a legislative package to be unveiled after next week's hearing. However, he stressed that the package has to give Puerto Rico the authority to restructure a portion of its debt and provide it with equal treatment under federal programs. "Over the years, Congress has a history of trying to provide Puerto Rico with 'special' treatment, and these efforts, whether well-intentioned or ill-intentioned, almost always end up harming Puerto Rico," he said. "My constituents are not laboratory rats upon whom the federal government should be undertaking policy experiments." During Lew's visit, federal officials announced that the Treasury team helping Puerto Rico's government has grown and is now providing technical assistance in areas including revenue collection. Lew also noted that a comprehensive restructuring could provide pensioners with more security given that their funds are depleted under the status quo. Republican U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin has promised that Congress would come up with "a responsible solution" for Puerto Rico's debt problems this year. Republican leaders have demanded to see the territory's audited financial statements. Local officials say they will be available soon, but Gov. Garcia Padilla said the statements will not reveal anything new. Puerto Rico already has defaulted on several bond payments and warned it does not have the money to make upcoming payments. The local government also faces its first lawsuit over how it diverted funds to meet certain bond payments. Lew noted that up to 3,000 Puerto Ricans are leaving the island every week for the U.S. mainland because of nearly a decade of economic stagnation and said action is needed soon. "This is not a case of waiting will help," he said. "All waiting does is make the process more complicated, messier and more costly." ___ Danica Coto on Twitter: www.twitter.com/danicacoto U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew speaks during a press conference at the Vanderbilt hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. Lew traveled to Puerto Rico to meet with government officials. He urged Congress to pass legislation soon, saying the territory is "in the midst of an economic collapse." The White House says a federal bailout is not under consideration. (AP Photo/Carlos Giusti) Sundance's returning greats reflect on their first festival LOS ANGELES (AP) There's no set path for a breakout Sundance director. Some go big. Some stay small. Some get their foot in the studio world and still maintain an independent voice and vision just look at Ryan Coogler, who won the grand jury prize for "Fruitvale Station" in 2013 and followed it up with "Creed." But they always have a home at Sundance, and some, even years and much success later, find themselves back at that snowy mountain town again and again. FILE - In this Jan. 18, 2014 file photo, writer and director Ira Sachs poses at the premiere of the film "Love is Strange" during the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, in Park City, Utah. Sachs returns this year with his fifth feature to play at the festival - Little Men - a drama starring Greg Kinnear and Jennifer Ehle about a pair of young friends whose connection is put in jeopardy when their parents stop getting along. The 2016 Sundance Film Festival runs Jan. 21-31. (Photo by Danny Moloshok/Invision/AP, File) "Sundance is a discovery festival but it's also about independent storytellers at any point in their career if they're dong the kind of work that we're all about," said Trevor Groth, Sundance's director of programming. This year, a host of veterans like Ira Sachs, Kelly Reichardt, Whit Stillman, Kenneth Lonergan and Todd Solondz, are back to debut new works. Below, these returning greats reflect on their first festival experiences, harrowing train rides, pivotal screenings and life-changing connections. "Value is a term that I consider all the time as a filmmaker what is value? Is it economic value? Is it commercial value? Is it personal value?" said Sachs. "Sundance is a space where you can find different answers." IRA SACHS Sachs' Sundance memories precede his filmmaking days. His father lives in Park City, Utah, so he's been attending for over three decades. "I learned about the possibilities of being an independent filmmaker in the cinemas and lounges of the festival," Sachs said. "The breadth of cinema that I was able to see as a young person really gave me, and continues to give me, the courage to take risks in my own work." Sachs had a short film there, but it was with his first feature, "The Delta," in 1996 that he really found a home there as a filmmaker. "Sundance was a kind of birthplace for modern queer cinema, and as a gay person making movies, I felt very welcomed ... in Utah!" He's an adviser at the Institute, too. Sachs returns this year with "Little Men" a drama starring Greg Kinnear and Jennifer Ehle. KELLY REICHARDT When Kelly Reichardt's first film, "River of Grass," was accepted in 1994, she couldn't afford a plane ticket from New York, so she and her star and editor Larry Fessenden took the train. The three-day ride turned into a brutal five-day slog when the train froze. Reichardt recalls rolling up to the festival in time, but a bit greasier than she would have liked. She stayed in a house with Sachs, and met her friend, the late "Still Alice" filmmaker, Richard Glatzer, there, too. She also remembers feeling like a bit of an outsider amid the intense competition. It was the year of Kevin Smith's "Clerks," David O. Russell's "Spanking the Monkey" and Steve James' "Hoop Dreams." "People were handing out trinkets to promote their films like when you're in high school and running for president," she said. "I was like 'holy (expletive), we were supposed to make something?'" This year, she'll be debuting "Certain Women," based on Maile Meloy's short stories and starring Michelle Williams, Kirsten Stewart and Laura Dern. WHIT STILLMAN Sundance is Whit Stillman's good luck charm. His first film, "Metropolitan," a wry comedy about debutantes in New York City, premiered there in 1990. It lost out on the grand jury prize, but he remembers it as a Cinderella story. At the first screening, he sat behind an amused Roger Ebert, who gave the film a positive review. He came back to serve on the jury years later, around the time when "Barcelona" was finding its footing in Europe. Then in 2010, when "Metropolitan" played in a retrospective, days later, Stillman secured financing for "Damsels in Distress." "Sundance is more open to comedies and quiet, humanistic films than some other festivals where it's a pretty tough, grim, film-buff crowd," Stillman said. "If it's a light movie, they might very well walk out." Stillman's latest, the period comedy "Love and Friendship" (based on Jane Austen's "Lady Susan"), reunites his "Last Days of Disco" actresses Kate Beckinsale and Chloe Sevigny. KENNETH LONERGAN "I had a suspiciously good time my first time at Sundance," said Kenneth Lonergan, who took his directorial debut, "You Can Count on Me," to the festival in 2000. "I actually came home from the festival and proposed to my now wife. That's how good a mood I was in." The film won the Waldo Walt Screenwriting Award and tied with Karyn Kusama's "Girlfight" to win the grand jury prize. It also scored two Oscar nominations for original screenplay and actress (Laura Linney). Lonergan's third feature, "Manchester by the Sea," is a drama about a man who has to take care of his orphaned nephew. It stars Casey Affleck, Michelle Williams and Kyle Chandler. TODD SOLONDZ Todd Solondz already had a distributor in place for his idiosyncratic sophomore feature, "Welcome to the Dollhouse," by the time it reached Sundance in 1996. "It was a happy time," said Solondz. "It opens a lot of doors for you." The darkly comedic tale of eccentric middle schooler Dawn Wiener (Heather Matarazzo) captivated audiences that year before going on to win the grand jury prize. This year, Solondz is premiering "Wiener-Dog," which sees the return of Dawn Wiener, but this time she's played by Greta Gerwig. Matarazzo told Solondz years ago that she never wanted to play the character again. "If you're looking for a sequel, you might be a little disappointed," Solondz said. FILE - In this Jan. 29, 2005 file photo, Ira Sachs wins the dramatic Grand Jury award for the film "Forty Shades of Blue," during the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Sachs returns this year with his fifth feature to play at the festival - Little Men - a drama starring Greg Kinnear and Jennifer Ehle about a pair of young friends whose connection is put in jeopardy when their parents stop getting along. The 2016 Sundance Film Festival runs Jan. 21-31. (AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac, File) FILE - In this March 28, 2011 file photo, Kelly Reichardt attends the Cinema Society screening of "Meek's Cutoff," in New York. When Reichardts first feature, River of Grass was accepted into the Sundance Film Festival in 1994, she couldnt afford a plane ticket from New York, so she and her star and editor Larry Fessenden took the train instead. The hard to find film is actually playing again this year thanks to a restoration by Oscilloscope Laboratories, and shell be debuting her new film Certain Women, based on Maile Meloy's short stories and starring Michelle Williams, Kirsten Stewart and Laura Dern, as well. The festival runs Jan. 21-31, 2016. (AP Photo/Peter Kramer, File) FILE - In this Aug. 5, 2014 file photo, Whit Stillman attends the "Frank" premiere in New York. Sundance is much more open to comedies and sort of quiet, humanistic films than some other festivals where its a pretty tough, grim, film buff crowd and if its a light movie they might very well walk out, Stillman said. Stillmans latest, Love and Friendship reunites his Last Days of Disco actresses Kate Beckinsale and Chloe Sevigny in this 18th century-set comedy based on Jane Austens Lady Susan. The 2016 Sundance Film Festival runs Jan. 21-31, 2016, in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP, File) FILE - In this Nov. 9, 2015 file photo, Kenneth Lonergan attends the Arts in the Armed Forces 7th Annual Performance on Broadway in honor of Veterans Day of "Lobby Hero" at Studio 54 in New York. I had a suspiciously good time my first time at Sundance, said Lonergan, who took his directorial debut You Can Count on Me to the Sundance Film Festival in 2000. Lonergan this year will debut his third feature film, Manchester by the Sea, a drama about a man who has to step up and care for his orphaned nephew in the wake of a tragedy starring Casey Affleck, Michelle Williams and Kyle Chandler. The festival runs Jan. 21-31, 2016, in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Andy Kropa/Invision/AP, File) FILE - In this Sept. 8, 2011 file photo, U.S. director, screenwriter and producer Todd Solondz poses for photographers during a photocall at the 37th American Film Festival in Deauville, Normandy, France. Solondz's film, "Wiener-Dog," premieres at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. The festival runs Jan. 21-31, 2016. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler, File) IS pays tribute to Paris attackers, identifies 2 as 'Iraqis' PARIS (AP) The Islamic State group has published an online photo tribute to the Muslim extremists who killed 130 people in Paris, including pictures of two unknown men identified as Iraqis. Belgian federal prosecutor Thierry Werts said Wednesday investigators "didn't know them at all," referring to two men identified by their noms de guerre as Ali Al-Iraqi and Ukashah Al-Iraqi. Al-Iraqi in Arabic means "the Iraqi." The photo display in Dabiq, the IS propaganda magazine, also shows suspected Paris attack ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud and eight other men in battle dress. Senate Democrats block Syrian refugee bill from advancing WASHINGTON (AP) Senate Democrats on Wednesday blocked a bill that would crack down on Syrian and Iraqi refugees coming to the U.S. as the debate turned into a referendum on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his policies. Senate Democrats sought to force election-year votes as Trump who holds a commanding lead in national polls for the Republican presidential nomination has called for barring Muslims from coming to the United States. Republicans wanted similar votes on politically fraught amendments. The Senate fell short of the three-fifths needed to move ahead. The vote was 55-43. FILE- In this Dec. 18, 2015, file photo, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., speaks with reporters at the Capitol in Washington. McConnell, R-Ky., urged his colleagues to vote Wednesday, Jan. 20, to move ahead on a House-passed bill that would require new FBI background checks and individual sign-offs from three high-ranking ranking federal officials before any refugee from Syria or Iraq could come to the United States. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File) The House legislation would require new FBI background checks and individual sign-offs from three high-ranking federal officials before any refugee from Syria or Iraq could come to the United States. The American Security Against Foreign Enemies Act cleared the House in November in the aftermath of the Paris attacks. It received 289 votes, a veto-proof margin that included 47 Democrats despite President Barack Obama's opposition. "This bill is just another step in the absolute wrong direction, the direction of Donald Trump," Reid told reporters before the vote. "The Democrats are committed to opposing the hateful views of Trump and his Republican enablers." But Senate Republicans who backed the House bill said it is difficult to effectively vet immigrants from war-torn countries like Syria and Iraq, where record keeping is poor or may not exist at all. They also said senior U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials have expressed concern that the Islamic State may try to exploit the refugee screening program. "So it is any wonder that the citizens we represent are concerned?" McConnell said. "No wonder dozens of Democrats joined with Republicans to pass this balanced bill with a veto-proof majority over in the House." Three of the Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz of Texas, Marco Rubio of Florida and Rand Paul of Kentucky left the campaign to return to Washington to vote for moving ahead on the measure. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders of Vermont missed the vote as did Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who was campaigning for Jeb Bush in New Hampshire. Two Democrats from GOP-leaning states Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia voted with Republicans to move ahead on the legislation. For Democrats facing tight 2016 elections, opposing the bill may put them in the difficult position of rejecting what many consider to be a reasonable anti-terror measure in the wake of a terrible tragedy. Those concerns surfaced ahead of the House vote in November when White House aides went to the Capitol to win over Democrats in a private meeting. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, D-N.Y., told them, in a forceful exchange, that voting "no" could hurt Democrats at the polls, according to aides in attendance. In addition to the amendment on Trump, Reid said Democrats also wanted to propose an increase in anti-terrorism money for local police forces and airport security and banning the sale of guns and explosives to people on federal terrorism watch lists. This House bill, Reid said, "scapegoats refugees who are fleeing war and torture instead of creating real solutions to keep Americans safe." House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said the bill is a security test, not a religious one. "This reflects our values," Ryan said. "This reflects our responsibilities." Cruz announced Tuesday he was canceling two events in New Hampshire and rescheduling two others in order to return to Washington to vote. While Republicans said the bill contains no religious tests for the refugees, Cruz and White House rival Jeb Bush have suggested giving preferences to Christians. Obama has scolded politicians for raising worries over taking in refugees fleeing the Islamic State's harsh rule in Syria and Iraq, where it controls territory. "Apparently, they're scared of widows and orphans coming into the United States of America," Obama said when the House voted last year. The White House has said Obama will veto the legislation if it reaches his desk. Voters' concerns about terrorism have surged at the same time their confidence in the government's ability to defeat IS and other extremist groups has plummeted, according to a national survey conducted in December by the Pew Research Center. ___ AP writer Donna Cassata contributed to this report. ___ Follow Richard Lardner on Twitter at http://twitter.com/rplardner Rauner, GOP leaders want state takeover of Chicago schools CHICAGO (AP) Backed by Gov. Bruce Rauner, top Illinois Republicans called Wednesday for a state takeover of the financially troubled Chicago Public Schools, which faces a nearly $1 billion budget deficit that could lead to thousands of teacher layoffs and a possible strike in a matter of months. Senate GOP Leader Christine Radogno called the plan a "lifeline" for CPS and Rauner said it's a way to protect children and taxpayers, though Democrats quickly shot down the idea. Radogno and House Republican Leader Jim Durkin said the legislation would give the Illinois State Board of Education control over the nation's third-largest school district. They also noted that GOP lawmakers may reveal a bankruptcy plan for CPS and the city of Chicago in the coming weeks, but didn't offer many details. Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner speaks at a news conference at Chicago's Union Station on Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016, where he announced his support for a proposal by top Illinois Republicans for a state takeover of the financially troubled Chicago Public Schools. (AP Photo/Teresa Crawford) "What we're proposing is a lifeline," Radogno said of CPS, which has a massive unfunded pension liability. "We didn't come to this lightly, but the track record of Chicago and its public school system is abysmal." The plan calls for the state schools superintendent, who is chosen by a governor-appointed board, to name up to seven members of an independent authority that would essentially replace Chicago's school board, which is chosen by the mayor. They would also negotiate teacher contracts, though Republicans said the authority wouldn't be able to "unilaterally cancel or modify" existing agreements. At least seven districts in Illinois have come under state management since 2003, including East St. Louis in 2012, which was fought hard by people in the struggling St. Louis suburb. Rauner announced his support for the takeover not long after Radogno and Durkin's news conference, saying a new board and superintendent would "stand up for children and stand up for taxpayers the way the current administration has failed to do." He also said that would include standing firm in negotiations with the Chicago Teachers Union on a new contract rather than using state money to help CPS, as Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has requested. But Democrats who hold big majorities in both chambers of the Illinois Legislature, are close allies of Emanuel and are locked with Rauner on a long-overdue state budget blasted the plan almost immediately. "This is not going to happen," Senate President John Cullerton said, calling the idea and a distraction from the state's other problems. The mayor was at a conference in Washington, D.C., but his spokeswoman said Emanuel is "100 percent opposed to Gov. Rauner's 'plan'" and accused Republicans of "trying desperately to distract from their own failures." "If the governor was serious about helping Chicago students, he should start by proposing and passing a budget that fully funds education and treats CPS students like every other child in the state," Emanuel spokeswoman Kelley Quinn said. For years, Emanuel has called for a change in state law regarding how pensions are funded. Currently, Chicago taxpayers cover the cost of city teachers' pensions, while taxpayers statewide contribute to retirement funds for teachers outside Chicago a system Emanuel argues is unfair because Chicago residents pay twice. But Rauner has repeatedly said he won't approve any help for Chicago until Emanuel gets behind legislative measures that the former businessman says will make Illinois more competitive. Those include allowing local governments to curb labor unions' bargaining rights and making changes to workers' compensation insurance. Emanuel has opposed those efforts, saying they would hurt the middle class. Rauner noted the Democrat-led Legislature passed a measure in 2014 that allowed Illinois to take over districts other than CPS, and called their opposition to the latest plan unfair. Emanuel already has dealt with stern criticism over allegations that his administration kept a video of a white officer shooting a black teenager under wraps until after he won a second term; protesters have repeatedly called him to step down. CPS also is in the midst of contentious negotiations with the Chicago Teachers Union on a new contract. Union members last month overwhelmingly authorized their leaders to call a strike if needed, which was an attempt to pressure the district to avoid layoffs or severe cuts. The union, which went on strike in 2012, says a walkout would still be months away. CTU officials called the plan an example where Rauner "clumsily attempts to lead" and that the plan is a "non-starter when state government has so far been unable to assume responsibility for its own budget." US, allies agree to intensify fight against Islamic State PARIS (AP) U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter won agreement Wednesday from defense ministers from France and five other nations to intensify the campaign against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria. Carter said at a news conference with French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian that there was broad agreement on a coordinated plan to battle IS over the next year and retake key cities under the militants' control. "We agreed that we all must do more," Carter said shortly after a session with Le Drian and defense ministers from France, Australia, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Britain. French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, center, gestures next to German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, left, and U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter after posing for a picture during a meeting at the Defense Ministry in Paris, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. Defense chiefs from seven countries meet in Paris to plan to intensify the fight against Islamic State group extremists. (AP Photo/Jacques Brinon) Carter also said the main 26 nations in the anti-IS coalition, as well as Iraq, will assemble in Brussels next month, after a NATO defense ministers' meeting, to continue the talks. Those 26 countries have provided specific military troops, equipment or weapons in the campaign against the extremists. Other nations have provided various types of nonmilitary support, such as humanitarian aid. Carter urged the coalition to seize the opportunity now to hasten the terrorist group's defeat. The U.S. has mapped out a coordinated campaign against IS over the next year, and Carter laid out the plans to the ministers during meeting hosted with France. "Because Daesh is retreating and we have managed to affect its resources in the ground, it is the moment to increase our collective forces with a coherent military strategy," Le Drian said, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group. Carter has said he would not hesitate to challenge the core nations to do more in the fight in the coming year. According to a senior defense official, there were no specific offers from the ministers. Instead, a consensus emerged that they were open to doing more. The official said that U.S. Vice Adm. Mark Fox, deputy commander at U.S. Central Command, outlined the specific military needs to the defense ministers. The defense ministers also discussed plans to retake two major cities in Iraq and Syria that serve as power centers for IS. The coalition wants to help Iraqi and Kurdish peshmerga forces regain control of Mosul in northern Iraq and to assist the Syrian moderate forces in ousting Islamic State militants from Raqqa, Syria, the group's self-proclaimed capital. "Raqqa and Mosul must be won back," Le Drian said, adding that it can only succeed if the coalition supports the local forces on the ground in Iraq and Syria. U.S. military leaders say the coalition is gaining ground on IS, and they hope the six core nations can encourage others to contribute. While European nations have been heavily involved, the U.S. would like to see more direct military contributions both equipment and training from Arab and Asian countries. Arab nations joined the coalition's airstrike campaign early on, but the defense official said there has been very little Arab participation in the airstrike campaign in recent months. Saudi Arabia has been focused on its fight with Iran-backed rebels in Yemen. The official was not authorized to discuss the meeting publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Before the meeting, British Defense Minister Michael Fallon said IS was under pressure and that the goal of the gathering was to "identify how we can tighten the noose around the head of the snake." "We are now seeing Daesh being hit in its own heartland. We are seeing the attacks on its oil wells and we are beginning to see attacks" in Mosul, Fallon told reporters. He said Britain carries out air strikes six days per week, plus reconnaissance flights to pinpoint targets. The U.S. has asked allies to increase their contributions, including special operations forces, fighter jet and reconnaissance aircraft, weapons and munitions, training and other combat support. But the key needs are trainers and surveillance assets, such as drones. Iraqi security forces, which waged a long battle to retake Ramadi, need increased training on niche capabilities, including how to counter improvised explosive devices. U.S. has forged a closer military and intelligence relationship with France, particularly in the wake of the attacks in Paris last year. ___ Associated Press writers Milos Krivokapic and Elaine Ganley contributed to this report. French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, left, and U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter arrive for a meeting at the defense ministry in Paris, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. Defense chiefs from seven countries meet in Paris to plan to intensify their fight against Islamic State group extremists. (AP Photo/Jacques Brinon) U.S Defense Secretary Ashton Carter adresses media during a press conference, after a meeting at the defense minister residence in Paris, Wednesday, Jan 20, 2016. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Wednesday that defense ministers from France and five other nations have agreed to intensify the campaign against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, and that the coalition will work together to fill the military requirements as the fight unfolds over the coming months. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus) French Defense minister Jean Yves Le Drian gives a press conference, at the defense minister residence in Paris, Wednesday, Jan 20, 2016. U.S Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Wednesday that defense ministers from France and five other nations have agreed to intensify the campaign against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, and that the coalition will work together to fill the military requirements as the fight unfolds over the coming months. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus) Attorney General defends executive actions on guns as legal WASHINGTON (AP) Attorney General Loretta Lynch defended President Barack Obama's executive actions curbing guns before Congress on Wednesday, telling lawmakers that the president took lawful steps to stem firearms violence that kills and injures tens of thousands of Americans yearly. "I have complete confidence that the common sense steps announced by the president are lawful," Lynch told the Senate Appropriations Committee panel that oversees the Justice Department. Early in an election year in which both parties seem ready to make guns a political issue, Lynch called Obama's moves "well-reasoned measures, well within existing legal authorities, built on work that's already underway." The modest steps Obama announced two weeks ago were immediately attacked by a top Republican, who said the measures were the latest of the president's actions infringing on the constitutional right to own guns and exceeding his executive branch powers. Attorney General Loretta Lynch prepares to testify on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016, before the Senate Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies subcommittee hearing on gun control. Lynch defended President Barack Obama's executive actions curbing guns, telling lawmakers that the president took lawful, common-sense steps to stem firearms violence that kills and injures tens of thousands of Americans yearly. (AP Photo/Molly Riley) "The department is on notice," Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., chairman of the subcommittee, told Lynch. "This subcommittee will have no part in undermining the Constitution and the rights that it protects." Some GOP senators on the panel mixed distaste for Obama's unilateral moves with an openness to some of the details. That included his proposal to boost the number of FBI personnel who process background checks so the system can operate 24 hours daily instead of its current 17 hours. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., in whose state the background check system is based, said some of Obama's proposals were "political messaging" but expressed support for buttressing the "overstressed" system. Backed by the National Rifle Association, the GOP-led Congress is all but certain to take no action curbing firearms this year. But the gulf between Lynch and Shelby underscored that the issue will be part of the presidential and congressional campaigns. Already, Democratic presidential candidates have backed Obama's moves while GOP contenders have lambasted them as wilting gun rights and abusing his presidential powers. House Republicans have said they will create a task force to study "executive overreach" by Obama and other presidents. Shelby, who faces a conservative challenger in his March 1 Senate GOP primary, criticized Obama's response to recent mass shootings, including last month's killing of 14 people in San Bernardino, California, by a Muslim couple that authorities say had been radicalized. Shelby said that instead of tightening screening for potentially violent immigrants or addressing "our law enforcement's failures," Obama has instead resorted to "grandstanding and engaging in anti-gun theatrics." Lynch said the actions were appropriate. "As the list of tragedies involving firearms has grown, so has the American people's belief that we must do more to stem the tide of gun violence, and this administration is committed to doing our part," she said. Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski, top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, backed Lynch's remarks, saying, "We do need to change our nation's culture of violence. We do need to stop guns from getting into the wrong hands." Obama's actions include guidance on who the government will consider "in the business" of selling firearms a phrase used to describe which dealers must obtain federal licenses and conduct background checks on buyers. Even those selling a few guns online or at gun shows can be required to get licenses and perform background checks, the administration said. Other steps include hiring 230 more FBI background check examiners; adding 200 agents to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; boosting federal research on gun safety technology and asking Congress for $500 million to improve mental health programs. Lynch said Obama's 2017 budget, to be released in February, will seek $80 million for his gun proposals, largely for the additional FBI and ATF agents. Gun violence has flared anew as a political issue following the San Bernardino killings. Obama failed to push gun curbs through Congress in the months following the 2012 killings of 20 children and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut, and despite periodic mass shootings the GOP-led House and Senate remain opposed to restricting firearms. Government statistics show that over 30,000 Americans die from firearms wounds yearly, two-thirds of which are suicides. Attorney General Loretta Lynch arrives on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016, to testify before the Senate Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies subcommittee hearing on gun control. Lynch defended President Barack Obama's executive actions curbing guns, telling lawmakers that the president took lawful, common-sense steps to stem firearms violence that kills and injures tens of thousands of Americans yearly. (AP Photo/Molly Riley) Fiat used by Pope Francis to be auctioned in Philadelphia PHILADELPHIA (AP) One of the two Fiats used by Pope Francis during his visit to Philadelphia last year is going up for auction. The car will be up for bid as part of the Philadelphia Auto Show black-tie gala on Jan. 29. Bids will be accepted in person and online. The Archdiocese of Philadelphia and auto show representatives made the announcement Wednesday. They say the second black Fiat 500L used by Francis might also be auctioned. Proceeds will go to select archdiocese ministries and The Children's Hospital of Pennsylvania. 'The King and I' taps a 'Lost' and 'Hawaii Five-0' star NEW YORK (AP) Broadway's next king has been awfully busy chasing bad guys on the streets of Honolulu. Daniel Dae Kim, who plays a detective on the TV series "Hawaii Five-0," takes over in May as the King of Siam in the blissful Lincoln Center Theater revival of "The King and I," a role he calls "maybe the greatest role for an Asian male in theater." Kim, who graduated from New York University with a master's degree in acting and cut his teeth in off-Broadway shows, said he's been "looking for a way to get back" to the New York stage but instead found himself in Hawaii doing TV for the 12 past years. FILE - In this March 16, 2015 file photo, Daniel Dae Kim attends the premiere of "The Divergent Series: Insurgent" in New York. Kim, who plays a detective on the TV series Hawaii Five-0, takes over in May as the King of Siam in the blissful Lincoln Center Theater revival of The King and I, a role he calls maybe the greatest role for an Asian male in theater. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File) Kim managed to see the current "The King and I" twice once with Ken Watanabe and once with Hoon Lee and said "it was treat to be able to watch both of them interpret the role." The king, who is both imposing and romantic, will mark Kim's Broadway debut, but he's played the same monarch before, at London's world-renowned Royal Albert Hall in 2009. "It was really a fantastic opportunity and I felt at the time that as much as I enjoyed it, there was more to be done with the role," he said by phone from Hawaii. "The opportunity to revisit it is a really valuable one for me. I've grown since then, my experiences have changed and I look forward to trying it again on Broadway." Born in Busan, South Korea and raised in New York and Pennsylvania, Kim will be stepping into a role made famous by Yul Brynner, who was king for more than 4,600 performances. Kim saw the movie version, but the actor hopes to leave his own imprint. "I have a healthy level of respect for what Mr. Brynner did, but, at the same time, I look forward to my bringing something of my own to it," he said. "This work is strong enough where there can be many different interpretations of the same character. When you look at a Shakespearian play, you don't say, 'Well, there is one definitive Hamlet.' There are many different Hamlets that you can find relatable." The 51-cast-member revival won the Tony Award for best revival and co-stars Kelli O'Hara as the Englishwoman who travels to Siam to teach the children of the king. Its score by Rodgers and Hammerstein includes "I Whistle a Happy Tune," ''Getting to Know You" and "Shall We Dance." The show's current king, Lee, abdicates on Feb. 28 and Tony Award-nominated Watanabe returns to the role from March 1 to April 17. Jose Llana, who starred last summer in the royal role, returns to it from April 19-May 1 and then Kim, who also played Jin Soo Kwon on the TV series "Lost," takes over from May 3-June 26. ___ Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits ___ Tsonga to the rescue of ailing ball girl MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) Jo-Wilfried Tsonga came to the aid of a ball girl in distress and won accolades on social media from fans who called him a gentleman. The No. 9-seeded Frenchman said he noticed the ball girl was unwell during the third set of his match Wednesday, so he paused before serving and walked over to see what was wrong. He put his hand on her back, and the ball girl handed Tsonga a ball she was holding. He then looped his arm through hers and escorted the ball girl off the court. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France assists a ball girl from the court who was unwell during his second round match against Omar Jasika of Australia at the Australian Open tennis championships in Melbourne, Australia, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016.(AP Photo/Aaron Favila) "I saw she was in trouble," Tsonga said. "It was normal to help her out of the stadium. I hope she's OK." The ball girl was fine, just feeling under the weather, according to tournament organizers. And Tsonga is through to the third round after beating Omar Jasika of Australia, 7-5, 6-1, 6-4. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France assists a ball girl from the court who was unwell during his second round match against Omar Jasika of Australia at the Australian Open tennis championships in Melbourne, Australia, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016.(AP Photo/Aaron Favila) Latvia marks 25th anniversary of resistance to Soviet rule RIGA, Latvia (AP) With flowers and torches, Latvians on Wednesday marked the 25th anniversary of building barricades across the country to defend against Soviet attempts to quash the small Baltic nation's quest for independence. Hundreds of people gathered in Riga's old town, where white-striped burgundy Latvian flags flapped from buildings and on rooftops of the freezing capital. They huddled next to bonfires at Cathedral Square and outside Parliament, where in 1991 sandbags were erected to ward off a feared attack by Soviet troops. This time Latvian soldiers marched beside people holding torches and waving flags in the snowy afternoon. Latvians gather at a bonfire marking the 25th anniversary of a Soviet crackdown on pro-independence protesters, at the Parliament building, in Riga, Latvia, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. Latvia marked the 25th anniversary of a Soviet crackdown as the country strived for independence. (Roman Koksarov/F64 via AP) In 1991, more than 15,000 people across the country participated in erecting barricades, including former policeman Renars Zalais, who was wounded in an attack by elite Soviet commandos against the Latvian Interior Ministry. He said the real barricades "were the Latvian people themselves" who helped guarantee the country's independence, which it gained later that year. Led by Prime Minister Laimdota Straujuma, officials and lawmakers, Latvians laid wreaths at the central Freedom Monument during Wednesday's solemn celebration. Some Latvians are wary of a new perceived threat as neighboring Russia has been increasing its military presence in the region and violating Baltic airspace since it annexed Crimea in 2014. Andris Vitolins, an artist who painted slogans on barricades and buildings as a teenager, says he would not hesitate to protect his country again. "If we had a situation right now that we had to protect our country, I would come and join ... We have such a crazy neighbor (Russia), it would be just like defending your house or your apartment," he told The Associated Press. "If anyone wants to break in, then there is no other way but to fight." Wednesday's gathering was part of a series of events this year in the three Baltic countries of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia to commemorate the end in 1991 of nearly 50 years of Soviet occupation. ___ Associated Press writer Matti Huuhtanen, who reported on the events in Riga in 1991 for the AP, contributed to this story from Helsinki. The Latest: Murder-terrorism case suspect is back in court NEWARK, N.J. (AP) The latest on a Washington state man accused of terrorism for allegedly killing a New Jersey college student last year (all times local). 12:15 p.m. A Washington state man charged with a terrorism count for allegedly killing a New Jersey college student last year over U.S. policy in the Middle East wore ear plugs to a court hearing. Ali Muhammad Brown was flanked by 10 sheriff's office deputies for his status hearing Wednesday. He refused to take part in the proceedings, which he has said he did not want to attend. His lawyer told a judge that he still wants to get some more evidence and plans to file some motions in the case. But the lawyer would not say if he would seek to have the charges dismissed. In an unrelated matter, Brown received a 36 1/2-year sentence Wednesday for a robbery conviction. ___ 2 a.m. A Washington state man accused of terrorism for allegedly killing a New Jersey college student last year over the United States' policy in the Middle East is set to make a court appearance. Ali Muhammad Brown has a status hearing scheduled for Wednesday. The charges against the 30-year-old Brown include the first-ever terrorism counts filed under New Jersey's law. Brown also faces murder counts in Washington stemming from the June deaths of two men killed in Seattle after they left a gay nightclub. The Latest: Camera recovered from Greyhound bus after crash SAN FRANCISCO (AP) The latest on a deadly Greyhound bus accident (all times local): 2:35 p.m. A federal transportation official says a camera was recovered from a Greyhound bus that flipped onto its side in Northern California, killing two passengers. A California Highway Patrol investigator moves personal belongings at the scene of a Greyhound bus crash that left two dead and at least eight injured on Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016, in San Jose, Calif. A Greyhound spokeswoman said the bus, which left Los Angeles Monday night, was carrying 20 passengers in addition to the driver. (AP Photo/Noah Berger) National Transportation Safety Board investigator Jennifer Morrison told reporters Wednesday that the agency hasn't viewed the video yet. She says investigators hope to interview the driver, who reported being fatigued before the Tuesday morning crash on a rain-slick freeway. Morrison declined to discuss possible causes of the wreck, saying she and seven other investigators arrived late Tuesday and have just started their inquiry. Morrison says they'll examine the 2014 MCI motor coach for mechanical and structural defects while looking into road conditions and the driver's actions before the crash. The California Highway Patrol also is investigating and says it's ruled out drugs or alcohol as factors. ___ 11:20 a.m. Authorities have ruled out drugs and alcohol as factors in the deadly Greyhound bus crash in Northern California. The California Highway Patrol says it's still trying to determine what led the bus to veer off U.S. 101 in San Jose, slam into safety barrels and roll onto a concrete divider on Tuesday morning. Two passengers were killed, and several others were injured. The CHP says the driver told investigators that he was fatigued and that he bought a cup of coffee at a stop in Gilroy, about 30 miles south of the crash. The California Department of Motor Vehicles says the driver has a clean driving record over the past three years and no history of drunken driving over the past 10 years. ___ 10:20 a.m. Federal transportation officials say Greyhound buses have been involved in six fatal accidents resulting in seven deaths over the past two years. The U.S. Department of Transportation data don't include the two people killed Tuesday morning when they were ejected from a Greyhound bus that flipped onto its side on a freeway in San Jose. The California Highway Patrol says the bus driver reported feeling fatigued before hitting safety barrels on rain-slickened U.S. 101. The federal data show that officials inspected 1,882 Greyhound vehicles and 3,065 drivers over the past two years and that Greyhound buses were involved in six deadly accidents during that period. DOT spokesman Troy Green says seven people died in those six accidents. ___ 9:35 a.m. A coroner has identified the two passengers killed in a Greyhound bus crash in Northern California. The Santa Clara County coroner's office says 51-year-old Fely Olivera of San Francisco and 76-year-old Maria De Jesus Ortiz Velasquez of Salinas died at the scene of Tuesday morning's wreck. The California Highway Patrol says both women were ejected from the bus when it flipped onto its side on Highway 101 in San Jose. The agency has said the bus driver reported feeling fatigued before hitting safety barrels on the major commuting thoroughfare. Eight people went to the hospital, and several others received minor injuries. The CHP and federal transportation officials are investigating the crash. Olivera's son previously confirmed his mother's death. He says Olivera was returning home from Los Angeles after visiting two other sons. Earth's temperature depends on where you put thermometer WASHINGTON (AP) When it comes to measuring global warming, it's all about altitude. Temperature readings taken close to Earth's surface about 6 feet off the ground show a slightly warmer planet than measurements taken from on high by satellites in orbit. And that discrepancy has given ammunition to climate-change doubters. Government agencies and most scientists rely primarily on ground measurements, and they show that 2015 was the warmest year on record. The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, NASA, the Japanese and British meteorological agencies and the World Meteorological Organization all use ground data. It's a matter of better accuracy and relevance, scientists say. "We care about what's happening where we live. That's why ground-based temperatures are most relevant to humans," said Texas Tech climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe. But those who try to cast doubt on accepted science most often non-scientists prefer satellite data that goes back to 1979. And the data shows that 2015 was only the third-warmest year on record. Politicians who reject mainstream climate science, such as Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, especially cite one satellite measurement system, Remote Sensing Systems, in asserting that there has been no global warming for 18 years. That's a claim scientists, including the one who runs RSS, say is misleading. Carl Mears, senior scientist for Remote Sensing Systems, told The Associated Press in an email: "The satellite measurements do not measure the surface warming. They are measurements of the average temperature of thick layers of the atmosphere" about 50,000 feet off the ground. "For impacts on human society and the environment, the surface data are more important," Mears said. Mears said his analysis of his own satellite data has five times the margin of error of ground measurements. That's because satellites use complex mathematical algorithms and thousands of bits of code to translate wavelength measurements into temperature readings, Hayhoe said. Scientists routinely use ground measurements to calibrate and validate satellite information, said Marshall Shepherd, a University of Georgia meteorology professor. He and several other scientists called surface measurements "the ground truth." John Christy at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, who runs a separate satellite temperature monitoring system, said satellites are better for detecting warming from heat-trapping gases because the "surface is affected by too many other variables and doesn't represent the real mass of the climate system." German on trial accused of being in IS 'storm trooper' unit BERLIN (AP) A 25-year-old German has gone on trial accused of having been part of the Islamic State group's secret police. The man, identified only as Nils D., is charged with membership in a terrorist organization and faces up to 10 years in prison. Prosecutors allege he belonged to an IS "storm trooper" unit that hunted spies and deserters, guarded prisoners and disposed of their bodies. At the trial opening Wednesday, D. told the regional court in Duesseldorf that he converted to Islam in 2011, quickly became radicalized and traveled to Syria in August 2013. He returned over a year later and was arrested Jan. 10, 2015. The Latest: Snyder aide email blamed Flint for water crisis LANSING, Mich. (AP) The latest on the water crisis in Flint, Michigan (all times local): 7 p.m. A day after local doctors reported high levels of lead in Flint children, Gov. Rick Snyder's chief of staff told him the "real responsibility" for the city's water issues rested with local government officials. Flint, Mich. Mayor Karen Weaver responds to a reporter's question at a news conference during the U..S. Conference of Mayors Winter Meeting in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder says Michigan will commit $28 million in the short term to pay for filters, bottled water and health professionals in Flint's water crisis. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen) Snyder released his emails Wednesday related to Flint's water crisis. They show then-chief of staff Dennis Muchmore questioning in late September whether the state was responsible but then also noting that it had signed off on city's switch to a new water source. The next day, Muchmore wrote to Snyder and other top aides that critics were focusing on the lead issue and "looking for someone to blame," but two state agencies and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency "can't find evidence of a major change" in lead contamination. The emails are those sent to or from Snyder. He did not release those of his staff. The executive office is exempt from public-records requests, but Snyder says he took the unprecedented step so people "know the truth." By October, the Snyder administration was forced to acknowledge lead concerns and help Flint return to Detroit's water system. His administration is engulfed in criticism. ___ 5:50 p.m. President Barack Obama has told autoworkers in Detroit that his administration is doing what it can to assist Flint in that city's water crisis. Obama said Wednesday at the UAW-GM Center for Human Resources that if he were a parent in Flint he would be beside himself if his children's health was "at risk." The president also said the situation in Flint is a "reminder of why you can't shortchange basic services." Obama has declared an emergency in Flint, qualifying the city for $5 million. Gov. Rick Snyder is seeking a federal disaster declaration which would bring in more federal resources. Corrosive water from the Flint River has caused lead to leach from old pipes into homes. Tests have shown high levels of lead in the blood of some children. ___ 5:20 p.m. The Michigan House has approved Gov. Rick Snyder's request for $28 million more to deal with Flint's drinking water crisis. The House voted unanimously Wednesday, and the measure moves to the Senate for expected action next week. The funding, which follows the Legislature's $9 million allocation toward the crisis in the fall, would pay for more bottled water, filters, health treatment, water testing and help the city offset unpaid water bills. The money also would cover the replacement of plumbing fixtures in schools, day cares and medical facilities. Snyder said in Tuesday's annual State of the State speech that the $28 million is not his last budget request for Flint. He is expected to include additional funding in his February budget proposal. ___ 4:45 p.m. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder's administration has released more than 270 pages of his emails related to the Flint water crisis. The emails were posted Wednesday on his website, www.michigan.gov/snyder. The second-term Republican pledged during his annual State of the State speech Tuesday night to fix the emergency in Flint and to have greater transparency by releasing his own emails on the matter. He's not required to do so under state law. Flint's water became contaminated with too much lead when an emergency city manager appointed by Snyder switched its water source to the Flint River in 2014 to cut costs. Lead contamination can lead to behavior problems and learning disabilities in children and kidney ailments in adults. Flint's 100,000 residents are unable to drink unfiltered tap water. The National Guard, state employees, local authorities and volunteers are distributing lead tests, filters and bottled water. ____ 1:50 p.m. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder is asking President Barack Obama to reconsider the denial of his request for a federal disaster declaration in Flint. The governor submitted his appeal on Wednesday, likening the crisis to a flood and saying that the city's lead-contaminated water is a "natural catastrophe in the sense that lead contamination into water is a natural process." The Obama administration declared an emergency but determined the crisis did not meet the legal definition of a major disaster. Snyder says the "considerable" needs brought by the disaster exceed the funding capabilities of state and local government. He says without additional federal aid, Michigan won't have money to repair the entire public water system, plumbing inside homes in the high-poverty city and to provide other assistance. ___ 12:45 p.m. Flint Mayor Karen Weaver says she will not call for Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder's resignation over the water crisis in her city. Asked at the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in Washington, D.C., what repercussions Snyder should face, she said Snyder needs to remain in place to provide "the services and the money, the funds that we need to address the population." Flint's water became contaminated with too much lead when its water source was switched in a cost-cutting measure in 2014. Protesters called for the governor's resignation as he delivered his State of the State speech Tuesday night. Weaver refused to join those calls, saying she is staying focused on what she can get from the governor to resolve the crisis. ___ 1:29 a.m. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder is planning to release all his email correspondence relating to the Flint water crisis. The Snyder administration says it will post the emails on the governor's website, www.michigan.gov/snyder, on Wednesday. The second-term Republican pledged during his annual State of the State speech Tuesday night to fix the emergency in Flint and to have greater transparency by releasing his own emails on the matter. He's not required to do so under state law. Flint's water became contaminated with too much lead when an emergency city manager appointed by Snyder switched its water source to the Flint River in 2014 to cut costs. Lead contamination can lead to behavior problems and learning disabilities in children and kidney ailments in adults. Flint's 100,000 residents are unable to drink unfiltered tap water. The National Guard, state employees, local authorities and volunteers are distributing lead tests, filters and bottled water. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder delivers his State of the State address to a joint session of the House and Senate, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016, at the state Capitol in Lansing, Mich. With the water crisis gripping Flint threatening to overshadow nearly everything else he has accomplished, the Republican governor pledged a fix Tuesday night during his annual State of the State speech. (AP Photo/Al Goldis) Grisly fossils from Kenya reveal a 10,000-year-old massacre NEW YORK (AP) Scientists have found grisly evidence of a massacre in Kenya about 10,000 years ago, providing rare evidence of violence between groups in ancient hunter-gatherer societies. Researchers said the discovery casts light on the poorly understood roots of warfare. Evidence of violence appeared in 10 of 12 relatively complete fossil skeletons the scientists found by what used to be the edge of a lagoon. That included five or six cases of apparent arrow wounds to the head or neck, and five cases where the head was smashed with something like a club. One skull had a sharpened stone still embedded. In this August 2012 photo provided by Marta Mirazon Lahr, researcher Frances Rivera, right, Michael Emsugut, left, and Tot Ekulukum excavate a human skeleton at the site of Nataruk, West Turkana, Kenya. This skeleton was that of a woman, found lying on her back, with lesions on her neck vertebrae consistent with a projectile wound. She also had multiple fractures on one of her hands. Writing in a paper released Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016, by the journal Nature, scientists said its one of the clearest cases of violence between groups among prehistoric hunter-gatherers. (Marta Mirazon Lahr via AP) The researchers said the wounds would have been fatal immediately or soon thereafter. Two skeletons didn't show evidence of violence but the position of the hands suggested they might have been tied up at the time of death. One was a woman who was pregnant or had recently given birth. The 12 bodies were adults, and at least four were female. The site also revealed partial remains of at least 15 other people. The 2012 discovery, made west of Lake Turkana, was reported by scientists at Cambridge University and elsewhere. Writing in a paper released Wednesday by the journal Nature, they said it's one of the clearest cases of violence between groups among prehistoric hunter-gatherers. The reason for the violence is not clear. The victims may have been raided for resources, like territory or food stored in pots, the researchers said. Or the violence may have resulted from antagonism between two groups, they said. ___ Online: Journal Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature ___ World War II veteran to reunite with wartime girlfriend VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) A World War II veteran will travel to Australia to reunite with his wartime girlfriend after more than 70 years apart. Norwood Thomas, 93, of Virginia Beach will travel to Adelaide, Australia, next month to reunite with 88-year-old Joyce Morris, The Virginian-Pilot (http://bit.ly/1T4yu0o) reported. Thomas told Morris that he would love to see her again in person when the two recently spoke via Skype. During their two-hour video reunion, the two recalled their time together when they met in England, a few months before he parachuted into Normandy with the 101st Airborne Division. In this photo taken Nov. 6, 2015, Norwood Thomas, 93, talks with Joyce Morris via Skype from his home in Virginia Beach, Va. During World War II, Morris lived in England and was Joyce Durrant, the girlfriend of Thomas, a D-Day paratrooper with the Army's 101st Airborne Division. Morris now lives in Australia. (Bill Tiernan/The Virginian-Pilot via AP) MAGS OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT After the war had ended, the two went their separate ways. Morris has since lost much or her vision and currently resides in Australia. Thomas has also health problems and lives on a fixed income in Virginia Beach. After their story went public two months ago, more than 300 people made donations online to help the two rekindle their romance. Others mailed checks directly to Thomas' house. About $7,500 has been donated thus far, according to the newspaper, which also reports that Air New Zealand has made arrangements to send Thomas and his caretaker son, Steve, to Australia free of charge. Thomas said he was stunned by the generosity. "I'm numb," he said. "I have no idea what my emotions are going to be once we meet face to face." Thomas and Morris are expected to spend Valentine's Day together. ___ Information from: The Virginian-Pilot, http://pilotonline.com Venice steps up security for Carnival celebrations ROME (AP) Venice is boosting security for its upcoming Carnival festival after the crime spree against hundreds of women that hit Germany during New Year's Eve revelry. The pre-Lenten festival known locally as Carnevale, which begins Jan. 23 and runs through Feb. 9, sees tourists in masks and costumes throng Venice's car-free streets. The new security plan includes deploying extra police, including plainclothes officers, and establishing a command post near St. Mark's Square, the heart of the canal-laced city. In apparent reference to the extremist attacks that bloodied Paris, Venice's prefect's office said Wednesday the "overall international scenario" has "sparked worry." Sean Ludwick (picturd) was caught trying to flee the county while out on bail after being charged with vehicular homicide and drunken driving A New York real estate developer accused of drunkenly crashing his Porsche in the Hamptons and leaving his friend to die on the roadside was caught trying to flee to South America, according to the authorities. Sean Ludwick, 43, is facing vehicular homicide and drunken driving charges over the fatal crash in Southampton in August last year. He was free on $1million bond and awaiting trial after being indicted in the death of Paul Hansen, 53. If convicted, he faces up to 32 years in prison. Ludwick was apprehended by federal authorities in Puerto Rico, where he was trying to buy a boat large enough to take him to South America, Robert Clifford, a spokesman for the Suffolk County district attorney, said. After his capture on the Caribbean island, he was brought back to Long Island and ordered to be held without bail on Wednesday. His attorney declined to comment. Ludwick allegedly crashed his Porsche into a utility pole as he drove Hansen home to Sag Harbor, New York, in the early hours of August 30. But instead of calling for help, he is accused of dumping the real estate brokers body in the street leaving the father to die feet from his own home, according to prosecutors. Scroll down for video Ludwick was free on $1million bond and awaiting trial after being indicted in the death of Paul Hansen (pictured). If convicted, he faces up to 32 years in prison Sean Ludwick is pictured arriving at Southampton Town Justice Court in Hampton Bays on September 4, 2015 At a hearing at Suffolk County Court earlier this month, prosecutor John Scott Prudenti told Judge Fernando Camacho that Ludwick had also thrown Hansens personal belongings into the woods before fleeing although he didnt get too far. There were some personal effects from the victim, Mr Hansen, that he threw out into the woods, Prudenti said. The defendant in the most cold-hearted fashion removed the rest of Mr Hansens body from the car, laid him in the street and fled as far as that car would take him, he added, according to 27East. Prudenti also revealed that the crash had damaged the 2013 Porsche, which he drove off in despite the fact it was missing its front wheels. He is charged with leaving the scene of an accident, a class D felony, according to court documents, and driving while intoxicated. Ludwicks blood alcohol level was reportedly double the legal limit to drive four hours after the crash. Ludwick allegedly crashed his Porsche into a utility pole as he drove Hansen (pictured) home to Sag Harbor, New York, in the early hours of August 30 last year The victim's widow Catherine Hansen stands over his casket outside St. Andrew's Roman Catholic Church in Sag Harbor on September 3, 2015, following his funeral Shortly after the incident, Daily Mail Online revealed Ludwich had drunk tequila after tequila at a club in Long Island called 230 Down before driving off with Hansen. According to a police report, he had strong odor of an alcoholic beverage emanating from his breath, his speech was slurred and slow, his eyes were bloodshot, glassy and hooded or partially closed. It added: During the interview and investigation, he stood with a wide stance and continuously swayed from front to back and he stumbled when he tried to walk. He initially refused to allow a test to examine his blood alcohol level at the scene and had demanded an attorney before eventually giving blood four hours later. Authorities seized CCTV footage from the club and interviewed other revelers to establish the extent of Ludwicks drinking on the night in question. Hansen had declined joining his friends earlier that evening and dined with his family and put his children to bed before joining Ludwick at the club. Ludwicks 11-year-old son was having a sleepover at Hansens home that night. While Ludwick downed tequilas, his friend drank significantly less and sometimes replaced alcohol with glasses of water. The pair later left together in order for Ludwick to drop Hansen off at home and pick up his son as well. Fugitive from Cuba back in US to face gun, escape charges DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) A man facing federal firearms charges in Iowa who was found in Cuba attempting to escape prosecution has been returned to Iowa and faces a court hearing to determine whether he should remain in federal custody until his trial. Shawn Michael Wegmann, 38, who had been in custody in Florida since Cuban officials turned him over to federal marshals on Dec. 8, was returned to Iowa on Friday. He appeared in court Wednesday in Davenport, where his trial is to be held, to face a new charge of failure to appear while on pre-trial release. The judge set a hearing for next Wednesday to determine whether Wegmann should remain in custody until his trial. Jeffrey Lang, Wegmann's court-appointed attorney, declined to comment Wednesday. Wegmann had been charged in a federal indictment filed in September with being a felon in possession of firearms and possessing stolen guns. Four other men, also convicted felons prohibited from possessing weapons, are indicted in the same case involving an assortment of rifles and shotguns, some which authorities say were stolen. Court records said he had been scheduled to enter a guilty plea on Oct. 21 but he failed to appear in court. Wegmann had been living with his wife in Kirklin, Indiana, while out on bond awaiting trial. Federal authorities said at some point on Oct. 23, Wegmann removed his GPS ankle monitor. Federal probation officers responded and found the device attached to the bumper of a van in a Sam's Club parking lot. A warrant was issued for his arrest. About a week later, investigators say he arrived in Havana on a 13-foot (4-meter) Boston Whaler reported stolen from a marina in Key West, Florida. Cuban authorities notified the U.S. Marshals Service on Nov. 3 that Wegmann was in their custody. Fingerprinting revealed he was wanted in Iowa. "Wegmann is the first fugitive who has been returned to the United States by the Cuban government after fleeing to Cuba since diplomatic relations began nearly a year ago," said U.S. Marshal Amos Rojas Jr., in a statement released last month when Wegmann was flown from Cuba to Florida in a chartered jet. Court documents indicate Wegmann was indicted Jan. 12 on the new charge of failure to appear. He was in custody in Florida until he was returned to Iowa. "Welcome to Braggsville" author wins Gaines literary award NEW ORLEANS (AP) The winner of the 2015 Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence will be formally introduced to the public this week. New Orleans native T. Geronimo Johnson will receive the recognition Thursday at a ceremony at the Manship theatre in Baton Rouge. He's receiving the award for his latest work, "Welcome to Braggsville." The award recognizes outstanding work from rising African-American fiction writers while honoring Gaines' contributions to the literary world. Johnson says the Gaines award is special because he's been directly affected by Gaines' legacy. Gaines was a Stegner creative writing fellow at Stanford University as was Johnson and was one of the first writers of color in that program. Watchdog faults FAA's air traffic control operations WASHINGTON (AP) Spending on air traffic control operations has doubled over two decades, while productivity has declined substantially and efforts to improve performance have been ineffective, according to a report released Wednesday by a government watchdog. The report by the Transportation Department's inspector general blames the decline in productivity at air traffic facilities on a culture resistant to change within the Federal Aviation Administration and the agency's failure to adopt business-like practices. Lawmakers who want to remove air traffic operations from the FAA's control and turn them over to a nonprofit corporation pounced on the report as evidence the agency is incapable of modernizing its air traffic operations. The FAA has been engaged for more than decade in transitioning from a radar-based air traffic control system to one based on satellite navigation. FILE - In this May 21, 2015 file photo, an air traffic controller works in the tower at Newark Liberty International Airport in Newark, N.J. A government watchdog says that despite a doubling of spending on air traffic control operations over two decades, productivity has declined and reform efforts have been ineffective. The report by the Department of Transportation's Inspector General may boost efforts by some lawmakers, airlines and others to remove air traffic operations from the Federal Aviation Administration's control and turn them over to a nonprofit corporation. ( AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File) Decades of personnel, organizational and acquisition reforms have failed to slow the agency's cost growth, improve its productivity or improve its performance in modernizing air traffic operations, said Rep. Bill Shuster, R-Pa., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. "This report shows that the FAA simply isn't suited to successfully modernize our nation's antiquated air traffic control system," he said. "The FAA remains a vast government bureaucracy, not a high-tech service provider." Shuster is expected to introduce legislation within the next two months that would spin off the agency's air traffic operations to a nonprofit controlled by a board of aviation "stakeholders," including airlines, airports and others. The FAA would still be responsible for safety oversight. The airline industry, with the exception of Delta Air Lines, has been lobbying aggressively for the change. Business aircraft operators are opposed to privatizing air traffic operations, fearing they'll have to pick up a larger share of the cost of operations and be forced out of some airports to make room for more airline flights. There is also opposition to privatization from key House and Senate Democrats. "Tearing apart the FAA will not advance safety," said Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, the senior Democrat on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. "Congress should instead take this opportunity to improve the FAA, not privatize it." Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., the senior Democrat on the House committee, is working on a proposal to make the entire FAA an independent government corporation in an effort to rid the agency of archaic personnel and procurement rules and overly bureaucratic procedures. Clayton Foushee, FAA's director of audit and evaluation, said in a memo responding to the report that the agency has been more effective at controlling the cost of its operations than many other government agencies. Part of the reason costs have risen is expensive security measures taken since 2001 to protect against terrorist attacks and the dramatic increase in global hacking attacks, he said. The FAA has also completed several new "complex and demanding" air traffic computer systems that are part of the larger, modernization effort, he said. However, the inspector general's report says that while the FAA reports improvement in its management of such acquisitions, major programs continue to experience problems that delay the introduction of the new technologies and defer retirement of costly legacy systems. FAA's overall budget grew from $8 billion in 1996 to nearly $16 billion in 2012. Air traffic operations take-offs, landings and other aircraft handling by controllers declined 23 percent from 2000 to 2012 due to a drop off in air travel as the result of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Great Recession and other events. But air traffic handling per controller dropped 25 percent at approach control facilities and 16 percent at facilities that handle high-altitude air traffic over four years ending in 2012, while the number of air traffic controllers employed by the FAA has remained level. The FAA also continues to operate about the same number of air traffic facilities 317 instead of consolidating operations to save money, the report said. The agency also hasn't increased the number of airport towers operated by private contractors over the past 15 years even though the agency has acknowledged doing so could save money. It costs on average about $1.5 million less for a contractor to operate an airport tower than for the FAA to operate it, primarily due to lower staffing and salary levels, the report said. __ Crash spurs new questions about lawmaker with brain injury HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) A Connecticut state senator who has been working to recover from a traumatic brain injury he suffered in a 2014 fall faces new questions about his health following a recent car crash in which police say he was driving the wrong way. Waterford Police Lt. David Burton said Sen. Andrew Maynard was driving south in a northbound lane of Route 32 on Dec. 14 when his car struck an SUV and careened down an embankment. He was unconscious when emergency crews arrived and his air bag had deployed. The Stonington Democrat spent four days in the hospital. Friend and attorney Robert Reardon said Maynard suffered a serious concussion and is now resting at home. He said Maynard, who has not yet spoken with police, doesn't remember the crash. It is unclear how Maynard's latest injuries might affect his efforts to recover from the fall off an outside staircase at his home. "I would like to think that once he gets his rest and recuperation and heals from his concussion, he will be at least where he was before the most recent accident," Reardon said. While his speech has improved, Reardon said his friend still occasionally forgets his words. Maynard's family has said he suffered aphasia, a communication disorder caused by damage to parts of the brain that control language. The car crash comes as state lawmakers prepare for a new session of the General Assembly, which opens Feb. 3. Reardon said Maynard, 53, told him he wants to be on hand for opening day. Maynard's local newspaper, The Day of New London, has questioned whether Maynard is up for the job, noting how its reporters have been unable to interview the senator. Just before last week's car accident, a columnist at the newspaper said he hadn't spoken to anyone, including Maynard's Senate colleagues, who could report having had a meaningful conversation with Maynard since his fall. The column suggested Maynard might be a "puppet politician" of the Senate's majority Democrats who don't want to lose the seat to a Republican. Senate Minority Leader Len Fasano, R-North Haven, said he feels badly for Maynard. He suggested his colleague could "put the rumors to rest" by speaking to the media to "reassure the public that he's capable of handling the duties of the Capitol." Months after his 2014 accident, Maynard easily won re-election to a fifth two-year term despite being unable to campaign because of his injuries. Popular among his colleagues, he later received a standing ovation when he walked into the Senate last January for the first time. While the Senate Democrats said he recorded a vote in 92 percent of all Senate votes taken, Maynard, the co-chairman of the legislature's busy Transportation Committee, attended few committee meetings during the last session. "It is not a secret that Andy continues to work on his speech, which was impaired after the fall at his home in 2014," said Senate President Martin Looney, D-New Haven. "However, he has ably and dutifully represented his district and his principles in the Senate circle." Reardon noted that Maynard had attended a Senate Democratic caucus meeting in Hartford on the day of the recent car crash. "From the time that the accident first occurred, his prognosis was very worrisome. None of us really knew if he was going to survive the accident, when we first were informed of it," Reardon said, referring to the 2014 fall. "He came back and he worked very hard with therapists and speech therapy. He eventually made such progress that he continued on with his career." Reardon said Maynard had been driving regularly for months. Burton said police will likely interview Maynard sometime next week, after he's had more time to recuperate. A reconstruction of the accident is not planned, he said, because there was not a fatality or serious injury. The driver of the SUV, who initially refused medical treatment, reported having neck and back pain the next day. It's questionable whether Maynard will face any charges. Burton said police are looking at any mitigating circumstance for the crash, such as weather or a medical condition. Religion news in brief Dalai Lama heads to US for medical checkup DHARAMSALA, India (AP) The Dalai Lama is headed to the United States for a medical checkup, although the Tibetan Buddhist leader says he has no specific health complaints. The Dalai Lama told reporters he has been going to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, for regular health checkups for the past nine years. CORRECTS LOCATION OF MAYO CLINIC TO ROCHESTER, MINN., INSTEAD OF ROCHESTER, N.Y. - Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama points to his swollen right eye as he talks to journalists before boarding his chartered flight in Dharmsala, India, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016. The Tibetan leader said that he was going to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., for a regular medical checkup. (AP Photo/Ashwini Bhatia) In September, the Dalai Lama canceled a series of appearances in the United States on the advice of his U.S. doctors. The 80-year-old was told to rest for several weeks after a medical checkup. The Tibetan Buddhist leader's health is a matter of concern for his followers across the world, and especially for the hundreds of thousands of Tibetans who live in India. The Dalai Lama says he is likely to return to his Indian headquarters in March. ___ Members of Michigan diocese angered at priest's arrival BATTLE CREEK, Mich. (AP) Some parishioners in a Michigan Catholic diocese are concerned that a former Minnesota archbishop who left amid a clergy sex abuse scandal is helping out in a Battle Creek church. The Kalamazoo Gazette reports that former Archbishop John Nienstedt (NYN'-sted) is celebrating masses at St. Philip while its pastor recovers from an illness. Nienstedt resigned from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis in June after charges were filed claiming the church failed to protect children. Nienstedt has not been charged, and Kalamazoo diocese spokeswoman Victoria Cessna says the church has no knowledge of pending allegations against Nienstedt. St. Philip parent Samantha Pearl says "the church is demonstrating that it is willing protect those who have hurt children." ___ Russians celebrate Epiphany by diving into freezing waters MOSCOW (AP) Thousands of Russians have taken a dip in icy waters to celebrate Epiphany, a major holiday in Orthodox Christianity marking the baptism of Jesus. Water blessed by a priest on the Epiphany week in Orthodox tradition is considered holy and pure, and bathing in it is believed by some to have healing powers. In Moscow, authorities set up 60 official bathing sites for believers for the ceremony, from open air pools to holes cut ponds. Temperatures in Moscow were 14 degrees Fahrenheit overnight. Russia's defense ministry organized Epiphany celebrations for troops serving at Russia's military base in Syria by putting up an inflated rubber pool. ___ Manufacturer stands by policy on Muslim prayer breaks MILWAUKEE (AP) The Council for America-Islamic Relations is asking a Wisconsin manufacturer to back away from a policy that doesn't allow an extra break for prayer for its Muslim employees. The Ariens Company, however, has told CAIR that it can handle the matter internally. The friction comes after 53 Ariens Company workers left their jobs in protest after the company limited them to two 10-minute breaks per work shift. CEO Dan Ariens said adding a third prayer break had disrupted production at the lawn mower and snow blower manufacturer. The company says it has had longstanding religious accommodations for Muslim workers, including a prayer room. ___ Churches are urged to welcome transgendered members WASHINGTON (AP) The Episcopal Church's first openly gay bishop says, now that more faith groups are accepting same-sex marriage, the next step is to reach out to transgendered individuals. Former New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson says his message to American clergy is, "Transgendered people are coming to a theater very near you, maybe just around your corner, and you best get ready." He appeared at a Washington forum with the Rev. Allyson Robinson no relation a transgendered Baptist pastor who used to pastor churches as a man. Both Robinsons said being transgendered should be accepted as God's gift rather than something that's broken or sinful. Gene Robinson said Jesus crossed cultural boundaries in his ministry and churches should be prepared to do the same. ___ Chicago church when King preached could become landmark CHICAGO (AP) Mayor Rahm Emanuel says a church on Chicago's West Side where Martin Luther King Jr. preached could become a historic landmark. Emanuel said on Monday's Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday that the city's Landmarks Commission will consider the designation for Stone Temple Baptist Church. The church was built in 1926 as a synagogue for Jews fleeing anti-Semitism in Romania. An African-American Baptist congregation that supported civil rights bought it in 1954. The congregation's pastor was friends with King, who spoke there starting in 1959. A six-to-nine month designation process would begin if the commission votes to initiate landmark status for the church. The Chicago City Council would consider any final recommendation for the honor, which would protect the building from significant alteration and demolition. ___ Ukrainian admits leading ring that stole online bank data NEWARK, New Jersey (AP) A Ukrainian man has admitted using thousands of infected computers to steal user names and passwords for bank accounts and other online services. Federal prosecutors in New Jersey say Sergey Vovnenko, who allegedly used aliases like "Darklife" and "Centurion," pleaded guilty Wednesday to wire fraud conspiracy and aggravated identity theft charges. He now faces 22 years in prison when he's sentenced May 2. Prosecutors say the 29-year-old Vovnenko and co-conspirators hacked into the computers of individuals and businesses in the United States and elsewhere. Vovnenko admitted operating a "botnet" more than 13,000 computers infected with malicious computer software that were programmed to gain unauthorized access to computers and to identify, store, and export information from hacked computers. Argentina says may shoot down illegal flights BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) Argentina's government has announced tighter new rules for the country's airspace, including a measure that could let the air force shoot down planes suspected of illegal activities. The rules include expanded radar coverage aimed at detecting and deterring drug and flights. Opponents have jumped on the protocol for potentially shooting down unresponsive planes, saying it amounts to a death sentence. But Security Secretary Eugenio Burzaco said Wednesday that would only be a last resort. New President Mauricio Macri has vowed to crack down on drug trafficking and Burzaco says there were some 400 irregular flights into the country last year. The fatal shoot-down of a missionary plane in Peru in 2001 led that country to suspend a similar policy until last year. ___ Big storm with significant snowfall looms for East, South WASHINGTON (AP) As people in the South and East readied themselves for a nor'easter that might bring heavy snowfall by week's end, snow fell on much of Kentucky and Tennessee and contributed to at least one traffic-related death Wednesday. The National Weather Service's Weather Prediction Center warns of heavy, "perhaps crippling" snow across the northern mid-Atlantic region, including Baltimore, Washington and Philadelphia, probably beginning Friday. The District of Columbia was preparing for blizzard conditions and up to 2 feet of snow, Mayor Muriel Bowser said Wednesday. The city has requested Humvees from the National Guard to reach isolated people and places if necessary. United States Post Office employee Todd Smith delivers the mail Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016, in Danville, Ky. Snow and drizzle began falling early Wednesday across much of Kentucky and Tennessee leading school districts and some universities to cancel classes and officials to warn motorists to drive carefully. (Clay Jackson/The Advocate-Messenger via AP) TABLOIDS OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT "If this is a blizzard and we have sustained winds and people lose power, that would be my biggest concern," Bowser said at a news conference. "We can move the snow. We will move the snow." In the areas where blizzard conditions are possible, the weather service warns that travel will be limited if not impossible. The strongest winds and potentially life threatening conditions are expected Friday night through Saturday night. On Wednesday, the weather service issued blizzard and winter storm watches for parts of Maryland, Washington, Virginia, West Virginia and Arkansas. The watches start as early as Thursday and stretch into Saturday. The storm will bring ice and freezing rain to Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky starting Thursday, prediction center Meteorologist Rich Otto said Wednesday. "There's a lot of details that are yet to be seen," Otto said. "Subtle changes can make a big difference. We've seen that in storms in the past." ___ THE FIRST FLAKES Snow in much of Kentucky and Tennessee led school districts and some universities to cancel classes Wednesday and contributed to at least one traffic death, and officials warned motorists to be cautious of slick roads. The Knox County, Tennessee, Sheriff's Department says a car slid off the roadway due to speed and slick conditions, killing the driver and injuring a passenger. Forecasters said another cold front will hit Thursday night and Friday and could dump more snow over the region before traveling eastward. ___ GEARING UP IN PENNSYLVANIA, NEW JERSEY Road crews and hardware stores were gearing up Wednesday ahead of the potential winter storm that could dump as much as 16 inches in eastern Pennsylvania. The National Weather Service predicts that 12 to 16 inches of snow could come down between Friday night and Sunday morning around the Interstate 95 corridor. As much as a foot of snow is possible for Philadelphia's northern suburbs. Mitchell Gaines, of the National Weather Service in Mount Holly, New Jersey said people should be prepared for strong winds, heavy, wet snow and power outages. Forecasters say most of New Jersey will likely see several inches of snow. ___ SOUTHERN NEW ENGLAND PREPARES FOR WORST Although the storm's impact on southern New England remained uncertain Wednesday, officials are preparing for the worst. The National Weather Service said there's a potential for 6 inches of snow or more in the region. High winds and coastal flooding are possible. But meteorologist Matthew Belk said it depends on the storm's track. "You want to be prepared for the possibility for a significant weather storm, but there's a possibility it might not amount to much," Belk said. ___ MAINE, NEW HAMPSHIRE, VERMONT: The storm is expected to miss northern New England. Meteorologist Tom Hawley of the National Weather Service in Gray, Maine, says its path could shift, but right now "all indications are that it will not amount to much" in the region. If the storm says to the south, southern Maine and New Hampshire could see up to 1 to 2 inches of snow at the most. Little to no snow is in the forecast for Vermont. ___ AIR TRAVEL All major airlines have issued waivers for travel over the weekend, allowing passengers to rebook onto earlier or later flights to avoid the storms. The airports included vary by airline but include some cities in Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia all the way up the coast to New Hampshire and Massachusetts. ___ ANTI-ABORTION MARCH STILL ON Organizers of the March for Life say their annual anti-abortion rally in Washington will be held Friday, as scheduled. The rally on the anniversary of the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision is one of the largest events on the National Mall. Thousands of abortion opponents gather to listen to speeches before marching to the Supreme Court. ___ NOT EVEN SAFE FOR A SNOWBALL FIGHT? Even the organizers of a snowball fight are nervous about the storm that's expected to hit the nation's capital. The Washington D.C. Snowball Fight Association is taking a wait-and-see approach to its gathering in Dupont Circle, tentatively scheduled for Saturday. "If it is still blizzard conditions, that's not the optimal conditions. We might have to move it. Maybe to Sunday, maybe later on Saturday," snowball fight organizer Ami Greener said. "Once it stops snowing, anything is good. Two feet of snow is fine." ___ STOCKING UP ON SUPPLIES Simon Martinez, 48, felt fortunate to find a new snow shovel at a True Value hardware store in northwest Washington. He tried a nearby Home Depot first, without success. "It's crazy there," he said, adding that they were also out of salt. In Baltimore, Director of Emergency Management Bob Maloney urged residents to make sure they have enough water to last for three days, along with a working flashlight and a battery-operated radio. For Mitchell Cohen, owner of Cohen & Co. Hardware in Center City Philadelphia, the snowy forecast is good news. He said he's been getting calls from people asking to hold shovels for pickup on Friday and Saturday. He was getting shovels and snow melt delivered Wednesday. "We live right around corner so it's no problem getting here, no matter how bad it gets," Cohen said. "We'll be open all weekend." This image provided by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center shows an early computer model forecasting the chances of a windy, strong sleet-snow storm hitting the East Coast this weekend, Jan. 22-23, 2016. Meteorologists say tens of millions of Americans from Washington to Boston and the Ohio Valley could be walloped by an end-of-the-week snowstorm. (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration via AP) Liz Moran and her father Daniel Moran, of Bowling Green, Ky., build a snowman on Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016, at Bowling Green Junior High School. Another snow storm is expected to begin on Thursday. (Austin Anthony/Daily News via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT Davis Moran, of Bowling Green, Ky., throws a snowball on Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016, at Bowling Green Junior High School. Another snow storm is expected to begin on Thursday. (Austin Anthony/Daily News via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT Man guilty but not criminally responsible in fatal stabbing FREDERICK, Md. (AP) A man who told authorities he was being poisoned by "witchcraft food" and wanted to "invade a Korean" was found guilty but not criminally responsible Wednesday for killing a cook and wounding the victim's wife at a rural religious retreat favored by Korean immigrants near Washington, D.C. Song Su Kim, 30, of Falls Church, Virginia, pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder and was convicted by a judge after a prosecutor read an agreed-upon statement of facts. Prosecutors dropped three other counts as part of the deal. Both sides agreed with the findings of a court-ordered mental-health evaluation that concluded Kim was competent to stand trial but not criminally responsible at the time of the attack. The report was filed under seal, so details weren't available. Under Maryland law, people can be found not criminally responsible if they had a mental disorder that made them unable to appreciate the criminality of their conduct or act within the requirements of the law. FILE - A July 26, 2015 file photo provided by the the Frederick County, Maryland, Sheriffs Office shows Song Su Kim. During a hearing Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016 in Frederick, Maryland, the 30-year-old Falls Church, Virginia, man was found guilty but not criminally responsible for fatally stabbing a South Korean visitor at a rural religious retreat last summer. (Frederick County, Md., Sheriffs Office via AP, File) Kim killed Chung Hwan Park, 63, with 11 stab wounds and seriously wounded Ae Suk Ko during a July 26 worship service at the Anna Prayer Counseling and Retreat Center near Urbana, about 40 miles northwest of Washington. The couple, from Suwon, South Korea, were volunteer cooks and maintenance workers at the nondenominational Christian center. Frederick County Circuit Judge Scott Rolle ordered Kim committed to the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene for a psychiatric evaluation to determine if he is a danger to himself or others. The evaluation will be done at the maximum-security Clifton T. Perkins psychiatric hospital in Jessup, where Kim will likely be confined indefinitely, subject to annual reviews, Assistant State's Attorney Nanci Hamm said. "I don't see any doubt that he will be found dangerous," she said. Kim, a U.S. citizen, had been brought to the center five days before the attack by his mother, police said. Court records list multiple misdemeanor charges against him in the past 10 years in northern Virginia, including assault, drunken driving and possession of marijuana. Many of the charges were ultimately dismissed. He was arrested near the retreat after calling 911 to say he had stabbed two people. In another 911 call a day earlier, Kim told a dispatcher "they were making witchcraft food" at the retreat, Hamm said. After his arrest, Kim told police he was tired of being disrespected by Koreans. "He stated he wanted to 'invade a Korean' for the way all Koreans treated him," charging documents state. U.S. immigration policies haven't changed with the restoration of diplomatic relations between Havana and Washington Many are trying to jump overboard and self-harming in an attempt to be taken in for treatment Cuban migrants desperate to reach U.S. shore are increasingly violent and non-compliant with Coast Guard crews who detain them at sea, authorities said Wednesday, citing reports of attempted poisoning and self-inflicted wounds as rumors swirl that the 'wet-foot, dry-foot' policy will soon be abandoned. U.S. immigration policies haven't changed since President Barack Obama ordered the restoration of diplomatic relations between Havana and Washington in December 2014, and for over a year the Coast Guard has warned migrants and their relatives in the U.S. that no change is imminent. But an ongoing surge in Cubans fleeing their homeland by sea is fueled by fears they soon will lose the 'wet-foot, dry-foot' benefits that allow those reaching U.S. land to stay and pursue citizenship, according to the chief of response for the Coast Guard's 7th District in Miami. The U.S. Coast Guard says it's documenting increasing instances of violence and non-compliance at sea among Cuban migrants. In this photo, personnel try to assist a group of Cuban migrants on a makeshift vessel in the Florida Straits on January 4, 2016 Security has been increased for Cuban migrants aboard Coast Guard vessels because more are jumping overboard, trying to poison themselves or suffering self-inflicted wounds in frantic attempts to be taken to U.S. shore for treatment, Capt. Mark Fedor said. 'It's been a dangerous uptick. The last six months, it's come to a head,' Fedor said. According to a Coast Guard tally provided to The Associated Press, compiled from crew reports of migrant hostility over the last six months, several makeshift vessels carrying a dozen or more Cuban migrants refused to stop for U.S. authorities, leading them on slow pursuits for hours before surrendering. Among other incidents in the tally, two Cuban migrants were found with self-inflicted gunshot wounds, one migrant drank bleach before abandoning a rustic vessel, one migrant threatened officers with a machete and three separate times, migrants jumped overboard from Coast Guard cutters. The agency said one group of 18 migrants refused lifejackets and used oars to try to fend off the Coast Guard, and another group of eight migrants who refused to stop for 72 hours attempted to light a Molotov cocktail before complying with orders to stop. A handful of violent incidents with non-compliant migrants from Cuba, Haiti or elsewhere in the Caribbean are routinely reported each year by Coast Guard crews. Rarely are the migrants involved brought to shore. Aboard Coast Guard vessels, all migrants receive food, shelter and medical care before they're returned to their homelands. Other migrants are deported if they reach land, but Cubans are allowed to remain in the U.S.; Cubans caught at sea are taken back to the communist island. Along with a general increase in migrant traffic through the Caribbean toward Florida over the past couple of years, the Coast Guard has recorded a significant spike in the number of Cubans attempting the risky sea voyage since December 2014. Since Oct. 1, U.S. authorities say they have captured, intercepted or chased away over 1,980 Cuban migrants. In the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 4,473 Cuban migrants were kept from reaching U.S. shores, an increase over the 3,737 in the 2014 fiscal year and 2,218 in 2013. This month alone, U.S. authorities say they have encountered 435 Cuban migrants, compared with 355 in January 2015 and 240 in the previous January. The Coast Guard has reallocated some resources to boost patrols in the waters off Florida, Fedor said. 'One thing we've done is increase the level of security on the cutters after the interdiction occurs, because we've had instances where people have jumped overboard to swim to a buoy or because they think they see land,' Fedor said. The migrants tell crews they don't see any future for themselves in Cuba's poverty, and they fear their window is closing to take advantage of the policy that shields them from deportation, Fedor said. No other migrant groups have exhibited this level of noncompliance over the last year, Fedor said. Biden wisecracks at Davos, then warns of digital age threats DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) Ever the jokester, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden ribbed his boss Wednesday at the World Economic Forum before getting serious to chide tax-dodgers and warn about the possible dangers that the digital revolution and growing automation could pose to jobs. A frequent veteran of the 45-year-old World Economic Forum while a U.S. Senator, Biden wisecracked about President Barack Obama for not letting him go as vice president until now as he delivered the keynote address at the renowned Davos conference in the Swiss Alpine snows. "I've really resented the hell out of the fact Barack wouldn't let me come until tonight," he told a nearly packed hall, before quickly adding: "I'm only joking about that. That's a joke." US Vice-President Joe Biden speaks at the plenary session of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. A prevailing sense of anxiety was in the air in the Swiss ski resort of Davos as the World Economic Forum kicked off Wednesday with delegates fretting about the turbulence in financial markets, slowdown in China and plunging oil prices. (AP Photo/Michel Euler) Self-deprecatingly referring to the "Biden gaffe" known to many of his fellow Americans, Biden also quipped about wanting to seek a "personal" loan from IMF managing director Christine Lagarde, who sat in the front row and laughed. He then turned to the theme of this year's edition the Fourth Industrial Revolution and expressed hopes it would produce "far more winners than losers" in his speech at a conference where roughly two-thirds of the 2,400-plus attendees are business leaders. "So my call to action here is simple: Embrace the obligation to your workers as well as your shareholders," he said. Biden said the traditional bargain which stipulated that a worker who contributed to the success of his employer would get a share in the benefits has been broken. He decried a growing wealth gap, economic inequality, tax avoidance and data showing that wage growth is not keeping pace with productivity gains. He suggested that they were among the contributing factors to a rise of public disenchantment and frustration in many parts of the world, fanning radical movements like the Islamic State group and far-right extremists in Europe, and spawning an extreme political discourse in the United States. "So I say to all of you tonight that the digital revolution has the potential to exacerbate this breakdown, and not just in America but around the world," he said. Business leaders, he predicted, are likely to fare better. "It's true all of us in this room are probably going to be fine. But while we'll be fine, we need an environment in the wake of this revolution that gives a chance to be part of the mix. And it's not so self-evident how to do that," Biden said. However, he said he's more optimistic about the future of the world than ever amid the vast technological changes. "Never before we have had so much power in our hands to do better," Biden said. "It's not going to be easy. But it's possible." ___ Follow Jamey Keaten on Twitter at https://twitter.com/jameykeaten President and Founder of the World Economic Forum Klaus Schwab, left, and US Vice-President Joe Biden shake hands prior to the plenary session of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. A prevailing sense of anxiety was in the air in the Swiss ski resort of Davos as the World Economic Forum kicked off Wednesday with delegates fretting about the turbulence in financial markets, slowdown in China and plunging oil prices. (AP Photo/Michel Euler) US Vice-President Joe Biden gestures as he speaks at the plenary session of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. A prevailing sense of anxiety was in the air in the Swiss ski resort of Davos as the World Economic Forum kicked off Wednesday with delegates fretting about the turbulence in financial markets, slowdown in China and plunging oil prices. (AP Photo/Michel Euler) Detroit schools sue to try to stop teacher absences DETROIT (AP) Faced with another massive sick-out by teachers, the Detroit school district filed a lawsuit Wednesday to try to stop absences that have kept thousands of students at home and left parents scrambling for child care and other quick remedies. The latest sick-out shuttered more than 85 of the struggling district's roughly 100 schools and was timed to coincide with a visit to the city by President Barack Obama. Temperatures in the teens appeared to have kept most students indoors, and all Wednesday's protest and one last week did for Carnisha Wesley, 23, was to make her late for her own classes. Wesley had to scramble to find a sitter for her 5-year-old daughter, Myajai, as Ann Arbor Trail school was closed. Burton International Academy computer advanced teacher Denice McGee, bottom left, holds a sign as she and other protesters wait to cross the street Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016, in Detroit. Most of Detroit's public schools closed for the day on Wednesday due to teacher absences, as disgruntled educators stepped up efforts to protest the governor's plans for the district, its ramshackle finances and dilapidated buildings. (Todd McInturf/Detroit News via AP) DETROIT FREE PRESS OUT; HUFFINGTON POST OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT "It's inconvenient. It makes me a little late for school when I have to find someone to watch her," said Wesley, a pharmacy tech student at the Everest Institute's Detroit campus. Disgruntled Detroit educators have stepped up efforts to protest Gov. Rick Snyder's plans for the district, its ramshackle finances, their low pay, dilapidated buildings and overcrowded classrooms. The district responded with a lawsuit and a request for an injunction in the Michigan Court of Claims, naming the teachers' union, activists and two dozen teachers as defendants. It wasn't immediately clear when Judge Cynthia Stephens would act. The state-appointed emergency manager for Detroit's public schools said the sick-out closed 88 schools and caused nearly 45,000 students to miss classes. Darnell Earley called the sick-out "a publicity stunt" and said "sooner or later, the families who have been so adversely affected by these sick-outs will express their displeasure and voice their disdain of these actions." Meanwhile, several dozen people marched in front of Detroit's convention center. Many of those chanting and carrying signs were Detroit Public Schools teachers. The protest lasted more than an hour as marchers hoped to be on hand when Obama's motorcade arrived to tour the North American International Auto Show. Obama's visit was to highlight progress in the city and the auto industry. It also opened up a bigger stage for teachers to get their message out, according to Detroit Federation of Teachers spokeswoman Ann Mitchell. "People couldn't miss the opportunity for us to say, this is what's happening and we really need help," Mitchell told The Associated Press. "We really need someone to help focus on the schools." The closures Wednesday in the 46,000-student district come after more than 60 schools were closed Jan. 11 because of an absence of teachers. Other sick-outs affecting a smaller number of schools have taken place as well. In response, city officials have started inspecting schools for any code and safety violations. Shanay Watson-Whittaker has seen fallen ceiling tiles, cold classrooms and leaking ceilings. "The teachers teach despite being in those conditions. This is appalling," she said, adding that three of her five children remained home Wednesday when Renaissance High School was closed. "They're home right now. They are doing homework," Watson-Whittaker said Wednesday afternoon. "They were dressed for school when we got the phone call that school was closed." Mayor Mike Duggan has called for teachers to stop the sick-outs and return to their classrooms while state legislators work on solving the district's financial crisis, saying the "frustrations are legitimate, but the solution is not to send the kids home." Duggan gave White House official Cecilia Munoz a tour of some city neighborhoods on Wednesday, after he met Tuesday with Detroit's delegation in the Legislature to work out their strategy on trying to improve conditions. The schools, he says, "are only getting worse. Lansing needs to act." The governor has pushed state lawmakers to pass bills to overhaul the school district by splitting it in two, spending more than $700 million over a decade, warning of a potential bankruptcy. Already, the district is run by an emergency manager appointed by Snyder, a Republican. The district said it has no choice but to close schools when teachers don't report to work. Watson-Whittaker said her anger is not toward the teachers but with the "emergency manager and how the state has run the education" in the district. Teacher and activist Steve Conn said Snyder is "attacking public education in Detroit." The number of schools closed Wednesday indicates that more teachers are joining the sick-outs. "This movement has grown, and I think it has grown among the teachers themselves," Mitchell said. "We were not encouraging people to go out today, but people are feeling it's the time now to do big actions to show what they're feeling." Wesley got help from her mother on Wednesday to watch Myajai, who is in kindergarten, but says more closings may lead her to remove her daughter from Detroit schools. "I can't have her out of school and not learning," Wesley said. Western International High School teacher Debrah Baskin, 53, of Southfield, and other teachers from Detroit area schools protest outside the Cobo Center, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2106, only hours before President Barack Obama's visit to the auto show. Faced with another massive sick-out by teachers, the Detroit school district filed a lawsuit Wednesday to try to stop absences that have kept thousands of students at home and left parents scrambling for child care and other quick remedies. The latest sick-out shuttered more than 85 of the struggling district's roughly 100 schools and was timed to coincide with a visit to the city by the Obama. (Todd McInturf/Detroit News via AP) DETROIT FREE PRESS OUT; HUFFINGTON POST OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT Pasteur Elementary teacher Rochelle Hicks, 42, of Southfield, and other teachers from Detroit area schools protest outside the Cobo Center, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2106, only hours before President Barack Obama's visit to the auto show. Faced with another massive sick-out by teachers, the Detroit school district filed a lawsuit Wednesday to try to stop absences that have kept thousands of students at home and left parents scrambling for child care and other quick remedies. The latest sick-out shuttered more than 85 of the struggling district's roughly 100 schools and was timed to coincide with a visit to the city by the Obama. (Todd McInturf/Detroit News via AP) DETROIT FREE PRESS OUT; HUFFINGTON POST OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT Prosecutor: Exec charged in fatal crash tried to flee US MINEOLA, N.Y. (AP) A New York City real estate executive charged with vehicular homicide and drunken driving in a fatal crash in the Hamptons tried to flee to South America, a prosecutor said Wednesday. Sean Ludwick was apprehended by local and federal authorities on Tuesday at a property he owns in Sag Harbor, on eastern Long Island, said Robert Clifford, a spokesman for Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota. Assistant District Attorney John Scott Prudenti, the chief of the Vehicular Crimes Bureau, said authorities learned that Ludwick had made inquiries while visiting Puerto Rico last week about buying a vessel capable of taking him to South America. In this undated photo provided by the Suffolk County Police Department, real estate executive Sean Ludwick is shown. A spokesman for the Suffolk County district attorney says that Lidwick, who is facing vehicular homicide and drunken driving charges over a fatal crash in the Hamptons, was apprehended by federal authorities in Puerto Rico after trying to flee to South America. (Suffolk County Police Department via AP) "For the next several days the Suffolk County District Attorney's office, acting with local law enforcement and federal authorities, conducted an investigation that led to his arrest," Prudenti told The Associated Press. Ludwick, a managing partner and founder of Blackhouse Development, had been free on $1 million bond after being indicted in the August death of a passenger in the town of Southampton. Ludwick was arrested on a bench warrant, Clifford said. He was ordered held without bail Wednesday. His attorney declined to comment. His next court appearance is scheduled for Tuesday. Ludwick, 43, pleaded not guilty earlier this month to aggravated vehicular homicide, drunken driving and other charges. Prudenti has said previously that a sample taken four hours after the crash showed Ludwick's blood-alcohol content was 0.18, more than double the state's legal limit of 0.08. The Aug. 30 crash killed his passenger, 53-year-old Paul Hansen, a real estate broker who lived in Sag Harbor. Prudenti said Ludwick crashed his Porsche into a utility pole, dragged Hansen's body from the car and left it within feet of Hansen's driveway. He then tried to flee the scene, but two of the wheels had come off and the mangled rims of the other two prevented him from traveling more than a quarter-mile, investigators said. After the arraignment, Manhattan defense attorney Benjamin Brafman called the crash "a very sad case." "There is no good answer to the fact that someone is dead," said Brafman. "There is a difference between a homicide and an accident that results in a person's death." ___ Palin's re-emergence underscores GOP split DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) If the Republican Party is on the verge of an implosion, Sarah Palin may have been the one who lit the fuse. Palin's complicated relationship with GOP leaders over the past eight years is a microcosm of the party's broader struggles with its most restive members. What started with an embrace by party leaders evolved into wary tolerance, followed by a potentially irreparable split. So it's perhaps little surprise that Palin is re-emerging on the national political scene at this moment of reckoning for Republicans. While she's hardly the conservative kingmaker she once was, Palin remains a favorite of the tea party insurgency, and her endorsement of Donald Trump for the 2016 GOP nomination gives him an added boost of conservative, anti-establishment credibility. Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin speaks to a crowd as she introduces Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at a rally in Tulsa, Okla., Wednesday, Jan 20, 2016. (AP Photo/Brandi Simons) "He's been going rogue left and right," Palin said Tuesday, with a beaming Trump standing by her side. "He's been able to tear the veil off this idea of the system." Mainstream Republicans have tried for the past several years to keep their system together by bringing lawmakers elected as disrupters into the fold rather than pushing them aside. It's a strategy that succeeded in winning the party the House in 2010 and the Senate in 2014, but it did little to achieve such conservative goals as overturning President Barack Obama's health care law or blocking increases in the nation's debt ceiling. Now, the GOP system is cracking, leaving some in the establishment feeling they would be the outsiders in a party helmed by Trump or by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a frequent tormentor of Republican leaders who is a strong contender for the nomination. "I thought I was a traditional Republican conservative," says Bob Dole, the 1996 Republican presidential nominee who represented deep red Kansas in Congress for decades. Dole has been an especially vocal critic of Cruz, who has blamed Republican failures in presidential contests on the party's tendency to elect mainstream candidates like the longtime Kansas senator. However, Dole suggested in an interview Wednesday that he might be able to make peace with a Trump presidency, saying the businessman's reputation as a "dealmaker" could mean he's able to work with Congress. Palin's endorsement of Trump is seen as a knock against Cruz, who has been on the rise in Iowa for several weeks. She campaigned for Cruz when he ran for the Senate in 2012, and he's said her support was instrumental in his victory. For all of her firebrand conservatism, Palin owes her place on the national stage to the mainstream Republican Party. She was a little-known Alaska governor when Sen. John McCain seen by some Republicans as an embodiment of the party establishment tapped her as his running mate for the 2008 election. Palin was an awkward fit as No. 2 on the ticket, but she built an enthusiastic following with conservatives. She blended more neatly into the tea party movement that blossomed during the first years of Obama's presidency and flirted with a White House run of her own in 2012 before concentrating on political punditry and reality television. Now it's Trump and Cruz who are pushing the anti-establishment movement further than she ever managed. With less than two weeks before the Iowa caucuses kick off the nominating process, strong showings by the billionaire and the senator could turn the Republican race into a two-man contest. To be sure, a slew of politically experienced rivals are still hoping to blunt Trump's and Cruz's momentum once voting begins. But for now, more mainstream voters are dividing their support among Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, making it difficult for any one of them to mount a strong challenge. In most recent elections, Republicans have tended to nominate center-right candidates who were seen as having the best prospects in the general election. Even after the 2010 tea party takeover in the House, the GOP nominated Mitt Romney the former governor of moderate Massachusetts in the 2012 presidential race. Four years later, many Republican voters not only believe that nominating a centrist would cost them another shot at the White House, but they also are deeply skeptical that an establishment GOP president would follow through on their priorities. "I'm so sick of the Republicans," said Scott Doremus, a retired commercial airplane pilot from Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, who is supporting Cruz. "Republicans have become just like Democrats." Debbie Marmon, a Trump supporter from Norwalk, Iowa, said of the GOP nominating process: "Sometimes you need radical to beat radical." "You can't be a wuss, and I'm tired of wusses in this country," said Marmon, who attended a rally with Trump in her hometown Wednesday. "They need to stand for something or we'll fall for anything." ___ AP writers Scott Bauer in North Conway, New Hampshire, and Jill Colvin in Norwalk, Iowa, contributed to this report. ___ Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC Crisis-hit steel industry dealt fresh blow with news of more job losses The crisis-hit steel industry has been dealt a fresh blow with news of more job losses. Sheffield Forgemasters started consultations on 100 redundancies, just days after Tata cut 1,050 jobs mainly at Port Talbot in south Wales. The company said reduced activity in the traditional oil and gas sector, the slowing down of growth in the global economy and an international collapse in steel prices had adversely affected its results for 2014. Sheffield Forgemasters started consultations on 100 redundancies The Sheffield company said caution expressed in its 2013 financial results had proved well founded, as it experienced a tougher global business environment. Forgemasters also cited acute pricing pressures from international competitors combined with high UK energy costs as key factors. A statement said: "The company's need to restructure the business means consultation on up to 100 redundancies across all its divisions has begun, with the emphasis on creating a more streamlined operation, better able to operate in the tough economic environment." The announcement was made as it published accounts for the 18 months to December 2014, which showed a loss for the first time since a management buyout in 2005 - 9.4 million. Sheffield Forgemasters chairman Tony Pedder said: "The storm clouds which seem to gather periodically over the steel and steel-related sectors are once again evident. A confluence of factors has made trading conditions for our sector particularly challenging for several months and this has led to difficult decisions for us. "Of particular concern has been reduced activity in the traditional oil and gas sector, with oil prices down to a level that is deferring much potential new investment. "This combined with a slowing of global economic growth has led to a scarcity of orders for our engineering products and an international collapse in steel prices, affecting our ingot and bar sales. "For the first time, we have traded at a loss despite the best efforts of all in the company. "In this situation, the company must continue to look to all sources of support. We have been working with our major customers, suppliers and in particular, our secured lender, with whom we have concluded an extension to our financing facility. This will provide adequate funding for the business through to end March 2017." Roy Rickhuss, Community's general secretary said: "Every sector of the UK steel industry is caught up in the current crisis. We keep saying that delays in implementation of support and a lack of swift and decisive action by Government only puts more steel jobs at risk. Today's announcement by Sheffield Forgemasters just increases the number of steelworkers and their families worried about their futures. "We will be meeting with the company in the coming days to examine and test their proposals, mitigate the impact on jobs and ensure a sustainable future for the business. "The spectre of the UK's cosy relationship with China hangs over the entire steel industry. The Prime Minister needs to stand up to China and stand up for our steel industry. When the UK steel industry is cut out of procurement deals such as at Hinkley Point, or sees its Government cheerleading for China's market economy status then it's no wonder the industry is in crisis. We need to see evidence that Government is committed to the long-term future of UK steel making and that needs a lot more short-term action." Harish Patel, Unite's national officer said: "World class companies like Sheffield Forgemasters need urgent support and a level playing field with their international competitors if they are to survive. "It wasn't that long ago that Government ministers pulled the plug on a loan that would have allowed Sheffield Forgemasters to invest in new equipment making it more productive. "The Government now needs to right that wrong by guaranteeing that British companies such as Sheffield Forgemasters are never again excluded from tendering for British infrastructure projects. "If it's made for Britain then it should be built using British steel. Firms such as Forgemasters should be looking forward to helping build the new gas and nuclear power plants which are in the pipeline, not left fighting for their survival on an uneven playing field." Shadow business secretary Angela Eagle said: "These latest job losses will be devastating news for the workers affected especially given the uncertainty that they've endured as the plant restructures to secure its near-term future. There is also a loss to the wider economy due the high-quality and specialist nature of the steel produced at the plant which is of strategic importance to our national security. "The Government must take faster and more decisive action to assist, especially on relief for business rates and high energy costs." Meanwhile, French energy giant EDF, which is building a new nuclear power station at Hinkley in Somerset, said the UK does not currently have the capability or capacity of producing the very largest forgings required by the power station, so these will have to be sourced from outside the UK. There will be opportunity for suppliers, including those in the UK, to compete in the supply of forged components for the turbine generators and in other items such as pumps, motors, valves and the like. Construction at Hinkley Point C will provide 25,000 jobs in the UK, 1,000 apprenticeships, and more than 60% of the project's construction value is expected to come from British companies. "Hinkley Point C is a big opportunity for UK steel, as well as for UK construction and manufacturing more widely," said EDF. A Government spokesman said: "It has been a challenging time for the steel industry facing tough global economic conditions. We will work with local partners to help anyone made redundant find new jobs as quickly as possible. "We understand that Sheffield Forgemasters is taking this step to restructure the business to secure its long-term future and welcome the news that its lending facility has been extended. Record number in work as jobless total falls to near eight-year low Unemployment has fallen to a near eight-year low and a record number of people are in work, official figures have shown. The jobless total fell by 99,000 in the three months to November to 1.6 million. This week's raft of job losses in the steel industry will not feed through for months. Official unemployment figures will show whether the downwards trend is continuing Tata announced more than 1,000 redundancies on Monday, while Sheffield Forgemasters said on Wednesday that 100 jobs are set to be cut from its 700-strong workforce. The official data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that unemployment has fallen by 239,000 over the past year. The claimant count has also fallen - down by 4,300 last month to 785,900, the lowest since March 2008. Employment has reached a record 31.3 million, a rate of 74%, increasing by more than half a million over the past year and by 267,000 in the latest quarter. Almost 23 million people are in a full-time job, 436,000 more than a year earlier, while 8.4 million are working part-time, up by 152,000. The number of workers in part-time jobs wanting a full-time post is 1.2 million, down by 21,000 in the latest three months. Economic inactivity, counting people on long-term sick leave, looking after a relative or who have given up looking for work, fell by 93,000 to just under nine million, the lowest since the spring of 2014. The inactivity rate for women reached a record low of 27%. The record high was 44% in 1971, when most employment records started. Average earnings increased by 2% in the year to November, down by 0.4%. Other figures showed that job vacancies have increased by 13,000 to a record high of 756,000. ONS statistician David Freeman said: "These results show the labour market continued to strengthen in the autumn. "The employment rate, at 74%, was the highest on record, as was that for women, while the rise in the number of people in work - 276,000 on the quarter - was the third highest on record. "Real earnings continued to grow, albeit at a slower pace than in mid-2015." Employment Minister Priti Patel said: "This is a record-breaking set of figures and has got 2016 off to a fantastic start. "There are now more people in work than ever before and wages are growing - a credit to hard-working Brits and businesses alike. "And in a further demonstration of the strength of the UK labour market, today's figures show there are a record three-quarters of a million vacancies. "We will build on this throughout the coming year - doubling childcare for working parents and introducing the new National Living Wage - ensuring that everyone has increased financial security and the opportunity to get on and succeed in life." Prime Minister David Cameron said: "Unemployment is now below where it was before the recession. We must stick to our plan to keep delivering jobs and security for people." A Welsh Government spokesman said: "Over the last year Wales has seen the joint largest reduction in the unemployment rate of anywhere in the UK - down 22,000. "However, this week's Tata announcement has been a stark reminder of the challenges to Wales in a global market. "Later today the Business Minister is chairing a high-level taskforce charged with drawing up an action plan to support the workforce and the local supply chain. "The Welsh Government has a strong relationship with industry in Wales, working in close partnership over many years. We will continue working tirelessly to provide support during this challenging time." During Prime Minister's Questions, Mr Cameron said the unemployment rate was now lower than at the start of the recession. "Over the last year we have actually seen more people in work in every region in our country and that is something that is welcome," he said. "The latest figures show unemployment falling by another 99,000 and we have today in our country a record number of people in work ever in our history and a record number of women in work," he added. Opposing Jeremy Corbyn on Trident 'no reason for Labour resignations' Shadow ministers will not have to resign if they oppose Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn's position on the renewal of Britain's Trident nuclear deterrent, a senior party source has said. The comment is the strongest indication yet that Mr Corbyn may offer his MPs a free vote in any Commons vote on Trident which comes before the completion of the party's ongoing review of its defence policy. There is widespread expectation in Westminster that ministers will force a vote on Trident in the coming weeks, before the recommendations of the review are announced by shadow defence secretary Emily Thornberry in June or ratified by annual conference in September. File photo dated 30/01/02 of the Royal Navy's 16,000 ton Trident-class nuclear submarine Vanguard. Mr Corbyn was taunted at Prime Minister's Questions in the Commons over his suggestion in a weekend TV interview that the UK could retain its nuclear missile submarines but send them to sea without their warheads, which Tory backbencher Karl McCartney described a "Yellow Submarine" policy. Taking up the Beatles theme, Prime Minister David Cameron responded that Mr Corbyn might prefer "Back In The USSR", adding: "The deterrent has been, on a cross-party basis, an absolutely key part of our defence and making sure we have got the ultimate insurance policy which we support on this side and we should vote on in this House." Senior Downing Street aides later declined to comment on speculation that a vote on Trident's "maingate" - approval for the project to move into the manufacturing stage - might come as early as next week. Asked whether Labour's existing policy of support for Trident would be applied in any such vote, the senior party source described it as "a policy in review, which puts it in special circumstances" and said it would be for the leader himself to decide on what approach Labour would take. "The policy is in review and if there is a vote in Parliament, depending on how it is framed, there will then be a decision about how to deal with that," said the source. "But Jeremy Corbyn has made clear repeatedly that it is going to be an open process and all differences will be respected in the shadow cabinet and the whole party and the whole Parliamentary Labour Party and that there is no reason for anyone to resign or anything like that. "Judging how to approach such a vote would depend on its terms." Whipping arrangements in a vote on Trident would be a matter for the leader, but would be agreed in consultation with the shadow cabinet in a process which has already begun, said the source. Asked whether Labour MPs would be offered a free vote, he said: "Nothing has been said about that, but Jeremy Corbyn has emphasised that all positions in an issue which people obviously have different views about in the Labour Party - as they do in other parties and as they do in the military - will be fully respected when a vote takes place. "Those views will be respected, there will be no reason for anyone to resign, but the actual particular response will depend on what the proposal that's brought forward by the Government is." He stressed that any decision on the deterrent would not be a simple choice between the existing fleet of submarines armed with warheads and complete disarmament, suggesting that other options - including land-based deterrents and Cruise missiles - would be considered by Ms Thornberry's review. Judges to ponder 'genius' in row over divorce cash split Senior judges are set to analyse the nature of genius after a multi-millionaire American financier complained that he was not left with a fair cash share following a divorce battle with his unfaithful wife because his "special contribution" to their fortune had not been recognised. A High Court judge had decided that 48-year-old Randy Work's contributions to wealth creation had not been "wholly exceptional" - after considering whether they possessed the "quality of genius". Mr Justice Holman had concluded, after a trial in the Family Division of the High Court in London, that Mr Work's estranged wife Mandy Gray, 46, should get half of a fortune totalling more than 140 million. Randy Work is trying to overturn the High Court judge's ruling But Mr Work, who says his share should be nearer two-thirds, has been given the go-ahead to take his case to the Court of Appeal after his lawyers complained that Mr Justice Holman had been wrong not to give credit for a special contribution. Barrister Nicholas Cusworth QC, who leads Mr Work's legal team, argued that judges had differing views on what constitutes a "special contribution" to marital wealth. And an appeal court judge has decided that Mr Work has a chance of over-turning Mr Justice Holman's ruling and should get the opportunity to make his case at a full Court of Appeal hearing. Lady Justice King gave Mr Work permission to appeal on Wednesday but no date has yet been fixed for a full hearing. Mr Justice Holman had said, in a ruling in March 2015, that he had to consider the "specialness" required before concluding that a contribution to marital wealth was "special". He said some judges had referred to a "special contribution" possessing the "quality of genius" in earlier rulings. But he said genius tended to be an over-used word and should be "properly reserved" for the likes of Leonardo Da Vinci, Mozart and Einstein. Mr Work and Ms Gray had been "two strong and equal partners" over 20 years. He said Ms Gray had been a "good wife" and "home-maker". He suggested that without her contribution Mr Work, who worked for a Dallas-based private equity firm called Lone Star, would not have been able to "amass the wealth". Lord Bramall to meet police after Met refuses apology over dropped inquiry Scotland Yard has refused to apologise to Field Marshal Lord Bramall over a dropped nine-month investigation into historical claims of sex abuse. The 92-year-old war veteran saw his home raided after allegations were made by one man, known as Nick, before police admitted there was insufficient evidence and announced on Friday night that they had dropped the case. Lord Bramall dismissed a lengthy statement from the force as "purely the police justifying themselves", but said he would accept an offer from a senior officer to meet with him and explain what happened. Police conducted a nine-month inquiry into Lord Bramall before dropping the case Assistant Commissioner Patricia Gallan said: "I fully recognise how unpleasant it may be to be investigated by the police over allegations of historic abuse. "For a person to have their innocence publicly called into question must be appalling, and so I have every sympathy with Lord Bramall and his late wife and regret the distress they endured during this investigation." A storm erupted over the force's treatment of the D-Day veteran, with London mayor Boris Johnson among those calling for him to receive an apology. Ms Gallan said she will meet Lord Bramall at the end of a wider police investigation into historical abuse claims, called Operation Midland, and explain the force's conduct. In a statement issued through his lawyer today, the retired Army chief said: " I've got nothing to say, this is purely the police justifying themselves and that's up to them. I am glad to say they have offered a senior officer to come and see me and I am willing to speak to them." Ms Gallan insisted police would be put off investigating claims if they had to apologise when inquiries did not end with a suspect being charged. "The Metropolitan Police accepts absolutely that we should apologise when we get things wrong, and we have not shrunk from doing so," she said. "However, if we were to apologise whenever we investigated allegations that did not lead to a charge, we believe this would have a harmful impact on the judgments made by officers and on the confidence of the public. "Investigators may be less likely to pursue allegations they knew would be hard to prove, whereas they should be focused on establishing the existence, or otherwise, of relevant evidence." In her statement on Wednesday, which came after days of fierce criticism of the inquiry, Ms Gallan said the claims against the peer were "one part of a detailed set of allegations" and so it was not possible to clear him "as quickly as we would have liked". She went on: " The possibility of an apology has been raised, and I thought it was important for the Metropolitan Police to respond publicly. This is an unusual step for us to take, but I think it is in the public interest for me to explain the dilemmas faced by policing in this regard. "We have many serious allegations referred to us every year that we have a duty to investigate. It is, of course, a principle of British justice that everyone is equal before the law so that duty must apply equally to all, irrespective of their status or social standing. We always endeavour to investigate impartially and to follow the evidence without fear or favour." On Tuesday, Lord Bramall's son, Nicholas Bramall, called for his father's anonymous accuser to be investigated. Bed factory owner found guilty of people trafficking A factory owner who employed large numbers of Hungarians as a "slave workforce" in a bed-making firm which supplied retailers like John Lewis, Next and Dunelm Mill has been found guilty of people trafficking. Mohammed Rafiq was found guilty of conspiracy to traffic at Leeds Crown Court, officials confirmed, and will be sentenced next month. A jury was told how an investigation into Kozee Sleep, based in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, and its subsidiary Layzee Sleep, based in Batley, began after two Hungarians, Janos Orsos and Ferenc Illes, were arrested over human trafficking allegations. Mohammed Rafiq was found guilty of conspiracy to traffic at Leeds Crown Court Large numbers of Hungarian men were employed at Rafiq's Kozee Sleep factory, supplied to them by Orsos. At the beginning of the trial in October, prosecutor Christopher Tehrani QC said Rafiq knew Orsos's organisation would source him "cheap slave labour to work at Kozee Sleep and Layzee Sleep factories". Mr Tehrani said Rafiq was " aware of the circumstances of the Hungarian nationals who were working at these sites and went along with their exploitation as a slave workforce". "The prosecution submits that this course of offending demonstrates a persistent campaign of exploitation involving many Hungarian men over a prolonged period of time." Rafiq, 60, of Thorncliffe Road, Staincliffe, denied a single count of conspiracy to traffic individuals within the UK. The court said he will be sentenced on February 12. Rafiq's conviction is reported to be the first of a company boss for human trafficking offences in the UK. The court heard how ethical audits by leading high street retailers failed to spot what was going on. Mr Tehrani said the firm supplied companies including Next Plc, the John Lewis Partnership and Dunelm Mill. He said: "As part of the contract, Kozee Sleep was required to adhere to each company's policies re ethical trading, which included how they treated persons who worked on their premises." Mr Tehrani said each firm conducted regular ethical audits before May 2014 but he said: "Nothing untoward had been uncovered during those audits." The men were promised good wages, housing and food would be provided in the UK but, once in West Yorkshire, they found themselves living in shared, cramped and squalid accommodation with a large number of others. They were made to work at the respective businesses and other places for long hours, working anything between 10 to 16 hours per day, five to seven days per week. Prosecutors said the men received 10 to 20 per week plus each house they were living in would receive about 20 a day for food. The jury was told how one man, Robert Bodo, came to Batley from Hungary in January 2010 and was taken to live in a property in the town called Gothic House where 40 to 50 people were living and he shared a room with three others. Mr Tehrani said inspectors found the house was in "a horrendous state". Mr Bodo was at Kozee Sleep for three-and-a-half years where he worked a minimum of 60 hours a week or he had to do extra work somewhere else. The prosecutor said he was paid 10 every Friday by Orsos. When he found out Orsos was being paid 3 an hour by the firm, Mr Bodo tried to leave but "couldn't as Janos Orsos had his national insurance and bank card". Mark Kovacs came to the UK in January 2013 and was put in a two bedroom house in Rand Place, Bradford. Mr Tehrani said: "There were mattresses in every room. During the four months he lived in this property, Mr Kovacs estimates that between 25 and 42 people were living in the premises at any one time." He was later moved to a three bedroom flat in Ravensthorpe, Dewsbury, where, when he moved in, 30 people were living. Mr Kovacs "escaped Mr Orsos's clutches" with the help of a charity called Hope for Justice. Airdropping aid to Syrian towns 'a last resort', says Justine Greening International Development Secretary Justine Greening has insisted airdropping aid to besieged Syrian towns would be a "last resort" after the United Nations urged Britain and allies to consider the idea. Ms Greening said there were significant difficulties with the tactic - including the risk that the supplies would end up in the hands of the forces laying the siege. The comments came ahead of a crucial international summit in London next month on the response to the Syria crisis, where Britain is aiming to secure funding pledges, and action to boost economic opportunities for refugees in the region. Justine Greening revealed the potential pitfalls of air drops David Cameron is due to push the agenda at the World Economic Forum in Davos over the coming days. On Friday he will jointly host an event with Queen Rania of Jordan encouraging business and political leaders to take "practical steps" to create jobs in countries that have taken in large numbers displaced by the raging civil war. Ms Greening, who visited the region last week, said the average length of time people remained a refugee was now 17 years, and the London conference had to address "long term issues of jobs and education". Many communities in countries like Jordan were struggling to cope with sharp population increases, and needed help with issues such as economic infrastructure, schools and refuse systems. Proposals on the table include allowing more Syrians to run businesses in refugee camps and trade with host communities, and generating investment at preferential rates by institutions such as the World Bank. Ms Greening told a briefing for journalists that the summit on February 4 - co-hosted by the UK, Norway, Germany, Kuwait and the UN - would seek pledges of aid funding for the next two to three years - rather than for a single year as was usually the case. She was asked about a letter from UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs Stephen O'Brien, in which he argued that "all options need to be in the table" in relation to airdrops for besieged towns facing starvation. Mr O'Brien suggested the UK and US military could carry out airdrops without following UN guidelines, which state that permission has to be obtained from Bashar Assad's government. "Given the appalling level of need in Syria and our collective responsibility to act, I believe we have reached a moment where all options need to be on the table," he wrote. Ms Greening said the UK was "working with the UN generally to make sure we try and access some of these harder to reach and besieged areas". Pointing out that Madaya, which recently faced a crisis, was only a short distance from the capital Damascus, she said: "They (airdrops) would really be something that would be a last resort because they are something that is less effective in getting aid to people, and of course often less safe. In the end what we need to do is actually frankly have the actors on the ground." Ms Greening added: "We are not ruling anything out, but the key is making sure that we can actually achieve what we are trying to do. "Some of the difficulties of dropping from air are clearly you have to do it from height to be safe, that then creates real challenges on being able to target effectively. "Obviously you do not want to drop from significant height aid to areas where it can drop in the wrong place and be helping to feed and support the very people who are helping to besiege town. "It is a significant operation... There is no getting away from the fact that we should be seeing international humanitarian law adhered to and we continue to see making sure that regime complies with it as one of the key things we need to see progress with." Labour backbencher Jo Cox said: "The UN has asked the Government to put 'all options on the table' to help starving Syrians, and this should include contingency planning for UK airdrops. Crispin Blunt admits using poppers as MPs back powers to ban substance A Conservative former minister has "outed" himself as a poppers user, as sweeping new powers banning the substance cleared the Commons. Crispin Blunt warned he and many gay men were "astonished" by the Government's plan, adding respect for the law would "fly out the window" because of the ban. Home Office Minister Mike Penning told the Commons he has offered a "compromise" which will mean poppers are banned but a review will be undertaken to see if it should be overturned. Crispin Blunt said respect for the law would 'fly out the window' if a ban is implemented A final decision taken by Home Secretary Theresa May and Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt will be made before the summer, Mr Penning said, before the Psychoactive Substances Bill received an unopposed third reading. The Bill creates powers to make all psychoactive substances illegal with listed exceptions instead o f forcing each new legal high to be individually banned as they are created and sold. It bars the production, distribution, sale and supply of legal highs - imposing a maximum seven-year prison term on convicted offenders. A Labour-led amendment to exempt poppers from the banned list was defeated by 309 votes to 228, a majority of 81 during report stage in the Commons. Peers will have to examine amendments made by MPs before the Bill can become law. Speaking in the Commons, former justice minister Mr Blunt said: "There are some times when something is proposed which becomes personal to you and you realise the Government is about to do something fantastically stupid and I think in those circumstances one has a duty to speak up. "I use poppers, I out myself as a popper user, and would be directly affected by this legislation and I'm astonished to find that it's proposing to be banned and, frankly, so were many other gay men. "If I follow my own mindset reaction to this it simply serves to bring the whole law into disrepute. "Choosing to ban this, which I have been using and I know has been used ... for decades, then respect for the law is going to fly out the window for people if that's the drug that they use." He noted warnings indicate there will be increased use of class A and B drugs plus increased transmission of sexually transmitted infections. After the vote, Mr Blunt told BBC Radio 4's PM programme: "Frankly I don't think most MPs will have known the detail of this legislation. They trust their colleagues on either side who do take a keen interest, either a leading interest or get themselves involved in issues ... " Pressed on whether he would keep using poppers, Mr Blunt said: "I have to obey the law. Personal possession is not going to be made a crime under the law, the issue of supply will be made a crime. "I imagine now that gay men who use these things will be stocking up ... and then they will be able to be legally supplied again." Conservative David Davis, a former shadow home secretary, said in the Commons : "I understand it's intended not to victimise current users of this drug but it does put them in a position where they might be susceptible to blackmail if they are a public figure dealing with a criminal. "So it does seem to me that it will criminalise people who it does not intend to criminalise." Shadow home office minister Lyn Brown said she was afraid that banning the products would "push their use underground and away from regulatory controls that currently exist". Keith Vaz, Labour chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, added: "To ban then un-ban sends a powerful message out to a section of our community that they are not being listened to and to experts who have given evidence to us that they are wrong." Tory Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) said poppers help LGBT couples achieve intimacy that would be more difficult without the drug's muscle-relaxing properties. Mr Freer said it therefore has an important emotional and mental health benefit, although he backed the ban. During the third reading, Mr Penning said of the Bill: " I think it will save lives. As a father I can only imagine what others have gone through that have had their loved ones taken away from them or badly damaged. "I also panicked like hell when my daughters went to university. They're really sensible kids, they understood everything but they also could easily have been dragged into the situation that 'this is safe'. Stephen Lawrence case: Police urged to shelve retirement of senior officer Lawyers for the father of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence have made a last ditch attempt to stop the retirement of a senior police officer who is facing a misconduct claim. Commander Richard Walton, who leaves Scotland Yard today, was accused of meeting with an undercover officer who had gathered information about the Lawrence family during the public inquiry into the teenager's death. The senior officer's retirement means that he will not face disciplinary proceedings over the claim. Stephen Lawrence was murdered by a gang of racists Lawyers for Neville Lawrence have written to Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe asking him to suspend the officer and stop his retirement. Police watchdog the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) previously found that Mr Walton has a case to answer for alleged misconduct over the meeting with the officer. The lettter from law firm Hodge, Jones and Allen said: "Without any suspension there is a real risk that Commander Walton will avoid sanctions as a result. We consider that the IPCC conclusions provide enough justification that it is in the public interest to suspend Commander Walton immediately in order to allow him to face disciplinary proceedings. "There is a strong public interest in ensuring that any disciplinary sanctions are followed through, in order that the police are seen to be held accountable for their actions. Permitting Mr Walton to resign would cause serious damage to the reputation of the Metropolitan Police Service." In 2014 Mr Walton was temporarily moved from his job leading the force's counter-terrorism command, following the publication of a damning report by barrister Mark Ellison QC into the original Lawrence murder investigation. Mr Ellison revealed that an undercover officer - known as N81 - held a meeting in 1998 with Mr Walton, who was then an acting detective inspector working on Scotland Yard's Lawrence review team, responsible for making submissions to the Macpherson Inquiry, the probe into the appalling failures in how the 18-year-old's racist murder was investigated. Mr Walton was alleged to have met the undercover officer and ''obtained information pertaining to the Lawrence family and their supporters, potentially undermining the (Macpherson) inquiry and public confidence". It was also claimed that he provided inconsistent accounts to Mr Ellison's review team. Aspiring architect Mr Lawrence was murdered by racists in Eltham, south-east London, in April 1993 and it took nearly 20 years for two of the gang of up to six killers to be brought to justice. The Ellison report disclosed that in the late 1990s, N81 infiltrated a group which was apparently working to influence the Lawrence family's justice campaign to further its own agenda. Feedback from N81 to his unit, the shadowy Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), touched on personal details concerning the Lawrence family, such as comments on the separation of Stephen's parents, Doreen and Neville. Somali Islamist rebels say they have captured Kenyan troops By Feisal Omar MOGADISHU, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Somalia's al Shabaab Islamist group said on Sunday it had captured some Kenyan soldiers during an attack last week on military bases in western Somalia near the Kenyan border. The group, which did not say how many soldiers were held after Friday's assault in Ceel Cadde, also said in a statement that more than 100 Kenyan soldiers were killed, revising up the number from the more than the 63 dead it had previously claimed. Kenya has not given casualty figures beyond saying both sides sustained casualties. But a top Kenyan commander said on Sunday the army was conducting "search and rescue" operations without specifically saying if those it was looking for were captured. "Mujahideen fighters ... stormed the Kenyan base in the early hours of Friday morning, killing more than 100 Kenyan invaders, seizing their weapons and military vehicles and even capturing Kenyan soldiers alive," al Shabaab said in a statement. The African Union's AMISOM force, which includes Kenyans, along with Somali troops have driven al Shabaab from major strongholds in Somalia in a wave of offensives. But the group still controls some rural areas and frequently launches attacks saying it wants to drive out the "invaders". Kenyan Defence Minister Raychelle Omamo said Kenya was striking back and would pursue the attackers. She spoke to reporters at a Nairobi airport where four wounded soldiers arrived back for treatment. "This attack will not rest unanswered," she said. "We have engaged the perpetrators decisively and remain in full pursuit of them." General Samson Mwathethe, chief of the defence forces, said Friday's attack struck the Somali National Army base and an AMISOM base that was located in the same place. The attackers used vehicles packed with explosives and suicide bombers. The minister said the attack was launched against a company-size force of soldiers, without making clear if this was the size of the Kenyan contingent in the area or the mixed force. A military company can range between 80 to 250 soldiers. "Our priority now is to make sure that we conduct the search, rescue and recovery for the ones who are not in the camp but are elsewhere. We are trying to search for them, rescue them and recover them," Mwathethe said without saying if they were captured. The general said he would not release details for security reasons. "We have engaged the enemy and severely degraded him," he added. Al Shabaab often cites higher figures for death tolls than those given by officials, who usually play down the numbers. There was no independent death toll. Al Shabaab said the attack was in retaliation for the Kenyan "invasion of Muslim lands". President Uhuru Kenyatta has repeatedly said he would not be coerced into withdrawing Kenyan forces from Somalia, saying the troops are protecting Kenya. Russia flies over 40 T of aid to blocked Syrian areas -agencies MOSCOW, Jan 19 (Reuters) - Russia's air force has delivered more than 40 tonnes of humanitarian aid to areas of Syria which are blocked by "terrorists", Russian agencies quoted a defence ministry official as saying on Tuesday. Food and other cargo was parachuted to the besieged city of Deir ez-Zor and other localities blocked by Islamic State, Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov was quoted as saying. Konashenkov added that a Russian bomber had destroyed strongholds in the Syrian province of Deir ez-Zor, where Islamic State had executed Syrian civilians en masse recently. Austrian prosecutors file terrorism charges against Swedish teen VIENNA, Jan 19 (Reuters) - Austrian prosecutors have filed terrorism charges against a 17-year-old Swedish girl with a Somali family background, accusing her of wanting to travel via Vienna to join jihadis, a court spokeswoman said on Tuesday. The girl faces up to five years in jail for what Austrian authorities call 'participating in a terrorist organisation' by contacting Islamist fighters in the Middle East and planning to go there, the spokeswoman said. The girl's parents told Swedish police of their concerns and she was detained at a train station in Vienna last month. Tunisia police, protesters clash in several towns over jobs By Tarek Amara TUNIS, Jan 19 (Reuters) - Tunisian police firing tear gas clashed with hundreds of protesters in at least four separate towns on Tuesday after demonstrations broke out to demand employment just days after a young jobless man committed suicide. The protests erupted in Kasserine, where the young man killed himself, apparently over the lack of job opportunities, residents said, and later spread to three other towns or cities in the country's impoverished central, southern region. Tunisia's "Arab Spring" uprising in 2011 was sparked when a struggling young market vendor committed suicide, unleashing a tide of anger among the young, unemployed that eventually forced longtime autocrat leader Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali to step down and flee the country. "Security forces chased the protesters in the streets of the city and fired tear gas," Hatem Salhi, a witness in Kasserine, told Reuters by telephone. Hundreds of unemployed protesters had gathered in front of the headquarters of the Kasserine governorate, where some threatened to commit suicide, prompting tear gas salvoes by security forces to scatter them, witnesses said. The Interior Ministry later announced a night-time curfew in Kasserine as a preventative measure. But clashes continued into the night there and spread to the other cities of Tahla, Fernana, Meknasi, according to TAP state news agency. Protesters chanted: "Work, freedom and dignity," according to one resident. In Meknasi, groups of young men took to the streets and set alight tires in solidarity with protests in Kasserine, said Mahdi Horchani, a local resident. REMINDERS OF 2011 The unrest in Tunisia sparked the revolutions that transformed the Arab world. But while countries such as Libya and Syria have been torn apart by violence and civil war, Tunisia avoided the worst of the chaos and remains relatively stable. Despite democratisation since the toppling of Ben Ali, many Tunisians worry about unemployment, high living costs and the ongoing marginalisation of rural towns - all factors that helped fuel the 2011 uprising. Unemployment in the North African country had risen to 15.3 percent by the end of 2015 compared with 12 percent in 2010, driven by weak economic growth and a decline in investment in both the public and private sectors coupled with a rise in the number of university graduates, who now comprise one-third of jobless Tunisians. Kasserine is among Tunisia's most impoverished areas, with its highest regional unemployment at about 30 percent. Residents and local media said Ridha Yahyaoui, the jobless man who committed suicide, killed himself after local authorities refused to accept his request for a post in the public sector. Authorities had no immediate comment. On Tuesday, the main UGTT union and largest industry association struck a deal to increase wages for about 1.5 million private-sector employees, a decision that could avert strikes and protests. The UGTT had threatened a general strike if Tunisia's Chamber of Commerce and Industry refused to raise wages. Poland - Factors to Watch Jan 20 Following are news stories, press reports and events to watch that may affect Poland's financial markets on Wednesday. ALL TIMES GMT (Poland: GMT + 1 hour): DATA Polish statistics office releases December employment and wages data at 1300 GMT. PKO Poland's biggest bank by assets, PKO BP, said on Tuesday that Standard & Poor's has withdrawn the lender's credit rating as a contract between the two organisations has ended. PEKAO Standard & Poor's affirmed at 'BBB+/A-2' Poland's No.2 bank by assets Pekao's rating following sovereign rating action. PZU The Polish treasury named Michal Krupinski, former deputy treasury minister, as the new head of Eastern Europe's largest insurer PZU on Tuesday, in the latest management reshuffle at a state-run company. PGNIG Poland's state-run gas company PGNiG said on Tuesday it sold 23.13 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas in 2015 compared with 18.60 bcm the previous year. ****Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.**** PRESS DIGEST - RUSSIA - Jan 20 MOSCOW, Jan 20 (Reuters) - The following are some stories in Russia's newspapers on Wednesday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. VEDOMOSTI www.vedomosti.ru - Russia is considering launching a diamond exchange in its Pacific gateway Vladivostok and is conducting talks with Chinese experts regarding this, the presidential representative in Russia's far east, Yury Trutnev, says in an interview. - Gasoline prices in some Russian regions are growing despite a plunge in world oil prices. - Anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny has lost another lawsuit launched against him by senator Dmitry Sablin, the daily reports. It quotes the opposition activist as saying that by holding opening such ;awsuits the authorities aim to riun him financially. KOMMERSANT www.kommersant.ru - Police have completed investigating the activity of a criminal group of businessmen and lawyers in Vladimir in central Russia, who had been involved in "raider" seizures of companies partly owned by the state. The police estimate the damage at 1 billion roubles ($12.60 million), the daily reports. IZVESTIA www.izvestia.ru - Russia's space agency Roscosmos has decided to drop its plan of creating a space shuttle. The government had originally planned to spend up to 12.5 billion roubles ($157.49 million) on building such a vehicle. - Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov writes in the daily that his calls to fight the "jackals" criticising President Vladimir Putin targeted "those Western hirelings who left Russia ... and are now slinging mud at it, spreading slander". PRESS DIGEST - Bulgaria - Jan 20 SOFIA, Jan 20 (Reuters) - These are some of the main stories in Bulgarian newspapers on Tuesday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. -- Prime Minister Boiko Borisov warned the country will plunge into political crisis and would not be able to form a government for a long time if his coalition government collapses. (24 Chasa, Duma, Monitor, Sega, Trud) -- Prime Minister Boiko Borisov pledged to carry out substantial judicial reform to ensure rule of law during a meeting with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland in Sofia. (24 Chasa, Capital Daily, Sega, Standart) -- Bulgaria's economy is expected to grow by 2-3 percent this year and has the potential for higher growth, Finance Minister Vladislav Goranov, but added that the state investments this year will not match the volumes in 2015. (24 Chasa) -- Danish furniture retailer JYSK will invest 100 million euros in a logistic centre near Sofia and will open about 200 work places, the company said. (Capital daily, Monitor, Standart) Draft constitution for army-run Thailand 'strong medicine' By Amy Sawitta Lefevre and Panarat Thepgumpanat BANGKOK, Jan 20 (Reuters) - A draft constitution for army-run Thailand to be unveiled this month will be "strong medicine", the constitution panel head said on Wednesday, adding that there was no guarantee it would pass a referendum, meaning a further extension of military rule. The May 2014 coup ended months of political protests in Bangkok aimed at ousting a civilian government, since when the junta has curbed basic freedoms and pushed back the timetable for elections to 2017. Meechai Ruchupan, 77, chairman of the Constitution Drafting Committee, said the constitution aimed to solve long-running problems such as abuse of power by lawmakers, but might not solve decades-long political divisions. "If we are to reform the country, we have to use strong medicine, even if political parties do not agree," Meechai told Reuters in an interview. "I can't promise it will be Thailand's last constitution." A previous draft was rejected in September by a now-defunct National Reform Council. Some critics called the draft "unconstitutional" and fear a repeat. A second failed draft would give the army additional room to prolong its stay in power, say analysts. "The difference between this time and last time, however, is there might be more restlessness on the parts of political parties, especially if the army fails to show them how they fit into their long-term governance plans," said Ambika Ahuja, Southeast Asia analyst at Eurasia Group. "The army's main goal is still to prolong its stay in power for as long as possible." Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, a former army chief who led the 2014 coup, has publicly said he does not want to hold on to power and that the military is working towards restoring democracy quickly. Getting a new constitution approved in a referendum is a key part of the junta's "roadmap to democracy" and a 2017 general election. It's also one of the biggest hurdles for the junta, known as the National Council of Peace and Order, because if the draft doesn't pass, it would add to pressure at home and abroad for a quick return to elections. The interim constitution does not say what will happen if the draft is voted down, leading to more uncertainty. "I don't know what is going to happen if the charter does not pass," said Meechai. The constitution would be Thailand's 20th in 84 years of often turbulent democracy. "Continuous making and remaking of constitutions takes up a lot of political energy, can cause instability and does not allow political arrangements to settle," said Sumit Bisarya, Constitution Building Head of Mission at International IDEA. For the past decade, Thailand has been locked in a bitter conflict between the Bangkok-based royalist-military establishment and supporters of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and his sister, former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, and their Puea Thai Party. Meechai said the current draft, running at 261 pages, was not aimed at limiting the influence of the Shinawatra family, which has won every election since 2001, nor that of any political party. "If people want to vote for Puea Thai, then they will get the vote," he said. "This charter is not designed to be an obstacle to any political party." Israel plans to seize West Bank farmland - Army Radio By Ori Lewis JERUSALEM, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Israel plans to appropriate a large tract of agricultural land in the occupied West Bank, Israel's Army Radio said on Wednesday, a move that has angered Palestinians and is almost certain to draw international criticism. The report said the land, covering 154 hectares (380 acres), was in the fertile Jordan Valley close to Jericho, an area where Israel already has many settlement farms built on land Palestinians seek for their own state. The appropriation, which Army Radio said would be announced shortly but was not immediately confirmed by the Israeli Defence Ministry which administers the West Bank, comes at a time of increased international condemnation of settlement policy. Hanan Ashrawi, a senior official in the Palestine Liberation Organization, described Israel's reported move as a violation of international law. She challenged the international community to hold Israel to account. "Israel is stealing land specially in the Jordan Valley under the pretext it wants to annex it," she told Reuters. "This should be a reason for a real and effective intervention by the international community to end such a flagrant and grave aggression which kills all chances of peace." The report said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon had already signed off on the appropriation and that technical details were being finalised ahead of a declaration expected soon. The Defence Ministry declined to comment. The land, already partly farmed by Jewish settlers in an area under Israeli civilian and military control, is situated near the northern tip of the Dead Sea. For years, Israel has drawn intense criticism for its settlement activities. Most countries regard the policy as illegal under international law and a major obstacle to the creation of a viable Palestinian state. Palestinians want to form an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as the capital. The last talks between Israel and the Palestinians on a so-called "two-state solution" broke down in April 2014. On Tuesday, U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby reiterated the United States' opposition to Israel's settlement building, which usually begins with land seizures. "We remain deeply concerned about Israel's current policy on settlements, including construction, planning, and retroactive legalizations," he said. Hagit Ofran, a member of the anti-settlement group Peace Now, said that unlike previous Israeli governments that largely avoided land seizures, Netanyahu has carried out several approprations during his time in office. "Since 2011, moves of this sort by Netanyahu have only drawn greater international criticism from Israel's closest allies," she told Reuters, describing it as a "diplomatic catastrophe". In August 2014, soon after Hamas militants kidnapped and killed three Jewish teenagers, Israel appropriated some 400 hectares (988 acres) in the Etzion settlement bloc near Bethlehem, a move Peace Now said was the biggest in 30 years. Western military chiefs to intensify Islamic State fight By Phil Stewart and John Irish PARIS, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Defence chiefs from the United States, France, Britain and four other countries pledged on Wednesday to intensify their fight against Islamic State, looking to capitalise on recent battlefield gains against the militants. The jihadist group lost control of the western Iraqi city of Ramadi last month, in a sorely needed victory for U.S.-backed Iraqi forces. But critics, including some in the U.S. Congress, say the U.S. strategy is still far too weak and lacks sufficient military support from Sunni Arab allies. Sunni Arab nations have largely dropped out of the air campaign against Islamic State since last year joining a Saudi-led coalition fighting Houthi rebels in Yemen. "We agreed that we all must do more," U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter told a news conference after talks in Paris among the "core" military coalition members, which also included Germany, Italy, Australia and the Netherlands. A U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States was looking for additional contributions of special operations forces from allies. The official also signaled a willingness among core contributors to consider providing additional police and military trainers as needed. A joint statement by the ministers re-committed their governments to work with the U.S.-led coalition "to accelerate and intensify the campaign." The Paris setting for the talks itself sent a message, coming just over two months after the city was struck by deadly shooting and bombing attacks claimed by Islamic State. French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Islamic State was in retreat. "Because we have been able to hit its resources, it's now time to increase our collective effort," he said. British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said the goal was now to "tighten the noose around the head of the snake in Syria in Raqqa." COALITION 'NOT WINNING YET' But U.S. Senator John McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee - along with other critics of U.S. President Barack Obama's approach to the war effort - says Islamic State still poses a potent threat. "ISIL has lost some territory on the margin, but has consolidated power in its core territories in both Iraq and Syria," McCain said at a Wednesday hearing on U.S. war strategy, using another acronym for Islamic State. "Meanwhile, ISIL continues to metastasize across the region in places like Afghanistan, Libya, Lebanon, Yemen, and Egypt. Its attacks are now global, as we saw in Paris." Carter has sought to confront Islamic State both by wiping out its strongholds in Iraq and Syria and addressing its spread beyond its self-declared caliphate there. But U.S. officials have declined to set a timeline for what could be a long-term campaign that will also require political reconciliation to succeed. Carter announced a meeting next month of defence ministers from all 26 military members of the anti-Islamic State coalition, as well as Iraq, in what he described as the first face-to-face meeting of its kind. "Every nation must come prepared to discuss further contributions to the fight," he said. "And I will not hesitate to engage and challenge current and prospective members of the coalition as we go forward." Russia to lodge claim against Ukraine over Eurobond by end of Jan - RIA MOSCOW, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Russia still plans to lodge a claim against Ukraine over missed payments on a $3 billion Eurobond by the end of this month and is not in talks with Kiev over the debt, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov was quoted as saying by RIA news agency on Wednesday. Erdogan aide calls for nationalisation of Turkey's Isbank ISTANBUL, Jan 20 (Reuters) - An aide to Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has called for the nationalisation of the country's biggest private bank, Isbank, in which the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) has a 28 percent stake. The aide, Yigit Bulut, made the comments after lawyers for Erdogan this week filed a lawsuit against CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu for describing the president as a "tin-pot dictator" in a speech. "I am speaking very clearly, a (political) party cannot have a bank. Necessary legislation should be enacted urgently and this bank should be turned into a state bank," Bulut said in a TV programme broadcast on state-run TRT Haber late on Tuesday. "That bank belongs to the state, the people. A party cannot have an organic link to a bank. After that speech, after those insults to the president, state, people and religious community, that bank should urgently be returned to the people," he said. Kilicdaroglu described Erdogan as a dictator over the president's intolerance of a petition signed by academics criticising military action against Kurdish militants in the southeast and urging an end to curfews in the region. Isbank shares were down 2.65 percent at 4.41 lira by 1150 GMT, underperforming the main Istanbul share index which was down 1.2 percent. Last May the authorities took over Bank Asya, set up by followers of U.S.-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen, an ally-turned-foe of Erdogan. The CHP inherited a 28.09 percent stake in Isbank from the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, whose will stipulates that dividends go to the Turkish Language Association and Turkish History Association. A foundation constituted by the bank's employees holds a 40.15 percent stake in the bank, and the remaining 31.76 percent is listed on the Istanbul stock exchange. Britain's FTSE falls into "bear market" territory By Kit Rees and Atul Prakash LONDON, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Britain's blue-chip equity index entered "bear market" territory on Wednesday after falling more than 20 percent from its record highs in April, with concerns about a slowdown in China triggering a sharp decline in commodities-related stocks. The benchmark FTSE 100 index was down 3 percent at 5,700.05 points by the middle of the trading session after dipping as far as 5,689.48, its lowest level in more than three years. "The FTSE is now in a bear market and should we close below 5,700, a psychological level in itself, we may well see the 5,620 level and even sub-5,600 in a very short time," said Brenda Kelly, an analyst at London Capital Group. "It's not a pretty sight with every single sector in the red," she added. Technical analysts define a "bear market" as one in which the index falls more than 20 percent from its previous peak. UK mining and energy indexes slumped more than 4 percent to their lowest levels in about 12 years, with a sharp decline in oil and metals prices scaring investors away from commodities stocks. Shares in commodities-related companies such as BHP Billiton , Anglo American, Glencore and Royal Dutch Shell fell 6.3 percent to 7.8 percent. "We do not see any lasting potential for these sectors to outperform and believe any recovery might be short-lived," said Christian Stocker, equity strategist at UniCredit. "The trend of earnings estimates is declining strongly, relative valuation versus the overall market is still very high and a lasting trend reversal in commodity prices is not in sight. We recommend remaining underweight on commodity stocks." BHP Billiton came under further pressure after saying it expected no recovery in iron ore or coal prices in the next few years, with global markets suffering from oversupply and a slowdown in China, the world's biggest metals consumer. Germany says ready to find EU benefits deal with Britain BERLIN, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Germany is ready to help Britain win reforms on welfare benefits paid to migrants from other European Union countries and would itself like to see these rules tightened, Labour Minister Andrea Nahles said in a newspaper interview on Wednesday. Prime Minister David Cameron wants to reform Britain's relationship with the EU ahead of an 'in-out' referendum he has promised to hold by the end of 2017. Welfare benefits for EU migrants to Britain are the thorniest issue in the negotiations. "We want Britain to remain in the EU. That is our joint conviction," Nahles told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) daily in a joint interview with French Labour Minister Myriam El Khomri. "We are ready to find solutions to the Britons' questions that address the issue of social benefits for foreign EU citizens," Nahles said. The newspaper said Germany and France saw the renegotiation of Britain's EU ties as an opportunity to bundle concessions to London with their own wishes to reform welfare payments linked to the free movement of people within the 28-nation EU. Nahles wants to protect German local authorities from having to pay out unlimited amounts to EU migrants without means, the FAZ added. "From our point of view too, there are holes in the rules when it comes to avoiding false incentives. We can see that in Germany too," she said. The readiness of Germany and France, the EU's leading powers, to show flexibility on the welfare issue is good news for Cameron, who wants to clinch a deal at an EU summit next month that he can then sell to British voters. However, Nahles' offer of support addresses the softer part of Cameron's demands - cracking down on welfare abuse by those without jobs or other means - rather than Cameron's push to discriminate against foreign workers. Rich EU states support Cameron's call to fight such 'abuse' of their welfare systems and Germany has led the charge by fighting - and winning - several cases in Europe's Court of Justice to deny benefits to foreigners. But Cameron wants a special dispensation to be able to discriminate between two identical workers on the grounds that one is, for example, Polish and the other British - and he is not supported on that position by other member states. U.N. envoy says Syria peace talks may be delayed, pressure needed By John Miller and Stephanie Nebehay ZURICH/GENEVA, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Internationally brokered talks between Syria's government and opposition groups due to start on Jan. 25 may be delayed, but major powers must keep up the pressure to bring participants to the table, the United Nations envoy said on Wednesday. A Syrian opposition council backed by Saudi Arabia said on Wednesday it will not attend the negotiations in Geneva with the government if a third group takes part, a reference to a Russian bid to widen the opposition team. U.N. Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura spoke in an interview with broadcaster CNN, hours after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov held talks in Zurich despite no sign of agreement on who should represent the opposition. "We have no intentions to postpone the talks from January to February. This is both the position of Russia and the United States, and we are confident that in the next days, in January, such talks must start," Lavrov said. "...This will be just the start, because of course it will take a lot of time, a whole range of arduous tasks are to be resolved." Various dates were being mooted, but the final decision was for the U.N. Secretary General on the advice of de Mistura, he said. De Mistura, asked if he was able to send the invitations to the talks, told CNN in the Swiss resort of Davos: "I can't tell you today, I will tell you on the 24th, one day before." It was important that it be "a serious talk about peace and not talks about talks", he said. "I believe we can start the talks, perhaps not on the 25th, but we need to maintain the pressure, we need to maintain the momentum." Kerry's spokesman, John Kirby, said Kerry and Lavrov discussed "the importance of maintaining progress toward a diplomatic solution to the crisis in Syria." "There's been no change in our desire to see this meeting happen on the 25th," he said. A delay of one or two days in the start of the talks not be the end of the world, a U.S. State Department spokesman said later on Wednesday in Washington. Kirby said Kerry also pressed Russia to use its influence with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to ensure unimpeded humanitarian access, especially to Syrians in besieged areas such as Madaya where people are reported to have died from starvation. De Mistura said he believed Russia, which has been carrying out air strikes on rebels in Syria for months, "has a great vested interest in not getting involved for too long" The United States was also "heavily involved politically" in seeking an end to the nearly five-year-old war, while Iran and Saudi Arabia had assured him they would work to end the Syrian conflict, despite their diplomatic row. "They too probably realise that the time has come for at least trying to find a political solution which will be a compromise," de Mistura said. NO AGREEMENT OVER OPPOSITION The United Nations said on Monday it would not issue invitations to the talks until major powers promoting the negotiations, which include the United States and Russia, agree which rebel representatives should attend. Russia and Iran, which support Assad, have rejected attempts by Saudi Arabia, which like the United States and European powers opposes Assad, to organize the Syrian opposition and delegation for the talks. Austria says will slash asylum claims, strengthen border checks By Francois Murphy and Alexandra Schwarz-Goerlich VIENNA, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Austria declared on Wednesday it would cap the number of people allowed to claim asylum this year at less than half last year's total, and its chancellor said border controls would have to be stepped up "massively"- but how that would be done was unclear. Germany said on Wednesday Austria's decision was "not helpful" to German efforts to negotiate a European Union-wide solution with the support of Turkey, from which most migrants reach the European continent. Hundreds of thousands of people have streamed into Austria, a small Alpine republic of 8.5 million since September, when it and Germany threw open their borders to a wave of people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Afghanistan and elsewhere. The vast majority of arrivals simply crossed the country on their way to Germany, but a fraction have stayed. Roughly 90,000 people, or more than 1 percent of Austria's population, applied for asylum last year. Public fears about immigration have fuelled support for the far right, and calls for a ceiling on the number of migrants by members of the centre-right People's Party within the coalition government have grown. "We cannot take in all asylum seekers in Austria, or in Germany or in Sweden," Werner Faymann, a Social Democrat who has resisted calls to cap immigration, told a joint news conference, referring to the countries that have taken in the most migrants. The government plan announced on Wednesday provides for the number of asylum claims to be restricted to 1.5 percent of Austria's population, spread over the next four years. Breaking down the four-year cap, the statement said the number of asylum claims would be limited to 37,500 this year, falling annually to 25,000 in 2019. Asked what would happen if the number of people who wanted to apply for asylum exceeded that figure, Faymann said only that experts were due to examine the issue. "We must also step up controls at our borders massively," Faymann told the joint news conference with Vice Chancellor Reinhold Mitterlehner and other officials, without explaining what that would involve. Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said one option would be to accept asylum requests without processing them. "The (other) option of not having to accept asylum requests at the Austrian border is now being checked, and to send these people back, to deport them back to our safe neighbour states," she told public broadcaster ORF. Slovenian police said later on Wednesday that Slovenia planned "the same action" as Austria on its southern border with Croatia if Austria, which lies north of Slovenia, took further steps to limit the inflow of migrants. The Dutch prime minister, whose government currently chairs EU ministerial councils, said Austria's move illustrated the kind of national action likely to multiply if the 28-nation EU did not start implementing a commonly agreed strategy on asylum before a likely "spike" in arrivals with spring weather. Saying the EU had six to eight weeks to end division and inaction on managing immigration, Mark Rutte told reporters at the European Parliament in Strasbourg that if that failed "we have to think about a plan B". As Germany has firmed up border controls in recent months, Austria has often followed. Austria's interior minister said last week it would start turning away people who were no longer being let into Germany, prompting a knock-on effect further down the main route into Europe. Faymann said he had discussed his government's plans in principle with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and their Slovenian counterpart. Kenyan police say kill Islamists planning attacks in tourist resort By Joseph Akwiri MOMBASA, Kenya Jan 20 (Reuters) - Kenyan police killed four suspected Islamists in the coastal resort of Malindi on Wednesday after receiving a tip-off that the men were planning to attack a local shopping mall and a police post, the local police chief said. In the past, such attacks in Kenya have been carried out by al Shabaab, a Somali militant group which wants to punish Kenya for sending its troops into Somalia as part of an African Union peacekeeping force. Mutava Muchangi, the local police chief, said four men were killed when police raided a residence in Malindi, 120 km (75 miles) north of the port Mombasa, following a tip-off by members of the public. "The suspects started firing at our officers when they were challenged to surrender, and so we shot and killed them," Muchangi told Reuters. The men had also thrown a grenade at police officers but none was injured. Muchangi said police had recovered a pistol and five grenades. The men had fled from Mombasa during a police crackdown on suspected Islamists with ties to Somali militants, he said. Al Shabaab, which is aligned to al Qaeda, killed 67 people during an attack on the luxury Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi in September 2013. Last April, al Shabaab gunmen killed about 150 people when they stormed Kenya's Garissa University. The group staged a major attack on a Kenyan base in Somalia last week, claiming to have killed more than 100 Kenyan soldiers. Kenyan officials have not disclosed the death toll, but newspaper pictures of coffins bringing back dead Kenyan soldiers from Somalia has ratcheted up pressure on President Uhuru Kenyatta. On Wednesday, al Shabaab published scores of photos purporting to show showing bullet-riddled bodies of Kenyan soldiers killed during Friday's attack, along with looted army equipment. The group says it is holding some Kenyan soldiers captive. Kenyatta on Tuesday said the Kenyan military was conducting search and rescue operations for troops in the wake of the attack on the Ceel Cadde base, close to the Kenyan border, but did not confirm if any soldiers were being held by militants. In Norway, asylum seekers take workshops on sexual violence By Gwladys Fouche NAERBOE, Norway, Jan 20 (Reuters) - A workshop that seeks to educate asylum-seekers in Norway about Western attitudes to sex and sexual assault will appeal to European neighbours struggling to cope with a wave of refugees, but not everyone who attends the course is a fan. Sitting with his arms crossed in a classroom with 21 other male Syrian asylum seekers, Issam Alhlabi is wondering why he has been compelled to attend. "I know all this already from back home," the 52-year-old teacher from Aleppo told Reuters. "Syria is like Norway ... In every country you have backward people with low education." The ultimate aim of the course is to discuss - and discourage - rape in the context of a Scandinavian society that is more sexually liberal than back home. But for at least a few of the attendees, it exposes implied preconceptions about the sexual mores of those in the class, not to mention their views on violent crimes like rape. "It is unexpectedly interesting: that most people think we did not experience such things, because we are outsiders, foreigners," commercial airline pilot Muaz, 26, told Reuters. "We go through them every single day in our country. I have two sisters and they could be harassed walking anywhere in the world," said Muaz, who declined to give his last name. "We do experience such things. It is not like we come from a peaceful place." Norway initiated the programme after a series of attacks on women at night in the streets of Stavanger, Norway's third-biggest city, in 2009. According to public broadcaster NRK, which reviewed court papers, 17 of the 20 men convicted in the cases were foreigners. The course will reverberate with European countries facing the worst migration crisis since World War Two, especially after mass sexual assaults on women in Cologne, Germany, on New Year's Eve were blamed on migrants. WHAT SIGNALS? Set in a rural community on Norway's west coast, the refugee camp is surrounded by snow-covered fields. The nearest neighbour is a cluster of World War Two German bunkers; the loudest noise comes from Atlantic Ocean waves crashing on the nearby beach. When a Reuters correspondent visited a one-day workshop on Tuesday, the teacher, Linda Hagen, was showing the classroom a picture of a Norwegian brunette in a short dress and high heels, and asking: "What signals is she giving?" The men broke into groups to discuss and report back to the class. "It could be a very normal situation," said one. "It is not unusual," said another. "She could be in a cafe," said a third. No one said she looked sexy or that she was provocative. Hagen said the course aimed to address an awkward subject as sensitively as possible. "This is a difficult subject. We have the best intentions in running this course but it is a tough thing to discuss. We don't know what people have experienced before," she told Reuters. Participants in the course are not addressed as potential perpetrators but as future members of Norwegian society who can make a positive contribution by helping prevent sexual assaults. One scenario features Hassan, "a helpful, good man who is well-liked" and who has been in Norway for more than a year. He goes out with Arne, a Norwegian, who says he wants to ply Stine, a Norwegian woman, with alcohol to "soften her up". What should Hassan do, asks the teacher? The consensus is that Hassan should try to stop Arne or make sure Stine gets home safely. The course also confronts hard questions that are being discussed around the Western world, including U.S. college campuses. In one case, the men watch a video showing a boy and girl talking at a party, dancing and laughing. The two go upstairs to a bedroom where he forces sex on her, despite her saying no. "What do you think of the boy? What do you think of the girl?," asks Hagen. "If I am the guy, I would say she was interested. She went up the stairs, she sat on the bed," says one man. Another says: "I blame him because he uses power. Both should be in agreement." Alhlabi is firm in his opinion: "To me it was clear from the beginning that this was rape. "It was obvious she was afraid when she was going up the stairs. Kissing and hugging in Europe is not unusual." Alhlabi's comments aside, Hagen said she had seldom received negative feedback since she started teaching the course in 2011. "If we can help avoid misunderstandings, it is very important." And some said the course was useful. Official from Mozambique's opposition Renamo shot, police say MAPUTO, Jan 20 (Reuters) - A senior official of Mozambique's Renamo opposition party was shot and wounded on Wednesday, police said, hours after he accused security forces of killing and abducting members of his party. Manuel Bissopo, the Secretary General of Renamo, was shot by unknown assailants in the central port town of Beira, the second largest city in the southern African country and his party's stronghold. He was taken to hospital, police said, and his bodyguard was killed. The attackers shot Bissopo moments after he gave a news conference in which he denounced attacks on Renamo members, actions he blamed on the Defence and Security Forces (FDS) who he said were acting at the behest of the party in the power. Bissopo, also a member of parliament, said members of his party had been kidnapped in the dead of night as well as in broad daylight. He said that the bodies of the two party members were found on Tuesday. A police official who declined to be named told Reuters "we can confirm the shooting and that a male subject was taken to hospital and treated for his wounds. But at this point in time, we do not have details as to what really happened and who perpetrated the assault." Zimbabwe court bans child marriage after challenge by former child brides By Emma Batha LONDON, Jan 20 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Zimbabwe's Constitutional Court outlawed child marriage on Wednesday after two former child brides took the government to court in a ground-breaking case to challenge the practice that is rife in the southern African nation. Loveness Mudzuru and Ruvimbo Tsopodzi asked for child marriage to be declared illegal and unconstitutional, saying it was a form of child abuse which trapped girls in lives of poverty and suffering. The court ruled that as of January 20 no one in Zimbabwe may enter into any marriage, including customary law unions, before the age of 18, and struck down a section of the Marriage Act which allows girls to marry at 16 but boys at 18. Nearly a third of girls in Zimbabwe marry before they are 18 and 4 percent before they turn 15, depriving them of an education, increasing the likelihood of sexual violence, and putting them at risk of death or serious injury in childbirth. "I really am happy that we have played an instrumental part in making Zimbabwe a safe place for girls," said Mudzuru, who was married at 16 and had two children before she was 18. The ruling outlined the "horrific consequences" of child marriage and said there had long been a "lack of common social consciousness" on the problems faced by girls who marry early. Beatrice Savadye, who heads rights group ROOTS which backed the legal challenge, said: "I'm delighted. This is a milestone in the campaign to end this scourge in society". But she said more needed to be done to educate communities on the dangers of child marriage in places where it had become entrenched, including remote mining and farming areas. She also called for tougher penalties for anyone convicted of marrying a minor. In statements to the Constitutional Court last year, Tsopodzi and Mudzuru said Zimbabwe's Marriage Act was discriminatory because it set the minimum age at 16 for girls and 18 for boys. The Customary Marriage Act sets no minimum age. They called for the law to be brought into line with Zimbabwe's 2013 constitution as well as regional and international treaties banning child marriage. Poverty is the driving force behind child marriage in Zimbabwe. Parents often marry girls off young so they have less mouths to feed. Dowry payments may be a further incentive. In her affidavit, Mudzuru described how child marriage and poverty create a vicious circle. "Young girls who marry early and often in poor families are then forced to produce young children in a sea of poverty and the cycle begins again," she stated. Mudzuru told the Thomson Reuters Foundation last year that her life was "hell". "Raising a child when you are a child yourself is hard," she said from Harare. "I should be going to school." Serbia bars migrants unless seeking asylum in Austria or Germany BELGRADE, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Serbia will deny migrants access to its territory unless they plan to seek asylum in Austria or Germany, a government minister was quoted as saying on Wednesday. The ban follows action by Austria, which announced last week it would bar all migrants intending to pass through its northern neighbour Germany to other western European countries. On Wednesday it said it would cap the number of people it allowed to claim asylum this year at less than half last year's figure. Labour Minister Aleksandar Vulin - the Serbian government's pointman for the migrant crisis - said Serbia would respond in kind. "From today ... migrants will not be able to continue their travel (through Serbia) if they have not expressed intention to seek asylum on the territory of Austria or Germany," state news agency Tanjug quoted him as saying. In Zagreb, outgoing Interior Minister Ranko Ostojic said neighbouring Croatia would also ask migrants if they intended to seek asylum in Austria or Germany, state news agency Hina quoted him as saying. Ten wounded, including opposition politicians, in southeast Turkey shooting DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Ten people were wounded in Turkey's mostly Kurdish southeast on Wednesday when their group, which included two opposition politicians, came under fire while rescuing people hurt in earlier clashes, officials said. Among those shot in the firefight was a journalist, who was rushed to hospital. Others among the wounded were sheltering in a house in the town of Cizre, where security forces are enforcing a 24-hour curfew, security sources said. It was not clear who fired on the group of 15 people, which included family members of those hurt earlier, lawmaker Faysal Sariyildiz from the opposition Democratic Peoples' Party (HDP), and the mayor of Cizre. The town, near the Syrian and Iraqi borders, has since mid-December witnessed violent clashes between security forces and members of the autonomy-seeking Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). HDP Chairman Selahattin Demirtas told reporters outside parliament in Ankara that the group including Sariyildiz had warned state authorities in advance that they were entering the neighbourhood to rescue those wounded earlier. He said ambulances were initially blocked from entering the area. Security forces have launched operations inside Cizre and a half-dozen other towns and cities in the southeast to root out PKK militants, who have dug trenches and built barricades to keep police at bay. More than 150 civilians have been killed in the crossfire since July, according to rights groups. Separately, seven soldiers were wounded in a bomb attack by the PKK in Diyarbakir, the biggest city in the southeast, security sources said. Violence in the southeast is at its deadliest in two decades after a ceasefire collapsed in July. Saudi-backed container shipping line UASC resumes Iran business By Jonathan Saul LONDON, Jan 20 (Reuters) - United Arab Shipping Company (UASC), in which Saudi Arabia holds a stake, is resuming business to Iran, becoming the latest shipping line to re-establish ties after the lifting of Western sanctions, the group told Reuters on Wednesday. A nuclear deal between world powers and Iran led to the removal on Saturday of international oil export prohibitions as well as restrictions on banking, insurance and shipping for Tehran. Kuwait-headquartered UASC, founded in 1976, said "the carrier started accepting shipments to and from Iran". "It is important to note that a number of sanctions are still in place, therefore, the ability to accept cargo volumes to/from Iran will continue to be based on UASC's strict internal compliance check, which is in line with the international laws and applicable sanctions," it said in a statement. With U.S. sanctions still in place, which exclude U.S. persons, banks and insurers from trading with Iran including dollar business, shipping and marine insurance sources say many foreign companies are likely to tread carefully. UASC, which has corporate offices in Dubai, is owned by the governments of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and Iraq. Qatar holds a 51 percent stake in the group, while Saudi Arabia has a 35 percent stake with the remaining nations having smaller holdings. Sunni Muslim power Saudi Arabia cut relations with Shi'ite Iran earlier this month. The crisis erupted when Saudi Arabia executed a prominent Shi'ite cleric on Jan. 2 and Iranian protesters retaliated by storming and setting fire to the Saudi embassy in Tehran. In solidarity with Riyadh, Kuwait and Qatar subsequently pulled out their ambassadors from Tehran, and the United Arab Emirates downgraded its ties. Bahrain and two non-Gulf states, Djibouti and Sudan, severed relations completely. A source close to UASC told Reuters separately it was business as usual despite the tensions. "Historically, since the company's foundation, politics normally stayed away from the board room," the source said. "UASC is commercially managed." The source said UASC weathered Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, even with staff relocating for a while. "If you look at the shareholding nations' relationships ... they were not always at the best levels," the source said. "Meetings continued and services were normal," the source said, referring to the 1991 Gulf War in which a U.S -led coalition forced Iraq out of Kuwait. NEW OPPORTUNITIES UASC, which suspended all Iran business in April 2013, said it would initially service the Islamic Republic using smaller feeder ships via third parties that shipped containers to Iran from the United Arab Emirates. It aimed to resume direct calls as soon as possible. "For the shipping industry, the relaxation of sanctions is likely to create opportunities resulting in additional volumes due to the expected increase in infrastructure projects as well as the ability of Iranian consumers to access a wider range of foreign goods," UASC said in the statement. Iran had depended on foreign ships for much of its imports, but has relied more on land routes and its own commercial fleet, particularly since 2012, as layers of sanctions led to an exodus of Western shipping firms, causing supply disruptions. In August last year the world's number three line, France's CMA CGM, and number four, Evergreen of Taiwan, were the first to resume direct services to Iran. In late December MSC of Switzerland, the world's second biggest container shipping line, resumed direct calls. The world's biggest line Maersk said this week it was "looking into how and when we can resume container transportation services to/from Iran", without providing further details. German container line Hapag Lloyd said this week it would continue to offer only feeder services, which started in November, adding it would handle "all Iran cargo with utmost care in terms of compliance". According to consultancy Alphaliner, UASC's market share, based on fleet capacity, is estimated at 2.6 percent versus nearly 15 percent for Maersk. Haiti needs new approach to make aid effective, bring jobs, skills-ex-PM By Anastasia Moloney BOGOTA, Jan 20 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Haitians have been sidelined from reconstruction efforts following the earthquake that rocked Haiti six years ago, and a new approach is needed to give them more say in how billions of dollars of aid are spent, a Haitian former prime minister said. Laurent Lamothe, prime minister from May 2012 to December 2014, questioned the effectiveness of foreign aid as Haiti is still struggling to recover from the Jan. 12, 2010 quake that killed 200,000 and flattened the capital Port-au-Prince. Some aid groups have said corruption and weak governance by Haitian authorities are behind their reluctance to channel aid through the government, but Lamothe believes this attitude has damaged the recovery of the western hemisphere's poorest state. "The problem with aid is that it wasn't country led and it wasn't country owned," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a recent telephone interview. "It has been very damaging for Haiti. It's created basically a situation where there was no transfer of knowledge, no jobs were created," said Lamothe, whose tenure was the longest of any Haitian prime minister in the last three decades. Most of the aid from the United States, the largest foreign donor, is still bypassing local companies, according to the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). The think-tank, a critic of U.S. foreign policy in Haiti, says the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has awarded around $1.8 billion in contracts since the quake, of which only 1.6 percent hase gone directly to Haitian companies. "Certainly most of the aid money continues to go to the same partners as always," said Jake Johnston, a CEPR research associate, referring to U.S.-based Chemonics International Inc., among others. "Though some small efforts to increase funds going to local organisations have begun, with limited success." "It's not all the international community's fault," said Lamothe, also a former businessman and foreign minister. "The gridlock in Haitian politics has created a space of mistrust. Haitian politicians have to get their act together so that aid is channelled through them." The latest index of anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International, which ranks 175 countries by their perceived levels of public sector corruption, ranks Haiti at 161, among the 15 most corrupt. Lamothe said concerns over corruption "can't be an excuse not to give aid" to Haitian authorities and local non-governmental organisations, adding that there are ways of controlling how aid is spent, such as international audits. "It's a question of trust and credibility," he said. POLITICAL CRISIS An independent electoral commission said the first round of voting in Haiti's presidential elections in October was marred by fraud, and delays in holding a runoff vote had caused political instability and undermined reconstruction efforts. Haiti's electoral council announced last week the runoff vote between ruling party candidate Jovenel Moise and opposition challenger Jude Celestin would take place on Jan. 24, though Celestin says he will boycott the vote because he has no faith in the process. "The immediate problem is political instability, completing the election cycle, and having a credible president to come out of it," Lamothe said. Lamothe had his sights on the presidency but was barred from running for the post last year after the provisional electoral council ruled that he lacked the required "discharge" after a routine investigation into government ministers' use of public funds. As prime minister, Lamothe was credited with helping manage infrastructure projects and attracting foreign investment, particularly to the hotel sector, an approach that was praised by Bill Clinton, a former U.N. special envoy for Haiti. But Lamothe fell out of favour over allegations he was overspending to back his presidential ambitions. Critics also accused him of lack of transparency in handling funds from Venezuela's preferential Petrocaribe fuel programme. Lamothe resigned in December 2014 after anti-government street protests and pressure by opposition lawmakers. NEW HAITIAN-LED FOUNDATION He is now focusing on promoting development through a foundation he launched last week, the Dr. Louis G. Lamothe Foundation, named after his late father. For Lamothe, a key way to improve the effectiveness of aid is to allow Haitians and local organisations to take a greater lead in the country's development and encourage dialogue between all sectors in this socially divided country. As part of this approach, the foundation's board includes prominent Haitians from the private sector and politics, including former ministers. "There are very few think-tanks in Haiti. This creates an opportunity to create an alternative in terms of approach. A self-reliance approach," Lamothe said, adding that academic research led by the foundation aims to guide policy and development projects. Haiti is the poorest nation in the western hemisphere, a quarter of its population of 10 million living in extreme poverty on less than $1.25 a day. To tackle entrenched poverty, Lamothe has singled out key areas including education, climate change, agriculture, improving aid efficiency and making Haiti more self-reliant. As farming provides nearly 70 percent of all jobs in Haiti, the foundation's first pilot programme involves 18,000 poor farmers in a mountain village near the capital. They will be given training, fertilizers and seeds to grow vegetables and taught to read and write. Painted marker posts help quell land conflicts in Sudan's Darfur By Katy Migiro NAIROBI, Jan 20 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Before war broke out in Sudan's Darfur region, trust between communities was such that Arab herders stowed their excess luggage with farmers when they migrated southward in the dry season - and a charity is working to rebuild the shattered ties. Relations between the two turned hostile in 2003 when rebels took up arms against the Arab-led government in Khartoum, accusing it of discrimination. Non-Arab farmers sided with the rebels while herders allied themselves with the government. Khartoum unleashed militias to crush the rebellion and millions fled to refugee camps as their villages were burned. The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir for genocide. While the mass killings of a decade ago have eased, tensions remain as the insurgency continues and droughts have forced herders into competition with farmers over land. "After the war started, they never sat together," said Awadalla Hamid Mohamed, project manager for Practical Action, which has been working to rebuild shattered relations from the bottom up through the Darfur Community Peace and Stability Fund. Since 2011, the charity has installed 390 posts along almost 200 km (125 miles) of migratory routes in North Darfur to reduce conflicts over land and has set up 20 shared water points. At first, progress was painfully slow. "The farmers were complaining... about their villages being burned and their livestock being looted by these (nomadic) groups," Mohamed said, while herders were bitter that farmers had blocked their traditional migratory routes. "Everyone defended himself." It took six months of meetings before the communities agreed to mark out a migratory route with colour-coded concrete posts. "The big thing is how to build consensus," said Mohamed. "How can we find ways of co-existing because there are so many mutual benefits?" In demarcated areas, 75 to 150 metres wide, red posts indicate herders must stick to the route in an agricultural zone while white ones mean they are free to graze. GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT The project echoes local self-governing systems of justice which kept the peace in Darfur before colonial rule. Traditionally, farming tribes like the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa owned land in Darfur and granted access to the nomads. Land ownership is rarely registered in Sudan. Instead, proof of ownership rests with the collective memory of local communities. If herders left designated routes, trespassed on farmland and damaged farmers' crops, they were fined by their own leaders who compensated the farmers. "Tribal conflicts (were) few because of the unwritten constitution and a gentleman's agreement between the local residents and the leaders of the nomadic tribes," Darfur expert El Khidir Daloum told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Customary land laws unravelled as the conflict intensified and spread. Arab militias from Darfur and neighbouring countries like Chad moved onto land belonging to farmers, Daloum said. "The role of the state in the current system is about divide and rule," he said. "That is what destroyed the whole issue of land rights." More needs to be done to disarm the herders and strengthen local institutions, Daloum said. "It is not only about demarcation of the grazing route," he said. "If you demarcate and I am a nomad and I have a four wheel drive, I have mounted guns... and when I commit a crime, no one brings me to justice, what is the point?" Sudan plans to hold a referendum in April over whether Darfur will stay divided into five states or reunite as one entity, an idea the government has long resisted for fear of giving Darfuris too much autonomy, analysts say. In the meantime, the peace committees Practical Action has set up to resolve disputes between communities are an important first step, Mohamed says. The rains were poor this year and herders are moving southwards through farmers' land in search of pasture for their animals. 'Keep it simple' - business appeals to 'in' campaign on Brexit By Elizabeth Piper DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 20 (Reuters) - "Keep it simple, visual and factual" - that is the advice of the most powerful man in advertising to Britain's campaign to stay in the European Union, saying it must focus on the benefits to trade, investment and jobs to win the debate. A second-generation immigrant, Martin Sorrell, who has built the world's biggest advertising group WPP (WPP.L) over 30 years, is passionate about staying in the EU and does not rule out personally contributing to the 'in' campaign at a later date. But if Britain were to vote to leave the 28-nation bloc in a referendum Prime Minister David Cameron hopes to hold this year, he would feel a conflict between his head and heart - with logic suggesting that he should move his headquarters from its now home, while patriotism may compel him to do otherwise. "Keep it simple, make it as uncomplicated as possible, make it as visual as you can possibly can," he said in an interview at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos. To make his point, he cited a poster campaign carried out in 1979 by advertising company Saatchi & Saatchi, where he worked at the time, on behalf of Britain's then opposition Conservative party under Margaret Thatcher. The poster, showing a long line of people queuing for unemployment benefit under the slogan "Labour isn't working", is credited with helping the Conservatives win that year's parliamentary election. Sorrell did not suggest what the catchphrase for the 'in' campaign might be, saying: "That's not my job." But he urged it to offer an alternative vision of immigration as a positive force to counter a growing feeling among some voters that Britain is already a "crowded isle". "As a second-generation immigrant, and I am probably subjective about it, I think immigrants are a net benefit not a net disadvantage," said Sorrell, whose father's parents were from Ukraine and mother's were from Poland and Romania - the first arriving in England around the turn of the 20th century. FUTURE ROLE The referendum will not only shape Britain's role in world trade and affairs, but also the EU, which is struggling to maintain unity over migration and financial crises. Although official campaigning on both sides of the debate will not begin until Cameron has finished negotiations with the bloc which he hopes will secure a better membership deal for Britain, the battle lines have already been drawn. Much of big business in Britain has sided with Cameron, pressing arguments that the EU's single market helps spur trade, attract investment and create jobs while the uncertainty of a possible 'Brexit' does little for the economy. Some smaller businesses and hedge funds are keener on leaving the bloc. Others say an exit would have little impact. Roger Carr, chairman of BAE Systems, Europe's biggest defence contractor, supports remaining in a reformed European Union and says there is an understanding that business should support the government's position to negotiate a better deal. "I am a supporter of making it better, more competitive and therefore seeking to improve it, but I still believe you can do that more effectively as a family member within rather than as a critic outside," he told Reuters. Although an exit would not directly hurt BAE, which mostly deals with governments, he said the tone of relationships would change and it could hurt security. He is not working on contingency planning if Britain votes to leave. But Dominic Barton, global managing director at McKinsey business management consultancy, said some other companies were spending "a lot of money" on planning for a British departure which could mean moving offices out of Britain. "I know one global bank that is spending $75 million, because you've got to think about (your) real estate footprint, moving people, tax implications," he said. "And even though you don't think it's going to happen, as a leader you've got to have a backup plan." EMOTION OR LOGIC For Sorrell, his team as yet have not started looking into a move, which, he suggests, would be a wrench. He moved WPP, which owns agencies including JWT, Ogilvy & Mather and Grey, to Ireland in 2008 to cut its tax bill after the then Labour government proposed the potential "double taxation" of corporate profits. He returned in 2013, but said some board members were against it. He said the company returned for "I hesitate to say it" patriotic reasons and some board members were against it, making it "difficult to say" whether the company would move again. "And forgetting about the emotional side for a minute ... purely logically ... if we came out of Europe it would probably make sense to be in Europe. It could be Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Milan, Frankfurt," he said, adding there was no plan to do so. Most business leaders are, like many opinion polls, split over which side of the debate has the upper hand. Some polls suggest that those favouring a departure from the EU have a small lead but with so many Britons undecided, any clear picture is difficult to gauge. That's where a simple campaign comes in, says Sorrell, who argues that many of those as yet undecided over which way to vote simply do not have enough information. "If I look at the polls ... (they are) saying the key battle ground is the undecideds," he said. Ukraine plans new diplomatic push to recover Crimea-Finance Minister DAVOS, Switzerland Jan 20 (Reuters) - Ukraine plans soon to launch a fresh diplomatic initiative to recover the Crimean peninsula from Russia which annexed it in 2014, Finance Minister Natalia Yaresko told Reuters on Wednesday. "We don't agree that Crimea has gone. This will be the year we really begin pressing forward on a process to return Crimea," Yaresko said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. Russia seized the Black Sea peninsula in March 2014 in a military operation denounced by the West, which imposed retaliatory sanctions to punish Moscow that remain in place. More recently Ukraine cut power supplies to the region and its president, Petro Poroshenko, said power would be restored if Crimea were recognised as part of Ukraine. However, Russia has given no sign that it would ever consider returning Crimea, which has a majority ethnic Russian population and holds a special place in Russian history and culture. Last month Moscow issued a new banknote dedicated to Crimea. Yaresko said Ukraine aimed to create a forum along the lines of the so-called Geneva format, a body that included Russia, Ukraine, the European Union and the United States and operated briefly in 2014. Russia has ruled out reviving the forum. "We are looking to establish something bigger than the Geneva format to begin dialogue on how to return Crimea to Ukraine," Yaresko said. Some legal experts believe Ukraine can successfully use Crimea's annexation as a lever against Russia if Moscow carries out its threat to take Kiev to a British court over non-payment of a $3 billion debt Reuters Health News Summary Following is a summary of current health news briefs. Vaccines alliance signs $5 million advance deal for Merck's Ebola shot The Gavi global alliance for vaccines and immunization group signed a $5 million advance purchase commitment on Wednesday to buy a vaccine being developed by Merck to protect against future outbreaks of the deadly Ebola virus. Gavi said the agreement would help the U.S. drugmaker take the experimental Ebola vaccine through late-stage clinical trials to licensing and then through pre-qualification by the World Health Organization (WHO). Lack of resilience as a teen tied to higher diabetes risk as an adult Men who have low resistance to psychological stress at age 18 may face considerably higher risk for type 2 diabetes in adulthood compared to those better able to handle stress, according to new research. "Other studies have found that stressful life experiences in mid-adulthood are linked with a higher risk of developing diabetes," said lead author Dr. Casey Crump of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. Eating green leafy vegetables may lower glaucoma risk People who eat more green leafy vegetables, a good source of nitrate, may significantly decrease their risk of developing glaucoma, according to a large study. Based on long-term data for more than 100,000 U.S. adults, those who consumed the most nitrate - mostly from green vegetables like kale and spinach - were 21 percent less likely than those who ate the least nitrate to develop open-angle glaucoma by the time they were in their 60s and 70s. Zafgen soars on hope of reviving obesity drug tests Zafgen Inc said positive data on its experimental obesity drug could convince the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to lift a clinical hold placed on its trials in December after two patients died. Zafgen's shares more than doubled on Wednesday after the company said its lead drug, beloranib, significantly reduced body weight and an excessive urge to eat in patients with Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS), the most common genetic cause of life-threatening obesity. Skin cancer more deadly when caught during pregnancy Melanoma may be even more dangerous when it's diagnosed in women during pregnancy or within a year of giving birth, a U.S. study suggests. Among women under 50 with malignant melanoma, those diagnosed during or soon after pregnancy were significantly more likely to have tumors spread to other organs and tissues, and were also much more likely to have the cancer recur after treatment, the study found. Biden pledges faster U.S. approval for cancer drug cocktails U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that the United States would speed up the approval of promising new drug combinations in his government's newly announced drive to cure cancer "once and for all". Biden, who lost his 46-year-old son Beau to brain cancer last year, set out his plans at a World Economic Forum meeting of international cancer experts in Davos, a week after being appointed to lead the initiative by President Barack Obama. CDC issues guidelines for pregnant women during Zika outbreak The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday issued guidelines for doctors caring for pregnant women who might have been exposed to Zika virus, a mosquito-borne infection that can cause brain damage in a developing fetus. The new guidelines, first reported by Reuters, lay out recommendations for doctors whose pregnant patients have traveled to areas with Zika virus transmission. High fish consumption in pregnancy tied to brain benefits for kids (Reuters Health) - When mothers eat three sizeable servings of fish each week during pregnancy it may benefit children's brains for years to come, according to a large study in Spain. Researchers followed nearly 2,000 mother-child pairs from the first trimester of pregnancy through the child's fifth birthday and found improved brain function in the kids whose mothers ate the most fish while pregnant, compared to children of mothers who ate the least. Zika virus may infect up to 700,000 people in Colombia: government The mosquito-borne Zika virus has already infected more than 13,500 people in Colombia and could hit as many as 700,000, the health minister said on Wednesday. According to Pan-American Health Organization figures, the country is second only to Brazil in infection rates, health minister Alejandro Gaviria told journalists. Venezuela needs urgent foreign medical aid, pharma group says Italy's Renzi moves closer towards curbing Senate's power to block change By Gavin Jones ROME, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Italy's Senate gave its final consent on Wednesday to cutting its own powers, taking Prime Minister Matteo Renzi a step closer towards limiting its ability to bring down an elected government and block legislation. Since taking office two years ago, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has staked his political future on the bill to effectively abolish the upper house Senate as an elected chamber. He says this will make Italy more governable but his critics say it reduces democratic checks and balances. It was the fifth and penultimate reading of the bill, which aims to streamline the lawmaking process. Under the lengthy procedures required for constitutional changes, the Chamber of Deputies must now pass the reform again. It will then face what promises to be a fiercely contested national referendum which Renzi hopes to hold in October. The Senate approved the bill to cut its own size and powers by 180 votes to 112, with one abstention. "You have written a page of history," Renzi told the senators in an impassioned speech before the vote. "The fact the Senate has shown it can reform itself means that nothing is impossible for Italy." The reform will cut the number of senators by two thirds, strip the Senate of its ability to bring down a government and sharply limit its scope to block legislation. It will also return to Rome some powers now held by the regional governments. "How many have dreamed of this moment," Renzi said, referring to the prospects for an end to Italy's "perfect bi-cameralism" by which each chamber of parliament has to approve the same final version of all laws. Renzi repeated that he would retire from politics if, in what he called "the mother of all battles," the reform is rejected in the referendum. "We will see whose side the people are on," said the 41-year-old former mayor of Florence, promising he and his allies would campaign "house by house" to win the popular ballot. Renzi has pursued constitutional change since he took office in an internal party tussle in February 2014. It has divided his own Democratic Party and caused ructions in the centre-right party of ex-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who first backed the changes but now calls them undemocratic. All the opposition parties are pledging to campaign against the reform at the referendum. Many commentators believe that if Renzi wins he will use the momentum to go to the polls in 2017, one year before his term of office expires. One reason why the stakes are so high is that the Senate is inextricably tied to Renzi's other main political reform: the introduction of a new, two-round voting system. The electoral reform has already been passed by parliament but it envisages direct elections only for the Chamber of Deputies and so cannot work unless the Senate is scrapped in its current form. The reformed Senate would be made up of regional councillors and mayors. Renzi says his package of reforms helped pull Italy's economy clear of recession in 2015 after three years of contraction, but his critics say the impact will be limited in a country still in the grip of vested interests. There is no one factor for the continued shrinking of Indias exports. You can blame China, Saudi Arabia, United States and in a small part, the unending crisis in West Asia for all the troubles that Indian exporters are facing. For 13 successive months, Indias exports have contracted, according to official data published by the ministry of commerce. Exports shrank 14.8 per cent in December 2015, compared to a year ago, as demand for India-made products from European Union, West Asia, China and even the US shrank. In the nine months from April to December 2015 period, exports contracted 18.1 per cent. Trouble worsened for Indian exports with the dramatic slowing of the Chinese economy in the last calendar year, when it grew at its slowest in 25 years. Its economy still expanded 6.9 per cent in 2015 despite its size, which is no small feat when many advanced economies manage to expand just about one to two per cent annually. But the global economy had been spoiled by the double digit growth in China and the slowing of the worlds most populous country meant lower demand for various commodities the country sources from other nations to convert into manufactured products that are then exported. That has sent many natural resource-rich nations into a tailspin, with many projects being scaled down or shuttered, rendering thousands jobless. Even before China weighed down the global economy, Saudi Arabia and the United States were forcing down crude oil prices. The fall in crude oil prices have wrecked the economies of many nations that were dependent on export earnings from oil and shrunk demand from these countries. It all began with the United States desire to reduce its dependence on Arab oil for its energy needs. That led to a big step up in fracking, and the plan helped the US become an energy surplus economy. But, that hurt the interest of close ally and largest oil exporter, Saudi Arabia. The Arab nation is also the most influential member of the Organisation of Oil Producing Countries (OPEC), a cartel of oil exporters, which sets quotas for oil production in the member countries. The OPEC has continued to maintain production of oil at over 30 million barrels a day by the members despite the surplus across the world. It hoped that the strategy of over-production will put a squeeze on fracking, which is an expensive method of extracting oil and gas trapped between rocks. It makes economic sense to undertake fracking when crude oil prices are high, about $60 dollars a barrel. Fracking may have reached a stage where it is no longer viable given the collapse of crude oil prices below $30 a barrel. With most sanctions on oil-rich Iran removed, further drop in oil prices to as much as $20 a barrel is not ruled out. There are even wild speculations that oil may drop to as little as $10 a barrel if this surplus continues. The drop in the oil prices was both a blessing and a curse for India. It slashed Indias import bill by more than 40 per cent, which is a welcome development. But petroleum products are Indias largest item of export and the collapse of oil prices has pared export earnings from petroleum products by 50 per cent. That is a big blow for the country and the biggest reason for the contraction of export earnings. Petroleum products are being exported to countries as diverse as the US, United Arab Emirates, Brazil, South Africa, Japan, South Korea, Netherlands and Singapore. Petroleum products account for more than half of Indias exports to Brazil. While oil prices have collapsed, so have Indias exports to that nation. Like petroleum, the collapse of gold prices has had similar impact on Indias global trade. Though it has brought down import bill for gold, it has also hurt export earnings. More recently, the fall in gold prices has also led to increased demand for the precious metal in the country. Besides gold and other precious metals, pearls and precious stones are among the top exports from the country. Export of gold and precious metal jewelleries contracted 33 per cent between April and November 2015, according to disaggregated data of the commerce ministry. Exports to United Arab Emirates declined by a whopping 45 per cent. RICHMOND Virginia's top economic official said Wednesday that a failed taxpayer-funded business deal in Appomattox County will be reviewed for possible "fraud." After being called to speak to the Senate Finance Committee, Secretary of Commerce and Trade Maurice Jones said it's possible an external fraud investigation will be initiated over the Lindenburg Industry LLC project, in which $1.4 million in public funds were paid to a Chinese-owned company that never delivered on promises of a new factory. Sweet 'Project Honey' deal turned sour for Virginia Reforms to vetting protocol have been ordered after lapses in evaluating Lindenburg Industry. Jones was asked if the matter has already been referred to the Virginia State police or the FBI. Jones answered that he could not say with certainty, and said there's no ongoing external investigation. "But the issue of fraud is one that we're going to definitely pursue," Jones said. Michael Kelly, a spokesman for Attorney General Mark R. Herring, would not say if the matter has been referred to the state police or the FBI, saying conversations between Jones and the attorney general's office fall under attorney-client privilege. A recent investigation into the deal by The Roanoke Times found that state officials failed to properly vet the company, which submitted a North Carolina address where the company was never located and produced a website with misleading information, before agreeing to give out public incentives. The state has asked for the money back, but Jones said Wednesday that may be a tall order. "My initial opinion is this will be an uphill battle to recover all $1.4 million," Jones said. "We are going to aggressively pursue full recovery." Jones apologized to the panel, saying he "should have asked tougher questions." He also said he and the Virginia Economic Development Partnership gave too much weight to the company's willingness to pay cash to purchase a former furniture plant in Appomattox and took the advice of a "reputable" consulting firm. "We took comfort in those facts. We took too much comfort in those facts," said Jones, who suggested the failed project is an outlier and defended the state's overall track record. "The reason why this happened was human error on our part." "Mr. Secretary, I appreciate your candor and the euphemism of 'human error,' which probably could be characterized in a little stronger terms," said Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment Jr., R-James City. Senate Minority Leader Richard L. Saslaw, D-Fairfax, drew a contrast between the level of interest in the Appomattox deal and the hundreds of millions of dollars the state spent on the U.S. 460 project, a 75-mile expressway between Petersburg and Suffolk that was never built. "And not a single person sitting up on this panel asked one lousy question," Saslaw said. "In which situation was the state worse off?" "You're trying to get me in trouble sir," Jones said jokingly. Register for more free articles. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading. Stay up-to-date on what's happening Receive the latest in local entertainment news in your inbox weekly! Sign up! Already a Subscriber? Already a Subscriber? Sign in Terms of Service Privacy Policy BRUSSELS - Belgium - The EU tears up asylum deal that allows Britain to remove 1,000 people a year, as Prime Minister says nothing as usual and kowtows to his superiors. Britain wont be able to deport thousands of asylum seekers as of today because the Dublin ruling has just been scrapped by EU president, Jean Claude Juncker. Because of the scrapping of this deal, anyone who now comes into the UK is barred from deportation, could be a hate preacher, a rapist or a murderer, plus migrants are not constrained by having to claim asylum only in the first country of entry as it was before, a smiling EU technocrat said whilst enjoying a filet mignon at an expensive Brussels restaurant. Meanwhile back in Britain, a subservient spittle sniffer prime minister, quietly acquiesced to the reneging of the Dublin deal and simply shrugged his shoulders, much like Neville Chamberlain did when he came back from Germany singing the praises of Herr Hitler all those years ago. David Cameron is Neville Chamberlain, and unless someone with some fucking balls comes in to mend this almighty mess, we will all be goose stepping soon. NEW YORK - USA - Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump has outlined how he reads the memoires of Benito Mussolini every day to give him strength in his campaign. The Il Duce, was a great man, and he was a strong man. I am inspired by his life and how he changed Italy for the better. This is what I want for America, Mr Trump told CNN on Tuesday. Benito Mussolini was the founder of fascism, and was instrumental in the deaths of millions of people in World War II, but that does not seem to phase Trump, who aspires to bring a totalitarian regime to the United States as well. Lets face it, there will be a period, like Mussolinis when he was prime minister of Italy, where he ruled constitutionally until 1925, but soon after he thought, screw this, lets have a full dictatorship. Im not saying were going to have an immediate dictatorship in America when Im president, but Ill give it a little time, maybe a year or two. Business is business, I gotta do what I gotta do, and Im going to clean house, whatever it takes. Fascism is great because you dont have to answer to anyone, you just do it. Will Trump eventually end up like his hero, hanging from a post? Pakistan has been actively investigating the Pathankot attack as Prime Minister Sharif conveyed to his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi he will not allow anyone to derail the peace process. (Photo: AFP/File) Islamabad: Pakistan was not playing any double game with India regarding investigations into the Pathankot airbase attack, Islamabad has told Washington. A government official said the US was taken into confidence on the investigations conducted so far into the Pathankot incident. We have told them we are serious in finding out whether someone from Pakistan is involved in the terror act. There have been arrests and the investigations are ongoing. There has been no double game and there will not be any double game on the Pathankot issue, he added. He said the Prime Minister and the foreign ministry both have got the message from Washington that Pres-ident Barrack Obama and his team were happy with Pakistan reaction to the Pathankot attack and hoped there will be fair investigations. Another official said the US has convoyed to Pakistan that it is also pressing India to be patient. Pakistan has been actively investigating the Pathankot attack as Prime Minister Sharif conveyed to his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi he will not allow anyone to derail the peace process. The authorities took JeM chief Maulana Masood Azhar into protective custody and sealed many seminaries run by the proscribed outfit. Islamabad: Pakistan is considering a ban on Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation (FIF), a charity run by JuD chief Hafiz Saeed, according to a media report. "Officials said the government is likely to ban FIF. The Ministry of Interior, these officials said, had started serious consultations with all the stakeholders before banning FIF and a final decision would be taken in next few days," The Nation reported. The charity is operated by Saeed who also runs Jamaat-ud- Dawa (JuD) and is the mastermind of the 2008 Mumbai attack. The paper also said that Pakistan had told the US it is not playing any double game with India regarding investigations into the Pathankot airbase attack. Last week, US Secretary of State John Kerry asked Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to find out the truth and urged the need to focus on the pressing challenge of terrorism in the region. A senior government official said that Washington was taken into confidence on the investigations conducted so far into the Pathankot incident. "We have told them we are serious in finding out whether someone from Pakistan is involved in the terror act. There have been arrests and the investigations are ongoing. There has been no double game and there will not be any double game on the Pathankot issue," he added. He said the prime minister and the foreign ministry both have got the message from Washington that President Barack Obama and his team were happy with Pakistan's reaction to the Pathankot attack and hoped there will be fair investigations. The government is lifting a five-decade-old ban on a type of lentil that has been linked to nerve damage and paralysis, in a desperate attempt by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to cut legume imports and make the nation self-sufficient in the edible seeds. Hit by back-to-back droughts for the first time in over three decades, lentil output has fallen and prices have nearly doubled. Now the government has cleared three varieties of the khesari lentil, which can grow in dry or wet conditions. But the opposition Congress party, which is trying to pressure Modi over continuing rural hardship, said the government was playing with the health of unsuspecting Indians by allowing the cultivation of khesari. The varieties developed by Indian scientists, however, contain a lesser amount of a neurotoxin that can damage nerve tissues and weaken the legs of both humans and animals than previous varieties, said Narendra Pratap Singh, director of the state-run Indian Institute of Pulses Research (IIPR). "The government thought if in a reasonable quantity it can be consumed then why not allow it, particularly when there's a crisis and we're importing pulses," said Singh. Despite the ban placed on the lentil in 1961, khesari is still eaten in eastern India and neighbouring Bangladesh, mainly as a cheap source of protein for millions of poor people. "This is how the Modi government is tackling price rise - by lifting (the) ban on a pulse that's medically proven to cause paralysis," Congress party spokesman R P N Singh said on Twitter. The three varieties now allowed have been ready for the last 10 years and "various experiments on animals have shown there are no adverse long-term effects if consumption is in reasonable quantity," IIPR's Singh said. Every year Indians consume about 22 million tonnes of lentils used to make a thick stew called dal, commonly taken with rice or flat bread across South Asia. About a fifth of the volume is imported from countries like Canada, Australia and Myanmar, which grow the legumes mainly to sell to India. Modi wants India to be self sufficient in lentils and last month approved a scheme to encourage greater cultivation of the legumes. Higher incentives for water-intensive crops like wheat and rice have made India a big grains producer at the cost of other key crops like lentils and oilseeds. Bollywood actress Asin Thottumkal today tied the knot with Micromax co-founder Rahul Sharma in a Christian wedding ceremony here. The couple got married in the morning at a resort hotel. While the 30-year-old "Ghajini" actress donned a white gown, the groom opted for a black suit and bow tie. Gracing the occasion was Asin and Rahul's close friend superstar Akshay Kumar, who also played cupid for the couple. "It was a beautiful wedding. Everyone looked amazing. Akshay was present. It was Asin's idea to have a Catholic wedding. We all are very happy," said a close relative of Rahul. Delhi-based music group Elohim Worship band performed at the wedding. "Everything went great at the wedding. We played some 2-3 songs. Asin looked beautiful in her white gown. We had a rehearsal yesterday," said a band member. The wedding rituals began around 11 and went on for about 30 minutes. The couple will have a second ceremony as per Hindu rituals in the evening at the same venue. "The time for the wedding is at 7 pm and it will include jaimala and pheras," said one of the priests invited to solemnise the marriage. Around 200 people have been invited by Rahul for the evening ceremony, sources said. The wedding will be followed by a reception in Mumbai. US Secretary of State John Kerry has warned both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan against indulging in trade of nuclear weapons, saying there will be "all kinds of NPT consequences" if Riyadh went ahead with any such plan. Such a strong warning from Kerry comes amidst media reports that Saudi Arabia is trying to buy nuclear weapons from Pakistan. Top Pakistani leaders have in recent weeks warned Iran of serious consequences if it attacked Saudi Arabia, which many analysts see a nuclear threat from Islamabad to Tehran. "Sure we've heard those things. But you can't just buy a bomb and transfer (a nuclear bomb)," Kerry told CNN. "There's all kinds of NPT consequences. I mean, there are huge implications of that," Kerry said, referring to the strong nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). He was asked, "The Saudis (are) not even ruling out the possibility, given their concern about this nuclear deal with Iran, they could go forward and buy some maybe buy a nuclear bomb, maybe from Pakistan, youve heard those concerns." Pakistan is already under the radar of the international community for its previous nuclear proliferation activities and leaking the nuclear weapons technology to countries like Iran, Libya and North Korea. "Saudi Arabia knows, I believe, that that is not going to make them safer, nor is it going to be easy because the very things that Iran went through, they would then be subject to with respect to inspection, NPT and so forth," Kerry said. The outgoing Jawaharlal Nehru University Vice Chancellor Sudhir Kumar Sopory once told his granddaughter that student protesters shout slogans, VC hosh main aao (VC come to your senses)! Fir aap hosh main kyon nahi atey ho (Then why dont you come to your senses)? the VC said his granddaughter told him. Sopory, who is going to retire from the post of JNU VC on January 27, told reporters on Tuesday that student union polls resumed in the university during his tenure, after a three-year interim ban on it by the Supreme Court in 2008. The student union since then has launched successful countrywide campaigns such as Occupy UGC and currently, the union is demanding justice for a 26-year-old Dalit student of the University of Hyderabad who committed suicide in his hostel room early this week. Following the incident, the JNUSU called for a university strike. I always tell students, they can shout: murdabad, zindabad (long live, down-down), as long as they do their studies, the VC said. The JNU student leaders however, said they disagree with VC. JNUSU vice-president Shehla Rashid Shora said the universitys student community wants elections without the Lyngdoh Committee recommendations. The committees recommendation lays down rules for conducting students union elections, sans so-called money and muscle power. Its an instrument to bring in fee hike, Shora told Deccan Herald, claiming that the committees recommendation has left the JNUSU wanting for more powers. She said the union had recently opposed the university fee hike. The JNU administration has been sensitive to student demands, Sopory said at a press meet on Tuesday. Some students objected to a signage which says blind curve, he said, as he turned around to ask his colleagues to suggest a term that is not offensive to visually impaired students. The university conducts an access audit for ensuring barrier free campus for disabled students, he added. On his unaccomplished promises as a VC, Sopory said, We had funds since two years but I havent been able to get permission for construction for over 20 months now. Despite all the support I got from LG, DDA, etc, the plan has got stuck again with the Ministry of Environment and Forests. The outgoing VC has faced intermittent student protests over the issue of hostel crunch. A 16-year-old girl living in the house of a JNU professor, on the universitys campus was abducted by four car-borne men from the campus and gang-raped in the moving vehicle on Monday evening, police said. The girl was allegedly employed by the professor as a maid; however, police said she was a relative of the professor. The girl had stepped out of the professors house to go to a tailors shop in Munirka when the incident took place at around 3 pm, police said. The accused drugged her and raped her in the vehicle before dropping her back on the campus at around 7 pm, where a university student helped the victim and took her to a health centre in the campus, said an investigator. From the health centre she was later referred to Safdarjung Hospital. The victim, who hails from Bihar, is receiving treatment and undergoing counseling, he said. The chilling incident not only raised questions about laxity of security in the university but also gave handle to students union members to slam the professor of Urdu in the School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies (SLL&CS) for allegedly employing a minor as a maid. The girl was employed as a maid by the professor five years back. She would have been a mere 11-year-old when employed by the professor at his house, and according to campus rules this is not allowed, said Sourabh, Joint Secretary, JNU Students Union. When contacted by Deccan Herald, the professors son refused to comment on the topic. Police sources said the professor claimed that the girl was related to him and living in the house for four years. As a group of the JNU Students Union demanded action against the professor for allegedly employing a minor maid, Vice-Chancellor Sudhir Kumar Sopory said: We have given clear instructions to all the servants quarters that their details must be sent to us and police verification is required. The concerned professor must have hidden the information from us regarding the maid whom he had allegedly employed. We will investigate the matter. A case has been registered under Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO). Police have recorded the victims statement before a magistrate and investigation is on. Nikita Chauhans sister has told police that Delhi Police sub-inspector Vijender Kumar had been harassing the family. The woman claimed that Vijender used to threaten them using his service revolver. Vijender shot Nikita five times following an argument at a park in Dwarka, then pumped three bullets into himself in a fit of violence that left both of them dead on Sunday. Vijender had got the revolver issued from west Delhis Ranhola police station saying he needed it for a raid in a robbery case. It is alleged that Vijender had gone to Nikitas house last year on her birthday to give her flowers. Her husband was at home. She had then filed a complaint against Vijender. In October 2015, Nikita had met Joint Commissioner of Police (Southwestern Range) Deependra Pathak to complain about Vijender. Nikita had told police that Vijender cheated her on the pretext of marriage. Pathak said Vijender had not reported to work this month. He joined duty on Saturday. Vijender had then requested for the revolver and 10 cartridges. In the last three years, Vijender had faced two departmental inquiries and received six show cause notices for not investigating and completing his case files. Nikitas father has also asked police to investigate if her husband Parvesh was involved in the deaths. They have filed a complaint with local police. On the other hand, Vijender had also left a note in which he has alleged that Nikita had been extorting money from him for three years. The note addressed to Vijenders mother was recovered from his pocket. Sources said Vijender had been planning to murder her and then kill himself for the last two weeks. In the note, Vijender wrote that he borrowed Rs 5 lakh to pay Nikita. He was also not reporting to work to evade creditors. Vijender claimed that Nikita began blackmailing after finding his marital status. It is alleged that Nikita threatened to file a rape case against Vijender. The Delhi Jal Board has put in place a system under which it has divided its distribution areas into small pockets to plug water leakages in its network, which currently stand at a high 45-50 per cent. The DJB has formed 96 District Metering Areas (DMAs), clusters of 1,000-1,500 water consumers. It will monitor the gap between water supplied and consumed, which is the billed quantity of water. The gap will in turn indicate the Non Revenue Water (NRW), meaning losses through leakages or theft. Currently, the water utility has set up 96 DMAs and set a deadline of December 2016 to cover whole of Delhi through a total of 1,010 DMAs. The aim is to plug losses in a decentralised way. Through these DMAs, we will measure how much is consumed by people and much loss is there. We can have individual figures from these small pockets and can reach to its cause and will be easier to fix it, be it replacing pipelines, checking meters or overhead tanks. But if we only have a total figure of leakage in Delhi, we will not know from where to start. Revolution in the water sector has been brought only through the DMAs in the West, so we need to step up our work, said DJB CEO Keshav Chandra. Within the hydraulic boundary of each DMA, the amount of water supplied and consumed will be checked through bulk smart meters installed at input connection and pressure gauges will be installed to monitor pressure levels. This will give us a clear picture of the losses of the losses and their reasons. The current percentage of water leakage is 45-50 per cent which is unacceptable and we have to bring to acceptable limits of 10-15 per cent, Chandra said. Water leakages and contamination has been a perennial problem for the water utility of the capital, whose some of the areas like Sangam Vihar are dealing with water scarcity. According to a CAG report in 2013, the raw water available is not enough to provide potable water to the entire population of Delhi, as per prescribed norms. We are not going to get additional water, so our main aim should be reducing leakages and utilise that water elsewhere, said Chandra. DJB has 20 executive engineers and each engineer has been directed to form five DMAs. Out of the total 1,010, around 80-90 areas are under PPP projects and 330 others under Asian Development Bank and Japan International Cooperation Agency funded projects. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday lashed out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi and demanded the sacking of his junior labour minister and HRD minister over the alleged suicide by a harassed Dalit student in University of Hyderabad. Kejriwal sought a judicial probe into the incident and asked Modi to apologise for it. The AAP also announced nationwide protests on January 21 for seeking action against Universitys Vice-Chancellor, P Appa Rao, Minister of State for Labour, Bandaru Dattatreya and HRD Minister Smriti Irani. I strongly urge the Prime Minister to immediately sack the two ministers, order a high level judicial probe and personally tender an apology to the aggrieved family, the Dalit community and the people of this great country, Kejriwal said in his statement. Modi govt constitutionally duty bound to uplift dalits. Instead Modijis ministers got five dalit students ostracised n suspended, he said in a tweet. Its not suicide. Its murder. Its murder of democracy, social justice n equality.Modi ji shd sack ministers n aplogoize to the nation, the Delhi Chief Minister said. Pointing to the suicide by University researcher Rohit Vemula on January 17, Kejriwal said Modi should ask the crucial question as to what business do ministers have in interfering in the internal affairs of a University? He said Dattatreya and Irani endorsed and abetted a systematic targeting campaign of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishads the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh - to first socially ostracise five Dalit students at the University, deny them access to library facilities, deprive them of their monthly stipends and finally have them suspended. The searing injustice of these actions was such that it finally took the life of Vemula, he said. Vemula was among five research scholars who were suspended by the University in August last year and also one of the accused in the case of assault on a leader of the ABVP. Kejriwal said Modi should tell How can a minister term young, bright students as anti-national, simply because they had an altercation with the ABVP? How can young Dalit students be socially ostracised ad economically penalised by the University administration? The Dalits have a constitutional right to the best opportunities of education and socio-economic advancement. The government is constitutionally bound to protect the fundamental guarantees of the Dalits, Kejriwal said. Dattatreya and the University VC were on Monday named in an FIR over the alleged suicide of the researcher. The Chief Minister also slammed Modis inaction earlier when after the death of two Dalit children in Haryana Union Minister of State for External affairs V K Singh allegedly made a controversial statement that the government could not be held responsible if someone stones a dog. Meanwhile, AAP leader Sanjay Singh announced plans for the partys agitation on January 21. Dattatreya misused his political clout to crush Dalit students movement in the University and got these students suspended, he said. Dattatreya also got the VC to issue orders banning the suspended Dalit students from visiting public places in the university...they were also thrown out of their hostels and were forced to spend nights under the open sky, said Sanjay Singh. On January 21, AAP volunteers will organise protests in all state capitals demanding immediate sacking and arrest of the University VC and Dattatreya. We also demand that HRD Minister Irani's role should also be probed, he said. Singapore has deported 26 Bangladeshi migrant workers late last year and jailed one for supporting "the armed jihad ideology" of terror groups like Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, authorities said today. The men, who were working in the construction industry here, were detained between November 16 and December 1 last year, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said. Investigations showed that they supported the armed jihad ideology of terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Some of them had considered waging armed jihad overseas, but they were not planning any terrorist attacks in Singapore, said the MHA. The 26 deported were members of a closed religious study group that subscribed to extremist beliefs and teachings of radical figures like Anwar al-Awlaki, an American and Yemeni Islamic lecturer alleged to have ties with militant group Al-Qaeda. Awlaki was killed in a drone strike in Yemen in September 2011. The Bangladeshi authorities were informed of the circumstances of their repatriation. The jailed man was not a member of the study group, but was discovered to have been undergoing radicalisation. He supported extremist preachers and possessed jihadi-related material. He was jailed for attempting to leave Singapore illegally. He will also be repatriated once he completes his sentence. In the course of their arrests, the Internal Security Department recovered a "significant amount" of radical and jihadi-related material, such as books and videos containing footage of children undergoing training in what appeared to be terrorist military camps. Several members also possessed a shared document with graphic images and instruction details on how to conduct "silent killings" using different methods and weapons. An excerpt from the document, which depicts in a graphic manner how one can attack and kill with stealth. The group members took measures to avoid detection by the authorities, sharing jihadi-related materials discreetly and holding weekly gatherings to discuss armed conflicts involving Muslims, said MHA. "They also carefully targeted the recruitment of other Bangladeshi nationals to grow their membership," it said. A number of members admitted that they believed they should participate in and wage armed jihad on behalf of their religion. Several contemplated travelling to the Middle East to take part in the ongoing conflict. "Members were encouraged to return to Bangladesh and wage armed jihad against the Bangladeshi government. They had also sent monetary donations to entities believed to be linked to extremist groups in Bangladesh," said MHA. US warplanes have reportedly destroyed a large Islamic State bank in Iraq's Mosul city housing an estimated USD 45 million, the second time in over a week that such a facility of the terror group has been bombed. American warplanes destroyed the Islamic State bank in Mosul late last night, a senior US defence official told Fox News. This was the second such instance in over a week that US military has targeted an Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) finance centre holding significant cash reserves. The US dropped two 2,000-pound (900-kilogramme) bombs on January 10 in central Mosul destroying the building containing huge amounts of cash. The airstrike had destroyed the ISIS building reportedly housing an estimated USD 90 million. The building targeted in yesterday's strike housed an estimated USD 45 million in dollars and Iraqi dinars, according to officials. Reports indicated the collective strikes on the two sites are "crushing" ISIS, another senior defence official was quoted as saying. It has been reported that ISIS salaries to its fighters and civil servants have been significantly reduced as a result of the strikes. The group's Bayt al-Mal, the Treasury Ministry, has decided to cut the salaries of its fighters in half due to the "exceptional circumstances" ISIS has been witnessing, The Jerusalem Post said, citing new documents released last month. The terror group reportedly did not explain exactly what those "exceptional circumstances" were. Around 2,000 ISIS fighters occupy the 1.5-million Sunni-majority city of Mosul, according to estimates from the Iraqi military. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Abadi said recently he wants Mosul retaken by the end of 2016 and ISIS destroyed. In the past weeks, the US-led air campaign has increased its airstrikes in and around Mosul, the largest ISIS stronghold in Iraq. Hitting back at political rivals, HRD Minister Smriti Irani today accused them of attempting to "instigate" students all over the country on the issue of suicide by a dalit student in Hyderabad University and dismissed demands for her resignation. After keeping a low profile for the last two days, Irani addressed a press conference flanked by three ministers where she took on Congress leader Rahul Gandhi saying the party wants to "shoot" on the issue which is "expected but unfortunate". The minister was at pains to project that the ABVP student, who was attacked in a student rivalry, belonged to the OBC community as was Union Minister Bandaru Dattatreya, who had written a letter to her about the attack. Claiming that a "malicious attempt" was being made to project the suicide as a dalit versus non-dalit caste battle over which "passions" are being ignited, the minister rejected allegations that her ministry's intervention through letters had led to the suicide of the student Rohith Vemula. Facing a number of questions, Irani said she did not want to get into political mudslinging or a blame game and was only bringing certain facts to set the record straight in the face of attempts to create caste divisions in the society. "An effort is on to instigate students all over the ountry. My appeal is, please do not instigate students and communities deliberately. "There has been a malicious attempt to ignite passions and present this as a caste battle which it is not. It is not a dalit versus non-dalit confrontation as has been the efforts of some to project it that way," she said repeatedly. Asked about the resignation demand made by Gandhi during his visit to the University yesterday, "They need to look at all these facts. Today I want to answer (to his statements) only through these two reports," she said referring to the standard protcol followed in government from the UPA time. Irani sought to downplay the letter of Dattatreya, who had sought action on the issue of clash between two student bodies and the "anti-national activities" in the varsity, and her ministry's five communications to the university as a follow-up, which have been blamed for the suicide. Seeking to turn the tables against Congress, she produced a letter of Congress MP V Hanumantha Rao, who had written a letter in November, 2014 seeking her intervention over various issues including suicide by students of marginalised communities in four years due to "alleged caste discrimination". "Why did the Congress not debate and fix the issue then? Why it is debating it now?, she asked adding "the Congress MP says it's not a new problem but one that persisted for four years. If they (Congress) had fixed the problem four years ago, perhaps Rohith would have been alive," the minister said. Justifying the five communications in the present case, Irani said six letters were sent to the University by her ministry even on the complaint of Hanumantha Rao. She said whatever her ministry had done was done in accordance with the protocol of the Central Secretariat Manual of Office Procedure. She also produced a certified copy of the suicide note of Rohith to say that it did not mention any university official, political organisation or any MP. Irani said there was one last line to "ASA family" (Ambedkar Students Association)...sorry for disappointing all of you....There is some bad water in us". She said the two-member fact-finding committee sent by the ministry to the university yesterday will return in the evening and give its formal report. Asked whether she would go to Hyderabad, Irani said she would not make a visit as she would not like to give an impression of "interference". The minister expressed confidence that justice will be done as a "fair probe" was being conducted. " As a government we are very clear. We have a sent fact-finding committee. The committee will submit a report whether any due process was not followed. I will comment only after I see the report," she said. Appealing for restraint, Irani said passions are being ignited by "wrong information, misrepresentation, misconstruing and twisting" of facts to project a wrong image. At the press conference she was flanked by ministers Thaawar Chand Gehlot, Nirmala Sitharaman and Vijay Sampla. Giving details of the case, Irani said it was the Executive Council of the University that approved the expulsion of five students including Rohith and an Executive Sub-Committee, which included a senior dalit faculty member, was subsequently constituted to go into the matter and it also upheld the punishment. She also referred to the presence of a number of dalit officials including the hostel warden, who communicated the decision to keep them out of the hostel, to counter the charge of any anti-Dalit bias in the matter. "The Executive Council was not constituted by this government. Members functioning in EC were nominated by previous UPA government," Irani said. However, later at a meeting of the Executive Council, a lenient view was taken as expulsion would have deprived the students of the chance to continue pursuing their doctorate and it was decided to permit them into their departments, library and academic meetings but not in hostel, administration and other public places. The US today condemned the terror attack at a university in Pakistan's restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, saying the blatant disregard for human life displayed by the attackers is intolerable. Condemning the Taliban attack on Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, the US Ambassador to Pakistan David Hale said the US stands with the government and people of Pakistan and is committed to supporting their efforts to fight terrorism. "The blatant disregard for human life displayed by these attackers is intolerable," Hale said in a statement here. "It is especially reprehensible that the attackers targeted an educational institution where students and educators are seeking to better themselves and the nation of Pakistan," he said. He said the "appalling" attack stands in stark opposition to "the desires of the Pakistani people to create a secure, stable, and prosperous country, based on respect for all." "We offer our deepest condolences to the victims and their families during this time of grief," he said, adding that the US supports Pakistan's efforts to bring to justice those behind the attack. Heavily-armed Taliban suicide attackers entered the university in Charsadda, some 50 kms southwest of Peshawar, and opened fire on students and teachers, killing at least 21 people. Four militants were also killed as security forces retaliated. The Supreme Court today reserved verdict on pleas seeking recall of its order appointing Justice Virendra Singh, a former judge of Allahabad High Court, as the Lokayukta of Uttar Pradesh, saying it has been "misled" on the issue. The controversy surrounding Justice Singh, appointed by the apex court as Lokayukta on the ground that the selection panel of the Chief Minister, the Leader of Opposition and the Chief Justice of the High Court did not appoint anybody in last 20 months despite its orders, took the centre stage in the proceedings. "Certainly not," the bench headed by Justice Ranjan Gogoi said when senior advocate T R Andhyarujina submitted as to whether Justice Singh would have been appointed by it if the state had apprised the court about the reservations of the High Court Chief Justice against him. Andhyarujina said, "the Chief Justice suspected the integrity of Justice (Virendra) Singh" and it was agreed to by the Chief Minister and the Leader of Opposition that his name will be dropped, but still his name was given to this court. "They have misled us. We will deal with them," the bench said, adding that still, it will not send the issue of appointment back to the collegium. "There is no question of primacy of views of the Chief Justice. The Chief Minister, the Leader of Opposition and the Chief Justice did not do anything for 20 months...whatever is appropriate, we will do. Leave it to us," the bench said. "We will respect the opinion of the Chief Justice of the High Court. Give us the material. They did not do anything for 20 months. "The moment we appointed somebody, all hell broke loose. The unfortunate part of this is that all the parties did not act...We are used to being blamed. Blame us. We don't bother about all this," the bench said, adding that the selection panel did not "respect" the orders leading to a "painful" situation. At the outset, the bench, which also comprised Justice Prafulla C Pant, made clear that it is not going to vacate its order appointing Justice Singh as Lokayukta till there were compelling circumstances to do so. "Unless there are compelling reasons, shocking our conscience, we will not vacate our order," it said. The bench said it passed the order under Article 142 of the Constitution as the authorities did not act and sought materials on the allegations against Justice Singh, saying one cannot question the integrity of a person without any proof. The court also said that though it does "sit in appeal" on the satisfaction of the HC Chief Justice, but there has to be some material. "What are the specific objections of the Chief Justice to the name of Justice Singh? Can you give us the material," it asked, adding that the bench took out the names from the list provided by the state and it could have been anybody. "This was incumbent upon the state to tell this court that his name was dropped and there was no consensus on his name," Andhyarujina said. Prashant Bhushan, appearing for one of the petitioners, said there have been misrepresentation and there have been complaints made to the Governor against the person. "The court has been misled/persuaded by the state government into appointing Justice Virendra Singh," he said. The apex court had on December 16 last year exercised its constitutional authority and appointed Justice Singh as Lokayukta, saying the constitutional functionaries-- the Chief Minister, the leader of opposition and the Allahabad High Court Chief Justice -- had failed to comply with its orders by not appointing the chief of the state's anti-graft ombudsman. During the winter vacation, the Supreme Court had heard a fresh plea filed by one Sachidanand Gupta who had alleged that the SP government had "concealed facts" about Justice Singh and "played fraud" upon the apex court. The state government had also told the court that it will not go ahead with the oath ceremony of Justice Singh as Lokayukta till the apex court had heard the plea. The court had taken note of the fresh plea which alleged that immediately after the appointment, the HC Chief Justice had written a letter to Governor Ram Naik expressing his displeasure with the state government for not disclosing the facts that he had some reservations on Singh's name. The plea had sought quashing of the December 18 order of the UP government appointing Justice Singh as Lokayukta. Wharton programme for high school students Knowledge@Wharton High School (KWHS), part of the global Knowledge@Wharton network of online business journals at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, is inviting applications from high school students for its upcoming 2016 summer programme, KWHS Global Young Leaders Academy. The intensive academic programme will be held at Wharton in Philadelphia with three two-week sessions between May and July 2016. High school students aged 15-18 years are eligible to apply through BrainGain Magazine (www.braingainmag.com), a study-abroad online magazine that is collaborating with KWHS on this programme. PG Diploma in Management IMI New Delhi is reopening admissions to its course Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM). The last date to fill the form is January 25, 2016. The institute also announced admissions to its Executive Post Graduate Diploma in Management (EXPGDM) 2016-17. The last date for the submission of filled-in forms is January 30. The classes will commence from the second week of May. Advertising & Brand Management The School of Art and Design at the UK-based Staffordshire University, is conducting a BA (Hons) Advertising and Brand Management programme. As part of the course, students get involved with leading advertising and design agencies in London, the North West, Midlands and Glasgow. The course duration is three years. The eligibility criteria is that students must have secured approximately 70% in Class 12. Evidence of English language proficiency is also required, which could be IELTS and/or CBSE, ICSE and selected metro boards Class 12 English. The application deadline is February 15, 2016; students can apply via UCAS. The link for the course is: http://www.staffs.ac.uk/course/SSTK-00726.jsp For details, e-mail Arti.Mishra@staffs.ac.uk. Cyber Security Centre In view of the increasing rate of cyber crime in the country, IIT Kanpur is set to establish a Cyber Security Centre in Bengaluru, along with Karnataka State Electronics Development Corporation Limited (KEONICS). According to IIT(K) Director, Professor Indranil Manna, IIT and KEONICS agreed to be strategic partners in this regard and official documents will be signed on January 31. From students to police officials, all can be trained in cyber security at the Bengaluru-based centre. Professors from Indian Institute of Technology (Kanpur) and cyber experts will provide training at the centre. For this purpose, laboratories will be constructed in both the cities. The centre will be a first-of-its-kind where cyber security will be taught in depth. JN Tata endowment awards The JN Tata Endowment awards a one-time loan scholarship only at the beginning of the course to Indian nationals for full time postgraduate/PhD/postdoctoral studies abroad and in India, in all fields, irrespective of caste, creed, gender or community. The amount to be awarded to each scholar by way of the loan scholarship is determined on the basis of the norms laid down for the purpose, and does not cover the full cost of studies. Applicants should be Indian nationals who are graduates of a recognised Indian University, with a consistently good academic record and other achievements to their credit. Students in the final year of the degree course and those awaiting results are eligible to apply. Email jnte@tatatrusts.org or jntealumni@tatatrusts.org for details. Certificate course in RTI Act The Mumbai University will be offering a six-month PG certificate course in Right to Information (RTI) Act. The Department of Civics and Politics is formulating the course content and identifying the subjects in the curriculum. The university is targeting social activists, PIOs, journalists, bureaucrats and members of civil society to ensure more effective use of the RTI tool. e-MDP Course in Digital Marketing The Xavier School of Management in technical collaboration with Talentedge, one of Indias leading online interactive education companies is launching a Specialised Online Certificate Programme in Digital Marketing for professionals who are employed in marketing, advertising, branding, communications or sales domain. The registration for the course is open till January 31, 2016. Applicants can register online through the link: http://sat.xlri.ac.in/emdp/emdp_reg.php?emdpid=E815. Gandhi fellowship The Gandhi Fellowship Programme is a two-year fellowship programme for talented youngsters from Indias top colleges. The programme is designed to provide youth with the opportunity for personal transformation through self-discovery and thereby, contribute to the causes surrounding them. It creates a legitimate space for young people to engage with social issues in a real manner and devote their energies to bring about school change through their tenure and effectively lead complex public systems in the future. Visit http://apply.gandhifellowship.org/ to know more. Pancharatnam fellowships A limited number of Pancharatnam Fellowships are available at the Raman Research Institute for young researchers with a demonstrated ability to conduct original and independent work. This fellowship is for three years and is usually offered to applicants who have completed at least one postdoctoral period after their doctorate. Application files should all be attached to a single email message. These may be sent to director@rri.res.in. Fellowships in liberal arts The Vinod & Saryu Doshi Foundation has extended its support for education by setting up rigorous and challenging Postgraduate fellowships in liberal arts and sciences. It is to support students who are Indian nationals and who have received acceptances from universities abroad to pursue postgraduation in the field of liberal arts, (Masters, Postgraduate diploma/certificate or doctorate). It mainly includes fellowships for Humanities in India, the Sciences, scholarships for Social Sciences in India and Mathematics. Applicants must have a first class degree or equivalent from a recognised Indian university. They must have secured admission in a foreign university of repute, on their own merit, for a course commencing from August or September 2016. They should be Indian citizens. Candidates studying in the final year of their degree course or equivalent may also apply, provided they are able to submit their final year certificates before April 30, 2016. Visit: http://vsdf.org/ for more details. CLAT to be held in May The Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) will be held on May 8 from 3 pm to 5 pm in many centres across the country. Online application for CLAT 2016 opened on January 1 and closes on March 31. Detailed information along with e-brochures is available on www.clat.ac.in. L&T Build-India scholarship L&T Construction will sponsor fresh, deserving engineering graduates interested in pursuing an MTech in Construction Technology & Management in IIT (Madras/Delhi) and NIT (Surathkal/Trichy) and developing as Project Managers. L&T Construction is part of the Larsen & Toubro conglomerate. The 24-month course will start from July 2016. Eligible candidates may apply online on the Careers page of the website www.Lntecc.com. The royal corridors of Buckingham Palace, Queen Elizabeth II's home, which is usually the preserve of paying visitors or guests, can now be seen through a new virtual reality tour. The queen's primary residence can be accessed via a new video uploaded on the 'British Monarchy YouTube Channel' as part of a larger Google Expeditions Pioneer programme. The palace will be the first UK landmark to feature in a related virtual field trip intended for schoolchildren around the world. "For schoolchildren, Buckingham Palace is one of the most iconic, magical buildings in the world. We're terrifically excited that, thanks to the virtual reality potential of Google Expedition, children, their teachers and families can visit the palace wherever they live," said Jemima Rellie, director of content and audiences at the Royal Collection Trust which has collaborated with Google for the project. "Virtual reality is really something. It's a game-changer. It is entirely different. It is the most physically immersive experience you can get without actually being at the palace. It's not going to replace a visit, but if you are unable to get to the palace, it is the best alternative out there," she said. Using a special app and a cardboard stereoscopic viewer and smartphone, pupils from selected countries will be guided through the palace's grand entrance, up the grand staircase, through the throne room, picture gallery, green drawing room, ballroom and white drawing room. The Buckingham Palace tour is one of 150 such tours on the free app available to 500,000 pupils who have signed up so far in schools across the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Denmark and Sweden. Other countries are to be included as the project expands this year. The photos for the tour were taken last week with a 16-camera rig placed in a circle. The general public can access the 360-degree tour via the YouTube Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gen0NgJjry4. Visitors can stand at the bottom of the grand staircase and, although not able to move, have an almost complete view of the architectural wonder dating back to the early 18th century. Industry body Karnataka Small Scale Industries Association (Kassia) president V K Dikshit on Wednesday appealed to the government to allot land up to two acres for 10 years on lease-cum-sale basis, and abolish the 99-year lease system for micro and small industries. Delivering the keynote at the two-day National Vendor Development Programme-cum-exhibition, IND EXPO, organised by MSME Development Institute, Bengaluru, in association with KSSIDC, Kassia, Bangalore and Department of Industries and Commerce at MSME Development Institute premises, Rajajinagar Industrial Estate, Dikshit said, We will not be interested in 99-year lease system. There is a requirement of 10,000 small plots measuring 3,000 sq ft, 5,000 sq ft, and 10,000 sq ft each, to industries all over Karnataka under 10-year lease-cum-sale basis. Dikshit added that SMEs should be able to get small land and buildings on sale basis, since small land and buildings are the only life saving for industries. Karnataka Minister for Food and Civil Supplies Dinesh Gundu Rao feels that 99-year lease system should be abolished. I can arrange a meeting with Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and you can address your grievances. Personally, I also agree that the 99-year lease system should be abolished. Karnataka State Small Industries Development Corporation (KSSIDC) Chairman B Gurappa Naidu urged the government to provide bus facilities even in remote areas where SMEs are located, as these companies cannot afford transportation. A BHEL official said, BHEL-Bengaluru is meeting the requirements of over 20 per cent procurement from MSMEs (micro small and medium enterprises) for the last three years. The official added, BHEL will register SMEs in this exhibition and will make them permanent vendors within a month. Ford India on Wednesday has launched the all new Endeavour at a starting price of Rs 24.75 lakh (ex-showroom, Mumbai) and is pitted against the Toyota Fortuner. The SUV comes in two engine versions, which are the 2.2-litre and the 3.2-litre. The company can manufacture 1,000 units every month of the new Endeavour at its Chennai facility. Sales for the earlier version of the Endeavour was stopped in late 2015. Ford India would look at consolidating its existing presence in the market besides looking at sustaining its current growth rates. We have launched four products already, and one more is in the offing very soon. It could be a quiet year for products but we are looking at consolidating our presence by working with dealerships across the country to develop a deeper relationship with customers, Ford India President and Managing Director Nigel Harris said. We have grown 40 per cent so far and the company will look at sustaining this growth rate for the rest of the year, Harris added. As far as the impact of Chennai floods are concerned, Harris said that the company lost production of 5,000 units. The launch of the new Endeavour was also delayed by nearly four weeks due to the floods, Harris said. One of the key features of the SUV is the airbags for the knees, which is an industry first. The new Endeavour comes with both 2-wheel and 4-wheel-drive configurations as well as automatic option and is assembled at its Chennai plant. The jaggery produced in the district, which was attracting traders in large numbers to Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC), is seeing a slump leaving the farmers worried. Decades ago, traders from Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala would throng the APMC as there was great demand for the product. Now, the sales are limited only to Bengaluru and Mysuru. Trading of jaggery is held on Wednesdays and Saturdays. About five years ago, 13 to 15 lakh cakes of jaggery were sold per day. Now, not more than two to three lakh cakes are sold. Compared to the last five years, trading has come down by at least 60 per cent. Substandard Substandard quality of jaggery is said to be the reason behind the slump in the sales. It is alleged that growers were using chemicals above the recommended levels, including urea, which affects quality. Speaking to Deccan Herald, APMC officials said, unscientific preparation had also resulted in jaggery losing its colour within two days of preparation, with no takers. With Mandya leading in production and sale of jaggery and farmers in Andhra Pradesh setting up jaggery units, the number of traders buying jaggery from Chamarajanagar APMC has reduced. The sale of jaggery in shopping malls is also said to have affected the sales. The mall owners do not purchase jaggery from APMCs, but buy it directly from jaggery units. Currently, one quintal of cast jaggery is sold for Rs 2,500 to Rs 3,000. e-tendering Last year, the State government had announced introduction of e-tender process for jaggery trading in the district, however, it has not taken off so far. Confusion in e-tender process is creating hurdles in its implementation. While online buyers prefer best quality jaggery, it is not possible to know, whose jaggery has been sold until the tenders are opened, said traders. There is no clear decision in this regard from the government. So, the e-tender process of jaggery is gathering dust, officials said. The JD(S) has been keenly following the developments in the Congress and the BJP vis-a-vis the aspirants for the Hebbal Assembly bypoll. With too many aspirants vying for a ticket, especially in the Congress, the JD(S) is hopeful of being approached by a rebel candidate. There is speculation that the party had already been approached by BJPs Katta Subramanya Naidu and Rahman Sharieff of the Congress. JD(S) leader H D Kumaraswamy has, however, dismissed it as a rumour. On Wednesday, Kumaraswamy went to the extent of saying that the party would be wasting money by fielding candidates in the bypolls. The same money can be distributed among the kin of farmers who have committed suicide. Kumaraswamy, who met his father H D Deve Gowda, said he had broached the subject with the party supremo. His suggestion was, however, not considered as the party leaders and workers wanted the JD(S) to contest the byelections. Congress strategy Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Wednesday said the Congress would field candidates who have the ability to win the upcoming byelections to three Assembly constituencies Hebbal, Devadurga and Bidar. Speaking to reporters, he said there were many ticket aspirants in the party for all the three constituencies. Asked about independent MLC, B A Suresh, seeking Congress ticket to contest from the Hebbal constituency, he said Suresh was a co-member of the Congress Legislature Party. But technically, he cannot join the party. So, there is nothing wrong in him seeking the party ticket, he said. He, however, said the final decision on the candidate selection will be taken by the party high command. BJP meeting The BJP has convened its core committee meeting in Bengaluru on Thursday to decide on its Hebbal candidate. On Wednesday, the partys city unit leaders Subba Narasimha and Muniraju met Katta Subramanya Naidu and Lalitha (wife of the late sitting MLA Jagadish Kumar) to elicit their opinion on the candidate for the constituency. As the Bengaluru traffic police began cracking the whip on helmet-less pillion riding on Wednesday, authorities in some parts of the State have reportedly decided to strictly implement the rule from February 1. Mysuru Police Commissioner B Dayananda said action would be taken against violators after the completion of the awareness drive for 15 days in the city. The police department had roped in school students for an awareness rally on January 14. They had also intercepted two-wheeler riders and explained to them the safety aspects of wearing helmets by both the rider and the pillion rider and also children. The police are said to be going slow on the implementation of the rule considering that there has been a huge demand for helmets. Given the situation, they were also concerned about customers being exploited by helmet dealers. In Dakshina Kannada, Udupi and Kodagu districts, the police have relaxed the rule till January 31. Speaking to Deccan Herald, ACP Uday Nayak said the rule would be enforced strictly from February 1. The police are creating awareness among the general public about the need for pillion riders to wear helmets for safety. Rule breakers Apparently, not a single pillion rider was found wearing helmet on Wednesday in Mangaluru. However, the police are currently taking awareness measures and are warning two-wheeler riders and pillion riders against violating the rule. Two-wheeler riders in Chikkamagaluru were not so lucky, as the traffic police in Mudigere penalised more than 120 two-wheeler riders for not wearing helmets on Wednesday. The police had been issuing warnings to riders to wear helmets since the past one week. As a result, helmet dealers, too, have been doing brisk business. Karnataka could be the first state to have a university catering specifically to management education on the lines of Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU) for engineering and Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS) for medical courses. The Canara Bank School of Management Studies (CBSMS), Bangalore University, has prepared a preliminary proposal to start what would be called the Karnataka International Management University. Besides addressing the issue of quality in management education in the state, the proposal also lays strong emphasis on sustainable development education. A copy of the proposal is with the Deccan Herald. Higher Education Minister T B Jayachandra has entrusted the task of reviewing the proposal to a committee, according to K Janardhanam, director, CBSMS. Asked about the Management University, Jayachandra, who was in the UK to attend an education forum said: It is a positive step. Once I am back, I will look into the matter and will take some decisions. Some of the objectives of the university include improving the quality of management education in the state through globally benchmarked curriculum, smoothening the coordination of management education through affiliated institutions by focusing on profession-specific needs, attracting international researchers and management degree aspirants to the state and establishing a unique low-cost and high-quality management education system in the country for weaker and under-privileged sections of society. The university will aim to integrate management colleges and undergraduate as well as postgraduate courses in other colleges. We are taking the prestigious Singapore Management University (SMU) as a model in trying to develop this concept, said Janardhanam. While there are as many as 261 All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE)-approved management institutions with an annual intake of 22,000 in the state, hundreds of seats are left vacant each year. The proposal also aims to address this concern. The situation calls for immediate measures to streamline the management development process through innovative interventions in management education. Creation of a separate management university is greatly needed for aligning the management education quality to the best of the global benchmarks and making it affordable for larger sections of the society, the proposal says. While hailing the move to start such a university, Basavaraj Ramanlal, chairman, Karnataka College of Management, Yelahanka had a word of caution: The faculty, infrastructure and curriculum need to be carefully planned, he said. Consider this. traffic police in Bengaluru have installed CCTV cameras at various busy road junctions to capture and record traffic movement. The data is later monitored by police personnel for traffic volume, violations, accidents, road safety purposes among others. The process takes time and manpower. Now, enter machine intelligence and data analytics technology with which it is possible to analyse the data for these parameters on a real-time basis. To tap the potential of data analytics - an emerging technology - for various eco-systems in the State, the Karnataka Knowledge Commission (KKC) has constituted a special task group on machine intelligence. Machine intelligence uses technology to enable machines to perform tasks traditionally conducted by humans with speed and efficiency. The 18-member task group is co-chaired by Chiranjib Bhattacharya, professor, Department of Computer Science and Automation, Indian Institute of Science and Venkatesh Valluri, chairman and president of Ingersoll Rand (India Region). The task group, which comprises representatives from software companies, industry and academia, held its first meeting on December 22 and will be coming out with a Karnataka - Machine Intelligence Plan in six months. Data analytics is a new science and we are looking at using the technology to address issues in the field of transportation, compilation of census and survey data, healthcare, education, rural and urban development, governance, citizen services specific to Karnataka, says Mukund Rao, member secretary of KKC. Rao, who is also a member of the special task group, said the panel will come out with a roadmap for development and industrialisation of technologies and applications related to machine intelligence for the next 10 to 15 years. KKC, in association with the department of Information Technology, held a round table on the sidelines of Bangalore ITE.Biz last month. Experts participated in the discussion and several ideas emerged. We will be taking it forward, Rao said. The panel will look at developing a business model for machine intelligence and recommend steps that the government could take to encourage commercial development of the technology. Rao said the group also plans to involve universities and students in the run-up to the preparation of the Karnataka Machine Intelligence Plan. Bandaru Dattatreyas letter to HRD Minister Smriti Irani on the University of Hyderabad has kicked up a storm in his home state of Telangana, but this is not the first time the labour minster has written to a colleague on Hyderabad. Before his controversial letter to Irani, Dattatreya had written to Home Minister Rajnath Singh on April 7 seeking an in-depth investigation into the activities of terror outfits in Telangana in which he has depicted Hyderabad in not so flattering terms. While University of Hyderabad has turned into a den of anti-national politics for the Secunderabad MP, the city has become a place known for nurturing militant activities. In his letter to Singh, Dattatreya said Telangana is known to be the target over the years for nationally and internationally banned outfits, which are known to create terror to gain national and international attention. His letter came against the backdrop of the encounter killing of two suspected SIMI activists in Nalgonda district in April. Dattatreya stated that he was bringing Singhs notice to the fact that Hyderabad had been a place known for nurturing militant activities by the banned militant outfits and has been the shelter zone of many sympathisers of such banned outfits. Deccan Herald had reported about the letter in April. The 68-year-old minister, who was loaned to the BJP by the RSS, became a minister in the Narendra Modi government as the BJPs representative from Telangana. Dattatreya was also a minister the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. In the controversial letter to Smriti in August, he stated: Hyderabad University, a Central university located in Hyderabad has, in the recent past, become a den of casteist, extremist and anti-national politics. The letter also mentions activities of Ambedkar Students Association (ASA) of which Rohith Vemula was a member. He had also referred to ASAs protest against the execution of Yakub Memon in July. This letter has landed Dattatreya in trouble with the police registering a case of abetting Rohiths suicide. Does the Hyderabad municipal elections due on February 2 have anything to do with the politics being played out over Rohith Vemulas suicide? A section of the BJP at least thinks so. Party sources said the TRS government, which is contesting the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) polls for the first time, was trying to paint the BJP as anti-Dalit by making Union Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya an accused in the case. The minister, who is a Yadav by caste, which falls under the OBC category, is also an MP from Secunderabad. The 150 GHMC wards have a sizeable Dalit votes. Of them, 10 wards are reserved for schedule castes (SCs). Prior to the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, giving birth to Telangana, the Hyderabad corporation politics was dominated by the Congress and All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM). But, the TRS is trying to get a toe-hold among voters belonging to the underprivileged sections of the society. A BJP general secretary said the K Chandrashekhar Rao governments move to get an FIR registered against Dattatreya was politically motivated since there was no connection between Rohith committing suicide and the ministers letter to the HRD Ministry, which was essentially to seek response on a complaint filed by Hyderabad Central Universitys ABVP member Sushil Kumar. Kumar was allegedly attacked by Ambedkar Students Association when he along with other ABVP members objected to their protest against hanging of Mumbai terror convict Yakub Memon. On what basis did they file an FIR against the Union minister? If at all they had to do, it should be on the basis of the suicide note of the student, said the BJP general secretary on condition of anonymity. There is not an inkling of evidence in the suicide note that the BJP or the minister played any role in forcing Rohith to take this extreme and unfortunate step, said party sources. In the tussle for extracting political mileage, the Bahajun Samajwadi Party (BSP), which is also contesting the Hyderabad local body polls, also plunged along with other prominent leaders, including Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi. While condemning the incident, former Uttar Pradesh chief minister and BSP supremo Mayawati said: The attitude of two senior ministers in Prime Minister Narendra Modis Cabinet towards the Dalit scholar that if you are against the policies of the BJP government, you are an enemy of ours and will be harassed through government terrorism, is blatantly undemocratic and condemnable. BJP leaders said attempts to drag Dattatreya into the case is the latest in a trend of accusing the party of being either anti-caste or religious minorities. The party sources said that prior to Delhi elections, the Opposition charged that churches were being attacked, but after a probe it turned out to be different. Similar outlandish allegations were made in a Dalit family feud case of Faridabad in Haryana, sources added. Thieves fleeing with a blue-beacon flashing SUV of a senior IPS officer posted with Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) from near Delhi on Wednesday sent shivers down the security establishment, which is bracing towards ensuring an incident-free Republic Day celebrations. The incident, which took place in the early hours of Wednesday immediately brought back memories of terrorists using the official vehicle of Punjab Police officer Salwinder Singh after abducting him to reach the Pathankot airbase before launching the terror strike. A senior official said they were viewing the incident seriously as terrorists could use the vehicle to launch a strike at sensitive locations. We cannot take it lightly. Especially, at a time we are celebrating the Republic Day, the official said. A massive hunt was launched for the white Tata Safari with a registration number CH 01 GA 2915, with the Delhi Police, which are coordinating the security for the Republic Day parade here, taking to Twitter seeking publics help in tracing the vehicle. The vehicle was bought recently and it has beacon as well as the ITBP flag. Official vehicle white Tata Safari with blue light of IG ITBP stolen from sector 23 Noida last night.CH01GA2915. Alert sounded, Delhi Police said on Twitter. All requested to share information if any with Delhi 100 or Noida SSP or 100 regarding this vehicle if spotted, it added. Officials said the vehicle of ITBP Inspector General (IG) Anand Swarup was stolen from his Sector-23 residence at around 3:30 am. A case was registered at Noida Sector 24 Police Station after the guard of the residential complex informed Swarup. The Union Home Ministry has specially asked Delhi Police to ensure that the vehicle is located as early as possible. Sources said police in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh are checking for the vehicle. On its part, ITBP has set up a Court of Inquiry into the incident. Swarup, a 1992-batch IPS officer of Uttar Pradesh cadre, was posted as Inspector General (Provisioning) in Delhi few months back on transfer from Mussoorie. India and Pakistan are keen to complete at least one round of bilateral dialogue before Prime Minister Narendra Modis proposed visit to Islamabad to attend the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) summit in November. The two countries want to move ahead despite by the recent terrorist attack at Pathankot airbase in Punjab. Modi has already accepted an invitation from Pakistan Prime Minister M Nawaz Sharif to visit Islamabad for the 19th Saarc summit. Modi also paid a surprise visit to Lahore on December 25 to greet his Pakistan counterpart on his birthday and join celebration at his residence on the occasion of the wedding of his granddaughter. New Delhi and Islamabad, however, are learnt to be preparing for a formal visit by Modi to Pakistan by the end of this year. Modis trip to Islamabad for the Saarc summit will create an opportunity for a meeting between him and Sharif on the sideline of the multilateral event. New Delhi and Islamabad are learnt to be keen to include a bilateral component with a substantive agenda during the visit. But both sides, according to the sources, agree that senior officials must complete at least one round of negotiations under the Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue before Modis visit. India and Pakistan on December 9 last agreed to restart parleys after a two-year-long hiatus. They agreed to rename it as Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue, which, however, would include parleys on all the subjects discussed in Composite Dialogue from February 2004 to November 2008 and again as components of an untitled dialogue between March 2011 and January 2013. Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and his counterpart A A Choudhury were scheduled to meet in Islamabad to decide the modalities of the Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue. The meeting was, however, deferred after terrorists attacked the Indian Air Force base at Pathankot. On the eve of French President Francois Hollandes visit, negotiators from India and France are looking at expanding the Rafale deal after the first 36 fighter jets are delivered to the Indian Air Force as per original plan. The government-to-government deal for 36 jets was agreed when Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited France in April 2015. Since then, the defence ministry cancelled a previous tender to purchase 126 multi role fighter jets arguing that the deal would be too expensive. The French president is scheduled to arrive on January 25 and he will be the chief guest for the Republic Day. Dassault Aviations Rafale was the selected platform in the 126 aircraft tender as well. As negotiators scramble to prepare a document on the Rafale deal for the Modi-Hollande summit meeting, there is no official word on whether the commercial agreement would be inked. Inclusion of the option clause to buy more aircraft is one of the unresolved issues. Reports from France, quoting unnamed sources pegged the deal at approximately $9 billion, but it is unclear if the package would include the cost of weapons and training. Also resolving the offset obligations was the hardest parts in the negotiations, where the two sides have reportedly achieved a breakthrough. With depleting fighter strength, IAF was looking at the Rafale deal to add some strength in its wings. But the Air Force headquarters too has not come up with a road-map on how the gap of 90 aircraft would be filled as the indigenous Tejas light combat aircraft will need more time to become fully combat ready. Modi and Hollande are expected to give a fresh push to the Rafale deal for different reasons. For Modi, it will be arming the military, whereas for Hollande it would spur economic activities in the backdrop of the economic emergency that he announced. A follow-on order for three more Scorpene submarines to be manufactured at Mazgaon dock in Mumbai could figure in their meeting. The first Scorpene submarine being manufactured with French collaboration is undergoing trial and expected to be inducted by later this year. All the six submarines are likely to be delivered to the Navy by 2020 as per the existing contract. If materialise, the follow on order would allow the MDL to explore the air independent propulsion technology that allows submarines to stay under water for a longer time than conventional diesel-electric submarines. Breaking her silence over the controversy surrounding the suicide of research scholar Rohith Vemula of the University of Hyderabad, HRD Minister Smriti Irani said on Wednesday that the issue has been projected as a Dalit versus non-Dalit confrontation with malicious intent. The minister also conveyed her condolences to Rohiths family, saying she would not indulge in political mudslinging at this sombre moment. Smritis statement came after Prime Minister Narendra Modi took stock of the situation at a meeting on Wednesday. This is not a caste battle. This is not a Dalit versus non-Dalit issue as being projected by some to ignite passions. A malicious attempt is being made to show it as a caste battle which it is not. A young life was cut short. I convey my condolence and my sympathy to his family, Smriti told a press conference. Flanked by Cabinet colleagues Thaawar Chand Gehlot and Nirmala Sitharaman, Smirti rejected accusations that the university officials suspended Rohith and four other students because her ministry was sending reminders to the varsity seeking to intimate them with facts on Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreyas complaint that the campus had become a den of anti-national politics. Narrating the chain of events, Smriti said the varsity executive council decided to expel Rohith and other students after an FIR was registered over accusations that Ambedkar Students Association (ASA) members attacked some other students. I am compelled to say that the student (ABVP leader N Susheel) who was attacked was also an OBC. The senior-most professor who upheld the executive councils decision to suspend the students was also a Dalit. The warden who asked Rohith to vacate the hostel is also a Dalit. This is not a Dalit vs non-Dalit issue, the minister said. We forwarded Dattatreyas letter to the university in compliance with the rules. Dattatreya is not the only MP from whom we received complaint, she said. To substantiate her claim, Smriti showed a letter written to her by Congress Rajya Sabha MP Hanumantha Rao on November 17, 2014, wherein he complained about various irregularities and corruption in the varsity, urging her to order a probe. The Congress MP also held the university administration responsible for a series of suicides committed by students belonging to the marginalised communities and sought the ministrys intervention. We wrote to the university and said give us a reply. We also sent six reminders to them. We are following the rules for MPs of every political party. These guidelines were made by the previous government, she added. She also displayed to the media a certified copy of Rohiths suicide note, reading out its content which did not appear in the suicide note circulated on social media. To the ASA family, I am sorry to disappoint all of you. There are some badwaters in us, she read from the note. Smriti also launched an attack on the Congress, accusing the party of adopting a shoot politically policy on the incident. The Congress wants to shoot politically on this issue. It is expected but unfortunate. We would not encourage rumour mongering, she added. As many as 1,520 motorists who rode with pillion without helmet were penalised by the Bengaluru Traffic Police who started enforcing the new rule from Wednesday, on a low scale though. After a week-long campaign on creating awareness about the new rule that makes helmet mandatory for pillion riders, the traffic police levied a fine of Rs 100 each against the violators. Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic), M A Saleem, told Deccan Herald that all most all police stations received an average number of violations, which in total touched 1,520. We want people to voluntarily follow the rule and not by force, he said, and added that the traffic police would be more strict on Thursday. Acknowledging that there were more violators than the number of people who were booked on Wednesday, he said that only traffic police inspectors were directed to fine violators on Wednesday and not their subordinates. Saleem felt that the rate of compliance was up by 60 per cent compared to that on January 12 when they had started the awareness campaign. We are hoping to see better compliance, he said, adding that the staff from the Transport Department assisted the traffic police on Wednesday. A traffic inspector in Bengaluru South said some people claimed they were not aware of the rule. A high percentage of motorists were hoping that the grace period would be extended. Others claimed that they picked their colleagues up from work and some promised to buy a helmet soon. Saleem said pillions below the age of 12 years are exempted. We want to first ensure that all pillion riders wear helmet whether it is ISI marked helmets or not. They should understand that helmets are for their own good and not for the police, he added. A 31-year-old software engineer was found dead with strangle marks on her neck at her flat in Mahaveer Kings Place apartment near Vijayalakshmi Colony in Kadugodi, off Whitefield, in eastern Bengaluru on Tuesday night. Kusuma Rani, who hailed from Punjab, was strangled with a laptop battery cord, the police suspect. The murder came to light when her roommate, Nidhi, returned home from work around 9 pm. She opened the door and found her lying on the floor. Rani was unresponsive. Nidhi alerted the neighbours and called the police. Rani worked for computer technology multinational IBM in Whitefield. She earlier lived in Noida and had moved to Bengaluru just six months ago. She had divorced her husband and posted her profile on the matrimonial website, Shaadi.com. It is clear that she was looking forward to remarry, the police said. Security guards at the apartment told the police about a man who had come asking for Rani. They said they told her about him. She came down and took him to her flat. The man left the place after a few hours, said a senior police officer who is part of the investigation. CCTV footage shows the man entering the apartment complex and leaving. We suspect him and are searching for him. Rani was alone in the flat when she was murdered, the officer said. It has also emerged that Rani had lodged a complaint at the Kadugodi police station a few months ago, saying a man whom she contacted through the matrimonial website had cheated her of Rs four lakh by promising to marry her. We are investigating if it was the same man who visited the victim on Tuesday, the officer added. A case has been registered at the Kadugodi police station. In a swift action, the Jnanabharathi police on Wednesday rescued a person within 45 minutes of his abduction. According to police, Ramesh, a director of a private company was abducted by three persons in Jnanaganga Nagar near Kengeri. The police also arrested Shivakumar, one of the abductors, while his two accomplices are at large. Police said that around 8 pm, Shivakumar and his two friends came near Rameshs office and asked the latter to come out for a discussion on a proposal. Even as they were talking, the trio bundled Ramesh into a car and drove away. The security guard who noticed this incident, informed the office staff, who in turn alerted the police. The police tracked the mobile phone of Ramesh and traced his location to Gollarahatti. A team of policemen were sent to the spot who managed to rescue Ramesh. He is being questioned to know his relationship with the suspects, police added. BMTC bus runs over biker A 25-year-old man was run over by a BMTC bus after his motorcycle skidded off the road near BEL-Jalahalli Circle on Wednesday morning. Ranganath, a resident of Kammanahalli, was riding to his workplace in Vidyaranyapura when he lost control over the bike and it skidded off near the BEL-Jalahalli Circle around 6 am. A BMTC bus moving behind ran him over, killing him on the spot, the Jalahalli traffic police said. Passersby called the police who arrived at the spot and took him to a hospital. But he was declared brought dead. The police seized the bus and arrested its driver, who was identified as Nagesh. The bus was hired by a private company to ferry its employees. Judge Sue L. Robinson recently granted a motion for judgment on the pleadings that U.S. Patent No. 5,612,527 is invalid under 35 U.S.C. 101. Motivation Innovations, LLC v. Petsmart, Inc., No. 13-957-SLR (D. Del. Jan. 12, 2016). The 527 patent disclose[d] and claim[ed] methods for redeeming discount offers by associating a machine-readable identification code, such as a barcode, with data identifying items to be offered at a discount. Id. at 13. Judge Robinson discussed the evolution of cases since the Supreme Courts Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank Intl, 134 S.Ct. 2347 (2014), noting: the complete rejection of patentability for computer programs to the almost complete acceptance of such, to the current (apparent) requirements that the patent claims in suit (1) disclose a problem necessarily rooted in computer technology, and (2) claim a solution that (a) not only departs from the routine and conventional use of the technology, but (b) is sufficiently specific so as to negate the risk of pre-emption. Id. at 10. As such, the Courts analysis under 101 is a difficult exercise. Id. at 11. Applying the Alice framework, Judge Robinson first determined that the claimed invention was directed to the abstract idea of using coupons to provide discounts. Id. at 16. Having found the claims were directed to a patent-ineligible concept, Judge Robinson turned to the next step in the Alice framework to determine whether additional limitations of the claims merely recite conventional or routine activity or computer technology. Id. Judge Robinson determined the claims were invalid because the additional limitations involved routine and conventional computer technology to redeem discounts and track customer spending habits. Id. at 17. By Timmons Roberts 13 January 2016 (Brookings) I spent the past week in Bangladesh, visiting the countryside on a fascinating and heartening trip from the countrys massive capital, Dhaka, to the south, a region being hammered by climate change. I came to give some speeches and took the opportunity to see for myself how foreign aid and local sweat and equity are being used to fight the rising seas in a country so low that 30 million people may become refugees. For them to secure a livelihood in their home places, the developed countries need to be engaged, with our resources, our hands, and our minds. We simply cannot afford not to be here. After being asked for years to come, Id finally made the trip to attend the 2nd annual Gobeshona conference, a gathering of researchers seeking to understand the reality and best policy and actions Bangladesh and other vulnerable countries can take in the face of rising seas, intensified cyclones, saltwater intrusion, fatal heat waves, and droughts. Bangladesh, with its 180 million people living on an ancient river delta, is extremely vulnerable to climate change, and has become a national laboratory for how we all are going to cope. As Dr. Saleemul Huq, who leads the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) and is a world leader on adaptation, puts it, if you want to see what climate change looks like, and more importantly, what tackling it looks like, you must come to Bangladesh. What will happen to the rest of the world tomorrow is already happening there today. The rest of the world can therefore learn from Bangladesh how to tackle the problem. In 2015 we saw how the influx of 1 million refugees from Syria has challenged the whole European Union system, and taxed resources and cultures across the region to keep their doors open. Imagine the disruption that might come from 30 or 300 million climate refugees if emissions are not controlled and poor nations needs are not addressed. Migrants are likely to follow past patterns of movement. First, they will try stay in their homelands, and if they have to move, they will seek to move to cities as close as possible to their homes, so they can remain in touch. When they get to cities, they will be forced to live in shantytowns and other irregular settlements, in shacks often built on precarious land in floodplains, subject to mudslides, extreme heat, and unsanitary conditions. They will be forced to work in the informal sector, earning pennies and living hand-to-mouth. Once uprooted, further disruption then can send them on to other cities or countries. I met a neighborhood of people in Khulna, a sprawling coastal zone city that has absorbed displaced people from Bangladeshs coastal zone. Their fields are made worthless by saltwater flooding, with their wells now often too salty to drink or use for irrigation or watering animals. Tin shacks with dirt floors were packed together in one tiny piece of land they rented, with 20 families sharing cooking facilities, a water tap, and washing place. In this way, they had adapted to climate change, in a common way that humans have throughout history: they moved and reinvented themselves in a new place. The men learned how to pull rickshaws in the savage traffic, heat, pollution, and dust of Khulna, earning a scant living through long shifts that run from morning until late at night. Some of the women have secured low-paying jobs as domestic servants for families of more means, cleaning, cooking, and caring for children. If they can, they keep in touch with the people who stayed back home, sending money when they can to their elderly parents or spouses to survive. [more] MTN Nigeria has claimed that it refuses to pay a dime or penny of the $3.9 billion fine that it has incurred in the market for failing to comply with security regulation. The penalty was issued to MTN by the regulator NCC (Nigerian Communications Commission) for failing to disconnect unregistered SIMs as part of a crackdown on terrorist activity. All other major operators complied with the order. Nigerian newspaper Business Journal has quoted a top MTN official as saying that the operator is considering two options for avoiding the fine which has already been reduced by 25% from $5.2 billion following negotiations - and one of them may be to exit the market. MTN is lodging a legal challenge against the penalty, with the unnamed source claiming that lawyers had been instructed to keep the matter perpetually in court, up to the supreme court until the current government and the NCCs leadership - no longer holds office. While Nigerias current administration is in its first term, even if it procures a second, the source has claimed that MTN can keep the case in court beyond 10 years. The same source added that paying the fine would bankrupt MTN in the market, and claimed that the NCCs motivations were questionable, which could result in the operator pulling out of the lucrative market. Our second strategy is to leave the Nigerian market entirely and expand into other territories in Africa and probably, the Middle East, to cushion the expected revenue gap from Nigeria. However, MTN leads the Nigerian market with over 65 million connections; it is therefore highly debatable whether it would seriously consider withdrawing from the country. It has also recently renewed its Nigerian operating licence up to 2021, as well as acquiring local CDMA operator Visafone to improve the quality of its Nigerian broadband offering. An American medical device company called Insulet Corporation has donated $10,000 (7,000) each to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) and the American Diabetes Association (ADA). Insulet, based in Billerican, Massachusetts, raised the funds following a company-sponsored three-day initiative in which thousands of US clinicians wore a demo of the OmniPod system. OmniPod is a discreet and unique insulin delivery system which can calculate suggested doses and administer insulin without the hassle of tubes. It can provide up to three days of non-stop insulin delivery, has a built-in blood glucose meter, and because it is waterproof it does not have to be removed when showering or swimming. The device is available to purchase online in the UK. Our mission is to improve the lives of individuals living with diabetes, said Patrick Sulliva, President and Chief Executive Officer of Insulet. The successful fundraising efforts by the employees of Insulet underscore their creativity, dedication and commitment to this very important cause. The funds were raised as part of Novembers National Diabetes Awareness, and Insulet donated to either the ADA or the JDRF for each clinician who participated in the program. The JDRF is a leading global funder of type 1 diabetes research that has international affiliates in the UK, Australia, and several European countries. It hosts several fundraising events every year across the UK. Margo K. Lucero, Senior Vice President, Corporate and International Development of JDRF said: We graciously accept this donation from Insulet and its employees who share our desire to not only research for tomorrow, but find the best possible diabetes treatments for today. Jonathan Webb, Vice President, Corporate Alliances and Grants, American Diabetes Associatio, added: [This donation] will help advance our cutting-edge research efforts aimed to prevent, cure and manage all types of diabetes. But as we celebrate advances, we also promise to never let down our guard in both the fight against diabetes and the fight for all people affected by diabetes. The company has reportedly filed an application with the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) and may have asked for approval to sell products online too Apple may soon be opening its own Apple branded stores in India soon. According to a report by ET Tech, the company has filed an application to open its own store with the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP). DIPP Secretary, Amitabh Kant told ET Tech, We have just received Apple's proposal. We are examining it. He added that Apple has not specified how much it will be investing and that it has asked for government approval to sell products online as well. The companys move comes after the Indian government's liberalisation of Foreign Direct Investment rules on single-brand retail in November. Earlier rules required companies to have a certain percentage of manufacturing in the country if they wanted to operate retail outlets. Apple CEO, Tim Cook has recognised the importance of emerging markets like India and China for the company. Back in April last year, he revealed that emerging markets contributed for nearly 40% of Apples revenue in the Q2, 2014 and that middle class in India and China fueled most of the sales of the iPhone. In October, it was reported that Apple had partnered with Indian retail Chroma for setting up Apple Stores in the country. As part of the pilot project, Apple stores would be opened in six locations, five in Chroma stores in Mumbai and one in Bangalore. Apple has also crossed the $1 billion mark in India for the first time during the financial year 2014-15, as per the results filed with the Registrar of Companies (RoC). The company posted a 44% increase in sales to Rs. 6,472.89 crore as compared to the Rs. 4,500.35 crore it posted during the last financial year. Its financial sales have nearly doubled as compared to FY13, where it posted a revenue of Rs. 3,057.79 crore. The service would allow enterprises and organisations to use PCs like a utility by paying one price per seat on a monthly basis over a three or four year period HP has announced that its offering a new Device-as-a-Service (DaaS) program aimed at empowering businesses in India. This service would allow enterprises and organisations to use their PCs like a utility by paying one price per seat on a monthly basis over a three to four year period. Customers would also get customised services and support from HP such as PC configuration and software installation, onsite break-fix, data migration, and proactive support. HP DaaS also ensures secure and responsible disposal of PCs during the final phase in the PC lifecycle. Read the complete press release below HP Inc. today announced that it is offering a new Device-as-a-Service (DaaS) programme, empowering businesses in India to stay ahead, move fast, be more efficient and deliver the best experiences to their customers. Indian businesses are innovating to serve a vibrant, diverse workforce and are transforming to become more competitive nationally and globally, said Rajiv Srivastava, Managing Director, HP Inc., India. HP offers services and solutions that grow with enterprises and organizations, enabling them to leapfrog whole technologies, connect across geographies in India and even global markets. As the final touch-point to their customer and employee, the right device is just the start. Its about how you manage that device, ensuring flexibility, integrating the right application and keeping it secure till its replaced. With HP Device-as-a-Service, enterprises and organizations use their PCs like a utility - they pay one price per seat on a monthly basis over a three or four year period. They also get customized services and support from HP, such as PC configuration and software installation, onsite break-fix, data migration, proactive support, while having the ability to upgrade to the latest HP commercial desktop, notebook PCs, and tablets for subsequent contract periods. HP DaaS incorporates services, support and eventual disposal as part of one overall services agreement. This is different from typical leasing agreements where PC acquisition, setup and maintenance are covered under separate contracts. This means that organizations can enjoy more predictable annual costs and greater ease from having to manage just one contract during their entire PC lifecycle. HP DaaS also covers secure and responsible disposal of PCs, a final phase in the PC lifecycle that is often overlooked and risk the leak of sensitive information. HP DaaS was first implemented with Maruti Suzuki in India, with a focus on empowering their sales force with tablets that come with interactive content and serve as an on-ramp for customer information. Digital transformation is key for businesses to stay ahead of the curve and deliver best-in-class services to customers. Innovative service model offerings from our partners like HP is helping us to transform our customer experience. Each dealer can better identify the options that match the requirements and aspirations of our customers and address their queries more effectively and provide impeccable experience, said Rajesh Uppal, Executive Director, IT, Maruti Suzuki India Limited. The new 4GB DRAM package is based on the second generation High Bandwidth Memory (HBM2), which Samsung claims to be seven times faster than the current DRAM performance limit Samsung has announced that it has begun mass producing the worlds first 4GB DRAM package that is based on the second generation High Bandwidth Memory (HBM2) interface. The company claims that this is seven times faster than current DRAM performance limit, which allows faster responsiveness for high-end computing tasks including parallel computing, graphics rendering, and machine learning. The new package is designed to be used for high performance computing, enterprise servers, advanced graphics and network systems. The new DRAM package features 256GBps of bandwidth, which is double of a HBM1 DRAM package. Samsung states that it uses the company's 20 nanometer process and advanced HBM chip design for improved performance, efficiency, and reliability. The 4GB HBM2 offers enhanced power efficiency by doubling bandwidth per watt as compared to a 4Gb GDDR5 based solution. It also embeds Error Correcting Code (ECC) functionality to offer high reliability. Sewon Chun, Senior Vice President, Memory Marketing, Samsung Electronics stated, By mass producing next-generation HBM2 DRAM, we can contribute much more to the rapid adoption of next-generation HPC systems by global IT companies. Also, in using our 3D memory technology here, we can more proactively cope with the multifaceted needs of global IT, while at the same time strengthening the foundation for future growth of the DRAM market. Additionally, Samsung has stated that it plans on producing an 8GB HBM2 DRAM package by the end of 2016. It says that this will save more than 95% space in graphic cards as compared to GDDR5 DRAM. The company adds that it will steadily increase the production volume of its HB2 DRAM over the year in order to meet the anticipated growth in demand for network systems and servers. Samsung also says that it will expand its line-up of HBM2 DRAM solutions so as to stay ahead in the high-performance computing market and extend its lead in the category of premium memory production. Gunmen stormed a university in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, leaving at least 21 people dead - four of them security guards - and dozens wounded. Pakistani Taliban spokesperson Umar Mansoor claimed responsibility for the attack on Bacha Khan University, saying it was revenge for a previous operation by the Pakistani military. Mansoor was behind the December 2014 attack on an army-run school that killed 144 children. Police said the militants scaled the university walls and then entered the building, opening fire on students and teachers. Police chief Saeed Wazir told AFP the operation had ended and security forces were clearing the area, with most of the student victims shot dead at a hostel for boys on the campus Many of the dead were reportedly shot in the head, execution-style. "More than 30 others including students, staff and security guards were wounded," Wazir said. Meanwhile, military spokesman Major General Asim Bajwa said on Twitter that four attackers were killed. "Update: Snipers killed 2 more terrorists on roof top, total Terrorist killed so far 4. All buildings (and) roof top taken over by Army," he wrote. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who is currently in Davos for the World Economic Forum, issued a statement condemning the attack. Sharif said he was "deeply grieved over the sad incident of terrorists' attack on Bacha Khan University. The International Monetary Fund has urged the global community to accept lower growth in China as the new normal going forward. In its biannual take on global growth prospects published on Tuesday, the Washington-based lender cut its 2016 growth forecast to 3.4% from 3.6%. The outlook for global growth in 2017 was lowered to 3.6% from 3.8%. In tandem with the data release, the IMF cautioned that China is adjusting to the new normal of slower growth banking on domestic consumption and a weaker yuan, something which global markets have to contend with and not overreact to, especially in the commodities sphere. The slowdown and rebalancing of the Chinese economy, lower commodity prices, and strains in some large emerging market economies will continue to weigh on growth prospects in 2016-17, the IMF noted further. China had its own growth projections for 2016 and 2017 maintained at 6.3% and 6% respectively. The European Central Bank would increase the size of its programme of quantitative easing, but what was really needed were more radical instruments [from the ECB], Kenneth Rogoff, an ex-International Monetary Fund chief economist told Bloomberg TV. Speaking on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the economist said [ECB president Draghi] can do more QE, he probably will. Hell probably press ahead, but unless he can change more radically his instruments, its not easy to do. Just as some analysts had in recent days been trimming their forecasts for rate hikes from the US Federal Reserve in 2016, the opposite had been taking place on this side of the Pond. A survey conducted by Bloomberg on 18 January showed that 60% of analysts it polled expected Draghi to announce further stimulus in 2016, up from the 40% who forecast that in December. QE is of limited effectiveness [Draghi, has] limited tools, Rogoff added. Unilevers plans to buttress its growth prospects in anticipation of weakness in emerging markets paid off last year. In September 2013 the companys boss, Paul Polman, warned of a downturn in emerging markets from which it derives about half its business. Rivals afterwards issued similar warnings, albeit to different degrees. Now Polman is warning of tougher market conditions ahead this year. The consumer goods-maker has responded by cutting costs hard and forcing through price increases where it can. It has also been adding premium high-margin products like Talenti and Grom. Lasts years financials seem to indicate the strategy is working. Sales rose 4.1% versus 2014, half from volume and half from prices, while underlying sales in emerging markets grew 7.1%. Debt increased as a result of acquisitions, with a stronger dollar not helping matters given that its in dollars. However, the companys gearing does not look excessive. Selling on about 19 times earnings and sporting a yield of 3.1% they look worth holding in the long-term, given the firms demonstrated ability to navigate choppy waters, The Timess Tempus said. Ocado may have found a good business model, albeit accidentally. The digital grocer began carrying out deliveries for WmMorrison in 2013, the struggling supermarket chain. Now, some reports indicate it might soon ink another partnership with Amazon. Indeed, the company itself had led investors to expect just such an event towards the end of 2015. The absence of that explains in part why the share price had moved lower. Nevertheless, part of the rationale behind Sainsburys purchase of Home Retail lay in the latters superior logistics. Similarly, Amazon was poorly-equipped to meet large multi-item, temperature-controlled to tight deadlines Ocados speciality. Given the long slog before Ocado might achieve the scale necessary to reap the full benefits of its growth, providing its technology to another big retailer could certainly deliver returns, but being bought out by one would be better, the Financial Times Lex column said. Save my User ID and Password Some subscribers prefer to save their log-in information so they do not have to enter their User ID and Password each time they visit the site. To activate this function, check the 'Save my User ID and Password' box in the log-in section. This will save the password on the computer you're using to access the site. Note: If you choose to use the log-out feature, you will lose your saved information. This means you will be required to log-in the next time you visit our site. Ohio statewide, congressional candidates disputed 2020 election U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance is among a slate of Ohio officials who cast doubt on the 2020 election results amid false claims of systemic fraud. A Masters graduate from De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) enjoyed his course so much he is now teaching the subjects he was studying just a few years ago. Scott Leatham said he originally intended to start a career in the military but was inspired to become a lecturer while completing his BA (Hons) in International Relations and History. He went on to take an MA in International Relations and will graduate with Distinction in January 2016, receiving the Leicester Business School Prize for Best Student Performance on his course. The 23-year-old said: I chose my undergraduate degree because, initially, I was looking at a career in the military. That changed within a year because of what I learned and I found myself on a different political path. After realising academia appealed, Scott started his masters. He said: I chose to stay at DMU as Id enjoyed my three years immensely and got on well with staff and students. The course was focused on my areas of interest and allowed me to pursue environmental politics and critical theory politics. DMU also offered an Alumni Scholarship, which sealed the deal. Alasdair Blair, Head of Department of Politics and Public Policy, encouraged us to attend events and I joined DMUs internship scheme as a Frontrunner for the new Jean Monnet research centre in 2013, which inspired me to take my studies even further. A funded PhD came up in the right area Greening Chinas Political Economy and Scott started his research into ecological politics in conjunction with Liaoning University, China, in October 2015. Scott said: I hope to find out how we can move away from the approach to environmental governance that reflects current vested interests. He is particularly interested in how theoretical/ideological assumptions manifest in negotiations between the EU and China, and ecological politics more generally. In addition, he is looking at reformation versus transformation attempts to reconcile political economy and environmental crises, and how these are communicated. RELATED NEWS International Relations graduate plays key role at International Monetary Fund DMU extends agreement with prestigious Beijing university Take a look at what the Leicester Business School can offer you Scott will spend three months a year in China with DMUs partner Sunwah International Business School at Liaoning University, where he will undertake the majority of his fieldwork. He said: I will be taking a more critical perspective on it all. Are there political reasons were reaching certain decisions and is this beneficial, or is it to do with who has the loudest voice? Scott is balancing his research with his lecturing commitments teaching International Relations at DMU and US Domestic Politics at the University of Leicester and is relishing the challenge. He said: Students have competing and different interests on what is happening in the world, which is fascinating. Scott would encourage any prospective students to approach their time at university with an open mind. He said: DMU offers excellent opportunities to broaden your horizons. You experience difference cultures on courses with a diverse range of people. My highlight was going to the House of Lords with the Policy Commission, who came up with 100 Ideas to Change Britain. Students, aided by academics, spent six months coming up with policy ideas that they would like political parties to adopt a first for any UK university and handed over their document to influential party members. European regulator approves Amadeus $830-mn acquisition of Navitaire The European regulator yesterday unconditionally approved the $830-million proposed acquisition of US travel software company Navitaire by Spain's Amadeus. The European Commission (EC) said that deal will not hinder Amadeus rivals in the airline bookings market. "The companies' IT solutions target different types of airlines and are complementary," the EC said in a statement. In July, Amadeus offered to buy technology and business solutions provider to the airline industry Navitaire from Accenture Plc, for $830 million in order to focus on digital services for airline passengers. (See: Spain's Amadeus to buy Accenture's Navitaire for $830 mn) Navitaire, which focuses on the low-cost and hybrid-carrier segments of the airline industry and has a global customer base of more than 50 operators, provides revenue-generation and cost-streamlining solutions in the areas of reservations, ancillary sales, loyalty, revenue management, revenue accounting and business intelligence. Amadeus, based in Spain, offers IT solutions to airlines and travel agencies worldwide. It offers Global Distribution System, a different IT tool used by travel agencies to obtain information and make bookings with airlines and internal IT solutions for airlines and airports, such as Passenger Service Systems, an IT tool used by airlines to internally manage reservations, inventory and departure control. Anne Marie Wards successful swim across the North Channel is a powerful measure of her determination. Anne Marie Wards successful swim across the North Channel is a powerful measure of her determination. In 2010, Anne Marie, one of Donegals two People of the Year 2011, became the third woman ever to make the swim. First, a word about the North Channel: its considered the worlds most difficult channel swim because of the cold and unpredictable waters, and the large pods of jelly fish that appear when the waters are calm. The crossing has been attempted nearly 80 times, but the success rate is very low. Most swimmers wouldnt touch it, Anne Marie said. Heres the thing about Anne Marie: she undertook the challenge three gruelling times before she succeeded. The first time, in 2008, Anne Marie was in the water for 17 and a half hours before she could no longer battle the tides that pushed her backwards. Still she said, After the first attempt I came away very happy. I thought, This is do-able. During her second attempt, in 2009, the weather turned. Winds drove her on to the Copeland Islands and she was separated from her pilot boat. You cant plan with the sea, she said. Its got a mind of its own. But Anne Marie and her team returned in 2010. After five hours in the water, her joints began to seize from the toxins of the numerous jellyfish stings she endured. She was hospitalised in Belfast after returning. It was our third time back over the Glenshane pass, disappointed, Anne Marie recalled. She had to think hard about whether there would be a fourth attempt she was thinking not just about herself, but her dedicated team. Is that too big an ask? she thought to herself. They were absolutely brilliant. In the end, it was personal for her team, too. They said, Were going to conquer this channel, Anne Marie said. And in September 2010, they did. She couldnt believe it when she was informed that she had been named Donegal Person of the Year. Its a fantastic honour, it really is, she said. Im just getting used to it. Born in Pornablagh and now living in nearby Ards, Creeslough, Anne Marie Ward has inspired people around Ireland and abroad with her remarkable story. Though she only began swimming in open water seriously about a decade ago, her achievements have been the stuff of dreams. What happened to me over the last 10 years was not something I ever planned, she said. The second oldest of Paddy and Marguerites four sons and three daughters, Anne Marie has been swimming as long as she can remember. As a child she would spend time with the Sheephaven Sub Aqua Club, and when the team went diving, shed go for a swim around Horn Head. Club members are among those who have become crucial to her success, supporting her on her swims. It was 2002, when she was nearly 36, that Anne Marie and two colleagues swam two miles from Rossnowlagh to Creevy Pier near Ballyshannon, to benefit the Share a Dream foundation. They had been assigned to select a personal goal in a management development programme at work Anne Marie is a trained nurse and disability manager with the Health Service Executive and that was the goal they chose. Anne Marie was hooked. She thought to herself, What would really challenge me after that? And then, Wouldnt it be lovely to give Tory a go? She swam from Magheraroarty to Tory in 2003, and was part of the five-member relay team, along with her brother Ryan, that undertook the 830-mile swim around Ireland in 2006. She received the Pierre van Varan Award for the best swim in arduous conditions for her 2007 swim across the English Channel she finished the swim in a Force 5/6 storm. Family, friends and other supporters waited for Anne Marie on the English coast. She had been in the water for 20 hours. Everyone in the boat was so subdued, she said. Everyone was pure exhausted. Anne Marie was also dehydrated. But the lessons she and her team learned on that demanding swim set her up for the North Channel challenge. She has two big swims this year: This summer, Anne Marie will be part of an international relay team to take on the frigid Bering Strait, swimming from Siberia to Alaska; and in late March she will travel to Tunisia to swim three, 10-kilometre legs over three days with a Tunisian Army colonel who is swimming along the coast to Egypt in a staged relay to promote peace in the Middle East. In November of 2010 Anne Marie was named World Open Water Swimming Woman of the Year, accepting her award at the United Nations in New York City. I suppose I had to pinch myself, she said. I was gobsmacked to even be listed in that shortlist. Her parents and her team accompanied her to New York to see her receive the honour. Anne Marie never mentions a swim without crediting the teams that have supported her. Theres Noel Brennan, founder of Sheephaven Sub Aqua, who shes known for 35 years, and who takes early-morning training swims with her; Brendan Proctor, who has accompanied her on all her swims; her brother Ryan, a member of Sheephaven Sub Aqua, Derek Flanagan, a member of the Coast Guard and Sheephaven Sub Aqua, and Team Delta members Gus ODriscoll, Joe Devenney, Ivan Irwin and Owen Fogarty, as well as other Sheephaven members who have provided valuable support and assistance. Open water swimmers are accompanied by a team in a boat. There can be no physical contact between the swimmer and the boat or the team -- the swimmer is alone in the water, challenging the dark seas. But the team passes the swimmer vital liquid nourishment, minds the tides and other obstacles, and keeps an eye on the swimmer, even when the sky is dark. You dont just go out on a boat for a day, Anne Marie said. Its a big responsibility on them. She said she believes that aspect of her story the idea of people working together toward a goal and achieving it has struck a chord with people. I think everyone needs hope now, more than ever, Anne Marie said. Especially now. In her telling, the importance of the team is always foremost. When Anne Marie made her successful North Channel swim, one of the mantras she repeated to herself in one of the last hours was this: The boys will bring me home, she said to herself. The boys will bring me home. Please allow ads as they help fund our trusted local news content. Kindly add us to your ad blocker whitelist. If you want further access to Ireland's best local journalism, consider contributing and/or subscribing to our free daily Newsletter . Support our mission and join our community now. A Donegal TD has claimed patients in Donegal have been given less than 24 hours notice to attend outpatient appointments in Dublin. Fianna Fail TD Charlie McConalogue says he has been contacted by constituents who have received a call to attend an outpatient appointment in Dublin with less than 24 hours notice. This type of policy is completely unacceptable. I have written to the Minister Leo Varadkar asking him to put a minimum notice protocol in place for patients at Letterkenny University Hospital to ensure that patients whose appointments are outsourced are given adequate time to make arrangements to attend their appointment, he said. This situation has arisen as a result of the under-resourcing of Letterkenny University Hospital over the last five years. Fine Gael and Labour have presided over a serious deterioration of hospital services, not least here in Donegal. In fact, the number of planned elective procedures at Letterkenny University has been significantly scaled down in January and February. There are over 5,500 patients currently waiting six months or longer to be seen by a Consultant in Letterkenny University Hospital, a third of whom have been waiting for over a year or more, he claimed. For more see Mondays Donegal Democrat and Donegal Peoples Press. A mother who lost three babies to a rare disease is sharing her story in the hope it will help others, Sue Doherty writes.. Catherine Flanagan from Ballybofey, now 50, lost three babies toWegener's Granulomatosis (WG), a condition so rare that there is no support group in Ireland. She has written a book about her experiences and also wants to make contact with other families affected by WG, to help them know they are not alone and offer each other support. Catherine was 21 and living in London when she gave birth to her first child, Siobhan, (pictured) in 1986. Siobhan was a very healthy baby, Catherine recalls. She thrived and was even a bit greedy with her feeds. Thats how I first started to know something was wrong. After her Christening, she wouldnt take her food. Catherine brought Siobhan to the doctor but was told everything was fine and that she was just being a nervous, first-time mother. Then one morning, I woke up and Siobhan was coughing up blood. She turned blue and we brought her by ambulance to Hammersmith hospital. They were there for a week, with Siobhan being fed through tubes but there was no improvement. They couldnt work out what was wrong so they sent us to Great Ormond Street, Catherine continues. She was in intensive care for two weeks then moved to another ward because they thought she was getting better but she wasnt. It was six months before Siobhan was diagnosed with WG which causes inflammation of the blood vessels in the nose, sinuses, throat, lungs and kidneys. Its so rare, in fact, that Catherine says Siobhans case was the only one the doctors knew of at the time and there was no treatment plan. As Siobhans condition continued to deteriorate, she couldnt even take her bottle, was gasping for breath and coughing up a lot of blood. Tubes, tracheotomy, nothing worked, Siobhan couldn't eat, drink or speak and Catherine stayed with her in hospital around the clock. In November, doctors said there was nothing more they could do. Catherine brought her baby home and Siobhan died the next day, aged 15 months. Catherines marriage broke down and she moved to Ballybofey to be near her parents, Mary and John. She met John Gallagher and theyve been partners ever since. They were delighted when Catherine gave birth to Sinead in August 1990. Catherine had an emergency Caesarean two months early. The baby was small, just over 2lbs, but otherwise healthy and put on weight. Soon, however, Sinead was coughing up blood and diagnosed with WG. I couldn't believe it was happening again, Catherine said. No treatment worked and Sinead passed away in Catherine's arms, aged two months. In 1994, a son, John Patrick was born, also premature. His chances were slim and doctors said he was a prime candidate for WB. He only lived one day. The years have gone by but to us it's as fresh as if it was yesterday, Catherine said. I've written a book and am spreading the word, here and on Ocean FM, to remember my babies and to help any other family to known that they aren't alone. We're here if they need someone to talk to. If you want to contact Catherine for a copy of her book or to find out more about Wegener's, email sue.doherty@donegaldemocrat.com . The controversial owner of the Bog Hotel outside Frosses was the victim of an attack in the early hours of last Tuesday morning after being accused of being a Garda informant The controversial owner of the Bog Hotel outside Frosses was the victim of an attack in the early hours of last Tuesday morning after being accused of being a Garda informant Patsy Brogan who has been dominating the national and local media for a number of years because of his relationship with his 30 year old Polish companion, Daria Weiske and his ongoing battle with Donegal Co. Council had his bar ransacked and suffered a number of bruises to both his face and body. Speaking to the Donegal Democrat, Brogan said, Four lads burst into the bar at about 2.30 am last Tuesday morning just as I was about to close and started throwing things all over the place. They were shouting at me and calling me a rat and a snitch - they seemed to think that I was just keeping the place open late so that I could give the Gardai information which is a load of rubbish. They hit me over the head with a table and scattered stuff all over the place, As you can see the place is in a total mess. Ill be honest with you, I was terrified, I thought my number was up as I lay on the floor. I am not a young man anymore and I am not just fit for this sort of thing. Identities I know the identities of these people and have passed on the information to the Gardai. The only way to deal with these things is with the law. Brogan was at home with Daria in his home when the attack occurred but has revealed that she was so scared that she has left and was afraid to return. Daria rang me from Dublin to say that she was taking a flight back to Poland and I am not sure whether she will return or not. There are obviously people who have issues with me having a bar here but I am not interested in fighting with anyone. All I want is a bit of peace and quiet at this stage of my life. The Bog Bar is really just a hobby to me - living out here on a bog on top of the mountain can be a lonely place for someone like myself - the bar provides me with a bit of company and chat. Garda comment A Garda spokesman told the Donegal Democrat that they had received no official complaint in relation to the alleged incident. judi online hadir sebagai solusi praktis saat ingin memasang taruhan dengan mudah dan fleksibel. Berbagai tipe game bermunculan dan sportsbook terutama taruhan bola masih mendominasi. Anda cukup berkunjung ke situs judi bola lalu siap memainkan gambling kapan saja. Judi seperti ini membutuhkan akun dan deposit. Akun menjadi bukti bahwa anda adalah member. Situs tersebut hanya memberikan akses kepada member yang valid. 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Keunggulan Yang Identik Dengan Agen Judi Bola Bagus Dari aspek mana saja tidak akan ditemukan hal yang kurang atau mengecewakan dari agen judi bola online bagus. Agen judi online terbagus selalu memiliki cara mereka sendiri untuk memberikan yang terbaik bagi membernya. Kepercayaan yang pemain berikan dengan cara mendaftar kesana akan dibalas dengan sepadan melalui berbagai keunggulan yang hanya akan anda dapatkan jika bermain gambling bola online dari agen taruhan bola terbagus ini. Detailnya akan dibahas disini jadi simak sampai akhir bila anda ingin tahu lebih banyak. Fasilitas Utama Agen Judi Bola Terbagus Agen judi bola online terbagus diakui dan mendapatkan banyak kepercayaan dari pemain pasti karena ada alasan yang jelas. Harus ada hal logis yang menjadi kriyteria dari agen taruhan bola ini menjadi yang terbagus diantara agen taruhan bola yang lainnya. 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The country's eight respective police forces have been almost exclusively dependent on large, Australian-built sedans with light modifications for their duties in recent decades. But with the Ford Falcon and Holden Commodore both bowing out of production by 2017, there are calls to replace them with national-specification vehicles which offer the latest safety and technology, and conform to specific police requirements. Under the plan devised by the Australia New Zealand Policing Advisory Agency, foreign car makers have been asked to put forward specifications for a national prisoner transportation vehicle, national highway patrol car and national general duties car. Submissions for the program closed Wednesday. "It's about what the market can offer. This exercise is about drawing out ideas from manufacturers that can improve the specifications of police vehicles," said John White, chief executive of ANZPAA. "There's a lot of complexity. This is the first step to see what's available." Mr White said prospective vehicles must comply with strict policing protocols, such as a full-size spare wheel, additional seat bolstering to accommodate heavy weapons belts and, in the case of highway vehicles, a certifiable speedometer that is accurate to within 2km/h. Holden has already developed a police vehicle for the United States. The Caprice PPV, as it is dubbed, is based on the long-wheelbase, locally-made luxury car with specific features for police use, such heavy-duty suspension, a more robust electric system, unique front seats, spot lights and inoperative inside rear door handles, locks and window switches. Police forces typically replace one-third of their main fleets every three years, or after 60,000km on lease deals, providing an attractive supply opportunity for several overseas manufacturers. Fairfax Media understands Mercedes-Benz, Chrysler, Volvo, BMW and Audi are among the foreign marques to submit specifications. While it is hoped the scale of a national police fleet would enable sizeable cost savings, car makers are adamant they will not adversely compromise the specification of their vehicles to qualify for the programs. "They don't want standard safety equipment deleted, which is a good thing, but we're not interested in taking specification out of cars to meet a price requirement," Mercedes-Benz Australia corporate communications manager David McCarthy said. "If one model of the Mercedes performance range was going to be used as a highway patrol car, for instance, we're not interested in taking content out. Because then you have an AMG with full equipment on our roads, and one without - and that's going to affect resale value. It's going to come down to price." Mercedes has submitted applications for all three duty vehicles. Withstanding price pressures, car makers agree that securing police contracts is an easy way to lift their public profiles and vindicate their vehicle's safety and performance. ANZPAA plans to use the exercise to "challenge the notion" of what police cars ought to be, with Mr White citing V8-powered highway patrol cars which are now becoming less occupied in high speed pursuits as one major example. Around two thirds of Australian police vehicle fleets are the six and eight cylinder locally-made configurations scheduled to disappear in 2017. Between then and the expected roll-out of a national police fleet, there is speculation several police forces plan on stock piling large numbers of Holden Commodores and Ford Falcons for highway patrol vehicles. -with Christopher Jay Dundalk's landmark town centre hotel - The Imperial - is to be sold. The 50 bed hotel is being sold by receivers Deloitte. The last of Dundalk's town centre hotels, the Imperial houses both the popular Parkes Bar and Silence niteclub. The Imperial Hotel, Park Street, Dundalk, stands on the site of three old premises at 96, 97 and 98 Park Street, the original hotel on the corner of Rampart Lane, was at No. 96. According to the Irish Historic Towns Atlas (No. 16 Dundalk), written and edited by Harold OSullivan; the premises was first used as an hotel in 1856 but may have existed as an inn before that date. Mentioned in Bassett's Guide to Louth (1886) but no name given. Tempest's Annual of 1897 says that the proprietor then as a Patrick O'Toole. According to Victor Whitmarsh in his 'Old Dundalk' pictorial book, (1988) the Imperial was owned 'at the turn of the century' by a Mr. Connolly whose family came from Clanbrassil Street and owned the Lorne Hotel (No. 15). He purchased the Imperial from Felix P. Campbell who became the fist Honourary Secretary of the Emmet Band when it was established in 1863 by Peter and Tom McEvoy. A Hugh O'Hare had owned a furniture and cabinet making shop at 97 and, when he died in 1917, his premises was purchased. By 1918, the hotel had doubled in size and was advertising as 'the largest hotel between Dublin and Belfast.' No. 98 was owned by a Bernard Hamill who ran an extensive grocery business and was an early member of the Dundalk Urban District Council. After Hamill's death in the 1960s, his premises was sold to the Quinn family and all three old premises were demolished and the present structure completed in about 1970. The Imperial (including O'Hare's) had been bought in about 1940 by Mrs. Irene Quinn who owned the Ballymascanlon Hotel and for many years was managed by her son Peter Quinn. The hotel was one of the Quinn Group hotels which included the Ballymascanlon, The Fairways, Haggardstown and another hotel near Dungannon in county Tyrone. After Mrs Quinn's death the Park Street hotel was sold to a consortium that had build the Long Walk Shopping Centre and, later the Carroll Village development. The Imperial had, over the years, seen many political gatherings and, during the Truce period in 1921 had been the venue for a meeting between Michael Collins and Eamonn de Valera prior to the Civil War. It also witnessed a serious riot in 1971 when the then Taoiseach Jack Lynch attended a function hosted by the Dundalk Junior Chamber of Commerce and a demonstration was organised at the front entrance by Sinn Fein to protest against internment in Northern Ireland. The hotel was the central of much of the organisation for the early Maytime Festivals in Dundalk and, it was alleged, that for a short time, was the home of a local pirate radio offices. It was a popular venue in the 1980s and 90s for dancing and other social activities. It was also rumoured that it was the centre of much intelligence and counter-intelligence by both sides during the recent Northern Ireland Troubles. (This rumour was, however, never substantiated.) Another story about the old hotel was that it was the home of a ghost which could be seen at times, peering out of a first floor window and was reputed be very unlucky to see, but this may have related to Hamill's old premises. Im a doer as opposed to a talker and I want to win a seat for Fianna Fail, Emma Coffey said when I spoke to her at the launch of her general election campaign last week. She might be new to politics, but its clear that she is totally in touch with the electorate. Emma Coffey and Declan Breathnach are the two Fianna Fail candidates. Fianna Fail have one seat in Louth-East Meath at the moment and these two candidates hope to hold that seat and add to it. Emma Coffeys launch took place at the Oriel Centre (Old Gaol) Dundalk, a symbolic setting. It was here that Frank Aiken - the father of Fianna fail in Louth - and his comrades escaped from during the War of Independence. Emma Coffeys great-grandfather was among them. Her father is from Pearse Park, her uncle Eamon is a barrister from the town, and another uncle is Nicky Coffey, a distinguished journalist who helped pioneer investigative journalism with RTE. She grew up in Annagassan, had family connections with Dromiskin, and has worked for 13 years in Drogheda where she has her own legal practice. Although she has the historical connections with the Fianna fail party, it is the present that concerns her, and the challenges and difficulties that face people in their day-day lives. Louth is a great place to live, she said. A great place to raise a family. But we have 10,000 people under 25 unemployed and I dont want to see them forced to leave. So how does she see these people getting jobs? We need to give tax rebates to small business. A PRSI rebate. There needs to be a discount to encourage firms to take on apprentices. We also need to restructure the commercial rates system. At the moment a quarter of the costs of running a business go towards rates. We need a fairer more practical system. Crime is also high on her political agenda. At the Fianna Fail Ard Fheis last weekend she met party leader Micheal Martin on a one-to one basis to discuss this issue. Garda numbers are down here in Louth over the past five years. Over 40 have not been replaced and Louth has one of the highest burglary figures in the country, she said. But she is very supportive of the community alert texting system and believes this is a very effective way of bringing the people and the gardai together to fight back against crime. I was at the IFA meeting on crime and community text alert was put forward as a means of dealing with rural crime and I think its very clear that it works. Its a basic right to feel safe in your own home. As a young mother she is fully aware of the crippling costs of childcare and the need for a radical political policy that will help young struggling families. Childcare is like a second mortgage. Its 800 a month for two children. We need to look at what the German are doing, at the UK where there is a tax credit system. Fianna Fail is proposing a 20 to 40 per cent tax credit. This can be implemented. If young families can get that they can spent more in the economy. Its a benefit to all of society. Tourism in the county is another issue she thinks has been neglected. We have 140 klms of coastline here. We have Cooley coastline walks, fine beaches, but we need a more organised approach towards selling it. More investment. would go a long way. The following guest post was written by Ed Schultz, the former host of The Ed Show on MSNBC and current host of The Ed Schultz Show. If implemented, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) could undermine many of President Barack Obamas landmark achievements and thus his legacy on jobs and economic recovery, health care access, financial reform and close to Michigans heart the U.S. auto industry rescue and more. The great mystery is why Obama called for congressional passage of the TPP in his final State of the Union address? The TPP text was finally released in November after seven years of secretive talks. As The Washington Post reported, 500 U.S. trade advisors representing corporate interests had special access while Congress, the public and press were shut out. Not surprisingly, the Chamber of Commerce, Business Roundtable and similar corporate lobbies support the TPP. Opposing is the most diverse coalition of progressive organizations ever assembled to battle against a trade deal. The implications of what stands to be the mother of all congressional trade fights are perverse. Obamas address focused on his vision for Americas future, but the TPP stands to throw us backwards into more of the same economic disaster that has a large share of the American electorate fuming mad and seeking alternatives in the candidacies of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Consider: The president helped pull the U.S. out of recession after the global financial crisis. But the administrations only major study on TPPs economic impact found it would result in 0.00% increased U.S. economic growth if all tariffs on all products were eliminated, which did not occur. The president says hes focused on the issue on the top of most Americans agenda: jobs. But the TPP includes rules that make it cheaper and less risky to offshore U.S. jobs to low wage nations. The pro-free trade Cato Institute calls these investor protections a subsidy on offshoring. Since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that the TPP would expand on, more than 57,000 U.S. manufacturing facilities have closed and five million U.S. manufacturing jobs one in four were lost. More than 875,000 U.S. workers were certified as NAFTA casualties under just one narrow U.S. Department of Labor program. Obamas 2015 SOTU was all about battling income inequality. But a recent study finds that the TPP would spell a pay cut for all but the richest 10 percent of U.S. workers by exacerbating income inequality. If Americans face more competition from Vietnamese workers who make less than 65 cents an hour, of course our wages will be pushed downwards. Historically, 60 percent of U.S. manufacturing workers losing jobs to trade who find reemployment face pay cuts, with one in three losing more than 20 percent, per Labor Department data. There is academic consensus that NAFTA-style trade has contributed to the unprecedented rise in inequality. Obamas most recent free trade agreement (FTA) with Korea that served as the TPPs template had led to a 90 percent jump in our goods trade deficit with Korea as our exports fell 7 percent and imports surged. Thats no fluke. We had a $177 billion goods trade deficit with our 20 FTA partners. Our auto trade deficit exploded under the Korea FTA. The TPP could threaten the presidents U.S. auto industry rescue and thousands of U.S. jobs. Shockingly the TPP would allow duty free imports of autos with majority Chinese content, even though Chinas not even in the deal. Despite bipartisan congressional demands, the pact does not include disciplines on currency cheating. So whatever ostensible new market access we might gain with TPP tariff cuts can eliminated away overnight by Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam and other TPP countries notorious for devaluing their currencies to subsidize their exports and price our goods out of their markets. Ford has supported all past U.S. trade deals, but opposes the TPP. The TPP also would contradict Obama efforts to reduce U.S. health care costs by expanding monopoly patent protections for big drug firms, as Doctors Without Borders notes, that allow drug firms to stop competition and raise prices. As seniors groups note, the TPP would also empowering drug firms to meddle in U.S. government Medicare and Medicaid decisions. And the TPP could help banks unravel the new rules Obama achieved on Wall Street by prohibiting bans on risky financial products and too big to fail safeguards while empowering foreign banks to sue the U.S. government over new financial regulations. Obama said that the TPP was a renegotiation of NAFTA. What he did not say is that the pact expands on NAFTAs offshoring incentives, its ban on Buy American procurement rules, and the types of policies that foreign corporations can attack before investor-state dispute system (ISDS) tribunals of private corporate attorneys to demand taxpayer compensation. Saving the American middle class requires us to stop the TPP, which can only go into effect if Congress approves it. Perversely, killing the TPP may also save Obamas legacy. [CC image credit: Jared Rodriguez/Truthout | Flickr.com] [All photos by Anne C. Savage, special to Eclectablog] As lawmakers and other political movers and shakers in Michigan gathered together in the cozy warmth of Michigans State Capitol Building for Governor Snyders 2016 State of the State Address, over 500 protesters from around the state gathered in the frigid cold outside to demand substantive action by the state government to respond to the poisoning of Flints drinking water with the powerful neurotoxin lead. Though protesters chanted, This is what democracy looks like, the fact is that this is, in fact, NOT what democracy looks like. In fact, the human-caused catastrophe in Flint is the direct result of democracy being replaced by what is essentially a one-person dictatorship. Without the Emergency Manager laws Public Acts 4 and 436 none of this would have come to pass and the protest in Lansing last night would have been unnecessary. The protest began with a press conference in front of Lansing City Hall. Michigan nurse Cheryl Weston started off, saying, Today Gov. Snyder will have to face some of the people who he poisoned. Steve Dawes, an Assistant Director in UAW Region 1C, reminded the audience that one of the first things Republicans did when they swept into power in 2010 was to take $8 million a year in revenue sharing from Flint, making their perilous financial situation even more difficult. He talked about how labor unions have been working since last year to provide drinkable water to Flint residents, often going home to home to distribute it. UAW Region 1C Assistant Director Steve Dawes Ironically, as he spoke, staffers and interns for the Michigan Republican Party held a bottled water drive on the steps of the Capitol. They displayed a small pile of cases of bottled water, most purchased by the MRP from Walmart (of course). MRP Chair Ronna Romney-McDaniel was nowhere to be seen (of course), nor were any other of the MRPs leadership (of course), leaving the interns and staffers to face the crowds of mocking protesters and try to stay warm (of course). Walmart water purchased by the Michigan Republican Party for Flint in place of actual assistance and help The UAW contributed a few bottles of water of their own with labels saying Refreshing Leaded Flint Water UAW Vice President Cindy Estrada took to the microphone and said, What I dont understand is how Gov. Snyder could go on Twitter and say this is not political issue. It IS a political issue! She lauded the activists and people in the medical community who were out there raising their voices when nobody would listen and said that, through his actions (an inactions), Gov. Snyder had created a whole bunch of new activists. Nayyirah Shariff, a Flint activist with the Flint Democracy Defense League, asked Gov. Snyder, When are you going to lift executive immunity so that I can know who poisoned me? She called Flints activists Water Warriors and said the Snyders four apologies had not stopped Flints residents from being abused. Were still receiving bills for poisoned water, she said. It was unchecked power that has poisoned our community. The final speaker was former Congressman and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mark Schauer. He placed the blame for what has transpired in Flint directly on the shoulders of Gov. Snyder. This reminds me of the Pottery Barns policy that If you break it, you own it. Make no mistake, Schauer said, Gov. Snyder owns this. As the press conference came to an end around 6 p.m., protesters began marching across the street to the Capitol Building. Carrying signs and chanting, they surrounded the MRP staffers and interns who scrambled to move their small pile of bottled water as they were engulfed in the maelstrom. For over an hour the protestors swarmed the front steps and lawn of the Capitol Building. Their chants could be heard inside the House chamber as Gov. Snyder took the stage to deliver his State of the State Address: The sounds of protest can be heard inside the chamber in the lead up to today's SOTS. Posted by Jeff Irwin on Tuesday, January 19, 2016 Heres a bit of video I shot with my phone: Gov. Snyder opened with a discussion of the crisis in Flint, spending nearly half of his 50-minute speech in contrite acceptance of his administrations role in the debacle. He seemed to deflect blame from himself directly, instead claiming he was not informed of what was going happening. Looking and sounding as if he was on the verge of tears, Snyder told the residents of Flint, Im sorry and I will fix it. You did not create this crisis, and you do not deserve this. Government failed you at the federal, state and local level, Snyder said. We need to make sure this never happens again in any Michigan city. He said that Michiganders should be able to turn on their faucets and get clean, safe water any time. In reviewing how Michigan, and Flint in particular, have arrived where we are today, Gov. Snyder completely skipped over the part where his Emergency Manager Darnell Earley made the unilateral decision to move to the Flint River for water in a cost-saving measure. While he (and far too many others) want to implicate Flints elected officials, the fact is (and it IS a fact), the Flint City Council NEVER once voted to move to Flint River water. That decision was made FOR them by the state under the leadership of the Emergency Manager. Period. In his speech he outlined a series of steps he and his administration plan to take (via the Detroit Free Press): Ramping up the number of Michigan National Guard troops in Flint from fewer than 100 currently to about 200, with plans for the troops to staff water stations while the Red Cross and other volunteers complete visits to all of the citys roughly 33,000 households this week. Appealing President Barack Obamas refusal to declare a federal disaster in Flint when he declared a federal emergency there on Saturday. A federal disaster declaration, which is reserved for natural disasters, would make greater amounts of federal funding available. Asking the Legislature for a $28.5-million supplemental appropriation to cover immediate Flint needs, such as the cost of bottled water and filters and troops from the Michigan National Guard, which Snyder mobilized Jan. 12 after declaring a state of emergency on Jan. 5. Including in that appropriation about $2 million to support Flint utilities and stop any threatened shut-off of water customers, while the state and the city work on a broader plan to address the problem of Flint residents being billed for water they cant drink. Also included is close to $1 million to increase the number of nurses and other health professionals in Flint-area schools and about $120,000 as a first step in expanding capacity at child and adolescent health centers. Expanding age eligibility for the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) healthy nutrition program. Experts say good nutrition minimizes the impact of lead exposure. Testing and replacing faucets and other fixtures at schools and other public facilities that could be potential sources for the leaching of lead. The testing of water in schools is particularly important because, as former Flint mayor Dayne Walling told me in my interview with him, they are exempt from federal testing requirements: The biggest hidden problem is whats happening in schools because the Safe Drinking Water Act does not require testing, Ive now learned, in schools where the municipal water system is being tested. But, again, the problem is how the water interacts with the older lead and copper pipe systems. So, if youre on Detroit water in a metropolitan Detroit community and youre using water every day and its circulating through your system, then the test that those communities are publishing are probably representative of the risks. But if youre a four-year old in a Headstart program in an older school building, the water in those pipes is not turning over every day, likely. Its sitting there all weekend then kids are coming in and using the drinking fountain or filling a water bottle. Those risks are going undetected in Michigan. So there are a lot more safeguards that need to be put in place and then they have to be enforced by the State Department of Environmental Quality. But, again, the problem is how the water interacts with the older lead and copper pipe systems. So, if youre on Detroit water in a metropolitan Detroit community and youre using water every day and its circulating through your system, then the test that those communities are publishing are probably representative of the risks. But if youre a four-year old in a Headstart program in an older school building, the water in those pipes is not turning over every day, likely. Its sitting there all weekend then kids are coming in and using the drinking fountain or filling a water bottle. Those risks are going undetected in Michigan. So there are a lot more safeguards that need to be put in place and then they have to be enforced by the State Department of Environmental Quality. But lets be clear, while we all agree that major infrastructure improvements need to be made in Flint, $28.5 million is barely a drop in the bucket. Flint Mayor Karen Weaver, who met with President Obama yesterday in Washington, D.C., estimates that over $1 billion will eventually be needed. Looking around the House chamber as Gov. Snyder gave his Address particularly seeing tea party adherents like Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof sitting stone-faced behind the governor its hard to imagine the current legislature voting to spend that sort of money. With nearly a half billion in Michigans Rainy Day Fund and another half billion surplus left over from last year, its hard to understand why less than 3% of that is being requested. If Michigan Republicans cant see that its not only raining in Flint but that they are in the middle of a veritable monsoon, residents of that city are in deep trouble. Gov. Snyder also pledged to release all 2014-2015 emails to and from him regarding the Flint water catastrophe. This marks a major victory for the fine folks at Progress Michigan who have kept up a steady drumbeat of calls for this to happen. However, given that much of what led to the switch to the Flint River happened in 2013, we may not be getting the full story: FYI Gov Snyder is releasing 2014-15 emails BUT decision to use Flint water was in 2013 #FlintWaterCrisis #MISOTS16 https://t.co/ne1c2t1Gy4 Laura Packard (@lpackard) January 20, 2016 UPDATE: Lonnie Scott, executive director of Progress Michigan released the following statement about Gov. Snyders releasing of some but not all of his emails related to the Flint water crisis: While its a good first step for the Governor to release these emails, Progress Michigan remains committed to advocating for a complete repeal of the exemption for the Governor and legislature in our FOIA laws. Its nice that now that the spotlight of national media is shining a light on Snyders failures that he decides to give lip service to transparency. We will continue to shine a spotlight on the Governor to encourage action and not just empty words. Also, Gov. Snyder made clear this morning that the emails hell be releasing are his only and not those of other members of his administration. We also have to remember that its not just Flint at issue here. Detroit Public Schools which uncoincidentally are run by the same Emergency Manager that once ruled over Flint, Darnell Earley are in a state of collapse that is unprecedented even for that beleaguered school system. Detroit schools are in need of a transformational change, Snyder said in his speech. Lets solve this problem and help the kids. The time to act is now and avoid court intervention. These are ironic words given that he and his Republican colleagues have been trying to create transformation in our states schools, and in Detroit in particular, by starving them of needed resources. Transformation, especially rapid transformation, requires investments and that seems to be the last thing that Michigans Republicans are interested in. They seem convinced that they can turn things around quickly and effectively by spending less, paying teachers less, using less qualified teachers, letting buildings and classrooms crumble around the teachers and students, using untested and unproven education gimmicks like the so-called student-centered learning practiced in the Education Achievement Authority, and by testing students more. Its not just illogical, its 180 from what they actually need to be doing. This is largely why nearly every Detroit school is closed today due to another teacher sick out. Teachers ARE sick; sick of trying to educate students in a deplorable teaching environment. If you need any proof, have a look at the photos in this article. It will break your heart. Gov. Snyder, for all his emotion, faux or not, looked and sounded like a man who has no idea what hes doing. His slavish adherence to the principle that government should be run like a business has him adrift with no anchor, utterly clueless as to why his leadership style is failing him so completely. Its clear why: when a CEO takes charge of a corporation, he surrounds himself with people who tell him hes doing everything right. They shield him from bad news and take whatever drastic steps are needed to keep the company profitable, closing down divisions, and making investments in successful ventures. When it comes to state government, its the bad news that the governor most needs to hear. He or she cannot simply jettison cities or schools that are struggling. When times are bad, its these struggling areas where investments are most critical. Corporatism has proven to be a failed model in Michigan. From schools that educate our children to the jails that house our inmates and including our struggling urban centers, privatization, austerity, and profiteering have failed our state on every level. At the heart of Flints problems and Detroit Public Schools problems is Emergency Management; a takeover by the state that believed it could do things better. The verdict is now in: the state CANNOT do things better, at least not under our current leadership. When locally-elected officials are removed from the equation, accountability goes away and havoc and chaos ensue. This is Michigan under the failed leadership of Governor Rick Snyder and, despite protest after protest after protest, this is decidedly NOT what democracy looks like. One final note: Political analyst Bill Ballenger made statements over the course of the last week claiming that the Flint Water Crisis is overstated and basically a hoax: This has been a vastly overblown crisis, perpetuated by a lot of politicians with an axe to grind and, for that matter, the news media, and some national figures, some political, some entertainers who dont know what their talking about, Ballenger told WJRs Frank Beckmann. He said a full range of data has not yet become available on the seriousness of the impact of the contamination, discovered while the city was using the Flint River as a water source. I had my blood tested just yesterday, and I have no elevated blood-lead level. Its way down there, and in fact, Ballenger said. The tests that have been taken in Flint so far show that a very small percentage of children had lead levels in their blood that is higher than what is tolerable The idea that the entire population of Flint has been poisoned and that we all have elevated blood-levels because of this is just a total canard. Its just a crock. And for this to be perpetuated as a story is doing a lot of damage to Flint as a community. Given how absurd these statements are, one wonders if perhaps the leaded Flint water has had more of an impact on Ballenger than he realizes. Ballenger works for Inside Michigan Politics, a publication owned and operated by journalist Susan Demas. Demas issued this statement this morning indicating that Ballenger has been fired: Inside Michigan Politics after I bought the publication in 2013. I have great respect for Bill Ballenger, who has continued to periodically contribute toafter I bought the publication in 2013. As you are aware, Bills comments Tuesday night on WKAR after the State of the State address regarding the seriousness of the Flint Water Crisis are indefensible. Bill had previously made public comments as a Flint resident and political analyst, but last night he was on Off the Record associated with IMP. As I told Bill earlier Tuesday, he is entitled to his opinion, but not his own facts. And as the sole owner, editor and publisher of IMP, I alone speak for the publication and set its editorial direction. Flint is a public health catastrophe, as the meticulous research of Virginia Tech and Hurley Medical Center Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha clearly shows. I cannot have anyone associated with Inside Michigan Politics who minimizes the impact of this terrible public health disaster that will impact peoples lives for decades to come. I am truly sorry to everyone hurt by Bills comments at a time of already considerable anxiety and pain. So it is with a heavy heart that I am informing you that as of this morning, Bill Ballenger is not associated with Inside Michigan Politics in any way, shape or form. Kudos to Demas for this move. Its exactly the correct response. NASA last week announced that it has established thePlanetary Defense Coordination Office to formalize its efforts to detect and track near-Earth objects. The PDCO will supervise all NASA-funded projects to find and characterize asteroids and comets that pass near Earths orbit around the sun. It will issue notices of close passes and warnings of any detected potential impacts, and will work with the Department of Defense, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and other U.S. agencies and their international counterparts to respond to potential impacts. About 1,500 near-Earth objects are detected each year, and more than 13,500 NEOs of all sizes have been discovered since NASA began funding surveys in 1998. Weve found about 92 percent of objects larger than a kilometer in size out of an estimated population of a little over 1,000, said Lindley Johnson, planetary defense officer at NASA. Our goal was updated in 2005 to find those 140 meters and larger, and weve found about 7,000 of those out of an estimated population of 25,000 to 26,000, he told TechNewsWorld. An NEOs size is measured by its longest axis. Not So Far Away Potentially hazardous objects the PDCO tracks are asteroids and comets measuring 30 to 50 meters whose orbits are predicted to bring them within 0.05 astronomical units of Earth. An AU is about 93 million miles. Now, 0.05 AUs translates to 4.65 million miles, which may seem a tad too far for concern, but this is based on definitions of the astronomical community that go back 20 years, Johnson explained. Anything that comes within a few million miles of the Earth would be affected by the Earths gravitational pull. NASA is continually assessing what weve learned and may modify the definition of potentially hazardous objects over time as it learns more about them, he said. The PDCO will prepare notification messages to be sent to the Executive Office of the President, Congress and other government organizations if a potentially hazardous object has a more than 1 percent chance over the next 100 years of impacting Earth. We want to be seriously tracking an object that has that great a chance of an unwanted impact, Johnson remarked. Also, NASA wants to ensure that it has plenty of time to determine a potential response, which will depend on the objects size and how far ahead in the future its impact could be. The Tracking Process NEOs are detected using ground-based telescopes around the world as well as NASAs space-based NEOWISE infrared telescope. Tracking data is sent to a global database maintained by theMinor Planet Center, which has been sanctioned by theInternational Astronomical Union. Once an NEO is detected, the Center for NEO Studies at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory predicts and monitors its orbit. Select NEOs are further characterized by NASAs Infrared Telescope Facility, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and interplanetary radar operated by NASA and the National Science Foundation. These efforts are coordinated and funded by NASAs long-established NEO Observations Program, which will continue as a research program under the PDCO. Unseen Dangers Even though weve been attempting to map the really big objects that come close, there are approximately 10 percent that could be classified as civilization-enders that we dont know about, said Mike Jude, a research manager at Frost & Sullivan. Your best bet is to detect these things early and then deflect them, he told TechNewsWorld. NASA is working on the Asteroid Redirection Mission concept, which would use the mass of an object to pull a potentially hazardous object slightly out of its original orbit. This leverages the gravitational force all objects have in space. Some of the technologies required for this are already under development in other NASA missions such as the one to Mars, Lindley said, and the redirection mission will pull all these technologies together in Phase A while contracts are being released for other parts of the mission. The U.S.Federal Trade Commission is extending its regulatory reach to the e-commerce impact of big data. For years, the FTC has asserted vigorously its authority to apply existing consumer protection laws to emerging developments in the realm of information technology. Now it is signaling that it will apply that same vigor to big data under the regulatory authority it possesses through the Federal Trade Commission Act and other laws. The commission will continue to monitor areas where big data practices could violate those laws and will bring enforcement actions where appropriate, it said in a report issued this month. The title of the report, Big Data: A Tool for Inclusion or Exclusion? Understanding the Issues, and the rationale for its publication seem to indicate that the scope of the document is limited to the FTCs concerns about imbalanced outcomes of big data. They include potential negative impacts on low-income and underserved segments of society, including discrimination in lending and job opportunities. Legal Standard The commission will not hesitate to enforce FTC Act prohibitions against unfair and deceptive practices related to big data in all applications, not just those affecting a particular segment of the population, it said in the report. It will utilize the same legal basis for big data situations that it uses for cases involving the hacking of consumer records, identity theft, and fraudulent misrepresentations in e-commerce transactions. That legal leverage is not confined to particular market sectors but is generally applicable to most companies acting in commerce, the FTC said. In a clear warning to businesses, the FTC cited two significant e-commerce enforcement cases with implications for big data regulation:Disclosure: One case involved charges of misrepresentation and deception against a credit card marketing company for failure to disclose all the conditions affecting cardholders. While the key issue centered on disclosure, an underlying condition involved the use of behavioral scoring data affecting credit availability to customers. Generating increasingly detailed information on consumer behavior, of course, is a major element in the commercial use of big data. In a settlement, the company was prohibited from repeating the misrepresentation practices. Identity theft: In another enforcement action, the commission cited a company for selling personal information to third-party identity thieves posing as legitimate subscribers. The FTC contended that company neglected to adequately check on the status of the third party, despite the presence of red flags. Such cases show, at a minimum, companies must not sell their big data analytics products to customers if they know or have reason to know that those customers will use the products for fraudulent purposes, the commission said.The situations outlined in the two cases fall under the basic FTC Act but do not cover all possible scenarios. The commissions legal authority regarding unfair and deceptive practices covers activities that involve a material statement or omission that is likely to mislead a consumer acting reasonably under the circumstances, the FTC said. If a company violates a material promise whether that promise is to refrain from sharing data with third parties, to provide consumers choices about sharing, or to safeguard consumers personal information it will likely be engaged in a deceptive practice, it noted. Companies that maintain big data on consumers should take care to reasonably secure that data commensurate with the amount and sensitivity of the data at issue, the size and complexity of the companys operations, and the cost of available security measures, the commission said. Regulatory Road Map The report underscored the FTCs regulatory commitment to vigilantly monitor the cybersecurity impacts of e-commerce advancements. The regulated community would be wise to pay attention to the FTCs big data report. As with any formal FTC pronouncement, it provides a road map as to the FTCs thinking and likely future enforcement agenda, said Lisa Sotto, a privacy law specialist atHunton & Williams. It is particularly important to remember that existing laws apply to the use of big data. Too often, companies fail to consider how existing legal regimes might pose an obstacle to the manner in which data collected as part of a big data initiative may be used. The FTCs reminder of this point should serve as a cautionary word to companies that are overly aggressive in their use of big data, she told the E-Commerce Times. The report does not offer FTCs thoughts as what companies can do to avoid violating existing laws when using big data, said Scott Talbott, senior vice president for government affairs at theElectronic Transactions Association. The report sounds an ominous tone, which could have a chilling effect on the use of big data, he told the E-Commerce Times. Other Laws The FTCs enforcement of two other laws the Fair Credit Reporting Act, or FCRA, and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, or ECOA could affect companies that collect, analyze, market and use big data, especially data related to consumers. FCRA applies to companies known as consumer reporting agencies, or CRAs, that compile and sell consumer reports containing information that can be used for credit, employment, insurance, housing, or other decisions about eligibility for certain benefits and transactions, the FTC noted. Conventional tools CRAs use include debt payment histories, rental payments, liens and even bankruptcy filings. Enhanced consumer data generated by big data collection and analytics also will be subject to FTC enforcement under FCRA, the commission said, citing examples such as ZIP code identification, shopping history and social media usage. Whether conventional data or enhanced big data resources are used, the standards applied to determine the applicability of the FCRA in a commission enforcement action, however, are the same, the FTC said. ECOA prohibits credit discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, age, or because a person receives public assistance. Such activity must cause a disparate impact resulting from a creditor who treats an applicant differently based on a protected characteristic. For example, a lender cannot refuse to lend to single persons or offer less favorable terms to them than married persons even if big data analytics show that single persons are less likely to repay loans than married persons, the FTC said. Another example would be the use of ZIP code data that could trigger a violation if it could be linked to ethnic group discrimination, the commission noted. Big data can provide huge economic and social benefits as well as potentially negative outcomes, the FTC acknowledged. It was abundantly clear from the report that big technology advances will meet with a commensurate regulatory response. The day after the report was released, FTC Commissioner Julie Brill emphasized that point. Eighty years ago, Congress gave the FTC authority to protect consumers from a broad range of unfair or deceptive acts or practices, she said at a Privacy Summit sponsored by the governor of Washington. Under that authority, the FTC has initiated nearly 100 privacy and data security enforcement actions, Brill noted. The flexibility and breadth of our authority to obtain remedies that protect consumers has allowed us to keep up with rapid changes in technology, she said. Before the Internet, messages were spread by television and newspaper ads and highway billboards. Today that is done through social media. Virtually everyone knows about it, and many people use it. Does it make any sense that a U.S. government agency could violate any laws for using social media to carry out its mission? Doesnt make sense to me. However, last month, the U.S.Government Accountability Office ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency violated federal law and took part in covert propaganda by using social media to solicit support for an Obama administration rule aimed at protecting streams and surface waters. Having followed theEPA for many years, I have always thought that the point of the agency is to help protect the environment for future generations. Using social media to help protect the nations streams and surface waters seems to make a lot of sense, particularly since the EPAs website states that its mission is to protect health and the environment. Free Speech and Social Media Over the years, many people have filed lawsuits involving libel, slander and even revenge porn related to anonymous social media postings. Since under the U.S. Constitution, the First Amendment gives everyone the right to free speech, the principles should apply to social media. However, when these types of cases were first filed in the 1990s, they routinely failed, maybe because judges didnt understand or lawyers were not good at explaining their claims, or both. Then around 2000, U.S. courts accepted what was called cybersmear as a legitimate legal claim. However, if there was a grain of truth to a statement in question, it was not considered cybersmear. For example, if a posting stated that an EPA commissioner was incompetent, which is an opinion, that posting would be considered free speech under the First Amendment. However, a posting stating that the commissioner is a convicted felon, if untrue, would be not be protected free speech. The standard also is different for a public figure than for a private citizen. In 1964, the Supreme Court decided in New York Times v. Sullivan that slander or libel directed at a public figure is entitled to less protection than a nonpublic figure. Based on the Sullivan standard, the EPA is open to criticism, but whether is violating a federal law is altogether different. EPA Doesnt Back Down Last month, EPA spokesperson Liz Purchia posted a blog on the EPA website defending the agencys use of the GSA-approved Thunderclap social media platform to get the word out about our historic Clean Water Rule a law to better protect the streams and wetlands that are the foundation of our nations water resources. The page on Thunderclap included the EPA logo and byline with this message: Clean Water is important to me. I support EPAs efforts to protect it for my health, my family, and my community, she said. The EPA Thunderclap page was linked to an EPA website with information about the rule. We shared this page with all of our stakeholders no matter what sector, geographic location, or perspective with the goal of catalyzing our public engagement process, and getting people excited about the importance of clean water, Purchia said. Apparently the EPA is not backing down. Senate Inquiry The GAO is the investigative arm of the Congress, which is currently controlled by the Republican Party. This inquiry began last year when the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee requested that the GAO review the EPAs use of social media, and in particular Thunderclap. During the inquiry, Sen. James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, the committee chairman, requested that the GAO expand its inquiry to examine whether EPAs activities constituted prohibited covert propaganda or publicity. Other senators requested more information. The GAOs finding confirms what I have long suspected, that EPA will go to extreme lengths and even violate the law to promote its activist environmental agenda, Inhofe said after the GAO submitted its 26-page report last month. The Senate committee took note of other highlights of the GAO report about the EPA. We conclude that EPAs use of Thunderclap constitutes covert propaganda, in violation of the publicity or propaganda prohibition, the report says. We conclude that EPA violated the anti-lobbying provisions contained in appropriations acts for FY 2015 when it obligated and expended funds in connection with establishing the hyperlinks to the webpages of environmental action groups, it maintains. Because EPA obligated and expended appropriated funds in violation of specific prohibitions, we also conclude that EPA violated the Antideficiency Act, 31 U.S.C. 1341(a)(1)(A), as the agencys appropriations were not available for these prohibited purposes, the report says. Next Steps Congress seems to have made this more political than legal in nature, which means there likely will be a political resolution rather than a lawsuit between the GAO and the EPA. Regardless of how the issue is resolved, the legal issues presented are interesting and could result in more scrutiny of other U.S. agencies and their use of social media, giving other agencies free rein over social media use, or something in between. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on Thursday announced a deal that would require Uber to encrypt geolocation information about its riders, as well as enhance its data security practices. The AG opened an investigation into Uber in 2014, in response to allegations that the service had tracked riders and displayed their locations in an aerial format, known internally as the God View. The AGs office opened another investigation early last year, after Uber notified it that an unauthorized third-party had accessed the names and drivers license information of Uber drivers as early as May 2014, although the company did not discover it until the following September, according to legal documents obtained by the E-Commerce Times. We are committed to protecting the privacy of consumers and customers of any product in New York State, as well as that of any employee of any company operating here, Schneiderman said. New Data Rules The settlement requires that Uber encrypt rider geolocation information, adopt multifactor authentication before any Uber employee can access sensitive rider information, and engage in other protection practices, according to the AGs office. The settlement also requires Uber to pay a US$20,000 penalty for failing to provide timely notice to drivers and to the AGs office regarding the September 2014 data breach. We are deeply committed to protecting the privacy and personal data of riders and drivers, Uber said in a statement provided to the E-Commerce Times by spokesperson Matt Wing. We are pleased to have reached an agreement with the New York Attorney General that resolves these questions and makes it clear our commitment to best practices that put our community first. Weve Been Expecting You Buzzfeed reporter Johana Bhuiyan in 2014 discovered that her Uber ride had been tracked as she traveled to the companys Long Island City headquarters while on assignment to interview its New York general manager. She had not given prior consent to the tracking, and it was against company policy to do such a thing, according to a Buzzfeed exclusive report. The AGs office mentioned the Buzzfeed article in its announcement of the settlement; however, Wing declined to comment on the incident. Uber last year posted a privacy policy that mentioned the hiring of law firm Hogan Lovells to review the companys privacy practices. Uber conducts annual privacy and security training, has an employee designated to supervise it, and takes other steps that already comply with the AG agreement, it said. Companies often fail to protect sensitive customer data, according to Charles Duan, staff attorney at Public Knowledge, who pointed to the AT&T breach in which call center employees had access to customer data, including 280,000 Social Security numbers. I expect that many consumers will now start to think twice before hitting that Uber request button, he told the E-Commerce Times. Ubers ride service is largely based on the idea that its better than taxis, and now theyve shown that taxis are actually superior in at least one respect namely, privacy and anonymity. (Mercedes-Benz) Mercedes-Benz has revealed pricing for the highly anticipated 2017 E-Class executive sedan. The 2017 E-Class is now available to order and will be arriving at European markets by April 2016. U.S. availability has not yet been announced but is expected to follow at a later date. The 2017 Mercedes-Benz E-Class sedan will be offered in three variants the E200, the E220d and the E350d. The entry-level E200 model will be powered by a 2.0-liter four-cylinder petrol engine that produces 181 horsepower and 221 lb-ft or torque. It can go from 0 to 62 mph in 7.7 seconds and attain a top speed of 150 mph. Based on German prices, the E200 will cost about $49,427. The E220d variant is powered by a new 2.0-liter four-cylinder diesel engine that delivers 191 horsepower and 295 lb-ft of torque. It goes from standstill to 62 mph in 7.3 seconds and can run up to 150 mph. Prices start at about $51,414. The third model, the E350d, is powered by a 3.0-liter V6 diesel engine that produces 254 horsepower and 457 lb-ft of torque. It goes from 0 to 62 mph in just 5.9 seconds and attains a top speed of 155 mph. The E350d is expected to arrive at European dealers in June with prices starting at about $60,665. The 2017 Mercedes-Benz E-Class sedan comes standard with the 9G-TRONIC nine-speed automatic transmission. Other standard features include Active Brake Assist, the Pre-Safe system with Pre-Safe Sound, Dynamic Select with five drive modes, automatic climate control, the Audio 20 USB infotainment system and electrically adjustable front seats. Mercedes-Benz is also offering three packages (Avantegarde, Exclusive and AMG Line) to further enhance the design and features of the E-Class sedan. Customers can also equip their E-Class sedan with the latest technical innovations. Mercedes-Benz is offering the following packages: high-resolution Multibeam LED headlamps, Air Body Control suspension, Driving Assistance Package with DRIVE PILOT, Driving Assistance Package Plus and Remote Parking Pilot. Stay tuned for official news and announcements regarding U.S. pricing and availability. (Photo: REUTERS / David Mdzinarishvili)A baby is baptized during a mass baptism ceremony on Epiphany day in Tbilisi, January 19, 2014. About 600 children were baptized by the Georgian Orthodox church during the 32nd mass baptism ceremony at the country's main cathedral Holy Trinity Pope Francis has focused on the common baptism that all Christians share, saying the strength of this bond is stronger than existing divisions. "We are truly the Holy People of God, even if, due to our sins, we are not yet a people fully united," the Pope said in his Jan. 20 general audience in Rome. "All the baptized, reborn to new life in Christ, are brothers and sisters, despite our divisions," said Francis. The Pope's had his audience in the Vatican's Paul VI Hall, during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, Catholic News Agency reported. The Week of Prayer for Christian unity runs Jan. 18-25, and is organized by the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity and the Commission on Faith and the Order of the World Council of Churches. This year's theme, "Called to proclaim the mighty acts of the Lord," is taken from chapter two of the First Book of Peter, and was chosen by a group from Latvia, which is home to a strong presence of Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox Christians. Francis referred to a 12th century baptismal font in the Lutheran Cathedral of Riga in Latvia, where St. Mainardo evangelized in his address. In Riga, the country's oldest baptismal font, dating from the time of the Latvian evangelizer, St. Reinhard, stands at the center of the Lutheran Cathedral in the country's capital. The placement of the font so near to the cathedral's ornate pulpit speaks of the relationship between baptism and proclamation, and the calling shared by all the baptized to proclaim the mighty acts of the Lord, the World Council of Churches says on its website. The font, said the Pope, is sign of the origin of the faith recognized by all Christians in Latvia, and he explained that this origin "is our common baptism." SACRAMENTAL BOND OF UNITY The Pope referred to the Second Vatican Council document "Unitatis redintegratio," and affirmed that baptism "establishes a sacramental bond of unity which links all who have been reborn by it." Above all, this shared baptism means that all are sinners and are in need of being saved, redeemed and freed from evil, he said. When Christians say that they share one baptism, it's an affirmation that all of them, including Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox, share the experience of being called from "unforgiving darkness and alienation from the encounter with the living God," who is full of mercy. Francis noted that despite our common roots, all Christians unfortunately experience egoism, which plants seeds of division, closure and contempt in our minds and hearts. By restarting from our baptism, Christians again "plunge into the source of mercy and hope, from which no one is excluded," he said. This experience of shared grace creates "an indissoluble bond between us Christians, such that, by virtue of baptism, we can consider ourselves truly brothers," he said. Francis said that the more we welcome this grace and mercy, the more we belong to the one, Holy People of God. "We also become capable of announcing his marvelous works to all, beginning from a simple and fraternal witness of unity," Francis observed. He said a good way for all Christians to work together in this announcement is by performing the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, which are "a concrete witness of unity among us Christians: Protestants, Orthodox and Catholics." Rev. Odair Pedroso Mateus, the WCC's director of Faith and Order, said that during the week prayer, churches will have the opportunity to reflect on questions that may help them "proclaim the mighty acts of the Lord." For example, he noted three questions that could help people focus on spiritual renewal and Christian unity: "How do we understand our common call to be "God's people?" Or, "In what ways do we see and respond to God's "mighty acts": in worship and song, in work for justice and peace? "Knowing the mercy of God, how do we engage in social and charitable projects with other Christians?" The Roman Catholic Church is not a member of the WCC, but it cooperates with the grouping of more than 550 million mainly Anglicans, Orthodox Chrsitians and Protestants in main areas and it serves on the council's Faith and Order Commission. (Nissan) Alongside the extreme Nissan Rogue Warrior Concept, Nissan also introduced its Titan Warrior Concept based on the all-new 2016 Titan XD full-size pick-up truck. Nissan has turned its production version Titan XD into an extreme and aggressive off-road machine. "Truck buyers have a seemingly insatiable appetite for more content and more unique offerings. Even though our all-new 2016 Titan XD just started arriving at Nissan dealers nationwide last month, we are already exploring new territory where Titan might go into the future," said Jose Munoz, chairman of Nissan North America. In order to give the Titan Warrior Concept a more extreme and powerful presence, Nissan Design America (NDA) modified the Titan XD's dimensions. As a result, the concept truck is three inches higher and six inches wider. The change in height allowed NDA to equip the Titan Warrior Concept with 18-inch aluminum alloy wheels with massive 37-inch off-road tires. In terms of design, the Titan Warrior Concept evokes the feeling of a modern warrior's armor. The truck comes in a matte gunmetal exterior paint with orange and black accents. The front fascia features an enhanced grille, a muscular front fender, functional hood vents and a broad hood line to complement the large front skidplate. The truck also comes with custom LED lighting on the Nissan signature boomerang lights. At the rear, there are also LED taillights and a quad-tipped exhaust system. Despite its massive size, the Titan Warrior Concept is still aerodynamic. It uses carbon fiber for the rear cab and tailgate spoilers. Inside the truck, the cabin comes with a "chronograph" inspired design. The interior's styling also serves to complement the exterior's active design. The cabin features carbon-colored seats with orange accents. It also uses carbon fiber, chrome, leather and orange stitching for the interior trim and accents According to Automotive News, Nissan is considering putting the Titan Warrior Concept into production. However, that may come to fruition at a much later date. Instead, truck enthusiasts can first look forward to the arrival of the 2016 Titan and Titan XD pick-up trucks arriving at dealers by early spring 2016. (Photo: REUTERS / Nir Elias)Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew (R) walks with Pope Francis outside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem's Old City May 25, 2014. Pope Francis on Sunday invited the Israeli and Palestinian presidents to come to the Vatican to pray for peace a month after U.S.-backed talks aimed at ending the Middle East conflict collapsed. The meeting marks the 50th anniversary of a meeting between Patriarch Athenagoras I of Constantinople and Pope Paul VI in Jerusalem. The meeting of Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople holds significance for global churches and the ecumenical movement beyond the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches, says Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the World Council of Churches. Tveit in a statement Tuesday referred to the text of the Common Declaration issued by the two church leaders on May 25 when they met in Jerusalem. "It is important that the Bishop of Rome [Pope Francis] and the Patriarch of Constantinople met to confirm this calling of the church toward unity just as their predecessors did 50 years ago," Tveit said. "And that this is viewed as a necessary step toward communion in 'legitimate diversity.'" The Roman Catholic schism with Eastern Orthodox Churches occured in 1054. Sunday's meeting of Francis and Bartholomew in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher was the 50th anniversary of the meeting in 1964 between Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras, the Patriarch of Constantinople, viewed by many as the spiritual leader of Orthodox Christians. That historic meeting was the first rapprochement after 900 years of estrangement between the churches. The WCC head cited the confirmation by Bartholomew and Francis of the call to church unity, the importance of their meeting in Jerusalem and the Holy Land and their shared conviction that all are on their way on a pilgrimage of justice and peace. (Photo: Osservatore Romano) World Council of Churches general secretary, Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit, with Pope Francis in an audience at the Vatican on October 3, 2013. In their common declaration Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew pledged to continue working toward unity between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches. The WCC is a grouping of more than 500 million Christians that includes Anglican, Lutheran, Orthodox and Protestant churches. The Roman Catholic Church is not a member of the WCC, although its serves on the council's faith and order commission and other bodies of the Geneva-based body. ""Our fraternal encounter today is a new and necessary step on the journey towards the unity to which only the Holy Spirit can lead us, that of communion in legitimate diversity," the document signed on Sunday said. "The need for and understanding of respectful diversity within the Church was confirmed at our 10th Assembly in October last year, where both Orthodox and Roman Catholic leaders were present together with representatives of all the WCC member churches and beyond," Tveit said. "To hear this directly from them adds to the inspiration we experienced at the assembly," said Tveit referring to a once every seven years meeting held by the WCC' highest governing body. It was held in Busan, South Korea. In cooperation with the Ministry of Finance of Cyprus and the Cyprus Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCCI), the European Investment Bank Group (EIB Group) is organising the conference Solving non-performing loans (NPLs) through Innovative Solutions. The high stock of non-performing loans (NPLs) ranks amongst one of the most problematic issues in Cyprus, as it has been impeding the proper and adequate functioning of the banking sector. Policies which foster NPL resolution are therefore essential to revive bank lending activities in order to lead Cyprus back onto a path of sustainable growth. Although new insolvency and foreclosure legislation has meanwhile been adopted, Cyprus can benefit from international experience in terms of NPL resolution. There are a number of alternative strategies for management teams when it comes to the disposal of impaired assets. The suitable policy mix will depend on factors including the size of the NPLs, the asset type, the structure of the banking system, private- and public sector management capabilities as well as the fiscal policy. Regulatory and tax reforms can function as important tools for reducing NPL levels. Such reforms could aim at incentivising banks to deal with NPLs more efficiently, for instance through stricter provisioning rules, or to facilitate NPL resolution by reforming foreclosure rules and insolvency laws. The seminar is aimed at policy makers, representatives of the banking sector and private sector actors; it will highlight the key impediments to resolving the issue of NPLs in Cyprus whilst sharing best practices from other European countries and developing comprehensive proposals for policy reforms and initiatives. The event is free of charge and upon invitation only. If you would like to be invited, or for any further information, please send an email outlining your interest to Martha@ccci.org.cy or call tel: + 357 22 88 97 60. Europes economic success lies in its ability to innovate and complete its single market urgently, says a major study from EIB economists. Restoring EU Competiveness was published in Davos today at the annual World Economic Forum meeting under the banner of The 4th Industrial Revolution. The study, which was written by EIB economists and project analysts from the EUs public investment bank, calls for decisive measures from policymakers, investors and the private sector alike to raise Europes competitiveness for higher levels of productivity, employment and prosperity. It says the effects of the financial crisis have made structural weaknesses worse and contributed to a legacy of economic and policy challenges that need to be tackled. These have been made more pressing by the unprecedented rise in migration witnessed over the past year, which in all likelihood will continue in the near future. Speaking from Davos EIB President Werner Hoyer said, If anyone wonders why Europe needs integration, the scale of the challenge ahead is the answer. No single European country could meet it alone. Europe still has a strong base in science and some industrial technologies; but we risk missing the boat in the technologies of the next Industrial Revolution. At the EIB we are committed to strengthening Europes competitiveness, through significant and unprecedented levels of financing for innovation and through the European Fund for Strategic Investments which is now off to a successful start. He added, Crucially, in order to preserve its strength, the EU economy needs to be at the global innovation frontier. But investments in todays innovation only make sense if they can rely on access to a vast integrated market and a developed digital infrastructure. Market integration is the backbone of Europes prosperity. Our research clearly shows the alarming proportions of the innovation gap with the US, especially in leading-edge technologies, such as digital and biotechnology. Its time for all of us to face the urgent need to remedy decades of underspendingand under-thinkingabout innovation. The EIB is at the forefront of financing for innovation. EIB Group support for innovative projects was a record EUR 18.7 billion last year, compared to less than EUR 10 billion in 2008. However, the Restoring EU Competiveness study shows Europe needs: An additional EUR 130 billion a year to meet the EUs target of spending 3 percent of GDP on research and development (taking the EU close to the R&D investment ratios of other leading economies) EUR 90 billion a year to keep up with advanced manufacturing technology EUR 35 billion a year to match US Venture Capital financing EUR 10 billion for state-of-the-art education facilities EUR 65 billion to reach EU targets for broadband, data centre capacity and cyber-security Later this year the EIB intends to co-develop in the Competiveness Lab for Europe project. The aim is to pinpoint concrete recommendations to address Europes competiveness gap, and its findings will be presented in Davos in 2017. Background information: The Restoring EU Competiveness study is an update of an EIB study prepared in July 2014. It has revised investment gaps, expanded its scope to include deeper analysis of the importance of the EU single market, and updated the section and data around EIB activities. It focuses on key enablers that require long-term investment and are critical to our future well-being. Its purpose is to help inform the identification of strategic priorities and show why action needs to be stepped up at the European level to revitalize long-term, competitiveness-enhancing investment in the EU. More information Last year, as the worlds biggest multilateral financier, the EIB group (EIB and EIF combined) lent a record EUR 84.5 billion. In the coming year, one of its biggest challenges will be the management of the Investment Plan for Europe. Restoring EU Competiveness" study European Fund for Strategic Investments EIB Annual Report http://www.eib.org/infocentre/events/all/annual-press-conference-2016.htm United Nations, Jan 20 (EFE).- U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon hailed Tuesday a national unity government in Libya and hoped it will find support at the earliest to start addressing the challenges in the country's political transition. The naming "marks an important step towards the implementation of the Libya Political Agreement and the resolution of the crisis in the country," said Ban in a statement. The U.N.- appointed Presidency Council had announced a Government of National Accord after a delay of 48 hours, amid opposition by some of its members. The U.N. chief also renewed his appeal to all Libyans to back the political accord so the country could continue its democratic transition. The first challenge for the new government will be validation from the country's two rival Parliaments that operate out of Tripoli and Tobruk, something the appointing council was unable to achieve. The new government, to be headed by Council President Mohamad Fayez Al Serraj, comprises 32 ministers, chosen proportionally from the three main Libyan regions. U.N. special representative for Libya, Martin Kobler, urged the Tobruk Parliament, the only one recognized by the international community, to convene promptly and endorse the new government for it to receive funding and begin work. Bogota, Jan 20 (EFE).- Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos sent a formal request to the U.N. Security Council, or UNSC, to oversee the bilateral ceasefire with the leftist rebel group FARC, as agreed by the two sides on the same day in Havana, venue of the ongoing peace dialog. "In Havana, we have agreed to formally request the UNSC to create a special mission to verify the definitive bilateral ceasefire and disarmament. I have just sent a letter to the Council president making the request," said Santos in an address from the presidential palace, attended by leaders from across all political parties in the country. During his address Tuesday he also gave out details of the accord reached in Cuba, terming it "the most concrete step" taken since the peace process was initiated in November 2012. "I have maintained since the beginning the Government would only agree to a ceasefire if it was a serious one, that is, a definitive ceasefire with a verification mechanism in place that instills confidence in the government, the FARC, and above all, the Colombians. We have kept our promise," claimed the President. He stressed the "tripartite" nature of the verification, which will consist of observers from the government, the guerrilla as well as international envoys from CELAC members from Latin American and Caribbean nations. He added the countries will be chosen by the U.N. in consultation with the Havana negotiating team and in accordance with the normative practices for such peace missions worldwide. Santos underlined these would be "unarmed observers" - unlike a Blue Helmets peacekeeping mission - and mentioned significant advantages of approaching the UNSC, including its flexibility and the fact it would be a mechanism that "ensures the financing of the mission." "Independent of its size, a verification mission is quite costly. It is better we dedicate our resources to implementing other accords," he said. Bogota, Jan 20 (EFE).- The suspicion of a possible link between cases of microcephaly with Zika has led governments all over America to step up preventative measures and even recommend that women should avoid pregnancies, as the virus continues to spread and now is present in nearly 20 countries and territories of the continent. Since November, the virus has spread rapidly and its presence has been confirmed in Brazil, Barbados, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, French Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, San Martin, Surinam, Venezuela and now also the USA, where at least two pregnant women have tested positive for Zika. Faced with this rapid spread new action is now focusing on pregnant women as, though not usually fatal, the virus has been linked with increased reports of microcephaly, a deformity in which the baby is born with the skull smaller than normal, particularly in Brazil, where more than 3,500 cases of this anomaly are suspected to be a result of zika. The situation has prompted governments such as Colombia and Jamaica to recommend avoiding pregnancies, following the guidelines of the World Health Organization (WHO) to step up prevention against the increase in birth defects in areas where the virus circulates. "In consideration of the phase in which the existing Zika epidemic is and the risks involved, it is recommended to all couples of the country to not get pregnant during this phase, which can last until July 2016," according to a notice from the Health Ministry of Colombia, where 11,712 cases of zika have been reported, of which 297 are women in pregnancy. However, the Colombian government today denied the presence of a first case of microcephaly linked to the virus as indicated by the Colombian senator and Doctor Jorge Ivan Ospina. Colombia had also announced the launch of a study to determine if there is a relationship between zika and cases of microcephaly in the country, where between 2009 and 2015 some 840 children were treated with this deformity. Likewise, the Jamaican government, where no cases have been recorded, recommended to female Jamaicans today to delay their pregnancies "for the next six to twelve months" because of the growing threat of the virus. "The Zika virus is inching closer and closer to Jamaica as several of our Caribbean neighbors have reported cases. Women are therefore being advised to delay pregnancy if possible," said Health Minister Horace Dalley. The Dominican government, which stepped up the surveillance at border points, ports, airports and cruises after confirmation of the virus being present in Haiti, said that it considers including the recommendation to avoid pregnancy in its virus prevention protocol. In the U.S., the state of Florida confirmed three cases, but no pregant women, with the virus today. Two of the affected travelled to Colombia in December and the other visited Venezuela Florida issued a travel advisory in which it recommends pregnant women or those planning to become pregnant should avoid travelling to the 14 countries in Latin America in which Zika circulates. "Until more is known, and out of an abundance of caution, CDC recommends special precautions for pregnant women and women trying to become pregnant," noted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the U.S. At present Brazil, with 3,530 reported cases, is the country with the highest number of cases of microcephaly, suspected to have been caused by the virus. Therefore, the government launched an intense mobilization to combat "Aedes aegypti" mosquito that transmits dengue, chikungunya and zika, in addition to launching an investigation into the death of 38 babies allegedly linked to the virus. "This is a dramatic situation, without precedent. New cases accrue daily but we are not managing to connect the dots", told Artur Timerman, president of the Brazilian Society for Dengue and Arbovirus, who said that the Government made a mistake by not taking action against the virus earlier, according to the Spanish newspaper El Pais. "Pregnant women should be protected at all times. Until there are studies that say at which stage of pregnancy is there a possibility to acquire Zika, we will not lower our guard and continue alerting", said Ana Rius Armendariz, Secretary of Health of Puerto Rico, where one person has been diagnosed with the virus. So far there is no consolidated figures of those infected with Zika on the continent, as in some countries it is not mandatory to notify the cases, although Colombia reports the highest number with 11,714 cases. The virus, which can cause fever, red eyes without secretion and without irritation, rash and, less frequently, muscle and joint pain, was identified for the first time in 1947 in the forests of Zika in Uganda (Africa) and was detected in Latin America in 2014 by the Chilean authorities, who confirmed the first case on Easter Island. Tucson (U.S.), Jan 20 (EFE).- With thousands of Cubans arriving at the southern frontiers of the United States, activists are questioning the special treatment meted out to immigrants from the island country as compared to those from Central America. According to them, while Cubans are given special privileges, Central American immigrants are deported despite the fact that they too are escaping violence in their countries of origin. "This is a cynical double standard, a legacy of the Cold War era in which the U.S. places migrants from enemy-regimes on one side and those from allied countries on the other side of the balance," director of Central American nonprofit 'El Rescate,' Salvador Sanabria, told EFE. He added Cubans come from a more stable and peaceful atmosphere, as compared to Central Americans who, he said, are "fleeing from hell." For e.g. in El Salvador official figures peg the number of homicides at 3,912 for 2014 - a jump of 1,422 more than the year before, whilst Honduras - one of the poorest countries in the region - closed the first semester of 2015 with 2,580 such cases. "We can say there is discrimination against Central Americans. The Cuban Adjustment Act has not been updated; it came into force in the 1960s and is thus based on the world scenario of those times," an immigration lawyer Fernando Romo told EFE. He added Cubans can just present themselves at the border and their nationality secures them entry into the United States and they can even arrange residency for other family members within a year. Moreover, he added, special provisions allow them to get United States Citizenship and Immigration Services application costs waived. Considering the community's political clout in the country, the lawyer said chances are slim for the legislation, favoring Cubans, to be revoked. Meanwhile, director of the 'Honduran Alliance,' Cecilia Rodriguez told EFE the U.S. government must study the current situation in the countries to grant immigration benefits, and claimed Central Americans are currently in urgent need of protection. Fetterman 'recovering well' from life-threatening stroke, doctor says John Fetterman on Wednesday released an updated medical report that says he is recovering well from his May stroke. Ely, Cambridgeshire is best known for its majestic cathedral dubbed the 'Ship of the Fens' because it dominates the flat landscape. The city, which is the second smallest in England, is about 14 miles north-northeast of Cambridge and about 80 miles by road from London. 17:55, 17 OCT 2022 Conference to explore new ways of dealing with loss Amanda Cafaero New insights into grief and bereavement will help raise awareness of the support available on the Island for those dealing with loss. That's the hope of Cruse Bereavement Care - the charity is hosting a conference next month in a bid to provide professionals with a forum to share knowledge and skills. Professors and lecturers from the UK will attend the event on February 23rd - among the topics being discussed are support for those who've been bereaved through suicide and substance abuse. Amanda Cafaero is from Cruse: Media Amanda Cafaero Re: Going to ETH for a student with disabilities? https://www.ahv-iv.ch/de/Sozialversi...ersicherung-IV Here's the german website with a lot of links and FAQ. As for accessibility: A good majority of the public transit here is accessible---however not all, so sometimes you might have to wait for another bus/tram, choose your train wisely. At ETH I think everything is relatively accessible, you just need to know where the automatic doors/ramps/lifts are. The one concern I would have is they are not very thorough here with snow and ice removal on the sidewalks. I slip all the time and am generally very sure footed. In Zurich, this will only be a few weeks altogether in the winter though (depending on the weather). Do note the different system in CH, where a Bachelors degree isn't considered a full graduate of the ETH. A full graduate requires a masters as well. I think what you're looking for is called IV: InvalidenversicherungHere's the german website with a lot of links and FAQ.As for accessibility: A good majority of the public transit here is accessible---however not all, so sometimes you might have to wait for another bus/tram, choose your train wisely.At ETH I think everything is relatively accessible, you just need to know where the automatic doors/ramps/lifts are.The one concern I would have is they are not very thorough here with snow and ice removal on the sidewalks. I slip all the time and am generally very sure footed. In Zurich, this will only be a few weeks altogether in the winter though (depending on the weather).Do note the different system in CH, where a Bachelors degree isn't considered a full graduate of the ETH. A full graduate requires a masters as well. __________________ "You have reached the end of you free trial membership at BenjaminFranklinQuotes.com" -Benjamin Franklin Re: Seeking ecology/science communication job Hi, Martina, I can only say good luck to your job search in CH in Ecology and related field. My husband has a doctorate degree in biological sciences: Landscape Ecology (GIS is one of the chapters in his dissertation) from USA and had 4 years of post doctoral experience in an US national lab and some publications. He IS still looking for a job in his field after we moved back to his homeland in mid January this year. He has applied for a few jobs in the field but has been rejected- did not even get an interview. Females are welcome to apply for those job positions he applied. You might have a better chance than my hubby. Now he is planning to be a science teacher- above secondary school level. Keep looking! kuanty Re: Fox News Reacts to Obama's Gun Control Speech Quote: Yeah, cos all that gun crime in Chicago is committed by people who buy their guns at gunshops. Illegally owned firearms used to commit crime on young black/Hispanic males (not a problem) Legally owned firearms used to commit crime on white children (a problem) Maybe the US should round up all black/Hispanic men and put them in jail? (Although based on recent statistics it looks like they're trying to do that already). In a closed system - no guns = no gun crime. But the system isn't closed, and they are Americans - and they're not that great at being told what to do - they get all excited, jump up and down, declare you an "enemy of democracy and/or god" and run about the place act like they're part of the Bangles defensive line (I was going for Cowboys but realized their record at Gridiron this year was woeful). For me though - my absolute favourite is their "right to bear/bare arms" - which was all well and good when the government was sent from good old Great Britain and was held in place by 36 men call Geoffrey in beautiful red uniforms. If an American (and his pet Eagle) and 9 of his closest relatives all jump in a pick up from Alabama/Nebraska - head for the capital with their 12-bores - they'd not get further than the state border before a Sheriff, State Police Officer, FBI Agent introduced them to the muzzles of more automatic rifles than is entirely necessary, a rubber gloved hand and an extensive cavity search. When I was a lad America was the promised land - it was so much better than a wet Tuesday in Stoke on Trent - and no amount of mushy peas and chips could make up for that. 30 years later - I'd take the mushy peas and chips any day of the week. Perhaps we should split gun crime into distinct groups:Illegally owned firearms used to commit crime on young black/Hispanic males (not a problem)Legally owned firearms used to commit crime on white children (a problem)Maybe the US should round up all black/Hispanic men and put them in jail?(Although based on recent statistics it looks like they're trying to do that already).In a closed system - no guns = no gun crime. But the system isn't closed, and they are Americans - and they're not that great at being told what to do - they get all excited, jump up and down, declare you an "enemy of democracy and/or god" and run about the place act like they're part of the Bangles defensive line (I was going for Cowboys but realized their record at Gridiron this year was woeful).For me though - my absolute favourite is their "right to bear/bare arms" - which was all well and good when the government was sent from good old Great Britain and was held in place by 36 men call Geoffrey in beautiful red uniforms. If an American (and his pet Eagle) and 9 of his closest relatives all jump in a pick up from Alabama/Nebraska - head for the capital with their 12-bores - they'd not get further than the state border before a Sheriff, State Police Officer, FBI Agent introduced them to the muzzles of more automatic rifles than is entirely necessary, a rubber gloved hand and an extensive cavity search.When I was a lad America was the promised land - it was so much better than a wet Tuesday in Stoke on Trent - and no amount of mushy peas and chips could make up for that.30 years later - I'd take the mushy peas and chips any day of the week. __________________ "Don't believe everything you read on the internet" Abraham Lincoln Re: Moving to Geneva with infant Quote: Anjela I was thinking more Drize and Chemin Vert as far as Carouge is concerned, and La Chapelle, which is the part above Bachet (the TPG tram depot), there are others but I'm not sure of the names as they're going to be 'new' areas. Lancy is okay, don't know Chene Bougeries that well but understand it's nice. Chene Bourg is more built up than Chene Bougeries so watch that when making a list of places to visit. Basically ideally you try to find somewhere along the #12 tram route or with a bus that links to that tramline. Or the same, but the #15 which would include Lancy. But do check the frequency of the buses as some of the outlying villages only have one per hour which is very annoying if you've just missed it. You need to remember too that in the Geneva housing market things go incredibly fast and often don't get advertised at all, so it's worth asking your employer if they have contacts with any particular letting agents; some of the bigger companies are offered places before the general public. If you've been allocated a relocation agent they'll have similar contacts. I have asked this question before and the response I got was not encouraging to ride my bicycle to work, which would be my preferred option. I'll also keep an eye out on bike path and the relative ease to do so during peak hours. Cheers. Thank you Anjela. We do have a letting agent which will be assigned to us and I am trying to get in touch with them this week/next week to start getting some feeds from them in terms of what will be available when we get to Geneva and discussing some of the areas we would like to inspect when we get there (The plan is for me to go to Geneva first and get everything organised before my wife and son come, so I will be doing the viewings, etc).I have asked this question before and the response I got was not encouraging to ride my bicycle to work, which would be my preferred option. I'll also keep an eye out on bike path and the relative ease to do so during peak hours.Cheers. Yet Another Smuggling Case http://www.20min.ch/schweiz/zuerich/...elpen-29347050 Smugglers have been caught at the border, with mother dog in the car and a litter of boxer-pitbull cross puppies hidden in the boot. It is thought that the smugglers were bringing the puppies from Italy through Switzerland to Germany. It is alledged that these b******s have done this before. The smugglers face not only charges for illegal importation, but also charges related to dangerous dog legislation. The mother and puppies have been given to a Tierschutz organization. Unfortunately given BSL as well as the absolutely unexcuseable barstewardry of those idiots who tried to smuggle them in... The problem of smuggling, of illegal dog dealing, is growing in Switzerland. This is an egregious example - but this is also why I am so upset with all the threads where first time posters pop up advertising dogs, either for sale or claiming to be a rescue. Yes, these posters might be legit. But why advertise on EF? Responsible breeders, responsible rescues advertise elsewhere, not on an open forum 'free ads'. When I see these posts my spidey senses start tingling, wondering if the thought that we 'blode Auslander' EFers might not know the law and therefore tend towards the gullible is why folks with no history on the forum and thus no credibility, decided to post here. I hope I'm wrong, I hope these newbie posters are simply naive. But given the growing problem of dog smuggling... I just hope that there is a different end in sight for those pups than what I fear... B******s. (I see the filter caught even my asterisked-out adjective. As one might guess, I am upset.) I was going to title the thread B******s, but thought better of it. Nonetheless those are my exact sentiments.Smugglers have been caught at the border, with mother dog in the car and a litter of boxer-pitbull cross puppies hidden in the boot. It is thought that the smugglers were bringing the puppies from Italy through Switzerland to Germany.It is alledged that these b******s have done this before.The smugglers face not only charges for illegal importation, but also charges related to dangerous dog legislation.The mother and puppies have been given to a Tierschutz organization. Unfortunately given BSL as well as the absolutely unexcuseable barstewardry of those idiots who tried to smuggle them in...The problem of smuggling, of illegal dog dealing, is growing in Switzerland. This is an egregious example - but this is also why I am so upset with all the threads where first time posters pop up advertising dogs, either for sale or claiming to be a rescue.Yes, these posters might be legit. But why advertise on EF? Responsible breeders, responsible rescues advertise elsewhere, not on an open forum 'free ads'. When I see these posts my spidey senses start tingling, wondering if the thought that we 'blode Auslander' EFers might not know the law and therefore tend towards the gullible is why folks with no history on the forum and thus no credibility, decided to post here.I hope I'm wrong, I hope these newbie posters are simply naive.But given the growing problem of dog smuggling...I just hope that there is a different end in sight for those pups than what I fear...B******s.(I see the filter caught even my asterisked-out adjective. As one might guess, I am upset.) Re: Geneva Airport fires Muslim workers This is what the solicitor representing them is saying. Only Muslims were fired, of the right colour and with the 'right' (wrong) names, en bloc- without any intelligence from the French (eg none were on suspect register, etc), and that none with access to tarmac are currently the same as above. Unless one is a Muslim convert with a non arabic name or colour (we all know their exist). And since no-one else that fits the above description has been sacked- what other conclusions can one come to? Especially has the majority had been there for years, doing a good job integrated in a team. More research to be made I agree. What I am saying is, that if that is the case- it is truly shocking- and a great way to radicalise young people, I'd say. Re: Geneva Airport fires Muslim workers Frankly it would help if people actually read the info available instead of stopping mid-article. As is stated, at least one employee was under special scrutiny by the french, the guy with the "fiche S", obviously unbeknownst to airport security or they would have reacted before being informed by the french. They need to ask themselves: How many more did we overlook? How many will potentially be killed in such a case? As a consequence of the Paris terror attacks security measures got revised and tightened, in other words those in charge are doing their job. One measure is that security clearance is now checked every two years instead of five. Obviously that means about 60% of the personnel got checked at the same time, also obviously those that didn't pass get their security clearance withdrawn roughly at the same time. Those in charge of security will have to prefer being too strict rather than let only one too many pass: Security comes first, full stop. There is no such thing as "in dubio pro reo" here as there are higher values at risk: the lives of your passengers and personnel. They acted accordingly: Their security clearances were withdrawn, no more no less. They were not fired. What's also overlooked: The criteria underlying the personnel security checks are defined by the BAZL. Obviously these measures would be relatively easy to bypass if known by the public, therefor the document's content is secret. I don't give a shit what religion they are, provided they have one in the first place. But if they fail to pass the checks without problems I think their security clearance needs to be withdrawn. If possible keep employing them, but that will have to be second priority. Re: Geneva Airport fires Muslim workers Quote: CorsebouTheReturn See you can have 10 employees. 5 of them are "white skin" with ginger hair. They are all fired. It does not means necessarily they were discriminated based on their (horrible*) hair color! As said, I am awaiting further info. Does anyone know- was any other French frontalier staff sacked who were not of Arab origin and assumed to be Muslim? They could have welcomed them at work on the day and explained: due to fresh intelligence, we have no choice but to stop you from doing your job today and in the near future. We know you have been an excellent employee, and we are very sorry not to have a choice in the current circumstances and you will be properly compensated- and re-instated pending an enquiry and further information- when possible. Our apologies again and hope you understand. Go home and we will be keep you informed. Thank you. What would be wrong with that? What is wrong too, is that security firms found themselves VERY short staffed out of the blue at the busiest time of the year and in the most dangerous circumstances for a long time. Safe? Really? Well, yes. But if your have 500 employees and you happen to sack 30 of them who all have the same ethnic profile, whose religion has been 'assumed' because of this??? Come on!As said, I am awaiting further info. Does anyone know- was any other French frontalier staff sacked who were not of Arab origin and assumed to be Muslim?They could have welcomed them at work on the day and explained: due to fresh intelligence, we have no choice but to stop you from doing your job today and in the near future. We know you have been an excellent employee, and we are very sorry not to have a choice in the current circumstances and you will be properly compensated- and re-instated pending an enquiry and further information- when possible. Our apologies again and hope you understand. Go home and we will be keep you informed. Thank you.What would be wrong with that?What is wrong too, is that security firms found themselves VERY short staffed out of the blue at the busiest time of the year and in the most dangerous circumstances for a long time. Safe? Really? A study from the Buck Institute and UCLA offers an explanation for why a particular genetic form (allele) of apolipoprotein E (ApoE) poses the most significant genetic risk for Alzheimer's disease. Publishing on January 20th in The Journal of Neuroscience, researchers cast the lipid-binding ApoE4 in an entirely new light, showing that it is a transcription factor that enters the nucleus and binds DNA with high affinity, including the promoter regions of 1700 different genes. Seventy-five million Americans are ApoE4 carriers, putting them at increased risk for Alzheimer's disease, and another 7 million carry two copies of ApoE4, giving them an even higher, 10 - 12 fold increased risk of developing Alzheimer's. "When the genes whose promoters bind ApoE4 are considered in functional groups, their relationship to Alzheimer's disease is striking," said co-senior author Dale Bredesen, MD, Buck Institute faculty and a professor at the Easton Laboratories for Neurodegenerative Disease Research at UCLA, "ApoE4 targets genes associated with sirtuins and aging, insulin resistance, inflammation and oxidative damage, accumulation of amyloid plaques and tangled tau among others. This provides a roadmap for what is essentially a 'unified theory' of Alzheimer's disease." "Our group hopes this work will lead to a new type of screen for Alzheimer's prevention and treatment," said co-senior author Rammohan Rao, PhD, an associate research professor at the Buck Institute. "We are also designing and engineering novel drug candidates that target not one, but several of the ApoE4 mediated pathways simultaneously. Ultimately we want to develop a drug that can be given to ApoE4 carriers that would prevent the development of Alzheimer's disease, and these results provide a mechanism and screen to do that." "This is an exciting, unexpected discovery that should be of great interest to neuroscientists," said Caleb Finch, PhD, the ARCO/William K. Kieschnick Professor in the Neurobiology of Aging at the University of Southern California. "The fact that a lipoprotein in the blood is also a transcription factor that directly controls gene expression makes it an important factor across the lifespan." Finch, who was not involved in the research, studies the evolution of the human lifespan and diseases of aging, especially Alzheimer's. "There is a lot of major work that needs to be done, both within the Alzheimer's field and within general molecular biology - now that APOE has been identified as such a major player." The study was done using a combination of neural cell lines, skin fibroblasts from Alzheimer's patients, and ApoE targeted mouse brains, and utilized chromatin immunoprecipitation and high-throughput DNA sequencing (ChIP-seq). The work followed a 2013 study by Bredesen and Rao, along with geneticist Veena Theendakara, which showed a connection between ApoE4 and Alzheimer's via the anti-aging protein Sirtuin1 (SIRT1), the same molecule whose activity is enhanced by resveratrol, an ingredient in red wine. The presence of ApoE4 triggered the reduction of SIRT1 both in neural cells and in the brains of Alzheimer's patients with ApoE4. How ApoE4 triggered the reduction of SirT1 was not explained in that study. "These results offer an exciting new possibility to design therapeutics that would block the coordinated action of these 1700 ApoE4-associated genes in their Alzheimer's risk induction, and such an approach is now underway," said Bredesen. ### Citation: Direct Transcriptional Effects of Apolipoprotein E DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI. 3562-15.2016 Other Buck researchers involved in the study include Veena Theendakara, Clare A. Peters-Libeu, Patricia Spilman, and Karen S. Poksay. The work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (AG034427), the Joseph Drown Foundation, the Buck Impact Circle, The Marin Community Foundation, the Stephen D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation and The John and Bonnie Strauss Foundation. About the Buck Institute for Research on Aging The Buck Institute is the U.S.'s first independent research organization devoted to Geroscience - focused on the connection between normal aging and chronic disease. Based in Novato, CA, The Buck is dedicated to extending "Healthspan", the healthy years of human life and does so utilizing a unique interdisciplinary approach involving laboratories studying the mechanisms of aging and those focused on specific diseases. Buck scientists strive to discover new ways of detecting, preventing and treating age-related diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, cancer, cardiovascular disease, macular degeneration, osteoporosis, diabetes and stroke. In their collaborative research, they are supported by the most recent developments in genomics, proteomics, bioinformatics and stem cell technologies. For more information: http://www.thebuck.org ITHACA, NY-- A new study by researchers at Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) has uncovered a veritable trove of genes used by plants to form symbiotic relationships with fungi, vastly increasing the knowledge of the genetic basis for this agriculturally valuable interaction. Most land plants get a large portion of their mineral nutrients through a symbiotic relationship with soil fungi called arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) symbiosis. But, despite decades of research, many of the genes required to form this relationship remain elusive. Now, with the advent of widely available genome sequences, BTI researchers were able to compare 50 plant genomes to identify 138 genes shared exclusively by plants capable of AM symbiosis. The findings, which appear in the journal Nature Plants, may ultimately bring us closer to developing plants that thrive without added fertilizer. "Currently, our research field has identified only a handful of genes required exclusively for AM symbiosis and we know that there are huge gaps in our knowledge," said senior author Maria Harrison, the William H. Crocker Professor at BTI. "These 138 genes are a valuable resource and provide new insights into the ways that plant cells host their fungal symbionts." In the past, researchers have identified genes involved in AM symbiosis through time-consuming genetic screens that could take upwards of five years to complete. Having identified a few genes from the barrel medic plant (Medicago truncatula) through this approach, the researchers noted that several of these AM symbiosis genes are missing from another plant species that does not host the fungi. This realization inspired Nathan Pumplin, a former graduate student in the Harrison laboratory to initiate a genome comparison approach in the hope of identifying more genes that fit this pattern. "The approach relies on the idea, supported by fossil evidence, that AM symbiosis evolved just once, early on in the evolution of land plants, so all plants that host the symbiosis likely inherited a similar set of genes. Plant groups that lost the ability to form symbiosis are presumed to have lost the required genes," said Armando Bravo, a postdoctoral scientist and first author on the paper, who continued to develop the project. Bravo collaborated with Thomas York, a bioinformatics analyst at BTI, to compare the genome sequences of 34 plant species that can form the symbiosis with 16 that can't. Together, they picked out the genes that are found only in plants that form AM symbiosis and from an initial list of 62,000 possibilities, arrived at just 138 genes. Fifteen of these were already known to play a role in AM symbiosis and Bravo tested the accuracy of seven of the unknown genes in the group by growing barrel medic with mutations in those genes and examining their ability to form a successful symbiosis. Mutations in six of these genes resulted in a faulty interaction. Analysis of the new genes that were found highlighted the importance of lipid biosynthesis during symbiosis. While the analysis cannot single out every gene that a plant needs for symbiosis, it did pick out the ones that serve no other function except in symbiosis. "I think it really shows you the power of bioinformatics," said Lukas Mueller, a coauthor and associate professor at BTI. "If you have lots of genomes you have much more power to answer questions." In the future, the researchers plan to investigate the remaining 131 genes and to use them to learn more about the development and regulation of the symbiosis. Almost all staple food crops form AM symbioses, so optimizing this interaction through crop breeding could improve yield and reduce the need for fertilizers. To begin the work, the researchers received a generous grant from the Triad Foundation, an Ithaca-based national philanthropic organization. The grant supports high-risk, high-reward research that is difficult to fund through traditional sources. The research was also supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (#IOS-1127155). ### Media Relations Contacts: Patricia Waldron (607-254-7476, pjw85@cornell.edu) or Kitty Gifford (607-592-3062, kmg35@cornell.edu) CITATIONS: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/NPLANTS.2015.208 To learn more about Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) research, visit the BTI website at http://bti.cornell.edu. Connect online with BTI at http://www.facebook.com/BoyceThompsonInstitute and http://www.twitter.com/BTIScience. About Boyce Thompson Institute Boyce Thompson Institute is a premier life sciences research institution located in Ithaca, New York on the Cornell University campus. BTI scientists conduct investigations into fundamental plant and life sciences research with the goals of increasing food security, improving environmental sustainability in agriculture and making basic discoveries that will enhance human health. Throughout this work, BTI is committed to inspiring and educating students and to providing advanced training for the next generation of scientists. For more information, visit http://www.bti.cornell.edu. The past century has seen a 0.8C (1.4F) increase in average global temperature, and according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the overwhelming source of this increase has been emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants from human activities. Scientists have also observed that many of Earth's glaciers, ecosystems and other systems are already being impacted by rising regional temperatures and altered rainfall amounts and patterns. What remains unclear is precisely what fraction of the observed changes in these climate-sensitive systems can confidently be attributed to human-related influences, rather than mere natural regional fluctuations in climate. So Gerrit Hansen of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and Daithi Stone of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) developed and applied a novel methodology for answering this challenging question. Their work was published in Nature Climate Change on December 21, 2015. Their computer modeling-based study focused on various particular regional impacts around the world identified in the last IPCC report (such as melting glaciers and snow ice in Europe, changes in terrestrial ecosystems in Asia, wildfires in the state of Alaska, etc.). The IPCC report listed over 100 such impacts of various kinds in various regions across the globe. The Hansen-Stone study focused on the regional climate trends relevant to these impacts over the 40-year period 1971-2010. Using a sophisticated algorithm, the study essentially required satisfaction of three distinct types of tests. First, the algorithm assessed the adequacy of the available climate data--the so-called observational record--related to the particular regional impact over the 40-year period. Was the data sufficient to provide a basis for understanding what actually had been taking place? Next, the algorithm determined whether the climate models the researchers used provided sufficient resolution or detail concerning regional climate so as to be considered an appropriate source of information. Finally, the researchers examined collections of model simulations with and without human emissions factored in to understand to what degree human emissions were responsible for a given impact, by comparing these simulations against observed trends. The result of each test of data set quality or of observation-simulation agreement was expressed as a numerical score, and then these scores were merged into an overall measure of confidence in the hypothesis that human-generated emissions have affected the regional climate, ranging from "none" to "very high". "There are many ways we could combine the scores", says Stone, "but we found that it didn't matter which plausible method we used--the results all pointed to the same conclusions." Their analysis revealed that almost two-thirds of the listed impacts related specifically to the warming over land and near the surface of the ocean could confidently be attributed to human-generated emissions. However, the researchers could not find the same kind of link for trends in precipitation. According to Stone, cases where the link between human-generated greenhouse gas emissions and local warming trends were weak were often due to the fact that the climate observational record was insufficient in those regions to build a clear picture about what has been happening over the past several decades. "Previous analyses linking observed impacts to climate change have been generic in nature, addressing whether there is an influence of human-related warming on impacts globally, without an inference to individual impacts," says Hansen. "Our analysis is the first to bridge these gaps for a large range of impacts, by assessing the role of human-related emissions in each impact individually, including impacts related to trends in precipitation and sea ice." "Studies linking emissions to climate change impacts provide the most stringent test available for evaluating the accuracy and confidence of our projections of impacts in a future warmer world," says Wolfgang Cramer, Director of the Mediterranean Institute for Marine and Terrestrial Biodiversity and Ecology in Aix-en-Provence, France. "With these tests, we can be much more confident in our calculations of how a 4C world will differ from a 1.5C world. It is crucial that we continue to develop and maintain observational efforts around the world in order to continue documenting how the world is responding to our greenhouse emissions, as well as to agreed reductions in those emissions." ### Stone and Hansen's work was partially supported by the Department of Energy's Office of Science and the German Ministry of Education and Research. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world's most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab's scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. For more, visit http://www.lbl.gov. DOE's Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit the Office of Science website at science.energy.gov/. HANOVER, N.H. - Men continue to dominate a number of academic professions such as economics, but a Dartmouth College-University of Pennsylvania study shows the gender gap is shrinking in at least one research field -- vision science. The findings appear in the Journal of Vision. A PDF is available on request. Previous research shows that in academic settings, women are under-represented in mathematically intensive fields such as engineering, computer science and physics, while in social and life sciences, the representation is more balanced. But the Dartmouth-Penn findings are important because they involve a fast-growing multidisciplinary field that cannot be assumed to follow the demographic trends of any single traditional scientific field, thus providing a broader look at gender balance among academic researchers nationwide. "Understanding the current status and historical trends of gender gaps is an important component of fostering a diverse and inclusive scientific community," says co-lead author Emily Cooper, a research assistant professor in Dartmouth's Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. The study's other lead author is Ana Radonjic, a research associate at the University of Pennsylvania. The Dartmouth-Penn team examined the gender makeup, dropout rate and career trajectory in vision science, which includes researchers in psychology and neuroscience as well as computer science. To do so, they tracked the gender of attendees over the past decade at the annual meeting of the Vision Sciences Society (VSS), one of the most prominent conferences in the field. During that period, VSS meeting attendance increased from nearly 900 to nearly 2,000. The results show that while the majority of vision scientists at all career levels are male, there is a substantial generational difference in gender balance - the older generation has a much larger percentage of men, but the younger generation has a smaller gap. Across generations, the male-bias has been slowly but steadily decreasing over the past decade. An analysis of the career trajectories for a recent generation of graduate students shows that females have a larger dropout rate than males. But the results also suggest that women who continue in vision science research beyond graduate school advance in their career at very similar rates as men. In terms of recognition for their achievements, the imbalance between males and females in the vision sciences community still exists: only one out of nine awardees of VSS's Young Investigator Award has been female and the members of a conference review committee are predominantly male. "We hope our report will motivate efforts to understand the causes of this imbalance and correct for it, so that in the future these recognitions better reflect the greater gender balance of the current generation of vision scientists," Radonjic says. "It's important to directly examine the issue of demographic representation in the sciences for several reasons," Cooper adds. "Advancement in science should be based on merit, and a scientific community is best positioned to tackle complex problems if it is composed of people with a diversity of backgrounds." ### Dartmouth Research Assistant Professor Emily Cooper is available to comment at emily.a.cooper@dartmouth.edu. Broadcast studios: Dartmouth has TV and radio studios available for interviews. For more information, visit: http://communications.dartmouth.edu/media/broadcast-studios This news release is available in German. Scientists at ETH Zurich have developed a new method of 3D microprinting. This can be used to manufacture even tiny, partly overhanging structures easily and in a single step. One day, this could pave the way for the manufacture of complex watch components or microtools for keyhole surgery, for example. In most existing 3D microprinting processes, overhanging structures can be achieved only through a workaround: during the printing process, a stencil manufactured beforehand is used as a placeholder under the overhang that is to be printed. The template must be removed once printing is complete. In the new technique developed by ETH doctoral student Luca Hirt of the Laboratory of Biosensors and Bioelectronics, the print head can also print sideways. This means that overhangs can be printed without templates. Tiny pipette The new technique is a refinement of the FluidFM system developed at ETH Zurich several years ago (see ETH Life article, 26.06.2009). At the heart of this system is a moveable micropipette mounted on a leaf spring, which can be positioned extremely precisely. Nowadays, FluidFM is used primarily in biological research and medicine; for example, to sort and analyse cells and to inject substances into individual cells. For three years now, the system has been sold commercially by the ETH spin-off Cytosurge. As part of his doctoral thesis at ETH Zurich, Luca Hirt has been investigating the possibility of using FluidFM for printing processes. In particular, he is interested in using this technique to electro-deposit dissolved metals and other substances on to a conductive substrate. Electrochemical reactions at the tip The system now developed works as follows: a droplet of liquid is placed on a base plate made of gold. The tip of the micropipette penetrates the droplet and acts as a print head. A copper sulphate solution flows slowly and steadily through the pipette. Using an electrode, the scientists apply a voltage between the droplet and the substrate, causing a chemical reaction under the pipette aperture. The copper sulphate emerging from the pipette reacts to form solid copper, which is deposited on the base plate as a tiny 3D pixel. Using a computer to control the movement of the micropipette, the researchers can print three-dimensional objects pixel by pixel and layer by layer. The spatial resolution of this process depends on the size of the pipette's aperture, which in turn determines the size of the copper deposits. At present, the scientists can produce individual 3D pixels with diameters ranging from 800 nanometres to more than five micrometres, and can combine these to form larger 3D objects. In an initial feasibility study, various spectacular microscopic objects were created. They consist of pure, non-porous copper and are mechanically stable, as studies by scientists from the group led by Ralph Spolenak, Professor of Nanometallurgy at ETH Zurich, showed. A particularly impressive object consists of three nested microspirals, which the ETH researchers manufactured in a single step and without using a template. "This method can be used to print not only copper but also other metals," says Tomaso Zambelli, associate lecturer and group leader at the Laboratory of Biosensors and Bioelectronics at ETH Zurich. And FluidFM may even be suitable for 3D printing with polymers and composite materials, he says. An advantage of the new method over other 3D microprinting processes is that the forces acting on the tip of the pipette can be measured via the deflection of the leaf spring on which the micropipette is mounted. "We can use this signal as feedback. Unlike other 3D printing systems, ours can detect which areas of the object have already been printed," says Hirt. This will make it easier to automate the printing process. Successful collaboration with a spin-off The scientists have submitted a patent application for the method. The scientists have submitted a patent application for the method. The ETH spin-off Cytosurge has now licensed the method from ETH Zurich. Pascal Behr played a key role in developing FluidFM at ETH several years ago. Today, he is CEO of Cytosurge. "We see big market potential in the printing process and an opportunity to further diversify our company," he says. "We are convinced of the idea of using FluidFM in 3D microprinting. Now, the task is to optimise this application in collaboration with interested researchers at universities and in industry -- for example, in the watchmaking, medical technology and automotive sectors." Behr sees an initial application in the field of rapid prototyping, where microscopic components can be manufactured quickly and easily using 3D printing. The long-established collaboration between ETH Zurich and Cytosurge will also continue. "It is a case of mutual give and take, from which both sides profit," says Zambelli. Cytosurge provides ETH with its latest equipment, which the ETH scientists are able to use for their research. They in turn help to test the devices and offer suggestions for improvements and further development. ### Reference Hirt L, Ihle S, Pan Z, Dorwling-Carter L, Reiser A, Wheeler JM, Spolenak R, Voros J, Zambelli T: Template-Free 3D Microprinting of Metal Using a Force-Controlled Nanopipette for Layer-by-Layer Electrodeposition. Advanced Materials 2016, doi: 10.1002/adma.201504967 A $15.7 million grant from the Atlanta-based Marcus Foundation has helped launch a new Georgia Institute of Technology research center that will develop processes and techniques for ensuring the consistent, low-cost, large-scale manufacture of high-quality living cells used in cell-based therapies. The therapies will be used for a variety of disorders such as cancer, lung fibrosis, autism, neuro-degenerative diseases, autoimmune disorders and spinal-cord injury - as well as in regenerative medicine. The work of the new Marcus Center for Therapeutic Cell Characterization and Manufacturing (MC3M) will help provide standardized production and quality testing for these living cells, which have great therapeutic potential. Standardized manufacturing techniques already exist for drug-based pharmaceuticals; the new center will help provide similar methods and standards for manufacturing therapeutic cells. Expected to be the first of its kind in the United States, the center will include a validation facility for good manufacturing practices in cell production. In addition to The Marcus Foundation, funding will come from the Georgia Research Alliance and Georgia Tech sources for a total investment of $23 million. The center will also seek support from federal agencies, clinical research organizations and other sources. "The aspirin you buy today from one pharmacy is essentially the same as the aspirin you buy from another pharmacy, but cell-based therapies may have different efficacy depending on the source and manufacturing processes," said Krishnendu Roy, Robert A. Milton Chair and professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. "There are established ways to quickly assess the efficacy and safety of small-molecule drugs that are acceptable around the world. We want to develop and establish similar processes for therapeutic cell manufacturing." Ultimately, the growing need for these cell therapeutics could require large-scale production facilities similar to those used in today's pharmaceutical production. But living stem cells and immune system cells are readily affected by the varying conditions under which they are grown, stored and packaged, meaning the same type of cell produced at different facilities could behave very differently. Unless those cells can be produced with consistency, in large scale and at low cost with high quality, use of the new cell therapies could be limited and their promise would not extend to large numbers of patients. "The critical goal is to either minimize differences caused by varying manufacturing conditions, or to have a very defined characterization process so we exactly know how much the cells have changed and what specific characteristics are predictive of their efficacy in patients," explained Roy, who will lead the new center. "That consistency will allow us to produce affordable products that can make this new technology available to the large community of people who need it." The new center will collaborate with research and clinical institutions around the country, especially those at which The Marcus Foundation funds research on cell-based therapies, including Duke University, the University of Miami, City of Hope, Emory University, as well as the University of Georgia and other national and international universities. "Access to this network will provide us a huge advantage by bringing together experts to work on a common problem," Roy said. "Stem cell treatments and cell-based immunotherapies are, and will be, the treatment of the future," said Bernie Marcus, who co-founded The Home Depot. "Manufacturing and characterization of stem cells and immune cells is a major first step, and that is why The Marcus Foundation chose Georgia Tech and its teams - they have the experience and the personnel to achieve key goals in this process." The new center will be a collaboration among research groups at Georgia Tech, as well as numerous outside institutions, noted Georgia Tech President G.P. "Bud" Peterson. "Reproducible production of high-quality therapeutic cells and understanding what markers predict cell effectiveness could give clinicians worldwide new tools in the battle against some of the most difficult human health challenges we face today," Peterson said. "Transitioning these cells into broad clinical use will require the kind of multidisciplinary collaboration that Georgia Tech is known for. Beyond Georgia Tech, this effort will involve The Marcus Foundation, top clinical institutions, the private sector and the Georgia Research Alliance." The center will involve multiple research organizations at Georgia Tech, including the Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology, the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute and the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience. Also involved will be faculty researchers from the College of Sciences, College of Computing, and various schools in the College of Engineering, which includes the Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering operated by Georgia Tech and Emory University. The center will also work closely with the Center for Immunoengineering at Georgia Tech, the Georgia Immunoengineering Consortium, and the Regenerative Engineering and Medicine (REM) Center, a partnership between Georgia Tech, Emory University and the University of Georgia. "There is no question that stem cell and immune cell manufacturing have the potential to significantly impact our lives, especially as we age," said Ravi Bellamkonda, chair of the Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering. "We are fortunate to have a visionary foundation in The Marcus Foundation, and the foresight of the Georgia Research Alliance providing leadership in this endeavor." Work of the center will help make new cell-based therapies more widely available to patients. "The timing of this investment in cell manufacturing by The Marcus Foundation is absolutely critical," said Robert E. Guldberg, executive director of Georgia Tech's Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience. "Cell therapies are being evaluated in nearly 9,000 clinical trials worldwide, but their potential to impact human health care will be severely limited until we can scale up their production reproducibly and at low cost. There are currently FDA-approved, clinically effective cell therapy products sitting on the shelf and unavailable to patients because the cost of manufacturing them is simply too high." The cell manufacturing effort grew, in part, out of a major planning grant awarded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to the Georgia Research Alliance in 2014. That effort focused on developing a road map for cell manufacturing in the state of Georgia - an initiative expected to provide significant economic development benefits. Georgia Tech has been leading this road mapping effort that involves more than 30 industry partners and 16 academic institutions as well as key federal agencies. "The NIST grant kick-started our efforts to develop a national road map for cell manufacturing," said Michael Cassidy, president and CEO of the Georgia Research Alliance. "The cell manufacturing industry is an emerging and growing industry with annual revenues of about $1 billion. This initiative has the potential to turn scientific research into new businesses and jobs for Georgia." Initial funding is for five years, and ultimately the center will be expected to support itself with corporate, government and nonprofit funding, Roy said. "This is a unique public-private philanthropic partnership to address a grand challenge," he added. "We hope to make significant contributions to improving cell-based treatments and lowering their cost. This could provide huge benefit not only to the health of our fellow citizens, both adults and children, but as a manufacturing initiative, could be transformative to the economic development and workforce in Georgia." ### CAMBRIDGE, Ma. - Jan. 20, 2016 - During a 2014 talk on his exploration of deep-sea coral reefs, Baruch College marine biologist David Gruber showed a video of clunky robotic hands collecting fragile specimens of coral and sponges from the ocean floor. Harvard engineer and roboticist Robert J. Wood was in the audience -- the two scientists were being recognized as Emerging Explorers by the National Geographic Society -- and a lightbulb went off. "They were using rigid Jaws of Life-type grippers designed for the oil and gas industry that were totally overpowered and were destroying things," Wood recalls. "It immediately clicked that there was a soft robotics solution that may be viable." In the months that followed, the pair collaborated to design, fabricate, and test soft robotic grippers for deep-sea collection of fragile biological specimens. Their recent expedition to the Gulf of Eilat in the northern Red Sea, a unique marine ecosystem that houses one of the world's largest and most diverse coral reefs, marked the first use of soft robotics for the non-destructive sampling of fauna from the ocean floor. The new technology could enhance researchers' ability to collect samples from largely unexplored habitats thousands of feet beneath the ocean surface, areas that scientists believe are biodiversity hot spots teeming with unknown life. The soft grippers also could be useful in underwater archaeology. As described in a paper published today in the journal Soft Robotics, the team successfully developed two types of grippers, and in the process demonstrated a new fabrication technique that allows for the rapid creation of soft actuators. Gruber, associate professor of biology and environmental science at Baruch College of the City University of New York, and research associate with the American Museum of Natural History, explores deep ocean ecosystems, with a particular focus on organisms that display bioluminescent and biofluorescent traits. (Bioluminescent animals produce their own light; biofluorescent animals absorb light and re-emit it as a different color.) When he wants to visit a coral reef below the maximum depth that human divers can tolerate, Gruber must rely on a remotely operated vehicle (ROV). But there's a problem: The standard-issue robotic "hands" of underwater ROVs are ill-suited to collecting delicate coral, sponge and other samples. That's because the equipment was designed for undersea construction and to install and repair submerged pipelines. Manipulating and grasping fragile organisms from the sea floor requires something that can mimic the dexterity and soft touch of a human diver's hand. Wood, Charles River Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and founding core faculty member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, recognized that soft robotics is tailor-made for the task. Design, fabrication and grasping vegetables Wood and Wyss Institute mechanical engineer Kevin Galloway set about designing two types of hands to replace the ROV's factory-furnished metal gripper, each capable of gently recovering objects of different sizes and shapes. One, inspired by the coiling action of a boa constrictor, can access tight spaces and clutch small and irregular-shaped objects. The other, a bellows-style model, features opposing pairs of bending actuators. To facilitate rapid in-field modification and repair, the team emphasized simple construction, inexpensive materials and a modular design. This meant they could try multiple configurations and make them in quantity. Harvard's Office of Technology Development has filed a patent application on the team's method for the manufacture of bellows-type soft actuators. The method is scalable, opening up a wide range of commercial, biomedical and industrial applications for this type of actuator. The biggest design challenge, Wood said, was a lack of precise specifications. They weren't designing a robotic arm to repetitively attach doors to car bodies in an auto assembly plant. The team had no way of knowing the size, shape, or stiffness of the objects they would be sampling on the ocean floor. To approximate likely specimens, they visited the produce aisle and brought back an assortment of vegetables -- celery, radishes, carrots and bok choy -- tied them to a metal grate, and dropped them into a test tank at the University of Rhode Island. After exhaustive tank tests, the devices were put through their paces at depths greater than 800 meters off the Rhode Island coast. Field testing took the team to Israel's Gulf of Eilat in the northern Red Sea in May 2015. There they conducted more than a dozen dives ranging from 100 to 170 meters (558 feet -- or as deep as the Washington Monument is tall). Most dives involved "catch-and-release" maneuvers to test system performance. But they did manipulate the grippers to retrieve samples of delicate (and relatively abundant) red soft coral, as well as difficult-to-snag coral whips, bringing them to the surface undamaged in the ROV's cargo tray. Next steps Simply collecting hard-to-harvest samples isn't the end game. Researchers like Gruber hope to apply these techniques to conduct in situ measurement of organisms, and eventually, gene expression and transcriptomic analysis. Conducting this work on the seabed floor rather than bringing samples to the surface, means that organisms are not exposed to stress from changes in temperature, pressure, and light and there is less disturbance to the reef system. On the robotics side, Wood has a list of performance enhancements he hopes to pursue. Current-generation ROVs rely exclusively on visual feedback -- a live video feed from an onboard camera - but he'd like to add tactile feedback, applying his lab's expertise in soft sensors to let an operator actually "feel" what the gripper is touching. He is also interested in experimenting with bilateral, rather than single-arm manipulation to achieve improved dexterity. Finally, the team wants to go deeper -- literally. During the Red Sea dives, the system operated at depths under 200 meters. They envision conducting field work in unexplored worlds 6,000 meters below the surface. ### Along with Gruber and Wood, coauthors of the paper include Galloway, Harvard SEAS graduate student Kaitlyn Becker, University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography students Brennan Phillips and Jordan Kirby, URI Assistant Professor of Ocean Engineering Stephen Licht, and Dan Tchernov, marine biology department head at the University of Haifa. Funding for the research was provided by a National Geographic Innovation Challenge Grant, a program designed to foster collaboration between two or more National Geographic Society Explorers, and by the National Science Foundation (10400321). EAST LANSING, Mich. - A new species of bird has been discovered in northeastern India and adjacent parts of China by a team of scientists from Sweden, China, the U.S., India and Russia. The bird, described in the current issue of the journal Avian Research, has been named Himalayan forest thrush Zoothera salimalii. The scientific name honors the great Indian ornithologist Salim Ali, in recognition of his contributions to the development of Indian ornithology and nature conservation. The discovery process for the Himalayan forest thrush began in 2009 when it was realized that what was considered a single species, the plain-backed thrush Zoothera mollissima, was in fact two different species in northeastern India, said Pamela Rasmussen, of Michigan State University's Department of Integrative Biology and the MSU Museum, and coordinator of MSU's global bird sounds website AVoCet. Rasmussen was part of the team, which was led by Per Alstrom of Uppsala University (Sweden). What first caught scientists' attention was the plain-backed thrush in the coniferous and mixed forest had a rather musical song, whereas individuals found in the same area - on bare rocky ground above the treeline - had a much harsher, scratchier, unmusical song. "It was an exciting moment when the penny dropped, and we realized that the two different song types from plain-backed thrushes that we first heard in northeast India in 2009, and which were associated with different habitats at different elevations, were given by two different species," Alstrom said. Along with keen field observations, the scientists had to do a lot of sleuthing with museum specimens. Investigations involving collections in several countries revealed consistent differences in plumage and structure between birds that could be assigned to either of these two species. It was confirmed that the species breeding in the forests of the eastern Himalayas had no name. "At first we had no idea how or whether they differed morphologically. We were stunned to find that specimens in museums for over 150 years from the same parts of the Himalayas could readily be divided into two groups based on measurements and plumage," Rasmussen said. Further analyses of plumage, structure, song, DNA and ecology from throughout the range of the plain-backed thrush revealed that a third species was present in central China. This was already known but was treated as a subspecies of plain-backed thrush. The scientists called it Sichuan forest thrush. The song of the Sichuan forest thrush was found to be even more musical than the song of the Himalayan forest thrush. DNA analyses suggested that these three species have been genetically separated for several million years. Genetic data also yielded an additional exciting find: Three museum specimens indicated the presence of yet another unnamed species in China, the Yunnan thrush. Future studies are required to confirm this. New bird species are rarely discovered nowadays. In the last 15 years, on average approximately five new species have been discovered annually, mainly in South America. The Himalayan forest thrush is only the fourth new bird species described from India since 1949. Rasmussen is tied for the third-highest number of birds discovered in the world since 1950 and is ranked first for birds discovered in Asia, and Alstrom is second for Asia in the same time period. Additional scientists who contributed to the study include Chao Zhao (China), Jingzi Xu (Sweden), Shashank Dalvi (India), Tianlong Cai (China), Yuyan Guan (China), Ruiying Zhang (China), Mikhail Kalyakin (Russia), Fumin Lei (China) and Urban Olsson (Sweden). ### Michigan State University has been working to advance the common good in uncommon ways for more than 150 years. One of the top research universities in the world, MSU focuses its vast resources on creating solutions to some of the world's most pressing challenges, while providing life-changing opportunities to a diverse and inclusive academic community through more than 200 programs of study in 17 degree-granting colleges. About 600 miles from Earth's surface is the first of two donut-shaped electron swarms, known as the Van Allen Belts, or the radiation belts. Understanding the shape and size of the belts, which can shrink and swell in response to incoming radiation from the sun, is crucial for protecting our technology in space. The harsh radiation isn't good for satellites' health, so scientists wish to know just which orbits could be jeopardized in different situations. Since the 1950s, when scientists first began forming a picture of these rings of energetic particles, our understanding of their shape has largely remained unchanged -- a small, inner belt, a largely-empty space known as the slot region, and then the outer belt, which is dominated by electrons and which is the larger and more dynamic of the two. But a new study of data from NASA's Van Allen Probes reveals that the story may not be so simple. "The shape of the belts is actually quite different depending on what type of electron you're looking at," said Geoff Reeves from Los Alamos National Laboratory and the New Mexico Consortium in Los Alamos, New Mexico, lead author on the study published on Dec. 28, 2015, in the Journal of Geophysical Research. "Electrons at different energy levels are distributed differently in these regions." Rather than the classic picture of the radiation belts -- small inner belt, empty slot region and larger outer belt -- this new analysis reveals that the shape can vary from a single, continuous belt with no slot region, to a larger inner belt with a smaller outer belt, to no inner belt at all. Many of the differences are accounted for by considering electrons at different energy levels separately. "It's like listening to different parts of a song," said Reeves. "The bass line sounds different from the vocals, and the vocals are different from the drums, and so on." The researchers found that the inner belt -- the smaller belt in the classic picture of the belts -- is much larger than the outer belt when observing electrons with low energies, while the outer belt is larger when observing electrons at higher energies. At the very highest energies, the inner belt structure is missing completely. So, depending on what one focuses on, the radiation belts can appear to have very different structures simultaneously. These structures are further altered by geomagnetic storms. When fast-moving magnetic material from the sun -- in the form of high-speed solar wind streams or coronal mass ejections -- collide with Earth's magnetic field, they send it oscillating, creating a geomagnetic storm. Geomagnetic storms can increase or decrease the number of energetic electrons in the radiation belts temporarily, though the belts return to their normal configuration after a time. These storm-driven electron increases and decreases are currently unpredictable, without a clear pattern showing what type or strength of storm will yield what outcomes. There's a saying in the space physics community: if you've seen one geomagnetic storm, you've seen one geomagnetic storm. As it turns out, those observations have largely been based on electrons at only a few energy levels. "When we look across a broad range of energies, we start to see some consistencies in storm dynamics," said Reeves. "The electron response at different energy levels differs in the details, but there is some common behavior. For example, we found that electrons fade from the slot regions quickly after a geomagnetic storm, but the location of the slot region depends on the energy of the electrons." Often, the outer electron belt expands inwards toward the inner belt during geomagnetic storms, completely filling in the slot region with lower-energy electrons and forming one huge radiation belt. At lower energies, the slot forms further from Earth, producing an inner belt that is bigger than the outer belt. At higher energies, the slot forms closer to Earth, reversing the comparative sizes. The twin Van Allen Probes satellites expand the range of energetic electron data we can capture. In addition to studying the extremely high-energy electrons -- carrying millions of electron volts -- that had been studied before, the Van Allen Probes can capture information on lower-energy electrons that contain only a few thousand electron volts. Additionally, the spacecraft measure radiation belt electrons at a greater number of distinct energies than was previously possible. "Previous instruments would only measure five or ten energy levels at a time," said Reeves. "But the Van Allen Probes measure hundreds." Measuring the flux of electrons at these lower energies has proved difficult in the past because of the presence of protons in the radiation belt regions closest to Earth. These protons shoot through particle detectors, creating a noisy background from which the true electron measurements needed to be picked out. But the higher-resolution Van Allen Probes data found that these lower-energy electrons circulate much closer to Earth than previously thought. "Despite the proton noise, the Van Allen Probes can unambiguously identify the energies of the electrons it's measuring," said Reeves. Precise observations like this, from hundreds of energy levels, rather than just a few, will allow scientists to create a more precise and rigorous model of what, exactly, is going on in the radiation belts, both during geomagnetic storms and during periods of relative calm. "You can always tweak a few parameters of your theory to get it to match observations at two or three energy levels," said Reeves. "But having observations at hundreds of energies constrain the theories you can match to observations." The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, built and operates the Van Allen Probes for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The mission is the second mission in NASA's Living With a Star program, managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. ### Quebec City, Jan. 20, 2016 -- Researchers from Universite Laval and Quebec's Ministry of Forests, Wildlife and Parks have shown that the DNA suspended in lake water can be used to effectively estimate the abundance of fish living in it. The details of this new approach, which could revolutionize how fish stocks are managed in lakes, are presented in a recent issue of the Journal of Applied Ecology. The team supervised by Professor Louis Bernatchez of Universite Laval's Faculty of Science and Engineering and postdoctoral researcher Anais Lacoursiere-Roussel demonstrated this technique using lake trout populations in 12 southern Quebec lakes. The researchers had access to lake trout population estimates obtained through the traditional approach used by their colleagues at Quebec's Ministry of Forests, Wildlife and Parks. This method consists of estimating entire lake populations by extrapolating from the number of fish captured using nets deployed in different parts of the body of water. This method is often time and labor intensive, in addition to having a potentially negative effect on fish populations. The DNA used by the researchers is known as environmental DNA (eDNA) and is made up of genetic material present in free state in the water. "This DNA comes from cells that have come off the skin of fish," professor Bernatchez explains. "Since this biological material degrades after a few days, its abundance gives a very up-to-date picture of the species in the lake," adds the researcher, who also holds the Canada Research Chair in Genetic Conservation of Aquatic Resources. To measure the concentration of lake trout eDNA, the researchers took approximately 10 one-liter samples of water from different areas of each lake studied. They then filtered the water and subjected the particles retained to genomic analysis techniques to accurately measure the quantity of lake trout DNA. The results obtained show a strong correlation between population estimates obtained using the traditional approach and those based on the eDNA concentration. "What's more, the variations in eDNA abundance in different parts of each lake are similar to those reported for net catches," says Bernatchez. "Therefore, eDNA provides a reliable and accurate indication of the number of lake trout and their distribution in a lake, at a much lower cost than the traditional method. We are continuing our work to produce genomic tools targeting several species that are of interest for fishing, including walleye, sauger, brook trout, Arctic char, and northern pike, but also for a number of rare or threatened species as well as invasive exotic species." Applications for eDNA are not limited to fish populations in lakes. As Louis Bernatchez notes, "We could also adapt this approach for river fish, including salmon." The article published in the Journal of Applied Ecology is coauthored by Anais Lacoursiere-Roussel, Guillaume Cote and Louis Bernatchez from Universite Laval, and Veronique Leclerc from Quebec's Ministry of Forests, Wildlife and Parks. ### Information: Louis Bernatchez 418-656-3402 Louis.Bernatchez@bio.ulaval.ca Department of Biology Faculty of Science and Engineering Institute for Integrative Systems Biology (IBIS) Universite Laval Many biomedical researchers are striving to make sense of the flood of data that has followed recent advances in genomic sequencing technologies. In particular, researchers are often limited by the challenge of getting multiple bioinformatics tools to "talk" to one another. To help address this need, researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, in collaboration with labs at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Stanford University, Weizmann Institute and Pennsylvania State University, developed GenomeSpace, a cloud-based, biologist-friendly platform that connects more than 20 bioinformatics software packages and resources for genomic data analysis. The team is now developing and crowdsourcing "recipes" -- step-by-step workflows -- to better enable non-programming researchers to interpret their genomic data. The work is described in a paper published January 18, 2016 in Nature Methods. "Now that new sequencing technologies can produce significantly greater amounts of data than they could a decade ago, the methods required to analyze that data must be correspondingly more powerful," said Jill Mesirov, PhD, associate vice chancellor for computational health sciences and professor of medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine and Moores Cancer Center. "The problem is that only a small portion of the biomedical research community has the expertise to know the right method, or combination of methods, to solve their research questions and the best way to apply those methods to their data." Before GenomeSpace, it was extraordinarily difficult for researchers, especially without programming skills, to get many of the available analysis tools to work together. Users needed to know how to write short computer programs in order to transform and transfer data between platforms. GenomeSpace now performs this service seamlessly with a user-friendly interface, connecting popular genomic data analysis tools such as Cytoscape, Galaxy, GenePattern and the Integrative Genomics Viewer (IGV). Several of these tools are themselves "tool aggregators," so in linking them, GenomeSpace provides access to hundreds of bioinformatics analyses. What's more, GenomeSpace doesn't just leave users on their own to determine the best tools for their particular research questions. The site also provides "recipes" -- easy-to-follow example workflows that clearly demonstrate the sequence of tools researchers should use to get the information they are looking to extract from their raw data. GenomeSpace currently provides 13 recipes. The platform's developers are now inviting the user community to contribute their own additional recipes. "No individual lab can possibly develop all the right useful recipes -- crowdsourcing will help make GenomeSpace even more useful to non-programming researchers," said Michael Reich at UC San Diego School of Medicine, who leads the GenomeSpace development team. Here's how an example GenomeSpace recipe works: A researcher wonders if there is a specific set of genes that leukemia stem cells express differently than normal white blood cell precursors. She also wants to better understand the biological mechanism underlying those differentially expressed genes but doesn't know where to start. With GenomeSpace, the researcher can simply upload the gene expression data and other information about the two cell types (the "ingredients") and follow a GenomeSpace recipe, designed specifically for these types of research questions. In this case, the recipe tells the researcher how to run the data ingredients through two tools available in GenomeSpace: 1) GenePattern, which finds a list of the 50 genes that differ the most between the two cell types and 2) Cytoscape, which identifies how proteins associated with these genes interact in networks, thus providing clues to the roles that tumor-specific or normal cell-specific genes play in the body. This type of information provided by GenomeSpace could help the researcher better understand how leukemia develops and help identify possible targets for new therapeutics, said Reich. "Our recipe resource was modeled on Tom Maniatis' classic, Molecular Cloning: A Laboratory Manual. We hope, with a combination of our own development and crowdsourcing, to grow the resource and increase its breadth," Mesirov said. "It's our long-term goal to convert these descriptive workflows into more dynamic, interactive interfaces making them even easier to follow." ### For more information or to contribute recipes, please visit http://www.genomespace.org . Study co-authors include Kun Qu, Stanford University; Sara Garamszegi, Felix Wu, Helga Thorvaldsdottir, The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; Ted Liefeld, Marco Ocana, James T. Robinson; The Broad Institute and UC San Diego; Diego Borges-Rivera, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Nathalie Pochet, The Broad Institute and Harvard Medical School; Barry Demchak, Tim Hull, Trey Ideker, UC San Diego; Gil Ben-Artzi, Eran Segal, Weizmann Institute of Science; Daniel Blankenberg, Anton Nekrutenko, Pennsylvania State University; Galt P. Barber, Brian T. Lee, Robert M. Kuhn, UC Santa Cruz; Aviv Regev, The Broad Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Howard Hughes Medical Institute; and Howard Y. Chang, Stanford University and Howard Hughes Medical Institute. This research was funded, in part, by the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health (grants P01HG005062 and U41HG007517), with additional initial support from Amazon Web Services. A grant from the Office of Naval Research will help researchers from across the University of Houston's Cullen College of Engineering more efficiently test advanced materials being developed with funding from the Department of Defense. Venkat Selvamanickam, M.D. Anderson Professor of mechanical engineering, said he will use the $810,000 grant from the Office of Naval Research to purchase a physical properties measurement system (PPMS), which will allow researchers to more quickly test the advanced materials being produced in their laboratories. Selvamanickam, who also is director of the Applied Research Hub at the Texas Center for Superconductivity at UH (TcSUH), said the new equipment will allow his lab to expedite its research on the development of improved superconducting wire. The money comes from an Office of Naval Research (ONR) program to fund new equipment needed for research sponsored by that office or other Department of Defense research programs. Selvamanickam, whose work includes efforts to commercialize high-temperature superconducting wire, has a number of eligible grants. The new PPMS won't be used only for superconductor technology, he said, but will benefit a variety of materials research, including solar cells, batteries, graphene, thermoelectrics and flexible electronics. It will allow testing at a wider range of temperatures, from near 0 degrees Kelvin to room temperature, and over a wide range of magnetic fields, up to 140,000 gauss. That's up from 90,000 gauss for the current equipment, which also is limited to use only for superconductor wires. Yan Yao, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at UH, is among the other faculty who will use the new equipment. His research group focuses on green and sustainable organic materials for energy generation and storage. He also is a principal investigator for TcSUH. "With the addition of PPMS, we will be able to obtain a fundamental understanding of how the transport properties of two-dimensional layered metal chalcogenides are influenced with the change of interlayer distance and the pillar materials," he said. That should offer valuable feedback for an effort funded by the ONR's Young Investigator Program to design better magnesium-ion intercalation materials. Selvamanickam said the current testing system limits his lab to testing no more than three samples a week; the new system will increase that to as many as seven samples a week, in addition to providing a wider range of valuable information. "It creates a big bottleneck," he said. "Until we measure, we can't proceed. With better measurement, we can make materials better, faster." ### COLUMBIA, Mo. (Jan. 20, 2016) -- In use for more than 20 years, the varicella zoster virus vaccine for chickenpox and shingles is considered an essential medicine by the World Health Organization (WHO). However, researchers from the University of Missouri School of Medicine have found, in rare instances, a link between the vaccine and corneal inflammation. It is a finding the researchers say should be discussed by primary care physicians and patients with a history of eye inflammation before getting vaccinated. "Keratitis, or inflammation of the clear layer on the front of the eye, is a vision issue that can cause serious complications or even permanent damage to your vision if left untreated," said Frederick W. Fraunfelder, M.D., chair of the Department of Ophthalmology at the MU School of Medicine and director of MU Health Care's Mason Eye Institute. "By studying case reports from national and international registries, we found at least 20 cases of keratitis occurred in children and adults within a month of administration of the chickenpox and shingles vaccine. While this is a rare occurrence, it's important for physicians to know when giving the vaccine to individuals who have a history of the condition because it could be reactivated by the vaccine." Fraunfelder is the director of the National Registry of Drug-induced Ocular Side Effects, an international effort to gather information on adverse ocular events associated with drugs, chemicals or herbs. The registry collects data from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration spontaneous reporting database, the WHO spontaneous reporting database and reports from physicians who submit to the registry. A review of the database and previously published reports found 20 cases of keratitis with a close relationship to administration of the vaccine. For adults, symptoms of keratitis developed within 24 days of vaccination. For pediatric patients, symptoms of inflammation developed within 14 days. Using the WHO classification system for adverse drug reactions, the researchers found a probable relationship between the vaccine and keratitis. However, the researchers recommend the majority of patients still be regularly vaccinated against chickenpox and shingles. "It's important to note that keratitis associated with these vaccines is very rare, and by itself is not a reason to forego vaccination," Fraunfelder said. "But for patients who have a history of keratitis, we recommend they talk to their primary care physician before getting vaccinated. If these individuals are vaccinated, they should be closely monitored to ensure they don't experience corneal inflammation or additional scarring." The study, "Varicella and Zoster Vaccine-associated Keratitis," was presented at the 2015 meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology in Las Vegas. In addition to Fraunfelder, the researchers included Anthony Grillo, M.D., fellow in the MU Department of Ophthalmology. ### In the early stages of life, peer play is an important factor in the developmental growth of a child. It is during play and children's interactions with peers when many essential and vital skills are learned, from social connections to emotional, language, and cognitive abilities. Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Miami (UM) College of Arts & Sciences Dr. Rebecca J. Bulotsky-Shearer is fully aware of how interactive play is necessary for a child's growth; her research centers on social and emotional development in children - especially children living in poverty or adverse life circumstances. Within the Miami-Dade community, as in many urban areas, there is a large population of families that are living in low-income households from Hispanic or Latino backgrounds, explains Dr. Bulotsky-Shearer, and there is a concern, on a national policy level, that children from low-income households are not ready for kindergarten. To shift away from negative perceptions aimed at Latino children living in poverty and the disparities in school readiness at kindergarten entry, Dr. Bulotsky-Shearer and her colleagues focused on the strengths that the Latino children were displaying in preschool. "National research suggests that there is an achievement gap at kindergarten entry, especially for ethnic minority children living in poverty, and many folks view this from a deficit-perspective," said Dr. Bulotsky-Shearer. "There are a couple of studies that we have been working on that show peer social competence is a strength of young children. We wanted to demonstrate this strength in the Latino children we work with in the Head Start Programs here in Florida. One of the measures we've been collecting is on children's play in the classroom, which is very important for learning during preschool." The importance of how children learn in preschool is through interaction with their peers: How do they share? How do they negotiate while playing? Do the children build together or engage in pretend play? All of these interactive play scenarios support learning in the classroom especially during early childhood. To validate the importance of peer play for Latino children within the Head Start Programs, the researchers used The Penn Interactive Peer Play Scale (PIPPS), a behavioral rating measure used for understanding peer play behaviors. There are three different dimensions to the PIPPS used to study peer play behavior in children: Play Interaction (sharing, collaborative play, encouragement); Play Disruption (aggressive, antisocial behaviors); and Play Disconnection (withdrawn behavior during play). Using the PIPPS measure to observe how Latino children in low-income households interact during peer play, researchers found that the children displayed a high level of interactive peer play in positive learning environments; the children were engaged, motivated and social. "We also looked at how those three scales on the PIPPS relate to two other sets of measures that are important for children, in terms of kindergarten readiness skills," said Dr. Bulotsky-Shearer. The first is approaches to learning, learning-related behaviors for teachers to observe that show how children are eager and motivated to learn, and the second is a direct assessment of the children's language, literacy and math skills - both measures can help teachers assess the children in their classroom and provide feedback to parents. Dr. Bulosky-Shearer, along with colleagues Dr. Lisa Lopez at the University of South Florida and Dr. Julia L. Mendez at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, presented the findings in a study published in the Early Childhood Research Quarterly entitled, "The validity of interactive peer play competencies for Latino preschool from low-income households." ### Business scholar's analysis of mandatory retirement policies shows institutional knowledge, experience and age are all factors that shareholders should consider in corporate governance COLUMBIA, Mo. - Approximately half of the companies listed with Standard & Poor have adopted policies mandating retirement based on age. A new study from the University of Missouri has found that although these mandatory retirement polices represent an effective way to address underperforming CEOs, accumulated job experience improves performance and counters age-related declines. "On the one hand, some studies have shown cognitive function declines with age, and we found that mandatory retirement policies can act as a mechanism to limit CEOs who serve beyond their effectiveness," said Adam Yore, an assistant professor of finance at the Trulaske College of Business at MU. "On the other hand, our study showed that experience is a significant positive factor of performance which could counter assumptions about age-related performance." Forty-seven percent of Standard & Poor's corporate firms have adopted policies mandating retirement based on age. These policies allow firms to force individuals over the age of 65 to retire. The policies also are aimed at preventing CEOs from having undue influence over boards of directors simultaneously protecting shareholders from aged CEOs who may no longer be able to maximize shareholder wealth. Such policies bypass age discrimination laws due to exceptions for "bona fide executives" and "high-policymaking employees" in equal employee opportunity laws. Yore analyzed data from 2,143 firms and found that although CEO age can be negatively related to firm value and operating performance, CEO experience is positively related to firm value and operating performance. Based on his research, Yore said experience largely offsets the losses associated with CEO age. "This is not a black and white issue," Yore said. "What we do know is that any 'one-size-fits-all' model of governance will create more problems than solutions. Although we found that mandatory retirement policies can represent an effective form of corporate governance, in order to mitigate issues regarding the underperformance of older CEOs, a clear need also exists to account for all personal characteristics of executives, especially experience." The study, "Silverback CEOs: Age, Experience and Firm Value," which is co-authored with Brandon Cline at Mississippi State University, will be published in an upcoming edition of the Journal of Empirical Finance. ### Abuse or neglect associated with worse executive function in adults, whether or not they have bipolar disorder ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- The scars of childhood abuse and neglect affect adults' brains for decades to come - including their ability to process and act on information both quickly and accurately, new research suggests. That kind of quick "go or don't go" thinking is crucial to everyday situations like driving or rare events like reacting to an emergency. And it appears to be less accurate and more impulsive in adults who suffered physical, emotional or sexual trauma in their early years than in those who did not, the study finds. The new findings about impulse control add to a growing body of evidence about the lasting scars that traumatic childhood experiences can leave. The researchers, led by a University of Michigan Medical School neuropsychologist, say adults who suffered trauma as children may benefit from talk therapy or other options to combat the effects. Surprise finding Reporting in the journal Psychiatry Research, the team describes what they found when they analyzed data from the Heinz C. Prechter Longitudinal Study of Bipolar Disorder based at the U-M Depression Center. They set out to see if people with bipolar disorder had more impulsive and inaccurate responses on a quick task than others without the condition, as measured on standard timed tests called a "Go/No-Go" test. But to their surprise, they found no differences between the two groups. Instead, when they looked closer, they found a common thread running through nearly everyone with more impulsive responses. Among the more than 320 people in the study who took the tests, 134 reported a history of childhood trauma in surveys. This included physical abuse or neglect, emotional abuse or neglect, and sexual abuse. It did not include one-time traumatic events. None of the participants had active substance abuse issues, and the participants without bipolar disorder did not have other mental health conditions. Those with bipolar disorder and a history of trauma performed significantly worse on the "Go/No-Go" test, than those with bipolar alone. But those without bipolar disorder who had a history of trauma performed just as poorly. The test measures how well a person can stop himself or herself from reacting incorrectly to rapid prompts that sometimes require a "go" response and sometime require a person to hold back the impulse to respond ("no-go"). "Past research has looked at mental health conditions, including bipolar disorder, and even at memory function in people with childhood trauma, but few have looked at inhibitory control, or what some people call impulse control," says lead author David Marshall, Ph.D. "Having the data from the Prechter research effort allowed us to see that a history of childhood trauma can impact the development of this key aspect of executive functioning that we need more of as we become adults, where we are required to engage in self-monitoring and goal-directed behavior." Marshall got the idea for the study after noticing that a sizable portion of the bipolar disorder patients who had volunteered for the study at U-M discussed problematic childhoods in the questionnaires that all participants fill out. The Longitudinal Study, supported by the Heinz C. Prechter Bipolar Research Fund, includes people who don't have bipolar disorder and are willing to act as comparisons for those with bipolar, so scientists can see important differences in the two populations. "What is intriguing about this research is that childhood trauma had an effect on impulse control that was in both groups, meaning that it is independent of bipolar illness and more strongly related to adverse childhood experiences," Marshall says. "This substantially changes the way we think of how trauma increases risk for illnesses. There may be brain changes after trauma that act as a risk marker for development of later illnesses, including bipolar disorder. These processes are much more fluid than we previously thought." Advice for adults with childhood trauma The new findings highlight the importance of continuous treatment for people diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and early detection and attention to the effects of childhood trauma on anyone. "By finding early those who may be at risk of long-term mental health effects from childhood abuse and neglect, we may be able to guide them to treatments that can mitigate these effects," Marshall says. While treatment recommendations vary, cognitive behavioral therapy -- a form of talk therapy -- can help even those whose childhood issues haven't been addressed formally for years, Marshall says. The self-control and self-talk that are key to CBT could help individuals build problem-solving techniques to assist their thinking and analytic abilities. Although Marshall notes that the paper only includes a small group of people with no bipolar disorder but a history of childhood trauma, he hopes to continue assessing the question as the Prechter study continues. He and his colleagues will also watch over time as the study participants who reported childhood trauma continue to respond to surveys sent to them periodically. ### In addition to Marshall, who is an assistant professor in the U-M Department of Psychiatry, the study team includes U-M neuropsychologist Kelly A. Ryan, Ph.D., and Melvin McInnis, M.D., the psychiatrist who heads the Heinz C. Prechter Bipolar Research Program. The senior author is Scott Langenecker, Ph.D., formerly of U-M and now at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Funding for the study came from the Prechter Fund, the Richard Tam Foundation, and the National Institute of Mental Health (MH074459). Volunteers needed: The Prechter Longitudinal Study of Bipolar Disorder is still accepting new participants, both with and without bipolar disorder. Learn more at http://www.prechterfund.org/ Reference: Psychiatry Research, doi:10.1016/j.psychres.2015.12.013 A new species of bird has been described in north-eastern India and adjacent parts of China by a team of scientists from Sweden, China, the US, India and Russia, led by Professor Per Alstrom, Uppsala University and Swedish University of Agricultural Science. The bird has been named the Himalayan Forest Thrush, Zoothera salimalii. The scientific name honours the great Indian ornithologist Dr Salim Ali (1896-1987), in recognition of his huge contributions to the development of Indian ornithology and nature conservation. The Himalayan Forest Thrush was first discovered when it was realised that what was considered a single species, the Plain-backed Thrush Zoothera mollissima, was in fact two different species in north-eastern India. What first caught the attention of the scientists was the fact that the 'Plain-backed Thrushes' in the coniferous and mixed forest had a rather musical song. This was in contrast to individuals found on bare rocky ground above the treeline in the same area, as they had a much harsher, scratchier, more unmusical song. Studies of museum specimens in several countries revealed consistent differences in plumage and structure between birds that could be assigned to either of these two species. It was confirmed that the species breeding in the forests of the eastern Himalayas had no name. It was suggested that the high-elevation Plain-backed Thrush be called the 'Alpine Thrush' instead, while retaining the scientific name of the 'original' species, Zoothera mollissima, in accordance with international nomenclatural rules. Further analyses of plumage, structure, song, DNA and ecology from throughout the range of the 'Plain-backed Thrush' revealed that a third species was present in central China. This was already known, but was treated as a subspecies of 'Plain-backed Thrush'. The scientists called it Sichuan Forest Thrush. The song of the Sichuan Forest Thrush was found to be even more musical than the song of the Himalayan Forest Thrush. DNA analyses suggested that these three species have been genetically separated for several million years. Genetic data from three old museum specimens indicated the presence of yet another unnamed species in China. Future studies are required to confirm this. The Himalayan Forest Thrush is locally common. It has been overlooked until now because of its close similarity in appearance to the Alpine Thrush. New bird species are rarely discovered nowadays. In the last 15 years, approximately five new species have been discovered annually on average, mainly in South America. The Himalayan Forest Thrush is only the fourth new bird species described in India since the country achieved its independence (1947). ### More information: Prof. Per Alstrom, Department of Animal Ecology, Evolutionary Biology Centre, Uppsala University, Sweden, and Swedish Species Information Centre, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden Email: per.alstrom@ebc.uu.se Tel: +46 70 454 69 65 http://www.slu.se/per-alstrom-research http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Per_Alstroem Per Alstrom, Pamela C. Rasmussen, Chao Zhao, Jingzi Xu, Shashank Dalvi, Tianlong Cai, Yuyan Guan, Ruiying Zhang, Mikhail V. Kalyakin, Fumin Lei and Urban Olsson Integrative taxonomy of the Plain-backed Thrush (Zoothera mollissima) complex (Aves, Turdidae) reveals cryptic species, including a new species. Avian Research. [doi] (Open Access) Pictures to be published freely in connection with reports about this study. Name of photographer/recordist should be given. Sound recordings of Himalayan Forest Trush, Alpine Trush and Sichuan Forest Trush are available either from the researcher or the press officer. TORONTO, January 20, 2016 - Scientists of the international ALPHA Collaboration have once again pushed the boundaries of antimatter research with their latest breakthrough studying the properties of antihydrogen. Published today in the prestigious journal Nature, the collaboration's result improved the measurement of the charge of antihydrogen, essentially zero, by a factor of 20. Their work is the latest contribution in the quest to chase down the answer to the basic antimatter question, "If matter and antimatter were created in equal amounts during the Big Bang, where did all the antimatter go?" "That means the electrical charge of antihydrogen - the antimatter analogue of hydrogen - can be ruled out as the answer to the antimatter question," says York University Professor Scott Menary, an ALPHA member. "The point of the experiment was to search for a clue as to how or where our predictions of nature are wrong," continues Menary. "Something is missing in our understanding otherwise the matter and antimatter at the Big Bang would have annihilated each other and there would be no universe today. The interactions of matter and antimatter must somehow be different." Physics dictates that for every particle of matter there is an oppositely charged antiparticle with an equal mass. An antihydrogen atom should have the exact same charge as hydrogen (zero). That's because the antiproton and antielectron (positron), which make up antihydrogen, should have the exact opposite charge of the proton and electron that make up hydrogen. Dr. Andrea Capra, a former PhD student of Menary's (now at TRIUMF) who played a major role in the analysis behind this result, says, "We take the charge of matter and antimatter for granted, however, you cannot analyze data or make an experiment assuming it's true." This result showed that antihydrogen and hydrogen are indeed both electrically neutral at a level 20 times more precise than before. Since the antiproton charge is also known to a similar precision, the collaboration also has improved the previous best precision on the positron charge by a factor of 25. While both results uphold the Standard Model, they have constrained what possible extensions to it could be. Capra points out that this work addresses one piece of a larger puzzle. When comparing normal matter to antimatter, he says that "there is the piece comparing their charges, the piece comparing their light spectrums, and the piece comparing how they respond to gravity." The latter piece will be investigated by a dedicated experiment, ALPHA-g, spearheaded by the University of Calgary and including the Canadian members of the collaboration. The experiment was the first using the upgraded "ALPHA-2" system which began operation last year. The largest component, the cooling cryostat, was designed and built at TRIUMF and the University of Calgary by a team led by Mechanical Research Engineer Cam Marshall and Research Scientist (now Emeritus) Art Olin. Scientists at Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia also contributed to the construction and assembly of the ALPHA-2 apparatus, including the cryostat. Marshall explained that "the cryostat houses a unique octopole magnet with the antimatter trap, into which was fed the laser spectroscopy system, microwave system, liquid helium cooling, super-conducting current leads, diagnostic wiring, and thermal shielding. A lot going on in a small space!" According to Olin, the experiment's success was "facilitated by the stable cryogenic environment and higher trapping rate of this new atom trap." The experiment was tricky because the team had to isolate the antihydrogen within a sophisticated "magnetic bottle" without it coming into contact with matter as it would then annihilate and disappear. Having passed the first test of their upgraded apparatus with flying colours, the ALPHA Collobration is anxious to attack the other even more exciting pieces of the antimatter puzzle in the coming years. "We will now look at the other pieces of the puzzle, such as the colour of the light emitted by antihydrogen, and test whether hydrogen and antihydrogen emit light in the same way," says Capra. "We are also working on measuring the gravitational acceleration of antihydrogen and determining whether matter and antimatter have the same gravitational behaviour. The next several years are going to be very exciting." ### For More Information: The research, "An improved limit on the charge of antihydrogen from stochastic acceleration", was published in the journal Nature at http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature16491. High resolution images are available at the ALPHA and CERN websites. Also, images are available of the cryostat and external solenoid assembly at CERN here and here. About ALPHA-Canada ALPHA is a collaboration of about 40 researchers from 40 researchers from Canada, the United Kingdom, Denmark, the United States, Sweden, Israel and Brazil. ALPHA-Canada consists of senior scientists, graduate students, and several professional staff from five Canadian institutions: The University of British Columbia, the University of Calgary, Simon Fraser University, TRIUMF and York University. See http://alpha.web.cern.ch/alpha About York University York University has always been known for championing new ways of thinking that drive teaching and research excellence. Our 52,000 students receive the education they need to create big ideas that make an impact on the world. Meaningful and sometimes unexpected careers result from cross-discipline programming, innovative course design and diverse experiential learning opportunities. York students and graduates push limits, achieve goals and find solutions to the world's most pressing social challenges, empowered by a strong community that opens minds. York U is an internationally recognized research university - our 11 faculties and 24 research centres have partnerships with 200+ leading universities worldwide. @YorkUnews About TRIUMF TRIUMF is Canada's national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics and accelerator-based science. We are an international centre for discovery and innovation, advancing fundamental, applied, and interdisciplinary research for science, medicine, and business. Owned and operated by a university consortium, TRIUMF trains and inspires future leaders in science and technology. Our laboratory is a hub for inquiry and ingenuity, a Canadian centre of excellence deeply integrated into the global scientific community. TRIUMF's multidisciplinary team of roughly 500 staff and trainees collaborates with Canadian and international users who visit the laboratory to leverage our world-class facilities. Together, we drive compelling research and develop ideas and innovations that benefit humanity. http://www.triumf.ca Through her book, Chakraborty offers a peek into the intimate lives of many girls and young women who are keen on fulfilling risky desires and performing multiple identities. TORONTO, January 20, 2015 -- Muslim women and girls living in the slums of Kolkota are at the forefront of India's globalization process, according to York University researcher Kabita Chakraborty, in her new book, launched Tuesday. In her book, Young Muslim Women in India: Bollywood, Identity and Changing Youth Culture (published by Routledge), Chakraborty explores how they contribute to and are impacted by the changing youth culture in India. The Children's Studies researcher spent nearly two years in the large city of Kolkata, West Bengal as part of field research. "It is a common perception that slum youth are poor victims who are excluded from India's social change, and this discourse is even more challenging for minority Muslim communities" observes Chakraborty. "The reality is girls and young women living in the slums have incredible ambitions, desires and transgressions that impact the country's sociopolitical changes." As a scholar of youth cultures, Chakraborty documents their experiences, drawing on their own opinions, words, visual images and stories. "The youth were actively involved in peer-to-peer interviews, leading neighbourhood tours, creating photobooks of their lives, participating in yoga as a participatory method, and many other youth-driven activities," notes Chakraborty. Through her book, Chakraborty offers a peek into the intimate lives of many girls and young women who are keen on fulfilling risky desires and performing multiple identities. "They share with us how they learn sexy Bollywood dancing; how they develop romantic relationships; and how they win time and space to participate in various aspects of a globalizing India which often tries to exclude them," points out the author. "More than just fantasy, Bollywood emerges as an important role model which these young people consult." The book was launched at an event sponsored by the Department of Humanities and the York Centre for Asian Research. ### York University is known for championing new ways of thinking that drive teaching and research excellence. Our 52,000 students receive the education they need to create big ideas that make an impact on the world. Meaningful and sometimes unexpected careers result from cross-discipline programming, innovative course design and diverse experiential learning opportunities. York students and graduates push limits, achieve goals and find solutions to the world's most pressing social challenges, empowered by a strong community that opens minds. York U is an internationally recognized research university - our 11 faculties and 24 research centres have partnerships with 200+ leading universities worldwide. Media Contact: Gloria Suhasini, York University, 416-736-2100, ext. 22094, suhasini@yorku.ca European investors were well-prepared for the implementation of the EUs Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (BRRD) bail-in regulation on January 1 this year. However, the Bank of Portugals decision to bail-in a small number of senior bondholders in Novo Banco, just three days before year-end means that the new legislation is now overshadowed by confusion and controversy. Many senior bond investors had their year-end break interrupted by a press release from the Bank of Portugal on December 29. It stated that, based on the deteriorating situation at Novo Banco, (the good bank created after the collapse of Banco Espirito Santo in 2014): Banco de Portugal decided to confer again on BES the responsibility for certain issues of non-subordinated bonds issued by the latter and intended for institutional investors. The affected bonds had been transferred from BES to Novo Banco when the latter was set up in August 2014. Under the original BES resolution Banco de Portugal, as the resolution authority, was given the power to retransfer assets and liabilities between BES and Novo Banco at any time. The first was the rescue of Madeira-based Portuguese bank Banco Internacional do Funchal (Banif) and its subsequent sale to Banco Santander. Banif is Portugals seventh largest lender with total assets of 12.8 billion. In a deal finalized in December, Santander will buy the majority of Banifs assets for 150 million while the Portuguese state will commit 2.26 billion to cover future contingencies: 1.76 billion from the state and 489 million from the countrys bank resolution fund. Subordinated creditors were bailed in as part of the rescue but senior creditors were not. This followed a 1.1 billion injection of funds into Banif by the state in January 2013 and its 400 million participation in a contingent convertible bond issue by the failed bank. The latest cash injection into Banif added another percentage point of GDP to Portugals budget deficit, which ballooned from 4.5% to 7.2% on the rescue of BES. Bailing out two banks has doubled the Portuguese deficit to nearly three times the EU mandated target. Foreign law creditors Secondly, the Bank of Portugal has recent experience of the difficulty associated with bailing in foreign law creditors. The ability for legal claims against it by lenders to a Goldman Sachs-arranged loan to BES in 2014 to be heard in the UK Commercial Court seems to have reinforced its determination to limit the December bail-in to domestic bonds only. The US bank had arranged the $835 million English law loan to BES which was to fund a Venezuelan refined oil project via special purpose vehicle Oak Finance just weeks before the Portuguese lender collapsed in mid-2014. The $835 million loan was initially transferred to Novo Banco as part of the BES rescue in August, but in December 2014 the Bank of Portugal resolved that the transfer had not been authorized and the liability for the loan remained with BES. This would mean that lenders would inevitably be wiped out and, unsurprisingly, they made the decision to sue. However, because this loan had been written under English law, the lenders won the right to sue the Bank of Portugal in the UK Commercial Court. The English court ruled that regardless of the status that the Bank of Portugals decision on the transfer of the loan might have in Portuguese law, it had no status under the BRRD and therefore no effect under English law. It is a situation the Bank of Portugal will not want to find itself in this time, although it has remained defiant in the face of the UK court decision. According to Bloomberg, on January 14 the Bank of Portugal announced that regardless of any court decision BESs debt to Oak Finance will remain at the bad bank, partly because Goldman has a 2% stake in BES. COPENHAGEN, January 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- SaxoSelect investment portfolios consisting of BlackRock exchange traded funds (ETFs) to launch in selected European markets, starting with Denmark, Finland, Italy, Norway, Netherlands and Sweden in Q1 2016. Saxo Bank [http://www.saxobank.com ] today announces the launch of the first large-scale, truly digital, investment solution for retail investors built with iShares(R) ETFs by BlackRock. 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The refusal of my church, the United Methodist Church (UMC), to permit Discovery Institute a place as an exhibitor at its upcoming General Conference in Portland was based upon a resolution passed in 2008. The resolution states the churchs position on education in relationship to Creationism or Intelligent Design. But the denial has two more sources (also passed in 2008), one relating to what the church regards as a legitimate interpretation of Gods natural world and another (oddly enough) that attempted to adopt fresh ways to respond to the perils that now threaten the integrity of Gods creation and the future of Gods children. In weighing the ban on intelligent design from an informed Methodist perspective, I would like to consider these before turning to the foundational truths of Methodist theology, in the form of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. It is instructive to examine the petitions in their original form, as approved and now in force, because there the alleged rationales for their adoption can be found. The first, Evolution and Intelligent Design (Petition 80839), reads in full: Evolution and Intelligent Design (80839-C1-R9999) Add a new resolution as follows: WHEREAS, the United Methodist Church has for many years supported the separation of church and State (paragraph 164, Book of Discipline, 2004, p. 119), THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the General Conference of the United Methodist Church go on record as opposing the introduction of any faith-based theories such as Creationism or Intelligent Design into the science curriculum of our public schools. RATIONALE Creationism and Intelligent Design are appropriate topics in public education classes such as comparative religion, literature, or philosophy since scientific method incorporates critical thinking processes. All truth is Gods truth. The promotion of religion or any particular religion in the public schools is contrary to the First Amendment. This resolution demonstrates a complete misunderstanding of what intelligent design (ID) actually is. ID simply is not a religious, faith-based theory; ID merely says that certain features of the natural world are better explained by an intelligent cause than by a random or undirected process. It makes no claims as to who or what may be behind that design. Of course, ID is not creationism. There is nothing in its definition, programs, or policies that would suggest that, and Discovery Institute has never sought to push ID into public school science classrooms. But if ID is an appropriate topic for a variety of classes since scientific method incorporates critical thinking processes, then isnt it a contradiction to deny Discovery Institute a place at the conference based upon its own stated rationale? But probably there are other things going on here. Science and Technology (Petition 80050) is a resolution that supposedly removes ambiguities that Christians face while wrestling with differences between literal Biblical interpretations and current scientific understandings. Our concern is that Methodism articulate a position that avoids historical blunders, embraces the scientific knowledge of today, and does so without negating the beauty of our sacred textual metaphors. The focus here is on Genesis and the creation account. But the essential problem with this resolution is that in an effort to remove ambiguities about the Bible and science it creates more by failing to define precisely what those ambiguities are and by further refusing to delineate what is meant by literal interpretations. If the goal of this resolution were simply to admit that scientific technologies without defining what those technologies are can be a legitimate use of Gods natural world, then all would be well and good. But surely this resolution is not suggesting any and all scientific technologies are a legitimate use of Gods natural world. Would we include abortion here? How about Jack Kevorkians death machine to facilitate euthanasia? Additionally, this resolution claims that many apparent scientific references in our Bible and creeds are intended to be metaphorical. Which ones? All of them, some of them, or just those we find problematic? The petition bandies about terms like science and evolution without once defining what they mean. The broad and hazy language raises more questions than it answers. The resolution emphatically states that biological evolution is not in conflict with theology. If biological evolution is taken to mean change through time or some type of teleological form of common descent (many have been proposed by some brilliant minds e.g., Alfred Russel Wallace [1823-1913], St. George Mivart [1827-1900], Henri Bergson [1859-1941], Robert Broom [1866-1951], Fred Hoyle [1915-2001], to name a few), who has said otherwise? Certainly not Discovery Institute! So Whats the Problem? The real problem most likely can be found in a resolution called Gods Creation and the Church (Petition 80990), although UMC leaders never actually cited this petition in their interactions with Discovery Institute. Portions of this resolution are simply bizarre. For example, it calls for a Festival of Gods Creation that is closest to Earth Day, a celebration more befitting Wiccans than Christians. We are called to stewardship over creation not celebration, which is best reserved for and directed to our Creator. But the main issue is how it embraces The Clergy Letter Project, an interdenominational movement with demonstrated successes at ameliorating the mindless battle some Christians pick with science. Part of the Clergy Letter contains language no thoughtful Christian would oppose, such as the claim that among Gods good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator. Another part of the Letter discusses how to interpret the Bible, which intelligent design as a scientific theory does not claim to address. But the third topic of the Letter is evolution. It asserts that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests and it urges school board members to preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human knowledge. Discovery Institute also affirms that the modern theory of evolution should continue to be taught in the science curriculum. It just urges that students should learn more about the current state of evolutionary theory, including scientific controversies over key parts of it that are well-represented in the scientific literature. As for whether the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, that depends on how one defines the term, and the Clergy Letter never offers a definition. At face value, the UMCs endorsement of the Clergy Letter Project certainly does not justify excluding intelligent design proponents from a place in the exhibit hall at the UMC General Conference. For one thing, much of the letter is either irrelevant to intelligent design or its wording is highly ambiguous. More importantly, nothing in the UMC resolution endorsing The Clergy Letter Project claims that The Clergy Letter is the ONLY acceptable approach to science and faith that should be allowed within the UMC. Recommending one approach does not necessarily rule out other approaches, and to interpret this resolution to justify the censorship of any other view is an abuse of power. Having said this, I admit that those behind these resolutions may have been far more intolerant in their personal views than the text of the resolutions they offered. Given the preoccupation of some United Methodist leaders with the topic of evolution, it does seem that many of them would like to equate unguided evolution (aka Darwinism) with science itself. They havent succeeded in getting the UMC to officially adopt this view, but they would like to act as if they have (witness the effort to exclude Discovery Institute from the exhibit hall). Again, I think this is an abuse of church power. But speaking as a Christian and as a United Methodist (not as an intelligent design proponent), I believe there is another very important issue that needs to be addressed: Is the apparent uncritical embrace of unguided evolution by certain UMC leaders really consonant with Methodist theology? These leaders claim that intelligent design is beyond the pale, but in reality it is the unguided Darwinian version of evolution that should raise real concerns. One of things I honor and respect the most about Methodism is its reliance upon the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. This is, in effect, a four-fold criteria of analysis and critical examination. Wesley believed that the living core of the Christian faith was revealed in Scripture, illuminated by tradition, vivified in personal experience, and confirmed by reason (see The Book of Discipline, pp. 80-86). Lets see how Darwinism holds up under these standards. Scripture Given the fact the Darwinism argues for biological diversity (life in all its abundance) based upon stochastic, random, and wholly blind processes, how does this comport with Scripture? While that is not a question ID would ever ask, for Christians it becomes a critical issue. Many misconstrue the Darwin/ID debate as a battle between Creationism and Science, a formulation favored by most Darwinian evolutionists and one apparently endorsed by the UMCs misguided approval of the three resolutions outlined above. But this is simply wrong. Two points are key here: 1) Darwinian evolution is not just another scientific theory, it is at heart a materialistic metaphysic; and 2) ID posits no particular designer and, therefore, is not creationism much less Christian fundamentalism. Apparently under the Creationism versus Science scenario the first three chapters of Genesis become the battle ground. Thus, the three resolutions, including The Clergy Letter, seek to make the creation account metaphorical, a poetical whimsy if you will. Scripture seems clear, however. Psalm 8, for example, is Davids proclamation of Gods majesty in nature. The psalmist is at once poetic and descriptive of Gods intimate relationship with His creation and His creatures: When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained, What is man that you are mindful of him, And the son of man that You visit him? For You have made him a little lower than the angels, And You have crowned him with glory and honor. (vs. 3-5) Then there is Psalm 19:1-6. Here the psalmist makes clear that The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament show His handiwork in which creation itself daily speaks of Gods manifold power and presence in nature. Psalm 104 reiterates this theme. Yet Darwinian evolution turns the profound profane by making man not a little lower than the angels but rather a little higher than the beasts. Such a perversion is full of immediate moral and ethical implications. Instead of Gods majesty in creation and His interest in His creatures, Darwinian evolution reduces nature to mindless, purposeless mechanisms neither good nor bad nor remotely interested in humanity. Indeed Darwinian evolution proclaims materialism as the supreme truth while other truths are relegated to the realm of the subjective a hazy world of feelings and fairy tales, nice but vague and ethereal. How could it be otherwise? Darwin himself did not view man as a being made in Gods image. Instead, God was an idea in mans mind. The idea of a universal and beneficent Creator, he wrote, does not seem to arise in the mind of man until he has been elevated by long-continued culture (The Descent of Man). As for purpose and guidance in Nature, Darwin stated, There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings, and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows ( Autobiography ). But Paul spoke less poetically and more directly of Gods intimate connection to nature: For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse (Romans 1:20). Embracing the Darwinian understanding of evolution means embracing materialism, a perspective that at best gives lip service to a vague religiosity while turning Scripture into a mere work of literary effusion, making a mockery of its enlightened metaphors while rejecting any suggestions of design in nature. In stripping God from nature the Bible is either made into pointless poetry or worse a lie. Tradition Any embrace of Darwinian materialism would also reflect a complete abandonment of Christian and Wesleyan tradition. As to the former a few words are in order. Apparently the idea behind the petitions discussed earlier was to distance the UMC from Young Earth Creationism. But one need not be a creationist to have grave concerns over Darwinian evolution. Augustine warned that the six days of creation were not ordinary days but epochs or periods. In the words of R.F. Baum (d. 1986), God [according to Augustine and cited approvingly by Thomas Aquinas] originally created not the world that men saw around them, but a world that, over time, would produce the world that men saw, a conception in complete accord with descent with modification or evolution (Doctors of Modernity: Darwin, Marx, Freud). But Augustine and Aquinas would have been appalled by Darwins positivism and materialism. The real problem isnt with evolution, it is with the wholly stochastic and naturalistic mechanisms of Darwinism. In short, Darwinism runs afoul of our Patristic tradition by insisting upon chance and necessity through naturalistic selection as the sole viable explanation for the diversity of life. Darwinism runs afoul of Wesleyan tradition as well. This tradition was most clearly established in John Wesleys Survey of the Wisdom of God in Creation, Or a Compendium of Natural Philosophy (1763). William H. Mills tried, in his curious John Wesley an Evolutionist, to make Wesley a prophet of Darwin through his Survey, but, as Methodist minister and scholar Laura Bartels Felleman points out, Mills could make this connection because, By this time [1893], the work was out of print and difficult to obtain, and Mills reasonably assumed none of his readers were aware of its contents. Mills attempted to make strained links between the Survey and Darwin, Fisk, and Huxley. Felleman is highly skeptical of Millss claims and believes: This work is about Gods creation and Gods attributes. It views the natural order through the eyes of faith and sees in the various components of creation worldly examples that can be used to illuminate the divine characteristics of God. Natural philosophy, according to the Preface to the Survey, should serve one purpose: to display the invisible things of God, his power, wisdom, and goodness. Wesleys Survey should not be construed as a creationist work if one means by that a literal young earth rendering of the first three chapters of Genesis. That clearly was not Wesleys intent. Wesleys Survey is an explication of nature not a commentary on Genesis. But he does make it abundantly clear that Gods design is evident in His creation as evident as it was to Paul in Romans or to Augustine and Aquinas. Wesley saw in mankind not an evolutionary chain of naturalistic development, but rather the hand of God Himself. Like the natural theologians of his generation, he saw in the form of man divine design. So fearfully and wonderfully are we made!, he proclaimed. With what holy fear, he adds, should we pass the time of our sojourning here below! Trusting for continual preservation, not merely on our own Care, but on the Almighty Hand, which formed the admirable Machine, directs its agency and supports its Being! Wesley unquestionably recognized intelligent design in nature and man. The bold expressions of Wesley are precisely the kind of ideas that Darwin wrote against in his life and works. Neither Wesleys view of creation nor his view of evolution (if, in fact, he ever had one) is at issue; the question is, did he view nature as intimately woven into Gods fabric of intentionality or did he view Gods intentionality as wholly absent in nature? For that matter was evolution however construed infused with teleology or was it without plan or purpose? Wesley would have found the latter views in each case unthinkable. Reason The rationale behind supporting The Clergy Letter was supposedly to ameliorate the mindless battle some Christians pick with science. But ID has no battle with science; it does have a serious issue with the kind of radical materialism embodied in Darwinian evolution. To dismiss a priori any design in nature on the premise that only naturalistic and positivistic evidence count as science is a seriously limiting view. Furthermore, there is little attempt to explain how, under Darwinian mechanisms of randomness and chance, God could in any real sense be interested in a personal relationship with His creatures. Would UMC leaders ask us to believe in and support rank materialism in our view of the nature He established, on the one hand, and still embrace a personal triune God with love and compassion for each individual even though our very knowledge of Him is wholly derived, according to Darwin and neo-Darwinists, from thoughtless biological and cultural processes? Such thinking defies reason. Experience Finally, we come to experience. It is a sad irony that at the very same time some UMC leaders were giving their full assent to Darwinism, the UMC offered its Apology for Support of Eugenics (Petition 81175), referring to the UMCs historic role in that destructive movement: Eugenics, the belief that certain genetic traits are good and others bad, is associated in the public mind mostly with the extreme eugenics policies of Adolf Hitler, which ultimately led to the Holocaust. The study of eugenics did not begin with Hitler or his German scientists, but rather was first promoted by Sir Francis Galton, in England. Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, who expanded on Darwins theories and applied them to the human population. The United Methodist General Conference formally apologizes for Methodist leaders and Methodist bodies who in the past supported eugenics as sound science and sound theology. We lament the ways eugenics was used to justify the sterilization of persons deemed less worthy. We lament that Methodist support of eugenics policies was used to keep persons of different races from marrying and forming legally recognized families. We are especially grieved that the politics of eugenics led to the extermination of millions of people by the Nazi government and continues today as ethnic cleansing around the world. This petition was long overdue. Even scholars otherwise sympathetic to Darwinism admit to the untoward consequences of its social applications. Adrian Desmond and James Moore write in their biography Darwin: Social Darwinism is often taken to be something extraneous, an ugly concretion added to the pure Darwinian corpus after the event, tarnishing Darwins image. But his notebooks make plain that competition, free trade, imperialism, racial extermination, and sexual inequality were written into the equation from the start Darwinism was always intended to explain human society. Is this the science that the UMC apologizes for out of one side of its mouth only to insist on another version of it out of the other? One hopes past experience would have a more chastening effect. In the end, apparently some in the UMC leadership are opposed to the idea that there are tell-tale features of living systems and the universe that are best explained by an intelligent cause that is, by the conscious choice of a rational agent rather than an undirected process (Meyers, Signature in the Cell). They seem to be more comfortable with Darwins mindless and unguided version of evolution. I wonder how many of the laity knows this. They should know it now. Image: John Wesley, by Willam Hamilton, National Portrait Gallery, via Wikicommons. Join us on Friday, February 5, for the greater Houston premiere of the new intelligent design film, Living Waters: Intelligent Design in the Oceans of Earth. The event will feature a special welcome by Lee Strobel, author of several best-selling books including The Case for a Creator. The screening will be followed by Q&A with one of the films featured scholars, philosopher of biology Paul Nelson. The event starts at 7 pm, with doors opening at 6 pm. The location is Faith Bible Church, 5505 Research Forest Drive, The Woodlands. The film premiere is free, but registration is required. The third installment in the Illustra Media DVD series The Design of Life, Living Waters explores rivers and oceans to reveal spectacular displays of purpose and design in the animal kingdom. From the complex navigational systems of humpback whales, sea turtles, and Pacific salmon to a dolphins elaborate sonar and the ingenious propulsion of a jellyfish, you will marvel at the engineering brilliance that fills every corner of the Earths liquid universe. Watch the trailer. Register here. For questions, contact Donna Scott at djscott@discovery.org or 800-685-0632 x128. This event is presented by the newly launched Houston Chapter of the Science & Culture Network. Take action now: Contact United Methodist officials and urge them to overturn their ban on Discovery Institute. The Christian Post obtained a response from the United Methodist Church on the decision to bar Discovery Institute from participating as an exhibitor at the churchs upcoming General Conference: Diane Degnan, spokeswoman for the UMC, told The Christian Post that this was the first General Conference to allow for outside exhibitors. The Commission on the General Conference determined that the application by the Discovery Institute did not meet the guidelines established for exhibitors in that it was not consistent with the purpose of the exhibitor program, said Degnan. [The program] states that exhibits are not to provide a platform to survey or test ideas but to provide products, services and resources which are credible and proven to help local church ministries), and, in their opinion, it conflicted with our social principles. This rationale is the most obscure to be offered so far. The issue is that Discovery Institute sought a platform to survey or test ideas What? Our interest was in sharing ideas with thoughtful adults, not testing them or surveying anyone. We test ideas in peer-reviewed science publications and other written forms, in the lab, in silico, in debates not at church conferences. Or the problem is that our resources arent credible? But if the United Methodist hierarchy cant make the clear distinction between intelligent design and creationism, as Michael Flannery and Donald McLaughlin (both United Methodists themselves) pointed out yesterday, then I dont see how these church officials are in a position to weigh the credibility of ID. Some of this confusion is reproduced in the Christian Post article: United Methodisms official position on the Creation vs. evolution debate has been decidedly in favor of evolution, with their website offering links to works calling on Christians to embrace the theory. In 2008, the UMC passed a resolution voicing opposition to any efforts to have ideas like Intelligent Design or Young Earth Creationism included in public education. But for the umpteenth time, intelligent design is not about Creation or creationism. It is a scientific program that investigates evidence of purpose or teleology in nature. And Discovery Institute has consistently opposed pushing ID into public school education. Or perhaps the problem is that our resources are of no help to local church ministries? Intelligent design is not a species of apologetics, but thats one thing that makes it so credible and thus helpful, you would think. It does not seek to justify any particular reading of Scripture but pursues truth for its own sake. Michael Flannery, a science historian, writes today about his churchs teachings from a historical perspective, how Darwinism fares in light of those, and about the UMCs misguided and ill-informed recent resolutions on science and faith. Were supposed to believe that an objective account of biological origins, that happens to lend to support to Methodist tradition, is not helpful in serving the needs of church members? That makes no sense. Fortunately, the Christian Post spoke to Discovery Institute vice president John West as well: We are a nonprofit educational and research organization, and we have sponsored information tables at a wide variety of conferences and events, explained West. A staff member or ours who is a United Methodist brought to our attention the fact that the United Methodist General Conference would be held this year in Portland, Oregon, which is just a few hours away from our headquarters in Seattle. Last December, the Commission denied the Institutes application and last Thursday reaffirmed the decision, reportedly referencing the 2008 resolution to justify their reasoning. West told CP that he believed this reasoning was ridiculous, since his organization does not favor introducing Intelligent Design into public school science classes but rather thinks students should learn about the scientific strengths and weaknesses of modern Darwinian theory. More importantly, our information table was not focused on public school policy, but about resources dealing with science and faith; and nothing in the resolution they cited said United Methodists couldnt believe in Intelligent Design or discuss it, continued West. I would point out that the UMCs slogan is open hearts, open minds, open doors, and UMC leaders claim to be in favor of open dialogue. But banning us from even having an information table is not open-minded. Its close-minded in the extreme. A friend points out the irony that a world-class atheist philosopher like Tom Nagel can praise ID as a credible challenge to Darwinian theory, even as Dr. Nagel resists it for his own reasons but liberal Christians wont even allow the idea to be discussed at their conference. More than just close-minded, that strikes me as almost surreal. Image: UMC chapel, Kent, WA, by PFAStudent [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons. BBDO has announced that it has won all creative duties for 8 MetLife Asia markets and will be responsible for work in Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, Vietnam, Australia, India, Bangladesh and Nepal. BBDO has announced that it has won all creative duties for 8 MetLife Asia markets and will be responsible for work in Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, Vietnam, Australia, India, Bangladesh and Nepal. Additionally, Omnicom Media Group will be responsible for strategic media buying and planning across all communication channels for MetLife. Omnicom Media Group will focus on data driven insights, innovation, and analytics to drive powerful and effective results for MetLife. MetLife, one of the worlds largest life insurers is currently transforming itself into a global financial services company with a strong customer-centric focus. With a customer base of 24 million in Asia and growing, the company is in expansion mode MetLife Asia currently delivers a significant portion of global profits and the share is set to increase. BBDO will play a key role in this, helping the brand to raise awareness and differentiation across the region. BBDO impressed us with their outstanding creative capability, cohesive regional account management team, and ability to formulate consumer insights that excite consumers across the region. We look forward to transforming the MetLife brand in Asia in partnership with the BBDO team, said Ralph Brunner, Chief Marketing Officer of MetLife Asia. Commenting on the development, Jean-Paul Burge, Chairman & CEO, BBDO Asia, said, "Were absolutely delighted at the opportunity of working with MetLife across the region. It is a fantastic brand, the people we have met so far have been inspiring and with the highly creative ambition they have outlined there is little more we could ask for in a client. I look forward to seeing some great hard-working work from the teams in 2016." Read more news about (ad news, latest advertising news India, internet advertising, ad agencies updates, media advertising India) The National Sheep Association (NSA) has announced the 2015 winner of the highly regarded George Hedley Memorial Award as Julie Sedgewick from County Durham. With a career spanning more than 25 years, Julie has been singled out for the award recognising individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to the sheep industry. Julie says: It was a great honour to have even been nominated for this prestigious award, and to be informed I have now won is just so exciting. To win an award for being involved with something that I have a great passion for is even more special. I must thank my family and the many sheep farming families whose help and support over the last 25 years has enabled me to achieve what I have. Born into a farming family, sheep have always been a passion for Julie. Be it breeding, showing or promoting sheep, she has dedicated much of her life to the industry and will step down as NSA Northern Region Manager after 27 years service in February. Phil Stocker, NSA Chief Executive, says: The effect of Julies work is clear to see. She will leave her beloved NSA Northern Region with a host of dedicated and enthusiastic sheep farmers who have witnessed many changes and challenges over the years. These challenges will continue and I have no doubt our farmers will adapt and continue as a prosperous sheep production region that is vitally important to the UK industry. Julies passion was evident when she began her career in the sheep sector shortly after she left school, taking the lead in unofficially promoting the North of England Mule breed. From there she was asked to take on the role of Oxford Down Sheep Breeders Association Secretary and, in 1991, Suffolk Sheep Society Promotion Officer. She then began her involvement with NSA. In 2001, while the industry recovered from the devastating foot-and-mouth outbreak, she took on the job of coordinating the NSA public-facing hub at the Royal Highland, Royal and Royal Welsh shows. By 2004 she was as co-organiser of NSA Scot Sheep and then the NSA Sheep Event. A couple of years later she became sole organiser of NSA Sheep Event and can arguably be credited with the renaissance of this event, which is now resolutely established in the agricultural calendar. Phil adds: Julie has remained at the helm of the NSA Northern Region and it couldnt be more fitting to give her this award as she steps down after an incredible 27 years service to the NSA and the sheep industry as a whole. Julie will be formally presented with the George Hedley Memorial Award at the NSA Sheep Event, held on Wednesday 27th July at the Three Counties Showground, Malvern, Worcestershire. Nominations for the 2016 award will be accepted later this year. NSA has presented the George Hedley Memorial Award annually since 1960. It is given to honour the memory of George Hedley, a highly respected farmer from the Scottish borders who was involved with the NSA (then the National Sheep Breeders Association) for many years. It was while he was NSBA Chairman, travelling to a Council meeting in London on 26th January 1960, that he was tragically killed in a car accident. Each person who receives the NSA George Hedley Memorial Award is given a specially sculptured statuette of a South Country Cheviot sheep mounted on a plinth carrying the name of the recipient and the words For outstanding service to the sheep industry. Recipients are also made Honorary Life Members of the National Sheep Association. As the closed period for slurry spreading comes to an end we continue to experience challenging weather and certain areas remain affected by unfavourable ground conditions. In light of this the Ulster Farmers Union is urging farmers to be cautious to protect their Single Farm Payment. The Union is also warning contractors that they too can now be penalised under the 2015-2018 Nitrates Action Programme and phosphorus regulations. Ground and weather conditions are very difficult. While the closed period ends on 31 January, the nitrates programme also restricts slurry spreading at other times when conditions are unsuitable. It also makes clear that despite floods, spreading must be at specified distances from waterways. Any farmer breaching these conditions could see their Single Farm Payment penalised, said UFU environment committee chairman, Wilbert Mayne. He warned that with cash flow a major issue farmers cannot risk penalties, but said many faced a difficult dilemma because tanks are filling up while in certain areas ground conditions are not suitable for spreading. When the Nitrates Directive was introduced, the UFU secured an exceptional circumstances clause for conditions that leave farmers unable to fully comply through no fault of their own. As a result those forced to spread in early February could claim exceptional circumstances, but as was the case during the closed period, detailed documentation may be required to avoid penalties. The UFU can assist members with this process. Contractors carrying out slurry spreading can now also be penalised for spreading organic manures and chemical fertiliser in inappropriate conditions or too close to a waterway. A penalty can also be applied even if a farmer is carrying out the work for another farmer, warned Mr Mayne. The UFU says this need for caution by farmers and contractors has been made even more crucial by the latest Brussels review of the nitrates programme and a more intense focus on water quality. Since regulations were introduced, and then made even tougher, farmers have invested to comply. New Rural Development Programme schemes later this year will make funds available to further improve water quality and the rural environment. We want to see these schemes available as soon as possible, so that farmers can begin investing this spring in nutrient efficient technology, said Mr Mayne. He said the European Commission and others needed to recognise that tackling water quality was a long term challenge, and that substantial progress had been made by farmers, despite the financial pressure the industry is under. The UFU is also urging those wishing to avail of the nitrates derogation for 2016, which allows up to 250 kgN/ha/year on farms operating under specified conditions, to remember they must apply to NIEA by 1 March. Fertilisation accounts should also be submitted to NIEA by then by those who had an approved derogation in 2015. Upland sheep farmer David Raine has been confirmed as the new NFU Cumbria County Chairman for 2016 and 2017. He will officially take over from Richard Geldard of Low Foulshaw Farm in Kendal at the NFUs Cumbria County Branch Annual Dinner which takes place on Monday 25 January at the Westmorland Hotel, Tebay. David farms at Old Parks, Kirkoswald near Penrith with wife Anne and son Michael, the eldest of four children. The farm is between 400ft and 600ft above sea level with 410 acres of typical Eden Valley pasture land, alongside 830 acres of out and out rough grazing hill land near Hartside summit on the Penrith to Alston road. Old Parks has 1,000 breeding ewes, predominantly Swaledales, with mules and Blue Faced Leicesters, alongside 220 cattle based on a suckler herd of 70 Limousin cross cows. Davids commercial sheep and cattle are sold through Penrith and District Farmers Mart, with breeding sheep also sold through H&H. David said: The main output of the farm is mule gimmer lambs and wethers. We finish the cattle and grow 100 acres of winter and spring barley, fodder beet and swedes to feed the cattle and sheep. We source protein and some sheep feeds but the core ethos of the business is to produce the majority of the feed we need on farm. Educated in agriculture at Newcastle University, David will bring a vast amount of experience to his new NFU Cumbria County Chairman role. He was on the countys NFU Executive Committee from 1993 to 2003, was the organisations Cumbria livestock spokesman in 1993 and 1994, and in 2012 joined the NFUs national livestock board a role which will finish in March of this year. His roles outside of the NFU have benefitted the livestock sector in the UK greatly. He was chairman of the National Sheep Association (NSA) between 1996 and 2000, being asked to do the role again in 2006. David held influential positions on the livestock sectors levy boards. He sat on the Meat and Livestock Commission (MLC) sheep advisory panel between 1994 and 1998 and chaired its Sheep Strategy Council between 1998 and 2002, and was a member of the Eblex Executive Board until 2012. He is still the NSA representative on the Assured Food Standards (AFS) beef and lamb advisory board. Talking about the future of the NFU in the county, David added: Making sure that issues important to NFU Cumbria members are brought to the attention of the wider organisation will be an integral part of my chairmanship. There is a huge level of expertise within the NFU at a national level that does an awful lot of good work much of which does not get seen. The NFU team at regional and county level are committed to ensuring that members are given every opportunity to feed ideas and concerns into the organisation so that it can continue to deliver a professional and relevant service. The Raine family has a long and illustrious NFU history. Davids father, Joe, was council delegate and chair of the NFU national livestock board in the 1980s. This has clearly influenced David who took the conscious decision to follow his father albeit on a slightly different route. Producers still losing 18-20 per pig, new estimates show February is set to be a great movie month and A Bigger Splash is just one of the films that will be coming our way over the next few weeks. A Bigger Splash A Bigger Splash sees Ralph Fiennes return to the big screen as he teams up with Oscar winner Tilda Swinton for the first time since the critical and commercial success of The Grand Budapest Hotel. Fiennes and Swinton are two of the most exciting actors around and it is great to see them sharing the screen once again - I am really looking forward to seeing these two great actors working together once again. In this terrific new clip, we see Fiennes show off his singing skills. Check it out: A great cast has been assembled for A Bigger Splash as Fiennes and Swinton are joined by Matthias Schoenaerts and Dakota Johnson while Luca Guadagnino is in the director's chair. The movie sees Guadagnino reunite with Swinton for their first feature film since I Am Love. A Bigger Splash is the first live action film for the director since I Am Love as he has been working in short films and documentary projects over the last few years. When a high-profile couple - a rock star and a filmmaker decide to vacation on a remote Italian island, their rest is disrupted by the sudden visit of an old friend and his sexy, yet mysterious daughter. Suddenly, what was supposed to be an ideal getaway turns into a whirlwind of jealousy, passion and danger for everyone in the group. A Bigger Splash is released 12th February. by Helen Earnshaw for www.femalefirst.co.uk find me on and follow me on Ryan Gosling is back on the big screen this week as he teams up with Steve Carell, Brad Pitt, and Christian Bale for new film The Big Short, which marks the return of Adam McKay to the director's chair. The Big Short Gosling is a bit of a favourite here at FemaleFirst and we always look forward to seeing the latest film offering from the Oscar winner... The Big Short has been winning over the critics and I can't wait to see him in action as part of this exciting ensemble cast. We take a look back at Gosling's career and some of his finest performances to date. - Drive (2011) When it comes to Ryan Gosling movies, Drive really is one of his best performances and one of my favourite of the actor's movies. It was back in 2011 when the film hit the big screen and saw Gosling team up with filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn for the first time. Drive is based on the book by James Sallis and followed a stuntman and mechanic who gets himself into real trouble when he tries to help out his neighbour and her family. To say he doesn't speak all that much is a bit of an understatement, and he still manages to create a powerful character that is full of mystery and intrigue. From start to finish, it is just a captivating performance from the actor: he gives more away with a single look that he could ever do with words. This is a very different kind of character and performance from Gosling and he really does excel. Both Gosling and the director understand the power of silence and use it perfectly in this movie. They make a very exciting movie-making team and they went on to reunite for Only God Forgives and I hope that we see them work together again in the future. Drive was one of the finest films to hit the big screen in 2011 and it was Gosling's mesmerising central performance that really elevates this film to something more. While Drive was a critical hit, it is a film that should have received far more awards attention than it actually did; why it was overlooked for a Best Picture Oscar nod is anyone's guess. - Half Nelson (2007) Hard to believe that it is almost ten years since Gosling starred in Half Nelson. While Gosling was no stranger to the big screen at this time, Half Nelson really was a movie that showed off a very different side to him as an actor. Gosling took on the central role of Dan Dunne, an inner-city high school teacher who struggles with a drug habit. Dunne strikes up an unusual friendship with one of his students when she discovers his secret. Half-Nelson sees Gosling deliver a wonderful performance and he was rewarded with his first Best Actor Oscar nomination; he lost out to Forest Whitaker for his role as Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland. Director and writer Ryan Fleck, delivers a gritty and interesting script that Gosling well and truly gets his teeth into. There is a truly raw and real feel to Half-Nelson and that is what makes it such a powerful and rather emotional watch. Through Gosling's performance, Half Nelson becomes an interesting and complex character study of a self-destructive teacher who tries to stop one of his students making the same mistakes as he has. These two characters may have been brought together by rather dark circumstances, but their central relationship is what truly shines in this film. I love that this is not your usual and cliched inspirational teacher movie as Fleck and Gosling are keen to tell a very different story that is engaging and thought-provoking from start to finish. - Blue Valentine (2011) Derek Cianfrance returned to the director's chair for only the second feature film of his career in 2011, as he teamed up with Gosling and Michelle Williams for Blue Valentine. This was to be the first collaboration between the director and Gosling; who would work together again on The Place Beyond the Pines in 2013. Blue Valentine marks the ups and downs of the relationship between David and Cindy over several years. The movie moves back and forth charting how they met, their years of marriage, the failure of that marriage, and the role both of them played in that failure. What I love about Blue Valentine so much, is it is not your love conquers all Hollywood romance story. While there are elements of romance in the film, the director shows that there are ups and downs in every relationship, love can break your heart, and love can leave a scar. It really is quite a brilliant and bold breathe of fresh air. Both Gosling and Williams deliver powerful and compelling performances and have brought to life complex and rounded characters that are people we can truly relate to. Blue Valentine is a touching and rather sincere portrait of the collapse of what was once a loving relationship; showing that real life and real love is not always the fairytale that you hope it will be. Gosling and Williams are just magnificent together as they capture the passion, the love, and the hate that exists between this couple at different stages in their relationship. The chemistry between the pair really is fantastic and they both deliver knockout emotional punches that will truly break your heart. - The Ides of March (2011) 2011 was a hugely successful year for Gosling and in the autumn, he teamed up with George Clooney for The Ides of March. The movie was the fourth feature film of Clooney's directing career; he also starred in the film alongside Gosling and penned the film's screenplay. The Ides of March takes place during the frantic last days before a heavily contested Ohio presidential primary, when an up-and-coming campaign press secretary (Gosling) finds himself involved in a political scandal that threatens to upend his candidate's shot at the presidency. I love a good political thriller and The Ides of March is one of the best in recent years, in fact, it was one of the best films of 2011 for me. You get caught up in the underhand dealings of the politicians and the people around them from the opening frame - as Clooney shows politics is a game that some will do anything to win. The Ides of March is a movie that explores themes of loyalty and idealism in what is a provocative, intelligent, and compelling drama. Gosling delivers another terrific performance as he finds his loyalty to his candidate truly tested as events unfold throughout the film. From start to finish, The Ides of March is a smart chess game as we see all the major players trying to outwit each other to best serve themselves. It truly is gripping stuff. Other great Gosling movies include Lars and the Real Girl, The Notebook, The Place Beyond the Pines, and Crazy Stupid Love. The Big Short is released 22nd January. by Helen Earnshaw for www.femalefirst.co.uk find me on and follow me on Britain's Prince Charles is battling to keep his private estate from being a public authority. Britain's Prince Charles Legal representatives for the 67-year-old royal's Duchy of Cornwall estate are appealing the decision, which allows environmental data about their onsite oyster farm to be made public after campaigner Michael Bruton claimed the farm is causing environmental damage to the local area. According to the Mail Online, Thomas de la Mare QC, who is representing the heir to the throne's estate, said: "It is not a natural or legal personality. The Duchy is in fact shorthand for the land owned by the Duke, subject to restrictions contained in a charter. "None of the relevant powers are the powers of the Duchy, as opposed to the Duke. None of the relevant powers in question, save perhaps the ceremonial aspects, are concerned with service of public interest. There is no separate legal personality for the Duchy. Any claim that it does have such separate legal personality may present consequences outside this litigation." Michael Bruton has been campaigning for the information to be released since 2008 but it was rejected by the Duchy estate at the time because they claimed the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) did not consider them to be a public authority. Britain's Princess Anne met with penguins during her tour of South Georgia. Britain's Princess Anne The 65-year-old royal is currently visiting the British Overseas Territory where she came face to face with the creatures. A tweet from the monarchy's official account captioned a photograph of the Princess Royal walking amongst the birds: "A Regal day for wildlife in South Georgia as King Penguins meet The Princess Royal! (sic)" Whilst the country's government wrote on their account on the micro blogging site: "#Biodiversity abound and #penguins galore as The Princess Royal visits Gold Harbour #SouthGeorgia (sic)" During her visit to the territory, which is in the middle of Atlantic Ocean, south east of South America, the Princess met with staff at the South Georgia Heritage Trust, which aims to protect the stunning landscape and heritage of the area whilst scientists discussed with the daughter of Queen Elizabeth about sustainability in the region. A tweet from the government's account read: "The Princess Royal meets @SGHTcharitysite staff at the #SouthGeorgia museum ... "Scientists talk to The Princess Royal about how their research contributes #sustainable #SGFisheries (sic)" Earlier this week, Princess Anne opened the new Post Office on the island. Hollyoaks fans were shocked this week when they were finally given the return many had been waiting for - serial killer Silas Blissett. Credit: Lime Pictures Unexpectedly showing up in Tuesday's (January 19) first look edition of the soap on E4, Silas met with Trevor Royle in prison as he searched for clues as to the identity of the Gloved Hand Killer. It turns out that Silas has been exchanging letters with Trevor whilst he's been incarcerated, pretending to be a writer who's curious about the case. Using the mantle 'Mister E Mann', or 'Mystery Man' when said aloud, Silas was disappointed to discover that Trevor is innocent and so is still searching for more morbid details. Credit: Lime Pictures Could Silas now invade Hollyoaks village once more and, if so, will he be adding to his list of victims or simply continue on with his search for the latest serial killer on the block? Viewers last saw Silas in 2012 when he went on the run from a psychiatric unit. To-date, he's claimed the lives of four women including his own daughter Heidi Costello in a case of mistaken identity. Actor Jeff Rawle who plays Silas shot his new scenes during a top secret weekend of filming recently, with soap bosses eager to keep his comeback a major secret. Credit: Lime Pictures The future of his storyline in the show is also being kept underwraps - whether he's here for a short guest appearance or whether his story will be going on now for some time is yet to be seen. It's possible Silas could be the man to bring justice to Gloved Hand Killer Lindsay, but then there's also the possibility of him taking her under his wing if he does discover who she is, in a bid to help her carry out more devastating crimes. Hollyoaks continues tonight on Channel 4 at 6.30pm, with the First Look episode on E4 following at 7pm. by Daniel Falconer for www.femalefirst.co.uk find me on and follow me on The page you were looking for does not exist. HOME | B2B | KNOWLEDGE | SERVICES Here are some helpful links instead: Ethnic wear firm Fabindia Overseas has crossed Rs 1,000-crore sales mark to become the largest retail apparel brand in the country , way ahead of nearest rivals Zara and Levi's India.During 2014-15, Fabindia posted a 12 per cent rise in consolidated sales at Rs 1,148 crore with 36 per cent increase profit. Its domestic business grew 25 per cent to touch Rs 767 crore ahead of largest fast-fashion brand Zara that clocked sales of Rs 720 crore during the same period, the Economic Times has reported. Ethnic wear firm Fabindia Overseas has crossed Rs 1,000-crore sales mark to become the largest retail apparel brand in the country, way ahead of# "Customers are moving to one of two responses to retail. Either they are responding to products as commodities, or investing in curated products and experiences. We will continue to focus on the quality of our design and curation," said William Bissell, Managing Director at Fabindia. The company which runs more than 205 stores in India, also attributes its success to a policy of no discounting and instead build a sustainable cash flow.Founded in 1960 by Bissell's father John Bissell to market craft traditions of India, Fabindia started out as a company exporting home furnishings. The first retail store was opened in Greater Kailash, New Delhi, 15 years later. In mid 1990s, William Bissell took over the company.The company added the non-textile range in 2000, while organic foods and personal care products were launched nearly a decade ago. Experts said the brand, which has expanded its portfolio over the years, has been finding acceptance among younger consumers since the last decade, a new development in a category earlier largely restricted to older buyers. "The brand has been consistent to its core and they have been adding newer categories to remain relevant and also earn higher margins," said Devangshu Dutta, Chief Executive at retail consultancy Third Eyesight. "The challenge is to continue the momentum since their sourcing is dependent on thousands of craftsmen instead of few large manufacturing units."Ethnic wear, a segment still mostly fed by the unorganised segment, has been growing at an average of more than 10 per cent a year over the last decade.Leading department chains such as Shoppers Stop, Lifestyle and Westside are increasing the width of their private label range and offer contemporary styling in the ethnic space, fuelling growth. The ethnic wear segment is also seeing a lot of aggressive expansion from newer players both in online and brick-and-mortar space, something that could hurt Fabindia's growth prospect going forward. For instance, Kolkata based Manyavar, which had just one store till 2008, has more than 400 stores across the country now and is expanding its portfolio from wedding and special occasions to everyday clothing, the report said.In comparison, Fabindia opened eight stores last fiscal. (SH) Fibre2Fashion News Desk - India Six months after the European Union member states agreed to ban nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPE) widely found in clothing because it poses an unacceptable risk to the environment, the amended Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) regulation will come into force from Februaty 2, 2016, and companies will then have five years to to remove the chemical from their products and supply chains, according to the EU Official journal.This means there should be no NPEs in any textile placed in the market after February 3, 2021 which can be reasonably expected to be washed in water during their normal lifecycle, in concentrations equal to or greater than 0.01 per cent by weight of that textile or of each part of the textile article. Six months after the European Union member states agreed to ban nonylphenol ethoxylates (NPE) widely found in clothing because it poses an # The restriction will not apply to second-hand textile articles or new textile articles produced without the use of NPE exclusively from recycled textiles.The proposal ban the chemical was brought forward by Sweden in 2013 and backed by scientists at the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA).NPE degrades in the environment into substances including nonylphenol (NP), which accumulates in the bodies of fish and disrupts their hormones, harming fertility, growth and sexual development.The wide use of NPE in the textile industry was brought to light by a Greenpeace International report , Dirty Laundry 2: Hung Out To Dry in 2011, which found toxic chemicals in waste water discharge from two textile processing facilities in China supplying global apparel firms. (SH) Fibre2Fashion News Desk - India Heimtextil closed its doors with over 69,000 trade visitors visiting the fair as against 67,861 in 2015 and 2,866 exhibitors compared to 2,723 last year.As was the case last year, 68 per cent of trade visitors came from abroad, while there was an increased number of visitors from Italy, Spain, Sweden, Russia, Japan and South Korea in particular at Heimtextil 2016. Heimtextil closed its doors with over 69,000 trade visitors visiting the fair as against 67,861 in 2015 and 2,866 exhibitors compared to 2,723 last# 89 per cent of exhibitors as against 88 per cent in 2015 came from abroad, while this edition saw a growth in exhibitors from Turkey, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Brazil and the US, Messe Frankfurt informed in a press release.For the fast-growing segment of decor and upholstery materials, hall 4.0 was even equipped with a new, additional hall level, where primarily high-quality exhibitors from Italy showcased their wares. Textile digital printing with all the market leaders such as Epson, Hewlett Packard, Kornit, Mimaki and Zimmer was also considerably expanded in comparison to last year.The product group 'Bed' with bed linen, bedding, covers, decorative pillows and mattresses was also added to this event.The increase in mattress manufacturers in particular, such as Rossle & Wanner and Frankenstolz, who were both exhibiting at Heimtextil again after several years' absence, was warmly received by trade visitors, Messe Frankfurt noted.Detlef Braun, CEO of Messe Frankfurt said, The world of textile interior design came to Frankfurt and the increase in exhibitors and visitors alike speaks for itself.The positive economic indicators also boosted discussions between suppliers and purchasers and thus Heimtextil has consolidated its position as the top global meeting place for the industry, Braun added.A buyer from Europe's biggest department store chain El Corte Ingles, Cristobal Montero Alvarez said, Heimtextil has been the most important trade fair when it comes to the purchase of home and house textiles.No other trade fair offers such an international range of exhibitors, while the quality and price of suppliers at Heimtextil appeals to us, he added.This year, we were particularly impressed by the new technical solutions in the sun protection segment, Alvarez too added.Visitors to Heimtextil come from across the world and all of them want to see the latest trends in the textile market, Paola Ribera of the decor and furniture supplier Texathenea from Spain.According to the organiser, the glamour factor was once again a major element in 2016 as actress and hotel owner Jessica Schwarz was an honorary guest at the opening press conference on Tuesday.On Thursday, she took the opportunity to go on a purchasing tour through the halls for this very purpose.Also present was musician and artist Nena, who presented her new wallpaper collection at the Marburger Tapetenfabrik stand and rocked the house in the evening in front of an audience of invited guests. (AR) Fibre2Fashion News Desk India According to a French Textile Machinery Association (UCMTF) press release, ITMA 2015 was an outstanding experience for French textile machinery manufacturers despite the global uncertainties.President of UCMTF Bruno Ameline said, The French exhibitors met many more customers than they expected who included long time and new, and who came with real projects. According to a French Textile Machinery Association (UCMTF) press release, ITMA 2015 was an outstanding experience for French textile machinery# ITMA 2015 has been a great opportunity for each machinery manufacturer to show their latest innovations mainly developed from partnerships with their clients, he added.Thanks to these machines, textile companies can introduce new products, sometimes disruptive ones, and have reliable, cost efficient and energy saving production processes, Ameline observed.Secretary general at UCMTF Evelyne Cholet said, French machinery manufacturers were able to establish long term relationships with their customers worldwide.The French seminars organised before ITMA in Iran and Uzbekistan and agreement signed with the Russian textile industry have been instrumental in attracting visitors to the French booths at ITMA, she too added.According to UCTMF, once again, sustainability was a main theme at ITMA, so the textile industry has to be an even better steward of the planet to answer the tremendous forces coming from the consumers.For many years, the French machinery manufacturers have been proactive to help reach this goal and make it compatible with their customer's financials, the trade body informed.In 2016, the French machinery manufacturers will also able exhibiting at ITM 2016 in Istanbul, ITMA Asia in Shanghai and India ITME in Mumbai. (AR) Fibre2Fashion News Desk India Japanese fibre yarn manufacturing company Asahi Kasei Fiber Corporation is collaborating with Surat Art Silk Cloth Manufacturers' Association (SASCMA) to process and develop India's first Bemberg silk fabric, a substitute for natural silk, according to a report in Times of India.Japan, Italy and France have a monopoly in manufacturing this fabric from Bemberg yarn, which is widely used in western outfits, linings in coats, innerwear, sportswear, T-shirts, non-woven technical textiles, etc. Japanese fibre yarn manufacturing company Asahi Kasei Fiber Corporation is collaborating with Surat Art Silk Cloth Manufacturers' Association (SASCMA)# Over the years, Asahi Kasei has improved the quality of Bemberg and expanded its applications over the years, Now, Surat will be the first centre in India to process the fabric from Bemberg yarn, a trademark of Asahi Kasei Fiber Corporation, which is a part of Asahi Kasei group.Asahi Kasei's general manager of Bemberg sales department, Kamiyama San and other officials visited Surat last week to hold discussions with SASCMA board members to develop and process Bemberg fabric. SASCMA is the sole distributor of Bamberg yarn from Asahi Kasei in the city. Around 5,000 tonnes of Bemberg yarn is being imported annually from Japan for the last 40 years to manufacture duppatas and sarees."The company officials plan to come to Surat in March to develop Bemberg fabric from coarse denier," Man-Made Textile Research Association secretary Dinesh Zaveri said.The Japanese company will display all the fabrics manufactured from Bemberg coarse denier yarn at Global Fabric Resource and Research Centre set up by Southern Gujarat Chamber of Commerce and Industry at Nanpura, the report said. (SH) Fibre2Fashion News Desk - India The Ministry of Fisheries and Forest has ordered a halt to the practice of paying good will fees, or fishing levy payments, to owners of customary fishing rights (CFROs). Fisheries resource custodians have been charging these fees to fishers as a condition of their acquiring fishing permits from the Divisional Commissioners. Fishers have been required to pay these fees to the owners of customary fishing rights before any fishing license request was vetted, processed and approved by the Fisheries Department. Citing the powers conferred on him by the Chapter 158, Section 9 (e) of the fisheries Act, the Hon. Minister Osea Naiqamu stated, I hereby declare that all goodwill payments or fishing levies, which are often paid to resource custodians to obtain letters of consent to acquire fishing permits from the respective Divisional Commissioners (upon the prior endorsement of the letters of consent from any Roko Tui within a given province), are to freeze in all divisions for 2016. This interim directive and policy shall come into effect immediately from today, Wednesday, the 20th of January 2016. My ministry will undertake more country-wide consultation with individuals and communities affected by this practice before formalizing a policy to correct the wrongs that have been practiced for the last 45 years, Minister Naiqamu said. We will put in place a new arrangement for access-fee payment that has legal standing and that should first be paid to government. Government could then allocate a portion of that fee to the customary fishing rights owners through an approved mechanism. The Hon. Minister Naiqamu made the decision to freeze all such good-will payments, or fishing-license levies, before obtaining written consent from the i-QoliQoli Resource Custodians for a number of reasons. First, the Ministry has received well-documented reports that the abuse of this good-will fee payment system by CFROs has been increasing in some provinces across the country, particularly in the last five to seven years. The Minister also believes that a more detailed and focused consultation programme needs to be undertaken within the next five months across four divisions, with proactive participation from Community groups and all affected parties, so that a more consolidated approach can be formulated that includes a robust access-fee structure and system. Features of that system could include limiting the size or mesh of nets that may be used to take fish in Fiji fisheries waters or parts of those waters, regulating the procedure for issuing and cancelling licenses and registering fishing boats, determining the fees to be charged for licenses and the registration of fishing vessels, and regulating matters relating to the conservation, protection and maintenance of a particular stock of fish, if necessary. Pawan Kalyan, who has been working round the clock to complete Sardaar Gabbar Singh on time, is reportedly heading for a sudden trip to Singapore. The actor, who was supposed to take a break during Sankranthi festival, did not get any time off from the shooting works and hence he is going for a short trip to Singapore, according to the sources close to him. However, nothing can escape the eye of people who read everything between the lines. A few enthusiasts are raising doubts if Pawan Kalyan's impromptu trip to Singapore has anything to do with the state politics. They also have questions on why the actor is going for a holiday all alone. Well! For the fact nobody knows if he is travelling alone or going for a holiday with family. Now this is the problem with hearsay. The reports also suggest that Sardaar Gabbar Singh might not hit screens in April as it is promised, but will get pushed to May, due to the delay in shooting schedules. We only have to wait and see how far the reports are true as time passes by, since you don't generally see Pawan Kalyan responding to gossipmongers. On the other hand, a fresh schedule of Sardaar Gabbar Singh is going to start in the last week of January and the film's audio launch is slated to happen on 12 March. Stay tuned to this space for more updates. Chinas securities regulator on Tuesday approved seven initial public offerings, the first under new listing rules introduced at the start of the year that are an important step towards a registration-based system. Three companies including Eastern Pioneer Driving School and Southern Publishing and Media Company will list on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, according to a statement by the China Securities Regulatory Commission posted on its website. Four other firms will go public in Shenzhen either on the ChiNext board or on the Small and Medium Enterprise board. Under the new IPO rules, retail and institutional investors can pay for the exact value of new shares after they secure them by lottery or by allotment. Previously, they were required to deploy much more capital for pre-ordering new shares that they might not get, which locked up huge amounts of capital ahead of each new listing. Moreover, Chinese retail investors, who account for the majority of A-share trading, typically get allocated few new shares but typically seek to sell their holdings in order to participate in IPOs, a customary practice that can accentuate market volatility by drying up liquidity. By scrapping pre-payment for subscribing to new shares, huge amounts of capital will no longer be frozen, and the launch of new listings will not impact the market liquidity, the CSRC said in the statement. The securities watchdog announced the new mechanism in November last year, which it sees as a major step towards the long-awaited registration system. In the same month, it also lifted a four-month ban imposed on IPOs at the height of the countrys stock market rout. Apart from dropping the upfront payments, the revised rules also give IPO candidates and their underwriters a bigger role in the process. The CSRC allows companies that sell less than 20 million new shares to directly determine the offering price. Three companies of the seven, including Guangzhou Gaolang Energy Conservation Technology and Suzhou Institute of Architectural Design, will be eligible to set debut prices, according to the CSRC, although it hasnt clarified whether their IPO valuations can exceed its unspoken ceiling of 23 times earnings. All seven companies will have gone public before the Chinese New Year holidays, which kick off on February 7, with the pace of one IPO being launched each day, in an effort to secure a safe operation of the new mechanism, according to the regulator. Registration system China has pledged to overhaul the countrys current approval-based IPO system, which has been in place for more than two decades and heavily relied on stringent review by the securities regulator it controls both the timing and pricing of new listings. In late December, the countrys top legislature approved a proposal to shift to US-style registration-based system, paving the way for the CSRC to implement the changes in two years. Such a registration-based mechanism would allow the market to play the decisive role in resource allocation, as well as lowering the listing threshold and simplifying the listing process. Last week, CSRC spokesman Deng Ge said it wouldnt come into place as early as on March 1, which was previously reported by domestic media. The reform of the registration system will be a gradual process. It wont be achieved overnight. And it wont result in a massive expansion in the new share listings, Deng said at a briefing on January 13. Analysts at Shengwan Hongyuan, a large Chinese brokerage, said they expected the new registration mechanism to be launched in the second quarter of the year at the earliest. The proposal on reforming the IPO system was approved within two weeks after it had been submitted. The leadership knows the urgency to launch the registration system, they said in a note on December 28. TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 01/19/16 -- Quantum International Income Corp. (the "Corporation") (TSX VENTURE: QIC)(TSX VENTURE: QIC.U) announces today that it has entered into a definitive agreement with DGAT Partners, LLC ("DGAT") and certain other affiliates, pursuant to which the Corporation will sell, and affiliates of DGAT will acquire, the entirety of the Corporation's 100% indirect interest in DA Management NJ Inc., the subsidiary through which the Corporation indirectly administered anesthesia services at its Centers for Special Surgery, LLC ("CSS") subsidiary and other locations. Through its wholly-owned subsidiary Quantum Anesthesia Management Corp., the Corporation will receive, in consideration for the sale, a cash payment of US$600,000 and the irrevocable option to cancel, for no additional consideration payable, 9,000,000 common shares of the Corporation which had been previously issued to affiliates of DGAT. The Corporation and the purchasers have further agreed to reduce the cash portion payable to the Corporation by US$362,000, which reduction reflects an aggregate amount the purchasers have agreed to pay to satisfy certain expenses of CSS that would otherwise have been ultimately funded by the Corporation. Affiliates of the purchasers are members of the Board of Directors of CSS and as such are considered Non-Arm's Length Parties of the Corporation under TSX Venture Exchange ("TSXV") rules. The completion of the transaction is subject to receipt by the Corporation of final approval by the TSX Venture Exchange. "Quantum continues to downsize operations and cut costs as a part of our restructuring initiatives. We are singularly focused on our growth and profitability in our surgery centre operations," stated Manu Sekhri, Chief Executive Officer. Separately, the Corporation announces today that Geoff Boothe has resigned from the Board of Directors, effective immediately. The Corporation further announces that Roy Booth, Chief Financial Officer has resigned from the Corporation effective February 15, 2016. Mr. Boothe was first elected to the Board in November 2013 while Mr. Booth joined the Corporation as CFO in March 2014. "Quantum thanks Messrs. Booth and Boothe for their service to the company during its formative phase," continued Mr. Sekhri. "Their contributions were greatly valued and we wish them well in their future endeavours." More information on Quantum International Income Corp. is available at www.quantumincomecorp.com. 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 This release contains certain information which, as presented, constitutes "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws. Forward-looking information involves statements that relate to future events and often addresses expected future business and financial performance, containing words such as "expect" and "intend", statements that an action or event "may" or "will" be taken or occur, or other similar expressions and includes, but is not limited to, statements about the completion of the sale of the Corporation's anesthesia business, including but not limited to the treatment of the cash consideration therefor and cancellation of any common shares in consideration therefor. These statements and information are subject to various known and unknown risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the ability of the Corporation to control or predict, and which may cause Quantum's actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from those expressed or implied thereby, including, but not limited to, risks related to the inability by Quantum to acquire its own common shares for cancellation, as well as other factors discussed in the Corporation's annual information form dated July 23, 2015, (the "Annual Information Form") and the Corporation's final short form prospectus supplement dated July 21, 2015, which are available on SEDAR under Quantum's profile at www.sedar.com. Forward-looking information is developed based on assumptions about such risks, uncertainties and other factors set out herein, in the Annual Information and Prospectus, and as otherwise disclosed from time to time on SEDAR under Quantum's profile at www.sedar.com. Unless otherwise specified in this press release, information contained in this press release is current as of the date of this press release. Unless otherwise specified, all dollar amounts herein refer to Canadian dollars. The Corporation undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements except as may be required by applicable Canadian securities laws. Readers are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements. Contacts: Quantum International Income Corp. Vera Janakievski Operations Manager Tel. (416) 477-3411 veraj@quantumincomecorp.com www.quantumincomecorp.com AIX-EN-PROVENCE, France, January 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Sunpartner Technologies has just raised 5.2 million (5.6 M$) from ACAPITAL and historical investors. Sunpartner invented the invisible photovoltaic component Wysips and specializes in solar technologies. Funds will be used to start making large panels of Wysips Glass for the transportation and construction industries and to continue international expansion, mainly in Asia. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150107/723989 ) To view the full press release, please click here A New Capital Campaign to Launch Production of Wysips Glass This round was marked by the entry of ACAPITAL, a renowned investment fund specialized in helping European mid-size companies expand in Asia. With its international network and its focus in China, A CAPITAL will support Sunpartner Technologies' growth in Asia. Sunpartner Technologies has now raised a total of 45M ($48.7 M) since its creation in 2008 - 15M ($16M) in 2015 alone. Wysips Glass: High-Tech Manufacturing of Smart Glazing in France This new capital will be used to set up high-tech production facilities in France for transparent, solar Wysips Glass for large surfaces, with a capacity of 30,000m2 of smart glazing per year. The site will be operational by 2017 and will make next-generation PV modules, which will be integrated into the glazing in partnership with leading manufacturers. This smart glazing is destined for transportation, smart buildings, and net energy positive buildings. The PV component is integrated into the building's glazing and produces electricity from light, helping reach net positive energy. When coupled with a smart switchable film the window can then power itself. Sunpartner Technologies Expands in Asia In 2016, nearly 50% of Sunpartner Technologies' revenue will come from in Japan, with several partners including NTT DOCOMO and KYOCERA. To accelerate Sunpartner's position in Asia, the company is developing new partnerships in Japan, where discussions are underway with around ten companies in the glazing, watch, screen, and accessories industries. At the same time, the company is expanding in the Taiwanese and Chinese markets, where it has an office in Shenzhen. In China, the first markets targeted are smartwatches, with production starting in summer 2016, and accessories, whose production will launch in Q2 of 2016. Sunpartner Technologies then plans to target the glazing industry in China. http://www.sunpartnertechnologies.com REDMOND (dpa-AFX) - Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) CEO Satya Nadella announced a new three-part initiative to ensure that Microsoft's cloud computing resources serve the public good. As part of this initiative the recently formed Microsoft Philanthropies will donate $1 billion of Microsoft Cloud Services, measured at fair market value, to serve nonprofits and university researchers over the next three years. Microsoft said its three-part commitment focuses on ensuring the cloud can serve the public good in the broadest sense by providing additional cloud resources to nonprofits, increasing access for university researchers and helping solve last-mile Internet access challenges. 'Microsoft is empowering mission-driven organizations around the planet with a donation of cloud computing services - the most transformative technologies of our generation,' said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who on Wednesday will speak at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX 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. VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Jan. 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Silver Wheaton Corp. ("Silver Wheaton" or the "Company") (TSX:SLW) (NYSE:SLW) is providing an update on certain matters relating to the ongoing dispute with the Canada Revenue Agency (the "CRA"). On January 8, 2016, Silver Wheaton filed a Notice of Appeal with the Tax Court of Canada, electing to pursue resolution of the matters relating to the Notices of Reassessment issued by the CRA for the 2005-2010 taxation years through a judicial court process rather than continue to pursue the CRA's internal appeals process. This decision was made in accordance with Silver Wheaton's right to appeal directly to the Tax Court of Canada 91 days after the date of filing a notice of objection. "We remain confident in, and we intend to vigorously defend, our business structure. We believe that we have complied with Canadian tax law and feel that the court process, rather than the CRA appeals process, will provide the most expeditious avenue for the resolution of this matter," said Randy Smallwood, President and Chief Executive Officer of Silver Wheaton. "Through this entire process, we continue to believe in the strong underlying value of our shares and continue to be active under our normal course issuer bid program in buying back our shares," he added. On January 19, 2016, subsequent to filing the Notice of Appeal, Silver Wheaton received correspondence advising that the CRA would be commencing an audit of the Company's international transactions covering the 2011-2013 taxation years. It is important to note that the correspondence received is not a proposal or notice of reassessment and the Company is not in a position to determine what, if any, position the CRA will take in respect of the 2011-2013 taxation years. However, if the CRA were to take a position similar to that underlying the Notices of Reassessment for the 2005-2010 taxation years, the Company estimates that the CRA could assert that taxes payable in Canada would increase for the 2011-2013 taxation years by approximately US$310 million. Taxation years subsequent to 2013 also remain open to audit by the CRA. The timing of the court process for the 2005-2010 taxation years and the audit of the 2011-2013 taxation years is uncertain; however, management intends to vigorously defend any challenge to the Company's tax filing positions. CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD LOOKING-STATEMENTS The information contained herein contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements, which are all statements other than statements of historical fact, include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to Silver Wheaton's confidence in its business structure, Silver Wheaton's appeal to the Tax Court of Canada, response to any future reassessments, the potential reassessment of Silver Wheaton's 2011-2013 tax filings by the CRA as a result of the audit of those years, the potential reassessment of Silver Wheaton's future tax filings, Silver Wheaton's position relating to the current or any future dispute with the CRA, the estimate of future potential taxes, penalties and interest that may be payable to the CRA, the impact of taxes, penalties and interest payable to the CRA, Silver Wheaton's defense of reassessments issued by the CRA, Silver Wheaton's view of its tax filing positions, possible audits for taxation years subsequent to 2013, Silver Wheaton's intention to file future tax returns in a manner consistent with previous filings, the length of time it would take to resolve the dispute with the CRA in the court process, any future reassessments or an objection to any reassessment, Silver Wheaton's ability to post security for amounts sought by the CRA under any notices of reassessment, and assessments of the impact and resolution of various legal and tax matters, including proceedings before the courts. Generally, these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "projects", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", "potential", or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved". Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of Silver Wheaton to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including but not limited to: differences in the interpretation or application of tax laws and regulations or accounting policies and rules, Silver Wheaton's interpretation of, or compliance with, tax laws, and regulations or accounting policies and rules is found to be incorrect, Silver Wheaton's operations or ability to enter into precious metal purchase agreements is materially impacted as a result of any reassessment, any challenge by the CRA of Silver Wheaton's tax filings is successful and the potential negative impact to Silver Wheaton's previous and future tax filings, the tax impact to Silver Wheaton's business operations is materially different than currently contemplated, any court process and any reassessment of Silver Wheaton's tax filings and the continuation or timing of any such process is outside Silver Wheaton's control, any requirement to pay reassessed tax, interest and penalties will have an adverse impact on the financial position of Silver Wheaton, litigation risk associated with the challenge to Silver Wheaton's tax filings, risks related to claims and legal proceedings against Silver Wheaton, changes to tax legislation and administrative policies, as well as those factors discussed in the section entitled "Description of the Business - Risk Factors" in Silver Wheaton's Annual Information Form and the additional risks identified under "Risks and Uncertainties" in Management's Discussion and Analysis for the period ended June 30, 2015, both available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and in Silver Wheaton's Form 40-F and Form 6-K filed August 11, 2015, both on file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington, D.C. Forward-looking statements are based on assumptions management believes to be reasonable, including but not limited to: expectations regarding the resolution of legal and tax matters, that Silver Wheaton will be successful in challenging any reassessment by CRA, that Silver Wheaton has properly considered the application of Canadian tax law to its structure and operations, that Silver Wheaton may be permitted to post security for amounts sought by the CRA under any notices of reassessment, that Silver Wheaton has filed its tax returns and paid applicable taxes in compliance with Canadian tax law, that Silver Wheaton will not change its operations as a result of any proposal, reassessment or dispute, that Silver Wheaton's ability to enter into new precious metal purchase agreements will not be impacted by any reassessment, expectations and assumptions concerning prevailing tax laws and any future potential amount that could be assessed as additional tax, penalties and interest by the CRA, that any foreign subsidiary income would be subject to the same tax calculations as Silver Wheaton's Canadian income. Although Silver Wheaton has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause results, level of activity, performance or achievements not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate and even if events or results described in the forward-looking statements are realized or substantially realized, there can be no assurance that they will have the expected consequences to, or effects on, Silver Wheaton. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and are cautioned that actual outcomes may vary. The forward-looking statements included herein for the purpose of providing investors with information to assist them in understanding Silver Wheaton's expected performance and may not be appropriate for other purposes. Any forward looking statement speaks only as of the date on which it is made. Silver Wheaton does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that are included or incorporated by reference herein, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. This release contains references to United States dollars and Canadian dollars. All amounts payable to CRA are payable in Canadian dollars. All dollar amounts referenced, unless otherwise indicated, are expressed in United States dollars. For further information: Patrick Drouin, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations, Silver Wheaton Corp., Tel: 1-800-380-8687, Email: info@silverwheaton.com, Website: www.silverwheaton.com CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - The Australian dollar weakened against the other major currencies in the Asian session on Wednesday. The Australian dollar fell to 1.5881 against the euro and 80.65 against the yen, from yesterday's closing quotes of 1.5781 and 81.25, respectively. Against the U.S. and the Canadian dollars, the aussie edged down to 0.6883 and 1.0044 from yesterday's closing quotes of 0.6907 and 1.0066, respectively. If the aussie extends its downtrend, it is likely to find support around 1.61 against the euro, 79.00 against the yen, 0.68 against the greenback and 0.98 against the loonie. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX 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. BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - Destatis is slated to release Germany's producer prices for December in the pre-European session on Wednesday at 2:00 am ET. Economists forecast prices to decline 2.2 percent annually after easing 2.5 percent in November. Ahead of the data, the euro showed mixed trading against its major rivals. While the euro rose against the pound, against the U.S. dollar and the Swiss franc, it fell against the yen. As of 1:55 am ET, the euro was trading at 0.7740 against the pound, 1.0953 against the Swiss franc, 1.0954 against the U.S. dollar and 127.79 against the yen. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX 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. AIM: MARL : Suite 102, 3 Eden Street 20 January 2016 North Sydney, NSW 2060 Australia HOT MADEN HIGH GRADE GOLD-COPPER PROJECT, NE TURKEY - SANDSTORM ACQUIRES A TECK ROYALTY PACKAGE FOR US$22M INCLUDING THE HOT MADEN 2% NSR Mariana Resources Ltd ('Mariana' or the 'Company'), the AIM listed exploration and development company with projects in South America and Turkey, notes that Sandstorm Gold Ltd (SSL-TSX, SAND-NYSE) announced on the 19th of January 2016 that it had purchased a package of royalties from Teck Resources (TCK.B:TSX) for US$22 million. The key component of this package is a 2% Net Smelter Royalty ('NSR') on the Hot Maden high-grade gold-copper project in Turkey owned by Mariana (30%) and joint venture partner Lidya Madencilik Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S. ('Lidya') (70%). According to the news release by Sandstorm, the acquired package consists of 56 royalties with 7 classed as 'key assets', and Hot Maden sitting at the top of this list. (http://www.sandstormgold.com/_resources/news/2016/2016-01-19.pdf ) For 2016 the Lidya-Mariana JV is concentrating on the mineral resource area, as previously reported, with extension and exploration drilling as well as detailed studies continuing for the completion of a Preliminary Economic Assessment ('PEA') anticipated by early Q4 2016. This PEA will further enhance the Hot Maden project giving greater confidence in economics and ultimately valuation. Chief Executive Officer Glen Parsons today commented: 'Encouragingly, this third party purchase of the Hot Maden high grade gold- copper 2% NSR gives Mariana shareholders and investors a benchmark valuation of what is achievable in terms of cash flows going forward in the future.' 'This is going to be an exciting year at the project for the JV and we look forward to updating the market accordingly through 2016.' +------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Hot Maden Mineral Resource Estimate | |On August 18, 2015, Mariana reported a maiden mineral resource estimate for| |the Hot Maden project. The Mineral Resource estimate was prepared by| |independent mining consultants RungePincockMinarco Limited ('RPM'), and was| |based on assay results received for drill holes up to, and including, HTD-17 | |completed on 25(th) June, and is reported in accordance with the JORC Code| |2012 edition and estimated by a Competent Person as defined by the JORC Code. | |The total maiden Mineral Resource estimate comprises (Mariana has an| |attributable interest of 30% of this total): | | | | | |Indicated Category (100%): | | | |2.033 Million Oz Gold Equivalent** ('AuEq') - (4.71 million tonnes ('Mt') at| |10 grammes per tonne ('g/t') gold and 102,000 Tonnes ('t') copper, for a gold| |equivalent grade* of 13.4 g/t) | | | |Inferred Category (100%): | | | |0.968 Million Oz AuEq** - (3.65 Mt at 5.5 g/t gold + 65,000 tonnes copper, for| |a gold equivalent grade* of 8.2 g/t) | | | |Au Equivalence (AuEq) calculated using a 100 day moving average of| |$US1,178/ounce for Au and $US2.70/pound for Cu as of July 29, 2015. No| |adjustment has been made for metallurgical recovery or net smelter return as| |these remain uncertain at this time. Based on grades and contained metal for| |Au and Cu, it is assumed that both commodities have reasonable potential to be| |economically extractable. | |*- The formula used for Au equivalent grade is: AuEq g/t = Au + [(Cu% x| |22.0462 x 2.7)/(1178/31.1035)] and assumes 100% metallurgical recovery. | |**- Au equivalent ounces are calculated by multiplying Mineral Resource| |tonnage by Au equivalence grade and converting for ounces. The formula used| |for Au equivalent ounces is: AuEq Oz = [Tonnage x AuEq grade (g/t)]/31.1035. | +------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ **ENDS** For further information please visit website at www.marianaresources.com or contact the following. In Australia: Glen Parsons (CEO) Mariana Resources Ltd +61 2 9437 4588 Eric Roth (COO) Mariana Resources Ltd +56 9 8818 1243 Rob Adamson RFC Ambrian Limited (Nomad) +61 2 9250 0041 Will Souter RFC Ambrian Limited (Nomad) +61 2 9250 0050 In U.K. Oliver Stansfield Brandon Hill Capital (UK Broker) +44 20 3463 5061 Jonathan Evans Brandon Hill Capital (UK Broker) +44 20 3463 5016 Camilla Horsfall Blytheweigh (Financial PR) +44 20 7138 3224 Megan Ray Blytheweigh (Financial PR) +44 20 7138 3203 About Mariana Resources Mariana Resources Ltd is an AIM quoted exploration and development company with an extensive portfolio of gold, silver and copper projects in South America and Turkey. Mariana's most advanced asset is the Hot Maden gold-copper project in NE Turkey, which is a joint venture with our Turkish JV partner Lidya (30% Mariana and 70% Lidya). A maiden mineral resource estimate of 2.03 Moz Gold Equivalent (Indicated Category) and 0.97 Moz Gold Equivalent (Inferred Category) (100% basis) was reported for Hot Maden on August 18, 2015. Elsewhere in Turkey, Mariana holds a 100% interest in the Ergama gold-copper project. In Suriname, Mariana has an option to earn up to a 50.01% interest in Nassau Gold Limited, a JV company between Mariana and Sumin Resources Limited ('Sumin') which in turn holds an option to earn up to 80% of the Nassau Gold Project. The Nassau Gold Project is a 28,000 Ha exploration concession located approximately 125 km SE of the capital Paramaribo and immediately adjacent to Newmont Mining's 4.2Moz Au Merian project. In southern Argentina, the Company's core gold-silver projects are Las Calandrias (100%), Sierra Blanca (100%), Los Cisnes (100%), Bozal (100%). These projects are part of a 160,000+ Ha land package in the Deseado Massif epithermal gold-silver district in mining-friendly Santa Cruz Province. Mariana acquired 100% interests in the Dona Ines Au-Ag and Exploradora East Cu prospects in northern Chile through the Aegean Metals Group transaction which closed in January, 2015, with Mariana exploration now being funded by Asset Chile through the provision of $1.65m for a total 50% interest. In Peru, Mariana holds a portfolio of interesting very early stage properties. Safe Harbour This press release contains certain statements which may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made as at the date of this press release and include, without limitation, statements regarding discussions of future plans, the realization, cost, timing and extent of mineral resource estimates, estimated future exploration expenditures, costs and timing of the development of new deposits, success of exploration activities, permitting time lines, and requirements for additional capital. The words 'plans', 'expects', 'budget', 'scheduled', 'estimate', 'forecasts', 'intend', 'anticipate', 'believe', 'may', 'will', or similar expressions or variations of such words are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors that may cause actual results to vary materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to: the effects of general economic conditions; the price of gold, silver and copper; misjudgements in the course of preparing forward-looking statements; risks associated with international operations; the need for additional financing; risks inherent in exploration results; conclusions of economic evaluations; changes in project parameters; currency and commodity price fluctuations; title matters; environmental liability claims; unanticipated operational risks; accidents, labour disputes and other risks of the mining industry; delays in obtaining governmental approvals or in the completion of development or construction activities; political risk; and other risks and uncertainties described in the Company's annual financial statements for the most recently completed financial year which is available on the Company's website at www.marianaresources.com . Although we believe that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions and have attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements. Accordingly, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward- looking statements. We do not undertake to update any forward-looking statements, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. This announcement is distributed by GlobeNewswire on behalf of GlobeNewswire clients. The owner of this announcement warrants that: (i) the releases contained herein are protected by copyright and other applicable laws; and (ii) they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein. Source: Mariana Resources Ltd via GlobeNewswire [HUG#1980066] B12GJ72R24 Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de LONDON (dpa-AFX) - Anglo American plc (AAUKY.PK, AAL.L) said that it has entered into a Share Sale Agreement with Batchfire Resources Pty Ltd to sell its 100% interest in the Callide thermal coal mine in Queensland, Australia. The transaction will be effected via a sale of shares in the subsidiary companies holding Anglo American's interest in Callide. The transaction remains subject to several conditions precedent, and its terms are confidential. Callide consists of an open pit thermal coal mine and associated processing infrastructure that produced 7.6 Mt of coal in 2014 (and 5.6 Mt in the first nine months of 2015), the majority of which (4.7 Mt in 2014) was sold to two adjacent power stations under long term contracts. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. LONDON, January 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- NewVoiceMedia, a global provider of cloud technology which helps businesses sell more, serve better and grow faster, today announced that Interactive Design Institute Ltd (IDI), the UK's leading provider of accredited online courses in art and design subjects, is using ContactWorld to transform its sales operations, increase conversion rates and improve business efficiencies. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140910/705584-a ) IDI selected NewVoiceMedia's ContactWorld for Sales solution for its seamless integration with Salesforce, detailed reporting and rich functionality including click-to-call which improves efficiencies in outbound calling operations. The technology offers the company a single solution for insight into its entire business, replacing a standard telephone package. Used by the company's sales team based in the UK, ContactWorld enables reps to make calls directly from within their Salesforce environments - delivering significant efficiency improvements while reducing dialling errors. Customer records are then automatically updated, meaning there is a complete history of interactions. Follow-up activities can then be easily created so that no lead is lost. This provides one view of the customer across all departments, while call recording gives a meaningful insight into performance. With a true cloud environment, NewVoiceMedia also offers IDI a flexible platform for growth and reduced capital investments. Furthermore, staff can log into the same system wherever they are, as all they need is a phone and internet connection, meaning they can work from multiple locations. The platform offers a real-time window into the entire operation, so reps can be easily managed, and customisable, rich reports allow the company to expose where improvement opportunities exist. Alistair Montgomery, Head of Web Development at Interactive Design Institute, comments, "We are pleased to be live with ContactWorld for Sales following a fast deployment and have seen instant benefits from the solution. We now have detailed insight into our entire business, have established KPIs and thanks to the platform's call recording and reporting capabilities, can easily measure our agents' success. The sales team have also reported significant efficiency improvements in their outbound dialling." Jonathan Gale, CEO of NewVoiceMedia, adds, "We're extremely pleased that IDI has chosen ContactWorld to improve its sales performance and that it has experienced immediate benefits from the technology. Not only have we provided the company with a feature-rich cloud solution, it's also completely flexible and scalable and will continue to support the business as it grows, while reducing its capital investments." Interactive Design Institute was founded in 2004 with the aim of creating opportunities for people to access accredited online courses in practical art and design subjects, without having to attend a college or university. IDI has grown to become the UK's leading provider of accredited online courses in art and design subjects, gaining approval from some of the UK's most respected awarding bodies, such as the City & Guilds of London Institute and ABC Awards. For more information about NewVoiceMedia, visit http://www.newvoicemedia.com Salesforce, Salesforce1, AppExchange and others are among the trademarks of salesforce.com, inc. About NewVoiceMedia NewVoiceMedia powers customer connections that transform businesses globally. The leading vendor's award-winning cloud customer contact platform revolutionises the way organisations connect with their customers worldwide, enabling them to deliver a personalised and unique customer service experience and drive a more effective sales and marketing team. With a true cloud environment and proven 99.999% platform availability, NewVoiceMedia ensures complete flexibility, scalability and reliability. Spanning 128 countries and six continents, NewVoiceMedia's 500+ customers include PhotoBox, MobileIron, TNT, Lumesse, Qlik, JustGiving, Canadian Cancer Society and Wowcher. For more information visit http://www.newvoicemedia.com or follow NewVoiceMedia on Twitter @NewVoiceMedia Wall Street Tech Conference and Digital BPO Innovation Conference Tackle the Impact, Value-add & Risks of Transformational Technologies NEW YORK, Jan. 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The Outsourcing Institute (OI) today announced its 2016 lineup of must-attend events including its annual Wall Street Tech and Digital BPO Innovations Conferences. Each day-long event gathers the who's who of industry experts to deliver impactful speakers, roundtables, case studies, and panel presentations for powerful learning and networking opportunities centered around digital transformation. To learn more about these events visit: www.oievents.com. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160119/323946LOGO "2016 is a pivotal year for the sourcing marketplace as digital technologies disrupt and enable industries across the globe. Our conferences explore the move from hype to reality as emerging technologies converge to create a suite of services and capabilities that will change business, accelerate business outcomes, reduce cost, create new revenue opportunities and redefine how work gets done," said Daniel Goodstein, President of Media & Events at The Outsourcing Institute. "Many clients and providers are still behind the curve, and need to catch up. The next 12-18 months are critical, industry mindshare and market share are at stake and the old ways of solving business problems are fading quickly." In its fourth year, The Wall Street Tech Conference, "Managing Risk & Reward in a Digital World," will address the complex balancing act facing Wall Street IT execs: determining how to innovate their businesses and implement advances in IoT, Cloud, Mobility, Automation and other emerging technologies, while avoiding cyber-security risk and regulatory and compliance pressures. Held in New York City on May 24, 2016, this industry focused forum connects CIOs, CTOs, tech sourcing executives and business leaders across the Banking, Financial Services and Insurance industries with new resources and industry leaders. The fourth annual Digital BPO Innovations Conference to be held in New York City on September 20, 2016 will concentrate on the impact of digital services on Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and how enterprises run in the new digital era. The event brings together leading business executives, BPO practitioners, influencers and thought leaders to learn, connect, share and transact. This year's conference theme, "The impact of Digital on Business Processes & the Key to Unlocking Operational Transformation," will focus on digital platforms and supply chains, optimizing processes, insights & analytics, disruptive and enabling technologies, multi-service governance and innovative pricing models. "This is the year it all comes together. We have gone through the hype cycle of the last few years around Digital, Automation, IoT and Cognitive," said Program Co-chair Anupam Govil, a Partner at consulting firm Avasant. "Customers now want to see these solutions realized in a way" that's least disruptive to their business, yet helps them transcend into the digital economy. Finding a balance between cost, risks, transformation and innovation is going to be the underlying theme. This will be the year of back to basics but with a pathway to the digital future." In addition to these two must-attend conferences produced by Outsourcing Institute, OI is teaming up with sister-organization, The Institute for Robotic Process Automation (IRPA), to host the Outsourcing, Automation, Innovation Seminar Series (OAISS) this Spring, a new regional roadshow and roundtable series focused on the intersection of outsourcing, innovation & automation. OAISS event details: March 17 in Dallas ; in ; April 12 in NYC, in NYC, April 27 in London, UK in June in Chicago OAISS is a precursor to the annual OI Conferences, as well as the upcoming December NYC and London Automation Innovation Conferences hosted by IRPA. To learn more about upcoming OI and IRPA events please visit www.oievents.com and www.irpanetwork.com/events. Individuals interested in speaking or sponsoring any of the events can e-mail inquiries@outsourcing.com. About The Outsourcing Institute Founded in 1993, The Outsourcing Institute is the largest neutral professional association dedicated solely to technology & outsourcing, comprised of more than 70,000 professionals worldwide and providing information, research, networking opportunities and customized outsourcing solutions to the industry. For more information, contact us at info@outsourcing.com or visit us online at www.outsourcing.com. WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Regional lender KeyCorp (KEY) is scheduled to release its fourth-quarter results before the bell on Thursday, January 21. The consensus analysts' estimate from Thomson Reuters calls for earnings of $0.28 per share and revenues of $1.09 billion for the quarter. Catalysts - Positive Operating Leverage - Compelling Combination With First Niagara - Maintains Strong Capital Position - Remains Focused On Risk Management Full-year 2015 net interest income growth is expected to be in the low single digit range, and non-interest income in line with its outlook for mid-single digit growth. October 30, 2015, KeyCorp announced a definitive agreement to acquire First Niagara Financial Group (FNFG) in a cash and stock transaction for total consideration valued at about $4.1 billion. First Niagara shareholders will receive 0.68 KeyCorp shares and $2.30 in cash for each First Niagara common share. The per share consideration is valued at $11.40 per share. KeyCorp expects the acquisition to be accretive to earnings per share in 2017, excluding one-time charges, and expects the transaction to deliver an attractive Internal Rate of Return of approximately 15%. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2016. First Niagara, headquartered in Buffalo, N.Y., has $39 billion in assets and $29 billion in deposits and 394 banking offices in New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Massachusetts. The company's combination with First Niagara is believed to benefit the clients, communities, employees and shareholders, and create a high performing regional bank. With this acquisition, Key will be the leading bank in Upstate New York with a strong presence across the North East, Midwest and Pacific Northwest. KeyCorp said its dividend will continue for the next two quarters at the current $0.075 per share then increase to $0.085 cents per share in the second quarter of 2016 as originally included in its 2015 plan. The just bygone quarter demonstrated the successful execution of the company's business model, which has allowed it to continue to add and expand client relationships and to grow revenue. Capital remains a strength of the company with a common equity Tier 1 ratio of 10.5%. In the third quarter, KeyCorp repurchased $123 million of common stock. KeyCorp's third-quarter profit rose 18% from last year, reflecting strength in its core fee-based businesses that was partly offset by an increase in provision for credit losses. Earnings per share missed analysts' expectations by a penny, while revenues beat their estimates. Net income attributable to KeyCorp was $213 million or $0.25 per share, up from $180 million or $0.21 per share in the year-ago period. During the latest quarter, Key incurred costs of $19 million or $0.01 per share related to a pension settlement charge. Earnings per share from continuing operations rose to $0.26 from $0.23 last year. On average, 32 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected earnings of $0.27 per share. Analysts' estimates typically exclude certain special items. Total revenue increased 7% to $1.07 billion from $998 million last year and beat analysts' consensus estimate of $1.05 billion for the quarter. Net interest income on a taxable-equivalent basis rose 3% from last year to $598 million, as higher earning asset balances offset lower earning asset yields. Non-interest income grew 13% to $470 million due to strength in Key's core fee-based businesses, which included a full-quarter impact of the September 2014 Pacific Crest Securities acquisition. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de WALTHAM, Massachusetts, Jan. 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- EuroSite Power' Inc., (OTCQB: EUSP) an On-Site Utility' solutions provider, offering clean electricity, heat, hot water and cooling solutions to healthcare, hospitality, housing and leisure centers in the United Kingdom (UK) and Europe is pleased to announce the receipt of $358,780 (249,118) cash in Enhanced Capital Allowance (ECA) incentives from the UK government. The ECA program provides a tax incentive to businesses that invest in energy-saving equipment that meets published energy-saving criteria.Managed by the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), the ECA program is a key part of the UK government's efforts to combat climate-change. "EuroSite Power's installations provide property managers a cost-free way to install energy saving power and heating equipment. The UK government's ECA program recognizes the efficient design of our CHP systems and rewards us for our ultra-efficient solutions," noted EuroSite Power's Managing Director Paul Hamblyn. Under the program, UK businesses may write off the entire cost of qualifying green technology against taxable profits in the year of purchase. Although combined heat and power equipment (CHP) does not automatically qualify for an ECA benefit, owners and operators can submit details of the equipment design for assessment to obtain a certificate of energy efficiency. Once a certificate has been granted, the installation can qualify for an ECA incentive payment. This ECA incentive payment is a result of installations completed in 2014 (and was discussed on the most recent quarterly earnings conference call); tax incentives for fiscal year 2015 have not yet been filed. On-Site Utility' EuroSite Power sells the energy produced from an onsite energy system to an individual property as an alternative to the outright sale of energy equipment. On-Site Utility solution customers only pay for the energy produced by the system and receive a guaranteed discount rate on the price of the energy. All system capital, installation, operating expenses and support are paid by EuroSite Power. About EuroSite Power EuroSite Power Limited is a subsidiary of American DG Energy Inc. (NYSE MKT: ADGE). The Company provides institutional, commercial and small industrial facilities with clean, reliable power, cooling, heat and hot water at lower costs than charged by conventional energy suppliers - without any capital or start-up costs to the energy user. More information can be found at www.eurositepower.co.uk. FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS This press release contains forward-looking statements under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements, as disclosed on the Company's website and in Securities and Exchange Commission filings. This press release does not constitute an offer to buy or sell securities by the Company, its subsidiaries or any associated party and is meant purely for informational purposes. The statements in this press release are made as of the date of this press release, even if subsequently made available by the Company on its website or otherwise. The Company does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking statements provided to reflect events that occur or circumstances that exist after the date on which they were made. GENEVA, January 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Four companies to help speed access to curative direct-acting antiviral in 112 low- and middle-income countries The Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) announced its first round of sub-licences for the generic production of Bristol-Myers Squibb's daclatasvir, a novel direct-acting antiviral that is proven to help cure multiple genotypes of the hepatitis C virus. Generic companies Cipla, Emcure, Hetero and Natco have signed non-exclusive, royalty free agreements with Bristol-Myers Squibb and the MPP to produce and sell daclatasvir in 112 low- and middle-income countries. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151026/280525LOGO ) The sub-licences follow MPP's announcement of its first hepatitis C licensing agreement, signed with Bristol-Myers Squibb in November 2015, and mark the first time that generic manufacturers have worked through a non-profit, public health organisation to increase access to new hepatitis C medicines for developing world patients. Between 130 and 150 million people worldwide are estimated to have hepatitis C. The vast majority lives in low- and middle-income countries. "Given the burden of hepatitis C, MPP worked quickly to forge agreements with generic companies," said Greg Perry, Executive Director of the MPP. "Cipla, Hetero and Emcure are long-term partners working with us to develop generic HIV antiretrovirals. We welcome Natco, a new collaborator, to the MPP and hope to have other companies on board as well." MPP is assessing applications from several other companies and expects to grant further sub-licences soon. The MPP licence allows generic manufacturers to develop fixed-dose combinations that offer the potential to treat all of the six major genotypes of hepatitis C (HCV). Daclatasvir, in combination with sofosbuvir, for example, produces high cure rates after 12 weeks of treatment, with recent Phase III studies demonstrating that the regimen could cure up to 100% of HCV patients depending on genotype and stage of liver disease. Natco is an India-based pharmaceutical company with five manufacturing facilities throughout the country and is one of the first generic companies to have India's Drug Controller General's approval to market the hepatitis C drug in the country. "Natco is committed to making affordable drugs available in developing countries. Daclatasvir combinations offer valuable treatment choices, including a potential pan-genotypic option. We look forward to collaborating with MPP to improve access to these medicines in India and elsewhere," said Rajeev Nannapaneni, Vice Chairman & CEO. Cipla is a global pharmaceutical company with more than 1,500 products across various therapeutic areas. With a strong presence in HIV, the company holds several MPP sub-licences for key antiretrovirals, including dolutegravir and tenofovir alafenamide. "We are pleased to once again work with the MPP to bring new classes of drugs to people who need them the most in developing countries," said Dr. Jaideep Gogtay, Chief Medical Officer of Cipla. "Pan-genotypic daclatasvir regimens are crucial in resource-limited countries where access to genotype testing is limited." "It has been a pleasure working with the Medicines Patent Pool that has recently included hepatitis C into its focus areas. This licence will help us distribute daclatasvir to low- and middle-income countries at affordable prices," said Vik Thapar, Head of Strategy, Emcure, one of the first generic companies to sign a licence with MPP for HIV antiretrovirals in 2012. Hetero, one of India's leading generic pharmaceutical companies, also signed an MPP licence agreement to produce daclatasvir. "Hetero is pleased to enter in the licensing agreement with MPP to produce daclatasvir for low- and middle-income countries," said Bhavesh Shah, Director, International Marketing for the company. "The MPP has been a valued partner in our work to develop MPP-licensed HIV medicines and we welcome the opportunity to work on improving the standard of care and treatment for hepatitis C." Daclatasvir, discovered and developed by Bristol-Myers Squibb, is the first-in-class NS5A inhibitor used in combination with sofosbuvir for the treatment of patients with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) genotype 3 infection. Compared to other treatment options, this combination not only increases the cure rate, but is also regarded as a valuable treatment option in some of the difficult-to-treat HCV patient subsets. About the Medicines Patent Pool The Medicines Patent Pool is a United Nations-backed public health organisation working to increase access to HIV, viral hepatitis C and tuberculosis treatments in low- and middle-income countries. Through its innovative business model, the MPP partners with industry, civil society, international organisations, patient groups and other stakeholders to prioritise, forecast and license needed medicines and pool intellectual property to encourage generic manufacture and the development of new formulations. To date, the MPP has signed agreements with six patent holders for twelve HIV antiretrovirals and for one hepatitis C direct-acting antiviral. Its generic partners have distributed more than three billion doses of low-cost medicines to 117 countries. The MPP was founded and remains fully funded by UNITAID. DIJON, France, January 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Opencell Software, the startup behind the world's first open source carrier-grade billing software solution, announced today having raised 650 k in seed funding from Xavier Niel's Kima Ventures, from Cap Innov'Est, a regional venture fund based in Eastern France, from Awys, the personal fund of Eric Durand-Gasselin, the founder of French alternative telco provider Afone, from the regional business angel network Bourgogne Angels and from several other business angels based in France and the United States. The funding, leveraged by additional R&D and debt financing of 600k received from BPI France, the French public investment bank, will be used to expand Opencell's operations, sales, product development and marketing operations. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160120/323991LOGO ) Since its initial version released in 2007, Opencell's billing solution has gradually evolved into the leading open source alternative to traditional carrier-grade billing solutions. Covering the entire consume-to-cash process including mediation, rating, charging, invoicing and AR management, it is a robust, natively multi-tenant solution with rich out-of-the box customization possibilities. It is available for on premise installation and for cloud deployment on the Microsoft Azure marketplace. Its cost-effectiveness and flexibility make Opencell's solution uniquely positioned to address the partial or complete replacement of legacy billing systems used by telco or utilities operators as well as the growing need for subscription or usage-based billing of operators launching digital services in cloud infrastructure, software, health, banking, media, transport etc. Opencell's solution is currently live or being deployed with ten clients in France and Western Europe and has been referenced by major IT integrators interested in Opencell's disruptive approach. "Opencell's innovative open source model has the potential to disrupt a huge market by proposing a lower cost, more flexible, alternative to traditional multi million-dollar billing systems. By choosing Opencell, companies will be able to avoid the vendor lock-in that goes with traditional billing systems.", said Xavier Niel. AboutOpencell Opencell was founded in March 2015 by several senior IT entrepreneurs to develop, support and accelerate worldwide deployment of Opencell, the world's first open source carrier-grade convergent billing system. http://www.opencellsoft.com Contact: Ethan Beardsley - ethan.beardsley@opencellsoft.com PARIS, January 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The best businesses from France have been honoured at an exclusive event held in Paris for The European Business Awards sponsored by RSM. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160120/323997 ) The 28 companies from across France were chosen as 'National Champions' by a panel of independent judges, including senior businesses and academic leaders. At the event, attendees had the chance to speak to leading businesses in their field and hear from guest speakers including Luc Bardin,Chairman, Strategic Partnering Ltd. The Paris event is the fifth in a series of events taking place across Europe to celebrate the 678 National Champions from 32 different countries. Future events will be held in Austria, Greece, Cyprus, Germany and Brussels. Jean-Michel Picaud, Presidentof RSM France, said: "France is home to some truly exciting and entrepreneurial businesses, which we are delighted to champion and support. We wish the National Champions every success for their businesses in the future. Please also vote for your favourite French company by visiting http://www.businessawardseurope.com to choose a National Public Champion for France." All the National Champions have made a presentation video, telling their unique story and explaining their business success. The videos have been posted on the European Business Awards website http://www.businessawardseurope.com as part of a public vote that will decide the National 'Public' Champions for each country.Public voting closes on 26th February 2016. Separately, the panel of independent judges will award the best of this group the coveted 'Ruban d'Honneur' status. Ruban d'Honneur recipients will then go on to be part of the grand finale in June 2016. The European Business Awards engaged with over 32,000 companies from 33 countries this year, a 33% increase from last year, and a record-breaking number for the competition now in its ninth year. The competition was created to support the development of a stronger and more successful business community throughout Europe. Additional sponsors and partners of the Awards include ELITE, the UKTI and PR Newswire. Further information can be found at http://www.businessawardseurope.com and http://www.rsm.global About the European Business Awards: The European Business Awards' primary purpose is to support the development of a stronger and more successful business community throughout Europe. For all citizens of Europe, prosperity, social and healthcare systems are reliant on businesses creating an even stronger, more innovative, successful, international and ethical business community - one that forms the beating heart of an increasingly globalised economy. The European Business Awards programme serves the European business community in three ways: It celebrates and endorses individuals' and organisations' success It provides and promotes examples of excellence for the business community to aspire to It engages with the European business community to create debate on key issues The European Business Awards is now in its 9th year. It attracted over 24,000 businesses to the competition last year and in the public vote generated over 170,000 votes from across Europe. http://www.businessawardseurope.com. About RSM RSM is the seventh largest network of independent audit, tax and consulting firms, encompassing over 120 countries, 740 offices and more than 37,500 people internationally. The network's total fee income is US$4.4 billion. MANCHESTER, England, January 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- EDM, a leading global provider of training simulators to the civil aviation and defence sectors, announced today that it has successfully completed a Critical Design Review (CDR) with Cathay Pacific clearing the way for the project to enter into the manufacturing phase. EDM announced a major contract from Cathay Pacific in September last year to provide the airline with a full range of cabin crew training equipment. The team from Cathay Pacific visited EDM in Manchester last month and conducted a detailed technical review of the project to ensure that the simulators are ready to proceed into manufacture and that agreed performance requirements will be met within the set timescales and costs. The simulators will be specifically designed and manufactured by EDM to enable the instructor team of the Hong Kong based airline to provide the highest standard of training to their crews in the handling of emergency situations and provision of cabin services to passengers. Once finished, the training equipment will be shipped and installed at Cathay Pacific's Training Centre in Cathay City at Hong Kong International Airport. The full order of cabin crew training equipment comprises: B777 Cabin Emergency Evacuation Trainer A330 Cabin Emergency Evacuation Trainer B777 Door Trainer A330 Door Trainer B747 Freighter Upper Deck Crew Service Door Trainer B747 Freighter Main Deck Door Trainer Real Fire Trainer For more information about Cathay Pacific visit: http://www.cathaypacific.com For more information about EDM visit: http://www.edm.ltd.uk About EDM EDM is a leading global provider of training simulators to the civil aviation, defence, rail and other industries. Combining the highest engineering standards with leading-edge technologies, EDM providesairlines withDoor Trainers, Cabin Service Trainers, Cabin Emergency Evacuation Trainers andFull SizeMockups and defence organsiations withProcedure Trainers, Maintenance Trainers, Ejection Seats, Simulators and Full Size Replicas. Serving organisations worldwide from its UK headquarters, EDM is committed to delivering exceptional quality and value to its clients to help them enhance safety and operational efficiency. WISeKey, a leading cybersecurity company, and CenturyLink, Inc. (NYSE: CTL), a global communications, hosting, cloud and IT services company, today announced the signing, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, of a collaboration agreement to explore a future relationship to jointly offer a managed digital identity solution for Internet of Things (IoT) providers. Through this collaboration agreement, WISeKey and CenturyLink plan to work toward a relationship where they may collaborate on joint solutions that enable global corporations to secure their IoT infrastructure and ensure the privacy of their data. WISeKey would like to leverage CenturyLink's data center presence in the United States to establish a Root of Trust (RoT), which provides the foundation behind trusted computing and allows IoT device verification at the hardware level, in order to support the needs of U.S.-based corporations and government establishments. Carlos Moreira, founder and CEO of WISeKey, noted, "This collaboration agreement with CenturyLink will enable us to continue discussions about ways to work together to rapidly expand our cybersecurity services for IoT providers in the North American market." "As the number of connected devices continues to expand, collecting and exchanging huge amounts of data along the way, the need for strong Internet of Things security services becomes increasingly important for businesses and consumers," said Gary Gauba, president, of CenturyLink Cognilytics. "This collaboration agreement with WISeKey is a first step toward a relationship that we hope will instill confidence in companies that manage and secure connected devices, and we look forward to collaborating to jointly serve this growing market." About WISeKey WISeKey is a leading global digital security solutions company. Working at the forefront of information cybersecurity, identity management, and mobile software services, WISeKey's mission is to facilitate the global growth of secure electronic transactions by providing individuals, businesses, and governments with advanced technology and services that authenticate and protect digital identity across the full spectrum of personal, business and administrative transactions online. WISeKey, established in Geneva, Switzerland in 1999, (http://www.wisekey.com/), is a World Economic Forum Global Growth Company. About CenturyLink CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) is a global communications, hosting, cloud and IT services company enabling millions of customers to transform their businesses and their lives through innovative technology solutions. CenturyLink offers network and data systems management, Big Data analytics and IT consulting, and operates more than 55 data centers in North America, Europe and Asia. The company provides broadband, voice, video, data and managed services over a robust 250,000-route-mile U.S. fiber network and a 300,000-route-mile international transport network. Visit CenturyLink for more information. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160120005409/en/ Contacts: CenturyLink: Justin Lopinot, 314.628.7053 justin.lopinot@centurylink.com or WISeKey: Youmna Abisaleh, Head of Marketing and Sales, +41 22 594 30 40 yabisaleh@wisekey.com or WISeKey Investor Relations: Lena Cati, The Equity Group, Inc., 212.836.9611 lcati@equityny.com THUNDER BAY, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 01/20/16 -- When Members of Provincial Parliament travel to Thunder Bay on January 20 for pre-budget consultations, they will be met with community protests over austerity cuts and privatization. The Ontario Federation of Labour and the Ontario Common Front will be joining the Ontario Health Coalition in Thunder Bay to protest the deep cuts to Ontario hospitals and social programs. "Here in Thunder Bay, we are seeing the effects of austerity in every community. Hospital cuts, hydro privatization, mounting student debt, precarious jobs and Canada's lowest social program funding are taking their toll in every neighbourhood," said, Patty Coates, Secretary-Treasurer of the Ontario Federation of Labour. "Ontarians are calling on the Wynne Government to abandon her austerity agenda and lay out a plan for restoring public services, growing our economy, expanding Ontario's revenue base and lifting standards for everyone. The next Ontario budget shouldn't be constrained by government cuts, it should create an Ontario in which everyone prospers." "Nine consecutive years of real-dollar cuts have plunged Ontario to the bottom of the country in hospital funding. Patients are being left on stretchers in hallways, surgeries are being cancelled and vital health services are being privatized, subject to user fees, or moved out of town," said Natalie Mehra, Executive Director of the Ontario Health Coalition. "It is beyond time that these devastating hospital cuts be stopped. The Ontario government must restore our public hospital funding to at least the average of all the other provinces in Canada." Patients, workers, students, seniors and anti-poverty activists will rally outside the Thunder Bay consultations of the Ontario Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs. WHAT: Community protest of Thunder Bay Pre-Budget Consultation WHERE: Valhalla Inn, 1 Valhalla Inn Rd, Thunder Bay WHEN: Noon on Wed. Jan. 20, 2016 SPEAKERS WILL INCLUDE: -- Patty Coates, Secretary-Treasurer, Ontario Federation of Labour -- Jules Tupker, Co-Chair, Thunder Bay Health Coalition -- Carlos Santander-Maturana, President, Thunder Bay and District Labour Council -- Suzanne Pulice, Co-Chair, Thunder Bay Health Coalition -- Andrew Foulds, Thunder Bay City Councillor -- Diane Parker, Patient -- Elving Josephson, Patient -- Patients will share experiences with hospital cuts and privatization Similar protests will take place at every pre-budget consultation in Ontario. For more information, visit: http://ofl.ca/index.php/rallyagainstausterity The Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) represents 54 unions and one million workers in Ontario. For information, visit www.OFL.ca and follow @OFLabour on Facebook and Twitter. Ontario Health Coalition represents more than 400 member organizations and a network of Local Health Coalitions and individual members. For information, visit http://www.ontariohealthcoalition.ca and follow @OntarioHealthC on Facebook and Twitter Contacts: Joel Duff OFL Communications Director 416-707-0349 (cell) jduff@ofl.ca ENG/FRENCH VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/20/16 -- B2Gold Corp. (TSX: BTO)(NYSE MKT: BTG)(NAMIBIAN: B2G)("B2Gold" or the "Company") is pleased to announce an exploration update from several of its projects . All dollar figures are in United States dollars unless otherwise indicated. Highlights include extending Fekola 700 metres down plunge with drill results up to 4.77 g/t gold over 45.4 metres and a new zone found near Kiaka where drill results are up to 2.21 g/t gold over 106 metres. Fekola Project, Mali Exploration in 2015 focused on the main open pit Fekola deposit, the extension of the main Fekola mineralization to depth outside the feasibility design pit and testing several regional grassroots targets. Fekola Deeps: To date, 8 diamond drill holes, totalling 4,200 metres have been drilled in the Fekola Deeps Zone, a down plunge extension of the Fekola deposit that has been traced for over 700 metres below the limits of the feasibility pit boundary. Recent drilling in the Fekola Deeps Zone indicates the strong down plunge continuity of the Fekola ore body to depths greater than 300 metres below surface. The deposit remains open along strike to the north and down plunge. Highlights of the Fekola Deeps drilling to date include: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hole ID Section (N) From To Length (m) Au (g/t) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FKD_148(i) 1388240 421.30 454.30 33.00 2.90 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- incl. 440.30 446.30 6.00 7.97 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FKD_179(i) 1388413 488.60 507.60 19.00 3.88 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- and 515.50 529.19 13.69 1.95 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FKD_181 1388612 425.20 470.58 45.38 4.77 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- incl. 425.20 434.60 9.40 10.70 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- and 438.60 444.80 6.20 9.23 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FKD_182 1388350 457.30 473.10 15.80 2.98 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- incl. 467.25 472.10 4.85 4.41 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FKD_183 1388275 445.10 479.30 34.20 3.27 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- incl. 463.00 471.00 8.00 8.33 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FKD_184 1388500 490.00 515.05 25.05 2.37 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- incl. 499.70 508.00 8.30 3.54 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (i) (previously disclosed in B2Gold news release, June 11, 2015) Note - true widths are approximately 70-80% of reported core lengths Fekola Infill Drilling: In 2015, approximately 7,800 metres of infill diamond drilling were completed with the objective of increasing the percentage of indicated mineral resource within the proposed Fekola open pit. The infill drilling confirmed the continuity of grade and widths (as modelled) for the main ore zone and for the well mineralised hanging wall zones. In addition to infill diamond drilling, 3,100 metres of reverse circulation drilling was completed on approximately 20 metre-spaced centres in the Stage 1 design open pit reserves at the south end of the proposed Fekola open pit. Overall, tight infill drilling confirms the grade, widths and continuity of gold mineralization as modelled in the January 24, 2015 resource model and disclosed in the June 11, 2015 news release announcing the results of the Optimized Feasibility Study. Highlights of the tight infill program include: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Length Gold (g/t) Hole ID From To (m) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FKCR_335 7.00 25.00 18.00 3.55 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FKCR_336 23.00 35.00 12.00 3.87 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FKCR_338 4.00 35.00 31.00 4.79 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FKCR_340 29.00 52.00 23.00 4.77 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- and 7.00 22.00 15.00 3.79 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FKCR_341 6.00 26.00 20.00 15.14 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FKCR_342 11.00 49.00 38.00 6.60 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FKCR_343 14.00 35.00 21.00 3.24 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FKCR_348 19.00 42.00 23.00 9.35 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FKCR_349 19.00 62.00 43.00 5.60 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FKCR_350 13.00 64.00 51.00 3.38 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FKCR_352 14.00 33.00 19.00 16.71 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FKCR_353 19.00 78.00 59.00 5.48 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FKCR_355 14.00 60.00 46.00 3.70 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FKCR_357 46.00 70.00 24.00 2.76 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FKCR_358 29.00 61.00 32.00 2.42 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FKCR_359 34.00 90.00 56.00 4.42 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FKCR_360 33.00 60.00 27.00 6.93 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FKCR_361 50.00 77.00 27.00 4.87 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FKCR_362 24.00 48.00 24.00 2.92 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FKCR_363 32.00 61.00 29.00 5.22 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FKCR_364 17.00 32.00 15.00 6.43 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FKCR_365 42.00 65.00 23.00 7.70 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FKCR_366 23.00 65.00 42.00 2.38 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FKCR_368 27.00 48.00 21.00 7.29 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FKCR_369 21.00 77.00 56.00 7.59 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FKCR_370 51.00 90.00 39.00 2.69 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- and 14.00 45.00 31.00 4.23 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FKCR_372 14.00 44.00 30.00 1.45 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FKCR_373 53.00 75.00 22.00 2.24 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fekola Regional Exploration - Mali As part of the 2015 Fekola regional exploration program, B2Gold undertook a combined auger, air core, reverse circulation and diamond drill programs on soil anomalies defined within approximately 20 kilometres of the proposed Fekola open pit. Multiple target areas were drill tested and follow up work for these areas is currently being prioritized. Results indicate there is very good potential to discover further zones of mineralization around the Fekola deposit. Highlights of the program to date include: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hole ID From To Length (m) Gold (g/t) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- MSAC_046 27.00 48.00 21.00 2.80 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- MSAC_047 17.00 38.00 21.00 8.73 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- MSAC_052 26.00 46.00 20.00 3.21 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- MSRD_002 23.00 40.00 17.00 3.90 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- MSAC_058 18.00 51.00 33.00 1.49 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- MSAC_121 22.00 36.00 14.00 3.46 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- MSAC_131 29.00 35.00 6.00 12.21 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- MSAC_182 10.00 14.00 4.00 11.93 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- MSAC_183 4.00 22.00 18.00 3.26 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- MSAC_196 18.00 26.00 8.00 9.88 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note: Fekola and Fekola Regional intervals reported above are greater than 1g/t gold over greater than 3 metres, based on a maximum of 3 metres internal waste. Insufficient drilling has been completed to determine true widths. A total of 54,000 metres of diamond, reverse circulation, auger and air core drilling is planned in 2016 to follow up the regional targets in and around Fekola and to further test Fekola deeps. Kiaka Regional Exploration, Burkina Faso In 2015, Kiaka regional exploration was focused along a strand of the regionally significant Markoye fault corridor structure where an auger drilling program carried out in 2014 identified anomalous geochemical targets co-incident with prospective geological structures identified in the interpretation of airborne geophysics and geological mapping. In 2015, 1,591 metres of diamond drilling and 3,870 metres of reverse circulation drilling were completed on this new prospect area. Studies are currently underway to determine whether this new prospect area contains sufficient mineral resources to supplement the Kiaka Gold Project, or if it constitutes a viable, standalone gold project. A total of 13,000 metres of reverse circulation, diamond and air core drilling is planned in 2016. Highlights from the 2015 Kiaka Regional Exploration drilling program include: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hole ID From To Length (m) Gold (g/t) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- NKRC042 114.00 129.00 15.00 3.17 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- NKRC043 71.00 142.00 71.00 2.11 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- NKRC044 69.00 103.00 34.00 2.27 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- NKRC047 75.00 181.00 106.00 2.21 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- NKRC048 100.00 140.00 40.00 1.38 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- NKRC049 110.00 132.00 22.00 1.51 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- NKRC052 231.00 249.00 18.00 3.12 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- NKDD005 100.00 156.00 56.00 1.21 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- NKDD008 111.00 164.15 53.15 1.33 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- NKDD012 87.00 204.00 117.00 1.91 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- NKRC057 66.00 74.00 8.00 1.90 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- and 80.00 104.00 24.00 2.18 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note: Kiaka Regional intervals reported above are greater than 0.3 g/t Au, based on a maximum of 5 metres internal waste. True widths are estimated to be 80% of reported drill intervals. The Kiaka project has an Indicated mineral resource of 124 million tonnes at an average grade of 0.99 g/t gold for 3.9 million ounces of gold and an additional 27.3 million tonnes at 0.93 g/t for 815,000 ounces of gold in the Inferred Category as disclosed in the NI 43-101 technical report entitled "An Updated Mineral Resource Estimate on the Kiaka Gold Project Burkina Faso" dated January 8, 2013. Namibia Exploration Summary Otjikoto and Namibia Regional A total of 20,605 metres of diamond drilling was carried out in and near the Otjikoto deposit and Wolfshag zones at Otjikoto in 2015. An additional 1,453 metres of reverse circulation and 8,500 metres of rotary air blast (RAB) drilling was conducted on regional exploration targets. The majority of the diamond drilling was focussed on the southern, deeper, portion of the Wolfshag zone to decrease the drill hole spacing in support of a Wolfshag resource model update and underground scoping study. Exploration has confirmed a new zone of mineralisation, the Wolfshag East zone, 850 metres east of the Wolfshag zone. The new zone was first identified with 2014 in soil geochemistry and follow-up RAB drilling. Diamond drilling highlights from the new zone include 5.54 g/t gold over 6.0 metres in hole WH15-216 and 6.81 g/t gold over 11.6 metres in hole WH15-223. These holes will be followed up in 2016 as part of a 29,000 metre core, reverse circulation and RAB drill program. Ondundu JV - Namibia B2Gold Namibia and Omatjete Mining Company, a 70% owned subsidiary of Forsys Metals, signed an earn-in joint venture agreement whereby B2Gold can earn in stages up to a 100% interest in the Ondundu project. The property is located approximately 190 kilometres south west of the Otjikoto Mine. The primary exploration target in EPL 3195 is the Ondundu Main Zone which has numerous shallow historic gold workings over a strike length of 2,200 metres. Previous exploration on the property included detailed surface mapping, sampling of old workings and diamond drilling. This work identified gold mineralisation in the Margarethental and Razorback target areas. The Margarethental target has thick zones of low grade gold mineralisation (e.g. ADD10 34 metres grading 0.7 g/t gold at a vertical depth of 100 metres and ADD13 69 metres grading 0.4 g/t gold at a vertical depth of 90m). The low grade zones have higher grade sections and four widely spaced holes over a length of 450 metres intersected possible higher grade shoot associated with the Margarethental syncline axial zone (e.g. OD2 18 metres grading 1.7 g/t gold from 133m). Twelve core drillholes (2,968 metres) were drilled at 25 metre centres on four widely spaced lines to test this zone in November/December 2015. The Razorback target appears to have more typical slate belt type structurally controlled high grade quartz vein mineralisation associated with the Razorback antiform (e.g. ADD40 1.0 metres grading 10.8 g/t gold at 188 metres downhole and ADD58 1.0 metres grading 11.8 g/t gold from 32 metres). A drill program to test the Razorback target area is planned to start in February 2016. Masbate Mine, Philippines The 2015 Masbate Exploration drill program comprised 12,254 metres of diamond drill core and reverse circulation drilling. The objectives of the exploration drilling was to identify potential additional mineral resources to the mine and targeted six areas within trucking distance to the mine. The Pajo area, located one kilometer north of the Colorado open pit with easy road access to the Masbate mill complex was a primary focus of exploration in 2015. Highlights from the exploration drilling include PHRC079 which intersected 11.0 metres true width grading 1.71 g/t gold, PHRC118 which intersected 9.20 metres true width grading 6.93 g/t gold, PHRC136 which intersected 21.08 metres true width grading 2.26 g/t gold and PHRC077 which intersected 14.50 metres true width grading 3.54 g/t gold. The Montana SE zone is the southward extension of the Montana vein which is scheduled for production in 2017. Highlights from the 2015 exploration drilling include MONRC128 which intersected 19.20 metres true width grading 5.14 g/t gold including 3.01 metres true width grading 27.95 g/t gold, MONRC131 which intersected 6.34 metres true width grading 4.16 g/t gold, MONRC132 which intersected 17.14 metres true width grading 1.50 g/t gold and MONRC135 which intersected 11.51 metres true width grading 1.57 g/t gold. Planned exploration in 2016 will consist of 18,000 metres of drilling to continue to test these new zones. At the same time an aggressive surface exploration program comprising geological target generation and follow up prospecting, geochemical sampling and trenching is also planned for 2016. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- True Gold Length width Gold Capped(i) Hole ID Target From To (m) (m) (g/t) (g/t) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- PHRC079 Pajo West 73.00 89.80 16.80 11 1.71 1.71 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- PHRC118 Pajo Mid 29.50 40.00 10.50 9.2 6.93 2.40 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- PHRC136 Pajo Mid 3.80 38.80 35.00 21.08 2.26 1.52 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- PHRC077 Pajo Main 54.15 69.10 14.95 14.5 3.54 3.41 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Montana MONRC128 SE 58.80 81.10 22.30 19.2 5.14 2.01 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Montana Incl. SE 64.30 67.80 3.50 3.01 27.95 7.96 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Montana MONRC131 SE 66.40 74.10 7.70 6.34 4.16 3.67 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Montana 17.90 35.30 17.40 17.14 1.50 1.50 MONRC132 SE ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Montana 7.20 19.90 12.70 11.51 1.57 1.57 MONRC135 SE ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- LASD009 Luy A 30.20 40.20 10.00 8.56 4.80 4.80 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Luy A LASD002 South 56.40 79.50 23.10 17.5 1.27 1.27 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Luy A LASD004 South 159.95 168.35 8.40 8.2 6.38 1.57 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (i) Drilling Results - All capped gold grades reported have been capped at 15 g/t gold. Nicaragua Exploration Summary Exploration in Nicaragua during 2015 was focused on discovering potential new gold mineral resources around the La Libertad and El Limon mines with 23,737 metres drilled. A total of 17,000 metres of drilling is planned on the La Libertad and El Limon projects in 2016. El Limon diamond drilling in 2015 totaled 10,271 metres, focused mainly on Santa Pancha 1 (SP1), Atravesada, Veta Nueva and other targets, including Portal. The SP1 (Pozo #8) results were encouraging with highlights including LIM-15-3900 which intersected 5.60 metres grading 19.66 g/t gold, LIM-15-3918 which intersected 5.54 metres grading 25.50 g/t gold and LIM-15-3899 which intersected 10.0 metres grading 7.19 g/t gold. Portal North vein returned 4.65 metres grading 4.61 g/t gold in hole LIM-15-3911. At La Libertad, 11,692 metres of diamond drill core were drilled in 2015. The primary focus in 2015 was evaluating the underground potential of the Jabali Antenna and Mojon vein systems as well testing the open pit potential on other regional targets such as Los Angeles-Mestiza structure and San Francisco. Drilling at Jabali Antenna East returned high grade results with JB15-029 returning 8.24 metres grading 5.14 g/t gold, JB15-428 returning 3.57 metres grading 17.0 g/t gold and JB15-426 returning 4.55 metres grading 5.0 g/t gold. At Los Angeles-Mestiza, a potential strike extension of Los Angeles mineralization was identified in MZ 15-007 that intersected 8.2 metres grading 4.56 g/t. In addition, first-pass drilling on a new target near Mojon returned encouraging results with TP15-003 intersecting 16.0 metres grading 3.49 g/t gold (including 6.0 metres grading 5.52 g/t gold). Finland Exploration Results B2Gold has entered into an "earn in" joint venture with Aurion Resources Ltd. on their Kutuvuoma properties comprising Kutuvuoma, Ahvenjarvi, Piko-Mustavaara and Soretiavuoma located in Lapland Province, northern Finland. B2Gold can earn up to a 75% interest upon certain payments, share issuances and expenditures made in accordance with the terms of the agreement. The Kutuvuoma properties are located 30 kilometres southeast of Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd.'s Kittila mine which produced 141,742 ounces of gold in 2014. Highlights from the 2015 exploration season include trench sampling over 470 metres of strike length at the Kutuvuoma Zone that contained up to 8.84 g/t gold over 14.66m, 3.20 g/t gold over 10.92 metres and 5.30 g/t gold over 9.94 metres (Aurion's sampling protocols did not include insertion of certified reference standards into their sample stream). ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Trench Metres Gold g/t Gold g/t Capped at 20 g/t ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- K1502 14.66 8.84 6.07 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- K1502 10.92 3.20 3.20 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- T2 9.94 5.30 3.51 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- An aggressive exploration program is planned for 2016 comprising surface geochemical sampling, prospecting, geological mapping and trenching to be followed by a small diamond drill program. B2Gold's Quality Assurance/Quality Control Quality assurance and quality control procedures include the systematic insertion of blanks, standards and duplicates into the core, reverse circulation, air core, RAB drilling and trenching sample strings. The results of the control samples are evaluated on a regular basis with batches re-analysed and/or resubmitted as needed. All results stated in this announcement have passed B2Gold's quality assurance and quality control ("QA/QC") protocols. Tom Garagan, Senior Vice President Exploration, the Qualified Person as defined under National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101"), has reviewed and approved the contents of this news release. West Africa The primary laboratory for Fekola is SGS Laboratories in Bamako, Mali, where samples are prepared and analysed using 50g fire assay with atomic absorption finish and/or gravimetric finish. Bureau Veritas, Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire is the umpire laboratory. The primary laboratory for Kiaka Regional Exploration is ALS Minerals Laboratories in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, where samples are prepared and analysed using 50g fire assay with atomic absorption finish and/or gravimetric finish. Namibia The primary laboratory for the Otjikoto and Ondundu Projects is ALS Minerals in Johannesburg, South Africa, and Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, where samples are analysed by metallic screen fire assay with atomic absorption and/or gravimetric finish. Samples are prepared at ALS Minerals in Swakopmund, Namibia. Bureau Veritas, Swakopmund, Namibia, serves as the umpire laboratory for check analysis. Masbate The primary laboratory for the Masbate gold project is the on site laboratory at the Masbate gold project where samples are analysed by fire assay with atomic absorption finish. All sample preparation is carried out at the SGS Exploration sample preparation facility on site at the Masbate gold project. ACME Labs, Vancouver, Canada, is the umpire laboratory. Nicaragua The primary laboratory for the La Libertad and El Limon projects is Bureau Veritas Laboratories in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, where samples are analysed by gold fire assay with atomic absorption finish. Sample preparation is carried out at the La Libertad and El Limon mines sample preparation laboratories where they are dried, crushed and pulverized. ALS Minerals, Vancouver, Canada, is the umpire laboratory. ON BEHALF OF B2GOLD CORP. Tom Garagan, Senior Vice President of Exploration For more information on B2Gold please visit the Company website at www.b2gold.com. The Toronto Stock Exchange neither approves nor disapproves the information contained in this news release. This news release includes certain "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian and United States securities legislation, including projections of future financial and operational performance, statements with respect to future events or future performance, estimated future revenues, production estimates, anticipated operating, production and capital costs and statements regarding anticipated or planned exploration, development, construction, production, permitting and other activities on the Company's properties and the results thereof, including the potential addition of mineral resources at Kiaka, Wolfshag and Masbate and the projections included in existing technical reports and feasibility studies and geological models. Estimates of mineral resources and reserves are also forward looking statements because they constitute projections regarding the amount of minerals that may be encountered in the future and/or the anticipated economics of production, should a production decision be made. All statements in this news release that address events or developments that we expect to occur in the future are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, although not always, identified by words such as "expect", "plan", "anticipate", "project", "target", "potential", "schedule", "forecast", "budget", "estimate", "intend" or "believe" and similar expressions or their negative connotations, or that events or conditions "will", "would", "may", "could", "should" or "might" occur. All such forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management as of the date such statements are made. Forward-looking statements necessarily involve assumptions, risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond B2Gold's control, including risks associated with the uncertainty of reserve and resource estimates; volatility of metal and currency prices; risks and dangers inherent in exploration, development and mining activities; financing risks; ability to obtain any necessary permits, consents or authorizations required for its activities; shortages or cost increases in necessary equipment, supplies and labour; regulatory, political and country risks; litigation risk; risks related to hedging activities; risks related to environmental regulations or hazards and compliance with complex regulations associated with mining activities; the ability to replace mineral reserves and identify acquisition opportunities; unknown liabilities of companies acquired by B2Gold; risks related to operations in foreign countries and compliance with foreign laws; risks related to remote operations and the availability adequate infrastructure; fluctuations in price and availability of energy and other inputs necessary for mining operations; risks related to reliance upon contractors, third parties and joint venture partners; challenges to title or surface rights; dependence on key personnel; the risk of an uninsurable or uninsured loss; changes in tax laws; and community support for operations; as well as other factors identified and as described in more detail under the heading "Risk Factors" in B2Gold's most recent Annual Information Form and B2Gold's other filings with Canadian securities regulators and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), which may be viewed at www.sedar.com and www.sec.gov, respectively. The list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect the Company's forward -looking statements. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results, performance or achievements could differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, these forward-looking statements. Accordingly, no assurance can be given that any events anticipated by the forward-looking statements will transpire or occur, or if any of them do, what benefits B2Gold will derive therefrom. The Company's forward-looking statements reflect current expectations regarding future events and operating performance and speak only as of the date hereof and the Company does not assume any obligation to update forward-looking statements if circumstances or management's beliefs, expectations or opinions should change other than as required by applicable law. For the reasons set forth above, you should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The disclosure in this news release regarding mineral properties was prepared in accordance with NI 43-101, which differs significantly from the mineral reserve disclosure requirements of the SEC set out in Industry Guide 7. In particular, NI 43-101 permits companies to use the term "resources", which are not "reserves". Under U.S. standards, companies are not normally permitted to disclose mineralization that does not constitute "reserves". Accordingly, while mineral resources are recognized and required to be disclosed by NI 43-101, the SEC's disclosure standards normally do not permit companies to disclose mineral resources in their filings with the SEC. In addition, the definitions of "reserves" and related terms under NI 43-101 and the SEC's Industry Guide 7 differ significantly. Under SEC standards, mineralization may not be classified as a "reserve" unless the determination has been made that the mineralization could be economically and legally produced or extracted at the time the reserve determination is made. Among other things, all necessary permits would be required to be in hand or issuance imminent in order to classify mineralized material as reserves under the SEC standards. Further, U.S. investors should also understand that "inferred mineral resources" have a great amount of uncertainty as to their existence and great uncertainty as to their economic and legal feasibility. It cannot be assumed that all or any part of an "inferred mineral resource" will ever be upgraded to a higher category, and investors are cautioned not to assume that all or any part of an "inferred mineral resource" exists or is economically or legally mineable. For the above reasons, information contained in this news release that describes the Company's mineral resource estimates or that describes the results of feasibility or other studies is not comparable to similar information made public by companies that report in accordance with U.S. standards. Contacts: B2Gold Corp. Ian MacLean Vice President, Investor Relations 604-681-8371 www.b2gold.com Tikkurila Oyj Press Release January 20, 2016 at 13:00 p.m. (CET+1) Invitation: Tikkurila's Financial Statement Release for January-December 2015 Tikkurila Oyj will publish the Financial Statement Release for January-December 2015 on Tuesday, February 9, 2016, at 9:00 a.m. Finnish time. Tikkurila will hold a press conference regarding the Financial Statement Release for January-December 2015 for the media and analysts on Tuesday, February 9, 2016, starting at 12:00 noon Finnish time at hotel Kamp's Akseli Gallen-Kallela cabinet (address: Pohjoisesplanadi 29, 00100 Helsinki). The conference will be held in Finnish. Attendees will be served lunch at the conference premises starting at 11:30 a.m. The Financial Statement Release will be presented by Erkki Jarvinen, President and CEO, and Jukka Havia, CFO. A live webcast, conducted in English, will be organized on February 9, 2016, at 3:00 p.m. The live webcast will be available at www.tikkurilagroup.com (http://www.tikkurilagroup.com/). The participants can also join a telephone conference that will be arranged in conjunction with the live webcast. The telephone conference details are set out below: +358 9 6937 9590 (Finnish callers) +44 20 3427 1919 (UK callers) +1212 444 0412 (US callers) Participant code: 2434440 An on-demand version of the webcast will be available at www.tikkurilagroup.com/investors (http://www.tikkurilagroup.com/investors) later during the same day. Interim Report and related presentation material will be available before the press conference at www.tikkurilagroup.com/investors (http://www.tikkurilagroup.com/investors). For further information, please contact: Tikkurila Oyj Minna Avellan, Director, Investor Relations and Brand Concept Development, tel. +358 40 533 7932, minna.avellan@tikkurila.com (mailto:minna.avellan@tikkurila.com) Tikkurila is the leading paints and coatings professional in the Nordic region and Russia. With our roots in Finland, we now operate in 16 countries. Our high-quality products and extensive services ensure the best possible user experience in the market. Sustainable beauty since 1862. This announcement is distributed by NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions on behalf of NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions clients. The issuer of this announcement warrants that they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein. Source: Tikkurila Oyj via Globenewswire HUG#1980134 www.tikkurilagroup.com (http://www.tikkurilagroup.com/) DUBLIN, January 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Research and Markets(http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/wcwxfh/technology) has announced the addition of the"Technology Breakthroughs Shaping the Future of Power-to-Gas"report to their offering. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130307/600769) Power-to-gas is a concept to convert surplus of electricity either from renewable or conventional sources to chemical energy. There are two major processes in power-to-gas electrolysis process and methanation process. From this, there are three types of electrolysis process, namely, alkaline, proton exchange membrane (PEM) and solid-oxide electrolysis. Methanation process is mainly of two types - thermocatalytic and biological methanation. Hopes for power to gas is immensely high as a clean method to store excess generated electricity, stabilize the power grid or redirect excess electricity toward other useful applications. With serious R&D efforts all over the world, technology readiness level (TRL) of power-to-gas is expected to speed up, thus establishing a complete system in the near future. Key Findings - Power-to-gas is a concept to convert surplus of electricity either from renewable or conventional sources to chemical energy. The main purposes of the conversion are to store excess generated electricity, stabilize the power grid, or redirect excess electricity toward other useful applications. - There are two major processes in power-to-gas-electrolysis process and methanation process. The electrolysis process is to convert electricity to hydrogen, while the methanation process is a method to produce synthetic methane (by combining hydrogen generated from the electrolysis process with carbon dioxide). - There are three types of electrolysis process, namely, alkaline, proton exchange membrane(PEM)and solid-oxide electrolysis. Alkaline and PEM electrolysis processes are already commercialized, but solid-oxide process is still in research and development (R&D) phase. R&D trends for electrolysis is shifting towards building a high-performance and low-cost process by creating advanced electrocatalysts and thermally stable materials at high temperature. - The methanation process is mainly of two types - thermocatalytic and biological methanation. Thermocatalytic methanation is already commercialized while biological methanation is still at pilot stage. The major R&D theme for methanation process is to develop a high performance catalyst. - Hydrogen or methane produced from electrolysis or methanation process in power-to-gas systems can be converted back to usable power by stationary fuel cells, internal combustion engines or a combined heat power (CHP) system. - Overall, power-to-gas systems can be considered to be at a prototype or demonstration stage, mainly because the infrastructure is still not able to cope with energy fluctuations caused by renewable energy sources. - A major driver for adoption is a low cost system, where the focus is on a low-cost electrolysis system as X% of the cost of a power-to-gas system comes from the electrolysis process. - Europe is the most active region for power-to-gas systems, mainly due to aggressive efforts from the governments in Germany, France and the Netherlands. A few power-to-gas plants exists in Europe (demonstration and commercial scale), with the world's largest power-to-gas power plant in Germany. - Efforts in Asia and North America are moderate, as the US seems to be putting in more R&D effort into batteries as a form of energy storage. There are a few demonstration plants across Japan, whereas China will have its first power-to-gas plant in 2017. - Ultimately, all the innovations will lead to autarkic (self-sufficient) power-to-gas plants. However, in order for such a plant to be realized, robust integration of self-sufficient processes along the power-to-gas process chain will be necessary. This report will touch upon: - Technology Snapshot and Trends - Innovation Analysis for Electrolysis and Methanation Processes. - Region-Wise Adoption - Application Landscape - Future Outlook & Technology Readiness Level Key Topics Covered: 1. Executive Summary 2. Technology Landscape 3. Application Impact & Future Outlook 4. Key Patents 5. Key Contact Details 6. Conclusion For more information visithttp://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/wcwxfh/technology About Research and Markets Research and Markets is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends. Media Contact: Laura Wood +353-1-481-1716 press@researchandmarkets.net ABU DHABI, UAE, January 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- UAE Minister of Economy: Hosting the Summit in Abu Dhabi Strengthens the UAE's Industrial Sector and Expands the UAE's Industrial Base in Accordance with Global Standards and Best Practices The world's first Global Manufacturing & Industrialisation Summit (GMIS), which brings together leaders of both the public and private sectors and representatives of civil society to shape the future of manufacturing, will hold its inaugural summit in Al Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi between the 10th and the 12th of October 2016 under the patronage of H.H. Sheikh Hazza bin Zayed Al Nahyan, National Security Advisor, Vice Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160120/323992 ) (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160120/323993 ) (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160120/323994 ) This global initiative, organized by the UAE Ministry of Economy and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in collaboration with the Global Agenda Council for the Future of Manufacturing of the World Economic Forum, aims to promote and advance inclusive and sustainable industrial development in line with the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. GMIS will establish a global platform for dialogue and the sharing of best practices and knowledge in manufacturing through an unprecedented gathering of public and private sector leaders, as well as representatives from civil society, with the aim to shape the future of manufacturing through solutions and initiatives that contribute towards the achievement of inclusive and sustainable industrial development. It is anticipated that GMIS will attract to Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, over 1500 representatives from governments, industry and civil society including more than 300 representatives from the UAE and the wider Gulf Region. In a recorded statement, The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon congratulated both the UAE Government and UNIDO, stating "I welcome this innovative dual-focus on shaping the future of manufacturing. Responsible business practices benefit individuals and society. We now have the Sustainable Development Goals, our map to a new future. Inclusive and sustainable industrialization will help get us there while advancing us on the low carbon path that our world needs". Abu Dhabi was selected to host the inaugural edition of GMIS for its contributions to manufacturing and the UAE's commitment in building an advanced industrial base that promotes economic diversification and social development, reinforcing the goals sought by GMIS internationally. For more information and press inquiries, please contact: Mohammed Shaban Head of Public Relations Global Summit for Industry and Manufacturing Tel: +971559008363 Email: mohammed@gmisummit.com CALGARY, ALBERTA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/20/16 -- Touchstone Exploration Inc. ("Touchstone" or the "Company") (TSX: TXP) announces that it has entered into an agreement to dispose of its Kerrobert, Saskatchewan facility, infrastructure and the associated PNG rights to Quattro Exploration and Production Ltd. ("Quattro") (TSX VENTURE: QXP) for total consideration of $4,150,000. The consideration includes $650,000 in cash and $3,500,000 in securities through the issuance of 35,000 non-voting Quattro Class "C", Series 3 preferred shares. The preferred shares have a face value of $100 per share and pay an annual preferred dividend of $3.50 per share. The cash consideration consists of $100,000 to be paid upon signing of the Purchase and Sale Agreement with the balance payable no later than February 15, 2016. Non-payment of the final cash installment will result in Quattro forfeiting the initial cash deposit. The disposition is effective December 31, 2015 and is expected to close on or before February 15, 2016, subject to satisfaction of closing conditions customary in transactions of this nature. James Shipka, Chief Operating Officer, said, "The Kerrobert property was our final producing asset in Canada. The disposition of the property will eliminate operating losses and allow our team to focus on our core onshore Trinidad producing assets." The property contributed an average of 100 barrels of heavy oil per day during the three months ended September 30, 2015 and was a legacy Petrobank combustion project. With no intent to pursue combustion projects now or in the future, the Company had no development plans for the property. As of December 31, 2014, the property was assigned net Total Proved reserves of 399,400 barrels and net Total Proved plus Probable reserves of 606,100 barrels of heavy oil. Associated future capital costs were $1,020,000 under both the Proved and Proved plus Probable cases. The property incurred unaudited operating losses of approximately $1.35 million during the eleven months ended November 30, 2015. Through this disposition, the Company will eliminate an internally estimated $3.33 million in future abandonment liabilities associated with the assets. Following the disposition, Touchstone has an interest in 32,723 acres of undeveloped land in Saskatchewan focusing mainly on the Viking formation. Advisory Regarding Forward-Looking Statements Certain information provided in this news release may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws including, but not limited to, information, expectations, and assumptions regarding the property disposition. Although the Company believes that the expectations and assumptions on which the forward-looking statements are based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements because the Company can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Since forward-looking statements address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties, including failing to complete the property disposition on terms that are acceptable to the Company or at all. Actual results could different materially from those currently anticipated due to a number of factors and risks. Certain of these risks are set out in more detail in the Company's Annual Information Form dated March 30, 2015 which has been filed on SEDAR and can be accessed at www.sedar.com. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as of the date hereof and except as may be required by applicable securities laws, the Company assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements made herein or otherwise, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. About Touchstone Touchstone Exploration Inc. is a Calgary based company engaged in the business of acquiring interests in petroleum and natural gas rights, and the exploration, development, production and sale of petroleum and natural gas. Touchstone is currently active in onshore properties located in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago and western Canada. The Company's common shares are traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol "TXP". Contacts: Touchstone Exploration Inc. Mr. Paul Baay, President and Chief Executive Officer Mr. Scott Budau, Chief Financial Officer Mr. James Shipka, Chief Operating Officer (403) 750-4400 DUBAI, UAE, January 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Exhibits at the Shared Services & Outsourcing Week in MiddleEast Newgen Software, a leading global provider of Business Process Management (BPM), Enterprise Content Management (ECM), Customer Communication Management (CCM), and Case Management (CM) solutions, today announced its participation at the 2016 edition of SSON's Shared Services & Outsourcing Week Middle East (ME) being held in Dubai from January 25 to 27. Newgen will be the Solution Partner for the conference. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130912/638839 ) The highlight at the conference will be a Newgen-sponsored panel titled 'Unlocking Business Value through Shared Services'. An elite panel with eminent thought leaders from across the industry will discuss the present and future of the Shared Servicesmarket in ME. Speaking on the occasion, Prashant Sahai, AVP & Business Head - Middle East - Newgen Software, said, "Shared Services market in ME has not yet evolved or expanded as far as it has in western economies. Organizations in the ME have focused on growth, while cost has been a primary driver in more mature markets. However, with changing economic landscape in the region, cost efficiencies are assuming an important role. Enterprises are increasingly exploring the centralized model of operation for reducing operational costs without compromising on service quality. This is impacting all industries - Manufacturing, Oil and Gas and now even Banks." The panel discussion, which will take place just before the lunch hours of 25th January, will also explore how technology can play a major role in deriving business value from deployment of Shared Services in the region, especially in a Banking and Financial Industry setup. Newgen powers Virtual SSCs for banks globally which creates a connected pool of experts for these banks, enabling a person seated in any location to process transactions of any location. This renders leaner branches, highest level of compliance and operational efficiencies for the banks. The exhibition will also include live demonstrations of Newgen's innovative tech solutions that are delivering success for Shared Service Centers (SSC) by centralizing processing of core business functions. These solutions offer automation across a multitude of SSC operations, ranging from Finance & Accounting and Human Resources to Supply Chain Management. Some of the organizations that are eliciting cost ROI benefits through Newgen SSC offerings include Wipro Wividus, AstraZeneca, Strides Arcolab, Olam International, IFFCO Global, Ranbaxy Laboratories and Tube Investments of India Limited. To know more, please visitwww.newgensoft.com Media Contact: Asif Khan asif.khan@newgen.com Corporate Marketing Vital-Sign Sensing Band Fujitsu Limited Public and Investor Relations Tel: +81-3-3215-5259 URL: www.fujitsu.com/global/news/contacts/ Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. ICT Systems Laboratories Server Technologies Lab E-mail: Retimer_ISSCC2015@ml.labs.fujitsu.com TOKYO, Jan 20, 2016 - (JCN Newswire) - Fujitsu today announced ten new products in its FUJITSU IoT Solution UBIQUITOUSWARE line, to accelerate the digitalization of its customers' operations. The new products will be steadily rolled out in Japan beginning January 20, 2016.UBIQUITOUSWARE gathers and analyzes a range of human-centric data using advanced sensing technology, and can provide the high-value information that customers want, so it can immediately be put to use in the field. The UBIQUITOUSWARE Sensor Algorithm, which precisely detects the behavior and status of people and things, has been refined through repeated testing inside and outside Fujitsu to ensure precision. In addition, UBIQUITOUSWARE Core Modules, which incorporate a variety of sensors, can be embedded into customer products and services.Devices such as location badges/tags and vital sign sensing bands are available to meet the varied usage scenarios of different customers, creating a comprehensive service that ranges from embedded applications and products to their operation and support. Fujitsu also offers the UBIQUITOUSWARE Pilot Pack, a set of devices and applications that can be field tested prior to IoT deployments, in order to fully support customers' field trials.Fujitsu will use the Pilot Pack to conduct testing together with customers and partners in a wide range of industries, building a co-creation model.UBIQUITOUSWAREFujitsu uses its mainstay FUJITSU Digital Business Platform MetaArc to realize the digital innovation of its customers. Fujitsu uses cutting-edge technologies to support connections between people, things, and infrastructure across the traditional boundaries of companies and industries, and contributes to its customers' creation of new value and enhanced competitiveness.With regard to the IoT, Fujitsu aims to use the massive amounts of data that surround people and to help make life better through the use of advanced technologies. Fujitsu provides one-stop solutions with everything from sensing devices in the front end to networking and platforms in the back end. UBIQUITOUSWARE serves as the front end, using cutting-edge technologies, created through the development of smart devices, to support customer IoT deployments.Key Features of UBIQUITOUSWAREFujitsu is expanding the UBIQUITOUSWARE lineup by building on the FUJITSU IoT Solution UBIQUITOUSWARE Head Mounted Display, the wearable device for enterprises which was released in May 2015.UBIQUITOUSWARE provides on-site data collection and analysis functionality in the form of the Sensor Algorithm. Fujitsu collects and analyzes sensor data and provides it in a form the customer needs, which eliminates the necessity for the customer to design and develop algorithms or test them for correctness, so they can put the data to work immediately. Also, as part of the analysis is performed inside the Core Modules, not all sensor data needs to be transmitted to the cloud, streamlining data communications.Furthermore, the proprietary algorithms that Fujitsu has created through the development of smart devices have been repeatedly tested inside and outside the company to ensure their precision. Fujitsu is collaborating with third-party specialists, such as The Ohara Memorial Institute for Science of Labour, with whom it jointly studied heat-stress estimations.1. Sensor Algorithm brings together existing sensor and AI technologiesThe Sensor Algorithm, employing over 60 different proprietary algorithms, is software that utilizes Fujitsu's Zinrai artificial intelligence technology. It analyzes data collected from sensors, and can convert that into the form needed in line with a customer's applications using the respective algorithms.Sensor Algorithms include motion algorithms that analyze movement data, such as a person rolling over or falling and a pet's walking balance; vital algorithms that analyze vital-sign data, including a person's heat stress; a locational algorithm to acquire information on positioning, both in and outdoors; and a sonic algorithm to analyze sound data, such as talking, lifestyle noises, coughing, and other sounds.Moreover, by linking to the FUJITSU Cloud Service IoT Platform, it is possible to optimally process the data gained from an enormous volume of sensors.2. The Core Module and Core Module Development Kit can be embedded in customer productsThe Core Module incorporates a set of sensors including accelerometer, barometer, geo-magnetometer, gyroscope, and microphone, as well as a microcomputer for data analysis and Bluetooth Low Energy(1). Customers can add a heart-rate monitor or GPS receiver as needed, and the Sensor Algorithm converts the sensor readings to useful data. To help customers embed the Core Module into their products and services, Fujitsu also offers the UBIQUITOUSWARE Core Module Development Kit.3. UBIQUITOUSWARE Vital Sign Sensing Band helps provide a safer working environment and more efficient task performanceThis can be used to remotely track the wearer's status, including heart rate, human body and thermal environment index, location, and whether the wearer has fallen. This makes it possible to monitor the degree of risk for illness caused by heat stress, or quickly alert a supervisor to a user's fall.4. UBIQUITOUSWARE Location Badges/Tags, with two ways to monitor location1. For wide-area location tracking, "pedestrian dead reckoning" can be used to track the paths of people and things using fewer beacons, in order to monitor their positions over a wide area.2. For highly accurate real-time positioning, locators can be installed that can track location with a margin of error as small as 30 cm and a delay of only one second. This supports highly accurate indoor location tracking.In addition, a function can be assigned to the button on Location Badges, so, for instance, a wearer could notify coworkers of their current location in order to receive support.5. UBIQUITOUSWARE Remote Monitoring Station relies on sound to safeguard the wellbeing of the elderly and those in careBy analyzing sounds in the home, it is possible to get a grasp of a person's condition while preserving a measure of their privacy. Sounds such as speech or coughs, human presence, via motion detectors, and room temperatures and humidity levels can all be monitored. In emergencies, the person can press the emergency button for hands-free communications with a call center.6. UBIQUITOUSWARE Wandant Charm/Station keep an eye on one's pet while out, and monitor the pet's healthThe Wandant Charm records changes in a dog's daily activities, such as number of steps, amount of exercise, and occurrence of shivers(2), and measures balance deviations when the pet walks, which can be used as a pet healthcare service. The Wandant Station takes photographs of conditions inside the pet's room, monitors changes in the environment with temperature and humidity sensors, and can send an alarm when it detects anything abnormal.Wandant Station/CharmWandant Station/Charm7. Pilot Pack, to deploy and test UBIQUITOUSWARETo enable customers to test what data and results they will attain in their operations by deploying UBIQUITOUSWARE, Fujitsu provides all necessary equipment and materials (such as devices and visualization applications) on a rental basis for field testing. In addition, Fujitsu engineers help with data visualization and answer questions.Pilot Pack Preliminary Field Trial Examples1. Care service for the visually impaired: Itochu Techno-Solutions Corporation (CTC)A key concept for CTC is "human services for empowerment." One part of this is putting UBIQUITOUSWARE to use in spotlighting support for the visually impaired, particularly to help them get out and be active in society. CTC aims to support safer and more secure lifestyles, by making a care service with functions that notify users of dangers and positioning, and that allows families and communities to understand the user's current location. The Pilot Pack trial will test the concept and technology for a service that helps people to get out and about.2. Flow line analysis for people and things in manufacturing (internal implementation): Fujitsu Peripherals LimitedUsing UBIQUITOUSWARE Location Badges, equipped with highly accurate indoor positioning technologies, and the FUJITSU Manufacturing Industry Solution VPS GP4 (Global Protocol for Manufacturing), a solution for simulating the movements of line workers, the simulated movements of people, materials, and equipment are compared and analyzed to identify work inefficiencies and verify efficiency improvements in operations.Fujitsu is currently using the Pilot Pack to perform verification testing on health management in factories, locational data of employees, and detection of people falling with 14 customers across ten industries, including information and communications, chemicals, transport equipment, public and local authorities, construction and railroads.(1) Bluetooth Low EnergyA Bluetooth specification for short-range wireless communications.(2) Occurrence of shiversA measure of animal shaking, which occurs when anxious.About Fujitsu LtdFujitsu is the leading Japanese information and communication technology (ICT) company, offering a full range of technology products, solutions, and services. Approximately 159,000 Fujitsu people support customers in more than 100 countries. We use our experience and the power of ICT to shape the future of society with our customers. Fujitsu Limited (TSE: 6702) reported consolidated revenues of 4.8 trillion yen (US$40 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2015. For more information, please see http://www.fujitsu.com.Source: Fujitsu LtdContact:Copyright 2016 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved. LONDON (dpa-AFX) - The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria has confirmed that Jihadi John was killed in a drone strike in their Syrian stronghold of Raqa in November. Born Mohammed Emwazi in Britain, and known as Jihadi John, the militant was known as the executioner of the militant group appearing masked in a string of videos showing the beheading of Western hostages. The death of Jihadi John, a symbolic face of the group's barbaric executions, was confirmed in its online magazine Dabiq Tuesday. Emwazi was killed on November 12 as the car he was in was targeted in a strike by an unmanned drone in the city of Raqa, it said. The US military had said at the time that it was reasonably certain he had been killed in the strike. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX 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. SAN JOSE, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/20/16 -- Vectra Networks, the leader in real-time detection of in-progress cyber-attacks, today announced it continues to gain industry traction in the higher education market due to its unique ability to detect active cyber attacks and address compliance requirements which are naturally higher with the necessity of BYOD and mobility to foster an open, collaborative environment. The Vectra automated threat management solution enables it to deliver the secure mobile campus experience students and staff require, while protecting sensitive university and student information from malware and advanced persistent threats. With Vectra, universities have the automated threat management needed to secure private data and address FERPA, HIPAA and PCI compliance concerns from security risks, especially those introduced by the highly mobile nature of students and the university community. Some current higher education customers include Santa Clara University, Barry University, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). "Accessing our university's data is now big business for attackers," said Sean Michael O'Connor, assistant chief information officer at WPI. "It is crucial for us to make sure that we identify these attacks immediately before they acquire our data. Within the first couple of weeks after deploying Vectra Networks on our network, we were seeing some really interesting activity, including a number of command and control attempts which we were able to shut down before any damage was done. Vectra Networks technology is truly cutting edge in its ability to help us to identify malicious activity that we would have otherwise likely missed." In addition to customer traction, Vectra remains active and dedicated to the education sector. President and CEO Hitesh Sheth was named as an advisor to the recently launched Kogod Cybersecurity Governance Center (KCGC) at American University's Kogod School of Business. The KCGC at American University was launched in September 2015 in response to the growing need for collaborative, objective and multidisciplinary research in cybersecurity governance, enterprise risk management and cyber risk management. These efforts extend across business, legal, public policy and public administration disciplines. To promote and advance good governance in the preparation for, prevention and detection of, as well as response to, cybersecurity breaches, KCGC Advisory Committee members represent a wide range of leaders from the public sector and private industries, as well as distinguished faculty, all of whom are committed to help shape the Center's research and education charter. "It's widely understood that organizations everywhere have been breached by cyber attacks and the security intelligence world has accepted that many more will be breached," said Dr. William DeLone, co-executive director of KCGC and Kogod Eminent Professor of Information Technology. "In-depth knowledge of advanced persistent threat (APT) intelligence is critical to the center's research mission and that is what Vectra brings to the table. "We are pleased to have Mr. Sheth bring his extensive knowledge and experience in the cybersecurity intelligence field and leadership expertise to guide and champion the Center's research and education agenda," he added. "I am honored to join leaders in industry, government and education to contribute to the cybersecurity research and efforts of the Kogod Cybersecurity Governance Center," said Hitesh Sheth, president and CEO of Vectra Networks. "Higher education is a very important market for us. Universities across the U.S. have adopted Vectra to mitigate the risks introduced by BYOD in their highly mobile environments and embrace mobile devices as essential and expected tools for learning and collaboration." In November 2015, Vectra sponsored and provided equipment for Rochester Institute of Technology's (RIT) second annual Collegiate Pentesting Competition. The competition allowed students to experience a day in the life of a penetration tester, testing and evaluating computer systems and networks to make sure they are secure from malicious hackers. For the competition, teams of three to six students interrogated a mock-company's network. They presented their findings to judges and offered suggestions for mitigating risk. Student teams from RIT, Alfred State College, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Penn State, Syracuse University, Tompkins Cortland Community College, University of New Hampshire, University at Buffalo, and the United States Naval Academy participated in the weekend competition. About Vectra Networks Vectra Networks is the leader in real-time detection of in-progress cyber attacks. The company's automated threat-management solution continuously monitors internal network traffic to pinpoint cyber attacks as they happen. It then automatically correlates threats against hosts that are under attack and provides unique context about what attackers are doing so organizations can quickly prevent or mitigate loss. Vectra prioritizes attacks that pose the greatest business risk, enabling organizations to make rapid decisions on where to focus time and resources. In 2015, Gartner named Vectra a Cool Vendor in Security Intelligence for addressing the challenges of post-breach threat detection. The American Business Awards also selected Vectra as the Gold Award winner for Tech Startup of 2015. Vectra's investors include Khosla Ventures, Accel Partners, IA Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures, and DAG Ventures. The company's headquarters are in San Jose, Calif., and it has European operations in Zurich. More information can be found at www.vectranetworks.com. About American University American University is a leader in global education, enrolling a diverse student body from throughout the United States and nearly 140 countries. Located in Washington, D.C., the university provides opportunities for academic excellence, public service, and internships in the nation's capital and around the world. Vectra and the Vectra Networks logo are registered trademarks and Security that thinks, the Vectra Threat Labs, and the Threat Certainty Index are trademarks of Vectra Networks. Other brand, product and service names are trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks of their respective holders. Contact: Dan Spalding Email Contact (408) 960-9297 TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 01/20/16 -- Siyata Mobile Inc. (the "Company" or "Siyata") (TSX VENTURE: SIM)(OTC PINK: TLRRF) is pleased to announce that it has received multiple purchase orders from Alberta-based TELUS authorized dealer Communications Group Red Deer Ltd. ("Communications Group"). Communications Group has purchased Siyata's VOYAGER and TRUCKFONE connected-vehicle devices for distribution to its customers in Red Deer, Alberta. Communications Group is a TELUS authorized dealer and one of the largest shops in Western Canada. Marc Seelenfreund, CEO of Siyata, commented, "Our TELUS approval has given us greater market visibility and access to their hundreds of dealerships across Canada. We are happy to partner with Communications Group in offering our innovative connected vehicle devices to their corporate customers throughout Alberta." About Communications Group Red Deer Ltd. Communications Group Red Deer Ltd. is a locally owned and operated company in Red Deer, Alberta. Currently employing over 70 full-time highly trained and qualified staff, they have experienced technicians and installers on board with over 30 years of qualified technical expertise. About Siyata Siyata Mobile Inc. is a leading global developer and provider of a vehicle-mounted communications platform over advanced mobile networks. Siyata's customers include cellular operators, commercial vehicle technology distributors, and fleets of all sizes in Canada, the US, Europe, Australia, and the Middle East. Siyata's "Connected-Vehicle" devices and accessories are specifically designed for professional fleets such as trucks, vans, buses, ambulances, government cars and more. Siyata aims to provide greater mobile connectivity for professional drivers and facilitate replacement of the current in-vehicle, multi device status quo with a single device that incorporates voice, data, and fleet management solutions. Visit www.siyatamobile.com to learn more. On Behalf of the Board of Directors of: SIYATA MOBILE INC. Marc Seelenfreund, CEO and Director Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This news release may include forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. All statements within, other than statements of historical fact, are to be considered forward looking. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include market prices, continued availability of capital and financing, and general economic, market or business conditions. There can be no assurances that such statements will prove accurate and, therefore, readers are advised to rely on their own evaluation of such uncertainties. We do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required under the applicable laws. Contacts: Investor Relations: Arlen Hansen Kin Communications 1-866-684-6730 SIM@kincommunications.com Sales Department: Ed Shoval, Director of Sales Siyata Mobile Inc. 1-647-222-9276 ed@siyatamobile.com VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/20/16 -- On Thursday, January 21, the Fraser Institute will release a new study spotlighting the health care systems of 10 different countries in the developed world. The study, Cost Sharing and Universal Health Care examines the utilization of health-care user fees - for access to hospitals, general practitioners or specialists - in these countries which, like Canada, have accessible and high-performing universal health care. A news release with additional information will be issued via Marketwired on January 21 at 5:30 a.m. (Eastern). Follow the Fraser Institute on Twitter Become a fan on Facebook The Fraser Institute is an independent Canadian public policy research and educational organization with offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, and Montreal and ties to a global network of think-tanks in 87 countries. Its mission is to improve the quality of life for Canadians, their families and future generations by studying, measuring and broadly communicating the effects of government policies, entrepreneurship and choice on their well-being. To protect the Institute's independence, it does not accept grants from governments or contracts for research. Visit www.fraserinstitute.org Contacts: MEDIA CONTACT: Steven Globerman Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute Kaiser Professor of International Business Western Washington University For interviews with Mr. Globerman, please contact: Aanand Radia, Media Relations Specialist, Fraser Institute (416) 363-6575 ext. 238 aanand.radia@fraserinstitute.org For further information, contact: Aanand Radia, Media Relations Specialist, Fraser Institute (416) 363-6575 ext. 238 aanand.radia@fraserinstitute.org @FraserInstitute MONTREAL, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 01/20/16 -- Midland Exploration Inc. ("Midland") (TSX VENTURE: MD) is pleased to announce the identification of new exploration targets following a soil geochemical survey completed on its Heva gold project. This project 100% owned by Midland is located close to the prolific Cadillac Break about 5 km northwest of the Malartic gold mine owned in joint venture by Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd and Yamana Gold Inc. which contains proven and probable reserves of 8.6 million ounces of gold. The Heva project, acquired by Midland in May 2013 from d'Arianne Resources Inc., consists of two blocks named Heva West and Heva East, and totals 32 claims covering an area of over 1,200 hectares. During the fall of 2015, Midland's exploration team completed a soil geochemical survey (B-horizon) in the western part of the Heva East block where several interesting gold results were obtained during the 2015 summer exploration program. Following these recent works, the best results returned values of 18.0 g / t Au and 5.1 g / t Au from sampling of an old blasted trench and dating back more than twenty years which was found during reconnaissance work and a value of 5.6 g / t Au obtained in sampling mineralized ore masses found near the old Dempsey-Cadillac showing from 1930 (see press release dated October 28, 2015). On top of detecting the two main gold-bearing horizons already known in this area, the soil geochemical survey identified two (2) new axes that are anomalous in gold and in arsenic on hundreds meters of extension and parallel to the known gold-bearing horizons. Moreover, these two new axes coincide largely with still unexplained historic induced polarization anomalies. Midland is currently planning more prospecting and mechanical trenching work for next summer to explain these new promising targets in the extension of a subsidiary structure to the Cadillac Break oriented east-west and interpreted from geophysical and geological survey. This structure, which remains largely unexplored, covers a horizon of deformed conglomerate containing mineralized quartz veins with pyrite and arsenopyrite and is altered in silica and locally in sericite over 4 kilometers. These conglomerates contain the majority of the historic gold showings, including the Dempsey-Cadillac showing, as well as new identified showings during the 2015 summer campaign. Maps showing the soil geochem survey on the Heva project may be consulted using the following link: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/Heva_1040109.pdf Quality Control All analysis were performed by ALS Minerals in Val-d'Or, Quebec and all multi-element ICP-MS analysis were completed by ALS Minerals in Vancouver. For quality control, ALS Minerals uses a strict program including the insertion of certified standards, duplicates and blanks at regular intervals throughout the sample sequence. The data was reviewed by Mario Masson, VP Exploration for Midland, certified geologist and Qualified Person as defined by NI 43-101. Amendment to stock option plan Midland announces that it has amended its stock option plan (the "Stock Option Plan"). The amendment increases the maximum number of shares issuable upon exercise of the options granted to directors, officers, key employees and consultants of the Midland pursuant to the Stock Option Plan from 4,000,000 to 5,400,000. Such number represents less than 10% of the total number of shares issued and outstanding. The amendment was conditionally approved by the TSX Venture Exchange. About Midland Exploration Midland targets the excellent mineral potential of Quebec to make the discovery of new world-class deposits of gold, platinum group elements, base metals and rare earth elements. Midland is proud to count on reputable partners such as Agnico Eagle Mines Limited, Teck Resources Limited, SOQUEM INC., Maudore Minerals Ltd and Japan Oil and Gas and Metals National Corporation. Midland prefers to work in partnership and intends to quickly conclude additional agreements in regard to newly acquired properties. Management is currently reviewing opportunities and projects to build up the Company portfolio and generate shareholder value. This press release was prepared by Mario Masson, Midland's VP Exploration, certified geologist and Qualified Person as defined by NI 43-101. For further information, please consult Midland's website. Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This press release may contain forward-looking statements that are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to vary materially from targeted results. Such risks and uncertainties include those described in Midland's periodic reports including the annual report or in the filings made by Midland from time to time with securities regulatory authorities. Contacts: Midland Exploration Inc. Gino Roger President and Chief Executive Officer 450 420-5977 450 420-5978 (FAX) info@midlandexploration.com www.midlandexploration.com CALGARY, ALBERTA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/20/16 -- -- Umusadege field production averaged approximately 16,340 barrels of oil per day ("bopd") during December 2015 based on calendar days; average field production based on production days was approximately 19,515 bopd during December 2015. -- Total production from the Umusadege field in December 2015 was approximately 506,550 barrels of oil ("bbls"). -- The combined net delivery of oil from the Umusadege field through the Umugini pipeline and the Nigerian Agip Oil Company Limited ("NAOC") export pipeline totaled approximately 501,780 bbls in December 2015 before estimated combined pipeline and export facility losses, and approximately 445,970 bbls after deduction of combined pipeline and export facility losses for December 2015 as estimated by Mart. -- Aggregate calculated downtime during December 2015 totaled approximately five days. -- The UMU-16 well was spudded on December 6, 2015 to appraise the West Prospect. The well reached the final total depth of 11,372 feet on January 12, 2016. Logging and testing results will determine the potential of the West Prospect and will be released following data analysis and regulatory reporting and approval procedures. -- The UMU-15 well short string, completed in the XIV sand, has been production tested resulting in a final flow rate of 1,908 bopd. -- The UMU-15 well long string, completed in the XXa sand has been production tested resulting in a final flow rate of 1,084 bopd. Mart Resources, Inc. (TSX: MMT) ("Mart" or the "Company") and its co-venturers, Midwestern Oil and Gas Company Limited ("Midwestern", Operator of the Umusadege field) and SunTrust Oil Company Limited are providing the following updates on Umusadege field production for December 2015 and other operations. December 2015 Aggregate Production Update Umusadege field production during December 2015 averaged approximately 16,340 bopd resulting in total production of approximately 506,550 bbls for the month. Aggregate calculated Umusadege field downtime during December 2015 was approximately five days (based upon days with production of more than 10,000 bopd being considered to have no downtime). There were shutdowns of the Trans Forcados pipeline and the NAOC export pipeline during December 2015 due to operational interruptions for pipeline repairs and general pipeline and facility maintenance, but ongoing production from the Umusadege field was managed by the ability of the field operator to alternate production between the Trans Forcados and NAOC export pipelines. There were no full down days during the month. The average field production based on producing days was approximately 19,515 bopd in December 2015. The combined net delivery of oil from the Umusadege field through the Umugini pipeline and NAOC export pipeline totaled approximately 501,780 bbls in December 2015 before estimated pipeline and export facility losses, and approximately 445,970 bbls after deduction of combined pipeline and export facility losses estimated for December 2015 by Mart. NAOC Export Pipeline Update Total net crude oil deliveries into the NAOC export pipeline from the Umusadege field for December 2015 were approximately 75,560 bbls before pipeline losses. Based upon the 12-month rolling average rate of pipeline and export facility losses from December 2013 to December 2014 of 17.46%, Mart estimates NAOC export pipeline and Brass River export facility losses for December 2015 will be approximately 13,190 bbls. Accordingly, Mart estimates that the total net crude deliveries into the NAOC export pipeline from the Umusadege field for December 2015 less estimated pipeline losses will be approximately 62,370 bbls. As previously announced, total net crude oil deliveries into the NAOC export pipeline from the Umusadege field for November 2015 were approximately 177,640 bbls. Actual NAOC pipeline and export facility losses have not been allocated for November 2015 because allocation was suspended beginning in December 2014 by the Department of Petroleum Resources pending an approved loss computation formula. Mart previously estimated pipeline and export facility losses for November 2015 to be approximately 31,010 bbls, based upon the 12-month rolling average rate of pipeline and export facility losses of 17.46% between December 2013 and November 2014. The NAOC export pipeline was down for 13 days in December 2015 due maintenance and repair work done on the pipeline and operational problems. Trans Forcados and Umugini Pipeline Update Based upon Mart's internal production and facility data, the Company estimates that Umusadege field deliveries into the Trans Forcados export pipeline connected to the Forcados oil export terminal were approximately 426,220 bbls in December 2015. Based upon historic pipeline losses encountered by other exploration and production companies utilizing the Trans Forcados export system, Mart estimates pipeline and export facility losses of 10% of crude oil deliveries, resulting in estimated Umusadege field deliveries of approximately 383,600 bbls for December 2015 after deduction of estimated pipeline and export facility losses. The Umugini pipeline was down for six days in December 2015 due maintenance and repair work done on the pipeline. Further to its previous disclosures regarding the absence of accurate and reconcilable injection data from Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited ("SPDC"), the operator of the Trans Forcados oil export terminal system, Mart advises that the Company and its co-venturers have received unreconciled reports that include only preliminary gross oil injection volumes and estimated pipeline and export facility losses. From our initial review, it is not clear whether the reported volumes represent all producers on the system or only Mart and its co-venturers. Mart and its co-venturers have requested additional and more complete information from SPDC in order to accurately reconcile volumes and any attributed pipeline losses. However, based upon preliminary analysis of the volume and loss information provided, Mart has calculated that the average loss rate could range between 10% and 21% of gross oil injections. The Company cautions that it is currently not able to obtain confirmation of these values, and it is not able to perform a reliable reconciliation. Until more accurate and complete information and reports can be obtained from SPDC, Mart will continue to estimate such pipeline losses at a rate of 10% based upon historic pipeline losses encountered by other exploration and production companies utilizing the Trans Forcados export system. Drilling and Testing Update The UMU-16 well was spudded on December 6, 2015. The well has been drilled to appraise the West Prospect potential. The well was drilled to the planned total depth of 10,597 feet on December 25, 2015, following which the zones of interest were logged and sampled and the 9 5/8 inch casing was cemented in place. The well was then drilled to 11,372 feet by January 12, 2016 using an 8 1/2 inch hole. The deep section is currently being logged and sampled, after which the deep section will be plugged back. The testing results for the UMU-16 well will be released after full interpretation of the drilling, logging, and sampling data and required approval by the Department of Petroleum Resources in Nigeria. The UMU-15 well short string completed in the XIV sand has been production tested at multiple choke settings, resulting in a final rate of 1,908 bopd on a 36/64 inch choke during a 6 hour flow test. The oil gravity was 44.2 degrees API with a gas-oil-ratio of 28 scf/bbl. The flowing tubing head pressure was 412 psig with basic sediment and water of 1.3%. The UMU-15 well long string completed in the XXa sand has been production tested at multiple choke settings, resulting in a final rate of 1,084 bopd on a 36/64 inch choke during a 6 hour flow test. The oil gravity was 47 degrees API with a gas-oil-ratio of 5,254 scf/bbl. The flowing tubing head pressure was 1,320 psig with basic sediment and water of 0%. The remaining zone in the long string (XVIIa sand) has been cleaned up, however no production testing was undertaken. This zone will be placed on commercial production after depletion of the XXa sand. Additional information regarding Mart is available on the Company's website at www.martresources.com and under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Except where expressly stated otherwise, all production figures set out in this press release, including bopd, reflect gross Umusadege field production rather than production attributable to Mart. Mart's share of total gross production before taxes and royalties from the Umusadege field fluctuates between 82.5% (before capital cost recovery) and 50% (after capital cost recovery). As a result of the Umusadege field capital expenditure funding arrangement entered into by Mart and its co-venturers with Guaranty Trust Bank Limited ("GTB") in April 2014, during the twelve moratorium period, Mart's share of funding of the 2015 Umusadege field capital expenditure program will be approximately 50% and there will be no recovery of Mart's capital expenditures incurred and not recovered before the start and during the moratorium period. This arrangement results in Mart's share of total gross production before taxes and royalties from the Umusadege being 50% during the during the twelve moratorium period ending in March 2016. Forward-Looking Statements and Risks Certain statements contained in this press release constitute "forward-looking statements" as such term is used in applicable Canadian and US securities laws. Any statements that express or involve discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or are not statements of historical fact and should be viewed as "forward-looking statements". These statements relate to analyses and other information that are based upon forecasts of future results, estimates of amounts not yet determinable and assumptions of management. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. In particular, there is no assurance that there will not be future disruptions of the NAOC export pipeline or Brass River export facility. Any future disruptions may materially and adversely affect the ability of the Company to transport, deliver and sell its crude oil production from the Umusadege field. Pipeline and export facilities losses are expected to continue in the future and such losses could be material. There is no assurance that there will not be adjustments to previously reported pipeline and export facilities losses by NAOC. There is no assurance that the estimates of current month pipeline and export facilities losses will reflect actual losses once reported to the Company by NAOC. There is no assurance that there will not be future disruptions to the Umugini Pipeline, Trans Forcados export pipeline or the Forcados export terminal. Any future disruptions may materially and adversely affect the ability of the Company to transport, deliver and sell its crude oil production from the Umusadege field. There is no assurance on when the operators of the Trans Forcados export system will report actual oil injections or pipeline and export facility losses to the Company or that the estimates of the Company regarding oil injection volumes or pipeline and export facility losses referenced in this press release will reflect those volumes and losses reported by the operators of the Trans Forcados export system to the Company. The Umugini pipeline is a relatively new pipeline and will continue to face risk associated with any new pipeline installation and with risks generally associated with pipeline operations in Nigeria. There is no assurance that the Company will be able to successfully complete the UMU-16 well or that the well will be commercially produced. Statements (express or implied) regarding the ability of the Company to successfully drill, complete, test and commercially produce, transport and sell oil from the UMU-16 well (or any one or more of the hydrocarbon sands encountered or identified by the UMU-16 well) should all be viewed as forward-looking statements. There is no assurance that the Company will be able to commercially produce, transport or sell oil from the UMU-15 well (or any one or more of the sands identified by the UMU-15 well). Statements (express or implied) regarding the ability of the Company to commercially produce, transport and sell oil from the UMU-15 well (or any one or more of the hydrocarbon sands identified by the UMU-15 well) should all be viewed as forward-looking statements. The foregoing test results herein not necessarily indicative of long-term performance, future production levels, or of ultimate oil recovery from the UMU-15 well. There can be no assurance that such forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate as actual results and future events could vary or differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements contained in this news release. The forward-looking statements contained herein are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement. Forward-looking statements are made based on management's beliefs, estimates and opinions on the date the statements are made and the Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements and if these beliefs, estimates and opinions or other circumstances should change, except as required by applicable law. NEITHER THE TSX NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER (AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN THE POLICIES OF THE TSX) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THE RELEASE. Contacts: Mart Resources, Inc. - London, England office Dmitri Tsvetkov Interim CEO & CFO +44 207 351 7937 dmitri.tsvetkov@martresources.com Mart Resources, Inc. - Canada Sam Grier 403-270-1841 sam.grier@martresources.com www.martresources.com WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Avanir Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (AVNR) said it has appointed Rohan Palekar as its president and chief executive officer. He replaces Keith Katkin, who has served as president and CEO since March 2007 and will transition to the board of directors for Avanir. Palekar joined Avanir in March 2012 as senior vice president and chief commercial officer. He was promoted to executive vice president and chief operating officer in March 2015. Palekar has more than 20 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry in drug development and commercialization. In his prior position as EVP and chief operating officer for Avanir, he led the commercial, finance and IT, legal affairs, human resources, business development and corporate communications functions. Prior to joining Avanir, Palekar was chief commercial officer for Medivation, a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing drugs in oncology and neuroscience. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM -- (Marketwired) -- 01/20/16 -- Kaseya, the leading provider of complete IT management solutions for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and small to midsized businesses, today released the results of its annual Managed Service Provider (MSP) Global Pricing Survey, which reveals a continued surge in overall growth for MSPs, especially for those offering security services. As part of its unwavering commitment to the MSP community, Kaseya also announced the appointment of industry veteran Miguel Lopez as Senior Vice President and General Manager for MSP Solutions. Lopez brings over 20 years of managed services experience to his role and will lead Kaseya's MSP strategies and consult with Kaseya partners large and small to help them better solve their clients' business problems with Kaseya technology solutions. With survey findings gathered from operators of nearly 400 MSP firms spread across more than 30 countries, Kaseya's Global Pricing Survey report provides unique visibility into both the pricing and new service offering trends in the MSP market segment. The results provide a wealth of detail into what services MSPs currently offer, how they price them and how the MSP business has changed over the past year. Key findings from Kaseya's 2016 survey include that high growth MSPs: Have experienced more than 20 percent annual growth over the past three years; Offer security services as a key competitive advantage as they've indicated that 'heightened security risks' is the top IT problem or service that they expect their clients to have for 2016; Offer Desktop Security services (75 percent); Offer Identity & Access Management services which are growing at a double digit Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) over the past three years (33 percent); Are more than twice as likely to offer cloud-based services such as monitoring, hosting, backup/recovery and desktop/server management; Charge more per hour for their technicians; Have a larger hourly price spread between level one, two and three technicians; Charge more on average for monthly server support and maintenance; Provide hosting services for customer-owned equipment (85 percent); Offer cloud services (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) (50 percent); Expect increased revenues in 2016 (66 percent). For more details and comprehensive analysis of the findings, the Kaseya MSP Global Pricing Survey Report is available here: http://www.kaseya.com/content/2016-global-msp-pricing-survey-results Supporting Quote "As the leading provider of IT management, security and automation technology to MSPs, Kaseya is in the enviable position of being the vendor that others look to for information on what separates a successful MSP from the pack. Having been on both sides (MSP and vendor), I know first hand that successful MSPs have bolder strategies and put their customers' concerns first," said Miguel Lopez, SVP and GM for MSP Solutions, Kaseya. "At Kaseya, we base our own customer success model on our customers' year-over-year growth rather than our own company's sales. It turns out that the most successful MSPs follow the same model for their customers. Kaseya's annual MSP survey provides the industry with a tool to use to evaluate what company success looks like, and highlights the areas that the most successful MSPs thrive at." Helpful Links Kaseya MSP Global Pricing Survey Report Kaseya: What We Do Kaseya: How We Help Kaseya Blog Follow Kaseya on Twitter Follow Kaseya on Facebook Follow Kaseya on LinkedIn Kaseya on YouTube About Kaseya Kaseya is the leading provider of complete IT Management solutions for Managed Service Providers and small to midsized businesses. Kaseya allows organisations to efficiently manage and secure IT in order to drive IT service and business success. Offered as both an industry-leading cloud solution and on-premise software, Kaseya solutions empower businesses to command all of IT centrally, manage remote and distributed environments with ease, and automate across IT management functions. Kaseya solutions currently manage over 10 million endpoints worldwide and are in use by customers in a wide variety of industries, including retail, manufacturing, healthcare, education, government, media, technology, finance, and more. Kaseya, headquartered in Dublin, Ireland is privately held with a presence in over 20 countries. To learn more, please visit www.kaseya.com. Media Contact Taunia Kipp Kaseya 415-694-5700 x1973 taunia.kipp@kaseya.com VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/20/16 -- Tinka Resources Limited ("Tinka" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE: TK)(OTC PINK: TKRFF) is pleased to announce results of the final eight holes of its 2015 drill hole program at the 100%-owned Ayawilca project, central Peru. Twenty-three holes were completed during 2015 for 8,917.5 metres in total, with all holes drilled beyond the boundary limits of the February 2015 Inferred Zinc Mineral Resource (PR Feb 26 2015). The footprint of the zinc, and tin-copper mineralization, continues to grow (approx. 1km x 1.5km). Zinc mineralization remains open particularly to the south and northeast, where the Company is prioritizing new drill permit renewals and extensions by 2nd half 2016. Tin-copper drill intersections cored directly below the zinc from the same diamond holes (A15-49, A15-52 & A15-55) further underpin the growing significance of the Ayawilca polymetallic system. Tin in A15-55 is 130 metres east of reported mineralization in A15-40 (52.3 m at 1.2% tin, 0.16% copper & 15g/t silver), and still open. New drill intersections include: Zinc Mineralization (mantos): -- A15-53: 16.5 metres at 5.5% zinc, 92g/t indium & 11g/t silver from 344.2 metres depth, including: -- 6.8 metres at 8.2% zinc, 117g/t indium & 12g/t silver from 353.9 metres depth; -- A15-52: 18.6 metres at 4.4% zinc, 81g/t indium and 4g/t silver from 306.1 metres depth, including -- 1.6 metres at 11.1% zinc, 280g/t indium & 7g/t silver from 319.9 metres depth; -- A15-49: 8.3 metres at 3.6% zinc, 2.1% lead & 28g/t silver from 279.7 metres depth; Zinc Mineralization (veins): -- A15-54: 5.8 metres at 8.9% zinc and 26g/t silver from 95.9 metres depth, including: -- 1.6 metres at 28.1% zinc and 76g/t silver from 95.9 metres depth; Tin-Copper Mineralization (mantos): -- A15-55: 13.0 metres at 0.74% tin, 0.11% copper & 5g/t silver from 411.6 metres depth, including -- 4.0 metres at 2.0% tin, 0.23% copper & 7g/t silver from 420.6 metres depth, and; -- A15-52: 5.1 metres at 1.2% tin, 0.33% copper & 24g/t silver from 356.1 metres depth, including -- 0.9 metres at 5.26% tin, 0.53% copper & 38g/t silver from 359.0 metres depth; -- A15-49: 9.5 metres at 0.9% tin, 0.26% copper & 12g/t silver from 393.9 metres depth, including -- 2.4 metres at 2.4% tin, 0.43% copper & 8g/t silver from 396.6 metres depth. -- True thickness of the mantos are estimated to be at least 75% of the down-hole lengths for zinc and 85% for tin-copper, as the mineralization is generally flat-lying. True thicknesses of high-grade veins in A15-54 (Table 1) are estimated to be between 60% and 80% of the down-hole lengths. Dr. Graham Carman, Tinka's President and CEO, stated: "We are very pleased with the new drill results, which continue to show that Ayawilca is a large and 'growing' polymetallic discovery. We estimate only 30% of the prospective area at Ayawilca has been drill tested, with high-priority targets lying immediately outside of the permitted area (e.g., South Ayawilca, West Ayawilca, Chaucha). Drilling permit renewals and extensions are under way to test targets beyond the current limits of drilling. We expect the new permits, which will cover an area of approximately 9 km2 (i.e., 3 times the size of the existing permits), will be granted during the second half of 2016. "The 2015 drill program, in particular, has extended the zinc mineralization to the south and has also linked the Central and Eastern Ayawilca zinc areas together. Tinka's geological team is now compiling and interpreting the extensive information gathered from the drilling. We expect to update the February 2015 zinc mineral resource, as well as estimate an initial tin-copper mineral resource, in 2016. "In the next 6 months Tinka will continue its field activities focusing on district-scale exploration. We are planning a systematic property-wide airborne magnetic survey covering the entire tenement package, consisting of 140 km2, just as soon as weather and permitting processes allow (expected May 2016). Company geologists have already identified base metal occurrences several kilometres to the north, with characteristics similar to those outcropping over the blind Ayawilca zone, in areas of no or limited previous exploration. Only 15% of our highly prospective tenement package has been covered with magnetics - we believe this upcoming airborne survey will find new areas of mineralization and provide additional upside for the future of the project. Tinka remains in a strong financial position with around C$7 million cash and no debt at the end of September 2015." 2015 Ayawilca Drill Program The 2015 program focused on drill testing extensions of the Inferred Mineral Resource at East, Central and West Ayawilca (see Figures 1 & 2). Twenty three step-out holes for 8,917.5 metres were completed using two diamond drill rigs between August and December 2015. One hole (A15-48) was lost at 69 metres depth. In the case of tin, true widths are at least 85% of down-hole length due to the flat-lying mineralization. True widths of the zinc intercepts are believed to be at least 75% of the down-hole widths, as the mineralization is interpreted to be generally gently dipping. Table 1 shows the drill intercepts highlights for all 2015 holes. Table 2 summarises the drill hole collar information for all 2015 holes. Two north-south interpretive cross sections are shown for 333400E and 333900E sections, respectively (see Figures 3 and 4). Geology of Ayawilca Zinc mineralization at Ayawilca occurs as massive to semi-massive sulphide replacements of Mesozoic limestone up to 250 metres thick (Pucara Group). The zinc mineralization is interpreted to be hosted mostly by gently-dipping replacement bodies or 'mantos', with feeders which are sub-vertical to steeply-south dipping. The zinc occurs as sulphide impregnations (sphalerite) accompanied by abundant pyrite, pyrrhotite, chlorite, iron carbonate, and/or magnetite. Minor sulphides include galena, chalcopyrite, and arsenopyrite. The Pucara limestone is overlain by a 150 metre thick sequence of Cretaceous sandstone (Goyllarisquizga Group). The sandstone forms a barren cap to the mineralization, although narrow sphalerite-rich sub-vertical veins (less than 1 - 3 metres wide) cut the sandstone and occasionally outcrop at the surface especially at West Ayawilca. Massive to semi-massive pyrrhotite mantos, which occur at or near the base of the Pucara Group limestone, host tin and copper mineralization. The pyrrhotite bodies are magnetic, and are the main source of the strong geophysical anomalies. The pyrrhotite-tin-copper mantos vary in thickness from a few metres to up to 50 metres thick. Sulphide stockwork veins occur beneath the mantos hosted within the underlying metamorphic rocks (Excelsior Group). Based on a mineralogical study of eight tin-bearing samples from seven drill holes (PR November 25, 2014), tin at Ayawilca occurs predominantly as cassiterite (tin oxide), the most common ore mineral of tin, with minor stannite (tin-copper sulphide). Almost half of the cassiterite was coarse-grained (greater than 0.3 mm), providing the opportunity for possible gravity separation of the coarser tin fractions in any future mining operation. Copper was predominantly chalcopyrite. The Ayawilca project is located in the high Andes Mountains at elevations of between 4,000 and 4,300 metres. Ayawilca would likely be mined, if proven to be economic, using underground mining methods accessed by horizontal portals at lower elevations. The qualified person, Dr. Graham Carman, Tinka's President and CEO, and a Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, has reviewed and verified the technical contents of this release. About Tinka Resources Limited Tinka is an exploration and development company with projects in Peru. Tinka's focus is on its 100%-owned Ayawilca and Colquipucro projects in the highly mineralized zinc-lead-silver belt of central Peru, 200 kilometres north of Lima. The Ayawilca project (Inferred Mineral Resource of 13.3 Mt @ 5.9% Zn, 0.2% Pb, 68g/t In, 14g/t Ag for 7.7% Zn Eq., PR Feb 26 2015) has the potential to be a major zinc sulphide discovery located 40 kilometres from Peru's largest historic zinc mine at Cerro de Pasco. The adjacent Colquipucro silver oxide project (Indicated Mineral Resource of 7.4 Mt @ 60g/t Ag for 14.3 Moz Ag and Inferred Mineral Resource of 8.5 Mt @ 48g/t Ag for 13.2 Moz Ag, Feb' 26, 2015) is a near-surface, sandstone-hosted, silver oxide deposit. On behalf of the Board, Dr. Graham Carman, President & CEO Forward-Looking Statements: Certain information in this news release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws (collectively "forward-looking statements"). All statements, other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs and expectations of Tinka as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to Tinka's management. Such statements reflect the current risks, uncertainties and assumptions related to certain factors including, without limitations, the successful completion of the current and future drill programs, the interpretation and actual results from the drill programs, the Company's expectations regarding mineral resource calculations, capital and other costs varying significantly from estimates, production rates varying from estimates, changes in world metal markets, changes in equity markets, uncertainties relating to the availability and costs of financing needed in the future, equipment failure, unexpected geological conditions, imprecision in resource estimates or metal recoveries, success of future development initiatives, competition, operating performance, environmental and safety risks, delays in obtaining or failure to obtain necessary permits and approvals from local authorities, community relations, and other development and operating risks. Should any one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should any underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described herein. Although Tinka believes that assumptions inherent in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and accordingly undue reliance should not be put on such statements due to the inherent uncertainty therein. Except as may be required by applicable securities laws, Tinka disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking statement. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release. Notes on core sampling: All holes are HQ diamond cores with recoveries generally at or close to 100%. The drill core is marked up, logged, and photographed on site. The cores are cut in half at the Company's core storage facility with half-cores stored as a future reference. The other half-core is bagged on average over 1 to 2 metre composite intervals and sent to SGS laboratory in Lima for assay in batches. Standards, blanks and duplicates are inserted by the Company for quality control purposes. At the laboratory, samples are dried, crushed to 100% passing 2mm, with 500 grams pulverized for multi-element analysis by ICP using multi-acid digestion. Samples assaying over 1% zinc, lead, or copper are re-assayed using precise ore-grade AAS techniques. Samples which assayed approximately 200 ppm tin or greater in the ICP analysis were re-assayed for tin by fusion with sodium peroxide and AAS finish (SGS Lima laboratory method SGS-MN-ME-112). The fusion results are presented in Table 1, where available. The high-grade tin interval in A15-40 (50.5 metres) was check assayed by XRF pressed powder technique (ALS Lima laboratory method ME-XRF15b) with the results being the same as fusion within analytical uncertainty. Gold was assayed by fire-assay with a 30g charge using an AAS finish, but is not routinely assayed due to low gold values found in most samples. Notes on drill results in Table 1: The down-hole intersections using a 1% Zn or 0.1% Sn cut-off grade (over 6 metre intervals) are summarized in Table 1. High-grade zinc intersections use a 3% Zn cut-off grade. Intercepts (Int) shown are down-hole widths. Cut-off grades are 1% Zn or 0.1% Sn over 6 metre intervals. In the case of tin, true widths are at least 85% of down-hole length due to the flat-lying nature of the mineralization. True widths of the zinc intercepts are believed to be at least 75% of the down-hole widths as the mineralization is generally gently dipping (except where marked with (i) in hole A15-36 where true thickness is estimated to be approx. 30% of down-hole length). N/A = Not assayed. Table 1. Highlights of 2015 Drill Results at Ayawilca (New results highlighted) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Drill From To Int Zn Pb Ag Cu Sn In Au hole (m) (m) (m) (%) (%) (g/t) (%) (%) (g/t) (g/t) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A15-55 265.90 268.25 2.35 3.54 1.89 49 0.08 0.03 1 N/A and 308.40 314.90 6.50 2.03 2.89 72 0.09 0.02 less N/A than 1 and 389.55 407.30 17.75 1.34 0.01 1 0.01 0 38 N/A and 411.60 424.60 13.00 0.19 0.01 5 0.11 0.74 7 N/A including 420.65 424.60 3.95 0.07 0.00 7 0.23 2.02 5 N/A and 454.60 458.30 3.70 2.82 0.00 2 0.05 0.05 14 N/A A15-54 95.90 101.70 5.80 8.89 0.05 26 0.05 less 2.5 N/A than 0.01 including 95.90 97.50 1.60 28.14 0.04 76 0.12 0.01 8 N/A and 107.00 118.20 11.20 4.81 0.03 22 0.03 less 3 N/A than 0.01 including 113.90 114.40 0.50 33.37 0.23 152 0.17 0.01 7 N/A including 107.00 107.50 0.50 13.97 0.07 39 0.13 less 7 N/A than 0.01 including 115.20 115.80 0.60 22.67 0.15 147 0.17 0.01 6 N/A including 117.70 118.20 0.50 18.32 0.06 53 0.12 0.01 24 N/A and 138.50 141.70 3.20 9.96 0.62 84 0.04 less 1 N/A than 0.01 including 138.50 139.10 0.60 27.93 2.22 230 0.08 less 1 N/A than 0.01 and 162.00 180.00 18.00 3.71 0.89 65 0.02 less 1 N/A than 0.01 including 168.40 168.90 0.50 37.43 0.19 134 0.23 less 9 N/A than 0.01 and 193.60 194.10 0.50 14.53 0.10 102 0.09 less 4 N/A than 0.01 and 200.40 205.20 4.80 3.00 0.08 19 0.02 less 5 N/A than 0.01 including 202.80 203.30 0.50 16.31 0.10 69 0.07 less 42 N/A than 0.01 A15-53 128.00 132.00 4.00 7.63 less 13 less less 1 N/A than than than 0.01 0.01 0.01 including 128.00 130.00 2.00 12.26 0.01 20 0.01 less 2 N/A than 0.01 and 160.00 164.00 4.00 4.45 0.03 16 less less 7 N/A than than 0.01 0.01 and 190.00 191.40 1.40 0.75 1.35 240 less less less N/A than than than 1 0.01 0.01 and 344.20 360.7 16.50 5.45 0.02 11 0.12 0.05 92 N/A including 353.90 360.7 6.80 8.17 0.02 12 0.09 0.08 117 N/A and 380.30 389.00 8.70 4.36 0.14 9 0.04 0.1 8 N/A A15-52 192.00 192.60 0.60 10.23 4.06 161 0.05 0.03 152 N/A and 198.50 202.10 3.60 2.06 0.02 5 0.01 less 27 N/A than 0.01 and 232.00 246.10 14.10 1.88 1.69 27 0.05 0.03 less N/A than 1 and 270.60 274.95 4.35 6.38 0.61 14 0.05 0.05 less N/A than 1 and 306.1 324.7 18.60 4.38 0.03 4 0.06 0.06 81 N/A including 319.9 321.5 1.60 11.13 0.02 7 0.13 0.07 280 N/A and 356.10 361.20 5.10 0.28 less 24 0.33 1.21 17 N/A than 0.01 including 359.00 359.85 0.85 0.34 less 38 0.53 5.26 25 N/A than 0.01 and 364.00 387.00 23.00 2.77 0.06 6 0.02 0.03 43 N/A including 370.30 371.25 0.95 16.59 0.04 10 0.05 0.04 301 N/A and 394.20 400.70 6.50 3.09 0.01 3 0.04 0.12 18 N/A A15-51 376.00 380.10 4.10 3.05 0.03 1 less less 93 than than 0.01 0.01 A15-50 384.60 392.60 8.00 1.97 less 1 0.01 less 13 N/A than than 0.01 0.01 A15-49 30.90 31.70 0.80 7.56 0.73 50 0.04 0.03 40 N/A and 84.50 85.00 0.50 19.60 0.14 59 0.12 0.01 83 N/A and 167.70 174.20 6.50 1.15 0.85 87 0.05 0.19 less N/A than 1 and 279.70 288.00 8.30 3.57 2.07 28 0.03 0.06 5 N/A and 302.00 309.80 7.80 2.49 1.45 25 0.02 0.03 less N/A than 1 and 393.90 403.40 9.50 0.39 0.02 12 0.26 0.88 8 N/A including 396.60 399.00 2.40 0.03 less 8 0.43 2.39 6 N/A than 0.01 A15-47 152.30 154.65 2.35 0.24 0.20 210 0.01 less less N/A than than 1 0.01 and 178.35 179.00 0.65 5.21 5.87 133 0.07 less less N/A than than 1 0.01 and 386.00 390.00 4.00 3.64 less 1 0.02 0.05 4 N/A than 0.01 and 396.00 398.50 2.50 5.14 less 10 0.10 0.13 210 N/A than 0.01 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A15-46 99.20 101.30 2.10 37.25 2.29 255 0.15 0.04 347 N/A and 185.70 192.00 6.30 3.10 0.01 5 0.01 less 9 N/A than 0.01 and 230.70 231.20 0.50 6.23 9.92 308 0.26 0.03 1 N/A and 246.50 248.00 1.50 3.41 2.49 97 0.14 less 1 N/A than 0.01 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A15-45 109.40 109.90 0.50 10.75 0.12 36 0.03 0.04 73 N/A and 115.40 115.90 0.50 17.69 0.08 33 0.03 less 45 N/A than 0.01 and 168.20 174.50 6.30 2.12 0.02 2 less less 16 N/A than than 0.01 0.01 and 308.00 314.00 6.00 2.30 0.91 13 0.04 less 1 N/A than 0.01 and 344.00 350.00 6.00 2.36 0.53 8 0.01 0.07 1 N/A and 367.25 376.00 8.75 3.00 0.17 5 0.02 0.04 12 N/A including 373.00 374.40 1.40 8.96 0.05 11 0.07 0.03 6 N/A and 381.80 384.50 2.70 5.47 0.08 5 0.00 0.05 7 N/A A15-44 172.80 178.70 4.90 3.21 0.06 23 0.02 less 28 N/A than 0.01 and 305.90 310.90 5.00 2.80 0.02 6 0.04 less 23 N/A than 0.01 and 350.55 365.40 14.85 0.46 less 26 0.36 1.10 15 N/A than 0.01 including 358.00 363.65 5.65 0.05 less 47 0.56 2.16 16 N/A than 0.01 A15-43 130.70 134.00 3.30 14.87 0.07 23 0.05 0.04 99 N/A and 151.30 156.10 4.80 2.24 1.08 16 0.02 less less N/A than than 1 0.01 and 177.20 206.50 29.30 2.16 0.31 7 0.01 less 27 N/A than 0.01 and 221.00 252.30 31.30 2.63 0.01 5 0.08 less 52 N/A than 0.01 including 222.50 226.00 3.50 4.74 less 4 0.02 less 63 N/A than than 0.01 0.01 and 281.90 329.60 47.70 0.08 0.00 4 0.20 0.47 4 N/A including 314.00 320.00 6.00 0.01 0.00 10 0.52 1.28 6 N/A A15-42 78.00 82.00 4.00 2.80 0.02 12 0.02 less 1 N/A than 0.01 and 110.00 116.50 6.50 3.03 0.01 7 0.01 less less N/A than than 1 0.01 including 115.40 116.50 1.10 13.02 0.04 17 0.04 less 1 N/A than 0.01 and 170.00 176.00 6.00 1.74 1.03 112 0.03 less less N/A than than 1 0.01 A15-41 82.40 86.00 3.60 15.35 0.06 31 0.05 0.01 103 N/A including 82.40 84.30 1.90 28.08 0.04 45 0.10 0.02 190 N/A and 233.70 242.70 9.00 4.31 1.25 29 0.06 0.01 1 N/A and 268.10 273.40 5.30 4.35 0.45 9 0.03 0.01 3 N/A and 286.50 294.50 8.00 1.43 0.29 8 0.01 0.02 5 N/A and 306.00 308.40 2.40 6.71 0.01 3 0.06 0.03 172 N/A and 294.00 340.00 46.00 0.58 0.02 4 0.10 0.20 16 N/A A15-40 55.00 62.00 7.00 3.89 less 3 less less 1 N/A than than than 0.01 0.01 0.01 and 201.60 223.50 21.90 1.89 0.18 8 0.04 0.03 13 N/A and 231.40 248.50 17.10 3.42 0.23 8 0.05 0.03 62 N/A including 233.80 241.75 7.95 5.31 0.04 9 0.07 0.04 91 N/A and 300.20 301.20 1.00 7.67 0.14 36 0.06 0.02 140 N/A and 326.20 378.5 52.3 0.32 0.03 15 0.16 1.20 9 N/A including 328.00 341.00 13.00 0.05 less 12 0.25 2.94 8 N/A than 0.01 including 330.00 332.50 2.50 0.02 less 10 0.18 8.81 4 N/A than 0.01 A15-39 182.60 183.60 1.00 9.64 0.01 10 0.03 less 23 N/A than 0.01 and 294.80 303.20 8.40 3.29 0.13 9 0.01 0.06 56 N/A and 320.00 350.00 30.00 3.53 0.10 7 0.01 0.08 50 N/A including 329.25 331.00 1.75 18.87 0.01 27 0.01 0.07 226 N/A and 370.00 452.00 82.00 0.01 less 5 0.22 0.33 3 N/A than 0.01 including 370.00 420.00 50.00 0.01 less 6 0.25 0.52 3 N/A than 0.01 including 380.00 388.00 8.00 less less 3 0.19 1.43 1 N/A than than 0.01 0.01 A15-38 236.60 280.00 43.40 3.65 0.08 13 0.06 0.08 63 N/A including 268.00 278.00 10.00 5.90 0.02 16 0.08 0.18 119 N/A and 294.00 303.30 9.30 4.20 0.02 5 0.03 0.11 31 N/A and 312.00 328.00 16.00 1.83 less 1 0.03 0.06 46 N/A than 0.01 and 354.00 360.70 6.70 2.25 less 2 0.05 0.04 46 N/A than 0.01 and 372.70 379.00 6.30 2.46 less 1 0.02 0.1 22 N/A than 0.01 and 379.00 388.00 9.00 0.04 less 4 0.26 0.04 5 N/A than 0.01 A15-37 84.00 89.60 5.60 3.12 0.33 26 0.02 less 50 N/A than 0.01 and 475.50 481.90 6.40 4.16 0.74 25 0.03 less 53 N/A than 0.01 A15-36 79.70 87.00 7.30(i) 7.10 1.29 194 0.12 less 53 0.24 than 0.01 and 344.50 354.00 9.50 4.00 0.01 2 0.05 0.07 74 N/A and 360.00 399.35 39.35 0.27 0.06 19 0.11 0.21 26 N/A A15-35 162.00 190.00 28.00 3.26 0.78 25 0.06 0.06 10 N/A and 196.00 246.00 50.00 2.97 0.33 12 0.02 0.1 31 N/A including 202.00 216.00 14.00 3.78 0.04 6 0.02 0.1 19 N/A ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- including 238.00 246.00 8.00 4.74 0.06 19 0.05 0.17 67 N/A and 262.00 302.00 40.00 2.26 0.03 3 0.02 less 9 N/A than 0.01 including 288.00 296.00 8.00 3.53 0.04 8 0.06 less 6 N/A than 0.01 and 340.00 354.15 14.15 0.31 0.00 1 0.16 0.36 12 N/A A15-34 98.00 99.30 1.30 5.64 0.18 92 0.14 less 138 N/A than 0.01 and 364.00 368.00 4.00 1.50 0.12 6 0.02 less less N/A than than 1 0.01 and 418.00 426.00 8.00 1.41 0.22 8 0.02 0.01 5 N/A ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Notes on drill hole data Table 2: Eastings and Northings are based on the PSAD56/18S UTM datum. Elevations were taken from a measured topographic model compiled from field surveys using theodolite from known surveyed points at a scale of 1:1,000. Azimuth and dip measurements of drill holes were taken using compass and inclinometer at surface. All holes were down-hole surveyed; small variances in both azimuth and dip do occur down hole but are not shown here. Table 2. Drill hole collar coordinates and hole details ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Drill Elevation Depth Hole Easting Northing m m Azimuth Dip Comment ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A15-34 333,713 8,846,592 4,209 435.6 000 -70 Reported Sep' 29 2015 A15-35 333,720 8,846,129 4,138 385.7 180 -75 Reported Sep' 29 2015 A15-36 333,904 8,846,291 4,113 425.8 180 -80 Reported Sep' 29 2015 A15-37 333,858 8,846,620 4,198 509.1 000 -60 Reported Sep' 29 2015 A15-38 333,884 8,846,090 4,118 441.1 000 -90 Reported Sep' 29 2015 A15-39 333,698 8,845,727 4,185 568.3 000 -75 Reported Sep' 29 2015 A15-40 333,893 8,845,891 4,113 423.1 000 -75 Reported Oct' 13 2015 A15-41 333,397 8,845,857 4,202 360.3 180 -75 Reported Oct' 28 2015 A15-42 332,858 8,846,372 4,275 299.2 180 -85 Reported Oct' 28 2015 A15-43 333,507 8,845,865 4,171 427.5 000 -85 Reported Oct' 28 2015 A15-44 333,400 8,845,723 4,220 392.9 180 -80 Reported Oct' 28 2015 A15-45 333,800 8,845,816 4,145 404.2 000 -65 Reported Oct' 28 2015 A15-46 333,160 8,845,900 4,230 407.3 180 -60 Reported Oct' 28 2015 A15-47 333,997 8,846,181 4,062 425.8 180 -60 New Results A15-48 334,314 8,846,134 3,982 68.7 000 -85 Hole Lost A15-49 333,717 8,846,122 4,137 424.4 020 -70 New Results A15-50 334,194 8,846,345 4,062 453.2 000 -80 New Results A15-51 333,732 8,846,440 4,176 451.7 025 -70 New Results A15-52 333,904 8,845,832 4,153 450.3 000 -80 New Results A15-53 333,904 8,845,832 4,153 412.5 180 -80 New Results A15-54 332,868 8,846,185 4,267 264.7 325 -45 New Results A15-55 334,000 8,845,775 4,113 486.1 000 -70 New Results ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To view Figures 1, 2, 3 and 4 please click on the following link: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/TK0120.pdf Contacts: Tinka Resources Limited Investor Information Mariana Bermudez 1.604.699.0202 info@tinkaresources.com www.tinkaresources.com Miniaturization trend set to empower wearables with more functionalities, finds Frost & Sullivan MOUNTAIN VIEW, California, Jan. 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The fast emerging field of wearables is poised to disrupt current technologies and processes across industries while creating new market opportunities and business models. The market will continue to evolve as various start-ups and established companies take a keen interest in product research and development, particularly in the creation of multiple functions for individual devices. New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, Futuristic Outlook of Wearable Technology in Key Applications (http://frost.ly/o), finds that the use of wearables is expanding beyond fitness tracking to include applications in consumer electronics, automotive, sports, industrial processes and homeland security. For complimentary access to more information on this research, please visit: http://bit.ly/1Kpa7mR While a plethora of options exist for distinct functions, wearables that cater to multiple applications are in short supply. Limited form factors and battery capacities curb the incorporation of diverse capabilities in a single wearable device. The implementation of efficient power management and energy harvesting technologies that will help wearables run for longer periods will be critical to widen the utility of the technology. "The trend toward miniaturization will allow more features to be packed in chips and empower wearables to provide functionalities previously not possible in such small devices," said TechVision Research Analyst Sumit Kumar Pal. "Advancements in processor technologies will equip wearables with high computing capabilities for demanding applications." Advancements in cellular connectivity, low-power Bluetooth and wireless communication standards such as ZigBee and Wi-Fi will expedite the evolution of wearables. Innovations in material technologies such as smart fabrics will also enable next-generation wearable devices. Expectedly, the success of wearables will depend on innovations from the entire ecosystem of app developers, service providers, technology providers and original equipment manufacturers. Stakeholders should also explore untapped technology and industry convergence scenarios, which can give rise to new dynamics such as convergence between wearables and insurance or wearables and jewelry. "Such integration will give shape to the connected living trend throughout the world and add momentum to the adoption of wearable technology," noted Pal. "Companies that substitute brick-and-mortar business models with online channels to breach geographical boundaries will be able to fully tap the market potential and bring wearables to a global audience." Futuristic Outlook of Wearable Technology in Key Applications, a part of the TechVision (http://ww2.frost.com/research/technology/information-communication) subscription, offers a detailed account of wearable technologies, including funding trends, IP activity, transformation potential of enabling technologies, innovation ecosystem, application overview with futuristic outlook and strategic insights. It also outlines the impact of megatrends and emerging business models in the wearables domain. Frost & Sullivan's global TechVision practice focuses on innovation, disruption and convergence and provides a variety of technology based alerts, newsletters and research services, as well as growth consulting services. Its premier offering, the TechVision program, identifies and evaluates the most valuable emerging and disruptive technologies enabling products with near-term potential. View a summary of our TechVision program: http://ifrost.frost.com/TechVision_Demo. About Frost & Sullivan Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's market participants. Our "Growth Partnership" supports clients by addressing these opportunities and incorporating two key elements driving visionary innovation: The Integrated Value Proposition and The Partnership Infrastructure. The Integrated Value Proposition provides support to our clients throughout all phases of their journey to visionary innovation including research, analysis, strategy, vision, innovation and implementation. provides support to our clients throughout all phases of their journey to visionary innovation including research, analysis, strategy, vision, innovation and implementation. The Partnership Infrastructure is unique as it constructs the foundation upon which visionary innovation becomes possible. This includes our 360- degree research, comprehensive industry coverage, career best practices as well as our global footprint of more than 40 offices. For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community. Is your organization prepared for the next profound wave of industry convergence, disruptive technologies, increasing competitive intensity, Mega Trends, breakthrough best practices, changing customer dynamics and emerging economies? Contact Us: Start the discussion Futuristic Outlook of Wearable Technology in Key Applications D6A6 Contact: Clarissa Castaneda Corporate Communications - North America P: +1 210.477.8481 F: +1 210.348.1003 E: clarissa.castaneda@frost.com NEW YORK, NY -- (Marketwired) -- 01/20/16 -- Fiduciary Trust Company International (Fiduciary Trust), a leading wealth management firm and wholly-owned subsidiary of Franklin Resources, Inc., is pleased to announce that the New York Business Journal is honoring executive vice president Carin Pai with its second annual Women of Influence Award. The award honors women business leaders in the New York City area who stand out both for their achievements in the marketplace as well as their commitment to the community and mentoring. Ms. Pai was recognized for her business acumen and performance over the past several years, as well as for setting a positive example as a leader, colleague and mentor. She is an active member and strong supporter of the Women@FTI initiative, a forum for employees to discuss how women can overcome barriers to career advancement. The New York Business Journal's Women of Influence is part of a national effort by American City Business Journals to identify and celebrate women business leaders as well as foster business environments that will help develop more successful women in the future. Ms. Pai and other award recipients will be recognized at a luncheon on January 20th at the Harvard Club in New York City. "We are extremely proud of Carin's accomplishments and dedication to the firm," said Gail Cohen, chair and general trust counsel of Fiduciary Trust. "She is a true leader at our company with exemplary professionalism and personal touch." As director of Equity Management and head of the Equity Strategy Committee, Ms. Pai is responsible for leading Fiduciary Trust's equity strategy and process. She manages client portfolios, oversees the firm's team of equity portfolio managers and serves on the management committee. Prior to joining Fiduciary Trust in 1996, Ms. Pai worked at Prudential Securities in the brokerage division. She earned a B.S. in business administration from the University at Albany, State University of New York, and completed an Executive Program at Harvard Business School for investment management. She is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA)(1) charterholder and a member of the New York Society of Security Analysts. About Fiduciary Trust Fiduciary Trust Company International, a global investment management firm, has served individuals, families, endowments and foundations since 1931. With over $45 billion in assets under administration and management as of September 30, 2015, the firm specializes in strategic wealth planning, investment management and trust and estate services, as well as tax and custody services. The firm and its subsidiaries maintain offices in New York, Coral Gables, FL, Boca Raton, FL, St. Petersburg, FL, Los Angeles, San Mateo, CA, Washington, D.C., Wilmington, DE, and London. For more information please visit fiduciarytrust.com. About Franklin Resources Franklin Resources, Inc. (NYSE: BEN) is a global investment management organization operating as Franklin Templeton Investments. Franklin Templeton Investments provides global and domestic investment management to retail, institutional and sovereign wealth clients in over 150 countries. Through specialized teams, the company has expertise across all asset classes -- including equity, fixed income, alternative and custom solutions. The company's more than 600 investment professionals are supported by its integrated, worldwide team of risk management professionals and global trading desk network. With offices in 35 countries, the California-based company has more than 65 years of investment experience and approximately $763 billion in assets under management as of December 31, 2015. For more information, please visit franklintempleton.com. (1) CFA and Chartered Financial Analyst are trademarks owned by CFA Institute. Copyright 2016. Fiduciary Trust Company International. All rights reserved. Media Contact: Rebecca Radosevich (212) 632-3207 Email Contact Michael Chiong (646) 922-7764 Email Contact WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - US Defense Department installations will no longer accept driver's licenses from Minnesota, Illinois, Missouri, New Mexico and Washington as proof of identity. The ban, which also includes licenses from American Samoa, is a consequence of the REAL ID Act of 2005, DoD News quoted DoD officials as saying Wednesday. The REAL ID Act grew out of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks -- most of the terrorists involved had driver's licenses from Florida and Virginia. Congress tightened up issuance processes and documentation needed to get a driver's license. Compliant cards must have specific security features to prevent tampering, counterfeiting or duplication of the document. The licenses also must present data in a common, machine-readable format. The REAL ID Act affects only access control policies where individuals are required to present an identification document for accessing federal facilities, entering nuclear power plants or boarding federally regulated commercial aircraft. The federal REAL ID Act implementation rules allow for exceptions, officials noted. For example, they explained, life or safety issues such as medical emergencies, and situations in which physical access is necessary to apply for benefits are two exceptions. Those attempting to gain physical access to DoD installations must show an alternate form of identification, such as a passport, officials said. Service members, family members, DoD employees, and federal employees with the DoD common access card, DoD uniformed services identification and privileges cards, federal personal identification verification cards or transportation workers' identification credentials are not affected, officials said, as these cards are authorized in DoD policy to facilitate physical access to installations. 'All federal agencies including DoD must comply with the law regarding the use of REAL IDs for official purposes,' an official said. 'For most DoD installations, an identification card or an installation pass is required to facilitate access. Hence, where an ID or an installation pass is used for physical access, DoD installations are prohibited from accepting driver's licenses or state identification cards from states deemed non-REAL ID compliant. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwired - January 20, 2016) - Taglich Brothers, Inc. announces that it has initiated coverage of Aspen Group, Inc. (OTCBB: ASPU). Aspen Group, Inc., headquartered in Denver, Colorado, provides online postsecondary education through its Aspen University subsidiary. ASPU's mission is to provide a quality, responsibly priced distance-learning education. The company offers certificate programs and associate, bachelor, master and doctoral degree programs in nursing, business, education, technology, and professional studies. ASPU's school of nursing is its fastest growing program with 48% of full-time degree seeking students enrolled in one of its nursing programs in 2Q16 compared to 36% in the year-ago period. The complete 20-page report is available at www.taglichbrothers.com. Taglich Brothers, Inc. is a full-service broker dealer focused exclusively on microcap companies. The Company defines the microcap segment of the equity market as companies with less than $250 million in market capitalization. Taglich Brothers currently offers institutional and retail brokerage services, investment banking and comprehensive research coverage to the investment community. We do not undertake to advise you as to changes in figures or our views. This is not a solicitation of any order to buy or sell. Taglich Brothers, Inc. is fully disclosed with its clearing firm, Pershing, LLC, is not a market maker and does not sell to or buy from customers on a principal basis. The above statement is the opinion of Taglich Brothers, Inc. and is not a guarantee that the target price for the stock will be met or that predicted business results for the company will occur. There may be instances when fundamental, technical and quantitative opinions contained in this report are not in concert. 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Contact: Rick Oh Taglich Brothers, Inc. 631-757-1500 LONDON and ROCKLEIGH, New Jersey, January 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Visit Hall 2, Booth C24 to Tour the Exceptional Office and Home Environments Made Possible by Crestron Technology From innovative and productive workplaces to exceptional smart homes, Crestron Electronics, a leading global technology company, is showcasing its latest solutions during Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) 2016 from 9-12 February at the RAI Convention Centre in Amsterdam. These include enhancements to the company's flagship Crestron Fusion platform, which helps enterprises optimise their most important investments - their technology/AV devices, meeting spaces and people. Crestron's unique solutions incorporate best-in-class, secure and scalable technologies and seamlessly integrate disparate systems. Dealers/integrators, solution providers, AV managers, customers, and prospective clients are invited to visit Hall 2, Booth C24 for a demonstration of how Crestron makes life easier and better. At the booth, the company will be providing attendees with room-by-room tours of the extraordinary commercial and residential environments they make possible. Crestron will have a major presence at ISE 2016, the world's largest AV, system integration and communications show. Attendees will be exposed to cutting-edge solutions for smart building integration, asset and space utilisation, global device management, broadcast messaging, energy management, security, and much more. The company is planning four days of announcements, awards, training, and consultations, including: Product news: Crestron will discuss the first cloud-based version of its Crestron Fusion platform for managing companies' multimedia, environmental and room-scheduling needs with ease. This one-of-a-kind platform provides full, real-time visibility into the enterprise at the individual room and device levels. Executives will demonstrate how Crestron Fusion, used with the new Crestron PinPoint mobile app, clears a path for employees to work smarter, faster and more efficiently and helps improve companies' bottom lines. Crestron will discuss the first cloud-based version of its Crestron Fusion platform for managing companies' multimedia, environmental and room-scheduling needs with ease. This one-of-a-kind platform provides full, real-time visibility into the enterprise at the individual room and device levels. Executives will demonstrate how Crestron Fusion, used with the new Crestron PinPoint mobile app, clears a path for employees to work smarter, faster and more efficiently and helps improve companies' bottom lines. Awards: The Crestron Integration Awards will be held on 10 February at 3pm at the Crestron booth. The awards celebrate the achievements of integrators, designers and partners who have developed extraordinary home and commercial environments using Crestron technologies. Watch for the Best Integrated Home, Best Corporate Installation, and Most Innovative Solution, among other categories. The Crestron Integration Awards will be held on 10 February at at the Crestron booth. The awards celebrate the achievements of integrators, designers and partners who have developed extraordinary home and commercial environments using Crestron technologies. Watch for the Best Integrated Home, Best Corporate Installation, and Most Innovative Solution, among other categories. Training: Enterprises and colleges/universities alike are pushing to transform their spaces for a new competitive advantage. Several courses will help AV managers and integrators meet their demand. Classes on Communication into the Boardroom, Creating the Huddle Experience, Driving the Meeting Room Experience with Crestron's .AV Framework, and Streaming into the Classroom will be held on 10-11 February, 2016 . Enterprises and colleges/universities alike are pushing to transform their spaces for a new competitive advantage. Several courses will help AV managers and integrators meet their demand. Classes on Communication into the Boardroom, Creating the Huddle Experience, Driving the Meeting Room Experience with Crestron's .AV Framework, and Streaming into the Classroom will be held on . Consultants Summit : A Consultants Summit on 9 February will cover the latest product offerings from Crestron and how each can contribute to a complete integrated solution for projects of any size. A lunch at 12:00 will be followed by presentations from Fred Bargetzi , Crestron's Chief Technology Officer and Stijn Ooms , Crestron Director of Technology in Europe . : A Consultants Summit on 9 February will cover the latest product offerings from Crestron and how each can contribute to a complete integrated solution for projects of any size. A lunch at 12:00 will be followed by presentations from , Crestron's Chief Technology Officer and , Crestron Director of Technology in . Presentations: Visit the Unified Communications Theatre in Hall 9 on 9-10 February to gain valuable insights from Crestron's Technology Manager for Unified Communications, Joe Sarrasin. Joe will also be hosting two sessions - 1) Bringing Skype for Business and Google Hangouts to the conference room; and 2) How Crestron is facilitating technology between AV and IT professionals for the enterprise conference room. On 10 February, Crestron's Research and Development Manager, Dan Jackson will be a panelist for a discussion on the future of AV in light of the IT convergence. Visit the Unified Communications Theatre in Hall 9 on 9-10 February to gain valuable insights from Crestron's Technology Manager for Unified Communications, Joe Sarrasin. Joe will also be hosting two sessions - 1) Bringing Skype for Business and Google Hangouts to the conference room; and 2) How Crestron is facilitating technology between AV and IT professionals for the enterprise conference room. On 10 February, Crestron's Research and Development Manager, will be a panelist for a discussion on the future of AV in light of the IT convergence. Press Tour: The press are invited to breakfast and a personal tour of the Crestron booth on 10 February before the show opens. About Crestron For more than 40 years, Crestron has been the world's leading manufacturer of advanced control and automation systems. Our solutions are built on a validated architecture, using best-in-class technology that integrates unified communications, AV presentation, lighting, and environmental systems. Crestron streamlines technology, improving the quality of life for people in corporate conference rooms, hotels, classrooms, auditoriums, and in their homes. Our products are backed by more than 90 fully-staffed offices that provide 24 x 7 x 365 sales, technical, and training support across the globe. In addition to its World Headquarters in Rockleigh, New Jersey, Crestron has sales and support offices throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Australia. Discover the world of Crestron by visiting http://www.crestron.com. All brand names, product names, and trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Certain trademarks, registered trademarks, and trade names may be used in this document to refer to either the entities claiming the marks and names or their products. Crestron disclaims any proprietary interest in the marks and names of others. Crestron is not responsible for errors in typography or photography. 2016 Crestron Electronics, Inc. For news and updates, follow Crestron International at: Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | Google+ MAPLEWOOD (dpa-AFX) - 3M Co. (MMM) announced that it has entered into an agreement to sell to Innovative Chemical Products Group, a portfolio company of Audax Private Equity, the assets of 3M's Pressurized Polyurethane Foam Adhesives business (formerly known as Polyfoam), which is part of 3M's Industrial Adhesives and Tapes Division. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The transaction is expected to close during the first quarter of 2016, subject to customary closing conditions. Approximately 20 3M employees that support the business are expected to join ICP Group in conjunction with the sale. ICP Group plans to maintain the Pressurized Polyurethane Foam Adhesives business' existing operations in Tomball, Texas, and Coral Springs, Fla., as a stand-alone business unit within the specialty chemicals platform. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann. CHICAGO, IL--(Marketwired - January 20, 2016) - AdvantaMeds Solutions USA Fund 1, Inc. ("AdvantaMeds"), a cannabis Corporation, announces that the US SEC approved its Convertible Preferred Stock Shares for sale. The Company appears to be the first ever Convertible Preferred Stock Shares approved for a cannabis operation. With US SEC approval, the Company, its legal team and Corporate advisors remain focused on funding the Convertible Preferred Stock Shares through a number of underwriters. Convertible Preferred Stock Shares proceeds enable AdvantaMeds to grow operations with the construction of potentially the largest fully licensed and approved commercial cannabis facility in North America. AdvantaMeds has entered into a purchase agreement with a company in Colorado that owns a 104,000 sq. ft. industrial building. Investment proceeds will be used for improvements to increase the size to a 223,270 sq. ft. facility. The increasing demand for cannabis as a medicine for a number of aliments continues to be a proven alternative to pharmaceutical regiments. Positioning the Corporation to take maximum advantage of this demand with high-quality products remains a major operational objective. Management believes that it can obtain increasing revenues, garner greater market share and look for and close upon quality acquisitions to increase its presence as a commercial cannabis operator. Geoff Thompson, President, AdvantaMeds Solutions USA Fund 1, Inc., states, "After months of hard work we finally received AdvantaMeds' US SEC Convertible Preferred Stock Shares approval. As an historical event, not just for Advantameds, but for the whole cannabis industry, regulators allowed a Convertible Preferred Stock Shares issuance for an industry that in the past wasn't taken seriously." He further states, "Convertible Preferred Stock Shares holders who purchase a stake in Advantameds, become the first in this historic event for both the Corporation and the cannabis industry." Adavantameds Solutions USA Fund 1, Inc. continues with commitments in earnest to provide a high-quality, legally regulated cannabis product which can provide medical relief to the inflicted, but also provide a positive balance sheet and bottom-line earnings for its investors. For further information about the Convertible Preferred Stock Shares and the Corporation, Contact Mr. Richard Kaiser, Investor Relations, YES INTERNATIONAL, 757-306-6090 and/or yes@yesinternational.com. Forward-looking Statements: This news release contains certain statements that may constitute forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. This information includes, but is not limited to: (i) The Company's ability to fully raise $20,000,000; and (ii) legal rules in the medical marijuana industry remaining consistent at the time of this release. Although AdvantaMeds Solutions USA Fund 1, Inc. believes that the expectations and assumptions on which the forward-looking statements are based are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on the forward-looking statements because management can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Since forward-looking statements address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from those currently anticipated due to a number of factors and risks Contact: Richard Kaiser YES INTERNATIONAL yes@yesinternational.com 7573066090 MINNEAPOLIS, MN -- (Marketwired) -- 01/20/16 -- Outsell, which offers the best customer engagement platform for driving more revenue for auto dealers, announced today that with agency partner Saatchi & Saatchi, has won the 2015 Summit Emerging Media Award (EMA). The 2015 Toyota Camry Launch was honored with the Leader Award in the category Consumer Integrated Campaign. This is the second year in a row that Outsell and Saatchi & Saatchi's innovative marketing campaigns created for Toyota North America have been recognized with a Summit Emerging Media Award. "This is a great way to kick off the year and I'm extremely proud of Outsell and Saatchi & Saatchi's teamwork on the 2015 Toyota Camry launch. Thank you again Summit International for recognizing their creative efforts," said Michael Wethington, President and CEO, Outsell. "We are always looking for new ways to give automotive brands the edge in a competitive space. This integrated campaign is a perfect example of how a carefully designed and executed campaign can greatly increase consumer engagement and vehicle sales at the dealer level." 2015 Toyota Camry Launch Outsell and Saatchi & Saatchi developed an integrated media campaign to help Toyota dealers sell down the 2014 Camry inventory before the 2015 models arrived on dealer lots. The campaign kicked off by connecting to 207 dealer databases nationwide to send dealer-branded campaigns via email, which led them to a microsite, using sophisticated data-driven behavioral targeting in order to find potential Camry buyers. The creative took the prospect on a journey of lifelike emotions from courtship to relationship. A seamless Parallax website experience used edgy language with bold colors that vividly demonstrated Camry's bells and whistles. Each phase, from sell-down to post-launch, generated unprecedented level of consumer engagement. 150,000 people nationwide interacted with the campaign, and 11,600 of these people clicked to "Schedule Test Drive." Most importantly, consumers who interacted with this campaign generated approximately $21,277,537 in Camry sales revenue for participating dealers.* To view examples of the award-winning campaign, please visit: http://www.outsellauto.com/files/saatchi/CamryAward2015/ About Summit Emerging Media Award The Summit Emerging Media Award (Summit EMA) evolved through a need to recognize and celebrate creativity, innovation and those pushing the bounds of creative excellence in all forms of emerging media. Traditionally, advertising has focused strictly on the big idea. Today, advertising needs to break new ground to keep up with the ever-changing pace. It is not about big budgets, but rather big ideas. This award is for the marketers, coders, designers, developers, innovators, visionaries and leaders in this exciting new realm of advertising. The award offers recognition for introducing new methods, directing and helping to set the pace for emerging media, and demonstrating excellence on the web, through apps, videos, mobile sites and social media. About Outsell Outsell offers the only customer engagement platform that drives more revenue for auto dealers by transforming how they engage customers and prospects throughout their lifecycle. Using proprietary technology and machine-learning algorithms, Outsell makes dealers' lives easier by helping them keep in front of customers on a consistent individualized basis, automating follow-up, and tipping off dealers when a person is ready to engage or buy. Outsell's platform currently manages millions of consumer interactions every month for dealers representing all major automotive brands. Learn more at www.outsell.com. *To calculate linked sales revenue, we looked at individuals who interacted with the campaign and subsequently purchased a new Toyota Camry from a participating dealer. Revenue was calculated based on price paid to dealer for each Camry sale. Media Contact Gina Rezendes Big Swing Communications Email Contact +1-617-640-9278 TULSA, OK -- (Marketwired) -- 01/20/16 -- TRC Companies, Inc. and the Tulsa Regional Chamber today hosted an open house and ribbon-cutting ceremony, to welcome the Willbros Professional Services staff to the TRC family and to introduce the newly expanded company to the greater Tulsa community. During the event, Tulsa Mayor Dewey F. Bartlett Jr., TRC leadership and local government officials discussed the impact of the acquisition for the Tulsa community and for the Company's clients. TRC, a recognized leader in engineering, environmental consulting and construction-management services, acquired the professional services business segment of Willbros late last year. The new TRC business unit, "Pipeline Services," positions TRC as the leading provider of end-to-end solutions in both the power and oil & gas markets. Speakers at the event included Dewey F. Bartlett Jr., Mayor of the City of Tulsa; Mike Neal, President and CEO of the Tulsa Regional Chamber; Chris Vincze, Chairman & CEO of TRC; Ed Wiegele, Senior Vice President and Pipeline Services Sector Director at TRC (formerly President of Willbros Professional Services); and Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma Attorney General. "We couldn't be happier to be here in Tulsa today, welcoming our new colleagues and introducing TRC to the community," Vinzce said. "The merger of our organizations is transformational for both of our businesses. We are truly 'better together,' with expanded capabilities to serve the oil and gas market at a time when cleaner natural gas solutions are pivotal to our collective energy future. We are focused on providing immediate and long-term value to all of our clients and are committed to helping the Tulsa business community continue to grow." "Tulsa is home to several major industries, including oil and gas, and the region has the greatest growth and employment concentration in the country," Neal said. "We are confident TRC will be a valuable partner as we continue to expand our workforce and boost economic development for years to come." About TRC Pipeline Services (formerly Willbros Professional Services) Headquartered in Tulsa, OK, and led by Wiegele, TRC Pipeline Services has approximately 750 employees in nine offices nationwide. It has a premier reputation as a provider of innovative pipeline and facilities engineering, EPC/EPCM, field services and integrity services to the oil and gas transmission and midstream markets, as well as at government facilities. The segment's 2014 gross revenue was approximately $209 million. About TRC A pioneer in groundbreaking scientific and engineering developments since the 1960s, TRC is a national engineering, environmental consulting and construction management firm that provides integrated services to the energy, environmental, infrastructure and pipeline services markets. TRC serves a broad range of commercial, industrial and government clients, implementing complex projects from initial concept to delivery and operation. TRC delivers results that enable clients to achieve success in a complex and changing world. For more information and updates from the Company, visit TRC's website at www.TRCsolutions.com and follow TRC on Twitter at @TRC_Companies and on LinkedIn. Forward-Looking Statements Certain statements in this press release may be 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. You can identify these statements by forward-looking words such as "may," "expects," "plans," "anticipates," "believes," "estimates," or other words of similar import. You should consider statements that contain these words carefully because they discuss TRC's future expectations, contain projections of the Company's future results of operations or of its financial condition, or state other "forward-looking" information. TRC believes that it is important to communicate its future expectations to its investors. However, there may be events in the future that the Company is not able to accurately predict or control and that may cause its actual results to differ materially from the expectations described in its forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that all forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially from those discussed as a result of various factors, including, but not limited to, the uncertainty of TRC's operational and growth strategies; circumstances which could create large cash outflows, such as contract losses, litigation, uncollectible receivables and income tax assessments; regulatory uncertainty; the availability of funding for government projects; the level of demand for TRC's services; product acceptance; industry-wide competitive factors; the ability to continue to attract and retain highly skilled and qualified personnel; the availability and adequacy of insurance; and general political or economic conditions. Furthermore, market trends are subject to changes, which could adversely affect future results. See the risk factors and additional discussion in TRC's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2015, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, and other factors detailed from time to time in the Company's other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Company Contact: Angela Cincotta (978) 656-3594 acincotta@trcsolutions.com Investor Contact: Sharon Merrill Associates (617) 542-5300 trr@investorrelations.com ALBANY, New York, January 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Asia Pacific is proving to be a lucrative market for proximity and displacement sensors, as the adoption of nanotechnology and other high-end technologies becomes indispensable across key industries located in the region. The imminent shift of industries towards feedback-based production models has impelled producers to deploy proximity and displacement sensors in their facilities to address workflow challenges and strengthen efficiency. A new analysis by Transparency Market Research (TMR), titled "Proximity and Displacement Sensor Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2014 - 2020" pegs the overall value of theglobal proximity and displacement sensor marketat US$2.93 bn in 2013. Rising at a CAGR of 2.8% between 2014 and 2020, the market is likely to reach US$3.56 bn by 2020. Full Research Report on Global Proximity and Displacement Sensors Market with detailed figures and segmentation at: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/proximity-displacement-sensors.html "Rising demand for automation from the key industrial sectors is boosting the global market for proximity and displacement sensors," said a lead TMR analyst. "Increasing awareness among producers to improve production efficiency at their facilities is a key factor aiding the growth of the proximity and displacement sensors market worldwide", he added. Increasing incidences of road rage and reckless driving have made safety in automobiles a critical concern for the automotive industries, which gives rise to the demand for proximity and displacement sensors. The evolution of connected vehicles, for instance, is likely to give a significant impetus to the market for the same. The falling prices of key components required to manufacture these sensors will also act as a catalyst for the growth of the proximity and displacement sensor market. Get Sample Report Copy OR For further inquiries, click here: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=1903 Furthermore, the rising demand for wearable devices will also translate into increasing demand for proximity and displacement sensors. Since, these sensors are resistant to temperature conditions and high pressure, they are considered ideal for industrial usage. Among the key product types available in the market, photoelectric sensors hold the highest share in the market, accounting for US$843.4 mn in 2014. Since these sensors ensure high efficiency and durability, they are likely to continue dominating the market during the report's forecast period. From the perspective of end-use, the automotive industry accounted for the majority of demand generated for proximity and displacement sensors. The report finds that the automotive industry segment in 2014 was valued at US$698.2 mn. The process industry, during the forecast period, will emerge as the fastest growing segment exhibiting a CAGR of 2.95% between 2014 and 2020. Browse the Press Release of this report, here: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/pressrelease/global-proximity-displacement-sensors.htm "The presence of abundant manufacturing facilities across India and China is fuelling the demand from the Asia Pacific proximity and displacement sensor market," said a TMR analyst. Asia Pacific will also remain the undisputed market leader during the report's forecast period. Rapid implementation of automation and advanced technologies in industries across Europe and North America will lay a strong foundation for the global proximity and displacement sensor market. These regions collectively account for over 50% of the global proximity and displacement sensors market. Proximity and displacement Sensors Market: By geography North America Europe Asia Pacific Rest of the World Proximity and displacement sensors Market: By product type Inductive sensors Photoelectric sensors Capacitive sensors Magnetic sensors Ultrasonic sensors LVDT sensors Others Proximity and displacement sensors Market: By Industries Automotive Food and Beverages Process Industries Pharmaceutical Industrial Manufacturing Others The report provides a cross-sectional analysis of all the above segments with respect to the following regions: North America Europe Asia Pacific (APAC) (APAC) Rest of the World (RoW) Other Research Reports by Transparency Market Research: Nanosensors Market: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/nanosensors-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/nanosensors-market.html Magnetic Field Sensors Market: http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/magnetic-field-sensors-market.html http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/magnetic-field-sensors-market.html Body-Worn Temperature Sensors Market:http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/body-worn-temperature-sensors-market.html About Us Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The company's exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMR's experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information. TMR's data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports. Contact Sudip.S 90 State Street, Suite 700 Albany, NY12207 Tel: +1-518-618-1030 USA- Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453 Email:sales@transparencymarketresearch.com Website:http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com Blog:http://www.europlat.org HONG KONG, Jan. 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --The Chapter 11 reorganization plan of Offshore Group Investment Limited ("OGIL"), its parent beingVantage Drilling Company("Vantage"), was confirmed on January 14, 2016at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Delaware. Hours before the hearing was commenced, OGIL amended the plan and continued to file additional supplements with material changes. Vantage Drilling Company is in liquidation in the Cayman Islands and the Cayman Court granted the winding up order at a hearing on January 18, 2016. Mr. Nobu Su, the sole owner of F3 Capital which is a shareholder of Vantage, and the Chairman of Taiwanese shipping firm TMT, expressed his concern about the Chapter 11 filing, and said,"There remain questions surrounding the intentions of Vantage, and the lack of effort to provide full transparency and disclosure." The Debtors filed nothing showing the assets and liabilities of the various entities. There have been concerns raised regarding the Vantage operations in Hungary and Poland. The Debtors did not file Schedules or Statement of Financial Affairs showing the assets and liabilities leaving the very important facts in any bankruptcy a secret in the Vantage case. Only after Mr. Su attempted to object to the light speed of the Bankruptcy did Vantage admit that the Plan was based on a Restructuring Agreement between Vantage, OGIL and Lenders which had a key term Vantage's directors could not agree to because it was contrary to Cayman Law which required a shareholder vote. F3 Capital is one of the largest shareholders of Vantage. Moreover, Vantage reported it had $250 million in September 2015 but there has not been a proper explanation on what happened to these funds. The Delaware Bankruptcy Court found that F3 Capital and Mr. Su lacked standing so they could not cross examine any witnesses at the confirmation hearing. There was a dearth of information supporting the lenders had secured claims under Cayman law as it related to the Cayman companies or the stock of those companies. It is also questioned why Mr. Paul Bragg was nominated as an officer and director of any of Vantage's subsidiaries given his track record. Mr. Sucontinued,"The true intentions of Vantage must be fully revealed. This involves answering some key questions regarding its conduct in recent years. There is a lack of transparency regarding the OGIL Prepackaged Plan." Further, Mr. Su stated"This 'Perfect Plan'reminds me of what we saw in the financial crisis with the public being shut out of what was really going on with Lehman, Barclays, Nomura and other companies only to learn years later that taxpayers and consumers were the true victims paying to save banks in the US and abroad from bad management." SACRAMENTO, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/20/16 -- A new year is the perfect opportunity to start a college fund or contribute to an existing 529 plan, and ScholarShare, the California 529 College Savings Plan, makes it easy to start small and pave a path to higher education learning for a beloved child. You can easily open an account in just 15 minutes, and easily manage the account online or by mail. Whether your loved one attends a community college, 4-year university or trade school, parents can start small and children can dream big with as little as $25 to open a college savings account. Multiple ScholarShare resources are available to help develop clear college savings goals, identify the best college savings plan portfolio, and make continued savings simple. Automatic contribution plans can help keep you on track toward achieving your goals with as little as $15 per pay period using automatic payroll deduction. Friends and family members who wish to help alleviate the costs of a child's future college education can open a new account or make an eGift contribution to an existing account, as long as they have a valid Social Security Number or Taxpayer Identification Number. You can feel confident in your decision with easy-to-understand reasons to save with the California college savings plan, one of the top-rated 529 college savings plans in the country by Morningstar, an independent investment research firm. ScholarShare has no annual account maintenance fee and is considered one of the most competitively priced 529 plans in the country. About the ScholarShare 529 College Savings Plan: To sign up for an account or for more information about the plan, visit www.scholarshare.com. For information about the ScholarShare Investment Board (SIB), visit www.treasurer.ca.gov/scholarshare. Like ScholarShare on Facebook at www.facebook.com/scholarshare529 and follow us on Twitter at @ScholarShare529. Named for the section of the IRS code under which they were created, 529 plans offer valuable tax advantages. Contributions are made with money that has already been taxed. Once funds are placed in the account, investment earnings, if any, are not federally or state taxed, if withdrawn to pay for qualified higher education expenses. The ScholarShare 529 College Savings Plan Twitter and Facebook pages are managed by the State of California. For more news, please follow the Treasurer on Twitter at @CalTreasurer, and on Facebook at California State Treasurer's Office. WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - The son of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin has been arrested on domestic-violence and weapon charges after he allegedly battered his girlfriend during an argument. Track Palin, a U.S. army veteran, has been charged with assault, interfering with the reporting of domestic violence, and possessing a gun while intoxicated. According to police officials in Wasilla, Alaska, Track's girlfriend Jordan Loewe called 911 to report that he had punched her in the face and that he had a firearm. His girlfriend was concerned that he would take his own life with an AR-15 rifle, the Alaska Dispatch News reports. The alleged assault reportedly took place at Sarah Palin's home, but the former VP candidate was in Iowa to endorse Donald Trump for president at the time of the incident. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX 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. DUBLIN, January 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Research and Markets(http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/nr3mw4/the_us_education) has announced the addition of the"The US Education Industry Report: 2015 Edition"report to their offering. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130307/600769 ) The U.S. Education Industry analyzes the current prevailing condition of the industry along with its major segments including Pre-K, K-12, Post-Secondary and Corporate Training. The U.S. market along with specific dependence on other countries for growth including China, India, France and Germany is being discussed in the report. The major trends, growth drivers as well as issues being faced by the industry are being presented in this report. The major players in the industry are being profiled, along with their key financials and strategies for growth. The education industry of the U.S. has undergone several changes over the past few years and continues to invite significant spending by the public. The overall growth of the industry will be driven by rising responsiveness of people towards the benefits of early education, rising awareness of the advantages of higher education and growing demand for online teaching methods. The major trends in the industry include growth of educational content and technology, rising demand for digital textbooks, high penetration rate for U.S. post-secondary education sector, students shift towards online education and students dependence on family for higher education funding. The major growth drivers include increasing work participation of women in the U.S., rising post-secondary enrollment rates in the U.S and growing merger and acquisition activities in the industry. However, growth of the market is hindered by several factors including declining population of children under five years of age and legal and regulatory issues. Key Topics Covered: 1. Introduction 2. The U.S. Education Industry Analysis 3. Market Dynamic 4. Competitive Landscape 5. Company Profiles - Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Company - John Wiley and Sons Company - K12 Inc. - Scholastic Corporation For more information visithttp://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/nr3mw4/the_us_education About Research and Markets: Research and Markets is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends. Media Contact: Laura Wood +353-1-481-1716 press@researchandmarkets.net HARRISBURG, PA--(Marketwired - January 20, 2016) - The Pennsylvania Treasury reunited thousands of Pennsylvanians with a record $136.3 million in property and money in 2015 bringing the total value of money and items returned since July 1, 2005 to more than $1.1 billion. Additionally, Treasury collected a record $672.7 million in dormant and forgotten property last year, a 126 percent increase over 2014. "In 2015, the Pennsylvania Treasury collected and returned more unclaimed property than any other year," Treasurer Timothy Reese said. "Approximately one in ten Pennsylvanians have unclaimed property and Treasury's goal is to reconnect as many people as possible with property and funds that are rightfully theirs. By all accounts 2015 was a record year." Overall, since July 1, 2005, Treasury has collected more than $2.6 billion in property and returned more than $1.1 billion to rightful owners. Treasury currently seeks the owners of $2.5 billion in unclaimed property in its possession. Every year, Treasury receives millions of dollars in unclaimed property -- items such as abandoned bank accounts, forgotten stocks, uncashed checks and contents of safety deposit boxes. The property remains available to be claimed by the owners or their heirs in perpetuity. Treasury serves as the custodian of unclaimed property until it can find and verify its rightful legal owner. "We are in the process of sending 200,000 notifications to potential property owners to alert them that they may have unclaimed property," said Reese. "Our claims process and call center staff make claiming property as easy and seamless as possible. While there is no time limit to claim unclaimed property, all Pennsylvanians should regularly check to see if Treasury has property that belongs to them." Businesses are required by law to turn over to the state any abandoned money or property after three years of inactivity or dormancy. Treasury communicates these requirements to businesses and holds a series of webinars to better educate potential holders of property about the process to ensure entities holding property are in compliance with state law. To learn more about Pennsylvania's Unclaimed Property Program or to search for money or other items held by Treasury, visit www.patreasury.gov or call 800-222-2046. The Pennsylvania Treasury is an independent department of state government led by the state treasurer, who is elected every four years. The department's primary duty is to safeguard and manage the state's public funds. It invests state money to generate income on behalf of the citizens of Pennsylvania, reviews and processes payments for state government agencies, and serves as custodian of more than $100 billion in state funds. Key Treasury programs include Unclaimed Property, PA 529 College Savings Program and the Board of Finance and Revenue. To learn more visit patreasury.gov. Media contact: Debra S. Tingley APR 717-787-2991 news@patreasury.gov LONDON, January 20, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- 36% of Brits struggle to find a holiday destination that suits the interests of them selves and their companion However, 82% of Brits say who you travel with is as important as where you travel according to new study* from the British Airways American Express Card When planning your holiday this January, it might be worth spending just as much time considering which companion you take with you as searching for your dream destination. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160120/324107 ) (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160120/324108 ) (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160120/324109 ) New research from the British Airways American Express Card has found that the travel experience is defined as much by your companion as by the destination itself, with 82% of Brits saying that the person they choose to travel with is as important as where they choose to go. However, over a third (36%) say that they struggle to find a destination that suits the interests of both holidaygoers - whether that travel companion is a partner, family member or friend. With 36 million Brits planning to get away in 2016, and the average spend per holiday amounting to 1,350 in total, making sure you and your companion's travel interests are catered for, is key. Which is why American Express has partnered with renowned publisher Phaidon, to create a travel guide with a difference. Companion features ten of the most exciting cities in the world explored from the differing perspectives of the insiders who live and work there. In it, late night rock 'n' roll is reconciled with healthy living in Reykjavik, the urban scene is contrasted with the splendid isolation on offer in Vancouver and the worlds of high fashion and films are championed in Sao Paulo. Designed to satisfy the diverse interests of travelling companions, the guide is inspired by the Companion Voucher, a British Airways Amex Card benefit that provides a complimentary second seat companion on a British Airways flight. The result is an insider's guide to the must-see cities to visit with partners, family and friends from creative visionaries across the world including Ferran and Albert AndriA , renowned chefs and the inspirational founders of celebrated restaurant elBulli and British photographer and Magnum Photos president Martin Parr. The Ten Companion Trips of 2016 are: City Companion guide insider insights Berlin Photography and nightlife Barcelona Architecture and food Amsterdam Shopping and design Sao Paulo Cinema and fashion Rome Architecture and pizza Reykjavik Food and coastal landscapes Vancouver Outdoors and city life New York Eating and drinking Los Angeles Photography and art Hong Kong Design and Asian cuisine Heather Laverne, British Airways American Express Card, says: "Holiday time is precious so finding a destination that caters to the differing interests of you and your companion is crucial. The Companion guide is designed to inspire those travelling together in 2016 with recommendations from insiders who can offer new perspectives on some popular city destinations. We hope that the guide will help travellers cater to the differing interests of their companions but also tempt them to explore something new." Mat Smith, Phaidon's Digital Editorial Director, says: "At Phaidon we were excited to create Companion because we see the desires of our travel companions as something to embrace, an opportunity to explore the unexpected and a chance to enjoy, quite literally, a different view. Use the expertise of our network of creatives and their associates to fast track yourself to the best each city has to offer." The COMPANION travel guide is available online from 11th January 2016 and free to download at http://www.americanexpress.co.uk/companion s * One Poll study of a representative sample of 2,000 UK residents December 2015 About the Companion Voucher When you spend 10,000 on your British Airways American Express Premium Plus Card within a Card anniversary year you will receive a Companion Voucher, which you can use to take a companion with you in the same flight and cabinwhen you use your Avios for a British Airways reward flight*. Get 1.5 Avios for virtually every 1 spent on your Card and a 25,000 bonus Avios welcome offer when you spend 3,000 in your first three months of Cardmembership. A companion trip to Berlin (9,000 Avios) or Rome (15,000 Avios) could be closer than you think. *Taxes, fees and charges apply. About American Express American Express is a global services company, providing customers with access to products, insights and experiences that enrich lives and build business success. Learn more at americanexpress.com and connect with us on facebook.com/americanexpress, foursquare.com/americanexpress, linkedin.com/companies/american-express, twitter.com/americanexpress, and youtube.com/americanexpress. Key links to products and services: charge and credit cards, business credit cards, travel services, gift cards, prepaid cards, merchant services, business travel, and corporate card. THUNDER BAY, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 01/20/16 -- As MPPs from all three political parties from the Ontario Legislature traveled to Thunder Bay for pre-budget hearings today, they were met with protests by patients, concerned residents and health care workers. The message was clear: stop the devastating cuts to - and privatization of - our local hospital services. The Ontario Legislature's Standing Committee on Finance and Economic Affairs has heard from community advocates who have made submissions to budget hearings for almost a decade warning that the cuts are harming patients. But the government is refusing to listen. This year, local health coalitions across Ontario are staging protests outside the hearings to stop the cuts, in partnership with the Ontario Federation of Labour. "Nine consecutive years of real-dollar cuts have plunged Ontario into the bottom of the country in hospital funding. Patients are being left on stretchers in hallways, surgeries are being cancelled and vital health services are being privatized, subject to user fees, or moved out of town," said Natalie Mehra, Executive Director of the Ontario Health Coalition. "It is beyond time that these devastating hospital cuts and the privatization of hospital services be stopped. The Ontario government must restore our public hospital funding to at least the average of all the other provinces in Canada." Thunder Bay's hospitals are full to overflowing, patients line stretchers in hallways because there are too few beds. Lakehead Psychiatric Hospital's geriatric unit was wiped out by budget cuts in 2014 even though there are huge wait lists for long-term care across the region. "Our hospitals are running at absolute full capacity with no room for any loss of services or staff," said Jules Tupker, co-chair of the Thunder Bay Health Coalition. "We fear that impending budget cuts will put even more pressure on our overstretched hospitals and even more stress on patients and their families. It is inevitable that cuts will harm patients and reduce patient care." "Here in Thunder Bay, we are seeing the effects of austerity in every community. Hospital cuts, hydro privatization, mounting student debt, precarious jobs and Canada's lowest social program funding are taking their toll in every neighbourhood," said Patty Coates, Secretary-Treasurer of the Ontario Federation of Labour. "Ontarians are calling on the Wynne Government to abandon her austerity agenda and lay out a plan for restoring public services, growing our economy, expanding Ontario's revenue base and lifting standards for everyone. The next Ontario budget shouldn't be constrained by government cuts, it should create an Ontario in which everyone prospers." www.ofl.ca, www.twitter.com/oflabour, www.Facebook.com/OFLabour Contacts: Thunder Bay Health Coalition Jules Tupker Co-Chair 807-577-5946 Ontario Health Coalition Natalie Mehra Executive Director 416-230-6402 (cell) Full-year revenues up 102% to 14.5m Growth across all regions and businesses 9.0m in net cash before receipt of the $3m payment from Bristol-Myers Squibb Cash consumption kept down to 1m during 2015 as a whole Regulatory News: ONCODESIGN (Alternext ALONC), a biotechnology company serving the pharmaceutical industry in the discovery of new therapeutic molecules to fight cancer and other serious diseases with no known effective treatment, has reported a strong increase in its 2015 revenue and cash position at December 31, 2015. millions - unaudited data 2015 2014 Experimentation revenue 9.37 6.12 +53% Discovery revenue 5.15 1.06 +386% Total revenue 14.52 7.18 +102% Cash position 9.00 10.03 Experimentation: acceleration in international expansion Experimentation revenue rose by 53% to 9.4m in 2015, after an increase of 1.8% in 2014. All the Group's geographical regions contributed to this growth. The strong increase in North American revenue (185%) and the intiation or continuation of major programs, with customers such as Cellectis, Synthon or Gilead, underpinned this acceleration in growth. This top-line expansion in North America clearly demonstrates the benefit of the initiatives taken in 2015. To recap, Oncodesign bolstered its teams by setting up a commercial subsidiary near Boston and a production subsidiary in Montreal in conjunction with Mispro Biotech Services to handle studies for US customers directly on site. In 2015 as a whole, the share of revenue generated in North America went up from 11% to 20%. Discovery: major progress and strategic collaboration agreement with Bristol-Myers Squibb In 2015, revenue from research partnerships came to 5.15m, up from 1.06m in 2014, representing a very strong increase of 386%. During 2015, Oncodesign achieved two major advances, giving rise to payments for the Group. Firstly, UCB exercised the option it held in June 2015 to secure the license to an Oncodesign program targeting neurological diseases. Secondly, Oncodesign sealed a strategic collaboration agreement with Bristol-Myers Squibb in late 2015 covering the discovery of new oncology and non-oncology drugs. Upon signature of this agreement, the Group received an upfront payment of $3m (included in revenues in the year ended December 31, 2015 and cashed-in on January 5, 2016). To recap, the payments due to Oncodesign under this collaboration agreement with Bristol-Myers Squibb may reach up to 80 million dollars per targetas research, development and regulatory milestones are reached. In addition, Oncodesign is eligible to receive tiered royalties and sales based milestones for each product resulting from the collaboration of 3 years duration, extendable to 5 years. 9.0m in net cash before receipt of the $3m payment from Bristol-Myers Squibb At December 31, 2015, net cash stood at 9.0m with cash burn of just 1m over full-year 2015 and down 45% on 2014 cash burn. Including the $3m payment from Bristol-Myers Squibb on January 5, 2016, Oncodesign would have generated a positive cash flow of 1.8m, while maintaining its R&D investments at a high level. This performance is the result of the attractiveness of Oncodesign's innovative technologies as well as its well-balanced business model, linking the recurrence of Experimentation revenue to the important leverage of Discovery activities. "Our strong revenue growth across all our regions in 2015 was achieved through the investments and commercial expansion of our activities following our IPO around a year and a half ago. We continued our international expansion drive, by strengthening our teams and bolstering our production capacity through our move into North America. In the discovery business, after UCB exercised its option, the strategic collaboration agreement with Bristol-Myers Squibb again demonstrates our technological prowess and shows how we intend to pursue our strategy of expansion by acting as a key partner helping pharma groups with their innovation strategies," said Philippe Genne, Chairman, CEO and founder of Oncodesign "Thanks to our financial strength and our business model consuming only limited cash, we are starting 2016 with confidence and are looking to continue pursuing the international expansion of our Experimentation business and extend our technological potential to new targets and through new collaboration agreements." Next financial release: 2015 annual results on Tuesday, March 29, 2016 (after the market closes) About ONCODESIGN: www.oncodesign.com Founded over 20 years ago by Dr. Philippe Genne, the Company's CEO and Chairman, ONCODESIGN is a biotechnology company that maximizes the pharmaceutical industry's chances of success in discovering new therapeutic molecules to fight cancer and other serious illnesses with no known efficient treatment. Backed by unique experience acquired through more than 600 clients, including the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, and relying on a comprehensive technological platform combining state-of-the-art medicinal chemistry, advanced animal modeling and medical imaging, ONCODESIGN is able to predict and identify for every molecule, its therapeutic use and its potential to become an efficient drug. Applied to kinase inhibitors, molecules that represent a market estimated at over 40 billion dollars in 2016 and accounting for almost 25% of the pharmaceutical industry's R&D investments, ONCODESIGN's technology has already enabled the targeting of several promising molecules with substantial therapeutic potential, in oncology and elsewhere, and the signing of partnerships with pharmaceutical groups Bristol-Myers Squibb, Sanofi, Ipsen and UCB. Based in Dijon, France, in the heart of the town's university and hospital hub, ONCODESIGN has 103 staff. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160120006166/en/ Contacts: Oncodesign Philippe Genne President CEO Tel. +33 3 80 78 82 60 investisseurs@oncodesign.com or NewCap Investor & Press Relations Julien Perez Nicolas Merigeau Tel.: +33 1 44 71 98 52 oncodesign@newcap.eu OTTAWA, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 01/20/16 -- Canada Revenue Agency The Honourable Diane Lebouthillier, P.C., M.P., Minister of National Revenue, today announced the winding down of the review by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) of registered charities' political activities. Our government recognizes the critical role charities play in our society and their valuable contribution to public policy and public debate on behalf of all Canadians. To help them continue this important work, charities must be assured they are operating in a regulatory environment that respects and encourages this contribution. The results of the political activities audit program have shown substantial compliance with the rules regarding charities' involvement in political activities. In light of these outcomes, the political activities program will be concluded once the remaining audits have been finalized. Our Government's commitment to openness and transparency includes providing more information on the regulation of charities to the public and the charitable sector in a timely manner and in ensuring the engagement of the sector. In order to achieve this, Minister Lebouthillier also announced that the CRA will publish an annual report to provide the public with more information about its activities and its contribution to an effective regulatory framework for registered charities. Minister Lebouthillier is committed to engaging with key stakeholders and has asked CRA's Charities Directorate to find ways to further clarify the rules governing a registered charity's involvement in political activities. Details of the consultations will be made public as they become available. Quick Facts -- To date, of the 30 completed political activities audits, only 5 resulted in a determination to revoke registration, all of which were primarily based on factors that were beyond their involvement in political activities. Any charity that has had its registration revoked always has the right to appeal the revocation. -- There are 24 more audits already underway and scheduled for completion. These audits will continue so that the CRA can address any serious deficiencies, consistent with the approach used in the regular charities audit program. -- The six remaining charities that were selected for audit will not be reviewed under the political activities audit program. -- The CRA registers charities under the Income Tax Act and monitors the sector to ensure registered charities continue to comply with the Act's requirements. -- Charitable registration comes with privileges, such as issuing official donation receipts, and obligations, such as complying with the Act's requirements related to their involvement in political activities. The Act permits charities to carry out a limited amount of non-partisan political activities in support of their charitable purposes. -- The rules regarding the political activities of charities have been in effect since 1985, and are outlined in the CRA's Policy Statement CPS- 022, Political Activities, which was published in 2003. -- Of the approximately 86,000 charities in Canada, about 500 report carrying out political activities on their annual information returns to the CRA. -- As part of its regular audit program, the CRA audits approximately 800 to 900 charities every year. Quotes "The results of the political activities audit program have shown that the charities audited have been substantially compliant with the rules regarding their involvement in political activities. In light of these outcomes, the program will be concluded." "The CRA conducts both educational efforts to help charities understand the rules of registration and audit activities to confirm compliance with those rules. This role is critical in ensuring Canadians' charitable donations are used for charitable purposes." "The independence of the Charity Directorate's oversight role for charities is a fundamental principle that must be protected. The Minister of National Revenue does not and will not play a role in the selection of charity audits or in the decisions relating to the outcomes of those audits." "Our Government's commitment to openness and transparency includes providing more information on the regulation of charities to the public and the charitable sector in a timely manner and in ensuring the engagement of the sector." The Honourable Diane Lebouthillier, P.C., M.P., Minister of National Revenue Associated Links -- Policy Statement CPS-022, Political Activities (CRA) -- Resources for charities about political activities (CRA) -- Video Series: Charities and their participation in political activities (CRA) Stay connected To receive updates when new information is added to our website, you can: -- Follow the CRA on Twitter - @CanRevAgency. -- Subscribe to a CRA electronic mailing list. -- Add our RSS feeds to your feed reader. -- You can also watch our tax-related videos on YouTube. Contacts: Office of the Minister of National Revenue 613-995-2960 Philippe Brideau Media Relations Canada Revenue Agency 613-941-6269 Technavio's latest chemicals and materials industry report covers the present scenario and growth prospects of the global helium market for the period 2016-2020. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated through the sales of helium in various applications. Various distribution modes for the gas were considered while arriving at the market size. In this report, Technavio's industrial gases research experts announce their key market highlights for the global remote market. Their findings include: Demand from MRI systems expected increase Demand for MRI systems was estimated to be USD 5 billion in 2014 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7% by 2020. Helium is predominantly used in MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), NMR machines, and nuclear reactors as a coolant. MRI machines function by generating an intense magnetic field through a superconducting magnet and a series of current-carrying coils. "Helium is used in MRI machines to cool the low-temperature superconducting materials and magnets to temperatures close to absolute zero, in order to achieve zero electrical resistance, which results in the creation of powerful magnetic fields," said Technavio industrial gas expert analyst Ardhendu Ghosh. "A continuous demand for superconductivity in the areas of medical research, transport, energy transmission, and storage is leading to a demand for MRI systems," Ardhendu added. USA, Qatar, and Russia are the largest producers of helium The global helium market is highly oligopolic in nature and is often characterized by very limited production of helium combined with huge price volatility and perennial shortages. This acts as the biggest factor for the global helium market having so few being big players. The US Helium Conservation Act of 1925 has played a significant role in the US becoming the largest producer and supplier of helium. The US Federal Helium Reserve currently caters to approximately 25%-30% of the global helium demand. Qatar and especially Russia are the other two big players in the global market and both have plans to ramp up helium production in the near future. Russia is looking to become the world's largest helium producer through its East Siberian Gas Program, intending to tap into the enormous gas reserves of Irkutsk and Yakutia. Despite the increased helium production efforts, Technavio research analysts believe delayed development of natural gas fields and tensions in the Middle East will pose supply concerns and lead to price volatility. This will ultimately lead to demand growing faster than production. Helium market growing fastest in healthcare sector The volume of helium consumed in healthcare applications was just over 2 billion scf (square cubic feet) in 2015 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7% through 2020. This growth is being fueled mostly by North America, a key manufacturing region for medical and scientific equipment, including NMR machines that consume significant amounts of noble gases. Sales of these NMR machines are expected to grow more than 7% year on year through 2020 due to a rising demand from the healthcare and federal research and biotech sectors. Top vendors covered in this report: Airgas Air Liquide Linde Messer Group Praxair Browse Related Reports: Global Neon Gas Market 2015-2019 Global Noble Gas Market 2015-2019 Global Hydrogen Peroxide Market 2015-2019 Purchase these three reports for the price of one by becoming a Technavio subscriber. Subscribing to Technavio's reports allows you to download any three reports per month for the price of one. Contact enquiry@technavio.com with your requirements and a link to our subscription platform. About Technavio Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. The company develops over 2000 pieces of research every year, covering more than 500 technologies across 80 countries. Technavio has about 300 analysts globally who specialize in customized consulting and business research assignments across the latest leading edge technologies. Technavio analysts employ primary as well as secondary research techniques to ascertain the size and vendor landscape in a range of markets. Analysts obtain information using a combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches, besides using in-house market modeling tools and proprietary databases. They corroborate this data with the data obtained from various market participants and stakeholders across the value chain, including vendors, service providers, distributors, re-sellers, and end-users. If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at media@technavio.com. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160120005091/en/ Contacts: Technavio Research Jesse Maida Media Marketing Executive US: +1 630-333-9501 UK: +44 208 123 1770 www.technavio.com media@technavio.com CALGARY, ALBERTA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/20/16 -- Veresen Inc. ("Veresen") (TSX: VSN) today announced that its Board of Directors has declared a cash dividend for January 2016 of $0.0833 per common share. The dividend will be paid on February 23, 2016 to shareholders of record at the close of business on January 29, 2016. This dividend is designated an "eligible dividend" for Canadian income tax purposes. The dividend is eligible to be reinvested by shareholders, at a 5% discount, in common shares of Veresen ("Common Shares") under the dividend reinvestment component of the Premium Dividend and Dividend Reinvestment Plan of Veresen ("Plan") to be held for their account under the Plan. Shareholders may have these additional Common Shares delivered to a designated plan broker in exchange for a premium cash payment equal to 102% of the reinvested amount under the Premium Dividend component of the Plan. Registered shareholders of Veresen who have not previously enrolled in the Plan and wish to enroll in the Plan with respect to the January 2016 cash dividend and future cash dividends declared by Veresen, must deliver to Computershare Trust Company of Canada, as Plan Agent, a completed enrollment form which is available at www.computershare.com/investorcentrecanada, at or before 5:00 pm (ET) on January 22, 2016. A copy of the enrollment form may also be obtained by calling Computershare Trust Company of Canada at 1-800-564-6253, or from Veresen's website at www.vereseninc.com. Beneficial shareholders of Veresen who have not previously enrolled in the Plan and wish to participate in the Plan with respect to the January 2016 cash dividend and future cash dividends declared by Veresen, should contact their broker, investment dealer, financial institution or other nominee to provide appropriate enrollment instructions and to ensure any deadlines or other requirements that such nominee may impose or be subject to are met. About Veresen Inc. Veresen is a publicly-traded dividend paying corporation based in Calgary, Alberta that owns and operates energy infrastructure assets across North America. Veresen is engaged in three principal businesses: a pipeline transportation business comprised of interests in the Alliance Pipeline, the Ruby Pipeline and the Alberta Ethane Gathering System; a midstream business which includes a partnership interest in Veresen Midstream Limited Partnership which owns assets in western Canada, an ownership interest in Aux Sable, a world-class natural gas liquids (NGL) extraction facility near Chicago, and other natural gas and NGL processing energy infrastructure; and a power business comprised of a portfolio of assets in Canada. Veresen is also developing Jordan Cove LNG, a six million tonne per annum natural gas liquefaction facility proposed to be constructed in Coos Bay, Oregon, and the associated Pacific Connector Gas Pipeline. In the normal course of business, Veresen regularly evaluates and pursues acquisition and development opportunities. denotes trademark of Canaccord Genuity Corp. Veresen's Common Shares and Cumulative Redeemable Preferred Shares Series A, Series C and Series E trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbols "VSN", "VSN.PR.A", "VSN.PR.C" and "VSN.PR.E", respectively. For further information, please visit www.vereseninc.com. Contacts: Veresen Inc. Dorreen Miller Director Investor Relations (403) 213-3633 investor-relations@vereseninc.com DAVOS, SWITZERLAND -- (Marketwired) -- 01/20/16 -- The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, announced today that Michael Wernick will become Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to Cabinet, effective Friday, January 22. He has been empowered by the Prime Minister to move forward with the renewal of the professional, non-partisan public service. The current Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to the Cabinet, Ms. Janice Charette, will remain in the public service as Senior Advisor to the Privy Council Office, pending a new assignment. The Prime Minister has asked Mr. Wernick for advice on a process to fill the position on a permanent basis. Quote "Michael Wernick is an outstanding public service leader. He has the depth of experience and the skills we need to move full speed ahead on the implementation and delivery of our government's agenda. I believe strongly in the vital role a modern, professional public service plays in our democracy. We will ensure its long history of achievement continues into the future and that its capacity to deliver services to Canadians and advice to government is renewed and enhanced." "I thank Janice Charette for her exemplary service to Canada. She has had a long and distinguished career as a dedicated, hard-working and brilliant public servant, and as Clerk she guided the public service through an election year and my government through a seamless transition. Ms. Charette led the public service through a difficult period with distinction and Canadians should be thankful for her stewardship. Making mental health a workplace priority is a legacy of Janice's that will better the lives of many public servants for years to come." - Rt. Hon. Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada Contacts: PMO Media Relations: 613-957-5555 This document is also available at http://pm.gc.ca VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/20/16 -- Medgold Resources Corp. (TSX VENTURE: MED) (the "Company" or "Medgold") is pleased to announce it has established a wholly-owned subsidiary in the Republic of Serbia, and has subsequently applied for a 100 sq. km exploration licence targeting newly identified epithermal-porphyry mineralization in the country. Dan James, the President of Medgold, said: "We're excited to establish ourselves in Serbia which has a long and rich history and culture of mining. The country has a tremendous metal endowment and Serbia's mining industry enjoys high-level government support. Our decision to expand our generative exploration effort into Serbia is timely. The on-going contraction of the gold exploration industry worldwide has created major opportunities for risk-tolerant junior exploration companies like Medgold. The cost of exploration has decreased significantly and there are many dormant exploration projects which can be acquired quickly and at low cost. Exploration of our projects in Portugal is on-going and well-funded through our JV agreement with Centerra, and we've spent a lot of time recently reviewing the exploration potential in other regions of Europe. Serbia is a logical place for us to expand our efforts. We're looking forward to commencing field work in the spring." Initial Target Medgold's first exploration target in Serbia has been the focus of reconnaissance geochemical rock sampling and remote sensing studies. The licence application has been made, and management expects the licence to be granted in approximately 90 days. Medgold has engaged a full-time senior Serbian geologist who has more than 12 years of experience in exploration in the region, and is a co-discoverer of the Kiseljak and Yellow Creek porphyry Cu-Au deposits in Serbia. In addition, we have retained the Serbian consultancy, Jantar Group, who have been providing geological services for over 20 years. The Company intends to apply the same exploration approach in Serbia that it used in Portugal; that is, identifying the key macro controls on metal deposition in the region, and thereby identifying the local deposit-scale controls on mineralization. The Company is in a very positive position in Portugal. Our key projects - which include 6 exploration licences - are joint-ventured to Centerra with a proposed exploration budget of US$1.4m for 2016. Management expects to drill-test the Boticas project with a 3,000m diamond core programme in the late spring of this year. Boticas has been recognized by the Portuguese government as a project of Strategic National Importance. We are also awaiting the issuance of the Caramulo licence in early 2016, which is a large gold exploration area located approximately 60 km due south of the Lagares project. As well, Medgold is expecting repayment of the Boticas and Chaves bonds from Centerra, plus additional bond repayments for several other licences which are in the process of relinquishment. In total, management is anticipating about C$600k in cash in-flow throughout the year. This cash will cover G&A costs through 2016 and a portion of our exploration costs in both Portugal and Serbia. Qualified Person David Clark, PGeo, consulting geologist to the Company, is a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 -- Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects. Mr. Clark has reviewed and approved the disclosure of technical information contained in this news release. About Medgold Medgold is a European-focused TSX-V listed exploration and development company targeting gold properties in northwest Iberia and the under-explored gold provinces of southern Europe. Run by a highly experienced management team with a successful track record of building value in resource companies, Medgold is aiming to become a leading European gold company. Additional information on Medgold can be found on the Company's website at www.medgoldresources.com and by reviewing the Company's page on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD Daniel P. James, President & Director Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Forward-looking statements Certain statements contained in this news release constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation. All statements included herein, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements and include, without limitation, statements about the proposed acquisition of a licence in Serbia, the exploration work proposed on the Company's Portugal projects, and the expected receipt of cash payments during 2016 and the planned use thereof. Often, but not always, these forward looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "estimate", "estimates", "estimated", "potential", "open", "future", "assumed", "projected", "used", "detailed", "has been", "gain", "upgraded", "offset", "limited", "contained", "reflecting", "containing", "remaining", "to be", "periodically", or statements that events, "could" or "should" occur or be achieved and similar expressions, including negative variations. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by forward-looking statements. Such uncertainties and factors include, among others, the issuance of a licence in Serbia; changes in the proposed exploration work on the Company's Portugal projects; the receipt of anticipated cash payments in 2016 and use of such funds; changes in general economic conditions and financial markets; the Company or any joint venture partner not having the financial ability to meet its exploration and development goals; risks associated with the results of exploration and development activities, estimation of mineral resources and the geology, grade and continuity of mineral deposits; unanticipated costs and expenses; and such other risks detailed from time to time in the Company's quarterly and annual filings with securities regulators and available under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results to differ from those anticipated, estimated or intended. Forward-looking statements contained herein are based on the assumptions, beliefs, expectations and opinions of management, including but not limited to: that the Company's stated goals and planned exploration and development activities in Serbia and Portugal will be achieved; that the Company will receive the anticipated cash payments during 2016 and will spend such funds as planned; that there will be no material adverse change affecting the Company or its properties; and such other assumptions as set out herein. Forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and the Company disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise, except as required by law. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Contacts: Medgold Resources Corp. Dan James (UK) President +44 7972 579188 dj@medgoldresources.com Medgold Resources Corp. Ralph Rushton (Vancouver) Investor Relations +1 604-630-5544 ralphr@goldgroup.com Agreement with Montreal-based Spinologics will allow co-development of patient-specific 3D biomechanical simulation of spine surgery EOS imaging (Paris:EOSI)(Euronext, FR0011191766 EOSI), the pioneer in 2D/3D orthopedic medical imaging, announced today a new partnership with Montreal-based Spinologics to develop a biomechanical simulation software dedicated to spine surgery planning that will be integrated into EOS imaging's cloud-based, 3D planning software. The co-development will allow surgeons to plan treatment from EOS 3D dataset taking into account the patient's stiffness and physiological parameters. Spinologics' team of world-recognized spine surgeons and engineers is dedicated to the development of innovative clinical devices and techniques through rigorous research and development. The team has been exploring the biomechanics of the spine for over 25 years within academic and corporate research and development, and has developed dedicated software to simulate the biomechanical response to various approaches of spinal treatment. Spinologics' latest release includes an improved multi-axial screw finite element model and a new spinal hook model in patients surgeries including up to 4 rods. The biomechanical model of the spine and the pelvis provides input to define a planned correction taking into account the spine stiffness, while predicting if there could be a risk of failure along the course of treatment. It will bring particular value to the correction of elderly patient deformity and degenerative spine conditions for which spine flexibility is diminished. The approach also applies to paediatric surgery. The joint development effort will utilize patient-specific 3D datasets from EOS exams to simulate in-situ bending, vertebral de-rotation, contraction-distraction as well as gravitational effects. The new capability should allow surgeons to better understand and anticipate the effects of forces on the spine while planning initial and revision surgeries. EOS imaging will have the exclusive rights to sell the new software worldwide with an anticipated release date of the first product by mid-2017. Marie Meynadier, CEO of EOS imaging said, "We have a lot of respect for the novel solutions that Spinologics has brought to the market to advance clinical outcomes for patients. Our co-development will be integrated in the next generation of our soon to be released 3D spinal surgical planning. It is a strong added value to our web-based surgical planning applications, in line with our strategy of proposing to surgeons "virtual patients", 3D patient specific models on which planning and simulation of surgeries can be performed. The better surgeries are planned and simulated, the least patients will undergo costly and painful revision surgeries." Stefan Parent, CEO of Spinologics said: "We are proud to team up with EOS imaging and to bring our technology to what we estimate being today the standard of care in spine imaging. As surgeons, we are convinced that spine surgery deserves adequate planning and simulation and that our technology and co-development will be of high value for a better and safer treatment of spine pathologies". The EOS platform provides 2D and 3D full-body, stereo-radiographic images of patients in functional positions. EOS exams offer a radiation dose 50% to 85% less than Digital Radiology and 95% less than basic CT scans. The new EOS Micro Dose system, marks another important step towards the ALARA principle (As Low As Reasonably Achievable). This latest technology has made the dose for a pediatric spine follow-up exam equivalent to a week's worth of natural background radiation on Earth. For more information, please visit www.eos-imaging.com. EOS imaging has been chosen to be included in the new EnterNext PEA-PME 150 index, composed of 150 French companies and listed on Euronext and Alternext markets in Paris. EOS imaging is listed on Compartment C of Euronext Paris ISIN: FR0011191766 Ticker: EOSI About EOS imaging EOS imaging designs, develops, and markets EOS, an innovative medical imaging system dedicated to osteoarticular pathologies and orthopaedics, as well as associated solutions. The Company is authorized to market in 48 countries, including the United States (FDA), Japan and the European Union (EC). The Group posted 2015 revenues of 21.8 million and employs 121 people including an R&D team of 45 engineers. The Group is based in Paris and has five subsidiaries in Besancon (France), Cambridge (Massachusetts), Montreal (Canada), Frankfurt (Germany) and Singapore. About Spinologics Spinologics is a privately held medical device company founded by spine surgeons in collaboration with experienced biomedical engineers, located in Montreal, Canada. The Company provides novel medical products that answer unmet clinical needs. Spinologics advantageously exploits its clinical and engineering expertise to devise, develop, and offer improved spinal care products. For more information, please visit www.spinologics.ca View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160120006295/en/ Contacts: EOS imaging Anne Renevot CFO Ph: +33 (0)1 55 25 61 24 investors@eos-imaging.com or Spinologics Mark Driscoll, P.Eng., Ph.D. Chief Technology Officer Ph: +1.888.988.2747 Ext :101 mdriscoll@spinologics.com or NewCap Financial communication and investor relations Pierre Laurent Valentine Brouchot Ph: +33 (0)1 44 71 94 96 eosimaging@newcap.eu or The Ruth Group (US) Press relations Joanna Zimmerman Ph: 646-536-7006 jzimmerman@theruthgroup.com Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - January 20, 2016) - American CuMo Mining Corporation (TSXV: MLY) (OTC Pink: MLYCF) ("CuMoCo" or the "Company") has been notified that anti-development environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the United States Forest Service (USFS) regarding the recent granting of permits to CuMoCo to perform work on the CuMo Project property. The Company considers the lawsuit which was filed with the U.S. District Court in Idaho on January 15, 2016 to be frivolous and redundant. At the time of this news release, the lawsuit has not been served on the USFS, and until it has, the Company will make only limited comments. However, the Company is compelled to respond to all misleading media coverage of the suit. The Company emphasizes that the lawsuit does not request an injunction to stop work on the CuMo Project. Any coverage purporting otherwise is speculative. Furthermore, the current allegations regarding the plant species "Sacajawea's Bitterroot" were addressed within the previous lawsuit, whereby Judge Lodge ruled that USFS's analysis of the Sacajawea's Bitterroot did not violate NEPA. In the previous lawsuit the court only directed that additional analysis of potential impacts on groundwater from the drilling activities be conducted and USFS has fulfilled exactly what the court required. CuMoCo considers this to be a frivolous attempt to create concern within the community and for significant investors. Additionally, the news release regarding the lawsuit was timed strategically to disrupt coverage of the Company's major positive news announcement about the boost in economic outlook for the Project due to Ore-Sorting technology. If the suit is not served within 90 days of the filing date, it will be dismissed. CuMoCo management will continue to keep shareholders apprised of developments with the project and the lawsuit. About CuMoCo CuMoCo is focused on advancing its CuMo Project towards feasibility and establishing itself as one of the largest and lowest-cost molybdenum producers in the world as well as a significant producer of copper and silver. Management is continuing to build an even stronger foundation from which to move the Company and the CuMo Project forward. For more information, please visit and www.cumoproject.com For further information, please contact: American CuMo Mining Corporation Shaun Dykes, President and Chief Executive Officer Tel: (604) 689-7902 Email: info@cumoco.com 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 new release. Forward-looking information This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation including, but not limited to, statements that address activities, events or developments that the Company expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future, such the Company's ability to move its CuMo Project to feasibility and production, and to become one of the largest and lowest-cost molybdenum producers in the world as well as a significant producer of copper and silver. Forward-looking information is based on a number of material factors and assumptions, including the result of exploration activities, the ability of the Company to raise the financing for a feasibility study and to put the CuMo project into production, that no labour shortages or delays are experienced, that plant and equipment function as specified that the Court will not intervene with the Company's proposed exploration activities at the CuMo Project, and the ability of the Company to obtain all requisite permits and licenses to advance the CuMo Project and eventually bring it into production. Forward-looking information involves known and unknown risks, future events, conditions, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future prediction, projection or forecast expressed or implied by the forward-looking information. Such factors include, among others, the interpretation and actual results of current exploration activities; changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined; future prices of molybdenum, silver and copper; possible variations in grade or recovery rates; labour disputes and other risks of the mining industry; delays in obtaining governmental approvals or financing, as well as those factors disclosed in the Company's publicly filed documents, including the Company's Management's Discussion and Analysis for the period ended September 30, 2015. There may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that forward-looking information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Except as required under applicable securities legislation, the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking information. ROSEVILLE, CA--(Marketwired - January 20, 2016) - International Business Systems (IBS), a leading provider of supply chain solutions, announced today that McGraw-Hill Education has launched IBS Bookmaster as its back office infrastructure in Asia Pacific and India. The new ERP platform will manage the complexities of selling digital and print products. The learning science company has been an IBS customer since 1988. McGraw-Hill Education's APAC and India regions have consolidated three systems onto IBS Bookmaster 7.9 and, as such, catapulted to the forefront of digital education delivery. The undertaking spanned 14 months, involved 60 dedicated personnel, and will facilitate sales in 35 countries in the Asia Pacific region, including Australia, Singapore and India. Rollouts in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) and Latin America are under consideration for implementation over the next two to three years. "While a successful ERP implementation is worthy of celebration in and of itself, the business transformation it will engender is even more critical," said Kevin Smith, Global Vice President of Technology at McGraw-Hill Education. "We've embarked on a journey that enables us to better react to our customers' needs today and into the future, and IBS technology has facilitated this goal." IBS Bookmaster is a publishing-specific, integrated enterprise management solution designed specifically for the needs of publishers and book distributors with both print and digital businesses. It is comprised of a robust core distribution, financial and Supply Chain Management (SCM) system with highly functional integration to web-based financial transaction and business management processes. "IBS Bookmaster enables us to execute our strategic plan, which includes the sale of digital products, and deliver on our mission to improve learning outcomes," said Matthew Cantwell, Vice President of Finance and Strategy at McGraw-Hill Education. "It also enables enhanced analytics, greater transparency in financial reporting, robust compliance and controls, and optimal customer service interactions. Perhaps the most immediate benefit is that it saves our people time, time that can be used for more productive activities." McGraw-Hill Education selected IBS Bookmaster for its publishing industry attributes. While ERP projects of this scale are complex, Cantwell cited this IBS migration as largely on time and on budget, lowering McGraw-Hill Education's total cost of ownership. IBS Bookmaster also reduces business risk. Newly designed business processes deliver optimal, cross-functional workflows for McGraw-Hill Education's staff and overall business. "Bookmaster will play an integral part in McGraw-Hill Education's strategy to deliver digital solutions to the marketplace," said Renee Nicholson, Professional Services Manager APAC at IBS. "We are honored to be part of this initiative." Besides IBS Bookmaster, McGraw-Hill Education will leverage IBS Analytics solution, a data discovery platform powered by QlikView, across its regions. IBS ERP and supply chain solutions lower IT costs, reduce business risk, employ industry-specific best practices, and deliver flexibility. About IBS International Business Systems (IBS) is a leading global integrated ERP, WMS and supply chain distribution software solution provider. For more than 35 years, we have helped customers such as Harper Collins, Penguin Random House, WORLDPAC, Associated Pharmacies, Inc., GILLIG, Zwilling J.A. Henckels, Miele Inc., Tri Literal LLC, Mighty Auto Parts, Victory Packaging Inc. and many more streamline, automate and accelerate their distribution network processes, and drive profitability and efficiency. For more information, visit www.ibs.net. For more information, contact: Renee Truttmann Chief Marketing Officer +1 760 201 6243 renee.truttmann@ibs.net Net metering is the most fundamental policy for the U.S. rooftop solar market, and California is by far the largest state market. This means that the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) ruling on a successor program to net metering which is planned for January 28 is the biggest pending policy decision for the U.S. solar market, now that the Investment Tax Credit has been extended. Earlier this month the California solar industry appeared to be in a good position, with CPUC issuing a Proposed Decision in mid-December that retained the basic features of retail-rate net metering and rejected most of the mechanisms proposed by utilities to weaken compensation levels for customer-sited PV. However, solar advocates have expressed great alarm at a turn of events over the last few days. Today the CPUC held an "all-party meeting" on the successor program to net metering, which the California Solar Energy Industries Association (CalSEIA) said might involve an attempt to consider an alternative proposal to the Proposed Decision. On January ... 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. PRINCE GEORGE, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 01/20/16 -- Mining for Miracles, the BC mining community's longstanding fundraising campaign for BC Children's Hospital Foundation, launched their 2016 campaign today in support of the CAUSES research clinic, a state-of-the-art diagnostic centre for rare diseases in pediatric patients. Premier Christy Clark joined BC mining industry representatives to launch this year's fundraising campaign. "Mining for Miracles is one of the many ways in which B.C.'s mining industry supports families and communities in every corner of our province," said Premier Clark. "Over the years, Mining for Miracles has raised more than $25 million for BC Children's Hospital, helping to connect children and their families with the care and support they need." The new CAUSES Research Clinic provides genome-wide sequencing to support the accurate and efficient diagnosis of rare genetic diseases in children who would otherwise require numerous tests or might not be diagnosed at all. These services have the potential to save lives and also reduce costs to families and the health-care system. Genome British Columbia has pledged to match Mining for Miracles' commitment up to an additional $1 million and, in cooperation with the CAUSES Research Clinic, is seeking opportunities to leverage this partnership to secure additional funding. "Since 1988, the mining industry has come together to raise millions of dollars to support child health in British Columbia," said Jeff Hanman, Chair of Mining for Miracles. "Investing in the CAUSES Clinic is a great example of how Mining for Miracles can have a transformative impact on the lives of children and their families in our province." There are 7,000 known genetic disorders and the CAUSES Research Clinic will use a single genomic test capable of identifying all of these at once. This may reduce the number of tests required to diagnose a patient's condition from 10 or more to just one. This has the potential to reduce costs to families and the health-care system. How to support Mining for Miracles The success of Mining for Miracles depends on the generosity of individuals and organizations throughout British Columbia. Donations can be made through employee and corporate fundraising initiatives or through fundraising events such as Diamond Draw, Jeans Day on April 28, Teck Celebrity Pie Throw on May 12 or the Slo-Pitch Tournament on May 28-29. Visit www.miningformiracles.ca for more information and to donate. About Mining for Miracles Every year volunteers from the mining community work together through Mining for Miracles to help improve the quality of health care for children in our province. Through its support of the construction of facilities and acquisition of specialized medical equipment at the hospital, Mining for Miracles is helping to keep BC Children's Hospital at the forefront of pediatric care excellence. Visit www.miningformiracles.ca for more information and to donate. About the CAUSES Research Clinic The CAUSES Research Clinic provides genome-wide testing, clinical interpretation, genetic counselling, and personalized recommendations for treatment for children with complex, undiagnosed medical conditions. The CAUSES Research Clinic is made possible by a $3-million commitment from Mining for Miracles through BC Children's Hospital Foundation and is supported by the Provincial Health Services Authority and the University of British Columbia. The CAUSES Research Clinic will ensure that BC Children's Hospital remains a centre of excellence providing outstanding care to the children and families of British Columbia. The CAUSES Research Clinic: -- The Causes Research Clinic opened to its first patient in June 2015, -- 5 year old Collyns Doran of Prince George is the first patient to receive a diagnosis at the Causes Research Clinic at BC Children's Hospital. The diagnosis provided by genome-wide sequencing ends the family's 5-year journey to find an explanation for their daughter's developmental issues. -- There are 7000 known rare disorders and Causes uses a single genomic test to look for all of these. CAUSES provides this service to children across British Columbia and in some cases, is utilizing Telehealth. -- Over the next 3 years, 500 children and their parents will have their genomes sequenced through CAUSES. CAUSES is currently receiving approximately 10 patient referrals a week. -- Since opening in June 2015, 70 families have been seen at CAUSES, and the CAUSES team is now beginning to provide answers to families. -- For some families, a diagnosis will lead to life-changing treatments for their child. For others, their diagnosis is important information that helps parents in planning for their child's future. -- The CAUSES Clinic helps reduce the number of invasive tests - such as biopsies, biochemical tests, expensive single gene tests, or MRI scans often requiring sedation- needed to obtain a diagnosis for children. This is expected to reduce the average number of tests per child required for a diagnosis from 10 or more to one, resulting in significant savings for both families and the health-care system; About Genome British Columbia Genome British Columbia is a catalyst for the life sciences cluster on Canada's West Coast, and manages a cumulative portfolio of over $660 million in 211 research projects and science and technology platforms. Working with governments, academia and industry across sectors such as forestry, fisheries, agriculture, environment, bioenergy, mining and human health, the goal of the organization is to generate social and economic benefits for British Columbia and Canada. Genome BC is supported by the Province of British Columbia, the Government of Canada through Genome Canada and Western Economic Diversification Canada and more than 300 international public and private co-funding partners. www.genomebc.ca Contacts: BCCHF Gloria Cameron (604) 875-2519 Mining for Miracles Jeff Hanman Chair (604) 699-4338 OTTAWA, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 01/20/16 -- "I would like to congratulate the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority (WDBA) on announcing the short-listed respondents. This is yet another significant milestone towards the construction of the Gordie Howe International Bridge. "Last month I had the opportunity to visit Windsor, Ontario to learn about and see first-hand the progress that WDBA has made. "Federal infrastructure investments such as the Gordie Howe International Bridge project will, in the short-term, stimulate the local, regional and national economies by creating jobs and opportunities for businesses. In the long-term, the new bridge will contribute to the economic growth and continued prosperity of both Canada and the United States. "The Government of Canada is committed to the Gordie Howe International Bridge and will continue to make federal infrastructure investments that help grow the economy, create good middle-class jobs and enhance productivity in local communities across Canada." Twitter: @INFC_eng Website: Infrastructure Canada Contacts: Press Office Office of the Minister of Infrastructure and Communities 613-991-0947 Infrastructure Canada 613-960-9251 Toll free: 1-877-250-7154 media@infc.gc.ca Weekly net asset value ("NAV") is calculated as of the close of business on each Tuesday and posted on the following business day. In the event that Tuesday is not a business day, the Company will calculate the close-of-business NAV as of the business day immediately preceding that Tuesday. The end-of-month NAV is calculated as of the close of business on the last day of the month and posted on the following business day. For weeks that include a month-end NAV report, PSH will provide only the month-end NAV and not report the Tuesday NAV. Monthly NAVs are published in accordance with the Decree on Conduct of Business Supervision of Financial Undertakings under the Wft (Besluit Gedragstoezicht financiele ondernemingen Wft). 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. A chat platform changing the world of business building a creative working culture. This is the mission of ChatWork, the Japanese company ready to disrupt the team collaboration process, which too often still relies on paper and email. Following the close of the Series B round, we spoke with CEO Toshi Yamamoto about the opportunity they found in the market, the product and its applications, the company and its growth path, the funding and future plans. FinSMEs: Hi Toshi, can you tell a bit more about you? Toshi: Im the founder and CEO of ChatWork. I lead the day-to-day operations of ChatWork from the U.S. and work with our teams in Japan and other Asian countries. Im from Osaka, Japan, but I moved to the U.S. with my family in 2012 to focus on expanding our market share here and in Western countries. FinSMEs: Lets speak about ChatWork. which is a business chat apphow does it work? Toshi: Today, its harder than ever to work as a team. There are too many emails, too many meetings and too much information thats hard to keep organized. Team members are in different time zones. Projects take longer to complete than planned. Its frustrating, stressful and teamwork falls apart. Teams need an easier, faster and more streamlined way to communicate and work together with less drama and stress. ChatWork is a new way to work where everything flows and is streamlined for teamwork. Theres a chat room for each project you work on together. Conversations, tasks and files are in context and are transparent. Global teams can stay in sync and engage in real-time. FinSMEs: Can you make an example of successful adoption from your customers? Toshi: We have customers from all kinds of industries who use ChatWork with their internal and external teams. One example is our customer, GeoRepublic. They are a software company that specializes in geolocation. They compete on a global scale and have employees and customers all over the world. They give their employees the freedom to set their own schedules and work from anywhere like Munich, Tokyo and Osaka. By using ChatWork since their founding in 2011, their global teams can collaborate and stay in sync regardless of their different locations or time zones. FinSMEs: Given the above, a huge market opportunity? Toshi: ChatWork already helps over 86,000 companies from 204 countries and regions all over the world. Were on a mission to help all the rest of the teams across the globe who are frustrated and stressed out because they are still depending on email to get work done. We want to show them theres a faster, more streamlined and collaborative way to work. This is a tremendously big market opportunity. FinSMEs: Where is ChatWork in terms of growth? Toshi: ChatWork has over 60 employees in Osaka, Tokyo, Taiwan and San Francisco. Our customers are teams from over 86,000 companies based in 204 countries and regions. With our funding, we know we can continue to expand and reach even more teams especially in Western countries. FinSMEs: You just raised a meaningful Series b round of vc. How are you using the funds? Toshi: With our Series B funding, were excited to accelerate our market growth in the U.S. and Western countries and help businesses build a more humanized work culture and excel in our global economy. FinSMEs: What about the startup ecosystem in Osaka? Supportive? Is it growing? Toshi: The situation for startups is changing in Japan, but its not like Silicon Valley. Theres not a lot of entrepreneurs there starting new businesses and so there isnt a lot of funding from VCs. I want to be a role model to business leaders in Japan and show them its possible to succeed beyond Japan and represent Japan in the U.S. ChatWork was fortunate to receive funding from from JAFCO Co. Ltd., the largest and most prestigious venture capital firm in Japan. We hope with our Series B funding of $12.5M (U.S.), one of JAFCOs largest rounds they have ever invested in, that this will create a huge impact in the Japanese VC industry and will help build momentum for other Japanese startups. FinSMEs 20/01/2016 Maluuba, a Waterloo, Ontario, Canada-based machine-learning company, raised C$9m ($6.2m) in Series A funding. Backers included Emerillon Capital, Nautilus Ventures and undisclosed strategic investors. In conjunction with the funding, Brian Kang, managing director of Nautilus, and Ludovic Andre, managing director of Emerillon, joined Maluubas board. In conjunction with the round, Brian Kang, managing director of Nautilus Venture Partners, and Ludovic Andre, managing director of Emerillon Capital, joined as board members. Dave Grannan, previously vice president at Nuance Communications, president & CEO at Vlingo, and currently co-founder & CEO of Light, became the chairman of the board. The company, which has now raised C$12m ($8.3m) in total funding to date, intends to use the capital to further enhance its deep learning research and development, and expand its product in the automotive and IoT sectors. Led by Sam Pasupalak, co-founder & CEO, Maluuba is a deep-learning company that allows machines to think, reason and communicate with human-like intelligence. It currently enables interactive natural language and conversational dialogue experiences in over 50 million smart devices globally including IoT, mobile phones and smart TVs. Supporting more than 10 languages, Maluuba provides its technology for several industry OEMs including LG. FinSMEs 20/01/2016 Palo Alto, CA-based early stage venture capital firm SoftTech VC promoted Stephanie Palmeri and Andy McLoughlin, two of its senior investment staff, to Partners. Stephanie Palmeri joined SoftTech VC in 2011 as Senior Associate after receiving her MBA from Columbia Business School. She was promoted to Principal a year later and has been led the firms investments in Marketplaces, Consumer Services, Education Technology and Digital Health. She is also responsible for leading investments on the East Coast. Over the last five years, Palmeri sponsored 18 investments and sourced several more including Niche (acquired by Twitter in 2014), ClassDojo and Grovo. Andy McLoughlin joined SoftTech VC in 2015 as Venture Partner, after co-founding London-based Huddle in 2006. He had moved to San Francisco in 2010 to open Huddles US office and started angel investing at the same time. McLoughlin made 36 angel investments including Postmates, Intercom, Pipedrive, Bugsnag and Secret Escapes until he left Huddle. At SoftTech, he sponsored and sourced a number of deals including OnboardIQ and LaunchDarkly. Led by Jeff Clavier, Founder and Managing Partner, SoftTech VC invests in B2B/Saas, Marketplaces, Connected Devices and B2C startups across Silicon Valley, New York, Southern California, Boulder and Canada. To date, the firm has invested in over 170 companies since its founding in 2004 and started investing its fourth fund, the $85M SoftTech VC IV, in 2013. In 2015, the fund has invested in 13 companies. FinSMEs 20/01/2016 Social media has been flooded with tributes to the rock icon David Bowie since news broke of his death. But the most interesting tribute of them all comes from British band Coldplay. According to the band, they tried to convince David Bowie to collaborate on a song they thought had a David Bowie-type character, but sadly the legend refused. Their drummer Will Champion told NME that the music giant refused invitation to collaborate on a track with them saying, "It's not a very good song, is it?" "He was very discerning," Champion added. "He wouldn't just put his name to anything. I'll give him credit for that." This is not the first time the band are relating this story though. The band's frontman Chris Martin had made the revelation during the 2014 BBC Music Awards, where Bowie was nominated for British Artist Of The Year and Coldplay performed live. A much-awaited David Bowie tribute show will be held at Carnegie Hall in New York on 31 March, with performances by Cyndi Lauper, the Roots and Bowies long-term producer Tony Visconti. If you're big on social media in India then you know there's a Game of Thrones-esque battle raging on Twitter between father-daughter duo Kabir and Pooja Bedi (she was born of his first marriage, to dancer Protima Bedi). The script reads like something thought up by Ekta Kapoor's saas-bahu series. The source of the fight? Kabir Bedi's fourth and most recent marriage to his long-time partner Parveen Dusanj in Alibaug last weekend. Pooja Bedi drew interesting parallels on Twitter likening her father's newest wife to an evil stepmother and a 'wicked witch', airing her dirty laundry in public. Thence ensued a hilarious (for viewers) back and forth between father and daughter, in public, with each calling the other names and flinging such barbs as "venomous", "deeply disappointed", "bad behaviour" to this latest tweet from Pooja Bedi. @iKabirBedi why r u spewing a DAY LATER over a tweet that was DELETED instead of being happy about the next tweet that wished you well?? Pooja Bedi (@poojabeditweets) January 19, 2016 Bedi, who tied the knot with Dusanj, a social researcher from UK, on his 70th birthday, took to Twitter to share his displeasure over the unwelcoming remarks made by Pooja. Do you sense a parallel here? The key word being "Twitter." All this drama begs the question, have either of you heard of a magical device we 21st century humans use to communicate with each other called a phone? I don't know how I would take it if my father married someone younger than me (and thankfully I don't have to) but after ten years together wouldn't one be accustomed to that by now? Pooja Bedi's rants on social media read more like an angsty 17-year-old's than the "mature" 45-year-old woman she is. And the father, Kabir, is just as bad. Pick up the god damn phone and call your daughter. At least that's the mature thing to do. But it doesn't seem like the thought struck either of these two adults. You'd think that after four days of having at each other in public and the scores of articles being written about the feud since, they'd have wisened up by now. Sadly, not. According to Vagabomb, Pooja opened up to Spotboye about the tweets, saying she had no idea about the wedding and was not invited to any of the celebrations. But she learnt of it from her children who found out when they arrived at the party venue. This is Kabir Bedi's fourth wedding. After his divorce to Protima, he married British-born fashion designer Susan Humphreys and the couple had a son, Adam. Bedi divorced Humphreys and tied the knot with TV and radio presenter Nikki Bedi. They had no children and divorced in 2005. Rumour has it that Bedi and daughter Pooja have been estranged for over two years now. Pooja had apparently asked father Kabir and his partner Parveen to move out of the house that she said belonged to her mother, Protima. For the rest of us it's safe to say this saga is far from over and we can look forward to a few more amusing days for us in the Twitterverse. I didnt think that this is wrong. I thought of it as being beautiful, and I thought theyre sexy, theyre beautiful, theyre free, theyre doing whatever they want to do. And thats how I saw it. When Sunny Leone honestly responded to the question of her career choice in the infamous interview, she revealed amazingly candid honesty and courage. So much so that it ended up honoring a so-called dishonorable profession. More than the nature of the interview, the narrative seems to have shifted towards how bada** Sunny Leone is, and how she maintained her calm. Surely, there's a lot to be learned from her. Here are some life lessons that the most searched woman on Google taught us, thorough this interview. Lesson 1: What may be wrong for society can be right for you as an individual Sexy and beautiful in Sunny Leones response doesnt just imply the body but the attitude. Its beautiful to be free. Its sexy to be who you are. What Sunny saw in those naked women she is referring to, at the age of 18-19, was a sense of liberty to be themselves, irrespective of the judgement of right or wrong. Lesson 2: Own your past and be proud of it. Your past is a part of who you are. When you honour it, you empower both the present and the future. If Sunny can acknowledge that nothing is a mistake and she would willingly make the same choices, it speaks a lot about the faith in ones decisions; society and its social values be damned. Her current position in Bollywood is a classic case of making the best lemonade out of the lemons in her basket. Lesson 3: Only hard and honest work counts. Not what others think. The common fear amongst everyone is that they dont take certain actions out of the fear of being judged. Stop caring about the world. Instead, care for what you want and what you have to do to get it. Work. Work hard. Thats indeed true worship. To the self. Lesson 4: Stand up for yourself without overreacting. The mention of an Aamir Khan, the so called hero or the biggest, most respectable actor, is clearly meant to provoke Sunny Leone into feeling small in comparison. But Sunny refused to react and gave the perfect answer. An Aamir Khan or any other actor refusing to work with her does not reflect on her. She is who she is another Khan fan in this case. Lesson 5: Do not apologise for who you are Many women around you are prone to be insecure, if you have an attractive personality. The insecure ones need to understand that no one is after their man or prize or whatever. The secure ones need to be accepting of the rest. As for the man in question, well, we are giving him way too much importance. Lesson 6: Business is not a dirty word Work for passion, money follows. There is no difference in the way one earns money. Like she puts it, the interviewer is getting paid to ask her these questions just like she is paid to do her job. There is no shame in either work or money. Here is Sunny Leone's response to the love and affection shown to her after the interview: Hey everyone, I just wanted to say thank you so much for all the love, all the support youve given me over the last couple of days. I wouldnt be here if it wasnt for you, and I wouldnt be here without your love. Just as much love as youre giving me, I want to give you all the love in the world back so, I love you guys. And finally, Lesson 7: Be graceful in your victory Be graceful in your gratitude and refuse to be the victim. Her very simplicity and refusal to sound righteous even after all the support she received post the interview, shows a very sorted and level headed, confident woman. A pioneer. Thats Sunny Leone in her new avatar. New Delhi: The cabinet on Wednesday cleared ex-post facto the stand taken by India on food security at the last meeting of the World Trade Organisation held in Nairobi. "Cabinet has given ex-post facto approval for the approach adopted by India at Nairobi WTO meeting. The outcomes of the Conference, referred to 'Nairobi Package' include ministerial Decisions on agriculture, cotton," an official statement said today. "These cover a Special Safeguard Mechanism (SSM) for developing countries and public stock holding for food security," it said. The Tenth WTO Ministerial Conference concluded in Nairobi in December. India wants a permanent solution on the issue of public stock holding for its food security programme. It had proposed either amending the formula to calculate the food subsidy cap of 10 percent, which is based on the reference price of 1986-88, or allowing such schemes outside the purview of subsidy caps. The food security issue is related to several developing nations which provide subsidised foodgrains to the poor. PTI Singapore-based budget accommodation platform RedDoorz has raised Pre-Series A funding from 500 Startups to intensify its expansion plans in the South East Asia region. RedDoorz had also raised funds for its Pre-Series A from Jungle Ventures, a Singapore-based venture firm that invests and helps build tech category leaders in Asia. We are thrilled to be part of the 500 Startups global community and network and are confident that with their support we will be able to rapidly expand the RedDoorz offering across a market that is ripe for transformation, said Amit Saberwal, CEO & Founder, RedDoorz. The hotel industry globally is going through a lot of change and were glad to be working with RedDoorz to lead part of this change in a market like Indonesia, said Khailee Ng, Managing Partner, 500 Startups. With the new funding from 500 Startups, RedDoorz will intensify its outreach in Indonesia, and introduce its service offering in other tourist and business hubs across SE Asia including Thailand, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, according to a company press release. 500 Startups is a global venture capital seed fund and startup accelerator. It manages $200 million in assets and has invested in more than 1,300 technology start-ups in more than 50 countries. RedDoorz is a budget accommodation brand and service provider. It gives budget hotel owners access to expert advice and assistance to standardise their offering and directly distribute online via RedDoorzs technology platform. It was launched by Commeasure, a technology platform that helps hotels distribute and manage their digital presence, thereby lowering distribution costs and increasing direct reservations. Since its launch in July 2014, Commeasure has worked with 500+ hotels across India and Asia. Every year in June, Tulla Mulla, an area of Ganderbal around 27 kilometres from Srinagar, is abuzz with Kashmiri Pandit families celebrating the Kheer Bhawani Mela. It is the biggest congregation of Kashmiri Pandits and they celebrate it with traditional fervor. Holding night-long prayers at the temple, ringing bells and carrying rose petals. They offer milk and kheer to the spring within the temple complex, considered to be sacred and surrounded by Chinar trees. It is an unusual spectacle, which after the unfortunate exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley, is a rare. A paradox is in operation here: While the number of families visiting one of the holiest places of worship has doubled in recent years, the same does not hold true for the population of Pandits living in valley. The reasons are prosaic as well as profound. These pertain to culture (acculturation, to be more accurate), the new vistas that have opened up for the new generation of Kashmiri Pandits. While the older generation of Kashmiri Pandits, out of nostalgia and other reasons like weather and yearning to live in their homeland want to return home, the younger ones decultured after living in new milieus, and sensing few employment opportunities hardly relate to Kashmir anymore. Most of them do want to come to Kashmir, but only as tourists. The same holds true for the new cohort and generation of Kashmiri Muslims; they hardly relate to or understand Kashmiri Pandits. So, there may be some merit to the assertion by Farooq Abdullah the patron of the National Conference that no one in Kashmir will go to Kashmiri Pandits with a begging bowl. Too much water has passed under the bridge, so to speak even though publicly no one would say they dont want Pandits back in their homeland. The bottom line is that Kashmiri society has moved on; so have its Hindu residents. As Abdullah pointed out, If the Pandit community is waiting for the last guns to stops firing to come home, they will never be able to come home. Todays Kashmir is not the Kashmir of the 1990s. The structural conditions within and without Kashmir are different. The guns have largely fallen silent. There is a negative peace prevalent in the region. From a practical standpoint, this is the right time to return. But why aren't Pandits returning? My reportage assignments have provided me with answers to this vexing question. In the past seven years of reporting on the conflict in and over Kashmir, I have made dozens of reporting trips to the crumbling and decrepit housing colonies inhabited by Kashmiri Pandits in Jammu and Delhi. (In one instance, my fathers old friend, a Kashmiri Pandit living in Jammu, advised me to hide my identity. I was a Kashmiri Muslim, in a colony that was dotted with people who held the minuscule Muslim population of my valley responsible for their migration and misery). I conducted hundreds of interviews and meetings with my fellow Kashmiris, but alas the sobering and sad conclusion I reached was that no matter the inducement, the younger generation of Kashmiri Pandits would never return. These reporting trips also illustrated that while a fundamental trust deficient between the two communities is enormous, the silver living is that it cannot be described as unbridgeable. However, mutual antagonism and the attendant recriminations between the two communities persist: Pandits blame Kashmiri Muslims for their displacement and a majority of Kashmiri Muslims blame Pandits for leaving them at a time when they needed them most. Furthermore, conspiracy theories on the entire exodus abound and questions arise in peoples minds: How was it possible for migration from the entire Valley to be conducted in one night? How were buses arranged to take this vulnerable community out of Kashmir? But, at the same time, the fact that stares at us today like a blot of ink on a white sheet, is that in many areas of Kashmir, loudspeakers of mosques were used to terrify the Hindu residents of Muslim-majority Kashmir. The story of the exodus is then mired in a convoluted mists of history, conspiracy and paranoia. Also, there were incidents of an ugly nature. There is a story my father told me years ago. On 7 May, 1990, dozens of armed men turned up at the house of Professor Kundan Lal Ganjoo, in the Badshah Masjid area of Batpora in Sopore. The Ganjoos were dragged out and their Muslim neighbours were locked inside to prevent them from intervening. The family was taken to the nearby Jhelum river. Professor Ganjoo was shot, his wife was kidnapped and his nephew was thrown into the river, but he somehow managed to survive. People say, Ganjoos abducted wife, Pranaji, was later killed, but her body was never found. There was speculation that her body was thrown into the Jhelum. Most terrifying are the rumours that her dead body was tied with a stone and thrown into the Jhelum. The incident was the first killing of any Kashmiri Pandit in Sopore town and the news spread like wildfire. The fear of persecution loomed large among the community and almost all the Pandits living in Sopore migrated to Jammu, like thousands of others. Terrifying stories like these would often be repeated in discussions and interviews, and whenever Pandit and Muslim families meet in Kashmir. Some have given socio-historical reasons for the breaking out of animus between some sections of the majority community in Kashmir and the minority one: A hundred-year-old economic and class exploitation of Kashmiri Muslims at the hands of Pandits. A Kashmiri journalist friend once told me Kashmiri Pandits are not a community but a class. And it was this class exploitation that somehow came to the fore and aided the sudden rage. This animus appears now to be cyclical and mutual. The problem today facing Kashmir is after every passing day, things seem to be going from bad to worse especially in terms of polarisation of the state. So it comes as no big shock when you learn that in both the major unrests in the state in 2008 and 2010 when Jammu was pitted against Kashmir and vice versa, and when the National Highway to Kashmir was blocked by people the state CID reported that majority of the people who participated in that blocked were young Kashmiri Pandit boys in Jammu. Asking who should be blamed for this is a rhetorical question. However, what can be said with certainty is that in the maelstrom and melee of history and the recent past, the relations between Kashmiri Pandits and Muslims have plumbed depths. The reasons largely pertain to the absence of a dialogue and a psychological meeting point between the two communities. In this charged environment, perceptions take over and reality gets sidelined. Government apathy even at the Central level is not helping matters. For instance, former prime minister Manmohan Singh, in April 2008, announced a Rs 1,618-crore package for offering jobs to Kashmiri Pandits, in addition to other assistance. The government immediately spent Rs 218.46 crores to create transit accommodation. But if you happen to visit these colonies, they are nothing more than decorated slums. A Kashmir Pandit friend, who was employed as a teacher, rightly complained, that whenever his infant son cried during the night, neighbours wake up and complain, because the wall is made of fibre and the noise travels to other rooms. The conditions that prevail in these decorated slums are abominable and heart-rending. In the final analysis, the truth is politics and rhetoric have overwhelmingly become the dominant reality in terms of the Pandit condition and many continue to live a miserable existence. Successive governments have failed to facilitate a dialogue between the stakeholders of Kashmir. They have seen the problem through the prism of politics and not rights. Let the politicisation of Pandits stop and if they want, they are always welcome home a home that belongs to both Muslims and Hindus. Sriharikota: India successfully launched its fifth navigation satellite IRNSS-1E on-board the workhorse PSLV-C31 in Sriharikota on Wednesday, taking another step to be on par with US based Global Positioning System (GPS). In a precise textbook launch, the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) C 31 blasted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) , about 110 km from Chennai at 9.31 AM and released the satellite into the orbit 19 minutes and 20 seconds later. As the rocket soared into the clear blue sky at the end of the 48 hour countdown, all the four stages of PSLV executed their functions as programmed, to the joy of Isro scientists at the mission control centre. After the satellite's injection into geo synchronous transfer orbit (GTO), the two solar panels of IRNSS-1E will be automatically deployed in quick succession. The Master Control Facility in Hassan (Karnataka) would then take control of the satellite to perform orbit raising operations. IRNSS-1E is the fifth navigation satellite in the IRNSS space system, comprising seven satellites, which would be on par with US-based GPS once the full complement of spacecraft is launched. While four satellites would be sufficient to start operations of the IRNSS system, the remaining three would make it more "accurate and efficient". Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated the dynamism of scientists on the successful launch . Congratulating the dynamism & determination of @isro & our scientists on successful launch of PSLV C31 & putting IRNSS 1E in orbit precisely Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) January 20, 2016 Spoke to the scientists at @isro & congratulated them on their accomplishment today. Our scientists keep making us proud. Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) January 20, 2016 Congratulating the ISRO team for the success, a beaming ISRO Chairman A S Kiran Kumar said, "Today with this New Year we are starting the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite fifth launch, fifth of the seven satellite constellation. With this satellite in place, within our country we will be able to get 24/7 provisional good positional accuracy". "Let me congratulate the entire ISRO team for the work they have done and we are having a long way to go. We have got two more satellites to be launched in this constellation, which would happen in the next couple of months", Kiran Kumar said from the Mission Control Centre. On the future launches, he said, "We have a long way to go. This year we are planning to launch the earth observation satellites." "We intend to complete this year the launch of our GSLV-Mark III which is going to carry heavier satellites into geo-stationery transfer orbits. And, we have a long way to go. And I would like to remind all my colleagues, while we have started the New Year with success, we need to dedicate ourselves for completing the task on hand", he said. Mission Director B Jayakumar said, "ISRO starts the New Year with a grand success. IRNSS-1E has been injected very precisely into the intended orbit. We have employed the most powerful vehicle for this launch with that able to carry the satellites. We have three variants in PSLV and with this launch we have completed 33 launches in PSLV." "With this, the uniqueness is 11,11,11. The core alone version 11xL variant is 11 and generic variant is 11. It is first Mission for ISRO in New Year", Jayakumar said. IRNSS-1E has configuration similar to its predecessors IRNSS-1A, 1B, 1C and 1D and carries two types of payloads --navigation and ranging payloads. The navigation payload will transmit navigation service signals to the users and operating in L5-band and S-band, while the other comprises a C-band transponder that facilitates accurate determination of the satellite range. IRNSS-1E has a lift-off mass of 1,425 kg and carries Corner Cube Retro Reflectors for laser ranging and a highly accurate rubidium atomic clock (also part of the navigation payload of the satellite). The four satellites already launched include IRNSS-1A on 1 July 2013, IRNSS-1B on 4 April 2014, IRNSS-1C on 16 October 2014, IRNSS-1D on 28 March, 2015. ISRO scientists plan to put all the seven navigation satellites in to the orbit by March 2016. The mission life of IRNSS-1E is 12 years. PTI In his celebrated work, A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens describes a scene when a marquis drives out of a party in a bad mood because nobody paid attention to him. He boards his chariot, and his valet, as is the norm for all nobility, drives through the narrow streets with utter disdain for the poor people on the streets. It is their headache to get out of harms way, not the marquis. A little boy, however, is unlucky and is crushed. His body, a tiny bundle, is placed near a fountain in the clearing nearby and his father (Gaspard) is seen wailing. The marquis becomes irritated at the fuss the father is making. He is more worried about the injuries his horses might have sustained while trampling upon the boy. He gets off the chariot and throws down a gold coin at his valet to be given to the father as gracious compensation. Into this scene steps another privileged person, a wine-shop owner, to console the father in the most cavalier manner. Heres the passage from the novel: The marquis took out his purse. It is extraordinary to me, said he, that your people cannot take care of yourselves and your children. One or the other of you is for ever in the way. How do I know what injury you have done my horses? See! Give him that. He threw out a gold coin for the valet to pick up, and all the heads craned forward that all the eyes might look down at it as it fell. The tall man called out again with a most unearthly cry, Dead!. He was arrested by the quick arrival of another man, for whom the rest made way. On seeing him, the miserable creature fell upon his shoulder, sobbing and crying, and pointing to the fountain, where some women were stooping over the motionless bundle, and moving gently about it. They were as silent, however, as the men. I know all, I know all, said the last comer. Be a brave man, my Gaspard! It is better for the little plaything to die so, than to live. It has died in a moment without pain. Could it have lived an hour as happily? You are a philosopher, you there, said the Marquis, smiling. How do they call you?" More or less, this is the charade thats being played out on the Hyderabad University campus following the suicide of Dalit research scholar V Rohith Vemula. Look, for instance, at the abstraction in which Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi indulged, while addressing the students on Tuesday. "There are certain people who are responsible for this boy's death. Whoever is responsible for this outcome has to be punished in the strictest manner possible," said Gandhi. "I have come here for Rohith. But Rohith is not alone. In every university in India, this is happening. It is very important that we carry this flag forward and create legislation that gives certain rights to every single student." Are these utterances not similar to the passage in Dickens novel? How will you fix the culpability of certain people in a suicide? What will you do with thousands of farmers suicides, mostly Dalits, that have largely gone unnoticed and unmourned in the past 15 years? What will you do with the wanton killing of Dalits across the country in pursuit of their different objectives by security forces on the one hand and left-wing extremists on the other? Fresh from his latest vacation in Europe, Gandhi seems to be blissfully oblivious of the fact that there is a near-famine situation in Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh. And most of those facing starvation in the region belong overwhelmingly to the Dalit community. Gandhi surely knows Bundelkhand because not long ago, he began his political apprenticeship by making forays into Bundelkhand and staying overnight in Dalit hutments. But right now Bundelkhand does not seem to be as politically attractive a destination for him as Hyderabad. Every suicide and killing is a tragedy. Vemulas is a sequel to stories of similar self-killings by Dalit students in various prestigious campuses across the country. But there is a tendency to romanticise this tragedy by Gandhi and those overly inspired by Marxism. This was evident in the manner in which Vemulas virtues were extolled and compensation for his death demanded. "His family should be paid Rs 50 crore," said a student reading the charter of demands before Gandhi said. "But you have mentioned Rs 5 crore!" Gandhi pointed out. The student leader corrected and put the figure at Rs 5 crore. Vemulas suicide and subsequent politics is a classic case of trivialising Indias biggest social tragedy. In over six decades of positive discrimination (a euphemism for reservation in jobs), Dalits, in spite of their sizeable numbers in government employment, are given only grudging entry into the portals of power across the country. There has never been a Dalit cabinet secretary of India for want of political will, not merit. Similarly at the secretary level in the government of India, representation of dalits is an abysmal 4-5 percent. The story is the same at the level of joint secretary, a post critical to the formulation of government policy. Its no different at the state level either; Dalits hardly ever make it to the top to the extent that theres been only one Dalit IAS officer, Mata Prasad, who was made chief secretary of Uttar Pradesh for the first time by Mayawati. There hasnt been another since. Just recently, Umrao Salodias, decision to convert to Islam got more traction in the media and peoples mind than the basic reason why he resigned from service: he lost the opportunity to become Rajasthans first dalit chief secretary when the incumbent was given an extension. This in-built discrimination against dalits was highlighted by Governance Now, a policy magazine, in an October 2013 cover story titled The policy pariahs. Heres how the lead intro to the report summed it up: A Dalit wrote the most important policy document of the nation, our constitution. But 63 years on, there have been very few IAS officers from SC/ST in the highest echelons of policy-making. Why is this so? Are these officers who pass the most gruelling exam of the countrywith some positive discrimination, of courseso incompetent that they deserve to rise only so much and no further? Or are they not allowed to live down their caste identity even decades after entering the IAS? IAS What this shows is simple. The stories of discrimination against Dalits are ideology-neutral. If no Dalit IAS officer ever rose to be cabinet secretary of India in the entire 55 years of the rule of the Dalit-loving Congress, one of the most brilliant civil servants from the community, Mata Prasad, was denied the chance by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stalwart Atal Bihari Vajpayee. This trend has continued even though the political colour of governments started changing intermittently post-1977. What is curious is the fact that hypocrisy of those carrying the banner of justice for Vemulas suicide is not lost on dalit masses. In state after state, dalits are becoming increasingly alienated from the political ideologies of the Left and the Right. The emergence of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in Uttar Pradesh as a dominant political force is an expression of dalits disaffection with the dominant political ideologies. This is the precise reason why Dalits deserted Marxism in West Bengal and the radical left in Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, in droves. Vemulas suicide has merely engendered an optical illusion in which politicians are clutching at straws to win over a powerfully social block. The farcical manner in which the suicide is romanticised for political expediency is hardly a remedy. There is an imminent risk of turning this tragedy into a media spectacle where politicians and activists jostle for their two minute of fame. That would indeed be a disservice to Vemulas memory. New Delhi: With the arrest of four people with suspected ISIS links from Manglour in Uttarakhand, Delhi Police on Wednesday claimed to have unearthed a terror plot to target the ongoing Ardh Kumbh Mela at Haridwar, particularly trains heading there and some strategic locations in the national capital. The suspects, identified as Akhlaq ur-Rehman, Mohammed Osama, Mohammed Azim Shah and Mehroz were arrested from Manglour town in Uttarakhand's Haridwar district on Tuesday and produced in a Delhi court on Wednesday which sent them to 15 days' police custody, Special Commissioner of Police (Special Cell) Arvind Deep said. "The four suspects were tracked down with inputs from a Central intelligence agency. They had planned to carry out terror attacks at the Ardh Kumbh mela, trains heading towards Haridwar passing through Roorkie and some strategic locations in Delhi," Deep said. According to sources, the suspects were allegedly in contact of a former Indian Mujahideen operative, who later went for training in Syria and is presently believed to be a key member of Ansar-ut Tawhid fi Bilad al-Hind (AuT) which has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). One of the suspects, Akhlaq, is also being questioned in connection with the attacks at Pathankot. Meanwhile, their involvement in all possible networks, including the AuT-ISIS, is being verified, the source said. The suspects have been booked under provisions of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. Special Commissioner Arvind Deep refused to comment on the outfit which the suspects belong to but said, "The National Capital faces threat until the entire module is busted." Delhi was put on high alert and security was stepped up earlier this month after the Special Cell received input about the presence of some Jaish-e-Mohammed key members in the city two days after the attack at Pathankot. On Monday, two persons with suspected Al Qaeda links were detained from Mewat in Haryana. However, Delhi Police Special Cell has so far claimed to have arrested only one. Senior officials have also reviewed the security today in view of upcoming Republic Day celebrations, an official added. PTI New Delhi: Noted environmentalist Ravi Chellam has assumed charge as the executive director of Greenpeace India, the NGO announced on Wednesday. The green body said that Chellam will anchor the NGO which has been "facing a series of challenges from a number of government agencies apart from renewing the organisation's focus on campaigns for a clean and safe future". This comes after former Executive Director Samit Aich had resigned in June last year following an internal review of the organisation's handling of two sexual harassment cases. Programme Director, Divya Raghunandan, too had quit at the same time. The government had earlier barred Greenpeace India from receiving foreign funds by suspending its licence for six months and freezing all its accounts after alleging that it has "prejudicially" affected the country's interests. Chellam is a wildlife biologist and conservation scientist by training. The NGO said that Chellam has undertaken governance roles in various conservation organisations. "We are at a critical juncture in human history and as we saw at the recent climate talks in Paris, India has a tremendous opportunity to lead meaningful change at a global level.... "Over the last year, Greenpeace India has had to defend itself against a barrage of charges, but has drawn strength from the thousands of Indians who join in our campaigns, and the judiciary which has upheld our position time and time again," Chellam said in a statement. Prior to joining Greenpeace he has worked with the Wildlife Institute of India, United Nations Development Programme, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, Wildlife Conservation Society (India Program), Madras Crocodile Bank Trust amongst others. PTI A lot of dust more political and administrative than academic has risen following the suicide of Rohith Chakravarthy Vemula. The death has serious social ramifications across educational institutions in India. This is having a debilitating effect on the academic atmosphere on the campus of Hyderabad Central University (HCU). While the opprobrium against the University administration is one thing, Rohiths suicide has brought to light a rotting system. Here are five symptoms of this rot- -The Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD), stood exposed, what with the five successive missives the MHRD has dashed off to the Vice-Chancellor seeking to know the follow-up on the letter addressed by Union Minister of State Bandaru Dattatreya. This is despite its minister Smriti Iranis feeble argument that the University was established through an Act of Parliament and that she didnt have any powers to intervene in its matters. If viewed on a larger canvas, the MHRD would have been surely poking its nose into several of the centrally-governed educational institutions and the case of HCU has seen the light of the day owing to the suicide of a research scholar. -Rohith very specifically mentioned in his suicide note that he was expecting a sum of Rs. 1.75 lakh (excluding HRA) of stipend that was stopped by the university authorities for seven months. Though the university officials have been maintaining that the delay in payment was due to paper work, Prof. Lakshminarayana, head of a professors body, feels that it could have been due to the suspension of Rohith that the authorities stopped the release of the stipend which was Rs. 25,000 a month. Rohith had to live in penury, given his financial background. Even if the stipend is held back owing to the suspension, the same rule of extending a subsistence allowance given to any government employee under suspension should have been applied to him. And, since no inquiry was ordered, whether the stipend would ever be paid to the poor students remains a Rs. 25,000-question month on month. -Persecution on the basis of caste and religion on the campus of a centre of excellence like the HCU has been laid bare in its ugliest form. The suspension of five Dalit students after a complaint by ABVP activist N Susheel Kumar and the public interest litigation filed by his mother Vinaya in the High Court seeking protection to her son and also a direction to the university authorities to act against the students (opposed to her son), has clearly brought out the objective of certain influential sections on the campus. This surely isnt an isolated case. The committee led by Prof Vinod Pavarala, then Dean of Sarojini Naidu School of Arts and Communication, highlighted the numerous shortcomings and anomalies while evaluating the students in the Department of Physics soon after a PhD student, Senthil Kumar, committed suicide in 2008. The university authorities, wittingly or unwittingly, have given an impression that Dalit students are being discriminated against. The very fact that as many as nine Dalit students committed suicide in 10 years on the campus shows how rotten the system is. The Government, no matter which party is in power, too appears to have eschewed its responsibility to step in to address the root cause of the problem. The fact that some faculty members are refusing to be guides to researchers shows that the university pursues an Orwellian maxim of some are more equal than the others. -The very fact that the political leanings of the Vice-Chancellor Appa Rao Podile are widely discussed, is reason enough to show him in poor light, overshadowing his academic excellence. Of course, Rao has tried to defend his stand alleging that it is a bid to cast a slur on him by labeling him as a BJP man. However, Dalit students have been alleging that Appa Rao has the blessings of a powerful union minister for a variety of reasons. This naturally has triggered a political reaction to the suicide of Rohith. It has provided a ready-made recipe for the opposition to curry favour from the aggrieved sections. Right from Rahul Gandhi to Arvind Kejriwal to YS Jaganmohan Reddy, several politicians either reacted or visited the campus and expressed solidarity with the agitating Dalit students. Rahul Gandhi went to the extent of holding the V-C and (the) Bandaru Dattatreya responsible for Rohits suicide. Universities should allow free flow of political thought, but surely not let politics and politicians have their way or say. -The letter written by Bandaru Dattatreya to the Union Minister for Human Resources Development projecting the Dalit students as anti-national, extremist and casteist groups is surely a case in point that needs a debate. If he has over-reacted to the representation given by ABVP activists and espoused their cause, that needs to be dealt with. At the most, Dattatreya may be charged with vicarious responsibility in the case of abetment to commit suicide. The systemic deficiency, however, lets anyone file a police case against anybody and the police are under an obligation to register a first information report. These major issues apart, questions are being raised against the sudden media attention on the campus following the suicide, blowing certain issues out of proportion, and why the media has remained a mute spectator all these days when Rohith and four others were suspended and were agitating. Prof Lakshminarayana has sought to know why the earlier letter of Rohith to the Vice-Chancellor, which highlted the plight of Dalit students, was ignored. New Delhi: A Delhi court on Tuesday sent a woman, accused of throwing ink at Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal here, to 14-day judicial custody. Metropolitan Magistrate Sunil Kumar remanded Bhavna Arora to judicial custody after the investigating agency said she was not required for further custodial interrogation. Arora, was produced before the court on completion of one-day police custody, had thrown ink at Kejriwal at a rally after the completion of government's odd-even car rationing experiment. The probe agency said the attack on the Chief Minister was "attack on the democracy" and the woman should be sent to jail so that in future people who indulge in such activities get a "lesson" and do not get publicity. "It was a government function and the attack was made during a rally. Ink was thrown at the Chief Minister. It could have been anything, acid also. "Such acts have been a routine process. There are people who indulge in activities like throwing ink and shoes. It's time to teach them lesson to those who opt such path to garner publicity," the police said. The advocate appearing for Arora opposed the police's submissions and sought bail for the accused. "There is no previous record of crime. She has been falsely implicated in the case. Nothing has been recovered during the investigation and the probe is complete...She is entitled to bail being a woman," Arora'a lawyer said. The court, however, dismissed the bail plea moved by Arora and sent her to judicial custody. Arora had thrown ink on Kejriwal when he was addressing the 'thanksgiving' rally at Chhatrasal Stadium here, prompting angry reaction from AAP government which termed the incident as a "BJP conspiracy". The woman, who claimed to be a member of the Punjab unit of Aam Aadmi Sena, a splinter group of Delhi's ruling AAP, was later whisked away by police and questioned at the Model Town police station. Arora has claimed she had "proof in the form of a CD" on the CNG scam. A resident of Rama Vihar in outer Delhi's Rohini sub-city, she was booked for alleged offences under sections 186 (obstructing public servant in discharge of public functions) and 353 (assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty) of the IPC. PTI New Delhi: One person, who is suspected to be associated with a terror outfit, has been detained and three of his associates are being questioned by a team of Delhi Police's Special Cell at Roorkee in Uttarakhand. The detained suspect, identified as one Akhlaq, is likely to be brought to Delhi by Thursday and produced before a court in New Delhi. The suspects are believed to have been planning an attack at the ongoing Ardh Kumbh Mela in Haridwar, a police source said on Wednesday. The Special Cell tracked down the suspects in a joint operation with a central intelligence agency and they are conducting search operations throughout Uttarakhand, the source said. The detained suspect is also being questioned in connection with the recent terror attack at Punjab's Pathankot as he is believed to have links with terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed, the source said. On Tuesday, the Special Cell of Delhi Police had arrested a person with suspected al Qaeda links from Nuh town in Haryana's Mewat district. In a joint operation with a central intelligence agency, two persons were apprehended from there, of which one was arrested by the Special Cell, senior officials claimed. PTI New Delhi: A court has dismissed a criminal complaint against Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal alleging he asked voters to take bribes from other parties but vote for the AAP in elections. Metropolitan Magistrate Babru Bhan dismissed the plea seeking prosecution of Kejriwal, saying that no offence was made out against him. "The accused (Kejriwal) has not offered any gratification to the voters (to vote) in favour of his party. He has merely stated that allurements are generally offered by some parties, if offered this time, do not refuse the same but vote in favour of his party. "He himself has not offered any gratification in lieu of casting votes in favour of his party," magistrate Bhan said in his Monday order. The complaint was filed by Ikrant Sharma, who alleged that Kejriwal by making such a statement violated the model code of conduct and instigated the public to accept bribes from politicians. The complaint was filed in February 2015, the month Kejriwal led his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to a sweeping win in the Delhi assembly elections. IANS By Syed Mohib Ali This rejoinder is in response to Sriram Karris article published on 18 January. The response is intended to point out the wilful ignorance of the author to institutional caste discrimination and state intervention in educational institutions and points out the inherent hypocrisy of blaming student politics for Rohith Vemulas tragic death. Sriram Karris article essentially bemoans the fact that the deceased did not have the space to pursue his true dream; of being a science writer and how it was students politics that consumed and killed him. The piece goes on to argue that politics has taken over the mission of academics to produce successful people and that of providing students with an ecosystem of learning and intellectual curiosity. Firstly, it is amusing and ludicrous that the author expects students like Vemula to become science writers and better minds, and yet not decry the suspension that barred his entry from the library and all public spaces: A suspension order that reeked of casteism by socially boycotting the Dalit students, similar to the age old practice of outcasting Dalits to the margins of a community. If there is still any apprehension about the fact that the circumstances leading to the suicide had nothing to do with institutional caste discrimination, one should read Vemulas letter to the vice-chancellor written two weeks ago seeking a solution to the caste problem. Secondly, the argument is hypocritical at several levels. It makes student politics the straw man for its own purposes and deflects from the real issues at hand. It speaks about the core purpose of universities to provide space for intellectual curiosity, freedom and learning, and yet does not condemn persistent ideological state intervention and anti-intellectualism in this case and others. The fact of the matter is that it is only after repeated queries and pressure by the Ministry of Human Resource Development that the university administration took action against the five students going back on its earlier revocation of the suspension order. The author then goes on to claim that the students were left languishing in the open and nobody reached out to them in a humane manner. Here again, the author conveniently ignores the administration's apathy, but instead chooses to blame campus politics. Instead of dealing sensitively with the issue, the university administration chose to be apathetic and indifferent to the suspended students camping out in the open for 12 long days, and to the protests by the JAC for Social Justice against the discrepancies in its enquiry. Karri speaks of the unimpeachable need for a concerned citizenry and political awareness, but does not endorse the peaceful protests being undertaken by students all over the country for this and various other causes, as is their right and enshrined in the right to assemble peacefully and speak freely. The title of his article is misleading for it does not seek to change campus politics by democratising or formalising students representation as, for instance, the Lyngdoh committee suggests. It doesnt even try to be critical of the affiliations of student groups with political outfits and their use of violence as a political means. While broadly agreeing with the point about the dangers of creating political binaries and political parties scoring brownie points over the issue, to ask students not to engage in politics at this juncture is akin to asking one side to disarm themselves in the face of a battle while being under attack. The fact is there are still four research scholars who are alive, well and suspended. And to deprive them and other students of their right to protest by political means and seek justice is absolutely unfair. Simply put, the author tries to make campus and student politics the scapegoat and chooses to overlook institutional caste discrimination and state intervention. It is truly the vanity and hypocrisy of our times that we expect marginalised students to become great intellects and not be concerned about social causes and injustices perpetrated against them. We want students to pursue their dreams but do not want them to be free and choose their own politics or their food. The worst hypocrisy that the author commits is to denounce the very campus politics that tries to achieve all these freedoms as a means to pursue various ends. In his zealousness to listen to subtle tunes, the author turns a blind eye to the obvious and the unmissable. The author is a student at the University of Hyderabad The protest of students unions against the alleged role of a union minister in the suicide of Hyderabad-based research scholar Rohith Vemula threatens to get bigger with a few student bodies planning to escalate their agitation. On Tuesday, they erupted in protest on streets and campuses. While the Congress-backed National Students Union of India (NSUI) staged a demonstration outside the HRD Ministry in the national capital, the students wing of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) protested with banners and slogans at Jantar Mantar. Weve demanded the immediate resignation of HRD Minister Smriti Irani and Union Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya. They should be prosecuted for abetment to the suicide of Rohith Vemula. The five letters issued by the HRD Ministry to the vice chancellor and registrar of the Hyderabad Central University (HCU) asking whether action had been taken against the Dalit students speaks clearly of the involvement of the ministry and Irani. How can HRD ministry write to the VC without the knowledge of the minister? After todays demonstration, the NSUI will stage a protest across the country. The government is clearly trying to gag the voice of students in every institution and promote a single ideology, NSUI president Roji M John told Firstpost. Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), which had been a centre of students protest in 2015, has gone on a one-day hunger strike with a group of students sitting outside the FTII campus. Devas Dixit, a final year FTII student and member of the strike committee of FTII Association, said We strongly condemn the incident and five FTTI students are on a hunger strike. This suicide incident and the long strike at FTII last year without any outcome show that the government is utterly insensitive towards students. Any students voice of demand or protest has been dubbed as anti-national by the government. In each and every case it has been seen that the government has paid no heed to their demands. Its only the students, who are at the receiving end and the problems continue to remain as it is. The picture was no different at IIT Madras. Outside the IIT campus, Progressive Students Group staged a demonstration demanding the arrest of Dattatreya. Weve gathered outside the IIT campus to protest against the suicide of Rohith Vemula and the role of Union Minister Bandaru Dattatreya, who acted on a representation by ABVP leader Sushil. Five Dalit students were suspended. Were demanding an enquiry into the incident, remove Dattatreya and revoke the students suspension. Government should also probe into the role of the Union HRD minister, said Sadashivan, one of the students from the group. The CPI (M-L)-backed All India Students Association (AISA) staged demonstrations in Hyderabad, Kolkata, Delhi, Gandhinagar, Patna and Chandigarh, and burnt an effigy of Dattatreya at Jantar Mantar on Tuesday. The five letters from HRD ministry have exposed the ugly face of the government. The governments involvement in it has become clear. Instead of initiating an independent probe into the incident that occurred in the past at HCU, the government played into the hands of ABVP leader Sushil and forced the university to take action. Weve demanded immediate resignation of Smriti Irani, Dattatreya and HCU VC, and all should be prosecuted under the SC-ST Atrocities Act, said Shehla Rashid, member, AISA and vice president JNU Students Union, who was a part of the demonstration in Delhi. The organisation would make the fight bigger, its members said. While the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) has called the suicide of Vemula a national loss, the right-wing students body said no anti-national activities should be tolerated in university campuses in the country. Bandaru Dattatreya never wrote the HRD Ministry to take action against the students group, Ambedkar Students Union, but he pointed out about anti-national activities in the campus. Earlier, we opposed the screening of film Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai and later this group staged a protest after the hanging of Yakub Memon. They put posters saying Ek Yakub ko marenge, to har ek ghar se Yakub niklega (kill one Yakub, there will be one Yakub born out of every house). Under the name of Ambedkar, the father of the Indian Constitution, these students have been indulging in anti-national activities. All these students groups and parties need one issue or the other to target the government. This wont be tolerated, ABVP national media in-charge, Shreerang Kulkarni told Firstpost. The suicide of a Dalit student in Hyderabad has provided a god-given opportunity to our "secular" netas. "The value of a man was reduced to his identity to a vote, to a number, to a thing. Never was a man treated as a mind, as a glorious thing made of star dust in every field. In studies, on streets, in politics and in dying and living", wrote Rohith Vemula in a heart-wrenching suicide letter. His eloquent words seem eerily prophetic now. In less than the time it took for family members, friends and colleagues to process the news of his shocking death, the erudite science scholar has been stripped down, buck naked, to his Dalit identity. And as the vivacious student activist foresaw, through a well-oiled paradigm of reductive politics, his voice has been reduced to just a vote. One vote that could lead to many votes in the eyes of our congenitally opportunistic political handlers. Like vultures excited by the smell of carrion, party leaders from all over India are now circling over Hyderabad, determined to peck every bit of flesh clean off the bone in an effort to secure their votebanks. We learn from a Times of India report that PhD scholar Vemula got his admission to the University of Hyderabad on general merit quota. And although he declared himself as a member of a Scheduled Caste in his admission form, he never felt the need to furnish it. Vemula wanted to be a writer of science like Carl Sagan. He was well-read, meritorious, brilliant. He was spunky, a man of action and an inspiration to co-activists. He tore down posters of ABVP, organised movements in favour of the causes he espoused, inevitably resulting in clashes with students of different ideologies. And from his experience, he was also aware of the structured alienation that Dalits face from society. In his final letter, a veritable treatise on each of his experiences as an individual or part of a collective, Vemula issued a clarion call against disrespect for merit in "in studies, on streets, in politics and in dying and living". But look at what we have done. Hardly a day has passed since his suicide that long, sharp knives are being twisted into his memory. All that he stood for stands nullified. Eager to pose with his family members and co-activists in a bid to exploit the sentiment still raw and powerful vote-hungry netas are busy trampling Vemula's dying wish under their foot. Can't blame them, really. A tragedy not exploited is an opportunity lost. Union minister Bandaru Dattatreya, acting on a request from the BJP's student wing, sent a letter to HRD ministry. He accused the student association at Hyderabad University bearing Ambedkar's name of "anti-nationalism". The Smriti Irani-headed ministry shot off four letters to the vice-chancellor. Vemula and four others were expelled and he eventually committed suicide. If the BJP had a death wish, it couldn't have executed the plan better. For the Opposition, it is an issued served on a platter to paint the ruling party as a reflexively anti-Dalit. Hence, we find Arvind Kejriwal, who practices throwing secular arrows on the 'Narendra Modi Dartboard' when not playing the victim card, jump into the cauldron with alarming alacrity. Calling it "not suicide, but murder" and demanding an apology from Modi, the 'mufflered mango man' who remained steadfastly silent during the violence in Malda a district in Bengal, has since been burning in the fire of righteous indignation. The Trinamool Congress sent its emissary Derek O'Brien, the articulate spokesperson. He couldn't travel the distance from Kolkata to Malda around 326 kilometres when it was burning, but wasted no time in taking the first flight to Hyderabad. Some causes are greater than others. The early bird prize, though, went to Rahul Gandhi who came along with senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh. Amid folk songs and impromptu lyrics, the Gandhi scion spoke before an excited crowd on the campus. Some tried to capture selfies, while others called their parents at home, requesting them to switch on the TV because it was being covered live. Seeing all this unfold, Mayawati, whose life and career is centred around Dalit identity politics, sent two emissaries on a fact-finding mission. Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls are not too far away. As tragedy tourism went on in full swing and the recipe for another 'Mahagathbandhan' was being readied, we are reminded yet again of Vemula's immortal words: "The value of a man was reduced to his immediate identity". The reductive principle at work behind the stripping down of Vemula to his Dalit identity is effectively the new caste system that the political parties are engaging in. And in this new paradigm, politics is no longer the sphere in which convictions crash or varied interests are shared. It is now just a battlefield for pitting one identity against the other. Dalit against Brahmins. Muslims against Hindus. Vemula, the PhD scholar, is no longer a thinking individual who was convinced of his ideology and acted on basis of his conviction. That individual, tragically, is now dead. The multi-faceted scholar has been quickly ossified by politicians into a mere keeper of an identity, the very thing he warned us against in his final missive. Henceforth, Vemula is just 'that Dalit student who committed suicide'. Sunny Leone is right: This world is of peetal (brass), and she is rare gold. You guessed it right, this is intended to be an ode to the gorgeous, smart, independent and brave Leone. But, since no discussion on her can progress meaningfully without addressing her past, let's get it out of our way first. Yes, Leone started her screen career by acting note that word in porn cinema. But her choice of career does not in any way give anybody the liberty of pitying, patronising or pillorying her. All these emotions are reserved for hapless victims of their circumstances, losers or those with gaping holes in their intellectual and moral fibre. Leone has none of them. "Everything that I have done in my life has led me to this seat. Everything is a stepping stone I met an agent, and when I saw these photos of these women, I didnt think it is vulgar. I didnt think it is wrong. I thought it was beautiful and sexy. They (people who question her past) are free, and they are doing what they want to do," Leone said in her recent interview with anchor Bhupendra Chaubey, rightly foiling any attempt to make her look vulnerable, a girl forced into a bad world. Frankly, to think that an actor who is role-playing and faking it for the camera is the targeted victim of porn is a misconception. The real victim, if any, is the viewer who succumbs to the temptation of watching others playing out his fantasies. Contrary to popular perception, a porn film doesn't put to test the resolve, patience and what we Indians love to refer to as 'character' of the actors. If at all, it reminds the viewer of the frailty of human nature by reminding us that desire easily overcomes many other human traits. As controversial French writer, film-maker and former sex worker Vergenie Despentes argues in her book The King Kong Theory, "Porn crudely reveals this other aspect of human nature: sexual desire is mechanical, and hardly complex to set in motion." So, when an actor does her job with remarkable success, becomes the fantasy and top Google search of an entire nation, she is to be complemented, even envied, for her achievement, instead of being turned into an object of faux sympathy or forced into penitent self-flagellation. It is to Leone's credit that she made a conscious career choice, excelled in it and when she got the opportunity, moved on to a different vocation. Even if she hadn't, her pre-Bollywood avatar wouldn't have entitled us to the liberty of judging Leone. Here, let me quote from the Dustin Hoffman-starrer The Graduate. In that film, Benjamin (Hoffman) is seduced by the wife of his father's friend. When he is confronted later by the husband, Benjamin replies: "What happened between Mrs Robinson and me didn't mean anything. It didn't mean anything. We might just as well have been shaking hands." Obviously, it is a folly to give any importance to mechanical, simulated sex and judge an actor for what she did for the camera. Instead of seeing Sunny Leone through the prism of her screen image both past and present it would be much better to admire her for what she is in real life: a hard-working career woman who has made the most of the cards life has dealt her in arguably world's most competitive and closed industry. Today, she is among the few female actors who guarantee a decent opening for films at the box-office. Her appeal transcends that of many established stars, both male and female. And, according to Forbes India magazine, she is No 45 in the list of top 100 celebrities of the country. Off screen, she is a smart, witty, confident woman who has the courage of conviction, takes pride in her past, is open about her sexuality and preferences and doesn't give a damn to what others say about her. And, if you have watched her interviews, you would realise she also has a philosophical bent of mind. Aren't these the very traits men look for in a woman these days with a searchlight? The men who argue that Sunny Leone is a threat to Indian culture are, of course, hypocrites. As Despentes writes in her book, these people are furious that these girls should have dared perform exactly what they want to see. 'Masculine grace and coherence in a nutshell, Give me what I want, I beg you, so that I can spit in your face for doing it.' Or, maybe they are madly obsessed with her. As Leone said in her interview with Chaubey, they must (those who call for her a ban on her) must be really thinking a lot about her to put her even in their speeches. So, dear Leone, ignore them all and continue to continue doing what you do best: entertain, entertain and entertain. Boney M once sang: My Sunny one shines so sincere, Sunny one so true, I Love you. Exactly. New Delhi: The Congress on Wednesday climbed down from its demand for the resignation of Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani in connection with the Dalit scholar suicide case but insisted on a probe by a sitting high court judge against her. The party also demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi should "break his silence and take concrete action" in this case and sack Union minister Bandaru Dattatreya. "The culpability of Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani should be investigated by a sitting high court judge and the Union Labour Minister should be immediately sacked," said Hooda. He also demanded immediate sacking of Hyderabad University Vice Chancellor Appa Rao and immediate withdrawal of suspension of the four other Dalit scholars. Congress leader and party spokesperson Kumari Selja had on Tuesday demanded that both Irani and Dattatreya should resign or else Modi should take action against the two by sacking them. Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi had also targeted Irani and Dattatreya saying the ministers and the VC have "not acted fairly" that forced the Dalit scholar to take the extreme step. Addressing a news conference on Wednesday, Irani had also accused the Congress of trying to use the issue for political gains and referred to a letter written to the HRD Ministry by party MP Hanumantha Rao in September 2014 where he had talked about suicides by marginalised students in the university for over four years. PTI A muffler, a Gandhi topi, dressing as simply as one can and a secular fundamentalist surrounded by a mix of NGO activists and old style socialists that's Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for you. An IITian and a former IRS officer, Kejriwal's 'anti-establishment' image became an instant hit, when the former leading member of Anna Hazare's anti-corruption brigade decide to join politics. The rest, as they say, is history. There are no coincidences in politics and Kejriwal's timely entry into the arena of national politics certainly wasn't one. Kejriwal made his debut in national politics in 2012, after he had successfully unseated Anna Hazare as the face of the anti-corruption protests that demanded an independent Jan Lokpal between 2010 and 2011. The time was just right. There was no worthy contender for the eloquent firebrand and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi (now the prime minister), who tore through the dilapidated and outdated politics of the Congress government in the run-up to the General Election of 2014. Being in the right place at the right time coupled with an astute media sense, it did not take too long for Kejriwal to surpass political giants and become one of the biggest surprises that the Lok Sabha Elections of 2014 threw at the world. When he formed the Aam Aadmi Party, this is what Kejriwal had said: The politicians of this country challenged the aam aadmi to fight elections and come into the legislatures and frame laws. Those leaders forgot that the aam aadmi tills the land, netas don't. Aam aadmi goes to the moon, netas don't. Left with no option, aam aadmi decided that we will fight elections. Kejriwal was a favoured, household name by the time his party (Aam Aadmi Party) won the Delhi Assembly election in December 2013 amid a blaze of national shock and euphoria. Yet the partys term in office lasted just 49 days, a period wracked by successive scandals. After its stunning victory in the polls, the Kejriwal government had come in for heavy criticism over a series of stand-offs with the authorities including law minister Somnath Bharti's 'vigilante' action against Africans and Kejriwal's own dharna demanding greater control over the police. That's where it began. Political pundits, analysts and experts, opposition parties and of course the social media. Memes about Kejriwal took over social media as the former CM gave a stirring speech to the people of Delhi and said: "I am a very small person. I have no aukaat. I am one of you. I didn't come here for power or for the chair. And that is why our government hereby resigns." we are missing you. prime time is missing u. pic.twitter.com/XgdqrotjMS Kejriwal memes (@Kejrumeme) May 28, 2014 But the former Delhi CM would not bow out of the fraught national political arena any time soon. Critics of Kejriwal and AAP termed his success in the Delhi Assembly polls as fluke. But as stated earlier, nothing in politics is coincidence. And Kejriwal came back with a bang. Kejriwal's Bambi moment Kejriwal insisted on record that it wasn't personal ambition that drove him in the elections, it was janta's will. But this controversy, prompted concerns about the longevity of the AAP as a political organisation. But soon after his 'whimsical' resignation, Kejriwal not only started preparing for his comeback, but he also appeared on national TV and apologised to the public for his decisions. Watch him in action here: This manoeuvre was so successful that it was recycled and reused by political stalwarts like Nitish Kumar. If politics is the art of communication and building perceptions, Kejriwal is the master of the dark arts of manipulating public perception. This is how a writer described him: "He is the proverbial Pied Piper, who almost leads the media to set his own agenda like a band-master with shrill decibel rhetoric." The move worked and the 'pied-piper' returned as the Delhi chief minister with a mind-boggling mandate, that saw AAP win 67 of 70 constituencies in the 2015 Delhi Assembly Elections. Conspiracies and Kejriwal It is everyone's fault but Arvind Kejriwal's. The man's routine blame the Delhi Police, then blame the Central government and if nothing works, protest or threaten to protest has been the favourite of meme-generators across the country. Sample this one: If anything goes wrong, trust Kejriwal to come up with a conspiracy theory that can be straightforwardly blamed on either Lt-Governor Najeeb Jung or Modi. Whether it's the issue of corruption allegations against principal secretary Rajendra Kumar which were made by AAP, Congress and BJP members but the when the CBI raids took place, Kejriwal conveniently turned it into a conspiracy engineered by the prime minister. Victimising self "Why always me?" This is what Kejriwal seems to chant when he is not in front of the camera. Here's what Kejriwal had to say when eggs were flung at him. "I am just thinking - why am i being repeatedly attacked? Who r the masterminds? What do they want? What do they achieve?" His rhetoric that as the agent of change, he makes the existing political establishment insecure has stopped cutting ice with public at large. But it's true. Compared to Indian netas, who have been at the receiving end of all sort of abuse, Kejriwal has been the attacked the most. Apart from the latest ink attack, the Delhi CM has faced eggs and has even been slapped. Here's a video of Kejriwal being slapped in Haryana during a road show: The latest ink attack, which came when Kejriwal with his party members was participating in a "success" rally after the odd-even scheme in Delhi, was described as something done by the "forces" who had turned no-stone-unturned "to ensure the odd-even scheme failed". The attacker, identified as Bhavna Arora, told the media that more than 100,000 CNG stickers had been sold to non-CNG vehicles so that they would be exempt from the odd-even road rationing scheme. This was Kejriwal's response to this claim: "Leave her. She is referring to some scam... CNG scam. Take the papers from her," he said. "Whenever something good is attempted in the country or in Delhi some forces create all sorts of hurdles. As Gopal Rai said, many forces had tried to ensure the odd-even scheme failed." And of course, it was the Delhi Police's failure and fault. "I can see a BJP conspiracy. They want to take advantage of such a situation and attack Kejriwal and the entire Cabinet. They may also kill people because they cannot stand the success of the odd-even scheme and AAP's popularity among the masses. Delhi Police is a part of the conspiracy," deputy CM Manish Sisodia told India Today. For the love of Twitter Try going through Kejriwal's timeline on Twitter and you will know what we mean. The man is constantly trolling his opponents. There was the suicide of Rohith Vemula of the University of Hyderabad: It's not suicide. It's murder. It's murder of democracy, social justice n equality.Modi ji shd sack ministers n aplogoize to the nation(2/2) Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) January 19, 2016 Or this: Modi ji trying evrything possible to create hurdles in Delhi govt. https://t.co/lSUyUn2w8v Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) January 17, 2016 ???? ?? ?? ??? ?? ?? ??, ???? ????? ??? ??, ????? ????? ??? ??? ?? ????? ??? ???? ?????? ????? (2/2) Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) January 15, 2016 PMO sources-Next raid on Manish or Satinder. Officers under them being pressurized to get something wrong signed from them(1/2) Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) January 15, 2016 And the one tweet that took the cake: Modi is a coward and a psycopath Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) December 15, 2015 We could go on and on, but the list is the exhausting. Mr Right Thing at the Right Time With Kejriwal ushering the 'aam aadmi' into national politics and making it about everything that was denied to the common man, the Delhi CM made sure that the camera stayed on him. This character trait was quickly identified and he was soon compared to the one man who apparently loves the shutter and its bugs: Modi himself. Just like Modi, Kejriwal is a one-man PR army. At a time when Rahul Gandhi was disappointing the entire nation with his weak and lacklustre speeches, Kejriwal rose like a phoenix as the only solid opponent for Modi, with whom this IITian shared many similarities. The right time, the right people and the right place. Kejriwal usually gets all three of them right. Sample these quotes from the Delhi CM: "We will take action against our own minister, MLAs if they are found corrupt. Even Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia and I will be jailed if we are found corrupt." "I did not believe in God but I now do. I believe that truth can never lose... It was an impossible fight, who would have thought that a one-year-old party will win 28 seats." "There is an odd VIP raj prevalent. They stop the traffic for every minister... I have been driving the past few days. I stop at all red lights. I don't think my time is wasted (while looking at the opposition)" "The people of Delhi have dared to root out corruption in India's politics. The question before this house is which of its members wants to be a part of this fight?" And most recently, Kejriwal announced that he will visit Hyderabad after the alleged suicide of Vemula. The move comes days after Rahul concluded his own Hyderabad visit. The comparison with Modi was the next natural step. While Modi spoke of being the son of a tea shop owner who wanted to take on the 'Shehzada', Kejriwal discussed the perils of being the 'aam aadmi' and swore to 'sweep away' corruption with his broom. Kejriwal is one of those few politicians who sagaciously tapped into the media and its various purposes. Like veteran journalist Rajdeep Sardesai wrote in this Firstpost article: The media was oxygen for the Anna movement in 2011 which first catapulted Kejriwal from just another anti-corruption crusader into a national figure. Modi too, has benefited from the relentless media coverage of his every move, emerging as by far the most watched politician in the country today. And if Modi bhakts are quick to counter any criticism of their icon on social media, so are the AAP groupies. In fact, their abusive responses at times only confirm that intolerance is not the sole preserve of any particular ideology. There is no such thing as bad publicity and this is especially true in Kejriwal's case. After all, not a day goes by when Kejriwal isn't either praised, rubbished, analysed or attacked. The Karnataka government on Tuesday filed point-by-point highlights of errorsby the Karnataka High Court in deciding the disproportionate assets case in favour of the AIADMK leader and three co-accused, reports The Hindu. The State government's main point is the value of disproportionate assets held by Jayalalithaa. The State is saying that the acquittal can be set aside by just correcting the totalling mistake to show that the value of disproportionate assets of the accused comes to Rs. 16.32 crore, that is 76.7 per cent of the income, against the 8.12 per cent arrived at by the High Court, reports The Hindu. The Supreme Court has set 2 February as the date for hearing appeals against the acquittal of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa. The Hindu reports that the Karnataka government has done the detailing of "errors" in a seven-page document and listed out 16 arguments against the May 2015 judgement of the Justice C.R. Kumaraswamy after which Jayalalithaa, her aide Sasikala Natarajan, V.N. Sudhakaran and J. Elavarasi walked free. "Principally, the State government asks whether the bare fact that it was neither considered nor ignored as the sole prosecuting agency in the corruption case would not by itself vitiate the High Court judgment," says The Hindu report. The State wants the Supreme Court to address what would be the effect of not repairing this omission throughout the appeal hearings in the High Court till they were disposed of. The Karnataka State document, filed by advocate Joseph Aristotle and settled by senior advocate B.V. Acharya, "asks whether the appeals were not vitiated as the duly appointed Public Prosecutor was never given the opportunity of an oral hearing." A Bench of Justices P.C. Ghose and Amitava Roy have scheduled the hearing on the appeals to start from February 2, 2016. "We will start the hearing from February 2 and will hear the matter on February 3 and 4 as well," a bench comprising justices P C Ghose and Amitava Roy said. The bench, meanwhile, asked the counsel for both the parties to file the "issues" highlighting main points to be considered within the next two weeks. Earlier the apex court had agreed to conduct day-to-day hearing on the appeals filed against the Karnataka High Court verdict acquitting Jayalalithaa and three others in the case. On July 27, the apex court had issued notices on Karnataka government's appeal seeking stay of the high court judgement, to Jayalalithaa, her close aide Sasikala and two of her relatives, V N Sudhakaran and Elavarasi, and asked them to file their replies within eight weeks. The apex court had allowed an intervention application by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy in the matter and had asked him to file issues he wished to press before it. The Karnataka HC had on May 11, 2015 ruled that AIADMK supremo's conviction by special court suffered from infirmity and was not sustainable in law, clearing decks for her return as Tamil Nadu Chief Minister. Karnataka government, in its plea against the May 11 order, claimed that HC erred in computing disproportionate assets of the AIADMK leader. The Karnataka government also asked whether the high court had "erred in law" by according benefit of doubt to Jayalalithaa in pursuance of a Supreme Court judgement holding that accused can be acquitted if his or her disproportionate assets were to the extent of ten per cent. The state government had also claimed that the high court has erred in overruling preliminary objections raised by it and added that the accused had filed their appeals against conviction without impleading Karnataka as a party. The special court had in 2014 held Jayalalithaa guilty of corruption and sentenced her to four years imprisonment and imposed a fine of Rs 100 crore. With Agencies New Delhi: With Amit Shah set to be re-elected as BJP president, the process for election to the top party post got underway on Wednesday following issuance of notification of the poll schedule. Nominations for the post of party president would be accepted on 24 January and scrutiny will take place the same day. The election, if required, would be held on 25 January. Shah's tenure at the helm of the party is ending on 23 January and he is likely to be re-elected unopposed, party sources said. If re-elected, this would be the first full tenure for Shah as he is now completing the remnant of the three-year term of Rajnath Singh, who left the post after joining the Union Cabinet. Shah took over as the BJP President on 9 July, 2014. "The nominations for the election to the post of BJP President would be accepted on 24 January between 10 AM and 1 PM at the party headquarters on Ashok Road. The scrutiny and withdrawal of nominations would take place between 1 PM and 1:30 PM and, if necessary, the election will be held on 25 January between 10 AM and 2 PM," Returning Officer for the election Avinash Rai Khanna said. Party sources said the BJP already has 20 state presidents in place and the process for electing five more state unit chiefs is underway. As per the BJP constitution, which was amended in 2013 during Nitin Gadkari's tenure, a person can be elected BJP President for two terms. Sources said the RSS has backed Shah for a full term after Prime Minister Narendra Modi put his weight behind his long-time loyalist. The party president's election in BJP is normally unopposed. Last time senior party leader Yashwant Sinha had expressed his willingness to contest but later decided against it. PTI Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, under intense attack from Opposition BJP, on Tuesday fulfilled a key election promise with his Cabinet giving the signal to 35 per cent reservation for women in state government jobs. The crucial decision was taken at the cabinet meeting today. There will now be provision for 35 per cent reservation to women of all categories in all kinds of government jobs, said Brajesh Mehrotra, Principal Secretary (Cabinet). This decision comes 10 years after Nitish Kumar unveiled 50 per cent reservation for women in panchayat and local body polls in 2006. The Nitish Kumar government said the latest reservation decision now extends the scheme that is already in place for women in constable posts to other state government vacancies too. The cabinet also gave the go-ahead to rules paving way for the Right to Public Grievances Redressal Bill, which is likely to be implemented in May, a target set by the Chief Minister. The Opposition BJP on Tuesday upped its attack on Nitish Kumar daring the "bechara Mukhyamantri" (helpless chief minister) to act against the ruling party MLAs allegedly involved in criminal activities to make it clear that "rule of law is prevalent in Bihar". "Criminals have been emboldened after the secular alliance government of RJD, JD(U) and Congress came to power in the state. Many MLAs of ruling coalition have been booked for criminal activities but no action has been taken. Nitish Kumar has become a 'bechara Mukhyamantri' in front of such elements," senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi told reporters. "People were earlier afraid of RJD due to Lalu Prasad but now JD(U) MLAs have also started showing their muscle power freely," the leader of opposition in legislative council said. Modi's comments came in the wake of a JD(U) MLA's husband escaping from a police station as well as an FIR lodged against another JD(U) MLA Safaraz Alam for misbehaving with a couple on Rajdhani Express. The first incident took place in Purnea where Awdesh Mandal, husband of JD(U) MLA Bima Bharti, escaped from Maranga police station lock up on Sunday night when Bharti and JD(U) MP Santosh Kushwaha were present in the police station. Mandal was arrested for allegedly threatening a murder case witness. In the other incident, an FIR was lodged on Monday with Patna GRP against Alam, MLA from Jokihaat in Araria district, for allegedly abusing a couple on board Guwahati-Delhi Rajdhani Express on Sunday night. Modi, who started his 'Janata Darbar' from Tuesday to hear complaints of people, dared the CM to act against these ruling party MLAs to back his claim that "rule of law is prevailing in Bihar'. With Agencies Charsadda, Pakistan: The death toll in a gun and explosives attack on a university in northwestern Pakistan has risen to 21, the police told AFP, adding that security forces had ended the operation against the gunmen. "The death toll in the terrorist attack has risen to 21," regional police chief Saeed Wazir told AFP without specifying if that included the four militants the army stated it had killed. He said the operation had ended and security forces were clearing the area, with most of the student victims shot dead at a hostel for boys on the Bacha Khan University campus in Charsadda. The attack on the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, about 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the city of Peshawar, is the latest to hit the militant-infested region. As it unfolded Police, soldiers and special forces launched a ground and air operation at the university in a bid to shut down the assault, as television images showed female students fleeing the campus. "There are five dead bodies in front of me," said emergency official Bilal Faizi, speaking from the Bacha Khan university in Charsadda. All of them have bullet wounds," he told AFP. Military spokesman Major General Asim Bajwa said on Twitter that two attackers had been killed. "Two more terrorists who were firing from inside the Block cordoned by Army troops, shot (and) killed. Op continues." It was not immediately clear if the two were included in the toll of five given by emergency official Faizi. Geology student Zahoor Ahmed said he had tried to leave his hostel after hearing shots fired. "(We) were stopped by our chemistry lecturer who advised us to go inside. He was holding a pistol in his hand," he said. "Then I saw a bullet hit him. I saw two militants were firing. I ran inside and then managed to flee by jumping over the back wall," Dozens of personnel in combat fatigues and automatic weapons piled out of transport vehicles as helicopters buzzed overhead and ambulances with sirens wailing approached the scene. "There is firing inside the university at Charsadda," Saeed Wazir, a senior police official, told AFP, while Nasir Durrani, police chief of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province -- of which Peshawar is the capital -- confirmed that the university has been cordoned off. Officials at two hospitals in the city said a total of six injured people have been brought in from the university, four to the Lady Reading Hospital and two to a Charsadda district hospital. "There are male and female staff members and students on the campus," Fazal Raheem Marwat, the university vice chancellor, said, adding he had been on his way to work when he was informed of the attack. "There was no announced threat but we had already beefed up security at the university." The gunmen had stormed the campus on its southern side, he said. Naik Mohammed, security chief at the university, said the attackers had entered close to a campus guest house. Peshawar was the location of Pakistan's deadliest ever extremist attack, when Taliban gunmen stormed an army-run school in December 2014, killing more than 150 people, most of them children, in an hours-long siege. The attack on the school prompted a crackdown on extremism in Pakistan, with the military prosecuting an offensive against militants in the tribal areas where they had previously operated with impunity. Pakistan's Jinnah Institute said in a report released on Tuesday that the National Action Plan (NAP) helped curb extremist violence last year, although targeted attacks against religious minorities spiked in the nation of some 200 million people. "The NAP has allowed improvements in two areas: the first actual implementation of prosecution against hate speech, and the arrest of terrorists from sectarian organisations which feed religious violence," said one of the authors, Syed Hassan Akbar. On Tuesday, a suicide attack at a market on the city's outskirts killed 10 people in addition to the bomber. AFP VIENNA Austria declared on Wednesday it would cap the number of people allowed to claim asylum this year at less than half last year's total, and its chancellor said border controls would have to be stepped up "massively"- but how that would be done was unclear. Germany said on Wednesday Austria's decision was "not helpful" to German efforts to negotiate a European Union-wide solution with the support of Turkey, from which most migrants reach the European continent. Hundreds of thousands of people have streamed into Austria, a small Alpine republic of 8.5 million since September, when it and Germany threw open their borders to a wave of people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Afghanistan and elsewhere. The vast majority of arrivals simply crossed the country on their way to Germany, but a fraction have stayed. Roughly 90,000 people, or more than 1 percent of Austria's population, applied for asylum last year. Public fears about immigration have fuelled support for the far right, and calls for a ceiling on the number of migrants by members of the centre-right People's Party within the coalition government have grown. "We cannot take in all asylum seekers in Austria, or in Germany or in Sweden," Werner Faymann, a Social Democrat who has resisted calls to cap immigration, told a joint news conference, referring to the countries that have taken in the most migrants. The government plan announced on Wednesday provides for the number of asylum claims to be restricted to 1.5 percent of Austria's population, spread over the next four years. Breaking down the four-year cap, the statement said the number of asylum claims would be limited to 37,500 this year, falling annually to 25,000 in 2019. Asked what would happen if the number of people who wanted to apply for asylum exceeded that figure, Faymann said only that experts were due to examine the issue. "We must also step up controls at our borders massively," Faymann told the joint news conference with Vice Chancellor Reinhold Mitterlehner and other officials, without explaining what that would involve. Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said one option would be to accept asylum requests without processing them. "The (other) option of not having to accept asylum requests at the Austrian border is now being checked, and to send these people back, to deport them back to our safe neighbour states," she told public broadcaster ORF. Slovenian police said later on Wednesday that Slovenia planned "the same action" as Austria on its southern border with Croatia if Austria, which lies north of Slovenia, took further steps to limit the inflow of migrants. The Dutch prime minister, whose government currently chairs EU ministerial councils, said Austria's move illustrated the kind of national action likely to multiply if the 28-nation EU did not start implementing a commonly agreed strategy on asylum before a likely "spike" in arrivals with spring weather. Saying the EU had six to eight weeks to end division and inaction on managing immigration, Mark Rutte told reporters at the European Parliament in Strasbourg that if that failed "we have to think about a plan B". As Germany has firmed up border controls in recent months, Austria has often followed. Austria's interior minister said last week it would start turning away people who were no longer being let into Germany, prompting a knock-on effect further down the main route into Europe. Faymann said he had discussed his government's plans in principle with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and their Slovenian counterpart. Faymann referred to the measures as a second-best option while awaiting a European solution involving securing the EU's external borders, setting up centres there for people to apply for asylum, and spreading them around the bloc. (Additional reporting by Matt Robinson in Belgrade, Marja Novak in Ljubljana and by the Brussels bureau; Editing by Mark Heinrich) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. It must be a curse to be born in today's Pakistan. The fundamentalists do not want infants to be vaccinated against deadly and crippling diseases. The fanatics do not want the girls to be educated. And terrorists are targeting their elite schools and universities to wipe out the brightest and the best in their future generation. Some years ago, famous poet Mohammad Iqbal had written a shikwa (complaint) to the Almighty, moaning the plight of Muslims. 'Barq girti hai to bechare Musalmanon par (thunderbolt strikes only the hapless Muslims)," Pakistan's national poet had woefully lamented. Wednesday's terrorist attack on the Bacha Khan university in Charsadda near Peshawar shows Iqbal may have had a lot more to complain about the plight of the country he helped carve out of India. This is the second big attack on a premier educational institution in northwestern Pakistan. In 2014, terrorists had entered the Army Public School in Pakistan, killing at least 160 children, some less than 10 years old. Though details of Wednesday's attack are sketchy, reports put the death toll anywhere between 20 and 60, with dozens of students still stuck in the campus with armed terrorists. Intelligence sources told Pakistan's Dawn newspaper that eight to 10 terrorists were inside the school, adding that they were between 18 and 25 years old, were wearing civilian clothes and had their faces covered. So, the damage could be much more. The cruel irony of the attack would not have been lost on many. The Bacha Khan university is named after Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the doyen of freedom struggle and apostle of non-violence; the man revered as Frontier Gandhi. For his contribution to the freedom struggle and commitment to non-violence, Bacha Khan was anointed with India's highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, in 1987. And how his name was sullied in his homeland! When terrorists began their dance of death in the Bacha Khan university, students were reciting poetry in a mushaira to observe the death anniversary of the Gandhian leader. But, to expect the Tehreek i Taliban Pakistan (TTP), who have claimed credit for the attack to respect their own heroes and their ideals would be insane. In 2014, when TTP had attacked the Peshawar school, killing their own children to teach their parents a lesson, its jihadis had begun their descent into a bottomless pit of barbarity, with no ethical, moral or emotional barriers to stop them. Insulting Bacha Khan's memory is just a peccadillo in comparison. Pakistan, and also other countries, will soon have to find a mechanism to deal with the new template of jihadis, who now have no moral compunctions in attacking schools, educational institutes, youth and children. According to a report in The Dawn, terrorist attacks on places of learning around the world have risen to alarming levels; higher than any point in more than 40 years. Its a global phenomenon that is increasing at an exponential rate. According to the report, based on Global Terrorism Database, Pakistan has the highest number of people killed by country (450) in school attacks attributed, in part, to the Peshawar carnage. Pakistan also has the highest number of attacks (850) on places of learning by country. Unless it finds a way to quickly address jihadi terror, Pakistan will continue to remain its biggest victim. And the country a curse for its future generations. WASHINGTON The family of former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who went missing in Iran eight years ago, said on Tuesday it was "desperate for answers" on his whereabouts and expressed frustration at the information it had received from the Obama administration. Levinson, who disappeared while visiting Iran's Kish Island in 2007, was not among the five American prisoners released by the Iranian government on Saturday as part of a prisoner swap with Washington. His family said in a statement over the weekend that they were "devastated," adding: "We are happy for the other families. But once again, Bob Levinson has been left behind." In a speech on Sunday celebrating the release of the Americans, Obama said the U.S. government would "not rest" until Levinson was found. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said in a Twitter post that Iran had agreed to deeper coordination to locate Levinson. Levinson's son, Dan, told CNN on Tuesday the family "can only hope that they (U.S. officials) are really doing everything they can." He said that for years "President Obama has promised that, Secretary Kerry has promised that, but it hasn't ... given us results." U.S. officials believe that Levinson, who suffered from diabetes, died in captivity after meeting with an American-born Islamic militant on Kish Island. Iranian officials have repeatedly denied knowledge of his disappearance or whereabouts. Robert Levinson's wife, Christine, told CNN on Tuesday that she had tried since November to arrange face-to-face meetings with high-level administration officials, including Obama, Kerry and national security advisor Susan Rice. "We're desperate for answers, and we're really going to push hard, and we're not going to go away," Christine Levinson said. She said the family had received one phone call from a member of the Obama administration after the American prisoners' release apologising that they had not been warned ahead of time. In a separate interview on Fox News, Christine Levinson said, "we need the United States government to work harder to bring him home." White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Tuesday the administration had repeatedly pressed Iranians for "as much information as they have" on Levinson's whereabouts and would continue to do so. Senior administration officials, including Obama personally, have been in touch with the Levinson family as recently as late December, he said. "We're obviously very sensitive to the concerns and rather raw feelings of the Levinson family," Earnest said. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on CNN that officials have been working to find Levinson and bring him back "the entire time." He said the administration was uncertain Levinson was still being held in Iran. The FBI has offered a reward of $5 million for information leading to finding Levinson and his return. (Reporting by Megan Cassella; Editing by Paul Simao and Grant McCool) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. On 19 August, 2014, the world watched in horror as a video uploaded on YouTube showed the beheading of American journalist James Foley. In the video, Foley in an orange jumpsuit was shown kneeling in the desert, next to an Islamic State terrorist with a knife to his throat. The militant was dressed all in black, in such a way that only his eyes were visible. After a statement by Foley, the masked IS terrorist was shown apparently beginning to cut at the neck of the captive. The video faded to black before the beheading was completed. The next shot appeared to show the captive lying dead on the ground, his head decapitated. At the end of the video, the terrorist showed a second man, who was identified as another American journalist, Steven Sotloff, and warned that he could be the next captive killed. Just two weeks after the video horrified the world, yet another video was released, showing the beheading of Sotloff by the same masked IS militant. It was because of this cold-blooded brutality that the IS terrorist Mohammed Emwazi, nicknamed 'Jihadi John' by the media, became one of the most infamous and hated people in the world. Emwazi's nickname 'Jihadi John' was based on nicknames freed hostages said they gave their British-sounding captors, a reference to Beatles member John Lennon. He horrified the world with videos of brutally beheading hostages. In most videos, he acted as a narrator, taunting the West and promising an IS although the videos don't make it clear whether or not he carried out all of the actual killings. But his videos, with sneering taunts at the West, also served as a recruiting tool for those drawn to the dark, bloody world of extremism. Emwazi's brown eyes peering out from behind a black balaclava and his London accent became the first contact many around the world had with the terror group Islamic State, although the extremists carried out other mass killings, rape and enslavement in their march across Iraq and Syria. Born in Kuwait, Emwazi grew up in Britain. He spoke English in his videos, making the message even easier for the world to understand. "You're hearing it in your own language, so the threat sounds all the more menacing," Raffaello Pantucci, the author of We Love Death As You Love Life: Britain's Suburban Terrorists and the director of international security studies at Britain's Royal United Services Institute, had said. "It speaks to the audience and says, you know, 'We are you...You think we're this alien thing but actually no, we're from within your very communities,'" Pantucci had added. Emwazi soon became one of the West's top targets after IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and his other lieutenants. Apart from the beheading of Foley and Sotloff, Emwazi was also seen in the videos of beheading of British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning. In November 2014, a 15-minute video posted online showed Islamic militants beheading at least 14 men. Emwazi again appeared in the video and according to Islamic State, the victims were pilots and officers loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. American hostage Peter Kassig was one of the victims. Jihadi John was identified as Mohammed Emwazi in February 2015. The Washington Post and the BBC, which had first identified the masked man in the video as Emwazi, had said he was born in Kuwait, grew up in west London and studied computer programming at the University of Westminster. The university had confirmed that a student of that name graduated in 2009. The news outlets had said Emwazi was known to British authorities before he travelled to Syria in 2012. Emwazi had also traveled to Tanzania with two other men after leaving university in 2009, but was deported and questioned in Amsterdam by British and Dutch intelligence services, who had suspected him of attempting to join al-Shabaab militants in Somalia. In 2010, Emwazi had accused the British intelligence services of preventing him from traveling to Kuwait, where he planned to work and marry. CAGE, a London-based advocacy group that counsels Muslims in conflict with British intelligence services, had quoted an email Emwazi had sent saying, "I had a job waiting for me and marriage to get started. But now I feel like a prisoner, only not in a cage, in London." Emwazi was reportedly killed in a drone strike by the US on 12 November, 2015. The US military had said at the time that it was "reasonably certain" he had been killed in the strike. The death of Mohammed Emwazi aka Jihadi John was confirmed by the IS on Tuesday. In its online magazine Dabiq, the terror group said Emwazi was killed on 12 November "as the car he was in was targeted in a strike by an unmanned drone in the city of Raqqa, destroying the car and killing him instantly." With inputs from agencies BEIRUT Islamic State on Tuesday released 270 of an estimated 400 civilians, most of them women and children, kidnapped at the weekend when its fighters attacked Syrian government-held areas in the eastern city of Deir al-Zor, a monitoring group said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also said, however, that the ultra-hardline group rounded up another 50 men on Tuesday during raids on houses in areas seized during four days of fighting in Deir al-Zor, the provincial capital. Rami Abdulrahman, the Observatory's head, said that the group has kept male prisoners between the ages of 14 and 55 for more questioning. "Those who they see have ties with the regime will be punished and those who (do) not must undertake a religious course based on the group's interpretation of Islam," he said. The civilians released will remain in Islamic State-run villages in the province of Deir al-Zor, which links the group's de facto capital in Raqqa with territory controlled by the militant group in neighbouring Iraq. The group, which controls of most of the province, has laid siege since last March to remaining government-held areas in the city of Deir al-Zor. (Reporting by Mariam Karouny; editing by Chris Reese, G Crosse) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. PARIS Defence chiefs from the United States, France, Britain and four other countries pledged on Wednesday to intensify their fight against Islamic State, looking to capitalise on recent battlefield gains against the militants. The jihadist group lost control of the western Iraqi city of Ramadi last month, in a sorely needed victory for U.S.-backed Iraqi forces. But critics, including some in the U.S. Congress, say the U.S. strategy is still far too weak and lacks sufficient military support from Sunni Arab allies. Sunni Arab nations have largely dropped out of the air campaign against Islamic State since last year joining a Saudi-led coalition fighting Houthi rebels in Yemen. "We agreed that we all must do more," U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter told a news conference after talks in Paris among the "core" military coalition members, which also included Germany, Italy, Australia and the Netherlands. A U.S. defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the United States was looking for additional contributions of special operations forces from allies. The official also signalled a willingness among core contributors to consider providing additional police and military trainers as needed. A joint statement by the ministers re-committed their governments to work with the U.S.-led coalition "to accelerate and intensify the campaign." The Paris setting for the talks itself sent a message, coming just over two months after the city was struck by deadly shooting and bombing attacks claimed by Islamic State. French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Islamic State was in retreat. "Because we have been able to hit its resources, it's now time to increase our collective effort," he said. British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said the goal was now to "tighten the noose around the head of the snake in Syria in Raqqa." COALITION 'NOT WINNING YET' But U.S. Senator John McCain, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee - along with other critics of U.S. President Barack Obama's approach to the war effort - says Islamic State still poses a potent threat. "ISIL has lost some territory on the margin, but has consolidated power in its core territories in both Iraq and Syria," McCain said at a Wednesday hearing on U.S. war strategy, using another acronym for Islamic State. "Meanwhile, ISIL continues to metastasize across the region in places like Afghanistan, Libya, Lebanon, Yemen, and Egypt. Its attacks are now global, as we saw in Paris." Carter has sought to confront Islamic State both by wiping out its strongholds in Iraq and Syria and addressing its spread beyond its self-declared caliphate there. But U.S. officials have declined to set a timeline for what could be a long-term campaign that will also require political reconciliation to succeed. Carter announced a meeting next month of defence ministers from all 26 military members of the anti-Islamic State coalition, as well as Iraq, in what he described as the first face-to-face meeting of its kind. "Every nation must come prepared to discuss further contributions to the fight," he said. "And I will not hesitate to engage and challenge current and prospective members of the coalition as we go forward." The U.S. defence official acknowledged that the need for a greater Arab role was a focus of discussions and held out hope that Saudi Arabia would attend next month's talks in Brussels. (Additional reporting by Marine Pennetier, editing by Larry King and John Stonestreet) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Just yesterday, a new rumor stated that Google will release two Nexus devices this year similar to 2015. Now, some new information about the two Nexus devices has surfaced and this one is coming from @LlabTooFeR. LlabTooFeR, who is a known tipster is stating that the two Nexus smartphones by HTC will come with the codenames T50 and T55. The new Nexus devices are said to sport 5-inch and 5.5-inch display so it can be assumed that 5 inch model is codenamed as T50 while the 5.5 inch model is the T55. HTC had made first Nexus phone ever, the Nexus One in 2010 as well as the Android tablet, the Nexus 9 in 2014. Last year, the Nexus 5X was made by LG and the Nexus 6P was made by Huawei. It is must be noted that these can be just rumors and nothing has been confirmed yet. Allegedly related to HTC Nexus devices codenames are: T50 T55 LlabTooFeR (@LlabTooFeR) January 19, 2016 via HTC has dismissed reports which claimed that it is planning to spin off its VR business into a standalone company. Local media, Focus Taiwan had claimed that the Taiwanese company is looking forward to spin off its Vive division into a separate company. HTC revealed in a statement to investors that the report stating Chairwoman Cher Wang is in the process of creating a new VR entity that is wholly owned by her and HTC is incorrect. The company unveiled the Vive Pre, a second generation VR headset at CES 2016. Pre-orders for the VR headset will kick start from February 29 followed by shipping in April. HTC has partnered with video game developer Valve for the VR headset which uses Valves Steam VR technology. Recent media reports in Taiwan, such as by United Evening News, stating that Cher Wang is planning to spin off HTCs VR operations into an independent entity that will be wholly owned by Wang is incorrect. HTC will continue to develop our VR business to further maximize value for shareholders. said HTC in a statement The company has been struggling to clock profits from its smartphone business for long time. One of the greatest competitive advantages American companies have over their foreign counterparts is that the United States attracts the best and brightest people from around the world to live and work here. America is like Goldman Sachs in this regard. Or Amazon.com. Or Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet. These companies don't need to advertise to attract talent; incredible people come to them. This is why America's immigration policy is so important to entrepreneurs and executives like: Mark Zuckerburg, the founder and CEO of Facebook Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo! With this in mind, I went through a couple dozen of the biggest companies on the S&P 500 by market capitalization to see if any of them were founded or currently led by immigrants. A meaningful percentage of them were, including the following five current and former CEOs, in addition to a co-founder of one of America's greatest technology company: Google's CEO Pichai Sundararajan (India) Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella (India) Pepsico 's chairperson and CEO Indra Nooyi (India) 's chairperson and CEO Indra Nooyi (India) Pfizer 's CEO Ian Read (Scotland) 's CEO Ian Read (Scotland) Intel 's former CEO Andrew Grove (Hungary) 's former CEO Andrew Grove (Hungary) Alphabet's co-founder Sergey Brin (Russia) The circle broadens considerably if you include second- and third-generation immigrants as well. In the bank industry, for instance, which I follow closely, doing so would capture one of the best bankers in the United States (and probably the word): JPMorgan Chase's (JPM -1.96%) CEO Jamie Dimon, who's paternal grandfather immigrated to the United States from Greece in 1921. Dimon helped the government not once, but twice during the financial crisis. He agreed to acquire Bear Stearns in March 2008 at the behest of the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department. Six months later, he oversaw the acquisition of Washington Mutual, one of the biggest depository institutions in the country. Had it not been for JPMorgan Chase's assistance, it isn't unreasonable to assume that Washington Mutual might still be a ward of the state today. At the very least, it wouldn't have fallen into such capable hands as Dimon's and JPMorgan Chase's. In this way, the United States' ability to attract talent from elsewhere translates into a robust competitive advantage for American companies. This boosts their sales and expands their margins relative to competitors abroad. This is one reason (among many) I believe investors can be confident about buying shares of American companies, even in times like today, when the market is hemorrhaging because of concerns abroad. The people running these businesses are among the best and brightest in the world. If anyone can figure out how to operate in challenging times, they'd be (and are) at the top of that list. Oscar winner Kevin Spacey has been busy these days, but not just being an actor. Besides leading Hollywoods Relativity Studios movie production unit, hes the new spokesperson for Internet security company WISeKey. He joined the FOX Business Networks Maria Bartiromo at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland to discuss his new venture in cybersecurity. Ive always been fascinated by this particular space. Now that I am the chairman of the studio, in light of the Sony hacks last year, this is a wake-up call for anybody, not just in my business but for any business. If you want to protect your content and you want to protect your intellectual property, now its my responsibility to make sure we do that, he said. During the interview, WISeKey CEO, Carlos Moreira joined in on the conversation and explained what the company does. Theres something like 50 billion devices to be connected to the Internet. We started with watches in Switzerland, a simple device that now connects to the Internet. In the future, everything connects to the Internet. WISeKeys encryption provides identity, so every object has an identity. So when you send data to the cloud, everything is encrypted so nobody can hack you in the middle. Moreira also discussed vulnerability to hacks. We are very vulnerable, especially to previous encryption Because all those back doors have been there for a while. Now this is going to be even more difficult if you dont authenticate the product. So, now the trend is to put security at the product level not at the platform level. Anyone can hack the platform but if you put that at the product level, and you connect that to Block Chain for instance, then you have a pier to pier interaction between products, he said. The House of Cards star also discussed his role as chairman of Relativity Studios. Its a new chapter in my life. I finished my 12 years at The Old Vic Theatre in London, of which I was living there and running the theater From my business partner, producing partners Dana Brunetti, whos run my film company Trigger Street for all these years -- we are both now in a position where we get to green-light films, we get to make those decisions, and its an extraordinarily exciting opportunity for us to make movies that we want to get made, Spacey noted. When it comes to the GOP candidates solutions to defeating ISIS, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates says, simplistic answers arent cutting it. I think weve not phased as many different kind of challenges simultaneously in a very long time as we are looking at now -- whether its the whole Middle East, as you say, North Korea, Russia, China and Iran, he said during an interview with the FOX Business Networks Maria Bartiromo. I think most rhetoric about carpet bombing, about making the sand glow, about bombing them to death and so on is frankly just unrealistic. Its not going to accomplish the military objective -- it takes no account of civilian casualties. Its a simplistic answer to whats a complex and long term problem, he added. Although Gates credits the Obama administration for taking steps to deal with ISIS and some of the world problems, he says the gradual measures should have been taken sooner. Weve slowly and I think on the part of the administration, reluctantly begun to do things we should have been doing a number of months ago in terms of increasing numbers of special operation forces on the ground, helping the Iraqi security forces, advising them, and training them. He also said the U.S. should provide weapons directly to Sunnis and the Kurds and intensify air campaigns to be more aggressive in defeating terrorism. The idea on carpet bombing and so on is just not going to solve the problem Even though ISIS has lost some territory, maybe a third of its territory over the last year or so, as you alluded to, we are seeing ISIS activity in Libya, and in other places around the world. Not to mention, their efforts to try and recruit operatives in the United States, in Western Europe and elsewhere, [and] to carry out, if you will, lone wolf attacks that put everyone on edge and give everyone a sense of insecurity. Theres no doubt, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is stiff competition for Hillary Clinton in the race for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. In recent polls, Sanders continues to show his strength in early primary states and is closing in on Clintons national lead. According to a Monmouth University poll released Tuesday, Clinton holds 52% support nationwide from Democratic voters, down from last months 59%. Sanders garners 37% support, a big jump from 26% in December. With a shrinking margin, a strong showing by Sanders in Iowa and New Hampshire could cut Clintons national lead even more, said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, in a statement. With three weeks left before the New Hampshire primary, the self-proclaimed Democratic socialist is taking a commanding lead over the former Secretary of State. According to a new WMUR/CNN poll, Sanders has 60% support compared to Clintons 33% among Democratic New Hampshire primary voters. Andrew Smith, director of the Survey Center for the University of New Hampshire, conducted the poll. He says Bernie Sanders is a real threat to Hillary Clinton and has been for several months. Sanders has had a 10 percentage point advantage over Clinton since September its not that we are seeing a new phenomenon, what we are seeing is a continuation of a trend, said Smith. Historically in New Hampshire, the Democratic primary electorate tends to favor the candidate that is not the favorite of the party at large. During the 1984 primary, Gary Hart won over Walter Mondale and in 2000, Bill Bradley received 46% of the vote, nearly beating out establishment candidate Al Gore. Smith says approximately 35-45% of Democratic primary voters in the Granite State are considered moderate to progressive, which is why Bernie Sanders already has a built-in base. The key thing to remember about New Hampshire which is different than any other primary state is that we have a really big turnout; over 50% this year. That means the people who vote are not political activists, they are just regular old voters and they are not wedded to any one candidate, said Smith. The most impressive result from the poll is Sanders overwhelming favorability rating: 91% of all Democratic primary voters hold a favorable opinion, 96% under the age of 35 support him and a whopping 98% of voters who have never voted for a primary in the past also back him. Sanders has favorability ratings that are off the charts, I have never seen ratings like this, said Smith. He is staggeringly popular -- its not that Clinton is unpopular; she has 65% favorable opinion. Smith says what sets Sanders apart from Clinton is his new on the political scene feel even though he is the oldest candidate running. Another important factor is Bernies honest and direct approach on the campaign trail. When asked which candidate is the least honest in the recent survey, 55% of Democratic primary voters said Hillary Clinton. I think that is the biggest problem Clinton has had in her campaign is that she is not necessarily genuine -- the positions she holds on issues are political, rather than driven by her core beliefs, said Smith. What makes Bernie Sanders an even more viable candidate is his ability to control the messaging from his campaign. Smith says Sanders is driving the Democratic race by pushing the agenda and message, while Clinton is responding to him. It is much easier for voters to believe the real deal versus the person who is saying me too, said Smith. On the offensive, the Clinton campaign released a new TV ad in Iowa and New Hampshire on Wednesday highlighting her accomplishments as First Lady, Senator of New York and Secretary of State. According to the press release, the 60-second spot shows how Hillary Clinton is uniquely suited to take on the challenges that the next president will face and her experience cannot be matched by any other presidential candidate. Hillary Clinton is in very real danger of losing both Iowa and New Hampshire to Bernie Sanders. She is making two arguments: First, that she is ready to be elected, and second, that Sanders can't win and is a danger to America, said David Schoen, a Democratic campaign consultant who worked with Hillary Clinton during her Senate run for New York. Schoen says given the recent poll numbers, there is no evidence this strategy is producing results for her. Candidates efforts for a winning game plan in the New Hampshire primary may be all in vain since 35-45% of primary voters say they make up their minds in the last three days of the campaign and 15-20% say they will select a candidate on Election Day. In New Hampshire, its not a heavily thought out ideologically driven choice and that means that things move around tremendously. People will start paying attention to debates, media coverage and see what their neighbor says. All these little things can change a campaign and shift how things will turn out in the end, said Smith. Throughout 2015, prescription drugs steep price increases were in the news over and over, and 2016 doesnt look to be much different. Already, Pfizer has raised the price of more than 60 of its branded drugs an average of 10.6 percent this month, according to The Wall Street Journal. Allergan, which is in negotiations to be acquired by Pfizer, raised prices an average of 9 percent this month, and other drug makers are following suit. Its not all bad news. For heart disease patients whose only option is Crestor, Zetia or Benicar, generics will likely be available soon to replace their pricey medications, according to prescription benefits manager Express Scripts. HIV patients taking Kaletra, Norvir or Epzicom may also have generics to look forward to this year. As these and 24 other drugs go off patent in 2016, generics manufacturers are likely to overtake the markets for them and save consumers money. READ MORE: The Top-Selling Drugs in America For many Americans who take daily prescriptions 49 percent of all adults, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) there is no such luck. However, there are still ways you can save on your drugs aside from manufacturers coupons and discount programs. Here are a few you may not have heard of. 1. Use alternative pharmacies Because prescriptions are so expensive these days, shopping around can definitely save some money. Mail-order pharmacies save money by cutting out the bricks-and-mortar drugstore, and then pass some of those savings on to consumers. If youre interested, check your insurance policy to see whether it covers mail-order pharmacies. If so, ask your doctors office which one it prefers and for help getting set up with it. READ MORE: 8 Things You Should Know Before Using an Online Pharmacy If thats not an option, you can still shop around for the right pharmacy in town. A good website for this is GoodRx.com, where you can enter the name of your drug and ZIP code; the site will then display prices for that drug in your area. Most of the time, it provides a price with a GoodRx coupon, which you can print from the website once you select your pharmacy. 2. Consider clinical trials Depending on your condition, you may be eligible to participate in a clinical trial and receive some free care and medication. Clinical trials are a bit risky because the drug youre taking hasnt yet been cleared by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as safe, but the reward can be high, because you may end up taking a more effective drug than the one you currently use. To participate in a trial, youll have to sign a consent form, agree to specific visit dates, and be healthy enough based on laboratory results, among other qualifications. However, these exams and visits should be free to you, and the staff should be able to answer all your questions. To find out if there are any open clinical trials near you, check out clinicaltrials.gov and search for your city and condition. READ MORE: The Most Commonly Prescribed Drugs in America 3. Ask your doctor about pill splitting If you take a low dose of your medication, pill splitting may save you money. Since most drugs come in several doses, and 100 mg usually doesnt cost twice as much as 50 mg, for example, purchasing double doses of your pills and cutting them in half can be a thrifty choice. This tactic doesnt work for every person or every pill, so its important to get your doctors approval before splitting. Extended release pills or hormone medications such as birth control should not be split, along with some others, but your doctor will know for sure. Youll want to cut your pills perfectly in half to ensure proper dosing, so once your doctor writes the new prescription, pick up a pill splitter from your pharmacy for $5 to $10. 4. Take advantage of discount programs If you take a particularly pricey drug, you might already be aware of the manufacturers discount or coupon program, since most pharmaceutical companies have some sort of savings system. However, these are usually available only to people with insurance at certain income levels and dont always cover enough of the drugs cost to make it affordable. READ MORE: Cheap Prescriptions: How to Find the Most Bang for Your Buck There are some independent discount programs that may do more to lower your costs. If your finances leave you below 500 percent of the federal poverty level, you may qualify for the Patient Access Networks (PANfoundation.org) program for your condition, which provides money to pay for disease-related costs, including prescriptions. For just drug discounts, independent discount cards are available at rxassist.org and familywize.org with no income restrictions. When you log on to these sites youll have to provide your personal information, but the discount cards are free. As costs keep rising, its easy to get discouraged, but with a little extra work and time spent researching your options, you should be able to find ways to save on your prescription drugs. The tourism industry in debt-burdened Puerto Rico urged precautions on Tuesday after U.S. health authorities alerted pregnant woman against traveling to the island because of the mosquito-borne Zika virus. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a travel warning on Friday for 14 countries and territories in the Caribbean and Latin America, including Puerto Rico, where infection with Zika is a risk. It particularly cautioned pregnant women, as Zika has been linked to serious birth defects. Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, reported its first case of Zika in December. "We are closely monitoring all information about the Zika virus jointly with all the tourism-related organizations," Clarisa Jimenez, president and chief executive of the Puerto Rico Hotel and Tourism Association, said in a statement on Tuesday. Jimenez said travel agents, meeting and convention planners were being informed of the measures being taken at the tourism destination level. "Among these are urging the use of repellents and vigilance of spaces prone to accumulate water in order to eliminate them and avoid the breeding of the mosquito," Jimenez said. Zika is usually a mild illness with fever, rash and joint pain. There is no preventive vaccine or treatment, according to the CDC. While the travel cautions may not help the island's image for tourists, it is not seen having a significant economic impact. Puerto Rico is struggling with $70 billion debt and is trying to renegotiate payments with creditors. "I would be very surprised if it has any noticeable impact on the Puerto Rico economy," said Height Securities analyst Daniel Hanson. "There was pretty much no (economic) effect from the Dengue fever outbreak." According to the CDC website, as of Dec. 9, there were 1,696 suspected cases of Dengue reported in 2015, of which 43 were confirmed in a laboratory. Puerto Rico has estimated that tourism contributes about 6 percent of its gross domestic product, although Hanson said it was likely higher at around 13 to 15 percent. Standard & Poor's analyst David Hitchcock said the leisure and hospitality sector represented only about 14 percent of total employment and 2 percent of GDP, "because it is basically a low-wage industry." "It's indeterminate what the impact on tourism would be - we are not necessarily expecting an immediate big impact," said Hitchcock. The water crisis in Flint, Mich., is just the tip of the iceberg and if you think that it cant happen in your community, youre sadly mistaken. The aging water infrastructure in this country is deeply flawed. Many of the 150,000 public water systems that serve more than 300 million people are based on rusting, leaky pipes and decades-old plans that if not corrected and replaced will have devastating and long-lasting effects on our communities. The disaster in Flint, which began in 2014 when the city switched its water supply from Detroits system to the Flint River in a cost-saving measure, is likely brewing in many other communities. It is inconceivable to me that in the most developed nation on the planet, we have exposed families and young children to the poisonous effects of lead. And it is almost criminal to me that water supply officials were unaware that the water pumping through a large American city was endangering the community. That level of negligence is beyond comprehension. The dangerous, detrimental effects that lead can have on a developing brain and body are well-documented. In 1978, a largely successful campaign to remove lead from home paint products resulted in a new law, after it was found that small children could mistakenly eat paint chips and be exposed to lead poisoning. When it comes to levels of lead in water, no true amount is safe. However, in 1991 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) established an action level for lead in public drinking water at 15 micrograms per liter, and required water supplies to routinely test household tap water to check lead levels. These laws and others were established to protect our citizens from both indirect and direct exposure to the harmful compound. A person can be directly exposed to lead by drinking contaminated water with unsafe levels, while indirect exposure can occur when a person inhales contaminated water particles through steam or vapors. Once lead enters the human body, the heavy metal attaches itself to cells that can begin to build up in bones or major organs like the liver or kidneys. It disrupts the normal cellular biology of the organ and can lead to chronic diseases. However, the most dangerous damage lead poisoning can inflict is on the brain, especially in young or unborn children. If lead is deposited in a developing fetal brain, it can disrupt the normal function and cause irreversible damage. The same can happen in young children whose brains are still maturing. The consequences can result in low IQ, severe delays in cognitive function, significant disruption in the memory center of the brain, learning disabilities and other neurological deficits. The devastating part of this diagnosis is that it is, for the most part, irreversible. Patients exposed to acute lead poisoning can be treated through chelation, which is a method used to filter out the lead. However, for children chronically exposed over a period of time, the damage cannot be undone. This makes the preventable crisis in Flint all the more devastating. I read that the Obama administration is planning to pick Dr. Nicole Lurie to act as a czar and fix the crisis in Flint, but I urge her to look further than just Michigan. Lurie and others must start to seriously evaluate other areas of America where the people are most susceptible to a disaster such as this. The government failed the city of Flint, it must act now to protect the rest of us. Travel-related cases of a mosquito-borne illness running rampant in Latin America have reached Florida and Illinois, officials in those states said Tuesday. Cases of Zika virus which health officials in Brazil believe is causing babies to be born with abnormally small heads have also been reported in Hawaii and Texas. All of the U.S. cases thus far have involved people who traveled to Latin America. In Illinois, two pregnant women who traveled to the affected area have contracted the virus, and doctors are reportedly monitoring their health and pregnancies. There is virtually no risk to Illinois residents since you cannot contract Zika virus from another person, but only through the bite of an infected mosquito, Illinois Department of Public Health director Nirav D. Shah, M.D., J.D., said in a news release. But since this is a time of year when people travel to warmer climates and countries where Zika virus is found, we are urging residents, especially pregnant women, to take preventive measures when traveling in affected countries and check health travel advisories. The Florida Department of Health has confirmed three Zika cases. Two of those people live in Miami-Dade County and traveled to Colombia in December, and the third infected person lives in Hillsborough County and traveled to Venezuela in December, according to the Washington Post. None of the residents are pregnant women. An individual can contract Zika when an infected mosquito bites them. Theres no vaccine nor antiviral treatment for the virus. Most infected people don't develop symptoms, but those who do may have a fever, a rash, joint pain and red eyes which usually last no more than a week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). On Tuesday, the CDC issued new guidelines for doctors whose pregnant patients may have traveled to regions with a tropical illness linked to birth defects. The center advised doctors to ask pregnant women about their travel and certain symptoms, and if warranted test them for an infection. The CDC said there is mounting evidence that Zika virus infection is linked to microcephaly, a birth defect that causes babies heads to develop abnormally. Since October, more than 3,500 babies with the condition have been reported in Brazil. The Associated Press contributed to this report. WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from the manufacturer of Children's Motrin over a $63 million judgment awarded to a family whose daughter developed a life-threatening disease after taking the medicine. The justices on Tuesday let stand a lower court ruling that said Johnson & Johnson should pay the judgment awarded to the family of Samantha Reckis. Reckis was 7 in 2003 when she was given the ibuprofen product for a fever. She developed a rare skin disease and was blinded. A jury ruled in 2013 that the company failed to provide sufficient warnings about potential side effects. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts rejected the company's arguments that the family failed to prove the medicine caused the disease and damages were excessive. As self-proclaimed Democratic socialist, Bernie Sanders' poll numbers keep going up, a new Monmouth University national poll shows, Clinton with 52-percent amongst Democratsdown from 59-percent in December. Sanders at 37-percent --substantially up from 26-percent last month. Look what's happened with two important voting groups. With women, Clinton has dropped significantly. Last month she had a 64-percent to 19-percent lead over Sanders. Now she only has a 54-percent to just a 35-percent lead over him. For younger voters under the age of 50, Clinton has gone from a 52 to 35-percent lead, to a 39 to 52-percent shortfall. That's huge. With the GOP, the latest ARG poll among likely primary voters in New Hampshire, shows a stunning upswing for Ohio Governor, John Kasich. He is up to a significant second place at 20-percent, ahead of Rubio, Cruz and Christe, with Donald Trump still in the lead at 27-percent. Look at how the race tightens when voters are asked if they are definitely voting for a particular candidate. Trump still leads at 24-percent, but Kasich is much closer behind at 22-percent. This is a good day for Donald Trump in New Hampshire, but this is a very good day for John Kasich. Mosuls massive, stone-walled monastery of St. Elijah, dating from the sixth century and distinguished by an entryway etched by Christian monks with Chi Rho, the first Greek letters of the word Kristos, Christ, has been obliterated. From satellite photos of the isolated hill where it had stood, it was confirmed today that the monastery was pulverized into a field of grey dust by ISIS fanatics, evidently using some determined application of sledgehammers, bulldozers and explosives. Built before Christianitys sectarian divisions and having gathered Christian worshipers for one and a half millennia, this ancient sacred edifice, now reduced to rubble, represents yet another irreparable loss to Christian patrimony at the hands of these Islamist extremists. But, even more importantly, its destruction also symbolizes the genocide of Iraqs Christian people and their civilization. It gives shocking reminder that Nineveh has been inalterably changed. Its pluralistic cultural mosaic since antiquity has been shattered and putting it back together may prove impossible in this generation. But why did ISIS do it? The militants had already consolidated control over all of the Nineveh Plain by late summer 2014 and had killed, enslaved, forcibly converted or driven out all Christians when it went to the considerable effort of destroy St. Elijah--along with a long roster of other historic Christian churches, tombs, sculptures, and manuscripts. Surely, it was not driven to do so because the monastery posed a threat or was a seat of power -- these minorities had no military forces or real political power. ISIS set about eradicating every trace of the Christians, even the silent stones of their now forlorn monasteries, due to its sacramentalized hatred of infidels. In a report this week, the UNs Assistance Mission in Iraq confirms that ISIS is indoctrinating and training Mosul children in jihadist ideology. This ideological hatred encompasses all of Ninevehs Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Christians, as well as its Yazidi community. And, alarmingly, it is being indoctrinated into the next generation with school textbooks that direct children to hate and kill the Nazarenes, that is, the Christians, and the Yazidis, condemned as polytheists and devil worshippers, respectively. Thirty Muslim teachers have been reportedly arrested recently and are to be tried in Mosuls sharia courts for heroically refusing to teach from these texts. According to Canon Andrew White, the Anglican Vicar of Baghdad, mainstream education in Nineveh is now jihadi doctrine. Basically, what is being taught is death to anyone who is not a follower of Mohammed, he reported learning from his Muslim contacts there. Less than 300,000 Christians remain in Iraq, down from 1.4 million in 2003 when Iraqs Christian community was one of only four robust Christian communities remaining in the Middle East. The great portion of Iraqs remnant Christians are now in Kurdistan, many displaced from Nineveh and rapidly losing all hope and desire of ever returning home. So far, President Obama has refused to recognize that the Nineveh Christians and Yazidis in Kurdistan are targeted for religious genocide by ISIS. For purposes of U.S. policy, the destruction of St. Elijah monastery will be counted for just another senseless act of destruction. There is no legal recourse for these minorities to be designated refugees since they technically remain within their home country, though, in Kurdistan, they have no legal right to work and maintain residency. For another winter, Ninevehs Christians and Yazidis will struggle to survive in their tents and shipping containers, subsisting on hand-outs, wondering what is to become of their children and praying for rescue. Why is it not a not a big surprise that a history professor living off of taxpayer funds may have cheered on Americas Islamist enemiesand is the target of an FBI investigation into whether he is linked with ISIS? Julio Cesar Pino, a Cuban-born convert to Islam, is apparently well known at Kent State University for fiery anti-Israel rhetoric. Since-deleted social media posts attributed to him have praised Usama bin Laden and urged Al Qaeda fighters to merge with ISIS, of which he also allegedly approves. Pino shouted Death to Israel during a presentation by a former Israeli official, eulogized a Palestinian suicide bomber, and allegedly claimed to be one of two masked Islamist fighters in a picture posted online. One report says Pino told a Jewish student he would burn in hell for his religion. A spokesman for Kent State told the public that the FBI believes there is no threat to the school. Pino himself assured a reporter: I support no violence or violent organizations. The professor, who graduated magna cum laude from UCLA, added an infantile haters gonna hate in his defense. Actually the threat is very real. Whether we like it or not, and whether we recognize it or not, the USA is at war with radical Islamincluding all of the groups Pino holds in high esteem. The tip of the Islamist spear is pointed at the free world on the battlefield, which in recent weeks has extended from Syria into a concert hall in Paris, a holiday party in San Bernardino, and a Starbucks in Istanbul. However, the rest of the Islamist spear relies on political and cultural subversion instead of bombs. Recently this has included a rape rampage in Cologne on New Years Eve and the efforts of groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which uses political correctness to discredit opponents of Islamism and violent jihad. Pino is a part of this cultural front. Whether or not the FBI finds evidence sufficient to charge Pino with a crime is a secondary issue. The real question is why men like him are allowed to teach American students. How could anyone possibly think he is qualified to teach history? Last week, at a forum hosted by the Hamilton Foundation, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich observed that those who still believe in America must contend with an entire academic left which is so anti-Western.. that they cant really imagine there is a threat to us that we havent earned. Why must we tolerate this? Why do taxpayer funds support political activists posing as teachers? Why do middle class Americans donate each year to universities with legions of administrators and professors who hate their values? Why are those universities allowed to shelter endowments worth hundreds of billions from the taxes, even as they indebt students for life in exchange for decreasingly valuable degrees? If we ever want to turn the tide on radical Islam and end the perpetual cycle of war and terrorism, we have to get our own house in order first, and then take on the ideology of radical Islam globally. People who think like Pino should be purged from universities. Liberals will moan about academic freedom, but it is blatantly obvious to any conservative who has set foot on a campus in recent decades that there is no academic freedom. Diversity to college administrators means a Benetton adan obsession with race and ethnicitynot true diversity of thought. Governors and state legislatures have got to step in to eliminate tenure and demand that taxpayer-funded colleges reflect the values of taxpayers. It would be better to have liberals moaning in the future about the supposed loss of academic freedom than to blind ourselves today to the Islamists war on us. Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson canceled the remainder of his campaign events Tuesday after a fatal car crash involving staff and volunteers. According to the campaign, a van carrying three volunteers and a campaign staff member slid on an icy Iowa road and flipped on its side near Atlantic, Iowa. It was then hit by another vehicle. One volunteer, 25-year-old Braden Joplin, was transported to the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Obama, Neb. where he died Tuesday around 4:30 p.m., according to a statement from the campaign. "Carson plans to meet with Joplin's family members once he arrives in Omaha later this evening to offer his condolences," the campaign said. Three of the other passengers in the van are being examined at Cass County Memorial Hospital in Atlantic, Iowa, Carsons campaign said in a written statement. The accident comes less than two weeks before the Iowa caucuses, where Carson is polling fourth behind Donald Trump, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, according to polling data from RealClearPolitics. The oldest son of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was arrested in a domestic violence case in which his girlfriend was afraid he would shoot himself with an AR-15 assault rifle, according to court documents filed Tuesday. Track Palin, 26, is charged with assault, interfering with the report of a domestic violence crime and possessing a weapon while intoxicated in connection with the incident Monday night at the Wasilla home of his parents, where he lives, according to an affidavit by police. The girlfriend told authorities she was punched in the face by Palin, who is the oldest child of Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee and conservative icon. The charges were filed Tuesday, the same day Sarah Palin endorsed Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump before voting begins with the Iowa caucuses. There is no telephone listing for the girlfriend. The court documents say the woman, Track Palin's girlfriend of one year, had bruising and swelling around her left eye, and she said her right knee hurt after Palin kicked her there. Palin family attorney John Tiemessen declined to comment on the matter other than to say in an email that respect for the family's privacy is appreciated "as Track receives the help that he and many of our returning veterans need." Palin's arraignment was held Tuesday, but Tiemessen was not sure if he entered a plea yet. According to the three-page affidavit, both Palin and his girlfriend called 911 that night. Police Officer Andrew Kappler wrote that he arrived at the Wasilla home and found Track Palin walking outside and talking on a phone. The officer said Palin had an injury to his right eye and surrounding area, smelled strongly of alcohol and acted with escalating hostility, prompting Kappler to put him in handcuffs. Police say a breath sample provided by Palin showed he had a blood alcohol level of 0.189. The affidavit says other officers found the girlfriend hiding under a bed inside the home and crying. The argument continued at the home, according to the affidavit, which says Palin struck the woman with his fist on the left side of her head near her eye. She curled up in the fetal position because she didn't know what else he would do, the woman told police. She said he then kicked her in the knee and threw her phone across the driveway, according to the court document. The woman said she went inside after getting her phone. Inside, Palin held the rifle, with the barrel just away from his face pointed to the side, the affidavit states. The affidavit adds that the woman told police Palin was yelling "Do you think I won't do it?" The girlfriend "was concerned that he would shoot himself and ran outside and around the house," the affidavit says. "She didn't see where Palin went, so she went inside and up the stairs, where she hid under a bed." It's not the first encounter with the law for Palin or other members of his family. In September 2014, he and other Palins were involved in a brawl that broke out at a party in Anchorage. No arrests were made in the melee, and no one wanted to press charges. But according to a police report, Palin had blood around his mouth and his hands. He was belligerent until his mother told him to talk to a police officer. Defense Department bases no longer will accept drivers licenses from five states as proof of ID -- a consequence of the implementation of a controversial post-9/11 law. The decision, which affects residents of Minnesota, Illinois, Missouri, New Mexico and Washington, was announced Wednesday. Residents from those five states, going forward, will need another form of ID such as a passport to enter. The move marks one of the first big changes after the government started to implement a 2005 security law known as the REAL ID Act. The legislation was meant to tighten standards for government-issued IDs like drivers licenses and banned federal agencies from accepting IDs that dont measure up. Washington D.C. delayed full implementation for years, but the Department of Homeland Security is now pressuring states into compliance. Currently, DHS is only enforcing the legislation for access to military bases, most federal facilities and nuclear power plants -- but will eventually extend the ID requirements for air travel as well. Only 23 states are in compliance with the law, but many others have been granted exemptions until later this year. However, Illinois, Missouri, New Mexico and Washington were denied an extension beyond Jan. 10, making them officially non-compliant. Minnesotas exemption expired in 2015. A DoD official said in a statement released Wednesday that DoD installations are now prohibited from accepting drivers licenses or state ID cards from non-compliant states. However, the official noted that the requirement could be waived in certain situations. DoD policy allows commanders to waive the DoD access control requirements for special situations, circumstances, or emergencies, the official said. Therefore, installations may authorize other alternatives to facilitate installation access, such as a graduation ceremony guest list, escorts, etc. The legislation has faced opposition from both Democrats and Republicans due to privacy and cost concerns, and fears that it represents the first step toward a national ID system. DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson announced earlier this month that airline passengers from states not compliant with the law will be unable to board a flight using a drivers license as of Jan. 22, 2018, and urged state lawmakers to ramp up their compliance efforts. I urge state government leaders to take immediate action to comply with the REAL ID Act, to ensure the continued ability of their residents to fly unimpeded. It is time to move toward final compliance with this law, Johnson said. **Want FOX News First in your inbox every day? Sign up here.** Buzz Cut: Hillary Clintons red scare Server situation keeps getting worse Trump, Palin try to build left-right coalition New Rubio ad hits Hillary Dad, the trumpets saw the pants HILLARY CLINTONS RED SCARE Is this the Clinton campaign or the John Birch Society? Hillary Clintons campaign network is riot with talk about socialism, seeping in under the door or perhaps in the fluoridated water. You never know where the conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids will turn up. Among those warning of socialist creep is prominent Clinton booster, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, who got double coupons for warning of a threat to the very heartland of the nation. Here in the heartland, we like our politicians in the mainstream, and he is not hes a socialist, Nixon told the NYT. The sinister socialist to whom Nixon is referring is 74-year-old Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has been in Congress since 1991 and for all of his adamancy about being an independent and a, yes, socialist has almost always been a perfectly pliant supporter of the Democratic party. Democratic leaders getting Sanders vote has been something like bums turning up for a hot meal at the Salvation Army: You have to listen to a little sermon, but youll get what you came for. Now remember, Democrats are socialists. Heck, most Republicans are socialists, in the traditional sense that socialism refers to the government taking resources from the private sector and redirecting them. In an academic understanding, its all about degree. Some people are socialist enough to want the government to build highways and provide basic regulations for commerce. What Sanders means is that he would like the government to do much, much more of that. Like, much more. But during the Cold War and beyond the word came to be associated with the dangerous boys in the Politburo. Being associated with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was not exactly good PR. And that after the National Socialists of Germany, well, youre going to need a re-branding. Welcome back progressivism! But despite the relatively short ideological leap between Clintons policies and those of Sanders, the scare is on. Joining Nixon in the red scare is Clinton PAC man David Brock. Hes a socialist, Brock told Bloomberg News. Hes got a 30 year history of affiliation with a lot of whack-doodle ideas and parties. Not very kind to say about a guy who has been a loyal Democrat and shared 93 percent of votes in common with Clinton when she was in the Senate. This ought to prove a couple of things to election observers: Team Clinton is very nervous and utterly willing to do anything to win. Server situation keeps getting worse - Fox News: Hillary Clinton's emails on her unsecured, homebrew server contained intelligence from the U.S. government's most secretive and highly classified programs, according to an unclassified letter from a top inspector general to senior lawmakers. Fox News exclusively obtained the unclassified letter, sent Jan. 14 from Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III. It laid out the findings of a recent comprehensive review by intelligence agencies that identified several dozen additional classified emails -- including specific intelligence known as special access programs (SAP). That indicates a level of classification beyond even top secret, the label previously given to two emails found on her server, and brings even more scrutiny to the presidential candidates handling of the governments closely held secrets. New poll has Bernie leading Hillary in New Hampshire - CNN: Bernie Sanders lead over Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire is on the rise, with the Vermont senator leading the former secretary of state by 27 points, 60% to 33%, a new CNN/WMUR poll has found. The new poll, mostly conducted before Sunday night's debate, found Sanders support has grown by 10 points since a late-November/early December CNN/WMUR poll, which found Sanders holding 50% to Clinton's 40%. New Hampshire Democrats' views on the race are solidifying as well, with 52% saying they have definitely decided who they will support, up from 36% who felt that way in early December. Among those voters, Sanders holds an even broader 64% to 35% lead. WITH YOUR SECOND CUP OF COFFEE On this day 153 years ago Union General Ambrose Burnside, reeling from an embarrassing defeat at the hands of Robert E. Lee in Fredericksburg, Va., tried to redeem himself by taking advantage of an unusually warm and dry January to quick march his Army of the Potomac for a surprise attack. But it would turn out that Burnsides gift for innovation was mostly limited to facial hair. The Massachusetts Sesquicentennial Commission has a wonderful description of the big idea that would cost him his command: On the night of January 20-21, as they were set to begin, a light rain began and then turned very heavy. The roads that had seemed easy to navigate quickly turned to impassable mud. The march should have taken an easy four hours, but it became a four-day nightmare. The wagons and heavy artillery simply sank and the teams of horses and men hauling them with ropes could not remove them...Meanwhile, across the river, the Confederate soldiers, who were quite aware of Burnsides plan, sat and watched, mocking the Union soldiers with signs that read Yanks, if you cant place your pontoons yourself, we will send you help and This way to Richmond. Burnside gave his men rations of whiskey to encourage them to keep going, but this effort backfired: a fight broke out that eventually turned into a melee of 2,500 menBurnside ordered the men back to camp on January 24. Got a TIP from the RIGHT or the LEFT? Email FoxNewsFirst@FOXNEWS.COM POLL CHECK Real Clear Politics Averages Republican Nomination Trump 34 percent; Cruz 20 percent; Rubio 11 percent; Carson 9.5 percent General Election: Clinton vs. Trump Clinton +2 points Generic Congressional Vote: Republicans +0.5 TRUMP, PALIN TRY TO BUILD LEFT-RIGHT COALITION In Donald Trumps savage, short-term fight with Ted Cruz, Sarah Palins endorsement probably helps shore up Trump with some suspicious Iowa conservatives. But as Palin pointed out in her remarks, she and Trump are both focused on building sort of a left-right coalition now. It may seem odd to the politically uninitiated to call her and Trump centrists, but thats kind of the brand. Its the re-birth of the Reform Party. Jesse Ventura, call your office. As Palin put it, Well, Trump, what hes been able to do, which is really ticking people off, which Im glad about, hes going rogue left and right, man. Thats why hes doing so well. Hes been able to tear the veil off this idea of the system. Cruz, on the other hand, is following a more traditional path to victory in Iowa: conservatism, Christianity and contact with voters. Cruz is getting ready to barrel back into Iowa with Glenn Beck, Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, and other conservative all-stars at his side for a final caucus push. Cruz also got a big bump when the states Governor Terry Branstad, called for Cruzs defeat for opposing ethanol subsidies. Branstads opposition lets Cruz further intensify his brand as the one the GOP establishment is most afraid of. Trump is trying for a new model in which he brings in lots of new voters, especially disaffected Democrats and independents. It may work, but based on recent history, Cruz is making all the right moves for the traditional GOP electorate in the state. Power Play: Trump the establishment pick? - The GOP establishment might be faced with a tough choice in the coming months: Ted Cruz or Donald Trump? In the choice of who could be the nominee the vote seems unanimous: Trump. Why? Chris Stirewalt explains all in just 60 seconds. WATCH HERE. [Watch Fox: Ben Carson joins "The Real Story with Gretchen Carlson" today at 2 p.m. ET to talk about the death of his volunteer.] New Rubio ad hits Hillary - In a new ad out today, the Rubio team uses one of the Florida senators best lines from the Fox Business Network debate knocking Hillary Clinton on her handling of the Benghazi scandal. The television ad is set to air today in New Hampshire and South Carolina. Rubio takes on atheist at event in Iowa - DMR: Confronted by an activist atheist, Marco Rubio said hell champion a country where no one is forced to violate their conscience. No one is going to force you to believe in God, but no one is going to force me to stop talking about God, said the Florida senator, prompting applause and a whistle of support from the crowd. During a town hall on Monday morning, Justin Scott, 34, of Waterloo asked about Rubios new ad, explaining that atheists such as him are looking for somebody that will uphold their rights as Americans, and not pander to a certain religious group, he saidYou have a right to believe whatever you want, said Rubio, a Roman Catholic, in response. You have a right to believe in nothing at all. [Watch Fox: Gov. Chris Christie will be on Your World with Neil Cavuto today at 4p.m.] DAD, THE TRUMPETS SAW THE PANTS ABC News: When the cold gets tough in Minnesota, one longtime Minneapolis resident uses frozen pants to make it more fun. Tom Grotting is famous in his Minneapolis neighborhood for freezing pants and placing them in unlikely places, including his front yardGrotting soaks the pants in a bucket of water and then hangs them outside, sculpting them as they freeze. The whole process takes less than 30 minutes, he said. The fun begins for Grotting when he decides where to put the frozen pants. Past locations have ranged from outside the neighborhood coffee shop to next to parking metersGrotting said two people who have never caught on to his prank are his two children, a 15-year-old daughter and 19-year-old son. The kids hate it, Grotting said. My daughter is in the band and had a big rehearsal with the trumpet players and she texted me and said, Dad, the trumpets saw the pants. AND NOW A WORD FROM CHARLES [Hillary Clintons server] is an investigative story. And now its in the hands of the FBI. Its hard to imagine that the Department of Justice will ignore this or wave it away. Charles Krauthammer on Special Report with Bret Baier. Chris Stirewalt is digital politics editor for Fox News. Want FOX News First in your inb Attorney General Loretta Lynch defended President Obamas new executive actions on guns during a Senate hearing Wednesday, as a top Republican put her department "on notice" about infringing on constitutional rights. This subcommittee will have no part in undermining the Constitution and the rights that it protects," Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., top Republican on the Senate Appropriations panel that held the hearing, told Lynch. Lynch testified before the panel as the president's recently announced measures to expand background checks kick up an election-year fight over gun rights. GOP presidential candidates and lawmakers have condemned the president's move as an overreach of executive powers. Shelby almost immediately questioned the administrations legal justification for moving ahead on its own and bypassing Congress. It is clear to me that the American people are fearful that President Obama is eager to strip them of their Second Amendment rights, Shelby, who is up for re-election in November, said. Let me be clear: the Second Amendment is not a suggestion. It is an individual right protected in the Bill of Rights that has been recognized by the Supreme Court. But Lynch called the moves "well-reasoned measures, well within existing legal authorities, built on work that's already underway." "I have complete confidence that the common-sense steps announced by the president are lawful," Lynch said. Obama's actions include new guidance on who the government will consider "in the business" of selling firearms -- a phrase used to describe which dealers must obtain federal licenses and conduct background checks on buyers. Even those selling a few guns online or at gun shows can be required to get licenses and perform background checks, the administration said. Other steps include hiring 230 more FBI examiners so more background checks can be run; 200 additional agents for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; federal research on gun safety technology and a request for $500 million to improve mental health programs. Lynch said Obama's 2017 budget, to be released in February, will seek $80 million for his gun proposals, largely for the additional FBI and ATF agents. GOP presidential candidates Donald Trump and Jeb Bush have said they would repeal Obama's orders if elected, while Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, another contender, called them unconstitutional. House Republicans said they will create a task force to study "executive overreach" by Obama and other presidents. Most Democrats have supported Obama's actions. "I'm fighting to give the Justice Department the tools they need to protect families and communities from gun violence," said Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski, top Democrat on the Appropriations panel. Gun violence has grown anew as a political issue as mass shootings continue to rip through America. Obama failed to push gun curbs through Congress in the months following the 2012 killings of 20 children and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut, and the GOP-led House and Senate remain opposed to restricting firearms. As Obama has conceded, Lynch told the senators she has "no illusions that these measures by themselves will end gun violence in America." She said she hoped Congress would work with the administration on the issue. Government statistics show that over 30,000 Americans die from firearms yearly, two-thirds of which are suicides. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder devoted most of his State of the State speech Tuesday night to the toxic water crisis in the city of Flint, apologizing to its residents and vowing "I will fix it." The Republican Synder also pledged greater transparency, saying he would release on Wednesday his own emails regarding Flint's water, which became contaminated with too much lead when the city switched its water source in 2014 as a cost-cutting measure. "I'm sorry most of all that I let you down," Snyder said. "You deserve better. You deserve accountability. You deserve to know that the buck stops here with me. Most of all, you deserve to know the truth, and I have a responsibility to tell the truth." Snyder and his administration have been deluged by criticism from state and national Democratic leaders and activists, who claim the governor admitted the magnitude of the fiasco months too late. The crisis began when Flint, about an hour's drive from Detroit, switched its water supply from Detroit's system to the Flint River in 2014 to save money while under state financial management. Michigan's top environmental regulator Dan Wyant resigned over the failure to ensure that the Flint River water was properly treated to keep lead from pipes from leaching into the water. "This is the kind of disaster, the kind of failure to deliver basic services that hurts people's trust in government," House Minority Leader Tim Greimel said. However, the Environmental Protection agency's top Midwest official recently told The Detroit News the agency knew about the lack of corrosion control in the water suppy as early as this past April, but did not make the knowlege public. In his speech, Snyder committed $28 million more in the short term to pay for more filters, bottled water, school nurses, intervention specialists, testing and monitoring on top of $10.6 million allocated in the fall. The money also would replace plumbing fixtures in schools with lead problems and could help Flint with unpaid water bills. The new round of funding, which requires approval from the GOP-led Legislature, is intended as another short-range step while Snyder works to get a better handle on the long-range costs. He plans to make a bigger request in his February budget proposal. Snyder also announced the deployment of roughly 130 more National Guard members to the city and revealed his appeal of President Barack Obama's denial of a federal disaster declaration for the area. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Sarah Palin publicly addressed her son Track's arrest on domestic violence charges during her first post-endorsement appearance Wednesday on the campaign trail for Donald Trump, appearing to link his alleged behavior to post-traumatic stress disorder -- even using it to criticize President Obamas veteran policies. Speaking to the pro-Trump crowd in Tulsa, Okla., Palin referred to her sons case as the "elephant in the room." After telling the crowd they deserved a commander-in-chief who will let [military members] do their job and go kick ISIS ass and not leave our wounded warriors behind, the former Alaska governor asked if she could get a little bit personal. I guess its kind of the elephant in the room because my own family going through what were going through today, with my son, a combat vet having served in the striker brigade fighting for you all, America, in the war zone, she said. But my son, like so many others, they come back a bit different. They come back hardened. They come back wondering if there is that respect for what it is that their fellow soldiers and airmen and every other member of the military have sacrificially given to this country and that starts at the top. Palin said military members look at Obama and question whether he knows the sacrifices they make to secure America and to secure freedoms. So when my own son is going through what he is going through coming back, I can certainly relate with other families who kinda feel these ramifications of some PTSD, she said. Track, a 26-year-old Iraq veteran, was arraigned Tuesday on charges of domestic violence assault, interfering with a report of domestic violence crime and possession of a firearm while intoxicated. According to the police affidavit posted by KTVA-TV, officers were called to the residence Monday night following two 911 calls the first from Tracks girlfriend and the second from him. The woman claimed Track had punched her in the face and that a firearm was involved, according to police records. The charges against Track were filed the same day Palin appeared at an Ames, Iowa, rally to endorse Trump, the current GOP frontrunner. Palin, a Tea Party favorite and the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, told the crowd that things will change under President Trump. She went on to criticize the GOP establishment as well as Obamas foreign policies. I usually say that the media care far more about endorsements than the voters do. Sarah Palin backing Donald Trump might be different. At the very least, the surprise move enables Trump to dominate the next few news cycles in this crucial home stretch before the Iowa caucuses. And coupled with Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad coming out against Ted Cruz, it gives Trump a sense of momentum in a race where a week or so ago he was thought to be slipping. (Branstad is ripping Cruz for taking the bold step of criticizing ethanol subsidies, which tells you what you need to know about Iowa politics.) In her speech, Palin mocked the GOP establishment for calling Trump insufficiently conservative and saying it's "busted" for attacking its own front-runner, offering her highest praise that he was going rogue against the party. Nearly eight years after her losing vice presidential race, Palin is not the political force she once was. But she validates Trump among very conservative and evangelical voters, precisely the kind who turn out on wintry February nights in Iowa. Palin put her muscle behind Joni Ernst in Iowas 2014 Senate race, and that helped the tea party favorite win. And as Cruz acknowledged in a graceful preemptive message, he wouldnt have won his Senate seat in 2012 without Palins backing. It remains to be seen whether Palin actively campaigns for Trump for more than a day, but in the Facebook age, it doesnt really matter. Palins mama grizzly backing also helps neutralize Hillary Clintons dismissal of Trump as a sexist figure. Palin has more than her share of detractors, many of them in the media. Some of them will paint both Palin and Trump as loudmouths who dont know a hell of a lot about policy. But this isnt a general election endorsement. With Cruz attacking Trump as a fake conservative, her embrace helps reassure conservative voters that hes the real deal. You can see why theyd like each other. Both are media-savvy mavericks who challenged the political establishment and have had to fend off criticism about the depth of their knowledge. And theyve both had reality shows! Palin, who served half a term as Alaska governor, is more of a cultural figure now, and Trump is a celebrity businessman who made the leap to politics. As an interesting side note, Palin is making this move despite Trump having dismissed the POW record of the man who brought her to national prominence, John McCain. But in the finger-pointing that followed the 2008 loss, there was little love between the McCain and Palin camps. Besides, McCain has made clear hes not a fan of the senator he once called a wacko bird, and more recently echoed Trump in questioning Cruzs eligibility on birther grounds. Cruzs strongest shot at the nomination relies on an Iowa win that helps deflate the Trump balloon. That path may have just gotten a bit more complicated. When it comes to tax perks, the mortgage interest deduction is the third rail -- typically, no one wants to touch it. But Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson is doing the politically unthinkable and openly talking about getting rid of homeowners' favorite tax favor. And a handful of other candidates are at least talking about making tweaks to the system. No exceptions, no shelters, no loopholes, Carson told South Carolina Tea Party activists on Monday, touting his 14.9 percent flat tax plan. The tough tax debate on the 2016 campaign trail shows that sacred cow deductions are at least on the table. At the same time, analysts suggest any major changes to the system remain a long way off. The Republican candidates tax plans generally aim to simplify the code, lower rates and strip down deductions. But Carson is largely out on his own calling for a complete elimination of the homeowner benefit. Even as his poll numbers fall, he doubled down on the idea at last week's Fox Business Network debate. There are a lot of people who say, if you get rid of the deductions, you ruin the American dream, because, you know, the mortgage interest deduction. But the fact of the matter is, people had homes before, Carson said. The deduction allows homeowners who itemize their taxes to subtract the interest paid on their mortgage or loans totaling $1 million or less. The Carson proposal has been met with jeers from real estate magnate -- and Republican front-runner -- Donald Trump, who argues that messing with the deduction is a major miscalculation. You know, a lot of people were worried about real estate try taking the mortgage interest deduction out, Trump said at a rally last fall in New Hampshire, when Carson posed a bigger threat in the polls than he does now. Youll see whats going to happen to real estate. You want to see a crash? Try that one. Republican strategist Bradley Blakeman says Carson should reconsider his approach. Its a bad move. Hes the Kevorkian of taxes, Blakeman told FoxNews.coms Strategy Room, comparing Carson to assisted suicide advocate Dr. Jack Kevorkian. It is absolutely essential to keep the mortgage deduction because that is the empowerment by which people can make a home, buy a house and amortize that cost over a period of 15 to 30 years. Trump has argued the deduction, one of Americas most expensive tax breaks, is key to keeping the countrys economy alive a view echoed by many GOP presidential candidates. Other major candidates propose either leaving the deduction alone, or giving it a slight tweak. Florida Sen. Marco Rubios gone on record to say hed leave the deduction in place. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said hed cap it at 2 percent of adjusted gross income. Texas Sen. Ted Cruzs Simple Flat Tax plan includes a deduction for home mortgage on the first $500,000 in principal. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee has vowed to gut the countrys entire tax code if elected, which by default means hed be in favor of dumping the existing deduction. While the deduction itself is popular and designed to make home ownership more accessible, some financial analysts say that a vast majority of benefits go to the top tier of wealthy Americans. University of Texas Law Professor A. Michele Dickinson says that nearly half of those who have a mortgage receive little to no benefit from the interest deduction. Instead, a majority of mortgage holders choose to use a standard deduction when filing because its more profitable. Though the mortgage interest deduction theoretically increases Americans access to homeownership, in reality, it mostly subsidizes housing costs for upper income Americans, she wrote. Carson has also vowed to cut the charitable contribution deduction, though others have not followed suit. Carson, who has seen his poll numbers slip in recent weeks, says hes betting on the goodwill and generosity of Americans to donate without expecting a tax break in return. We had churches before that and charitable organizations before that, Carson said at the first Fox Business Network debate in November. The fact of the matter is, I believe if you put more money in peoples pocks that they will actually be more generous rather than less generous. Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are now attacking each other in what has become a two-man race in Iowa the first test in the long battle for the Republican nomination. But unlike earlier scraps involving so-called establishment candidates, Trump and Cruzs jabs are part of a fight for the partys most conservative wing -- and the war of words carries the risk of alienating those same voters. Teds not a person thats liked. Hes a nasty guy, Trump said Wednesday on Fox News Fox and Friends, essentially repeating what hes said for days about the Texas senator. Several polls suggest Cruz and Trump indeed are competing for the same voting bloc, considering many likely Cruz voters see Trump as their second choice, and vice-versa. A recent Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register survey, for example, found that 47 percent of Trump supporters picked Cruz as their second choice in Iowa. And 25 percent of Cruz supporters had Trump as their No. 2. Below them in the polls, the wide field of GOP candidates is competing for the rest, with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson composing the second tier nationally. Political analysts have mixed views on whether the Trump-Cruz attacks will hurt or help either candidate. David Payne, a Republican strategist and senior vice president for Vox Global, thinks neither will benefit from personal attacks, but suggests Cruz has the most to lose. It certainly has gotten really nasty, really quick, he said. But analysts essentially agree the truth will be revealed after the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses, dominated by conservative voters. It remains to be seen, Julianne Thompson, founder of the Free America Project and a former co-chairman of the Atlanta Tea Party, said. Theres a competition for evangelical voters. And well see whether they respond to Ted Cruzs message and if he gets the campaign energy that Trump now has. Still, Thompson thinks Cruz vs. Trump is good overall for conservatives, whom she thinks have been disenfranchised by Republican politics. They felt betrayed, she said. But theyve stormed back in 2016 because of these candidates. I dont believe the evangelical base will be divided. But a lot will be decided in Iowa. In the early months of the campaign, Cruz and Trump appeared to have an unspoken agreement not to attack each other, even appearing together at a Tea Party rally on Capitol Hill. But signs of the inevitable emerged just minutes after the rally -- when Cruz suggested he attended because any event featuring Trump would bring TV cameras and free media. Then, Cruz in November started his double-digit surge in Iowa. As Cruz scooped up potential votes left by the slipping campaign of evangelical favorite Carson, Trump started his attacks by suggesting the Canada-born Cruz might not be a natural-born citizen, a situation Democrats, he said, could use to invalidate a Cruz presidency. He also repeated the details of a news story about Cruz failing to disclose on federal campaign-finance papers a Goldman Sachs loan in his 2012 Senate run. But in roughly the past week, Trumps attacks, as they have with other candidates, turned personal. He was so nice to me, Trump said Sunday on ABCs This Week. But he's a nasty guy. Nobody likes him. Nobody in Congress likes him. Cruz has also attacked Trump, arguing hes nowhere to be found in meaningful debates about the roughly 11 million people living illegally in the United States. As voters you have reasons to doubt the credibility of the promises of a political candidate who discovers the issue after he announces for president, Cruz said Monday at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire. Hes also questioned Trumps conservative credentials -- pointing out donations to Democrats, including $50,000 in 2010 to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a former chief of staff for President Obama. And during the Fox Business Network debate last week, Cruz tried to connect the billionaire businessman to New York values, which he characterized as socially liberal or pro-abortion or progay marriage, focusing around money and the media. His apparent attempt to appeal to Iowa conservatives essentially backfired when Trump reminded the audience how New Yorkers responded after 9/11. Cruz responded the next day with a tongue-in-cheek apology to the millions of New Yorkers who've been let down by liberal politicians in that state. Payne called that response a mistake. It didnt help him in any meaningful way. It didnt make him look transcendental and presidential," he said. "You dont win that way. The words "God save the queen" were recently spoken in space for (possibly) the first time when British astronaut Tim Peake uttered the famous phrase in a video message sent to Earth on Dec. 31, 2015. Peake recorded the message from the International Space Station (ISS), and included a short greeting to Queen Elizabeth II, who is 89 years old and Britain's longest-reigning monarch. In the video, Peake responded to a personal message of salutation that Her Majesty had sent to him. "Welcome aboard the International Space Station," Peake said, with the flag of the United Kingdom displayed over his left shoulder. "I'm truly honored to have received Your Majesty's message, inspired by its wording and humbled to represent the U.K. and Europe aboard the ISS." [Amazing Space Photos by ESA Astronaut Tim Peake] Peake said he enjoyed looking at the British Isles from space, and that he hoped that his mission would bring the United Kingdom together, particularly given its history of scientific exploration. He then closed his message with "God save the queen," saying he wasn't sure it had ever been said in space before. Queen Elizabeth sent a memo to Peake on Dec. 15, right around the time he was launching toward the station for a half-year mission in space. A photo on the British Monarchy's website shows the photocopied memo with the Buckingham Palace letterhead at the top. The queen wrote that she and her husband, Prince Philip, send best wishes to Peake. "We hope that Major Peake's work on the space station will serve as an inspiration to a new generation of scientists and engineers," she added. "We join with his friends and family in wishing him a productive mission and a safe return to Earth." Peake is the first British European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut to visit the ISS. next Image 1 of 3 prev next Image 2 of 3 prev Image 3 of 3 Concerned about personal protection? For folks looking for an everyday concealed carry weapon for self-defense, a number of new choices made their debut at the annual SHOT Show this week. Heres a look at four new concealed carry guns revealed this week. Walther PPS M2 in 9mm James Bond carried Walther-made handguns and for civilians who need a serious concealed carry option, the company has taken the highly popular PPS Classic and taken it to the next level. Very slim at one-inch wide, the Walther PPS M2 in 9mm is also extremely lightweight at 21.1 ounces when empty. It is 6.3-inches long and a mere 4.4-inches high with the shortest magazine in place. Accurate, comfortable and easy to conceal three key criteria for daily carry that the PPS M2 has in spades. Details like rounded contours aid snag-free draw. Related: More than half a million rounds kick off SHOT Show in Las Vegas Chambered in 9mm and .40 S&W, theres a smooth, light 6.1 pound trigger pull. The grip has a non-slip surface. The push-button magazine release is designed to be more intuitive than the PPS and there are three magazine options: six, seven and eight-round. A law enforcement version, the PPS M2 9mm LE Edition, will come equipped with phosphoric sights and three magazines. Both editions will become available early 2016 with the .40 S&W available in the Spring. Kimber K6s Revolver Kimber Mfg. Inc. has created an answer for folks looking for a new concealed carry in a small frame, lightweight, comfortable wheel gun. Unveiled this week, the K6 is a new six-round .357 Magnum revolver. Related: $1M guns made of meteorite Weighing in at a tiny 23 ounces, this revolver packs a whole lot of engineering into a very compact package machined in stainless steel. The K6 is 4.46-inches high and 6.62-inches long with a two-inch long barrel. Aiding a discreet carry, the width is narrow with a 1.39-inch cylinder diameter. The rubber grip is designed for secure handling and the trigger has a 9.5 to 10.5 pound pull. To help reduce snagging when quick drawing from a concealed position, the internal hammer and edges are rounded. The Kimber K6s will be rolled out initially in 2016 as three models; the K6s Stainless, K6s Stainless (LG) and a Limited K6s First Edition. Colt Lightweight Commander Fan of the 1911? Then Colts enhanced Lightweight Commander, debuting at SHOT, is a great concealed carry option. The new gun is lighter and shorter than the Commander designed for government users. Related: 11 amazing A-10 Warthog images Like the Combat Commander, it has a 4.25-inch barrel. Theres a black anodized aluminum frame, blued carbon steel slide, custom Colt G10 grips and Colts Dual Spring Recoil System. The Lightweight Commander will become available in both a .45 ACP model with an eight-round magazine capacity and the 9mm that holds 9 rounds. New features include a skeletonized trigger and extended safety lever. Colt also introduced Novak sights and a beavertail grip safety. The new gun is expected to retail for approximately $949. Beretta The PX4 Compact Carry, also revealed at SHOT Show, takes the Beretta 9mm PX4 Storm Compact to another level. Related: Top military innovations of 2015 The trigger, the grips and even the night sights are enhanced. For improved concealment, the gun is narrower. The safety levers and slide stop are more low vis. To enhance handling, the grips are Talon wrap around, the trigger pull is enhanced and theres a bigger magazine release button. While the price hasnt been set yet, it is expected to become available to consumers this year. An American-Islamic civil liberties group is asking a Wisconsin manufacturer to back away from a policy that doesn't allow an extra break for prayer for Muslim employees. But Ariens Co. said Tuesday that it can handle the matter internally and it's not interested in negotiating through the Council for America-Islamic Relations. The friction comes after 53 workers left their jobs in protest after Ariens decided to enforce a policy of two 10-minute breaks per shift. Ariens had previously allowed the newly hired Muslim employees to leave their work stations a third time to accommodate prayer. The company says those breaks were disrupting production. CAIR is asking the company to revert to its previous policy until a resolution can be reached. Ariens is based in Brillion, 90 miles north of Milwaukee. North Carolina officials have denied parole for a former Ku Klux Klan leader convicted of using a crossbow and a razor-tipped arrow to kill a black teenager three days after Christmas in 1992. The Charlotte Observer reports (http://bit.ly/1PDLxk4) the N.C. Parole Commission denied parole for 56-year-old Russell Hinson, who was convicted in 1993 of killing 16-year-old Felicia Houston. Department of Public Safety spokesman Keith Acree said Tuesday that the commission made its decision last week and Hinson had been notified why parole was denied. Court records show Houston was walking down the sidewalk at a Monroe apartment complex with two cousins when she was shot through the chest. An all-white jury deadlocked over whether Hinson should get the death penalty, and he was sentenced to life in prison. ___ Information from: The Charlotte Observer, http://www.charlotteobserver.com More than 50 million people could be walloped by snowfall this weekend, should a noreaster develop over the Ohio Valley, potentially dumping as much as one to three inches per hour at times in parts of the Northeast, AccuWeather reported Tuesday. Following an unseasonably warm December in the Northeast, the system forecasted to initially bring a wintry mix to the southern Appalachians and Ohio Valley on Thursday will have enough of the cold air it needs to create headaches for millions in the Northeast this weekend, the forecasting service said. Although it's still early, computer models all predict a windy, strong slow-moving storm. "There's going to be a big storm. Somebody's going to get walloped," said Victor Gensini, a meteorology professor at College of DuPage outside of Chicago, which should be spared. "It does look like it's going to be a doozy." Rich Otto, lead forecaster at the National Weather Service's Weather Prediction Center, said some major cities will likely see a foot or more of snow. Other meteorologists talked about 18 inches, two feet and more. Otto said an upper-level disturbance in the air is moving from the Pacific to the Rockies to the southern plains. It should pass over Texas, move into the Ohio Valley, join with other unstable air and become a nor'easter Friday evening over the Mid Atlantic, moving up the coast on Saturday. As the storm strengthens and moves northeastward leading into the weekend, it will take advantage of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean, and snowfall rates of one to three inches per hour are possible along its track, AccuWeather reported. "Since the storm is arriving on a southern track, impacts will include Kentucky, Cincinnati, West Virginia, Northern Virginia into D.C., then Philadelphia," said meteorologist Ryan Maue of the private WeatherBell Analytics. The latest AccuWeather forecast map for Friday and Saturday showed the strongest potential for snowstorm activity along the I-81 corridor, from Roanoke, Va. to southern New York State, as well as for most of the Boston-Washington metropolis. The amount of snow expected in coastal areas will depend on the amount of mixing rainfall, AccuWeather reported. Strong winds will accompany the storm along the coast in the New York area, according to FOX-5, which also warned of the potential for storm surge in the region. While many in the Washington, D.C., New York and Boston areas can expect to see noticeable snowfall activity, under current projections, little to no snow is likely to fall over upstate New York and northern New England, AccuWeather senior meteorologist Brett Anderson said. Should the storm continue northeastward, rather than turn more to the east at the last minute, New York, Boston, Providence and Hartford would be buried in snow, Anderson said. Forecasters see Saturday as the worst day in the East. However, should the storm system shift 50 to 100 miles farther to the north, the I-95 corridor could be spared the worst of the snowfall, in favor of the northern Appalachian Mountains, AccuWeather reported. South and east of the areas expecting snowfall, a wintry mix is expected throughout much of Tennessee and western North Carolina, shifting to mainly rain approaching the coast. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Authorities say a woman stabbed Denver's fire chief after jumping into his vehicle near the department's headquarters. Police spokesman Doug Schepman says the woman jumped into Chief Eric Tade's black SUV on Tuesday afternoon and stabbed him in the hand and leg. Tade, who ran into fire headquarters for help, was hospitalized with minor injuries and was released Tuesday evening. Police say 42-year-old Marlene Zacevich-Rodriguez was arrested on suspicion of aggravated assault, and that witnesses identified her. Police are still investigating a motive, and Schepman says investigators do not know whether the chief and the woman knew each other. Booking documents do not indicate if Zacevich-Rodriguez has hired an attorney. Sheriff's officials found a woman dead of exposure and her teenage son suffering from frostbite Tuesday, ending a three-day search for a family of three that went missing while snowmobiling in the Medicine Bow Mountains. Searchers had found the father in good condition Monday after he went for help and became separated from the other two. The couple's 18-year-old son was being treated at a Colorado hospital and was in stable condition, Albany County Undersheriff Robert DeBree said. "He has a lot of frostbite," DeBree said. Officials weren't identifying the Cheyenne family. Both parents were 46. Heavy snow and strong wind slammed the southeast Wyoming mountains on Saturday night. The search began Sunday, a day after the woman, her husband and their son set out into the mountains and one of their three snowmobiles broke down. The family built a fire and spent Saturday night in a snow cave, DeBree said. Attempts by the father to find help failed when another snowmobile got stuck in ice and handlebars of the third broke off, stranding him away from the others. Searchers found him Monday, after he spent a second night in the mountains in a snow cave. The search involved two Wyoming National Guard helicopters and several searchers on snowmobiles. The son was taken to a Colorado hospital. In Colorado, three snowmobilers reported missing in Garfield County were found safe Monday after spending a night in the backcountry. Two of their machines had mechanical problems, the Glenwood Springs Post Independent reports (http://tinyurl.com/hgholou ). Their names weren't released. A Kent State professor long known for fiery anti-Israel rhetoric is under investigation for alleged links to ISIS, and an independent probe Tuesday turned up disturbing posts on his purported Facebook page praising Usama bin Laden and urging Al Qaeda fighters to merge with the black-clad terror army. "Sheik Osama (May Allah be Pleased with Him) was the greatest, and desrves (sic) praise for kicking off this jihad," one post from an account in Julio Cesar Pino's name begins. The post, which has since been deleted, was preserved in a screenshot by The Clarion Project, a New York-based research institute that monitors international terrorism. It continues: "However, the organization he left behind is not the same AQ he founded. The brave warriors of AQAP and the Nusraf Jabbat should join #IslamicState." An FBI spokeswoman confirmed to the Akron Beacon Journal that the bureau was looking into Pino, an associate professor of history, for ties to the terrorist group. Pino is also known by the Muslim name Assad Jibril Pino, according to his essay "Born in The Fist of the Revolution: A Cuban Professor's Journey to Allah." A Kent State spokesperson told FoxNews.com that Pino is still teaching classes. "Kent State is fully cooperating with the FBI," the University said in a follow-up statement. "As this is an ongoing investigation, we willl have no further comment. The FBI has assured Kent State that there is no threat to campus." "If I was a student there, I would not go on campus, personally." Ryan Mauro, The Clarion Project Pino, a Cuban-born convert to Islam, denied the allegations. Ive never broken the law, he told the Beacon Journal. I support no violence or violent organizations. One man or one womans interpretation of events can be very different from anothers. As they say, Haters gonna hate. Truth always prevails, and truth will prevail in this case. Pino blamed his past rhetoric for possibly inspiring the probe. I can only imagine, given my past record at Kent State dealing with controversial issues about the Middle East, some people may be favorable or unfavorable, he said. Rumors start, and thats the only thing I can think would draw attention from a government agency. Attempts by FoxNews.com to reach Pino via phone and email were unsuccessful. The FBI has already questioned several of Pinos colleagues and students, the Beacon Journal reported. Emily Mills, the editor-in-chief of student newspaper the Kent Stater, said she was among those interviewed. They said they were looking into his alleged ties to the Islamic State, Mills told the Beacon Journal. They said it was an ongoing investigation and that they were questioning faculty and other students. A Kent State spokesperson said the FBI assured the college there was no threat to the school. We find Prof. Pinos comments reprehensible & counter to our core values. He does not speak on behalf of @KentState. https://t.co/aKrArapaXX Beverly Warren (@PresBWarren) January 20, 2016 Pino has a long history of making controversial and anti-Semitic statements. In a 2014 open letter to academic friends of Israel, he accused pro-Israel members of the academic community as being directly responsible for the murder of over 1,400 Palestinian children, women and elderly civilians. He signed that letter Jihad until victory! He also shouted Death to Israel during a presentation by a former Israeli official in 2011, eulogized a Palestinian suicide bomber in the Kent Stater and allegedly posted jihad-promoting messages on a jihad website in 2007. The call to join ISIS from Pino's purported Facebook page was just one of many troubling posts. In the "Intro" section the account claims Pino studied "Overthrowing the Government at UCLA." Pino received his Ph.D. in History from UCLA, according to his Kent State online bio. On Sept. 14, 2014, the account posted a photo of two masked Islamist fighters with the comment, "Keep it a secret: That's me on the left!" In August 2012, the account posted a photo of Pino standing in front of the U.S. Capitol Building. A comment below the picture from Pino's account said, "I come to bury D.C., not to praise it." Ryan Mauro, a National Security Analyst for the Clarion Project, called some of the postings "smoking gun material." "Anyone that is a supporter of ISIS needs to be considered an imminent threat," Mauro told FoxNews.com. "If I was a student there, I would not go on campus, personally." A Fulbright Scholar and a member of Phi Beta Keppa, Pino has written numerous magazine and journal articles and authored a book in 1997, "Family and Favela: The Reproduction of Poverty in Rio de Janeiro." Pino is listed in "Who's Who in American Education" and "Who's Who in America." Pino has a B-minus average on ratemyprofessors.com and numerous bad reviews from former students. "Pushes his personal views WAY too much," one student wrote. "Stay away from him. Awful professor." Another wrote: "This professor is knowledgeable, but may insult you with his opinions." A decade-old oil leak that could last for another century was caused by an "act of God" during a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico, the president of the company responsible said Wednesday. Taylor Energy President William Pecue told a gathering of industry experts and environmental advocates in Baton Rouge that the company cares "very deeply" about the environment. "This event hits home for us," said Pecue, the last remaining full-time employee at the New Orleans-based company. "This is our community. We live here and it is very special to us." The public meeting at an LSU research center is a requirement of a court settlement that Taylor Energy reached in September with environmental groups, which accused the company of withholding information about the leak. In September 2004, waves whipped up by Hurricane Ivan triggered an underwater mudslide, which toppled a Taylor Energy-owned platform and buried a cluster of its oil wells under mounds of sediment. Federal regulators believe oil is still coming out at the site. Oil slicks often stretch for miles about 10 miles off Louisiana's coast. Taylor Energy has said nothing can be done to completely eliminate the chronic sheens. Regulators recently estimated the leak could last a century or more if left unchecked. An Associated Press investigation last year revealed evidence that the leak is worse than the company, or government, publicly reported during their secretive response. Presented with AP's findings, the Coast Guard provided a new leak estimate that's about 20 times larger than one cited by the company in a court filing last year. Pecue and company-hired experts are scheduled to make most of the presentations Wednesday during the daylong meeting, the first public forum Taylor Energy has hosted since the leak started more than 11 years ago. A moderator warned the audience of several dozen people that video and audio recordings of the meeting were prohibited. The moderator also said speakers would only answer questions put in writing. One of the first asked Pecue to explain why he believes the leak was an "act of God." Pecue declined to elaborate, citing "potential future litigation." "I can affirmatively say that we do believe this was act of God under the legal definition," he said. "Defining why we believe this is an `act of God event' gets into a legal definition that is not appropriate for today." One of the environmental advocates in the audience was retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, who is better known for helping restore order in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Honore, who founded a coalition of environmental groups called "GreenARMY," said he wants to see more transparency from Taylor Energy and the regulators supervising the company's work on what he called a "man-made disaster." "If we didn't put the (platform) there, this incident wouldn't have happened," he said. "I don't blame God for what happened here." Taylor Energy, once one of the Gulf's largest operators, sold all its offshore leases and oil and gas interests in 2008. Its founder, Patrick Taylor, died in 2004. The company is led by his widow, Phyllis Taylor, a prominent philanthropist and political donor. Environmental groups led by the New York City-based Waterkeeper Alliance sued Taylor Energy in 2012, arguing the public was entitled to know more about the company's government-supervised work. Taylor Energy says it has spent more than $480 million on its efforts to stop the leak. Earlier this month, the company sued the federal government to recover approximately $432 million that remains frozen in a trust, reserved for leak response work. Last year, federal authorities rebuffed the company's settlement overtures and ordered it to perform more work at the leak site. The U.S. Navy is looking for a few good names without "men" in them. As part of the move to integrate women in all roles of the military, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus has announced plans to make titles and descriptions gender neutral. That puts the time-honored name "Midshipman" squarely on the radar. A review of the seafaring branch's titles already underway will "ensure they were representative of all sailors and did not discriminate based on gender," the Navy said in a statement. The United States Navy and Marine Corps have too many real enemies to defeat and deter. The Secretary of the Navy should have better things to do than adding the English language to the list." Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and retired Navy captain Chief of Naval Operations John Richardson was ordered to look at ratings that referenced 'man' in the title, which includes more than 20 Navy jobs. Richardson, in turn, enlisted Mike Stevens, master chief petty officer of the Navy, to take the helm. Stevens is now putting together a working group that will "canvass the fleet, talk with sailors to hear their thoughts, and provide recommendations based on feedback." A report detailing which titles should change is due to Mabus by April 1. "This is an opportunity for us to take a look at our rates to see if their names and titles best represent the Sailors and the description of their jobs, just as we have done many times in the past," Stevens said in a Jan. 13 statement. There have been more than 700 rate name changes since the Navy's beginning, acccording to the Capital Gazette newspaper. But not everyone is embracing the change, including Arizona senator and former Republican presidential nominee John McCain, who retired from the Navy as a captain in 1981. The United States Navy and Marine Corps have too many real enemies to defeat and deter," McCain told FoxNews.com on Wednesday. "The Secretary of the Navy should have better things to do than adding the English language to the list," he said. The rank of "midshipman" dates back to the 1600s, long before the Naval Academy in Annapolis opened its doors in 1845. KT McFarland, a Fox News contributor who served in national security posts in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations, called the move for change "offensive." McFarland argued that changing titles "wipes away decades, and in some cases centuries, of tradition and belittles the current holder of that position." Others said the move is warranted, especially as the U.S. military welcomes women into previously closed positions. Kyleanne Hunter, a former Marine Corps pilot and founder of the Think Broader Foundation, called the move to change titles "symbolic" and one that "has a very impactful meaning." "I think that sometimes recognizing that traditions need to be changed is a positive step forward for everyone," Hunter told FoxNews.com. "The formal barriers for women have been removed. However, changing the language is a final step to removing the informal barriers that still exist," she said. "When you have 'men' or 'man' attached to titles -- whether its midshipman or infantryman -- it creates a mental picture that that job can only be done by a man," argued Hunter. "When youre on the inclusive side of a tradition, its very hard to see the other side. Not only did I have to fight to do the actual job, in addition I had to constantly fight against the bias I didnt belong there." "This is really a win-win for everybody," said Hunter, who suggested replacing "midshipman" with "midshipmate." Cristina Corbin is a reporter for FoxNews.com. Follow her on Twitter @CristinaCorbin. The mother of slain journalist James Foley says the family was "delighted" to see the return of four Iranian-American citizens freed by Iran in a prisoner swap with the United States and is hopeful that the U.S. government will make American hostages more of a priority. The 40-year-old Foley went to Syria in 2012. He was captured that November and was beheaded by Islamic State militants in a video released in August 2014. Diane Foley in Rochester, New Hampshire, told The Associated Press on Wednesday the prisoner release gives her hope that what happened to her son and others in Syria won't be repeated. The Islamic State group has acknowledged the death of the masked militant known as "Jihadi John," who appeared in James Foley's video. Snowpack in the mountains that feed the Colorado River was slightly above the long-term average on Wednesday welcome news in the drought-stricken Southwest. But water and weather experts said it's too early to predict how deep the snow will get or how much of it will make its way into the river and on to Lake Powell in Utah and Arizona, one of two major reservoirs on the Colorado. "We are cautiously optimistic, but nature has a way of doing what it wants," said Chris Watt, a spokesman for the federal Bureau of Reclamation, which manages the water in Lake Powell. The Colorado River serves about 40 million people and 6,300 square miles of farmland in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming. Mexico is also entitled to a share of the water. Lake Powell, behind the 580-foot-high Glen Canyon Dam, has a key role in regulating and distributing the river. Some people worry there won't be enough water in the river to go around in the future because of protracted drought, climate change and unrealistic estimates about how much water was available in the first place. Lake Powell is only about half full after multiple dry years. April is the key time for predicting how much water will flow into the lake from the annual spring snowmelt in the Rocky Mountains, Watt said. The bulk of the snow has fallen by then, and the runoff has begun. As of Wednesday, the accumulated snowfall was 104 percent of normal in the Upper Colorado River Basin, which includes the western half of Colorado, the eastern half of Utah and smaller portions of Wyoming, New Mexico and Arizona. The river begins near the Continental Divide in Colorado, inside Rocky Mountain National Park. Most forecasts call for average or above-average water flow in the upper Colorado River and other waterways in the state, Colorado state climatologist Nolan Doesken said, but the snow season is only about half over and the picture could change quickly. "We haven't gotten so much snow that we're assured of an average or above-average runoff," Doesken said. "It could turn on us." The El Nino weather pattern is likely a factor in the healthy snowpack so far this winter, Doesken said. "There's clearly been a much better flow of Pacific moisture this year than in the last few (years) in terms of the midwinter time period, and that's sort of consistent with El Nino," he said. Klaus Wolter, a research scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colorado, said the state's snowpack could fall below average during the second half of winter, but the moisture will likely rebound in the spring. Most of Colorado's east-facing mountain slopes, which feed the Platte and Arkansas rivers as well as the Rio Grande, ranged from 98 to 112 percent of the long-term average. Officials Tuesday suspended their massive search for 12 Marines who were aboard two helicopters that crashed off Hawaii last week. The around-the-clock effort failed to locate any sign of the 12 service members despite five days of searching by several agencies. Officials said at a late afternoon news conference that the search would be suspended at sundown and the Marine Corps would transition to "recovery and salvage" efforts. A memorial is tentatively planned for Friday at Marine Corps Base Hawaii in Kaneohe Bay. "The decision to suspend the search without finding survivors is particularly difficult," said Capt. James Jenkins, chief of staff and acting commander of the Coast Guard 14th District in Honolulu. The search began late Thursday when a civilian on a beach reported seeing the helicopters flying and then a fireball. The Marines were alerted when the CH-53E helicopters carrying six crew members each failed to return to their base at Kaneohe Bay following a nighttime training mission. Hours later, a Coast Guard helicopter and C-130 airplane spotted debris 2 1/2 miles off of Oahu. The crash was near the north shore, but the search area spanned from the western coast of Oahu to the northeast corner of the island. The transport helicopters were part of the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing at Marine Corps Base Hawaii. Known as Super Stallions, they are the U.S. military's largest helicopter, capable of carrying a light armored vehicle, 16 tons of cargo or a team of combat-equipped Marines, according to a Marine Corps website. The Coast Guard initially reported that the choppers had collided, but the Marines said later it wasn't yet known if there was a collision. The cause remains under investigation. The Marine Corps will strive to "discover all of the facts" surrounding the crash, said Brig. Gen. Russell Sanborn, commanding general of the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing. They will continue the recovery of any debris and "any other remains that may discovered," he said, "so that we can give closure to those families that are still out there that still want that final piece of the puzzle." All four life rafts from the helicopters were found but they were empty. There was no indication anyone had been on any of the rafts, based on their condition and the lack of any personal effects, the Coast Guard said. High surf complicated the mission for rescuers during the initial days of the search. A green laser near Haleiwa Beach Park struck a Coast Guard plane Saturday night, forcing crew members to alter search patterns. Authorities searched for survivors around the clock. The Coast Guard assumes the best-case scenario when considering how long someone in the right equipment and right conditions could survive, Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Sara Mooers said. "We err on the side of caution because the last thing that anybody wants is to suspend the search when there's still a possibility of finding somebody," she said Monday. Aircrews wear personal flotation devices with their flight suits and get additional training on top of survival swimming training, the Marines said. People have been found days or even weeks after getting lost at sea, Mooers said. The missing crew members are: -- Maj. Shawn M. Campbell, 41, College Station, Texas. -- Capt. Brian T. Kennedy, 31, Philadelphia. -- Capt. Kevin T. Roche, 30, St. Louis. -- Capt. Steven R. Torbert, 29, Florence, Alabama. -- Sgt. Dillon J. Semolina, 24, Chaska, Minnesota. -- Sgt. Adam C. Schoeller, 25, Gardners, Pennsylvania. -- Sgt. Jeffrey A. Sempler, 22, Woodruff, South Carolina. -- Sgt. William J. Turner, 25, Florala, Alabama. -- Cpl. Matthew R. Drown, 23, Spring, Texas. -- Cpl. Thomas J. Jardas, 22, Fort Myers, Florida. -- Cpl. Christopher J. Orlando, 23, Hingham, Massachusetts. -- Lance Cpl. Ty L. Hart, 21, Aumsville, Oregon. The Taliban claimed responsibility for an attack by multiple gunmen that killed at least 20 people at a university in northwestern Pakistan Wednesday morning. In addition to the victims, Pakistan police said four attackers had been killed at Bacha Khan University in the town of Charsadda, located 21 miles outside the city of Peshawar. Provincial governor Sardar Mehtab Abbasi said the attack is now over and that the troops have cleared the campus. Taliban leader Khalifa Umar Mansoor told AFP: "Our four suicide attackers carried out the attack on Bacha Khan University today." Mansoor said the attack was in retaliation for a military offensive against extremists in tribal areas near the border with Afghanistan. Mansoor was the mastermind behind the December 2014 attack on an army-run school that killed over 150 people, 144 of them children. But the main spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, Mohammad Khurasani, said the attack was "un-Islamic" and insisted the Pakistani Taliban were not behind it. Such statements from among the Taliban are not uncommon since the group has many loosely linked factions. Data curated by FindTheData The absence of the overall leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Mullah Fazlullah, who is believed to be hiding in Afghanistan, means that local commanders often operate independently. The spokesman also said the Taliban "consider the students in non-military institutions the future of our jihad movement" and would not kill potential future followers. He insisted Fazlullah had nothing to do with the assault. Khurasani said those who carry out such attacks should be tried before an Islamic, or Sharia court. The militants, wielding AK-47s, used the cover of thick, wintry fog to scale the campus walls. They then went into university buildings and opened fire on teachers and students as classes began. Explosions were heard inside and Pakistani TV stations aired images of heavily armed security personnel entering the compounds as female students ran for their lives. At the university gates, distraught relatives of those being taught inside anxiously waited for news. Regional police chief Saeed Wazir said most of the victims were killed at a hostel for male students inside the campus. Lt. Gen. Asim Bajwa, an army spokesman, said 18 students and two teachers were killed. Witnesses identified one of the teachers killed as a chemistry professor named Dr. Hamid who tried to return fire at the attackers. "He was holding a pistol in his hand," Geology student Zahoor Ahmed told Sky News. "Then I saw a bullet hit him. I saw two militants were firing. I ran inside and then managed to flee by jumping over the back wall." Another student told TV reporters: "We saw three terrorists shouting, 'Allah is great!' and rushing towards the stairs of our department. One student jumped out of the classroom through the window. We never saw him get up." Botany teacher Mohammad Ishtiaq said he saw five gunmen enter the building he was in and begin firing automatic assault rifles, as students ran in all directions. He said he locked himself inside a second-floor bathroom and then jumped out the window when he saw one of the attackers approaching. He broke his leg in the fall. After the attack, Pakistani army chief Gen. Raheel Sharif visited the university and the wounded in hospital. The Bacha Khan University is named after the founder of a liberal, anti-Taliban political party. The Pakistani Taliban has targeted the party in the past for its anti-militant policies. More than 3,000 students are enrolled at the school, which was hosting an extra 600 visitors on Wednesday for a poetry recital, Vice Chancellor Fazal Rahim said, according to Sky News. In a statement released after Wednesday's attack, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said "we are determined and resolved in our commitment to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland." Pakistan vowed to redouble efforts to combat militants after the 2014 Peshawar school attack, lifting a moratorium on the death penalty and intensifying a military offensive in North Waziristan, a tribal region and longtime stronghold of the Taliban and other militants. Last month, as the country marked the anniversary of the school attack, the military claimed "phenomenal successes" in the war and said it had killed around 3,500 insurgents since launching the operation in 2014. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Click for more from Sky News. A British man whose partner died on their Australian honeymoon says he is living through a nightmare after authorities refused to recognize he was ever married in the first place. As a result, all the decisions around his spouses death have had to be made by family members thousands of kilometers away, a situation slammed as horrific by critics who have urged the government to intervene. Further compounding the heartache surrounding the death of David Bulmer-Rizzi, who suffered a fatal accident last Saturday in Adelaide, is the realization that if hed died in Melbourne or Sydney, the fact he was gay would barely have raised an eyebrow. But in South Australia it was enough to ensure his husband Marco Bulmer-Rizzi was shut out of almost every decision following his death. David, 32, married his partner of five years, in London in June last year followed by a full ceremony in front of family and friends on the idyllic Greek island of Santorini. Same-sex marriage was legalized across much of the UK in 2014. David was passionate about human rights, he was generous, loved life and loved to party with people, Marco, 38, told news.com.au. In many ways, he was very Australian; maybe he should have moved to this country. The couple began their Australian honeymoon in late December with Facebook posts detailing their travels around the country. But tragedy struck last weekend when David fell down the stairs in the Adelaide house they were staying in. I went to bed and David was to follow me shortly. He was just reading his Kindle. I woke up 45 minutes later and heard this awful noise and I turned on the light and he was lying at the bottom of the stairs in a bloodbath, Marco told Buzzfeed UK. He suspects it was because he was unfamiliar with the house and it was dark. An unconscious David was placed in an induced coma but the damage to his head was too severe and he succumbed to his injuries. However, the pain was only about to begin. While same-sex marriage is illegal within Australia, all the eastern states recognize same-sex marriages performed overseas and allow partners to act as next-of-kin. South Australia does not. Literally within an hour, I had no choice but to deny that we ever married, Marco told news.com.au. It made me feel humiliated and lonely. I felt like it was 20 years ago when you couldnt come out for fear of being treated differently. I asked if I could at least leave that part [of the death certificate] blank but they said the drop down box wouldnt allow it. The computer said no. There was no room for humanity and I think thats the shocking part. Its a complete nightmare whats happened. Every decision Marco wanted to make, from whether David should be cremated to what coffin to use, had to be rubber-stamped by his late husbands father, Nigel Bulmer, back in the UK. While Mr Bulmer backed his son-in-law and explained they were married, the authorities refused to budge. Marcos treatment has riled lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) advocates, who say his case shows why marriage equality is needed now. South Australian Greens senator and marriage equality spokesman Robert Simms said he would raise the widows plight in Parliament. He has also called on Foreign Minister Julie Bishop to provide him with support. He has been treated in a degrading and dehumanizing way and Im horrified about his experience, Mr Simms said. Its very disappointing and particularly when you consider South Australia led the way when it came to the decriminalization of homosexuality but now the state Labor government is asleep at the wheel. Independent Sydney MP Alex Greenwich, who wed his male partner Victor in Argentina, was one of the key backers of a 2014 change in NSW laws, which saw same-sex marriages performed abroad recognized within the state. While the federal government continues to delay marriage equality, couples are not waiting; couples are going overseas and getting married and coming to Australia, he said. This is a person who is grieving with the loss of their partner and all of this is completely unnecessary. Australian Marriage Equality South Australian convener Harley Schumann said: Most South Australians would find it appalling that our law has failed to recognize the love and commitment in David and Marcos relationship. Its time for us to join Tasmania, Victoria, NSW and Queensland in recognizing overseas same-sex marriages. South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill said the government had begun to remove laws from the statue books that were examples of senseless discrimination. We will introduce a further raft of legislation to the Parliament this year that will grapple with the more complex issues such as this, he said. For Marco, the support hes received since Davids death just days ago has been overwhelming. Australians are amazing people and thats why we chose to come here, he said. Asked if he had a message for the state and federal government, he told news.com.au: I appreciate Australia has to go through its own process but Im just asking to be treated with dignity and for some compassion. My entire life was denied in front of me because being married to David was my life. Davids organs have now been donated to a number of people, one who was waiting for about four years for a transplant. Three Australian families have been given the gift of life and that was probably the best moment from all of this, Marco said. Davids life will continue and it provides relief for otherwise unbearable grief. Click for more from News.com.au. A British independent school is scrapping nearly two centuries of tradition by eliminating its uniform code to accommodate transgender students. Richard Cairns, the headmaster at Brighton College in Brighton, told students this week the schools 170-year-old uniform code would be replaced with trouser and skirt uniforms for all students up to the age of 16, The Telegraph reports. Public schools are usually seen as bastions of conservatism but Brighton College feels it is time to break ranks, the school said. It added that it was reacting to a changing society which recognizes that some children have gender dysphoria and do not wish to lose their emotional gender identities at school. Girls at the school who identify as boys will be allowed to wear a full tweed blazer, tie and trousers, while boys who identify as girls can wear a skirt, bolero jacket and open-neck Revere blouse, The Telegraph reports. The school says at least one student has taken up the clothing options already and parents must advise administrators of their childs situation. This change follows requests from a small number of families. It ties in with my strong personal belief that youngsters should be respected for who they are, Cairns said. Student Amy Arnell told the newspaper, "No one was really surprised." Click for more from The Telegraph. Vietnam's Communist Party will hold its 12th congress Jan. 21-28 to elect a new set of leaders for the next five years. Here's a look at how the process works. CENTER OF POWER Vietnam's 93 million people do not directly elect their top leaders, who are chosen by the Communist Party of Vietnam. Article 4 of Vietnam's constitution formally gives the Communist Party the right to rule the country. It controls the government, legislature, military, police, judiciary and virtually every public organization including farmers', youth and women's organizations. PARTY CONGRESS It is held every five years to elect the all-powerful party Central Committee, which this year will have 180 members, up from 175 currently, and the Politburo, which this year could be more than the current 16. It also chooses the party general secretary and endorses the nominees for the posts of the president, the prime minister and the chairman of the National Assembly, or parliament. The general secretary is the most powerful official in the collective leadership. The prime minister is considered No. 2 in the hierarchy. The president holds a largely ceremonial post although he is nominally the head of the military. SECRET AFFAIR The party congress is held behind closed doors in complete secrecy, except for the ceremonial opening and closing sessions that are broadcast live on state television. A total of 1,510 Communist Party delegates representing 63 provinces, ministries, government agencies and party commissions attend the party congress in the capital, Hanoi. The outgoing central committee issues a list of candidates for the new Politburo and the new central committee, which the congress members will then debate. These lists have more names than available positions, allowing for the delegates to vote on their choices. DO THE PEOPLE HAVE ANY SAY AT ALL? Not really. The people do elect the 500 legislators in the National Assembly, most of whom are Communist Party members, but it is mostly a rubber-stamp body. The new assembly, to be elected in May, will hold its first session in June, where it will formally select the president, prime minister and Cabinet members chosen by the party congress in elections that normally have only one candidate. Because of this process, Vietnam's government says that leaders are the people's choice. POWER STRUGGLE In the days leading up to the congress, there appeared to be a power struggle between General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong (pronounced "Nyu-en Foo Chong") and Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung (pronounced "Nyu-en Taan Dzoong"). Trong, 71, took over as secretary-general in 2011 even though he should have been ineligible for the post because of the compulsory retirement age of 65 from the Politburo. An exception was made to allow him to be re-elected to the Politburo and take over the top post. Unofficial reports leaked from party meetings say that Trong has been nominated as the sole candidate for General Secretary for a second term, effectively removing Dung from the race. Two years after Fallujah became one of the first prizes claimed by ISIS, the Iraqi city is a ghost town where fearful residents turn on one another and resistance is met with unspeakable brutality, according to sources trapped inside the Pittsburgh-sized community just 40 miles west of Baghdad. The sources, who spoke by phone with FoxNews.com, painted a bleak picture of life under an increasingly brutal and desperate ISIS, as it prepares for an expected assault by Iraqi government forces. Backed by coalition air power and aided by Shia militias, Baghdad has already liberated nearby Ramadi from ISIS, but plans to retake Fallujah fell apart in the latter half of last year when the risk of civilian casualties was deemed too great. Nobody can stand up to them. If they speak out, they will be killed." Fallujah resident They have had almost two years to build up the city for defenses, make strong points, set all sorts of booby traps, dig tunnels for ease of movement between positions, said former U.S. Army Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, now a foreign policy analyst. Id expect theyd fight much more fanatically for Fallujah. An uneasy alliance of government forces, Shia militias and Sunni tribal units are now skirmishing with ISIS on the citys outskirts, signaling the pending -- and likely bloody -- campaign. Little information has trickled out from Fallujah since it was seized by ISIS in January 2014. The terrorists have informants throughout Fallujahs population, which once stood at 320,000, but is now unknown, said Davis, who added that ISIS actively searches for people sending reports of any sort out and will kill them. People inside Fallujah told FoxNews.com that ISIS fighters don Iraqi government uniforms to trick citizens into believing the liberation has begun, only to slaughter them when they venture from their homes. Yet skeptics have said previously that much of the brutality is carried out by Shia militias who resist ISIS even as they use it as cover to cleanse the city of the Sunni Muslims they despise. Such differing accounts are a testament to the mistrust and fear that pervades the city. Under ISIS control, Friday morning prayers are followed by mass executions in the public square, including locking people in cages with ravenous wild animals, blowing them up, setting them on fire and driving armored vehicles over them, say residents. Nobody can stand up to them, an insider currently in the region said. If they speak out, they will be killed. As in other parts of ISIS' sprawling caliphate, women suspected of adultery are beheaded and men believed to be homosexual are thrown from atop buildings. All they need is for two witnesses to testify and say that this person has done something wrong and they get killed, he said, adding that the accusation of adultery against a woman results in beheading. So two bad people can make something up and have a person killed. Two weeks ago, 10 boys no older than 12 were killed for running away from ISIS training camps, one of the sources inside Fallujah recounted. Schools are open for a few hours during the day, although boys and girls are strictly separated and the only courses being taught pertain to weapons use, a hard-line interpretation of Islamic doctrine and learning the classical Arabic language which differs from local dialects. ISIS requests that families provide at least one or two child fighters depending on the size of the family and boys are forced to register for selection at age 14. ISIS members infiltrate local communities to root out disloyal residents, generating deep mistrust among members of a community that once lived in harmony, sources said. Scores and possibly hundreds of residents have been killed trying to leave Fallujah, and those left behind face constant water, food and electricity shortages. To deter further defection attempts, ISIS strips locals of identity cards and documentations, making prospects for landing in a safer locale far more challenging. Those who once served in the Iraqi military or police force are hunted down and killed, as are families that have even a remote connection to the Iraqi government. A recent and rare case of civilian retaliation came late last month, according to a source in Fallujah, when three ISIS fighters, known by locals as Daesh, were killed by a boy of 13 after they tried to stop him from breeding pigeons. They slaughtered 70 birds in front of this boy and flogged the father in front of the family, and when the mother tried to step in the Daesh slapped her causing major anger for the son, claimed a witness. The boy is said to have seized one fighters AK-47 and gunned down all three of the tormentors. The boy and his family are now in hiding within their community, the source continued, protected by family and neighbors who despise ISIS, yet hunted by loyalist infiltrators. Fallujah, like much of Anbar Province, has long been dominated by Sunni Muslims who distrust the current Shia-led government. When ISIS initially took the city, it had substantial popular support from Sunnis, including senior military officers from the reign of Saddam Hussein. ISIS does not enter a place and control it firmly unless they have some sort of internal support, Iraqi-American human rights activist Steven Nabil told FoxNews.com. But the Sunni terror groups brutality may be making it even less popular with fellow Sunnis than the hated Shia government. Now about 80 percent of the people are against ISIS, said the source. And the other 20 percent either support it or a part of it themselves It used to be more. With many barriers to dealing with Iran suddenly lifted as part of a deal to curb its nuclear activities, some European companies are ready to seize business opportunities in a tempting market of 78.5 million people. At first glance, the allure is obvious the second-largest economy in the Middle East-North Africa region after Saudi Arabia; the second most populous country after Egypt; and with lots of infrastructure and vehicles way overdue for an upgrade after years of sanctions. Once inspectors confirmed that Iran was taking steps to curb its nuclear program, the United States and European Union on Saturday dropped many of the economic sanctions that have been keeping foreign companies from doing business there. But those that take the plunge face serious risks from the remaining sanctions relating to other issues, from geopolitical uncertainty and from red tape and corruption. Here's a look at who might be interested and the hazards they will face if they venture in. WHO'S HOT TO GO IN Auto manufacturing is one field where interest could be strong. Before sanctions, Iran was a major market for France's Peugeot. One of the first out of the blocks after the announcement was Daimler AG's truck division, which on Monday announced joint ventures with Iranian partners that will enable it to restart its business there a presence that went back to 1953 before being interrupted by sanctions from 2010 to 2016. Daimler foresees joint production of trucks and engines and a marketing company; it plans to reopen its representative office in the first three months of this year. Division head Wolfgang Bernhard said in a statement he saw "huge demand" for commercial vehicles in Iran, where the company's Mercedes-Benz brand is well-known. The president of the Federation of German Industries, Ulrich Grillo, said that "Iran's need for making up lost ground in modernizing its industrial infrastructure is extraordinarily large," adding exports could double in five years from 2.4 billion euros ($2.6 billion) a year currently. From their side, Iranian officials are touting the investment possibilities. Iran's transport minister told the official IRNA news agency on Saturday that his government had agreed to buy 114 new planes from the European consortium Airbus. Airbus spokesman Stefan Schaffrath was more restrained, saying only that "we are studying our way forward in view of this new environment in full compliance with all international laws." WHO'S NOT Deutsche Bank, Germany's biggest, withdrew from Iran in 2007 and says that until further notice it isn't doing any business connected to Iran. The company didn't go into the reasons, but it's hard to overlook the $258 million in penalties it agreed in November to pay to U.S. banking regulators for dealings with Iran and other countries in violation of earlier rounds of sanctions. More trouble with U.S. regulators is the last thing the bank wants. There are further risks for financial companies. Although the lifting of the sanctions imposed over Iran's nuclear program means it is now possible to do financial transactions in and out of Iran and to offer bank accounts, other sanctions remain in place over Iran's human rights record and what the U.S. authorities say is its support for terrorism. Many of those sanctions bar financial dealings with dozens of specific individuals; any bank would have to be certain it was not dealing with one of them or a company controlled by one of them. And the nuclear deal has a "snap-back" provision meaning sanctions could be quickly reimposed if Iran is found not to be complying more uncertainty. Thomas Schlueter, spokesman for the Association of German Banks, said members were "examining what is possible and what is not possible." WHY NOT Although Iran is a big market, it has big problems. It ranked 119th out of 189 economies in the World Bank's ease-of-doing-business index, which measures obstacles posed by bureaucracy, slow public services and taxation. It finished 136th of 175 countries in the corruption perceptions index compiled by Transparency International. Moreover, Iran is deeply involved in the violence convulsing the Middle East through its local supporters in Iraq and Syria, and tensions have risen sharply recently with regional rival Saudi Arabia. Disruption from conflict and politics is always a possibility. Industrial companies must be wary of yet more sanctions that bar the import of dual-use goods that could be used to make nuclear weapons. Germany's VDMA industrial machinery association warns that firms themselves will need to understand the complex rules, and not rely on government help. More than 100 participants have shown up for the association's information sessions on the end of the sanctions regime, it said. ACROSS THE POND American firms have to be much more cautious still. Deal or no deal, U.S. sanctions not related to the nuclear program will still be in place and those bar most American companies from doing business with Iran. The deal drops so-called secondary sanctions, which were aimed at non-U.S. entitites. But primary sanctions barring involvement by U.S. individuals and companies in Iran predating the nuclear controversy largely remain intact, according to guidance from U.S. officials issued Saturday. That means U.S. companies are still broadly barred from doing business with Iran, with a few exceptions such as selling passenger aircraft and parts and importing rugs, pistachio nuts and caviar. There is little doubt that some companies, from aviation to oil, are interested, if rules allow. But they could believe that the situation is still too foggy that the next administration might reimpose sanctions. Even after implementation of the nuclear deal, the Obama administration announced new sanctions over Iran's ballistic missile program. U.S. interests can sell food, medicine, farm products and some other goods to Iran, "but aside from these areas, the U.S. embargo is still fully intact," Richard Nephew, a former sanctions-policy official at the State Department and now at Columbia University, said in an email. U.S. plane maker and Airbus rival Boeing Co. still faces hurdles. "There are many steps that need to be taken should we decide to sell airplanes to Iran's airlines. For now, we continue to assess the situation," said Boeing spokesman Marc Sklar. In 2014, Boeing received a U.S. Treasury license to export to Iran spare parts needed to keep Iran's older Boeing planes safe. Iran's airlines have among the oldest fleets in the world at 23 to 27 years on average, according to the Centre for Aviation, an airline data and analysis firm based in Australia. U.S. oil companies still face additional restrictions that make it unlikely they'll be working in Iran in the short term to help it exploit its oil and gas reserves. A spokesman for Exxon Mobil Corp., the biggest U.S. oil company, declined to comment. Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips did not immediately respond to inquiries. ___ Koenig contributed from Dallas. Associated Press Writer Greg Keller contributed from Paris. The latest issue of Islamic State's online magazine targets the terror group's fellow Muslims even more than the West. Dabiq, as the English-language publication is called, devotes a majority of the 56 pages in the latest issue to justifying the killing of Shia Muslims. In numerous articles, the magazine goes to great lengths to give a theological basis for killing members of the minority Muslim sect that controls Iran and Iraq and has been at odds with Sunni Muslims for over a millennia. The magazine spends so much time justifying the killing of innocent Shiites that it suggests that ISIL is frustrated that too few Sunnis favor sectarian massacres, Ryan Mauro, a national security analyst for the Clarion Project, said. ISIS is making the argument because it sees a problem it needs to address. ISIS' literary arm charges that Shia Muslims, or Shiites, qualify as apostates to the Sunni majority and therefore deserve to be killed. The radical terror group's target audience seems to be fellow Sunnis who consider Shiites to be Muslims, or at the very least, not deserving of being murdered. The spark has been lit here in Iraq, and its heat will continue to intensify by Allahs permission until it burns the Crusader armies in Dabiq. Quote from Abu Musab az-Zarqawi in the latest issue of Dabiq. ISIL's focus on justifying killing Shiites is because it is being pressed by Shiite forces in Iraq and Syria, Mauro said. ISIL is hoping to enlist Sunnis by framing its jihad as part of a prophetic battle where the Shiites and Jews eventually unite behind the Antichrist. Fanning the flames of the Sunni-Shia split, which dates to shortly after the death of Mohammad, benefits ISIS by helping it recruit Sunnis, Mauro said. And the terror group's leadership appears to believe a final battle has been prophecized. Worldwide, Sunnis make up about 85 percent of the worlds 1.6 billion Muslims. Sunnis, who believe the true lineage of Mohammad lies with those who most closely followed his teachings, control powerful Muslim nations including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan. In addition, most Muslims in Africa are Sunnis. Shia Muslims are a relatively small minority of Muslims, concentrated in Iran and Iraq. They believe bloodlines, not devotion, dictate the prophets line of successors. Throughout history, Shia Muslims have rejected the authority of Muslim leaders elected by the people, instead following a line of clerics they consider to have been appointed by Mohammad or Allah. The divide goes back to the period following Mohammads death in 632, when his close confidante Abu Bakr became the first Caliph of the Islamic nation. Shias believed the rightful heir was Mohammads cousin and son-in-law, Ali bin Abu Talib. Both sects have spawned more than their share of terrorists, though the terror organizations operate differently. Al Qaeda, ISIS, Al-Shebab and Boko Haram are Sunni organizations, while Iranian-sponsored terrorist groups, including Hezbollah, are Shia. The 13th issue of Dabiq, a copy of which was provided to FoxNews.com by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), is titled "The Rafidah: From Ibn Saba' To the Dajjal." Rafidah is derogatory term for Shia Muslims that translates to rejecters. In the foreword of the issue, the terror group praises the Dec. 2 terror attack in San Bernadino, Calif., calling it a demonstration of Muslims willingness to make sacrifice for the sake of fulfilling their duty to Allah. The foreword then uses the attacks carried out by married couple Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik as a call to arms for targeting "crusaders" on their own soil. The spark has been lit here in Iraq, and its heat will continue to intensify by Allahs permission until it burns the Crusader armies in Dabiq, reads a quote from Abu Musab az-Zarqawi, an Iraq-based Al Qaeda leader killed in 2006. The issue also touches upon other matters, including an article on the recently killed executioner for ISIS, Jihadi John, an article praising the widows of ISIS fighters and a piece blasting Saudi Arabia. But what is most clear throughout the issue is a concerted effort to wipe out the Shia population of the Middle East. At first glance, it may seem odd that ISIS is focusing its efforts against fellow Muslims and not the West, but Mauro says that it is part of a very elaborate campaign on the Islamic States part. It is still important for ISIL to attack the U.S. and Europe for branding purposes," Mauro said. "It helps them make their case that they are looked favorably upon by Allah and that they are growing stronger, regardless of whatever territorial losses they suffer on the ground. Russian warplanes are taking off from their base in Syria's coastal province of Latakia as Moscow continues pressing its air blitz days before scheduled peace talks. A pair of Su-25 jets flew past, returning from a mission shortly after sunrise on Wednesday, and air force crews readied combat jets for more missions. Two heavy transport plans were parked near the main terminal as soldiers toting assault rifles stood guard. Since Russia launched its air campaign in Syria on Sept. 30, its warplanes have flown nearly 6,000 missions. The number is impressive for a relatively compact force comprising just a few dozen warplanes. The Russian military brought a group of Moscow-based reporters to the base on Wednesday to see the operations. Russia has showcased the military might it is currently using in Syria, days before peace talks aimed at devising a political settlement to the conflict. Warplanes took off one after another and helicopter gunships were sweeping low as a number of Moscow-based journalists were allowed into the base in the province of Latakia. Two heavy transport planes were parked near the main terminal as soldiers carrying assault rifles patrolled. As well as offering reporters a glimpse into Moscow's military operation in Syria, a defense ministry spokesman also revealed humanitarian supplies its planes have delivered to residents of the blockaded city of Deir el-Zour. Russia launched its air campaign in Syria in September, and since then its warplanes have flown almost 6,000 missions. Defense ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov told the assembled reporters that Russian warplanes had flown 157 sorties hitting 579 targets in six Syrian regions over the past four days. The pace showed no sign of letting up, judging by the number of jets taking off and landing on Wednesday. State-of-the-art air defense weapons have been moved to the base after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane along the Syrian border in November. Towering launch tubes and massive radar arrays of the S-400 air defense missiles could be seen at the edge of the base. Throughout the air campaign, the Russian military has said it is targeting Islamic State militants and other extremists, dismissing Western accusations it is hitting moderate rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al Assad. Russia has also rejected claims its jets have hit civilians, insisting all casualties have been at extremist facilities away from populated areas. However, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Wednesday that more than 1,000 civilians have been killed since Moscows strikes began, including more than 200 children. Major General Konashenkov said Syrian government forces have retaken around 250 villages and towns from extremists as a result of the Russian campaign. He added that each target is verified through multiple intelligence sources before Russian jets strike. Across the tarmac, Russian soldiers were loading humanitarian supplies onto a Syrian Il-76 heavy transport plane to be parachuted over Deir el-Zour. The United Nations has warned that living conditions there have deteriorated significantly, as government-held areas of the city have been blockaded by extremists for over a year. Major General Konashenkov said around 40 metric tons of relief supplies have been delivered to the city, parachuted in on cargo platforms provided by the Russian military. The Syrian government and the opposition are set to hold talks in the Swiss city of Geneva on Monday. The negotiations are meant to lead to a political settlement with a new constitution and elections within 18 months, but hopes for a successful outcome are low. Click for more from Sky News. A senior U.S. diplomat stepped up pressure on China on Wednesday to play a leading role in punishing North Korea for its recent nuclear test that raised worries about advancements in its bomb program. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in South Korea on a diplomatic push for tougher sanctions and punishment that can force change in the North. Key to those efforts is whether China, the North's last major ally and a veto-wielding U.N. Security Council member, will join in such moves. "We believe that China has a special role to play given the special relationship that it has with North Korea," Blinken told reporters after meeting with South Korean officials. He said Beijing has "more influence and more leverage" over Pyongyang than any other country because most its trade goes from, to or through China. "We are looking to China to show leadership on the issue," Blinken said. He flies to Beijing later Wednesday for talks on North Korea. During a meeting with South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se, Blinken said Seoul and Washington are working closely in New York with the United Nations Security Council. Yun said it is time for the international community to stand united to make North Korea face the consequences for its bomb test. "This is North Korea versus international community," he said. China is expected to join in some U.N. sanctions, but won't likely go as far as to take steps that might lead to the collapse of the North's authoritarian government. China fears the onslaught of a wave of refugees and violence surging across the border, analysts say. North Korea says it conducted a hydrogen bomb test on Jan. 6. Many governments and experts remain highly skeptical about the North's claim, but whatever device North Korea detonated will likely push the country a step closer toward its goal of manufacturing a miniaturized warhead to place on a missile that can threaten the U.S. mainland. After the bomb test, the rival Koreas resumed psychological warfare with Seoul blasting anti-Pyongyang broadcasts from border loudspeakers, while Pyongyang does the same and also floats propaganda leaflets over the border by balloon, according to South Korean officials. Lyft vs. Uber battle is continuing with the price drop in the winter months. While Uber has announced to cut fares in 100 US cities, Lyft only decided to make the price drop in 33 cities like San Francisco, but not NYC. According to the Verge, "Lyft announced today that it was reducing its fares in 33 cities to make up for a drop in business during the winter months. The news comes less than a week after Uber announced it was slashing its prices by 10 percent in 100 North American cities." Sounds like Uber is still taking a strong lead over Lyft all across the country. The article continues that "Lyft says the cities that will see lower fares include DC, Denver, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Detroit, and Baltimore. Two cities not on Lyft or Uber's list: New York City and Chicago, which rely more heavily on car and taxi services and are probably less likely to see downturns in demand." Uber will definitely win the hearts of NYC residents this way. In other news, Lyft has not been only battling Uber over in cities like San Francisco and NYC with price wars. Lyft has been looking for innovative ways to beat out its biggest competitor Uber in gaining traction in New York. Lyft secured a partnering with the medical sector, helping seniors get to doctors in New York, which means that it is gaining some headway! According to CNN, "The next time New York City Medicaid patients head to the doctor, they may find themselves in the back of a Lyft... Now, as part of a test program in New York City, its operators can book a Lyft car for clients using Concierge, a new web-based dashboard designed by Lyft." Do you think getting the medical industry on their back will help Lyft gain some market control over Uber? Let me know in the comments below! FASTSIGNS Named to Franchise Business Reviews Top 200 Franchises List Global Sign, Graphics and Visual Communication Franchisor Earns No. 1 Spot in Business Services for High Franchisee Satisfaction January 20, 2016 // Franchising.com // CARROLLTON, Texas FASTSIGNS International, Inc. is entering 2016 with another pat on its back. The worldwide franchisor for the more than 600 FASTSIGNS sign, graphic and visual communications centers ranked No. 1 in the Business Services category of Franchise Business Reviews (FBR) Top 200 Franchises list. In other areas of the list, FASTSIGNS ranked No. 9 in the Enterprise 250+ Locations category and No. 11 in the overall Best of the Best. The FBR Top 200 is a comprehensive ranking of the nations top franchises based on franchisee satisfaction. For the 2016 report, FBR surveyed 28,000 franchise operators who represent 339 brands. The survey featured 33 benchmark questions ranking franchisors in in various areas, such as financial opportunity, training and support, leadership, operations and product development, core values, general satisfaction and the franchisee community. It also included 16 additional questions surrounding market area, demographics, business lifestyle, etc. Ranking each year in the FBR Top Franchises list speaks volumes to how invested we are in our franchisees success, FASTSIGNS International, Inc. EVP of Franchise Support and Development Mark Jameson said. No other ranking takes as deep of a look into franchisees satisfaction. Theyre the people who are truly moving the needle and driving the franchises growth their satisfaction with the business model is critical to the health and success of the franchise and continued expansion. This isnt the franchises first ranking on the FBR Top 200. In 2015, FASTSIGNS was inducted in the FBR Hall of Fame for demonstrating reliable performance through 10 consistent years of annual placement in its Top Franchises list. FBR also recognized FASTSIGNS as one of the leading franchises for military veterans. In the companys recent review that was completed by 44 percent of its franchise system, it received an overall rating of 4.2 out of 5. FBR President and COO Michelle Rowan, CFE said: I have had the pleasure of working with the FASTSIGNS team since 2006. They continue to amaze me with their commitment to the franchisee their success and enjoyment in the FASTSIGNS system. Everyone from the corporate staff, to the franchisees and employees seem aligned to continue driving the brand forward. In 2015, FASTSIGNS achieved global revenues of $400 million, reached its 600-unit milestone, signed more than 50 franchise agreements and opened more than 40 units. Due to the rising worldwide need for visual communications and digital signage technology, the company expects to open another 60 to 70 locations in 2016, as well as finalizing master franchise agreements in two new countries. For information about the FASTSIGNS franchise opportunity, contact Mark Jameson (mark.jameson@fastsigns.com or 214-346-5679) or download an eBook that explores the FASTSIGNS franchise opportunity at http://amzn.to/1FrnDJu. About FASTSIGNS FASTSIGNS International, Inc. is the worldwide franchisor for the more than 600 FASTSIGNS sign, graphic and visual communications centers in nine countries including the US (and Puerto Rico), Canada, England, Brazil, Mexico, the Caribbean, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Australia (where centers operate as SIGNWAVE). The largest sign franchise in North America, the independently owned and operated FASTSIGNS centers provide comprehensive visual communications solutions to help customers of all sizes across all industries meet their business objectives and increase their business visibility through the use of signs, graphics, printing, promotional products and related marketing services. The Franchise Research Institute has named FASTSIGNS a top sign and graphics franchise and has awarded the company certification as a 2015 World-Class Franchise for four consecutive years. FASTSIGNS was also recognized by USA Today, Military Times magazine, G.I. Jobs magazine and Franchise Business Review as one of the top franchises for military veterans. For more information about FASTSIGNS franchise programs, contact Mark Jameson (mark.jameson@fastsigns.com or 214-346-5679) or visit http://www.fastsigns.com/. SOURCE FASTSIGNS Media Contact: Jayne Levy Fishman Public Relations (O) 847.945.1300 jlevy@fishmanpr.com ### Add to Request List Added Request Information Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus Firenza Pizza Got Fired Up in 2015, Poised for Exponential National Growth in 2016 January 20, 2016 // Franchising.com // FAIRFAX, Va. Thriving on consumer demand while appealing to the appetite of investors, Firenza Pizza, one of the latest contenders emerging in the race to dominate the fast-casual pizza industry, strongly closed 2015 and has all of the pieces in place to launch an aggressive national growth initiative in 2016. Firenza was founded in 2015 by Dave Wood and Dave Baer, two franchise veterans who have over 50 years in the industry combined. Wood owned and operated 17 Dominos franchises throughout Northern Virginia before opting for retirement and selling them in 2012. Last year, the company opened its first two locations in the city of Fairfax, Virginia and Alexandria, Virginia. A third corporate store is expected to open in Ashburn, Virginia in the first quarter of 2016. Company plans call for opening as many as 15-20 new restaurants this year and approximately 20-30 annually thereafter. The enthusiasm and momentum we built from a successful first 10 months of business has continued into the new year, said Firenza Co-Founder and CEO Dave Wood. Our growth in this overly populated marketplace is a true testament to the high demand for our products and the excellent leadership of our all-star franchise team and culinary team. Were confident we have what it takes to become the segment leader. Having only launched its franchise opportunity last October, Firenza has already signed its first franchise deal a 25-unit master development agreement that will bring the brand to Richmond, Virginia and Eastern North Carolina. Firenza specializes in truly hand-crafted pizzas. Customers can pick and choose from nearly 40 toppings six signature sauces, seven cheeses, nine meats and 17 veggies and watch their customized pies assembled right in front of them. For those customers who dont want to create their pizzas from scratch, Firenza also offers eight, chef-inspired signature pizzas. Each pizza takes about 3-4 minutes to bake in an open flame stone-hearth oven. Other menu items include oven baked wings, meatballs and custom salads. Beverages include beer and wine, Mexican Coca-Cola, and Coke freestyle fountain drinks. We are excited to grow beyond Virginia, added Wood. As we continue to build our footprint, we will remain committed to providing premium quality products and exceptional service, as well as a welcoming atmosphere that cant be matched. For more information about franchise opportunities, visit www.firenzapizza.com. About Firenza Founded in 2015, Firenza is a new concept in the burgeoning fast-casual pizza segment that creates Pizza Like Never Before! Developed by a team of franchise executives and proven franchisees with more than 100 years of restaurant business development experience, Firenza specializes in truly hand crafted and made-to-order, stone hearth-baked pizzas that can be customized with nearly 40 toppings. With two locations currently open and operating in Virginia, Firenza plans to open as many as 30 new restaurants annually. For more information, please visit http://www.firenzapizza.com. SOURCE Firenza ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus Kinderdance Expands Into Mexico US Franchise Organization Brings Movement Education To Young Children Worldwide January 15, 2016 // Franchising.com // Melbourne, FL - Kinderdance International Inc, a leader in developmental dance, gymnastics and fitness programs for young children, continues to prove that movement programs standout as a highly popular childrens franchise. Kinderdance International keeps growing with a strong finish to 2015 by awarding a Gold level franchise to Maria Cecilia Anzola Mejia. Maria will be teaching to children in the greater Mexico City Mexico area. Maria has earned a BA in business along with a MBA in Education. Maria is fluent in both English and Spanish. She has extensive work experience in early childhood education, business, marketing and sales. Maria wanted to own a business that allowed her flexibility with great growth potential. Kinderdance was the perfect fit for her. I was ready to make the move from a corporate setting to entrepreneurism and begin running my own business, said Maria, Kinderdance franchisee of Mexico. After doing my research on different childrens franchise organizations, my desire to be part of a leader in childrens developmental dance and movement led me to Kinderdance. The solid corporate support, increasing demand for quality dance and movement programs really stood out to me. With a strong entrepreneurial spirit and a passion for dance and movement programs Maria will enjoy enriching the lives of children in Mexico! Maria is ready to turn her passion into a rewarding career with Kinderdance. We are excited about Maria joining our franchise family and look forward to helping her business grow in the Mexico says Kinderdance Vice President, Karen Maltese. Kinderdance, established in 1979 is a worldwide recognized dance, gymnastics and fitness program for children ages two to twelve. Their 130 Franchisees currently teach over 12,000 children weekly at over 800 various locations in 28 states including DC and 11 countries. About Kinderdance International Kinderdance places emphasis on building self-confidence and self-esteem in children through learning to share, lead, interact and respond to others needs as well as their own. The programs incorporate the arts, movement, education, music, fitness and the fun of learning into a young childs life while helping in the worldwide fight against childhood obesity. The company offers their educational movement programs on site to child-care centers, recreational centers, churches, fitness centers, corporate child care, community centers, military bases, public and private schools and many other viable locations. For more information on Kinderdance Please contact Richard Maltese at 1-800-554-2334 Or visit their website at www.kinderdance.com. SOURCE Kinderdance International Contact: Richard Maltese President / CEO Kinderdance International 1-800-554-2334 kindercorp@kinderdance.com ### Add to Request List Added Request Information Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus Kinderdance Texas Area Developer Expands US Franchise Organization brings movement education to young children Worldwide January 15, 2016 // Franchising.com // Melbourne, FL - Kinderdance International Inc, a leader in developmental dance, gymnastics and fitness programs for young children, announces expansion under Kinderdance Area Developer, Heather Hardesty. Ms. Hardesty teaches Kinderdance programs to children in Travis and Williamson counties in the state of Texas. Heather purchased her franchise in 2004 and has become a Top Kinderdance producer and leader. Ms. Hardesty has been awarded Rookie of the Year, in 2005 and Franchisee of the Year in 2008. Since starting her business she has been continually growing her sales, student enrollment and expanding in Texas with sub franchises. As a Kinderdance Area Representative she has mentored and developed successful sub franchises. Today, Kinderdance proudly announces the signing of another sub franchisee Susan Racette who will be serving Hays County and the South Austin in the state of Texas. Its wonderful to be expanding Kinderdance in Texas. For young children, movement, music and dance are natural tools for fitness, learning and communicating while expressing their feelings, says Kinderdance Vice President, Karen Maltese. About Kinderdance Kinderdance is a nationally recognized dance, gymnastics and fitness program for children ages two to twelve. Their 130 Franchisees currently teach over 12,000 children weekly at over 800 various locations in 28 states and 11 countries. Kinderdance places emphasis on building self-confidence and self-esteem in children through learning to share, lead, interact and respond to others needs as well as their own. The programs incorporate the arts, movement, education, music, fitness and the fun of learning into a young childs life while helping in the worldwide fight against childhood obesity. The company offers their educational movement programs on site to child-care centers, recreational centers, churches, fitness centers, corporate child care, community centers, military bases, public and private schools and many other viable locations. For more information on Kinderdance Please contact Karen Maltese at 800-554-2334 or visit their website at www.kinderdance.com. SOURCE Kinderdance Contact: Karen Maltese VP Franchise Development Kinderdance International 1-800-554-2334 kindercorp@kinderdance.com ### Add to Request List Added Request Information Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus SERVPRO Named to Entrepreneur's Top 10 Franchise List for 7th Consecutive Year Cleanup and Restoration Franchisor Retains Top Ranking in Restoration Services Category and Climbs to #4 Ranking Overall in the 2016 Franchise 500 Rankings GALLATIN, TN - (Marketwired - Jan 19, 2016) - SERVPRO, a cleanup and restoration franchise company, maintains its hold on the top ranking in the Restoration Services industry for the 13th consecutive year and moves up to the number four spot overall in the 2016 Franchise 500 rankings from Entrepreneur magazine. This is the seventh consecutive year SERVPRO has been included in the magazine's Top 10 list, standing out in a group of more than 951 franchises that qualified for inclusion in the list. Entrepreneur magazine's Franchise 500 selection process uses "objective, quantifiable measures of a franchise operation" to help would-be entrepreneurs identify franchise investment opportunities. Some of the most important factors considered by Entrepreneur in developing the list each year are "financial strength and stability, growth rate and size of the system." "This recognition affirms that SERVPRO is a dynamic organization that continues to grow and strives to always provide superior support for its franchisees, and by extension its customers," said Sue Steen, Servpro Industries, Inc., chief executive officer. "The recognition that the company earns year after year in this prestigious list is confirmation of a commitment to excellence that starts at the top and is evident in the service that each franchisee provides to each and every customer." According to Steen, a number of differentiators set SERVPRO apart from the competition and fuel the attractiveness of the company to both existing franchisees and would-be entrepreneurs looking for a strong business opportunity. Key among these are: SERVPRO's strength as a brand with a national footprint, wide-spread market penetration, laser-focused brand messaging, and the ability to create national partnerships with organizations such as the PGA TOUR and the American Red Cross. SERVPRO's commitment to being a learning organization, which keeps training and support at the forefront of the company's culture and philosophy of success and helps franchisees plan, track, and deliver best-in-class services to consumers. SERVPRO's focus on continued development and support for proprietary software and systems to allow the company's operational capacity to keep pace with an aggressive growth strategy. Steen adds, "One of the potential pitfalls of growing too quickly is outpacing your capacity to train and support the franchisees. SERVPRO is a conservative company, and early on we took the time to build a strong system and put the building blocks in place to support growth without sacrificing support to our franchisees." "Today," Steen continues, "as a mature franchise organization with more than 1,700 locations under a single brand, recognition like this makes it clear we are reaping the rewards of having laid a solid foundation and a framework to handle quick growth. As our brand continues to grow, we will continue our winning strategy of supporting and improving upon our infrastructure and investing resources in training and support." SERVPRO specializes in fire and water cleanup and restoration services, helping both commercial and residential customers recover from property damage emergencies "Like it never even happened." For more fire prevention tips and information about fire and water damage restoration services, please visit www.servpro.com/. About SERVPRO Founded in 1967, the SERVPRO Franchise System is a leader and provider of fire and water cleanup and restoration services, and mold mitigation and remediation. SERVPRO's professional services network of more than 1,700 individually owned and operated Franchises responds to property damage emergencies ranging from small individual disasters to multi-million dollar large-loss events. Providing coverage in the United States and Canada, the SERVPRO System has established relationships with major insurance companies and commercial clients, as well as individual homeowners. SOURCE SERVPRO Contact: Kim Kramer Brooks Corporate Communications Coordinator Servpro Industries, Inc. (615) 451-0200 ext. 1644 kbrooks@servpronet.com ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus Tropical Smoothie Cafe Signs Franchise Agreements To Open Nearly Two Dozen Locations In Atlanta Market Leading Fast Casual Cafe Continues Nationwide Expansion with Aggressive Growth Plans for North Atlanta, Cobb and Cherokee Counties January 20, 2016 // Franchising.com // ATLANTA - Tropical Smoothie Cafe, the leading fast casual cafe concept known for its better-for-you food and smoothies with a tropical twist, announced today it signed franchise agreements to open 23 locations in the Atlanta market over the next five years. The award-winning smoothie franchise is targeting North Atlanta, Marietta, and Cobb and Cherokee counties to open the new cafes. Currently, Tropical Smoothie Cafe has five locations in the area, including a restaurant that opened Jan. 12 in Suwanee at 3320 Lawrenceville-Suwanee Road, Suite 1-A. The Suwanee cafe is owned by franchisee Mike Haines, who will open another location in March at 869 North Main St., Suite 204, in Alpharetta. Haines worked in sales for 15 years at Microsoft and Facebook before leaving corporate America to become a franchise owner with Tropical Smoothie Cafe. He signed a development agreement in 2015 to open 10 cafes in North Atlanta. Tropical Smoothie Cafe also signed a franchise agreement with Meritage Restaurant Group, a family owned company lead by husband-and-wife team Deborah and Chris Pike, along with their daughter Meghan Cook and son Taylor Pike. Prior to joining Tropical Smoothie Cafe, Deborah Pike was chief marketing officer at Arby's and CEO of Atlanta-based restaurant consulting firm New Eyes, Inc. The family will open 10 cafes in Cobb and Cherokee counties over the next five years. "Our family has lived in Marietta for more than 60 years, and we are thrilled to bring Tropical Smoothie Cafe to the thriving community that we call home," said franchisee Chris Pike. "The brand promotes the importance of following a healthy lifestyle and offers a truly unique product that has developed a passionate following among consumers throughout the country. We look forward to welcoming our neighbors in to enjoy delicious and nutritious food while growing our business throughout the area as a family." The new cafes in the Atlanta area will feature Tropical Smoothie Cafe's new menu, featuring toasted wraps and flatbreads, bowls, salads, house-made sides, all-day breakfast, a kids menu and, of course, the brand's delicious smoothies. Guests can select from a menu of Superfood Smoothies that feature ingredients such as spinach, kale, acai, pomegranate, ginger and avocado; Supercharged Smoothies like the Chia Banana Boost and Muscle Blaster; and many more. Additionally, Tropical Smoothie Cafe offers a wide variety of supplements like probiotics and whey protein, as well as fresh add-ins like granola, whole grain oats and ginger. This year, the food and smoothie franchise plans to exceed 550 restaurants nationwide. The brand currently has franchise opportunities across the U.S. in markets such as Miami, Philadelphia, Boston, Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Atlanta, Columbus and Charlotte, among others. By 2018, Tropical Smoothie Cafe plans to have 800 stores open across the U.S. Tropical Smoothie Cafe is looking to add qualified franchisees to its growing brand. Candidates should have business experience; $125,000 in liquid assets and a minimum net worth of $350,000; and an initial investment of between $195,550 and $427,130. The healthy fast food franchise currently boasts an average unit volume (AUV) of more than $578,000 - the highest in the company's 19-year history - with the top 50 percent reporting an AUV of $734,000. Tropical Smoothie Cafe's aggressive franchise growth is backed by the entrepreneurs at the BIP Franchise Accelerator, a division of venture capital firm BIP Capital, which invested in the brand in 2010. BIP Capital has invested more than $250 million in emerging, high-growth brands across the franchising, software, and technology and consumer products industries. BIP Capital created the BIP Franchise Accelerator to leverage its leadership team's deep franchise experience to help emerging brands accelerate their growth. In addition to Tropical Smoothie Cafe, the BIP Franchise Accelerator's portfolio includes Tin Drum Asiacafe, which has grown to 13 locations in Georgia and Florida. For more information about opening your own Tropical Smoothie Cafe franchise, please visit www.tropicalsmoothiefranchise.com. About Tropical Smoothie Cafe Founded in 1997, Tropical Smoothie Cafe is a fast-casual restaurant concept inspiring healthy lifestyles across the country, with over 465 locations nationwide. With snack and meal options for any time of day, Tropical Smoothie Cafe serves smoothies, salads, tacos, wraps, sandwiches, and flatbreads. The rapidly growing franchise has received numerous accolades including being ranked on Entrepreneur's 2015 Franchise 500, 2015 Fast Casual Top 100 Movers and Shakers, Franchise Times' Top 200+ and Nation's Restaurant News' 2015 Top 200. Tropical Smoothie Cafe is seeking qualified franchisees to expand throughout the United States in markets such as Southern California, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Atlanta and Charlotte, N.C. SOURCE Tropical Smoothie Cafe Media Contact: Jessi Nunez Fish Consulting jnunez@fish-consulting.com 954-893-9150 ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus We are here for you and your loved ones beyond your cancer diagnosis. Find information related to your care at Fred Hutch. Our team members will help you with your medical records, financial assistance, housing questions and other services. Two Local Marketing Companies Collaborate for United Regional Chamber Seminar This event is sponsored by the United Regional Chamber of Commerce but is open to ALL businesses. To register and secure a seat, call the Chamber at 508-222-0801. -- Miles Internet Marketing is collaborating with ECE Marketing Services to present a FREE seminar at Dean College on January 28th, 2016 from 6 PM to 8 PM. Dean College is located in Franklin, MA and free parking for this event will be in a lot off of West Central Street (RTE 140). The event will be held in the campus center at the college. The topic to be discussed is "How to Quickly Generate Fresh Local Leads for Your Business on Autopilot." The event is being promoted by the United Regional Chamber of Commerce which is located at 42 Union Street in Attleboro, MA and registration is required because there is limited seating. People can call the Chamber at 508-222-0801. While this is a Chamber event it is open to ALL local businesses who want to learn how to get leads for their business in an automated manner. A few of the topics to be discussed at the seminar will be: *Lead Generation vs Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media, and Networking Events *The Lead Generation basics: One Big Idea and having the Right Message to the Right Market at the Right Time *How to find local prospects interested in purchasing products or services *Why most advertising fails and how to avoid making those mistakes *How to boost sales when business is slow *How to laser target any audience *How to automate lead generation to quickly make sales Miles Internet Marketing is located in Wrentham, MA at 215 Bennett Street. They offer a wide array of cutting edge and cost effective marketing services to help their clients grow. They have become known as the INTERCEPTORS because they 'intercept' potential customers before they reach the competition and send them to their clients. Mr. David Miles the founder and president of Miles Internet Marketing started the company in 2009 after a long career of marketing as a real estate broker. His goal was to offer services that would level the playing field for all size companies to prosper and grow. For more information about Miles Internet marketing visit their website at http://www.MilesInternetMarketing.com. Ed McDonough is a nationally recognized Marketing Consultant, the author of The Complete Internet Marketing Strategy Guide and the founder of the marketing agency, ECEMarketing Services which is located in Walpole, MA. ECE Marketing Services provides lead generation, lead conversion, customer re-engagement and marketing consulting services to businesses interested in rapidly increasing their sales revenue. For more Information about ECE Marketing Services visit their website at http://ECEMarketingServices.com. This seminar will give a business the opportunity to quickly grow their business. Participants will walk away with a proven strategy to drive up their sales revenue in a matter of days. For more information contact David Miles at 508-384-5990 or Ed McDonough at 508-296-5001. Summary This event is sponsored by the United Regional Chamber of Commerce but is open to ALL businesses. To register and secure a seat, call the Chamber at 508-222-0801. For more information about us, please visit http://www.unitedregionalchamber.org Contact Info: Name: David Miles Organization: Miles Internet Marketing Address: 215 Bennett St. Wrentham, MA 02093 Phone: 508-384-5990 Release ID: 101591 For more information visit r Recent Press Releases By The Same User Agarwood Essential Oil Market Expected to Grow at CAGR 4.2% During 2016 to 2022"> (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Cyber Weapon Market by Type, Product, Application, Region, Outlook and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Landscaping and Gardening Expert Trevor McClintock Launches New Locally Optimized Website (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Sleep apnea devices Market is Evolving At A CAGR of 7.5% by 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Agriculture Technology Market 2017 Global Analysis, Opportunities and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Global VR Helmet Market by Manufacturers, Technology, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Merely Theatre Balance The Bard With UK Tour Using 50/50 Male and Female Company of Actors As criticism mounts over opportunities for women in theatre, Merely Theatre use a company of five male and five female actors, producing five-hand Shakespeare productions touring the UK in 2016. London, England -- January 20, 2016 (FPRC) -- As 2015 drew to a close, criticisms surfaced over equality of opportunity for women in the arts in the UK. While the industry as a whole flags behind other sectors, the new generation of theatre companies are taking matters into their own hands. Merely Theatre hope to start 2016 as they mean to go on as they embark on their first national tour: as the first gender-blind classical theatre company, and the first to use 50/50 casting. The 50/50 male and female company will perform over forty shows in nearly twenty venues across England, Scotland and Northern Ireland early in 2016, produced by The Production Exchange and supported using public funding by Arts Council England. This company will tour five-hand productions of Henry V and A Midsummer Night's Dream, beginning on January 22nd at the Uppingham Theatre and concluding on May 7th at the Kings Theatre, Edinburgh. Full details and booking information is available here. Associate Producer Emmy Rose explained, "It's fantastic to be preparing our first national tour after working for years together in rep, honing our style. What we've created is modern, accessible and so exciting. We can't wait to connect with audiences across the country." Shakespeare himself was no role model when it came to equality: only 16% of his characters were female. The largest female role is Rosalind, with just over seven hundred lines, while the largest male role, Hamlet, has over fifteen hundred. One of the other major criticisms is that even when women are employed equally in number, they fall into 'subordinate' roles; the kind that would fail the Bechdel Test, where two women must speak to one another about a subject other than a man in order to pass. To overcome these challenges in the text, Merely's unique company is used in a unique way. Their five-hand productions of Henry V and A Midsummer Night's Dream utilize a company of ten actors, made up of five men and five women. Male-female 'twins' rehearse the same parts as one another, so there is both a male and a female actor ready to play every role. From that cast of ten, five are selected for each performance, with the genders fluidly jumbled. For example, some audiences will see a female Henry V, and others will see a male Titania. This role-sharing also creates an industry-leading progressive working environment for the company moving forward. This approach has already yielded rewards, with a production of Henry V with four female actors (one of whom played Henry) and one male earning a five-star reviews from Everything Theatre, together with glowing audience feedback. The company does not draw attention to the gender-blind conceit however. Artistic Director Scott Ellis explained, "Our system of putting the actors into male-female pairs and the fact that every single character could be portrayed by an actor of either sex on any given night means that we are truly 100% gender blind. This allows us to address the gender inequality in British theatre without making any sort of statement with the production itself. We simply take gender out of the equation." Robert Myles, an actor working with the company, remarked, "When Shakespeare was around, all actors were men and actors played all the parts. Now actors are men and women, and actors play all the parts. It's got a clean logic to it, and it doesn't affect how we tell the story." By making it a non-issue in their practice, it frees the creative team up to focus on perfecting what they see as the fundamentals of Shakespeare- clarity, focus, stakes, pace, sweat, and active choices. Artistic Director Scott Ellis said of the work, "We're not doing this as a gimmick or because it's politically correct. We're doing it because we've worked with as many great female actors as we have with male actors, and they deserve the same kind of opportunities to play the same great roles. This way, they can. It stretches both the men and women in the cast to play parts they wouldn't ordinarily be cast in, making them more creative and robust in the process. The result has been two of the best shows we've ever produced." About Merely Theatre The actors, the audience, the text. Merely is characterised by playful use of space and audience interaction. Their dynamic, irreverent but focused use of text ensures modern audiences are as engaged and entertained as when the words were written. For more information please visit: http://merelytheatre.co.uk/ Contact: Emmy Rose, Associate Producer, Merely Theatre Email: emmy@merelytheatre.co.uk Phone: +44(0) 7708 822 306 Send an email to Emmy Rose, Associate Producer, Merely Theatre of r +44(0) 7708 822 306 Recent Press Releases By The Same User ShapeHost Launches New Spring Sale Offering Savings Of Up To 35% On VPS Packages (Tue 8th Mar 16) Paypro Finance Launches their Consumer Financing for Small Business Program (Mon 7th Mar 16) Kuber Ventures Publishes New Infographic To Show Difference Between EIS for Pensions and SIPP (Thu 3rd Mar 16) Pregnancy Exercise Publishes New Guide Into Training For Fitness While Pregnant (Thu 3rd Mar 16) Centex Hosting Launches Newly Redesigned Website To Herald Expansion Into VPS Hosting (Thu 3rd Mar 16) Royal Cliff Receives ISO 22000 Food Safety Management Certification (Wed 2nd Mar 16) Adventron Group Engages Leading Digital Media Company To Increase Consumer Awareness of Affordable 24/7/365 Healthcare Access Adventron Group is pleased to announce it will be using the marketing expertise of Propel Media, Inc. a leading digital media company. -- During the 2016 Open Enrollment period in November 2015, Adventron began offering enhancedcareMD? Smart Choices, an inexpensive healthcare service which is intended to supplement existing health insurance policies. Members can connect to healthcare professionals 24/7/365 via phone anywhere within the 50 United States and Puerto Rico. Translation is available for Spanish and over 150 other languages. "The initial response to our new service offering has been good, said Clifford Merchant, Adventron Managing Partner. Propel Media will accelerate our objective of informing consumers that they can meet with healthcare professionals on their own time schedules instead of being constrained by doctor office hours or wasting valuable time in a waiting room. In the past, we could only do banking during banking hours. Of course, ATMs and online banking revolutionized the banking industry. In similar fashion, I expect enhancedcareMD? to have the same effect on the healthcare industry. I should be able to consult with a doctor on my schedule and not the other way around". enhancedcareMD? is a truly revolutionary medical service allowing Members to gain timely access to medical doctors and nurses and make smarter healthcare coverage choices. Members may call anytime, as often as they would like, with calls answered in about 30 seconds on average. Over 32% of the time, the medical team helps members avoid visits to the Doctor's Office, ER or Urgent Care facility completely. The entire household could benefit from the medical consultation services. The Prescription Savings Program offers the ability to save even more on prescription medications at Walmart, Sam's Club and Neighborhood stores. Savings average 23% and sometimes are as high as 80% versus other pharmacies and other programs. enhancedcareMD? membership allows the opportunity to buy lower premium plans and spend less money on healthcare benefiting both those who currently have health insurance coverage as well as those who need health insurance coverage. An average family of 4 could save approximately $3,500 in annual healthcare costs by taking full advantage of the enhancedcareMD? family of services. Families who qualify for the Federal Government Subsidy will benefit from the shopping portal as well. To learn more about this advancement in healthcare visit AmericanHealthcarePlan.com enhancedcareMD? Smart Choices is a registered trademark of Enhanced Care Inc. ABOUT ADVENTRON GROUP Established in the heart of Silicon Valley, Adventron Group is a management consulting firm that promotes and develops products and services that have significant potential for broader market appeal. The co-founders have over 35 years of combined professional experience in marketing and finance. For more information about us, please visit http://AmericanHealthcarePlan.com Contact Info: Name: Kelly Morris Organization: Adventron Group, LLC Phone: 4087695500 Video URL: https://youtu.be/M1tWZf-rNag Source: http://marketersmedia.com/adventron-group-engages-leading-digital-media-company-to-increase-consumer-awareness-of-affordable-247365-healthcare-access/101632 Release ID: 101632 For more information visit r Recent Press Releases By The Same User Agarwood Essential Oil Market Expected to Grow at CAGR 4.2% During 2016 to 2022"> (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Cyber Weapon Market by Type, Product, Application, Region, Outlook and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Landscaping and Gardening Expert Trevor McClintock Launches New Locally Optimized Website (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Sleep apnea devices Market is Evolving At A CAGR of 7.5% by 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Agriculture Technology Market 2017 Global Analysis, Opportunities and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Global VR Helmet Market by Manufacturers, Technology, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Mossack Fonseca Joins the "My School First-Mi Escuela Primero" Program Mossack Fonseca, in conjunction with the Panamanian Ministry of Education, has announced the signing of a collaboration agreement in support of the "My School First" program. -- Mossack Fonseca, a leading global company providing comprehensive legal, trust, and accounting services, has teamed up with a group of companies to support the "My School First" program by signing a collaboration agreement with the Panamanian Ministry of Education. Through this agreement, Mossack Fonseca will provide for the adaptation of the El Valle Basic Education Centre such that it will comply with the high standards set by the Ministry of Education. The "My School First" program is one of the many educational projects being carried out by the central government of Panama to enhance the conditions of various educational centers in the country. The program seeks to make repairs where possible, build new facilities where necessary and furnish the schools in order to provide students with an environment conducive to learning. The lofty goals of these projects are in keeping with the tenets of Mossack Fonseca's corporate philosophy, particularly as it relates to the essential nature of social responsibility and the importance of making a commitment to the communities it serves. Corporate social responsibility is one of the foundations of Mossack Fonseca and it has been that way since the company began 38 years ago. The company's involvement in this laudable endeavor should therefore come as no surprise to those familiar with its overarching mission that seeks to offer comprehensive and convenient legal, trust and accounting services. With a strong global presence active across every continent, the company continues to make every effort to support programs developed to benefit the communities of its clients. With its head office located in Panama, Mossack Fonseca's collaborative work with the Ministry of Education on the "My School First" program serves as a potent reminder that the company not only seeks to act in a way that addresses the needs of clients and shareholders, but also in a way that is socially responsible and wholly beneficial to society at large. Efforts such as this continue to demonstrate that the company takes its core values -- commitment, responsibility and loyalty, among several others -- quite seriously. About The Company: The Mossack Fonseca Group has been a global provider of comprehensive legal, trust and accounting services since it was founded in 1977. Having established a global presence featuring the availability of staff members in offices located on every continent, Mossack Fonseca has long believed in the importance of a client-centered approach delivered by expert professionals specializing in wealth management, trust services, commercial law and international business structures, along with a variety of other vital services. For more information about us, please visit http://www.mossfon.com Contact Info: Name: Mossack Fonseca Organization: Mossack Fonseca Address: 54th Street, Marbella, Panama, Republic of Panama Phone: (507) 205-5888 Release ID: 101197 For more information visit r Recent Press Releases By The Same User Agarwood Essential Oil Market Expected to Grow at CAGR 4.2% During 2016 to 2022"> (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Cyber Weapon Market by Type, Product, Application, Region, Outlook and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Landscaping and Gardening Expert Trevor McClintock Launches New Locally Optimized Website (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Sleep apnea devices Market is Evolving At A CAGR of 7.5% by 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Agriculture Technology Market 2017 Global Analysis, Opportunities and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Global VR Helmet Market by Manufacturers, Technology, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) A Certified and Experienced Team of Engineers are Gaining Praises for their Telecom Services across U.K Telephone System Engineer is one of the leading telecommunication service providers specializing in all types of installations, repairs, and troubleshooting telephones, computers, and networking systems. -- Regardless of how advanced telecommunication technology is and how big and smart a business setup is, telecom systems and devices are likely to default at some point of time. However, both business personnel and householders rely heavily on the faultless and efficient working of these systems such as computers, Internet, and phones. This is now ensured practically by the Telecom System Engineer, an evolving service provider whose tales of efficient solutions are spreading quickly across the nation. United Kingdom, Jan 14, 2016 London: Telephone System Engineer, a specialist in telecom services, is proving itself to be the most efficient and versatile solution provider for most fixing all types of faults for business personnel. It is becoming the first choice of several U.K business owners who quickly get rid of stress and hassle caused by disrupted telecom systems. With full 9 years of experience in the field of telecommunication, the service provider professionally tackles all types of demands or needs such as phone installation and repair, mobile contracts, cabling, computer networking, more economic line rentals, hosting and Web design, troubleshooting. Due to these many services on offer, the company is truly versatile in terms of its knowledge and experience. At present, it is serving a myriad of business customers in the various cities of England, Wales, and Scotland, such as Westminster, Oxford, Derby Bristol, Durham, Leeds, Hull, Newport, Dundee, Edinburgh, Stirling, and Cardiff. No matter where the customer is, a certified and experienced technical team ensures that the customer gets the desired service on time and in a friendly manner. Each of its technical professional is highly trained to deal with any problem or need, right from installation to replacement and troubleshooting. In fact, the company has such team for each type of telecom device as well as for each brand, such as BCM telephone engineers, LG telephone engineers, Panasonic telephone engineers, Toshiba telephone engineers, and Samsung telephone engineers. The customer, therefore, gets a more personal service with that exclusive expertise. According to a customer, "There is no reason why a businessman should disregard this service provider. There is everything on offer, which you can expect from a genuine and customer-friendly telecom engineer. " Similarly, another customer shared, "I contacted Telephone System Engineer through the Internet. It managed to save us a good percentage on moving our business to our new location." In line with the above feedback, the spokesperson responded, "We pride ourselves in meeting all types of practical customer demands in the most amiable way. It is luckily our responsibility to stick to this commitment sincerely and give our best in any situation." For more information about us, please visit http://telephone-system-engineer.com/ Contact Info: Name: Bogdan Popa Organization: Telephone System Engineer Address: Suite 3, Unit 4, Mitre Court Lichfield Road, Sutton Coldfield West Midlands, B74 2NJ Phone: 0800 849 8800 Source: http://marketersmedia.com/a-certified-and-experienced-team-of-engineers-are-gaining-praises-for-their-telecom-services-across-u-k/101654 Release ID: 101654 For more information visit r Recent Press Releases By The Same User Agarwood Essential Oil Market Expected to Grow at CAGR 4.2% During 2016 to 2022"> (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Cyber Weapon Market by Type, Product, Application, Region, Outlook and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Landscaping and Gardening Expert Trevor McClintock Launches New Locally Optimized Website (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Sleep apnea devices Market is Evolving At A CAGR of 7.5% by 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Agriculture Technology Market 2017 Global Analysis, Opportunities and Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Global VR Helmet Market by Manufacturers, Technology, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022 (Fri 2nd Jun 17) Sanlam UKs chief executive Lukas van der Walt has left the firm as part of its ongoing integration and management restructure. He will formally leave Sanlam UK on 29 February, after which he will serve as a strategic consultant to the group, advising on its development, mergers and acquisitions. During his 12 year tenure, Mr van der Walt orchestrated the purchase and development of Merchant Investors Assurance in 2004 as well as Buckles, English Mutual and FOUR Capital Partners. He was also responsible for strategic investments and partnering initiatives with Nucleus, Intrinsic and Punter Southall Group - the latter two being sold in 2013 and 2014 respectively. Jonathan Polin became chief executive of Sanlam UK on 1 January with a brief of business integration and dynamic future growth. He left his position as Ashcourt Rowans group chief executive at the end of October, with Sanlam Private Wealths incumbent chief executive Craig Massey returning to South Africa as branch operations director and head of stockbroking. In December, Sanlam announced changes to the management structure of its UK businesses from the start of this year. The UK group will be known as Sanlam UK and will be made up of: Sanlam Wealth Planning: The national financial adviser. Sanlam Private Wealth: The discretionary fund manager. Sanlam Investments & Pensions: The life and pensions business. Sanlam Four: The boutique asset management and fund solutions business. Sanlam Securities: The provider of institutional and retail stockbroking services. Earlier this month, it was revealed that adviser numbers at Sanlam Wealth Planning have fallen by about one in five since August 2012, according to figures from Imas Corporate Finance. According to the acquisitions adviser, the number of total approved persons at Sanlam Wealth Planning fell from a peak of 101 in August 2012 to 79 last month. A source close to the company claimed it had seen a raft of departures, but Mr Polin said its number of advisers was roughly the same as in 2013. He acknowledged his companys decision to reduce the number of employed advisers at Sanlam Wealth Planning, which was created from a merger of Sanlam Private Wealth (formerly Denbighshire-based Buckles) and financial advisory firm English Mutual, which Sanlam UK bought in 2014. A large number of the former Buckles clients did not meet our criteria, so we were able to reduce the number of our employed advisers at Sanlam Private Wealth and improve quality, said Mr Polin. peter.walker@ft.com Investor confidence has fallen to one of its lowest levels since July 2013, according to figures from Lloyds Bank. This months investor sentiment index came out at a level of 4.55 per cent during December. Only in September last year did the level fall even lower to 3.23 per cent, driven by the initial concerns about the slowing of Chinas economy and the impact of currency devaluation. Net sentiment is a statistic showing the difference between those who hold a positive view and those who hold a negative view each month on the outlook for each type of investment over the next six months. All figures are rounded to the nearest whole number. The data comes from a 4,621 adult strong YouGov survey, of which 1,152 were investors, undertaken at the start of January. In December, all 10 asset classes experienced a drop in market performance, compared with the previous month. Commodities lead the way, with another huge fall in perceived performance of 8.6 per cent. Markus Stadlmann, chief investment officer at Lloyds Bank Private Banking, explained investors are feeling particularly gloomy at the moment, with asset class performance dropping off as we start 2016. Given declining market performance and falling levels of sentiment, it is surprising to see sentiment towards bonds also falling. But, by sticking to familiar investments like property and gold, some investors might be missing the potential opportunity offered by lower risk fixed income assets such as bonds. Only UK property and gold bucked the trend, with small rises in sentiment of 1.88 per cent and 2.04 per cent respectively. When comparing the year-on-year changes in sentiment, only UK property increased its positive position, with a 12 per cent rise over 12 months, taking it to a high level of more than 50 per cent. Eurozone equities have also improved levels of sentiment during the last year time, with a rise of 9 per cent, but sentiment towards this asset class remains extremely negative, at around -34 per cent. Emerging market equities have fallen out of favour. After being regarded positively with a sentiment of 6 per cent in December, confidence levels fell by around 12 per cent this month. Sentiment towards emerging market equities also fell by around 15 per cent year-on-year, which is the biggest fall across all the asset classes. Despite their 10.7 per cent growth in actual market performance, Japanese equities are still failing to impress the UK investor, with a sentiment reading of -14.31 per cent, their poorest level since its record low in this survey, also registered in September 2015. katherine.denham@ft.com The European oil and gas industry and Ryanair financials are areas which Invesco Perpetuals Adrian Bignell hopes will spark a further take-off in performance this year. The manager began 2016 with what could be seen as a bold decision, moving from neutral to overweight exposure to oil and gas. He now holds 6.5 per cent of his 122m European Opportunities fund in oil majors and exploration and production companies, along with roughly 2 per cent in oil services. He said: Ive been increasing my exposure and sadly this has been very painful since the oil price hit $30 [last week]. However, he added: Global demand grows by about 1m barrels a day and we have a surplus supply of around 1.5m a day. What is making me optimistic is as the price goes [below] $30, there are a number of fields that are unprofitable that will be shut, and this is a supply side response to help us into supply/demand balance. We are getting close to the inflection point. The manager aims to split the funds exposure equally between large, mid and small caps, but admitted finding better returns and value in some of the smaller firms. Mr Bignell has experience in this area through his 168m Invesco Perpetual European Smaller Companies fund. His largest exposure remains to financials at 23 per cent of the fund, but the emphasis here has shifted to new small cap entrants and being underweight European banks. Mr Bignell has been buying up shares in investment and brokerage firms that have opted for different pricing models to traditional banks, creating a price and business-model battle akin to that of Ryanair and British Airways. He said: At the small and mid-cap level there are really interesting financial technol-ogy (fintech) firms. Leonteq came to market with a different cost base to structured products suppliers, like Ryanair arriving next to British Airways. This is the opportunity for fintech. Starting with the right cost base and superior technology to the incumbent banks, they are very quickly able to generate really good returns at a fraction of the price [for banks]. Elsewhere in financials, the Opportunities fund holds 3.3 per cent in Flow Traders, an Amsterdam-based market maker for exchange-traded products (ETPs). Mr Bignell said the ETP market was set to grow by 15 per cent per annum over the next four years. Flow listed in July 2015 valued at roughly 1.5bn (1.1bn) and has a 70 per cent cash to payout ratio, he added. He also holds the German exchange Deutsche Boerse (2.5 per cent of his portfolio) and 4.9 per cent in Leonteq. Mr Bignell has also looked to Avanza, a Swedish online brokerage firm, which he described as the Hargreaves Lansdown of Sweden. He said it had a 2.5 per cent market share with an excellent online product offering and prices, and a dividend growing at 15-20 per cent a year. The managers European Opportunities fund has returned 40.6 per cent over three years and 8.1 per cent over one, compared with IA Europe ex-UK sector average returns of 25.7 and 3.8 per cent, according to FE Analytics. International financial advice firm Globaleye has apologised for inaccuracies in a pension guide on the companys website. Tim Searle, chairman of Globaleye, said his firm gives the most up to date information it can and added with the fluidity of Qrops/Qnups it is easy to get out of date. He made these comments when FTAdviser flagged that rival advisers had complained about a misleading guide on his companys website. Mr Searle said: What our clients get and what is on the website is completely different. Ill apologise for the inaccuracies up there - we are reviewing them at present. It is one of the tasks the marketing team are doing now. We have an ongoing battle with making sure it is up to date. We are not a robo-advice or transactions company, he added, stating that Globaleye clients have to sit down with an adviser. James Pearcy-Caldwell, chartered financial planner at Aisa (CORRECT) International, told FTAdviser information in the guide, which was published on Globaleyes website and able to be viewed last week, was largely out of date, misleading or inaccurate as different rules apply for different age groups and different countries. The guide stated: In the UK, all pensions have income tax deducted at the basic rate before they are paid out to the pensioner, whereas Qrop income will be taxed at the rate applicable to the country that the Qrop is based in. Due to double taxation agreements this can sometimes be 0 per cent. Christopher Lean, an IFA based in the Czech Republic, said this information was misleading, pointing out the level of taxation applied on pension income will depend upon the country where the retiree is the tax resident, the jurisdiction where the pension is based and the double taxation agreement between those two states. Mr Pearcy-Caldwell added the guide ignored the initial 10,000 or so of income comes under a personal allowance in the UK, which is taxed at 0 per cent. The guide also stated tax penalties do apply if you return to the UK within five years. Mr Lean questioned what tax penalties there were and Mr Pearcy-Caldwell said he was unaware of any tax penalties applied by the UK to repatriates. Another misnomer was the following statement: If you leave your pension in the UK in a Sipp for example, you will pay your highest marginal income tax rate on the income taken where ever you are in the world. Mr Lean said: This is nothing to do with UK Sipps, but how pensions are taxed and Qrops income should be declared and taxed too. The guide also stated a tax-free lump sum of up to 30 per cent can be drawn down from a pension, leaving 70 per cent for a regular income, however Mr Lean noted UK advisers referred to it as a pension commencement lump sum, and other countries tax this lump sum. The Treasury select committee has attacked Financial Conduct Authority bosses for the way they announced the end of their investigation into banking culture. FCA chairman John Griffiths-Jones and acting chief executive Tracey McDermott have been grilled by members of the committee today (20 January) after news emerged late last month that the FCA was abandoning its review of culture at UK retail and wholesale banks. Andrew Tyrie, chairman of the Treasury select committee, asked Mr Griffiths-Jones whether news about the ending of the investigation was the consequence of a planned pre-briefing, or whether it was leaked. The FCA chairman denied that it was a leak, but pointed out the letters sent to the banks were not secret. He also disputed the FCA had abandoned its probe into bank culture, but said it had instead thrown out the thematic review in order to narrow down the investigation by putting the work on culture back onto individual firm supervision. They came to the conclusion that the way the work was structured was not going to lead to the best way of making progress on culture, Mr Griffiths-Jones said. Mr Tyrie also quizzed the FCA boss over internal communications about the decision to scrap the review. Mr Griffiths-Jones admitted that when the letters about the review were sent out to the banks on the 19 October last year, the board were notified about this decision three days later. The decision to hold the culture review was in the board plan, he said, before pointing out that the board only approves the plan in total and does not know every sentence in the document. Mr Tyrie probed further: The fact is the board took a decision to hold this review and that decision was overturned without recourse to the board by the executives. But both Mr Griffiths-Jones and Ms McDermott denied that any decision had been overturned. Ms McDermott said the executive makes the operational decisions about what should be taken forward or what should be done differently. We thought it was approproate that the board should be notifed and I made the decision and I think that was an entirely appropriate way to do this, she said. The Treasury select committee meeting came after an article by the Financial Times suggested Megan Butler, an executive director at the Prudential Regulation Authority, had influenced the decision to drop the FCAs review after she was seconded in September. An internal paper published at the end of September showed after moving across to the FCA, she helped draw up plans to abandon the culture probe. The FCA caused industry uproar after abandoning the review of culture at UK retail and wholesale banks just before New Years Eve. Tony Catt, compliance officer at Peacehaven-based Anthony Catt Limited, said: The FCA is in a difficult position between the Treasury, MPs and the banks. John Mann, Labour MP and member of the Treasury select committee is demanding that Treasury officials appear before the committee to explain the background to the cancellation of an inquiry into banking culture by the FCA which was announced on a quiet news day (30 December 2015). Mr Mann is rightly concerned that the Treasury appears to be interfering in the work and operations of the FCA as this could weaken the effectiveness of regulation. In response, the FCAs acting chief executive, Tracey McDermott, went to great lengths in interviews to emphasise that the FCA was not the puppet of the Treasury and that it had objectives set by statute (not by the Treasury) as well as a board of directors. All of this is true, but that does not mean the Treasury does not wield significant power. There is a history of Treasury interference in the regulators actions. Sir Hector Sants, the incumbent chief executive at the time of the financial crisis, defended his light-touch regulatory approach by saying it was what the Treasury wanted. Sir Hector, expecting to carry the can for the lacklustre role of the regulator, let it be known inside the FSA (the predecessor of the FCA) that he would not be seeking an extension to his contract. By passing the buck to the Treasury, instead of being fired, Sir Hector was knighted. His successor, Martin Wheatley, was appointed by George Osborne as part of the new coalition governments plan to restructure the old FSA by carving out the banking prudential regulatory activity and returning it to the Bank of England, and changing the name of what was left to FCA. Mr Wheatleys message was that he was going to shoot first and ask questions later, which sounds like he was on a mission to clean up the sector. It probably struck the right note at the time when there was clearly going to be plenty of banker bashing. But the problem with bashing banks is that it simply discourages them from lending, and this was a post-crisis problem that Mr Osborne needed to address in order to stimulate economic recovery. During the post-crisis years, banks have been slow to make new loans and instead have had to contend with a rising tide of regulation and regulatory investigations and fines not a climate that encourages lending. Indeed, one major British bank was contacted with an enquiry about funding an investment opportunity, but the response of the person who took the call was: Why are you calling me? The reluctance of banks to return to the lending business is quite apparent in the growth of non-bank lending senior debt funds have been a new and growing source of debt capital for borrowers and a mechanism for investors to capture reasonable returns, particularly compared to the very low rates on bank deposits. But even during Mr Wheatleys reign, it was not all banker bashing. It was well known inside the FSA that internal reports concerning banking behaviour and practices were required not to adopt a critical tone, but rather a more sympathetic approach. Livestock farmers are being urged to prepare for a possible bluetongue outbreak after the first case of the virus for four years was detected in France. NFU livestock board chairman Charles Sercombe said the union and other industry stakeholders were talking at length with Defra and Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency (AHVLA) officials about the likelihood of bluetongue reaching the UK this year. The first outbreak of bluetongue for four years was confirmed in the Allier region of central France last August. See also: France redraws bluetongue zones after disease jumps Bluetongue factfile Bluetongue disease affects sheep, cows and goats, causing painful hooves, lameness and reproductive problems Main signs of bluetongue in sheep are ulcers in the mouth, discharge of mucus, drooling from mouth or nose and swelling of the mouth, head, neck and the coronary band Bluetongue is a notifiable disease, which means the Animal and Plant and Health Agency (APHA) must be told immediately if a case is suspected Animals may also have red skin, fever, lameness and breathing problems Cattle are the main carriers of bluetongue and can show some of the same symptoms as sheep, but generally they do not show any signs of the disease Bluetongue is carried and spread by midges Since it was first detected, surveillance work uncovered 95 outbreaks of the virus, prompting movement restrictions and vaccinations for exported livestock. Defra subsequently assessed the risk of the disease reaching the UK as low. But the NFU has warned that many variables will increase the threat over the coming months including rising temperatures, wind direction and vaccination in other countries. There is quite strong evidence that with the outbreak in France and the potential weather situation it could move to the southern part of the UK in 2016, Mr Sercombe told an NFU Council meeting at Stoneleigh, Warwickshire, on Tuesday (19 January). Some 87 cattle farms were worst affected in the French outbreak, with the virus also hitting four sheep and beef farms and four sheep farms. Mr Sercombe said it was important that vaccine was readily available for UK farmers to use before cattle were turned out this coming spring. We are working behind the scenes to encourage vaccine production to make it available for members to use, he added. Farmers would have to make their own decision about whether to vaccinate livestock, but it was incumbent on the NFU to ensure vaccine was available. Like the UK, much of Europe has been experiencing an unseasonably warm winter. Last month, Defras international disease-monitoring team said mild weather meant the continual slow spread of the virus in France was no particular surprise. Previous bluetongue outbreaks in the UK have seen vaccine costs subsidised by Defra. But take-up among producers was lower than expected, leaving the government with a hefty bill and unused stocks. Mr Sercombe said the industry would have to pay its own way this time around. Story Highlights More than four in five U.S. adults are satisfied with direction of personal life Barely half are very satisfied, still lagging the 59% found before 2008 market crisis Personal satisfaction varies most by household income PRINCETON, N.J. -- Americans' satisfaction with how things are going in their personal life continues to recover after the percentage very satisfied dipped below 50% during the 2008 Wall Street economic crisis. Still, at 53%, personal satisfaction falls short of the 55% to 59% range in the years leading up to 2008. More broadly, 85% of U.S. adults are either very or somewhat satisfied with the direction of their personal life. Personal satisfaction far eclipses the 23% who are satisfied with the direction of the country. Just 14% of Americans are dissatisfied with their personal life, while 76% are dissatisfied with the direction of the nation. While overall personal satisfaction is high among most U.S. subgroups, the percentage very satisfied varies considerably, particularly by household income. Two-thirds of adults in households earning $75,000 or more were very satisfied with the direction of their own life in the Jan. 6-10 Gallup poll, but this drops to 51% among those earning between $30,000 and $75,000 and to 39% among those earning less than $30,000. Significant differences are also seen by marital status and religious affiliation. Married adults are much more likely than those who are not married -- encompassing widows, divorcees and those never married -- to be very satisfied with their own lives, 61% vs. 46%, respectively. Of the three largest religious blocs in the U.S., Catholics (60%) and Protestants (55%) are more likely than nonreligious Americans (47%) to be very satisfied. By contrast, little to no significant differences are seen by gender, age, race or party identification. Democrats' Satisfaction Rises to Tie Republicans' Despite the current parity in Republicans' and Democrats' "very satisfied" percentages, the trend has been different for each. Republicans were consistently more likely to be very satisfied than Democrats from 2001 through 2007 -- spanning most of Republican President George W. Bush's two terms in office. That pattern remained in the next reading -- in December 2008 -- as personal satisfaction dropped, because the decrease was similar among the two groups. However, Democrats' satisfaction has rebounded while Republicans' has remained low, resulting in the two groups now reporting similar satisfaction. More Income Equals Higher Life Satisfaction The percentage very satisfied differs by income level, with the highest income group consistently the most satisfied and the lowest income group the least satisfied. High satisfaction dropped the most in 2008 among the high-income group, likely due to their greater exposure to the stock market crash at the end of that year, but satisfaction for this group has gradually improved in the years since. Satisfaction among the two lower-income groups continued to decline in 2011, possibly reflecting the challenging job market and wage stagnation during this period, but has since improved among both groups. Still, none of the groups have recovered to their pre-2008 highs. Bottom Line Americans are largely satisfied with their personal lives, suggesting the issues that are so troubling to many on the national level -- the economy, political gridlock, terrorism and a host of domestic issues -- don't affect most people's daily lives. At the same time, the 2008 market collapse and the slow, still incomplete recovery in the years since the 2007-2009 recession clearly affected people, causing fewer to see their lives in highly positive terms. The other factor possibly shading these perceptions is partisan politics, with Republicans less likely to believe, or at least admit, their lives are going well with a Democratic president in office. Thus, the outcome of the November election will likely decide if the current pattern of satisfaction by party ID persists, or if Republicans' attitudes sharply improve along with a party change in the Oval Office. Survey Methods Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted Jan. 6-10, 2016, with a random sample of 1,012 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. For results based on the total sample of national adults, the margin of sampling error is 4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. All reported margins of sampling error include computed design effects for weighting. Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 60% cellphone respondents and 40% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by time zone within region. Landline and cellular telephone numbers are selected using random-digit-dial methods. View complete question responses and trends. Learn more about how Gallup Poll Social Series works. Minecraft Goes Educational, Minecraft: Education Edition To Be Released Summer 2016 Microsoft has now decided to go in another direction as the gaming giant releases Minecraft: Education Edition, as a new version of Minecraft that's customized for schools. Now, Minecraft isn't only about exploring dark caverns, endless plains, and computer designed mountains, it wants them to explore places in the real world, like the infamous Pompeii, the pyramids of Giza, and Greek temples. Minecraft has always been a host of educational projects. At some point, 43,000 square km of Denmark was copied in and used to teach architecture. This allowed us to take a look at the strange but bizarre world of quantum physics, and the Minecraft: Education Edition, which is a remake of the original game that teaches educators lesson planning and crowd control. Considering the extent of Microsoft's resources compared to those of previous MinecraftEdu's owners, TeacherGaming, it's hard to really visualize who might exploit Minecraft's educational potential to its fullest. As of the moment, the changes aren't really dramatic. Minecraft: Education Edition is basically the exact same Minecraft you've been playing for years, but with some extra features that makes it easier to use. That whole process involves Minecraft's mapping feature so that a number of students can actually find its way around, letting teachers lock in resources for students to utilize, and includes an in-game camera and a scrapbook to hold screenshots for cataloging where you've already explored. Microsoft is quick to mention that its keeping the changes minor because it doesn't really want to make Minecraft a full educational product, it's still technically a game and therefore something kids have fun using. Details of the new features have not been released totally by Mojang just yet. However, sample lesson plans and maps can already be found on the Education Edition website. Minecraft: Education Edition will be released sometime this summer, and it's going to be just a fresh start from Microsoft's plan to use Minecraft for schools purposes. gamershell.com expired on 08/21/2022 and is pending renewal or deletion. Backorder Domain The contracts for firefighters and lifeguards each covers a three-year period and provides annual wage increases. This log includes incidents in which there might have been a public disturbance or a risk to the public. Information comes from the Corvallis Police Department, the Benton County Sheriffs Office and Oregon State Police. It does not include all calls for service. The status of incidents might change after further investigation. Locations are approximate. People arrested or suspected in crimes are considered innocent until proven otherwise. Corvallis Police Department MONDAY, JAN. 18 DUII: 3:38 a.m., Northwest Harrison Boulevard and 25th Street. Johanna Vasquez-Silva, 20, of Corvallis was charged with DUII following a traffic stop. Vasquez-Silva reportedly had a blood alcohol content of 0.13 percent. She was booked into the Benton County Jail. SUNDAY, JAN. 17 TRESPASS: 12:52 p.m., 3600 block of Southwest Deon Drive. A woman reported that she and her roommates heard a person come into their home, walk up to the third floor and enter an unlocked bedroom. One of the woman's roommates reported that the person stood in the corner of her room for a moment before walking back downstairs and leaving the apartment. Nothing was taken from the apartment and the roommates were not certain whether the person was male or female. SATURDAY, JAN. 16 DOMESTIC ASSAULT: 9:37 p.m., 3300 block of Northwest Crest Drive. Robert Erickson, 51, of Corvallis was charged with fourth-degree assault, reckless endangering and interfering with a report. Erickson allegedly assaulted a woman inside his home while the woman was carrying a 1-year-old child. Erickson allegedly took a phone away from the woman when she tried to call for help. BURGLARY: 10:45 a.m., 1600 block of Northwest Division Street. A man reported that someone had torn an air conditioner from the back room of his house and stole two medical marijuana plants inside the home. The man reported the value of the marijuana plants at around $3,600. THURSDAY, JAN. 14 THIS IS NOT A DAY CARE: 8 p.m., 2500 block of Southwest Pickford Street. A woman returned home from the hospital to find three children in her home. Two of the children belonged to Jessica White, 27, of Corvallis, and the third child was White's 13-year-old sister. An initial investigation determined that White stole the keys from the homeowner's purse while visiting a relative and then "allowed the minors to stay at the residence without the homeowner's permission." White was arrested and charged with first-degree trespass and third-degree theft. Gangan! Buhari Threatens To Deal With Tompolo And Niger/Delta Over Pipeline Bombings xsucces at 20-01-2016 12:33 AM (6 years ago) (m) Following the renewed incidents of pipeline vandalism in the Niger Delta, President Buhari has threatened to deal decisively with those behind the act. According to a statement by the senior Special Assistant to Buhari on Media and Publicity, Shehu Garba, Buhari made the threat while speaking with Nigerians residing in Dubai earlier today. Following the renewed incidents of pipeline vandalism in the Niger Delta, President Buhari has threatened to deal decisively with those behind the act. According to a statement by the senior Special Assistant to Buhari on Media and Publicity, Shehu Garba, Buhari made the threat while speaking with Nigerians residing in Dubai earlier today. While stating that the Nigerian Armed Forces had already dealt deadly blows on Boko Haram, Buhari said the activities of oil thieves and vandals would soon be brought to an end The oil thieves and abductors are a less problematic target. We will re-organise and deal with them, he was quoted as saying. In the same vein, he warned telecommunication companies operating in Nigeria not to place their desire for huge profits above the security needs of the country. He said all telecommunication companies operating in Nigeria must adhere to the rules and guidelines of the Nigerian Communications Commission in this regard. He spoke on his administration's war against corruption. While stating that the Nigerian Armed Forces had already dealt deadly blows on Boko Haram, Buhari said the activities of oil thieves and vandals would soon be brought to an endThe oil thieves and abductors are a less problematic target. We will re-organise and deal with them, he was quoted as saying.In the same vein, he warned telecommunication companies operating in Nigeria not to place their desire for huge profits above the security needs of the country. He said all telecommunication companies operating in Nigeria must adhere to the rules and guidelines of the Nigerian Communications Commission in this regard. He spoke on his administration's war against corruption. Post Reply Posted: at 20-01-2016 12:33 AM (6 years ago) | Gistmaniac emma4love3 at 20-01-2016 12:46 AM (6 years ago) (m) mmmmmh...... another wahala....is about to break out oooh.....mr president hold it with cautioned..... becos of poor and innocent people Posted: at 20-01-2016 12:46 AM (6 years ago) | Hero mmmmmh...... another wahala....is about tobreak out oooh.....mr president hold it with cautioned.....becos of poor and innocent people Reply ficull at 20-01-2016 12:53 AM (6 years ago) (m) poster, ur headline is misleading. To me, His words are truly appropriate..or what did u expect him to say??? U are quick tag him a dictator wen he talks tough, as a president should..... did u listen to George W. Bush's statements after 9/11? Posted: at 20-01-2016 12:53 AM (6 years ago) | Gistmaniac poster, ur headline is misleading. To me, His words are truly appropriate..or what did u expect him to say???U are quick tag him a dictator wen he talks tough, as a president should..... did u listen to George W. Bush's statements after 9/11? Reply Powerfulify at 20-01-2016 12:56 AM (6 years ago) (m) Fighting corruption with sentiment Posted: at 20-01-2016 12:56 AM (6 years ago) | Gistmaniac Fighting corruption with sentiment Reply Oworen25 at 20-01-2016 01:03 AM (6 years ago) (m) Ah this one were you do not begin war with militants I no dey der oh Posted: at 20-01-2016 01:03 AM (6 years ago) | Hero Ah this one were you do not begin war with militants I no dey der oh Reply gogoman at 20-01-2016 01:08 AM (6 years ago) (m) where is @FREETHINKER!!! Posted: at 20-01-2016 01:08 AM (6 years ago) | Addicted Hero where is @FREETHINKER!!! Reply Anthonimania at 20-01-2016 01:40 AM (6 years ago) (m) Sai baba...Execute them once and for all. The militants are being pampered by the PDP. NO MERCY FOR PEOPLE THAT BELIEVED THEY CAN DESTABILIZE THE PEACE OF OUR DEAR NATION. Posted: at 20-01-2016 01:40 AM (6 years ago) | Upcoming Sai baba...Execute them once and for all. The militants are being pampered by the PDP. NO MERCY FOR PEOPLE THAT BELIEVED THEY CAN DESTABILIZE THE PEACE OF OUR DEAR NATION. Reply Anthonimania at 20-01-2016 01:43 AM (6 years ago) (m) And also make sure that there sponsors are dealt with too, if they believed they can use looted fund to sponsor crimes, instead of helping poor Niger-Delta people. Posted: at 20-01-2016 01:43 AM (6 years ago) | Upcoming And also make sure that there sponsors are dealt with too, if they believed they can use looted fund to sponsor crimes, instead of helping poor Niger-Delta people. Reply winace at 20-01-2016 04:50 AM (6 years ago) (f) Hmmmmd post is different from d write up. Meanwhile if Buhari truly threaten, he shld know dat boko haram are not d same as militant. Wen boko haram were operating, Nigeria was making money and was selling at 100 per barrel but if dis guys go back to d creek, then get ready for total collapse of d nation cus Nigeria depend on d southern oil yo survive since other region have abandon all other natural gift from GOD yo focus on oil including north dat can't produce even groundnut (they groundnut in d north o) Posted: at 20-01-2016 04:50 AM (6 years ago) | Addicted Hero Hmmmmd post is different from d write up. Meanwhile if Buhari truly threaten, he shld know dat boko haram are not d same as militant. Wen boko haram were operating, Nigeria was making money and was selling at 100 per barrel but if dis guys go back to d creek, then get ready for total collapse of d nation cus Nigeria depend on d southern oil yo survive since other region have abandon all other natural gift from GOD yo focus on oil including north dat can't produce even groundnut (they groundnut in d north o) Reply OOSSYY at 20-01-2016 06:01 AM (6 years ago) (m) Quote from: Anthony Oladejo on 20-01-2016 01:40 AM Sai baba...Execute them once and for all. The militants are being pampered by the PDP. NO MERCY FOR PEOPLE THAT BELIEVED THEY CAN DESTABILIZE THE PEACE OF OUR DEAR NATION. MAY THUNDER FIRE U, FIRE UR MAMA, FIRE UR PAPA, FIRE ALL UR ENTIRE FAMILY MEMBERS. AND MAY THUNDER FIRE THAT UR BUHARI AND HIS ENTIRE PEOPLE.STUPID ANIMALS ENJOYING FROM WHAT U DO NOT HAVE Posted: at 20-01-2016 06:01 AM (6 years ago) | Upcoming MAY THUNDER FIRE U, FIRE UR MAMA, FIRE UR PAPA, FIRE ALL UR ENTIRE FAMILY MEMBERS. AND MAY THUNDER FIRE THAT UR BUHARI AND HIS ENTIRE PEOPLE.STUPID ANIMALS ENJOYING FROM WHAT U DO NOT HAVE Reply OOSSYY at 20-01-2016 06:05 AM (6 years ago) (m) Quote from: Anthony Oladejo on 20-01-2016 01:43 AM And also make sure that there sponsors are dealt with too, if they believed they can use looted fund to sponsor crimes, instead of helping poor Niger-Delta people. MAY THUNDER FIRE U, FIRE UR MAMA, FIRE UR PAPA, FIRE ALL UR ENTIRE FAMILY MEMBERS. AND MAY THUNDER FIRE THAT UR BUHARI AND HIS ENTIRE PEOPLE.STUPID ANIMALS ENJOYING FROM WHAT U DO NOT HAVE Posted: at 20-01-2016 06:05 AM (6 years ago) | Upcoming MAY THUNDER FIRE U, FIRE UR MAMA, FIRE UR PAPA, FIRE ALL UR ENTIRE FAMILY MEMBERS. AND MAY THUNDER FIRE THAT UR BUHARI AND HIS ENTIRE PEOPLE.STUPID ANIMALS ENJOYING FROM WHAT U DO NOT HAVE Reply proly at 20-01-2016 07:10 AM (6 years ago) (f) Igbanda empty threat....u taught mllitants re olisa metuh or bokkos...this guys ve heavy machine or u taugt they re biafra...dnt go there aat all..they will crash aabj overnite Posted: at 20-01-2016 07:10 AM (6 years ago) | Hero Igbanda empty threat....u taught mllitants re olisa metuh or bokkos...this guys ve heavy machine or u taugt they re biafra...dnt go there aat all..they will crash aabj overnite Reply dleg at 20-01-2016 07:29 AM (6 years ago) (m) Let look at it critically. Since Niger Delta has been benefiting since 6 yrs of GEJ as some people claimed, how many community or local government area in Niger Delta can we mention, boast or stand out living wealthy. NIGER DELTA SHOULD HAVE LOOK LIKE A LITTLE LONDON WHERE EVERYBODY WANT TO STAY AND LIVE THERE. Instead, no Electricity, Road, Good Water, Education Institution and the standard of living is poor in the area. WHY ARE WE DECEIVING OURSELVES IN NIGERIA? LET STOP FIGHTING FOR SELFISH AND HEARTLESS PEOPLE. ASARI DOKUBO went to build University in Togo rather than building it in Niger Delta for his community to benefit. But this is one of the people that benefited from Niger Delta with the song of fighting for his community right. They claimed they are part of the community and fight for the community right But l tell you, they are only fighting for their pocket and not the community. The only time they come out is when their contract is terminated or money not paid to them or their request are not made by the government. Let neglect this people and allow the Government to do their work so that we will all benefit from the economy. WAKE UP NIGERIAN AND STOP DEFENDING SELFISH AND HEARTLESS LEADER. Posted: at 20-01-2016 07:29 AM (6 years ago) | Gistmaniac Let look at it critically. Since Niger Delta has been benefiting since 6 yrs of GEJ as some people claimed, how many community or local government area in Niger Delta can we mention, boast or stand out living wealthy. NIGER DELTA SHOULD HAVE LOOK LIKE A LITTLE LONDON WHERE EVERYBODY WANT TO STAY AND LIVE THERE. Instead, no Electricity, Road, Good Water, Education Institution and the standard of living is poor in the area.WHY ARE WE DECEIVING OURSELVES IN NIGERIA? LET STOP FIGHTING FOR SELFISH AND HEARTLESS PEOPLE.ASARI DOKUBO went to build University in Togo rather than building it in Niger Delta for his community to benefit. But this is one of the people that benefited from Niger Delta with the song of fighting for his community right.They claimed they are part of the community and fight for the community right But l tell you, they are only fighting for their pocket and not the community. The only time they come out is when their contract is terminated or money not paid to them or their request are not made by the government.Let neglect this people and allow the Government to do their work so that we will all benefit from the economy.WAKE UP NIGERIAN AND STOP DEFENDING SELFISH AND HEARTLESS LEADER. Reply sweetypweety at 20-01-2016 07:37 AM (6 years ago) (f) Y do naijapals posters always give misleading headings to posts? Where did he mention Tompolo here? Haba ! This is how u start controversies Posted: at 20-01-2016 07:37 AM (6 years ago) | Gistmaniac Y do naijapals posters always give misleading headings to posts? Where did he mention Tompolo here? Haba ! This is how u start controversies Reply Ennyolalekan at 20-01-2016 07:47 AM (6 years ago) (m) how I wish Posted: at 20-01-2016 07:47 AM (6 years ago) | Gistmaniac how I wish Reply Ennyolalekan at 20-01-2016 07:49 AM (6 years ago) (m) how I wish Posted: at 20-01-2016 07:49 AM (6 years ago) | Gistmaniac how I wish Reply bennieben at 20-01-2016 08:41 AM (6 years ago) (m) I want to see Ow the presido will do that. The firm might end well at all Posted: at 20-01-2016 08:41 AM (6 years ago) | Upcoming I want to see Ow the presido will do that. The firm might end well at all Reply ngfineface at 20-01-2016 08:49 AM (6 years ago) (f) Poster and loud mouth. Where did he mention Tompolo's name? He said all those that are guilty of the offense. So if you are Tompolo's brother/sister and you feel he is guilty then tell him PMB will deal with him but if he is not guilty, why worry your ass? Posted: at 20-01-2016 08:49 AM (6 years ago) | Hero Poster and loud mouth. Where did he mention Tompolo's name? He said all those that are guilty of the offense. So if you are Tompolo's brother/sister and you feel he is guilty then tell him PMB will deal with him but if he is not guilty, why worry your ass? Reply kp45 at 20-01-2016 08:52 AM (6 years ago) (m) God does not answer prayers that doesn't glorify him. For those who are always in the social media to raise insult on a fellow I guess you can afford to swallow the consequences in future. Come on, here is just a place for fun and not a do or die affair. Its disgusting when you guys insult yourselfs here. Posted: at 20-01-2016 08:52 AM (6 years ago) | Hero God does not answer prayers that doesn't glorify him. For those who are always in the social media to raise insult on a fellow I guess you can afford to swallow the consequences in future. Come on, here is just a place for fun and not a do or die affair. Its disgusting when you guys insult yourselfs here. Reply Facebook launches initiative to counter hate speech in Europe News oi -GizBot Bureau In a bid to answer critics that it has not done enough to tackle online racist and hate speech at a time when Europe is going through a refugee crisis, Facebook has started a new initiative to counter extremist posts on the social networking website in Europe. Called "Online Civil Courage Initiative", it is based in Berlin and supported by the German Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection, Financial Times reported on Tuesday. SEE ALSO: Motorola Confirms Moto X Force Launch In India: Top 10 Features Of The Smartphone "Take a moment to share your story or idea supporting counter speech, with the goal of combatting online extremism and hate speech. In order to make change, everyone needs to " feel empowered to share their voice and exercise ?#?civilcourage?," read the message on the initiative's Facebook home page. According to Facebook, it will invest one million Euros in European non-governmental organisations that are fighting online extremism. "Facebook is not a place for the dissemination of hate speech or incitement to violence. With this new initiative, we can better understand and respond to the challenges of extremist speech on the Internet," said Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, while announcing the initiative in Berlin. London-based think tank the Institute for Strategic Dialogue will lead the initiative. SEE ALSO: 5 Secret Tips For Topping Candy Crush Jelly Saga The initiative is a partnership between Facebook, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, the Amadeu Antonio Foundation and the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence. Facebook has faced complaints in the past that it has not done enough to take down racist and xenophobic hate speech. In November last year, German prosecutors launched an investigation into the European head of Facebook over the social media platform's failure to remove racist hate speech. Source IANS Best Mobiles in India Facebook, To stay updated with latest technology news & gadget reviews, follow GizBot on Twitter YouTube and also subscribe to our notification. Allow Notifications Pakistan lifts ban on YouTube News oi -GizBot Bureau Pakistan has lifted the ban on YouTube after nearly three years, officials said on Monday. "On the recommendation of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, the Government of Pakistan has allowed access to recently launched country version of YouTube for Internet users in Pakistan," an official statement said. The government banned YouTube after the country's Supreme Court ordered a ban due to the blasphemous movie "Innocence of Muslims" on YouTube and other websites in September 2012. Recently, Google launched a country (localized version) of YouTube (YouTube.pk) and confirmed that YouTube.pk does not contain any copies of "Innocence of Muslims". SEE ALSO: 5 Secret Tips For Topping Candy Crush Jelly Saga Moreover, in case any copy of the offending material appears on YouTube website in future, Google has provided an online web process through which requests for blocking access to the offending material can be made by PTA to Google directly and Google/YouTube will restrict access to it for users within Pakistan. Source IANS Best Mobiles in India Facebook, To stay updated with latest technology news & gadget reviews, follow GizBot on Twitter YouTube and also subscribe to our notification. Allow Notifications US Intelligence Chalks Up Declining Influence in Europe to 'Russian Spies' Sputnik News 21:57 17.01.2016(updated 19:07 19.01.2016) American intelligence is set to conduct a 'major investigation' into the Kremlin's 'infiltration' of European political parties, The Telegraph reports. According to the newspaper, US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has been instructed by Congress to conduct a major review of Russia's alleged secret funding of European political parties over the past decade. Washington, The Telegraph says, is becoming concerned over's Moscow's alleged use of clandestine influence to undermine NATO, block US missile defense and undo the Western sanctions imposed on Russia in the aftermath of the crisis in Ukraine. An unnamed senior British government source anxiously told the newspaper that 'it is really a new Cold War out there,' referring to Russian 'meddling' which, according to The Telegraph, is 'taking on a breadth, range and depth far greater than previously thought.' 'Right across the EU we are seeing alarming evidence of Russian efforts to unpick the fabric of European unity on a whole range of vital strategic issues,' the source said. Meanwhile, the newspaper suggests that it has been given privy to a mysterious dossier on 'Russian influence activity,' with Kremlin influence operations said to stretch from France to the Netherlands, Hungary, Austria and the Czech Republic. Ultimately, the US intelligence review is set to examine the extent to which Russian security services have funded European political parties, charities, and NGOs with the express aim of 'undermining political cohesion.' The latter is classified to include everything from protests against US missile defense to attempts to find alternatives to Russian energy. With officials declining to tell the newspaper which parties specifically would be affected by the probe, The Telegraph decided to attempt a little 'influence activity' of its own, suggesting to its readers that the groups most likely to find themselves on the list are far right parties including Hungary's Jobbik, Greece's Golden Dawn, Italy's Northern League, and France's Front National. 'Other cases of possible Moscow-based destabilization being monitored by diplomats includes extensive links in Austria, including a visit by Austrian MPS to Crimea to endorse its annexation,' The Telegraph suggested. It would be interesting to get the paper's take on whether parties on the left of the political spectrum, such as Germany's Die Linke, Poland's Left Alliance or Greece's SYRIZA, all of which, like their right wing counterparts, have made statements suggesting that their countries should improve or at least normalize relations with Moscow, will also be investigated. Moreover, if a visit to Crimea is sufficient cause for Washington's suspicion, it will be interesting to see if other European officials, including political heavyweights such as former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, or the group of lawmakers from France's The Republicans who visited the peninsula last summer, will also be subject to the probe. Perhaps the Polish literature and poetry students who visited the peninsula in September will also be scrutinized by the DNI Even the Netherlands' upcoming referendum on the ratification of the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement, according to the newspaper, will be investigated, with 'sources [saying that] arguments deployed in support of the referendum 'closely resemble' known Russian propaganda.'' Naturally, the UK-based newspaper warns, secret Russian influence over the UK is also on the ascendant, with the Kremlin 'eying' 'the forthcoming EU referendum and the election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader as potential opportunities to weaken Europe.' Its evidence? That the 'Kremlin-controlled' television channel RT gave positive coverage of Corbyn's leadership campaign, and that the Russian ambassador gave a similarly positive assessment of the Labour politician's election to the leadership. Basically, The Telegraph seems to suggest, every move by a European political party or social group which doesn't fall in line with Washington's anti-Moscow agenda, is fair game for investigation. And while it might be flattering to Russian security services that some in Washington, London, and Brussels, among others, are pulling their hair out in fear of secret puppet masters in Moscow stealthily pulling the strings to every anti-NATO, anti-US, anti-war or anti-sanctions personality or movement across an entire continent, the real purpose of the probe, it's quite obvious, is to call into question any move by Europeans looking to demonstrate their independence. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Afghan Air Force receives first four A-29s By Capt. Eydie Sakura, 438th Air Expeditionary Wing / Published January 18, 2016 KABUL, Afghanistan (AFNS) -- The U.S. Air Force delivered four A-29 Super Tucanos to the Afghan Air Force Jan. 15 at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Afghanistan. Eight combat-ready attack pilots and a handful of maintainers graduated Dec. 17, 2015, and have returned to Afghanistan after a year of training with the 81st Fighter Squadron at Moody Air Force Base, Georgia. The pilots are the first of 30 who will be trained by the 81st FS in the next three years. The U.S. Air Force had no qualified A-29 pilots or maintainers prior to the start of the program, and stood up the 81st FS. These Airmen have been responsible for developing all the tactics and ways to instruct the students. "The A-29 program has been an integral part of the U.S. government's overall 'Building Partnership Capacity' efforts around the world and immediately supports the development of an indigenous air force in Afghanistan," said Brig. Gen. Christopher Craige, the commanding general at Train, Advise, Assist Command-Air. "This rapidly developed program for Afghanistan is unique for the A-29 development because this is the first time (U.S. Air Force) pilots and maintainers have been trained as instructors to conduct training for Afghan students in the United States." The 81st FS instructors will be deployed to TAAC-Air where they'll advise their counterparts on continued development of close air support, aerial escort, armed overwatch and aerial interdiction in the coming months. Designed to operate in high temperatures and in extremely rugged terrain, the A-29 is highly maneuverable fourth-generation weapons system capable of delivering precision-guided munitions. "It can fly at low speeds and low altitudes, is easy to fly, and provides exceptionally accurate weapons delivery," Craige said. "It is currently in service with 10 different air forces around the world." The A-29 program was designed to help Afghan pilots gain an advantage by providing close air support to friendly forces engaged in combat on the ground. Training pilots on the A-29 in the U.S. provides them an opportunity to learn how to employ this weapon system and defend Afghanistan from insurgents, he said. "This is a fighting aircraft which will destroy the centers of enemies in the country," said Col. Bahadur, the Afghan Air Force public affairs officer, through an interpreter. "This aircraft has the ability of transferring weapons like rockets and machine guns. This fighting aircraft will provide security and combat support from the ground units in ground operation." Security cooperation provides a means for the Air Force to help international partners build airpower capabilities and fill operational needs, increase access, shorten response time and affect the strategic calculus of potential adversaries. Through sustained security cooperation activities, the Air Force works to build a network of global partners who have the capacity and capabilities to respond to contingencies effectively and efficiently. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Crude Reckoning: The Far-Reaching, Unexpected Effects Of Falling Oil Prices January 19, 2016 by Frud Bezhan What do a Kurdish Peshmerga fighter, a Russian villager, and an American miner have in common? They have all been adversely affected by plunging oil prices. For many Western consumers, plummeting prices mean paying less to heat their homes and drive their cars. But cheap oil, at its lowest price in over a decade, is also having far-reaching and unexpected geopolitical and economic consequences around the world. War On Islamic State Low oil prices complicate Iraq's military campaign against Islamic State (IS) militants, who control large parts of the north and west of the country. The Kurdistan regional government, a semiautonomous entity in northern Iraq that is heavily dependent on oil revenue, has accumulated $18 billion in debt, threatening its ability to pay the salaries of its security forces and public workers. That means trouble for the fight against Islamic State because the Kurdish Peshmerga has been one of the most successful in beating back the extremist group. In cash-strapped Iraq as a whole, the oil-price plunge has caused severe problems. The country depends on oil for 95 percent of its budget, meaning price drops can affect everyone and everything. In terms of Iraq's challenging effort to turn back IS, less cash impedes Baghdad's ability to buy military equipment, pay its security forces, and rebuild cities that have been wrested from IS fighters. The situation could leave Baghdad to look to other interested parties to help fund the fight. 'Iraqi and Kurdish fighters have not been paid for a few months,' says Justin Dargin, a Middle East energy expert at the University of Oxford. 'At the same time, there is a very strong international effort to confront [Islamic State] so Iraq is not going alone in this. What we will see is an effort from the United States and perhaps the European Union to plug in the budgetary shortfalls when it comes to security-related expenditures.' The United States granted the Iraqi government $1.6 billion in security assistance for 2015. In addition, Baghdad obtained a $1.7 billion loan in July 2015 from the World Bank for economic development. Islamic State's War Machine Oil is one of the main sources of revenue for the extremist group, which is believed to have generated tens of millions of dollars a month by producing and smuggling Syrian and Iraqi oil. Amid the claims, Washington and Moscow have intensified their pressure on the group by targeting infrastructure that allows the group to produce oil in Syria. In addition to military tactics targeting production capability, analysts say low oil prices will also impact IS's ability to generate cash. '[Islamic State militants] transport oil and provide security as well for certain middle men. It's deeply integrated in the transport of oil into southern Turkey,' says Dargin. 'There are people buying that oil on the other side of the Turkish border. I would say that is where [IS] obtains the majority of its revenue.' Saudi Soft Power Sinking oil prices not only pinch Saudi Arabia's budget, they could crimp Riyadh's ability to project its influence in its own backyard. Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest producer of oil and among the globe's richest countries, is under severe economic strain. Riyadh is planning cuts to construction projects and introducing new taxes to help sustain its lavishly funded social-welfare system. One surprising move, for example, saw the country cut gasoline subsidies for the first time. Should things continue on their current course, the International Monetary Fund predicts, the monarchy could go bankrupt in five years. 'Saudi Arabia is in a far better financial position than almost all the other OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) countries in terms of having plenty of money in the bank and having very low debt,' says Spencer Welch, oil markets analyst at IHS Jane's. 'But that doesn't mean that they're not going to change and adapt,' says Welch, adding that he doubts Riyadh would cut funding for foreign-policy commitments, or defense and security spending. One area where there could be cuts, however, is in the arena of soft power: a reduction of aid projects in foreign countries, for example, or less financing for media organizations, think tanks, academic institutions, religious schools, and charities. There is already speculation that Saudi financial support for Egypt, a key regional ally, is starting to dry up. Media Beacon Dims? Bankrolled by oil-rich Qatar, Al-Jazeera America was launched with great fanfare in 2013 with ambitions to rival domestic heavyweights such as Fox News and CNN. After pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into its North American cable channel, however, Al-Jazeera America recently announced that it would pull the plug on April 30. The channel, which suffered from poor ratings, explained that its business model was 'simply not sustainable.' But considering that a barrel of oil was selling for around $98 when the channel was launched, and is now selling for under $30, it is reasonable to assume that Qatar could not simply throw money at its effort to gain a foothold in the established U.S. media market. Price Wars In anticipation of the lifting of economic sanctions following the implementation of its nuclear accord with world powers, Iran's game plan has been to reap the benefits of its natural resource wealth by increasing oil exports. But low oil prices should temper Iran's expectations. Tehran has indicated that, despite the downturn of fortune, it will nevertheless increase oil production and export as planned. In doing so, Iran will pit itself against regional rival Saudi Arabia, which facilitated the current price drop months ago by refusing to lower production, sacrificing revenue in order to preserve market share and weed out nontraditional producers. With an extra half million barrels of Iranian oil expected to flood the market following the implementation of the nuclear deal, analysts now predict a price war between the Middle East rivals. 'The Iranians have indicated that they will produce and export as much oil as they can and more or less engage in a price war with Saudi Arabia,' says Dargin. 'The Saudis have not restricted their production and exports, and Iran says, 'Why should we?' And Iran is in a more precarious economic situation.' 'Iran will be trying to recapture its lost market share,' says IHS analyst Welch. 'Those buyers have been buying alternative crude and they're only going to swing back to Iran if the price is attractive, so it's going to be competition.' Shale Boom Bust U.S. consumers will see a windfall of around $700 million a year as a result of lower oil prices, and that money is fueling stronger consumer demand. But the low price of oil is also negatively affecting the booming U.S. energy industry. The flooding of the world market with oil has priced out U.S. shale, which is relatively expensive to produce and is seen as one of the threats that Saudi Arabia was keen on eliminating. Shale drillers in the United States have slashed spending and tens of thousands of workers this year as prices have fallen. Last year, the International Energy Agency said low oil prices would 'slam the brakes' on the fledgling U.S. shale industry. BRICS Fall Plunging oil prices are a mixed bag for the so-called BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), developing economies that were seen as being on the cusp of greatness. Of the BRICs, China and India -- which are not net oil importers -- are reaping the benefits of cheaper prices. But it is bad news for Russia and Brazil, both oil exporters. Tumbling oil prices have brought Brazil to the brink of economic collapse, with the world's seventh largest economy sinking into recession. Russia has been forced to dip heavily into its hard-currency reserves and its currency, the ruble, is approaching historic lows. Moscow, which was in recession in 2015 according to economists, is running a budget deficit of 3 percent of gross domestic product this year, and the government is looking to cut 10 percent from the federal budget. Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/falling-oil-prices-impact-russia- saudi-arabia-iran-iraq-islamic-state/27497423.html Copyright (c) 2016. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Fate of civilians in armed conflict 'grim' with thousands killed, hospitals under attack, Security Council told 19 January 2016 With scores of civilians being killed in conflicts worldwide, tens of thousands facing starvation in besieged cities, and hospitals under attack, the United Nations Security Council held a day-long session today amid calls for greater accountability and expanded use of the International Criminal Court. "The reality on the ground is grim and bleak," UN Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson told the Council at the start of the session on the 'Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict.' "In conflicts around the world, great numbers of civilians are deliberately or recklessly killed, maimed, tortured and abducted. Sexual violence is rampant," he said. "Hospitals must be sanctuaries in wartime. But recently we have seen a surge in attacks on hospitals and health centres. In Afghanistan, an airstrike destroyed a surgical ward with devastation everywhere. In Yemen, hospitals have been attacked and children, who have not been killed by bullets and bombs, are dying from the lack of medicine and health-care," he stressed. He noted that in 2014, 92 per cent of those killed or injured by explosive weapons in populated areas were civilians, with 19,000 civilians killed in Iraq between January 2014 and October 2015 and the "horrible reality" in the Syrian town of Madaya, where thousands of people have been denied food and medical treatment for months, leading to starvation and death. "This carnage of innocent people must not continue," he declared. "Let us remember that Madaya is just one place where this, shamefully, is happening and this, today, in the 21st century," Mr. Eliasson underscored. "A siege that denies people access to the basic necessities of life is one of the gravest violations of international law and an affront to our shared humanity," he continued, noting that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has recently condemned such violations, naming them war crimes. "These crimes simply must stop, end now," he added. Mr. Eliasson cited the new challenges presented by non-State extremist groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and Boko Haram in West Africa. "These groups brazenly and brutally murder thousands of people, kidnap young girls, systematically deny women's rights, destroy cultural institutions and undermine the peaceful values of religions," he said. In the face of such ubiquitous violations of human rights he called for enhanced efforts to prevent conflicts in the first place, and where this failed to ensure full accountability through the accession of all States to the International Criminal Court which was set up to judge war crimes and crimes against humanity, as well as by domestic adoption of robust criminal legislation. Also briefing the Council, International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Vice-President Christine Beerli warned that violations of international humanitarian law are occurring daily. "Explosive weapons are used indiscriminately in populated areas. Civilian populations and civilian objects are deliberately targeted," she said. "Civilian communities are forcibly displaced and trapped in lengthy sieges, deprived of means of survival. Women and men, girls and boys are regularly the victims of rape and sexual violence. Schools are attacked or used for military purposes, leading to their loss of protection against attack. Detainees are summarily executed, tortured and kept in inhumane conditions and denied due process of law," she explained. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US Special Forces in Afghanistan Poised to Assume More Active Role by Jeff Seldin January 19, 2016 U.S. military officials insist Afghan forces are carrying the burden when it comes to securing and stabilizing the country, but there are questions as to whether U.S. special forces could soon be playing an increasingly active role. 'There hasn't been any signaling of that yet,' a U.S. official told VOA. 'The primary role there is to train, advise and assist.' Still, the official said U.S. special forces have been highly engaged in Afghanistan and that the current approach could change if the Taliban finds a way to expand on gains from the past year, provided the Afghan government agrees. 'It's best to leave that responsibility to the host nation itself,' the official said. Questions about the role of U.S. special forces in Afghanistan have been simmering since a U.S. Green Beret, Staff Sgt. Matthew McClintock, was killed earlier this month in Marjah, in Helmand Province, when his unit came under fire from the Taliban. The mission for McClintock's team training Afghan special forces is 'not unusual,' the official said. Nor is the context, described as being part of a larger Afghan counteroffensive against the Taliban. 'With the Afghan special forces, that's conducted down to the tactical level, and so that was what was going on in this case,' Army Brig. Gen. Wilson Shoffner said during a briefing in Afghanistan. 'The force that was there, the American special forces team, is designed to operate independently, which it was doing,' Shoffner added. 'Combined with the Afghans, they did have sufficient combat power on hand for the threat that they faced, and they had sufficient airpower available to them throughout the operation.' Expanded role The U.S. has relied heavily on special forces for its train, advise and assist efforts in Iraq and Syria. The Defense Department expanded the role of special forces last month with the creation of a specialized expeditionary targeting force that would conduct raids, gather intelligence and target Islamic State commanders. 'You don't know at night who's going to be coming through the window,' Defense Secretary Ash Carter told lawmakers at the time. 'That's the sensation we want all of ISIL's leadership and followers to have.' ISIL is an acronym for the Islamic State. For now, though, U.S. officials say that type of presence is not needed in Afghanistan, where the Taliban control just nine of the country's more than 400 districts, while wielding influence in another 17. U.S. officials also say that, despite making some gains over the past year, the Taliban is having trouble holding onto those gains and is experiencing difficulty governing the areas it does control. They also say Afghanistan's forces are steadily improving, becoming more capable from one operation to the next. Optimism, setbacks U.S. officials admit that while there is reason for optimism, Afghan forces have had only mixed results as they have begun to shoulder more responsibility. 'When they conducted deliberate, planned operations they actually did fairly well,' said Army Brig. Gen. Shoffner. 'Where they had trouble and where they didn't do so well was in response to crisis situations. That remains one of their weaknesses.' U.S. officials also are concerned about the commanders of Afghanistan's armed forces, including the leadership of the country's 215th Corps, which operates in Helmand Province. The commander of Afghanistan's 215th Corps already has been switched out, and two brigade commanders have been replaced, as well as key staff members. 'They've got some leaders that are corrupt and need to go,' Shoffner said. 'They need to make some tough leadership choices.' Additionally, recruiting has been a problem. The Afghan National Army currently is facing a 25,000-soldier shortfall, although Afghan officials are hoping to fill those positions within the next six months. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Military Strikes Continue Against ISIL in Iraq From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release SOUTHWEST ASIA, January 20, 2016 U.S. and coalition military forces have continued to attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in Iraq, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today. Officials reported details of the latest strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports. Strikes in Iraq Attack, fighter, and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 14 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of the Iraqi government: -- Near Habbaniyah, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL building. -- Near Haditha, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed two ISIL vehicles. -- Near Kisik, two strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed ten ISIL fighting positions. -- Near Mosul, three strikes destroyed nine ISIL fighting positions, an ISIL command and control node, and two ISIL assembly areas. -- Near Ramadi, six strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit, suppressed an ISIL mortar system, denied ISIL access to terrain, and destroyed an ISIL mortar system, three ISIL fighting positions, an ISIL rocket-propelled grenade system, two ISIL vehicle bombs, an ISIL building, two ISIL heavy machine guns, an ISIL tunnel entrance, two ISIL petroleum oil and lubricant trucks and an ISIL front end loader. -- Near Sinjar, a strike destroyed four ISIL command and control nodes. Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target. Part of Operation Inherent Resolve The strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to eliminate the ISIL terrorist group and the threat they pose to Iraq, Syria, the region, and the wider international community. The destruction of ISIL targets in Syria and Iraq further limits the terrorist group's ability to project terror and conduct operations, officials said. Coalition nations that have conducted strikes in Iraq include Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Jordan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States. Coalition nations that have conducted strikes in Syria include Australia, Bahrain, Canada, France, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Texas Visits Sasebo During Indo-Asia-Pacific Deployment Navy News Service Story Number: NNS160120-02 Release Date: 1/20/2016 9:44:00 AM By Lt. j.g. Eric Wootten, USS Texas Public Affairs SASEBO, Japan (NNS) -- Virginia-class attack submarine USS Texas (SSN 773) arrived at Fleet Activities Sasebo Jan. 20 for a visit as part of its Indo-Asia-Pacific deployment. The visit strengthens the already positive alliance between the U.S. and Japan through the crews' interaction with the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force. It also demonstrates the U.S. Navy's commitment to regional stability and maritime security in the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations. 'The ship and crew have performed exceedingly well,' said Cmdr. Todd Nethercott, commanding officer. 'The ship's motto, 'Don't mess with Texas,' clearly depicts the ship's capabilities and the crew's spirit. The crew is looking forward to experiencing Sasebo and working with our close regional allies.' Texas is the second Virginia-class attack submarine commissioned by the United States. This submarine is capable of executing a multitude of missions including anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface ship warfare, strike, surveillance and reconnaissance, irregular warfare, mine warfare, and shallow water operations. 'Texas Sailors are professionals at sea and in port,' said Master Chief Machinist's Mate Daniel Kloepfer, chief of the boat. 'Our stop in Sasebo is exciting and the crew is ready to get out and see all of the interesting sites the country has to offer.' Many crew members said they are excited to experience the rich culture of Japan. 'I had a great time the last time I visited Japan,' said Electrician's Mate 1st Class Charles Ward. 'I'm looking forward to experiencing a whole new set of adventures in Sasebo.' Measuring more than 377 feet long and weighing more than 7,800 tons when submerged, Texas is one of the most technologically advanced submarines in the world. Built in Newport News, Virginia, from 2002 to 2004, Texas established its home in Groton, Connecticut, before transferring to Pearl Harbor in 2009. The boat is sponsored by former first lady Laura Bush. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address China on high alert against Japan's attempt to poke its nose in South China Sea issue People's Daily Online By Yuan Can (People's Daily Online) 13:07, January 20, 2016 China is on high alert against Japan's attempt to poke its nose in the issue of the South China Sea, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said in response to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's latest interview with Financial Times on Jan.19. In his recent interview with the Financial Times, Abe said that Japan harbors very strong concerns over China's building of islands in the South China Sea and development of resources in the East China Sea. He called on the international community to raise its voice against this. China's oil and gas development activities in the East China Sea are all conducted in undisputed waters under the jurisdiction of China. They are within the realm of China's sovereign right, Hong Lei, spokesperson of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said on the regular press conference on Tuesday. Hong mentioned that China has indisputable sovereignty over the Nansha Islands and their adjacent waters. Construction by China on relevant islands and reefs of the Nansha Islands falls within China's sovereignty. It is legitimate, reasonable and justified. Japan once snatched from China islands in the South China Sea during the Second World War. The Chinese government retrieved them after the War. Japan should reflect upon rather than forget what it has done during the aggression, act and speak cautiously on issues concerning the East China Sea and the South China Sea, Hong said. Hong urged that Japan should make more efforts to increase mutual trust with its neighbors and promote regional peace and stability instead of sowing discord. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Vietnam says China moves oil rig into disputed waters Iran Press TV Wed Jan 20, 2016 10:1AM Vietnam says China has moved an oil rig into disputed waters in the South China Sea, calling on Beijing to stop drilling and remove the rig from the area. Vietnam's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Le Hai Binh, said in a statement on Tuesday that Vietnam has raised concerns with China's embassy in Hanoi over the movement of Haiyang Shiyou oil rig, known as Hai Duong 981 in Vietnam. 'Vietnam demands that China not conduct any drilling activities and withdraw Hai Duong 981 oil rig from this area,' the spokesman said, adding, 'Vietnam reserves all its legal rights and interests in the area in accordance with international law.' The movement of the oil rig sparked a stand-off between the two countries in 2014 after China towed the rig off Vietnam's central coast. It prompted a diplomatic row between the two countries and several anti-China demonstrations in Vietnam. Five people were killed in the protests and scores of Chinese factories in Vietnam were burned or looted. China claims sovereignty over nearly all of the South China Sea, which is also claimed in part by Taiwan, Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines. The contested waters are believed to be rich in oil and gas. The dispute has at times drawn in extra-territorial countries, particularly the United States, which have more often sided with China's rivals. Beijing accuses Washington of meddling in the regional issues and deliberately stirring up tensions in the South China Sea. The US, however, says China is undergoing what it calls a land reclamation program in the South China Sea by building artificial islands in the disputed areas. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Protesters Enter Moldovan Parliament Building After Pro-EU Government Approved January 20, 2016 by Eugen Tomiuc and Mircea Ticudean Protesters have entered Moldova's parliament building, shortly after lawmakers voted in a new pro-EU government. Live footage showed demonstrators, some waving Moldovan flags just inside the building's entrance as darkness fell. They were blocked from gaining further access by riot police. Before and during the vote, hundreds of protesters calling for early elections had faced off with riot police outside the building. The new cabinet approved by legislators is led by Pavel Filip, 49, a deputy chairman of the ruling Democratic Party who has served as minister of telecommunications in several governments since 2011. Fifty-seven out of the 101 deputies -- six more than needed -- voted in favor of the new cabinet in an attempt to bring a three-month-old political crisis to an end. After the previous government led by Valeriu Stretlet was ousted in October amid a banking scandal, two attempts to name a new prime minister had failed. The third try was held amid protests by the pro-Russian opposition Socialists, who attempted to postpone the vote and heckled lawmakers during the parliament session. Several opposition lawmakers briefly interrupted the proceedings, displaying banners demanding 'early elections.' According to opinion polls, snap elections could be won by pro-Russian parties that want to renegotiate Moldova's Association Agreement with the EU and develop stronger ties with Moscow. While the rally outside parliament was organized by pro-Russia opposition groups, a pro-EU movement also took part, building on similar actions at the end of last week. Both camps are calling for early elections, saying a new cabinet, based on the same ruling parties, will not break with the corrupt practices of previous governments. On January 16, thousands of people attended three separate rallies in Chisinau, two organized by pro-Russian political forces, while a third was held by the Dignity and Truth (DA) anticorruption civic group. The protests came after President Nicolae Timofti on January 15 nominated Filip to be the country's prime minister, after two previous nominees failed to gain the office. The first was Vlad Plahotniuc -- a controversial oligarch with close ties to the ruling Democrat Party. His candidacy was rejected by Timofti. The second, presidential office staffer Ion Paduraru, withdrew his name shortly after he was nominated by Timofti. If parliament had not managed to approve a government by January 29, Timofti would have had to dissolve the legislature and call early elections. Moldova, which lies between Romania and Ukraine, has been effectively rudderless since a no-confidence vote toppled the Stretlet government in October after $1 billion -- one-eighth of the country's gross domestic product -- disappeared from Moldova's banking system. Billionaire Plahotniuc, a former legislator, has been a main target of the mass protests against the banking fraud that shook Europe's poorest country. The delay in appointing a new prime minister and apparent deadlock over potential candidates had prompted the pro-Russia opposition to call for snap elections. Ahead of the January 20 vote, media controlled by Plahotniuc last week broadcast reports that pro-Moscow opposition leaders and Russian security forces were planning a coup in Moldova. But businessman Renato Usatii, who heads the pro-Russia Our Party and is also mayor of Balti -- Moldova's second-largest city -- on January 16 denied the reports, labeling them as 'nonsense.' With reporting by RFE/RL's Moldovan Service correspondent Alexandru Eftode Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/moldova-parliament-approves-government/27499491.html Copyright (c) 2016. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Update: air strikes in Iraq and Syria 20 January 2016 British forces have continued to conduct air operations in the fight against Daesh Latest update As part of the international coalition, RAF Tornado GR4, Typhoon FGR4 and Reaper aircraft have flown daily armed reconnaissance missions to seek out terrorist activity and to provide air support to the Iraqi and Kurdish security forces who are battling Daesh on the ground. On Monday 18 January, Typhoons operated over northern Iraq, working in close cooperation with Kurdish forces. North-west of Mosul, our aircraft identified two groups of armed terrorists and struck both with Paveway IV guided bombs. The Typhoons then flew west to the area south of Sinjar, the scene of a significant Kurdish victory in November, where they employed a third Paveway to destroy a concealed Daesh vehicle. Tuesday 19 January saw Typhoons and a Reaper patrolling over Ramadi to assist the Iraqi ground forces as they continue to clear the city of Daesh positions. The Typhoons conducted successful Paveway attacks on a terrorist mortar team and a group of Daesh armed with rocket-propelled grenades. The Reaper used its Hellfire missiles to destroy a group of terrorist vehicles, including a fuel tanker, a supply truck and a mechanical excavator used for constructing defensive positions. Meanwhile, a second Reaper was operating near Haditha, where it attacked a large truck-bomb, terrorist fighters and a supporting vehicle with three Hellfires. Previous air strikes 1 January: An RAF Reaper supported coalition air strikes in Ramadi, and on 2 January, another Reaper used a Hellfire missile to destroy a mortar position near Fallujah. 3 January: A busy day for RAF aircraft: Typhoons delivered four successful attacks in Ramadi against terrorist positions, including a mortar team. A second Typhoon mission over Ramadi conducted no less than six attacks, accounting for five machine-guns and a sniper position. Near Haditha, Tornados destroyed a truck-bomb, while a Reaper used Hellfires against two armed pick-up trucks and a group of terrorist fighters. Over northern Iraq, two more flights of Tornado GR4s successfully attacked a total of two mortar and four machine-gun positions. Daesh terrorists have suffered further losses following intensive Royal Air Force strikes as part of the coalition's air campaign over Iraq and Syria. 4 January: A pair of RAF Typhoon FGR4s operated over northern Iraq and used Paveway IV precision guided bombs to attack eight terrorist mortar and rocket positions. Meanwhile, Tornado GR4s provided close air support to the Iraqi army as they continue their operations to eliminate the remaining terrorist fighters in and around Ramadi. When an Iraqi unit came under rocket-propelled grenade and mortar fire from several Daesh-held buildings, the GR4s conducted a very accurate attack on all four buildings using Paveway IVs. The Tornados were tasked to deal with a group of terrorists who were preparing for a counter-attack. Despite this being a difficult target for most weapons, the GR4s were able to score a direct hit with a Brimstone missile. An RAF Reaper was also patrolling over Ramadi it provided surveillance support for three air strikes by coalition fast jets, and also conducted two attacks using its own weapons, employing a GBU-12 laser guided bomb against a Daesh machine-gun team, and destroyed two terrorist trucks with a single Hellfire missile. On Monday evening, a Tornado patrol, supported as ever by a Voyager air refuelling tanker, used a Paveway IV to strike a Daesh-held building near Mosul. 5 January: RAF Typhoon patrols over Ramadi continued, they used Paveways to destroy two terrorist machine-gun positions, as well as an anti-aircraft gun that had opened fire on an Iraqi Air Force helicopter. Near Haditha, Reapers provided close air support to Iraqi security forces as Daesh attempted to mount an attack on them Hellfire missiles and a GBU-12 were used against two armed pick-up trucks, two machine-gun teams and groups of terrorist fighters. In the area around Mosul, Tornado GR4s hit two Daesh rocket teams. 6 January: Following their loss of control of key areas in Ramadi, Daesh extremists attempted to mount attacks against Iraqi ground forces near Haditha. Coalition aircraft provided extensive close air support to Iraqi troops, and a pair of RAF Tornado GR4s used two Paveway IV bombs in attacks on with an Iraqi terrorists who were engaged in close combat unit. The Typhoons then flew south to Ramadi, where operations continued as the Iraqis sought to eliminate those Daesh positions that remain in the city. Working closely with other coalition aircraft, the Typhoons conducted four Paveway attacks, destroying two machine-gun positions and two armoured personnel carriers. In northern Iraq, Tornado GR4s supported Kurdish forces; south of Sinjar, a Paveway IV destroyed a terrorist team manning rocket launchers, while near Mosul, three fighting positions and three accommodation blocks used by Daesh were destroyed by six Paveways. Later in the day, Typhoons were once again over Ramadi, where they struck two terrorist positions, including a heavy machine-gun team that was firing on Iraqi troops. 7 January: Operations over Ramadi continued with Typhoons delivering six successful Paveway IV attacks on Daesh positions, including two more machine-gun teams. In the north, the Tornados were likewise again patrolling over Mosul and Kisik, and these missions used Paveways against a group of extremists and a rocket position. 8 January: Tornado GR4s conducted two more Paveway attacks near Mosul, striking rocket and machine-gun teams. 10 January: The focus turned to a series of targets inside Syria. Near Raqqa, a pair of Tornados bombed a pair of Daesh-held buildings, one of which was a confirmed command and control centre, and used a Brimstone missile to destroy a supply truck. A second pair of GR4s dropped four Paveway IVs on a tunnel complex, again near Raqqa, whilst a Reaper engaged a terrorist position with a Hellfire missile. During the evening, a further Tornado flight and a Reaper used a combination of Brimstone and Hellfire missiles to attack a number of mobile cranes brought in by Daesh to attempt to repair the severe damage inflicted by previous RAF and coalition air strikes on the Omar oil field. 11 January: A milestone was passed on Monday morning when an RAF Reaper flew the 1,000th sortie by the type since they were committed to operations against Daesh in October 2014. Iraqi ground forces have made repeated successful advances against the Daesh terrorist network, with recent major successes at Sinjar and Ramadi. Mosul remains the largest Iraqi town held by the terrorists, and they have concentrated much of their command and control functions within the city. Patient intelligence assessment allowed a walled compound in the northern part of Mosul to be identified as a major headquarters of the Daesh security organisation, which is responsible for terrorising the civilian population and indeed demoralised elements of their own membership into compliance, and is thus associated with many of the terrorists' worst atrocities inside Syria and Iraq. Very careful planning allowed three key targets within the compound to be identified, and an attack carefully planned to minimise any risks to civilians in Mosul. 11 January: RAF aircraft have also continued very active air operations against Daesh targets inside Syria. A Reaper identified a terrorist check point one of the methods used by Daesh to attempt to impose their will on the civilian population and successfully attacked it using a Hellfire missile. 12 January: Reapers maintained surveillance over the oilfields in eastern Syria which have been targeted by coalition air strikes, including by the RAF, to deny Daesh the ability to use the oil to finance their operations. The Reapers identified a mechanical excavator which was being used to attempt repairs, and an oil pump which had evidently been brought back on line, and destroyed both with Hellfire missiles. In north-eastern Syria, Tornado GR4s meanwhile patrolled in the area of Al Hasakah, where they used Paveway IVs to strike two Daesh-held strongpoints. While other coalition aircraft conducted a series of strikes on a range of other key Daesh targets within Mosul, Typhoon FGR4s from RAF Akrotiri, supported by a Voyager air refuelling tanker, used Paveway IV guided bombs to attack the security headquarters compound, and initial analysis indicates that the attack was a success. 13 January: Typhoon FRG4s provided Iraqi ground forces with close air support as they continue to eliminate terrorist positions in and around Ramadi and conducted two successful attacks with Paveway IV guided bombs on Daesh machine-gun teams. Further north, south-west of Sinjar, Tornado GR4s supported operations by the Kurdish peshmerga and used a Paveway to destroy a machine-gun position which had opened fire on the troops. 14 January: Typhoons were again in action over Ramadi, where they delivered three Paveway IV attacks on a group of Daesh fighters preparing for an assault, a firing position and a mortar team. Tornados patrolled east of Mosul, where they used a pair of Paveways to attack a mortar position and an armed pick-up truck. Typhoons operated in the same area that night, and successfully bombed three buildings in a terrorist-held compound. 15 January: Tornado GR4s struck a Daesh barracks near Raqqa, with two Paveway IVs, also destroying one of their vehicles parked close by. 17 January: GR4s conducted two successful attacks with Brimstone missiles, destroying a vehicle near Tabbaqah, west of Raqqa, in Syria and a terrorist supply truck south of Sinjar in Iraq. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Suicide Blast Near Russian Embassy in Kabul by Ayaz Gul January 20, 2016 Afghan officials say a suicide car bomb blast near the Russian Embassy in the capital Kabul has killed at least seven people. Police say the attack targeted a minibus carrying production staff of a private Afghan television channel. Several employees of Tolo TV were among the dead. The Taliban confirmed it was targeting staff of the Tolo television channel when it claimed responsibility for the attack. In a statement sent to media organizations, including VOA, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid accused the channel of broadcasting anti-Islam , anti-Afghan and anti-Taliban material and warned other Afghan media to learn a lesson from Wednesday's attack. There were no injuries among staff at the nearby Russian embassy, according to Russian foreign ministry officials. NATO's Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan strongly condemned the attack. "By specifically targeting journalists, terrorists have proven once again they have no regard for Afghanistan's people or future," said Brig. Gen. Wilson Shoffner, Resolute Support deputy chief of staff for communications. "A free press is critical to Afghanistan's future, and we owe a debt of gratitude to the men and women who choose to become journalists in this critical time in Afghanistan's history." The Committee to Protect Journalists said 'Attacks aimed at crushing independent media organizations in Afghanistan are a direct assault on the very foundation of Afghan democracy-a free and open press.' Meanwhile, the U.S. embassy in Afghanistan said in a statement on Wednesday that it has received reports that militants were planning to attack an unknown hotel or guesthouse frequented by the international community in the Shar-e-Now area of Kabul this month. It said there is no further information regarding the timing, target, location, or method of any planned attacks. The embassy warned U.S. citizens that the security situation in Afghanistan is extremely unstable. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address UN Security Council on Peace Mission to Burundi by Margaret Basheer January 20, 2016 A United Nations Security Council delegation headed to Burundi Wednesday with a message for the government and opposition to start substantive dialogue and avert catastrophe before it is too late. "This is a critical crossroads for Burundi," U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power told VOA ahead of the trip. "They cannot let it become business as usual that you wake up in the morning and there is a corpse on the street as you try to get to work, and that is what is starting to happen in Burundi." It is the second time the Council has visited the country in less than a year a clear indication of its growing concern about the escalating bloodshed. Political crisis Election related violence has killed at least 439 people since April and sent tens of thousands fleeing inside the country and beyond for safety. Observers fear that the violence sparked by what is seen by many as an unconstitutional third term for President Pierre Nkurunziza could result in another civil war between the country's ethnic Tutsis and Hutus, similar to the one that plagued the country from 1993 to 2005. "What must not happen in Burundi is that this conflict moves from a political phase to an ethnic phase," U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson told reporters Tuesday. "When you take that step, then we always pay a price, because then there is a new element entering the conflict which will be much harder to control." Mediation In July, the East African Community (EAC) regional bloc asked Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni to mediate between the government and opposition groups, but that effort has so far been fruitless. Earlier this month, peace talks between the two groups were postponed, and no new date was announced. "We need to find a way that allows the opposition to engage with the government. The government says it supports intra-Burundian dialogue, but it's not happening," said Britain's Deputy U.N. Ambassador Peter Wilson. "If the Ugandan process does not work, then we need to find a process that does," he added. "We will come in and throw our weight behind accelerated mediation of the kind that should have taken place over these many months," Ambassador Power emphasized. The U.N. Secretary-General's Special Advisor on Burundi, Jamal Benomar, says there still is a window of opportunity for Burundians to come together and find a way to move forward. "For them to do this, they would need an inclusive process that is impartially mediated, one that has a timeline that is clear, an agenda, an agreement on who will participate and this is exactly what we don't have,' Benomar said. African Union troops Last month, the African Union announced it would deploy a 5,000-member "prevention and protection" force to Burundi for an initial period of six months. The Nkurunziza government, however, has firmly opposed the idea. African heads of state will meet January 28 to discuss what to do next. Within the Security Council there is some difference of opinion on the need for troops right now. "This idea of troops, we are not necessarily going there to say that troops have to be there in Burundi," said Security Council Ambassador Ismael Gaspar Martins of Angola, who is co-leading the Council trip with his U.S and French counterparts. "It is the primary responsibility of the state to protect their citizens, to stop these, all kinds of situations, which are going on and we should be able to see that they are doing it right," he added. Diplomats say Council members China, Russia and Egypt also have expressed reservations about intensified involvement. Ambassador Power said stakeholders should consider how such a force could "become a friend to stability, rather than something" that is threatening Burundian sovereignty. Fallout More than 230,000 Burundians have fled the country over the past nine months, including many members of the country's civil society. Human rights violations are growing. On Friday, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein warned of new cases of sexual violence against civilians by security forces, reports of mass graves, and an increase in forced disappearances. The crisis also is having steep fiscal implications on the tiny nation. "They are in an economic crisis and that's an undeniable fact," said British envoy Wilson. "They are possibly going to become the world's poorest country this year. There is a real risk of food insecurity in Burundi. There is a real risk that a political divide is going to lead to an economic mess." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address China jails former party chief of Urumqi for corruption Iran Press TV Wed Jan 20, 2016 7:20AM A court has sentenced a former chief of China's Communist Party from the northwestern city of Urumqi to 12 years in prison over corruption. On Wednesday, a court in the Chinese capital, Beijing, found Yang Gang guilty of abusing his power while in office in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, and assisting others in promotions and winning contracts. The court added that Yang received 13.79 million yuan (USD 2.10 million) in bribes. The money was channeled through his wife and son. Yang was arrested last year. He served as the Communist Party secretary between 1999 and 2006. The court stated that Yang has confessed to his crimes and even helped the investigators and therefore received a lighter sentence. Several Chinese officials have been jailed over the past three years after President Xi Jinping took office and launched an anti-fraud campaign. In April 2015, former top security official, Zhou Yongkang, was sentenced to life in jail after being charged with bribery, abuse of power and disclosing state secrets. He played a crucial role in China's oil industry and accumulated vast power as he became a member of the Communist Party's elite Politburo Standing Committee (PSC), China's top decision-making body. Several of Zhou's allies were also arrested as part of the anti-corruption campaign, among them Jiang Jiemin, the former head of China's state-owned assets watchdog. In July 2015, Ling Jihua, a senior aide to retired President Hu Jintao, was imprisoned for accepting bribes, wrongly obtaining state secrets and committing adultery. Former senior economic official, Liu Tienan, was jailed in 2014 for life for taking millions of dollars in bribes. Former secretary of China's Chongqing Party, Bo Xilai, also received a life in prison sentence in 2013 for fraud. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Iran nuclear deal proves power of diplomacy: Zarif Iran Press TV Wed Jan 20, 2016 6:9PM Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says the landmark nuclear deal between Tehran and the P5+1 proved that regional disputes can be resolved through diplomacy. "Regionally I think it sends a message that if we can resolve that something everybody thought was impossible to resolve, with countries who were - obviously at least Iran and the United States - were hostile for at least 37 years, then there's no impediment in resolving regional issues," Zarif said while addressing the World Economic Forum (WEF) in the Swiss city of Davos on Wednesday. Zarif said that regional nations, "who're bound by a common region, common faith, common history, common culture, common values," can "work together to address a very serious challenge in our region, and that is the challenge of extremism." The top Iranian diplomat said that through the nuclear agreement, the Iranian nation's right to peaceful nuclear technology has been restored "because our nuclear program was always for peaceful purposes." "I think the deal is not a perfect deal. No deal is ever perfect. But it deals with our requirement, that is removal of sanctions and at the same time respecting our right to have our nuclear program for peaceful purposes, because our nuclear program was always for peaceful purposes," he said. On January 16, Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China plus Germany started to implement the nuclear agreement, dubbed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), they had reached in the Austrian capital, Vienna, on July 14, 2015. After the JCPOA went into effect, all nuclear-related sanctions imposed on Iran by the European Union, the United Nations Security Council and the United States were lifted. Iran in return has put some limitations on its nuclear activities. Zarif further expressed Iran's preparedness "to show even greater transparency in order for the International Community to know what we already know, that our program is nothing but peaceful." Saudi Arabia concerned about Iran deal Pointing to Saudi Arabia's expression of concerns about Iran's nuclear deal, Zarif said, "Since the agreement in Geneva in 2013, our Saudi neighbors have been panicking. There is no need to panic, our friends. Iran is there to work with you. Iran does not want to exclude anybody from this region. There is no need to engage in a confrontation." Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told Reuters on Tuesday that the removal of sanctions on Iran as a result of its nuclear deal with world powers will be a harmful development if it uses the extra money to fund "nefarious activities." Saudi Arabia has been calling for tough inspections of Iran's nuclear program and the possibility for resuming sanctions against the country. Syria has no military solution The Iranian foreign minister further dismissed any military solution to the devastating crisis in Syria, saying the conflict must be settled through diplomatic means. "There is no military solution to the (Syrian) crisis. We need a political solution," he said. He said that a ceasefire in Syria was needed before a national unity government could be formed and elections based on a new constitution held. "We are determined to provide every contribution and encouragement that we can in order to bring people to the negotiating table. I think what is necessary to make sure [is] that those who believe that there is a military solution are also brought to their senses and brought to the negotiating table," he said. Over 260,000 people have reportedly been killed in Syria since foreign-backed militancy erupted in the country in March 2011. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Daesh razes to ground Iraq's oldest Christian monastery Iran Press TV Wed Jan 20, 2016 1:43PM The Takfiri Daesh terrorists have destroyed the oldest Christian monastery in Iraq as they continue with their demolition campaign against historical and religious sites in the areas under their control. Satellite images released by the Associated Press on Wednesday showed a pile of rubble at the location of St. Elijah's Monastery, situated south of the city of Mosul in northern Iraq. The monastery, which had survived for more than 1,400 years, is believed to have been damaged at some point in 2014, after Daesh took control of the area in June that year. The partially restored 27,000-square-foot stone and mortar building had 26 distinct rooms although its roof was largely missing. However, latest images show the stone walls 'have been literally pulverized', said imagery analyst Stephen Wood, adding, 'Bulldozers, heavy equipment, sledgehammers, possibly explosives turned those stone walls into this field of gray-white dust. They destroyed it completely.' Iraq-based Catholic priest Reverend Paul Thabit Habib, also expressed shock at the images, saying, "Our Christian history in Mosul is being barbarically leveled." St. Elijah has joined a list of over 100 demolished religious and historic sites by Daesh. The extremists have looted museums and ruined ancient monuments in the Iraqi cities of Nineveh and Hatra as well as the Syrian city of Palmyra. In October last year, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) approved Italy's proposal to send UN peacekeepers to protect heritage sites around the world from various threats, primarily terrorist attacks and destruction by militants. Gruesome violence has plagued parts of Iraq and Syria ever since the Daesh terrorists launched their offensive and took control of portions of the countries. The militants have been committing vicious crimes against all ethnic and religious communities in Iraq, including Shias, Sunnis, Kurds, and Christians in areas they have overrun. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Amnesty: Iraqi Kurds Deliberately Destroying Arab Villages by Ken Bredemeier January 20, 2016 The human rights group Amnesty International accused Iraqi Kurds Wednesday of deliberately destroying thousands of homes of Arabs in northern Iraq in apparent revenge for their perceived support for Islamic State militants. In a new report it called 'Banished and Dispossessed,' Amnesty International said Peshmerga forces carried out the widespread destruction in Ninevah, Kirkuk and Diyala provinces over the last year as they reclaimed lands that Islamic State fighters had overrun in 2014. The rights group said Kurdish troops bulldozed, blew up or burned down homes in Arab communities and have not allowed their residents to return to the villages where they lived. Donatella Rovera, who carried out Amnesty International's research in northern Iraq, said, 'The forced displacement of civilians and the deliberate destruction of homes and property without military justification may amount to war crimes.' Islamic State insurgents took control of a wide swath of northern Iraq and northern Syria a year a half ago, although Kurdish fighters, supported by a massive U.S.-led aerial bombardment of Islamic State targets, have since then reclaimed about 40 percent of the territory. Army Colonel Steve Warren, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, said it takes the issues raised by the Amnesty International report 'very, very seriously.' Amnesty International said it based its report on visits to 13 villages and towns, the accounts of 100 eyewitnesses and displaced residents, as well as satellite imagery showing the destruction of the homes. Avenging 'past abuses' The rights group said Kurdish leaders have justified the displacement of the Arabs on grounds of security, but said 'it appears to be used to punish them for their perceived sympathies' with Islamic State fighters and to consolidate their own territorial gains in northern Iraq. 'This is part of a drive to reverse past abuses by the Saddam Hussein regime, which forcibly displaced Kurds and settled Arabs in these regions,' Amnesty International said. 'Many farmed the land and herded animals in and around their villages,' Amnesty International said, 'and have not only lost their homes but also their livelihood. Displaced families are now sheltering in camps for internally displaced persons, where conditions are dire and humanitarian assistance woefully inadequate, or in disused or unfinished buildings lacking sanitation and basic facilities.' The rights group quoted one local resident, Maher Nubul, as saying that he left his village, Tabaj Hamid, in August 2014 when Islamic State fighters captured it. He said that the village's houses were still standing when Peshmerga forces retook the community four months later, but that Peshmerga forces subsequently bulldozed the village. 'I don't know why,' Nubul said. 'There is nothing left. They destroyed everything for no reason.' In response to the Amnesty International report, a spokesman for Iraq's Kurdistan region, Dindar Zebari, said there is 'no strategy planned' to destroy the villages. He said Peshmerga forces 'have been in full obligation to implement the standards of and principles of international human rights.' NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address UN Urges Libyan Support for Unity Government by VOA News January 20, 2016 United Nations officials are urging Libyans to support an agreement among the country's warring factions to create a unity government. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the deal an important step toward resolving the crisis in Libya, which has seen fighting and political chaos since the overthrow of longtime leader Moammar Gadhafi in 2011. The United Nations mediated the agreement at a conference in the Tunisian capital, Tunis, but it remains unclear whether it will draw wide support to end the bloodshed in Libya. There was no immediate reaction from the country's two legislatures, the internationally recognized government that operates out of Tobruk in eastern Libya and an Islamist-backed government in the Libyan capital, Tripoli. Martin Kobler, the head of the U.N. mission in Libya, said 'hard work lies ahead' and that Libyans have a 'sterling opportunity' to unite and build their country. He called on Libyan lawmakers to endorse the agreement. Quick ratification urged European Union foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini also called for quick ratification of the unity government. 'Libya is at a critical juncture and it is crucial that all key political and security actors uphold the interests of their country and its people above all others,' Mogherini said. 'Only a united Libyan government, supported by all its citizens, will be able to end political divisions, defeat terrorism, and address the numerous security, humanitarian and economic challenges the country faces,' she added. If the rival governments agree to join forces in the coming days, Fayez Sarraj, a lawmaker in the eastern parliament, is set to become the Libyan prime minister. The power-sharing deal comes as Islamic State militants are gaining a new foothold in Libya, aiming to take control of the country's oil terminals and fields, Libya's key source of wealth. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Pakistani Taliban group claims university attack in NW Pakistan People's Daily Online (Xinhua) 20:00, January 20, 2016 ISLAMABAD, Jan. 20 (Xinhua) -- A splinter group of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan(TTP) on Wednesday claimed responsibility for the attack on a university in the country's northwest district of Charsadda, which has reportedly killed 19 people and wounded over 50 others. Local Urdu TV channel Waqt News quoted Umar Mansoor, a commander of the Geedar group of TTP, as saying that they had sent four men for the attack. Mansoor said the attack was carried out in response to the Pakistani army's ongoing operations against militants in the country's northwest tribal areas. However, Muhammad Khorasani, the spokesman of TTP, denied any involvement in the attack. He told local media Express Tribune in an email that 'The TTP and its leader Maulana Fazalullah have nothing to do with the attack.' 'We consider these youth studying in non-military educational institutes as our future, they are Muslims and their protection is our responsibility,' he said, adding that 'Those people who used the name of the Taliban in the attack will be tried in sharia courts.' Pakistani army spokesman Asim Saleem Bajwa confirmed on his twitter account that four attackers had been killed in the operation launched by the security forces following the attack. Local media reported that the university attacked had been cleared and the search operation for other possible attackers hiding in the nearby areas had also been completed. Army Chief General Raheel Sharif paid a visit to the attacked university after the conclusion of the operation. The attack took place on Wednesday morning when a ceremony was being held to observe the anniversary of the late Bacha Khan, a famous political leader of the country, of whom the university is named after, according to Fazal Raheem, the vice chancellor of the Bacha Khan University. Large contingent of security forces, including army, police and paramilitary forces Frontier Corps, were dispatched to the university shortly after the attack was reported. Three army helicopters were also deployed to monitor the operation, said army sources. Fierce firing and at least 10 blasts were heard in the campus following the attack, said eyewitnesses. Medical Superintendent of District Headquarters Hospital in Charsadda, said the hospital had received 19 bodies of the attack victims. Shah Farman, minister for public health engineering of the country's northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, where Charsadda district falls under its jurisdiction, confirmed that over 50 others were injured in the attack. The vice chancellor of the university said the killed include one professor from the chemistry department of the university, two female students, four security guards and one policeman. All the attack victims have been shifted to District Headquarters Hospital in Charsadda as some of the seriously wounded people have been referred to the hospital in the neighbouring city of Peshawar, capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Many victims received head and chest bullet wounds, said hospital sources, adding some of the injured remained in critical condition and the death toll might further rise. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif strongly condemned the attack and was closely following the development of the incident while on a foreign tour, said the PM Office in a statement. All the educational institutions in Charsadda have been closed until the end of the month in the wake of the attack. A three-day mourning over the attack victims has been announced by the the government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modiand the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan have also condemned the attack. Wednesday's attack reminded people of a brutal attack launched by Taliban militants on an army-run public school in Peshawar on Dec. 16, 2014, which killed 150 people including 140 school children and 10 staff members.the end of the month in the wake of the attack. A three-day mourning over the attack victims has been announced by the the government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modiand the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan have also condemned the attack. Wednesday's attack reminded people of a brutal attack launched by Taliban militants on an army-run public school in Peshawar on Dec. 16, 2014, which killed 150 people including 140 school children and 10 staff members. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address At Least 20 Killed In Attack On Pakistani University January 20, 2016 by RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal Militants have stormed a university in northwestern Pakistan, shooting students in their sleep during an assault that left at least 20 people dead and more than 50 others wounded. The early morning attack in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province revived memories of a December 2014 assault on an army-run school in the provincial capital, Peshawar, in which 144 students and staff were killed. The alleged mastermind of the 2014 attack claimed that his splinter group of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Pakistan's Taliban, was responsible for the January 20 assault on Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, 17 kilometers northeast of Peshawar. A TTP spokesman condemned the attack as "un-Islamic." Intense gunfire and several explosions were heard as security guards fought the attackers, who apparently climbed over a university wall under cover of thick winter fog. Regional police chief Saeed Wazir said most of the student victims were shot dead at a hostel for boys on the campus. At least one university teacher was also among the dead. The army said it had concluded operations to clear the Bacha Khan University campus six hours after the attack began and that four gunmen were killed. It was unclear whether the death toll included the four militants. In a statement, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said his government was 'determined and resolved in our commitment to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland.' The violence comes as Pakistani military forces continue a campaign against Pakistani Taliban and other militants in tribal areas neighboring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province and Afghanistan. According to Fazal Haq, a student from the university's department of geology, students were still lying in their beds in the hostel when the attackers struck. 'They were knocking on each door and whoever opened the door, they shot him,' Haq told RFE/RL. 'Most of our friends were shot while they were sleeping in their beds.' 'We were so much scared and took shelter under the beds, but the army came too late almost after an hour. Police also came late. Our security was very weak,' he added. An RFE/RL correspondent, speaking from the scene of the attack, said there were indications that students tried desperately to flee when the assault began. 'I saw a lot of blood on the floor of four-five rooms and there were broken windows,' the correspondent said. 'The beds and the students' belongings were scattered in some places, which showed that they ran to escape the shooting. There were also bullet marks on the corridor walls.' 'Police usually come [to the university] in the morning for security with their vehicle and they were usually on main gate, but I couldn't see them today,' assistant professor Abbas Ali told RFE/RL. 'Maybe, the police were supposed to come later.' Umar Mansoor, a TTP splinter group commander who authorities believe was behind the December 2014 school attack in Peshawar, said the attack on Bacha Khan University was a response to a military offensive against militants in Pakistan's tribal areas. He said four suicide attackers from the group were involved. Muhammad Khorasani, a spokesman for the TTP's central leadership, condemned the attack in an e-mail sent to RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal. He said the group does not target civilian schools. 'TTP strongly condemns today's attack and disassociates itself completely from this un-Islamic attack,' Khorasani also said on Twitter. Bacha Khan University, established in 2012, is named after Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, also known as Bacha Khan, the leader of a nonviolent Pashtun movement. The attack occurred on the 28th anniversary of his death. In the 1930s, Khan launched the Khudai Khidmatgar Movement (Servants of God) to reform the stagnant Pashtun society and to mobilize Pashtuns to struggle for their rights against British imperial rule in the Indian subcontinent through peaceful agitation. Fazli Rahim Marwat, vice chancellor at the university, told RFE/RL that about 3,000 students are enrolled at the school. He said the university also employs about 600 teachers and staff. The violence comes as Pakistani military forces continue a campaign against Pakistani Taliban and other militants in tribal areas neighboring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province and Afghanistan. With reporting by Reuters, AP, AFP, and dpa Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/northwest-pakistan-university-attack-gunmen/27498229.html Copyright (c) 2016. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Gunmen Kill at Least 20 at University in NW Pakistan by Ayesha Tanzeem, Ayaz Gul January 20, 2016 A gun and bomb attack on a university in northwestern Pakistan Wednesday killed at least 20 people and wounded dozens more. Military spokesman Asim Bajwa told reporters 18 students and two university staff were among those killed after what he described as a group of four terrorists stormed the Bacha Khan University in the town of Charsadda. Bajwa said troops, including army commandos, gunned down the four attackers and conducted a "block by block" clearing operation before securing the entire university campus. Regional deputy inspector general of police, Saeed Wazir Khan, said at least two suicide bombers were among the attackers. The spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, Mohammad Khorasani, says the group has nothing to do with the university attack, adding that non-military institutions are not on its list of targets. In a statement sent to VOA, Khorasani declared Wednesday's attack against 'Islamic Sharia.' Earlier, a local Taliban commander had said he sent the four attackers to the university. There was no explanation for the conflicting claims. Students and staff at the university told the VOA correspondent at the scene, Ayesha Tanzeem, that some of the victims suffered both bullet and stab wounds. Casualties Military spokesman Bajwa said telephone intercepts and other evidence collected from the scene have helped investigators to 'swiftly achieve a breakthrough' in identifying the planners, where and how the attack was carried out. But he refused to discuss further details saying it would undermine the investigation process. He said the attack against a 'soft target' like the Bacha Khan University shows that terrorists have been 'frustrated' by successes army operations have achieved against their strongholds in the tribal areas near the Afghan border. He added that telephone calls received by the attackers on their cell phones showed they were in contact with people in Afghanistan. Pakistani Senator Senator Shibli Faraz of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf told VOA that it was alarming that militants were active after a lull in terrorists' attacks in the country. Reaction The United States strongly condemned Wednesday's attack. 'It is particularly appalling that these terrorists continue to attack educational institutions, targeting Pakistan's future generations,' State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner said in a statement. 'The United States stands with the government and people of Pakistan and their efforts to create a secure, stable, and prosperous country, and we will stand side-by-side with Pakistan in its fight against terrorism.' Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, currently visiting Zurich, has condemned 'the cowardly attack' and said he was 'deeply grieved over the sad incident. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, currently visiting Zurich, has condemned 'the cowardly attack' and said he was 'deeply grieved over the sad incident. An official statement quoted Sharif as reiterating Pakistan's resolve 'to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland.' Amnesty International said the attack 'violated the central principle of international humanitarian law by deliberately targeting civilians in what appears to be a war crime.' "Whoever is responsible for this attack showed absolute contempt for life and civilian immunity. Armed groups in Pakistan must end all such affronts to humanity and commit publicly not to attack civilians," said Champa Patel, Interim South Asia Director at the British-based group. The university in the Khyber Pakhtunkhaw province is home to more than three thousand students. Charsadda is located at around 50 kilometers from the province capital of Peshawar, where militants linked to the Pakistani Taliban attacked a school in December of 2014 and massacred around 150 people, mostly children. On Tuesday, a suicide bomber blew himself up near a security checkpoint separating Peshawar from the Khyber tribal district, killing at least 12 people. The Taliban claimed responsibility for that attack. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Saudi Official Won't Rule Out Seeking Nuclear Bomb to Meet Iranian Threat by VOA News January 19, 2016 Saudi Arabia's foreign minister has refused to rule out that it will seek a nuclear weapon if archrival Iran becomes a threat. In an interview Tuesday, Reuters news agency asked Adel al-Jubeir whether Saudi Arabia would try to get a nuclear bomb if Iran obtained one, despite its agreement with six world powers. He responded that his country would do 'whatever we need to do in order to protect our people.' Jubeir said the end of Western sanctions on Iran as part of the nuclear agreement would be welcome if Iran uses unfrozen funds to improve the living standards of its people. But he said if the funds 'go to support the nefarious activities of the Iranian regime, this will be a negative and it will generate a pushback.' The Saudis, Israelis, and some American lawmakers opposed to the nuclear deal say they fear Iran may use the billions of dollars in unfrozen assets to fund terrorist groups and militias. Tensions between Saudi Arabia and Shi'ite majority Iran escalated earlier this month after the Saudis executed a Shi'ite cleric accused of supporting terrorism. Furious Iranians attacked the Saudi Embassy in Tehran. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry brushed off concerns the Saudis may try to get their hands on a nuclear weapon to counter a perceived Iranian threat. 'You just can't buy a bomb and transfer it,' Kerry told CNN television this week, noting that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and international inspections would make such a thing very difficult. He also said possessing a nuclear bomb would not make Saudi Arabia safer. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address In Jordan, UN refugee agency chief urges greater efforts to end Syria conflict 19 January 2016 The international community must make greater efforts to end the conflict in Syria or risk prolonging the world's biggest humanitarian crisis for many years to come, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has said during a trip to the region. "It is essential that the international community and all actors that have an influence on the parties to the conflict and the parties to the conflict themselves, first and foremost exercise greater efforts towards peace," Filippo Grandi told reporters while visiting Jordan's Za'atari refugee camp. Three weeks after taking up office, Mr. Grandi said he had chosen to travel to the region on his first overseas trip to focus minds on finding solutions to the nearly five-year-old conflict. "If a settlement of the conflict is not found, this crisis will not end and we will continue year after year to ask the international community for huge amounts of money to support refugees that until there is peace will not want to go back," he stated. Mr. Grandi urged governments to take advantage of two upcoming global conferences in London in February and Geneva in March to pledge more financial support for refugees and host countries, and increase the number of legal resettlement places for those escaping the conflict. According to the High Commissioner's Office (UNHCR), the protracted nature of the crisis is having a devastating effect on millions of ordinary Syrians, as well as placing a huge burden on neighbouring countries that have so far taken in more than four million refugees. Jordan is currently host to more than 630,000 Syrian refugees, putting a huge strain on the small kingdom's natural resources, infrastructure and economy. While almost 110,000 Syrians currently live in Za'atari and the country's other main camp at Azraq, the vast majority are struggling to survive in towns and cities across Jordan. Addressing the plight of an estimated 17,000 Syrians currently camped near the country's north-eastern border, Mr. Grandi said he fully appreciated Jordan's security concerns and pledged UNHCR's help in screening individuals in order to allow those in need of international protection to enter the kingdom. While at the camp, he met a Syrian Bedouin family who arrived in Za'atari in February 2013. A father of six, Mohammad Olayan said he had witnessed a steady improvement in conditions during his three years there. "When we first came we were living in a tent and there were no services. Now we have two caravans, and there is electricity and proper sanitation," he said. Despite the improvements, the family still struggles to feed themselves with the food assistance they receive, and Mohammad must borrow money or try to find work to keep food on the table. While his three young sons attend school in the camp, his two school-aged daughters say they are still too traumatized by the conflict and intimidated by the large class sizes to go. As a result, Mohammed and his wife and daughters spend much of their time inside their shelter. "What else can refugees do?" he asked. After three years in exile with no end in sight, Mohammad said he is considering returning to the family's small farm in Syria's southern Dara'a province despite the danger. "We don't want to run away for the rest of our lives," he explained. "Maybe it would be better to die quickly in Syria than the slow death we face here." The High Commissioner's visit also includes stops in Turkey and Lebanon. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Russia, US seek no delay in Syria peace talks Iran Press TV Wed Jan 20, 2016 5:20PM Russia's foreign minister says he and his US counterpart have not sought a postponement of UN-led Syrian peace talks planned for January 25 between Syria's government and opposition groups. Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday after a meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry that neither he nor his US counterpart had thought about a postponement of the fresh Syria peace talks, which are scheduled to start in Geneva. State Department spokesman John Kirby also said after the talks between Kerry and Lavrov in the Swiss city of Zurich that the two sides discussed 'the importance of maintaining progress toward a diplomatic solution to the crisis in Syria.' The UN Security Council on December 18, 2015 adopted a resolution supporting an international roadmap for a peace process in Syria. The resolution called for a nationwide ceasefire in Syria and the formation of a "credible, inclusive and non-sectarian" government within six months and UN-supervised "free and fair elections" within 18 months. Two conferences were previously held in an attempt to resolve the Syrian crisis in the Swiss city of Geneva, one in 2012 and the other in 2014. However, both events ended in failure. The Syrian conflict, which started in March 2011, has claimed the lives of more than 250,000 people and displaced nearly half of the country's pre-war population of about 23 million within or out of its borders. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Syrian forces capture strategic heights in Homs Iran Press TV Wed Jan 20, 2016 4:42PM Syrian army troops have retaken strategic hills and heights in the central province of Homs as government forces continue their mop-up operations in many parts of the Arab country. The Syrian army and popular forces targeted Daesh terrorists' positions southeast of Homs city, and gained control over several strategic hills and heights near al-Quaryatayn town. The news comes as the army also retook al-Raqqah bridge and the hills of Brok in Dayr al-Zawr after fierce clashes with Daesh terrorists. Some 19 terrorists were killed and a number of others injured in the clashes which also left six machine gun-mounted vehicles destroyed. The Syrian forces also destroyed a number of terrorists' gathering centers and weapons in Sheikh Lutfi village and the neighborhood of al-Rashideen 4 on the southern outskirts of Aleppo city. Meanwhile, four civilians were killed and five others injured in a terrorist rocket attack on al-Safirah town, southeast of Aleppo. There has been no reference to the casualties among the Syrian forces in this report. Syrian forces have recently been making back-to-back advances with the support of fighters from the Lebanon resistance movement Hezbollah and Russian airstrikes. Over 260,000 people have reportedly been killed in Syria since foreign-backed militancy erupted in the country in March 2011. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Tsai's Facebook page flooded with messages from China, again ROC Central News Agency 2016/01/21 00:04:26 Taipei, Jan. 20 (CNA) The Facebook page of President-elect Tsai Ing-wen () was flooded with over 20,000 messages likely from Chinese Internet users, who voiced their opposition against Taiwan's independence, in three hours Wednesday. Since Wednesday afternoon, several netizens posted the Communist Party of China's socialist values of eight honors and eight shames, which start with 'it is an honor to love the motherland, a shame to endanger it,' in simplified Chinese used in the mainland on Tsai's Facebook page. There are also messages ridiculing or criticizing the pursuit of Taiwan's independence that is part of the platform of Tsai's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Tens of DPP heavyweight proposed a freeze in the platform's clause about Taiwan's independence in 2014. According to local media reports, a post showed up on a popular online message board of Chinese search engine Baidu's Tieba service, encouraging Chinese users to flood the Facebook page of Tsai and Taiwanese media outlets with emoticons expressing opposition to Taiwan's independence, from 7 p.m. Wednesday. 'Welcome to democratic and free Taiwan,' said DPP spokesman Yang Chia-liang () to people that posted the messages, which the party does not plan to delete. This was not the first time Tsai's Facebook page became the target of Chinese online users, as they posted last November tens of thousands of messages, mainly to criticize her and the DPP. At that time, Tsai said she 'saw the incident in a positive way' and hoped Chinese Internet users can also visit other Facebook pages of Taiwanese people or groups, even though the social media site is blocked by the Chinese authorities. (By Sophia Yeh and Kay Liu) enditem/BL NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Cross-strait policy not salient issue in elections: DPP official ROC Central News Agency 2016/01/20 18:21:24 Washington, Jan. 20 (CNA) Joseph Wu (), secretary-general of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), said Tuesday in Washington that viewing Taiwan's Jan. 16 general elections from the perspective of independence versus unification might be outdated. Occasional observers may look at the elections through the independence versus unification prism, with the DPP advocating independence and the Kuomintang unification. This view might have had some degree of truth in the early years of democratization; however, it is overly simplistic and misleading to still view the elections and their implications through this outdated perspective as the voters in Taiwan no longer make their choice based on such simple terms, Wu said. Wu made the statement while delivering a speech during a forum on assessing the outcomes and implications of Taiwan's January 2016 elections, at the invitation of two U.S. think tanks -- the Brookings Institution and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Tsai Ing-wen (), chairwoman of the DPP won the presidency and the DPP also scored an unprecedented legislative majority in the elections. According to Wu, the DPP conducts regular surveys to understand the issues the public considers important. These surveys show that the public cares less about highly political issues, such as cross-strait relations and sovereignty, than about the issues that concern them personally, such as the economic situation and food safety, Wu said. Factors contributing to the election results, other than the KMT's own failure, include young voters' discontent with the government and the sharp contrast between the performance of the local administrations controlled by the DPP and the KMT, according to Wu. The DPP's active pursuit of balanced positions on potentially young voters and the DPP's policy platforms that addressed public concerns might also have been factors contributing to the election outcome, Wu added. It should be noted that the cross-strait relations question was not a salient issue in the campaign and therefore was not the issue defining the election outcome. Throughout the campaign, neither the presidential candidate herself nor the DPP campaign team targeted China in any campaign rhetoric or slogans, Wu stresses. China sees Taiwan as a province to be unified by force if necessary. Tsai Ing-wen () had said during a speech in Washington last year and the televised presidential debates and policy presentation forums held in Taiwan prior to the election that the DPP has never denied the historical existence of the cross- strait dialogues that took place in 1992, according to Wu. Tsai indeed acknowledges the shared desire of the two sides at that time to advance cross-strait relations by fostering mutual understanding, Wu said. Tsai also advocates a return to the original spirit of 'setting aside differences to seek common ground' that formed the basis of the 1992 cross-strait meetings, Wu said while speaking on the subject, Wu added. The consensus was a tacit agreement reached between Taiwan and China in 1992 that there is only one China, with each side free to interpret what that means. 'Going forward, we will do our utmost to find a mutually acceptable mode of interaction between Taiwan and the mainland, one that avoids confrontation and prevents surprises,' said Wu. 'We will, in the new session of the legislature, put forward the Cross-Strait Agreement Oversight Legislation as a priority to highlight our interest in peaceful and stable relations with China,' Wu added. It was Wu's first speech in Washington after the elections, attracting great attention during the forum. Richard Bush, a former American Institute in Taiwan chairman and current director of the Brookings Institution's Center for East Asia Policy Studies, delivered opening remarks at the forum hosted by Bonnie Glaser, senior advisor for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Wu is now on a visit to U.S. He will meet with American officials, Congress members and think tank scholars in Washington before returning to Taiwan on Jan. 22. (By Tony Liao and Evelyn Kao) Enditem/ke NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Turkey's Crackdown on Kurdish Rebels Includes Local Mayors by Dorian Jones January 19, 2016 Eighteen mayors and nearly 50 locally elected representatives of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party are being prosecuted in Turkey. Earlier this month, for example, the mayor of Van was sentenced to 15 years in jail on charges of being a member of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party. The prosecutions and severity of the charges are unprecedented, says senior Turkey researcher Emma Sinclair Webb of the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch. 'It is the most serious move against democratically elected mayors in towns we have seen in years," she said. "Mayors have been targeted in the past, with arrest and periods in jail. But the charges they face this time are unprecedented. Basically they amount to life in prison for offenses that do not in any way amount to terrorism or violence and deadly acts.' Most of the charges against the representatives are for attempting to overthrow the state, following statements calling for Kurdish autonomy. For more than a month, Turkish security forces have been attempting to eradicate the presence of PKK rebels in towns and cities across the predominantly Kurdish southeast. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu defended the prosecutions, accusing the mayors of working with the rebels. Davutoglu said their concern is polemics, ideology and terror. The mayors, he said, spend the people's money in dark channels and function as the logistics center of terrorists. Now, he said, the mayors had to account 'for this betrayal.' But political scientist Cengiz Aktar of Istanbul's Suleyman Sah University says these are the same policies used by the state since the PKK took up arms in 1984. 'The Turkish establishment, be it civilian or military, is repeating the same good old strategy of repression, hoping that this time it will produce another result," Aktar said. "Of course, it will not. The Kurdish problem cannot be resolved by force. I mean, the Turkish political establishment is back to square one.' Observers say the government appears to believe it has no one to negotiate with and that current representatives of the Kurds are part of the problem, rather than the solution. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Erdogan lashes out at academics critical of anti-PKK campaign Iran Press TV Wed Jan 20, 2016 7:3PM Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lashed out Wednesday at a large group of academics who have criticized Ankara's campaign against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants. Speaking during a meeting with local Turkish politicians at the presidential palace in the capital, Ankara, Erdogan said the academics will continue to thrash around "in this pit of treachery they fell in." The scholars showed "real and ugly faces" after their "masks fell off," the Turkish president said. "So you think you will try to disrupt the unity of this nation, and continue to have a comfortable life with the help of the salary that you receive from the state and pay no price?" Erdogan said, warning, "Those days are over." More than 1,200 researchers and academics from Turkey and abroad have signed a petition entitled, We will not be a party to this crime. Turkish prosecutors have launched a major investigation into the signatories to the petition, detaining at least 18 people as part of the probe. The petition urges the Turkish government "to lift the curfew, punish those who are responsible for human rights violations, and compensate those citizens who have experienced material and psychological damage." The petition highlights the need for national and international observers to be given access to Turkey's southeast to monitor and report on the incidents taking place there. Turkey's southeast has been volatile since a shaky ceasefire between Ankara and the PKK that had stood since 2013 collapsed following the Turkish military operation against the militant group. Ankara's campaign began in the wake of a deadly bombing, blamed on the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group, in the southern Turkish town of Suruc in July last year. After the incident, the PKK militants, who accuse the Turkish government of supporting Daesh, engaged in a series of reprisal attacks against Turkish police and security forces. The Turkish government has imposed curfews in the southeastern areas that have been targeted in the army's anti-PKK campaign. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Former Commander Of Pro-Russian Separatists Says He Executed People Based On Stalin-Era Laws January 19, 2016 by Anna Shamanska For most of his 42-minute appearance on a radio talk show, former Russia-backed separatist commander Igor Girkin sounded like nothing more than a fanatic discussing a dream now widely dismissed as fantasy. He spoke of hopes for the creation of a 'Novorossia' -- a New Russia stretching across much of Ukraine, from Kharkiv to Odesa, and one day joining a Russian empire including all of Belarus and Ukraine. It wasn't until the last minute that the interview with Girkin went from surreal to chilling. Referring to his time commanding separatists in the eastern Ukrainian city of Slovyansk in 2014, a host asks him how he stopped the rampant looting. 'With executions,' Girkin said matter-of-factly. According to Girkin, separatist 'authorities' installed a military court and introduced 1941 military laws implemented by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. 'Under this legislation we tried people and executed the convicted,' Girkin said. 'While I was in Slovyansk four people were executed. Two among the military for looting, one local for looting, and one for killing a serviceman,' he said on the Radio Komsomolskaya Pravda, which is affiliated with a leading pro-Kremlin Russian tabloid. One of the people killed was an 'ideological' supporter of the Ukrainian nationalist group Right Sector, he said. Key Separatist Commander Girkin, also known as Igor Strelkov, was a key commander in the Russia-backed separatist forces in the early stages of the war against Ukrainian government troops that has killed more than 9,000 civilians and combatants since April 2014. Ukraine's government has called Girkin a Russian agent and accused him of war crimes. He resigned as a rebel commander in August 2014 amid reports that he had been wounded in battle. Later that year, he told an interviewer that he was a colonel in the Russian FSB, or Federal Security Service -- a statement that was edited out of the interview published by state-run Rossia Segodnya. In October 2015, the Brussels-based International Partnership for Human Rights provided the International Criminal Court with more than 300 testimonies about alleged military crimes and crimes against humanity that it said had been committed by Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces in Eastern Ukraine. It said that 'while crimes committed by both sides of the conflict have been documented, the collected evidence primarily concerns crimes committed by separatists because of security issues related to accessing separatists-controlled territories of Ukraine.' In the radio appearance, Girkin said he was not concerned about the possibility of international prosecution. 'I am not at all bothered by international law, because it's a tool in the hands of winners,' he said. 'If we are defeated, well then, the norms of these laws will be applied to me.' Fighting has lessened since a February 2015 deal on a cease-fire and steps toward peace, but the Russia-backed separatists still hold large parts of Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk provinces. Girkin, a former military reenactor, appeared to have the support of both the hosts and those calling in. 'God forbid,' one host said, referring to the possibility of Girkin being sent to an international court for prosecution on war crimes charges. As for his feelings about Stalin, Girkin said he dislikes the dictator as he was in his younger days, but believes that he was a great statesman at the end of his life. 'You can discuss for a long time how much blood and where Stalin spilled it, but at least you can confidently say that he did it not for himself but for the sake of an idea,' he said. Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/ukraine-girkin-strelkov- executions-stalin-era/27497491.html Copyright (c) 2016. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Southside Virginia Community College will begin offering a new Power Line Worker Training Program designed to address the projected critical shortage of skilled electric utility line workers in Virginia. This program, which will involve 11 weeks of intensive classroom and hands-on training, will prepare its graduates for employment as apprentice line workers at electric utilities. SVCCs new program was one of five successful entries in the first Governors Competition for Talent Solutions, announced in the fall of 2015. The Power Line Worker Training Program will benefit from a $200,000 matching incentive grant from the commonwealth intended to provide new workforce training options and develop Virginias economy. McAuliffe said, Talent Solutions grants and the new Power Line Worker Program exemplify the Commonwealths commitment to building a demand-driven workforce system. Were excited about the innovative solutions generated by these grants, and we look forward to working together with our community colleges and the private sector to train a new generation of highly skilled workers who will help us build a new Virginia economy. The electric cooperatives in the commonwealth partnered to create a shared training program and collectively supported that program. They provided donations of materials and equipment, financial support and technical advice on how to design the program and set up the training yard. This is exactly the sort of public-private partnership that we hoped to stimulate in the Governors Competition for Talent Solutions, said Secretary of Commerce and Trade Maurice Jones. I commend all of the partners involved in opening the first power line worker training program in one of Virginias community colleges, and I look forward to seeing its success in the coming months. We literally could not have gotten this line worker program going without the strong support of Virginias electric cooperatives, said Keith Harkins, vice president of Workforce and Continuing Education for SVCC. The way they got behind this worthy cause so strongly and so quickly was a sight to see. Were extremely pleased to have had this opportunity to work with Governor McAuliffe, Southside Virginia Community College and the entire Community College System to help train our young people for great careers as line workers and to provide a needed boost to Southside Virginia, said John C. Lee, Jr., president and CEO of Mecklenburg Electric Cooperative. Virginias 13 consumer-owned electric cooperatives partnered with the Governors Office and community colleges on the pre-apprentice training to replace the wave of retirements expected in the industry over the next few years. Southside Electric Cooperative, headquartered in Crewe, developed a prototype Day in the Life of a Lineman program with local schools. The program served as a springboard to spark interest among young people in careers as line workers. Supporting our communities is what co-ops are all about, noted Southside Electric Cooperative President and CEO Jeffrey S. Edwards. We have been very gratified at the response among high school students, who want challenging, rewarding careers that will allow them to remain in Southside Virginia. Rappahannock Electric Cooperative President and CEO Kent Farmer said, Cooperatives strongly support workforce training in the communities we serve, and, of course, the training that will take place at this new school will help provide our cooperatives with a pool of excellent young candidates for line worker positions. Sudbury, Ontario (FSCwire) - Houston Lake Mining Inc. (TSX.V: HLM), is a mining exploration company which is actively exploring for rare metals lithium, tantalum, rubidium and cesium by currently advancing its 100% owned and optioned PAK Lithium Project in northwestern Ontario, Canada. HLM today reported the closing of a non-brokered private placement offering for a total of 5,314,321 units ("Units") of the Company priced at $0.155 per Unit, for total gross proceeds of $823,720. The Common Shares to be issued under a unit offering of 5,314,321 units (Units) at a subscription price of $0.155 per Unit. Each Unit shall consist of one (1) Common Share of the Company and one-half () share purchase warrant (the Warrant). Each full Warrant shall entitle the holder thereof to purchase one additional common share of HLM at an exercise price of $0.22 for an 18 month period from the closing (the Offering). In connection with the $823,720 Offering, the Company issued finders fees of $33,707.26 (7% of $470,470 of the Offering) and 212,470 finder warrants (7% of 3,035.290 of Units sold under the Offering). Each finder option will be exercisable at a price of $0.22 into one common share for a period of eighteen months from the date of issuance. All of the Shares and Warrants issued pursuant to the private placement are subject to a minimum 4-month hold period. Proceeds from the financing will be used to advance exploration of HLMs 100% owned and optioned PAK Lithium Project located in northwestern Ontario. About the PAK Lithium Project The PAK Lithium Project lies close to the boundary between two geological sub-provinces of the western Superior geologic province in northwestern Ontario and hosts a rare metals pegmatite deposit. The deposit is an LCT (lithium- cesium- tantalum) type pegmatite. These types of pegmatites have been the principal source of hard rock lithium, tantalum, rubidium and cesium ores mined in the world but there are comparatively few commercially-viable deposits. HLM is actively exploring its 100% owned and optioned project which contains the Pakeagama Lake pegmatite. The deposit is one of the highest grade lithium deposits in North America which has a current Indicated Resource of 2.45 million tonnes of 1.81% Li 2 O Eq. and Inferred Resource of 5.91 million tonnes of 2.01% Li 2 O Eq. which has a technical/ceramic grade spodumene with low inherent iron (below 0.1% Fe 2 O 3 ). The deposit has adjacent zones that are enriched in rubidium and tantalum. HLM is also evaluating the phased co-production of rubidium and tantalum concentrates once lithium mineral production has been commercialized. The deposit now has a known 480m strike length with an estimated true width varying from 10m to 125m with a sub-vertical orientation. The resource remains open to depth and along strike to the northwest and southeast. The Phase III and IV, diamond drill programs and the 2015 Channel sampling were conducted with the objectives to extend the known strike length and to upgrade the lithium Indicated mineral resource to a Measured category, and to possibly upgrade the Inferred mineral resource to a Measured and Indicated category. About Houston Lake Mining Inc. HLMs goal is to become a fully integrated lithium, rubidium and tantalum producer through the development of the PAK Rare Metals Project in Ontario, Canada . The Company's strategy is to take advantage of the global shift towards electric/hybrid vehicles and high quality consumer electronics by becoming a raw material supplier of the elements required for the pursuit of sustainable energy and other applications in high-tech electronics and metal alloys. HLM has a total of 114,412.069 common shares issued and outstanding. For additional information, please visit the company website at www.houstonlakemining.com. Company Contact Information Trevor R. Walker, President Henry J. Kloepper, CEO 2736 Belisle Drive T. +001 416.520.0187 Val Caron, ON. P3N 1B3 CANADA T.+001 705.897.7622 F.+001 705.897.7618 Forward-looking Statements Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This release includes certain statements that may be deemed forward-looking statements. All statements in this release, other than statements of historical facts, that address future production, reserve potential, exploration drilling, exploitation activities and events or developments that the Company expects are forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward looking statements include market prices, exploitation and exploration successes, continued availability of capital and financing, and general economic, market or business conditions. Investors are cautioned that any such statements are not guarantees of future performance and those actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. For more information on the Company, Investors should review the Companys registered filings what are available at http://www.sedar.com To view this press release as a PDF file, click onto the following link:public://news_release_pdf/HoustonLkJan202016.pdfSource: Houston Lake Mining Inc. (TSX Venture:HLM) http://www.houstonlakemining.com/ Maximum News Dissemination by FSCwire. http://www.fscwire.com Copyright 2016 Filing Services Canada Inc. Signature dish at Ceru, Potts Point - slow roast lamb shoulder, shawarma spices, pomegranate, mint and pistachio dressing. Photo: Supplied Sydney's latest restaurant opening might prove to be the city's most border-hopping offering of 2016. The food sweeps the Middle East, the menu was road-tested in London, and the design hinges heavily on the ancient Chinese practice of feng shui. "The site [next to the Larmont hotel on Kings Cross Road] had such a chequered past I called in a feng shui master," says Tom Kime, the English chef and co-owner at Ceru, which opens January 21. The result of that consultation saw a planned black floor become grey, the ceiling recreated into a flat surface and more non-alcoholic drinks introduced to the bar menu to "cool the fire". Kime pulled out the black and gold fittings of the sites last restaurant, replacing them with materials including copper and reclaimed fence panels. His business partners also have global aspirations for Ceru, trialling Kime's dishes in recent months at Ceru in London. The most popular dish was slow-roast lamb shoulder with shawarma spices and pomegranate while the chermoula-roasted beetroot was also a fast mover. "The food is inspired by places like Syria and Lebanon. That [part of the world] is such a quagmire at the moment, it's devastating to me people aren't able to go there and try it all themselves." Breakfast wrap with grilled haloumi, fried egg, spinach & cumin at Ceru, Potts Point. Photo: Supplied Mon 7am-11pm; Tues-Fri 7am-midnight; Sat 8am-midnight; Sun 8am-10pm. 2 / 2-14 Kings Cross Road, Potts Point, cerurestaurants.com/sydney Ramen Bankara's authentic Tokyo-style shoyu ramen of pork bone broth with braised pork belly. Photo: Linsey Rendell Ramen Bankara first opened in 1998 in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. Having expanded throughout Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, it's now arrived in Australia, bringing founder Naoki Kusano's family recipe to Melbourne. The restaurant's signature is its Tokyo-style ramen a dense pork bone broth laced with shoyu and topped with kakuni (braised pork belly). It's sweet and savoury, and one of the richest varietals, typical of the region. In keeping with tradition, noisy slurping is encouraged. "In Japanese culture, the louder you slurp the noodles means the more delicious the ramen is. You should slurp as loud as you can," says co-owner Kenneth Wong. Tokyo noodle house Ramen Bankara has opened in Swanston Street, Melbourne. Photo: a The restaurant's flagship opened on Swanston Street on Boxing Day, following openings at Doncaster Westfield in August and the Target Centre in November. "The response has been very good, so we keep expanding," Wong says. Box Hill will gain another ramen ya (ramen shop) in two weeks' time, and expansion to Sydney is on the cards. Open daily 11am-midnight. Tsukemen cold ramen: chilled springy noodles for dipping in a rich peppery broth at Ramen Bankara. Photo: Linsey Rendell 305 Swanston Street, 03 9663 8862, ramenbankara.com.au The popular restaurant attracts large crowds, but has not escaped the attention of the Fair Work Ombudsman. Photo: Supplied The operators of Chinatown's highly-awarded and ever-popular Mamak restaurant are facing court after allegedly underpaying six employees to a tune of more than $87,000 and using false records to disguise the underpayments. The Malaysian restaurant on Goulburn Street, which is famous for its long queues and fast service, allegedly paid rates as low as $11 an hour to the casual staff over more than three years. One employee is believed to have been underpaid by $26,793 while another was allegedly owed $21,538. Roti canai at Mamak. Photo: Edwina Pickles In total, the workers - four of whom were international students and one a bridging visa holder - were allegedly underpaid $87,349 between February 2012 and April 2015. Under the Restaurant Industry Award, five adults should have been paid more than $22 for normal hours, while a junior casual staffer could claim more than $13, according to the Fair Work Ombudsman. While under investigation by Fair Work, the restaurant allegedly disguised the underpayments, which have since been reimbursed, by providing false documents as well as breaking laws relating to pay slips and access to information. The government body has commenced legal action against restaurant owner-operators Joon Hoe Lee, Julian Lee and Alan Wing-Keung Au and their company Mamak Pty Ltd, which also oversees restaurants in Chatswood and Melbourne. The owners face penalties of up to $10,200 per contravention while the company may be fined up to $51,000 per contravention. The workplace watchdog has not yet confirmed if it is investigating the company's Melbourne restaurant on Lonsdale Street. Advertisement John Hart, CEO of Restaurants and Catering Association Australia said he could not comment on the individual case, but that while the industry body would never condone any sort of breach of awards or employment conditions, restaurant operators face an "extremely complex" pay structure. "In an environment that is as extremely complex as our awards, it doesn't surprise me when any business is found to be in non-compliance. "There is in excess of 60 different rates an individual may be paid for performing fundamentally the same job." A directions hearing is listed for February 5 at Sydney's Federal Circuit Court. Fairfax Media has contacted Mamak for comment. DO YOU KNOW MORE? Contact Esther Han on ehan@fairfaxmedia.com.au FILE - In this Feb. 10, 2015 file photo, Vice President Joe Biden talks to Kayla Kosmalski of Bear, Del. during a celebration of the ABLE Act (Achieving a Better Life Experience Act), with members of Congress, in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House complex in Washington. The Act creates a new savings account for families with people with disabilities. Barbara Weltman, a consultant and author of books on taxes, law and finance, said the programs definition of disability is very broad, but that its restricted to people who became disabled before age 26. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File) SHARE By CAROLE FELDMAN, Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) Americans who are disabled or have a dependent who is might be able to take advantage of a series of tax benefits designed to ease the burden. The newest program, called ABLE, was created in 2014 and is similar to the 529c programs administered by the states for education expenses. "Supporters of the law pointed out that the U.S. tax code provided significant tax benefits to parents who save money for their children's college education in 529 plans," according to Intuit, publisher of TurboTax. "But parents of people with disabilities had no similar way to save for their children's future needs, such as occupational therapy or assisted living." ABLE accounts allow parents to do just that. Contributions of up to $14,000 the annual tax-free gift limit can be made to ABLE accounts. The earnings are not taxable if they are withdrawn and used to pay for disability-related expenses. Among eligible expenses, according to the Internal Revenue Service: housing, education, transportation, medical care, job training and others. "There's no federal tax benefit, but the money in that ABLE account can grow tax-free," said Kathy Pickering, executive director of the Tax Institute at H&R Block. She called it a "very important mechanism" for attending to the needs of a disabled dependent. Barbara Weltman, a consultant and author of books on taxes, law and finance, said the program's definition of disability is broad but is restricted to people who became disabled before age 26. "It's designed to allow for savings for disabled children without causing them the loss of government benefits," she said. Under the program, the first $100,000 in an ABLE account is not considered a personal asset, according to Intuit. "This is important because federal law generally bars individuals from receiving assistance such as Medicaid, housing aid and Supplemental Security Income if they have more than $2,000 worth of financial assets," the company said. Congress last month made it easier for people to set up ABLE accounts by removing the residency requirement. "By allowing ABLE beneficiaries the ability to enroll in programs outside their state, individuals will now have greater options in choosing which program best meets their needs," the National Disability Institute said on its website. "In addition, this could mean qualified persons may have the ability to open an ABLE account much sooner than previously anticipated." Already, nearly three dozen states have passed legislation implementing the ABLE program, according to the National Down Syndrome Society, one of a consortium of groups advocating for the disabled that had pushed for the law. The IRS says two new forms will be required for those participating in the accounts: Form 1099-QA for reporting distributions and Form 5498-QA for reporting contributions. Among other tax breaks or benefits that the IRS says might be available to the disabled: a higher standard deduction for people who are legally blind; a credit for working taxpayers paying the cost of caring for a spouse or dependent who is physically or mentally unable to care for themselves; a deduction for impairment-related work expenses, and a deduction for unreimbursed, disability-related medical expenses. The IRS says taxpayers also might be eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit if they are disabled or have a child who is. The refundable credit benefits people with low or moderate income, and the agency estimates that as many as 1.5 million eligible taxpayers with disabilities fail to claim it each year. The National Disability Institute says the credit is critical "considering the disproportionate number of Americans with disabilities living at or below poverty, as compared to their non-disabled peers." There are income limits for the credit based on filing status and the number of children in the household. For the 2015 tax year, the maximum credit is $6,242 if there are three or more children in the home. It phases down to $503 for taxpayers with no children. "If the taxpayer's child is disabled, the age limitation for EITC is waived," the IRS says. Critical illness plans, which can help workers cover their high deductibles, are being offered in growing numbers by employers. But the policies have limitations. Fotolia SHARE Lump sums for serious illnesses have limitations By Michelle Andrews Insurance policies that pay a lump sum if workers get cancer or another serious illness are being offered in growing numbers by employers. Companies say they want to help protect their workers against the financial pain of increasingly high deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs. But it's important to understand the limitations of these plans before buying. Critical illness plans have been around for decades, but they have become more common lately as employers have shifted more health care costs onto their workers' shoulders. Forty-five percent of employers with 500 or more workers offered the plans last year, up from 34 percent in 2009, according to benefits consultant Mercer. Employees are generally responsible for the cost of coverage, although in some cases bosses contribute to the premiums. "What we have seen is a very clear and steady rise in the number of employers offering high-deductible plans," said Barry Schilmeister, a principal in the health and benefits practice at Mercer. "More employers are looking at the reality of pulling back on the value of health plans but looking to offer something else that would make people feel a little more comfortable about taking on that additional risk." Forty-six percent of workers covered by insurance on the job faced a deductible of at least $1,000 in 2015, up from 22 percent in 2009, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation's annual survey of employer sponsored coverage. (KHN is an editorially independent program of the foundation.) Critical illness policies typically provide a lump sum if someone is diagnosed with cancer, heart attack, stroke, kidney failure or needs a major organ transplant. They may also pay benefits for other medical problems such as loss of vision or paralysis; plans have an average of 19 eligibility triggers, according to a market survey by Gen Re, a company that offers insurance to insurers to help manage the risk from underwritten policies. In addition, some employers also offer a policy that pays only in the event of a cancer diagnosis. Nine out of 10 critical illness policies are sold through the workplace, according to Gen Re. These plans provide an average $15,000 payout to workers diagnosed with one of the conditions covered under the policy. Plans sold on the individual market pay $31,000 on average, Gen Re said, but applicants generally have to go through medical underwriting to qualify. Employer plans usually don't require that. The average annual premium was $283 for $25,000 worth of coverage in 2013, according to financial services research company LIMRA. In addition to deductibles and cost-sharing for pricey drugs and treatment, the payments can be used to help cover many expenses associated with serious illness that even generous employer health plans don't cover, including travel costs to see a specialist, time off from work and extra charges for out-of-network doctors or hospitals. But benefits from the critical illness policies can be limited by very specific requirements, so it's important to understand the coverage before you buy. Here are some of the details to look for: n Pre-existing conditions If you've had cancer or a heart attack in the past, check to see whether the plan will cover those conditions in your case or impose a waiting period before doing so. n Excluded benefits "Understand that maybe not every cancer and heart attack is covered," said Stephen Rowley, vice president at Gen Re. For example, non-invasive prostate or breast cancers may be excluded from some policies. However, a growing number of critical illness insurers are covering such early-stage cancers, said Karen Terry, assistant managing director for insurance research at LIMRA. n Partial payouts Rather than excluding coverage altogether, plans may make a partial payout for things like non-invasive cancer, heart bypass surgery or angioplasty. n One-time vs. repeat payouts If you get cancer a second time, will the plan pay out again, in full or in part? Does it matter if the second incidence is the same or a different type of cancer? n Unrestricted vs. specified schedule of benefits Critical illness policies typically pay out a lump sum to use as the policyholder wishes. Cancer policies may do the same or pay set amounts for hospitalization, chemotherapy or radiation treatments, for example. n Age-related benefit reductions Some plans reduce how much they pay out after policyholders turn 65 or 70. n Waiting periods Plans typically won't pay benefits for 30 to 90 days after a policy becomes effective. As people's financial exposure for medical care has increased, "they're really spooked, especially when they've had a serious illness in their family, and they know all that goes along with that," said Bonnie Burns, a longtime consumer health advocate and a policy specialist with California Health Advocates, which assists Medicare beneficiaries. "I think these [coverage] holes are going to proliferate and people are going to fill them where they can." However, some researchers suggest that the increasing interest in critical illness policies does not compensate for less generous health insurance policies. "Why don't they just offer people a better [health insurance] policy in the first place?" said Karen Pollitz, a research fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation. SHARE By John Begnaud, Horticulture Green is always a welcome color in West Texas landscapes, and it is particularly welcome during the grey and cold days of winter. There are a few large trees that offer evergreen foliage, and some small trees and many more shrubs that provide green and a variety of winter colors. The live oak tree is the most widely used large evergreen tree in our area. Live oaks are native to Texas and well adapted to a wide range of soils. They can survive on rainfall alone after establishment. Considered slow growers, these giants can be encouraged to grow fast with twice-a-month watering and fertilizing two to three times a year when young. Older trees benefit from occasional pruning but need no fertilizer unless stressed from disruption in the root system. The No. 1 complaint about live oak trees is the mess they can leave from dropping leaves, acorns, occasional aphid sapping and roosting birds. For this reason, they should be located away from outdoor living and entertaining areas such as decks, pools and ponds. The thick canopy of multiple branches provides cover for birds and varmints. Rubber snakes, artificial owls and aluminum strips hung in the tree are devices that meet with poor success at sending roosting birds to a new location. Opening the tree by selectively pruning crowded, rubbing or duplicated branches will make birds feel less safe and exposed to cats and other predators. This is helpful in allowing better sunlight through the canopy for growing turf or plants beneath. Now through February is a good time to prune live oak trees. We would like to complete this chore before leaf shed and warm spring weather. This is especially true for trees located in oak wilt epicenters, none of which have been identified in Tom Green County. Live oak leaves may turn color due to the cold temperatures of winter, but these discolored leaves will drop in early spring. New leaves sprout and grow in spring and early summer, but unlike many evergreens, only last for one year. This leaf shed and re-leafing can be unnerving to some and is sometimes so dramatic as to leave some live oaks nearly completely void of leaves for one or two weeks in spring. Genetics as well as environmental influences determine the varying degrees of leaf color, size, and shedding. A frequently asked question concerning live oaks is, "How do we eradicate the root sprouts or suckers from beneath our oak trees?" A considerable amount of research has been conducted on both propagating oaks from stem cuttings and reducing these oak sprouts. To date, there are no repellants, hormones or chemical sprays that reliably suppress or remove these suckers without harming the mother trees. Hand grubbing or deep root pruning can reduce these suckers for a few years at best and then they will return. Planting ground covers such as Asian jasmine, which has leaf form similar to live oak, beneath these root-sprouting oak can hide the suckers. Planting both container and balled and burlapped live oaks can be done now. But now is one of the best times to dig trees from pastures or relocate volunteer trees. Remember to give oak trees plenty of room to grow and reach their full potential. In a home landscape, put live oaks no closer than 20 feet from the home, 15 feet from a solid surface and at least 35-40 feet away from the nearest tree. When placing live oaks remember that they may start slow, but they are well adapted, will last forever and are giants. John Begnaud is Tom Green County Extension Agent for Horticulture. He offers his advice on horticulture every other Tuesday in the Home section. In this Jan. 6, 2016 photo, members of the 36th Front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia or FARC, trek to a new camp in Antioquia state, in the northwest Andes of Colombia. Big guerrilla camps are a thing of the past, the rebels now move in smaller groups. The 36th Front is comprised of 22 rank and file fighters, 4 commanders and 2 dogs. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) SHARE In this Jan. 6, 2016 photo, Juan Pablo, center, a commander of the 36th Front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, walks with his comrades in Antioquia state, in the northwest Andes of Colombia. As a commander of the 36th Front, one of the most militarily-active in a half century of warfare, the 41-year-old is capable of reciting verbatim passages from Fidel Castro's speeches even though he's never been to the movies, driven a car or eaten in a restaurant. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) In this Jan. 4, 2016 photo, Yira Castro, a mid-level commander for the 36th Front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, looks up from her laptop at a hidden camp in Antioquia state, in the northwest Andes of Colombia. After three decades in the jungle her loyalty is absolute, she says that if peace does arrive the first thing shell do is take a trip alone with her boyfriend, a fellow rebel. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) In this Jan. 4, 2016 photo, Harrison, a rebel soldier of the 36th Front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, drags the carcass of a hog to an open fire, for singeing to remove body hair, in their hidden camp in Antioquia state, in the northwest Andes of Colombia. The animal will be enough to feed the 26 members of the group for several days. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) In this Jan. 6, 2016 photo, Juliana, a 20-year-old rebel fighter for the 36th Front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, rests from a trek in the northwest Andes of Colombia, in Antioquia state. Like many of her comrades in arms, her path to the FARC was born as much from personal tragedy as political ideology. In her case, she fled an impoverished home at age 16 and followed in the footsteps of an uncle after being raped by her stepfather. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) By JACOBO GARCIA, Associated Press IN THE MOUNTAINS OF NORTHWEST COLOMBIA (AP) The rebel leader known as Juan Pablo carries with him a new telescopic assault rifle and a heavy heart. As a commander of the 36th Front of the FARC, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, one of the most active units in a half-century of bloodshed, the paunch-bellied warrior has spent 25 years plotting ambushes and assembling land mines but has never been to the movies, driven a car or eaten in a restaurant. Now peace is within reach as talks between the guerrillas and the government near conclusion in Cuba, and for the first time the 41-year-old is thinking about a future outside this jungle hideout. His dream: to return to the poor village he left as a teenager and run for mayor. But transition to civilian life will come without his girlfriend and comrade-in-arms who was killed six months ago in an army raid, underscoring the toll still being exacted by Latin America's last major guerrilla conflict even as it winds down. "This war is going to end without victors or vanquished but lots of suffering on both sides," said Juan Pablo, the soft-smiling son of a street vendor. "It's false to say we arrived defeated to the negotiating table. They dealt us some heavy blows, of course, but 51 years of war against an enemy backed by the most powerful army in the world (the U.S. army) has not made us cower, because the injustices that led us to take up arms are still occurring." That mixture of pride and trepidation about the future is common among the FARC's roughly 7,000 fighters, many of whom, like Juan Pablo, come from poor rural upbringings and struggle to imagine life outside the highly regimented ranks of the guerrillas. The Associated Press made a rare, three-day visit to a secret FARC camp in Antioquia state in early January to see how the region's oldest leftist insurgency is preparing for a peace that looks more tantalizingly close than ever. AP journalists were directed to a remote meeting point and then escorted on an hours-long trek to the jungle site. The FARC insisted that the camp's location not be revealed to protect the lives of its fighters. Decades of fighting between guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries and the armed forces has, according to government figures, left a toll of more than 220,000 dead, some 40,000 disappeared and over 5 million driven from their homes the largest displaced population of any country after Syria. But after President Juan Manuel Santos traveled to Cuba in September and shook the hand of the FARC's top commander, both sides feel confident enough to predict a final deal as early as March. On Tuesday, both sides announced from Cuba that they would request the United Nations prepare a 12-month mission made up of unarmed Latin American observers to monitor adherence to an eventual ceasefire and rebel disarmament. If peace deal arrives, this generation of FARC guerrillas would be the first to abandon its stated aim of overthrowing the government and instead fight for their ideals at the ballot box. At the makeshift camp that was temporarily home to 22 rank-and-file fighters, four commanders and two dogs, the day starts at around 4:30 a.m. With the moon still hanging on the horizon, the jungle comes to life to the sound of metal pots clanging as breakfast is prepared, rain falling on giant fronds and rubber boots sloshing through the mud. Thanks to a unilateral FARC cease-fire, it has been months since gunshots rang out in this remote corner of the Andes where the rebels share the dense forest with venomous snakes, 20 kinds of exotic frogs and South America's only bear species. Still, the rebels show no sign of letting down their guard after a decade-old government offensive that more than halved their troop strength. They sleep with their weapons, restrict all conversation at night and use assumed names to protect their identities. Once-a-day radio contact with other units happens via code, and lengthier missives are saved to thumb drives and transported through a network of human couriers. Fresh in everyone's mind is the 2011 death of the FARC commander known as Alfonso Cano, hunted down and killed by the Colombian army thanks to a cellphone intercept. Their wariness highlights one of the thorniest issues that negotiators must still work out: How and under whose auspices the FARC will demobilize, when experience has taught the rebels that politics can be just as perilous as war. The guerrillas recall too well how during 1980s peace talks that ultimately failed, the FARC established a party known as the Patriotic Union as its political arm. In just a few years, more than 3,000 leftist activists, rebel sympathizers and two presidential candidates were gunned down by paramilitaries, often in cahoots with state security forces. It became a cautionary tale in a country plagued by political violence since its independence from Spain. "We learned a lot from that experience, but who says the only way to practice politics is in Congress?" said Leonidas, another commander. "One thing is clear: In this new phase the FARC is not going to demobilize, we are going to mobilize" politically. He said that activism would mostly involve work on behalf of the rural poor, a reflection of the FARC's 1960s origins as a self-defense force formed to protect farmer-run "independent republics" from the military. While peace may be in the air, the rhetoric of conflict is hard to shed. Rebels call superiors "comrades" and deserters "traitors," and harangues about "oligarchs" and the U.S. "empire" oppressing working-class Colombians are a daily trope. Forget cheap romance novels or literary classics; the only reading material at the camp includes volumes like the collected speeches of Fidel Castro, biographies of Argentine revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara and journalistic accounts of paramilitary land grabs. Juan Pablo, for one, is capable of reciting verbatim from Castro's speeches. But if the FARC can appear stuck in an ideological time warp, the rebels say the group rescued them from poverty, taught them to read and provided a "family" and sense of belonging. In hours of conversation during the AP visit, none showed any outward sign of discontent or criticized the peace process. They also tried to downplay the FARC's deep involvement in drugs a lucrative trade that could prove a powerful economic incentive to remain armed, especially for midlevel commanders. Families living in the remote valleys that the 36th Front lords over acknowledge paying a war tax to protect their coca plantings, but the rebels say they will help develop alternative crops if an accord is reached. As a confidence-building gesture, the FARC has renounced ransom kidnappings to fund its insurgency. And while abuses such as recruitment of minors and civilian massacres will be judged by special peace tribunals, the rebels note that human rights groups blame the paramilitaries for most of the killings during the conflict. Even as the camp maintains a wartime footing, the guerrillas have begun holding twice-a-day peace assemblies. On a recent day the first one, before breakfast, was led by Yira Castro, a commander whose nom de guerre honors a noted Colombian communist. Under the shade of a tree, she read from a 63-page sub-accord that was recently signed in Havana. Castro, a sort of mentor to other women rebels, has spent much of the last three years with the talks in Havana, and her relative worldliness shows in her Cuban-inflected Spanish and new orange laptop. Listening attentively was Juliana, who joined the discussion after butchering a pig that would feed the camp for several days. Like many others, her path to the FARC was born as much from personal tragedy as political ideology. At age 16, after she says she was raped by her stepfather, she fled her impoverished home and followed in the footsteps of an uncle. Juliana said that if she hadn't taken up arms she would have liked to have studied computers. But now she hopes to serve the FARC even during peacetime: "I want to prepare myself to get involved in politics and continue my association with the organization." Amid the Spartan life of a guerrilla, she allows herself one small feminine indulgence: light-pink lipstick. Her companion, Alexis, spoke of what he sees as the banality of relationships in the outside world. "In the FARC we never touch money. Everything is given to us, from medicine to cigarettes. That's why there is no dependency in which she expects me to provide for her," Alexis said, taking Juliana's hand. "Between us there is only love." Talk came to an abrupt halt as an unfamiliar airplane flew overhead a second time, setting nerves on edge. "Politics is a lot tougher than war," another commander, Anibal, observed from his hammock. "You pay for a mistake on the battlefield with your life," he said, swinging back and forth, "but an error in the field of politics brings down an entire organization." ___ Jacobo Garcia is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/jacobogg His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/journalist/jacobo-garcia Damian Cate SHARE By Staff Report UPDATED 11:30 A.M. An Abilene man is in the Taylor County Jail after being charged with two felonies in connection with the body of a newborn baby that was discovered in a south Abilene home. Damian Cate, 22, was arrested by Abilene Police and charged with murder and tampering with evidence. He is being held in lieu of bonds totaling $300,000. The body of the infant was found Monday by police hidden in a home in the 400 block of South 25th Street. Details of the Abilene Police Departments search warrant became available Tuesday. The warrant was sought by Jason Haak of the APD and signed by 104th District Court Judge Lee Hamilton. Police suspected five people in connection with the death of the infant, according to the search warrant. No one else had been charged in the case Monday morning, but the investigation is continuing. The 18-year-old mother of the baby told a police detective that she gave birth to the child in the bedroom and tried to flush the baby down the toilet, according to the search warrant. Police received a call from Hendrick Medical Center around 8:33 a.m. Monday, when a hospital staff member alerted them about a patient that the doctor believed may have delivered a baby and dumped the newborn, per the search warrant. Detectives responded to the hospital and to the residence. A person at the residence gave consent to a search. Police stopped their search after not being able to locate the child, so they could obtain the search warrant. But they did find the following: a sheet in the washer with fresh blood, a towel also in the washer covered in still wet blood, blood on the laundry room floor, the southwest bedroom floor, and a knife with blood on it on the bedroom floor. Police also found blood on the bath tub, a sock with blood on it and tissue with blood on it. ORIGINAL STORY: The body of an infant was found Monday by Abilene police investigators hidden in a home in the 400 block of South 25th Street. Police said employees of Hendrick Medical Center reported at 8:33 a.m. Monday that an 18-year-old woman was receiving treatment for severe bleeding, determined later to be from giving birth to a full-term child. The child was not at the hospital, police said. After an initial investigation, detectives went to the residence and located tissue remains in the sewer. They later found the body of the newborn child hidden in the residence. Police said there was visible trauma to the body of the newborn. The case is being treated as a homicide. The case is still active, and suspects are being interviewed, police said. SHARE By Titus Falodun ABILENE, Texas - The mother of a newborn found dead Monday in a south Abilene home was arrested Tuesday afternoon after being released from the hospital. Her boyfriend previously had been arrested in connection with the babys death. Amber Craker, 18, and Damian Cate, 22, have been charged with first-degree felony murder and second-degree felony tampering with/fabricating physical evidence with intent to impair a human corpse. They remain in Taylor County Jail in lieu of bail totaling $300,000 each. According to a search warrant affidavit sought by Sgt. Jason Haak of the Abilene Police Department, police were contacted about 8:30 a.m. Monday by a staff member at Hendrick Medical Center alerting them about a patient who the doctor believed may have delivered a baby and later dumped the newborn. The document was signed by 104th District Judge Lee Hamilton Detectives went to the hospital and the patients residence in the 400 block of South 25th Street, where a person at the home gave consent to a search, according to police. After no child was located, police halted the search to obtain the search warrant. Officers, however, did find the following: a sheet in the washer with fresh blood, a towel also in the washer covered in still wet blood, blood on the laundry room floor, the southwest bedroom floor, and a knife with blood on it on the bedroom floor. Upon their return to the residence, detectives reported finding tissue remains in the sewer. Police also reported finding blood on the bathtub, a sock with blood on it and tissue with blood on it. The newborns body eventually was found in the trash, according to police. Police said there was visible trauma to the body of the newborn, which appeared to be born alive. Justice of the Peace Mike McAuliffe pronounced the infant dead at 7:10 p.m. Monday and ordered the body sent to Tarrant County for autopsy. Police said other evidence collected included a placenta; a trash can with blood evidence; clothing with suspected blood evidence; a plunger; bedding; a pillow with suspected blood evidence; a knife; scissors; shoes; a laptop; a cellphone; and a mop head. At the hospital, Craker told police that she gave birth to the child in the bedroom and tried to flush the baby down the toilet around 1 a.m. Monday, according to the search warrant. Craker reportedly had told a family member that she felt something release from her stomach. When someone asked what was going on, she reportedly replied, nothing and that this had happened before. Cate and others then accompanied Craker to the hospital after she passed out in the kitchen. Dr. Preston Alexander, an OB-GYN, reportedly told police that he believes Craker had a full-term delivery of the 6-pound baby. The patient reportedly said she did not know she was pregnant and that the bleeding was a result of her cutting herself with a razor while shaving, according to the search warrant. Cate later reportedly said he saw Crakers father using tongs to remove flesh from inside Amber and that he didnt know what they did with the baby afterward, according to the search warrant. Police spokesman Rick Tomlin said he had no knowledge of any similar incidents occurring in Abilene. Additional arrests are possible in the case, police said. FILE - In this Jan. 14, 2016 file photo, Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt, speaks in Hanover, N.H. There was a time when Democrats fretted about Hillary Clintons presidential campaign becoming a coronation, leaving her without the tests of a primary season to prepare for a general election matchup against the Republican nominee. In the past two weeks, the race for the Democratic Partys 2016 presidential nomination has evolved from relatively civil disagreement over policy into a contentious winter competition between Clinton and Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File) SHARE Coalition needed to turn tide to Sanders By Arit John The big question for Bernie Sanders is no longer whether he can win over white liberals in Iowa and New Hampshire, but whether he can put together a significant coalition of minority voters in a state like South Carolina, where an overwhelming majority of black Democrats are passing on his political revolution in favor of Hillary Clinton. While wins in the first two states in the Democratic nomination race would give Sanders momentum, losses in more diverse states would call into question his ability to re-create the coalition of white liberals, young voters and people of color that elected Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. Sanders is still an unknown quantity for many African-Americans in South Carolina, which will hold the Souths first Democratic primary on Feb. 27. Palmetto State voters who have heard of the Vermont senator may like him, but, so far, they know and like Clinton better. I havent listened a lot to Bernie Sanders, and to me I dont think Id vote for him, said Jacqueline Owens, a 60-year-old librarian from Irmo, S.C., on Monday at the statehouse, where the three candidates spoke at the King Day at the Dome event celebrating the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. after debating on TV the previous night. He doesnt appeal to me. I dont think hed be that strong a supporter of black votes and black issues. Id have to do more research on him, though. Or, as Sammie Bacoke, a 72-year-old Army veteran backing Clinton, put it: I think hes all right, but I dont think that he has the qualifications to be president like Secretary of State Clinton. Sanders made his case to South Carolina voters on Monday by emphasizing his ties to the civil rights movement and how his platform carries on its themes. Standing on the steps of the statehouse, where the Confederate flag hung until this summer, Sanders asked the crowd of hundreds to remember that King, at the end of his life, was working for the rights of poor people and low-paid workers. And I wonder if Dr. King was with us today, what would he say about a nation in which the top one tenth of 1 percent own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent? Sanders asked. And what would he say about a nation in which 29 million Americans have no health insurance? Sanderss speech was well-received by the audience, but the crowd was more enthusiastic about Clinton. Theres no question that Hillary, at this point, is ahead. You can tell in this crowd, Rep. Jim Clyburn said on Saturday night after his annual fish fry. But its very clear that he is doing well in this state as he is around the country. While Sanderss events are often described as overwhelmingly white, there were several, mostly young, African-American Sanders supporters at the fish fry. Kyundra Martin, a 17-year-old student, said she likes that Sanders talks about issues like LGBT rights and free college education. Clinton, she said, tries to hard to reach out to young voters. Martin was at the fish fry with Janet Williams, a 51-year-old federal employee from Seneca, S.C., backing Clinton. I would say not Bernie because hes new to me, Williams said, adding that Clinton has already been under the microscope. Recent polling has shown Sanders trailing Clinton by an average of about 40 points in the state. That deficit is even wider among African-American voters. According to a December CBS/YouGov online poll, Clinton led Sanders 67 percent to 31 percent overall, but for black voters that margin increased to 79 percent to 19 percent. The Sanders campaign says his numbers have improved since the start of his campaign, just as they have improved in Iowa and New Hampshire. His campaign also notes that candidates have received boosts in later primary states after winning the Iowa caucuses or the New Hampshire primary. According to polling averages from RealClearPolitics, Sanders has an almost 7 point advantage over Clinton in New Hampshire and trails her by 4 points in Iowa. Sanders has six campaign offices, 53 paid staffers and more than 100 part-time community organizers in South Carolina, according to the campaign. Theyve aired ads, done interviews on African-American radio stations, and visited black churches and historically black colleges and universities. During the debate on Sunday, the campaign aired television ads in the state for the first time. At the state partys First in the South dinner on Saturday, Sanders focused on black voters, emphasizing his work with Clyburn to include funding for community health centers in the Affordable Care Act, his participation in the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and efforts to address felon disenfranchisement, minority vote suppression, and criminal justice system problems. To make his case in the spin room following Sundays debate, Sanders brought in his most high-profile advocates in the black community: former Ohio state Rep. Nina Turner, Georgia state Rep. LaDawn Jones (also his Georgia state director), and Michael Render, better known as Run the Jewels rapper Killer Mike. While they acknowledged that persuading black voters to give Sanders a chance would be a challenge, they emphasized that his platform would help black Americans the most. Render, who posted a popular six-part interview in a barber shop with Sanders last month, rejected the idea that Clinton is doing a better job of reaching out to black voters because they favor her in polls. What Im seeing in the African-American community is people waking up. What Im seeing among black men in particular, who are often left out of the voting conversation, are saying that this is a candidate that Ill support, Render said. So what Id like to say to pollsters is youre polling in the wrong places: You need to get in some barber shops and some beauty shops. And throughout the weekend, there were black Sanders supporters holding signs, wearing stickers, and cheering their candidate on. One of those supporters was Lillie Hart, a 67-year-old retired social worker and self-described socialist from Columbia, who spent Monday morning handing out flyers and talking to undecided voters for several minutes at a time about Sanders ahead of his King Day speech. When I talk to people about Bernie Sanders, Im talking to people who dont understand or even know of him, and so I have to explain who he is, Hart said. But once you talk to them and tell them what this man has been about all of his life, they start thinking Well, maybe, Ill have to look at him. So I do believe that people are open to changing their mind. SHARE Francisco Zertuche Suspect Man sought in woman's slaying By Jennifer Rios As Thursday drew to a close, city police were seeking Francisco Zertuche, 53, of San Angelo, as a suspect in the city's second homicide of the day. Police were called to a house in the 2400 block of Raney Street at 9:15 a.m. Thursday to investigate a report of a body. They found Maria Alcantar, 55, of San Angelo dead in bed, where she had been discovered by her daughter, according to a news release. Police declined to provide details regarding the cause of death. "There are a number of suspicious circumstances surrounding Alcantar's death, which is being investigated as a homicide," the news release says. Police declined to elaborate on Zertuche's relationship to Alcantar, but they confirmed that several agencies, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, were alerted in the search. Public help was sought in finding Zertuche, who is described as 5 feet, 6 inches tall and 160 pounds, with black hair and brown eyes. He is known to drive a red Dodge Neon with Texas license plate 024-LCZ, police said, and is also known to have lived at 3105 N. Chadbourne St., Apartment No. 3. Earlier in the day, police were investigating the day's first homicide, the death of Jorge Ibarra Jr., 33, who was found stabbed in the 300 block of East 22nd Street. Alcantar's death is the sixth homicide this year in San Angelo, and the third this week. City police detectives were canvassing the neighborhood where Alcantar lived for information that might pertain to her death, and the department was also searching for people of interest, the release said. Detective Javier Barrera, speaking at the scene, confirmed that Alcantar was the mother of Manuel Alcantar, who was shot to death in a confrontation with state police in Concho County on Jan. 1. Manuel Alcantar, 20, was being sought as a suspect in the shooting death of San Angelo resident Lynda Fairchild. The vehicle in which he was a passenger was pulled over by a Texas state trooper Jan. 1 near Eden, and Alcantar opened fire on the trooper, authorities have said. The trooper fired back, hitting Alcantar, who later died in Concho County Hospital in Eden. Fairchild, 38, had been shot to death on Dec. 31. City Police Sgt. Rusty Herndon said police believe Maria Alcantar's death is not related to Fairchild's killing. Violence by the year Homicides by year in San Angelo: * 2009: 6 * 2008: 5 * 2007: 1 * 2006: 3 * 2005: 3 * 2004: 1 * 2003: 2 * 2002: 0 * 2001: 2 * 2000: 1 * 1999: 4 * 1998: 4 * 1997: 0 * 1996: 2 * 1995: 3 * 1994: 5 * 1993: 8 * 1992: 5 * 1991: 7 * 1990: 5 * 1989: 5 * 1988: 5 * 1987: 8 * 1986: 2 * 1985: 11 SOURCE: FBI UNIFORM CRIME REPORTS, STANDARD-TIMES ARCHIVES. 2009 Ahomicides These people have been victims of homicide in 2009 in San Angelo: * Randy Cave, 55, found Jan. 15. * James Thomas Phillips, 60, found Feb. 16. * Kevin James Harris, 21, March 2. * Michael Jason Neeley, 29, April 5. * Maria Alcantar, 55, April 9. * Jorge Ibarra, 33, April 9. Lake View Chiefs feeling sense of urgency to get in playoff chase The Lake View High School football team hopes to get its first District 2-4A win of the season on the road against Big Spring on Friday night. Republican legislative leaders in Illinois on Wednesday proposed a state takeover of Chicago Public Schools and permitting the troubled district to declare bankruptcy to get its finances in order, billing the controversial ideas as a "lifeline" and not "a state bailout.""We didn't come to this lightly, but the track record of Chicago and its public school system is abysmal," said Senate Republican leader Christine Radogno of Lemont.House Republican leader Jim Durkin of Western Springs said "the goal here is to provide the tools to right the ship."It's the latest move as Gov. Bruce Rauner and Mayor Rahm Emanuel continue to play the blame game over CPS' $480 million budget shortfall that threatens layoffs and has led to heavy borrowing to keep the state's largest school district afloat.Emanuel, who is in Washington, D.C., for a national mayor's conference, has spoken out against Rauner's bankruptcy idea in the past, saying instead the state should provide more money to CPS to cover its pension costs. That position hasn't changed."The mayor is 100 percent opposed to Gov. Rauner's 'plan' to drive CPS bankrupt. If the governor was serious about helping Chicago students, he should start by proposing _ and passing _ a budget that fully funds education and treats CPS students like every other child in the state," Emanuel spokeswoman Kelley Quinn said in a statement Tuesday.As described by the GOP leaders, the legislation would allow the Rauner-appointed State Board of Education to remove the current Chicago Board of Education and create an independent authority to run CPS until it is determined the district is no longer in financial difficulty. The leaders said the change would add CPS to a state financial oversight law that it is exempted from but that applies to all other Illinois school districts.Another measure would allow school districts like CPS to declare bankruptcy, which could allow it to void union contracts. Rep. Ron Sandack, R-Downers Grove, acknowledged that's a possibility under the bankruptcy option.The General Assembly, however, is controlled by Chicago Democrats unlikely to warmly greet the takeover and bankruptcy ideas. Senate President John Cullerton outright dismissed the plan, saying it "is not going to happen.""It's mean-spirited and evidence of their total lack of knowledge of the real problems facing Chicago Public Schools. The unfair treatment of pension systems by the state is the immediate cause of CPS' financial problem," Cullerton said in a statement. "That situation ought to be addressed rather than promoting this far-fetched notion that the state is somehow in the position to take over Chicago schools. This ridiculous idea only serves as a distraction from the state's problems that these two state leaders should be focusing on."The state covers the cost of teacher pensions in the suburbs and Downstate, but not for CPS, which has long had its own pension system. CPS instead gets more state money in other education areas as Chicago homeowners pay property taxes that cover teacher pension costs.Durkin and Radogno tried to pressure Cullerton and House Speaker Michael Madigan on the issue."We are willing to help Chicago Public Schools, but we have been stonewalled by Mike Madigan and the Democratic majority to protect the status quo," Radogno said.State lawmakers' effort to revive the bankruptcy and school finance authority options are sure to be opposed by the Chicago Teachers Union and its allied advocacy groups.Talk of a move to re-establish state fiscal oversight of the city's schools has circulated since the summer and comes as bond ratings agencies have dropped CPS' debt deeper into junk status in advance of district plans to add more than $850 million to its overall debt load.The city's schools have been under the state's emergency oversight before. In 1980, a district fiscal crisis that prompted banks to withhold loans from CPS prodded state lawmakers to create the Chicago School Finance Authority to supervise schools.CPS had to submit a balanced budget to the authority, which had power to keep school doors closed until it approved or rejected district spending plans and contracts.That arrangement lasted until 1995, when a Republican-led legislature passed legislation that gave then-Mayor Richard M. Daley control of CPS. Daley quickly sought permission from Springfield to divert district pension dollars to other uses and saw the school system take its first partial pension holiday.On Tuesday, Rauner was asked about a CPS bankruptcy bill and took shots at the mayor."I'm worried that the mayor is failing. The mayor gave in and caved on the (teachers) strike 4 { years ago. Hurt the taxpayers, hurt the schoolchildren as a result. I'm very concerned about the trajectory of where we're going with CPS. And right now, the mayor's only real message to the state government is, 'Hey, we failed financially our schoolchildren, send us half a billion dollars.' That's not a reasonable position for the mayor to take," Rauner told reporters.Rauner said he would be taking unspecified "action to protect the schoolchildren so they have good access and they have teachers and they have effective classrooms. And we're going to protect the schoolchildren and the taxpayers as well."Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool fired back, calling the governor's comments "deeply irresponsible." The Chicago Teachers Union and district negotiators met again Tuesday in an effort to replace a contract that expired over the summer."The governor is defending a school funding system that is separate but unequal," Claypool said in a statement. Teacher absences forced 88 Detroit schools to close today, the largest in a string of recent sick-outs meant to call attention to large class sizes, dilapidated buildings and other problems in Michigan's largest school district.The sick-out idled most of Detroit Public Schools' 46,000 students. It came on the same day President Barack Obama was visiting the North American International Auto Show at Cobo Hall."Things have been happening for so long, and I think teachers felt like they had no voice," said Lacetia Walker, an instructional specialist in special education for DPS. "This has been a way for us to draw attention to the conditions of the buildings, the fact that teachers' STEP pay has been frozen for years. ..."We realized that nobody is coming to save us, so we have to save ourselves."District officials said they had no choice but to close schools amid the sickout."This means that 44,790 of the district's 46,325 students lost a critical day of instruction," spokeswoman Michelle Zdrodowski said. "There were, however, nine district schools that stayed open today. We appreciate the teachers and staff at those schools for being in their classrooms and ensuring that their students are learning today."Zdrodowski said the district has been meeting with teachers since last week to discuss their concerns but said the sickouts could make a legislative fix harder."The only way we will be able to address the bigger issues is through an investment by the Michigan Legislature in the students and families of DPS," Zdrodowski said. "Obtaining this support becomes more difficult with each sickout that happens."Walker said the sickouts were organized by a grassroots group called DPS Teachers Fight Back, though teachers at individual buildings voted on whether to participate.The closed schools are: Academy of the Americas, Adult Education Center -- West, A.L. Holmes, Ann Arbor Trail, Bagley, Bates, Benjamin Carson, Bennett, Blackwell, Bow, Breithaupt, Brewer, Bunche, Burton International, Carleton, Carstens, Carver, Cass Tech, Clark, Clemente, Clippert, Cody APL, Cody DIT, Cody Medicine, Cooke, Crockett CTC, Davis Aerospace, Davison, DCP @Northwestern, Detroit International Academy, Detroit Lions Academy, Detroit School of the Arts, Diane Banks Williamson, Dixon, Dossin, Douglass, Drew, Durfee, Duke Ellington, Earhart, East English Village, Edison and Emerson.Also closed are Fisher Lower, Fisher Upper, FLICS, Gardner, Garvey, Golightly CTC, Gompers, Harms, Henderson, Hutchinson, Keidan, J.R. King, Martin Luther King Jr. High School, Ludington, MacKenzie, Mann, Marquette, Thurgood Marshall, Mason, Maybury, Moses Field Center, Munger, Neinas, Nichols, Osborn Evergreen, Osborn Math, Osborn Prep, Palmer Park, Pasteur, Priest, Randolph, Renaissance High School, Paul Robeson/Malcolm X, Ronald Brown, Sampson, Shultze, Spain, Thirkell, Turning Point, Wayne, West Side Academy, J.L. White, Charles Wright and Coleman Young.At 7:30 a.m., the district posted on its Facebook page: "The following DPS schools are open today: Communication Media Arts, Chrysler, Fleming, Golightly Elementary-Middle, Greenfield Union, Pulaski, Priest, Vernor, Western"Teachers have been using rolling sickouts in recent weeks to spotlight the poor conditions of dilapidated schools. Many say they're also concerned about stagnant wages, super-sized classes and Gov. Rick Snyder's controversial plan to divide DPS into two, one to pay off the district's debt, the other to educate children"I feel like if this is the only way that someone will at least listen to all the atrocities that are going on in DPS, then I support the teachers 100%," said Jeffrey Gisstennar, president of a parents group at Renaissance and father of a sophomore. "Teachers have one of the most important jobs on the planet."DPS is in danger of running out of cash by April or May, according to Emergency Manager Darnell Earley. The district's total debt, including unfunded pension liabilities, is estimated to be as high as $3.5 billion.Last week, State Sen. Goeff Hansen, R-Hart, introduced two long-awaited bills aimed at revamping public education in Detroit. It would, among other things, add additional financial oversight and a school board made up of appointees of Snyder and Mayor Mike Duggan, the latter being a point of contention for Detroit lawmakers who want local control immediately. The body would later be replaced by an elected board. Milwaukee has some real problems. The number of homicides increased 69 percent last year to 145, the highest number in more than a decade. It's the fifth poorest big city in the country, with 29 percent of its residents living in poverty -- nearly double the national average.For those reasons, along with complaints about racial disparities in unemployment, health and education, Democratic Mayor Tom Barrett appears vulnerable as he seeks a fourth term. Still, most political observers in the Wisconsin city would be surprised if Barrett, who was first elected in 2004 and has run two unsuccessful campaigns for governor against the incumbent Scott Walker, ends up losing office.Barrett faces a total of six challengers in the Feb. 16 primary, including two aldermen, Joe Davis and Bob Donovan. The top two candidates in the nonpartisan race will compete in the April general election.Davis and Donovan both announced their candidacies back in 2014, but each has been slow to launch a full-scale campaign. They've criticized Barrett extensively but haven't done much to define their own platforms. Barrett started the year with $810,000 stocked in his campaign treasury, compared with just $25,000 apiece for Davis and Donovan."The mayor's certainly not taking anything for granted," said Thad Nation, a political consultant in Milwaukee. "But I don't think anybody here sees them as very serious challengers."Barrett argues that the city has been battered by forces beyond his control, such as the recession and a state government that's put roadblocks in Milwaukee's path. The state, for example, blocked funding for a streetcar line and eliminated the city's residency requirements for police and firefighters. (That state law, however, was thrown out by the state court of appeals last summer.)Barrett boasts that Milwaukee is now on the rise, with some $5 billion worth of downtown development over the past decade and another $2 billion worth of projects in the pipeline."The city has made huge strides during the mayor's tenure," said Patrick Guarasci, a senior adviser to the Barrett campaign. "We're interested in explaining to the city of Milwaukee why the decisions he has made have set up the city for long-term success."Some numbers do look good. Barrett has kept property taxes under control while increasing spending on police nearly 40 percent. Although the alarming number of homicides can't be dismissed, property crime has come down and the number of teen pregnancies have been cut in half since 2006."Tom Barrett is more the low-key, fiscally-prudent manager whos tried to build strong, enduring systems in every part of city government," wrote Bruce Murphy, editor of the online news site. "Year by year, in an incremental fashion, the Barrett administration has been steadily working and generally succeeding at making this a better city."But not everyone's fortunes have been rising.Downtown may be seeing the most activity in a generation, but many people in Milwaukee are mired in despair. A Brookings Institution study in 2014 showed that income inequality grew more in Milwaukee than in all but five other large U.S. cities from 2007 to 2012. Citywide, 42 percent of children are living in poverty.Police and firefighters also aren't on Barrett's side. The police union has endorsed Donovan, while the firefighters' union is backing Davis."Over the course of the last 12 budget cycles, he has systematically reduced frontline staffing every single budget year," complained Dave Seager, president of the Milwaukee Professional Firefighters Association.Both Davis and Donovan are reaching out to particular blocs of dissatisfied voters. Davis enjoys support among black voters, while Donovan has attracted more supporters from the conservative white precincts. So far at least, there's no evidence that either will be able to create a large enough coalition of Barrett skeptics to defeat him."If Barrett's judged by how he's managed the city, I think he'd have to be given a passing grade -- even by his opponents," said Mordecai Lee, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.Barrett won more than 70 percent of the vote in both of his previous re-election bids. But even if he wins this time, he's unlikely to get such strong support again."All it takes is one good snowstorm or one horrible crime," Lee said, "and all of a sudden public opinion could suddenly change." Gov. Christie on Tuesday acted on more than 100 pieces of legislation, vetoing bills that would ban firearms for certain criminals, raise the smoking age, and preserve nonprofit hospitals' property-tax exemption.Christie, a Republican running for president, had until Tuesday to take action on bills the Legislature passed during the lame-duck session between November's election and the start of the new legislative session last week.He "pocket vetoed" dozens of bills, meaning he didn't sign them into law or officially reject them. The practical effect is that the legislation did not become law, and legislators must start the process all over again if they wish to advance their initiatives.One such bill Christie pocket-vetoed would prohibit persons convicted of carjacking, gang criminality, racketeering, or terroristic threats from purchasing or owning a gun.Current law already imposes that restriction on individuals convicted of other crimes such as homicide, aggravated assault, arson, and endangering the welfare of a child.The bill, which passed the Democratic-controlled Legislature without a single "no" vote, also would make carjacking and the other listed offenses crimes of the second degree, which are punishable by a fine of up to $150,000 and a prison sentence of five to 10 years.Another gun-related bill Christie let lapse would require firearms retailers to sell and maintain an inventory of so-called smart guns. Also known as personalized guns, the weapons use technology, such as fingerprinting, to ensure they can be fired only by the person who legally purchased them.The bill also would repeal a provision of a 2002 law that said once smart-gun technology was available, firearms retailers would be prohibited from selling traditional handguns. Democratic lawmakers who sponsored that law said it had the unintended effect of stalling the technology's development, as gun-rights groups lobbied against it.The National Rifle Association opposed the latest effort, even as Democrats presented it as a rollback of a previously onerous regulation.The bill passed the Legislature along party lines."This is, quite simply, an attempt to protect children from gun violence, especially accidental shootings, but the governor wasn't even interested enough to act," said Assemblyman Gordon Johnson (D., Bergen), a bill sponsor.Christie's rivals for the GOP nomination have attacked his record on gun rights, and the governor has acknowledged that he has evolved on the issue.The governor's office declined to comment on any specific bill Christie pocket vetoed. But spokeswoman Joelle Farrell said: "Having the Legislature pass more than 100 bills in such a hasty and scrambled way, praying for them to be rubber stamped, is never a good formula for effectively doing public business."Christie also declined to sign a bill that would have raised the smoking age from 19 to 21. New Jersey is among just four states and the District of Columbia where the minimum age to purchase tobacco is 19.Nearly 60,000, or 12.9 percent, of the state's high school students smoke, according to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids."We are disappointed that Governor Christie vetoed this measure that would have protected thousands of New Jersey's kids from a lifetime of tobacco addiction, thereby saving lives and health-care costs," said Ethan Hasbrouck, a lobbyist for an advocacy group affiliated with the American Cancer Society.Hasbrouck added, "Evidence suggests that if a young person does not begin smoking by the age of 26, it is very unlikely that he or she will ever take up smoking." Hawaii is the only state where the minimum age to buy tobacco products is 21.The bill faced opposition among convenience stores and gas stations.Christie also vetoed a bill that would preserve nonprofit hospitals' exemption from property taxes but also require them to pay annual community service fees to municipalities for public safety costs.The exemption had come under scrutiny after a tax court judge ruled in June that a nonprofit hospital in Morris County "operated and used its property for a profit-making purpose" and therefore owed property taxes.The judge warned that other nonprofit hospitals with for-profit medical providers on-site across the state may not qualify for the property-tax exemption, and hospitals feared the decision could encourage municipalities to file lawsuits.Under the bill, hospitals' community service fees would help pay for public safety costs in their municipalities and counties. Under a formula established by the Legislature, Cooper University Hospital in Camden would pay about $580,000 annually. Marlton-based Virtua Health would owe more than $1 million total to a couple municipalities. Facing the biggest crisis of his five years as governor, demands for his resignation and even calls for his criminal prosecution, Gov. Rick Snyder accepted major responsibility for the Flint drinking water catastrophe in his State of the State address Tuesday and set out short-term plans and long-term promises to put things right."I'm sorry and I will fix it," Snyder said near the opening of his 50-minute speech, directly addressing the residents of Flint. "You did not create this crisis, and you do not deserve this.""Government failed you at the federal, state and local level," Snyder said. "We need to make sure this never happens again in any Michigan city."Snyder pledged to release his 2014 and 2015 e-mails related to the crisis, which many groups have requested as a step toward greater transparency. The governor's office is exempt from the Michigan Freedom of Information Act.Snyder spokesman Dave Murray said officials are uploading the e-mails, and he hopes they will be posted on the governor's website sometime Wednesday morning. They will represent all e-mails sent to or from the governor regarding Flint water in 2014 and 2015, with only certain personal information possibly redacted, he said.Murray said any e-mails sent or received on Snyder's personal e-mail account should also be covered, because the governor forwards all government-related e-mails to his government account.Reaction was mixed. Democrats said they were outraged and expressed concern the e-mails Snyder releases will be incomplete and "cherry picked."Republicans were much more supportive. "He owned up to it and he said we're going to fix it -- that's good," said Sen. Mike Nofs, R-Battle Creek.But Sen. Curtis Hertel, D-Meridian Township, said it took national media attention to focus Snyder and his administration on addressing the problem with Flint's water."It's good that there's a plan coming around, but it's a little late," Hertel said.Laura Sullivan, a professor at Kettering University in Flint who was among a small group of city residents who pushed to get attention for the drinking water problem, said Snyder "sounded very sincere" and she believes the state is finally moving in the right direction on the crisis.But Senate Minority Leader Jim Ananich, D-Flint, said Snyder delivered "lip service and passing the buck" instead of "a comprehensive, actionable plan to make this right."Snyder, a Republican, devoted almost the entire speech to the lead contamination of Flint's drinking water supply and steps he will take to address the health and educational needs of Flint children exposed to lead.But he also highlighted the critical importance of finding a financial fix for Detroit Public Schools, while also highlighting the improved financial prospects of the City of Detroit a year after emerging from a Chapter 9 bankruptcy initiated and largely managed by the state."Detroit schools are in need of a transformational change," Snyder said. "Let's solve this problem and help the kids. The time to act is now and avoid court intervention."Beyond Detroit Public Schools, Snyder announced a commission on 21st Century education, tasked with improving Michigan's school performance across the state. He said he wants the new commission to report by November.But Snyder's main focus was the City of Flint and its drinking water.Snyder used the speech to thank pediatrician Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha of Hurley Children's Hospital, who was in the audience in the House chamber, and Virginia Tech researcher Marc Edwards, who was not. The two professionals forced Michigan government to lift a cloak of denial and finally acknowledge, around Oct. 1, a problem of lead leaching into Flint drinking water that began in April of 2014.Snyder gave no signs he plans to resign from office with a little less than three years remaining in his final term, saying he wants to stay on and put things right, aides said.Flint initiatives Snyder highlighted, either in the speech or in documents released at the time of his speech, include:* Ramping up the number of Michigan National Guard troops in Flint from fewer than 100 currently to about 200, with plans for the troops to staff water stations while the Red Cross and other volunteers complete visits to all of the city's roughly 33,000 households this week.* Appealing President Barack Obama's refusal to declare a federal disaster in Flint when he declared a federal emergency there on Saturday. A federal disaster declaration, which is reserved for natural disasters, would make greater amounts of federal funding available.* Asking the Legislature for a $28.5-million supplemental appropriation to cover immediate Flint needs, such as the cost of bottled water and filters and troops from the Michigan National Guard, which Snyder mobilized Jan. 12 after declaring a state of emergency on Jan. 5.* Including in that appropriation about $2 million to support Flint utilities and stop any threatened shut-off of water customers, while the state and the city work on a broader plan to address the problem of Flint residents being billed for water they can't drink.* Also included is close to $1 million to increase the number of nurses and other health professionals in Flint-area schools and about $120,000 as a first step in expanding capacity at child and adolescent health centers.* Expanding age eligibility for the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) healthy nutrition program. Experts say good nutrition minimizes the impact of lead exposure.* Testing and replacing faucets and other fixtures at schools and other public facilities that could be potential sources for the leaching of lead.A key Republican pledged quick action on the supplemental request for Flint. Rep. Al Pscholka, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said after the speech he expects the bill will clear both his committee and the full House on Wednesday.Snyder officials stressed that the supplemental appropriation for 2016 is only a first step in addressing Flint's needs. They said Budget Director John Roberts is reworking the 2016-17 budget that Snyder will present on Feb. 10 to address longer-term health and infrastructure needs."This will not be the last budget request for Flint," Snyder said.Democratic lawmakers wore blue scarves or clothing to symbolize support for Flint. They also wore buttons that said "What did you know and when did you know it?" in reference to Snyder, and "No exemptions for transparency."Flint was under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager when, in a cost-cutting move, the city temporarily switched its source of drinking water from Lake Huron water treated by the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department to Flint River water treated at the Flint water treatment plant. State Department of Environmental Quality officials have admitted they made a disastrous mistake when they failed to require the addition of needed corrosion control chemicals. As a result, the corrosive Flint River water caused lead to leach into the drinking water, though where any leaching occurred and how severe it was depended on many factors, such as what type of line connected a home to the street and what the internal plumbing fixtures were like.Snyder said the story began when the Flint City Council voted in 2013 to switch from Detroit water to join communities supporting a new Karegnondi Water Authority pipeline to Lake Huron. But Dayne Walling, who was mayor then, said at the time of the vote the city intended to stay on Detroit water until the new pipeline was completed. Instead, Flint emergency manager Ed Kurtz opted to use the Flint River as an interim supply when Flint and Detroit -- both under state-appointed emergency managers at the time -- could not agree on an interim price.Ananich said the amount of money in the supplemental bill is "a start, but we're going to be in this for the long haul.""I hope the Legislature and the governor understand that we all have a responsibility to fix this problem and it's going to be important for all of us to focus on getting it right whatever that dollar amount might be," Ananich said.Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof, R-West Olive, commended Snyder's speech."The crisis in Flint demonstrates a need for greater accountability and reforms to our state government systems," Meekhof said. "Bloated, unresponsive bureaucracy does not meet the needs of our citizens."The citizens of Michigan deserve a responsive, competent team of employees and administrators that value accountability, safety and customer service above red tape."Meekhof also said Republicans in the Senate are ready to tackle reform of Detroit Public Schools.Hanna-Attisha, the Hurley Children's Hospital pediatrician whose findings of elevated lead levels in the blood of Flint children were first dismissed but later embraced by the Snyder administration, said "our community has been through so much, but Flint is loyal and resilient and we hope this is just a speed bump."We've become the forgotten city," Hanna-Attisha said. "We need to garner the attention and resources to build a better Flint."Among the demonstrators outside the Capitol before the speech Tuesday were three residents of Battle Creek, Snyder's home town. Al and Bonnie DiGennaro traveled to Lansing with a protest sign and their neighbor, Veroneze Strader.Al DiGennaro said he wants to see Snyder announce a plan to test Flint children and remediate the damage. "This is a crisis," he said.DiGennaro's wife Bonnie said she doesn't want to hear talk about the need for more studies. "It's criminal that people in the administration knew the water was full of lead and were telling people it was safe to drink," she said.U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Flint Township, said after the speech that $28.5 million "is a fraction of the money city residents have paid for poisoned water that they cannot drink.""Flint deserves an immediate response equal to the gravity of this ongoing public health emergency," and "the state must do more," Kildee said in a news release. Says Wisconsin on track Laying foundation for 2018 run? Seeking to rehabilitate his sagging standing in the state, Gov. Scott Walker pledged Tuesday to spend more money on public education using savings from changes to state employee health plans.Walker -- who has previously cut funding for K-12 and higher education while expanding the private school voucher program -- said in his sixth State of the State address that his pledge could mean tens of millions of dollars for the state's public schools."Tonight, I commit to investing every penny of savings to the general fund from these specific reforms to support public education," Walker said. "People tell me that they appreciate our efforts to get the state's fiscal house in order and that now is the time to use savings to help our students prepare for the future."That proposal, and support for college affordability and job training measures, counter Democrats' sharpened criticism of Walker's education cuts.The 40-minute speech came after a roller coaster year in which Walker briefly led the 2016 Republican presidential field before a colossal campaign collapse returned him to a state where his approval level had dipped below 40 percent.In the address, Walker offered a variety of smaller proposals to harness the power of government to help educate residents and find them jobs, but none of the "big, bold" ideas that he championed in the past and touted on the presidential campaign trail.Walker's comments about the state's health insurance plan for employees were his strongest yet, but he didn't specify which option he supports. The Group Insurance Board is set to vote Feb. 17 on adopting a self-insurance model, in which the state would pay benefits directly and assume the risk for large claims. Consultants have said such a plan could save as much $40 million or cost up to $100 million more per year. Another option of reducing the number of HMOs from 17 to seven could save $45 million to $70 million a year.Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, said after the speech that lawmakers want to examine the proposal even further before getting on board."I think it would take a lot of convincing to get the Legislature to move forward without seeing some hard numbers on what the benefit would be," Fitzgerald said. He said the proposal likely wouldn't come up for debate until the next biennium "and maybe even beyond that."Fitzgerald also said the Legislative Fiscal Bureau is expected to release tax revenue figures soon that are far shorter than the $150 million in additional funds that was anticipated, which could put a damper on any new spending this legislative session.Walker also:--Announced an additional $3 million for a dual enrollment program, known as Wisconsin Fast Forward, that allows high school students to take courses at technical colleges.--Said he would work with University of Wisconsin System leaders to promote on-time graduation, to expand the online UW Flex Program to include as many students as a new UW campus and to explore a three-year degree option.--Called on the Legislature to pass a package of bills that would lift the cap on tax deductions for student loan interest, add $1.5 million in need-based student college grants, increase internships and require state higher education institutions to provide financial literacy instruction.--Highlighted new information to assist employers whose workers have loved ones suffering from dementia.--Asked for feedback from the citizens of Wisconsin as part of a "2020 Vision Project," which he described as a state listening tour with diverse small groups to discuss what makes Wisconsin great, where it should be headed in the next two decades and how to measure success.Declaring "the Wisconsin comeback is real," Walker highlighted how employment levels are near an all-time high, state finances are stable, students are performing well, college tuition is frozen and property and income taxes are down from before he took office."We have an aggressive plan over the next year to ensure that everyone who wants a job can find a job," Walker said. "We will enact this plan by helping the people of this state improve the economy and by investing in K-12 education, higher education and worker training."Democrats have fired back that job growth in Wisconsin has lagged other states, the labor participation rate has declined and higher education funding remains below 2010 levels. The state is set to spend $5.4 billion on K-12 general school aids in 2016-17, the first year since Walker took office that aid will rise above 2010-11 levels.Senate Minority Leader Jennifer Shilling, D-La Crosse, took issue with the governor's characterization that the state was "strong.""I'd like for him to tell that to the 1,200 workers who have been laid off at Oscar Mayer. I'd like for him to tell that to the 400 workers who were laid off from Tyson Foods," she said. "For these workers and their families, the state of the state is not working for them."Democrats also have criticized the Republican higher education proposals for not going far enough to help Wisconsinites with student loan debt. They have proposed making all student loan payments, not just interest, tax deductible and setting up a student loan refinancing authority, which Walker has rejected.Walker highlighted budget measures requiring able-bodied adults without children to be enrolled in job-training programs before they can receive food stamps."When we first proposed these reforms, some in this Capitol argued that we were making it harder to get government assistance," Walker said. "The truth is: we're making it easier to find a job."Walker also has been talking up a potential run for a third term in 2018. His presidential campaign sent out a fundraising appeal Monday noting "our re-election campaign may seem like a long way off but the other side is already gearing up for a bruising battle."Over the past year the Legislature has controlled much of the agenda, passing a contentious state budget, making Wisconsin a right-to-work state, adopting new campaign finance rules, and replacing the nonpartisan Government Accountability Board with two bipartisan commissions.Two years ago, heading into an election season, the state had $912 million in unanticipated tax revenue that Walker and legislative Republicans used to reduce property taxes. This year finances are much tighter, with the state ending last year with $136 million in reserves. The state had $517 million in reserves at the end of the previous year.Last year's fast-paced 24-minute speech was largely overshadowed by Walker's widely anticipated presidential run and a looming $2.2 billion budget shortfall. Walker proposed balancing the budget with $250 million in cuts to the University of Wisconsin System, increased borrowing for roads, higher park fees, fewer scientists at the Department of Natural Resources and other austerity measures across state government.Walker has been traveling the state extensively since dropping out of the presidential race on Sept. 21, and he said he plans to visit every part of the state to hold listening sessions throughout 2016. govtech-100-screenshot.jpg Visit the full GovTech 100 by clicking the image above or visiting Govtech.com/100. No Unicorns to Be Found Some candidate companies for this years list were acquired by other startups and incumbents alike. Motorola, Autodesk and GovDelivery picked up one each. For its part, Accela bought three companies that would have made the list in their own right Springbrook (public finance), Civic Insight (building and construction project data) and PublicStuff (service requests). Significantly, there is not a unicorn in the whole bunch. In fact, taken together, GovTech100 companies represent a cumulative market cap of $1,000,462,835, just over the magical $1 billion threshold for a single company to be regarded as a unicorn startup. According to CB Insights and The New York Times, there are only 144 unicorns alive on the planet today, with cumulative value of $508 billion their number includes, not surprisingly, Airbnb and Uber. Industry observers, including Fortune, Forbes and Wired, have expressed disappointment in the much-vaunted unicorns seeming unwillingness or inability to IPO and, more importantly, falling short of their potential. Whats more, MarketWatch laments, The unicorns that can really change the world with their breakthrough technologies are rarely being created. This is a real tragedy since there have never been more opportunities to help the world (profitably) with new sources of energy, new medical technology, new ways to clean the environment and new ways to help the sick and disabled. In the absence of unicorns, scrappy GovTech companies are eschewing mythical imagery in favor of focusing on the work, solving real problems close to the ground and extending the reach of government agencies all with the potential of having an outsized impact in creating meaningful change in the communities they serve. It grew up quickly. And changed its name. What emerged in its place was the GovTech market broader and more robust than civic tech had been originally defined, a namesake of its own dedicated venture capital fund, and indicative of new opportunities for transformational change in the public sector.Seen as a market, government technology as a whole is an industry that accounts for $180 billion in state and local government alone, according to analysis by the Center for Digital Government. This new GovTech slice has come into its own, emerging as a stand-alone industry composed of hundreds of startup companies even after no fewer than 23 acquisitions, and having attracted $1 billion in private capital investment.The editors oftogether with e.Republic Labs, a sister organization focused on civic innovation and new market entrants, have developed the inaugural GovTech100, a listing of the leading 100 companies focused on government as a customer, having developed an innovative or disruptive offering to improve or transform government, or having created new models for delivering services. These companies are active in one or more market segments: administrative, service delivery, intelligent infrastructure and civic tech focus areas.The companies in the GovTech100 are, on average, 9 years old and together span most of what government does promising greater productivity, improved workflows, automated processes, mobile-equipped workforces, data-informed decision support, mutual aid, and sharing of facilities and equipment. The open data movement fueled many of the startups with many new transparency-related services offering a hedge against waste, fraud and abuse.This first effort at compiling the GovTech100 reflects hundreds of hours of work to identify, verify and qualify companies using publicly available information, media reports and interviews with parties familiar with the market. We are confident that it is a good list one that can introduce you to otherwise unknown players that may have a fresh approach to a problem you are trying to solve. That said, we know subsequent iterations of the GovTech100 can be better. We want to hear from you about companies that are helping you do the publics business in new and better ways. Our crowdsourcing of a full inventory of the GovTech space is already underway at govtech.com/100 we welcome and value your help.Until now, there has not been a single place to discover innovative companies in the GovTech market. This years GovTech100 is a down payment in that effort. It comes as 41 states are on track to meet their revenue projections and as city revenues have returned to near pre-recession levels giving them some margin to deal with pent-up demand to make their communities better for the people who live there. At the same time, the expectations of residents are being shaped by their experience in the wider marketplace, with companies such as Amazon, Uber and Apple. It is against that backdrop that GovTech companies offer new capabilities and capacity to help government get stuff done.As the GovTech market continues to grow and mature, it is important for those working inside government to have a mechanism to keep up with startups that could change the world or, at least, your community. And that is our purpose in presenting the first annual GovTech100.Visit govtech.com/100 to view the 100 GovTech firms featured in alphabetical order. SLOW START TO RECORD SUBMISSIONS MAINE CATCHES UP FAST ON BACKLOG (TNS) -- Maine police and courts have submitted more than 3,000 mental health records to the FBIs background check database in recent years as part of the national focus on blocking gun sales to potentially dangerous mentally ill people.Maine has made substantial progress in notifying federal law enforcement about mentally ill people who should be prohibited from buying a gun in the 2 years since lawmakers began requiring the reports. But the data-sharing process isnt as efficient as it could be because of an outdated court record-keeping system that requires state police to manually enter the records in the federal database.We have been making great progress, said Maj. Chris Grotton with the Maine State Police special services. One hundred percent of the information we receive, we transmit (to the FBI).It was unclear Monday, a federal holiday, how many Mainers had been rejected for gun purchases because of mental health records.The campaign for expanded background checks on gun sales, accelerated by the 2012 shootings at Connecticuts Sandy Hook Elementary School, has stalled in Congress and in many state legislatures in the face of opposition from the powerful gun lobby and its well-organized supporters. Yet states across the country, including Maine, have quietly begun feeding more information into the federal background check database as part of a bipartisan effort to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill.In the 2 years since state lawmakers strengthened a reporting requirement, Maine has submitted 3,022 records to the FBIs National Instant Criminal Background Check System on 1,750 people prohibited under federal law from buying guns because they were involuntarily committed to a mental health institution by a court.Another 377 records on individuals deemed by Maine courts to be mentally incompetent to stand trial or not guilty by reason of insanity also have been submitted to the federal government.By comparison, the state had submitted just 35 mental health records to the federal database as of October 2011, according to an analysis of FBI data by the gun control group Mayors Against Illegal Guns.I think the state has moved very quickly to address this, both the Chief Justice (Leigh Saufley) and the Maine State Police, said Rep. Mark Dion, D-Portland, one of the sponsors of the 2013 bill that required the reporting.About 1,000 requests for involuntary commitment have been submitted to Maine courts annually for the past five years, according to judicial branch records.Individuals deemed by the courts to be mentally defective or who were committed by a court to a mental institution have been prohibited from possessing or purchasing a gun since 1968. Anyone who voluntarily seeks treatment for mental illness or checks themselves into a mental health institution would not be prohibited from owning a gun.In 1998, the FBI launched the NICS as part of a new Brady Act requirement that all federally licensed gun dealers request a background check on potential gun buyers. Mental health records contained in the NICS and another federal database queried by the FBI remain confidential, and dealers who run a background check through the databases are not told why the individual has been rejected.State participation in the NICS is voluntary. But while states have submitted tens of millions of criminal history records into the NICS since that time, the vast majority of states sent comparatively few mental health records or sometimes none at all until just a few years ago because of a combination of logistical, technological and legal issues surrounding access to confidential mental health records.The campaign to improve the reporting rate took on new urgency in the spring of 2007 after a Virginia Tech student shot and killed 32 students and faculty members on campus in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. A subsequent review found that federal law prohibited the shooter from purchasing a gun because a judge had ordered him into outpatient treatment and deemed him an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness. But Virginia law at the time did not require submission of the shooters name into the NICS, thereby allowing him to buy guns despite a background check.However, it wasnt until 20 children and six adults were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 that states participation in reporting mental health records to the FBI surged. States have submitted over 2.1 million mental health records into the NICS since the Sandy Hook shootings, more than double the combined total from the previous years, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, an organization at the front of the push for expanded background checks.A bipartisan group of Maine lawmakers successfully shepherded a bill through the 2013 legislative session to require data reporting retroactive to 2008. Since then, the Administrative Office of the Courts has worked with state police to send the records to the FBI for inclusion in the database.Every case from 2008 forward has been reported to NICS, said Anne Jordan, manager of the criminal process and specialty dockets at the court administrative office. Before 2008, state law did not allow us to report that information because it was considered confidential.Nationally, the number of people blocked from buying guns because of mental health prohibitions has spiked as states submit more records. In 2013 and 2014, at least 10,932 gun sales were blocked after a background check revealed the potential buyer was prohibited from owning a gun because of mental health issues, according to an analysis of FBI data by Everytown for Gun Safety. That is more than double the number in the two previous years, the organization said in a report last month.Sen. Stan Gerzofsky, a Brunswick Democrat who served as co-chairman of the Criminal Justice Committee that worked on the 2013 bill, said Jordan and the state police have done a pretty damn good job getting the state up to speed on the mental health records.I know its a big problem (nationally) and thats why we are doing something about it, Gerzofsky said. Its on our radar and we are a lot further ahead now than we were before.State officials, however, acknowledge the process could be improved.Maine courts use an outdated case-management system that only allows them to send paper records to the state polices State Bureau of Identification. Bureau workers then type the information into the federal database.Jordan said the process typically only takes a few days. Even so, the state polices Grotton said an electronic transfer would be faster.There are always ways to make the system more efficient, and hopefully, at some point, it will be automated, Grotton said. But the most important thing is it is effective now.The Maine Judicial Branch is reviewing bids from contractors interested in supplying an e-filing court case management system that will allow courts throughout the state whether criminal or civil to process paperwork electronically. The court received a $15 million bond authorization for the project.Although the bidding process didnt lay out a timeline for when the new system will be in place, a report from the Administrative Office of the Courts estimated it would take five to seven years from exploration of options to actual implementation of an e-filing system. (TNS) -- Cleveland Utilities, which has provided electricity, water and sewers in Bradley County for the past 76 years, is studying whether to add high-speed Internet, telephone and cable TV to its portfolio of services.Ken Webb, president of the Bradley County, Tenn., utility, said he is convinced the public wants better broadband service, especially in the rural portions of the county outside of the city. But rather than have Cleveland Utilities invest the estimated $45 million needed to build a countywide fiber optic broadband network, Webb said CU is considering a partnership with Chattanooga's EPB, which already boasts the fastest Internet in the country."We don't want to reinvent the wheel," Webb said Tuesday. "We continue to study our options (for adding telecommunications services), but we would prefer for the state to allow us to have the option of working with EPB."EPB is one of seven municipal electric utilities in Tennessee which have built their own high-speed broadband networks to serve their customers. Under existing state law, city utilities are only allowed to offer telecom services to customers within their power service territories.If the law is changed or the court upholds a Federal Communications Commission decision last year that struck down Tennessee's territorial limits on municipal broadband, CU and EPB could partner in an arrangement to offer broadband throughout Bradley County."The removal of the barrier (by the Legislature) would, in my opinion, open up a world of opportunity between utilities with the ultimate winners being the community and the region," Webb said. "The cost savings of a partnership could potentially be significant and we could benefit by using the best practices of others."Webb said municipal utilities "have a long history of working together for the good of the community." Citing the aid Cleveland Utilities got from 12 other public power utilities during the storms of April 2011, Webb said such help and cooperation "is in the DNA of public power utilities.""Can we make it happen? The outcome of this process is still unknown," Webb told business leaders in Cleveland last month. "This decision must not be based on emotion, but based on facts. And what we do know is that any proposal to provide service must be reliable, reasonably priced, backed by first-class customer service, be available to all customers in our electric footprint and be based on a solid business plan developed on conservative estimates."The private companies that now provide broadband in Bradley County the telephone company AT&T and the cable TV company Charter Spectrum both oppose municipal electric systems expanding into their territories.Allan Hill, regional director for AT&T, said the phone company already has seven fiber-ready, multi-tenant buildings in Cleveland where fiber is offered to businesses."Additionally, mobile broadband with 4G LTE capability is widely accessible in Bradley County," Hill said.But Webb said many Bradley County residents are eager to gain access to Chattanooga's 10 gigabit-per-second Internet speed the fastest of any citywide system in America."Should the (legal) barrier be removed (preventing EPB from serving Cleveland), some residents stand to get worldclass access to the Internet within a few short months from EPB," Webb said.Any new plan to expand into municipal broadband by Cleveland Utilities, like those now provided by other city-owned power companies in Tennessee, must be accepted by the Tennessee Comptroller. Any telecom initiative also will have to be self-funded and can't be subsidized by other services.EPB President Harold DePriest said the Chattanooga utility could expand its fiber optic service to neighboring areas in portions of Hamilton County now served by Volunteer Energy Cooperative and in all of Bradley County served by VEC and Cleveland Utilities, if the Legislature adopts pending legislation to allow municipalities to expand broadband beyond their power footprint."My constituents want and need municipal broadband," said state Rep. Kevin Brooks, R-Cleveland, who is sponsoring the legislation to allow municipal electric utilities to offer broadband anywhere in the state.DePriest, who is also chairman of the Tennessee Fiber Optic Communities, said the Chattanooga utility is eager to expand into the parts of Hamilton County it doesn't currently serve, which includes about 9,000 homes in east Hamilton County, and into all of Bradley County, which has more than 50,000 homes and businesses."We have developed some plans and we will develop more," DePriest said. "We've already had more than a thousand people from that area write us, email or call us asking when they can get our (broadband service)."Depriest estimate it would cost an extra $13 million to $15 million to serve with fiber optic telecom the areas of Hamilton County EPB doesn't currently serve. Expanding service to Bradley County would be much more expensive, but DePriest said he still thought there would be a strong enough demand to make such an expansion financially viable, even competing against other broadband providers."We think we have the expertise and the infrastructure already in place so that expanding into these areas would help them and help us," he said. "We would have to work out the arrangement with Cleveland Utilities and Volunteer Electric because this is their territory and we're not going to go anywhere where we are not invited and where it doesn't make good business sense." Obituary Eugenia "Jeannie" G Condon, 97, of Coulee Dam, Washington, was born July 3, 1918, to Robert and Roxie Grosjean in Kamiah, Idaho. She passed away at the Regency Care Center in Omak, Washington, on Wednesday, January 13, 2016. Following her 1936 high school graduation in Nespelem, Washington, she spent several years in San Diego, California, obtaining her nursing license, before returning to Washington to marry Calvin Jack Condon in 1940. Their daughter, Anita Corrine, joined the family in 1946. Jeannie continued nursing for a few years as Jack worked on roads, eventually getting a surveying license which he used for many years with her help. Jack was a great horseman as well as a pretty fair bronc rider and calf roper during his younger years and raised Quarter Horses until passing in 2002. Jeannie was an accomplished sewer and enjoyed many crafts. She was president of several clubs. Jack and Jeannie involved themselves in many school and community activities after building a home in Coulee Dam in 1968. They were well liked by everyone they came in contact with. A very special, heartfelt thank you to Marty and Sally Blum who were there for her in too many ways to count during her final years. Friends like that are too few and far between. She is survived by her daughter, Anita. At her request there will be no services. "TAKE EVERY DAY AND MAKE THE MOST OF IT." Naidu's Secret Tour To Singapore! AP Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu who is currently touring Davos in Switzerland to attend World Economic Forum meeting, has scheduled a 'secret tour' to Singapore. As per official schedule released by Chief Minister's Office, there is no scheduled visit of Naidu to Singapore. However, Naidu has now decided to fly directly to Singapore from Davos on January 24. His sudden decision to visit Singapore surprised TDP leaders, ministers and senior officials of AP government. TDP sources said Naidu is visiting Singapore to strike a deal with Singapore companies on constructing new capital Amaravati. He is said to be lobbying with Singapore companies to award construction works to some contractors recommended by him. Naidu also agreed to extend lease rights over government lands to Singapore companies for 99 years as demanded by them. Earlier, the lease limit was only 33 years but Singapore companies want lease period for 99 years. Despite severe criticism from all quarters over surrendering to Singapore firms on lease issue, Naidu is said be in favour of extending the lease period and in return want certain benefits from Singapore companies for himself, TDP leaders and contractors, recommended by him and this secret tour to Singapore is aimed to achieve these goals. TDP Cadre Unhappy With Balayya-KCR Meet? Hyderabad: Balayya met KCR to request the latter to regularize certain illegal constructions in his Basavatharakam Cancer Hospital. KCR responded favorably to the request apart from coming out with certain valuable suggestions of his own. Apparently, this meeting has not gone down well with the TDP cadre and leaders. While it was on a personal mission that Balayya met KCR, they feel that the meeting on the eve of GHMC sends a wrong signal to the public and result in the Seemandhra vote being diverted to the TRS. The picture of Balayya and KCR shaking hands was one of absolute affection and this might further go to persuade the Seemandhra voters that the TRS is really positive towards them. GREENSBORO In a back room at the Greensboro Science Center, twin blue tubs serve as temporary housing for four special guests endangered green sea turtles recuperating from a sudden temperature drop off the North Carolina coast that left hundreds of the reptiles in water too cold for them to swim. The turtles were cold stunned, a condition similar to hypothermia and occurs when water temperature changes before cold-blooded reptiles, including turtles, can migrate to warmer areas. When that happens, a turtle stops swimming and just floats with the current. Some wash up on shore while others can become prey. According to estimates, more than 600 turtles were cold stunned off the coast this month, including the four recuperating at the science center. The turtles arrived in Greensboro last week and will stay at the center until theyre strong enough to be released into the wild, part of a statewide rehabilitation effort led by the North Carolina Aquarium. The reptiles dont have names, just tag numbers painted on their shells. CLC 06-09 B doesnt exactly roll off the tongue, but the turtles all between the ages of 2 and 5 years old arent mature enough for biologists to properly determine their sex. Hopefully, they wont be in town long enough for monikers to stick, anyway. It could be two to three weeks, said Ed Parsons, the science centers curator of fishes. Whats wrong with them is what determines their care. We make sure theyre eating, administer antibiotics as needed and monitor their weight. But they came to us in pretty good shape. Hundreds of turtles have already been rehabilitated elsewhere and released. Determining a timeline for that process depends on the individual turtles case but also on the weather. Putting them back in cold water kind of defeats the purpose, said Lindsey Zarecky, the vice president of conservation and research at the science center. They were found in 50-degree water and 70 degrees is probably realistically comfortable for them. Officials with the North Carolina Aquarium ultimately will make that call. Until then, the turtles will hang out behind the scenes at the science center. Because their stay is a conservation effort, the turtles wont be on display, Zarecky said. Still, people interested in their rehabilitation can get progress reports on the science centers Facebook page. Its the first time the science center has participated in this type of recovery effort, but hopefully not the last, Zarecky said. Were just doing what we feel like we should be doing. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Connecticuts beleaguered motor vehicles commissioner has resigned, taking the fall for an agency fraught with customer service complaints over long lines, suspended registrations and software glitches. Andres Ayala Jr., a former state senator from Bridgeport and the first Latino commissioner under Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, survived just over a year on the job. He oversaw the highly controversial rollout of a drivers license program for undocumented immigrants and the much-maligned computer upgrades at the state DMV, a $63 million operation with 650 employees. Although this past year has been challenging, I worked diligently to bring about the necessary changes to the Department of Motor Vehicles, Ayala wrote Malloys chief of staff, Brian Durand, on Tuesday. Malloy thanked Ayala, 46, for his service in a brief statement Wednesday that avoided mention of the agencys woes and the publics fury toward the DMV. The commissioner is a dedicated public servant to Connecticut, and I appreciate all of the work hes done in so many different capacities both at the local and state levels, Malloy said. I want to thank him for his service and for his unwavering dedication to improving our state. More Information Andres Ayala Jr. Former president of Bridgeport City Council. Served in state House and Senate. Appointed commissioner of state Department of Motor Vehicles in 2015. Resignation will be effective Friday. See More Collapse The DMVs loudest critics immediately speculated that Ayala, a political appointee with scant management experience, was forced out of his $160,000-a-year post. It may not have been a personal choice, said state Sen. Toni Boucher, R-Wilton. A prominent political family Boucher, who is ranking member of the Legislatures Transportation Committee, said she spoke last week with her former colleague about the direction of the agency. He was sounding very hopeful at the time that somehow they would work through all the problems and that someday they would become a 21st century DMV, Boucher said. However, you could tell this is a person who was under a tremendous amount of pressure, stress and duress. Malloy spokesman Devon Puglia disputed the notion that Ayala, who served in the state House before the Senate, was shoved out. The governors office did not give a timetable for replacing Ayala, whose resignation takes effect Friday. Ayala might not be out of a job for long, as Bridgeport school officials confirmed the former longtime social studies teacher has been on a leave of absence from the district and is at the top of a waiting list for an open position in his area of instruction. The Ayala name is synonymous with Bridgeport politics. Ayala is a former City Council president. His aunt is the Democratic registrar of voters in the states largest city. His uncle is a power broker in the party. When Ayala made the jump from the state House to the Senate, his cousin, Christina Ayala, filled his old seat. Her tenure was clouded by an elections-fraud scandal and personal controversies. It came to an end in 2014, when she was defeated in the Democratic primary by Christopher Rosario, a friend of Andres Ayala. Im kind of shocked, Rosario said of Ayalas resignation. I understand he was going through a difficult time. I dont think everything was his fault. Whether municipal or state jobs, were all tasked to do a difficult job with minimal resources. Ayalas seat started to get warm last summer, when the DMV replaced its 40-year-old computer system with new software. The transition was anything but seamless, with the DMV closing most of its non-licensing offices for four days last August. When they reopened, irate customers encountered waits of up to seven hours. At the time, Malloy, campaigning in New Hampshire for Hillary Clinton, pressed Ayala for an update on the turmoil. Whats going on? How are we doing? Malloy asked by phone. Ayala told Malloy that 32 percent of transactions processed since the changeover could have been done by computer. Malloy said the situation was improving, but acknowledged more could be done to steer people to self-service stations. That's a generational thing, Malloy said at the time. I know how hard you guys are working. Ayalas woes were recently compounded when an untold number of motor vehicle registrations were wrongly suspended for lack of insurance even though drivers had provided the required documentation. The blunder was blamed on a computer system backlog. As a state senator in 2013, Ayala joined fellow Democrats in a party-line vote to give undocumented immigrants a mechanism for obtaining drivers licenses, a controversial program he oversaw as DMV commissioner. Critics say the DMV under Ayalas leadership underestimated the number of participants in the program, which contributed to processing backlogs and lengthy waits for driving tests. They, in fact, were being put at the head of the line, Boucher said. Malloys administration has prided itself in the diversity of its appointees, including Ayala, whose parents came from Puerto Rico. He replaced Melody Currey, who now heads the state Department of Administrative Services. Supporters in Bridgeport We in the Latino community were very proud to have a Latino commissioner, said Lydia Martinez, Bridgeports city clerk and a former state representative. Martinez said the DMVs problems are more likely systemic and existed before Ayalas arrival. Did somebody leave a hot potato for him? Martinez said. Americo Santiago, a prominent Democrat who previously ran some of Ayalas campaigns, defended his longtime ally. I think hes the fall guy, to be honest with you, Santiago said. He hasnt talked to me, but I know how the system works. Ive been around those people too many years. Ayalas resignation comes a week after the Hartford Courant called for his ouster in an editorial and two days after the newspaper requested access to the personnel file of one of Ayalas aides from Bridgeport under the Freedom of Information Act. That employee, Carlos Cosme, served as Ayalas legislative aide before being hired by the DMV. Criminal records show Cosme has been arrested multiple times on charges of buying cocaine, grand theft, drug possession with intent to sell, probation violation, first-degree unlawful restraint, resisting arrest, violation of a protective order and third-degree assault. Cosme remains employed by the DMV and his status will be determined by Ayalas successor, according to the state. neil.vigdor@scni.com; 203-625-4436; http://twitter.com/gettinviggy What do J.D. Salinger and Bob Dylan have in common? Both were influenced by Robert Burns, the famed Scottish poet of the 18th century. J.D. Salinger titled his book Catcher in the Rye from Burns poem Comin thro the Rye and Dylan said his greatest artistic inspiration was Burns poem A Red, Red Rose. He was a very, very interesting person and you can completely see why the Scots love him and why he has such a following all over the world, said Greenwich resident Stasha Healy, a long-time fan of Burns. To Burns and non-Burns lovers alike: get ready for some tartans, haggis and ample Scotch whisky, said Healy, because she has organized a Burns Supper from 6 to 9 p.m. Jan. 23 at the Knights of Columbus, 37 West Putnam Ave. Healy attended the University of Edinburgh in Scotland as a yearlong study abroad program in college, and fell in love with Burns poetry though not so much Burns himself. As it turns out, he had little respect for women, she said. I wrote a paper on him and all these years later, I remember the paper was on his misogyny. Im celebrating his work, not his character per se, Healy said with a laugh. When Healy lived in New York City she frequently attended Burns Suppers, which were often organized by the University of Edinburgh Alumni Association of which she was a part. She said she missed the suppers when she moved to Greenwich in 2007. He was a pre-romantic. I always wondered why I loved his writing, but its because I loved Wordsworth and the Romantic poets always struck my heart, she said. When she discovered that her friend and co-organizer of the event, resident Kia Heavey of Greenwich, played the bagpipes and was interested in attending her first Burns Supper, Healy put plans for a supper into motion. Burns Suppers are a national tradition in Scotland, dating back to the fifth anniversary of Burns death in 1796. Greenwichs Burns Supper will stick with tradition, following a particular order of activities, beginning with the Greenwich Pipe Band serenade to guests, followed by a few lines of Burns Selkirk Grace, a meal of the Scottish pudding called haggis, the singing of Burns songs by Stefanie Kies and an address to the lassies, countered by a toast to the laddies. Burns embodies a lot of things that I love a lot that I dont love but a lot I do. Burns Night celebrates music and poetry and food and toasts. Theres also scotch involved, which Ive learned to enjoy, said Healy. A direct descendant of Burns, Greenwich resident and Pen Women member Lee Paine will be attending. Healy said Paine assured her she was a descendant on the correct side of the blanket, given that Burns was known for producing numerous illegitimate children. Tickets cost 38.74 pound sterlings or $55, at www.burnssuppergreenwich.eventbrite.com. Purchasing tickets at the door costs $60. SFoster-Frau@scni.com; @SilviaElenaFF This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate HARTFORD A consumer group is calling Gov. Dannel P. Malloys $11 billion plan to widen Interstate 95 to ease congestion a boondoggle that will waste taxpayer money. The Connecticut Public Interest Research Group on Tuesday said money earmarked to widen I-95 would be better spent improving mass transportation, enhancing the Metro-North commuter railroad so it can handle more passengers and installing congestion tolling. Road widening does not address congestion, said Evan Preston, ConnPIRGs state director. As we make choices, investing in I-95 is the least effective way to increase our transportation system. But Joe Cutrufo, policy director for the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, cited national studies which show widening projects actually increase congestion. Studies have shown when you widen a highway, you invite more traffic onto it, Cutrufo said. Connecticut could be a great place to get around via transit and better service on Metro-North. Judd Everhart, a spokesman for the state Department of Transportation, acknowledged wider highways attract more cars. But that doesnt mean you shouldnt do it, he said. More Information Money matters ConnPRIG's recommendations for spending transportation dollars: Increase Metro-North ridership and availability Invest in more buses and mass transportation modes Use congestion tolling Repair existing roads and bridges Build bicycle and pedestrian pathways See More Collapse Billions to widen Malloys $100 billion, 30-year plan to reform and upgrade Connecticuts bus, rail and highway system includes $11.4 billion to widen I-95 at choke points between Greenwich and New Haven. The plan would also spend $4.4 billion to widen Interstate 84 at key points between Danbury and Waterbury and $4.2 billion to widen I-95 east of New Haven. The governors 30-year, $100 billion plan is full of proposed investments in public transit, Everhart said. Connecticut has invested more than $2 billion in recent years to expand service and enhance stations and accompanying parking and support facilities. Devon Puglia, Malloys spokesman, cited a report by CDM Smith, the states transportation consultant, which concluded widening select portions of I-95 and I-84 will help the state grow. (The) projects have a positive return on investment and represent critical interventions to support the states economic future, CDM Smith concluded. They allow Connecticut to remain competitive as a business location site. Without these projects, the high costs of congestion would drive away a portion of the states business growth. CDM Smith added: The projects address severe congestion along key economic corridors and enable Connecticut to add roughly 5,800 jobs. The impacts will be spread widely across the states economy. State Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport, said many legislators have reservations about widening I-95 and other highways. The emphasis should be on mass transit, Steinberg said. It does not lead to reductions in congestion. It leads to more cars on the highway. Steinberg said electronic congestion tolling, which offers express lanes for rush hour travel in exchange for a small fee, better reduces congestion. Boondoggles State Sen. Toni Boucher, R-Wilton and a ranking member of the Transportation Committee, said she has reservations over the cost of Malloys transportation plan, but acknowledged I-95 needs to be widened. I would not dismiss widening I-95, Boucher said. Its a choke hold and its curvy. But Boucher said where the money will come from for Malloys transportation plan remains unclear, adding she opposes tolls or raising gas taxes and other fees to help cover costs. Im not saying its doable in my lifetime, Boucher said. We have another deficit and we are already in a hole. Lets be realistic. Its our bridges and rails. We have to fix whats broken now with the scarce money we have. ConnPIRG said Colorado is wasting $58 billion widening I-170 and North Carolina is needlessly spending $647 million to widen I-77. Milwaukee recently canceled a widening project after community advocates opposed it, the group noted. Several states are re-evaluating the wisdom of boondoggle highway projects, either shelving them entirely or forcing revisions to the projects, ConnPIRG said in a report on boondoggles. The report cited 12 highway projects across the country including Connecticut which exemplify the need for a fresh approach. America does not have the luxury of wasting tens of billions of dollars on new highways of questionable value, ConnPIRG said. State and federal decisionmakers should re-evaluate the need for the projects profiled in this report and others that no longer make sense in an era of changing transportation needs. The letter group title, Here and There, (Saturday) implies a breadth of opinion, whereas some 90 percent (nine out of 11 on my count) of the letters placed full blame for the GE move particularly on Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and generally on Connecticuts anti-business climate. These selected opinions ignore the forest for the trees. Call my view neither here nor there. Three points. We have 800 potential jobs at loss, though GE cites maybe 200 higher-end jobs will relocate to Boston at the new designated U.S. headquarters. Out of 300,000 world wide employees. GE is shifting 800 or .27 percent of their work force, most of which will have little impact if any on middle class America. We should be advocating about the many other jobs that should be housed in Connecticut if not the two-thirds of their workforce currently located overseas. And this record is from a top corporation that is parking funds abroad rather than repatriating money for investing here. Are we really worried about the tiny number of elite positions only? Have we already ceded all grounds on the jobs and investment capital issues? Our clean-up stance is limited to softer tax and weakened business regulation? Gabriel Kreuthers roasted heirloom-squash salad. Photo: Melissa Hom The last year-plus has seen the true rise of the vegivore: There are daytime-only vegetarians, lines of customers streaming out of vegan shops, and meatless burgers everywhere you look. The produce-loving lifestyle is well and good during peak growing times, but what about now, when the cold weather naturally limits the things that farmers can grow? Youre in luck: Even if youre missing late-summer tomatoes, there are all kinds of squash, tubers for days, and, hey, even some hearty greens, which chefs are turning into impressive, enjoyable dishes. Here are ten great options to get you started. Roasted Heirloom-Squash Salad Where: Gabriel Kreuther Price: $19 Do as New Yorks Adam Platt suggests and hang in the more casual, laid-back barroom at Gabriel Kreuthers luxurious culinary wonderland. There you can enjoy the chefs roasted heirloom-squash salad, made with six different types of squash (kabocha, acorn, delicata, red kuri, and shaved raw butternut) along with toasted pumpkin seeds, micro celery, red-veined sorrel, and an appropriately wintry touch of roasted chestnuts and chestnut dressing. Sunchokes Where: Untitled Price: $16 At Untitled, Michael Anthony roasts versatile, nutty sunchokes and serves them with fatty bacon and Shy Brothers Cloumage, a creamy, fresh curd cheese thats perfect with tubers and has a texture not unlike baked ricotta. Roasted Cauliflower Where: Maman Tribeca Price: $13 The new, third branch of Maman serves a substantial, winter-ready salad of roasted cauliflower with yellow quinoa, dates, raisins, almonds, chives, red treviso, and turmeric. Its available during lunch and brunch. Celery-Root Gratin Where: Wassail Price: $17 The menu at this vegetarian restaurant and cider bar is winter produce or bust right now, and one of the more appealing dishes youll want before hunkering down this cold weekend is the celery-root gratin. Its made with potato, smoked Gouda, and broccolini. Whipped Tofu Where: Tilda All Day Price: $9 The sunny, stylish Clinton Hill cafe goes totally vegan with this dish of whipped tofu with beets, charred scallion, and tahini. Chicories Salad Where: Superiority Burger Price: $5 Winter often means hearty, rib-sticking food, but sometimes you want something bright to remind you of warmer days. Thats the idea behind this almost-citrusy salad at Brooks Headleys East Village veggie-burger shop, which dresses Campo Rosso Farm chicory, market apples, pickled onion, and toasted Marcona almonds in a light caraway-seed vinaigrette. Sweet Potato Where: Wildair Price: $16 At the Orchard Street wine bar, the kitchen staff piles tender sweet potato, nutty tahini, and ricotta under fresh herbs a necessary douse of green during these cold days. Roast-Beet Mole Where: Pizza Moto Price: $12 Pies are the focus at this restaurant on the Red Hook border, and the current menu has a pizza with a winter-greens-and-pistachio pesto, but theyre also serving more vegetable-centric dishes. Take the roast-beet mole, here served with sesame seeds, ricotta, and minty tarragon. Roasted Root Vegetables Where: Willow Price: $13 The Bed-Stuy restaurant from the team behind the Pines keeps it simple, serving a selection of well-roasted, slightly burnished root vegetables (like parsnip, onion, and sweet potato) with peppery arugula and a thick smear of lemon ricotta to brighten it up. Winter-Squash Risotto Where: The Heyward Price: $20 Few dishes are better for fighting off the cold than risotto. This casual Southern restaurant goes all in with the squash, incorporating it in three distinct ways: a butternut squash puree, acorn squash cooked until crispy, and pumpkin seeds for crunch. Theres also braised turnip greens, for those who can never have enough bitter, hearty greens. Annually, 32 million tons of fish go unreported. Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images Another day, another depressing study about life in the ocean. Researchers from the University of British Columbia say that the global seafood catch has been underestimated by more than 50 percent over the last 60 years, and that 32 million metric tons of fish go unreported every year. That figure is nearly half of the 86 million metric tons that was reported in 1996, which was the highest catch reported since 1950. The authors argue that catches across the world are currently declining because stocks have been drained, and that the numbers have declined more significantly since the mid-1990s than official figures suggest because, well, there are no good fisheries left to pillage. The reason for the discrepancy, they say, is that official statistics from the U.N.s Food and Agriculture Organization dont include data from discarded bycatch, illegal fishing, and smaller-scale fisheries used for both commercial and subsistence purposes. Lead author Dr. Daniel Pauly, a marine biologist who doesnt mince words, tells the BBC that the problem is the FAO doesnt have to correct the data they get, which is provided by countries reporting only what they see. A little digging in the Bahamas, he told the news outlet, revealed that while no small-scale fishing was reported, invoices showed that local fishermen were selling their catch directly to hotels and resorts. Underestimation varies by region from as high as 200 to 300 percent in island states to 20 to 30 percent in the developed world. Depressing. [BBC] The Ascend Mate7 isn't the only Huawei device in the process of receiving a beta build of Android 6.0 Marshmallow soon. The Chinese company's Honor sub-brand wants in on that beta action too. So if you're from the UK and own the Honor 6 Plus, Honor 6, or Honor 4X, you can now sign up to become a beta tester for the Marshmallow update for your device. This follows a similar campaign that was outed for the Honor 7 last month. To try your luck at getting selected for this, you have to fill out the form here. You need to supply your handset's IMEI number (dial *#06# to get it), as well as its current firmware version. This has to be a specific one noted in the document linked above, otherwise you won't be able to participate. Of course you should keep in mind that such beta builds can be filled with bugs, and make sure you back up your data before you install. Source The mobile realm is definitely a hard environment to survive in, but despite the fierce competition, the market is still expanding rapidly. The situation is direr on the PC front. Due to a complex combination of trends, mobile devices being a bigger part of the overall mix, shares for the more traditional part of the industry are shrinking and only the strongest, fittest and most versatile are posed to survive. This is why it is particularly strange to see new players trying to make their way into the realm. The latest such rumor however, says that Huawei might be making the unlikely move. While the tech giant is far from a complete stranger to PC tech, its involvement has pertained mostly to network solutions and primarily on the enterprise side. Industry sources now claim that the OEM is planning to try its hand at a consumer PC. Most of the speculation stem from a recently filed trademark claim for the "MateBook" moniker. Not much else is known about the alleged venture, but some have speculated that the device or perhaps even family line may use an Intel processor and employ the 2-in-1 form factor. This would, effectively, pit it up against established competitors, such as the Microsoft Surface. Of course, the name could just as easily be attributed to a standard laptop product, with a less than subtle reference to Apple's legendary MacBook series. Currently, we can't really say how much truth this rumor holds, but it is worth noting that Xiaomi another major Chinese OEM that has been on the rise lately has been involved in a similar laptop affair for well over a year now and an actual product is yet to materialize. We'll just let you be the judge, so be sure share your opinion in the comment section below. Source Huawei will soon begin beta testing the Android 6.0 update for its P8lite smartphone in Europe. In a Facebook post a couple of days ago, the Chinese company's Romanian unit said that it's looking for 100 beta testers to test the update. However, apparently, only those with an unlocked unit of the handset will be able to participate, as the company clearly stated in the post that P8lite devices with custom software from a mobile operator aren't welcome. While there was no word on when the final update would be rolled out, the company's Poland unit - in a Facebook reply to a user - revealed that they've stopped working on the Android 5.1.1 update and that the Marshmallow update will be released sometime this quarter. Thanks for the tip Ady!! Via 1 (Romanian) 2 Looks like Motorola will soon start rolling out the Marshmallow update to its second-generation Moto G smartphone. The company has posted Android 6.0 update release notes for the device on its India support website. The handset was launched in September 2014 running Android 4.4.4 (KitKat) out-of-the-box. Although it started receiving the Android 5.0 Lollipop update in January 2015, Android 5.1 hasn't hit the device yet. So, turns out the phone will directly jump from Android 5.0 to Marshmallow. This comes just a day after the Motorola Moto G Turbo Edition started receiving the Android 6.0 update in India. Source | Via Verizon is introducing a new way to make money at the potential inconvenience to consumers. It is going to offer sponsored data at the expense of marketers and companies who want to advertise. An ad or link would have a little bee next to it signifying that it is sponsored and has already been paid for, the user can then click the content, view, or consume it in any way. Basically, Company X can post an ad with content like videos or articles which will not be deducted from the subscribers data bucket upon viewing the content. It will be billed at Company Xs own expense. While this isnt really a benefit for the customer, nor an inconvenience, its just a way for Verizon to make more money off its large subscriber base. Net Neutrality supporters have been bugging T-Mobile about services like Music Freedom and Binge On. The difference with the two is that T-Mobiles services actually provide benefit to the customer while Verizons FreeBee data only makes Verizon more money. When you think about it, this is much like what T-Mobile is already doing, except it is explicitly charging the companies for flagging content as free data. The way that Verizon wrote the press release sounds like it is taking advantage of its customers to a certain extent. I may be sounding harsh and this might not even be Verizons intention at all, but this could end up badly for Verizon or its consumers. The only way FreeBee could be successful for Verizon is if these ads are unobtrusive and dont put preference of other content over what the subscriber is actually looking for. It really boils down to what marketers want and what Verizon can offer to them. If Verizon can respect what is obtrusive and annoying to the subscriber, I guess its not THAT bad. Once Verizon crosses a line, it becomes a slippery slope and customers could become irritated. This program is actually in beta-testing, so the only content providers right now are Hearst Magazines, AOL, and GAMEDAY. These are initial test runs to see how well the program performs before proceeding. Source | Via In a continued move to show us how much it loves the number 6, Vodafone has introduced a new own-brand Android device today. And this is not a smartphone, like the Smart prime 6, Smart ultra 6, Smart first 6, or Smart speed 6 from last year. The Vodafone Tab speed 6 is a tablet in fact, as its convoluted name implies. It comes with an 8-inch 1,280x800 touchscreen, a 1.3 GHz quad-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of expandable storage, a 5 MP rear camera, a 2 MP selfie snapper, 4G LTE built-in, and a 4,060 mAh battery. It runs Android 5.1 Lollipop. The tablet may not be anywhere close to a high-end offering - on the other hand it is priced at just 125 on Pay as you go. It's already up for grabs on the Vodafone website, and when you pick one up you also get 6GB of data valid for up to 30 days. If you are into signing long-term contracts, then Vodafone will happily oblige and provide you with a free Tab speed 6 if you choose a 3GB data plan that costs 16 per month. Source Haiti - FLASH : Demonstration, violence, vandalism and panic scenes in the Capital Yesterday Tuesday, the metropolitan area and North woke up with a strong police presence in the streets, following the violent incidents during Monday's demonstrations and the ransacking of several polling stations in the North https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-16363-haiti-news-electoral-zapping.html A presence that has not intimidated several thousand people who took the concrete to the call of the G8 and the opposition forces to continue to demand among other things, the withdrawal of the presidential decree convoking the people to elections Sunday, January 24. This demonstration was marred by violent incidents causing panic especially at Delmas, Nazon Lalue Bois-Verna and the city center. An officer of the Corps of Intervention and Maintenance of Order (CIMO) was injured after be subjet to stone throwing and at least one protester was apprehended. Vehicle windshields were broken, vehicles torched, streets of the capital were blocked by barricades of burning tires, dumpsters, rocks and branches and several clashes between demonstrators and police force have been reported. Police had to repeatedly use tear gas to disperse demonstrators particularly violent, who tried to block one of the the major axes of Port-au-Prince and throw stones at the police. Particularly violent slogans were launched by leaders of small groups such as "kill Opont", "kill Martelly" taken up by the crowd of protesters... Individuals defied anyone to vote Sunday, calling to out the weapons to prevent the elections on January 24... Following these violence Pierre-Richard Casimir, the Minister of Justice has reacted strongly in a statement "The Ministry of Justice and Public Security condemns the numerous acts of vandalism and violence during the last 72 hours, during street demonstrations in both the capital and the north of the country. The Ministry so that no one ignores, reminds all organizers of events on public roads, the obligation they have by law to ensure the exclusively peaceful nature of their movements. The police and the prosecuting authorities have therefore been instructed to apprehend and prosecute any individual that will makes disorder by attacking the life and property of others [...]" HL/ HaitiLibre Haiti - FLASH : Labadee port calls canceled due to demonstration Tuesday morning, while the cruise ship Freedom of the Seas full of cruise passengers arrived in Labadee a number of people on small boats, organized a demonstration at the dock constraining for security reasons, the company Royal Caribbean, to cancel the scheduled port call to Haiti. Following this incident the Government of Haiti in a statement "[...] condemns with the utmost vigor the incident that occurred, this Tuesday, January 19, 2016, at the tourist port of Labadee with the inopportune arrival of a group of protesters to the dock of this port. This situation caused a regrettable tension for cruise passengers arriving at the site. Therefore, the Government believes that some different can be resolved through dialogue and calls for calm everyone. The government has taken steps to remedy this situation caused by social order demands. Government officials will have to meet as soon as possible, residents of Labadee area and thus start a dialogue process. On the other hand, we want to reassure and give our largest tourism partner of the cruise ship company Royal Caribbean all the guarantee that the arrangements will be made by the government to secure the area and allow the tourism activity to continue on the site of Labadee as usual. The Government of the Republic of Haiti reaffirms the implementation of its overall policy to ensure that Haiti can become one of the main tourist destinations in the Caribbean that can accommodate visitors from around the world." For its part in its statement Royal Caribbean explains "Today, when Freedom of the Seas arrived to Labadee, Haiti, the ship encountered a number of locals in small boats staging a protest. Although this protest was peaceful in nature, it was clear that if the protest continued, there would be a significant impact on our guests ability to enjoy Labadee. Therefore, Royal Caribbean cancelled Freedom of the Seas port call to Labadee. Instead, the ship will remain at sea and call to Falmouth, Jamaica, tomorrow, as planned. We will continue to closely monitor the situation and are in close communication with local and government officials in Haiti. At this time, we have not made any decisions regarding future port calls to Labadee. The next schedule call is Navigator of the Seas, on Thursday, January 21." HL/ S/ HaitiLibre Haiti - Elections : The Diaspora wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry 43 Haitian-American diaspora organizations, 34 political, religious and community leaders, and 66 other individuals wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry Tuesday criticizing "the unhelpful role the State Department has been playing in Haiti's election crisis" and calling for a change of U.S. policy. The letter demonstrates the deep concern felt by Haitian-Americans about this crucial issue for Haiti's future. "Pushing forward heedlessly with elections on January 24 will only deepen Haiti's political crisis," said City of North Miami Vice-Mayor Alix Desulme, one of the endorsers of the letter. "The country does not need another round of debilitating instability, it needs a legitimate government issued from fair and credible elections." The letter urges Secretary Kerry to support an independent, Haitian-led investigation, as demanded by Haitian religious leaders and civil society to support the recommendations of a recently-appointed Evaluation Commission, which called for major changes to Haiti's electoral council and the establishment of a political dialogue among the relevant political actors. Meeting these "minimum conditions" for restoring faith in the electoral process must be made the top priority of U.S. policy in Haiti, the letter states, "even if this means postponing the election or briefly appointing a transitional government." "All too often, the U.S. has been eager to sacrifice democratic principles for the sake of an elusive 'stability'," said Pierre Imbert, former Director of the Massachusetts Office of Refugees and Immigrants and an endorser of the letter. "We're asking Secretary Kerry not to make this mistake again." "The time when the State Department could hand-pick a president for Haiti is over," said Eugenia Charles, policy and communication director of the 1804 Institute. "Haitians want free and fair elections that will eventually free our country from systemic foreign domination." Download the text of the letter : https://www.haitilibre.com/docs/Critical-Elections-Diaspora-Letter.pdf HL/ HaitiLibre Loretta Lynn's first album dates back to 1963. At age 83, Lynn is still touring, singing and recording. But don't expect her to be releasing albums for very long, her nw album Full Circle, which arrives on March 4th will be her last. Speaking to Billboard, Lynn explains: "I've got a whole houseful of kids and grandkids, and I'm doing a lot of this for them," Lynn said. Though, she plans to keep working "for a long time," she said. "I feel great. I thank God every day that I'm in good condition." Full Circle follows on the heels of her Gospel album released last year. Last year on April 14th, Gaither Music released Hymns and Gospel Favorites. The album gathers Lynn's recordings of hymns and spiritual songs she has had recorded throughout her lengthy career. Some of the highlghts include Lynn's touching autobiographical ballad "If I Could Hear My Mother Pray Again," "Who Says God is Dead" and "I Believe." This timeless collection captures the honest, colorful strains that have made Loretta Lynn a household name, trendsetter and recording icon. These treasured songs of faith highlight her unmistakable, heartwarming voice that has been bringing audiences to their feet for decades. With Full Circle, Lynn offers 13 new songs with two covers from her own reportoire. The first is her own hit "Fist City" and the second being an updated take on "Whispering Sea," the first song Lynn ever wrote, which was originally released in 1960 as the B-side to "I'm a Honky Tonk Girl." Recorded in the Cash Cabin Studio, which Johnny Cash built on his own spread of Tennessee countryside in the late Seventies, Full Circle was co-produced by daughter Patsy Lynn Russell and family friend John Carter Cash. The result is an album that doesn't necessarily stretch Lynn's legs, as the Jack White-produced Van Lear Rose did more than a decade ago, as much as celebrate her strengths. For fifty years now, Loretta has fashioned a body of work as artistically and commercially successful-and as culturally significant-as any female performer you'd care to name. Her music has confronted many of the major social issues of her time, and her life story is a rags-to-riches tale familiar to pop, rock and country fans alike. The Coal Miner's Daughter-the tag refers to a hit single, an album, a best-selling autobiography, an Oscar-winning film, and to Lynn herself-has journeyed from the poverty of the Kentucky hills to Nashville superstardom to her current status as an honest-to-goodness American icon. Here's the tracklist for Loretta Lynn's Full Circle: Whispering Sea (Introduction) Whispering Sea Secret Love Who's Gonna Miss Me? Black Jack David Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven Always on My Mind Wine into Water In the Pines Band of Gold Fist City I Never Will Marry Everything It Takes (Featuring Elvis Costello) Lay Me Down (Featuring Willie Nelson) Tags : Loretta Lynn loretta lynn last album loretta lynn new album loretta lynn full circle loretta lynn news loretta lynn latest accept employment with a buyer of the business and the buyer recognises their prior service at Masters for redundancy purposes; accept employment within an associated entity in the Woolworths Group; reject an offer from the buyer on substantially similar and overall no less favourable terms, which would have recognised their prior service at Masters for redundancy purposes Redundancy costs will arise where businesses shut and no alternative offer is made. minimising the number of staff cuts (but not necessarily the number of staff cut it is often better to cut once and cut deep, so that remaining staff are not left in fear of further imminent cuts); and keeping staff informed of their potential to obtain a continuing role in the business with a buyer or other redeployment options. ail giant Woolworths announced plans on Monday to sell or close its Masters hardware business after heavy losses, leaving HR in the delicate position of managing the future of thousands of employees.A Woolworths media spokesperson told HC Online that all Masters stores will continue to trade for several months.We are currently in a valuation process with our JV partner Lowe's which will run for at least two months, the spokesperson said.Following that period, Woolworths intends to acquire Lowe's shares in the business and we will then make a judgement about how we exit the business (by sale or wind-up), the spokesperson said.HC Online spoke to Senior Associate Benjamin Marshall from Arnold Bloch Leibler about the challenges HR managers face when managing redeployment and redundancies.Marshall says Woolworths faces significant redundancy liability if it cannot find a buyer for its hardware businesses to employ its staff or absorb it staff into its other businesses.Their priority will be to find a buyer for the businesses who can take on their staff, he says. You would expect that to be a condition of any sale. Any buyer will need at least some staff to run the business and the existing staff are the logical choice.Although the Woolworths group is a massive employer, he says is likely to struggle to redeploy the majority of Masters staff if they do not continue in the business.The primary issue from a human resources perspective will be cost of any redundancies and what can be done to limit this cost, Marshall says.He says Woolworths may also face industrial pressure from the union, possibly in its other businesses, if it is not seen to do the right thing by the hardware staff.In the case that Woolworths does find a buyer for its Masters business, Marshall says it is likely that most staff will be offered ongoing employment, subject to the needs of the buyer.For instance, if some locations were to be shut, the buyer may resist taking on those staff, he says.However, employees will not be entitled to redundancy pay where they:He says one of the major issues for HR is managing to keep up staff morale and minimise the aura of fear and uncertainty which arises when employee job security is under threat.The uncertainty of these scenarios is destructive of morale, Marshall says. You can expect that a number of employees will look to jump ship to competitors or elsewhere when they see a limited or uncertain future ahead.HR can play a key role in limiting the uncertainty, including:Marshall notes that although the potential for redundancy payments may be enough to stop staff jumping ship early, employers should consider an additional retention benefit for key staff.Woolworths chairman Gordon Cairns says the retail giant will try to find other avenues to redeploy its 7000 Masters staff within the Woolworths empire, if the chain was not sold."Today will come as a shock to those 7000 people, and to be quite frank, they've done an outstanding job at Masters they're not contributory to the fact we're not making money," Cairns was quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald."We feel very strongly that as a repsonsible and caring employer, our objective is to make sure we can do the best thing by them and do the best we can to find them employment in the [Woolworths] group."Woolworths told media some 7,000 workers would be affected by the restructure, although the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association put the figure at up to 9,000.Union national secretary Gerard Dwyer told the Sydney Morning Herald that Woolworths was a large company with a "good track record" of re-deploying staff where brands have been closed or down-"sized."The union has already sought and been given assurances that Woolworths would be working closely with staff and the SDA to maximise redeployments should the business have to close," Dwyer said."We can assure staff that all employee entitlements will be protected whether the business is sold or closed."Woolworths owns 63 Masters stores across Queensland, Victoria, NSW, South Australia, Western Australia and the ACT. By Jesse Wood The Watauga County Board of Commissioners heard from Deborah Greene of the New River Advocates, a nonprofit that opposes the Town of Boones water intake along the South Fork of the New River, regarding a petition for action. Greene is requesting that the Watauga County Board of Commissioners compel the Town of Boone to seek approval from them regarding the towns condemnations of property in the county for its intake. Last year, the Town of Boone filed 16 condemnation actions the day before the passage of N.C. House Bill 875, which prevents municipalities in Ashe and Watauga counties from exercising eminent domain outside of its planning jurisdiction without the consent of elected officials in those counties. The bill was sponsored by N.C. Rep. Jonathan Jordan in April and later advanced through the Senate by N.C. Sen. Dan Soucek in September. Jordan sponsored the bill on the heels of the Town of Boone notifying landowners of its intent to acquire easements along the transmission line route of its proposed water intake near Todd either through a fair negotiation or eminent domain. In the petition for action, the New River Advocates state that while the condemnation proceedings were filed one day before the bills ratification, the town didnt file the memorandum of action for the properties being condemned until Sept. 25, which is about one week after the bill instantly became law upon passage. The New River Advocates, Inc. contends the Town of Boone failed to initiate the condemnation proceedings on Sept. 16, 2015 by failure to file the memorandum of action referenced herein until Sept. 25, 2015, the petition for action reads. The New River Advocates state that the commissioners have standing to request the Town of Boone to seek approval from them and also requests the commissioners to take legal action to prevent the Town of Boone from seeking final judgment of the condemnations without the commissioners approval. After listening to Greenes presentation, which essentially boiled down to reading the two-page petition, Austin Eggers, an attorney representing the county, said it would be better to discuss the issue under closed session. Right now its a question of standing and whether or not the county has standing to bring this type of action, Eggers said, adding that this likely falls under attorney-client matters. With those words from Eggers, Chair Jimmy Hodges asked for the consensus of the board to discuss this issue in closed session after the public portion of the meeting. So we all have a good understanding of the situation. This could be a very contentious issue, so we want to deal with in in the right way and not jump into something that could cause a big problem or whatever for this board and this county, Hodges said. With consent of the board, the commissioners moved on to the next agenda item. Responding to a request for comment via email on Wednesday morning, Town Attorney Allison Meade said that the town certainly disagrees with the assessment in the petition for action and said that she or Town Manager John Ward would provide further comment later in the day. [Update: Heres Meades response: The condemnations were filed on Sept. 16 and the law as it existed on that date is what will apply to them. Here is why: NC case law establishes that, with limited exceptions that dont apply here, the law as it exists when a civil action is filed is the law that applies to that case. Normally, a civil action is instituted when the complaint is filed. In the case of a condemnation, the statute is explicit as to when the action is filed. NCGS s 40A-41 provides in relevant part: A public condemnor listed in G.S. 40A-3(b) or (c) shall institute a civil action to condemn property by filing in the superior court of any county in which the land is located a complaint containing a declaration of taking declaring that property therein is thereby taken for the use of the condemnor . . . Accordingly, the Towns civil action was properly filed when it filed its complaint and declaration of taking, both of which happened on September 16, 2015. This conclusion is further buttressed by the language of s. 40A-42, which provides that in cases such as this, title immediately vests in the condemnor upon the filling of the complaint and the making of the deposit in accordance with G.S. 40A-41. There is no mention of memorandums of actions in either 40A-41 or 40A-42. The filing of the MOA with the Register of Deeds office is required by a different provision of the statute, s. 40A-43. Nothing in this provision states that a MOA must be filed as part of the civil action, or that it must be filed for the civil action to be effective. The point of the filing of the memorandum is to give title record notice in the Register of Deeds office to potential purchasers of the real property at issue that the property is subject to a condemnation. The filing requirement thus protects third parties and the condemnor in the event the condemnee attempts to sell or obtain a loan on property that is subject to a condemnation action, by ensuring that potential purchasers or lenders have notice of the pending condemnation. In other words, the requirement for the filing of the MOA is for the protection of third parties and the condemnor not the condemnee. So, even assuming that the MOA was filed late in this case, the supposedly late filing of the MOA that does not cause prejudice to any party cannot possibly be found to invalidate or delay the effective date of the civil action. There is no NC appellate case in which a court has ever found that failure to file a MOA on the same day as a complaint was filed affected the validity or effective date of the complaint.] When the town filed the condemnations in September prior to the passage of the legislation, Brantz noted that the town chose to act because this bill would add additional costs and delays to a project that has already cost at least $2 million and is several years old. The delays involved with changing state law at the end of the easement acquisition phase of the project could compromise approximately $22 million in loans and grants the Town of Boone has secured, Brantz said in September. County Manager Deron Geouque didnt immediately respond to questions regarding the closed session meeting on Tuesday evening. Share this: Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Reddit Pocket Juha Palonen, the managing director of Suomen Lampopuu, has expressed his delight with the lifting of economic sanctions on Iran, estimating that the decision will enable the manufacturer of heat-treated wood products to step up its exports to the country. I think it'll be possible to double our exports to Iran, Palonen estimates in an interview with Uusi Suomi. Iran has been undergoing a construction boom, but it has slowed down a bit as they've waited for the sanctions to be lifted. I think the recent decisions will give a boost the construction industry. Suomen Lampopuu is also exploring the possibility of hiring additional staff after hearing about the dissolution of the sanctions. It is presently set to hire three employees and an additional three or four later in the spring. [We'll hire] as the need arises, says Palonen. Palonen has good experiences of conducting business with Iranians. Doing business with them is pleasant. They react to developments in a similar manner and have a similar negotiating culture. The level of education in Iran is also high, he says. He also admits to being surprised at how similar life in Iran is compared to that in Finland. Iranians, he estimates, are roughly as religious as Finns. The banking sector is similarly poised to benefit from the de-regulation of trade with Iran, according to Timo Karppinen, a senior relationship manager at OP Financial Group. Banks, he explains, will benefit from the decision because they provide services to companies exporting to the country. Karppinen is confident that closer export ties with Iran will also boost the revenues of OP Financial Group. Customer enquiries on our end will definitely increase as the market opens up and Finnish companies start exporting all kinds of goods and services. The demand there has bottled up for nearly ten years due to the sanctions, he points out. OP Financial Group has prepared for the new opportunities by establishing ties with financial institutions operating in Iran. The financial services provider was part of the business delegation that accompanied Lenita Toivakka (NCP), the Minister of Foreign Trade and Development, on her export-promotion trip to the country in December. I got to talk with companies that will export [to the country], hear about their thoughts and challenges. On the other hand, I was there to establish ties with local banks, to make their acquaintance. We, together, will be able to take care of the business fees, guarantees and whatnot of our corporate customers, Karppinen tells. He estimates that the dissolution of the sanctions will have even a more widespread impact on Finland. This is definitely good news to the export industry and, thus, also to the financial sector [] because [Iran] is a market the size of Germany and because the demand has bottled up for ten years, he explains. He also expresses his hopes that the trade embargo against Cuba will be lifted in the near future. US President Barack Obama announced last week that he would like to lift the embargo by the end of the year. Aleksi Teivainen HT Photo: Atta Kenare AFP / Lehtikuva Source: Uusi Suomi The sex crimes reported to law enforcement officers in the wake of the festivities are exceptional both in terms of their extent and nature, according to the police department. The police are currently aware of 15 incidents of sex crimes, which can be considered an extremely large number, the police department states in a summary released at the request of the Government's Situation Centre. Helsinki Police Department has shed further light on the sex crimes that are believed to have taken place in Helsinki on New Year's Eve. Helsinki Police Department has never received so many reports of sex crimes in a single day. The victims of the crimes are women aged 1466 years. One of the incidents under investigation is treated as rape, two as attempted rape and twelve as sexual harassment. The investigators are also looking into a number of other offences, including assault, attempted burglary, attempted theft and invasion of domestic premises. The sexual harassment included groping, touching, squeezing and face-licking, according to the investigators. The accounts of victims indicate that the people who acted as part of a group may have had a pre-determined strategy in which some of the suspects surrounded the victim while others carried out enforcement measures that meet the elements of an offence, the summary reads. The objective of the people who surrounded the victim of the crime was to prevent the victim from fleeing and bystanders from intervening and exposing the activities. The described activities represent a new phenomenon in Helsinki both in terms of their extent and nature. The suspected offenders are described as follows: The suspects in the cases already cleared are asylum seekers. The suspects in cases under pre-trial investigation and yet to be investigated have been described as foreigners. More than one people are suspected in roughly half of the cases, according to Jonna Turunen, a detective superintendent at Helsinki Police Department. Helsinki Police Department also calls attention to the rumours that began to circulate a day before New Year's Eve that a group of Iraqi asylum seekers was to be rounded up at the Aavaranta Reception Centre in Kirkkonummi to create disturbances and commit sex crimes. A couple of asylum seekers were apprehended in Aavaranta on suspicion of public incitement to an offence based on inquiries made by the Western Uusimaa Police Department. No similar rumours are known to have circulated in Helsinki, but at least in Tampere police patrols received similar reports from the Iraqis there. Aleksi Teivainen HT Photo: Markku Ulander / Lehtikuva Source: Uusi Suomi On 19 January 2016, Finnish environmental and architectural expertise was awarded in Tehran. The international Energy Globe Award was presented to the River Jukajoki restoration project in Eastern Finland and to the KOMITU architects project on the construction of a youth centre in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Waterway protection at the grassroots level Launched in North Karelia by the villages of Selkie and Alavi, Eastern Finlands biggest waterway protection project, aimed at restoring the River Jukajoki, has been active for five years. In 2010 and 2011, peat production by the company Vapo Oy caused deaths of fish in the river, after which the villages launched this new kind of waterway protection project. This enabled fishermen, hunters and residents in the catchment area to participate in restoring their waterway. One of the projects most significant innovations is the idea that the villagers traditional, local knowledge is just as important as science in detecting changes, says River Jukajoki Project Leader Tero Mustonen, who will be present to accept the prize in Tehran. The goal of the project, which to date has spent a total of EUR 2.7 million, is to restore and study the heavily damaged waterway. In 2012 a Ministry of the Environment representative proposed the innovations of the River Jukajoki project as a possible model for solving the Talvivaara Mine disaster. The River Jukajoki project has also featured internationally in two American documentary films Jukajoki and Our Place on Earth, which were shot in the villages of Selkie and Alavi over a two-year period. The Jukajoki film will be premiered in March 2016. In 2014 the project also received a special mention from the UN for best practices in waterway protection. Youth centre from bamboo and earth bricks The youth centre, designed and executed by the Finnish KOMITU architects opened in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in February 2014. Two Cambodian non-governmental organisations use the premises to teach English as well as information technology and vocational skills to children and young people. The organisations and young people using the building participated in its design and construction. Bamboo and compressed earth bricks were used in the construction of the youth centre. Making earth bricks does not require energy at all. Bamboo, in turn, is a rapidly-renewable, carbon-binding local material. In addition, an experimental wall of plastic bottles filled with plastic waste was made for the building in response to the areas waste problems. Educational events on ecological construction methods where held on the site for local students. The KOMITU architects working group consisted of Noora Aaltonen, Sisko Hovila,Tuuli Kassi, Maiju Suomi, Elina Tenho and Inari Virkkala. KOMITU acted in the project as the architect, developer and provider of financing. The projects biggest providers of financing were the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the Finnish Cultural Foundation and the Arts Promotion Centre Finland. This is the third international award won by the project. Previously, the project has won 3rd prize in the International Architecture Awards 2015, and an honourable mention in the Re-thinking the Future Awards. KOMITU is part of the Nordic South of North network and the Finnish Ukumbi ry non-governmental organisation, which offers architectural services to disadvantaged groups. The award was accepted in Tehran by working group members Noora Aaltonen and Elina Tenho. Distinguished guests at the Gala The awards were presented by the Austrian Energy Globe Foundation in Tehran on Tuesday, 19 January 2016. According to the foundation, the TV Gala will attract more than one billion viewers on 600 different TV channels around the world. It can also be followed on a live webcast at the address http://www.energyglobe.info. The Energy Globe Foundation is a non-profit organisation whose goal is to spread awareness of sustainable practices and renewable forms of energy as well as to promote global dialogue among experts and politicians. The Gala is being held this year in Iran, with the objective of supporting Irans environmental and civil society development. The awards ceremony was attended by Irans high political leaders, including Minister Masoumeh Ebtekar, head of the environment agency of Iran. Minister Maneka Gandhi from India, recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize and other international people of note were also present. A heartbroken father has spoken of how he tried to save his young son who was swept out to sea after falling from cliffs while on holiday. Aaron O'Flaherty (9) died after the incident that happened on a visit to Black Head lighthouse north of Fanore, Co Clare, on May 4, 2014. His father, Patrick Hayes, gave emotional testimony at the inquest into Aaron's death of how he almost managed to grab his son as he was caught in the waves, only for the boy to be swept away in the strong swell. The court heard that the pair had been on a weekend camping trip to Doolin. Stumble Mr Hayes said they visited the lighthouse earlier in the day, but Aaron wanted to see it in operation, so they returned at dusk. As the pair sat on the rocks looking out over Galway Bay, Aaron spotted a fisherman on rocks nearby. He wanted to try casting out, his father said. "As he got up he seemed to stumble toward the cliff edge. I went to grab him but he fell in," Mr Hayes said. Aaron fell between 15 and 20 feet into the sea below. Mr Hayes, who trained with the Civil Defence in 2005, said he knew he could not reach him. "He was treading water and calling out to me. I realised I wouldn't have been able to swim out to him," he said. He called 999, untangled the ropes of a lifebuoy and threw it, but it did not reach his son. Fisherman Malikhaz Mgeku- asgvili, who was alerted by Mr Hayes' shouts, cast out a line and Aaron grabbed it. "I pulled him in to the shoreline, near enough to grab him. The man went into the water and grabbed the child but a wave came in and pushed them apart," the fisherman said. Mr Hayes struggled with his emotions as he told coroner Dr Brian Farrell he could not keep hold of his son. "I had him in my hands on a number of occasions, but the waves kept breaking us apart and pushing us under," he said. Aaron was swept swiftly out to sea, Dublin Coroner's Court heard. Mr Hayes questioned the length of time it took a coastguard helicopter to respond. Following Mr Hayes' 999 call, logged at 9.15pm, the Rescue 115 Coast Guard helicopter mobilised and departed Shannon airport at 9.33pm. Airlifted It arrived at the scene at 9.45pm, as Doolin Coast Guard volunteers arrived by boat. They found Aaron around 100 metres from shore, Thomas Doherty of Doolin Coast Guard told the court. Noting the 12-minute flight time from Shannon to Black Head lighthouse, Mr Hayes said: "It still doesn't explain why it took so long to mobilise." Aaron was airlifted to Galway University Hospital and later transferred by ambulance to Temple Street in Dublin, where he died four days later. The cause of death was irreversible brain damage due to a lack of oxygen, secondary to a drowning episode. The lighthouse is approached by a path with a "No Entry" sign, the court heard. Dr Farrell returned a verdict of death by misadventure. Gardai at the scene where the body of Kenneth O'Brien (INM) Gardai have identified Dublin dad Kenneth O'Brien as the murder victim whose body was found in a suitcase in the Grand Canal. Mr O'Brien (33) was last seen alive leaving his house on Lealand Road, Clondalkin on Friday morning, January 15. His partner is said to be "devastated" after she was told by gardai yesterday that a DNA sample was an exact match to the torso found in the canal at Ardclough, Kildare. Described as a "family man" originally from Ballyfermot, Mr O'Brien had told his family that he was going down the country for some work on Friday. Sources said it is believed Mr O'Brien was brutally murdered because of a personal grudge. The mechanic was the father of a little boy and part of a family described as being very respectable and hard-working. Mr O'Brien was also a JCB driver and had just returned from Australia last month. "He's a family man, with a partner," said Superintendent Gerry Wall of Leixlip Garda Station. "I spoke with his family this evening. They are devastated and grief-stricken," Supt Wall said at a press briefing. "At this stage there is no indication as to why this crime was perpetrated on this man. "It is a particularly gruesome crime. The brutality of it couldn't be overstated in respect of how a human being has been treated." Last night detectives were making inquiries to establish his acquaintances since he came back from Australia - and determine if he had been involved in any incident that could be linked to his brutal demise. Gardai have not yet located where he was murdered and his body dismembered, but intensive investigations are continuing in west Dublin and north Kildare. Gardai were informed at 3.30pm yesterday that a DNA sample was an exact match to a sample provided by a member of his family. His relatives were informed by garda liaison officers at teatime yesterday as a murder hunt was stepped-up. Officers said last night that securing a positive identification of the victim was a significant development in their investigation. The torso in the suitcase was wrapped in plastic and discovered by two walkers along the banks of the canal at Ardclough on Saturday afternoon. It had been spotted there six hours earlier by locals who thought the case was discarded litter. Search A detailed search of that stretch of the canal by the garda water unit was completed yesterday. A post-mortem examination of the torso by deputy State pathologist Dr Michael Curtis failed to determine how Mr O'Brien had been killed, and there were no marks on the body. But gardai said that there has been a steady stream of information which was "bringing up good leads". Residents on Lealand Road in Clondalkin last night spoke of their shock. "You'd never think something like that would happen to a neighbour," they told the Herald. A review of filming on Henrietta Street is underway, with residents hoping it will see more rules imposed on production companies. The street has long been a favourite in the film and TV industry because it is the only intact example of an early 18th century street of houses. Shows such as Penny Dreadful and Ripper Street regularly use the area as a location for shooting. However, residents have been campaigning for years for their neighbourhood to be protected, as they feel it is treated as a continuous set. Dispute The dispute came to a head when filming took place through much of November, and Dublin City Council (DCC) imposed a six-month moratorium on filming there. Resident Edward Casey, who has lived in the area all his life, told the Herald that filming has become a "nightmare" for him and his family. He said he hoped the review would result in "a better use and a more controlled use" of the street and that less filming would take place there. "These are family homes, it is very important that residents are allowed to enjoy their family life," he said. Mr Casey said that he hoped that the future use of the street would show it off as a Dublin heritage site, as it is mostly used to portray scenes set in London. The council have appointed Yvonne Thunder, who has a long history in the film industry, to carry out the review. She will interview residents and people working in the film industry. Some residents have raised concerns that it represents a conflict of interest to have her carry out the review. However, the DCC said that her experience in the industry was a "positive element in her work". The findings of the review will be presented to the council, and it is likely that a new code of practice for the area will be drawn up and submitted to city councillors in March. "Should new guidelines be adopted before the expiry of the six-month moratorium on May 13, 2016 then consideration will be given to lifting the moratorium at an earlier date," assistant chief executive Brendan Kenny said in the briefing document for the review. In 2015 - before the ban - seven applications for filming were made for filming on Henrietta Street, for periods of between one and seven days. Dublin receives around 100 applications for filming every year. It is estimated that Penny Dreadful, which will shoot here for four seasons, will create some 121m in foreign direct investment. Previously, Screen Producers Ireland said that the ban would have "a severe impact" on the film industry and that, in their view, many residents were supportive of filming. The damage done by shots fired in the post office at Woodbine Park, Blackrock (Brian McEvoy) A gunman who opened fire in a raid on a Dublin post office was bravely tackled to the ground by two men yesterday. The masked gunman entered the post office at Woodbine Park, Blackrock, shortly after 2pm and threatened staff before firing a number of shots at the glass security screen on the counter. Shortly afterwards, as the gunman emerged from the premises, a man working in the vicinity grappled with the armed raider. In the violent struggle, the gunman lashed out and hit the courageous man on the head with the gun. Blood flowed from the victim's head as he continued to struggle with the gunman. A second man then jumped in to tackle the gunman. During the struggle, the handgun fell to the ground and was kicked away. The two men and the gunman ended up on the ground as the two have-a-go heroes tried to pin the robber to the footpath. But the raider managed to break free and run off, leaving his gun and a bicycle at the scene. A woman who works in a grocery shop next door told the Herald she called the gardai as the raid was in progress. "Four or five men came running into the shop and told us to call the guards because there was a guy with a gun in the post office," said the woman (24). "I heard bangs but I didn't know it was shots. The man was still in the post office when I rang the guards. "A man outside the post office managed to knock the gunman to the ground when he came out. He got hit on the head by the gunman and there was a big gash in his forehead. "I think he must have knocked the gun out of his hand and another man stood on it. "The gunman was wearing a balaclava mask. Another man also helped to tackle him." "The man with the gash on his head was taken to hospital. Those two men who tackled the gunman are definitely heroes. "They put their own life at risk to protect other people," she added. Armed Another woman working in a shop nearby said the gun used by the armed raider was "a big one". Mary Creed told the Herald: "When I came out of the shop I saw the handgun lying on the ground and there was a man standing over it who appeared to be waiting for the guards to arrive. It was a very big handgun," she said. She said the two men who tackled the robber were "brilliant" and "very brave". Southwest Virginia lawmakers repeated their pledge Tuesday to seek reversal of an attorney generals decision on handgun carry permits and their constituents voiced overwhelming support for those efforts. Speaking on a conference call with more than 3,000 constituents, Sen. Bill Carrico, R-Galax, and Delegates Terry Kilgore, R-Gate City, and Todd Pillion, R-Abingdon, among others, said they will work to change the December decision by Attorney General Mark Herring that Virginia will stop recognizing the concealed carry permits of 25 states, including Tennessee, on Feb. 1. Questions about the permits dominated the hour-long telephone town hall hosted by Kilgore and other area lawmakers. In addition, 96 percent of respondents to a poll question conducted during the call said they oppose Herrings action while only 4 percent said they support it. One caller from Norton expressed concern about crossing into nearby Tennessee or Kentucky if the permits arent recognized and a retired law enforcement officer from Big Stone Gap asked how this affects his right to carry. We have a series of bills, one that I am carrying, that takes the attorney general out of the mix and tells the State Police they shall enter into reciprocity with all 50 states, Carrico said. We have a bill that has the attorney general in the bill that says he shall enter into [reciprocity] but after his political weaseling this week I dont know we want him in that. Herrings office issued a statement that it is merely upholding existing state law and that the 25 states were cited because they have lower standards than Virginia. The way weve drawn the budget amendments, mine is drawn to the section of the code under public safety, Carrico said. All the governor can do is allow the reciprocity or to veto the whole public safety section of the budget. The same way with the attorney general, he either allows the reciprocity to go forward or he vetoes the whole section of his travel budget. So he wouldnt be going anywhere but to his office and the prosecutors would be the only ones getting paid. Carrico also called out Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who recently signed a series of executive orders that ban private citizens from carrying guns on state property, make sure only licensed dealers are selling guns and making it more difficult for those prohibited from having guns to obtain them. If he [McAuliffe] draws a line in the sand, the choice hes making to disallow people to carry on state property which makes it a criminal trespass offense and that includes rest areas. Its his choice. Either Ill [McAuliffe] revoke my executive order and my reciprocity suspension or Ill just do without the money. If the governor wants to go that route, hes doing a disservice to Virginians not us. Carrico also reiterated his support for revoking funds for the governors State Police security detail. If hes so afraid of guns then were not going to surround him with them, Carrico said. In response to one question about the reciprocity issue, Pillion urged listeners to be sure to vote against Herring when he runs for re-election in two years. All of us are working hard to make sure we come up with ways to keep your concealed carry permit and allow you to carry into Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia or wherever you are going, Kilgore said. Other topics included job recruitment, help for the sagging coal industry, the proposed merger between Wellmont Health System and Mountain States Health Alliance and education issues. Game on! IU to resume series with Kentucky starting in 2025-26. Kentucky coach John Calipari confirmed at SEC media day the two schools have agreed in principle to restart their annual regular-season series. It is one of the givens in Indias political scenario, especially within the media circles, that the BJP owes its growing electoral acceptability from the 1990s to the Ram Mandir movement and whenever any major election is in the offing, the sangh parivar unlocks the issue from its store house and unleashes one or another move towards building the temple. The coincidence between the two has been noted by almost every newspaper/TV journalist as red stone slabs started their journey towards Ayodhya recently. However, has the given really enabled the BJP to reap the sort of electoral dividends it is credited with? The facts indeed fly in the face of this assumption. And these are not manufactured facts! The first time the BJP came to power on its own in UP, home of Ayodhya, was in 1991 with the harvest of 221 seats, when the temple movement was just about coming centre stage under the leadership of LK Advani. Ironically, as his political fortunes declined in the 21st century both outside and within the BJP, he began to be hailed as an embodiment of secular politics in the media. On the fateful day, December 6, 1992, the movement culminated in the demolition of the Babari Masjid, leaving as well preceding a huge trail of blood on the ground. Some months later, assembly elections were held in some states in the Hindi-speaking region, heartland of the movement. The BJP lost UP badly. Its present tally dwindled to a miserable 47 out of 403 in 2012 and does not look poised for a rocket rise in the elections in 2017, for which heat is being turned on in Ayodhya. In the other major Hindi-speaking state, MP, then the biggest in the country in terms of area (before Chhattisgarh was carved out in 2000), the BJP lost power and was able to recapture it only after a 10-year hiatus when Digvijaya Singh had his days of glory. In Himachal Pradesh, it won eight seats in a house of 68. However, in Rajasthan, the party survived because of two sorts of distances: the physical distance of the region from the scene of action and the discreet political distance its chief minister, BS Shekhawat, had kept between himself and the movement. It thus becomes hard to get carried away by the equation between the Ram Mandir movement and the rising fortunes of the BJP, never mind the media. Indeed the connection between the movement, or the well worked out strategy of communal polarisation on the eve of elections, and electoral dividends has rarely worked in India. The most recent instances are Delhi and Bihar, still fresh in memory. In Delhi, within about six months of the triumphal march of the BJP to the Lok Sabha, the BJP stoked communal fires here and there, but the results stunned it! The metaphor of a three-wheeler scooter as the vehicle for the entire BJP lot in the assembly of 70 is most telling. On the eve of Diwali, Bihar too has put to rest the communal strategy of the BJP. The one state where polarisation yielded a rich and durable harvest was in Gujarat, thanks to the active collaboration between the states political leadership, a pliant bureaucracy and the party. Everywhere else the results are far from reassuring for the BJP, or indeed for the sangh parivar. Why does then the parivar still persist with the failed strategy? The mother organisation in the parivar, the RSS, since its inception has set its sights higher than winning elections and working a democratic polity. Its foundational texts, like MS Golwalkars We, the Nation Defined, have little love lost for parliamentary politics and adore Hitler for establishing a model authoritarian regime and cleansing the society of its impurities, i.e. the Jews, translated in the Indian context as Muslims and Christians. The vision goes beyond authoritarian regimes, focusing on reshaping Indias destiny in terms of its pure and singular Hindutva ideology. Its aim is to make Hindutva Indian societys common sense a la Gramsci. Winning state power, through elections or without them, is a step towards that end, not the end itself. Its chief target of attack is not corruption, for it has demonstrated a charming degree of tolerance of it within its offspring, the BJP, but the pluralist nature of Indian society, its religions and cultures. Ironically, Hinduism provides the most powerful support to this pluralism, with its denial of the singularity and finality of The Truth which characterises several religious as well as non-religious ideologies such as Christianity, Islam, Sikhism and Positivism/Marxism. Hindutva is thus the very negation of Hinduism. The parivar strategy is an ensemble of quiet, long-term work of education at the ground level through shakhas, schools and other institutions as well as launching dramatic events to capture societys attention. The BJP has another growing compulsion too: With its election promises collapsing, the economy rolling into the doldrums, India Incs growing nervousness about falling profits and rising doubts about higher GDP figures doled out by the government and recalling with nostalgia the much-maligned decade of UPA rule, with no rising employment figures in sight, and daily rise in the number of farmer suicides, with a number of visible blots on the promise of corruption-free governance, it needs a diversion. Will it succeed? History is not very promising. But then for the parivar, it is mythology and not history where the truth is! Harbans Mukhia is National Fellow, Indian Council of Historical Research. The views expressed are personal. With wide waists in white tutus, their figures are far from those of typical ballerinas -- but these plus-size Cuban dancers are determined to defy stereotypes. In a land with a fiercely demanding dance tradition, the women have turned their large physique into an artistic virtue, proudly taking to the stage to perform Swan Lake. You dont come here to lose weight. You come here to feel like a ballerina, says Juan Miguel Mas, founder of the Danza Voluminosa troupe. You are fat and you have the desire and the need to express yourself through movement. Fighting fat Cuba is world renowned for its slim, rigorously trained dancers. But 44% of its population is overweight, according to 2012 figures from state nutrition body SISVAN. Members of Danza Voluminosa typically weigh between 100 and 120 kilos, but there is no limit. Mas, 50, a trained dancer with a rotund figure himself, founded the group in 1996. It once had 20 members, but only seven remain. Some left and two have died from obesity-related illnesses. It has not been easy, says one of the members of the troupe, Maylin Daza, a 36-year-old housewife. We have lost companions to obesity. And here we are, still fighting. Juan Miguel Mas, the director of the group shows the wardrobe during a rehearsal at his home in Havana. (AFP) Soft, wide bodies Mas set out to use his own professional dance experience to train people with bodies like mine, softer and wider. I had the idea of creating a space where those people could train and develop, and of creating dances using these bodies, he said. It helps obese people to develop not only artistically, but also socially. The ballerinas, all women, practice twice a week in Mass small apartment in Havanas working class Marianao neighbourhood. Mas has spent 20 years exploring ways of making an overweight body move aesthetically better -- developing elegant moves adapted to bigger figures. Our dances will not be the same as thin peoples dances, he says. Winning over the audience The group recently put on a series of shows for the public. The first few times we performed, there was this deathly silence. Some people got up and left. Some laughed, Mas recalls. But when people saw how developed our work was and how impressive, with so much work behind it and such aesthetic meaning, in the end they applauded. We won over the audience. Then one night in early January, three dancers from the troupe found themselves stepping out in front of an audience at the elite National Theater in Havana. In white tutus, leggings and headdresses, they stepped along in tight formation to Tchaikovskys score. Mas (left) rehearses with his dancers at his home in Havana. (AFP) Fat women dont dance ballet There are no jumps and few bends. In rehearsal, the ballerinas groan when made to hold a move for several seconds. But in the dressing room, excitement reigns. Ive always liked classical dance, said Daza. But everyone knows fat women dont dance ballet. And in my family no one helped me to lose weight. The National Theater show was part of a cultural exchange between the University of Massachusetts and the Cuban writers and artists union UNEAC. For the dancers, it is a measure of how far they have come. Pulling on her long white gloves, Rubi Amaro recalls her first performances with the group. It wasnt easy at first, the 34-year-old said. At the start people laughed. They didnt like it. But others did. Now they pay more attention to the choreography. No one laughs at us now, she added. The family of an Indian man held in a Chinese prison for several months on Monday sought the Centres help for his repatriation even as Chinese authorities and Indian diplomats grappled with the mystery of his travel to China without documents. The curious case of the man, identified as Vishnu Das Sharma alias Chanda from Khuja village in Guna district, was thrust into the spotlight recently after Chinese authorities finally ascertained his Indian identity. Chinese authorities, however, identified him as Vishnu Mohan. Though he was identified only last week, Vishnu, 45, was picked up by police after complaints from residents of Anning city in southwestern Yunnan province last June. Since he was not carrying any documents and spoke a language unknown to local police, he was promptly put in jail. Vishnu does not have any travel or identification document: Chinese officials Chinese officials said Vishnus repatriation is taking time because he does not have any travel or identification document and is unable to explain how he entered China. Bhagwati Prasad, the elder brother of Vishnu, said they have submitted documents with police in support of their claim for his repatriation. The police had asked for his birth certificate, which we didnt have. So we went to the sarpanch of our village who gave us in writing, certifying my brothers birth here, Prasad told HT over phone from Guna. He added they have also appealed for Centres help. Vishnu was working as a priest in a temple in Rajasthan Prasad said Vishnu was working as a priest in a temple at Balapura village in Rajasthan when he started behaving abnormally. We decided to take him to mental hospital at Gwalior for treatment, but he fled from the Guna railway station and we never saw him since, he said. RV Sinha, a member of the faculty of Yunnan Nationalities University in Kunming, who helped Chinese police in interacting with the man, said Vishnu appeared unstable during the conversation, could not explain how he reached Yunnan and came up with fantastic stories about his travels. Nobody knows how he landed in China: Indias consul general Nobody knows how he landed in China. He landed without any papers, said YKS Thangal, Indias consul general in Guangzhong city of Guangdong province under which Yunnan falls. Thangal said Mohan could be repatriated but there were formalities to be completed. Gunas additional superintendent of police Satendra Tomar said that they are doing whatever possible to help Vishnus family in getting him back. A Ukrainian tourist in Madhya Pradesh who had been separated from her group on January 11, and had been unable to communicate with the police due to language differences, was on Wednesday reunited with her 14-member group. Marina, 45, had landed in Gwalior via Shivpuri on January 11. She had been separated from her group and was unable to communicate in any language other than Russian, due to which the police could not understand her. She was also reportedly under the influence of a drug. The police produced her in the court, which directed to send her to mental hospital for treatment considering her trauma. On January 17, she was referred to KRH hospital for treatment of an injury she had sustained on her leg. Meanwhile, the police managed to trace other group members through the Ukrainian embassy. Three persons, including a cousin of Marina and yoga teacher Umesh Joshi, on Wednesday reached Gwalior from Krishikesh to take her back. Joshi reportedly informed sources that Marina had alighted at Shivpuri while returning from the Omkaleshwar shrine darshan and had disappeared. The group expressed their delight at their reunion. The group had been visiting religious places in India and taking yoga lessons at Krishikesh. TI, MM Malviya of University police station said that Marina would be reunited with her group after the completion of legal formalities. The Jaipur Literature Festival is a unique celebration of writing that has grown into something bigger and more wonderful to anything we could ever have hoped when we first conceived this festival a decade ago. From only 14 guests turning up in 2005, most of whom were tourists who took the wrong turn; in 2006 we had a big enough crowd nearly to fill the Diggi Durbar Hall. About four hundred people came in 2007. Last year, we had nearly a third of a million footfalls, and the success of Jaipur has inspired a whole galaxy of nearly ninety other literary festivals not only in India but in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Nepal and now Burma. We are as surprised as we are proud of this. Jaipur remains the one of the worlds most beautiful cities, with a rich cultural heritage and a proud tradition of literature. It is the perfect setting for what we pride ourselves is the most democratic and egalitarian book festival in the world. All events are completely free; there are no reserved spaces for grandees; our authors mingle with the crowds and eat with them on a first-come, first served basis. People also know that when they come here they will have a lot of fun. As Time Out put it nicely last year, Its settled. The Jaipur Literature Festival is officially the Woodstock, Live 8 and Ibiza of world literature, with an ambience that can best be described as James Joyce meets Monsoon Wedding. Read: Jaipur Literature Fest 2016 to focus on culture and heritage But the scale and reach of the festival is something that still takes us all aback. When we ask an author to come to Jaipur, they very rarely say no, and this year we are proud to present a galaxy of Booker, Pulitzer and Samuel Johnson winners -- for free. Jaipur has now become synonymous with the greatest writers on the planet. Only 14 guests turned up in 2005 when Jaipur Literature Festival first began. (jaipurliteraturefestival.org) This year we have so much to offer that it is difficult to know where to begin. My colleague Namita Gokhale has put together an extraordinary Indian and bhasha list this year with names ranging from Punjabi Dalit activist Bant Singh through Hindi short story writer Anu Singh Choudhary and award winning poet Yatindra Mishra, to our perennial festival favourites like Javed Akhtar and Gulzar. Read: Jhumpa Lahiri honoured with DSC prize at JLF 2015 I am equally proud of the international list which this year is, I believe, the most cerebral, intellectually-stimulating and high-powered weve ever fielded. Among the international authors appearing this year we present writers of genius as diverse as economist Thomas Piketty and humourist and polymath Stephen Fry. We import some of the worlds most admired novelists, including Margaret Atwood, Colm Toibin, Aleksandar Hemon and David Grossman, as well as arguably the worlds greatest living travel writer, Colin Thubron. We deeply delve into three areas of world literature we have so far failed to explore- notably the novelists and poets of the Balkans, the Caribbean and Central America--while returning to examine eternal classics such as the work of Shakespeare, Proust and Andal. We will look in detail at the turmoil in the Middle East--the Shia Revival, the oppression of the Palestinians, and the rise of ISIS as well as examining the historical roots of the conflict: in A Peace to End All Peace four leading scholars of the Ottomans, the Armenian Genocide and the First World War, Eugene Rogan, Margaret MacMillan, Ronald Suny and Anthony Sattin show how the choices made between 1918 and 1921 set the Middle East along a road that led to the conflicts and confusion that continue to this day. This years festival will see a special focus on the literature of the Balkans, the Caribbean and Central America. (jaipurliteraturefestival.org) We will explore a vast range of subjects from Neanderthals to Hedge Fund Managers; the bleak depths of depression to the heights of the Silk Road; universal myths of the Deluge to the literature of the ethics of Empire; from adultery in Baroque Rome to the practice of contemporary art; from Mount Kailash to Zion; from Jamaican rap and mediaeval mystic poetry; the agonies of Partition to the pleasures of the Kama Sutra. Its going to be an absolutely extraordinary five days and I only wish it were possible to clone oneself so that one could attend five sessions simultaneously. Global leaders will converge at Davos, the popular Swiss ski resort, to discuss geo-politics, economics and development at the World Economic Forums (WEF) flagship annual event that gets underway on Wednesday. The theme for this years meeting is Mastering fourth Industrial revolution HT gives a heads up on 5 key issues that would dominate the discussions at WEF this year: China The worlds second-largest economy grew at 6.9%, its slowest pace in a quarter of a century, amid mounting concern for global investors. It is the slowest since 3.8% in 1990. The Chinese economy is slowing, according to multiple projections, and its financial market has been on a roller-coaster ride, roiling world markets as it tries to find balance. Struggling to claw out of its worst slowdown in more than a decade hit by shrinking exportsthe edifice of its growth storyChinas central bank have devalued the yuan to a its lowest value in five years. The devaluation is primarily aimed at making its manufactured products cheaper and help exports race ahead of competitors. World leaders are expected to expend a significant time in Davos discussing the state of the Chinese economy. Climate Change Never before in recent history has climate change assumed such an importance in geo-political discussions as now. After four years of talks , representatives from 195 countries created history in Paris in December 2015 by agreeing to a comprehensive climate change deal that will commit nearly every country to lowering planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions besides giving a boost to clean energy business. The COP21 agreement will have a lot in store for economies in transition like India with over a trillion dollars in green investment set to be handed out in the next decade or so, enabling the adoption of greener technologies an endgame that the agreement sets out to achieve. The long-term goal is to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees celsius over pre-Industrial Revolution levels, and to try for 1.5 degree if possible. Climate change and COP 21 are expected to be key discussion points in Davos as well Jobs The official theme of the 2016 meeting is mastering the fourth industrial revolution, which implies fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital and biological spheres. According to the WEF report disruptive changes to business models will have a profound impact on the employment landscape over the coming years. Many of the major drivers of transformation currently affecting global industries are expected to have a significant impact on jobs, ranging from significant job creation to job displacement, and from heightened labour productivity to widening skills gaps. According to the WEF report in many industries and countries, the most in-demand occupations or specialties did not exist 10 or even five years ago, and the pace of change is set to accelerate. By one popular estimate, 65% of children entering primary school today will ultimately end up working in completely new job types that dont yet exist. The report says that in such a rapidly evolving employment landscape, the ability to anticipate and prepare for future skills requirements, job content and the aggregate effect on employment is increasingly critical for businesses, governments and individuals in order to fully seize the opportunities presented by these trendsand to mitigate undesirable outcomes. India Amid sputtering global conditions, India is set to become the worlds fastest growing major economy by 2016 ahead of populous neighbour China that is battling an industrial deceleration. According to latest government estimates, India will likely grow at 7-7.5% in 2015-16, marginally faster than the previous years 7.3% growth. A new World Bank report has said emerging market economies that led the global recovery from the 2007-8 financial crisis are slowly down, with one exception, India. It called India-led South Asia a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy outlook for emerging markets, using a phrase that has come to be used regularly in recent months for India. According to the World Bank, India is projected to grow at 7.8% in 2016. The International Monetary Fund has projected robust growth for India in 2016 and 2017 and a more gradual pickup in global economy than it had said before. India would grow by 7.5% in both 2016 and 2017, the Funds update to the World Economic Outlook said on Tuesday. Finance minister Arun Jaitley would be accompanied by RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan and other senior government officials at the summit. Jaitleys two sessions India and the World and Asias Era of Infrastructure would be keenly followed for cues on Indias future reforms roadmap, essential to cement its place as the worlds growth engine Developed Economies For better part of the last decade, India, along with China, had been the toast of discussions in Davos This year, however, the phraseology at Davos, could undergo a subtle metamorphosis. Amid budding signs of recovery in the US, macroeconomic strategists in the developed world are now focussing on ways to Re-shoring of jobs to their countries, as opposed to Off-shoring. This could mark a fundamental shift in mainstream economic thinking following the world economys Great Crash of 2008. Last year, British Prime Minister David Cameron had summed it up rather appropriately at Davos when he cautioned that the West cannot afford to be starry eyed about globalisation and that it was about time to bring home the benefits by seizing the re-shoring opportunities where some jobs that were once offshored are coming back, from East to West. All eyes will on reading the fine-print of the new phraseology at WEF this year The Bombay Stock Exchange on Wednesday fell 418 points as part of a global selloff as investors panicked amid a cut in growth forecast by the International Monetary Fund and uncertainty in China along with the continued slide in oil prices which reaffirmed a slowdown in the global economy. The Sensex closed at 24,062 points, after falling below 24,000 level during trading, a level not seen since the Narendra Modi government came to power in May 2014. The 50-share Nifty on the NSE also corrected sharply, falling 1.7% to 7,309 points. This is clearly the fear of the unknown, said Mayuresh Joshi, vice president at Angel Broking. Investors still dont know to what extent China has been affected and also to what levels crude would fall. Domestically, Indian companies too have not helped much with the lackluster earnings seen so far, he added. Biggest losers for the day were heavyweights Adani Ports (down 5.53%), State Bank of India (down 5.13%), Reliance Industries (down 3.76%), Coal India (off 3.45%), Maruti and Tata Motors (down 3.4% each). The Sensex dipped by over 600 points to 23,848 point during the day tracking massive sell-off in Asian indices after IMF slashed global growth forecast. In 2016, FIIs have sold cash shares worth over Rs 6,000 crore, hurting Indian markets in a big way. The rupee dipped to a 29-month low to 68.16 per dollar due to the Chinese fear of a major slowdown, which has been reiterated by the IMF forecast, coupled with low crude oil prices which together portend to a major global economic slowdown. With global equities falling sharply and oil also plunging below $30 a barrel, a 13-year low, most investors rushed to safer havens like the dollar and gold. The precious yellow metal was up 0.4% $1,091 an ounce in global markets. The dream of minimum governance cited by Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems to be defied by the fine print of the action plan on startups unveiled on Saturday. Experts say entrepreneurs will have to go through numerous rounds in and out of bureaucratic corridors in order to be eligible for tax and other benefits. A start-up shall be eligible for tax benefits only after it has obtained certification from the inter-ministerial board, set up for such purposes, says one of the guidelines in the action plan document. In order for a startup to be considered eligible, the startup should be supported by a recommendation, in a format specified by the DIPP, from an incubator established in a post-graduate college in India. Though the government should be lauded for the initiative, but will life be simpler for an entrepreneur, the answer is no, said Sudhir Singh, partner, PWC. Given the diversity, with lack of clarity, power and internet connectivity, an entrepreneur who stays far away from the post graduate colleges like IITs and IIMs, and has no idea of how to obtain an inter-ministerial board approval will have to take a lot of hardship to take the key benefits. In simpler terms, it will be a lot of hard work for a genuine entrepreneur rising from the grassroots. Some of the government officials told HT that normally such boards meet either once a month, or once in two months, which means more rounds in the bureaucratic corridors. Given that innovation comes from the youth and common people in remote areas, it will not be easy for them to comply with the minimum government requirements mentioned in the fine print, said another analyst who requested anonymity. Availing tax benefits itself has a lot of clauses. It will definitely not be as easy as it was cited on Saturday. Not just this, proving innovation itself to the government will not be an easy task. HTs Aanchal Bedi in conversation with globally renowned scientist Professor Peter Hodgson, director at Institution of Frontier Material at Deakin University, Australia. Please tell us about significant recent/upcoming partnerships with Indian institutes as well as industry partnerships for research etc. An agreement has been signed between Deakin University and IIT Madras on joint doctoral programmes which will allow students to undertake research in both countries, and upon successful completion students will receive awards from both universities. The joint doctoral programme will help build the PhD scholar base between the two countries in the fields of material sciences and advanced manufacturing. We have signed an MoU with GE Technology Centre in Bangalore in the area of materials science and manufacturing across areas of synergy which are strategically important to both Deakin and GE. This partnership is envisaged to grow to five students over the next five years time. Another is the student mobility group, a study tour from the faculty of business and law. Students will be visiting India and interning with corporates to understand the business and management aspects and cultural diversity of the country. Indias ranking in Global Innovation Index slipped to 81 in 2015. Your comments. Education system in India is very much driven around high marks and strong focus on employment. Many courses are rigidly structured rather than being based on innovation or adopting a problem solving approach. In Australia, we focus on critical thinking, creativity, team working, problem solving etc. We ensure that our final year students spend time with research groups and are exposed to research culture. In terms of research excellence, Australia has a system to measure how universities are performing in the area of research, not just in science but also across all fields. The new government is about to launch its innovation statement and we expect that it will also give clear direction on how to improve the impact of our research on industry and society. Research innovation is part of the agenda and curriculum of the education system. What should be done to develop scientific temper among students? Industry has a major role to play in this. Students should be given career opportunities in the technical fields whereas at present most of the focus is on IT sector and management in India. A curriculum which is more engaging for the students will help them develop a passion for the subject. Variety of choices must be provided to students who can then develop a desire towards science. Does Deakin University offer any scholarship for Indian students? This year we have partnered with NDTV to offer scholarships which cover 100% tuition fee each two at undergraduate level and two at postgraduate level. More details about the scholarship and the online application form are available at www.ndtv.com/scholarship. Apart from the 100% tuition fee scholarships, the university offers scholarships ranging from a 10% to 25 % tuition fee waiver on the basis of students academic credentials and extracurricular achievements. Read more: One solution too many for Indias education issues Indias Republic Day is a joyous and festive occasion, made solemn too because of remembrance and honouring of acts of valour and sacrifice by the bravest and most valiant of its people . Participating in the Republic Day parade is, therefore, something that many school students look forward to. Braving the winter chills, hours of practice with their bands, delicately working out the balance between trials, rehearsals and studies is not easy but many youngsters manage things expertly. HT Education chased a few bands to find out more about how they are prepping up for the big day. The Scindia School, Gwalior, with its contingent of 45 students will be a part of the main Republic Day parade in the Capital. Many students, all of whom are part of the National Cadet Corps, have attended the camp at least two to three times. They are also privileged to have given the guard of honour to dignitaries, says Dr Madhav Deo Saraswat, principal of the school. Scindia students have been participating in the Republic Day Parade since 1973. Most of those who are selected for the military band are from classes 7, 8, 9 and 11. They have to dedicate as many as seven hours every day for practise: in the morning, after lunch and dinner. Some are even made to report for duty during the winter and summer vacations. They play patriotic music and martial tunes, says Ramesh Sharma, bandmaster, of the school. At any given point of time, there are 100 to 110 boys ready to perform, he says. Students say that the rigorous practise regime teaches them to be punctual, inculcates discipline and helps them learn how to balance time between academics and co-curricular activities. But most important is the sense of pride we get by participating in the Republic Day parade, they say. Besides January 26, students who are part of the military band get to participate in several intra-school competitions such as the Indian Public Schools Conference, which is a prestigious annual event. Most schools ensure that students spend a lot of time practising with their bands. Captain A J Singh, principal, Pinegrove School, Solan, says his students in the brass band generally practise for 40 minutes every day, but during inter-school competitions the time stretches to over four hours before the main competition. Most schools encourage students to start young and they have to be strong enough to blow into the instrument. Thats why most of the band members are selected from Class 7 onwards as they then get about six years on the instrument before they finally leave school.The school band at Lawrence School, Lovedale, Ootacamund, is part of the school heritage which is almost 130 years old. We even have student buglers who wake up the school during the founders day month held between April and May, says Sangita Chima, principal. Madhav Nair, band major of the schools brass band says that they get to practise between 2.30 pm to 3.30 pm every day. Ive been part of the school band for the last five years and can play the bugle, the drums and, euphonium, trombone, cornet and the saxophone. We practise patriotic music such as kadam kadam, sare jahaan se accha etc. During competitions we spend around five to six hours of practise. The band room is open for us throughout the day. Being part of the band has taught these students a thing or two about punctuality and even leadership skills. It has taught me how to approach each individual differently, everybody takes time to get used to an instrument and needs a friendly atmosphere to be able to perfect a melody or a tune, says Nair. Private unaided schools allotted land by the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) cannot hike fees without the governments permission, the Delhi high court ruled on Tuesday. The verdict has implications for close to 400 private schools in the city, and comes as a major relief to thousands of parents forced to accept annual fee hikes they are rarely consulted on. Declaring that schools cannot indulge in profiteering and commercialisation of education, a bench of chief justice G Rohini and justice Jayant Nath ordered the governments directorate of education (DoE) to ensure these schools comply with the terms and conditions of their letter of allotment of land regarding fee hikes. Quantum of fees to be charged by unaided schools is subject to regulation by DoE under the Delhi School Education Act, 1973 and he is competent to interfere if the fee hike by a particular school is found to be excessive and perceived as indulging in profiteering, the court said. It also directed the DDA to take action in accordance with the law against schools not following the fee fixation rules as per their letter of allotment. Within hours of the high court order, SK Bhattacharya, president of the Action Committee of Unaided Private Schools, said, We will soon file a special leave petition with the Supreme Court as the judgment is against the spirit of the Constitution. Maintaining that the 1973 Act gives schools the autonomy to regulate their own fees, Bhattacharya added, Further, the SC had said in a judgment that private schools enjoy full autonomy. There are close to 400 private unaided schools allotted government land in the city, counsel for petitioner NGO Justice for All, Khagesh Jha, said. According to the DoE website, the list includes Modern School (Barakhambha), DPS (RK Puram), Air Force Bal Bharti School (Lodhi Road), Amity International School (Saket), Sanskriti School (Chanakyapuri), Mirambika Free Progress School (Sri Aurobindo Ashram), Convent of Jesus and Mary (Bangla Sahib Marg), Ryan International School (Mayur Vihar) and Ahlcon International School (Patparganj). We cannot comment as we havent yet read the order. We will discuss the issue with our management and decide what to do about it, said DR Saini, principal of DPS RK Puram. Several other private schools HT spoke to also refused to comment as they werent yet aware of the court order. Fee hike by private schools is a contentious issue in Delhi and often a subject of litigation. In 2011, the high court set up the justice (retd) Anil Dev Singh committee that identified hundreds of schools for collecting excess fee, and in its latest report last December ordered 53 of them to refund parents. It found these schools had failed to pay their teachers and staff salaries as per the Sixth Pay Commissions recommendations despite charging hefty fees. Jha said schools should fix fees on the basis of the paying capacity of residents of the locality for whose benefit public land was allotted. He contended before the high court that whenever land is allotted by the DDA on perpetual lease hold basis for running a school, a specific clause is included in the allotment letter that bars the school from hiking tuition fees without prior sanction of the DoE. Despite such specific rules, private schools continued to charge exorbitant amounts beyond the reach of residents and without DoE permission, the counsel said. Read more | Improve your schools first: HC to AAP govt in nursery case (With inputs from HT Correspondent, Delhi) SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Meeting people of the conflict-ridden Tuensang area of eastern Nagaland was a life-changing experience for Joel Rodrigues. He decided to document their experiences and play a role in encouraging locals to maintain peace and justice in this remote area. Rodrigues is a student of Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Guwahati, pursuing a masters in peace and conflict studies, believes that by taking up this programme he is contributing to nation healing and wants to pursue research on the subject. For my dissertation, I am recording the experiences of people behind the customary law practised in the Tuensang area of eastern Nagaland. Recognising that the Naga villages functioned as independent republics and because these areas were inaccessible, the British administration introduced customary laws in the Naga Hills and Tuensang area. After colonial independence, the Indian Constitution recognised the same in Article 371 (A). According to the provision, no act passed by Parliament pertaining to religious and social practices of the Nagas, their customary law and procedure or ownership or transfer of land will have any effect in the state unless it is agreed upon by the Nagaland Legislative Assembly by a resolution. At this juncture, I involve myself in projects that help people access justice and move towards honest reconciliation, he says. Through academics, research and co-curricular activities, students like Rodrigues are playing key roles in working on areas of national interest. Rishika Sahgal, of National Law University (NLU), Delhi, has been a teaching assistant for a programme on constitutional law and has assisted a senior faculty member to write a chapter on the right to life and personal liberty for the Oxford Handbook on the Indian Constitution to be published in March 2016. The course on constitutional law gave me an insight into integral issues of fundamental rights and constitutional governance, such as the right to equality, reservations and affirmative action, the freedom of religion, freedom of speech and expression, federalism, independence of the judiciary, etc, says Sahgal who has been selected as a Rhodes Scholar 2016 to study at Oxford University. Sahgal was an integral part of the death penalty research project at NLU Delhi, the first-ever attempt in India at a practical study of the administration of the death penalty. She interviewed prisoners on death row across India, and their families, to document the socio-economic profile of such prisoners and to understand their experience of the criminal justice system. I learnt that death row prisoners do not have access to quality legal representation, and important criminal justice safeguards were flouted in their cases, she says. For Jyoti Mishra, a research scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University, the masters programme in political studies built the ground for research. I am currently focussed on Indian politics. While pursuing my masters, I got an opportunity to attend a workshop on understanding quantitative methods in political science. This was conducted by a Delhi-based research organisation Lokniti: CSDS. Its core area is to study Indian electoral system and democracy using quantitative methods. During that workshop, I got exposure to study survey methods, quantitative tools, she says. Read more: Students make UP district officers walk or cycle to office SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Four suspected IS operatives arrested overnight near Haridwar were planning attacks on the Ardh Kumbh Mela and the trains ferrying tens of thousands of pilgrims to the three-month festival, police said on Wednesday. The men arrested in a joint operation by the Delhi police special cell and Uttarakhand police were tasked with carrying out bomb blasts at 10 locations on the Har ki Pauri ghat in Haridwar this week, most probably on Friday, sources said. Special cell officials said the four men, students from Manglaur near Roorkee in Uttarakhand, had conducted reconnaissance of the 10 spots. Akhlaq-ur-Rehman, 21, Mohammad Azim Ushan, 20, Mohammad Osama alias Adil, 18, and Mohammad Mehraj, 22, were already under intelligence agencies scanner as their online activity had attracted attention. The suspected IS operatives had planned similar blasts on trains operating between Roorkee and Haridwar and other express trains ferrying devotees from different states. Police sources said the alleged IS men conducted reconnaissance of 13 trains. The preliminary interrogation of the four students has revealed that the objective of their module was to cause maximum damage to human lives and properties in one go. They had planned to target bus terminals and trains as they knew that after simultaneous bomb blasts at Har ki Pauri ghat, devotees from outside would attempt to flee in buses and trains. And striking public transport would result in more panic and maximum damage, a Delhi police officer privy to the probe said. They were initially treated as sympathisers of the IS in India. They collected explosives by removing flammable material from matchsticks that were to be used in preparing bombs, the officer said. Read more: Uttarakhand: Authorities arrest suspected militant, detain 3 accomplices The four were allegedly in touch with their prime handler, Shafi Armar, a native of Bhatkal in Karnataka who was earlier associated with the Indian Mujahideen (IM), in Syria. They were recruited and trained online for more than three months in preparing bombs using locally available explosive items. Their names are also said to have cropped up during the interrogation of arrested IM leader Yasin Bhatkal. Shafi Armar is the brother of Sultan Armar, the first Indian national who died fighting for the IS in Syria. Armar is believed to be a key member of the Ansar-ut Tawhid fi Bilad al-Hind which has pledged allegiance to the IS. The two brothers first fled to Pakistan along with other founder-members of IM in the mid-2000s. The two left for Aghanistan after differences arose between them and top IM leaders such as Riyaz Bhatkal and Amir Raza Khan. From Afghanistan they moved to Syria and associated themselves with the IS. Interrogation of the arrested men revealed they were planning a major attack in Haridwar. They were provided funds by their handlers to implement their design, said Anil Raturi, additional director general of police (law) in Dehradun. Raids were still on in Uttarakhand to arrest more suspects. Haridwar shares its boundary with western Uttar Pradesh, a communally sensitive belt that is a worry for security agencies. Akhlaq was already wanted by Delhi police as an FIR was registered against him under section 41 of the Criminal Procedure Act. The other three of them have no criminal history, inspector general of Garhwal Range, Sanjay Gunjayal, said. In October 2015, most newspapers in the state carried front page reports after Dalit student Hucchangi Prasad was abducted and tortured by suspected Hindutva activists. They were angry with his book Vadalu Kicchu (The Pain Inside) which is a trenchant criticism of the Vedic system. While he was initially happy with the media focus on the issue, he now feels the attention he got has only made things worse. Prasad is pursuing MA in journalism at the Davangere University. His parents are day labourers in a small village 40 km from the university. Some of my classmates and college mates would quote the statements I had given to the media and everybody would laugh. All the upper caste students I knew on the campus stopped talking to me, he said. For the first month after the attack, even his teachers cut contact with him and refused to take his phone calls. Prasad has vacated the subsidised hostel of the university and moved back to his village to live with his parents. He now travels 80 km a day by bus to attend classes. I had no choice. I was completely boycotted at the hostel. The few SC/ST friends I had were also getting harassed for spending time with me. I just saved everybody the trouble and left, he says. Reacting to the death of UoH scholar Rohit Vemula, he says, I can understand what he must have gone through. But no matter how much trouble I get into, I will not kill myself. I will live to fight. This is the message I want to give to Dalit students who are involved in a historic struggle in campuses across India. A local court in Ajmer has ordered the police to register a case against five professors of the Central University of Rajasthan, including the vice chancellor, after a dalit research scholar alleged harassment and criminal conspiracy that led to his expulsion. The court order comes when parts of the country are stewing over the death of Rohit Vemula, a second-year PhD student of the University of Hyderabad. On January 17 he committed suicide after the university suspended him for his involvement in student politics. The research scholar in the Rajasthan central varsity, Umesh Kumar Jonwal, has accused Professor Jagdish Ullahs Jadhav, who is his research supervisor and Head of Social Work department, and associate professor Atique Ahmed of harassment and criminal conspiracy. Based on Jonwals application and materials produced before it, a local court here ordered to register cases. Jonwal was expelled on October 15 on the charge of being absent from the university continuously for 15 days. The universitys Dean for students welfare BL Meena confirmed that university rules and regulations were violated while expelling Jonwal. Clauses 4.7 and 28 of the university ordinance under which the action has been taken against the victim have not been followed, said Meena. Research scholars are not needed to make daily attendance in the university however their admission can be discontinued if they remain absent continuously for 15 days but the same is regularised again with a payment of Rs 100 fine. But in Jonwals case his admission was terminated after expiry of 15 days, Meena said. Jonwal submitted his illness certificate to the university authorities but they did not accept, said Meena. According to Jonwal, Jhadav fell out with him after he refused to part with Rs 10,000 from his scholarship money. Jadhav demanded Rs 10,000 from me for every semester, and I paid him thrice. But when I stopped paying the money he started harassing me and threatened me that he will not let me complete me my PhD, alleged Jonwal. Later, during a departmental research committee meeting, Jadhav not only threw my research papers at me but also hurled abuses at me, saying that I am not fit for research work, alleged Jonwal. Jadhav refuted the allegation. I never demanded money. In fact, the money deposited in my account was the repayment of Rs 30,000 which we had loaned him (Jonwal) after collecting from the department to foot the hospital bills of his brother who had heart ailment, said Jadhav. His admission was terminated because he was not regular in his classes and was not pursuing his course work in time, added Jadhav. Ahmed refused to comment on the matter. University Vice Chancellor AK Pujari said: As the matter is sub-judice it would not be proper for me take make any statement on the matter. Controversies over Rohith Vemulas Scheduled Caste (SC) status continue even as a certificate from the revenue department of the Andhra Pradesh government shows he was a Dalit. The certificate bearing the digital signature of K Sivannarayana Murti, the tehsildar of Guntur mandal, states that Rohith belonged to the Mala community, categorised as Schedule Caste. A section of the BJP in Delhi pointed to a snapshot of a Telugu petition that suggested Rohiths mother Radhika Vemula declared her other son as Vaddera, a backward but not Scheduled Caste community in the state. An unverified video also popped up on social media where an elderly woman, claiming to be Rohiths paternal grandmother, said they were Vadderas. There are contradictory claims about the SC status of the student. The caste certificate was issued to Rohith in 2015. He did not apply for it earlier, a BJP leader said. The SC certificate gives Rohiths date of birth as January 30, 1989, but it mentions his name as Rohit. A Telangana police team has been sent to his village to ascertain the facts. Congress leader K Raju, a former IAS from Andhra Pradesh, said, His father had left Rohith at a very young age. But a Supreme Court order said if a child is brought up in a Dalit environment by his or her Dalit parent, he or she will be treated as a Scheduled Caste. In 2012, the SC had ruled that children born out of inter-caste wedlock cannot be denied the benefits of reservation merely on the grounds that one of the parents belonged to an upper caste. This presumption may be stronger in the case where in the inter-caste marriage or a marriage between a tribal and a non-tribal, the husband belongs to a forward caste. But by no means the presumption is conclusive ... It is open to the child of such marriage to lead evidence to show that he/she was brought up by the mother who belonged to the SC/ST, the apex court had observed. The BJP leaders argued that the validity of the case against minister Bandaru Dattatreya would be questioned due to doubts about Rohiths SC status. Union minister Bandaru Dattatreya, in the eye of a storm over the suicide of a Dalit student, remains cooped up at home in Hyderabad, awaiting the report of a government fact-finding team, sources close to him said on Wednesday. Dattatreya was busy strategising for the Hyderabad civic elections when Rohith Vemula, a Phd student at the citys Central University, hanged himself to death, triggering a political controversy that has embarrassed the Narendra Modi-led government. Dattatreya is accused of driving Vemula, a Dalit student activist, to suicide by pushing for his suspension from the university. Sources close to the beleaguered central labour minister said he was in touch with legal luminaries and also senior BJP leadership in the New Delhi to devise a way out of the crisis. Read: Dalit students suicide: Is Modi losing touch with the youth? He is expected to travel to New Delhi on Thursday. For now, all preparations for the municipal elections have come to halt and the focus is on the crisis at hand, the ministers aide said. We are awaiting the report of the HRD ministrys two-member fact finding team and thereafter will decide how the minister should respond, an aide of the minister told HT over phone from Hyderabad. The report is expected today. Read: Indias on fire: Letter to Rohith Vemula from his transgender friend An MP from Secunderabad Lok Sabha constituency, Dattatreya is the sole BJP MP from Telengana and only representative in the Union council of ministers from the state who was spearheading BJPs campaign for Hyderabad civic polls. The registration of a case under the newly amended SC, ST act against the minister has landed him in the biggest crisis of his political career. Is the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led ruling dispensation at the Centre losing the plot? Barely twenty months after they catapulted Narendra Modi to power in New Delhi, students and the youth are agitating against the NDA government in different campuses across the country. Some of these protests may be politically or ideologically driven, as the ruling party leaders would have us believe, but their increasing frequency raises several questions. Does it sound anachronous to talk about start-up India when campuses across the country are on the boil over suicide by a Hyderabad university Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula, allegedly driven by some controversial actions of some Central ministers/ministries? It should not, but for the silence on the latter. To dismiss it with the argument that Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi -- who visited the varsity and also met Rohiths mother on Tuesday -- and other opposition parties are playing politics over the death of the 26-year-old research scholar could be a plain platitude or a sublime expression of naivety. If labour minister Bandaru Dattatreyas portrayal of Hyderabad university as a den of casteist, extremist and anti-national politics -- in a letter to human resource development minister Smriti Irani -- was alleged to be the agent provocateur for Rohiths suicide, BJP general secretary Muralidhar Rao did his bit to re-ignite the embers on Tuesday as he branded the deceased student as a supporter of terrorism. Read more: All you need to know about the Dalit scholar suicide row Amid all this, its Brand Modi that seems to be taking the real blow. Ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, for instance, students in then Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumars Sasaram constituency in Bihar would come to the railway station to study under lights and have question-and-answer sessions in groups to prepare for competitive examinations. During small breaks, they would discuss Modi and the changes he could bring in their life once he came to power. Over one-and-a-half years hence, the Modi governments initiatives in the education sector may not be very reassuring to them. They were soon made to believe that they would have better career prospects in a global market if they studied Sanskrit, instead of German, as their third language in school. They were to believe that eminent nuclear scientist and then chairman of the board of governors of IIT, Mumbai, Anil Kakodkar, who was a member of the Irani-headed search-cum-election panel to choose IIT directors, had to resign because he batted for the wrong candidate. Before that, IIT, Delhi, director RK Shevgaonkar had to resign mid way through his tenure -- and then wait for several months to get his relieving orders -- as he refused to accept the ministrys diktat. Read more: Union min Dattatreya charged for Dalit scholar suicide, probe ordered These aspiring students in Sasaram-- some probably still studying under some lamp posts -- along with their brethren in other parts of the country may now be watching the unfolding controversy over the selection of vice-chancellors of the Delhi and the Jawaharlal Nehru universities, discussion on Lord Shiva as an environmentalist at the Indian Science Congress in Mysore, re-writing of history textbooks, et al. As it is, there have been loud protests or simmering tension against actions of the NDA regime, or of those supposedly supported by it, in different campuses across the country, stretching from IIT Madras (over the banning of a students forum) to Hyderabad university, Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune, Aligarh Muslim University (over minority status of the institution), and Delhi University (over a seminar on Ayodhya temple), among others. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has many senior, experienced colleagues in his party and the Cabinet who had started their career in students politics and who could apprise him about how even small issues in colleges and universities have the potential to snowball into major political crises for a government. Ramvilas Paswan, a close ally of the BJP today, may also have a lesson or two to share about students movements of the turbulent 1970s, which started on rather paltry issues of hostel food and fees but ended up shaking up the political order. 2016 is not the 1970s and the current students protests are not as potent or as organised either. But given that its Modis core constituency, even small rumblings of discontent are bound to hurt the party and the government. (The views expressed are personal) SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is set to visit the University of Hyderabad on Thursday to meet the students after the suicide of the Dalit scholar who was expelled from the university following a tussle with students affiliated with the student wing of the BJP, Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarthi Parishad (ABVP). Over 300 supporters of the Aam Aadmi Partys Delhi unit and its student wing, Chhatra Yuva Sangharsh Samiti, besides party leader Ashutosh and MLAs Sandeep Kumar and Rakhi Birla, gathered at the Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on Tuesday to demand the resignation and arrest of union minister Bandaru Dattatreya . AAP also demanded that Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Iranis role in the matter should also be investigated. Read more: All you need to know about the Dalit scholar suicide row Rohith, a second-year research scholar of Science, Technology and Society Studies Department, and others were suspended from the hostel last year following allegations that they attacked Sushil Kumar after the screening of a controversial documentary Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai. Earlier this month, five students were thrown out of the hostel after they accused the university authorities of denying them access to campus facilities, except their classrooms and workshops. The 28-year-old victim from Andhra Pradeshs Guntur district was found hanging at the hostel room of one of his friends around 7:30p.m. on Sunday. Meanwhile, protests escalated in Hyderabad and cities across the country including in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune and Chennai. On Wednesday fresh protests rocked the Hyderabad Central University as several politicians headed to the city including YSR Congress leader Y S Jaganmohan Reddy and CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechuri. A group of students carrying placards and raising slogans protested in the tense University campus on Wednesday morning. Read more: Dalit students suicide: Is Modi losing touch with the youth? The suicide by the dalit student Rohith Veluma has snowballed into a major issue with BJPs rivals wading into it and demanding the removal of Union Ministers Smriti Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya, accusing them of being responsible for the death. Rahul Gandhi had on Tuesday led the multi-party charge attacking the government and the Vice Chancellor Appa Rao, saying, The VC and the Union Ministers in Delhi have not acted fairly. This youngster was put in so much pain that he had no option but to kill himself. Though he did not name Irani, who had just over the week attacked Rahul in his constituency Amethi of failing youths there, the reference was obvious to her against the backdrop of ministrys action which is blamed for the suicide by the dalit research scholar on Sunday night. Various political parties and leaders have blamed Labour Minister Dattatreyas letter of Aug 17 last year to Irani seeking action against the anti national activities of a students union and the alleged assault of an ABVP leader and a series of five communications from the HRD Ministry between Sept 3 and Nov 19 demanding follow up action for the suicide. The HRD ministry, however, has rejected allegations that it had put any pressure on the University relating to either suspension of Rohith or keeping him out of the hostel. The communications, it maintained, was not aimed at putting pressure but was in compliance with the standard protocol adopted in accordance with the Central Secretariat Manual of Procedure whenever a VIP Reference is received. The arrest of 22-year-old Mehraj on charges of alleged terror links has come as a shocker for his friends who claim he was an active student with dreams for a bright career. Son of a small farmer, Mehraj was kind of a role model in his locality of Landhora, a Muslim-dominated area with less literacy rate. In 2014 when Mehraj got admission to Bachelor of Ayurvedic Medicine and Surgery at Rishikul Ayurvedic College in Haridwar, it was nothing less than a celebrity status that he achieved. He was very active in the college and in social networking sites. In his batch, only 13 of the total 60 students took the first-year exam due to short attendance, and he was the one protesting against the college decision, said one of his friends wishing not to be named. He also said Mehraj stayed alone for some time. A shocked principal of his college refused to comment on the issue. I am not in position to comment. I have not received any information from the police and we are looking in the matter. We have taken no action against the student (Mehraj) so far, said AN Pandey, principal, Rishikul Ayurvedic College. Sources said all the four arrested students are from lower-middle class background but despite odds, their parents provided them good education. Another accused Akhlaq-ur-Rahman, was a student of Polytechnic College in Roorkee. His father runs a small shop in Mangalore area. Like Meraj, Akhlaq was also a role model among locals, particularly youth, in his area. The other two were students too. Religious leaders from the community said youngsters must be alerted about the dangers of radicalisation at the earliest. Organisations like Islamic State, which are luring youngsters, should be condemned as they are anti-Islam. Moreover, there is a need to alert youth in Haridwar area about such organisations which are anti-national, said Maulvi Arif, a cleric from Haridwar. A Kerala court convicted a millionaire bidi maker of murder on Wednesday for ramming his luxury SUV into a security guard who was slow in opening the gate of his apartment complex. The quantum of punishment will be delivered on Thursday. Muhammad Nisham, 39, was arrested last January for pursuing the guard into the complex with his Hummer and squashing him against a wall before getting out and beating him with an iron rod. The 50-year-old guard, Chandar Bose, was left with multiple injuries and died in hospital after a month. The case had attracted nationwide attention, and the Supreme Court had directed the Thrissur district additional sessions court to deliver a verdict by January 31 this year. Nisham is no stranger to controversy. In 2013, he uploaded a video on Youtube of his nine-year-old son driving a Ferrari, which went viral and sparked outrage. The police then filed a case against him. He also faces a separate criminal case for allegedly locking up a woman sub-inspector who tried to book him for drink driving in his Rolls Royce. In all, he faced about 12 cases but seemed to always emerge unscathed until he mowed down Bose. The state government had suspended Thrissur police commissioner Jacob Job last year for allegedly trying to weaken the case against Nisham in Boses murder. Besides a roaring bidi business, Nisham is said to also own hotel and jewellery businesses in the Middle East worth some Rs 5,000 core. He reportedly owns a fleet of luxury cars, including a Bentley and an Aston Martin which the police confiscated last year. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A Dalit scholars suicide in Hyderabad triggered nationwide protests with students and activists demanding resignations of Union ministers Smriti Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya on Tuesday for allegedly driving PhD student Rohith Vemula to commit suicide. 26-year-old Vemula committed suicide on Sunday night. He was among the five research scholars who were suspended by the Hyderabad Central University in August last year over an alleged assault case. They were also kept out of the hostel. The five were allegedly suspended after BJP leader Bandaru Dattatreya wrote a letter to HRD minister Smriti Irani, describing the university as a den of casteist, extremist and anti-national politics. Based on the recommendations of a sub-committee of the executive council, the five were denied access to hostels on the campus except their classrooms and workshops related to their subject of study. Rohith was found hanging at the Central Universitys hostel room in the campus on Sunday, triggering protests from students since Sunday. Police booked Dattaterya, the vice-chancellor of University of Hyderabad and two members of the right-wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) on Monday for abetment of the suicide and violation of the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes (prevention of atrocities) Act. Read | Union min Dattatreya charged for Dalit scholar suicide, probe ordered This may be the first case to be tried under the revamped Act, 2015 -- the new law clearly stating that social or economic boycott of Dalits or tribals is a punishable offence which can invite a jail term of up to five years. The HRD ministry also said it has sent a committee to Hyderabad to inquire about the incident and it is expected to submit a report soon, while the National Commission for Scheduled Caste chairman warned on Tuesday that the agency will keep a close watch on the investigations progress and will not hesitate to summon officials to ensure a quick and fair inquiry. Accusations The university students Joint Action Committee termed the suicide as institutional murder while opposition parties slammed the BJP-led NDA government for having an anti-Dalit agenda and mindset. An umbrella organisation of the Hyderabad University launched an indefinite strike and sought the resignation of vice chancellor Appa Rao. Vemulas mother, also protesting at the campus, said she wouldnt move until Rao explained the reasons behind suspending her son. Dozens of activists of the Telangana Jagruti Yuva Morcha, considered the cultural wing of the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), held a demonstration outside the residence of Dattatreya in Ramnagar, Hyderabad. Read | Dalit scholar suicide: Students launch strike, seek VCs ouster Water cannons were used to disperse members of student organisations in Delhi, demonstrating in front of the HRD ministry office in Shashtri Bhawan on Tuesday. Students of the Film and Television Institude of India in Pune and Mumbai University also staged protests. Noted writer Ashok Vajpeyi also returned the D Lit, awarded to him by the Hyderabad Central University, to protest against death of the 26-year-old doctorate student. Opposition ammo Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi addressed students in Hyderabad on Tuesday and said conditions for the Dalit students suicide were created by minister of state Dattatreya and the institute, and failure to provide him justice will be failing to show him respect. Read | Dattatreya created conditions for Dalit students suicide: Rahul Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal also stepped up attack on the Modi government. Its not suicide. Its murder. Its murder of democracy, social justice n equality. Modi ji shd sack ministers n aplogoize to the nation, the Delhi chief minister tweeted early on Tuesday. I request the BJP not to play dangerous political games with students, RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav said in a tweet, adding that BJP and RSS casteist agenda led to Rohiths death. The other side The Centre, however, rubbished opposition charges and blamed the Congress party of politicising the issue, maintaining that the suicide had nothing to do with Dattatreyas letter to Irani. Earlier, BJP general secretary P Muralidhar Rao alleged that Vemulas suicide has been made into a political issue by Congress, a section of media and some groups with vested interests. The accused BJP MP Bandaru Dattatreya refuted accusations against him: I have nothing to with this incident (suicide) or suspension of students. The BJP too defended their sole representative in the Union cabinet from Telangana as the its state spokesperson Krishna Sagar Rao said the minster was in no way responsible for the suicide. Dattatreya has not been named in the suicide note, he added. As the controversy erupted, HRD minister Smriti Irani said, Dont want to make political statement. My condolences to family of deceased. Government doesnt intervene in the administration of universities. Two-member fact finding team will submit report on this. Read | Dalit scholar suicide: BJP rejects demand for axing Dattatreya, Irani Intelligence officers of the Border Security Forces (BSF) and Malda police on Monday night arrested a man considered to be one of the key figures in the counterfeit money smuggling ring that thrives across the India-Bangladesh border. Police cornered the accused, a Bangladeshi citizen, in the Baburhat area in the Malda district of West Bengal. The arrest took place under the Kaliachak police station jurisdiction where a mob attack took place on January 3, an attack police alleged was instigated by fake money smugglers and poppy cultivators. We have arrested a Bangladeshi national with fake money of the face value of Rs 8 lakh. We have started an investigation into the incident, said Malda police superintendent Prasun Banerjee. On Tuesday, National Investigation Agency (NIA) sleuths appealed before a Malda court for custody of the accused. The NIA is already investigating a couple of cases of fake money in the district and indicated they could follow up on this case as well. Police sources told Hindustan Times the arrested person has been identified as Enarul Islam, a 40-year-old resident of Shibganj police station area under Chapai Nawabganj district of Bangladesh. He was found to be in possession of 400 counterfeit notes of the denomination of Rs 1000 and 800 notes of the denomination of Rs 500. Security officials began tracking Enaruls movements when they noticed his frequent visits to the country. The most interesting part of this case is that Enarul didnt enter India illegally. He came here with valid passport and other documents. Moreover, this is not the first time that he has come to India with valid documents, a senior officer of the district police said, adding they had received a tip off about Enaruls illegal activities in India. In February 2015, Enarul came to Malda and stayed at Kaliachak for over a month and returned to Bangladesh. He came to Malda on November 21 again with a valid passport and visa, and was scheduled to return to Bangladesh by April 10 this year. He had come to Malda in 2014 as well. Intelligence officers ascertained that Enaruls role was to recruit carriers to circulate fake Indian currency notes (FICN) in India as well as find safe locations to smuggle the notes in to the country. A senior officer of district intelligence wing said, We were still in the dark when Enarul got the FICN consignment of Rs 8 lakh, but we are almost sure that he is one of the kingpins of FICN smuggling in India. Enarul operated largely under the Baishnabnagar police station in Malda. But increased BSF vigilance forced the smuggling racket to shift between Sabdalpur under Kaliachak police station and Kanchantar under Englishbazar police station, leading to Enaruls arrest. Investigators are currently trying to find Enaruls associates who gave him shelter at Baburhat village and supplied the counterfeit money. A civilian died after security forces fired their guns to break up demonstrations in South Kashmirs Pulwama district on Wednesday. The protesters had taken to the streets in Naina Batpora village after the security forces shot dead a militant in an overnight firefight on Tuesday. A police statement said Parvez Ahmad Guroo, 25, was hit by a fire arm. Inspector-General of Police, Kashmir, Syed Javaid Mujtaba Gilani, told HT: The encounter was already going on. There was cross firing near the site and the protesters burnt down a police vehicle. A civilian was killed during the clashes. Police said the protesters started pelting them with stones as security forces resumed the operation on Wednesday morning. Witnesses said protesters also burnt down a police van a few hundred metres away from the encounter site when it got stuck and its driver fled. Four other youths were also injured after security forces fired their guns, and were shifted to summer capital Srinagar for treatment. The authorities also suspended train services after the violence. On Tuesday evening, a joint team of the army, the police and the paramilitary CRPF laid siege to a house in the village after they received a tip about the presence of militants. One local militant was killed in the encounter in the morning, Gilani said. The militant has been identified as Shariq Ahmed Bhat, a resident of Brow Bandana, Awantipora, and belongs to Hizbul Mujahideen outfit. The house where the militant was holed up was destroyed. Army spokesman NN Joshi had earlier claimed that the two militants were killed in the encounter. Gillani, however, said only one body had been recovered from the debris of the house. We have stopped searching following the law and order situation, Gillani said. Police also said 17 security force personnel, including a deputy superintendent of police, were injured in the clashes. They said more than 50 civilians, who were trapped in a nearby mosque during the encounter, were rescued safely. As protests continue in the University of Hyderabad after the suicide of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula, politicians of all hues are making a beeline for the campus visit to express solidarity with the agitating students. A day after Congress vice president Rahul Gandhis visit, Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati and Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Sitaram Yechuri arrived at the University on Wednesday. It is not abetment of suicide, it is straight forward murder, CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury said at the Hyderabad University campus. Rohith Vemula Suicide case: CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury at University of Hyderabad pic.twitter.com/MVX7km7Lbe ANI (@ANI_news) January 20, 2016 What has happened in the Hyderabad University is completely obnoxious. This is something that cannot be accepted and cannot be tolerated. This runs contrary to the fundamental feature of the Indian Constitution. Therefore, action should be taken against all those who are involved, including two Cabinet Ministers in the Centre, the Labour Minister, the HRD Minister and the Vice Chancellor, Yechury added. YSR Congress Party leader Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy, who met Rohiths mother and brother at their house, also assured all support to the family. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is likely to visit the university on Thursday. Trinamool Congress MPs Derek OBrien and Pratima Mondal spent two hours on the campus on Tuesday night, interacting with the four Dalit scholars suspended along with Rohith as well as the agitating students. The parliamentarians will visit the campus again on Wednesday to address the students at the site of their hunger strike. Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen chief and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi also visited the campus on Tuesday and expressed solidarity with the agitating students. Read more: Indias on fire: Letter to Rohith Vemula from his transgender friend Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Tammineni Veerabhadram was also present on the campus when Rahul Gandhi addressed the students. Veerabhadram, a Telangana state secretary of the CPI (M), sat along with the students who are on a relay fast to demand the resignation and arrest of central minister Bandaru Dattatreya and vice chancellor Appa Rao. However, students said they had no faith in these leaders. We have no hope in these political leaders (visiting the campus). We would continue our agitation till all the culprits are punished, Ayub Rehman, convener, Ambedkar Student Association (ASA) told Hindustan Times. BJP Telangana chief Kishan Reddy said that the students death issue is being politicized. The Telugu Desam Party an ally of BJP has been largely silent on the issue. Students want immediate removal of the vice chancellor Podile Appa Rao and action against union minister Bandaru Dattatreya who had in August last year written to the ministry of human resource development on the anti-social, anti-national activities of the Ambedkar Student Association which led to the suspension of the five students. With inputs from Agencies The words used for Rohith Vemula, a dalit research scholar who killed himself at the University of Hyderabad, indicate how his death has divided politics in the country. Caste battle, confrontation, deep shock, and unpleasant treatment, were among terms used on Wednesday by a range of politicians speaking on the scholars death. Here are some quotes: HRD minister Smriti Irani, who reacted to allegations that her ministry got Vemula expelled, in Delhi: There has been a malicious attempt to project the issue as a caste battle. The truth is that, it is not. A malicious attempt is being made to show it as a caste battle which it is not. Union minister Bandaru Dattatreya, who is accused of abetment of Vemulas suicide, in Hyderabad: I have expressed my deep shock on learning about the death of Hyderabad University research scholar Rohit Vemula. Dattatreya admits he sent the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishads complaint against Vemula to the HRD ministry but said that was expected of him. Taking representations from common people, constituents and forwarding it to concerned ministries is what I consider my earnest responsibility by being an elected peoples representative. Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh: No minister is going to resign as the hue and cry being generated by disappointed opposition politician (Congress leader Rahul Gandhi) was a proof of immense intolerance, and an undesired attempt to divide the society on the basis of casteism and communalism. Union minister M Venkaiah Naidu in Mangaluru, Karnataka: Congress is engaging in cheap politics. The Opposition is following a 4D policy of disruption, diversion, delay and defamation. Deepender Singh Hooda, Congress spokesperson, in Delhi: Instead of apologising for the tragic loss of Rohith Vemula, Mrs. Smriti Irani is shamelessly describing it as not dalit vs anti-dalit issue. The Congress demands that the Prime Minister breaks his silence and takes concrete action. Karnataka chief minister and Congress leader Siddaramaiah, in Bengaluru: Central minister Badaru Dattatreya and concerned (HRD) minister Smriti Irani are responsible for the suicide of Dalit scholar Vemula because they were the ones who created such a condition. Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, in Patna: There is an environment of political intolerance in the country that resulted in the suicide by a Dalit student. It is a matter of serious concern that intolerance has increased in the country. RJD chief Lalu Prasad, in Patna: For the BJP and the RSS, Dalits and the minorities have no place and what happened in Hyderabad is an example of it. Humiliation, mental torture and victimisation of a Dalit student has again exposed the real character of the BJP and the RSS in case of Dalits. YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, YSR Congress leader, in Hyderabad: Action should be taken against all those responsible for the events that led to the death of the dalit student Rohith Vemula -- action should be taken against the vice chancellor (of University of Hyderabad) and all others who were responsible for the discrimination of Dalits Mayawati, BSP chief, in UP: The attitude of the ministers against Dalit student Rohith Vemula was grossly condemnable and undemocratic. The party demands strict legal action against two central ministers(Irani and Dattatreya) and the VC(Appa Rao), who forced Rohith to commit suicide. With inputs from PTI and IANS) A massive fund crunch is starving Indias flagship tiger conservation programme. The Centre has decided to reduce its allocation from this financial year for the project to save the big cats with a clutch of national parks Corbett in Uttarakhand, Ranthambore in Rajasthan, Bandhavgarh and Kanha in Madhya Pradesh feeling the pinch. The finance minister in October slashed allocations for 16 centrally sponsored schemes including Project Tiger for which the environment ministry used to provide 100% funding for non-recurring expenses. Under the new system, the Centre will provide only 60% of the total non-recurring expenditure. States and the Centre will continue to share equally the expenditure for recurring items. The previous fund-sharing mechanism was in existence since 1973 when Project Tiger was conceived to protect the animals across India. The programmes budget was increased to over Rs 600 crore in the 11th five- year plan and as many as 48 tiger reserves in 18 states were brought under the national wildlife protection scheme. But, the Centre decided to reduce its share citing the 14th Finance Commission recommendations which increased direct flow of money to the states from 32% to 42% beginning the financial year 2015-16. This means that states would provide additional money for these schemes from a larger financial kitty. That has not happened and as a result special protection measures in tiger reserves have come to a grinding halt. Some reserves have stopped setting up special tiger protection forces, others have postponed installing electronic surveillance systems for anti-poaching activities and relocation of villages to create inviolate areas in a large number of reserves has been indefinitely delayed. Less funds means I will have lesser staff on the ground for patrolling and no money to support our anti poaching activities as well as infrastructure. Its a serious blow to tiger protection, said Samir Sinha, director of the Corbett Tiger Reserve, which has the highest density of tigers in the country and is prone to poaching because of its proximity to the Indo-Nepal border a popular tiger poaching route. Officials in Corbett say the park will see its annual budget of Rs 7.5 crore being reduced by about a third. Similarly in Rajasthan, which has two major tiger reserves at Ranthambore and Sariska, the impact of the Centres decision is apparent. Government officials say the relocation of villages from Rathambore and Sariska would be hit as villagers are demanding packages worth more than Rs 10 lakh due to which many hamlets are still located inside the reserves. Rajasthan forest department officials said slashing of the central assistance would also have an adverse impact on infrastructure and manpower needed for monitoring of tigers and surveillance of the reserves. We are studying the budget structure to prepare a plan which will be sent to the state government for review before finally sending it to the Centre, said the states chief wildlife warden, RK Tyagi, adding that the Rajasthan government would plan the future course of action only after a reply from the Centre. Madhya Pradesh with six tiger reserves is at greater risk and has been forced to cut down on frontline staff deployed for protection. The sanctioned amount from the Union government has been reduced by 32% in 2015-16, contributing to the crisis. Sources in the forest department said as against Rs 41.35 crore sanctioned for six tiger reserves by the Centre in 2014-15, the Union government has reduced the amount to Rs 27.92 crore this fiscal year. Chief wildlife warden of MP, Ravi Shrivastava, refused to comment on the impact the cuts had on the management of tiger reserves. We will manage somehow, he said. Hemendre Kothari, chairman of the Mumbai-based Wildlife Conservation Trust, urged the government to restore the previous funding mechanism from the next financial year, saying the cutback would dent the future of flagship species and could lead to further degradation of forests. The view of the states was echoed by environment minister Prakash Javadekar in a letter to finance minister Arun Jaitely, urging him to restore the earlier funding plan. In view of the immense gains to society under the Project Tiger, its character of 50% support for recurring activities and 100% support for non-recurring items, as has been operational since 1973, should be retained as a special case, Javadekar wrote to Jaitley earlier this month. Javadekar also said that a 30% increase in tiger population from 1,706 to 2,226 tigers which is 70% of the worlds total tiger population, was largely attributable to the scheme being completely funded by the central government. He highlighted four anti-poaching measures village relocation, special tiger force, building of new infrastructure and use of innovative technologies introduced because of central intervention, as reasons for the jump in tiger numbers. (With inputs from Rahul Noronha in Bhopal, Anupam Trivedi in Dehradun and Rashpal Singh in Jaipur) SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON As Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi sat in front of her, silently listening to the tragic saga of her personal life, Radhika Vemula narrated how she single-handedly brought up her son, a Hyderabad university student who committed suicide on Sunday. She told us how she worked as a labourer and a tailor after her husband deserted her and her son, Rohith (Vemula), said a Congress leader who was present during the interaction between Gandhi and the grieving mother. Rohith ended his life at the University of Hyderabad after his suspension following an alleged clash with a leader of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, which is affiliated to the RSS. Gandhi visited the university on Tuesday. Read: Dalit students suicide: Cornered, Dattatreya plots next move An inconsolable Radhika also maintained she didnt know Rohith had been suspended from the university, according to the Congress leader. Rohiths father, Vemula Mani Kumar, had left his wife and son in the second year of the marriage. The mother recalled how Rohith was a meritorious student all through his career that was abruptly cut short a few days ago. Rohit always wanted to be a scientist. Gandhi told her he had heard effusive praise of Rohit from other students and his friends. Read: Rohith Vemulas death haunts BJP plan to increase social base Amid all my trouble, now I hear people are asking if my son was really a Dalit or not, a weeping Radhika lamented. Other students told Gandhi that when he was suspended, Rohith, who was an active member of the Ambedkar Society of the University of Hyderabad, came out with his bag on one shoulder and a large portrait of Baba Saheb Ambedkar in the other hand. Congress leader K Raju, the head of the partys scheduled caste cell, told Hindustan Times he knew Rohith well. He was a well-mannered, bright student who always wanted to help others and was active in social movements. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The Supreme Court on Wednesday questioned the failure of constitutional authorities in Uttar Pradesh and reserved its order on a petition seeking recall of its decision to appoint retired high court judge Justice Virendra Singh as the states Lokayukta. The top court said it will not let the UP chief minister, the Allahabad high court chief justice and the leader of opposition (LoP) in the state assembly select a new Lokayukta in case it decided to recall its order appointing Justice Singh to the post. For 20 months you failed to arrive at a consensus over a name for the post. The order (of December 16, 2015 appointing Justice Singh) was delivered under very painful and distressing circumstances. We are not sending it back (to the constitutional authorities) even if we recall our order. We shall do whatever is appropriate and appoint someone, a bench of justices Ranjan Gogoi and PC Pant said. The court said it cannot recall the previous order until there are compelling reasons. The Chief Justice (of Allahabad high court) has expressed his reservation with regard to the person subsequently appointed by us. We would not sit in appeal on his satisfaction but can you give us the material that led him to believe his (Justice Singh) integrity, the bench asked senior counsel TR Ahdiyarujina, representing the chief justice, when he insisted the retired judge was of doubtful integrity. It even commented on the alleged flip-flop by the LoP, who later retracted his support for the former judge. The court said: We do not want to go by the LoP. He is also shifting his stand. The law prescribes that a collegium, comprising the chief minister, the state high court chief justice and the LoP has to take a unanimous decision to appoint a Lokayukta. But chief minister Akhilesh Yadav and chief justice DY Chandrachud were not on the same page regarding the new Lokayukta. The chief minister objected to the names proposed by the chief justice while Justice Chandrachud expressed reservations over those forwarded by Yadav. The delay in finalising a name prompted the top court to invoke its constitutional powers to appoint Justice Singh, whose name figured on top of the list the state had submitted when the order was issued. Later, allegations surfaced that the state government had not informed the court that the chief justice had not approved Justice Singhs appointment, citing lack of integrity. The bench agreed with the contention of Justice Chandrachud that it was misled by the state government. Yes, we have been misled. But then, our orders were delivered under the constitutional powers and not on the basis of an individuals satisfaction, the bench told senior advocate Andhiyarujina, who repeatedly argued that chief minister Yadav had assured he would not recommend Justice Singh in future after the chief justice vehemently opposed it. He stated that the LoP, in his letter to the governor, supported Justice Chandrachuds views. But the state government contested Justice Chandrachuds opinion before the apex court, saying the name wasnt withdrawn at all. It accused the chief justice and the state governor of unnecessarily trying to block the appointment. The states advocate general said the order should not be recalled as the former judge was also nominated as the head of the state consumer commission. A nursery student of the Nirmala Convent School in Ujjain was allegedly raped by a bus conductor in a moving school vehicle earlier this week. Police said that though the incident occurred on Monday, family members of the four-year-old girl filed a report at the Nanakhera police station only the next day. The complaint stated that the accused identified as Mahesh Bhagwan took advantage of the situation and sexually assaulted the girl after all the other students had been dropped off. The bus was plying from Alakhnanda Nagar to Vasant Vihar at the time. The police have registered a case under Sections 354 (assault or criminal force with intent to outrage a womans modesty), 376 (rape) and 325 (voluntarily causing grievous hurt) of the Indian Penal Code. As the girl belongs to the scheduled caste, the case will be transferred to an Anusuchit Janjati Kalyan police station earmarked for the purpose. Though the recent death of research scholar Rohith Vemula has drawn the countrys attention to the University of Hyderabad, suicides among Dalit students here is not a new phenomenon. Members of the Ambedkar Students Association (ASA) claim that as many as 12 students belonging to scheduled castes have ended their lives since the central university came into existence in the early 1970s, largely due to caste prejudices that many say are omnipresent. This problem, however, has assumed alarming proportions in recent years. Rohith is the sixth victim since 2008, noted P Vijay Kumar, who along with Rohith and three other Dalit students was suspended from the university hostel and was allegedly being subjected to a social boycott of sorts. Senthil Kumar, who committed suicide in 2008, was the first. He was pursuing PhD in physics at the university and after being denied a supervisor to complete his research, had taken his own life by consuming poison in his hostel room. Senthil Kumar hailed from Tamil Nadu and belonged to the small Panniyandi sub-caste of the Dalits known for pig-rearing. The Vinod Pavarala committee, which investigated the circumstances that led to his suicide, found that discrimination against students from marginalised sections of society was one of the main reasons for the drastic step. The year 2013 saw two Dalit students committing suicide. Madari Venkatesh, a third year PhD scholar at the Advance Centre for Research in High Energy Materials, took the extreme step on November 24 that year. Hailing from a Dalit family in Ibrahimpatnam, Andhra Pradesh, Venkatesh too fell victim to caste discrimination. A seven member fact-finding committee headed by Prof V Krishna investigated the case. Earlier that year, the same committee had probed the circumstances that led to the suicide of Pulyala Raju, a student of MA in Applied Linguistics. He (Venkatesh) was not provided a guide and a lab, even after three years, even when other students started their researches, and published international papers, an independent committee, which probed the suicides of both Venkatesh and Raju, said in its report. The independent committee, called the Raju Venkatesh solidarity committee, comprised three Dalit students Dontha Prashanth, Dickens Leonard and Ashok Kumar. The Krishna committees report of December 2013 too pointed out that its earlier report as well as the Pavarala committee report highlighted glaring instances of insensitivity and lack of diligence, especially towards students from marginalised sections of society. The university needs to show greater alacrity in setting up and adequately monitoring the mechanisms for making the campus a more inclusive and rewarding experience for its students, the report had said. However, none of the recommendations were ever implemented, according to Dontha Prashant, one of the five suspended Dalit students and a member of the Raju Venkatesh solidarity committee. Had the authorities taken appropriate action on those recommendations and created conditions for fair treatment of all students, we would not have seen another suicide, he said. The craze for a selfie turned fatal for a youth in the Uttarakhand capital when he slipped into a canal and drowned while a similar attempt killed a young holidaymaker as he fell from the high ramparts of Jodhpurs Mehrangarh Fort. The incidents happened close on the heels of two young cousins drowning in the Narmada in Madhya Pradesh, adding to a growing number of selfie deaths in a country that accounted for half of the worlds fatalities from the new fad in 2015. A police officer said Devendra Kandari, son of a rickshaw driver, and Shubham who works in a restaurant had gone to Shaktinahar canal, around 40km from Dehradun, and allegedly drank alcohol there. After a while Devendra tried to take a selfie but he lost balance and fell into the canal. Shubham immediately jumped in to rescue his friend. But both were swept away by strong currents. Two onlookers then dived into the canal and managed to save Devendra, Vikasanagar circle officer Swapna Kumar Singh said on Wednesday. The body of the youth id yet to be traced, the officer informed. Empty alcohol bottles were recovered from the spot. The incident is reminiscent of man drowning in the Arabian Sea on January 9 when he tried to save three girls who slipped into the water while clicking a selfie. Mumbai police have banned selfies in 16 spots identified as dangerous. Read: Mumbai Police identify 16 no-selfie zones after drowning In Rajasthans Jodhpur city, police said 23-year-old Nikhil Prajapat who was to get married in 10 days had gone to the citys landmark fort with his friends and lost his footing on the edge of the rampart while trying to take a selfie with his mobile phone. Nikhil climbed the rampart to click a picture despite his friends stopping him. He fell several feet down. He was taken to Mahatma Gandhi hospital where doctors declared him dead on arrival, an officer said. Nikhil, who worked at an auto-electric shop, was on leave for his wedding. Read: Selfie turns fatal for 23-year old at Mehrangarh Fort in Jodhpur Sounding an alarm, a recent report on such deaths around the world and published in the Washington Post, said out of at least 27 selfie-related deaths in 2015, about half were reported in India. A Japanese tourist had died at the Taj Mahal recently after falling off the steps of the monument while attempting a selfie. Experts told Hindustan Times that selfies have become a dangerous attention-seeking activity for the youth. Youngsters between 18 and 22 are increasingly trying to find their self-esteem and self-worth in the likes and comments they get on selfies posted on social media platforms, psychiatrist Vaibhav Dubey of Peoples Hospital in Bhopal said. He said the craze gradually turns into a mental disorder and in extreme cases, pushes them to their death. (With inputs from agencies and HTC, Bhopal) Read: Selfies gone wrong: India leads in number of selfie related deaths Mumbai selfie deaths: Bandra bravehearts body found at Mahim creek With their friend committing suicide, the four other suspended Dalit research scholars of University of Hyderabad are facing an uncertain future. They are continuing their protest at a makeshift tent on the campus and have vowed not to budge till their demands are met. They are demanding immediate resignation of vice-chancellor, arrest of central minister Bandaru Dattatreya and two ABVP leaders named in the FIR. They are also seeking a R5 crore compensation for Rohith Vemulas family and a job for his family member. With the visit of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and show of solidarity by students from different universities across the country, they hope they will get justice. Read more: All you need to know about the Dalit scholar suicide row We have many dreams. We hope that issue will be resolved at the earliest so that we go back to our studies, Vijay Kumar, a third year PhD (political science) student told HT. He feels that if the problem continues, they would not be able to continue their studies. If the VC remains here, we cant continue our studies. We have to go back and work in fields, said Vijay Kumar, son of an agriculture labourer. He hails from Prakasam district of Andhra Pradesh He along with D Prashant, Sheshu Chemudugunta and Velpula Sunkanna explained to Rahul Gandhi the circumstances which led to Rohiths suicide. We are feeling sad that we have lost brave and a brilliant friend. It is an irreparable loss, Prashant said. Union labour minister Bandaru Dattatreya sought to distance himself on Wednesday from the suicide of a Dalit scholar for which he has been blamed, as the BJP leader said he did not push the University of Hyderabad to suspend the student. The minister has been named in an FIR for allegedly abetting the suicide of 26-year-old Rohith Vemula who was found hanging inside the institution on Sunday, with the death triggering a nationwide outcry and demands for Dattatreyas resignation. The BJP lawmaker said he only forwarded two representations he received from the right-wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) to the Union ministry of human resource development led by Smriti Irani who is also facing criticism over the incident. My role was only limited to forwarding these two representations. I would have happily forwarded representations of any other student body, if they had approached me, Dattatreya said in a statement. The University of Hyderabad, is an autonomous institution with established procedures and I have no role in the administration of the university. Critics say Dattatreya wrote a letter to the HRD ministry last year describing the university as a den of casteist, extremist and anti-national politics which pushed the institution to act against Vemula and a few other students over an alleged attack on an ABVP activist. Taking representations from common people, constituents and forwarding it to concerned ministries is what I consider my earnest responsibility by being an elected peoples representative, the minister said. Read: Rohith Vemulas death not a matter of caste battle, says Smriti Irani Protests intensified at the university with a clutch of politicians arriving at the campus to meet the demonstrators, even as the vice-chancellor denied any pressure from the Centre to act against Vemula and the others. There was no pressure. We took the letters received as routine letters, said V-C Appa Rao Podile, adding there was no phone call from either of the ministers or any ministry official. Rao told HT the police commissioner had advised him to stay away from the university till tempers cool down but hoped for a resolution by Thursday afternoon. We are looking at ways we can help these four suspended students, he said. Read: Rohith Vemulas mother told Rahul how she raised him single-handedly CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury, Trinamool Congress leader Derek OBrien and YSR Congress president YS Jaganmohan Reddy were among the politicians who interacted with the students on Wednesday. It is part of the larger issue of intolerance. Intolerance is also part of the larger issue. The larger issue is transform this secular, democratic, republic of India as our Constitution says, into what they want, a rabidly intolerant fascistic Hindu Rashtra, Yechury told reporters. That is the larger game. Police took into custody a few activists of the Left-leaning All India Students Federation (AISF) when they tried to hold a demonstration near Dattatreyas residence. (With agency inputs) Read: Dalit students suicide: Is Modi losing touch with the youth? Indias on fire: Letter to Rohith Vemula from his transgender friend Rainbow colours will be on display at the Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University (BBAU) convocation on January 22 when dignitaries, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and students will don Indian dresses instead of colonial robes. The Prime Minister will wear a golden yellow achkan of 50-inch chest size (not 56 inch) over a bulletproof jacket. The khadi and handloom achkan has been stitched by a Delhi tailor, a source said. The university got to know about the PMs chest size from the PMO and then got the achkan stitched. A stole for the PM has been arranged in Lucknow itself. On the convocation day there will be seven VVIPs on the dais wearing achkans and stoles of different colours. Chancellor NL Lalkhanpal will wear a maroon achkan while vice chancellor RC Sobtis achkan will be of purple-pink colour. Other dignitaries, including union home minister Rajnath Singh and mayor Dinesh Sharma will wear light peach colour achkans. Since the university wants to make this maiden visit of the PM memorable for one and all, the vice chancellor is taking personal interest in selecting the dresses and their colours. Of the 600 post-graduate students, boys will wear kurta-pyjama with navy blue stole and girls cream coloured churidar pyjamakurta. There will also be 82 researchers wearing maroon coloured stoles. The university had done away with the colonial convocation gowns last year itself. The change in the dress code was effected when former President late APJ Abdul Kalam, in October 2010, opposed use of ceremonial gowns and caps at convocations. He had then said: This cap and gown should go because it reminds us of the British Raj. The Missile Man had pitched for an indigenous dress with Lucknows famous Chikankari. Speaking to HT, Sobti said, I tried for chikan kurta but somehow could not decide on it this time. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Hyderabad university vice-chancellor on Wednesday denied any pressure from Union ministers or the ministry behind the suspension of Dalit student Rohith Vemula whose suicide has triggered outrage across the country amidst allegations of insensitivity against the BJP-led government at the Centre. Podile Appa Rao, the VC of Hyderabad Central University (HCU) has been booked by police along with Union minister Bandaru Dattatreya and two ABVP activists for abetment to suicide by the 26-year-old research scholar. There was no pressure. We took the letters received as routine letters, he said in reference to allegations that he acted against the five students including Rohith after the human resource development minister wrote to the varsity to act on Dattatreyas allegations of anti-national activities on the campus. The HRD ministry had written as many as five letters to the varsity on Dattareyas complaint which also mentioned a violent attack on ABVP leader Susheel Kumar. The ministry has maintained it was standard procedure on such VIP references. I am not sure whether suspension has really been the cause for suicide. At least not from the face of the suicide note as left by the student, Rao said as he appealed to the students to resume academic activities and not give space for any political games. However, the agitating students appeared to be in no mood to relent as fresh protests rocked the campus on Tuesday where protesters continued their relay hunger strike demanding the VCs resignation over the suicide which has become one of the biggest political embarrassments for the NDA government. Besides Hyderabad many cities across the country including in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune and Chennai were rocked by protests on Tuesday. Political leaders also continued to make a beeline for the campus a day after Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi made a day-long trip to Hyderabad. Republican Party of Indias leader Ramdas Athawale had to face the ire of students when he visited the campus on Wednesday. Athawale had to leave without addressing the students as protestors demanded that he should first withdraw support to the BJP-led NDA government. Police had to intervene and escort him as students entered into a heated argument with him over his support to the BJP. We have no hope in these political leaders (visiting the campus). We would continue our agitation till all the culprits are punished, said Ayub Rehman, convener of the Ambedkar Students Association. The five suspended students including Rohith belong to this outfit. Later in the day, Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati and Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Sitaram Yechuri are set to arrive on the campus while Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal is likely to visit the university on Thursday. Lok Janshakti Party parliamentary board leader Chirag Paswan and union minister Ram Vilas Paswans brother Ramchandra Paswan will also meet students and Rohiths family. Trinamool Congress MPs Derek OBrien and Pratima Mondal spent two hours on the campus on Tuesday night, interacting with the four Dalit scholars suspended along with Rohith as well as the agitating students. The parliamentarians will visit the campus again on Wednesday to address the students at the site of their hunger strike. YSR Congress Party leader YS Jaganmohan Reddy, who met Rohiths mother and brother at their house, will also visit the campus. Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen chief and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi also visited the campus on Tuesday and expressed solidarity with the agitating students. The universitys shopping complex that is close to the NRS hostel where Rohith committed suicide on Sunday has become the nerve centre of the student agitation. Meanwhile, the Hyderabad high court which is hearing two petitions related to the incident one seeking protection for ABVP leader Susheel Kumar on the campus and another filed by the suspended students against the university action has posted the matter to January 25. A tweet by BJP leader and former Union leader Sanjay Paswan, warning of wrath, revenge, revolt unless serious note was taken of Dalit student Rohit Vemulas suicide, has resulted in a certain degree of unease within a party thats trying to expand its social and electoral base in the country. the stake holders of power politics must take serious note of rohit vemula episode or be ready to face wrath , revenge , revolt , reactions Sanjay Paswan (@sanjaypaswanbjp) January 19, 2016 Party leaders are concerned that the nationwide outrage over the suicide as well as the decision of poet Ashok Vajpeyi to return his D Lit degree from Hyderabad University the same institution that suspended Vemula may have a serious bearing on its electoral plans. Paswan, the former head of the BJPs scheduled caste morcha, had tweeted on Tuesday that the stakeholders of power politics must take serious note of rohit vemula episode or be ready to face wrath, revenge, revolt, reactions (sic). He may have been referring to the upcoming assembly polls in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, both states with sizeable scheduled caste populations, where the opposition is likely to use the present crisis for thwarting the BJPs plans to woo Dalits. Read more: First Rahul, now Kejriwal to visit Hyderabad University amid protests Party seniors are also worried about the impact this incident may have on the BJPs Dalit-wooing exercise, something that holds a lot of significance in states such as Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Uttarakhand that go to the polls next year. Such controversies provide oxygen to our rivals, such as the Congress and the Bahujan Samaj Party, which compete with the BJP for scheduled caste votes in these areas. We need to counter their propaganda of making this issue spill outside the boundaries of Hyderabad University, a BJP leader said. Vemula, a second-year PhD student, had ended his life on January 17 after the university allegedly prodded by Union ministers Smriti Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya initiated disciplinary action against him and a few colleagues for their involvement in student politics. Read more: Dalit students suicide: Is Modi losing touch with the youth? The controversy has also put BJP allies such as Ram Vilas Paswans Lok Janshakti Party, which survives on Dalit support for its electoral existence, in a tight spot. In an attempt to soothe frayed tempers, Paswan has not only demanded a high-level independent probe into the matter but also sent his parliamentarian brother Ramchandra Paswan to Hyderabad University on a fact-finding mission. Meanwhile, BJP leaders in Delhi accused Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi of politicising the issue, even as the partys online supporters made hashtags such as #vultureRahul trend on Twitter. Spokespersons of the ruling party, for their part, took turns to defend Irani and Dattatreya on the matter. However, despite all the firefighting, the BJP which has been trying its best to woo the SC community through specific government programmes finds itself in a very uneasy position. In Uttar Pradesh, where the NDA won 73 out of 80 Lok Sabha seats, the party has launched a Dalit outreach programme aimed at drawing influential caste leaders out of the BSPs fold. It also faces an aggressive Aam Aadmi Party in Punjab, which has a high scheduled caste population. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal appeared in a fortified Mumbai court on Wednesday in a case registered against him for holding a rally without permission in Maharashtra during the 2014 general election. The Kurla Metropolitan magistrate had granted permanent exemption to the chief minister from appearing in court for the case that was filed last year, but summoned him to complete bail compliance formalities. Satish Jain, an Aam Admi Party (AAP) member provided surety for the AAP chief, which the court accepted, while Kejriwal submitted a bail bond of Rs 10,000 too. Security was tightened at the court premises where party workers had gathered outside to show their support for Kejriwal, with entry being restricted and identity checks being conducted. Besides Kejriwal, other AAP leaders accused in the case appeared before the court as well. However, two of the accused, Medha Patkar and Imtiaz Ansari, missed the hearing and filed for an exemption. Patkars counsel pleaded that she be exempt as another case against her, in which a warrant was issued in her name, was scheduled for hearing on Wednesday morning as well. The defence lawyer also sought permanent exemption for the other accused, including former Bank of Scotland CEO Meera Sanyal. When an agitated security guard, fed up of monkeys jumping around, opened fire at the simians, little did he know that he would be arrested for murder. The incident took place at a city club at Cantonment late Monday night. The guard, identified as Eklavya, allegedly shot at the monkeys with his licensed gun. While one monkey died, two others were injured and fled the spot. Doctors, who conducted the autopsy of the carcass, recovered pellets from it and the forest department has filed a complaint in the case after animal rights activists held a protest. The shooting was witnessed by rickshaw puller Indrajeet and tea vendor Kashyap. They were the ones who took the injured monkey to a private veterinary clinic. They did not find a doctor there, but met a volunteer from the People for Animals, an organisation working for the welfare of animals. The volunteer took the monkey to a doctor in Raipurwa, where it died during treatment, said Archana Tripathi, president of the Kanpur chapter of the People for Animals. Eyewitnesses told me that the guard shot the monkey, she said. According to the two eyewitnesses, seven-eight monkeys were playing in the area. The guard, who was standing there, got irritated and fired two shots. Three monkeys fell from the trees. While one lay unconscious, the other two ran away, they said. The guard fired at the monkeys with his single barrel gun, the two witnesses claimed. Archana Tripathi said she informed the forest department and district magistrate Kaushal Raj Sharma about the accident. A team of forest officials took the carcass to the Kanpur zoo for an autopsy while the Cantonment police examined the site and recorded the statement of eyewitnesses. Instructions have been issued to register a case against the guard, Sharma said. Forest ranger IB Singh, who got the autopsy conducted in the presence of the police, said a case will be registered under sections of the Wildlife Protection Act and Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act. Sushil Ghule, assistant superintendent of police (Cantonment), said the process to register a case has been started. We will arrest the guard as soon as the process is over, he said. Punjab deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal on Wednesday admitted that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) could make it a triangular contest on some assembly seats in the state, but he hastened to add that the fledgling party posed no threat to the Akali-BJP alliance or the Congress in the 2017 elections. The AAP can put up a fight on some seats, especially in Malwa. But the main battle will be between the Akali-BJP combine and the Congress. AAP is getting media coverage because its a new party, Sukhbir said while interacting with reporters after flagging off a pilgrimage train to Varanasi. He said the people supporting AAP were ill-informed about the party. See what they have done in Delhi. They have not fulfilled even a single promise made before the elections. Their only aim is to promote Arvind Kejriwal. They are spending Rs 532 crore on his advertisements from the governments coffers, the deputy CM said. He added that the AAP government was paying Rs 2 lakh per month to MLAs as salary. Of the 67 MLAs they have in Delhi, more than 60 are holding posts such as parliamentary secretaries and chairpersons of various boards. The Lokpal promised by AAP is also no less than a joke, and the new bill says the Lokpal will work under the chief ministers office. Their entire politics is based on fraud, Sukhbir added. On Manpreet Singh Badals entry into the Congress, he said it would not make any impact on the Congress prospects in Punjab as the former finance minister had already been exposed and was known for shifting stands like a pendulum. Answering a question about the Panama boat tragedy, Sukhbir said the Punjab government had been assured by the Union external affairs ministry that all possible steps would be taken on the matter. He also directed the police department to immediately start a crackdown on illegal travel agents. He also appealed to media houses not to publish advertisements of unregistered travel agents. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Just four days after the death of a woman suffering from swine flu at Christian Medical College and Hospital (CMCH), another woman from Bathinda succumbed at Dayanand Medical College and Hospital (DMCH) late on Tuesday evening. The woman had delivered a child on January 16 who was also sick and admitted at the hospital. The 37-year-old woman was admitted to the DMCH after she was found infected by swine flu last week. After giving birth, the woman and her child were put on ventilator due to their deteriorating condition. District epidemiologist Dr Ramesh Bhagat said the Bathinda woman had delivered a child on January 16. Earlier, a woman from Ludhiana admitted at the CMCH had died of swine flu on January 15. She had been admitted since January 12. It was the first death of a Ludhiana woman owing to swine flu. More efforts needed Though the health department installed boards at 24 different places across the city mentioning preventive measures, the awareness campaign seems to have left a little impact on the general public. The health department has recommended usage of masks at the crowded places during this season but people dont take it up. Dr Ramesh said, at least 30,000 pamphlets to spread awareness regarding swine flu have been distributed. Another 20,000 pamphlets would also be distributed at different hospitals and crowded areas, said Dr Ramesh. With no concrete information available so far, the authorities have no clue about the exact location where a boat capsized near Panama a few days ago. Officials of the Indian embassy in Colombia have received information about a boat sinking in the sea between the two countries a few days ago. However, they have not been able to confirm whether any Indian was aboard that vessel or not. An official, pleading anonymity, told HT that the boat carrying 26 persons overturned on way to Colombia from Panama. The local government has told us that a boat capsized in the sea off the Colombian coast. Of the 26 persons, nine managed to survive as they were offered timely help by a boat passing by, said the official. Among survivors include 4 Nepal nationals, 2 Siberian nationals, one Pakistani and one Sri Lankan. The nationality of the ninth survivor is yet to be revealed. We are trying to ascertain details from Colombian authorities, said Gaurav Kumar Thakur, an official in Indian embassy in Colombia. As soon as we get concrete information, we will share it with the ministry of external affairs, he added. AAP MP from Sangrur Bhagwant Maan, who is presently in California on a personal tour, said he was in touch with Indian officials in Columbia. The boat sank near a place called Chaamba in the Colombian sea. An official in the Indian Embassy in Colombia has told me that authorities have not been able to find the bodies of 15 people who are feared to have been drowned. All survivors are in Colombian navys custody. The embassy is not clear if any Indian was aboard the vessel. the MP told HT over phone. Maan said he would visit Colombia in the coming days. Both embassies have told me there is no Indian among survivors. Now, we have to ascertain the claims of survivor Jaswinder Singh Sonu who reportedly called up his family and said two youths of Kapurthala have lost their lives the tragedy, said Maan. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON After the Dinanagar and Pathankot terror strikes, fingers are being pointed at the Border Security Force (BSF) for its failure to stop infiltration from across the Pakistan border and alleged connivance of some of its men with drug smugglers. The force, tasked with guarding the border and preventing trans-national crime, has sacked and jailed seven of its personnel for colluding with the drug mafia, while 108 others have been shifted since 2011 due to suspicious activities, according to information available with the intelligence wing of the BSFs Punjab frontier headquarters in Jalandhar. Of these seven cases, four, including the recent arrest of a jawan by the police in SAS Nagar, were handed over to the state police for investigation, citing the involvement of civilians also. BSF inspector general, Punjab frontier, Anil Paliwal says the intelligence and vigilance wings keep tabs on all personnel, especially those who belong to the smuggling-prone area, even during their leave period. Transfers are based on reports given by our intelligence wing about their activities or due to complaints regarding doubtful conduct, he adds. Other BSF officers also reason that the transfers do not mean that these personnel were involved in any illegal activity on the border. Since 2014, the BSF has also adopted a policy not to offer the home district to any soldier or official. Postings are also not given in buffer districts (two nearby districts from both sides). RECORD SEIZURE OF CONTRABAND Notwithstanding the flak, the BSF has made the second biggest seizure of heroin and other narcotic drugs on the Indo-Pak border along Punjab in 2015 after setting a record in 2014. A total of 344-kg heroin was seized in 2015 as compared to 361 kg in the previous year. Though repeatedly blamed by the Punjab government for drug smuggling, the record seizures, despite a drop in heroin production in Afghanistan as per a United Nations (UN) report, are seen by the paramilitary force as a positive sign. The numbers speak for themselves, Paliwal said. As for intrusion, 21 smugglers and 15 intruders have been gunned down by the BSF since 2011. In addition, 122 Pakistani nationals were caught while crossing the border, mainly for the purpose of smuggling or spying. There has been no report of terrorists taking this route though. We have not had inputs on this for the past many years, another BSF official told HT. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Suspecting four local men who travelled to Ludhiana for details of a forgery case to have been kidnapped, their families on Wednesday took matters to the police. Chandigarh businessman Pawan Kumar (50) and three others Jayant Sharma (24), Ram Chaudhary (35) and Janu Nagra (23) are missing for the past six days. Pawans brother, Pankaj Sharma, told the media here that his sibling ran wholesale business of clothes from his Sector 27 house here and on January 14, a Punjab Police team from Ludhiana had come over and arrested his sales agents Rampal and Pramod in a case of financial dispute and fraud. When Pawan came to know, he along with Jayant, Chaudhary and Nagra left for Ludhiana to get details. He called home on the night of January 14 to say hed be home by 3am the next day. In the morning when they didnt come back and even their mobile phones were switched off, the family informed the local police, who handed over the investigation to their Ludhiana counterparts, said Pankaj Sharma. The families said the police had not done enough to locate the men. We have received no ransom call yet but we are sure that it is a case of kidnapping, calling for investigation, added Pankaj Sharma. Men went back: Ludhiana cops Ludhiana: Six days after four people from Chandigarh went missing here, the local police claimed on Wednesday that they had gone home on January 14 by Southern Bypass and their whereabouts after the Neelon Bridge were not known. Missing garment trader Pawan Sharma visited the Jodhewal police station on January 14 to meet Rampal and Pramod, who had been arrested under Sections 420 (cheating) and 406 (punishment for criminal breach of trust) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for failing to pay back Ludhiana retailers, said Basti Jodhewal station house officer (SHO) inspector Balwinder Singh, adding: Pramod and Rampal were arrested on the complaint of a hosiery manufacturer. The Metro project received a major boost with both Punjab and Haryana giving their consent for the project. The development is significant as the Union ministry of urban development had sent back the revised detailed project report (DPR) of the Chandigarh Metro Project to the UT administration in November last year. The administration was directed to take consent of its partners Punjab and Haryana before submitting the revised project for consideration. The new clause by the Centre had delayed the formation of the Greater Chandigarh Transport Corporation (GCTC), which will start the work on the project. Confirming the development, UT finance secretary Sarvjit Singh said: We have got a nod from Punjab and Haryana and will forward it to the Centre for the formation of the GCTC. UT administrator Kaptan Singh Solanki said: Metro is not the only solution for traffic congestion but it is the identity of any growing city. Metro is an affordable and quick solution for the city residents to commute easily. He added: Now, there is no hitch as we have got consent from Punjab and Haryana for the project. Even the city MP Kirron Kher had given her nod for the project. The Union ministry of urban development has also asked the UT administration to change the name of the project, which is known as the Chandigarh Metro Rail Project. The total length of the project covering Chandigarh, SAS Nagar and Panchkula is 37.57 km. The major portion of the two corridors falls in Chandigarh. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON It was a smart move that left Punjab Police and state government officials red-faced. Hundreds of farmers from several districts, including Sangrur, Mansa, Bathinda and Muktsar, on Wednesday assembled near Badal the native village of Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal two days ahead of their planned protest. Interestingly, the farmers unions had earlier announced to hold a three-day round-the- clock protest at Badal village from January 22-24. The march took police and government officials, who were taking it easy, by surprise. Fearing police crackdown on its leaders and workers, farmers started arriving at Rai Ke Kalan village around midnight. Rai Ke Kalan is just three km away from Badal village. The farmers, who are demanding better crop compensation for cotton growers, are presently camping inside a local gurdwara. Police have now cordoned off the two villages and sealed its entry points. Even the power supply to the village remained suspended throughout the day. Situation remained tense as repeated meeting of farmer representatives with Bathinda deputy commissioner Basant Garg and senior superintendent of police Swapan Sharma remained inconclusive. Sukhdev Singh Kokri, state general secretary of Bhartiya Kisan Union (Ugrahan), claimed the farmers have come early to mobilise support for their rally. Had we stuck to our plan, police and administration would have gone all out to foil our protest. This time, we decided to dodge them, Kokri said. Shingara Singh Mann, BKU (Ugarahan) district chief, said the heavy deployment of police has created panic in the village. The administration wants us to step out so that they can arrest us. But we wont come out of the gurdwara till police defuse the tense situation, Mann said. SSP Sharma said the farmers have breached trust and hoodwinked the administration. They have forcefully entered the gurdwara compound and are creating chaos in the village, said the SSP. DC Basant Garg said the administration is making every effort to raise their demands with the state government. What farmers want Farmers are demanding a compensation of Rs 40,000 per acre for loss to the cotton crop and Rs 20,000 per acre for farm labourers, who could not get work due to damage to the crop. They are also demanding the withdrawal of Prevention of Damage to Public and Private Property Act, minimum support price of Rs 4,500 per quintal for basmati-1509 variety and Rs 5,000 per quintal for basmati-1121 variety apart from clearance of sugarcane growers dues. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Ahead of French President Francois Hollandes visit to the city, 15 heritage chairs and a table designed by Le Corbusier were stolen from the storeroom of the Government College of Art in Sector 10 on Monday night. The police said the thieves took advantage of dense fog and slipped away with the heritage furniture. The police said thieves cut barbed wires on the boundary wall to enter the college campus and they also broke three locks to enter the storeroom in the basement from where they lifted the heritage furniture. The police said the thieves could not be identified as there was no closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera installed at the store. WATCHMEN UNDER SCANNER Watchmen at the college Ajit and Krishan Kumar told the police that the locks were intact when they went on a round to the storeroom in the night. But they found the locks broken and furniture missing when they again went to the storeroom at 5.45am. The police said the statements of the watchmen were contradictory and it appeared that did not take a round on the college campus. The stolen articles were loaded in a four-wheeler, but the watchmen failed to hear the noise, the police said. Even the college authorities dont have the exact record showing when the furniture was kept in the storeroom and who were the college employees who had transported the furniture from the college to the storeroom, which is located in a secluded area on the campus. It is clear that thieves were aware about the heritage furniture kept in the storeroom, said the police. A first information report (FIR) has been lodged against unidentified persons under Sections 457 and 380 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) at the Sector 3 police station. The police said the way the theft took place, it appeared that the thieves were well-aware about the storeroom where the heritage furniture was kept. Sector 3 station house officer Neeraj Sarna said they have procured CCTV camera footage from the Matka roundabout and also other points to identify the accused. A CFSL team was also called to gather clues. NO HEADWAY IN PREVIOUS THEFT In September last year, thieves took away eight wooden chairs and two tables after breaking the windows of the exhibition hall of Le Corbusier Centre in Sector 19. The police have failed to make any headway in the case. HOUR-LONG OPERATION, SAY POLICE The police said the thieves entered the college campus midnight and it must have taken them an hour to lift 15 chairs and a table and load it in a vehicle. Superintendent of the college Pawan Kumar said: A committee was formed in 2011 to register the heritage furniture. We photographed every piece of furniture and listed it in a register. After that the furniture was stored in two rooms. It is wrong to say that we do not have the record. The white pillars that mark the international border between India and Pakistan stand bright in the fog, mute witness to the drug smuggling, and now terror, route to Punjab. Beyond the pillars, the mustard crop is in bloom in Pakistan, while the lush wheat fields provide the winter backdrop on the Indian side. A fortnight after the Pathankot terror attack on the airbase, a visit to Punjabs border villages reveals a deceptive calm but disturbing truth that the enemy lurks within. On the surface, its difficult to miss the prosperity that families of farmers in Punjabs border villages have seen over the past 15 years. Landholdings may have shrunk but trucks parked outside houses in villages located just a shout away from the border speak volumes about the easy money narcotic smuggling has brought. The high number of drug addicts in these villages also reveals the misfortune that has befallen their residents. Once into smuggling cloth material, opium and later gold from Pakistan, crossing the unfenced, and unguarded, border was like venturing into the neighbourhood for these families. In the past decade, however, they have taken to smuggling heroin. The contraband is smuggled from Afghanistan and Pakistan into India via J&K, Rajasthan and Punjab. A major part of the consignment is passed through Punjab, while some quantity of heroin is sold in the local market by couriers. The smuggling has been going on unchecked as its done with the tacit understanding of Punjab Police and politicians, at different levels, coupled with the lack of a modern surveillance system and inadequately deployed Border Security Force (BSF). Now its just that Pakistan has begun pushing in terror with the narcotics, the Pathankot attack being the latest fallout. EVERYONE IS A SUSPECT HERE Smuggling has is virtually a lucrative cottage industry in Punjabs border belt. Despite the rising risks, villagers admit, it has helped build fortunes. The signs of prosperity are visible in villages such as Mahwa, Daoke, Naushera Dhalla, Havelian, Mehndipur and Rajatal. But drug addicts can also be spotted easily. Border villagers are into smuggling and the youth are in the grip of drugs. Everyone is a suspect here, says Amandeep Singh of Mehndipur village, in the Khemkaran sector, surrounded on three sides by Pakistan. TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT About 2 km from Mehndipur is Sehajrai village of Pakistan, considered the hotbed of heroin smugglers due to its proximity with the border. Border villagers own farm land across the barbed fence up to the pillars. They grow wheat and paddy in the fertile stretch on the Indian side, while their Pakistani counterparts plough land right up to the pillars. At many places from Fazilka to Pathankot, the border criss-crosses in such a manner that the Pakistani farmers land is 50 metres from the Indian fence. Pushing heroin in small-sized packets is then just a throw away. There have been instances of police and BSF recovering Pakistani mobile phone SIM cards from Indian couriers. The border villages receive signals of Pakistans cellular networks such as Mobilink and Ofone. When the crop is tall and ripe on both sides of the Radcliffe line, the border pillars are not visible. This is an advantage for Pakistani smugglers, who can easily hide amid wheat or paddy crop while venturing into Indian fields to push the poison into Punjab. And, there is no dearth of takers. Before the border was fenced, Indian villagers could simply walk into villages in Pakistan that are a kilometre away, says Labh Singh, 80, of Naushera Dhalla village. A former opium smuggler, he broke down and said with regret: My son was into smuggling and was caught with fake currency and arms. He died in jail. BSFS CHALLENGES Police and politicians encourage drug smuggling. Police harass the innocent. I have been detained many a time unnecessarily, claims Suba Singh, a former sarpanch of Rajatal village, infamous for smugglers, even as another villager Kundan Singh, 90, reminds the former about his shady past. Now, every family that owns farms across the fence is seen as a potential heroin smuggler in the garb of a farmer. This stigma doesnt ruffle many. Smuggling, many admit, flows in their blood. Thats one of the enormous challenges the BSF faces while guarding the 553-km border of Punjab. The BSF kisan (farmer) guards accompany peasants to their land across the fence. Many a time, we have recovered heroin hidden in farm appliances. It is not easy when you have to watch anti-national activities of those whom you are protecting, says a senior BSF officer. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON As jaundice continues to spread its tentacles in Shimla town, people, especially migrant labourers are still consuming water from banned natural sources despite administrations written warning. Government record states that over 800 people have been left sick due to jaundice outbreak in Shimla in over a month, while the actual number is almost double of it. Of total 25 municipal wards, four Chota Shimla, New Shimla, Malyana and Kasumpati (areas merged recently in the town) are worse affected. Shimla district administration and Shimla Municipal Corporation (SMC) jointly started awareness campaign in the town to sensitise people about the disease. The MC also declared water from all natural sources as Unsafe. But only the people, who can afford to spend money, are purchasing purifiers and mineral water. But, those who have arrived here to earn livelihood as labourers from other states are in bad state. These people are still consuming water from bawris- (natural water source,) which is feared to be contaminated in newly merged areas due to unplanned sanitation system. We have heard about jaundice, but have no other option than consuming this water, Rattan Bahadur, a Nepalese living in Sanjauli area, said. Though district administration has asked contractors to supply safe water to the labourers, nothing has been done to ensure its implementation. There are 49 bawris in Shimla town. In newly merged area- worst affected by jaundice outbreak, people use water from these sources for their daily consumption. Shimla MC commissioner Pankaj Rai said, Written advisory on not using bawri water for drinking has been pasted. We have painted the advisory on the walls of bawris. There were reports of even removing the warning from walls. We have written that water from this source is not safe for drinking, but at some places, some anti-social elements have removed the word No from the advisory. Water contamination a general problem in town Problem of water contamination is not new to Shimla. Several times unplanned sewerage systems contaminate drinking water leading to various water-borne diseases. Grey water (kitchen waste) is also not connected to sewage line at several places and is being drained in open. An irrigation and public health (IPH) official said, Only 70%-75% habitation is connected by sewerage lines and sewage from rest of the houses finds its way to natural drainage or streams directly or via age old septic tanks, which is the main reason behind contamination of natural water sources. Shimla MC is on a spree to check the houses with no sewerage connection. The MCs sewage network is in around 80% area of the town. Several households have not availed the facility. Even notices have been given to 107 households to avail sewage connections and due to negative response; three water connections have also been disconnected, Pankaj Rai said. Not only those, but people having septic tank for the sewage disposal do not have soak pit resulting in overflow of sewage and leading to water contamination. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to declare Chandigarhs name among the first 20 smart cities during his visit on January 24. The UT was earlier shortlisted among 98 smart cities, following which Chandigarh had sent a detailed project report to the Centre. The Prime Minister is scheduled to visit the city to receive French President Francois Hollande on his visit. The PM and the French President are also expected to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on developing Puducherry and Chandigarh as the smart cities as part of a bilateral agreement. The heads of the two countries will also attend an IndoFrench forum of chief executive officers at Hotel Taj in Sector 17. Meanwhile, to handle the international media, a special team comprising external affairs ministry officials will arrive in the city on January 21. Apart from the national media, over 60 international journalists will arrive here to cover the visit. The special team will also take stock of all the arrangements, including issuing media passes. The team will assist the local administration in identifying the locations where the media will be briefed. FRENCH SECURITY TEAMS IN CITY TODAY For the upcoming visit of French President Francois Hollande and PM Narendra Modi to the City Beautiful, France-based security teams will arrive here on Wednesday. Besides, over 4,000 cops of the UT police and over 1,680 cops of Punjab and Himachal police and paramilitary forces will also be deployed. During the passing of the cavalcade, the police said, traffic would be blocked for over 10-15 minutes. SSP (security) Maneesh Chaudhary said besides the UT cops, a total of 12 companies of the Punjab police, - as many as 70 cops in each of the company -10 company of the paramilitary forces and two companies of the Himachal Pradesh police will also be deputed. Besides, a special protection group will also arrive here on Thursday. After a meeting of all the forces, a mock drill will also be carried out. While two terror attacks in Punjab in the past six months have laid bare the gaping holes in the states 553-km-long border with Pakistan, the terrorists modus operandi has turned the spotlight on the nexus between drug smugglers and security personnel. In March 2012, after years of a nonchalant approach towards the drug menace, the state government went cracking against drug smugglers and peddlers. The mandate to then director general of police Sumedh Singh Saini was to identify and smash the drug networks and their supply lines. The police top brass was instructed to entertain zero political interference. SHADY DEALINGS The drive revealed that the accusations of police-smuggler nexus were not unfounded. In two years (2013 and 2014), at least 70 personnel of the Punjab Police were found working in collusion with trans-border narcotic smuggling networks, as per police records. Of them, 48 cops were summarily dismissed from service after their links with drug smugglers/peddlers surfaced. Another 19 policemen were arrested on similar charges. The dismissed officials included deputy superintendent of police (DSP) Dinesh Singh, against whom the charge was that he misused his official position to promote drug trafficking. Sub-inspector (SI) Kulwant Singh was sacked for having a nexus with drug peddlers while posted as the station house officer (SHO) at Kahnuwan (Gurdaspur district). Read: In border villages, enemy lurks within More than 57,000 peddlers and smugglers were arrested in 48,138 cases, leading to the seizure of 1,744 kg of heroin (from 2012 to September 2015). The state government adopted a zero-tolerance policy on drugs and gave clear directions to the police. As a result, the drug distribution network has been ruthlessly broken and transit lines of major Pakistan-based heroin cartels snapped in the past four years, says Saini, who remained the state police chief from March 2012 to October 2015. The clean-up drive helped the police bust international cartels, starting from one Arif Mohammad alias Doctor in Pakistan. The arrests have been indicative of the flourishing drug trade between Pakistan and Punjab. And, the drug smuggler-police-politician nexus is blamed for the easy availability of drugs in the state. Read: BSF keeping tabs on its own personnel SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON After the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) failed to file chargesheet against 12 accused in the murder of Dalit children in Sunperh, Faridabad, within the mandatory 90-day period, the CBI special magistrate, Haryana, granted bail to four of them here on Tuesday. On October 20, 2015, two siblings were burnt to death at their house in Sunperh. On the complaint of the victims father, Jatinder Kumar, cops arrested Sanjay, Dharam Singh, Kartar Singh and Balwant Singh of Rajput community the same day. Later, eight more people were arrested, who, too, are expected to get bail in the absence of chargesheet. Jatinder Kumar had alleged that the Rajputs poured inflammable liquid in the room where he and his wife were sleeping with the two children, and set it ablaze. The four accused who got bail on Tuesday had submitted in an application before the CBI court, through their counsel Abhishek Singh Rana: that the challan under Section 173 of the CrPC (Code of Criminal Procedure) has not been submitted by the CBI in the court till January 18, and now, 90 days have expired. In view of Section 167(2) of the CrPC (that states that detention of accused cannot exceed 90 days in cases of murder), they were entitled to get bail, they stated. The accused have been maintaining that they were framed as they were witnesses in the murder of three Rajput men, in which 11 Dalits are accused. On October 5, 2014, three members of the Rajput community were killed in a fight with Dalits over a mobile phone. Jatindar Kumars two brothers are accused in the case, said Abhishek Singh Rana, counsel for the accused. While giving consent for their polygraph test, the accused had demanded that lie-detection test of Jatinder Kumar and his wife, Rekha, should also be conducted to find out the truth. However, the CBI opposed it, but the court has issued notice to Jatinder Kumar and his wife for February 1. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Singapore said on Wednesday it had arrested 27 Bangladeshi construction workers late last year for supporting the armed jihad ideology of terrorist groups and deported 26 of them. The workers were being groomed to return to their home country to wage a holy war and had studied booklets on assassination techniques, the Ministry of Home Affairs said in a statement. Home affairs minister K Shanmugam added in a Facebook post that while the group were planning attacks overseas, they could have easily changed their minds and attacked Singapore. Several of members of the group also contemplated joining armed jihad with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, according to the MHA. The 27 men, aged between 25 and 40, were arrested between November 16 and December 1 last year under Singapores Internal Security Act. They all worked in construction in Singapore, where large numbers of labourers -- mostly from South Asia -- live in often cramped dormitories. The group members took measures to avoid detection by the authorities. They shared jihadi-related material discreetly among themselves, and held weekly meetings and gatherings where they discussed armed jihad and conflicts that involved Muslims, the ministry said, adding that the group was also actively recruiting members. One of the group was not deported and is serving a jail sentence for attempting to flee Singapore after learning about the arrests of the other members. He will be repatriated to Bangladesh after he completes his sentence. The man was said not to have been a member of the group but was in the process of being radicalised. Silent killings According to the ministrys statement, the groups members were encouraged to return to Bangladesh and wage armed jihad against the government there, while some had sent money to terror-linked entities in their country. The ministry said they possessed radical and jihadi-related materials, including footage of children undergoing training in what appeared to be militant camps. Excerpts from a video released by the ministry showed young boys dressed in black and wearing white caps firing pistols and automatic rifles during training. There was also a document titled Techniques of Silent Killing that contained graphic images and instructions on how to carry out assassinations, using different methods and weapon. The announcement of the arrests came less than a week after militants mounted attacks in the Indonesian capital Jakarta, leaving at least eight people dead, including four suspected attackers. The Islamic State (IS) group claimed responsibility for the coordinated bomb and gun assault on a central thoroughfare in the capital. Kumar Ramakrishna, a counter-terrorism analyst at Singapores S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said the arrests would likely be disconcerting to the public as foreign workers have become part of Singapores social landscape. Singaporean officials have said that the city-state remains a target by militants because of the presence of a large number of multinational corporations and its status as a regional financial centre. Singapore authorities in late 2001 foiled an attempt to carry out bomb attacks on US and other foreign targets in the city-state, arresting several suspects in the process. The Chinese state television has telecast an apparent confession by a detained Swedish rights activist in which he is shown to be making an apology for carrying out activities harmful to China. Peter Dahlin, 35, was detained earlier this month following allegations that a group he founded, Chinese Urgent Action Working Group (CUAWG) received foreign funds to release wrong reports, critical of China. I violated Chinese law through my activities here, Ive caused harm to the Chinese government, I have hurt the feelings of the Chinese people. I apologise sincerely for this and I regret that this ever happened, Dahlin said during the apparent confession shown on China Central Television (CCTV) on Tuesday night. According to a statement from the police, Dahlin and another person were operating an unregistered organisation on the Chinese mainland in the name of an emergency rights aid group, receiving unregulated huge sums of money from seven overseas organisations and carrying out unregulated activities. Official news agency, Xinhua, quoted the police as saying the ...organisation hired and trained others, who were called lawyers and petitioners, to gather, distort, exaggerate and even fabricate negative information about China, providing the so-called Chinas human rights report to overseas organisations. In Syrias eastern city of Deir el-Zour, supplies are running so short that desperate residents are selling their gold, valuables and even their homes for food or an exit permit allowing them to escape a siege by both government troops and Islamic State militants. The extremists have blockaded government-held areas of the city for over a year, and some of its 200,000 residents are slowly starving while troops and militias supporting President Bashar Assad exploit their suffering. While international attention was focused recently on Madaya a rebel-held town surrounded by pro-Assad troops near the capital of Damascus the United Nations and aid agencies say another catastrophe is unfolding in Deir el-Zour. The civil war has transformed a once oil-rich city into a place where even something as simple as making tea is a struggle, according to residents who have fled, because of severe shortages of food, water and fuel. Many people live on bread and water and there are long waits for both. Taps are shut off for days at a time, and the water that flows out for only a few hours is brackish. The city hasnt had electricity for over 10 months, with little fuel available for generators and water pumps. The UN warned last week that living conditions have deteriorated significantly in Deir el-Zour. Students are frequently absent from school because of malnutrition. The only remaining civilian hospital needs drugs and other supplies, as well as staff. Unverified reports cited up to 20 malnutrition deaths, the UN said in its report. But Ali al-Rahbi, spokesman for the Justice for Life Observatory for Deir el-Zour, said his group documented 27 deaths. The Islamic State group surrounds Deir el-Zour and wont let people and supplies in by land; the Syrian government, which controls part of the city and its airport, wont allow supplies to be brought in by air or let its people out. The city, about 450 kilometers (280 miles) northeast of Damascus, is divided roughly along the Euphrates River, with the Islamic State group on the eastern side and the Syrian government on the western side, although IS controls some territory on the western bank as well. Deir el-Zour is the largest of about 15 besieged communities in Syria, cutting off about 400,000 people from aid. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said both the Syrian government and the rebels are committing war crimes by deliberately starving civilians. Reports of starvation in Madaya prompted an international outcry, and two aid convoys last week delivered humanitarian aid to civilians there. So far, no such aid is forthcoming to Deir el-Zour. The city recently has been the focus of renewed efforts by Islamic State militants to retake it. An offensive over the weekend captured new areas from government forces, killing over 250 troops and civilians, and capturing hundreds. The offensive is putting thousands of people in the line of fire, said UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq. How the city came to be under such a punishing siege from both sides only makes sense in the perverse circumstances of Syrias civil war, now in its fifth year. Deir el-Zour lies near the Iraqi border, deep in Islamic State territory, but the government has been able to defend its military airport on the outskirts, allowing it to maintain its citys fortifications. It also controls four large neighborhoods that are home to many internally displaced people, including women and children. Because the airport is so close to the front line, only helicopters have been able to land there since September, the UNs Haq said. The government troops in the city are regularly reinforced and supported by Russian and Syrian air power. Rather than fight them, the IS militants imposed a blockade in January 2015. Residents say the siege grew worse in March when the government stopped anyone from leaving Deir el-Zour without permission. IS has prevented people from entering government-held areas, but a few months ago, it began allowing people to leave for other IS-held areas, although it subjected them to interrogation and harassment and in some cases, it confiscated their documents. The extremists then closed that window, banning anyone from leaving. Residents say the government has its own reasons for maintaining the siege-within-a-siege and carefully controlling the flow of goods and people through the military airport: The residents have effectively become human shields against an IS attack. In addition, the government can extract money from them by raising the price of food or taking huge bribes in return for permits to leave. Many residents wonder if an IS takeover would bring much-needed supplies of food. My father told me exactly, My beard is long now, and my stomach is empty. Let them (the militants) in if it is going to let food into the city, said Karam Alhamad, a Deir el-Zour native who escaped in September but left his parents behind. It took him six months to find someone who could arrange his exit permit. But Haq said that following the IS attacks on Sunday, the U.N. has received credible reports of the execution and abduction/detention of civilians, including those believed to have been smuggling in food. International organizations have been able to fly in only a limited amount of aid through the military airport, where it passed through government hands before reaching the population, if at all. Any aid typically goes to army officers and their allies, who resell it on the black market, al-Rahbi said by phone from Turkey. The regime is operating a war economy and allows its officers to control humanitarian aid to the city, he added. Last week, Russia dropped 22 metric tons of relief supplies into Deir el-Zour, but activists said government-affiliated vehicles immediately moved in. Alhamad said security forces collected all the supplies to sell them at the market for the prices they wanted. A resident who identified himself as Bahaa said he lost more than 14 kilograms (33 pounds) during 11 months in the city and escaped in November to Gazientep in southern Turkey weighing only 55 kilograms (121 pounds). My health now is much better than it was, but Im still suffering psychologically. A lot, he said by phone. The man, who did not give his real name because he feared for reprisals against relatives left behind, said he paid 250,000 Syrian pounds (over $600) in bribes to receive permission to fly out. It was too expensive to bring his whole family. We sold our gold to raise the money for the bribes, he said. Other families have sold their homes. Bahaas house is on the IS-held side of the city. When the militants took over, the family fled to the government-held side, where they rented an apartment. We dont know what has happened to our home, he said. A resident named Mustafa, who also spoke on condition his full name not be revealed for fear of reprisals, said he managed to flee in October to the Islamic State groups de facto capital of Raqqa, then made it to Turkey. From there, he took the perilous sea route to Europe and has resettled in Austria. I thank God every day that I was able to get out, Mustafa said, adding that his three children fell ill and one began refusing food and drink. I couldnt bear it any longer. There was no one to help. No doctors, no medicine, no nothing. Mustafa said he sold his apartment and bribed so many people, I forgot how many. The Islamic State group confirmed on Tuesday the death of British jihadist Jihadi John, saying he was killed in a drone strike in their Syrian stronghold of Raqa in November. Born Mohammed Emwazi, he was known as the executioner of the jihadist group appearing masked in a string of videos showing the beheadings of Western hostages. In its online magazine Dabiq, the group said Emwazi was killed on November 12 as the car he was in was targeted in a strike by an unmanned drone in the city of Raqa, destroying the car and killing him instantly. The US military had said at the time that it was reasonably certain he had been killed in the strike. Emwazi became the public face of Islamic State and a symbol of its brutality after appearing in videos showing the murders of US journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley, U.S. aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig, British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, Japanese journalist Kenji Goto and other hostages. Shown in the videos dressed in black, a balaclava covering all but his eyes and the bridge of his nose, Emwazi became one of the worlds most wanted men. Born in Kuwait in 1988, Emwazi was taken to Britain by his family when he was 6 years old and graduated in computer programming in London. The US-British missile strike believed to have killed him was months in the preparation but came together at lightning speed last November as two U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drones and one British MQ-9 cruised above the Syrian town of Raqqa, according to U.S. officials. The Pakistan-based chief of a militant alliance fighting Indian security forces in Kashmir openly condemned on Wednesday a crackdown by the Pakistan government against another group India blames for an attack on an air base. Syed Salahuddin, the chairman of the United Jihad Council (UJC), an alliance of pro-Pakistan militant groups based in Pakistani occupied Kashmir, had claimed responsibility for the assault in Pathankot on January 2. The claim of responsibility was met with a sceptical response among Indias security establishment, which blames another group called Jaish-e-Mohammed. Last week, Pakistan arrested the head of Jaish-e-Mohammed as well as several other leaders of the group and shut down offices and seminaries linked to the outfit. We are at a loss to understand whether they (the Pakistan government) are concerned about the interests of the country that feeds them or that of its enemy? Salahuddin told a news conference, referring to the governments crackdown. Pakistan is not only an advocate but also a party to the longstanding Kashmir dispute and therefore the Pakistani people, government and media should play the role of a patron rather than of an adversary. Salahuddins public comments could cause further tensions between the two neighbours, with New Delhi accusing Islamabad of tolerating groups openly hostile to India. He spoke at the Press Club in Muzzafarabad, capital of Pakistani occupied Kashmir. Police outside the club made no move to arrest him. Following the January 2 attack on the Indian Air Force base, the United Jihad Council had warned that their attacks can engulf all of India if the issue of Kashmirs divided rule is not resolved. Since the attack in Pathankot, Pakistan has said it is clamping down on Jaish-e-Mohammed, which India has long accused Pakistani authorities of tolerating, while it investigates Indian assertions that the attack was the work of the militants based in Pakistan. India has demanded that Pakistan take action against the group and last week announced that the two countries would reschedule talks between their foreign ministers while the investigation into the air base attack was carried out. Jaish-e-Mohammed militants are blamed for a 2001 attack on Indias parliament that nearly led to a war between the nuclear-armed rivals. A mother and her daugher went on trial in Spain on Tuesday for shooting dead a ruling party politician in broad daylight after the younger woman lost her job with a local council, in a case that shocked the country. Montserrat Gonzalez, 60, shot Isabel Carrasco -- the conservative Popular Party (PP) leader of the provincial government -- in the back on the afternoon of May 12, 2014 as she walked on a pedestrian footbridge in the northern city of Leon, prosecutors and witnesses say. With her face covered by a scarf and sunglasses, Gonzalez shot Carrasco two more times in the head before walking away with her daughter who was nearby, according to prosecutors. A retired police officer who happened to be on the footbridge when the killing occured trailed the pair and called police who arrested Gonzalez and her daughter, Triana Martinez. The man also saw how the pair left the gun used in the killing in a car belonging to a policewoman with the city of Leon, Raquel Gago, who was also arrested. Gonzalez told a court in Leon on the opening day of the trial of the three women that she killed Carrasco as revenge for the way her daughter had been treated by her. Spanish defendant Triana Martinez at the courthouse in Leon Northwestern Spain on January 19, 2016 during the trial of Isabel Carrascos murder. (AFP) Her daughters temporary contract with the Leon provincial council ended in 2011 and another candidate was chosen to replace her. Gonzalez told the court that her daughter was let go from her job because she refused to have sex with Carrasco, who had led the provincial government of Leon since 2007. Asked if she regretted killing the politician, Gonzalez told the court: No. I would be lying if I said otherwise. She would have continued to make life impossible for my daughter, Gonzalez added. Public prosecutors have asked for Gonzalez, her daughter and the policewoman whose car was used to hide the weapon used in the killing to each be sentenced to 23 years behind bars. Carrascos murder shocked a country unused to such acts since the Basque separatists ETA announced an end to violence. Numerous PP officials were assassinated in the 1990s and early 2000s in killings blamed on ETA, which declared a definitive end to violence in October 2011. Satellite photos obtained by The Associated Press confirm what church leaders and Middle East preservationists had feared: The oldest Christian monastery in Iraq has been reduced to a field of rubble, yet another victim of the Islamic State groups relentless destruction of heritage sites it considers heretical. St Elijahs Monastery stood as a place of worship for 1,400 years, including most recently for US troops. In earlier millennia, generations of monks tucked candles in the niches, prayed in the chapel, worshipped at the altar. The Greek letters chi and rho, representing the first two letters of Christs name, were carved near the entrance. This month, at the request of the AP, satellite imagery firm DigitalGlobe tasked a high resolution camera to grab photos of the site, and then pulled earlier images of the same spot. Before it was razed, a partially restored, 27,000-square-foot stone and mortar building stood fortress-like on a hill above Mosul. Although the roof was largely missing, it had 26 distinctive rooms, including a sanctuary and chapel. One month later photos show that the stone walls have been literally pulverized, said imagery analyst Stephen Wood, CEO of Allsource Analysis, who pinpointed the destruction between August and September 2014. Bulldozers, heavy equipment, sledgehammers, possibly explosives turned those stone walls into this field of gray-white dust. They destroyed it completely, he said from his Colorado offices. On the other side of the world, in his office in exile, in Irbil, Iraq, Catholic priest Rev Paul Thabit Habib, 39, stared in disbelief at the before- and after- images. Our Christian history in Mosul is being barbarically levelled, he said in Arabic. We see it as an attempt to expel us from Iraq, eliminating and finishing our existence in this land. The Islamic State group, which now controls large parts of Iraq and Syria, has killed thousands of civilians in the past two years. Along the way, its fighters have destroyed whatever they consider contrary to their interpretation of Islam. St Elijahs joins a growing list of more than 100 religious and historic sites looted and destroyed, including mosques, tombs, shrines and churches. Ancient monuments in the cities of Nineveh, Palmyra and Hatra are in ruins. Museums and libraries have been pillaged, books burned, artwork crushed or trafficked. US troops and advisers had worked to protect and honour the monastery, a hopeful endeavour in a violent place and time. I would imagine that many people are feeling like, What were the last 10 years for if these guys can go in and destroy everything? said US Army reserve Colonel Mary Prophit, who was deployed there in 2004 and again in 2009. Built in 590, tragedy struck at St Elijahs in 1743, when as many as 150 monks who refused to convert to Islam were massacred by a Persian general. In 2003 St Elijahs shuddered again this time a wall was smashed by a tank turret blown off in battle. Iraqi troops had already moved in, dumping garbage in the cistern. The US Armys 101st Airborne Division took control, painting over ancient murals and scrawling their divisions Screaming Eagle, on the walls. Then a US military chaplain, recognising its significance, began a preservation initiative. Roman Catholic Army chaplain Jeffrey Whorton, who celebrated mass on the monasterys altar, was grief-stricken at its loss. Why we treat each other like this is beyond me, he said. Elijah the prophet must be weeping. At the Vatican, spokesperson Rev Federico Lombardi, noted that since the monastery dates back to the time Christians were united, before the break with Orthodox and Catholics, the place would be a special one for many. He said it was the first news he had had of the destruction. Unfortunately, there is this systemic destruction of precious sites, not only cultural, but also religious and spiritual. Its very sad and dramatic, Lombardi told AP. Helicopter gunships sweep low around Russias air base on the Syrian coast and air defence missile systems tower at the bases edge as warplanes take off one after another. The sound is deafening. Russias heavy airstrikes in Syria continued on Wednesday, days ahead of the hoped-for start of talks on how to end one aspect of the countrys five-year-old war, where government forces fight rebels, and militants including the extremist Islamic State have seized substantial stretches of territory. Even though the front line is dozens of miles (kilometres) away and the area around the base is tightly controlled, the Russian military methodically patrols to make sure there is no ground threat. Two heavy transport planes were parked near the main terminal as soldiers toting assault rifles stood guard. Since Russia launched its bombing campaign in Syria on September 30, its warplanes have flown 5,700 missions. The number is remarkable for a force comprising just a few dozen warplanes. The Russian military brought a group of Moscow-based reporters to the base on Wednesday to see the operation. Defence ministry spokesperson Major General Igor Konashenkov said, by the afternoon, Russian warplanes had flown about 40 sorties, with each aircraft hitting three to five targets on a single run. In the early stages of the bombing campaign, planes struck only one target during each mission. Since The Associated Press first visited the Hemeimeem base in October, the Russian military has put a second runway into service and has deployed powerful S-400 air defence weapons. Asked how long the Russian air campaign may last, Konashenkov said that Russias goal is to strike extremist infrastructure in support of Syrian government troops. They have shown some good results in defeating terrorist groups, he said. Russian air force personnel prepare to load humanitarian cargo on board a Syrian plane at Hemeimeem air base in Syria. (AP Photo) The Russian military has insisted it is targeting the Islamic State group and other extremists, and has angrily dismissed Western accusations that it is hitting moderate rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad. Moscow also has rejected claims that its aircraft have hit civilians, insisting that all casualties have been at extremist facilities away from populated areas. Konashenko said Syrian government forces backed by Russian airstrikes have retaken about 250 villages and towns from the extremists. He said each bombing target is verified through multiple intelligence sources and every fifth target Russia hits is now chosen thanks to information from patriotic opposition forces. Konashenko said one particularly successful strike was conducted on Tuesday in Aleppo province, where a Russian Su-34 bomber hit a meeting of extremist leaders. Russian ordnance includes bunker-buster bombs capable of piercing seven metres (23 feet) of rock to destroy underground facilities, Konashenko said. Some of the bombs are laser-guided, but all Russian warplanes at the base are equipped with a sophisticated targeting system, allowing them to use even regular bombs with pinpoint accuracy, he said. British defence minister Michael Fallon on Wednesday once again raised Western concerns about civilian deaths as a result of the Russian air strikes. I am very concerned at the number of civilian casualties through the use of unguided munitions seems to be several hundred casualties now, he said in Paris during a meeting of Western defence ministers on how to combat the Islamic State group. Weve seen Russian strikes on opposition forces, on towns and villages, particularly in the south of Syria, which is simply prolonging the Syrian war, propping up Assad and is actually delaying the day on which we can all unite and properly get Daesh (Islamic State) out of Syria. Konashenkov dismissed such claims as slanderous lies. Across the tarmac, Russian soldiers loaded humanitarian supplies onto a hulking Il-76 heavy transport plane to be parachuted over the Syrian city of Deir el-Zour, where government-held areas of the city have been blockaded by extremists for more than a year. The United Nations says living conditions there have deteriorated significantly, with reports of up to 20 deaths because of malnutrition. Konashenkov said more than 50 metric tonnes of relief supplies have been delivered to Deir el-Zour in precisely targeted airdrops. The Syrian government controls the military airport in the city, and activists say the limited amount of aid that gets in typically goes to army officers and their friends who sell it on the black market. The Syrian government and the opposition are to open talks on Monday in Geneva. The negotiations are meant to pave the way for a political settlement for Syria, with a new constitution and elections in a year and a half. But international negotiators, including the United States and its allies and Assads backers, Russia and Iran, have failed to agree on which of the myriad Syrian militant groups should be part of the political talks. Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and US secretary of state John Kerry met in Switzerland on Wednesday to try and resolve the differences. The most visible difference at the Hemeimeem base since October is the presence of the S-400 air defence systems. Russia deployed the powerful weapons, capable of hitting targets 400 kilometres (240 miles) away, after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane along the Syrian border on November 24. Turkey said it downed the Russian jet after it violated its airspace for a few seconds, while Russia insisted its plane had stayed within Syrian airspace. It was the first time in more than half a century that a Nato nation had shot down a Russian plane. The Russian military quickly sent the S-400s to the base and warned that it would fend off any threat to its aircraft. Moscow also punished Turkey by imposing an array of economic sanctions, including a ban on package tours. To augment the air defences, Russia has kept a navy ship carrying long-range air defence missiles off the Syrian shore and Russian fighter jets have begun escorting strike jets to fend off any air threat. Oceans around the world have absorbed man-made heat energy to the tune of two billion Hiroshima-style atomic bombs in the last 18 years, a study released last week claimed. The oceans absorbed approximately 150 zettajoules of energy from 1865 to 1997 and then absorbed about another 150 in the next 18 years, Nature Climate Change journal said in its study. How much is a zettajoule? A zettajoule is 1 x 10 to the 21st power so a very large number, co-author of the paper Paul J Durack, an oceanographer at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab in California, told Hindustan Times. According to Associated Press, an explosion of one Hiroshima-style atomic bomb every second for a year (which is 31,53,6000 bomb explosions) would release just 2 zettajoules of heat energy. So from 1865 to 1997, in the pre-industrial era, our oceans absorbed man-made heat energy equivalent to 2,36,52,00,000 Hiroshima-style atomic bombs (31,53,6000 *150/2). And since 1997, in the post-industrial era, the heat energy absorption doubled with the oceans taking in heat energy equivalent to another set of 2,36,52,00,000 bombs. These numbers are approximately accurate and are consistent with the previously published work of the IPCC 2013 5th assessment report, Durack said. This image provided by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory shows Pacific and Atlantic meridional sections showing upper-ocean warming for the past six decades (1955-2011). Red colours indicate a warming anomaly and blue colours indicate a cooling anomaly. The amount of global-warming triggered heat energy absorbed by the seas has doubled since 1997, a new study showed. (AP Photo) Cause and effects When asked about the reason behind such a doubling in the last 18 years, Durack squarely blamed it on careless human nature which led to an increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, primarily CO2. The atmospheric composition changes are affecting the global temperatures. Many independent studies have confirmed these human-caused changes to many aspects of the climate system, from the atmospheric temperatures, to the ocean and many other aspects. Previous work has shown that the spatial patterns and changes that were seeing in the earth climate system are a response to human-caused changes. The strong temperature increases that our new study has uncovered paints a clear picture of continuing ocean warming, and if we are to extrapolate into the future following the rates of change these show large increases will continue, Durack said when asked about the effects we are facing because of the voluminous heat energy consumed by the oceans. Is the data accurate? Even though the numbers appear to be enormous, Durack is confident of his calculations. The oceanographic research community has been measuring the global ocean for many centuries, with constant changes to the technology employed to measure the ocean properties and continual improvements in the accuracy of the measurements, he said. These data are the best that we have, and when the older data is compared and contrasted to the latest measurements from new high precision observations they check out well. (With AP inputs) SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON At least seven people were killed and at least 24 wounded when a suicide bomber struck a minibus carrying employees of popular Afghan TV channel TOLO on Wednesday, just months after the Taliban declared the network a legitimate military target. The bombing took place near the Russian embassy in downtown Kabul and marks the first major attack on an Afghan media organisation. No group has so far claimed responsibility for the carnage, the latest in a wave of attacks despite an international push to jumpstart Taliban peace talks. Our office bus taking TOLO staff home came under attack, an employee at the channel said, requesting anonymity. The bombing left some staff members burning inside the vehicle, another employee said, adding that the bus was mostly filled with behind-the-scenes workers from the channels graphics and dubbing departments. The loud explosion sent a plume of smoke rising in the sky, with ambulances and firefighters rushing to the scene which was littered with charred debris. The enemy of peace and Afghan people have martyred my colleagues, Fawad Aman, a well-known TOLO TV anchor, wrote on his Facebook page. Such cowardly attacks will not deter us from exposing the truth. The Taliban in October declared TOLO and 1TV, both privately run news stations, as legitimate military targets. The group said the move was in response to their reports claiming that Taliban fighters raped women at a female hostel in Kunduz, after the group briefly captured the northern city in late September last year. The Taliban rejected the reports as fabrications, saying they were examples of propaganda by the satanic networks. The attack, which highlights the growing dangers faced by journalists in Afghanistan, comes just two days after a second round of a four-country meeting in Kabul aimed at reviving talks with the Taliban. The Taliban has stepped up attacks on government and foreign targets in Afghanistan this winter, when fighting usually abates, underscoring a worsening security situation. Observers say the intensifying insurgency highlights a push by the militants to seize more territory in an attempt to wrangle greater concessions during talks. Suspected Islamist gunmen stormed a teeming university campus in Pakistans volatile northwest on Wednesday, killing 21 people, including a chemistry professor who tried to protect his students by firing at the militants. A security official said the death toll could rise as the army cleared out student hostels and classrooms at Bacha Khan University at Charsadda, around 50km from Peshawar, in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. Former cricket hero Imran Khans Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf Party, which rules the province, initially said about 25 people were killed and 50 others wounded in the attack. The death toll was later revised by police officials to 21. The brazen attack coincided with the death anniversary of renowned Pashtun leader Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan or Bacha Khan, the apostle of peace after whom the varsity is named. The assault was claimed by a Taliban faction led by Umar Mansoor, the mastermind of the 2014 attack on an army-run school in Peshawar that killed nearly 150 people. Our four suicide attackers carried out the attack on Bacha Khan University today, said Mansoor. But it was branded un-Islamic by the leadership of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan a divergence that signalled continued infighting in the Taliban at a time when the Islamic State is trying to gain a foothold in the region by recruiting disaffected fighters. The TTPs central leadership also denied any involvement in the attack. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif vowed to fight to the end and destroy the menace of terrorism while his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi condemned the attack. Strongly condemn the terror attack at Bacha Khan University in Pakistan. Condolences to families of the deceased. Prayers with the injured, Modi tweeted. Students spoke of a heroic teacher, Syed Hamid Husain, fighting back against the intruders, shooting at them with his pistol to protect his wards. Geology student Zahoor Ahmed said the chemistry lecturer had warned him not to leave the building after the first shots were fired. He was holding a pistol in his hand, he said. Then I saw a bullet hit him. I saw two militants were firing. I ran inside and then managed to flee by jumping over the back wall. A military helicopter flies past a mosque during an operation after a militant attack at Bacha Khan University, in Charsadda, Pakistan. (Reuters Photo) Witnesses said the attack started at around 8am when the militants used the cover of thick, wintry fog to scale walls and enter the campus. The gunmen first entered the deans office and then spread out to classes and hostels. Regional police chief Saeed Wazir said most of the student victims were shot dead at a hostel for boys. Military spokesman Lt Gen Asim Bajwa said four attackers were killed by troops, including two who were shot by snipers. Commandoes dropped into the campus by helicopters carried out an operation lasting several hours to clear all blocks of the campus. Following the attack on the army-run school in December 2014, the Pakistan government framed a National Action Plan (NAP) to counter terrorism, created special military courts to deal with terrorism-related offences and executed scores of people convicted in terrorism cases. Observers said Wednesdays attack raised questions about the efficacy of the NAP and the Talibans ability to strike almost at will despite the militarys claims of major successes in Operation Zarb-e-Azb, an offensive against all militant groups active in northwest Pakistan. With inputs from Agencies Yasutaro Koide, the world's oldest man, died this morning in Japan after succumbing to chronic heart problems, according to USA Today. Koide was born in March of 1903. He died in a hospital in Nagoya. His death came just several months after he was presented the Guinness world tittle of world's oldest man. "I felt very honored that I have had a chance to meet Mr. Yasutaro Koide last summer, surrounded by his warm family and relatives," said Vice President Erika Ogawa of Guinness World Records Japan. "The stories of his adolescent years encouraged all of us who were there. I would like to express my sorrow and condolences to him and his family." Koide said that his secret to longevity lied in not smoking, drinking or "overdoing it," according to the Associated Press. Last year's oldest man was Sakari Momoi, who was also from Japan and also 112, as previously reported by HNGN. With Koide's passing, a new oldest man will be announced, and sources claim that 111-year-old Masamitsu Yoshida is a contender for the title. The oldest person in the world, however, is Brooklyn, New York's Susannah Mushatt Jones who is 116 years old, according to CNN. The oldest person to ever be officially recognized was from France. Jeanne Clament died in 1997 after living for 122 years. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Tuesday praised last week's implementation of the nuclear deal and the accompanied lifting of international sanctions against his country, but he warned that Iran must remain cautious of American intentions, reports AFP. Khamenei, who has has the final say on all state matters including the nuclear negotiations, made the comments in a letter written to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to congratulate him on the successful implementation of the nuclear deal signed with the P5+1 world powers. In exchange for Iran agreeing to limit its nuclear program, some U.S. and international sanctions have been lifted, opening Iran's economy to international trade and investment and giving it access to $100 billion in assets that were previously frozen overseas. "I would like to express my satisfaction because the resistance of the great people of Iran in the face of unjust sanctions, the endeavor of nuclear scientists in advancing this important industry and the untiring efforts of our negotiators, which forced the other sides - some of whom are notorious for their enmity towards the people of Iran - to retreat and to lift part of these bullying sanctions. I would like to thank you, the negotiating team, the honorable Minister and all officials involved," Khamenei said in the letter published on his website. But he stressed "the need to be vigilant about the deceit and treachery of arrogant countries, especially the United States, in this [nuclear] issue and other issues. Be careful that the other side full meets its commitments." He added that "statements that some American politicians have made in the last two, three day are cause for deep suspicion." Khamenei didn't name any specific politicians, but Reuters notes that nearly every Republican presidential candidate has heavily criticized the deal, with several promising to disavow U.S. involvement should they win the election. Nor did Khamenei mention the new sanctions that the U.S. Treasury imposed on Iran on Sunday after the United Nations determined Iran launched ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, which was a violation of a U.N. ban. Under the sanctions, 11 entities and individuals involved in procuring goods for the ballistic missile program are banned from using the U.S. banking system. Iran's Foreign Minister spokesman Hossein Jaber Ansari said Monday that the country's "missile program has never been designated to be capable of carrying nuclear weapons" and that the sanctions have "no legal or moral legitimacy," reported BBC. He added: "America sells tens of billions of dollars of weaponry each year to countries in the region. These weapons are used in war crimes against Palestinian, Lebanese and most recently Yemeni citizens." @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Representatives of the Colombian government and the left-wing Revolutionary Armed Army of Colombia (FARC) have requested that the United Nations and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States monitor their bilateral truce as the country's peace talks draw to an end. "We have decided to ask the U.N. Security Council to create (a mission) of unarmed observers for a period of 12 months," the two sides said in a joint statement that was read in Havana, Cuba, where the peace talks have been taking place over the past three years. After recent agreements on rural reform, political participation, drug trafficking and victims, the final point on the agenda is "End of Conflict," or reaching a decisive bilateral ceasefire, according to Colombia Reports. Due to ongoing mutual distrust, the administration of President Juan Manuel Santos and the FARC leadership are asking for this "tri-partisan mechanism for the monitoring and verification of the deal regarding the bilateral and definitive ceasefire and cessation of violence, and disarmament," the joint statement explained. An important part of the monitoring mechanism will be resolving disputes that arise from the demobilization of more than 7,000 FARC rebel fighters, the Guardian reports. The method of disarmament still remains to be negotiated. Some consider this agreement to be an important sign that the projected March 23 deadline for concluding the peace talks is within reach. "Today's announcement isn't only the start of an international process, it's the unequivocal demonstration of our desire to end confrontation," said Humberto de la Calle, the government's lead negotiator, according to the Guardian. "We're not thinking of masking a fictitious ceasefire, just to get things done." FARC negotiator Ivan Marquez called the new agreement a "strong signal," also stating that "Peace in Colombia is possible," according to Reuters. More than 220,000 people have been killed and millions displaced through the violent conflict between the FARC and the Colombian military, which began in 1964. It is the longest-running armed conflict in the Western Hemisphere, according to the BBC. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Islamic State magazine Dabiq officially announced the death of the notorious British citizen turned jihadist, Jihadi John. Jihadi John, whose real name was Mohammed Emwazi, gained his reputation after appearing in an execution video of the Islamic State's hostages. Dabiq, the official magazine of the Islamic State, paid tribute to Jihadi John. "On Thursday, the 29th of Muharram, 1437 (Nov. 12, 2015), Abu Muharib finally achieved shahadah (martyrdom) for the cause of Allah, which he had sought for so long, as the car he was in was targeted in a strike by an unmanned drone in the city of Raqqah, destroying the car and killing him instantly," the magazine said, according to Reuters. Da'ish confirm 'Jihadi John' is dead. Reports he died in a drone strike in Raqqa in Nov 2015. Obituary in Dabiq: pic.twitter.com/xF3zC71NF4 Haidar Sumeri (@IraqiSecurity) January 19, 2016 "It was through the mercy and blessing of Allah that Abu Muharib attained the gift of a sound 'aqidah' (creed) and correct manhaj (understanding) despite residing in one of the centres of kufr and despite the increased presence of deviants calling to the gates of Johanna," the article entitled "Among the Believers Are Men: Abu Muharib al-Muhajir" said, according to the Mirror UK. In November, the United States military said that they were "reasonably certain" that Jihadi John has been killed, according to Army Col. Steve Warren, Fox News reported. The vehicle he was in was targeted by drones. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A volunteer from Ben Carson's campaign team was killed on a car crash in Atlantic, Iowa on Tuesday. Three other members of Carson's team, two volunteers and a campaign employee, were also injured and were brought to Cass County Memorial Hospital located in Atlantic. Rest In Peace Braden Joplin. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family. pic.twitter.com/p87TCnD44p Dr. Ben Carson (@RealBenCarson) January 20, 2016 Twenty-five-year-old Braden Joplin was rushed to the University of Nebraska Medical Center, but died at 4:30 p.m., according to Fox News. The campaign team released a statement saying that the team's van "hit a patch of ice and flipped on its side where it was struck by another vehicle," according to Ben Carson's website. The statement also announced that the schedule for Jan. 19 was to be cancelled. I'm suspending all campaign activities today due to a car accident involving members of our team. Full statement: https://t.co/Uf9HZrn2P6 Dr. Ben Carson (@RealBenCarson) January 19, 2016 "Dr. Carson has cancelled all remaining campaign events today and will be traveling to Omaha this afternoon to be with the family during this difficult time," the statement added. Carson expressed his gratitude towards campaign volunteers and his grief regarding the incident. "One of the precious few joys of campaigning is the privilege of meeting bright young men and women who are so enthusiastic about their country that they will freely give of their time and energy to work on its behalf. America lost one of those bright young men today. I had the privilege of knowing Braden Joplin personally, and am filled with a deep and profound sadness at his passing," Carson said, according to his statement. "While we mourn this profound loss, I am thankful that our other campaign colleagues, Drew McCall, Aaron Ohnemus and Ryan Patrick Shellooe, have all been treated and released from the hospital," he added. "Across America today, I ask everyone to take a moment to reflect on the preciousness of life and remember and honor the memory of Braden Joplin." Republican presidential-hopeful Carson went to Omaha to pay his respects and met with the victim's family, according to Reuters. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Anyone who has a Penn State University degree and lived on main campus has called 867-5309 and asked for "Jenny" - at least before area codes became mandatory. For those who have dialed 1-900-MIXALOT to "kick them nasty thoughts," this takes it a step further. Verizon reassigned Sir Mix-A-Lot's (nee Anthony Ray) actual phone number in 2012 and gave it to this guy: Jonathan Nichols, a 33 year old law student at Seattle University who was preparing for his upcoming Seattle job search, according to Uproxx. Nichols said he didn't think too much of a text linking to a YouTube demo, according to The Seattle Times, and he politely told the sender he had the wrong number. When Ferrari, Jaguar and Lamborghini dealers left messages asking if he was interested in a test drive, Nichols responded: "I'd love to, but I think you have the wrong guy. I'm a broke law student." Then, on Aug. 12 - Mix's birthday - the phone took on a life of it's own, "blowing up off the hook." Sexy photos, duck lips, photos of bottles of Big Bottom Whiskey and a reference to the ode to plump posteriors finally made it click for Nichols. He had the OG of big booties' old phone number, according to Mental Floss. "Don't check any text messages in front of your wife," the Shakespeare of fat bottom sonnets advised Nichols via Seattle columnist Nicole Brodeur. "That would be the first thing. And don't answer any texts by saying 'Yes,' because people take 'Yes' differently with me. And usually you end up opening your wallet." Sage advice. The bonus for the recent grad looking for a job in Seattle? "When interviewers have asked me, 'What's something interesting that no one else knows?' or when people I meet working political campaigns tell me about meeting Bill Clinton, I always say, 'I have Sir Mix-A-Lot's old phone number,'" Nichols told The Seattle Times. "It's a total mic drop." "Tell him any really sexy pictures - little in the middle, and if she's got much back - give them the new number," Sir Mix-A-Lot told Brodeur with a laugh. "But not the car dealerships." For Mix's newest single, check out his official webpage. For those who want to live in 1992, check out the NSFW (and scandalous-for-it's-time) video below. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A terrorist attack on Pakistan's Bacha Khan University on Wednesday has claimed the lives of at least 25 people, including a professor, and injured 50 others, according to Daily News & Analysis. Four armed militants stormed the Bacha Khan University campus in Pakistan's northwestern town of Charsadda at approximately 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday. In the cover of fog, the militants gained access into the university through the back wall and opened fire at students and teachers on campus. Explosions were also heard during the attack as security forces exchanged fire with the terrorists, according to BBC News. Nearly three hours after the attack began, the four militants were killed and government troops had regained control of the university, tweeted Lt. Gen Asim Bajwa. Update:Snipers killed 2 more terrorists on roof top,total Terrorist killed so far 4.All buildings&roof top taken over by Army.op continues-3 AsimBajwa (@AsimBajwaISPR) January 20, 2016 Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan claimed responsibility for the attack and said that the assault was in retaliation to a military offensive against militant strongholds. Pakistan Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif condemned the "cowardly" attack and said that "those killing innocent students and citizens have no faith and religion," according to CNN. "We are determined and resolved in our commitment to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland. The countless sacrifices made by our countrymen will not go in vain," he added. The attack takes places a day after a suicide bombing attack by the Taliban killed 10 people, including a child and five police officers in Peshawar, as HNGN previously reported. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A routine hike in California's Angeles National Forest for one man turned grisly Sunday when he came across the remains, ID and car of Megan Sue Dipiazza, a woman who mysteriously disappeared in 2012 and had been missing ever since. The hiker discovered her car but failed to realize its significance until he looked up the name on the ID card he found online. Upon discovering her identity, he contacted authorities, who arrived Sunday evening but came back the following morning since it was too dark to conduct a proper search, according The Los Angeles Times. Detectives managed to find a family photo as well as credit cards through their search. Keys were found still in the ignition, but the seat belt was unfastened. Investigators also found various human bones, which remain unidentified pending the results of a DNA test. Dipiazza, 33, was going through a bitter divorce with her husband at the time of her disappearance, reported ABC 7. A mother of one, she left a "goodbye" note in a trashcan at her Los Angeles foothills home, but investigators have declined to elaborate on the contents of the note. Authorities and her family have been searching for her body ever since she went missing on the evening of Nov. 11, 2012. There have been various leads in the case, with the most recent one being in September, when human remains were found in a Santa Clarita ravine, but this is the first one that has been definitively linked to Dipiazza. The case has been classified as a voluntary missing person case, reported the New York Daily News. However, many have suspicions considering what was going on in Dipiazza's life prior to her disappearance. This stage of the investigation is being handled by Glendale police and and Los Angeles County coroner's officials. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The city of Flint, Mich., has been suffering from a water contamination crisis for over a year, and after the deaths of several due to possible connections to the lead in the water, the residents are now not only raising health concerns, but calling for the arrest of Michigan's governor, Rick Snyder. In his State of the State yesterday, Snyder apologized to the people, saying, "I'm sorry, and I will fix it." The day before Snyder's annual State of the State address, roughly 60 people stationed themselves outside his Ann Arbor apartment, and called for his arrest. "Many of us think this governor has committed a crime, and want to see justice for Flint," said Jan BenDor, who helped organize Monday's protest, according to USA Today. "If that whole city could be poisoned, it could happen to any of us." The contamination started in 2014 and has been ongoing since. The city of Flint switched its source of supply from Lake Huron water, treated by the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department to more corrosive and polluted Flint River water, treated at the Flint water treatment plant. The change was made as a cost-cutting measure. "I'm sorry most of all that I let you down. You deserve better. You deserve accountability. You deserve to know that the buck stops here with me. Most of all, you deserve to know the truth, and I have a responsibility to tell the truth," said Snyder, during a 49-minute address, according to Syracruse.com. "No citizen of this great state should endure this kind of catastrophe. Government failed you - federal, state and local leaders - by breaking the trust you place in us," Snyder continued, reports The New York Times. Snyder promised more accountability and said he would release emails related to Flint from 2014 and 2015. "The Governor should not be allowed to operate in secret and outside of public scrutiny. Picking and choosing the emails that he wants the public to see is not accountability," said Melanie McElroy, executive director of advocacy group Common Cause Michigan criticising the move through which the emails will be available on the state website starting on Jan. 20, reports The Huffington Post. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Soon after the release of five American prisoners in an exchange of hostages with Iran, the family of former FBI agent Robert Levinson felt "extremely betrayed" by the White House. "We are happy for the other families. But once again, Bob Levinson has been left behind," read a statement by the family, reported Reuters. Levinson disappeared March 9, 2007, while on an unauthorized intelligence gathering mission with the CIA. He was last seen on Kish Island, off Iran's coast. "We had to learn it from the TV ourselves, and that's very disappointing and heartbreaking," said Levinson's wife Christine, according to Fox News. State Department spokesman John Kirby said the government had planned to inform the Levinsons about the release of the Americans before the news broke. "The Iranians leaked the information early, too early for us to have made the phone calls and notifications that we wanted to make. Believe me, nobody is happy about the way that went down," said Kirby, reported NBC News. "The people who are working on the case directly, they have told us there is no evidence to suggest my dad is not alive. We're not going to give up because, obviously, we're doing everything we can. We need to make sure his country is doing the same," said Levinson's son Dan, according to Fox News. But when asked by reporters during a press conference if Levinson was still alive, Secretary of State John Kerry said, "We have no idea," reported Fox News. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Vietnam has warned China not to drill for oil after Beijing moved a giant rig into disputed waters in the South China Sea, which may lead to a repeat of a 2014 maritime standoff between the communist neighbors. Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Hai Binh said in a statement Tuesday that Vietnam has raised concerns with China after it moved its Haiyang Shiyou 981 oil rig on Jan. 16 to an area where the two countries' continental shelves overlap and have not been demarcated, according to CNN. "Vietnam requests China not to conduct drilling activities and to withdraw the HYSY 981 oil rig from this area," he said. "Vietnam reserves all its legal rights and interests in the area in accordance with international law." However, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei defended China's action, insisting Wednesday that the oil rig is operating in "undisputed waters under China's jurisdiction," according to AFP. "As far as I know, the operation of the HYSY 981 oil rig is being carried out in completely undisputed waters under China's jurisdiction," he said during a regular news briefing in Beijing. "We hope the Vietnamese side will see this operation calmly and make joint efforts with China to properly handle maritime issues." This isn't the first time that the oil rig has led to a standoff between the two communist countries, reported the Associated Press. In May 2014, relations between the two countries were at their lowest point in years after Beijing was forced to evacuate thousands of Chinese nationals from Vietnam when exploratory drilling in contested waters near the Paracel Islands sparked deadly anti-China riots. News of the oil rig comes at a critical time politically for Vietnam's ruling Communist Party as more than 1,500 delegates gather in Hanoi for a congress that will pick new leaders and chart the country's economic and foreign policy for the next five years. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Seven people are dead and 24 others were wounded after a suicide bomber targeting a crew affiliated with Afghanistan's largest media group struck a minibus near the Russian embassy in Kabul on Wednesday, marking the latest terrorist attack in the country's capital. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Taliban, who had taken exception to Tolo News' coverage of the fall of Kunduz to militants last October, said the flagship station or any of its affiliates, are legitimate targets, according to Washington Post. The timeline of the incident is unknown, however authorities confirmed that the bomber detonated a blast targeting a minibus carrying 30 staff of Kaboora Production. "A suicide attacker rammed into a civilian minibus on Darul Aman road and there have been casualties," Kabul deputy police chief Sayed Gul Agha Rohani, according to the Australian Broadcasting Company. The resulting explosion reportedly sent a plume of smoke in the air, as authorities arrived on the scene to assess the extent of the damage and tend to the wounded. News of the bombing comes just two days after a second round of international talks aimed at reviving Taliban peace talks were held. In attendance were Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the U.S., however the Taliban - backed historically by Pakistan - were notably absent not just the recent round, but the first one as well, reported The Guardian. The Taliban has stepped up attacks in recent months, which experts believe is a bid by the militants to wrangle greater concessions during peace talks. The next round of discussions are slated for Feb. 6 in Islamabad. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. "Clueless" star and FOX News Contributor Stacey Dash appeared on Wednesday's "Fox & Friends" where she discussed her thoughts about the accusations of racism in this year's Oscar nominations, arguing the easiest way to avoid situations like that is to get rid of BET, NAACP and ven Black History Month, calling their existence a double standard. "We have to make up our minds," Dash said, according to San Jose Mercury News. "Either we want to have segregation or integration. And if we don't want segregation, then we need to get rid of channels like B.E.T. and the B.E.T. Awards and the Image Awards where you're only awarded if you're black. If it were the other way around, we would be up in arms. It's a double standard." Since last week's release of the 88th Academy Award nominees, prominent black figures in politics and the media have been calling for a boycott of the show. Such people include filmmaker Spike Lee, actress Jada Pinkett Smith and Reverend Al Sharpton, who is leading the charge. Dash affirmed her position when host Steve Doocy asked her to repeat what she said about BET. "No, I don't think so, no," she said, according to the New York Daily News. "Just like there shouldn't be a Black History Month. You know? We're Americans. Period. That's it." Doocy then asked for clarification, asking there "shouldn't be a Black History Month because there isn't a white history month?" "Exactly. Exactly," she responded Her full comment can be seen below: This isn't the first time Dash has made headlines for her comments. In 2012, she famously referenced a Martin Luther King speech when she endorsed Mitt Romney over Barack Obama; and in 2011 she tweeted her support of Paula Deen, who was in the middle of a scandal for her admission during court testimony that she used the n-word decades prior to the court proceedings. Most recently, Dash was suspended from on-air reporting on FOX after she said Obama doesn't "give a s***" about terrorism. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. T here are 34 bridges across the Thames in Greater London. Just one lies east of Tower Bridge, 20 miles downriver in Dartford the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, where roaring traffic snakes over the hump-backed monster day and night. Proposals to build scaled-down versions between Tower Bridge and Dartford to help ease traffic have been floated since the Seventies. However, the UKs foremost master planner, architect Sir Terry Farrell, has a better idea build modern equivalents, not of the Dartford crossing, but of Tower Bridge. Master plan: the six crossings pinpointed along three stretches of the river east of Tower Bridge. Image: Farrells / Farrells Only high-level bridges or tunnels are currently being planned. Low-level bridges, which lift a few times a day to let tall ships through, are a better alternative, he says. They would act as catalysts for mixed-use development on either side of the river, turbo-charging existing plans for areas such as the Royal Docks and Thamesmead. Building bridges for London 1 /6 Building bridges for London Nine Elms Transport for London recently unveiled proposals for 13 new river crossings. This proposed crossing at Nine Elms in Battersea that would link Wandsworth to Westminster. Transport for London deems it a valuable addition to the area. Floating districts All six of the propsed crossings have rising centre sections like Tower Bridge, plus a fanciful moored flotilla of floating homes. Farrell believes there is potential for 47,000 homes within a mile and a quarter of the Thamesmead/Barking bridge. Terry Farrell Terry Farrell's masterplan Master plan: the six crossings pinpointed that could boost areas Farrells Garden Bridge It is said the proposed Garden Bridge across the Thames, designed by Thomas Heatherwick, will cost at least 175m. Barking Riverside Transport for London recently unveiled proposals for 13 new river crossings, from Fulham in the west to Dartford in the east. A new tunnel will be part of an Overground extension to Barking Riverside. Sir Terry has long been part of a chorus pushing for new foot and cycle Thames crossings mixed with more substantial new bridges for traffic. Just before Christmas, Mayor Boris Johnson called for 13 new crossings. Sir Terrys big idea is to build six all-traffic crossings at ground level centre-lift bridges whose prime purpose is to aid development on both sides of the river in currently marooned spots. A low-level crossing enhances land values at both ends by 10 per cent, says BuroHappold. They are relatively cheap. You can get three to four low-level crossings for 100 million to 150 million a time for the price of one high-level bridge, according to consulting engineers BuroHappold. Sir Terrys architecture practice Farrells concedes that one high-level crossing is needed. But that should be it. Savills research director Susan Emmett agrees. There is huge potential to create new neighbourhoods east of the city if we make best use of our land. BuroHappold has quantified the footfall benefits. If 7,000 commuters pass the bridge each day, theyll spend an estimated 7 million a year in shops, bakeries, food stores and pubs within the bridges area of influence. Interactive graphic: 13 new Thames crossings Transport for London has unveiled proposals for 13 new river crossings, from Fulham in the west to Dartford in the east. The majority of these will be built in east London, where current cross-river connections are poor and population growth is highest. The tunnels and bridges are part of a master plan for a new City in the East, stretching from London Bridge to Ebbsfleet, being pushed by the Mayor. They include a pedestrian and cycle link between Canary Wharf and Rotherhithe, a crossing between Royal Docks and Charlton Riverside, and a new road bridge between Beckton and Thamesmead. TfL is also mulling over two tolled crossing points and consultations on the 3 billion project close next month. A tunnel or a high-level bridge from Belvedere in Kent to Rainham in Essex is one route, while the other is a bridge at Gallions Reach, between Beckton and Thamesmead. Here, a crossing would span more than a mile, with ramps making up two thirds of the length. Sir Terry concedes one of these is needed to ease congestion. But the price of dead ground is heavy. Farrells calculates that 55 acres of land underneath and around Gallions Reach inclines will be rendered unusable for housing and shops, while an area the size of Holland Park is neutralised obliterating space for 2,600 homes. So why cant we have a low-level bridge here? Why not plenty more? Farrells has pinpointed six spots on three stretches of the river. Two crossings would link the neck of the Isle of Dogs to the south bank the first to Surrey Quays, the second to Greenwich. Downstream, one bridge replaces the Woolwich Ferry, while another links Charlton to Silvertown. Further east, there are two crossings from Thamesmead to Barking. All six have rising centre sections like Tower Bridge, plus a fanciful moored flotilla of floating homes. There is potential for 47,000 homes within a mile and a quarter of the Thamesmead/Barking bridge, adds Farrells. Pressure for new crossings is rising as fast as Londons population is hurtling towards 10 million. Last month, the Mayor unveiled TfLs plans to build 13 new crossings by 2050. He said: Building a series of new bridges is essential for the future prosperity of our rapidly growing city. These TfL crossings are shaped by a parochial priority to move pedestrians and ease traffic. The Port of London Authoritys 20-year Thames Vision, published last month, takes a similarly narrow view. The PLAs priority is to encourage more ships, preferably under bridges high enough not to dent funnels. But Sir Terry is beginning to have an impact. His ideas came too late to influence the TfL and PLA reports, but the PLA acknowledges his impact on the debate. We have started a dialogue with Terry Farrells team to explore proposals for low-level bridges, says James Trimmer, PLA director of planning. However, it is fundamental that passage for river traffic can be maintained. The PLA is reluctant to say how many times low-level bridges would have to be raised to allow ships to pass. It would depend on the bridge heights, but its something we will discuss with TfL, adds Trimmer. It looks like you've reached a page that doesnt exist (anymore). Please use the navigation or search above to find content on Hospitality Net. Go back to home Well this is rather surprising. Not even 48 hours after receiving the official version of No More Parties In LA, Kanye West takes to twitter to share a message he has from Mos Def Yasiin Bey. The audio message, which appears on KanyeWest.com, turns out to be Yasiin freestyling over the phone to Yeezys No More Parties In LA, though he calls his No More Parties In SA. The title derives from Yasiins recent troubles with South Africa, where he was recently arrested at the Cape Town Airport for an illegal world passport document. The 11-minute audio finds Yasiin giving an update on the whole South Africa situation, along that he will retire from both the music and Hollywood worlds effective immediately. He later adds that his final album will arrive sometime later this year. Before closing out the message however, Yasiin gave a shout out to Kendrick Lamar and rapped some various lyrics he performed for Kanye shortly before his first child, North, was born. Listen to the entire message below. [Via] Yasiin Bey THE THING about Moving Hearts is you either get it or you don't. Some don't. Invariably, they are the kind of people who can count from one to ten alright but just not in that order. For the rest of us, however, the Hearts were, are and will always be one of the musical marvels of the twentieth century. Eamonn McCann used to call them "the greatest rock & 'n' roll band in the world." I always thought he understated their case. Moving Hearts play Dublin's Midnight At The Olympia on Friday February 18th and Saturday February 19th. Missouri lawmakers say boosting transportation funding will be a top priority this year, but theres little agreement on how to do it. A proposal to increase the states fuel tax, sponsored by the Republican chairman of the Senates transportation committee, has support from Democrat Gov. Jay Nixon and the Missouri Department of Transportations director. But House Speaker Todd Richardson has said a tax increase is the wrong solution, while the chairman of the Houses transportation committee says hes partial to a multi-pronged approach that includes raising the fuel tax, raising the tobacco tax and ending the use of highway department money for the Missouri State Highway Patrol. MoDOT DIRECTOR PATRICK MCKENNA About 640 of Missouris 10,400 bridges are in critical condition, and more than a thousand others have weight restrictions. Fifteen percent of Missouris major roads and 25 percent of its minor state roads are in poor condition. Missouri has the fourth-lowest spending on transportation per mile of road, Transportation Director Patrick McKenna said. When Interstate 70 was constructed in the 1960s, it had a life expectancy of about 20 years. Its foundation has deteriorated, and transportation officials say it needs to be rebuilt and widened at a cost of $2 billion to $4 billion. The department spends more than it brings in. By the end of the decade, its cash balance is forecast to decline from $800 million to $200 million. In all, at least a dozen pieces of legislation including some proposed constitutional amendments would address transportation funding. FUEL TAX At least four measures would raise Missouris 17-cent fuel tax, which has stayed flat since 1996. Since then, inflation has eroded about half of that taxs purchasing power, McKenna said. Doug Libla, a Poplar Bluff Republican who heads the Senates transportation committee, has proposed increasing the tax by 1.5 cents-per-gallon for gasoline and 3.5 cents for diesel. About two dozen interest groups have supported the bill, and Libla said he hopes to vote it out of committee. Sen. Rob Schaafs proposed constitutional amendment also would raise the gas tax by 1.5 cents and the diesel tax by 3.5 cents. Rep. Margo McNeil, D-Florissant, proposed raising the diesel tax by 8 cents and the gas tax by 7 cents. Rep. Keith English, an independent from Florissant, has proposed raising both taxes by 2 cents. Liblas increase is expected to net close to $56 million a year. The countrys average state fuel tax is about 20 cents for both gasoline and diesel, according to the American Petroleum Institutes January 2016 report. But most states also charge additional fees, such as Kansas 1-cent-per-gallon environmental assurance fee. Those extra fees, on average, total roughly 9 cents per gallon; Missouri charges an extra 0.3 cents per gallon. The federal governments gas tax adds an additional 18.4 cents per gallon. In total, Missouri has the fifth-lowest tax on gas and the fourth-lowest on diesel in the country, according to the American Petroleum Institute. BUDGET MOVES At least six proposals would shift the transportation departments costs to local governments or into the states general revenue stream. Two proposals Schaafs amendment and a bill from Rep. Bryan Spencer, R-Wentzville would transfer control of lettered highways back to county control. Theres more than 19,000 miles of those two-lane highways in Missouri. They were originally designed as farm-to-market routes, and most counties have hundreds of miles of them, transportation department spokesman Bob Brendel said. In many other states, counties still maintain those kinds of roads. But Missouri assumed control of them in the 1950s, and most counties probably lack the equipment, budget and personnel to handle them, he said. To that end, Spencer has proposed a constitutional amendment that would double the money available to counties for road maintenance by diverting an extra 10 percent of fuel taxes to the County Road Trust. That would leave less money for the remaining state roads, though Spencer has also introduced a bill to try to patch that shortfall with money from the states sales tax. A bill sponsored by Sen. Bob Onder, R-Lake St. Louis, would divert one-sixth of Missouris 3 percent general revenue sales tax into the transportation departments road fund as well. Rep. Glen Kolkmeyer, the Odessa Republican who chairs the Houses transportation committee, said a bill is in the works to pay for the Missouri State Highway Patrols budget with general revenue funds. He said that would free $70 million for transportation, though Brendel said the highway patrols budget is closer to $200 million. Nixon has said using money from general revenue is tantamount to paying for roads by cutting money from schools. CIGARETTE TAX A petition is circulating to ask voters to increase Missouris cigarette tax from 17 cents to 40 cents a pack. The ballot measure would also raise taxes on other tobacco products by 5 percent. By the time its fully implemented in 2021, the measure would raise about $95 million to $103 million for transportation annually. DISCRETIONARY CHANGES Rep. Rick Brattin, R-Harrisonville, introduced a constitutional amendment that would require the state to fully fund the transportation departments construction projects before authorizing or issuing any tax credits. Rep. Delus Johnson, the St. Joseph Republican who serves as majority whip, has proposed creating an Emergency Road and Bridge Fund. His bill doesnt create a new funding mechanism, so it would be up to the Legislature to appropriate money for it. An online exclusive is an article or story that does not run in the print edition of the Houston Herald. Typically 2-3 are posted online every Wednesday morning. It is another feature for users who purchase full web access from the Herald. Click here to subscribe for print, digital or both. Subscribing to our services is a three step process. First you have to create an account and then you have to pick if you want to subscribe to digital and or print. Some people only want to be a digital subscriber to get access online and others want to also receive the print edition. If you are already a print subscriber and want online access, it is free, you simply have to create an online account and then attach your print subscription account number to the online account you create. As an existing print subscriber it is easy to get FREE access to all our online content. When you click get started below it will walk you through creating an online account to attach your print subscription number to. After your account is created it will ask you to either add a subscription for online access or click on the print subscriber button. Click the print subscriber button header and it will open a dropdown, now click on get started. The page will reload and you will be prompted to enter an account number and a zip code. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO USE THE NUMBER OFF OF THE MOST RECENT ISSUE OR ANYTHING AFTER JANUARY 28, 2019 TO GAIN ACCESS! OLD ACCOUNT NUMBERS WILL NOT WORK The account number and zip code are easily available on your most recent issue of the High Plains Journal or Midwest Ag Journal in the address fields as is shown here. Sometimes the account number has extra zero's in front of it, just ignore those. Fraser Institute Media Advisory: Who really pays when governments increase corporate tax rates? New study coming Tuesday, January 19 Media Contact: Aanand Radia, Media Relations Specialist, Fraser Institute, (416) 363-6575 ext. 238, aanand.radia@fraserin Posted by Press Releases on Wednesday, 01-20-2016 12:09 am Currently 0.0/5 Stars. 1 2 3 4 5 0.0 from 0 votes TORONTOOn Tuesday, January 19, the Fraser Institute will release a new study examining the effects of increases in corporate and payroll tax rates in Canada.While activists continue to advocate for increases in corporate taxes as a means to deal with current fiscal challenges, The Effect of Corporate Income and Payroll Taxes on the Wages of Canadian Workers, calculates the monetary impact of such a policy on the average worker.A news release with additional information will be issued via Marketwired on Tuesday, January 19 at 5:30 a.m. (EST).Charles Lammam, director of fiscal studies at the Fraser Institute, will be available to media from Toronto.(30)MEDIA CONTACT:For interviews with Mr. Lammam, please contact:Aanand RadiaMedia Relations Specialist, Fraser Institute(416) 363-6575 ext. 238aanand.radia@fraserinstitute.org @FraserInstituteFollow the Fraser Institute on Twitter | Like us on FacebookThe Fraser Institute is an independent Canadian public policy research and educa... Close Forgot Your Password? Enter in your email address and we will send it to you. Send Email An HR.com member profile provides you with access to a multitude of information and education along with the opportunity to network with the largest HR community on the web. If you need any help, call .877.472.6648 and ask for our Member Experience Co-ordinator. Hi Please check your email for an activation link. If you do not receive your activation email within a few minutes, check your spam folder or call our Help Desk at 1.877.472.6648 For faster assistance, dial extension 4. Thank you! Continue Hi Verification error - Please enter the correct code above. Verified Wow! You have successfully verified the account Continue Hi your HR.com account is ready Your Profile completion: 30% Complete your profile Close Forgot Your Password? Enter in your email address and we will send it to you. Send Email What You Should Know When Conducting An Internal Investigation Posted by Arkus Inc on Wednesday, 01-20-2016 3:20 pm Currently 0.0/5 Stars. 1 2 3 4 5 0.0 from 0 votes An internal workplace investigation is among the most undesirable tasks a business owner or employer wants to undertake. However, in businesses of nearly any size, its nearly inevitable that cases of harassment, theft, discrimination, fraud, embezzlement, etc., can occur and when an employee files a complaint, the organization must take action. The goal of an internal investigation is to make sure the organization (and its workforce) acts in compliance with the law, as well as with its established policies and procedures. By gathering facts about a specific situation, the company can objectively determine if a serious infraction has occurred and then determine what to do about it. Here are key facets of an internal investigation you should understand before embarking on the process: Be thoroughly familiar with established policies. Prior to interviewing those involved in the alleged wrongdoing, internal investigators should have comprehensive knowledge of the organiza... Close Forgot Your Password? Enter in your email address and we will send it to you. Send Email An HR.com member profile provides you with access to a multitude of information and education along with the opportunity to network with the largest HR community on the web. If you need any help, call .877.472.6648 and ask for our Member Experience Co-ordinator. Hi Please check your email for an activation link. If you do not receive your activation email within a few minutes, check your spam folder or call our Help Desk at 1.877.472.6648 For faster assistance, dial extension 4. Thank you! Continue Hi Verification error - Please enter the correct code above. Verified Wow! You have successfully verified the account Continue Hi your HR.com account is ready Your Profile completion: 30% Complete your profile employees bullying allegations have landed a major communications firm in hot water despite a leading employment lawyer accepting the company had investigated the claims fairly so why the fine?Vodafone sales manager Kate Franich said her manager had made inappropriate comments about her weight and undermined her position she also argued that shed been unfairly demoted during a major restructuring.During the merger between Vodafone and Telstra Clear, Franichs role changed to a desk-based sales role, dealing with large quantities of low-value customers. Previously, shed been involved in sales to a small number of high-value clients, with lots of face-to-face customer interaction.After the grievances were filed, bosses launched an internal investigation and found Franich has not been unfairly treated the Auckland-based employee then took her claim to the Employment Relations Authority Vicki Campbell, a member of the ERA, found that while there was evidence to support Franich's allegation of workplace bullying, Vodafone had investigated the claim fairly."I find the investigation into Ms Franich's allegations, while she was clearly unhappy with the end result, did not lead Vodafone to act unjustifiably in relation to the allegations of bullying," Campbell said in her decision.Yet still the company was fined a total of $12,000.Specialist employment lawyer Campbell explained the fine was actually down to a breach of good faith."In coming to my conclusion I have been critical of the process carried out by Vodafone during the restructuring of the sales team," she said, adding that Franich had only signed the new and significantly different employment agreement out of fear shed lose her job entirely.The decision to redeploy Ms Franich into a desk-based role was not a decision an employer acting fairly and reasonably could make, she continued, adding that the company deliberately denied Ms Franich the opportunity to comment or have any input into the decision to disestablish her role.Campbell then ordered Vodafone reinstate Franich in a different role that would include face-to-face sales.Franich, who had initially sought compensation of $15,000 for the affect the unjustified restructure had on her, was awarded $7,000 compensation.Campbell also found Vodafone's actions warranted a penalty of $5,000 half of which will be given to Franich and half would be retained by the Crown. A New Jersey humane society is celebrating after successfully using the force of social media to find a home for cat that bears an uncanny resemblance to Star Wars actor Adam Driver. Corey, a two-and-a-half-year-old Oriental shorthair cat was featured on the Monmouth County SPCAs Facebook page last week, his picture drew immediate comparisons to Driver. Advertisement Tell me this cat at @TheMCSPCA doesn't look like Adam Driver. pic.twitter.com/OmtGnOWxyG Marci Robin (@MarciRobin) January 16, 2016 A brief bio noted Corey loves ALL people, including children, and would be happiest as the only pet in the home. A marked behavioural distinction between Corey and Drivers performance as Star Wars villain Kylo Ren aside from one being feline, the other human. In the end, a flurry of social media attention brought 32-year-old Emily McCombs forward to offer Corey a new home. An update on the Monmouth County SPCAs page notes McCombs instantly fell in love with Catlo Ren and drove all the way from Brooklyn to adopt him. Advertisement McCombs, an Elite Daily executive editor, laughed about the comparisons of Coreys weird little face to Driver in an interview with Time Magazine. She extended an open invitation to Driver to meet his doppelganger. He has the exact opposite of Kylo Rens personality. He is the opposite of villainous, she said. Hes loving and sweet. Hes a supreme snuggler. Also on HuffPost: When Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau broke into song at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration, she likely didn't anticipate the tune being played in clubs. But spinners could do that across Canada, if they wanted, thanks to artists Craig Mann and DJ Feminem. Advertisement Her vocals seem well-suited to the genre, as she sings phrases like, "the love that I feel" with a simple beat in the background. But the duo's wasn't the only remix of Gregoire-Trudeau's song. DJ Dom4Good created his own version, too: Advertisement That remix drew praise from Ottawa Citizen politics writer Glen McGregor. The hand gestures in the Sophie G-T remix just kill me. Too good, @dom_4good. https://t.co/ubrnq6mfQt Glen McGregor (@glen_mcgregor) January 19, 2016 Gregoire-Trudeau was clearly going for a jazzy feel in her initial performance, but somehow, it seems better suited to EDM. Also on HuffPost: One Toronto all-girls school is hoping to educate the community on what gender transition entails. Branksome Hall, a private school for girls near the city's downtown core, released their annual winter alumni magazine The Read featuring two transgender men on the cover, former students Andy Sprung and Reed Wanless. Inside, they detail their unique gender transition stories. Tanya Pimenoff, editor of the magazine, says working on this issue has educated her about the transgender community in general. Advertisement At our reunion in May 2014, one of our senior students met Reed Wanless, who attended the dinner," Pimenoff tells The Huffington Post Canada. "This chance meeting inspired the girls who were part of Branksomes student-run Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) to invite Reed to attend one of their meetings. "We soon learned of Andy Sprungs gender transition as well two stories of two changed lives. Reed and Andy both had very positive experiences during their years at Branksome." In September 2015, the school established a Transgender Working Group (TWG), a team dedicated to creating guidelines to educate the community about the needs of transgender students. The TWG also reviews research and human rights policy to draft additional policies for the school. What we set out to do, through the cover stories of this issue of The Read and the newly established TWG, was to educate our community on the topic of 'being transgender' a topic that is important and necessary in todays changing times, Pimenoff says. Advertisement The school will also be hosting a conversation about transgender issues specifically geared toward parents in February, co-hosted by Wanless. In Branksome's magazine, Sprung, an associate at Findlay Law Offices in Hamilton, opens up about once being interviewed by an employer and being asked about his educational background. When he brought up going to Branksome, it was followed by an awkward pause. It's stories like this people in the community can relate to, Wanless notes, who wrote his own piece about teaching and some of the challenges he dealt with post-transition. ALSO ON HUFFPOST: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau set aside a few minutes in his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland Wednesday to sing the praises of one Canadian university. In a speech titled The Canadian Opportunity, Trudeau used his keynote address to distance himself from the resource and energy-themed speeches delivered by former prime minister Stephen Harper in years past. Advertisement Instead, Trudeau leaned on tech innovation and diversity, outlining examples to frame Canada as an economic hub rich with brilliant minds and brilliant ideas. Justin Trudeau, Canada's prime minister speaks during a special session at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Jan. 20, 2016. (Photo: Matthew Lloyd/Bloomberg via Getty Images) Recently, a New York Times reporter asked the president of Y Combinator, a major Silicon Valley startup funder, if any one school stood out as a source of graduates with sparkling new ideas, Trudeau said. Advertisement Theres one: Its the University of Waterloo. Canadas University of Waterloo. Diversity isnt just sound social policy. Diversity is the engine of invention. Highlighting the success of the schools graduates, the prime minister used the reference to shine a light on Canadas student population, calling the cohort one of the most diverse in the world. Diversity isnt just sound social policy. Diversity is the engine of invention. It generates creativity that enriches the world. We know this in Canada, he said. The Times article, published in March last year, quoted Y Combinator president Sam Altman identifying the Southern Ontario university as a top feeder school for upcoming tech talent not his own alma mater, Stanford. According to Altman, the Ivy League school has not had a really great track record compared to Waterloo. Fresh federal funding for university The hat tip comes a week after the prime minister visited the Ontario university to meet with student entrepreneurs enrolled in the schools Velocity Science program. Advertisement Trudeau and Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains announced $12 million in funding for water research at the University of Waterloo. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau poses for a photo with University of Waterloo students on Jan. 14, 2015. (Photo: The University of Waterloo) The money is expected to support up to 80 projects and forge partnerships with 90 businesses and non-profit organizations. By investing in groups like the Southern Ontario Water Consortium we're investing in our economy, we're investing in our environment, we've investing in our communities but above all, we're investing in our future, Trudeau said at the time. We cant wait to see what our most innovative Canadian companies have in store for our communities. Advertisement Also on HuffPost: A B.C. couple says their baby daughter saved their lives after a furnace started leaking carbon monoxide overnight. Kyle and Monique Ruppel were asleep in their Kamloops home last week when their 15-month-old daughter, Celia, woke her mom up. Advertisement "I attempted to make my way to her room but only made it a few feet before being completely overwhelmed with vertigo," Monique wrote on Facebook Sunday. "Kyle immediately woke and we quickly realized something was wrong. We both suffered from dizziness, headache, nausea, and burning eyes." Fifteen-month-old Celia Ruppel saved her parents by waking during a gas leak, her mom Monique wrote. (Photo: Facebook) The couple managed to pack a bag and call Kyle's parents. By the time the grandparents arrived, Celia was throwing up and the family cat had collapsed. Advertisement The Ruppels were taken to a local hospital and then airlifted to Vancouver General Hospital for treatment. The family spent over seven hours in a hyperbaric chamber receiving oxygen therapy. They are expected to make a full recovery. Kyle, Monique, and Celia Ruppel are seen in a hyperbaric chamber after being poisoned by carbon monoxide. (Photo: Facebook) The couple had no carbon monoxide detectors in their house, Monique wrote. "We are so thankful Celia woke us. We often wished she would sleep through the night but we do not feel that way anymore," said the mom. "Our sweet, sweet baby saved us all." Advertisement Follow Us On Instagram Also On HuffPost: When news broke yesterday that Prince Harry was dating Princess Maria-Olympia of Greece and Denmark, we were intrigued. Who was this 19-year-old aristocrat who had stolen the handsome royal's heart? Well it turns out the daughter of Crown Prince Pavlos and Crown Princess Marie-Chantal of Greece is not only gorgeous, but also super stylish and cool as in, sits besides Emma Watson front row at Paris Fashion Week-kind of cool. Advertisement Emma Watson, Princess Maria Olympia of Greece and Crown Princess Marie Chantal of Greece attend the Valentino show as part of Paris Fashion Week - Haute Couture Fall/Winter 2014-2015 at Hotel Salomon de Rothschild on July 9, 2014 in Paris. The blond beauty was born in New York City and raised in London, but is back in the Big Apple, studying at NYU and living in Soho (like we said, super cool). And she's quite the social media star, with almost 61,000 followers on Instagram. Her feed is filled with killer #OOTDs, gorgeous vacation snaps, and other notable names in the fashion world including Balmain's Olivier Rousteing and Victoria's Secret Angel, Lily Aldridge. Basically, the Princess is reigning over the social media app, and we're totally bowing down in admiration. Unfortunately a "senior Royal source" has squashed the rumours of a romance brewing between Harry and Olympia, and while we mourn at what could have been, we take solace in the fact that we've just discovered our new Royal style icon. Advertisement Check out some of Princess Olympia's most fashionable grams below! Year of the monkey A photo posted by olympiagreece (@olympiagreece) on Jan 19, 2016 at 8:45am PST @louisvuitton X Unicef A photo posted by olympiagreece (@olympiagreece) on Jan 14, 2016 at 9:45am PST J'adore A photo posted by olympiagreece (@olympiagreece) on Jan 12, 2016 at 10:49am PST A photo posted by olympiagreece (@olympiagreece) on Aug 17, 2015 at 1:39pm PDT @anlestudio A photo posted by olympiagreece (@olympiagreece) on Jan 7, 2016 at 1:02pm PST Advertisement 2016 !!!!!! A photo posted by olympiagreece (@olympiagreece) on Jan 1, 2016 at 12:52pm PST Merry Christmas A photo posted by olympiagreece (@olympiagreece) on Dec 25, 2015 at 11:30am PST @dior #GIG2015 A photo posted by olympiagreece (@olympiagreece) on Nov 4, 2015 at 8:51pm PST Also on HuffPost At least 20 members of a volunteer fire department including the chief in Spaniard's Bay, Nfld. resigned Tuesday over a controversy involving its only female member. The resignations leave the town without fire protection in the near future, according to local newspaper The Compass. Advertisement Brenda Seymour, a town councillor and volunteer firefighter, told CBC News she faced harassment from male colleagues and their wives because of her gender and dedication to her job. Seymour, who did not resign, says she has faced harassment, intimidation, and has been overlooked for promotion. "You might want to go home and wash that, we jerked all over it." She is one of only two Level II certified firefighters in the brigade, and says she has been passed over for executive positions. Seymour said she decided to speak out after an incident last year when she noticed her balaclava was missing from her locker in October. Advertisement She said when she went to the chief gave her a replacement, another firefighter said, "You might want to go home and wash that, we jerked all over it." Seymour told 590 VOCM the most uncomfortable moment happened in April 2014 when a guest instructor played a pornographic film at the end of a training session. As the only woman in the room, she said she was "flabbergasted." "I was frozen." Simmering tensions Spaniard's Bay Mayor Tony Menchions told CBC News he was "shocked" by the resignations, "but not surprised." "There's not a lot I can say right now, but we're going to try to work through it, and see what happens over the next few days," he said. "It has to be exposed and bled out, and it has to be stopped." He said fire departments from nearby towns are helping out for the time being, according to VOCM. In 2010, Seymour was suspended and dismissed from the brigade for overstepping her bounds, after she tried to secure funding to attend a training course. She has also discussed the fire department in her role as town councillor, according to The Compass. Advertisement A study conducted by a former chief of the Spaniard's Bay Fire Department found no evidence of gender bias in her dismissal, but did conclude suspending her from the department was unjust. In March 2011, Seymour was reinstated. According to The Compass, Seymour made two motions during a town council meeting last November calling for the removal or suspension of fire chief Victor Hiscock. The move was defeated 4-3 after the mayor voted in favour of the fire chief. Another motion to reevaluate and restructure the council was also defeated. Seymour said after that council meeting, her treatment at the fire department got worse. While out walking, she was hit by a coffee cup thrown from a passing vehicle, according to CBC News. She also received a copy of a conversation in which five of the firefighters' wives called her a "slimy bitch," and discussed hiring a hitman. Seymour says her experience has been "mind blowing." "It has to be exposed and bled out, and it has to be stopped," she said. Also on HuffPost 22 Reasons Rick Mercer Should Be Premier Of Newfoundland See Gallery The Trans-Pacific Partnership meant to create the worlds largest free trade area will cost Canada 58,000 jobs and increase income inequality, says a new U.S. study. Perhaps more surprisingly, the study found that the two largest economies in the TPP the U.S. and Japan would actually shrink as a result of the trade deal, and that the deal would result in fewer jobs overall in all the participating countries. Advertisement Ten years after the TPP were to come into force, Canadas economy would be 0.28 per cent larger than it would have been without it, the study from Tufts University, near Boston, found. That amounts to an additional $5 billion in economic activity, on an economy worth some $1.8 trillion today. That boost is only slightly more than the $4.3-billion subsidy the Harper government proposed for the dairy industry, to absorb the shock of an open dairy market. The U.S. economy would be about 0.54 per cent smaller with the TPP, or about US$100 billion smaller. The country would see a net loss of 448,000 jobs due to the agreement. Advertisement The authors researchers at Tufts' Global Development and Environment Institute say thats because creating the massive free trade area that would encompass 40 per cent of the world economy would force companies to be more competitive and efficient, pushing them to cut jobs. They also say that participating countries economies would shift to focus more on producing goods for export rather than for domestic consumption, and export-oriented industries create fewer jobs, overall. In all, the study estimates that the 12 countries involved in the proposed free trade deal would lose a net total of 771,000 jobs in the 10 years after the deal comes into force. U.S. President Barack Obama, right, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stand up following their bilateral meeting at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Manila, Philippines, Thursday, Nov. 19, 2015. (Associated Press photo) Advertisement The study is bound to be controversial, given it contradicts some earlier research that suggested net benefits to employment and economic growth from the TPP. The World Bank estimated last year that the GDP of TPP countries would increase on average by 1.1 per cent thanks to the deal, though for NAFTA countries (the U.S., Canada and Mexico) it would only be 0.6 per cent. A study from the right-leaning Fraser Institute estimates that the TPP would boost Canadas GDP by $9.9 billion, or double the Tufts studys estimate, and increase exports by $15.7 billion. (The study makes no estimate of the impact on labour.) The Tufts researchers argue that the models used by many other researchers are flawed because they look at changes to foreign trade, but disregard changes in the domestic labour force. These earlier studies assume full employment in their models, and assume there will be no change in the distribution of income, they say. The Tufts researchers argue the trade deal would increase inequality in one important respect. The amount of income flowing to business owners and shareholders would increase, relatively, while the amount of income flowing to wage earners would shrink, the Tufts study predicts. Advertisement In Canada, labours share of GDP, as its known, would shrink by 0.86 per cent, and in the U.S., it would shrink by 1.31 per cent. (Canada is already more unequal than the U.S. when it comes to labour's share of income.) Because the TPP would negatively affect income distribution, it would weaken domestic demand, significantly undercutting possible gains from trade, the researchers concluded. The 12 negotiating countries reached an agreement on the text of the TPP last fall. The deal now has to be ratified by each of the participating countries. The current federal Liberal government gave cautious support to the deal while campaigning last fall against the previous Conservative government, which negotiated the deal. But the Liberals have sounded hesitant about the deal since then. International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland said last month it's "not my job to persuade anybody that the TPP is good." She has not yet committed to attending a symbolic TPP signing ceremony in February. Advertisement After delivering a speech to a room full of global thinkers Wednesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was pressed on the "logic" behind his plan to withdraw Canadian jets from the fight against the so-called Islamic State. In his keynote address to the World Economic Forum, Trudeau touted Canada as a beacon of inclusion. He also noted how he welcomed Syrian refugees to Toronto last month as "new Canadians" and the future of the economy under a new government. Advertisement "Frankly our recent election reminded us all that people can respond to a positive, inclusive vision of society," Trudeau said. "The result is creativity that enriches Canada and the world." Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gestures as he speaks during a panel "The Canadian Opportunity"at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. (Photo: Michel Euler/AP Photo) After his speech, the prime minister sat down with CNN's Fareed Zakaria for a wide-ranging interview. Zakaria bluntly accused the past Conservative government of climate change "denial" and noted that, in the last election, Trudeau opposed stripping citizenship from dual citizens convicted of terrorism. Advertisement "I guess my question is how on Earth did you get elected?" asked Zakaria. Trudeau said his party put forward a positive vision and resisted attacks, strategic division, and negativity. Borrowing a phrase from Abraham Lincoln, Trudeau said Liberals called on "the better angels of people's nature." When the conversation shifted to ISIS, Zakaria asked him to clarify if Canada will end "its fairly limited participation" in airstrikes against the terror group in Iraq and Syria. "We continue to be part, militarily, of the coalition against ISIL." The prime minister said Canada has a role to play in the global war on terror. "We continue to be part, militarily, of the coalition against ISIL," Trudeau said. "We have committed, however, to end the airstrikes portion of our involvement in exchange for another way of military involvement, probably around training and such things that can help local troops bring the battle directly towards terrorists." "Why? What's the logic behind this?" Zakaria wondered. Trudeau said all countries need to look at where they can be most effective. "Over the past 10 years this is not to take anything away from the fighter pilots that we have in Canada but over the past 10 years, Canada developed a tremendous level of expertise in training, in intelligence on the ground in Afghanistan, for example." The prime minister added that recent history has shown conflicts similar to the one with ISIS "need to have their resolution on the ground." Advertisement The platform that helped Liberals capture a majority government stated the party would end the combat mission if elected and "refocus" efforts on training local forces. Conservatives have argued Canada can support a larger training mission and still keep its CF-18 fighter jets in the battle. Watch Trudeau's speech and interview with Zakaria below: Top Tory critic: Trudeau's remarks 'disappointing' Conservative defence critic James Bezan told The Huffington Post Canada that the "only clear message" delivered by Trudeau was that Canada is withdrawing the CF-18s. He said the prime minister's remarks were particularly "disappointing" when one considers that major allies were, at the same time, meeting in Paris to map out next steps in the ISIS fight. Advertisement Earlier this week, Tories said the fact that Canada was not invited to that meeting proved allies now see this country as stepping back. Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, however, dismissed the notion that we were snubbed and reminded reporters he will meet with counterparts in Brussels in two weeks. "It's shameful," Bezan said. "Many members of the military, including veterans, are very insulted we (aren't) at the table." Trudeau and his ministers have failed to articulate how pulling the planes is "at all helpful," Bezan said, or why Canada can't keep up both the bombing and training mission. "We haven't heard from one ally who says taking our CF-18s out of the fight is a good thing," he said. Advertisement Also on HuffPost Niyazz via Getty Images Stethoscope with national flag conceptual series - Kenya It's been a year since the World Health Organization challenged the international community to curtail the harm caused in low- and middle-income countries by non-communicable diseases. (An umbrella term that refers to maladies that aren't transmitted by infection, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.) Since the WHO issued its challenge, Canadians are doing their part to respond. According to the WHO, non-communicable diseases kill 38 million people a year. Approximately 16 million of those deaths are premature and avoidable, up from 14.6 million premature deaths in 2000. Advertisement Low-income countries shoulder a disproportionate burden of these deaths, with nearly three-quarters of non-communicable disease deaths, or 28 million, happening in low- and middle-income countries. Consequently, the WHO is spearheading a worldwide effort to stop the growth and actually reduce the number of premature deaths caused by non-communicable diseases by 25% by the year 2025. My company, Medcan, has for several years now conducted outreach in remote areas of Kenya as part of an effort called Medcan Naweza. After the WHO's challenge, we looked at our efforts to see whether we could do anything to decrease the number of premature deaths in the areas we cover. We're already well on our way to decrease the number of preventable deaths caused by cardiovascular disease in the areas covered by our sister clinics. Cancer was a natural target. During previous trips to Kenya we'd learned about the problems caused by cervical cancer. So we consulted with Medcan's obstetrics and gynaecology specialist. Dr Sue Wong is a graduate of Harvard Medical School who also works out of Toronto's St. Joseph's Hospital. Advertisement She loved the idea of going after cervical cancer in Kenya. One of the most preventable types of the disease in Canada, cervical cancer is currently killing women at alarming rates in Kenya and the developing world. According to one estimate, 266,000 people die of cervical cancer annually across the world, and 85% of those deaths happen in the world's poorest countries. In Canada, the story is much different. According to the WHO global database of cervical cancer statistics, just 8.1 new cases of cervical cancer happen each year per 100,000 Canadians. The number in Kenya is five times that, at 40.1 new cases per 100,000. The disparity in cervical cancer mortality is even more stark, according to the database. The disease causes 2.9 deaths per year per 100,000 people here in Canada. The figure is an astonishing seven times that in Kenya, at 21.7 deaths per year per 100,000 people. In fact, in Kenya, cervical cancer is the most frequent cancer among women; in Canada, it's the 13th. What accounts for the discrepancy between Canada and Kenya? Money, basically. Nearly all cases of cervical cancer arise from something called the human papillomavirus virus (HPV). We screen most women for abnormal cells and HPV with pap smears and swabs. A vaccine exists for HPV, and in Canada, our health-care system provides it free of charge to young girls. The problem is, at about $300 per person, the vaccine is relatively expensive--too expensive for Kenya to provide to its population of women. We were aware that for years the University of Toronto had been leading the reproductive health component of an international academic-to-academic collaboration called AMPATH, intended to improve Kenyan health care. Their efforts are centred around the Western Kenya city of Eldoret and its Moi University. Teams led by such Toronto doctors as Barry Rosen and Rachel Spitzer work with Dr. Astrid Christoffersen-Deb in Kenya with local collaborators. They have to date screened 40,000 women for cervical cancer. Advertisement "Cervical cancer in most places in sub-Saharan Africa means your days are numbered," says Dr. Christoffersen-Deb, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Toronto and the field director for reproductive health at the AMPATH consortium. "You could look forward to a painful and bloody death." The technique they use, know as the see-and-treat protocol, involves applying vinegar to a woman's cervix and looking for anomalous cells, which the vinegar turns white. If any pre-cancerous early-stage anomalies are found, they're treated immediately with liquid nitrogen in a procedure not unlike the burning off of a wart. It was Dr. Wong who realized the technique made sense to address the cervical cancer problem in Medcan's remote sister clinics. (One clinic is located in central Kenya's Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, while the second is in Fluorspar, a five-hour drive northwest of Nairobi.) So as part of Medcan Naweza's six-person health team, which I also joined, Dr. Wong travelled in October to Kenya. She trained clinical staff to conduct the screening and treatment measures, and travelled to several rural clinics, where she screened about 200 women for abnormal lesions. Her work also included an important educational component, the influence of which will last long after her departure from Kenya. "We trained the medical officers in the clinics to perform the see-and-treat protocol," Dr. Wong says. Advertisement The cervical cancer screening was so popular it caused lineups at the clinics. "The women who had been screened went out into the fields, told their friends, and some of them came in, too," Dr. Wong explained. "That's another reason I was excited to come on this project," says Dr. Wong, who also arranged with the University of Toronto's fellow partner in the AMPATH consortium, Kenya's Moi University in Eldoret, to provide further training in cervical cancer screening to the healthcare workers in our clinics. "We weren't just doing the screening, we were setting up a sustainable program that trained the medical officers who will be performing cervical screening and treatment for years to come." Back in Toronto, Dr. Wong remains in contact with the Kenyan healthcare workers, conducting virtual rounds with them to assist in the management of the screening programs. We have a long way to go before we meet the WHO's goal of cutting non-communicable disease rates by 25% by 2025. Nevertheless, thanks to the efforts of Dr. Wong and people like her, we're making progress toward the goal. In cases like these, prevention can be the cure to cancer. CP People don't care about policy. As a candidate in the 2015 federal election with a masters in public policy, this is something you hear a lot on a campaign. And in early 2015, the Conservatives "Anti-terrorism Act, 2015" policy sounded good enough to most people. We're all against terrorism, right? In February 2015, a Angus Reid poll found that support for the bill was at 82 per cent. By early March according to Forum Research it was down to 45 per cent, and at the end of March it had plummeted to 33 per cent. More than three-quarters of Liberal, NDP and Green voters said they disapproved of the legislation, and 13 per cent of Conservative supporters agreed. What happened? Advertisement I go to a lot of protests, and have been attending actions since I was a teenager in Niagara protesting the treatment of animals at Marineland. Ask any organizer, it's hard to get folks out. People are busy. They're also not always convinced that showing up, holding a sign and chanting makes a difference. On March 14, 2015, I headed over to Nathan Philips Square in downtown Toronto on a damp and dreary Saturday morning, only to discover 1,500 people banging drums and holding colourful signs with playful taglines like "Kill Bill C-51." Walking through the diverse and passionate crowd, I asked one older man why he was there. He told me, "I lived this, I'm from Poland. I can't let this happen in Canada." At its core, Bill C-51 is simply unCanadian: it's vague legislation that violates the human rights and freedoms which define us as a country. Across the country, citizen driven days of actions against Bill C-51 like this one, combined with social media campaigns, drew the attention of the press and people became more aware of the bill. In University-Rosedale where I live, home to what I often call "angry intellectuals", people were Googling and reading the bill. This led to big questions and public concern around free speech, surveillance, privacy, and increases to the power of the police and CSIS. With both the Liberals and Conservatives supporting the bill, and the NDP, Green Party and Bloc Quebecois opposing it, for several months it was a top election issue, one that helped keep the NDP in the lead. With a longer election, by mid-September the attention and interest in Bill C-51 had faded, as image-driven issues like the Syrian refugee crisis and the niqab and citizenship ceremonies received more media attention, and as a result, more interest from the public. While there was a time in the campaign when card carrying Liberals were cutting up their membership cards in protest to Bill C-51, in the end, the Liberals won a historic majority government, attracting new voters to the polls through a change campaign, and in their victory speech declared "sunny ways" ahead. Advertisement There's no shortage of issues for the new government to address right now, from climate change to the rise of ISIS/ISIL (or as they don't like to be called, Daesh), to pressing indigenous issues and a commitment to 25,000 Syrians refugees. But as Canadians openly welcome Syrians, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau personally tells them "you are home," we owe it to them to revisit a piece of legislation that targets them as Muslims, as well as other groups like indigenous people, environmentalists, or anyone who creates art that explores terrorism or criticizes the government of the day. At its core, Bill C-51 is simply unCanadian: it's vague legislation that violates the human rights and freedoms which define us as a country. Four former prime ministers, Supreme Court judges, justice ministers, prominent Canadian business leaders, artists, civil liberties activists, lawyers, academics, the privacy commissioner, Amnesty International, and every human rights expert in the country opposed the bill. The United Nations also expressed grave concern, and two groups have taken it to court (The Canadian Civil Liberties Association and Canadian Journalists for Free Expression) to challenge the constitutionality of the legislation. The Liberal government has committed to rewrite what they describe as "problematic elements" of Bill C-51 and introduce new legislation that strengthens accountability in regards to national security, balancing this with rights and freedoms. Amnesty International Canada and the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group recently issued a report urging the new government to go further. Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale says the government is open to an expansive revamp of national security legislation, and they will give Canadians a chance to have their say before making a decision. This is our chance. Let's show the government that we don't have to choose between security and human rights and civil liberties. While it may be a campaign tactic, fear is not a policy. And it's also not a Canadian value. Advertisement Jennifer Hollett is an award winning broadcast journalist and digital strategist who uses social media for social justice. She has her Master of Public Administration from Harvard Kennedy School, and was the federal NDP candidate in the downtown Toronto riding University-Rosedale. Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook ALSO ON HUFFPOST: Randy Risling via Getty Images TORONTO, ON - JUNE 3: Gordon Cressy, former President, United Way speaks at a City Hall at a press conference opposing the practice of police carding. (Randy Risling/Toronto Star via Getty Images) Gordon Cressy and Isabel Bassett will officially become members of the Order of Ontario. They are both worthy candidates for Ontario's most distinguished honour. I nominated Cressy because of his commitment to social justice, defence of minority rights and his idealism in helping the needy here at home and abroad. I became a fan of Bassett when she was a noted progressive cabinet minister in Mike Harris's ultra-Conservative government. I admired her commitment to public institutions such as TV Ontario. Advertisement My nomination of Cressy had the endorsement of esteemed Canadians, including Stephen Lewis; former President of Ryerson University Sheldon Levy; Meric S. Gertler and Anne Sado, the presidents of the University of Toronto and George Brown College, respectively; and institutions such as the YMCA of Trinidad & Tobago and The Learning Partnership. In endorsing my nomination, Canada's respected and admired citizen Stephen Lewis reflected how, "that in the span of but 50 years, how one person could bring financial integrity to three celebrated postsecondary institutions, could orchestrate the ascension of the United Way to extraordinarily financial heights, could physically move with his wife to Trinidad and Tobago, there to establish an entirely new YMCA in a an entirely new culture, could immerse himself, with compelling success, in issues involving children and families (including the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund); could manage to orchestrate collaborative learning and community initiatives in concert with multinational corporations: and could even find time for a brief but decisive political dalliance at municipal level." For the president of George Brown, "Gordon Cressy is a man with a deep social conscience and one that exercises his convictions, and uses his many talents, to help so many in our community." For president Gertler, Cressy is a "visionary agent of change." Isabel Bassett has served as an MPP, an influencial cabinet minister and chair and CEO of TV Ontario. She was a noted journalist and national co-chair of the James Robinson Johnston Chair in Black Canadian Studies at Dalhousie University -- among many achievements. Advertisement To her contributions to TVO -- Steve Paikin wrote a personal testimonial, celebrating her efforts that "made a huge contributions to Ontario in several fields including the media, politics, philanthropy and championing women's issues." He further reflected how, "TVO was under constant threat of having its budget cut, or being privatized altogether. Yet under Ms. Bassett's leadership, she successfully made the case to the Mike Harris government that TVO should remain in the public's hands, as a distinctive, non-commercial voice." In an endorsement letter of my nomination of Ms. Bassett, former premier Mike Harris paid tribute to her, describing how "she has earned herself a place in Canadian history." Ontario's 22nd premier added how "she was a tireless promoter of social justice and equal opportunity for all Ontarians." I am glad I forwarded the nomination of these distinguished Ontarians as they are a credit to my adopted Canadian citizenship. Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook MORE ON HUFFPOST: Ruskpp via Getty Images Canada and Iran A little over three years ago, the Harper government closed the Canadian embassy in Tehran -- a move which former Canadian ambassador to Iran, James George, described as "stupid." Weighing the pros and cons of this decision in retrospect, Ambassador George's assertion seems largely accurate: Canada has simply not gained much as a result of this course of action. The new, less hard-line liberal government of Prime Minister Trudeau has signaled that it is willing to re-opening the embassy again, but has yet to announce any such plans. Although we were never really an influential actor inside Iran, by shutting our embassy's doors we have effectively lost the little leverage and means of communication we had with a pivotal player in the Middle East. A functioning embassy -- a nation's eyes and ears -- would allow Canada to directly and independently assess the complicated political scene in Iran better, becoming less reliant on our allies when it comes to our understanding and engagement with the Middle East. In fact, Canadian and Iranian interests in the region overlap on numerous fronts (e.g. the fight against ISIS). Advertisement Such ground presence would further permit Ottawa to possibly negotiate the release of Canadian prisoners inside Iran (e.g. Saeed Malekpour). The United States actually just achieved something of the like under the (unofficial) umbrella of the nuclear negotiations. Additionally, diplomatic relations with Iran will allow the Canadian government to play a more constructive role when it comes to pressuring for human rights reforms. Iran has a terrible human rights track record, similar to many other countries in the Middle East. The establishment of an embassy would permit Canada to potentially hit two birds with one stone: satisfying national interests in the region while bolstering its international image as a champion of civil liberties. Politics aside, Canada may stand to benefit economically from restarting relations as well. From energy to mining to agriculture, a boost in Canadian-Iranian trade would be profitable for both countries. Iran recently announced ambitious plans to attract foreign capital over the coming years in both energy and mining, two areas which Canadian companies are global leaders in. The reserves of the latter are said to be almost as extensive as its hydrocarbon ones, an estimated $700 billion in value. Unsurprisingly, however, their developments (similar to the Iranian oil fields) have been largely inefficient and inadequate due to dated technology and lack of expertise -- enter Canada. Over the past few months numerous European, Chinese, and Russian delegations have already visited Iran to boost trade ties and capitalise on its market of 75 million (see here and here). Companies like the likes of Airbus, Total, and British Petroleum are either on the verge of or have already made deals with Tehran. Even American companies like Apple, General Electric, Hewlett Packard, and Boeing may enter in the near future. For instance, Apple and Hewlett Packard have already been in touch with Iranian distributors, hoping to get a head start if unilateral American sanctions are lifted. Perhaps it would be wise for Canada to re-consider standing on the sidelines in the upcoming year and re-engage with Iran like much else of the world. Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook ALSO ON HUFFPOST: Historic Iran Deal See Gallery Unseen footage of the British man thought to be the new Jihadi John - Siddhartha Dhar - has been shown on a Channel 4 documentary in which he speaks of the "real possibility" that the Islamic State flag will one day fly over Downing Street, and other extremists are seen laughing after watching execution videos. In the documentary, titled Jihadis Next Door, Siddhartha Dhar, who changed his name to Abu Rumaysah after converting to Islam, shows filmmaker Jamie Roberts around a garage in east London that contains the IS flag. Later he warns: One man died in Woolwich, Lee Rigby, and the whole country went up in uproar, there are many Lee Rigbys in Muslim countries and if these issues arent addressed we can expect more carnage in this country and more cycle of violence." Advertisement The footage was shot by the broadcaster in January 2014, nine months before Dhar was arrested by counter-terrorism police. He later skipped bail and was thought to have travelled abroad to Syria with his wife and four children. Siddhartha Dhar is seen holding an Islamic State flag during the Channel 4 documentary, Jihadis Next Door Dhar is suspected of being the latest British face of IS propaganda. In January a video was released which is believed to have shown him overseeing the murder of five men. Advertisement The documentary also focuses on an extremist preacher called Abu Haleema and his friend Mohammed Shamsuddin. Haleema has links to a teen jihadi who wanted to carry out a beheading on Anzac Day in Australia, while Shamsuddin was an associate of Islamic cleric Anjem Choudary and joined a radical group after meeting hate preacher Omar Bakri. The extremists are seen staging aggressive street protests - where they were often challenged by other Muslims - appearing in court, praying in front of an IS flag and arguing with police. Dhar pictured in the Islamic State execution video in January During the film Roberts shows the extremists an execution video to gauge their reaction. They are seen laughing and making jokes at first, but later add it is horrific ... its a horrible way to die. Haleema is filmed explaining that homosexuality and adultery under strict Islamic law will be punished. Those found guilty ill be thrown off high buildings and stoned to death. When asked if people would watch it, he says, of course. He disagrees it would be gruesome, saying: No, people like that kind of stuff, innit. Advertisement Haleema goes on to say that the racism his family encountered when he was younger "builds up hatred inside of you". Shamsuddin told the broadcaster that the British government did not want to examine its own foreign policy, "all it wants to do is look at Muslims. Condemn Muslims, target Muslims." He went on to warn that the UK would "face a backlash" as a result. He said: "If youre gonna suppress a people for so long, if youre gonna suppress and suppress I mean its like a tinder box, its gonna explode. The film, made by production company Mentorn over two years, explores the status that joining the radical extremist group gives some young men. Advertisement Haleema is often recognised due to his video messages on social media and one young man, Abu Mattasim from Birmingham who has had his passport taken from him by police, says that makes me feel very good. When asked why, he answers: Because it makes me feel important. When asked about the November 13 Paris attack in which 130 people were killed Haleema says if "you're going to kill other people's innocents", the same thing is going to happen to your country in return. He dodges questions about his allegiance to IS. When asked whether the jihadi in the latest execution video is Dhar, he says "there is definitely a resemblance", but says he can't be sure without seeing his face. He says Dhar is "more than a friend of mine, he's my Muslim brother", and "He's from the best of the best of the best." Roberts said when the latest IS execution video emerged in January Shamsuddin sent him a text telling him he might know the voice, which he took to hint that Dhar was the man overseeing the murders in the video. The front doors of asylum seekers' houses will be re-painted different colours, after it was revealed almost all their doors were red, leaving them open for targeted attacks. A subcontractor of global security firm G4S, 'Jomast', announced the move after an investigation by The Times branded its door-painting policy 'Apartheid on the streets of Britain'. Asylum seekers in Middlesbrough had told how they faced graffiti being daubed on their doors and rubbish thrown at their houses because the properties were easily located. Advertisement They also recollected incidents of having had dog excrement smeared across the entrance to their homes and eggs and stones being thrown at windows. A 'National Front' logo was carved into the door of one house. One former local MP reportedly compared the use of red paint, used on terraced streets in a deprived area of the northern town, to the yellow stars Jews were forced to wear in Nazi Germany. Asylum seekers living in terraced houses with red doors were targeted Times journalists visited 168 Middlesbrough homes occupied by asylum seekers, discovering that 155 had red doors. Advertisement The properties are owned by Stuart Monk, 66, who earns millions of pounds each year for providing accommodation to thousands of asylum seekers from Syria and parts of eastern Europe. He is worth an estimated 175 million. Millionaire Monk, pictured, owns the sub-contractor responsible for the painting policy "They put us behind red doors. When people see them, everyone knows it means asylum seekers. Its like saying were not the same as you, one man whose house was allegedly targeted told them. G4S said there was no policy to house asylum seekers solely behind red doors, and promised to repaint them different colours in light of the news today. But one resident said that after they re-painted their front door white, a Jomast employee visited and said it was "against company policy". They were forced to have the door repainted red. Advertisement Immigration minister James Brokenshire responded by vowing to commission an urgent audit of asylum seeker housing in North East England. PA. 25290317 Red doors for asylum seekers' homes See gallery "I expect the highest standards from our contractors. If we find any evidence of discrimination against asylum seekers it will be dealt with immediately as any such behaviour will not be tolerated," he said. Suzanne Fletcher, chair of Liberal Democrats for Seekers of Sanctuary and a councillor in the area for over 30 years, said she had originally raised concerns over the issue four years ago. "We were working with groups of asylum seekers and they were so worried it marked them out... They were very worried about attacks," she lamented. "We sat in meetings with G4S constructive, helpful meetings, was the idea and we met with them on a number of issues, and in September 2012 we asked G4S if they would do something about the red doors. Advertisement "They replied that they had no intention of doing anything about it. They wouldn't be asking Jomast to be changing the red doors on their houses." G4S were 'told about the issue in 2012', Fletcher claimed Prominent Labour MP Chuka Umunna blasted the news as "appalling", saying it was "a scar on our country". If, following the Home Office audit, these claims are proven, this story is a scar on our country. Appalling https://t.co/XFs4nWE46b Chuka Umunna (@ChukaUmunna) January 20, 2016 G4S said in a statement: "Although we have received no complaints or requests on this issue from asylum seekers we house, in light of the concerns raised Jomast has agreed to address the issue by repainting front doors in the area so that there is no predominant colour. Advertisement "Our asylum accommodation is inspected frequently by the Home Office and has been found to meet the required standards." Jomast's Stuart Monk added: "Our accommodation is inspected frequently by the Home Office and has been found to meet or exceed the required standards. "As many landlords will attest, paint is bought in bulk for use across all properties. It is ludicrous to suggest that this constitutes any form of discrimination, and offensive to make comparisons to a policy of apartheid in Nazi Germany. Cherie Blair despaired of the term Blair Babes, used by the media as a catchall for the intake of female MPs following her husbands election win in 1997, as it suggested they were "sex objects." Some 120 women, twice the number from the 1992 general election, were elected to the Commons in 97, including 101 female Labour Party politicians. A picture of the new prime minister flanked by women gave rise to the term Blair Babes in the press. Advertisement Tony Blair and the newly elected Labour women MP's in '97 When they all came in to parliament, there was this rather disparaging remark that they were all 'Blair Babes', the human rights QC told HuffPost on Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos. It implied "they were there to be looked at, not to do, she added. During a 20-minute interview, the lawyer, who runs the 'Cherie Blair Foundation for Women,' said her husbands administration was "ahead of its time," especially ensuring females were fully represented in government. There are so many things that Im proud of that he did in No. 10, she reflected. When he was leader of the Labour Party, he instituted an all-women shortlist, which meant for the first time in history there was over 100 women MPs in parliament. Advertisement She said the former prime minister also practiced what he preached, by making a third of his cabinet female, while highlighting the empowering role of minimum wage legislation, which was a huge thing for women. We brought in parental leave, there were a lot of family-friendly policies, and we changed the whole thing around domestic violence, she added. The Labour governments we had right up to 2010 did a lot, Blair continued. For example, we are seeing this year in the UK companies are going to have to put in their annual report what the gender pay balance is in relation to their workforce. That was a policy introduced under the last Labour government in 2010. It wasnt implemented during the coalition government, but has finally come into effect now. You can see how ahead of its time in relation to women Tonys government was. And thats partly due to the fact there were so many women MPs. Advertisement Donald Trump insisted he has "tremendous support" in the United Kingdom, after being tackled by Sky News' Kay Burley in the wake of the Commons debate over whether to ban him from Britain. The frontrunner in the race to become the Republican US presidential candidate, who yesterday won the endorsement of Sarah Palin, said he was "surprised" the British parliament had bothered discussing him. Advertisement I have a great deal of supporters in the UK. We receive thousands and thousands of letters and emails and tweets saying 'youre so right' and that so many people agree with me and, as you know, the whole thing went nowhere," he told Burley in Iowa. Burley, who had worked her way to the front of the media scrum following a campaign rally, asked Trump what he thought about being called "misogynistic", "racist" and "bigoted". Trump said: "So many people who have got upset by it because they feel the same way I do. Something is happening and it's not good. They feel the same way I do. I am honoured by the tremendous support I had in the UK. That whole thing went away. Very few people showed up to talk about it." Advertisement Burley asked if he was "hurt" by the 500,000 people who signed a petition to have him banned from Britain after he said all Muslims should be banned from the United States. "I was sort of surprised that would happen," Trump said. "500,000 votes today is a whole different thing than it would have been ten years ago, before Twitter and all. "I have, between Twitter and Facebook and other things, I have like 11 or 12 million people. I could get that many [500,000] with one tweet today. They made a big deal out of it. I was really honoured by the way the people stuck up for me. The people from the UK really stuck up for me and you know it." Back in 2010, David Cameron gave a speech a Southampton University where he said society "must always" help poorer students to go to university - and said bursaries should not only be kept, but expanded. Fast forward to 2016, and the prime minister is brushing off questions from opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn, who demanded to know why student nurse bursaries had been axed, and student maintenance grants abolished. Advertisement Here's David Cameron promising to keep and expand student bursaries. #PMQspic.twitter.com/rMY77azMlL Labour Press Team (@labourpress) January 20, 2016 David Cameron,2010 "We must always help ppl from lower income backgrounds to go to uni,that's why we keep bursaries" pic.twitter.com/zg5lh7jIeW Abby Tomlinson (@twcuddleston) January 19, 2016 Last year, chancellor George Osborne announced maintenance grants would be replaced by loans, a move which was met with anger. The proposal proved to be even more unpopular when it was quietly passed by just 18 MPs in a "third delegated legislation committee", instead of being debated in the Commons. On Tuesday, the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts (NCAFC) group organised a demonstration outside Westminster to demand a reversal of the "disgraceful attack on working class students". Advertisement The demo coincided with an opposition day debate tabled by a Labour MP, which saw the grants axing finally debated on the Commons floor. Cameron was finally challenged on the cuts to bursaries and grants on Wednesday, during the PMQs, when Corbyn asked where the pledge to abolish maintenance grants appeared in the Tory manifesto. The prime minister replied the manifesto promised to cut the deficit and would uncap student numbers, and we've done both. He added: "We want to uncap university places so as many young people in our country who want to go to university can go to university." Cameron's response was not taken well. Its official, Westminster hates poor kids, next bill they're going to ask their parents to eat them #axedgrants#PMQs Harriet Fuest (@HarryFuest) January 20, 2016 Advertisement This is the man whose own government found scrapping grants would make it harder for people to study, & promised to protect bursaries. Laura Blair (@lauragrayblair) January 20, 2016 Cameron claims that cutting bursaries for nurses and students is good for aspiration. He hasn't the slightest clue about peoples real lives. Ivan Lewis (@IvanLewis_MP) January 20, 2016 Cameron's cut of student grants will give the poorest students the largest debt, it's clear and plain classism Dean (@deanvictorr) January 14, 2016 When Osborne revealed student nurses would have their bursaries taken away, and would instead have to finance their tuition fees with a loan, one student described the move as "devastating". Stephanie Jansky, a 26-year-old who has been studying for the past two years to gain the necessary qualifications needed to enter nursing, whilst working full time. Advertisement "I already have a student loan from a previous degree and the news today that Osborne is cutting bursaries is devastating," she told The Huffington Post UK. "It will make it highly unlikely that I can follow my dream to become a nurse. A 10-year-old Muslim boy who misspelled a word during an English lesson, writing that he lived in a "terrorist house", has been interviewed by police. The Lancashire primary school pupil meant to write that he lived in a "terraced house". The boy was reported to the police, in accordance with the 2015 Counter Terrorism and Security Act, which places a higher emphasis on teachers to tell the authorities of any suspected extremist behaviour. Advertisement A Muslim boy's spelling error led to him being interviewed by police The boy was interviewed by Lancashire Police the following day and the family's laptop was examined. The child's family said they want the school and police to apologise following December's incident. The boy's cousin, who is not being named in order to protect the child's identity, told the BBC that she originally believed it was a "joke". She said: "You can imagine it happening to a 30-year-old man, but not to a young child. "If the teacher had any concerns it should have been about his spelling. They shouldn't be putting a child through this. "He's now scared of writing, using his imagination." Lancashire Police said in a statement: "This was reported to the police but was dealt with by a joint visit by a PC from the division and social services, not by anyone from Prevent. Advertisement "There were not thought to be any areas for concern and no further action required by any agency." Since July, teachers have been obliged to report suspected terrorist behaviour to police. The 2015 Counter Terrorism and Security Act places a statutory duty on schools and colleges to prevent people being drawn into terrorism. A Muslim school in east London has failed an Ofsted inspection after investigators found books in its library that promote "inequality of women and punishments, including stoning to death". Inspectors found "inappropriate texts" in the Jamiatul Ummah School's library during a "very brief" tour, uncovering three books that "undermine the active promotion of the rule of British law and respect for other people". The books, an Ofsted report released this month, said: "Promote inequality of women and punishments, including stoning to death, which are illegal in Britain and which do not reflect the school's ethos and integration." Advertisement Ofsted found three books 'promoting stoning people to death' at Jamiatul Ummah School in east London The unannounced investigation at the Tower Hamlets school, which teaches 158 boys aged 11 to 16, was carried out on 25 November, and is the third inspection it has failed since October 2014. The watchdog was at the all-boys private secondary school - which has annual fees of 3,400 - to assess what progress it had made in implementing an action plan to correct problems it had earlier identified. This was the second assessment. In March 2015 inspectors found that seven of the independent school standards were not being met. The school had subsequently provided a plan to remedy the concerns, which Ofsted accepted in October 2015. Advertisement According to the Ofsted report, the school library was primarily used by sixth-form students until July 2015, but had remained closed since. The report stated: "Although current students do not have access to the inappropriate material, past students did for some time and others will if the library is reopened and a full audit is not undertaken. In addition, the library is used for meetings, exposing participants to the material." Ofsted noted an audit of "outdated, irrelevant or unsuitable material" had since been started by the Interim Principal. However, the report added that staff "have not been sufficiently vigilant about the availability of inappropriate texts in the library or sufficiently aware of the potential for unwittingly promoting extreme views". Ofsted found that the standard concerning students' "spiritual, moral social and cultural development" was not met, because of the presence of the books: "This is because students' well-developed understanding of fundamental British values and tolerance of different cultures and beliefs could be undermined by some of the books that are in the library." Despite the presence of the books, inspectors noted that they had found "no evidence to support the promotion of extremist views or radicalisation of students or staff" at the school. In fact, it found students and staff presented "well-informed and positive views" about the role of British Muslims and their responsibilities with the local community. The school has said it condemns "all forms of extremism unequivocally and this is recognised by Ofsted". The Huffington Post UK was unable to reach the school for comment, but a spokesperson told MailOnline: "We recognise the concerns raised by Ofsted in respect of three books in the library, however, as Ofsted rightly noted, the library is locked and current students have no access to it. "Ofsted also recognised that the content of these books, 'do not reflect the schools ethos of tolerance and integration'. "Nevertheless, we are taking steps, and are at present auditing all materials in the library and those available within the school." Advertisement A previous Ofsted inspection at the school in October 2014 found the "curriculum was too narrow", the "assessment framework was not systematic or effective across all subjects" and "students did not develop a broad knowledge of cultures and faiths other than their own". A man who sparked alarm after wearing camouflage clothing on the London Underground has insisted that he was dressed as a "soldier" and not a "suicide bomber". Pedro Fonseca was travelling from Putney Bridge to Covent Garden when he was spotted on the District Line at Fulham Broadway on Monday night. Fonseca, accompanied by friends dressed as policemen, was on his way to a work fancy dress party. His outfit caused alarm and an image was uploaded to Twitter by Alec Wilson, who lambasted his choice of attire, which included a large rucksack and a "fake bomb". Advertisement A prankster entered the London Underground dressed as a suicide bomber in a stunt which has been branded as "sick" British Transport Police (BTP) branded the fancy dress outfit "insensitive" and "crass" in light of recent worldwide terrorist attacks. But Fonseca has defended his decision, explaining that it was not a fake bomb around his chest, but a "small bag" for his wallet and phone. Advertisement Speaking to the Mail Online, he said: "We were having fun on the Tube and people were having fun with us together. "Some were even asking my friends who were dressed as police to handcuff them to the the hand rails for a joke. Honestly, we didn't have any problems at all. He said that at the work party venue, lots of people were dressed as soldiers and in camouflage "without a problem". Wilson, 29, uploaded a picture of the scenes, labelling the group "dicks" and saying he hoped they would "get shot by the actual police". Advertisement Alec Wilson's tweet about the incident Wilson told the Evening Standard: "I realised his weapon was plastic and that he was walking towards the 'police man' with a feather boa in his hat. "Once I realised it was a joke I thought it was sick. "I thought if hes the first one walking through a turnstile and a police officer calls it in, theyll be pointing automatic weapons at him." The incident comes six months after the 10th anniversary of London's 7/7 bombings, which included three attacks on the underground. BTP said officers were aware of the incident even though commuters did not report it. A spokeswoman said: "It is insensitive and crass behaviour in the light of recent terrorist attacks across the world and the threat to the UK currently at severe." "It is important for everyone to remember the need to be responsible and considerate to fellow passengers while making your journey. Advertisement David Cameron has confirmed he has changed his mind on the need for student grants for the poorest students - telling MPs a system of loans and fees is a better way to ensure university was not the preserve of the elite. The Prime Minister came under fire from Jeremy Corbyn for getting rid of student maintenance grants, despite the plan not appearing in the Conservative manifesto. Advertisement His response at Prime Ministers Questions - that fees and loans was uncapping aspiration - is in marked contrast to Mr Camerons pledge in 2010 to always help people from lower income backgrounds has been shared in social media. David Cameron,2010 "We must always help ppl from lower income backgrounds to go to uni,that's why we keep bursaries" pic.twitter.com/zg5lh7jIeW Abby Tomlinson (@twcuddleston) January 19, 2016 His position was confirmed to The Huffington Post UK by the Prime Ministers official spokesman. I just asked No10 why PM had changed his mind on bursaries since 2010. Spksman: loans better for taxpayer + students https://t.co/uFAOmOI62Y Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) January 20, 2016 The Labour leader argued the coalition Government pledged to increase the bursary for the poorest when it trebled tuition university fees to 3,000 a year in 2011. Advertisement But Mr Cameron responded it was Labour that introduced fees and loans to replace grants in 1998, and claimed the party under Mr Corbyns leadership wanted to go back to a situation where people went out, worked hard, to pay their taxes for an elite to go university. The move to axe the grant, which will affect around half a million of England's poorest students, was met with anger when it was announced in George Osborne's Summer budget. The policy was not debated in the Commons, and was instead passed by just 18 MPs in a back-room Westminster committee. Yesterday, students blocked Westminster Bridge in protest. Here's David Cameron promising to keep and expand student bursaries. #PMQspic.twitter.com/rMY77azMlL Labour Press Team (@labourpress) January 20, 2016 Mr Corbyn opened his round of six questions at PMQs on where in the Tory manifesto was the pledge to abolish maintenance grants for all students. Advertisement Mr Camerons reply was the manifesto promised to cut the deficit and would uncap student numbers, and we've done both. The Labour leader persisted, raising a question crowdsourced from a student called Liam who asked: Im training to be a mathematics teacher and now will come out at the end of my course to debts in excess of 50,000. Which is roughly twice what his annual income would be. He added: Why is Liam being put into such debt? Mr Cameron argued - as has repeatedly been the Government line - that more people from the poorest backgrounds are going to university now. He said: What I would say to Liam is he's now in a country with a university system with more people going to university than ever before and more people from low income backgrounds going than ever before. He will not pay back a penny of his loan until he's earning 21,000. He will not start paying back in full until he's earning 35,000 and our policy is going to put more money in the hands of students like Liam. Advertisement By contrast, the Labour policy. - which is to scrap the loans and scrap the fees, which would cost 10 billion - would mean going back to a situation where people went out, worked hard, pay their taxes for an elite to go university. We're uncapping aspiration. He wants to put a cap it. Jeremy Corbyn: "Theyre now scrapping the very same grants they used to boast about they would increase." The Labour leader returned by raising the pledge to increase maintenance grants as fees were increased. Mr Corbyn said: Theyre now scrapping the very same grants they used to boast about they would increase. Where is the sense in doing this? Why are they abolishing those maintenance grants? The PM predictably started fluffing himself with the unemployment figures: Back at #PMQs. PM makes point that unemployment is at lowest level in a decade and record levels of employment. Darren McCaffrey (@DMcCaffreySKY) January 20, 2016 But Jeremy Corbyn was ready to jump in with steel mill closures and student maintenance grant cuts: Great question from @jeremycorbyn on omission from Tory manifesto about cutting student grants, no answer from Cameron #PMQs Justin Madders MP (@justinmadders) January 20, 2016 Advertisement John Bercow said "chuntering" again: Corbyn was feeling sassy: That was quite amusing. Jeremy Corbyn raises an eyebrow at the baying Tory front bench, "Are you done?" #PMQs (@streetswept) January 20, 2016 But more or less everyone was being particularly rowdy: #PMQs. What a circus. What a joke. State Control (@State_Control) January 20, 2016 #PMQs I'm going to have to stop watching this, bunch of shouting savages. Shut up and let me hear whats being said - bloody children. Marcus Kerr (@marcuskerr) January 20, 2016 Advertisement Cameron said he "misses" Ed Balls. Can't imagine why. BREAKING: Cameron misses Ed Balls #PMQs Matt Singh (@MattSingh_) January 20, 2016 Cameron defended tripling tuition fees by citing Labour's introduction of fees: Yes, it was Labour who introduced the fees and loans system. But in fairness, I think we can agree this is not Blair's Labour Party. #pmqs Skylar Baker-Jordan (@SkylarJordan) January 20, 2016 When Cameron acts like tuition fee hikes aren't his fault because Labour introduced tuition fees #PMQspic.twitter.com/qzNDx5jDNC Ryan Barrell (@RyanBarrell) January 20, 2016 There was a big argument about NHS nurses: Corbyn: Student nurses now face equivalent of huge pay cut with new charges. #PMQs Simple Politics (@easypoliticsUK) January 20, 2016 The government says universities had to turn down 37,000 nursing applicants in 2014. #PMQs Red Box (@timesredbox) January 20, 2016 Advertisement New line from Corbyn: He quotes Vicky from York, who wouldn't have been able to train as a mental health nurse without a full bursary #PMQs UKPoliticalNews (@UKPoliticalNews) January 20, 2016 How does scrapping the support system that allows ppl 2 train 2 become nurses help train more nurses, Mr Cameron? #BBCDP#PMQs Matthew James (@Onlyanatheist1) January 20, 2016 Angus Robertson came out all guns blazing... SNP @AngusRobertson says British planes and bombs being used by Saudis to kill thousands in Yemen #pmqs norman smith (@BBCNormanS) January 20, 2016 Once again, David Cameron had a planted question to set him up for a weak joke: "When it comes to Beatles songs, I suspect the Leader of the Opposition prefers Back In The USSR." - David Cameron #PMQs Oliver Cooper (@OliverCooper) January 20, 2016 The planted questions at #PMQs make it absolutely unbearable. Fergus Boden (@fergusboden) January 20, 2016 News outlets and social commentators took no time to point out the comedy value of Sarah Palin's endorsement speech for Republican candidate on Tuesday night. "No more pussyfooting around ... Hes going rogue left and right, man, thats why hes doing so well," and "Right wingin, bitter clingin, proud clingers of our guns, our god, and our religions, and our Constitution," are just two quotes from her appearance at a Trump rally in Ames, Iowa. Advertisement But an unofficial campaign team for Hillary Clinton were particularly keen to remark on the linguistics of the former-governor. "Congrats to the YouTube commenter who wrote your remarks," they wrote in a tweet. .@SarahPalinUSA Congrats to the Youtube commenter who wrote your remarks. The Briefing (@TheBriefing2016) January 20, 2016 Meanwhile Clinton's main account didn't offer the same put-downs, but did use it as an opportunity to gain more supporters: Sarah Palin's got Trump's back. If you want to keep Republicans like them out of the White House, add your name now: https://t.co/sL83uGwu1q Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) January 20, 2016 Advertisement The media also swarmed around the event, the front page of US newspaper The Daily News documenting the bizarre occasion with one line, "I'm With Stupid". The Daily News - "I'm With Stupid" Journalists and celebrities also jumped in on the occasion, causing a Twitter storm in reaction to the speech. And now a visual metaphor for Sarah Palin's endorsement of Donald Trump today. pic.twitter.com/V9EjlNYY0Z Will McAvoy (@WillMcAvoyACN) January 20, 2016 Hearing Sarah Palin endorsed Donald Trump is like learning the two worst people you went to school with married each other. Duh, but yikes. Josh Gondelman (@joshgondelman) January 20, 2016 Advertisement Sarah Palin endorsing Donald Trump is like cancer endorsing cigarettes. Emerson Collins (@ActuallyEmerson) January 20, 2016 Sarah Palin makes Donald Trump sound like Cicero Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) January 20, 2016 Sarah Palin mocks the idea that Donald Trump is "not conservative enough": What would [the GOP] know about being conservative? Caleb Howe (@CalebHowe) January 20, 2016 Sarah Palin endorses Donald Trump. It's like history is giving us an IQ test. John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) January 19, 2016 Whilst one Vine recorded a snippet of the speech and wrote "Sarah Palin summed up Donald Trump supporters better than any of us have been able to do so far, I'll give her that". Advertisement The event saw Palin, 51, boom "You are ready to make America great again!" whilst rallying supporters, telling them that he would "kick ISIS' ass" and not "apologise" for America. Palin gained notoriety as the unexpected vice-presidential selection of John McCain in 2008, giving the campaign early momentum with populist and Tea Party supporters. However, a series of gaffes, including the inability to name a newspaper, ultimately derailed the Arizona senator's bid for the Oval Office. We've heard of children attempting to change the grades on their school report, but one school has decided to save them the bother by sending a letter to their parents offering to bump up their marks. In a bid not to disappoint those who have not performed well, a school in New York gave parents the option of getting a second report with higher grades. Staff at Yeshiva Ketana of Long Island sent the letter below home to parents alongside their kids' reports, and the last paragraph is causing a stir. Advertisement Can you believe this letter to parents from a NY #yeshiva? (Originally posted by Jerry Richter) pic.twitter.com/gXTw9Hcg1S Rabbi Jason Miller (@RabbiJason) January 15, 2016 The letter explained that the report is an opportunity for parents to praise their children for doing well and find out areas they need to improve on. The last paragraph states: "Since our goal is to share accurate information with the parents, and not to discourage or hurt a student, great discretion must be used before allowing your child to view his report card. "Certainly, report cards should not be seen by students without parental permission and guidance. "If after reviewing the enclosed report card, you would like us to develop a second version of this report card for your son with higher grades, please call." Advertisement The idea of changing children's grades to ensure they aren't disheartened has outraged some parents. "This is a disgrace," one mother wrote on Twitter. "The coddling of kids has got to stop. There is no accountability anymore. Sad." Another person tweeted: "What? Surely, they can't be serious..." HuffPost UK Parents has contacted the school for comment. The five things you need to know on Wednesday January 20, 2016 1) DUBLIN DOWN ON MIGRATION Its PMQs day again and David Cameron will be hoping that jobless stats out at 9.30am give him some more hard evidence that his long-term economic plan (Tory whips have ensured the phrase is back) is working. Advertisement Jeremy Corbyn could well raise steel job losses and wider claims that George Osborne has been complacent about global headwinds. The JeremyCorbyn4PM Twitter account this morning claims John McDonnell is the Peoples Chancellor, while Osborne is the Bankers Chancellor. But one major headwind for the Government is of course the EU migration crisis. And the FTs splash today wont be welcome in No.10: Brussels Rule Change To Put Greater Burden On UK. This is the story that the European Commission plans to scrap the so-called Dublin Rules that currently force migrants to seek asylum in the first EU country they enter. This is a major victory for Italy and Greece as Brussels doubles down on its plan to share the burden of the Syria crisis more evenly. Britain of course opts out from the quota system, but as the FT points out we benefit from the opt-in Dublin Rules as they let us send asylum seekers back to southern Europe. No.10 reminded us yesterday that 2,000 refugees were still entering Greece every day, even in winter. And the PM will use his Davos trip to call for more help for Jordan and other states. But the Advertisement real problem is the impact of all this on Camerons EU referendum plans. The sequencing isnt helpful, with the Dublin rules due to be dumped at the March council, when the PM could be at the start of his Remain campaign. Donald Tusk is demanding urgency. Will Jean-Claude Juncker (the man the PM tried to stop getting his job) help the UK in any way? Syria continues to cause trouble for Labour. Hilary Benn last night told a Fabian foreign policy launch how he disagreed with Corbyn on talking to ISIL. I dont think theres much to negotiate with Daesh about. 2) BREXIT DOUR Chris Graylings Press Gallery lunch didnt deliver any fireworks and left many hacks writing about the tumbleweed rolling by. Even though he was watched like a hawk by Craig Oliver, I understand Grayling wouldnt have said anything different even if the PMs comms chief had been absent. The sketch writers have had a field day, with the Indys Tom Peck pointing out that Andy McNab explains in Bravo Two Zero that captured SAS officers were trained in becoming the gray man, to draw no attention to themselves. To render oneself entirely invisible and simultaneously give a twenty minute speech was admirable in its way, and not something even the SAS can teach. Lord Lawsons mystery Cabinet leader of the Leave campaign may not be Grayling. Will it be Sajid Javid? Or Theresa May? The Telegraph had a poll yesterday showing Boris was the overwhelming choice of the public to lead the Out camp. Advertisement Meanwhile, the Sun has a big piece today revealing that Labours biggest private donor, John Mills, has called on Jeremy Corbyn to give all his shadow ministers a free vote on whether Britain should leave the EU. Writing in the paper, Mills challenges J-Corbz to match David Camerons recent offer to senior Tories and lift the Labour whip that compels all of its politicians to back Remain. 3) AS EASY AS A-B-M Anyone But Miliband. That seems to be the conclusion in Margaret Becketts report of who was to blame for Labours 2015 election disaster (and some seem to forget just what a disaster it was). Beckett focused on busting myths such as the idea that Milibands policies were too left-wing, and went on to say it was all the fault of a wicked media that the former leader wasnt seen as strong or credible. She even says he did well in the campaign. One of the biggest mistakes we could make is to say its all the fault of Ed Miliband[it was a] much deeper problem, she told Today. Several moderate MPs are already muttering about how Beckett was always a creature of the soft left with a naivety about the hard left (she nominated Corbyn after all), and others point out that the man who wrote much of her report, KPMGs Alan Buckle, hardly had his finger on the pulse. On the Today prog, Margaret Beckett conceded these are not just my judgments, this is a compilation but claimed it was an accurate picture of what went wrong. She rightly points out Labour piled up votes in safe seats but failed to get a smidgeon of Tories in the south (Scotland is even worse, with the warning that the party will need a 12.5% swing to get into power if the SNP remains strong). Beckett also says the party failed to communicate on issues like welfare and immigration. But on Today, she insisted the main policy was right on migrants but it couldnt cope with the simple thuggishness of the Conservative and UKIP approach (but wasn't asked about Labour's immigration mug, sadly). She also said that no-nukes on Trident was at the more extreme end of policy options. Advertisement Yesterday David Miliband personified the latest moderates priority: building more innovative policy. The responsibility of the centre-left and the responsibility of the centre-right isnt to keep on stamping our foot and saying were right it is to update the policy answers that weve got. BECAUSE YOUVE READ THIS FAR Watch this strangely hypnotic vid of a washing machine, containing a brick, bouncing on a trampoline. No, really. 4) HOLDING ONTO NURSE The Times today has some excellent exclusives (not least the red doors asylum seekers scoop). It also reports on the Health Service Journal scoop that NHS Accident and Emergency units were told by NICE to hire more nurses last year - but the government ordered the advice should not be published. Nices final guidance told hospitals not to draw up rotas based on the average but on a significantly higher level of attendances, it has now emerged. This would mean being short-staffed only 15 per cent of the time rather than up to half the time if using a simple average. The doctors strike is still unresolved, but if Corbyn wanted to raise the NHS at PMQs, this is a gift. Meanwhile, the Indy has a neat angle on the Migration Advisory Committee plans to raise wages thresholds for migrant workers. Nurses have currently been exempted from the migrant cap by Theresa May to avoid a recruitment crisis, but the committee will report next month on whether the end the temporary exemption. One to watch. Advertisement 5) PSYCHO KILLERS, QUEST-CE QUE CEST? Theres lots coming up today, not least the Lords battle over party funding and the Trade Union Bill. But in the Commons, watch for the Home Secretary leading on the Report and 3rd Reading stages of the Psychoactive Substances Bill. Watch too for ex-Health Minister Dan Poulter and ex-Cabinet minister Peter Lilley teaming up on an amendment to re-schedule cannabis from a Schedule 1 drug to a Schedule 2 drug for the purposes of promoting research into its medical use. Lilley already achieved notoriety this week over 40 Shades of Grey. Hes no stranger to carving out his own path.. If youre reading this on the web, sign-up HERE to get the WaughZone delivered to your inbox. So obviously with everything else going on in the world, I haven't had much time for TV but of course unless you are living in a cave, you can't have failed to notice that Celebrity Big Brother has hit our screens again with its usual drama, subterfuge, miscommunication, and overall craziness! I guess I'm ok to give my opinion on CBB, I often get asked, especially at this time of year just what it's like to spend all that time away from the real world surrounded by essentially a group of strangers, so I thought I would put it out there so you can understand the process a little better. I was "chosen", I guess, to go into the famous house at a really bad time in my life. Katie had just left me, I was being hailed in the media as some sort of scapegoat for all of Katie's wrath and felt literally hated by the nation at that point. It was really difficult and to be honest when it came to that very first night I wasn't sure if I could go in. It was a hard decision but I am, inherently, a fighter and I don't back down when things get tough, so it was a case of taking a deep breath and going for it. I actually really wanted the public to see the real Alex, not the punchbag I appeared to be. It was actually a really scary and surreal evening, start to finish. Advertisement Meeting the other celebrities, for me, was a really bizarre experience. I can describe it as being in a dream, a real out of body type thing. Sure there were some I recognised more than others, and I'm sure that's how most of them felt about me but we had all been thrown into this experience so we had that in common from the outset. All these people, at that very moment, were our frail and vulnerable selves, all wondering what would happen next and what the hell we had signed up to! We had to sink or swim over the coming weeks and I was determined to get my armbands on! One of the most recognisable faces was of course Stephen Baldwin. I did think he would be quite "Hollywood" but he had a fantastic energy, really interesting to talk to and listen to, a really nice guy. Of course his family were acting royalty in the '80s and '90s so he had some brilliant stories to tell and his anecdotes were great. Basshunter, again, what a star. We became firm friends in there, that was fabulous as our friendship surprised me a little. The relationship with Vinnie Jones was organic, starting out tough, but it moved on to a very warm, brotherly-type vibe. I enjoyed getting to know him very much. I don't know if I expected to dislike anyone, as we were so very different, but I genuinely didn't. I do tend to look for the good in people. That trait has been known to get me in trouble sometimes but fortunately it worked well for me in the house as I was open to getting on with everyone without agenda. It's easy in a situation like that to start doubting your own "self", surrounded by those you may judge more well-known and certainly more liked considering what I was going through in the outside world at that time. To be completely honest, I did feel that way a little, just at the start. So to combat any feelings of insecurity I decided to immerse myself in the experience and think que sera, sera! None of us knew how we would be seen, how the public would perceive the people we actually were in comparison to any media hype that may have been attached to each and every one of us over the years. Of course it was something that concerned me during my time in the house. I had been put through the mill a bit and the media had done their best to vilify me in a way. Perhaps the viewers would finally get a chance to see the real Alex, the nice guy who has insecurities like the rest of us, yet always gives everyone a fair shot. Advertisement There is simply no getting away from the fact that you are under constant scrutiny as the cameras are literally everywhere! Who can forget me getting a spray tan, with the help of a few of my housemates! I don't think there was an angle of my bum that wasn't covered by either tan or viewing angle! You never forget the cameras are there but it does become a bit more second nature. Time itself though is your enemy. It drags and drags. I know there are activities and challenges but they don't take up much out of your day on the whole. You have to remember I was madly in love at that time, missing my girl and that just made everything seem to take so much longer. That was what I struggled with the most if I am honest. I missed her. On the flip side of being kept away from that which is most important to you, is the pure exhilarating cathartic nature of not being bombarded with media. No phones, no papers, no social media... nothing. Most of us would go nuts without our phones for an hour, not understand in the slightest the amount of information we are being swamped with information every second. It was a total blackout from technology and it was wonderful. I mean that. I think we should all perhaps take a day, just one day, where we turn everything off and get back to the simple pleasures of actually talking to one another, to taking the time to have a conversation with someone you don't know instead of being glued to our mobile devices and essentially becoming enslaved to them. I am just as guilty but I can tell you being without it, it was amazing. But hey - that's a post all on its own! The way I felt on entering the house was exactly how I felt when they announced I had won. Everything slowed down, everything was a bit unreal. I couldn't quite believe it but I was so chuffed. So happy that finally, the public had seen a side of Alex Reid that they liked, that they could relate to. That was the pinnacle for me. I had achieved the almost impossible and it hit me like a tonne of bricks. I had been hated, bemoaned, berated and now here I was, the winner of Celebrity Big Brother. Now don't get me wrong it's not an Oscar, I didn't expect plaudits but the simple fact that perhaps the public had warmed to me was a fantastic feeling. Saying that, when I was preparing to leave, I did wonder if I was going to have to dodge being pelted with eggs and rotten tomatoes as I gave my exit interview - luckily that didn't happen! Advertisement Since leaving the house I have kept in touch with a couple of people, but it's difficult when you are back in the chaotic real world. I met up with Stephen a couple of times and my mate Basshunter and I enjoyed a boys night out! I even bumped into Dane Bowers on the Tube. It's nothing personal that the friendships you make in there perhaps aren't the most enduring. It's not the real world. It's kind of like having a very intense holiday romance that fizzles when you come back to everyday life but I thought they were all really lovely people in their own way. Elohor knows firsthand the human costs of underfunded hospitals and roads Three of the world's biggest oil and gas companies - Shell, Total and ENI - were granted an extraordinary series of tax breaks worth a staggering US$3.3billion in Nigeria, a country where millions of people live in extreme poverty. A new report from ActionAid, 'Leaking Revenue' has for the first time revealed the scale of the tax loss - money that could have been used to fund key public services like healthcare and education. Advertisement Elohor Siakiere, 30, lives in the oil rich Delta State and knows firsthand the human costs of underfunded hospitals and roads: "I was pregnant and when my labour started, I was transported in a canoe to Ukperhren where I was put on a motorcycle to go to the general hospital in Warri. But the road was very bad and I fell down many times. It was a painful ordeal to get to the hospital." Elohor survived the precarious journey in the dugout canoe and the 15 kilometers on the muddy and slippery road, but unfortunately her unborn child did not. "At the hospital, the doctor told me the baby was dead," Elohor says quietly. "They did an operation to remove it. I felt very bad losing my baby." Elohor's story is tragic but sadly not uncommon. Nigeria has one of the highest child mortality rates in the world with more than one in ten children dying before the age of 5. It also has the fourth highest maternal mortality rate in the world with 814 women dying for every 100,000 live births. Nigeria granted the tax breaks to the three companies from 1999-2012, exempting them from corporate tax payments. The British-Dutch oil giant Shell was the greatest beneficiary after being exempted from paying a total of $1.66 billion - equivalent to more than the entire Nigerian annual health budget. Advertisement French company Total was exempted from paying $977million and Italian company Eni was exempted $677million. The report raises further questions about whether developing countries are giving away billions of dollars in tax revenue unnecessarily. ActionAid's research shows that the oil companies' investment would have been highly profitable even without these harmful tax incentives. To tackle this, Nigeria should publish and review its tax break policies and collaborate with other countries in West Africa to end harmful tax breaks. We also need to see multinational companies working in Nigeria, such as Shell, pay their fair share of tax and publish their tax payments in every country they operate, including details of tax breaks they've been given. These companies should not seek harmful tax breaks that haven't been publicly disclosed or debated by lawmakers. It's that time of year where people are coming to the gyms in droves with their brand new Lycra and earnest faces, desperate to shift a bit (or a lot) of weight and fulfil their newly created resolutions. It's also that time of year where regular gym goers and fitness fanatics sigh, moan and despair that their previously safe haven and temple of fitness worship has now been invaded. "It's absolutely rammed. I can't get my favourite treadmill anymore!" whines one lady in luminous leggings. "They're not even using the leg press machine correctly..." sighs another one dramatically. It's true, gyms in January are suddenly packed and the experienced regulars are forced to mix with the inexperienced civilians. But, as it always happens, by February it'll be mostly back to normal. Perhaps one or two of those beginners in January are inspired and join the ranks of the dedicated, but more often than not, the habits don't stick and the initial plans and goals fade away into the black hole of Failed Resolutions. Advertisement I won't lie, I'm a fitness fanatic and I too have often felt annoyed that I've had to wait for the machines I want to use, or that the gym suddenly feels very claustrophobic and, well, extra sweaty. But this shouldn't be our reaction. We should welcome these newcomers. Make them feel like they're not alone in their pursuits of whatever goals they have: run a 5k, shift a stone, gain some muscle...whatever it is they want to achieve, we shouldn't bemoan their efforts. They have every right to be there too. They're paying customers too (albeit with a shiny special offer price and no joining fee). In the current obesity climate and with depressing health scares constantly making appearances in the news, the more people making an effort to get fit should be celebrated! And often than not, it will be the fit and healthy who bemoan and complain about the people clogging the NHS with their obesity-related issues. "They should just get off their backsides and go for a run" says one. "They should try and lose a bit of weight" says another. Social affairs journalist Dawn Foster's new book Lean Out is a mere 81 pages long, but it packs a powerful punch. Inspired by Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg's likeable bestseller Lean In, it's much more than just a riposte to the popular business manifesto for women. Fascinating, thought-provoking and at times outrage-inducing, Lean Out elucidates the many ways in which women are being subjugated by corporations and the government, and encourages us to take direct action to address these inequalities. To prepare for our interview, I read both Lean In and Lean Out. Although both authors naturally want women to have a better deal in life, and both back up their points with statistical data and anecdotal evidence, their books are very different. While Sandberg's tone is breezy and accessible, Foster's is more academic and full of realism and urgency; and while Sandberg says the key to women's success lies in changing our behaviour, Foster states that this is pointless when our institutions are inherently prejudiced against us. Advertisement In the flesh, Foster is confident, witty and fun. Still only 28, she's one of the frankest and most interesting people to follow on social media, as she says exactly what she thinks and refuses to be cowed by Twitter trolls; recent tweets of hers lambast the government for being an 'absolute cavalcade of pillocks', praise the junior doctors' strike, and rebuke David Cameron for his parenting classes voucher scheme: 'Man who left daughter in a pub tells people in poverty they need parenting lessons.' We meet for drinks in North London. How did you feel when you first read Lean In, I ask? 'Quite conflicted,' Foster confesses. 'A lot of what Sheryl Sandberg said was very practical and needed to be said... a lot of her advice was very very good, but she seemed to be unfailingly positive about the businesses that she's worked for. She didn't say "You need to forcefully speak up more in meetings, because men have a habit of talking over you, and patriarchy encourages male voices and discourages female voices, and you need to work against that." She never criticised the institutions that perpetuate inequality against women.' She takes a sip of cider. 'And one thing that upset me quite a bit is that the only reason that Sandberg's life is at all possible is because she employs low-paid women to clean her house, do the grocery shopping, look after her children, run her finances... and her advice wouldn't help those women at all. Speaking up more in meetings isn't going to help a cleaner, because they don't have meetings, they just get isolated.' Advertisement She gives an example from her own life: 'If I'm in a newspaper office and I write 20 stories a month, and most people do ten, I can say 'Look, I do a lot of work - I deserve a raise'. If you're a cleaner, and you clean a lot, you can't ask for more.' Sandberg starts her book with a series of disclaimers about the fact that it doesn't address institutional bias against women. Does Foster think she was anticipating a book like Lean Out? 'I don't know. I think she genuinely believes that once you get a couple of women in at the top, then it automatically follows that you get more women slowly throughout the whole structure. So she honestly felt that if you get a female Prime Minister, then the cabinet becomes 50:50, more feminist policies are enacted... and my book makes the point that this hasn't happened.' As with Thatcher, I say. 'Yeah. And if you look at Theresa May, she has a policy now to keep out immigrants earning under 35K a year, and that really impacts on women, because a lot of immigrant women who are coming in with their British partners won't earn that, because women have children. And when you look at Sweden and Norway, where they've brought in laws to put more women in at the very top, what happens is those boardrooms have more women, but nothing else about the institution changed - and the women that they brought in didn't really change much themselves either. The boards wanted to maintain the status quo, and the best way of doing that was to get some women in that they vaguely knew who wouldn't rock the boat that much.' Foster speaks quickly and passionately. 'The book assumes that women always work in the interests of women, but people aren't male and female and that's it. If Theresa May is a white woman who is very well-educated and very wealthy, she's more likely to act in the interests of, say, a very wealthy white man than she is a working class poor black or immigrant woman. This is for both personal reasons and career reasons, and she may feel a lot closer to wealthier people of the same background than she would to someone of her own gender from a completely different background. So that's another issue that Sandberg didn't really address.' Advertisement When I mention a male friend who alleged that leaning out of the corporate model would have no effect, Foster counters with the example of a group of cleaners in Birmingham, 'who found out that they were being under-paid in comparison to men. They went to their trade union, and the union said "What we want you to do is to not kick up a fuss, because we're worried that the men will have a pay cut and it will be at their expense." The women replied "Actually, we're going to press on with this anyway", so they removed their labour and they won.' Foster then suggests other ways to lean out: 'If you're in a meeting and a man talks loudly over you, rather than copying that behaviour and normalising it, what you could do is say 'Can everybody stop doing this and instead put up a hand when we talk?' It's about not aping and copying men's behaviour, and instead taking a stand and moving things outside.' Foster has seen this work in her own workplace. She also talks about taking direct action and occupying spaces to achieve parity, instead of signing petitions or lobbying your MP. 'What Sheryl Sandberg seems to say is that the best thing you can do is basically copy and align yourself as closely as possible with men,' Foster continues, before giving her own example [not featured in Lean In or associated with Sandberg] of why this doesn't work: 'For instance, if you're in the stock market and you're snorting loads of coke and going out until 4am - if you copy that behaviour, it just means the behaviour continues forever. Whereas if a large number of people in finance said "No, we won't have drugs, we'll have normal working hours and we'll be more accountable", then you can change your working environment for the better that way.' Does Foster think life for women will improve if a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour Party is elected in 2020? 'Definitely. One thing that I found refreshing about his campaign was that he was very keen to listen to what women wanted - to hold focus groups and travel around the country and see what affected women. One of the main policies he has is to stop austerity and cuts, and 80% of cuts have affected women. So even if he just repealed austerity and nothing else, life for a lot of women would drastically improve quite quickly. Especially for single mums, women on low incomes, disabled women, carers... I haven't seen any policies from the Conservative government that help women whatsoever.' Advertisement Foster takes a breath. 'As much as Theresa May can claim to be a feminist, she's part of a government that has massively cut domestic violence centres, legal aid to women, benefits... everything the Conservatives have enacted disproportionately affects women, because they're poorer in the first place. And at the same time you've got very very rich men and women who are getting richer at the expense of everyone else.' I'm perplexed by why the press won't support Corbyn, I say. 'I was one of the few journalists who was quite pro-Corbyn from the beginning,' Foster tells me. 'Working within newspapers, so many of them are so used to the status quo, they're so invested in lobby journalism, and assuming that all politics happens in Westminster... but doing social affairs, I spend a lot of time out of London speaking to people who have been hit by cuts, or disabled, or who have been made unemployed. If you speak to those people, a lot of them were ambivalent about the General Election. And now a lot of them are so excited that there's a leader who's pro-union, pro-workers' rights, and seems to be speaking quite directly to people... He's putting forward actual values and beliefs instead of spin and PR.' And yet, I say, the press prefer to keep digging up things like 'he's so into his politics, he doesn't have time to eat, so he eats cold baked beans from a tin while standing up'. Foster smiles: 'Sheryl Sandberg would approve of that, because he's not wasting time on things - he's leaning into politics!' she quips. 'There was a headline today that said "Jeremy Corbyn won't name his cat". He calls his cat El Gato, and apparently he whistles and it comes to a certain tune, and I thought that was really endearing. Some of the ways to discredit him just show how desperate the press are. But the press are realising that they've called it wrong on two counts: one, because they said he'd never win the election, and he won by a landslide; and two, he is very popular amongst people, and the more the press attack him, the more they get attacked, and the more ludicrous they look.' Foster draws an amusing analogy: 'Initially I thought "Oh, I'm sure Jeremy Corbyn's all right", and then there was so much vitriol directed at him, I noticed that me and all my friends were suddenly really drawn towards him! It's like if you just met somebody and you thought they were really racy and exciting, and your mum said "I don't think he's very good", you're like "Oh now I like him all the more, you can't keep us apart!" I feel that's the effect that this all has.' Advertisement We move on to social media. A cursory glance at Foster's Twitter mentions shows that we're still a long way from equality. When she tweeted '2015 will always be the year we found out the Prime Minister f***ed a pig. They can never take that away from us', a young male commenter tweeted back 'Would rather f*** a pig than f*** you, you ugly c***.' (Foster deftly retweeted the abuse with the caption 'Are no pigs safe from Tories?') Does she think there's a certain kind of man who can't stand strong assertive women? 'Yeah, definitely,' she nods. 'I've got a few male friends who are very similar to me in their sense of humour and politics and how they tweet, and they never ever get the same level of abuse that I do. They will tweet, and the worst they ever get is 'you're wrong'.' I can't imagine a woman tweeting 'I'd rather f*** a pig than f*** you' to a man, I say. 'Exactly,' Foster agrees. 'And as a friend pointed out, if you'd rather f*** a pig than a human, I'd keep quiet about it on the internet!' Today (18th Jan) a multi-faith memorial service was held in London to remember the 30 refugees who died trying to cross from northern France to seek safety in the UK over the last year. The latest victim, Masud, a 15 year old Afghan, lost his life trying to join his family living in the UK. The ceremony today called for the UK government to offer safe routes for those who have a legal right to claim asylum in the UK and asked 'How many more children will die trying to seek safety in the UK?' The answer to this question can only be decided by our government. Having spent time in Calais I have witnessed the outstanding and superhuman efforts and charity of others who devote themselves to improving the situation as best they can. But it seems there comes a point where charity can only go so far and what is needed is a political solution to save the lives of people trapped in northern France. I am convinced that this point has been reached. Advertisement The situation is this. Thousands of humans fleeing untold, misery, deprivation, war, persecution and death are stranded in conditions with appalling sanitation; a perpetual threat of disease or illness (norovirus, scabies, diarrhoea through chronic malnutrition, respiratory infection); food and shelter supplies struggling to keep up; maltreatment, beatings and tear gas from the police and violence from far-right groups. On top of this, we are now firmly in the icy grip of winter and a risk that people may freeze. Strong winds and rain batter the camp destroying tents, ruining clothes, blankets and sleeping bags which become drenched and float in stagnant pools of water. The camp in Dunkirk has become ankle deep in mud. Each time I go to Calais I notice more and more families and small children are in the camp, some unaccompanied. Children will play in any situation, blissfully unaware. Part of you hopes that they will not grow old enough to realise the desperate situation they are in. I have wondered when my first memory was, and at what age someone has their first memory. I have thought 'what if your first memory was in the camp?' Imagine how impactful that could be on the rest of your life even if you managed to escape to safety which at the moment seems unlikely. There is a significant risk of death if anyone tries to flee this appalling situation to the UK and people are being left to fester where any dreams and aspirations of a marginally better life are actively denied. This situation is morally unjustifiable. I would say that this is a moral outrage. Advertisement I take the view that the UK government is in part directly responsible for the situation. If it is the case that the government has, instead of sending humanitarian aid, invested millions of pounds in more security, police, higher fences thereby increasing the risk to any who wish to come to the UK, then this contributes to the suffering and death. If the government refuses to provide a safe passage then this leaves no other option but for people to wallow in the appalling conditions or risk the lethal crossing. If the government ignores the plights of any refugee in Europe and in fact demonises such refugees then it would be the case that the UK government has actively contributed to the plights and misery of those in this appalling situation. This too would be a moral outrage. Some may take the view that this is not the UK's problem. Yet it could be said that this is not some terrible disaster in a far-off land which we could (in my view, unjustifiably) ignore. This is a humanitarian crisis on our doorstep which is actively worsened by the actions and inactions of the UK government. Even if you hold the view that it is a terrible situation but it's not our business to solve the world's problems you may agree with me that it would be wrong to actively contribute to those problems and worsen the lives of thousands of people. If so then you might favour the government changing its policy. In my view the UK has a moral responsibility to do more the help. It is unjustified that the government completely ignores the plights of any refugee in Europe, meets calls for help with hostility and only commits to settle a minimal and inadequate amount of refugees. Personally I am sick of apologising to the people I meet stuck in Calais on behalf of my government's neglect and antagonism towards them. It's a terrible feeling when you really want to help someone but are unable to do so. This happened when I was asked by a Syrian family if I could help them get to the UK. It pained me to explain that I could not. But the UK can and should offer them hope. There is a simple and small solution to this problem and that is to provide safe routes and take in refugees with legitimate claims to asylum from the camps and to fulfil the campaign to re-settle 3000 unaccompanied refugee children in Europe. This small step would make a vast difference to the lives and aspirations of those in desperate need of help. Doing the school run on Monday I was distracted from the utterances of my teenage passengers by David Cameron's interview on Radio 4. Having made announcements about the Government's 20m plan for English language teaching, written about integration and Muslim women in the Times, he was now deftly dealing with the matador-like prodding of the interviewer, who was doing her best to back him into a soundbite corner. He did a good job of communicating his message, being firm about the greatness of the UK, while still saying there was a need to build 'One Nation'. Am I the only one whose ears prick up when I hear phrases like 'One Nation' and 'Big Society'? Next to the stoic mantra of George Osborne's 'long-term economic plan', these phrases seem to hint at a sense of vision rather than a 'building society' advert. A 'blistering attack' is how some commentators described Cameron's article. I missed that part. Of course there were problematic statements. For example, "I am not saying separate development or conservative religious practices directly cause extremism. That would be insulting to many who are devout and peace-loving." The implication that those who have religiously conservative values are somehow closer to those who are extremist is like saying that if you are driver you are more likely to be a car bomber! Advertisement But how does this relate to my teenage passengers - why were they made to listen? I have been back in the classroom recently, trying to teach (or at least facilitate) discussion of the thorny issue of British values, with a group of 15-year-olds who have recently arrived in East London. We are calling the lessons Citizenship and Welcome to the UK. Unlike America, we don't have a constitution that defines rights and responsibilities. Or a Declaration of Independence that defines the start and 'flavour' of our nation. But we do have the weight of history and democratic development behind us, and a collective national memory that makes ours the oldest and (I think we could argue) the strongest of democracies. We have a way of doing and developing, from the 1215 Magna Carta to universal suffrage and the establishment of NHS, which makes us all contributors to society. It is very difficult to teach this in a short course. You can't make a British citizen within a six-week programme, singing the national anthem and saluting the Union Flag. Integration, belonging and loyalty cannot be imposed by government alone, but, as David Cameron has pointed out, government has a role to play. This new programme will take place in different settings: colleges, homes and community organisations. I suspect many of those community settings will be faith-based organisations, which play a key role in giving a place of connection to people of their faith, or other faiths or no faith at all. What's more, this approach is hardly untested. Before Daesh dominated the media, the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) launched a community-based English initiative, and the Learn English Blog traces the development of this programme and the six different approaches that were chosen. It seems unusual to congratulate the government on getting ahead of an issue but, with the migrant and refugee crisis still very real, as well the desire to reach isolated Muslim women, it's worth noting that work on a solution was started some time ago - well before the issues were at the fever pitch they are now, and certainly before the media turned our attention to this area. Advertisement One of the criticisms of the Government has been the cutting of English language services, but any new programme needs to also aim to increase confidence and a sense of belonging. Pure language programmes are not enough: we need community-based programmes that improve English and confidence and build that sense of community and belonging. The after-effects of a holiday can often be felt in the workplace, particularly after the festive season. Following a longer-than-average Christmas break and with some wet and windy weather ahead (not to mention a belt-tightening, sober January for some), many employers report seeing lower productivity and morale as workers drag their feet about getting back into work. Yet this isn't just a seasonal problem. Our research shows that the UK already has a problem with disengaged employees, which is no doubt exacerbated by January blues. More and more workers are 'quitting in seat' - coming into work and going through the motions, but mentally checking out from their day-to-day work. Why are workers so blue? The driving cause is the dissatisfaction with the 'next step' and future career paths offered by current employers. Around 70 percent of workers are frustrated by the lack of development opportunities with their employer. At Christmas this figure inevitably creeps higher as people compare their career progress with friends and family. Advertisement Yet rather than taking proactive steps to look for a new job - including applying for roles online, phoning recruiters and sending out their CVs - many people are choosing to stay in their jobs and keep things ticking over by doing the bare minimum. Perhaps because of the shaky global economy, only 19 percent of UK employees are actively job-seeking, down 11 percent compared to the previous year, while levels of 'discretionary effort' - going above and beyond - are also at an all-time low. This lost productivity and underperformance is a serious problem not only for business leaders and HR departments, but also for employees themselves who aren't prepared to put in the time and effort to either seek out a better role or get more engaged in their current job. Rather than 'write off' those people who have switched off, business leaders need to be transparent about how employees can contribute to the future business strategy, what is expected from them and how they can learn new skills in the process. The four tips below should help managers get through the January doldrums. Measure employees' engagement levels: To pinpoint where re-engaging opportunities and resources should be focused, organisations can leverage new tools that allow them to assess employees likelihood of attrition and level of engagement at work. The best of these also test for employees' agility in the face of change and their mental alignment with the organisation's strategy. Advertisement Improve access to new opportunities. The reality is that there isn't much room for upward movement and regular promotions in today's flatter organisational structures. Yet companies can still enable other kinds of movement across the organisation, perhaps to a different department or office or onto a new team taking at a fresh challenge. Be open about development. Managers need have regular conversations with employees about their performance and reinforce how their current role is in itself progressing their skills and careers to make them more marketable both within the company and beyond it. Stick to expectations. Some attrition is a good thing, especially if it opens up opportunity for movement for other people across the business. Managers should set clear expectations and deadlines for employees to decide whether or not they want to be part of the business. On Thursday 21 January, over nine years after his murder, we will hear the findings of the Litvinenko Inquiry into his death. The murder of Alexander (Sasha) Litvinenko with Polonium 210 was headline news for many weeks and the spotlight has remained on the case in the years that followed, thanks to the unrelenting efforts of one woman. Sasha's widow Marina has pursued justice for her late husband in her belief that he was murdered by Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun and that the attack was initiated by the Russian state. I first met Marina Litvinenko at University College Hospital in London on 21 November 2006 and we met under the strangest of circumstances. Her husband was terribly ill, having been poisoned with Polonium 210. He and I were part of the same circle that had formed around Boris Berezovsky in London at that time. Sasha asked for me to bring a photographer to the hospital so the world might know the condition he was in. I, along with Lord Bell, continued to help him and later his family deal with the intense media interest that followed. I was struck that day at the hospital by the grace Marina showed. I cannot think of many more frightening situations than to be with your critically ill husband at a hospital and at that point not even knowing which poison had been used. Yet she was warm and dignified and she has remained so in all the years that have followed in her quest for justice. She has remained a dear and constant friend, always so affectionate and interested in the lives of others. Advertisement Her life during this campaign could not have been more different to the life she left behind in Russia. A ballroom dancer in Russia and back then, by her own description, not at all a political animal. Yet the murder of her husband in London, where they had been granted asylum and British citizenship after fleeing Russia via Turkey, meant that she has literally had to take on the Russian state. She has done it with passion, intellect and unrelenting commitment. alI have yet to meet a journalist that has not liked and admired her. She has met Foreign Secretaries, MPs and editors and she has always made a positive impact. It is as though she was thrust into unfamiliar territory and she has more than risen to the challenge. Many people have remarked on her beauty and dancer's elegance. But what wins people over is the genuine interest she has in the wellbeing of others. Her dedication to her cause never prevented her from paying genuine attention to all of our lives - babies born, bereavements, birthdays and graduations all receive her attention. Her campaign trail has been full of new friendships thanks to her winning personality. Marina has faced all kinds of challenges. In the early days after the attack, some people were nervous that she had been exposed to the Polonium through contact with her husband and they had unfounded fears that she could somehow transmit it to them. She was guarded by police and recognised on the street. The media interest was understandably intense. She did interviews in her second language of English. All whilst suffering an intense bereavement. Her son Anatoly was just a child when his father was killed. He has grown into a bright and articulate young man, a credit to both his parents. His mother's care, sensitivity and determination have surely played a great role in this. Advertisement The Tories have an appalling record when it comes to meeting their own targets and delivering on what they promise. For that reason, I was interested to read yesterday that one Government minister is finally waking up (and owning up) to the UK's huge trade problem. While Mark Carney spoke yesterday at Queen Mary University about slowing UK economic growth, Lord Maude, the Government's Trade Minister, presented to the Cabinet about the UK's trade situation. They should have had lots to talk about. Despite much fanfare on its announcement in 2012, George Osborne's target to double UK exports to 1trillion by 2020 looks set to be woefully missed. In fact, the Office of Budget Responsibility is currently predicting that we will fall short by a whopping 350billion. Advertisement Maude himself admitted that it would be a 'big stretch' for the Government to meet the target. In order to do so we would need our export market share to rise by 50% over this Parliament - instead, it's set to fall by 3.3%. If the rate of progress forecast across this Parliament continues it will be 2032 by the time the target is finally reached. But these dismal figures aren't new to everyone in Government, who have been trying to gloss over the situation for some time. Indeed buried deep in the OBR's analysis of the Autumn Statement and Spending Review was the revelation that the current account deficit is the largest in peacetime since at least 1830. Cameron's Government has managed to run up the biggest current account deficit since the Duke of Wellington was the Prime Minister. Boosting our exports has to be key to tackling the historic deficit, yet the outlook for exports under this Government has been consistently disappointing and nowhere near enough has been done to remedy the situation. While the UK has a surplus on trade in services, that is more than offset by a very large deficit on trade in goods. Domestic export industries such as steel and manufacturing, which is now officially back in recession and has a lower output now that in 2008, have come under huge pressure in recent years from soaring energy costs and cut price competition from markets such as China. The announcement yesterday that Tata steel is to fire 1,050 workers from Port Talbot due largely to the dumping of Chinese steel on the UK market, and the Government's total inaction, is symptomatic of the problem. Advertisement In addition to doing little to tackle the problem George Osborne is failing to do enough to protect Britain from the economic headwinds from China. It was announced today that China's economic growth had slowest to its lowest level in 25 years, which follows weeks of financial turmoil in which trading on the country's stock market was suspended twice by the Chinese Government. Just a few months ago the Bank of England warned that if Chinese GDP were to fall by 3% relative to its trend then the output in the UK would be around 0.3% lower as a result. This issue is too important simply to be another missed target and broken promise from this Tory Government. Steps urgently need to be taken to address the weaknesses in our economy, but there is no sign that these will be forthcoming from the Tories. The Government may have just had its first Cabinet meeting on the subject but meetings no longer make the cut - it's time for action. The news last week that the conservative government is converting the last remaining non repayable grants and bursaries into loans for students is sadly becoming far from surprising. This extra support, given to the poorest or neediest students on top of their loans, can make the difference between accessing university or never setting foot on campus. For others like me, whilst it may not be quite as stark as that, it can mean the difference between succeeding and doing yourself and your efforts justice - or standing behind a till, a bar or a checkout when you could be buried in the books that you came to uni to read in the first place. I went to university in 2007 as a mature student to read Politics, turning 23 in my second week of term. Luckily I only had to pay 3,000 tuition fees per year, but being in Reading our living costs were almost as high as London, with none of the extra loan available to us that goes to students in the capital. Like thousands of students today, so often unfairly and lazily labelled tax-dodgers, I had a part time job (full time during the holidays) in a high street bank where I most certainly paid my taxes. Advertisement It's no exaggeration to say I needed this job. It was the difference between me staying at uni and dropping out. My better off peers though me really strange every Wednesday and Saturday going down for breakfast in hall in a bank uniform, but that was small price to pay for being able to support myself. When I got to my final year the student loans company where finally able to treat me as a true mature student, i.e. someone financially self-sufficient and not relying on their parents. The fact I'd been this all along didn't matter, as the SLC were bound by law to treat me the same way as an 18 year old until I'd passed 25. The upshot was I received several hundreds of pounds on top of my loan as a bursary that I wouldn't have to pay back. This bursary allowed me, for the first time in over three years, to give up my job and go to the library. It allowed me to research my dissertation and study for my finals. It meant the difference between a grade I could scrape and the grade I deserved. It meant simply all my years at university being worthwhile. Getting that extra financial support in my final year made a huge difference to me. For the first time I could afford to move out of university halls of residence and share a house with my friends, something many would take for granted as a key part of student life. Crucially it also allowed me to give something back. Advertisement The freedom not having to man a till in the bank gave me allowed me to run to be President of my students union, where I successfully campaigned to give more financial support to the first cohort of students to pay 9000 a year. It's deeply depressing to see the support I lobbied so hard for that year being slashed by the government. This is a government that infantilises young people with the one hand, while with the other taking swipes at them for not working hard enough or taking enough responsibility for their own lives. It scraps benefits for all young people while protecting those for the well-off elderly, who don't need them, with the vigour of a polecat guarding its nest. These bursaries where comparatively small sums of money but they made a huge difference. Even Nick Clegg, continually derided for his tuition fee U turn, has said this week that bursaries were the "hidden reason why lots of those disadvantaged kids weren't being discouraged [from going to university]. I can't help but agree with Nick! Bursaries aren't huge sums of money that irresponsible students go and splurge up the wall partying. They're modest amounts of money that make the difference between success and not even getting started. They helped people like me, and many far worse off, improve their lives and get into careers that they'd never be able to enter otherwise. They're also significantly less expensive than most non-means tested pensioner's benefits. But what do I know, I'm probably still too young to have an opinion anyway... The launch of Labour Leave is the catalyst for the thousands of Labour supporters across the UK to show that they do not share the Europhile views of the establishment within the Labour Party. Back in 1975, the British public did not vote for a United States of Europe. Now they have their chance to say what they think. Great socialists such as Tony Benn, Hugh Gaitskell, Peter Shore and Clement Attlee were deeply opposed to a European super state, so I am sure they would have joined the podium and supported Labour Leave, the socialist and progressive campaign to leave the EU. The EU is the opposite of the progressive organisation it purports to be. It spends 40% of its budget on a broken agricultural scheme that prevents farmers from less developed countries selling their wares in Europe, while dumping excess pesticide-pumped food on African markets, disrupting the livelihood of many poor farmers. Not only that, but the EU has a long history of assisting tax evasion. Juncker, the current president of the European Commission, organised sweetheart deals for big multinationals in his previous job, which was only possible due to EU connivance. Advertisement But at its very worst, the EU is highly corrosive to Labour and progressive values. Some people see the EU as a left-wing voice in a right-wing country. That is simply rubbish. The European Council is dominated by right wingers, who hold 19 out of the 30 positions. The biggest group in the European Parliament is the Conservative EPP, who also hold the position of Presidents of European Commission and Council. The organisation believes far more fanatically in austerity than Osborne, forcing it on Spain, Portugal, Italy and, most spectacularly and self defeatingly, on Greece. In this, the heart of democracy and civilisation, the EU ordered in riot police, deposed the government of Labour's sister party PASOK, and introduced biting austerity that lead to a 200% increase in HIV cases and the collapse of the public health system, as well as mass unemployment. The great waste of youth across the EU due to mass unemployment means that left-wing parties, from the Catalan CUP to the Greek Communists, are now deeply opposed to the European project. We need a separate campaign from the Greens, Ukip, Tories and Lib Dems, because while we all have the same aim and will cooperate, our values are progressive and socialist so we have a different vision of the UK from them, one that resonates with millions of people across the country. It Is our job to speak to them, especially as the Leave side has around a 17% lead amongst our core working-class voters. We have great faith that many members of the rapidly expanding Labour family will join us in the campaign, as EU policies such as TTIP and rules against state aid will prevent us re-nationalising the railways and force privatisation on the NHS. Jeremy Corbyn himself saw the conflict between socialism and the EU, voting for Leave in 1975, and he spent 32 years proudly voting against the EU in Parliament, which only stopped on his ascension to leader. Advertisement All wings of the party are represented in the Labour Leave campaign, so we can boast of being a broad-based movement looking back at a proud history of Labour Euroscepticism and forward to a more democratic and progressive future outside the EU. Image created by Kylie Barton, using prices from the National Rail Website accurate as of 19/01/2016 As Caroline Lucas' Private Members Bill on bringing the railway back into the public's hands gets its second reading (22nd January) with the backing of Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn, I thought it timely to share some of the many frustrations of a commuter. Moreover, demonstrate how the government and the train companies are completely mugging us off. Rail fares in the South East can be up to four times more expensive than comparable journeys across Europe. We all know that if you want to journey to London, or to another popular destination, that you will pay for the privilege of a seat, or more often than not, a small space to stand in a rammed train of other disgruntled travellers. What is more concerning, and more surprising, is that for smaller more local journeys, we get ripped off when it comes to buying a single. Advertisement With a trip to London from the South you are looking at northwards of 50, unless you book in advance and manage to find an obscure rate, or take a stopping service. At least with London though, if a single is all you require then you can usually see that you are only charged around half of the price of a return ticket, which is fair fares at its finest. After all you are only undertaking half of the journey of a return, and so why would the price be more than half? Great question. Logic would dictate that this would be the case across the entirety of the rail network, but logic and what is in the public interest doesn't currently govern our railways - profiteering big business does. This is why The Railway Bill is so important, so that common sense can prevail, and allow people to make greener choices with their transport decisions. National Rail can offer ridiculous prices to places like Lille at 29 due to the amount they overcharge on small local journeys. This is not good. It is an absolute joke that in the year after the Paris Climate Talks, people can pay less to travel further, whilst people making small journeys to get to work pay through the teeth for journeys of less than 45 minutes (discounting the multiple delays of course). Having just moved to a new constituency, thus making my own commute longer, I decided this would be the topic that I first contact my new, (surprise surprise) Tory MP about. In the letter I described my grievance that in my commute from Fratton to Eastleigh, I pay only 50p less for a single. Sometimes I have other arrangements after work which may include volunteering with young people, or I may be getting picked up or dropped off if my partner is around that way. But I still have to pay pretty much full price when I am doing half the travelling. It makes me sick every time I queue up at the self-service ticket machine. Advertisement One day, whilst waiting in the cold for a delayed service, which was the second that week, I asked a member of staff if he knew why this was the case. He said, South West Trains' hands are tied by the government. Write to them. And so I did. If the government are in some way responsible for the pricing structures, why indeed is the public whom they serve not receiving the benefits and the profits? It just doesn't make sense. Green Party MP, Caroline Lucas states: "Privatisation has not delivered the innovation and investment it promised, back-room staff costs have massively increased, the cost of train travel has risen by 23% in real terms, and the drain on the public purse has more than doubled. The only long-term solution is to bring the railways fully back into public hands. The franchisees remain heavily dependent upon public subsidies, yet turn over an estimated 90% of their profits to shareholders. And, because of the fragmented system, 1.2bn a year is wasted on the bureaucracy needed to work out which franchisee is liable to pay compensation for poor service". The railways have been in the news again this year due to the 1 per cent increase in fares, reportedly being the lowest in years. But why an increase at all when the service is still poor, the prices are completely nonsensical and are disproportionate to the miles travelled? To her credit, MP for Portsmouth South, Flick Drummond provided a very personalised, in depth response. I have to wonder if this sort of response may sometimes be sent to bamboozle the enquirer into silent submission, but not me. Ms Drummond stated that South West Trains have a 'fairly inflexible fare structure' and invited me to take part in the current public consultation to tell the Department of Transport what aggrieved commuters like me want. (This is still open by the way so do it now). She discussed how she has pressed South West Trains for greater flexibility, and even suggested innovative methods such as pay as you go cards like the Oyster model. But it is no surprise they did not seem keen because the infrastructure is not there to support such a scheme, on a network as spread out as the South West. Many stations do not have barriers in place for instance which ironically creates a barrier to such technological innovation. Also, they have no real impetus for such a change that would see them pocketing less, because a business's main priority, is, has, and always will be profit. And this is why the railway needs to be a public service. She continued to say that the only way the companies' hands are tied is that they cannot increase without government say so, they are free to reduce whenever they like - but shock horror; they don't. Advertisement On the single fare issue in particular, she said: "The government did consider the anomaly of single fares that are nearly the same as returns in the last Parliament, and I will find out what happened to the trial which was expected to run last year with single fares at a lower level. I take this issue very seriously and the issue of ticketing is something we need to address as well as the infrastructure the trains run on. I have had great support from other MPs in the region in pushing for better rail services so far, and have had a lot of correspondence with constituents about it too. The current situation is not acceptable and I am determined that it will be improved." As the world's decision-makers congregate in Davos this week, one of the most pressing issues will be also one of the most fundamental: Water. For the first time ever, the World Economic Forum's Global Risks Report has cited an environmental risk - failing to mitigate and adapt to climate change -- as the risk with the single greatest potential impact this year. Water crises rank third for this year, and of highest concern for the next decade. There is a growing understanding that climate change will leave no one unscathed - and water is how we will feel it most. Advertisement The two are inseparable. Climate change manifests as water change - too much water leading to flooding; not enough, as in drought; at the wrong time, as in extreme weather events; and in water quality, worsening pollution and salinity. Livelihoods, and lives, at risk From WaterAid's work in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Pacific Rim and Latin America, we have seen what happens to the world's poorest communities when they are subject to regular flooding, drought, delayed rainy seasons and torrential, unseasonal rains. Livelihoods are wiped out; villages are destroyed; diseases take hold. When access to life's essentials - water, food, a roof over your head - was already fragile, recovery from disaster is so much more difficult. Women in Bangladesh collect filtered, safe water from a water point in an area where groundwater is saline and contaminated. WaterAid/Habibul Haque Advertisement Just six weeks ago world leaders committed to the Paris climate change agreement, pledging to work toward keeping carbon emissions down to minimise the Earth's temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius and to support nations in adapting to climate change as well as mitigating its impact. This support for adaptation is essential. WaterAid works to improve access to water, sanitation and hygiene, which improve health and well-being, and allow communities to become more prosperous. These services are just as critical to communities' ability to recover from disaster. Boreholes are better able to withstand drought than surface water. Rainwater collection systems allow a supply of clean water even when groundwater becomes polluted. And good sanitation helps prevent diseases from spreading when disaster strikes. Diarrhoeal illnesses are the third leading cause of death among children under five, alongside pneumonia and malaria; more than half of these deaths are linked to dirty water and poor sanitation. That is 314,000 children who could be saved each year. Davos powerbrokers can make it happen Recognition is the first step towards change, and among the many breakfast meetings, receptions and deliberations at Davos this week will be a discussion on forming a Heads of State panel on water. Advertisement Political will and cooperation across borders are required to deal with the water challenges now exacerbated by climate change, and such a panel is a step in the right direction. However it is only a first step. World leaders committed to another agreement last year: to eradicate extreme poverty and create a fairer, more sustainable world by 2030 through 17 UN Global Goals on sustainable development. These goals are achievable, with political prioritisation and financing. But unabated climate change threatens those possibilities. via Tobias Franz on Flickr Germany's start to 2016 has been dominated by a wave of sexual assaults that took place in Cologne and elsewhere on New Year's Eve. A number of the suspects for these assaults were of North African origin, which has once again stirred up the main debate in Germany- how to deal with the European refugee crisis. Advertisement Last year Germany was seen as the beacon of hope for refugees crossing the continent, as Angela Merkel vowed to try to accept as many people as possible, but since this initial promise, she has faced pressure from her party to toughen her stance. As well as from the Middle East and the Balkan countries, Germany has seen a rise in asylum seekers from Algeria and Morocco, and the events on New Year's Eve have exposed an imbalance in German public opinion between these regions. Merkel is currently trying to get Algeria and Morocco onto the list of 'safe' countries, which makes it more difficult for migrants to be granted asylum. Elsewhere in a town in Western Germany, a public swimming pool has banned adult male refugees after complaints of "sexually offensive behaviour of some migrant men at the pool". Advertisement In similar fashion, after growing reports of male refugees and asylum seekers harassing female guests in Danish nightclubs, some owners have introduced language tests on the doors, to make sure the clientele can speak Danish, English or German, in order to minimize harassment. Instead of banning the individuals in question, a blanket ban on refugees shows an underlying prejudice or resentment towards these groups. Even if there are lots of refugees, who are behaving inappropriately, it's still unfair to paint them all with the same brush. Unsurprisingly the right has exploited the assaults as symptomatic of an immigration policy out of control. Pegida, a right-wing, anti-Islam movement, held a march in Cologne recently to protest against 'Islamic mass rape'. The right has also made complaints that publicly owned broadcaster ZDF did not report what happened until days after, accusing the media of forming a 'cartel of silence' in order to prevent anti-immigration sentiment. However this is only one side of the debate, after government minister for Women's and Family Affairs, Manuela Schwesig, came out in support of a feminist initiative that is protesting against the 'islamification of sexual violence', and declares itself against both sexual violence and racism. Advertisement The initiative is using #ausnahmlos (without exception) on Twitter. Not only has the recent wave of sexual assaults brought to light once again a pro-Syrian bias in Germany's refugee policy, but also highlighted that immigration and race dominate the public debate to such an extent that other key issues are being neglected. In this case it is sexual violence. Similarities at home Parallels could be drawn between the latest events in Germany and the Rochdale paedophile ring that was exposed in 2012. Parts of the media coverage were dominated by the fact that most of the men found guilty were from Pakistani backgrounds, and the victims were white girls aged 13-15. This focus on race ended up obscuring the real issues at hand: the protection of young, vulnerable girls, and the failings of the police to treat the case with the severity it required. Controversial historian David Starkey said the Pakistani men were "acting within their cultural norms". Baroness Warsi, then Conservative co-chairwoman, also placed race at the heart of the case, claiming that,"there is a small minority of Pakistani men who believe that white girls are fair game," and that acknowledging this was important in tackling the problem. Regardless of race, there are vulnerable teenage girls all over this country, and regardless of race, sexual violence is a problem that Germany, as well as other European countries, needs to tackle. Advertisement Sexual violence is worrying commonplace throughout Europe, and as revealed in a 2014 report conducted by the EU, one in three women have experienced physical and/or sexual violence since the age of 15. At 35%, the figure for women with such experience was slightly higher in Germany alone, but the percentage was even higher in the UK (44%). These kind of horrifying figures simply need to enter the public debate more often. Whether it be blurring the debate on the NHS by overplaying the burden of health tourism, obscuring the housing crisis with rhetoric of migrants flooding into the country, or even demonising those who are HIV positive and born outside the EU, there are countless examples of how the public debate in the UK has been skewed by immigration or the recent refugee crisis. Among the many challenges facing the Labour Leave campaign is their name. This handful of anti-European MPs, led by serial maverick Kate Hoey, no more reflects Labour's settled view on Europe than the rebels who tried to vote down same-sex marriage in 2012 reflect Labour's settled view on equality. In fact, Labour is more united now on Europe than it has ever been - not just in parliament but at every level. Despite intense lobbying from the eurosceptic fringe, a positive EU motion was passed by the party's conference in September, with not a single speech or vote against it from either the grassroots or the trade unions. As a party, we speak with one voice: Britain is unambiguously better off as part of the European Union. In this context, today's usual suspects advocating Brexit ought to amount to no more than a historical footnote. But experience suggests that any insurgent group has a shot at the big time if it's prepared to fight dirty, and if it has money to burn, and for Hoey and co, money is not a problem. The group insists that it's funded by party members, glossing over the fact that the key member in question is none other than millionaire John Mills of anti-EU pressure group Vote Leave - a group which is chaired by Matthew Elliot of the Taxpayers' Alliance, and whose other sources of funding are a Tory banker and a Ukip spread-betting tycoon. In short, the coffers are not likely to run dry any time soon. Advertisement The other key question, then, is how far Labour's outers are willing to go in order to make their case. Last year they tried to call themselves the 'official Labour Leave campaign', but that particular gambit was quashed in short order. I expect their next tactic as the referendum looms will be to demand equal representation with their party on any platform discussing Europe, as if they represented one half of a genuine split in opinion rather than a self-organised fringe group. We know the characteristic approach of right-wing eurosceptics. First, blame 'Brussels' for whatever hot potato is currently being tossed around, then push your own agenda as a follow-up. Hence the absurdity of, for instance, Ukip's campaign over the festive season trying to blame the EU for flooding in the north of England. That strategy works well for the eurosceptic hard right; but one might hope that raising the spectre of 'Brussels' to deflect from the government's failings would ill befit those on the left who ought to have no vested interest in covering for the Tories. So one might hope. A leaked draft of Labour Leave's latest missive crossed my desk recently, and it does not make for encouraging reading. There's the usual hotchpotch of bizarre inventions, like the suggestion that we will have to give up our seat on the UN security council - we won't - that British universities are clamouring to escape the EU - they aren't - or that Norway can pick and choose which EU rules to adopt - it can't. Charitably setting these aside, the headline bogeyman is TTIP, a possible future trade deal with the US. Now, Labour MEPs were among the first to point out that some of the ideas mooted here are plainly unacceptable. But it's nonsense to suggest that the way to avoid this is to leave the EU. Advertisement Quite the opposite. We can win this battle precisely because we are fighting it at EU level, where many share our concerns, and where we gain clout by teaming up with our neighbours - together we're the world's biggest economy. How do Kate Hoey and her friends think we'd be better off if we walked away? Without the EU, the Tories would have signed us up to a bilateral deal - with all TTIP's worst features - before you can say 'converging regulatory standards'. This is what really baffles me about so-called 'Labour Leave'. One of the defining characteristics of the political left throughout history has been our willingness to stand up and fight for our values. We've never shied away from political battlegrounds, be they local, national or global. And what the outers somehow fail to recognise is that Europe is just another battleground. The decisions made there affect us profoundly, whether we're part of it or not. As Labour, we fight such battles every day - and when we work with our allies, we can win them. That's why the EU single market has rules to protect consumers, workers and the environment, and to deal with multinational companies. We need to develop and improve these rules - not trigger a race to the bottom by breaking up the EU. Even if every single assertion made by Labour Leave turned out to be true this could only inspire us to fight even harder. The suggestion that we on the left should give up and walk away from the political battleground of Europe is worse than absurd - it is a betrayal of what we stand for. Advertisement This week in the House of Commons, thanks to an opposition day debate, we had the opportunity to discuss the scrapping of Student Maintenance Grants. Currently the Tory government are planning to scrap these grants, that over half a million students currently benefit from, and instead replace them with loans. Sound familiar? It should. The Tories are doing the same thing with the NHS Bursary that I have written about previously. There are some serious flaws with this method of paying for higher education and I hope to outline them below. Advertisement This cut is an outright assault on the ambitions of our population that has long been on the agenda of our Tory government. Just six years ago the Tories were saying how important the Student Maintenance Grants were in making education accessible whilst increasing the cost of tuition to 9,000 a year, now they are scrapping them. I heard time and time again during the debate that although the grants were being scrapped the amount of money available to students will increase. Students will now be able to borrow 8,200 per year, a modest 800 increase of the 7,400 that is currently available. These figures mean nothing when you think about the 3,387 grant that will no longer be available to students. This money was crucial in paying for rent, food, bills and study materials, if anything it should be increased. Scrapping this grant but then adding 800 onto what has to be paid back is worthless. The way this legislation has come about also shows shocking disregard for the democracy of the House. Instead of bringing this legislation to the floor and debating it properly it was pushed through the Third Delegated Legislation Committee in a small debate that lasted barely 90 minutes. When it came to a vote it just got through with 10 ayes to 8 noes. The Tories wanted this to be hidden away, pushed through without an adequate debate or proper coverage. It is an unbelievable hypocrisy, that whilst George Osborne pushes through his austerity agenda, he is asking the poorest of our society to take on greater loans. It is also further evidence of Osborne's elusive long term economic plan - when all else fails, borrow more. Advertisement Scrapping maintenance grants are going to have a devastating impact on social mobility, the Tories aren't even hiding it any more, the government has already accepted that this change will mean students from poorer families will graduate with largest debts making sure the poorest of our society stay poor. The truth is maintenance grants are not just simply free money. When you pursue higher education you are more likely to have a higher income, throughout your lifetime earnings you will more than pay back these grants through the taxes that you pay. People who access higher education contribute so much more to society, they have a higher level of entrepreneurial activity and experience less unemployment. Graduates are more likely to vote and participate in public debates. The benefits are endless and unquantifiable. Scrapping maintenance grants is a desperate attempt by Osborne to find savings wherever he can because as a Chancellor he has failed consistently to meet any target he has ever set himself. This proposed saving of 1.57billion is a drop in the ocean compared to our 1.5trillion worth of debt that has increased under Osborne's time as Chancellor. Again Osborne has pound signs in his eyes with no idea of the actual worth. Ronnie Cowan is the SNP MP for Inverclyde Few political punch-bags take quite such a regular pummelling in the media as the Human Rights Act. But yesterday it came to the rescue of press freedom in the face of arbitrary abuse of state power - and not for the first time. Back in 2013, David Miranda was stopped by police at Heathrow Airport under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act. He was held for nine hours and questioned for long periods without a lawyer. His electronic equipment was confiscated - equipment that happened to be carrying encrypted journalistic material provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Miranda was helping his partner Glenn Greenwald, the first journalist to drag Snowden's mass surveillance revelations kicking and screaming into the light, when he was detained. Advertisement For years Liberty has argued that Schedule 7 - a breathtakingly broad and intrusive power to stop, detain, question and seize without suspicion that can be used against anyone travelling to, from or through the UK - is ripe for overuse and abuse. And yesterday, in a landmark victory for our free press, the Court of Appeal agreed with Liberty's intervention. It ruled Schedule 7 incompatible with journalists' right to freedom of expression, protected in British law by - guess what? - Article 10 of the Human Rights Act, because it allows the state to pry into journalists' work without any proper safeguards. This isn't the first time the Act has proven a bulwark for the protection of journalistic sources against powerful interests. It's the latest in a long line of cases. The Sun has employed it to challenge police snooping on confidential sources. The Daily Mail has used it in its defence too. The mere threat of Article 10 has been enough to protect newspapers, as the Guardian discovered when the Met came knocking for its phone-hacking sources. Advertisement Local press have benefitted too. Milton Keynes Citizen reporter Sally Murrer faced prosecution for receiving information from the police before Article 10 forced the case to be dropped. And Sunday Tribune journalist Suzanne Breen resisted an order to hand over confidential notes on the Real IRA using Article 10 and Article 2 - the right to life. A free press is a vital pillar shoring up our democracy - journalists must have room to hold governments to account. They are, and should be, an inconvenience for the powerful. But, in less than nine months in power, this Government has demonstrated clearly its approach to that "inconvenience"- by attempting to shut down, one by one, the tools that help the media and others to do just that. The first attack was on Freedom of Information. On Monday, Liberty will give evidence before the FOI Commission. Unnecessary and unashamedly weighted, there's no doubt that its aim is to curb the Act. Why else spend scarce time and resources on this when FOIA was subject to thorough cross-party scrutiny just three years ago (which found it was working well)? Why stack the Commission line-up with peers renowned for their dislike of FOI, or who have found themselves under its unforgiving glare? Without the FOI Act, we'd still be in the dark about a wealth of major public interest stories, not least the MPs' expenses scandal. Starting to see why the Government feels life might be easier without it? Then there's the Draft Investigatory Powers Bill - a law, in a twist of irony for Miranda, which has only come about thanks to Snowden's whistleblowing and Greenwald's journalism. Advertisement The Government promised it would contain new 'journalist protections'. What those protections appear to amount to is a draft code of practice which recommends police and spies pause for 'consideration' when intercepting communications between journalists and sources. The Bill gives journalists as much protection against abusive surveillance to journalists as it does the rest of us - none. The bulk hacking and interception powers it seeks to legitimise are indiscriminate by their nature - they don't differentiate by profession - and its pitiful safeguards mean journalists' communications can be spied on at the say-so of a minister or chief constable. And then there's the beleaguered Human Rights Act, which this Government wants to scrap. They promise its planned replacement, the 'Bill of Rights', will contain "an explicit statement backing freedom of expression for the press". On the Government's current trajectory, that promise carries diminishing weight. Like the FOIA, the HRA has been responsible for exposing countless acts of state mistreatment, neglect and abuse - revelations of monumental public interest. Without it, the parents of Private Cheryl James would not be on the brink of finding answers about how their daughter died, after battling for 20 years for information from police and the MoD. Without it, the sisters of Corporal Anne-Marie Ellement wouldn't have secured a fresh inquest into her death. Without it, journalists wouldn't have been able to establish that they should not be at risk of being detained and questioned and having precious information seized under Schedule 7 while travelling through UK airports. Advertisement Yet while newspapers of all persuasions have rightly gone out of their way to stand up for the FOIA, they're giving the Government a much easier ride when it comes to the HRA. Let's be clear: plans to scrap the HRA are fuelled by exactly the same motivations as the bid to curb FOI. Like the FOIA, the Human Rights Act is one of very few pieces of legislation that allow ordinary people - including the press - to take the mighty to task. Both Acts are crucial weapons in journalists' legislative armoury. Both Acts are currently in the crosshairs of a Government determined to pull down the shutters and keep inconvenient truths, valid concerns and dissent at bay. The powerful don't like giving away power. This is not a Government that stands for press freedom. It is not a Government that wants to be held to account. After another embarrassing loss at the hands of the courts, real safeguards for journalists - whether they toe the Government line or unearth political scandal - would mark a radical step-change in policy. The head of the NHS Simon Stevens has called for long-term solutions to funding care, particularly for older people, to be in place by 2018. In doing so he has opened a huge can of worms. The issue has defeated successive governments and eggheads like Sir Andrew Dilnot. Simon Stevens is right that we need to tackle this major challenge for our society and our ageing population. In the grand scheme of things, funding care is a relatively small problem compared to turning round a vast ocean tanker like the NHS. And solving care funding would make a massive difference to the NHS. Advertisement So why hasn't it been done already? There are several reasons. There is a long-established orthodoxy that, unlike the NHS, social care should be means tested and people should pay for care unless they have relatively low income or assets. This makes joined up funding of health and care very difficult. While the NHS remains a nationally funded system, much of care funding comes from councils and has been subject to substantial cuts. Politicians have not been brave enough to address the funding gap - or when they have, they have been shot down, for example, for proposing a 'death tax'. They haven't agreed on who should pay. Even the most recent plan to cap care costs has been postponed. And for many politicians, the care of some of our most vulnerable citizens simply hasn't been a top priority. That seems to be changing. Increasing numbers of people recognise that the care system is on the brink of collapsing, leaving many older people and their families without support and undermining the NHS. Advertisement So what can be done? Perhaps the biggest reason for inaction has been the failure to agree on a solution. Ultimately it's highly political and all about our priorities as a society. It's a trifle naive therefore for Simon Stevens to call for a political consensus on such an issue. But can we get any agreement on what should be done? I would argue for a new system of care funding that has three key principles - it should be fair, simple and sustainable. Care should be free at the point for delivery, like the NHS, and based on national eligibility criteria (as currently for continuing health care). Individuals should be responsible for paying their housing costs in residential care. Care could be commissioned by joined up local health and council bodies that have one unified budget. This would help older people get the care they need where they want it - at home and by supporting family carers. So would this be fair, simple and sustainable? Firstly, the fairest way to pay for care is through taxation. Tax revenues could be diverted from current spending priorities or additional sums could be raised. This might be done by reducing pension tax relief or fairer taxes on the income and wealth that have been accumulated by richer older people. This would also address Simon Stevens' concern about intergenerational fairness. As one of the wealthiest nations in the world, Britain could invest in a first class care system if we chose to do so. Secondly, simplicity is key. Every change to the care system has made it more complicated and required a growing legion of advisers and information services to guide families through the maze. Being free at the point of delivery would be very clear and remove an army of bureaucrats responsible for overseeing the millions of transactions in the system. A national system locally delivered would be both fair and simple. Advertisement Thirdly, how do we ensure that it is sustainable to meet the needs of our ageing population? We need better, fairer care now and for generations to come. To be intergenerationally fair, people need to know that what they pay for now will be there when they need it. Many of the current older generations mistakenly thought they had already paid for their health and care in later life. We can't make the same mistake again. To be sustainable, tax revenues need to be linked to the growth in our ageing population and its wealth. While watching the James Bond Movie Quantum of Solace with my grandson a while ago I began to think about Lithium. Lithium, a very soft silver white metal belonging to the alkali group of metals which carries the atomic number 3 is about to become one of the most sought after substances on earth, if it hasn't already! Why? Because it's a super conductor which means it's use within the development of batteries is an essential ingredient for production, not only of iPhones, iPads and Tablets but importantly electric cars and other forms of green transport. Advertisement It was Benjamin Franklin, that great polymath and founding father of The United States, who in 1749 first coined the word battery when he was linking a group of capacitors together, but the battery as we know it is about to enter a whole new era of importance, due entirely to lithium. Lithium use in the hugely important science of robotics will become more obvious to the general public as the years unfold. Lithium, which is found in brine, clay and certain rock face, exists in various countries around the world, particularly, Chile, China, and Bolivia. In my opinion though it is Bolivia that is set to become as important to developing green technology as oil was to the development of the internal combustion engine, and therefore cars. Advertisement Transmutation of lithium atoms to helium in 1932 was the world's first fully man made nuclear reaction. Today it is used in the production of thermonuclear weapons as well as for more positive and peaceful uses like those mentioned above. It is an essential trace element and is present in all organisms. Lithium is rarer than 25 of the 32 trace elements that exist and because of its use as described will become a source of conflict as commercial applications continue to unfold. Lithium Wars may be a strong description but it's extraction will cause a few commercial, if not military, battles that's for sure! Bolivia is a very poor landlocked country in South America where many of its people work in salt mines which let's face it isn't a lifestyle choice many of us would make. The country has borders with Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Chile and Peru. Salt and brine is important in developing commercial quantities of lithium which in turn may turn this nation of around 10 million people into the new Saudi Arabia. What Saudi has been to Oil for the last 100 years Bolivia may be to lithium! Advertisement Bolivia hasn't historically had a stable government, although it has been a constitutional democracy since 1990, this relative instability leaves it potentially open to influence by interested parties. Rich in minerals generally and with extreme biodiversity, It's silver deposits mainly funded the expansion of the Spanish Empire, indeed Spanish is still the official language, although over 30 others are spoken! As I say it was the James Bond movie Quantum of Solace that made me start to think about lithium and the future global investment opportunities that exist. You will need to watch the film to understand what I mean but suffice to say both Bolivia and Lithium emerge as important parts of the films plot. The Salar De Uyuni, a little known cacti desert expanding to over 5000 sq miles is situated in central Bolivia and contains nearly half of the world's lithium beneath its 10 billion tons of salt which factually makes this South American Republic something of a commercial hotspot. It will be interesting to see how the current Bolivian Government handles the huge commercial interest which will inevitably be focused upon this sparsely populated nation of mainly indigenous people. Advertisement Retaining control over production by way of granting licences will be essential if the country and its people's are to retain much of the wealth created. Water is scarce in this landlocked country so ensuring some of the money goes into clean water production will be important. Developing the nations tourist industry is another potential area of economic development. Bolivia is so bio-diverse that the potential for attracting tourists is vast. As the world progresses from its dependency on oil it will be lithium that will fuel much of its future growth. It is essential that governments around the world deal with the Bolivians fairly. It's their turn to prosper as their natural resources help the rest of us to prosper too. Retaining money to spend on education, health improvements and nutrition is essential, as are improvements to Bolivian airports. Being landlocked, further airport development is vital for tourism to expand exponentially. Holy shit I've been Kundalini'd (okay I'm not sure if Kundalini'd is a word) but I certainly feel like I've just been 'done' as opposed to doing. At sixteen weeks pregnant and woefully under exercised, I blame it on having two kids and regular #mumboss duties. I have made the vow 2016 is going to be my healthiest year yet. More walks, more swimming and more yoga, okay some yoga. I've always had an on/off relationship with yoga, which on the surface of things could or should really be my thing...I've tried many different types over the years: vinyassa flow, hatha, power yoga, bikram yoga, iyengar and sometimes I thought I was on the tipping point of falling in love with it...and then not so much. Advertisement I want to be flexible. I really, really do. But I also want to sweat. If I'm going to put my gym kit on, I want to feel like I've had a proper work out, otherwise what's the point? Having said that, I don't want to be reduced to a sniveling wreck on the floor, begging for mercy and water - The Bikram Experience. True story. So, after announcing I was pregnant (again) a colleague and someone I have been recommending to clients for pregnancy and birth support for a couple of years now, Doula Laura Jones AKA Wise Mother said 'Great, I'm just about to start up my pregnancy yoga classes again.' My response, 'fantastic.' Internal dialogue: How the hell do I get out of this one? I hate pregnancy yoga. You breathe, you relax, you talk about pregnancy ailments and mainly I get cold. Very cold from the overall lack of action. The other thing I was slightly concerned about was that Laura is a Kundalini teacher... Kunda-what?? The only things I'd really heard about Kundalini, involved Russell Brand and sex. Not together, but I have heard it referred to as 'The sexy yoga'. I was certain this was not going to be up my street at all. But when you commit to having the healthiest year ever alongside telling yourself you want to be more flexible and someone says they're starting up a pregnancy yoga class like you've never experienced before, you've got to try it out right? Advertisement So...I'm writing this after my second week of classes with Laura and I'm pretty blown away. Kundalini is yoga, like you've never experienced before.It's different. The first thing you'll notice when you go to a class is that your yogi is dressed from head to toe in white. I'm not really sure of the significance of this, but they definitely look like they mean business. Laura teaches in a small but beautifully formed studio in South-East London. With only room for a maximum of five students, it feels gorgeously intimate and you benefit from lots of personalized attention. Once the hot waters and lemon teas are handed out, it's time for the proceedings to start. Each session kicks off with a chant. It doesn't matter if you don't know the words because these are very thoughtfully printed out for you to read. There is something immediately centering about starting the class focusing on the sounds you are invited to create, and with that your practice has begun. After a the short chant, you do a warm up before moving into what is known as the Kreya. What surprised me about the warm up is how flowing the movements were. I'd describe them as lyrical, almost dance like, and during my first week all of this action took place on the floor. Large sweeping motions that got the heart pumping and my muscles almost audibly saying, 'eh up, what's going on here?' You then move into the main part of the class The Kreya. Which is a set of very simple movements that are repeated and build up on themselves over a period of about 20 minutes to half an hour. The movements are simple, but the self-control and discipline required to stick with the posture and hold the alignment is really bloody hard. And that is what makes is so different from all of the airy fairy pregnancy yoga classes I have tried in the past. You're learning to find a space within your mind that detaches you from the rest of your body. Laura coaxes you through the poses, guiding you to find expansion, find the little bit of pleasure in your body that maybe trying to convince you to 'just put your arms down.' Until your time in each posture is up. Advertisement Laura's years of experience of working with women through pregnancy and birth shines through as she connects the dots. Tying up what you're doing in class and how it will serve you during labour in a way that is completely tangible. So by the time you finish the class you leave feeling open, stretched and like a warrior princess. It's amazing! As I slowly awake from hibernation in the midst of an icy blue January, the cold has got me shivering - but it's the dangerous, stigmatising and misplaced attack on Muslim women that sent a cold shot down my spine. Conflating issues and attaching them to items of no relevance our government is doing what it seems to do best. Prime Minister David Cameron has affirmed his position that Muslim women can be banned from wearing veils in schools, courts and other British institutions following his announcement of a 20 million scheme to help counter extremism and confront 'dangerously' patriarchal homes - a scheme to enable Muslim women to wait for it.... learn English. Feeling sorry for those who are unable to attend ESOL (English Language) classes due to Tory cuts, (might you be a Hindu women or a Trinidadian man) for Muslim women there's around 100 for each of the alleged 190,000 women. Advertisement The Prime Minister wants Muslim women to learn English to counter extremism. Projected as though it was a light bulb moment of an idea, few and far between seem to share the same belief. Yes, it is an advantage for anyone to speak the spoken language of their residing country, it allows independence and opportunity but to place language barriers as a cause of 'extremism' is simply irresponsible. The comments and initiative conflate and draw attention to an item which isn't exclusive to any one community, and you'd think by reading or listening to what was said no Muslim women could speak a single word of English. The comments marginalise and target Muslim women separating their benefit to learn and speak English from every other community fuelling ammunition for anti-Islamic sentiment and the perception of otherness. Cameron has been criticised by his own party, those in opposition and basically anyone with any sense, Shadow Home Secretary Andy Burnham calling his approach "clumsy and simplistic". The PM said non-English speakers could be "more susceptible" to 'extremism', though it seems he's missed the fact that 'extremism' speaks more than a single language. To threaten women who may come into Britain to learn English or risk deportation is a targeted and unacceptable attack on a lone group and it seems in his drive to ramp up the fight against 'radicalisation' and 'extremism' and drive out what he's called patriarchal societies he is becoming his own enemy. In Presovo in Serbia, children are sleeping in thin tents amidst the snow and ice. Unicef warned yesterday that some won't survive if this goes on. This humanitarian crisis is the worst in Europe since the Second World War. But it will get even worse this year unless European Governments urgently act. Today's proposals from the European Commission still don't add up to a sustainable plan. Europe needs a comprehensive response that properly manages this crisis which includes more sanctuary but also more border controls too. EU President Donald Tusk is right to warn that time is running out for Europe to deal with the crisis. Throughout the winter people have continued to flee the war and violence especially in Syria and Afghanistan. Families are freezing in camps on our continent right now. But the easing of the weather in the Spring won't ease the problem - as more boats will start to arrive again. Advertisement We cannot just repeat last year - tiny bodies washed up on the shores, families walking for 60 kilometres to get dry clothes and food, huge crowds of people travelling through Europe, no border checks or controls in place to manage the crisis so it is possible for criminal gangs or extremists to exploit, no proper assessment of whether people are refugees in need of sanctuary or have safe homes to return to and need to leave. Greece had to cope with as many as 9,000 people arriving a day. Still the weakest economy in Europe, they struggled to provide enough humanitarian aid, not to mention registering, checking or assessing new arrivals. And although the one million people arriving make up only 0.2% of Europe's population, most of them have gone to just two countries - Germany and Sweden - creating real integration problems that mean they won't be able to do the same again this year. So European Governments need to work urgently together on a comprehensive response before it is too late. But this latest proposal that the Commission wants to ditch the Dublin Agreement in order to save the Schengen Agreement seems to me to be missing the point. Dublin has already collapsed and Schengen shouldn't be saved. The Dublin rules that require people to apply for asylum in the first country they arrive in haven't been working for at least a year. Meanwhile the Schengen Agreement - no border controls within continental Europe - is making it harder to control the situation. Europe needs internal border controls as well as external border controls right now in order to manage the flow of people, stop the smuggling gangs and increase security checks to build public confidence in the system. Advertisement For Britain which is rightly keeps its own border checks, opts out of Schengen and would have a new opt out of any replacement for Dublin, it doesn't look like these changes in themselves will make much difference. So Eurosceptics trying to exploit the issue are ignoring the facts. Indeed, our agreement with the French government that we can carry out our border checks in Calais is an important benefit of EU cooperation that we should not put at risk by pulling out. So what more is needed to respond to the crisis? For a start Europe needs to implement the things Ministers talked about last year but failed to deliver; more work with Turkey to stop the smuggling gangs' dangerous boats, more support for camps and refugees in the region, so people don't need to flee to Europe to get sufficient food, medicine, shelter, schooling or jobs. We also need stronger external and internal border controls and safe, legal routes to apply for sanctuary in Europe to undermine the gangs and illegal routes. In particular there need to be proper, extensive refugee assessments and security checks when people first arrive in Europe so refugees can be helped as quickly as possible and those who have safe homes can be returned. And all European countries - as well as the US, Canada and other countries outside Europe - should offer to do more to provide sanctuary too. So yes, Britain must also offer to do more too. We have a proud history of providing sanctuary to those fleeing conflict and persecution, and we should do the same again, starting with child refugees. Labour's Alf Dubs, himself a survivor of the Kindertransport that rescued 10,000 children from the Nazis, has tabled an amendment to the Immigration Bill that would implement calls from Save the Children to take 3,000 unaccompanied refugee children from within Europe as a matter of urgency. We are facing the biggest humanitarian crisis since the Second World War. It is not enough to bury our heads in the sand in the hope that someone else will step in. We all have a moral responsibility to act before this gets so much worse. Advertisement Stefan Postles via Getty Images CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA - DECEMBER 03: Tony Abbott during House of Representatives question time at Parliament House on December 3, 2015 in Canberra, Australia. Mr Brough is being investigated by the Australian Federal Police any involvement in getting former staffer James Ashby to obtain copies of then-speaker Peter Slipper's diary in 2012. (Photo by Stefan Postles/Getty Images) Tony Abbott is reportedly planning a comeback and hopes to return to the post of Prime Minister, a plan which has seen Bill Shorten dub him "the Terminator". Because he'll be back. Advertisement Abbott, deposed as PM by Malcolm Turnbull in September 2015, has hung around in parliament and resisted expectations he would resign after losing a ballot for the Liberal Party leadership. Reports have emerged of a "resistance movement" of MPs loyal to Abbott and working toward his return -- most famously, the so-called "monkey pod room" -- and today Sydney's Daily Telegraph newspaper published a report citing "Liberal sources" that Abbott is being urged to fight for the leadership of the party again. Hang ten, dudes "Liberal sources have told The Daily Telegraph he is being urged by his former chief of staff Peta Credlin to have another crack in the hope he might regain the top job... He is said to have ambitions that he can mount a comeback like former Liberal prime ministers John Howard and Robert Menzies," the Telegraph reported. A front page screamed "I'll be back! Tony's plan to be PM again," with a headline reading "Tony not giving up on being PM again." Advertisement A spokesman for Abbott denied the claims to the Sydney Morning Herald, saying "the whole thing is fanciful". Speaking to ABC Radio on Wednesday, opposition leader Bill Shorten gave us a taste of his near-legendary zingers, which we have been sorely missing over the parliament break. "I don't know about you, but I, like many Australians, share the relief that Tony Abbott is gone. Although I noticed today that a bit like the Terminator he's vowing to have Tony Abbott 2.0 -- he'll be back," Shorten said. Turnbull, in his capacity as current PM (for now, at least) is in Washington, having met with President Barack Obama overnight. Our alliance is founded not just on national self-interest, not just on economics or kinship, but on shared values. We define our national identities by reference to common political values of freedom, the rule of law, democracy -- real democracy, which empowers the majority but constrains them so as to protect the minority. A photo posted by Malcolm Turnbull (@turnbullmalcolm) on Jan 19, 2016 at 11:45am PST Advertisement Turnbull is the fourth Aussie PM that Obama has entertained at the White House since 2009, after Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and Abbott. Obama is no doubt struggling to keep up. ASSOCIATED PRESS Barack Obama meets with Kevin Rudd, March 24, 2009 ASSOCIATED PRESS Barack Obama, with Julia Gillard, March, 7, 2011 ASSOCIATED PRESS Barack Obama with Tony Abbott, June 12, 2014 ASSOCIATED PRESS Barack Obama meets with Malcolm Turnbull January 19, 2016 Of course, Abbott wouldn't be the first Aussie pollie to re-take the top job after being shafted previously. Kevin Rudd was deposed by Julia Gillard but then recaptured the prime ministership by, in turn, deposing her; while Malcolm Turnbull, who was replaced as Liberal leader by Abbott in 2009, of course then unseated Abbott last year. Also, FYI Twitter users; in the style of the #Ruddmentum and #ReTurnbull hashtags, we've agreed the official Tony comeback hashtag is #ToneBack (as in, a play on "turn back," as in "turn back the boats". It'll be a thing.) The Pakistani Taliban reportedly scaled walls and attacked students in their dormitories at Bacha Khan University, but were killed before they could detonate suicide vests. The death toll is expected to rise in the deadly attack, which takes place under two years after the Pakistani Taliban killed 145 people in another school attack. [NYT] "Russias military intervention in Syria is finally generating gains on the ground for Syrian government forces, tilting the battlefield in favor of President Bashar al-Assad to such an extent that the Obama administrations quest for a negotiated settlement to the war suddenly looks a lot less likely to succeed." [WaPo] A look at the last Navy SEAL to die in Afghanistan. [NYT] "Intelligence officials reviewing emails on former Secretary of State Hillary Clintons private computer server have found information they consider to be of a higher level of classification than 'top secret,' according to a letter sent to lawmakers last week by the intelligence agencies inspector general." [NYT] Advertisement Inside the "perfect storm" creating such a backlog in FBI background checks for gun purchases. [USA Today] "Though precise figures are not available, most ISIS fighters probably earned a few hundred dollars a month prior to the pay cut." [Vocativ] WHATS BREWING Check out the first chapter of a graphic novel which walks you through a day in the life of a humanitarian worker in a post-ISIS world. [HuffPost] Advertisement "If you think back 10 years ago, the Academy was doing a better job. Think about how many more African Americans were nominated," the superstar told Variety. You can read the President of the Academy's statement here. [HuffPost] Change it. Immediately. You can thank us later. [Gizmodo] A lot. [HuffPost] "In other words, in just 34 years, plastic trash in the ocean will outweigh all the fish in the sea." [HuffPost] If you pack your bags and head to Japan. [HuffPost] For more from The Huffington Post, download our app for iOS or Android. WHAT'S WORKING The funds for cloud services will be doled out to various to nonprofits and university researchers over the next three years. [NYT] For more, sign up for the What's Working newsletter. BEFORE YOU GO ~ Michigans governor vowed to fix the Flint water crisis in his State of the Union. ~ Pakistani boy: I have no regrets after cutting my hand off for the Holy Prophet. ~ The Coast Guard has called off the search for 12 marines whose helicopters collided in Hawaii Thursday. ~ Sarah Palin endorsed Donald Trump for president. ~ NASA is hiring astronauts, but it takes a lot to become the next Matt Damon. ~ It may be faster to have everyone stand still on escalators. ~ Want a date with the "Sexiest Doctor Alive?" It's possible. ~ The "Here to Make Friends" crew dissects how horribly the women acted on the last episode of "The Bachelor." Advertisement ~ This list of things you've forgotten to clean in your house makes you want to reach for the Clorox, stat. ~ China wants to be the first country to land on the far side of the moon. ~ Nielsen will account for social media commentary in its new ratings system. ~ All the ways the universe may end (uplifting for your Wednesday -- we try). The "lie-detector" test has a storied history in law enforcement, as well as a dubious place in American courts. The idea of using physical response to determine whether a person is lying is nothing new. While the first polygraph machine was invented in 1921, the practice of listening to a defendant's heart beat during testimony dates back to ancient times. In 1923, shortly after the invention of the "modern" polygraph, which analyzes physical responses (heart rate, blood pressure and breathing), the United States Supreme Court ruled in Frye v. United States that this new "science" would be admissible in court only if and when it was "sufficiently established to have gained general acceptance." Advertisement Well, it's been almost 100 years, and it has failed to gain that acceptance. The accuracy rate in determining truth or deception by polygraph is as low as 70 percent, according to some critics. In fact, a person can purportedly train himself or herself to beat the test by controlling certain physical responses. Do an internet search and see for yourself. Recently, the Oklahoma owner of Polygraph.com was convicted and sentenced to two years in federal prison after teaching people how to beat a lie detector. It is not against the law to learn how to beat a polygraph, yet Douglas Williams, a former Oklahoma City police officer, was convicted of two counts of mail fraud and three counts of witness tampering. Apparently, he knew his strategies would be used in federal matters to deceive the United States government. Regardless, there are institutions like the American Polygraph Association (APA) which advocate for the use and accuracy of polygraph evidence. According to its aggregate data meta-analysis, the APA reported that a review of all results "produced a decision accuracy of 87% (confidence interval 80%-94%) with an inconclusive rate of 13%." However, the APA also conceded that the only studies included in the meta-analysis were those which met the requirements of the APA Standards of Practice. Now don't get me wrong: I firmly believe that polygraph results have a place and a purpose when it comes to negotiations behind closed doors. When a seasoned prosecutor and an experienced criminal defense lawyer can sit down and discuss the mitigating (or damning) findings of a polygraph test administered during the investigation, there is a fair chance that the test result may have some serious bearing on the direction of negotiations. Advertisement But to put the results in front of a jury? No thank you. Possibly the largest problems with the polygraph, and why it has been inadmissible in most U.S. courts, is the notion that jurors give the test too much weight, particularly in light of its noted inaccuracies. In some states, the mere mention of a polygraph test to the jury, especially without a prior stipulation, can result in mistrial or even sanctions against an attorney. A recent ruling by the United States 10th Circuit Court, however, might lead to sweeping changes in those jurisdictions. In United States v. Tenorio, a man convicted of sexually assaulting his 16-year-old niece claimed that his confession was coerced, and he was innocent of the charges. Tenorio alleged that when an investigator offered a "lie-detector" test, he willingly took it, hoping the test would clear his name. Instead, the investigator intensified her investigation with "confrontational questioning," accusing Tenorio of lying and telling him to "man up." Tenorio ultimately confessed, but later argued it was only because he was distraught and did not understand why the agent was "coming at [him]" and didn't believe him. In bringing up coercion as his defense, prosecutors argued Tenorio opened the door for mention of a polygraph test he took voluntarily. The District Court cautioned prosecutors not to bring up the actual results of the test -- only to indicate that the defendant took a polygraph test as part of the attempt to disprove coercion. The judge furthermore cautioned the jury: Advertisement Not to speculate or take into consideration anything regarding the polygraph examination or its potential results in reference to the guilt or innocence of the defendant or in reference to whether or not he did or did not commit the acts charged in the indictment. Such an admonition shows exactly why the polygraph should not even be mentioned to the jury. The judge had to order the jurors not to take into account what every normal person would logically ask when put on notice that a test was administered: "Did he pass or not?" Taken one step further, and the inference from the lack of an answer becomes: "Well, he must have failed the innocence test if they are still arguing about this in court." After his conviction, Tenorio's appeal was denied when the 10th Circuit ruled the test was not being used as scientific evidence of guilt or innocence, but rather as evidence to confirm or deny the alleged coercion. And herein lies the slippery slope. The mere mention of polygraph tests in the presence of the jury begins to shift the burden onto the criminal defendant. The notion that there is a test which can prove if someone is lying puts the obligation on any innocent defendant to take, and pass, such test. If the test exists, and its being talked about in court, the failure to present the results leaves the impression that the results aren't good. If and when the practice of discussing polygraph exams in jury trials becomes the norm, criminal defense attorneys might as well kiss their profession goodbye. While many folks might jump for joy at the idea, one has to wonder what would remain of the prosecution's burden to prove a criminal defendant guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt." That burden is the cornerstone of the United States criminal justice system and it adds an undeniably human element to the cold and calculated court proceedings. Consequently, humans are necessary to help explain and argue the facts upon which the reasonable doubt is established. Advertisement The idea of citizens contemplating "reasonable" doubts as to the guilt of the accused implies that they are allowed to use reason, which seems to be distinctively human in nature, once we consider a certain level of cognition (a dog can reason its way out of a hole under the fence but not a pair of pants). This "human element" is exactly why we are allotted more than one juror to hear our case, and why any verdict returned must be a unanimous decision (or at least a majority). Someone once described the dissolution of the USSR as a typical Soviet divorce -- you're no longer married but you're still forced to live in the same apartment. So it is with North and South Korea, which have had more than their share of animosity the past half century, which has, not surprisingly, affected the U.S. in one way or the other. North Korea has tried to assassinate the South Korean President and when that failed, it doubled down and seized the USS Pueblo. A few years later, North Korean soldiers hacked two United States Army officers in the DMZ to death. And there's the more recent missile-rattling by current Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un. On November 29, 1987, North Korean agents hid a bomb on Korean Airlines Flight 858, killing all 115 on board. It was later learned that the bombing was intended to destabilize the South Korean government and to scare off participants in the upcoming Olympic Games to be held in Seoul the following summer. The State Department called the bombing a "terrorist act" and designated North Korea as a state-sponsor of terrorism. Advertisement Thomas Dunlop served as Political Counselor in Seoul from 1983-1987 and later as Director for Korean Affairs at the State Department. He discusses the details of the bombing, including how the North Korean agents were supposed to take cyanide if caught; one was stopped and she was interrogated, and later expressed remorse for her actions. Though she was sentenced to death, she was pardoned by South Korean President Roh Tae-woo, who saw her as a victim of North Korean brainwashing. Read other Moments on Korea. The downing of KA Flight 858 DUNLOP: In November 1987, a scheduled Korean Air airliner [formerly Korean Air Lines (KAL)] flying East from the Persian Gulf and bound for Bangkok and Seoul, disappeared over the Andaman Sea, just South of Burma [now Myanmar]....All of the [passengers] were killed. By then I had returned to the United States and was Country Director for Korean Affairs. I was at home. This incident occurred on a Saturday evening, Washington time. Incidents of this kind, with great predictability, seem to take place on weekends. The full story of what happened to that airplane did not come out until the two people who had placed the bomb in an overhead compartment in Bahrain and then left the aircraft were captured. Advertisement It is a fantastic, fascinating story. One of them committed suicide. The other one was prevented from committing suicide, a young Korean woman named Miss Kim. Miss Kim did not succeed in committing suicide. She became sick after biting into a cyanide pill, but not did not die, and there was no damage to her brain. She was taken back to Seoul. Over a period of weeks and months she told her story to her South Korean interrogators. It was a remarkable story of precise training, over a period of years, to become a terrorist. It went "wrong" simply because her escape route from the terminal had not been properly planned. Everything was planned up to the point of getting the bomb on the airplane and getting the two North Korean terrorists off the plane. This all went like clockwork. Then, their escape routes from the airport did not work out, and they were caught. She told her story of having been recruited as a bright young graduate of the North Korean school system. She was told what an honor it was to work for the Korean fatherland and the reunification of her people. She was told that her mission was to be the first in a series of missions. This was the curious, scary part, but there were other, scary parts of this story. The missions were designed to destroy the Seoul Olympics, and, in the course of destroying the Olympic Games, set in train a series of events which would bring down the South Korean Government, expose the Americans as the weak, imperialist manipulators that they are, and lead eventually to the reunification of Korea. What more glorious task did this young woman have to devote her life to but this? She was sent to Macao for training in the Chinese language, because her cover story was that she was to be Chinese. She apparently was a brilliant student of languages. Very few adults can learn to speak a new language without an accent. While she probably had an accent, that probably could have been explained by saying that she was from Macao, where a special kind of Chinese is spoken. She spent a couple of years in Macao, studying Chinese. Advertisement She went back to Pyongyang, North Korea, where she was then indoctrinated in the use of explosives in a bottle looking like a bottle of cognac. She was introduced to an older man, who was to be her partner in this venture. She was then drilled on how she was to get to Baghdad, where she was to board a flight to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. For this operation their route led from Pyongyang to Moscow, Budapest, Belgrade, and then on to Baghdad, where they boarded the Korean Air Lines flight. "The North Korean man took a cigarette, which had a cyanide pill in it" They left the plane in Bahrain, having placed the explosives in the overhead luggage compartment. The plane on which they were supposed to leave Bahrain stopped at Qatar, where they did not plan on stopping. A hold had been placed on flights to Qatar coming from Bahrain. The authorities in Qatar were very smart. They had been told to interview all of the people who had left Bahrain and see whether they would reveal anything. Not only did they interview these passengers, they detained them, so that their onward flight left Qatar without them. They had a backup ticket which they used in an effort to switch identities. They switched the ticket, but the passport was being held by the Qatari authorities. So there was a mismatch between tickets and passports, and they were held. The woman and her companion were seated in a holding room in the airport at Qatar by the airport security people. There was a Qatari policewoman sitting between the two North Koreans. There was another security officer on the other side of the man. The North Korean man asked if he could smoke. The Qatari security officer said, "Yes." So the North Korean man reached into his pocket and pulled out a package of regular cigarettes. The North Korean girl asked, "May I smoke, too?" The Arab policewoman said, "Yes." Advertisement So the North Korean girl took a cigarette and the North Korean man took a cigarette, each of which had a cyanide pill in it. Rather than biting these pills simultaneously, the North Korean man bit first and went into convulsions. Apparently, this happened bang!, just like that. He started to convulse with the cigarette hanging out of his mouth. Rather than be distracted by looking to her left, the Arab policewoman looked to her right, saw the cigarette going into the North Korean girl's mouth, and hit her arm. The North Korean girl bit the pill but only got a tiny amount of cyanide. So the North Korean girl survived. One aspect of the fallout from all this was that if we hadn't been doing everything we could to help the South Koreans in the security field, this added the last bit of incentive, if anything remained to be added. After the North Korean girl was brought to Seoul, we heard through the South Korean intelligence services that she was likely to do a full "conversion" from allegiance to North Korea to allegiance to South Korea and tell all. We wanted to be very sure that we and the South Koreans could convincingly assert that she had not been coerced into a confession. That is, that she was not tortured. We explained to the South Koreans how very important this confession was to be but we also said that it would not be credible unless we had access to her. The South Koreans did not want her to have access to anybody. However, we fought hard with the South Koreans for a couple of days, knowing that time was not going to be very good to us in this matter. We finally did get access to her, were able to interview her, and were able to convince ourselves that the reason she had made this conversion was simply that she gave everything to one particular cause. Advertisement When she found out that the North Korean cause was flawed, when she found out that life in Seoul was not as it had been described to her and that people in South Korea were not clothed in tatters or were hungry and starving, she made her conversion. She was also no doubt in terrible fear of torture and death, and this had its effect. But in this case I was convinced that the primary cause of her conversion was her appreciation that she was not tortured and killed. You can find many similar conversions among Japanese POWs in WWII, similarly indoctrinated to anticipate torture and death. For me that was certainly a very instructive insight into the degree to which the North Koreans were willing to go in pursuing their objectives. Much has been written about how our economy is changing, particularly in light of the digital revolution. This economy is defined by entirely new ways of organizing and working together, by an energizing sense of possibility, and by a seemingly insatiable thirst for problem solving. But a central question remains: problem-solving for and with whom? How will the new economy engage and support the least visible among us? Now that we're living in the era of tech-enabled scale and efficiency, it's time to elevate empathy and equity if we hope to shape a more caring economy that works for all of us. These questions remind me of many of the people I meet in my work to bring recognition and basic labor protections to domestic workers around the United States. People like Erlinda, who cares for the elderly in Chicago. Erlinda became a caregiver when she arrived to this country, remembering the fulfillment of caring for the elders in her community in the Philippines. At our first meeting, she shared a story about a client she referred to as "my lady." Advertisement They had a morning ritual. When Erlinda arrived in the mornings, she would sing while she helped her lady out of bed and in and out of the bath to start their day. One morning, rather than ask her to sing, she asked for her hand. Erlinda knew immediately that her beloved client was preparing to say good-bye. So she quickly gathered the family together and they surrounded her in a circle of care as she passed away. Erlinda was proud that those final moments were exactly as she deserved: full of care and human connection. As much as she loves her work caring for others, it's a tough job. In addition to the emotional challenges associated with illness and end of life, the hours can be long and unpredictable. The average annual median income for a home care worker in the United States is $15,000, a wage so low that many of our greatest caregivers are forced to find other work. And yet home care is in huge demand - it's the fastest growing occupation in the U.S. economy, a result of the aging generation and our longer lifespans. Tech companies have emerged to help families find caregivers, and they are creating jobs in the process. But like other parts of the new economy, the question is, will they be poverty wage jobs or jobs that acknowledge the true value of the work? Thankfully, we can already point to some exciting ways that business entrepreneurs and leaders are coming together with changemakers to ensure it's the latter. For example, our team at National Domestic Workers Alliance recently teamed up with Care.com, the largest tech company in the industry, to promote good work and fair standards in care work. In June we launched a campaign, together with an employer group, Hand-in-Hand, called the Fair Care Pledge to encourage employers of caregivers and domestic workers to commit to paying fair wages and offering paid time off and a clear work agreement. Over 40,000 individual employers have taken the pledge, and our numbers continue to grow. Advertisement This same concept is reaching into other parts of the new economy through the Good Work Code, a simple framework for tech companies in particular to create good work for the growing numbers of people who work in the online economy. The framework includes eight principles: safety, stability and flexibility, transparency, shared prosperity, a livable wage, inclusion and input, support and connection, growth and development. A dozen companies took the lead in signing onto the Good Work Code when it launched last October, and a new round of companies will be announced in the coming weeks. Finally, in October of last year, a diverse group of leaders across business, non-profit, academia and labor signed onto a letter calling for portable benefits - a framework for benefits that allows workers to move from job to job without risking access to a basic safety net. With increasing numbers of workers working part-time and temporary jobs, or on multiple platforms, many can no longer access the benefits and security we've long taken for granted. The concept has gained traction, with important champions in government and the tech economy. These advancements show what's possible in many parts of the new economy. They also serve as an important reminder: we shape our economy as much as it shapes us. We have an opportunity right now to make sure the digital revolution is supported by a long-overdue revolution in values - one that embeds empathy and equity more centrally in how we imagine progress and success. And one that channels the wave of innovation we are living through toward making life better for Erlinda and for all of the people whose work enriches our lives and moves our world forward. This post is part of a "Thriving in a World of Change" series produced by The Huffington Post and Ashoka. The series is part of The Huffington Post's coverage of The World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting, and explores how, in an age of unprecedented change and connectivity, we must transition quickly to an everyone-a-contributor world with empathetic ethics at its core. Read all the posts in the series here. Millennials Katie Costella and Jesse Barkin each traveled nearly 1,000 miles to show their support for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. TOLEDO, IA - "Give us a honk! Honk for Hillary!" Jesse Barkin yelled, as Clinton supporters arrived at the convention center on Monday afternoon. This millennial came all the way from Maine to volunteer for Clinton's campaign. "I think she represents millennials and pragmatic and progressive thinking," Barkin said. "I think she's the candidate to win so I'm out here doing everything I can in the cold." Right next to Barkin stood Katie Costella in 10 degrees clutching a 'Hillary for Iowa' sign in her hands. She traveled nearly 1,000 miles from Warrenton, Va. to support Clinton. Both Barkin and Costella, between their chattering teeth, said they were in their mid-20s. Costella braves the cold to show her support for Clinton in Iowa. "It's just her time to get in the White House. We need someone who's going to build on what Obama has done for the past eight years," Costella said. "We need to make sure we don't get a Republican in there that's going to set us back." Clinton has warned Iowans that if a Republican were to win the election, all of the progress with the Affordable Care Act would be lost. In order to continue to work toward universal healthcare these millennials say Clinton is the candidate to continue Obama's progress. Advertisement One issue that Clinton wants to improve upon is the affordability and fair price for men and women when it comes to healthcare. According to The Center of American Progress, nearly 20 percent* of Millennials were uninsured as of 2014. "We need to require insurance companies to give people three free visits before their deductible kicks in," Clinton said. "I think it is so important that she doesn't want us to pay more for healthcare just because we're women," Kelsea Johnson said. The Elon University student is pro-Hillary because of her activism for women's rights. Elon is located in Elon, N.C. Healthcare has become difficult for many millennials to afford, but so have student loans. With increasing rates students are faced with more expenses then they can afford. College tuition and debt have become hot button issues for younger generations. According to Pew Research 75 percent** of adults say college is too expensive for most Americans to afford. 57 percent** say that the expense of a college education is not worth their money. Advertisement Clinton has created a detailed $350 billion plan that will help students and their families afford a college education to avoid drowning in debt. The plan, the New College Compact, claims students will not be held back by costs and loans. "I really think that her college affordability plans are really well thought out and achievable," Connor Doyle said. This 21-year-old Oklahoman and volunteer for the Clinton campaign chose to go to The University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia instead of a school in the United States. This is what prompted this millennial to seek an education outside of the U.S. because the education he was seeking was more affordable overseas. "I think she's really fighting for families like mine. So that debt is not stacked against us, so that we can really try to get ahead," Doyle said. Clinton talks healthcare with Tama County residents. During the event Clinton outlined her education plans for the U.S. saying, if she were president she would make community colleges free and public universities debt free. "I want you to be able to have an endpoint to your debt, so that you're not paying for it when you're in a nursing home," Clinton said. Advertisement Millennials have been flocking to Clinton's campaign since she began discussing her ideas of how to make an education more affordable and wages higher. With so many appealing ideas for the younger generation, it is no wonder Clinton is one of the Democratic parties favorites. It is often said that the foreign policy of a country is a reflection of its domestic one. This is particularly true about Iran, where the hardliners, and reformists and moderates espouse two starkly different domestic policies, the result of which is two vastly different foreign policies. Similar to all other countries, the power struggle in Iran is over the scarce resources of wealth, power and social prestige. Unfair competition can make discrimination and inequality part of the political system. We can see this even in the United States, the most powerful democracy on earth, where the economic gap between the rich and poor has widened and given rise to the 1 percent rich, 99 percent poor phenomenon. The same is true about Iran. The identity of the Islamic Republic of Iran is based on a loud power struggle, together with harsh repression of the population. Having connection to the government, the embodiment of the political system, is the simplest way of getting rich in a country in which the economy is controlled by the government and the connection gives one special privileges not available to the ordinary citizens. This has given rise to vast corruption, some of which has been revealed. Some have even been executed for their involvement in the corruption. Advertisement After former Iranian reformist President Mohammad Khatami left office in 2005, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei helped Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a hardliner, come to power. After the reformist 6th Majles [parliament] finished its four-year term in 2004, Khamenei eliminated the reformists from the power hierarchy and created the 7th, 8th and 9th Majles in his own image. Several times he declared proudly that the dual state - the elected and unelected parts - has been unified, and the nation is run by the conservatives. Saeed Jalili, Khamenei's chief nuclear negotiator, conveyed the same impression in the foreign policy arena. But, the Khamenei/Ahmadinejad/Jalili state also had to use extreme repression, cracking down harshly on the democratic Green Movement; it also suffered under the burden of the United Nations Security Council resolutions and the most crippling economic sanctions imposed on Iran by the United States and its allies. Ultimately, the hardliners harsh repression that also gave rise to vast corruption and unwise and uncompromising foreign policy failed utterly, costing the ordinary Iranians heavily. The revelations made about the Ahmadinejad's era have been so terrible that no hardliner dares to take responsibility for them. But, after Hassan Rouhani was elected President in June 2013, the nuclear negotiations began to speed up, culminating in the historic July 14, 2015 agreement between Iran and P5+1. Iran began implementing its obligations, and on January 16 the economic sanctions against Iran were lifted after the International Atomic Energy Agency certified that Iran has carried out its obligations. Advertisement Long secret negotiations with the U.S. also led to the exchange of the prisoners between the two nations on the same day, which is another significant foreign policy achievement for both Rouhani and President Obama. Rouhani has also been trying to soften up Iran's harsh national security state. Though he has had only limited success, the political arena is still far better than the Ahmadinejad era. Both camps in Iran, hardliners led by Khamenei, and the reformists led by Rouhani, Khatami and former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, are keenly aware that the nuclear accord, lifting the sanctions, and negotiations with the United States have important implications for the domestic affairs. The reformists and moderates would like to compromise with the hardliners, akin to the nuclear accord, whereby both sides made concessions. They want the release of all the political prisoners, free elections, free press and freedom for political groups and parties, improved relations with the outside world, particularly the United States, and detente in the region. Hardliners oppose them all. Khamenei has said repeatedly that the "enemy" - the United States - wants to "infiltrate" Iran and regain its old influence. Hardliners are terrified by the prospects of a landslide victory by the reformists and moderates in the parliamentary elections of February 26. Thus, they are doing their best to prevent this, and block any reforms internally and any opening to the outside world. They want to show that "nothing has changed" in Iran, as the conservative judiciary chief Sadegh Larijani once put it. Thus, in essence, they want to topple Rouhani. Advertisement Ransacking Saudi Arabia's embassy in Tehran and its consulate in Mashhad (an important religious city in northeast Iran) can be understood within this framework. The attacks on Saudi Arabia's embassy and consulate were in fact attacks on the reformists and moderates. It led to Saudi Arabia and its allies to either cut their diplomatic relations with Iran, or downgrade them. Iran was also condemned by the United Nations Security Council. After the terrible consequences of the attacks for Iran became clear, the hardliners retreated and claimed that the attacks were the work of the "enemy's agents" and "vigilante" groups, whereas everyone in Iran knows that they are supported by the hardliners. Ali Motahhari, the maverick Majles deputy, said in an interview on January 13 that the mob that attacked Saudi Arabia's diplomatic posts are linked to the security and intelligence forces, and that the reason the police did not stop them was twofold. One was that they are linked to important organs of the regime, while the second reason is that the hardliners need them if the regime is facing threats to its survival. Then, ten U.S. sailors were arrested in Iran's territorial waters by the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution (IRGC) navy, but were released after several phone conversations between Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. But, even after the release of the sailors, the IRGC commanders continued to make threats, which must again be viewed as targeting the reformists and moderates. Advertisement Rear Admiral Ali Fadavi, commander of the IRGC navy, claimed that "at the time of arresting the American sailors [the aircraft carrier] USS Truman was acting unprofessionally for 40 minutes. American and French carriers were in the path of our missiles, and if they had continued their unprofessional behavior, there would have been an unprecedented catastrophe for them, which would have destroyed them." Major General Hassan Firoozabadi, chief of staff of the armed forces, said that this event [the arrest and release of the sailors] and Iran's power and alertness revealed the Americans' vulnerabilities. "If it were not for the wisdom and goodwill of Iranian commanders, Americans would have had a new catastrophe [on their hands]," he added. Former IRGC chief Major General Mohsen Rezaei claimed that the IRGC arrested 10 personnel from the most modern and powerful military in the world, and then the Americans asked Iran to release them, hence concluding that, "Today, the U.S. [armed forces] is not significant compared to Iran, let alone Saudi Arabia. I can see the day that the people of Saudi Arabia hang the al-Saud dynasty." Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naghdi, the commander of the Basij militia, strongly criticized the domestic press and said, Advertisement "Our IRGC forces captured the U.S. sailors, who were like mice, and told them your place is not here [Iran]. But, some in the press, which is not clear where they belong to, published the thankful message of U.S. Secretary of State as their front page title. In fact, we must say [to them] that you must not thank [us] because your soldiers should not be in the Persian Gulf [in the first place]." Such an aggressive posture in foreign policy is followed by the same type of domestic policy. Even here, the IRGC wants to control everything. Mohammad Hossein Nejat, deputy IRGC chief for cultural and social affairs, said on January 14 that Rouhani's interior ministry should have disqualified from running a large number of the candidates for the elections of the Majles and the Assembly of Experts [a Constitutional body that appoints the next Supreme Leader], and because it did not, the Guardian Council [which vets the candidates for almost all elections] must do the job. After Rafsanjani and Rouhani publicly opposed disqualification of the candidates for the elections, Khamenei said in a speech that the Guardian Council does have the authority to disqualify the candidates. In response, reformist cleric Hossein Ansari-Rad, who headed a commission in the reformist 6th Majles that investigated the citizens' complaints about the government, criticized the Council in a public letter to Khamenei, and called for national reconciliation, release of the political prisoners, and an end to house arrest of the Green Movement's leaders, former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi and his wife Dr. Zahra Rahnavard and former Speaker of the Majles Mehdi Karroubi. But, initial reports indicate that the Council has approved the qualifications of only about 4o percent of the candidates. The Guardian Council has disqualified the moderates and reformists en masse to the point that in some towns they do not have even one candidate. Only 30 out of the 3,000 reformist candidates across the country were approved. This is while on January 9 Khamenei asked people, even "those who reject him and the Islamic Republic," to vote in the upcoming elections. Given what has happened, doing so means voting for Khamenei's candidates. The moderates and reformists hope that Rouhani, as the second highest official of the nation, resist the disqualifications by the Guardian council. He has promised to "use all of my authority" to get as many candidates qualified for running as possible. But, compared to Khamenei, Rouhani has limited power and his popular support is not organized. Given the volatile state of the Middle East, the reformists and moderates do not want nationwide protests against the hardliners, similar to what happened after the presidential elections of 2009 and the Green Movement. Advertisement Iran's power struggle, in both domestic and foreign affairs arenas, will intensify in the coming weeks. Hardliners have been using the economic recession, a direct result of the sanctions and the corruption, to attack the moderates, and it is doubtful that lifting of the sanctions on January 16 will have discernable effect on the economy by the time the elections are held on February 26. The oil price has also collapsed, causing more troubles for the Rouhani administration. Despite these, it is still possible that the next Majles will have a moderate composition. The most important question for Iranian democrat is how to transform Iran to a democratic state without Iran becoming another Iraq, Libya or Syria. Scholastic publishers evidently thought United States school children needed a new picture book to help them celebrate George Washington's birthday. Unfortunately the book also seems to celebrate slavery in the United States and has now been recalled. The book is narrated by an enslaved African young girl named Delia. Images show happy slaves baking George Washington a birthday cake. One panel announces that "Hercules, a slave, takes great pride in baking the president's cake. But this year there is one problem -- they are out of sugar." But evidently that was not the only problem in the new nation. According to the book's author, the story was intended to shed light on the "complex and varied nature of enslaved existence" including "enslaved people who had a better quality of life than others and 'close' relationships with those who enslaved them." Actually George Washington's relationship to slavery was not that complex and illustrates have deeply imbedded the slave system was in the United States. Advertisement According to the Mount Vernon website, Washington became a slaveholder at the age of eleven when his father died. By the time George Washington died in 1799, the enslaved population on his Mount Vernon planation included 318 people, 123 who were "owned" by Washington himself and the rest who were part of the estate of his wife's children from a previous marriage. Instead of freeing the people he claimed to own in his will, Washington transferred ownership to his wife. Some of these people were freed in 1801. During the American Revolution, George Washington refused to enlist enslaved Africans who wanted to secure their freedom by joining the Revolutionary army and at the end of the war he sent a letter to British commanders demanding that they return formerly enslaved Africans who were freed when they escaped to the British lines. Washington objected to British plans to evacuate formerly enslaved Africans as a violation of the provisional peace agreement and sought to find and reacquire people he claimed as his own property. Slavery was illegal in Philadelphia while it was the national capital in the 1790s. Enslaved Africans brought to Pennsylvania would officially be free after six months in the state. To evade the law, Washington rotated enslaved Africans back to his Virginia planation before that would have to be emancipated. Apparently Hercules so "enjoyed" being enslaved by George Washington that he later escaped to freedom. When Hercules escaped bondage in 1797 Washington wrote a letter to his personal secretary Tobias Lear where he demanded Lear assist in Hercules' capture. After discussing new carpets, furniture, pots, and pans, Washington requested that Lear "desire Mr. Kitt to make all the enquiry he can after Hercules, and send him round in the Vessel if he can be discovered & apprehended." Martha Washington's personal "servant" also escaped while the family was in Philadelphia. According to a runaway slave ad posted in the Pennsylvania Gazette, "Absconded from the household of the President of the United states, Oney Judge, a light mulatto girl, much freckled, with very black eyes and bushy black hair, she is of middle stature, slender, and delicately formed, about 20 years of age . . . it is probable she will attempt to pass for a free woman . . . Ten dollars will be paid to any person who will bring her home, if taken in the city, or on board any vessel in the harbor; - and a reasonable additional sum if apprehended at, and brought from a greater distance . . . " Advertisement Upon learning that Judge had escaped to New Hampshire, Washington wrote officials there demanding her return because it "would neither be politic or just to reward unfaithfulness." Judge was interviewed by abolitionists in 1845 while living in New Hampshire. She explained, "Whilst they were packing up to go to Virginia, I was packing to go, I didn't know where; for I knew that if I went back to Virginia, I should never get my liberty." Close up on the hands of a young woman as she is writing in a small notepad at a wooden table I'm sorry. Kendall*, you don't know me well; we met only once on a night I'm sure you want so badly to forget. After an hour of outfit debating, hair restyling, and snapchat selfie-ing that night, our makeshift group of new and old friends finally made it to a party. It was my first college party, and every detail -- from the too-eager freshmen boys to the strobe lights to the crowded dance floor -- seemed to fit the epitome of Hollywood's take on college life. Hours later when you returned to our group with a tear-streaked face and ripped skirt after leaving the party with that tall, older guy, your story became one I had heard far too many times. Advertisement As we sat in that dorm room at 4 a.m. and you sobbed into my arms, my heart broke for you, Kendall. I'm sorry that you were embarrassed to tell us your story, as if somehow you bore any part of the responsibility for what happened to you that night. I'm sorry that you were scared to tell your parents or the police or even go to the hospital. I'm sorry that he got away, likely without even a second thought, while you were forced to deal with the emotional, physical, and psychological repercussions of that night. Most of all, I am sorry that my apologies cannot take away the pain and fix the problem. One in five women is a victim of sexual assault. For every 1,000 female students on a college campus, approximately 35 incidents of attempted or completed rape occur in any given year. Less than five percent of rapes are reported to law enforcement. But Kendall, you are more than a statistic. You are a 19-year-old girl who not three hours before was debating whether to curl or straighten her hair and complaining about her essay due Monday. You are young and full of life and you deserve, at a most basic level, to be safe while at school. This problem is more than only a Greek life problem or an administration problem. It's more than just a college problem or a woman problem; this is my problem just as much as it is your problem. It's a social problem that can be as seemingly small as our emphasis on teaching girls prevention rather than boys respect and self-control, or as scary and real as ambulances and police officers and emergency rooms. Advertisement So, to Kendall* and Maddie* and Jessica* and every other victim of sexual assault, I am sorry that, despite all the efforts to make change and all the steps in the right direction you are still scarred by no fault of your own. I am sorry that our system has failed you and that our society has failed you. Before I met you, Kendall, I didn't fully understand the magnitude of the problem of sexual assault on campus. I didn't realize how appallingly frequent incidents of assault are or how devastatingly life-changing they can be. Like every other college student, I had participated in required sexual assault education and I knew the statistics. What I didn't realize was how my apathy contributed to the problem. People say that campus culture perpetuates rape and sexual assault. I think the problem is that our legal system is setup to do damage control, not to prevent incidents -- there are no legal consequences for a guy who has a reputation of pushing girls further than they want to go. Condemning sexual violence in theory is not enough; as a student body it is our responsibility to identify and end both overt and covert acceptance of aggression and assault. Prevention then, comes from the way that we as individuals and as a community think about rape and sexual assault. Condemning sexual violence in theory is not enough; as a student body it is our responsibility to identify and end both overt and covert acceptance of aggression and assault. Advertisement That means that difficult tests do not "rape" you and "rape-y" is not an appropriate adjective to describe individuals or groups of people. Rape is serious and a painful trigger for so many. Victims never "bring it upon themselves" or are "asking for it," no matter what they are wearing or how much they have had to drink. "It's because he's a guy" is never a justification for a lack of self-control and it's not "normal" for guys (or girls) to push their partners further than they enthusiastically and positively consent to. Finally, Kendall, I now understand the importance of removing the stigma with which we view victims of sexual assault. That one night does not define who you are or who you will become. Cultivating a more aware and sensitive campus culture will make it easier for you and other victims to share your stories with peers, administrative officials, and law enforcement, and make it more difficult for perpetrators to escape the legal and social consequences of their actions. In October 2015, residents of New Hampshire ranked drug abuse as the most important issue in the 2016 presidential campaign. They ranked it as more important than jobs and the economy. Politicians are listening and this has become a topic in the 2016 elections. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont (one of the hardest hit states) has stated that addiction is "a disease, not a criminal activity" and called for a radical change in our country's approach to the epidemic. Hillary Clinton has pledged to spend $10 billion to combat drug addiction, with much of it focused on federal-state partnerships for treatment programs. On the Republican side, Jeb Bush has released a comprehensive drug policy plan and he and the other candidates have made a compassionate approach towards addiction a part of their rhetoric. No one can ignore the epidemic that is raging across the country. The death toll from heroin and opioid overdose has grown at a staggering rate in the last 15 years, as illustrated in a Wall Street Journal graph. Advertisement The truth is that this rising death toll is not a coincidence or an unavoidable tragedy. It is a consequence of the pharmaceutical industry using ever more aggressive tactics to push doctors to prescribe high-level opioids for all manner of complaints, even minor aches and pains for which they are clearly unnecessary. A 2003 GAO report found that Purdue Pharma gave doctors 34,000 coupons for free OxyContin prescriptions, as well as OxyContin "fishing hats, stuffed plush toys, coffee mugs with heat activated messages, music compact discs, [and] luggage tags." These campaigns worked exactly as planned -- usage of OxyContin and other painkillers went way up. In 1991, Americans were issued 76 million prescriptions for opioids. By 2013, that number had nearly tripled to 207 million. The pharmaceutical industry's push for reckless pill popping has had tragic consequences for millions of American families. Many of the patients prescribed OxyContin and similar pills have ended up dependent on and ultimately addicted to the drugs. If their doctors eventually cut them off, they too often find a cheaper alternative -- heroin. This is a common story, and in fact, four out of five heroin addicts were first addicted to opioids. Mexican drug cartels capitalized on the opportunity by heavily targeting heroin to areas of the country with the highest rates of opium prescription and addiction. But it is the American drug cartels -- some of them doing business as Purdue Pharma, Johnson & Johnson, and Endo Pharmaceuticals -- that bear ultimate responsibility for the opiate epidemic. Those fighting the epidemic already understand the destructive consequences of pharmaceutical companies' greed. But, any attempt to rein in the prescribing of their dangerously over-prescribed painkillers is met with a fierce astroturf resistance. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was planning to issue new guidelines for doctors on when to prescribe opioids at the beginning of this year. These guidelines, which advise doctors to prescribe opioid painkillers only for the most intense pain, would not have placed any legal restrictions on pharmaceutical companies or physicians. But even the prospect of advisory guidelines was too much of a risk against their profits, according to pharmaceutical companies. The fake "consumer" groups that they fund insisted that the guidelines would make it too difficult for patients to get their drugs. And, for now, they have succeeded in keeping the CDC from implementing them. Advertisement Pharmaceutical companies have good reason to be afraid of Americans learning the truth about their destructive and corrupt opioid marketing campaigns. The Sackler family, which owns Purdue Pharma, is the 16th richest family in the country, with a massive $14 billion fortune - a fortune that was largely built by pushing masses of OxyContin into doctors' offices and hospitals around the country. Pharmaceutical companies put profits before public health and the result is billions for them and broken lives, drug addiction and death for the American people. The people are fighting back, and the tide is finally beginning to turn against PhRMA. In his recent State of the State address, Governor Peter Shumlin of Vermont stated that Oxycontin "lit the match that ignited America's opiate and heroin crisis" and called for a limit in the number of pills that can be included in a prescription. Elected officials are increasingly willing to speak out because they know that public opinion will be on their side. We need to rein in reckless drug company greed--drug prices for everyone continue to go up year over year by around 10%, commercials for drugs pollute every channel of media, and companies continue to restrict access to life-saving drugs by pricing them out of reach from those who need them. Left: Amy demonstrates how she had to use a chair to balance and modify her leg lift in Tree Pose. Right: Amy has come a long way with her balance and is now able to stand with her foot on her leg in Tree Pose. On a cold February morning, my life changed forever. Walking down the driveway of my building, I slipped on a patch of sheer ice. My feet went straight up, and I landed with my head taking the full impact, briefly knocking me unconscious. When I started to get up, I knew I wasn't okay. I had an excruciating pain in my skull where it hit, and I was seeing whirly, bright lights out of my left eye. Advertisement The doctor confirmed I had a severe concussion, major whiplash, C4/5 damage, a dislocated sternum, and multiple torn muscles. I had no idea the road to recovery I'd face, and how drastically my life had just changed. I had been doing yoga since college because it brought me balance and peace, and was an instant de-stresser me. With all of my physical injuries added to my traumatic brain injury (TBI), I could no longer do yoga. After months of vertigo, dizziness and balance issues, cognitive problems, short-term memory loss, and the pain of my physical injuries, I was at the end of my rope. I felt like I would never find any relief, and worried that the TBI would leave me permanently impaired and unable to ever do physical exercise again. I consulted with a neurologist, chiropractic neurologist, as well as the National Balance and Dizzy Center. I was encouraged to attempt some physical movement, as it would eventually help my body work out its kinks and stabilize my balance issues. It seemed counter intuitive at the time; however, I was desperate to have some sense of normalcy and routine in my life. Advertisement About fifteen months after my accident, I took private lessons with my yoga instructor in an attempt to find poses I could do--poses that wouldn't trigger my vertigo or cause tension in my neck or sternum/clavicle area. My instructor taught me how to use a chair or wall to support myself in standing poses so I didn't feel like I was going to fall. We found five poses I could do with modifications that didn't cause any problems or flare ups, including: Tree, Mountain, Cat/Cow, Puppy Dog, Forward Bend, and Seated Spine Twist. Within about six weeks of doing these five poses every day for 10 minutes, I gradually added Down Dog, Plank, and Warrior for a breath. My vertigo and dizzy issues seemed to almost completely subside, and my balance was coming back closer to what it was pre-accident. Now with modifications I can do many of the poses I used to do. I still can't do any back bends or tip my head backwards, but I am on an amazing road to recovery, thanks to yoga. I urge anyone with a TBI or other injury to try to incorporate yoga into your daily routine. If you think, "I'm not flexible, I can't do yoga," you are absolutely wrong! If I can do this, I know you can too. Listen to your body. Don't do anything that hurts or causes you pain. Mild discomfort is to be expected if you haven't stretched your body in awhile, however, if it actually hurts, listen to your body. Don't do that particular pose, or modify it to fit what your body is capable of. If a pose triggers vertigo, try modifying it so that your head doesn't have to move, or else move on to a different pose. Connect your breath. Oxygen is critical for brain health, and yoga helps you connect your breath to your movements. Take strong, deep inhalations, and allow the out-breath to help you get deeper into the pose and deeper into the now ~ releasing all negative thoughts and emotions. Modify poses. In the beginning I could only do 5 simple, basic, stretching poses. I had to use a chair or wall to hold onto for balance. I couldn't do any poses that required my head forward or backward. Don't feel obligated to do every pose in a series, do what you can do and go at your own pace. Yoga is an individual "sport" and there is no one to impress other than yourself. Find an instructor willing to work one-on-one with you to help you find poses you can do, and help you understand how to modify them. Believe in yourself. I know it's a challenge when you haven't been able to do physical exercise in months, but I finally took the plunge and I know you can too! Yoga has SO many health benefits, and I truly believe in you and your ability to get moving and start feeling better. Let go of the resistance that is holding you back, and allow yourself to move forward in your recovery! Your mind, body, and spirit will thank you! TAKE THE YOGA CHALLENGE! Yoga Today is one of the leading providers of online yoga classes, and they are gifting the world with 16 specifically designed and sequenced classes to connect (or reconnect) people with the deep power and benefits of yoga! This FREE online course of 16 classes is available until February 16, 2016, and for those who finish all 16 classes, Yoga Today has some exciting gifts to give you - just for giving yoga a try! Advertisement Additionally, Yoga Today is launching a new philanthropic initiative in 2016. For every membership purchased, they will give a free month of classes to someone suffering financial hardship. After 10 years, thousands of classes and 350,000 followers, executive producer Kim Whitman wanted to give something back. "The past decade has been one of tremendous growth for our company, and we just decided to do something a little special for our current community and prospective students," she said. "This course is like no other we have ever created. The course is designed specifically to tap into the power that comes with the start of the new year and to give people a boost to embrace what lies ahead. The course helps people look deep and turn on their own personal power." Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump expressed his desire to maintain the Renewable Fuel Standard Jan. 19, 2016 at the 10th annual Iowa Renewable Fuels Summit in Altoona, Iowa. Renewable fuels and the controversial standards surrounding them are repeat hot topics of debate during the Iowa caucuses, and the current crop of presidential candidates are not cowering away from the issue. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Tuesday at the 10th annual Iowa Renewable Fuels conference that he supports the notion to maintain the standard, a declaration that must have boded well with many citizens of a state with 41 corn ethanol plants in attendance. Advertisement "As president, I will encourage congress to be cautious in attempting to charge and change any part of the (Renewable Fuel Standard)," Trump said at the summit, closely accompanied by his script. "Energy independence is a requirement for America to become great again." Three other candidates attended the summit as well -- former Sen. Rick Santorum, who won the Iowa caucuses in 2012, former business executive Carly Fiorina and former governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee. Studies have shown that while the use of ethanol does limit the need for fossil fuels and reduces greenhouse gas emissions caused by petroleum-based fuels, there are other environmental concerns that may outweigh these benefits. According to an investigation by the Associated Press in 2013, the use of corn for ethanol has caused the cost of corn to skyrocket, which has prompted farmers to grow more. This boom in corn growth has caused nutrients to be stripped from once-fertile soil, chemicals from overused fertilizer to run into drinking water and dormant amounts of carbon dioxide to be released from freshly dug soil. Advertisement This makes farmers' jobs much harder. So why are the majority of current presidential candidates supporting it? Monty Shaw, the communications director for the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, responded to the criticism. "It frustrates me that some of the more out there environmental groups take this position in spite of facts based on credible studies," he said. "I don't think there are environmental negatives." Mike Stice, the dean of the University of Oklahoma's Mewbourne College of Earth and Energy, said ethanol has a bit of a public relations issue. "(The) standpoint of what the positives and negatives are is irrelevant," he said. "It's what the public thinks." Advertisement Furthermore, from a public standpoint, the economic value of ethanol is dipping as a result of falling oil prices, which currently sit at about $28 per barrel. "The initial economic motivation is gone (for ethanol)," Stice said. "You couldn't justify building a new facility, but when you look at these as margin businesses, you can still make money with the existing capital that has been deployed." "Would I recommend a new, large-scale ethanol plant be built tomorrow? No. I don't think you can have the economics to pay out the capital." Along with the economy, young adults don't support ethanol entirely either, as data from multiple polls show millennials' desire to preserve the environment, a goal that ethanol production makes harder. An exclusive poll for MSNBC conducted in 2014 said an overwhelming amount of millennials support preserving the environment. However, another poll, conducted by USA Today less than two weeks ago, said 80 percent of the millennials surveyed want to see a switch to renewable energy by 2030. It's tough to have it both ways. "I'm a big fan of renewable energy, (but) my understanding is that ethanol maybe isn't the best direction to go," said Jonathan Shears, a 20-year-old political science student at Elon University in North Carolina. "And I know that's unpopular to say in Iowa." Advertisement The latter may be true. "The candidate who wins will be a candidate who supports the RFS, it's as simple as that," said Steve Bleyl, the Executive Vice President of Ethanol Marketing at Green Plains Inc., at a roundtable discussion at the summit. "If they don't support the RFS, they shouldn't win the state of Iowa." Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's endorsement of Donald Trump might have fueled controversy among his supporters. Young adult supporters, who attended Trump's rally this morning in Norwalk, Iowa, held very different opinions about Sarah Palin. However, Trump is happy with his endorsement. "Sarah Palin came in and she was so great. She was so great yesterday and so popular, and amazing actually. And everybody wanted her endorsement," Trump said. Advertisement Trump's event at the Wright Place this morning hosted approximately 530 people. Several of those were people born between the years 1980 and 1998. One of who, Caleb McKinney, 17, rearranged his priorities to hear Trump speak. McKinney, a high school student, skipped class to attend the event with his mother. McKinney felt better about skipping class after Sarah Palin endorsed the businessman last night and announced she would join him at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla. this afternoon. Trump and Palin may receive a different welcome from the ORU crowd than they did this morning in Iowa. According to the Tulsa World, students at the university created a petition to ban the businessman from speaking at the university. In Iowa this morning, not everyone at the event felt the same as McKinney did. Ellie Beckett, 22, strongly dislikes Palin, and is prepared to change her vote away from Trump, if the duo becomes running mates. "I'm just not a fan of her, I don't like what she did in Alaska...," Beckett, who plans on participating in a Republican Iowa caucus this year, said. "If she was his Vice President I would vote for Ted Cruz." Advertisement According to a poll by the Des Moines Register and Bloomberg, Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz are each other's biggest threat in Iowa among the GOP candidates. The poll has them just three points apart with Cruz in the lead. Donald Trump had positive comments this morning about Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, who publicly asked Iowans not to vote for Cruz. This brought more conflicting feelings between the two millennials. Beckett disapproved of the governor's comments against Cruz at last nights Iowa Renewable Fuels Summit. "I thought that made Branstad look bad, I thought that made Trump look bad, because I know there's a lot of people who like Ted Cruz here," Beckett said. Although Beckett believes the comments could have negative repercussions for Trump, McKinney stands by and applauds the governor. Advertisement "I thought it was cool how Branstad did it, because it shows Iowa's not going to back down in this. We're in this for good," said McKinney. Despite Palin's endorsement and the attention it received, Trump mentioned very little about it at today's event, instead he focused nearly 20% of his speech on the media. "They're really really dishonest and disgusting," Trump commented. FILE - In this Jan. 14, 2016 file photo, Syrian refugees inside the border wait to be approved to get into Jordan, in the Hadalat reception area, near the northeastern Jordanian border with Syria, and Iraq, near the town of Ruwaished, Jordan. The Senate will consider new rigorous screening procedures for Syrian and Iraqi refugees seeking to enter the United States as national security looms large for voters in an election year. (AP Photo/Raad Adayleh, File) "[Before the war] life was prosperous," explained Walid,* a Syrian refugee in Jordan. "I had money. I had my routines. Things were normal and organized." Walid was married, raising children, and owned a successful business. Then, as events unfolded in his hometown of Homs in early 2012, everything changed. Advertisement "These things that were happening around me were only things that seem to happen in movies -- American movies," he reflected. "I didn't believe it. I never thought I would see these things." A civilian who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, Walid was shot twice while exiting a mosque. His 12-year-old nephew was killed by a sniper. He and his daughters hid in a drainage canal among dead bodies during a bombing campaign. He was stopped at a check point and subsequently taken to prison. He was held for 45 days until his family paid a bribe for his release. They used "every kind of torture," he said. Walid and his family are among the 4.4 million Syrian refugees who have been forced from their homes and country in search of peace and safety. In a report released earlier this month, Reclaiming Hope, Dignity and Respect: Syrian and Iraqi Torture Survivors in Jordan, the Center for Victims of Torture (CVT) details patterns of torture and human rights abuses endured by Syrians and Iraqis in their home countries, as well as the challenges they are facing as refugees in Jordan. In interviews with 64 former CVT clients living in Jordan conducted between January 2014 and October 2015, CVT found that the daily stresses of life as a refugee -- including the loss of self-sufficiency and individual agency -- were overwhelming. With each passing month in exile, the hopes they once had for a better future are slipping away. Advertisement While many refugees describe feeling much safer in Jordan than Syria, life as a refugee is extremely difficult: humanitarian assistance is limited, cost of living is high and most refugees are strictly prohibited from working. Few refugees see a future for themselves or their families in Jordan. On the other hand, to return to Syria at this point remains equivalent to suicide. Even while many Syrian refugees still yearn for a chance to rebuild what they've lost and return to a home they love, as the war approaches its fifth year and becomes increasingly complex, they are finding it harder and harder to fathom return as an option for the future. As Amira,* a Syrian woman, explained, "All we want is to return -- to go home. It's very hard to be outside and so far away. Our families and communities and people are all dispersed. We want to be reunited and together again." However, she also noted, "We have lost so much -- our homes, our businesses, they are all destroyed. What are we returning to?" Consequently, for many refugees, the only elusive hope left seems to be in a third country - Germany, Sweden, Norway, the United States, Canada, Australia, etc. And, through both formal and informal channels, Syrian refugees are seeking hope where they can find it. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports that between March 2011 and November 2015, 681,713 asylum applications were filed by Syrians in Europe. UNHCR estimates that 10% (over 400,000) of Syrian refugees living in neighboring countries are in need of resettlement. Canada has pledged to accept 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of February 2016 and 50,000 by the end of the calendar year. UNHCR has referred over 22,000 cases for resettlement to the United States but almost 90% of those cases remain under consideration. As of late December 2015, less than 2,600 Syrians had arrived in the United States since the beginning of the Syrian conflict. Advertisement In order to better address the scale and severity of the Syrian refugee crisis -- and give Syrian refugees something to hope for -- resettlement countries, including the United States, must increase the number of individuals and families they are welcoming. The U.S. Refugee Admissions Program is the most robust in the world. The security background and vetting process that refugees go through is the most rigorous of all non-citizens entering the United States. Moreover, Syrian refugees undergo an enhanced screening process that includes an additional review. We cannot let political tensions and concerns about security to be an excuse for the United States to do less than it can and should. The United States can resettle Syrian refugees and simultaneously protect Americans from external threats to our communities and national security. Resettlement is an important and lifesaving option for a small number of highly vulnerable refugees, but it will never be the only solution. For the majority of refugees who will never have the opportunity to be resettled, conditions in refugee host communities must improve. As a first step, Jordan and other refugee host countries should allow refugees to legally work so that they may have the opportunity to support their families. Ultimately, the solution for Syrians will have to come through a peace process that creates the conditions for refugees to return home safely and voluntarily. Any negotiated peace agreement must include a path for holding perpetrators of human rights violations and war crimes accountable along with a major national rebuilding effort. Without that, as Amira asked, "What are we returning to?" Portrait of woman with long brown hair Do you think you need a complete and total overhaul to transform your life? Trust me, you don't. Chances are that there are many good things working in your life so there's no need for a complete overhaul, simple makeovers will do the trick. Just like a fresh can of paint can easily makeover a room, you can easily makeover your life with simple tweaks. Take simple and small actions every day to design a life that brings you joy. Advertisement Design your days and #Take15Minutes for a happier and healthier you. We lead busy lives and we're busy trying to juggle so many things which can be stressful. We need time to unwind and focus on ourselves so we can revitalize our lives. Using a small pocket of time each day can reap big rewards. So design your day and #Take15Minutes every day just for you. Spend this time alone without any distractions to disconnect, clear your mind, enjoy the stillness and get your body moving. Decide in which part of the day you would like to #Take15Minutes. Will it be early in the morning before your day begins? Maybe you would like a midday restorative break or one later in the evening. You need to decide which part of the day those 15 minutes work best for you. Spending this valuable "me" time each day may help you live a little bit happier and healthier. Once you've established which part of the day works best for you, decide how you would like to spend your 15 minutes. Taking this time is like finding your bliss. Advertisement #Take15Minutes and: Read a book. Simply read for enjoyment. According to Forbes, one of the five things successful people do before they go to bed is to read a book. Reading for enjoyment is the key to relaxing. Here are some suggestions to get you started. I'm reading Brooklyn by Colm Toibin and next up, Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes. Listen to your favorite joyful soothing music. Research shows that listening to joyful music is good for your health. Research has found that listening to soothing music can decrease blood pressure and anxiety levels in patients with certain heart conditions. Research from the University of Maryland Medical Center found that listening to joyful music can have a healthy effect on blood vessel function, and most of the participants in the study stated that country music is their favorite type of music that evokes joy. Here are "5 Ways Music Improves Our Health" from Huffington Post. Mediate. Meditation can help bring you a sense a calm and decrease negative emotions and help you manage stress. Meditation produces a deep state of relaxation and a tranquil mind, and while you can practice mediation anywhere, having your own little cocoon nook, can make it very calming. Meditation can help enhance your physical and emotional well-being. During meditation, focus your attention and eliminate the stream of jumbled and chaotic thoughts that may be crowding your mind and causing stress. Spending even a few minutes in mediation can restore your calm, wipe away stress and bring inner peace. Research shows that meditation may reduce blood pressure as well as symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome. Write in a gratitude journal or bliss journal. Every day, write down things you are grateful for. Write down things that bring you pleasure. Write down things you love. Focus on the positive things in your life, and write them in your gratitude journal or what I like to call a bliss journal. I like to say bliss journal because research shows expressing gratitude can foster happiness. "In positive psychology research, gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness. Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships." Go outdoors. Go outside for a calming walk and observe the beauty for a happier and healthier you. Take a warm bath. Soak and let the stillness of the water and the silence of the room bring you inner peace and tranquility. A hot bath can relax muscles and counteract the physical symptoms of stress. (Quick tip: Before you get into the bathtub, test the water with your hand. The Burn Foundation recommends that you move your hand rapidly through the water for several seconds to make sure it's not too hot before getting in. And the temperature should not exceed 100 F/39 C.) Advertisement Pause and Practice Mindfulness. Appreciate the moments. Mindfulness can help you deal with emotions in a positive way. Find your cocoon. Find a little special space in your home that's your cocoon to relish the simple things. Just move. Walk, run, dance, hike, cycle-just keep moving. To reap big rewards here, when it comes to physical activity, #Take15Minutes two times a day, everyday. That'll give you the 30 minutes of physical activity that's recommended by the experts. [The World Health Organization recommends for adults ages 18-64 years old, "30 minutes of moderate-intensity activity 5 times per week." Prep meals for the next day. Trust me, ask a great Chef and he'll or she'll tell you prepping is key. For example, if you know you're making a healthy stir-fry for dinner, prep the night before. #Take15Minutes and chop all the fresh veggies--peppers, broccoli, red onion, carrots or whatever veggies you choose. Plus, spending time in the kitchen can be very relaxing to some people. So you don't need a major overhaul. Small simple healthy design actions can reap big rewards. Small steps=Big impact. Advertisement Do you #Take15Minutes every day? I'd love to hear from you. Please share your thoughts and comments in the conversation section below. Thanks. Barbara Ficarra, RN, BSN, MPA, HEALTH DESIGNER BarbaraFicarra.com "Design Your Healthy Life" #DYHL #Take15Minutes Clinging listlessly to the top of the pole in the middle of Tahrir Square the Egyptian flag projects absolute power, a signal of the old order restored after the mass anti-government uprising of 2011. Exactly five years after the first major protests it shows who's back in control now. Basem Fahty, one of the young organizers of those original January protests, says "it's a symbol of victory dominating the square - the flag says crisis over and the state won, the old state." It was put up in early 2015; "it's unifying and makes people feel nationalistic," said the city's governor. Fahty is now 32 years old, a political veteran by Egyptian standards. Five years ago he headed one of the feeder marches on January 25 that converged on the square in the afternoon. Advertisement A few days ago we sat on a bench in Tahrir as he pointed out where he entered the square at about 4pm that Tuesday afternoon. "I wasn't a fighter but had been on demonstrations so was pushed to the front - I was pretty scared, leading several thousand people here but really didn't know what to do if it came to a clash with the police," he said. "It was a bit lucky but when the police lined up across the street to stop us we just ran towards them and, thank God, they got out of the way." "By the time I arrived I'd say there were already about 40,000 people here. Those of us who had planned the protest, the other activists, went round asking each other 'Now what?' but there really wasn't any plan." His job had been to sort out logistics for the planned protest, but he had massively underestimated the size of the crowd that would show up. "I knew my way around the area pretty well; in all there are 13 entrances to the square - main arteries and small alleys. I was trying to organize getting blankets and water into the protestors past the police." The police attacked with tear gas and rubber bullets soon after midnight, he said, which triggered the first chants of people calling for the downfall of the regime. Advertisement "People realized that first day when they arrived here in the square that they could suddenly just move around freely, without being stopped and questioned, that freedom, just milling about, it meant everything," says Fahty. The following heady 18 days witnessed constant monster protests, replicated across the country, which finally led to the downfall of the Mubarak dictatorship on February 11. Tahrir became focus of peaceful and violent demonstrations in the following years as Egypt's politics repeatedly convulsed, and it was at the center of a military coup in June 2013 which left current President Sisi in charge. Many of the organizers of the 2011 demonstrations have since been targeted. Fahty's activism led to his arrest and a suspended jail sentence. In recent weeks dozens of activists have been rounded up by authorities jittery that Monday's anniversary will trigger fresh protests against the new regime. The square itself looks calm, an image the authorities are keen to encourage. You have to look hard to find the scars on Tahrir. The most obvious security presence is now half a dozen traffic cops in yellow hi-viz vests waving halfheartedly at motorists to obey the lights. Advertisement The square's KFC, shut down during the 2011 protests, is back to a bustling hub of gossiping teens. Outside people lounge around on benches in the winter sun sipping tea. "We lost," said Fahty. "This back to normal sense of the square is their ultimate victory - in Bahrain the regime bulldozed Pearl Square, the site of their 2011 protests, and the military occupies it. It's a sign their crisis is still on somehow, but the message is that our crisis is over and Tahrir just looks like a big traffic circle," he said, nodding up towards the limp flag at the top of the 20 meter pole. All Empires are alike. They are all begotten from the DNA of the species that craves power for the sake of power--an evil that has persisted unchanged since Adam and Eve. The United States has predictably followed the model of its Roman precursor. First we fought in self-defense against the British. Then we fought in defense of allies in World War I. Then we invented allies to defend, for example, Vietnam, Kuwait, or Somalia. And then we began to fight for the sake of fighting unable to define victory over international terrorism or otherwise beyond Justice Potter Stewart's memorable definition of obscenity, "I know it when I see it." Like its predecessors, the American Empire refuses to entertain the idea that our endless, gratuitous foreign interventions have created enemies that would not otherwise have attacked us. Upton Sinclair explained the fierce resistance to the truth: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." Advertisement Trillions of dollars of wealth, great power, and social status lie behind our military-industrial-terrorism (MIT) complex. It thrives on perpetual war and concocted fears of danger and existential threats. Since the Americana Empire took hold after World War II, none have dared to insinuate that our chronic, objectless, military interventions in the Middle East in support of brutal, corrupt, oppressive regimes have provoked retaliation by the oppressed. We have provided material assistance to state's featuring repression, torture and extrajudicial killings, for example, the Shah of Iran, the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia, or Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak. Two fatwas issued by Osama bin Laden before 9/11 protested the presence of our troops in Saudi Arabia near the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina, not our freedom of speech or religion, elections, due process, or gender equality. Think of the analogy of a bayonet and a hornet's nest. The nest will not harm you if you leave it undisturbed. But if you smash it to bits with a bayonet, the hornets within will sting you. The United States would be vastly freer, wealthier, and safer if we withdrew all our troops from the Middle East for redeployment at home to protect our borders, our shores, and our skies. Israel commands more than enough power to fend for itself. With vastly less military might in 1948, Israel handily defeated Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and Palestinian Arabs combined. And we should cease selling arms or providing non-humanitarian aid of any type to the region. Our warfare state, nursed and fueled by the military-industrial-terrorism (MIT) complex, is the great destroyer of liberty. Its malignant children have been the surveillance state, national bankruptcy, secret government, and the evisceration of constitutional checks and balances. Advertisement Abraham Lincoln said it best in 1838 as we began our descent into Empire riding the militant wave of Manifest Destiny: Awards trophy There has recently been lots of "controversy" over the lack of diversity at the Oscars. However, when I read articles that begin that way, I often feel like they're mocking the subject. That diversity is just something that people of color complain about because we're lazy and don't want to work hard. The truth is that people of color deserve to be recognized along with their white counterparts. The fact that they aren't included is simply insulting. But if you need five more reasons to consider boycotting the Oscars this year, I've got you covered: Advertisement 1. It's the second year that all twenty contenders in the acting categories are white: I didn't understand how there were only white actors nominated last year, but the fact that it happened again is kind of crazy. Award shows are usually annoying because the people who should win sometimes don't. However, it feels like the Oscar voting body only consumes the performances of white actors. Big assumption? Not really. According to a 2012 study by The Times, the Oscar voting body is 94% white and 77% male. Some people have said that the Oscars cannot have a diversity problem, simply because the president of the Academy is a black woman. But it's like she's the only black person (and woman) there. Other people of color or women who may be part of the voting body are sure to get their voices drowned out by the white men surrounding them. Simply put, a lot of the voters are coming from the same place. If the voting body had different types of people who are drawn to different films and performances, maybe there would be more variety amongst nominees. 2. I'm not the only one who is angry about it: A lot of times it might seem as though a few random people of color are screaming about the lack of diversity in Hollywood. Not only is that super not true in general, but it's also not true in this situation. #OscarsSoWhite was trending on Twitter, both this year and last, because of a reason. Other people have noticed, and they're tired of hearing the same stories over and over again. Advertisement Being angry about the lack of diversity at the Oscars isn't just a "black thing," even though some people are making it out to be that way. Minorities of all sorts aren't represented in Hollywood, or at awards - actual trans people (not cis people portraying them), Native Americans, women, and other racial minorities aren't afforded the privilege of seeing themselves on screen. Why shouldn't that change? 3. Other celebrities are doing it: Spike Lee and Jada Pinkett Smithrecently announced that they would not be watching or attending the award ceremony, which has spurred a bunch of conversation among other people of color in Hollywood. This is actual proof that people within the industry are tired of not being recognized for their hard work. Some people have said that Jada only cares about the lack of diversity because her husband wasn't nominated, and that accusation infuriates me. Why can't a woman of color, who is an actress in her own right, be angry about the lack of diversity in the industry that she works in? Maybe Jada is just angry because of principal. Maybe she's angry because the work of other women of color is going ignored, and has in the past. Either way, she's allowed to be angry. She's allowed to be frustrated. I am. 4. There were films by people of color that are worthy of acknowledgement: This is perhaps the biggest argument that people have when the all white Oscars are brought up. "Maybe if people of color actually did work worthy of awards, they'd be nominated!" First of all, awards like the Oscars are given out subjectively. There's a group of voters because someone might think that Leonardo DiCaprio deserves an Oscar this year, but others think he doesn't. There are Oscar predictions from all sorts of publications starting at the beginning of the year. If people can come up with such a wide variety white people who might be worthy of nomination, people of color can certainly be included. Advertisement Let's not forget all of the amazing performances given by people of color last year, either: Idris Elba and Cary Fukunaga of "Beasts of No Nation," that cast and director of "Straight Outta Compton," Michael B. Jordan, Tessa Thompson, and Ryan Coogler of "Creed," Oscar Isaac in "Ex Machina," Benicio Del Toro's "Sicario," "Chi-Raq's" cast and director...there are so many. You don't think any of them deserve nominations? Okay. Maybe I don't think "Mad Max: Fury Road" needed a Best Picture nom, or Christian Bale needed a Best Actor nomination for "The Big Short." The point is that there's room for disagreement with these things, and maybe if there had been people of color in that voting pool, one of these performances could've been argued in. 5. We can make a real impact: Some people don't want to boycott because they don't think there's any point. But if people of color boycotting can definitely have an impact. For one thing, even though we represent 37% of the U.S. population, we bought 46% of all movie tickets in 2014. That's a lot. Usually, people don't start to listen until money is involved - and imagine how much money the film industry would lose if we stopped watching movies? Even if we ignore that, though, there's still the fact that last year's broadcast was down 16 percent from the year before. Why is that important? Well, it's a six year low. But this also came after a bunch of people made a vow not to watch the Oscars because of the lack of diversity. If we do this, we can make an impact. Advertisement Even if we don't break records, we'll still be sending a message: we are important. We matter. Our achievements and our work are not worth any less because of our skin color. We should be recognized. At the heart of the Paris Agreement are 195 voluntary national pledges to reduce climate pollution. These pledges broke through decades of gridlock, but if fulfilled, get us only halfway to climate rescue. By 2020 nations must be ready, roughly, to double this pace of emission reductions - but the pledges they made do not, in a legally binding sense, kick in until that year. The hidden premise that powered Paris was that countries would not wait until the 2020 deadline, but would act promptly. Why would they act sooner than pledged? Because, the negotiators hoped, these goals are steps countries want to take for their own selfish reasons. With sufficient velocity by 2020 it would be clear to everyone that faster emission reduction is a good deal all around, indeed inevitable. Rapid decarbonization will be seen in 2020 as vital for countries to remain competitive. It is that premise and that hope which framed President Obama's climate discussion in his State of the Union message. Advertisement It was only a few paragraphs, but he gave climate advocates some powerful language we have long needed - and which emerged only after extended internal debate within the White House. The President began not with climate but with pocketbooks. In fields from Iowa to Texas, wind power is now cheaper than dirtier, conventional power. On rooftops from Arizona to New York, solar is saving Americans tens of millions of dollars a year on their energy bills. Telling the truth that clean energy is now cheaper was something the Administration long resisted - first because the data has only recently become clear that this is the truth, and second because White House staff feared that even if true, the public was not ready to believe. Only a few months ago, when Vice President Biden spoke to a very friendly Renewable Energy Conference in Las Vegas, he hedged: solar power he said, was getting "awfully close to the cost of coal." In November the White House promised only that "By 2030, climate commitments could make clean energy less costly than even our cheapest fossil resources." So to be as direct as Obama was in the State of the Union message is a big shift. Why? Well, the data keeps getting stronger. Recent polling demonstrates that the public is far more ready to believe this than only a few months ago. But I think an important ingredient is that the idea that "cheaper equals cleaner" is at the heart of the Paris agreement that the president just worked so hard to bring home. After all, Paris is voluntary. Countries do have competing priorities and concerns. Only if we are ready to embrace the affordability argument for decarbonization will we get it done in time. Advertisement How are we doing? Remarkably, only a month after the Paris Agreement was ratified, many of the world's biggest emitters have taken aggressive and substantial steps to redeem their voluntary pledges. The Obama Administration, which just before Paris stopped oil leasing in the Arctic Ocean and blocked the Keystone Pipeline, has slapped a nationwide moratorium on coal leases on public lands. New York State has become the ninth state to go coal free, and the number of coal power plants with firm shut-down dates in the US has reached 228. China quintupled the fee it charges coal users to help support renewable energy development, projecting it would increase its renewable capacity by 21% in 2016. (China ended 2015 having installed 40% of the world's total new renewables. At 21% a year, China's renewable capacity will have more than doubled by 2020.) As a result of its growing renewables and greater efficiency, China, the biggest global carbon emitter, cut coal consumption by 5% in 2015 for the second year in a row, coal power generation by 4%, and banned the initiation of new coal mines. And as global oil prices slumped, China quietly ceased passing the reduced cost of crude on to gasoline and diesel users, effectively putting a $40/bl floor under oil prices to ensure that cheap oil did not drive increase consumption and emissions. India accelerated pending tough new pollution rules for autos by moving the deadline up four years, while in the same month announcing much tougher emission requirements for coal-fired power plants.The government in New Delhi even experimented with banning half of the city's cars from the roads to reduce lethal levels of air pollution. In Canada, in the wake of the US rejection of Keystone XL and the Government of Alberta's commitment to set a permanent cap on carbon emissions from tar sands producers in the lead up to Paris, the newly elected Liberal Government banned tanker traffic off the Northern Coast of British Columbia, effectively blocking construction of the proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline. Weeks later the Government of British Columbia strongly opposed a third pipeline, Kinder-Morgan's TransCanada route, leaving Tar Sands Producers with no clear route to expand their pipeline to market capacity. Advertisement Of course, there are counter-currents. Australian officials gave another round of permits to a massive coal extraction projects in the Galilee Basin. Countries in southeast Asia are still teeing up massive number of coal plants, even though their citizens are resisting - and Japan and Korea still seem willing to finance them. British Prime Minister Cameron, while pledging a coal phase-out, is also stalling on his country's commitment to renewables. Steven Avery was a lucky man. If he hadn't been framed for rape, he would have no chance of successfully challenging his conviction for murder. If Avery, the subject of the Netflix documentary series "Making a Murderer," hadn't been falsely imprisoned for eighteen years for a rape he didn't commit, his arrest for the murder of Teresa Halbach would never have landed on the front page of the November 23, 2005 New York Times. And Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi would never have noticed him and moved out to Wisconsin to film the proceedings against him. Without the video evidence that Demos and Ricciardi collected, "Making a Murderer" could not have become a social media juggernaut that drew out a juror - one who voted to convict Avery in 2006 - and caused him to report misconduct in deliberations after he watched Netflix and didn't chill. Advertisement Without the show, Avery wouldn't have inspired the winningest exoneration attorney - Kathleen Zellner of Downers Grove, Illinois - to take his case pro bono. All of this reveals a lamentable reality about claiming your innocence from behind bars: it's not the truth, but the news that shall set you free. This is the second time within the last year that someone who had exculpatory information - or information that might secure a prisoner a second trial - emerged under heightened media scrutiny. Sarah Koenig's podcast Serial - a reexamination of Adnan Syed's murder conviction - caused alibi witness Asia McClain to re-assert the fact that she had seen Syed, a fellow student at Woodlawn High School, in the library during the afternoon of the murder for which he was convicted. Advertisement None of the momentum that led to Syed's second hearing - granted just this past November, approximately fifteen years after the crime - would have been possible without extensive media coverage of his case. The Innocence Project estimates that anywhere between 40,000-100,000 prisoners are actually innocent of the crimes that keep them in custody. The names of only two of them remain on the tip of the public's tongue right now: Avery and Syed. Those unnoticed defendants don't have two documentary filmmakers breaking the fourth wall to show the injustices in their cases to the rest of the world. Unless they attract the attention of journalists and celebrities, the chances of the remaining thousands being freed or exonerated are low, because evidence and witnesses aren't surfacing for them like they are for Avery and Syed. Avery was lucky, too, when he had enough money to retain lawyers who knew and cared enough to establish a complete trial record for post-conviction review. While it wasn't the $36 million he had anticipated collecting from Manitowoc County, Wisconsin for his wrongful conviction, the $400,000 Steven Avery received in settlement in his civil suit retained two hard-working attorneys whose zeal and dedication to their client was so inspiring that love memes about them decorate the social media landscape. Advertisement Eighty percent of state inmates are poor and are represented by appointed counsel who don't devote the time and concern that Jerry Buting and Dean Strang did to their client's case. In fact, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed suit in Idaho this past summer, citing "nonexistent" investigation by the state's public defenders. And that's if they can get a lawyer; the ACLU filed suit last week against the Orleans Parish Public Defenders in New Orleans, Louisiana for refusing to accept indigent clients at all. As someone who sat in York Correctional Institution for six-plus years protesting her convictions, an inmate who's bid for exoneration outlasted her sentence, I often wonder how much of that six years I would have served if I had a Demos or a Ricciardi on scene when I was being prosecuted. I don't begrudge Avery or Syed the attention they're getting. In fact, I'm glad that someone can get the justice that I probably never will. But the fact that Avery has a chance at justice or freedom doesn't erase the lasting inequity in how criminal cases are investigated and publicized. Everyone who's accused of a crime deserves a Netflix-worthy level of scrutiny applied to the evidence against him before he loses his freedom. Few rarely get it. People have various opinions on what "Making a Murderer" should teach us; the potential for bald corruption (or stupidity) in law enforcement, the masterful subtlety involved in coerced confessions, the surprising limits of forensic science and how it can actually prevent certainty instead of enhancing it. Advertisement In February 2014, Marine Lance Corporal Monifa Sterling was convicted by a court-martial of violating a number of articles of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Sterling was reduced to the rank of E-1 and received a bad conduct discharge from the Marines. The charges against Sterling resulted from several separate, unrelated incidents over the course of five months. These incidents included failing to go to her appointed place of duty, disrespecting a commissioned officer, and disobeying direct orders from her superiors to wear the proper uniform. These incidents had nothing to do with religion or religious freedom. The most serious of the charges that Sterling was found guilty of were her failing to go to her appointed place of duty, and her disrespecting of a commissioned officer in relation to that incident. Sterling was assigned the duty of giving out passes to family members visiting Marines who had just returned from a deployment. This duty was to be for a few hours on a Sunday afternoon. Sterling claimed that she couldn't perform this duty because she was on medication for migraines that made her drowsy, but, as the court-martial found, there was no reason that this medication would have interfered with Sterling performing this duty if she took it at night as prescribed. But, as Sterling admitted, she was not planning to take her medication as prescribed on that Sunday. She was planning to take it earlier. Her reason? She was going to church and the loud choir at the church service might bring on a migraine. Seriously, that was her excuse -- that she planned to take her medication not as prescribed. Needless to say, this excuse didn't work. The disrespecting of a commissioned officer occurred a few days before the Sunday on which Sterling was assigned to be on duty giving out the passes. Sterling refused to take the passes from the major who was trying to give them to her, an incident witnessed by a first sergeant who, when asked at the court-martial to describe Sterling's behavior towards the major, said it was "the most disrespectful thing [he] had witnessed from a Marine of junior rank" to a commissioned officer in his over eighteen years of service. Advertisement Sterling's defense for the charges against her regarding her disobeying direct orders to wear the proper uniform was also a medical excuse. Sterling claimed that she had a medical order, referred to as a "chit," saying that she did not have to wear a particular uniform because of a medical device she needed to wear for a back problem. But when her superiors checked this out, they found it not to be true, and that there was no reason that Sterling couldn't be in the "uniform of the day" like everybody else. Much of the court-martial was focused on this issue of Sterling's medical "chit," and the finding was that it did not excuse her from refusing to obey the orders of her superiors to change into the proper uniform. There was also a third incident, in which Sterling refused to obey an order to remove signs on which were printed her interpretation of a Bible verse that she had put up in her work space. At her court-martial, Sterling was also found guilty of refusing to obey this order. Of all the charges that Sterling was found guilty of at her court-martial, the charge of disobeying the order to remove the signs was not the most serious of the charges brought against her. In fact, as the transcript of the court-martial shows, the Bible verse incident received the least amount of attention at the court-martial. But now, thanks to the propaganda from fundamentalist Christian organizations and the right wing media, Sterling's case has been turned into a case of outrageous Christian persecution. Anyone reading articles about this case on the internet would think that Sterling is a poor, persecuted Christian who was court-martialed for nothing more than posting a Bible verse on her desk. Advertisement An article from the Washington Times, for example, titled "High military court will hear case of Marine punished for displaying Bible verse," begins: "The highest U.S. military court will hear the case of a Marine who was punished for refusing to remove a Bible verse from her workstation." According to Fox News, in an article titled "Marine court-martialed for refusing to remove Bible verse," "The plight of Lance Corporal Monifa Sterling seems unbelievable -- a member of the Armed Forces criminally prosecuted for displaying a slightly altered passage of Scripture from the Old Testament: "No weapon formed against me shall prosper." Even the articles that do acknowledge that there were other charges against Sterling do so in a way that gives the impression these other charges, which had nothing at all to do with her signs, somehow resulted from her refusal to remove the signs. The Daily Caller, for example, in an article titled "High Court Agrees To Hear Appeal Of Marine Discharged For Refusing To Remove Bible Verses," presents it like this: "Sterling's staff sergeant demanded she remove the verse but she wouldn't. The next day Sterling arrived at her station to find the verses ripped down, so she put them up again. This cycle repeated, and soon Sterling was court-martialed. She was convicted of disrespecting a superior commissioned officer, failing to go to an appointed place of duty, as well as disobeying a lawful order on four different specifications." Sterling, who decided to represent herself during her court-martial, has already appealed her case once and lost, with the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals affirming the judgment of the court-martial, as well as her sentence. Advertisement But now Sterling is being represented by the Liberty Institute, and the highest court in the military, the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, has granted a review of the case. As you can see if you read the Liberty Institute's description of the case, there is no mention at all of the other, more serious charges that Sterling was found guilty of. The sole ground on which the Liberty Institute is appealing Sterling's case is that she had the right to post her signs under the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), and that the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals was wrong in its decision that Sterling's actions were not protected by the RFRA. For a detailed explanation of why the RFRA does not apply to Sterling's case, see the amicus brief filed by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF). But, the question of whether of not Sterling's actions were protected by the RFRA aside, here's the bigger question. What, exactly, does the Liberty Institute hope to accomplish by making its appeal solely about Sterling's signs? As already explained, Sterling's refusal to obey the order to remove these signs was just one of several charges she was found guilty of, and it wasn't even the most serious of the charges. Making the case all about these signs might work to turn Sterling into their new poster child for Christian persecution in the media, but does the Liberty Institute seriously think that by making its appeal only about the Bible verse issue is going to make the other charges that Sterling was found guilty of just magically go away? That the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces is just going to forget about Sterling's failure to go to her appointed place of duty, her disrespecting of a commissioned officer, and her refusing to obey the orders of her superiors to wear the proper uniform. Even without the charges resulting from Sterling's refusal to remove her signs, she would certainly still have been court-martialed and found guilty of these other charges. And, by failing to appeal the other convictions to the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, Sterling's "counsel" has waived any legal arguments or defenses she may have had regarding her other convictions, making those convictions now final. With the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces having agreed to review Sterling's case, the Liberty Institute is now, of course, bolstering its case with amicus briefs from various supporters in its fight against this outrageous example of alleged persecution of Christians in the military. This would be nothing of note if it weren't for who one of these amicus briefs came from -- a group of nine retired military generals, most of whom were known for blatantly disregarding military regulations themselves when they were on active duty. Advertisement One of these nine retired generals is Maj. Gen. Jack Catton, Jr., who in 2007 was found by the DoD Inspector General to be in violation of the DoD Joint Ethics regulations regarding endorsement of non-federal entities by his participation in uniform at the Pentagon in a 2004 promotional fundraising video for the fundamentalist Christian organization Christian Embassy. And even before that investigation had gotten underway, General Catton was the subject of another inquiry for having used his official email account to send out fundraising emails for Bentley Rayburn, a political candidate running for Congress in 2006, not only blatantly disregarding DoD regulations on endorsing political candidates, but saying in his emails that "we are certainly in need of Christian men with integrity and military experience in Congress." Another is Lt. Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin, who was admonished by the Bush administration in 2003 for his speaking in churches in uniform, delivering Christian supremacist speeches in which he made virulently anti-Muslim remarks and painted the War on Terror as a holy war. Another is Brig. Gen. Richard Abel, a former executive director of Campus Crusade for Christ's Military Ministry, an organization whose stated goal is to transform our military into a force of "government-paid missionaries," and whose "God's Basic Training" program teaches recruits in Army basic training that "The Military = 'God's Ministers'" and that one of their responsibilities as a soldier is "To punish those who do evil" as "God's servant, an angel of wrath." And then there's Maj. Gen. Cecil Richardson, the former Chief of Chaplains of the Air Force, who was quoted in the New York Times back in 2005 as saying that Air Force chaplains "reserve the right to evangelize the unchurched," and then, when asked in an Air Force Times interview, "Say a Christian chaplain is visited by a troubled airman who isn't interested in hearing about religion. Do you trust your chaplains to advise that airman without steering him toward Jesus?," Maj. Gen. Richardson began his answer, "Well, you know, sometimes Jesus is what they need. They're asking for it. ..." Advertisement And, on top of the record of prior disregard for military regulations among this group of retired generals, their use of their positions as retired generals to even file their amicus brief in this case violates the Standards of Conduct for retired military officers, as explained in this Standards of Conduct complaint filed by MRFF. Incredibly, among the arguments in the nine general's brief is the claim that Monifa Sterling did nothing wrong because service members must swear an oath to God. Seriously, these generals are actually arguing that the phrase "So help me God" being at the end of military oaths -- a phrase that is not only not required because of the Constitution's "no religious test" clause, but has been the source of numerous complaints itself when service members were unconstitutionally forced to say these words -- is a reason that Sterling's disobeying of an order to remove her signs was OK! From the generals' brief: "Finally, it is incongruous that service members should swear with God's aid to support and defend the Constitution, but be deprived of basic exercises of religion like displaying a favorite religious text in a personal workspace." "Enlistees and officers are required to take an oath to 'support and defend the Constitution' and invoke God's aid to fulfill their oath." "It is all the more problematic to prevent a military member from exercising his or her own religious beliefs when the oath he or she is required to take to join the military invokes God's very aid." And even more outrageous is one of the examples the nine generals use to make their irrelevant point that "the desire to express or live out one's religious beliefs, which initially spurs the decision of a soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine to join the military, often grows and intensifies as military service continues." The outrageous example they use is Jeffrey Struecker, writing: A few specific examples illustrate this. For instance, Jeffrey Struecker was one of the Army Rangers who fought in the firefight memorialized in the movie, Black Hawk Down. He credits his faith in God with his ability to return to the firefight to check on the status of the downed helicopter. Advertisement Why is the example of Jeffrey Struecker so outrageous? Well, because Struecker's admitted tactic for evangelizing as a Ranger chaplain was to take advantage of the soldiers in Ranger training, waiting until they were so worn down by a lack of food and sleep that they would be easier to convert, as can be seen in the video below (beginning at the 2:50 mark): Yes, this is what these nine retired generals who are now defending Monifa Sterling's behavior consider to be a great example in support of their argument that unrestricted religious expression is good for the military -- a chaplain who would deliberately prey on soldiers who are so tired and hungry that they don't have the energy to resist, proudly saying of his reprehensible evangelizing tactic: "My goal is to meet them when they're at their absolute worst -- when they're coldest and the most tired and the most hungry that they're gonna be -- because the more difficult the circumstances, the more receptive the average person becomes to issues of faith." We meet outside my apartment at seven in the morning on a freezing cold Saturday. We're Facebook friends, but total strangers; three idealistic pilgrims on a quest to the faraway land of Iowa, that frigid empty wasteland that will decide our nation's next president. As soon as we're on the highway, a sense of excitement permeates the car. We don't know each other, but we already know we have the most important thing in common: a passion for social and political change, a desire to be a part of what Bernie calls a political revolution. It's funny; the whole trip, we refer to the man we're doing this all for, a man we've never met, by only his first name. Bernie. "Did you hear what Bernie said about institutional racism?" "My favorite thing about Bernie is his passion. He exudes passion without even trying." Like he's a mutual friend that introduced us all. Advertisement We realize somewhere along the way that's exactly what he is. Somewhere around the great Mississippi River the conversation turns to Dr. Cornel West, an activist and professor who refers to himself as a "Revolutionary Christian." He's been out stumping for Bernie, and is another figure we all admire. We agree that he is a shining example of all Christianity can be. Then we ask each other. "Are you religious at all? Spiritual?" None of the answers are simple. I'm a progressive Christian struggling with what God means; he grew up in a Reform Jewish household and flirted with the Baha'i faith; she is a convert from Christianity to Islam. Is there more to this than just our progressive politics? Is there something guiding us on our path? We agree that no one religion has a monopoly on God, faith, spirituality, enlightenment, or any other synonym for religious experience. That there's something common among our differing faiths, maybe even to all faiths. Maybe there's something spiritual about the presidential campaign of U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders. Michael talks about the spiritual joy of selfless service to others, and the genuineness of Bernie's smile. It makes sense to us. Crystal, hesitant at first to even reveal her faith, speaks of the damage that America has done to people of her faith all across the world, and the hope that under President Sanders, those wounds might begin to heal. That America may well become the country we all grew up thinking it was. Advertisement I'm quiet, but I think about Jesus. My hero. The man who went against the religious institutions of his day to heal the sick, regardless of their socio-religious standing (universal healthcare, anyone?) I think of his indictments of wealth and greed, of his good news to the poor. Of the distributive economic and social justice of his Kingdom of God. When we arrive at Bernie's campaign office in Iowa City, the temperature is in the single digits and the office is bustling with more strangers. Some are old; many are young, like us. Smiles and hugs are abundant. Within moments, we've been drafted into the ranks of these Sanders soldiers, marching into the ice to knock on doors. Most people ignore us, or aren't home. Some are rude, ordering us to get off of their property. A small few are enthusiastic to see us, inviting us in for a few moments to warm up, pledging to caucus for Bernie, thanking us for what we're doing. We find friendly faces even among the uninitiated; Democrats for Hillary and Republicans alike thank us for being involved, admire our bravery against the freezing temperatures, and listen to what we have to say. A few even promise to think it over. When it gets too cold and dark to canvass, we return to the office. It feels like going home, and we're struck again by the community among these supporters, united by their desire to change the world, enabled by a disgruntled septuagenarian who managed to hold onto enough idealism for all of us. We sit down to eat together, strangers only in name, and again I'm reminded of Jesus and his open commensality. Then it's time to get to work making phone calls. We leave the next day more energized than when we'd come, even though we hardly slept. We want to stay. We say goodbye to our new friends, promising to come back before the caucus if our lives allow. We tapped into something out in that cold, hustling for our dear brother Bernie Sanders and his message of love and hope. Advertisement Love for our fellow human beings, meaning the desire to see everyone succeed, everyone taken care of, everyone treated with the dignity our humanity entitles us to. Hope that political action can be enough, that our country isn't too far gone to take back. Hope that the vision of a world marked by economic and social justice, first preached by the prophets of ancient Israel, then fought and died for by Jesus of Nazareth, next articulated by Muhammad, and continually championed by heroes from all faiths all over the world, can and will be realized. That vision of love and hope is older than, and will continue after, Bernie Sanders. But what Senator Sanders has done is give a voice to the politically disenfranchised and disenchanted all across America. Idealistic? Sure. Improbable? Maybe. But every great thing humanity has ever done was at one point improbable. Out in those cold Iowa streets, doors slamming in our faces, new friends at our sides, we felt anything was possible. That's because anything is possible. "America was promises to whom?" -- Archibald McLeish, America Was Promises It was a good day for those who had served as Iraqi translators/interpreters, although it passed largely unnoticed. The day was October 4, 2013. That was the day President Obama signed an extension of the special immigrant visa program for them. It extended the program until the end of 2013. The Act provided for what were called "Special Immigrant Visas." They were for Iraqi nationals who had served as translators or interpreters for or on behalf of the United States government. When Congress initiated the fast-track immigrant visa program in 2008 in order to permit translators and interpreters to enter the U.S., the visa applications were supposed to be turned around within 9 months. It has not turned out that way. According to Katherine Reisner of the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project at the Urban Justice Center, as of March 15, 2015, more than 1,800 Iraqis' applications remain in limbo and many of these have been waiting 5 years. Captain Doug Vossen who served two tours in Iraq said his translator, who is awaiting a visa, served as his protector and adviser, but now that the promised visa has not appeared, he is in hiding in Iraq with his family fearing for his life. "He was there, risking his life when the United States Government came calling. And now, when he is at the end of his rope, completely desperate for him and his family, we're not returning the favor? Just not right." Captain Vossen is right and things may be getting worse. That's because on November 19, 2015, the House passed an anti-refugee bill that, if it becomes law, will increase the difficulties already faced by Iraqi personnel who were promised visas at the conclusion of the part of the Iraq conflict that ended in 2008. Although the intent of the bill is to slow down the almost non-existent admission of Syrian refugees into this country, as drafted it would further delay the admission of those Iraqis who helped the United States during the war. When the bill passed the House, there was uncertainty as to whether or not it would be considered by the Senate. The uncertainty is gone. On January 18, 2016, it was announced that the Senate would take up the legislation during one of the rare times in 2016 that it will find the time to act as a legislative body. Although Harry Reid, the top Democrat in the Senate, has stated that the legislation has no chance of attracting sufficient democratic support in the senate to be passed, if he is wrong and it becomes law, those Iraqis who were promised visas will be able to quietly wait to see if ever the United States will honor the commitment it made to them at the end of the war. (Nine Iraqi interpreters sued the U.S. Government in March 2015 order to get their visa status resolved. That suit is pending.) Advertisement There are other potential immigrants who are anxiously waiting to learn if their ability to obtain visas is in jeopardy. The answer for them is not to worry. These people are the beneficiaries of the EB-5 visa program. Under the EB-5 program foreign investors who invest $500,000 in a new U.S. commercial enterprise in a "targeted employment area " are able to obtain green cards for themselves and visas for two family members. As an alternative to investing $500,000 in a "targeted employment area", investors may invest $1 million in any new U.S. commercial enterprise irrespective of where it is located. Because of the way the program is structured, an investor may build a luxury project but nonetheless qualify for the benefits with only a $500,000 investment by building it adjacent to a "targeted Employment Area". What we learn from the foregoing is that money talks-courage doesn't, at least when it comes to getting visas. Senator Charles Grassley and others have long urged that the program be overhauled because of abuses in how it operates. That didn't happen. Instead, towards the end of December, before Congress went on vacation for the holidays, it acted to extend the EB-5 program until September 30, 2016. That will give Congress a chance to see how the program can be improved. It also gives foreign investors additional time to get their EB-5 visas. Meanwhile, the Iraqi translators in Iraq who live in fear for their lives because of the assistance they gave the United States during the war and the subsequent failure of the United States to honor its promises, can wait an indeterminate time for admission to the country they helped. Go figure. Christopher Brauchli can be emailed at brauchli.56@post.harvard.edu. For political commentary see his web page at http://humanraceandothersports.com It has been common for scientists, including me, to criticize previous federal administrations for condoning scientific misconduct when it comes to denying climate change or ignoring environmental concerns. So when, in April 2009, President Obama told the National Academy of Sciences "we are restoring science to its rightful place", and "the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over," the scientists in the audience, including me, gave him a standing ovation. The president then instructed his science advisor Dr. John Holdren, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), to issue uniform guidelines for a strong federal scientific integrity policy within three months. But nearly seven years later, there is still no meaningful federal scientific integrity policy, and parts of the Obama administration have continued to misuse science to support ideology. The next administration can, and should, do better. It took OSTP more than 18 months to issue feeble guidelines that gave individual federal agencies complete discretion to develop their own policies. How effective are those individual policies? The answer is that the policies vary from strong to very weak. For example, at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that oversees the National Institutes of Health (NIH), there is a strong policy administered by the Office of Research Integrity. In contrast, as shown here, at the Department of the Interior, there is a weak policy that in practice has so little substance as to be meaningless. The Department of Justice, in defending Interior's decisions, is no better. Advertisement Here I present two striking examples. The common theme in both examples is that someone at the top (e.g., the Director of the National Park Service or the Secretary of Interior) made their wishes clearly known about the outcome they desired before their agency embarked on what should have been an unbiased science-driven environmental impact statement (EIS). In both cases, the EIS came to the boss' desired outcome (no surprise), even if it required fabricating, falsifying, or ignoring scientific data. With a weak scientific integrity policy, formal complaints led to cover-ups and meaningless investigations. In spite of the President's lofty words, it has been business as usual at the Departments of Interior and Justice with science taking a back seat to ideology. The next administration should learn from what has been done right (e.g., HHS) -- and what hasn't (e.g., Interior and Justice). Example #1: The oyster farm at Drakes Estero The first example concerns how both the Departments of Interior and Justice dealt with the so-called 'oyster war,' the decade-long battle between the National Park Service (part of Interior) and an 80-year-old oyster farm, which started at Drakes Estero in Point Reyes National Seashore and ended on the steps of the Supreme Court. The oyster farm lost, and so did scientific integrity. The creation of Point Reyes National Seashore along the coast of California in 1962 was a historic collaboration between environmentalists and agriculturalists in what should be a model for the rest of the park system - in which the production of wholesome food can exist in harmony with the protection of the environment. In recent years, however, the National Park Service, Sierra Club, and other environmental organizations decided that Drakes Estero should be turned into a legally defined wilderness area, and with that change, that the oyster farm should go. That decision was a flip-flop from what the same groups said three decades earlier. Advertisement In 1976, when Congress passed laws designating Drakes Estero as "potential wilderness," there was a remarkable consensus among the public - including the Park Service and environmental organizations - that the oyster farm should remain operating under wilderness designation in perpetuity. The Sierra Club, for example, argued that Drakes Estero could be put under the Wilderness Act "even while the oyster culture is continued - it will be a prior existing, non-conforming use." The co-sponsors of the legislation, Sen. Alan Cranston, Sen. John Tunney, and Rep. John Burton, all agreed that the oyster farm should continue. The oyster farm had a lease with the potential to be renewed in 2012. Once the Park Service, Sierra Club, and others changed their minds and decided they wanted to remove the oyster farm, they presumably needed a justification for their flip-flop - some new information to turn public opinion - and elected officials - against the oyster farm, and thus against the permit renewal. That new information was so-called scientific evidence of environmental harm. In 2007, National Park Service, led by then West Regional Director Jon Jarvis (who in 2009 under President Obama became NPS Director), announced that the oyster farm was polluting the water, smothering eelgrass, harming fish, and degrading the estero's ecosystem. Most alarmingly, in 2007, a park official who reported to Jarvis said the oyster farm's owners should be prosecuted for committing "environmental felonies" because the farm had allegedly caused an 80 percent decline in the local population of harbor seals, a federally protected marine mammal. These charges were surprising. Clams, oysters, and other shellfish were an important part of the environment for Drakes Estero, just as they were for San Francisco Bay and other coastal bays and estuaries up and down the California coast, and around the world, before most were fished out or destroyed by pollution. Oysters actually provide environmental benefits by clarifying water, which is why they are being restored in projects around the world. In 2007, the National Park Service refused to publicly share its data and analysis that led to the 80 percent decline claim. When Senator Dianne Feinstein intervened, the National Park Service reluctantly made the data available, and we learned why the agency had refused to act with transparency. The data did not support the Park's claim. Advertisement Harbor seals had indeed declined by 80 percent at one subsite--but that subsite was far from the oyster farm, in what was already a protected wilderness area. The decline correlated with an increase in disturbances from wildlife and human park visitors, not the farm. The seals simply moved to other neighboring sites, some actually closer to the oyster farm, as the overall population remained unchanged. Three years later, in 2010, the Park retracted their 80 percent decline claim. As a result of the park's shenanigans, in 2007 the oyster farm owner asked Interior's Inspector General (IG) to investigate potential misconduct. In 2008, the IG released its report. It found that the National Park Service "had misrepresented research" and wrote that while the park scientist "denied any intentional misrepresentation," their investigation revealed the park scientist was privy to information contrary to her characterization and did nothing to correct the misinformation. The IG also determined that Interior lacked a scientific integrity policy. Around the same time in 2007, Feinstein asked the National Academy of Sciences to investigate the park's claims and independently evaluate the data. In 2009, the Academy released its report. While asserting that it would not comment on potential misconduct (i.e., whether misrepresentations were intentional or not), the Academy found the National Park Service had "selectively presented, overinterpreted, or misinterpreted" the available data, and concluded that, at Drakes Estero, "there is a lack of strong scientific evidence that shellfish farming has major adverse ecological effects." By 2010, the National Park Service had retracted most of the claims it had made against the oyster farm in 2006 and 2007. In early 2011, the Solicitor's Office of the Department of the Interior concluded that park officials and scientists had shown "bias," "advocacy," a "troubling mind-set," and that five employees had "violated [the National Park Service] Code of Scientific and Scholarly Conduct." With the retraction of the false claims and rebukes by the National Academy of Sciences, Interior's Inspector General, and Interior's own lawyers, there was reason to hope that the park would end its misuse of science. However, with the renewal of the oyster farm's operating permit coming up in 2012, the NPS embarked on preparing an environmental impact statement to help guide the Secretary's decision of whether to renew the farm's permit. While preparing the EIS, the National Park Service doubled down, putting out still more claims of environmental harm. The main evidence for the renewed hardline policy was, again, harbor seals. Advertisement In 2007, the National Park Service initiated a secret program, with cameras hidden in dense brush, to gather digital photographs of seals and oyster boats, every minute of the day during pupping season for more than three years--for a total of more than 300,000 photographs. The Academy had asked NPS for all of its data, and even went so far as to write that resolving the controversy "... would require a data collection system that could be independently verified, such as time and date stamped photographs," yet park officials and scientist failed to disclose the existence of their ongoing data collection and analysis. The secret cameras and the park's analysis of the photographs were uncovered in 2010, based on a leaked government document, followed by a Freedom of Information Act request. The detailed National Park Service logs of those photos revealed no disturbances to the seals by the oyster farm. But the National Park Service was determined to find disturbances in those photos, so in 2012, as it was preparing its final EIS, and with the help of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS, another branch of Interior), it asked one of the world's foremost marine mammal behavior experts, Dr. Brent Stewart of Hubbs SeaWorld Research Institute, to re-analyze the enormous cache of photographs. In Stewart's May 2012 report, he found "no evidence of disturbance" of seals by oyster boats. This should have finally put the issue to rest. But it didn't. In November 2012, the National Park Service released its environmental impact statement on the oyster farm. It concluded that the oyster farm had a significant "adverse impact" on harbor seals. Stewart's finding of "no evidence of disturbance" was doctored into a false finding of causation of disturbances, a clear case of scientific misconduct. Stewart protested to Interior that he was misquoted, but Interior refused to change its report. A week later, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar ruled against the oyster farm's permit renewal, citing, in part, the conclusions about environmental harm in the environmental impact statement. (He also cited the false claim that the Wilderness Act required the oyster farm to go.) Advertisement The Department of the Interior implemented a scientific integrity policy in 2011 in response to the President's promise. Interior's policy - if it had teeth - should have prevented this whole mess, but it did not: Interior officials and scientists knew the conclusion that NPS Director Jarvis wanted from the EIS in order to convince the Secretary to remove the oyster farm, and they appeared willing to change Stewart's findings to achieve that outcome. Emails obtained by FOIA revealed the importance of Stewart's analysis to what NPS wanted to present to Salazar for his decision. For example, a USGS official wrote in February 2012: "the NPS needs this analysis done by the end of March to brief Secretary Salazar who needs to make a decision on Wilderness Status for the park." "This is a high profile project." Shortly before Stewart submitted his analysis in early May 2012, another USGS official wrote to him: "NPS is chomping at the bit (they've got deadlines for deciding on the permit)" and then again a few days later "NPS will be breathing down my neck this week, when do you think you'll be able to transmit something?" My own involvement in this issue began back in 2007 when the President of the county board of supervisors contacted me and asked for my help in evaluating the National Park Service science vs. their claims. The county official knew me as a local resident, University of California Berkeley biology professor, elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, and someone who had been involved at the interface of science and public policy (i.e., in my prior role as Chair of the National Research Council's Board on Life Sciences). I was distressed by what I uncovered - a repeated pattern of dishonest science used by the National Park Service against the oyster farm. As a result of that discovery, I have been at the center of many of the investigations of false science. For example, I was the person who discovered the secret cameras, photos, and logs, and the person who discovered that Interior had altered Stewart's findings. In December 2012, I alerted then-USGS Director Dr. Marcia McNutt (currently Editor of Science Magazine and soon-to-be President of the National Academy of Sciences) to the misrepresentation of Stewart's report since it involved USGS officials. She agreed the misrepresentation was serious, and said she would instruct her Scientific Integrity Officer to open an investigation. After many months, and with no response to repeated emails to McNutt or her Scientific Integrity Officer, I filed a formal scientific misconduct complaint in May 2013 with the Secretary of the Interior. Advertisement Pro bono lawyers representing the oyster farm filed suit in December 2012 asking a federal court to reverse the Salazar's decision to close down the farm, claiming the decision had been informed by false science. The Department of Justice represented the Department of Interior in court. Justice has its own Scientific Integrity Policy. The policy states that Justice is "entrusted with awesome responsibilities and ... must pursue, rely upon and present evidence that is well-founded in fact and veracity." The policy requires that "When science ... forms the basis for the Department's [position], it is vital that the information relied upon be credible." Department of Justice lawyers violated these lofty principles in court while defending the Interior secretary's decision. Even though they had been alerted by my court filings that the environmental impact statement misrepresented Stewart's finding, government lawyers continued to cite its claim that the farm causes adverse impacts on harbor seals. Both agencies - Interior and Justice - continued to cite the environmental impact statement as if it were fact, right up to the steps of the Supreme Court. In June 2014, the Supreme Court denied the oyster farm's petition for a hearing. Months later, the oyster farm was gone. What happened to the year-old scientific misconduct complaint that I formally filed with Interior in May 2013? It took Interior over eight months to interview the key witness, Dr. Stewart, as to whether his scientific report and conclusions had been altered by USGS and NPS officials (Stewart was never asked the key question). In November 2014, five months after the Department of the Interior won the court battle, the USGS Scientific Integrity Officer, Alan Thornhill, sent me a two-sentence dismissal to my 164-page misconduct complaint. He wrote: "... we did not find misconduct or a loss of scientific integrity and the case is dismissed." In Thornhill's very brief decision posted on Interior's web site, he concluded that USGS and NPS officials were following "standard practices," as if to say it is not misconduct to intentionally misrepresent scientific reports since Interior officials do it all the time (you'll see Interior use this defense in #2 below). Advertisement In dismissing the case, Thornhill never denied that USGS and NPS officials misrepresented Stewart's report. Moreover, he never acknowledged that he had indeed interviewed Stewart in writing, and that Stewart had not contradicted anything I had written in my complaint. Thornhill also ignored Interior's definition of scientific misconduct involving "intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly" misrepresenting the facts. USGS and NPS officials remained silent on the misrepresentation of Stewart's analysis, did not correct their errors, and did not stop Justice from repeating the errors in federal court. In January 2015, Michael Ames published a story in Newsweek that included the first public interview with Stewart on this issue. Ames wrote: "On May 3, 2012, Stewart filed his reports, determining there were no disturbances attributable to the oyster farm's boats. But when the USGS published its final report that November, Stewart discovered that his findings had been altered and that the study reached conclusions his research directly contradicted. 'It's clear that what I provided to them and what they produced were different conclusions and different values,' says Stewart. 'In science, you shouldn't do that.'" But NPS and USGS officials and scientists did just that, and they got away with it. Example #2: The Klamath River dams Water use in the Klamath Basin in Oregon and California has been a source of conflict between tribes, farmers, environmentalists, a power company, and the governments for decades. In 2002, many blamed a massive Chinook salmon kill on an allegedly politically motivated decision by Interior and then Vice President Dick Cheney to divert water to farmers rather than to in-stream flows. A 2004 National Academy of Sciences report complicated the picture by concluding that poor water quality, rather than low in-stream flows, was the main risk to threatened and endangered species. Advertisement When the Obama administration came into office, it began considering a billion-dollar project to remove four dams on the Klamath River. There was never much doubt about the outcome: in 2009, Interior Secretary Salazar said that the proposal to remove the dams "will not fail." In April 2011, the Bureau of Reclamation (an agency within Interior) hired Dr. Paul Houser as its Science Advisor and Scientific Integrity Officer--a position created after Interior released its scientific integrity policy in January 2011 (Houser is today professor of hydrometeorology at George Mason University). In September 2011, Interior released a draft EIS for the dam removal project. Houser complained to his superiors that the draft EIS and its accompanying press release misrepresented the science panel report on the dam removal project, emphasizing the positive benefits without the uncertainties or negatives. In February 2012, just one month before Interior Secretary Salazar was scheduled to formally make his decision, Dr. Houser was terminated. He believed this was retaliatory and intended to prevent him from investigating whether the final EIS was also tainted by scientific misconduct. In response, he filed a whistleblower complaint with Interior's Inspector General as well as a scientific misconduct complaint with Interior's Scientific Integrity Officer. In March 2013, Interior released a report on Houser's scientific integrity complaint. The report was written by an outside consultant whose main client is Interior. The consultant was not asked to investigate Houser's actual complaint, but rather was given a set of questions written by Interior, and not allowed to interview witnesses. The report dismissed the charge of "misconduct" as "normal practice," and Interior's Scientific Integrity Officer, who reports to the Secretary of Interior, agreed. In May 2013, the House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources released a report on Interior's Inspector General, highlighting the Klamath River scientific integrity complaint because of what the Committee concluded were failures of both Interior and Interior's Inspector General. The House Committee reported that an IG investigator thought it likely that Houser was terminated because Interior disagreed with his scientific analysis. The investigators thought the reasons cited by Interior for termination were "trivial." Still, Houser was not reinstated, and his whistleblower and misconduct complaints were quietly dismissed. In 2012, Kate Sheppard published a story on Houser's case in Mother Jones. Sheppard wrote: "Advocates for transparency and good science within government agencies point out the apparent irony in firing a guy hired to enforce scientific integrity for his attempts to do just that. "I have to say, this doesn't smell right," said Francesca T. Grifo, director of the Scientific Integrity Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental group that has been following the implementation of scientific integrity policy closely. "Interior is struggling to figure out what this policy means," she added, and has had difficulty implementing it. "[That] leaves giant holes that politics can drive through." Conclusions These two examples show that despite the President's promise to restore science to its rightful place, it has been business as usual in parts of his administration, with certain Federal agencies misusing science to support their ideology. What have we learned about the scientific integrity policies in different federal agencies? Certain agencies, such as HHS, have a strong policy, whereas others, such as Interior, have a very weak one. First, Interior's policy provides no transparency, timeliness, and truly independent review. Second, it fails to deal with agency conflicts of interest. Third, it has no requirement to correct egregious errors. And fourth, it provides no accountability - no way to appeal decisions either administratively or in the courts. Our country needs a single uniform scientific misconduct policy that applies to all federal agencies, not a series of individual policies that allow some agencies to continue to misuse science. Here are some key elements of what should be included. Advertisement Create a uniform policy. The White House should issue a single uniform policy. The policy should be in the form of an Executive Order, binding on all federal agencies. The scientific community has waited patiently for over thirty years: it is time for a unified federal policy with some teeth. Don't allow exemptions. The federal policy should apply to all branches of government. For example, Inspector General offices believe the policy does not apply to them. No agency should be exempted from being held accountable for scientific misconduct. Conduct truly independent investigations. Allegations of scientific misconduct should be investigated by an office or agency that is truly independent of the agency accused of the misconduct. Independent investigators should be charged with investigating the allegations no matter where it takes them, who they need to interview, or what documents they need to demand. The results of investigations should be publicly released with a complete analysis. If investigations are not independent, then conflicts of interest can develop. So long as (i) high-ranking officials pressing predetermined agendas have power over the investigators, (ii) outside consultants overseeing investigations have financial ties with those agencies, or (iii) investigators are controlled by pre-filtered questions, then truly independent review will never be accomplished. Pursue cases in a timely fashion. Investigations should be conducted in a timely manner, with the goal that each case should be resolved within six months. The current situation, in which an agency can stonewall for more than a year simply deciding whether to conduct an investigation, is unacceptable. Advertisement Implement true whistleblower protections. Whistleblowers need actual protection. As Jeff Ruch, Director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility commented on Houser's case (i.e., the Klamath River dams) as published in Greenwire in 2013: "If Interior's own Scientific Integrity Officers are not shielded from reprisal for doing their jobs, how in heaven's name could one expect a staff scientist to push back against political shenanigans?" Admit and correct errors. When egregious scientific errors are discovered, agencies should be required to correct them, including retracting papers and reports. The days of agency directors refusing to correct false science, or government lawyers presenting false science in federal court as if it is fact, has to come to an end. Ensure accountability. Persons responsible for violating the scientific integrity policy--or encouraging such violations--should be held accountable. Good science is too important to our democracy for misconduct to be rewarded with promotions. Investigators who find misconduct should recommend appropriate actions to inform the public and remediate any injuries caused by the misconduct. President Obama is in his final year, and he still has time to get this right. But whatever happens this year, the scientific community, led by the National Academy of Sciences, should demand that the next President issue a government-wide policy that assures that all federal agencies have a scientific integrity policy as good as HHS and NIH. About the Author UNITED STATES - DECEMBER 8: Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, holds a news conference with Gov. Greg Abbott, R-Texas, (not pictured) in the U.S. Capitol to discuss Syrian refugee legislation on Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2015. (Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call) Through the course of his presidential run, Ted Cruz's Canadian birth has put the process for receiving U.S. citizenship in the spotlight. Now, the Senate Judiciary Committee will aim to forward a bill this month that the senator introduced that would change how Americans lose their citizenship. The specifics of the bill will shock Americans concerned with civil liberties. Sen. Cruz's Expatriate Terrorist Act (S. 247) would allow bureaucrats to strip citizenship from U.S. citizens on the dangerously vague grounds of "assistance" to a terrorist group. Americans could lose their citizenship without any trial, conviction, or review by another agency. For Americans abroad, the bureaucrats would even have the ability to deny the right to travel home while a lawsuit is pending in U.S. courts. Advertisement Current Process for Expatriation Lacks Strong Due Process In 1967, the Supreme Court found that Congress cannot take away an American's citizenship unless they voluntarily choose to relinquish their citizenship. The 14th amendment is unequivocal: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States... are citizens of the United States." Congress cannot disagree. In 1980, the Court added that a person's intent to relinquish must be proven, not merely assumed by virtue of voluntarily taking actions deemed by Congress to be "expatriating." The process for proving intent, however, is less than rigorous. Under 8 U.S.C. 1481, U.S. citizens--natural born or naturalized--can be expatriated if they voluntarily commit a variety of actions with the intent of relinquishing U.S. citizenship. These include naturalizing in, or being employed by, a foreign state, formally renouncing U.S. citizenship, or being convicted of treason, sedition, incitement to rebellion, or other violent acts against the U.S.. For most acts, the State Department regulations assume that you intend to keep your citizenship unless you formally renounce it. Yet if you "serve in the armed forces of a foreign state engaged in hostilities with the United States," "take a policy position in a foreign state," or are convicted of treason, the State Department rejects the assumption. Such cases, the State Department assures us, "will be developed carefully" by U.S. consular officers. Once the conclusion is made that you intended to give up your citizenship, however, you have little recourse. Under 8 U.S.C. 1501, if a State Department consular officer claims that you have committed such expatriating actions, and the Secretary of State signs off on the claim, that's it: you are no longer a citizen of the United States of America. You can appeal to the decision, but only to the very State Department that just expatriated you-and under its own regulations, it will not reconsider its decision without "substantial new evidence of involuntariness or intent." Advertisement At this point, the law gets very complicated. A plain reading of the statute appears to forbid appeals to U.S. courts by Americans abroad. But in 1962, the Supreme Court interpreted the law in such a way as to allow for judicial review under the Administrative Procedures Act (APA). The justices then abrogated this precedent in 1977, deciding the APA no longer grants jurisdiction. In the 1980s, two district courts then construed the law to still allow for appeals outside the country, based on the 1962 decision. The bottom line is that this area of law is far from settled and extremely complex, so much so that even the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals called the question of review "unclear" in 2010. For a U.S. citizen who has lost his or her citizenship abroad, the difficulty of challenging an expatriation decision would be immense and extremely fraught, especially in the face of a statute that implies they have no right to do so. Americans in this situation would have no right to attorney. They would be forced to find one in a foreign country. They couldn't flee the foreign country, including one that had become unsafe. There are already examples of Americans in Yemen who have had their passports revoked through bureaucratic fiat. One individual said he was coerced into signing a State Department form that led to his passport being revoked. They are currently suing. New Bill Will Weaken Expatriation Standards The only good news in the current process is that the facts at issue--i.e., a formal statement by the individual, a conviction for treason, service in foreign armed services, or a policy position in a foreign state--are at least fairly objective. Sen. Cruz's bill will add to these objective and clearly defined actions a new vague offense: "material assistance" to any foreign terrorist organization (FTO). Unlike treason or other violent expatriating acts, the bill doesn't require a conviction for this new offense. In fact, "material assistance" is not defined in the bill or in other law, and so it is not even possible to be convicted for it. Advertisement Under 8 U.S.C. 2339A, Congress has criminalized providing FTOs "material support"--which may or may not refer to the same actions as "material assistance." If it does, this law is already terrifyingly broad. In 2010, for instance, the Supreme Court found that Humanitarian Law Project violated this provision by simply providing the PKK (the Kurdish Worker's Party) in Turkey--which the U.S. has designated as a FTO--advice on how to "peacefully resolve conflicts." To understand how this bill could work in practice, consider a somewhat comparable case that went to the Supreme Court last year. A consular officer denied a visa to the wife of a U.S. citizen because of her alleged "terrorist activities." The citizen sued, arguing that his rights to be with his wife and have a marriage with his wife in the U.S. were being denied without due process. His wife was once a payroll clerk in the Afghan government prior to the U.S. invasion in 2001, but the officer did not cite even this to explain his decision--and the Supreme Court found that he didn't need to: those two words were all the "due process" to which he was entitled. The man's hopeless pursuit of an explanation for the denial could easily preview what might happen to someone targeted under S. 247: a blackhole of bureaucracy. The U.S. Can Stop Terrorists and Keep Due Process Protections The goal of the legislation, as stated by its author, is to prevent foreign fighters from returning to the U.S. to commit attacks. But if there is sufficient cause to take away someone's citizenship, there is sufficient cause to revoke their passports, arrest them, try them, and convict them. The bill is completely unnecessary to prevent future attacks. Sen. Cruz also seems to believe that his bill would cause individuals to automatically lose their citizenship, simply by engaging in the "expatriating acts" listed in the bill. He appears to think that it would not be necessary to prove that the person intended to give up citizenship by taking them--exactly what the Supreme Court has stated is impermissible under the 14th Amendment. But even if this were constitutional, it wouldn't be desirable. Advertisement There are many Americans who travel to troubled areas for innocuous reasons--for example, aid workers or U.S.volunteers for the Kurdish forces fighting ISIS (note that these Kurds, who the U.S. is helping, are the Syrian and Iraqi allies of the Kurdish PKK members in Turkey, who the U.S. considers to be terrorists). It is easy to see cases of mistaken identity or confusion over someone's intent in traveling near a war zone. This is why due process is important. Individuals are presumed innocent, and the trial provides a means for discovering the truth. We should not give more power to bureaucrats to take away all of the rights of Americans with a stroke of the pen. Such a process does not accord with American traditions or basic human rights. Congress should reform the expatriation statutes to require a trial prior to loss of citizenship. The Eagle Ford crude oil tanker sails out of the the NuStar Energy dock at the Port of Corpus Christi in Corpus Christi, Texas, U.S., on Thursday, Jan. 7, 2016. Crude oil slid Thursday to the lowest level since December 2003 as turbulence in China, the worlds biggest energy consumer, prompted concerns about the strength of demand. Photographer: Eddie Seal/Bloomberg via Getty Images The United States has never exported much crude oil -- but that is likely about to change because congressional leaders recently lifted the country's 40-year-old ban on crude oil exports. However, this new expected surge of crude oil exports will be entering a market that is already clouded by too little data transparency. Very little information is available on oil's full impacts on the environment and climate change. Better data is needed urgently in order to evaluate and quantify the oil sector's climate responsibilities. History shows that industries and companies often go out of their way to avoid releasing valuable information to the public. Volkswagen has previously installed software to produce false emissions-test data. China has been dramatically underreporting its coal consumption. And automakers Hyundai and Kia have been overstating fuel-economy claims. These are serious abuses that point to outdated corporate norms that result in companies not reporting verifiable open-source information to the market. Advertisement Open source data are needed to quantify the oil sector's climate responsibilities. A prime example of this is the oil industry, the sector with the largest global energy demand and ostensibly the largest climate footprint. In the wake of an historic climate agreement in Paris, there is a new mandate for all stakeholders to know your oil and what impacts it is having on the environment. Oil has changed dramatically over the years and continues to adapt constantly. Over the past several decades, the oil industry has developed the means to extract many different types of petroleum, such as tight oil, oil sands extra-heavy oils, ultra-deep oils and more. Technological advances, like hydraulic fracturing and injecting steam, mean that more unconventional hydrocarbon deposits in once-unreachable areas are now viable resources. Now, complex refining can turn even semi-solid and semi-gaseous oils into gasoline, diesel and other petroleum products. These developments are remarkable, but they have made a hash of existing environmental reporting requirements. Quite simply, the oil sector has changed dramatically, and data reporting has not kept up. There's an 80 percent difference in greenhouse gas emissions between the lowest-emitting oil and the highest. We need a 21st century oil data disclosure regime that accounts for the total greenhouse gas footprint associated with the entire barrel of oil -- its production, crude transport, refining, product transport and overall consumption. Despite its massive capital, scope and durability, the oil sector remains extremely opaque. Data reporting is seriously lacking. Measurements are inconsistent and data uncertainty is high. Too few records are disclosed and validated. Any information posted online features fine print stipulating its use requires companies' permission. And more often than not, up-to-date high-quality databases are the property of private consultancies that are extremely costly or not for sale. Open source data are needed to quantify the oil sector's climate responsibilities. That is why the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace teamed up with researchers at Stanford University and the University of Calgary to develop the Oil-Climate Index, a first-of-its-kind web tool that compares global oils' greenhouse gas emissions, barrel-for-barrel. In a small sample of just 30 global oils, there's an 80 percent difference in greenhouse gas emissions between the lowest-emitting oil and the highest. Despite its massive capital, scope and durability, the oil sector remains extremely opaque. Oil data transparency will require government action. This can be directed through executive order or by updating regulatory guidelines for greater disclosure during environmental permitting. Congress has also expressed interest in tackling the issue of providing greater information so that oil markets function more efficiently in the future. New oil supplies will enter global markets with the recent lift of the U.S. export ban. Greater transparency is needed to better understand these (and all other) oils. At the same time, the climate deal reached in Paris will require full emissions accounting. Up-to-date, open-source oil data is required to set industry best practices and inform decision making. Advertisement Last month, Disney released the new movie, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and I was in the audience the first weekend it opened (yes, I am just that geeky.) As I watched the movie I remembered long ago in a town far away (ok, not that far) when I was fifteen and fascinated by the very first Star Wars. Of course I was mesmerized by the special effects, the scenes of ships traveling through space, the droids, the technology, and, of course, the Jedi with their lightsabers. Over the years and seven Star Wars movies later, the concept of "The Force" is truly something I've considered. If you think of The Force as "energy that surrounds us, that passes through us, that binds us all together - and that can influence our actions," it doesn't seem any more mystical than many religious beliefs. The story of The Force in each of the Star Wars movies is the story of the struggle between the Dark Side and the Light - good and evil. This is a tale told in countless novels, fables, myths, and religious stories. So where are we today? It seems as if the Dark Side is rising. Mass shootings all around the world. Organized attacks on innocent people. Greed of the most wealthy that is creating more power for fewer people. It is widening the gap between those with resources and those without. We hear more stories about evil everyday on the daily news. Advertisement Additionally, and particularly this year, the national political campaigns seem to demonstrate the rise of the Dark Side. I'm not saying that our candidates are evil; but, the Dark Side is fueled by hatred, lies, manipulation, and falsehoods that are used to gain power. Sound familiar? I don't recall any campaign in recent times that targeted a group of people to ban from the country based on their religion. I am stunned by the assertions that all those from particular countries are evil rapists and killers. Such statements are false, fear mongering, and dark. However, we also hear stories of Light. Recently a little girl from Schenectady, New York survived a fire in an apartment building. Sadly, her father and three siblings were killed. She created a video asking for one thing this holiday season: a few Christmas cards to fill her Christmas Card Tree. With that simple request, she has received hundreds-of-thousands of cards from total strangers. On our college campus, our students, mostly through student clubs, take on numerous projects each year to provide assistance to people in our community, people they don't even know, but want to help. We are at our best when we help a stranger through a difficult time. We, in higher education, need to teach students to understand other cultures. We need to encourage them to use facts in discussions, not sound bites and hyperbole. We need to teach them to reason through arguments and to empathize with those with whom they do not agree in order to at least understand their position before fighting against it. We need to teach them peace and civility. We must encourage them to always be truthful. We must show them the Light. This past Martin Luther King Day, Donald Trump took the opportunity to pay tribute to Dr. King, who would have been 87 had he been alive today. As expected, the tribute was little more than Trump's usual campaigning, with Trump dedicating his campaign rally that day to King. Trump's tribute to King was only a symbolic move, but it's not wholly surprising since King has largely become a convenient political symbol. What King said or what he stood for seems to get distorted. Most people that know of King know of his famed "I Have a Dream" speech, but what of his other speeches? What of the King who criticized the Vietnam War or the King who was preparing a speech titled "Why America May Go to Hell." Martin Luther King has become such an iconic figure today that we forget that by the end of his life he was actually a very unpopular figure in the media. This is why I find it interesting how some people have tried to use King to attack the Black Lives Matter movement. This is the same King who was beaten and jailed for protesting segregation. King certainly did not listen to the voices within the white community that were denouncing him and he most likely would not have agreed with the voices today who attack the Black Lives Matter movement without addressing the situation that caused the movement in the first place. After all, King did say: But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. It's difficult to speak to what a person may or may not do if they were alive today, but that is precisely what many conservatives have attempted to do. For instance, Mike Huckabee suggested that King would have been "appalled" by the Black Lives Matter movement. Roger Simon wrote an entire article about how King would have viewed Black Lives Matter. It's curious how Simon criticizes the Black Lives Matter "people" for being the "sons and daughters of Stokely Carmichael" when Carmichael and King were actually friends. The two men marched together and struggled together. There certainly were disagreements between the two, but the two were much closer than Simon seems to think. Carmichael had great respect and admiration for King. We are so accustomed to hearing about King's dream of a colorblind America that we forget critical aspects of King's thinking, like his being an advocate of Black pride. Simon writes about the division between the integrationists and the separatists, which ignores the fact that in the latter part of King's public career it was with the "separatists" that he found support. For instance, the media attacked him when King spoke out against the Vietnam War, but on this issue King found common ground with Muhammad Ali of the Nation of Islam. Like King, the Nation of Islam had criticized the hypocrisy of America sending Black people to fight in wars when those same Black people did not even have equal rights in America. Moreover, King himself later questioned if integration was the right move. He told Harry Belafonte, "I think we may be integrating into a burning house." So King was not the staunch integrationist that Simon tries to present him as in his article. King may not have been shouting Black Power like Carmichael was doing, but when one listens to King's speeches from this time period he was clearly speaking about Black empowerment. For example, King said in his final speech "we've got to strengthen Black institutions." King was even an advocate for reparations. Advertisement If we really want to honor King's legacy it would be best to remember everything that he said and not pick and choose the parts of his legacy that are most convenient for us, especially those of us that are trying to dismiss or explain away the Black Lives Matter movement. Martin Luther King did not just dream about a colorblind America. He was unrelenting and fearless in attacking racism, poverty, militarism, and even capitalism. This made King unpopular with many people when he was alive and I suspect that had King been alive today he would be just as unpopular among some of the people that profess to love him. -- Eton Shirts latest menswear campaign, photo courtesy of Eton Another edition of Pitti Uomo has come to a close and the wonderful playground of all that is new and stylish in menswear has achieved, once again, record attendances from around the world and double digit growth in almost all European markets. Even with the financial crisis beginning to register in countries like China and Russia, and its ripple effect being felt around the globe, designers exhibiting at Pitti Uomo continued to reinvent fashion and recreate excitement in menswear. Raffaello Napoleone, CEO of Pitti Immagine put it best when he stated that, "we are looking to the future with confidence and in the knowledge that Florence and Pitti Uomo continue to be the top places to be on the map of world fashion." The future should always be on our minds, both as creatives and human beings, because it is when we lose sight of it that we are doomed. Short sightedness, I believe, is our worst enemy, it interrupts our imagination and limits our potential, while instead thinking about what can be, where we can go next without boundaries is the definition of our great human dream, the globalized equivalent of the "great American dream" our ancestors felt in the last century. Advertisement Pierre-Louis Mascia and the amazing technicolor dream-scarf. As a well-respected fashion editor pulled me into the Pierre-Louis Mascia booth enthusiastically, I could never imagine I would be stepping into a magical alternate universe of style that not only represented everything that is right with the world, but also inspired and excited me beyond what words can describe. In the designer's list of inspirations for his wondrous shawls, there hid in plain sight a few gems like Farid Yasulov's fantastical tapestry covered rooms installations, Yannick Haenel's latest novel Je cherche l'Italie, the urban lyrics of M.I.A., Italian artist Leonardo Ulian's recycled "Techno Mandalas" and Laylah Ali's graphic black drawings. I love it when fashion guides me to a world of new discoveries and when I can find pieces, accents that never let me forget who a designer is. While I await a way to buy my first Pierre-Louis Mascia shawl I will notice and follow his inspirations around the globe. Art Comes First and the Avec Ces Freres brand. The wondrous men behind Art Comes First made me believe in the magic of fashion at first sight. Shaka and Sam are a creative force to be reckoned with, a new generation of style power that will guide a brand new beauty aesthetic going forward, one that is inclusive and beautifully diverse. Fashion is always about setting trends and perhaps the greatest one present at Pitti Uomo was one of multiculturalism, one that allowed for a vision beyond our collective comfort zone, which of course has made us all everything but comfortable until now. Lets face it, just as those "lily white" Oscars (as cinematic genius Spike Lee called this year's Academy's choices on Instagram) aren't working anymore for cinema, neither will a single vision fashion look going forward. We are a global world, we need to think in global terms and thanks to the vision of companies like Art Comes First, I think I am beginning to understand just what the future will look like. And I love it! Advertisement Simon Fournier and these sparkly boots were made for walking. As I wondered around the main convention hall building of the Fortezza da Basso, I ended up in the MAKE section of Pitti Uomo, an oasis of artisanal creations. And there I discovered that a man can indeed wear glittery boots, with a substantial heel to boot (pardon the really obvious pun) and still look like a man. In the hands of the folks who create and sell Simon Fournier Paris, a shoe company that concentrates on making beautiful boots in small quantities, even silver and blue glitter can work for a masculine look, if paired -- as worn by the charming gentleman with the ever-so-lovely hint of a French accent who showed me the line -- with jeans and a blazer. Apart from wanting a pair for myself and realizing they don't come in a 6B, I can't wait to see the look again, on another confident, fashionable and preferably also French, man. Eton and that elusively perfect dress shirt. While men around the globe fall all over each other to find the shirt El Chapo wore in his video interview with actor Sean Penn, I ask myself "why?" I mean, it's a shirt boys and honestly, as far as shirts go, it's not the kind of thing us women want to see you in. It's a bit, how do I put it, too "drug-dealer hiding in the Mexican jungle" tacky. Swedish brand Eton on the other hand has both the textures and looks we women adore on men. And you won't have to spend any time ironing it to look good either, as they are all made in a special wrinkle-free fabric! With a few wonderful collections that range from dressy, to casual to edgy chic and can adapt themselves to any global market, Eton is a company after my own heart. Lets not even talk about their exceptional party on the rooftop of the Westin Excelsior, with beautiful people everywhere and fantastic drinks, overlooking the city of Florence. A perfect night organized by the perfect menswear brand. The Sartorialist capitalizes on his brand name. Blogger and photographer Scott Schuman has finally jumped into the fashion market and gone into making his beautiful vision a reality. Those looks, the silhouettes that he appreciates and captures all over the world for his blog The Sartorialist, which were also compiled into three bestselling books published by Penguin, have become the stuff that can be in any man's dream wardrobe. From shoes, in a collaboration with Sutor Mantellassi known for their beautiful handmade products, to my favorite jeans and a blazer looks for Italian denim brand Roy Roger's, Schuman is promising to make men all over the world look as good as he does. And from the looks of it, he's also helping men find that inner beauty that allows the master blogger to look as if he's not even trying. I can't wait to run into The Sartorialist man, on the streets of NYC, or in a hotel lobby in Dubai. I know I'll spot him from miles away, because he'll be the one exuding effortless style and feeling equally at home all over the world. Hotel Continentale, a home away from home. Last, but definitely not least, the "dulcis in fundo" of any stay in Florence for me, is the Hotel Continentale, my own oasis of calm and luxury away from the hustle and bustle of the shows, the crowds and the chaos. It's where I start the day, with a steaming cappuccino and some pistachio cream filled croissants, thanks to breakfast at any Lungarno Collection hotel of my choice -- I choose The Gallery, because I feel at home there -- and where I end it, enveloped in the crisp white linens of their soft bedding where I review the workday and do some writing. I can't imagine PItti Uomo without this place, and this time I ventured to their basement for a spa treatment at the White Iris Beauty Spa, courtesy of the lovely Hend, who did my impeccable "Blue Satin" Chanel manicure while I laid down and relaxed. Now, if that isn't luxury and the best life has to offer, I don't really know what is. Until a few years ago, the name of London-based ceramic sculptor Edmund de Waal would not have rung a loud bell. But since his book, The Hare with Amber Eyes, published in 2010, turned out to be an international bestseller, Edmund de Waal became a household name. Now, with his new exhibition, "ten thousand things" at Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills, he proves himself to be a fascinating artist as well, working obsessively with porcelain. Hundreds of his small porcelain pots are meticulously arranged in vitrines with a very particular syncopated rhythm. The ever-changing space between them is as important in his work as the moments of silence between the words of a poem. Last week, de Waal delivered a talk to a jam-packed audience at The Getty Center. He talked about his obsession with porcelain, which led to his latest book, The White Road: Journey into an Obsession (2015). This is the story of his "...encounters with many people and places that help deepen his understanding of the nature of the material." The exhibition is dominated by two colors, which I would describe as 50 shades of black, and 50 shades of white. Trust me, not until you see his 2 major wall-mounted pairs of vitrines, with a few hundred small pots in each, would you ever imagine that black and white can have so many shades. In his talk at The Getty, and the next day during the private walk-through of his exhibition at Gagosian Gallery, de Waal proved to be a very eloquent storyteller, all the while retaining a charming humility. He spoke slowly, with pregnant pauses that echoed the negative space so essential to his sculptural installations. Advertisement Among the major influences for de Waal and his art, he mentions the poetry of Paul Celan, and the music of John Cage. You might remember sitting in a concert hall listening in awe to John Cage's famous musical piece, consisting of 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence. And indeed, with all these musical references, it's impossible to look at de Waal's installations without thinking about old sheet music, with handwritten notes scattered rhythmically throughout the page. Another source of inspiration for de Waal --while working on this exhibition --was the architecture of the Schindler House on Kings Road here in Los Angeles. "It was here that, according to de Waal, Cage 'began to clear his mind.'" And indeed, if you've ever visited the Schindler House, you'll agree that it's the most humble as well as the most sophisticated architectural masterpiece. For the last several days, I was wracking my brain trying to think about any other artist of distinction who exceled in more than one medium. At last, a dear friend of mine reminded me that Paul Gauguin wrote Noa Noa, his famous travelogue of his time and life in Tahiti. And Jean Cocteau exceled not only as an artist, but as a poet and filmmaker as well. Wow. How about that? But still the question is, were any of them as good a storyteller as de Waal proved to be? There are two events this coming weekend where I will talk about the contemporary art scene in LA. On Saturday the 23rd at 5pm, I will be talking downtown at Photo LA with esteemed photographer Jim McHugh. And on Sunday the 24th, there will be a panel discussion at El Segundo Museum of Art at 3pm, where I will speak with two well-known LA artists, Rachel Lachowicz and Alison Saar. Advertisement To learn about Edward's Fine Art of Art Collecting Classes, please visit his website. You can also read The New York Times article about his classes here, or an Artillery Magazine article about Edward and his classes here. ___________ Social media concept on keyboard background Social media is changing "business as usual" for governments, opening up democratic processes, delivering services both to understand and surveil constituents, managing threats and conducting direct diplomacy. Even so, adoption of social media is slow and uneven, with vast differences both between and within states. As more and more governments move towards e-government, their use of social media will grow. Social media has had significant impacts on governments around the world, forcing them to respond, adapt and rethink governance in a digital age. The stakes are high. Using social media effectively is not just a matter of ROI but also important for citizen engagement, service delivery, crisis management/response and even national security. Advertisement There are numerous ways -- positive and negative -- in which governments are utilizing social media, including: 1. Opening Up Democratic Processes When its utmost potential is reached, social media is democracy at work. It lowers the barriers of entry for citizens to engage with, provide feedback on, and participate in government initiatives. Whereas politicians and government officials once had to travel to interact with citizens, now online town halls strengthen the connections between them, while providing a platform for direct input on government initiatives. Social media allows citizens to be the source of ideas, plans and initiatives in an easier way than ever before. We the People, an online petition system started by President Barak Obama, is just one example; anyone can start a petition, and any petition with over 100,000 online signatures requires a response from the federal government. Meanwhile, in 2008, the City Council of Melbourne used a Wiki-based platform to create the Future Melbourne Community Plan website, drawing over 40,000 page views. In 2011 Iceland used social media to crowd-source feedback for its new constitution. Advertisement The Iceland case study illustrates both the opportunities and challenges created by social media for government, as the constitution was not ultimately passed into law, showing that the use of social media as a democratic process is still experimental. 2. Public Service Delivery Social media has played a key role in the accelerating shift towards "e-government", the use of the internet to deliver government information and services. E-government goes beyond social media alone, but social media has become a means by which public services are delivered. In Afghanistan, Government Media and Information Centers provide live updates on Twitter, Facebook, and SMS about security incidents, while in earthquake-prone Indonesia, the National Geology Agency posts early warnings on both Twitter and Facebook. At the city level, Vancouver uses Twitter to notify residents of trash pick-up schedules. Beyond these alert-based services, cities such as San Francisco, Pittsburgh and New York have all developed online 311 systems that allow citizens to provide reports and request services via Facebook and Twitter. This application of social media is novel to government and citizens alike. While progress so far is laudable, governments still consider it a nice perk, rather than a must-have. This will certainly shift over time. 3. Understanding -- and Surveilling -- Constituents The wide reach and instantaneous nature of social media makes it a rich source of real-time information for governments. It has become easier than ever for them to receive feedback via online polls, sentiment analysis and data generated by social media. The huge amount of data that each citizen generates every day -- mostly via social media -- is a treasure trove of information. One 2013 study estimates that the average American office worker generates 5,000 MB of data daily. Advertisement Because of this, social media is a useful intelligence and surveillance tool. Governments monitor keywords, hashtags, conversation flows and geolocation data. This type of monitoring can range from "acceptable" uses, such those employed in crisis or disaster management situations, and potentially more nefarious ones, as in crowd management. During the 2013 protests in Ukraine, protesters received chilling text messages: "Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance." Thus, the privacy and security concerns for citizens -- especially those who wish to remain unseen -- in the digital world are very significant, and must be balanced against the wealth of information that social media provides. 4. Threat Analysis and Management Robert Hannigan, the UK's Director of Government Communications Headquarters, described social media as "the command-and-control networks of choice for terrorists," highlighting a common view government officials hold about the dangers of social media. The same characteristics that make social media attractive to criminals and terrorist organizations also make it a useful tool for governments as a source of threat analysis and management, much to the concern of privacy advocates. Law enforcement agencies now use social media as a type of open-source intelligence gathering, compiling background checks, criminal records (if any) and credit reports to create real-time threat profiles of individuals in predictive policing. In addition, it is also increasingly the site of "information warfare." The Israeli government pioneered this approach by using social media to broadcast in real-time details of its military advances against Hamas. Rather than waiting for journalists to cover the story in a way that was potentially less sympathetic than desired, the government -- or in this case the military -- took to social media to ensure that they shared their desired narrative, and also communicated directly with Hamas fighters. Advertisement 5. Direct Diplomacy Social media can be used as a tool of direct communication between governments and foreign organizations, civil society and even citizens of other states. This falls under the category of public diplomacy. Notable examples include the U.S. Embassy-Beijing's account on Sina Weibo in China, one of the largest and most popular social networks in that country, which publishes a daily report on air quality in Beijing; the @Sweden Twitter account, which gives control of the handle to a different Swedish citizen each week, painting an alternative and more "genuine" picture of Sweden than official channels normally allow; or the banter and bickering between @ISAF, the official account of the International Security Assistance Forces in Afghanistan and the Taliban. The objectives of these social media public diplomacy engagements differ in each case, but overall their goal is to provide an alternative narrative -- and platform -- for countries to influence their image abroad. These scenarios of how governments are using social media are non-exhaustive and non-prescriptive. As social media use around the world increases and evolves, governmental use of the platforms will increase and evolve as well. While this piece aims to provide an overview of what governments are currently doing, perhaps the next question is, "What they should be doing?" This post is part of a series produced by The Huffington Post and The World Economic Forum sharing insights gained from surveying 5,000 digital media users from Brazil, China, Germany, South Africa and the U.S on the impact of digital media on society. The series is developed in conjunction with the Forum's Shaping the Future Implications of Digital Media for Society project and the Forum's Impact of Digital Content: Opportunities and Risks of Creating and Sharing Information Online white paper. The series is running during the Forum's Annual Meeting 2016 (in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, Jan. 20-23). Read all the posts in the series here. I have been a retailer for over 25 years running a once multi-million dollar kids furniture and accessory store. Which qualifies this title of "Five Ways To Help Your Retail Business" just a little. This retail business not only grew me up in business, but opened BIG doors as a brand and marketing consultant. It did help that I studied Advertising and Graphic Design at the Seattle Art Institute. When the Internet hit in the early nineties, I was first in line to pay over 25K to have this beautiful website. This fancy website cost me thousands every month to keep it up to date with all the latest and greatest kids' products. Then one day I noticed that one of my main bedding companies was not only selling online the same products I was displaying in my showroom, but they were undercutting the "suggested retail" price. They also had a zip code finder to find a "store in your area." Thus competition was no longer in your neighborhood, but across the nation and with your vendors. I quickly recovered by designing and selling my own bedding and scaling down brands. However in my innocence one of my bedding companies invited me to come to their factory and talk about consulting opportunities with their bedding and brand. Even with an NDA in place, they ran with it and opened up a custom kids bedding collection. Bold enough to even use my own content. I could have gone after them and sued, but I had better things to do, like try to keep my business afloat. It seemed I was steaming ahead of my competition by creatively changing, branding, and merchandising in ways that kept my customer's coming back, and loyal to my business. Advertisement If you are a retailer and reading, this is all too familiar. Only since that time, we have all been trying to reinvent, hang on, build out, change, and try to keep our heads above water. No margins will ever cover your staff, your showroom space, and your overall expenses when facing the giants of online selling. After all we are now the free showroom to every brand in America who has sold out to the online giants. All your selling efforts, showroom space and merchandising are simply providing the online giants more revenue. Congratulations if you are still making your margins and still in business when most have become the showroom and staff to these online giants. I am sitting in a small community in Oregon writing this at my desk in that retail shop. No more staff, no more buying, no more plans for merchandising all the new products that once hit my backdoor. I am surrounded by the final pieces of inventory. Clothes, Stepstools, Lamps and so much more marked well below wholesale. After 25 years, and having just turned 50 I am focusing more of my time with family, and my work as a consultant. I have been making my margins, and turning a profit in this now small boutique. In the past few years I have had countless retailers contact me and ask me how I am able to survive in this retail market. It seems that last years efforts are no longer working and at the end of the day if retail is your bread and butter it's time to get knew knife to spread that butter. There are five things I have done that have helped my retail business. It's not a secret, but if you are hanging on and love what you do, here are some things you can do to start helping you and your company. Advertisement 1.Find your customers' in the social space and start building relationships with them. a.Online media, shopping, and your sales depend on this. b.Your customers are on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snap, etc, etc. c.Ask your customer's to share their experience in your spaces and places d.Have a post card that every customer gets with each purchase asking them to share on your social platforms. (You do have social platforms, right?) e.Build relationships with your customers around the products they love. 2.Invest in winner purchases- Are the big online giants stealing your sales from your best products? Well steal theirs. a.Bring in some key winning products and know what the big online giants are charging then advertise something like, "We beat out the big guys so you can shop here." b.Then build more revenue with pick up items that you know the big giants do not carry. If you are carrying carseats and you know the online giants sell for less, then invest in that number one carseat and surround it with all kind of swag for the carseat. I did this with the Phil and Teds brand. Target is now carrying this once high end boutique brand. I sold for $20 less than Target and then all the add in swag covered that loss. c.Winner, winner chicken dinner. You do win when your customer's come in with that phone app to show you a price and you can not only sell under the online giants, but you have this cool swag to go with it. 3.Delivery of Goods- If Dominos can deliver pizza; don't you think you can deliver the products your customer's need now? a.Get a call service in place NOW. More than ever people are still people and need people. Imagine being a brand that you hear a real voice at the other end of the phone who is, "Happy to delivery to you". b.Set up two days a week that you send someone out with a car load of goods to be delivered. Imagine what it will mean to that customer, who is working all day. Home delivery is not new. The big online giants have monopolized free delivery, yet we the retailers still have to pay shipping to get products in our stores. c."Give'em A Pickle" -Longtime Portland resident Bob Ferrell passed away this last year. Owning restaurants and ice-cream shops. He wrote a book called "Give'em A Pickle." Meaning offer something for free. It makes all the difference in the world. Customer services in the long run costs you nothing. What are you giving your customer's? I gave every customer a little wooden delivery truck. In bulk these cost me $1.00 each. d.If your customer's are calling they are looking at the online giant's pricing. They have learned all the features of the products they want. Yay you get to deliver and make a customer happy. 4.Invest in local products-Imagine if you set up modern day Trunk Shows & Pop-UP Boutiques in your showroom. a.This allows you to get to know your local talent. b.In seeing their products it allows you the opportunity to order in bulk at a later date. c.Supports your community. After all don't you want the community to support you? d.Bonus is that these vendors are so honored to be in your store that they invite all their friends and you expand your business awareness. e. 5.Be Unique in your store message. a.What are you doing different that makes people want to shop in your space? b.Offer a weekly event or product specific sale, which you share on all your social platforms. c.Stop email spamming. Remember when we all got so excited when we could actually email our customers. That now lands in a spam box. Pick up paper and pen and teach your staff the art of a handwritten thank you. barack obama signing copies of... President Obama's State of the Union address last week inspired a meme which has been flowing through my Facebook newsfeed ever since. Progressive Christians, for the most part, when they post this meme or "like"it, say how "inspiring" the President has been, how "compassionate" he is. He makes them want to be better people, they say. Better American citizens. I am not among those who have been inspired. When I review Obama's presidency, with the major exception of his stance on LGBTQ issues and his endorsement of same-sex marriages, I don't find that he has stood up for the weak and vulnerable. I find his policies and, at times, his speech to be the opposite of standing up for the weak and vulnerable. In fact, with his militarism, anxiety over national security, and willingness to exploit vulnerable ethnic minorities for political or economic gain, he bears a close resemblance to Caesar. Advertisement This is particularly disturbing in light of the fact that the United States is the contemporary world's Rome -- a key player in the militarization and globalization of the world to the advantage of the rich and powerful and to the disadvantage of the weak and vulnerable. My theological concern is that we progressive Christians have forgotten one of the central tenets of the Bible -- that there is a clear distinction between Caesar and God. We have forgotten that God is the good guy and Caesar is the bad guy. We should be the Anti-Caesars -- the Christ People who deliberately put critical distance between ourselves and the Caesars of the day. We should be the ones who analyze their policies and their words from the perspective of the weak and vulnerable peoples of the world. The peoples we might call the crucified ones. Instead of putting critical distance between ourselves and Caesar, we seem to have fallen in love with him - in this case with President Obama. No matter what he does, we stay with him when we should walk away. We say he did not mean it (he had to compromise), he could not help it (Republican obstructionism). When I review Obama's past seven years in office, particularly in light of his record on immigration, trade agreements, and jobs, I find that he did anything but stand up for the weak and vulnerable. He did not stand up for asylum seeking Central Americans, many of them children, whom he deported to their deaths last year, the Central American women and children being held in detention centers which some say resemble concentration camps, the more than 2 million families he tore apart through deportation, nor the thousands of migrants who died crossing America's heavily militarized southern border on his watch. He did not stand up for the veterans who have been deported to countries that for all intents and purposes are not their own. He has not stood up for the thousands of spouses, mostly wives, and children who have followed their loved ones into exile. He has not stood up for the many of them who now are the unauthorized immigrants, stranded by family ties, lack of funds, and lack of papers in countries not their own. Advertisement He has not stood up to the for-profit prison industry which negotiated contracts with the Federal government to deport 400,000 unlawful immigrants a year and detain 34,000 a day in prison-like detention centers. He has not stood up to the military contractors who want to further militarize our southern border. Obama talks about a "new economy". Yet, in his policies he has not stood up for the millions of people whose jobs will go overseas because he signed Free Trade Agreements with Colombia, South Korea, and Peru. He has not stood up for the millions of people whose jobs and businesses will disappear should the looming TransPacific Partnership, for which he has negotiated vigorously, come into being. He has not stood up for the millions of people who will be displaced in countries affected by those agreements. He talks of a new economy, yet he has not spoken out for the many low-income Americans who have been in the streets crying out for "$15 A Day and A Union!" He has not stood up to the deep pocket employers who want to import cheap, vulnerable workers via major expansions of the slavery-like guest worker program. Nor do most of us progressive Christians stand up to President Obama. We cannot. We are in love with him. And that is a problem, especially for the weak and vulnerable. Advertisement Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders has attracted an enormous following of millennials - the diverse group of millennials who sat on stage behind Sanders at his town meeting in Carroll, Iowa on Tuesday showed as much. But surprisingly, the audience facing Sanders at noon Tuesday was mainly made up of older generations. Sanders is currently polling 2-1 with millennials against democratic opponent Hilary Clinton, according to an NBC poll. But with older generations, Sanders remains behind in the polls. Advertisement But Sanders' audience in Carroll might hint at a growing following of baby boomers in Iowa. Sanders' agenda has obvious appeal to millennials, a generation immensely concerned with student loans, debt and unemployment. But the baby boomers who attended Sanders' town meeting at Santa Maria Winery found his agenda appealed just as easily to them. Lori Lang, an Iowa resident and factory worker who is currently putting her daughter through college, said she had always supported Sanders, and that she would caucus for him Feb. 1. "I feel like I'm the sort of person he's fighting for," she said. "I'm a factory worker whose income has not changed of any great significance at all in many years. I'm struggling. I just always felt like he sticks with his beliefs and he doesn't give up." Kelly Fratar, another baby boomer in Sanders' audience, flew to Iowa from her home in Berkley, California just to participate in the buildup to the Iowa caucuses. Though Fratar was attending events for nearly every Presidential candidate, she said Sanders would likely get her vote. Advertisement But Sanders had not always been Fratar's favorite - she first fell for Sanders when she read the Oct. 12 Populist Profit article in The New Yorker. The article, she said, helped her understand Sanders' agenda, and his use of the term "democratic socialism." Fratar felt Sanders was more popular with millennials than with her generation because younger age groups are less frightened of the word "socialist." But she said as Sanders gains publicity, her age group is starting to fear the term less. NEW YORK, NY - MARCH 11: David Koch attends the 2013 School Of American Ballet Winter Ball: A Night In The Far East at David H. Koch Theater, Lincoln Center on March 11, 2013 in New York City. (Photo by Gary Gershoff/WireImage) The Roberts' Supreme Court had no idea what it was unleashing on our democracy and on the American people when six years ago this week, the Court issued the Citizens United decision. The decision struck down the ban on corporate spending in federal elections and led to a series of developments that has left our political system and campaign finance laws in shambles. The decision: Advertisement - returned corrupting, unlimited contributions and secret money to federal elections; - provided billionaires and multimillionaires with unprecedented influence over our elections and government decisions; - led to the creation of individual-candidate Super PACs that raise unlimited contributions, support only one candidate and eviscerate candidate contribution limits enacted to prevent corruption; - led to the use of nonprofit groups to launder unlimited, secret contributions into federal elections; and - resulted in Super PACs and nonprofit groups spending, to date, more than $1.5 billion in unlimited contributions - including more than $500 million in unlimited, secret contributions. Advertisement By the time the 2016 election is over, America's Super Rich will have given the largest amount of the biggest contributions and the most secret money ever provided in our history to support candidates for President and Congress. A system of unlimited contributions is an inherently corrupt system. That's what the Supreme Court found in in Buckley v Valeo (1976). A system of unlimited, secret contributions is even more dangerous because it provides opportunities for donors and officeholders to buy and sell government decisions with no way to hold them accountable. The numbers since Citizens United tell a stunning story of the way the Supreme Court has given the Super Rich extraordinary influence in our political system. The top 100 donors in the 2012 national elections gave an average contribution of $4.7 million per donor to Super PACs, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The top two donors, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, gave more than $90 million -- including $30 million to the Super PAC supporting only Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. The Supreme Court's idea that a $30 million contribution like this cannot corrupt a candidate as long as the expenditures of the money are "independent" is both naive and patently wrong. Advertisement Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner, considered by many to be the nation's most influential conservative judge not on the Supreme Court, had a much better understanding of how money works in American politics. Judge Posner said, "[It] is difficult to see what practical difference there is between super PAC donations and direct campaign donations, from a corruption standpoint." Judge Posner has said about the Citizens United decision: "Our political system is pervasively corrupt due to our Supreme Court taking away campaign-contribution restrictions on the basis of the First Amendment." In the 2016 election cycle, the role of the Super Rich in financing our elections will far exceed anything that anyone could have imagined pre-Citizens United. In an unprecedented move, Charles and David Koch, worth $40 billion each, said last year they intend to spend, through the Koch political network, as much as $750 million (revised from $889 million) in the run up to the 2016 elections. Since the Koch network operates in secret, we will not know how much of their spending comes from their own money and how much will come from their Super Rich colleagues supporting their network. Advertisement What we do know is that the Koch brothers have enormous economics stakes in government policies that deal with climate change, energy policies, environmental regulations, and tax laws, among others. We also know that the potential influence over government policies that can result from the massive campaign-related expenditures will flow to the Koch brothers. In another unprecedented development, $176 million in unlimited contributions - or nearly half of the money raised for the presidential primary candidates as of last October - was given by just 158 families, according to The New York Times (October 10, 2015). "More than 50 members of these families have made the Forbes 400 list of the country's top billionaires," according to the Times article. "Sixty-four of the families made their wealth in finance, the largest single faction among the super-donors of 2016." This explosion of big money from the Super Rich in our political system is happening at a time of ever-growing concern by ordinary Americans about the income and wealth disparities in the country, and about Wall Street's power and influence in our political system. Billionaires have been coming out of the woodworks to support 2016 presidential candidates. Four billionaires who made their fortunes in fracking and investments gave $36 million last year to three Super PACs supporting Senator Ted Cruz, money that helped to jump start Cruz's presidential campaign. A billionaire businessman pledged $10 million in 2015 to support Senator Marco Rubio's presidential campaign. He was joined this year by a billionaire hedge fund manager who ius raising money to support Rubio's candidacy. Advertisement Former billionaire Hank Greenberg, a former head of AIG, gave $10 million this year to a Super PAC to support Jeb Bush. He is suing the government, which bailed AIG, out with the apparent goal of retaining his billionaire status. Billionaires George Soros, Haim Saban and Steven Spielberg have given $1 million each to the Super PAC supporting Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. And it is apparently only a matter of time before billionaire Sheldon Adelson and his millions will be heard from in the 2016 elections. Other billionaires have created their own Super PACs to provide support federal candidates. Billionaire Carl Icahn, an activist shareholder, is launching his own Super PAC with $150 million of his own money to support changes in the corporate tax laws. Billionaire Tom Steyer, an environmental activist, provided $70 million of his own money to fund his Super PAC in the 2014 congressional elections and is expected to provide millions more for the 2016 elections. Advertisement Billionaire Michael Bloomberg, a businessman and gun control advocate, provided more than $17 million to fund his Super PAC in the 2014 elections and is also expected to provide millions more for the 2016 elections. And on it goes. Some of have argued that Jeb Bush's poor showing in the primaries, despite having an individual-candidate Super PAC that has raised more than $100 million to support him, shows that such Super PACs may not matter that much. This misses the point. The billionaires and multimillionaires who support winning presidential and congressional candidates by providing huge contributions to their Super PACs are what constitute the dangers here. These donors will end up with enormous influence in Washington and widespread opportunities to obtain the economic benefits they want in return for the campaign money they provided. Thus, the danger here is legalized corruption. The Supreme Court has empowered the Super Rich, undermined ordinary Americans and subverted our democracy. This is not the representative system of government envisioned in our Constitution. The Supreme Court in Citizens United ignored the Founders concerns about corruption, the nation's history and the reality of big money in American politics. The Court also had no understanding of the harmful impact the decision would have on the faith and confidence of the American people in their government and elected representatives. Advertisement Even within the boundaries of this radical decision, however, there are major reforms that can be enacted to combat and counter the onslaught of big money in our elections. A major battle for these campaign finance reforms lies ahead. By Elyssa Kirkham, Finance Writer Health insurance costs are up for 2016. Monthly premiums for the most popular plans offered on Affordable Care Act state exchanges in 2016 are 10.1 percent higher on average than they were in 2015, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The tax penalty for those without health insurance is also set to increase in 2016 from $325 per adult or 2 percent of household income to $695 or 2.5 percent of household income, reported the The New York Times. GOBankingRates conducted a study of popular health plans offered on ACA exchanges in each state and the District of Columbia to see which states' residents are paying less for health insurance and what they're getting for their money. Click through to see if your state is among the best or worst for health insurance costs. The 10 States With the Highest Health Insurance Costs To find the states with the highest costs, GOBankingRates compared the lowest-cost plan at the ACA's silver tier in each state. Comparing monthly premiums, deductibles and copays based on a single, 40-year-old, non-smoking male with an annual income of $40,000, the study highlighted the 10 states with the highest health insurance costs. Advertisement If you live in one of these states, you should expect to pay more each month for your insurance. Unfortunately, you'll also be paying more for each doctor or emergency room visit, as the worst plans charge higher co-insurance rates and copays. Starting with the 10th-worst to the No. 1 worst state for health insurance costs, these are the states where residents pay more for coverage. 10. Colorado Colorado residents enrolled in the state's cheapest silver plan, the CO Silver 2750 option from Kaiser Permanente, will pay a $266 monthly premium that's right in line with the national median. The deductible is also relatively reasonable at $2,750. This plan's unfavorable co-insurance charges put Colorado in the bottom 10 of this list. A 20 percent co-insurance charge will apply for all visits to a primary physician as well as for emergency care, which means that the policyholder might still face high out-of-pocket costs even after they've met the deductible. 9. Wyoming The lowest-cost silver plan offered in Wyoming, BlueSelect Silver ValueTwo, carries a premium of $315 a month, 18.4 percent more than the national median of $266 for this type of plan, as found by this study. That's with a substantial tax credit of $105 a month, without which the premium is $420. The plan has an average deductible of just $3,000, but plan participants pay co-insurance charges at 20 percent even after the deductible is met, meaning costs could be high for people who require healthcare services more frequently. Advertisement Wyoming residents and legislators are currently debating whether to expand Medicaid in the state under Obamacare, which would bring the state $268 million in additional funding over two years and enable it to help approximately 20,000 uninsured residents get coverage. Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead expressed support for the expansion, reported the Wyoming Tribune Eagle. 8. Delaware The lowest-cost silver health insurance plan offered on the ACA exchange in Delaware is the Health Savings Embedded Blue EPO 3400 plan from Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield Delaware. Priced at $320 a month after tax credits ($3,840 annually), it costs well above the $266 national median identified by the survey and has a higher-than-median deductible of $3,400; however, the plan offers 100 percent coverage after this deductible is met. These costs are higher than this state's residents paid last year. Delaware's ACA exchange premiums rose 22.1 percent on average for 2016 compared with insurance costs for 2015 plans, according to DelawareOnline.com. Deductibles and out-of-pocket costs also rose year over year. Similarly, Delaware state employees might be facing higher health insurance costs or lowered benefits due to a spending gap anticipated in 2017, reported Delaware Public Media. 7. Indiana The number of Indiana residents enrolled in insurance plans through the ACA marketplace doubled in 2015 to close to 180,000, reported The Journal Gazette, and the state expanded its Medicaid through the ACA in 2015. Despite these changes, Indiana still has some of the highest health insurance costs in the nation. The lowest-cost silver plan, the MDWise Marketplace Silver Basic, costs $3,432 a year with its higher-than-average monthly premium of $286. The plan also has a high deductible of $5,000, and even after the deductible is met, the policyholder can expect a $200 copay for urgent or emergency care visits. Out-of-pocket costs are capped at $6,600. Advertisement 6. Oklahoma The cheapest silver health insurance plan offered to Oklahoma residents, Blue Advantage Silver PPO 103, has a monthly premium of $283, totaling $3,396 annually. This cost is higher than the median, and the plan's high deductible of $4,000 and higher copays, such as $15 per visit to a primary doctor and 20 percent co-insurance even after the deductible is met, contribute to making this one of the most expensive plans in this study. The plan's out-of-pocket maximum is $6,850. Insurance options offered to Oklahomans through the ACA exchange are more limited for 2016, down from five providers to just two -- and one of the remaining insurers has further limited its offerings in the past year, reported local outlet NewsOK. With fewer choices, Oklahoma insurance shoppers have fewer chances to get a deal on health insurance in 2016. 5. Mississippi Mississippi's lowest-cost silver plan, Ambetter Balanced Care 2 from Magnolia Health, is $278 per month, or $3,336 annually. It's the plan's high deductibles, however, that make it one of the most expensive. The insured party under this plan needs to meet a deductible of $6,500, the second-highest deductible cost of the health plans surveyed in this study, and each visit to a primary doctor has a copay of $30. Mississippi also has the worst health system of any state, according to a 2015 study on state health system performance by the CommonWealth Fund. The state had the third-worst score for accessible and affordable healthcare, largely due to its high rates of uninsured adults and failure to expand Medicaid. As the state with the highest poverty rate of nearly a quarter of its residents -- 24.3 percent, according to The Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality -- health insurance is still outside the financial reach of many Mississippians. 4. New Jersey New Jersey's lowest-cost silver plan, Oscar Market Silver, landed among the worst in the U.S. because of its high co-insurance costs of 50 percent. While it has a lower-than-average deductible of $2,500, a plan participant will still be responsible for half of the healthcare costs after this deductible is met. Additionally, the plan's monthly premium of $317, or $3,804 annually, is higher than average. Advertisement 3. Alabama The combination of a high monthly premium, high deductible and high copays make Alabama the third-worst state for health insurance costs. The state's lowest-cost silver plan, the Silver Compass 5000 plan offered by UnitedHealthcare, has a high deductible of $5,000, after which the enrollee is still responsible for 20 percent of care costs and a $20 copay for primary doctor visits. These lackluster benefits come at an above-median cost of $288 a month, or $3,456 a year. The state has not opted to expand Medicaid. In November 2015, a task force appointed by Gov. Robert Bentley recommended that the state government work to extend coverage to the hundreds of thousands of Alabamans who currently earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but don't make enough to reasonably afford health insurance, according to AL.com. Opting into a federally funded expansion of Medicaid could help the state's low-income residents get better access to healthcare. 2. South Carolina In South Carolina, the cheapest silver plan is the Blue Option Silver 6850 offered by BlueChoice HealthPlan, which ranked as the second-costliest because of its $6,850 deductible, the highest of any silver plan in this study. This high deductible is the plan's maximum out-of-pocket cost, and no co-insurance is required once this is met; however, a primary care doctor visit will incur a $25 copay. People in South Carolina also get poorer quality healthcare, according to CommonWealth Fund's study of state health systems, which ranked South Carolina in 40th place. The study reported that South Carolina is among the worst states for accessible and affordable care, has less equitable healthcare and is home to residents with overall poorer health and lifestyles. 1. New York New York has the most expensive health insurance, with factors scoring poorly across the board. The state's cheapest silver plan, offered by CareConnect, has a higher $3,000 deductible and the highest monthly premium at $366 ($4,392 annually). The insured party will pay some co-insurance charges, such as 25 percent on emergency care. The plan's maximum out-of-pocket costs are capped at $6,850 per individual. Advertisement Although New York is featured here for its high costs, it made healthcare news in late December 2015 when Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill that adds pregnancy as a qualifying event, which enables pregnant women to enroll in an insurance plan at any time, including outside of typical enrollment periods. With this law, New York is the first and only state that requires health insurers to accept pregnant women as new policyholders at any time. The 10 States With the Lowest Health Insurance Costs In the study of states' health insurance plans, some plans stood out as offering higher value while charging lower premiums -- the lowest is less than half of the cost of the most expensive health plan identified in this study. Lower premiums enable plan participants to save money in their monthly budgets, and lower deductibles and copays mean residents of these 10 states are also more likely to pay less when they need to use their insurance. Click through to see the 10 states where health insurance providers give customers better deals. 10. Idaho Idaho is one of the worst states for accessible and affordable healthcare, with 22 percent of people experiencing high out-of-pocket costs relative to income and rates of uninsured adults remaining high near 20 percent, according to data from the Commonwealth Fund. Because the state has opted not to expand Medicaid through federal funding, the state also has 78,000 residents who have incomes too high to qualify for subsidies or Medicaid but too low to afford monthly premiums, reported the Associated Press. Idaho's Gov. C. L. Otter, however, has introduced a new $30 million legislative plan that would use state funds to address the issue. The good news for Idaho residents is that their health insurance costs are already relatively low. The lowest-cost silver plan in the state, Mountain Health Co-Op Link Silver, has a monthly premium of $266, which is the national median, and it has a lower deductible of $2,150. Flat fees for visits to emergency rooms and primary doctors also keep costs low. 9. Oregon Several new healthcare laws went into effect Jan. 1, 2016, in Oregon that expand many residents' insurance coverage. The provisions require health insurance providers serving Oregon residents to cover a full year of birth control, 90 days' worth of most prescription medicines, and medical services provided via videoconference, reported Portland Business Journal. Advertisement Despite the expansions to health insurance coverage for Oregonians in 2016, the costs are still some of the lowest in the nation. Silver plans start at $230 a month with the Connect 2000 Silver plan from Providence Health Plan. Its deductible is a low $2,000. Plan participants should expect to be responsible for some of the costs beyond the deductible, however; emergency services carry a $250 copay after the deductible is met, and the copay for care from a primary doctor is $25, with out-of-pocket costs capped at $6,850. 8. Hawaii Despite having one of the nations' highest costs of living, Hawaii's health insurance costs are some of the most reasonable. Along with one of the better low-cost silver plans, Hawaii also has one of the best health systems in the nation, ranked as the third best in the nation by the CommonWealth Fund's study. The state's lowest-cost silver plan, HMSA Silver HMO, has a monthly premium of $260, which is slightly better than the $266 median, and it has a relatively low deductible of $2,500. It also charges flat copays for emergency care and visits to primary physicians, which help to limit plan holders' costs when they need to use their insurance. 7. District of Columbia The District of Columbia has some of the best health insurance costs. The District's cheapest silver plan, BlueChoice HMO HSA Silver, has a monthly premium of $229, or $2,748 annually. The deductible is just $1,350 -- one of the lowest of any of the plans reviewed for this study -- which also helps limit out-of-pocket costs for policyholders, such as the $300 emergency room copay. Advertisement 6. Michigan Michigan is another state with low a monthly premium -- just $210 a month, or $2,520 annually. The low-cost silver plan with this premium, Humana Silver 3800/Detroit HMOx, does have a $3,800 deductible, however, which is higher than most states' silver plan deductibles, but costs are kept low with other fees, such as the $20 primary doctor visit fee and the $250 emergency room copay before deductible. These low costs are offset somewhat by Michigan's 0.75 percent tax on health insurance, which funds Medicaid coverage for low-income residents of the state. Even with this tax, however, health insurance is relatively affordable in Michigan, and 311,000 state residents have signed up for health plans through the ACA exchange since Nov. 1, 2015, according to the Associated Press. 5. Pennsylvania Competition between Pennsylvania's 19 health insurers selling individual plans on the ACA exchange has led to better prices and plans for residents. The state's lowest-cost silver plan from Independence Blue Cross, for example, has one of the lowest deductibles in this study: $1,500. This deductible, paired with flat copays that make it easier to predict and control costs, are the top factors that put Pennsylvania at No. 5 among states with the lowest health insurance costs, even with the plan's monthly premium of $276. 4. Texas Health insurance plans offered on the healthcare exchange in Texas are some of the best in the nation. The state's cheapest silver plan, Molina Marketplace Choice Silver Plan, offers a low $2,000 deductible with a competitive $253 monthly premium for an annual premium total of $3,036. Flat fees on health services also reduce the overall cost. Advertisement Despite its low healthcare costs, Texas still has some catching up to do. Texas is one of the most populous states that opted not to expand Medicaid, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, and although its uninsured rates have dropped since ACA took effect, 20.8 percent of residents were still without insurance in the first half of 2015, according to Gallup data -- the highest of any state. 3. California In the nation's most populous state, more than 238,000 California residents joined the Covered California health exchange, reported The Orange County Register. The state's cheapest silver plan, Silver 70, costs $360 less a year than the national median because of its lower $236 monthly premium. The plan also has other affordable features, such as a low $2,250 deductible and flat fees on many health services. These low costs might soon be increased by a tax on all health insurance plans proposed by California Gov. Jerry Brown, according to the San Jose Mercury News. The tax would raise an estimated $1.35 billion each year, which Gov. Brown hopes to use to expand programs and services such as those for Californians with developmental disabilities. 2. Utah For Utah residents, low-cost health insurance is within reach even though the state has not adopted the federal Medicaid expansion. The state's least expensive silver plan, Molina Marketplace Silver Plan, has a premium of just $214 a month ($2,568 annually). Utah residents on this plan can also look forward to more affordable out-of-pocket costs. The plan has a low $2,000 deductible and flat fees for many health services. It also caps out-of-pocket expenses at $6,850. 1. New Mexico With the lowest monthly premium for a silver plan of any state, New Mexico residents can get covered for just $181 a month, or $2,172 annually, on the Molina Marktplace Silver Plan. Along with a low premium, this plan also offers a low $2,000 deductible and flat-fee copays for many health services. Advertisement Despite low costs, many New Mexico residents have encountered issues getting their health coverage. Due to a high volume of health insurance applications, many applications submitted in December 2015 remained unprocessed even past the date when insurance coverage should have kicked in, reported the Santa Fe New Mexican. Enrollees whose applications weren't processed quickly enough experienced problems such as being unable to visit a doctor or receive care using their new policy. 50 States and D.C. Ranked by Health Insurance Costs Here is the full ranking of the 50 states and the District of Columbia from best to worst, according to their health insurance costs for the silver plan with the lowest monthly premium in each state. Keep Reading: 20 Things Baby Boomers Can Save Money on in 2016 Methodology: This study compared silver plans with the lowest monthly premiums offered through the national or state-level insurance exchanges administered through the Affordable Care Act. Silver plans were used because these are the most popular plans, accounting for two-thirds of plans purchased through exchanges, according to data from the Department of Health and Human Services. Costs were estimated based on the following assumptions: The insurance enrollee is male, single, 40 years old, doesn't smoke, is in good health, earns $40,000 a year and lives in a major metropolitan area in the state. Where the enrollee qualified for a tax credit, the costs cited in the study reflect the estimated deduction that would apply. The lowest-cost silver plans for each state were ranked based on the favorability of four cost factors: (1) the plan's monthly premium, (2) deductible, (3) emergency care copay and (4) copay for care from a primary physician. This study and the included rankings were updated Jan. 21, 2016, to correct an error in calculating the cost for a Vermont silver health insurance plan. The ranking for the states with the highest health insurance costs has been updated to reflect this change, with Vermont moving out of the top 10 and Colorado moving up to No. 10. Advertisement By Andrew Lisa, Contributor The debate on whether the U.S. should adopt stricter gun control policies has been a hot topic among politicians, especially in 2015 as the nation dealt with a string of shootings that occurred in San Bernardino, Calif., at Umpqua Community College in Oregon, at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs, Colo., and more. In January, President Obama referenced the country's recent shootings in an emotional appeal for stronger gun control. But the push for more gun control is met with opposition from many Republicans and gun advocates who fiercely support the Second Amendment. And then, of course, there's the fact that the gun business is big business in the U.S. According to 2013 data from the Pew Research Center, there are between 270 million and 310 million guns in the U.S. And IBIS World's "Guns & Ammunition Manufacturing in the US: Market Research Report" reports that the gun business is a $13 billion industry with a 3.4 percent annual growth rate from 2010 to 2015. Advertisement Sure, $13 billion is a lot of money. But that figure is nothing compared to the economic cost of gun violence in America. The Cost of Gun Violence in America: $229 Billion a Year Eighty-nine people die from gun violence every day in the United States that's about 32,500 people over the course of year. An even larger number of people (more than 75,900) survive from gun injuries each year, according to data from the Brady Campaign, which works to reduce the number of gun deaths and injuries in the U.S. The human toll is evident in the statistics, but gun violence also has a significant economic impact on American taxpayers. Dr. Ted Miller is an internationally recognized safety economist with more than 200 publications. He is also a senior research scientist with the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation and the founder of the Children's Safety Network Economics and Insurance Resource Center. Advertisement In collaboration with online publication Mother Jones, Miller conducted extensive research on the cost of gun violence in America. His conclusion? Gun violence costs the U.S. $229 billion a year, or about $700 per American. The cost of gun violence in the U.S. can be broken down into two different categories: direct costs and indirect costs or "out-of-pocket costs and costs attributed to lost wages, pain, suffering and quality of life," said Miller. Miller's research concludes gun violence costs about $8.6 billion in direct, or "out-of-pocket," expenses. This is more than just the costs associated with transporting gunshot victims to hospitals and treating them; it also includes long-term prison costs for those who commit gun crimes. "The adjudication and sanctioning of the people who have committed gun violence, police investigations, incarceration and court proceedings can all get very expensive," said Miller. What's more, about 87 percent of these direct costs (about $7.5 billion) will come out of taxpayers' wallets. Divided among the approximately 322.8 million people there are in the U.S., that's about $23 per person. Advertisement Meanwhile, pain and suffering, or indirect, expenses are much higher at roughly $221 billion. These costs include victims' lost wages, victims' loss of quality of life and employers' losses. About $49 billion can be traced to victims' lost wages annually, and an astounding $169 billion is due to lost quality of life. Gun Violence Vs. Gun Control: Which Costs Americans More? Despite a 2015 Gallup poll survey that found only 28 percent of Americans personally own a gun and 55 percent want to see stricter gun laws, the powerful gun lobby has successfully blocked attempts at gun reform. During his January speech on gun safety reform, President Obama became emotional as he recalled recent mass shootings in America and called for an expansion of background checks on gun sales. "We've created a system in which dangerous people are allowed to play by a different set of rules than a responsible gun owner who buys his or her gun the right way and subjects themselves to a background check," said Obama. "That doesn't make sense. Everybody should have to abide by the same rules." Whether stricter gun laws would save lives is a hotly debated political issue. But, would stricter firearms legislation save money compared to the current cost of gun violence? Advertisement Firearms policy expert David B. Kopel is an associate policy analyst with the CATO Institute as well as a research director at the Independence Institute and an adjunct professor of advanced constitutional law at the University of Denver's Sturm College of Law. He has written more than 10 books, some of which analyzed firearm laws and policies. Kopel doubts that significant gun-control legislation is likely to pass, nor does he think more gun control will necessarily save America money. "The U.S. has been very successful at reducing the costs of gun crime," said Kopel. "Infringing the rights of law-abiding citizens is not necessary or effective at saving money." In fact, the U.S. has been able to reduce gun violence without passing stricter gun control laws. According to the Pew Research Center, the overall gun death rate has declined 31 percent since 1993. The trend is similar when it comes to non-fatal gun victimizations. In 1993, there were 725.3 nonfatal violent gun victimizations per 100,000 people ages 12 and older. But in 2014, that number was only 174.8. Mental Health and Gun Violence: The Relationship and Cost Instead of strengthening gun laws, Kopel suggested America could save money and lives by focusing on mental health. "More help for the severely mentally ill would be effective at reducing crimes against the mentally ill, who are disproportionately victimized," he said. "It would also reduce homicide. About one-fifth of state homicide prisoners are mentally ill." Advertisement In his speech, Obama said he plans "to do more to help those suffering from mental illness get the help that they need." "High-profile mass shootings tend to shine a light on those few mentally unstable people who inflict harm on others," said Obama. "But the truth is, is that nearly two in three gun deaths are from suicides. So a lot of our work is to prevent people from hurting themselves." Obama also added that he plans to invest $500 million to expand mental illness treatment across the country. "President Obama's proposal for extra spending for this is a good first step," said Kopel, "although states need to be the leaders on the problem. Mental health spending is very expensive in the short run, but can produce enormous savings in the long run." Keep Reading: 10 Ways Illegal Immigration Affects You Financially Although the cost of gun violence and the merits of proposed gun control legislation is fiercely debated, one thing is certain the epidemic of gun violence in America has become a fact of life. Advertisement "I did an NPR interview the other day, and they were talking about the mass shooting in San Bernardino," Miller recalled. "At a certain point, the guy said, 'When I started talking to you, I thought you were going to say the cost of the San Bernardino shooting was enormous, but you acted like it's not a big deal.' I said, 'It's not a big deal compared to the number of people killed by guns across the country every single day.'" BIRMINGHAM, AL - JANUARY 18: Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks at Boutwell Auditorium, January 18, 2016 in Birmingham, Alabama. Sanders spoke to a capacity crowd of around 5,000 supporters. (Photo by Hal Yeager/Getty Images) Bernie Sanders just spoke to a crowd of 7,000 in the conservative state of Alabama, and pledged to carry on Martin Luther King's legacy. Hillary Clinton has a Super Tuesday problem, and this problem starts before March 1, 2016. While Dr. Cornell West, Ohio State Senator Nina Turner, and rap artist Killer Mike discuss the similarities in political philosophy between Bernie Sanders and Dr. Martin Luther King (in this Legacy of MLK Roundtable), the Clinton campaign accepted money from prison lobbyists. The Huffington Post writes that "Lobbying firms that work for two major private prison giants, GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America, gave $133,246 to the Ready for Hillary PAC, according to Vice." While Clinton has invoked 9/11 and President Obama's acceptance of Wall Street money to defend her millions in Wall Street donations, she's yet to defend or accuse anyone else of accepting money from the prison lobby. Advertisement For those who'd rather cite Clinton's polling leads (dwindling faster in 2016 than in 2008), the following information will be of little interest. For everyone else, Clinton's Super Tuesday dilemma among minority voters is highlighted in an Intercept article titled Private Prison Lobbyists Are Raising Cash for Hillary Clinton: As immigration and incarceration issues become central to the 2016 presidential campaign, lobbyists for two major prison companies are serving as top fundraisers for Hillary Clinton. Corrections Corporation of America and the Geo Group could both see their fortunes turning if there are fewer people to lock up in the future. ...As first lady, she championed efforts to get tough on crime. "We need more police, we need more and tougher prison sentences for repeat offenders," Clinton said in 1994... "We need more prisons to keep violent offenders for as long as it takes to keep them off the streets," she added. ...she recently signaled a willingness to crack down on so-called "sanctuary cities," a move that could lead to more immigrant detentions. Because of prison lobbyist contributions and conservative stances against illegal immigrants, The Huffington Post states that Cesar Vargas, co-founder of the advocacy group Dream Action Coalition, decided to support Bernie Sanders over Clinton. In contrast to Clinton's acceptance of these donations, "Sanders recently introduced a bill to ban government contracts for private prisons, including immigrant detention centers." Advertisement Unlike Clinton, Bernie Sanders wants to end private prisons. Expect Clinton's polling lead among African Americans and Latinos to dwindle when more media coverage is given to her prison lobbyist donations. Even the Clinton campaign's "Southern firewall" (created in September, after acknowledging Bernie Sanders would win both Iowa and New Hampshire) won't prevent non-white Democrats in the South and nationwide from learning about Clinton's ties to the prison lobby. As for Clinton's racial justice record, Boston's Black Lives Matter president Daunasia Yancey summarizes her meeting with Hillary Clinton during an NPR interview: What we heard was clearly a policy-based response and, actually, an admonishment of the movement, which wasn't what we were looking for... I think that her record is abysmal (laughter). I think that her support of policies that have decimated black community - she talked a lot about her advocacy for children, for black children, for Latino children while simultaneously sending those children's parents to jail and, if we talk about the Juvenile Justice System, sending those children themselves to jail. Poll numbers indicating a lead among minority voters don't illustrate Daunasia Yancey's assessment that Clinton's racial justice record is "abysmal." This "abysmal" record on racial justice will affect the votes of African Americans and Latinos throughout the South and the country. According to the U.S. Census, "In comparison to the election of 2008, about 1.7 million additional Black voters reported going to the polls in 2012, as did about 1.4 million additional Hispanics and about 550,000 additional Asians." When Clinton's aura of inevitability is shattered by Bernie Sanders winning Iowa and New Hampshire, Clinton's history on a number of topics will be evaluated from a more critical vantage point. Advertisement Suddenly, millions of Democrats will ask, "Why is Clinton better for African Americans and Latinos, when she takes money from special interests that hurt these communities?" Furthermore, what happens when Democratic voters of all backgrounds ask, "If Bernie Sanders is better for my interests, and destroys Trump in a general election, then why would I vote for Clinton?" Even before Super Tuesday when states like Alabama, Georgia, Texas, Oklahoma, and Colorado vote, history will repeat itself in South Carolina. The Wall Street Journal writes "In the 2008 primary, black voters lined up behind Mr. Obama, who easily defeated Mrs. Clinton in South Carolina, 55% to 27%." Clinton's experience, and substantial ties to African Americans in Congress didn't overshadow her inability to connect with a core constituency. The Wall Street Journal, in the same article, explains that "Some say, though, that she will need to overcome residual anger over Bill Clinton's comments in 2008 suggesting that Mr. Obama's win in South Carolina was as inconsequential as Jesse Jackson's victory in the 1984 primary." Wait a second, "residual anger?" The poll indicating Clinton's current lead among African American and Latino voters doesn't mention "residual anger," does it? Advertisement This "residual anger" in South Carolina is highlighted in a POLITIO piece titled Hillary Clinton struggles to escape South Carolina scars: Clinton -- defeated by Obama and hobbled politically by her husband's red-faced defense of his family's civil rights legacy here seven years ago -- returned to the site of her most scarring defeat to embrace her core message of women's equality and to triangulate between two titans who decided her fate in 2008... In 2008, black voters -- who make up about half of the Democratic primary electorate and a quarter of general-election voters -- defected en masse to Obama, propelling him to a 55 percent-27 percent victory over Hillary Clinton... The most damaging of Clinton's comments: His claim that Obama's win here was a "myth" and "mugging" -- and his claim that the victory would be regarded as insignificant as Jesse Jackson's victory here in the 1984 primary. If you don't know the history of Clinton's 2008 debacle in South Carolina, Congressman James Clyburn's quote in The New York Times speaks volumes. In 2008, Congressman Clyburn stated that pertaining to the manner both Clintons treated Barrack Obama, "black people are incensed over all of this." During my appearance on The Benjamin Dixon Show, I explain that Bernie Sanders will defeat Clinton in a landslide, primarily because non-white Democrats will eventually side with Bernie Sanders, not his challenger. From Clinton's 3 a.m. ad against Obama (that Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson stated contained a "racist sub-message"), to Clinton's "dirty tricks" against Obama's campaign, and the Clintons treatment of South Carolina's James Clyburn, Hillary Clinton utilized race in order to attain political power. In 2014, I had the great pleasure of being on HuffPost Live with Marc Lamont Hill, to discuss my article titled Ferguson and Race From White America's Perspective, If It Switched Places With Black America. In reality, it's not just Republicans that have divided this country along racial fault lines, but also certain establishment Democrats. This fact is illustrated in a Salon piece titled Bill Clinton's gutsy apologies: Now he owes one to Ricky Ray Rector: Advertisement To look tough on crime, Clinton oversaw execution of a man so mentally ill he asked to save his last meal for later... How did candidate Clinton choose to show he was "tough on crime?" By flying down to Arkansas, mid-campaign, to personally preside over the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, a mentally retarded African-American man. ...Clinton made a point of being on hand for the TV crews when Rector was killed by lethal injection on January 24, 1992. The issue of the death penalty, and whether Rector deserved to die for the two people he killed, aren't the only elements of this story. The issue here is how Bill Clinton benefited politically from the execution of a black man, at a time when he wasn't viewed as tough on crime as his GOP counterparts. Around 1 a.m. on June 27th, 2015, Bree Newsome and I drove down to Columbia, South Carolina. Several hours later, we met a group of 12 activists at a Waffle House, across the street from the South Carolina Capitol grounds, where the confederate flag silently flew. Every person present knew their specific roles, and by the time the sun rose, Bree had removed the Confederate flag from its pole. Shortly after, Bree and I were taken into custody by capitol police, a video of the action went viral, and the rest was history. Our action was a direct response to the June 17th massacre at Emanuel AME Church that left 9 parishioners dead. We were tired of the redundant narrative of thinly veiled racism and falsely justified cultural relevance associated with the confederate flag. We planned and structured the action intentionally to have a woman of color, assisted by a white man, climb the pole and remove this particular symbol of intolerance and hate. Taking down the flag was our collective statement, shouting load and clear, "No! This flag does not have legitimacy here. It is not our flag, it does not fly for us, and we will not stand idly by debating the validity of its symbolism. Period." When I first began writing this blog post, I found myself telling the story of the action, a compelling story I've told to the media time and time again. Upon reflection, I decided I didn't want to write that story. Instead, I think people should know what motivated a person like me to assist in removing the confederate flag. Why would a white person participate in an action seeking to dismantle a historic symbol of racism, particularly when that racist system benefits that individual. Advertisement The reasons that I participated are complex and distinct from the reasons of my comrades of color. Let me state clearly that I know that I am a privileged white male from an upper middle class family. I could utilize my unearned privilege for the rest of my life without caring one way or another about the confederate flag, or about racism. For that matter, I am on the winning end of every inequality we so thoughtlessly perpetuate in our culture. So, what motivated me? To answer that, I need to dig a little deeper into some theory and personal history. Over the last five and a half years I have been heavily involved in the activist community, organizing around environmental issues, such as coal, fracking, and climate. Early on in my activism, I had my mind blown on several occasions by anti-oppression trainings, completely shifting my relationship to others. From the lens of privilege and oppression, I now more clearly see the interconnections between the environmental destruction and the oppressions of minority and indigenous groups by the dominant class. From colonialism, global capitalism is born, with both having the same end goal of dominance and ownership. Like colonialism, capitalism is propped up by the twin pillars of exploitation and extraction, exploitation of others, and extraction of resources from lands occupied by others. Without these twin pillars, profitability would never be an option within the global capitalist system. In the same way that capitalism needs constant resource inputs to feed its rampant consumption, capitalism also need hegemonic justifications for poverty, cultural bias, oppression, and exploitation of peoples. Advertisement Making a stand against environmental destruction or racism are similar fights with the same common enemy, an enemy that has found a home within us all, as consumers and participants in the world as we know it. However, we should know that the world as we know it is not all that is possible. I wholeheartedly believe that we should be actively creating the world we want, rather than resigning ourselves to the world that was given to us, particularly considering that none of us were asked for our consent upon entering said world. Ideally, we should only be giving our consent to the aspects of the world that we wish to perpetuate. Racism, inequality, privilege, and oppression are all examples of structures I have no interest in perpetuating. Several days before taking down the flag, I was still wrestling with the dangers and ramifications associated with my role in the pending action. I talked to my father loosely about our plan and my reservations, and he said something that resounded with me. He said, "Jimmy, if you do this, you'll be putting yourself in harms way for some time now." What he meant was that I would be making myself a target for racist retaliation. Embarrassingly, my home state of North Carolina has ten active KKK chapters. I realized that my participate in the action would suspend the protections awarded by my white skin. I would be making myself a target for the same type of terror and violence that has been perpetuated against people of color since the birth of this nation. It was at this moment that I realized there was no way for me to turn away from the action. I was sick of my own silence, of my complacency to inhumane cultural norms, and of having redundant conversations that left us all exactly where we had began. To stay passively silent in the face of injustice is the same as actively taking the side of the oppressor. This silence has been the primary method that racism has perpetuated itself. While black America bears the mental and physical scars of racism, white America bears the guilt of perpetuating racism through ouR silence. My participation would perhaps be the first time that I intentionally broke my own white silence. As white Americans, we have been perpetuating racism since racism was designed. We feign ignorance, play the color blind card, shift responsibility, point out black friends, or beseech people of color with placations to our good white intentions. But these placations are disingenuous, pretending a world where we are all equal, with similar opportunities, and interchangeable cultural experiences. The irony here is that the privilege of staying silent or ignoring the ever present truth of systemic or blatant racism is a privilege that is only possible through the oppression of others. A white persons choice to care or not care about racism is a privilege that is afforded only to white people, specifically because of racism. Advertisement Therefore, the responsibility of dismantling racism and privilege falls overwhelming on the group of peoples benefiting from the system of racism and privilege. Yes, I am talking about white people. People of color in the United States do not have the option of ignoring racism. Conscientious white people should be actively dismantling the system we created and from which we are currently benefiting. As white people, we should realize that with great opportunity comes great responsibility. My family and surrounding environment taught me that the true measure of a societies greatness is calculated by how it cares for its most disadvantaged peoples, not by how lavishly it pampers its most privileged classes. As a white man, I can choose to care about the confederate flag or not, but my individual interpretation is less important than how two other groups of people view the flag. For the Dylan Roof's of the world, the flag has a specific meaning, tied to hate, violence, and racism. I have heard many people of color describe the flag as a sign of poignant intolerance, of feeling unwelcome in the place they find themselves. For these two groups of people, the flags meaning is specific and grounded in a lived experience, not a relative conjecture of values and heritage. I believe dismantling racism to be the responsibility of all white people. To clean our hands from that task requires us first to get those hands dirty, actively tackling the sins of our forefathers. We should view the dismantling of racism as a healing process. The individual mindset accustomed to privilege is a sick mind, consumed by delusions of grandeur. The collective lineage of inequality has poisoned our entire culture with its inhumanity. As a white person, I know now how much work we have to do. The task at hand is huge and charts the course of history, but dismantling racism is necessary for healing, and only through healing will we ever regain our humanity. -"Jimmy" James Tyson was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, and received his Bachelors of Science in Environmental Science from Warren Wilson College. Most of his time is spent at home on the farm, milling wood, tending to horses or chickens, and managing day-to-day operations. On June 27th of 2015, he assisted Bree Newsome in removing the confederate flag from the South Carolina State Capitol. Woman washing using sponge in shower By Lindsey Murray You probably don't put too much thought into your daily shower--it's just something you do every day to get clean and, depending on your routine, wake up or wind down. But certain habits may actually be leaving you with dry, itchy skin, or even prone to a raging infection. Nix these sudsy saboteurs before you lather up next. Your water is too hot Dry, itchy skin? Scalding showers might be to blame. "If there is tons and tons of steam coming out, then that's a sign that your shower is too hot," says Melissa Piliang, MD, dermatologist at the Cleveland Clinic. In addition to drying out your skin, Dr. Piliang warns that hot showers can cause eczema to flare up. Advertisement You don't have to give up steamy showers entirely. To get the same soothing effect, Dr. Piliang recommends letting the steam build up before you step under the water. "First turn on your shower as hot as you want it," she explains. "Let it get nice and steamy and warm in there, and after it's all heated up, turn it down to a comfortable temperature and then get in." This way you can enjoy the heat without irritating your skin. You're using a harsh soap You may love that squeaky-clean feeling that comes from scouring your skin, but soaps with antibacterial agents or harsher detergents may be causing more harm than good. That squeaky sensation happens when all of the natural oils have been stripped from the skin. In contrast, "when the oils are present, they act as a lubricant so your hand will slide smoothly over the skin," says Dr. Piliang. Without that barrier, your skin is even more exposed to hot water, whipping winds, and other things that dry it out. What's more, triclosan, an antibacterial ingredient used in some soaps, has been linked to more serious health concerns. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) maintains that the ingredient is not toxic to humans, but studies in animals have suggested that triclosan may alter hormone levels. Other lab studies have linked the chemical to contributing to the development of antibiotic resistance. Advertisement Dr. Piliang recommends skipping antibacterial soaps in the shower, and looking for products that are fragrance-free and contain added moisturizers, such as Aveeno Active Naturals Fragrance Free Skin Relief Body Wash ($7; amazon.com) and Neutrogena Oil-Free Moisture Sensitive Skin ($9; amazon.com). Everyone's skin is different, so you may need to try a few different products to find the one that's right for you. You're scrubbing too much Unless you're covered in grime (from say, working outside all day), the only places that need major soaping are your armpits and groin. Water does the job for everything else--even after a sweaty workout, explains Robynne Chutkan, MD, the founder of the Digestive Center for Women in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and author of The Microbiome Solution ($16, amazon.com). In addition to those natural oils, your skin is also crawling with "good" bacteria that are crucial for skin health. Scrubbing down from head-to-toe, even if you're using a milder soap, can still strip your skin of this beneficial bacteria that helps protect you from acne and eczema flare-ups, and yep, dry skin. You're not cleaning your razor Razors can collect bacteria from your skin, and can then breed more germs while sitting in a damp, dark shower. That's why you must rinse it with scalding hot water before each use, says Sanford Vieder, MD, of Lakes Urgent Care in Michigan. Skipping this step can opening you up to infection, especially if you cut yourself, but even if you don't. "When you use the razor you can obviously nick yourself and give yourself a cut, but the razor is also going to make very microscopic tears in the skin that can be a portal of entry for bacteria or fungus," adds Dr. Piliang. You should replace your razor blade completely about once a week. "If you use a dull blade you are at a greater risk of cutting your skin and creating an entryway for that bacteria to come in," warns Dr. Vieder. Advertisement You're skipping gym shower etiquette Your years of dorm living may be long behind you, but that doesn't mean you should abandon the practice of wearing flip flops when you use a communal bathroom. "Athletes foot and warts can be picked up in public places," warns Dr. Piliang. "Wearing shower shoes or flip flops on your feet when you're in and out of the shower can help avoid these problems." On January 20, 2017, America will begin our next chapter. A new president will stand on the steps of the Capitol, raise one hand, and take the oath of office. From that moment on, he or she will decide whether we defend and build on the progress we've made under President Obama -- or tear it all away. That feels pretty personal to me -- not just as an American who supports President Obama, but also as someone who was proud to work alongside him at the White House. Advertisement I remember vividly the day after the 2008 election when President-elect Obama asked me to come see him in Chicago. It turned out that he would ask me to be secretary of state. But first, we talked about everything he was doing to get ready for his first term -- and everything he was learning about the reality of the economic crisis our country was facing. The president-elect was getting briefings every day, sometimes several times a day. And the news was not good. He turned to me and said, "It is so much worse than they told us." He was right. By the time President Obama was sworn into office, we were on the brink of another Great Depression. Before the worst was over, we were losing 800,000 jobs a month, 5 million Americans lost their homes, and 13 trillion dollars of family wealth was wiped away. Meanwhile, our auto industry -- the pride of American manufacturing and ingenuity for decades -- was on the verge of collapse. It turned out to be the second-worst financial crisis in our country's history. President Obama changed all that. Look where we are today. We've had 70 straight months of private-sector job growth. Our businesses have created 14.1 million jobs. The unemployment rate is the lowest in seven years. And the auto industry just had its best year ever. That's a pretty outstanding record for any president -- let alone one who took office amid an economic disaster. That's not all. We've imposed the toughest regulations on Wall Street since the 1930s. We created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau just over a year ago -- and it's already returned nearly $11 billion to consumers. Advertisement We've restored our standing around the world. Under President Obama's leadership, we worked with Congress and the United Nations to impose crippling sanctions against Iran, which paved the way for a landmark deal that will keep Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. We stood up for LGBT rights and women's rights around the world. We brought Osama bin Laden to justice. And thanks to a lot of painstaking diplomacy by the president and his team, nearly 200 countries have signed on to a landmark agreement to tackle the urgent threat of climate change. Then there's the progress we've made toward a cause close to my heart: putting quality, affordable health care within reach for everyone. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, 18 million Americans now have health coverage. Millions more are receiving benefits like free preventive care. Americans can sleep easier knowing they'll never be denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition. Democrats have been trying to pass universal health care since Harry Truman's administration. President Obama got it done. Now we need to build on it, bring down out-of-pocket costs, and make sure every American can get the care they deserve. If you take a step back and look at all America has achieved over the past eight years, it's remarkable to see how far we've come. But you'd never know it from listening to the Republicans. They're quick to demonize and demean President Obama. At the last GOP presidential debate, two candidates referred to him as a "child." That kind of racially coded rhetoric has no place in our politics. Instead of insulting our president, we should be thanking him. Republicans aren't just harshly criticizing the president. They're threatening to undo just about everything he has achieved. They want to repeal the Affordable Care Act; in fact they've voted to repeal or dismantle it more than 50 times. They're hard at work dismantling workers' rights and voting rights. They want to take away women's rights to make our own health decisions. Some even want to reverse marriage equality -- one of the greatest civil rights accomplishments in American history. In short, they want to drag us backward and undo all the progress we've worked so hard to achieve. We can't let that happen. Advertisement As president, I will carry forward the Democratic record of achievement. I'll defend President Obama's accomplishments and build upon them. I'll work to get incomes rising for middle-class families, make college affordable, alleviate the crushing burden of student debt, protect LGBT Americans from discrimination, preserve women's access to health care and reproductive choice, and keep America safe from threats at home and abroad. And I'll never allow the Affordable Care Act to be repealed. We've made tremendous progress over the past eight years. That shouldn't be dismissed or taken lightly. Let's keep that progress going. Let's make sure no one turns the clock back. We've come too far. We've accomplished too much. We can do even more for our families, our communities, and the country we love. And together, we can build an economy and a country that works for everyone. That would be truly revolutionary. I was born and raised in Texas, so I feel I have a right to complain about a rotten thing that is happening here. Texas used to be the best place in the world to live. No more. The people who now run our Legislature do not care about the people, their rights, or their needs. I've been reading in The Herald Zeitung and The San Antonio Express News about people whose land is being "legally stolen" by greedy developers...with the help of "our" Legislature and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). Let me make one thing clear. I do not know anyone involved in any way with this situation. I have nothing to win or lose here. It is simply not fair--and I fight against injustice whenever and wherever I find it. I have not researched "eminent domain" laws. Like Will Rogers, I only know what I read in the papers. And what I've read is really rotten! It appears that someone can buy several hundred acres of Texas land with a plan to build many hundreds of houses. The person can then create a fake "municipal utility district" and proceed to condemn and take a neighbor's adjoining land for their huge sewer facility. Lust, greed, and theft. It's a subdivision, people--not a city! This situation reminds me of David's sin against Uriah in the Bible. King David had many wives and hundreds of concubines, yet he lusted after his neighbor's one wife. He sent her husband to the front lines of the war so he would be killed. Then David was free to take Uriah's wife. Lust, greed, theft, and murder! The Herald reports that "a developer bought a 300-acre ranch"... yet he lusted after 7.7 acres of his neighbor's land. He worked the system so he could keep all of his land...and legally take possession of his neighbor's land for his sewer plant. Common sense says the developer must set aside some of his own land for his sewer plant. The family whose land he, the Texas Legislature, and TCEQ are taking is private land which has been owned by the ranching family for 110 years. The family refused to accept this attack on their land and protested through the courts. A judge ruled against them and that the family must pay legal fees of $86,000 plus attorneys' fees...for trying to protect their own land from a developer and a fake MUD. They're not allowed to fight the ruling without more stiff penalties. The same judge ruled that if they appeal or take their case to a higher court, they must pay another $20,000...plus an additional $25,000 if it goes to the Texas Supreme Court. Does that sound un-American to anyone else? I hate injustice anywhere and on any level. This appears to be a huge case of injustice. And when Texas' government is involved, that makes it worse! I recognize Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, inherited a dog's breakfast from the odious Tony Abbott, his predecessor. But, at some point, Turnbull has to stand up for the libertarian principles he espouses -- damn the conservatives in his government who want to stand in the way. The mess in Australia is evidence that any alliance between conservatives and classical liberals leaves the libertarian side at a disadvantage. Conservatives are happy for an alliance as long as no libertarian reforms are actually allowed. In other words, they are happy if the Liberals are liberal in name only. Turnbull is no bigot, he wants marriage equality. He is also saddled with a split party where some pretty mean-spirited National Party members are adamant to show how much they dislike gays every chance they get. Advertisement Abbot praised the heroics of Tori Johnson when a terrorist held him and others hostage at the Lindt Chocolate Cafe, where Johnson was manager. Abbott called Johnson "good people," but he wasn't good enough to have the same rights as other Australians. He wasn't allowed to marry his partner, though they wanted to marry the moment the government would allow it. Abbott felt morally superior by making sure that never happened. Johnson wasn't married, at least not legally. The same wasn't true of Marco and David Bulmer-Rizzi. The couple had been together five years when they finally tied the knot in June of last year. The British couple traveled to Australia in December to celebrate that marriage with a dream honeymoon. Their last stop was Adelaide and there tragedy struck. Marco had gone up the stairs to bed and David said he'd be up shortly. Marco had drifted to sleep when a noise woke him up. He turned on the lights and saw David lying in a pool of blood at the foot of the stairs. David's skull was cracked and there was severe swelling of his brain. Marco was told David would not survive. He was told to call "family." In Australia, in spite of their marriage certificate, Marco was not family. He remained a friend, a roommate, even a stranger, but not family. Thanks to Abbott and his small-minded Nationalists another survivor of a tragedy was suffering needlessly. Advertisement Marco called David's parents and they immediately left for Australia. They, not David, would be considered family. David's heart, liver and pancreas were donated to others in need, people who will now live thanks to David. David, like Tori Johnson, was saving others though he was losing his own life and his own love. Marco said, "David's life gave this gift to three other people, three families who are rejoicing. There's two children who have their daddy, who won't wake up tomorrow and think about whether or not David was gay. That person will wake up knowing they have a chance and can see their kids grow up." The funeral director told Marco of one more indignity he would have to suffer. The death certificate he'd be handed would list his husband as "never married." It got worse. Every decision had to be approved by David's parents, not Marco. Yes, the director asked Marco what he wanted but each time had to confirm it with David's father, Nigel Bulmer. Nigel told the director "Marco is David's husband. He is the one." But, they kept turning to Nigel for answers. In spite of being David's legally married spouse, he wasn't family in Australia. Advertisement Nigel said, "I flew out here to support my son-in-law. I'm a 60-year-old man, I've been in the fire brigade for many years, I thought was shockproof. But I was horrified and deeply hurt by the words I heard there: that they're going to put on the death certificate 'never married.' It's not acceptable. It's also not true. I was there." In another interview he said: "It's degrading. It demeans my son's memory and denies their relationship." Malcolm Turnbull supported marriage equality before becoming Prime Minister. Abbott represented the conservative National Party in the coalition but was immensely unpopular and became less and less popular every time he opened his mouth. Turnbull replaced Abbott and the popularity of the government rose substantially. Marriage equality is widely supported. It is not a minority position, other than in the ranks of the National Party and their Christianist allies. Turnbull needs to step up and stand by his own principles. He needs to tell the conservatives that they are going to have to cave in on this one. It can't just be the liberals who keep compromising. It is also time for the Liberals to openly discuss breaking the coalition and opening themselves up to alliances on the Left. If the Right won't compromise on social freedom, maybe it's time to offer the Left a chance to compromise on their opposition to economic freedom. Liberals can't be the only ones throwing principles out the window for the sake of forming a government. WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Director Michael Bay's action film about the September 11th, 2012 attack on a U.S. compound building in Benghazi, Libya is flopping, badly, and at least one Republican congressman thinks it's because they didn't have him write the script. Taking in a paltry $19 million, 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi is being widely held as a massive commercial flop. Unlike Clint Eastwood's war movie American Sniper, 13 Hours just does not seem to be resonating with moviegoers. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), says that it's because Bay didn't ask him to write the script. Issa said that years of leading witch hunts against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama over the Benghazi incident has given him the "unique experience" necessary to "craft the finest yarn about Benghazi ever." Image via house.gov "Who else besides me and Trey Gowdy," Issa asked reporters that caught up with him at a D.C.-area eatery, "have the most experience making stuff up about the Benghazi attack?" Issa pointed to the fact that he was one of the biggest and loudest peddlers of the conspiracy theory that Clinton gave a "stand down" order the night of the attack, essentially leaving the U.S. ambassador and anyone else under attack at the compound as sitting ducks, as reasoning enough that he should have gotten the writing gig. Advertisement "That trope has been debunked several times by several witnesses in multiple congressional hearings," Issa said proudly, "and I kept and keep bringing it up. What other writer would have such dedication to his craft?" Issa declared that had he been able to write the script for 13 Hours himself, he would have included "every single scrap of hearsay and tin foil hattery" that he'd been privy to in the years since the attack. "No one has more desperately tried to pin the blame for Benghazi on the president and Ms. Clinton than me," he said at one point, "and that kind of dogged obsession pays off when you're crafting a tale for the silver screen." "If you want a story that's authentic to the made-up bullshit we Republicans believe about Bengazi," Issa said, his voice dripping with indigence, "you go to Darrell Issa, everyone knows that." Rep. Issa said that he is "seriously considering" opening a new congressional investigation to determine if Ms. Clinton or President Obama "played an active role in any way" in keeping him from being offered the screenwriter's job on 13 Hours. Latinos work very hard, and they instill in their children the kind of commitment that turns possibilities into great accomplishments. My own parents, who had little more than a middle school education, taught my siblings and me that triumph and progress require commitment and hard work. They also taught us a good education is key to advancement and reminded us that in school, as in all good things, el esfuerzo vale la pena -- making an effort is worth it. I know my parents were not unique in that respect. It's why I am not surprised that Latino parents across the nation welcome the new rigorous academic standards that are now the norm in more than 40 states. At each grade level, there is a set of clear, consistent academic goals that students must master before moving on to the next. Those goals, along with accurate tests that measure how well a student is mastering the academic content, guarantee something very important. By the end of high school, parents and teachers will know a student is truly prepared for success in college or the workplace. Before the new standards and assessments, a high school diploma did not necessarily mean a student was ready for college-level work. Not only were the standards different in each state; they could be quite different from one school to the next. It meant zip codes dictated how well a student was prepared for college. Advertisement Furthermore, while Latinos tripled their college-going rate over the past two decades -- an encouraging statistic -- many were arriving on campus only to discover that they were not academically prepared. It meant many Latino students spent time and money on content they should have learned in high school -- or worse, dropped out of college altogether. Today, more than nine million Latino students are being taught to and assessed on these new rigorous academic standards in math and English language arts. It means the bar has been raised to ensure students learn how to think critically, solve problems that they will experience in the real world and be able to explain and justify their work. It's far more than a demanding experience. All of those skills are necessary to succeed in college and the 21st-century workplace. Right now we are in a period of adjustment as teachers and students get used to the new standards and tests. For example, in Kentucky, the first state to begin using these new academic standards (known by many as the "Common Core"), student test scores went down at first. But the percentage of high school graduates ready for college and careers increased from 34 percent to 62 percent in four years. And, the state's high school graduation rate for Latino students has risen from 56 percent to 80 percent. That's not a bad start. But, across the U.S. we should -- and can -- do much better. I am certain we can accomplish it -- together. While parents are setting high expectations at home, I encourage them to also speak with their child's teacher about the new standards and assessments. Ask them how to best work in concert to ensure your child is mastering the new standards. And, don't forget to visit NCLR's www.RumboalTriunfo.org website, where we provide information and resources about the standards and assessments for Latino parents like you. Advertisement The truth is, none of this will be easy -- for students, parents or teachers. But, as my parents showed me, Latinos never shy away from hard work, especially when it means a better future for our children. MOSUL, IRAQ - DECEMBER 10: Female Syrian Peshmerga fighters are being trained to fight against Daesh and Assad forces at a camp located in Old Mosul region of the city of Nineveh, Iraq on December 9, 2015. (Photo by Hamit Huseyin/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) Qubad Talabani, the deputy prime minister of Iraq's Kurdish Regional Government, has issued an urgent warning that falling oil prices, combined with the costs of war and of housing refugees, is threatening the Kurdish Peshmerga's ability to fight ISIS (Daesh). "The world is focused on the war against ISIS but nobody wins a war bankrupt," Talabani states. "I think this is something the coalition against ISIS really do need to factor into the equation." Advertisement The Kurdistan Autonomous Region (KRG), the front line against Daesh (ISIS) in Northern Iraq, which has seen ongoing gains by their Peshmerga with coalition air support, recently cut Daesh's supply line between Mosul and Raqqa. This makes the Peshmerga a key ally in the fight against the Islamic State, and our "boots on the ground" in Northern Iraq. However, as Talabani warns, "The most dangerous impact [of the oil price crash] it can have is on morale. We are getting desertions. People are leaving their posts -- it will increase." The Kurdish news site, Rudaw, which has quoted Talabani in calling the oil crash an "economic tsunami" has written in an op-ed that the crisis leads to a "practical and moral necessity to bail out Iraqi Kurdistan." While the Iraqi Kurds are not blameless in stresses to their economic health (articles describe a bloated bureaucracy in their ancient capital of Erbil relying on public sector salaries that depend on oil sales), there is also the cost of hosting 1.8 million displaced Iraqis and 280,000 Syrian refugees, and a history of disputed payments from Baghdad to the Kurds. This is what the Kurds say led them to sell their oil on the open market, setting up an untenable diplomatic triangulation between the U.S., Baghdad and the Kurds, and influenced by global companies that have embarked on oil ventures with Baghdad. The Kurds complained in 2014 they were offered a third of their contractually promised payment after Baghdad claimed the Kurds had not met their required oil deliveries. The Kurds responded they simply did not have the amount of oil that Baghdad demanded, and needed the promised revenue share (a percentage Iraq's revenue) to support refugees and to fight the Islamic State. Advertisement Then, "in February 2015 [stated the Kurdish region's minister for natural resources, Ashti Hawrami], we went again to Baghdad only to discover that they have thrown their budget out of the window and were simply working with cash in hand. We told them that our state salaries constitute some $750 million - half of this to security and Peshmerga - so how could we live on just a third of our budget?" The Kurds, worried by what they saw as "a theoretical [Baghdad] budget which isn't worth the paper it is written on" began selling their oil on the open market. Reuters reported, at the time, that Kurdish oil was making it to Israel and Hungary, with a Greek shipping line reported taking the oil to other ports, while two ships were turned away from the U.S. and North Africa. With oil prices crashing, the refugee crisis in the Kurdish autonomous region reaching record proportions, and their successes on the battlefield requiring more and better arms and payroll, the Kurds are now asking for help. What is at stake? The Iraqi Kurds have one of the most effective ground forces taking on Islamic State militants. The Peshmerga's effective soldiers, whose name translates as: "Those who face death", have scored one success after another in driving Daesh (ISIS) away from the Kurdish Regional Government's boarders. Recently, as mentioned, in coordination with coalition airstrikes, the Peshmerga cut Daesh's supply line between Mosul in Iraq and Daesh's de facto capital of Raqqa in Syria. The Kurds are our boots on the ground in Northern Iraq. It might seem like there's an answer: Fix the mess with Baghdad, transfer the oil to get the Kurds paid, but there are questions: Is Baghdad truly working on some kind of unaccountable budget? Do the Kurds have the oil Baghdad is demanding? Is that even possible with Kurds now selling on the open market. Does the oil crash complicate the payments even if the transfer could happen? Advertisement Complicating the crisis is Turkey, a NATO ally, with their position of "Kurds bad" (some Kurds) -- mostly referring to Syrian and Turkish Kurds who are members of the outlawed group, PKK, but also toward the related YPG and YPJ whom are making significant gains against Daesh (ISIS) in Syria (and with whom we have embedded Special Forces). Turkey further complicated the crisis, once they finally entered the war against Daesh (ISIS), by bombing the PKK in Eastern Turkey with tragic results. This has lead to entire Turkish-Kurdish neighborhoods to become abandoned due to fighting, murders, arrests and bombings, and has put the coalition into an increasingly confusing diplomatic situation. Add Turkey's new conflict with Russia over the latter's involvement in Syria, and you have, in an over-simplified description, a mess. The Iraqi Kurds have business dealings with Turkey on an oil pipeline (the flow of which is increasingly interrupted through theft and sabotage) and seek, through diplomacy, to maintain a dialogue with them. Despite that, given Turkey's attitude toward the Turkish and Syrian Kurds, along with Turkish fears of overall Kurdish independence, coupled with the Iraqi Kurds' problems with Baghdad over their sales to the open oil market, and the pressure from companies that have deals with Baghdad, the West's willingness to openly support Iraqi Kurds on issues that could become politically non-expedient in either Baghdad, with the oil industry, and in Turkey has, so far, been limited. Adding to the complications, along with Turkey and Russia's new conflict on the Syrian border, is the, as yet insufficiently explained, Turkish forces that have been recently deployed outside Mosul -- near the Kurdish Peshmerga -- in Northern Iraq, an unknown factor in an increasingly confusing situation. Regardless of the convergence (miasma) of self-interested and complicated politics, our strategy in Northern Iraq relies on the Peshmerga as one of the the most effective forces against Daesh (ISIS) in that region. The Iraqi Kurds have been effective on the field, and are beyond generous -- at this point to their economic detriment -- in support of refugees, which includes Yezidis, Christians, and Muslims, flooding their borders, and--not to be taken lightly--the Iraqi Kurds have long been one of the most reliable partners to the West. Advertisement These reliable partners are now asking the U.S. and the Coalition to help with a budget crisis worsened by collapsing oil prices and 1.8+ million refugees who've fled fighting in Iraq and Syria. Whether this is solved through direct funds or some kind of diplomacy with Baghdad (if that's even possible), it's a crisis in need of a quick and agile solution. Author's note: In 2010, I interviewed Qubad Talabani about the success at that time of the Iraqi Kurdish region, which was experiencing growth and freedom hitherto unknown in Iraq. The Kurds were building universities, elaborate and elegant malls, investment was booming, their parliament had (and has, I believe) more women than men, their army, the Peshmerga, is coed, as is their police force. The Kurds had opened their autonomous borders to Iraqi Christians fleeing persecution in Baghdad, and had provided them with villages, homes and livelihoods that gave them new lives. They proudly claimed that not one Western soldier was killed behind their borders during the Gulf War or in the violent aftermath in the rest of Iraq. They have declared their gratitude to the U.S. for their newfound freedom and that they are our friends. It was an optimistic article at a promising time. That was until Daesh (ISIS) exploded on the scene and threatened the 8,000 year old Kurdish capital of Erbil (Arbil) and genocide toward the Kurdish Yezedi minority stuck on Sinjar Mountain. The Kurds, after initial loses, and with help of U.S. airstrikes, fought back while opening their borders to more and seemingly unlimited refugees. They have lost scores of soldiers to the fight, and to capture and horrific execution, while they have shown compassion to dying Daesh (ISIS) fighters on the battlefield. Has the Kurdish Regional Government made mistakes, should they have broken from Baghdad, could their bureaucracy be leaner, are some benefiting where others are not? Possibly, but who cares at this point? They are fighting for their lives and for ours, and have asked for our help. Advertisement The toxic agent used by assassins in the Middle East and in counterterrorism operations in Moscow is now wreaking havoc with the havoc already created by America's prescription drug and heroin crisis. The potent drug making a resurgence on the streets is fentanyl, a synthetic opioid we've been prescribing for decades for patients with severe, chronic pain (such as cancer pain) or breakthrough pain after surgery. The illicit form is manufactured by clandestine labs and is up to 100 times more powerful than morphine and 30 to 50 times more powerful than heroin. Just a pinch of it sprinkled into a batch of heroin can kill rapidly. Hence the street names "Drop Dead" and "Breaking Bad." It's not the first time dealers have gotten their hands on it. Between 2005 and 2007, over 1,000 U.S. deaths were blamed on fentanyl. The surge ended when the source of that fentanyl, a single illicit lab in Mexico, was shut down. Advertisement According to a new report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the growing use of fentanyl was likely a major contributor to the record increase in opioid deaths in 2014. And in fact, the entire increase in drug-related deaths in the last two years in New Hampshire can be traced to overdoses involving fentanyl, according to the Union Leader, which said in an editorial that "no legislative solution can be taken seriously if it doesn't address fentanyl." Last spring, the DEA released a nationwide alert on fentanyl after state and local drug labs reported seeing 3,344 fentanyl samples in 2014, up from 942 in 2013. Widespread Damage Here are other recent examples of the toll the drug is taking across the United States, the DEA says: New Jersey saw a huge spike in fentanyl deaths in 2014, reporting some 80 deaths in the first six months of the fiscal year. Rhode Island and Pennsylvania have also seen huge increases since 2013. In a 15-month period, about 200 deaths were reported in Pennsylvania related to fentanyl. In the St. Louis area, fentanyl was the only drug attributed as a primary death factor in 44% of overdose cases. Some addicts are deliberately taking fentanyl, a drug so deadly sprayed it into the ear of a Hamas leader in a botched assassination attempt in 1997 and used it in an attempt to rescue some 900 hostages held by Chechen rebels in 2002. (The drug proved more lethal in the hands of the Russian rescuers, as more than 100 of the hostages were fatally poisoned by the fentanyl-based gas.) Fentanyl was also reportedly considered for tactical roles in Vietnam. "Heroin is bad enough, but when you lace it with fentanyl, it's like dropping a nuclear bomb on the situation," Mary Lou Leary, a deputy director in the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy, recently told NPR. "It's so, so much more dangerous." Advertisement Obama Highlights Epidemic in State of the Union The spot we find ourselves in today is so dire that the prescription painkiller and heroin overdose epidemic was mentioned at the very outset of President Obama's State of the Union address earlier this month, before even terrorism. "I hope we can work together this year on bipartisan priorities like ... helping people who are battling prescription drug abuse and heroin abuse," the president said. Fighting terrorism and fighting the scourge of opioid abuse have much in common. They both strike unpredictably, as an addict can unknowingly be exposed to fentanyl or any number of additives in a bag of heroin at any time. Both kill indiscriminately, without regard to race or social status. Once the scourge of the inner city and the poor, 90% of the people who tried heroin in the last decade were white and an increasing number are middle-class or wealthy. And like the war on terror, the battle is often waged on foreign soil. Global opium poppy cultivation in 2014 reached its highest level since the late 1930s, while illicit fentanyl is coming out of Mexico. Our neighbors to the north are fighting the same foe. The Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse reports that within the last six years, the number of deaths involving fentanyl in Canada's four largest provinces has increased markedly, doubling in some subdivisions and increasing more than 20 times in others. It's heartening to hear from the president that he wants to make the prescription drug and heroin overdose epidemic a priority in this country. The government has so far used a multipronged approach, including cutting off the supply of drugs from abroad, reassessing opioid prescribing practices and making the antidote naloxone more widely available. I also like the approach prosecutor Joe Coronato in Ocean County, New Jersey, is taking. Believing (correctly) that to quell the epidemic, we must break the cycle of addiction, Coronato will begin stationing "interveners" at local hospitals to persuade drug overdose victims brought in for treatment to enter rehab. Another step forward would be for the Food and Drug Administration to approve a new, experimental implant designed to deliver a steady dose of medication that would control cravings for heroin or prescription painkillers. Advertisement But without evidence-based comprehensive addiction treatment that cares for the whole person and the total condition, not just the symptoms, we'll surely see overdoses continue to mount. Some 22.7 million people 12 and older needed treatment for an illicit drug or alcohol use problem in 2013, but only 11% got it. A study published in March in the American Journal of Public Health found "significant gaps" between the need for treatment and capacity in the U.S. Recent developments in genetic, pharmacology and neurophysiology research have helped establish that addiction is a brain disease instead of a moral failing. While the 2016 presidential race has gone a long way toward lessening the stigma of addiction as the candidates reveal their personal stories, we need more beds for intensive treatment and more funds for the support of addicts once they reach recovery. There's no time for stigma. Fentanyl has taken this difficult battle to a ridiculously dangerous new level. ROME,VATICAN 27 April: Images from the Canonization of Saint John XXIII and Saint John Paul II by Pope Francis and the Catholic Church. This event, attended by millions is amongst the most important in current history. PICTURED: Archbishop Aquila from the Archdiocese of Denver (USA) JEFFREY BRUNO/ALETEIA You wouldn't know it, because they were essentially ignored by Denver media (except Channel 7, Denver's ABC affiliate), but thousands of anti-choice protesters rallied on the west steps of the state capitol Saturday in frigid weather, marking the 43rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade. In speeches, spiked with attacks on Planned Parenthood, rally-goers were exorted to take action on "life" issues--banning all abortion and preventing the legalization of physician-assisted suicide. Advertisement The big cheese speaker at the March for Life event was Denver Archbishop Samuel Aquila, who promised, "We will not be silenced," after telling the crowd to call and email their state legislators--and to attend Colorado's March caucuses, where political parties select candidates and hash out party platforms. "Bombard [legislators] with emails," Aquila said at one point. Following the lead of his predecessor, former Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput, Aquila promotes political activism by Catholics. He hasn't gone so far as Chaput did in recommending that faithful Catholics vote against one presidential candidate (Kerry) and for another (Bush). Instead, Aquila acted as if he was nonpartisan on Saturday, urging the protestors to look at candidates through the filter of "life" issues, without mentioning a political party. But one of the issues that most clearly divides the two parties these days is abortion, with Democrats mostly being pro-choice and Republicans mostly not. Among the presidential candidates, the division among the two parties is shocking. So Aquila's decision to focus the attention of Catholics on "life," issues, rather than, say immigration, poverty, or climate change, puts him in the pocket of Republicans--especially given that he made no mention of the death penalty on Saturday, which is a "life" issue embraced by Democrats. Aquila's priorities are GOP priorities. Advertisement You can see this in Aquila's attitude toward Planned Parenthood, which came up repeatedly at the rally. Most of Planned Parenthood's work has nothing to do with abortion but instead with providing women, many of them low-income, with basic health care and family planning. So does Aquila think Catholics should support candidates who support Planned Parenthood? For an RH Reality Check post, I asked Aquila this question after the rally. "No," he told me,"I believe that we really need to give witness to life, and Planned Parenthood does not give witness to life." Pope Francis, who's focused the world's attention on economic inequality and environmental disasters, has given Aquila the opening to have said something very different to me, along the lines of, "Planned Parenthood mostly embodies what the Catholic Church stands for, serving the poor and healing the sick. It's up to individual Catholics look at the world's needs and struggles and act in accordance with their faith." In his State of the Union address, President Obama was as clear as he could be: "We have to reduce the influence of money in our politics, so that a handful of families and hidden interests can't bankroll our elections - and if our existing approach to campaign finance can't pass muster in the courts, we need to work together to find a real solution." There is a temptation to dismiss Obama's call for reform. He has expressed similar views in the past, but most of the time his actions have not matched his rhetoric. It is true that, as an Illinois State Senator and in the United States Senate, he did support campaign finance reform. But as President his record is negative. He was the first presidential candidate fully to opt out of the presidential public funding system. Even more importantly, since assuming office he has not spent any of his political capital on behalf of reform. Ruth Marcus, writing in the Asbury Park Press, details his failures. According to her, he has made no effort to compel sources of "dark money" to be reported, to require phony "social welfare" groups to disclose their political spending, to fix the dysfunctional Federal Elections Commission or to issue an executive order requiring federal contractors to report their contributions http://www.app.com/story/opinion/columnists/2016/01/13/marcus-obama-deliver-campaign-finance-reform/78757096/ Advertisement While the temptation to be dismissive is strong, it should be resisted. For in his address, Obama did say that he was going to travel the country over the course of the next year on behalf of reform. We should take him at his word, and provide the opportunity for him to do so. The most important of these opportunities will be the spring actions planned for April by a coalition of reform activists. Our movement has become strong enough so that, for the first time, we are able to organize mass rallies and events in Washington. The President should be invited to endorse them. Three separate activities are being organized in support of campaign finance reform and voting rights protection. Democracy Spring is sponsoring a march from Philadelphia's Liberty Bell to the Capital in Washington between April 2 and 11, to be followed by non-violent civil disobedience to protest Congressional inaction. Democracy Awakening is sponsoring a rally, teach-in, and concert on April 17 and 18. And Congress of Conscience is planning a Congressional lobby day on April 19. It might be a little much to ask the President to endorse civil disobedience. But there is no reason he cannot be supportive of the other actions. After all, Obama did work as a community organizer. He understood then, and probably still knows, that only a mobilized public possesses the potential to curb the undemocratic power of wealth. To quote his address: "Changes in our political process...will only happen when the American people demand it. It depends on you" https://www.whitehouse.gov/sotu Advertisement In seeking a presidential endorsement of our activism, our goal is precisely to avoid in the future the disappointments we have experienced during the Obama years. Were Obama to align himself with the money in politics movement, the next President (particularly if he/she is a Democrat) will be under great pressure to move on the issue. That pressure will be particularly intense because all three Democratic Party candidates have repeatedly called for reform, and even the Republicans have been compelled to address the issue (though in almost all cases unsatisfactorily). An important source of that growing pressure is our movement's increased political savvy and success: organizing at the grass roots and selectively endorsing reform candidates. But more than that, the American people have become increasingly aware of the nexus that exists between a political process dominated by wealthy people and an economy that favors the very rich. Tax policy that, in the name of fairness should be progressive, instead favors the rich because wealthy donors seek to protect their privileges. It is ever more obvious that political inequality creates economic inequality. But even if Obama shuns us, the press will be watching as we demand that he back his rhetoric with support. Our approaching him will draw the media's attention. That media exposure cannot help but assist us in gaining support within a population that is increasingly ready to hear what we have to say. Sub-Saharan Africa's (SSA) energy system is set to expand rapidly to 2040, with urban areas experiencing significantly improved coverage and reliability of centralised electricity supply, while mini-grid and off-grid systems will increasingly provide electricity to 70% of those in rural areas. Yet, despite these positive projections made by the International Energy Agency in its 2014 report, some 530 million Africans will probably continue to remain without electricity during this period. At present two out of every three people in sub-Saharan Africa do not have access to electricity. This is a terrible obstruction to the continent's true growth potential, one that hampers the speed of economic diversification and job creation, and that feeds the cycle of poverty. It is widely argued that in order for a more viable energy sector to take root, African nations need to step up infrastructure investments and focus on innovative approaches and technologies to leap frog economic growth. They need to pave the way for stable legal systems, predictable fiscal regimes, profit repatriation guarantees, and access to foreign exchange. The International Institute for Sustainable Development Infrastructure (IISD) defines a financially sustainable electricity sector as one that can recover costs, make investments, provide reliable electricity and meet social and environmental obligations. Advertisement While this might seem like an insurmountable challenge in the near future, there are ways to take greater strides in the short term by turning these threats and challenges into opportunities and action. The African mining sector, holds a crucial key. Threats and opportunities in resource nationalism... An open knowledge report, The Power of Mine, produced by the World Bank in 2015, states that since the year 2000 the mining industry in SSA has spent around $15.3 billion on generating its own electricity - 1,590 megawatts. Bewilderingly, none of this made its way on to the national grid. With the fall in commodity prices, which according to PwC's 2015 annual mining report effectively wiped $156 billion off the global mining market this year, mining companies in Africa are struggling to remain buoyant. Governments too are feeling the pressure, giving rise to a growing climate of resource nationalism, a condition in which African governments look to secure higher benefits from minerals mined and exported by foreign companies operating in the continent's mining sector. There is a very fine line between resource nationalism and legitimate national interest, but if handled properly it could be a viable solution to securing long term socio-economic growth for African nations and ensuring profitability for mining companies. Advertisement In fact, falling commodity prices, climate change and mining by-products present Africa with opportunities to transform how mining companies contribute to the region, and reduce the impact or risks associated with resource nationalism. This is an opportunity for governments and institutional investors to focus on public private partnerships (PPP) to drive job creation and economic diversification. Reversing the self-supply mindset in mining... One of the most notable inefficiencies is the way in which mining companies 'self-supply' their energy, effectively turning their backs on the region's own energy needs. Mining is one of the most energy-intensive industries and companies are prepared to invest billions of dollars in generating their own electricity, while the majority of the people in the countries they mine in go without. This is a form of humanitarian negligence that has to be reversed. An old African proverb says that 'greed loses what it has gained', which in the face of falling commodity prices, rings true for mining companies caught in a downward trajectory. Self-supply is expensive to start with, and it contributes nothing to the national grid. So here is an opportunity for an entire, energy-intensive industry to become a major customer. Mining companies have an opportunity to act as 'anchor' customers, a primary customer to state-generated electricity (with the understanding that their energy needs will be met in a timely manner) that puts money back in to the economy and supports reinvestments in the electrification of the region. And of course with electricity comes opportunities for businesses to flourish and for people in remote regions to build a better quality of life. The mining industry also has to battle with many other high costs that are often linked to inefficiencies and a lack of innovation. Tackling such issues may provide mining companies with an opportunity to trim expenditure and also provide opportunities for local entrepreneurs and foreign investors to create new and transformative industries that are linked to the sector. Advertisement The environmental opportunity in mining... One of the ironies is that many African countries have a surplus of a cleaner and cheaper fuel, particularly gasses such as methane, butane and propane, which are produced as a by-product of oil extraction. So why doesn't Africa use these alternative fuel sources instead of resorting to flaring? Typically, countries that flare gas lack the infrastructure needed to encourage investments in flare elimination. There may also be legal, regulatory, investment or operating issues that make flare elimination difficult. Here is a natural resource that is readily available, easy to access and comparably much cheaper than burning diesel and other fossil fuels. If governments and multi-billion dollar mining companies can collaborate, gas-fuelled power stations can be up and running within two years, providing a fast-turnaround for investors. Tackling flaring provides Africa with the opportunity to reduce unnecessary emissions, utilise existing cleaner energy resources and transform the continent's electricity grids. At present, with increased pressure, some African countries are already signed up to the Global Gas Flaring Reduction Partnership, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon and Nigeria. Many of the world's biggest oil companies such as BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell and TOTAL have also signed up. Yet this area remains as low hanging fruit and a missed opportunity for foreign investors to work with governments in the form of PPPs or through direct investment. Now is the time to modernize Africa's mining industries... If mining companies can become anchor customers for state-generated electricity, they will be contributing significantly more to the national GDP, enabling host countries to invest greater sums in national infrastructure. Advertisement Focusing on the electrification of the continent using natural resources would help to restructure many state budgets as refined oil subsidies could be cut considerably. For example, for Angola, the GDP growth elasticity factor is estimated at 0.2, meaning that for each 1% increase of power consumption, there is a 0.2% increase in GDP growth. Investors are now diverting considerable funds into this 'new frontier of capitalism' but this is still not sufficient to support Africa's electrification needs. There is also the opportunity for national governments to use their improved infrastructure and higher GDP to invest in renewables and new technologies. Hydropower, for instance, is already a focus for countries above and below the Sahara. Morocco is building the world's largest solar panel farm in the Western Sahara and countries such as Cameroon have already implemented policies that compel large power users to invest in hydropower, legally binding private developers to compete for hydro sites. Mozambique is yet another example of creative thinking, channelling efforts to turn waste coal from its coking coal production for power generation. There are many ways in which mining companies can contribute to the national grid, and help build a national and regional power market. At the core of it, it is the collective responsibility of governments and private mining companies to ensure that the benefits of mining are transferred to citizens. The time for ruthless plundering of an entire continent's natural wealth for private gain is over, especially as world economies draw closer together and where the political and economic developments in important emerging regions, such as Africa, have global reverberations. In many ways, African nations are at crossroads. They have an opportunity to modernise their mining industries in a way that benefits the environment and supports the development of wider and more reliable electricity grids. This modernisation can come from enforced policies as well as innovation and investment in renewables. Smarter use of existing resources such as mining by-products is of paramount importance, not least because it is a win-win for mining companies, the national economy, communities and the region's grid development. Advertisement Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin speaks during a rally where she endorses Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at the Iowa State University, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016, in Ames, Iowa. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer) TITLE PAGE Mr. Trump, you're right. This is going to be so much fun. DEDICATION You rock-n-rollers. And holy rollers! All of you who work so hard. You full-time moms. You with the hands that rock the cradle. You all make the world go round, and now our cause is one. INVICTUS Apologize for this country. Lie to the families of the fallen. A weak-kneed capitulator-in-chief has decided America will lead from behind. The enemy sends a message. We bend over and say, "Thank you, enemy." We are ready for a change. THE COMPLICITY Trump's candidacy, it has exposed Not just that tragic ramifications of that betrayal of the transformation of our Country, but too, he has exposed the complicity. Okay? He's going rogue left and right, man. He's been able to tear the veil off this idea of the system. The permanent political class has been doing the bidding of their campaign donor class, and that's why you see that the borders are kept open. It's for crony capitalists to be able to suck off of them. It's part of the problem. Believe me on this. And the proof of this? They are so busted, the way that this thing works. INVICTUS 2 Turning safety nets into hammocks, and all these new Democrat voters that are going to be coming on over the border as we keep the borders open. How 'bout the rest of us? Right wingin', bitter clingin', proud clingers of our guns, our god, and our religions, and our Constitution. Tell us that we're not red enough? When we're talking about a nation without borders. We're talking about our very existence, so no, We're not going to chill. In fact it's time to drill, baby, drill down, and hold these folks accountable. Are you ready for new? And are you ready for the leader who will let you make America great again? It's gonna take a whole team. It's gonna take a whole team. Fighters, all of us, in the private sector. ASIDE ON THE MUSLIMS Where they're fightin' each other and yellin' "Allah Akbar" calling Jihad on each other's heads for ever and ever. Like I've said before, let them duke it out and let Allah sort it out. ECCE HOMO (NOT AN ELITIST) Yeah, our leader is a little bit different. He's a multi-billionaire. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But, it's amazing, he is not elitist at all. Oh, I just hope you guys get to know him. He's not an elitist. And he has, he's spent his life with the workin' man. And he tells us Joe six packs, he said, "I've succeeded. Hugely I've succeeded." He has spent his life looking up and respecting the hard-hats and the steel-toed boots. He, being an optimist, passionate about equal-opportunity to work. TIME-TESTED TRUTHS You're ready to stop the race-baiting. Pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, strict constitutionality. Those things that are unifying values and their time-tested truths involved. HE BUILT THAT Picture this, it's a nice thing to picture. former President Barack Obama. He packs up the teleprompters and the selfie-sticks, and he heads on back to Chicago, where I'm sure he can find some community there to organize again. There, he can finally look up, President Obama will be able to look up, and there, over his head, he'll be able to see that shining, towering, Trump tower. Yes, Barack, he built that, President Obama signs the Every Student Succeeds Act Orchestras across the U.S. were thrilled when their advocacy efforts paid off as a new education law -- called the Every Student Succeeds Act -- received bi-partisan support from the House and Senate and was signed into law on December 10, 2015 by President Obama. On the long load to rewriting what is currently known as the No Child Left Behind Act, the nation's orchestras -- in partnership with arts advocates nationwide -- made contact thousands of times with Congress, calling on policymakers to close gaps in access to arts education in our nation's public schools. Here are some highlights of why as a parent, nonprofit leader and arts advocate, I am so pleased with the direction of the new law, but also concerned about next steps: Advertisement The new Every Student Succeeds Act firmly establishes that every child deserves access to a "well-rounded education," including music and the arts right alongside reading and math in the list of subjects that comprise a complete education. It dials back the No Child Left Behind Act's high-stakes approach to testing in math and reading, prompting renewed hope that the time and resources for the arts -- and other subjects that were often "squeezed out" of the school day -- may find their way back into the classroom. States now have flexibility to incorporate other critical measures of student success, such as student engagement. They are encouraged to use portfolio -- and project-based approaches when measuring student learning. These approaches align exactly with the integrated learning strategies, dynamic assessment tools, and social-emotional growth that the arts can deliver. The new law declares that a wide array of federal education dollars, including the Title I funds essential in our highest-poverty schools, may be used by states and local school systems to provide increased access to the full array of subjects in a well-rounded education. But the battle is not over and there is more work ahead for arts advocates ahead at the state and local levels. A key shift in the law is that the role of the federal government changes. Now, many more decisions for how to use federal education dollars are left in the hands of state and local education policy leaders. So there is now also an urgency for the arts to partner with others in broader education policy circles to ask the question -- how can the arts be incorporated in state and local plans to better prepare students for success in school, work, and life? Advertisement League of American Orchestras Vice President for Advocacy Heather Noonan testifying recently at a public hearing at the U.S. Department of Education. Photo: Narric Rome It is not a forgone conclusion that states will choose this path. While No Child Left Behind named the arts as a "core academic subject of learning," gaps in access to arts learning persisted. In fact, despite the clear evidence of the value of learning in and through the arts, the U.S. Department of Education's own research finds that the highest poverty schools in this country have the least access to arts education. This is exactly the kind of disparity that federal education law -- originally crafted in 1965 -- is meant address, by closing gaps in access and improving outcomes for all learners. To make progress, the gaps in access to arts education in our schools must be documented and made visible. So must the disparities in access to health and wellness programs, STEM, and the full array of services and subjects that will prepare our students and our communities for a new future. On January 11, the League of American Orchestras testified at a public hearing at the U.S. Department of Education's headquarters as initial decisions are made on how the new law will support schools in high-poverty communities. Every year, LaGrange College brings in a Martin Luther King Jr. speaker. This year, the speaker was the Rev. Dr. Raphael G. Warnock of Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church, who spoke to a packed Callaway Auditorium. And yes, politics entered into his speech. But, unlike what most people probably expected, it wasn't a partisan speech. This column will tell you why. Rev. Warnock, who served Ebenezer Baptist Church since 2005, was the youngest to serve that historic church regarded as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "spiritual home." He spoke about how he enjoyed connecting with institutions of higher learning, exhorting them to tune the heart, not just train the head, promoting ethics in education. Poster by LaGrange College He called for people to dream. "Dreams are an affront to the status quote," Rev. Warnock preached. "Hold fast to dreams, or they die." He himself had a dream, the son of a West Savannah preacher who ran a junkyard, to attend college. "My father used to say 'there is a God who can recycle,'" Rev. Warnock told us. Advertisement But he also connected the holiday to today's politics. There was a discussion about what happened to Trayvon Martin, killed for walking through a gated community with a bag of Skittles. He was shot by someone, whom I might personally add, who has done little to show that he was anything but the aggressor that night, and someone who even Gov. Jeb Bush pointed out, engaged in behavior beyond "Stand Your Ground" laws. He decried today's racism, income inequality, and today's partisan politics. "When geese fly in a 'V' formation, one side of the formation doesn't try to shut down the other half of the formation," Rev. Warnock pointed out. But then, audience members were in for a surprise. Because Rev. Warnock was about to talk about alliances he formed with the ACLU, Newt Gingrich at the Koch Brothers. Really? The connection they formed involved criminal justice reform, especially from the bottom-up. You see, it's not just the Bernie Sanders fans who are concerned about how many people are being locked up. Advertisement Conservatives realize too that some of the regulations that lead to America dominating the world in prisoners is pretty expensive. It's a drain on public resources, the economy, and locks up families where the primary breadwinner is behind bars. For violent crimes, such cases are understandable, but for non-violent offenses or technicalities, or cases where service would better fit the punishment, such avenues should at least be explored. This isn't some new push by conservatives fishing for 2016 votes. Newt Gingrich aligned himself with Washington DC Mayor Marion Barry when Barry made his comeback (and not his ill-fated first stint in office). And the Koch Brothers, as well as Rand Paul, have sought law enforcement reforms for several years now. Georgia Governor Nathan Deal has supported drug courts which emphasize treatment and rehabilitation, with punishment only for non-compliance. I know that going into a partisan election, such unity calls don't get the same level of attention. But maybe they should. After all, most Americans are usually more moderate than their politicians, and less likely to oppose everything a politician from a different party says, just because they wear a different color or have a different political label. It's what Dr. King would have wanted. When it comes to emotions, it's safe to say that most men don't talk about theirs very often. It's commonplace for men to act nonchalant when it comes to things of the heart, but perhaps it's what's been keeping us from experiencing the deeper things in life. When I was an adolescent I grew up with the hidden notion of not being enough. It's a fear that exists within everyone so keep reading. Despite the seemingly popular exterior and some head smarts I carried a sense of loneliness within self that I just couldn't shake. After finishing school and promptly leaving home I believed this was the opportunity to find the missing piece. But after several years of trying just about every vice (a common teenage/20-something approach), the feeling persisted. It wasn't too long before I found myself leading a life, as Henry David Thoreau stated, "of quiet desperation." Yet despite this increasing sense of emptiness, there was a beckoning deep inside that called me to more, which compelled me to seek. And in the decade between my mid-20s and mid-30s pieces of the puzzle came together that finally changed it all. Advertisement Here are three lessons that made a huge difference and may offer up some answers for you. 1. Our Response To Our Own Feelings Is Learnt When boys are young and they hurt themselves, or feel overwhelmed, it's commonplace for fathers to be dismissive about it with their sons. It's not that fathers intend to limit their kids emotions, it's usually just how they themselves were brought up. But as a result of not fully engaging in meeting their child's emotional need, they unconsciously communicate that emotions of vulnerability are to be suppressed and sometimes even ashamed of. It's no wonder then why as boys grow into young adults they have such a difficult time navigating their own emotions. Whenever they feel uncertain about something, they try to suppress the feeling of vulnerability to not experience rejection or shame. It's also why an increasing number of young adolescent males play up so much. Consider the following. If a young adolescent male, grows in an emotionally supportive environment and does not feel the need to prove himself because he's secure in who he is, would he be more likely or less likely to engage in anti-social behavior? It may seem like a weighted question but the fact is most anti-social or destructive behavior is a result of compromised self-worth. That's because the impact of not being able to appropriately express nor navigate emotion leads to an internal conflict which manifests in poor self-image. And it's from this place that we see so many men creating relational issues. Advertisement Boys need love and tenderness just as much as girls so that they can learn that their emotions are a natural part of the human experience. By doing so we sow the seeds of emotional intelligence that today are so desperately needed. And when nurtured well make for amazing men and incredible partners. 2. Masculine & Feminine Energies Exist Within All Now before we explore this further we must first be aware that the masculine and feminine energy types are independent of gender. This is because these energy types relate to the hemisphere of the brain which is most consistently accessed in a person's experience. The left hemisphere (masculine) is the logical center of the brain vs. the right hemisphere (feminine) being the expressive creative side. As you can imagine, both hemispheres will output different meaning to the same experience of an event. The literal nature of masculine energy allows for it to maintain a focused directive in that it is action driven and able to accomplish task based on desire. This means that given an outcome the masculine energy will seek to resolve the outcome in as short a time as possible often in the most efficient manner. The masculine energy requires clear and concise information to be provided in communication so that outcomes are as desired. The weakness of the literal nature of the masculine energy is that any inferential or ambiguous communication can lead to outcomes which are a deviation from the desired. This is not because the masculine energy seeks to rebel; rather, this is because the masculine seeks to derive the literal meaning from the communication provided. This literal approach is often times cause for conflict within relationships. Advertisement The inferential nature of the feminine energy communicates in ambiguous and indirect manners and anticipates that the responsibility of interpretation lies with the listener. The reason this is so it is because the feminine energy seeks to determine the level of engagement the listener is willing to have. This manner of communication also serves to maintain relationships by minimizing statements that are direct in nature and could in some form cause emotional hurt to the listener. This is because the female energy is intrinsically experiential in nature. Now depending on half of the brain you most rely on will determine how you experience your world and the type of communication you both give and receive. Now that you know a difference exists, you can stop asking yourself unresourceful questions like, "What's wrong with me?" or "Why don't they get it?" and instead start appreciating the difference. 3. Love Is The Ultimate Purpose For what it's worth, if you're a guy reading this, I get that you may find this hard to swallow, especially if you were brought up in an environment where emotions were suppressed. That empty feeling inside that all of us carry can only be filled with one thing, and that's love. Unfortunately the notion of love has been tainted to mean a warm fuzzy feeling, a euphoric sensation, bliss or some other such expression. Whilst these are all representative of love they only paint half the picture. That's because there are both masculine and feminine manifestations of love. Advertisement Love also shows up as strength, courage and certainty in the face of challenge. It chooses to look beyond the limit and believe in the highest good. It refuses to stay silent because it knows it's worth speaking up. It can be likened to a warrior going into battle, to reveal the light. This is what we all search for. This is what we all seek, to love and to be loved. Hispanic voter voting in polling place Among the many accomplishments in his all-too-short life, perhaps none was as important to Dr. Martin Luther King as the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Dr. King understood that the single most important tool that African-Americans could use to unravel the worst elements of state-sanctioned discrimination was the ballot box. Decades before the Civil Rights movement emerged, communities across the nation had contrived a system of electoral exclusion that depended on a witch's brew of poll taxes, literacy tests and "good character" clauses. When these obstacles failed to dissuade potential voters, violence or threats of violence offered a useful and effective supplement to the campaign of disenfranchisement. In the aftermath of the 1964 Civil Rights Acts, Dr. King boldly decided to press President Lyndon Johnson to explicitly defend voting rights. The early months of 1965 saw Dr. King and other civil rights activists risk their lives in places such as Selma and Marion, Alabama to highlight the extremes to which some communities would go to deny African Americans the franchise. Images of bloodied civil rights protesters outraged the nation. That summer, President Johnson, surrounded by Dr. King and Rosa Parks, signed the Voting Rights Act into law at a White House ceremony. No other piece of legislation had such a positive effect on the ability of all Americans--irrespective of race, ethnic origin or native language--to participate in our democratic system. Advertisement Unfortunately, in the wake of the Supreme Court's 2013 decision in the case of Shelby v. Holder, the Voting Rights Act has been crippled. By undermining the ability of the federal government to oversee electoral policies and procedures at the state and local levels of government, a slim majority of the Supreme Court has created a terrible rollback of voting rights in America. Republican-led State Legislatures in a number of states have passed a series of laws that make it more difficult for Americans to register to vote and cast their ballots. In 2015, according to the Brennan Center for Justice and New York University School of Law, at least 113 bills to restrict access to voting and registration were introduced in 33 states. In 15 states, new restrictions on voting and registering will be in effect this year and will almost certainly have an impact on the 2016 national elections. As one of the nation's leading Latino civil rights organizations, Hispanic Federation takes the current assault on voting rights very seriously. As we have seen in recent years, Latino voters are the targets of a number of voter restriction laws including a series of voter identification laws that mask discrimination by making specious arguments about voter fraud. What's more, as a recent article in the New York Times points out, Latino communities often find their electoral power diluted by schemes to create at-large districts in municipalities where Latino political power seems to be in ascent. The only way to undo all of this damage is to revitalize the Voting Rights Act. In its decision in Shelby v. Holder, The Supreme Court was clear: "voting discrimination still exists; no one doubts that." But they left it up to Congress to design new tools and benchmarks for protecting voters. Last year, Senator Patrick Leahy and Congressman John Lewis introduced the Voting Rights Advancement Act. The Act would again give the federal government the power to oversee changes in voting policies, including the adoption of voter identification laws. Unfortunately, Congress has failed to act. Republicans in the House and Senate have failed to schedule hearings on the bills and they have shown little to no interest in answering the Supreme Court's challenge to fix the issues raised in Shelby v. Holder. That is unacceptable. It's time for Congress to get serious about protecting the voting rights of all Americans. Dr. King wouldn't expect any less from us. San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed smiles during a City Council meeting in San Jose, Calif., Tuesday, June 5, 2012. As state and local governments across the country struggle with ballooning pension obligations, voters in two major California cities cast ballots Tuesday on sweeping measures to curb retirement benefits for government workers. Reed, a Democrat, joined an 8-3 City Council majority to put San Jose Measure B for pension reform on the ballot. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma) The millionaires and billionaires who want to gut public sector pensions in California have decided to put off their anti-labor ballot initiatives until after the Roberts Court imposes its "right-to-work" regimen on the whole country this June. Former San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, along with the San Diego Republican Carl DeMaio, and their deep-pocketed corporate benefactors have been for years aggressively moving to shred the retirement security of thousands of California's police officers, firefighters, nurses, health care professionals, state workers and teachers. Advertisement But they're going to hold their fire for now. They believe their anti-labor gambit will be more successful in 2018 after their ideological soul mates on the U.S. Supreme Court hobble public sector labor unions when they rule against labor in Friederichs v. California Teachers Association. These models of civic virtue also believe their attack on the retirement security of public sector workers in California is more likely to bear fruit in 2018 because voter turn-out slumps in non-presidential election years. Reed recently sued the State of California for blocking the wording of his anti-labor propositions. The State of California wanted the language to refer to the actual people whose pensions Reed targets: "teachers, nurses, and peace officers." Reed subsequently tweaked the wording of his summaries to keep them vague by saying they would only affect people "working in K-12 schools, education, hospitals and police protection." Said Reed; "It's not the most positive way to describe the initiative, but at least it meets the legal requirement to be accurate." Reed and DeMaio prefer deceptive language to bamboozle just enough California voters into supporting something they probably would shy away from if the wording were more honest. Advertisement They play on the fears that arose from the economic insecurity of the Great Recession to put forth a scheme that is sure to set loose the asset strippers, profiteers, speculators, and other "entrepreneurs" to pick apart the public pension systems. Under the guise of "fiscal conservatism" and a feigned concern for budgets and taxpayers, Reed's plan could compel the state's police officers, firefighters, nurses, and teachers to moonlight on the side as Uber drivers, AirBnb hosts, or pizza delivery people if they don't want to retire in poverty. Year after year, Reed and DeMaio have counted on their deep-pocketed right-wing allies to cough up some serious dough. "We're in the ballpark of $25 million to run a statewide campaign," Reed crowed. Meanwhile, Reed's millionaire friends aggressively push these initiatives while pretending to be some kind of "citizen driven" campaign. A member of the "Independent Institute," Lawrence J. McQuillan, in a letter to the Sacramento Bee recently denounced the retirement security of police officers, firefighters, nurses, and teachers as an unfair "class system" that forces "the rest of us" to "pay for these protected government pensions." McQuillan's wording should be included in the summaries of the ballot initiatives because it's more honest and it reveals quite clearly the resentment and bitterness among workers that Reed and his allies are trying to foment. The modus operandi of Reed and his asset stripper allies is similar to what Governor Scott Walker did in Wisconsin: Pit private and public sector workers against each other whose yearly salaries aren't that different. Advertisement At a time when the "fire season" in California lasts 365 days a year and the state's firefighters are risking their lives everyday to try to save the state from burning up. When police officers are working harder than ever trying to keep our overcrowded streets and freeways safe. When nurses and other health care professionals face increased patient demands due to the aging baby boomer population (with the state's population reaching 40 million). When state workers, including civil servants and child protective services officers, have endured years of austerity and have had their numbers thinned with heavier workloads. And when teachers from Crescent City to San Diego are handed mandates to test and drill the state's children while dealing with a steady onslaught of vituperation undermining their profession coming from corporate "reformers." Now there are calls to strip away the pensions of these working people who have dedicated their lives to making California a better and safer place to live? Reed and Co. willfully ignore the fact that the defined-benefit pension plans for California's workers are part of the compensation package designed to encourage talented people to dedicate their skills to serving the needs of the state. Retirement plans are part of the incentive structure to lure good people to accept modest salaries to give something back to society. Yet Reed and other asset strippers apparently see little value in the work public sector employees do. The public should think twice before taking advice on "pension reform" from these sharks. Reed and others like him, if given their way, would privatize public pensions to allow profiteers to rake in the cash managing inferior 401(k)s. We need to remind Chuck Reed and the asset strippers that California isn't Wisconsin. Reed and DeMaio think that since their pension-gutting crusade would only apply to future hires current employees won't oppose them. But I can tell you as an employee of the Great State of California and a labor unionist I'll be among those fighting against Reed and DeMaio's ballot initiatives no matter what shape-shifting form they take. Advertisement Let's not forget that the anti-pension initiatives are also designed to drain the coffers of the state's labor unions, which is why Reed believes he'll get a better shot after the Supreme Court overturns the 1977 Abood v. Detroit Board of Education this June in the case Friederichs v. California Teachers Association thereby hamstringing political spending by public sectors unions. Almost every year California's labor unions are forced to spend millions of dollars fighting essentially defensive battles against right-wing corporate interests that engage in class warfare and seek to hobble workers' rights. The money often flows in from Texas and other states with an agenda behind it that is clearly anti-California. These propositions from millionaires and corporations push the unions back and drain their hard-earned dues money that could have been spent on organizing new members or changes in the law that help workers. These rich guys apparently have nothing better to do with their spare time and money than to beat down public sector workers in California along the same lines that Scott Walker did in Wisconsin. This June the Supreme Court is certain to embolden Reed by making it harder for public sector unions to defend themselves. Instead of attacking the pensions of hard-working Golden State employees we should be asking the questions: Why is it that the private sector treats its workers so shoddily that it sets them up to retire in poverty? Or: What good will it do for the state to throw thousands of public sector workers into poverty in their old age? Of all the great social causes -- climate change, ending discrimination, protecting the environment, etc. -- to which Reed and his merry band of "concerned citizens" could dedicate themselves they choose to fight to reduce the already modest incomes of retired police officers, firefighters, nurses, health care professionals, state and municipal workers, and teachers? Advertisement Many of the rich people who throw money behind these "campaigns" no doubt see it as a good investment. For ideological reasons they want to privatize state and municipal pensions, strip the assets (even the ones that workers have paid into for twenty or thirty years), ruin this modest incentive structure that attracts qualified people into public service, and replace good protected pensions with 401(k)s or similar plans that function at the whim of Wall Street speculators and are vulnerable to blowing up after the next bubble pops. An elite class of financial managers and advisers who charge exorbitant fees, commissions, rents, and compensation are licking their chops over these initiatives so they're not going away. The World Food Programme and writer Joshua Dysart have teamed up to create a graphic novel highlighting the work of the organization's humanitarian aid workers and those they strive to help. The comic, titled "Living Level 3," for the most severe classification of humanitarian crisis, tells the story of a fictional humanitarian aid worker, Leila, on an aid mission after the self-described Islamic State brutally seized territory there in 2014. Advertisement Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin's plan to dismantle Kynect, the state's health insurance exchange, and transition to the federal exchange would hurt Kentuckians, despite what some contend. It likely will mean that they'll face higher premiums and have a harder time getting and staying covered. Health reform provides a "no wrong door," seamless eligibility system so people can easily apply for and move between coverage programs -- including Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and exchange coverage -- as their situations change. Making coverage seamless has proved challenging for both HealthCare.gov (the federal exchange) and some state exchanges that have kept their Medicaid and exchange systems separate. Kentucky, by contrast, enjoyed early success in developing an integrated system in which individuals and families can apply and get covered in the program for which they're eligible. The state's uninsurance rate for low-income adults has fallen from 40 percent to 12 percent. In states using the federal exchange, cases must be transferred between HealthCare.gov and state Medicaid and CHIP programs. While HealthCare.gov works better now than it used to, low-income people still may face delays and coverage gaps when their incomes change or they apply at HealthCare.gov and are eligible for Medicaid. Advertisement With Kynect dismantled, people with exchange coverage would have to start from scratch and reapply for coverage at HealthCare.gov rather than be auto-renewed into health plans for 2017. Premiums would rise as insurers likely pass on to enrollees the 3.5 percent fee that the federal exchange would charge Kentucky to join. These costs would come on top of the states' cost of shutting down Kynect, estimated at $23 million to $25 million. Medicaid and CHIP beneficiaries would also be affected, since Kynect is the portal for their coverage, too. Kentucky would have to establish new systems to transfer cases between its Medicaid and CHIP programs and HealthCare.gov. That could prove challenging, since some states are still experiencing problems with these transfers, resulting in delays and coverage gaps. Without Kynect, families with children in Medicaid or CHIP and parents in exchange coverage would have to straddle two systems. They would have to report changes in income or employment to both the state and HealthCare.gov and follow different processes to renew and verify their coverage, rather than working only through Kynect. Kentucky would no longer operate its own website and call center or manage outreach for its programs, so consumers would no longer have support that's specific to the state's programs and health plan choices. Kynect is a model for other states. Dismantling it would cost the state money, boost premiums, and likely cause some Kentuckians to lose coverage. Other Kentuckians, including Medicaid and CHIP beneficiaries, would face more red tape and confusing new processes for applying and renewing coverage. Governor Bevin should reconsider his decision. Advertisement This post originally appeared on Off the Charts, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities' blog. I am really disappointed in you, Marco Rubio, because I think there was a time when you did not lie in order to win, she said. This past Saturday I decided it would be fun to go hiking in the Scarborough Bluffs and invited my ex-girlfriend Lorraine to come along. I thought it would be a lovely Dr. Zhivago -- esque idea to walk in the bluffs in the midst of a very cold Toronto winter . I do not own a horse, so I brought along my trusty circus puppy Lucille, who though not a horse, would suffice. I put on my warmest jacket and my faux fur hat, gathered everyone into my battered '94 Ford and off we drove to our destination. At first it was lovely, in a freezing fresh air kind of way, but after the first few moments of bliss the -- 20 temperature started to turn my warm titties into tit-cicles. Really? What was I thinking? I am not a Russian princess but a neurotic, over -- fifty Jewish Canadian Princess! Oy Vey! However; intrepid is my middle name, so even though it did not seem to be the most brilliant idea I have ever had, we three soldiered on. Again, at this almost frozen moment in time , a healthier person would have turned back and called it a day, but not me!! Oh no! We drove all the way there dammit; and we are going to have fun! Advertisement Twenty minutes into our hike, we came upon a steep incline. Lorraine climbed down first, Lucille went next, then it was my turn. Yikes ! This mountain is too steep for me to climb without dyke assistance! I focused all my energy on Lorraine's back, silently willing her to turn around and say "Hey, Katharine need some help?" For of course, I needed help. I have bad knees and bad balance and a broken motherless heart, so I silently screamed: "I NEED HELP YOU MOTHERFUCKER!!!" Lorraine did not turn around. This wasn't my first time on this particular merry go round, and more than likely, it wouldn't be my last. Memories flashed through my mind -- 5-year-old me, on a rare outing with my mother to Eaton's department store, begging Mother to hold my hand, Mother refusing, telling me that I'm a big girl now, big girls don't need to hold their mother's hand. 10-year-old me, asking my father the engineer to help me put together my bicycle, and Dad refusing, telling me he couldn't figure out the diagram. Really Daddy? You are an engineer! You can do it! Instead of looking at the building instructions together, he chose to walk away, leaving me with an unassembled bike and a disassembled heart. So when Lorraine did not turn around, it was a familial sensation. The shock and the pain brought me to a very young and wounded place, and out of that place, I did something extremely foolish. Instead of asking for Lorraine's assistance, I proceeded down the very steep incline by myself, tripping on an unseen branch, injuring my already bruised left knee. And if it would have ended there, it would just have been another in the series of shame blame Saturdays; but on this particular Saturday, as I lay stunned on the very cold sand, a miracle happened. Advertisement FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER I, KATHARINE ANGELINA LOVE, CONCIOUSLY AND WITH INTENTION, FORGAVE MYSELF!! I forgave myself for not being able to ask Lorraine to turn around and help me. I forgave myself for not being able to hike down the steep incline without falling. I forgave Lorraine for not having a mother who encouraged connection and reaching out to others, literally and figuratively. I put into practice what my amazing therapist; the wonderful Jodee has been encouraging me to do; engage the wounded little 5-year-old that still lives inside of me. I took my little 5 year old's hand, and said to her "It's okay baby, everyone here is doing the best they can. You are safe, I am here for you, and you are not alone anymore." I then felt a surge of love and forgiveness fill my body, and silently thanked Lorraine, who had given me this opportunity to practice the practice of forgiving myself. "Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that crushed it." UNITED STATES - JANUARY 18 - Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks at an organizing event in Toledo, Iowa, on Monday, Jan 18, 2016. (Photo By Al Drago/CQ Roll Call) Forty three years ago next week, the Supreme Court declared abortion a fundamental right, and forever preserved a woman's right to make her own decisions about her health. Yet today, just two weeks before the Iowa caucuses, the Republican front-runner in that state has vowed to invalidate this Supreme Court ruling. When asked if he would even attempt to use the 14th Amendment to rob American women of this sacred right, Ted Cruz replied: "Absolutely, yes." Cruz is not alone in holding these extreme positions. Marco Rubio has said that as president, he would end abortion, without exceptions for victims of rape and incest. By now it probably comes as no surprise that Donald Trump, who once claimed to be "pro-choice," now calls Planned Parenthood an "abortion factory," and promises to defund it. Advertisement And even if a President Ted Cruz ultimately failed in his quest, he would be in a position to appoint as many as four new Supreme Court Justices, whose opinions will determine the fate of an entire generation of women. As the Chairman of Planned Parenthood's Board of Advocates, the stakes in this election are higher than I've ever seen in a lifetime of waging these fights. Views that used to exist only on the fringes of the Republican Party have become mainstream dogma. Recently, the Republican-controlled Congress managed to pass a bill repealing the Affordable Care Act and defunding Planned Parenthood for the first time in history. A thin line of ink from President Obama's veto pen is all that stands between American women and this nightmare. This vote is a disturbing preview of coming attractions. If any of the current cohort of Republican candidates manage to win the White House too, the only thing women will be able to count on is politicians interfering in her personal health decisions. Advertisement Without the Affordable Care Act, we would go back to the days when being a woman was a pre-existing condition in America. Insurance companies could once again charge women more for coverage just because of their gender. And without Planned Parenthood, women would be cut off from the care they need, including birth control, well-woman exams, access to STD testing, and cancer screenings. To escape this frightening future, America has only one path to follow. We must make sure Hillary Clinton becomes the next President of the United States. Planned Parenthood has issued its first-ever primary endorsement of Hillary because she's been fighting for women and families her entire life. In Arkansas, she launched the first rape crisis hotline in the state. In the Senate, she fought tirelessly for reproductive rights, access to birth control, and sex education. And as Secretary of State, women's health and women's rights were the centerpiece of her agenda. All that experience means that Hillary has the skills and the scars that no one else can match. She is the strongest, most qualified candidate for the office of president that I have ever encountered. But in an election, she'll only be as powerful as those who stand with her. So as our more of our friends and neighbors begin tuning into this election, let's make sure they understand everything that's on the line. Let's organize for her, caucus for her, and vote for her. Advertisement This year, 2 million Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders can gain health coverage from the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Many of these people have never had insurance before and cannot afford doctor visits and prescription medications. Before the ACA, nearly one in seven AAs and NHPIs were uninsured -- and even more were underinsured. Today, millions of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders (AA and NHPI) are part of the 17.6 million people enrolled in coverage across the country -- thanks to the health care law. There are more affordable options than ever before to ensure AA and NHPI families are covered. Health insurance marketplaces in each state have a variety of plans for every budget, including financial assistance for middle- and low-income families. Families and children may also qualify for coverage through Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP). And coverage includes the essentials of health care: doctor's visits, maternal care, prescription medications, and hospitalizations (if necessary). It is through these programs and the marketplaces that eligible AAs and NHPIs can find the affordable coverage that works best for them. In Utah, one of our partners worked closely with a Tongan American man to find coverage through the marketplace. His employer had recently reduced his hours, but he was still paying $550 every month for his family's health coverage. With the assistance of a navigator, he found a plan with the same coverage that was only $200 a month! Advertisement The good news is that there may be even more affordable options over the next few years. Last week, the president announced a new proposal that, if adopted by Congress, would help push remaining states that haven't expanded Medicaid over the finish line. States that expand their Medicaid programs would receive three full years of federal funding. In a separate development, the newly elected governor of Louisiana recently announced an expansion to the state's program, which will save about $200 million in uncompensated care costs. If all states expanded Medicaid, about 798,000 uninsured AAs and NHPIs be eligible for Medicaid or CHIP across the country. Expansion could potentially make a huge impact in closing the health care gap for AA and NHPI communities and many more across the nation. When looking for the right coverage, people can ask for help from a variety of sources, including through Healthcare.gov. Many community health groups hold enrollment fairs with assisters to answer questions and help families walk through the process. For AAs and NHPIs who do not speak English well, in-language assistance is available from trained interpreters and translators in Marketplace call centers. My organization, the Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum, has been honored to work alongside our state-based partners and be a national lead for Action for Health Justice (AHJ), a national collaborative working with community partners and in-person assisters to close the health insurance gap. During the first two open enrollment periods, AHJ partners outreached, educated, and enrolled more than 850,000 AAs and NHPIs in 22 states and provided one-on-one assistance in 56 languages. The experiences of the first two open enrollment periods showed a need for more in-language materials to explain health insurance terms - which can be complicated regardless of the language. Working together with partners on the ground across the country, AHJ developed a glossary of common health insurance terms, available in more than 12 Asian and Pacific Islander languages. Because one in three AAs and NHPIs have difficulty speaking, writing, reading or understanding English, being able to access information in multiple languages is critical. Advertisement It is also critical that we continue our focus on the millions of AAs and NHPIs who are eligible, but do not have insurance yet. The current open enrollment period wraps up at the end of January, so our time is running out! During the White House's third annual AAPI Affordable Care Act Week of Action, we are working with our federal colleagues, including the White House Initiative on AAPIs and the Surgeon General's office to encourage all to sign up and get enrolled in health coverage. This is America. We want to make it easier for people to participate. -President Barack Obama, State of the Union, 2016 Beyond the partisan divides around some of President Obama's policy proposals lies a compelling thought: regardless of the policy outcome, give ordinary people safer access to the process. That is an achievable goal--as demonstrated by the many governments who have made it so. For too long, government has made unrealistic demands of citizens when it comes to their participation. Initially, whole segments of the population could not vote or faced significant obstacles to registration--still an issue in some states. Meanwhile, the only choice many citizens had was to speak for no more than three minutes at a podium--often on live television, after hours of waiting, minutes before a vote. At one city council meeting in Texas, a speaker at a public hearing asked (in a nearly empty chamber at 11 o'clock at night), "Will there be an opportunity to weigh in on this issue? "I believe you're doing so now," replied the mayor. "With any power?" she asked, to applause from fellow citizens and befuddlement from her elected officials. Advertisement At work, we don't limit input to those who can make a speech right before we make a decision, and we shouldn't impose that limit on the American people, either; that helps "the most extreme voices get all the attention," as the President put it. What do we expect when we ask citizens to sit as they would in church, court, or a college lecture, listening to elected officials opine from a dais on high? Only the bravest would openly and brazenly challenge a pastor, a judge, or a professor in those settings. The changes in attitude the President describes may be hard for government to achieve, but that doesn't prevent changes in process that would help produce rational, constructive debates, enabling us to listen to more than those who agree with us, and to give the average person more of a say. We should strive to ensure, after all, that those affected by a public policy decision can affect that decision. That's not the case now in much of our country. A multi-organizational coalition that included the American Bar Association, the National League of Cities, and the International City County Managers Association produced a set of tools to help make the President's dream a reality. Called "Making Public Participation Legal," it sought to replace archaic regulations that drive governments to host public hearings rather than facilitate dialogue. In cities across the country, governments have either replaced or complemented hearings with conversations. Neutral facilitators help smaller groups of citizens with differing points of view talk to each other respectfully, with discussion guidelines that encourage people to respect points of view other than one's own, focus on understanding rather than persuasion, and suspend judgment. Moderators even manage to get thousands of people into civil dialogue online through forums set up by local governments to discuss policy challenges. Advertisement Some communities even empower ordinary citizens to be the change they want to see in our process--by training them to host dialogue. In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, citizen hosts from Portsmouth Listens held small conversations in people's homes and resolved major political conflicts through constructive and structured dialogue. Rather than expecting elected officials both to hold a point of view and to stay neutral among competing interests, many cities have empowered teams of citizen volunteers to facilitate policy discussions at cafes, schools, and houses of worship. Perhaps most importantly, governments where these changes in public participation have taken hold have laid a solid foundation for change through guiding principles and, in many cases, dedicated personnel. Several organizations, including the International Association for Public Participation, have given governments templates for public participation principles, and more and more cities have community engagement coordinators, offices of neighborhood engagement, and the like. Ultimately, this paradigm shift can yield more than just warmer feelings among Americans. Governments often spend millions dealing with the consequences of poor public participation--holding off-cycle recall elections, defending against lawsuits filed by aggrieved policy opponents, or even policing protestors. In an age when we are trying to focus on preventive, ongoing health care rather than the much more expensive emergency room, shouldn't we do the same for our politics? Perhaps when Americans demand that their elected officials, from Congress to city council, give them chances to converse, rather than contend, we will achieve the President's vision. Our civic health is ailing; most Americans don't vote, let alone stay active in public life away from the ballot box, and many young adults are not leaving home with a firm understanding of civics or with the tools needed to engage in meaningful civic dialogue. The cure will require all of us--and is well within our reach. Millennials Katie Costella (left) and Jesse Barkin (right) greet cars in frigid temperatures outside of the Reinig Center hours before Hillary Clinton's event. TOLEDO, IA - "Give us a honk! Honk for Hillary!" Jesse Barkin yelled, as Clinton supporters arrived at the convention center on Monday afternoon. This millennial came all the way from Maine to volunteer for Clinton's campaign. "I think she represents millennials and pragmatic and progressive thinking," Barkin said. "I think she's the candidate to win, so I'm out here doing everything I can in the cold." Right next to Barkin stood Katie Costella in 10 degrees clutching a 'Hillary for Iowa' sign in her hands. She traveled nearly 1,000 miles from Warrenton, Va. to support Clinton. "It's just her time to get in the White House. We need someone who's going to build on what Obama has done for the past eight years," Costella said. "We need to make sure we don't get a Republican in there that's going to set us back." Clinton has warned Iowans that if a Republican wins the election then the Affordable Care Act will be lost completely. Costella said Clinton is the candidate who will use Obama's progress as a stepping-stone to achieve universal healthcare. Advertisement Katie Costella holds a 'Hillary for Iowa" sign as she welcomes people to the event center in Iowa. "We need someone who's not just going to say things, but someone that's going to get stuff done," Costella said. One issue that Clinton wants to improve upon is the affordability of healthcare for Americans of every age. According to the Center for American Progress, nearly 20 percent* of millenials were uninsured as of 2014. "We need to require insurance companies to give people three free visits before their deductible kicks in," Clinton said. Advertisement Healthcare isn't getting any cheaper and neither is college tuition, which is another hot button issue for millennials. According to Collegeboard, tuition at public four-year institutions in the U.S. is increasing by 3.4 percent** every year. Clinton has created a detailed 350-billion-dollar plan that will help students and their families afford a college education to avoid drowning in debt. The plan New College Compact claims students will not be held back by overpriced tuition and fees. "I really think that her college affordability plans are really well thought out and achievable," Connor Doyle said. This 21-year-old Oklahoman and volunteer for the Clinton campaign chose to go to The University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia instead of a school in the United States. The education Doyle was seeking was more affordable overseas; this is what prompted him to get his college degree in another country. "I think she's really fighting for families like mine. So that debt is not stacked against us, so that we can really try to get ahead," Doyle said. Advertisement According to a Pew Research study, 75 percent*** of adults said college is too expensive for most Americans and 57 percent*** said U.S. colleges aren't worth the money students and families spend. During the event, Clinton outlined her education plan saying, if she were president she would make community colleges free and public universities debt free. Clinton explains to Tama County residents her plan for affordable college education. "I want you to be able to have an endpoint to your debt, so that you're not paying for it when you're in a nursing home," Clinton said. Following the horrific attacks in Istanbul, Indonesia and Burkina Faso carried out by extremists in the name of Islam, a fundamental question needs to be raised. Why are such radical Islamic groups able to recruit locals? Why do they find an audience in Islamic countries who are then maneuvered to attack their own? Is it possible that certain ideologies have crept into mainstream Islamic schools of thought that aide these groups? http://i.huffpost.com/gen/3631954/images/s-TERRORISM-small.jpg There is absolutely no doubt that the overwhelming majority of Muslims condemn terrorism and absolutely abhor all extremist groups. However, a recent Pew Research showed that a tiny minority in many majority Muslim countries hold a favorable view of ISIS. Even though the percentage is very low, these turn out to be alarmingly high numbers. For example: 9% of Pakistan's population is approximately 1.7 million people. 4% of Indonesia's population is roughly 1 million people who support ISIS. Even if these numbers were halved, it still provides a nourishing breeding ground for terrorism. This is why I believe that the answer must come from within. The Muslim countries must unite against all such factors that drive people to these groups. Let's look at a few of these factors. Violent Jihad must be opposed. While the majority of Muslims believe Jihad to be a defensive war fought against religious persecution, there are Muslim clerics who preach violence and terrorism in the name of Jihad. The notion of fighting wars over religions or converting others to your faith through force must come to an end. As an Imam who works with the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community of Canada, I worked closely on a project here at home. This was exactly our intention when we started a campaign called 'Stop The CrISIS'. It was simply an initiative to unite Canadian Muslims with fellow countrymen against ISIS and the barbarity that they stand for. Loyalty to Canada should be the hallmark of all Canadian Muslims. Violence and terrorism is carried out in many Islamic countries in the name of Jihad. Therefore, unless all Muslim countries stand united against it and take actions against clerics preaching it, this issue won't go away. Local mosques and clerics will continue to produce people who will get attracted to the message of radicals. Advertisement Equality and empowerment of women is another important step against radicals. We have seen some horrific images of treatment of women by these terrorists. It is up to the Muslim leadership and countries to counter this behavior. Standards of treatment of women continue to be very poor in many majority Muslim countries. This must change. There should also not be any restriction on women in their dressing. The tales of forcing women to wear veils or burqa are disturbing and leave us no better than these terrorists. To present an example for Muslims worldwide, here is how the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community deals with the issue of veiling. Our Caliph, Mirza Masroor Ahmad, said in his sermon of September 5th, 2014: However, even if they (women) do not take scarf we cannot bind them to do so. Some of our men have hard-line attitude and resort to rigidity ... Men should remember that they have not been given powers to police others and should restrain themselves. It is not for them to cover the heads of women from outside. Men are commanded to restrain their eyes; they should fulfill their own obligations. There is not even any commandment to forcibly cover the heads of Muslim women let alone non-Muslim women. It is men like these who have hard-line ideas, there may be the odd one among us also, who bring Islam in disrepute. One of the more fundamental problems we see in many Muslim countries is the issue of blasphemy and free speech. These are issues that put us at par with extremists. Advertisement Freedom of speech must be supported. The idea of jailing people for their views should be done away with. The case of Raif Badawi in Saudi Arabia is quite disturbing. Our response to derogatory cartoons or videos shouldn't be mass protests calling out for violence against the perpetrators. To give an example of the country of my birth, Pakistan, the law of blasphemy continues to be used by extremist clerics to silence their critics. My own community, Ahmadiyya Muslims, has been heavily victimized. If countries like Pakistan continue to persecute minority communities such as Shia Muslims, Ahmadi Muslims and Christians, they will continue to make inroads for groups like ISIS. When a Pakistani Muslim sees ISIS doing at large what is being done in his community at a smaller scale, the chances of him being attracted to terrorists become significantly higher. Thus the true solution to defeating ISIS will come from within the greater Muslim Community. The overwhelming majority of Muslims already consider such groups to be a perversion of their faith. But we will need to go a step further to completely dismantle ISIS and take away their ability to attract people. For this, we must identify all such factors that breed extremism in our society. As long as the governments of Muslim countries do not stand against radical factors and principles prevalent in their own societies and clerics who preach it, ISIS and such groups will continue to find their breeding grounds. TEHUACAN, MEXICO - FEBRUARY 4: A Mexican woman skirts a Jaguey water hole, February 4, 2006 near San Marcos Tlacoyalco, Mexico. The Tehuacan Valley South-East of Mexico City has long experienced severe water shortages. Drought and climate change have contributed to this but recent industrial growth has also placed tremendous strain of a very limited ground water resource. Big industry has taxed this resource so severely that many small farmers and rural people have had no choice but to move closer to the cities and abandon their traditional lives. Water resources in the area area largely based on a weekly delivery by truck as well as collecting water from small pools known as Jagueys. This collected water was traditionally only used for animals but now more and more people are relying on it as a water source for crops and for drinking and bathing purposes. (Photo by Brent Stirton/Getty Images) We come together in Davos this year to discuss the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the previous ones outstripping our planet's ability to sustain itself, consuming and dumping millions of tonnes of fossil fuels into our fragile ecosystem. Man-made greenhouse gas emissions have increased since the pre-industrial era, driven largely by our economic and population growth. This has led to the highest atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide in at least the last 800,000 years. Advertisement View a larger version of this graphic here. Graphic by IPCC. Several reports published by the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) have year after year demonstrated successive record breaking events across a range of geological parameters. In the last century, the world has warmed by approximately 0.75 degrees Celsius, with each of the last three decades being successively warmer than any preceding decade since 1850. Since the beginning of the industrial era, oceanic uptake of carbon dioxide has resulted in its acidification; with a 0.1 pH decrease of ocean surface water corresponding to a 26 percent increase in acidity. Ocean warming has dominated the increase in energy stored in the climate system, accounting for more than 90 percent of the energy accumulated between 1971-2010. Advertisement The annual mean sea-ice extent has been reducing at a rate of 3.5-4.1 percent per decade in the Arctic and 1.2-1.8 percent per decade in the Antarctic. Arctic sea-ice extent has decreased in every season and in every successive decade since 1979. Over the period 1901 to 2010, the global mean sea level has risen by an average of 19 centimeters. View a larger version of this graphic here. Graphic by IPCC. What if We Don't Act Now? If current levels of greenhouse gas emissions are to continue, this will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems, with uneven distributions, generally greater for disadvantaged people and communities. Many people view climate change as a geographic and physical phenomenon, but there is a very real human and biological side too, with a host of related public health issues. If left unchecked, global warming will cause hundreds of millions of deaths across the world in the coming decades. According to the World Health Organisation, taking into account only a subset of the possible health impacts, and assuming continued economic growth and progress in public health, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year between 2030 to 2050, of which: 38,000 will be due to heat exposure in the elderly 48,000 will be due to diarrhea 60,000 will be due to malaria 95,000 will be due to malnutrition in children This does not include the immeasurable deaths that will occur due to extreme climate events and forced migration. Broadly speaking, the effects on our health can be divided into four main categories. Advertisement 1. Heat Stroke and Cardiovascular Disease Extreme weather events will affect rates of cardiovascular diseases (CVD) in several ways. Directly, the stress of an extreme event or anxiety over its recurrence is associated with increased myocardial infarctions (or heart attack) and sudden cardiac death. Indirectly, the displacement caused by a disaster is frequently associated with interruptions of medical services putting populations with chronic conditions at risk. Cities and urban sprawl are more exposed to this risk due to the 'Urban Heat Island' (UHI) effect. High concentrations of buildings cause the generation and absorption of heat, making the urban center as much as three -- five degrees Celsius warmer than surrounding areas. This places added strain on the temperature regulating components of the body, principal of which are vasculature tone and body fluid content, influencing blood pressure control, cardiac output through fluid redistribution and kidney function. Prolonged exposure can cause heat cramps and exhaustion leading to heat stroke and death; exacerbating pre-existing chronic conditions such as various cerebral and cardiovascular diseases, particularly in the elderly and frail. In the absence of any adaptation of the population, modeling done by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine has reported that heat-related deaths would be expected to rise by around 257 percent by the 2050s from its current annual baseline in the UK as a surrogate for the developed world. An international study conducted in China, meanwhile, looked at population risk to CVD with changing temperature rather than just its rise. The study found those to be at the greatest risk were individuals who were subjected to fluctuating temperatures (both a rise and fall in ambient temperature), with cold effects lasting longer than hot effects. 2. Air Pollutants and Respiratory Disorders With a rise in air allergens, decrease in air quality and rising ozone levels, respiratory conditions -- which already affect 334 million people with asthma globallyand 210 million people with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) -- will be exacerbated. Advertisement Climate change has the potential to impact airway diseases by increasing ground level ozone and fine particle concentrations in the air. Air pollution is able to overcome the mucosal barrier in the lungs by inducing airway inflammation, resulting in allergen-induced respiratory responses. In addition, air pollutants fewer than 2.5 micrometers in diameter (PM2.5) and ozone may alter the allergenicity of aeroallergens like pollen, thereby promoting further airway sensitization. View a larger version of this graphic here. Graphic from the State of World Allergy Report 2008. These microscopic droplets lodge deep into lung tissue causing serious health problems. Inhaling them triggers a variety of reactions including chest pain, coughing, throat irritation, and congestion; and worsens allergies, bronchitis and emphysema, by reducing lung function and inflaming the linings of the lungs -- repeated exposure of which can permanently scar lung tissue. A study by the European Respiratory Society estimated that there would be 1,500 more annual ozone associated deaths by the year 2020 in the UK alone. 3. Vectorborne and Zoonotic Diseases (VBZD) VBZDs are infectious diseases, the transmission of which involves either animal hosts or vectors serving as zoonotic reservoirs for human pathogens or as means in which they move between species. We are seeing an increasing emergence in zoonotic disease outbreaks with the majority of recent major human infectious disease outbreaks worldwide such as SARS, MERS and HIV/AIDS, originating in animals. The link between malaria and extreme climatic events has long been studied. In India, excessive monsoon rainfall and high humidity has been identified to enhance mosquito breeding and survival. Recent analyses have also shown that the malaria epidemic risk increases five-fold in the year immediately after an El Nino event. The use of a meteorological model and biological data regarding the brown dog tick, Rhipicephalus sanguineus, clearly indicates the climatic zone favorable for this tick species reproduction has expanded by 669 percent since the 1960s in Europe alone. By observing the activity of such tick vectors, over relatively short periods of time, provides evidence towards this growing problem. The same being true of other vectors like sandflies, mosquitoes, fleas, larvae, worms, insects, snails or other cold-blooded animals. Advertisement 4. Malnutrition Through Food and Water According to the United Nations Development Programme, some 3.7 billion people worldwide are currently malnourished. Extreme weather events and changes in temperature and precipitation patterns will directly damage or destroy crops and other food supplies, as well as interrupt transportation chains. Indirectly, there is potential for harm from malnutrition resulting from damage to agricultural crops and related trade, economic, and social instability; diversion of staple crops for use in biofuels, impaired ability to grow crops due to changing environmental conditions and water availability; and the reduced availability and nutritional quality of protein from fisheries, aquaculture, and other marine-based foods. Food and water can also be a source of exposure to illnesses, resulting from the ingestion of microbes, chemical residues (such as pesticides, biotoxins) or other toxic substances. With a rise in the number of natural disasters and changing weather patterns, there will be a reduction in the supply of fresh drinking water. The WHO already estimates there are approximately 760,000 child deaths annually due to diarrheal diseases, and this huge number will only be compounded by the rise in floods, droughts and famines that climate change will bring. The people of the world cheered their own fate and that of future generations this December in Paris, as 157 world leaders along with 40,000 delegates from 196 countries, came together to craft a legally binding climate accord, which could once and for all address the impact of climate change on our planet. Advertisement If we can work together to achieve these goals, then surely our human spirit of cooperation and excellence will allow us to create a remedial response to the damage of the last few centuries. To turn the clock back on our current unsustainable way of life and create a world which we are not dependent on oil and natural gas and one where we live within our means to create a lasting legacy for mankind which we can be proud of. This would be a truly fitting outcome for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Of course, it's not just debates where the Republican candidates spew their xenophobia. Their anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim rhetoric and policies are flooding the airwaves. The ad Donald Trump released recently is focused on banning Muslims from entering the U.S. and paints immigrants as a danger to national security. Trump's fellow Republican contenders have been mirroring his language. As Marco Rubio campaigns throughout the country, he's repeating the talking point he used in the last debate, that all immigrants and refugees pose a terrorist threat to America. He also has gone so far as to accuse President Obama, our Commander in Chief, of having "deliberately weakened America." Ted Cruz, for his part, is trying to out-Trump Trump. He too released a new TV ad that falsely portrays immigrants as taking jobs and draining the U.S. economy and he's proposing not only that the US should not accept any Syrian refugees, but that we should expel refugees who are already here. That's not the American way. As President Obama said at the State of the Union: "We need to reject any politics that targets people because of race or religion. This isn't a matter of political correctness. It's a matter of understanding what makes us strong." It's time for the Republican candidates to end their campaigns of hate. The bigoted rhetoric and policy positions we're hearing from these candidates go against core American values. They don't merit discussion at the kitchen table, and they certainly don't merit discussion at a debate for those aspiring to the nation's highest office. Sadly, I'm not holding my breath for Republicans to stop vilifying Muslims or immigrants. As the Republican presidential candidates continue their attacks, it's critical that ordinary Americans stand up for the values we know are right. The message we heard from President Obama during the State of the Union, his call to embrace diversity and our history as a nation that welcomes immigrants and refugees, is rooted in our country's deepest principles, and no matter what happens in the GOP primary, that's the message we need to carry forward. The border is a place characterized by intense contradictions. That's my conclusion after spending almost a week in southern Arizona as part of a faculty immersion seminar to learn about border issues. As an outsider--I'm a Puerto Rican living in the Midwest--I'm removed from the challenges that those living on the borderland face on a daily basis, no matter on which side of the wall they find themselves. I'm aware that my vision and understanding is limited, but during those few intense days of visiting migrant shelters, listening to religious and community leaders, lawyers, doctors, human rights activists, talking with recently deported migrants in Nogales, filling water stations in the desert, and attending an Operation Streamline court proceeding, I was constantly reminded of the need to share what we witnessed at the border. As Isabel Garcia from Derechos Humanos told our group: ""What you see along this border is the most important thing you can take back." What I witnessed, were the intense contradictions that arise from the constant struggle between life and death. The irony behind this U.S. road sign alerting travelers of the open "border crossing" ahead is difficult to ignore. The border isn't "open" to all--only to those with papers--although historically, and until recently, the U.S.-Mexico border allowed for a much freer transit of people from one side to the other. NAFTA (1994) changed all that by promoting the free flow of goods while stopping the flow of people. Advertisement Across the border, on the Nogales, Mexico side, near the Kino Border Initiative shelter. The "zona ganadera" (cattle zone) sign hides two poignant ironies: 1) cattle is free to cross the border while human beings are not (even if their families are on the U.S. side); 2) many of those deported are forced to cross back into Mexico through a cage-like corridor resembling a cattle chute. The dehumanization of the migrant finds the perfect metaphor in this sign. Mural and cross at the Kino Border Initiative shelter in Nogales, which helps recently deported migrants by offering meals, clothes, first aid, free phone calls to family in the home country, check cashing, as well as advice at this crucial stage of the journey, when they are at risk of violence at the hands of drug cartels and law enforcement. Faith in God's mercy gives them hope to find their families or escape death. Street art commemorating the life of Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, a sixteen year-old Mexican minor shot and killed by the U.S. Border Patrol in 2012 on the Mexican side of Nogales. The case has become emblematic of the injustices and violence faced by people of color at the hands of US Border Patrol. Across the way, street artists proclaim the triumph of life and liberty through the symbolic transformation of a piece of paper into a white dove flying into the horizon. Underneath the wall-fence their message reads: "Somos tan libres como el papel" (We are as free as paper). Advertisement A bus full of migrants approaches the Federal courthouse, where they are about to become victims of Operation Streamline. This little known program was designed to prosecute undocumented migrants in federal court, usually about 70 people in under two hours. Witnessing these weak, traumatized, and abused migrants--handcuffed and shackled like dangerous criminals--being sentenced to anywhere between 30-180 days, and knowing that they'll be subsequently deported with a federal criminal record that will make it impossible to return to the U.S. (even if they have family here), felt like the death of our justice system. Even in the face of such travesty, we heard one of the prisoners shout "Dios bendiga a America" (God bless America). Humane Borders vandalized water station in the desert. Water is life, and migrants and stranded travelers have survived thanks to these stations. Finding the barrel several yards down the hill, water spilling, and the flag down, instantly translated into a symbol of hatred. Why would anyone damage any water source, knowing very well that it can mean the difference between life and death for another human being? Team effort raising the Humane Borders blue flag, a beacon of hope for migrants dying from dehydration while crossing the desert. Humane Borders water barrel back on its stand. The Virgen de Guadalupe sticker a reminder of the deep faith that guides migrants through one of the most unforgivable landscapes of this country. Discarded water jug with piece of clothing tied to it found about a hundred yards from the vandalized water station. These black jugs are sold in Mexico and migrants often travel with them in order to carry water without the risk of being detected due to the water reflection. Every discarded bottle and every piece of clothing found across the desert tells a story; only we don't know if it's one of death or survival. Advertisement The Sonoran desert has become the epitome of the contradictions that plague our broken immigration system. Life and death; good and evil; hope and resignation; freedom and captivity, all coexist--and are in constant struggle--in the borderlands. The militarization of the border has had an "intended" consequence: it has funneled migrant traffic through the most dangerous and deadly areas of the Arizona desert. We have a serious humanitarian crisis in our hands, and we are responsible for it. Decades and thousands of deaths haven't been enough to convince our government and society that "Prevention Through Deterrence" is not a humane immigration policy. As Reverend John Fife, founder of the Samaritans, told us, "They never took into consideration the desperation of poverty." Mark R. Tercek is the president and CEO of the Nature Conservancy and author of Nature's Fortune. Follow Mark on Twitter @MarkTercek. Many communities around the world are running out of water. When demand outpaces supply, communities often turn to difficult and costly solutions, such as building reservoirs, importing water or constructing desalination plants. But this week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, I'm pushing global leaders to consider a different solution--one that could significantly accelerate progress on addressing the root cause of water scarcity around the world. Advertisement Let's tap economic forces--the power of the market--to be smarter about how we use the water we already have. By viewing water as a tradable asset, we can create water markets that encourage water users--such as cities, farms and companies--to be more efficient. The water saved can then be allocated for other uses. With half the world's cities and three-fourths of irrigated farms experiencing regular water shortages, it's critical that we capitalize on the value created from conserving water. My organization, the Nature Conservancy, is harnessing private capital through impact investing to do just that. Advertisement Impact investing--which allows investors to align their portfolios with their values by investing in initiatives that generate financial, societal and environmental outcomes--is emerging as a fresh source of funding for conservation projects. With our impact investing unit, NatureVest, our global water experts and Australia team have created the world's first community water trust in Australia's Murray-Darling Basin. Through that program, we're working to raise $69 million of investor capital to help balance water use in the basin so there's enough for farmers, communities and nature. Here's how it works: A community water trust acquires a portfolio of water rights and then collaborates with farmers, who buy and sell water allowances through a water rights trading system. Through the trust, scientists help farmers execute water-saving strategies, and farmers who conserve water can sell their remaining rights back to the trust. The trust, in partnership with local conservation organizations, then uses some of that saved water to restore degraded freshwater ecosystems. It leases back the remainder to water users, ensuring Murray-Darling farmers get the water they need while at the same time generating financial returns for investors. In the Murray-Darling Basin, we--along with local nonprofit Murray Darling Wetlands Working Group--plan to use water saved through the trust to restore more than 40,000 acres of wetlands during the next decade. Advertisement Not only will this wetland restoration benefit farmers and wildlife--such as frogs, fish, turtles and waterfowl--but it also will help preserve Aboriginal cultural and spiritual sites, many of which are located in the wetland areas. This impact investment-driven solution to water shortages uses market-based strategies to encourage and reward smart water use. It generates environmental, financial and social benefits at a greater scale than philanthropy-funded efforts can while also supporting farmers and communities who rely on freshwater. Impact investing can help conservation organizations scale up solutions to a variety of other problems, as well. For instance, NatureVest leverages private capital to accelerate sustainable grazing practices in Africa, prevent urban stormwater runoff in the U.S. and help island nations restructure debt in ways that help them adapt to climate change. Embracing innovative solutions like these--and finding new sources of funding, such as impact capital--will be critical as global leaders leave Davos, ready to meet the world's challenges head on. CARROLL, IA - Presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders promised to prioritize education and employment over incarceration. "I believe we should be investing in education and jobs, not just more jails and incarceration," Sanders (D-Vt) said to the public in a town hall meeting in this west central Iowa city 90 miles northwest of Des Moines. Josh Esdohr , a high school senior who attended the event with his government class expressed his concern about issues most important to him. Advertisement "I'm just worried about getting to college and getting through college," Esdohr said. "Paying off college tuition and just trying to find a job and hold it down and find a way to keep yourself fed, keep a roof over your head and feed a family is what it comes to." Sanders expressed at this county meeting that youth unemployment is a major issue in America today. He stated that 33 percent of Caucasian high school graduates are either unemployed or underemployed - Latinos 36 percent and African-American 51 percent. He attributed these high levels of youth unemployment to a corrupt criminal justice system in America. "If anyone thinks there's not a correlation between youth unemployment and the fact that we have more people in jail today than any other country on earth, I think you're wrong," Sanders said. Advertisement The 2010 US Census announced 110 prisons have been opened or renovated between 2000 and 2010. The National Center for Education Statistics says in the same time period 16,941 schools have been closed nationwide. According to Sanders, the US criminal justice system is corrupt and is expanding because it targets the wrong people. He blamed the greed of major financial institutions as the cause for a major economic downturn. "Millions of people lost their jobs, their homes, their life savings because of the greed and illegal behavior of these people," Sanders said, "And how many of them have been prosecuted? How many of them will have a criminal record? The answer is zero." Sanders was referring to the settlement between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Goldman, Sachs & Co. where the business was forced to pay a $550 million fine and reform its business practices, which included misleading investors about a subprime mortgage process just before the housing market collapsed. This kind of behavior is exactly what Sanders vows to stop on Wall Street and why he refuses to take any money from large corporations. In fact, the average campaign donation for Sanders is a whopping $27. Advertisement Davos Diary: Wednesday 20 January Today at Davos, we will talk about security. We are in a world that is increasingly prey to violent extremism : the many terrorist attacks witnessed in 2015 and, unfortunately, at the beginning of this year already demonstrate it. Violent extremism seriously undermines the principles and purposes of the United Nations. It threatens peace and security, the exercise of human rights and the achievement of sustainable development. No country nor region is safe from its effects. All people want peace, since the dawn of time. But what is peace exactly? Peace is something very personal, which is not easy to define. For some, peace is freedom of movement to attend sport and cultural events without fear. For others, it is access to quality education, decent work and a fair judicial system. For me, it is clear that peace is much more than the absence of war. Peace is something important for us all here in Switzerland, and in particular within International Geneva. It is at the heart of the mandate of the United Nations, which works every day at the service of peace, for the promotion of dialogue, understanding and cooperation between religions and cultures. The UN Secretary-General has just presented his plan of action to prevent violent extremism, that I strongly support. It calls for urgent action for the establishment of a new global partnership to cope with this threat, for a focus on prevention, for an "all of Government" approach and for the engagement of all stakeholders in society, including women, youth, media, private sector and religious leaders. Advertisement And just today in Davos, the Grand Mufti of Egypt, Dr. Alam Shawky, will announce his initiative against violent extremism and urge all Muslim countries to act quickly. There is no better opportunity than Davos in the presence of more than 2500 change-makers from academia, business, and the public sector, to call for a deepening of the understanding of Islam -- of the authentic Islam, the one that is against extremism in all its forms. It is within the framework of the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that we will strive to work together. We must aim to promote a culture of peace based on the respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms in order to eliminate conditions conducive to the spread of terrorism. Single payer healthcare proposals, similar to the one Democratic Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders has created as part of his campaign platform has seen stark opposition lately from other Democrats. The opposing arguments for single payer healthcare are predicated on political expediency or tied to outside interests rather than factual information debunking the pros of a single payer healthcare system. For instance, former DNC Chair Howard Dean recently criticized single payer healthcare on MSNBC, claiming it would "undo people's healthcare," resulting in chaos. In 2009, Howard Dean explained on Democracy Now the benefits of a single payer healthcare system. Dean's flip-flop can likely be attributed to his current position as a lobbyist for Denton Public Policy and Regulation, which regularly lobbies for Pharmaceutical companies and corporate healthcare. Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton has also vocalized her opposition to a single payer healthcare system as a means to attempt to highlight differences between herself and the candidate. At an event in Iowa she told her supporters Sanders' plan is a "risky deal." Her daughter, Chelsea Clinton, echoed Hillary Clinton's sentiments while campaigning in New Hampshire. It is of no surprise Hillary Clinton is opposed to a single payer healthcare system which would get rid of private health insurance companies and undermine the ability for pharmaceutical companies to price gouge as during 2013-2015, Hillary Clinton received $2.8 million in speaker fees from the health industry. In 2008, when Barrack Obama criticized Hillary Clinton's healthcare proposals, she held a press conference explaining why Democrats should never attack each other over universal healthcare. Advertisement Although the Democratic opponents to single payer healthcare proposals are correct to say it would dismantle Obamacare, their arguments are misleading, especially in regards to the implications of doing so. The affordable healthcare act fails to ensure around 30 million Americans, nearly ten percent of the population, and so many concessions were made from the initial universal healthcare package, what was passed is far from what the social safety net of healthcare for all is supposed to be. A single payer healthcare system would correct the shortcomings of Obamacare, and save Americans billions of dollars. Instead of Americans soliciting healthcare from private insurers, everyone would have access to healthcare as right of American citizenship, similar to citizens of every other advanced capitalist nations. The first thing to keep in mind, and virtually everyone agrees about this, is that single payer healthcare would save a lot of money and resources that currently goes into administering the private health insurance system. Most of the time people view saving money and saving resources as a good thing, but if you own an insurance company or if you own a pharmaceutical company where you are charging monopolistic prices for things, saving money means lowering your income,' said Gerald Friedman, Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Professor Friedman estimates a single payer healthcare system would save $600 billion in its first year alone. "I go out and people like me go around and say 'look at all the money we saved.' But, if you want to understand the opposition to single payer healthcare, you have to understand that the money saved is $600 billion of income going to people, a lot of it is going to very rich people with a lot of friends and that is why a lot of misinformation goes out; because people have a lot of interest and money riding on preventing single payer healthcare from becoming a reality. Professor Friedman cited England as an example of a capitalist, industrialized nation with a single payer healthcare system, but notes that system was enacted shortly after World War II before large pharmaceutical companies and large private health insurers were around to oppose such a system from being created. There are literally trillions of dollars of income flowing through the current healthcare system and there are people looking to preserve it. No serious person would say a single payer system would be more expensive. added Professor Friedman, who estimates the costs of insuring the uninsured would be around $300 billion, so single payer healthcare would still save a lot of money, while simultaneously eliminating co-pays and deductibles. There would still be private doctors, private clinics, and private pharmaceutical companies, but private health insurers would be eliminated in exchange for one run by the government, hence the term, single payer. Advertisement A recent New York Times Magazine investigation revealed the history of deception by the chemical giant DuPont around its toxic Teflon chemical PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid, also called C8). The story focuses on Rob Bilott, the heroic lawyer who had previously worked for chemical companies only to become the whistleblower who took on DuPont for its lengthy history of pollution. The story begins at a West Virginia farm where DuPont had been dumping PFOA for years. In the fall of 2000, after DuPont refused to hand over its records, Bilott asked the court to order the company to do so. When he ultimately received the documents, Bilott found a smoking gun: DuPont's internal documents showed that the company had been covering up its knowledge of the health risks from PFOAs for nearly 40 years. Over decades, DuPont continued to market dangerous products made with PFOA -- and continued to dump PFOA-laden waste, not only on the farm but also in areas that ultimately poisoned the drinking water for 70,000 people. Products with PFOAs were worth $1 billion in annual profits to DuPont, until the company finally agreed to stop producing the chemical in 2013. Today, DuPont has spun off its chemical business, which now operates as a "new" independent company called Chemours. Advertisement As a New York Times editorial noted, Congress is currently considering proposals to change the federal government's failure to regulate harmful chemicals. The Times called on Congress to adopt "the strongest possible reform." But reining in the egregious behavior of chemical companies that have more than a century of experience in gaming the system to their advantage will not be easy. Congress has an opportunity to rein in corporate abuses with its new draft chemical safety bills (having moved through both chambers), but this can only happen if states retain the power to protect citizens. States have historically been ahead of the federal government when it comes to protecting Americans from harmful chemicals. For example, in 1986, California voters overwhelmingly approved the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, commonly known as Prop 65. This law has created landmark public health gains that have created national changes for chemical safety. Reading the Times story on DuPont may be shocking to those who are not familiar with the chemical industry's history. But sadly, the DuPont case around PFOA is simply the latest repetition of the industry's tried-and-true tactics. Advertisement Take the case of the chemical company Ciba, a history documented in the recent Pulitzer Prize winning book Toms River (you can hear our talk with author Dan Fagin on the CEH podcast). After its dye factory polluted the drinking water in the New Jersey town of Toms River for decades, the company's cover-up came to light when lawsuits uncovered internal documents showing that Ciba (later Ciba-Geigy) had long known about the potential health risks from its polluting operations, but chose to put its profits above public health. Ciba ultimately merged with Sandoz to form a "new" company, Novartis, which ultimately spun off its chemicals division into the "new" company Syngenta. Or take a look at the chemical company Monsanto and its factory in the town of Anniston, Alabama. Monsanto produced PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) there for decades, routinely discharging PCB-laden toxic waste into a local creek and dumping millions of pounds of PCBs into open-pit landfills. As a Washington Post investigation notes, "...[T]housands of pages of Monsanto documents -- many emblazoned with warnings such as "CONFIDENTIAL: Read and Destroy" -- show that for decades, the corporate giant concealed what it did and what it knew" about the health risks from PCBs. Monsanto was even more blunt than other companies about putting profits ahead of human health: the company feared that revealing what it knew about the health threats from PCBs would be costly, with one internal company document noting that "We can't afford to lose one dollar of business." Can you guess what happened with Monsanto's chemical business? That's right, a spin off was created, founding the "new" chemical company Solutia. Chemicals like PFOA, dye chemicals and PCBs are, as the Times story noted, just a few of the "more than 60,000 synthetic chemicals that companies produced and released into the world without regulatory oversight." You probably wouldn't buy a car if you found out the automaker never conducted government-required crash tests, but every day we all use products made with chemicals that have never been evaluated for their potential to harm our or our children's health. One of my favorite moments leading up to this season's fashion week was a commercial advertising shoot for Mongolian cashmere brand Emzeg Steppe. Laura Lanteri New York (formerly of Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Oscar de la Renta), provided the creative direction for Emzeg Steppe's new advertising campaign shot by my studio, Mike Mellia Photography. The collection features a selection of Mongolian cashmere pieces where downtown New York meets Parisian cool. The Emzeg Steppe collection presented here is intriguing due to the fact that it's comprised of oversized, textured, highly stylized and overly indulgent cashmere pieces that yet, at the same time, have an attitude of effortless cool. Emzeg steppe is like the younger rebellious postmodernist brother of Loro Piana. Like Loro Piana, Emzeg Steppe also realizes that the world's warmest and most luxurious cashmere comes from Mongolia. Advertisement What makes this work so interesting is that the designer and owner of the brand discussed his work only in abstract terms with the creative director and stylist Laura Lanteri weeks before the shoot, and then allowed the direction of the campaign to form amongst the creative team of the stylist, photographer, makeup artist, set designer, etc. This is intriguing because it takes a great amount of creative vision and confidence to realize that trusting other creative people is ultimately what will bring your brand to the next level. A designer would usually work obsessively on his collection over many months, spending endless days and nights pouring over every detail of perfection. One could make the argument that by the time the collection is completed, there are diminishing returns for the designer. In some ways, when it then comes to styling, branding, art direction, or photography, the designer would not want to feel "too close" to the collection to allow the visual media to be its best. This is the reason why all successful large fashion corporations have separate divisions for advertising, product strategy, and creative design- it's almost impossible for one person to be the top of all of these seemingly unrelated fields. The creative direction for these visuals sought to combine the modern style of downtown New York with the indifferent je ne sais quoi of Parisian teenagers. Classical cable-knit sweaters were juxtaposed against white minimalist sneakers and postmodern leather-pleated skirts. This unexpected conflict in the styling along with the photographic moodiness of the industrial atmosphere is what drove the branding of this collection. Advertisement The campaign was shot in studio in New York City. Given the large amount of lighting equipment, computers, set design, and personnel required to realize all of these elements, it would be considered a medium-sized production. Ironically, this large amount of artificial lighting and equipment was necessary to achieve the illusion of consistent natural light indoors. The photographic style, lighting, and retouching were done in a very natural style, with the purpose of bringing out the extravagant textures of the cashmere pieces. The compositions of the images were angular, modern, and geometric, which provided great tension against the languid emotions and the almost baroque extravagance of the collection. I liked the results of this work because several creative minds took risks and came together to produce something greater than would have been possible independently. Rene Magritte, Les merveilles de la nature (The Wonders of Nature), 1953. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, gift of Joseph and Jory Shapiro. 2015 C. Herscovici/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Nathan Keay. MCA Chicago. In the art world over the past decade or so, Surrealism has somewhat fallen out of favor. Its rather maligned reputation may be the result of its popular resurrection in lowbrow art, which has become saturated with less talented imitators in the last few years. Or perhaps Surrealism's insistence on the psychological, symbolic, personal and emotional is simply off trend at the moment, as the art world favors works that are more detached, or more formal, or more political, or more process-oriented. Even the word "surreal," likely due to its widespread adoption in popular parlance, is used with a measure of hesitance lately when describing contemporary art. Gladys Nilsson, Giant Byrd, 1971. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, gift of Herbert Gibbs. Photo: Nathan Keay, MCA Chicago. Advertisement At the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, however, curator Lynne Warren shows a more expansive vision of Surrealism, surpassing tidy preconceptions and dismissive attitudes. From the museum collection, Surrealism: The Conjured Life assembles a remarkably diverse and striking display of works, from the movement's origins in the 1930s to present day, demonstrating its deep inter-generational influence and continued relevance. Here, Surrealism's tenets are shown to be deeply rooted in experimentation -- with imagery and juxtaposition, of course, but also with unusual materials and media. In this fascinating exhibition, Warren finds undercurrents of the surreal coursing through artworks one would not usually associate with Surrealism, deftly expanding the definition whilst introducing a wide range of works, in over 100 paintings, sculptures, photographs, drawings and installations. Installation view, Surrealism: The Conjured Life, MCA Chicago. Nov 21, 2015 -- Jun 5, 2016. Photo: Nathan Keay, MCA Chicago. This is a massive show, compacted into a modest space in the museum. Yet the individual works' considerable punch is not lessened by a sense of overcrowding -- on the contrary, the works seem to draw strength from the close proximity to their neighbors. One can almost feel a convivial chatter rise up between the works as they dialogue between each other. This arrangement demonstrates that the power of Surrealism derives from the imagery contained within each work, and not necessarily from its context or the space around it. (Contrast this with the Kathryn Andrews exhibition, Run For President, across the hall, where each work demands a great amount of space and/or scale for contemplation.) Advertisement Paul Delvaux, Penelope, 1945. Collection of Museum Contemporary Art Chicago, gift of Joseph and Jory Shapiro, 1998.36. 2015 Foundation Paul Delvaux, Sint-Idesbald - ARS/SABAM Belgium. Photo MCA Chicago. Surrealism: The Conjured Life centers on a spiral-shaped gallery in the center of the room, containing historical examples of Surrealism's past, from Rene Magritte to Leonora Carrington. The gallery's rich purple walls accent the robes of the mystically regal figure in Paul Delvaux's 1945 painting Penelope, as well as the gold, rosy pink and vivid tangerine of an evocative Yves Tanguy abstraction. As the spiral continues, more contemporary works by international artists engage in a visual dialogue with their historical precedents: a large-scale Cindy Sherman and a series of Francesca Woodman photographs speak across the aisle to an eccentric Claude Cahun portrait; a menacingly large, devilish face peers out of a Mark Grotjahn painting, recalling the puppet-like impasto features of Enrico Baj's 1961 Angry General with Decorations, hung just around the spiraling corridor. Installation view, Surrealism: The Conjured Life, MCA Chicago. Nov 21, 2015 -- Jun 5, 2016. Photo: Nathan Keay, MCA Chicago. Outside the spiral, the gallery explodes with strange, eye-catching and unfamiliar works. These range from the grotesque and comical -- Joseph Seigenthaler's life-size, hyperrealistic ceramic figures, The Couple (1993), and an inscrutable, nightmarish Frankenstein's monster scene by Donald Roller Wilson teeter on the edge of good taste -- to the light and fanciful. A long, two-sided illustration by Chicago's own outsider marvel, Henry Darger, enchants with its vivid, dreamlike scenes of his Vivian Girls. Overhead, on the other side of the gallery, an ethereally beautiful and simple construction by Gabriel Orozco, made of delicate feathers, like leaves attached to tree twigs and hung from the ceiling, flutters tantalizingly in the soft currents of air in the gallery. Advertisement Ed Paschke, Sunburn, 1970. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, gift of Muriel and Albert Newman in honor of Dennis Adrian. Photo: Nathan Keay. MCA Chicago. The gallery's perimeter walls are devoted to Chicago artists -- a dazzling and diverse array from the museum's holdings. The Chicago Imagists owed a great debt to Surrealism, and they are well represented here: in the wild colors and cartoonish figures of Ed Paschke and Jim Nutt; the biomorphic abstractions of Gladys Nilsson and Barbara Rossi; the grotesquerie of Don Baum and Leon Golub; the anthropomorphism of H.C. Westermann. Surrealist tendencies run deep in Chicago, however, beyond the work of the Imagists alone. One of the most impressive works here is an installation by Mexican-born, Chicago-based artist Marcos Raya, centered on a painting of the artist, dark sunglasses on, lying on a hospital bed, with an amorphous, organic form lying at his feet, an impassive doctor by his side looking directly at the viewer, and other unsettling elements, some of which -- an armless, masked mannequin, some surgical instruments -- appear in an arrangement of physical objects around or in front of the canvas. Marcos Raya, Night Nurse, 1993/1996. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Restricted gift of Roy and Mary Cullen. Photo: James Isberner. MCA Chicago. One of the exhibition's greatest strengths is in the wealth of women artists included. Some of the strongest paintings in the classical Surrealist section come courtesy of Leonora Carrington (her bizarre bird-human hybrid is marvelously strange) and Dorothea Tanning (this reclining nude with abstract forms manifesting over her eyes is surely one of the most evocative representations of the dream state). Sleek works by Chicago Imagists Christina Ramberg and Barbara Rossi look effortlessly timeless here. Lee Bontecou's suspended sculpture appears like the dream of a future space vessel sailing through the cosmos. And a grouping of small paintings, produced in the 1940s and 50s, in one corner of the gallery are revealed to be the strange, spare, psychological visions of Gertrude Abercrombie, an autodidact known in Chicago as "the other Gertrude" for her legendary salon parties filled with Chicago artists and jazz musicians. Advertisement Christina Ramberg, Muscular Alternative, 1979. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Bequest of Sandra Jorgensen, Photo: Nathan Keay. MCA Chicago. Surrealism: The Conjured Life is a wild ride. While the exhibition itself spins and spirals, each individual work provides a proverbial "rabbit hole" to lose oneself in. This thoughtfully curated exhibition offers a dynamic viewing experience, while amply demonstrating the strength and diversity of the museum's collection, and celebrating the richness of Chicago's local art history. Exhibitions like this, which reappraise an entire genre of art with a fresh, forward-looking view, provide rich opportunities to view older works with new eyes and open new avenues of interpretation into newer ones. Installation view, Surrealism: The Conjured Life, MCA Chicago. Nov 21, 2015--Jun 5, 2016. Photo: Nathan Keay, MCA Chicago. --Natalie Hegert There is something so wonderful about the indomitable and ever-evolving nature of the human spirit. Down through the generations, we recall and retell the inspiring stories of those who came before us pioneering a pathway for progress. Memorable historical figures spring to mind such as Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa and Rosa Parks. In our personal lives we are deeply inspired by our immigrant ancestors, our tireless teachers and role models, and by the many, unsung community heroes we watched who dedicated their lives to ensuring the rights of others. The brave women and men of these stories share three powerful traits that can provide us with a healing template for continuing our own learning, growth, and self-care. Because of their courage, curiosity and commitment, they were able to keep forging ahead in spite of the odds. Courage The root of the word courage is cor, the Latin word for heart. Although in modern times courage is synonymous with being heroic or brave, the original use of the word meant attending to one's innermost feelings. In his book, Finding Inner Courage, Mark Nepo similarly defines courage as "standing by one's core." He writes, "This is a striking concept that reinforces the belief found in almost all traditions that living from the Center is what enables us to face whatever life has to offer." Advertisement The courage to meet and greet each new day is seldom bombastic and brimming with confidence and bravado. More often than not, courage is that still, small voice at our core that says, "Yes, I am willing to keep trying. Although I am afraid, I am by no means finished. I will not quit. I have come too far to turn back. I will let go of the familiar in order to brave the unknown." This impulse to rise up and keep going under difficult conditions is what Hemingway meant when he coined the phrase "grace under pressure." It takes courage to confront life-long patterns that continue to drain us and diminish our well-being. It's courage that compels us to move on from the past instead of hiding there in the familiar but self-destructive comforts of the status quo. Courage isn't something we are born with. It's something we choose to practice. Twenty six-year-old Lizzie Velasquez has learned how to put feet to courage. She has a rare medical condition that prevents her from gaining weight. She has never weighed more than 64 pounds. It also causes early aging and has left her blind in one eye. When she was in high school, she discovered an 8-second video of herself on YouTube that dubbed her the "World's Ugliest Woman." Shockingly, it had already garnered 4 million views. She was devastated. The cruel comments were unbearable. However, with the love and support of her family, she worked on developing the courage to channel the bullying and rejection she faced into the motivation and determination needed to rise above it. And rise she did. Advertisement Her 2013 TEDx talk in Austin Texas, titled "How Do You Define Yourself?" went viral. Her autobiographical presentation is charming, funny, touching and thought-provoking. Above all else, it is a call to action. She concluded her talk with these courageous and inspiring words: "My life is in my hands. I can make it good or bad. It's up to me. The same is true for you. Just remember ... brave starts here." Lizzie has already realized several of her dreams. She graduated from college, has written three books and is now a sought after motivational speaker. Her TED video has been viewed over 9 million times. Curiosity Courage opens the door and invites curiosity. When we have the courage to ask, "What if..." our curiosity becomes ignited. Exploring this curiosity can prove to be so stimulating and encouraging that it contributes to effectively softening our fears of uncertainty and the discomfort of facing the unknown. In a study in the journal Neuron researchers from UC Davis Center for Neuroscience found that the brain's chemistry changes when we become curious. Because of these changes we are able to learn more, as well as retain and utilize information more effectively. Giving ourselves permission to honor and explore our questions is the key to unlocking the learning, creativity, and healing that leads to growth. In her book, Rising Strong, Brene Brown asks, "How do we come to aha moments if we're not willing to explore and ask questions? New information won't transform our thinking, much less our lives, if it simply lands at our feet. For experiences and information to be integrated into our lives as true awareness, they have to be received with open hands, inquisitive minds and wondering hearts." Advertisement In the past, research has focused predominantly on intelligence and effort as the core determinants of learning and development. New research is expanding on these traditional predictors by adding curiosity as a powerful contributor. In a study published in Psychological Science , researchers from the UK and Switzerland gathered data from over 200 studies with a total of 50,000 students. They found that curiosity has a large, positive effect on academic performance. When coupled with a high level of conscientiousness (willingness to work hard), curiosity had as big an effect on performance as intelligence, resulting in engaged, independent learners. Exploring and fostering our curiosity regarding our lifestyle choices will invite us to step outside of our comfort zone to try something new. This could include joining a gym, signing up for a restorative yoga class, rekindling a past relationship or inviting a new friend to lunch. To be curious is to be open to seeing the world with new eyes, new hope, and new possibilities. Commitment When it comes to healing, there is no neutral place in our experience. We are either integrating healthful elements necessary for growth, or we are, by our inaction or unhealthy choices, contributing to the disintegration of our well-being. In addition to our ongoing practice of courage and curiosity, what keeps us centered in our responsibility for our personal evolution is our commitment to stay the course, no matter what. This commitment is not a cliched hard line of steely fortitude. Rather, it involves a steady, reliable effort on our part to practice consistent care for our body, mind, and spirit. This commitment is based in a tender yet determined promise to make choices every day that create more love and connection in every aspect of our being. In her book, Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories That Heal, Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen tells a moving story that illustrates not only the power but also the beauty of personal commitment. One of her patients was a young man who was separated from his ski party and spent three days in freezing temperatures but somehow had miraculously survived. Because of frostbite and progressing gangrene surgeons wanted to amputate his foot. The young man refused and became sicker and sicker. Overwhelmed by the possibility of losing him, his desperate fiance took off her engagement ring and thrust it onto the swollen toe of his blackened foot and cried, "I hate this damned foot. If you want this foot so much why you don't marry it? You're going to have to choose, you can't have us both." The young man opted for surgery on the following day. On a visit with him as he was recovering, Dr. Remen asked him what had changed his mind. He answered that seeing that ring on his foot had shocked him. He realized that he had been more committed to keeping his foot than he was committed to saving his life and their life together. He was powerfully reminded that what had in fact enabled him to survive those three desperate days in the life-threatening cold was the commitment he had made to his fiance' and the promise of their life together. Advertisement Dr. Remen writes, "Commitment, though it may sometimes feel constricting, will ultimately lead to greater degrees of freedom. Commitment is a conscious choice, to align ourselves with our most genuine values and our sense of purpose." This life can be so very tough when we find ourselves facing a health crisis, unemployment, divorce and other personally devastating challenges. But what knocks us to the ground is often the very thing that jumpstarts a renewed passion for living. Like the young man in Dr. Remen's story, it's the indomitable love within us and between us that summons our courage, spikes our curiosity and galvanizes our commitment to not just survive, but to thrive. Diarist Anais Nin said it this way: "And the day came when the risk of staying tight in a bud was greater than the risk it took to blossom." What acts of courage have inspired you toward healing and growth? Sometime during the next few months, the US Supreme Court will issue a decision that could profoundly weaken public employee unions across the country. By all accounts, the justices -- in the oral argument in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association -- signaled that they are poised to rule that workers' payment of dues to public sector unions must be voluntary. Specifically, the Court is expected to strike down, on First Amendment grounds, state laws requiring payment of dues (or an equivalent amount) by public sector workers who choose not to join the union. A majority of the Court appears persuaded that such arrangements -- requiring workers to support union advocacy of positions with which they may disagree -- constitute "coerced speech" in violation of the First Amendment. The Court's prior cases have permitted these arrangements as necessary to pay for collective bargaining activities, benefiting union members and nonmembers alike, subject to the proviso that nonmembers must be able to obtain a refund for overtly political activities, like lobbying and campaign contributions. Advertisement The public employees in the Friedrich case -- teachers in Los Angeles public schools -- argue that collective bargaining between unions and the government is no less political than campaign contributions or lobbying. When public sector unions bargain with a state or local government agency over pensions, health insurance, average class size, or the length of the school year -- these are all inherently political issues that directly implicate the interests of voters, not just "management" in the traditional sense. The Court appears ready to buy this argument. The practical implications of this change are huge. The political clout of unions in the public sector is a function of their ability, among politicians, to reward their friends and hurt their enemies. In a world in which dues payments collapse because workers can't be forced to pay them, public sector unions will find they have few friends, while their enemies can defy them with impunity. In states like California, where public employee unions have long held sway, both in the Legislature and in city councils and school boards across the state, the balance of political power will shift away from teachers, police and bureaucrats. From a political standpoint, I am generally in favor of this shift. Disproportionate power in the hands of a special interest group, like public sector unions, is fundamentally anti-democratic. And the acquisition of that power through campaign contributions, though legal, is inherently corrupting of the political process. Nonetheless, I think the constitutional arguments against mandatory union dues in the Friedrich case are misconceived. The essence of the coerced speech doctrine, established in Supreme Court decisions going back three decades, is that government may not force citizens to subsidize the advocacy of a policy or point of view with which they disagree. The idea is that forced support for, or association with, a point of view that you dislike is the flip side of censorship: the silencing of your expression of a point of view that the government dislikes. Advertisement But this First Amendment principle is subject to a big exception. If the objectionable speech that you are being forced to support or subsidize is government speech, then the First Amendment is not implicated, much less transgressed. This is the holding of Walker v. Texas, a 2015 Supreme Court case involving state screening of drivers' requests for specialty license plates. Texas' rejection of a license featuring a Confederate flag did not infringe free speech rights, the Court ruled, because specialty licenses are government speech. The government speech exception presumably also explains why the First Amendment doesn't stand in the way of the levying of taxes. Every April 15, Americans are required to pay income taxes, some portion of which subsidizes or supports policies (and their advocacy) with which many taxpayers disagree. Those taxpayers, however, may not invoke the First Amendment to withhold a portion of their taxes. The reason: the speech to which they object is government speech. The problem is that the distinction between government coercion of private speech (triggering First Amendment scrutiny) and government coercion of its own speech (exempt from First Amendment scrutiny) is not at all clear. Indeed, one could characterize the union speech in the Friedrich case is governmental because it is approved by government, a point that Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor tried to make during oral argument. Moreover, the characterization of speech as governmental hardly removes the constitutional sting of the coercion. On the contrary, being forced to subsidize an idea with which one disagrees is even more objectionable, from a First Amendment standpoint, if the idea is expressed in the government's words than in the words of a private speaker. A decision by the Court that diminishes the resources -- and therefore the influence -- of public sector unions would effect a major realignment of political power at the state and local level. While that would be a welcome development politically speaking, the Court appears ready to embrace a legal theory whose arbitrariness could undermine free speech rights in future cases. Advertisement Why Lola Ridge is ripe for rediscovery. By Kathleen Rooney The early-20th-century radical poet and feminist Lola Ridge, a popular poet during her lifetime but little known today, was a woman whose adventures might strain credulity in fiction. Born Rose Emily Ridge in Ireland, she came of age in the mining towns of New Zealand and trained as an artist in Australia, married at 21, left her husband several years later, and eventually headed to the United States, where she gave herself a new name, took a decade off her age, and reinvented herself as a poet. In Anything That Burns You, the first biography of Ridge, Terese Svoboda vividly renders Ridge's life and seeks to revive her legacy. The author of 14 previous books in a variety of genres, Svoboda moves beyond biography to create a textured portrait of a colorful milieu: the anarchist and intellectual left of the first half of the 20th century, full of hobo poets, high-dollar literary contests, painters and their models, and salons and soirees. Dedicated to the cause of social justice, Ridge crossed paths with a veritable who's who of political and artistic figures, including Emma Goldman, Mabel Dodge, Margaret Sanger, Eugene O'Neill, Hart Crane, and Marianne Moore. The Poetry Foundation spoke with Svoboda about why, 75 years after her death, Ridge and her work are due for a revival. The following exchange was edited and condensed. Advertisement Lola Ridge is something of a lost feminist icon, so how did you happen to "find" her, and how did you end up writing an entire biography? I was an avid fan of Robert Pinsky's Slate column, and in 2011, he wrote eloquently on Lola Ridge. I'm not exactly sure, however, what excited me so much about the piece--it doesn't include the poems I now consider her most riveting--except that her first book concerned the Lower East Side, where I have lived for the last 25 years. It was inexplicably love at first sight. I remember practically shaking when I left something inane in the comments section. I put all that newfound enthusiasm into a presentation at Poets House and a piece for American Poet about her. Tim Schaffner, my agent 30-odd years ago, read the article and contacted me. As the grandson of H.D., he knew the territory well. He sensed that between my enthusiasm and her amazing work, there could be a book, and as he is now a small publisher, he offered me a contract. Today, lawmakers in 16 states and the District of Columbia announced new legislative efforts designed to protect Americans from intrusion into their personal data by schools, employers or government. The proposed laws focus on a range of issues, such as email and other electronic communications, employees' use of social media, cell phone trackers and license plate readers. Should these measures pass, it would send a strong signal to other states and Congress that Americans remain concerned about protecting their privacy. Congress seems unwilling or unable to address these issues. The federal laws governing online privacy date to 1986, five years before the World Wide Web existed. Legislation to update the privacy laws for email and other electronic communications has won strong bipartisan support but has repeatedly stalled. Advertisement Although the Supreme Court has issued some important privacy-protective decisions in recent years, such as requiring a warrant to attach a GPS tracker or search a cell phone, it has yet to address the privacy of modern electronic communications like email or cell phone location information. It can take the Court decades to fully appreciate new technology. In the early 20th century, for example, the Court allowed police to listen in on phone calls without a warrant because they were only using "their sense of hearing," not intruding into a home. It was not until 1967 -- some 40 years later -- that the Court reversed itself and required a warrant for phone taps. We are in a similar situation today with more modern technology. Under current Supreme Court doctrine, formulated in 1979, there is no Fourth Amendment protection for private communications data, such as email, because users expose that information to "third-party" service providers like Gmail or Microsoft. And some courts have applied this logic to cell phone location data, which users must reveal to phone companies. Nonetheless, that doctrine is nearing its 40th birthday, and it is possible that the Court will have another "telephone moment" in the not-too-distant future. Until that time comes, states are taking it upon themselves to update privacy laws. Legislatures in Minnesota, New Mexico, New York and Virginia are pushing to require law enforcement to get a warrant to access private data like email, texts, and location information. California's Electronic Communications Privacy Act, signed in October, is considered a national model. Illinois and Michigan are introducing legislation that would require a warrant for police to use cell phone trackers -- often called "Stingrays" -- that mimic cell phone towers and trick nearby phones into revealing private data. Nebraska's measure would ban their use entirely. Michigan and Nebraska are also introducing bills to set more stringent rules for automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, which can sweep up location information on millions of innocent drivers and send it to a database for long-term retention and data-mining. Advertisement Having state legislatures set policy will ensure greater clarity for both residents and police. Courts often confront privacy claims in the context of criminal cases when defendants invoke the Fourth Amendment. But the current constitutional test -- whether there is a "reasonable expectation of privacy" in the data acquired by law enforcement -- can be vague and difficult to administer. Under this standard, for example, courts have concluded that individuals have little privacy in some of their most cherished activities, even placing inordinate weight on the availability of a specific technology or the wording of a cellphone agreement. Privacy-protective state law can forestall this process by requiring a warrant or other process up front, and by adding more muscle to the constitutional argument that drivers, cell phone owners, and others do not abandon their privacy the moment they step outside. Visit Radhanath Swami's website: radhanathswami.com for more. Connect with Radhanath Swami on Facebook and Twitter. With the bright lights from the London skyline seeping into the ninth floor room at EY, one of the "big four" international professional services firms, Radhanath Swami gave his keynote address at their Diwali cultural showcase, "Life Beyond Borders". As is tradition, he began with the chanting of ancient mantras, which created a mood of serenity. Regardless of background, when the Swami folds his hands, and bursts the pin-drop silence with his elongated "Aum," you sense that something special is about to happen. Yeohan Kim, an actor with MTV, thought the same: "I heard about the Swami and his incredible story through Russell Brand and he didn't disappoint. His words were refreshing and were like nuggets of wisdom." The event was the first of Radhanath Swami's two-week tour of the UK, after which he will fly to Italy to celebrate his 65th birthday. He has already circled the planet twice this year. The globetrotting Swami, with close friends and followers in almost every nation, is quickly becoming a reverential spiritual leader. Advertisement Martin Pollard, a postgraduate Journalism student, said "The moment he stepped onto the stage, his energy was infectious. He changes the room just by his presence and I was inspired how conscientiously he answered my questions." Martin added "I get quite nervous seeing men of the cloth and I'm definitely in the non-religious camp, but the principles he spoke of, I could relate to. He was just a really compassionate, wise man to be honest!" Although this event was commemorating Diwali, a traditionally Hindu celebration, over half of the audience were agnostic, reflecting the rising popularity of do-it-yourself spirituality, yoga and meditation in the West. "What I enjoyed about his talk were the personal anecdotes he gave. They were filled with universal truth that I could relate too," Sophie, who works with UNESCO, praised. Radhanath Swami focused on the truths of inner-transformation: "Diwali takes place on the new moon -- the darkest, most inauspicious night of the year -- but Diwali is the time of the brightest lights. That is transformation. Diwali is a time when we really focus on bringing light into our own hearts." He continued by shedding light on the ancient classic, the Ramayana, stressing how all citizens from that era were described to have lived with compassion. Why? Because their leaders lived with compassion. Sandhiya Indurjith, a Tech Consultant from Accenture, expressed a liking to similar principles in an interview after the event. "I loved his point on 'earn with integrity, spend with compassion'," she said. "He brought my awareness, my consciousness to another level." When asked what she would like to hear him speak on in the future, she passionately interjected, "His life stories! When he was talking about his adventures and the lessons he had learned, that really resonated with me. What an exciting life." That would have been the perfect moment for her to join the 250,000 others who have been moved by the stories in his autobiography, The Journey Home. Advertisement In his life story, the Swami shares his frustrations with the socio-political situation of America in the sixties. In the midst of the oppression of African-Americans to the atrocities of the Vietnam War, he embarks on his journey to find truth. After hitchhiking through Europe and the Middle East, he arrives at his final destination, India. It is here in the book that he describes his experiences of spiritual mysticism, which has transformed him into who he is today. Currently, the Swami leads an ascetic life. He rises before dawn to meditate and spends much of his time reading, giving seminars and focusing on his many philanthropic activities, such as Midday Meals, a project which daily feeds 300,000 school children all over India. "He has a serious message to share with the world, about leadership and values, but he's so humble, endearing and entertaining that his ideals become easier to fathom and implement." said Bijal Majithia, the organiser of the event hosted by the EY Hindu Network, Veda London and the Assistant Director for Global Diversity & Inclusiveness at EY. "He has a way of connecting with everyone!" she exclaimed. Radhanath Swami was delighted with the event. He personally congratulated the Veda London team for their commitment to presenting ancient wisdom from the Vedas to a contemporary city audience. Next, he is expected to be at the European headquarters of the Krishna Consciousness movement, Bhaktivedanta Manor, to give the keynote address to hundreds of spiritual seekers. There needs to be clear, concise articulation from the United States regarding its strategy in the Middle East, and it needs to happen soon. War could easily break out any moment between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which will call for our intentions and relations to be obvious, and currently necessary directions are needed in the region for us to have any kind of backbone and charge as a world leader. Our policy regarding the Middle East has been inconsistent and muddled, to put things mildly. Bahrain hosts the United State's 5th fleet, our main naval base in the Gulf, a region that we need critical access to. We have witnessed Iranians be stampeded, executed and scapegoated left and right; the outside world has now begun to suffer from the filthy hands of growing ISIS terror, all while our politicians publicly talk about notions of democracy, nuclear deals and freedom being a priority. Now is not the time to remain coy about our alliances -- for the sake of the various elements we want to engage in, short-term, with both forces. Fanning the flames of frienemies' for the sake of questionable oil profits makes less and less sense by the day. In the last few weeks, our congress sent mixed messages to Iran with the amendments to the VWP HR-158 after our nuclear deal with the country was being set into motion. We need to strengthen the deal with them, and to pass sanctions on missile authorizations. The world at large wants to fight ISIS, and to resolve the Syrian war issue. For these things to occur, the U.S. needs clarity with communication from a supportive Iranian government. As a second-string partner with America, Saudi Arabia should take heed of the United States' interests and not throw unbridled sabotaging techniques into our proactive negotiations with Iran for the sake of extremist ideologies and last attempts at a last ditch effort for prime-time world stage presence. The United States should also state more clearly what the punishments or results would be for playing into the hands of such unacceptable behavior not only from Saudis but with the Iranian hardliners, especially before February's important parliament and guardian council elections there. The time for smoke and mirrors is coming to a close, globally, and it is obvious that Iran is being turned into a scapegoat boogeyman by the Saudis and their allies (including United States Republicans). Human rights violations from Saudi Arabia must be kept in check. Advertisement It was a short-sighted, blatant distraction from Saudi Arabia's horrid inner state of governmental affairs and lack of democracy to kill a prominent Shia Cleric, and was a slap in the face to Iran and the U.S. alike, with whom Iran is thawing relations. The vandalization of the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Tehran by the Iranian public is no doubt a hostile act, but Iranian government has arrested the 40 culprits and is trying them justly in a court of law. There has been no justice for the Saudi Arabians' murder of leading Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr on January 2, or for the huge drama they are now trying to carry out across the Middle East. The United States has, of course, recently made clear that it did not condone more senseless violence, yet the Saudis went ahead anyway. Easing tensions for the sake of fighting ISIS was supposed to be one of the modern world's priorities at this juncture. Their inflated response to the Embassy vandalization is a reflection of their desire to thwart Iran's geopolitical relations and glaring potential. By cutting ties so vehemently and quickly with the Shiitte country, it is clear that their competition is very much thriving, and more than just alive as it has been for decades. The Saudis are creating a giant theatrical world distraction so that they can maybe get a leg up and seem like a powerful player in the Middle East. If they abruptly collect their alliances and make two clear sides to choose from and invest with, they can maybe turn a blind eye to the messy state of their own affairs. Although the U.S. publicly hoped for decency and compromise between the two rival powers that have so much sway in the Middle East, sectarian divisions and proxy wars will now be fueled further, leaving the question of: what is the United States' stance? Do we need to be fake with Saudi Arabia for oil much longer, when their dependence on oil wealth has led them down a road of huge deficit? I don't think so. We also have huge promise in our own country for oil, and may need to strengthen ties with Iran and work on our nuclear deal with a country that has true world leadership potential, if they don't fall into the trap being so blatantly put in front of them in a time of unsurety. A country in crisis will always search for outsiders. And if we look at what Donald Trump suggests, to deny Muslims into America, we must admit that this is quite an extreme proposal -- even for Republican standards. I have asked many people abroad what they think about Donald Trump, to possibly understand why he has such success in the Republican primary election so far with several racist comments, among several other blunders, behind him. I have surprisingly received many comprehensible answers, on Trump's behalf from all kinds of people. What people seem to agree on is that former American politicians from both sides have done a lot wrong for their country in the recent decades. Many are actually very outraged on how bad America is ruled these past years, how they have let crime and obesity explode. How the upper class is rising while the middle class is not the majority anymore, and that means fewer rich people and many more poor ones. How America still put people in jail more than any other nation. How the prices to get a decent education is increased sky-high. How they treat the American soil and the nature in general. The list could go on and on. Advertisement There are many unanswered questions out there about why average Americans are suffering and getting poorer while the biggest industries and company owners can roll themselves in more cash. The recent years, the American growth and wealth is distributed into the already rich ones' moneybags while the middle class and the broke ones who needed it most is taking the bill. When we summarize the development, or should we say the lack of development, of the country we all love, it's understandable that American citizens cheering for the Republican candidate Donald Trump. People want a leader who guarantees changes, and Trump promises exactly that. He is a businessman and speaks like one, and people seem to understand him well. He is now the voice of many powerless and desperate Americans who not only just want changes but who also needs changes badly. These people are not extremist. Many are just ordinary folks like us, some are poor, some rich, some old and some young, but they have one thing in common; they are tired of paralyzed politicians who don't or can't do the right things for their bellowed country. There are unfortunately several reasons why a sitting president can't do as he like to. He must go through congress, and he must keep his promises to the people and companies that supported him during the election. So even if the sitting president wants to change something, the laws, deals and regulations may stop him -- no matter how much he wants them. I think America needs a leader who put their fellow citizens prosperity and health above all else; a leader with integrity that is genuine focused on the tasks and who's fighting for these American brothers and sisters every single day, the whole period of four or eight years. America needs a leader who prioritizes the promises to the common man ahead of wealthy banks and rich companies. Although people understand the desperate cries from many Americans, they don't think or want Trump to be president of the United States. His lack of manners is one thing, the racism he has shown, to Mexicans and Muslims, is another thing. But the third and the most important thing America now needs is empathy and an understanding that many Americans are fighting everyday for survival -- a new leader needs to recognize the domestic problems and to put words into action immediately. People don't think Trump has these qualities, but to be honest; which other candidates does? It seems that the political system makes Americans choose between two evils; Republicans or Democrats: For that I feel sorry for America, and for that I understand why Donald Trump is one of the Republicans favorites. America needs drastic changes. Advertisement A Lebanese woman weeps for her relative, one of two soldiers killed Friday by a roadside bomb, during their funeral procession at the Lebanese army hospital, in Beirut, Lebanon, on Saturday, Sept. 20, 2014. Attackers blew up a roadside bomb near an army patrol near the Syrian border killing the soldiers and wounding many in the latest spillover from the civil war next door, security official said. The violence appeared to be the latest in tensions between Lebanese troops and Syrian Islamic extremist rebels crossing the border in a spillover of Syriaas civil war. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla) The world continues to be stunned on a daily basis by the senseless violence that is devastating so many families and communities. Terrorism, war, murder and violence targeting racial and ethnic minorities, women and children happen with such frequency that they have become the new norm numbing our sense of outrage at these atrocities. The daily violence reflected in these and so many more incidents is deeply shocking and stirs up powerful feelings of fear, anger, outrage and sadness. The questions swirl, and consume our thoughts. Why? Who? How? Advertisement It is natural to feel this way. Violence is horrible and the purpose of violence is to horrify. As part of a global community of peace-builders, I hear daily stories of violence from across the world, both the stories that captivate the media and the stories that we never see and yet are no less tragic. My own practice in these moments is to weep and then to work. In weeping we open ourselves to the depth of sadness that incidents of violence evoke. Grief, real grief, is such an important response to the loss of life and the damage to people and the world around us. Through our tears, we connect to those who suffer, and we humanize a situation caused by the dehumanizing actions of others. Grief also connects us to love, and it is through love that we are called back into what The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called "a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation." If we do not allow ourselves to feel this sadness, to really grieve, then our fears and pain turn instead to grievance. Who is to blame? How can I get my revenge? Our world is locked in an endless cycle of grievance. Grievance is the fuel of terrorists, and the inspiration for those who choose violence as a means to the ends that they desire. One act of violence fuels another and the grievance/violence cycle continues, day after day, generation after generation. In contemplating a world descending into the depths of war in his own time, Dr. King went on to urge those gathered at Riverside Church in New York City, April 4, 1967 to see love as an absolute necessity for the survival of humanity. "When I speak of love, I am not speaking in some sentimental and weak response... I am speaking of that life force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle." Advertisement If we are dedicated to breaking this cycle of violence and reclaiming the power of love, first we weep. We weep for those whose lives are lost to or damaged by violence. We weep for their families and friends and communities who suffer. We weep for the generations who follow whose lives will be changed. But our sadness leads not to paralysis but to a deeper commitment to confront this violence and work for peace in our communities, in our country and in our world. Our sadness connects us to deep feelings of compassion and love for our fellow human beings and all living creatures. This is a power that no criminal, cowardly, dehumanizing act of terror and violence can overcome - or, in Dr. King's words, "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." (This article is continued from Part 1) E. Obama's "Fix" Panning back for a wider perspective on the specific deceptions about money in politics contained in Obama's SOTU speech quoted above, one sees Obama displacing attention from this central issue of the 2016 campaign. He buries the issue in a broader context of the need to "fix our politics," one of the four broad issue areas his speech addresses. For Obama, corruption is not the single important issue because, as Sanders says, "very little is going to be done" of value for average Americans until this issue is solved. For Obama it is only one of a group of several issues defining the broader abstraction he calls "fix[ing] our politics." Obama's "fix" relates more to personal style than criminal law enforcement. Obama would shift our attention to some of these other issues where a fix may perhaps exist, even should they not exist - for Obama - with respect to corruption. He would have us relax our focus on the issue of plutocratic corruption for a different less contentious "fix" for "our politics." In Obama's shell game the pea is under a different shell than the one labeled "corruption." Or if the fix relies on solving all these problems at once, perhaps it is too complex a problem to expect any "real solution" any time soon. Obama's "fix our politics" ideas involve voting rights, gerrymandering, and most important of all, the issue which took the greatest part of Obama's time in his discussion of democracy, and comprised perhaps the general overall theme of his SOTU: the partisan polarization that prevents "rational, constructive debates." Advertisement 1. Rights. After the offensive judicial supremacist decision of Chief Justice Roberts in Shelby County (2013) - which on the 50th anniversary of MLK's March on Washington shamelessly resorted to the lowest judicial excrescence of the racist antebellum Dred Scott case for its support - the issue of voting rights is both regrettably timely and highly legitimate. The Supreme Court's gutting of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County to promote primarily southern Republican white supremacy runs precisely parallel to the Court's gutting of anti-corruption laws to promote nationwide plutocracy. In the absence of plutocracy, which disenfranchises everyone but plutocrats, it would not be nearly as possible to revive Roberts' Jim Crow project for legally disenfranchising minorities. In a democracy, the response to Roberts would have been more like Abraham Lincoln's disparaging response to Roger Taney and Dred Scott, which relegated both to the trash heap of history without requiring any legal formalities. Oligarchies are always built on some designated underclass, which in American history has always been defined racially. Minorities are the most effective voters against oligarchy, because they have to be. They are in turn prime targets for plutocratic disenfranchisement. One of the benefits of the U.S. two party system, which also has its drawbacks, is that it enormously empowers a minority willing and able to organize to swing its vote on the single issue of preserving democratic rights. This was how the 1960's civil rights movement obtained landmark democratic legislation before the curtain of plutocracy fell in 1976, thereby vitiating those same hard-won rights. The right to vote in what amounts to a demonstration election can solve nothing on its own when the system itself is thoroughly corrupt, as it is now. Only democracy empowers the right to vote. Where elections survive in form, but there is no democracy because it has been corrupted, voters must first join to solve the paramount issue of plutocratic corruption, as the Sanders campaign is doing. It was due to loss of voting power over several decades and not loss of voting rights, that - even prior to Shelby County - civil rights had already suffered serious decline. This decline was evidenced in the legal impunity of Trayvon Martin's and other racist killers and a long line of cases like Parents Involved v. Seattle (2007) (which "undermines Brown [v. Board]'s promise" by ruling school integration unconstitutional). Advertisement This explains the paradox of rapid deterioration of civil rights during the presidency of Barack Obama. The cause is Obama's service to plutocracy. This is understood by authentic civil rights leaders like Cornel West who stand ethically above the personal rewards to be gained from the scam of lip-serving civil rights while facilitating plutocracy. 2. Re-districting. Gerrymandering has an easy legislative fix, drawing congressional district boundaries at the national level by neutral algorithm. But in a corrupt environment that fix will not be administered. Gerrymandering is not as important a barrier to democracy as denial of voting rights since voters can effectively still prevail within either cracked or packed gerrymandered districts by organizing for swing issue voting or to contest primaries. In Obama's hands, gerrymandering makes for more of a diversionary verbal whipping post than an authentic cause of political dysfunction. Besides, gerrymandering offers an excuse only for the House, not the Senate, much less the Presidency, whereas all three are systemically corrupted by plutocracy. 3. Kabuki polarization. Far more important, indeed central, to Obama's propaganda objectives is his broader appeal to the high Kabuki drama of partisan polarization. This drama is often performed as a plaintive plea for bipartisanship. In the performance of this ritualized diversionary "problem," the purpose of the pretense is to disguise the duopoly which rules jointly for plutocrats. The duopoly regularly gets together to do Wall Street's bidding under Obama's leadership, such as in his annual Christmastime "Obomnibus" felony fests. The cover story acted out on the Kabuki stage is that the parties are deadlocked in mortal combat. This appearance is conveyed by highlighting those issues that Wall Street does not particularly care about (e.g., gender, identity, religion), is divided on (e.g. immigration), or on which it prefers the status quo (e.g. money in politics). Partisan polarization is the "problem" which is "solved" whenever the two parties periodically dissolve their deadlock pose to join together in happily serving plutocracy whatever it wants. Advertisement At those times you are supposed to be pleased that at least the adolescents are no longer fighting, even if they did just gang up to steal your wallet. To Bernie Sanders, this supposed "problem" is actually "a mythology" disguising "the real issue ... that Congress is owned by big money." Mark Leibovich's entertaining and non-partisan peek behind the Kabuki curtain of the corrupt capital exploded this favorite myth of our Kabuki president. His book This Town (2013) exposed the secret that the "city, far from being hopelessly divided, is in fact hopelessly interconnected" in its embrace of corruption. "Everyone ultimately is playing for the same team," for whom "everyone [is] playing a role, performing a show" as "hollowed-out Kabuki players." Leibovich explains: "Washington becomes a determinedly bipartisan team when there is money to be made." "The biggest shift in Washington over the last forty or so years has been the arrival of Big Money and politics as an industry." Business has been especially good under Obama for "the wielders of political power gained not by votes but by money." "Over the last dozen years," Leibovich writes, "corporate America (much of it Wall Street) has tripled the amount of money it has spent on lobbying and public affairs consulting in D.C." Obama's (apparently) highminded encouragement of "bonds of trust" (among thieves) and "willingness to compromise" (when dividing the boodle) constituted a grand Kabuki turn. By making such highminded sounding pleas, the Kabuki performance denies the deeper unity of purpose and bipartisan service to plutocracy that Obama regularly leads. The city's Kabuki theater business is designed to obscure, in this manner, the fact enduringly exposed by Leibovich of the Kabuki gang's essential unity in systemic corruption. Meanwhile the drama keeps the seats filled, and eyes diverted from reality. Obama plays the romantic lead for the capital's Kabuki performers, the forlorn suitor of love and harmony regularly bemoaning the partisan polarization myth, which was the headlined villain of the SOTU. He appeals to us "not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans first, ...voices of" - he says it twice for emphasis in his soaring conclusion -"unconditional love." Obama promises Kabuki love for sacrificing democracy. This essential propaganda meme sustains the politics of plutocracy with its divide and conquer strategy. Every Kabuki performance of, or complaint about, polarized partisanship imparts verisimilitude to the myth. The public's political energies are intended to be entirely absorbed within the Kabuki drama lest they get real and some day overturn the ruling plutocracy holding the puppet strings. The bipartisan Kabuki theater purveys an illusion of choice in a rigged system where none of significance is in fact on offer, except to those who pay. The SOTU deployed this strategy in full force to divert the electorate from the single question to which Sanders and the public are now reverting after two generations of distraction: whether the country should remain a plutocracy or finally unite to restore its democracy. It cannot be both. Only apologists for rule by plutocrats, like Obama, espouse the diversionary theory that partisan polarization is an independent factor that needs an independent "fix" by having everyone just behave better. Bipartisan unconditional love is the romantic lead's melodramatic plea. As George Carlin warned: "'Bipartisan' usually means that a larger-than-usual deception is being carried out." When Obama gets gooey about "a better politics," its best to hold on to your wallet. He's covering up another Obomnibus. F. "the system is rigged" Obama takes this propaganda meme one step further to defend plutocrats from the direct attack by those who would restore democracy. Although aimed at Republicans on its surface, Obama's concern about the loss of democratic civility "if we think that our political opponents are unpatriotic" is also clearly aimed at those seriously working against the continued overthrow of democracy by systemic corruption. Plutocracy is unpatriotic. Corrupting government by buying off elected representatives violates the Declaration of Independence's insistence upon the "consent of the governed," the principle for which patriots fought and which they then implemented in their Constitution. That the oligarchic opponents of democracy are unpatriotic was the principle political theme of the early generations of post-Revolutionary Americans, until that theme was contested and reconfigured within the political cauldron of abolition, secession and reconstruction and finally silenced in the Gilded Age that followed. To execute his pivot from criticizing Republican primary candidates, for which Paul Ryan in turn criticized him, to "persuad[ing] ... Bernie Sanders to stay the Obama course - during the campaign and beyond," Obama flips his criticism of fascist-leaning and polarizing Republican primary candidates to attack Sanders. In his triangulating bipartisan fashion, Obama turns stage left to attach his Kabuki criticism of polarization to those who are fighting the historical 2016 campaign to reclaim the country from the plutocracy that Obama serves. Advertisement Directly following his Kabuki dramatization of the perils and incivility of partisan polarization, Obama charges: "And most of all, democracy breaks down when the average person feels their voice doesn't matter; that the system is rigged in favor of the rich or the powerful or some special interest. Too many Americans feel that way right now." (emphasis added) Where to begin unpacking the deceptions? "Some" indefinite, implicitly questionable "special interest?" Obama pretends he is not intimately familiar with numerous special interests which corruptly operate the plutocracy through him and others. "Too many Americans" for what purpose? You can never have "too many" citizens informed about threats to democracy. This is like complaining that Paul Revere made too much noise. Obama's whole formulation of this sentence reverses the direction of causality. It is the overthrow of democracy by plutocracy that causes how "the average person feels" about it, not the opposite. It has been scientifically established that "ordinary citizens have virtually no influence over what their government does in the United States.... Both parties have to a large degree embraced a set of policies that reflect the needs, preferences and interests of the well to do." This was not caused by citizens feeling that this fact is true, but by the money in politics that Obama takes, defends, and increasingly legalizes. Obama deliberately directs his criticism literally at the feelings of the average American, rather than at the reality that causes and justifies those feelings. He places this criticism immediately following the context of his complaints about extreme partisan polarization. From his precise choice of words and context, Obama certainly seems to be advocating that Americans should not "feel" the way they do, because their feelings are a result of the evil influence of polarization. The blame for those (allegedly false) feelings logically falls on highly partisan Democrats from whom the plutocratic centrist Obama recoils. Obama implies, without exactly saying, that he thinks that what "too many Americans feel" is wrong, and uncivil, and in fact dangerous to democracy. It takes a master like Obama to suggest, albeit couched in deniable ambiguity, that it is undemocratic to use democratic elections to regain democracy from plutocrats who have corrupted it for their own greedy ends. Worse than the authoritarian attacks on Muslims and Mexicans, anti-science rants, hate radio and so forth, the behavior to be avoided "most of all," in Obama's world, is to recognize the scientific truth, and to pronounce it, that in the current plutocracy the average person's voice does not matter on issues already bought by plutocrats and that, as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have each said, the political system is rigged in favor of the rich by the legalization of political corruption. Is Obama really not only denying the existence of the palpable plutocracy he serves, by labeling it just a feeling, but also actually implying that fighting against the plutocracy, as Sanders is doing, causes "democracy [to] break... down" because of the feelings it arouses? Advertisement Obama reduces plutocracy to an unjustified feeling induced in average people by polarizing campaign assertions no more real than those Donald Trump makes about his Kenyan birth. Such a truly Orwellian proposition is designed to define the battle lines where Obama will protect from Sanders' attack his principal legacy of considerably increasing the level of plutocratic corruption. Obama wins the Kabuki theater gold medal by making plutocracy just an illusion, on his stage. G. The counterfeit To repeat, Obama makes this statement criticizing how average Americans feel about the plutocracy in which they live in a deniable form. Take it out of its context, photoshop out the word "feel" or explain it away as an intended synonym for "know" and someone could defend the statement as maybe a lament, rather than a criticism. The indignant press spokesperson would reply: "Poor word usage, possibly. The President apologizes if his meaning was misunderstood." But Obama makes his point less ambiguous when his script spins immediately from this apparent attack on Sanders to cover three propaganda memes at once. This is an even more daring medal-winning triple axel. Watch its separate elements in slow motion. Obama says next, "It's one of the few regrets of my presidency -- that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better. I have no doubt a president with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide, and I guarantee I'll keep trying to be better so long as I hold this office." 1. Sanders shmrancors. This statement doubles down on the immediately preceding (arguably ambiguous, in the hands of a good propaganda clean-up crew) accusation against those anti-plutocrats, those "too many Americans," who are implicitly misled by Sanders into understanding the plutocratic government that Obama leads. Obama bookends their allegedly misguided feelings by associating those feelings not just with his previous examples of polarization but also this immediately following reference to "rancor and suspicion between the parties." Implying mutually opposing rancors emphasizes the switch from addressing solely Republican examples of anti-democratic extremism to include Democrats in Obama's Kabukoid polarization myth, which "has gotten worse" under Obama. Polarization needed to get "worse" in Obama's Kabuki theater precisely because it had to cover up much larger favors for plutocrats than any prior Democrat had given, including Bill Clinton, since at least Woodrow Wilson. The Democrat who's made it "worse" is not a Clinton. Obama's culprit is not even a Democrat, except for purposes of contesting their nomination as required by the creaking electoral mechanics of an ailing two party run-off process. But Hillary Clinton is definitely innocent of rancor, being just as tight with plutocrats as Obama is. If Obama had different intentions than criticizing Sanders, then before moving on from the previous statement about Americans' feelings, and instead of immediately reverting to the subject of mutually polarizing rancors, Obama should have affirmed the irrefutable and intolerable cause of and reality behind the average American feelings he described. He should have proposed, promised to lead, an effective "real solution" for overturning a corrupt plutocracy where the opinions of ordinary voters do not count but money does. This is the very heart of the matter in 2016. Obama adroitly cuts this heart out of the picture. He wraps it up and incorporates it into his Kabuki drama of polarization. Feelings, not real world corruption, is the problem that needs a fix. On Obama's Kabuki stage Sanders' revolution against plutocratic corruption is just more evidence of the Kabuki "problem" of polarization to be solved. Instead of an expected follow-up phrase or two to clarify his ungainly reference to the key problem, Obama thus nails down his recharacterization of the central issue of American politics as a problem of partisan polarization. "One of the few regrets" Obama expresses is not that the overthrow of democracy by plutocracy became more entrenched on his watch but that misled feelings about an illusory plutocracy causes partisan polarization that might inflict damage on democracy. Somehow if we, namely Sanders, would all just calm down and mind our manners, democracy would fix itself without impolite rancor toward Obama's plutocrat friends by re-criminalizing their spending of money on our politics. After all, let's just get used to the fact there is no "existing ... real solution" anyway so we might as well just relax and accept Obama's world of illusions. He promises us his highest quality Kabuki performance "so long as I hold this office." 2. The hapless president. While your head is still spinning from this pivot to accuse Sanders of rancor, Obama's statement then turns off again in an entirely different direction. He subtly plays off liberals' favorite excuse for Obama's consistent betrayals of his "beliefs" and promises. He is hapless, means well, tries hard "to be better," but is just not quite up to the job. Nice guys finish last and all that. Of course the standard he self-deprecatingly does not meet is one he imputes to the two greatest presidents, thereby leaving plenty of room below them in the standings for his legacy to score quite high enough. After playing out a similar role of deception, Woodrow Wilson still scores in the sub-great range among many historians on the basis of his supposed intentions. Advertisement Obama's comparison does arrogantly claim, at a deeper level, that he is playing in the same league as Lincoln and Roosevelt. His game is just not quite "gifted" enough to get the job done, though he is still trying. But actually he is not even playing in the same league of Lincoln and Roosevelt. He never started the job of restoring democracy that he was expected to lead after the broad revulsion from the imperial warmongerer, torturer and eavesdropper, Bush II, swept Obama into office in 2008. These references to the greatest presidents also responds to a criticism that is known to have reached Obama. Obama's most powerful critics like Cornel West and Cynthia McKinney (who had the prescience to run against Obama in 2008) complain that Obama campaigned as a Lincoln or Roosevelt but gave us another neoliberal like Clinton. Obama's defense is to change the subject to his not having the "gifts" of Lincoln and Roosevelt, a tacit denial of the charge of being an impostor. This at the same time evokes Obama's usual exculpatory cover story of being benign, but somewhat ineffectual when it comes to supporting progressive popular reform. This is his defense against the entirely different grounds for West's criticism, which is not about his gifts. The "gifts" Obama refers to are those of the Kabuki stage, where the performer pretends to resolve the Kabuki "problem" of partisan polarization by serving the plutocrats' bipartisan agenda. It is a devious distortion of history to imply that the "gifts" of Lincoln and F.D. Roosevelt consisted of being better actors than Obama at pretending to "bridge the divide" of fake partisan polarization on the Kabuki stage. Obama's last SOTU should secure for him history's judgment that he was our greatest Kabuki president. "It's not even close," in his own words, definitely not close in the case of Lincoln or Roosevelt, or for that matter Martin Luther King who Obama also invokes, The oligarchs hated them all, unto Civil War, assassination or military coup. By contrast, Obama's destiny as the greatest Kabuki president is surely a plutocratic sinecure. Both Lincoln and Roosevelt, who said they were opposed to the interests of slave power oligarchs or economic royalist plutocrats, fought and won historic victories against these anti-democratic forces. Though some criticized them for not going far enough in important details of their policies, what they did accomplish constituted essential advances for democracy of world-historic dimension. The integrity of their achievements being consistent with their words, not the gifts they possessed for Kabuki bipartisanship, made them our greatest presidents. John Quincy Adams was perhaps the most legitimately gifted president, but the single term of his presidency is largely forgotten because it lacked such achievement. Obama is too smart not to understand his distortion of history in claiming that continuing regard for Lincoln and Roosevelt rests on their gifts for Kabuki. Democracy and Kabuki are two different leagues. Advertisement 3. Counterfeit gifts. The American people in 2008 enthusiastically disagreed with this assessment of Obama's "gifts" as being in any way deficient. As his popularity declines, rarely are his "gifts" the subject of criticism. Americans powerfully judged that he did indeed have the "gifts" required to do the job of a Lincoln or Roosevelt. The times required those gifts after Bush II's village idiot moral religiosity (accepted in revulsion from Bill Clinton's clever depravity) turned out even worse than Buchanan and Hoover by starting the stupidest, most meaningless, criminal, counterproductive and downright evil war in U.S. history, while simultaneously generating economic and fiscal disaster. What Americans misjudged about Obama, which his statement is designed to disguise behind feigned modesty about deficient Kabuki "gifts" as the source of his deficiency, was their assumption that Obama would also have integrity, in addition to his obvious gifts of charm, poise, eloquence and intelligence. After supporting Obama in 2008, West now describes him as a "counterfeit" who "posed as if he was a kind of Lincoln." Talent for counterfeiting is a well-remunerated gift of its own, on the political Kabuki stage as in the real theater. But Americans did not anticipate that Obama would be a world class political fraud in the loyal service of Wall Street, while he also restored an image of dignity, graciousness and charm in his conduct of the office. After the embarrassingly puerile Bush II, this conduct provided a token consolation. It has won begrudging tolerance for his misrepresentation of his future conduct on virtually all matters of importance to plutocrats. Even though some, like McKinney, saw through it, voters can be excused their mistaken assumption about Obama's integrity, since there had never been, except possibly Wilson, such a fraud elected to the presidency who did the direct opposite of nearly everything of importance that he promised, and to the last continued talking up personal "beliefs" that were directly contradicted by his contemporaneous deeds. Obama campaigned against the way Washington does business, the nation's biggest problem. But his most historic advances have been made on behalf of the militarized plutocracy that he campaigned against. The difference between him and the greatest presidents is therefore not his considerable "gifts," as he deceptively and purposefully suggests, but his lack of integrity in leveling with the people about the purpose for which he intended to and does use those gifts. This is the reason he failed to fulfill the role history offered him as the man of the hour that the nation needed and happily chose in a time of severe crisis. Instead he served as the man the plutocracy needed and financed to profit from the crisis notwithstanding an aroused public. Woodrow Wilson is the only president who survived such a switch in roles with sufficient reputation remaining in tact to have a legacy still worth debating. It's a small niche for which Obama is aiming. Obama thus himself defines the decisive issue in the 2016 campaign which his SOTU was actually about. Bernie Sanders exudes authenticity and integrity. Cornel West and those who agree with his view of Obama are prioritizing those qualities for 2016. Even if they do come in an uncharismatically crusty package with few other demonstrable "gifts" included, "only Bernie has authenticity and integrity," according to West's formal endorsement. It is enough that this man of the hour has the requisite experience and capacity to run a winning campaign for the restoration of democracy. He does not claim, nor do his supporters expect him to possess any measure of, the specific Kabuki "gifts" of bipartisanship that Obama praises. Resolving the fake partisan polarization by leading enormously lucrative plundering raids on the public commons to enrich plutocrats is not the skill that Sanders is offering. Sanders' polarization lies along an entirely different political axis than the fake one that Obama occupies. Sanders says, "in the Congress, it's not the Republicans and Democrats hate each other. That's a mythology from the media. The real issue is that Congress is owned by big money and refuses to do what the American people want them to do." Sanders' struggle is real, Obama's is fake. It requires no gifts of a Kabuki president to lead the country back to democracy. It requires uncompromising opposition to its current feculent plutocracy. Advertisement BIRMINGHAM, AL - JANUARY 18: Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaks at Boutwell Auditorium, January 18, 2016 in Birmingham, Alabama. Sanders spoke to a capacity crowd of around 5,000 supporters. (Photo by Hal Yeager/Getty Images) During the last Democratic presidential debate, Bernie Sanders did something that you don't see every day from politicians of either political party. He criticized the Pentagon budget. SANDERS: But here's an issue that we also should talk about. We have a $600 billion military budget. It is a budget larger than the next eight countries'. Unfortunately, much of that budget continues to fight the old Cold War with the Soviet Union. Very little of that budget -- less than 10 percent -- actually goes into fighting ISIS and international terrorism. We need to be thinking hard about making fundamental changes in the priorities of the Defense Department. The purported "fact-checking" site PolitiFact asserted that Sanders' claim that "less than 10 percent of defense budget is for fighting terrorism" was "Mostly False." The murky path by which PolitiFact claimed to achieve this conclusion is telling. It illustrates a major reason why we haven't yet had much meaningful public discussion about the Pentagon budget: because establishment journalists like those at PolitiFact aren't interested in a meaningful public discussion taking place. PolitiFact concedes that the Sanders campaign has data to back up its claim: Sanders' campaign has used this talking point before, and shared the math with us. They cited more than $600 billion in defense spending, saying only $5.5 billion has gone to fighting ISIS and around $42 billion has gone to operations in Afghanistan, much of which is used to fight al-Qaida. In all, they said the government has spent about 7.9 percent of the defense budget on fighting terrorism. But, PolitiFact argues, "that's a very narrow view of how the defense budget works." PolitiFact then offers a different calculation than the Sanders campaign, and comes up with "a bit more than 9 percent." Quick students of arithmetic will already have noted that "a bit more than 9 percent" is still "less than 10 percent." Then PolitiFact argues: "experts said it's hard to draw a tidy line between how much of the defense budget is for current operations and how much is for general readiness. The military needs its base budget in order to conduct the fighting for which the OCO was created." Advertisement OCO refers to the "Overseas and Contingency Operations account," otherwise known as "the war budget," as opposed to the "base" Pentagon budget of $600 billion that the Pentagon would get, as a kind of permanent entitlement, even if we were fighting no wars at all and had no plans to fight any. It's certainly a fair point that the U.S. military couldn't fight the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria if the "base Pentagon budget" were cut to zero, so some part of the "base budget" is arguably attributable to the wars. How much? Apparently, PolitiFact has absolutely no idea, and no clue where to get one, because it makes no effort to inform us what the scale of this number might be. PolitiFact faults Sanders for not including something, but gives us no idea whether the thing excluded is big or small, and therefore whether the exclusion is very damaging to Sanders' case, or not damaging at all. This establishment journalism "fact-checking" is apparently like being on a high school debate team where you're allowed to make arguments to take up space without having to justify their importance. Then PolitiFact argues: Sanders' math also doesn't take into account counterterrorism efforts through other sources that don't involve bombs or fighter jets, like the Justice or State departments. It's far from obvious why PolitiFact is bringing this up. Sanders didn't make a claim about the "share of the federal budget devoted to national security," he made a claim about the Pentagon budget. Moreover, while there is indeed "national security spending" elsewhere in the budget, a bunch of that "national security spending" also has nothing to do with confronting terrorism. For example, there is nuclear weapons spending in the Department of Energy budget. Presumably, we're not going to be using nuclear weapons against ISIS or al-Qaeda. So, even if PolitiFact wants to claim that Sanders is looking at the wrong metric according to some standard by focusing on the Pentagon budget - which is arguably outside the scope of "rating" his claim about the Pentagon budget as "mostly false" - PolitiFact is engaging in fuzzy math by introducing into the discussion national security spending on terrorism outside the Pentagon budget without acknowledging national security spending outside the Pentagon budget that has nothing to do with fighting terrorism. They're arguing for increasing the numerator without acknowledging that would imply increasing the denominator. Advertisement Finally, PolitiFact summarizes its case: Sanders said, "Very little of (the defense) budget -- less than 10 percent -- actually goes into fighting ISIS and international terrorism." He's getting that number by using a very limited view of the overall defense budget, pointing only to specific allotments in the budget for addressing ISIS and other terrorist threats. Experts told us that no matter what amounts are designated for that purpose, those operations draw from resources paid for in the base budget. There's no clear way to separate the two. Sanders' figure does refer to some specific funding but paints a misleading picture of overall defense spending. We rate it Mostly False. What is the core of PolitiFact's argument? Sanders' claim is "mostly false" not because we have good reason to believe that some very different number is much more likely to be correct - like 20%, or 50%, or 90% - but because the share of the Pentagon budget which goes into fighting ISIS and international terrorism is a fundamentally unknowable fact, like how God passed the time before creating the world. The question is intrinsically outside the scope of human knowledge. The clear implication of PolitiFact's argument is that there's no role for the general public in talking about what the Pentagon should spend money on. It would be impossible to argue that the Pentagon is spending too much money on other things besides fighting terrorism, because there is no way to talk about how much that is. Therefore, any member of the general public who thinks that the Pentagon should spend more on fighting terrorism only has one alternative: support an increase in the base Pentagon budget, and let mysterious unnamed smart people somewhere else figure out how to allocate the money. Cui bono? In whose interest is such a claim? Lockheed Martin couldn't have said it better. How about some more money for the F-35? It might help us fight ISIS. There's no way to say it wouldn't. Earls Kitchen + Bar -- Junzi Kitchen -- Dizengoff We love hearing about restaurants through the grapevine and, as food writers and consultants, have had our ear to the ground for decades. Our new feature, Restaurants to Watch 2016, explores innovative concepts, local/national roll-outs, and what's coming to the U.S. from abroad. We're excited about all of it. Barbara-Jo McIntosh, proprietor of Vancouver's celebrated bookstore "Books to Cooks," years ago waxed nostalgic about her favorite local restaurant called Earls. I had never heard of it but was intrigued by her level of affection for a place that began in 1982 as a beer and burger joint and grew into an upscale-casual eatery with 67 restaurants across the U.S. and Canada. Recently, I dined in the company's newest outpost in Tysons Corner, Virginia. I loved its contemporary sprawl -- part hipster, part family-friendly -- designed with subtly and sass. I had envisioned an old-fashioned, seen-it-before kind of establishment, but instead found a mission-driven let's-take-care-of-you dining hall. It's very big. As is its innovative menu, its ramped-up lounge and bar, its extensive cocktail offerings, its level of generosity, and spot-on service. Advertisement The chef, Ryan Spicknell, a 27-year old Canadian, has traveled in Europe and fastidiously trained by Earls' culinary team. Price points for appetizers range from $10 to $12 and main courses from $16 to $28. One lingers for a long time over the globally-inspired menu. Choose tuna tostadas, chimichurri skirt steak, Korean bibimbap bowl, or a Royale burger with house-made mushroom ketchup, and you will sample a handful of Earls' most popular offerings. Unlike most chains, each restaurant cooks from high-quality ingredients, making fresh food from scratch. And it shows. Next up: Orlando and Boston Prudential (there are currently locations in Miami, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Lone Tree, CO and Bellevue, WA). Junzi Kitchen The brainstorm of a bunch of over-educated grad students at Yale, Junzi Kitchen is a northern Chinese version of Chipotle. Located on the edge of campus, down the block from the Apple store, Junzi's had lines out the door for two months. Unlike your typical mall-based Chinese steamtable business, this one makes all its food to order -- and by hand. Junzi specializes in "bings" (slightly puffy Chinese wraps) and bowls of noodles with enticing fillings and toppings. Their tender braised beef shanks have overtones of bay leaf, fennel and anise. Braised pork shoulder and hock is perfumed with cardamom, clove, and cinnamon. Chicken is marinated in garlic, peppercorns, rice wine and soy sauce, then grilled. Charred tofu is glazed with kung pao pepper. You mix and match these proteins with a seasonally changing array of hot and cold vegetables and house-pickled vegetables that make your mouth water. Even the garnishes are inspired: chive ash, shrimp salt, chili oil. Everything's prepared in front of you in about a minute. The bings and noodle bowls are portable but there's a small seating area, too. The fast-casual food is memorable, craveable and authentic. Portions are enormous, and for under ten bucks this may be best meal bargain in New Haven. Locals go there several times a week. Naturally, these entrepreneurial Yalies are now on the prowl for locations in New York City and Boston. Gunpowder rose tea, anyone? Advertisement Dizengoff The powers-that-be at the wildly successful restaurant Za'hav in Philadelphia say there will probably never be another one. Instead, celebrated chef, owner, and recent author of the encyclopedic cookbook Za'hav, Michael Solomonov, has opened, in downtown Philly, the more casual hummusiya called Dizengoff -- named after Tel Aviv's main thoroughfare (and after the city's first mayor, Meir Dizengoff.) Located all over Israel, hummusiyas are places for just that -- hummus with a variety of "toppings" and warm pita for excavating. At Dizengoff, one gets a bowl of the chef's famously smooth, rich hummus topped with innovations - from roasted cauliflower, ground lamb with mint and pistachio, or with chickpeas, corn and lemon. The big news is that Dizengoff will be opening in New York's Chelsea Market (home of the Food Network and many boutique-y dining outposts) in the next few months. This is a first-of-its kind concept in the U.S., and with hummus so ubiquitous it is a wonder that there aren't already a dozen or so in America. At Dizengoff in Philadelphia, one dines at communal tables. In NYC, one will eat at a counter. In addition to hummus, shakshuka (another Israeli import of baked eggs in a spicy tomato-pepper stew) will also be on the menu. In 1996, I was one of four "Women Chefs for Peace" on a mission to Israel. Upon my return I wrote an article for the New York Times about new Israeli cuisine and predicted it was the trend to watch. And now, it's here. 'Group of college students in the university amphitheatre, they are sitting and doing an exam.' In the last week, the chasm between Republicans and Democrats on higher education has become clear. On the one hand, Democrats have begun a sustained push for debt-free higher education. Hillary Clinton will make the issue central to her campaign and both House and Senate Democrats introduced a resolution calling for debt-free higher education. While Democrats see public higher education as a public good that contributes to economic growth and innovation, Republicans see higher education as a consumer good that only the wealthy should enjoy. These two visions will collide in 2016, the vision of everyday Americans and the vision of the plutocrats. While the proposals are still taking shape, President Obama has already pushed for free community college, and has expanded an income-based repayment program. On the other hand, Republicans have released proposals that would open up higher education funding to massive cuts, particularly programs that give low-income students a shot at the American dream. Republicans have proposedremoving guaranteed funding for Pell Grants, meaning that every year low-income students would worry about getting their legs cut out from under them. Already, Pell Grants have lost a large share of the value, from funding 76 percent of a student's college costs in 1980 to 30 percent in 2014. Advertisement Republicans have called for an end to an Obama program that would prevent a graduate's monthly student loan bill from exceeding more than 10 percent of their income and offer debt forgiveness after 20 years of repayment. Such a program is standard in other developed countries. After Obama proposed free community college, Republicans were quick to distance themselves from him again there. (John Boehner, for instance, created a page full of Taylor Swift gifs opposing the proposal, for some reason.) The difference in vision couldn't be clear. On one side is the American vision of an opportunity-based society. On the other side is the plutocratic vision of limited upward mobility and a permanent ruling class. As the chart below shows, the cost of college can cost more than 80 percent of a low-income family's annual income, compared with only 20 percent for wealthy families. Further public cuts will pull college even further out of reach. What's interesting about the Republican agenda, though, is that for a policy so widely shared among party elites, it's actually deeply unpopular with voters. In agroundbreaking study two years ago, Benjamin Page, Jason Seawright and Larry Bartels examined the preferences of the wealthiest Americans, who are notoriously hard to poll. What they discovered is that the wealthy are strongly opposed to things that average voters support, and that education was one of the deepest chasms (see chart). Data from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee shows that Americans overwhelmingly support debt-free higher education; but, particularly important, a majority of Republicans (56 percent) even support it. Advertisement A recent YouGov poll asked respondents the following: "Do you think it's a good or a bad idea for the government to pay so that students can attend college for free?" Among those earning less than $40,000 a year, 66 percent said it's a good idea, compared with 33 percent of those earning more than $80,000 a year. But what's key is that the middle class ($40,000 to $80,000) overwhelmingly support the lower-income respondents, with 60 percent saying free community college is a good idea. There are two possible reasons for the rich being out of step with average Americans: The wealthy were far less likely to say they knew someone who wanted to attend college but could not (37 percent of those earning more than $80,000, compared with 56 percent of those earning between $40,000 and $80,000); and they were also less likely to say it's a good idea to "encourage every high school graduate to attend college" (53 percent compared with 67 percent). The chart below shows the portion of the YouGov poll dealing specifically with Obama's community college proposal, which has broad support nationally. What's particularly surprising is that 42 percent of Republicans support the plan, even though the question explicitly notes that the proposal was released by Obama. The plan would cost $60 billion over the next decade (or roughly two years' worth of funding for the F-35 stealth jet -- which still cannot fire its gun). Over the last two decades, an increasingly radical conservative base has pulled the Republican Party out of line with the American people. The rich control the Republican agenda, and they are pulling the party not just to the right of the average voter, but also their own voters. In the 2016 election, progressives need to frequently bring to the forefront of the debate the issues on which they stand firmly with the majority of Americans. Issues like universal childcare, universal paid sick leave and higher minimum wages. The centerpiece should be good jobs and upward mobility. By forcing Republicans to choose between plutocrats and voters, debt-free higher education is crucial to such a campaign. Advertisement Conversations which start in Davos, a Swiss mountain resort where governments, business, trade unions and NGOs gather at the start of every new year, can sometimes turn into a dialogue which can change the world. The Davos week began with Oxfam detailing increasing inequality 62 people holding the same wealth as half the world's population. The ITUC Report Scandal, looked inside the supply chains of fifty of the world's largest supply chains to expose a hidden workforce of ninety four per cent - the workers who live on poverty wages and work in unsafe or insecure jobs to generate the profits for the richest corporates. And Amnesty International depicted the depravity of child labour in the supply chain of extractive industries. Advertisement This is inequality by design. As we contemplate a world which is still choosing to deploy technological innovation in a way that deepens inequality and divisions within and between nations, we need to set global foundations back on track. The world has reached a tipping point. Sixty per cent of global trade is now driven by big business which, depends on a business model based on exploitation and abuse of human rights in supply chains. When the largest corporations directly employ only six per cent of the workers they depend on it's an easy way to displace responsibility. As WEF 16 gets underway in Davos we ask CEOs of major companies to take a look at the business model they preside over. They must know their profits are too often driven by low wage levels that people cannot live on; that these profits risk safety with the result of indefensible workplace injuries and deaths; that these profits are increased by tax evasion or tragically linked to pollution of community land and water even while their lobby teams are turning Governments against the rule of law that would hold them to account. When minimum living wages, bargaining for fair wages, pensions and job security are denied in too many countries it is not rocket science to understand the drivers of inequality. Advertisement When a textile worker like Rina from the Philippines tells me she cannot tell her 12 year old son if she will be home to cook him a meal or say goodnight because she is forced to work extra shifts without notice - this is not decent work. And when men gathering seafood for many of our tables are enslaved on boats in Indonesian waters without living quarters and sanitation for months on end there is no hope for them of decent work without a new model of global trade - a business model with a moral compass. There are two discussions at Davos that seek to change the prevailing model. The first lead by the Prime Minister of Sweden, Stefan Lofven, will engage business, unions and Government leaders in the challenge to strike a 'global deal' where people, rights and sustainability through social dialogue is possible. The second in a conversation with young business leaders, lead by the B Team's Richard Branson, about a business model that is 100% human at work - a new social contract based on the UN Business and human rights principles that realises the core values of respect, equality, growth, belonging and purpose. Both these initiatives seek a radical shift in the way we treat people at work. Both are founded on the belief that we are never going to be able to achieve the UN's Sustainable Development Goals and a better world for all unless we start by affording people in the workplace rights, dignity and respect. Advertisement And both conversations will tackle the imperative to build a future of work inclusive of refugees and other migrants seeking a safe and secure life. Most significantly both are founded on dialogue - social dialogue always works. The ITUC is proud to support both these ground breaking initiatives and call on Governments to sign on to the global deal and business to join its counterpart 100% Human At Work. Business leaders need to take the sons and daughters test. A new model of business and economic development must ensure everybody's sons and daughters are treated as we would expect for our own. As the polls keep shifting towards a Bernie Sanders victory in the early primary states, I am increasingly worried. What troubles me is not that Sanders is a hypocrite -- far from it; it is that he is a man of too many certainties -- like Ted Cruz on the other side, he believes everything he says, now and forever. I fear that he is far too "authentic" to be an effective president. I favor people who change their mind, who see life and the world in shades of grey, not red, white and blue, or black and white. I like my politicians to turn on a dime when circumstances show that change is needed, capable of grabbing a shovel when it snows and not standing in the blizzard cursing the weather. Authenticity can only take us so far. Yes, the devotion to truthfulness is a great virtue, but it ceases to be a virtue when it declares itself the only truth -- when it cannot moderate its positions or play well with others, as they say in nursery school. I am sure that Ted Cruz is authentic. He speaks his mind, has held his strong "originalist" views about the constitution, preaches for more guns after Sandy Hook, and has remained the same since debating in high school, believing that we pay too much mind to the poor and disadvantaged -- that they should rise on their own. Like many middle class kids who have moved higher in the world than their parents, he fails to realize what a great hand up he was given by being born into a family that believed in education. Cruz is the "authentic" moral bully -- one who, if elected, could only bring disaster to the country. Advertisement Trump is also authentic to those who follow him; he says what is on his mind -- the fact that his mind is a toilet that sorely needs a good plumber means nothing to them. He is "real" -- "authentic." Hillary Clinton has often been accused of being inauthentic, particularly by such queens of journalism as Andrea Mitchell and Maureen Dowd. That means that there is a bit too much cackle in her laugh, a bit too much force in her pronouncements, a bit too much forgiveness for her stray hound-dog of a husband -- and that she only means half of what she says, and that half has switched positions from past positions. FDR, perhaps the most inauthentic president of my lifetime, acted covertly in guiding us towards WW2 while pretending that his goal was for the USA to remain neutral; he cheated on Eleanor time and again, and did next to nothing to help those fleeing fascism in order to assuage a non-interventionist voting public. Yet, he still remains a great president. He gave us Social Security, a true game changer in the life of the country; he gave us the WPA, tried to give us the NRA, and fought to get the country out of its great slump and back on its feet. A leader. Not to be trusted. Authenticity was the hallmark of Ronnie's presidency. He pasted a smile over all the little treacheries -- giving arms in exchange for prisoners and lying about it, claiming to be an everyman while catering only to the rich, invading teeny-tiny countries in order to show he was more than a movie-star hero, and glad-handing the world when he clearly despised that part of the world that had no money or prospects. Looking and sounding authentic was taught at MGM in the thirties to all their B actors. I never voted for him, but I could see how he gained power through his smilingly authentic inauthenticity. Advertisement And of course we had Nixon, master of the authentic inauthentic -- who when caught with his hand in the cookie jar dragged out his dog and his pathetic wife in her Republican cloth coat. He growled and groveled like a penned-up bulldog in a shelter; yet he won remarkable victories with his inauthenticity -- the voting rights act came about under his presidency, and so did the opening up to China. All this is just to say that my vote remains with Hillary -- and I don't give a damn how inauthentic she appears to others. Yes, she has stumbled, but when she picks herself up she gets on with the job. When I look back on my long life and career I realize that I have been helped most by inauthentic people -- people who are capable of changing and I have been harmed only by the truly authentic: those who consider themselves morally superior to others, now and forever while behaving treacherously. Would I prefer a less damaged candidate? Sure I would. But there are none out there as capable of carrying on the progressive tradition capably, and I mean capably, as Hillary Clinton, a woman of experience, good sense, and shining genuine inauthenticity. This article originally appeared in NCR Today, January 18, 2016 Supporters of international law have expressed consternation that the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for president -- like most of her potential Republican rivals -- strongly supported the illegal U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. Hillary Clinton's support for the Bush administration's request for war authorization effectively placed her in opposition to the United Nations Charter and the Nuremberg Principles forbidding such wars of aggression. Ironically, these important international legal standards were in large part designed by officials from administrations of the very political party she hopes to represent in the contest for the White House. Clinton's defenders insist that her vote in support of the invasion was simply a "mistake," as if this graduate of Yale Law School had somehow forgotten such basic principles of international law or the obligation of the United States, under Article VI of the Constitution, to uphold such binding international treaties. Advertisement One of the most disturbing examples, however, is in regard to her strident opposition to the International Criminal Court (ICC). The ICC was established by international treaty in 2002 in The Hague, Netherlands, as a means of prosecuting individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, and related international war crimes. It grew out of the 1998 Rome Statute signed by the United States and 122 other countries in the hopes of finally establishing accountability for individuals for serious violations of international humanitarian law. In response to the signing, right-wing talk show hosts and other conspiracy theorists here in the U.S. began claiming that the ICC would force American soldiers to stand trial before an anti-American tribunal on trumped-up charges without basic defendants' rights, part of what many saw as a plot by the United Nations to impose a "world government." In reality, the ICC only has jurisdiction in cases where national courts are unable or unwilling to prosecute soldiers or others for such crimes. Despite some notable lapses in prosecuting some offenses, the Uniform Code of Military Justice provides a sufficient domestic mechanism for trying any members of the U.S. armed forces suspected of alleged war crimes to avoid having any American soldier tried under ICC jurisdiction. Furthermore, virtually every person put on trial before the ICC since its founding has been a high-level military or political figure, not individual soldiers. Despite this, ultra-conservative Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) introduced an amendment called the American Service-Members' Protection Act prohibiting the United States from cooperating in any way with the ICC and its prosecution of individuals responsible for serious crimes against humanity, such as those responsible for the genocide in Darfur. In addition, this vindictive law also restricts U.S. foreign aid to countries that support the ICC. Advertisement According to Richard Dicker, director of the International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch, "The states that have ratified this treaty are trying to strengthen the rule of law," but that the United States was "trying to punish them for that." Similarly, William R. Pace, executive director of the Institute for Global Policy and convener of the global Coalition for the International Criminal Court, noted how "This Congressional action is part of a multi-pronged effort of the US government to undermine international justice, international law and international peacekeeping." Much to the shock and dismay of many of her constituents, Clinton voted in favor of that Republican-sponsored amendment, which was immediately signed into law by President George W. Bush. Even more disturbingly, this resolution Clinton helped become law also authorizes the president of the United States "to use all means necessary and appropriate to free members of United States military and certain other allied persons if they are detained or imprisoned by an international criminal court." Given that this presumably includes military force, the bill was quickly dubbed the "Hague Invasion Act." Not surprisingly, there was widespread international criticism of the bill, particularly in The Netherlands, where the foreign minister issued a formal protest and the Dutch parliament passed a unanimous resolution raising concerns about the authorization of the use of force, an action which would presumably involve armed confrontation with Dutch soldiers and police guarding the court complex. In addition to violating the UN Charter, such an attack would run counter to the NATO Treaty, to which both the United States and the Netherlands are also party. Advertisement Apparently, however, Clinton -- who has championed U.S. military intervention in over a dozen countries as a senator and Secretary of State and has spoken at right-wing rallies outside the United Nations protesting the world body -- has no problem with that. Her position on the ICC places her well to the right of President Barack Obama, who supports the court, and closer to that of the Republican contenders for president. Ironically, it was President Bill Clinton who initially signed the Rome Statute establishing the court, yet another reminder that as president, Hillary Clinton would likely pursue an even more hawkish foreign policy than did her husband. It's unclear why Clinton has so little respect for international law. Some claim it is because she feels a need to look tough in the face of possible Republican opponents who are even further to the right. More likely, however, it could be related to her advocacy of establishing closer U.S. military cooperation with a number of foreign leaders accused of war crimes who might conceivably find themselves under ICC indictment. An Uber driver holds up a sign during a protest against a rise in the commission taken by Uber Technologies Inc. outside their offices in London, U.K., on Thursday, Nov. 12, 2015. Uber Technologies Inc. got a boost from a London judge who said smartphones used by its drivers arent the same as taxi meters and dont require a license from the citys transport authority. Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg via Getty Images Fifty-one years ago, Bob Dylan's song "Maggie's Farm," a brilliant satire that compared the job prospects of that generation's youth to that of working on a dystopian plantation, was released on Dylan's album "Bringing It All Back Home." The owners, Maggie, her ma, pa and brother -- a real close-knit unit, like a small "sharing economy" startup -- were quite eager to put you to work, but they were a bit stingy on the compensation side for your menial, TaskRabbit-type work. Well, I wake in the morningFold my hands and pray for rainI got a head full of ideasThat are drivin' me insaneIt's a shame the way she makes me scrub the floorI ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more Dylan wrote that song in the 1960s, at a time when the plight of U.S. workers was actually on an upswing. Wages were rising, living standards were increasing, racial minorities and women were finally starting to find their seat at the table. For the next couple of decades, the U.S. workforce remained one of the most productive and wealthiest in the world. But flash forward to today, and the workforce has been enduring a long strange trip downward for nearly three decades. That's how long it's been since, in aggregate, American workers have had a pay increase. Even as corporate profits are at an all-time high, with significant chunks parked overseas to avoid being taxed, not much of the benefits of that labor productivity are being returned to domestic shores. U.S. workers are in the process of being rolled. Let's call it "Shaggy's Farm," led by Maggie's brother, Shaggy. I ain't gonna work for Maggie's brother no moreNo, I ain't gonna work for Maggie's brother no moreWell, he hands you a nickelHe hands you a dimeHe asks you with a grinIf you're havin' a good timeThen he fines you every time you slam the doorI ain't gonna work for Maggie's brother no more Advertisement A significant factor in the decline of the quality of jobs today has been many employers' increasing reliance on "non-regular" employees -- a growing army of contractors, freelancers, temps and part-timers. Meet Chris Young, an assembly line worker at Nissan's manufacturing plant in Smyrna, Tenn. Young works alongside other Nissan employees, but he doesn't work for Nissan. Rather, he works for a private contractor that provides a majority of Nissan's workers. Young receives half the salary, less job security and fewer safety-net benefits than the regular Nissan employees. Nationwide, temps like Chris Young, who was profiled by the Washington Post, have provided nearly one-fifth of the job growth since the recession ended. And increasingly, the temps aren't very temporary. Some have been employed at the same company for as long as 11 years, resulting in the doublespeak term "permatemps." Microsoft paid $97 million to settle a lawsuit for denying benefits to over 8,000 permatemps. Instacart employees fulfill orders for delivery at the new Whole Foods in Los Angeles. (Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images) The advantage for a business of using such non-regular workers is obvious: It can lower labor costs dramatically, often by , since it is not responsible for health benefits, social security, unemployment or injured workers' compensation, paid sick or vacation leave and more. Contract workers, who are barred from forming unions and have no grievance procedure, can be dismissed without notice. A small percentage of contract workers earn high enough wages to make it all work. But most contractors are just grunts down on "Shaggy's Farm." Besides the explosion in the number of temporary jobs, nearly half of the new jobs created in the so-called "recovery" pay only a bit more than minimum wage. Three-fourths of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, with little to no emergency savings to rely on if they lose their job. Income inequality is now as bad as it was in 1928, just before the Great Depression. Incredibly, the share of wealth held by the bottom 90 percent is no higher today than during our grandparents' time. It's as if the New Deal had never existed. The Latest Twist in the Race to the Bottom Where are the minstrels and poets to hold up society's mirror? Why are no major or even emerging recording artists today writing such sharp, penetrating songs as "Maggie's Farm"? If the corrosive reality of the traditional economy doesn't inspire a Dylan-esque satire, maybe the latest "Twilight Zone" funhouse on "Shaggy's Farm" will. A new and alarming mash-up of Silicon Valley technology and Wall Street greed is thrusting upon us the latest economic fad: the so-called "sharing economy." Companies like Uber, Airbnb, Instacart, Upwork and TaskRabbit allegedly are "liberating workers" to become "independent" and the "CEOs of their own businesses." In reality, these workers also are contractors, with little choice but to hire themselves out for ever-smaller jobs ("gigs" and "micro-gigs") and wages, with no safety net while the companies profit. Uber at first seemed like a great idea to many. Taxi service was crummy nearly everywhere, so the industry was ripe for being disrupted. And with so many people struggling to find any kind of work, a lot of underemployed men jumped behind the wheels of their own vehicles to make a few extra bucks. Not only that, but with the new ride-sharing service, suddenly an American fantasy seemed to be coming true: everyone could have their own private chauffeur at the tap of an app. Rush hour traffic in Los Angeles. (Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg via Getty Images) But increasingly it's clear that this huge increase in convenience comes with a price, both environmentally and labor-wise. The reason Uber and Lyft drivers arrive so rapidly is because these companies have flooded the streets with cars. In city after city, from New York to San Francisco to Seattle, already-thick traffic has gotten even more congested. In New York, transportation analyst Charles Komanoff Uber's own numbers and concluded that Uber-caused congestion has reduced traffic speeds in downtown Manhattan by around 8 percent. Incredibly, there are now far ride-sharing cars operating in New York City than there are yellow taxis. Uber cars and those of its ride-sharing competitor Lyft also now vastly taxis in several American . Uber and Lyft have put an estimated 15,000 autos on the streets in San Francisco; Ed Reiskin, director of transportation for the Municipal Transportation Agency in San Francisco, : "They're all contributing to the increased traffic." Ride-sharing defenders respond that increased congestion is being caused by an improving economy; undoubtedly there's some truth to that. But I've lived in San Francisco for 20 years, and I've seen the city streets in both good times and bad. The number of cars -- and increasingly desperate drivers -- choking in traffic has never been so in your face. Urban cores cannot simply add thousands of additional cars to already crowded streets and not expect rather dramatic knock-on effects. Urban cores cannot simply add thousands of additional cars to already crowded streets and not expect rather dramatic knock-on effects. This is not only true today, it was also true in yesteryear: during the Great Depression, so many jobless men jumped into whatever vehicle they could find to provide rides-for-hire that soon local officials and media like the New York Times suggested regulation. Thus was born the much-reviled medallion system, which limited the number of taxis on the streets. It seems we have entered a back-to-the-future scenario. On the labor side, Uber drivers are not treated as employees but as freelance contractors. Most drivers, after they subtract their considerable driving expenses, don't earn any more than taxi drivers. Many Uber drivers complain they don't even earn minimum wage. They receive no benefits and can be cut off the app-based platform at any time. Recently Uber cut off hundreds of drivers (and possibly over a thousand) in Los Angeles and San Francisco because those drivers' "acceptance rate" was too low. Many veteran drivers have figured out that, given the dramatic increase in congestion, drivers don't make any money on short rides because they are stuck in traffic. They have begun refusing short rides, so Uber fired many of these drivers without warning. The message was clear: a low acceptance rate can get you fired. Think about it: if these drivers really are the CEOs of their own driving business, as Uber likes to claim, shouldn't they be able to refuse a ride they know will cause them to lose money? This incident and others show that Uber exerts control over its drivers, which seems to support the legal claim by thousands of drivers who are suing Uber, insisting they are indeed employees, not contractors. As an employer, Uber would be responsible for paying Social Security and Medicare contributions for these workers, as well as unemployment and injured worker compensation. The drivers are also suing for reimbursement of expenses and for tips. New York City taxi drivers hold a rally in front of Governor Andrew Cuomo's office to protest against Uber in Sept., 2015. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images) Welcome to "Shaggy's Farm." That's why, according to Uber's , most drivers work only part-time and about half leave within a year. New drivers like the flexibility, but after a while they burn out, with frequent and unfair treatment (in early January, Uber wages once again, this time by 30 percent to about 50 cents per mile, less than the $0.54 reimbursement rate set by the government for wear and tear on a vehicle -- many drivers aren't even earning enough to reimburse their vehicle's depreciation). If driving for Uber was such a great job and paid halfway decently, wouldn't more drivers last longer and drive more hours? Not surprisingly, many Uber drivers have called for forming a union, and recently pioneering legislation was in Seattle to allow NGOs to organize these drivers. Come Stay on Shaggy's Farm' -- Courtesy of Airbnb Airbnb also started out as a good idea: helping "regular people" rent out a spare room in their home to make some extra money. But over the last two years Airbnb has morphed into something quite different: it has been invaded by professional real estate operatives who rent out multiple units, not just a spare bedroom. In many cities, Airbnb "hosts" control dozens of properties; in New York City some hosts have controlled over 200 properties. In San Francisco, Seattle, New York and elsewhere, 40 percent or more of hosts have multiple listings, according to data expert Tom Slee, author of "What's Yours Is Mine: Against the Sharing Economy." According to Slee's analysis, almost half of Airbnb's revenue in these cities comes from hosts with multiple listings. A leaked memo from Coldwell Banker Commercial shows the perverse profit incentives on "Shaggy's Farm." The memo broadcast to the real estate community that if their rental units are let out via Airbnb instead of to local residents, the projected rate of return is well over twice the profit they can take in from renting to tenants. Often the professionals evict longtime residents and convert entire buildings into Airbnb hotels, eating up the local housing stock. In cities with an already low housing vacancy rate, Airbnb's thousands of listings in each city are devouring the few vacancies available. It is eating away the thin margin and making an existing housing crisis even more urgent. A protester outside an apartment building that allegedly evicted all of the tenants to convert the units to Airbnb rentals in San Francisco. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) "Shaggy's Farm" is increasingly relying on these types of business operations as a core part of its model to maximize profits. It's a big contributor to the ongoing race to the bottom. But fortunately there are solutions. One that I and others have proposed is creating a "portable safety net." Each worker should be assigned an "individual security account" into which every business that hires that worker would pay a small "safety net fee," prorated to the number of hours a worker is employed by that business. Those funds would be used to pay for each worker's safety net. We don't have to wait for a dysfunctional U.S. Congress to pass this "new new deal." State governments and even city councils in the worst-hit cities could pass this, requiring its businesses to pay into individual security accounts for each worker. This would be a major step (out of the many needed) towards forging a new kind of deal, one in which most workers would be enriched by technology and innovation, instead of being disrupted and impoverished by this "share-the-crumbs" economy down on "Shaggy's Farm." Parts of this piece, which was adapted for The WorldPost, appear in the author's recent book Raw Deal: How the "Uber Economy" and Runaway Capitalism Are Screwing American Workers. Earlier on WorldPost: ALEPPO, SYRIA - JANUARY 17: Members of Syrian opposition Al-Sultan Murad Brigade and Al-Mutasim Battalion patrol at the Yanyaban village in Aleppo, Syria on January 17, 2016 after they took the region back from terrorist organization Daesh. (Photo by Huseyin Nasir/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) Back in August 2014, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, the Nusra Front, and Islamic State group (IS) forces attacked the Lebanese town of Arsal. The fighting concluded with the capture of 30 Lebanese policemen and soldiers. Immediately after the battle, the Nusra Front and IS executed two soldiers each. One died from wounds sustained from fighting in Arsal, while 16 soldiers remained in the custody of the Nusra Front, and nine remained imprisoned by IS. Sixteen months later, an exchange of captives took place between Lebanon and the Nusra Front. The deal was brokered by Qatar, who has over the last decade been playing somewhat controversial, but often crucial roles in conflict mediation throughout the region. At the time, December 1, 2015, the event attracted substantial public attention, but it quickly faded into the background of the news cycle. At first glance, the return of 16 Lebanese policemen and soldiers -- held by the Nusra Front since August 2014 -- seemed like a routine swap between belligerents as a result of successful local level negotiations -- most of which took place recently as a result of the stalemate felt by all sides on the ground. Yet, this exchange differs because it took place between a non-state actor -- in this case, an internationally-agreed-upon terrorist organization -- and a neighboring state, Lebanon; with the blessing of the Syrian and Saudi governments. In Lebanon, the prisoner exchange provided the government with an opportunity to instill a sense of unity in its fragmented populace. Upon the release of the Lebanese captives by the Nusra Front, people in Beirut representing different political allegiances cheered the news of their release. Meanwhile in Doha, the government quickly claimed credit for having facilitated talks and provided aid, but strongly denied paying any money as part of the deal. Although this is not the first time Qatar has succeeded in brokering such a deal involving foreign nationals -- it did so before with Lebanese Shiite pilgrims -- the fact that it involved the exchange of soldiers is significant. Advertisement An earlier attempt to release the Jordanian pilot failed despite the Jordanian Government's willingness to submit to the demands of IS. In fact, the exchange contrasts with Nusra Front's own track record of handling prisoners of war. Therefore, this case deserves deeper analysis as it highlights a number of anomalies that may have implications for how we view the conflict in Syria and the ways in which it may end. First, the exchange would not have been successful without the involvement of many parties that are "publicly" at war with each other. Major General Abbas Ibrahim, chief of the Lebanese Security Service, emphasized that the deal was assisted by the direct involvement of Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah, Bashar al-Assad, and even Sa'ad Hariri. While this raises hope that talking peace among foes is not impossible when it comes to the war in Syria; at the same time it underlines that a clear political will is needed to do so. In this case, the exchange clearly served Hezbollah's interests. The organization has been blamed for dragging Lebanon into the Syria war and has found it increasingly difficult to justify why Lebanese soldiers -- mostly non-Shiite -- were placed in harm's way as a result of its unilateral decisions in Syria. Second, the exchange represents an attempt by the Nusra Front to position itself as a party willing to negotiate in order to achieve both a military and political objective. The group also demonstrated a capacity to protect captured soldiers and later leverage them as bargaining tools, instead of merely executing them. By doing so, it attempts to distance itself from IS and its atrocious actions; however, it achieved this end without totally alienating IS by insisting on including Saja al-Dulaimi -- the former wife of IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, arrested by the Lebanese security forces in November 2014 -- in the exchange. Given recent developments on the ground, this can be seen as an attempt by the Nusra Front to reiterate its assertion that unlike its affiliate, al-Qaeda, its project is a national one. The Nusra Front has no ambition to be seen as operating across borders, particularly following its enrollment alongside other more moderate groups in their fight against Assad. Third, most of the prisoners released by the Lebanese in exchange for their security personnel were captured following the Arsal attack and remained in custody for a long time without being formally and publicly charged with specific criminal acts. This is despite the fact that al-Dulaimi's history of serving as a transporter of money for militant organizations was documented by the Washington Post, as she was imprisoned by the Syrian government until 2014. Similarly, Joumana Hmayed, another prisoner of the Lebanese, was caught around the same time as al-Dulaimi for driving a car with about 100 kilograms of explosives. These actions, if true, clearly show intent on the part of the suspects to aid or carry out terrorist acts. For the Lebanese government to release these individuals, the political goodwill generated in return was calculated to be higher in value. Fourth, as a result of mediating this prisoner exchange, the Qatari government has unwittingly placed itself, yet again, in a controversial position. The Qataris' involvement, once more, demonstrated their ability to access -- directly or indirectly -- some of the extremist groups such as the Nusra Front, and more so their willingness to negotiate with such organizations. This trend continued despite their continuous denial of any links to terrorist organizations in response to growing international scrutiny over their ties to militant Islamists fighting in Syria and elsewhere. Advertisement Of course, last year, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, the Emir of Qatar, expressed his belief that not all groups possessing an Islamist background are terrorists, and as such, Qatar will continue to engage these groups in dialogue in order to achieve a favorable outcome for both parties. The Qatari position to keep the door open remains advantageous given the current political and security flux across the region. However, for Qatari officials, publicly revealing their connections to extreme Islamist organizations, as they displayed by communicating directly with the Nusra Front, will prove undoubtedly damaging in the long run. Qatar needs to reflect on this issue very carefully as it shifted its mediation efforts from multi-party, complex issues of peace-making in the region to narrow and single issue initiatives designed to achieve immediate results. Despite the Emir's good will in wanting to ensure that communication lines persist in Syria, and undoubtedly the basic humanitarian gesture involved in the exchange on all sides, Qatar would better itself by disassociating the government from such talks. They ought to take lead from the experiences of other nations, who over the years have learned that mediation is often a thankless task. As a mediator -- to some extent this applies also to the parties of conflict -- you need to preserve the option of "deniability," i.e. your ability as a government to deny any role in the process, in case things go wrong. In a previous analysis paper, the author recommended that Qatar should encourage the establishment of a national or a regional, non-governmental entity that can develop the ability to undertake discreet interventions without having public link to the state. This would allow the Qatari government to distance itself from Islamist groups, but provide them with the reputation they seek as a broker of peace in the region. It will also protect Qatari interests, both at home and abroad. I'm a liberal, Jewish woman. My best friend, Dawn, is an ultra-conservative, born-again Christian. As expected, our cemented views on politics, societal expectations, and even portions of our value systems could not be more incongruent. Due to our often-conflicting opinions on sensitive subjects, one would think time would eventually play out into a broken friendship, or, at best, drift into that friendship purgatory-- acquaintanceship. Name a controversial and/or social topic and we typically will not see eye-to-eye. We are on different pages--rather, entirely different books-- in regard to most religious and political subject matter. This potentially could cause great discomfort, but, in the end, Dawn and I have learned over the past 35 years that our friendship and devotion to one another supersede our need to win an argument or prove our point, regardless of the passion we feel for said subject. Surprisingly, our differences have actually become strengths in our relationship. Miraculously, our fierce loyalty to one another remains stronger than ever; not despite our differences, but in spite of them. Advertisement Every year that passes, the gaps in our political and religious compatibility seem to widen yet our friendship strengthens. The explanation for the above is pretty straightforward. Because it is Dawn's adherence to her religion that has made her the person she is and, put simply, determines how she lives her life. It is these choices she has made that make her the incredible human being she is and how beautifully she contributes her best self to our friendship. Without her devotion to Christianity, she wouldn't be the same Dawn, the person I cherish and adore. Our deep bond goes back to sixth grade. I knew in an instant, the second we met, that we would be friends for the rest of our lives. We fostered our friendship from that point on and our commitment to it is thicker than any other I've known. Through middle school, high school, college, jobs, marriages, kids, divorce (mine), we have been a wonderful constant in the other's life. We have a lovely and healthy dependence on one another. But on paper, we really shouldn't want to invest our energy and time in the other; conventional wisdom states we would not enjoy one another's company and would lack respect for the other's views, and ultimately, the person herself. Due to the extreme differentials in our beliefs, many would ask why on earth one would choose to be so close to a species so entirely opposite from ourselves and what we hold close. Advertisement Yet Dawn and I have proven time and again that, contrary to popular belief, a true, deep, honest friendship isn't necessarily dependent upon similarities. While corresponding ideas and beliefs can energize and strengthen any relationship, I have learned through this particular friendship that, surprisingly, sometimes being at very opposite ends of the spectrum can actually have the same outcome--a phenomenal friendship. When you care so much about someone, the desire to prove that person incorrect or to attempt to convince them of your way pales in comparison to the importance of the friendship. Because a true, solid friendship goes deeper than opinions--and even beyond certain values. Common ground isn't always a necessity to maintain a durable bond. Regardless of our differing views and beliefs, neither of us would ever consider dipping a toe into judgment waters about the other's opinions. We have a strong, mutual respect for the other, notwithstanding our strongly opposing thoughts. Dawn has always encouraged and supported my connection to Judaism and has never tried to dissuade me for a second from holding firm my religious or political views. When my younger daughter had her bat mitzvah, Dawn was one of her biggest cheerleaders. And from my end, even though Dawn's ideology and viewpoints are often far from those I adhere to, I respect that she holds these beliefs close, acts on them, and doesn't deviate from her solid commitments. In fact, I have more respect for her holding tight to her conservative and religious beliefs than I do for someone with my same beliefs but who is inconsistent in walking the walk. Because of this, I couldn't be more proud of Dawn nor could I possess more ardent admiration for her. The way she embraces her faith and actually lives the life required of that faith impresses me regularly. Though her walk isn't the walk of my religion, it is a walk of love nonetheless. She is the most genuine soul I've ever met and puts her value system into hard core action, not mere words. So, with the ultimate irony, it was her unselfishness and grace, born from her Christian faith, which pulled me, her Jewish best friend, out of the darkest years of my life. I, who possess such opposing feelings to hers when it comes to religion and social issues, actually have benefitted from her religion, as that Christianity is the momentum behind Dawn. She caught me over and over when I had fallen hard during and after my very painful, unforeseen divorce. And still, to this day, her unwavering support is always at the ready. Her religion is what drives her to be the best person she can be, and therefore, able to give her best self to our friendship. Advertisement I have learned through this profound mixed-religion friendship that Dawn loves me for whom my Jewish upbringing intended me to be. And, subsequently, not only am I open-minded and accepting of the fact that my best friend's religion has made her who she is and the reason she is this very special individual, I am thrilled with it. It is Dawn's Christianity that has made her into the dear friend I adore, the human being I admire. LOS ANGELES, CA - OCTOBER 14: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), agents detain an immigrant on October 14, 2015 in Los Angeles, California. ICE agents said the immigrant, a legal resident with a Green Card, was a convicted criminal and member of the Alabama Street Gang in the Canoga Park area. ICE builds deportation cases against thousands of immigrants living in the United States. Green Card holders are also vulnerable to deportation if convicted of certain crimes. The number of ICE detentions and deportations from California has dropped since the state passed the Trust Act in October 2013, which set limits on California state law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration authorities. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images) Since just before the end of 2015, the announcement and then execution of expanded immigration raids has set off panic in immigrant communities. The heightened awareness of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity caused rumors to fly, moved faith leaders to offer sanctuary, and exposed that in addition to its current hunt for asylum-seeking mothers and children, ICE is performing raids on a daily basis under the banner of "fugitive operations." Just this week, as the Supreme Court announced it would take up a case that could finally allow some undocumented immigrants temporary relief, the Washington Post reported that we can expect the raids to be on-going and possibly target unaccompanied children and people who have been ordered deported without ever having been in court. Advertisement The new context of 2016 has many people asking, "What do I do if immigration agents come to my door?" Here are nine steps for what to do in case of a raid. 1. Get in touch with a community or advocacy group right now. The best defense against immigration enforcement practices that separate our families is to be organized and be prepared beforehand. Being in touch with a community organization can give you resources that you need to defend yourself and your family, information about your rights, and a group of people who can organize to defend you, if something should happen. 2. Create an emergency plan for taking care of children, the elderly or other people who depend on your care. Let them know who to call if you get taken into custody or you don't pick them up from school or the doctor. Have the paperwork prepared to grant a trusted person permission to pick up your children or perform other duties in your place. Advertisement 3. Memorize the phone number of two trusted people. When in custody, you will not have access to your phone so you'll need to have contact numbers memorized. They should know that they are your contacts in case of emergency (i.e. if you get taken into custody by ICE), know where your important documents are, and what is your emergency plan. 4. If ICE comes to your home, do not open the door. Even if they tell you they are looking for someone else, or they show you the photograph of the person they are looking for and you do not know them, you don't have to open the door. If they say they have a warrant, ask them to slip it under the door or show you through a window. The document should be signed by a judge, and have the name of the person they are pursuing and address that they have permission to search. You still don't have to open the door if they have it, but it means they likely will come in anyway. But if they come in without your permission and without a warrant, it is a violation of civil rights. Either way, it is best practice to just not open the door. 5. Remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you by ICE. Unlike in a criminal arrest, you will not be reminded by the agents or read your miranda rights. Do not answer any questions, especially those that expose your status like where were you born, do you have papers. Advertisement 6. Do not sign any papers without your attorney or agree to be fingerprinted. Do not give information about yourself. Immigration agents sometimes insist that people should sign confessions or their own deportation, ironically called "voluntary departure". Do not sign anything without fully understanding it and having the advice of a trusted lawyer. ICE agents have also asked for people's fingerprints. You do not have to allow them to take your fingerprints. 7. Document the raid. Take pictures, the names of the agents (if possible), ask for their badge number, count how many agents were present and if they had guns. Write down whether they were given permission to enter the house, and get the names and birthdays of those taken into custody. If you don't get a chance until after, write down what you remember as soon as you are able to and report it to a community organization. Credit: Puente Arizona Credit: El Gran Om 8. Know that you can fight your case. Get advice from a trusted attorney and look for resources in your community. Just because you have been ordered deported, doesn't mean that you are out of options. Many times immigrants do not receive proper representation from their attorneys, and are ordered deported even though they have solid evidence that they should be allowed to stay. Other times, attention from the community is able to get ICE to re-consider a person's deportation. To get an initial evaluation of your case if you are a victim of a raid or are in deportation proceedings visit, http://www.notonemoredeportation.com/intake/ Advertisement 9. Report the raid: Make sure you report the raid. You can call the Salvadoran consulate at 202.553.1545 or let us know what happened here. Baja and Paso Robles compete as our place to unplug from Los Angeles. Day 1: Our sweet spot has been a canine friendly casita named Villa Bella Guest House. It is midpoint between Rosarito Beach and Ensenada near El Descanso, a famous surf site with a stunning view of cliffs, coves and the sea below. Barolo is a fine traveling companion. All photos courtesy of Lewis H. Perkins The more we come here the longer we want to stay. Once over the border, we tend to sidestep Tijuana which has been rightfully touted for its fine dining. We prefer to wait for Susannas Cuisine of the Californias nestled in a zeabra festooned courtyard of a vintage mini-mall close to the old market in Rosarito Beach. (Zeabra is a nearly extinct word meaning wood fence that was culled from a comic novel, The Clicking of Cuthbert, by P.G. Wodehouse started on this trip.) The tamarind margaritas are to die for, as is the house made bread with tubs of scallion butter and tapenade served at each table soon after seated. The cilantro pesto is excellent as are the fish and seafood entrees I have sampled. Having been there at least a half dozen times -- and never once disappointed -- is no small feat in my world. Advertisement Day 2: Early morning awakening is necessary, along with coffee, if a beach hike is in order before the arrival of high tide. Yoga and Tai Chi warm ups accomplished with other beach combers and surfers alike is inspiring. Tides wait for no one Foray into the closest town Primo Tapia for their quirky farmer's market for a few comestibles and a decent outdoor haircut. The butcher in the Mercado La Placita is great. La Cascada is an outstanding value for pints of hand packed gelato for later in the evening. A tamarind pop for now is perfect. We should have planned better and reserved appointments at Las Rocas since we wanted to catch the sunset while having a pedicure. Instead we opted for Priscilla Aguilar who makes house calls. Ms. Aguilar works mostly through personal referrals, but can also be reached on Facebook. Less lazy after sunset, we would have gone to hear a guitarist of local fame at Hotel Mission. Instead we opt to watch movies, play backgammon and read. Advertisement Villa Bella Guest House on the left Day 3: Maybe you get the drift here, a repeat of yesterday morning's walk and stretch, this time going for a quick dip in the ocean. Back to Primo Tapia for extra groceries since new friends are coming over for Hoppin' Johns vegetarian style with hard boiled eggs. This paired nicely with a lovely Fume Blanc Sauvignon Blanc blend from L.A. Cite in the Guadalupe Valley Wine district aka Ruta del Vino. Meaty Tacos El Poblanos or seafood at Ana Mar's or Allegria for a quick bite would have sufficed if we were not cooking. A step up in dining is Splash Cantina or Benny's in Rosarito. Further south is the fabulous harbor side Tres Muelle in Ensenada. Today's variation on a theme is to take a hike into the neighborhood we overlook from our perch which feels like Topanga Canyon. We run into some nice people, one couple from San Diego and the other Orange County, who also use this place to unplug. Why relatively unplugged? This is a perfect place to get work done and relax at the same time; to rest, repair, write and catch up on reading. It is hard to be reached and reach others except through email and social media as the internet signal is strong. Google phone does not work and roaming charges on your smart phone can be expensive. We did not try Skype, but it could be a possibility, if motivated. A number of trusted contemporaries have expressed skepticism, derision and fear when we tell them we're going to Baja Norte again. Foremost, they express fears of unsafe and unsanitary conditions. Advertisement What is ironic with these folks -- whose opinions I take seriously -- they will regularly go further into Mexico to Puerto Vallarta, for example, or a third world country half way around the world, at the proverbial drop of a dime. Interesting, what is close to home is more suspect then what is farther away. A compadre in unplugging, put it this way, "As long as you find clean restaurants with good reputations, refrain from getting drunk in public, driving too late and buying drugs on the street -- if you follow these general rules of civil conduct -- you will be fine." Another day relatively unplugged in paradise Basic Logistics of Coming and Going to Mexico Try to leave Los Angeles via the 405 south to the 5 south at the crack of dawn to get a head start on rush hour traffic, but no later than noon. After 12:00 p.m. you hit the evening rush hours, which will double the time to your final destination. In general we do not drive at night in Mexico. Returning to the U.S. try to cross the border before 10:00 am. Google maps, will at times recommend the short cut, the 74 toll road Huntington Beach to La Jolla, though not every time. It you decide to do the toll road, it costs less than $10 round trip. Pay for it online, unless you are committed to having the transponder attached to your car. Be aware of the five day grace period after using the toll road before a fine kicks in. On your way down call in your Mexican car insurance. Jackie Alameda provided invaluable help obtaining the Sentri card and car certification which allows the greatest ease for crossing international borders. Living in the States you sometimes forget how close we are to a 'foreign country.' Advertisement There is a rest stop with a view of the ocean called Aliso Creek -- Camp Pendleton north of Oceanside and south of Lego Land. If you have a kitchen in Baja, Tammarack Avenue in Chula Vista has a few choices for groceries. Vons just east off the exit is closest to the freeway. We take the Tijuana (TJ) entrance down but prefer the Otay Mesa (OM) border crossing for our return. Returning home it is easier to walk over OM than TJ, for those who do not have a Sentri or Global pass. Harm reductionists, HIV/hepatitis C preventionists, and good people everywhere, rejoice! Last month Congressional Republicans rallied behind an effort to lift a decades-old ban against federal funding for syringe exchange programs. Syringe exchange programs swap out used syringes for clean ones while providing wraparound services such as HIV/hepatitis C testing, referrals to social services and access to drug treatment for people struggling with addiction. For decades now evidence has overwhelmingly concluded that syringe exchange programs are effective at reducing the transmission of HIV and hepatitis C among injection drug users, lowering needle-stick injury to law enforcement and members of the public, and connecting people who use drugs to social services and treatment options. Despite this, the outdated ban on federal funding for these programs has meant that most programs struggle to stay afloat and others are forbidden from being implemented at all. This Congressional action could mean that existing programs struggling mightily to provide adequate HIV/hepatitis C prevention, syringe disposal, and wraparound services might finally see some reward for their efforts. I chatted with Whitney Englander, policy advocate at the Harm Reduction Coalition, to see what the end of the ban might mean for organizations that provide syringe access services to people who use drugs. Advertisement TC: Can you describe when the ban on federal funding was introduced and its original intent? WE: The ban on federal funding for syringe exchange programs (SEPs) has been in place since the 1980s. Several programs were springing up around the country at that time in response to the HIV epidemic and there was political backlash over what impact SEPs would have on drug use. At the time, many were concerned that SEPs would encourage riskier drug use or cause more people to initiate drug use. Even though there was already an overwhelming body of evidence to demonstrate these claims to be false, Congress implemented a ban on federal funding for these programs. Because of that, many states and municipalities also declined to provide funding. In 2009 after Obama took office, Congress briefly lifted the ban, but it was reinstated again in 2011 when the House flipped back to Republicans. I think the frustration [within the harm reduction movement] was that it seemed that even though we certainly had champions, neither Democrats nor Republicans really prioritized syringe exchange funding when competing with other hot button policy riders such as abortion or Obamacare funding. It was used as a trading chip by both sides to win other things. The opioid epidemic's spread across the country has changed the paradigm. To be clear, Congress did not fully repeal the ban on federal funding for syringe exchange programs. There are some caveats. For example, they still will not fund the syringes themselves, but they will fund all the additional program elements from the staff to the facilities, as well as the other wraparound services provided to participants. The area has to demonstrate risk for an outbreak of HIV or HCV, there needs to be some collaboration with the CDC, etc. But this is still a major step. With the current opioid epidemic, it's pretty easy to demonstrate risk for an HCV or overdose outbreak and syringes are usually the most affordable element of a syringe program. TC: What were some of the arguments used to convince Congress to repeal the ban now? WE: Ironically, refusing to allow federal dollars (and by extension in many cases, state and municipal dollars) to fund syringe exchange programs, Congress was actually ensuring that any programs that did exist were likely to only provide syringes and not the other wraparound services that make up a comprehensive disease prevention program. With limited funding many programs can only provide syringes to participants, since syringes are relatively cheap. What they couldn't provide was HIV testing, drug treatment referrals, substance use counselors, job training, linkage to the health care system, and other services that are far more costly. A ban on government funding meant that Medicaid couldn't reimburse these services, so it created a disincentive for programs to provide them. That was a key argument that resonated with Congress. TC: What caused Republicans to lead the effort to repeal the ban after decades of imposing it? Advertisement WE: The short answer is Scott County, Indiana. In early 2015 we saw the ravages of an HIV outbreak among people who inject drugs. The tiny town of Austin, in Scott County, saw 170 new cases of HIV among a population of 4,000. That kind of an outbreak was unheard of before, but it's starting to happen, especially in rural counties where they don't have the infrastructure to handle these kinds of medical emergencies. Urban areas have long had drug issues and have built the infrastructure to address outbreaks, but rural areas, where drug use is shifting to, are unprepared. Given that Scott County is right across the border from Kentucky, which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell represents, there was good reason to fear that the outbreak might spread to Kentucky. There was actually a research project out of the University of Kentucky that modeled what that might look like. I think that resonated with Senator McConnell and Chairman Rogers, also representing a rural Kentucky district that is already hard hit by hepatitis C, who were the champions behind the efforts to repeal the ban. Both policymakers deserve a lot of credit for heralding in this reform and making it a reality. TC: What are the next steps to encourage syringe exchange efforts in the U.S.? WE: We have had this devastating policy rider in place for over three decades. Amending it and modifying it was an important step, but it's important to note that no new funding has been attached to it. The next important step is to do the hard work to get the federal dollars flowing and directed where they can help the most. I am hoping that this will give states flexibility to support existing syringe exchange programs. Now that the ban is lifted, it will give some existing programs the validation they need to continue in areas that have been hard hit by the opioid epidemic, HIV and hepatitis C. This is an important step forward for harm reduction. We have long been blacklisted as not part of the mainstream health care continuum and I think this was the final push towards lifting that stigma. It is important to address the opioid epidemic using a full spectrum of services, including primary prevention, treatment, capacity to integration into primary care, overdose prevention, HIV/hepatitis C testing and referrals, etc. Harm reduction efforts such as syringe exchange are now being integrated into all the other important strategy pieces to address the opioid epidemic. Hopefully this will be another step forward for health agencies to learn how they can integrate harm reduction into other programs as well. Our youngest son, David, became ill at 16. He started having psychotic episodes, was hospitalized, and could no longer attend high school, so we quit our jobs and moved back to Montana from California, where we were living at the time. We thought we could give him a more stable life there. He was able to finish high school and start college, but his struggle was hardly over, as he continued to have psychotic episodes, attempted suicide and spent time in a hospital. During a psychotic break, he committed three felonies and ended up in jail, spending six weeks in isolation in a holding cell while highly psychotic. A few months later, he was sent to the state psychiatric hospital's forensics unit for an evaluation. The evaluation showed he was unable to form a criminal intent as a result of his illness. The court gave him a sentence of 25 years, with all but 10 suspended as a "guilty but mentally ill" offender. In Montana, an individual is considered to have committed the crime even though they are mentally ill, so they serve their time in a secure Forensic Hospital Unit. He was there for almost four years. We visited him every weekend, celebrating three Christmases and Thanksgivings at the hospital. Most visits, our car was the only one in the lot. It's a long trip, and some of the patients in the unit had committed crimes so horrible that their families couldn't get past it. But we knew how important family connection was to David's recovery. So we came every week, 120 miles round trip to be there for him. His two sisters and brother, along with their families, came from out of state for visits and called him on a regular basis. Advertisement David was paroled to a treatment facility in Missoula, Montana, where he has been since December 2014. After spending time in jail and the hospital, David decided he needed to make a change in his life and started working toward it. He participates in the treatment facilities' 12-step program, volunteers, and is an active participant in his treatment plan. David has a wonderful parole officer who works with him to make sure he stays on track. She works with his therapist and case manager to help him set manageable goals that he can reach. She recently helped him apply for college. As he has been convicted of three felonies, she helped him prepare for the questions the college would ask. She helped him convey his commitment to recovery and sobriety, and that he's taking responsibility for his life and sticking to his treatment plan. We started taking a National Alliance on Mental Illness "Family-to-Family" class around the time David first got sick. At the front of the class, there was a chart showing the stages of emotional response to a loved one getting sick. We started at the first stage, dealing with the diagnosis. We were in denial and angry. We slowly moved toward acceptance and are now in the final stage: advocacy. We know what it feels like to have a pain in the pit of your belly, knowing something bad is about to happen but not being able to prevent it. But now we have more hope than we ever thought we would and want to work to give others that hope and support. Our daily mantra is "suit up, show up, try not to screw up and pray." We do what we can. As we enter the 2016 election year and primary voting gets under way in the next few weeks, it's important to consider the relationship between progressive faith and politics. From the tradition I work out of, and with a name like "progressive Christians," it's not surprising that many people assume that means Christians who are Democrats, likely even those who "feel the Bern." Not so! Progressive faith is rooted in a theological commitment. We believe that salvation is first and foremost a this-worldly, collective change from the problems of this life more than an individualistic afterlife after-party. Whether you call it the Social Gospel or something else, it means that our faith is meant to address the domination and oppression that communities experience as death-dealing. It means offering liberation and healing not just post-mortem, but right here, right now. Advertisement We believe that the truest calling of being church or living out Jesus' way of compassion and justice means being in solidarity with oppressed communities. Learning from them and supporting their struggles are holy activities. This obviously has strong social, and by extension political, implications. Ending poverty, fighting militarism, dismantling white supremacy (Martin Luther King's classic trifecta), as well as protecting the planet, affirming LGBT rights, and standing with religious communities being discriminated against (like Muslims) is the calling of every progressive person of faith. What that doesn't mean is that progressive Christians are shills for the Democratic Party. You can be a counter-cultural Green, a political independent, or a member of the Democratic Socialists of America (like Cornel West). Others prioritize expressing their civic engagement beyond voting through protesting party rallies like Black Lives Matters activists. I know an anti-racism trainer who is a born and raised Republican who votes in their primaries (let's call this transformation from within). It's even possible to feel an affinity for extra-American political parties, such as Greece's Syriza Party or Podemos of Spain. The key insight of progressive faith, whether Christian or otherwise, is a healthy skepticism of any one political figure acting as a messianic savior. Even a politician who prioritized all the issues and policies we advocate is not the solution to our world's problems, because we know that strong social movements are what push our political system to address issues elected officials would sooner avoid. Some politicians are more open to being pushed, and some are more resistant. But the vast majority of long-lasting change happens when there is sufficient popular pressure to do the impossible, thanks to our moral imagination, whether through leading uprisings like the People Power Revolution that helped end the Philippines' political dictatorship in the 1980s, pushing against political inertia through the Moral Mondays movement in North Carolina, or challenging our economic system to move away from obscene income inequality and wealth disparities going forward. Advertisement Progressive faith trusts that the world can be healed from much that ails it, another system of living together is possible, and we have to fight and struggle together in love to help birth that coming Commonwealth into Divine existence. Just don't expect any person to single-handedly save the world. Except maybe Jon Snow. A woman waiting for her child to be born. Below is the speech I delivered at the launch of the Lancet Series on Ending Preventable Stillbirths. At the launch, I spoke of my own experience of stillbirth in Nigeria and the work that we can do to accelerate progress so that it is not more than 160 years before a pregnant woman in Africa has the same chance of her baby being born alive as a woman in a high-income country today. To listen to my experience of stillbirth, click here for my interview with Akwasi Sarpong from BBC Focus on Africa. I would like to thank The Lancet Series for their invitation of the Wellbeing Foundation Africa and I to co-author the third report in this series, Stillbirths: economic and psychosocial consequences, alongside other notable experts in this field. The Lancet Series on Ending Preventable Stillbirths is a seminal programme that shines a spotlight on what is often termed the 'invisible death,' and we are proud to be part of this. Advertisement The report explores the direct and indirect costs of stillbirths, as well as the psychological and social effects - a neglected area of health accountability metrics and statistics. Data on the cost of stillbirths in high-burden countries - including my home nation of Nigeria, which ranks second highest in the world for stillbirths - is inadequate, indicative of the cultural taboos associated with the loss of a child in a stillbirth. Studies outlined in the report describe the disenfranchised grief felt by parents in low- and middle-income countries, where their grief were not legitimised or accepted by health professionals, family, or society. Their accounts were supported by survey responses from care providers in low- and middle-income countries where 4% attributed stillbirth to a mother's fault, 12% agreed that parents should not talk about their stillborn baby, and only 19% agreed that a death before birth is the same as a death of a child. Nigeria suffers a rate of almost 43 stillbirths per 1000 births, whereas Iceland has a rate of only 1.3 per 1000 births. How can Nigeria simultaneously reduce its stillbirth rate and ensure that the 43 mothers per 1000 births are supported? The negative experiences of some women in sub-Saharan Africa when seeking maternity care, especially around the time of labour can negatively impact health-seeking behaviour, resulting in women avoiding skilled birth attendants at future deliveries, resulting in increased further risk of stillbirth. At the White Ribbon Alliance Nigeria, we have campaigned for Respectful Maternity Care to ensure women feel safe, heard, and respected during pregnancy, during labour, and during any negative health outcomes, including stillbirths. The experience of grieving mothers from stillbirths in low- and middle-income countries is painfully fresh for me. Less than a month ago, I visited the Kwara State Civil Service Clinic in Nigeria. During my visit, I noticed a young mother who had recently experienced a stillbirth, sitting silently on her bed in a ward surrounded by new mothers with their newborns. In her silence, I saw my own grief reflected back to me. I too lost one of my twin daughters during childbirth in Nigeria, over twenty years ago. Her silent endurance, her lack of support, and her neglected psychological state was in direct contrast to the traditional Yoruba concept of motherhood, called Alaafia Abiyamo - a belief that motherhood transcends the physical process and is a transformative pre-gestational, social, prenatal, postnatal, spiritual, and community role. Alaafia Abiyamo starts from the heart - it begins before birth, and continues throughout the lifetime of both mother and child, in joy and in sadness. Advertisement It is the concept of Alaafia Abiyamo that has driven the Wellbeing Foundation Africa and I to embark on advocacy and programming that can ensure the survival of every mother and every child, at every stage of pregnancy, and at every stage of life. Although I have witnessed firsthand the grief of a preventable stillbirth, I have also seen how high-income countries prevent stillbirths. Only this week, my dear friend in London was confined to bed rest at 24 weeks of pregnancy to prevent early labour and a potential stillbirth of her long-awaited child. This decision taken by the NHS was taken with the knowledge that every hour, every day, and every week is the difference between life and stillbirth, and that every measure must be taken to prevent this outcome. Through our groundbreaking Maternal Monday social media campaign, we advocate to share the stories of African mothers and educate mothers about potential risks to survival. Our Alaafia Universal Health Coverage Fund (AUHCF), which funds the insurance premiums of 5,000 Nigerians annually, allows pregnant women to access antenatal care, thus preventing pregnancy risks escalating into tragedy and stillbirth. Our WBFA Personal Health Record - a vital accountability tool - allows pregnant women to track every stage of their pregnancy, enabling mothers to make informed decisions about their health while enabling health professionals to provide timely, effective care such as ensuring bed rest. As the International Confederation of Midwives Global Goodwill Ambassador, I am working to scale up access to skilled midwives who can not only provide care that prevents stillbirths but also provide the psychological support and comfort for grieving families in the aftermath of a stillbirth. Moreover, as 1.2 million women experience the loss of their baby during labour after a full nine months of pregnancy, we have partnered with Johnson & Johnson and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine to deliver emergency obstetrics and newborn care (EmONC) training to healthcare professionals in Kwara State that could reduce maternal mortality by up to 20% and help prevent stillbirths during labour. Drawing on Alaafia Abiyamo, we support parents and families across the African continent in their care before, during, and after pregnancy. Drawing on Alaafia Abiyamo, we give mothers the medical care and resources needed to prevent stillbirths. Because of Alaafia Abiyamo, we give parents the support, space, and voice to grieve and recover. Further, we provide a full scope of transformative support on Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health and, indeed, health in its entirety as we embark on SDG 3, for wellbeing for all, at all ages. Advertisement NEW YORK, NY - APRIL 27: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (L) meets with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at the United Nations April 27, 2015, in New York City. The two were meeting at the opening of a UN conference on a global anti-nuclear weapons treaty, attempting to make progress in talks on a long-term nuclear deal. (Photo by Jason DeCrow-Pool/Getty Images) Doubting the power of diplomacy is like doubting climate change at this point. Despite the skepticism Barack Obama faced in the 2008 elections for his willingness to talk to adversaries -- including accusations of naivete from Democratic and Republican rivals alike, Obama's diplomacy has now both prevented a disastrous war with Iran and an Iranian nuclear bomb and has secured the release of American prisoners held in Iran. And much more can be achieved if America stays the course -- the question is if it can when so much of this success has been built on specific personal relations that have been forged. Since this new budding relationship with Iran has not been institutionalized, what will be left of it when the Obama administration leaves office? Having established a reliable channel of communication between the two countries for the first time in more than three decades, the Obama administration can explore opportunities that have been unavailable to previous administrations. For Obama -- who has long argued that the U.S. should be able "to test the possibility that engagement leads to better outcomes" -- sailing into such uncharted waters with Iran affords a ripe opportunity to shape a legacy that is growing by the day. Advertisement Since this budding relationship with Iran has not been institutionalized, what will be left of it when the Obama administration leaves office? The challenge is to ensure that these channels of communication are not limited to the personal rapport that has developed between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, but will survive into succeeding administrations. Failing to formalize the channel could not only undermine the very real opportunities that spring forth from such direct U.S.-Iran engagement, but could also implicate the sustainability of the nuclear accord itself. The most natural step -- normalizing relations and reopening embassies -- is not in the cards for now. But there are measures the U.S. and Iran can take that could help institutionalize this critical relationship. Step 1: The U.S. and Iran need to establish a strategic dialogue through regular meetings between their respective government agencies. This will not be a negotiation between the two, but rather a dialogue on various issues of common concern, though not necessarily of common interest. The main purpose of this dialogue is to better understand each other's motives in order to preempt misperceptions and misunderstandings. And of course, if areas of common interest can be found, the dialogue provides an opportunity to explore collaboration on those issues. In 2003, the Iranians offered a three-step negotiation road map for the U.S. and Iran. One of the suggested measures was a strategic dialogue just of this kind. The George W. Bush administration ignored the proposal. Had the Bush administration accepted the invitation for dialogue, the Middle East would likely look very different today. The U.S. and Iran may have collaborated rather than competed with each other in Iraq -- as they did in Afghanistan before President Bush included Iran in the Axis of Evil, which may have prevented the collapse of the Iraqi state and the spread of sectarianism. The world may never have known the scourge of the so-called Islamic State, and Syria might not have devolved into a civil war seemingly immune to resolution. Missing that opportunity in 2003 proved tremendously costly for all sides. Missing it after 2016 may prove even costlier. Advertisement Step 2: The legislatures of both countries need to establish their own dialogue. Some of the harshest opposition to improved U.S.-Iran relations is currently concentrated within the U.S. Congress and the Iranian parliament. The only prospect of undoing some of that mistrust is to begin a process of dialogue -- just as the nuclear deal began with discreet talks between American and Iranian officials in Oman. Ideally, this process will eventually lead to congressional delegations visiting Iran and vice versa and provide the legislatures a formal role in the strategic dialogue between the two countries. Step 3: Perhaps most importantly, there needs to be increased contact and communications between the two societies. Whether connections between American and Iranian think tanks or non-policy oriented people-to-people exchanges, such activities have been almost nonexistent in the past three decades. Here, the problem has primarily been on the Iranian side, where the government has viewed such activities with great suspicion. Just in the past months, there has been a crackdown inside Iran on individuals engaged in such bridge-building. For people-to-people contacts to flourish and enable the two societies to rediscover each other, the bridge builders must feel safe. While the Obama administration has always spoken about diplomacy with Iran as limited and transactional, the events of the past few weeks show this dialogue has the potential to become transformational. But for that to happen, it cannot be limited to Obama and Rouhani or Kerry and Zarif. True opportunities to start a dialogue between the U.S. and Iran have only appeared once a decade. Opportunities to change the paradigm of the relationship may only come once a generation. Advertisement Co-authored by Makiah Green . Our generation had a moment this MLK Day. On Monday January 18, 2016 some of the greatest artists and activists of our time came together to commemorate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Held at Harlem's Riverside Church, in the same room where Dr. King delivered his infamous "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" speech, the sanctuary was filled to capacity with eager spectators. As the audience patiently waited for their favorite celebrities to take the stage, you could feel the historic energy in the air. Ryan Coogler, Director of Creed, Fruitvale Station, and co-founder of United Blackout, served as the emcee of the evening, introducing Lin Manuel Miranda, Michael B. Jordan, Tessa Thompson, Chris Rock, Anika Noni Rose, Octavia Spencer, and a host of other artists and entertainers. Each performance evoked the spirit of Black radical figures ranging from James Baldwin and Fred Hampton to Angela Davis and Sojourner Truth. In between the powerful exhortations came dynamic performances from India Arie ("I Am Light"), Jussie Smollett ("Strange Fruit"), Saul Williams, Anika Noni Rose ("Be Free"), and Karega Bailey. As soon as Lin Manuel Miranda graced the mic, we knew we were in for something special. He delivered Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" with the pace and vigor fitting for the moment. As he spoke, the musicians matched his words with jazzy bass lines and sweet piano riffs, providing the perfect soundtrack for the night. In an era where everyone is constantly looking forward, it was beautiful-and surprisingly necessary-to pause and look back. Listening to the carefully curated live readings, it became clear that there's much to glean from our past as a people. Advertisement Sitting in the sanctuary, one couldn't help but to think about how each speech spoke directly to the time we currently find ourselves in. From Shirley Chisholm's 1972 Presidential Campaign Announcement, in which she discussed her commitment to true democracy, to Ida B. Wells' chilling expose on the pervasive lynchings of Black men, both speakers and audience alike felt the weight of each speech and drew parallels to the present. With a program full of strong performances, there was never a dull moment. From the minute Actor Andre Holland (The Knick, Selma, 42) stepped on stage to deliver Malcolm X's "Police Brutality and the Mainstream Media," the tone shifted and many felt that they were on the corner of 125th & Seventh Ave., watching Malcolm deliver an impromptu diatribe. From his tonal inflections to his mannerisms, Andre embodied the full essence of Malcolm X and successfully honored a legacy that has been largely misconstrued and misrepresented by mainstream media. One of the most dynamic performances of the night came from none other than poet and performer, Saul Williams. Saul's didactic and punk-infused poem espoused a message that was central to King's message: love. Williams, chanting the names of significant figures within history, belted the cosmological connections we all share with one another. Towards the end, he chanted "I Love You" to different sections of the sanctuary until the audience began to shout it back. His emphasis on love was simple, yet revolutionary, as the entire room broke out of their comfort zone and affirmed each other with those three powerful words. Advertisement Another thought-provoking moment of the evening was the intimate artist conversation held between Ryan Coogler and platinum rapper, J. Cole. In what felt like a phone conversation between brothers, they candidly discussed the significance of King's legacy and its relevance to youth today. Both gentlemen praised the others' work and shared how their work had influenced one another, even to the point of tears.They discussed how the Movement for Black Lives had left an indelible mark on them as artists, and bonded over the responsibility that they feel to depict the struggle within their mediums. It was incredibly powerful to see two Black men engage in open and vulnerable dialogue, as opposed to the heavily guarded and censored interviews they're often confined to. Both left the audiences full with understanding that this generation might, in fact, be left in the hands of those who deserve to steer it. Just when we thought the event couldn't get any better, Ryan Coogler introduced civil rights icon, Harry Belafonte. After his brilliant recitation of Patrice Lumumba's "Proclamation of Independence," he tenderly passed the torch to the new generation of freedom fighters. Sharing several memories from his time with Dr King, Belafonte commissioned young people to continue mobilizing and to do what they see fit to advance the struggle for Black liberation. Reminding the audience that many civil rights leaders were teenagers when they joined the movement, he stated, "I was 26 and Martin was 24, and we were the elders. Jesse was 17." Happy successful sportswoman raising arms to the sky on golden back lighting sunset summer. Fitness athlete with arms up celebrating goals after sport exercising and working out outdoors. Copy space. Sometimes inspiration isn't difficult to find. This week it was around the bend in the train tracks as my little red train wound through snow-capped mountains to Davos, Switzerland. Every year at this time, the eyes of the world turn to Davos for the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting, a gathering that brings together leaders across politics, economics, academia and arts, unified under the Forum's clear purpose "to improve the state of the world." It was at last year's WEF meeting when corporate leaders gathered on the forefront of a movement: purpose. For some time now, we've been seeing that purpose can no longer be the tagline under the logo. Instead, companies are seeing that they can serve a higher purpose beyond profit to attract and retain customers and talent -- and to drive innovation and transformation. This is what led us to convene business luminaries to talk about purpose at last year's meeting -- including Unilever CEO Paul Polman, Mondelez CEO Irene Rosenfeld and Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson. Advertisement This also led us to launch during last year's WEF the EY Beacon Institute -- a community of executives, entrepreneurs and academics committed to redefining what it means to be a successful business in the 21st century. And as we approach our one-year anniversary and global leaders reconvene in Davos, it is clear that while progress is being made, we need more action to accelerate that progress. Purpose is a proven value creator. First, the good news: There's more evidence of a strong and growing business case for purpose. The EY Beacon Institute reviewed more than 150 articles and books on this topic and interviewed leading experts and practitioners. Full results will be published after the Forum's annual meeting in our report called The State of the Debate on Purpose in Business, but here are five key insights we can share now that are priming our Davos discussions this week: First, a clearly articulated aspirational purpose instills strategic clarity in a business. In our volatile, rapidly changing world, purpose serves as a "North Star" -- a fixed point guiding both short- and long-term decision-making, which helps determine what activities the business should -- and should not -- consider. Focus on a compelling bigger picture, so purpose can encourage people to look beyond short-term considerations to look for solutions and innovations that will deliver durable value and returns. In this way, purpose helps channel innovation and keeps people focused on what matters. Purpose helps organizations transform themselves, motivates people through meaning, not fear, and helps people understand the need for change rather than feeling alienated by imposed change. Humans have an innate desire to contribute to something bigger; to find meaning in their lives and their work. Articulating a business's purpose helps people see they are working for something, rather than simply against the competition, tapping into a powerfully motivating universal need. By showing where people and organizations share common ground, purpose also helps build bridges, across business functions within organizations and between different organizations. This helps to create the collaboration businesses so need to succeed in the 21st century. Moving purpose from aspiration to action isn't easy. Unfortunately, it's not all good news. Research we conducted with University of Oxford Said Business School and in a survey with Harvard Business School Analytic Services revealed that in many areas of a business there's still a wide gap between aspirations and action. For example, there's a wide gap between intentions and achievements aligning purpose with performance metrics and rewards. This is troubling given the important role purpose can play in changing people's behaviors. There is also great risk here. If businesses don't align internal measurements and rewards with their stated purpose, their people and public will be confused at best; disillusioned at worst. Lofty expressions of purpose may come to sound like empty rhetoric unless acted upon consistently in every aspect of the organization. Moving from discussion into action. More and more, customers are making their buying decisions based on an organization's stated aims and more millennials are choosing their employer based on its purpose. Now that companies are armed with the impetus and the business case to transform around purpose, the discussion needs to shift from "why" to "how." Specifically, how can businesses bridge the gap between aspiration and action, and how can they put purpose into practice? A key part of moving into action is scrutinizing the main challenges that companies face. Also, organizations must make purpose an integral part of their strategy and decision-making, into business models and cultures to unlock the value of purpose - and avoid the perils. As the WEF meeting opens, we will once again convene a distinguished group of experts on the subject of purpose. And besides discussing the issues, our EY Global Chairman and CEO Mark Weinberger will host a workshop to pinpoint concrete actions. In the coming weeks, we'll share learnings, helping inspiration and ideas ripple from Davos to businesses in Dublin, Dallas, Dar es Salaam and beyond. We invite you to share your perspectives and insights as we advance the evolution of business and take more steps on our collective purpose journey to improve the state of the world. Advertisement In an article by Palm Beach Post, the Princeton Review ranked Eckerd College the 20th least religious school in the country. Though, according to the Review's website, the ranking is based entirely on student opinion, (and probably wouldn't hold much water in the eyes of a true statistician), it sparked an intriguing question: Is Eckerd religious? Eckerd is related by covenant, an agreement, to the Presbyterian Church. The connection between the two is a mutual agreement of morals, but Eckerd is not promoting Christianity in this way. "[Eckerd] was never, as I understand it, a Christian college ... But it's always been a church-related college," Professor of Religious Studies David Bryant said. Advertisement The nature of the relationship with that church has changed over decades. It maintains an official agreement in which the Presbyterian Church takes on certain commitments in respect to the college, and the college has a commitment to maintain morals and values to assist the student body. "I know the history of the Presbyterian Church is built on education, expression, thought, critical thinking and a well-rounded education," Associate Director of the Center for Spiritual Life and Associate Chaplain Libby Shannon said. "I think that's lived out on campus. If you look at other Presbyterian colleges such as Macalester College in Minnesota, we're in good company." Bryant says that, during the 30 years he's taught at Eckerd, the number of students identifying themselves as religious has always been small -- much less than the majority. "And it's probably smaller since I have arrived," Bryant said. Students agree -- there is no single group that is more dominant than the rest. Because Eckerd students come from 47 states and 33 countries, it is no mystery that diversity, even religious diversity, exists on campus. Advertisement "There are small pockets of people who are religious, but I would say -- at least with my interactions -- it's more people who are atheist or agnostic," junior Kylie Bold said. "I wouldn't say that as a whole Eckerd is religious." Bryant agrees. "No, I don't think it's religious if you mean the institution. It's an educational institution... But I do believe that the spiritual aspects of life are a part of the liberal education," Bryant said. Two weeks ago, The Current sent a survey to the student body asking whether students considered themselves and the student body religious. It also asked what religion students practice. The 206 responses showed the diversity of thought surrounding religion on campus. "What your survey speaks to is that we are a diverse campus," Libby Shannon said. Although diversity is important, so is the social atmosphere in which students, faculty and administration have recreated and maintained over the years. Eckerd supports students' identities, religious or not, and encourages clubs and organizations that fit students' needs and interests. Advertisement Shannon values this about Eckerd. Promoting an environment that allows individuals to be who they are is an important aspect of Eckerd's community. "We've done a remarkable job of allowing people to live into the spaces they want to live into," Shannon said. Students seem to feel the same way as the faculty. "I would say people are pretty tolerant of each other. It's kind of like 'you do your thing, and I'll do mine,'" Bold said. The social environment created and maintained by the student body, faculty and administration allows for diversity and welcomes it. Whether you are culturally diverse or religiously diverse, Eckerd welcomes you. But students are still reluctant to associate themselves with a religion, if they belong to one. This might have something to do with the negative connotations associated with organized religion. Advertisement "For some people religion is a very dirty word," Assistant Professor of Religious Studies Amy Paris Langenberg said. "People associate it with very oppressive institutions, corrupt institutions... people associate it with conservative politics and social views." Young adults are generally more inclined to be spiritually guided rather than associated with a specific religion or maintain membership at a religious institution. The question of whether this matters or not can only be answered by the individual or religious institution. Some churches seek to improve their numbers, others are more interested in the quality of their congregation. "What I really value in the language of 'spiritual,' is that it widens the lens to say 'we can experience the divine in so many more ways than we used to be able to,' and I think that's a great gift," Shannon said. "Just because it's not in church, doesn't make it any less a valid experience." Students who experience the divine presence in a sunset or on a hike might identify as Spiritual But Not Religious (SBNR). This idea is not new to the religious studies discourse. However, there are some aspects about being institutionally religious that are beneficial. "One of the important things about being institutionally religious is the community piece," Shannon said. "Part of the real gift about being religious is having that group of people to celebrate with, mourn with and create families around." Advertisement She believes that kind of community exists and thrives at Eckerd, without needing to put a religious label on it. "We have a community that we celebrate with, who we grieve with and who we go through life's joys and challenges with. So that particular need is met on campus for a lot of people," Shannon said. According to the Eckerd webpage, "The liberal arts education is a uniquely American program that emphasizes knowledge across a wide spectrum, critical analysis of information, and the ability to communicate clearly and effectively." This includes knowledge about religion. "Religion matters in the world, so we don't let you ignore it, from an academic standpoint," Shannon said. "We talk about these texts because they matter in the world. We're not asking anybody to ascribe to a particular religious tradition, but what we're saying is, you have to be able to talk about it." Professor Langenberg urges students to focus on talking about and thinking about religion as a human phenomenon without comparing religions to one another. Although Langenberg doesn't encourage students to discuss personal faith commitments in the classroom, she does understand that it does come up within discussion. Because this occurs, it is important to be able to engage religious studies critically before one chooses to engage it personally. Advertisement The main concern is less about Eckerd being religious or not, and more about the ability and willingness of students to engage in discussion about the bigger picture of religion. Eckerd students don't need to be religious -- they need to be able to talk about religion and its relationship to the world. The topic of religion is intertwined with many issues discussed in the media and college courses, such as terrorist attacks, human rights and stem cell research. Having a basic knowledge about religion allows students to engage in intellectual discourse in the classroom setting about these issues. This not only assists students in the academic setting but assists them into become a well-rounded, citizens of the world. A member of Iraqi security forces holds a Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG) as he stands guard during an operation to clear al-Sajarya district on the eastern outskirts of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, on January 17, 2016, a few weeks after they declared victory against the Islamic State (IS) group. / AFP / STRINGER (Photo credit should read STRINGER/AFP/Getty Images) In the midst of political campaigns people say silly things. Recently Bill Maher said that Senator Ted Cruz, running for the Republican nomination, is evil: "It's one thing to have evil people who aren't that bright!" But, he added, Cruz is smart. Joining him, Heather Digby Parton wrote in Salon about "Ted Cruz, evil genius: How he's wreaking havoc on Washington and positioning himself as the GOP dark horse." Advertisement We hereby forgive journalist and pundits who accuse people of being evil. They face deadlines and they need to be slightly outrageous. (Senator Cruz has not, yet, accused journalists of being evil.) We do not forgive politicians quite so easily. When they speak about evil their comments have far-reaching consequences. Beginning in the 1980s with President Reagan, American politicians of both major parties lapse into phrases like "The Evil Empire" (Reagan talking about the USSR), "Evil is on the march" (Rep. Stephen J. Solarz talking about Saddam Hussein), and "the axis of evil" (President George W. Bush talking about Iran, Iraq, and North Korea). This language echoes traditional religious beliefs about good and evil. Reagan spoke about the USSR as the Evil Empire when he addressed American evangelicals in March 8, 1983. The basis of the United States, he claimed was the "deeper realization that freedom prospers only where the blessings of God are avidly sought and humbly accepted." Without affirming that alleged truth we would lack the ability to confront the "aggressive impulses of an evil empire." Rep. Stephen J. Solarz (D., New York) used the same language eight years later on January 12, 1991 when supported the "Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution." Solarz argued that Saddam Hussein presented a catastrophic danger to the United States analogous to that presented by Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan in 1941: "This, I contended, was the great lesson of our time: evil exists and when evil is on the march, it must be confronted." Eleven years later President George W. Bush delivered his State of the Union Address to joint session of the 107th Congress on January 29, 2002. Referring to the attacks of September 11, 2001, he said: "We've come to know truths that we will never question: Evil is real, and it must be opposed." He concluded, "And many have discovered again that even in tragedy--especially in tragedy--God is near." Advertisement Accustomed to hearing religious phrases like these from American politicians we may be surprised to learn that they do not match the language of former Presidents and British Prime Ministers. Among them is Winston Churchill who faced challenges far greater than those posed by Islamic terrorism. Supreme perhaps among all who anticipated the rise of Nazi Germany, Churchill did not say that "evil is real and it is on the march." He recognized that the Nazi war machine carried out evil actions; he did not ascribe their crimes to an imaginary Evil that somehow possessed them. Evil was not on the march; the German armies were. The Second World War was not between Good and Evil; it was between Germany, Italy, and Japan on the one side, and the Allies on the other. Churchill, while a great orator, was a supreme realist. Though raised a Christian, he realized that the War would not be won by divine intervention. If God is among us God is invisible and passive. We do not doubt that every day a million prayers rose up all over Europe, seeking help against vicious enemies. Churchill's great speeches, memorized for generations, did not invoke God and they did not claim special status for England. In his broadcast to the United States and to London on October 16, 1938 he said: It is this very conflict of spiritual and moral ideas which gives the free countries a great part of their strength. You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. On all sides they are guarded by masses of armed men, cannons, aeroplanes, fortifications, and the like -- they boast and vaunt themselves before the world, yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. Churchill did not demonize Hitler. He did not place him and his followers along an axis of evil. That would make them undefeatable, immortal, uncanny beings who live forever. On the contrary, Churchill said, Nazis were frightened human beings, terrified of free speech and free action. Churchill's listeners in the United States and Britain recognized themselves in this portrait. They did not need to imagine a future, perfected state; they lived it as free people in free nations. We also live in a free nation. That is enough to deliver us from evil. BERLIN, GERMANY - JANUARY 07: Pupils attend the 'Welcome Class' for immigrant children, including children of migrants and refugees, at the Leo-Lionni-Schule primary school on January 7, 2016 in Berlin, Germany. Germany is investing in German language classes across the country by hiring more teachers and expanding the Federal Volunteer Service (Bundesfreiwilligendienst) in order to accomodate the hundreds of thousands of migrant and refugee children who have arrived in Germany over the past year. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images) Is the desire for security, prosperity, and freedom in the DNA of Europe-- or is it Europe's worst nightmare? Does a more crowded planet lead to more opportunities or more risks? After 100 years of human progress, are we at a peak or on the verge of a U-turn? Will the pendulum of human history lean towards tolerance or intolerance? These are some of the questions that those of us who are concerned about the wellbeing of people who've lost their homes (for various reasons) are asking at the start of 2016. How will things go on after millions of people have migrated to Europe from Africa, Asia and the near East? Advertisement "The short answer is: We need to figure this out! And we shouldn't take as much time responding as we did last time." In preparation for our meeting as the Transatlantic Council on Migration in Berlin at the Migration Policy Institute, we ask the following question: Are these numbers and associated challenges the new norm? And, if so, how can we deal with this situation responsibly? The short answer is: We need to figure this out! And we shouldn't take as much time responding as we did last time. As we improve our indicators, the positive conclusion of this past year remains: 2015 showed the world how Europe was capable of receiving an unexpected influx of children, women, and men who decided to make it their new home. They allowed this part of the world to grow closer together in ways that no one could've foreseen only six months ago. This was an outcome resulting from immense suffering. Nearly 4,000 people died crossing the Mediterranean. And among those who survived the risky boat ride, many died as their journeys unfolded. But overall, there were many positive outcomes: private individuals, charities, and governments outdid themselves in their commitment to overcome these enormous challenges. Advertisement Thousands opened their hearts and homes as they welcomed newcomers in the wake of their suffering. This has been a motivation and an inspiration to those who have worked alongside the misery of immigrants for decades, and continue to seek new solutions. "I do not want to belittle the fears: fear over rising crime and instability is legitimate." We have also encountered ugliness and brutality. Unsurprisingly, and to an increasing extent, criminals exploit the suffering of others. And many governments have struggled to see that investment and good management can help reduce such situations. Now, 70 years after the end of World War II, and 25 years after the Berlin Wall came down, we must do better at handling migration. We need a robust approach. Migration must be safe, respectful of the statutory framework and work without chaos. These are the lessons we learned from 2015. I'm speaking to all of us, not only to migrants. Teacher Ina Orbitz leads pupils at the 'Welcome Class' for immigrant children at the Leo-Lionni-Schule primary school on January 7, 2016 in Berlin, Germany. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images) The xenophobic resentment, which we observed after the second terror attack in Paris, and after the events in Cologne and in other places, is terrifying. As I write this, I do not want to belittle the fears: fear over rising crime and instability is legitimate. We must take seriously those who have concerns that are not born out of evil intentions to spread dated stereotypes about foreigners. Because, if we do not take them seriously and quickly implement comprehensive solutions, the climate will change in every country in Europe. Advertisement Institutions such as mine persistently raise conversations about events taking place in countries like Nigeria or Turkey, and actively seek to deal with them-- even if they seem, at first glance, to be far removed from the domestic policies of our own countries. "Remittances plays a significant role in improving the situation in their countries of origin, and thus motivate the people there to seek a better future." The screening procedures for asylum seekers can and must be conducted far from European borders. Refusals to grant access to refugees will keep countless migrants from making expensive and risky journeys. Additionally, we must improve the travel arrangements for those who are granted visas. As a continent with extreme demographic challenges, Europe needs more sustainable programs to welcome young people and to educate and integrate them into society. Since Europe has made positive progress to offset the crisis in elderly healthcare and childcare, through soliciting, at least partially, the help of foreigners (who are often not given official status), why don't we turn these obvious challenges in health and education into opportunities? In 2015, only 40 candidates filled nursing job vacancies, even though there were 100 openings. Advertisement With the termination of their informal status and granting them visas, two problems are solved at once. Seventy years of experience with refugees and migrants have revealed that they send significant portions of their earnings back to their families at home. Remittances plays a significant role in improving the situation in their countries of origin, and thus motivate the people there to seek a better future. People are forced to spend more than $1000 for a dangerous boat ride across the Mediterranean. Then, they are required to pay a similar sum to finally make it to their destination. To see this money no longer in the hands of criminal traffickers, but invested in language and integration courses is what motivates my colleagues and I to search for better solutions than those we've seen in 2015. The collaborative spirit of all the involved participants will help us in 2016, as we seek to implement acceptable solutions for everyone. As we reflect on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, we think about African-Americans as agents of history. Well-documented gaps in unemployment rates, earnings, poverty and wealth too often lead to viewing African-Americans as bystanders to America's economy. At worse, there is a tendency to observe the gaps in economic success and blame African-Americans for being disengaged and not trying to respond to clear economic realities -- a lack of investment in education, skills, training and personal saving. But, a clear and fair understanding of Dr. King's legacy, is that in fact, African-Americans have been fully aware of the barriers they face to success, and have been steadfast to struggle to remove them. Indeed, Dr. King was assassinated during a campaign by black sanitation workers in Memphis to exercise their right to organize, strike and demand fair wages; a key theme of American worker advancement during the first 80 years of the last century and one repeated this Dr. King Holiday by airport workers demanding a living wage. The lack of wealth in the African-American community is well known. The median net wealth of white households is 12.2 times greater than that of black households. The difference in wealth does not grow smaller when comparing white and black households headed by college graduates, or when controlling for differences in income. Because the easy answers like education and income differences don't explain the wealth gap -- which measures accumulated savings over multiple generations -- the fall back is often to blame the savings' behavior of blacks. And, here, old stereotypes of African-Americans being profligate can easily substitute for documentation. Advertisement This is why those early years after emancipation are key in addressing the deep history of African-Americans as their own agents. During the Civil War, African-American leaders, most famously, Frederick Douglass, campaigned hard to have black soldiers officially sworn into the fight to end slavery. With issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln also finally signed on that in 1863 not only would slaves in the rebellious states be free, but African-American men would join the United States Army and Navy in quelling the Southern revolt. Close to 180,000 black men signed-up as official members of America's Armed Forces to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. They became the largest paid workforce of African-American men to that point in America's history. The issue quickly arose as to where could they deposit their paychecks? A few fledgling efforts were made to start banks. And, that effort culminated with the establishment of the Freedmen's Savings and Trust by Congressional act in March 1865; the Freedmen's Bureau bank. Recently the U.S. Department of Treasury and Secretary Jack Lew dedicated an annex to honor the Freedmen's Bureau Bank. By 1870, the bank operated 37 branches throughout the South, with African-Americans trained as branch managers. In all, almost 70,000 African-Americans made deposits in the bank, reaching savings of about $57 million. Those facts stand to clearly demonstrate the efforts of a people, subject to slavery, freed with nothing from their previous labors to start anew having built wealth for others for free. Advertisement But, fate would intervene. The accumulation of those savings came during a period when the federal government still stood in the way of restoring the South's old hegemony of white southern planters. And, it came when the nation's banks were still conservative following the uncertainties of the Civil War. Southern banking laid prostrate, devastated by the collapse of the Confederacy and the meaningless holdings of Confederate dollars, and the long mystery of the disappearance of the gold reserves that backed that currency on its desperate journey south from Richmond, Virginia in April 1865 as Robert E. Lee surrendered the fighting cause at Appomattox Court House under the vigilant eyes of 2,000 black men in seven units of the United States Colored Troops. By the start of the 1870s, the expansion west made possible by the Homestead Act and transcontinental railroad -- both enacted during the Civil War -- restored the nation's prosperity and financial zeal. The result was over speculation in railroading. In Europe, financial pressures mounted from the Franco-Prussian War. Germany refused to continue issuing silver coins. This resulted in plummeting silver prices, and the eventual move by the United States to go from backing its currency in silver and gold, to use only the gold standard. This led to the collapse of investments in silver mines in the western United States. The result was a global financial collapse that swept Europe and the United States in 1873. With it came the collapse of the U.S. banking system. Sound familiar? And, with that collapse came the collapse of the Freedmen's Savings and Trust as well. At a time of general financial collapse and no Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation -- a creation learned from the Great Depression -- many depositors lost their savings. The millions in savings of the newly free went away, too. Not too different than the 240,000 homes that disappeared from the African American community after the financial collapse of 2007. In 1876, a compromise to resolve the Presidential election resulted in the removal of federal protection of African-Americans in the South. The end of reconstruction meant the restoration of southern white hegemony and the evisceration of voting rights for African-Americans, the protection of the access to many occupations and the limiting of their equal access to education. This too sounds familiar. To accurately measure history, it takes measuring all the hills and valleys right. Dedicating a building to the Freedmen's Savings and Trust allows us to properly assess the toil and efforts of African-Americans. It shows the hard work and industrious nature of a determined people. It reminds us of the mountains of betrayal as well. As world leaders gather this week in the cozy confines of Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum, civil society leaders came together today to issue this statement to to step up the fight on inequality. The world faces an inequality crisis that is spiralling out of control. Across the world we are seeing the gap between the richest and the rest reach extremes not seen in a century. Struggles for a better world are all threatened by the inequality crisis. Workers across the world are seeing their wages and conditions eroded as inequality increases. The rights of women are systematically worse in situations of greater economic inequality. The vast majority of the world's richest people are men; those in the most precarious and poorly paid work are women. Young people are facing a crisis of unemployment. Other groups such as migrants, ethnic minorities, LGBTQI people, people with disability and indigenous people continue to be pushed to the margins, suffering systematic discrimination. The struggle to realise the human rights of the majority are continually undercut in the face of such disparities of wealth and power. Advertisement Extreme inequality is also frequently linked to rising restrictions on civic space and democratic rights as political and economic elites collude to protect their interests. The right to peaceful protest and the ability of citizens to challenge the prevailing economic discourse is being curtailed almost everywhere, for elites know that extreme inequality and participatory democracy cannot co-exist for long. Even the future of our planet is dependent on ending this great divide, with the carbon consumption of the 1% as much as 175 times that of the poorest. Our current economic system is not working at many levels. Dominated by an over-confidence in the benefits of the market, it helps only a small elite, and is failing the majority, and failing the planet. There is widespread agreement that we are living through an inequality crisis. On this the IMF, the Pope and many other influential voices are agreed. The time has come to do something about it. The current system did not come about by accident. It is the result of deliberate policy choices. It is the result of our leaders listening to the 1% instead of to the majority. This has to change. This is all happening at the time when the international community has agreed a new set of Sustainable Development Goals (Agenda 2030), and has come together to discuss financing development and crucially the Climate Change Accord in Paris where every country agreed to work together to combat climate change. Advertisement We know that existing commitments, and much more beyond that must be done, will not be realised without a fight. That is why today we are coming together as the beginnings of a global alliance to fight inequality. We will work together with others to tackle the root causes of inequality, whether they be economic, political, social or cultural. We will press governments to meet their obligations to ensure people can enjoy their rights to health, education and other essential public services through tackling tax dodging and ensuring progressive tax and spend policies. We will support workers' rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining, and narrow the gap between rich and poor. We will fight for the redistribution of women's unequal share of unpaid care work, and the tackling of violence against women brought on by state repression and rising fundamentalism. We will advocate for universal social protection floors. We will fight for land reform. We will work together to challenge the disproportionate power and practices of the corporate sector that is undermining so many struggles, contributing to human rights violations and increasing inequality across the globe. We will work together with others to secure climate justice. We will take on the power of corporations, including fossil fuel companies who are undermining efforts which respond to science and protect people and planet. We will together champion international cooperation so every country plays its part and we avoid a race to the bottom. The current face of failed globalization is rising inequality, conflict, corruption and oppression. The world needs fundamental change through a new economic model that puts the interests of people first. We need change on a scale never seen before. People across the world must be at the heart of demanding and driving this change. Only such a people powered movement can build a breakthrough that unites governments, trade unions, civil society and companies who share a commitment to the common good. We choose to imagine a better world than this, where everyone's human rights are respected, protected and fulfilled. We believe humanity has the talent, technology, and brilliance to build that better world, where the interests of the majority are put first. And we believe the time has come to fight for it together. Advertisement Adriano Campolina, Chief Eexecutive, ActionAid John Nduna, General Secretary, ACT Alliance Salil Shetty, General Secretary, Amnesty International Lydia Alpizar Duran, Executive Director, Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) Bernd Nilles, Secretary General, CIDSE Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah , General Secretary, CIVICUS Mads Christensen, Acting Executive Director, Greenpeace Sharan Burrow, General Secretary, International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director, Oxfam ASSOCIATED PRESS A man gets a tatoo of Bhim Rao Ambedkar, near his memorial in Mumbai, India, Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2007.Ambedkar, an untouchable, or dalit, and a prominent Indian freedom fighter, was the chief architect of the Indian Constitution, which outlawed discrimination based on caste. Hundreds of thousands of low-caste Indians are expected to pay homage at his memorial Thursday, on his 51st death anniversary. (AP Photo/Gautam Singh) NEW DELHI -- A Dalit family in Tamil Nadu was stopped from using a public road which leads to a burial ground, forcing them to put the dead bodies of their loved ones on ice for several days. M. Karthikeyan, a 30-year-old Dalit from Nagapattinam, told The Indian Express that he could not bury his grandparents because the influential Vanniyars of Vazhavur, led by a leader from the ruling AIADMK party, blocked them from using the road, saying it was a bad omen." Advertisement Vanniyars belong to the Other Backward Classes (OBC) category. Karthikeyan's grandmother died on November 26 and his grandfather passed away on January 3. In both instances, the police urged them not to use public roads and buried the bodies, according to IE. Following his grandfather's death, the Madras High Court told the District Collector to allow the procession through the public road and submit a compliance report. District Collector S. Palanisami, who told IE that he belonged to the Vanniyar caste, said that his priority was to prevent caste clashes. Instead of using another path cutting through a forest and crossing a canal, Karthikeyan, who recently completed a Teacher Training Programme, kept his grandfather's body on ice until the police came and took him away. Advertisement I still do not know where exactly my grandfather was buried, he said. We poured kerosene on ourselves and shouted that we will commit suicide if the police continue to disregard the High Court order." Contact HuffPost India Also on HuffPost: Pacific Press via Getty Images RAJASTHAN, INDIA - 2015/11/19: A child standing with a sword in hand during the sunset at the annual cattle fair in Pushkar, western Rajasthan state. Pushkar is a popular Hindu pilgrimage spot that is also frequented by foreign tourists who come to the town for its annual cattle fair. (Photo by Shaukat Ahmed/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images) In an apparent response to the Islamic State, a Hindu outfit is training thousands of people some of them children as young as eight years old to fight with guns, swords, and rocket launchers. In two years, the Hindu Swabhiman has prepared 15,000 such fighters as part of their "dharma sena". A Times of India investigation found that there are 50 such training camps across western Uttar Pradesh, who are preparing to fight the ISIS, which they believe will take over the area by 2020. One leader described their motto for training people as "catch them young" where after the first six months of training, children begin learning how to use guns. Advertisement At the centre of the group's efforts is Swami Narsinghanand Saraswati (born Deepak Tyagi), a Hindu ascetic on whose ideology this 'army' is being built. He told TOI that he fully supports an extremist Hindu outfit as an answer to ISIS to "fight fire with fire". He called for support from Hindus all over the country to help them get access to more weapons. In fact, they have already started reaching out to Hindus in the country by speaking to two panchayats a month, propagating the idea that people should die fighting against "the enemy". "At the panchayats, I ask my Hindu lions to be brave and make sure they keep weapons with them at all times," Saraswati told TOI. "During the Muzaffarnagar riots, we went to the ground and asked people to be armed. All these politicians, who claim credit for saving Hindus, are lying." "I am preparing my people for civil war." Advertisement Contact HuffPost India Also on HuffPost: A MAJEED via Getty Images This photograph taken from a mobile phone shows Pakistani security personnel taking position outside the Bacha Khan university following an attack by gunmen in Charsadda, about 50 kilometres from Peshawar, on January 20, 2016. Gunmen have attacked a university in northwestern Pakistan, injuring at least three people, and are still on the rampage, security and school officials told AFP in the latest assault to hit the militant-infested region. AFP PHOTO / A MAJEED / AFP / A Majeed (Photo credit should read A MAJEED/AFP/Getty Images) CHARSADDA, PAKISTAN/ISLAMABAD -- Armed militants stormed a university in volatile northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing at least 20 people and wounding dozens a little more than a year after the massacre of 134 students at a school in the area, officials said. A senior Pakistani Taliban commander claimed responsibility for the assault in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, but an official spokesman later denied involvement, calling the attack "un-Islamic". Advertisement The violence nevertheless shows that militants retain the ability to launch attacks, despite a country-wide anti-terrorism crackdown and a military campaign against their strongholds along the lawless border with Afghanistan. A security official said the death toll could rise to as high as 40 at Bacha Khan University in the city of Charsadda. The army said it had concluded operations to clear the campus six hours after the attack began, and that four gunmen were dead. A spokesman for rescue workers, Bilal Ahmad Faizi, said 19 bodies had been recovered including students, guards, policemen and at least one teacher, named by media as chemistry professor Syed Hamid Husain. Husain reportedly shot back at the gunmen with a pistol to allow his students to flee. Many of the dead were apparently shot in the head execution-style, TV footage showed. The militants, using the cover of thick, wintry fog, scaled the walls of the university on Wednesday morning before entering buildings and opening fire on students and teachers in classrooms and hostels, police said. Students told media they saw several young men wielding AK-47 guns storming the university housing where many students were sleeping. "They came from behind and there was a big commotion," an unnamed male student told a news channel from a hospital bed in Charsadda's District Hospital. "We were told by teachers to leave immediately. Some people hid in bathrooms." Thirty five of the wounded remain in hospital, a local police official said late on Wednesday. Here are latest updates over terrorist attack on #BachaKhanUniversity, Pakistan https://t.co/6GAeZr8io8 ABP News (@abpnewstv) January 20, 2016 CONTRADICTING CLAIMS The gunmen attacked as the university prepared to host a poetry recital on Wednesday afternoon to commemorate the death anniversary of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a popular ethnic Pashtun independence activist after whom the university is named. Advertisement Vice Chancellor Fazal Rahim told reporters that the university teaches over 3,000 students and was hosting an additional 600 visitors for the poetry recital. Umar Mansoor, a senior Pakistani Taliban commander involved in the December 2014 attack on the army school in Peshawar, claimed responsibility for the Charsadda assault and said it involved four of his men. He told Reuters by telephone the university was targeted because it was a government institution that supported the army. However, later in the day, official Taliban spokesman Muhammad Khorasani issued a written statement disassociating the militants from the attack, calling it un-Islamic. "Youth who are studying in non-military institutions, we consider them as builders of the future nation and we consider their safety and protection our duty," the statement said. Advertisement The reason for the conflicting claims was not immediately clear. While the Taliban leadership is fractured, Mansoor is believed to remain loyal to central leader Mullah Fazlullah. The Pakistani Taliban are fighting to topple the government and install a strict interpretation of Islamic law. They are loosely allied with the Afghan Taliban who ruled most of Afghanistan until they were overthrown by U.S.-backed military action in 2001. By afternoon on Wednesday, the military said all four gunmen had been killed. "The operation is over and the university has been cleared," Pakistan army spokesman General Asim Bajwa said. A security official close to the operation said he had seen the four gunmen's bodies riddled with bullets. He said none of the gunmen was wearing a suicide vest, but they carried guns and grenades. RUMOURS OF ATTACK Television footage showed military vehicles packed with soldiers driving into the campus as helicopters buzzed overhead and ambulances lined up outside the main gate while anxious parents consoled each other. Shabir Khan, a lecturer in the English department, said he was about to leave his university housing for the department when firing began. "Most of the students and staff were in classes when the firing began," Khan said. Several schools had closed early at the weekend around Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, after rumors circulated of a possible attack. The area has been on edge since the December 2014 massacre by six gunmen in Peshawar. Pakistan, which has suffered from years of jihadist militant violence, has killed and arrested hundreds of suspected militants under a major crackdown launched afterwards. The Peshawar school attack was seen as having hardened Pakistan's resolve to fight militants along its lawless border with Afghanistan. Advertisement "We are determined and resolved in our commitment to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland," Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said in a statement after Wednesday's attack. JUST IN: Those who kill innocent students and civilians have no religion, says PM Nawaz Sharif on #PakUnivAttackpic.twitter.com/fSC9izIYHE CNN-IBN News (@ibnlive) January 20, 2016 Strongly condemn the terror attack at Bacha Khan University in Pakistan. Condolences to families of the deceased. Prayers with the injured. Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) January 20, 2016 Advertisement Contact HuffPost India Also On HuffPost: STRDEL via Getty Images The Chief Minister of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu Jayalalithaa Jayaram gestures as she speaks onstage during the Global Investors Meet 2015 at the Chennai Trade Centre in the Indian city of Chennai on September 9, 2015. The southern state of Tamil Nadu is expecting investment from foreign investors to encourage industrial development. AFP PHOTO / STR (Photo credit should read STRDEL/AFP/Getty Images) The Morning Wrap is HuffPost India's selection of interesting news and opinion from the day's newspapers. Subscribe here to receive it in your inbox each weekday morning. Essential HuffPost A Sikh man along with his three Muslim friends, who were kicked out of an American Airlines flight last month because their appearance made the captain uneasy, sued the airline for $9 million. Advertisement In a bid to attract more students and contain dropouts, West Bengals education department will provide school shoes free of cost to all students in government primary schools till class four. Pollutants in the air reduced by up to 18 per cent during the odd-even scheme that regulated the plying of four-wheelers on Delhi roads for a fortnight, according to a US study. It found stark reductions in pollutants around the noon hours from January 1 to 15. Tamil Nadu Chief J Jayalalithaa launched a round-the-clock Amma Call Centre to ensure faster response to grievances. The action taken on the grievance will also be shared with the caller through SMS. Yasutaro Koide, the world's oldest man, died at the age of 112 in Japan. The world's oldest person is an American woman, 116-year-old Susannah Mushatt Jones of Brooklyn, New York. Advertisement Main News The latest questions being raised in the suicide of PhD student Rohith Vemula at the Hyderabad Central University is this: why did the Ministry of Human Resources write four letters on the matter? Heres all you need to know. The Opposition, meanwhile, was demanding the resignations of Central Ministers Smriti Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya for allegedly driving the Dalit scholar to suicide. In a first, three minors from Madhya Pradesh accused of murder of their classmate would be examined to decide if they should be tried as adults or juveniles under the revamped Juvenile Justice Act. Pakistans slow probe on the Pathankot attack means the Jaish-e-Mohammed men may be freed. A total of 35 operatives, including its founder Masood Azhar, were detained by Pakistani authorities but there has been no other progress in the investigation, sources said. The Bihar government announced 35 per cent reservation for women in government jobs in the state at all levels. The decision was taken at a meeting of the state cabinet presided over by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. At a rally in Kokrajhar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised Central largesse in Bodoland but with strict monitoring of funds. The solutions to all the problems in Bodoland lie in development, he said. Advertisement Off The Front Page The results for the first phase of the National Family Health Survey 2015-16 were heartening. It showed dramatic improvements in maternal and infant mortality, immunisation coverage, nutrition and such criteria in 13 states. The last survey was done a decade ago. Indian Army dogs will take part in the Republic Day Parade on 26 January after a gap of 26 years. The Army, which has about 1,200 Labradors and German Shepherds, have selected 36 canines to march down the Rajpath with their handlers. Actor Asin Thottumkal married Micromax co-founder Rahul Sharma in a private ceremony attended by family and close friends at a resort hotel in Delhi. Bima Bharti, JD(U) MLA in Purnia district of Bihar, allegedly helped her husband Awadhesh Mandal escape from the police station. A manhunt is on for Mandal, who is accused in more than 100 cases of murder, extortion and loot. Twenty-six years after the Kashmiri pandits were forced to flee the valley, former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Farooq Abdullah said the onus was on them to return. Don't wait till the last guns stop firing. Come home! he urged. Who are you waiting for? Don't wait. You think Farooq Abdullah will come, hold your hand and take you there? he asked. Advertisement Opinion Journalist Bhupendra Chaubey is a defender Sunny Leone neither sought, nor needed. It's time Chaubey, and his ilk, find someone else to shower their faux heroism on. Heres one in praise of Sunny Leone facing a smug and judgmental interviewer. I will clam up if you want it on record, he said, and I thought that was the essential problem with Rahul the lack of confidence to take on the world without having to hide behind off-the-record interactions and the resultant malicious misrepresentations, writes Sujata Anandan in the Hindustan Times. Rahul Gandhi needs to work on his charm offensive, she says. It is puzzling why India would pick a battle with China outside of its own neighbourhood, when it benefits India to engage China in promoting infrastructure and fighting terror in the neighbourhood, writes Suhasini Haidar in The Hindu. Advertisement News / Africa by Staff Reporter The dark side of illicit sex trade got darker for a Gaborone man over the weekend after he was invaded by a gang of three men and two women armed with Okapi knives and accusing him of raping one of the women.The Voice reported that the 29-year old man who stays at Jamal Estates Flats in Maruapula is alleged to have met the woman at Gaborone West Phase 2 at 3am on Sunday and proposed love to her.The woman is said to have agreed and they went to Maruapula together where they had consensual sex at the man's house.After engaging in sex the lady is said to have demanded cash from the man and told him that she was in business.He is said to have told her that he did not have any money and only gave her money for a cab.At around 7am the woman is said to have returned to the flat with her friends and forced their way into the man's house accusing him of rape.When he tried to resist they allegedly threatened him with an Okapi knife before they robbed him of his cellphone and emptied his fridge before they fled.The security guard is said to have identified their get-away grey Alteza car and later gave the registration number to the police.The vehicle was screened and it was discovered that the registration details were actually of a Subaru whose owner was in Jwaneng.The police followed up the matter and managed to arrest the two women implicated in the robbery while their male friends are still at large. Headlines from the front lines Sign up to join the fight for all animals with email updates and text alertsyou can be first to take action on the issues that matter most. Access exclusive content and media materials in our press room. 6 Reasons Snapchat Will Own 2016 2016 is shaping up to be a big year for Snapchat, which has already seen massive user growth across a broad swath of demographics, meaning now is a good time for artists to start taking advantage of some of Snapchat's underutilized features. ___________________________________ Guest post by Jesse Kirshbaum of the Nue Agency As 2016 continues to roll, its becoming pretty clear that its going to be a huge year for Snapchat. Even though Ive been a user for a few years, Ive been starting to have a lot of fun on the platform as my community grows and engages more and more. Im noticing a few things I want to share: Snapchat is poised to win this year as it appears to be gearing toward a 2016 IPO. At a 10 billion + valuation in 4 short years thats beyond big business. It took Facebook 8 years to IPO just to put that into perspective. Snapchats engagement is also way up. To give some context back in April 40 million people tuned into the Coachella story. Thats way more than the live stream or any other platform and Snapchat is seeing an averaging of seven billion mobile views per day. The audience is aging up. Meaning, its where millennials have been communicating regularly, but now its clearly gaining more traction in other demos. Over the last year in the U.S., Snapchat added 25-to-34-year-old users (103%) and older-than-35 users (84%) faster than 18-to-24-year-old users (56%), according to measurement firm Comscore. Snapchats own data now peg 12% of its nearly 50 million daily users in the U.S. as 35 to 54. [ LATimes The stories are useful, but direct messages are the best way to use the medium. Its really not about how many followers you have, its all about how you communicate with your community. I personally try to respond to every direct message I get. More so than any other medium. Its a grind but way more personal to me. So hit me up at @JesseKay3000. With that said Snapcodes are completely under utilized. Just take a picture of my Snapcode on Snapchat and it will allow you to add me as a friend. Im surprised this isnt taking off more. Why arent stores putting their Snapcodes on the front doors? Why dont artists have their Snapcodes as their profile pictures? Billboards should include Snapcodes along with tv commercials, print ads, all marketing, because its just that easy to connect with Snapchat. And pulling up my Snapcode at a party or event reminds me of my early days in this game when you beamed youre Two Way info with your new contacts. That was an era. And its just that easy again with Snapchat to connect. JesseKay25 for 25% off expires Feb 18 If you want to learn how to put music in your story, check out this video tip . PS. Get your tickets to Social Media Week NY now! Disclaimer Im on the advisory board and its going to be the best one yet NYC! Use the code:for 25% off expires Feb 18 Anyway, Im having a lot of fun playing the medium and I see a lot of you are too. If you are loving Snapchat and crushing it (aka gaining followers, innovating, gaining traction, breaking ground, putting out fresh content) id love to chat with you. Hit me on the Snap or email me directly. -JesseKay3000 Jesse Kirshbaum. // @JesseKay For more than a decade, Jesse Kirshbaum has been in the trenches of the music business, specializing in securing talent for concerts, tours, and endorsement deals for his various clients and brand partners internationally. He founded NUE, a creative music agency recently named to the Inc. 5000 as the third fastest-growing media company in America, to sit at the center of music, brands, and technology . Jesse is also the executive producer for both the hit digital series #CRWN and The FlashFWD Awards, honoring premierstars in music tech. Share on: 2015 abounded in noteworthy judgments, which shows that Europe is committed to an extensive protection of the privacy of Internet users. At the same time, this privacy protection enforcement takes place under the jurisdiction of the relevant Internet user, which means that in the US, it will be possible to sue Google. One of the most important cases was the dispute between Google and Vidal-Hall ([2015] EWCA Civ 311), where the plaintiff sued Google for collecting data on online activity from her Apple Safari browser without her consent. Another interesting case was the Weltimmo s.r.o. vs Nemzeti Adatvedelmi es Informacioszabadsag Hatosag (Case C-230/14) lawsuit, where the Slovak website, gathering Hungarian market real estate offers, collected the data of Hungarian citizens. The company, even though it was Slovak, was held responsible before the Hungarian authorities for unauthorized data collection. The last interesting case was the Schrems vs. Facebook (C-362/14) lawsuit, as a result of which Safe Harbor was considered null and void. Success of the year From the perspective of the advertising industry, it is worth mentioning the dispute between the publishers of the German daily newspapers "Die Zelt" and "Handelsblatt", and Eyeo, producer of the advertisement blocking Internet tool AdBlock Plus, which was lost by the former. The publishers filed a lawsuit against AdBlock Plus for illegal activity that was detrimental to market competition and deprived them of their profits from advertising. Another issue that was raised concerned the fact that some companies pay the developers of AdBlock Plus for being placed on the so-called "white list" of entities that are not blocked by the program. The publishers lost the case in the court of Hamburg, as the bench did not find any violations by the producer's ad blocking software. In the light of the disputes loss and the need for conciliation, and with the lack of a legal means to put an end to the activities of the software producer, the recent activity of the Axel Springer Group is becoming more and more important and can be considered a success. The Group closed access to all content on the "Bild" newspaper website to all users of ad blocking programs. It requires AdBlock to be turned off or a EUR 2.99/month subscription fee to be covered. Its activity is lawful, and looking at recent reports effective. Perhaps; therefore, it is one of the solutions that could be adopted by the advertising industry? Failure of the year The so-called "Trilogue negotiations on the wording of the new regulation on data protection for European citizens were completed. While the idea behind it is noble, the combined efforts of the online industry failed to convince European legislators to take into account the demands of the industry, such as a more precise definition of personal data or clear regulations on profiling, with a new model of much more restrictive sanctions. It can all be summed up by Townsend Feehan, CEO of IAB Europe: The data protection deal is a triumph of populist rhetoric over common sense. Legal uncertainty and big fines are a toxic cocktail, and companies will have little choice but to impose annoying requests for consent every time a user accesses their website. Europe remains a regulatory minefield, which means that new data-driven innovative services and products will continue to come to European consumers much later or not at all, and if they come they will be offered by more competitive companies. Trend of the year Data combining a new driving force that increases the effectiveness of online campaigns. First party data", i.e. the data of the advertiser or the agency; "second party data", i.e. the data of the advertisers' partners and lastly; "third party data", i.e. the data of third parties such as publishers, monitoring traffic on their websites. These three notions, in particular in relation to the growing popularity of programmatic advertisements, are becoming commonly used. From the legal perspective, it is worth mentioning that the growing use of different data sources entails increased legal risks for the entire process. This raises questions concerning the "ownership" of data, its safe transfer, attempts to combine it (with the use of the popular "cookie matching") and the consequences it has for the protection of personal data, but also for the information obligations of publishers. Forecast for 2016 Privacy will likely be a returning subject and a headache for the industry. The past year shows that, although the statutory law has not kept pace with the development of business models, especially in the online industry, the judicial authorities are striving to bridge this gap with precedential judgments. Apart from the Safe Harbor case and the draft regulation on the protection of natural persons in terms of processing and free movement of personal data, which is viewed as at least controversial by the online advertising industry; it is worth mentioning the European Commissions initiative concerning the establishment of the Digital Single Market. It covers, among other things, rules facilitating cross-border e-commerce and ending geo-blocking, as well as a closer look into the role of Internet platforms such as search engines and social media. p>Millions of dollars for basic necessities like food, clean water and temporary shelter as well as for longer-term projects like the rebuilding of schools, hospitals and houses can be raised through relatively small amounts of money from individuals and entities across the globe, mostly through the Internet. Crowdfunding, as the movement and practice is known, leverages social media and web-based communication to solicit small monetary contributions from a large group of people. The emergence of more specialized crowdfunding websites suggests that this type of digital fundraising is becoming more common in the development and humanitarian community. Here are 15 popular crowdfunding sites for social causes and development initiatives, based everywhere from New Delhi, India to Brooklyn, New York. Source: https://www.devex.com/news/digital-fundraising-15-popular-crowdfunding-sites-for-social-causes-87606 News / National by Staff reporter Zimbabwe National Roads Administration acting chief executive officer Engineer Moses Juma has landed a top continental post as the African Road Maintenance Fund Association (ARMFA) executive auditor.ARMFA brings together 34 road administration organisations from various African countries.The main objective of ARMFA is to develop a network for the exchange of information and experiences on the practices of financing road maintenance in Africa.It is also aimed at encouraging the promotion and strengthening of ties between road maintenance organisations on the continent with a view to ensure sustainability and harmonious development of road funds.Eng Juma was elected at the association's 14th annual congress held in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo last month, taking over from Ghana's Mr Francis Ahlidza.In an interview yesterday, Eng Juma said his appointment did not only put Zimbabwe on the world map in terms of road fund management, but also confirmed the quality of human resources in the country."What it means is that zinara and subsequently Zimbabwe as a country is leading the management and smooth running of road funds in the roads industry on the continent," he said."This shows how much faith the continent has in Zimbabwe's capabilities."Eng Juma said his appointment comes at a time when the country had upped the implementation of the country's economic blueprint Zim-Asset which places infrastructure development at the centre of economic development."Roads are a key economic enabler," he said. "All the development we are talking about requires us to have roads as a key driver."As zinara, we have learnt a lot from our African counterparts and we want to strive for excellence as we continue to support road construction, especially now that we have targets we have to meet under Zim-Asset."ARMFA was established in 2003 and has been instrumental in encouraging and supporting African Road Fund organisations as they seek to optimally collect revenue for roads development and maintenance through fuel levy, licence fees and tolling fees.It is divided into four focal groups namely Central Africa, East Africa, West Africa and Southern Africa.Before assuming his new post at ARMFA, Eng Juma was chairperson of the Southern African Focal Group since his appointment as Zinara acting chief executive officer.Zimbabwe, through Zinara successfully hosted the 13th ARMFA Annual General Assembly and Annual General Meeting in Victoria Falls in February 2015.The hosting of that meeting was at short notice after Ghana failed to take up the responsibility.This gave the country an opportunity to showcase its tollgates that are run 100 percent on solar, making Zimbabwe the first country in the world to use such technology. ProPublica , the non-profit investigative journalism outfit whose motto is "Journalism in the Public Interest" has become the first major media organization to join the "Dark Web" with the launch of a hidden service version of its site, designed to run on the encrypted Tor Browser . As reported by Wired: The move, ProPublica says, is designed to offer the best possible privacy protections for its visitors seeking to read the sites news with their anonymity fully intact. Unlike mere SSL encryption, which hides the content of the site a web visitor is accessing, the Tor hidden service would ensure that even the fact that the reader visited ProPublicas website would be hidden from an eavesdropper or Internet service provider. While working on a project about internet censorship in China, ProPublica's news applications developer Mike Tigas decided that his employers' website could benefit from some additional buffers against censorship anywhere in the world. On a ProPublica podcast, Tigas explained: Last year, we were working on a project called Inside the Firewall. It was an interactive news app about Chinese Internet censorship and the "Great Firewall," just tracking how international news sites are censored and uncensored within mainland China. During this, I was experimenting with using Tor around ProPublica-related things to see if maybe we could protect ourselves from being censored in the event that ProPublica is censored, or in the event that somebody is in a restrictive country or area would people be able to still access our reporting and our content? Many still associate the "Dark Web" with websites that cater to criminal activity, like the shuttered Silk Road, but Tigas told Wired, "I hope other people see that there are uses for hidden services that arent just hosting illegal sites...having good examples of sites like ProPublica and Securedrop using hidden services shows that these things arent just for criminals. Announcing the new version of the site on ProPublica's "Nerd Blog" last week, Tigas wrote: We launched this in part because we do a lot of reporting, writing, and coding about issues like media censorship, digital privacy and surveillance, and breaches of private medical information. Readers use our interactive databases to see data that reveals a lot about themselves, such as whether their doctor receives payments from drug companies. Our readers should never need to worry that somebody else is watching what theyre doing on our site. So we made our site available as a Tor hidden service to give readers a way to browse our site while leaving behind less of a digital trail. Coincidentally, last week Reason TV released a video tutorial on "How To Chat Anonymously Online," which includes a brief explanation of what Tor is and why you it's worth using even if you've got "nothing to hide." Source: http://reason.com/blog/2016/01/19/propublica-censorship-tor-dark-web Due to an unexpected surge of health insurance enrollees at the tail end of 2015, carriers have been beset by processing delays. This left many incoming consumers with issues such as missing insurance cards the following year, preventing them from actually using their coverage.The delays forced some policyholders to pay for their health care personally, despite being technically covered since the start of 2016.Various brokers and insurers have reported that many of their customers (with individual health plans and coverage via small businesses) have voiced complaints regarding the delay.Late last year, a number of carriers ended plans in some markets, forcing many of their customers to shop for new policies. At around the same time, the federal government extended the deadline for enrollment by two days, which meant more individuals and businesses rushed at the last minute to sign up. The ACA was also expanded last year, requiring employers to cover their workers.However, some delays were the result of insurer mistakes. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, for instance, had to delay the delivery of its insurance cards due to a bank account overdraft error on its part; the insurer had erroneously taken too much money from its 3,200 customers. The company announced Jan. 15 that it had managed to reverse most of the billing errors, and almost all of its customers have received their cards.Although health insurance delays are not uncommon to the industry, brokers claim that this year has been exceptional. The nations largest health insurance carrier is suffering large losses due to its inaugural participation in Affordable Care Act exchanges last year.UnitedHealth Group Inc. reported Tuesday that it lost $720 million its individual-market health plans in 2015 nearly $300 million more than it had originally estimated a few months ago.And while the insurers full-year profit still increased 3.5% year over year to total $5.81 billion, the staggering losses affected its insurers fourth-quarter profits, which fill 19% to $1/22 billion. UnitedHealth is also expecting to book $95 million in losses from a managed Medicaid contract.UnitedHealth had originally forecast a $425 million net loss on its ACA policies in November. However, sicker-than-average consumers enrolling in its health plans and a surplus of people signing up outside the open-enrollment window caused losses to surge. The deficit was so great, UnitedHealth also lost $245 million it had set aside to mitigate against 2016 losses.The insurer has reacted to its losses swiftly, having slashed broker commissions up to 80% through the end of 2015 and eliminated any pay to brokers altogether beginning this month.These adjustments are consistent with our long-stated approach to carefully evaluate and better understand the dynamics of exchanges as they have become clearer over time and adjust accordingly, the insurer said in statement.Agents are expected to lose thousands of dollars a year as a result of the change, and many are now saying they will stop recommending the carriers plans to clients.While we want to provide the right solutions, I feel were losing a degree of objectivity, said Rob Ferguson, an agent with Absolute Insurance Solutions in North Carolina. It may be a less expensive plan and thats what youre ultimately looking for and as an agent, Im going to make you aware of it, but Im not going to facilitate that process through the marketplace because Im really not getting paid for my time.Other rumors suggest UnitedHealth will pull out from the exchanges next year a move that could seriously diminish consumer choice.The only time Ive seen this before is when insurers are required by government to sell a product they do not particularly want to sell, Mark Hall, a law professor with Wake Forest University, told North Carolinas News Observer. Here, this seems consistent with an insurer that no longer wants to sell through the exchangesbut is not allowed to withdraw immediately, so its pushing its commissions to zero until its allowed to exit. New Zealand Team Preview T20 World Cup 2022: 'Nice Guys' New Zealand May Once Again Surprise With Final Finish 'India Doesn't Take a Single Penny From Asian Cricket Council': Former Opener Claims Pakistan Will Definitely Take Part in ODI WC T20 World Cup: No Ashwin, Pant in Harbhajan Singh's India XI For Crucial Pakistan Clash 'Bumrah's Absence is a Big Loss For India But Facing Shami And Bhuvneshwar Will be a Challenge For Pakistan' News / National by George Maponga A BULAWAYO man appeared before a magistrate's court here for poaching after he allegedly teamed up with three other men and killed four rhinoceros worth nearly $500 000 at Sango Valley Conservancy in Chiredzi.Munashe Mudenge Murwira (age not given), who is a senior Central Intelligence Organisation official based in Bulawayo, allegedly teamed up with a Zambian, Chris Kamboyi, Jason Chisango and the now deceased Dumisani Moyo and killed the rhinos before de-horning them in December last year.Kamboyi was still recovering in hospital after he was shot by police detectives, while Chisango has since been jailed for an effective 20 years after he was convicted of poaching by a Masvingo magistrate early this month.Moyo was shot and killed by detectives who intercepted the poaching gang at Sango Valley.Murwira, the alleged ringleader and mastermind of the poaching, appeared before Masvingo provincial magistrate Mr Langton Ndokera on Monday facing four charges of hunting and killing a specially protected animal.Murwira was remanded out of custody to March 4 after he was granted $100 bail by the High Court.According to prosecutor Mr Tavonga Musina, agreed facts are that on February 10 2014, Murwira and his three accomplices drove to Sango Valley Conservancy where they shot and killed two rhinos before de-horning them.On February 29 2015, Murwira and his gang again used the same modus operandi and went to Sango where they shot and killed another rhino before de-horning it.They allegedly sold the horn to unknown people in Zambia.Murwira and his gang allegedly struck again in April last year when they killed the third rhino and sold the horn to Zambians.Luck ran out for Murwira and his gang on December 29 last year after police detectives, acting on a tip-off, laid an ambush for them at Sango Valley.Murwira and his team allegedly started exchanging fire with police detectives, resulting in Kamboyi being shot and sustaining serious injuries, while Moyo was killed on the spot.Murwira and Chisango were arrested after they surrendered.Kamboyi was taken to Masvingo General Hospital where he is receiving treatment under police guard. We work towards an equitable, gender-just, self-reliant and sustainable fisheries, particularly in the small-scale, artisanal sector We work towards an equitable, gender-just, self-reliant and sustainable fisheries, particularly in the small-scale, artisanal sector We work towards an equitable, gender-just, self-reliant and sustainable fisheries, particularly in the small-scale, artisanal sector We work towards an equitable, gender-just, self-reliant and sustainable fisheries, particularly in the small-scale, artisanal sector News / National by Stephen Jakes The political commentator Zexie Mashonga has accused the ruling Zanu PF government for allowing a lot of unconstitutional things to be done in the country such as Chiefs being partisan."There are so many things that Zanu PF government is allowing that are unconstitutional," he said. "In our constitution for example traditional leaders are not allowed to be partisan but you find that Chiefs Council president ,Chief Fortune Charumbira and his chiefs and Headmen are Zanu PF activists and a thugs more than any ordinary citizen. He doesn't make it a secret."He said the whole traditional leaders institution is used by Zanu PF un apologetically."No-one cares, but this unconstitutional.Another good example is of our security sector. If there is anywhere full of thugs of Zanu PF that's in the chiefs. All Zanu PF murderers are found in the security sector, they kill and find safe haven in Army, Police and or CIO," he said. "This sector is so corrupt that they are not even ashamed of being Zanu-PF. They attend Zanu PF rallies in uniforms, they are party of the slogan chanting crowd."He said but what does the constitution say about this..?"Security sector must be non partisan. Serious reforms are needed here in order for Zimbabwe to be a country again," he said. "I think these are some of the more cases that our NGOs, Opposition political parties and civic organisations must take to court for clarity." News / National by Staff reporter Zimbabwe Stock Executive (ZSE) chief executive Alban Chirume yesterday told the court about the emotional pain he was going through due to the wide publicity his domestic dispute was receiving from the media.Chirume made the remarks while testifying in the domestic violence case when he appeared before Harare magistrate Nomsa Sabarauta, in the matter where he is accusing his ex-wife, Susan Mutangadura, of domestic violence.Mutangadura who is Institute of Directors Zimbabwe chairperson pleaded not guilty to the charge, arguing that all she did was act in self-defence. Developing properties for life, commerce, and leisure is just one part of the equation; for Filinvest, the biggest challenge is developing pleasant, long-term relationships through great design and the highest material standards. Real estate development is an industry that requires companies to assiduously consider more than a handful of factors before they start any project. Filinvest Land, Inc., a company that has proven its mettle in a diverse range of real estate developments, has risen to the top mainly due to its vision, hard work and insistence on choosing the best construction partners. The company believes that even the smallest board or the most subtle of mouldings should communicate institutional demand for excellence and quality. Architect Jimmy S. Roque, Filinvest Head of Planning Department, believes that construction materials of the highest quality are an important part of the success of their projects. We are always looking for building materials that will satisfy our requirements as a real estate developer in order to deliver quality homes that will ultimately benefit our clients, Roque said. The quest for the best in construction Filinvest Land, a name that has become synonymous with property development, has been in the real estate business since 1967 and has proven its authority in a diverse range of real estate developments including residential subdivisions, mid-rise and high-rise condominiums and offices, shopping centers, leisure hubs and more. Filinvest has built homes for over 135,000 families, and is committed to continue to fulfill Filipinos dreams. As such, it puts a high regard on using the best materials in all its developments to ensure the quality of its end-product while providing a safe environment for its contractors. Roque lists down his companys priorities when it comes to choosing building materials: quality, safety, availability, price, sustainability, maintenance, and design versatility. For us, the challenge is finding materials that provide long-term benefits while being sustainable. We want our clients to enjoy low-maintenance homes that will not require constant repairs. We also put into consideration the availability of materials so our construction operations and delivery commitments will never be compromised. Lastly, the material must be able to conform to changing design trends, he shared. Versatile, preferred building material One brand Filinvest has consistently used is HardieFlex. Filinvest has found the resistance of HardieFlex to fire, impact, moisture damage, and termites to be a great benefit for the company as it adds value to its developments. Filinvest also discovered another benefit: high-quality HardieFlex fiber cement boards are effective against damage caused by rodents. It has enough toughness to prevent rats from creating holes in the panels. Filinvest also found out that, unlike plywood that shrinks or expands [when exposed to varying weather conditions], the HardieFlex boards have maintained their form and integrity. Because of this, once the panels were put in place and the finishing has been applied, cracks are unlikely to appear. Re-sealing will not be required for a long time. Filinvest also demands versatility. Aside from using the fiber cement boards for interior purposes, they have explored outdoor applications, too. One of the companys projects, Princeton Heights in Molino, Cavite, has an American New England theme, with traditional exterior siding as a notable design feature. To attain this look, Filinvest used HardiePlank Siding with a wood grain-textured finish. The planks were simply applied directly onto the concrete walls. Princeton Heights, one of Filinvests projects located in Molino, Cavite displays an American New England theme, with the use of the HardiePlank Siding. In fact, for themed developments that require special design featuressuch as Balinese, Asian Tropical, and Mediterranean projectsFilinvest is constantly on the lookout for building materials that are flexible and versatile to achieve these design features without spending more. We use materials that are practical, lighter, and faster to install, affirmed Roque. We want to achieve our desired finishes at a lesser cost but with the same quality as a wall finish. Safeguarding the homeowners interests lies at the core of Filinvests business, which is why the company continues to use HardieFlex for its projects. We have seen that our homeowners have benefited from the lower maintenance and repair costs, Roque reported. Customer satisfaction and welfare, at the end of the day, are very important aspects that any leading full-range property developer always tries to ensure. First introduced in the mid-1980s, James Hardies pioneering fiber cement technology served as the foundation for the HardieFlex products we know today. James Hardie entered the local market in 1996, and Filipinosboth end-users such as homeowners and big corporations such as real estate developers - embraced HardieFlex as their go-to building material for ceilings and walls, initially. Made from high-grade cellulose fiber, Portland cement, water, sand and especially formulated additives, HardieFlex is durable and requires minimal maintenance and repair hence is very cost-effective and environment-friendly with very low VOC. Back to top The first trailer for New Line Cinemas The Conjuring 2 the sequel to 2014s acclaimed blockbuster, has arrived, and there seems to be plenty more eerie happenings in store. With director James Wan (Fast & Furious 7) once again at the helm, the supernatural thriller brings to the screen another real case from the files of renowned demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren. Reprising their roles, Oscar nominee Vera Farmiga (Up In the Air, TVs Bates Motel) and Patrick Wilson (the Insidious films), star as Lorraine and Ed Warren, who, in one of their most terrifying paranormal investigations, travel to north London to help a single mother raising four children alone in a house plagued by malicious spirits. The film follows the phenomenal worldwide reception of Wans The Conjuring, which marked the largest opening ever for an original horror movie. The film went on to make more than $319 million worldwide and still remains the second highest grossing original horror movie of all time, second only to The Exorcist. In addition to directing the film, Wan wrote the screenplay with Carey Hayes & Chad Hayes, and David Leslie Johnson. Opening across the Philippines on June 09, 2016, The Conjuring 2 is a New Line Cinema presentation and will be distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. Back to top Governor Brown Announces Appointments Sacramento, California - Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today announced the following appointments: Charlene Taylor, 63, of Elk Grove, has been reappointed to the California Veterans Board, where she has served since 2012. Taylor has held several positions at the Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and Health Plan since 1997, including chief nursing officer and chief operating officer of the Kaiser Permanente Sacramento Medical Center. She served as chief nurse and flight nurse for the U.S. Air Force Reserve from 1993 to 2009 and was an assistant hospital administrator at Sutter Amador Hospital from 1988 to 1997. She is a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Reserve Officers Association and the Society of Air Force Nurses. Taylor earned a Master of Science degree in nursing administration from the University of California, San Francisco. This position requires Senate confirmation and the compensation is $100 per diem. Taylor is a Republican. Bruce Holaday, 63, of Oakland, has been reappointed to the California State Board of Education, where he has served since 2012. Holaday has been director at Wildlife Associations since 2014, where he was director of educational advancement from 2010 to 2014. He was executive director at Newpoint Tampa High School from 2009 to 2010 and at the Oakland Military Institute from 2004 to 2009. Holaday held several positions at Culver Academies from 1976 to 2004, including director of development, director of Culver Summer Camps and an English teacher. He earned a Master of Education degree in English from Indiana University. This position requires Senate confirmation and the compensation is $100 per diem. Holaday is a Democrat. Feliza Ortiz-Licon, 40, of Long Beach, has been reappointed to the California State Board of Education, where she has served since 2015. Ortiz-Licon has been senior director of K-12 education at the National Council of La Raza since 2013, where she was regional director of education for California and the Far West from 2007 to 2013. She was director of college access services at the Fulfillment Fund from 2006 to 2007, director of policy for Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education member David Tokofsky from 2003 to 2006 and served as a teacher at John Muir Elementary School from 1999 to 2001. She is a member of the American Educational Research Association. Ortiz-Licon earned a joint Doctor of Education degree in educational leadership from the University of California, Irvine and California State University, Los Angeles and a Master of Arts degree in city and regional planning from the University of California, Berkeley. This position requires Senate confirmation and the compensation is $100 per diem. Ortiz-Licon is a Democrat. Nicolasa I. Sandoval, 45, of Lompoc, has been reappointed to the California State Board of Education, where she has served since 2013. Sandoval has been education director for the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians since 2009 and a lecturer at the University of California, Santa Barbara since 2007. She was a consulting manager at the Nonprofit Support Center from 2008 to 2009, where she was a community outreach specialist from 2007 to 2008. Sandoval was project evaluator at the University of California, Santa Barbara from 2004 to 2006 and served in several positions at the Smithsonians National Museum of the American Indian from 1995 to 2002, including assistant director of community services, training coordinator and special assistant for external affairs. Sandoval was a public affairs assistant at the Smithsonians National Museum of Natural History from 1994 to 1995 and a press assistant at the J. Paul Getty Museum from 1991 to 1993. Sandoval earned a Doctor of Education from the University of California, Santa Barbara and a Master of Arts degree in museum studies from George Washington University. This position requires Senate confirmation and the compensation is $100 per diem. Sandoval is registered without party preference. Judith Freyman, 65, of Rocklin, has been reappointed to the Occupational Safety and Health Appeals Board, where she has served since 2012. Freyman was vice president and western operations director at Mercer ORC Worldwide from 2001 to 2012 and held multiple positions at ConAgra Refrigerated Prepared Foods from 1979 to 2001, including assistant general counsel and corporate counsel. Freyman was corporate counsel at the Jewel Corporation from 1977 to 1979. She earned a Juris Doctor degree from the Loyola University, Chicago School of Law. This position requires Senate confirmation and the compensation is $120,441. Freyman is a Republican. Jack Neureuter, 78, of Geyserville, has been reappointed to the State Compensation Insurance Fund Board of Directors, where he has served since 2014. Neureuter was chief executive officer at Alliance Medical Center from 1998 to 2012, executive director of the Oakland Association of Insurance Agents from 1980 to 1998 and an account executive at Fritz Insurance Agency from 1977 to 1980. He is a member of the Sonoma County Memorial Hospice Advisory Board and the Health Action Sonoma Committee for Health Improvement Palliative Care Group. This position does not require Senate confirmation and the compensation is $55,255. Neureuter is a Republican. Ricky Cabrera, 49, of Salinas, has been reappointed to the 7th District Agricultural Association, Monterey County Fair Board of Directors, where he has served since 2012. Cabrera has been president at Cabrera Contracting Inc. since 1988. He is president of the Salinas Alisal Rotary Club and the Mexican Heritage Expo and a volunteer for the California Rodeo Salinas and Monterey County Reads. Cabrera is a member of the National Steinbeck Center Board of Trustees, Salinas Valley Leadership Group Board of Directors and the Monterey County Farm Bureau. This position does not require Senate confirmation and there is no compensation. Cabrera is a Democrat. Daniel Presser, 72, of Monterey, has been reappointed to the 7th District Agricultural Association, Monterey County Fair Board of Directors, where he has served since 2014. Presser has been owner at Four Winds Travel since 1994. He was a travel agent at Ashely Travel from 1992 to 1993 and a public relations director at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca in 1991. He is a member of the Association of Retail Travel Agents, Monterey County Military and Veterans Affairs Advisory Commission, Carmel Chamber of Commerce and the American Legion Post 41 Board. This position does not require Senate confirmation and there is no compensation. Presser is a Democrat. Paul Tran, 51, of Spreckels, has been reappointed to the 7th District Agricultural Association, Monterey County Fair Board of Directors, where he has served since 2012. Tran has been a project manager at Community Housing Improvement Systems and Planning Association Inc. since 2004. He served as a contract planner and deputy zoning administrator for the City of Santa Cruz in 2004. Tran was a law clerk at Lombardo and Gilles from 2001 to 2003, at Bello, Tade and Nale from 1999 to 2001 and at Call and Boyns from 1998 to 1999. He served as a certified law student and student intern at Legal Services for Seniors from 1997 to 1998. Tran was an associate planner for Monterey County from 1990 to 1998 and an assistant planner at the EMC Planning Group Inc. from 1989 to 1990. He is a member of the Salinas Senior Center Board of Directors, Monterey County Sheriffs Advisory Council, Monterey County Sheriffs Emergency Assistance Team and the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary. Tran earned a Juris Doctor degree from the Monterey College of Law. This position does not require Senate confirmation and there is no compensation. Tran is registered without party preference. Ned Dunphy, 57, of Bakersfield, has been reappointed to the 15th District Agricultural Association, Kern County Fair Board of Directors, where he has served since 2015. Dunphy has been a partner at Young Wooldridge since 2014, where he has been an attorney since 2012. He was a personal injury lawyer at Klein DeNatale and Goldner from 1990 to 2012 and a staff attorney and organizer at the United Farm Workers from 1977 to 1990. Dunphy is a member of the Kern County Bar Association and the Consumer Attorneys Association of Los Angeles. He earned his legal education through the California State Bar Law Office Study Program while participating in the United Farm Workers of America Legal Apprenticeship Program. This position does not require Senate confirmation and there is no compensation. Dunphy is a Democrat. Karen Henderson, 61, of Grass Valley, has been reappointed to the 17th District Agricultural Association, Nevada County Fair Board of Directors, where she has served since 2012. Henderson has been a teacher at Nevada Union High School since 1992. She was a teacher at Emporia State University from 1988 to 1992 and co-owner at Shady Oaks Ranch from 1977 to 1988. Henderson is a member of the California Wool Growers Association. She earned a Master of Science degree in biology from Emporia State University. This position does not require Senate confirmation and there is no compensation. Henderson is registered without party preference. Andrew Trygg, 33, of Grass Valley, has been reappointed to the 17th District Agricultural Association, Nevada County Fair Board of Directors, where he has served since 2013. Trygg has been a lead instructor at Public Safety Training Consultants since 2011. He served in several positions at the Nevada County Sheriffs Office from 2008 to 2013, including communications manager and senior sheriffs dispatcher. Trygg was a public safety dispatcher at the Placer County Sheriffs Office from 2005 to 2007 and a sheriffs dispatcher at the Nevada County Sheriffs Office from 2002 to 2005. He is a member of the Firefighters Association of Nevada City and served as a volunteer fire captain at the Nevada City Fire Department from 2001 to 2015. This position does not require Senate confirmation and there is no compensation. Trygg is registered without party preference. Kathlyn Mead, 57, of Escondido, has been appointed to the Race Track Leasing Commission as a representative of the 22nd District Agricultural Association, San Diego County Fair Board of Directors. Mead was executive vice president and chief operations officer at the California Endowment from 2007 to 2014. She was president and chief executive officer at the Council of Community Clinics from 2006 to 2007, vice president at Blue Shield of California from 2005 to 2006 and president and chief executive officer at Sharp Health Plan from 1996 to 2005. Mead was vice president at Childrens Hospital San Diego from 1994 to 1996. This position does not require Senate confirmation and there is no compensation. Mead is a Democrat. Richard Valdez, 52, of Chula Vista, has been appointed to the Race Track Leasing Commission as a representative of the 22nd District Agricultural Association, San Diego County Fair Board of Directors. Valdez has been an adjunct professor at the University of San Diego School of Law since 2008 and a partner and associate at Sandler, Lasry, Laube, Byer and Valdez LLP since 2000. Valdez was a partner and associate at Procopio, Cory, Hargreaves and Savitch LLP from 1991 to 2000. This position does not require Senate confirmation and there is no compensation. Valdez is a Democrat. Joan Kaiser Bell, 85, of Red Bluff, has been reappointed to the 30th District Agricultural Association, Tehama District Fair Board of Directors, where she has served since 2013. Bell served as an outpatient clinic clerk at the California Department of Veterans Affairs Hospital, Long Beach from 1989 to 1995. She is a member of the Tehama County Democratic Central Committee and the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association. She is a member of the California Democratic Party and a past California Democratic Party Assembly District 2 delegate. This position does not require Senate confirmation and there is no compensation. Bell is a Democrat. Linda Durrer, 67, of Red Bluff, has been reappointed to the 30th District Agricultural Association, Tehama District Fair Board of Directors, where she has served since 2013 and served from 2002 to 2005. Durrer has been owner and broker at Durrer Insurance since 2005 and a vocational counselor and return to work specialist at Durrer Rehabilitation since 1991. She is a member of the Tehama County Democratic Central Committee and Rotary International. This position does not require Senate confirmation and there is no compensation. Durrer is a Democrat. Manuel Ray Souza, Jr., 69, of Turlock, has been reappointed to the 38th District Agricultural Association, Stanislaus County Fair Board of Directors, where he has served since 1996. Souza has been owner at Ray Souza Farms since 1984. He is a member of the Stanislaus County Farm Bureau and past president of the Western United Dairymen, District 5 Board of Directors. This position does not require Senate confirmation and there is no compensation. Souza is a Republican. Jeremiah Williams, 51, of Modesto, has been reappointed to the 38th District Agricultural Association, Stanislaus County Fair Board of Directors, where he has served since 2015. Williams has been owner at Oak Crafts by Jeremiah since 1986. He is a member of the Modesto Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors, Gallo Center for the Arts Board of Trustees, King-Kennedy Memorial Center Board of Directors, Modesto Community Gang Task Force and the Boys and Girls Club of Stanislaus County Board of Directors. Williams is a charter member of Project Uplift, president of the Greater Modesto Tree Foundation, chair of the City of Modesto Independence Day Parade and community relations director at the United Pentecostal Church of Modesto. This position does not require Senate confirmation and there is no compensation. Williams is a Republican. Secretary of State John Kerry's Meeting With Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov Washington, DC - Secretary Kerry met today in Zurich with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov to discuss Syria, Ukraine, and other issues of mutual concern. The Secretary and Foreign Minister discussed plans for the UN-led negotiations between the Syrian parties on January 25 and the importance of maintaining progress toward a diplomatic solution to the crisis in Syria. Secretary Kerry pressed for Russia to use its influence with the Asad regime to ensure immediate, unimpeded and sustained humanitarian access to all Syrians in need, especially those in besieged areas such as Madaya, in compliance with UNSCR 2254 and as agreed by the ISSG in New York in December. On Ukraine, they discussed how to accelerate the full implementation of Minsk commitments, including the urgent need to restore the ceasefire and allow full OSCE access. Finally, they discussed the importance of a strong and united international response to North Koreas nuclear test in defiance of Security Council resolutions. London's Public Washrooms are Reopening as Nightclubs for First time in 10 Years News / National by Staff reporter Former Zanu-PF Chivi South legislator, Irvene Dzingirai, has defected to ousted Vice-President Joice Mujuru's People First movement (PF).Dzingirai who was defeated in the Zanu-PF primaries by Charles Utete, attended the-PF meeting held last week in Masvingo, where he posed for a group picture after the meeting.He confirmed his latest political move, saying Zanu-PF has reneged on its promises to the masses.Dzingirai last year blasted President Mugabe for appointing a bloated Cabinet at a time Treasury coffers were dry. Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the IndyArts email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} When I was growing up, mental illness petrified me. In the early 1990s, a rash of widely reported random killings by paranoid schizophrenics led to discussions about failings in community care. Headlines bristled with words such as "rampage" and "frenzied". There were soundbites on the news from people worried about venturing into shopping centres for fear of being attacked by strangers acting on the instructions of evil voices in their head. But in my own case, the anxiety came from a different source to that troubling most of the people interviewed on TV. The thought of being attacked by a mentally ill stranger didn't scare me any more than the many other upsetting things the nightly news beamed into my living room. Instead, it was the idea of losing your mind, to the extent that you might unintentionally kill someone, that frightened me. The knowledge that it was possible to be driven to such extremes by your own brain kept me awake for nights on end. I couldn't imagine what I would do if it ever happened to me. Some years later, when I read King Lear at school, I could well appreciate the panic in the ageing monarch's appeal: "O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven! Keep me in temper. I would not be mad," and the poignancy of his statement when, at last, he is reunited with Cordelia: "To deal plainly, / I fear I am not in my perfect mind." King Lear is not alone in its association of fear with mental illness: in the more than 400 years since the play was written, numerous authors have yoked insanity to dread. Several 19th-century novels feature figures (usually women) in turbulent mental states who do unnerving things, among them Charlotte Bronte's Bertha Rochester the original Mad Woman in the Attic and the title character in Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White. More recently, the idea of the vicious madman has underpinned countless horror stories and thrillers, with Robert Bloch's Psycho being something of a touchstone. Culture news in pictures Show all 33 1 /33 Culture news in pictures Culture news in pictures 30 September 2016 An employee hangs works of art with "Grand Teatro" by Marino Marini (R) and bronze sculpture "Sfera N.3" by Arnaldo Pomodoro seen ahead of a Contemporary Art auction on 7 October, at Sotheby's in London REUTERS Culture news in pictures 29 September 2016 Street art by Portuguese artist Odeith is seen in Dresden, during an exhibition "Magic City - art of the streets" AFP/Getty Images Culture news in pictures 28 September 2016 Dancers attend a photocall for the new "THE ONE Grand Show" at Friedrichstadt-Palast in Berlin, Germany REUTERS Culture news in pictures 28 September 2016 With an array of thrift store china, humorous souvenirs and handmade tile adorning its walls and floors, the Mosaic Tile House in Venice stands as a monument to two decades of artistic collaboration between Cheri Pann and husband Gonzalo Duran REUTERS Culture news in pictures 27 September 2016 A gallery assistant poses amongst work by Anthea Hamilton from her nominated show "Lichen! Libido!(London!) Chastity!" at a preview of the Turner Prize in London REUTERS Culture news in pictures 27 September 2016 A technician wearing virtual reality glasses checks his installation in three British public telephone booths, set up outside the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, Netherlands. The installation allows visitors a 3-D look into the museum which has twenty-two paintings belonging to the British Royal Collection, on loan for an exhibit from 29 September 2016 till 8 January 2017 AP Culture news in pictures 26 September 2016 An Indian artist dressed as Hindu god Shiva performs on a chariot as he participates in a religious procession 'Ravan ki Barat' held to mark the forthcoming Dussehra festival in Allahabad AFP/Getty Images Culture news in pictures 26 September 2016 Jean-Michel Basquiat's 'Air Power', 1984, is displayed at the Bowie/Collector media preview at Sotheby's in New York AFP/Getty Culture news in pictures 25 September 2016 A woman looks at an untitled painting by Albert Oehlen during the opening of an exhibition of works by German artists Georg Baselitz and Albert Oehlen in Reutlingen, Germany. The exhibition runs at the Kunstverein (art society) Reutlingen until 15 January 2017 EPA Culture news in pictures 24 September 2016 Fan BingBing (C) attends the closing ceremony of the 64th San Sebastian Film Festival at Kursaal in San Sebastian, Spain Getty Images Culture news in pictures 23 September 2016 A view of the artwork 'You Are Metamorphosing' (1964) as part of the exhibition 'Retrospektive' of Japanese artist Tetsumi Kudo at Fridericianum in Kassel, Germany. The exhibition runs from 25 September 2016 to 1 January 2017 EPA Culture news in pictures 22 September 2016 Jo Applin from the Courtauld Institute of Art looks at Green Tilework in Live Flesh by Adriana Vareja, which features in a new exhibition, Flesh, at York Art Gallery. The new exhibition features works by Degas, Chardin, Francis Bacon and Sarah Lucas, showing how flesh has been portrayed by artists over the last 600 years PA Culture news in pictures 21 September 2016 Performers Sean Atkins and Sally Miller standing in for the characters played by Asa Butterfield and Ella Purnell during a photocall for Tim Burton's "Miss Peregrines Home For Peculiar Children" at Potters Field Park in London Getty Images Culture news in pictures 20 September 2016 A detail from the blanket 'Alpine Cattle Drive' from 1926 by artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner is displayed at the 'Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum for Contemporary Arts' in Berlin. The exhibition named 'Ernst Ludwig Kirchner - Hieroglyphen' showing the complete collection of Berlin's Nationalgallerie works of the German artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and will run from 23 September 2016 until 26 February 2017 AP Culture news in pictures 20 September 2016 A man looks at portrait photos by US photographer Bruce Gilden in the exhibition 'Masters of Photography' at the photokina in Cologne, Germany. The trade fair on photography, photokina, schowcases some 1,000 exhibitors from 40 countries and runs from 20 to 25 September. The event also features various photo exhibitions EPA Culture news in pictures 20 September 2016 A woman looks at 'Blue Poles', 1952 by Jackson Pollock during a photocall at the Royal Academy of Arts, London PA Culture news in pictures 19 September 2016 Art installation The Refusal of Time, a collaboration with Philip Miller, Catherine Meyburgh and Peter Galison, which features as part of the William Kentridge exhibition Thick Time, showing from 21 September to 15 January at the Whitechapel Gallery in London PA Culture news in pictures 18 September 2016 Artists creating one off designs at the Mm6 Maison Margiela presentation during London Fashion Week Spring/Summer collections 2017 in London Getty Images Culture news in pictures 18 September 2016 Bethenny Frankel attends the special screening of Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" to celebrate the 25th Anniversary Edition release on Blu-Ray and DVD in New York City Getty Images for Walt Disney Stu Culture news in pictures 17 September 2016 Visitors attend the 2016 Oktoberfest beer festival at Theresienwiese in Munich, Germany Getty Images Culture news in pictures 16 September 2016 Visitors looks at British artist Damien Hirst work of art 'The Incomplete Truth', during the 13th Yalta Annual Meeting entitled 'The World, Europe and Ukraine: storms of changes', organised by the Yalta European Strategy (YES) in partnership with the Victor Pinchuk Foundation at the Mystetsky Arsenal Art Center in Kiev AP Culture news in pictures 16 September 2016 Tracey Emin's "My Bed" is exhibited at the Tate Liverpool as part of the exhibition Tracey Emin And William Blake In Focus, which highlights surprising links between the two artists Getty Images Culture news in pictures 15 September 2016 Musician Dave Grohl (L) joins musician Tom Morello of Prophets of Rage onstage at the Forum in Inglewood, California Getty Images Culture news in pictures 14 September 2016 Model feebee poses as part of art installation "Narcissism : Dazzle room" made by artist Shigeki Matsuyama at rooms33 fashion and design exhibition in Tokyo. Matsuyama's installation features a strong contrast of black and white, which he learned from dazzle camouflage used mainly in World War I AP Culture news in pictures 13 September 2016 Visitors look at artworks by Chinese painter Cui Ruzhuo during the exhibition 'Glossiness of Uncarved Jade' held at the exhibition hall 'Manezh' in St. Petersburg, Russia. More than 200 paintings by the Chinese artist are presented until 25 September EPA Culture news in pictures 12 September 2016 A visitor looks at Raphael's painting 'Extase de Sainte Cecile', 1515, from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence during the opening of a Raphael exhibition at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, Russia. The first Russian exhibition of the works of the Italian Renaissance artist Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino includes eight paintings and three drawings which come from Italy. Th exhibit opens to the public from 13 September to 11 December EPA Culture news in pictures 11 September 2016 Steve Cropper and Eddie Floyd perform during Otis Redding 75th Birthday Celebration - Rehearsals at the Macon City Auditorium in Macon, Georgia Getty Images for Otis Redding 75 Culture news in pictures 10 September 2016 Sakari Oramo conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Chorus and the BBC Singers at the Last Night of the Proms 2016 at the Royal Albert Hall in London PA Culture news in pictures 9 September 2016 A visitor walks past a piece entitled "Fruitcake" by Joana Vasconcelo, during the Beyond Limits selling exhibition at Chatsworth House near Bakewell REUTERS Culture news in pictures 8 September 2016 A sculpture of a crescent standing on the 2,140 meters high mountain 'Freiheit' (German for 'freedom'), in the Alpstein region of the Appenzell alps, eastern Switzerland. The sculpture is lighted during the nights by means of solar panels. The 38-year-old Swiss artist and atheist Christian Meier set the crescent on the peak to start a debate on the meaning of religious symbols - as summit crosses - on mountains. 'Because so many peaks have crosses on them, it struck me as a great idea to put up an equally absurd contrast'. 'Naturally I wanted to provoke in a fun way. But it goes beyond that. The actions of an artist should be food for thought, both visually and in content' EPA Culture news in pictures Culture news in pictures Culture news in pictures These stories are suspenseful and often chilling because of the inscrutable nature of the afflictions gripping their characters. We don't understand what is wrong (at least at first) and so we can't predict what will happen next. And the less we understand, the more easy it is to demonise. It's a technique that the author Shirley Jackson exploits and to some extent turns on its head in her terrifying mid-20th-century novel The Haunting of Hill House. Here, rather than being rushed at on occasion by an insane character who waits in the wings, readers are taken inside the mind of the person who is disturbed. The troubled protagonist is Eleanor, one of a handful of volunteers who answer a newspaper advert to accompany an investigator of the paranormal during a stay at a purportedly haunted house. The not knowing in this case takes the form of an uncertainty about how many of the unsettling events described are real and how many of them only take place in Eleanor's mind. Although there are suggestions in the weird euphoria that Eleanor feels during her journey to the house that her mental state is erratic, Jackson lays out enough hints to keep open the possibility that the terrifying occurrences that the guests all experience to some degree have supernatural causes. As a result, we wander through the text as ill at ease and unsure about what is really happening as the protagonist herself. The final turn of the screw comes when Eleanor's anxieties transform into a horrid serenity that we know with queasy certainty can't come to any good. Jackson might have left things at that and turned in a gripping thriller. But what lifts the book on to another level are the flashes of insight that she continues to give Eleanor right up until the narrative drives to its terrible conclusion. Amid the eerie incidents, we get glimpses of the woman trapped in the tumult, clamouring to get out. This is what makes us care and keeps the story churning in our brain long after the final page. Iris Murdoch, whose confused narrators in The Sea, the Sea betray their own conditions (Getty) (Getty Images) Indeed, this issue of where a condition or perhaps possession in Eleanor's case stops and the person begins is one of the most fascinating questions when it comes to the literature of mental illness. From Bessie Head's A Question of Power to Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, and from Horacio Castellanos Moya's Senselessness to Knut Hamsun's Hunger, the world abounds with novels that tug at the knots tying identity to mental health and try to tease out the point at which the concepts come apart. Many of these, such as Iris Murdoch's tour de force The Sea, the Sea, work through the form of intense, first-person narratives that seethe with contradictions and non sequiturs, inviting readers to put their own spin on events and make their own diagnosis. Others, among them Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire, use devices such as footnotes to build up layers of assertion and counter-assertion that wrinkle into pockets where speculation about the sanity of one or more of the narrators can breed a kind of textual split personality disorder. In my novel Beside Myself, which features an identical twin who is diagnosed with bipolar disorder after she swaps places with her sister and becomes trapped in the wrong life, I decided to use voices to reflect the mental disintegration of my protagonist. Starting off rooted in the first person, the narrative comes unstuck after a traumatic childhood experience and moves into the second person. By the time the adult protagonist, Smudge, appears, the narration is in a distant third-person strain that gets interrupted and occasionally almost overwhelmed by disjointed voices in Smudge's head. The seriousness of the question of how identity and illness intermingle means that many of the works that tackle it tend to be rather bleak, but that isn't always the case. Joseph Heller builds Catch-22's satire around a set of paradoxical requirements used to ascertain whether airmen are mentally fit to fly (in short: if you were insane you could be excused from duty; and yet, if you applied to be excused, you were showing a very sane fear for your life); Don Quixote's deluded tilting at windmills evokes much mirth; and, for all its sinister, Kafkaesque traits, Jonas Karlsson's The Room, about a civil servant who discovers a door to a secret office where his colleagues can see only a blank wall, packs several hilarious punches. Similarly, for all the fears often attached to it, mental illness itself is not portrayed in a uniformly negative light in fiction. Just as it provides rich fodder for wordsmiths, so its depiction is often rich. For example, the link between mental illness and creativity demonstrated by numerous scientific studies, including research last year by Reykjavik-based genetics company deCODE which showed that painters, musicians, writers and dancers are, on average, 25 per cent more likely to carry gene variants that predispose them to bipolar disorder and schizophrenia is a common theme. Derek Jacobi as King Lear (Johan Persson) The protagonist of Patrick Gale's Notes from an Exhibition, for example, is the brilliant yet troubled artist Rachel Kelly, whose debilitating bipolar disorder and bursts of creative genius are irrevocably intertwined. The question is: brilliant yet troubled, or brilliant because troubled? Though Shirley Jackson's Eleanor is ultimately crushed by events at Hill House, she experiences moments of exhilaration, joy and release as she surrenders to whatever delusion or force grips her there. Even Lear, wandering on his blasted heath, "As mad as the vexed sea, singing aloud, / Crowned with rank furmitor and furrow-weeds", has moments of accepting his weakness and diminished status that approach a kind of peace. These depictions of the positive sides of altered mental states echo some of the real-life accounts written by people diagnosed with psychiatric illness. In The Devil Within, for example, author and critic Stephanie Merritt describes how her bipolar disorder led to periods of intense productivity and an "unnatural energy" that allowed her to turn in articles at a frenetic rate, although, as the title suggests, the negative aspects of the untreated illness far outweighed any benefits. This dual quality is reflected by the fact that, in many of these narratives, those who have experienced treatment describe the struggle of accepting that managing their illness so as to be able to function on an everyday basis will involve the loss of the bursts of energy, creativity and vision that their condition affords them in its unbridled state. There are some forms of insanity that are celebrated in literature or at least regarded as normal. Love is the prime example. Here's Romeo, a self-confessed "sick man", describing his state in light of his new feelings for Juliet, and sounding for all the world like someone in the grip of a psychiatric disorder: "Tut, I have lost myself. I am not here. / This is not Romeo; he's some other where." And more plainly, here's Rosalind in the thick of toying with Orlando in As You Like It: "Love is merely a madness, and I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punished and cured is that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too." (Rosalind's reference to the grim Elizabethan treatments for madness are a reminder that extreme and inappropriate responses to many forms of mental illness are sadly nothing new.) Even when it comes to less common conditions and obsessions, literature's ability to transport readers and viewers into unfamiliar and sometimes desperate situations means that it is able to explain and to some extent normalise the troubled mental states of its characters. Through showing us the steps that have led to the crisis, stories reveal that insanity can often be if not a rational then a reasonable, human response to terrible events. For example, in Sophocles' play Electra, Electra's plan to have her brother Orestes murder their mother Clytemnestra is somehow understandable in light of her fixation on her dead father and hatred for the mother who killed him. Similarly, some 25 centuries later, in his novel The Shock of the Fall, Nathan Filer's deft excavation of the impact on the protagonist of his brother's death takes us deep into the experience of schizophrenia. Stories such as these are important because they build bridges between the world of the reader and that of the character described. By revealing the humanity and humanness of illnesses so often stigmatized and made to seem other, they chip away at the sharp divide many of us imagine between sane and insane a divide that may often be little more than a comforting buffer between us and the terrifying idea of losing our mind. Instead, these stories encourage us to see mental health as more of a sliding scale, a continuum on which we might all find ourselves at different points throughout our lives. By fleshing out the experience of mental illness, they nudge us towards the truth that, as Matt Haig observes in his memoir-cum-manifesto Reasons to Stay Alive, "Everyone would have a label if they asked the right professional." In so doing, they work against the stigma and fear that so often bring loneliness in their wake for people diagnosed with mental illness. Hennequins painting of Orestes tormented by the Furies, which shows him being embraced by his sister Electra after killing their mother in a mad plot (Wikimedia) This was something I encountered in my early-twenties when I spent two years volunteering for Samaritans. Over that time, I had the sad privilege of talking with people in all sorts of extreme circumstances, from young abuse victims in care to prisoners experiencing mental breakdown, as well as many people holding together "normal" lives while struggling against terrible challenges beneath the surface. The stories of those I spoke to were unique and private to the individuals, but something that was common to many of them was a sense of isolation. Even those in touch with the caring professions often felt failed and marginalised by the system, something I later found movingly conjured in John O'Donoghue's memoir Sectioned: A Life Interrupted. Yet these people felt a compulsion to share their own stories and to feel the connection that doing so brings even if the only person listening is a 23-year-old stranger on the end of a telephone line. And if sharing stories on an individual level can foster that sense of affinity, however brief, then sharing them on a national or international level through the archetypes, everymans (and everywomans), and vibrant one-offs of literature can surely link us more of us yet more meaningfully, and help to break down the preconceptions that keep fear and stigma entrenched. Of course, this is not to suggest that literature by itself can be the magic bullet for the failings in the way we handle mental illness. After all, human beings have been telling stories about mania, obsession, depression and delusions for centuries, and we still are a long way from understanding and accommodating these states in society. Indeed, the form of stories makes them in some ways unsuited to carry the full weight of the experience of mental illness. Beginnings, middles and ends bear little relevance to the daily lives of many who endure psychiatric conditions that can often seem punishingly endless. It's a point that Rose Bretecher makes in Pure, her account of living with "pure o", a little-known form of obsessive compulsive disorder: "The global story bias has no truck with the grinding tenacity of mental illness: when was the last time you saw a drawn-out soap opera storyline in which someone spent years bottling something up before finally mustering the strength to confide in a loved one, and then literally NOTHING CHANGED?" Books that attempt to capture something of the interminable nature of such situations can never entirely succeed. Even Hanya Yanagihara's 720-page, best-selling novel A Little Life, a substantial portion of which is devoted to the appalling history of the compulsively self-harming Jude St Francis, cannot do this justice; the days or weeks it takes to read are as nothing beside the decades facing those for whom such experiences are a bitter reality. While John Bunyan's Christian passes through the Slough of Despond and comes through his trials to declare triumphantly at the end of The Pilgrim's Progress, "My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me that I have fought His battles who will now be my rewarder", many spend much of their lives trapped in the swamps, with little hope of moving forward. Despite its limitations, however, literature is a powerful tool in the effort to help us to all live better with mental illness. By taking us inside a world that we instinctively fear and wish to distance ourselves from, stories remind us that while people sometimes lose their minds, they never lose their humanity. This brings with it a string of powerful implications: that psychiatric illness is tightly woven into the human experience. That we all have psychological marks and scars. And that, when it comes to mental health, there is a continuum where we might prefer to imagine a neat divide. Ultimately, they encourage us to confront the alarming yet liberating truth that the "perfect mind" does not really exist. Ann Morgan's novel 'Beside Myself' (12.99, Bloomsbury) is out now News / Press Release by Evelyn Masaiti - PDP Women's Assembly Chairperson The People's Democratic Party (PDP) applauds the historic Constitutional Court judgment delivered today, banning marriages of both males and females below the age of 18.As PDP, we also pass our congratulate the applicants, Loveness Mudzuri, Ruvimbo Tsopodzwa and human rights lawyer, Tendai Biti for standing on behalf of the girls and for fighting a good fight.The two teenage girls who were both married before they had reached the age of 18 years made history in the struggle for taking a bold decision and fighting for women's emancipation.What is encouraging is that the ConCourt ruling is not a dry, wooden and narrow approach but cuts across all sectors of society including religious, traditional or customary artifacts.It offers serious protection to children and women amid shocking statistics that over 25 000 girls are getting married every day worldwide.Today's judgment is enough proof that Zimbabwe is now in a transition to a better Zimbabwe, a Zimbabwe that respects the rights of its citizens.Although Zanu PF is still the government of the day; the people of Zimbabwe are looking beyond Robert Mugabe and into the future.The far-reaching judgment in declaring child marriage unconstitutional, gives the majority of the ordinary people easy access to the country's courts of law.Before the new Constitution, it was almost impossible for ordinary citizens to exercise their rights including the right to unfettered access to the courts.The judgment is also revolutionary as it elevates Zimbabwe in terms of international law; this is prudent in highlighting the judiciary's lead that Zimbabwe does not exist in isolation.The PDP therefore urges the legislature, executive and civic society to revisit the issues of economic and social challenges in which poverty has been cited as the main challenge as the root cause of child marriages especially in the African society and Zimbabwe in particular.The judiciary has played its part and it is now for the government and civic society to educate some minority sections of society who are ready to die in order to protect their views in practicing early marriages.Most of the early marriages have been taking place in communities where the poor people live and these vulnerable citizens have to be protected.Another Zimbabwe is Possible!!! Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse Loughrey Get our The Life Cinematic email for free Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the The Life Cinematic email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} When and where is Sundance held? Sundance takes place annually in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and the Sundance Resort in Utah, United States. This years festival runs from 21 to 31 January. What is the point of it? Sundance showcases exciting new work from independent filmmakers around the world. There are competitive sections for feature-length and short dramatic and documentary films, as well as out-of-competition sections. When did it all begin? It all kicked off in the summer of 1978 as part of a bid to attract more filmmakers to Utah. Sterling Van Wagenen, John Earle and Cirina Hampton Catania founded it while actor and Utah resident Robert Redford was the inaugural chairman. Films featured in the first Sundance, known then as the US Film Festival, included A Streetcar Named Desire, Deliverance and Midnight Cowboy. The films to watch out for from Sundance 2016 Show all 8 1 /8 The films to watch out for from Sundance 2016 The films to watch out for from Sundance 2016 The films to watch out for from Sundance 2016 The Birth of a Nation The topical #OscarsSoWhite fiasco could be a thing of the past come next years ceremony if Nate Parker excels as writer, director and star of his film about Nat Turner, who led the biggest slave rebellion in US history. The films to watch out for from Sundance 2016 The films to watch out for from Sundance 2016 Magnolia Pictures The films to watch out for from Sundance 2016 The films to watch out for from Sundance 2016 The films to watch out for from Sundance 2016 The films to watch out for from Sundance 2016 Only independent. US-made films were allowed to participate. There were panel discussions with filmmakers and a showcase of projects by those working outside of Hollywood. Why was it named Sundance? The festival was given its current name in 1991 after Redfords character The Sundance Kid from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Why should I take interest in it? Sundance has proved a crucial platform for many notable filmmakers, including Quentin Tarantino, David O Russell, Darren Aronofsky and Paul Thomas Anderson. The likes of Reservoir Dogs, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Saw, Donnie Darko, Little Miss Sunshine, Before Sunrise and The Blair Witch Project have garnered wider attention after premiering at Sundance. Furthermore, films that debut at the festival with no buzz whatsoever often go on to earn Oscar nominations and wins, such as Whiplash, Boyhood and Brooklyn, while multiple movies are picked up by distributors there. What films should I watch out for? Little Men Love is Stranges Ira Sachs brings us Little Men, about two high school boys who find their friendship tested when their parents begin fiercely arguing over rent. Growing up is once again the theme here, the title being the giveaway, along with class and the gentrification of Brooklyn. Promising. Hunt for the Wilderpeople Boy director Taika Waititi returns with a road comedy and coming of age drama starring Sam Neill and Julian Dennison. The story follows city kid Ricky who moves in with a new foster family in the New Zealand countryside, before tragedy strikes and he goes on the run with Uncle Hec. Branded outlaws in a national manhunt, they must face their options together. Expect to laugh and cry in equal parts. Certain Women Women take centre stage for once, not as wives and girlfriends, but as fascinating, complex human beings in their own right. Kelly Reichardt wins flavour of the month. Indignation This could finally prove the big one for Logan Lerman, who takes the lead in former Focus Features chief James Schamus directorial debut. Based on Philip Roths 2008 novel of the same name, Indignation could prove a seriously hard-hitting weepie. The Birth of a Nation The topical #OscarsSoWhite fiasco could be a thing of the past come next years ceremony if Nate Parker excels as writer, director and star of his film about Nat Turner, who led the biggest slave rebellion in US history. Christine Rebecca Hall takes the title role in this thriller about the 29-year-old Florida TV reporter who suffers a dissolution of self while battling to succeed as an ambitious woman in the Seventies and ends up committing suicide during a live broadcast. Swiss Army Man Intriguing if only for its bizarre premise: a homeless man befriends a dead body washed up on his island home and together they go on a surreal journey to get home. Daniel Radcliffe stars, in a film that couldnt sound much further from Hogwarts. Manchester by the Sea Kenneth Lonergan has made just two films in fifteen years but both have been highly acclaimed. The story follows a Boston handyman who becomes guardian to his 16-year-old nephew. Casey Affleck and Michelle Williams star. Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse Loughrey Get our The Life Cinematic email for free Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the The Life Cinematic email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} DC have opened the floodgates on their cinematic slate. Premiered alongside the highly-anticipated Suicide Squad trailer as part of their Dawn of the Justice League special on The CW, the first footage from 2017's Wonder Woman has now been revealed; alongside details on what we can expect from the Amazonian warrior. King of nerds, Kevin Smith, spoke to DC's Chief Officer Geoff Johns on the special; with Johns revealing the film will essentially consist of a standard origin story. Yet, though Wonder Woman's existed in the cultural milieu for 75 years now, Gal Gadot's iteration is the very first to enter the big screen; so her backstory's simply not well known enough to come off as tired or well trodden as the rest (looking at you, Spider-Man). "Wonder Woman is one of the greatest superheroes out there," he tells Smith. "But people don't know her origin like they know Superman's origin and Batman's origin; and so what we want to do in the film is really tell people who she is, where she comes from, and why she does what she does. We've never seen her on film before." "She comes from Greek a mythology. She was born on this island of Amazons called Themyscira. These Amazons were once created to protect man's world, but they've since abandoned it. And Diana's asking constantly, 'why don't we go do what we were created to do and protect man', and they say, 'because they're not worth it'. And this takes her on a journey into our world." This first look also delved into the appeal of DC's most iconic female hero. "She's an Amazon warrior. She's the best fighter in the DC universe," Johns explains. "She has strength and speed, and she's been training her whole life for war." The film's director, Patty Jenkins, offered her own perspective; "The greatest thing about Wonder Woman is how good, and kind, and loving she is; yet none of that negates any of her power." It's a promising take, which will hopefully see the evolution of the female hero onscreen beyond emotionless badass and towards the territory of true, old-fashioned heroism. Wonder Woman is so special, and a feminist icon to so many, partially due to the fact she's one of DC's true believers in justice. "She stands for equality, and I think that's really important," Johns agrees. "I think that's why people love the character." The accompanying footage reveals little on how Wonder Woman will differ tonally from Zack Snyder's own DC contributions (Man of Steel, Batman v Superman); we're seeing the same washed-out colours, the same start-stop speeds on the fights. That said, the film's throwback to WWI offers promising territory for Jenkins to explore, so here's hoping the film develops its own mark and voice as distinctive as what we're seeing from David Ayer's Suicide Squad. Wonder Woman is set for a June 2017 release. Sign up to IndyEat's free newsletter for weekly recipes, foodie features and cookbook releases Get our Now Hear This email for free Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the IndyEats email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} One-in-four of the mozzarella cheeses on sale in Italy are made not from milk but from industrial curd that is a foreign import, the countrys main farming association has admitted. The revelation follows news that police seized three-and-a- half tons of the curd at a farm in the Murgia area of Puglia. They feared it was about to be used to produce mozzarella, despite it being in a poor state of preservation. To rub salt into Italian gourmets wounds, much of the curd seized in Bari was thought to have come from Germany, with which Italy is currently embroiled in a diplomatic spat regarding what is sees as Berlins overweening dominance of the EU. Roberto Moncalvo, the head of the national farming group Coldiretti, called for immediate action to protect the reputation of one of the countrys most prized food products. Given these new frauds and scams theres no time to waste in saving [the reputation of] made in Italy and it must be made obligatory right away to indicate the origins of dairy products in order to guarantee transparency and health of consumers, he said. Food and drink news Show all 35 1 /35 Food and drink news Food and drink news Healthy living makes us more inclined to binge, research suggests Gluten-free breads, dairy-free milks and other plant-based products have been some of the most favoured foods in British supermarkets this year. However, while were busy filling our shopping trolleys with gluten-free goodness, were also jamming it with junk food and alcohol, new research suggests Getty/iStock Food and drink news Growing list of Vegan celebs Making the switch to veganism is a major lifestyle choice, one that many claim can improve energy levels, lower the risk of cardiovascular disease and clear up any skin issues. Beyonce, Natalie Portman and Jessica Chastain are among the growing list of Hollywood stars who have eschewed animal products from their diets in recent years. Theres also been an increasing number of professional athletes who have gone vegan, such as boxing champions Mike Tyson and David Haye, thus debunking the myth that following a plant-based diet will leave you feeling weak and malnourished. AFP/Getty/NARAS/iHeartMedia Food and drink news McDonald's has announced the launch of a new vegan burger on its menu in Germany This will mark the first time the German franchise of the fast food chain has offered a vegan burger to its customers. The Big Vegan TS burger consists of a patty made from soy and wheat. It is served in a classic sesame seed bun, and contains salad, tomato, pickles and red onion. McDonald's Germany Food and drink news Drinking too many protein shakes could lead to an increased risk of obesity and a reduced lifespan, a new study has claimed Researchers from the University of Sydney's Charles Perkins Centre carried out an investigation to determine the impact excessive consumption of branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) has on the body. BCAA supplements are often consumed in the form of powder, which is then added to water to make a shake. Published in journal Nature Metabolism, the study found that while BCAAs help to build muscle, they can also negatively impact an individual's temperament, cause weight gain and lead to a shortened lifespan Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news Britain consumes more chocolate than any other country Most people love chocolate but it turns out no one does more than the Brits with the average Brit found to have consumed 8.4 kg of chocolate in 2017, according to new data. Chocolate consumption around the world is on the rise, according to Mintel Global New Products Database (GNPD), which found that in the past year alone, Easter chocolate production has risen by 23 per cent Food and drink news 'Easter eggs should be banned for children under four' Dr Becky Spelman, chief psychologist at Harley Streets Private Therapy Clinic, is calling for Easter eggs to be banned for consumption for children under the age of four, claiming that giving them the opportunity to binge on chocolate so young will give them an unhealthy relationship with food later on. "This is a nightmare situation for parents of this generation as they have no idea how to teach their children to delay their response to cravings, she said, explaining that too many young kids binge on these chocolates because their parents dont know how to stop them. "Once a child starts overeating behaviour at a young age its very hard to turn things around for them in terms of food and their eating habits moving forward, leading to obesity from at very young age," she added PA Food and drink news Pineapple overtakes avocado as the UK's fastest-selling fruit According to Tesco, pineapple has overtaken avocado as the UKs fastest-selling fruit, with sales increasing by 15 per cent in 2017. In comparison, avocado sales rose by just under 10 per cent last year. The popular supermarket says the surge in popularity comes as shoppers buying the versatile fruit are beginning to use it as a main ingredient in everything from curries and barbecues, to juices and cocktails Getty Food and drink news Marks & Spencers launches stoneless avocados Rather than the result of genetic modification, the avocados are formed by an unpollinated avocado blossom. The fruit develops without a seed which in turns stops the growth, creating a small, seedless fruit. Whats more, the skin is actually edible, unlike a regular avocado. The flesh is much like that of a normal avocado - smooth and creamy, pale in colour and rich in flavour M&S Food and drink news Office teabags contain 17 times more germs than a toilet seat, reveals study The average bacterial reading of an office teabag was 3,785, in comparison to only 220 for a toilet seat. Other pieces of kitchen equipment also stacked up highly in their findings, with the bacterial readings averaging at 2,483 on kettle handles, 1,746 on the rim of a used mug and 1,592 on a fridge door handle Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news New study shows drinking more coffee leads to a longer life There is good news and a final hope for coffee addicts and lovers. You will now be able to drink coffee for longer as new study shows its can lead to a prolonged life. Scientists showed that those who drank between two and four cups of coffee a day had 18% lower risk of death compared to non-coffee drinkers. PA Food and drink news Coke Zero is replaced with Coke Zero Sugar Coca-Cola is pulling the plug on its Coke Zero. The much loved drink will be replaced with a new improved taste. The move, backed with a 10 million campaign, is said to come from Coca-Cola supporting people to reduce their sugar intake. Coca-Cola want people make this move while not sacrificing sugary taste of Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola Food and drink news Starbucks introduce new avocado spread The avocado craze has grown from hipster brunch restaurants to Starbucks. Starbucks have introduced their new avocado spread earlier this year and it has the internet in debate. Some argue that it not a spread but guacamole while others question if there is any avocado in there at all. When buying the new spread you can also buy an optional toasted bagel. It is a must try for all avocado connoisseurs. Starbucks Food and drink news New Mars chocolate bar The iconic British chocolate bar is about to get its partner in crime. The new bar, named Goodness Knows, will replace the gooey caramel goodness of the mars bar with oats. It is said to be more like a Florentine biscuit with a thin dark chocolate bottom. While being moderately healthy Mars says that is has good intentions. One pack has 154 calories and will sell for about 90p. Mars Food and drink news Wine prices could increase because of Brexit Wine lovers across the UK might soon have to shell out close to a quarter more for their favourite tipple after Brexit, as a weaker pound and sluggish economy takes its toll, a new study shows Rex Food and drink news Chocolate may be good for the heart A new study, published in the British Medical Journal: Heart, found that moderate chocolate intake can be positively associated with lessening the risk of the heart arrhythmia condition Atrial Fibrillation Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news Brits throw away 1.4 million bananas each year British families are throwing away 1.4 million bananas that are perfectly good to eat every day at cost of 80m a year, new figures have shown PA/Armin Weigel Food and drink news Rosemary sales spike over exam time There has been a surge a surge in sales of the herb rosemary after a recent study found it helps improve memory. According to high street health food chain Holland & Barrett, sales of the herb have increased by 187 per cent compared to the same time last year Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news Gluten-free diets 'not recommended' for people without coeliac disease Avoiding wheat, barley and rye in the belief that a gluten-free diet brings health benefits may do more harm than good, according to a team of US nutrition and medicine experts Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news Starbucks launches two new coffee-based drinks Starbucks is launching two new coffee-based drinks in the UK, as it strives to tap into consumers growing appetite for healthy beverages. The Cold Brew Vanilla sweet cream and the Cappuccino Freddo, will both be available in stores throughout the UK from the start of May Twitter/@SbuxCountyHall Food and drink news Cadburys Dairy Milk Tiffin is making a permanent comeback after 80 years The Cadbury Dairy Milk Tiffin, first produced in 1937, is making a permanent comeback to the UK. The raisin and biscuit-filled chocolate bar is being launched after a successful trial last summer saw 3 million chocolate treats at the cost of 1.49 for each 95g bar- purchased by nostalgic customers Cadburys Food and drink news Pizza restaurant makes worlds cheesiest 'Scottie's Pizza Parlor' in Portland Oregon has created the worlds cheesiest pizza using a total of 101 different cheese varieties. Facebook/Scottie's Pizza Parlor Food and drink news A pizza joint in Portland Oregon has created the worlds cheesiest pizza using a total of 101 different cheese varieties. Why not eating before a workout could be better for your health A study published in the American Journal of Physiology by researchers at the University of Bath found you might be likely to burn more fat if you have not eaten first Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news New York restaurant named best in the world A New York restaurant where an average meal for two will cost $700 has been named the best in the world. Eleven Madison Park won the accolade for the first time after debuting on the list at number 50 in 2010. The restaurant was praised for a fun sense of fine-dining, blurring the line between the kitchen and the dining room Getty Images Food and drink news Why you crave bad food when youre tired Researchers at Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University in Chicago recently presented their results of a study looking into the effects of sleep deprivation upon high-calorific food consumption. Researchers found that those who were sleep-deprived had specifically enhanced brain activity to the food smells compared to when they had a good nights sleep Shutterstock Food and drink news Drinking wine engages more of your brain than solving maths problems Drinking wine is the ideal workout for your brain, engaging more parts of our grey matter than any other human behaviour, according to a leading neuroscientist. Dr Gordon Shepherd, from the Yale School of Medicine, said sniffing and analysing a wine before drinking it requires exquisite control of one of the biggest muscles in the body Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news British dessert eating surges after people ditch healthy eating in February : In heartening news for anyone feeling guilty about quitting their New Year diet, it seems lots of us have given in to our sweet tooths once again. New data from nationwide food-delivery service Deliveroo reveals there was a surge in Brits ordering desserts in February compared to the first month of 2017 Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news US congress debates definition of milk alternatives A new bill has been created that seeks to ban dairy alternatives from using the term milk. Titled the DAIRY PRIDE Act, the name is a tenuous acronym for defending against imitations and replacements of yogurt, milk, and cheese to promote regular intake of dairy every day. It argues that the dairy industry is struggling as a result of all the dairy-free alternatives on the market and the public are being duped too Getty Images Food and drink news Cadburys launches two new chocolate bars UK confectionary giant Cadbury has launched two new chocolate bars, hoping to lure those with a sweet tooth and perhaps help combat some of the challenges it faces from rising commodity prices and a post-Brexit slump in the value of the pound.The companys new products will be peanut butter and mint flavoured. They will be available in most major super markets as 120g bars, priced at 1.49, according to the company Cadburys Food and drink news You can now get a job as a professional chocolate eater The company responsible for some of your favourite chocolate brands think Cadbury, Milks, Prince and Oreo have officially announced an opening to join their team as a professional chocolate taster. The successful candidate will help them to test, perfect and launch new products all over the world. Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news MSG additive used in Chinese food is actually good for you, scientist claims For years, weve been told MSG (the sodium salt of glutamic acid) - often associated with cheap Chinese takeaways - is awful for our health and to be avoided at all costs. But one scientist argues it should be used as a supersalt and encourages adding it to food. Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news Lettuce prices are rising Not only are lettuces becoming an increasingly rare commodity in supermarkets, but prices for the leafy vegetables seem to be rising too. According to the weekly report from the Governments Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, a pair of Little Gem lettuces had an average market price of 0.86 in the week that ended on Friday, up from an average of 0.56 in the previous week thats an almost 54 per cent increase. Getty Images Food and drink news Do-It-Yourself restaurant To encourage more people to cook and eat together, IKEA has launched The Dining Club in Shoreditch a fully immersive Do-It-Yourself restaurant . Members of the public can book to host a brunch, lunch or dinner party for up to 20 friends and family. Supported by their very own sous chef and maitre de, the host and their guests will orchestrate an intimate dining experience where cooking together is celebrated and eating together is inspirational Mikael Buck / IKEA Food and drink news Ping Pong menu with a twist Gatwick Airport has teamed up with London dim sum restaurant Ping Pong to create a limited edition menu with a distinctly British twist; including a Full English Bao and Beef Wellington Puff, to celebrate the launch of the airports new route to Hong Kong Food and drink news Zizzi unveil the Maamgharita Unique pizza art has been created by Zizzi in celebration of the Queens 90th birthday. The pizza features the queen in an iconic pose illustrated with fresh and tasty Italian ingredients on a backdrop of the Union Jack Food and drink news Blue potatoes make a comeback Blue potatoes, once a staple part of British potato crops, are back on the menu thanks to a Cambridge scientist turned-organic farmer and Farmdrop, an online marketplace that lets people buy direct from local farms. Cambridge PhD graduate-turned farmer, Adrian Izzard has used traditional growing techniques at Wild Country Organics to produce the colourful spuds, packed with healthy cell-protecting anthocyanin, which had previously disappeared from UK plates when post-war farmers were pushed towards higher-yielding varieties He warned that surreptitious use of imported curd instead of home-produced milk, apart from producing second-rate cheese, also distorted the market, depressed prices paid to Italian farmers and forced the closure of farms. Currently, the best quality mozzarella that made from buffalo milk is labelled DOP (Denominazone di Origine Protetta, or protected name of origin) and is subjected to regular checks. Mozzarella is a principle ingredient in everything from pizzas and arancini to caprese salads. But in recent years, quality and safety concerns have dogged the creamy, stringy, white cheese. In 2008, dioxins were detected in the buffalo milk of some local dairies. The carcinogenic chemicals were thought to be present in the soil and the grass eaten by the buffalo as a result of the illegal dumping of toxic waste, an activity that nets the Camorra mafia hundreds of millions of euros a year. And in 2010, Italian authorities had to issue a Europe-wide alert over possible contamination of mozzarella after balls of the cheese turned blue. Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Lifestyle Edit email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A&E departments may be too short-staffed to cope with demand almost half of the time, according to a suppressed report by patient safety experts. Experts at the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) called for the NHS to introduce minimum nurse-to-patient ratios on A&Es last year, but the report was never published and NICES research was controversially suspended. Ministers and NHS chiefs faced accusations at the time that they were seeking to hide the scale of the staffing crisis in the NHS and water down recommendations for more nurses that would have come at a huge cost to the Government. In a copy of the NICE guidance, obtained by the Health Service Journal after frequent requests for its publication were denied, experts say that A&E staffing levels set according to historical patient demand leave emergency departments unprepared to cope with frequent surges in demand. The report recommends that A&Es should build in a margin of safety into their staffing plans, even if this meant they were overstaffed during quiet periods. The Royal College of Emergency Medicine endorsed the findings, saying that most A&E departments have insufficient nursing staff to deal with predictable patient attendance patterns. Despite his emphasis on improving patient safety in the NHS, Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, has rejected calls for minimum nurse-to-patient ratios. The Royal College of Nursing said it was concerning that the financial cost of alleviating the shortages may have been a factor in the decision to scrap NICEs research. Health news in pictures Show all 40 1 /40 Health news in pictures Health news in pictures Coronavirus outbreak The coronavirus Covid-19 has hit the UK leading to the deaths of two people so far and prompting warnings from the Department of Health AFP via Getty Health news in pictures Thousands of emergency patients told to take taxi to hospital Thousands of 999 patients in England are being told to get a taxi to hospital, figures have showed. The number of patients outside London who were refused an ambulance rose by 83 per cent in the past year as demand for services grows Getty Health news in pictures Vape related deaths spike A vaping-related lung disease has claimed the lives of 11 people in the US in recent weeks. The US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention has more than 100 officials investigating the cause of the mystery illness, and has warned citizens against smoking e-cigarette products until more is known, particularly if modified or bought off the street Getty Health news in pictures Baldness cure looks to be a step closer Researchers in the US claim to have overcome one of the major hurdles to cultivating human follicles from stem cells. The new system allows cells to grow in a structured tuft and emerge from the skin Sanford Burnham Preybs Health news in pictures Two hours a week spent in nature can improve health A study in the journal Scientific Reports suggests that a dose of nature of just two hours a week is associated with better health and psychological wellbeing Shutterstock Health news in pictures Air pollution linked to fertility issues in women Exposure to air from traffic-clogged streets could leave women with fewer years to have children, a study has found. Italian researchers found women living in the most polluted areas were three times more likely to show signs they were running low on eggs than those who lived in cleaner surroundings, potentially triggering an earlier menopause Getty/iStock Health news in pictures Junk food ads could be banned before watershed Junk food adverts on TV and online could be banned before 9pm as part of Government plans to fight the "epidemic" of childhood obesity. Plans for the new watershed have been put out for public consultation in a bid to combat the growing crisis, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said PA Health news in pictures Breeding with neanderthals helped humans fight diseases On migrating from Africa around 70,000 years ago, humans bumped into the neanderthals of Eurasia. While humans were weak to the diseases of the new lands, breeding with the resident neanderthals made for a better equipped immune system PA Health news in pictures Cancer breath test to be trialled in Britain The breath biopsy device is designed to detect cancer hallmarks in molecules exhaled by patients Getty Health news in pictures Average 10 year old has consumed the recommended amount of sugar for an adult By their 10th birthdy, children have on average already eaten more sugar than the recommended amount for an 18 year old. The average 10 year old consumes the equivalent to 13 sugar cubes a day, 8 more than is recommended PA Health news in pictures Child health experts advise switching off screens an hour before bed While there is not enough evidence of harm to recommend UK-wide limits on screen use, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health have advised that children should avoid screens for an hour before bed time to avoid disrupting their sleep Getty Health news in pictures Daily aspirin is unnecessary for older people in good health, study finds A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has found that many elderly people are taking daily aspirin to little or no avail Getty Health news in pictures Vaping could lead to cancer, US study finds A study by the University of Minnesota's Masonic Cancer Centre has found that the carcinogenic chemicals formaldehyde, acrolein, and methylglyoxal are present in the saliva of E-cigarette users Reuters Health news in pictures More children are obese and diabetic There has been a 41% increase in children with type 2 diabetes since 2014, the National Paediatric Diabetes Audit has found. Obesity is a leading cause Reuters Health news in pictures Most child antidepressants are ineffective and can lead to suicidal thoughts The majority of antidepressants are ineffective and may be unsafe, for children and teenager with major depression, experts have warned. In what is the most comprehensive comparison of 14 commonly prescribed antidepressant drugs to date, researchers found that only one brand was more effective at relieving symptoms of depression than a placebo. Another popular drug, venlafaxine, was shown increase the risk users engaging in suicidal thoughts and attempts at suicide Getty Health news in pictures Gay, lesbian and bisexual adults at higher risk of heart disease, study claims Researchers at the Baptist Health South Florida Clinic in Miami focused on seven areas of controllable heart health and found these minority groups were particularly likely to be smokers and to have poorly controlled blood sugar iStock Health news in pictures Breakfast cereals targeted at children contain 'steadily high' sugar levels since 1992 despite producer claims A major pressure group has issued a fresh warning about perilously high amounts of sugar in breakfast cereals, specifically those designed for children, and has said that levels have barely been cut at all in the last two and a half decades Getty Health news in pictures Potholes are making us fat, NHS watchdog warns New guidance by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the body which determines what treatment the NHS should fund, said lax road repairs and car-dominated streets were contributing to the obesity epidemic by preventing members of the public from keeping active PA Health news in pictures New menopause drugs offer women relief from 'debilitating' hot flushes A new class of treatments for women going through the menopause is able to reduce numbers of debilitating hot flushes by as much as three quarters in a matter of days, a trial has found. The drug used in the trial belongs to a group known as NKB antagonists (blockers), which were developed as a treatment for schizophrenia but have been sitting on a shelf unused, according to Professor Waljit Dhillo, a professor of endocrinology and metabolism REX Health news in pictures Doctors should prescribe more antidepressants for people with mental health problems, study finds Research from Oxford University found that more than one million extra people suffering from mental health problems would benefit from being prescribed drugs and criticised ideological reasons doctors use to avoid doing so. Getty Health news in pictures Student dies of flu after NHS advice to stay at home and avoid A&E The family of a teenager who died from flu has urged people not to delay going to A&E if they are worried about their symptoms. Melissa Whiteley, an 18-year-old engineering student from Hanford in Stoke-on-Trent, fell ill at Christmas and died in hospital a month later. Just Giving Health news in pictures Government to review thousands of harmful vaginal mesh implants The Government has pledged to review tens of thousands of cases where women have been given harmful vaginal mesh implants. Getty Health news in pictures Jeremy Hunt announces 'zero suicides ambition' for the NHS The NHS will be asked to go further to prevent the deaths of patients in its care as part of a zero suicide ambition being launched today Getty Health news in pictures Human trials start with cancer treatment that primes immune system to kill off tumours Human trials have begun with a new cancer therapy that can prime the immune system to eradicate tumours. The treatment, that works similarly to a vaccine, is a combination of two existing drugs, of which tiny amounts are injected into the solid bulk of a tumour. Nephron Health news in pictures Babies' health suffers from being born near fracking sites, finds major study Mothers living within a kilometre of a fracking site were 25 per cent more likely to have a child born at low birth weight, which increase their chances of asthma, ADHD and other issues Getty Health news in pictures NHS reviewing thousands of cervical cancer smear tests after women wrongly given all-clear Thousands of cervical cancer screening results are under review after failings at a laboratory meant some women were incorrectly given the all-clear. A number of women have already been told to contact their doctors following the identification of procedural issues in the service provided by Pathology First Laboratory. Rex Health news in pictures Potential key to halting breast cancer's spread discovered by scientists Most breast cancer patients do not die from their initial tumour, but from secondary malignant growths (metastases), where cancer cells are able to enter the blood and survive to invade new sites. Asparagine, a molecule named after asparagus where it was first identified in high quantities, has now been shown to be an essential ingredient for tumour cells to gain these migratory properties. Getty Health news in pictures NHS nursing vacancies at record high with more than 34,000 roles advertised A record number of nursing and midwifery positions are currently being advertised by the NHS, with more than 34,000 positions currently vacant, according to the latest data. Demand for nurses was 19 per cent higher between July and September 2017 than the same period two years ago. REX Health news in pictures Cannabis extract could provide new class of treatment for psychosis CBD has a broadly opposite effect to delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main active component in cannabis and the substance that causes paranoia and anxiety. Getty Health news in pictures Over 75,000 sign petition calling for Richard Branson's Virgin Care to hand settlement money back to NHS Mr Bransons company sued the NHS last year after it lost out on an 82m contract to provide childrens health services across Surrey, citing concerns over serious flaws in the way the contract was awarded PA Health news in pictures More than 700 fewer nurses training in England in first year after NHS bursary scrapped The numbers of people accepted to study nursing in England fell 3 per cent in 2017, while the numbers accepted in Wales and Scotland, where the bursaries were kept, increased 8.4 per cent and 8 per cent respectively Getty Health news in pictures Landmark study links Tory austerity to 120,000 deaths The paper found that there were 45,000 more deaths in the first four years of Tory-led efficiencies than would have been expected if funding had stayed at pre-election levels. On this trajectory that could rise to nearly 200,000 excess deaths by the end of 2020, even with the extra funding that has been earmarked for public sector services this year. Reuters Health news in pictures Long commutes carry health risks Hours of commuting may be mind-numbingly dull, but new research shows that it might also be having an adverse effect on both your health and performance at work. Longer commutes also appear to have a significant impact on mental wellbeing, with those commuting longer 33 per cent more likely to suffer from depression Shutterstock Health news in pictures You cannot be fit and fat It is not possible to be overweight and healthy, a major new study has concluded. The study of 3.5 million Britons found that even metabolically healthy obese people are still at a higher risk of heart disease or a stroke than those with a normal weight range Getty Health news in pictures Sleep deprivation When you feel particularly exhausted, it can definitely feel like you are also lacking in brain capacity. Now, a new study has suggested this could be because chronic sleep deprivation can actually cause the brain to eat itself Shutterstock Health news in pictures Exercise classes offering 45 minute naps launch David Lloyd Gyms have launched a new health and fitness class which is essentially a bunch of people taking a nap for 45 minutes. The fitness group was spurred to launch the napercise class after research revealed 86 per cent of parents said they were fatigued. The class is therefore predominantly aimed at parents but you actually do not have to have children to take part Getty Health news in pictures 'Fundamental right to health' to be axed after Brexit, lawyers warn Tobacco and alcohol companies could win more easily in court cases such as the recent battle over plain cigarette packaging if the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights is abandoned, a barrister and public health professor have said Getty Health news in pictures 'Thousands dying' due to fear over non-existent statin side-effects A major new study into the side effects of the cholesterol-lowering medicine suggests common symptoms such as muscle pain and weakness are not caused by the drugs themselves Getty Health news in pictures Babies born to fathers aged under 25 have higher risk of autism New research has found that babies born to fathers under the age of 25 or over 51 are at higher risk of developing autism and other social disorders. The study, conducted by the Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment at Mount Sinai, found that these children are actually more advanced than their peers as infants, but then fall behind by the time they hit their teenage years Getty Health news in pictures Cycling to work could halve risk of cancer and heart disease Commuters who swap their car or bus pass for a bike could cut their risk of developing heart disease and cancer by almost half, new research suggests but campaigners have warned there is still an urgent need to improve road conditions for cyclists. Cycling to work is linked to a lower risk of developing cancer by 45 per cent and cardiovascular disease by 46 per cent, according to a study of a quarter of a million people. Walking to work also brought health benefits, the University of Glasgow researchers found, but not to the same degree as cycling. Getty However, officials in the Department of Health said that the NICE report was an unofficial document, indicating that it should not be considered as guidance by hospitals. Research on safe-staffing has transferred to the new arms-length NHS regulatory body, NHS Improvement, and will be completed later this year, a DH spokesperson said. But Dr Clifford Mann, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said that not only were A&Es understaffed half of the time, they were often as much as 50 per cent short of the numbers required. This guidance from NICE highlights what is self-evident on a daily basis in UK A&E departments. Most have insufficient nursing staff to deal with predictable patient attendance patterns, he said, adding that the guidance should be formally published and that hospitals should consider it. The number of A&E attendances has increased by 35 per cent between 2003 and 2015. Donna Kinnair, director of nursing, policy and practice at the Royal College of Nursing said: These guidelines were put together by experts, looking at strong evidence who found a very clear relationship between the number of registered nurses and patient care. The evidence for the importance of having the right number of nurses, and the right ratio of nurses to health care assistants, would have led to new recommendations and guidance on the safe range of nurse staffing levels. These recommendations would have exposed shortages, and this would have had financial consequences. It is concerning that these consequences may have been a factor in the decision to scrap this important work. Justin Madders MP, Labours Shadow Health Minister, said that the decision to block the findings was deeply concerning Ministers need to urgently set out how they intend to tackle the workforce crisis in the NHS and ensure hospital wards are not left dangerously understaffed, he said. Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Lifestyle Edit email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Depression in expectant fathers has been linked to babies being born prematurely, according to a new study. Scientists in Sweden conducted the study in order to better understand the effects of depression in men on their unborn children, following evidence linking womens mental health with premature birth. The team who carried out the study published in the 'BJOG: an International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology' studied over 350,000 births between 2007 and 2012, focusing on extremely premature births between 22 and 31 weeks, and moderate from 32 to 36 weeks. Parents were defined as clinically depressed if they had taken anti-depressants or received hospital treatment for the condition in the 12 months before the child was conceived or the second trimester of pregnancy. The evidence showed that women who experienced new or recurrent depression were 30 to 40 per cent more likely to give birth to a moderately premature baby. Researchers also found a link between men newly diagnosed with depression and a 38 per cent rise in the risk of very premature birth. However, recurrent depression in men was not linked with premature birth. Professor Anders Hjern, from the Centre for Health Equity Studies in Stockholm, said depression in a partner could be a "substantial" source of stress for an expectant mother, which could result in the risk of a preterm birth. "Paternal depression is also known to affect sperm quality, have epigenetic effects on the DNA of the baby, and can also affect placenta function. However, this risk seems to be reduced for recurrent paternal depression, indicating that perhaps treatment for the depression reduces the risk of preterm birth," he said. Health news in pictures Show all 40 1 /40 Health news in pictures Health news in pictures Coronavirus outbreak The coronavirus Covid-19 has hit the UK leading to the deaths of two people so far and prompting warnings from the Department of Health AFP via Getty Health news in pictures Thousands of emergency patients told to take taxi to hospital Thousands of 999 patients in England are being told to get a taxi to hospital, figures have showed. The number of patients outside London who were refused an ambulance rose by 83 per cent in the past year as demand for services grows Getty Health news in pictures Vape related deaths spike A vaping-related lung disease has claimed the lives of 11 people in the US in recent weeks. The US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention has more than 100 officials investigating the cause of the mystery illness, and has warned citizens against smoking e-cigarette products until more is known, particularly if modified or bought off the street Getty Health news in pictures Baldness cure looks to be a step closer Researchers in the US claim to have overcome one of the major hurdles to cultivating human follicles from stem cells. The new system allows cells to grow in a structured tuft and emerge from the skin Sanford Burnham Preybs Health news in pictures Two hours a week spent in nature can improve health A study in the journal Scientific Reports suggests that a dose of nature of just two hours a week is associated with better health and psychological wellbeing Shutterstock Health news in pictures Air pollution linked to fertility issues in women Exposure to air from traffic-clogged streets could leave women with fewer years to have children, a study has found. Italian researchers found women living in the most polluted areas were three times more likely to show signs they were running low on eggs than those who lived in cleaner surroundings, potentially triggering an earlier menopause Getty/iStock Health news in pictures Junk food ads could be banned before watershed Junk food adverts on TV and online could be banned before 9pm as part of Government plans to fight the "epidemic" of childhood obesity. Plans for the new watershed have been put out for public consultation in a bid to combat the growing crisis, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said PA Health news in pictures Breeding with neanderthals helped humans fight diseases On migrating from Africa around 70,000 years ago, humans bumped into the neanderthals of Eurasia. While humans were weak to the diseases of the new lands, breeding with the resident neanderthals made for a better equipped immune system PA Health news in pictures Cancer breath test to be trialled in Britain The breath biopsy device is designed to detect cancer hallmarks in molecules exhaled by patients Getty Health news in pictures Average 10 year old has consumed the recommended amount of sugar for an adult By their 10th birthdy, children have on average already eaten more sugar than the recommended amount for an 18 year old. The average 10 year old consumes the equivalent to 13 sugar cubes a day, 8 more than is recommended PA Health news in pictures Child health experts advise switching off screens an hour before bed While there is not enough evidence of harm to recommend UK-wide limits on screen use, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health have advised that children should avoid screens for an hour before bed time to avoid disrupting their sleep Getty Health news in pictures Daily aspirin is unnecessary for older people in good health, study finds A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has found that many elderly people are taking daily aspirin to little or no avail Getty Health news in pictures Vaping could lead to cancer, US study finds A study by the University of Minnesota's Masonic Cancer Centre has found that the carcinogenic chemicals formaldehyde, acrolein, and methylglyoxal are present in the saliva of E-cigarette users Reuters Health news in pictures More children are obese and diabetic There has been a 41% increase in children with type 2 diabetes since 2014, the National Paediatric Diabetes Audit has found. Obesity is a leading cause Reuters Health news in pictures Most child antidepressants are ineffective and can lead to suicidal thoughts The majority of antidepressants are ineffective and may be unsafe, for children and teenager with major depression, experts have warned. In what is the most comprehensive comparison of 14 commonly prescribed antidepressant drugs to date, researchers found that only one brand was more effective at relieving symptoms of depression than a placebo. Another popular drug, venlafaxine, was shown increase the risk users engaging in suicidal thoughts and attempts at suicide Getty Health news in pictures Gay, lesbian and bisexual adults at higher risk of heart disease, study claims Researchers at the Baptist Health South Florida Clinic in Miami focused on seven areas of controllable heart health and found these minority groups were particularly likely to be smokers and to have poorly controlled blood sugar iStock Health news in pictures Breakfast cereals targeted at children contain 'steadily high' sugar levels since 1992 despite producer claims A major pressure group has issued a fresh warning about perilously high amounts of sugar in breakfast cereals, specifically those designed for children, and has said that levels have barely been cut at all in the last two and a half decades Getty Health news in pictures Potholes are making us fat, NHS watchdog warns New guidance by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the body which determines what treatment the NHS should fund, said lax road repairs and car-dominated streets were contributing to the obesity epidemic by preventing members of the public from keeping active PA Health news in pictures New menopause drugs offer women relief from 'debilitating' hot flushes A new class of treatments for women going through the menopause is able to reduce numbers of debilitating hot flushes by as much as three quarters in a matter of days, a trial has found. The drug used in the trial belongs to a group known as NKB antagonists (blockers), which were developed as a treatment for schizophrenia but have been sitting on a shelf unused, according to Professor Waljit Dhillo, a professor of endocrinology and metabolism REX Health news in pictures Doctors should prescribe more antidepressants for people with mental health problems, study finds Research from Oxford University found that more than one million extra people suffering from mental health problems would benefit from being prescribed drugs and criticised ideological reasons doctors use to avoid doing so. Getty Health news in pictures Student dies of flu after NHS advice to stay at home and avoid A&E The family of a teenager who died from flu has urged people not to delay going to A&E if they are worried about their symptoms. Melissa Whiteley, an 18-year-old engineering student from Hanford in Stoke-on-Trent, fell ill at Christmas and died in hospital a month later. Just Giving Health news in pictures Government to review thousands of harmful vaginal mesh implants The Government has pledged to review tens of thousands of cases where women have been given harmful vaginal mesh implants. Getty Health news in pictures Jeremy Hunt announces 'zero suicides ambition' for the NHS The NHS will be asked to go further to prevent the deaths of patients in its care as part of a zero suicide ambition being launched today Getty Health news in pictures Human trials start with cancer treatment that primes immune system to kill off tumours Human trials have begun with a new cancer therapy that can prime the immune system to eradicate tumours. The treatment, that works similarly to a vaccine, is a combination of two existing drugs, of which tiny amounts are injected into the solid bulk of a tumour. Nephron Health news in pictures Babies' health suffers from being born near fracking sites, finds major study Mothers living within a kilometre of a fracking site were 25 per cent more likely to have a child born at low birth weight, which increase their chances of asthma, ADHD and other issues Getty Health news in pictures NHS reviewing thousands of cervical cancer smear tests after women wrongly given all-clear Thousands of cervical cancer screening results are under review after failings at a laboratory meant some women were incorrectly given the all-clear. A number of women have already been told to contact their doctors following the identification of procedural issues in the service provided by Pathology First Laboratory. Rex Health news in pictures Potential key to halting breast cancer's spread discovered by scientists Most breast cancer patients do not die from their initial tumour, but from secondary malignant growths (metastases), where cancer cells are able to enter the blood and survive to invade new sites. Asparagine, a molecule named after asparagus where it was first identified in high quantities, has now been shown to be an essential ingredient for tumour cells to gain these migratory properties. Getty Health news in pictures NHS nursing vacancies at record high with more than 34,000 roles advertised A record number of nursing and midwifery positions are currently being advertised by the NHS, with more than 34,000 positions currently vacant, according to the latest data. Demand for nurses was 19 per cent higher between July and September 2017 than the same period two years ago. REX Health news in pictures Cannabis extract could provide new class of treatment for psychosis CBD has a broadly opposite effect to delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main active component in cannabis and the substance that causes paranoia and anxiety. Getty Health news in pictures Over 75,000 sign petition calling for Richard Branson's Virgin Care to hand settlement money back to NHS Mr Bransons company sued the NHS last year after it lost out on an 82m contract to provide childrens health services across Surrey, citing concerns over serious flaws in the way the contract was awarded PA Health news in pictures More than 700 fewer nurses training in England in first year after NHS bursary scrapped The numbers of people accepted to study nursing in England fell 3 per cent in 2017, while the numbers accepted in Wales and Scotland, where the bursaries were kept, increased 8.4 per cent and 8 per cent respectively Getty Health news in pictures Landmark study links Tory austerity to 120,000 deaths The paper found that there were 45,000 more deaths in the first four years of Tory-led efficiencies than would have been expected if funding had stayed at pre-election levels. On this trajectory that could rise to nearly 200,000 excess deaths by the end of 2020, even with the extra funding that has been earmarked for public sector services this year. Reuters Health news in pictures Long commutes carry health risks Hours of commuting may be mind-numbingly dull, but new research shows that it might also be having an adverse effect on both your health and performance at work. Longer commutes also appear to have a significant impact on mental wellbeing, with those commuting longer 33 per cent more likely to suffer from depression Shutterstock Health news in pictures You cannot be fit and fat It is not possible to be overweight and healthy, a major new study has concluded. The study of 3.5 million Britons found that even metabolically healthy obese people are still at a higher risk of heart disease or a stroke than those with a normal weight range Getty Health news in pictures Sleep deprivation When you feel particularly exhausted, it can definitely feel like you are also lacking in brain capacity. Now, a new study has suggested this could be because chronic sleep deprivation can actually cause the brain to eat itself Shutterstock Health news in pictures Exercise classes offering 45 minute naps launch David Lloyd Gyms have launched a new health and fitness class which is essentially a bunch of people taking a nap for 45 minutes. The fitness group was spurred to launch the napercise class after research revealed 86 per cent of parents said they were fatigued. The class is therefore predominantly aimed at parents but you actually do not have to have children to take part Getty Health news in pictures 'Fundamental right to health' to be axed after Brexit, lawyers warn Tobacco and alcohol companies could win more easily in court cases such as the recent battle over plain cigarette packaging if the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights is abandoned, a barrister and public health professor have said Getty Health news in pictures 'Thousands dying' due to fear over non-existent statin side-effects A major new study into the side effects of the cholesterol-lowering medicine suggests common symptoms such as muscle pain and weakness are not caused by the drugs themselves Getty Health news in pictures Babies born to fathers aged under 25 have higher risk of autism New research has found that babies born to fathers under the age of 25 or over 51 are at higher risk of developing autism and other social disorders. The study, conducted by the Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment at Mount Sinai, found that these children are actually more advanced than their peers as infants, but then fall behind by the time they hit their teenage years Getty Health news in pictures Cycling to work could halve risk of cancer and heart disease Commuters who swap their car or bus pass for a bike could cut their risk of developing heart disease and cancer by almost half, new research suggests but campaigners have warned there is still an urgent need to improve road conditions for cyclists. Cycling to work is linked to a lower risk of developing cancer by 45 per cent and cardiovascular disease by 46 per cent, according to a study of a quarter of a million people. Walking to work also brought health benefits, the University of Glasgow researchers found, but not to the same degree as cycling. Getty Dr Patrick O'Brien, an obstetrician and spokesman for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG), described the research as interesting, but said that further research is needed to establish the mechanism behind the results. He also stressed that those who believe they have depression to seek help. "We encourage anyone, and particularly those planning a family or who are pregnant, and are experiencing a change in mood, irritability or anxiety to seek advice. No-one should suffer in silence - there is help and support available." The NHS recommends that those who feel depressed - defined by feeling persistently sad for weeks or months - should visit a doctor in order to begin treatment as soon as possible. Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Stay ahead of the trend in fashion and beyond with our free weekly Lifestyle Edit newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Lifestyle Edit email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Patients should get more involved in deciding their medical treatment and challenge the pervading doctor knows best culture which results in the over-prescription of potentially unnecessary drugs, Scotlands Chief Medical Officer has suggested. Calling for a new era of realistic medicine which accepted the limits of what drugs and clinicians could do, Dr Catherine Calderwood said doctors should engage patients in proper discussions about their care which may result in them deciding not to be treated at all. In her first annual report on the state of the nations health, she warned that the overuse of medical interventions was of serious concern at a time of restricted budgets. Fewer treatments may actually lead to a better quality of life for some patients, she argued. In striving to provide relief from discomfort, illness and death, modern medicine can sometimes over-reach itself and provide treatment that is of little long term benefit to the patient, she said. This is especially true when a person has multiple conditions, each of which has its own list of recommended medicines and treatments. Realistic medicine is about moving away from the doctor knows best culture. Its about more fully involving patients in the decisions about their care. Of course, this will only happen if people are prepared to have these conversations in this way with their doctors. Dr Calderwood, a consultant obstetrician who took on the role of Chief Medical Officer at the beginning of last year, also pointed out that doctors tended to choose fewer treatments for themselves than they offered to patients. As doctors we should be asking why that is, she said, suggesting that if patients were better informed then they would follow suit. Her report said an ageing population with increasingly complex health needs has led to a massively increasing volume of medication being taken by the Scots each year, with 20 per cent of adults taking more than five medicines a day. Dr Calderwood said she hoped to open a dialogue with doctors over how to improve the health service. Reacting to the report, Dr Peter Bennie, chair of the British Medical Associations Scottish Council, cautioned against placing unrealistic expectations on the nations already overworked doctors. We must recognise that morale amongst Scotlands doctors is very low with workload intensity continuing to rise, and that this is likely to have an effect on how well doctors can respond to the needs of a changing healthcare service and growing patient demand, he said. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Aldi has made its first foray into online shopping with a wine delivery service. The German discounter revealed it has invested 35 million to establish the online service. There are plans to expand the operation to include cycling wear, electrical items, camping equipment and clothing later this year. Aldi has started its online offering with 90 wines, including rose and sparkling wine. Customers can choose a case of six wines or order a ready-mixed case from a selection of regions. Matthew Barnes, UK chief executive, said online sales are an important step forward for Aldi. Starting with wines is a logical first step for us. Its a stand-out category for Aldi and often the entry point for customers who havent shopped with us before, he said. The new service will be available across the country with the expectation of Northern Ireland. Delivery is free for orders over 50, but smaller orders will cost 3. Aldi currently operates over 630 UK stores and plans to open a further 83 this year. It aims to reach 1,000 stores by 2022. Aldi and Lidl claimed a combined market share of 10 per cent in November after their smaller, cheaper stores won more middle class customers from the big four of Morrisons, Tesco, Asda and Sainsburys. Aldi sales were up 20.6 per cent in the final quarter of the year, while Lidl sales jumped 17.9 per cent, according to Nielsen data. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Royal Dutch Shell has come under fire for being part of a consortium that accepted an extraordinary $3.3bn (2.3bn) tax break in Nigeria twice the poverty-stricken countrys annual health budget. In a new report ActionAid estimated the consortium, which also includes Frances Total and Italys Eni, received this benefit between 2004 and 2012 on top of Nigerias standard five-year tax holiday to encourage investment. The charity says the cost of the tax breaks could have been better spent on improving health and education systems at the same pace that oil revenue pours in. Shell has a 25.6 per cent share in the consortium, which provides around 7 per cent of the worlds liquefied natural gas. The Anglo-Dutch giant is estimated to have received a near-$1.7bn tax break in 2004-12, Total just shy of $1bn, and Eni $677m. The remaining 49 per cent share of the project is owned by the Nigerian government, represented by Nigerias national oil company. The consortium, Nigeria NLG Limited claims the tax breaks encourage wider economic and infrastructure development in the country and says it has contributed to the socio-economic wellbeing of the country. Oil and gas has made Nigeria one of the worlds fastest growing economies, but the country suffers from terrible inequality. Around 110 million people live in extreme poverty, which is defined as less than $1 a day; more than half the population has no access to clean water; and almost 15 out of every 100 children die before their fifth birthday. The tax break was granted in 1990, when Nigeria was under military rule, though did not kick in until 1999. After the standard five-year holiday, there was an unusual five-year extension and a rollover of certain allowances, which ActionAid says resulted in the consortium not paying corporate income tax until 2012. Around 110 million Nigerians live in extreme poverty (Getty Images) The report states: The consortium is the only company in Nigeria with its own law defining its tax framework... One argument frequently used in favour of tax incentives, is that the initial investment costs often are so high that companies would not be able to invest were they not given a reduced tax rate the first few years. While that may be true in some cases, the consortium accounts suggest differently. Even with a normal five-year tax break, the consortium would have been highly profitable. The company states that tax holidays of such durations are not unusual in global business. Anders Dahlbeck, ActionAids tax policy adviser, said: This extraordinary tax break to some of the richest companies in the world cost Nigeria $3.3 billion money that could have been used to fund critical health and education services, especially for women and children. ActionAid is calling on the Nigerian government to review its policies on tax breaks and show greater transparency on when and why tax breaks are granted. A spokesman for Shell declined to comment but instead referred the Independent to NNLNG. Shell did tell Action Aid, however, that it complies with the tax laws of the countries it operates in. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty NLNG said: The report makes several references to Nigeria LNG Limited and purported tax losses to the government totaling $3.9 billion. This claim is false and misleading. ActionAid admits that its figure is a hypothetical one. The Federal Governments initial investment of US$2.5billion, bolstered by the associated tax incentives, has so far yielded over US$ 33 billion in the form of dividends, taxes and feedgas purchases for the country over the past 16 years, with an additional US$ 5 billion accruing through corporate spend on local goods and services during the same period. This is in line with NLNGs corporate vision to help build a better Nigeria. News / Regional by Sukulwenkosi Dube A 38-YEAR-OLD Zimbabwean based in Botswana offered a lift to a 20-year-old Bulilima woman and went on to rape her in a bushy area.Mike Moyo was on his way from Madlambuzi area in Bulilima to Plumtree when he met the woman at around 5PM on December 27.On the way, he diverted from their route and parked in a bushy area before raping his passenger.Moyo appeared before Plumtree magistrate, Livard Philemon, facing rape charges.He was remanded in custody to January 27.Prosecuting, Elisha Mazorodze said the woman was travelling alone when she flagged down Moyo in Madlambuzi area and requested a lift to Plumtree."On 27 December around 5PM, the woman was offered a lift from Madlambuzi area to Plumtree by Moyo. When they had travelled a distance, Moyo diverted from the road and entered a bushy area and locked the car doors."Moyo then ordered the woman to undress and threatened to stab her with a knife if she did not comply. He raped her once and then ordered her to get out of the car. He dumped her in the bush," said Mazorodze.He said the woman made her way to a nearby homestead and got help. The matter was reported to the police resulting in Moyo's arrest. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Jamie Foxx dramatically came to the rescue of a driver whose car burst into flames outside the actors mansion in California. Brett Kyle, 30, crashed his 2007 Toyota Tacoma on Monday night. The vehicle apparently rolled over several times before bursting into flames, CBS News reports. Foxx and a passer-by ran to the scene and helped pull the man to safety. Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Foxx described how he smashed the window and used the passer-bys scissors, managing to pull the driver out just before the truck became engulfed in flames. As we pull him out, within five seconds later, the truck goes up As Im getting him out, I said youve got to help me get you out because I dont want to have to leave you, the 48-year-old said. Actor Jamie Foxx is speaking out after rescuing a man from a burning truck right in front of his house.... Posted by ABC7 on Tuesday, 19 January 2016 The actor, who is more used to playing brave, heroic roles on screen in films like Django Unchained, maintains that despite his real-life actions he is not a hero. I dont look at it as heroic. I just look at it as, you know, you just had to do something. And it all worked out. People news in pictures Show all 18 1 /18 People news in pictures People news in pictures 7 October 2015 Russian President Vladimir Putin takes part in an ice hockey match between former NHL stars and officials at the Shayba Arena in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. Vladimir Putin spent his 63rd birthday on the ice, playing hockey with NHL stars against Russian officials and tycoons EPA People news in pictures 6 October 2015 German designer Karl Lagerfeld (R) and model Cara Delevingne (C) appear at the end of his Spring/Summer 2016 women's ready-to-wear collection for fashion house Chanel at the Grand Palais which is transformed into a Chanel airport during the Fashion Week in Paris, France Reuters People news in pictures 5 October 2015 Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne addresses the Conservative party conference in Manchester. The Chancellor argued that reducing the payments to people in low paid jobs would give them economic security by reducing the Governments spending deficit Getty Images People news in pictures 4 October 2015 Cowboys captain Johnathan Thurston takes a moment in the centre of the field with his daughter Frankie Thurston, holding dark-skinned doll, after winning the 2015 NRL Grand Final match between the Brisbane Broncos and the North Queensland Cowboys at ANZ Stadium in Sydney. The image quickly became the talking point of Australias National Rugby League Final and provoked a strong reaction on social media, with many praising Thurston for giving his child a toy that promotes inclusiveness and diversity Getty Images People news in pictures 3 October 2015 Pope Francis gives a thumbs-up as he greets people at the end of an audience to the participants of a meeting organized by the "Food Bank" at the Paul VI audience hall in Vatican Getty Images People news in pictures 2 October 2015 Britain's Finance Minister George Osborne (L) throws an American football as he meets with former American football players Dan Marino (2nd R) and Curtis Martin (not pictured) at 11 Downing Street in London, ahead of the New York Jets playing against the Miami Dolphins at London's Wembley Stadium on 4 October Getty Images People news in pictures 1 October 2015 An honor guard opens the door as Russian President Vladimir Putin enters a hall to attend a meeting with members of the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia People news in pictures 30 September 2015 Former Mrs America Lisa Christie, who alleges misconduct by Bill Cosby, holds up photos of her younger self during a news conference at the law office of attorney Gloria Allred in Los Angeles People news in pictures 29 September 2015 Matt Damon has defended himself against claims that he instructed gay actors to remain in the closet. He had said I think youre a better actor the less people know about you and sexuality is a huge part of that. Whether youre straight or gay, people shouldnt know anything about your sexuality but an appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres show said, I was just trying to say actors are more effective when theyre a mystery. Right? Getty People news in pictures 29 September 2015 Actor Marion Cotillard has said that there is no place for feminism in Hollywood. Speaking to Porter magazine, she saidFilm-making is not about gender/ You cannot ask a president in a festival like Cannes to have, like, five movies directed by women and five by men. For me it doesnt create equality, it creates separation. I mean, I dont qualify myself as a feminist." Getty People news in pictures 29 September 2015 Actor Paul Walkers daughter, Meadow, is suing Porsche over her fathers death in a lawsuit that claims he was trapped in the burning car because of design flaws and the seat belt. The Fast and Furious star was killed when the Porsche Carrera GT he was a passenger in hit a pole in California in 2013. The driver, his friend Roger Rodas, also died when the vehicle burst into flames. AP People news in pictures 28 September 2015 Robert Mugabe waits to address the United Nations General Assembly. The leader of Zimbabwe reportedly exclaimed 'We are not gay!' as he criticised Western nation's "double standards and attempts to prescribe new rights that are contrary to our values, norms, traditions and beliefs. In 2013 he described homosexuals as worse than pigs, goats and birds. Reuters People news in pictures 28 September 2015 South African comedian Trevor Noah hosts the first 'Daily Show' since taking over from Jon Stewart as host. Stewart had presented the US satirical news show since 1999 and was described by Noah during the show as a 'Political father' 2015 Getty Images People news in pictures 25 September 2015 Sir Elton John may have received a phone call from the real Vladimir Putin. Mr Putin's spokesman announced he had made contact weeks after the singer was duped by pranksters pretending to be the Russian President. Getty People news in pictures 25 September 2015 Actor Leonardo DiCaprio was mistakenly declared as the artist who produced the Mona Lisa by Fox News anchor Shepard Smith. It was in fact Leonardo da Vinci. People news in pictures 24 September 2015 A new biography claims Donald Trump expected to be dead by 40 and never marry. The Guardian says the a new book also claims that in 1980, Mr Trump manufactured a fake vice-president of his real estate conglomerate, whom he called John Baron. People news in pictures 24 September 2015 The Dalai Lama has said that Britain's policy towards China is just about 'Money, money, money.' And asked 'Where is morality?' People news in pictures 24 September 2015 Puff Daddy secured the number-one spot on the Forbes Hip Hop Cash Kings list, with the publication calculating he made an estimated $60million (39m) between June 2014 and June 2015. Mr Kyles father, Brad, thinks differently and praised Foxx, tearfully telling ABC News: It doesnt matter to me who it was or what they do for a living or whatever, just the idea that someone could do that is so much more than I could fathom. Foxx shared a picture of him and Brad embracing on Facebook hours later. Met the father of the young man from last night today," he wrote. "This is all that matters. That a man, a son, a brothers life was spared last night. God had his arms wrapped around all of us No heroes.. Just happy fathers. Met the father of the young man from last night today. This is all that matters. That a man, a son, a brother's life was... Posted by Jamie Foxx on Tuesday, 19 January 2016 Mr Kyle was reportedly taken to hospital where he was treated for head, chest and neck injuries as well as burns. He was also arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence, according to police. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A former US special forces soldier who shot Osama bin Laden and later wrote a best-selling book, reportedly had an unauthorised photograph of the al-Qaeda leaders corpse. A report in the US said Matthew Bissonnette had recently handed over a computer hard drive allegedly containing the image of bin Laden to US investigators. The Intercept said Mr Bissonnette, a former Navy SEAL and author of No Easy Day, a firsthand account of the 2011 operation to kill the al-Qaeda leader, had been under investigation for allegedly revealing classified information. Pakistani seminary students gathering in front of the final hiding place of Osama bin Laden, in Abbottabad, in 2011 (Getty Images) Bin Laden was killed in May 2011, along with his bodyguards, after US troops stormed a compound in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad where he had been secretly living. In a process that the US government said was carried out for security reasons, his body was reportedly then buried at sea off a US aircraft carrier, the USS Carl Vinson. Images of the burial at sea, along with other pictures of the corpse were taken, but the Obama administration has resisted all efforts by the Associated Press and other groups to obtain them. Internal emails that were eventually released under the Freedom of Information Act suggest that only a very small number of people onboard the ship were aware of what took place, and that no sailors witnessed it. One email stamped secret and sent on May 2 2011 by a senior Navy officer, briefly described how bin Ladens body was washed, wrapped in a white sheet, and then placed in a weighted bag. Osama bin Laden (Getty) Traditional procedures for Islamic burial was followed, the email from Rear Adm Charles Gaouette read. The deceased's body was washed then placed in a white sheet. The body was placed in a weighted bag. A military officer read prepared religious remarks, which were translated into Arabic by a native speaker. After the words were complete, the body was placed on a prepared flat board, tipped up, whereupon the deceaseds body slid into the sea. In an interview with CBS just a few days after bin Laden was killed, President Obama said he had seen the images - which one group claimed may total as many as 50 - but insisted the government had good reasons not to make them public. Matthew Bissonnette took part in the raid to kill Osama bin Laden and later wrote a book using the pen name Mark Owen (YouTube) Keep in mind that we are absolutely certain this was him. Weve done DNA sampling and testing. And so there is no doubt that we killed Osama bin Laden, said Mr Obama. It is important for us to make sure that very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence. As a propaganda tool. Mr Bissonnettes lawyer, Robert Luskin, declined to confirm to The Intercept whether or not his client had an image of bin Laden. I can confirm that the criminal investigation of Mr Bissonnette for alleged wrongful handling or disclosure of classified information was closed through declination by the DOJ in August 2015, said Mr Luskin. He said that he had negotiated a deal in 2014 with the Pentagon and the Justice Department to hand over to the government some of the millions of dollars in book profits Mr Bissonnette had received for the book, written under the pen name Mark Owen. Mr Luskin did not immediately respond to calls on Wednesday. Sign up for a full digest of all the best opinions of the week in our Voices Dispatches email Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Voices Dispatches email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The scientist who claims to be about to carry out the first human head transplant says that he has successfully done the procedure on a monkey. Maverick neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero has tested the procedure in experiments on monkeys and human cadavers, he told New Scientist. Dr Canavero says that the success shows that his plan to transplant a humans head onto a donor body is in place. He says that the procedure will be ready before the end of 2017 and could eventually become a way of treating complete paralysis. I would say we have plenty of data to go on, Canavero told New Scientist. Its important that people stop thinking this is impossible. This is absolutely possible and were working towards it. The team behind the work has published videos and images showing a monkey with a transplanted head, as well as mice that are able to move their legs after having their spinal cords severed and then stuck back together. Warning: graphic photo below A picture that shows to claim a monkey that successfully had its head placed on another body (Surgery/Ren/HEAVEN-AHBR) Fusing the spinal cord of a person is going to be key to successfully transplanting a human head onto a donor body. The scientists claim that they have been able to do so by cleanly cutting the cord and using polyethylene glycol (PEG), which can be used to preserve cell membranes and helps the connection recover. The monkey head transplant was carried out at Harbin Medical University in China, according to Dr Canavero. The monkey survived the procedure without any neurological injury of whatever kind, the surgeon said, but that it was killed 20 hours after the procedure for ethical reasons. It isnt the first time that a successful transplant has been carried out on a monkey. Head transplant pioneer Robert J White successfully carried out the procedure in 1970, on a monkey that initially responded well but died after nine days when the body rejected the head. The newly-revealed success is likely to be an attempt to help generate funds for the ultimate aim of giving a head transplant to Valery Spriridonov, the Russian patient who has been chosen to be the first to undergo the procedure. Dr Canavero has said that he will need a huge amount of money to fund the team of surgeons and scientists involved, and that he intends to ask Mark Zuckerberg to help fund it. 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 While the scientists behind the procedure have published the pictures and the videos, they havent yet made any of their work available for critique from fellow scientists. That has led some to criticise the claims, arguing that it is instead science through PR, and an attempt to drum up publicity and distract people from good science. Peers have criticised the maverick scientist for making the claims without allowing them to be reviewed or checked out. But Dr Canavero claims that he will be publishing details from the study in journals in the coming months. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A huge planet might be sitting at the edge of our solar system without ever being seen. The world which could be about ten times as massive as Earth would be large enough to become the ninth planet of our solar system. The planet hasnt yet been seen by scientists. Instead, they have found it by watching the way that dwarf planets and other objects in the outer solar system move their orbits seem to be disturbed by something huge but hidden sitting out there. Recommended Read more What we know about new mysterious dark world in our solar system If theres going to be another planet in the solar system, I think this is it, Greg Laughlin of the University of California, Santa Cruz told National Geographic. It would be quite extraordinary if we had one. Fingers crossed. It would be amazing. If the planet exists, it is thought to be about ten times as massive or three times as large as Earth. That sort of sized planet occurs throughout the universe but has been an obvious omission from our own. "This would be a real ninth planet," says Brown, the Richard and Barbara Rosenberg Professor of Planetary Astronomy. "There have only been two true planets discovered since ancient times, and this would be a third. It's a pretty substantial chunk of our solar system that's still out there to be found, which is pretty exciting." It would be around 200 to 300 times as far away from the sun as we are when it gets closest to the star, scientists say. It will spend some of its time as much as four times as far away as that, and an entire orbit of the sun probably takes about 20,000 years. 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 planet might have made its way out to the edge of the solar system when it was thrown out there by the gravity of Jupiter or Saturn, the scientists suggest. At such distances, the planet could be impossible to spot even with the two huge telescopes that are currently looking for it. So little light is sent back from that far away that it might never make it back for us to see. It is surrounded by much brighter lights even the distant Pluto could be about 10,000 times brighter and so scientists have to be sure that they point telescopes at exactly the right point and pick out an already very unlikely speck of light. Thats why the scientists have spotted the potential planet by seeing the disturbances that it is causing in the gravitational field of the far star system. There appears to be a great perturber upsetting the movement of other objects in that far away region, and the new paper authored by Michael Brown and Konstantin Batygin and published in the Astronomical Journal claims that is being caused by a mysterious, unknown world. The solar system doesnt often change. The only recent addition was Pluto, which was found in 1930 and spent most of the 21st century as its most distant and smallest planet until it was controversially downgraded to being just a dwarf planet, and the solar system went back to having eight members. If the new planet is real, then it will definitely be a planet, scientists say. Since it dominates a bigger region than any of the other planets, it would "the most planet-y of the planets in the whole solar system", Brown said. ISS Earth timelapse The downgrading of Pluto was partly the result of work by astronomer Michael Brown, who co-wrote the new paper. He had found that Pluto was surrounded by a huge number of similarly-sized planets, and the International Astronomical Union decided that Pluto would be excluded from a new definition. The two astronomers found the new potential planet while they were looking at those small rocks. They seemed to fly around on orbits that couldnt be happening by chance, and instead were best explained by a big ninth planet sitting out there with them. A ninth planet has long been hypothesised and become the basis of some conspiracy theories originally going under the name Planet X. It was first talked about more than a century ago, and looking for that planet was what brought astronomers to find Pluto. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A 10-year-old Muslim boy was questioned by police after mistakenly writing that he lives in a "terrorist house" in a school assignment. The unnamed schoolboy, who attends primary school in Lancashire, meant to write that he in lived in a "terraced house". The boy was interviewed at home by Lancashire Police and the familys laptop was examined after he was reported to police by his teacher in December last year. All teachers have been legally obliged to report any suspected extremist behaviour since July under new counter-terrorism measures introduced by the Government. The boys cousin told the BBC the family wanted an apology from the police and from the school, saying he was now too scared "[to write] using his imagination". She said: "You can imagine it happening to a 30-year-old man, but not to a young child. "If the teacher had any concerns it should have been about his spelling. "They shouldn't be putting a child through this." UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2022 The ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels down the long walk as it arrives at Windsor Castle for the committal service at St Georges Chapel AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 18 September 2022 A man stands among campers on The Mall ahead of the Queens funeral Reuters UK news in pictures 17 September 2022 Wolverhampton Wanderers Nathan Collins fouls Manchester Citys Jack Grealish leading to a red card. City went on to win the match at Molineux Stadium three goals to nil. Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 16 September 2022 Members of the public stand in the queue near Tower Bridge, and opposite the Tower of London, as they wait in line to pay their respects to the late Queen Elizabeth II, in London AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 15 September 2022 Members of the public in the queue on in Potters Fields Park, central London, as they wait to view Queen Elizabeth II lying in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 14 September 2022 The first members of the public pay their respects as the vigil begins around the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Hall, London, where it will lie in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 13 September 2022 Crowds cheer as King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort arrive for a visit to Hillsborough Castle Getty UK news in pictures 12 September 2022 Crowds line the Royal Mile, Edinburgh, as King Charles III joins a procession from the Palace of Holyroodhouse to St Giles Cathedral following the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II Katielee Arrowsmith/SWNS UK news in pictures 11 September 2022 Members of the Public pay their respects as the hearse carrying the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II, draped in the Royal Standard of Scotland, is driven through Ballater AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 10 September 2022 Britain's Prince William, Prince of Wales, Britain's Catherine, Princess of Wales, Britain's Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, Britain's Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, wave at well-wishers on the Long walk at Windsor Castle AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 9 September 2022 King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort wave after viewing floral tributes to the late Queen Elizabeth II outside Buckingham Palace Getty UK news in pictures 8 September 2022 A screen commemorating Britain's Queen Elizabeth II in Piccadilly Circus, London Britain EPA UK news in pictures 7 September 2022 Police officers stand guard after Animal Rebellion activists threw paint on the walls and road outside the Houses of Parliament in protest, in London, Britain Reuters UK news in pictures 6 September 2022 Queen Elizabeth II welcomes Liz Truss during an audience at Balmoral, Scotland, where she invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 5 September 2022 Visitors at the PoliNations garden in Victoria Square, Birmingham, which is made up of five 40ft high tree installations and over 6,000 plants. The PoliNations programme aims to explore how migration and cross-pollination have shaped the UKs gardens and culture PA UK news in pictures 4 September 2022 Undergraduates at the University of St Andrews take part in the traditional Pier Walk along the harbour walls of St Andrews before the start of the new academic year PA UK news in pictures 3 September 2022 The Massed Pipes and Drums parade during the Braemar Highland Gathering at the Princess Royal and Duke of Fife Memorial Park PA UK news in pictures 2 September 2022 Number 12 Company Irish Guards at Wellington Barracks, central London, before commencing their first Guard Mount at Buckingham Palace PA UK news in pictures 1 September 2022 A salmon leaps up the weir at Hexham in Northumberland, despite the drought warnings and low water levels, the River Tyne is still flowing well allowing the salmon and sea trout to head up river to spawn. Every year tens of thousands of salmon make the once-in-a-lifetime journey along the Tyne to spawn, having been out a sea PA UK news in pictures 31 August 2022 Flowers are placed at the gates outside Kensington Palace, London, the former home of Diana, Princess of Wales, on the 25th anniversary of her death PA UK news in pictures 30 August 2022 Edinburghs waste workers clearing mountains of rubbish at Forrest Road as they return to work following their 11 days of industrial action PA Lancashire Police said in a statement to the BBC: "This was reported to the police but was dealt with by a joint visit by a PC from the division and social services, not by anyone from Prevent [the Home Office's anti-extremism strategy]. "There were not thought to be any areas for concern and no further action was required by any agency." It comes just months after another 10-year-old in Birmingham was interviewed after complaining about there not being a prayer room on a residential trip. Although the Home Office does not publish the overall number of people referred to its de-radicalisation programme in the year till the end of October 1,355 people aged under 18 were referred to it - compared to just 466 in 2014. Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} David Cameron has launched a number of measures aimed at improving integration among Muslims in particular, Muslim women in the UK. Polls show that around 70% of people dont think Muslims are well integrated into British society and concern that Muslim people living in Britain do not feel British has long been part of broader discussions around extremism. So, now seems like a good time to take a closer look at how British Muslims actually feel about their place in society and to explore the link between segregation and extremism in greater depth. Along with Professor James Nazroo, I conducted research into these issues using nationally representative data, collected in 2008/09 from almost 5,000 people with different ethnic and religious backgrounds, as a part of the Home Office Citizenship Survey. We found that these ideas about British Muslims are not backed up by evidence. Crunching the numbers In this survey, respondents from a range of religious and ethnic backgrounds were asked about whether they felt they belong in Britain. The questions capture three different senses of belonging. Participants were asked about the extent to which they agreed with the following statement: I personally feel a part of Britain. You can see the participants' responses in the graph below. Its clear that almost everyone in the religious and ethnic groups examined feels a sense of personal belonging to Britain. And those who didnt were as likely to be Christian as Muslim. The respondents were also asked: How strongly do you belong to Britain? More than 80% of people in each of these groups said that they strongly belong to Britain, with the narrow exception being Asian Christians. This suggests that feelings of alienation are not as widespread within the Muslim population as many in the wider community appear to believe. And it indicates that where it does exist alienation is not unique to British Muslims, but also extends to other ethnic and religious groups. Furthermore, our participants were asked the extent to which they agreed with this statement: It is possible to fully belong to Britain and maintain a separate cultural or religious identity. As the graph below demonstrates, with the exception of Caribbean Christians, at least 75% of people in each group perceived no incompatibility between fully belonging to Britain and maintaining other cultural or religious identities. From these initial responses, it was clear that respondents in Muslim groups were just as likely as other groups to respond positively to the statements about belonging. But we also considered it important to take other factors into account. So we explored whether there was any evidence of an association between the respondents' sense of belonging and their age, gender, economic activity, place of birth and risk of racist victimisation. We calculated and compared the likelihood of reporting a very strong sense of belonging to Britain, feeling part of Britain, or strongly agreeing that it is possible to fully belong to Britain and maintain a separate cultural or religious identity, for each of these other factors. We found an association between a sense of belonging and four of the five factors: age, gender, place of birth and risk of racist victimisation. A source of frustration Lets start with age. On the whole, younger people were significantly less likely to feel British than their older counterparts. At first, this seems to align with the well-worn idea that young people and particularly young Muslims face a greater risk of radicalisation. It would also seem to contradict another finding in this study: that those born in the UK are more likely to feel a sense of belonging to Britain. The higher risk of radicalisation is generally seen to stem from young peoples frustration and confusion about the apparent incompatibility of the British and Muslim cultures they simultaneously inhabit. Yet 73% of respondents aged 25 or younger agreed that it is possible to fully belong to Britain, while maintaining a separate cultural or religious identity. And Muslims (and other non-Christians) were less likely to perceive such an incompatibility than Caribbean Christians. Indeed, complementary research suggests that much of the frustration among young British Muslims comes from a sense that their rights as British citizens to fair treatment and freedom of expression are not being respected. This frustration is not about being Muslim. Rather, it is about a lack of respect for their Britishness. Dont blame the victims Those who perceived themselves as at risk of victimisation were also less likely to personally feel part of Britain, or strongly belonging to Britain. Whether or not people have a sense of belonging to Britain is likely to depend on whether they feel accepted by British society. Negative attitudes toward Muslims are commonly presented by government ministers, the media and others. Worse, negativity towards Muslims has also been expressed in the form of verbal abuse, physical violence and other forms of social and economic exclusion, to which Muslims in Britain are increasingly and disproportionately exposed. This will directly affect their sense of acceptance, and in turn their sense of belonging within British society. Yet discussions of the Muslim problem generally ignore the role that the attitudes and actions of wider society may play in its creation. Indeed, the weaker sense of Britishness among women in this study may be in direct response to the particular ways in which Muslim women are targeted. Muslim women are often used as a symbol of the supposed dysfunction inherent in Islam. They are also singled out in government anti-radicalisation agendas and dress restrictions. Most recently, Camerons campaign has been criticised as taking a lazy and misguided approach to Muslim women. Conservative peer Baroness Warsi commented that linking English proficiency with the continuation of spousal visas was a very unusual way of empowering and emboldening women. This research suggests that concerns about Muslim loyalty to Britain are misplaced. It also suggests that, as a society, we should think more carefully about how we engage with our fellow Britons. A proportion of the ethnic and religious minority population in Britain does run the risk of experiencing a sense of alienation, but this is unlikely to be addressed by improving language skills. Instead, it requires a more concerted effort to reduce the processes which isolate these members of our society. Questioning the loyalty of already loyal citizens runs a direct risk of making the Muslim problem much worse than it actually is. Saffron Karlsen, Senior lecturer, University of Bristol This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A British man whose husband died in a tragic accident on their honeymoon in Australia has had his grief compounded by being told their marriage will not be recognised on the death certificate. Marco Bulmer-Rizzi said the document will read never married because of laws in South Australia that not only ban same-sex marriage, but also fail to recognise legal unions from abroad. He married his boyfriend of five years, David Bulmer-Rizzi, last year and the pair travelled to Australia last month for a honeymoon travelling the country. Mr Bulmer-Rizzi's husband died after falling down the stairs at their friends' home in Adelaide, Australia. (Getty Images) But last Saturday, David died suddenly after falling down a staircase at their friends home in Adelaide and sustaining serious head injuries. As relatives flew in from the UK, Mr Bulmer-Rizzi was devastated to learn that their marriage was not recognised and vital decisions about his husband would be left to his father-in-law. When the funeral director came thats when I was told that because Australia doesnt recognise same-sex marriage, it [the death certificate] will say never married, he told Buzzfeed News, adding that he was made to feel like nothing. His father-in-law, Nigel Bulmer, said he told authorities he did not want to act as next-of-kin but was given no choice. Equal marriage supporters at a rally in Sydney, Australia (Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images) He said he was deeply hurt by his sons marriage being wiped from the death certificate, denouncing the demeaning law that turned the Sunderland couple into second-class citizens. No one should ever have to go through what weve gone through, he added. Were at the bottom and somebody has dug a deeper pit. Mr Bulmer-Rizzi has written to David Cameron, the Foreign Office and MPs asking them to intervene to ensure British all marriages are recognised in Australia and elsewhere. Lonely Planet's top 10 gay-friendly travel destinations Show all 10 1 /10 Lonely Planet's top 10 gay-friendly travel destinations Lonely Planet's top 10 gay-friendly travel destinations 1. Copenhagen, Denmark Lonely Planet's top 10 gay-friendly travel destinations 2. New Zealand Lonely Planet's top 10 gay-friendly travel destinations 3. Toronto, Canada Hubert Kang Lonely Planet's top 10 gay-friendly travel destinations 4. Palm Springs, US Lonely Planet's top 10 gay-friendly travel destinations 5. Sitges, Spain Getty Lonely Planet's top 10 gay-friendly travel destinations 6. Berlin, Germany Lonely Planet's top 10 gay-friendly travel destinations 7. Mykonos, Greece Lonely Planet's top 10 gay-friendly travel destinations 8. New York City, US Nikada/Getty Images Lonely Planet's top 10 gay-friendly travel destinations 9. Reykjavik, Iceland Lonely Planet's top 10 gay-friendly travel destinations 10. Montevideo, Uruguay Urging people to join his campaign on Facebook, he said he was touched by the support he has received from around the world. Please help me in getting David's death certificate to show we were married.#nevermarried #timeforchange, he wrote. Jay Weatherill, the Premier of South Australia, said he would personally apologise to Mr Bulmer-Rizzi and his family and pledged to introduce a bill changing discriminatory legislation in the state later this year. I was very saddened to hear about what Marco Bulmer-Rizzi went through after the passing of his husband David, he said. This is an example of how discrimination based on sexual orientation can cause much pain and hurt. While same-sex marriage is not legal in Australia, overseas same-sex marriages are recognised in some states, but not in South Australia, the Northern Territory and Western Australia. Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Front doors on the homes of asylum seekers will be repainted after concerns they had been marked out in red - exposing them to racial abuse and vandalism. The Home Office has launched an urgent review of the properties in Middlesbrough after residents reported eggs and stones being hurled, dog excrement smeared on windows and frequent racist jibes. Ian Swales, former MP for Redcar, likened the red paint to the yellow stars Jews were forced to wear in Nazi Germany. Recommended Read more G4S guards accused of assaulting young offenders sacked The Liberal Democrat described them as a "mark of separation" that "reminds you of Germany in the 1930s". Iranian asylum seeker, Mohammed Bagher Bayzavi, 58, said: "Everyone here knows the red colour is Jomast. Change the colour - anything but red." The properties, owned by Stuart Monk, are subcontracted to Jomast by security company G4S, which holds the contract for housing asylum seekers in the North East. G4S and Jomast denied claims asylum seekers had been delibrately identified by red paint, but accepted the majority of doors, both private and asylum seeker accommodation, were painted red. In a statement, G4S said: Although we have received no complaints on the issue from asylum seekers we house, in light of the concerns raised, Jomast has agreed to address the issue by repainting the front doors in the area so that there is no predominant colour. However, Suzanne Fletcher, a local resident who chairs the Liberal Democrats for Seekers of Sanctuary, reportedly said over the last four years the case had been raised with the Home Affairs committee, the National Audit Office and Mr Swales. Iranian asylum seeker Mohammed Bagher Bayzavi at his front door in Union Street, Middlesbrough (PA) She told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "In September 2012 we asked G4S if they would do something about the red doors and they replied that they had no intention of doing anything about it." As well as reportedly previously raising the case, other residents had attempted to deal with matters themselves. Ahmad Zubair, from Afghanistan, told The Times: "Asylum houses have red doors. Everyone knows that. He had repainted his front door white, but claims a Jomast worker repainted it red - citing company policy. Andy McDonald, the member of parliament representing Middlesbrough, told the Times the red doors were "a way of marking people out that is reprehensible". UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2022 The ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels down the long walk as it arrives at Windsor Castle for the committal service at St Georges Chapel AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 18 September 2022 A man stands among campers on The Mall ahead of the Queens funeral Reuters UK news in pictures 17 September 2022 Wolverhampton Wanderers Nathan Collins fouls Manchester Citys Jack Grealish leading to a red card. City went on to win the match at Molineux Stadium three goals to nil. Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 16 September 2022 Members of the public stand in the queue near Tower Bridge, and opposite the Tower of London, as they wait in line to pay their respects to the late Queen Elizabeth II, in London AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 15 September 2022 Members of the public in the queue on in Potters Fields Park, central London, as they wait to view Queen Elizabeth II lying in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 14 September 2022 The first members of the public pay their respects as the vigil begins around the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Hall, London, where it will lie in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 13 September 2022 Crowds cheer as King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort arrive for a visit to Hillsborough Castle Getty UK news in pictures 12 September 2022 Crowds line the Royal Mile, Edinburgh, as King Charles III joins a procession from the Palace of Holyroodhouse to St Giles Cathedral following the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II Katielee Arrowsmith/SWNS UK news in pictures 11 September 2022 Members of the Public pay their respects as the hearse carrying the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II, draped in the Royal Standard of Scotland, is driven through Ballater AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 10 September 2022 Britain's Prince William, Prince of Wales, Britain's Catherine, Princess of Wales, Britain's Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, Britain's Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, wave at well-wishers on the Long walk at Windsor Castle AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 9 September 2022 King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort wave after viewing floral tributes to the late Queen Elizabeth II outside Buckingham Palace Getty UK news in pictures 8 September 2022 A screen commemorating Britain's Queen Elizabeth II in Piccadilly Circus, London Britain EPA UK news in pictures 7 September 2022 Police officers stand guard after Animal Rebellion activists threw paint on the walls and road outside the Houses of Parliament in protest, in London, Britain Reuters UK news in pictures 6 September 2022 Queen Elizabeth II welcomes Liz Truss during an audience at Balmoral, Scotland, where she invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 5 September 2022 Visitors at the PoliNations garden in Victoria Square, Birmingham, which is made up of five 40ft high tree installations and over 6,000 plants. The PoliNations programme aims to explore how migration and cross-pollination have shaped the UKs gardens and culture PA UK news in pictures 4 September 2022 Undergraduates at the University of St Andrews take part in the traditional Pier Walk along the harbour walls of St Andrews before the start of the new academic year PA UK news in pictures 3 September 2022 The Massed Pipes and Drums parade during the Braemar Highland Gathering at the Princess Royal and Duke of Fife Memorial Park PA UK news in pictures 2 September 2022 Number 12 Company Irish Guards at Wellington Barracks, central London, before commencing their first Guard Mount at Buckingham Palace PA UK news in pictures 1 September 2022 A salmon leaps up the weir at Hexham in Northumberland, despite the drought warnings and low water levels, the River Tyne is still flowing well allowing the salmon and sea trout to head up river to spawn. Every year tens of thousands of salmon make the once-in-a-lifetime journey along the Tyne to spawn, having been out a sea PA UK news in pictures 31 August 2022 Flowers are placed at the gates outside Kensington Palace, London, the former home of Diana, Princess of Wales, on the 25th anniversary of her death PA Immigration minister, James Brokenshire, said: I am deeply concerned by this issue and I have commissioned Home Office officials to conduct an urgent audit of asylum seeking housing in the North East. I expect the highest standards from our contractors. If we find any evidence of discrimination against asylum seekers it will be dealt with immediately as any such behaviour will not be tolerated. The Times found that 155 of the 168 houses it visited in Middlesbrough were red. Out of the 66 residents reporters spoke to, 62 of them were asylum seekers, of 22 different nationalities. Stuart Monk and Jomast have been approached for comment. G4S has been contacted, but currently has no comment on Ms Fletchers claims. Sign up to our free fortnightly newsletter from The Independent's Race Correspondent Nadine White Sign up to our free fortnightly newsletter The Race Report Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the The Race Report email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Behind the red front door of a terraced house in Diamond Road, Middlesbrough, three-week-old baby Amelia Perera has just woken up from an afternoon nap. She is unaware of the national controversy surrounding the colour of that door, and of the abuse her parents suffer as they try to build a home for her behind it. Amelia and her parents Lahiru and Asha, along with four-year-old brother Diheia, are among asylum-seekers in one of Englands poorest towns who have been housed in properties with identical red doors, amid claims an apartheid policy is marking them out for abuse from vandals and race-hate yobs. Everybody knows the asylum-seekers in this area have red doors, says Mr Perera, a 32-year-old from Sri Lanka. They shout, they knock on the door and they throw stones at the windows. It happens every night. Two days ago, somebody spat on the door. We have two children, one a baby. My wife is scared. She sleeps downstairs and is afraid to go upstairs. They should change the colour of these doors. According to an investigation by The Times, 155 out of 168 Jomast homes it identified in two of Middlesbroughs most deprived areas had red doors. People living in 62 out of 66 houses it investigated were asylum-seekers. The Home Office has now ordered an urgent review, with immigration minister James Brokenshire saying he is deeply concerned by the issue. If we find any evidence of discrimination against asylum-seekers, it will be dealt with immediately and any such behaviour will not be tolerated, he said. Pierre Degrando. from Cameroon, says the identifying doors stop asylum-seekers from being treated like human beings (Mark Pinder) The homes in a run-down area of Middlesbrough are owned by Jomast a subcontractor of the services giant G4S which denies that the colour red has been used deliberately. Jomasts managing director Stuart Monk said the paint is usually bought in bulk for use across all properties, adding that it is ludicrous to suggest that this constitutes any form of discrimination. The company has now said it will repaint the doors to ensure there is no predominant colour. One resident opposed to the housing of her foreign neighbours, however, said the asylum-seekers should pay for new doors. Asylum-seekers abused Suzanne Fletcher, a former local councillor who chairs Liberal Democrats for Seekers of Sanctuary, said the issue had been raised previously with the Home Affairs Committee and the National Audit Office. The people living behind these doors are vulnerable and frightened, she told The Independent. They have had eggs and stones thrown at their windows and graffiti daubed on their walls. Father-of-four Jagjeet Singh, 30, an asylum-seeker from India, whose red-doored house is among a row of empty terraces off Union Street, would change the door colour if he could. The Home Office has ordered an urgent review of the matter (Mark Pinder) We have no choice about where to live, he says. People bang on the door, they bang on the windows. Sometimes they throw stones. People are racist for the red doors. Another asylum-seeker from continental Europe in a neighbouring street, who does not want to give her name, says: They throw plastic bottles and stones at the windows and bang on the doors. I called police two weeks ago because I was so afraid. I have two children. We are stuck here and cant choose where we live. We are not treated like human beings, says Pierre Degrando, 56, from Cameroon. This is no life. Besides the red doors, a common feature on dozens of other houses in this poor area of town are steel shutters on their windows. Bulldozers can be seen pulling down homes in one street. An abandoned settee and a broken table lie on the grass next to empty houses. G4S said its asylum accommodation is inspected frequently by the Home Office and has been found to meet the required standards. But local residents say the area has largely been abandoned and all the houses should be demolished. One man, who also did not want to be named, said: Nobody cares about this area. We have been left on our own. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2022 The ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels down the long walk as it arrives at Windsor Castle for the committal service at St Georges Chapel AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 18 September 2022 A man stands among campers on The Mall ahead of the Queens funeral Reuters UK news in pictures 17 September 2022 Wolverhampton Wanderers Nathan Collins fouls Manchester Citys Jack Grealish leading to a red card. City went on to win the match at Molineux Stadium three goals to nil. Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 16 September 2022 Members of the public stand in the queue near Tower Bridge, and opposite the Tower of London, as they wait in line to pay their respects to the late Queen Elizabeth II, in London AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 15 September 2022 Members of the public in the queue on in Potters Fields Park, central London, as they wait to view Queen Elizabeth II lying in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 14 September 2022 The first members of the public pay their respects as the vigil begins around the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Hall, London, where it will lie in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 13 September 2022 Crowds cheer as King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort arrive for a visit to Hillsborough Castle Getty UK news in pictures 12 September 2022 Crowds line the Royal Mile, Edinburgh, as King Charles III joins a procession from the Palace of Holyroodhouse to St Giles Cathedral following the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II Katielee Arrowsmith/SWNS UK news in pictures 11 September 2022 Members of the Public pay their respects as the hearse carrying the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II, draped in the Royal Standard of Scotland, is driven through Ballater AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 10 September 2022 Britain's Prince William, Prince of Wales, Britain's Catherine, Princess of Wales, Britain's Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, Britain's Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, wave at well-wishers on the Long walk at Windsor Castle AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 9 September 2022 King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort wave after viewing floral tributes to the late Queen Elizabeth II outside Buckingham Palace Getty UK news in pictures 8 September 2022 A screen commemorating Britain's Queen Elizabeth II in Piccadilly Circus, London Britain EPA UK news in pictures 7 September 2022 Police officers stand guard after Animal Rebellion activists threw paint on the walls and road outside the Houses of Parliament in protest, in London, Britain Reuters UK news in pictures 6 September 2022 Queen Elizabeth II welcomes Liz Truss during an audience at Balmoral, Scotland, where she invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 5 September 2022 Visitors at the PoliNations garden in Victoria Square, Birmingham, which is made up of five 40ft high tree installations and over 6,000 plants. The PoliNations programme aims to explore how migration and cross-pollination have shaped the UKs gardens and culture PA UK news in pictures 4 September 2022 Undergraduates at the University of St Andrews take part in the traditional Pier Walk along the harbour walls of St Andrews before the start of the new academic year PA UK news in pictures 3 September 2022 The Massed Pipes and Drums parade during the Braemar Highland Gathering at the Princess Royal and Duke of Fife Memorial Park PA UK news in pictures 2 September 2022 Number 12 Company Irish Guards at Wellington Barracks, central London, before commencing their first Guard Mount at Buckingham Palace PA UK news in pictures 1 September 2022 A salmon leaps up the weir at Hexham in Northumberland, despite the drought warnings and low water levels, the River Tyne is still flowing well allowing the salmon and sea trout to head up river to spawn. Every year tens of thousands of salmon make the once-in-a-lifetime journey along the Tyne to spawn, having been out a sea PA UK news in pictures 31 August 2022 Flowers are placed at the gates outside Kensington Palace, London, the former home of Diana, Princess of Wales, on the 25th anniversary of her death PA Home help: How asylum housing is allocated Asylum-seekers can apply for accommodation and/or subsistence support while their application, and any subsequent appeal, is being considered. This is often referred to as Section 95 support, named after the relevant part of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. The properties are private lets often accommodation that has been standing empty for a long time or homes that contractors have found difficult to let in the past. The housing is allocated by government bodies, and the asylum-seekers are not given a choice as to where in the country they are placed. Much of the decision- making process is dependent on which areas have suitable housing available at each point in time. At the end of September 2015, there were 1,660 asylum-seekers in England and Wales in initial accommodation waiting to be housed more permanently, 28,620 living in dispersed accommodation after being granted homes, and 3,276 receiving subsistence-only support. The North-west hosts the largest number of asylum-seekers, with 7,531 people in dispersed accommodation. This is followed by the West Midlands, which has 4,351. The South-east hosts the lowest number, with 283 people provided with housing. The national contracts for asylum housing are held by G4S, Serco and Clearel, who subcontract to various providers. In 2014 there was a total of 16,265 applications for asylum support in the UK. Rachael Pells Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Morning Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A ground-breaking court victory for asylum campaigners is set to pave the way for thousands more refugees to come to Britain. The court found that three unaccompanied children and a young adult currently in the Calais refugee camp known as the Jungle should be allowed to come to live with close relatives who are already settled in the UK while their asylum claimed are examined. Lawyers for the four young refugees argued that the Home Office routinely ignored the right of refugees to be reunited with family members already in the UK, under a European asylum rule known as the Dublin III regulation. Many refugees in Calais are desperate to get to Britain to escape freezing temperatures and dire conditions and to be reunited with family members here. However bureaucratic failings mean that despite there being provision in EU regulations for this to happen safely and legally, in practice it can be virtually impossible. The court order means that the three Syrian children and accompanying adult should immediately be brought to Britain to join their relatives. Human rights group, including Amnesty UK welcomed the news, but said the government should go even further and allow more refugees to be reunited with their families. Steve Symonds, Amnesty International UKs Refugee Programme Director, said it was a matter of shame that desperate family members had to resort to the courts. Adetomiwa Edun and Oona Chaplin at a memorial service organised by Citizens UK for refugees who have died trying to reach the UK, at St Andrew's Church in the City of London. (PA) Campaigners from the grassroots group Citizens UK, which brought the case, now say they hope to bring the four refugees to the UK on Thursday and are despatching a team of lawyers to Calais to prepare the cases of up to 200 refugees who may have a case to come to Britain under the Dublin regulation. George Gabriel, a spokesperson for Citizens UK, said the group was delighted the Government would honour safer and legal routes for the most desperate of refuges to escape the dire conditions in Calais and come to Britain. Fascist group appears to launch stones and fireworks at Calais jungle and intimidate volunteers He said: We are delighted with the judgment and look forward to being able to see these families, who have been so cruelly separated by war; reunited and safe. This judgment highlights that there are safe, legal routes to reconnect families using the Dublin III regulations, and we hope will allow other families to be reunited. The news that the court had ordered the Calais children to be brought the UK was tinged with sadness for campaigners after a fifth child, who was due to be part of the test case, was died while attempting to get Britain in the back of a lorry. Nonetheless, the ruling has major implications beyond Calais as it paves the way for potentially thousands more refugees to come to Britain under European rules that give them the right to be reunited with close family members. Aid worker dodges prison Last night, Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat leader who has been calling for the Government to help 3,000 unaccompanied child refugees this winter, welcomed the ruling but said they are just a handful of the tens of thousands of unaccompanied refugees across Europe who need sanctuary. He said: No child, especially those without the protection of a family, should have to go through what they have, and I strongly commend the work of the organisations which have fought for the rights of these youngsters in court. Keir Starmer MP, Labour's Shadow Immigration Minister, added: When I visited Calais, I could see [the Dublin regulation] was not working and this case makes that abundantly clear. The ball is now in the Government's court to act and conduct the necessary review." The Dublin regulation should theoretically only allow an asylum seeker in Calais or elsewhere in Europe to join a close relative in UK if they have themselves already been granted asylum in France. However campaigners argued that bureaucratic failures meant this rarely happened, and the court has agreed that evidence of a written claim to asylum in France was sufficient to prove children had initially sought safety there. The Home Office is yet to comment on the case. The court subsequently has ruled that instead of waiting for French authorities to act, the Home Office must now examine claims brought by refugees under Dublin regulations. "This ruling has shone a welcome light on the plight of refugees seeking protection in Europe who are desperately trying to reach their relatives, said Judith Dennis, policy manager at the Refugee Council. A Home Office spokesperson said: We will study the full judgement in detail. We stand by the well-established principle that those seeking protection should claim asylum in the first safe country they reach. The court still requires these individuals to claim asylum in France before they can come to the UK. Any request to unite family members under the Dublin Regulation is carefully considered. Where someone seeking asylum elsewhere in the EU can demonstrate they have close family members legally in the UK, we will take responsibility for that claim. News / Regional by Adelaide Moyo A 22-YEAR-OLD Inyathi woman was on Monday fined $50 for assaulting her husband after she caught him sending a WhatsApp message to his ex-girlfriend.Emely Manatsi was convicted of assaulting Kairos Chapapi on Thursday last week.The woman snatched her husband's phone and threatened to give it to her in-laws as infidelity evidence against him.Chapapi, a general worker at a mine in Inyathi, reported his wife to the police for physical abuse and she was arrested.The contents of the messages were not disclosed in court.Passing sentence, Bulawayo magistrate Stephen Ndlovu on circuit at Inyathi court warned Manatsi against engaging in violence.He fined her to $50 with the option of spending 30 days in prison if she defaulted on the fine.Prosecuting, Lungisani Dube, told the court that on Thursday last week at around 7PM, Chapapi arrived home from work and found his wife preparing supper.He proceeded to their bedroom."Manatsi called her husband to have supper but he kept on sending messages on his cellphone. Manatsi forcibly took Chapapi's phone and read the messages he had been sending," the prosecutor said.The court heard that Manatsi realised that her husband was texting a woman identified only as Chipo, the man's ex-girlfriend.This did not go down well with her and she asked him what he was up to."An argument ensued between the two and Manatsi started assaulting him with fists. The accused also bit her husband once on the right chin before pushing him to the floor," Dube said.Manatsi kept the cellphone with an intention to use it as evidence of infidelity to her in-laws.Chapapi managed to escape and reported the matter to the police.chronicle Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} David Cameron has been accused of silently dragging Britain into another conflict in the Middle East without parliamentary approval or oversight. Angus Robertson, the Scottish National Partys leader at Westminster, said the Prime Minister should admit to British involvement in Saudi Arabias invasion of Yemen where the UK is providing arms, training and advice. The call comes as new figures released by the Government show that British bomb and missile exports to Saudi Arabia have increased by 11,000 per cent from 9 million to 1 billion over three months last year. Recommended Read more British arms companies ramp up bomb sales to Saudi Arabia by 100 times Saudi Arabia has been accused of war crimes by human rights groups and the legality of British military assistance to the country has been questioned by campaigners. Thousands of civilians have been killed in Yemen, including a large number by the Saudi air force and theyve done that using British-built planes, with pilots who are trained by British instructors, dropping British-made bombs, who are coordinated by the Saudis in the presence of British military advisors, Mr Robertson said during Prime Ministers Questions. Isnt it time for the Prime Minister to admit that Britain is effectively taking part in a war in Yemen that is costing thousands of civilians lives and he has not sought parliamentary approval to do this? The Prime Minister rejected the suggestion that the UK was taking part in the conflict but admitted that British advisors had a role in Saudi Arabia. Policemen search for survivors at the site of a Saudi-led airstrike on the police headquarters in Sanaa (AP) I think the Right Honourable Gentleman started in a serious place and then wondered off. Its in our interest to back the legitimate government of Yemen. We have some of the most stringent arms control procedures of any country in the world, he replied. Just to be absolutely clear about our role: were not a member of the Saudi-led coalition, British military personnel are not directly involved in the Saudi-led coalitions operations, personnel are not involved in carrying out strikes, directing or conducting operations in Yemen or selecting targets and were not involved in the Saudi targeting decision making process. But yes do we provide advice, help and training in order to make sure that countries actually do obey the norms of humanitarian law? Yes we do. 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Show all 10 1 /10 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In October 2014, three lawyers, Dr Abdulrahman al-Subaihi, Bander al-Nogaithan and Abdulrahman al-Rumaih , were sentenced to up to eight years in prison for using Twitter to criticize the Ministry of Justice. AFP/Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In March 2015, Yemens Sunni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi was forced into exile after a Shia-led insurgency. A Saudi Arabia-led coalition has responded with air strikes in order to reinstate Mr Hadi. It has since been accused of committing war crimes in the country. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Women who supported the Women2Drive campaign, launched in 2011 to challenge the ban on women driving vehicles, faced harassment and intimidation by the authorities. The government warned that women drivers would face arrest. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Members of the Kingdoms Shia minority, most of whom live in the oil-rich Eastern Province, continue to face discrimination that limits their access to government services and employment. Activists have received death sentences or long prison terms for their alleged participation in protests in 2011 and 2012. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses All public gatherings are prohibited under an order issued by the Interior Ministry in 2011. Those defy the ban face arrest, prosecution and imprisonment on charges such as inciting people against the authorities. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In March 2014, the Interior Ministry stated that authorities had deported over 370,000 foreign migrants and that 18,000 others were in detention. Thousands of workers were returned to Somalia and other states where they were at risk of human rights abuses, with large numbers also returned to Yemen, in order to open more jobs to Saudi Arabians. Many migrants reported that prior to their deportation they had been packed into overcrowded makeshift detention facilities where they received little food and water and were abused by guards. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses The Saudi Arabian authorities continue to deny access to independent human rights organisations like Amnesty International, and they have been known to take punitive action, including through the courts, against activists and family members of victims who contact Amnesty. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Raif Badawi was sentenced to 1000 lashes and 10 years in prison for using his liberal blog to criticise Saudi Arabias clerics. He has already received 50 lashes, which have reportedly left him in poor health. Carsten Koall/Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Dawood al-Marhoon was arrested aged 17 for participating in an anti-government protest. After refusing to spy on his fellow protestors, he was tortured and forced to sign a blank document that would later contain his confession. At Dawoods trial, the prosecution requested death by crucifixion while refusing him a lawyer. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Ali Mohammed al-Nimr was arrested in 2012 aged either 16 or 17 for participating in protests during the Arab spring. His sentence includes beheading and crucifixion. The international community has spoken out against the punishment and has called on Saudi Arabia to stop. He is the nephew of a prominent government dissident. Getty Saudi Arabia is intervening in Yemen to fight Houthi rebels, who control the countrys capital but are not internationally recognised as its government. The Kingdom was asked to join the conflict by the countrys Government, which has been pushed out of much of the countrys heartland. Criticism of the Saudi military operation have however included the bombing of multiple hospitals run by the charity Medecins Sans Frontieres and the deaths of thousands of civilians, including 130 at a single wedding. While international observers have recognised abuses on all sides, in late December UN human rights chief Zeid Raad al-Hussein said that a disproportionate number of attacks of civilians in Yemen had come from the Saudi-led invasion force. I have observed with extreme concern the continuation of heavy shelling from the ground and the air in areas with high a concentration of civilians as well as the perpetuation of the destruction of civilian infrastructure in particular hospitals and schools by all parties to the conflict, although a disproportionate amount appeared to be the result of airstrikes carried out by Coalition Forces, Mr Zeid said. Medics attend to the aftermath of an air strike on a police station in Yemen's capital Sanaa (Reuters) Human rights group Amnesty International UK has also accused the Government of ignoring overwhelming evidence of civilian targeting by the Saudi Arabian air force. "Angus Robertson has raised an important point about the UKs involvement in Saudi Arabias indiscriminate bombing campaign in Yemen, a campaign were told involves British advisers actually located in the Saudi control room, said Allan Hogarth, the groups head of Policy and Government Affairs. "Thousands of Yemeni civilians have already been killed in a barrage of indiscriminate Saudi airstrikes in the country and whatever advice Britain has been giving to the Saudis has apparently done little to prevent this appalling death toll. "Meanwhile, the UK is selling billions of pounds worth of weapons to the Saudis in the full knowledge of the grave risk that theyll be used to kill Yemeni civilians. "Instead of brushing aside Mr Robertsons questions, the prime minister should immediately suspend export licences for all further UK arms bound for Saudi Arabia and allow a full investigation into allegations of serious breaches of international humanitarian law by Saudi Arabia in Yemen. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The Government is effectively slashing the pay of new nurses by 900 a year by scrapping grants for people training in the profession, Jeremy Corbyn has said. The Labour leader attacked David Cameron Prime Ministers Question Time for phasing out the grants, which help people meet living costs while the qualify to work in the profession. From September 2017 student nurses will have to take out loans to cover their tuition fees and living costs which they will have to pay back when they start work. The mandatory repayments on the loans at a nurses salary would amount to about 900 a year, effectively reducing the take-home pay of the medics. The repayments when student nurses will have to pay when qualified will amount to an effective 900 pay cut when qualified for each nurse. Why is he punishing them when we need these nurses within our NHS? Mr Corbyn said. The Prime Minister will be aware that nine out of ten hospitals currently have a nurse shortage isnt what hes proposing for the nurse bursary scheme going to exacerbate the crisis and make our NHS less effective? The Labour leader cited correspondence from a women from York called Vicky who said removing the grant would stop people like her training as nurses. The Prime Minister defended the Governments record on the issue and argued that cutting help for trainee nurses would allow more nurses to join the profession. Today, two out of three people who want to become a nurse cant become a nurse because of the bursary system. By introducing the loans, nurses will get more money, well train more nurses and well bring in fewer from overseas, he said. In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Show all 10 1 /10 In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK 20,000 Junior Doctors marched through central London in protest at the new contract changes the government is trying to impose which they say will be unfair and unsafe In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Junior doctors protest in London In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK 4 year old Cassius takes part in a demonstration in Westminster, in support of junior doctors over changes to NHS contracts, London In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Protest over proposed changes to junior doctors' contracts, Leeds In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Junior doctors and NHS staff protesting against the health service cuts and the proposed contract changes offered by the government outside Parliament In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Junior doctors and NHS staff protesting against the health service cuts and the proposed contract changes offered by the government outside Parliament In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Over 5000 junior doctors rallied in Waterloo place, before marching through Whitehall and onto Parliament Square, in opposition to Jeremy Hunt's new working conditions for doctors In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Demonstrators listen to speeches in Waterloo Place during the 'Let's Save the NHS' rally and protest march by junior doctors In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK Junior doctors marched in London to highlight their plight In pictures: Junior doctors protests in UK A protester at a demonstration in support of junior doctors in London Its good for our nurses, its good for the NHS, and its good for our country. Its only a Labour party that is so short-sighted and anti-aspiration that he cant see it. Trainee nurses represented by the Royal College of Nursing marched past Parliament earlier this month in protest of the plan. RCN Students have today shown just how worried they are about this move and its potential effects, RCN general secretary Janet Davies said at the time. Student nurses and midwives are the professions future and their voices and concerns must, and should be listened to. Recommended Junior doctors could be unilaterally forced to accept new contract Over our 100 year history, the RCN has a long track record in the education of nurses and the Government should listen to our knowledge and expertise as it consults on these ill thought out plans. The future of nursing must be protected. Our patients deserve nothing less. The Governments run-in with nurses comes as it is locked in a dispute with junior doctors, who say a new contract ministers want to impose will undermine patient safety and reduce the take-home pay of those who work the longest hours. A 24 hour strike planned for next week was called off yesterday by the British Medical Association as negotiators plan for more talks, but further strikes in February are still on the cards if no deal is made. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Goldman Sachs has donated hundreds of thousands of pounds to the campaign to keep Britain in the EU, amid growing concerns among City firms over the consequences of Brexit for the UKs status on the global finance stage. The banking giant, which employs 6,000 people in the UK, is thought to be just one of a number of major city firms that have agreed to fund the In campaign. The firm declined to comment on the donation, but Sky News reported that the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign group had received a substantial six-figure sum. Both the officially-designated In and Out campaigns will be able to spend up to 7m ahead of the upcoming referendum. With the campaigns gaining momentum ahead of crucial talks between David Cameron and EU leaders next month, both camps are expecting the debate to centre on the economy and on immigration, against the backdrop of Europes mounting refugee crisis. Ashdown on Tory EU split Former Labour cabinet minister Yvette Cooper said that the EU should reintroduce internal border control to help control the movement of migrants and refugees. Ms Cooper, who chairs the partys refugee taskforce, said more countries should be prepared to take in refugees, but that the longstanding system of passport-free travel between most EU member states known as the Schengen Agreement should be scrapped. A number of EU states have already temporarily suspended Schengen in response to the migrant crisis. The European Commission this week also signalled plans to abolish rules which allow states to relocate refugees to the first EU country they arrive in. Officials hope to table a motion to reform the so-called Dublin regulations as soon as March, to alleviate the burden placed on southern European counties like Greece and Italy. However, Ms Cooper said that the latest proposals from the EU Commission did not add up to a comprehensive response to the refugee crisis. Europe needs a sustainable plan, which should include more countries offering sanctuary to families fleeing persecution and conflict, but should also include ending Schengen and bringing back internal border controls to manage the crisis, she said, adding that the UK should do more for refugees by taking in 3,000 unaccompanied refugee children currently in Europe. Her call came as the Government indicated it would resist any attempt by the European Commission to overhaul the Dublin regulations. Although the UK has an opt-out from EU asylum policy, it is signed up to Dublin. Any reforms to the system could risk the ability of the UK to send refugees back to their country of arrival, and would put pressure on the Government in the run-up to the referendum on Britains EU membership, which is expected as early as June. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2022 The ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels down the long walk as it arrives at Windsor Castle for the committal service at St Georges Chapel AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 18 September 2022 A man stands among campers on The Mall ahead of the Queens funeral Reuters UK news in pictures 17 September 2022 Wolverhampton Wanderers Nathan Collins fouls Manchester Citys Jack Grealish leading to a red card. City went on to win the match at Molineux Stadium three goals to nil. Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 16 September 2022 Members of the public stand in the queue near Tower Bridge, and opposite the Tower of London, as they wait in line to pay their respects to the late Queen Elizabeth II, in London AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 15 September 2022 Members of the public in the queue on in Potters Fields Park, central London, as they wait to view Queen Elizabeth II lying in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 14 September 2022 The first members of the public pay their respects as the vigil begins around the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Hall, London, where it will lie in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 13 September 2022 Crowds cheer as King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort arrive for a visit to Hillsborough Castle Getty UK news in pictures 12 September 2022 Crowds line the Royal Mile, Edinburgh, as King Charles III joins a procession from the Palace of Holyroodhouse to St Giles Cathedral following the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II Katielee Arrowsmith/SWNS UK news in pictures 11 September 2022 Members of the Public pay their respects as the hearse carrying the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II, draped in the Royal Standard of Scotland, is driven through Ballater AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 10 September 2022 Britain's Prince William, Prince of Wales, Britain's Catherine, Princess of Wales, Britain's Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, Britain's Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, wave at well-wishers on the Long walk at Windsor Castle AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 9 September 2022 King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort wave after viewing floral tributes to the late Queen Elizabeth II outside Buckingham Palace Getty UK news in pictures 8 September 2022 A screen commemorating Britain's Queen Elizabeth II in Piccadilly Circus, London Britain EPA UK news in pictures 7 September 2022 Police officers stand guard after Animal Rebellion activists threw paint on the walls and road outside the Houses of Parliament in protest, in London, Britain Reuters UK news in pictures 6 September 2022 Queen Elizabeth II welcomes Liz Truss during an audience at Balmoral, Scotland, where she invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 5 September 2022 Visitors at the PoliNations garden in Victoria Square, Birmingham, which is made up of five 40ft high tree installations and over 6,000 plants. The PoliNations programme aims to explore how migration and cross-pollination have shaped the UKs gardens and culture PA UK news in pictures 4 September 2022 Undergraduates at the University of St Andrews take part in the traditional Pier Walk along the harbour walls of St Andrews before the start of the new academic year PA UK news in pictures 3 September 2022 The Massed Pipes and Drums parade during the Braemar Highland Gathering at the Princess Royal and Duke of Fife Memorial Park PA UK news in pictures 2 September 2022 Number 12 Company Irish Guards at Wellington Barracks, central London, before commencing their first Guard Mount at Buckingham Palace PA UK news in pictures 1 September 2022 A salmon leaps up the weir at Hexham in Northumberland, despite the drought warnings and low water levels, the River Tyne is still flowing well allowing the salmon and sea trout to head up river to spawn. Every year tens of thousands of salmon make the once-in-a-lifetime journey along the Tyne to spawn, having been out a sea PA UK news in pictures 31 August 2022 Flowers are placed at the gates outside Kensington Palace, London, the former home of Diana, Princess of Wales, on the 25th anniversary of her death PA Signalling a likely clash with EU leaders, the Prime Ministers spokesperson said the UK wanted the core principles of the Dublin regulations to stay in place. Weve been clear that this mechanism within the Dublin regulation is one the UK makes use of, the spokesperson said. In any reform or discussion about revising the Dublin regulations we would seek to retain the principle that asylum seekers are returned to the first safe country they arrive in. No formal proposals had yet been made, the spokesperson said. However, Justine Greening, the International Development Secretary, emphasised that the UK would fight to retain the existing rules. Asked whether the Government would be concerned at any effort to change Dublin arrangements, Ms Greening said: "On Dublin, yes, we would be concerned and strongly against any change from that initial country status that we have got right now. It is important." The Dublin regulations have already largely broken down under the pressure of the migrant crisis. Germany waived its right to relocate refugees last year, taking in thousands of refugees, and Chancellor Angela Merkel has called for the system to be revised. Meanwhile, reports suggested last night that Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, a longstanding Eurosceptic, will go it alone in campaigning for Britain to leave the EU, rather than join one either of the two major Out campaign groups. The Prime Minister confirmed earlier this month that ministers would be able to campaign for either side in the referendum. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Labour hasnt yet won the publics trust back on the issues of welfare and immigration, the author of a key report into why the party lost the election has said. Dame Margaret Beckett said Jeremy Corbyn could win the election with a political miracle but said key reasons why Labour lost had not yet been overcome by the new leadership. The former Blair government minister said she thought the party had the right policies on immigration, but that it needed to be be more intelligent about communicating it. In the end I think we had the right policies towards immigration, but the simple thuggishness of the kind of Ukip and Conservative approach is easier to understand and we didnt overcome those communication difficulties, she told BBC Radio 4s Today programme. And on that and on things like welfare where the present governments goal is simply to divide the country, drive people apart and destroy mutual confidence, that is very damaging. We have to try and work on ways to overcome that Im not suggesting weve done it yet. Labour made controls on immigration on of its five main planks at the election. Specifics of the policy included making it easier to deport foreign criminals, exit checks, and a crackdown on undocumented migration. The party also said people who came to the UK would not be allowed to claim social security for at least two years and that people in public facing roles would be required to speak English. Labour however lagged the Conservatives in polls when it came to trust on immigration. Margaret Beckett was responsible for the report into why Labour lost (GETTY) On social security, Labour proposed a compulsory jobs guarantee and a triple lock on pensions. Noises were also made by the party about making unemployment benefits more contributory. Dame Margaret, a former foreign secretary, released a major study into why Labour lost the election yesterday. Commissioned by the party in the wake of its defeat, the inquiry warned that weak leadership, fear in England of an SNP alliance, and an association with the economic crisis were major factors towards Labour losing in 2015. The partys approach to welfare and immigration issues was also not accepted by the voters, the report said. Cruicially the inquiry said it would be difficult for Labour to win next time because of changes to constituency boundaries, voter registration changes, and restrictions on trade union funding of parties. Labours defeat came as a shock to pollsters, whose polls had suggested that the result would be much closer than it eventually was. Ultimately the Conservatives won a narrow majority. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The recreational drug Poppers can have beneficial health and relationship effects for men who want to have anal sex, a Home Office minister has admitted ahead of a vote on whether to ban the substance. Alkyl nitrites, also known as Poppers, are set to be covered by the Governments new Psychoactive Substances Bill, which seeks to ban so-called legal highs. MPs will vote today on the third reading of the Bill, which gives police powers to enforce bans on a broad range of legal recreational drugs including Nitrous Oxide or laughing gas. But in a letter to the Home Affairs Select Committee, Mike Penning, the minister with responsibility for the issue, hinted that Poppers could be exempted at a later date even if the law was passed in full today. The Government recognises that representations have been made to the effect that poppers have a beneficial health and relationship effect in enabling anal sex for some men who have sex with men, amid concern about the impact of the ban on these men, he wrote. In consultation with the Department of Health and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, the Home Office will now consider whether there is evidence to support these claims and, if so, whether it is sufficient to justify exempting the alkyl nitrites group. The Bill enables the Home Secretary (after statutory consultation with the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs) to add to the list of exempted substances to the Bill. Both the Home Affairs Select Committee and the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs told the Government the drug should be exempt from the ban, but the Government has so far not taken up their advice. During a debate in the House of Commons on the Bill, Conservative MP Crispin Blunt said he used Poppers, would be affected by the ban, and described the policy as manifestly stupid. There are sometimes when something is proposed which becomes personal to you and you realise the government is about to do something fantastically stupid. In those circumstances one has a duty to speak up, Mr Blunt said I use poppers. I out myself as a popper user and would be directly affected by this legislation and I am astonished to find it is proposing to be banned, so would very many other gay men. Mr Blunt added that the new rule would simply serves to bring the whole law into disrepute and said it was manifestly stupid to go down the path were going. Poppers physical effects, which include a short-live high and the loosening of muscles, have been known to improve anal sex. The drugs are not thought to have significant adverse health effects. While it is already illegal to sell the drug for human consumption they are often sold behind the bars of clubs and that cater to gay men. Sign up to the Inside Politics email for your free daily briefing on the biggest stories in UK politics Get our free Inside Politics email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Politics email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The Government has suffered an embarrassing defeat in the Lords as peers voted for controversial clauses in the Trade Union Bill, which would restrict funding of political parties, to be considered by a select committee. Peers voted 327 to 234, to give a majority of 93 to a Labour motion forcing the unusual parliamentary move. Labour fears its annual income could fall by 6 million, as the legislation would require Labour-affiliated union members to "opt in" to paying a levy to the party instead of having it automatically deducted. Labour's Baroness Smith of Basildon claimed democracy would be damaged if the Government pushed through the changes on funding without the situation being scrutinised by an all-party select committee first. Lady Smith said the select committee should report by February 29, and would not hinder progress of the full Bill. The Labour peer insisted it would be better to examine the issues involved in a select committee, rather than seeing "who can shout the loudest" on the floor of the house. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2022 The ceremonial procession of the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II travels down the long walk as it arrives at Windsor Castle for the committal service at St Georges Chapel AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 18 September 2022 A man stands among campers on The Mall ahead of the Queens funeral Reuters UK news in pictures 17 September 2022 Wolverhampton Wanderers Nathan Collins fouls Manchester Citys Jack Grealish leading to a red card. City went on to win the match at Molineux Stadium three goals to nil. Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 16 September 2022 Members of the public stand in the queue near Tower Bridge, and opposite the Tower of London, as they wait in line to pay their respects to the late Queen Elizabeth II, in London AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 15 September 2022 Members of the public in the queue on in Potters Fields Park, central London, as they wait to view Queen Elizabeth II lying in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 14 September 2022 The first members of the public pay their respects as the vigil begins around the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II in Westminster Hall, London, where it will lie in state ahead of her funeral on Monday PA UK news in pictures 13 September 2022 Crowds cheer as King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort arrive for a visit to Hillsborough Castle Getty UK news in pictures 12 September 2022 Crowds line the Royal Mile, Edinburgh, as King Charles III joins a procession from the Palace of Holyroodhouse to St Giles Cathedral following the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II Katielee Arrowsmith/SWNS UK news in pictures 11 September 2022 Members of the Public pay their respects as the hearse carrying the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II, draped in the Royal Standard of Scotland, is driven through Ballater AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 10 September 2022 Britain's Prince William, Prince of Wales, Britain's Catherine, Princess of Wales, Britain's Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, Britain's Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, wave at well-wishers on the Long walk at Windsor Castle AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 9 September 2022 King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort wave after viewing floral tributes to the late Queen Elizabeth II outside Buckingham Palace Getty UK news in pictures 8 September 2022 A screen commemorating Britain's Queen Elizabeth II in Piccadilly Circus, London Britain EPA UK news in pictures 7 September 2022 Police officers stand guard after Animal Rebellion activists threw paint on the walls and road outside the Houses of Parliament in protest, in London, Britain Reuters UK news in pictures 6 September 2022 Queen Elizabeth II welcomes Liz Truss during an audience at Balmoral, Scotland, where she invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 5 September 2022 Visitors at the PoliNations garden in Victoria Square, Birmingham, which is made up of five 40ft high tree installations and over 6,000 plants. The PoliNations programme aims to explore how migration and cross-pollination have shaped the UKs gardens and culture PA UK news in pictures 4 September 2022 Undergraduates at the University of St Andrews take part in the traditional Pier Walk along the harbour walls of St Andrews before the start of the new academic year PA UK news in pictures 3 September 2022 The Massed Pipes and Drums parade during the Braemar Highland Gathering at the Princess Royal and Duke of Fife Memorial Park PA UK news in pictures 2 September 2022 Number 12 Company Irish Guards at Wellington Barracks, central London, before commencing their first Guard Mount at Buckingham Palace PA UK news in pictures 1 September 2022 A salmon leaps up the weir at Hexham in Northumberland, despite the drought warnings and low water levels, the River Tyne is still flowing well allowing the salmon and sea trout to head up river to spawn. Every year tens of thousands of salmon make the once-in-a-lifetime journey along the Tyne to spawn, having been out a sea PA UK news in pictures 31 August 2022 Flowers are placed at the gates outside Kensington Palace, London, the former home of Diana, Princess of Wales, on the 25th anniversary of her death PA Lady Smith dismissed Government claims that it did not expect the Bill to impact financially on the Labour Party. "We believe the Government is wrong - or at the very least, in denial, of the consequences. "Our genuinely held concern is that this aspect of the Bill will have a significant impact on the resources of one major political party - my party, the Labour Party. "And in doing so, it will both disrupt the political balance in the UK and have a damaging effect on the electoral process and our democracy," the Labour peer said. Labour is also reported to be set to lose out by about 1.3 million a year when state funding for opposition parties - known as Short money - is cut. Press Association For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A Kenyan man who was shot while shielding Christians from an attack by al-Shabaab militants has died of his injuries in hospital. Salah Farah was among a group of Muslim bus passengers who refused to be separated by the al-Qaeda linked terrorists last month. Knowing that the Christians would be massacred as soon as they were identified in a horrific pattern repeated in many recent attacks, the group told the gunmen to kill everyone or leave. The Islamists let the bus go on its way to Mandera but not before killing two of those on board and injuring three others. Mr Farah, a father-of-five, was taken to a local hospital with bullet wounds and then flown to Nairobi for specialist treatment on Christmas Day. Officials told The Star newspaper he died on Sunday of complications to the injuries. Cleopa Mailu, the cabinet secretary for Kenyas ministry of health, said doctors had done everything in their power to save his life so he could live as a teacher of being a brothers keeper. Mr Farahs brother, Rashid, said he hoped his example would encourage Kenyans to live as one community and promote religious harmony. Mohammed Emwazi had wanted to join the hardline Islamist insurgent group al-Shabaab, the group that controls a swathe of Somalia and has brought carnage across East Africa (Reuters) At the time, Mr Farah told the Daily Nation that gunmen stopped the bus and ordered Christians and Muslims to separate. We asked them to kill all of us or leave us alone, the teacher and deputy headmaster said. As we argued, they shot me and the boy. One man who also came out of the bus and tried to escape to the bush was shot. Speaking to the Voice of America earlier this month, he said he wanted people to live peacefully together. We are brothers, Mr Farah added. It's only the religion that is the difference, so I ask my brother Muslims to take care of the Christians so that the Christians also take care of usand let us help one another. Joseph Boinnet, the Inspector General of Police, told the Standard Mr Farah was a true hero and that the government paid to fly his body home to his family in Mandera for burial Just a year before, Al-Shabaab stopped another bus in Mandera in 2014, divided passengers by religion, and shot the 28 non-Muslims dead. Kenya bus attack The Somalia-based terrorist group has launched several attacks in Kenya including the Westgate shopping mall massacre and Garissa University College attack. Militants claim they are carrying out reprisals for Kenyan military intervention in Somalia and exploiting historical grievances between Muslim and Christian communities Four suspected Islamists were killed by Kenyan police in the coastal resort of Malindi today after allegedly planning an attack a local shopping centre and a police post. Meanwhile, al-Shabaab has published photos claiming to show the bodies of Kenyan soldiers killed in an attack on a military base in Somalia last week. Militants claimed to have killed more than 100 troops but officials have not confirmed the dead toll and some men may be being held captive. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The Black Lives Matter movement marched yesterday in an attempt to 'reclaim' Martin Luther King day. Hundreds of activists in California marched from Oakland to Emeryville, rallying outside shopping centres and blocking a section of the Bay Bridge. One protest location was a Home Depot store where a 38-year-old black woman Yvette Henderson was shot and killed by police last year. One protester named Cat Brook in the video above explained his reason for protesting. "They managed to sanitise his (Martin Luther King's) image. All we hear about is the 'I have a dream' speech, the 'love your brother' speech, but they don't want to talk about the King that was connecting the dots between race and class." USA: BLM activists crash NYC Mayors speech on MLK day Similar protests were seen in New York as hundreds of protesters disrupted Mayor Bill De Blasio's speech at a church in Brooklyn. After being turned away from the church, activists marched onto downtown Manhattan accompanied by a brass band, carrying placards with slogans featuring 'police brutality', 'racial profiling' and one reading 'f**k Nazis'. The 'reclaim Martin Luther King day' movement began in last year after protesters voiced concerns over the day becoming too commercialsed, and people forgetting King's legacy as a civil rights activist. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Archaeologists have begun excavations what they believe to be the legendary lost city of Ciudad Blanca, or White City, in the Honduran jungle. So far, they have removed dozens of artifacts, including a vessel with vulture-shaped handles, a clay tray with a jaguar's head and a stone-made throne carved with a jaguar - possibly the remains of a ceremonial temple. The ruins, which appear to date between 1,000 and 1,500 AD are distinct from the cultures of the ancient Maya civilization. Archaeological pieces dug out at the Kaha Kamasa (White City, in Misquito language) archaeological site in La Mosquitia, northeast of Tegucigalpa (ORLANDO SIERRA/AFP/Getty Images) "It is a new culture, or a different culture," said Virgilio Paredes, the director of the Honduras' Institute of Anthropology and Colorado. It is believed the city's name is derived from the white limestone rock in the area and was first mentioned by Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century. Thedore Morde suggested in 1940 the city was in fact the White City of the Monkey God. Writing of his sighting in the US magazine The American Weekly, he said people from local tribes had told him of a monkey worshipping civilization. There were legends a monkey from the city kidnapped a local woman, breeding half-human, half-monkey children. An archaeological piece found in the Kaha Kamasa (White City, in Misquito language) archaeological site, on display at El Aguacate air base, department of Olancho, al northeast of Tegucigalpa (ORLANDO SIERRA/AFP/Getty Images) The excavation site was visited by Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who said: "We are blessed to be alive at such a special time in Honduran history. He added: "This discovery has created a lot of excitement because of its significance for Honduras and the world." The site was found by explorers last year, who mapped extensive plazas, earthworks and mounds. Artifacts excavated from the city will be displayed in a museum in Catacamas. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Isis has encouraged more couples to carry out terror attacks in America, Europe, and Australia after praising the San Bernardino shooters as righteous martyrs. Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik massacred 14 people at a conference centre in California on 2 December after apparently being motivated by the terrorist groups propaganda. They killed in a shoot-out with police, who found 5,000 rounds of ammunition, 12 pipe bombs and equipment to make more at the home they shared with their baby daughter. USA: San Bernardino shooting "an act of terrorism" - Obama In the latest issue of its propaganda magazine, Dabiq, Isis praised Farook and Malik for attacking the American-led crusaders waging war against its caliphate. Calling the husband-and-wife attack unique, the group claimed it had answered leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadis calls for supporters to commit massacres in the West. How much more deserving of Allahs blessing are a husband and wife who march out together to fight the crusaders in defence of the (Caliph), an article said. The brothers blessed wife accompanied him despite the fact that combat is not even obligatory upon her, but she did not want to lose the opportunity for shahadah (martyrdom) at a time when many men of the Ummah (Islamic community) have turned away from the obligation of jihad. In pictures: San Bernardino shooting Show all 15 1 /15 In pictures: San Bernardino shooting In pictures: San Bernardino shooting A couple embraces following a shooting that killed multiple people at a social services facility, in San Bernardino In pictures: San Bernardino shooting A victim is wheeled away on a stretcher following a shooting that killed multiple people at a social services facility, in San Bernardino AP In pictures: San Bernardino shooting Rescue crews tend to the injured in the intersection outside the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino Reuters In pictures: San Bernardino shooting A survivor (2nd L) of the mass shooting at the Inland Regional Center meets her family after police questioning in San Bernardino Rex In pictures: San Bernardino shooting An armed police officer protects a busload of people who were inside the Inland Regional Center where gunmen shot and killed 14 people and injured another 14, to be escorted to meet relatives at the Rudy Hernandez Community Center in San Bernardino Reuters In pictures: San Bernardino shooting People wait at a community center for a family member who was near a shooting that killed multiple people at a social services center, in San Bernardino, California AP In pictures: San Bernardino shooting In this image taken from video, armored vehicles surround an SUV following a shootout in San Bernardino AP In pictures: San Bernardino shooting Law enforcement officers search for the suspects of a mass shooting in San Bernardino Getty Images In pictures: San Bernardino shooting Law enforcement officers search for the suspects of a mass shooting in San Bernardino Getty Images In pictures: San Bernardino shooting The Inland Regional Center complex is pictured in an aerial photo following a shooting incident in San Bernardino Reuters In pictures: San Bernardino shooting Authorities prepare to search an area near a church, following a shooting that killed multiple people at a social services center for the disabled in San Bernardino AP In pictures: San Bernardino shooting Evacuees from the scene of a shooting at the Inland Regional Center hug each other as they wait inside the Rudy C Hernandez Community Center in San Bernardino EPA In pictures: San Bernardino shooting Omar Riopedre embraces his wife Diana, who was in the Inland Regional Center when the mass shootings took place, as they leave the Rudy C. Hernandez Community Center in the San Bernardino In pictures: San Bernardino shooting A Sheriff's Deputy runs after reports that suspects in the shooting at the Inland Regional Center were sighted in San Bernardino EPA In pictures: San Bernardino shooting Law enforcement officers search for suspects in a neighborhood after a shooting at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino EPA Isis claimed that more militants were joining its ranks in Syria and Iraq, while others were planning to defiantly terrorise the crusaders in their very strongholds. The believers who do trade with Allah will never lose, rather, they only stand to profit, the group said. May Allah accept the sacrifices of our noble brother Syed Rizwan Farook and his blessed wife, accept them among the shuhada (martyrs), and use their deeds as a means to awaken more Muslims in America, Europe, and Australia. The article claimed that Malik had pledged allegiance to al-Baghdadi and Isis online as the attack was carried out, although the American investigators previously cast doubt on the claim. FBI director James Comey said last month that the couple talked about their goal of jihad and martyrdom in private emails and messages but did not write about the issue publicly on social media. The FBI has found no evidence the couple were part of an organised cell or had any contact with overseas terror groups. Opinion / Columnist In Zimbabwe some people have developed a tendency in which they want to create an issue where there is none and end up getting away with it. A lot of them have developed a habit in which they see nothing good coming from government and always enjoy the suffering of the people as that benefit their profile in the country.It is surprising to hear that while the Zimbabwe Heads of Christians Denominations (ZHCD) represented by Businessman Shingi Munyeza joined the government in praying for the rains recently, the Zimbabwe Christian Prophetic Voice (ZCPV) represented by its spokesperson Pius Wakatama came up blazing and blasting the ZHCD for that move. The ZCPV slammed the ZHCD saying that it was wrong for it to join the government in praying for the rains as the move meant that the ZHCD was in support of what the government was doing in the country. The ZCPV went on to say that it was saddened by the so called "apparent pandering of the ZHCD to the whims of a corrupt and insensitive government", hence the prayers were not supposed to have been sanctioned by the ZHCD.What surprises this writer is the move taken by the ZCPV to come out blasting the move taken by ZHCD in joining the government in its move to pray for the rains as if it is wrong to call for divine intervention if one sees otherwise. Why is the ZHCD blasted over such a move? The ZCPV should be aware that its dislike of the current government and its ruling party cannot stop those who are sympathetic to it, in joining the government programs if need arises. It should be known that the ZCPV's views and its conclusion on the so called "corrupt and insensitive government", cannot be taken aboard by those looking for the better Zimbabwe in future.Actually, praying for the rains has nothing to do with corruption in the country. While corruption cannot be condoned by anybody here but for a group of Christians like the ZCVP to come up denouncing the act of praying for the rains is wrong. Everyone in the country is looking forward for the rains to come so that there is good harvest this coming agricultural season. So why is it that the ZCVP finds time to slam the ZHCD for joining the government in praying for the rains?It is a fact that the climatic change which has become a menace globally and causing erratic rainfall across the SADC region and beyond has nothing to do with a corrupt and insensitive government seen by the eyes of the ZCPV and its surrogates. It is not a crime for everyone to seek divine intervention when things go against one`s expectations and the government is not exceptional. The ZHCD did an excellent job by joining the government in praying for the rains and although there is no scientific knowledge to connect the rains that were experienced around the country some few days ago but some of us are convinced that the prayers had a hand in that move. For that reason the ZCPV should be ashamed in longing for the problems to persist in the country as a means for its surrogates to harvest more supporters.It boggles the mind to find out that instead of all the Christians denominations to join hands in praying for the country to get out of the problems which it is in, some of the Christians groups like the ZCPV are using their positions to denounce such a move. Actually all the God fearing people from all religious groups should join the government and the ZHCD in praying for the rains so that the country is served from the impending drought. While corruption has become a problem associated with cancer in the country but it should not be sighted and blamed as the one causing the shortage of rainfall, hence, people should not be stopped from supporting the government in rainmaking prayers.In fact, people should not be misled into believing that the failure by the country to get adequate rainfall has anything to do with alleged corruption by top officials in some government departments. It is known that the climatic change caused by the industrialized nations globally is the one fueling the shortage of rainfall in the African continent and beyond. So the ZCPV should be well informed on that and make informed decisions that do not seek to blame the ZHCD on its effort of praying for the rains.The ZCPV should be aware that the government has seen it fit to call for Christians in praying for the rains as a means to invite divine intervention in stopping the impending drought. On its part the government has availed funds through the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development for the cloud seeding meant to fast-track the coming of the rains in the country. The availing of funds to the Meteorological Department meant for the cloud seeding by government shows that the government is frantically doing its part in making sure that the country receives the require rainfall for this agricultural season.So such efforts by government of calling for the Christians to pray for the rains as well as the cloud seeding initiatives should be embraced by all Zimbabweans as that move is showing the commitment by government to have the country receive rainfall. It is good for the government to do that as that shows its commitment in making sure that the country gets a good harvest. For that reasons, Mr. Pius Wakatama and his ZCPV should feel ashamed for their opposing stance towards the good initiatives by true Christians and government meant to save the nation from possible hunger and famine. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The two civil rights lawsuits were unrelated but shared several similarities. Both men were teenagers when they were arrested. And both contended that Los Angeles Police Department officers had contrived evidence of their guilt and ignored any that pointed to their innocence. Now, two men who both spent decades behind bars for murder have been awarded a total of $24m (17m) by the city of Los Angeles, after it was found they had been wrongfully convicted on the basis of flawed police investigations. Kash Register, who served 34 years in prison for the armed robbery and murder of an elderly man, was awarded $16.7m which his lawyers say is the largest such settlement in LA history. In its closed-door session, the LA City Council also awarded a settlement of $7.6m to Bruce Lisker, who was jailed for the 1983 murder of his mother, but released in 2009 after a Los Angeles Times investigation cast doubt on his conviction. Mr Lisker, 50, claimed he was framed by the LAPD. Mr Register, 55, was arrested in 1979 for the murder of 78-year-old Jack Sasson, who was shot five times during an armed robbery and died three weeks later. None of the fingerprints at the crime scene matched those of Mr Register, whose girlfriend testified that he was with her at the time of the shooting. He was convicted on the strength of eyewitness testimony from 19-year-old Brenda Anderson, who said she had seen him running from the scene and picked him from a police line-up. Bruce Lisker during a 2009 court appearance in Los Angeles (Getty) (Getty Images) Mr Registers lawyers alleged that police had threatened to prosecute Ms Anderson for credit card forgery if she failed to identify a suspect. At the time, her sisters told detectives that Ms Anderson had lied in her account, but were ignored. Mr Registers lawyers and students from LAs Loyola law school took up his case again decades later, after one of Ms Andersons sisters learned that he was still in prison and contacted them. He was freed in November 2013. I cant get these 34 years back but I hope my case can help make things better for others, through improving the way the police get identifications, he said in a statement. The settlements come as police forces in the US face questions about their tactics and rectitude. Last year, the LA County District Attorney set up a unit to tackle credible claims of innocence from prisoners. According to the LA Times, city lawyers recommended awarding settlements to Mr Register and Mr Lisker, rather than risk the even larger financial penalties that might have resulted had their lawsuits been fought in court. Recommended Legal eagles fighting wrongful convictions in the US are coming here Mr Lisker spent 26 years in jail for the murder of his mother, Dorka, who was stabbed to death at their home in 1983, when he was 17. A troubled teenager he claimed he broke into the house to help her after seeing her lying in the hall. Police claimed he could not have seen his mothers body from that angle, and built their case against him using bloody shoeprints at the scene, which they insisted came just from Mr Lisker. However, when the newspaper re-examined his case in 2005, it found glaring omissions in the police inquiry. At a later federal hearing, experts said he could have seen his mother from outside the house and one of the shoeprints was not made by his shoes. Mr Lisker, who has married since his release in 2009, said: After more than 30 years of fighting to establish my innocence and to vindicate my rights, this painful chapter of my life has been brought to a close. Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A snow storm dubbed a 'sleeping giant' is predicted to hit the north east of the US later this week, possibly including the cities of New York, Washington, Philidelphia and Boston. As much as two feet of snow could bury parts of the eastern seaboard, potentially shutting down transport and electricity to hundreds of thousands of people. Two or more feet of snow would put the storm in the top three snowstorms for Washington - the state has not seen a 20-inch or greater snowstorm in nearly 100 years. In 1922, 28 inches of snow fell during the city's largest snowstorm on record. Further adding to the misery, flooding is also likely in New Jersey, Long Island and southern New England. This is do to forecasted heavy waves and high winds which could lead to to beach erosion, along with high tides. The weather is likely to be caused by low pressure, currently building up over the northern Pacific, which will push westwards across the country. The elongated nature of the weather system, stretching across several states, indicates that there is a lot of energy contained in it. The system is likely to move steadily into the north east, gaining strength, where it is thought it will hit and mix a section of northerly cold air (though its not cold air from the Arctic, which usually causes snowstorms in this region). Temperatures have been far below what is normal for much of the Midwest and eastern United States, the National Weather Service has said. According to AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Dave Dombek, "We are just now at the point [of the winter] where the air is cold enough with the ongoing storms to awaken a sleeping giant in terms of a snowstorm." The snowfall is expected because the storm is expected to strengthen rapidly, reduce its forward speed and tap plenty of moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean on its path, according to AccuWeather. In addition, there is little question of whether the storm will take place, with Weather.com reporting that all of the major computer forecast models forecast a strong low-pressure system to develop later this week over the eastern half of the U.S. with most of them taking the center of low pressure on a north easterly track that keeps it south and east of Long Island and the New England coast. Americans on Twitter have been voicing their concerns: However, not everyone is worried: The Independent will be following the storm's progress. Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Inside Washington email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Donald Trump has thanked his supporters in the UK for sticking up for him after British MPs branded him a fool and a wazzock in a debate over whether the US presidential contender should be banned from the UK. Speaking to Sky News Kay Burley, Mr Trump said of the debate: I was sort of surprised it would happen; you know 500,000 votes today is a whole different thing than it would have been 10 years ago, before Twitter and all But today they made a big deal out of it. I was really honoured by the way the people stuck up for me, because the people of the UK, they really stuck up for me and I want to thank them. Asked what he would say to his supporters in the UK, Mr Trump said: I have a great deal of supporters in the United Kingdom, we receive thousands and thousands of letters and emails and tweets saying that youre so right... and, as you know, the whole thing went nowhere. Members of parliament gathered in a chamber at the Houses of Parliament in London on January 18 to debate whether to ban US presidential hopeful Donald Trump from entering the country AFP (AFP) Im honoured by the tremendous support I have in the UK and that whole thing went away. Very few people even showed up to talk about it. Around 50 MPs debated Mr Trumps right to visit the UK in Parliament after half a million people signed a petition calling for him to be excluded from the country on hate speech grounds over his call for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the US. Trump also claimed some areas of Britain are so radicalised police fear for their lives. At points the sheer number of people signing the petition caused the Governments website to crash. During the debate, Conservative MP Victoria Atkins said: If he met one or two of my constituents in one of the many excellent pubs in my constituency then they may well tell him he is a wazzock for dealing with this issue in this way. Labour's Jack Dromey said: "Donald Trump is a fool. He is free to be a fool. He is not free to be a dangerous fool on our shores." Donald Trump's most controversial quotes Show all 14 1 /14 Donald Trump's most controversial quotes Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Isis: "Some of the candidates, they went in and didnt know the air conditioner didnt work and sweated like dogs, and they didnt know the room was too big because they didnt have anybody there. How are they going to beat ISIS?" Getty Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On immigration: "I will build a great wall and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me and Ill build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words." Reuters Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Free Trade: "Free trade is terrible. Free trade can be wonderful if you have smart people. But we have stupid people." PAUL J. RICHARDS | AFP | Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Mexicans: "When Mexico sends its people, theyre not sending their best. Theyre sending people that have lots of problems. Theyre bringing drugs. Theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists." Getty Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On China: "I just sold an apartment for $15 million to somebody from China. Am I supposed to dislike them?... I love China. The biggest bank in the world is from China. You know where their United States headquarters is located? In this building, in Trump Tower." Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On work: "If you're interested in 'balancing' work and pleasure, stop trying to balance them. Instead make your work more pleasurable." AP Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On success: "What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate." Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On life: "Everything in life is luck." AFP Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On ambition: "You have to think anyway, so why not think big?" Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On his opponents: "Bush is totally in favour of Common Core. I don't see how he can possibly get the nomination. He's weak on immigration. He's in favour of Common Core. How the hell can you vote for this guy? You just can't do it." Reuters Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Obamacare: "You have to be hit by a tractor, literally, a tractor, to use it, because the deductibles are so high. It's virtually useless. And remember the $5 billion web site?... I have so many web sites, I have them all over the place. I hire people, they do a web site. It costs me $3." Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On Barack Obama: "Obama is going to be out playing golf. He might be on one of my courses. I would invite him. I have the best courses in the world. I have one right next to the White House." PA Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On himself: "Love him or hate him, Trump is a man who is certain about what he wants and sets out to get it, no holds barred. Women find his power almost as much of a turn-on as his money." Getty Images Donald Trump's most controversial quotes On America: "The American Dream is dead. But if I get elected president I will bring it back bigger and better and stronger than ever before and we will make America great again." GETTY Labour Party legislator Paul Flynn said Mr Trump had already received "far too much attention, adding: "The great danger by attacking this one man is that we can fix on him a halo of victimhood." The debate did not end in a vote and does not have any influence on Government policy. Since the UK debate, Mr Trump has been endorsed as a presidential candidate by the politician-turned-reality star, Sarah Palin. Ms Palin, a former Alaska governor who was Republican Senator John McCain's running mate in the 2008 election, appeared with Mr Trump at a rally in Ames, Iowa, describing him as an anti-establishment candidate who would "kick Isis' ass". Sign up to our Evening Headlines email for your daily guide to the latest news Sign up to our free US Evening Headlines email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Evening Headlines email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Sarah Palin said a whole lot in the few minutes she had on stage, as if her mouth had been taped shut for the last eight years, which of course it hadnt been. But she started by suggesting her appearance would make media heads spin. It was a rare understatement. It made all of Iowa spin, if not America. By bringing Ms Palin to his rally inside a giant cattle show shed at the University of Iowas agricultural school in Ames and accepting her endorsement, Donald Trump was banking on just that, another grab for the headlines 10 days out from caucus night, when Iowans will be the first in the nation to voice their preferences for who should be the presidential nominees for both main parties. Recommended Read more Trump and Palin exist in an alternative universe of knowledge denial Her return to the spotlight is one more kick in the gut to the Republican establishment, which hardly has fond memories of Ms Palins record as John McCains hapless running mate in 2008. It has only just come to terms with the fact that not one of the traditional runners in the field now stands a ghost of winning in Iowa, where the competition has come down to Mr Trump versus Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. Those stragglers, most notably Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, Chris Christie, Governor of New Jersey, and the former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, surely looked on in dismay. For them, and the Ohio Governor John Kasich, coming second or third in the 9 February primaries in New Hampshire, where Mr Trump leads handsomely, must now become their more realistic and urgent priority. But perhaps Mr Trumps Palin coup was most damaging to Mr Cruz, who in recent polls has edged just slightly ahead of Mr Trump here in Iowa. The Senator, who ironically enjoyed what turned out to be a critical endorsement from Ms Palin when he ran for the US Senate in 2012, has achieved it by appealing to Tea Party voters and evangelical Christians. As the Palin-Trump show reached its crescendo here, one man shouted: You guys are a joke. The tycoon repeatedly called her very special and she hailed him as a future commander-in-chief who will kick Isiss ass among other compliments. He is from the private sector, not a politician, she said. Can I get a hallelujah? Mr Bush may concur with the heckler. He has electronic billboards all across the state with one of his more famous utterances from the trail: Donald Trump is unhinged. He can seem that way. In a single sentence he went from asserting that if the victims in Paris had had guns on their ankles and the bullets had gone in the other direction the tragedy in the city would have been averted, to musing about another endorsement he won on Tuesday, from the daughter of John Wayne, Aissa Wayne. That came even as it emerged Ms Palins oldest child, Track Palin, 26, had been arrested in a domestic violence case in which his girlfriend was afraid he would shoot himself with an AR-15 assault rifle. For all that, there is strategy in the zaniness surrounding Mr Trump. Donald Trump misquotes the Bible at a Christian University Possibly there was no smarter move for Mr Trump than claiming Ms Palin as his own, because, whatever the elite may say of her, she remains beloved of the Tea Party. On Monday this week he courted evangelicals by appearing at Liberty University, the most Christian of all Christian campuses, in Virginia. Thus in 48 hours he had poached on both of the Cruz strongholds. Moreover, he pulled the Palin move on a day when Mr Cruz had suffered an earlier wound, born of his refusal to do what all of his rivals have done, show support for a long-running federal initiative requiring all petrol sold in the United States to have at least a 10 per cent ethanol content. Consistent with his conservative disdain for all things mandated by Washington, Mr Cruz wants it phased out, calling it a subsidy in disguise for Iowa growers of corn, from which ethanol is produced. It was that stance that triggered a sharp denunciation of Mr Cruz from the Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, himself a Republican, during a summit on renewable energy sources earlier here on Tuesday. Asked by reporters if he would therefore like to see Mr Cruz lose on caucus day, the Governor flatly said Yes. Of Mr Cruz, he went on: Hes heavily financed by Big Oil. So we think once Iowans realise that fact, they might find other things attractive but he could be very damaging to our state. Paul Flynn on banning Trump Its a bad day for Mr Cruz, it really is. Its like a one-two punch, commented Jamie Johnson, a top Republican operative in the state who used to be national director for Rick Perry, the former Texas Governor, before he pulled out. He would not say which was more damaging, the stab in the back from Mr Branstad or the siding of Ms Palin with Mr Trump. Certainly the latter will matter, Mr Johnson argued, because some 10 to 15 per cent of Iowa Republicans identify themselves first as Tea Partiers. I dont care what anyone says, it is going to hurt him [Mr Cruz], he argued. I think it has a 2 to 5 per cent positive effect for Mr Trump. That could prove critical if the race between the two men is as close as the polls suggest. For his part, Senator Cruz attempted to play down losing Ms Palin to his main foe. I love @SarahPalin. Without her support, I wouldnt be in the Senate. Regardless of what she does in 2016, I will always be a big fan, he tweeted. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A man who cut off his wifes nose in being hunted by police and the Taliban in Afghanistan, officials said. Reza Gul lost a significant amount of blood after she was mutilated by her husband Mohammad Khan, 25, in the Taliban controlled, northern Faryab province. Relatives took her to a nearby hospital. Mr Khan then fled, according to The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission which circulated the 20-year-olds picture on social media. Branding the incident a disgrace they also called for the government to arrest him. It was not immediately clear why Mr Khan attacked the mother-of-one, but Ms Gul reportedly told the Commission that her husband had routinely beat her. In some parts of Afghanistan, slicing off a person's nose is meant to shame them and show they have brought disgrace to their family or clan. A spokesman for the governor of Faryab province said she would need reconstructive surgery and arrangements are being made to transfer her to Turkey. Recommended Read more Taliban splinter group calls for peace talks with Afghan government Mr Khan had returned from Iran just three months ago, Fawzia Salimi, a hospital director in Maymana, capital of Faryab province told The Associated Press, adding that community elders and Taliban representatives had tried mediating with the family to help them sort out their problems. But this traditional method of dealing with family issues had failed, she added. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said that the group's gunmen were "seriously searching the area to find" Mr Khan. If and when he was found, "then he will be dealt with according to Sharia law," Mujahid said, referring to the Islamic legal system. "Gul's village is under Taliban control... but the police are trying to chase her husband," Police chief Sayed Aqa Andarabi told the Agence France Presse. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty The photograph of Ms Gul sparked outrage on social media. Kabul-based women's rights activist Alema said: Such a brutal and barbaric act should be strongly condemned. Such incidents would not happen if the government judicial system severely punished attacks on women." Maria Reha, another prominent women's rights activist, wrote a sarcastic message on her Facebook page after the picture of Reza Gul circulated online. She wrote: "We are the most proud and brave nation on earth?! If you doubt it, here is another example of our bravery! Don't worry, soon America or Europe will make her another nose and Afghanistan will win another trophy for this pride!" Afghanistan is thought to have one of the highest rates of domestic violence in the world, although most incidents are not reported to officials. However, Recent attacks have sparked street demonstrations and online protests. A 2010 Time magazine front cover picture of a mutilated woman caught the attention of the world. Bibi Aisha, had her nose cut off by her abusive husband in southern Uruzgan province. Eventually she moved to the US and was given a prosthetic nose. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} One of the victims of the violent Pakistan university attack has been named as Syed Hamid Hussain, a professor in the chemistry department. Two of his students spoke about how he tried to save them and fight off the attackers at the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda. On Wednesday, suspected Taliban gunmen stormed the campus, killing at least 20 people and injuring 51. After security officials entered the university, a gun battle lasting several hours took place. Four gunmen were killed, the army said. Recalling the moment he first heard gun shots, Zahoor Ahmed, a geology student, told AFP that Dr Hamid, 34, told him not to leave the building. Mr Ahmed said: [Dr Hamid] was holding a pistol in his hand. Then I saw a bullet hit him. I saw two militants were firing. I ran inside and then managed to flee by jumping over the back wall. In pictures: Pakistan university attack Show all 10 1 /10 In pictures: Pakistan university attack In pictures: Pakistan university attack Pakistani rescuers shift an injured man to a hospital following an attack by gunmen in the Bacha Khan university in Charsadda, about 50 kilometres from Peshawar. At least 21 people died in an armed assault on a university in Pakistan, where witnesses reported two large explosions as security forces moved in under dense fog to halt the bloodshed In pictures: Pakistan university attack Rescue workers shout to clear the way for an ambulance transporting injured victims from Bacha Khan University in Charsadda AP In pictures: Pakistan university attack A Pakistani army armoured vehicle (R) enters the Bacha Khan university following an attack by gunmen in Charsadda Getty Images In pictures: Pakistan university attack Pakistani rescuers shift an injured man at a hospital following an attack by gunmen at Bacha Khan university in Charsadda Getty Images In pictures: Pakistan university attack Pakistani troops arrive at Bacha Khan University in Charsadda AP In pictures: Pakistan university attack Pakistani rescuers shift an injured victim outside the Bacha Khan university following an attack by gunmen in Charsadda Getty Images In pictures: Pakistan university attack Pakistani police and onlookers gather in front of a hospital following an attack by gunmen at Bacha Khan university in Charsadda Getty Images In pictures: Pakistan university attack An ambulance carrying injured victims enters a hospital following an attack by gunmen at Bacha Khan university in Charsadda Getty Images In pictures: Pakistan university attack Pakistani rescuers shift an injured man into a hospital following an attack by gunmen at Bacha Khan university in Charsadda Getty Images In pictures: Pakistan university attack Pakistani rescuers carry coffins at a hospital following an attack by gunment at Bacha Khan university in Charsadda Getty Images Another student said they saw the professor fire at attackers with his gun. People took to Twitter to pay their respects to Dr Hamid. One user said Pakistan had "lost an asset", while another called him a "martyr of education". The death of Dr Hamid was confirmed earlier in a statement published on the universitys Facebook page. It read: 20 to 50 feared martyred this morning as 4 to 10 terrorists attacked our [university] taking advantage of heavy fog by entering through the back wall near Boys Hostel and started firing with heavy weapons indiscriminately. It said that Dr Hamid was among the confirmed deaths, as well as two females, two guards and a policeman. A senior Pakistani Taliban commander named Umar Mansoor claimed responsibility for the attack earlier. However, Taliban spokesman Mohammad Khurasani denied that the group carried out the attack and called it "un-Islamic". Additional reporting by agencies For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} At least 20 people have been killed and 51 wounded after a group of suspected Taliban gunmen attacked a university in Pakistan. The army and police have now cleared the Bacha Khan University campus in Charsadda, in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Three students, at least one professor, and members of the police force all lost their lives in the violent attack. Many of those who died were shot in the head, according to reports. Militants stormed the university and opened fire on Wednesday morning. Security forces then entered the campus to try to bring the situation under control. A heavy gun battle ensued for several hours and four gunmen were killed by security officials. Although the death toll is yet to be confirmed, with reports putting it at 20 or 21, a security official fears it could climb to 40. Responsibility for the attack was claimed by Umar Mansoor, a senior Pakistani Taliban commander who masterminded the Peshawar school attack in December 2014. He said four of his men were involved. However, Mohammad Khurasani, the main spokesman for the Pakistan Taliban said the attack was "un-Islamic" and denied that the group was responsible, the BBC reported. Following the attack, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said: "We are determined and resolved in our community to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland." Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, said: "Strongly condemn the terror attack at Bacha Khan University in Pakistan. Condolences to families of the deceased. Prayers with the injured." In pictures: Pakistan university attack Show all 10 1 /10 In pictures: Pakistan university attack In pictures: Pakistan university attack Pakistani rescuers shift an injured man to a hospital following an attack by gunmen in the Bacha Khan university in Charsadda, about 50 kilometres from Peshawar. At least 21 people died in an armed assault on a university in Pakistan, where witnesses reported two large explosions as security forces moved in under dense fog to halt the bloodshed In pictures: Pakistan university attack Rescue workers shout to clear the way for an ambulance transporting injured victims from Bacha Khan University in Charsadda AP In pictures: Pakistan university attack A Pakistani army armoured vehicle (R) enters the Bacha Khan university following an attack by gunmen in Charsadda Getty Images In pictures: Pakistan university attack Pakistani rescuers shift an injured man at a hospital following an attack by gunmen at Bacha Khan university in Charsadda Getty Images In pictures: Pakistan university attack Pakistani troops arrive at Bacha Khan University in Charsadda AP In pictures: Pakistan university attack Pakistani rescuers shift an injured victim outside the Bacha Khan university following an attack by gunmen in Charsadda Getty Images In pictures: Pakistan university attack Pakistani police and onlookers gather in front of a hospital following an attack by gunmen at Bacha Khan university in Charsadda Getty Images In pictures: Pakistan university attack An ambulance carrying injured victims enters a hospital following an attack by gunmen at Bacha Khan university in Charsadda Getty Images In pictures: Pakistan university attack Pakistani rescuers shift an injured man into a hospital following an attack by gunmen at Bacha Khan university in Charsadda Getty Images In pictures: Pakistan university attack Pakistani rescuers carry coffins at a hospital following an attack by gunment at Bacha Khan university in Charsadda Getty Images Police said the militants managed to enter the campus buildings on Wednesday morning after scaling the walls of the university, which is situated 35km away from Peshawar. Two explosions were heard inside. Soldiers were seen entering the university as ambulances parked outside the main gate. TV footage shows heavily armed soldiers entering the campus (Reuters) Earlier, police chief Saeed Wazir said 70 per cent of the students had been rescued. All students have been evacuated from the hostels, but militants are still hiding in different parts of the university and some students and staff are stuck inside." Shabir Khan, a lecturer, was about to leave the hostel for the English department when the attack began. Most of the students and staff were in classes when the firing began. Security personnel take up positions outside the university (AFP/Getty Images) I have no idea about whats going on but I heard one security official talking on the phone to someone and said many people had been killed and injured, said Mr Khan. The Bacha Khan University is named after the founder of a liberal, anti-Taliban political party. The party has in the past been targeted by the Pakistani Taliban for its anti-militant policies. Following the massacre of more than 150 people at a school in Peshawar in December 2014, carried out by gunmen believed to be linked to the Taliban, hundreds of suspected militants in Pakistan have been killed and arrested in a major crackdown. Additional reporting by agencies For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The militant Baader-Meinhof group which terrorised Germany for two decades has made a dramatic comeback after three of its ageing members were accused of coming out of hiding to rob a security van with Kalashnikov rifles and a grenade launcher in a botched raid. The raid by members of Baader-Meinhof, also known as the Red Army Faction, failed when the former members failed to get the vehicles doors open. German police said DNA and fingerprinting tests had shown that the failed raid, near Bremen last June, was carried out by former members Ernst Volker Staub, 58, Daniela Klette, 57, and Burkard Garweg, whose age is unknown. All three have been on the run from police and living underground since the early 1990s. There was speculation that the three were running out of money and staging robberies more to gain an income than to fund terrorist attacks. We are convinced that the attempted robbery was carried out purely to finance their life underground, a police spokesman said. The RAF said in 1998 that its urban guerrilla war was over. The raid nevertheless bore the hallmarks of RAF terror. Video footage from surveillance cameras at the scene in a supermarket car park, showed the three driving up to the security vehicle in a Volkswagen van and blocking its departure route. Wearing masks, dressed in full combat gear and armed with a grenade launcher and two Kalashnikov assault rifles, the three tried to storm the security van. At least three shots were fired. One bullet burst one of the vans tyres, another shattered its windscreen and a third was found embedded in the vans armour. Two security mean inside the vehicle were unhurt After realising that they had no hope of breaking open the vehicles doors and fearing imminent arrest, the three got into their Ford Focus getaway car which was found abandoned in a nearby wood a week later. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty The RAF murdered more than 30 people in an anti-capitalist terror campaign waged throughout West Germany in the 1970s and 1980s. The gangs members were mostly radicalised young members of West Germanys prosperous post-war middle class. They believed they had a mission to destroy capitalism and fascism, which they claimed was still prevalent in post-Nazi West Germany. The RAF targeted bankers and German industrial leaders such as Hans Martin Schleyer, who was kidnapped and held hostage for weeks. His body was found dumped in the boot of an Audi car in 1977. Yet at their peak, surveys showed that some 25 per cent of young West Germans sympathised with the RAF. Hanns Martin Schleyer, a German industrial leader, was held hostage for three weeks and then later found dead in the trunk of a car in 1977 (Getty) (Getty Images) Several of the RAFs senior figures were tracked down and sentenced to lengthy jail terms. Those who have since been released have been given new names. However, the three who carried out the botched June security van raid were minor RAF figures who were given shorter jail terms. After their release they disappeared underground. The trio are also thought to have been behind a similar botched raid in Wolfsburg shortly after Christmas last year. Their attempt to stop the van failed. Their last successful raid was in 1999 when the trio stole the equivalent of 500,000 from a security van loaded with cash in the town of Recklinghausen. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A Danish town has made it compulsory for public institutions to serve pork products, drawing mixed reactions in what has been called the countrys meatball war. Randers City Council in central Denmark said it wanted to ensure public institutions, including nurseries, provide Danish food culture as a central part of the offering - including serving pork on an equal footing with other foods, AFP reports. The town passed the law after councillors narrowly approved the proposal, voting 16-15 on Monday night, according to The Local. The vote is part of a long-running debate in Denmark - dubbed the meatball war - over whether or not public institutions should be allowed to stop serving pork products out of respect for certain religions, particularly Islam. The move has been welcomed by the anti-immigration Danish Peoples Party (DPP), which said it was unacceptable to ban Danish food culture. Party spokesman, Martin Henriksen, wrote on Facebook: The DPP is working nationally and locally for Danish culture, including Danish food culture, and consequently we also fight against Islamic rules and misguided considerations dictating what Danish children eat. Council member, Frank Nrgaard, told Randers Amtsavis: We will ensure that Danish children and youth can have pork in the future." However, Social Liberals council member Mogens Nyholm, who voted against the proposal, said the idea of defining "Danish food culture" was absurd, whilea former integration minister from the Danish Social Liberal Party, Manu Sareen, accused Randers politicians of wanting to impose a forced ideology in this case on children. Food and drink news Show all 35 1 /35 Food and drink news Food and drink news Healthy living makes us more inclined to binge, research suggests Gluten-free breads, dairy-free milks and other plant-based products have been some of the most favoured foods in British supermarkets this year. However, while were busy filling our shopping trolleys with gluten-free goodness, were also jamming it with junk food and alcohol, new research suggests Getty/iStock Food and drink news Growing list of Vegan celebs Making the switch to veganism is a major lifestyle choice, one that many claim can improve energy levels, lower the risk of cardiovascular disease and clear up any skin issues. Beyonce, Natalie Portman and Jessica Chastain are among the growing list of Hollywood stars who have eschewed animal products from their diets in recent years. Theres also been an increasing number of professional athletes who have gone vegan, such as boxing champions Mike Tyson and David Haye, thus debunking the myth that following a plant-based diet will leave you feeling weak and malnourished. AFP/Getty/NARAS/iHeartMedia Food and drink news McDonald's has announced the launch of a new vegan burger on its menu in Germany This will mark the first time the German franchise of the fast food chain has offered a vegan burger to its customers. The Big Vegan TS burger consists of a patty made from soy and wheat. It is served in a classic sesame seed bun, and contains salad, tomato, pickles and red onion. McDonald's Germany Food and drink news Drinking too many protein shakes could lead to an increased risk of obesity and a reduced lifespan, a new study has claimed Researchers from the University of Sydney's Charles Perkins Centre carried out an investigation to determine the impact excessive consumption of branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) has on the body. BCAA supplements are often consumed in the form of powder, which is then added to water to make a shake. Published in journal Nature Metabolism, the study found that while BCAAs help to build muscle, they can also negatively impact an individual's temperament, cause weight gain and lead to a shortened lifespan Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news Britain consumes more chocolate than any other country Most people love chocolate but it turns out no one does more than the Brits with the average Brit found to have consumed 8.4 kg of chocolate in 2017, according to new data. Chocolate consumption around the world is on the rise, according to Mintel Global New Products Database (GNPD), which found that in the past year alone, Easter chocolate production has risen by 23 per cent Food and drink news 'Easter eggs should be banned for children under four' Dr Becky Spelman, chief psychologist at Harley Streets Private Therapy Clinic, is calling for Easter eggs to be banned for consumption for children under the age of four, claiming that giving them the opportunity to binge on chocolate so young will give them an unhealthy relationship with food later on. "This is a nightmare situation for parents of this generation as they have no idea how to teach their children to delay their response to cravings, she said, explaining that too many young kids binge on these chocolates because their parents dont know how to stop them. "Once a child starts overeating behaviour at a young age its very hard to turn things around for them in terms of food and their eating habits moving forward, leading to obesity from at very young age," she added PA Food and drink news Pineapple overtakes avocado as the UK's fastest-selling fruit According to Tesco, pineapple has overtaken avocado as the UKs fastest-selling fruit, with sales increasing by 15 per cent in 2017. In comparison, avocado sales rose by just under 10 per cent last year. The popular supermarket says the surge in popularity comes as shoppers buying the versatile fruit are beginning to use it as a main ingredient in everything from curries and barbecues, to juices and cocktails Getty Food and drink news Marks & Spencers launches stoneless avocados Rather than the result of genetic modification, the avocados are formed by an unpollinated avocado blossom. The fruit develops without a seed which in turns stops the growth, creating a small, seedless fruit. Whats more, the skin is actually edible, unlike a regular avocado. The flesh is much like that of a normal avocado - smooth and creamy, pale in colour and rich in flavour M&S Food and drink news Office teabags contain 17 times more germs than a toilet seat, reveals study The average bacterial reading of an office teabag was 3,785, in comparison to only 220 for a toilet seat. Other pieces of kitchen equipment also stacked up highly in their findings, with the bacterial readings averaging at 2,483 on kettle handles, 1,746 on the rim of a used mug and 1,592 on a fridge door handle Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news New study shows drinking more coffee leads to a longer life There is good news and a final hope for coffee addicts and lovers. You will now be able to drink coffee for longer as new study shows its can lead to a prolonged life. Scientists showed that those who drank between two and four cups of coffee a day had 18% lower risk of death compared to non-coffee drinkers. PA Food and drink news Coke Zero is replaced with Coke Zero Sugar Coca-Cola is pulling the plug on its Coke Zero. The much loved drink will be replaced with a new improved taste. The move, backed with a 10 million campaign, is said to come from Coca-Cola supporting people to reduce their sugar intake. Coca-Cola want people make this move while not sacrificing sugary taste of Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola Food and drink news Starbucks introduce new avocado spread The avocado craze has grown from hipster brunch restaurants to Starbucks. Starbucks have introduced their new avocado spread earlier this year and it has the internet in debate. Some argue that it not a spread but guacamole while others question if there is any avocado in there at all. When buying the new spread you can also buy an optional toasted bagel. It is a must try for all avocado connoisseurs. Starbucks Food and drink news New Mars chocolate bar The iconic British chocolate bar is about to get its partner in crime. The new bar, named Goodness Knows, will replace the gooey caramel goodness of the mars bar with oats. It is said to be more like a Florentine biscuit with a thin dark chocolate bottom. While being moderately healthy Mars says that is has good intentions. One pack has 154 calories and will sell for about 90p. Mars Food and drink news Wine prices could increase because of Brexit Wine lovers across the UK might soon have to shell out close to a quarter more for their favourite tipple after Brexit, as a weaker pound and sluggish economy takes its toll, a new study shows Rex Food and drink news Chocolate may be good for the heart A new study, published in the British Medical Journal: Heart, found that moderate chocolate intake can be positively associated with lessening the risk of the heart arrhythmia condition Atrial Fibrillation Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news Brits throw away 1.4 million bananas each year British families are throwing away 1.4 million bananas that are perfectly good to eat every day at cost of 80m a year, new figures have shown PA/Armin Weigel Food and drink news Rosemary sales spike over exam time There has been a surge a surge in sales of the herb rosemary after a recent study found it helps improve memory. According to high street health food chain Holland & Barrett, sales of the herb have increased by 187 per cent compared to the same time last year Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news Gluten-free diets 'not recommended' for people without coeliac disease Avoiding wheat, barley and rye in the belief that a gluten-free diet brings health benefits may do more harm than good, according to a team of US nutrition and medicine experts Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news Starbucks launches two new coffee-based drinks Starbucks is launching two new coffee-based drinks in the UK, as it strives to tap into consumers growing appetite for healthy beverages. The Cold Brew Vanilla sweet cream and the Cappuccino Freddo, will both be available in stores throughout the UK from the start of May Twitter/@SbuxCountyHall Food and drink news Cadburys Dairy Milk Tiffin is making a permanent comeback after 80 years The Cadbury Dairy Milk Tiffin, first produced in 1937, is making a permanent comeback to the UK. The raisin and biscuit-filled chocolate bar is being launched after a successful trial last summer saw 3 million chocolate treats at the cost of 1.49 for each 95g bar- purchased by nostalgic customers Cadburys Food and drink news Pizza restaurant makes worlds cheesiest 'Scottie's Pizza Parlor' in Portland Oregon has created the worlds cheesiest pizza using a total of 101 different cheese varieties. Facebook/Scottie's Pizza Parlor Food and drink news A pizza joint in Portland Oregon has created the worlds cheesiest pizza using a total of 101 different cheese varieties. Why not eating before a workout could be better for your health A study published in the American Journal of Physiology by researchers at the University of Bath found you might be likely to burn more fat if you have not eaten first Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news New York restaurant named best in the world A New York restaurant where an average meal for two will cost $700 has been named the best in the world. Eleven Madison Park won the accolade for the first time after debuting on the list at number 50 in 2010. The restaurant was praised for a fun sense of fine-dining, blurring the line between the kitchen and the dining room Getty Images Food and drink news Why you crave bad food when youre tired Researchers at Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University in Chicago recently presented their results of a study looking into the effects of sleep deprivation upon high-calorific food consumption. Researchers found that those who were sleep-deprived had specifically enhanced brain activity to the food smells compared to when they had a good nights sleep Shutterstock Food and drink news Drinking wine engages more of your brain than solving maths problems Drinking wine is the ideal workout for your brain, engaging more parts of our grey matter than any other human behaviour, according to a leading neuroscientist. Dr Gordon Shepherd, from the Yale School of Medicine, said sniffing and analysing a wine before drinking it requires exquisite control of one of the biggest muscles in the body Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news British dessert eating surges after people ditch healthy eating in February : In heartening news for anyone feeling guilty about quitting their New Year diet, it seems lots of us have given in to our sweet tooths once again. New data from nationwide food-delivery service Deliveroo reveals there was a surge in Brits ordering desserts in February compared to the first month of 2017 Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news US congress debates definition of milk alternatives A new bill has been created that seeks to ban dairy alternatives from using the term milk. Titled the DAIRY PRIDE Act, the name is a tenuous acronym for defending against imitations and replacements of yogurt, milk, and cheese to promote regular intake of dairy every day. It argues that the dairy industry is struggling as a result of all the dairy-free alternatives on the market and the public are being duped too Getty Images Food and drink news Cadburys launches two new chocolate bars UK confectionary giant Cadbury has launched two new chocolate bars, hoping to lure those with a sweet tooth and perhaps help combat some of the challenges it faces from rising commodity prices and a post-Brexit slump in the value of the pound.The companys new products will be peanut butter and mint flavoured. They will be available in most major super markets as 120g bars, priced at 1.49, according to the company Cadburys Food and drink news You can now get a job as a professional chocolate eater The company responsible for some of your favourite chocolate brands think Cadbury, Milks, Prince and Oreo have officially announced an opening to join their team as a professional chocolate taster. The successful candidate will help them to test, perfect and launch new products all over the world. Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news MSG additive used in Chinese food is actually good for you, scientist claims For years, weve been told MSG (the sodium salt of glutamic acid) - often associated with cheap Chinese takeaways - is awful for our health and to be avoided at all costs. But one scientist argues it should be used as a supersalt and encourages adding it to food. Getty Images/iStockphoto Food and drink news Lettuce prices are rising Not only are lettuces becoming an increasingly rare commodity in supermarkets, but prices for the leafy vegetables seem to be rising too. According to the weekly report from the Governments Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, a pair of Little Gem lettuces had an average market price of 0.86 in the week that ended on Friday, up from an average of 0.56 in the previous week thats an almost 54 per cent increase. Getty Images Food and drink news Do-It-Yourself restaurant To encourage more people to cook and eat together, IKEA has launched The Dining Club in Shoreditch a fully immersive Do-It-Yourself restaurant . Members of the public can book to host a brunch, lunch or dinner party for up to 20 friends and family. Supported by their very own sous chef and maitre de, the host and their guests will orchestrate an intimate dining experience where cooking together is celebrated and eating together is inspirational Mikael Buck / IKEA Food and drink news Ping Pong menu with a twist Gatwick Airport has teamed up with London dim sum restaurant Ping Pong to create a limited edition menu with a distinctly British twist; including a Full English Bao and Beef Wellington Puff, to celebrate the launch of the airports new route to Hong Kong Food and drink news Zizzi unveil the Maamgharita Unique pizza art has been created by Zizzi in celebration of the Queens 90th birthday. The pizza features the queen in an iconic pose illustrated with fresh and tasty Italian ingredients on a backdrop of the Union Jack Food and drink news Blue potatoes make a comeback Blue potatoes, once a staple part of British potato crops, are back on the menu thanks to a Cambridge scientist turned-organic farmer and Farmdrop, an online marketplace that lets people buy direct from local farms. Cambridge PhD graduate-turned farmer, Adrian Izzard has used traditional growing techniques at Wild Country Organics to produce the colourful spuds, packed with healthy cell-protecting anthocyanin, which had previously disappeared from UK plates when post-war farmers were pushed towards higher-yielding varieties The aim of the proposal, Randers insists, is not to force anyone to eat anything that goes against ones belief or religion. The "meatball war" reached a climax in 2013, after the former Prime Minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, criticised childcare centres that dropped pork from their menus. A survey following the criticism by tabloid newspaper, Ekstra Bladet, found only 30 out of Denmarks 1,719 daycare institutions had either stopped serving pork or switched to halal meat, meaning any meat served was prepared following Muslim rules. The food-fight was revived last week when Integration Minister, Inger Stjberg, claimed a Danish family had removed their child from a public daycare centre after it banned pork. Aalborg officials and the school in question both denied a ban was ever put in place, according to The Local. There are around 13 million pigs in Denmark and sales of pork products and live pigs account for around five per cent of the countrys exports. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Jewish people no longer feel safe living in Germany, it has been claimed. The leader of Hambergs Jewish community, Daniel Killy, told the Jerusalem Post: We no longer feel safe here. He went on to explain how a combination of extreme right-wing forces, deteriorating security, and Germany welcoming of refugees brought up in cultures "steeped in hatred" for Jews were resulting in anti-Semitism. Hamburg has a 2,500-strong Jewish population, and there are around 118,000 in Germany overall. One million Muslim refugees arrived in Germany over the last year. Mr Killy referenced a report published on tagesschau.de, authored by expert in extremist ideology Patrick Gensing. In the report he said: Anti-Semitic sentiments have diverse manifestations in Germany. [There are studies that point to] historical defensive guilt [about the Holocaust], obsessive criticism of Israel, National Socialist racism, Muslim anti-Semitism [and] Christian anti-Semitism. An article published on dw.com included an interview with 22-year-old Jewish man, Elliot Reich, who took part in a pro-Israel demonstration in 2014. Reich said he was surprised at the animosity against the marchers, claiming counter-protesters shouted things like: "Hamas, Hamas! Jews into gas! Words like this have nothing to do with Israel - they are purely anti-Semitic. Mr Gensing also pointed to a reported attack on a synagogue near Dusseldorf. Leonie Goldberg, head of Wuppertals Jewish Community, told Der Spiegel: I thought the time of the packed suitcases was for always over. Now I am considering when we need to pack these suitcases again. The Jerusalem Post said 200 German Jews moved to Israel in 2015. It pointed out that the figure is actually quite high considering the older age of Germany's Jews. Early in 2015 there was a backlash against Jewish council leader Dr Josef Schuster after he encouraged German Jews to look less Jewish when walking through predominantly Muslim neighbourhoods in Berlin. The Jewish school where half the pupils are Muslim Show all 2 1 /2 The Jewish school where half the pupils are Muslim The Jewish school where half the pupils are Muslim 9179.bin The Jewish school where half the pupils are Muslim 813.bin On New Years Eve 2014, Shakah Shapira, an Israeli man, suffered an apparently anti-Semitic attack by seven "Arabic-speaking" men in Berlin. Opinion / Columnist It would be an oversimplification of a rather complex issue to say that all war veterans are rallying behind the former Vice President, Joyce Mujuru's People First project. All the war veterans who are behind this project are known to be power hungry and cunning. In fact the proponents of this project are known to have been sellouts and people of dubious revolutionary credentials.It is alleged that a number of war veterans have dumped ZANU PF for People First(PF) as the yet-to-be launched Joice Mujuru political formation gains more ground. This came out during a PF meeting held recently in Masvingo. It is assumed that more than three quarters of war veterans in Masvingo province are behind PF; a thing which we doubt much. Moreover, this is an assumption from the interested members who are on a recruitment drive.We should know that an assumption can never be a measure of credibility, therefore we still have time to analyse the political landscape of this country. It is a sweeping statement to say that a large number of war veterans have defected to PF. The war veterans who have defected are those who have had their own agenda in the likes of former ZANU PF senior officials like Dzikamai Mavhaire, Kudakwashe Bhasikiti and Retired Colonel Claudious Makova.These war veterans have long been booted out of ZANU PF and are now seeking relevance and they cannot survive outside politics as they have a high affinity of leading other people. In a nutshell, they are power hungry. Some ZANU PF supporters are saying that it has been a good riddance in dismissing these personalities as they were amassing wealth using their political muscles. Shame to these brood of vipers for they worked for their stomachs only at the expense of the electorate.PF assistant spokesperson Retired Colonel Kudzai Mbudzi should not be taken seriously when he says that hordes of war veterans are flocking to join People First throughout the country. He goes on to say that President Robert Mugabe, the First Lady Grace Mugabe and other ZANU PF officials have in the past shown the highest disregard of ex-freedom fighters, calling them all sorts of names. Surely this man is uttering archaic propaganda and we know that he has been moving from one party to another and back again.Mbudzi has been in ZANU PF before he joined the Mavambo project which died a natural death, and now he has joined the People First project. It is high time that people should stop wasting other people's time in projects which suffers still birth.On the other hand the purported meeting between PF leader, Joice Mujuru, Tendai Biti and Theresa Makone seems not to have occurred at all; but mere speculations from the advocates of a coalition party to remove President Mugabe from power. On the contrary no coalition party has been formed in Zimbabwe as they all suffer a still birth.All these coalitions could not succeed because all their leaders want to be the President of the coalition government. Shame to these power hungry people for they shall not succeed in manipulating the electorate. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The United Nations has warned that the state of emergency imposed by France in the wake of the Paris attacks is imposing excessive and disproportionate restrictions on fundamental human rights. Special rapporteurs on freedoms of opinion, expression, assembly and privacy were among those raising concerns with the Francois Hollandes government. Ensuring adequate protection against abuse in the use of exceptional measures and surveillance measures in the context of the fight against terrorism is an international obligation of the French State, they said in a joint statement. Francois Hollande: Paris terror attacks an "act of war" While exceptional measures may be required under exceptional circumstances, this does not relieve the authorities from demonstrating that these are applied solely for the purposes for which they were prescribed, and are directly related to the specific objective that inspired them. Human rights groups warned about to scope for rights abuses in November, when the state of emergency was extended for three months. The laws allow police to place anyone deemed to be a security risk under house arrest, dissolve groups thought to be a threat to public order, carry out searches without warrants and copy data, and block any websites that encourage terrorism. Curfews can be imposed, large gatherings or protests forbidden and movement limited. The UN experts are calling on the government not to extend the powers beyond their deadline on 26 February, but French politicians are considering changing counter-terrorism laws. French policemen patrol on the Champs-Elysees avenue (BERTRAND GUAY/AFP/Getty Images) A statement said that while the group expressed their solidarity and deepest sympathy to the victims of the terrorist attacks committed in France and many other places in the world, rights must not be forfeited. They sent a list of concerns to the government, including the lack of clarity and precision of several provisions, surveillance laws and scope of restrictions to the freedoms of expression, peaceful assembly, association and the right to privacy. Emergency laws have been used to put environmental activists under arrest, the UN said, warning that such usage does not seem to fulfil the fundamental principles of necessity and proportionality. As France debates the strengthening of measures in the fight against terrorism, and considers a reform of the criminal procedure, we call on the authorities to revise the provisions and possible reforms adopted to that end, to ensure they comply with international human rights law, a joint statement said. They recommended the introduction of judicial oversight for counter-terror measures and electronic surveillance, which give authorities the power to collect, read and store communications and metadata without authorisation or review by a judge. In pictures: Paris attacks Show all 25 1 /25 In pictures: Paris attacks In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks French police with protective shields walk in line near the Bataclan concert hall Reuters In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Rescuers evacuate an injured person on Boulevard des Filles du Calvaire AFP In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks French Vigipirate troops mobilize next to Place de la Bastille AFP In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks French soldiers mobilize near to the Place de la Bastille AFP In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Wounded people are evacuated outside the scene of a hostage situation at the Bataclan theatre EPA In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks People react as they gather to watch the scene near the Bataclan concert hall Reuters In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks French police secure the area outside a cafe near the Bataclan concert hall Reuters In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Rescuers workers evacuate victims near the Bataclan concert hall AFP In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks French Prime Minister Manuel Valls and French President Francois Hollande attending an emergency meeting at the Interior Ministry AFP In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Spectators invade the pitch of the Stade de France after explosions were heard outside AP In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks A man lies on the ground as French police check his identity near the Bataclan concert hall Reuters In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Police officers man a position close to the Bataclan theatre AFP In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Wounded people are evacuated from the Stade de France in Paris EPA In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Two men evacuate the Place de la Republique square in Paris as a police officer looks on AFP In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Football fans are evacuated from the Stade de France stadium In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks An armed police officer Dan Gabriel In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks The Stade de France is evacuated after reports of an explosion In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks A member of the French fire brigade aids an injured individual near the Bataclan concert hall In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Wounded people are evacuated from the Stade de France in Paris In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Police are seen outside a cafe in 10th arrondissement of the French capital Paris, In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Rescuers assist an injured man on Boulevard des Filles du Calvaire, close to the Bataclan concert hall AFP In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks The scene at a restaurant in 10th arrondissement In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks The Bataclan theatre - where around 100 people are thought be held hostage In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks The Stade de France as it was evacuated In pictures: Paris attacks Paris attacks Forensic experts inspect the site of an attack outside the Stade de France stadium in Saint-Denis AFP Ensuring adequate protection against abuse in the use of exceptional measures and surveillance measures in the context of the fight against terrorism is an international obligation of the French State, they group said. Members included David Kaye, Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, Maina Kiai, Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly, Michel Forst, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Ben Emmerson, Special Rapporteur on the protection and promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism and Joseph Cannataci, Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy. Isis militants killed 130 people in Paris in a series of shooting and suicide bombings at the Bataclan concert hall, Stade de France, restaurants and bars on 13 November last year. The terrorist group claimed the massacres were revenge for French air strikes against its militants in Syria and members have threatened further attacks. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Police in Berlin have died claims of a cover-up over the disappearance of a 13-year-old girl after videos circulating on social media claimed she was kidnapped by asylum seekers and gang-raped. The child, who The Independent is choosing not to name, has since been found and officers said there was no evidence of either crime. In recent days it has come to our notice that there is great interest from the internet community in the case of a 13-year-old girl reported missing in Marzahn-Hellersdorf and the circumstances of her absence, a spokesperson for Berlin Police said. +++ Information zum Vermisstenfall einer 13-Jahrigen +++In den letzten Tagen ist uns aufgefallen, dass das Interesse... Posted by Polizei Berlin on Monday, 18 January 2016 It is true that the girl was briefly reported missing and has now returned. We are aware that a number of differing claims are being discussed on social media. The fact is the investigation by our LKA (State Criminal Police Office) found that there was neither a kidnapping or a rape. In response to questions on Facebook, the force said officers were aware of the videos circulating and continued to investigate the case. We expressly ask for your understanding that we cannot give further details, for the protection of the girl and her family, the statement added. We are also appealing for the subject to be handled sensitively on social networks. The Berliner Zeitung reported that the girl disappeared on her way to school on 11 January and was found the next day but conflicting claims about the incident have continued to circulate online, with videos and Facebook posts being viewed millions of times. Interest spiked after Russias state-owned Channel One television broadcast an interview with a woman claiming to be the girls aunt on Saturday. Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Show all 13 1 /13 Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Women protest against sexism outside Cologne Cathedral on 5 January after the assaults Oliver Berg/EPA Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Women protest against sexism in Cologne following the rash of sex attacks on New Year's Eve Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Police initially failed to mention the assaults in report the following morning EPA Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Police officers patrol in front of the main station of Cologne, Germany AP Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks German far-right supporters demonstrate at Cologne`s train station (Reuters) Reuters Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Supporters of anti-immigration right-wing movement Pegida in Cologne, Germany, January 9, 2016. Reuters Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Police used pepper spray to control supporters of Pegida, Hogesa (Hooligans against Salafists) and other right-wing populist groups as they protested against the New Year's Eve sex attacks on 9 January, 2016 in Cologne, Germany Reuters Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Police use a water cannon during a protest march by supporters of anti-immigration right-wing movement Pegida in Cologne, Germany, January 9, 2016 Reuters Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Police use pepper spray against supporters of anti-immigration right-wing movement Pegida, in Cologne, Germany, January 9, 2016. Reuters Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Artist Mira Moire protests naked in Cologne against the mass sex attacks on New Year's Eve AP Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks A demonstrator holds a sign in German that reads 'No violence against women' during a demonstration in the wake of the sexual assaults on New Year's Eve, outside the cathedeal in Cologne, Germany, 09 January 2016. EPA Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Counter demonstrators hold up a sign reading "Against sexism, against racism" as they protest against a demonstration of the islamophobic movement PEGIDA at the train station in Cologne, Germany, on January 9, 2016. AFP/Getty Images Germany reacts to Cologne New Year's Eve attacks Demonstration by a womens group on Saturday (AP) AP Breaking down into tears, she claimed the child was abducted and raped repeatedly in a 30-hour ordeal but that police did not believe her account. Another woman, said to be the girls cousin, also spoke about the alleged incident at a rally held by the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany, which has been accused of links to neo-Nazism. She claimed that three southern-looking foreign men who spoke broken German lured her into a car and held her in a room for 30 hours, raping her repeatedly. Denying claims the attack was a xenophobic hoax, she said the child had been questioned by police for three hours without her parents. Far-right groups in Germany and around the world have seized on the rumours to argue for an immediate halt to migration, as anger continues about the sexual assaults in Cologne. A German lawyer, Martin Luithle, has subsequently filed a complaint against the Russian journalist who appeared in a television report, accusing him of inciting ethnic hatred by spreading the extremely dangerous claims. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Known as a royal rebel, Prince Laurent of Belgium is said to persistently embarrass his family with his high-life escapades. But his latest scandal was distinctly common. On Wednesday, it emerged that Laurent, the younger brother of King Philippe, had repaid 16,000 (12,300) to the Belgian state for claiming his ski holiday, supermarket bills and school fees for his three children as state expenses. The repayment came after the Belgian Court of Audit, the financial watchdog of the public institutions, released a critical report on the princes spending last year, and Prime Minister Charles Michel suggested he return the expenses. It was latest in a long line of tales about the wayward Laurent, 52, who is seen as the black sheep of Belgian royalty for his outspokenness and run-ins with the law. Last year, he lambasted the royal family and their entourage on Belgian television, saying they were like the Stasi secret police and had sabotaged his career for years. My family has never supported me, he complained, adding that he had been hard done by despite his 307,000 (236,000) annual allowance. Once third in line to the throne, Laurent is now in 11th place. Although he enjoyed a reputation as a playboy when he was younger, his marriage to Bath-born Claire Coombs in 2003 was expected to settle him down. That never happened. In 2011, he was forced to accept limits to his official activities after uproar over an unauthorised visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo, and an attempt to go into business with a son of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Laurent, who trained in the army and navy before earning his wings as a helicopter pilot, has long had a taste for expensive cars and motorbikes. However, he was recently stripped of his drivers licence after being caught speeding at 20mph above the limit through the streets of Brussels in his Fiat Punto Abarth. He responded by declaring that there should be a special licence for those driving a fast car. A few years ago, his spending became so lavish that Princess Claire was asked to dip into her savings. The prince has tried to build a career in environmental and animal protection, but with little success: although he heads the Prince Laurent Foundation, which focuses on the welfare of domestic and wild animals, and a foundation to promote sustainable development and clean technologies, both are struggling financially. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The rules obliging refugees to register in the first European country they enter look set to be abolished under a radical revision of the European Unions asylum system. The move could be problematic for David Cameron ahead of Britains EU referendum. The EUs system, part of the so-called Dublin regulation, has been widely ignored during the migrant crisis in which more than a million refugees have streamed into Europe. However officials say the rules were never properly applied anyway, as most refugees landed on deserted beaches in Greece and Italy, and made their way over land to other countries such as Germany and Sweden. The move for reform, reported in todays Financial Times, comes after Greece, in particular, came under criticism for failing to set up basic facilities for refugees. However, it will mean that the richer countries of final destination, like Germany, will have to establish major registration and fingerprinting infrastructure to cope with the hundreds of thousands of expected refugees. It could also mean that Britain may find it more difficult to send refugees back to neighbouring EU states. One of the main arguments of the British campaign to remain in the EU is that the Dublin regulations allow the UK to deport asylum-seekers if Britain is not the first European country that they arrived in. Refugees settle in Germany Show all 12 1 /12 Refugees settle in Germany Refugees settle in Germany Germany Mohamed Zayat, a refugee from Syria, plays with his daughter Ranim, who is nearly 3, in the one room they and Mohamed's wife Laloosh call home at an asylum-seekers' shelter in Vossberg village on October 9, 2015 in Letschin, Germany. The Zayats arrived approximately two months ago after trekking through Turkey, Greece and the Balkans and are now waiting for local authorities to process their asylum application, after which they will be allowed to live independently and settle elsewhere in Germany. Approximately 60 asylum-seekers, mostly from Syria, Chechnya and Somalia, live at the Vossberg shelter, which is run by the Arbeiter-Samariter Bund (ASB) charity 2015 Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany A refugee child Amnat Musayeva points to a star with her photo and name that decorates the door to her classroom as teacher Martina Fischer looks on at the local kindergarten Amnat and her siblings attend on October 9, 2015 in Letschin, Germany. The children live with their family at an asylum-seekers' shelter in nearby Vossberg village and are waiting for local authorities to process their asylum applications. Approximately 60 asylum-seekers, mostly from Syria, Chechnya and Somalia, live at the Vossberg shelter, which is run by the Arbeiter-Samariter Bund (ASB) charity Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Kurdish Syrian asylum-applicant Mohamed Ali Hussein (R), 19, and fellow applicant Autur, from Latvia, load benches onto a truckbed while performing community service, for which they receive a small allowance, in Wilhelmsaue village on October 9, 2015 near Letschin, Germany. Mohamed and Autur live at an asylum-applicants' shelter in nearby Vossberg village. Approximately 60 asylum-seekers, mostly from Syria, Chechnya and Somalia, live at the Vossberg shelter, which is run by the Arbeiter-Samariter Bund (ASB) charity Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Mohamed Ali Hussein ((L), 19, and his cousin Sinjar Hussein, 34, sweep leaves at a cemetery in Gieshof village, for which they receive a small allowance, near Letschin Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Mohamed Zayat, a refugee from Syria, looks among donated clothing in the basement of the asylum-seekers' shelter that is home to Mohamed, his wife Laloosh and their daughter Ranim as residents' laundry dries behind in Vossberg village on October 9, 2015 in Letschin, Germany. The Zayats arrived approximately two months ago after trekking through Turkey, Greece and the Balkans and are now waiting for local authorities to process their asylum application, after which they will be allowed to live independently and settle elsewhere in Germany Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Asya Sugaipova (L), Mohza Mukayeva and Khadra Zhukova prepare food in the communal kitchen at the asylum-seekers' shelter that is their home in Vossberg village in Letschin Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Efrah Abdullahi Ahmed looks down from the communal kitchen window at her daughter Sumaya, 10, who had just returned from school, at the asylum-seekers' shelter that is their home in Vossberg Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Asylum-applicants, including Syrians Mohamed Ali Hussein (C-R, in black jacket) and Fadi Almasalmeh (C), return from grocery shopping with other refugees to the asylum-applicants' shelter that is their home in Vossberg village in Letschin Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Mohamed Zayat (2nd from L), a refugee from Syria, smokes a cigarette after shopping for groceries with his daughter Ranim, who is nearly 3, and fellow-Syrian refugees Mohamed Ali Hussein (C) and Fadi Almasalmeh (L) at a local supermarket on October 9, 2015 in Letschin, Germany. All of them live at an asylum-seekers' shelter in nearby Vossberg village and are waiting for local authorities to process their asylum applications, after which they will be allowed to live independently and settle elsewhere in Germany 2015 Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Kurdish Syrian refugees Leila, 9, carries her sister Avin, 1, in the backyard at the asylum-seekers' shelter that is home to them and their family in Vossberg village in Letschin Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Somali refugees and husband and wife Said Ahmed Gure (R) and Ayaan Gure pose with their infant son Muzammili, who was born in Germany, in the room they share at an asylum-seekers' shelter in Vossberg village on October 9, 2015 in Letschin, Germany. Approximately 60 asylum-seekers, mostly from Syria, Chechnya and Somalia, live at the Vossberg shelter, which is run by the Arbeiter-Samariter Bund (ASB) charity, and are waiting for authorities to process their application for asylum 2015 Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany German Chancellor Angela Merkel pauses for a selfie with a refugee after she visited the AWO Refugium Askanierring shelter for refugees in Berlin Getty Images If those regulations were to be changed the UK might be forced to accept refugees who have managed to enter the country from across the Channel, regardless of where they first arrived in Europe. This could further encourage migrants to head for Britain. The Out campaign was quick to make capital over the planned change. Recommended Read more Extreme cold heaps misery on refugees in Macedonia and Serbia This change would appear to provide an incentive for asylum-seekers to get across the Channel, said a spokesman for Vote Leave. This is further evidence that as part of the EU the UK does not have control over migration or asylum policy. Much will depend on the detail about how the new rules will work. With no land border with any other country in the passport-free Schengen zone, Britain is not expected to see a strong surge in migration. The Syrian refugee crisis in numbers The Dublin system was already undermined last September when German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, lifted her countrys right to return Syrian refugees to the first country of entry. Ms Merkel has already called for the EU to revise the Dublin rules to cope with the refugee challenges. The Dublin rules date back to a 1990 convention in the Irish capital, and came into force for the first 12 signatories in 1997. However, officials have long criticised them, suggesting they could not be applied in countries like Greece and Italy with long, unprotected coastlines. It looks like Dublin will have to be sacrificed if we want to save the Schengen system, an EU official said. The EU Home Affairs Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos told MEPs last week that a revision of the Dublin system would be unveiled in March. Dublin should not just be a mechanism to allocate responsibility, but also a solidarity instrument among member states. It must be revised deeply; it was adopted in a totally different landscape, he said. Six Europeans countries have already reimposed border controls and suspended their Schengen membership in an effort to contain the large influx of refugees. In his state of the union address to the European Parliament last September, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker promised a reform of the Dublin system. It is time we prepare a more fundamental change in the way we deal with asylum applications and notably the Dublin system that requires that asylum applications be dealt with by the first country of entry, he said. The European Council President Donald Tusk said that the EU had no more than two months to get things under control or face grave consequences. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Spanish police have been told they cannot visit strip clubs while on duty and in uniform after a ruling by the countrys supreme court. The decision by the courts military division was handed down following an appeal by a police officer in Toledo after he was disciplined for visiting a strip club during a shift. The unnamed officer was suspended without pay for six months after being caught in the El Cruce venue in uniform while he was supposed to be on patrol, according to The Local. He spent an hour and a half in the club drinking alcohol and talking to the female staff before the manager called the station to ask if it was standard practice for uniformed officers to sit in his club. The officer was caught at the scene when a patrol car was dispatched to the club, before he was suspended for serious misconduct. World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty In its judgement, the Supreme Court reportedly wrote: "Any Civil Guard will be fully aware that to visit a hostess club while on duty, regardless of your uniform and carrying a service weapon, to consume alcohol is unbecoming conduct and damaging to the institution." For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} British arms companies have cashed-in on Saudi Arabias military campaign in Yemen by ramping up arms sales to the countrys autocratic government by over a hundred times, new figures show. Sales of British bombs and missiles to the Saudi Arabia surged to over 1bn just three months last year, according to an official record of arms export licences quietly released by the Government this week. The sales, up from just 9m in the preceding three-month period, have occurred while the oil-rich autocracy conducts a military campaign in its neighbours territory, where the United Nations has said a humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding. Saudi Arabia is intervening in Yemen to fight Houthi rebels, who control the countrys capital but are not internationally recognised as its government. The Kingdom was asked to join the conflict by the countrys Government, which has been pushed out of much of the countrys heartland. Criticism of the Saudi military operation have however included the bombing of multiple hospitals run by the charity Medecins Sans Frontieres and the deaths of thousands of civilians, including 130 at a single wedding. While international observers have recognised abuses on all sides, in late December UN human rights chief Zeid Raad al-Hussein said that a disproportionate number of attacks of civilians in Yemen had come from the Saudi-led invasion force. I have observed with extreme concern the continuation of heavy shelling from the ground and the air in areas with high a concentration of civilians as well as the perpetuation of the destruction of civilian infrastructure in particular hospitals and schools by all parties to the conflict, although a disproportionate amount appeared to be the result of airstrikes carried out by Coalition Forces, Mr Zeid said. Medics attend to the aftermath of an air strike on a police station in Yemen's capital Sanaa (Reuters) The United Nations and the charity Action Aid have also said that around two-thirds of civlians casualties in the war have been caused by air strikes. The exact figure for British arms export licences from July to September 2015 was 1,066,216,510 in so-called ML4 export licences, which relate to bombs, missiles, rockets, and components of those items. The arms are exported with the consent of ministers, who must sign off all licences for weapons. 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Show all 10 1 /10 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In October 2014, three lawyers, Dr Abdulrahman al-Subaihi, Bander al-Nogaithan and Abdulrahman al-Rumaih , were sentenced to up to eight years in prison for using Twitter to criticize the Ministry of Justice. AFP/Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In March 2015, Yemens Sunni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi was forced into exile after a Shia-led insurgency. A Saudi Arabia-led coalition has responded with air strikes in order to reinstate Mr Hadi. It has since been accused of committing war crimes in the country. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Women who supported the Women2Drive campaign, launched in 2011 to challenge the ban on women driving vehicles, faced harassment and intimidation by the authorities. The government warned that women drivers would face arrest. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Members of the Kingdoms Shia minority, most of whom live in the oil-rich Eastern Province, continue to face discrimination that limits their access to government services and employment. Activists have received death sentences or long prison terms for their alleged participation in protests in 2011 and 2012. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses All public gatherings are prohibited under an order issued by the Interior Ministry in 2011. Those defy the ban face arrest, prosecution and imprisonment on charges such as inciting people against the authorities. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses In March 2014, the Interior Ministry stated that authorities had deported over 370,000 foreign migrants and that 18,000 others were in detention. Thousands of workers were returned to Somalia and other states where they were at risk of human rights abuses, with large numbers also returned to Yemen, in order to open more jobs to Saudi Arabians. Many migrants reported that prior to their deportation they had been packed into overcrowded makeshift detention facilities where they received little food and water and were abused by guards. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses The Saudi Arabian authorities continue to deny access to independent human rights organisations like Amnesty International, and they have been known to take punitive action, including through the courts, against activists and family members of victims who contact Amnesty. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Raif Badawi was sentenced to 1000 lashes and 10 years in prison for using his liberal blog to criticise Saudi Arabias clerics. He has already received 50 lashes, which have reportedly left him in poor health. Carsten Koall/Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Dawood al-Marhoon was arrested aged 17 for participating in an anti-government protest. After refusing to spy on his fellow protestors, he was tortured and forced to sign a blank document that would later contain his confession. At Dawoods trial, the prosecution requested death by crucifixion while refusing him a lawyer. Getty Images 10 examples of Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses Ali Mohammed al-Nimr was arrested in 2012 aged either 16 or 17 for participating in protests during the Arab spring. His sentence includes beheading and crucifixion. The international community has spoken out against the punishment and has called on Saudi Arabia to stop. He is the nephew of a prominent government dissident. Getty In mid-December the British Government was threatened with a legal challenge by campaigners, who warned that the decision to continue supplying Saudi Arabia with bombs despite apparent violations of international law could be unlawful. David Cameron however on Monday moved to defend arms British support for the operation, arguing that the UK had the strongest export controls in the world on weapons. First of all, our relationship with Saudi Arabia is important for our own security. They are opponents of Daesh and the extremism and terror [they spread], he told BBC Radio 4s Today programme. In terms of our arms exports I think we have some of the most stringent controls anywhere in the world and Ill always make sure theyre properly operated. Were trying to do everything we can to make sure that the work done by Saudi Arabia is properly targeted and its right that we should do that. Were working with them and others on behalf of the legitimate government on Yemen. In November foreign secretary Phillip Hammond said he wanted to sell even more munitions to Saudi Arabia. An MSF hospital at Haydan after it was hit by a Saudi Arabian air strike (MSF) Wed always like to do more business, more British exports, more British jobs and in this case very high end engineering jobs protected and created by our diplomacy abroad, he told the BBCs Newsnight programme when asked about the issue. He admitted that the weapons were being used in Yemen but said that Saudis deny there have been any breaches of international humanitarian law. But human rights group Amnesty International UK accused the Government of ignoring overwhelming evidence of civilian targeting. These figures are deeply worrying, showing that the UK continued to despatch huge amounts of weaponry to Saudi Arabia despite overwhelming evidence that the Saudi war machine was laying waste to Yemeni homes, schools and hospitals, said Allan Hogarth, the groups head of Policy and Government Affairs. As officials were signing off these sales, hundreds - possibly thousands - of Yemeni civilians were dying in a terrifying barrage of indiscriminate Saudi airstrikes in the country. Instead of burying their heads in the sand over Saudi Arabias behaviour in Yemen, Downing Street should immediately suspend export licences for all further UK arms bound for Saudi Arabia, and allow a full investigation into allegations of serious breaches of international humanitarian law by Saudi Arabia in Yemen. Roy Isbister, head of the NGO Saferworld's arms unit, told the Independent that the UK was breaking its obligations under international law. It is inexplicable that the day after the Prime Minister says there is no military solution to the situation in Yemen, the Government releases these truly stunning figures. A billion pounds worth of bombs to the Saudi air forcethe same air force that the UN says is responsible for multiple attacks on schools, hospital, markets and civilian infrastructureruns directly counter to the UKs obligations under national, EU and international law," he said. Clearly, all sides to the conflict in Yemen are guilty of abuses. However, the UK Governments incredible level of material support directly to Saudi Arabia patently undermines its claims to operate one of the most rigorous arms export control regimes in the world. The Independent has contacted the business department, which oversees arms export control, for further comment on this story. A Government spokesperson said: We operate one of the most rigorous and transparent arms export control regimes in the world with each licence application assessed on a case by case basis, taking account of all relevant information, to ensure compliance with our legal obligations. No licence is issued if it does not meet these requirements. We regularly raise with Saudi Arabian-led coalition and the Houthis, the need to comply with international humanitarian law (IHL) in Yemen. We monitor the situation carefully and have offered the Saudi authorities advice and training in this area." For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} After prayers, the traders of Bab al-Tob market in Iraqs second city, Mosul, formed a crowd around nine men lying on the street. Among the prostrate men was an Iraqi soldier and an alleged Kurdish spy. A bulldozer approached and slowly ran over the prisoners, crushing them utterly. More than a year after Isis conquered much of Anbar province and the plains of Nineveh the jihadists were, by last summer, beginning to lose ground. In Mosul, the main Isis stronghold in Iraq, the caliphate killings gathered pace. They were, as the United Nations observed, a warning to potential deserters, spies and enemies. Recommended Read more Schoolgirls who fled UK to join Isis may have died in airstrikes The nine men murdered by bulldozers were among 18,802 people killed by Isis over the last two years, according to a UN report released on Tuesday. Between May and October, 3,855 people were killed by Isis in Iraq alone, a 15 per cent increase on the numbers from December to April. The report also found that Isis had by last summer enslaved an estimated 3,500 people in Iraq, mostly from the minority Yazidi community. Isis was continuing to murder innocent men, women and children, but was also increasingly killing suspects among its own fighters. It has started executing a lot of its own people, whether because they are fleeing from the front line or are suspected of other things, a UN source said. And its abduction of children does make it look as if it is desperate to have enough fighters. In pictures: The rise of Isis Show all 74 1 /74 In pictures: The rise of Isis In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Fighters of the Islamic State wave the group's flag from a damaged display of a government fighter jet following the battle for the Tabqa air base, in Raqqa, Syria AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Fighters from Islamic State group sit on their tank during a parade in Raqqa, Syria AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Fighters from the Islamic State group pray at the Tabqa air base after capturing it from the Syrian government in Raqqa, Syria AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Fighters from extremist Islamic State group parade in Raqqa, Syria AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis kidnapping A video uploaded to social networks shows men in underwear being marched barefoot along a desert road before being allegedly executed by Isis Getty Images In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis kidnapping Haruna Yukawa after his capture by Isis In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis kidnapping Khalinda Sharaf Ajour, a Yazidi, says two of her daughters were captured by Isis militants Washington Post In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Spokesperson for Isis Vice News via Youtube In pictures: The rise of Isis A pro-Isis leaflet A pro-Isis leaflet handed out on Oxford Street In London Ghaffar Hussain In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Isis Jihadists burn their passports In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis controls Syrian Aid A man collecting aid administered by Isis in Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis controls Syrian Aid A woman collecting aid administered by Isis in Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis controls Syrian Aid Local civilians queue for aid administered by Isis. Since it declared a caliphate the group has increasingly been delivering services such as healthcare, and distributing aid and free fuel In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces detain men suspected of being militants of the Isis group in Diyala province In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Mourners carry the coffin of a Shi'ite volunteer from the brigades of peace, who joined the Iraqi army and was killed during clashes with militants of the Isis group in Samarra, during his funeral in Najaf In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees An Iraqi Shiite Turkmen family fleeing the violence in the Iraqi city of Tal Afar, west of Mosul, arrives at a refugee camp on the outskirts of Arbil, in Iraq's Kurdistan region In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi A photograph made from a video by the jihadist affiliated group Furqan Media via their twitter account allegedly showing Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi delivering a sermon during Friday prayers at a mosque in Mosul. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared an Islamist caliphate in the territory under the group's control in Iraq and Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Islamic extremists destroying mosques in Iraq Shiite's Al-Qubba Husseiniya mosque explodes in Mosul In pictures: The rise of Isis Islamic extremists destroying mosques in Iraq Smoke and debris go up in the air as Shiite's Al-Qubba Husseiniya mosque explodes in Mosul. Images posted online show that Islamic extremists have destroyed at least 10 ancient shrines and Shiite mosques in territory - the city of Mosul and the town of Tal Afar - they have seized in northern Iraq in recent weeks In pictures: The rise of Isis Islamic extremists destroying mosques in Iraq A bulldozer destroys Sunni's Ahmed al-Rifai shrine and tomb in Mahlabiya district outside of Tal Afar In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces celebrate after clashes with followers of Shiite cleric Mahmoud al-Sarkhi, in front of his home in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces arrest a follower of Shiite cleric Mahmoud al-Sarkhi after clashes with his followers in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces arrest a follower of Shiite cleric Mahmoud al-Sarkhi at his home after clashes with his followers in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces arrest a follower of Shiite cleric Mahmoud al-Sarkhi after clashes with his followers in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis A vehicle burns in front of a home of a follower of Shiite cleric Mahmoud al-Sarkhi after clashes with his followers in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees An Iraqi woman holds her exhausted son as over 1000 Iraqis who have fled fighting in and around the city of Mosul and Tal Afar wait at a Kurdish checkpoint in the hopes of entering a temporary displacement camp in Khazair In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees Displaced Iraqi women hold pots as they queue to receive food during the first day of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, at an encampment for displaced Iraqis who fled from Mosul and other towns, in the Khazer area outside Irbil, north Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria A militant Islamist fighter waving a flag, cheers as he takes part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa. The fighters held the parade to celebrate their declaration of an Islamic "caliphate" after the group captured territory in neighbouring Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Isis fighters wave flags as they take part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa province Reuters In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Isis fighters travel in a vehicle as they take part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa province In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Fighters from the Isis group during a parade with a missile in Raqqa, Syria. Militants from an al-Qaida splinter group held a military parade in their stronghold in northeastern Syria, displaying U.S.-made Humvees, heavy machine guns, and missiles captured from the Iraqi army for the first time since taking over large parts of the Iraq-Syria border In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Isis fighters during a parade in Raqqa, Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Fighters from the Isis group during a parade in Raqqa, Syria. Militants from the splinter group held a military parade in their stronghold in northeastern Syria, displaying U.S.-made Humvees, heavy machine guns, and missiles captured from the Iraqi army for the first time since taking over large parts of the Iraq-Syria border In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Isis fighters hold a military parade in their stronghold in northeastern Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Isis fighters during a parade in Raqqa, Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria A member loyal to the Isis waves an Isis flag in Raqqa In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi anti-government gunmen from Sunni tribes in the western Anbar province march during a protest in Ramadi, west of Baghdad. The United Nations warned that Iraq is at a "crossroads" and appealed for restraint, as a bloody four-day wave of violence killed 195 people. The violence is the deadliest so far linked to demonstrations that broke out in Sunni areas of the Shiite-majority country more than four months ago, raising fears of a return to all-out sectarian conflict In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces hold up a flag of the Isis group they captured during an operation to regain control of Dallah Abbas north of Baqouba, the capital of Iraq's Diyala province, 35 miles (60 kilometers) northeast of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Iraq Isis fighters parade in the northern city of Mosul In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Volunteers, who have joined the Iraqi army to fight against the predominantly Sunni militants from the radical Isis group, demonstrate their skills during a graduation ceremony after completing their field training in Najaf In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Kurdish Peshmerga troops fire a cannon during clashes with militants of the Isis group in Jalawla, Diyala province In pictures: The rise of Isis Lieutenant General Qassem Atta speaks during a press conference Iraqi Prime Minister's security spokesman, Lieutenant General Qassem Atta speaks during a press conference about the latest military development in Iraq, in the capital Baghdad. Iraqi forces pressed a campaign to retake militant-held Tikrit, clashing with jihadist-led Sunni militants nearby and pounding positions inside the city with air strikes in their biggest counter-offensive so far In pictures: The rise of Isis A police station building destroyed by Isis fighters An exterior view of a police station building destroyed by gunmen in Mosul city, northern Iraq. Iraq's new parliament is expected to convene to start the process of setting up a new government, despite deepening political rifts and an ongoing Islamist-led insurgency. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani issued a decree inviting the new House of Representatives to meet and form a new government In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Iraq Smoke billows from an area controlled by the Isis between the Iraqi towns of Naojul and Tuz Khurmatu, both located north of the capital Baghdad, as Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces take part in an operation to repel the Sunni militants In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees An elderly Iraqi woman is helped into a temporary displacement camp for Iraqis caught-up in the fighting in and around the city of Mosul in Khazair In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees An Iraqi Christian woman fleeing the violence in the village of Qaraqush, about 30 kms east of the northern province of Nineveh, cries upon her arrival at a community center in the Kurdish city of Arbil in Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees An Iraqi woman, who fled with her family from the northern city of Mosul, prays with a copy of the Quran AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Iraq The body of an Isis militant killed during clashes with Iraqi security forces on the outskirts of the city of Samarra Reuters In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi civilians inspect the damage at a market after an air strike by the Iraqi army in central Mosul EPA In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Members of the Al-Abbas brigades, who volunteered to protect the Shiite Muslim holy sites in Karbala against Sunni militants fighting the Baghdad government, parade in the streets of the city AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Shia tribesmen gather in Baghdad to take up arms against Sunni insurgents marching on the capital. Thousands have volunteered to bolster defences AFP/Getty In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis A van carrying volunteers joining Iraqi security forces against Jihadist militants. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced the Iraqi government would arm and equip civilians who volunteered to fight AFP/Getty In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Fighters of the Isis group parade in a commandeered Iraqi security forces armored vehicle down a main road at the northern city of Mosul In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq An Islamist fighter, identified as Abu Muthanna al-Yemeni from Britain (R), speaks in this still image taken undated video shot at an unknown location and uploaded to a social media website. Five Islamist fighters identified as Australian and British nationals have called on Muslims to join the wars in Syria and Iraq, in the new video released by the Isis In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Al-Qaida inspired militants stand with captured Iraqi Army Humvee at a checkpoint belonging to Iraqi Army outside Beiji refinery some 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of Baghdad. The fighting at Beiji comes as Iraq has asked the U.S. for airstrikes targeting the militants from the Isis group. While U.S. President Barack Obama has not fully ruled out the possibility of launching airstrikes, such action is not imminent in part because intelligence agencies have been unable to identify clear targets on the ground, officials said In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants attacked Iraq's main oil refinein Baiji as they pressed an offensive that has seen them capture swathes of territory, a manager and a refinery employee said In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants from the Isis group parading with their weapons in the northern city of Baiji in the in Salaheddin province In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq A smoke rises after an attack by Isis militants on the country's largest oil refinery in Beiji, some 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of the capital, Baghdad. Iraqi security forces battled insurgents targeting the country's main oil refinery and said they regained partial control of a city near the Syrian border, trying to blunt an offensive by Sunni militants who diplomats fear may have also seized some 100 foreign workers In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants of the Isis group stand next to captured vehicles left behind by Iraqi security forces at an unknown location in the Salaheddin province. For militant groups, the fight over public perception can be even more important than actual combat, turning military losses into propaganda victories and battlefield successes into powerful tools to build support for the cause In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq An injured fighter (C) from the Isis group after a battle with Iraqi soldiers at an undisclosed location near the border between Syria and Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Fighters from the Isis aiming at advancing Iraqi troops at an undisclosed location near the border between Syria and Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Fighters from the Isis group taking position at an undisclosed location near the border between Syria and Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Fighters from the Isis group inspecting vehicles of the Iraqi army after they were seized at an undisclosed location near the border between Syria and Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq One Iraqi captive, a corporal, is reluctant to say the slogan, and has to be shouted at repeatedly before he obeys Sky News In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Iraqi captives held by the extremists Sky News In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Iraqi captives held by the extremists Sky News In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants of the Isis group force captured Iraqi security forces members to the transport In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants of the Isis group transporting dozens of captured Iraqi security forces members to an unknown location in the Salaheddin province ahead of executing them In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq A major offensive spearheaded by Isis but also involving supporters of executed dictator Saddam Hussein has overrun all of one province and chunks of three others In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants of the Isis group executing dozens of captured Iraqi security forces members at an unknown location in the Salaheddin province In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Isis militants taking position at a Iraqi border post on the Syrian-Iraqi border between the Iraqi Nineveh province and the Syrian town of Al-Hasakah In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Isis rebels show their flag after seizing an army post AFP/Getty Images In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Isis militants waving an Islamist flag after the seizure of an Iraqi army checkpoint in Salahuddin Getty Images In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Demonstrators chant slogans as they carry al-Qaida flags in front of the provincial government headquarters in Mosul, 225 miles (360 kilometers) northwest of Baghdad. In the week since it captured Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul, a Muslim extremist group has tried to win over residents and has stopped short of widely enforcing its strict brand of Islamic law, residents say. Churches remain unharmed and street cleaners are back at work The true number of Isis fighters killed by their own group is difficult to determine. So too is the real number of civilian casualties which is likely to be far higher than UN estimates. Isil [Isis] has also killed members of its own group for refusing to fight or acting against its interests... said the UN report. The murders were frequently conducted in public spaces. [Isis] displayed the bodies of its own members whom it had murdered as a deterrent to other members who might consider disobeying orders or otherwise acting against its interests. On 29 June, weeks after Iraqi security forces and Shia militias seized Tikrit from Isis, a member of the jihadist groups morality police, al-Hisbah, was killed by a firing squad in Mosul. That came a day after Isis killed 32 of its own jihadists in Ramadi and Fallujah for passing intelligence to Iraqi forces. Ramadi was retaken by Iraqi forces in December. Iraq: Army liberates dozens of families in Ramadi as IS are pushed out Also in late June, a member of the Mosul administrative (Shura) committee, named as Abu Usman al-Hassan, who it was claimed was the representative in Mosul of the Isis caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was executed at al-Ghizlani military base in the city for conspiring against the caliphate state. Then, in August, Isis executed six of its members for fleeing a battle in Ramadi in Anbar province. The UN said that by September, some 34 fighters from an insurgent group once classified as an Isis ally had been executed after being found guilty of apostasy and betrayal. On 16 September Isis killed seven women from its al-Khansa Battalion for disobeying orders. The victims were shot and their bodies were left at the entrance of the Battalions headquarters in central Mosul as an example of what happens to those who disobey its orders. As Isis ranks have thinned through battlefield losses, desertions and the executions of suspected traitors, its recruitment has become increasingly desperate. On 21 June, there were widespread reports that Isis had abducted several hundred children aged between nine and 15 from various districts of Mosul. The children, it was claimed, were forced to undergo training on Mosuls outskirts. Children who refused to obey orders were flogged, tortured or, it was claimed by Kurdish authorities, raped. The UN said that the number of abducted children had been between 800 and 900. The children were divided into two groups: those aged between five and 10 were placed in a religious education camp; and those aged between 10 and 15 were forced into military training, the UN said. This report lays bare the enduring suffering of civilians in Iraq and starkly illustrates what Iraqi refugees are attempting to escape when they flee, said the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Raad al-Hussein. This is the horror they face in their homelands. Many of Isiss killings last summer were strategic. On 11 July, a former candidate from Qayyara for the Ninevah provincial council elections was shot in the head at al-Ghizlani. A day later, another candidate for the council elections was similarly killed on Mosuls outskirts. In August, three female candidates for parliamentary elections from the Mutahidoun Alliance, Iraqs largest Sunni bloc, were abducted from their homes in Mosul. All three women were shot in the head. Sister of IS terror suspect On 24 July, some 53 employees of the Independent High Electoral Commission in Iraq were abducted in Mosul. The next morning, 28 of those abducted, including 11 women, were executed. The jihadist group reserved particular cruelty for those it viewed as assisting the Iraqi government. In June, Isis claimed to have murdered 16 men in three batches by a rocket-propelled grenade fired at a car in which some men were placed, by placing others in a cage that was submerged into water, and by decapitating the remainder with explosives. The UN report said the men had been accused of co-operating with the Iraqi army. The UN said Isis had by last summer enslaved an estimated 3,500 people in Iraq, primarily women and children from the Yazidi community as the Islamists have faced setbacks. As the children were taken to become Isis fighters, Yazidi women were sold as sex slaves, fetching up to 1,400. Nineteen woman were killed in Mosul over two days at the beginning of August, after they refused to have sex with Isis men. It was claimed that Islamists had been rewarded with the widows of executed men to motivate them to continue fighting. The UN report said: On 21 June, in Mosul, it was reported that Isis had announced a Koran memorisation competition in Mosul, stating that the first three winners would reportedly receive sex slaves as prizes. For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Breaking News email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} They are among the richest people on earth, have won plaudits for their fight to eradicate some of the worlds deadliest and prolific killers, and donated billions to better educate and feed the poorest on the planet. Despite this, Bill and Melinda Gates are facing calls for their philanthropic Foundation, through which they have donated billions worldwide, to be subject to an international investigation, according to a controversial new report. Far from a neutral charitable strategy, the Gates Foundation is about benefiting big business, especially in agriculture and health, through its ideological commitment to promote neoliberal economic policies and corporate globalisation, according to the report published by the campaign group Global Justice Now. Its influence is dangerously skewing aid priorities, the group says. The world is being sold a myth that private philanthropy holds many of the solutions to the worlds problems, when in fact it is pushing the world in many wrong directions, the report claims. The Gates Foundation is being allowed to speak too loudly, and too many actors in international development are falling into line with the foundations misguided priorities. The group accuse the Gates Foundation of using its massive financial clout to silence international development experts and groups which would criticise its practices. Bill Gates, the report claims, who has regular access to world leaders and is in effect personally bankrolling hundreds of universities, international organisations, NGOs and media outlets, has become the single most influential voice in international development. Bill and Melinda Gates' foundation is accused of promoting private healthcare concerns (Getty) (Getty Images) At worst, the reports authors claims, the Gates Foundation often appears to be a massive, vertically integrated multinational corporation, controlling every step in a supply chain that reaches from its Seattle-based boardroom to millions of end-users in the villages of African and south Asia. Foundation's focus The Foundation is the worlds biggest funder of GM crop research, the report claims. Huge corporations including Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer and Dupont, are major beneficiaries of its projects. The Gates Foundation is, in effect, preparing the ground for them to access new profitable markets in hitherto closed-off developing countries, especially in Africa. The Foundation is especially pushing for the adoption of GM in Africa, it warns. One project aims to bring GM vitamin A-enriched bananas to Uganda. But field trials have been branded biopiracy since the original gene being used to develop these super-bananas was collected in Papua New Guinea. Lauded for their work in eradicating polio and malaria, amongst other diseases, the report accuses the Gates Foundation of funding privatised health and promoting an increased role for private education providers. The danger, the report says, is that it turns basic needs into commodities controlled by the market; such services are likely to be accessed mainly by the rich. It is critical of emphasis on single diseases and points out that this is being done at the neglect of basic health care systems. It also points out that during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, basic healthcare collapsed completely in parts of the region. The report is critical of the close working relations between the Foundation and major international pharmaceutical corporations and points out many of the same firms have been criticised for their over-pricing of life-saving vaccines. It warns that philanthropic influence is skewing health priorities towards the interests of wealthy donors (vaccines) rather than resilient health systems. Video: Bill Gates' goal to eradicate polio It accuses the Gates Foundation of promoting specific priorities through agriculture grants, some of which undermine the interests of small farmers. These include promoting industrial agriculture, use of chemical fertilisers and expensive, patented seeds, and a focus on genetically modified seeds. Much of the Foundations work appears to bypass local knowledge, the report claims. The criticism echoes the accusations made by the Indian scientist Vandana Shiva who called the Gates Foundation the greatest threat to farmers in the developing world. Recommended Read more Five predictions Bill Gates made about the future that came true The Foundations emphasis on technological solutions often ignores real solutions involving social and economic justice, it argues. This cannot be given by donors in the form of a climate-resilient crop or cheaper smartphone, but must be about systemic social, economic and political change issues not represented in the foundations funding priorities. It calls for the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development to carry out an inquiry into the foundations work on top of a British Parliamentary inquiry. The Gates Foundation said the report misrepresented its work. Our mission is to improve quality of life for the worlds poorest people. This is a complex challenge, and solving it will require a range of approaches as well as the collaboration of governments, NGOs, academic institutions, for-profit companies and philanthropic organisations. Governments are uniquely positioned to provide the leadership and resources necessary to address structural inequalities and ensure that the right solutions reach those most in need. The private sector has access to innovations for example, in science, medicine and technology that can save lives. And we believe that the role of philanthropy is to take risks where others cant or wont. All its work was guided by its partners, it insisted. It refuted claims that it was unaccountable, stating that it was one of the first to join the International Aid Transparency Initiative as well as reporting to the OECD. Gabriella Stern, spokeswoman for the foundation, said: For us, results are measured in lives saved and so we will continue to work with governments, non-profits, businesses, and other philanthropists to tackle the complex issues surrounding extreme poverty. The Gates Foundation has spent around $34.5bn since its inception, driven by its mission to help people around the world lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty. This report rehashes a series of unfounded claims that have been made by others and found wanting. Much remains to be done but we are confident that the world is making progress. Working together over the last 15 years, the world has cut extreme poverty, child mortality and malaria deaths by half, reduced maternal mortality by nearly 50 percent, and driven new HIV infections down by 40 per cent. Sign up to Simon Calders free travel email for weekly expert advice and money-saving discounts Get Simon Calders Travel email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the Simon Calders Travel email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Holiday options for single travellers are constantly expanding; so whether you're unattached, have different travelling tastes to your partner, or simply prefer to go it alone, these trips should do the trick. Seek out a specialist Single supplements and dining alone are the bugbears of solo travellers, but both can be avoided by booking through specialist companies. Guests with Friendship Travel (0844 800 2770; friendshiptravel.com) enjoy double rooms to themselves with no supplement, plus hosted communal dinners. Its Houseparty Holidays, which block-book small hotels for exclusive use, are bestsellers; a week in a Turkish hillside retreat above Oludeniz this summer costs from 495pp, including flights and evening meals. Similarly, Travel One (020 7929 7773; travelone.co.uk) has a three-night Northern Lights tour to Iceland from 1,099pp, including flights, accommodation, group dinners and sightseeing. Have an adventure It's not just the specialists that serve the solo market. Around half of those taking small group tours with Explore (01252 883 957; explore.co.uk) travel by themselves. That figure rises to almost 100 per cent for Secret Compass (020 7096 8428; secretcompass.com), whose more challenging expeditions visit Afghanistan, Armenia and other hard-to-reach locations and don't incur single supplements. Planned by former British Army personnel, these trips take adventuring to another level. Sailing through Scotland's Western Isles A 15-day journey through Madagascar takes in trekking, rafting and mountain peaks and costs 2,599pp, excluding flights but inclusive of meals, guides, accommodation and equipment. Class act Holidays that hone new skills are a big draw for single travellers. More than 70 per cent of guests with Skyros Holidays (01983 865 566; skyros.com) journey alone to the eponymous Greek island for workshops in yoga, painting, creative writing, windsurfing, comedy and more. Classes mostly take place outdoors on terraces overlooking the sea, with participants enjoying the flexibility to do as much or as little as they please. Prices start from 595pp for seven nights' full board, twin-share accommodation and a choice of three classes per day. Flights not included. Sail away Cruise lines have been somewhat slow to accommodate solo travellers' needs, but some are ahead of the curve. The Majestic Line (01369 707 951; themajesticline.co.uk) offers small-ship voyages through Scotland's Western Isles, with meals served communally and two double cabins reserved, supplement-free, for single use. A 10-night sail from Oban currently costs 4,050pp, full board. Until March, Hurtigruten (020 8846 2666; hurtigruten.co.uk) is waiving single supplements on its Norwegian coastal cruises. A seven-day voyage departing Bergen on 31 January costs from 758pp full board, with flights and transfers from 395pp extra. All about you With a focus on personal improvement, spa and wellness holidays are perfect for those going solo. For wellness with wall-to-wall sunshine, try The BodyHoliday's September Solos programme. The resort pairs daily spa treatments with hosted meals and classes in a gorgeous St Lucia setting. A week all-inclusive costs from 2,159pp, with flights, through Kenwood Travel (020 7749 9220; kenwoodtravel.co.uk). Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} The Government has been allegedly caught fiddling with figures in order to push through austerity on exaggerated and misleading premises yet again. Its hardly a surprise from a Government which distorts its own figures and definitions so consistently, its a wonder that ministers can ever keep track of them all. This time, the statistics under the spotlight are those cited by health secretary Jeremy Hunt in his core argument for introducing changes to Junior Doctors contracts. Hunt claims that people are 20 per cent more likely to die of a stroke on a weekend, something which he believes his seven day NHS proposal would change. Its a shocking thought that, within one of the most sophisticated medical infrastructures in the world, life or death can depend on the day of the week in which you have the misfortune to fall ill. However, there is growing concern that this claim simply isnt true: 59 senior medical professors and doctors wrote a letter to The Times, arguing that the statistic has been distorted for political end. They claim that the government has been using inappropriate and out of date data to misrepresent statistics on stroke care. In fact, they feared that the use of these statistics was actually putting more lives in danger as people suffering from a stroke on the weekend may now wait until the following Monday to seek help, risking severe harm to their health. UCL Professor David Curtis, who specialises in stroke care and has authored more than 200 reports on the matter, has been most direct in his response, directly accusing the health secretary of lying. Its like the dodgy dossier in Iraq, he says. Hes trying to find excuses for his actions and he knows he doesnt really have any. Hunt, naturally, denies the accusations and wrote on Twitter: Intelligent transparency not just thoughtless [sic] pumping out statistics the key. But its not the first time that this Government has been accused of distorting facts, figures and definitions in order to push through the case for cuts. A look at the Conservatives time in government reveals a disturbing track record of such troubling and underhand tactics. On 30 June last year, the governments own child poverty watchdog announced that the Conservatives policies would help push a million more children into poverty over the course of this parliament. The following day, it was reported that Iain Duncan Smith had announced that the definition of child poverty was to be changed. He argued that the measurement criteria was flawed and the government would alter what poverty indicators could be taken into account. Recommended Read more Duncan Jones shares powerful tribute to David Bowie And in July 2015, the Chancellor, George Osborne, announced his living wage for Britain. However, as the Living Wage Foundation was forced to politely point out, the wage in question wasnt actually a living wage by their formal definition at all. While Osborne was pledging 7.20 per hour, the living wage rate calculated by the very organisation that popularised the term stands at 7.85 per hour. The Governments many claims to support affordable housing has also come under pressure amid its refusal to pin down precisely what this pleasant buzzword meant. It was revealed that under their definition, the average Londoner was deemed capable of affording 400 per week rent; a colossal sum which no reasonable person could have believed was implied by the term "affordable". Statistics and definitions are hard to get passionate about. For all but the most committed political anoraks, such facts and figures may appear painfully dull or intimidatingly complicated. I fear the Government is relying on apathy over official figures to plump up their own arguments and plough on with their campaign of attacks on working class and vulnerable people in the name of austerity. Junior doctors message to Jeremy Hunt It's easy for the Conservatives to act like they're governing well when they're constantly changing the goalposts and then declaring victory, but its a deeply dishonest and self-deluded way of going about politics. In one sense, its almost reassuring; any twisting of the facts suggests that even the Government knows its policies simply dont stand up to scrutiny. However, the possibility that the Tories know their policies are causing considerable hurt to all but the richest in our society, but simply do not care, is even more disturbing. Opinion / Columnist The pessimistic views championed by the so-called renowned academics, who are predicting a leadership crisis in the event that, President Robert Mugabe falls incapacitated, are merely prophets of doom who lack appreciation of our supreme law.Zimbabwe is a constitutional democracy in which every national decision is based on the provisions of the national constitution which is the datum peg from which all legal issues are derived. Constitutional democracy is a system of government in which political authority, that is, the power of government is defined, limited, and/or distributed by a body of fundamental law called "the Constitution", and the electorate which is the general voting populace. It has effective means of dealing with all issues according to the well defined legal framework.In a constitutional democracy, there is clear separation of powers as distinctly shown by the three pillars of the state, viz; The Legislature, The Judiciary, The ExecutiveThere are cardinal essential characteristics and principles of constitutional democracy which makes it an antithesis of arbitrary rule. It is characterized by a popular sovereignty. The people are the ultimate source of the authority of the government which derives its right to govern from their consent, particularly through elections and referendums.This aspect enables recognition of the majority rule, and the minority rights which are respected in the interest of all nationalities. And there is a limited government power due to the existence of statutes which are derived from the mother law, the constitution.The state operates under institutional and procedural limitations on powers. Some of these institutional and procedural devices limit the powers of government. These may include the separated and shared powers among different agencies or branches of government. Each agency or branch has a primary responsibility for certain functions such as the legislative, the executive, and the judicial functions. However, each branch also shares these functions with the other branches which make it a functioning system.Checks and balances are done by different agencies or branches of government which are endowed with adequate powers to check the powers of other branches. For instance, checks and balances may include the power of judicial courts to declare actions of other the branches of government to be at variants with some constitution provisions, and therefore, can be declared null and void. This is the true case obtaining in this country. This reality dispels the sensational sentiments spewed by critics who wrongly label Zimbabwe as a dictatorial regime.The individual rights to life, liberty, and property are protected by the guarantee of due process of law as enshrined in the constitution. This country is never run along dictatorial or tyrannical lines as perceived by some blunt minded critics that mislead the generality of the public.The holding of regular elections as per the provisions of the electoral laws as extrapolated from the constitution, insure that key positions in government, including the presidential post, will be contested at periodic intervals, and that the transfer of governmental authority is accomplished in a peaceful and orderly process in accordance with the laws of the country.The Zimbabwean context is governed by the concept of "constitutionalism," which relates to how political authority is defined, limited, and distributed by law. The Constitution is the basic law of the political community, which enacts, and regulates the power of government as well as determining the degree and manner of distribution of political authority among the major organs like the government ministries, parliament, cabinet and the presidium, as well as the courts of legal justice.The local modern constitutional democracy also paves way for representative democracy which relates to who holds and exercises political authority, that is, members of parliament that are voted by the constituents. The electoral laws determine how political authority is acquired, and retained either directly or indirectly as the result of victory in free and competitive elections, and the voting citizenry, through participation in free and competitive elections held periodically, can effectively control their elected representatives (members of parliament). The citizens have the capacity to hold them responsible for the consequences of their exercise of governmental power.This clarification dismisses Professor Shadreck Guto of the University of South Africa, who asserts that, "Zimbabwe will face a leadership crisis because Mugabe's incapacitation will affect the security sector, judiciary and other institutions which have been under his firm control since independence." The rule of law takes toll if ever such an unfortunate incident takes place. There is no guess work as the laws spell out clearly the procedures to be followed. The nation is assured that there is no legal vacuum to that effect, and there is no need pay hid to Professor Guto's sensational claims which are inflammatory in nature.Professor Guto needs to read through the whole national constitution. This would enable him to have an in depth appreciation of the laws, and come up with a refreshed mind which can enhance him to critique matters accordingly without misleading the generality of the public. Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} A YouGov poll has revealed that 44 per cent of British people were proud of the British Empire whilst only 21 per cent regretted that it had ever happened. Worryingly Prime Minister David Cameron echoed this sentiment noting in 2013 ahead of a visit to India: I think there is an enormous amount to be proud of in what the British Empire did and was responsible for. This is clearly reflective of the British public's mood given the surprising - or perhaps not so surprising - YouGov results. Such a sentiment is indicative of a post-colonial melancholy that has become common place in recent decades. Britain's colonial legacies are not widely discussed within the UK but include a bloody toll of human rights violations. When we are taught about Empire we are rarely given the gruesome details that counter the idea of Britain being a benevolent Imperial power. This is partly due to a whitewashing of history curriculums. This was only exacerbated by attempts from Michael Gove to turn the history syllabus into nationalist propaganda. To add to this views put forward by pop historians such as Andrew Roberts serve to glorify Empire. Recently the British government had to pay reparations totalling 20 million to Kenyans who were tortured during the Mau Mau uprisings in the 1950s. Torture overseen and perpetrated by the British involved the rape, castration and systematic beating of Mau Mau fighters. This is just the tip of the iceberg. The British were utilising concentration camps as early as the 1900s during the Boer War to control the South African population. At least 28,000 women and children died in these concentration camps. The situation is not helped by a political class who refuse to acknowledge Britain's colonial past. David Cameron ruled out apologizing for the slave trade and the Amritsar massacre. This is in spite of the fact that Cameron and his wife have ancestral links to the slave trade. Britain undoubtedly did rule large parts of the world, but this is not something to be lauded, but rather something that should be bore with a great sense of shame. There is no escaping the fact that Empire was motivated and maintained by racism. This racism still lives on today for many people of colour. The misunderstanding of Britain's horrific colonial history is due to an unwillingness talk honestly and openly about our past. It is about time we put this on the agenda for schools and popular culture. Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} Walking into the Jungle five days ago I instantly felt ashamed. I thought that I was walking into a dark and dangerous place. That I was walking into hell. In truth it's much more like purgatory. These people are stuck. They can't go back. They can't go forward. So they wait. We, the British public, are labouring under some fundamental misapprehensions. The Jungle is not a refugee camp. It is a camp full of refugees and the distinction is important. There are over 15 nationalities peacefully (in the main) coexisting. In a refugee camp there are usually two nationalities, at max. There are over 70 restaurants and cafes in the jungle, countless small shops selling toothpaste, toilet paper and chocolate. There are two churches, three mosques, a theatre, a library and a womens centre. What lives in the Jungle? asks Ali, the 42-year-old representative of the Syrian community, Animals live in the Jungle. Not humans, he says. We are just numbers to the West. Who cares? No one. Ali has a Bachelors degree in economics and a Masters in business. Well educated and middle-class, he was a successful businessman who owned a chain of supermarkets in Syria. For the last six months hes lived in the sort of dehumanising squalor that I found hard to grasp. I tell myself that I arrived yesterday, he says. I upload that story to my brain every morning and it keeps me sane. Ive seen a lot of people lose their minds in this place. Its a very unhealthy environment. Calais refugees share personal stories Ali tells me that last week he and other community leaders met for the first time with representatives of the United Nations High Commissioner For Refugees (UNHCR). The UNHCR informed the community leaders that they still had no plan of what to do about the refugee crisis. That they had no idea what would happen to the 5000+ residents of the jungle. The UNHCR were apologetic, he adds. But talk is cheap and winter with its sub-zero temperatures, is here, now. The French authorities have repeatedly used tear gas and rubber bullets on the camps members. Even heavily pregnant women and minors, the most vulnerable, have been victims, he tells me. He closed the meeting with a plea to the UNHCR, If you cant help us, please dont hurt us. There are estimates of over 500 former British army interpreters in the Jungle who have fled their homes after our armed forces withdrew from Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. These men, who actively assisted our armed forces are surely owed better than this by our society. How is the role these brave men played in our recent wars any different from that of the Gurkhas whom we venerate? There is a proud tradition in the Conservative Party of honouring the debt that service with our army brings and currently it is not being paid. A number of opposition MPs have made the trip but not a single Conservative backbencher or minister has ever set foot inside the camp to have their own preconceived notions shattered. Its a disgrace. I respected the British Officers I served with, says Mohammed Nabi, a 33 years old Afghan who served as an interpreter for six years. But now I am nothing. Now I have no utility. To stay sane Mohammed tells me he does as much for other members of the camp as he can. Even setting up a Twitter account and moderating a Facebook group called Refugee Voices2015. Mohammeds English is immaculate. We discuss Charlie Brooker and the new angle Justin Bieber is taking. It breaks my heart. Mohammed shared a tent for three months with 15-year-old minor, Masud, who despite a legitimate claim to asylum in the UK was forced, out of desperation, to risk his life and suffocated to death in a lorry, prompting a media storm. I cant bear to talk about it in depth and I sense neither can Mohammed anymore. Unaccompanied minors and former British army interpreters may eventually be granted entry to the UK but for the rest of those stuck in the Jungle the future is dire. Momentum is building and as winter sets in public opinion is changing. But unless our government acts now the majority of the people I met may well be dead within the next couple of months. The political question of how to deal with the global refugee crisis is a big one, but the personal question we should all be asking ourselves couldnt be simpler: How do you want to treat people? Jolyon Rubinstein is a BAFTA winning filmmaker, writer and performer. If you would like to donate to building a shelter in Calais please click here. Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the View from Westminster email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} His hands grasping the podium, Donald Trump was subdued last night in Ames, Iowa. He spoke in strangely hushed tones as he introduced the celebrity mama grisly, and former vice presidential candidate for the GOP Sarah Palin. Palin roared into a rambling speech. To her it was a dose of hard, honest truth. To anyone familiar with the rules of grammar and syntax it sounded like a drunken rant. She hit on the familiar theme that has become her trademark. Trump was the right man for the presidency because he told unvarnished truths, he was a successful businessman, he thumbed his nose at elites, and he could kick ass. He would support the military. He is from the private sector. Not a politician, she said, followed by, can I get a hallelujah?! When Palin and Trump mock the media, rail against the establishment, or challenge intellectuals, their supporters shout back a hearty, ear-shattering HALLELUJAH!! Millions of Americans believe, perhaps as never before, that the wisdom of experts, the pronouncements of career politicians in DC, and the accumulated knowledge of science are wrong and worth fighting against. Intellectuals and weak officials had made the USA ineffective and insecure. To win that war on terrorism, Palin shouted from the stage to Tea Partiers in a Nashville banquet hall in 2010, we need a commander-in-chief, not a professor of law standing at the lectern. In Iowa last night she elaborated a little more to shouts of support: Are you ready for a commander-in-chief . . . you ready for a commander-in-chief who will let our warriors do their job and go kick ISIS' ass? Diplomacy is more about chest thumping and fist shaking, and the promise of carpet bombing, than it is about knowing anything about other cultures, societies, and the complicated dynamics of geopolitics. Why would anyone want to venture into all that boring, academic work, when a good old ass-kicking would do the trick? Trump and Palin apply this same populist, plain folk logic to almost every political issue, from immigration to the economy. Build a wall around the southern border, Trump blusters, and make Mexico pay for it. Palin assures her supporters that anyone who can manage their own household finances could manage the US economy. In this alternate universe of knowledge denial: vaccinations cause autism; homosexuals can be repaired and made straight; global warming is a hoax; and God created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago. Why does knowledge denial thrive in the US as it does? In large part it has something to do with the shouting-head, conspiracy theory political culture that the Republican Party, the Tea Party, AM radio shows, and Fox News have fostered. There is another major cause as well. Conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists - accounting for roughly 22 per cent of the nations population - have embraced anti-intellectualism as few other large groups could. Millions of right wing believers educate their children in their homes with fundamentalist curriculum, live in a kind of isolated parallel culture in their churches, and send their teenage sons and daughters to Christian colleges and universities that help complete the circle. Trump, a thrice-married, prophet of mammon, has positioned himself very well with evangelicals and all those who think conventional wisdom is bunk. A recent New York Times/CBS News poll has showed that Trump has garnered 42 per cent of evangelical support. Commenting on Palin yesterday, Trump said, When I heard that she was going to endorse me, I was so honored. You have no idea how honored. Indeed. With high favorability ratings among the faithful, Palin is the perfect pitchwoman for Trump and his populist, know-nothing GOP reality show. Randall Stephens is a Reader in History and American Studies at Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne. He is the author of The Fire Spreads: Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South (Harvard University Press, 2008) and The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age, co-authored with Karl Giberson (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press). Time and time again race riding has proven to be one of the most dangerous of all sports, yet if you ask any jockey if they are prepared to give it all up, you are guaranteed to get a negative response. It is their life, there is no doubt. Never for one minute, however, did the immensely talented and multiple-Cheltenham winning jockey, Robbie McNamara, think that this decision would be made for him. However, a serious fall in a handicap hurdle at Wexford in April of last year left him with no feeling in his lower body. Robbie was one of so many jockeys going about their daily business that day, but his career in the saddle ended abruptly, in the blink of an eye. Now nine months later, instead of wallowing in the past and reflecting on what could have been, the Newbridge-based Limerick native is busy moving on with his life and in the coming weeks is preparing to do a stint with the Irish National Stud ahead of what will be a busy breeding season at the Co Kildare farm. "Life is good at the moment," said the 27-year-old. "My time at the National Rehabilitation Centre is over and I'm doing a bit of walking exercise myself using my new walking bars and I'm also in the gym a lot." In the days, weeks and months after that horrific fall on April 10 last, Robbie suffered immense emotional trauma in a bid to cope with the severity of his spinal injuries which left him paralysed from the waist down and confined to a wheelchair. He suffered a litany of injuries including eight broken ribs, a punctured lung, multiple fractured vertebrae, internal bleeding in his chest and stomach, in addition to the spinal injuries that required titanium rods to be inserted each side of his spine.. However, just like his first cousin John Thomas McNamara and fellow jockeys Jonjo Bright and Shane Broderick, who also suffered career-ending falls, Robbie has shown immense strength and courage. The decision to commence a career in training later this year leaves people in no doubt about his intention to succeed in the next stage of his life. He also recently moved to get back behind the wheel in his newly-adapted car. "Training is something I've always wanted to do as well," said Robbie, who is now set to follow in the footsteps of his older brother Andrew who hung up his boots last August. Their cousin, JT, who is paralysed from the neck down following a fall in Cheltenham in 2013, is already carving out a new career as a trainer from his home in Croom, Co Limerick. "I've already seen a yard I like on the Curragh and I hope to start picking up horses during the sales during the summer," Robbie added. When injuries either end their careers or put them on hold, jockeys such as Robbie are most fortunate to have the financial support of the Irish Injured Jockeys' Fund and those overseen by The Turf Club on the Curragh. Set up in 2014, the Irish Injured Jockeys' Fund has to date raised 1.4m from public donations and various fundraising events held countrywide. "The Irish Injured Jockeys' Fund was originally established by the jockeys themselves as they felt that the existing charities were not active enough," commented general manager Michael Higgins. "We now rely solely on the generosity of others, and also high-profile fundraising events such as Jog for Jockeys. "Last year alone we had 22 jockeys in trouble. In addition we part-funded an exoskeleton suit to help with the rehabilitation of injured riders who have suffered paralysis. This was done in conjunction with the IRFU with whom we would hope to work closely again in the future." Jonjo Bright, who suffered severe spinal injuries from a fall in March 2013, was one of the first to try out the Ekso suit in the summer of 2014. The suit allows people who have been paralysed through injury or stroke to stand upright and through motors and hydraulics walk around and, crucially, to build up the muscles so that they can work towards the goal of walking unaided. In recent weeks the attention generated from the generous donation of 50,000 made to the Irish Injured Jockeys' Fund by Eva Maria Bucher-Haefner of Moyglare Stud again highlighted the importance of supporting such charities which are put in place for these jockeys who risk their lives every time they head out onto the racetrack. The donation came from prize-money won earlier this year by Forgotten Rules who, with Robbie in the saddle, made a winning debut at Punchestown in the spring of 2014. "It was through Pat Smullen I heard about the organisation, though to be honest, I never expected it to affect me as closely as it did this last spring," Ms Bucher-Haefner said of Robbie's accident. "We need to look after our own," she added. "The priority after any accident is that the injured jockey receives immediate care and support to remove the worry for both themselves and their families, and hence be able to face the future with optimism. Responsibility "We are a very wealthy business and the onus is on us all, it is our responsibility, to make sure that the people that contribute so much are looked after in their time of need." In the past fortnight alone Robbie has received new walking aid bars thanks to the continued support of the Irish Injured Jockeys' Fund, while financial assistance has also been made available to him through the Robbie McNamara Trust. Overseen by three private individuals, fundraising for the Trust is ongoing and later this month, on January 30, many of Ireland's top jockeys will gather for an event at the Killashee House Hotel outside Naas. Meanwhile, Gowran Park Racecourse has pledged to donate 5 from all full-priced admissions at the Goffs Thyestes Chase day, on Thursday, January 21, to the Irish Injured Jockeys' Fund. "The Irish Injured Jockeys' Fund has been good to me, as has the Trust," said Robbie, who also acknowledged the great work carried out by the four individual charities run by The Turf Club. The UK will hold a referendum on whether to remain in or leave the European Union possibly later this year. The May 2015 Conservative election victory gave the UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, the mandate to seek reforms of the EU and then to put the resulting package to an In/Out referendum before the end of 2017 although there will be strong pressure for an early decision once the reform package is known. The European Council meeting held a first substantive discussion on the four reform proposals that Cameron has put forward last December. It has agreed to try to reach agreement on these proposals at its next meeting in February. Tackling the entitlements of EU migrants to welfare benefits in their host country looks like the most difficult issue to resolve. Public opinion in the UK appears evenly split on the issue, although a majority still indicate they would vote to stay 'In' if Cameron succeeds in getting a significant package of reforms and decides to campaign on this platform to remain in the EU. UK withdrawal from the EU (or British exit, also called Brexit) would be a complex process given the role that EU legislation now plays in domestic legislation. The EU Treaty provides for a period of two years once a country indicates that it intends to leave the Union to negotiate a withdrawal treaty. This would set out the nature of the UK's future relationship with the EU particularly in the areas of trade, scientific cooperation, access to the single market and other issues. At the same time, the UK would need to decide what policies it wanted to put in place at home in those areas where EU policies currently play an important role. For UK farmers and the food industry, questions about future UK trade and agricultural policy in a Britain outside the EU are crucial. The UK National Farmers' Union (NFU) has produced a useful briefing document on UK farming's relationship with the EU. The NFU has not taken a 'yes' or 'no' stance ahead of the renegotiation. It points out that a full evaluation of the benefits and disadvantages of EU membership for British farmers is impossible because there is no clarity on what arrangements would be available outside the EU or what kind of agricultural policy a British Government would pursue. The EU currently contributes 2.9bn (3.8bn) to the UK via the CAP and related subsidies, accounting for 55pc of total income from farming. Owen Patterson, a former UK Minister of Agriculture and a leading member of the UK 'Leave' campaign, argued at the recent Oxford Farming Conference that the repatriation of the UK net budget contribution to the EU would allow a future British government to transfer at least as much funding to UK farmers as the CAP does now. He also argued that regulation could be greatly simplified if the UK no longer had to follow a pan-European environmental policy with common rules across all 28 member countries. The three-crop rule introduced as part of CAP greening is particularly unpopular in the UK. Phil Hogan, EU Commissioner for Agriculture, at the same conference, emphasised how much the CAP had changed in a more market-oriented direction in recent years and his commitment to simplifying rules and regulations. He pointed out that the more restrictive rules are often imposed by national governments rather than by the EU. He highlighted the value of access to the EU market for the UK and the greater clout the UK had as part of the EU in negotiating international trade agreements. Although economic arguments over whether UK farming would be better off inside or outside the UK will provide much of the detail of the forthcoming referendum debate, the outcome of the referendum will probably be decided more by the gut feelings voters have around the UK's position in the world. Alan Matthews is Professor Emeritus of European Agricultural Policy at Trinity College Dublin. Clover trials at Teagasc's Clonakilty college have the potential to increase profit by 160 per cow, but carries with it increased risks of cow mortality due to bloat. "We lost one cow out of 60 each year due to bloat during the two year trial, but we believe that with better management we can reduce that to zero on a long-term basis," said Clonakilty's farm manager, Fergal Coughlan. Avoiding turning cows out hungry onto wet paddocks with very high clover contents is key to preventing deaths, when cows tended to gorge themselves on clover-rich swards for a prolonged period before consuming water. Dosing the water system with bloat oil is the most effective way to prevent bloat, but it is important that the cows consume enough of this water to prevent the condition arising. Despite the risks, farmers at the Positive Farmers conference in Cork expressed a keen interest in adopting the plant into their grazing systems. While it has been ignored by many in recent times because of its lack of persistence in intensively farmed pastures, data showing that it can increase milk output by 784 litres and 58kg of milk solids per cow could lead to a turn around in the plant's fortunes. "It increased drymatter production by 1.9t/ha, and this has been repeated over two seasons, so it is quite reliable now," claimed Dr Brian McCarthy, who jointly presented the findings with Mr Coughlan. Management High levels of clover were present in the trial plots, at 20-70pc. However, the Teagasc researchers believe that 25pc is the ideal level to achieve. However, managing the swards required excellent grazing management, and getting the clover established without a high level of weeds was challenging. While the clover did not increase the amount of drymatter available for grazing in the first five months of the year, it consistently produced an additional 15kgDM/ha per day during June, July, August and September. Both tetraploid and diploid varieties of grass were compared in the trial, but no noticeable difference in output was recorded. Apart from bloat, the researchers also found the more open nature of the clover pastures challenging to manage during the spring, especially in wet grazing conditions. As a result, a lot of on-off grazing was carried out. There were also extra costs of 234/ha associated with the clover system in the trials, due to the cost of extra silage requirements in the early part of the year, along with bloat oil, cost of clover establishment and extra mortality. However, even after these extra costs, the additional milk sales at 29c/l allowed the clover system to out-perform the grass-only plots by 160/cow, or 440/ha. The race for the positions of deputy president and the four regional chairmen is set to intensify this week Monaghan based, Nigel Renaghan, chairman of the IFA national poultry committee is the only 'definite' on the ballot paper. Outgoing deputy president, Tim O'Leary is expected to break his silence on his intentions later today following a meeting of the Cork Central Executive last night. IFA liquid milk chairman, Teddy Cashman, a son of former IFA President, Donal Cashman (Cork), has ruled himself out because of his commitment to other involvements including the chairmanship of the National Dairy Council. The first votes in the election will be cast at Adare tomorrow night when former IFA dairy chairman, Richard Kennedy, competes for the Limerick Executive nomination for deputy president against Pallaskenry farmer, Donal O'Brien, who was outspoken on the recent pay controversy in the IFA. Connacht regional chairman, Tom Turley is being challenged for the nomination from within his own county of Galway where Bertie Roche from Abbey, Galway, was also proposed and seconded at a Galway Executive meeting last week. A ballot will be held when the executive meet on Thursday night. Mayo County Executive were meeting last night with the nomination of a candidate on the agenda and county chairman, Padraic Joyce expected to be the favoured choice. In North Leinster and Ulster, outgoing chairman Bert Stewart, who has been nominated by his own Monaghan Executive and neighbouring Cavan, says he is 'confident' of being a candidate and may be the only regional chairman unopposed. South Leinster's outgoing chairman, James Murphy has been nominated by Kilkenny and believes that he will have no difficulty in getting enough support to become a candidate. IFA business committee chairman, Tom Doyle has been nominated by Wexford and is also confident of getting the required support to contest the election. Munster's outgoing chairman, James McCarthy (Kerry) said that he is still 'considering' his position and will make a decision "within the next few days." Lobbies are being well washed down ahead of polling day The IFA has experienced a torrid few months but it is getting back to doing what it does best - lobbying. But the business of pushing agendas on behalf of members has to be a transparent exercise these days with all lobbyist organisations required to register details of any Government politicians and senior civil servants it lobbies. After an open lobbying day in Buswells Hotel in Dublin last week, the IFA said it was a major exercise detailing all contacts with ministers, Government TDs and senior public officials ahead of the registration deadline of January 21. The ICMSA said that having to upload lobbying details to the www.lobbying.ie website was an additional administrative burden. Macra has detailed a number of contacts on the website, including lobbying the Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney at its national rally. Galway branches defer decision on 'split' A final decision on a proposal by 19 branches in North Galway to form their own executive has been deferred until after the forthcoming IFA elections. Cathal Joyce, chairman of Cortoon-Lavally branch, told the Farming Independent that the scale of the county was one of the issues at the core of the concern by farmers in North Galway that their voice was not getting enough recognition at meetings. "Galway is a very big county. There are 78 IFA branches and to be honest with the best will in the world it is difficult for us to have all views aired at a meeting and some of the farmers feel that branches in the north of the county would get a better hearing if they had their own executive," he said. However, he added that "there is concern that a split in the county at this time would not help Joe Healy in his bid for the presidency. The county is fully behind him and the feeling at last week's meeting was that splitting now was not the right thing to do." Technically it is permissible within the rules of the association for a group of branches to form their own executive. Currently the Galway County Executive has the largest number of branches of any executive in the country. Predictions that milk prices will increase by 1c/l on average this year are beginning to look overly optimistic, according to some of the country's top dairy bosses. Carbery CEO Dan McSweeney said that he was "amazed" by the recent outlook posted by Teagasc. "I just couldn't understand it - I don't know what planet they are on. The market is returning less than 24c/l at the moment, and spot prices are 13-16c/l in Holland," said the west Cork-based CEO. "We were subsidising milk prices by 2-3c/l last year, but the market has weakened since then. Even though China still isn't back buying strongly, demand overall isn't too bad. It's all about [over] supply. Milk production in both Germany and Britain is up 4pc. "The talked about recovery in prices keeps getting pushed out by the likes of Rabobank. Originally it was the first half of 2016, now it's the last quarter," he said. Irish co-ops continued to sell milk powder into intervention this month, bringing the total to over 2,000t at the equivalent of 25c/l. The latest Ornua milk price index equates to 24.6c/l - 3c/l lower than the average returned by the marketing body to co-ops in 2015. "The news isn't positive, and it's very hard to see any upside in the first half of 2016. In fact, it might be more likely that there will be a further drop, so 24-25c/l is our prediction for the next six months," said Ornua's director of dairy trading and ingredients, Bernard Condon. "New Zealand's production is only back by 2-4pc, which is half the amount that was being predicted. That wouldn't be a problem, except that Europe is well up, by more than 4pc in the last quarter, so production will be up by 2.2pc in 2015, and 4.5pc in 2014. Feed prices "This was driven by quota removal, and fantastic weather and lower feed prices. Because the EU produces seven times more than the whole of New Zealand, it really counts. "In the absence of a rapid supply correction, the coming months will be difficult, and there are now some forecasts of weak prices into the second half of 2016," said Mr Condon. The Ornua director highlighted the role of a strong US dollar in maintaining a floor under EU milk prices last year, with EU exports still up in 2015 despite the absence of the Russian market that traditionally accounted for 240,000t of EU annual exports. However, Mr Condon also highlighted some positives for Irish dairy, pointing to a 14pc increase in butter consumption in the US on the back of more positive media coverage of dairy fats, and the possibility of massive growth for Kerrygold if stiff import duties were removed. "Ornua sales have increased fourfold in the US over the last number of years, and we could double or quadruple sales if a TTIP deal between the US and the EU was secured," he said. Ornua announced that it was distributing 15m in a top-up payment to its supplier co-ops following the sale of its US distribution company, DPI. One of the few Irish co-ops to buck the trend of static or falling prices over the last month is Town of Monaghan, which increased its payment by 1c/l for December milk. It leaves them 0.5c/l ahead of neighbours Lakeland Dairies, who are on 26.25c/l for December. Further south, prices are lower, with Kerry and Glanbia paying 25c/l, when the latter's 1c/l member bonus is included. Arrabawn is at 26c/l. A debt resolution advisor has warned that farmers around the country are facing difficulties after their debts were sold on by the banks to multinational property asset companies. Matt Carey, who represents many farmers, warned that asset companies often seek payment of the amounts owed as soon as they take charge of the loans. "The most difficult part of all is the lack of engagement," said Mr Carey, a former bank manager who now has a debt management services firm in Co Galway. "It is certainly very difficult if you are trying to deal with the banks at the moment." He said once the farmer falls behind on loan repayments they are transferred out of the local branch to the bank's headquarters, which makes it more difficult to bring a payment proposal. Mr Carey said many farmers he dealt with were "very scared" at that point as they were being told to sell the land they had put up as security. Joe Healy, an IFA presidential candidate, said banks and other creditors were heaping misery on vulnerable farming families struggling to repay unsustainable debts. "I have received numerous complaints over the last fortnight from farmers, and those representing them, about the manner in which they are being treated by the banks and other creditors," said Mr Healy. "These cases often move quickly to a point where a judgement is being sought against the landowner." Mr Healy said that farmers are even more exposed when the debts are sold on as asset firms are only "interested in short-term solutions". Taxation measures, guaranteed subsidy payments, and new grant levels for forestry are all recommended in a report to help boost the number of trees being planted. The in-depth report also calls for discussions between the forestry sector and the National Parks and Wildlife Service over permitting some planting in Hen Harrier special protection areas as soon as possible. The report - from the Council for Forest Research and Development, COFORD - highlighted 1.08m hectares of land with 'limited' agricultural capabilities that could be utilised for forestry plantations. It notes that farmers "seem to be unwilling to afforest", despite returns from forestry that are comparable to cattle and sheep farming. When land that is subject to environmental constraints is excluded, the area being targeted falls to 1.08m hectares. Some 49pc of this is being currently used for cattle, 18pc for dairy, 27pc for sheep, 2pc for tillage and 4pc in mixed livestock farming. Minister of State for forestry, Tom Hayes, said the report showed there was a major land asset in Ireland that was "suitable to support an increase in forest cover". With forestry being touted as a vital contribution to the farm sector's efforts to minimise greenhouse gas emissions, Mr Hayes said they would be examining the 28 recommendations in the report to work towards "restoring the national forest resource". However, he noted that there were already "attractive grant aid and premium payments" in place for landowners. The IFA Farm forestry chair Michael Fleming urged the minister to adopt the recommendation to assess the suitability of land in productive capacity to grow timber as a matter of urgency. Mr Fleming said this would open up more productive marginal land that has been restricted from the Afforestation Programme since 2010. Marginal land "The report estimates that there are nearly 180,000ha of productive marginal land that have a yield class greater than 14 - a requirement of the Afforestation Scheme - that is not currently farmed. It is this land base that we need to be targeting to achieve our Afforestation Programme and maximise farm incomes," said Mr Fleming. The 'Site Classification' system recommended in the report examines the site suitability for afforestation, using information on soil and vegetation to determine productivity. Mr Fleming urged farmers to consider forestry as a potential option for their land and to examine the available grants and premiums. He also highlighted beneficial changes in the last Budget on forestry income. "The report also identifies 1.8m hectares of land that are classified as being "limited" for agriculture but with forestry presenting a viable alternative land use option, particularly when you consider that the returns from forestry are comparable to cattle and sheep systems," said Mr Fleming. The report also recommended that forest premiums be guaranteed at entry level rate and the landowner qualify for any increase in rates that may happen in the future. It recommends the maximum timeframe for processing straightforward afforestation approvals and payments be set at three months. There are 735,000ha under forestry - 10.5pc of the land area- with aims to plant 15,000ha a year up to 2020. In 2014, 6,252ha were planted. Opportunities for live exports this spring must be targeted after a slump of almost 60,000 head last year, a farm body has said. Following the Bord Bia Live Export seminar, ICMSA livestock chair Michael Guinan said there were indications of a potentially strong live export trade for calves this spring with decent prices achievable. He said it was essential the Department of Agriculture and other bodies ensure that live exporters receive all the necessary support so "maximise the number of calves exported". Mr Guinan pinpointed the Netherlands as one of the key markets for dairy calves - with over 800,000 imported annually including 41,000 from Ireland in 2015. "There should be an opportunity to boost export levels to the Netherlands," he said, against a backdrop of an extra 120,000 dairy calves in 2015 and further growth expected this year. However, exports have been hit this year partly due to IBR restrictions in place in countries like Belgium which are recognised at European Commission level as being officially free of the disease. It has meant stricter import conditions on countries such as Ireland. With live exporters calling for a national IBR vaccination programme, Teagasc have already begun work on a cost benefit analysis of Ireland's IBR programme. Animal Health Ireland's group is considering a number of options for a national control programme. The IFA's Kevin Kinsella said it was clear that Ireland needed an IBR programme to "keep our markets open". However, he said the programme at farm level must not "impose very significant or additions costs on farmers". The figures show live exports dropped from 236,896 in 2014 to 178,048 last year. A new 'yellow card' system for first-time offenders has been introduced as part of a wide-ranging revamp of the penalty system applied to EU payments. EU Agriculture Commissioner Phil Hogan said work was continuing to cut the "administrative burden" for both farmers and government departments. "With the new CAP, farmers feel themselves faced with new and complex rules and consequently they worry that unintentional mistakes might lead to the application of penalties and thus the loss of part of their income support," said Mr Hogan. He added that the measures were designed to make it more "proportionate" and to reduce the impact on smaller farmers. After measures were introduced late last year to reduce the on-the-spot checks, Mr Hogan told a European Parliament Agriculture Committee meeting in Strasbourg that a 'yellow card' system was being introduced. In the case of a farmer making a mistake for the first time and where the over-declaration is minor - below 10pc of the area declared - the administrative penalty will be halved. "Farmers having received a yellow card will be registered and where appropriate will be subject to an on-the-spot control inspection the following year," he said. A system of 'preliminary checks' has also been introduced so that those governing the payments in individual countries can identify problems early with farmers' applications. Up to 35 days after submission, farmers will be allowed to make corrections to their aid applications without the addition of any penalties. "They will have a direct effect on farmers, sending a clear message that our interest is not to catch farmers out as it were, but to ensure that public money is well spent," he said. Simple penalty Mr Hogan said the Commission was working to simplify the system of administrative penalties for direct payments. "I have replaced the different categories by a simple penalty, which is 1.5 times the area overdeclared. This reduced level of penalties will apply from 2016," he said. "Small over-declarations that are up to 3pc of the area declared or 2ha will continue not to be penalised." The ICMSA's deputy president Pat McCormack said the preliminary checks of applications is positive and should be fully embraced by our department as this could also address many of the payment delays. He said the 'yellow card' system was an improvement but land eligibility issues must be addressed. ICSA president Patrick Kent said they welcomed all efforts to row back on the current "savage regime" of penalties. Meanwhile, Mr Hogan said agreement had been reached on export competition at the recent World Trade Organisation ministerial meeting. This would result in the "elimination of all forms of export subsidies and disciplines on other potentially trade-distorting export measures." Over 600 farmers gathered in Cork last week for the annual two day Positive Farmers conference. One of the aims of the event is to highlight the opportunities for ambitious young people in the dairy industry. A great example of that was Colm O'Sullivan, who is determined to build a full-time career for himself in dairy farming, despite coming from a 1ac small-holding in north Cork. The 28-year-old (pictured below) always had an interest in agriculture, but it took a couple of wrong turns before he realised that being landless was not a barrier to one day owning his own commercial farm. "From an early age I was generally found chasing tractors around the countryside on my bicycle," he told delegates at the Positive Farmers conference. "I was mad about machinery and bought a clapped-out Massey Ferguson tractor for 450 with my communion money. Thankfully it never started, and cured me of my heavy-metal disease. "After my Leaving Cert, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I chose agriculture in Kildalton, by chickened out at the last moment as I felt there wouldn't be a place for someone without land to fall back to. "So I started a degree in construction. Two years into it, the boom went bust, and I came to the realisation that I was totally uninspired. I had no idea what direction I wanted to go, and was lacking in confidence at this stage. "But I was lucky in a way, because I started helping on a neighbour's suckler farm, and discovered that I had a huge passion for working the land, especially livestock. "This neighbour encouraged me to apply again to ag college in Kildalton. "This was the turning point in my life. I'd come home from the lectures buzzing, and got used to the funny looks from those wondering what I was doing there, especially since I didn't "even have an uncle that owned a farm!" "I needed to be focused though - I didn't even know the meaning of the word lactation. But I think I benefitted from having an impartial viewpoint, and being free of the 'that's not the way we do it at home' attitude. "As someone without any real farming connections, I knew all I had for support was my ability and my reputation, so I worked hard at developing these. "I invested in myself by ensuring that my work placements were with great farmers and the likes of Teagasc Moorepark, and I also borrowed 9,000, much of which was needed to finish my education at the Royal Agricultural College in England. Steady job "I stood out like a sore thumb among the wealthy landowners' sons and daughters, but this didn't faze me as I knew an honours degree from a prestigious college would stand to me. "A number of people told me to get a steady job in Moorepark when I finished in Kildalton, but I was keen to stretch myself more. "I worked for a large farm management company called Velcourt in Devon, where I found myself in the deep end when the farm manager walked out during milking one weekend. I was suddenly in charge of 400 cows and staff. "I spent two years there, and tried to meet as many people as possible. I drove 7.5 hours to Scotland to visit a farming couple that I got on great with, Brendan and Maureen Muldowney. "I was getting a number of offers both in the UK and Ireland, but decided to head for New Zealand on a fact finding missionbut with a one-way ticket. "I started working on a 700 cow farm, then I found myself a herd manager on an 1,100 cow unit. It was a great experience. "But during all this time, I was keeping in touch with Brendan Muldowney, who was still farming in Scotland. However, he was also looking to set up a dairy partnership in Kilkenny. They were offering me a stake in the business, which I decided to take. I have spent the last 18 months setting up a partnership arrangement with Brendan for this farm. I am putting 25,000 of my own money into building a 170 cow herd. "I put a fair bit of effort into saving, to the point that I even do out a cash-flow on personal spending. But you should never prioritise wages and saving over good learning experiences." A reduction in red meat consumption has been linked to lower iron levels in both young women and men according to studies presented by scientists attending last week's Global Farm Platform conference in Britain. The conference also heard that grass fed beef has a longer shelf life compared to concentrate finished animals. Professor Michael Lee from University of Bristol said grass-based production systems for animals such as cattle and beef out-perform other farm systems on food quality and environmental factors. Professor Lee said products from ruminant animals can be viewed as low fat because they contain less than 5pc fat, with high levels of poly unsaturated fatty acids and omega-3, especially in the grass-based systems in Ireland and the UK. Red meat Meanwhile, reductions in red meat consumption have been linked to lower iron in young women. Young men were also experiencing a similar, if less pronounced, pattern in terms of reduced calcium, iodine and iron. A US dairy research scientist, Glen Broderick, told delegates that the contribution of red meat protein to the overall protein intake of the average American has dropped from 40pc in the 1970s to 25pc today. Hundreds of millions of people fall below the healthy level of daily consumption of 20gm of animal protein, he said. Professor Ian Givens from Reading University said that a reduced milk intake in adolescent and teenage girls was a particular concern. He said the lower calcium intake is potentially storing up problems with reduced bone health and strength in later years. The reduction in milk has also been linked to reduced systemic iodine concentrations in pregnant women and those of child-bearing age. The conference also heard analysis that showed sugary soft drinks are replacing milk in shopping baskets. I picked the finest day we've had since the Indian Summer of late 2015 to walk Farmersvale Stables near Kill in Co Kildare, just off the N7. Paul Doyle of JP & M Doyle was at the Blackchurch Inn to lead me to the 32ac residential stud farm, for sale by private treaty at 790,000. "It had a price tag of over a million at one point," Mr Doyle said, "but the market dictates." Located just off the N7 close to the Steelstown Interchange (Exit 5) Farmersvale Stables is situated within 12km of Dublin City Centre, close to the villages of Kill and Rathcoole and within easy access of Naas, Punchestown and the Curragh racecourses. The farm shares an entrance with the current owners who have a large house on a separate folio adjacent to the property but once a sale is concluded the present entrance will be for the sole use of the new owner. The neatly hedged avenue leads to the bungalow residence that was once the manager's quarters. Immediately behind the dwelling are some of the finest equestrian facilities in the country. The house is a modest neat three-bedroom bungalow with a kitchen/dining area, a sitting room, a bathroom and a sunroom/porch that looks out over the yard and on to the land. On the day I visited the house was bright and welcoming and flooded with sunlight but while it is perfectly habitable it will need some upgrading. The equestrian facilities are everything a working equine farm would need. The stables and facilities are laid out in an L shaped formation around an exercise area. The 17 loose boxes are top of the range and in spotless condition while other facilities include a fully equipped tack room, a feed store and an office. Indoor Arena A one-bedroom staff flat, a canteen and an office are located near the yard. Further equestrian facilities include a six-unit automatic horse walker and, the piece de resistance, a massive, modern, indoor sand arena specially designed and built for show jumping training. The land is laid out in five post and railed paddocks one located to the front of the property while the other four rise in elevation away from the back of the house and yard. The land is self-draining and firm under foot. "This place is managed and maintained to the highest standards," says Paul Doyle. "It's as sweet a stud farm as you are likely to see." One would have to agree; to find a place like this within a few minutes of Dublin is remarkable. "It is priced to sell and I expect it to sell," he said and he anticipates the likely buyer will be someone intending to use the place as a private stud farm. "The property has all that is required in an equestrian facility," said Mr Doyle. "Given its proximity to race courses and other well known equestrian centres it would be ideal for somebody with a modest training operation in mind." Discussions with farmers and homeowners along the planned cycleway from Galway city to Clifden are continuing to push for a "substantial agreement". Galway County Council said it was preparing its planning submissions for An Bord Pleanala on the tourist initiative. Galway county secretary Michael Owens said there was no schedule of Compulsory Purchase Orders in the planning documents. He said they welcomed further discussion with those who own land and homes along the old Galway-Clifden railway line that forms part of the route. The Galway Greenway is a project to develop a 78km traffic-free walking and cycle trail between Galway and Clifden in Co Galway. Farmers are against the use of CPOs for land along the route and have raised concerns over bio-security issues. Suckler farmer Martin Gibbons, on the Oughterard-Clifden side of the route, who is chairing a new interest group, said authorities were losing the "goodwill of the people" over the way the project is progressing. His farm is split by the railway line and the route comes within 20m of his shed. Senator Fidelma Healy Eames has called on authorities to persevere with the consultation process for the route, urging them to meet the owners without any "implied threats of CPOs". Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Photo: Reuters European stocks rose the most in three weeks yesterday, amid optimism China will act to support its weakening economy. The ISEQ Overall Index rose 86.62 points, adding 1.38pc to 6,366.33 after four trading days of declines. Housebuilder Abbey saw the biggest gains, adding 9pc to 17.47. IFG followed, up 4pc to 2.05. CRH gained 3pc to 23.69 while Dalata added 2pc to 5.05. The hotel operator said it had purchased the Clarion Hotel in Sligo for 13m. The biggest laggards were exploration companies. Troubled Petroceltic plummeted 44pc to 12c. Earlier this week Petroceltic said it had secured additional time to sell or rescue its business. Providence Resources shed 13pc to 14c. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index climbed 1.3pc at the close of trading. It rose as much as 2.4pc earlier in the day after a report showed China's economy grew at an annual pace that was just shy of a government target, while leaving open the possibility of further stimulus. Europe's benchmark pared its advance as oil-and-gas producers gave up some gains amid a drop in crude. Concern over a slowdown in the world's second-biggest economy and deepening oil losses have weighed on investor sentiment this year, dragging the Stoxx 600 down as much as 10pc to its lowest level since December 2014. The market is being led by a combination of earnings reports and technical factors, said Jeff Powell, managing partner of Polaris Greystone Financial Group in California. "From a technical perspective, we are at a level which if we don't hold, we're in big trouble and even decent earnings are probably going to be overlooked," he said. Credit Agricole climbed 2.5pc and Ocado Group rallied 6.9pc following a report that the online grocer will partner with Amazon in Britain. Opinion / Columnist "There should also be a thorough due diligence exercise to determine what exactly happened to the alluvial diamonds from Marange and Chiadzwa," wrote MDC-T spokesman Obert Gutu. "If heads have to roll, so be it! There should be absolutely no sacred cows."Sweet, sweet music to my ears!The wholesale looting and plunder in Marange and Chiadzwa is, without doubt, one of the darkest chapter in our nation's history; up there with the Gukurahundi madness.The discovery of alluvial diamonds in Marange and Chiadzwa in 2006 valued at $800 billion was comparable to the discovery of oil in Arab Peninsular; it was our ticket out of poverty! Instead this blessing has turned into the nation's worst curse.In 2012 Africa Partnership Canada, an NGO monitoring the illegal diamond trade, said President Mugabe pocketed a staggering $2 billion in that year alone from his share of the wholesale looting and plunder that has been going on in Marange. By keeping all this cash to himself and his few cronies who too have diamond mining concessions President Mugabe has starved the nation of the cash for essential economic development and critical basic needs.The papers reported other day that Parerenyatwa and Mpilo Hospitals had 50% of the drugs they need; no doubt the situation in the district hospitals and clinics is a lot worse. Another story said that water in Kariba Dam had dropped to 12% and so there will be a new wave of powers cut beyond the present 18 hours out of 24 power cuts. Assuming President Mugabe has been getting his $2 billion cut every year for the last 10 years, it is clear we would not be having these drug shortages or power cut if the $20 billion have been invested wisely in these areas!What makes our situation even worse is that President Mugabe and his cronies have used the looted wealth to bankroll the regime's vote rigging schemes. Zanu PF must have spent billions of dollars in the July 2013 elections from $10 million paid to NIKUV to corrupt the voters roll, millions paid to PR companies in UK and USA to spruce up President Mugabe's image, billions buying Zanu PF candidate new cars and paying their election expenses, etc., etc.So instead of the diamond wealth dragging us out of poverty and squalor, the wealth is now being used to bankroll our continued political oppression and thus dragging us even deeper into poverty hopelessness and despair.We owe it to ourselves to have the looting and plunder in Marange and Chiadzwa thoroughly investigated a.s.a.p. because no nation can afford such a criminal waste of its resources and, whilst this is allowed to continue, are hopes and dreams of a democratic Zimbabwe will remain just that a dream.I glad to hear Gutu say "there should be absolutely no sacred cows" because the MDC leader, Tsvangirai has played a role in this national tragedy. Tsvangirai was one of the few politicians who inspected the going on in Marange in 2012 and gave everything a thumbs-up. A few weeks after his visit to Marange, Tsvangirai was living-it in the presidential suite on the MS Legend of Seas, a Cruise Ship.The grand theft in Marange and Chiadzwa was institutionalized during the GNU years the nation must go after the thieves but also those who turned a blind eye to the thievery. For once, I have to applaud MDC-T spokesman, Obert Gutu, for saying something sensible. What a pity he and his fellow MDC friends "were busy enjoying themselves and forgot why they were in the GNU", as SADC heads have said; the nation would have never been robbed blind in the first place!Richard Morgan Tsvangirai, Prime Minister of the Republic of Zimbabwe was an honoured guest. In another pre-election boost for the Coalition, gross government debt has fallen below 100pc of the value of the economy for the first time since the bailout just over five years ago. Although the fall below the psychologically important barrier has been well flagged for some months now, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) confirmed yesterday that in the final three months of last year, gross debt dropped to 99.4pc of GDP, 204.2bn. Net debt stood at 80.8pc of GDP, 165.9bn. But don't be fooled and assume that the drop in the debt-to-GDP ratio is due simply to measures from Finance Minister Michael Noonan, inset, to reduce the debt pile. The growth in the national economy is behind the fall. In Budget 2016, the Department of Finance forecast that the gross debt-to-GDP ratio would fall to 97pc last year, slipping to 92.8pc this year and 90.3pc next year. But the level of the debt in monetary terms will actually increase. In monetary terms, the debt for last year is expected to be 203.8bn, rising to 207.1bn this year and 210.9bn in 2017. 600 added to lobbying act Almost 600 returns have been submitted as part of the first wave of the new Regulation of Lobbying Act. The act requires all lobbying activity undertaken between September and December of last year to be reported no later than tomorrow. On Tuesday, it was revealed that 568 returns had been filed under the new act. Public Relations Institute of Ireland (PRII) chief executive John Carroll said that a large majority of its members understood what the act meant. "More than 170 members of the PRII attended one of our 14 intensive half-day workshops on compliance with the act. "Our recent annual survey showed that 87pc of members were satisfied that they understood the obligations of the act." As well as the act, Carroll outlined plans the PRII has to extend its own code on lobbying. "The PRII is the only professional body in Ireland that has a specific code of conduct for public affairs and lobbying. This code was introduced in 2003, and at our AGM next week proposals are being made to further update it. Members of the PRII are bound by that code," Carroll said. Property execs for the IDA The Punt sees that the IDA is on the hunt for two property consultants to help it with its current 150m capital spending plan for buildings. The capital funding plan runs from 2015 to 2019 and will help the IDA deliver new advance buildings, strategic sites and business park investment. "As part of the implementation of this capital investment programme, IDA property has a requirement to appoint additional resources by way of consultancy appointments for a three-year fixed-term contract," the IDA says in request for tenders. The consultants will be based at IDA's Athlone office and will, naturally, be expected to travel nationwide on their quest for the 150m to be spent wisely. No doubt the IDA will be trying to avoid a repeat of last year's debacle where landowner and farmer Thomas Reid successfully battled the State agency and the State itself for trying to compulsorily purchase 72 acres of property, including his family home, outside Maynooth, Co Kildare. The Supreme Court overturned a previous decision by the High Court to allow the purchase to go ahead. The land adjoins the Carton House Estate and the massive Intel site. A high-level Chinese delegation arrived in Dublin last night in the latest step towards commencing Irish beef exports to the Asian giant, Foreign Minister Charlie Flanagan said. Ireland had its beef exports ban to China lifted last February in a major diplomatic and political coup that followed the lifting of the US ban on Irish beef. At a business networking event in Iveagh House last night, Mr Flanagan said the visiting delegation would be in Ireland for 12 days. "Tonight, as we speak, there is a high-level Chinese inspection team arriving in Dublin for a 12-day visit, which we believe is the next stage in completing the technical requirements to allow exports of Irish beef there to commence," Mr Flanagan said. The minister also announced a new economic diplomacy strategy to be spearheaded by the department and its 80-strong embassy network. He said a new programme of locally hired commercial attaches would be introduced into the embassy network. Market promotion funds would also be provided to "give our embassies more capacity and autonomy to pursue trade and wider promotional opportunities", Mr Flanagan said. The links between the embassy network and Irish business will also be deepened through a new programme of secondments. "It is widely accepted that embassies are particularly effective at opening doors for Irish businesses overseas and for providing important advice and networking opportunities for companies trying to break into new markets," the minister said. "Economic diplomacy is a critical part of our country's exporting trade success." "I believe there is an opportunity for Irish embassies to become even more active in assisting Irish exporting companies overseas." Mr Flanagan said the embassy network feeds back critical information and opportunities to the private sector. Ulster Bank announced a new partnership with Young Social Innovators (YSI) at an event in the Chq Building this morning. The partnership will see Ulster Bank provide funding to YSI, which is a programme that looks to foster social innovation from a young age. Speaking at the event today Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, said that social innovation now plays a key role in the Irish economy. "There has never been a greater focus on innovation as an important driver of economic progress. Social innovation also has an important role to play in shaping the future of Ireland to be a country that is not only economically prosperous but that is a more inclusive and fairer society to live in. By engaging our young people in programmes such as Young Social Innovators we are not only creating more caring and engaged citizens but those with the skills to tackle the very serious issues facing us at local, national and global levels, the Taoiseach said. Co-founder of YSI, Sister Stanislaus Kennedy, called on companies not to forget their social responsibilities. Innovation for its own sake is not enough. We have seen all too often in Ireland and elsewhere innovations which benefit a few but are harmful or are out of reach, to many. We need social innovation to be an integral part of innovation so that we build a more equal, inclusive and sustainable society that is what social innovation can bring to us. Ulster Bank CEO, Paul Stanley, said: We share a goal with YSI to enable growth through innovation, whether it is support for our business customers or for the communities where we live and work, in what matters to them. The work we do with YSI will strengthen the development of social initiatives that are important to young people and deliver positive change in our country for our citizens. Netigate, a provider of cloud-based services for online surveys, has announced the establishment of its international headquarters in Cork, creating 45 new jobs. The new roles will be spread out across sales, technical support and account management. Netigate has 1500 customers in 30 countries and Tobias Thalback, the firm's chief executive, said that the availability of talent played a key role in choosing Ireland. The availability of talent was critical when selecting a suitable location for our international headquarters. I am confident that Cork is an ideal location for us and its thriving business ecosystem and skills availability will enable us to provide an even higher support to our growing customer base in Europe and beyond," Mr Thalback said. Netigate covers a host of large clients including Electrolux, Ericsson, BMW and Spotify. Speaking about the new roles, minister for jobs, enterprise and innovation, Richard Bruton, said: Cloud computing is an important sector which offers major opportunity for employment growth in Ireland, and that is what we have specifically targeted it as part of our Action Plan for Jobs. Todays announcement that Netigate, a leading European company in this area, is establishing its international headquarters in Cork and creating 45 extra jobs is very welcome news. I wish Tobias and the team every success with this project. IDA CEO Martin Shanahan said: Netigate is a welcome addition to the thriving ICT cluster in Cork. Netigates decision to establish its International HQ in Ireland adds to the countrys reputation as a location of choice for cloud computing. Dublin-based travel software and data firm Boxever, which already employs 60 people, is looking 100 staff including data scientists and software engineers. The expansion comes following a $12m in fresh funding and its clients include Emirates and Aer Lingus. Boxever also plans to expand its sales and customer support operations around the world - it has a US office in Boston. Nua Healthcare, a private intellectual disability care service provider, has announced the creation of 800 new jobs over the next three years. The jobs will be introduced through the planned development of the company's new residential and day care facilities. 300 of the new positions are expected to be delivered over the course of this year. Minister of state at the Department of Health, Kathleen Lynch, welcomed the announcement of the new jobs as Nua opened its newest facility at Glenview House in Kilmallock in Limerick. "I am delighted to officially open Nua Healthcares newest facility in Limerick. Intellectual disability care is a key priority in the health sector and the services offered by Nua Healthcare in support of the HSE is invaluable in the Munster region and beyond. "I welcome their commitment to, and investment in providing high quality services for both children and adults with complex support needs across the country and the job creation in local communities to meet these needs," Ms Lynch said. The new roles are expected to span across several areas including social care, nursing, and administrative support staff. Chief executive of Nua Healthcare, Edward Dunne, said the firm was committed to the growing demand in the disability secord. "Our service model and approach has experienced huge demand over the past number of years and todays announcement is a major step towards making our service more accessible to individuals nationally. The ability to do so is testament to the incredible work of our committed team and partners in such a specialist sector. Meanwhile, French environmental services group Veolia is to create 300 roles at ts Irish operation over the next five years. The company supplies water, waste and energy management services to a range of companies in both the public and private sectors including Irish Water. The jobs are in a range of sectors includiing water infrastructure and biomass energy, growth areas for the firm. David Rosney is in a dispute with Bank of Ireland after his 96 year old mother took out equity in her home. Photo: Douglas O'Connor A man whose 96-year-old mother is facing a huge bill for an equity release product is to form a pressure group in a bid to get the Bank of Ireland to engage with people who took out the product. David Rosney, of north County Dublin, said he wants the Bank of Ireland to negotiate with people who took out so-called Life Loans. He is setting up a pressure group to raise the issue. Mr Rosney said the bank was refusing to meet people to discuss doing deals. "Legally, I recognise we may not have a leg to stand on, but morally I believe we do, particularly when it is set against the backdrop of the whole bank debacle and everything that involved," he added. Mr Rosney, whose case featured on RTE's 'Liveline', said his mother took out a 25,000 Bank of Ireland Life Loan a decade ago. She wanted to buy a new car. His mother turned 96 in December, and now owes 86,000. He is angry that the bank will not discuss a settlement. "I believe the only way to expect to get any modicum of success with BoI is to form a pressure group, where many voices may be listened to rather than one or two in isolation, and I would be prepared to undertake the formulation of such a group," he said. His mother now has dementia and is a ward of court. "Fortunately, she is hospitalised with dementia, and is a ward of court and so knew nothing about it," Mr Rosney said. He said that up to three years ago she was able to manage her own affairs, but when he reviewed her financial position and learned of the mounting debt, he engaged with Bank of Ireland to try and negotiate a more reasonable and acceptable compromise position. "On two occasions, I offered to settle for 50,000, to no avail," he said. Bank of Ireland said it does not comment on customer's cases. David Rosney can be contacted at davidrosney108@gmail.com. At least 3,000 people owe a total of 300m on equity release loans, according to the Central Bank. Getty Images/iStockphoto Lawyers issued strong warnings about controversial equity-release mortgages more than a decade ago. The products are now seeing thousands of older people facing massive debts. The lawyers had been particularly scathing about Bank of Ireland's Life Loan product. At least 3,000 people owe a total of 300m on equity release loans, according to the Central Bank. No repayments are made on equity-release products taken out by older people, which means huge debts have now built up. The money is due when the owner dies, or the house is sold. Financial adviser John Lowe explained that, as a rule of thumb, what is owed on a product like Life Loan doubles every 10 years. This means that a 50,000 Life Loan taken out a decade ago has now spiralled to become a debt of 100,000. Many families are now finding that the amount owed leaves them with nothing when the homes are sold, wiping out inheritances. Mr Lowe said there was a chance many people did not have the product's terms and conditions properly explained to them when it was taken out. The controversial Bank of Ireland Life Loan was singled out for criticism by the Law Society, which represents solicitors, in 2005. The lawyers said many of the conditions attached to the Life Loan product were "objectionable and quite unnecessary". The society claimed Bank of Ireland was imposing more stringent requirements than similar equity-release schemes in the UK. So annoyed was the Law Society that it refused to allow its certificate of title forms to be used in connection with the Life Loan product. Exception was taken by the society's conveyancing committee to the requirement that borrowers make a will and appoint executors. The lawyers are also annoyed at demands that borrowers name their executors. Yesterday, director general of the Law Society Ken Murphy said: "This very bad outcome, for a great many consumers of equity-release products, is what the Law Society predicted a decade ago. "In 2005 we expressed, both in the media and in practice notes to the solicitors' profession, the society's deep reservations about aspects of certain equity-release products then being offered on the market." He said the society had recommended in 2007 that the equity-release products be more tightly regulated. "Regrettably, no consumer-protection regulation was put in place." The Irish Independent has received hundreds of calls and emails since the issue was publicised last week, including coverage on RTE's 'Liveline'. Contacted again yesterday, Bank of Ireland said it sold life loan products between 2001 and 2010 in accordance with regulatory requirements. Swiss special police officers observe the surrounding area from the roof of the Davos Congress Hotel yesterday. Photo: Reuters The aural assault lasts fully 10 minutes. At 7am what sounds like every church bell in Zurich erupts in a loud, continuous and surprisingly unmusical battery of sustained clattering and banging. The Swiss don't really go in for lie-ons, it turns out. Even an Irish journalist couldn't sleep through it. Most of the billionaires, world leaders and sages arriving to the rural resort town of Davos are doubtless whisked in by some combination of private jet and limousine. But for the rest of us the train from Zurich - home to the nearest airport- takes you to the village in about two and a half hours. To cover the event fully you'll ideally be on the train leaving Zurich Hauptbahnhoff at 8.37am on Wednesday. It gets in to Davos on time to get registered and oriented for the start of the annual World Economic Forum conference, which formally kicks off later in the evening. A later train leaves Zurich at 9.37am. At midnight on Tuesday that seems awfully tempting. However, thanks to the the nagging bell ringers of Zurich there's pretty much no chance you'll give way to temptation, sleep-in, and miss your correct train. In Switzerland they don't just make sure that the trains run on time, they insist that the passengers do too. Taoiseach Enda Kenny will attend the meeting this week. But leaders meeting in Davos this week face an increasingly divided world, with the poor falling further behind the super-rich and political fissures in the United States, Europe and the Middle East running deeper than at any time in decades. Just 62 people, 53 of them men, own as much wealth as the poorest half of the entire world population and the richest 1 percent own more than the other 99 percent put together, anti-poverty charity Oxfam said on Monday. Significantly, the wealth gap is widening faster than anyone anticipated, with the 1 percent overtaking the rest one year earlier than Oxfam had predicted only a year ago. Rising inequality and a widening trust gap between people and their political leaders are big challenges for the global elite as they converge on Davos for the annual World Economic Forum, which runs from Jan. 20 to 23. But the divisions go far beyond those that exist between the haves and have-nots. In the Middle East, the divide between Shi'ites and Sunnis has reached crisis point, with Iran and Saudi Arabia jostling openly for influence in a region reeling from war and the barbarism of Islamic extremists. The conflicts there have spilled over into Europe, causing deep ideological rifts over how to handle the worst refugee crisis since World War Two and - with Britain threatening to leave the European Union - raising doubts about the future of Europe's six-decade push towards ever closer integration. (Additional reporting Reuters) Blackstone chief Stephen Schwarzman says China's economy is "not in freefall." Blackstone chief Stephen Schwarzman says China's economy is "not in freefall." Fears about the implications for global trade of a slow down in China, and it's impact on oil prices in particular, 8is emerging as the dominant theme as at the World Economic Forum's annual conference in Davos, Switzerland gets underway today. It is a sign of the pace at which markets have fallen in recent weeks that the question of whether China, and connected developing economies are in trouble, barely makes the formal agenda for this years event. Instead exhibits dedicated to emerging technologies - including displays of advanced robotics and virtual reality line the walls and corridors, reflecting the official theme for the event, which a focus on the implications of what organisers have called the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The vast Davos conference centre is hosting 1,500 global chief executives, dozens of political leaders and hundreds of investors and academics and celebrities. Oscar hopeful Leonardo DiCaprio and Bono are understood to be among the throngs already mingling in the informal lobbies and catch-up areas. Stephen Schwarzman is best known in Ireland for Blackstone's string of post-crash acquisitions, including a major stake in Eircom. He insisted today that China is not in freefall, citing the strength of consumer activity in the country, but the well known US Republican Party supporter said the level of anger being expressed in the presidential race there was 'astounding' Taoiseach Enda Kenny is due to arrive in Davos later today. Opinion / Columnist 15 years of implementing UN Security Council resolution 1325 in Africa Achievements in Africa Challenges Where is the money? The way forward in Africa As conflicts and crises in Africa took a more complex turn in recent years, there has been a devastating upsurge of violence against women and girls. The abduction of 200 Chibok girls from a school in northern Nigeria by Boko Haram militants in April 2014 remains a tragic case in point. So has the sexual violence being used as a weapon of war in Cameroon, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), South Sudan and Sudan, among others.Women and girls are singled out as targets by terrorist and extremist groups, who abduct them and use them as suicide bombers or sex slaves. Although women generally despise war, their bodies have become the new battlefields. Worse still, they are not consulted on issues of peace and nation-building, according to Zainab Hawa Bangura, the special representative of the UN secretary-general on sexual violence in conflict.In Africa women play important roles as custodians of culture and nurturers of families, yet in times of conflict they are not represented at the peace negotiating table or in community reconstruction efforts. According to UN Women, a UN body that promotes women's empowerment and gender equality, women constitute fewer than 10% of peace negotiators globally and only 3% of signatories to peace agreements.Many experts believe that leaving women out of peace and security processes hinders communities from finding long-lasting peace. In times of conflict, women's vulnerabilities and unique needs are often forgotten during negotiations, which in turn limits the effectiveness of both peace and security agreements, and humanitarian responses.Fifteen years ago the international community recognized the importance of women's participation in creating the conditions for permanent peace. On 31 October 2000, the UN Security Council adopted the landmark resolution 1325 on women, peace and security, which acknowledged the critical role women could play in preventing and resolving conflicts, negotiating peace, participating in peacekeeping and in humanitarian response and post-conflict peacebuilding.Among other things, the resolution calls for women to participate fully in all efforts to maintain and promote peace and security. The resolution also requires the UN to solicit and take into account all viewpoints on gender issues in order to increase the role of women in all peace and security activities. It also requires all parties at war to take special measures to protect women and girls from gender-based violence, particularly rape and other forms of sexual abuse.Despite these requirements, UN Women says the percentage of women in peace talks has stagnated at single digits since the resolution was passed. The results have had a devastating impact on women's lives: over half the world's maternal deaths occur in conflict and fragile countries; about half of out-of-school children of primary school age live in conflict areas; and girls' net enrolment rate in primary education is 17 points below the global rate. In these conflict areas, the risk of sexual violence, child marriage and HIV infection has increased since 2000.UN Women wants urgent action to increase women's active participation in peace and security matters. "This anniversary must mark that threshold moment where words become action," says Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the head of UN Women.The resolution was passed on the eve of International Women's Day in 2000 after "extensive stonewalling" by some members, recalls Anwarul Chowdhury, a former permanent representative of Bangladesh to the UN, who was the president of the UN Security Council at the time.As the world marked the resolution's fifteenth anniversary in October, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched the global study on resolution 1325, carried out to determine how it has been implemented since its inception. According to the study, Preventing Conflict, Transforming Justice, Securing the Peace, the resolution has had a remarkable impact on women's participation in all areas of peace and security. "I have highlighted women's leadership in peacebuilding as a priority. I have asked 15% of all peacebuilding funds to be devoted to advancing gender equality and women's empowerment," said the secretary-general during the launch of the report. "We have made some advances but we must do much more, and we must do it faster."Several African countries have embraced resolution 1325, and 16 states now have relevant national action plans in place. The African Union (AU) has also made significant efforts to integrate commitments to the idea of women, peace and security into its own security, crisis-response, human rights and peacebuilding efforts. The organization trains women as peace mediators, election observers and gender advisers.In January 2014 the AU appointed its first special envoy for women, peace and security. Bineta Diop helped coordinate Africa's efforts in implementing 1325. Since her appointment, Ms. Diop has worked closely with the UN, touring conflict areas in Africa. In the Central African Republic, the plan is to dedicate funding to support women's participation in the forthcoming elections, rule-of-law reform and transitional justice mechanisms.At the same time, both the AU and the UN have increased the number of women military and police officers in peacekeeping missions, which has in turn improved the reporting of sexual assaults. They have also set up units that provide protection to civilian victims of abuse. Similar units that shelter victims of gender-based violence also exist in Somalia and the Darfur region of Sudan. In Rwanda, Liberia and the DRC, the UN provides support to survivors of gender-based violence.Despite impressive efforts on the ground, there are still challenges when it comes to women, peace and security in Africa. Ten years after resolution 1325, the DRC went through a horrific conflict in which hundreds of women were raped. Horrified by the magnitude of the situation, the then-UN special representative for sexual violence in conflict, Margot Wallstrom, described the country as the "rape capital of the world.""The recent cases in South Sudan have compounded the reality that indeed progress has been slow and that women continue to bear the brunt of violence during times of war, and unfortunately even during times of peace," said Ms. Diop, the AU envoy, speaking at a high-level meeting held at UN headquarters recently.Moreover, the lack of time-bound targets for achieving the goals of the resolution may have slowed action, as countries were not under pressure to beat a set deadline. Also not spelt out was how countries would monitor and evaluate women, peace and security initiatives to provide evidence of progress. "Reporting mechanisms through the Security Council or [a] watch list of countries failing to meet the resolution's objectives were not established," said Namibia's deputy prime minister Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah during Africa Week, last October.Despite some progress, gaps in the implementation of resolution 1325 persist in Africa, in part because of lack of funds. "We have made some advances, but we must do much more, and we must do it faster," Mr. Ban told reporters at the launch of the global study, which was commissioned by the UN Security Council.The study found that unpredictable and insufficient funding, lack of data analysis on gender issues and also lack of technical expertise on gender, attitudinal obstacles, and insufficient mapping of needs in planning and budgeting have harmed the long-term effectiveness of interventions for peace and security, humanitarian causes and development."The most immediate solution is to divide the funding pie more equitably," says Africa Development Bank (AfDB)'s special envoy on gender, Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi. "It is important to expand the funding pie for women, peace and security so that gender is not seen as a zero-sum game."The AfDB has since established a fund - the Global Acceleration Instrument for Women, Peace and Security (GAI-WPS)to provide flexible rapid support to governments and organizations responding to emergencies. "The GAI-WPS aims to raise $100 million between 2015 and 2020," Ms. Fraser says.Meanwhile, Ms. Diop is urging countries to create national action plans on implementing 1325. "So far only 16 countries have action plans. Where are the rest?" she asks, adding that monitoring of and reporting on the implementation of the resolution was also not systematic. She emphasizes the need to regularly remind countries of their commitments and accountability.African countries can also look into information sharing and documenting good practices, regional training, as well as monitoring and reporting on progress in the implementation of the resolution.Africa Renewal Following last year's #OscarsSoWhite controversy, in which all the main nominated contenders were white, it had been expected that the Academy would take steps to ensure more diversity this year. Last year British actor David Oyelowo was overlooked for his stellar performance as Dr Martin Luther King Jr in Selma while Selma director Ava DuVernay was also ignored in the Best Director category. Unfortunately, black actors have been snubbed for a second year in a row with all of the Best Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress nominees being white. Jada Pinkett Smith and director Spike Lee have said they will boycott the ceremony on February 28 and it is expected that others may follow suit. A 2012 study by the Los Angeles Times found that the 6000 members of the Academy are predominantly older white males. Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs, who is African American, said, "The Academy is taking dramatic steps to alter the make-up of our membership. In the coming days and weeks we will conduct a review of our membership recruitment in order to bring about much-needed diversity in our 2016 class and beyond." However, it's too late for this year's crop of actors. As the debate rages, we take a look at some of the stars who may have been overlooked in this year's nominations. Some were shock snubs while others may simply not have hit the notes required to bag an Oscar: Idris Elba, Beasts of No Nation Elba (43) was nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Golden Globe, SAG, and BAFTA awards for his performance in the Netflix original feature so his absence from the Oscars list is glaring. He was also overlooked in 2013 for his role in Mandel: Long Walk to Freedom. On Monday Elba spoek to a group of British parliament members about the lack of diversity on screen. "We need to counter what everybody has, see the lay of the land and see who has which careers in TVwho makes TV, and who is allowed on TV and when they get the opportunity which roles do they play, on and off screen," he said. Video of the Day Expand Close Idris Elba with Abraham Attah in Beasts of No Nation. PIC: Netflix / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Idris Elba with Abraham Attah in Beasts of No Nation. PIC: Netflix "You have to ask the question: are black people normally playing petty criminals? Are women always the love interest or talking about men? Are gay people always stereotyped? Are disabled people ever seen at all?" He explained that he went to America because of its diversity policy but said the problem exists in "the gap between the dream and reality". "Now the gap is what Martin Luther King set out to fill in his dream. To champion diversity is to champion the American dream," he said. Will Smith, Concussion Smith (47) had also been tipped for a Best Actor nod for his turn in Peter Landesman's drama. The Hollywood Reporter predicted the film "confirms Smith as a serious Best Actor threat." He was not nominated. Smith and his wife Jada Pinkett Smith are now boycotting this year's ceremony. "Maybe it's time we pull back our resources and we put them back into our communities, and we make programs for ourselves that acknowledge us in ways that we see fit, that are just as good as the so-called mainstream," she said in a video on Facebook. Expand Close Will Smith in Concussion / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Will Smith in Concussion Samuel L Jackson (67), The Hateful Eight Speaking with ABC News Breakfast, The Hateful Eight director Quentin Tarantino suggested Jackson had been overlooked because Hollywood takes him for granted. "My only guess, frankly, is that they take him for granted. That would be my only guess," he said. Expand Close Samuel L Jackson in Tarantino's The Hateful Eight / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Samuel L Jackson in Tarantino's The Hateful Eight Michael B Jordan (28), Creed Creed has one nomination thanks to Sylvester Stallone (69), the film's main white star. There was no nomination for star Michael B Jordan although this is hardly surprising given this year's competition - Leonardo DiCaprio for The Revenant, Michael Fassbender for Steve Jobs, Eddie Redmayne for The Danish Girl, Bryan Cranston for Trumbo and Matt Damon for The Martian. Jordan gives a solid performance but arguably not quite Oscar-worthy. Expand Close Packing a punch: Silvester Stallone is back as Rocky training Apollo Creeds son played by Michael B Jordan. / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Packing a punch: Silvester Stallone is back as Rocky training Apollo Creeds son played by Michael B Jordan. Benicio Del Toro (48), Sicario Del Toro received rave reviews for his performance in the war-on-drugs drama with many critics tipping him for an Oscar nom. However, the Puerto Rican star was not shortlisted for Best Supporting Actor as expected. Expand Close Benicio Del Toro in Sicario / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Benicio Del Toro in Sicario Straight Outta Compton The film received a nomination - for its white screenwriters. However, the film itself had been considered a possible contender for Best Film having racked up numerous nominations from other quarters including the Producers Guild and SAG and rave reviews. By the same token director F Gary Gray could have been considered in the Best Actor category. Expand Close The struggle is real: 'Straight Outta Compton' / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The struggle is real: 'Straight Outta Compton' Channel 5 handout photo videograbbed image of Angie Bowie saying goodbye to Darren Day before she left the Celebrity Big Brother house Channel 5 handout photo of Kristina Rihanoff after she was evicted from the Celebrity Big Brother house at the Elstree Studios, Borehamwood Just 10 housemates remain in the Celebrity Big Brother house after Kristina Rihanoff was evicted and David Bowie's ex wife, Angie, walked out. The 66-year-old former model departed the show due to illness - she is the third celebrity to quit and pack her bags. After demanding an exit from the show on Monday's programme, in the diary room she yelled and insisted: "Get me a car and let me be gone, if you want to be cheap get me an Uber," and "I want to leave now! Get me my stuff! Give me my stuff! Now!" Spending the night in the spare bedroom, the next day before quitting Bowie saw the doctor, spruced herself up, and when she rejoined the others told them she had a temperature of 103F (39C). In the diary room Bowie said on her departure: "I am so sorry that I got sick and so very very sorry to have to leave the show. Just now they said the sweetest thing 'stay here we will look after you don't leave'. "Bye bye everyone - see you." A Channel 5 spokesman said: "After being unwell for a few days, Angie Bowie has decided to leave the Celebrity Big Brother house." Bowie had originally decided to stay in the house following the news that her former husband had died of cancer. On Monday American producer David Gest also quit due to medical reasons - he joined Kim Kardashian's good friend Jonathan Cheban, who left last week, citing its "bad vibe". Dancer Kristina, joined Nancy Dell'Olio and Winston McKenzie in being voted off the show by viewers. The pregnant Strictly Come Dancing star was visibly happy at being booted out of this year's programme, saying "yes" as the result was announced. Talking after her eviction the 38-year-old Russian said: "I am over the moon; it was all I have been praying for in the last few days. Video of the Day "The arguments became so vicious - it is not my cup of tea at all. I am really happy to leave; it is the right moment because it was getting very difficult for me." Danniella Westbrook, John Partridge and Tiffany Pollard, who were also facing eviction, were all saved by the public. Red Rock actress Andrea Irvine has said said she thinks the current storyline featuring her on-screen sons struggles with heroin is reflective of the is very contemporary as the drug poses such a huge problem the drug poses in Dublin. The Belfast native, who plays Garda Sergeant Angela Tyrell in the TV3 soap, said shes often left shocked at the scenes around the north inner city. Dublin shocks me because I work in and out of the Abbey Theatre and in the Lab on Foley Street and that whole area is rife with people off their heads, totally wrecked, she told the Herald. You can just see them pushing buggies with kids and theyve obviously just shot-up and theres that thing where they slowly, slowly collapse. It never ceases to amaze me. I dont know enough about drugs policy, but its staggering to see. Heroin addiction seems to have hit Dublin so hard. Mum As a mum of two boys herself Harry (11) and Joseph (14) she also feels huge sympathy for her characters plight as she grapples with her son Conor going back on heroin. Its so hard to see your child in pain. We still live in a society where its terribly stigmatised a lot of it still happens behind closed doors, she said. Theres also the threat of a criminal conviction and the worry that your reputation will be in tatters. She said that her character also has the added pressure of trying to hide her sons drug addiction from her garda colleagues. This season, there has been a great focus on Angela, in and around all this drugs stuff. You really start to see it impact in series two on her work as the two worlds start to collide. Now her home life is spilling into her work life, so thats interesting to play. Video of the Day She hinted that theres also big things in store for her station colleague, Detective Nikki Grogan, played by Valerie OConnor. Speaking about the strong writing in the Ifta-winning series, she paid tribute to Kim Revill, saying she is just fantastic. She has a great eye on whats going in a contemporary womans life. Shes not defining women as being side-kicks, she said. Instead of playing mammies and wives, shes putting them at the centre of their own storylines. The scene of the fire in an underground carpark in Artane Credit: Dublin Fire Brigade Five units of the Dublin Fire Brigade have battled a blaze at an underground car park in Artane. Approximately five cars parked in an apartment complex located in the Brookwood area of Dublin 5 were engulfed by the fire. They responded to a 999 call made by a member of the public. A photograph provided by the Dublin Fire Brigade shows extensive damage to two of the cars in the car park. Read More The emergency services removed 11 people to safety at the scene in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Of these, two individuals required treatment for smoke inhalation. Anglo Irish Bank was anxious to show a "strong corporate number" in its half year results in March 2008 after the so-called St Patrick's Day Massacre when the bank's share price fell significantly, a jury has heard. The bank's former Director of Treasury Matt Cullen said it was believed that if the market saw a strong customer number the bank would be regarded "as more secure". Mr Cullen was giving evidence on the opening day of the trial against former Anglo executives, John Bowe (52), from Glasnevin in Dublin, and William McAteer (65) of Greenrath, Tipperary town, Co Tipperary, and former Irish Life and Permanent executives, Denis Casey (56), from Raheny, Dublin and Peter Fitzpatrick, (63), from Malahide in Dublin. They have denied conspiring to mislead existing and potential investors, lenders and depositors by engaging in transactions between Anglo Irish Bank, Irish Life and Permanent (IL&P) and Irish Life Assurance to make Anglo appear 7.2bn better off than it was. This was allegedly done so "people who lent to Anglo would continue to lend" to them, prosecution counsel Paul O'Higgins SC said in his opening address to the jury. Matt Cullen, the former Director of Treasury in Anglo, told the jury that by October 2007 it was getting harder to get deposits into the bank, due to what was happening internationally. He said there were "difficult liquidity conditions in the market". These liquidity issues came to a head with the so-called St Patrick's Day massacre in March 2008 when the Anglo share price fell significantly, shortly before Anglo was due to report its half year results. Mr Cullen said he was told a decision had been made at senior level to show "a strong corporate number to the market" for the half year results. If the market saw a strong customer number, it would see the bank as more secure, the court heard. Mr Cullen said he was told to brain storm with colleagues and speak to other Irish banks to see what assistance they could give. He said he contacted David Gantly, Head of Treasury in IL&P and IL&P agreed to a "back to back" transaction. Anglo transferred 750 million to IL&P, who then deposited the money back in Anglo, via Irish Life Assurance, and "from the market perspective we got a 750m corporate deposit from ILA". Mr Cullen said he understood this transaction was discussed at executive level, he received approval for it from his boss at the time, Anglo's former Chief Financial Officer, Matt Moran, and Anglo's CEO David Drumm had said it "was not an issue". Mr Cullen said IL&P posted its half year results in June, and Mr Gantly approached him, instructed by his bosses Mr Fitzpatrick and Mr Bowe, to ask if Anglo would agree to a repo transaction, where Anglo would temporarily buy IL&P's mortgage stock for 3bn, as IL&P wanted to reduce its reliance on the ECB for its half year results. The court heard Mr McAteer, Mr Moran and Mr Drumm all "said yes" and agreed to the repo transaction. Mr Cullen will continue with his evidence tomorrow. Earlier today, in his opening address to the jury, prosecution counsel, Paul O'Higgins SC, said the case concerned events which allegedly occurred between March 1 and September 30, 2008, when Anglo provided its end of year accounts. Mr O'Higgins claimed that in the days before September 30, 2008, the accused conspired to make financial transactions from Anglo to Irish Life & Permanent and then bank to Anglo, via Irish Life Assurance, so as to appear customer deposits were greater than they were. He said these customer deposits were "actually funded indirectly by Anglo". Mr O'Higgins said that at some time on September 29, 2008 Anglo discovered it had no more money to keep things moving so it stopped for a period as it could not access money. Between September 29 and September 30, "the money does the rounds six more times" so that by September 30 the "reporting snapshot" gave the totally false impression of customer deposits of 7.2 billion, he claimed. Mr O'Higgins claimed the whole purpose of the scheme, its raison d'etre, was to "produce the temporary illusion that non-bank deposits had been made to Anglo in a massive, massive sum". He claimed this was to disguise the reality that "non bank deposits were declining at a rate that Anglo feared would alarm those who viewed Anglo as a going concern". Mr O'Higgins also told the jury there are undoubtedly other people who could have been charged as forming this conspiracy and who took part in events. However, he said this was not relevant to the jury. "Your role is to decide on the guilt or innocence of the four people before the court", he said. While women make up about 50pc of the Irish population, just 15pc of TDs are women, Mr Justice David Keane was told. Stock Picture A law linking State funding of political parties to their achievement of gender quotas in selecting candidates for election are "crude" and "punitive", a Fianna Fail activist has claimed in the High Court. Brian Mohan (30), a student and barman from Beaumont, Dublin, who had sought to stand for nomination to run in the General Election, said he was told a "diktat" issued from party headquarters had stipulated the sole candidate in his Dublin central constituency must be a woman. There remains considerable opposition within his party to the gender quota laws and he believed only party leader Micheal Martin and former Fianna Fail, now Independent, Senator Averil Power had spoken publicly in favour of them, he said. His dispute concerning gender quota laws is with the State, not with Fianna Fail, he said. He was giving evidence on the opening day of his challenge to the constitutionality of provisions of the Electoral (Political Funding) Act 2012 which mean political parties will lose half their central exchequer funding unless 30pc of their candidates in the next two general elections are female. All of the parties have said they will meet the gender quota. The case is against Ireland and the Attorney General, who dispute the claims and argue Mr Mohan's real dispute is with his party, which had not complained about the legislation. While women make up about 50pc of the Irish population, just 15pc of TDs are women, Mr Justice David Keane was told. Opening the case, Michael McDowell SC, for Mr Mohan, said the case was not "a backdoor attack" on equality legislation but an argument the Oireachtas is not entitled to introduce a "crude and punitive" measure seeking to use public funds in the hope of ensuring more women candidates in elections. The case continues. The HSE has apologised to the family of an 81-year-old woman over its failure to communicate a hospital care plan which her GP feared could involve her effectively starving The HSE has apologised to the family of an 81-year-old woman over its failure to communicate a hospital care plan - which her GP feared could involve her effectively starving. President of the High Court Mr Justice Peter Kelly described what happened as being "substandard" and "regrettable". He was told the woman is to be fed by an alternative programme to tube feeding through her stomach - which the hospital had decided not to recommend because she was not fit to take it. She will now undergo what is known as comfort feeding, involving her being fed small amounts of certain foods orally. On Monday, the judge directed an urgent inquiry into whether the treatment which the hospital had proposed was medically justifiable. The HSE, in its apology to the woman's family, said a care plan compiled by a multi-disciplinary team was not communicated to the woman's GP or the nursing home to which she had been discharged at 4am. The manner in which she had been discharged from the hospital to a nursing home was substandard, and should not have happened, counsel for the HSE Sarah McKecknie said. All the nursing home and the GP received was a discharge summary from the hospital. The woman, who has dementia, recently lost the ability to swallow because of a stroke, but is otherwise healthy. She was hospitalised in early January with aspirational pneumonia. She was discharged from the hospital late last week at 4am and was returned to a nursing home where she had previously been resident. Mr Justice Kelly said in this case there had not been proper communication between the hospital and the GP and the nursing home concerning the woman, and about the care plan that had been put in place. Noting that the HSE had apologised several times, the judge also hoped there would be agreement between the parties concerning the woman's ongoing treatment. The "urgent" situation the court found itself presented with was something "I hope will not be repeated", he said. The woman's son told the court the family had no problem with the hospital and accepted they had been informed about the risks of the tube-feeding procedure. Their main concern was that she would be comfortable and not in pain. The judge, in adjourning the matter to this Friday, said that he hoped any remaining difficulties between the parties concerning the woman's health are resolved. If not, he was minded to appoint a visiting physician to independently assess the woman on the court's behalf. Legislation for the establishment of a second court was already in existence but had never been brought into play. Stock picture A High Court judge has said he is "increasingly pessimistic" that a second Special Criminal Court will ever be set up. The establishment of the court was promised by the Government last October. Mr Justice Paul Butler made the comments yesterday during an adjournment in the case of two brothers from Co Mayo who were arrested on alleged explosives and IRA membership offences. Colin Mannion (33) and his brother Brian Mannion (31), of Burriscarra, Clogher, Claremorris, are both charged with membership of an unlawful organisation within the State, namely Oglaigh na hEireann, otherwise the Irish Republican Army, otherwise the IRA on June 9, 2012. The two brothers are also charged with the unlawful possession of explosive substances RDX, PETN, one loaded detonator, two unloaded detonators and three electrical component parts at their home on the same date. Presiding yesterday at the three-judge, non-jury court, Mr Justice Butler said he was "increasingly pessimistic" a second Special Criminal Court would be established. The court previously heard that a second Special Criminal Court may be established to deal with the backlog of cases in the court's current sole incarnation. In October, Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald confirmed the establishment of a second court after expressing concern about delays of almost two years in cases coming to trial at the Special Criminal Court. Legislation for the establishment of a second court was already in existence but had never been brought into play. This was despite an increasing caseload due to dissident republican activity. Seven serving judges were appointed to the bench of the new court. The Mannion brothers' case was listed for mention again on January 26, when a trial date may be fixed. However Mr Justice Butler told the brothers and their legal representatives that he was "extremely doubtful" a date for trial would be fixed when the case is mentioned on that date. Opinion / Columnist Africa on international trade scale For several years, experts from the three largest trading blocs in Africa - the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the East African Community (EAC) and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) - were locked in intense negotiations over a free trade agreement whose aim is to bring about a unified and liberalized single market. The talks finally bore fruit on 10 June 2015 when 26 African countries signed the Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA) agreement in Cairo, Egypt.Under this agreement, all the 26 countries, with a combined gross domestic product (GDP) of about $1.3 trillion and a population of 565 million, will merge into a common market and eliminate tariff lines and trade barriers. The participating countries will benefit from liberalized intra-regional trade, which is expected to boost the flow of goods and services. When implemented, the free trade area will constitute about half of Africa's GDP, half of its population and will cover a combined landmass of 17 million square kilometres, about the size of Russia.At the moment, however, only three of Africa's eight regional economic communities are participating in the TFTA. Non-participating economic blocs include the Arab Maghreb Union, the Economic Community of West African States, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, the Economic Community of Central African States and the Community of Sahel-Saharan States. For now, these blocs are not participating in this new initiative for political and economic reasons. The Abuja Treaty of 1995 signed by 51 African countries mandates all regional economic communities to join the group by 2017 in anticipation of an African Economic Community by 2028."The conditions [to form the TFTA] have never been better," says Sindiso Ndema Ngwenya, the secretary-general of COMESA. "We have improved governance, and the very fact that we withstood the global financial crisis of 2008 attest to sound macroeconomic policies. This is what is giving us resilience," he told Africa Renewal in an interview.The benefits of the free trade area are numerous. "It has the potential to increase economies of scale [which are the cost advantages that can be derived from size of a market and production] through integration, will increase demand for the region's goods and services and make the region more attractive to foreign investments," says Jason Kapkirwok, senior director of TradeMark East Africa, an African non-profit company that supports trade growth in East Africa. "This would in turn create more jobs and catalyze technology transfer."Trade between African countries, as a share of the continent's total trade has hovered at 10-12% for decades, but some experts argue that the actual figure is much more than that because a big part of the continent's trade is conducted informally and at times across porous borders where it's not recorded. The proportion in Europe and Asia, by contrast, is close to 60%.Leading the tripartiteSouth Africa and Egypt, two of Africa's biggest economies in terms of manufacturing and services, are the main forces driving the TFTA, followed by Kenya and Mauritius. Angola, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ethiopia could also play key roles in fostering the region's economy as they are expected to absorb a large share of the region's exports while supplying cheaper inputs such as electricity, petroleum, gas and other raw materials.Even as the bigger economies take advantage of the opportunity of an expanded and liberalized market, less advanced economies could also benefit from the TFTA. For example, countries in the EAC, such as Kenya and Uganda, have the most advanced customs union, which they will be expected to deploy to increase the pace and depth of integration.However, experts caution against high expectations of the TFTA because of existing hurdles that may slow down its implementation. For instance, the current low level of intra-regional trade in Africa could impede attempts to boost trade volume within the single market. In addition, some countries have overlapping memberships in the regional economic blocs, leading to incoherent national trade policies. Also, there are varying levels of socioeconomic development across countries, particularly in industrial, infrastructure and energy sectors, making it difficult for some participating countries to implement the agreement as speedily as others.Further, economies represented in this and other trade agreements are dominated by agricultural production; the UN Conference on Trade and Development notes that "the narrowness of African production and export structures and relative dependence on primary commodities are inhibiting factors to the boosting of intra-regional trade in Africa."Open trade with a country with very different economic characteristics will yield predictable results however, for African farmers, opening to trade with their similarly agricultural neighbours is a fraught prospect. When considering increased trade between two agriculturally dominant African countries, it is not immediately apparent which country will have the comparative advantage in its existing agricultural production this uncertainty stunts regional economic integration.Experts have argued that there is a lack of political will in some countries to implement the TFTA agreement. Already, not all participating countries have ratified the agreement, although they have until the end of the year to do so. Even South Africa, one of the most influential within the block, along with Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique and Zambia, have yet to sign the TFTA, which must be ratified by two-thirds of the participating countries before it comes into force by the expected date January 2016.Even if two-thirds of the countries do not ratify the agreement, Mr. Ngwenya, the COMESA official, says the ball will keep rolling. "In the event that not all the 26 countries sign the tripartite, we shall use the principle of variable geometry in terms of implementation, because those that are ready must move on. If we allow one or two countries that are not ready to hold up the process, then we will never move." The principle of variable geometry means that members from an integration scheme will be flexible enough to adopt different speeds to make progress.A major sticking point for many undecided countries is the TFTA's elimination of trade taxes, which serve as a major supplier of domestic revenue. The TFTA requires all countries to open up their markets to duty-free imports, which could spell some revenue loss. To this point, the TFTA includes phased reduction of tariffs, specifically the immediate liberalization of just 63% of tariff lines, to address such revenue losses.Overall, there are many enticing elements in the TFTA. By harmonizing policies on trade, movement of business persons and industrial and infrastructure development, the agreement will expand the market for goods and services and subsequently promote greater intra-regional trade. Mr. Kapkirwok hopes that all forms of trade barriers such as import and export restrictions will eventually be eliminated.While the TFTA may accomplish its goal of an expanded market for countries in the single trading bloc, Africa still needs to be more prominent in the international trade arena, says Mr. Kapkirwok. Africa should implement prudent macroeconomic policies and regulatory reforms, he says, and countries should embrace good governance and establish competent institutions.Currently, massive infrastructure deficit impedes trade and development, according to Mr. Kapkirwok, and underscores the need for Africa to understand properly the international markets, and to build better trade facilitation and services programmes across all the regional economic communities.Overall, the hope is that TFTA's success will strengthen one of Africa's ambitions - the establishment of a single market. THE High Court has awarded 5,000 to a man assaulted by a bus driver during a road rage incident in which the man, who is black, was also racially abused THE High Court has awarded 5,000 to a man assaulted by a bus driver during a road rage incident in which the man, who is black, was also racially abused. Mr Justice Max Barrett was told the issue of legal costs in the case taken by Anthony Doran against Bus Eireann had also been agreed between the parties. Last week, the judge found that in the totality of the bus driver's actions, an assault, which also consists of a reasonable apprehension of battery, had occurred. The aggressive way the bus driver approached Mr Doran's car and tone of his remarks prompted him (Doran) to believe he was about to be hit and to instinctively recoil, the judge said. Mr Doran, Charlestown Place, St Margaret's Road, Dublin, had appealed a Circuit Court decision dismissing his action against the bus company for assault, battery and false imprisonment. After overturning that decision in relation to assault only, Mr Justice Barrrett indicated he had in mind an award of 5,000 in damages for Mr Doran. The matter was put back to Wednesday (Jan 20) for an order to be made. When the case returned, the judge was told the 5,000 sum had been agreed between the parties as had the costs of the case. The incident occurred in Dublin's city centre on February 28, 2014, when Mr Doran's car broke down and he had to pull into a bus stop. A number of buses arrived and Mr Doran waved them on but one "acted differently" and the incident occurred,, the judge said. It was claimed Mr Doran had made a rude gesture to the bus driver before the confrontation. Mr Justice Barrett said he preferred the version of the events given by Mr Doran to that of the bus driver and by one of his company colleagues who witnessed the incident. It was a sad irony, the judge said, that Mr Doran, "an Irishman, who is black, was racially abused by a white man who has come to this country from abroad and thus might himself be exposed - unacceptably if it were to occur - to some form of intolerance". A CONVICTED murderer has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for burning down a house occupied by a family just days after he was released from a life sentence. Stephen Rock (51) of Priorswood House in Coolock, Dublin was found guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court of damaging a house at Colepark Drive in Ballyfermot, Dublin on July 12 2014 and intending to endanger the life of another. The 51-year-old had pleaded not guilty to the charge. Detective Inspector Colm O'Malley told Monika Leech BL, prosecuting, that Rock was seen "in the vicinity" of the home on the night in question. The court heard "an item" which looked like a "shoe box" was seen by a witness burning in the window of the house on the night of the fire. Counsel told the court that Leanne Nolan managed to rescue her mother Maureen Nolan and her younger brother from the house . One of the family pets did not survive the blaze. "The jury heard evidence that as a result of the blaze the house was destroyed and the family had to move to temporary accommodation," said Ms Leech. The court heard Maureen Nolan had been "assaulted" by Rock when he came to the house earlier that day and herself and her daughter Leanne asked him to leave. "When Mr Rock was asked to leave he said they would be sorry when he came back, counsel said. Rock denied starting the fire when interviewed. The court heard the economic loss to the family was 40,000 which did not include the "property loss to the house" which included beds, curtains and family pictures and much more. "It was not possible to put a value on the personal items lost," said Ms Leech. Ms Leech said that Leanne Nolan experienced "flashbacks" after the fire, her confidence suffered when applying for new jobs and she was afraid "something would happen to her mother when she was not there." The court heard how the Nolan family were upset after losing their dog in the fire and it was only now that they were "getting back to some kind of normality." "It was the first time I felt we could move forward as a family. He took everything, there were times when I felt I wanted to run away from here," Maureen Nolan stated. Rock was previously convicted for murder and was sentenced to life in prison on November 22, 1988, after pleading guilty to the murder of James Kavanagh. He had beaten Kavanagh to death with a pickaxe handle at Naas Road, Dublin. The court heard he was serving his time in Shelton Abbey Prison in Arklow when he escaped in 1999, before being found in London. "He had served ten years in prison before he absconded and he subsequently returned to this jurisdiction following an arrest warrant," said Det Insp O'Malley. The court heard Rock continued to serve his sentence from 2005 to 2014 before he was admitted to full temporary release on July 08 2014. Paul Greene SC, defending, told the court his client's "only visitor over the years" had been his mother who died four years ago. Mr Greene asked the court to take into account his isolated situation and his regret and concern for the Nolan family. Judge Patrick McCartan said that what Rock did was very serious and very dangerous particularly for a man with his record and who had been on temporary release and given full release from his sentence only four days before" said the judge. The judge "commended" Leanne Nolan for attempting to put out the fire and rescuing her brother and mother. "Mr Rock is someone who cannot have any sympathy from this court and he won't get it," said Judge McCartan before sentencing Rock to ten years in prison. AN English jewellery salesman has settled his High Court action against a Dublin hotel after he claimed he was robbed of around 400,000 worth of diamond rings and bracelets by three armed men who burst into the room he was sleeping in. Noah Stefanicki (71) was hit over the head with a hammer by one robber as another shouted "shoot him, shoot him" at his room in the Travelodge Hotel, Ballymun, the High Court heard. Mr Stefanicki, who said he never went anywhere without his small black bag containing the valuable jewellery, tackled one of the raiders and also ran after them, Mr Justice Seamus Noonan was told. His counsel, Ciaran O'Loughlin, told the court the jewellery stolen included ten trays containing 36 rings each including sapphire, emerald and diamonds, as well as engagement, dress and eternity rings, none worth less than 1,300 each. His bag, which was never recovered, also contained a pouch of diamond bracelets worth a total of 77,000, counsel said. Mr Stefanicki, from Gigglewick Cottage, Salisbury Road, Southampton, England sued the hotel owners, Smorgs Limited trading at The Travelodge Group, over the robbery on January 28, 2010. He claimed there was an alleged failure to have any adequate regard for his safety while he was a guest at the hotel. He also claimed he was exposed to a risk of injury or damage of which the hotel were aware or ought to have been aware. He further claimed there was an alleged failure to operate any adequate or appropriate system of security and that armed assailants were allegedly permitted to enter the premises without having been apparently without interruption or challenge. He had to get stitches to the head in hospital afterwards and he suffered post traumatic stress disorder, it is claimed. He could not work for a long time afterwards, it is alleged. The hotel denied the claims and contended the use of a safe had been offered to Mr Stefanicki. After talks yesterday, Mr Justice Noonan was told the case had been settled and could be struck out. The court had heard Mr Stefanicki, who at one time has served in the Israeli Army, usually came to Ireland once a month visiting jewellery shops around the country. He had stayed in the Travelodge, Ballymun twice before. After visiting a number of shops, he had checked in to the hotel the night before his return flight home. He had dinner in the hotel and later dozed off looking at TV in his room. He heard a loud bang and the three masked men entered his room, one carrying a gun and a hammer. He jumped out of bed and started to struggle with the man who had the gun. Another masked man standing at the hotel door said shoot him; shoot him. Even though he received a severe blow to the head with the hammer, he managed to follow the robbers and the gardai were called. Two teenage boys have pleaded guilty to taking part in violence during the Jobstown water protest in 2014 and had sentencing adjourned for enquiries to find out if the Tanaiste wants to give a victim impact statement. The Labour leader and her entourage were allegedly trapped in a ministerial car following a graduation ceremony just after midday on November 15th at An Cosan education facility in Jobstown in Tallaght. An anti-Irish Water demonstration was held which delayed her for about two hours. Gardai allege violence broke out after protesters encroached on and surrounded the car. Twenty four people, including six juvenile males as well as Anti-Austerity Alliance TD Paul Murphy and 17 other adults, are facing a variety of serious charges arising out of incident. Two boys, aged 15 and 16, pleaded guilty yesterday at the Dublin Children's Court to violent disorder charges. The 16-year-old also admitted breaking a windscreen on a garda car during confrontations between gardai and protesters. Judge O'Connor adjourned sentencing until a date next month. He noted the pair did not face false imprisonment charges but said the incident would been a very frightening experience for the Tanaiste. He ordered gardai to find out if she or her assistant wanted to make victim impact statements. He also said the incident was an aggressive form of bullying and an attack on the state. However, he also noted they were not politically motivated and said the teens had to be given credit for their guilty pleas. Pre-sentence probation reports on the teens were also sought by the judge. The boys were aged and 14 and 15 at the time and one of them had psychological and educational issues, Judge John O'Connor also heard. Both of the boy's were accompanied to court by their mothers and their cases were heard separately. Det Garda Paul Smith of Tallaght station told Judge O'Connor a large crowd gathered and tried to block the Tanaiste's car. During the course of the day there were a number of altercations with youths and adults in the area. It was alleged the 16-year-old was pushing and shoving gardai. He was cautioned a number of times to leave the area but refused to go and was aggressive, and among an aggressive group who were obstructing gardai from carrying out their duty. He also broke the windscreen of a garda car, the court was told. The 16-year-old has five criminal convictions, one for theft and five counts of breach of the peace, for which he was placed on supervised probation for 12 months in July last year. Det Gda Smith agreed with the defence counsel Stephen McCrea that there were a number youths involved and he said the teenager got caught up in the day's events. The court has heard the out-of-school teenager had education difficulties and had attended a youth club and a drug course but had no mental health issues. Det Gda Smith told the court the 15-year-old defendant had been aggressive and was also pushing and shoving gardai and throwing eggs. However he accepted that it was uncharacteristic of the boy who had no prior criminal convictions. The court has heard that teenager had significant difficulties and these included Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and also depression and has anger-management difficulties. The manager of an early school leavers programme told the court the youth was intelligent, could do well if he gets back into eduction and knows what he wants to do in his future. Another teenage boy who has pleaded guilty earlier to criminal damage and violent disorder charges is also due to be sentenced in March in the Children's Court. On Monday, a 17-year-old boy entered a not guilty plea at the juvenile court to a violent disorder charge; he will face trial in April. Another 15-year-old is due back in court this month to enter a plea to a violent disorder charge. A 17-year-old boy accused of false imprisonment of Tanaiste Joan Burton and her advisor during the protest is also due back in court later this month for ruling on his trial venue. Last month, Paul Murphy TD was sent forward for trial accused of false imprisonment of the Labour leader and her advisor. The DPP consented to him and 17 other people from Dublin being returned for trial at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court where they will face their next hearing on January 22nd. They face a variety of charges which include false imprisonment, violent disorder and criminal damage to garda cars. A witness at a murder trial has told how she grappled with a gunman and bundled him over a wall after he gunned her partner down and shot her in the leg. Sharon Rattigan was speaking in the Central Criminal Court at the trial Gary Flynn (31), of Rossfield Drive in Tallaght. Mr Flynn has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Seamus 'Shay' O'Byrne at Tymon Park North in Tallaght on March 13, 2009. Speaking to prosecution counsel Alex Owens SC, Ms Rattigan said she had been living with Mr O'Byrne in Tymon Park for two years. On the day Mr O'Byrne died, they had spent time at her mother's house, returned home, and were planning to head out again. At about 8pm she was in their car waiting for Mr O'Byrne when she saw a man in dark clothes and a hoodie walk towards her. "His top was dark and he had a hood up but his face was not covered," she said. She described the man as stocky and said she thought he was going to walk on past but then he turned to Shay and started shooting. "Shay fell to the ground and I tried to run and stop him," she said. "He turned around and shot me." Ms Rattigan said she was shot in the leg, just above the knee, but she kept going and tried to take the gun from the man. He hit her over the head and told her: "Let go of the gun, you tramp." She continued: "I got the gun out of his hand. I fell over the wall and he was trying to get the gun back off me. We were both on the ground." After a short while the man jumped up and ran away, Ms Rattigan kept the gun and put it into her car, which was parked in the driveway. The jury was also shown CCTV footage of the incident. Witness Elizabeth Caffola, a neighbour, said she heard Sharon Rattigan screaming. "I couldn't believe she [Sharon] was walking around after being shot," she said. The trial continues. A 57-year-old Dublin woman who sent obscene phone messages threatening to bomb President Michael D Higgins and several government ministers has pleaded guilty to harassing a priest. Anne Fennell, of Monastery Gate Green, Clondalkin, today pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to two counts of harassing Fr Desmond Byrne by any means including telephone at Woodford Drive, Clondalkin on October 8, 2006 and between October 5, 2005 and January 10, 2006. Last week, Fennell had her sentence for sending obscene phone messages adjourned so she could continue with her psychological therapy. The court heard that on one occasion Anne Fennell had referred to President Higgins as a ladyboy and on another told the receptionist that the President and Sabrina Higgins would go home in plastic bags if they set foot on English soil. She made repeated threats to bomb the president over a number of phone calls in April 2014 and again in October the same year. The court also heard that the entire area around Dail Eireann had to be searched on November 18, 2014 when Fennell called to say there would be a bomb at the main gate. The parliamentary usher who took the call later told gardai that Fennell, a former An Post worker, had hung up screaming. She pleaded guilty to making persistent annoying phone calls and sending obscene or menacing phone messages to Aras an Uachtarain, the Department of Finance, the European Commission Representation, An Post Dublin Mail Centre and the constituency offices of TDs Alan Kelly, Aodhan O Riordain and Noel Coonan between February 2 and December 1, 2014. Today Judge Patricia Ryan adjourned the harassment sentence hearing until July and remanded Fennell on continuing bail. The judge also directed that a victim impact statement be prepared. Defence Forces Cpt Aonghus O Halmhain reads the proclamation to children on Tory island off the northwest Donegal coast with pupil Brendan Lee Rodden Tolan. Photo: Gerry Mooney Defence Forces Lt Col Verling Donnagh presents the national flag to Donal Rogers in Scoil Athphoirt on Arranmore Island off the Donegal coast. Photo: Gerry Mooney Sgt Mark Dunne has the Proclamation reflected in his visor as the Defence Forces deliver the constitution and the national flag to schools off the northwest Donegal islands of Arranmore and Tory. Photo: Gerry Mooney Sgt Mark Dunne ensures a clear final approach while Lt Col Verling Donnagh holds the proclamation and national flag with airman Stephen Gleeson (right) before they deliver the Proclamation and the national flag to schools off the northwest Donegal island of Arranmore. Picture; GERRY MOONEY The children of Tory and Arranmore islands off the coast of Donegal rarely have visitors dropping by - but this was one special flying visit. The Defence Forces have been touring the country, delivering the Tricolour and a copy of the Proclamation to every national school ahead of the centenary commemorations of the Rising this Easter. And island children are not missing out - although our inclement weather has meant they have had a long wait as previous attempts have been called off. The Air Corps, accompanied by the Irish Independent, flew to Tory and Arranmore islands yesterday - and fog nearly scuppered the mission once again. However, the crew were given permission to use Northern Ireland's airspace, which allowed us to fly the "long route" around Belfast to Malin Head, before reaching the islands. First up was Arranmore, where we visited Scoil Aphoirt and Scoil Arainn Mhor - both of which have fewer than 20 pupils each. Led by Lt Colonel Ronan Verling, the Proclamation was read out to the class, before the Tricolour was presented to the school. Then it was off to Tory, where we visited Scoil Naisiunta, which has just nine pupils. All of the children said they knew of the Rising, but one little boy from Scoil Naisiunta summed it up best, saying: "It was a big fight in Dublin between the Rebels and the British." Jimmy Deenahan with Dr Natalie Harrower, Director of Digital Repository Ireland at the launch of Inspiring Ireland 1916 in the Royal Irish Acadamy in Dawson Street last night. Photo: Tony Gavin It is hoped that a new online exhibition using photos, diaries and videos to tell the stories of the people and events of the Easter Rising will reach out to Irish people both at home and further afield. It was launched by the Digital Repository of Ireland and the Inspiring Ireland project in Dublin's Royal Irish Academy last night. Organisers hope that the exhibition will capture the imagination of the diaspora and attract a global audience to the 1916 commemorations. The project features a range of artefacts, including witness testimonies of British soldiers and compensation claims from artists Jack B Years and Harry Clarke. Diaspora Minister Jimmy Deenihan, who launched the exhibition, said the project "digitally preserves" the country's heritage. Mr Deenihan continued: "Inspiring Ireland is a perfect platform for reaching out to our citizens abroad, our diaspora and Ireland's international friends in commemorating this key period in our history. "We must not forget the important influence that the Irish diaspora had on events in Ireland 100 years ago. "It is fitting that our global family of today are given the opportunity to participate in our 2016 commemorations." Comrades The peaceful night that round me flows, Breaks through your iron prison doors, Free through the world your spirit goes, Forbidden hands are clasping yours. The wind is our confederate, The night has left her doors ajar, We meet beyond earths barred gate, Where all the worlds wild Rebels are. An Assessment of 'Comrades' by Dr Lucy Collins Eva Gore-Booth, poet and activist, was the sister of Constance Markievicz. Both women rejected their privileged upbringing in different ways: Constance became a revolutionary nationalist while Eva chose pacifism and social reform. Though the sisters disagreed on the subject of violent rebellion, Comrades powerfully expresses their deep personal bond its simplicity reflects the poets need to speak of feelings unfettered by the descriptive detail of everyday life. Night, traditionally a time for poetic reflection on mortality, offers release; single syllable words aptly express the flow of emotion across all obstacles and the convergence of these two lives. The sisters were convinced of their power to communicate telepathically since childhood, and here their instinctive closeness finds poetic form. In the spirit of love and solidarity the poem charts a move beyond earthly states towards spiritual transcendence the place of pure feeling where idealists unite. Dr Lucy Collins is a lecturer in English at University College Dublin (UCD). She is the curator of 'Reading 1916', a forthcoming exhibition at UCD Special Collections. The transition to college can be a challenge for all, but for those with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) the move to a new, and more independent learning environment can be very problematic. Children with ASD, which includes Asperger's syndrome, can be academically bright, but have difficulties in processing information, communicating and socialising. They may have limited interests and repetitive patterns of behaviour, so changes in routine and surroundings can present problems. They can be overly or under sensitive to certain sounds, touch, tastes, smells, colours and lights. There have been big strides in the provision of supports for pupils with autism in primary and post-primary schools, but, while third-level colleges offer assistance for any student with a disability, there has been no dedicated response to meeting the needs of those with autism. For the person with ASD, a lack of awareness and understanding on the part of others can lead to isolation, perhaps bullying - and a difficult and unsatisfactory college experience. An initiative at Dublin City University (DCU) is about to change all that and, over the next 18 months, aims to create the first autism friendly university, both in Ireland and Europe. DCU president Professor Brian MacCraith says they want to come up with a model that will be replicable in other colleges. DCU research puts the prevalence of autism among Irish children at 1pc, similar to findings in the UK and US. That figure is now regarded as conservative, but even at 1pc, it means that every year about 470 students with ASD enter third level, most likely on courses in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM).The general difficulties students with ASD encounter may be a factor in high drop out rates on some of these courses. The project was inspired partly by a conversation between Professor MacCraith and Adam Harris, founder of AsIAm.ie, an advocacy group for people with autism. Meanwhile, Peter Brabazon, of the recruitment company Specialisterne Ireland was having parallel thoughts. Specialisterne, a branch of a Danish company exclusively involved in finding employment for people with autism, is collaborating with DCU and AsIAm on the project. The initiative has a dual focus: changing college cultures while also helping students with ASD through another important transition - to the world of work, where their condition can often be an unwitting obstacle to getting a job. According to Professor MacCraith, the unemployment rate among people with autism spectrum disorders is about 80pc, despite many of them having excellent qualifications. Peter Brabazon sees his role as helping students with ASD to develop the communication and socialisation skills to get through an interview and not allow their condition to distract from what they have to offer a company, while also helping employers to change their mindset. An immediate priority will be students going out on internships next spring through DCU's Intra work experience programme . DCU is bringing a whole college approach to the project, involving staff from a range of offices including student support, disability support, Intra, Professor of Psychology, Teresa Burke, and the school of nursing and human sciences as well as the students' union. A campus-wide consultation is running from now until May, involving students, lecturers and other staff, raising awareness and identifying the particular difficulties experienced by those with ASD, with a view to implementing changes from next September. Adam Harris says it is about focussing on ability rather than disability and on changing attitudes: "It is about having a conversation, finding out what people are having difficulties with and about getting those who don't have autism to meet those who do, half way." His vision of an autism-friendly campus wouldinclude quiet spaces to which people may retreat when they need to get away from noise, campus signage to aid navigation in a visual way, and training for lecturers to help them understand how people with autism process information. Brian MacCraith is also conscious that DCU, whose Institute of Education covers teacher training at all levels, has a responsibility to ensure those graduates bring a necessary understanding to their future work. The project is receiving 50,000 from the Dormant Accounts Fund. Practical and social challenges Sean Leaney (22) is a student with Aspergers syndrome. While attending Scoil Caitriona, Glasnevin, Dublin, he was provided with a Special Needs Assistant. When Sean began a B Sc in Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences in DCU, the Disability and Learning Service gave him a laptop, and introduced him to the Unilink support service, which he visited regularly during his first year. Now in his final year, Sean found the Disability and Learning Services policy of interacting with students and not their parents problematic. However, the service has also supported him through hard times. In my first lab of third year, I kept making mistakes and I got angry with myself. I was afraid I would break something. Because of that, the disability service was concerned for my safety and said I had to go see a counsellor before it could confirm I was ready to return to the lab. I was out of the lab for a couple of weeks but I managed to catch up and I passed third year. Im glad the disability service was there to help me manage it and to get back into the labs, because I really like the practical side of my course. Sean says he is really enjoying his course, but the social side of college life has been more challenging. I dont really have any friends on my course. I went to a class night out but I left almost as soon as I got there parties are not something I like. He prefers spending time with the college clubs and societies, including the Tea Society, Games Society and Rock-Climbing Club. The societies made it a lot easier for me to make friends, he says. This week will be an extremely busy one for Leaving Cert students. There are a number of deadlines and events coming up and no doubt, despite the best efforts of guidance counsellors, parents and the students themselves, there will inevitably be some students calling in to my office, and similar offices in other schools, in a bit of a panic. Here are four deadlines and events that students should be conscious of this week. CAO Today is the first deadline for CAO 2016, the last day an applicant can avail of the discounted application rate of 25, although not the deadline to enter courses or complete any other aspect of the CAO application. Students who have not already registered for the CAO should do so today, on the apply section of cao.ie. Once they have entered their personal details and paid their fee, they will be issued with their CAO number. Applicants have until January 31 to enter their course choices or make changes to their choices. HPAT Registration for HPAT, the assessment that all applicants to medicine must take, closes today at 5.15pm. Applicants will be assessed for entry on a combination of their HPAT score and their Leaving Cert results. The exam will take place on February 27. Applicants should make sure to download the HPAT information booklet and practice test material. Open Days Colleges all over the country are holding information evenings and open days. Intending CAO applicants should take this opportunity to visit the colleges before February 1. They will be able to ask questions about courses and speak to lecturers. This is especially important for students considering applying for any restricted entry courses. These courses must be listed by February 1 as they tend to involve portfolios, test, auditions etc, as part of the admissions process. These courses can always be removed during the change of mind process but they must be entered before February 1 for an applicant to be considered. PLC applications While much attention is on the CAO, Post Leaving Certificate (PLC) colleges are currently accepting applications. PLCs are an excellent option regardless of what an applicant's career goals may be. A PLC course will allow an applicant to improve their employment prospects in their area of study as well as allowing students to use these qualifications to gain access to the universities and institutes of technology. All PLCs colleges are currently accepting applications and some are holding interviews in the coming weeks. PLC colleges tend not to have closing dates and will continue to meet applicants until courses fill. However, popular courses fill quickly so students should consider applying for these now. Aoife Walsh is a guidance counsellor at Malahide Community School, Co Dublin Important dates Today Open Day - Grange Community College Open Day - Griffith College Dublin Tomorrow Info Evening/interview prep clinic Colaiste Dhulaigh College of FE DARE & HEAR Advice Clinic - Fels Point Hotel, Tralee, Co Kerry Portfolio Info Day LSAD - Limerick IT Open Day - Sallynoggin College of FE n Open Evening -Shannon College of Hotel Management January 22 Open/Careers Day - Bray Institute of FE Open Day - Galway Mayo IT/Letterfrack January 23 Open Day - BIMM Institute Dublin Open Day - Galway Mayo IT Open Day - IT Tallaght Interview/Info Day - Marino College of FE Open Day - Mary Immaculate College Open Day - NCI Architecture/Planning/Environmental Policy Open Day - UCD January 26 Open Day/Evening Greenhills College The proposal by the Minister for Education and Skills Jan O'Sullivan to remove Rule 68 from the Rules for National Schools before this Dail ends is a necessary and positive one and opposition to its removal is misguided. Rule 68 is part of the legacy of the history of Irish education but, as will be made clear, it no longer reflects the legal situation so its removal would be timely and appropriate. What is it all about? According to the Constitution, parents enjoy the right to withdraw their children from religious education that cultivates faith but it is hard to see how such withdrawal can be complete or absolute in practice. This is because the Rules of the Department of Education require the maintenance of a religious ethos in all primary schools. This requirement is part of Rule 68 of the Rules for National Schools promulgated in 1965 ('a religious spirit should inform and vivify the whole work of the school'). This means that all primary school pupils are supposed to receive indirect religious education. A much stronger statement about the place of religion appeared in the Primary School Curriculum of 1971. According to this document the 'separation of religious and secular instruction into differentiated subject compartments serves only to throw the whole educational function out of focus . . .' The Civics programme of 1966 promoted a similar view. It claimed that moral and civic education depends on religion. Few people are aware that religion dominates the regulations that govern the operation of Education and Training Board (ETB) (formerly VEC) schools at second level but oddly enough this has never become problematic. The Introduction to Memorandum V 40 (published in 1942) that underpin these schools states that the education provided in them 'be in keeping with Irish tradition and should reflect in the schools the loyalty to our Divine Lord which is expressed in the Prologue and Articles of the Constitution'. There has been no controversy, one way or the other, concerning the very strong demands to integrate religion into the life of schools in the ETB sector. This could well be because the largely middle class community of complainers concerns itself little with these schools. Note that these requirements about religion came from the State rather than from the Churches. Why the Rule should be rescinded? Firstly, it is inconsistent with liberal democratic principles in the Western world to teach religion, even indirectly, to those who reject it. I say this as a citizen who is a religious believer. This is not just a personal view. Seeking to promote religious faith in all young people is inconsistent with the Irish Constitution, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Education Act. Secondly, and more importantly, removing the requirement to affirm religion throughout the curriculum would make no practical difference. For example, the 1971 statements on the role of religion on the primary curriculum do not appear in the document of 1999. More dramatically the curriculum for CSPE (Civic, Social and Political Education) of 1996 makes no mention at all of religion. Rule 68 is unnecessary because the Education Act leaves it up to individual schools to decide their own belief systems. Its removal would not affect the right of denominational schools to maintain their religious ethos. There is a plausible case that references to the profile of religion in Irish schools are no more than rhetorical guff but the removal of Rule 68 would still be a positive symbolic statement. It is not the task of a liberal democracy to seek, even indirectly, to foster religious faith in its citizens. Dr Kevin Williams is Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Evaluation, Quality and Inspection, School of Education, DCU. Eight separate investigations are currently being carried out by either GSOC or the gardai into the identity of sources used by journalists as they researched articles. Seven out of the eight probes focus on journalists who mainly cover crime and security issues. But none of the so-called leaks involved information which might threaten the security of the State or could be deemed to interfere with or prejudice ongoing inquiries. Three journalists, one of whom, Conor Feehan, is employed by Independent News and Media, are satisfied that their phone records were accessed by GSOC investigators - and as a result gardai, whose names were on the phone call records, were questioned on why they were in contact. GSOC was set up in 2007 to deal with complaints from the public about the behaviour of gardai and provide an independent oversight of the force. Meanwhile, there are no suspicions that the gardai themselves accessed journalists' phones as part of their inquiries into leaks. But it is known that in some cases the gardai have accessed the phones of members of the force, which they are legally entitled to do, and in that way establish where contacts have been made. One of the GSOC probes is into a complaint by a friend of the late model, Katy French, in which he alleged information came from Garda sources. Two journalists are the focus of that investigation. Two more journalists are the subject of complaints by TD Clare Daly to GSOC in relation to publication of her arrest on suspicion of drink-driving. The suspicions were later established to be unfounded. Another GSOC investigation is into a complaint by a former government minister about the publication of an allegation of child abuse against him. GSOC also received a complaint from a member of an international crime gang about information relating to the gang appearing in media outlets. One of the current Garda investigations involves the publication of reports that a number of people were to face criminal charges arising out of a protest at Jobstown, Tallaght, when Tanaiste Joan Burton and her assistant were detained in her car for over two hours. In a separate case, which is not included in the list of eight investigations, 'Sunday World' journalist Nicola Tallant lodged a complaint with GSOC after she was told that her phone had been routinely monitored by a senior garda since 2010. In each of their investigations, senior GSOC management appoint a special team to carry out inquiries and prepare a report for examination. Where it is deemed appropriate, GSOC will submit a file to the Director of Public Prosecutions. In their investigations, senior Garda management appoint a high-ranking officer to head up a team. Labour Party leader Joan Burton has rounded on members of the Dail's Technical Group following their decision to table a motion of no confidence in her record as Tanaiste. During a heated Dail debate, Ms Burton staunchly defended her decision to appoint former trade unionist David Begg as chairman of the Pensions Authority. The controversy erupted last week after it emerged she waived the normal public appointments procedure, instead using a clause in the guidelines that allows her to personally offer the post to the former ICTU chief. The move to hand Mr Begg the 20,520-a-year post led to accusations of cronyism, and prompted Independent TD Shane Ross to table the motion - which was countered by the Government. During last night's debate, Taoiseach Enda Kenny labelled Mr Ross as a "cheerleader" for certain bankers in the former Anglo Irish Bank. "That record is there for all to see in black and white and I'm sure you'll understand that," Mr Kenny said. Ms Burton was flanked by three Labour Ministers - Jan O'Sullivan, Alex White and Ged Nash - as she came under attack for appointing Mr Begg to the role. Kicking off the debate on behalf of the Technical Group, Waterford TD John Halligan strongly criticised Mr Begg's claim that his remuneration is "not exactly a crock of gold". "What an appalling insult. I could fill this chamber 100 times over with pensioners, people on validity, people with disabilities, low-paid workers and the unemployed, all of those earning less than 20,000 per year," Mr Halligan. "I'm tired and I'm a little bit worn down meeting people in hopeless situations with no money, no food," he added. The focus of the debate, which will conclude with a vote tonight, quickly moved on to Ms Burton's record as Social Protection Minister. Dublin Bay North TD Finian McGrath highlighted an RTE programme this week which detailed the hardship facing homeless families in Dublin. "Where is the social protection for those children? Where is the support and care for those families?" Mr McGrath said. Kildare North TD Catherine Murphy said she was "sorry" she felt she had no option but to vote in favour of the motion put forward by the Technical Group. "The system is bypassed for someone perceived to be an insider," Ms Murphy said. Socialist TD Paul Murphy dismissed claims by Labour politicians that no rules were broken by the appointment. Homework "It is the equivalent of 'the dog ate my homework'," he said. "I am very strongly of the opinion that David Begg has not been appointed because of those qualifications." Responding to the criticism, Ms Burton strongly defended the decision to appoint Mr Begg. "The chair of a State board must be a person of integrity. He or she must be someone with expertise and experience in the issues which the board has to deal with," she said. "David Begg is all of these things." She accused Mr Ross of having a "personal vendetta" against Mr Begg. "We can all recall who Shane Ross championed for senior roles in Irish life. He championed Sean Fitzpatrick in particular," she said. "But to be fair, Deputy Ross wasn't alone in singing the praises of Anglo bankers. In 2006, Fianna Fail appointed another Anglo banker, Tiernan O'Mahoney, as chair of the then Pensions Board," she added. Child protection groups are demanding inspections of emergency accommodation offered to homeless families. Taoiseach Enda Kenny has defended the Coalition's record on housing amid a furore over the standard of emergency accommodation. Mr Kenny came under fire in the wake of the television programme 'My Homeless Family' aired on RTE on Monday. The Government is now under pressure to send in child welfare officials to inspect the housing offered to homeless families. The Children's Rights Alliance wants a child protection and welfare audit conducted on all emergency accommodation. The Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (ISPCC) also called for the introduction of child protection audits within emergency accommodation to review physical and management standards for their impact on child safety. The ISPCC said it had repeatedly warned about the hazards of emergency accommodation. The organisation's chief executive, Grainia Long, said it had regularly called for action to reassure the public and parents that children living in B&B accommodation are safe. "Emergency accommodation is unacceptable for long periods, and it is the State's responsibility to ensure that when they are placed in B&Bs that those placements do not place children at risk," she said. The ISPCC also argued that child protection audits would examine hotels and other forms of emergency accommodation, and would also ensure management standards. The Taoiseach said he believed people in emergency accommodation had their complaints heard. "Obviously, the stories of Emily, Ryan, Preston and Parker are not the kind of stories you want to see on television or indeed hear about," he said. "This is an issue which is not acceptable and I commend the people who spoke out,'' he added. "A total of 123 complaints were received about emergency accommodation. I understand that all of these complaints were dealt with appropriately," Mr Kenny said. The Taoiseach said the housing crisis followed the total collapse of the construction sector, which was taking the longest to get back on its feet. Mr Kenny ruled out increasing rent supplement to help alleviate homelessness. "The real problem is the supply of houses and increasing rent supplement only exacerbates the pressure on the existing housing stock,'' he said. Mr Kenny said the next stage in addressing the issue was to have local councils, who had already been given money, instructions and targets, to get on with the supply of social housing. Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin said the documentary was made possible by the bravery, courage and dignity of the families who participated. "They revealed with great courage and dignity the depressing and very dangerous nature and reality of homelessness Ireland,'' he said. Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams said it was wrong to say the Government was addressing the housing situation as a priority. He said that even in a straitened economy the Government had choices - and the Taoiseach chose to invest in collapsed banks over housing. Mr Adams said homelessness increased by 93pc in 2015 - a de facto doubling of the rate. At the same time, just 28 local authority houses were built. Independent TD Mick Wallace said NAMA would provide 2,000 social houses out of 20,000. "That is a ratio of nine-to-one and the major problem is the lack of social houses being built by local councils." Garda divers at the scene in the Grand Canal where the body of Kenneth OBrien was found. Collins Dublin, Gareth Chaney Members of the Gardai at the scene in the Grand Canal where the body of Kenneth OBrien was found. Collins Dublin, Gareth Chaney The family of Kenneth O'Brien cannot understand why he was killed, according to a family friend. The father-of-one's torso was found in a suitcase in the Grand Canal at the weekend. Gardai believe he was killed because of a personal grudge, saying that Dubliner had no connection with crime. But they think he may have fallen foul of someone with a grudge to bear, since he returned home last month after a spell working in Australia. Mr O'Brien was identified at 3.30pm yesterday after a DNA sample taken from the torso matched a sample provided by a member of his family. The mechanic and JCB driver was the father of a little boy, and part of a family who are described as very respectable and hard-working. Today, a person close to the OBrien family today said that Ken had only been at his grandfathers house in Ballyfermot on Thursday, the day before he went missing, to help him put a new battery into his car. He was always helpful, and quiet in his own way, nobody can understand what happened, they said. Ken grew up in Ballyfermot with his brother and sister and moved to Australia to work. His aunt reported him missing after getting a call from his partner on Friday night, but when we heard about the body being found in the canal on Saturday we never ever thought it could be Ken, they explained. Then we found out yesterday evening that it was him. We just can't believe it. They added. If they had killed him and left him it would have been bad enough, but to do what they did to him afterwards is just shocking. We are sick at what happened. We can't sleep, they said. Today a friend of Kens who worked with him in Australia told Independent.ie the the Irish community there are in shock at what happened. Ken lived for his family and was a hard worker. We cant understand how or why his life could have ended this way, he said. He went about his work, kept quiet, and gave nobody cause for concern or reason to criticise him, he added. He worked continuously and missed his family greatly, and wanted to start his own business when he went home. He would always talk about how he missed his little boy, said the Irishman who worked with Ken. When the little lad started to walk Ken was nearly in tears because he wanted to be be there to see him growing, he added. Weve been following the case out here because it is so unusual, and then this morning to see Kens photo in the reports is just such a shock. We can't understand it, he explained. Ken was not in trouble with anyone and this looks like some sort of execution. We just cant understand it, he added. Although Ken was a big man, he didnt carry himself as a hard man. He was a mechanic, just doing his work to provide for his family, he said. Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald described the case as "shocking" and "most distressing". Asked about the progress of the garda investigation she replied: "That's an operational matter for the Gardai." "Obviously it's a most distressing case and I won't comment further on it. Obviously it's a shocking case and incredibly sad and distressing for the family." Garda Commissioner Noirin OSullivan has described the murder of Kenneth OBrien as gruesome. Speaking in Dublin today, the garda chief offered the sympathies of the force to the OBrien family. Its obviously a very gruesome murder, she said. Ms OSullivan appealed for anybody who may have information, no matter how small they might think to come forward. Were very anxious to hear from anybody who might have any information they can offer in helping us to identify the perpetrator of this awful crime, she said. Last night, detectives were making inquiries to establish his acquaintances since he came back - and determine if he had been involved in any incident that could be linked to his brutal demise. One experienced investigator said: "It is rarely that we come across such savagery and we will be looking at people known to us with a history of violence as we sift through possible suspects for this awful crime." They will also check whether Mr O'Brien believed himself to be under threat in recent weeks. Their inquiries will focus on the Clondalkin area, where Mr O'Brien was last seen alive. He vanished last week after telling his family that he was heading down the country to do some work. Gardai are anxious to speak with anyone who was in contact with Mr O'Brien in the period leading up to his disappearance. Superintendent Gerry Wall, who is leading the investigation, said: "If you have spoken to him by email, phone or text, we would like to hear from you. "The fact he was last seen in Clondalkin, Clondalkin is of particular interest to us. He was last seen on Friday morning. He hasn't been seen since and no contact has been made." His disappearance was reported to the gardai in Clondalkin the following evening. Gardai have not yet located where he was murdered and his body dismembered, but intensive investigations are continuing in west Dublin and north Kildare. Officers said last night that securing a positive identification of the victim was a significant development in their investigation, and opened up fresh avenues of inquiry. Superintendent Wall said: "He's a family man, with a partner. I spoke with his family this evening. They are devastated and grief-stricken." Mr O'Brien had an address in Lealand Road, Clondalkin, but was originally from Ballyfermot and had lived in Australia before returning to Ireland in December. He is described as being 6'2" tall with a stocky build, and he wore a beard. Supt Wall added: "At this stage, there is no indication why this crime was perpetrated." Gardai were speaking to neighbours in the areas as the made door-to-door enquiries. Neighbours spoke of their shock at what had occurred, but said that Mr O'Brien was not well-known in the area as he had only recently returned from overseas. Officers from the Counter Terrorism International (CTI) unit have engaged with individuals intent on leaving Ireland for war zones such as Syria and Iraq. Stock photo Detailed emergency plans involving Government and the security forces have been drafted following realistic exercises based on the Paris attacks. And garda officials have been travelling to Jordan, Lebanon and Greece to vet refugees coming to Ireland in a bid to weed out radicals. The officer spearheading the State's counter-terrorism operations has revealed that garda counter-terrorism officers have also engaged with people intent on travelling to war zones in the Middle East. Assistant Commissioner John O'Mahoney, the head of the Garda Crime and Security branch, said that up to 40 individuals travelled from Ireland to participate in various conflicts there since 2010. Mr O'Mahoney said that the Gardai were part of a global security response to the threat. "The current security situation presents one of the biggest challenges facing law enforcement in the western world. This is an unprecedented global phenomenon which does not respect national borders and utilises the digital age where the internet and social media are used to radicalise and recruit people and incite terrorist acts. "The situation requires all national security services to be vigilant and working in harmony together sharing, updating and validating intelligence. "I can say that the co-operation between the various agencies is at its highest level ever." Officers from the Counter Terrorism International (CTI) unit under his command have engaged with individuals intent on leaving Ireland for war zones such as Syria and Iraq. "We have been tipped off by concerned families or friends of people who have been radicalised and want to travel, and this has been dealt with discreetly. "Our officers also engage with people coming back from these war zones with a view to assessing the threat they pose," he said. The Assistant Commissioner revealed that officers from the Special Detective Unit and officials from the Department of Justice were involved in vetting refugees coming to Ireland. "It is important not to conflate the refugee crisis with the terrorist threat from Isil. The vast majority of people coming from the Middle East have a genuine reason for fleeing the conflict," he stressed. "However, it would be naive for us not to suspect that a group like Isil did not seek to benefit in some way and effectively hide amongst the tide of human misery coming to our shores. Members of the SDU and officials from the Department of Justice have boots on the ground in Lebanon, Jordan and Greece to vet the refugees coming here so as to mitigate the threat as much as possible." Attack Describing the global threat as "unprecedented", he said that the Gardai and the other state services were trained and prepared for an attack. "An Garda Siochana has combated domestic terrorism for almost 50 years with considerable success. As a result, we have a formidable skills base in this field, which means we are well able to face this challenge. But it is important to stress the threat assessment is that an attack is possible but it is unlikely." Mr O'Mahoney said that the garda's elite tactical units, the Emergency Response Unit (ERU) and the Regional Support Units, had also increased training in response to the mounting terror threat. Meanwhile, the Defence Forces are advising other international agencies dealing with Islamic terror threats, particularly on the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The Explosive Ordnance Disposal units - or bomb squads - gained their expertise dealing with Provisional IRA bombs over 40 years and from operating in war zones with the EU and UN. They put on display their equipment and carry out a live exercise involving the detonation of a number of devices. The Irish Defence Forces are leading the way in devising a Europe-wide strategy on IEDs. Islamic terror groups' weapons of choice are IEDs, vest bombs used by suicide bombers and roadside bombs. Islamic State is making bombs based on devices designed by Provisional IRA bomb makers, which were sold on to other terror groups during the Peace Process. The scene of the investigation along the banks of the Grand Canal at Ardclough, Kildare, where the body was found Photo: Steve Humphreys The Garda sub aqua unit at the scene near the village of Ardclough, Co Kildare Gardai at the scene where the body was found in the Grand Canal Photo: Douglas O'Connor Gardai at the scene at the weekend, inset, the picture released of Mr Kenneth O'Brien Gardai have identified the murder victim whose torso was found in a suitcase in the Grand Canal at Ardclough in north Kildare last Saturday afternoon. He has been named as father-of-one Kenneth O'Brien (33) from Lealand Road, Clondalkin, Dublin. Kenneth O'Brien (33) He is understood to have gone missing on Friday and his disappearance was reported to gardai the following evening. Mr O'Brien was originally from Ballyfermot, Dublin. Mr O'Brien was last seen leaving his house last Friday and he told his family he was 'going down the the country to do some work'. Expand Close The scene of the investigation along the banks of the Grand Canal at Ardclough, Kildare, where the body was found Photo: Steve Humphreys / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The scene of the investigation along the banks of the Grand Canal at Ardclough, Kildare, where the body was found Photo: Steve Humphreys The JCB operator had recently returned from Australia. It is unknown how he travelled once he left the house. Superintendent Gerry Wall said at the press conference this evening: "He's a family man, with a partner. "I spoke with his family this evening. They are devastated and grief stricken." Superintendent Gerry Wall revealed that "gardai enquires are intensifying towards the Clondalkin area". Mr O'Brien had only returned from Australia last month. "If you have spoken to him by email, phone or text, we would like to hear from you," Superintendent Wall said Superintendent Wall said that gardai were particularly interested in speaking to anybody who may have been in the Grand Canal area early Saturday morning on January 16. He said that over 100 people have contacted the incident room with information regarding the murder. He added that wider searches will be done in the Ardclough area where the torso was found over the next few days. He said that a team of gardai have been out all day and will continue throughout the night to as they try to establish a crime scene. Superintendent Wall said gardai have no evidence to suggest that Mr Wall was in fear for his life. Kenneth OBrien is a very normal man, going about his business, pursuing his employment, trying to get some work and he has been brutally murdered, said Superintendent Wall. At this stage there is no indication why this crime was perpetrated on this man. It is a particularly gruesome crime and the brutality of it couldnt be overstated in respect of how a human being has ben treated. It focuses us and our intensity of our investigation to find the perpetrators of the crime and to bring them to justice. I dont have any car or any details about the mode of transport. That is certainly one of the things that would assist us in our enquires. If people did see him in a car, bus, Luas, wed be very happy to hear from them. Gardai said that they were pursuing leads why Mr O'Brien was killed. "At this stage there is no indication why this crime was perpetrated," said Superintendent Wall. He added that no crime scene has been found. "It is a particularly gruesome crime." Mr Wall also dismissed reports that Mr O'Brien was at a party. "That doesn't fit in with our enquiries," said Superintendent Wall and dismissed it as "speculation". He added that Mr O'Brien's family have only been given the "devastating" news just over two hours ago. Mr O'Brien was identified this afternoon after a DNA sample taken from the torso matched with a sample given by a member of the man's family. DNA analysis was carried out and completed today. Gardai were informed at 3.30pm today that the DNA sample was a match to Mr O'Brien. This evening, gardai issued a fresh appeal and said they wished to speak to anyone who was in or around the Grand Canal near Ardclough on Friday and early Saturday to contact them. Gardai said they are keen to speak to anyone who may have observed, seen or had any contact with Mr O'Brien since the early hours of Friday morning when he left Lealand Road in Clondalkin or can assist in tracing his movements. The gardai again requested people returning to their property or premises after the weekend to check to see if there was anything unusual. Anyone with information is asked to contact the incident room at Leixlip Garda Station 01 666 7800. Gardai have not yet established where Mr O'Brien was murdered and dismembered but intensive investigations are continuing in north Kildare and west Dublin. Mr O'Brien is not known to gardai - and is from what has been described as a very respectable and hard working family. The breakthrough in the identification of Mr O'Brien occurred earlier today. The torso of a male was found wrapped in plastic in a suitcase near Ardclough Bridge, Co Kildare, shortly after 3.30pm on Saturday. The victim's head, hands and feet had been cut off in an attempt to prevent gardai from carrying out an identification process of the body. However, investigating detectives were able to determine an age for the victim. Sources have revealed that one of the lines of inquiry gardai were working on is that the Mr O'Brien was brutally slain in "a house party that got out of control". However, it is understood this theory has been investigated and discounted. Read More The suitcase holding the torso of the Mr O'Brien was in the Grand Canal for at least six hours before it was recovered by passers-by. Several walkers noticed the suitcase in the canal at Ardclough in north Kildare from 9am onwards on Saturday but thought it was discarded litter. A post-mortem examination of the torso by Deputy State Pathologist Dr Michael Curtis, at Naas General Hospital on Sunday afternoon, showed no signs of injury to the torso. Gardai believe the fatal injuries may have been inflicted to the Mr O'Brien's head, either through a shooting or a brutal assault. Members of the Garda water unit resumed their search of the canal for other body parts yesterday, while the Garda dog unit was also drafted in to lead searches along the canal banks and adjoining land. Gardai think other body parts could have been dumped elsewhere in the Grand Canal or in nearby wasteland. Members of the Garda investigation team from the Kildare division are working closely with colleagues in west Dublin. Fingerprint checks are being carried out on the suitcase and the heavy plastic used to wrap the torso. Read More Gardai have so far gathered more than 80 witness statements from members of the public, with investigating officers appealing for anyone with information to contact Leixlip Garda Station. Nationally, 522 people were on trolleys, according to figures from the INMO Serious levels of overcrowding in hospital emergency departments returned yesterday as some beds had to be closed due to the number of patients with flu. Nationally, 522 people were on trolleys, according to figures from the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO). This is the third-highest trolley toll this month. Earlier this month, the numbers rose to 558. The congestion comes more than a week after the nurses' union agreed to defer its strike to allow for proposed measures to ease the trolley crisis in hospitals to be implemented. The HSE's own figures showed that around 219 patients across the country were waiting more than nine hours for a bed. This compares to 201 waiting more than nine hours last Tuesday. Beaumont Hospital in Dublin, which was worst hit with 44 patients on trolleys, said it had to temporarily close three beds due to flu which affects patient flow through the hospital. A spokeswoman said it had a high number of patients attending who needed admission. The hospital is implementing a series of measures to reduce overcrowding including earlier discharge, accessing nursing home beds and cancelled planned operations due for today. The HSE said that, according to its figures, 436 people were on trolleys yesterday morning. There had been an increase in attendances at Mullingar, Connolly, Cork University Hospital, University Hospital Waterford, Beaumont, St Vincent's and St James's Hospital. Hospitals are reporting increased numbers of patients presenting with respiratory or flu-like symptoms, said a spokesman. Nurses in the INMO are currently balloting on whether to accept the settlement measures and a result of that vote will be known at the end of the month. The failure to bring about a significant fall in trolley numbers is disappointing with hospitals across the country under pressure. Hospitals that suffered serious overcrowding included University Hospital Galway, Cork University Hospital, Sligo General Hospital and the Mater Hospital in Dublin. Senior managers and nursing union representatives must meet weekly to review how the relief measures are working. A record number of Air Force drones crashed in major accidents last year, documents show, straining the U.S. militarys fleet of robotic aircraft when it is in more demand than ever for counterterrorism missions in an expanding array of war zones. Driving the increase was a mysterious surge in mishaps involving the Air Forces newest and most advanced hunter-killer drone, the Reaper, which has become the Pentagons favored weapon for conducting surveillance and airstrikes against the Islamic State, al-Qaeda and other militant groups. The Reaper has been bedeviled by a rash of sudden electrical failures that have caused the 21/2-ton drone to lose power and drop from the sky, according to accident-investigation documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Investigators have traced the problem to a faulty starter-generator, but have been unable to pinpoint why it goes haywire or devise a permanent fix... The aircraft losses pose another challenge for the Air Force as it struggles to provide sufficient drone coverage for counterterrorism operations in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Mali and Cameroon, among other countries. Despite a surge in requests from field commanders, the Air Force last year had to curtail its drone combat missions by 8 percent because of an acute shortage of pilots for the remote-controlled aircraft. Things have gotten so bad that the Air Force is offering retention bonuses of up to $125,000 to its drone pilots, who have long complained of overwork. The Air Force also has contracted out more drone missions to private companies to meet what one general called a virtually insatiable appetite from military commanders for airborne surveillance. For starters, the Air Force is having a problem keeping them up in the air when they are flying. Something is making them fall from the sky. That is if they can get enough drone "pilots" to get them up to begin with.Sitting safely in a dark room is not the same as flying but at least you don't have to worry about your ride falling out of the sky like an F-35. LUAS boss Nigel Stevens has taken a hardline with unions and warned them there is no money in the pot to grant pay rises of up to 54pc. The UK-based chief executive also told SIPTU that the Minister for Transport or National Transport Authority will not intervene to avert two 48 hour strikes. The Transdev boss met with staff representatives this week and said the Workplace Relations Commission was the only place the dispute could be resolved. He was speaking ahead of talks with SIPTU at the commission on Friday. SIPTU has lodged claims on behalf of over 200 staff, including drivers, revenue protection officers, revenue protection supervisors, and control room staff, for wage increases ranging from 8.5pc to 53.8pc. Transdev said it is operating at a loss, and the claim would cost 6m a day. Mr Stevens took a very stern line that the company wouldnt be entertaining any sort of substantive pay rise, said Willie Noone of SIPTU. He said there was no money in the pot. He said he believed the company is paying reasonable wages and is going to maintain that position. He said he also said he had personally spoken to Transport Minister Paschal Donohoe and said they will do everything they can to make sure the action wont happen. The union told Mr Stevens that Mr Donohoe was the minister now, but may not be in a few weeks time. Ultimately, we said the members would decide if the Workplace Relations Commission can come up with something they can accept, he said. He said the union is very anxious to stop the dispute due to potential damage to the reputational image of the Luas and the fact there has been no strike there before. But he said it has such a big mandate from members for industrial action that it had to act. The parties are expected to outline their positions when talks commence at the commission on Friday. The scene in Ardclough following the discovery of human remains which where found in a suitcase at the Grand Canal in Co Kildare. The discovery was made by people out walking. Collins Dublin, Gareth Chaney It was a couple of walkers who made the grim discovery of a dismembered torso in the Grand Canal on Saturday afternoon, sparking a major murder investigation. The remains were identified yesterday as those of Kenneth O'Brien, a 33-year-old father-of-one who had only recently returned to Ireland after working in Australia. Mr O'Brien, a JCB driver from Leland Road in Clondalkin, Dublin, was last seen by his family on Friday morning when he told them he was going down the country to do some work. When they hadn't heard from him and were unable to contact him, they became worried and reported him missing to gardai on Saturday evening. Just hours earlier, two walkers spotted a suitcase floating in the Grand Canal at Ardclough, Co Kildare. When they discovered a torso inside they immediately alerted gardai. The torso had been wrapped in plastic before it was hidden in the suitcase and dumped in the water. Garda divers spent the following days trawling the canal for further evidence, while Kildare gardai combed adjoining land and along the canal banks. Meanwhile investigators pored over the missing persons list in a bid to identify the victim. Initially, gardai had little to go on. It was feared that the remains were those of Barry Corcoran (39), who has been missing from Wicklow since last July when he told friends he was travelling to Dublin to meet a man in Ballyfermot. Victim However, he was quickly ruled out as the victim. A post-mortem carried out by Dr Michael Curtis on Sunday revealed the victim to be a young man, possibly aged in his 20s, and with dark hair. Gardai issued an appeal for anyone who used the canal between last Thursday and Saturday to come forward and they received a large number of calls. Investigators believe the victim was either shot in the head or had been subjected to a brutal beating elsewhere, before being dumped in the canal. But without a murder scene, the investigation was severely hampered. Finding where the victim was killed became the focus. On Monday, gardai urged people returning to their property or business premises following the weekend to check if there was anything unusual and if any rooms or equipment had been disturbed. The breakthrough came yesterday morning when a DNA sample taken from the torso matched a sample provided by his family. Gardai are now continuing their hunt for the murder scene and the brutal killer. An 18-year-old man is in a critical condition and three others remain in hospital after taking the drug 2CB, an ecstasy substitute. Bloomberg A man has been arrested in Cork in connection with the 2CB incident yesterday. Three people have been released without charge after two searches at separate addresses in Cork today. The man is currently being held at Bridewell Garda Station after gardai discovered MDMA at an address in Finbarrs Place in Cork. The three men who were released without charge are aged, 21, 23 and 25 years old. Earlier today a man who says he was the first person to come on the scene of the house party in Cork where a number of people took designer drug 2CB has described it as one of one of the scariest" nights of his life. An 18-year-old man is in a critical condition and three others remain in hospital after taking the drug 2CB, an ecstasy substitute, at the party. Gerard Banks, a passerby, has told how he became concerned when he heard shouting. When he went to the front window to investigate, he saw blood on the walls, floor, and curtains, and he asked one of the partygoers to let him inside. Last night was one of the scariest and most surreal nights of my life, he wrote on his Facebook page. Read more: Drugs minister admits designer drugs like 2CB may not be illegal I was walking [past] late last night and heard crazy shouting in a house. So me and a friend looked in the window to see is everyone ok. The bedroom was covered in blood, walls, floor, bed and even curtains. We shouted in to see is everyone OK. A man arrived at the window clearly on drugs and in a state of shock. We asked is everyone ok. He replied: yes, everything is fine. So we said there is blood everywhere, someone must be hurt, can we check to make sure no one is hurt? He said yes and opened the door. When we went in it was like a scene from CSI. Blood all over the walls, floors, couches and a man and a woman naked covered in blood shouting and screaming badly hurt and clearly in a state of dementia. The man was smashing the house up, blood was everywhere. The house was destroyed. There was a man on the floor in cardiac arrest with major breathing problems and the man who let us in [was] sitting on the chair in shock. Mr Banks directed paramedics to the scene when they arrived. In shock, me and my friend took control of the room. My friend started helping the man in cardiac arrest on the floor. I had to control the room to let my friend help the man on the floor in safety. It was surreal a naked man and woman dancing naked on the chairs as a man was having cardiac arrest on the floor. I was the man who left the guards and paramedics into the house. It was surreal. Students in Cork are being warned to remain vigilant after six young people were hospitalised after consuming the drug at the party. Whatever drugs those people were on last night was scary, Mr Banks said. They didnt even know they were covered in blood and badly hurt, they didnt even know there was a man dying on the floor. I havent slept a wink all night. Im still in shock to be honest. These people did not seem like bad people just like students out partying which is the most worrying thing about this new drug and its side effects. Its really scary stuff and we need to make everyone aware of its dangers. Everyone in the house was rushed to hospital We were all delighted to see the man in cardiac arrest leave in an ambulance in a stable state. One night of taking this new drug has probably ruined the lives of these people for a long time to come. A spokesperson for the HSE has described 2CB as a new psychoactive substance similar to those products previously sold in 'head-shops'. HSE addiction services manager for Cork and Kerry David Lane said it was not safe to consume head-shop type substances. Mr Banks added: Im putting out a big appeal for everyone in Cork to be aware of the dangers of a new drug on our streets called 2CP." The discovery of a 67-year-old man's body in his Antrim home on Monday night was sparked by a strange sequence of events. The dead man has been named as Eddie Girvan, who lived at Station Road in the Co Antrim town of Greenisland. The pensioner was found dead in a chair on the ground floor of his property, with his hands tied and with a stab wound to the chest. The discovery was made after police entered the property on Monday night at around 9.30pm. They had gone directly to the house after earlier arresting a person in Belfast on what is believed to have been an unrelated matter. Enquiries with the arrested person then prompted police to visit Mr Girvan's address. When officers got to the pensioner's home they found the doors locked. After gaining entry, they found Mr Girvan dead in the chair, the victim of a brutal attack. A post mortem is expected to determine the time of death. Three people, including a 29-year-old woman and two men, aged 23 and 24, have been arrested in Belfast on suspicion of murder. They are being interviewed at Musgrave police station in Belfast. Locals say Eddie Girvan is the father of Belfast-born actress and assistant director Amanda Girvan, who appeared in TV series Give My Head Peace and I Fought the Law. Mr Girvan was said to be a very private man who collected antiques. According to neighbours he collected Rolex watches and other valuable antiques including old guns, but the police insist robbery is not a line of inquiry they are pursuing. Mr Girvan had a number of CCTV cameras around his property, in the porch and in an upstairs bedroom. The PSNI also want to trace the movements of Mr Girvan's silver Hyundai car, which was seen driving dangerously towards Belfast and was later found in the Verner Street area of the city. Detective Chief Inspector John McVea is the officer leading the investigation. He said: "A post mortem examination will take place to confirm the exact cause of Mr Girvan's death. However, I can confirm that, at this time, we are treating his death as murder. "An incident such as this is unusual for a community like Greenisland and I am appealing to local people for their assistance. "Detectives are making house to house enquiries because we need to speak to those local people who knew Eddie Girvan and saw him in the past few days. "I also want to hear from anyone who saw or heard any activity at Mr Girvan's home at 162 Station Road over the past weekend until Monday morning around 7am." The detective added: "My final appeal point is about Eddie Girvan's car, a silver Hyundai Sonata, registration number MKZ 9818. I need to hear from anyone who saw this silver car any time over the weekend, either in Greenisland or Belfast until it was recovered in the Verner Street area of the city in the early hours of Tuesday morning. "We know it was spotted being driven dangerously along the motorway between Rathcoole and Belfast. "This is a shocking crime and our sympathies today are with Mr Girvan's family and friends. "It is too early to say why Mr Girvan was killed. Anyone with information is asked to contact detectives at Seapark on the non-emergency number 101. Alternatively, anyone who does not want to provide their details can phone the independent charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111." The community in Greenisland has been left in shock following the murder. Just a few doors up the street from Mr Girvan's house is the Hairways salon belonging to Julie Bell. She said she heard the news yesterday morning and could not believe it, as Eddie regularly came into her salon for a coffee. "I spoke to Eddie last Wednesday," said Julie. "He always came in here for a coffee and a chat. I can't believe anyone would do this. "He was a character and has been living here for over 40 years. It is desperate this has happened in such a quiet area. "Eddie was separated and has two daughters. He was very nice but also very lonely. "His cat, Sam, would always come here to be fed and would sleep here most of the day. He used to be a plumber but hasn't worked in years. "I simply cannot believe he is gone. It is very sad indeed." Another neighbour, who did not wish to be named, said the police were at Mr Girvan's house last week. However, the PSNI would not confirm this. Alliance MLA Stewart Dickson said he was shocked by the death of Mr Girvan, a man he knew well. Mr Dickson said: "This stretch of road is a quiet residential area and this death will stun people there. I am very shocked and saddened by this incident, particularly as I knew the deceased well, as did many people in the area. This death will be hard to fathom for the whole community. My deepest condolences are with this poor man's family and friends at this most traumatic of times. "I would appeal to anyone with information on this sad incident to contact police immediately." JUSTICE Minister Frances Fitzgerald has denied that there is "wide-spread snooping" on private citizens' phone records. She was responding to reports that the Gardai and other agencies including GSOC sought to access phone records on almost 62,000 occasions in the five years up to 2012 and that similar requests were made almost 6,000 times in 2014 alone. A review of the laws that allow bodies including GSOC to access the phone records of journalists will not be complete until after the General Election. And the examination will only cover access to records of the media - not the wider public, it was revealed yesterday. Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald has given former chief justice John Murray three months to carry out a study of international best practice. She said that the number of requests to access information is "not out of line" with other jurisdictions. Asked if a review of the practice should be expanded she replied: "Let's be very clear. There is no wide-spread snooping on private individuals, private citizen's phones or their records. I want to say that to the public. "What we have is a system in place outlined in the 2011 legislation where the Gardai when they are concerned about serious crime, about a threat to the security of the state or threat to someone's life, where they have the powers to access phone logs or phone records. "When you examine the statistics of about 8,000 request by the guards every year that is not out of line. "For example in the UK - you would have over 725,000 requests from their police there. "So in terms of the percentages in Ireland it is relatively low internationally and what the review will do is it will examine whether further safeguards are needed in relation to access to journalists phones." Ms Fitzgerald was speaking at the launch of the Second National Strategy for Domestic, Sexual and Gender-based Violence to cover the years 2016 to 2021. She announced 950,000 in funding to raise awareness of the issue, calling the problem domestic and sexual violence "pernicious evils and a blight on any civilalised society". Mr Justice Murray is tasked with suggesting possible legislative changes that will give journalists the "strongest possible protection that we can provide under the law to protect their sources". The review will cover any bodies that have power to access phone logs, including An Garda Siochana, Defence Forces and Revenue Commissioners. However, Mr Justice Murray must limit his work purely to how the Communications (Data Retention) Act 2011 impacts on journalists and not ordinary citizens. The Irish Council for Civil Liberties' executive director Mark Kelly said the review was "a significant step in the right direction" but the exercise of snooping powers on the general public must also be reviewed. "The Council regrets that the scope of the review of the 2011 Act has been limited to its use in relation to journalists," he said. "This legislation is used by law enforcement agencies to capture a wide range of private information about members of the public. "The oversight shortcomings that this review will certainly identify are far from confined to cases where the data belongs to members of the media." NUJ Secretary General Seamus Dooley agrees that ordinary citizens should be included in the scope of the review. He said he would give a qualified welcome to the review given his disappointment that no interim solution has been introduced to cover the period until the review is published. It would be very naive to think that there would be any action within a six month period following Mr Justice Murrays review so I would be disappointed at the scale of that. The fact that the minister has acted so promptly and that there is also party support for the principle of journalism as entitled to protect the confidential sources of information is welcome, but I would have a concern at the timescale, he told RTE's Morning Ireland. I do believe that it could be possible to amend the legislation on an interim basis to make provision for judicial oversight of applications by GSOC and then have a more comprehensive review which should also include the rights of ordinary citizens. He added: I would share the concern of ICCL and digital rights Ireland that the Murray review is only going to refer to journalists. I acknowledge what the Minister is saying: this is a complex issue. And I think we can deal with the immediate problem in the short term and have a more comprehensive review. As the crisis in justice deepened, it emerged requests for access to telephone records by the Garda Siochana Ombudsman Commission (GSOC) are made at the level of the chairperson. Ms Fitzgerald met yesterday with the chairperson, Mary Ellen Ring, who, she said, assured her that "strict procedures" were in place. "I assured Ms Justice Ring that there is no question whatsoever of the review of the law in this area reflecting any lack of confidence in GSOC and that this review arises not from the facts of any particular case, rather the general concerns which have arisen about the overall balance of the law in this area," the minster said. "I was reassured by Judge Mary Ellen Ring that the actions carried out by GSOC were within the law." Ms Fitzgerald said she did not know how many journalists have had their data accessed by GSOC. The minister said her department had been in discussion with the Garda Siochana and was "reassured that the law is followed to the letter" in relation to the monitoring of phone calls. She said it was not possible to immediately stop snooping on phone records as there were "complex" issues involved. The issue was raised later in the Dail by deputies Clare Daly and Mick Wallace. Ms Daly appealed to the minister to extend the scope of the review to include "all of the surveillance legislation that is on our books, the use of that and powers that rest with the gardai, with the Revenue, with the Defence Forces and other State bodies which are not open to proper scrutiny or Freedom of Information requests". "All citizens deserve to have their privacy and human rights protected, and the rightful outcry in relation to journalists' phones being intercepted should be shared in relation to other citizens' rights," she said. However, the minister said that she was determined to get "a speedy report". "The purpose of the 2011 Data Retention Act is not to pry into the communications or privacy of individuals. "It is to support the work of statutory agencies who are carrying out important investigations... on what has to be serious criminal offences," Ms Fitzgerald added. While announcing the review, Ms Fitzgerald stressed she had no role in the process of requesting or authorising access to telephone records. "That would simply not be appropriate in the context of the independent functions of bodies such as GSOC," she said. Mr Justice Murray was Attorney General for a period in 1982 and again from 1987 to 1991. The General Election is due to be held in the next six weeks. The stories you need to know Gardai believe the father-of-one whose torso was found in a suitcase in the Grand Canal at the weekend was killed because of a personal grudge, the Irish Independent reports. Officers say that Dubliner Kenneth O'Brien had no connection with crime. But they think he may have fallen foul of someone with a grudge to bear, since he returned home last month after a spell working in Australia. Read More A young man howled like a "wild animal" and tried to "eat the pavement" as he lay naked and covered in blood on a footpath after taking designer drug 2CB at a party, the Herald reports. Students in Cork are being warned to be careful after six young people from the city who took the drug were hospitalised. An 18-year-old man is in a critical condition and three others remain in hospital after taking 2CB, an ecstasy substitute. Read More A professor and a student have been killed in an attack by gunmen at a university in Pakistan. Earlier, the police and army were exchanging gunfire with the attackers and several explosions were heard from the area of the Bacha Khan University in the town of Charsadda, located around 20 miles from the city of Peshawar. Read More Meanwhile, Oscar-winning actor Jamie Foxx has played super villains and anti-heroes on screen - the role of super hero he apparently saved for real life. Foxx has told how he and another man pulled a man from his burning truck moments before it became engulfed in flames. The incident happened near Foxx's Southern California home, and the actor met the victim's father on Tuesday. Read More Amid calls for an Oscars boycott over its all-white acting nominees and Spike Lee and Jada Pinkett Smith both announcing they would sit out this year's ceremony, the academy's president promised major changes. Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences President Cheryl Boone Isaacs pledged more diversity, and quickly, after both Lee and Pinkett spoke out. Lee said he "cannot support" the "lily white" Oscars, while Pinkett Smith also said she would not attend or watch the event in February. It might seem smart to ask a restaurant critic where the best food is served in Dublin, but its an even smarter idea to ask a top chef. They know about great food, and theyre also unlikely to spend their rare days off anywhere that will deliver a less-than-delicious experience. Happily, you dont need a chef on speed dial: weve asked some of Dublins hottest chefs to spill the beans on their favourite restaurants in the capital. Karl Whelan of Luna Generally, I go out on Sunday with family and friends. Top of my list is M&L on Cathedral Street, off OConnell Street. Ive always liked Chinese food and its a good place to sit around with a group. Ive been going there for years and have a good rapport with the staff, so they feed us things that arent on the menu. They used to have a Chinese menu and wed order by pointing. Then, we became friendly with one of the waiters and began ordering things without knowing what they were. He used to say, Oh, youre not going to like that, so wed order it! It took years, but now they understand that we want what they eat. Their green beans are unbelievable, and the sweet and sour pork the Chinese version, not their European one is super crunchy and off-the-hook delicious. They have razor clams, langoustines, prawns, lobster and none of that stuff is on the menu. I go to Locks in Portobello since Keelan and Connor took it over too. Ive been a few times for their late Sunday lunch. The second week they opened, Kieran Glennon (head chef at Guilbauds), Liz and Simon (owners of Etto) and John and Sandy (from Forest Avenue) were all sitting at different tables. That speaks volumes about the place. I like Dillingers in Ranelagh for brunch too. I know its part of the group I work for, but Ive always liked it. They do tasty food and the atmosphere is always good. Kwanghi Chan formerly of Soder+Ko I always head to Michie Sushi in Ranelagh for sushi and to the Good World on Georges Street for dim sum. I was born in Hong Kong but grew up in Donegal. My granny lived with us and cooked all the time. Shes from north China so shed make things like dumplings, Asian broths and hot pots. I grew up eating those kind of flavours. I love small restaurants, like the family-run Korean barbecue on Capel Street. Its really family-oriented and you get flavours you dont normally find. You have a grill on the table and they bring out raw foods and pull down the little extractor around you. Its a great experience and feels like youre abroad somewhere, eating street food. Despite having worked in The Cliff House at Ardmore, I dont have a favourite fine-dining restaurant. Id probably mix it up, though Guilbauds is always excellent. Forest Avenue is great too and I go to Pichet a lot for lunch. I know Stephen (the chef and co-owner) very well and find its very relaxing. The food is always good. Keelan Higgs of Locks Were open six days a week and its slim pickings on a Monday, so I often end up in M&L off OConnell Street. They used to do a cracking pig ear and cucumber salad. You couldnt eat something that tastes that good anywhere! I think they changed chef but the pork dumplings are still great. Its worth heading over to OConnell Street for these alone. Lee Kee on Parnell Street is more traditional. Youll get things like sliced whelk, confit aubergine with minced pork or fried chicken bones. Its mostly Szechuan and is really good. Parnell Street isnt the most comfortable place to eat but Ill often go with my brother, who works with me, and well load the table with food! Its mostly Chinese customers, with a few Irish whove caught on to the good food. If I was organised on a Sunday night, I might head for The Butcher Grill in Ranelagh. I like to eat without any formality or bullsh*t and the lads there are good craic and want you to enjoy yourself. They make a great cocktail and serve great steak without any hassle. Ive worked in many of Dublins fine dining restaurants Guilbauds, Chapter One, The Green House so tend not to go back to them. When youve worked somewhere, it changes how you enjoy your meal. Theres some brilliant new places where old workmates are cooking Delahunt and Luna so Id drop in there on a rare night off. Etto is great too. They all have the same vibe in common: casual, no formality and cracking food. John Wyer of Forest Avenue I like food that has been considered, that isnt overcomplicated or overworked, and uses good ingredients. Etto, on Merrion Row, is a perfect example. Sandy (his wife, who runs front of house at Forest Avenue) and I love it. We opened at the same time as the guys there and have become good friends. Theyre open on Mondays so we go quite often for a laid-back lunch. Theyve a great team and I love their approach. The food is Italian, very simple but always done properly. The last few months weve been going for dinner to Delahunt on Camden Street, which is excellent. Theyre very consistent with impressive cooking. Weve been very impressed with Taste at Rustic too, Dylan McGraths sushi restaurant. Weve been back six times since it opened, I think! We tried a few tasting menus and now we go back for sushi. The food is great, the service is brilliant. Its the whole package really. We also love The Cedar Tree, a very unhip place on Andrew Street. Its been there years but no one really knows about it. Its family-run, serving Lebanese and Middle Eastern mezze. Its delicious, simple home-cooked food and not expensive. Sunil Ghai of Ananda I love oriental food and we went looking for a good Chinese when we arrived from India. I tried many of them before discovering China Sichuan. The owner came to Ireland the same time as I arrived here, opening in Stillorgan then later moving to Sandyford. I actually ate there last night again! They do great flavours. Leena, my wife, comes from a vegetarian family, and China Sichuan has lots of good choices for her. High-end, for special occasions, I love Chapter One. Everything about it is so good, and its always a treat. For a casual local night out, Campo De Fiori in Bray does a lovely job. I live in Greystones so its very handy. Marco is a good chef and good guy. People always think of pasta and pizza when they think of Italian, but Campo De Fiori does good seafood and good soups. Ive been busy the last few months (getting ready to open his new north Indian restaurant, Pickle, in the city centre), so havent eaten there in a few months. I need to go back! Distributors here said the models in Ireland are not affected. RENAULT here has revealed that the diesel engine being recalled globally to correct an 'emissions issue' is not on sale in Ireland. The recall is for 15,000 versions of the big-selling Captur crossover with the dCi 100 engine. Without specifying the model - though it is known to be the Captur - the distributors here said the models in Ireland are not affected. A statement from Renault in France said the issue was known and had been corrected on production vehicles from September 4 last. It said its vehicles "are not equipped with fraudulent software or systems designed to bypass the emission control system". And it denied having said that 700,000 vehicles would be affected by a software update. Renault said it planned a software upgrade to cut the nitrogen oxide (NOx) pollution from its diesel engines, which have come under fire for their relatively high emissions in the wake of the Volkswagen test-rigging scandal. Following VW's exposure last September for using software "defeat devices" to cheat US regulatory tests, the French carmaker has drawn public and investor scrutiny over its own emissions performance. Renault shares have fallen 14pc since the January 14 disclosure that investigators raided its offices this month over suspicions of emissions fraud, which have been denied by the company and the government. Besides VW's outright cheating, the diesel scandal has heightened awareness of real-world NOx emissions by the broader auto industry far exceeding those measured in flawed European regulatory tests - with Renault often cited as being among the worst offenders. (Additional reporting by Reuters) Premium John Downing Opinion Last time the Tories diced with economic disaster it took them another 18 years to win an election I was listening to the young woman from the Daily Mail trying to recruit a gang of reporters to club together and hire an aeroplane to fly back to Brussels. She got an enthusiastic response from another British colleague who was celebrated for lavishly spending his employers funds. 'Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations." George Orwell's observations on press freedom and its duty to hold those in power to account comes sharply into focus in the current controversy over GSOC - the Garda Siochana Ombudsman Commission - and its surveillance of journalists. At least two journalists' phone records have been accessed following an investigation into alleged garda leaks about the death of model Katy French. Another seven garda leaks to the media are being investigated, including the reporting of TD Clare Daly's arrest for drink-driving (of which she was cleared) and the seizure of two children from Roma families in Dublin and Athlone. GSOC has been defended in the past by many media observers after its investigations into the treatment of garda whistleblowers were perceived as being undermined by garda chiefs and leading politicians. The issue eventually led to both the resignation of the Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan and Justice Minister Alan Shatter. The fast-tracking of mobile communication and media production means phones are used far more often as way of imparting sensitive details. In the past, face-to-face meetings between journalists and their sources were commonplace, both for reasons of confidentiality and practicality. Modern communication methods, such as mobile and email, have speeded up the transfer of information but the consequence is that these means are highly discoverable. This gives those that can authorise access to apparently private communication a greater opportunity for surveillance. This is a direct threat to a fundamental principle of democracy, which is that the media should be free and its right to protect its sources guaranteed. The Taoiseach's intervention to defend the need for an independent media, in particular the right of reporters to access leaked and confidential information in the public interest, is to be welcomed, although he qualified the need for surveillance by differentiating between national security and other matters. The current investigation into garda leaks will have a particular resonance for those with a historic context around the need for police forces to be held to account by the media. I worked as a newspaper reporter in central England in the 1980s when the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad was holding sway over policing in that region. Not only did their methods lead to the wrongful conviction of the Birmingham Six, they were involved in many other miscarriages of justice. The activities of the discredited and disbanded Serious Crime Squad were well known even at the time and questions about their activities were being raised with journalists by ordinary beat officers within the West Midlands Police Force. Covert face-to-face conversations were often held between police officers and reporters, even sometimes in police station washrooms with the taps turned on in case there were hidden microphones or someone should overhear. Arguably, a whistle-blowers charter would have helped expose the wrongdoings of the Serious Crime Squad sooner but the fact remains that the dissemination of information between police officers and the media plays an important part in the administration of justice. The role of journalists - and indeed whistleblowers within police forces - means that any approval around the surveillance of media must be both exceptional and independent. It is shocking that such actions should have been taken by GSOC without the prior approval of an independent judge, a system already adopted in the UK. It is equally shocking that such actions were in accordance with existing - and recent - legislation, namely the Communications (Retention of Data) Act 2011. The lack of detailed scrutiny for that and other legislation is an additional reason to have concerns around our democracy. The Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald is now bringing forward recommendations to Cabinet for an independent review of surveillance powers, which is likely lead to further legislation. Meantime, the Government will be extremely anxious to avoid any comparisons with the phone-bugging scandals that were perpetrated here during the early 1980s in relation to journalists Bruce Arnold, Geraldine Kennedy and Vincent Browne. Monitoring communications has become far more widespread and complex than it was in the 80s with the digital revolution leading to a proliferation of vast quantities of discoverable data. This in turn has given journalists far greater opportunities to pursue data-driven stories that are directly relevant to the public interest. Ironically, those journalists have to resort to lengthy and frustrating Freedom of Information requests to access the data, encountering obstacles that GSOC - and indeed the gardai - do not have to face. Orwell's '1984' nightmare around surveillance has now reached levels that even he could not have envisaged. Everyone's online business has become discoverable but that transparency is only a plus for journalists if they are allowed to carry out key elements of their job in confidence. That is not a double standard. That is a prerequisite for a healthy democracy and a recognition of the public interest role that journalists have to play in guaranteeing access to the truth. Bob Hughes is a former Deputy Director of News at TV3 and Channel 4 News producer. @bobhughesnews We do not need a review. We need to change the law that enables GSOC to access phone records. We must immediately address what is an egregious and highly unwelcome trespass on fundamental rights. Getty Images/iStockphoto The handling of the furore over the accessing of journalists' telephone records by the Garda Siochana Ombudsman Commission, GSOC, has been characterised by ineptitude and indecision. When there was a need for action, there was prevarication, followed by more indecision and uncertainty. We now learn that the scale and scope of the State snooping goes way beyond what had been thought, with as many as 6,000 phones having been subjected to the special powers. The latest attempt to sort things out was announced yesterday after a presentation from Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald. The 'response' - if that is not too strong a word - will take the form of a 'review'. Without prejudice to retired chief justice John Murray, who will head up the review, many will understandably ask why do we need more scrutiny and investigation? It is patently clear that anything that is an impediment to the public's right to know has no place in a democracy. Taoiseach Enda Kenny had already gone so far as to state that changing legislation that allows GSOC to access journalists' phone records may be necessary to protect sources. Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan Howlin also agreed that a balance must be struck to ensure that "a free press is not trammelled in any way". With all this agreement, what purpose can a review possibly serve? We do not need a review. We need to change the law that enables GSOC to access phone records. We must immediately address what is an egregious and highly unwelcome trespass on fundamental rights. This call was backed by the National Union of Journalists. The Irish Council for Civil Liberties and Garda representative bodies have also expressed their own concerns. Former press ombudsman John Horgan has suggested that a judge or person with very senior legal experience should decide on whether GSOC can access a journalist's phone records. Mr Horgan said the power appears to have been given to GSOC without stopping to think of who should govern that power. Good judgment comes from experience, and experience, as this controversy exemplifies, all too often comes from bad judgment. Burton gave opponents open goal on cronyism Most politicians develop a nose for avoiding trouble. The gift of finding it where it doesn't exist is unusual, but Tanaiste Joan Burton seems to have acquired this with some aplomb. Yesterday, she found herself at the centre of a vote of no confidence over her appointment of David Begg as chair of the Pensions Authority. Of course, the vote was a futile exercise, as it was never going to be passed. But Independent Alliance TD Shane Ross was given an open shot on goal by Ms Burton's poor judgment and he was not about to let it pass. Ms Burton has brought a storm down on her party's head, with the air thick with charges of cronyism. This is inexcusable given that (a) Mr Begg was a suitable candidate and could have filled the job on merit with no fuss had Ms Burton gone through the normal channels; and (b) Labour had signed up for transparency and open government. Ms Burton may have won this vote, but the impact of the row on the vote that really matters - the General Election - is far less certain. Pierce Martin (Irish Independent, January 18, 2016) repeats the same handful of arguments about 1916 in his quest to see it banished, like Carthage, from the national consciousness. First he describes 1916 UK as a 'liberal democracy' - even though all women and men below certain wealth levels were excluded. He is also obliged to ignore the reality that there was no explicit mandate for the UK government in 1914 to take this country into war, or for an unelected cabinet in 1915 to continue it. By contrast, the Easter Proclamation sought to include women politically in the new vision for Ireland. As for the 'blood sacrifice', the 1916 rebels were simply speaking the same language shouted across contemporary Europe. It's no accident the term 'jingoism' (meaning an appetite for war) was coined in Britain at the outbreak of World War One. How else to describe the almost mindless marching of hundreds of thousands of men into the mouth of enemy machine guns, except as 'blood sacrifice'? At least Pearse called off the Rebellion when it was clear the loss of life had reached a tipping point and it couldn't succeed. As for the whole question of partition, it had already been decided in 1912 by Unionists who had armed themselves with Austrian rifles in open opposition to their own government and the majority will of the Irish people. Unionism, not 1916, 'copper-fastened partition' and introduced the gun into 20th century Irish politics. The very formation of the Irish Volunteers was a response to the formation of the UVF. Mr Martin argues wrongly that John Redmond was a 'success'. No, he wasn't. Home Rule was never introduced here. It sat on the statute books, ensured by armed, physical-force unionism that it would never become a reality. In the meantime, John Redmond made the grandiose 'gesture' of turning Ireland's Irish Volunteers - supposed to be the core of a Home Rule army - into just another regiment of the British army, doing the recruiting sergeant's job for free. Events post-war showed the Rebels to be correct in their assessment: the Constitutional approach was tried at least twice - in the 1918 election and the 1919 Irish Delegation to the Versailles Conference, both of which were shown the door by Britain. The Rebellion itself was given a mandate by the elections of 1918 and 1920, with overwhelming popular support. I can't agree with Mr Martin's insistence we abjure our foundations and legitimacy as a State. Those foundations are 1916 and what followed, and not some counter-factual ghost of Home Rule, whether Mr Martin likes it or not. Nick Folley Carrigaline, Co Cork We can't keep fighting old wars I read Nick Bramhill's article (January 18) on Archbishop Eamon Martin's thoughts of the 1916 commemorations and, I have to say, I agree with the Archbishop's trepidation - but for different reasons. I believe we have come a long way in the last 20 years, never mind the last 100, in terms of our relations with our nearest neighbour. As someone who grew up during 'The Troubles' I think it is truly extraordinary the friendship, respect and genuine familial empathy that has emerged in our relations with our former colonial master. Remember, Margaret Thatcher's rule of the UK only ended 25 years ago, and that was a different story altogether! I lived there in the early-mid 1990s and only encountered courtesy, honesty and respect. Unlike the Archbishop, however, my concern is how our relations might be strained by a resurgent anti-British sentiment. I believe the Northern issue will be sorted like good cider - it will take time and generations, but will eventually come to maturity. However, any reversal in our relationship with Britain would be deeply regrettable. At the end of the day, whatever our/their idiosyncrasies, they alone understand and appreciate us best, more so than ever the US or the EU can. I would hate to see any revisionist triumphalism or flag-waving this year (well, it might be alright in Twickenham on February 27!). Seriously though, I am watching The Rebellion with this sensitivity in mind. Yes, what those people did back 100 years ago was immensely brave, but let's appreciate it in the context of history. Let it not impact on our present day, as we cannot keep re-fighting old wars. And this brings me back to the Archbishop's point. Frank Buckley Tullamore, Co Offaly Dissidents deaf to Pope's plea I'm pleased to say Fr Seamus Murphy SJ is a relative of mine, and before he became a teacher in philosophy at Loyola University, Chicago, he was a source of annoyance to those who worship at the shrine of the 1916 martyrs. His work, 'Easter Ethics', is just one example. I've no doubt he is acting as counterbalance to the voices in the USA who preach that the violence of 1916 was the only way forward for Ireland. Their latest followers, described as IRA dissidents, are still deaf to the plea of Pope John Paul II during his visit to Ireland: "Men of violence... on my knees I beg you to turn away from the path of violence and return to the ways of peace." Tony Moriarty Harold's Cross, Dublin FF health claims don't add up I find it altogether odd that Fianna Fail, under the leadership of Micheal Martin, are effectively emphasising the issue of hospital bed capacity and availability as a persuading factor in convincing voters to support the party on their latest billboard. In his foreword to 'Acute Hospital Bed Capacity - A National Review', produced in 2002 when he was the serving Minister for Health and Children, Micheal Martin outlined the following ambition: "A planned increase of over 25pc in acute hospital bed capacity." Total public health expenditure ballooned over threefold under the Fianna Fail-led government back then, from 3.6 billion in 1997 to over 12.3 billion in 2006. As outlined under the aforementioned national review, the number of acute hospital beds per capita was listed as 3.3 beds per 1,000 in 1996, and this declined to 3.1 beds per 1,000 in 2000. Despite all of the colossal extra public expenditure committed, the OECD 'Health at a Glance' report in 2007 indicated that Ireland had, at that stage, 2.8 acute hospital beds per 1,000 in the public system - compared with a then OECD average of 3.9 per 1,000. Simply put, the billboard conveys breathtakingly brazen campaigning from Fianna Fail in relation to health. John Kennedy Goatstown, Dublin 14 Top actress Charlene McKenna (31) has lifted the lid on the lunacy of pilot season in LA. While some Irish actresses are determined to make it big in Hollywood, the Ripper Street actress has said she would be very nervous to return to the bustling city and sell herself to casting agents and directors. Expand Close Pictured at The Premiere of Jesus Christ Superstar at The Bord Gais Energy Theatre last night was; Charlene McKenna / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Pictured at The Premiere of Jesus Christ Superstar at The Bord Gais Energy Theatre last night was; Charlene McKenna Ive been living in New York and Im due to go to LA after Ripper Street finishes filming, she told Independent.ie. They want me to go to LA on the back of the Ron Howard job, Clan of The Cave Bear, but I dont know. Im very nervous to go back. "I think the first time I went, I didnt enjoy pilot season. "Theres nothing wrong with Los Angeles. Its grand. But I didnt enjoy 900 meetings a day. Expand Close Charlene McKenna pictured at the opening of the musical Dirty Dancing / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Charlene McKenna pictured at the opening of the musical Dirty Dancing "Im a perfectionist and there was no time and I felt really frazzled, so thats why Im reticent about going back. I should go though and I will. The Monaghan native, who divides her time between London and New York, added how it was intimidating for any actor to be scrutinized so intensely. "Pilot season is lunacy and Ive yet to meet any actor who says its great or that they love working 900 hours a day. You need a thick skin. Youre just judged, she continued. "Obviously Ive a bigger career in Ireland and the UK, so when you walk into the room theres a bit of weight, whereas over there, they dont really know you and youre torn. Its interesting. Expand Close Vodafone TV launch with TV star Charlene McKenna and YouTube sensation Piggy Sue. Photo: Naoise Culhane / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Vodafone TV launch with TV star Charlene McKenna and YouTube sensation Piggy Sue. Photo: Naoise Culhane Video of the Day She added how her American agents are keen for her to attempt to crack America again but that she has to finish Ripper Street first and may fly over afterwards. Busy Charlene, whos currently house-hunting in east London, was back in Dublin this week for the launch of Vodafone TV, a new on-demand TV service. The IFTA-winning actress, who played a prostitute in Ripper Street, added how she still finds the industry deeply unsettling despite all her years of experience. "I was thinking about that just the other day, she said. Ive been doing this, solidly professionally just over ten years. And Ive never done anything else and sometimes its like Ive just started in that because you sort of are nicely going up the ladder a wee bit and it all becomes relevant so its about becoming that job and that job. Expand Close Charlene McKenna arrives the Irish Premiere of The Great Gatsby at The Savoy, Dublin. / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Charlene McKenna arrives the Irish Premiere of The Great Gatsby at The Savoy, Dublin. "And so, its not that you really think youll never work again, I think that that (feeling) what if it stops? doesnt go away, mixed with well it shouldnt." "And then like, that going into a mortgage you go, what if that was it then? What do you do? So Im always thinking about what if what if what it but touch all the wood, you just keep going. Defence ministers from the US, UK, France and others have agreed to intensify the campaign against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria. US defence secretary Ash Carter said that the coalition will work together to fill the military requirements as the fight unfolds over the coming months. Speaking at a news conference with French defence minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, Mr Carter said there was broad agreement on a coordinated plan to battle IS over the next year and take back key cities in Iraq and Syria from the militants. "We agreed that we all must do more," Mr Carter said shortly after a working lunch with Mr Le Drian and defence ministers from Australia, Germany, Italy the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Mr Carter also announced that the 26 nations in the anti-IS coalition, as well as Iraq, will meet in Brussels next month to continue the talks. He urged the coalition to seize the opportunity now to hasten the Islamic State group's defeat. The US has mapped out a coordinated campaign against IS over the next year, and Mr Carter laid out the plans to the ministers during the meeting, which was co-hosted by France. "Because Daesh is retreating and we have managed to affect its resources in the ground, it is the moment to increase our collective forces with a coherent military strategy," Mr Le Drian said, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State. Mr Carter has said he would not hesitate to challenge the core nations to do more in the fight in the coming year. The defence ministers also discussed plans to retake two major cities in Iraq and Syria that serve as power centres for IS. The coalition wants to help Iraqi and Kurdish peshmerga forces retake Mosul in northern Iraq and to assist the Syrian moderate forces in ousting Islamic State militants from Raqqa, Syria, the group's self-proclaimed capital. "Raqqa and Mosul must be won back," Mr Le Drian said, adding that it can only succeed if the coalition supports the local forces on the ground in Iraq and Syria. While European nations have been heavily involved, the US would like to see more direct military contributions - both equipment and training - from Arab and Asian countries. Arab nations joined the coalition's air strike campaign early on, but their participation has waned a bit over time, particularly as the fight between Saudi Arabia and Iran-backed rebels in Yemen has increased. Before the meeting began, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said that the IS group is now under pressure and the goal of the gathering was to "identify how we can tighten the noose around the head of the snake". "We are now seeing Daesh being hit in its own heartland. We are seeing the attacks on its oil wells and we are beginning to see attacks" in Mosul, Mr Fallon said. He said Britain carries out air strikes six days per week, plus reconnaissance flights to pinpoint targets. Sean Penn says his article on Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman failed in its mission (AP) Actor Sean Penn shakes hands with Mexican drug lord Joaquin El Chapo Guzman in Mexico during their meeting in October for a Rolling Stone interview. Photo: Rolling Stone The world's most wanted drug lord gave away the secret of his hiding place by sending his men out to buy tacos, it has been claimed. Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman, the 58-year-old head of the Sinaloa Cartel, had been on the run from police for almost six months since tunnelling out of the Altiplano prison. Expand Close Mexican actress Kate Del Castillo / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Mexican actress Kate Del Castillo Police were closing in on him helped, they say, by his contact with Mexican actress Kate del Castillo, who brokered an interview between Guzman and actor Sean Penn. The resulting highly-controversial article has been strongly criticised. On Monday a respected author of books on the drugs wars, Don Winslow, described it as "a brutally simplistic and unfortunately sympathetic portrait of a mass murderer". Expand Close Sean Penn says his article on Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman failed in its mission (AP) / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Sean Penn says his article on Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman failed in its mission (AP) And in Mexico, after the Penn interview, the authorities continued their hunt. They knew that he was looking for an urban area in which to hide and were familiar with the house in the town of Los Mochis, which men had been renovating for weeks. The final bit of evidence was a food order, Mexican officials told The New York Times. "Just two blocks away, a big order of tacos was picked up after midnight on Jan 8 by a man driving a white van, like the one believed to be driven by Guzmans associates, witnesses said. "Hours later, at 4.30am, the marines stormed the compound." The building was raided by 17 marines, supported by 50 soldiers who were tasked with making sure Guzman did not flee. The Sinaloa-born trafficker slipped away again through a tunnel, having created a second decoy tunnel to fool his pursuers. But he was captured at a roadblock, held in a motel, and then taken away by helicopter to the same prison from where he escaped. Guzman is now behind bars, being moved from cell to cell and watched by both humans and video cameras to prevent a fourth escape. He is currently fighting extradition to the United States, where at least seven federal prosecutors are vying to put him on trial for trafficking. And the controversy over the Penn interview continues. Del Castillo has been subpoenaed to explain her contact with the cartel. Mr Winslow, a respected author who has been writing about the cartels for 20 years, described Penn's efforts as "horribly misguided". Penn said he was disappointed that the Rolling Stone article failed to spark a discussion about the drugs wars. But Mr Winslow delivered a strong riposte to the actor, cataloguing the questions he should have asked of one of the driving forces behind a conflict that has cost 60,000 lives since 2006. "Penns story was not a failure because people failed to understand it, as he claimed on 60 Minutes," he said. "It is a failure because he failed to understand who he was interviewing, the crimes his subject committed and the responsibility he had to ask real questions. "An entry-level journalist would have pushed Guzman on the many millions of dollars in bribes he has paid to co-opt police, judges and politicians, about his treaty with the sadistic and hideously violent Zetas when it was convenient to him. "I would like to have heard about the people on his payroll who dissolved their victims bodies in acid, about the decapitations and mutilations, about the blood soaked bodies displayed in public places as intimidation and propaganda. "Any thoughts about that, Mr Guzman? Any feelings?" Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022] The oldest son of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin was arrested in a domestic violence case in which his girlfriend was afraid he would shoot himself with an AR-15 assault rifle. Track Palin, 26, was charged with assault, interfering with the report of a domestic violence crime and possessing a weapon while intoxicated following the incident on Monday night at the Wasilla, Alaska, home of his parents, where he lives, according to an affidavit by police. The girlfriend told authorities she was punched in the face by Palin, who is the oldest child of Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee and a conservative leader. The charges were filed on Tuesday, the same day Sarah Palin appeared in Iowa to endorse Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump. Court documents say the victim, Track Palin's girlfriend of one year, had bruising and swelling around her left eye, and she said her right knee hurt after he kicked her. Palin family lawyer John Tiemessen declined to comment on the matter other than to say that respect for the family's privacy is appreciated "as Track receives the help that he and many of our returning veterans need". Track Palin spent a year deployed in Iraq with the Army, after he enlisted on the sixth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. According to the three-page affidavit, both Palin and his girlfriend called the emergency dispatcher that night. Police officer Andrew Kappler wrote that he arrived at the Wasilla home and found Track Palin walking outside and talking on a phone. The officer said Palin had an injury to his right eye and surrounding area, smelled strongly of alcohol and acted with escalating hostility, prompting Mr Kappler to put him in handcuffs. The affidavit says other officers found the girlfriend hiding under a bed inside the home and crying. The affidavit says the woman said Palin struck her with his fist on the left side of her head near her eye. She said he then kicked her in the knee. Palin held the rifle, with the barrel just away from his face pointed to the side, the affidavit states, and the woman told police Palin was yelling: "Do you think I won't do it?" The girlfriend "was concerned that he would shoot himself and ran outside and around the house," the affidavit says." It is not the first encounter with the law for Palin or other members of his family. In September 2014, he and other Palins were involved in a brawl that broke out at a party in Anchorage. No arrests were made, and no-one wanted to press charges. But according to a police report, Palin had blood around his mouth and his hands. He was belligerent until his mother told him to talk to a police officer. The scene of the slaughter was Nataruk, a remote site near Lake Turkana in Kenya Showing no mercy, the killers clubbed and stabbed to death men, women and children alike, leaving their bodies strewn along the shore of a lagoon. At least some of the victims, including a woman in the last stages of pregnancy, had their hands bound as their heads, knees and limbs were smashed and torsos pierced. It sounds like a horrific scene from a present day or medieval atrocity in the Middle East or Europe. But this massacre, in which 27 individuals died, took place some 10,000 years ago, when humans lived as nomadic hunter-gatherers. Experts believe it is the earliest evidence that war was being waged by prehistoric people thousands of years before the bloody business of large-scale planned violence to settle disputes was thought to have originated. The scene of the slaughter was Nataruk, a remote site 19 miles west of Lake Turkana in Kenya which at the time it occurred 9,500 to 10,500 years ago supported a large population of hunter-gatherers. Scientists found the partial remains of 27 people, including at least eight women and six children. Ten skeletons showed clear signs of violent death, including crushed skulls and faces, broken hands, knees and ribs, arrow wounds, and stone projectile tips lodged in skulls and chests. Some of the unburied bodies had fallen into the lagoon, which has long-since dried, their bones preserved in sediment. The evidence, described in the journal Nature, suggests the victims may have been members of an extended family who were attacked and killed by a rival group. Lead researcher Dr Marta Mirazon Lahr, from Cambridge University's Leverhulme Centre for the Study of Human Evolution, said: "The deaths at Nataruk are testimony to the antiquity of inter-group violence and war. "These human remains record the intentional killing of a small band of foragers with no deliberate burial, and provide unique evidence that warfare was part of the repertoire of inter-group relations among some prehistoric hunter-gatherers." The site was first unearthed in 2012, but it has taken years for scientists to date the remains accurately using radiocarbon and other techniques. Among the signs of injury discovered were five cases of extreme force to the head that may have been inflicted by a wooden club. Two of three projectile points found in two bodies - one embedded in the victim's skull - were made from obsidian, a black volcanic rock that can be worked to a razor sharpness. This was evidence the rival groups came from different locations. Obsidian is rare in other late Stone Age sites from the same region. Most horrific of all, the remains of a six-to-nine month old foetus were recovered from the abdominal cavity of a woman victim. She was discovered in an unusual sitting position, suggesting that her hands and feet had been bound, and her knees were broken. The origins of war are controversial, and most experts believe it developed with the emergence of agriculture and settled communities around 6,000 years ago. Co-author Professor Robert Foley, also from the Leverhulme Centre, said: "I've no doubt it is in our biology to be aggressive and lethal, just as it is to be deeply caring and loving. "A lot of what we understand about human evolutionary biology suggests these are two sides of the same coin." The day after the spelling error officers arrived at the boy's home to interview him and examine the family laptop A 10-year-old Muslim boy was quizzed by police after mistakenly writing that he lived in a "terrorist house" rather than a "terraced house". The youngster made the error during an English lesson at a Lancashire school, and the following day police arrived at his home to interview him and examine the family laptop. The boy's family said the incident on December 7 had shocked them and asked for the police and school to apologise. His cousin, who has not been named to protect the schoolboy's identity, told the BBC: "You can imagine it happening to a 30-year-old man, but not to a young child. "If the teacher had any concerns it should have been about his spelling. "They shouldn't be putting a child through this. He's now scared of writing, using his imagination." She added that she initially thought the incident had been a joke. A spokeswoman for Lancashire Police said: "This was reported to the police but was dealt with by a joint visit by a Pc from the division and social services, not by anyone from Prevent. "There were not thought to be any areas for concern and no further action was required by any agency." Since last July teachers have been legally obliged to report any suspected extremist behaviour to police as part of the Government's Prevent anti-radicalisation strategy. At the time the Department for Education (DfE) issued advice for schools and childcare providers on how to meet the new requirement - known as the Prevent duty. It said: "Schools and childcare providers can also build pupils' resilience to radicalisation by promoting fundamental British values and enabling them to challenge extremist views. "It is important to emphasise that the Prevent duty is not intended to stop pupils debating controversial issues. "On the contrary, schools should provide a safe space in which children, young people and staff can understand the risks associated with terrorism and develop the knowledge and skills to be able to challenge extremist arguments." Schools are expected to assess the risk of children being drawn into terrorism, which can include support for extremist ideas that are "part of terrorist ideology". In October last year, figures obtained by the Press Association revealed that eight people were being referred to de-radicalisation schemes every day. Between June and August 2015, 796 individuals - including some 312 aged under 18 - were reported to the Government's Channel programme for possible intervention. The statistics further revealed that there was a marked fall in referrals - 349 in July, compared with 120 in August - when schools closed for the summer. Channel, which was first piloted in 2007, is a key part of Prevent, which is itself a strand of Contest, the acronym given to the multi-pronged national counter-terrorism programme. It aims to provide support at an early stage to people who are identified as being vulnerable to being drawn into terrorism. Rescue workers shout to clear the way for an ambulance transporting injured victims from Bacha Khan University in Charsadda town, some 35 kilometers (21 miles) outside the city of Peshawar, Pakistan. (AP Photo/Mohammad Sajjad) Pakistani troops arrive at Bacha Khan University in Charsadda town, some 35 kilometers (21 miles) outside the city of Peshawar, Pakistan. (AP Photo/Mohammad Sajjad) An attack on a university in Pakistan which left at least 20 people dead has been ended by security forces. The attackers triggered a heavy gun battle with police and army troops in a town near Peshawar, but officials said the operation to clear the site had now finished, and that four gunmen were killed. The attack stirred grim memories of the Peshawar school attack in 2014 that killed more than 150 people, mostly children, and shocked the nation. It also prompted the Pakistani prime minister to pledge the country will wipe out the "menace of terrorism". The attack began shortly after the Bacha Khan University opened for classes in the town of Charsadda, some 21 miles outside Peshawar, said deputy commissioner Tahir Zafar. As police and soldiers rushed to the campus, the attackers traded gunfire with the troops and several explosions were heard from the area of the university. The attackers were later contained inside two university blocks where the troops killed them, the army said. A chemistry professor and a student were among those killed, said Mr Zafar, adding that it was not initially clear how many attackers managed to penetrate the campus. Television footage showed heavy military presence at the university, troops rushing in and people fleeing. Ambulances were at the scene and the wounded were taken to hospital. Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif vowed to fight to the end and destroy the Taliban and other militants. "We are determined and resolved in our commitment to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland," Mr Sharif said. A Taliban leader, Khalifa Umar Mansoor, claimed responsibility for the attack. Mansoor, who was the mastermind behind the Peshawar school attack, said a four-man Taliban team carried out the assault. He said it was in revenge for the scores of militants the Pakistani security forces have killed in recent months. However, a spokesman for the main Taliban faction in Pakistan later disowned the group behind the attack, describing the assault as "un-Islamic." Mohammad Khurasani also denied earlier reports that he had endorsed Mansoor's claim and said that those who carried out such attacks would be tried before an Islamic, or Sharia court. Such statements from among the Taliban are not uncommon since the group has many loosely linked factions and is indicative of the deep divisions and splits among the insurgents. The Bacha Khan University is named after the founder of a liberal, anti-Taliban political party. The Pakistani Taliban have in the past targeted the party for its anti-militant policies. Angie Bowie, first wife of the late singer David Bowie, who left the Channel 5 reality TV programme 'Celebrity Big Brother' after 'being unwell for a few days' (PA) David Bowie's ex-wife, Angie, has left the 'Celebrity Big Brother' house. The 66-year-old has departed due to illness after being unwell for a few days, Channel 5 said. On Monday, American producer David Gest left the house due to medical reasons, which saw Bowie demanding to follow him. She began packing her suitcase and said in the diary room: "I want to leave now! Get me my stuff! Give me my stuff! Now!" A Channel 5 spokesman said: "After being unwell for a few days, Angie Bowie has decided to leave the 'Celebrity Big Brother' house." The other housemates could hear her yelling from the diary room as she shouted: "I am not staying here another minute. Get me out of here right now!" Despite Big Brother's concerns that it was the "middle of the night" and that things "had to be put in place", she insisted: "Get me a car and let me be gone, if you want to be cheap get me an Uber." It was unclear at the end of the show whether she had left or remained as a housemate. Mr Gest had taken to his bed over the last few days and left after he informed 'Big Brother' that he was too ill to continue the show. The 62-year-old missed the gunge task at the weekend and spent time confined in a spare bedroom as he tried to recover. In the diary room, Liza Minnelli's former husband said: "I've been so sick, and I'm really sad as I wish I could stay. It's something I will never forget. "I want to thank all the people that have been supporting me, I want to tell all the cast mates that I love them and I love this country for their support and being so good to me. Thank you, Big Brother." A Channel 5 spokesman said: "Due to medical reasons, David Gest has decided to leave the 'Celebrity Big Brother' house." A tweet from his official account, made by his team, said: "Sorry guys but @David Gest2016 is a bit poorly just now! When he is all fixed we will let ya know xx." Mr Gest was at the centre of a row in the house last week when US reality star Tiffany Pollard thought he was the David who had died, instead of David Bowie. Meanwhile, David Bowie's son Duncan Jones has retweeted a thank-you letter to his father from a doctor specialising in end-of-life care. Dr Mark Taubert, palliative care consultant at Velindre NHS Trust in Cardiff, told Bowie his death had prompted a "weighty" discussion with a dying woman in hospital and opened up the possibility for some patients that they could die at home. He wrote on the blog page of the 'British Medical Journal' website: "We discussed your death and your music, and it got us talking about numerous weighty subjects, that are not always straightforward to discuss with someone facing their own demise. "In fact, your story became a way for us to communicate very openly about death, something many doctors and nurses struggle to introduce as a topic of conversation." Bowie died from cancer aged 69 on January 10, surrounded by his family. Students using virtual reality goggles in the Google expeditions project which allows people to take a virtual tour of Buckingham Palace in London Credit: Andrew Federman/Google/PA Wire Buckingham Palace is usually the preserve of paying visitors or guests but now anyone can tour the famous London landmark - using the internet. A virtual reality experience has been created for some of the palace's state rooms, taking the viewer into the heart of the royal residence and bringing the ornate furniture, fixtures and fittings almost within grasp. Visitors can stand at the bottom of the grand staircase and, although not able to move, have an almost 360-degree view of the architectural wonder. They can also look down the picture gallery at the Old Masters such as Canaletto hanging on the walls, then turn around to see paintings behind them. Other highlights include tours of the lavishly decorated Green and White drawing rooms and the ballroom - where knighthoods and OBEs are presented by the Queen during investitures - all accompanied by a virtual tour guide. Google is behind the project and it has created a similar experience for schools under its Expedition pioneer programme, but instead of having a virtual guide, teachers dictate the tour and highlight interesting topics for pupils. Jemima Rellie, director of content and audiences at the Royal Collection Trust which has collaborated with Google for the project, said: "For schoolchildren, Buckingham Palace is one of the most iconic, magical buildings in the world. "We're terrifically excited that, thanks to the virtual reality potential of Google Expedition, children, their teachers and families can visit the palace wherever they live." Sixteen cameras - known as a Jump camera rig - placed in a circle were used to take the pictures last week. Google developed the virtual palace tour after creating similar experiences of other landmarks and natural wonders for schoolchildren around the globe taking part in its Expedition initiative, a pilot programme. Using a master tablet running Google's Expedition app and virtual reality goggles developed by Google called Cardboard - the material used to make them - teachers have been able to take their pupils to Japan's Mount Fuji or experience the Borneo rainforest. When the internet company asked the children what other virtual expeditions they wanted to take, they suggested the White House, outer space and Buckingham Palace. Jennifer Holland, Expedition's programme manager, said Barclay Primary School in Leyton, east London, was keen on seeing the Queen's home. Mrs Holland said: "We asked them, if you could go anywhere in the world where would you want to go and they replied - Buckingham Palace." Pupils from Barclay attended the launch of the virtual palace tour at an education training and technology show at ExCeL in London. Luke Scott, IT manager for Lion Academy Trust which runs the school, said: "It was interesting taking a step back and looking at the children's reactions, they would tell their friends to 'look over there' - they really thought they were there." Schools can take their pupils on a virtual field trip of Buckingham Palace by applying online to either Google's Expedition initiative - which loans the equipment needed and provides support - or its new Open Beta project which allows schools to download the free Expedition app and use their own tablets and goggles. The public can take the virtual tour by logging on to the British Monarchy YouTube Channel with a smartphone. A London council could be prosecuted for corporate manslaughter after a five-year-old girl died in a zip wire accident in a playground it maintained, an inquest hearing heard. Alexia Walenkaki suffered severe injuries when a tree the wire was attached to collapsed in Mile End Park, east London. A pre-inquest review at St Pancras Coroner's Court heard that an investigation by the Metropolitan Police's Serious Crime and Homicide Command is continuing and manslaughter charges may be brought against Tower Hamlets Council. Detective Inspector Craig Bradley told senior coroner Mary Hassell more expert evidence is being gathered. He said: "We are in the process of investigating the possibility of corporate manslaughter or gross negligence. We have liaised very closely with the CPS (Crown Prosecution Service)." Police were called just after 5.30pm on Friday July 17 and attended the scene with London Ambulance Service, which found Alexia in cardiac arrest. She died at the Royal London Hospital at 6.43pm that evening. The tree trunk was decayed and one expert has compiled a report on its state, the court heard. Mr Bradley said: "We have had to contact another expert in relation to the trunk concerning the level of the decay in the tree and whether it would have been visible in an inspection or not." At the time of Alexia's death a joint investigation was launched by the Metropolitan Police and the Health and Safety Executive. Once the CPS has received the second expert's report it is likely to make a decision on whether to bring a prosecution for manslaughter. If it decides not to bring charges, the investigation will be passed to the Health and Safety Executive, the court heard. Mark Scoggins, for Tower Hamlets, told the hearing a corporate manslaughter charge was not appropriate. He said: "That requires that at a very serious level there have been gross failings high up the senior management chain." He added: "The issue is literally down on the ground, it is difficult to see how senior managers up the chain could have knowledge of that." The coroner asked for witness statements to be collected from council workers who planned the maintenance schedule of the park and the person doing the maintenance. An inquest with a jury will run for four days starting on April 11. If a criminal prosecution is brought, the inquest will be adjourned. A man's body has been discovered next to a burning tent. Police were called to reports of a tent on fire underneath a railway bridge in Irwell Street, Salford, Greater Manchester, during the early hours of Wednesday morning. An investigation is under way to establish how the fire started. A spokeswoman for Greater Manchester Police said: "We were called at around 1.20 in the morning to Irwell Street, Salford, to reports that a tent was on fire under a railway bridge. "We recovered a man's body next to a tent. "We don't know the cause of the fire yet but investigations are ongoing." Two fire engines from Manchester Central were called to the scene close to Salford Central railway station at 1.18am and used a hose to put out the blaze. A spokeswoman for Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service confirmed they were called to the railway arches at the junction of Irwell Street and Trinity Way. A migrant mother carries her child as they walk through the snow from the Macedonian border into Serbia (AP) Refugee children are at grave risk from hypothermia as they trek with their parents through Greece and the Balkans in temperatures as low as -20C, British charity Save the Children has warned. Deep snow, biting winds and freezing temperatures are making the journey a misery for refugees and migrants as they cross by boat from the Turkish coast to Greece's Aegean islands and then make their way from Athens north into Macedonia and Serbia. More than a million migrants and refugees arrived in Europe last year, with fears that continuing conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries will propel a similar exodus this year. Despite rough seas and freezing temperatures, more than 24,000 refugees and migrants have reached Europe by sea so far this year, according to the International Organisation for Migration. Children are walking long distances and having to sleep out in the open as they make the journey north, their goal being western Europe and Scandinavia. On the border between Macedonia and Serbia, temperatures are forecast to drop to -20 C, raising the risk of hypothermia, pneumonia and other potentially fatal respiratory illnesses. At Presevo, on Macedonia's frontier with Serbia, aid workers said children were arriving with blue lips, their bodies shaking from the cold. "The conditions here are very, very difficult, and with temperatures forecast to drop as low as -20C today, the lives of children are at risk," said Save the Children's Valentina Bollenback. Hypothermia "The mothers I have met arriving here are distressed because they are unable to keep their babies warm and safe. "We see children with early signs of hypothermia such as blue lips and hands, as well as high fevers and respiratory problems. "Instead of focusing on closing their borders, Europe's governments should be doing more to give people fleeing war a dignified and humane reception." It has snowed on Lesbos, which receives the largest number of refugees of any Greek island. Some of the children arriving in boats and rubber dinghies are wearing nothing more than T-shirts. Many are soaking wet from the voyage. "The boat journey was the hardest part," said Nasir, a Syrian man who fled the war five months ago with his wife and two young children. "It was extremely cold, everything was wet and the babies were ill. Sometimes I fear for my children. We couldn't remain in Syria, but it doesn't get this cold there. We have never been this cold." Save the Children is handing out children's rain jackets, socks and shoes, as well as hot drinks and hygiene items. On Monday, the president of Greece accused Turkish border authorities of facilitating people smuggling by turning a blind eye to the trafficking of thousands of migrants to Europe. "I have a strong fear that Turkish smugglers have the support of the authorities, in particular, border authorities who act like they have seen nothing," Prokopis Pavlopoulos told the German newspaper 'Sueddeutsche Zeitung'. "There are even cases where the smugglers are helped. We have evidence. It's a type of slave trade," he said, stressing that he was not speaking about Turkey's leaders. ( Daily Telegraph, London) Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022] The SNP has called on David Cameron to "admit" that Britain is "effectively taking part in a war" in Yemen that is costing thousands of civilian lives. Speaking during Prime Minister's Questions, the party's Westminster Group Leader Angus Robertson claimed Mr Cameron had "not sought Parliamentary approval to do this". Mr Cameron hit back, arguing Mr Robertson had "started in a serious place but then seriously wandered off". The MP for Moray said: "Thousands of civilians have been killed in Yemen, including a large number by the Saudi air force, and they've done that using British-built planes with pilots who are trained by British instructors who are dropping British-made bombs and are co-ordinated by the Saudis in the presence of British military advisers. "Isn't it time for the Prime Minister to admit that Britain is effectively taking part in a war in Yemen that is costing thousands of civilian lives and he has not sought Parliamentary approval to do this." Mr Cameron said it was in Britain's interests that "we back the legitimate government of Yemen and it's right to do that". He added: "We have some of the most stringent arms control measures of any country anywhere in the world. But just to be absolutely clear about our role, we're not a member of the Saudi-led coalition, British military personnel are not directly involved in the Saudi-led coalition's operations. "Personnel are not involved in carrying out strikes, directing or conducting operations in Yemen or selecting targets and we're not involved in the Saudi targeting decision-making process. "But yes, do we provide training and advice and help in order to make sure that countries actually do obey the norms of humanitarian law, yes we do." Mr Robertson used both of his party's two questions during PMQs to press Mr Cameron on the issue of Yemen, asking: "Can the Prime Minister tell the House what the UK Government is doing to support peace in Yemen?" Mr Cameron said: "Well, we are doing everything we can with all the people taking part in this conflict to encourage them to get round a negotiating table as they have done recently in order to bring about what's necessary in Yemen, which is a government that can represent all of the people. "You've got to make sure that both Sunni and Shia are properly represented in that country and that's the only way that we'll meet our key national interest, which is to back a government in Yemen that will drive the terrorists including al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) out of Yemen, because they have been and are a direct threat to the citizens of Britain. Firefighters try to put out the fire in an oil tank in the port of Es Sider, in Ras Lanuf, Libya, in this file picture taken January 6, 2016. The attacks against Libya's biggest oil terminals were lethal and sustained. The last two weeks have seen suicide bombings, huge fires at storage tanks, and a hole blown in a major pipeline. The oil ports of Es Sider and Ras Lanuf had been closed for more than a year, and the Islamic State militants advancing on them backed off after three days of shelling and clashes (Reuters) Sitting in the shabby parlour of his temporary home, Haaji Mohammed can barely bring himself to watch the Isil video playing on his mobile phone. The film was made just last month - yet the horrific scenes it shows could be from 500 years ago. Kneeling before a masked executioner are two men in orange jumpsuits, charged under a statute that drags even the medieval barbarity of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) to new depths. The pair are accused of "sorcery", and just as in witchcraft trials of old, justice is swift, brutal and dispensed to the sound of a baying mob. As the executioner beheads them with a four-foot scimitar, a crowd of men and boys scream "Allahu Akhbar", jostling each other for a closer look. Mr Mohammed is less keen. "I know that man personally," he says, pointing to the older of the two defendants, whom he names as Said Jabr. "He is not a witch, he is just an alternative healer who does homeopathy and acupuncture. He was wrongly accused." That Isil's self-appointed morality police can be as careless as they are callous will come as no surprise to anyone who has seen their countless execution videos from Iraq and Syria. Yet this latest broadcast was shot not in the Isil strongholds of Raqqa or Mosul but the terror group's new "caliphate" in Libya, where it now controls the late Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's home city of Sirte, just 550km south of Italy. Stuffed with civic vanity buildings erected in Gaddafi's honour, Sirte's grandiose skyline was all but flattened in the 2011 revolution, when rebel groups from nearby Misrata vowed to teach the tyrant's stronghold a lesson. Now the tables have been turned, as the city's humiliated Gaddafi remnants join forces with Isil in revenge. Mr Mohammed, a Sirte elder, was forced to flee six months ago. Along with some 5,000 other Sirte residents, he now lives in the nearby city of Misrata. Yet as the fate of Mr Jabr shows, anything is better than staying put. Formed by a vanguard of just a few dozen fighters a year ago, Isil's Sirte chapter is now believed to be up to 3,000-strong, imposing a regime of beheadings and crucifixions. As with the ex-Ba'athists who now back Isil, it matters not a jot to the Gaddafi loyalists that their own secular brand of thuggery has little common cause with Isil's religious version. "There is a saying these days in Sirte: 'Better to live in the hellfire of Isil than the heaven of Misrata'," said Jamal al Misteri, (30) a Misratan rebel fighter. Such is the fear of that "hellfire" consuming the whole country that Britain has offered 1,000 troops to a 5,000-strong Italian force to help Libya's fledgling security forces take Isil on, though they would be confined to training roles. However, while few would doubt the ex-Libyan rebels' combat prowess, there are no "government" forces for Western troops to mentor. Instead, for two years, the country has been in a low-level civil war between two rival administrations, whose main achievement has been to distract each other enough for Isil to get a foothold. Outgunned Following a landmark peace deal signed last month after exhaustive UN-backed talks, the two factions are attempting to form a unity government. Diplomats fear, though, that even the mortal threat of Isil may not be enough to make them pull together: when the country's new UN-backed prime minister, Faiz Serraj, visited the scene of an Isil truck bombing two weeks ago, some locals booed him. Meanwhile, the chaos and discontent that Isil has exploited so deftly in Sirte remains across the country. Western embassies have withdrawn from Tripoli because of fears of kidnappings and terrorist attack. Many of the city's young ex-revolutionaries are now struck with a sense of despair, wondering why their reward for toppling one of the world's most feared dictators is merely to face another psychopathic force in the form of Isil. "Blood has become like smoke," said "Ahmed" (23) puffing on a joint and slugging from a bottle of Chivas Regal one night. "I used to be upset when I saw people killed, now it means nothing." Misrata is relatively unified by Libyan standards, its people having been through a collective baptism of fire in 2011 when Gaddafi's forces subjected them to a savage six-month siege. But after emerging from that coastal Stalingrad with a reputation for having some of the best urban fighters in Libya, it appears to have met its match in Isil-controlled Sirte. After initial successes, a senior military figure says, the fighting went into areas where the risk of civilian casualties was too high. Other Misratan fighters, though, say they were simply outgunned. "Fighting Gaddafi's people during the war was hard enough, but these Isil people are even fiercer," said Mr Mohammed's nephew Osama, who at one point was burying five comrades a day, including one of Mr Mohammed's sons. "We have never seen anything like it." Misratan commanders say a major offensive is being planned against Isil in Sirte, and that Western help will be welcome, as long as it is discreet. Meanwhile, Osama and his surviving comrades are laying the groundwork by sending spies into Sirte to gather intelligence. Two have already been caught and killed, and three others are missing, but the risks are deemed worth it - if only to see the return of Libya's green, black and red revolutionary flag, which still flutters proudly all over the rest of the country. "Isil's people only want their own black flag on display," said Osama. "So they have set up special dustbins where the Libyan flag can be dumped." In a country where so many died to see it unfurled five years ago, there is perhaps no greater insult - and no greater expression of Isil's new confidence. ( Daily Telegraph, London) Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022] An army fighter prepares to fire a shell towards Isil militants in the northern Aleppo countryside, Syria (Reuters) An estimated 3,500 people, mainly women and children, are being held by Isil as slaves in Iraq, the UN has said. The group, which also controls large parts of Syria, is responsible for acts that may "amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and possibly genocide", particularly against minorities, a report said. Iraqi security forces and allied groups, including Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, have also killed and abducted civilians, the UN said. "Some of these incidents may have been reprisals against persons perceived to support or be associated with Isil," it added. At least 18,802 civilians were killed in violence in Iraq in the first 10 months of 2015, half of them in Baghdad, and 36,245 civilians were wounded, the report said, calling the figures "obscene". The UN Assistance Mission for Iraq and the UN human rights office estimated that 3,500 people were "currently being held in slavery" by Isil, which seized mainly Sunni-populated areas in the north and west in 2014. "Those being held are predominantly women and children primarily from the Yazidi community," said the joint report, referring to a non-Muslim minority in northern Iraq. "But a number are also from other ethnic and religious minority communities." The Sunni Islamists, who claim responsibility for suicide bombings in Baghdad against Shia mosques and markets, should face prosecution for international crimes, said Francesco Motta, director of the UN human rights office in Iraq. "They use civilians as shields. They use children in armed conflict. They also directly target civilian infrastructure and that can amount to war crimes but they can also constitute crimes against humanity," he told a news briefing. The group seeks to "basically eliminate, purge or destroy minority communities," Mr Motta explained. "We've seen communities like the Yazidi, in particular, bear the brunt of this. Yazidi were basically given the option by Isil to convert or to be killed. "The intent seems clear... the international crime of genocide," he said. "The intention was to destroy part or the whole of the Yazidi people." The report detailed Isil executions by shooting, beheading, bulldozing, burning alive and throwing people off buildings. Doctors, teachers and journalists opposed to its ideology have been "singled out and murdered by Isil". "We have a lot of information on the recruitment of children, children as young as nine, to train them sometimes to use them as suicide operatives in their operations, but also forcing them to give blood and also take armed combat roles in other parts where conflict is taking place," Mr Motta said. Between 800 and 900 children in Mosul had been abducted for military and religious training, the report said. Ramadi, capital of Anbar province, was recaptured from Isil in late December and the tide of fighting appears to have turned against the group. "We still have grave fears for civilians in areas under Daesh (Isil) control as the armed forces and those supporting the government move closer to those areas," Mr Motta added. A newlywed is having to fight to have his marriage recognised after his husband was killed on their honeymoon. Marco Bulmer-Rizzi(38) and his husband David(32) were visiting friends in Adelaide on their honeymoon when David fell down a flight of stairs. He died with 24 hours of his injuries, including a cracked skull. His husband Marco told Buzzfeed News that their marriage - which is perfectly legal in the UK - is not being recognised by Australian officials. As a result, David's death certificate will read "never married" because "saying nothing... is not one of the drop down option on the computer". "I couldnt refuse. There was nothing I could have done. They wouldnt say married. They wouldnt leave it blank. They would only say, never married. This was confirmed by email because we complained afterwards". This refusal to recognise the marriage denies Marco next-of-kin rights, which means David's father is making all of the decisions around his son's death. He told Buzzfeed that the situation is "degrading". "It demeans my son's memory and denies their relationship. No-one should ever have to go through what we've gone through". "I was horrified and deeply hurt by the words I heard there: that theyre going to put on the death certificate never married. Its not true. I was there". David is asking supporters to write to their MP requesting that he be allowed to recieve a UK-style death certificate from the British consulate in Australia, as is standard procedure when a Briton dies abroad. However, Australia is 'expressly excluded' from this procedure, Buzzfeed reports. Read More The couple have been together for five years and married six months ago in London. They had arrived in Australia in late December for a belated honeymoon. Adelaide was their final stop. Marco explains that he doesn't know what happened to his husband. "I went to bed and David was to follow... he was reading his Kindle". "I woke up 45 minutes later... I turned on the light and he was lying at the bottom of the stairs in a blood bath". David was put into an induced coma by paramedics who told Marco to contact any family that needed to fly to Australia. David's parents flew out immediately. After unsuccessful surgery to relieve pressure on the brain, Marco was "told he will die within 24 hours. There was nothing they could do". Marco has written to David Cameron, among others, urging the British government to step in. "I am not asking them to (change Australian law). I'm asking my country to stand by its own laws". David's organs were donated, and went to "a 40 year-old man with two kids and another person who had been on the transplant list for 1,250 days". "Theres two children who have their daddy... that person will wake up knowing they have a chance and can see their kids grow up". South Australian premier Jay Weatherill has apologised to the couple for hurt caused. He has since tweeted that "legislation is being prepared" to recognised overseas same-sex marriages. The Premier of South Australia, Jay Weatherill, has personally called a newlywed who was widowed on honeymoon in Australia after country officials refused to recognise the couple's marriage. Jay Weatherill has apologised to Marco Bulmer-Rizzi for his treatment at the hands of Australian officials following the death of his husband while on honeymoon in Adelaide. Speaking to Buzzfeed News, Bulmer-Rizzi revealed that he received a direct phone call from the South Australian Premier. "We were on the phone for a good 10 minutes. He apologised. He said he would work on ways they can bring a change to avoid this happening in the future". "They are looking to actively change it through legislation and he told me it would happen in the next few months. He promised me that they would reissue the death certificate once that has happened". "My mind is blown away that the premier of South Australia called to apologise. Its such an acknowledgment, coming from the top of the state". "He probably would be proud", Marco said of his late husband. "The fact that through him maybe this is never going to happen to somebody else is such a good thing". Marco Bulmer-Rizzi(38) and his husband David(32) were visiting friends in Adelaide on their honeymoon when David fell down a flight of stairs and later died from his injuries. His husband Marco told Buzzfeed News that their marriage - which is perfectly legal in the UK - was not recognised by Australian officials. As a result, David's death certificate read "never married" because "saying nothing... is not one of the drop down option on the computer". "I couldnt refuse. There was nothing I could have done. They wouldnt say married. They wouldnt leave it blank. They would only say, never married. This was confirmed by email because we complained afterwards". Read More This refusal to recognise the marriage denies Marco next-of-kin rights, which means David's father is making all of the decisions around his son's death. He told Buzzfeed that the situation is "degrading". "It demeans my son's memory and denies their relationship. No-one should ever have to go through what we've gone through". The couple have been together for five years and married six months ago in London. They had arrived in Australia in late December for a belated honeymoon. Adelaide was their final stop. Marco explains that he doesn't know what happened to his husband. "I went to bed and David was to follow... he was reading his Kindle". "I woke up 45 minutes later... I turned on the light and he was lying at the bottom of the stairs in a blood bath". BMW announces $1.7 billion investment to build all-electric vehicles The $1.7 billion investment includes $700 million to build a high-voltage battery assembly plant with 300 new jobs in Woodruff. SHARE By Jennifer Crossley Howard The freshwater amoeba Naegleria fowleri killed a Sumter County boy last week, but an infectious disease doctor says the case is one in a million. The single-cell organism commonly lives in large and small free-standing bodies of water, but public health officials are emphasizing that the state's lakes are safe for swimming. Warm, shallow water found in low-level yard ponds, catfish farms and lakes harbors Naegleria, which is active during the summer. Upstate freshwater biologists say they cannot recall any deaths involving the amoeba in this region's water. Jim Beasley, spokesman for the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control said virtually every standing body of water in the state contains the organism, including Hartwell Lake, but it is threatening only when ingested up the nose."This boy's case is tragic," Beasley said. "We want folks to understand, yes, we will find it if we go looking for it. But even if you swallow that amoeba, it won't have that kind of impact on you."Blake Driggers, 8, of Sumter died on July 17, and an autopsy found that Naegleria caused his death. Blake was buried Monday at Northside Memorial Baptist Church in Sumter where he was a member. He was a rising third-grader at Alice Drive Elementary School. Sumter County Coroner Harvin Bullock said Newberry Pathology Associates performed a private autopsy because of the nature of the death. Bullock has never encountered a death caused by the amoeba."I've seen several cases of meningitis, but I've never seen anything like this before," he said. The coroner said he was 99 percent sure that the boy swam in Lake Marion in recent weeks. The transmission of the organism is unique in that freshwater swimmers can splash it on their skin or even drink it without effect. But inhaling it poses the most danger."It can kind of swim up your nose and the roof of your mouth through perforations that allow nerves to pass from the lining of your mouth and nose to brain," said Dr. Michael Kilby, chief of infectious diseases at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. "We tend to think of amoebas as bugs in the tropics that give you diarrhea, but this is a different amoeba from exposure to water," he said. Kilby is not associated with Blake Driggers' case and said he cannot remember treating a case involving the organism. There have been cases reported in South Carolina, Alabama, Florida and Australia in recent years, he said. But he stresses that the amoeba's mere presence is not enough reason to quit swimming in freshwater. "The last thing we want to do is cause alarm and cause people not to swim because it's one in a million," Kilby said. "When you're squashing around in the creek and you get it on your skin then it doesn't matter; it's just when it gets in the wrong place." Catching Naegleria fowleri in time is the key because once the amoeba reaches the brain the chance of survival is less than 5 percent. Death occurs usually between one and 10 days, Beasley said. The organism is capable of causing headaches, vomiting, seizures and death if it reaches the brain. But the frequency of such infections is so low, it is hard to determine what causes the organism to settle in and how fast it attacks, Kilby said. Clemson University freshwater ecologist John Hains said the organism's fatal change once ingested up the nose is mysterious. "We don't really fully understand what causes it to go into pathogenic mode," he said. "It's really completely unpredictable." Statistics illustrate the rarity of contracting infections caused by Naegleria fowleri. The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control has only six documented cases of Naegleria fowleri since the 1970s, Beasley said. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 32 cases were reported in the U.S. from 2001 to 2010, the latest statistics available. There are ways to avoid Naegleria. Wearing a nose clip when swimming in a lake or pond and not diving in lakes will discourage the organism from reaching the brain, Beasley said. "If you want to go to extremes, just don't swim in those bodies of water," he said. Retired Clemson freshwater biologist Larry Dyck said the last he heard about Naegleria being detected in Upstate water was in the late 1980s. "My last experience with it was at the Savannah River site where they had cooling ponds," he said. "Those cooling ponds would often get Naegleria in them." The U.S. is largely exempt from large outbreaks of such infections because of its superior public health, Hains said. Haiti and Cuba experienced cholera outbreaks recently. Beasley said there are many pathogens in water that can cause infections under the right circumstances. E. coli from feces is another potentially dangerous amoeba found in freshwater, but sickness from it is not common, Hains said. "As far as parasites we are blessed with relatively few," he said. Independent Mail reporter Anna Mitchell contributed to this story. - T. S. Eliot Thoughts After Lambeth "The World is trying the experiment of attempting to form a civilized but non-Christian mentality. The experiment will fail; but we must be very patient in awaiting its collapse; meanwhile redeeming the time: so that the Faith may be preserved alive through the dark ages before us; to renew and rebuild civilization, and save the World from suicide." Post the super success of 'Naanum Rowdy Dhaan', Vijay Sethupathi is here again with a promising on-screen punch with his next movie 'Sethupathi'. The actor is grabbing much attention through the film's trailer, in which he features as a cop. The teaser since its launch is trending on web world, courtesy its trendy dialogues and background music. The successful combination of Vijay Sethupathi and Remya Nambeesan (after the blockbuster movie 'Pizza') are coming together again for 'Sethupathi' and expectations are running high. Directed by S.U Arunkumar, 'Sethupathi' is bannered under Vansan Movies. Nivas Prasanna, who mesmerized us with 'Thegidi' has composed the music. Movie is touted to release in February. Incidentally, Nirvana Cinemas has bagged the rights for USA and Canada and will be releasing the movie on a grand scale. (For trade enquiries in USA & Canada, contact: 408-780-4655 or 312-725-3654 OR Email: nirvanacinemas@gmail.com) Since November 2015, the US Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) has slammed warnings to as many as 5 drug manufacturers of India over quality concerns and compliance with manufacturing practices. Besides, strengthening Indian rupee against African and Russian currencies coupled with increasing competition from China and other developing countries may drag Indias drug exports to 7.98% by 2020 from 14.77% GACR during 2010-2014, according to a recent study.A joint report on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) by TechSci Research and Assocham points out that the recent FDA warnings over deficiencies at manufacturing units of various Indian drug makers is hurting Indias drug exports to the US.According to the data available with the Ministry of Commerce and Industries, Indias pharma exports to the US fell to 9% in 2014 from 38% in 2011. However, Indias drug exports to the US surged to US$ 3.76 billion in 2014 from US$ 3.44 billion in 2013, which reflects that the US is the biggest export market for Indian pharma industry.In last 2-3 months, Indian pharma firms including Dr. Reddys Lab, Sun Pharma, Zydus Cadila, Wockhardt Ltd and IPCA Lab have been issued warning letters from the US FDA. Sun Pharma and Dr. Reddys, two of Indias largest drug makers, earns a major chunk of revenue from the US market. These strict actions by the UD drug regulator has already started affecting the exports of these two pharma majors.Adding to the misery, regulatory delays in top export markets like the US, Russia and Africa and weakening currencies of Africa, Russia, Ukraine and Venezuela is expected to take a toll on Indian drug export in coming 3-4 years, notes the study. Furthermore, the devaluation of yuan is also anticipated to give tough competition to Indian drug exports. Besides, Indian firms will continue to feel the heat of cheap APIs dumped in India.Dilip Shanghvi, Managing Director, Sun Pharma, during a concall on December 19, 2015 had said, Post the September 2014 inspection, the US FDA has withheld future product approvals from the Halol facility. This situation will continue until all issues are resolved and the site comes back in compliance.Speaking about the delay in issuing the warning letter by FDA Shanghvi had said, It is difficult for me to answer on behalf of the FDA as to what triggered this warning letter. Maybe it is our inability to effectively communicate the extent of changes and extent of remediation that we have done. It is also possible that we thought that some information which we were expecting that FDA will come and look for when they inspect us again, maybe that is something which was expected that we will share with them. We really do not know.Pankaj Patel, CMD, Cadila Healthcare Ltd had said during a concall on December 31, 2015, The action which FDA will take on any inspection would be on historical data and not prospective data. That is my understanding. There are deficiencies, that is why we have 483, and that is the reason why we have received the warning letter. We believe that we have taken action and if there are more to be done, we are willing to do it if FDA asks us additional work to be done. We would request FDA for an inspection to find out what we have done is sufficient or not.Following is the snapshot of how the strict FDA actions impacted the drug makers performance in the stock market and what changes (on yoy and qoq) can it bring in their Q3FY16 financial results:FDA issued warning letter to Dr. Reddys Lab on November 4, 2015 over violation of cGMP at its API manufacturing facilities at Srikakulam, Andhra Pradesh and Miryalaguda, Telangana, as well as Oncology formulation manufacturing facility at Duvvada, Vishkhapatanam, Andhra Pradesh. Shares of the company have plunged 32.55% to Rs. 2,910.05 at present, from Rs. 4,314.35. During the same period, Dr. Reddys market capitalization has also eroded by Rs. 23,927.17 crore to Rs. 49,647.68 crore from Rs. 73,547.85 crore.According to IIFL estimates, for Q3FY16, Dr. Reddys net revenue is expected to surge 6.5% to Rs. 4,093 crore on Y-o-Y basis. However, on Q-o-Q basis, the drug majors Q3 net revenue is expected to witness 2.6% rise. IIFL estimates that the companys net profit for the period will be around Rs. 758.50 crore at growth rate of 32% on Y-o-Y basis, but on Q-o-Q basis it is expected to post 5.1% rise. The company is expected see EBIDTA margin at 29.2%, with a Y-o-Y growth of 6 bps.Sun Pharma, Indias largest drug manufacturer, received FDA warning letter on December 19, 2015 for its facility located at Halol, Gujarat. Despite this, shares of the company have soared 5.26% to Rs. 794.15 at present, from Rs. 754.45. During the same period, Sun Pharmas market capitalization has increased by Rs. 9,568.03 crore to Rs. 1,91,120.63 crore from Rs. 1,81,552.60 crore.According to IIFL, Sun Pharma Q3 revenues would be impacted due to continued pressure on US supplies due to Halol remediation and pressure on base business as evidenced in Q2 results; we expect adjusted US revenues (for US$40mn one off income in Q2) to decline 1.5% qoq while domestic revenues would inch up 1.5% qoq. Overall we expect 2.7% revenue decline leading to concurrent pressure on margins (130bps qoq) and ~17% sequential decline in PAT. We expect InSite acquisition to be factored in Q3 and would look for management commentary on Halol, Ranbaxy integration and US business outlook.FDA issued warning letter to Cadila Healthcare relating to its Moraiya formulation facility and Ahmedabad API facility (Zyfine) on December 31, 2015. However, the company has clarified that there are no products in the US market which use API of Zyfine facility. Despite the companys clarification, its shares tumbled 6.20% to Rs. 307.50 at present, from Rs. 327.80. During the same period, the companys market capitalization has also declined by Rs. 2,458.05 crore to Rs. 31,480.08 crore from Rs. 33,938.13 crore. The companys 60% revenues from the US is generated by Moraiya plant.According to IIFL estimates, for Q3FY16, Cadila Healthcares net revenue is expected to climb 5.6% to Rs. 2,797 crore on Y-o-Y basis. However, on Q-o-Q basis, the drug majors Q3 net revenue is expected to witness 2.6% surge. IIFL estimates that the companys net profit for the period will be around Rs. 419.90 crore at growth rate of 49% on Y-o-Y basis, but on Q-o-Q basis it is expected to post 7.3% rise. The company is expected see EBIDTA margin at 25.7%, with a Y-o-Y growth of 5.3 bps. The Union Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi has given its ex-post facto approval for the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed in November, 2015 between India, and United Kingdom for Cooperation in Public Administration and Governance Reforms. The form of co-operation under the MoU will be in areas like sharing good governance practices in public administration, User led service design, Reducing bureaucracy in service delivery, Government Process Re-engineering, Building and developing staff capability, Public Grievance Redress Mechanism, Local Government Reforms, Reforms towards strengthening of social security, Collaboration in strategies for promotion of ethics in Government, Collaboration between Government and Industry on staff management, Mechanisms for public engagement, Crisis and Disaster Management and Digital transformation of Government. A Joint Working Group on Public Administration and Governance will be responsible for implementation of the MoU. The MoU will help in understanding the system of customer oriented public service delivery in UK with reference to rapidly changing environments in the area of public service management and enable in replicating, adapting and innovating some of the best practices and processes in the Indian Public Service Delivery System, leading to improved public service delivery in India. The First Joint Working Group (JWG) meeting under the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) is scheduled to be held later this month in London. HCL Technologies, Indias fourth-largest IT service provider, has reported a solid second quarter for the period ended on December 31, 2015. The Economic Times reached out to the companys CFO, Anil Chanana to get his views on the business performance.Commenting on the companys higher margin and a profit driven quarter, Chanana said that the EBIT margins grew quarter-over-quarter to 19-20%. He told ET that there had been a 5% growth in EBIT on a quarter-on-quarter basis. At the same time, the companys net income grew by 10%, which was on account of the one-time transaction. He went on to state that the companys decision to sell-off an idle property fetched it $20 million in the quarter.Since the companys margins came below the analysts expectations, Chanana explained that they have made few new investments including the IoT, launched during the last quarter. Given these investments, Chanana anticipates the margin to range between 21% and 22% in the upcoming quarters.Meanwhile, Chanana did agree that the currency volatility had some impact on their business as far as the pricing of the deals is concerned. To encounter this, the company has adopted hedge policy to cover the risks attached with its dollar-rupee exposure as well as exposure to other currencies. Chanana asserted that the company strictly follows the hedge policy and does not think of neglecting at any time, particularly in the current environment of ad hoc currency movements.Chanana claimed that the currency volatility has reduced the gains to the large extent, which were available during December-end. However, he still sees positive growth and is satisfied with the way their hedging policy is helping them to avoid any wild forex induced losses or gains.In the end, Chanana said that their business should not be looked only from the perspective of rupee-dollar movements, but impact as a result of exposure to other currencies should also be taken into consideration. RedDoorz today announced that it has raised Pre-Series A funding from 500 Startups to intensify its expansion plans in the South East Asia region. RedDoorz has previously raised funding from Jungle Ventures.500 Startups is a leading global venture capital seed fund and startup accelerator. It manages $200M in assets and has invested in 1300+ technology start-ups in 50+ countries and works with 2300+ founders. The venture capital firm also helps startups find their users by encouraging them to use marketing and distribution best practices.The new funding raised by RedDoorz complements its previous Pre-Series A funding raised from Jungle Ventures, a Singapore based venture firm that invests and helps build tech category leaders in Asia.RedDoorz is South East Asias first asset light budget accommodation brand and service offering. It provides budget hotel owners access to expert advice and assistance to standardize their offering and directly distribute online via RedDoorz technology platform. Under the RedDoorz brand and service umbrella, these properties receive continued guidance to build repeat business and see higher online occupancies of up to 50 percent. To the consumer, a RedDoorz branded accommodation means receiving a consistent experience and great prices, complemented by the brands trust and securityRedDoorz launched in Indonesia three months ago and has already signed on 200+ budget hotels as customers. With the new funding from 500 Startups, RedDoorz will intensify its outreach in Indonesia, as it in parallel introduces its service offering in other prominent tourist and business hubs across South East Asia including Thailand, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.The South East Asia travel market today has a size of US$ 60.6 Bn1. Its prominent tourism and business hubs include Thailand, Bali, Singapore, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, etc. During many periods in the year, the demand for accommodation far exceeds supply in the region. A large number of properties are offline. Further, the market is highly fragmented with low adoption of online distribution technology. Hotel owners are unable to realize the full monetary potential of their assets and have to make do with lower average daily rates.We are thrilled to be part of the 500 Startups global community and network and are confident that with their support we will be able to rapidly expand the RedDoorz offering across a market that is ripe for transformation, said Amit Saberwal, CEO & Founder, RedDoorz.The hotel industry globally is going through a lot of change and were glad to be working with RedDoorz to lead part of this change in a market like Indonesia, said Khailee Ng, Managing Partner, 500 Startups. Reliance Industries: RIL reported 38.7% YoY growth in net profit at Rs. 7,290 crore for the quarter ended December 31. Other expenditure decreased by 12.9% to Rs. 8,549 crore ($ 1.3 billion) as against Rs. 9,811 crore incorresponding period of the previous year due to lower fuel prices.Zensar Tech: The company reported consolidated net profit for Q3 is registered at Rs 71.5 crore vs Rs 91.3 crore QoQ, down by 21.4% while the consolidated Total Income was posted at Rs 762 crore vs Rs 758.6 crore QoQ.Axis Bank: The bank will annouce its Q3 result today. According to IIFL estimates, the Net Interest Margin (NIM) is expected to be at 3.8%, a 20.0 bps decrease Y-o-Y while a 10.0 bps decline Q-o-Q.IDFC Bank:IDFC Bank is in advanced talks to acquire Royal Bank of Scotland's (RBS) corporate banking portfolio in a deal worth up to INR 3,000 crore, reports a business daily.Indian Bank: The bank will raise Rs. 1,100 crore through Basel-III compliant tier-II bonds.Century Plyboards: The company acquired 51% stake in a Singapore-registered trading company for Rs. 1.07 crore.Dhanlaxmi Bank Ltd: The bank has informed BSE that a meeting of the Board of Directors of the Bank scheduled to be held on January 29, 2016, to inter- alia, consider the proposal for raising further equity shares on preferential allotment basis and seek shareholders' approval for the same.BASF: The company reported net loss of Rs. 106.38 crore for the quarter ended December 31, 2015. The companys revenue stood at Rs. 1131.7 crore registering growth of 15.77% yoy.Alok Industries: SBI informed Alok Industries that as decided by the Joint Lenders' Forum, Strategic Debt Restructuring has been invoked on the Company with the reference date being November 27, 2015. Further, at its meeting held on January 16, 2016, it has been further decided that the JLF will acquire up to 65% stake in the company by converting its debt into equity.Greenply Industries: The company recorded a rise of 35% in its net profit at Rs. 35.3 crore for the quarter ended December 31, 2015 as compared to Rs. 26.1 crore for the quarter ended December 31, 2014.Ferro Alloys Corporation: The Central Empowered Committee (CEC) submitted a report which concluded that the mining operation in Boula Chromite Mines fell within the Hadgarh Wildlife Sactury. The mining operations are not permissible in that area, as per BSE data.Ashok Leyland: Ashok Leyland's electric vehicles (EV) arm Optare has taken up a project to increase the range of its MetroCity and Solo buses to 200 miles without intrusion into passenger space, as per media reports.Triveni Turbine: Triveni Turbine reported standalone net profit of Rs. 27.50 crore for the quarter, registering growth of 16.52% yoy. The Companys standalone revenue stood at Rs. 197.67 crore, clocking growth of 30.78% yoy.Reliance Power: Reliance Power Ltd posted a net profit after taxes, Minority Interest and Share of Profit/(Loss) of Associates of Rs. 3518.10 mn for the quarter ended December 31, 2015 as compared to Rs. 2544.40 mn for the quarter ended December 31, 2014.Spicejet: The airline is set to place a big fleet order and is in talks with both Airbus and Boeing for the same, Chairman Ajay Singh told a Business TV channel in an interview on Monday.Reliance Infra: The company will announce its Q3 results today. IIFL expects the companys net profit to fall 4.5% to Rs. 432 crore yoy. The companys Q3 net profit is likely to plunge 4.2% qoq.Tata Sponge Iron: The company will announce its Q3 results today. IIFL expects net revenue to plummet 35.70% to Rs. 138 crore yoy. IIFL forecasts the companys net profit for Q3 FY16 to nosedive to Rs. 5.9 crore, declining at a rate of 64.20% yoy; however, it sees a rise of 3.5% qoq.KPIT Tech: The IT company will announce its Q3 results today.According to IIFL estimates, the company is expected to report net revenue of Rs. 840 crore at 7.7% growth rate on Y-o-Y basis.IL&FS Engineering and Construction Company Ltd: The company informed BSE that a meeting of the Board of Directors of the Company will be held on January 23, 2016, inter alia, to consider additional fund raising options including issue of Preference Shares.JSW Energy: JSW Energy Ltd, the Sajjan Jindal-led firm, will announce its financial results today. IIFL expects the companys net profit to decline 18% to Rs. 319.60 crore yoy; Q3 net profit is expected to fall 37.2% qoq.Autoline Industries: The company is eyeing for business with lndian Railways and Ministry of Defence and recently got Vendor Registration from Defence and Railway Authorities.Atlanta: The company secured letter of award for four laning of end of Moran Bypass to Bogibeel Junction of NH-37 in the State of Assam under SARDP-NE Package (II).Aegis Logistics: The company will expand gas supply operations in South India, as per media reports.IOC, HPCL, BPCL: Petrol price in Delhi was increased by 96 paise per litre and diesel by 53 paise. Public cloud options now offer the scalability, computing power, storage and security to better enable digital government platforms and meet rising expectations for performance and value, according to Gartner Inc.Gartner predicts that by 2018, increased security will displace cost savings and agility as the primary driver for government agencies to move to public cloud within their jurisdictions."Many cloud service providers, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google, invest heavily in incorporating higher levels of security into their products to continue building confidence that their data is more secure," said Neville Cannon, research director at Gartner. "Many of these providers can invest more than what most nations could afford, let alone the average government agency."Mr. Cannon said that hindrances do remain, however, as nationalism and concerns about data sovereignty will slow benefit realization, as cost savings and agility are maintained as subsidiary drivers in the belief that data is more secure when retained within its jurisdiction.Adoption will start to accelerate, and subject to appropriate analysis of the risks involved, the provider's capabilities and the technologies chosen to protect the data, public sector CIOs should look to use public cloud for hosting both public and low-to-medium levels of sensitive data."To improve efficiency and optimize business outcomes, government agencies are experimenting with smart machine technologies, such as virtual assistants, to deliver frontline services," said Rick Howard, research director at Gartner. "Advances in cognitive learning and natural-language processingtechnologies have reached the stage of commercial viability that government CIOs can factor them into technology roadmaps."Deploying virtual personal assistants to conduct lower-level business functions, such as Tier 1 support services or claims resolution, sets the stage for the government workforce to shift to more value-added activities, such as case management and program evaluation. Government CIOs should work with program managers to develop business use cases for various smart machine technologies and then construct scenarios for achieving the desired business results.Gartner believes that the growing availability of self-service data discovery and business intelligence/analytic tools, as well as the creation of a "consumerized" digital work environment, will drive government agencies to actively seek the talent of workers who are encouraged to bring their proprietary intellectual property to work.Next-generation (smart) data discovery tools and capabilities make insights from advanced analytics more accessible to business users or citizen data scientists. Gartner believes the performance of government workers and organizations will be determined by the methodologies and algorithms they uniquely employ to turn data into actions that increase efficiency and effectiveness."The formulation and adoption of BYO algo policies in government will help address the competitive disadvantage that public-sector employers often face in the quest to recruit top talent," said Mr. Howard. "By doing so, agencies will fully benefit from the talent of employees whose personal success rests on using all the digital tools at their disposal." The bloodbath at stock markets today created panic among the investors across categories. Resultant to that, there were very few large deals took place on both BSE and NSE.Uno Metals Ltd sold 7.2 million shares of Subex Ltd at Rs. 8.85 per share in a bulk deal valued at Rs. 6.37 crore on NSE. Shares of Subex Ltd closed 10.45% lower at Rs. 9 on NSE.Tirupati Trade and Finance Company bought 93,723 shares of Lincoln Pharma at Rs. 165.85 per share in a deal valued at Rs. 1.55 crore on NSE. Later the company sold 10,000 shares of Lincoln Pharma at Rs. 182.50 per share in a deal valued at Rs. 18.25 lk. Shares of Lincoln Pharma closed 6.72% higher at Rs. 185 on NSE.Last week, the Tanzania drug authority (TFDA) banned Chloramphenicol Sodium Succinate Injection manufactured and exported by Lincoln Pharma. Chloramphenicol Sodium Succinate is an antibiotic used to treat serious bacterial infections.In multiple bulk deals, 4,64,000 shares of Sanco Industires changed hands at an average price of 33.80 per share on NSE. The size of the bulk deals stood at Rs. 1.56 crore. Shares of Sanco Industries closed 6.23% lower at Rs. 30.85 on NSE. U.S. News & World Report Releases List Of World's Best Countries Trending News: These Are The Best Countries In The World Why Is This Important? Because in some ways this should be a wakeup call for America. Long Story Short U.S. News & World Report, along with the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and global brand consultants BAV Consulting have released a list of the world's best countries based on dozens of criteria. Europe dominates the list, while the U.S. comes in 4th. Long Story The notion of patriotism dictates that citizens not only stand up for their nation's ideals, but to have genuine pride in them as well. Here in the United States, we're certainly not short on that. While our election cycle eventually requires aspiring politicians to stump the idea that America needs fixing, they also have to balance it with rhetoric suggesting that America is, or at least could be the greatest nation on Earth (provided you vote for them). But while there are countless indicators you can use to attempt to rank the "best" countries, rare is it that anyone aggregates them into meaningful overall rankings. However, U.S. News & World Report along with the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and global brand consultants BAV Consulting have managed to do exactly that, releasing a list of the world's best countries. The verdict on America? Not bad, but not great. Before we go further, here's the list of the top-10 overall countries: 1. Germany 2. Canada 3. United Kingdom 4. United States 5. Sweden 6. Australia 7. Japan 8. France 9. Netherlands 10. Denmark Most people would agree that these are all very nice places to live with their own pros and cons. America is a place where anyone can theoretically strike it rich, but woe be unto those who wind up poor. In a country like Sweden, on the other hand, the social safety nets mean that while it's hard to be very poor, it's equally hard to be very rich due to the high taxes. U.S. News arrived at these ranking by assessing countries across nine areas (Adventure, Citizenship, Cultural Influence, Heritage, Entrepreneurship, Movers, Open For Business, Power and Quality of Life), each with several sub-criteria. Here's a breakdown of how the U.S. wound up ranked 4th: U.S. News & World Report You can hardly fault us for Heritage, as the nation's not even 300 years old yet. Our Adventure score sucks because while we're apparently a decently fun, friendly and scenic place to visit, our climate scores low and our sexiness scores even lower. Have the researchers been to Southern California, or Miami? That would lift us a bit, I'd think. Our business environment is a hot political campaign topic, and scores low for familiar reasons: High corporate taxes, corrupt executives, and astronomical manufacturing costs relative to other countries. Perhaps most troubling is our poor Quality of Life ranking while we enjoy a stable political landscape and a strong public education system, the U.S. is a very expensive place to live, with already-bad income inequality on the rise. What's more, we don't even get safety in return for the high cost we pay to live here crime and death are far more abundant here than in other developed nations. There's plenty of political fodder to be had here, for both sides. The right will continue to focus on improving our business environment (perhaps at the expense of workers' quality of life), while the left will continue to rail against income inequality and poor (but improving) healthcare (potentially at the expense of our business environment). It's proof that while it's easy to get caught up in the more inane, social components of politics, building and running a great nation is far from simple. Own The Conversation Ask The Big Question What's the most important area our leaders should focus on? Disrupt Your Feed Frankly I'm proud the U.S. made it into the top-5. Things are never as bad as they seem. Drop This Fact Since everyone will want to know, the worst country to be considered for the list (#60) was Algeria. This past week has been very rewarding, as we celebrated the life of the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (January 15, 1929 April 4, 1968) who was an American Baptist minister, activist, humanitarian, and leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for his role in the advancement of civil rights using nonviolent civil disobedience based on his Christian beliefs. King became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in 1957, serving as its first president. With the SCLC, King led an unsuccessful 1962 struggle against segregation in Albany, Georgia (the Albany Movement), and helped organize the 1963 nonviolent protests in Birmingham, Alabama. King also helped to organize the 1963 March on Washington. Well Indianapolis has an individual who has carried the torch for civil rights in our community and on Friday, January 15th Community Leader and Activist Reginald L. Jones Sr. received the Lucious Community Legacy Award. Reginald Jones Sr. is a father, leader, master teacher, social activist and champion of the community. Mr. Jones is a rare and wonderful servant leader who had dedicated his life to equality. He has spent a lifetime on the front lines unabashed, unafraid and at 75 years of age continues to work for civil rights. Lucious Newsom was a resident of Indianapolis and a man who was also caring and believed in everyone being treated fairly. Lucious Newsom made it his mission to help the needy of Indianapolis, he was a servant leader. Nicknamed the Lords beggar, Lucious Newsom had a way of convincing people to help the citys poor. He was a man of integrity. People trusted him, so they gave. Lucious Newson died in 2008 and the City of Indianapolis created Lucious Community Legacy Award in 2010, naming it after the Indianapolis resident to commemorate Newsoms life. The award honors individuals who promote outstanding dedication and selflessness in community service. At the event on Friday, January 15th in the City-County Buildings Beurt SerVaas Public Assembly Room, Newly Elected Mayor Joseph Hogsett recognized Jones for his continued commitment to serving his community. Jones continues to positively impact the community with his efforts to right society ills through education, and organizing. Mr. Reginald Jones was the first black Director of the Skills Center, a National Program that trained people who seemed deemed incapable of being trained and unemployable. Mr. Jones innovative teaching methods secured 75% job placements to persons 16-65 years of age. Mr. Jones has a long list of accomplishments which include; serving under four Administrations, members of the Governors Youth Council, President of the Swing Masters Dust Bowl Tournament for 16 years, First African American Director of the Skill Center in the Midwest, Board of Directors for the Fall Creek YMCA, the Urban League, NAACP Education Committee and original member of the Indiana Black Expo. The Lucious Newsom Community Award is given each year to an individual who serves his community and Mr. Reginald L. Jones Sr. rightfully deserved the honor. About Annette Annette M. Johnson holds a Bachelor Degree in Elementary Education from Martin University and Master Degrees in Adult Community Education and Executive Development for Public Service from Ball State University. She is President of Pike Townships Democrat Club and Secretary of Indiana Democrat Club as well as an Elected Official in Pike Township. She has memberships in various organizations and enjoys facilitating for various youth organizations along with doing research projects in history. She can be reached via email at j.annette92@yahoo.com lonwolfmag.com A 5 feet 9 inches tall girl born in UP had never thought that one fine day she would rock the international ramps for fashion behemoths like Stella McCartney, Dolce & Gabbana and Victoria Beckham. Pooja Mor gave up her career as an engineer only to pursue her dreams. In an interview, Pooja revealed, "My parents didn't want me to become a model. They felt that the profession was for the fickle minded and that it did not promise a sustainable career or source of income." Instagram She has already walked for about 20 Spring 2016 shows--top shows too, like Calvin Klein, Missoni, Narciso Rodriguez and Givenchy. When she was asked if she finds working in New York, easier than India, this dusky bombshell replied: "I think it's more organised here. In India, I think people are always socialising. We used to have chai breaks and all the fun things. Here, people are more professional. You're done with the shoot on time. You're on shoot on time, just break for this much, and done, done, done, like that. Everything is set before you come to the shoot." Today she can boast of some of the most prestigious tags that include being one of the top 10 fresh faces to know for 2016 by UK's Dazed & Confused. However, the idea of 'fame' still leaves her baffled. She added: The idea of fame is very scary. You feel even more lonely inside, because you know everybody's loving you just for that thing. The day the thing gets over, nobody will be there for you." But she's actively pursuing her dreams. "I'm open to everything. I've just started seeing the world. I'm going to live, I'm going to find myself first. What kind of person am I? I'm still looking for the answers." Here are 11 stunning pictures of her that prove that she's definitely making India super-proud! :D #1 A photo posted by Pooja Mor (@poojamor) on Jan 3, 2016 at 11:10am PST #2 #3 #4 Thanks to @nathanielgoldberg @makiryoke @condenast @visapyyapy @zarazachrisson #simonmagazine A photo posted by Pooja Mor (@poojamor) on Dec 17, 2015 at 10:24am PST #5 Thanks to @vogueindia @mauromongiello @sofiaandmauro @rieomoto @rominahair @mrfabioimmediato #LA A photo posted by Pooja Mor (@poojamor) on Dec 4, 2015 at 1:56am PST #6 Thanks to @vogueindia @mauromongiello @sofiaandmauro @rieomoto @rominahair @mrfabioimmediato #LA A photo posted by Pooja Mor (@poojamor) on Dec 3, 2015 at 3:18am PST #7 Thanks to @StellaMcCartney #SS16 Stylist @JaneHow Hair @EugeneSouleiman Make up @PatMcGrathReal @jamespscully #PFW A photo posted by Pooja Mor (@poojamor) on Oct 5, 2015 at 9:11am PDT #8 Thanks to @eliesaabworld #pfw A photo posted by Pooja Mor (@poojamor) on Oct 3, 2015 at 3:14pm PDT #9 Thanku @roberto_cavalli @peter_dundas #cavallicat A photo posted by Pooja Mor (@poojamor) on Sep 26, 2015 at 1:08pm PDT #10 Thanks to @Givenchy S/S 2016 @katy_england @luigimurenu @patmcgrathreal @orlandopita @riccardotisci17 A photo posted by Pooja Mor (@poojamor) on Sep 12, 2015 at 12:34pm PDT #11 Every company crafts its own culture, and language is a key part of that. Facebook is a huge company with approximately 12,000 employees, so it is only natural that there will be some words that may sound like gibberish to outsiders. If you take a visit to Facebook's campus in Menlo Park, words like "purple tie" and "epic" won't mean a piece of clothing or a synonym for awesome, but something entirely different. Here are 17 words only Facebook employees understand, and their definitions... 1. TNR 250 Image Credit: Business Insider TNR 250 is an abbreviation for "The Nouveau Riche 250" or Facebook's first 250 employees who became millionaires after the company's IPO. 2. Bootcamp Image Credit: Business Insider A six-week introduction to Facebook that all new employees must go through. Once they "graduate" bootcamp, new hires choose their teams. 3. Faceversary Image Credit: Business Insider The yearly celebration of how long an employee has worked at the company. The campus store sells special "Faceversary" balloons. It's even listed on employees' Facebook pages like a birthday to remind everyone to congratulate each other. 4. Game day Image Credit: Business Insider This is basically a grown-up version of field day. Each spring, Facebook employees band together in teams, dress in bright colours and head over to a local park to face off in a series of competitions. 5. Epic Image Credit: Business Insider Not just an adjective, it's also the main cafeteria on campus. 6. Livin' the Dream Image Credit: Business Insider Not a slogan, but another cafe on campus. Facebook renamed one of its cafeterias in memory of one of its first chefs, Josef Desimone, who was killed in a motorcycle accident in 2013. 7. Little Red Book Image Credit: Business Insider Not to be confused with a little black book, Facebook gave out little red books to employees in 2012 when the company hit a billion users (now it's at the number, daily). While it uses Bootcamp to instill a bit of culture, the book contains Facebook's mission statements and a chronology of funny company moments. The last page challenges employees: "If we don't create something that kills Facebook, someone else will." 8. 20 Image Credit: Business Insider Although Facebook's newest campus was designed by Frank Gehry, it didn't get a special moniker to match its creativity. Instead, the social network company just named it "20" in a naming scheme similar to the buildings that make up the rest of its Menlo Park campus. 20 (pictured below with the rest of the campus in the background) has a green roof employees can use and its own set of cafeterias, microkitchens and conference rooms. Employees can bike or take a shuttle between 20 and the rest of campus. 9. Gravity Room Image Credit: Business Insider The aptly-named Gravity room totally ignores gravity in one section of Instagram's offices. 10. Hacker Square Image Credit: Business Insider Facebook's version of a central square, Hacker Square proudly has "hack" written onto the tiles so its visible from above. Even airplanes landing at San Francisco's airport can catch a glimpse of it. Hacker Square is a main place for events on campus and for Facebook employees to meet each other. 11. The Crane Image Credit: Business Insider The yellow fixture in the middle of Hacker Square serves as the launching point for all hackathons and is a stage for many guests to come talk to Facebook employees. 12. The Aquarium Image Credit: Business Insider Also called the Fish Bowl, the conference room where Mark Zuckerberg and executives met was nicknamed for its ability to peer in at the "animals." Zuckerberg played along with the joke and eventually hung a sign to ask visitors not to take pictures of them inside The Aquarium. 13. Hacker Way Image Credit: Business Insider Don't confuse it with the square. 1 Hacker Way is just the address for Facebook's campus, not any kind of pedestrian path designated for coders. 14. Analog Research Lab Image Credit: Business Insider Facebook's not all online. Its "analog research lab" is what designs the motivational posters hung around campus. 15. Daily active people Image Credit: Business Insider Daily active users is a common metric in tech companies, but Facebook take it a step further to reinforce that its users are really people. You'll see it as a reminder in posters and on Facebook's corporate blogposts. 16. Vending machines Image Credit: Business Insider This isn't really a code word, but these machines mean something a little different for Facebook employees. On Facebook's campus, these aren't traditional soda and candy dispensing machines. Instead, the "vending machines" give out computer parts like chargers or keyboards. 17. Purple Tie Image Credit: Business Insider A perk for Facebook employees is to get some of their laundry done (for a subsidized cost) via a company called Purple Tie. You can spot Facebookers who use Purple Tie because of the giant purple laundry bags they'll carry around. Such is the state of hurry that we are all used to that we rarely get to stop for a moment and realise all that we are missing and feel human. But there are moments in everyone's life, which sort of pull us out and make us realize that life is not as much about achieving and collecting as it is about giving. The joy of giving and generating a smile on another's face is so powerful that it can light up even the darkest corners of our souls. representational image of a happy child. Wikimedia I have come across many people who have told me that "I want to do something good but don't know who to follow or where to start". Well this story, that I found on Facebook, is an answer to those people. Good deeds often result in a kind of domino effect and the chain can go a long way in making the world a better place. Here's the story, originally written in Malayalam, and posted along with its proof of authenticity online: Our protagonist, let's call him Mr H, was in Kerala's Perinthalmanna town for a business meeting. He spent the day chatting up with similarly business-minded men who resembled droids more than humans. Tired, he decided to spend the night in the town. He rented a room and set out to find himself a sumptuous meal in the vicinity known for it's amazing culinary variety. He was really hungry as he walked into a nearby hotel and quickly placed his order. As his hot meal arrived on his table, he could barely contain himself but that's the exact moment when he saw them... ... a pair of small eyes, peeping through the glass panes onto all the food being served and the people savouring them. These eyes belonged to a street urchin. His hunger betrayed his young eyes but the diners were just too busy to notice him or his plight. Mr H felt a deep pang in his heart. He called the little guy in. He was not alone, his little sister was also by his side. Their eyes betrayed them. Their gaze was transfixed at only the food and not the person who beckoned them. Mr H asked them, what they wanted to order. But those young eyes didn't need a menu - they just pointed to his plate. The food arrived promptly. The little boy tried to dive right in but his sister stopped him. Her eyes told him something that he understood and they rose up. They proceed to wash their hands before the meal. They returned and finished the meal. They didn't speak, laugh or make any fuss. After finishing their meal, they rose up again, washed their hands and left. Mr H had not touched his food till then. He found that his hunger was sated, he felt a rare feeling of fulfilment. He finished his meal and called for the bill. When he returned after washing his hands, he found the bill on the table. One look at it and a tear - one that was hidden somewhere by his conscience - left his eyes and dropped gently onto it. He looked at the man at the counter and smiled. The smile was reciprocated by an even bigger one. As he walked back to his room - he felt like he was better person, he felt as if he was more than a machine. He felt human! This is the bill he had received. It had no amount on it; just a message: Facebook The note on the bill says "We do not have a machine that can bill humanity. Godspeed!" You can read the original post in Malayalam right here. In a major security lapse, a Tata Safari SUV belonging to senior IPS officer Anand Swarup was stolen outside from his residence in Noida on Tuesday night. Following the incident, the Noida police have been put on alert because in a similar incident, terrorists had hijacked the vehicle of a police officer just before the Pathankot terror attack earlier this month. Represenatational image for Tata Safari. The blue beacon atop the Mahindra XUV of Superintendent of Police Salwinder Singh had helped the terrorists, who hijacked the vehicle, get past several police checkposts and enter the Pathankot air force base on January 2. Swarup, who is currently posted in ITBP as IG, confirmed to TOI that his SUV has stolen from his residence in Noida. "I have informed the local police and FIR has been registered in this connection," he said. Swarup lives in Sector 23 in Noida. Deputy Superintendent of Police Anoop Singh said that the SUV was reportedly lifted at around 3.30am. The vehicle had a Chandigarh registration number CH 2915. Hunt is on to trace it. "As Anand Swarup's family woke up they came to know about the incident. The police was informed about the incident. Acting on the information a police team dispatched the scene," Singh said. The culprits may misuse the vehicle "The SUV with a blue beacon belonging to Anand Swarup. It is not a government vehicle. It was private car," Singh said. He ruled out that the SUV was stolen by any terrorist outfit. "Initial investigation suggests that the SUV has been stolen by small time criminals. A day before theft, the SUV had gone to service station. There are chances that some mechanics would have copied the keys of the keys of the SUV. Our team is interrogating those people who were involved in servicing the SUV," Singh added. "We have gained some leads from the CCTV installed near his residence. Several of our teams are working on it and we are hopeful crack the case soon and safely recover the car," Singh further said. Intelligence and security agencies feel the threat of a "lone wolf" attack by an Islamic State-inspired element during the Republic Day preparations. The Special Cell tracked down the suspects in a joint operation with a central intelligence agency and they are conducting search operations throughout Uttarakhand, the source said. Taking a clear barb at his weekly critique bandwagon, Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the conference of Agriculture Ministers of states in Gangtok. Twitter/PMOIndia "Don't let me become delicate like a flower." "I have lived among the thorns, I will continue to live among the thorns. But there cannot be any bigger privilege if my life can be useful in wiping the tears of a sad person with the delicacy of a flower whenever necessary." Modi said. He made the comment when the issue of naming three orchid species developed in Sikkim. They were named as 'Cymbidium Sardar' (after Sardar Patel), 'Cymbidium Deen Dayal (after Deen Dayal Upadhyay) and 'Cymbidium Namo' (after the Prime Minister). While the State CM named one of the Orchids 'Namo', Modi selected Sardar (after Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel), 'Deen Dayal' (due to Indian leader and historian Deen Dayal Upadhyay's birth centenary) "I thank the Sikkim government for bestowing such an honour on me)." Using the occasion, he took a dig at the previous governments, saying, "in the 20th century, one Prime Minister had spent a night here (in Gangtok) and in the 21st century, I have come to stay here for a night." Follow us on national anthem row karan johar gets clean chit after 14 years New Delhi: In a major reprieve, director Karan Johar got a clean chit from a local court in Lucknow after 14 years of legal battle in a case filed against him on charges of insulting the national anthem in the movie Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gam. The complaint alleged that in the movie the national anthem was sung and some people in the picture hall stood up while some kept sitting as there was no caution before playing the song which caused dishonour to the national anthem. "Karan Johar had filed revision petition before sessions court which was heard by Additional District Judge Dhruv Raj, who allowed the revision and discharged Karan Johar from the case today," Johar's lawyer Chandra Shekhar Sinha said. The magistrate had passed a summoning order on April 17, 2002 and it was challenged by Karan Johar in high court, which had stayed the proceedings on July 18, 2002. The high court vide judgement dated September 1, 2009 had directed the magistrate to consider discharge application but the magistrate rejected it vide order dated October 20, 2014, following which the revision petition was filed before the sessions court. The Supreme Court has also said that the audience in cinema houses need not stand up when the national anthem is sung as part of a movie. National Honours Act Section 3 of the Prevention of Insult to National Honour Act, 1971 states that whoever intentionally prevents the singing of the Indian National Anthem or causes disturbance to any assembly engaged in such singing shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both. A logical interpretation of this Section implies that only those who intentionally prevent or cause disturbance to the singing of the National Anthem are liable to be prosecuted under the Act. (with PTI inputs) Latest Bollywood News Follow us on baccha khan university seige an attack on frontier gandhi s ideology New Delhi: Is it just a co-incidence that the Baccha Khan University that is bleeding due to terrorism has derived its name from Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan also known as Bacha Khan, preacher of non-violent movement in undivided India. The attack began as the university was observing Khan's 28th death anniversary and a Mushaira was underway at its premises. The fact that terrorists have chosen the death anniversary of the great leader could be an attempt to defeat the purpose Khan stoof for his entire life Situated in Charsadda, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, birth place of Khan, the University was named in his honour who became the foremost of the Pashtuns (a Muslim ethnic group of Pakistan and Afghanistan), ) during independence struggle. Khan, was also a Bharat Ratna awardee, a testimony to the fact that his popularity transcended boundaries of India and Pakistan. He also became a famous as frontier Gandhi for his proximity with Mahatma Gandhi. He was a political and spiritual leader known for his nonviolent opposition, and a lifelong pacifist and devout Muslim. He became also famous as frontier Gandhi for his non-violent. His message of peace and universal brotherhood will be the main motto of the University to steer the organization in the years ahead which would lead Pakistan into the comity of respectable nations of the world. Ghaffar Khan, who had opposed the partition, chose to live in Pakistan, where he continued to fight for the rights of the Pashtun minority and for an autonomous Pushtunistan (also called Pakhtunistan or Pathanistan; an independent state in the border areas of West Pakistan). Latest India News Follow us on dalit student suicide politicians head to hyderabad as protests escalate Hyderabad: As protests continue in the University of Hyderabad after the suicide of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula, politicians of all hues are making a beeline for the campus visit to express solidarity with the agitating students. A day after Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi's visit, Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati and Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Sitaram Yechuri are set to arrive on Wednesday. Lok Janshakti Party parliamentary board leader Chirag Paswan and union minister Ram Vilas Paswan's brother Ramchandra Paswan will also meet students and Rohith's family here. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is likely to visit the university on Thursday. Trinamool Congress MPs Derek O'Brien and Pratima Mondal spent two hours on the campus on Tuesday night, interacting with the four Dalit scholars suspended along with Rohith as well as the agitating students. The parliamentarians will visit the campus again on Wednesday to address the students at the site of their hunger strike. YSR Congress Party leader Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy, who met Rohith's mother and brother at their house, will also visit the campus. The leader of opposition in the Andhra Pradesh assembly assured all support to the family. Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen chief and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi also visited the campus on Tuesday and expressed solidarity with the agitating students. Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Tammineni Veerabhadram was also present on the campus when Rahul Gandhi addressed the students. Veerabhadram, a Telangana state secretary of the CPI (M), sat along with the students who are on a relay fast to demand the resignation and arrest of central minister Bandaru Dattatreya and vice chancellor Appa Rao. Latest India News Thoughts on recent Ninth Circuit and California appellate cases from Professor Shaun Martin at the University of San Diego School of Law. Follow us on national herald new name and change in co s structure on cards as ajl holds egm tomorrow Lucknow: With court cases across the country hounding the Congress, Associated Journals Ltd (AJL), publishers of the now defunct National Herald group of newspapers, is now looking to change the structure of the organization from commercial to a non-profit entity. AJL will be holding an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) in Lucknow tomorrow to seek shareholders' nod for changing the structure of the company. The meeting is to be held at the AJL office here as per advertisements placed in newspapers, said the general manager of AJL, Lucknow, BP Kannaujia. There is, however, no confirmation as to who all would attend the meeting, Kannaujia added. The general secretary of the AJL Employees' Union, Dilip Sinha, who has given a call for disrupting the meeting, meanwhile, said that as per his information, AJL Chairman Motilal Vora will be taking part in the meeting. Sinha said they will disrupt the meeting to force AJL to accept their demand of compensating the staff of the Lucknow unit at par with the New Delhi office. "A relay fast is already going on at Herald House since January 16 to press our demands," he said. According to the notice that appeared in Lucknow-based newspapers in December, the meeting will seek the approval of 762 shareholders for turning AJL into a not-for-profit, Section-8 company under the Companies Act, 2013. A Section-8 company is a venture established "for promoting commerce, art, science, sports, education, research, social welfare, religion, charity, and protection of environment or any such other object" and profits from such a company's activities, as well as any other income earned by it, can be used only for promoting the objectives of the company. The notice was issued by AJL Managing Director Vora, who is one of the seven summoned by a Delhi court in response to summons in the National Herald case. Congress president Sonia Gandhi, party vice president Rahul Gandhi and five others have been summoned to appear before the Delhi court. Shareholders of a Section 8 company are not entitled to receive any dividend. The shareholders will also be called upon to change the name of the company from AJL to a new name. (With PTI inputs) Latest India News Follow us on not a caste conflict says smriti irani on rohith vemula suicide New Delhi: Union Minister for Human Resource Development Smriti Irani today expressed regret over the death of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula in Hyderabad, but stressed that caste had no role to play in it. The HRD minister clarified that the issue was not a conflict between Dalits and non-Dalits. Passions have been ignited through misconstrued and misrepresented facts. This is not a Dalit versus non-Dalit conflict as is being projected by some to ignite passions, Irani said at a press conference today. The minister also came out in support of Union Minister Bandaru Dattatreya who has been under fire from the opposition parties who allege that the minister exerted pressure' on the university to suspend the student for being anti-national. There has been a malicious intent to fan sentiments. The document being circulated as Rohith Vemula's suicide note does not name any MP, minister, political organisation or university official, Irani said in defence of the Labour minister. Rohith Vemula ended his life on Sunday in the University of Hyderabad after his suspension following an alleged clash with a leader of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad. Irani's comments come amid allegations that her ministry pressured officials at the Hyderabad University to take action against a group of students from the Ambedkar Students' Association for allegedly beating up a leader of the ABVP, who filed a police complaint. Days after that, Union minister Bandary Dattatraya wrote to Irani, describing the campus as "a den of casteist, extremist and anti-national policies". Her ministry then sent five reminders to the Vice Chancellor, Professor P Appa Rao, seeking information on what action was being taken. Refuting the allegations, the HRD minister defended the action taken by the university against the students saying all due procedure was followed in the matter. A group of students allegedly attacked another student; we have ascertained that this is not a Dalit vs non-Dalit confrontation, she said. The minister further informed that an Executive Council of the university had in its meeting upheld the punishment given to the students. The students challenged the order of suspension from hostel, HC refused to put a stay on the order, she added. The Executive Council was not formed by this government and its members were appointed by previous government,: she said. Reacting to allegations of the HRD minister exerting pressure on the university to act against the students, Irani countered it saying it was part of a standard operating procedure. When an MP communicates to us, we have to seek facts from the university, Irani said. She also cited a letter by the Minister of State for Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions and the Prime Minister`s Office in the Congress-led UPA government V Narayansamy which reminded all departments and ministries of following the same procedure as has been followed in the present case. Irani further cited similar complaints against the state of affairs at the university by Congress Rajya Sabha MP from Telangana V Hanumantha Rao. Six reminders were sent regarding Rao's letter. Law and procedure are equal for all, Irani said. The December 2014 letter by Rao spoke of deteriorating law and order situation in the University of Hyderabad and increasing number of suicides by students from the marginalised community. Besides, it also spoke of land grab, misappropriation of funds, kidnapping and rape in the last four years, when the Congress-led government was in power at the Centre. On his part, Bandaru Dattatreya also clarified his stand on the matter today. On the 10th August 2015, I received a representation on the state of affairs in the University of Hyderabad which disturbed me greatly and I forwarded the same to the MOHRD. On 29th August 2015, I received a second representation in this and this too I forwarded to the MoHRD with a request to look into the matter & to do the needful. My role was only limited to forwarding two representations. I would have happily forwarded representations of any other student body, if they were to have approached me, he said in a statement issued today. Smriti Irani's press conference: Latest India News Follow us on pathankot attack two of the killed terrorists could be insiders says report New Delhi: Two of the six terrorists killed by security forces during Pathankot airbase attack could have been "insiders", Top NIA officials were quoted as saying to Economic Times. Government statements after the January 2-3 terrorist strike on the Pathankot airbase had mentioned six intruders, but only four of them were identified as having been outsiders who crossed the Punjab border with Pakistan, the report says. NIA officials cited recovery of only four AK-47 guns from the seige,for their strong suspicioin that these were possibly used by four Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terrorists. The report also says, that the investigative agency is also looking at all personnel present (3,500 people, including family members of those employed) at the airbase, as well as locals to establish the identity of the two insiders. The forensic report due next week, examination of call logs of phones recovered from the attack sites in the airbase and a close scrutiny of personnel at the air force station will help determine the identity of the "insiders", NIA officials said. Clearer answers will be available after the agency receives the forensic report next week. The agency has also established that the four militants entered the airbase on the morning of January 1 by terrorists entered the base by scaling its 11-ft wall and snipping concertina wires. Reportedly, the terrorists also spent up to 24 hours resting inside a disused Military Engineer Services shed as they prepared to launch their attack. The call by one of the terrorists to his mother in Pakistan was made from inside the airbase. A report in The Times of India said that 3017775253 and 3000597212 were the Pakistani numbers to which calls were made by the Jaish fidayeen after they entered India According to the report, the first number probably belongs to the mother of one of the militants, while the second one belongs to one of the handlers of the attackers. Investigators are now using the call details to build a case and ascertain the identities of the six terrorists. Meanwhile, senior Punjab Police officer Salwinder Singh on Tuesday underwent a lie detector test in connection with the National Investigation Agency's (NIA) probe in the terror attack at Pathankot air base. Singh had agreed for a polygraph test after the NIA informed a designated court about alleged inconsistencies in his statements before Punjab Police and the NIA. He was being questioned to ascertain the sequence of events that took place after he was kidnapped on the intervening night of December 31 and January 1 by terrorists. Polygraph tests will also likely be conducted on Singh's cook Madan Gopal and the caretaker of the Somraj shrine, which is near the airbase and Salwinder's friend Jeweller Rajesh Verma will alos be interrogated immdediately after his release from hospital. Terrorists had struck at the IAF base on the intervening night of January 1 and 2, in which seven security personnel were killed in the encounter that lasted for three days. Latest India News Follow us on security scare in delh as blue beacon itbp car goes missing in noida Noida: In a major security lapse on the outskirts of the national capital just days ahead of the Republic Day, a blue-beacon installed Tata Safari of a senior IPS officer was today stolen in the wee hours from Noida, police said. The development has prompted police to launch a massive manhunt in the wake of the security alert for Republic Day. Moreover, recent instances of terrorists in the Pathankot attack using a beaconed car belonging to a senior police official to negotiate police check points on the way has made the threat more imminent. According to officials, the white Tata Safari bearing registration number CH-01 GA 2915 of ITBP Inspector General (IG) Anand Swarup was stolen from his Sector-23 residence at around 3:30 AM. The move has triggered concerns in the national capital as well with the Delhi Police sounding an alert on the missing vehicle and also seeking information from the public on the stolen vehicle. Information, if any, can be shared at 100 or with the Noida Police Control Room at 0120-2479001. According to Noida police officials, the guard on duty in the complex alerted about the missing vehicle after which an FIR was lodged by the officer in Sector 24 police station in Noida. The vehicle was parked late last night after it came back from Delhi, they said. Swarup, a 1992-batch Indian Police Service officer of Uttar Pradesh cadre, is posted as IG (Provisioning) at the headquarters of the border guarding force in Delhi. ITBP has instituted a court of inquiry into the incident, they said, adding the IG was posted in Delhi few months back on transfer from Mussoorie. Officials said the SUV was purchased few months back and has a blue beacon, a two-star police IG plate and an ITBP flag in the front. The police are making all efforts to trace the vehicle in the wake of the recent Pathankot attack where terrorists had overpowered an Punjab police SP riding a similar vehicle to reach the IAF base before launching the deadly strike. There have been instances in the past when vehicles with beacon, including during the Parliament attack, were used to launch terror attacks by hoodwinking security officials. The National Capital Region is already on high alert in view of the Republic Day celebrations. Latest India News Follow us on terror threat to haridwar kumbh mela 4 suspected terrorists held New Delhi: Acting on a tip off that terrorists are planning to target the ongoing Ardh Kumbh Mela in Haridwar, the Special Cell of Delhi Police in a joint operation with a central intelligence agency on Tuesday arrested four suspected terrorists from the state. While one person, who is said to be associated with an international terror group, was arrested from Roorkee, the remaining 3 were nabbed Mangalaur area near Dehradun. According to police, the man arrested from Roorkee has been identified as Akhlaq. He will be brought to Delhi today where police will produce him before a court. He is said to be associated with an international terror group. The presence of four suspected militants has set alarm bells ringing as lakhs of devotees are arriving in Haridwar to take a holy dip in river Ganga. The Ardh-Kumbh Mela started on January 1 and will end on April 30. Over 5 crore pilgrims are expected to visit Haridwar to bath in river Ganga. Police said that they are interrogating the three friends of Akhlaq to establish further links and are also conducting search operations throughout Uttarakhand. The suspects are believed to have been planning an attack at the ongoing Ardh Kumbh Mela in Haridwar, a police source said. Akhlaq will also be questioned in connection with the recent terror attack at Punjab's Pathankot, sources said, adding that he is believed to have links with terror outfit Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM). The arrests have come a day after the arrest of Al-Qaida in Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) operative Abu-al-Sami from Mewat in Haryana. Sami, who belongs to Jamshedpur in Jharkhand, according to police, has provided some important details about terrorists plan to strike around Republic Day. On January 6, the Special Cell had arrested Maulana Anzar Shah, a cleric from Bangalore, for alleged links with AQIS. In December, they had arrested three suspected AQIS operatives. Latest India News Follow us on up govt misled us says supreme court on lokayukta appointment New Delhi: The Supreme Court today said it had been misled over the appointment of the Uttar Pradesh Lokayukta as it reserved its verdict on pleas seeking recall of its order appointing Justice Virendra Singh, a former judge of Allahabad High Court, to the post of the anti-graft ombudsman. The controversy surrounding Justice Singh, appointed by the apex court as Lokayukta on the ground that the selection panel of the Chief Minister, the Leader of Opposition and the Chief Justice of the High Court did not appoint anybody in last 20 months despite its orders, took the centre stage in the proceedings. "Certainly not," the bench headed by Justice Ranjan Gogoi said when senior advocate T R Andhyarujina submitted as to whether Justice Singh would have been appointed by it if the state had apprised the court about the reservations of the High Court Chief Justice against him. Andhyarujina said, "the Chief Justice suspected the integrity of Justice (Virendra) Singh" and it was agreed to by the Chief Minister and the Leader of Opposition that his name will be dropped, but still his name was given to this court. "They have misled us. We will deal with them," the bench said, adding that still, it will not send the issue of appointment back to the collegium. "There is no question of primacy of views of the Chief Justice. The Chief Minister, the Leader of Opposition and the Chief Justice did not do anything for 20 months...whatever is appropriate, we will do. Leave it to us," the bench said. "We will respect the opinion of the Chief Justice of the High Court. Give us the material. They did not do anything for 20 months. "The moment we appointed somebody, all hell broke loose. The unfortunate part of this is that all the parties did not act...We are used to being blamed. Blame us. We don't bother about all this," the bench said, adding that the selection panel did not "respect" the orders leading to a "painful" situation. At the outset, the bench, which also comprised Justice Prafulla C Pant, made clear that it is not going to vacate its order appointing Justice Singh as Lokayukta till there were compelling circumstances to do so. "Unless there are compelling reasons, shocking our conscience, we will not vacate our order," it said. The bench said it passed the order under Article 142 of the Constitution as the authorities did not act and sought materials on the allegations against Justice Singh, saying one cannot question the integrity of a person without any proof. The court also said that though it does "sit in appeal" on the satisfaction of the HC Chief Justice, but there has to be some material. "What are the specific objections of the Chief Justice to the name of Justice Singh? Can you give us the material," it asked, adding that the bench took out the names from the list provided by the state and it could have been anybody. "This was incumbent upon the state to tell this court that his name was dropped and there was no consensus on his name," Andhyarujina said. Prashant Bhushan, appearing for one of the petitioners, said there have been misrepresentation and there have been complaints made to the Governor against the person. "The court has been misled/persuaded by the state government into appointing Justice Virendra Singh," he said. The apex court had on December 16 last year exercised its constitutional authority and appointed Justice Singh as Lokayukta, saying the constitutional functionaries-- the Chief Minister, the leader of opposition and the Allahabad High Court Chief Justice -- had failed to comply with its orders by not appointing the chief of the state's anti-graft ombudsman. During the winter vacation, the Supreme Court had heard a fresh plea filed by one Sachidanand Gupta who had alleged that the SP government had "concealed facts" about Justice Singh and "played fraud" upon the apex court. The state government had also told the court that it will not go ahead with the oath ceremony of Justice Singh as Lokayukta till the apex court had heard the plea. The court had taken note of the fresh plea which alleged that immediately after the appointment, the HC Chief Justice had written a letter to Governor Ram Naik expressing his displeasure with the state government for not disclosing the facts that he had some reservations on Singh's name. The plea had sought quashing of the December 18 order of the UP government appointing Justice Singh as Lokayukta. (With PTI inputs) Latest India News Follow us on know about ranjit katyal the man who saved 1.7 lakh indian in kuwait New Delhi: Akshay Kumar's upcoming movie Airlift' based on World's biggest air evacuation carried out by Air India is attracting everyone's attention for its storyline. Also, the character Ranjit Katyal' which is being played by Akshay Kumar in the movie is highly speculated. Everyone is keen to know about the man who carried such a massive operation but never came to limelight. Here we tell you all about the mysterious man who saved 1, 70,000 Indians during Iraq-Kuwait war, as narrated in the movie Airlift. To all your surprise, Ranjit Katyal is a fictional character and not a person in real life. Yes, there was not one person behind this massive evacuation. The real evacuation(airlift) was carried out between Amman, capital of Jordan and Delhi. It was all possible because of heroics of our Ministry of External Affairs. The MEA officials posted in Kuwait that time, the journalists and the people of Air India deny any Ranjit Katiyal during the whole operation. As per Ministry of External Affairs, Indian Embassy was behind this operation.Below are the accounts of four persons related with the evacuation that strengthen the postulation: KP Fabian who was the then head of Gulf Division in Ministry of External Affairs deny presence of any such person during the operation. He says that India had good relations with Saddam Hussein and nobody else was needed. IP Khosla was additional secretary who accompanied Inder Kumar Gujral, the then minister of external affairs, to Kuwait, too endorses KP Fabian. Air India had flown nearly 500 flights from Amman to Delhi between 13th Aug 1990 and 11th Oct 1990. Jitender Bhargava, former executive director of Air India, also has similar views. He says that he had a word with the then AI regional director of the gulf and the middle east region Michael Mascarenhas, who also had denied knowing anyone named Ranjit Katiyal. Javed Ahmed, a journalist, lives in Kuwait for 35 years. He had witnessed the gulf war closely and interacted with many Indians there who were clueless about any such person among them. Upon watching the trailer of the film, he claimed that the film has nothing to do with the reality. He says the film talks about Dasman Palace, where actually no one lived that time as rich Kuwaitis had fled. Javed claims he was present there at that time. AK Shrivastava was engineer in one oil project in Iraq. Living in Gurgaon now, he recounts that he had little problem in Baghdad during those 2 months. He says that he didn't face much trouble as Jordan borders were open and it helped people in reaching Amman without much ado. In an interview to Indian Foreign Affairs journal, he says that after the news of Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, minster of external affairs Inder Kumar Gujral, IP Khosla and Shrivastava himself had visited Saddam Hussein. Gujral's visit included a famous embrace by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, which earned him a lot of flak from the media. Iraq agreed to tacitly permit the Indian evacuation efforts, but there was no Ranjit Katiyal. However, Akshay Kumar, in his recent interview, said that Ranjit Katyal is not a fictional character and does exists in real life. Though, they have changed his name in the movie. Here's what he said: That's true but I cannot talk about him. He's still alive and a big businessman today, living in Kuwait. But I didn't meet him. Raja Menon met him and spoke to him over the phone. But my character isn't completely based on one person. There were three or four people like him, who were involved in the operation. We've combined all their stories for the character but Ranjit Katyal was the main guy. We've changed his name in the film. I should bring to your notice that in 1990, he was a multimillionaire but he lost everything, got everybody back to India from Kuwait and today, he's a multimillionaire again. He's earned back all his money. The post first appeared on Quora. Latest India News Follow us on in syria hungry residents sell gold for food Beirut: In Syria's eastern city of Deir el-Zour, supplies are running so short that desperate residents are selling their gold, valuables and even their homes for food or an exit permit allowing them to escape a siege by both government troops and Islamic State militants. The extremists have blockaded government-held areas of the city for over a year, and some of its 200,000 residents are slowly starving while troops and militias supporting President Bashar Assad exploit their suffering. While international attention was focused recently on Madaya a rebel-held town surrounded by pro-Assad troops near the capital of Damascus the United Nations and aid agencies say another catastrophe is unfolding in Deir el-Zour. The civil war has transformed a once oil-rich city into a place where even something as simple as making tea is a struggle, according to residents who have fled, because of severe shortages of food, water and fuel. Many people live on bread and water and there are long waits for both. Taps are shut off for days at a time, and the water that flows out for only a few hours is brackish. The city hasn't had electricity for over 10 months, with little fuel available for generators and water pumps. The U.N. warned last week that living conditions have deteriorated significantly in Deir el-Zour. Students are frequently absent from school because of malnutrition. The only remaining civilian hospital needs drugs and other supplies, as well as staff. Unverified reports cited up to 20 malnutrition deaths, the U.N. said in its report. But Ali al-Rahbi, spokesman for the Justice for Life Observatory for Deir el-Zour, said his group documented 27 deaths. The Islamic State group surrounds Deir el-Zour and won't let people and supplies in by land; the Syrian government, which controls part of the city and its airport, won't allow supplies to be brought in by air or let its people out. The city, about 450 kilometers (280 miles) northeast of Damascus, is divided roughly along the Euphrates River, with the Islamic State group on the eastern side and the Syrian government on the western side, although IS controls some territory on the western bank as well. Deir el-Zour is the largest of about 15 besieged communities in Syria, cutting off about 400,000 people from aid. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said both the Syrian government and the rebels are committing war crimes by deliberately starving civilians. Reports of starvation in Madaya prompted an international outcry, and two aid convoys last week delivered humanitarian aid to civilians there. So far, no such aid is forthcoming to Deir el-Zour. The city recently has been the focus of renewed efforts by Islamic State militants to retake it. An offensive over the weekend captured new areas from government forces, killing over 250 troops and civilians, and capturing hundreds. The offensive "is putting thousands of people in the line of fire," said U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq. How the city came to be under such a punishing siege from both sides only makes sense in the perverse circumstances of Syria's civil war, now in its fifth year. Deir el-Zour lies near the Iraqi border, deep in Islamic State territory, but the government has been able to defend its military airport on the outskirts, allowing it to maintain its city's fortifications. It also controls four large neighborhoods that are home to many internally displaced people, including women and children. Because the airport is so close to the front line, only helicopters have been able to land there since September, the U.N.'s Haq said. The government troops in the city are regularly reinforced and supported by Russian and Syrian air power. Rather than fight them, the IS militants imposed a blockade in January 2015. Residents say the siege grew worse in March when the government stopped anyone from leaving Deir el-Zour without permission. IS has prevented people from entering government-held areas, but a few months ago, it began allowing people to leave for other IS-held areas, although it subjected them to interrogation and harassment and in some cases, it confiscated their documents. The extremists then closed that window, banning anyone from leaving. Residents say the government has its own reasons for maintaining the siege-within-a-siege and carefully controlling the flow of goods and people through the military airport: The residents have effectively become human shields against an IS attack. In addition, the government can extract money from them by raising the price of food or taking huge bribes in return for permits to leave. Many residents wonder if an IS takeover would bring much-needed supplies of food. "My father told me exactly, 'My beard is long now, and my stomach is empty. Let them (the militants) in if it is going to let food into the city,'" said Karam Alhamad, a Deir el-Zour native who escaped in September but left his parents behind. It took him six months to find someone who could arrange his exit permit. But Haq said that following the IS attacks on Sunday, the U.N. has received credible reports of the "execution and abduction/detention of civilians," including those believed to have been smuggling in food. International organizations have been able to fly in only a limited amount of aid through the military airport, where it passed through government hands before reaching the population, if at all. Any aid typically goes to army officers and their allies, who resell it on the black market, al-Rahbi said by phone from Turkey. "The regime is operating a war economy and allows its officers to control humanitarian aid to the city," he added. Last week, Russia dropped 22 metric tons of relief supplies into Deir el-Zour, but activists said government-affiliated vehicles immediately moved in. Alhamad said security forces collected all the supplies to sell them at the market for the prices they wanted. A resident who identified himself as Bahaa said he lost more than 14 kilograms (33 pounds) during 11 months in the city and escaped in November to Gazientep in southern Turkey weighing only 55 kilograms (121 pounds). "My health now is much better than it was, but I'm still suffering psychologically. A lot," he said by phone. The man, who did not give his real name because he feared for reprisals against relatives left behind, said he paid 250,000 Syrian pounds (over $600) in bribes to receive permission to fly out. It was too expensive to bring his whole family. "We sold our gold" to raise the money for the bribes, he said. "Other families have sold their homes." Bahaa's house is on the IS-held side of the city. When the militants took over, the family fled to the government-held side, where they rented an apartment. "We don't know what has happened to our home," he said. A resident named Mustafa, who also spoke on condition his full name not be revealed for fear of reprisals, said he managed to flee in October to the Islamic State group's de facto capital of Raqqa, then made it to Turkey. From there, he took the perilous sea route to Europe and has resettled in Austria. "I thank God every day that I was able to get out," Mustafa said, adding that his three children fell ill and one began refusing food and drink. "I couldn't bear it any longer. There was no one to help. No doctors, no medicine, no nothing." Mustafa said he sold his apartment "and bribed so many people, I forgot how many." Latest World News Follow us on india s mi 35 helicopters ready for 1st battle in afghanistan Kabul: Afghanistan today said three of the four multirole Mi-35 helicopters that India donated to it last month have been assembled and are now fully operational to combat terrorism in the war-torn country. According to the Defense Ministry, the helicopters will be used in the ongoing Helmand battle for the first time. "We have always been helped by India. The helicopters donated by India to Afghanistan have been assembled and will help us fight terrorists," Tolo news agency quoted Ghulam Sakhi Ahmadzai, deputy chief of procurement of the Defense Ministry, as saying. Thanking India for its cooperation, air force commander Abdul Wahab Wardak said help from regional and global countries was crucial for bringing peace and stability to the country. "The [Indian) helicopters are very suitable for the climate and the location of the country and they can give further morale to the security forces in their operations against terrorists," he said. "As we are helped by India and the US we need the same cooperation from other countries because the Taliban, Daesh and al-Qaeda are not only the enemy for Afghanistan but [the enemy of] any country in the world," Wardek said. Meanwhile, India's Defense Attache in Kabul Sujit Narain said that he was happy that the helicopters are operational for the Afghan Air Force. "We consider Afghanistan as our close friend and we will further help this country," Narain said. The Three helicopters were handed over to Afghanistan during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Kabul in December last year, the fourth helicopter is expected to be delivered soon. Latest World News Follow us on bombing close to russian embassy in kabul kills more than 12 Kabul, Afghanistan: An explosion was heard near Russian embassy in the capital, Kabul, killing more than 12 civilians and wounded over 20 others, said Afghan officials. Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said that four people were killed when a car bomb was detonated in the west of Kabul on Wednesday, at around 5pm local time. Ismal Kawasi, spokesman for the public health ministry, says the wounded are receiving treatment in hospital. Thick smoke was seen rising from the scene of the blast, and several nearby vehicles were damaged. No group has claimed responsibility for the bombing. (With inputs from AP) Latest World News Toshiba UCedge Adds XMPP Protocol Support As contact centers transform, it is clear that unified communications (UC) is becoming an increasing important part of the move to provide omnichannel interaction capabilities to frontline personal as they look to assure optimal customer engagement. With this in mind, Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., Telecommunication Systems Division recently rolled out an update for its popular UCedge UC app, introducing an extensive feature enhancement. The enhancement is support for the XMPP protocol, but the update also adds tighter integration with Toshibas IPedge and VIPedge applications. XMPP protocol support enables users connected to different servers, whether deployed on site or in the cloud, to: Whitelist each other to share contacts View presence status information Exchange instant messages Call users via one touch This includes external organizations that use Toshiba software, along with Skype for Business clients via XMPP gateway and other third-party systems that comply with XMPP standards. UCedge is being promoted as redefining UC with enhanced visibility, collaboration and XMPP federation across Toshiba premise and cloud business telephone systems, as well as third-party solutions like Microsoft Skype for Business. (It should be noted that last April, Toshibas UCedge took home the 2015 Unified Communications Product of the Year Award from TMC). "UCedge gives users the power to communicate how, where and when they wantvia smartphone, PC or tabletand with whomever they wantvia XMPP federationby unifying their communications across platforms," said Brian Metherell, vice president and general manager of Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., Telecommunication Systems Division. "UCedge increases productivity for users in different locations and on diverse Toshiba and third-party platforms, including Microsoft Skype for Business." UCedge is available for Android and Apple mobile devices, as well as for computers running Windows or Mac OS X. It works with Toshibas VIPedge cloud and IPedge premise telephone systems, as well as Strata CIX systems with an IPedge Application Server. In terms of VIPedge and IPedge integration with UCedge, this UCedge update adds new softphone for iPhone and iPad with Cloud Sync functionality across platforms, multi-line support for softphones or pairing with desk phones that enables users to have multiple calls on the mobile devices at the same time, and support for fax mail messages. Edited by Peter Bernstein Follow us on at least 21 dead in terror attack at bacha khan university Peshawar: In yet another horrible attack on students, Taliban militants today stormed Bacha Khan University in Pakistan which resulted in the death of at least 25 people majority of whom were students of the university. The exact number of causalities, however, are yet to be announced officially. At least 25 people were killed and about 50 others injured today after heavily-armed Taliban militants stormed a prestigious university and opened indiscriminate fire on students and teachers in Pakistan's restive northwest Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province. The gunmen entered the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda district of the province, some 50 kms southwest of Peshawar, and opened fire on students and teachers in classrooms and hostels, media reports said. Blasts and heavy gunfire were heard from inside the University campus. Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf Party leader and provincial lawmaker Shaukat Yousafzai said that 25 people, including a professor, were killed and around 50 others injured in the terrorist attack on the University this morning. The injured were shifted to hospital. An emergency has been declared in all hospitals in the town. All schools have been closed in the area. Yousafzai said between four to 10 attackers were involved in attack. "Such cowardice attack could not shake the resolve of the Government in the fight against terrorism," he said. Soon after the attack, a large contingent of security forces rushed to the site and started evacuating students. Pakistan Army troops also rushed to the University from Peshawar and started operation. Army spokesman Lt Gen Asim Salim Bajwa tweeted that four terrorists were killed during operation launched by security forces to clear the University. "Snipers killed 2 more terrorists on roof top, total Terrorist killed so far 4. All buildings & roof top taken over by Army...," he tweeted. "Clearance of university block by block continues by Army troops." Earlier, two terrorists who were firing from inside the university block were shot and killed by the army. The terrorists were contained in two blocks within the university and troops, commandos are participating in the operation. Surveillance operation has been completed. Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan claimed the responsibility for the attack, the Express Tribune reported. Citing intelligence sources, media reports said the terrorists are between 18 and 25 years old. University Chancellor Dr Fazal Rahim said there are over 3,000 students present inside the university along with an additional 600 guests who are present for a poetic symposium to mark the death anniversary of Khudai Khidmatgar Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan alias Baacha Khan who died on January 20, 1988. Rahim said four guards of university and one policeman were killed in attack. Geo TV reported that Professor Hamid Hussain of chemistry department was also among dead. "A teacher of the varsity after evacuation said Chairman Chemistry Department Hamid has been martyred by the firing of the militants," it said, adding the terrorists barged into Hamid's room and fired at his head, killing him instantly. (With PTI inputs) Video: Latest World News Follow us on aap government proposes independent tv channel for delhi assembly New Delhi: Taking cue from the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha TV channels, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Delhi is in process to start an independent TV channel to telecast the proceedings of Vidhan Sabha. The government has issued a notification seeking hiring of consultant to launch the channel. The project is expected to cost Rs 100 crore. "The Delhi Assembly proposes to set up an independent television channel. For this purpose applications are invited for the position of Consultant (Television Project) on purely contractual basis from professionals fulfilling the eligibility conditions for the position for an initial period of three months extendable to a maximum period of six months subject to exigencies," the notification, published on the website of Delhi Assembly, reads. To start a new TV channel, Information and Broadcasting Ministry permission is mandatory under the Cable Television Network (Regulation) Amendment Act, 2011. However, reports say, I&B has not granted permission to the AAP government. Last year, Delhi Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goel had written a letter to I&B Minister Arun Jaitley seeking permission to launch Vidhan Sabha's own TV channel. "The channel would be wholly owned and operated by the Legislative Assembly on the lines of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha TV," he had written. A senior AAP leader said that main idea of a TV channel is to ensure people know what their elected representatives are doing in the House. Earlier, I&B ministry had turned down a similar request from the West Bengal government and Punjab government, which wanted to set up their independent TV channel. Follow us on nitish kumar keeps election promise approves 35 job reservation for women Patna: Fulfilling a key election promise, the Nitish Kumar government on Tuesday gave the green signal to 35 per cent reservation for women in state government jobs. "Decision was taken of reservation for women in all government jobs including reserved and unreserved category. There will now be provision for 35 per cent reservation to women in all kinds of government jobs," an official in the CM's office said. The decision marked Nitish's first big step in this direction in nearly 10 years after unveiling 50 per cent reservation for women in panchayat and local body polls in 2006. During campaigning for the Bihar assembly polls last year, Nitish, who was chief ministerial candidate of the Grand Alliance of JD(U), RJD and and Congress, had promised 35 per cent reservation for women in all government jobs if he formed a government again. Soon after being sworn-in as CM in November last year, Nitish had reiterated his stand to provide 35 per cent reservation for women. He had also recalled that the state government was already providing 35 per cent reservation for women in recruitment as police constables and sub-inspectors and 50 per cent reservation as primary school teachers and in the Panchayati Raj system. According to socio-political analysts here, a large number of women cutting across caste and religion had voted for Nitish in the last assembly polls. In fact women voters outnumbered male voters in the five-phase Bihar assembly polls. They have emerged as a prominent vote bank - more powerful than the youth and caste factor in the state. Experts said this was a result of several schemes initiated by Nitish for women's empowerment including 50 per cent posts in Panchayati Raj elections and primary school teachers' recruitment for women and 35 percent of all police jobs for women. The government's scheme to promote education among girls by providing them free cycles has increased school enrolment in rural areas. The Cabinet yesterday also gave the go-ahead to rules paving way for the Right to Public Grievances Redressal Bill, which is likely to be implemented in May, a target set by the Chief Minister. Follow us on order fresh polls if you can t be cm omar abdullah s open letter to mehbooba mufti New Delhi: Former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has asked PDP president Mehbooba Mufti to recommend dissolution of Jammu and Kashmir Assembly for conduct of fresh elections in the state if she is "unable or unwilling" to assume the responsibility as Chief Minister. In an open letter to Mehbooba Mufti, the National Conference leader said "to dilly-dally is the biggest disservice you can do" to people of the state as they should not be denied an elected government. "If you are unable or unwilling to assume the responsibilities that are being placed on your shoulders, then you must do your duty to the people, recommend to His Excellency The Governor to dissolve the Assembly, and let the people make a fresh decision in an election," he said. Omar said Mehbooba's reluctance to step up and take charge meant that in less than a year, the state had to be placed under central rule again. "No state should be denied an elected government, but I took some consolation from the belief, alas mistaken, that central rule would be a short-lived affair and you would take over after the four days of mourning," he said. The working president of National Conference said the people of the state had a number of expectations. "The flood victims expected to see a bigger flood relief package; industry expected to see the return of power projects; contractors expected to see more money for development; and unemployed youngsters expected to see more jobs. Civil society was heartened to read that you were negotiating to ensure that divisive issues like the attack on our flag and threat to our special constitutional status would end," he said. Omar said the PDP president cannot blame the people for expecting to see all this happen. "Of course you can't, because this was part of the information being fed to us from people around you". He said Mehbooba's silence resulted in others from her party rushing in to fill the void. "People close to you, or pretending to be close to you, started to spin your reluctance as a negotiating tactic. It was made known that the alliance was teetering on the brink of an abyss. The Agenda for Alliance, the final policy document bequeathed to you by Mufti Sahib, had been ignored by your allies and you were angry. We were told that you would not takeover unless you had firm assurances from no lesser person than the Prime Minister. That unless parts of it were implemented immediately, you would walk away from the alliance with the BJP," he added. Commenting on the PDP core group meeting on Sunday, Omar said the people of the state were expecting some announcements but it appears it "will be business as usual when the business of governing resumes". Omar asked Mehbooba what she was waiting for when her party's alliance with the BJP stands and no fresh negotiations are taking place. "So why is the state under central rule? What are you waiting for, Mehbooba?" He said she should "either rise to the occasion or else step back. The people of the state cannot be expected to wait for you to make up your mind." For more about my academic work, please see my website I'm Rebecca Farnum, an American studying in the United Kingdom. This blog is so titled because "Bex" is a common nickname for Rebecca in Britain. Is Iran Taking the China Road? By Patrick J. Buchanan January 19, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - Is the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme leader of the Islamic Republic, a RINO a revolutionary in name only? So they must be muttering around the barracks of the Iranian Republican Guard Corps today. For while American hawks are saying we gave away the store to Tehran, consider what ayatollah agreed to. Last week, he gave his blessing to the return of 10 U.S. sailors who intruded into Iranian waters within hours of capture. He turned loose four Americans convicted of spying. And he gave final approval to a nuclear deal that is a national humiliation. Ordered by the U.S. and Security Council to prove Iran was not lying when it said it had no nuclear weapons program an assertion supported by 16 U.S. intelligence agencies "with high confidence" in 2007 the ayatollah had to submit to the following demands: Decommission 12,000 Iranian centrifuges, including all the advanced ones at Fordow, ship out of the country 98 percent of its enriched uranium, remove the core of its heavy-water reactor in Arak and fill it with concrete, and allow U.N. inspectors to crawl all over Irans nuclear facilities for years to come. Iran is being treated by the great powers like an ex-con on parole who must be monitored and fitted with an ankle bracelet. Why did the ayatollah capitulate to these demands? Comes the reply: To get $100 billion. But the money Iran is getting back belongs to Iran. It is not foreign aid. The funds had been frozen until Iran accepted our conditions. The sanctions worked. There is another reason Tehran may have submitted. When Iran said it did not have a nuclear bomb program, it was telling the truth. Indeed, it is Irans accusers, many from the same crowd that misled and lied to us when they said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, whose credibility is in question today. Irans accusers should produce their evidence, if any, that Iran had, or still has, a nuclear bomb program. Otherwise, they should shut up with the lying and goading the U.S. into another war that will leave us with another trillion-dollar debt, ashes in our mouths, and thousands more dead and wounded warriors. Yet, if Iran does not have a nuclear bomb program, we must ask: Why not? And the answer suggests itself: Because Iran concluded, years ago, that an atom bomb would make it less not more secure. For, as soon as Iran tested a bomb, a nuclear arms race would be on in the Mideast with Saudis, Turks and Egyptians all in competition. The Israelis would put their nuclear arsenal on a hair trigger. And most dangerous for Iran, she would find herself confronting the USA. Yet, no matter how much the mullahs may hate us, they are not stupid, and they know a war with America would leave their country, as it left Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, smashed and broken. Iraq is today splintered into Sunni, Shiite, Kurd and Arab. And Iran, after a war with the USA, could decompose into a tribalized land of warring Persians, Arabs, Baluch, Kurds and Azeris. Yet, if a war with America would be a disaster for Iran, detente with America might bring a time of peace that could enable this largest nation on the Persian Gulf, with 80 million people, and an ally now of its old rival Iraq, to achieve hegemony in the Gulf. Which brings us back to the ayatollah. From his actions, he appears to have blessed Irans taking the same road on which Deng Xiaoping set out some four decades ago. After Maos death, Deng found China with a backward economy in a booming world led by Reagans America and a Japan on the march. To save Communism, Deng decided to embrace state capitalism. And as there is nothing new under the sun, Deng had a model. In 1921, in the wake of Russias crushing defeat in the Great War and bloodletting in the Civil War between "Reds" and "Whites," Lenin saw his regime imperiled by a rising revolution against the Bolsheviks. He dumped "war Communism" for a New Economic Policy, opened Russia to Western investors, while assuring the comrades that the capitalists "will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." Similarly, Irans regime seems to have concluded that the path to power and permanence of the regime lies not in conflict with the United States, but in avoiding conflict and taking the China road. President Hassan Rouhani, who also sees Irans future as best assured by resolving the nuclear issue and reengaging with the West, described his triumph to the Iranian parliament: "All are happy except Zionists, warmongers, sowers of discord among Islamic nations and extremists in the U.S. The rest are happy." If this deal is truly in the interests of the United States and Iran, whose interests would be served by scuttling it? Who seeks to do so? And why would they want a return to confrontation and perhaps war? Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of the new book "The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority." To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com . Sailing Through a Meltwater Pulse By Dmitry Orlov January 19, 2016 - " Club Orlov " - It's January, and the Greenland ice sheet is melting. There was recently a winter hurricane in the North Atlantic, and another in the Pacific. On New Year's day there was a thaw at the North Pole. Greenand is melting; when it melts, the ocean level will go up 20 feet (6m). This will be enough to flood all the coastal citiespermanently. So far, predictions as to how fast this melting will occur have proven to be worthless, with the actual melting rate outpacing them by a huge margin. And although many people still believe that the effect will be gradualless than an inch a yearanother view on the matter is that at some point there will be an avalanche-like collapse of the Greenalnd ice sheet, which will generate a meltwater pulse, sending ocean levels up many feet in a single step. And there are all those who, whenever I publish something that mentions climate change, crawl out of the woodwork and gnash their exoskeletal mandibles at me, to the effect that climate=weather, and it's all a conspiracy theory. They are all idiots and deserve a boathook in the eye. Sailing on... For the sake of this discussion, I will assume a meltwater pulse of 10 feet (3m). What will it mean for those of us who live on the water and sail along the coastline? And, more specifically, what will be the impacts for the sailboat design I have been working on for about a year nowQUIDNON, the houseboat that sails? Ignoring, for the moment, other impacts, most shoreline marine facilitiesmarinas, boatyards, fuel dockswere constructed to be a few feet above the highest high tide. In many cases, they now have less than a foot of freeboard at highest high tide, and given a bit of a storm surge that number becomes negative, and the ramps that lead down to the floating docks stick up at a jaunty angle. A 10-foot rise will put virtually all of these facilities under a few feet of water at high tide, rendering them inoperable. With the transformers under water, they will be unable to provide electricity. Traveliftsthe cranes that lift boats out of the water for maintenancewill be rendered inoperative, and so there will be no more haulouts. But the worst part of it will be that entire marinas, which consist of an interconected structure of floating docks that float up and down on pilings with the tide, will lift off the pilings and drift off. The entire raft of docks and boats will drift until something runs aground. Then, when the tide ebbs, leaving the entire tangled mess high and dry, the powerboats will settle on their propellers, bending the drive shafts, while the sailboatsvirtually all of them keelboatswill fall over, tangling their rigging together and becoming dismasted. A few tide cycles and a stiff blow later, and an entire marina's worth of boats will turn into an unsalvageable tangled pile of wreckage. For marinas in zones without much tidal range (a few spots on the Intracoastal Waterway in the US, all Bahamas) that use fixed docks instead of floating ones, the problem will be about the same: as the meltwater pulse arrives, the boats will individually lift off pilings and sail off in random directions in a tangled mass. So much for marinas; but what of anchorages. After all, a few of us will have the foresight to get out of the marina and anchor somewhere. If you find an isolated anchorage in which to ride out the meltwater pulse, you might do fine, but in a crowded, shallow anchorage, where most boats have just a few feet under them at low tide, a 10-foot water level rise will cause them to run out of scope (the ratio between anchor chain length and depth). Anything less than 4:1 scope is unlikely to allow the anchor to hold a boat in place. They will drag anchor and end up littering the new coastline, which will run thorugh shopping mall parking lots, suburban subdivisions and historic waterfronts. Most reasonable people would consider such a scenario, and conclude that when (note: not if but when) it happens, living aboard boats will become impossible, along with recreational boating if the boat is stored in the water. It might still be able to launch boats from trailers, at low tide, from the very top of some boat ramps. Kayaks, canoes, dinghies and rowboats could still be used. But without shore water, shore power, pumpout services for sewage, floating docks to tie up to and ramps leading to dry land, living aboard a boat will be almost impossible for most people. Without functioning boatyards with travelifts it will no longer be able to maintain boats, which all need to have their bottoms painted and through-hulls maintained (that's a technical term for holes in the bottom of a boat, masking the fact that they are a bad idea). People who live aboard boats and drive to work will find it difficult to do so if the marina parking lot ends up under several feet of water twice in each 24-hour period. But suppose you are an intrepid sort of sailor who doesn't mind living at anchor in the midst of a postapocalyptic landscape, fetching your water and fuel in jerricans by dinghy and pushcart from some place further inland? (I assume that the boat is a sailboat, because, with fuel docks underwater, there weren't be any reasonable way to keep a powerboat fueled.) What if you get around the lack of boatyard facilities by careening the boat? Well, then there are still some additional issues. 1. With all the jetsam and flotsam getting washed off what used to be dry landcars, trucks, houses and so onsailing around and anchoring will be rather difficult. When anchoring, it is useful to look at a chart, and see whether the holding ground in an anchorage is marked sand or mud or hard. But what if the spot where you want to drop the hook is full of mangled wreckage? Will the anchor hold, and will you be able to get it back out? 2. There are many fixed bridges which, in the US, along the Intracoastal Waterway, have 65 feet of vertical clearance. After a 10-foot meltwater pulse, that becomes a 55-foot clearance, which will not be enough for any sailboat over about 34 feet that can't drop its mast to pass under during high tide. And then there are all the bridges that openbascule, swing and liftand wouldn't it be nice if the bridge tenders left them with the bascules up, the swing span open and the lift span up before permanently abandoning their posts, but what are the chances? And so, depending on where along the coast you find yourself when the meltwater pulse arrives, and with no boatyard crane available to pull your mast, you may be stuck, with no way to make it out to deep water. 3. In addition to significantly higher ocean water levels due to the meltwater pulse, we are also likely to face many more hurricanes. Currently, there are three tactics for dealing with hurricanes on a boat: emergency haul-out (not possible with the travelifts not running and the boatyards flooded); finding a hurricane hole (good luck with that, now that they are all full of debris, making anchoring an uncertain business); and, for the ridiculously intrepid and annoyingly ultra-competent, taking off to sea (on this, see previous point). But what if the boat you live on happens to be a QUIDNON? QUIDNON is designed to run aground safely. It only draws a couple of feet, and its bottom is clad in roofing coppera tough material that also resists marine growth, only requiring a periodic light scrubbing and brushing. With its bottom flat, it settles upright and can safely dry out at low tide. If it drifts into a parking lot or a suburban subdivision, there it will remain until the water comes back, and then sail back into deeper water. The lack of shoreline facilities don't affect it much: its bottom never needs to be painted because the copper cladding is designed to outlast the 30 years that is the design service life of a typical QUIDNON, and there are exactly zero underwater through-hulls to maintain, all of its water inlets and outlets consisting of siphon tubes that reach down into the engine well from above the waterline. Lack of shore power is not a big problem for a QUIDNON, there being plenty of solar panels, a wind generator and room for a generator set on deck. There is even room for a high-temperature plastics burner, a biochar kiln, and a digester for biodegradable jetsam and flotsam. Lack of access to fuel docks is not a big problem. QUIDNON's inboard-outboard, which lives in the engine well and can double as the dinghy motor, is used to maneuver and motor through calms, but most of the time it's possible to sail. QUIDNON is overcanvassed by most standards, and can move in the faintest zephyr. Thanks to the junk rig, it can even sail backwards, with the sails backed. Lack of shore water is not a big problem, there being lots of area from which to collect rainwater, and huge tanks in which to store it over long dry spells. The jetsam and flotsam clogging up the anchorages and the waterways may be problematic, but with just a 2-foot draft it should be possible to either see through or otherwise read the water to figure out what the bottom is. The plan can be to always dry out at dry tide, anchoring is a matter of finding a spot that has 3 feet above level ground at high tide, and putting down some stakes. The stakes are long steel pipes, with a pointed, conical plug at one end and a ring to tie a rope to on the other. Each of these goes through two holes, one through a fold-out hoop at deck-level, and one in the chine runners that protrude from the bottom on both sides. Once hammered in place, they effectively pin the boat in place, which then floats up and down when the tide picks it up. If the need arises to pass under bridges that either don't open or are fixed and now too low, the solution is simple: drop the masts. On QUIDNON, this operation doesn't require a crane, and can be performed with the boat in the water, by just one person, using a come-along. Lack of shoreside transportation with which to get to a job shouldn't be a problem either. With all this wreckage lying around, and many formerly prosperous coastal areas now unreachable by land and, for most people, by water either, there will be plenty of new opportunities in the salvage business. If a hurricane hits, a QUIDON can be kept secure by running it aground at high tide and running lines out to pegs in multiple directions. No hurricane hole is needed; just a sheltered spot with a gently sloping shore. In all, when the meltwater pulse arrives, it seems to me that, should you decide to stick around anywhere near the former coastline, your choices are 1. to get yourself a QUIDNON, or 2. abandon ship and flee to higher ground, and try to get by tied up alongside all the other miserable environmental refugees. I believe I have done my homework, and I think I know which choice I would prefer. Only two questions remain: Do I have enough money? and Do I have enough time? If you are interested in inhabiting the shoreline moving forward, please pitch in any way you can. Thank you. Dmitry Orlov was born in Leningrad and immigrated to the United States in the 1970s. He is the author of Reinventing Collapse, Hold Your Applause! and Absolutely Positive, and publishes weekly at the phenomenally popular blog www.ClubOrlov.com . Russian Red Scare No Longer Works By Finian Cunningham January 19, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " Sputnik " - The American and British governments are launching yet another media campaign to demonize Russia, with tall claims that the Kremlin is infiltrating European political parties and news media. The dastardly Russian aim, we are told, is to destroy the European Union. We've already seen versions of this scare tactic with regard to Ukraine and "Putin the new Hitler". But what this yawn-inducing exercise illustrates is that the old former spell over the Western public held by their rulers no longer works. The opiate of Western propaganda has expired. Never mind Russia. The EU has no-one else to blame for its present stresses and strains but itself, owing to its craven subservience to Washington's reckless policies. Twenty-five years after the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Washington and its trusty sidekick in London are desperately seeking to turn back the clock to the "good old days" when they could control their public through scare stories. Recall those hoary old bogeyman themes of "Reds under the bed", the "Red menace", "Evil Empire", and so on, when the Western authorities mobilized their populations out of fear and trepidation that "the Russians are coming". Looking back now, it seems amazing how this Western brainwashing managed to get away with such scare tactics. And to a large degree it worked back then. It allowed the US and its NATO allies to build up a huge arsenal of nuclear weapons that could annihilate the planet many times over; it permitted the US in particular to militarily interfere in dozens of countries all over the world, subvert their governments and implant brutal dictatorships all on the pretext of defending the "free world" against "evil Russians". Last week, we got a reprise of the Cold War brainwashing formula. Britain's Daily Telegraph, a notorious purveyor of psychological warfare, ran a report which cast Russia and President Vladimir Putin as a malign specter trying to break up European unity by "funding political parties" and "Moscow-backed destabilization". The newspaper, mockingly known as the "Torygraph" because of its deep links with Britain's rightwing political establishment, quoted anonymous British government officials as saying: "It really is a new Cold War out there. Right across the EU we are seeing alarming evidence of Russian efforts to unpick the fabric of European unity on a whole range of vital strategic issues." It was also reported in the same article that the American Congress has ordered James Clapper, the US National Intelligence Director, to "conduct a major review into Russian clandestine funding of European parties over the last decade." European political parties suspected of alleged Russian manipulation include Britain's Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn, France's National Front led by Marine Le Pen, as well as others in Netherlands, Hungary, Italy, Austria and Greece, according to the Daily Telegraph. Not one scrap of evidence was presented to substantiate the story of alleged Russian conspiracy to destabilize European politics. Typical of old Western Cold War propaganda dressed up as "news" the accusations leveled against the Russian government relied on innuendo, prejudice and demonization. Russia and its leader Vladimir Putin are "malign" because, well, er, we say they are "malign". What's really going on here is that the European Union is indeed straining at the seams because massive numbers of ordinary citizens have become so disillusioned with the undemocratic monstrosity. That disaffection with the EU applies to voters of both rightwing and leftwing parties. Economic policies of unrelenting austerity, rising unemployment and poverty, and draconian cutbacks in public services while banks, corporate profits and a rich minority keep getting richer and richer has alienated vast swathes of the EU's 500 million population. The EU's political leadership, whether called Conservative, Liberal, Socialist or whatever, has shown itself to be impotent to create more democratic policies and meet the needs of the public. In the eyes of many Europeans, the established political parties are all the same, all slavishly following a form of capitalist welfare for the already super-rich. A big part of the problem is that the EU has shown no independence from Washington. The European governments under the harness of the American-led NATO military alliance have blindly joined the US in its disastrous, illegal wars for regime change in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Those wars have in turn rebounded to bequeath Europe with its worst refugee crisis since the Second World War. Compounding the hardship is the totally unnecessary and futile standoff between Russia and Europe over the Ukraine crisis. European farmers, businesses and workforces are suffering on account of Washington and Brussels' policy to have destabilized Ukraine in order to isolate Russia for some geopolitical agenda. On this score, the European governments are especially execrable, since it should be clear that Washington wants to isolate Russia for its own self-interest of displacing Russia as a major energy supplier to the continent. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. Given all these strands of trouble it is no wonder that European citizens are discontent with their so-called political leadership. The popular contempt for Brussels has grown to record levels, and rightly so. Europe's pathetically servile deference to Washington's economic and foreign policies is manifesting in forms of protest and dissent towards the entire EU project. The rise of Poland's rightwing, nationalist ruling party is another sign of the times. But rather than facing the music for the widespread discontent across Europe, what Washington and its pro-Atlanticist allies like Britain are trying to do is make Russia the scapegoat. The irony is that Washington and London are seeking to blame the woes and growing disunity in Europe on Russia. When it is Washington and London who are the main reasons for why Europe appears to be coming apart at the seams. To that end, the US and Britain are re-launching the old Cold War epithets to demonize Russia as a way to distract from their own malign and destructive influence on the rest of Europe. Decades ago the anti-Russian vilification may have worked on the public. Especially when Western news organizations and their CIA, MI6-infiltrated "journalists" enjoyed an effective monopoly over public opinion. Those days are over. The Western public are no longer under the sway of scary stories like little children. There are many alternative information sources out there for them to avail of in order to obtain a more accurate picture. And that accurate picture of European problems does not fit with alleged Russian malfeasance. Rather, the malfeasance is plentifully ascribed to Washington and its lackey European governments. The attempted rewind of the "red scare" by Washington and London can be easily dismissed for sure. But the interesting thing is that it betrays a deep sign of how these two actors have run out of propaganda ideas with which to distract increasingly restless and angry Western populations. The people want real solutions to mounting social and economic problems, not stupid scare stories that expired decades ago. The more that the Western public is insulted by such nonsense the more contempt they have for their rulers. The Western capitalist powers, bankrupt and impotent, are at a dead-end. Bring it on. January 19, 2016 "Information Clearing House" - " RI " - Europe is in a panic. Europe is in horror. Europe groans. Victims of war and migrants from North Africa, cross the sea on fragile boats, previously drowning in site of the coast, at best clambering up to beg Europeans for a piece of bread, now storm the borders, tear at the barbed wire, throw flares at police. Over New Years in Germany they hunted down girls and young women to harass, rob, strip and rape. "What's happening - Europes moralists wonder? - How can these people, to whom we have given so much, dismiss the warmth we have shown them, why do they not appreciate our compassion and tolerance?" Visionaries and moralists, they dont understand the psychology of the people coming from North Africa and the Middle East. These people came to escape European bombs, missiles and shells. They fled burning towns, broken relics and rotting corpses. They came to Europe not for a piece of bread and work, but to be saved from death. But also, with a feeling of revenge, seeing Europeans as enemies, involved in their disaster, destroying their civilization and way of life. But how do Europeans perceive this? Leftists and liberals, which include Mrs. Merkel, demand greater tolerance, bigger quotas of foreigners to be be taken in, believing that Europe will humanize them, soothe their hearts. Europe, including Germany has forgotten its past. The countries of Europe have lost the will to exist, to resist, forgetting their great statesmen and culture. Germany has forgotten the Cologne Cathedral, its Gothic spire majestically soaring. It forgot Durer, Bach, Beethoven and Wagner, Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. An amorphous Europe continues to open its doors to those who hate Europe and Germany. It is a sad fate for a cold clime to be filled by the hot clay of hatred. Against a backdrop of criminality, the nationalists are surging into the streets, their crowds bigger and more organized than those on the left, the anti-fascists and humanists preaching multicultural tolerance. These crowds speakers will be tomorrows political and spiritual leaders, and they will recall Germanys greatness, cursing Versailles and Nuremberg. At which point, the fascization of Europe will no longer seem far-fetched - much less the demise of the liberal, tolerant European Union. Is Europe really a helpless maiden tossed upon the back of a fierce, stupid bull, who carries her over the sea to an uncertain future? Is this the end of the old Europe? Or will the maiden wake up, jump off the bull and reappear in a shower of foam, like Aphrodite? Russia is watching closely. US Elites Are Trying to Destroy Europe with Immigrants A side effect of the American neocon strategy of up-ending the Middle East is to flood Europe, and in particular, Germany, the continent's dominant power, with non-Christian immigrants. The author argues that this is deliberate, and that Merkel and Obama are neocon patsies, leading Europe to destruction, and that Russia is one of the few countries whose leadership understands what is happening, and is fighting back. A few years ago, views like these would be considered on the fringe. Today they are going mainstream. Witness the popularity of Donald Trump. By Robert Bridge January 19, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " RI " - From the United States to Europe, the Western elite are allowing a massive influx of foreigners to enter their lands, radically transforming the face of Western societies in a bid to divide, conquer and expand their military and financial rule across an unsuspecting planet. Angela Merkel was even named Times Person of the Year for spearheading the influx which threatens to tear Europe apart. Despite the media-generated characterization of Europe as only too willing to allow swarms of refugees into their conservative societies, recent history provides us with an altogether different picture. As early as 2010, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in response to rising anti-immigrant sentiment, sent shockwaves around the world when she admitted that efforts to create a multicultural society in Germany have "utterly failed." Today, Merkel is humming a completely different tune as a wave of refugees storms Europe from all corners. Trusting the public's short memory span, the German leader has put out the welcome mat along her country's lengthy border, telling the world Germany is ready to accept over 1 million new arrivals - and on practically the same day that 130 people were killed by alleged Islamic fundamentalists around Paris. Part of the public's change of heart towards the plight of refugees came from the tragic story of Aylan Kurdis, the Syrian child whose body was found washed up along a shoreline in Turkey after the boat he had been traveling in capsized. Of course, the corporate-owned, super-consolidated media, never one to ignore a tragic moment (and especially one with graphic photographs) posted the story on every newspaper frontpage across Europe. Indeed, these were the same Western newspapers that ignored the depravations brought to children around the Middle East from NATO attacks on sovereign countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and now in Syria. One need only read the subtitle that accompanied The Sun's front page headline, which said: "Bomb Syria for Aylan." Talk about using tragedy to sell the ugliest agenda of them all: War. So while the European people are being coerced by a relentless media campaign to accept Syrian refugees or be labeled neo-fascists (a word few Germans can tolerate following the harrowing memory of Nazi Germany, a memory the media will never let the German people live down), the refugees are being magnetically drawn to Europe by the promise of easy money and easy jobs. Note: it has been proven that most of the new arrivals to Europe are not from Syria, but rather from other war-torn places, like Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Refugees in Germany receive up to 345 euro per month from the government, whereas in Sweden the monthly allowance is up to 224 euro. Compared to the places and situations where the refugees are escaping from, this temptation of free money is practically impossible to ignore. Was this chaos planned? While on the surface it may seem that the refugee crisis has taken Western leaders by surprise, in fact it is all part of their plan for global domination, which was outlined in a paper by the now-defunct group of US neoconservatives known as The Project for a New American Century (PNAC). In September 2000, the group released a document entitled: 'Rebuilding America's Defenses - Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century,' in which the power-crazed individuals came out and admitted their goal of asserting US military power around the globe in order to remain the world's supreme superpower. The PNAC identified five nations it deems as "deeply hostile to America" - North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Libya and Syria (former US General Wesley Clark added another three to that list a bit later: Lebanon, Somalia and Sudan). It should come as no surprise that two of these five countries have already suffered a US-led occupation/capitulation, while Syria is still managing to survive, albeit only due to the military intervention of Russia. Moscow seems to have come to the correct conclusion that Islamic State is simply a proxy army created by the United States to smash down the doors of sovereign states. Judging by the scope of these diabolical plans, it is altogether impossible that the United States could not see well in advance that a flood of desperate refugees would soon be streaming towards the European Union in search of safety. But again, this is part of the overall plan that the US elite desire, otherwise they would not be so aggressively pushing for the rights of the illegal aliens over the rights of their natural born citizens. This makes sense when we consider the absolute wreck that the Western elite have made of the European economy, with nations like Greece, Italy, Portugal and others on the brink of total insolvency, and only surviving due to impossible-to-return loans pushed on them by the IMF and World Bank. There is the temptation to point to the colorful life story of Barack Hussein Obama - America's first black president of Kenyan descent who is known to hold strong opinions on the way minorities have been treated present and past - as a powerful reason for national borders collapsing around the world, and most shockingly in the United States and the European Union. Indeed, the real estate tycoon Donald Trump has practically sealed his nomination for the Republican presidential candidacy on nothing more than the promise to build a "gigantic wall" separating America and Mexico. So why doesn't Obama make an equally simple promise and shut down the Trump threat once and for all? Although I do believe that Obama is predisposed by both his skin color and life history to show sympathy to the plight of refugees and minorities, and is thereby less inclined to shut down America's borders, I don't think the US president's race can explain everything (although it has a wonderful way of scaring off any would-be critics out of fear of being branded 'racist'). The simple fact is that Obama is reading from a script that was written many years ago. Washington is simply weighed down by too many powerful, behind-the-scenes puppet masters for anything to happen by chance in the realm of US politics. According to a German sociologist Gunnar Heinsohn, by mid-21st century millions of migrants from Africa and Asia (950 million of them are already willing to relocate to the EU) will drag Europe back into the Dark Ages. So isnt this exactly what Barack Obama, a man with African roots, should be willing to achieve through his foreign policy? We would be amiss to singularly blame Obama for destroying the once proud European civilization (now hanging by a thread in a few stubborn holdouts, like Russia, Hungary and Belorussia). The blame must be placed on the very malevolent system that every American leader is forced to either accept or fight once in the Oval Office (John F. Kennedy is perhaps the best proof as to what will happen to any US leader who attempts to be his own man and demand real change. We can no longer allow ourselves to be deluded as to what is really happening in the world today. The United States is actively and intentionally destroying the old fabric of nationality - the very glue that holds together cultures and civilizations - around the world, and it does not matter if the state is friend or foe, Christian or Muslim, rich or poor. The ultimate plan is to smash any homogeneity that exists and replace it with a US-led imperial system that relies on brute force to maintain "peace and order." This is much easier achieved if people no longer have anything remotely in common with their neighbors. The microcosm of this demonic system is already playing out on Main Street, USA, where local police forces are actually receiving military-grade weapons to use against the American people - while our national borders remain open to killers, rapists and drug traffickers from South America (!). In Europe, the very same tragedy is playing out like a cold-blooded murder in broad daylight. Thanks to America's reckless foreign policy agenda, which went absolutely insane following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, NATO countries are being helplessly dragged into battles and regardless of the public outcry and protests against these illegal wars, which have already happened in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and now Syria - all of which have resulted - or soon will result - in failed states. But the real failed states will eventually be the old colonial powers of Europe, which sit on the front line of the refugee tsunami provoked by the US that is now crashing across the region, threatening to engulf every city from Lisbon to Helsinki. This development only plays further into Washington's hands as the European people - increasingly terrified by pre-planned acts of war, terrorism and financial collapse - look to a savior to rescue them. At that point, they will walk happily and blindly into captivity like lambs on the way to slaughter, believing they are free until the moment of their destruction. No, The Nuclear Sanctions On Iran Did Not Work By Moon Of Alabama January 19, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " Moon Of Alabama " - Some (not so) smart people believe that the implementation of the Iranian nuclear deal shows that "sanctions worked": Doug Saunders @DougSaunders The Iran paradox: this week proved that sanctions worked. So it was the worst week for US Congress to impose new sanctions 10:42 AM - 17 Jan 2016 This is completely wrong. Sanctions did not work in the case of the nuclear issue with Iran. Sanctions will also not work one Iran's ballistic missile program. Other authors have already expanded on this in length but it needs repeating. For Iran the development of a civil nuclear program for electricity and other needs was and is seen as a precondition to become a fully developed modern state. The U.S. and Israel wanted to prevent that. Israel sees Iran as a competing power in the Middle East and the U.S. sees Iran as too independent and too powerful to be left alone. Both want to restrict Iran's development unless Iran agrees to again become the client state it once was. The vehicle to pressure Iran was its nuclear program and an assertion that "Iran has no right to an enrich" Uranium. That assertion was wrong as a legal argument as any state has a natural right to use its resources as it like but the U.S. went to great length to make that claim. If it would have gotten its way it would have achieved a veto over how Iran, and others, could manage and use its natural resources. It was that U.S. claim and Iran's will to resist it that prolonged the conflict over a decade. After first (false) claims were made that Iran was developing nuclear weapons negotiations ensued and made fast progress. Iran was willing to restrict its activities and to have its nuclear program under full inspection. But its was the U.S. "no right to enrichment" point that blocked any solution. Writes UK negotiator Peter Jenkins: Having served on the UKs Iran Nuclear negotiating team in 2004 and 2005, I know that in March 2005 President Hassan Rouhani and Minister Javad Zarif, then in different roles, were ready to offer a deal very similar in its essentials to the JCPOA. At that time Iran had only a few experimental centrifuges and little enriched Uranium. But the U.S. insisted that Iran had no right to enrichment and blew the negotiations. Sanctions followed and Iran responded by building up more enrichment capabilities. Several more sanction rounds followed and Iran responded to each round by again increasing its capabilities. After the last round of sanction Iran announced that it would create highly enriched Uranium to fuel nuclear submarines. At that point the U.S. finally understood that it was senseless and impossible to ever increase international sanctions as a way to stop Iran's nuclear program. Only two alternatives were left. A very aggressive and expensive military attack on Iran followed by a lengthy occupation for which the U.S. public had zero appetite or negotiations and concessions to settle the issue. A new negotiation round started in November 2013 and at the core of the issue was again Iran's right to enrich: Disagreement over whether Iran has the right under international law to enrich uranium goes to the heart of the decade-old dispute over its nuclear program and has complicated diplomacy to end the standoff. Iranian officials made clear on the third day of talks in Geneva on Friday that the Islamic state's "right" to enrich uranium must be part of any interim deal aimed at curbing its atomic activity in exchange for some sanctions relief. ... The United States says no country has that explicit right under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the 1970 global pact designed to prevent the spread of atomic bombs. During those negotiations in 2013 the U.S. finally caved and a few days later an preliminary agreement was reached: The initial nuclear deal struck with Iran at the weekend states unambiguously that the second step or comprehensive solution will involve a mutually defined enrichment program with practical limits. The wording allows Tehran to state that the U.S. and five other powers in the negotiations have conceded that a final agreement, due within six months, will leave Iran with a domestic uranium-enrichment program. Iran interpreted that as the acknowledgement of its right to Uranium enrichment. After this key issue was solved further negotiations were about give-and-take points but no longer about a fundamental disagreement. As was revealed only later the U.S. had given up on the "no right to enrichment" claim even before the November 2013 negotiations: The secret US-Iran diplomatic channel that helped advance the interim nuclear deal last year got underway after a message from US President Barack Obama was conveyed to Iran: The United States would be prepared to accept a limited Iranian domestic enrichment program as part of a nuclear agreement in which Iran would take concrete and verifiable steps to assure the world its nuclear program would remain exclusively peaceful. ... Obamas message that he would be prepared to accept a limited Iranian enrichment program in an otherwise acceptable deal was conveyed to Iran at a secret meeting in Oman in March 2013, by a US delegation led by Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns, which also included Jake Sullivan, now Vice President Joe Bidens national security adviser, as well as Einhorn and then-White House Iran adviser Puneet Talwar. It was the U.S. that caved and pulled back from its (indefensible) position that Iran was not allowed to enrich Uranium. It was this concession by the U.S. - not the sanctions - that brought Iran to the table and which allowed to end the conflict over Iran's nuclear program. Netanyahu Aide Calls US Ambassador Little Jew Boy in Escalating Controversy By Peter Beaumont, The Guardian US State Department backs Daniel Shapiro after his comments drew criticism from Israeli ministers January 20, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " Raw Story " - The US State Department has moved to back Americas ambassador to Israel in a febrile and escalating row over his remarks on Monday that Israel applied law in the occupied West Bank differently to Palestinians and Israelis. Ambassador Daniel Shapiros unusually critical comments drew harsh criticism from ministers in Israels rightwing government including from Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Shapiro was also publicly lambasted on Israeli television on Tuesday by a former aide to Netanyahu who used the deeply offensive Hebrew word yehudon which translates as little Jew boy to disparage the ambassador. The term is used by rightwing Israelis against other Jews particularly against those in the diaspora whom they regard as not being Jewish or pro-Israel enough. Netanyahu has described Shapiros comments as unacceptable and wrong, while justice minister Ayelet Shaked has suggested that they were inappropriate and that Shapiro should recant them. We are being subjected to a terrorist onslaught that is simply unfamiliar to the United States, and to pass judgment on us in such a one-sided manner is wrong, Shaked told Army Radio. It would be appropriate if he corrected himself, and I hope he does that. As the row continued into a third day, US State Department spokesman John Kirby insisted the ambassador was reiterating US policy on Israeli settlement construction. Kirby was speaking after a private meeting between Shapiro and Netanyahu to attempt to paper over the differences. Our long-standing position on settlements is clear. We view Israeli settlements activity as illegitimate and counterproductive to the cause of peace. We remain deeply concerned about Israels current policy on settlements including construction, planning, and retroactive legalisations, he said. The latest row comes against a backdrop of escalating tensions between Israel and various countries and international political groupings. Last year Netanyahus government reduced diplomatic contacts with EU officials following a decision to recommend that member states label products produced in illegal Israeli settlements. Swedish foreign minister Margot Wallstrom has effectively been declared a persona no grata in Israel after calling for an investigation into whether some recent shootings by Israeli security forces of Palestinians amounted to extra judicial executions. Israeli officials said her comments were delirious. Netanyahu said they were outrageous. Israel also strongly condemned the decision this week by the EU foreign council to take up a new resolution strongly critical of continued Israeli settlement. Israel finds itself facing renewed criticism from the European Union for the continued expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, a complaint that Shapiro echoed. In remarks at a security conference on Monday regarded as a showcase event for Israeli politicians and senior security officials Shapiro said: Too many attacks on Palestinians lack a vigorous investigation or response by Israeli authorities, too much vigilantism goes unchecked, and at times there seem to be two standards of adherence to the rule of law: one for Israelis and another for Palestinians. Kirby explicitly rejected Israeli claims that EU labelling of settlement products amounted to a boycott of Israel. We do not view labelling the origin of products as being from the settlements a boycott of Israel. We also do not believe that labelling the origin of products is equivalent to a boycott. Aviv Bushinsky, former aide to Netanyahu turned media pundit on Israeli television, described Shapiro, who is Jewish, as a little Jew boy using the disparaging Hebrew word yehudon. Bushinsky, who served as Netanyahus chief of staff when he was finance minister in Ariel Sharons government, made the remarks on an Israeli political show. Nobody was standing there with a hammer forcing him to say it, said Bushinsky on the programme. I see a Jew, Dan Shapiro, saying this. I see it as a pattern it was the same thing with [former US Middle East envoy] Dennis Ross and now with [former US ambassador to Israel] Martin Indyk saying his nonsense. Its the behaviour of Jews who are trying to show that they are extra leftwing, more liberal and more balanced. Some Israeli commentators saw it as no coincidence that Shapiros remarks were made so soon after the lifting of sanctions against Iran and at such a high profile forum. Writing in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth , Shimon Shiffer said: Shapiros comments are significant in that they suggest the Obama administration will no longer tolerate human rights violations by our decision-makers against Palestinians in the West Bank. From the perspective of the White House, enough is enough. Guardian News and Media 2016 Who is Luring the Middle Eastern Refugees Into Germany By Andrey Fomin January 20, 2016 " Information Clearing House" - " Oriental Review " - Last September we published an outline of the analysis produced by the Russian investigator Vladimir Shalak on the hidden aspects of the Twitter-based campaign to lure the Middle Eastern refugees into Germany. Having studied 19000 refugee-related original tweets Shalak claimed that the great exodus to continental Europe was artificially arranged by non-European actors. The latest wave of migrant-caused violence in the number of European cities on New Years Eve sparked another intense anti-Merkel campaign in German and European social media, and yielded additional data for Shalaks in-depth research. Below we will share its preliminary results. But before we do lets have a glance at two pictures demonstrating drastic change in public narrative in Germany regarding the refugees in just 4 months: January 2016 Was it a tragic but spontaneous development or a deliberate psy operation by an external agent? To come closer to an informed conclusion we have to look briefly at the current US-German relations. Since March 2014 Crimea reunification with Russia the German Chancellor Angela Merkel found herself between the hammer and the anvil. Under heavy pressure from Washington she had to lead the European family to tighten the escalating sanctions against Russia while big business and her political opponents were increasingly reluctant to sustain them in face of the dire consequences for the German economy. Balancing two contradicting approaches, she opted for accomplishing the 2011 commercial contract to built the second phase of the Nord Stream pipeline that would deliver more natural gas from Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea despite a growing roar from the overseas. Another dimension of transatlantic tensions is connected with the TTIP agreement talks held since 2013 behind the closed doors. A solid propaganda fog around these talks can hardly conceal the fact that the main issue where the swords are crossed is the status of American private arbitration courts within the European legal system. The global TNCs push for allowing these companies to sue states in private arbitration courts for any action that negatively influences their profits. In practical terms that means a total loss of the sovereignty of the European states as the private arbitration courts will then be able to dictate to the nation states customs duties (directly influencing profits of course), s anitary and phytosanitary norms (EU will have to lift its strict barriers to GMO- and beef hormone products), financial and investment rules for the European banks and even subsidies. No wonder that a ruling coalition party in Germany categorically protests against the TTIP talks. Mass public anti-TTIP rally struck Berlin in October 2015. As a result, now Frau Merkel is emphatically careful in her assessment of the TTIP project. Now, the picture is more or less clear: Bundeskanzlerin plays a smart game trying to maintain European sovereignty while formally complying with the US demands on secondary tracks. No doubt that this game is decoded already by Washington and the only factor that impedes her immediate ousting from the office is the absence of prepared and manageable successor. Nevertheless, a media campaign against Frau Merkel, on the pretext of rapefugees scandal, is in full swing. Early January the notorious speculator and confessed sponsor of the refugee traffic to Europe George Soros gave an explicit interview to Wirtschafts Woche where he bitterly critisized Merkels stricter European and refugee policy suggesting that it would cost her chancellorship. Simultaneously the hashtag #ArrestMerkel and Merkel Has To Go motto appeared in Twitter and gained an impressive circulation. Conducted analysis showed that #ArrestMerkel hashtag was originally transmitted by two major Twitter accounts, @Trainspotter001 and @AmyMek. It was taken up and spread by a number of other powerful accounts. As you see, in both cases the minimum activity is observed between 7AM and 3PM GMT , which most likely corresponds to the US Pacific or Mountain Time. These Twitter activists are therefore active during daytime on the US West coast. Now, the @Trainspotter001 account has made almost 27K tweets since March 2015, or around 88 tweets per day which too much for a human operator (for example, the whole CNN Twitter team is making around 23 tweets/day). We conclude that @Trainspotter001 is a programmed bot, while @Amy Mek (27K tweets since 2012) is likely too. Going further to major retweeters we see that @Genophilia is the leading bot here (107K tweets since September 2012, or approximately 87 tweets/day). Its region is not indicated but average hourly activity research shows that it is operated from the US Pacific coast as well. Two other notable accounts are @jjauthor, a Nevada-based bot making 300 posts per day since 2010 (!) and @LadyAodh, another artificial blonde profile, created in the Unites States and fighting white genocide since March 2015. As you saw at the first graph, all these bot accounts are closely interlaced and thus multiplicate each others effect coving multimillion audiences. The presented evidence clearly demonstrates that the whole Refugee Combination was arranged by the US-based agents to frame up Chancellor Merkel and warn her against the defiance and independent stand for the European sovereignty. Quite noteworthy is that the seemingly polar opposite platforms (ultra liberal of George Soros and far right of vague US-located twitter bots) are eventually pursuing the same political goal to oust German leader from her office and impose the TTIP on Europe. Andrey Fomin is founding editor of the online political analysis journal Oriental Review. He holds a Masters in Russian History (Lomonosov Moscow State University). Eritrean Man Lynched By Israelis In Uniform, New Video Shows By Rania Khalek Warning: This post includes video of extreme violence. January 20, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " Electronic Intifada " - On 18 October, 29-year-old Eritrean refugee Haftom Zarhum was severely beaten and shot to death by a vengeful mob of Israeli soldiers, prison officers and police in and out of uniform, security camera footage recently obtained by the Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz has revealed. The mob mistook Zarhum, unarmed and injured, for the gunman who had opened fire moments earlier at the central bus station in Bir al-Saba (Beer Sheva), a city in the south of present-day Israel. The gunman, a 19-year-old Bedouin Palestinian citizen of Israel named Muhannad al-Okbi, killed an Israeli soldier and wounded around ten others, mostly Israeli security personnel. He was ultimately shot and killed by Israeli forces. Zarhum had traveled to Bir al-Saba that day to apply for a permit so he could stay in the country. He was on his way home when the bus station was attacked. The newly released footage opens with a station security guard shooting Zarhum as he frantically crawls on the floor presumably to seek safety. Seventeen seconds later, a man Haaretz identified as a bus driver is seen hurling a chair at Zarhum. The next day this same bus driver told the Israeli news site NRG that he had protected Zarhum from the lynch mob. With each passing minute, the footage shows more Israelis, often in uniform, joining in the attack, kicking Zarhum in the head, throwing heavy furniture at him and spitting on him as he writhes on the floor bleeding. One man wearing a yellow shirt is the only person who is seen pushing back against the crowd to protect Zarhum and for that he is assaulted. All the while onlookers chanted for his death, shouting mehabel (terrorist), Kill him! and Break his head! Break his head! Son of a prostitute! As the lynching was in progress, the real gunman, who was holed up in the bathroom, began shooting again, but the crowd continued beating Zarhum. Israel has refused to grant Zarhum official recognition as a victim of terrorism, which would allow his family to receive benefits, on the grounds that he had entered the country illegally. Disturbing pattern The lynching of Zarhum fits a disturbing pattern of street executions of Palestinians over the last several months, propelled by inflammatory rhetoric from Israeli leaders who have openly encouraged vigilantism. Israeli forces have killed more than 150 Palestinians since 1 October in what has been condemned by human rights groups as a shoot to kill policy. More than 20 Israelis have been killed by Palestinians in the same time period. Israel claims that the majority of slain Palestinians were killed while carrying out attacks on Israelis. But rights groups have accused Israeli forces of using deadly force as a first resort against alleged Palestinian attackers who posed no immediate threat. In other cases, Palestinians were not attempting to attack anyone when killed. Israel has reacted angrily to calls from Swedens foreign minister for an investigation into the pattern of killings. Denial of medical treatment Forensic analysis found that Zarhum, though savagely beaten, died as a result of eight gunshot wounds fired by three different people, however it remains unclear who besides the security guard shot him. Despite the severity of his injuries, medics from Magen David Adom, Israels national emergency service, did not evacuate Zarhum until 18 minutes after he was shot, even though they had arrived to the scene ten minutes earlier. When medics finally evacuated Zarhum, they ran into objection from the crowds at the scene, who blocked their way and called out Death to Arabs, Arabs out! and Am Israel Chai (The people of Israel live), according to Ynet. Magen David Adom told Haaretz that Israeli security officers prevented their medics from treating Zarhum because they believed him to be the attacker. However, the indictment against the four Israeli mob participants states that Zarhum was the last of the wounded to be evacuated to the hospital despite his injuries being the most severe. Physicians for Human Rights all but accused Magen David Adom of complicity in the killing. In a statement to Haaretz, the group said that despite the promise of the director of Magen David Adom that treatment is based on medical considerations alone, without judging the wounded for their actions preceding their injury, the teams on the ground are influenced by the public atmosphere. The statements of irresponsible politicians are eroding medical ethics. Indeed, the denial and prevention of medical aid to suspected attackers wounded by Israeli forces is routine practice. Before December, Israel Medical Association guidelines required treating victims before alleged attackers regardless of the severity of injury, a clear violation of the principle of medical neutrality. That changed last month after a petition by Physicians for Human Rights-Israel compelled the association to publish new guidelines instructing paramedics to triage first aid based on the seriousness of the injury, even if it means treating an alleged attacker first. Dubious justice While Israelis are rarely, if ever, held accountable for violence against Palestinians and African refugees, every so often there comes a killing so shameful and embarrassing to the Israels image that some face-saving action is called for. The graphically documented lynching of Zarhum appears to be one of those cases. Even so, only four of the nine Israelis caught on video beating Zarhum have been indicted, on charges of aggravated assault, which carries a prison sentence of up to 20 years. The shooters who fired the bullets responsible for killing Zarhum have not been charged. David Moyal, a restaurant worker in the bus station, was charged with throwing a bench at Zarhum. Yaakov Shamba, an Israeli soldier, was indicted for kicking Zarhum in the torso while he lay on the floor pinned under a bench. And Eviatar Damari, described only as a young man from Netivot, is being prosecuted for kicking Zarhum in the head multiple times. Ronen Cohen and Chen Shabat, both prison officers, repeatedly tossed a metal bench at Zarhum. Cohen also allegedly kicked Zarhum in the head and assaulted a bystander who tried to stop the mob violence. Cohen was indicted with the others, while Shabat managed to convince the state prosecutor that he threw the bench at Zarhum to protect him from the mob. He may even keep his job with the Israel Prison Service. The state prosecutor accepted this claim, noting that Shabat did not go on to kick Zarhum in the head as Cohen did, reported Haaretz. The bar doesnt get any lower than that. Rania Khalek is an independent journalist reporting on the underclass and marginalized. 2000-2015 electronicIntifada.net Syria - Some Preliminary Positioning For An Endgame By Moon Of Alabama January 20, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " Moon Of Alabama " - When the Russian campaign in Syria started Obama promised that it would end in a quagmire. Various media and opinion writer picked up that narrative. It was false as Russia was and is executing a well thought out campaign. Being confronted with reality the U.S. media is now changing its false narrative. The LA Times writes: The Latakia attack mirrors similar government gains across the country, as forces loyal to President Bashar Assad, backed by Russian air power, have been on the offensive. ... It's a dramatic shift for the forces of Assad, who less than six months ago had warned supporters that the government would have to "give up areas" after a string of humiliating setbacks. ... The gains have strengthened the government's position in the run-up to Syrian peace negotiations scheduled to begin next week in Geneva. The Obama administration and its anti-Syrian allies had hoped for a defeated Syrian government in Geneva that would agree to their capitulation conditions. They now have to change the narrative. Peace talks in Geneva, they now argue, can not take place because the Syrian government is winning. Headlines the Washington Post - Russian airstrikes are working in Syria enough to put peace talks in doubt: [A]fter 3 months of relentless airstrikes that have mostly targeted the Western-backed opposition to Assads rule, they have proved sufficient to push beyond doubt any likelihood that Assad will be removed from power by the nearly five-year-old revolt against his rule. The gains on the ground are also calling into question whether there can be meaningful negotiations to end a conflict Assad and his allies now seem convinced they can win. The situation on the ground in Syria is definitely not conducive to negotiations right now, said Lina Khatib of the Paris-based Arab Reform Initiative think tank. The Arab Reform Initiative is a bastard child of the U.S./Middle East Project, Inc. and various Middle East dictatorships. The Middle East Project was founded by Henry Siegman, a former National Director of the American Jewish Congress and has various hawkish U.S. politicians like Scowcroft and Brzezinski as its senior advisers. In their view the Syrian government has to be regime changed and can not be allowed to win. Negotiations will have to be put off until the government is likely to fall. Thus the U.S./Saudi/Turkish controlled "opposition" of militant Islamists wants to exclude the Kurds and non-militant opposition from any negotiations and sets additional conditions that make negotiations impossible. They practically demand that Russia and Syria declare and keep a one-sided ceasefire before any ceasefire negotiations can happen. In the meantime various parties are positioning themselves for the larger endgame. The Kurds in Syria want a corridor along the Turkish Syrian border to connect their areas in the east with the Kurdish enclave in the west. They are fighting against The U.S. supported gangs north-west of Aleppo with Russian support and with Russian and U.S. support against Islamic State gangs north-east of Aleppo. The U.S. is invading Syrian ground and building an airport in the Kurdish areas in east Syria. This probably to later support and guarantee an oil-rich Kurdish state: The airport, known as Abu Hajar, lies southeast of the town of Remelan, site of one of Syrias largest oilfields, run by the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units, which sells its production through Iraqi Kurdistan. The Russians may counter that move with their own airport in the area. Israel, which buys most of the Kurdish oil and just again made friend with Turkey, is now officially calling for an independent Kurdish state. The Turks will not like that at all. Turkey wants to prevent a Kurdish corridor along its border. It has instigated the "Turkmen" insurgents in Syria under its control to attack the Islamic State from their Aleppo-Avaz-Turkey corridor towards the east right along the border fence where Turkey can provide artillery support. That campaign stalled after a few days and several captured towns are now back in the hands of the Islamic State. New Turkish equipment and soldiers arrived on the Turkish border near the Jarablus border crossing which is currently in the hand of the Islamic State. It is the Islamic State's only open crossing to a somewhat friendly state. Should the Kurds come near to that crossing Turkey is likely to invade Syria to set up a wider buffer against the Syrian Kurds. In Iraq the Turks continue to occupy bases in Iraqi Kurdistan under the protection of the Iraqi-Kurdish mafia boss Barzani. This despite threats from the Iraqi government. But that government is now again controlled by the U.S. The Iranian influence had waned after clashes between the Iranian General Suleiman and the U.S. installed Prime Minister Abadi: A source in the office of the Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi said, The United States delay of its support to Baghdad was not a coincidence or an unintentional lazy reaction. It was a strategic decision to: Teach Iraq a lesson for rejecting U.S military bases; To observe the Iranian military capability and inability of Tehran to use air power and intelligence gathering to defeat ISIS; To submit Baghdad to its will and dictate its conditions. That the U.S. used the ISIS phenomenon to again achieve regime change and U.S. control in Iraq was confirmed by Obama in an interview with Thomas Friedman: The reason, the president added, that we did not just start taking a bunch of airstrikes all across Iraq as soon as ISIL came in was because that would have taken the pressure off of [Prime Minister Nuri Kamal] al-Maliki. ... But all those U.S. games are just short term thinking. The Kurdish areas in Iraq and Syria are landlocked and none of their direct neighbors has interest in a Kurdish state. After his mandate ran out and was not renewed by the parliament Barzani's presidency in Iraqi Kurdistan is illegitimate. The next ruler in the Kurdish areas in Iraq is likely to be less friendly with Turkey and the U.S. In Iraq the influence of Iran with the people will always be bigger than U.S. influence with parts of the elite. In Syria it is Russia that will dictate how the future of the state will look. In the long run the U.S. has little chance to keep its currently regained dominant position. Obama is repeating his predecessors mistake of believing that U.S. meddling in the arena can be successful and continue forever. The Islamic State is receding. It recently had to cut its wages by half. It is under continues bombing and has to fight ever bigger battles with ever higher losses. The population in the areas it holds is not happy. It will soon again revert to a guerrilla movement of underground terrorist cells. Then other interests of the various actors will again come to the fore, the U.S. will no longer be needed and again be dispelled from the theater. Then the U.S. will again wonder why it did not learn from the earlier lesson. 212 suspected cases of Lassa Fever have been confirmed in 64 Local government areas across 17 states in the country, the Federal Government said on Monday. The Minister of Health, Prof. Issac Adewole, who disclosed this yesterday in Abuja at the Emergency National Council on Health meeting with state Commissioners of Health and other stakeholders in the health sector, said the current out-break was a national embarrassment. He, however, warned against a conspiracy of silence among the states of the federation. While debunking the speculations in some quarters that the virus was a gimmick to get money from the government, the Health Minister said objective of the meeting, was to facilitate discussion on control of the ongoing disease outbreak; to develop strategies of prevention and management of all cases in Nigeria, among others. He said: There is a high level of denial and a conspiracy of silence in some of our states. I think people take delight in saying we have no case and to me that is not the issue. In fact, if you are able to pick a suspicious cases, to me that is the issue because that goes to tell us that the surveillance system is at work. We also want to alert all health professionals in the country that they should report any case. I have described the outbreak as a national embarrassment. We can manage embarrassment, but when we allow another outbreak to occur in August this year, it will become a national shame to all of us. One of the things we will do to prevent us from dragging this nation into shame is to stamp out Lassa Fever. Healthcare managers should not deceive their political leaders that all is well. All states should consider themselves at risk. Adewole noted that 17 states have so far been affected. It has affected 64 local governments across the country and we have been able to pick 212 suspected cases. It dates back from August last year, not just this year. It is better to over-count suspected cases than to under-count. The real hot spots are Niger, Bauchi, Taraba, Kano, Edo, Nasarawa, Plateau and Rivers, but for us to be honest with ourselves, all states should consider themselves at risk and please, put up measures to contain, prevent and reassure the community that we are on top of the situation, he asserted. The Ekiti State House of Assembly has raised the alarm over plans by the All Progressives Congress-led Federal Government to assassinate Governor Ayo Fayose, if moves to remove him from office fail. The lawmakers at yesterdays plenary alleged that they had uncovered a plot to use the report of an Army Board of Inquiry that investigated the conduct of soldiers in the June 21, 2014 governorship poll in Ekiti to sack Fayose from office. Led by Speaker Kola Oluwawole, the 26 lawmakers, who are all members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), accused President Muhammadu Buhari of being a dictator and attempting to silent the opposition. They also claimed that the alleged plot to unseat Fayose was to silence the voice of the leader of opposition and cause chaos, confusion in the state. The lawmakers, however, warned that Ekiti people would resist any attempt to tamper with the mandate freely given to Fayose and passed what they called a double vote of confidence in him. Members, who took turns to condemn the alleged assassination plot against Fayose included Deputy Speaker Segun Adewumi (Ekiti West 1); Ekundayo Akinleye (Ijero); Samuel Omotoso (Oye 1); Dele Fajemilehin (Gbonyin); Gboyega Aribisogan (Ikole 1); Sina Animasaun (Ekiti West 2); Mrs. Cecilia Dada (Ilejemeje); Sunday Akinniyi (Ikere 2) and Badejo Anifowose (Moba 2). Oluwawole and Aribisogan claimed that the APC government at the centre would use assassination as the last resort if other options to sack Fayose from office fails. Oluwawole said: Nothing negative should happen to Fayose because they may resort to the use of other means, including assassination. Our human rights activists have suddenly gone under the table; its a bad signal to our democratic process. Aribisogan said: Fayose has become a thorn in their flesh and they want to use frivolous and unwarranted Military Panel report to muzzle him and any attempt to harass and embarrass him will be resisted. We have heard from the grapevine that if all other efforts fail, they will attempt to assassinate the governor. House Leader Tunji Akinyele (Oye 2) moved the motion for the adoption of an eight-point resolution condemning the report of the Military Panel chaired by General Officer Commanding (GOC) 1 Mechanized Division of the Nigerian Army, Kaduna, Major General Adeniyi Oyebade. The motion was seconded by Abiola Jeje (Ido/Osi 2). The Peace and Security Council of the African Union (AU), at its 567th meeting held on 14 January 2015, reiterated AUs strong condemnation of the sporadic and isolated attacks by Boko Haram, against innocent civilians, and the disturbing use of children by the terrorist group, as suicide bombers. The council, therefore, renewed AUs solidarity with the Governments and people of Nigeria and those of the other countries directly affected by the activities of the Boko Haram terrorist group and calls for stronger international cooperation and support to the efforts to prevent and combat terrorism, in line with the relevant Africa and international instruments. A communique by the Council at the end of its meeting further notes with concern the continued threat posed by the Boko Haram terrorist group and stresses the imperative of sustained military operations by the MNJTF to completely eliminate this group. The Council has, therefore, decided to renew the mandate of the MNJTF for another period of twelve (12) months, from the date of the adoption of the communique. Boko Haram has killed over 15,000 people in Nigeria and has spread into neighbouring countries rendering millions of people homeless. A Boko Haram kingpin identified as Jarasu Shira has been arrested in Damboa, Borno state. Shira was arrested on Wednesday morning at a motor park along with 10 other suspected members of the terrorist sect who escorted him to Damboa from where he was to connect a vehicle from Biu, which was heading to Lagos. Daily Trust reports that the Boko Haram kingpin and his escorts were arrested by men of the Civilian Joint Task Force, who are providing support to the Nigerian military battling the militant group. Quoting a source, who pleaded not to be named for security reasons, the newspaper reported that Shira alias Jarido, is number one on the new list of wanted men by the Nigeria military. To conceal his identity, the suspected terrorist reportedly disguised in a cowboy outfit but that did not stop the eagle-eyed civilian JTF members from spotting him. Shira is believed to be the leader of Boko Haram militants in Damboa, Chibok and Askira Uba local government areas of Borno state. The suspects have been handed over to military authorities in Biu, Borno state. A Federal High Court sitting in Abuja on Wednesday ordered that the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) Nnamdi Kanu, be remanded in Kuje prison pending his trial for treason. Kanus trial was stalled Monday following the absence of a judge but at the resumed hearing on Wednesday, the presiding judge, Justice John Tsoho, gave the order after listening to applications filed by counsel to the Department of State Services (DSS) and IPOB leader on the matter. Counsel to the accused, Chuks Muoma (SAN), had prayed the court to give an order removing his client from DSS custody and remanding him in prison, saying since his arrest in October of 2015, Kanu had been kept incommunicado by the secret police. He, therefore, pleaded with the court to send the accused person to prison so that his family and lawyers could have access to him. This prayer was however rejected by the DSS counsel, Mohammed Diri, who urged the court to allow Kanu remain in the custody of the DSS for security reasons. In his ruling, Justice Tsoho ordered that Kanu be remanded in Kuje prison. Lagos State Governor Akinwunmi Ambode has expressed joy over the admission of Lagos State as the sixth member of the Odua Group. He described it as a major landmark in the effort of the South-Western States of Nigeria towards regional integration. In a statement, Wednesday, by the Lagos State Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Mr. Steve Ayorinde, Governor Ambode expressed belief that the drive towards regionally integrating South West of Nigeria cannot be effectively pursued if all the States in the region do not combine their resources, work together and maximize their comparative advantages in order to build a strong regional infrastructural and social links amongst the States. Governor Ambode said that Lagos joining the Odua Group is a priority for his administration. He observes that with its huge population, its vibrant economic base and its being the centre of economic and business activities in Nigeria, Lagos is uniquely placed to contribute to the development and growth of the Odua Investment Company Limited (OIC), the investment arm of the group, as well as the integration of South West Nigeria in general. The governor expresses his gratitude to the group for the decision and looks forward to his government working with those of other States in the group towards the betterment and development of South West of Nigeria and its people, Ayorinde said. The decision to admit Lagos State as the sixth member of the Odua Group was taken at the end of a meeting of the five governors of Oyo, Ondo, Ogun, Osun and Ekiti States in Ibadan yesterday, ending four years of debate amongst the previous five owner States over whether Lagos State should be admitted into the group. The federal government has warned that the current outbreak of Lassa fever could kill 1,000 Nigerians, adding that it has spread to 17 states in the country, with Edo, Rivers, Nasarawa and Taraba States identified as hotspots of the virus. The three states identified as hotspots joined Bauchi, Kano and Niger States, which have recorded a high incidence of the disease. The Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole, stated this at the emergency National Council on Health (NCH) meeting with Commissioners for Health from all the states of the federation and other stakeholders in the health sector in Abuja tuesday. According to the minister, the current outbreak of the virus is a national embarrassment, given that ignorance has been fuelling its spread. He charged all health practitioners operating in all the states not to hide anything from their political leaders, adding that they should tell them the true situation of things. The objective of the meeting, according to the minister, was aimed at facilitating discussions on the control of the Lassa fever outbreak, and developing strategies for prevention and management of all cases in Nigeria, among others. Adewole told the gathering that so far the Lassa fever virus had spread to 64 local governments areas in 17 states, with the country recording 212 suspected cases. There is a high level of denial and a conspiracy of silence in some of our states. I think people take delight in saying we have no case and to me that is not the issue. In fact, if you are able to pick suspicious cases, to me that is the issue because that goes to tell us that the surveillance system is at work. We also want to alert all health professionals in the country that they should report any case. I have described the outbreak as a national embarrassment. We can manage the embarrassment, but when we allowed another outbreak to occur in August last year, it became a national shame to all of us. One of the things we will do to prevent us from dragging this nation into shame is to stamp out Lassa fever, he said. Providing data on the outbreak of the disease, the minister added: Seventeen states have been affected across the country. It has affected 64 local governments across the country and we have been able to pick 212 suspected cases. It dates back to August last year, not just this year. It is better to over-count suspected cases than to undercount. The real hotspots are Niger, Bauchi, Taraba, Kano, Edo, Nasarawa, Plateau and Rivers, but for us to be honest with ourselves, all states should consider themselves at risk and please adopt measures to contain, prevent and reassure the community that they are on top of the disease. aThe minister further warned that the consequences of not doing enough to contain the spread of the virus might result in a wider spread of Lassa fever around the country. aAdewole ominously cautioned that Nigeria might witness about 3,000 cases and 1,000 deaths if nothing was done to curb the current spread of the virus. aThe minister also cautioned against the traditional habit of drying grains and other food items on road pavements, adding that food items might become contaminated by rats, transmitters of the disease. We need to change our habits, even now people still dry their food by the road side, rats can infect such food and the virus gets spread, Adewole warned. He called on all the states to strengthen their surveillance systems, report all cases and collaborate with the Federal Ministry of Health to achieve success in the implementation of the Multi-Sectoral Response Strategy. The National Coordinator and Chief Executive Officer of the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Prof. Abdulrahman Nasidi, in his presentation, said: Majority of the deaths recorded in Nigeria so far have been among the youths in their prime, most especially health personnel and pregnant women. Nasidi further stated that health promotional material review, adaptation and dissemination would be used to solve the current inadequate health promotion tools at all levels. In his presentation, the Kano State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Kabiru Getso, said the state had recorded some confirmed cases and two deaths. Getso told the gathering that Kano State had put in place effective measures to checkmate further spread of the virus across the state. He said public awareness campaigns had been taken to bus parks and other public places to ensure that Lassa fever is wiped out in the state. The Commissioner for Health, Cross River State, Dr. Inyang Asibong, explained that the state had remained vigilant against the spread of the disease, with concentration on public awareness and strengthening capacity among health care officials. Dr. Idris Omede of Kogi State also made a presentation on efforts by the state government to address any Lassa fever emergency in the state. Also in a communique, the NCH said it had received a presentation on the epidemiological situation of the current Lassa fever outbreak in Nigeria including available response infrastructure/resource requirements by Prof. Nasidi; updates from Lassa fever affected states which detailed the progression of the outbreak(s) in their states; and current efforts to contain and prevent further spread of the disease and reassure from the affected communities. It also received updates from chief medical directors/medical directors (CMDs/MDs) of federal tertiary health institutions located within the affected states on their responses and high index of suspicion towards all cases coming to their institutions, their management of confirmed cases, measures being implemented to prevent nosocomial spread within their facilities, and their community outreach efforts. The council noted the efforts of the Ministry of Health, its agencies and parastatals, as well as the efforts of all states including non-affected states which are actively strengthening their surveillance systems, awareness and health programme campaigns. It also appreciated the Nigerian military and para-military medical corps for their commitment to support ongoing control efforts. The council also inaugurated the Multi-sectoral Lassa Fever Eradication Committee for the implementation of the multi-sectoral response strategy, with Prof. Oyewale Tomori as chairman. Other members include Prof. A Nasisdi, Prof. George Akpede, Prof. Sunday Omilabu, Prof. C. Ejembi, Prof. Z. Ilyasu, Dr. Pelumi Adebiyi, Prof. Chike Onwasigwe, Prof. Idris Mohammed, and officials from the Ministry of Health. A total of 418 delegates participated from the departments and agencies of the Ministry of Health including CMDs/MDs of federal tertiary health institutions, state Ministries of Health and the Health & Human Services Secretariat of the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA), Abuja, among others. Source:Thisday The All Progressives Congress (APC) has told the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to look in the mirror to discover the source of the misfortunes, in-fighting and implosion that has been rocking it of late. The APC National Secretary, Mai Mala Buni, who gave the advice yesterday, was reacting to a statement credited to his PDP counterpart, Adewale Oladipo, who said that some party members were being used by the APC to draw political capital from the present challenges facing it (PDP). The governing party said it was marveled that PDP had continued to blame everyone but itself for its self-inflicted problems which, it added, led the party to the sorry state it currently finds itself. Mr. Buni said: The PDP now sounds like a broken record with its daily conspiracy theories blaming external forces and unseen hands for its electoral misfortunes, in-fighting and mind-boggling corruption charges and ongoing probe of some PDP leaders and the immediate-past PDP-led administration. The question begging for answers is: Why does the PDP choose to grope in the dark while reality stares it in the face? Did the PDP not know that it will one day pay for the impunity, recklessness and shocking mis-management of the countrys common wealth perpetuated under its watch for 16 years? For the record, the APC has no hand in the in-fighting and resultant implosion being witnessed in PDPs hierarchy. Perhaps the wind of change has blown through the PDP camp and many PDP members realise the need to embrace and enforce change. The APC reiterates that PDP members who are genuinely inspired by the APC-led administration are welcome to the APC fold. It is their right to abandon a sinking ship and join one that is smooth-sailing. The media was agog on Tuesday, when photos of the National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Chief Olisa Metuh wearing handcuffs while appearing for his trial before the Federal High Court in Abuja emerged. Some people claimed it was a plot by the All Progressives congress-led FG to subdue the major opposition party. Spokesman of the Nigeria Prison Service, Francis Enobore, has come forward to clarify the matter and Information Nigeria has put together what the NPS wants you to know Metuh, wearing handcuffs while appearing for his trial at the Federal High Court in Abuja on Tuesday was at the discretion of the prison officer, who supervised his court appearance. The officer in charge was at liberty to determine if the inmate should be handcuffed based on security situation, the environment and intelligence report made available to him. That handcuffing an inmate was a standard procedure, which the prison warden could employ based on the situation at hand. What do you say??? Punch About $2.9bn (N571bn) is being lost annually by the Federal Government to tax incentives given to some companies operating in the oil and gas sector under the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas consortium. Vanguard BENINGOVERNOR Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State, yesterday, regretted that the current tension in the Niger Delta was created by the immediate past Peoples Democratic Party, PDP-led administration through the empowerment of people he described as wrong guys who showed capacity for violence. The Sun The world received with joy, last week, news of the end of the worlds deadliest Ebola fever outbreak which took the lives of 11,000 people and triggered panic across the globe. The World Health Organisation (WHO), gave Liberia, the last bastion of the pandemic, a clean bill of health and proclaimed the Ebola war over. Thisday The national leadership of the Labour Party (LP) has asked the Nigerian senate to ensure that all those behind the submission of two versions of the 2016 appropriation bill are exposed and punished. Daily Times Corrupt judgesll end up in jail, FG warns The Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr. Abubakar Malami (SAN) has said that corrupt judges will go to jail as the government of President Muhammadu Buhari will actively promote and ensure that corrupt judges are prosecuted and their illegally acquired assets are returned to the state. Guardian KWARA State Police Command yesterday paraded 11 suspects over Mondays gruesome murders of a car wash centre owner, Alhaji Bayo Ajia and a middle-aged man Bukola Ajikobi in Ilorin. Daily Trust The All Progressives Congress (APC) has told the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to stop attributing misfortunes, in-fighting and implosion being witnessed in its hierarchy to the governing party. APC National Secretary, Mai Mala Buni, traded words yesterday with PDP National Secretary, Wale Oladipo, who was quoted to have said that some party members were being used by the APC to draw political capital from the present challenges facing it (PDP). National Mirror President Muhammadu Buhari yesterday in Abu Dhabi said Nigeria has made very significant progress towards ending Boko Haram insurgency since his assumption of office on May 29 last year. Leadership Justice Ibrahim Buba of the Federal High Court in Lagos yesterday heard how former director-general of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Patrick Akpobolokemi and his co-accused used the account of a fashion designer, Chukwuemeka Onuoha, to siphon over N546,802,000 million from the coffers of the agency. The Nation The trial of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) spokesman Olisa Metuh for alleged fraud and money laundering will begin on Monday at a Federal High Court in Abuja, Justice Okon Abang ruled yesterday. But he admitted him to bail at N400million and two sureties with Abuja property. Tribune The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has said that President Muhammadu Buhari would still be able to run the country efficiently even if oil price falls as low as $5 per barrel and if all financial leakages can be blocked successfully. A baby girl, dressed and abandoned by her mother in a biscuit carton near Eco Bank, along Ikot Ekpene Road, Uyo, died after hours of battling for survival. The baby, who was said to have been abandoned by her mother at about 11:30pm on Friday, died around 11:58am on Saturday after many hours of crying for help. A resident of the area, Mr. Okon Isaac, told a Punch correspondent that the baby became pale after a long period of crying for her mums comfort before passing out. Isaac said he wanted to check if Total Filling Station along Ikot Ekpene Road, Uyo had begun to sell fuel when he heard a baby cry near the refuse bin, dressed neatly and dumped in the biscuit carton. According to him, he was perplexed and had to suspend buying fuel and kept watch over the baby since 5:47am thinking that the mother might change her mind and come back for the baby. He stated that the babys cry from the carton drew the attention of a large number of people. Isaac added that people were scared to touch the baby to avoid being accused by the police of trying to steal or kidnap the baby. I have been here since 5:47am. I wanted to buy fuel from Total, which only sells the product when available between the hours of 4 and 6:20am. After this time, they stop selling pretending not to have the product. As I was passing, I heard the cry of the baby. I began to wonder where the baby was crying from. But when I got near the refuse bin, just off the road, I saw a baby girl neatly dressed and dumped in a biscuit carton. I could not go to Total in search of fuel again. I stayed behind to observe if the mother of the baby might change her mind and come back for the baby. And before long, people started to troop in as they heard the cry of the baby. But as we live in a period of child theft and selling of children for money, people were scared to touch the baby. They all stood helpless, should anyone risk lifting the baby, and the police happen to be around, the individual can be accused of child theft, or whatever, he said. The Punch correspondent called the police emergency number to inform them of the abandoned baby, but the police said they were aware of the situation and had contacted the Ministry of Environment for necessary action. It was observed that till the baby died, neither the police nor officials of the Ministry of Environment were present at the scene. Source: Lailas blog The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, has reiterated its belief in the rule of law in the ongoing prosecution of high profile Nigerians for alleged corruption, saying it will not disobey court orders. The acting Chairman of EFCC, Ibrahim Magu, who made this known on Tuesday in Abuja in a chat with newsmen, said the EFCC had no reason to disobey court orders. Magu said the campaign against corruption was not about him or the EFCC but the collective desire of Nigerians to move the country forward. He said, We have never had any reason to disobey any court order and we will not disobey court orders. It is not about me, it is about the desire to move this country forward. The EFCC boss spoke against the backdrop of accusations that the commission was infringing on the rights of detained suspects. The EFCCs re-arrest of former National Security Adviser, NSA, Sambo Dasuki and a former Director General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, NIMASA, Mr. Patrick Akpobolokemi, immediately after they were granted bails by various courts, was condemned in some quarters as acts of impunity and gross violation of the human rights of the suspects, who are currently standing trial for various acts of corruption. Mr. Magu, however, did not give room for a question and answer session with the media as he promised to meet them at a later date. The Olubadan of Ibadan, Oba Samuel Odulana Odugade, is dead. The monarch died in his sleep on Tuesday in his palace in the Monatan area of Ibadan, PUNCH reports. He was aged 101. Citing Palace sources, the newspaper said a son of the deceased, Prof. Femi Lana, was immediately summoned to inform some Ibadan high chiefs about his fathers demise. Though efforts to get the reaction of Lana were futile on Tuesday, a close source said Oba Odugades corpse had been deposited at the morgue of an unnamed hospital in Ibadan, Oyo State. I can tell you that Prof. Femi Lana and some high chiefs have taken the corpse to the mortuary but I will not tell you the name of the hospital because his death has not been formally announced, the source said. Another top source close to the palace, however, said the Olubadan-in-Council, comprising all the high chiefs, would have to first pay a condolence visit to the family before the formal announcement of the monarchs death would be made. According to the Palace source, after the visit of the Olubadan-in-Council, which is expected to take place today, Wednesday, a formal announcement would be made announcing Odugades death. The source said, The Olubadan is dead. He died peacefully in his sleep in his palace at Monatan and not in the hospital around 7.30pm today (Tuesday) due to old age. You know he celebrated his 100th birthday in April 2014; he would have clocked 102 this year. The palace chiefs invited his son, Prof. Femi Lana, who in turn, informed some high chiefs, including the Ashipa of Ibadanland, Chief Eddy Oyewole. With his demise, the Balogun of Ibadanland, Chief Saliu Adetunji, who was one of the nine Ibadan high chiefs recently promoted by the late Oba Odugade, is expected to be named as the new Olubadan by the Olubadan-in-Council. Senator Buruji Kashamu is the lawmaker representing Ogun East Senatorial District of Ogun State at the National Assembly. Though he was elected on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has vehemently declared his support for President Buharis anti-corruption campaign. Kashamu, who is also the Vice-Chairman, Senate Committee on State and Local Government Administration urged all and sundry irrespective of ethnic, religious or political affiliations to lend their support. Information Nigeria has put together his stand on the ongoing anti-corruption war Kashamu said, the current anti-corruption campaign would naturally affect a lot of those who played active roles in the immediate past administration, especially at the federal level. He said within the short time that this anti-corruption campaign began, there are positive results to show that the government is on track. The President rode to office on account of his integrity and goodwill. No matter what anybody says, his integrity is intact. Kashamu added that Buhari is a focused President whose body language is making treasury looters shiver and return their loot to the governments coffers. Finally, he added that in view of the dwindling oil revenue, we need all the money we can get to fix our infrastructure and develop our economy. He noted that in the course of doing that, if anybodys name is found in the books, the anti-graft agencies have a duty to do their job. But, such a job must be done, according to the Rule of Law. Do you agree??? The last has not been heard of the episode involving the Minister of Interior, Abdulrahman Dambazau and his State Security Service orderly, who was recorded on video cleaning his shoes at a public function recently as the Nigeria Security and Civil Defense Corps, NSCDC, has waded into the debate. In a 30-second video clip, the armed SSS detail was seen cleaning the dirt off Mr. Dambazaus shoes when he attended an event at the NSCDC Academy in December. Mr. Dambazau, whose ministry covers the NSCDC, police, customs, immigration and prisons, came under fire from Nigerians as the video went viral. A group known as the North-east Youth Peace and Development Empowerment Initiative, NEYPDEI, had exonerated the Minister, saying those criticizing him for allowing his security detail clean his shoes in public were ignorant. Joining the fray, the spokesman of the NSCDC, Okeh Emmanuel, justified the action of the security personnel and also absolved Mr. Dambazau of blame. However, the news being peddled by some online media houses, alleging that the Honourable Minister of Interior LT. General Abdulrahman Dambazau (rtd) converts SSS officer to a shoe shiner is baseless, fraudulent and malicious. It is a diversionary tactics of the evil ones to cast aspersion on the personality of the minister. The honourable minister, who was on a visit to NSCDC facilities at Sauka, never beckoned on any of his aides to come and clean his shoe as alleged. Rather, if the aide carried out such a function, it means it was done voluntarily without any iota of compulsion. The demonstration by the SSS personnel was a mark of respect for his principal since he was not compelled to do so. It should also be noted that a man of the calibre of the minister, who was a one-time Chief of Army Staff is entitled to aides that could help in ensuring that he looks neat at all times, said Mr. Emmanuel. The statement also said Mr. Dambazau is currently on a working visit to the North-East to assess the condition of the affected victims of insurgent attacks presently at the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa States. The police in Lagos have arrested a 39-year-old trader, Chinwe Abasi, for allegedly brutalising a 12-year-old boy, Chinedu Okorie, with hot water in the Apapa area of the state. Our correspondent learnt that Abasi, a mother of two, who hails from Nnewi, Anambra State, allegedly poured hot water on the boy because he collected N100 from a neighbour to buy a pair of socks to wear to school without the womans knowledge. PUNCH Metro learnt that Okorie, who is in Junior Secondary School 1, also worked as a sales assistant for Abasi, who sold cloth materials in the Oyingbo Market. It was gathered that last Monday when schools resumed, Okorie told Abasi that he would need to buy a pair of socks for school. Our correspondent learnt that the trader allegedly ignored the boy until Thursday when a neighbour, identified only as Usman, gave Okorie N100 to buy the pair of socks. It was gathered that when Abasi learnt that the boy had collected money from Usman to buy the pair of socks, she became angry and beat up the boy. The 12-year-old was said to have ran to the kitchen during the flogging. Abasi allegedly grabbed an electric kettle of boiling water and emptied it on the boy. The matter was reported at the FESTAC Police Division and the trader was arrested. It was gathered that the matter was also reported to the Lagos State Domestic and Sexual Violence Response Team, and a temporary shelter was provided for the boy, where he also received medical attention. Speaking with PUNCH Metro, Okorie, who hails from Enugu State, said he was forced to collect the N100 from Usman because he had no other option. He said, I told madam (Abasi) last Monday that I needed to buy a pair of socks for school. My teachers would seize my sandals without it. But she did not buy them, and I went to collect money from our neighbour. When she saw the pair of socks, she became angry and started to beat me. I ran into the kitchen. That was where she grabbed the electric kettle and poured the content hot water on me. It was around 7pm on Thursday. The trader, however, told PUNCH Metro that she did not deliberately brutalise the boy, adding that everyone knew she treated Okorie like her son. She said, On Monday, pupils resumed school, and Chinedu (Okorie) told me he needed a pair of socks and I said I would buy them for him. Unfortunately, when I came back, I forgot. Later, our neighbour said Chinedu collected N100 from him to buy the pair of socks. I was angry. I queried him and warned him against the behaviour. On Thursday, I gave him N100 to buy another pair of socks. When he came back, he told me he used the money for something else. So, I beat him up. There were times when I gave him N1,000 to go and buy fuel. He would spend three hours and later say he misplaced the money. So, I disciplined him on Thursday. He ran into the kitchen, and that was when I mistakenly poured the water on him. I sell clothes at the Oyingbo Market. He is my domestic help. I brought him from his village in Enugu State about four years ago. The boy is stubborn. I am not a bad woman. The Lagos State Police Public Relations Officer, SP Dolapo Badmos, confirmed the arrest, adding that the suspect would be charged to court. She said, The suspect has been arrested, and she will be charged to court. Source: Punch Governor of Rivers State, Barrister Nyesom Wike has advised the Nigerian Army to shun overtures from politicians to act against their constitutional responsibilities. Giving the advice yesterday at Government House, Port Harcourt, when he played host to the General Officer Commanding 82 Division, Enugu, Major General Ibrahim Attahiru, Governor Wike assured that his administration would continue to support the Army to discharge its responsibilities. Continuing, he said the government will work with the Army to sustain peace in the state He said: In carrying out your activities, you should be careful so that politics does not come into it. A 12-year-old boy, Michael Agu, has been brought to the Lagos State Government by a neighbour in the Victoria Island area of the state after five years of being allegedly tortured by her aunt, identified only as Mama Sarah. Agu told PUNCH Metro that he did not want to go back to the woman because of the torture. PUNCH Metro learnt that the boy, who was brought from the Imuneze area of Anambra State to stay with the woman around 2010, was registered in a secondary school just last year. He was said not to be punctual in school due to alleged abuse. Our correspondent gathered that the aunt had been reported at the Bar Beach Police Division sometime last year and had been arrested, but she was freed when she signed an undertaking not to touch the boy again. It was learnt that Mama Sarah, however, continued abusing Agu. According to the neighbour who took Agu to the state Ministry of Youths and Social Development, Alausa, and who identified himself only as Ike, the aunt allegedly tortured Agu with razor blades and knives. He said, Mama Sarah is from Delta State, and she has three boys and one girl. But her boys do not stay with her. It is only the girl who stays with her. She constantly unleashed terror on the boy. The boys father is dead, but his mother stays in the village. The boy was not registered in school until last year. He does not attend school regularly. We once took the case to the Bar Beach Police Division, where the woman was detained. She was later released, but she has refused to stop the abuse. Speaking with PUNCH Metro, Agu, who could barely speak English, said his aunt usually cut his body with razor blades whenever he offended her. I dont want to return to her. She cuts my body with blades and she also bites me to punish me, he added. Our correspondent learnt that the Child Protection Unit of the ministry had written to invite Mama Sarah on the alleged torture of the boy. A copy of the letter, obtained by PUNCH Metro and signed by the Permanent Secretary, Ogunmolu T.A., showed that the aunt was told to come to the ministry last Wednesday. The letter read in part, I am directed to invite you to a meeting with the Director, Child Development Department, Alausa, Ikeja, at 10am prompt on Wednesday, January 13. The meeting is in respect of the welfare of Michael Agu. It was gathered that the woman, however, had yet to show up at the ministry. Mama Sarah, when contacted, denied abusing the boy, adding that Agu ran away to be sleeping under the bridge. I got the ministrys letter. I did not beat him. He has run away to be sleeping under the bridge, she added. Source: Punch Linux Trojan captures audio and takes screenshots Security is something that is always on the minds of users these days, and that includes those who use Linux. TechWeek Europe has a disturbing article about a Linux trojan that captures audio and takes screenshots. It remains to be seen how widespread this Trojan is among Linux users and what the exact attack vector is for it. Steve McCaskill reports for TechWeek Europe: Security researchers have found a new Linux Trojan capable of taking screenshots of infected systems and even recording sound. Russian anti-virus firm Dr Web says that once the Linux.Ekoms.1 malware is launched it checks for two specific files one related to Dropbox and another related to Firefox. If it finds neither of the files, it makes a copy of itself and launches from a new directory. "If the launch is successful, Linux.Ekoms.1 connects to the server whose addresses are hard-coded in its body," said the company. "All information transmitted between the server and Linux.Ekoms.1 is encrypted. The encryption is initially performed using the public key; and the decryption is executed by implementing the RSA_public_decrypt function to the received data. "Every 30 seconds the service takes a screenshot and saves it to a temporal folder in the JPEG format with a name in the ss%d-%s.sst format, where %s is a timestamp. If the file is not saved, the Trojan tries to save it in the BMP format." More at TechWeek Europe Linux redditors reacted to news of the trojan in a long thread and wondered how to avoid it: GBPAUD Consolidating Just Below Key 1.80 Level Tradable Patterns - 45 minutes ago The GBPAUD is consolidating around what is arguably downchannel resistance (on the weekly chart), taking a breather after breaking Monday above the psychologically key 1.80 whole figure level. Although... Hog Futures Close Higher Barchart - Wed Oct 19, 4:48PM CDT At the close lean hog futures were $0.85 to $1.20 higher at the close. The CME Lean Hog from 10/17 was $93.19, down by 16 cents. The National Average Base Hog price for Wednesday afternoon was $3.67 stronger... HEZ22 : 87.375s (+1.04%) HEJ23 : 92.750s (+1.09%) KMZ22 : 96.875s (+0.36%) Limit Drop in Dec Cotton Barchart - Wed Oct 19, 4:48PM CDT Cotton futures hit their limit a couple of times to the downside on Wednesday, with December ultimately closing there. The other front months ended the day with 302 to 347 point losses. Dec is now printing... CTZ22 : 78.97 (+0.87%) CTH23 : 78.80 (+1.06%) CTK23 : 77.49 (+0.08%) Cattle Strengthens on Wednesday Barchart - Wed Oct 19, 4:48PM CDT Front month live cattle futures ended the day with gains of $0.72 to $1.57. The December contract went home $1.02 under the contract high and just 5 cents under the day sessions high. Feeders faded... LEV22 : 149.350s (+0.59%) LEZ22 : 151.350s (+1.05%) LEG23 : 154.250s (+0.97%) GFV22 : 175.225s (+0.23%) GFX22 : 178.075s (+0.14%) Soybeans Close in Black on Wednesday Barchart - Wed Oct 19, 4:48PM CDT The Wednesday soybean market saw afternoon strength push beans fractionally to 2 3/4 cents in the black. Through the session November contracts saw a 21 1/2 cent trading range from +6 1/2 cents to -15c.... ZSX22 : 1373-6 (+0.09%) ZSPAUS.CM : 13.2637 (+0.06%) ZSF23 : 1383-6 (+0.07%) ZSH23 : 1392-4 (unch) Red Close for Wednesday Wheat Barchart - Wed Oct 19, 4:48PM CDT Front month wheat futures traded lower through the midweek session, but ended off their lows. Chicago futures went home on 8 to 8 1/2 cent losses. Kansas City wheat futures closed 2 3/4 to 3 1/4 cents... ZWZ22 : 838-6 (-0.30%) ZWH23 : 857-2 (-0.26%) ZWPAES.CM : 7.7583 (-1.05%) KEZ22 : 939-2 (-0.27%) KEPAWS.CM : 8.9921 (-0.41%) MWZ22 : 952-6 (unch) Red Close in Midweek Corn Market Barchart - Wed Oct 19, 4:48PM CDT Corn worked off the highs in the afternoon round of trading, but futures were still down by 1 1/4 to 2 3/4 cents at the bell. December printed a 10 1/2 cent range on the day, from plus 3 1/2 to minus 11... ZCZ22 : 677-2 (-0.15%) ZCPAUS.CM : 6.6571 (-0.10%) ZCH23 : 684-0 (unch) ZCK23 : 684-4 (unch) Livestock Report Walsh Trading - Wed Oct 19, 4:06PM CDT Hogs rally Arts organizations and artists in rapidly gentrifying cities are being squeezed by dual forces. To the former group, a lack of affordable spaces. To the latter, insufficient income to pay for the expenses associated with living in a rapidly-gentfying city. Groups like San Francisco's Community Arts Stabilization Trust (CAST), which owes its existence, in part, to $5 million in seed funding from the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, are tackling the former challenge. CAST buys property from owners looking to sell and rents it out to the arts organization for seven to ten years while it raises the money needed to buy the building at its original sale price. Yet, preventing cash-strapped artists from fleeing cities like San Francisco or New York is a far more complicated undertaking. Part of the problem is that many foundations give cash to arts organizations, but not the artists themselves. Others, however, do cut checks to artists. But, as we see in Seattle, this model comes with its own set of pitfalls. Seattle's Artist Trust and the Frye Art Museum recently announced the winner of its 2015 James W. Ray Distinguished Artist Award. The $50,000 award comes from a larger five-year, $1.1 million gift from the Raynier Institute and Foundation. In announcing the award a few years back, the museum's director Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker (who will reportedly be leaving in October 2016), said that there needs to be an "integrated approach to how we support artists, to provide artists with enough funds so that they don't have to worry for at least a year about how they're going to pay the rent and meet their most basic needsso that they could do their work." It's hard to argue with this logic, especially in a quickly-gentrifying city like Seattle. There's just one twist to the story. The winner of the award, writer David Shields, makes approximately $200,000 a year. (We know this because the Stranger, which first brought this story to light, found footage of Shields talking about his income in a movie with James Franco.) The author of the Stranger piece, Jen Graves, rang up Artist Trust Executive Director Shannon Halberstadt and asked her if she knew about Shields' bank account. Her reply? "Oh, no, you're kidding. Oh, that's not good." Apparently neither Halberstadt or Danzker knew how much money Shields made. The application process was "income-blind" and asking an applicant's income was considered an invasion of privacy. Which brings us to the big Pandora's Box-like question: Should arts fellowship awards consider an artist's income when awarding cash prizes? The answer, conceptually speaking, should be yes. After all, foundations generally ask about an applicant's race and gender; should income be off-limits, even when one of the main goals of arts awards is to make poor artists less poor? One can convincingly argue that awarding $50,000 to someone who makes $200,000 is bad optics. If Artist Trust had known that Shield was pulling in six-figures, would her foundation politely pass and take a closer look at other applicants? We don't know. But we imagine other struggling Seattle-based artists probably spit out mouthfuls of Ramen upon hearing the news. Ultimately, all this speaks to an even broader question that's been with us since the dawn of philanthropy itself: Should foundations give money to artists or other individual grantees who don't need it? We've toyed with that question two years in a row in regard to the MacArthur "genuis" fellowships, which often go to people who are already well-established and financially successful. Related: Your Reaction to Those Genius Awards Says a Lot About Your Views on Philanthropy The question also comes up in regard to other fellowships we write about, where the focus on a pure merit may also trump financial need. Such a focus clearly makes sense when a funder is aiming to achieve a particular outcome. For example, if you're funding fellowships for scientists because you want to cure cancer, you'll want to give them to those applicants with the most promising ideas. Yet the arts feels different. Yes, funders often aim to advance a particular kind of work, but because creative people are in such crisis right now, economically, propping up artists in need should be a major priorityand certainly one factor that guides how grantmakers judge applications for fellowship awards. It's worth noting that even science funders are indeed thinking about the financial situation of fellowship applications. A number of foundations are focusing on supporting younger researchers in part because these are the people who are often scrimping by and may leave key areas of research without more support. Funders may not use income to screen applications, but they're attuned to this issue in a broader way. The assumption behind many arts fellowships seems to be that, of course, everyone who applies desperately needs the money. In fact, though, that's not always the case and so funders need to make sure they have a way to surface this issue. Researchers and advocates of greater family engagement in K-12 schools have long complained that educators pay lip service to the idea, but seldom put their money where their mouths are. But that is starting to change. Education Week reported last summer that educators are making a greater effort to better engage parents and incorporate them into schools. A growing number of school districts have created positions and departments that focus on parent involvement, while other districts have expanded existing parent engagement programs and made greater involvement an element of their strategic planning. In another sign of this new attention to parent involvement, some states are including family engagement as an element of teacher evaluation systems and other programs. Funders also have shown a greater interest in strategies to better engage families and communities in K-12 education. The W.K. Kellogg Foundation has awarded millions in grants to strengthen partnerships between schools and families. Heising-Simons Foundation is another leading funder of parent involvement activities. Meanwhile, parental engagement is also part of the collective impact strategy used by Say Yes to Educationwhich is backed by a number of funders, including the Wallace Foundation and the group's long-time benefactor, financier George Weiss. We could mention other funders who've also had an eye on parental involvement in learning, such as the Kenneth Rainin Foundation and The San Francisco Foundation. In 2014, a group of leading advocates for family and community involvement in schools banded together to create the National Association for Family, School, and Community Engagement (NAFSCE) to build greater support around this issue. Now, the Bethesda, Maryland-based group has received a big boost in its efforts, thanks to two leading funders. Kellogg awarded NAFSCE $400,000 to launch a new planning and stakeholder engagement initiative. An additional $40,000 from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation will further support this initiative. NAFSCE is hiring McKinley Advisors, an association management firm based in the nations capital, to create a strategic plan and aligned business plan to support NAFSCEs mission to make family engagement a universal practice in K-12 education. Early childhood education providers, policymakers, K-12 educators, researchers, and community organizations will be recruited to take part in the NAFSCE initiative. Research shows that parent and community engagement can have a big impact on student achievement by supporting learning, both in and out of school. Too often, however, such efforts have been one-shot programs rather than strategic, long-term efforts. NAFSCE and similar organizations appear to be working to change that, and funders are increasingly getting involved. I recently watched Ken Burns' documentary on the Central Park Five, the unfortunate story of five youths of color in New York who were wrongfully convicted of the rape of a white female jogger in the late 1980s. In 2002, the actual rapist confessed to the crime and the boys, now men, were finally exonerated. In 2014, a federal judge approved a $41 million settlement in which each defendant received roughly $1 million for every year he was wrongly imprisoned. It's tough to see how money could even begin to right a wrong like this, but one of the fivethe oldest, Korey Wiseis using some of his money to help others who find themselves in his shoes. Wise recently pledged $190,000 to support the Innocence Project at the University of Colorado Law School. The Innocence Project, a national litigation and public policy outfit, was founded to assist prisoners who could be proven innocent through DNA testing. According to the Innocence Project's website, "More than 300 people in the United States have been exonerated by DNA testing, including 20 who served time on death row." These individuals serve an average of 14 years in prison before exoneration and release. Wise, by the way, was incarcerated for over 13 years and was 16 years old at the start of his ordeal. The Colorado chapter of the Innocence Project was established in 2001. Wise's gift will rename the chapter the Korey Wise Innocence Project at Colorado Law and the funds will support the hiring of a full-time program director and provide financial support for the program's work. The chapter receives 25 letters a week from those seeking help with appeals, and has around 200 applications in review. As Colorado Law Clinical Professor Ann England puts it, We dont have the perfect legal system. We know innocent people get convicted, so that creates an obligation to figure out who among us have been wronged. Koreys gift gives students a face and a name to what it means to be wrongly convicted, and the Innocence Project at Colorado Law is an important educational tool that allows our students to work on real investigations of cases. In New York City, the Central Park Five case has always loomed, and as a person of color, the case served as one of my first lessons that the criminal justice system was not infallible. The recent case of Kalief Browder, an innocent youth who found himself in limbo for three years waiting for a simple trial, and his ultimate suicide, echoes that lesson. What strikes me about Wise's gift, then, is his apparent commitment to reforming the same system that so wronged him. Those Pritzkers just keep getting more interesting. Some 11 members of the famous Chicago family are billionaires, and it's not easy to keep track of all the philanthropic doings of this clan. The Pritzkers consistently make news for big donations to local parks, education and the arts. In recent years, for example, J.B. Pritzker has emerged as one of the biggest backers of expanding pre-K, as we've reported. We've also written about a younger Pritzker, Rachel, who's backing new ideas with a keen eye on ecological challenges. Then there's Nicholas and Susan Pritzker, who run the Libra Foundation which supports social justice and environmental work. Related: However, a Pritzker we have paid a bit less attention to thus far just made a huge donation that the LGBT community might be interested in. Jennifer Pritzker just made a headline worthy donation of her owna $2 million grant to a university in Canada to establish a chair for transgender studies. This is a bold move, considering that there no other transgender studies academic research positions like this exist anywhere in the world. So who is Jennifer Pritzker and why is this cause so important to her? To start, its important to note that Pritzker identifies as a transgender individual. She was born as James N. Pritzker and underwent an official legal name change in 2013. She identifies herself as a woman and is known as the worlds first and only openly transgender billionaire. That Pritzker is embracing the role of a public funder of transgender work is significant. It's been a big deal in the past when wealthy LGBT people have emerged as philanthropistslike when Jon Stryker came out as gay and quickly emerged as a top LGBT funder through the Arcus Foundation. (It's worth noting that a huge chunk of funding for LGBT causes remains anonymous.) Pritzker served in the army and received numerous medals and honors. In terms of broader philanthropy, she founded the Tawani Foundation, which claims the following missions and commitments: Enhancing and promoting awareness of the importance of the citizen soldier, through preservation of military history & heritage Preserving unique sites of significance to American history Improving public spaces and services that enhance quality of life Honoring the history and supporting the service of military personnel through recognition of achievement Today, Pritzker is worth an estimated $1.73 billion. She serves on the board of directors for the Pritzker Military Museum and Library, and her professional bio can be found on that organizations website and on the Tawani Enterprises site. To learn more about her approach to philanthropy, read Forwards How Colonel Jennifer Pritzker Pushes for Transgender Rights in Military. But now, back to this interesting new grant commitment. A sociology professor has already been named the inaugural chair for the transgender studies position at the University of Victoria British Columbia, a man named Aaron Devor who has studied the topic for over 30 years. He founded the universities Transgender Archives that hold publications and memorabilia from notable people in the transgender movement. "Far too many trans and gender-nonconforming people still live in poverty and fear," Devor said in a statement. "As the inaugural chair, I will act as a resource locally and internationally for those needing information for their own research or for policy development, as well as building linkages between community-based and academic scholars working in transgender studies." Until recently, transgender issues and research had rarely receive funding and usually only by a few passionate philanthropists here and there. The Erickson Educational Foundation, founded by a transgender man named Reed Erickson in the 1960s, was a pioneer in this type of funding. The Calamus Foundation, the Arcus Foundation, and the NoVo Foundation have also shown support recently for transgender issues in America. Related: Jennifer Pritzkers foundation isnt accepting unsolicited letters of inquiry at this time, but she definitely keeps up with whats happening in the transgender community and is on the lookout for promising research studies to improve the quality of life for transgender people. For example, she granted $1.35 million to the University of Californias Palm Center to conduct a study about transgender people in the military. On an interesting side note, shes also been into funding historic preservation and restoration efforts around Chicago and is actually opening up her second bed & breakfast. Stone Porch and Stone Terrace are both B&Bs located in historic landmark homes in suburban Evanston. OpenTech Alliance Inc., a Phoenix-based provider of self-storage kiosks, call-center services and other technology, has acquired a majority stake in StorageTreasures.com, an online-auction website that serves self-storage businesses and auction buyers. As a part of the investment, OpenTech has signed a long-term management agreement to operate websites related to Storage Treasures LLC, hire all of its employees and expand the brand into new markets, according to a press release. Financial terms were not disclosed. StorageTreasures.com supports more than 900,000 registered bidders and serves more than 6,000 self-storage facilities, according to the release. Associated websites include LegalNoticeLocator.com, SpacePicker.com and StorageBattles.com. The company became Storage Treasures LLC after a 2014 merger between Storage Battles LLC and Storage Treasures Inc. The acquisition comes eight months after Storage Treasures integrated with OpenTechs open application program interface (API), which enabled the auction provider to securely connect with multiple self-storage management software programs and streamline the auction process for users, according to a previous release. Last August, Storage Treasures signed an agreement with self-storage real estate investment trust Extra Space Storage Inc. to be the operators exclusive platform for online auctions. We have observed the rapid adoption of online auctions in our space and felt we could leverage our technology expertise, customer-service capabilities and IT infrastructure to help scale the Storage Treasures platform, said Robert A. Chiti, president and CEO of OpenTech. Over the past two years, the team at Storage Treasures, led by Jim Grant, has knocked the cover off the ball. They have significantly ramped up every metric of the business, including self-storage facilities using the service, active bidders, number of auctions and, most importantly, the debt-recovery percentage for their storage owners. Grant will continue leading the Storage Treasures brand, Chiti said. Everybody within the Storage Treasures organization is very excited about joining OpenTech, Grant said. Robert has been a member of our board of advisors and investors for over a year, so he is up to speed on our short- and long-term roadmap. OpenTech intends to invest heavily in launching related websites while also adding features to the Storage Treasures platform designed to increase participation from traditional auctioneers, affiliated auction sites in other markets and resale outlets, according to the release. The resale trend is exploding, and we want to put Storage Treasures in the center of it, Chiti said. StorageTreasures.com is a free locator service identifying storage auctions and self-storage facilities in Canada and the United States. The website offers auction schedules and site-specific guidelines for auction hunters and self-storage owners. OpenTech provides several models of INSOMNIAC self-serve kiosks as well as a range of self-storage rental solutions including the INSOMNIAC Live! Call Center, INSOMNIAC Online Web and mobile applications, LiveAgent! software products, and the INSOMNIAC ILock Security System, all available through the company's self-storage cloud. Update 2/4/16 The recent Sovran acquisition included a 13-property portfolio owned by Harrison Street Real Estate Capital LLC (HSRE), a real estate private-equity firm. The $186.4 million purchase comprises four properties in California, six in New England and three in Texas. The portfolio features more than 1.1 million square feet of storage space, including more than 55,000 square feet of vehicle parking. HSRE was represented in the sale by Kenneth Cox, senior managing director, and Aaron Swerdlin, executive managing director, of NGKF Capital Markets, a group within commercial real estate advisory firm Newmark Grubb Knight Frank (NGKF). "The sale of the Harrison Street portfolio marks the biggest transaction to close so early in a year, and its high-quality assets provided Sovran Self Storage with an entry into the competitive Los Angeles market, Swerdlin said. It is a big step forward for the company, which has been looking to make the right entry into the L.A. market for some time. The transaction supports the continued trend of portfolio investment sales in the self-storage sector, Cox said. The capital is out there, and the deep demand continues to support the aggressive portfolio environment, he added. There is no question the storage industry is generating great interest in the institutional community as investor confidence in the product type has solidified over the last several years. Headquartered in Chicago, HSRE has more than $8.4 billion in assets under management through commingled funds and public securities products. The funds focus exclusively on the education, health-care and self-storage segments. NGKF offers appraisal and valuation advisory services, debt placement, investment sales, proprietary lending, and transaction management. Together with its affiliates and London-based partner Knight Frank, the company employs more than 11,000 professionals, operating from more than 340 offices on five continents. 1/28/16 Sovran Self Storage has closed the public offering of common stock it opened on Jan. 19 to help fund a portion of its pending property acquisitions and repay debt tied to an unsecured line of credit used in connection with its recent real estate transactions. The REIT sold nearly 2.65 million shares at $105.75 per share, raising about $269.7 million after deducting underwriting discounts, commissions and expenses, according to a press release. The offering included the full 345,000 shares of common stock set as the underwriters over-allotment option. Real estate investment trust (REIT) Sovran Self Storage Inc., which operates the Uncle Bobs Self Storage brand, has agreed to acquire 25 self-storage facilities in eight states for approximately $371 million. The company also recently purchased five facilities for $27 million. Those transactions occurred during the fourth quarter of 2015 and earlier this month. In total, the 30 facilities comprise about 2.3 million square feet of rentable space, according to a press release. The acquisitions under contract include four portfolios and five single properties. The largest portfolio comprises 13 facilities, while the other three contain four assets each. Twenty-two of the purchased and contracted properties are in existing Sovran markets. Those include one in Arizona, one in Colorado, five in Florida, eight in New England, two in New York, two in Pennsylvania and three in Texas. We are very excited to acquire such an excellent group of high-quality properties, said CEO David Rogers. Those in our existing markets will be tremendous additions to the portfolio; and while all are well-run facilities, we expect improved operating results as we apply our customer-service standards and transition these stores onto our Web-marketing and revenue-management platforms. Eight of the acquisitions under contract are in the Los Angeles metro area, signaling the REITs entrance into the California market. Those assets account for $185.6 million of the total acquisitions cost and comprise 828,877 square feet. Seven of the facilities are established locations and one was recently developed, the release stated. While its taken us a while to get there, we are thrilled to enter the Los Angeles market, Rogers added. We are doing it the way we intended, with a group of high-quality facilities in sufficient scale, on an immediately accretive basis, with the opportunity to improve operating results in a meaningful way. This will present a future growth vehicle for Sovran. Sovran expects to close on all 30 properties between now and the end of April. Company officials believe the acquisitions will be accretive on a leverage neutral basis to funds from operations in 2016, according to the release. The REIT is also under contract to acquire four storage properties in certificate of occupancy purchases later this year. One of the facilities is in Charleston, S.C., two are in Chicago, and the fourth is in Miami. Sovran will buy the facilities for a total of $38 million once construction on each is complete, the release stated. To help pay for the portfolio expansion, Sovran recently increased the borrowing limit on a revolving credit line from $300 million to $500 million. In addition, the company has commenced a public offering of 2.3 million shares of common stock to fund property acquisitions and corporate expenses. Underwriters have been granted a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 345,000 shares, according to a press release. Jefferies LLC and Wells Fargo Securities are acting as joint book-running managers for the offering. Sovran operates more than 500 self-storage facilities in 25 states, with a large presence in Texas. Its portfolio of owned and managed facilities comprises more than 36 million square feet. This is not your fathers General Motors Co. The largest U.S. automaker announced this month that it is investing $500 million in ride-sharing service Lyft and will work with the San Franciscobased company to form a service allowing customers to order driverless cars to ferry them to their destinations. The move makes sense for GM, analysts believe. Its not a huge risk, says Martin Zimmerman, former chief economist at Ford Motor Co. and now a professor of business economics at the University of Michigans business school. GM is buying an option to participate in this industry and, to some extent, shape it; $500 million is significant, but given where the industry is headed, its something you can understand. The agreement with Lyft affords GM an opportunity to get its finger in the pie of ride-sharing and to broaden its involvement with autonomous cars. The two companies will create rental car centers where people who dont own cars can pick one up and become a Lyft driver. GM may also collaborate with some of Lyfts Asian partners, including Didi Kuaidi in China, Ola in India and GrabTaxi in Southeast Asia, GM president Dan Ammann told Bloomberg after the deal was announced. GMs investment in Lyft represents the first by a major auto manufacturer in a ride-service company. All of the major carmakers and several technology companies, such as Apple and Googles Alphabet , are trying to develop autonomous cars. GM aims to test a fleet of self-driving Chevrolet Volts at its technical center in Warren, Michigan, later this year. According to Zimmerman, it will take time to convince consumers that the new technology of driverless cars is safe and reliable. Getting the public acquainted with these vehicles through ride-sharing may be an effective way to do that. In addition, the ride-sharing market provides an excellent laboratory for automakers like GM to test what kind of autonomous cars and features people will be willing to purchase. Consumers wont be as concerned about the content in the ride-sharing vehicle, so it will be less risky for auto manufacturers to target the ride-sharing market first, Zimmerman says. The development of autonomous ride-sharing services doesnt mean that consumers wont want their own driverless cars, however. Its just one step of the transition toward autonomous vehicles. Sharing will be a big part of it, says Richard Wallace, director of transportation systems analysis at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan. But I think buying and owning will be a part of the model for quite some time. Granted, ride-sharing isnt the best option for everyone. For the moment at least, Lyft operates only within the U.S. and even then, not in every major metropolitan region, never mind rural areas. And convenience is an issue everywhere. Customers must plan in advance for using the services and wait for the car to arrive, which isnt always on time. People have many reasons for wanting their own car, and convenience is a big one, Wallace says. Ride-sharing services make the most sense for informal trips, such as meeting friends, he believes. It doesnt matter if youre ten minutes late to a bar or a restaurant, he adds. GMs rental center agreement with Lyft represents a shift in the automakers fleet management. GM is acknowledging that drivers dont have to own cars, Zimmerman says. But to some extent, the vehicles they sell to Lyft for rentals compete with the taxis they would have sold. On the plus side, the rental cars could serve as a marketing device, Wallace says: If an 18-year-old becomes a Lyft driver and uses a GM car, maybe at 25 they will buy a GM car. Meanwhile, analysts say that an alliance by GM with Lyfts partners in Asia would serve the automaker well, where outdated infrastructure has led to indomitable traffic. Car-sharing is a very attractive option there, Wallace says. Ford is already doing it. This is a quick way for GM to get into that market. Get more on corporations. During the Depression, James (Jamie) Kempners great-grandfather, Carl Loeb, founded the brokerage firm that would go on to become Shearson Loeb Rhoades. Today, the Loeb patriarch would recognize what his heir has in mind for the family office that manages the wealth that survives him. After all, Kempners idea to transform Loeb Partners Corp. into a merchant bank which advises and raises capital for private companies as well as invests in them points to a business that thrived on Wall Street until partnerships like Goldman Sachs & Co. and Morgan Stanley grew into financial supermarkets in the 1980s and started to go public. The merchant bank model withered as partners money was transformed into shares of public stock and private equity firms grew and evolved to take on the lions share of investing in private companies. Kempner, who spent 33 years at investment bank Lazard before joining Loeb Partners in January 2014, works alongside his 88-year-old father, Thomas, chairman and CEO of the firm. As president, the younger Kempner is building an investment banking advisory business for middle-market companies. He is also president and Chief operating officer of Loeb Holding Corp., parent company of Loeb Partners. Its a good time to refashion the Loeb family business into a merchant bank. Since the financial crisis, regulators around the globe have enacted legislation to prevent banks from taking the types of risks that led to the credit freeze of 2008 and the subsequent market meltdown. Under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, a bevy of rules have reined in banks, including raising the amount of capital that they have to keep on hand to support lending and trading activities. Bank of America, Citigroup, Credit Suisse and JPMorgan Chase & Co. have all sold their private equity arms, leaving opportunities for new entrants like Loeb. We focus on advising companies, but we want to be so close to them that we can also invest capital, says Kempner, 58, from his Wall Street offices. When youre wearing a pure adviser hat, you are a little threatening to companies because they think youre there only to generate fees. But if youre an adviser and a potential investor, you might be writing a check to them. Eager for an example, Kempner plucks a black biomass pellet from a bowl sitting on a table in his office, showing a reporter the product of a clean energy company called American BioCarbon, in which Loeb recently invested after having done advisory work. Philip Keating, who joined Loeb Partners last year, is interim CEO of American BioCarbon (formerly known as NFR BioEnergy), one of several clean energy investments for Loeb. Merchant banking isnt new; its the original investment banking model, says Keating, who spent 20 years doing investment advisory work and debt and equity placement in energy and industrials at several banks, including Lazard, where he met Kempner. We dont have institutional trading and we arent pushing other products. Its real advice and opportunistic investing. Kempner is capitalizing on the unwinding of a trend that his family helped kick off. In 1931, Carl Loeb founded his eponymous investment bank, which became Loeb, Rhoades & Co. after acquiring a competitor six years later. The firm steadily grew and in 1950, Thomas Kempner joined his grandfathers investment bank. When banking legend Sanford Weill, head of Shearson Hayden Stone at the time, bought Loeb Rhoades in 1979, the firm became the U.S.s second-largest investment bank. Shearson Loeb Rhoades, as it was called post-merger, spurred a wave of consolidation and growth among banks that didnt end until the financial crisis. Loeb Partners was originally established in 1982 by Thomas Kempner and his uncle, John Loeb, to invest the familys capital in private deals, including real estate and companies that ranged from start-ups to mature industrial concerns. Loeb also invested in public companies through its own hedge fund, which was wound down last year after its portfolio manager, Gideon King, decided to leave to run his own capital. Loeb is not the only new entrant to see merchant banking as fertile ground. One of the most well known merchant banks is Chicago-based BDT Capital Partners, run by Byron Trott, the former chairman of investment banking at Goldman Sachs Group and a favorite banker of Warren Buffett. Kempner, who ran equity capital markets at Lazard and was most recently senior banking adviser for companies in the transportation and logistics industries, believes his merchant banking strategy will be fueled by midsize companies desire for an alternative to private equity capital. Family offices like his can stay in deals longer than private equity firms, which need to exit within five to seven years to satisfy pensions and other outside clients. At the same time, private equity firms have increasingly focused on the largest deals, leaving many smaller companies without sufficient access to funding, particularly as bank loans have also dried up for the sector. Max Winograd, CEO and co-founder of NuLabel Technologies, a Rhode Island start-up focused on sustainable labeling for packages, says he talked to more traditional funders like private equity firms but felt his R&D-focused company would be better served by a family willing to stay in longer. The packaging industry is synonymous with glacier, says Winograd. Well require a longer investment than is typical. He adds that NuLabel benefits from Loebs more personalized investment, while at the same time being able to take advantage of the firms connections and years of expertise. Loeb wants to invest alongside other wealthy families in so-called club deals, particularly when it comes to bigger transactions that require large checks to fund. Some families feel that they can bring more than money to the table, says M. Said Armutcuoglu, who spent more than a decade at Lazard, where he worked closely with Kempner, before joining Loeb as a managing director in 2009. They have a good network of business partners, theyre working with good management teams and they want to be more proactive in managing a company. Last spring, Loeb advised Norstar Shipping (Asia) Pte on the purchase of two long range tanker ships, bringing in as an equity investor a prominent family office. Loeb offers up due diligence expertise that family offices may not have in-house, as well as deal flow through its advisory business. A lot of families are tired of paying private equity fees while still having no transparency and just getting word of distributions, quarterly reports and capital calls, adds Kempner. Loeb is evaluating investment opportunities, writing initial checks and then asking other families to join in. Although the firm prefers deals where it has control, it has done two recent deals in which it has a minority stake, including an investment in D.E Master Blenders 1753, an Amsterdam-based coffee company. Loeb is focusing on several industry groups: financial services, health care, media, telecommunications and transport and logistics. With decades under his belt in investment banking, Kempner knows all deals dont work out as planned. Loeb also has a restructuring group, which until recently hasnt been particularly busy. Not surprisingly, Kempner expects restructurings to pick up as the high-yield market slows down and companies look to private capital as an alternative. Loeb recently served as investment banker to Infraredx, advising the Burlington, Massachusettsbased cardiovascular imaging company on a corporate restructuring and sale to Japans Nipro Corp. last year following an abandoned IPO by Infraredx. Kempner is bullish on his firms prospects. Last year, Loeb Partners hired Randall Haase to run a new portfolio called the Loeb Total Return Fund. Haase, who was most recently a portfolio manager at Baron Capital and a managing director at Stanley Druckenmillers Duquesne Capital Management, will make public investments with Loeb money as King once did through his now closed hedge fund. Loeb also formed a partnership with the Landon Family Trust in London, called Loeb Landon Capital Partners, to invest directly in middle-market businesses in the U.S. The capital will come from ultra-high-net-worth U.S. and European family offices. Although Thomas Kempner has been investing in private companies since he opened his family office almost four decades ago, his son Jamie needs to build the firms own long-term track record. At that point, he may open a fund and look for outside capital or seek other families to commit money to Loeb. Says Kempner: Advisory work leads to investments and that will lead to a track record for my team. Follow Julie Segal on Twitter at @julie_segal. Get more on banking. In September, Bank of England governor Mark Carney delivered a speech at Lloyds of London entitled, Breaking the Tragedy of the Horizon, addressing the potential impacts of climate change on financial stability. Shifts in our climate bring potentially profound implications for insurers, financial stability and the economy, Carney told the room, warning that the challenges currently posed by climate change pale in significance compared to those that may yet be to come. While there is still time to act, the window of opportunity is finite and shrinking, he said. Carney identified three channels through which climate change has the potential to affect financial stability. They are: Physical risks (impacts of increased natural disasters driven by climate change) (impacts of increased natural disasters driven by climate change) Liability risks (impacts that could arise if those who suffer loss or damage from the effects of climate change seek compensation from entities they hold responsible) (impacts that could arise if those who suffer loss or damage from the effects of climate change seek compensation from entities they hold responsible) Transition risks (financial risks potentially presenting as a result of transitioning to a lower carbon economy) Carneys speech was a call to action to avoid potential disastrous ramifications brought about by climate change the tragedy on the horizon. So how should the Australian insurance industry prepare to address the potential impacts of climate change? The [range of] insurance products offered in Australia that could be impacted by climate change is very broad, and includes homeowners insurance, flood insurance, property and business interruption insurances, agricultural insurances and liability insurances, says Samantha Kelly, a Sydney-based partner at law firm DLA Piper. The insurance industry needs to ensure that it has access to suitable and up-to-date modelling information when developing products and assessing risk. Failure to do so may result in a situation where premiums are unaffordable, reserve funding is depleted, or certain assets become uninsurable, she says. The insurance industry could, for example, consider introducing their own codes when insuring businesses, to ensure that buildings and other physical assets are constructed in a manner that is most adaptive to the risks presented by climate change. Asked about the Australian regulatory landscape with respect to climate change, Kelly says: In our opinion, comparative to the international market, the issue of climate change in Australia remains relatively underregulated. The inconsistency in regulation and policies developed during the most recent political terms actually represents more of a challenge to businesses. Without consistent regulation, businesses are unable to effectively plan for the future. As in many other situations, preventative measures trump a cure, and when it comes to weather events, preparation is far less costly than efforts to resolve problems that arise later on. Whether theyre caused or exacerbated by climate change or not, you want to have a level of resilience against extreme events that are feasibly going to occur in the lifetime of the asset, because its generally going to be much cheaper to incorporate resilience at the beginning than to try and fix things later when theyre damaged, says Kate Mackenzie, manager of investment and governance at The Climate Institute. She points to the Productivity Commission reports into climate adaptation and natural disaster resilience. Theres a tendency to uninvest in resilience to the effects of weather, and thats something that we could anticipate will become more and more of a problem as time goes on. Work in progress Sharanjit Paddam, an actuary at Taylor Fry, says while theres still much to be done, theres significant activity already being undertaken by insurers to address climate change. Theres a substantial amount of action being taken by insurers in terms of thinking about this transition to a [low carbon] economy, he says, raising IAGs role as founding member of the Australian Business Roundtable for Disaster Resilience and Safer Communities, and Suncorps work with local councils to encourage resilience efforts. Were also seeing insurers taking leadership in this through working with the United Nations Environment Programme and their finance initiative, he adds. Paddam says the transition to a low carbon economy offers considerable opportunities for insurers. For example, renewable energy projects, design and construction risk [and] performance risk. Theres also potential to provide cover, for example, to solar farms or to wind farms because of changing weather patterns through things like weather derivatives. Theres also public policy risk. If the government suddenly decides to remove renewable energy subsidies, some insurers are offering cover for that type of political decision. Theres also substantial opportunity to invest in green bonds. Weve seen huge amounts of action on this. Even Goldman Sachs is committing millions and large resources to this area because, as we transition to a low carbon economy, these green bonds finance the investment in renewable energy and low carbon consistent infrastructure. Making a contribution As to how insurance businesses of all sizes can prepare for climate changes potential impacts, Martina Linnenluecke, a senior lecturer in sustainability at the University of Queensland, says there are a number of avenues available. First is knowledge generation, she explains. This includes understanding climate impacts, regulatory impacts, as well as adaptation and mitigation options. Linnenluecke cites work being done by Munich Re. The company has started to support risk transfer solutions, including the commercialisation of renewable energies. She adds, Climate change will have adverse impacts on both the affordability [and] availability of insurance for high-risk assets and/or high-risk locations. Insurers could join in lobby groups or public-private arrangements to argue a case for collective action on mitigation and adaptation. Discussing how insurance brokers could be taking climate change into account in providing advice to SME clients, Samantha Kelly highlights that the expected impacts of climate change in Australia are likely to affect almost all industries in some way. Insurance brokers should be ensuring that SME clients are aware of the risks that their business is uniquely exposed to, as well as the overall risks that are facing Australia. Certain businesses may be located in areas that are known to have been historically exposed to flooding or bushfire. Those businesses should be made aware of the risks associated with property damage, business interruption, and stock loss. Linnenluecke thinks its important that brokers, in advising clients on their insurance needs, place considerable focus on advice about potential risks resulting from climate change. She belongs to a research team that recently published a paper entitled, Planetary Boundaries: Implications for asset impairment. Science tells us that there are nine planetary boundaries that define a safe operating space for humanity and should not be exceeded, one of them being climate change, Linnenluecke says. The paper talks about how each of the boundaries can cause impairments for firms. This is a must-read for insurance brokers giving advice to clients about how their business can be affected by not only climate change but the other eight planetary boundaries. Kelly concludes: The insurance industry is uniquely placed to incentivise good environmental practices, while also accounting for the cost of extreme weather events, before such risks occur. In order to ensure that the insurance industry is able to best respond to climate change and prevent a situation where risks become uninsurable, efforts should be made to increase the availability and awareness of suitable information, in order to ensure product innovation, adaptive policies and consistent regulation. The New South Wales Government has released a position paper on the sharing economy which has been welcomed by insurers as a way to better regulate the sharing economy.The position paper outlines the Government stance on a wide range of aspects of the sharing economy, including services such as Airbnb and Uber, and notes that last year the sharing economy boosted the state economy by $504 million.Minister for innovation and better regulation, Victor Dominello, said that the sharing economy will continue to grow in importance for the state.The economic benefits relating to the collaborative economy are already significant and will continue to grow, as more consumers choose to link or share directly with providers via online and mobile platforms, Dominello said.Digital innovation is transforming the way people do business in every city and every country around the world. The reality is the collaborative economy is here to stay.We are living in the information age and it is vital that government policies embrace new technologies and enable businesses to operate with certainty. Ben Bessell , chief executive Australian Business Division for IAG , told Insurance Business that the very nature of the sharing economy demands a collaborative approach from Government, business and consumers.The sharing economy is rapidly evolving and we are supportive of more clarity around how this will be regulated in the future, Bessell said.We believe the best response is for government, industry and community stakeholders to work together to identify how we can better protect Australians who choose to participate in the sharing economy and keep pace with their changing needs.Bessell noted that the advent of the sharing economy provides the insurance industry with great opportunities to further develop their customer offering.The sharing economy is a dynamic and innovative sector with huge potential to influence both the domestic and global economy, Bessell continued.With an increasing number of Australians participating in the exchange of shared products and services, it is vital that there are clear boundaries in place to help protect both business owners and customers.For the insurance industry, this reinforces the importance of evolving our customer offering to include products and services tailored to customers participating in the sharing economy. We are working at a rapid pace to keep ahead of emerging digital trends and to continue to deliver first-to-market solutions for our customers.The Insurance Council of Australia (ICA), welcomed the Government paper as Rob Whelan, CEO of the ICA, spoke of the important role insurance will play in the future of the sharing economy.Insurers agree that sharing economy companies and those who operate them must have appropriate insurance policies to cover customer and third-party risk, Whelan said.The ICAs member companies are already responding to market demands by creating products to protect the thousands of new micro-business owners and operators, and their many customers.Initiatives like this one that seek to provide more certainty about the regulatory environment governing sharing economy businesses can help speed up that process.Whelan also stressed the tightrope that Government legislation has to walk as it balances new businesses with more traditional entities as he said the ICA remains committed to the principle competitive neutrality.The position paper states the importance of achieving the right balance of regulation so that innovation is not stifled. While recognising the extraordinary economic potential of these new digital business platforms, the ICA believes traditional business models are entitled to a level playing field so theyre not subject to regulations and compliance costs that digital startups can skirt, Whelan said.The ICA and its member companies will continue to work with all levels of government as they seek to respond to the changing business environment.To read the full Government position paper, click here International insurance giant XL Catlin has announced that it has opened a new office in Brisbane, its third office in Australia.The Brisbane office will be initially staffed by Geoff Still and Steve Rogers, covering property and casualty underwriting respectively with expansion planned into other lines over time.Steve Williamson, regional engineering leader for XL Catlins property engineering division Global Asset Protection Services (GAPS) will also be based in the new office. Robin Johnson , country manager for XL Catlin Australia, said the expansion will help the business develop in the Queensland market.Opening this office continues our Australasian expansion, Johnson said.It will allow us to get closer to our Queensland brokers and clients, to be more responsive to their needs and provide them with the service excellence that they expect from XL Catlin.Still joined XL Catlin in 2013 and has over 15 years worth of experience in property underwriting and broking with six years in the Brisbane market.Rogers has nearly two decades of industry experience in the liability space both claims and underwriting and joined XL Catlin in 2008 whilst Williams joined the business in 1995 before moving to Australia with GAPS in 2004.XL Catlin also has offices in Sydney and Melbourne with more than 100 employees working across the business which opened its Australian operation in 1998. Is this mega case really over? Its not just the loss of loyal customers that worries jeweler Howard Diamond, or the extra tax burden that businesses like his may have to carry as General Electric pulls the plug on Fairfield, Connecticut. As he approaches retirement and thinks about selling his home in town, he also fears an exodus of GE employees driving down real estate values. You feel badly for yourself, but you feel badly for everybody else, too, said Diamond, an owner of Fairfield Center Jewelers. With average household incomes far exceeding $100,000, Fairfield has enough going for it to weather the change. But GEs departure has many in the town of 60,000 people and other nearby shoreline communities fretting over the loss of revenue, charitable spending, and the prestige that comes with being home to a storied, $130 billion company. GE announced last week it will move its global headquarters to Boston and leave behind its sprawling campus in a rural area of Fairfield, where it employs 800 people. The move is expected to occur in stages and be completed in 2018. The company is the towns biggest payer of property taxes, at $1.6 million annually, and the income tax on company salaries boosts towns up and down Connecticuts Gold Coast. But Fairfield First Selectman Michael Tetreau said the impact goes deeper. Its definitely a hit on our community. Not just the economy, but the community, said Tetreau, who counts friends among the GE employees. These are people who have been very involved. GE employees hold seats on boards of charities across Fairfield County, and the GE Foundation has given millions to local schools and other causes. After the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in nearby Newtown, GE lent the services of several executives to help the town manage the aftermath and gave a $15 million gift. Tetreau plans to meet with GE to discuss how to minimize the impact on Fairfield. There is hope another large employer will eventually buy the GE property. To overcome the blow to Fairfields image in the meantime, he said he expects the town will also mount a campaign to emphasize the towns benefits, including strong schools for employees with families. Several people interviewed in town had angry words for elected leaders, looking to cast blame. It was dissatisfaction with proposed state business taxes that led GE to announce in June that it was exploring a move, although the company said last week that it began evaluating its headquarters location three years ago. Candace Adams, president of Berkshire Hathaway Services New England, said she expects houses that come onto the market will be absorbed without major disruptions. The biggest hit, she said, is likely be the psychological impact on buyers in a region where GE has been part of the civic fabric so long. Diamond, the jeweler, said Fairfield will be fine in the long run. In 1974, when his uncle was among the business leaders involved in the push to bring GE from New York City, he said the big concern was traffic. Nobody talks about that anymore, and he said the town will adapt to this, too. There will be an adjustment period, he said. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Connecticut Cases filed with the Maine Bureau of Insurance in 2015 resulted in nearly $1.5 million in recovered funds for Maine residents, according to Maine Insurance Superintendent Eric Cioppa. More than $1.2 million was recovered by the Bureaus Consumer Health Care Division, and more than $260,000 was recovered by the Property and Casualty Division, Cioppa said. In 2015, the Bureau fielded more than 6,400 inquiries and investigated more than 800 complaints. The Bureaus Property and Casualty Division, which assists consumers with questions involving auto and homeowners insurance, handled 3,209 inquiries and 274 written complaints. The Consumer Health Care Division, which assists with questions involving health-related insurance products that include individual and small group health, life, long-term care, Medicare supplement and annuities, received 3,205 inquiries and 534 written complaints. The Bureau of Insurance takes its responsibility to address cases from consumers and businesses very seriously, said Maine Gov. Paul R. LePage. These recoveries in 2015 generally represent claims that were initially denied or delayed, although some were recovered on behalf of individuals who were sold inappropriate policies or who were otherwise victims of illegal sales practices, LePage said. The Bureaus role is to regulate the insurance industry in Maine, Cioppa added. One of its responsibilities is making sure claims are appropriately processed and paid in a timely way. Source: The Maine Bureau of Insurance Topics Maine Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner Teresa Miller has announced a proposal to protect health care consumers from surprise balance bills and is soliciting public comment. Surprise balance bills happen when a consumer receives emergency care or has made a good faith effort to use health care providers and facilities in the consumers health insurance network, but has unexpectedly received a service from a provider or at a facility that is out-of-network, then receives a bill for that service. At a public hearing in October, I heard from consumers who, despite their best efforts to use providers in their health insurance network, still received out-of-network bills that were in the hundreds and in some cases thousands of dollars, Miller said. Miller said the goal of this proposal is to take consumers out of billing disputes between insurers and health care providers. The measures would need to be adopted through state legislation. She said the Pennsylvania Insurance Department looks forward to working collaboratively with the General Assembly, consumers, and stakeholder groups to draft legislation on this issue. As I said at the public hearing, when an individual is faced with a major medical issue, that person needs to concentrate on getting well, and not worry about whether an unexpected medical bill is coming in tomorrows mail, Miller said. The proposed plan would protect consumers who seek health care at in-network facilities, or from in-network providers, from being billed by an out-of-network provider at a cost more than what they would owe to a provider for any in-network cost sharing under the consumers health plan. For example, if a consumers health insurance plan has a $50 co-pay for a certain service delivered by an in-network provider, that consumer would not be liable for more than $50 for that same service from an out-of-network provider. The proposal provides several options for insurers and health care providers to reach agreement on payment. If the provider and insurer cannot reach an agreement on payment, the matter would go to arbitration. Both sides would submit their offers with supporting documentation, and the arbitrators decision would be binding. In no case would the consumer be liable for anything beyond the cost-sharing due for the service if it had been rendered by an in-network provider. Miller said the open comment process would allow the Insurance Department to get input from various stakeholders, including insurers, hospitals, and health care providers, all of whom also testified at the Departments public hearing on this topic in October. A link to the proposal and information on how to offer comments can be found at the Departments website, www.insurance.pa.gov. The deadline for offering comments is Feb. 29, 2016. Source: The Pennsylvania Insurance Department Topics Pennsylvania PZU SA appointed Michal Krupinski, an executive at Bank of America Inc. and former deputy treasury minister, as chief executive officer of Polands largest insurer, in the latest change as Polands new government extends its influence over the economy. Krupinski, 34, takes over the post as the state-controlled company faces challenges including lower income from investments and a new tax on its assets. PZUs shares have fallen 5.6 percent this year, extending a 30 percent decline in 2015. Krupinskis appointment is part of a shake-up at state institutions and government-controlled companies as Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo seeks to extend the influence of her Law & Justice party after winning parliamentary elections last year. Krupinski will replace Andrzej Klesyk, who resigned in December after failing to secure government support. The countrys biggest utilities, Energa SA and Enea SA, as well the largest refiner, PKN Orlen SA, whose biggest shareholder is the state, have also dismissed their CEOs. PZU last year bought a stake in Alior Bank SA as part of a strategy to diversify into the banking industry, just as Szydlos election victory heralded trouble for Polish banks. Following Hungarys example, Poland moved to convert foreign- currency mortgages into zloty and imposed a levy on lenders and insurers that will drain them of 4.4 billion zloty ($1.1 billion), or a third of last years profits, according to government estimates. Copyright 2022 Bloomberg. Topics Carriers Cobalt Insurance Holdings Ltd., the London-based provider of Shariah compliant insurance and reinsurance has announced a strategic investment by Armour Group Holdings Ltd., the Bermuda-based diversified insurance group. Financial considerations were not disclosed. The strategy of Bermuda-based Armour focuses on niche operations in the re/insurance and asset management sectors. Armour was formed by Brad Huntingdon and John Williams in 2007. Armours operations include underwriting operations, re/insurance companies, asset management companies and specialist service companies. Armour joins the original Cobalt investors including Capita and the Bank of London and Middle East. The investment coincides with additions to the board of Cobalt of former Lloyds Chairman Max Taylor as chairman, and Sean Dalton of Armour as a non-executive director. John Turner, chairman of Aon Risk Solutions (UK & Americas), and former Brit Insurance Group CFO Andrew Baddeley also join the board in non-executive capacities. Cobalt CEO Richard Bishop welcomed the investment and board appointments. The investment by Armour and the strengthening of the board will assist Cobalt achieve its objective of becoming a wider financial group serving a growing market in conjunction with leading London market capacity, Bishop said. Cobalts position as the Shariah re/insurance distributor for Lloyds and London market fits well with our niche strategies at Armour. We have observed with interest the impressive development of Cobalts leadership position in this fast growing sector, according to Sean Dalton at Armour. We have developed not only a model to serve brokers and their clients seeking Shariah compliant insurance and reinsurance solutions but also a range of products that interface with insurers within the London insurance market, Bishop went on to say. This is a highly skilled and experienced sector of the global insurance market that is actively seeking diverse and added-value propositions, particularly within emerging markets. Our capacity providers have strong financial ratings and therefore deliver the confidence that our clients require, he continued. Cobalt also announced it is moving offices to the 4th Floor of 107 Leadenhall Street in London. Source : Cobalt Insurance Holdings Ltd. Topics Reinsurance London Police communications show law enforcement authorities were aware of a powerful August storm heading toward a suburban Chicago festival, but didnt order an evacuation ahead of a fatal tent collapse, according to a newspaper report. One person died and nearly two dozen others were injured in the Aug. 2 tent collapse in Wood Dale. Authorities also didnt direct people to a nearby school, despite having a tentative agreement to use the facility for shelter, according to a story in The Chicago Tribune. The newspaper cited 87 pages of documents and audio records from a 911 call and police communication obtained through an open records request. Lawsuits on behalf of the victims allege that organizers shouldnt have gathered visitors together under a poorly secured tent. Though the tent vendor, Classic Party Rentals, has denied the claims. They supplied tents, tables and various equipment, attorney Michael Progar said of Classic Party Rentals, but they obviously didnt organize anything. The city of Wood Dales managers office and a committee of elected officials coordinate Prairie Fest, however the city isnt a defendant in the lawsuits. Patrick Moran, an attorney representing the city, said police officers didnt direct anyone into the tent. He declined to discuss the lack of a formal evacuation. Killed in the collapse was 35-year-old Steven Nincic of Wood Dale. Family members and attorneys for another person seriously injured, 81-year-old Lorraine Nocek of unincorporated Melrose Park, claim injuries led to Noceks Jan. 4 death. Related: Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) and Markel FirstComp, a division of Markel Service, Inc., have formed a new relationship through which eligible small business owners across the country can qualify for workers compensation insurance at competitive rates. NFIB, which represents 325,000 local businesses in the U.S., named Markel FirstComp as their newest preferred provider of workers compensation insurance coverage for its members. NFIB said it chose Markel FirstComp based on its financial strength, focus on small business, and its ability to customize plans to meet the needs of individual customers. Benefits of the NFIB/Markel FirstComp relationship will include for NFIBs small business owners such as: Pricing credits Exclusive NFIB policyholder dividends Tools and information designed to enhance businesses and employees safety Benefit availability and eligibility varies by state. The program will be administered by NFIB Member Services Corporation (MSC), a wholly owned, for profit, subsidiary of NFIB and MSC Insurance Agency of Tennessee, LLC., a wholly owned subsidiary of MSC. NFIB is a small business advocate with offices in every state capital and hundreds of thousands of members nationwide. Markel Specialty, a division of Markel Corporation, provides insurance for both commercial customers and individuals. Types of insurance offered include property and casualty, workers compensation, accident, and programs featuring industry or risk-specific coverage packages. Topics Workers' Compensation Commercial Lines Business Insurance The U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up a new constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act, turning away an appeal that said lawmakers used flawed legislative procedures to pass the measure. Opponents of President Barack Obamas healthcare law were seeking to sway a court that has upheld core parts of the measure twice since 2012, most recently in June. In the latest case, they argued that the law violated the constitutional requirement that revenue-raising legislation start in the House before proceeding to the Senate. In declining to hear that contention, the high court all but ensured that the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, will remain intact through the November election. The rebuff leaves health care as one of the core issues in the presidential and congressional campaigns. The latest challenge was pressed by the Pacific Legal Foundation, an advocacy group based in Sacramento, California, on behalf of Matt Sissel, an Iowa artist and small-business owner. The suit had gained little traction in the lower courts, even as it provoked a party-line divide on the legal reasoning. A federal trial judge in Washington upheld the law, as did a unanimous panel of three Democratic-appointed judges. A larger panel of judges then voted not to reconsider the case. Although the four Republican appointees on the 11-member Washington appeals court would have heard arguments, they also said they would have upheld the law for different reasons. At issue was a rarely invoked constitutional provision known as the origination clause, which says that all bills raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives. Revenue-Raising Bill? Sissels lawyers said Obamacare qualified as a revenue- raising bill, in part, because of the 2012 Supreme Court decision interpreting the law as imposing a tax on people who forgo health insurance. The three-judge panel rejected that argument, saying that under past Supreme Court cases, the origination clause applies only when a laws primary purpose is to raise revenue. Judge Judith Rogers said money collected by the government was a byproduct of the laws effort to encourage participation in the health insurance system. The four Republican appointees, led by Judge Brett Kavanaugh, called that conclusion untenable, saying the measure would raise almost $500 billion over 10 years. Kavanaugh said, however, that the law had met the requirement that it originate in the House. When the Senate took up the issue in 2009, it started with a House bill on an unrelated matter and substituted what became the core of Obamacare. The House then approved it, and Obama signed the measure into law. Congresss longstanding practice has been to permit Senate amendments of exactly the kind at issue here, Kavanaugh said. The case is Sissel v. Department of Health and Human Services, 15-543. Copyright 2022 Bloomberg. Dale Arnold, who worked for Wisconsin plastics maker Flambeau, chose not to take his work-sponsored health assessment and biometric screening. The company responded by pulling his insurance coverage. Like many employers, Flambeau uses a wellness program to cut insurance costs by encouraging healthy employee habits. In the past, submitting to on-site tests of blood pressure, body-mass, and cholesterol meant saving a few hundred dollars. Now companies such as Flambeau have gone a step farther, denying healthcare entirely to those who dont participate. People like Arnold must instead pay for more expensive coverage through the governments COBRA program. According to several federal courtsincluding one that ruled in favor of Flambeauthis is all perfectly legal. In a case filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the U.S. government argued that Flambeaus wellness program didnt comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, which limits companies from requiring medical exams or personal health information from workers. Denying employer-sponsored coverage crosses the line from voluntary to coercive, the EEOC contended. Not so, said a federal judge in Madison, Wisc., who ruled on Dec. 31 that employers can deny coverage without violating the ADA as long as the data gleaned from the wellness program is used for purposes of overall health coverage. In this case, the screenings helped Flambeau determine the risk of its insurance pool. The EEOC says it is reviewing the decision. Samuel Bagenstos, a professor at the University of Michigan, claims the ruling turns voluntariness on its head. It would make it all but impossible to enforce the voluntariness requirement for requests for medical information, Bagenstos said. In that sense its probably the wrong reading of the statute. Over the last few years, wellness programs have become a popular way for companies to try to curb rising health-care costs. Employers spent a record $693 per employee on such initiatives last year, up from $430 the previous year, according to data from Fidelity Investments. Wellness programs, an umbrella term for employer-supported initiatives to improve and promote employee health, were one of the most popular benefits last year, with three quarters of organizations surveyed by the Society for Human Resource Management offering some sort of program. Successes have been claimed. Companies that require health care surcharges for smokers, for example, say employees subsequently cut tobacco use, a recent SHRM survey found. Yet, despite the popularity of wellness programs among employers, their efficacy is unclear. Participation rates hovered at 24 percent in 2014, according to Gallup research which concluded that, when employees dont engage, the programs definitely dont work. Moreover, such programs tend to see results only over the long term. Researchers in a seven-year study at PepsiCo found that participation was associated with lower health-care costs, but only after the third year. To spur workers to buy into wellness and all its health benefits (and savings for the company), its common for employers to offer a reward of money toward health insurance premiums. In the Flambeau case, the company wasnt seeing results, so it upped the ante from a $600 credit to threatening a health insurance cutoff. Stephen Alfred Di Tullio, a lawyer for Flambeau, praised the court ruling, saying that from the get go they always felt this program wasnt discriminating. Employees have been getting roughed up in this nascent fight. The Flambeau decision was their second defeat after suing employers who got creative in pushing wellness programs. In 2012, a federal appeals court in Atlanta found in favor of an employer, using the same reasoning about the ADA to affirm a lower court ruling. In response to the confusion, the EEOC last spring put out proposed guidelines, drawing hundreds of critical comments from all sides. Under the new guidelines, the maximum penalty an employer can impose on non-participating workers is 30 percent of the total cost of employee-only coverage. Youre seeing a real tension to basically incent people to live healthier lives so that they can use insurance less, and lose less days at work, and be more productive, said Paul Secunda, a professor of law at Marquette University, who specializes in labor and benefits law. On the other hand theres the medical privacy concerns of individuals. Secunda agreed with Bagenstos that the reasoning in the federal cases is wrong. People on all sides expect more legal activity. The EEOC has two other lawsuits pending that challenge employer programs. Its new guidelines, which take effect next month, are also likely to trigger additional court fights. Employers will have to wait and see what happens, said Steve Wojcik, vice president of public policy at the National Business Group on Health, a nonprofit that represents large employers. I think the bigger picture for this is that the EEOC should clarify through the regulatory process what it means. Related: Copyright 2022 Bloomberg. Topics Legislation An Oklahoma familys eviction from their dream house following allegations of check fraud is threatening to derail the first trial over General Motors Co.s deadly ignition-switch flaw. Robert Scheuer, a mail carrier who claims the defect disabled his air bag in a 2014 car wreck, blames GM for the eviction, arguing that memory loss he suffered in the accident caused him to misplace a $49,500 check for a down payment on the home in suburban Tulsa, Oklahoma. GMs lawyers said they uncovered evidence that Scheuer, his wife and two children were actually kicked out of the house because a real estate agent found Scheuer had faked a $441,430.72 check stub from his federal government retirement account as proof of funds to close the sale. The evidence, revealed after the trial had already started, suggests Scheuer misled his own counsel, as well as the court and the jury, GM attorney Richard Godfrey said in a filing Tuesday in Manhattan federal court, where the trial is in its second week. The carmaker asked the court for permission to allow two new witnesses to testify about the evidence, the real estate agent and a forensic technology expert sent to Tulsa by GM. The original check was for only $430.72 before it was altered and had a different date, GM said in the filing. Multiple Cases The check-fraud claims, if successful, wont affect GMs liability over the defect, which has already triggered more than $2 billion in legal fees and settlements. Still, it would be a poor start for plaintiffs counting on bellwether cases like Scheuers to gauge how much they stand to recover for thousands of clients. U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman heard discussions about the development on Tuesday without the jury present, including GMs claim that the new evidence contradicts testimony given by the Scheuers in pretrial depositions and on the witness stand. The judge said he wanted Scheuers wife, Lisa, to appear in his courtroom on Wednesday so he could advise her of her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. He also said she may want to hire her own attorney. Oklahoma Crash Scheuer, 49, sued after his 2003 Saturn Ion flew off an Oklahoma highway and crashed into a tree in May 2014, leading to neck and back pain. GM argues the accident wasnt serious enough to deploy the air bag, and that Scheuers injuries predated the crash. Three weeks after the accident, Scheuer and his wife purchased the home in Sand Springs, Oklahoma, under a contract calling for $275,950 in cash, though no cash was ever provided and they were evicted in September 2014, GM said. The documents about the cash offer and the discovery of the allegedly altered check werent made available to GM until the real estate agent heard about the trial on the news and came forward, the company said. The real estate agents communications also show that Scheuer was on vacation shortly after the accident, when he was purportedly bedridden, GM says. Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor who isnt involved in the case, said the development looks bad for the Scheuers. Well have to see how the judge and Hilliard respond, he said. Scheuers Lawyer We are assessing GMs allegations about a situation we were unaware of, Robert Hilliard, Robert Scheuers attorney and one of the leading plaintiffs lawyers in the U.S., said in an e-mail about the claim of check fraud. GMs court filing on Tuesday included dozens of attachments purporting to back up its claim, including printouts of loan documents, e-mails and a photo of the disputed check stub that Scheuer allegedly sent to the real estate agent in a text message. The documents show a typical transaction for a newly built house, including requests for extra gutters, sprinklers and wood flooring, deteriorating into allegations of a widespread fraud over a period of a few months. Heard you and Robert were at Pottery Barn Saturday afternoon (after being at the bank) and were still telling them you had money coming in, an e-mail to Lisa Scheuer from Concept Builders Inc. said on Sept. 9, 2014. How many other people are the two of you trying to scam?' We Trusted After Lisa Scheuer denied the claim, the employee from Concept Builders said the fake check was obvious in hindsight, but we didnt think to look closely because we trusted him. The jury continued to hear other evidence in the case Tuesday without any knowledge of the dispute over the check stub. So far the testimony has focused on details about the design of the ignition switch, video depositions of GM engineers, and live testimony from the designer of the air bag, who claims it should have deployed. Regardless of how GM paints it, the heart of this case is that Mr. Scheuers air bag did not deploy as a result of GMs misconduct, and whatever dirt they throw at plaintiff and his wife doesnt change that, Hilliard said. The case is Fleck v. General Motors LLC, 1:14-cv-08176, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan). Copyright 2022 Bloomberg. Topics Agencies Fraud Oklahoma South Pittsburg, Tenn., officials are hoping to find a way to end flash flooding in the town after a Christmas morning storm damaged property and killed one resident. Marion County Mayor David Jackson says it is the second flash flood in less than three years. The Chattanooga Times Free Press reports Jackson and Southeast Tennessee Development District Executive Director Beth Jones have put together a task force to look for a solution. Jones said the task force meetings will be open to the public. She said local communities will need to work together on a solution because development, clear-cutting and rock harvesting all lead to more runoff. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Flood Tennessee Since my Viking Warriors series is contemporary paranormal, I spend more time reading about Norse mythology than history. Although when you study Vikings, the two are very much linked. And it was because of the enthusiasm of one of my history teachers that I first became so interested in my Norse forefather explorers and their gods and goddesses. Skane Coat of Arms I grew up in the very southern part of Sweden and history lessons were a little problematic for my school teachers. If they went by the standard curriculum, wed be studying all the kings of Sweden and the various wars they fought. However, the southernmost tip of Sweden was actually Danish until 1658 when it changed hands according to the Treaty of Roskilde. The people where a bit reluctant to change nationality and organized an uprising against the Swedish militia. It wasnt until 1720 that things settled down and Skane province (Scania) finally flew the blue and yellow flag. The one thing my history teachers could agree on though was that way before the people in Scandinavia were divided into the three kingdoms of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, the first major city of the region was Birka. Established in the middle of the 8th century on an island just outside contemporary Stockholm, it was an important trade and cultural center. Goods from Scandinavia, Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the Orient were bought and sold in Birka. It was also the site of the first known Christian congregation in Sweden. Its a UNESCO World Heritage Site and daily guided tours introduce visitors to the Viking era through reconstructed buildings and boats. A small silver statue found at Uppakra, nicknamed "Helge." But now the Swedish history books may have to be rewritten. It turns out that Birka was not the first major trading post in the region. In 1934, a farm was built close to Uppakra Church just outside Lund in Skane. While digging to create the foundation, the farmer discovered what turned out to be a Bronze to Iron Age settlement. It was obvious to archaeologists that Uppakra was a major find, but the sheer size of the project seemed to be too much to take on. The funds to create a proper archaeological site didnt become available until the 1990s. At that point, archaeologists extended the site and introduced metal detectors in the search. They discovered close to 30 000 gold, silver, and bronze objects. I visited the site last summer and was fascinated to watch scientists sift through layers of dirt that covers buildings, surgical instruments, pottery, jewelry, coins, and bones left behind by the people and animals who lived here since 100 AD. As you can imagine, even though serious digging has progressed for twenty five years now, only a very small part of the total find has been revealed. One of the finds I find particularly interesting is an unusual building. Its much taller than dwellings revealed at other Viking settlements and the amount of weapons, jewelry, and small statues buried inside shows that it may have been a house of worship where people gave offerings to the gods. Its the earliest example of such a house that has been discovered. Another rich finding is the amount of surgical instruments found at Uppakra, giving new insights into the medical knowledge of people of the Iron Age. The very best part about Uppakra Archaeological Center is that it is located ten minutes outside the town where my mom lives. That means Ill have plenty of opportunity to revisit and see new fascinating historical discoveries come to light as the archaeologists slowly sifts through the dirt, millimeter by millimeter. For more information about the treasures of Uppakra, visit www.uppakra.se or check out the centers Facebook page And here is where you can find me: Spending on information technology worldwide is expected to see little growth in 2016, although organizations will pony up more for data center technology, software, and IT services. Those are among the conclusions of Gartner, which yesterday released its Worldwide IT Spending Forecast for 2016. According to Gartner, worldwide IT spending is forecast to total $3.54 trillion dollars in 2016. That is just a 0.6 percent increase over 2015 spending of $3.52 trillion dollars. Last year saw the largest U.S. dollar drop in IT spending since Gartner began tracking IT spending, the firm noted: $216 billion dollars less was spent on IT in 2015 than in 2014, and 2014 spending levels wont be surpassed until 2019. "The rising U.S. dollar is the villain behind 2015 results," said John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner. "U.S. multinationals' revenue faced currency headwinds in 2015. However, in 2016 those headwinds go away and they can expect an additional 5 percent growth." The Gartner Worldwide IT Spending Forecast is a leading indicator of major technology trends across the hardware, software, IT services and telecom markets, Lovelock noted. For more than a decade, global IT and business executives have been using these highly anticipated quarterly reports to recognize market opportunities and challenges, and base their critical business decisions on proven methodologies rather than guesswork, he said. There is some good news in the report. Data center systems' spending is projected to reach $75 billion in 2016, a 3.0 percent increase from 2015. The server market is the segment that has seen the largest change since the previous quarter's forecast. The server market has seen stronger-than-expected demand from the hyperscale sector, which has lasted longer than expected. Typically, this segment has spikey demand which lasts for a couple of quarters before moderating. Demand in this segment is expected to continue to be strong through 2016, Lovelock explained. The worsening economic environment in emerging markets has had little effect on the global enterprise software spending forecast for 2016, with IT spending on pace to total $326 billion, a 5.3 percent increase from 2015. However, key countries in emerging markets, particularly Brazil and Russia, face escalating political and economic challenges. Organizations in those regions must balance cost cutting with growth opportunities during times of economic concern. Spending in the IT services market is expected to return to growth in 2016, following a decline of 4.5 percent in 2015. IT services spending is projected to reach 940 billion in 2016, up 3.1 percent from 2015. This is due to accelerating momentum in cloud infrastructure adoption and buyer acceptance of the cloud model. The not-so-good news: The devices market (PCs, ultramobiles, mobile phones, tablets and printers) is forecast to decline 1.9 percent in 2016. The combination of economic conditions preventing countries such as Russia, Japan and Brazil from returning to stronger growth, together with a shift in phone spending in emerging markets to lower-cost phones, is overlaid with weak tablet adoption in regions where there was an expectation of growth, Lovelock said. Ultramobile premium devices are expected to drive the PC market forward with the move to Windows 10 and Intel Skylake-based PCs, Lovelock said. Gartner has slightly reduced the speed of adoption over the forecast period, as buying in Eurasia, Japan, and the Middle East and North Africa moves away from purchasing these relatively more expensive devices in the short term, but expect them to revert back to buying in 2017 as the economic environment stabilizes. Telecom services spending is also projected to decline in 2016, by 1.2 percent, with spending reaching $1,454 trillion. Lovelock said this segment will be impacted by the abolition of roaming charges in the European Union and parts of North America. While this will increase mobile voice and data traffic, it will not be enough to counter the corresponding loss of revenue from lost roaming charges and premiums, he explained. Stock exchanges allow investors and traders to make money by providing them with a marketplace for trading securities. They also allow companies to raise money by listing different kinds of securities. Exchanges collect transaction fees from market participants and companies in exchange for providing such services. They also offer various products and services used for trading and related activities. The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is one of the worlds largest stock exchanges. Its origins date back to 1792. Located on Wall Street in New York City, the NYSE has one trading floor used for equities and another for its options exchange. This article explores the various sources of revenue and income for the NYSE. Key Takeaways The New York Stock Exchange is among the largest stock exchanges in the world. It maintains an efficient marketplace with fair price discovery while ensuring sufficient market liquidity. Listing companies pay the exchange one-time listing fees along with annual fees. Market data constitute a large portion of revenue earnings. Other revenue streams include trading software and technology, registration and regulatory fees, and NYSE governance services. Transaction Fee Revenue People come to the NYSE as it maintains an efficient marketplace with fair price discovery and ensures sufficient liquidity in the market. The NYSE charges fees in various forms to these market participants. Each trade that occurs on the NYSE attracts a transaction fee from the trading parties. All trades occur through registered market participants, including brokerage firms, trading houses, and asset management companies. In addition to the transaction fee, these participants also pay a one-time registration fee and a recurring annual membership fee to the NYSE. Individuals who are interested in investing in the NYSE can do so by purchasing shares of the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE)or a related index fund, such as the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF Trust (DIA). Listing Fee Revenue Companies that need capital can raise money by listing their securities on the NYSE after meeting certain eligibility criteria. They need to pay a one-time listing fee and then a recurring listing fee annually and trading services on the NYSE platform. Equities remain the most common securities listed, but the NYSE allows other instruments to be listed, including: The initial one-time listing fee is usually based on the total number of shares to be listed through the issue. After that, the NYSE charges fees based on corporate actions, like the issuance of additional shares through a rights issue, bonus issue, and stock split, among others. There are more than 2,400 companies listed on the NYSE. Listings amount to more than $28.8 trillion in market capitalization. Roughly 97% of listings are in the energy and utilities sector followed by financials (89%). Industrials, consumer goods, and health care made up 82%. 65%, and 71% of listings, respectively. Data Fee Revenue Market data constitute a large portion of revenue earnings for the NYSE. This includes real-time data, historical data, summary data, and reference data. Market participants need historical data for research and analysis, real-time data for ongoing trading and investment activities, summary data for reporting and auditing, and reference data for security-specific details like symbols and corporate actions. Based on its proprietary data, the NYSE offers all such data through various data feeds, end-of-day reports, and data software products. For example, a trader willing to backtest his newly developed high-frequency trading algorithm would need an NYSE data feed. A researcher checking the past performance of an NYSE-listed stock when it declared a dividend, on the other hand, would like to check the historical data. Full information regarding NYSE data services and data products pricing can be found here. Revenue The NYSE was acquired by the ICE on Nov. 13, 2013. Since then, NYSE-specific revenue data are unavailable, as ICE annual reports now consolidate all data across multiple exchanges of the ICE Group. The exchange regularly posted healthy revenue numbers from different streams of business. These include the following revenue streams: Trading Software and Technology: The NYSE offers its technology services and trading software to large institutional clients like mutual funds and asset management companies. These types of businesses require faster data and faster trade execution through dedicated products and services, which are offered by the NYSE trading software and technology product suite. This also includes co-location, where the computers of a large trading firm are placed and managed by the NYSE on NYSE premises, offering dedicated services with close proximity to the marketplace for faster trade execution and access. The NYSE offers its technology services and trading software to large institutional clients like mutual funds and asset management companies. These types of businesses require faster data and faster trade execution through dedicated products and services, which are offered by the NYSE trading software and technology product suite. This also includes co-location, where the computers of a large trading firm are placed and managed by the NYSE on NYSE premises, offering dedicated services with close proximity to the marketplace for faster trade execution and access. Registration and Regulatory Fees: NYSE market participants, market makers, and brokers need to register and pay the registration and regulatory fee for their NYSE membership. The NYSE also charges for facilitating trading licenses. All such charges include the one-time registration fee and recurring annual charges. NYSE market participants, market makers, and brokers need to register and pay the registration and regulatory fee for their NYSE membership. The NYSE also charges for facilitating trading licenses. All such charges include the one-time registration fee and recurring annual charges. NYSE Governance Services: The NYSE also offers corporate governance, risk, and compliance services to its diversified customer base. The NYSE's price list depends on the types of transactions and the securities involved. Although we can't get information about the exchange's revenue stream, we can use the table below to get an idea of what it's like. It highlights revenue between 2009 and 2012 (the year before the acquisition). Five-Year Plan Amount Needed per Month Two-and-a-Half-Year Plan Amount Needed per Month 60 months $166.67 30 months $333.33 Putting Your Plan into Action Buying a less expensive car the next time you are shopping for an auto and downgrading your cell phone service are two easy ways to come up with some cash to fund your savings plan. Skipping that two-week vacation, cutting down on the amount you spend dining out, and saving your next raise or bonus are also achievable methods of adding to your emergency fund. The key is to add to the fund at regular intervals. Ideally, you should treat it like any other recurring bill you must pay each month. Dedicate the appropriate amount from your paycheck and set it aside. While most people have no qualms about regularly sending enormous amounts of money to credit card companies, they balk at the idea of paying themselves first. Change that equation. If you are among the many investors who dont have a rainy day fund stashed away in case of emergencies, theres no time like the present to start saving. Even if you dont have the fortitude to address the project with a dedicated savings program, you can start simple: Take the change out of your pockets at the end of the day and put it in a jar. Look into micro-investing platforms, such as Acorns, that round up purchases made from linked accounts and collect and invest the change. You could also eat at home instead of dining out and tip yourself by adding a few bucks to your emergency fund. If you get cash back on your credit cards or just paid off a big debt, such as a personal loan or an automobile, put that newfound money into your fund. If you get a tax refund, deposit the check into your fund. If you manage to dedicate just $5 per day to your effort, youll have $1,825 at the end of the year; thats $9,125 in just five years. Where to Put the Money Money market funds and high-interest savings accounts are two good places to park your emergency fund. You need safe, liquid options so that your money is accessible in times of need. These choices make it harder for you to dip into it (face it: youll be tempted to from time to time), and youll also earn a bit of return on the money. The Bottom Line View your emergency fund like an insurance policy. Once you have it, guard it carefully. Its not a piggy bank. You should not using it for incidental expenses. In fact, as your salary rises, be sure to up the amount to match your new situation. Use the fund only in the event of an emergency and spend it carefully when you do need to draw on it. Remember, once that money is spent, it always takes much longer than anticipated to replace it. Start now and save whatever you can, even if it isnt much. Having an emergency fund gives you a better shot at weathering a crisis without running up a credit card balance or taking out a personal loan. Top News - Investor Idea Mullen (NASDAQ: MULN) Continues Acquisition Path With Purchase of ELMS Assets Including Factory in Mishawaka, IN., Enabling EV Production for Retail and Commercial Vehicle Lines BREA, Calif. - October 19, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Mullen Automotive, Inc. (NASDAQ: MULN), an emerging electric vehicle ("EV") manufacturer, announces the US Bankruptcy Court approval on Oct. 13th, 2022 of its acquisition of electric vehicle company ELMS's (Electric Last Mile Solutions) assets in an all cash purchase. Top AI Stock News - Investor Idea Breaking AI Stock News: FatBrain (OTCQB: LZGI) Acquires Confidential Computing Platform ZeroTrust to Protect Data Privacy and Accelerate Innovation for Millions of Growth Businesses NEW YORK, NY - October 19, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) FatBrain AI (LZG International, Inc.) (OTCQB: LZGI), the leader in powerful and easy-to-use artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for star enterprises of tomorrow, has acquired the confidential computing and privacy intellectual property (IP) plus software assets of Zero2A PTE LTD ("ZeroTrust Platform"), a software company based in Singapore. Top AI Cybersecurity Stock News - Investor Idea AI Cybersecurity Stock GBT (OTCPK: $GTCH) is Researching the Development of a Machine Learning Driven, RF Cybersecurity System and Protocol San Diego, CA - October 13, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) GBT Technologies Inc. (OTC PINK: GTCH) is researching the development of a machine learning driven radio frequency (RF) cybersecurity system and protocol. Top Health and Wellness Stock News - Investor Idea Health and Wellness Stock News - Amazon ( $AMZN) Expands Endexx (OTCBB: $EDXC) Blesswell Men's Premium Skincare Line Internationally to 13 Countries CAVE CREEK, Ariz. - September 29, 2022 (Investorideas.com Newswire) Endexx Corporation (OTCBB:EDXC), a provider of innovative, plant-based, and sustainable health and skincare products, today announces the international distribution of its premium men's Blesswell Skincare line through Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN). Check out our Podcasts for great investor ideas: Get new posts by email: Subscribe Powered by Investorideas.com Newswire: Subscribe to Investor Ideas Newswire A lawyer who worked on a previous baby murder trial believes Irish nanny Aisling Brady McCarthy has grounds to sue over her two-year imprisonment. McCarthy, 37, from Co. Cavan, was wrongly charged with the murder of the one-year old baby in her care, Rehma Sabir, in 2013 and spent two years in prison in the US. She was released in August 2015 following the presentation of evidence from nine outside experts attesting that the death was not homicide and she returned to Ireland. It is now believed that the prosecution may have withheld vital evidence that extended her imprisonment when they were aware it could have proved her innocence In her first interview since her release, McCarthy told the Boston Globe she was considering taking a civil action against Dr. Alice Newton, the doctor who first implicated her in the death of Rehma Sabir, Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan and prosecutors for the way in which her trial was handled. READ MORE: Boston Irish nanny innocent in murder case gives first interview. A trial lawyer who defended British nanny Louise Woodward, who was charged with the involuntary manslaughter of eight-month-old Matthew Eappen in Newton, MA in 2007, believes that the Irish former nanny should go ahead with this action. "I say do it and here's why: first of all she'll never get over this, ever, said Elaine Whitfield-Sharp. "Meanwhile she has to document her damages, she probably has some post-traumatic stress disorder. "Obviously she went through some humiliation and shame and there will be physical repercussions from all this emotional trauma." The manner in which McCarthys life has changed as a result of the false murder charge was evident from her first interview since returning to Irish soil. Speaking to the Boston Globe, the Cavan woman revealed how she left her home in Boston, a place where she had lived and worked for 15 years, where she had met and married her Co. Cork husband, with nothing but her dog following the nightmare experience. After enjoying her first Christmas at home with all of her nine siblings and her third wedding anniversary with her husband, Don, the first one theyve been able to celebrate together, McCarthy is faced with the prospect of starting life again at 37 years old in a country where her name has become notoriously linked with a babys death. I was a nanny. Im not going to do that again, she told Kevin Cullen. Whos going to want to hire a 37-year-old whos been out of the country for 15 years? I have no choice but to move on, she continued. I have changed. I dont trust people like I used to. Youre nearly afraid to get to know people because theyll say, Oh, youre the girl from Boston. It makes me want to cut my hair off and dye it black. The injustice of her imprisonment becomes all the more apparent when she speaks of her time in prison, the letters and cards she received from families whose children she had cared for in the 15 years previous, and the visits from one of these families with their young girls. Several were willing to testify about her character on her behalf, but the police or prosecutors never spoke to her former employers before she was charged. McCarthy had been taking care of Rehma Sabir for six months when the baby was found unconscious in her crib and rushed to the hospital with head injuries on January 14, 2013. She died two days later on her first birthday and McCarthy was charged with her murder. The original medical report found that Rehma died from blunt-force head injuries, but also that the child had pre-existing bone fractures. McCarthy always claimed that Rehma died from injuries sustained on a family holiday while not in her care and proclaimed her innocence. Expert witnesses for the defense also noted that Rehma was often sick and had suffered bone fractures in her spine weeks before her death while traveling with her mother and not in the nannys care. McCarthy was charged with murder when prosecution medical expert Alice Newton concluded the young girl died from injuries, including severe bleeding in the back of the eyes, that indicated abusive head trauma, more commonly known as shaken baby syndrome. The Boston Globe has since revealed that the prosecution withheld information regarding the diagnosis of eye specialist Dr. Alex Levin, who could not confirm the injuries sustained by Sabir were indicative of abusive head trauma but instead, may have been caused by an immune disorder called Job Syndrome. The nanny remained in jail for one year before this evidence came to light. READ MORE: Prosecution withheld vital evidence from defense in Irish nanny trial. In April 2015, the judge on the case ordered a full review of medical evidence, and also ordered the Middlesex DA to refrain from contacting the medical examiner. McCarthys attorney Melinda Thompson declared that she would not be confident the review was completely independent unless the Middlesex DA did not contact the medical examiner. I felt the interactions [so far] were inappropriate, Thompson told the Boston Globe, referring to emails which showed that the entire prosecution team was heavily involved with informing the medical examiner. We believed the review, on behalf of Aisling, the childs family, and the Commonwealth, should be independent, without interference from the Middlesex district attorneys office. Although the review eventually led to charges against McCarthy being dropped, this may have happened sooner if the evidence from eye specialist Levin had not been withheld from the defense. Do you think Aisling Brady McCarthy should sue the Middlesex DA in light of her ordeal? Share your thoughts in the comment section, below. TimeOut NY has named the Irish enclave of Woodlawn one of the best places for families in New York. The Bronx neighborhood, sometimes referred to as Little Ireland for its large Irish immigrant community, was voted by readers as a great place to consider raising a family. Coming in number six, along with nearby Riverdale and Norwood, Woodlawn was praised for having plenty of kid-friendly fun and growing families of many nationalities. Katonah Avenue, which runs though the heart of the neighborhood, boasts many Irish pubs and restaurants. Van Cortlandt Park is nearby, as well as beautiful Woodlawn Cemetery, a National Historic Landmark. Irish supporters of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton are set for a lobbying day on Saturday February 6, just three days before the New Hampshire primary. A Hillary supporters bus will leave New York from FitzPatricks Hotel on 56th and Lexington at 7am on the morning of Saturday the 6th and return at 8pm from New Hampshire. A complimentary breakfast will be served at FItzPatrick's from 6am that morning. Irish Americans should never forget what Hillary and Bill Clinton did to bring peace to Ireland, said co-organizer and long time Clinton close friend John FitzPatrick. We owe them a debt of gratitude and we hope to repay some of that by showing up on this vital weekend. Bill and Hillary Clinton were major players in the Irish peace process and have had a dedicated Irish following since then. The lobbying day will also include attendance at a Hillary Clinton event. A Hillary presidency would be great for Irish America and great for Ireland," said FitzPatrick. Having friends in the White House like Hillary and Bill Clinton would be a dream come true. The cost of the bus round trip is $60. To reserve a place call 914 255 0272 or email irishforhillary2016@gmail.com The International Monetary Fund has warned that Ireland must maintain fiscal discipline. It has finished its fourth post program monitoring following Ireland's exit from the EU/IMF Bailout programme in December 2013. The group said that the Irish economy continues to progress at a strong pace, however, challenges still remain. It is warning against cuts and changes to the Universal Social Charge, being proposed by Fine Gael, Labour, Fianna Fail and Sinn Fein ahead of the General Election. It also said that measures to boost housing supply are welcome in order to stimulate construction activity. However, the IMF warns that administrative measures on rents could reduce the return on investment properties and lead to less construction. The Central Bank is to issue a new 2 coin to commemorate the 1916 Rising. A total of 4.5 million coins will be released, the first of which will come into circulation in the coming weeks. The design for this coin, by Emmet Mullins, was chosen following a competition that saw 52 Irish and international designers submit proposals based on the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. The coin features a representation of the statue of Hibernia on top of the GPO, the centenary dates and the name Hibernia in hand-rendered lettering influenced by the Book of Kells. This will be the first time that Ireland has issued its own commemorative 2 coin into circulation. Paul Molumby, director of currency and facilities management at the Bank said: Its a significant achievement for us to mint and issue our own circulating commemorative coin. The design reflects back to the GPO and its association with the Easter Rising and the reading of the Proclamation. We are working with the banks, An Post, and the cash in transit companies to get the coin into circulation as soon as possible. Members of the public can expect to see the coins in the coming weeks as they come into general circulation. Later in the year, gold and silver proof coins, also to commemorate 1916, will be released for sale. These coins were designed by Michael Guilfoyle. His design also features Hibernia, along with an arrangement of key words and phrases from the Proclamation. Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald has denied widespread spying on the public amid revelations State authorities secretly request as many as 1,000 phone and internet records every month. A day after ordering a judge-led probe into Garda and Garda Ombudsman powers to access journalists mobile phone records, she said snooping on private communications in Ireland was relatively low compared to other countries. Lets be very clear, there is no widespread snooping on private individuals, private citizens phones, or their records, she said. I want to say that to the public. The senior Fine Gael minister was responding to a report in the Irish Times that almost 62,000 requests were made to access landline, mobile and internet records by authorities in Ireland between 2008 and 2012. Nearly all of the requests were made by Gardai and almost 99% were granted, the newspaper reported. When you examine the statistics of about 8,000 requests by the guards every year that is not out of line, said Ms Fitzgerald. For example, in the UK you would have over 725,000 requests. So in terms of the percentages in Ireland it is relatively low internationally and what the review will do is, it will examine whether further safeguards are needed in relation to access to journalists phones. Former chief justice John L Murray has been tasked with the inquiry after at least three journalists learned their private phone records had been analysed without them being told. The probe will not look at spying on the phones of other private individuals, nor will it report back until after the imminent general election. A key focus of the retired judges review will be to analyse how other countries give police and watchdogs access to telephone records and how Irelands approach compares with them. His review will examine the law and powers given to the Garda Siochana, the Garda Ombudsman, the Revenue Commissioners and the Defence Forces. Under the Communications (Data Retention) Act 2011, the Garda Siochana and its watchdog has the right to access call and text message records and other data in a criminal inquiry. Controversy erupted last week when journalists learned the Garda Ombudsman had access to their phone records as it investigated complaints against gardai who allegedly leaked information following the death of model Katy French in 2007. File photo of Katy French Records were being accessed to see if individual officers were in contact with journalists. Several Garda inquiries are also under way into how leaks were made to journalists, including reports on the arrest of Independent TD Clare Daly for alleged drink-driving. She was later proven to have been under the legal limit. The National Union of Journalists wants the law changed so judges must be asked to oversee applications for access to phone data. The trial is underway of four former bankers accused of misleading investors and depositors in Anglo Irish Bank. All have pleaded not guilty to engaging in transactions in 2008 to make the former banks deposits appear over 7bn stronger than they were. For only the third time in the history of the State, an enlarged jury of 15 has been sworn in to hear a criminal trial. They have heard the case is set in era of financial turbulence and they have been told they will be brought back to a time of economic difficulty and despair. The four former bankers each deny a single charge of conspiring to defraud by misleading investors and depositors in Anglo Irish Bank. They are: Willie McAteer Anglos former finance director, John Bowe, who used to be responsible for funding Anglo, Denis Casey former chief executive of Irish Life & Permanent and its former group director Peter Fitzpatrick. They are accused of engaging in transactions between March and the end of September 2008 to make the Anglos deposits appear 7.2bn stronger than they were. The first of around 100 witnesses is due to give evidence this afternoon. The Labour Party TD said he is working on measures to combat if-and-when contracts, offering workers little or no rights, exposed in an independent report commissioned by the Coalition last year. While he could not give a timeframe for any clampdown on the unsecured working arrangements, he said he would like to see a plan drawn up within the coming weeks to be brought before Cabinet. Almost 30,000 workers take casual shifts of one to eight hours a week, while 98,000 workers have arrangements giving them nine to 18 hours work. If these if-and-when workers have no employment contract lasting any longer than the length of their shift, then we are taking a step backwards, I believe, to the era of the Dublin docks in the 1950s or indeed the era of the hiring fair, going back to the 19th century, said Mr Nash. Back to an era when an employer could simply pick his daily complement of labour from people lined up outside of the workplace... who could hope for nothing more than a days work. Thats not something in this day and age that anyone could stand over. The so-called if-and-when arrangements were exposed in a University of Limerick study published last November. They differ from zero-hour contracts, much criticised in the UK, because there are no obligations on either worker or employer to take or provide work. Appearing before an Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Mr Nash said it was his intention to bring a report to Cabinet colleagues before the Dail is dissolved ahead of the imminent general election. However, Sinn Fein TD for Meath West, Peadar Toibin, said that action was needed urgently. Most employers are decent but there are some unscrupulous employers out there who have used low-hour contracts and zero-hour contracts not just for flexibility but for leverage purposes with regards to how they wanted workers to behave, said Mr Toibin. Companies are less confident in their ability to deal with online security threats yet are increasingly cognisant of their importance of doing so, according to the Cisco annual security report. Business leaders acceptance their investors and regulators expect companies provide greater transparency in relation to the threats they face is counterbalanced by their dwindling confidence in this area. The ability to recognise and respond to security threats becoming a business imperative has certainly shown itself to be an important finding, said Cisco chief security and trust officer John N. Stewart. Attackers have become much bolder and more co- ordinated. "Theyre sharing information; theyre moving and innovating very rapidly and then remaining incredibly flexible and almost annoyingly resilient because were watching the malicious actor teams actually embracing legitimate techniques like strong infrastructure, the use of virtual hosting almost IT teams that would be running any other business critical service if it were legitimate in order to launch their campaigns. This erosion of confidence is illustrated by the fact less than half of businesses surveyed for the report were confident in their ability to determine the scope of an attack and deal with it adequately. Between 2014 and 2015, the number of organisations with up-to-date infrastructure also fell by 10%. One particular risk to Irish firms where more than 99% of businesses are SMEs is the ability of smaller firms to manage their security needs. A structural weakness at the heart of SMEs globally is identified by the report as a potential threat which could also affect bigger businesses that do business with SMEs. Some estimates put the average annual cost of online security to Irish companies at 240,000. Another common security weakness is the proliferation of malicious browser extensions commonly run on both personal and business devices. Although previously seen as low-risk, the Cisco report identifies these as potential sources of major data leaks. Irish MEPs did not have an opportunity to vote against the specific proposal as it was part of a comprehensive report on the commissions annual competition report for 2014 but two Sinn Fein and one Independent abstained in the overall vote. The commission is investigating whether an agreement on tax liability between the Revenue Commissioners and the worlds wealthiest technology company, Apple, amounted to illegal state aid. The commission has already found that tax deals concluded by Luxembourg with Fiat Finance, by Starbucks with the Netherlands, and by 35 companies with Belgium, were illegal and has ordered them to repay millions of euro-worth of tax to the states. The annual report, that received the support of almost 80% of MEPs, calls on the commission to change the rules immediately so that amounts to be recovered should go to member states that have suffered an erosion of their tax bases because of the illegal tax arrangement, or it should go to the EU budget and not to the country that granted the illegal tax aid. Apple Could Owe More Than Billion in European Tax Probe https://t.co/b26w5Xtqvu by @rsgnl pic.twitter.com/4c4de0pSku MacRumors.com (@MacRumors) January 15, 2016 This rule provides an additional incentive for tax dodging the report said. Its author, Werner Langen a member of the EPP group to which Fine Gael belongs, told the parliament countries that play unfair tricks must not profit twice. MEP Brian Hayes said the four Fine Gael MEPs were opposed to the idea but there was not a specific vote on that. The rest of the report was okay, but this idea that a tax rebate is going to be handed into an EU budget is Alice in Wonderland stuff. Its going nowhere really. The four abstained on proposals in the report that favoured a common consolidated corporate tax base. Sean Kelly, FG MEP for Ireland South, said they went against the decision of the EPP group and abstained. The report also called for persons, such as CEOs of companies, to be personally fined as well as their companies in cartel and other cases. They want new criteria for assessing market size for digital market mergers and acquisitions. The turnover criteria is not sufficient to judge whether mergers or takeovers lead to too-dominant market positions. The report cited the case of Facebooks takeover of WhatsApp to illustrate that firms with low turnovers and substantial start-up losses may have large consumer bases and so big databases and strong market positions. It seems they dont like the new piece of snow grafitti that has popped up recently. The offending artwork is a giant snow penis and was drawn on some snow that had fallen onto the ice in a park in Swedens capital city over the weekend. An inspector from An Bord Pleanala yesterday refused an application from a senior counsel representing Dunnes Stores to abandon an oral hearing into a major retail development, proposed for the north-east side of Cork City. Eamon Galligan SC claimed the planning appeals board did not have the jurisdiction to conduct the hearing into plans for a mixed retail unit adjacent to the landmark Fox and Hounds pub in Ballyvolane. Ballyvolane Development Company Limited want to build a centre consisting of eight units in two blocks, which will include shops, a restaurant, a community building, an 8,882 sq m premises for an anchor tenant, and 434 car parking spaces. Mr Galligan said that, in his opinion, Bord Pleanala should not proceed with the oral hearing, as it was based in part on a planning application which had since been withdrawn. A modified application was submitted. He also claimed the two planning applications under appeal a retail development and road access were mutually inconsistent. The pragmatic thing to do would be to simply abandon the process, he said. Bord Pleanala inspector Auriol Considine decided to proceed with the hearing, at the Imperial Hotel. The developers, however, had disagreed with Mr Galligan and outlined their proposals which include a new access road to the site, improvements to local road junctions and the creation of pedestrian walkways. The development was needed, they said, to provide for population growth in Ballyvolane and maintained it would have a minimum impact on stores in the vicinity. The development was in line with both local authorities city and county vision to increase shopping facilities on the northside. However, Cllr Ger Keohane, on behalf of some local residents objecting to the plan, questioned the need for more retail development in the area. Apart from the shopping centre in Ballyvolane, where Dunnes is the anchor tenant, he pointed to a major centre in Blackpool and, in Glanmire, one of the countrys biggest SuperValu stores. The developers said the site did not flood, even during Storm Frank. Kieran Thornton, a flooding expert representing the developers, said existing drainage systems and mitigation measures would prevent the site from flooding and impacting on downstream Blackpool. However, the OPW provided a written submission which stated the developments both appear to some extent to be located in the floodplain of the Glen River in an area that is known or considered to be at risk of flooding. The OPW said it is developing a flood-relief scheme in Blackpool and would suggest strongly that no increase in flood risk at all be allowed to occur as a result of these proposed (upstream) developments. Mr Thornton claimed the developers measures would reduce flooding. Objections to the plan have been made by Dunnes Stores, An Taisce, Brookvale Residents Association and other local residents. A decision is likely to be made by Bord Pleanala in mid-March. Aaron Mahoney, aged 30, of Oak Hill, Youghal, Cork, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to possession of cannabis herb for sale or supply at Ballygall Crescent, Finglas, Dublin, on July 3, 2008. He has four minor previous convictions. Garda John Walsh told Elva Duffy BL, prosecuting, that a bench warrant, which existed for Mahoneys arrest since 2008, was executed in Cork last year when he returned to Ireland. Noah Stefanicki was hit over the head with a hammer by one armed man as another shouted shoot him, shoot him when the masked raiders, who also had a pistol, burst in to his hotel room at the Travelodge Hotel, Ballymun, six years ago. The jewllery salesman, who never went anywhere without his small black bag containing the valuable diamond jewellery tackled one of the raiders and also ran after them, Mr Justice Seamus Noonan was told. TDs last night debated a motion of no confidence in Ms Burton after she last week used a little-known clause in new public service appointment rules to give Mr Begg the 20,000-a year post as chairman of the pensions authority. TDs called for an end to political patronage and questioned why Ms Burton, and other government ministers, had by-passed general appointment rules and given people positions with public bodies Social Democrats TD Catherine Murphy noted how, in the dying days of the last Fianna Fail-led government, that 60 state appointments were made. She warned that there should not be a similar rush to make such appointments in the coming weeks by the outgoing coalition ahead of the general election. Catherine Murphy Independent TD Seamus Healy said the Begg appointment showed that cronyism was alive and well at the heart of government. There had been a known formula for this coalition, where Fine Gael decided two thirds of state appointments while Labour decided the remaining third, claimed the Tipperary TD. Deputy Healy criticised Mr Beggs defence of the position on the pension authority, after the former ICTU general secretary told the Irish Examiner last week that the 20,000 annual pay was not a crock of gold. Mr Healy pointed out that 125,000 people in Ireland earned less than that amount annually and that there were families of two adults and two children on welfare payments of less than that. How dare he suggest that 20,000 isnt a crock of gold, argued the TD. Independent Waterford TD John Halligan claimed Mr Begg, when a member of the Central Bank board during the boom, had been in a position to allow the financial system as a whole to borrow huge amounts. John Halligan Ms Burton defended her appointment of Mr Begg and said that the opposition motion of no confidence in her was threadbare, flimsy and not substantial. The Labour leader claimed that Independent Alliance leader Shane Ross, spearheading the motion, had a personal vendetta against trade unions as well as Mr Begg. Furthermore, the Dublin-Rathdown TD had been a boomer for bankers during the boom, week after week as a journalist, argued Ms Burton. Her decision to appoint Mr Begg was not a get out clause or an aberration, she told the Dail, stressing that Mr Begg had huge experience and knowledge of pensions and boards. Taoiseach Enda Kenny told the Dail that he had full confidence in Ms Burton as well as her appointment of Begg. The Fine Gael leader said he would not take lecturers from Mr Ross, who he accused of previously being a cheerleader of Anglo Irish Bank as a newspaper columnist. Mr Begg has said that he never asked for the state board position. The debate continues this evening. News of the meetings comes as the head of the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) chief executive Kevin Toland said he believes the delay by US authorities in issuing a licence to the airline involved is a result of political, not legal challenges. Ireland South MEP Deirdre Clune led calls last night for all channels of diplomacy to be used to secure the service which could transform Cork Airports fortunes, adding up to 50,000 passengers a year. Norwegian Air International (NAI), Norwegians Irish subsidiary, is planning to use Ireland as a base to launch a Cork to Boston service in May. By availing of the 2007 EU-US Open Skies Agreement, the low-cost carrier also hopes to launch a Cork to New York service next year. But an unprecedented two-year delay by the US Department of Transportation (DoT) in sanctioning NAIs foreign carrier permit is fuelling fears the launch of the service could be delayed. Norwegian says it is still committed to the service but with the clock ticking, fears are growing the service may not even get off the ground. Ms Clune said she raised her concerns at the permit delay at an aviation hearing in the European Parliament just before Christmas. That day, the Commission were talking about other Norwegian routes from Europe to the US that had the same problem, Ms Clune said. She said she is due to meet the head of the European Commissions External Aviation Policy sector next week to press the issue again. The biggest issue, she said, is the aggressive lobbying of the US DoT by American legacy airlines and unions, and by some EU airlines. I am pushing hard on this issue, and I am meeting with top officials in the commission next week. I am urging that all channels of diplomacy are used to put pressure on the US Department of Transport to approve the route without delay. Mr Toland said all the necessary Irish approvals have been granted to the airline . Its held up by political, not legal or practical challenges, he said. Paschal Donohoe Transport Minister Paschal Donohoe said the Open Skies Agreement is designed to encourage innovative competition in the transatlantic air market. New services from smaller airports such as Cork, which have never had transatlantic services, is precisely the type of innovation that the agreement was designed to facilitate, he said. Controversial plans to reduce the number of school bus services to Bishop Galvin Central School in Newcestown, Co Cork, from September is expected to have a significant impact on both pupil and staff numbers at the school. These changes would impact on about 40% of our current intake basically about 40% of our students would lose their transport to the school and would have to move to another school, said school principal Donie Keane, who explained many of the schools 216 pupils came from up to 10km away. We have students from Templemartin, Mount Pleasant and Mawbeg, he said, noting the immediate knock-on effect of the reduction of services would mean that many pupils would be left without transport to school. Pictured at Newcestown school were Concerned parents Declan OSullivan, Eileen Dunne and Mary OSullivan. Picture Denis Boyle The resultant falling pupil numbers would bring a loss of teachers and empty classrooms, he said. The worst-case scenario is that we would go down to a four-teacher school with just over half of our current student population we currently have eight class teachers. In all, about 250 people including Cork North West and Cork South West TDs attended the meeting. The bus service, according to Mr Keane, has served the school since 1971 following the closure of four old schools, Gurranes, Mount Pleasant, Mawbeg, and Newcestown. From the outset it was clear a large Central School such as ours, covering a vast rural area could not exist without school transport. Unfortunately, the Department of Education has begun to implement changes in the school bus service to national schools. One aspect of this change is to only provide bus transport to a pupils nearest school, said Mr Keane. He said, for many pupils, Newcestown was not in fact their closest school so they had lost their previously guaranteed entitlement to bus transport. Pictured was a packed house at a meeting on the situation regarding buses at Newcestown central Primary school. Picture Denis Boyle The impact of these changes could result in an exclusion of up to 40% of the schools current intake, a reduction of up to 50% in staff, a proportional and significant loss in Special Education Support, at least two empty classrooms, and a proportional loss of school funding as this is paid per pupil, he said. It would create difficulties in maintaining the school facilities and providing educational resources, the principal said. Mr Keane said he believed all of the factors would result in a significant deterioration in the standard of childrens education. Fine Gael Deputy Micheal Creed said following consultation with Education Minister Jan OSullivan, a meeting had been arranged between officials from the school transport section and representatives of Newcestown Central School. A further meeting takes place in Newcestown on February 12 for a progress report. Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald has appointed retired Supreme Court judge, Mr Justice John Murray, to carry out an independent review of the laws that allow gardai, the Garda Ombudsman, Revenue, and the Defence Forces to access journalists phone records and other communications data without warrant. ICCL director Mark Kelly said he had serious misgivings about the reviews scope. This legislation is used by law enforcement agencies to capture a wide range of private information about members of the public, he said. The oversight shortcomings that this review will certainly identify are far from confined to cases where the data belongs to members of the media. The premature baby was born in October, almost four months ahead of schedule, after her mother Jenny went into labour on a flight from Paris to New York. The flight was redirected to Dublin, where an ambulance met Jenny and her husband Gavin, both US citizens, and rushed them to the Rotunda Hospital. A short time later baby Zoe Ireland was born weighing just 820g. Since Zoes immune system is still too weak for her to travel on a commercial flight, Jenny and Gavin have been stranded in Ireland ever since the birth. To get back to their home in Tennessee, they need to get a special, and expensive, private flight complete with all the medical equipment and personnel Zoe needs to make the journey safely. Medical professionals told the family it would be six months to a year before their daughters immune system would be ready for a commercial flight. We cant afford to stay that long, obviously for financial reasons. We cant afford to stay and we cant afford to go, thats our little joke these days, said Jenny, speaking on RTE Radio 1s The Ray DArcy Show yesterday. Her immune system Even a common cold could kill her so we have to go privately. We would also need medical staff and medical support in case something happened in the air. A lot of people dont realise that the oxygen difference above ground like that is significant to such a young baby. So shed have to be on oxygen during the flight and youd need somebody to monitor that. Jenny and Gavin have been fundraising to get home and had raised 38k of the 67k required when Ray DArcy announced live on air that he had a surprise for them. He revealed the show had received a text message from someone who wanted to make up the difference and donate 30k to get Zoe and her family home. His only condition was that he not be named publically. Zoe Drake after her birth in 2015 We got back to this anonymous, generous, philanthropic person, and we checked him out and hes 100% above board, said Mr DArcy. He just seems like a really lovely man. Jenny said she was speechless at the news and admonished the host for not preparing her for it before going on air. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. Okay. Im not going to be able to talk. Wow, she said. Baby Zoe Ireland Drake is going home thanks to an anonymous donator @jennydrake2020 pic.twitter.com/NeudDEjOFU Ray D'Arcy Radio (@RadioRayRTE) January 19, 2016 The Irish people. I mean, you guys have a lot to be proud of. You have really taken care of us. For such a small country to have such a big heart Everyone we have met has just opened their arms, their house, everything to us. You guys have a lot to be proud of. Identity Ireland made the comments two days after it posted a Facebook press release describing Ali Selim as a dangerous man. The release was prefaced with the message: Kind words. Lets be honest, the lads a menace. The sooner we f@ck him into the Irish sea the better. Btw Hi Ali. Smiley face!!! Identity Ireland claimed Dr Selim has founded a new Islamic political organisation which is a very worrying development in Irish social, political, and cultural life due to the extreme nature of Selims views in relation to issues such as segregation, education, and censorship. When asked if the party advocates violence against Dr Selim, a spokeswoman said that the remark was a euphemism. She said: Underneath his smiley veil, a darker force is concealed. We do not advocate physical violence against anyone. But Mr Ali Selim, in our opinion, is an Islamic extremist sympathiser and true to their nature, Islamic extremists bring their dark age barbaric Ideology wherever they go. Dr Selim said his group, the South Dublin Muslim Board, is looking into the affairs of Muslims based in south Dublin, the most urgent of which is the coming election. He said the board is aware of its legal rights and responsibilities and is fully aware that democracy is guaranteed by law to every resident in Ireland. This law-abiding board is currently interested in developing and improving the Muslims involvement in Irish society to serve the best interest of their inclusive and cohesive society. Data released by the networking giant shows Sinn Fein has the largest amount of followers some 76,936 outnumbering all of the other major political parties combined. Facebook will today launch a check the register campaign, encouraging its 2.2m users in Ireland to check they can vote ahead of polling day. Elizabeth Linder, the sites politics and government specialist, said the scale with which politicians were now able to connect with ordinary people, particularly compared to the last general election, was exciting. Last year, elections were the most talked about issue on Facebook globally. In Ireland, the same-sex marriage referendum was the most talked about subject in the year, followed by the refugee crisis and the conflict in Syria. The British elections were the fourth most talked about topic here. Ms Linder noted politicians were increasingly now doing question-and-answer sessions on Facebook. Finance Minister Michael Noonan used the network for a Q&A session after the budget last October. But while other leaders in other countries, including in Europe, have used live streaming with users, Taoiseach Enda Kenny as well as other political leaders here have yet to connect with Facebook users in this way. Facebooks Dublin headquarters confirmed it has been training and advising major political parties as well as individual politicians about how to best utilise their pages and messages, ahead of the election. During the 2011 election, Sinn Fein had no Facebook followers, it now has almost 77,000 followers. This compares to Fine Gaels 13,666 and Fianna Fails 11,391. The eight biggest political parties in Ireland, between them, now have 142,000 followers. Ms Linder said likes on Facebook pages were almost modern endorsements or votes of support. Meanwhile, the networking website will today launch a campaign to encourage users and followers to make sure they are registered to vote in the upcoming election, or to sign up with the supplementary register. There have already been more than 1.5m interactions related to the election on the networking platform since November, the company says. But officials were unwilling to release the age, location or times when users had become most involved with issues online. The company said it will release regular data in the run up to the election, exploring the impact of political campaigns on Facebook and trends in public discussion. The mystery relates to a third-century Roman burial site in York in England which led to a discovery that has had experts guessing ever since its discovery in 2004. The site was unusual in that, instead of the usual mix of sex and age, the 49 skeletons found were all well-built adult males, under the age of 45. Several were found decapitated. Their skulls were buried with the body, although not positioned consistently. Some were on the chest, some within the legs, and others at the feet. Archaeologists have speculated that the skeletons belonged to gladiators, although they could also have been soldiers or criminals. The demographic profile of the York skeletons resembles the population structure in a Roman burial ground believed to be for gladiators at Ephesus. Although initial examinations of the skeletons revealed much about the life they lived, it was not until a genomic study done by a team from Trinity College that the origins of the men could be uncovered. Trinity College Seven of the skeletons were selected for genome analyses. Most of those sampled had genomes similar to an earlier Iron Age woman from Melton, east Yorkshire. The researchers found that poor childhood health of the men suggests that they were locals who endured childhood stress. However, their robust skeletons and healed trauma, suggest that they were used to wielding weapons. The nearest modern descendants of the men sampled live not in Yorkshire, but in Wales. However, one of the decapitated Romans was found to be of Middle Eastern origin. He grew up in the region of modern day Palestine, Jordan or Syria before travelling to Europe and meeting his death in York. Professor Dan Bradley, who led the Trinity team, said it confirms the cosmopolitan character of the Roman Empire. Whichever the identity of the enigmatic headless Romans from York, our sample of the genomes of seven of them, when combined with isotopic evidence, indicate six to be of British origin and one to have origins in the Middle East. It confirms the cosmopolitan character of the Roman Empire even at its most northerly extent, he said. As well as Trinity College, the multi-disciplinary scientific analysis involved scientists from the University of York and The York Archaeological Trust, as well as the universities of Durham, Reading and Sheffield, University College London and the University Medical Centre in Utrecht. A survey of members of the Real Estate Alliance (REA), reveals US property buyers are flocking to buy homes and investment properties here. It found enquiries from the US have increased from almost zero to 16% last year. The REA said this surge in interest could signal the first major return of emigrants who feel that the time is right to move back to Ireland. According to REA agents, 31% of overseas buyers are moving to Ireland to live and work, 29% are buying a home for their retirement, and 20% are purchasing a property as an investment. Almost one third of all overseas purchases last year were completed for less than 100,000 and a further 20% of sales fell into the 100,000 to 150,000 bracket. Some 31% were properties which sold for more than 200,000. REA chairman Michael OConnor said there was obvious value to be had in Ireland for US buyers. The average house price in the US in November 2015 was $374,900 (341,656), compared to our average house price survey national value of 188,370, so there is obvious value for American buyers in Ireland. US buyer interest is particularly strong in many undervalued rural counties and scenic locations and for the first time in the bigger cities, mostly from emigrants who feel that the time is right to return, Mr OConnor said. The 18-year-old was among six people who were rushed to Cork University Hospital (CUH) in the early hours yesterday after taking what is believed was the psycho-stimulant 2C-B in a rented house at St Patricks Terrace on Green St near Pouladuff Rd on the citys southside. While the results of toxicology tests are awaited, the HSE said the drug is believed to have been one of the new psychoactive substances similar to products previously sold in head shops. The drug, synthesised in back-street chemists in Eastern Europe and the Far East, is part of a family of drugs which are prohibited under the Misuse of Drugs Act 2015. Widely available online, and sold in tablet, powder, or liquid form, the drug produces intense hallucinogenic and psychedelic effects described as a cross between ecstasy and LSD. The HSE Addiction Services said such drugs can have serious psychological and physical side effects. Young people are advised there is no quality control on these drugs, said a HSE spokesperson. There are problems with purity and contaminants, and there is no way of checking that what is purchased or consumed is the intended substance. Gardai launched an investigation, conducted a forensic examination of the house, and are waiting to interview people who were at the party. Chief Superintendant Michael Finn urged people to be aware of the dangers linked to the consumption of illegal drugs and he urged anyone with information about this incident to contact gardai in confidence. The alarm was raised at around 4am when a couple passing the house became concerned when they saw at least one man dancing naked and apparently hallucinating on the street. One eyewitness said the man was covered in blood and there were unconfirmed reports that some people at the party had been cut with broken mirrors. Gardai and emergency services rushed to the scene and found the man in a collapsed state. Two people inside the house had also collapsed. In total, five men and a woman, ranging in age from 18 to 37, were rushed by ambulances to CUH. Two were discharged some time later. Four were still in hospital last night three were stable but an 18-year-old man was in a critical but stable condition. JJ Keating, who teaches chemistry at UCCs School of Pharmacy, said if tests show they consumed 2C-B, it could be the first time this drug has been linked to a serious adverse reaction in Ireland. It has a long onset of action which means if somebody doesnt see its effect as quickly as expected, they could take more, leading to toxicity, he said. Chris Luke, a consultant in emergency medicine at the Mercy University Hospital, said the incident has again highlighted the dangers of consuming designer or synthetic drugs. This case is a tragedy for those involved, said Dr Luke. But it raises serious questions about our public health response. We try to highlight the hazards associated with consuming drugs like this but the cases just keep coming. Five men on board the 25m Galway-registered Iuda Naofa trawler were saved as the vessel capsized and sank within 40 seconds off the Butt of Lewis, northern Scotland, on January 20, 2015. A Marine Casualty Investigation Board (MCIB) report found the trawler crew had difficulty operating a portable pump which was winched by a British coast guard helicopter onto their vessel using a hi-line. It said just one crewman had knowledge of hi-line protocols, and that the crew had difficulty releasing a clip on it. The MCIB recommended that portable pumps should have clear instructions attached and this should be communicated to the fishing industry by way of a safety notice. It has also recommended the updating of protocols, and special safety training for fishermen in relation to search and rescue operations which involve helicopter hi-lines. The Iuda Naofa set off from Rossaveel on January 17, 2015, in the company of another vessel, Star of Hope. Both vessels were laden with fish and were returning to Lough Foyle when the Iuda Naofa began taking on water between 9am and 9.30am, about 80km north of the Hebrides. When its pumps could not stem the flow of water, the skipper alerted the Irish coast guard just after 10.30am. A British coast guard helicopter responded and winched a portable pump on to its deck. The trawler crew told the MCIB they had difficulty releasing the pump from the hi-line and said they could not start it because there were no instructions. However, Stornaway Coast Guard told the MCIB that there was a full set of instructions with the pump and that the hi-line release clip was a standard type which should not have presented any difficulty. The vessel capsized and sank within seconds. Three crewmen were airlifted to safety and the other two swam to a life raft and were subsequently rescued by the Star of Hope. All five were safely brought ashore. The MCIB report said it was not possible to determine what caused the ingress of water but said the lodging of water on the fore deck led to the capsizal and eventual sinking. Tim Marks, a former employee of ICTS Ireland Ltd, was fired in 2014 after admitting he took the $5.99 magazine from a rubbish bag destined for the dump on October 22, 2014. Mr Marks took the magazine from two-thirds down a rubbish bag from a just-arrived flight by ICTSs biggest customer at Shannon, United Airlines. Mr Marks, who spent nine years with the firm, is suing for unfair dismissal at an Employment Appeals Tribunal (EAT). At a hearing in Ennis, Audrey Wilhite, station manager at Shannon for ICTS, said the value of the item was irrelevant as Mr Marks had brought the company into disrepute. Ms Wilhite said it was her decision to sack Mr Marks, stating that he would have been aware of a company memo confirming a previous incident where a worker was sacked for taking a can of Coke from an aircraft without permission. At peak season, ICTS Ireland employs around 100 employees at Shannon. ICTS Shannon operations manager, Pat Dunne, said Mr Marks explained that taking the magazine without permission was a momentary lapse of concentration on his behalf. Mr Dunne said the item was not his to take whether it was on the back steps or on the back of the aircraft. Ms Wilhite said she informed United Airlines staff representatives who were managing the aircraft. We explained that we had an incident where an item was removed from the aircraft and we were dealing with it, she said.It was embarrassing saying it to them and they looked a bit shocked and they asked what was the item. Mrs Wilhite said she showed them the Time magazine: I apologised and I asked could I retain the magazine and pay them compensatory value. I was told that I could retain it and they would not seek compensatory value unless the passenger requested its return. Our company is a security company and any removal of any item from an aircraft or surrounding area that we are responsible for shows a serious breach in what our company does and what we are employed for in the first place. On the seriousness of the incident, Ms Wilhite said United Airlines are our highest source of revenue and most important customer and that is why I would be very worried if they got the opinion that we werent operating with integrity and that we werent monitoring security in a satisfactory manner in what is a very competitive environment. She told the tribunal: Anything that is on the aircraft that does not belong to us cannot be removed from the aircraft, anything at all. It creates a very negative impression for our company should anyone assume that our staff are rooting through rubbish bags to see if there are items they can take them away with them. It is completely inappropriate. Ms Wilhite said she considered lower sanctions but decided to sack Mr Marks. The hearing was adjourned until April. A run of the shows is being recorded live on RTE Radio 1 over three nights as part of the inaugural radio festival, Comedy Showhouse. Sean Hughes who was a comedy god long before Spain did his first stand-up gig in 2000 hosts the panel show. He was the second comedian I ever saw live and actually the third and the fourth as well, says Spain. Billy Connolly was the first I saw him in Limerick in 1991. Two years later, I saw Sean Hughes. I was quite a fan. To work with him is fantastic. If only I could ring a teenage me and tell him that youre gonna be a comedian and be working with Sean Hughes in the future, it would be a great phone call to make, and a scary one to receive I imagine. Dont Quote Me! is a platform for Spain, Hughes, panellists like Andrew Maxwell and opposing team captain Fiona Looney, to kid around with famous quotes from Irish history and culture, framed with a quiz element. Previous episodes have aired on RTE Radio 1 over holiday periods in the past few years. Its a busy time for Spain. In November, he appeared in his sixth Kilkenomics festival on the bounce. His first pantomime premiered over Christmas. Entitled Freezin: The Story of the Snow Queen, its a spoof on the movie Frozen, and it ran at Dublins Olympia Theatre. He co-wrote it with fellow comic and panto veteran Al Porter, who also starred in it. The pair, who worked together on Republic of Telly, shared a flat at last summers Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Were like an odd couple but weve a similar sense of humour, he says. Weve a good laugh plotting schemes. Spain had only ever seen two pantos before, one of them with Maureen Potter when he was a kid, which was where Porters experience of the genre came in useful. Al has been doing panto since he was a kid, he says. He would put the bones on, tell me where to flesh bits out. Hed say, This is where you need to put the Hes behind you scene, that kind of stuff. The two of us then, through brainstorming, would come up with jokes. The feedback has been good that its funny and has loads of jokes. Spain does a good line in wryness when it comes to writing jokes for his stand-up gigs. He says hes always got his ears perked up for stuff that could end up as gags in his routines. I keep my aerials up for material. Id be tuned into conversation. A friend of mine said something the other night and I was thinking, oh, thats funny, thatll make it in somewhere. Thats what happens someone will say something, or my girlfriend will ask me something, and Ill be laughing, and will use it on stage. Now I know better. In the past it would be the case that almost subliminally a joke or a line would go into my head from conversation and Id use it later on stage. Id almost surprise myself by saying it. Example? One of my favourites, he says, I was going out with my girlfriend for a couple of years and she asked me, Am I the longest youve gone out with someone? I said, No, but it does feel like it. I was trying to re-assure her, meaning this is the most serious relationship Ive had, but it had double meaning. Dont Quote Me! will be recorded live 8pm, Monday, February 1 8pm, Wednesday, February 3 for RTE Radio 1 at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin 2. See www.grintageireland.com Before Novembers terrorist attacks in Paris, it was legal to stage a demonstration in a public square in that city. Now it isnt. In Uganda, although citizens campaigning against corruption or in favour of gay rights often faced a hostile public, they didnt face jail time for demonstrating. However, under a frighteningly vague new statute, now they do. In Egypt, government authorities recently raided and shut down prominent cultural institutions an art gallery, a theatre, and a publishing house where artists and activists once gathered. All around the world, it seems, the walls are closing in on the space that people need to assemble, associate, express themselves freely, and register dissent. Even as the internet and communications technology have made speaking up publicly technically easier than ever, ubiquitous state and commercial surveillance has ensured that expression, association, and protest remain constrained. In short, speaking up has never required more courage. For me, this shift could not hit closer to home. In November, the Open Society Foundations (the global philanthropies of George Soros, which I lead) became the second organisation blacklisted under a Russian law, enacted in May, that allows the countrys prosecutor general to ban foreign organisations and suspend their financial support of local activists. People protesting Irish Water in April 2015 Because anyone who engages with us is subject to possible prosecution and imprisonment, we have had no choice but to cut off relations with the dozens of Russian citizens we supported in their efforts to preserve some fragment of democracy in their country. There is nothing wrong with regulating public space and the organisations that use it. In the early 1990s, some new governments in eastern Europe, Africa, and Latin America, underestimating the power of an active citizenry and civil society, failed to regulate adequately advocacy organisations and the space in which they work. However, over the last two decades, as active citizens have toppled regimes in dozens of countries, governments have moved too far in the opposite direction, imposing excessive regulations on those organisations and that space. In the process, they are criminalising the most basic forms of democratic practice. In some cases, governments do not even bother to create a legal precedent for their actions. Last spring in Burundi, President Pierre Nkurunziza assumed a third term in office, despite the two-term limit enshrined in the constitution. When citizens took to the streets to protest, they were violently suppressed. Pierre Nkurunziza Even countries with some of the worlds most robust democratic traditions have been cracking down. After the Paris attacks, France and Belgium (where the plot was planned and organised) suspended civil liberties indefinitely, transforming themselves overnight into what are, at least by statute, police states. In both countries, demonstrations have been banned; places of worship have been closed; and hundreds of people have been detained and interrogated for having voiced an unconventional opinion. This approach is exacting a heavy toll. Thousands of people who had planned to protest at the UN climate talks last month had to settle for leaving their shoes. ParisAttacksVigil201115_Large/jpg It was a startling image, illustrating how fear can over-run the commitments needed to maintain open societies and political freedoms even in Europe, the birthplace of modern citizenship. There is no simple formula for regulating public space or safeguarding peaceful political dissent in an age of terrorism and globalisation. However, two basic principles are clear. First, the world needs stronger international governance of the movement of people and money, and fewer restrictions on speech, association, and dissent. Lately, governments have been moving in the wrong direction. However, 2016 offers plenty of opportunities for correction, in areas ranging from trade to migration. Second, non-profit organisations working to improve public policy need the same rights to secure international funding as for-profit entrepreneurs seeking to provide goods and services. Foreign direct investment should be encouraged, not hindered, regardless of whether it will support goods production and job creation or stronger public policies and more active citizenship. The responsibility for changing course does not fall exclusively on governments. All of us who value open public space must stand shoulder to shoulder in support of the policy frameworks and institutions that safeguard it. Now is a time for solidarity across movements, causes, and countries. When simply taking up the activism of a concerned citizen can land you in jail and fear of surveillance encourages mass passivity, single-issue politics is not a winning strategy. The best way to defend public space is to occupy it, even if you are championing a cause different from that of the person standing next to you. Chris Stone is president of the Open Society Foundations. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2016 Europe failed catastrophically to deal humanly with the influx of around a million people fleeing death and war, worsening the crisis and putting their lives and wellbeing at further risk. The stark judgement came from Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), the French originated global body that traditionally works to meet the health needs of the most disadvantaged in the world, often at great risk to themselves. They dont normally look for boats to take drowning people out of the Mediterranean or deliver babies on vessels or help find missing relatives for children. But over the past 12 months they looked after the medical needs of just under 100,000 people that were picked out of the water or out of boats. That is one tenth of the estimated one million that fled to Europe from wars in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. A quarter of those were children under the age of 18 years and one sixth were women. The body, that depends on donations, spent 31.5 million and mobilised 535 staff to respond to the needs of migrants that wouldnt have been necessary in many cases if Europe had provided safe passage and humanitarian standards of reception for these desperate people. In total they spent 62.5 million including on search and rescue operations and looking after refugees in Italy, Greece, the Balkans, and their countries of destination. MSF is scathing in its analysis of European leaders response: The lack of safe and legal options for people to flee, the razor wire fences, capriciously closed borders, squalid, inhumane reception conditions, and the complicated, ever changing registration procedures aggravated the already miserable conditions imposed on thousands fleeing war, poverty, and oppression, serving only to make fleeing more dangerous and increasing the suffering of those on the move. An MSF emergency coordinator working on the Phoenix off Malta said she always gets the same answer from people when she asked them why they risk their lives there is no alternative. These people know the dangers but they take the gamble anyway. They tell us that they would rather drown seeking safety and freedom than stay in their homelands or in Libya where their lives are not worth living, she reports. One Eritrean woman who stayed three months in Tripoli told MSF: I have no words to describe my life there. Its the worst place in the world. They treated us like animals. They separated women from men and every day they took one of us to quench their lust. Who wants to stay in Libya under these conditions? I dont want to be abused again. So we had no choice. Its true, we knew that we could die at sea, but it was our choice. Last year, 2015, was the deadliest year on record in the Med with at least 3,771 people dying on Europes shores while the lack of humanitarian action by the EU and governments pushed people into the hands of smugglers and onto overcrowded boats. These people were victimised in other ways too, with ongoing reports from sizeable numbers who landed on the Greek islands of Lesbos and Kos of how many were robbed or had their goods thrown into the sea by masked groups. Large boats tried to sink their dinghies at sea while the Greek Coast Guard either contributed or sailed by something they deny but MSF say the reports continue. MSF teams treated two children that survived such an attack. One eight-year-old boy came to the MSF clinic with his father. He told the doctors since we have been in the water I feel very sad. I dont know why but I feel very sad. Fighting back his tears, his father explained that his son had difficulty sleeping since the attack, waking up with nightmares, as well as suffering from bronchitis. Another child, six-years-old, came to a clinic with his mother. Having fled from the war in Afghanistan, she explained : My son was completely in the water, there was water all in the boat after the attack. But I managed so that his head didnt enter the water until we reached the island Farmakonisi. He was in my arms and I was holding him so tight. I was afraid. His whole body was black. His lips were completely blue. It was a miracle nobody died. MSF teams compare the emotional scenes of many when they step ashore in Italy and Greece, people kissed the ground and either jumped up and down or wept with a mixture of joy and relief after surviving the sea crossing, but their ordeal was far from over as conditions were atrocious. A Syrian woman told MSF: We are staying in a dirty tent. There are no mattresses to sleep on, just cardboard boxes. There are no blankets, nothing, just dirt. We dont even want to go near the toilets. The water is not clean, we cannot wash. I cant believe that I am living in such conditions with my family. I used to be a teacher and my husband was an accountant. Look at us now. This is inhumane. In Greece it was even worse with no facilities even still on Kos as the local authority refuse to let MSF or any other body help, and refuse to help the migrants themselves. The inhumanity continues in other locations too. We have witnessed a lot of pregnant women and children queuing for several days in the mud, soaking wet in the pouring rain without any protection, some of them only wearing a T-shirt. People cant stand up anymore because their feet are swollen after being wet for several days. Without the intervention of our medical teams or volunteers, police dont allow refugees to leave the queue to have access to health care. This is completely inhumane, said an MSF project coordinator in Lesbos. Used to dealing with skin diseases of people escaping the camps in Libya, MSF are now dealing with similar ailments of unhygienic conditions in Greece, made worse by the cold and rain of recent months with respiratory tract infections increasing dramatically. Pozzallo in Sicily, designated by the EU as one of the hotspots had such atrocious conditions and poor response from the authorities that MSF withdrew. Pressure to register the new arrivals was the only priority. One doctor told the horrific story of a young woman, last among 700 migrants to leave a rescue boat. We immediately realised she had endured violence during their journey through the desert, and she had suffered female genital mutilation. They alerted the authorities and asked to have her go to a specialist centre. But there was no response and the long wait in the overcrowded centre further destabilised her mental health and she had to be transferred to a psychiatric centre. For us it was a failure, the doctor said. An MSF project coordinator in Sicily said: Today, 18 corpses arrived in Pozzallo. More corpses. Is there anybody still thinking that people take the decision lightly to cross half of the world risking their lives to reach the wonderful Europe? On Friday, in Augusta, we received a child with a central venous line for chemotherapy. Last week a paraplegic Eritrean girl landed in Pozzallo, after having crossed the desert in a wheelchair. Some weeks ago a teacher from Ivory Coast told me he worked in Libya for two years and was suddenly forced to escape because of black-people hunting. And then there is the domino of countries shutting their borders, starting with Hungary. European governments along this route continuously played with the health, dignity, and wellbeing of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers by opening and closing borders seemingly on a whim, without proper planning or communication. Far from stemming the flow of people on the move, these restrictions have merely made peoples flight to safety more dangerous, more miserable, and more expensive. The attitudes of the police has been yet another obstacle to migrants, increasing the psychological as well as physical pressure on people. The experience of one Iraqi man travelling with his family in Dimitrovgrad in October is not all that unusual: Bulgaria is an EU country, I cannot believe it, I am so angry. Im sorry for speaking like this. But the police were really bad. It cant be called police, it is mafia. They took our money, our phones. They beat us, even women. We are running from Daesh in Iraq but I didnt know there was a Daesh in Bulgaria. When safe passage was organised in July from Macedonia to Serbia, people travelled in decent conditions, were rarely exposed to violence or forced into the hands of smugglers, and arrived at their destination relatively healthy. But by late November as borders are shut in their faces, MSF psychologists noted a significant increase in the number of panic attacks and self-harm attempts. MSF can help alleviate the results of the restrictive policies on their patients health and lives. However, Europes prioritisation of border control, security and deterrence over the health and wellbeing of those who flee is extremely difficult to treat. Europe must act to put the lives of those who flee first, the report says, and warms that all the signs point to the crisis continuing through 2016. That was Micheal Martins promise to the Taoiseach at the Fianna Fail Ard Fheis last Saturday. Its a good line and a good point. But this election is still Kennys to lose. There may be no open goal but the ball is at his feet. This is the moment of ultimate pressure in Enda Kennys long career. Barring a cock-up, or a series of them of his own making, he has a better than even chance of returning as Taoiseach, in some arrangement or another. A campaign that succeeds in crystallising his narrative of chaos versus stability could propel him and Labour over the line with a narrow majority. For now, thats a best case scenario. More likely, others will be required for a future Kenny-led government. Few understand the extraordinary pressure on an incumbent Taoiseach leading his party into an election campaign. You are the bulls eye everyone aims for you. To unseat a Taoiseach in the ring is the ultimate prize for any journalist in a press conference, or interview. It is the avowed aim of his opponents in every debate. Everything is at stake. Returning to office in 2016 cements Fine Gaels acquired role as the natural party of government. It would seal Kennys position as the most successful leader of his party ever. The problem is voters do not think in these terms. It is their own future, not Enda Kennys place in history which preoccupies them. Micheal Matrin The challenge of the campaign will be like no other for Kenny. It is his first as an outgoing Taoiseach with a record to defend. In 2007 as Fine Gael leader he led an apparently successful challenge for much of the campaign. Bertie Ahern and Fianna Fail were not only on the ropes, they were on the floor. Their campaign didnt so much recover, as survive. By the end, it was ahead less because of its offering, but because Kennys challenge has fizzled out. In 2011, Kenny did have a coronation of sorts. But the remnants of the Fianna FailGreen government if still in office the Greens in fact had actually left was in freefall. The circumstances were unprecedented. Now we are back to a sort of politics as usual. A small swing will make the difference. The campaign will matter intensely. The latest round of interminable opinion polls begs the question of whether the Governments recently acquired momentum has fizzled out. But the slip for Fine Gael, if there has been one, is within the margin of error. My strong sense is that, as of now, Fine Gael, Fianna Fail and Sinn Fein are set to have good results. Sinn Feian leader Gerry Adams That means more seats for the two opposition parties. For Fine Gael it demands that it can contain its losses. The open question for Fine Gael is Labour. It could win the battle but lose the war on its left flank. That is precisely what happened to it in 1997 when it was last in government. It gained seats but Labour losses saw it lose power. In 2007 its own promised breakthrough petered out, but it still chalked up significant seat gains. Labour couldnt move the dial. So it was back into opposition for them, together. Provided Kenny keeps himself and his own party on course, his future depends on his partners. Fine Gael in government would have been wiser to have treated them better. But its not over for Labour. They can survive and deliver. For Fine Gael the challenge is to ensure that talented TDs in marginal seats like Jerry Buttimer in Cork South Central or Paschal Donohoe in Dublin Central survive. Both, and some others add to the Fine Gael offering and make it a more interesting, rounded party. Paschal Donohoe For Donohoe the conundrum is especially interesting. He is fighting for his life in a three-seat constituency. Not only is his Dail seat at stake, so is his cabinet seat. Michael Noonan says he wants to return to the Department of Finance. Whether that is posturing or fact, the ultimate choice will be Kennys. If Kenny, either immediately or in the future, wishes to have a new minister for finance, Donohoe would surely be on the shortlist. It may boil down to a handful of votes in obscure suburbs but a lot is at stake. It is not only about which party is in government, it is about the capacity of that partys personnel to sustain the project years thereafter. Second terms are grinding. Returning to government brings unhealthy institutionalisation. The political edge can dull, and energy sag. New ideas and fresh thinking become rarer. The intensity of the political cycle, especially in office means that with few exceptions most need the rest they are given soon thereafter. One of the problems for Fianna Fail after 2008 is that if it had a wealth of experience and in Brian Lenihan some newly promoted talent, it was already deeply tired before the crisis arrived. It subsequently left office shattered. Kennys real problem, if he is re-elected, begins on the day of the actual coronation when, after he receives the mandate of the people, he is nominated by the Dail and appointed to the office of Taoiseach by the president. Then he returns to Government Buildings from Aras an Uachtarain, closets himself in his office and summons down that long red-carpeted corridor those to be appointed to cabinet. This, should he enjoy it, is both the moment of ultimate achievement and crisis. The achievement if it happens is obvious. The crisis unless the cabinet-making itself is botched will arrive more slowly but, inexorably. A Taoiseach retuned for the second time and, unless there is another snap election, one retiring during that term, in appointing his government, plays his last best hand. Politics is always future tense. Power is only temporarily loaned to those who can deliver, for those who give it. Once you have nothing more to give others start to give up on you. The moment of ultimate triumph, is ironically when power begins to be exhaled. Courtiers start to look over your shoulder, searching the room for who the future brings. But we are ahead of ourselves. The question this weekend for Fine Gael is whether the party positions itself successfully to deliver not for themselves, but for voters. Another question is how Kenny survives outside the cordon sanitaire of government in a media melee he is uncomfortable with. Extraordinary success is tantalisingly close. So is the worst of all nightmares whereby his party does credibly and Labour survives but not sufficiently, even with others, to make up a new government. Then, answering a national crisis another term for heaven-sent opportunity Fianna Fail, Sinn Fein, Labour and some others coalesce to form a national government. Body camera video of the traffic stop showed Samuel DuBose, 43, was shot in the head by officer Ray Tensing in July last year after he was pulled over for a missing front licence plate on his car. Mr DuBose attempted to prevent the officer from opening the car door before the car started slowly rolling forward. Mr Tensing, who is white, pulled his gun and fired once. Mr DuBoses death fuelled demonstrations and intensified a debate on policing and race in the US that helped lead to the founding of the Black Lives Matter movement. Lawyers for the family said in a statement that the settlement, including the free tuition, is worth about $5.3m. The agreement must be approved by the Hamilton County Probate Court before it is finalised. The agreement includes an apology to the family from the school president Santa Ono. The university will work with the family to establish a memorial on campus commemorating Mr DuBose, the statement said. This agreement is also part of the healing process not only for the family but also for our university and Cincinnati communities, Mr Ono said in a statement. The case was mediated in closed-door sessions over a two-day period, family lawyer Billy Martin said. Mr Tensing has pleaded not guilty to murder and voluntary manslaughter charges and is free on a $1m bond. No trial date has been set. If convicted, Mr Tensing faces a possible life sentence. An independent report on the shooting released in September called it entirely preventable. Following VWs exposure last September for using software defeat devices to cheat US regulatory tests, the French carmaker has drawn public and investor scrutiny over its own emissions performance. Besides VWs outright cheating, the diesel scandal has heightened awareness of real-world NOx emissions by the broader car industry far exceeding those measured in flawed European regulatory tests with Renault often cited by campaigners as among the worst offenders. The UN weather agency said it forecast below-normal temperatures and heavy snowfall in the next two weeks in the eastern Balkan peninsula, Turkey, the eastern Mediterranean, and Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan. Many children on the move do not have adequate clothing or access to the right nutrition, said Christophe Boulierac, spokesman for the UN childrens agency Unicef. Asked if children could freeze to death, he told a news briefing: The risk is clearly very, very high. Children were coming ashore on the Greek island of Lesbos wearing only T-shirts and soaking wet after travelling on unseaworthy rubber dinghies, the charity Save the Children said in a statement. Aid workers at the border reception centre in Presevo say there is six inches of snow on the ground and children are arriving with blue lips, distressed and shaking from the cold, it said. Below normal temperatures and heavy snowfall equals bad news for refugees: https://t.co/HTd3iIhlxR Vanessa Parra (@ParraV) January 19, 2016 It said temperatures were forecast to drop to -20C in Presevo in Serbia and -13C on the Greek border with Macedonia. Last year, children accounted for a quarter of the 1m migrants and refugees arriving across the Mediterranean in Europe, Boulierac said. The UN refugee agency UNHCR said a daily average of 1,708 people had arrived in Greece so far in January, just under half the December daily average of 3,508. Meanwhile, an estimated 3,500 people, mainly women and children, are believed to be held as slaves in Iraq by Islamic State (IS) militants who impose a harsh rule enforced by gruesome public executions, the UN has reported. The militant group, which also controls large parts of neighbouring Syria, has committed widespread abuses that may in some instances, amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide, the report said. The UN Assistance Mission for Iraq and the UN human rights office estimated that 3,500 people were currently being held in slavery by ISIL, using another acronym for IS. Those being held are predominantly women and children and come primarily from the Yezidi community, but a number are also from other ethnic and religious minority communities, said the joint report issued in Geneva. The report detailed executions by shooting, beheading, bulldozing, burning alive, and throwing people off the top of buildings. It said the UN had information about the murder of child soldiers and had verified reports suggesting that between 800 and 900 children in Mosul had been abducted for military and religious training. Even the obscene casualty figures fail to accurately reflect exactly how terribly civilians are suffering in Iraq, UN human rights chief Zeid Raad Al Hussein said in a statement. The figures capture those who were killed or maimed by overt violence, but countless others have died from the lack of access to basic food, water or medical care. It said a number of IS child soldiers were killed by the extremists when they tried to flee fighting in the western Anbar province. Mr Hussein added that the report laid bare the horror that Iraqi refugees were attempting to escape when they fled to Europe and other regions. At least 18,802 civilians were killed and another 36,245 were wounded in Iraq between the start of 2014 and October 31 of last year as Iraqi forces battled IS, the UN report said. Asia Taiwan Party That Won Election Wants US Help with China Taiwans new government will carefully manage relations with mainland China and it wants Washington to keep encouraging reconciliation. WASHINGTON Taiwans new government will carefully manage relations with mainland China and it wants Washington to keep encouraging reconciliation, a senior official of the victorious party said Tuesday. Joseph Wu is secretary-general of the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party. He is meeting with senior US officials this week following the partys commanding victory in elections on the self-governing island Saturday. The DPP defeated the Nationalist Party that has forged closer ties with the mainland during its eight-year tenure. The result was widely seen as a setback to Beijing, but Wu said his partys presidential nominee, Tsai Ing-wen, has made clear she wants to maintain the status quo and safeguard peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. We will do our utmost to find a mutually acceptable mode of interaction between Taiwan and the mainland, one that avoids confrontation and prevents surprises, Wu told the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. Those remarks will be welcomed by the Obama administration. The United States is Taiwans most important ally and source of defensive arms but it has applauded the easing of cross-Strait relations under the outgoing Nationalist government. China claims the island as its own territory and threatens to use force if Taiwan declares formal independence. We would need the United States to continue to encourage the two sides to speak with each other, Wu said, adding that Washington can play a balancing role so Taiwan is not dangling out there alone dealing with China. Wu characterized Beijings reaction to the election as measured, but it has already warned that it will not budge on its bottom line that Taiwans leader must agree that the communist mainland and democratic island are part of a single Chinese nation. Tsai has refused to endorse Beijings one China principle but hasnt publicly repudiated it either. Wu said a top priority for the new administration would be for legislation laying out the guiding principles for cross-Strait relations so there is more transparency in its dealings with Beijing. Opposition to a services trade agreement with China spawned major protests in 2014 by Taiwanese students and civic groups who occupied the national legislature. Wu said Taiwan would look to strengthen relations with the US, Japan and the European Union, and pursue membership of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, a US-backed free trade pact. He said if China sought to pressure smaller member of the 12-nation pact to oppose Taiwans inclusion it would hurt cross-Strait relations. Burma Anniversary of Ill-Fated Student Protest Marked in Mandalay Student activists in Mandalay demonstrate to mark the one-year anniversary of the beginning of a protest march violently dispersed by Burmese authorities 50 days later. MANDALAY Student activists in Mandalay demonstrated on Wednesday to mark the one-year anniversary of the beginning of a protest march that would be violently dispersed by Burmese authorities 50 days later, with commemorators calling for the release of all political prisoners, including dozens detained following the police crackdown. About 50 university students from the Mandalay Student Union marched the streets of Mandalay in defiance of local authorities who initially sought to prohibit the demonstration, reaching the entrance of Mandalay University before dispersing peacefully. We want to urge the government to release all of our friends from Thayawady Prison, as well as the other political prisoners, said the protesting students, referring to the penitentiary in Thayawady Township, Pegu Division, where students and their supporters arrested on March 10 in neighboring Letpadan are being held while they stand trial. Since Wednesdays protestors did not seek permission as required under Burmas Peaceful Assembly Law, local authorities and police officials attempted to stop them, but eventually reached agreement to allow the students to march to the university. The police and the authorities said our protest is unlawful and we could face charges. We are not afraid to face it, because we believe we are doing the right thing, said one student protester. On Jan. 20 of last year, students and other education reform advocates led by the All Burma Federation of Student Unions embarked on a 400-mile march from Mandalay to Rangoon, in protest of a controversial National Education Law passed in September 2014. The column of protestors made it all the way to Letpadan in Pegu Division, about 70 miles northwest of Rangoon, where they were met with a police blockade. Days of negotiations failed to break the stalemate and on March 10, police moved in with batons in a violent show of force condemned at home and abroad. More than 100 students were initially detained for their involvement, with over 50 still on trial facing a variety of charges that human rights advocates criticize as illegitimate. Burma ANP in Tense Standoff With NLD Over State Governance Politicians in western Burmas Arakan State butt heads over a forthcoming chief ministerial appointment, as the date draws nearer for the transfer of power. RANGOON Politicians in western Burmas Arakan State are butting heads over a forthcoming chief ministerial appointment, as the date draws nearer for the transfer of power to a newly elected government. The National League for Democracy (NLD), which won a landslide victory in the Nov. 8 nationwide poll, has stated its intention to appoint members from within the party to the top executive posts in all of Burmas states and divisions. The announcement was not well received in Arakan State, the only administrative region where an ethnic political party fared better than the NLD. The Arakan National Party (ANP), which won a majority of elected state and Union-level seats representing its constituencies, now vows to stand in firm opposition to the new government if denied the right to form its own state-level administration. In a statement dated Jan. 19, the ANP announced that it wont join any government organization, but stand as an opposition party for the interests of Arakan people, unless it is granted an exemption and allowed to form its own government. According to the Constitution, the president has the power to appoint chief ministers, who then appoint most cabinet positions in the state government. Ethnic parties have in the past made concerted efforts to amend the provision, arguing that the current procedures grant too much power to the central government. Last week, NLD central committee member Nyi Pu met with locals and civil society organizations in the state capital Sittwe, where he faced renewed calls for the party to make an exception for the ANP, as the party won about 67 percent of elected seats in the state legislature. According to ANP central committee member Khine Pyi Soe, Nyi Pu reiterated the NLDs position that the ruling party would select the states leadership and that the decision came from party chairwoman Aung San Suu Kyi. Tension is expected to mount as new lawmakers assume their seats next month, as the ANP has thus far only become more resolute in its demand. The party stated in its announcement on Tuesday that it would be open to discussions with the NLD should they wish to discuss the formation of the new state government. Editors note: This article was edited at 5:26pm to clarify that the ANP won a majority of elected seats in the state legislature, but does not have a majority due to the appointment of military lawmakers to 25 percent of seats. Burma Arakan Govt to Resettle Villagers Displaced by Conflict The Arakan State government plans to relocate 32 households displaced by recent conflict in Mrauk-U Township, a state official says. RANGOON The Arakan State government plans to relocate 32 households displaced by recent conflict in Mrauk-U Township, according to a state official. Hla Thein, of the state governments public relations department, said on Tuesday that the state will provide materials, labor and farmland, and that the resettlement project is expected to be complete before a new government is sworn in later this year. The official said the location for the new homes has not yet been chosen, but that the process has been and will remain consultative with affected villagers. We asked them about their wishes, and they agreed to our suggestion, Hla Thein said. The displaced villagers are currently taking shelter in a monastery in Kyiyar Pyin village. They are among an estimated 200 civilians who fled their homes after conflict broke out between the Arakan Army and the Burma Army in late December. An administrator from Kyiyar Pyin, Tin Aye Maung, told The Irrawaddy on Tuesday that Arakan State Chief Minister Mya Aung visited the village recently to meet with the refugees and assess their willingness to relocate. Some people accepted their offer, but others wanted to go back to their original homes, Tin Aye Maung said. Conflict appears to have abated in the restive area, though the commander of the Arakan Army said recently that tensions remain high and clashes could erupt at any time. Fighting between the Arakan Army and government troops broke out on Dec. 27, lasting for about three weeks. The Burma Army has since said that intends to annihilate the ethnic insurgents. The Arakan Army is not recognized by the government as a legitimate non-state armed group, and has been excluded from the ongoing peace process between the government and other ethnic armed organizations. Burma Carlsberg Caves After Tuborg Transliteration Dispute Danish brewer Carlsberg Group will change the Burmese transliteration of its Tuborg Beer labels following a dispute over intellectual property. RANGOON Danish brewer Carlsberg Group announced on Tuesday that it will change the Burmese transliteration of its Tuborg Beer labels following a dispute over intellectual property. Carlsberg launched the beverage in Burma last April, using the name Tu Po in Burmese script on its products. The name is spelled and pronounced the same as the title a beloved song associated with Thingyan, the countrys biggest cultural festival. The family of the songwriter, Myoma Nyein, said last week that it would sue the company if it did not change its labeling. The family claimed that Carlsberg preferred the phrase Tu Po over a more accurate transliteration in order to capitalize on the songs popularity. In light of the claims of the relatives of the late Sayar Myoma Nyein and the general debate around the use of Tu Po in the marketing of Tuborg Beer, we will discontinue the use of this spelling going forward and, to avoid any future misinterpretation, the Danish brand name Tuborg will be used in Myanmar, the company said in a statement. We are taking immediate steps to implement the necessary modifications and will endeavor to have this completed before Thingyan, it continued, though Myoma Nyeins family had initially requested that the changes be made within one week. Speaking to The Irrawaddy on Wednesday, Myoma Nyeins son, Shwun Myaing said the family welcomed the companys statement but was disappointed that they were not personally informed. We accept this, but the statement was only intended for the media and online, he said. They havent informed our family yet. The company still needs to come and see us to understand our wishes and whether we are satisfied. This is a way of showing respect in our culture. Burma Deadly Clashes Reported Between Taang and SSA-S Forces Fighting has flared between the Shan State Army-South and the Taang National Liberation Army in northern Shan State, with several casualties reported. CHIANG MAI, Thailand Deadly clashes have broken out between the Shan State Army-South (SSA-S) and the Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA) in northern Shan State, according to a spokesperson for the Palaung armed group. Three TNLA soldiers died and two were wounded after fighting, which first broke out on Jan. 17, according to Mai Ai Kyaw, a spokesperson for the Taang group. He said conflict had occurred in Kyaukme, Hsipaw and Namhsan townships in northern Shan State. We clashed because RCSS [Restoration Council of Shan State] troops trespassed on our territory. Clashes will end if the RCSS go back to their territory in southern Shan State, Mai Ai Kyaw said. The Taang spokesperson claimed that the SSA-S, the armed wing of the RCSS, had sought to claim new territory since signing the so-called nationwide ceasefire agreement (NCA) in mid-October. He also alleged that Burma Army troops had supported the Shan armed group in recent fighting. In late November, the TNLA also claimed that their troops had clashed with a joint force of SSA-S and Burma Army troops on multiple occasions in Namhkam and Manton townships, near the border with China. On the recent hostilities, Lt-Col Sai Mein, a SSA-S spokesperson, said his group was not the aggressor but had defended itself against a surprise TNLA attack. Clashes broke out as the TNLA ambushed our military columns on their way back to stations from our headquarters. We dont understand why they launched an attack on us, Sai Mein said. The spokesperson also refuted allegations the Shan armed group was being supported by Burmas military. He said the area of recent clashes was formerly controlled by the Shan State National Army and that SSA-S troops have been present there for some time. In an interview with The Irrawaddy last month, RCSS chairman Lt-Gen Yawd Serk also rejected claims of cooperation with the Burma Army as totally false. The SSA-S was one of eight non-state armed groups that inked the NCA last year. Several other major ethnic armed groups opted against signing, chiefly on the grounds that three armed groups, including the TNLA, were excluded from the agreement. Translated by Thet Ko Ko. Burma Saffron Revolution Leader Gambira Re-Arrested on Immigration Charge U Gambira, a former monk and leading figure of the 2007 Saffron Revolution, is arrested in Mandalay on a charge of illegal border crossing. MANDALAY U Gambira, a former monk and leading figure of the 2007 Saffron Revolution, was arrested in Mandalay on Tuesday on a charge of illegal border crossing. Police said Gambira, also known as Nyi Nyi Lwin, will appear in court on Wednesday for an immediate hearing. The immigration officers are questioning him and will present to the Maha Aung Myay Courthouse today, a police officer from the township told The Irrawaddy, adding that the charge does not allow for release on bail. Gambiras wife, Australian citizen Marie Siochana, said the couple traveled to Mandalay to apply for a passport, and that police apprehended him from their hotel room. Gambira has lived primarily in Thailand since he was released from prison in a 2012 amnesty. I think the immigration officials think he went to Thailand illegally. Actually, he has the official permit and a non-Thai immigration card, Siochana said. Gambira is one of Burmas most prominent political prisoners; he was arrested shortly after the Saffron Revolution for his role in organizing monks to participate in the uprising. He was forcibly disrobed upon his detention. Since his release in 2012, he has struggled with mental health issues and sought treatment in Thailand. While traveling back and forth between Thailand and Burma, he has been re-arrested at least four times on various charges largely viewed as spurious. Im worried about him because he cant get bail, Siochana said. He is mentally ill and needs to take medicine regularly. He needs to look after his health, and I wonder why they still want to arrest him. Gambira is currently being held at the No. 9 Police Station in Mandalay, and his hearing will proceed on Wednesday afternoon. Burma Verdict for Kachin Aid Worker Jailed for Facebook Post Expected on Friday A Rangoon court is expected to deliver a ruling Friday on the case of a Kachin social worker arrested in October over a Facebook post he disputes sharing. Burma Once Off-Limits, Moscos Islands Are a Dream Destination A remote archipelago in the Andaman Sea is now taking tourists, and its pristine waters are unlike any other place in Burma. I had one purpose in mind when I headed to Dawei for holiday: to reach the unspoiled islands of the Andaman Sea. I first became aware of the Moscos Islands, which were long restricted for tourists, through some accounts in local journals claiming that the isolated spot was now taking visitors. I remember seeing photos of clear blue seas and pristine sand banksand thinking that I had to rush there before it was gone or developed beyond recognition. Though the archipelago is remote, its not difficult to access. My friends and I booked a trip through a new agency, Tavoy Travel & Tour, which made arrangements for our overnight stay in a secluded island bay. With Dawei as our starting point, we boarded a small boat from San Hlen fishing village at around 7am to make our way further out to sea. The village itself was a draw. Its a small town where fishermen dock with their catch and trade with distributors who ship seafood to Burmas cities. There was a dizzying array of small, dried fish, found in shallow waters near the shore. The salty seafood is a local staple, used in salads, curries and beer snacks. Once we peeled ourselves from the docks, we headed out by boat for the Launglon Bok Islands in the southern part of the Moscos archipelago. Launglon Bok comprises two islesthe 6 kilometer-long Aek Bok and the 10 kilometer Auk Bok. The area was previously restricted because of a Burma Navy base nearby, though the land remains under the Dawei District administration. Foreign travelers visiting Daweis Maungmagan beach couldnt be kept away for long, however, and eventually began hiring fishing boats to take them out to the distant paradise. It takes about 90 minutes to travel from San Hlen to the southern Moscos, a stunning ride through crystal-clear water. Our group was lucky to spot a pod of dolphins playfully whirling around our boat before we docked at the bay of Thae Balot, which means soft sand. As we approached the bay, the white sand gleaming in the sun, we looked down to see colorful coral lining the seabed. The islands were still, for the most part, clean and beautiful, though my friends and I were disappointed to find a few pieces of broken beer bottles, plastic bits and used batteries along the shore. It seemed like such a shame that my companions and I began picking up whatever trash we came across to keep the bank natural. We rested for a while on wooden chairs beneath makeshift bamboo huts, thatched with palm rooftops to shield us from the sun. A dog trotted up to sit by us, and we later learned his name was Shote Maeblack noseand that his owners were a local couple who turned out to be very helpful to travelers. The wife, Aunty San, cooked a Burmese buffet for our lunch. At 2,000 kyats per person, it was a steal; drumstick vegetable curry, fried fish, shark salad and fried squid. Fish paste and cabbage on the side, all you can eat. The lunch was a bit debilitating, but after a quick rest we were ready to get back on the open water and explore the reefs. The water suddenly appeared very deep, and I could see urchins lining the reef. Being unable to swim, I was scared to death, but the underwater scenery was so beautiful that I couldnt peel my eyes away, dipping my face into the sea with goggles. Never in my life had I seen such a beautiful bed of coral, old and young, of all sizes, and so many varieties of fish passing through. When I looked up, I could see the fullness of the bay, a bright blue bowl with mountains on either side. We were told that during the rainy season there are waterfalls streaming straight off the hills and into the sea. Heading back just before sunset, we all felt there was too little time to enjoy the water, but it would soon be too dark to discover any more dazzling sea life. Once ashore we sat down to a few bottles of wine, some apples and oranges while Aunty San prepared dinner. She instructed the men to fetch a few bamboo poles so we could build a campfire, around which we spent the evening drinking wine and talking. There is nothing like breathing in the fresh air, sitting silently on the sand and listening to the sounds of the sea while staring out into a vast darkness. It felt like a world disconnected, away from pollution, away from distractions. Aunty San, who is 48 years old, said she suffered from hypertension before moving out to the island about six years ago. She lost weight, too, she said. She did look healthy and fit, and the claim that her new lifestyle was so good for her wellbeing had us all silently plotting a way to stay on this island forever. 4 Enterprise Technology Trends to Be Mindful of in 2016 The telecommunications industry isnt what it was nor what it will be. Nothing makes the transition buffeting the industry more clear than a look at capex predictions and related stories. Multichannel news reported on a forecast issued last week by Raymond James analyst Simon Leopold on capital expenditures (capex) for the telecommunications industry. The forecast predicts that overall capex will rise 3 percent in the United States. Cable will advance only 1 percent, with wired and wireless (telco) up 2 percent and Web expenditures 6 percent. The international numbers are more bearish: European capex will recede by 7 percent and China will sink a full 11 percent. That China and Europe are down while the U.S. is up is one sign that things are changing. More evidence of change can be found in Ovums forecast for worldwide capex. The first point analyst Matt Walker made was that the traditional segment what generally is thought of as telcos likely finished 2015 with $1.78 trillion in revenues. Thats 5 percent less than last year. The previous three years 2012 to 2014 were flat. The major point of the analysis, though, is that the old definitions need to be rethought: Capital spending by telcos remains tightly constrained: from $339bn in 2014, CSP capex will decline in 201517 before growing again through 2020, spurred on by early 5G spending. Meanwhile, capex from the Googles and Facebooks of the world Internet content providers (ICPs) in Ovum lingo is growing steadily in aggregate, reaching $110bn by 2020. Thats not much less than all fixed telcos will spend on their networks in 2020. The key going forward for vendors is to make investments both in research and development and acquisition that play to the needs of ICT companies. Zacks, which provides more granular investor-ready input, posted a piece last week that looks at the telecom industry in the United States. It doesnt offer predictions, but does provide good insight into the way the firm sees things developing. The company points to five drivers of innovation: wireless networks, high-speed fiber networks, industry consolidation, innovative products, and healthy demand in rural areas. After a discussion of two strategies diversification and geographic expansion the firm offers what could be called a ringing endorsement of the overall category. The industry is immune from external disturbances, has high barriers to entry (thus discouraging new competitors) and strong demand. Those, the piece concludes, are positives that are difficult to disregard from the standpoint of investors. Numbers are a good indicator of where a sector is going. In this case, however, even more compelling conclusions can be drawn from the tone and theme of the reports. Clearly, the very nature of what types of businesses and technologies should be followed is in a state of transition. Carl Weinschenk covers telecom for IT Business Edge. He writes about wireless technology, disaster recovery/business continuity, cellular services, the Internet of Things, machine-to-machine communications and other emerging technologies and platforms. He also covers net neutrality and related regulatory issues. Weinschenk has written about the phone companies, cable operators and related companies for decades and is senior editor of Broadband Technology Report. He can be reached at [email protected] and via twitter at @DailyMusicBrk. 5 Big Ways Big Data Is Changing the IT Network The closer the enterprise gets to implementing Big Data analytics, the more daunting it appears. Even organizations that are well-versed in data warehousing realize that building infrastructure for the so-called data lake is a completely different ballgame. Not only does the data lake require large amounts of computing power and storage access, it has to be integrated with cutting-edge analytics, automation, orchestration and machine intelligence. And ideally, this state-of-the-art infrastructure should be accessible to the average business executive who has little or no experience in the data sciences. But as weve seen many times, things that seem impossible at the outset are often possible once you put your mind to it. And data lake technology is already starting to make its mark at the top end of the enterprise market and shows every indication of trickling down to the lower tiers. According to Computerworlds James Henderson, classic warehousing technology is already evolving to meet the needs of the data lake and Big Data analytics. This is not to say the data lake will replace the warehouse in fact it seems the two will ultimately complement each other but that key elements like data ingestion and staging are changing on the warehouse side to meet the needs of Hadoop analytics. For instance, the data lake should be more adept at working with raw data, so much of the conditioning and pre-processing that went on in the warehouse data mart is unnecessary. This makes things easier for applications higher up the stack because they no longer have to know which databases to query. But this only works if the enterprise embraces the proper architecture for the data lake. As Infosys Abdul Razack told Inside Big Data recently, many early attempts at the data lake resembled jumbled repositories of structured, semi-structured and unstructured data, turning what should be a highly efficient analytics engine into a data wasteland. Current thinking attempts to reverse-engineer the analytics process by first determining what kinds of results the enterprise hopes to receive and then optimizing each component of the lake for those purposes. Invariably, this results in a lot of customization of the architecture but greater support for desirable outcomes like real-time analytics and highly dynamic scalability. Indeed, most data lake development so far assumed that its primary purpose was to collect and store data in its original Hadoop format and then let analysts make sense of it later, says Third Natures Mark Madsen (download required). But it soon became evident that this approach does not allow for sufficient scale not because the technology was not sound but because the people who need the analytics lacked the proper skill sets to locate and process data. Going forward, the data lake should consist of separate but integrated components for storage, standardization, structuring and processing. This allows data architects and scientists to do what they do best condition and prepare data for optimal value while still enabling line of business managers to draw results in a prompt, intuitive fashion. This is also why many of the key aspects of the data lake things like preparation, analytics and integration are becoming automated, says Data Informeds Jelani Harper. By removing much of the rote work from human operators, the automated lake frees up highly trained data scientists and architects for high-level management and development, while non-data-savvy users can still derive the results they need without a lot of retraining. At the same time, automation enables the kind of real-time or near-real-time functionality that will be vital in the fast-moving world of Big Data and the Internet of Things. Indeed, much of the analytics taking place will target opportunities in highly fluid, highly ephemeral business environments and will in fact be instigated by applications that are driven by their own sets of automated triggers. The idea of data-driven constructs acting on their own to engage customers and drive business processes may be unnerving to some, but it will likely become a crucial factor in the emerging app-centric economy. To meet this need, the data lake must not only be large enough to encompass the data load, but responsive enough to capitalize on opportunities. And that will require a clear set of expectations and architectural elements before the first compute module is unboxed. Arthur Cole writes about infrastructure for IT Business Edge. Cole has been covering the high-tech media and computing industries for more than 20 years, having served as editor of TV Technology, Video Technology News, Internet News and Multimedia Weekly. His contributions have appeared in Communications Today and Enterprise Networking Planet and as web content for numerous high-tech clients like TwinStrata and Carpathia. Follow Art on Twitter @acole602. Taiwanese handset manufacturer HTC may have been the first in line to usher in the Android race with the T-Mobile G1, but the company isn't exactly as strong as it once was during the advent of full touchscreen smartphones. However, as of late, HTC has been making giant strides in other departments. One great example of this is the company's partnership with Valve in creating the Vive VR headset. Now, according to rumors, the Taiwanese company is tapped by Google to make two Nexus devices. According to popular and reputable leaker for HTC devices LlabTooFer of Twitter, HTC is tipped for two new Nexus devices. The rumor puts a bit of light to the sketchy news that has been surfacing regarding HTC-made Nexus devices. However, it's not at all surprising that the Taiwanese company will be set to make new Nexus devices. After all, HTC has been the search engine giant's first partner. Reports suggest that the new addition in the Nexus lineup will apparently include 5-inch and 5.5-inch devices, further suggesting that Google will be continuing its two-size options for this year. It's also important to note that the search engine giant's decision to tap HTC for the next Nexus devices would mean that they could be a lot more similar as compared to the previous Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P, which are designed by LG and Huawei, respectively. This means that Google might offer two identical devices, albeit options that would seem close to how Apple sells the current iPhone 6s and the iPhone 6s Plus variants. However, further reports claim that the two new Nexus phones were of Huawei's to lose. The Chinese handset manufacturer has garnered huge success with the Nexus 6P, so it leaves everyone asking why Google wouldn't want to continue its budding relationship with Huawei. Dedicated to (1) protecting the Charles River in Cambridge/Boston, MA, USA.(2) standing up to destructive governments.(3) protecting the Charles River White Geese & other wildlife. See: http://www.friendsofthewhitegeese.org. Viewed in 121 plus countries. Email: boblat@yahoo.com. Friend the Charles River White Geese on Facebook. 2005-22, Friends of the White Geese, a MA non-profit. Hate speech has no place on the Internet, Facebook says, and this week it put at least some of its money where its mouth is. Specifically, the social network on Monday helped launch the Online Civil Courage Initiative, a new, million-euro effort designed to stamp out hate speech and extremism on the Internet in Europe. The new effort aims to support European nonprofit groups involved in the fight against online extremism, which has been reaching new heights amid the refugee crisis afflicting the region. The initiative will also bring together experts to jointly develop a set of tools and best practices to further that goal. Headquartered in Berlin, it was jointly organized by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg along with the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and the Amadeu Antonio Foundation. What proportion of the effort's stated one million euros comes from Facebook itself wasn't clear, and the company didn't respond to a request for clarification. Hate speech online has been a particular focus in Germany as it struggles to cope with the unprecedented influx of refugees arriving at its borders. In December, Facebook, Google and Twitter agreed to combat online racism by deleting hate speech from their websites within 24 hours. "In the past year, we've seen millions of people come together online to support refugees and stand in solidarity with the victims of terror attacks," Sandberg wrote in a post on her Facebook page on Monday. "But weve also heard voices of hate growing louder. With extremism damaging lives and societies across the world, challenging those voices has never been more important." Deleting content "won't make the hatred go away," Sandberg added. "We need the voices of tolerance and love to ring out across the world, because the best remedy to bad speech is more speech." It remains to be seen, however, how well Facebook puts those values into practice. "Enforcement has been an ongoing issue with Facebook in the past," noted social media strategist Lon Safko. "I hope Facebook stands behind their own policies, even at the cost of some members' 'freedom of speech' rights." Get unlimited access to all content and features at ivpressonline.com with our Full Online Access Subscription. Read our E-Edition, the digital replica of the print newspaper online, access content in exclusive sections including Family, Teen, Business, Databases, Farm and more. This option does not include daily home delivery of the Imperial Valley Press newspaper. For home delivery service, please select Premium or Premium Plus. Jewish Humor Central is a daily publication to start your day with news of the Jewish world that's likely to produce a knowing smile and some Yiddishe nachas. It's also a collection of sources of Jewish humor--anything that brings a grin, chuckle, laugh, guffaw, or just a warm feeling to readers. Our posts include jokes, satire, books, music, films, videos, food, Unbelievable But True, and In the News. Some are new, and some are classics. We post every morning, Sunday through Friday. Enjoy! What is a Jew? Israeli museum attempts an answer JERUSALEMI was on a short visit to Israel and spent time with a friend with whom I have been engaged in a 30-year argument. Elli... When anti-Semitism rears its head, we must be ready to fight it Anti-Semitism is a force that is persistent as well as pernicious. When it occurs, it must be fought both by being confronted in real time... Use increased in states with dispensaries after 2009 federal policy change; changes in state laws saw varying responses A Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health analysis of registered medical marijuana users found that a hodgepodge of law and policy changes since 2001 had varying effects on the number of people consuming what in many states remains an otherwise illegal drug for its purported health benefits. The findings, published online in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence, suggest a possible participation elasticity that could inform future discussions around medical marijuana provisions at both the state and federal level. Medical marijuana is legal to varying degrees in 23 states and the District of Columbia. In one finding, researchers determined that medical marijuana use in the states of Colorado, Montana and Michigan rose dramatically in 2009 when the federal government announced that it was making medical marijuana prosecutions a low priority. (In the previous administration, the federal government prosecuted medical marijuana users along with recreational users, since marijuana was -- as it is today -- against federal law.) By contrast, medical marijuana participation rose little in states the expressly prohibited dispensaries, such as Alaska, Rhode Island and Vermont. The federal policy change led to an increase in the number of medical marijuana dispensaries, which may have led to an increase in medical marijuana participation. When Colorado and Montana responded with regulations aimed at limiting dispensaries, their numbers fell, as did the number of medical marijuana registrants in these states. At one point, it seemed like there were more dispensaries than Starbucks in some cities, says study author Brian Fairman, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the Bloomberg Schools Department of Mental Health. Then when the number of dispensaries dropped, so did the number of registrants. Interestingly, after Colorado legalized recreational marijuana use, the rates of medical marijuana participation held steady, perhaps because sales taxes are lower for medical marijuana, so its more affordable. California became the first state to allow medical marijuana use in 1996. Since then, another 22 states and the District of Columbia approved medical marijuana use. An estimated 2.7 million people use medical marijuana, according to data based on a household survey from the U.S. National Survey on Drug Use and Health. However, state registries log only about 440,000 medical marijuana users, in part because registration is voluntary in some states, including California, so many patients do not register. The rules governing the practice currently vary from state to state, with some allowing dispensaries and some not, and two states, New York and Minnesota, prohibiting cannabis that is smoked (but allowing ingestion and vaporizing). Most patients who use medical marijuana do so for pain relief. For this analysis, only 13 states, along with the District of Columbia, with medical marijuana registries that had data available over time were included. The states analyzed were Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont. Other findings include: Among the eight states that report differences by age, medical marijuana patients under the age 18 make up less than 1 percent of medical marijuana patients. However, since June 2013 the number of minor patients in Colorado has increased significantly, possibly due to parents moving to the state to take advantage of the states dispensary market. In most states with available data, medical marijuana participants tend to be in their 50s, which is consistent with the baby boomer generation that had high rates of marijuana use during the mid-1970s. However, Colorado and Arizona have larger proportions of medical marijuana participants between the ages of 18 and 30. In states that report differences in medical marijuana by gender, men are more likely than women to register for medical marijuana, between 60 and 70 percent are men - but there is evidence that women may be catching up over time. The benefits of medical marijuana are little understood, largely because there is scant research, which is complicated by required clearance from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Marijuana policy is at a crossroads, Fairman says. Its especially important that policymakers and the public understand what might contribute to trends in medical marijuana use, considering the number of people who seek it for chronic pain and also how it might interplay with recreational use as more states legalize recreational marijuana. Trends in registered medical marijuana participation across 13 U.S. states and District of Columbia was written by Brian J. Fairman, PhD. The author acknowledges funding support by the National Institutes of Health under the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (T32DA007292) from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. # # # Media contacts for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: Barbara Benham at 410-614-6029 or bbenham1@jhu.edu and Stephanie Desmon at 410-955-7619 or sdesmon1@jhu.edu. Wal-Mart, the biggest retailer in the world, is doing a rare pruning. The company is set to close down 269 stores, 154 of them in the U.S. alone. These U.S. locations will include all stores under what the company calls Wal-Mart Express. Its stores in Brazil also take up a big chunk of these shutdowns. These store closures will not cause a big dent in Wal-Mart's revenues because they only represent less than one percent of its revenues worldwide. Currently, there are more than 11,000 Wal-Mart stores around the world. However, these store shutdowns will still affect a total of 16,000 workers globally. About 10,000 of them are employed in U.S. stores. Still, this is just a small percentage of the more than 2.2 million people Wal-Mart employs just in the U.S. alone. Along with these store closures, the company is also opening at least 405 new locations worldwide in its present fiscal year. This company initiative is in line with its shift towards Neighborhood Markets and Supercenters in more profitable locations. The U.S. stores scheduled for closure are more of the size of dollar stores which the company is trying to operate since 2011. In 2014, they were rebranded as Neighborhood Market. Interestingly, Wal-Mart will also close 23 existing Neighborhood Market in the United States, along with four Sam's Clubs and six discount centers. Wal-Mart will also shut down 12 Supercenters and seven locations in Puerto Rico. Doug McMillon, Wal-Mart CEO, announced these store closures after he told investors that the company is reviewing its store operations. The goal, said McMillon, is for Wal-Mart to become more nimble considering the presence of more competitors attacking on all fronts, most especially Amazon.com, the largest online store in the world. "No doubt our business has become both large and broad. It is more important now than ever that we evaluate our portfolio," explained McMillon. "We have closed stores across several markets and we will continue reviewing our fleet in a disciplined way," he added. An article written by Tony Penn explains that the quality of life in Southern Arizona depends on the children of the community and it starts with education. Penn explains Cradle to Career. Penn's article to the Arizona Daily Star introduces the Cradle to Career Partnership. C2C is a group of leaders that focuses on career outcome. These leaders have selected seven key results that will revolve around the birth-to-career initiative: First is kindergarten readiness which indicates that career mindedness should start at an early age; Second is early grade literacy which ensures development; Middle school math which is not to be neglected as math is essential to most careers; High school graduation which is the benchmark for success towards selecting a base career in college; Re-engagement of opportunity; Postsecondary education success; and career attainment. These things are necessary, as Penn illustrates, every child needs all the support it requires for education and adulthood. Each child should have the necessary resources inside and outside of the school. Penn also explained that this should be the top priority of each community in order to have a thriving economy. He continues to say that there is no direct cure as the reach is small and the area is wide. He listed down the things the system needs in order to attain the goal: quality early education, quality K-12 teachers, involved and engaged parents and affordable postsecondary education. These are listed as the essential requirements in order for the child to succeed. Penn describes that the education crisis is complex which is why C2C was launched last year to initiate changes. On its first year, the group focused on collecting and analyzing data in order to create a baseline for the seven areas listed above that need attention the most. Penn's article encourages attendees to view the results of The Cradle to Career Partnership education study which is scheduled to be released on Friday, January 29 from 9:30 AM until noon at the TEP building downtown at 88 E. Broadway. If you'd like to join, you can RSVP at this email address: mboulay@unitedwaytucson.org. Weddings are events many treasure as it is a memory of a solid union between two people. However, when it comes to the Queen of Scotland and Queen of England, the marriage they dream of may be scandalous instead of beautiful. It can well be a wedding no one can forget. Mary has always been doing all she can to save her Scotland and this time, she's willing to be Queen to the Prince of Spain - no matter how disabled he can be. The marriage alliance between Scotland and Spain may be the only thing that can win her cause against England. And Gideon will stop at nothing for this alliance to not happen. Driven by the need to free his daughter, he plants things inside Mary's head saying she will never be happy in a love-less marriage. And to make it more troublesome for Mary, he announced that the Queen of England is ready to accept Spain's proposal for marriage which pushed back her marriage date. On the other hand, the royal prince which is said to be disabled after the acciddent in his bedroom started to regain consciousness and remembers the truth about his accident. He regains not only his speech but also his mobility. He plans to use Mary the same way she used him, for marriage. He pulls the Duke in on his plan that he will accept Mary's proposal, deny Elizabeth's, only if Mary will agree to a crowned marriage - which will make him an heir to the Scottish throne. Mary gladly accepts but fearing something is wrong when she sees the Prince's hand move when her dog approached him, she enlists Gideon to find out the truth for her. She knows that he is only doing Elizabeth's bidding to save his daughter and this spy adventure will be to England's advantage because the alliance between Spain and Scotland may not happen. Gideon was able to find out that Spain has hired mercenaries to kill Mary when she travels to Spain. Furious, Mary plans to trick him into signing a contract without the crown addendum. Don Carlos still pretended to be disabled but quickly lost it when he read the contract and tore it apart with his two hands. Exposed as tricking the Queen into marriage, he leaves after threats from Catherine to expose his pillow secrets. Another marriage that may happen is Claude's unplanned wedding. Narcisse is struggling to lift France financially and he feels that France can benefit from Claude's marriage to a duke which is her greatest fear. Under Francis' reign, she was free to choose whomever she likes but this new revelation is one she cannot control. Meanwhile in England, posts reveal that Elizabeth found out she is pregnant with Robert's child. He wants to take care of them both so he plans to divorce his current wife. But Amy doesn't take this news lightly and ends up killing herself. This puts Robert in a spot being suspected of murdering his wife and Elizabeth cannot marry a man who is involved in a scandal that may ruin her reputation. What are the queens to do for love? An email obtained by The Verge stated that Microsoft is looking for interested iPhone users to test the if the Word Flow keyboard is compatible and functions well on iOS. "Word Flow keyboard has long been one of the highly praised features on Windows Phone and was used to break the Guinness World Record for fastest texting. We are now working on extending this keyboard to other platforms, starting with iOS," the email states. "Before publicly releasing this keyboard to the App Store, we'd love to give Insiders like you a preview. With your feedback, we'll build a roadmap of improvements to the keyboard over time," the email further states. An article published by Android Authority states that the "keyboard is only available as a beta for Windows Insiders at the moment.... We're not really expecting any changes with the iOS version of Word Flow - just the same wonderful experience Windows Phone users have grown to love." Although it is not clear whether when the Word Flow keyboard on iOS will be released to the public, Microsoft says it is ready to test it "more broadly". This gives us the assumption that it will more likely be available in the next few months. The Word Flow keyboard by Microsoft features autocorrect, gestures, suggestions, and the ability to swipe letters to type out words. An email sent to Windows Insider Kyle Reddoch says that the program asked if he owns "an iPhone (5s or newer)? Do you think your native iOS keyboard could use improvement?" The email further states that Microsoft is "working on extending the keyboard to other platforms, starting with iOS." The Word Flow keyboard is another unique part of Microsoft's mobile OS, together with the Cortana. However, making it available to competitions might somehow disappoint other fans, even if Microsoft has already announced that they are focused on making the experience available on multiple platforms. Walesonline, in their published article, said that a watchdog has confirmed that Iran had all the reasons to continue with the transaction as they have complied with a deal that was designed to help prevent the development of nuclear weapons. Iran's country's transport minister Abbas Akhoundi said that they would be buying 114 Airbus planes. Depending on the type of aircraft to be purchased, the deal could be amount to $10bn. Airbus has a total of 6,000 people at Broughton, and if this transaction becomes successful, then the company would greatly benefit from it. Airbus said on Saturday that the commercial talks happened only after the sanctions had been lifted. The said purchase is in line with the predictions of Iranair. It can be recalled that their chairman told news agency Reuters 18 months ago: "as soon as sanctions were eased, Iran would seek to obtain at least 100 wide-body and short-haul jets." This purchase is said to be the "first step in a renovation of national carrier Iran Air." Meanwhile, industry officials have forecasted the need to have 400 or more aircraft in the next decade in order to accommodate their country of 80 million people. With regard to the lifting of international sanctions against Iran, the International Atomic Energy Agency said that its "inspectors on the ground verified that Iran has carried out all measures required under the [July nuclear deal] ... to enable Implementation Day to occur". US secretary of state John Kerry and the EU's top diplomat, Federica Mogherini, met with Iran's Javad Zarif, in separate talks in Vienna. "Our region has been freed from [the] shadow of an unnecessary conflict that could have caused concerns for the region," Mr Zarif said, speaking to widely-held fears that if the deal failed then the United States or its allies would resort to military measures to take out Iran's nuclear infrastructure. "Today is also a good day for the world. Today will prove that we can solve important problems through diplomacy." Prime Air has been in the works since last year when the company revealed that it's working on using drones to deliver packages straight to consumers' homes. Amazon has recently revealed more details about its drone delivery service. Amazon describes its drone delivery services in detail except for the cost of Prime Air. The unmanned aerial vehicles are custom-made for the weather and is environment adapted. The drones are fitted with sensor features that are designed to avoid collisions. There are various drone versions that are being developed and each weigh an average of 55 pounds. The creation of different drones is specific to each environment in the United States. Paul Misener, the Vice President for Global Public Policy, explains that.. Our customers in the United States live in hot, dry, dusty areas like Phoenix, but they also live in hot, wet, rainy environments like Orlando, or up in the Colorado Rockies. Each drone is custom made which is suited to adapt to the environment they are placed. Some customers live in tall buildings while some live in country farmhouses. It can carry packages of up to 5 pounds in a distance of a 10 mile radiues from the depot and can deliver within 30 minutes of placing the orders online. The weight limit of 5 pounds was decided after the company has determined that majority of its products sold online weighs 5 pounds or less, reports confirmed. When asked if the company fears losing drones from people shooting them down, Misener was confident in saying that it wouldn't be an issue when the novelty wears off and seeing drones will be... ...as normal as seeing a delivery truck driving down the street someday. Amazon faces competition while other companies like Google's Alphabet and Walmart are staking their claim on the drone delivery industry. While the Federal Aviation Administration is yet to release official rules and regulations about the use of drones as delivery services, Amazon continues to add features to its services A motion has been filed for Walker County, Ga., asking dismissal of the complaint filed against it by Erlanger Health System. Attorney Stuart James said the motion "asserts that Walker County has no written agreement with Erlanger and is immune from suit. The motion further states that the suit should be dismissed as premature because the amount, if any, payable to Erlanger has yet to be determined due to the status of the legal claims in federal bankruptcy court, and counter-claims made against Erlanger by Hutcheson in the suit Erlanger filed against Hutcheson in this same federal district court in 2014." Attorney James said, Erlanger sued Hutcheson hospital and the hospital authority board in 2014. When the Board moved to add Walker County to that suit, Erlanger opposed that motion. The Court agreed. Now Erlanger is suing Walker, but not Catoosa, on a claim that is the same as the Hutcheson claim. Something does not add up here and we are asking the court to dismiss this claim allowing all of the issues in the Erlanger vs. Hutcheson suit to be resolved first. The Hospital Authority and Hutcheson in that suit have also filed claims and defenses against Erlanger claiming damages. It is beyond me why Erlanger sued when it is facing serious claims. It is beyond me why Erlanger sued Walker but not Catoosathreatening Catoosa with a suit if it did not continue to cooperate. It sounds to us like the giant in the room wants to beat up on the citizens of North Georgia while sweeping serious allegations about its conduct under the rug. Bebe Heiskell, Walker Countys Commissioner, said, "Erlanger has spent millions of dollars on attorney fees since 2014, not only defending lawsuits from disgruntled employees, but also to have a high powered Atlanta law firm file suit after suit against Hutcheson, none of which has so far been successful, except to run Hutcheson out of business. But I guess it is a good way to divert the taxpaying public's attention away from Erlanger's mis-management and financial troubles, while at the same time spending its competition (Hutcheson) into bankruptcy and liquidation. Now that Goliath has slayed Hutcheson, I guess it needs a new diversion for the press and the taxpaying public, so it has filed this frivolous lawsuit against Walker County." Email Links to our top local news stories of the day, Monday through Saturday. CHARLESTON, S.C. Hillary Clinton wrapped herself so tightly in President Obamas mantle at Sunday nights debate that it was a wonder she could walk off the stage. She lauded the Affordable Care Act to the heavens, rejecting the notion that it left too many Americans still without health insurance. She defended Obamas initiatives to rein in Wall Street, dismissing contentions that they did not go far enough. She highlighted his success in seizing Syrias chemical weapons. She praised the way he led us out of the Great Recession. And she attacked her chief rival for the Democratic nomination, independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, for allegedly being insufficiently loyal to the president. Senator Sanders called him weak, disappointing, she said. He even, in 2011, publicly sought someone to run in a primary against President Obama. There was considerable irony in all of this. Eight years ago, the primary fight here between Clinton and Obama was bitter and tinged with racial overtones. This year, with the possibility that Sanders could win both Iowa and New Hampshire, Clinton is counting on South Carolinas large African-American population to serve as a firewall. If there is anything not to like about the Obama legacy, apparently she hasnt heard of it. Sanders made the case that he has been, and remains, a supporter of the president. And he turned the tables, putting Clinton very much on the defensive when the subject turned to Wall Street excesses. I dont mean to just point the finger at you, he said, pointing his finger at Clinton, youve received over $600,000 in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs in one year. Clintons response that hedge-fund billionaires are running ads against her and that Im the one they dont want to be up against probably failed to convince many listeners that she is more antagonistic toward Wall Street than Sanders, who frequently rails about all the executives who need to be sent to prison. Former Maryland Gov. Martin OMalley, the third candidate on the Gaillard Center stage, delivered a performance that was smooth, knowledgeable and, as things now stand, irrelevant. Focus was on the contest between the two leaders in the polls, Clinton and Sanders, who offer Democrats a clear choice: evolution or revolution. The difference is evident in the two candidates positions on health care. Clinton proposes building on the foundation of Obamacare, the Childrens Health Insurance Program, Medicaid and Medicare to further expand coverage. Sanders advocates a new single-payer system, akin to those in other major industrialized countries, that would be truly universal and provide health care as a right. Clinton recalled that in the fight over passage of the Obamacare legislation, efforts to include even one public option government-run plan had to be abandoned. To start over again, pushing our country back into that kind of a contentious debate, I think is the wrong direction, she said. In other words, lets have evolutionary change. Sanders noted that there are still 29 million Americans without health insurance. He argued that a single-payer system, which he describes as Medicare for all, would not only provide coverage for everyone but also dramatically reduce medical costs. He said the issue is whether we have the guts to stand up to the private insurance companies and all of their money, and the pharmaceutical industry. Thats what this debate should be about. Translation: We need a political revolution. On issue after issue, Clinton proposes incremental solutions that take into account our political system as it is: sharply divided along ideological lines and warped by gerrymandering and virtually unfettered campaign contributions. Sanders proposes dramatic solutions that will only be possible when power is wrested from big money interests that refuse to do what the American people want them to. In that sense, Democrats are being asked to make a classic heads-vs.-hearts decision. With Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, Clinton would ordinarily have a huge advantage. Given whats happening in the GOP campaign, however, this doesnt much look like an ordinary election cycle. Sanders got a couple of the biggest cheers Sunday night, but for most of the evening the crowd seemed to be on Clintons side. In interviews afterward, several South Carolina political veterans predicted that Clinton would win the primary here, perhaps comfortably. But the loyal Democrats I spoke with also wished there was more passion in Clintons appeal to go along with the pragmatism. To convince people to eat their vegetables this year, you might have to add a little hot sauce. Today Except for a few afternoon clouds, mainly sunny. High near 60F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Tonight A mostly clear sky. Low 32F. Winds light and variable. Tomorrow Mainly sunny. High near 65F. Winds light and variable. In front of a large crowd of members from the sustainability community, Mayor Andy Berke on Tuesday announced that the city of Chattanooga has accepted the Department of Energy Better Buildings Challenge. The Better Buildings Challenge is a national initiative that encourages leaders in the public and private sectors to make buildings more energy efficient by accelerating investment and sharing of successful best practices. During Tuesdays announcement, Mayor Berke relayed the importance of local leadership in sustainability efforts, naming Green|Spaces EmPower initiative and EPBs recent PEER certification as examples. Michael Walton, executive director of Green|Space, provided an in depth description of the Better Buildings Challenge before Mayor Berke officially announced the city of Chattanoogas participation. The Better Buildings Challenge will add to the hard work and results we have already achieved, said Mayor Berke. Since 2013, the city has reduced its energy use by over 11 million kilowatt hours by making some relatively simple changes like controls for HVAC and lighting. But we can and will do more. Through the Better Buildings Challenge, the city of Chattanooga has established a baseline for energy use, which will help the city monitor and adapt practices to further reduce their energy consumption. Over 70 percent of the citys contribution to greenhouse gas emissions comes from their municipal building portfolio, which includes over 200 buildings and approximately two million square feet. On average, our 200 buildings combined use about 250 million kilowatt hours of energy per year. By taking the Challenge, we are committing to reduce our energy use by 20 percent over a 10 year period. Following Mayor Berkes announcement, the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce announced they would take the Challenge as well. The Chamber is pleased to be an initial supporter, not only in our own property on Broad Street but also by advocating strongly for our membership to understand the gains to be had from their participation both large companies and small, said Bill Kilbride, president and CEO of the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce. Sustainability reduces costs and builds goodwill for the company, its employees and their families, their supply chain, and their community. Several members of the Green|Spaces board of directors as well as representatives from Tennessee American Water Company and EPB were all in attendance to show their support for this effort. At EPB, one of the most rewarding things we get to do is help our customers find ways to maximize the energy efficiency of their buildings, said David Wade, COO of EPB. One way we do that is by offering free energy checkups for our residential and commercial customers to show them where they have opportunity to improve the efficiency in their properties. And if they choose to make upgrades to their properties, we even come back after the work has been done to check and make sure it meets our quality standards. Just last year we were able to help our business customers save over 17 million kilowatt hours through this process. It makes perfect sense that we would jump on board with the Better Buildings Challenge. Were looking forward to continuing our work with the city and helping more companies and residents use energy as efficiently as possible as part of this project. We want to thank Mayor Berke and the city of Chattanooga for their leadership in sustainability efforts. Were proud to be a part of this great city. The city is also encouraging other businesses and organizations to take part in the Better Buildings Challenge. The initiative is free and provides access to technical expertise, from the DOE to private partners such as Sprint, auto manufacturers and 3M, to help achieve the goals for Chattanooga. To that end, the city of Chattanooga and EPB will host a workshop on March 2 at EPB Headquarters downtown for interested community members to learn more about taking the challenge as well as what is involved in an energy checkup. To learn more about the DOEs Better Buildings Challenge, visit: http://betterbuildingssolutioncenter.energy.gov/ Chef Thomas Hauck of c.1880 restaurant bought Karl Ratzschs on Wednesday. Credit: Rick Wood By of the Karl Ratzsch's, one of Milwaukee's oldest restaurants and among the last of the German restaurants in the city, was sold Wednesday to chef Thomas Hauck of c.1880 restaurant . Ratzsch's, 320 E. Mason St., was closed Wednesday while the sale was finalized, and Hauck said it would remain closed while the interior is renovated. He estimated the project could take two months or more. Ratzsch's will remain a German restaurant, Hauck said, with schnitzel, strudel and other menu items customers might expect. "I've never met anyone who doesn't like a good schnitzel," he said. At Ratzsch's, he plans to serve regional German dishes as specials at lunch and dinner to highlight the variety in the country's foods. The restaurant, he said, took a turn toward Continental fare in the 1990s; the new menu would take it back to its roots, making it more like the restaurant first opened by Otto Hermann in 1904, Hauck said. The restaurant, he said, will be "about beer and fun and a ruckus" on the first floor, with quieter dining on the second floor for date nights. "My parents always used to tell me stories about date night there," said Hauck, whose fine-dining restaurant opened in 2012 and has been on the Top 30 list since then. Ratzsch's began in 1904 on Water St. as Otto Hermann's Cafe. Karl Ratzsch Sr. began working there during World War I, where he met and later married Hermann's stepdaughter, Helen. Ratzsch moved the business to Mason St. and renamed it in 1929. Among changes to the interior at Karl Ratzsch's will be the addition of a restroom to the first floor the only restrooms currently are on the second floor along with new flooring, tables, chairs and wall coverings. Patrick and Libby Castro of LP/w Design Studios, who designed c.1880 in Walker's Point, will oversee the renovation at Ratzsch's. "This restaurant has been a landmark in the history of Milwaukee, its dining scene, and has firmly represented the German heritage of the city for over a century. I am humbled and excited to take stewardship as we turn the page, and enter the new chapter in the history of this great restaurant," Hauck said in a written statement. Hauck said he approached the owners more than a year ago about selling the restaurant. General manager Thomas Andera, assistant manager Judith Hazard and executive chef John Poulos had bought the restaurant in March 2003 from Josef Ratzsch. The climate for the sale was different in 2003; the country was in an economic slowdown, affected in part by the terrorist attacks of 2001. Downtown today has a number of high-profile building projects, such as the construction of the Northwestern Mutual Life office tower. "I think downtown is going to boom," Hauck said. Poulos, Andera and Hazard, longtime Ratzsch's employees before they became owners, made some changes to broaden the restaurant's appeal, adding some lighter dishes such as spinach and orange salad and whitefish fillets when they took over Ratzsch's. Largely, though, the restaurant operated unchanged. Over the years, Andera said, people had offered to buy the restaurant, offers that he put in the category of "bar talk." When Hauck's offer came out of the blue, it was "the only one we thought was really serious," he said. Andera said he, Hazard and Poulos had worked for four members of the Ratzsch family and had been with the restaurant in some capacity since the 1970s. "John, Judy and myself basically grew up in the restaurant," Andera said. "We've been here a long, long time, and we really want it to succeed," he said. Andera said he was impressed by Hauck's background and commitment to German food, and he thinks the restaurant will benefit from "fresh eyes." "It's a very exciting time for the restaurant," Andera said. "I like to think of it as Ratzsch's being reimagined." The Chattanooga City Council passed a resolution Tuesday allowing city employees to accept support from organizations and agencies seeking to help individuals who sustained injuries or trauma from the Chattanooga shooting on July 16, 2015. According to City Attorney Wade Hinton, the current code does not allow city employees to receive compensation for injuries or trauma incurred during their role. However, because the July 16 incident - which left four Marines and one Navy officer dead - made for an extremely rare occasion, Attorney Hinton proposed to let city employees receive remuneration for injuries or trauma suffered from that event. The resolution only pertains to the July 16 attack. Speaking in support of the resolution at Tuesdays work session, Mickey McCamish, a retired U.S. Navy captain, said he has spent the last several months on a fundraising committee. The committee has been working with the National Compassion Fund to raise and distribute donations for victims of the shooting. The events of July 16 were horrific, he said to councilmembers. Captain McCamish went on to say an outpouring of city compassion and support came as the result of the shooting. The city appointed the fundraising committee to aid victims who might be eligible for support. We were all proud to work together, Captain McCamish said after introducing some of the committee members. Any first responder who was on the scene the day of the shooting is eligible to apply for funding, the former captain said. However, the family members of the terrorist are not allowed to apply. In the military we may be prepared for warbut when were sitting behind a desk, were not prepared for the attack that did happen. The donations from the National Compassion Fund have already been distributed to victims, as well as those most impacted psychologically by the attack. Kelly Cotton, a member of the fundraising committee, said the funds are important because they serve as a validation of experience for first responders. Robert C. Crates, a retired rear admiral and co-chairman of the fundraising committee, said if the council did not pass this resolution, it would be up to it to figure out how to get the funds back from those who have already received them. During the work session, Councilman Yusuf Hakeem asked if the city would be tearing departments apart by allowing additional compensation for the July 16 tragedy, since the city, through its insurance, provided assistance. Captain McCamish answered that a group of experts made the decision on what counted as trauma, making these funds different because they relied on expertise. He said a level of award should be given to those who responded to the terrible shooting. Admiral Crates said he knew up front there was a larger group of victims than people who were killed. The city, police department, or FBI reportedly interviewed eligible victims from the psychological standpoint to determine if their trauma qualified them for funding. Admiral Crates stated it took both national experts and local knowledge to determine who should be considered for funds from the universe of victims. All of the money collected reportedly went to the victims. Councilman Russell Gilbert said every day police go out in harms way. Yet this scenario differed because it dealt with terrorism. Though Councilman Chip Henderson thought it was ethical for the injured and traumatized individuals to receive compensation, he said, I can see this possibly being abused. In response to this, during the voting session Attorney Hinton recommended having a cutoff date for individuals to apply for funding. He proposed the date of July 16, 2017. Councilman Henderson moved to make this an amendment to the resolution. Once that was approved, he motioned to approve the resolution with the cutoff date. Council members voted 8-1 in favor of the resolution, with Councilman Larry Grohn opposed. By of the The online publication Matter had a strong showing in the recently announced National Magazine Award finalists, with two nominees in the reporting category and one in essays and criticism. The essay finalist is a piece called "Everything is Yours, Everything is Not Yours," the powerful tale of a 6-year-old child who escaped the Rwandan massacre and came to live in the U.S. It is the story of Clemantine Wamariya, told in her own words with the help of Elizabeth Weil, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine. The piece brings readers face to face with the kind of horror most cannot imagine. It also shows how difficult it is to carry such a story over to a new country where tragedy is routinely packaged and exploited for a mass audience. The opening gives a good idea where we're headed: The day we taped the Oprah show, in 2006, I met my sister Claire at her run-down, three-bedroom apartment in Rogers Park, where she lived with the three kids she had before age 21, thanks to her ex-husband, an aid worker whod picked her up at a refugee camp. A black car arrived and drove us to downtown Chicago. I was a junior at New Trier High School, living Monday to Friday with the Thomas family in Kenilworth, a fancy suburb. Claire, unlike me, was not a kid when we got asylum in the United States, so nobody sent her to school or took her in. Instead, she worked as a maid, cleaning 200 hotel rooms a week. All I knew about The Oprah Winfrey Show we were taping was that it was a two-part series: the first, a segment of Oprah and Elie Wiesel visiting Auschwitz, God help us; the second, the 50 winners of Oprahs high school essay contest, of which I was one. All of us winners had written about why Wiesels book Night, his gutting story of surviving the Holocaust, is still relevant today. I dictated my essay to Mrs. Thomas, my American mother, who packed my lunch and drove me to school. I said that maybe if Rwandans had read Night, they wouldnt have decided to kill each other. Oprah sat on stage on a white love seat, next to tired, old Elie Wiesel, who sat in a white overstuffed chair. Oprah said glowing things about all the winners except me, which I told myself was fine. I hadnt really gone to school until age 13, and when I was seven, Id celebrated Christmas with a shoebox of pencils that Id buried under our tent so that nobody would steal it. But then Oprah leaned forward and said, So, Clemantine, before you left Africa, did you ever find your parents? I had a mic cord tucked under my black TV blazer and a battery pack clipped to my black TV pants, so I should have known something like this was coming. No, I said. By of the An Australian citizen living in Shorewood since 2010 has lost another round in his efforts to bring a defamation suit against an Australian newspaper in Wisconsin courts. The Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that even if some people in Wisconsin read the story online, Wisconsin courts have no jurisdiction. We do not believe that (the defendants) publication of an article on the Sydney Morning Herald website, without more, evidences either conduct or a connection with the State of Wisconsin such that they should have reasonably anticipated being haled into a Wisconsin court, Judge Patricia Curley wrote for the District I court panel. The October 2010 article at issue, "Lawyers, guns, money: The sting in Yellow Tail," focused on the Australian family behind the popular Yellow Tail wine label, but included the familys connection to Roderick Salfinger and several peoples less than flattering opinions of him, according to the opinion. Salfinger specifically challenges as untrue a statement that he faced prosecution in the U.S. over an incident in which he reportedly showed a handgun at his daughters wedding. Salfinger said the statement caused him personal and professional harm, but the newspaper refused to retract the story. Without ever getting to the substance of the claim, Circuit Judge Richard Sankovitz granted the defendants motion to dismiss citing lack of jurisdiction. The Court of Appeals also addressed only the unique question of whether a Wisconsin court may exercise jurisdiction over foreign defendants whose only real connection to the State of Wisconsin is in having published an article online that is ostensibly available to anyone in the world Nor did it matter, the court found, that online readers in Wisconsin might confront advertising targeted to them. According to the opinion, 826,746 Wisconsin users accessed the Sydney Morning Herald website between May 23, 2011, and June 16, 2014. Furthermore, Salfinger claims, the paper sold online subscriptions in Wisconsin, and subsidiaries of the defendants also published The Wisconsin Agriculturalist, and had two full time employees in the state. The court found all those point (there were 11 online subscribers to the Sydney paper) insufficient to support jurisdiction. Merely placing an article online on an Australian newspapers website, particularly where the article does not even mention Wisconsin, fails to evince any connection with or conduct in Wisconsin. SHARE By of the Somali Muslims who left their jobs at Ariens Co. in a dispute over prayer breaks have been urged to return to work and continue pressing the issue. Whatever is going to happen to their employment status will happen, Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Tuesday. More than 50 Muslim employees at Ariens in Brillion recently stopped coming to work when management said it would begin enforcing a policy of two 10-minute breaks per work shift without accommodations for unscheduled prayer time. The 53 employees wanted the manufacturer of snowblowers and lawn mowers to continue a previous, more lenient practice of allowing Muslims to leave their work stations at different times such as at dawn and sunset to pray as their faith requires of them. Ariens has said it's sticking with a policy that doesn't accommodate special prayer breaks, despite having bent the rules some when there were fewer Muslim employees. Unscheduled work breaks, several times a day, could cost the company millions of dollars a year in lost productivity, said company President Dan Ariens. "It gets out of control," Ariens said, adding that other employees had questioned whether the Muslims should get prayer breaks while they didn't get them. Tuesday, Ariens Co. said four of the Muslim employees stayed on the job, while eight others said they wanted to return to work, and two asked for different shifts to accommodate their prayer needs. The company doesn't yet know how many of the other Muslims will remain off the job and risk getting fired for violation of an attendance policy. Enforcement of the company's policy of two breaks per work shift, and no special prayer time, begins Monday. "We are just taking it day by day," Ann Stilp, an Ariens spokeswoman, said Tuesday. Federal law requires employers to offer reasonable religious accommodations to workers of all faiths. Prayer-break accommodations aren't always easy in a fast-paced manufacturing plant where every minute counts, "but there are factories all over America that are handling this issue quite successfully, maintaining efficient production and maintaining the religious rights of their workers," Hooper said. "My religious rights in the workplace are a matter of law, and not of public opinion," he added. Cargill Inc., based in Wichita, Kan., recently fired about 150 meat-processing plant employees for violating the company's attendance policy after they failed to call in or show up for work for three consecutive days. The fired employees, most of whom were Somali immigrants, had protested what they thought were changes to time allowed for Muslim prayer. But it was a misunderstanding, based on one incident at the Fort Morgan, Colo., plant, and there was no change in Cargill's policy, which generally allows prayer breaks, said company spokesman Michael Martin. "There are times when we can't accommodate the requests, when we are short-staffed. By and large, though, we do try," he said. Following negotiations with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Cargill agreed to change a policy to allow any employee terminated for attendance violations or job abandonment to reapply for the job 30 days afterward. Previously, former employees had to wait six months before they could reapply. The prayer-break issue isn't completely settled, but it was important to get the fired workers back on the job, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Now, the group has turned its attention to Ariens Co., and says it wants the Muslim employees to return to work and seek prayer breaks, even if it means they might get fired for pressing the issue. The group wants to meet with Dan Ariens, who also is president of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., about changing the policy. If someone can leave their work station to go to the bathroom for a couple of minutes, workers also should be allowed an unscheduled prayer break, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations. A good outcome to negotiations is when Muslim workers can pray, based on the dictates of their faith, and their employer can maintain efficient production, Hooper said. Ariens has urged the Muslim employees to return to work before they are terminated for violations of the attendance policy. The company doesn't want the Council on American-Islamic Relations, based in Washington, D.C., to intervene on the employees' behalf. "We respect CAIR as an organization, but our policy has always been to work directly with our employees," Dan Ariens said. Muslims are required to pray five times a day. The sunset prayer is usually the issue for second-shift workers because the other prayers have a more flexible window of time. Muslims say a workplace prayer should take only a few minutes. "For some employees, though, it could take the better part of 30 minutes from the time they leave their work to the time they come back," said Cargill's Martin. Ariens Co. hired the Somali immigrants through a Green Bay employment agency. The prayer-time dispute is a unique situation in what's been a large influx of Somalis into the area over the last couple of years, said Jim Golembeski, director of the Bay Area Workforce Development Board in Green Bay. Ariens employs about 900 people in Brillion, most of them on assembly lines. "Ariens, because of the demand it's had for workers, has been willing to hire a lot of the Somalis. They're good workers," Golembeski said. "I am not aware of any other employers having an issue like this," he added. Golembeski said he understands both sides of the issue, which at times puts Muslim beliefs at odds with employers' needs. "From an employer's point of view, you have to look at the precedent you set because there are other religious traditions, too," Golembeski said. SHARE By and Thousands of health insurance consumers around the country have started the new year dealing with missing ID cards, billing errors and other problems tied to an enrollment surge at the end of 2015. Brokers and insurers in several states told The Associated Press that they have been inundated with complaints about these issues from customers with individual plans and those with coverage through small businesses. Insurance provider Health Care Service Corp., for instance, has been dealing with delays for around 10,000 companies, while billing errors caused bank overdrafts for 3,200 individual customers of a North Carolina insurer. In the Milwaukee area, brokers said that they haven't seen problems similar to those in other parts of the country, with the exception of plans sold by UnitedHealthcare for individuals and families. These delays mean that some customers may have to pay for care up front or wait for their insurance cards to arrive before scheduling a doctor's appointment, even though many have technically been covered since Jan. 1. "I've been in the health insurance business 20 plus years, and I've never seen anything like this," said Dallas-based broker Tanya Boyd, who estimates that hundreds of customers have complained about delays in receiving their insurance cards or a confirmation of coverage. The delays are due to more customers than expected shopping for coverage late last year after carriers ended plans in some markets, leaving thousands to find new ones. And a last-minute enrollment deadline extension from the federal government gave people two more days to sign up. An expansion of the Affordable Care Act's mandate that employers cover their workers also may have contributed to the rush. It's unclear how many people have had trouble so far this year. To be sure, a certain amount of problems can crop up at the start of every year, after insurers wrap up a busy holiday season clogged with enrollment periods for all types of insurance. But brokers say this year has been exceptional. Changing federal deadlines also contributed to the problem in some markets. Consumers who wanted coverage that started Jan. 1 originally had to sign up by Dec. 15. But HealthCare.gov, the federal website that handles applications for coverage from ACA exchanges in most states, announced Dec. 15 that it would extend the deadline two days due to heavy demand. That gave Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina a rush of last-minute business as it was transitioning to a new customer service system. The company said in a statement that it had planned for a 40% increase in customer service calls this year but was hit with a 500% jump. For its part, Health Care Service Corp. has resolved about half of the roughly 10,000 delayed applications that it was dealing with for new small business coverage. Spokesman Greg Thompson said the insurer, which operates Blue Cross-Blue Shield plans in five states and covers about 16 million people, is working to process the remaining applications as quickly as possible. Applications for that coverage quadrupled and slowed the insurer's processing. Thompson said the company doesn't know how many people were affected or why they saw an application spike. He said an expansion of the ACA's employer coverage mandate may have contributed. This year, the law started requiring small businesses with 50 to 99 employees to provide coverage for their workers. Last year, that requirement extended only to companies with 100 employees or more. In California, insurance broker Craig Gussin said only about half of the 150 clients that he helped enroll in small business health coverage that started Jan. 1 have received insurance ID cards. He said every insurer that he deals with has been slowed by a rush of companies seeking new coverage at the end of 2015 because they faced big premium hikes with their old coverage. "Every agent I talk to it's the same horror story....There's just an incredible backlog," the San Diego-based agent said. Brokers say most remaining problems should be resolved by the end of the month. But some confusion or delays may return in future years because many shoppers tend to buy coverage at the last minute, and then they don't have to make a payment until after coverage starts. These factors can delay the delivery of cards or confirmation of coverage. Jeanyi Kim, William Helmers and Alexander Mandl make up the board of the new Milwaukee Musaik, which has emerged from the Milwaukee Chamber Orchestra. Credit: Milwaukee Musaik SHARE By , If you've been wondering what happened to the Milwaukee Chamber Orchestra, wonder no more. Founded in 1973 as the Milwaukee Chamber Music Society, the ensemble has been silent in recent months, suffering from the same financial troubles that have plagued many arts groups in a struggling economy. But on Monday evening, the ensemble will emerge from that silence as Milwaukee Musaik (a blend of the German word "Musik" and the English word "mosaic"), reflecting the blend of chamber music programs and full chamber orchestra performances. Operating under the sort of artist-led management that is popping up across the classical world, violinists Alexander Mandl and Jeanyi Kim and clarinetist William Helmers will serve as president, vice president and treasurer, respectively. Mandl is a member of the Philomusica Quartet; Kim is associate concertmaster (third chair) of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra; Helmers is a member of both the MSO and Present Music. Mandl explained that Milwaukee Musaik will bring more of a "democratic process" to its management with, "more input from the group itself than we had in the past." He added that there will be no fixed seating within sections and the roles of the musicians may change according to programming. "This allows flexibility of artistic discussion," he said, explaining that members of the ensemble will have a voice as they would in a trio or quartet, as opposed to the follow-the-leader structure of a large orchestra. The new management structure also means a lot of administrative work from the players. Kim, who explained that the group's old structure was simply no longer sustainable, said that taking on the administrative duties of the group has been "a gargantuan undertaking." "It's been overwhelming and humbling to realize the amount of administrative work that goes into building a concert series," she said. "But this is a labor of love for us. Sometimes when you believe strongly in something, you really have to fight for it." According to Helmers, the idea to run the group came from the fact that musicians ran the MCO artistic committee for a few years, which he said led to "a couple of seasons that I believe were highlight of this organization." He also pointed out that creating a flexible ensemble allows the group to play some of the wonderful chamber music written for ensembles of six to 12 players. "Musicians love playing that music, and there really isn't any other group in town serving that repertoire," he said. Mandl explained that the group will not be tied to a single performance venue. From the Monday concert at Wisconsin Lutheran College, Milwaukee Musaik will move to Mount Mary University for its March 1 and April 3 concerts. Program and ticket information for Monday's concert and the March and April concerts can be found at www.milwaukeemusaik.org/ John F. Kennedy is sworn in as president by Chief Justice Earl Warren at the U.S. Capitol in this photo, taken Jan. 20, 1961, and published in the Jan. 21, 1961, edition of The Milwaukee Journal. Credit: Fred L. Tonne / Milwaukee Journal SHARE John F. Kennedy is sworn in as president by Chief Justice Earl Warren at the U.S. Capitol in this photo, taken Jan. 20, 1961, and published in the Jan. 21, 1961, edition of The Milwaukee Journal. Fred L. Tonne / Milwaukee Journal By of the To capture John F. Kennedy's inauguration on Jan. 20, 1961, Milwaukee Journal photographer Fred L. Tonne went heavily armed. In addition to five cameras and a wide array of lenses, Tonne was packing a 600-millimeter telephoto lens built especially for the Journal. He also had air cover after a fashion. And the result was, at least according to the Journal, "the first staff-produced color pictures of Kennedy's inauguration published anywhere in the Midwest." A front-page story in the Jan. 21, 1961, Journal recounted the photographs' journey, under the headline, "Color Photos of Inaugural are a 'First'": "Before he left the inaugural scene to meet a 5:45 p.m. Capital Airlines flight, (Tonne) had taken some 80 shots to be put on the plane for Milwaukee. "The plane landed at General Mitchell Field at 10 p.m. A Journal photographer was on hand to grab the pictures and rush them by car to the Journal's color laboratory." At the newspaper's offices in Milwaukee, a team of seven photographers, editors, artists and technicians "worked all night getting the pictures ready for the engravers," the Journal wrote. Of the five color photos published on Jan. 21, 1961, two showed the Journal's technology in action. From the roof of the House of Representatives' office wing a half-block away, Tonne shot the swearing-in using the 600-millimeter lens and a 25-millimeter wide-angle lens the latter reinforcing the cool, zoom-in capability of the former. In the photo taken with the larger lens, you can clearly see not only Kennedy as he's being sworn in by Chief Justice Earl Warren, but Lyndon B. Johnson, the newly sworn-in vice president; and Richard M. Nixon, the exiting vice president. Outgoing president Dwight D. Eisenhower and Jacqueline Kennedy can be seen from behind, standing behind Warren. Neither photograph of the swearing-in was used on the front page of that edition, however. Instead, the Journal editors chose Tonne's photo of scores of midshipmen from the Naval Academy marching in the inaugural parade, with the U.S. Capitol clearly in the background. Tonne himself was shown, camera in action, in a separate photo inside the edition. He wound up sharing photo credit with his air support: Captions for the photos read, "Journal photos by Fred L. Tonne, flown to Milwaukee by Capital Airlines." ABOUT THIS FEATURE The Journal Sentinel's photo archives are testament to the idea that the past is never even past. If you dig deeply enough, you can find images from Milwaukee and Wisconsin's recent history that echo today. Each Wednesday, Our Back Pages will dip into those archives, sharing photos and stories from the past that connect, reflect and sometimes contradict the Milwaukee we know today or at least give us something to smile about. Special thanks and kudos go to senior multimedia designer Bill Schulz for finding many of the gems in the Journal Sentinel photo archives. Steven Avery is escorted into a Manitowoc County Courtroom for his preliminary hearing Dec. 6, 2005, in Manitowoc. Credit: Associated Press By of the One of the Manitowoc County Sheriff's Office investigators who had a central role in the Steven Avery series "Making a Murderer" is firing back at Wisconsin reporters. "I would like to personally admonish you for continuing to publish inaccurate information and for fueling the threats we continue to receive," Lt. Andrew Colborn says in an email sent Tuesday to a USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin reporter and reprinted on Gannett's Wisconsin websites. The email concludes with what Colborn calls "a word of caution": "Be careful what you wish for. If Steven Avery is ever freed, he may just become your neighbor, and he may want to bring his nephew with him." The email reportedly was sent from Colborn's official email account and specifically criticizes an article by reporter John Ferak that lists the main figures in the popular Netflix documentary series and seeks to answer the question "Where are they now?" The documentary has fueled a staggering amount of reaction on all sides, from people who think Avery was framed for a murder he didn't commit to others who condemn the series for taking Avery's side. He was convicted in 2007 of killing 25-year-old photographer Teresa Halbach with help from his nephew, Brendan Dassey. Colborn, a sergeant at the time of the killing, is one of two Manitowoc County investigators who receive the most scrutiny in the 10-part series, which documents the defense team's unsuccessful attempt to prove investigators planted evidence in Avery's home and at his family's salvage yard. The other investigator who figures prominently in the series is Lt. James Lenk. The Gannett article, dated Saturday, notes that Lenk has since retired to Arizona. Colborn's email rips Gannett for publishing "private information about Mr. Lenk's residence, as he is now a citizen in poor health trying to live a quiet life away from this media circus," an argument rejected by Joel Christopher, vice president of news for USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin. "We, in a very general sense, reported where Lenk is," Christopher said in a story about Colborn's email, adding that he was "surprised by (Colborn's) strong reaction." "Lenk is a public figure in this case, like it or not," Christopher said. "We didn't print his address. ... We sent a reporter to speak with him, which is absolutely legitimate and there's no apology necessary for that." "A word of caution, be careful what you wish for," writes Manitowoc County Sheriff's Office Lt. Andrew Colborn to USA... Posted by Joel Christopher on Tuesday, January 19, 2016 Gannett, which operates 10 daily newsrooms in Wisconsin, including in Manitowoc, is in the process of buying Journal Media Group, parent company of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The Gannett sites in Wisconsin have been aggressive about pursuing stories and updates on Avery and "Making a Murderer" since the series was released online on Dec. 18. Their coverage now includes a daily newsletter devoted to the series and an upcoming live chat with reporters about the murder case. Get the full story: Track the Steven Avery saga with ongoing updates and the details #MakingaMurderer left out https://t.co/kTBSAnPE2f Post-Crescent Media (@PostCrescent) January 19, 2016 News websites publishing volumes of stories on series Gannett is not alone in following the latest developments closely and bringing back old coverage. News websites around the country and around the world have published volumes of articles reacting to the series. The Journal Sentinel compiled its own coverage of the 2007 trial in an online archive, and reporter Tom Kertscher, who covered the trial, spent two days watching the Netflix series for an article that reassesses the evidence against Avery. ICYMI: My analysis of #MakingAMurderer and the Steven Avery trial. https://t.co/nd8F9BIoah pic.twitter.com/jJ5juKUjCe Tom Kertscher (@KertscherNews) January 14, 2016 Others who covered the trial have given their own takes. Chris Duffy, a former WBAY-TV reporter, wrote in the Minneapolis StarTribune that "Making a Murderer" is a riveting documentary but shouldn't be confused with journalism. "It gets scary when nearly half a million people sign a petition requesting that the president exonerate a man who was found guilty by a jury based on what they learned from a one-sided piece of entertainment," Duffy writes. He now works for a public relations firm in St. Paul, Minn. And WISN-AM host Dan O'Donnell, who also covered the 2007 trial, has gone as far as to produce his own 10-part audio series poking holes in each episode of "Making a Murderer." His series is called "Rebutting a Murderer." There is a ready audience for such content, given the frenzy of debate over the series fueled in part by users of social networks like Twitter and Reddit, as well as people simply searching online for anything old or new about Avery. The website OnMilwaukee, for example, has received quite a bit of traffic with its reports by Jessica McBride analyzing the Netflix series. "In my 20 years of working online, I've never seen the kind of engagement effect that #makingamurder has produced," OnMilwaukee publisher Andy Tarnoff tweeted on Friday, with a graphic showing an exponential increase in the site's traffic since late December. Much of that increase, as seen in a Jan. 5 tweet by Tarnoff, appeared to come from two McBride stories one with the headline "Who killed Teresa Halbach? The four alternative suspects" and the other with the headline "14 pieces of troubling evidence 'Making a Murderer' left out or glossed over." Just passed 3k concurrents on @onmilwaukee. More traffic in last week than in previous month. #MakingAMurderer pic.twitter.com/EYooTxaF3r Andy Tarnoff (@AndyTarnoff) January 5, 2016 Avery's backstory is arguably one of the big reasons the documentary and recent news coverage are being gobbled up. He was exonerated in 2003 of a rape that was mistakenly pinned on him in 1985, a wrongful conviction for which he served 18 years in prison before being released. He was pursuing a lawsuit against Manitowoc County and top county officials when Halbach's charred remains were found on his property in November 2005. Because of Avery's lawsuit, the Calumet County district attorney and sheriff were called in to oversee the homicide investigation and the case against Avery. The documentary series focuses closely on ways that Manitowoc County officials were still involved at key moments of the investigation, and those arguments were made at length by Avery's defense attorneys at his trial. It wasn't enough to clear Avery in 2007. The jury found him guilty of first-degree intentional homicide and of being a felon in possession of a firearm, and he was sentenced to life in prison. Dassey, his nephew, also was convicted. Since the Netflix series came out, Avery has gotten a new legal team while Dassey has an appeal pending in federal court. SHARE By of the Penfield Children's Center, a longtime provider of early childhood services for mostly low-income children, many with disabilities, is seeking to buy the former Wisconsin Avenue School at 2708 W. Wisconsin Ave., as the proposed site of a new Montessori school. The nonprofit, which now serves children up to age 6, is seeking a charter from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to create what would be the city's only "fully inclusive" kindergarten-through-eighth-grade Montessori program, designed to integrate students with and without disabilities in the same classrooms. "We started looking at how we can deepen our impact with our kids, to get them on track to be successful," said Jason Parry, vice president of development and communications for Penfield, at 833 N. 26th St. "Most of our kids graduate out of our programs at the age of 3....We started to ask, 'What would our model look like if we went beyond age 3?'" Penfield is one of two organizations outside Milwaukee Public Schools to voice interest in one of the city's vacant or underused schools since last year when the state Legislature mandated the city make them available to other school operators. Risen Savior Lutheran School, at 9550 W. Brown Deer Road, also notified the city of its interest in the former Fletcher Elementary School at 9520 W. Allyn St. If it's approved, Risen Savior, which accepts students through the Milwaukee Parental Choice voucher program, would open its new campus this fall. MPS also has asserted interest in those buildings and nine others deemed eligible for sale. In a letter dated last week, MPS Superintendent Darienne Driver said both buildings are part of an active expansion plan by the district. MPS is exploring the possibility of a recreation and early childhood education center at the former Fletcher site and teacher housing at the Wisconsin Ave. building. It has also had talks with Penfield about its plan, spokesman Tony Tagliavia said. The Department of City Development must now post the letters online to determine if there are other buyers. After 28 days, if there is only one buyer, it will negotiate suitable terms; if there are multiple buyers, it will seek requests for proposals, according to City Clerk Jim Owczarski. The City of Milwaukee is considered the owner of the buildings. The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a conservative public interest law firm that supports charter and voucher schools, said Tuesday that MPS would have to pay the city for all the buildings on its list. Giving them for free, it said, would violate both the spirit and letter of the law. The Milwaukee city attorney's office, which represents both the city and the school district, declined to opine on the institute's assertion. Penfield is proposing to open its kindergarten program in the fall and to add a grade a year through 2024. The proposal is in some ways a return to its roots. Penfield started in the 1960s as an early childhood Montessori program. It would bring to eight the number of Montessori schools in Milwaukee and Ozaukee counties. While others, including MPS' Montessori programs, educate students with disabilities, it would be the only one designed to be "fully integrated," according to Parry and Allyn Travis, executive director of the Montessori Institute of Milwaukee. "In the early years it was much more common," Travis said. But over the years, she said, the programs increasingly focused on one population or the other. "I can't say our Montessori training prepared us for both," she said. "But the Penfield people are already attuned to what they need to be attuned." SHARE Don't trust politicians My cynicism, and complete distrust of politicians, began a few years before Lyndon Baines Johnson launched his "Great Society." I still don't trust any politicians who incurred a $20 trillion debt that continues to grow because (A) they spend much more than they receive in revenues, (B) they allowed 12 million or more illegal aliens to enter this country (guess who their kids will vote for) and (C) they spent $24 trillion on the War on Poverty starting in about 1965. All we got for our money are millions of people who are dependent on the government (guess who they vote for). Economics aside, running up a $20 trillion debt is not "the right thing to do." It was incurred by reckless, irresponsible politicians who wanted to get more votes, satisfy their lust for power and expand their morbidly obese egos. In doing so, they have set a record for the worst financial mismanagement in human history. The debt continues to grow, along with the anger, cynicism, and distrust of many voters. My cynicism and distrust will be lessened when our government reduces spending, reduces taxes, eliminates the national debt, followed by a balanced budget for five years, and deports the aliens who are in the U S illegally. One last requirement: The politicians who violated our immigration laws must be brought to justice and incur some consequences, which include heavy fines and loss of all pay and benefits such as health care and pensions. That ought to do it. Pete Luehring West Bend Pro-gun legislation The Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature are pushing what they call a "hunter's rights bill" that actually is pro-gun legislation. It could prevent property owners from stopping a hunter, or anyone with a gun, from trespassing on the homeowner's property. The way the legislation is written, it prevents anyone from "harassing" anyone with a gun. This is just a sneaky way to prevent businesses, colleges, libraries, malls, public buildings, schools, and universities from preventing pro-handgun nuts from entering with their concealed or open carrying of a handgun. And the Republicans in the Legislature are going after Wisconsin's minimum gun age. This plays off the "fear" that hunting is a dying sport. This proposal would result in no minimum age for hunting. Again, this is not really about hunting. It is about creating more pro-gun nuts by putting guns in the hands of children. Will the stupidity of the pro-gun nuts, the gun manufacturers, the gun lobby and Republicans ever end? Dave Searles Founder and president The Ecotopian Society Brodhead Don't eliminate age restrictions Wisconsin's Republican legislators have taken potshots at the state's educational programs in the past, but two recent proposals hit the bull's-eye: Allowing guns on school property and eliminating minimum age restrictions for hunters. Under this double barrel approach, just imagine first grade field trips of the future. No more rides to the farm to pet animals. Instead, kids would be locked and loaded into school buses with a gun and a parent for a trip to a corn field to shoot animals. And the note home to parents prior to the excursion: The school will provide lunch, but children need to bring their own guns. Any questions? Call Ms. Colt at extension 45. Parents know the attention span of 6-year-olds. Pick up your toys. Did you pick up your toys? When will you pick up your toys? Your father hurt himself falling on your toys. Now, we have to go to the doctor. Put on the safety. Did you put on the safety? When will you put on the safety? Your father has a hole in his head. Now, we have to go to the funeral home. Gary Rummler Whitefish Bay Republicans must not give up on Americas cities or the people who live there, writes columnist Christian Schneider. Credit: Mike De Sisti Now the mudslinging has begun. When Ted Cruz accused Donald Trump of having "New York values" during the Republican presidential debate last week, he was merely speaking in standard GOP nomenclature. As Woody Allen's famous line in "Annie Hall" goes, "Don't you see the rest of the country looks upon New York like we're left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers? I think of us that way sometimes and I live here." In the Wisconsin Legislature, State Rep. Bob Gannon (R-Slinger) devised a different strategy to denigrate cities. Last week on the floor of the Assembly, Gannon flipped Democrats a one-fingered salute, offering them the chance to get to know each other in ways previously unknown. But Gannon's lurid gesture was the least objectionable thing he did that week. Earlier, Gannon had issued a news release titled "Murder, Mayhem and Jobs," in which he called Milwaukee an "anchor holding back the ship of state" with regard to jobs. Specifically, Gannon cited Milwaukee's black population, which currently has an unemployment rate of 20%, as hindering the state's economic development efforts. "Could one make a connection between employment opportunities and the level of crime on those same streets?" wrote Gannon. "What employer will build or expand when they fear muggings, car jackings, attempted murder, or other serious criminal threats to their employees?" Obviously, there's some truth in what Gannon was saying crime does hinder job creation in Milwaukee, which leads to poverty, which begets more crime. But his statement served no purpose other than to gripe about Milwaukee, a first-class city that generates nearly 10% of the state's total revenue per year. There were no policy prescriptions, no suggestions to help Milwaukee and its residents fulfill their promise. Gannon's grievances simply fed into the idea that Republicans would be fine if Milwaukee broke off and slowly sank into Lake Michigan. It's a mistake for Republicans to treat cities with smarmy derision. America is not, as Thomas Jefferson had hoped, an agrarian society where individuals live off the land. Trash-talking cities simply feeds the perception that Republicans are averse to culture, diversity and progress. And it is true that large cities Milwaukee certainly included have little desire to be governed by conservatives. But just because political philosophies may clash, it shouldn't mean unilateral surrender. In Tuesday's "state of the state" address, Gov. Scott Walker made exactly zero reference to Milwaukee or its spike in violent crime this year; even if no panacea is available, it would have been prudent to at least acknowledge the city residents' dire circumstances. If I were living in a depressed area of the city and watching that speech, I wouldn't exactly have gotten the impression that any help was on the way. Of course, when Republicans do get involved in trying to help Milwaukee, their efforts are often met with derision from local politicians trying to protect their own pockets of influence. When the GOP tries to restructure an education system that allows schools with 0% reading proficiency, they are shouted down by the teachers union. When Republican legislators propose opportunity zones in the city to incentivize job creation, they are deemed interlopers and accused of "pimping" the city's residents. But that doesn't mean the GOP shouldn't stop trying. If the Legislature doesn't like the effect crime is having on the state's economy, legislators should get their hands dirty and help Milwaukee counteract it. Other initiatives should have bipartisan support; for instance, Milwaukee currently lags behind more prosperous cities (Austin, Charlotte, Portland, Seattle) in the number of residents with college degrees; both retaining graduates and attracting new ones could help provide much needed life to the city's economy. The tension between the state and its largest city isn't new; in essence, Wisconsin is two states "Wisconsin" and "Milwaukee." But just because a kid's parents vote for Democrats, they shouldn't be trapped in failing schools. The poor shouldn't be collateral damage in a war between ideologies. Not every state gets a city as strong and economically viable as Milwaukee the focus shouldn't be on blaming the city, but making it as strong as it can be. Republicans may not all have "Milwaukee values," but they should all value Milwaukee. Correction: In Sunday's column, I said Johnny "Blood" McNally was from River Falls. McNally is actually the pride of nearby New Richmond. Christian Schneider is a Journal Sentinel columnist and blogger. Email cschneider@jrn.com. Twitter: @Schneider_CM Insanity, Albert Einstein stressed on us before he died in 1955, is always doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. So as the crescendo grows louder and louder in a public cry to completely restructure the Hamilton County Department of Education, to look at how the whole thing started is to see how Jesse Register, Jim Scales, and apparently Rick Smith have each met their Waterloo. Register, who became the first superintendent for the district when the city schools and county schools merged in 1997, made Chattanooga one of 10 systems in the United States to win a $250,000 grant from the Carnegie Corporation as a New World leader in 2000. Seedy, back-room politics, pure and simple, successfully ran Register out of town on a rail six years later. And while he left Chattanooga under a shroud of backyard bullying, he was hired as Nashvilles superintendent in 2009 and in June of 215, upon his retirement, he was honored by the State Legislature for making the public school system in the state capitol one of the best in America by almost every standard. Infighting and jealousy with a touch of outright sabotage and treason -- caused Jim Scales to take a $300,000 buy-out two years later so Rick Smith could take advantage of a decades-old good ole boy network that has now resulted in a sickening plunge as the worst metro district in the state. So lets take a look at what really happened after Scales could stand it no more and the gullible taxpayers were led to believe nothing was wrong in what was an out-and-out coup. On the Fourth of July, this in 2011, there was the feeling that a work session of the Hamilton County School Board two days later might be explosive. Smith, who had been a deputy superintendent under the ousted Scales, was the lone candidate for the job. And while board member Everett Fairchild openly wondered back then why no one else was being allowed to be interviewed and no one dared answer, a vote by the nine-person body was still thought to be risky. "I would feel better about this if we opened the process to other people," Fairchild told the other board members at the time. "I would have liked for other people in this school system to feel like their service and dedication deserves some recognition, that they would have had the opportunity to at least submit a resume." (Not to mention some dazzling regional and national administrators.) But that is when Hamilton Countys good ole boy system got slick. Already a carefully-plotted attack on Scales had been pulled off without a trace of smoke the media might sniff, the disgraced man who came from Dallas took his satchel of cash back to Texas. The good ole boys, realizing Smith didnt have the one additional pledge of a vote they needed, soon jury-rigged a back-room deal that would come up with the deciding vote if Smith would agree to make Lee McDade, who was then principal at Lookout Valley High, as Assistant Superintendent instead of Robert Sharpe. Obviously Sharpe was Smiths choice the new superintendent even told people afterwards that McDade wasnt his first choice. Yet to make Smiths hiring even more unbelievable you cant make stuff like this up -- Smith publicly announced that McDade would be his lieutenant the day before the School Board actually voted to hire Smith thats how tight the lock had to be to assure Smith would get the job! Several board members were dumb-struck. This is not wise, Jeffery Wilson, the Vice Chairman of the School Board said. You don't hire your replacement before you even get hired for the job," he added. "It doesn't lend for an equitable process. This was not done right." It is a true story and it has happened over and over. Please Mr. Einstein: If you always do what you always did, youll always get what you always got. Dont you see? None of us cared. Let somebody else worry about it. I am telling you an entire county of us numbly nodded our heads so here we are, four years later, and we marvel that our system is now a colossal mess. With puzzling public apathy and oversight so out of vision it could be declared legally blind, it took a savage case of aggravated rape and the discovery of a hazing and bullying atmosphere to get our attention. First order of business: We are better than that! But there is more. Rick Smiths entire leadership team was hired from within the Hamilton Department of Education, where cronyism abounds. Almost everyone in key administration positions was pulled from not just any school but almost all on notice by the state, where the results were unacceptable. So you wonder why the whole system is flawed? said a source. Rick Smith hasnt been to a national meeting of education leaders in years. The man has no network. A good example is Steve Holmes, who today handles secondary operations. Under Scales, Holmes was assigned to be principal at Ooltewah High in 2009 after spending four good years at Sequoyah. But Holmes balked, arguing he didnt want a larger school, much less the impending misery. Words were allegedly exchanged and Holmes abruptly resigned, saying, I'm grateful for the opportunities I've been given, and have worked with some great people. It's time to start a new chapter in my life, and I'm going out in a positive manner, looking forward to the future." Really? Almost immediately after Smiths tenure began in 2011, Holmes came out of retirement to work with Smiths regime. After all, Rick Smith and Steve Holmes were best man in one anothers weddings and central office money is much easier than being a principal. This is just one example and it is so rampant throughout the Hamilton County Schools that teachers, true educators, keep an eye on job openings in Georgia. I know this is the truth. The biggest travesty is there are no educators in Smiths inner circle that have experience with the urban schools and there is a belief among the priority schools that they have been strongly unsupported. The priority schools are those that fail to meet the 50th percentile Woodmore and Orchard Knob Elementary, Dalewood and Orchard Knob Middle, and Brainerd High. It makes no sense. Solve your biggest problems first. But now we have 60 percent of our third graders who dont read at grade level. Under Register it was 30 percent. Hello? The tragedy? Those doomed to priority schools are also doomed to what sociologists now call generational poverty. We wretch at a rape and feel our senses go numb as the allegations of hazing across the district but generational poverty, with black-on-black crime now staggering, is modern-day genocide as far as I am concerned. Alert - the only way to stop it is with sound education! There is no way to make quick changes but this is the right time to sure start making changes. Our challenge is akin to rebuilding the Eiffel Tower, but with strong community leadership as well as impassioned educators and teachers, it can still be done. My friend Lou Holtz has the three-point formula: Do the right thing. Do the best you can. And always show people you care. Our emphasis, from the very start, needs to be on the last one. Show we care and trust comes back. Every time. Royexum@aol.com Gov. Scott Walker delivers his sixth "state of the state" address Tuesday in the Assembly chambers at the state Capitol. Credit: Rick Wood Gov. Scott Walker spun a dream on Tuesday night in his "state of the state" address, a dream we wish were true. The dream: Wisconsin's economy is back. "The Wisconsin comeback is real," he said. Well....not entirely. Yes, the unemployment rate is down, and the most recent monthly jobs report was stronger. But in reality, Wisconsin's economy still is being outperformed by other states in the upper Midwest. The state ranked 32nd in private-sector job growth among the 50 states in the five-year period that ended in June, according to federal government figures released in December. During that period, which encompasses the entire recovery since the Great Recession, Wisconsin private-sector jobs increased only by 7.6% while the national rate of job growth was 11.2%. Most nearby states did better than Wisconsin. The sluggish growth is not necessarily Walker's fault. No matter what powers he claims, a governor has limited options against the swirling winds of a global economy, particularly in a state still so reliant on heavy industry. And the state continues to have a serious mismatch between available qualified workers and available jobs. Recognizing this, Walker said Tuesday night: "We must value our students who choose to be highly skilled welders, IT technicians or certified nursing assistants as much as we do those who choose to be doctors or lawyers. Each of these professions is vitally needed for a strong economy in Wisconsin," he said. He's right. Walker should get credit for bringing discipline to state spending if not always in a thoughtful manner. Walker hasreduced taxes and cut spending, and while it's a good thing to keep taxes in check, his spending cuts sometimes have harmed state services. We worry about Walker's obsession with cutting higher education. Walker bragged about freezing tuition in his speech. But the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, which educates more Wisconsin students than any other campus, faces wrenching decisions this spring as a result of that decision and spending cuts. That may harm students in the end. We like the pilot program the governor mentioned in which students would get career planning earlier. That could be an important aid to families. We believe the idea of a three-year degree program that could start in high school may make sense and sounds like it could be an innovative way to reduce costs and get young people on the job sooner. And we think that Walker's statewide "listening sessions" this year are a good idea. Walker could start, though, by listening to Democrats in the Legislature. He could start a new politics in Wisconsin by pledging to work with them on the issues that really matter: jobs, schools, higher education. As Walker contemplates running for a third term, here's hoping he'll do what he says he'll do this year: Listen, especially to those who may disagree with him. SHARE By For the past few years, Wisconsin legislators eagerly have passed laws that disregard medical science, the well-being of patients, and the patient-doctor relationship. These laws are based on political agendas and "junk science" aimed at undermining access to reproductive health care. This unprecedented political interference into patients' relationships with their trusted doctors undermines women's health in Wisconsin. As licensed Wisconsin physicians, we are standing up against this devastating trend that compromises patient care and our ability to practice sound medicine. We are speaking out in support of a new legislative proposal the Patients Reproductive Health (PRH) Act authored by state Sen. Jon Erpenbach (D-Middleton) and state Rep. Chris Taylor (D-Madison). As physicians with years of education and training, we believe our patients deserve the basic right to make their own health care decisions based on the best medical science, free from interference from politicians, and without having to face harassment or intimidation from extremists who oppose reproductive health care. Unfortunately, our patients are often denied these rights by politicians pushing extreme agendas. When it comes to reproductive health care in Wisconsin, no one is guaranteed compassionate and medically accurate standards of care. That is why our state needs the PRH Act that ensures that when you are facing important decisions about your reproductive health, you can trust that your doctor has the right to provide you with information based on the best science available. Politicians in our state have prevented doctors from providing the best available medical information to their patients by requiring them to perform medically unnecessary ultrasounds, provide patients with medically irrelevant "informed consent" information and impose burdensome waiting periods on any of our patients who wish to access abortion care. The PRH Act recognizes that reproductive health care is an incredibly important aspect of human health and would repeal many of the existing laws that undermine quality care and the doctor-patient relationship. Even more important, it would prohibit the state from imposing regulations on reproductive health care that are not firmly grounded in medical science. The PRH Act recognizes and affirms that patients need medical professionals not politicians to provide them with expert advice about their reproductive health decisions. Most politicians are not doctors, and don't have the training or experience to tell doctors how to do their jobs. It's simply bad medicine when these politicians use their political beliefs to dictate care. Elected officials have many important jobs to do, but they need to leave the medicine to us. The PRH Act also recognizes the significant barriers that prevent many women from accessing comprehensive reproductive health care in Wisconsin. Nationwide, the number of facilities providing abortion care decreased 38% from 1982 to 2000, and continues to decrease. Only three counties in Wisconsin have abortion care facilities. As a result, the PRH Act would require any hospital that provides maternity care services to also allow willing health care professionals on its staff to provide patients with comprehensive reproductive health care. This provision will ensure that women have access to comprehensive medical care wherever they live in our state, while also recognizing the long-standing commitment in our country to honoring the consciences of all individual providers. Finally, the PRH Act also would ensure that you can seek care without facing harassment and intimidation. We all respect the right to an open discussion about public policy, but some of the things reproductive care patients and providers face are intolerable. As anyone who has openly provided abortion care knows, opposition to reproductive health care sometimes take the form of intimidation and violence directed against patients and providers. Many providers have shared powerful stories about the routine harassment and threats they face in the course of their day both at work and at their private residences. Many doctors and their families have consistently faced harassment and threats. In Wisconsin, these intimidation tactics have included arson. In other states, providers have even been murdered. The PRH Act recognizes this disturbing reality and sends a powerful message that extremist tactics are not welcome in Wisconsin. The most satisfying part of practicing medicine is helping patients get the care they need in the most compassionate way possible. But right now, your right to that care and to that compassionate treatment is sadly unprotected in our state. We can change that by passing the PRH Act, so that you can make decisions about your life and reproductive health that are right for you. Doug Laube and Angela Janis are physicians in Madison. By of the Madison Republicans in the Wisconsin Senate on Wednesday approved bills overhauling the state's century-old hiring process and cutting funding for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin. The Senate took up the bills reducing government payments to Planned Parenthood as a separate measure backed by abortion opponents remained stalled. The legislation that isn't advancing at least for now would ban research on aborted fetal tissue. As they wind down the legislative session for the year, senators voted 19-14 on party lines for Assembly Bill 373, which would modify the civil service system put in place 110 years ago to keep politics out of hiring public employees. Republicans who control the Legislature hope to finish their work for the year in March. Backers said employment policies for 30,000 state workers need to be updated because it takes too long to hire people to replace retiring baby boomers. The bill would eliminate the state's civil service exams; stop allowing longtime employees to avoid termination by "bumping" other workers with less seniority out of their jobs; and shorten by more than half the process for employees to appeal their dismissal or discipline. "It takes far too long to hire an employee here at the state," said Sen. Roger Roth (R-Appleton). "(The bill) seeks to reform that process to make sure we can make those decisions in a timely fashion." Sen. Jon Erpenbach (D-Middleton) said the bill would allow supervisors to play favorites and return to a system of political patronage. "Yes, this is going to open the door to corruption," he said. "Yes, this is going to open the door to cronyism." Gov. Scott Walker's administration has not yet fulfilled a request from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel last month for documentation on how long it's currently taking the state to hire workers. Last month, the newspaper reported that one example given by Walker to illustrate problems with the civil service system involved an at-will employee who didn't have those protections. In that case, two employees were given reprimands and no other discipline for having sex at work and trading explicit messages on their state email accounts. The Assembly passed the bill in October and it now goes to Walker, who has championed the measure. The bill stalled for a time because Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) opposed a provision in it that would end the state's practice of asking some job applicants upfront to check a box showing whether they have been convicted of certain crimes. He relented on Wednesday because Assembly leaders had told him the bill would die if the Senate made changes to it. Planned Parenthood bills Along party lines, senators voted 18-14 for a bill that would restrict how much Planned Parenthood could be reimbursed for prescription drugs, stripping it of perhaps $4 million a year, according to a rough estimate by Planned Parenthood. A second measure the Senate approved would cut another $3.5 million in government payments to Planned Parenthood. The moves come four years after Republicans made other funding cuts to Planned Parenthood, which the group says led to the closure of five rural clinics that provided birth control and health screenings but not abortions. Democrats argued Republicans were allowing their ideology to prevent some women from getting birth control. "We have no right to dictate our faith on another, that's what the Constitution says," said Sen. Lena Taylor (D-Milwaukee). But Sen. Duey Stroebel (R-Saukville) said taxpayers who oppose abortion shouldn't have their money go toward Planned Parenthood. Women can get their birth control from other providers, he said. "Since when is birth control a rare commodity? I think it's pretty easy to find," he said. Erpenbach disputed that, saying women in northern Wisconsin and other rural areas have difficulty in accessing birth control. Planned Parenthood and other family planning clinics acquire drugs at discounted rates available through a Medicaid health program known as 340B. Under Senate Bill 238, Planned Parenthood would be limited to billing taxpayers through Medicaid for the actual acquisition cost, plus a dispensing fee. Opponents argued it would be thrown out in court because it would treat Planned Parenthood differently than other clinics. The bill next goes to the Assembly, which is also controlled by Republicans. Again on party lines, the Senate voted 19-14 to pass Assembly Bill 310, which would prevent the state from passing on federal money it receives through the Title X grant program to any group that provides abortions or has an affiliate that provides abortions. Title X money goes toward family planning and health screening for the poor and uninsured and is not allowed to be used for abortions. Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin receives about $3.5 million in Title X money a year. The Assembly approved the measure in September and it now goes to Walker, a longtime opponent of Planned Parenthood. Under the bill, the Wisconsin Well Woman Program and other public health programs would get first draw for receiving federal funding, with nonprofits getting whatever funds remain, if any. The Well Woman Program provides breast cancer and cervical cancer screenings for women ages of 45 to 64. Critics of the proposal have praised the Well Woman Program but pointed out that it doesn't serve younger women or men. Supporters of the proposal have said other efforts would be targeted to men and younger women but have not provided a detailed plan for that. Eliminating Planned Parenthood's funding has gained momentum following the release of secretly recorded videos by abortion opponents that show a Planned Parenthood official in California discussing the cost of providing fetal body parts for medical research. Planned Parenthood last week sued the makers of the videos, alleging they were involved in a criminal enterprise and had lied about the abortion provider. Meanwhile, Republicans in Wisconsin are wrestling with a measure that would bar research on tissue from fetuses that were aborted after Jan. 1, 2015. Bill supporters say it would protect against profiteering from the remains of fetuses, while opponents say the state could achieve that goal without criminalizing potentially lifesaving research. So far, backers haven't been able to muster enough support to get the measure to the floor of either house. Other measures The Senate on Wednesday also approved: Senate Bill 248, which would end a requirement that people who are jailed cannot be strip searched unless they are going to be held for more than 12 hours. The bill, which Republicans passed on a party-line 19-14 vote, now goes to the Assembly. Assembly Bill 13, which sets up a system for returning firearms to people whose weapons were seized but who were not convicted. The seized firearms would have to be returned to the owners if prosecutors declined to press charges; charges were dismissed; or 10 months passed and no charges were filed. Senators approved the measure on a voice vote. The bill passed the Assembly in June and now goes to Walker. Dave Roeder shouts and waves as he arrives at Rhein-Main U.S. Air Force base in Frankfurt, West Germany on Jan. 21, 1981. He was among 52 Americans held hostage in Iran for 444 days after their capture at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Thirty-five years later, Roeder and other surviving hostages are set to receive compensation for their time in captivity. Credit: Associated Press SHARE President Ronald Reagan (left) greets freed Iran hostage Kevin Hermening after the release of the hostages in January 1981. Hermening, of Wisconsin, was the youngest of the 52 hostages. Associated Press By of the Washington The survivors of the Iran hostage crisis hope to begin collecting compensation later this year for their time and suffering in captivity, 31/2 decades after they were released. "I am completely flabbergasted," said Dave Roeder, a Wisconsin native and an Air Force attache when he was taken prisoner at the U.S. Embassy in Iran in 1979. "Persistence pays off in the long run." After trying for years in court and in Congress to win compensation, the former hostages achieved a landmark victory last month. Tucked into a massive year-end spending bill was a measure providing individual payments of up to $4.4 million for the 53 hostages and their estates. The money is to come not from taxpayers but from a multibillion-dollar penalty paid by the Paris-based bank BNP Paribas for violating international sanctions against Iran, Cuba and Sudan. Longtime efforts to win compensation directly from Iran failed over the years, largely because the 1981 Algiers Accord that provided for the release of the hostages explicitly barred them from suing Iran. "Many people scratch their heads and go, 'Why has it taken so long to bring some justice to the hostages?'" said House Republican Sean Duffy of Wausau, who participated in a conference call with reporters Wednesday along with other lawmakers, several former hostages and their lead attorney. The call came on the 35th anniversary of the release of the hostages. "It took a lot of political maneuvering," Duffy said of the bipartisan legislation. Duffy was one of the leaders on the House side in pushing the bill. GOP Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia has long been the key advocate in Congress for compensating the former hostages. He spent seven years on the issue, ultimately corralling support from lawmakers in both parties and the administration. "Today is a day many thought would never happen," Isakson said. The legislation sets a maximum payment of $4.4 million, based on a formula of $10,000 per day of captivity, but it doesn't guarantee that survivors will receive the full amount over time. That depends on the funds available and other claimants. The measure does not limit compensation from what is now a roughly $1 billion fund to the former Iran hostages; other victims of state-sponsored terrorism may seek compensation. A special master will be appointed to oversee the payments. The Iran hostages included Wisconsin natives Roeder, who grew up in Whitefish Bay and now lives in North Carolina; and Kevin Hermening, a Marine veteran, the youngest hostage and a constituent of Duffy's who lives in Wausau. A third Wisconsin hostage was Tom Ahern, a CIA station chief at the embassy, according to a 2011 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story. Hermening thanked lawmakers for clinging to their cause over the years and singled out for recognition the eight military personnel who died in Desert One, the failed 1980 rescue effort, saying many of those due to receive compensation are committed to contributing to a fund for their families. The former hostages on the call noted the urgency of the compensation issue as many in their group have died, gotten older and experienced health and personal problems. "This... really makes a big difference. We have been remembered and I think that brings closure... to this awful moment in our lives," said one former hostage, Mike Kennedy. But Roeder said he didn't think there would ever be complete closure for many of the people affected. "Many... have suffered and are in pretty bad shape... this doesn't end it. We're going to continue to have problems. We can't put together broken marriages. We can't fix the relationships between parents and estranged children, and on the physical side of course, the scars, like the ones I had on my forearms from rubber hoses and all that sort of thing, are not going to suddenly disappear," he said. "I'm one of the lucky ones," Roeder said. Reddit Email 0 Shares Human Rights Watch | (Jerusalem) Businesses should stop operating in, financing, servicing, or trading with Israeli settlements in order to comply with their human rights responsibilities, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Those activities contribute to and benefit from an inherently unlawful and abusive system that violates the rights of Palestinians. Occupation, Inc. How Settlement Businesses Contribute to Israels Violations of Palestinian Rights israel0116_web.pdf The 162-page report, Occupation, Inc.: How Settlement Businesses Contribute to Israels Violations of Palestinian Rights, documents how settlement businesses facilitate the growth and operations of settlements. These businesses depend on and contribute to the Israeli authorities unlawful confiscation of Palestinian land and other resources. They also benefit from these violations, as well as Israels discriminatory policies that provide privileges to settlements at the expense of Palestinians, such as access to land and water, government subsidies, and permits for developing land. Expand Barkan, located in the occupied West Bank, is an Israeli residential settlement and industrial zone that houses around 120 factories that export around 80 percent of their goods abroad. In the background is the Palestinian village of Qarawat Bani Hassan. 2004 David Silverman Settlement businesses unavoidably contribute to Israeli policies that dispossess and harshly discriminate against Palestinians, while profiting from Israels theft of Palestinian land and other resources, said Arvind Ganesan, director of the business and human rights division. The only way for businesses to comply with their own human rights responsibilities is to stop working with and in Israeli settlements. More than a half million Israeli settlers live in 237 settlements throughout the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including in East Jerusalem. Successive Israeli governments have facilitated this process, but businesses also play a critical role in establishing and expanding settlements, and enabling them to function. Under the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, companies should respect human rights and identify and mitigate any adverse human rights impact their operations may cause. But because of the nature of settlements, which are inherently illegal under the Geneva Conventions, companies cannot mitigate their contribution to Israels violations so long as they operate in settlements or engage in settlement-related commercial activity, Human Rights Watch said. Settlement businesses unavoidably contribute to Israeli policies that dispossess and harshly discriminate against Palestinians, while profiting from Israels theft of Palestinian land and other resources. The only way for businesses to comply with their own human rights responsibilities is to stop working with and in Israeli settlements. Arvind Ganesan Director of the Business and Human Rights Division Businesses engage in a variety of activities that support settlements. Some settlement businesses are directly engaged in managing the practical demands of settlements. Human Rights Watch investigated Israeli bank financing of settlement construction; a global real estate franchise that has a branch in settlements and whose Israeli franchisees market settlement properties; and a waste management company that collects and processes settler garbage in a landfill in the Jordan Valley that exclusively services settlements and Israel. Other businesses are located in settlements or settlement industrial zones, often drawn by cheap Palestinian labor, low rents, or favorable tax rates. Human Rights Watch investigated a textile manufacturer in a settlement industrial zone that supplies linens to a major American retailer. It relocated to Israel in October 2015. About 20 settlement industrial zones house about 1,000 factories, and Israeli settlers oversee the cultivation of around 9,300 hectares of Palestinian land. Settlement manufacturers and agricultural producers export much of these goods, often wrongly labeling them as made in Israel. Both types of settlement businesses facilitate Israels violations of international humanitarian law. The Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying power from transferring its civilians into the territory it occupies, and the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court, states that such a transfer, directly or indirectly, is a war crime. Human Rights Watch takes no position on a consumer boycott of settlement companies or on the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel. Rather, Human Rights Watch is calling for businesses to comply with their own human rights responsibilities by ceasing settlement-related activities. Other countries should ensure that any import of settlement goods into their territory is consistent with their duty under international humanitarian law not to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Palestinian territories, Human Rights Watch said. This includes prohibiting such goods from being labeled as made in Israel, excluding them from preferential tariff treatment for Israeli products, and refraining from recognizing any certification such as organic of settlement goods by Israeli government authorities. Settlement businesses also operate on and contribute to the Israeli militarys confiscation of large amounts of land in the West Bank, which it transfers to settlements. That violates the international humanitarian law prohibition on an occupying power using the resources of the territory it occupies for its own benefit. Some of the land is privately owned by Palestinians, violating an additional international humanitarian law prohibition, and the Israeli military severely restricts many more Palestinian landowners from accessing their farmland in the vicinity of settlements. Businesses should account for the reality that using Palestinian land, water, minerals, and resources in their settlement operations is unlawful and comes at a great cost to Palestinians, Ganesan said. But the tide is turning as more and more businesses are waking up to the reality that it is wrong for them to profit from inherently illegal settlements. The Israeli militarys unlawful transfer of Palestinian land to settlements and settlement-related restrictions are aspects of a broader system of discrimination that benefits settlement businesses while devastating the Palestinian economy, Human Rights Watch has found. Human Rights Watch documented the vastly discriminatory settlement system, and the ways in which it gravely harms Palestinians and forcibly displaces them from their land in a 2010 report, Separate and Unequal. Israel all but bars Palestinians from building or extracting natural resources in Area C, the part of the West Bank under its administrative control. Between 2000 and 2012, the Israeli military administration rejected 94 percent of Palestinian construction permit requests, and in 2014, it issued only one such permit. Human Rights Watch investigated one of 11 Israeli-administrated quarries in this area, owned by a European conglomerate. Israel has not approved a new quarry license for a Palestinian company there since 1994, according to the Palestinian Union of Stone and Marble, an independent organization representing more than 500 Palestinian companies. Every dollar of stone that settlement businesses extract and sell from the West Bank is a dollar taken from Palestinians, Ganesan said. The bottom line is no settlement business should be operating and profiting from land and resources illegally taken from the Palestinian people. The World Bank estimated in 2013 that Israeli restrictions in Area C cost the Palestinian economy $3.4 billion annually, approximately equal to 33 percent of Palestines GDP. Settlement businesses contribute to and benefit from unlawful and discriminatory policies that leave many Palestinians with no alternative but to work in Israel or settlements. This system affords Palestinian workers in Israeli settlements few labor protections. Israeli government officials have said they conduct virtually no oversight over labor conditions for Palestinian workers in settlements due to these workers ambiguous legal status under Israeli law. This leaves Palestinian workers vulnerable to abuse. In 2007, Israels Supreme Court held that the two-track legal system in the West Bank, which applies Israeli civil law to settlers but military law to Palestinians, discriminates against Palestinian workers, but the government has yet to implement the decision. Military law provides some labor protections, such as minimum wage, but since 2006, the Israeli civilian government has been responsible for enforcement. Settlement businesses help entrench discriminatory Israeli policies that favor settlers over Palestinians in Area C, even though the settlers should not be there in the first place, Ganesan said. Businesses that claim they are helping Palestinians by offering trapped Palestinians minimum-wage jobs with few labor rights protections add insult to injury. Human Rights Watch also has issued a question-and-answer document about its research. Via Human Rights Watch Related video added by Juan Cole: Wochit News from 2 months ago: The European Union Will Label Some Products Made in Israeli Settlements Reddit Email 0 Shares Bill McKibben | (Tomdispatch.com) | When I was a kid, I was creepily fascinated by the wrongheaded idea, current in my grade school, that your hair and your fingernails kept growing after you died. The lesson seemed to be that it was hard to kill something off if it wanted to keep going. Something similar is happening right now with the fossil fuel industry. Even as the global warming crisis makes it clear that coal, natural gas, and oil are yesterdays energy, the momentum of two centuries of fossil fuel development means new projects keep emerging in a zombie-like fashion. In fact, the climactic fight at the end of the fossil fuel era is already underway, even if its happening almost in secret. Thats because so much of the action isnt taking place in big, headline-grabbing climate change settings like the recent conference of 195 nations in Paris; its taking place in hearing rooms and farmers fields across this continent (and other continents, too). Local activists are making desperate stands to stop new fossil fuel projects, while the giant energy companies are making equally desperate attempts to build while they still can. Though such conflicts and protests are mostly too small and local to attract national media attention, the outcome of these thousands of fights will do much to determine whether we emerge from this century with a habitable planet. In fact, far more than any set of paper promises by politicians, they really are the battle for the future. Heres how Diane Leopold, president of the giant fracking company Dominion Energy, put it at a conference earlier this year: It may be the most challenging period in fossil fuel history, she said, because of an increase in high-intensity opposition to infrastructure projects that is becoming steadily louder, better-funded, and more sophisticated. Or, in the words of the head of the American Natural Gas Association, referring to the bitter struggle between activists and the Canadian tar sands industry over the building of the Keystone XL pipeline, Call it the Keystone-ization of every project thats out there. Pipelines, Pipelines, Everywhere I hesitate to even start listing them all, because Im going to miss dozens, but here are some of the prospective pipelines people are currently fighting across North America: the Alberta Clipper and the Sandpiper pipelines in the upper Midwest, Enbridge Line 3, the Dakota Access, the Line 9 and Energy East pipelines in Ontario and environs, the Northern Gateway and Kinder Morgan pipelines in British Columbia, the Pinon pipeline in Navajo Country, the Sabal Trail pipeline in Alabama and Georgia, the Appalachian Connector, the Vermont Gas pipeline down the western side of my own state, the Algonquin pipeline, the Constitution pipeline, the Spectra pipeline, and on and on. And its not just pipelines, not by a long shot. I couldnt begin to start tallying up the number of proposed liquid natural gas terminals, prospective coal export facilities and new oil ports, fracking wells, and mountaintop removal coal sites where people are already waging serious trench warfare. As I write these words, brave activists are on trial for trying to block oil trains in the Pacific Northwest. In the Finger Lakes not a week goes by without mass arrests of local activists attempting to stop the building of a giant underground gas storage cavern. In California, its frack wells in Kern County. As I said: endless. And endlessly resourceful, too. Everywhere the opposition is forced by statute to make its stand not on climate change arguments, but on old grounds. This pipeline will hurt water quality. That coal port will increase local pollution. The dust that flies off those coal trains will cause asthma. All the arguments are perfectly correct and accurate and by themselves enough to justify stopping many of these plans, but a far more important argument always lurks in the background: each of these new infrastructure projects is a way to extend the life of the fossil fuel era a few more disastrous decades. Heres the basic math: if you build a pipeline in 2016, the investment will be amortized for 40 years or more. It is designed to last to carry coal slurry or gas or oil well into the second half of the twenty-first century. It is, in other words, designed to do the very thing scientists insist we simply cant keep doing, and do it long past the point when physics swears we must stop. These projects are the result of several kinds of momentum. Because fossil fuel companies have made huge sums of money for so long, they have the political clout to keep politicians saying yes. Just a week after the Paris accords were signed, for instance, the well-paid American employees of those companies, otherwise known as senators and representatives, overturned a 40-year-old ban on U.S. oil exports, a gift that an ExxonMobil spokesman had asked for in the most explicit terms only a few weeks earlier. The sooner this happens, the better for us, hed told the New York Times, at the very moment when other journalists were breaking the story of that companys epic three-decade legacy of deceit, its attempt to suppress public knowledge of a globally warming planet that Exxon officials knew they were helping to create. That scandal didnt matter. The habit of giving in to Big Oil was just too strong. Driving a Stake Through a Fossil-Fueled World The money, however, is only part of it. Theres also a sense in which the whole process is simply on autopilot. For many decades the economic health of the nation and access to fossil fuels were more or less synonymous. So its no wonder that the laws, statutes, and regulations favor business-as-usual. The advent of the environmental movement in the 1970s and 1980s introduced a few new rules, but they were only designed to keep that business-as-usual from going disastrously, visibly wrong. You could drill and mine and pump, but you were supposed to prevent the really obvious pollution. No Deepwater Horizons. And so fossil fuel projects still get approved almost automatically, because theres no legal reason not to do so. In Australia, for instance, a new prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, replaced the climate-change-denying Tony Abbott. His minister for the environment, Greg Hunt, was a particular standout at the recent Paris talks, gassing on at great length about his deeply personal commitment to stopping climate change, calling the new pact the most important environmental agreement ever. A month earlier, though, hed approved plans for the largest coal mine on Earth, demanding slight revisions to make sure that the habitat of the southern black-throated finch would not be destroyed. Campaigners had hung much of their argument against the mine on the birds possible extinction, since given the way Australias laws are written this was one of the few hooks they had. The fact that scientists have stated quite plainly that such coal must remain in the ground if the globe is to meet its temperature targets and prevent catastrophic environmental changes has no standing. Its the most important argument in the world, but no one in authority can officially hear it. Its not just Australia, of course. As 2016 began in my own Vermont as enlightened a patch of territory as youre likely to find the states Public Service Board approved a big new gas pipeline. Under long-standing regulations, they said, it would be in the public interest, even though science has recently made it clear that the methane leaking from the fracked gas the pipeline will carry is worse than the burning of coal. Their decision came two weeks after the temperature in the city of Burlington hit 68 on Christmas eve, breaking the old record by, oh, 17 degrees. But it didnt matter. This zombie-like process is guaranteed to go on for years, even decades, as at every turn the fossil fuel industry fights the new laws and regulations that would be necessary, were agreements like the Paris accord to have any real teeth. The only way to short-circuit this process is to fight like hell, raising the political and economic price of new infrastructure to the point where politicians begin to balk. Thats what happened with Keystone when enough voices were raised, the powers-that-be finally decided it wasnt worth it. And its happening elsewhere, too. Other Canadian tar sands pipelines have also been blocked. Coal ports planned for the West Coast havent been built. That Australian coal mine may have official approval, but almost every big bank in the world has balked at providing it the billions it would require. Theres much more of this fight coming led, as usual, by indigenous groups, by farmers and ranchers, by people living on the front lines of both climate change and extractive industry. Increasingly theyre being joined by climate scientists, faith communities, and students in last-ditch efforts to lock in fossil fuels. This will undoubtedly be a key battleground for the climate justice movement. In May, for instance, a vast coalition across six continents will engage in mass civil disobedience to keep it in the ground. And in a few places you can see more than just the opposition; you can see the next steps unfolding. Last fall, for instance, Portland, Oregon the scene of a memorable kayaktivist blockade to keep Shells Arctic drilling rigs bottled up in port passed a remarkable resolution. No new fossil fuel infrastructure would be built in the city, its council and mayor declared. The law will almost certainly block a huge proposed propane export terminal, but far more important, it opens much wider the door to the future. If you cant do fossil fuel, after all, you have to do something else sun, wind, conservation. This has to be our response to the living-dead future that the fossil fuel industry and its allied politicians imagine for our beleaguered world: no new fossil fuel infrastructure. None. The climate math is just too obvious. This business of driving stakes through the heart of one project after another is exhausting. So many petitions, so many demonstrations, so many meetings. But at least for now, theres really no other way to kill a zombie. Bill McKibben is the founder of 350.org and Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College. He was the 2014 recipient of the Right Livelihood Award, often called the alternative Nobel Prize. His most recent book is Oil and Honey: The Education of an Unlikely Activist. Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Nick Turses Tomorrows Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa, and Tom Engelhardts latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World. Copyright 2016 Bill McKibben Via Tomdispatch.com Related video added by Juan Cole: Wired: King Tides Show Us How Climate Change Will Threaten Coastal Cities Reddit Email 0 Shares By Thalif Deen | (Inter Press Service) | UNITED NATIONS (IPS) The West continues its strong political and military support to one of its longstanding allies in the Middle East Saudi Arabia - despite withering criticism of the kingdoms battlefield excesses in the ongoing war in neighbouring Yemen. A Saudi-led coalition has been accused of using banned cluster bombs, bombing civilian targets and destroying hospitals either by accident or by designusing weapons provided primarily by the US, UK and France. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said last week the armed conflict in Yemen continues to take a terrible toll on civilians, with at least 81 civilians reportedly killed and 109 injured in December. As a result, the toll of civilian casualties, recorded between 26 March and 31 December 2015, are estimated at more than 8,000 people, including nearly 2,800 killed and more than 5,300 wounded. But Western powers which are quick to condemn and impose sanctions on countries accused of civilian killings have refused to take any drastic action against Saudi Arabia or its coalition partners, including Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain. The Saudi stranglehold is increasingly linked to a thriving multi-billion dollar arms market with British, French and mostly American military suppliers providing sophisticated weapons, including state-of-the-art fighter planes, helicopters, missiles, battle tanks and electronic warfare systems. The arms supplying countries, for obvious reasons, are unwilling to jeopardize their markets, specifically Saudi Arabia. The Saudi arsenal alone includes Boeing F-15 fighter planes (US supplied), Tornado strike aircraft (UK), Aerospatiale Puma and Dauphin attack helicopters (French), Bell, Apache and Sikorsky helicopters (US), Boeing E-3A Airborne Warning Control System (US), Sidewinder, Sparrow and Stinger missiles (US) and Abrams and M60 battle tanks (US). Dr. Natalie J. Goldring, a Senior Research Fellow with the Security Studies Programme in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, told IPS that for years, the US government has documented Saudi human rights abuses in its own reports, including the State Department. Yet the United States continues to provide a largely open-ended weapons supply line to the Saudi government. Its time for the US government to act in accordance with the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) and with its own laws and suspend arms transfers to Saudi Arabia, she said. She argued US weapons manufacturers profit motives for continuing massive weapons sales to Saudi Arabia should not drive US military and foreign policy. The US Defense Department may benefit in the short term by keeping some weapons supply lines open with foreign orders. But the risks to US military personnel and US interests should be given far greater weight in decision making, said Goldring who also represents the Acronym Institute on conventional weapons and arms transfer issues, at the United Nations. The current issue of Time magazine says Saudi Arabia continues to spend a bigger portion of its economy on defence than any other nation (11 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) compared with 3.5 percent by the US). It burns through $6 billion a month to bomb Yemen, an ill-advised war that has come to define the abrupt change brought by King Salman since he assumed the throne a year ago, said Time. But future military spending is likely to falter due to a sharp decline in oil pricesdropping to less than $30 per barrel this week, down from $110 in early 2014. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, from 2010-2014, the United Kingdom and the United States were Saudi Arabias top weapons suppliers. The United Kingdom accounted for 36 percent of the Saudis weapons deliveries, just edging out the United States, which accounted for 35 percent of Saudi weapons imports. France was a distant third at 6 percent. In an article in Counter Punch published last November, William D. Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project the Center for International Policy and a senior adviser to the Security Assistance Monitor, said the recent surge in US arms transfers to the Middle East is part of an unprecedented boom in major US arms sales that has been presided over by the administration of President Barack Obama. The majority of the Obama administrations major arms sales have gone to the Middle East and Persian Gulf, with Saudi Arabia topping the list with over $49 billion in new agreements. This is particularly troubling given the complex array of conflicts raging throughout the region, and given the Saudi regimes use of U.S.-supplied weaponry in its military intervention in Yemen, Hartung said. He also pointed out that the Obama administration has made arms sales a central tool of its foreign policy, in part as a way of exerting military influence without having to put boots on the ground in large numbers, as the Bush administration did in Iraqwith disastrous consequences. The Obama administrations push for more Mideast arms sales has been a bonanza for U.S. weapons contractors, who have made increased exports a primary goal as Pentagon spending levels off. Not only do foreign sales boost company profits, but they also help keep open production lines that would otherwise have to close due to declining orders from the Pentagon, said Hartung. For example, he pointed out, earlier this year it was reported that Boeing had concluded a deal to sell 40 F-18s to Kuwait, which will extend the life of the programme for another year or more beyond its current projected end date of early 2017. Similarly, the General Dynamics M-1 tank has been surviving on a combination of Congressional add-ons and a deal for tanks and tank upgrades for Saudi Arabia. But its not just about money. U.S.-supplied arms are fueling conflict in the region. The most troubling recent sales is a deal in the works that would supply $1 billion or more in bombs and missiles for the Saudi Air Force, again for use in the Yemen war, Hartung added. Meanwhile, hundreds of protesters took to the streets in the Canadian capital of Ottawa last month demanding the cancellation of a hefty 10.5 billion dollar arms deal with Saudi Arabia which included light armoured military vehicles. The contract, signed by the previous government, was described as one of the largest arms deals between Canada and Saudi Arabia. The protest was triggered by the execution of 47 prisoners, including a Shiite cleric, on terrorism charges. Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion, who dismissed the protest, was quoted as saying: What is done is done and the contract is not something that well revisit. The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com Licensed from Inter Press Service Related video added by Juan Cole: Euronews: New air raids on Sanaa cost at least 25 lives Ronald Frank Henderson, 41. is wanted on several property crimes in Georgia and Tennessee. He is 6',1", 200 pounds, with gray hair and blue eyes, and scars on his left cheek. The Whitfield County Sheriffs Office is offering a $500 reward to anyone who can provide information leading to the capture of Frankie Henderson. He was last seen approximately one week ago in the Cohutta, Ga. area. Anyone with information on his whereabouts should call the Whitfield County Sheriff's Office at 706 278-1233 or 706 278-3029. NEWSLETTER Sign up Tick the boxes of the newsletters you would like to receive. Just Drinks Daily News The top stories of the day delivered to you every weekday. Just Drinks Weekly News A weekly roundup of the latest news and analysis, sent every Monday. Just Drinks Magazine The industry's most comprehensive news and information delivered every quarter Avril Group, the French agrifood business, has confirmed reports it plans to build a mayonnaise factory in Algeria. According to reports in France, the Algerian factory is to make mayonnaise and supply sub-Saharan Africa. A spokesperson for Avril told just-food yesterday (19 January) the announcement was made at the opening of the new Lesieur cooking oils plant in Bassens near Bordeaux by group president Xavier Beulin. Unfortunately, we will not be able at this stage to give more information, the spokesperson said. Last week Avril opened a new site for bottling vegetable oils in Bassens. The company said the new site brings together the operations of two facilities. The factory has the capacity to produce 100 million litres of packaged oils per year. It will bottle and package oil to be sold under the Frial, Fruit dOr, Lesieur Cur de Tournesol and ISIO 4 brands. Avril was formerly known as Sofiproteol, which changed its name after reorganising its business last year. PepsiCo has launched a line of crisps developed for sharing under its Walkers brand in the UK. Walkers Tear n Share are sold in packaging PepsiCo says turns into a bowl. The crisps are available in five variants: lightly salted, salt and malt vinegar, cheddar cheese and onion, sticky BBQ ribs and sweet chilli. Thomas Barkholt, marketing director for PepsiCo in the UK, said: We know that the sharing segment is in growth with 86% of households buying sharing packs at least once a month (across the year), and by launching an innovative first for the category, we are helping to drive this growth. We know that consumers love the taste of the Walkers core range and now we have made it available to share in a simple format. The bag and bowl concept, a first for the sharing segment, accompanied by a thicker cut crisp, is set to drive incremental sales for retailers whilst establishing Walkers Tear n Share as a credible brand for all sharing occasions. The range launches on 25 January and each bag has an RRP of GBP1.99 (US$2.82). Red Bank Mayor John Roberts at the commission meeting Tuesday night said that over the last few months there have been discussions about making roads in the city friendlier for bike and pedestrian traffic in order to cater to the lifestyles of people that are moving into Red Bank. A vote was unanimous to authorize a contract with the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) for an improvement project to build pedestrian islands along Dayton Boulevard and Morrison Springs Road. There is no required time for the project to be completed, so the officials plan to take their time and make sure it is done right. Commissioner Rick Causer, who said he has been opposed to this project from the beginning, believing it would be detrimental to police and ambulance traffic, said he learned that five-lane roads are required to have a median. This changed his mind and he joined the rest of the commissioners who voted to approve the resolution for the transportation improvements. The city is also gearing up to increase retail business by hiring a retail recruitment company to help place new businesses in Red Bank. The project was bid out and the one from Buxton Company was the bid that was received. The commission voted to hire this company. Another vote approved the purchase of two Ford police interceptor all wheel drive utility vehicles. These will replace two 2008 Dodge Chargers in the citys attempt to lessen maintenance costs for the fleet. Each of the new cars will cost the city $27,306. City Manager Randall Smith said that south of city hall on Dayton Boulevard a new message sign is being erected with money received from the Red Bank Soddy Daisy Foundation. It is now up and close to being operational. The city will use it for items such as announcements and warnings. Be good neighbors, said Mr. Smith. With the extremely cold weather he asked for neighbors to check on and watch out and help one another if needed, especially the elderly. For help, he said, call 211. Mayor Roberts will speak at the Red Bank Chamber of Commerce meeting on Feb. 16 about what has happened in the city during 2015 and what to expect for 2016. He told the commissioners that he looks forward to 2016 as another great year for Red Bank. The commissioners, acting as the Red Bank Beer Board, approved a new beer permit for the Mountain Mart, 303 Signal Mountain Road. A new license was required because of an ownership change. City Attorney Arnold Stulce said that all the standards have been met. Background checks have been certified by Police Chief Tim Christol and there have been no offenses at this location in the past. The building also meets the distance requirement from schools and churches. A unanimous vote issued a new beer license for this business. 01/17/2016 // Dallas, Texas, United States // Attorney Keith Clouse // Keith Clouse // (press release) Dallas employment law attorney Keith Clouse believes, while each situation should be evaluated on its own, an employer must recognize that inconsistent discipline may lead to problems. If an employer has a policy of terminating employees who commit certain actssuch as theft, assaulting a coworker, or showing up late more than five times without noticethe employer should be consistent in terminating employees who commit those violations. Failure to do so not only endangers employee morale, but it also exposes the employer to potential liability. For example, consider a situation where two employees have trouble with punctuality, but one is verbally warned while the other is terminated. The terminated employee may claim that she was terminated because of her age. Now the employer must defend its inconsistent discipline. If an employer has a good reason to account for the difference in treatment, the employer should be able to convey that to the judge and jury. If not, the employer may have a difficult time combatting the terminated employees allegation. To speak to an employment law attorney about discipline in the workplace, send an email to [email protected] or call (214) 239-2705. This article is presented by the Dallas employment law lawyers at Clouse Dunn LLP. Media Information: Address: 1201 Elm Street Suite 5200 Dallas, Texas 75270 2142 Phone: 214.220.2722 Url: http://dallasemploymentlawyer.cdklawyers.com/inconsistent-discipline-can-lead-to-problems_13803.html It's only fair to share... Pinterest Linkedin email Print 01/19/2016 // 1-800 Car Wreck Fort Worth // (press release) Two people were killed in a recent multi-vehicle crash on a major Interstate in Fort Worth. Reports say that the victims were pronounced dead at the scene after sustaining blunt force trauma. Source: Two killed in I-35W crash at Heritage Trace identified FORT WORTH Two people killed in a three-vehicle crash on Interstate 35W at Heritage Trace Parkway on Monday night were identified Tuesday. Gabrielle Estelle, 19, and Alexander Trejo, 23, were pronounced dead at 8:45 p.m. Monday in the 9500 block of the North Freeway, the Tarrant County medical examiners office reported. To read more visit http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/fort-worth/article51021215.html. The deceased victims were reportedly passengers in a Ford Fusion that had been rear-ended by a Ford Explorer causing the SUV to hit a concrete center wall. The Explorer then collided with another vehicle. Four additional people were taken to a hospital to be treated for minor injuries. Three of those injured were also reportedly in the same vehicle as the deceased victims. The crash resulted in traffic being diverted onto the service road and multiple lanes of the interstate near the accident being closed until after midnight. Police were still investigating the cause and circumstances of the crash at the time of the report. Fatal Interstate Crashes in Texas Cities Like Fort Worth Statistics show that hundreds of crash fatalities occur on Texas Interstates each year. According to data from the Texas Department of Transportation, in 2014, there were 601 fatal Interstate crashes that occurred in 2014. A number of these accidents were reported in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. In another recent crash on Interstate 35W, a teenager was killed after being ejected from a vehicle that rolled over multiple times. Source: Man killed when vehicle rolls over on I-35W in far south Fort Worth FORT WORTH An 18-year-old man was killed Thursday night after he was ejected from a vehicle that rolled over several times on Interstate 35W in far south Fort Worth, police reported. The vehicle was entering northbound I-35W from East Rendon Crowley Road near Burleson when the driver attempted to change lanes, causing the vehicle to flip, said Cpl. Tracey Knight, a Fort Worth police spokeswoman. To read more visit http://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/community/fort-worth/article53653160.html. According to Knight MedStar ambulances arrived at 8:49 p.m. to find the man in critical condition, and two people in stable condition, MedStar spokesman Matt Zavadsky said. Soon afterward, the man died at the scene. Fort Worth personal injury lawyer Amy Witherite of Eberstein Witherite LLP, suggests that Interstate accidents are often very serious in nature for a number of reasons. Says the attorney drivers are going at faster rates of speed on freeways than other road types and depending on the time of day may be surrounded by several vehicles throughout their commute. These factors can be a recipe for disaster if a driver isnt paying attention and loses control of their vehicle, or gets hit by a negligent driver. The Fort Worth attorney says that it is important that the families of individuals who have been involved in a fatal car crash understand what their legal options are in the aftermath, if the accident was linked to the negligence of another driver. The recent crash that led to the death of the teen was also still being investigated at the time of the report. The Fort Worth accident lawyers of 1-800-CAR-WRECK will continue to follow updates on both stories. Media Contact: Lucy Tiseo Fort Worth car accident lawyer Eberstein Witherite LLP Phone: 866-774-5410 http://fortworth.1800-car-wreck.com/ Connect with Eberstein Witherite on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ Media Information: Address: Phone: 1800-227-9732 Url: 1-800 Car Wreck Fort Worth It's only fair to share... Pinterest Linkedin email Print Chambliss, Bahner & Stophel, P.C. announces attorney Nicole Osborne has joined the firm. Ms. Osborne, an attorney and government affairs professional, will assist clients with government relations and public policy matters. Ms. Osborne brings nearly ten years of experience to the firm and will assist Chambliss clients with various strategic governmental, economic, and public policy matters: legislative counsel, risk management, economic development incentives, PAC formation, coalition building, state and local representation, and relationship development. "She understands the importance of legislative advocacy for any regulated business and will help clients understand the ins and outs of government and governmental agencies. She has served numerous industries, including manufacturing, energy, environmental, municipal and government, and nonprofit," officials said. Before joining Chambliss, Ms. Osborne worked for Tennessee American Water Company as government and regulatory affairs manager, where she spearheaded legislation to allow private water companies to have access to the State Revolving Loan Fund. She also previously practiced law at Meyers and Alterman law firm and served as the director of government affairs for the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council in Washington, D.C. Ms. Osborne has a background representing clients before the Tennessee Legislature, Congress, city councils, and numerous local, state, and federal agencies. Some of her work has included developing and implementing legislative and regulatory efforts in Tennessee and Georgia, leading crisis management tasks, and working with the Tennessee Regulatory Authority. In addition, she worked on Capitol Hill for U.S. Senator John Warner, U.S. Senator George Allen, and the National Republican Congressional Committee, and she worked for the National Rifle Association. Ms. Osborne serves the Chattanooga and state communities on numerous boards and councils. She is an appointed member of the City of Chattanooga Health, Educational and Housing Facility Board and serves on the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce and Industrys Public Affairs Committee. She is a member of the Southeast Tennessee Lawyers Association for Women and the Tennessee Lobbyist Association. Ms. Osborne also serves as a representative to the Tennessee Business Roundtable and is on the Ruth Holmberg Arts Leadership Award Committee. Involved in numerous philanthropic organizations, Ms. Osborne volunteers for Girls Inc. of Chattanooga, Junior Achievement of Chattanooga, the Humane Educational Society, and Junior League of Chattanooga. Ms. Osborne received her law degree from Regent University School of Law. She graduated cum laude from Emory and Henry College with bachelor of arts degrees in mass communication and political science. The Midwest's most popular tourist destination was eerily empty Tuesday as Navy Pier closed its doors to visitors to make way for a new and improved Ferris wheel. Working under the flags of their respective nations, contractors based in the US, Netherlands, and Germany used cranes to carefully hoist three of the six legs that comprise the wheel's base into position. Each 120-foot leg weighs 36,000 pounds and will ultimately support the wheel's total mass of nearly 1,000,000 pounds. The new ride is designed to reach a maximum height of 196 feet -- some 50 feet higher than the previous wheel that graced the Pier from 1995 to 2015. Though Navy Pier's new Ferris wheel will be smaller than giants like the London Eye and Las Vegas' High Roller, which stand respectively at 450 and 550 feet, its dimensions are primarily dictated by the site constraints of the pier. The increase in wheel size will certainly afford riders an improved vantage point to enjoy Chicago's iconic skyline, but the most notable feature of the new attraction will be its 42 enclosed, temperature-controlled gondolas. Compared to the previous open-air 6-person cabs, these new 10-person carriages will allow visitors to comfortably ride the wheel year-round and in all weather conditions. Navy Pier will be closed again today as the international team of specialists erect the Ferris wheel's remaining support structures. Work to build the rest of the wheel will be ongoing as Pier officials aim to see the attraction completed ahead of this Summer's Navy Pier's centennial celebration and America's Cup regatta. The new Ferris wheel is just one part of a larger initiative to transform the Pier from kitschy tourist trap to more of a shared public meeting space and lakefront park. [Photos by Curbed Chicago/Jay Koziarz] Construction Begins on Navy Pier's New Ferris Wheel [Tribune] Navy Pier's Newer, Taller Ferris Wheel is Officially On Its Way [Curbed Chicago] The Carnival is Over: How a Transformed Navy Pier Will Change Chicago [Curbed Chicago] University Of Illinois Could Freeze In-State Tuition For Next Year By Kate Shepherd in News on Jan 20, 2016 10:47PM Photo via Facebook The cost of attending college seems to rise every daybut not so at the University of Illinois. The school is considering another tuition freeze for the 2016-2017 academic year. Under the proposal, tuition costs would not increase for new undergraduates from Illinois for the second year in a row, according to the Tribune. The university is trying to draw more Illinois-based students to its Urbana-Champaign, Chicago and Springfield campuses. There is a catch: fees at the Urbana-Champaign campus will increase and all housing costs will go up. Still, it's a risky proposal, because the university hasn't gotten funding from the state since this past July, according to the Tribune. "Our financial challenges cannot detract from our core mission - opening our doors wide to provide the opportunities that propel students into life and supply the human capital that is critical to move our state forward," University of Illinois president Tim Killeen, who is recommending the freeze, said to the Tribune. The university's board of trustees is set to vote on the tuition freeze during their meeting on Thursday. Video: New Indie Film Dramatizes The Obamas' First Date In Chicago By Mae Rice in Arts & Entertainment on Jan 20, 2016 6:02PM We all know that Barack and Michelle Obamas first date, in 1988, went well. (Not to give too much away but, they got married.) At this years Sundance Film Festival, though, audiences will be able to see it for themselvesor at least one director's imagining of itin the indie film Southside With You. Created by actor and first-time director Richard Tanne, the film was shot in Chicago and stars Parker Sawyers as the future President and Tika Sumpter as the future first lady, Michelle Robinson. (Robinson is Michelle's maiden name.) Here's the first released clip of the filmin which a young Barack promises Michelle "It's not a date until you say it is"courtesy of Yahoo Movies: As Tanne explained to Yahoo, the script is based on a mix of research and invention. I wasnt there on the date, and there wasnt a stenographer taking notes on the date, so it really did come down to educating myself as much as possible Not just about their lives, but also about what was happening in the world at that time and what was happening in Chicago at that time, and trying to extrapolate from there. He had plenty of room to be creative, though, especially because the Obamas own accounts of their first date differ. A few things are definitely known: They went to the Art Institute, saw Spike Lees Do The Right Thing, had their first kiss at Baskin-Robbins, and started one of the worlds most aspirational relationships. One other thing that's 90 percent definitely known: They know about the film. Ive heard from pretty reliable second-hand sources that they are aware of the movie, that they are curious to see it, and also, I think, rightfully baffled that it exists, Tanne told Yahoo Movies. Chinese and international artists came together on the banks of London's River Thames on Jan. 15, 2016 to mark the end of the Chinese-UK Cultural Exchange year. Teapots by Xiao Ge at London Bride. [Photo by Rory Howard / China.org.cn] Throughout 2015, China and the UK joined together to enter what many have called a 'Golden Era', not only in the realm of politics and economics but also in the realm of arts and innovation. The Ministry of Culture of the People's Republic of China and Phoenix Arta Chinese news company--together officially concluded the exchange year with a special celebratory art installation in London's Potters Field park. With "Inclusive" as the theme, the organizers marked the end of this special year with an installation work that showed an age-old link that China and the UK both share: tea. Two large teapots were assembled, one with a Chinese motif, the other with an English motif, their spouts joined together to signify the bridging together of these two peoples and nations; one the origin of tea, the other with a well-noted fondness for the drink. Curator and artist Xiao Ge mentioned that, in English, the word "China" is homophonous and contains within that one word both the nation and the traditional material of teacups and pots. According to Xiao, these bridging teapots "giveanother signification, making this inclusive and bridging teapot an ideal image to celebrate the China-UK Year of Cultural Exchange." Artists from China, Finland, and the UK showed off their arts around the teapot installation. Among the artists present were stalwarts of the Chinese international contemporary art scene, such as Xin Jianjun, Xiao Lu, Sheng Qi, and Leng Bingchuan. Follow China.org.cn on Twitter and Facebook to join the conversation. A forested stream in the Sierra Nevada | Photo: Allie Caulfield/Flickr/Creative Commons License A controversial 2015 report that suggested logging California's forests could increase the state's water supply got it wrong, according to a new study released late last week. The 2015 report by the Nature Conservancy had suggested that thinning forests in the northern Sierra Nevada as a fire management strategy would also increase flows downstream, adding to the amount of water available to rivers and reservoirs. But that study was based on flawed assumptions, according to a review of more than 230 hydrological studies released Friday. The new study, conducted by veteran hydrologists Jonathan Rhodes and Christopher Frissell, concludes that any increases to water supply from logging would be localized and short-term, and that California would pay the price in water quality, forest biodiversity, and public safety. Rhodes and Frisell's study, "The High Costs and Low Benefits of Attempting to Increase Water Yield by Forest Removal in the Sierra Nevada," was commissioned by the Environment Now Foundation to examine the Nature Conservancy's suggestions from last year. Much of the work in the new study mirrors a 1998 study Rhodes wrote with hydrologist Michael Purser. The Nature Conservancy isn't the first group to suggest that logging or forest thinning -- which it refers to as "restoration" -- would increase Californians' access to water. Rhodes' 1998 survey was written to examine previous similar claims. "While the idea of using logging to increase water flows can seem enticing, especially during times of drought, time and again this claim has turned out to be ill-founded," said Douglas Bevington, forest program director of Environment Now. "The latest versions popping up in California are just old wine in a new bottle." The suggestion that logging would increase stream flows does have a certain logic to it: living trees can suck a significant amount of water from the soil and transpire it into the atmosphere through their leaves. If a watershed had fewer trees in it to suck the water out of the soil, that water could conceivably add to stream flows instead. In addition, the Nature Conservancy report suggested that a thinner forest canopy might allow greater snowpack accumulation on the ground, instead of holding fallen snow above ground in a dense tree canopy where the snow might sublimate directly to water vapor rather than melting. But according to Rhodes and Frissell, any gains in groundwater conserved by cutting trees would be quickly used up by the flush of new vegetative growth that usually follows forest thinning or clearcuts, as rapidly growing young trees and shrubs would increase demand on local soil water. In most watersheds studied, that actually led to a decrease in streamflows compared to flows before logging took place. Based on comparative studies of watersheds across the Western U.S. with and without logging or thinning projects, Rhodes and Frissell estimate that about a quarter of a given watershed would need to be logged every 10 years in order to keep ahead of regrowing vegetation's water consumption. What's more, even the most carefully conducted logging projects increase erosion into local watercourses, both by removing the vegetation holding the soil in place and due to the increase in roadbuilding required to remove timber. Increased erosion from logged hillsides can drastically decrease water quality, damaging both wildlife habitat and water pumps, and can also reduce water storage capacity by silting up reservoirs. According to Rhodes and Frissell, the amount of water freed up by logging would be minimal to none in dry years. That's not true for especially wet El Nino winters, where more water will indeed go into rivers and streams as a result of logging. But that extra water won't be flowing downstream during the late season, when it would do the most good. Instead, additional water discharged from recently logged landscapes comes during annual peak flows, meaning that a big, flood-causing storm will do more damage to communities downstream of a logged landscape. Rhodes and Frissell point out that there are ways to increase late-season runoff from California's mountains without adding to those dangerous peak flows. Reintroducing beavers, a species once common in California's mountains, is one step: as they build dammed pools on mountain streams, the rodents would help raise local water tables, and improve riparian vegetation and habitat for fish. Sediment trapped behind beaver dams would help build mountain meadows instead of running downstream to cause flooding and other problems. Reducing some of the Forest Service's inventory of roads in California forests would help as well, especially for those roads that cross riparian areas. And one of the greatest benefits to the state's water supply from its mountain forests would result from reducing livestock grazing, which now affects between 7 million and 8 million acres in 11 National Forests in the Sierra Nevada. Livestock grazing degrades streams and their fringing vegetation, compacts soil, pollutes water with fecal pathogens, and increases erosion and sedimentation. Rhodes and Frissell note that a combination of limiting grazing, reducing road milesa and encouraging beavers could also help make California's forests more resilient in the face of climate change. "If one genuinely seeks to improve water flows in the Sierra Nevada, rather than simply trying to find a new justification for logging, these alternatives offer a better way for us to direct our resources," said Environment Now Foundation's Douglas Bevington. "Using logging to increase water flows is still a bad idea whose time has not come." Jacques Peretti discovers how the World Health Organization's recognition of obesity as an epidemic provided millions of new customers for the diet and weight loss industry. He also explores some of the latest developments in bariatric surgery and questions the extreme measures people will take to lose weight. More than 100 years ago, Rongfa Inn welcomed caravans and merchants along the ancient Tea and Horse Road, a trade route linking southwest China and South Asia. Once a staging point in the journey for merchants selling tea, china and silk as far away as Nepal, Rongfa Inn is now a village hotel, attracting visitors with its pastoral scenery and the aroma of the local Pu'er tea. "Our family has been running Rongfa for four generations," said 36-year-old owner Li Shaomeng, of Nakeli village in Hani and Yi Autonomous County of Ning'er, Pu'er City in southwest China's Yunnan Province. The hotel can accommodate over 100 visitors and brings in 100,000 yuan (16,000 U.S. dollars) a year for Li's family, seven times more than farming. Li isn't the only one to cash in on the tourism boom. There are 22 village hotels in Nakeli, where more than half of the 1,700 villagers are ethnic minorities. Tourism blooms Tourism has flourished in the villages of Yunnan, providing jobs for more than 270,000 people in the past five years and lifting 380,000 people out of poverty, according to statistics from the provincial bureau of tourism. Nakeli attracts more than 400 daily visitors on average, and tourism has brought nearly 300 villagers out of poverty. The average annual income per person increased to 6,207 yuan in 2015, triple that of 2010. But villagers were skeptical about welcoming guests into their humble homes and treating them to simple local fare. After an earthquake hit Nakeli and destroyed buildings and roads in 2007, the local government decided to reconstruct the village for tourism, and encouraged villagers to build village hotels through subsidies of up to 28,000 yuan per hotel. The quake-hit village transformed itself into a tourist resort. During the week-long National Day holiday in 2015, China's "golden week" for travel, 30,000 tourists crowded into Nakeli, charmed by its beautiful natural scenery and minority cultures. Gao Jiabao, a villager from Nakeli, was once a migrant worker but is now a hotel boss. "I used to drift from city to city, but could only live hand to mouth" said Gao. "Now I can stay at home and earn a yearly income of more than 100,000 yuan by running the hotel and planting tea." Nakeli has over 266 hectares of tea plantations, with Pu'er tea the most famous variety grown. Gao's son, Gao Shixing, is bringing local tea to visitors from around the world. "Guests to our village hotel can taste homegrown vegetables and visit the mountains to pick tea," said Gao Shixing. Thanks to Internet, the Gao's sold out their spring tea this year even before it was ready for the market, to online customers from Beijing, Taiwan and Malaysia. After studying an e-commerce training course in Qingdao City in east China's Shandong Province last September, Gao became one of a few who use the Internet to promote his village hotel. "More people will know about us once we promote ourselves online, and visitors can make tea orders and reservations during peak tourism season, which gives us more time to prepare," said Gao. As for his father, living hand to mouth is a thing of the past. After welcoming tourists to his hometown, the elder Gao has even saved enough to plan a bit of travel himself. "I've only worked outside, but I'm considering going on a trip this year," said Gao Jiabao. Kang Ha Neul and Esom (Lee Esom) transform into a romantically-charged, "same age" couple in their 1st Look pictorial. On January 20 (KST), OSEN released photos from the shoot, which depict the "Like for Likes" stars in resplendent poses. In the article, the actors, who are both 25-years-old, are praised for their compelling chemistry. Kang portrays Lee Soo Ho, an emerging composer who is inexperienced with dating. Esom is Jang Na Yeon, a television producer who considers herself to a relationship expert even though she is a rookie in her work life, in the upcoming CJ Entertainment release. OSEN also noted the methodology used by Kang and Esom to develop their on-screen personas, which included spending their free time together while engaging in activities that are generally enjoyed by couples. Directed by Park Hyun Jin, who is credited for her work on the films "Remarkable Woman" and "Lovers of Six Years," "Like for Likes" examines the romantic exploits of three couples, as impacted by social media. The movie features a star-studded cast which is led by "Veteran" star Yoo Ah In and Lee Mi Yeon, who recently appeared as the adult version of Duk Seon in "Reply 1988." Kim Ju Hyeok, who portrayed the future husband of Duk Sun joins "Twenty Again" actress Choi Ji Woo, to round out the main cast. he film marks the first silver screen release from Kang, following the meteoric success of his 2015 coming-of-age movie, "Twenty." He is also garnering positive attention as a cast member of the highly anticipated adaptation of the Chinese tale, "Bu Bu Jing Xin," a project that was initially titled, "Moon Lovers." Model-turned-actress Esom has appeared in several movie roles including her portrayal of Jang Mi in "Man on High Heels." "Like for Likes" premieres in Korean theaters on February 18. It has been three years since Park Shi Hoo appeared on the small screen, playing a retail chaebol in the drama "Cheongdamdong Alice." The actor, who returns in the OCN drama "Neighborhood Hero" has been absent from dramaland for three years following a charge of sexual assault that was eventually dropped. Because the charge and associated lawsuits were dropped, none of the major networks banned Park, as is sometimes the case when actors are involved in legal issues. But the negative publicity did make it less likely that he would be offered roles and it caused his name to be withdrawn from the Baeksang Drama Awards. Some speculated that his image was too tarnished to ever get another drama role. Park contemplated appearing in a 2014 drama "Golden Cross, but ultimately reconsidered. Although he said he didn't decline the role due to public sentiment, news of his drama return prompted negative comments. After the scandal Park spent some time in the U.S. and worked in Japan appearing in the Japanese film "Scent." He then made his Korean comeback in a film, "After Love," co-starring Yoon Eun Hye. Although he is well known for romantic comedies, his new drama role requires plenty of action scenes. In his comeback drama he plays Baek Si Yoon, a former agent who buys a bar and becomes an undercover hero. While running the bar he hears about crime and injustice in the neighborhood and attempts to set things right. He enlists the help of one of his customers. Park has done action scenes before. His serial killer role in the 2012 film "Confession of Murder" involved action scenes but that was not the only reason that Director Kwak Jung Eun cast him. Kwak recently spoke to the The Korea Herald about his decision to cast Park. Portraying the character required more than skill at action scenes. "Baek Si Yoon has some painful memories so I needed someone who was able to be sincere about his feelings as well," said Kwak. "Then I thought about Park Shi Hoo." In the interview, Park spoke about his small screen return. "It feels like a dream to be able to stand here once again," said Park. The drama begins on January 23 and co-stars Kwon Yuri and Lee Soo Hyuk. How do you feel about the actor's return to the small screen? Too soon? Enough time has passed? There can never be enough time? Time to stop judging him on a crime he was never convicted of? What do you think? Let us know. GRAND ISLAND -- The Central Nebraska Humane Society was inundated with phone calls on Tuesday from people hoping to adopt dogs that were recently given up by an area puppy mill. Weve had dozens and dozens of calls, Animal Control Supervisor Justin Gaunt said. On Tuesday morning, employees spent half of their time dealing with those calls. People should stop calling the Humane Society, Gaunt said, because most of the dogs arent ready for new owners. Of the 31 dogs the Humane Society took possession of, only two are up for adoption right now. Rather than calling the Humane Society, he urges people to visit www.centralnebraskahumanesociety.com to see whats available. The owner of the mill decided to surrender his animals, Gaunt said. Although the mill is about an hour north of Grand Island, he didnt want to disclose any more details. He declined to release the owners name. Because the owner surrendered the dogs, I dont want to punish him and possibly preclude other breeders from surrendering eventually. Animal control officers were brought in by the Department of Agriculture and took possession of the dogs on Jan. 11. Most of the dogs are small breeds. The vast majority are Maltese, Gaunt said. The group also includes two poodles, several Pomeranians, a Yorkie and one Australian shepherd. The two available now are Maltese. The others will come up for adoption gradually over the next six to eight weeks, he said. The dogs are not puppies. The youngest is 3 or 4 years old. One of the Maltese available is 13 years old. Many are older animals that havent had much of the medical care they require, he said. Were slowly getting them medically and behaviorally assessed and will be putting them up for adoption in groups of probably two or three at a time over the next several weeks, Gaunt said. The dogs all need to be spayed or neutered, he said. The Humane Society will make sure theyre up to date on their shots. Extensive dental work is needed, Gaunt said. The vast majority, probably two-thirds, will need major dental work, he said. The remaining third need minor dental attention. The mill that surrendered the dogs is on the Horrible Hundred puppy mills list maintained by the Humane Society of the United States, Gaunt said. The dogs, though, are a little more social than most dogs from a puppy mill, he said. Theyre not cowering in fear. Theyre timid, but theyre not terrified, Gaunt said. The animals stand out for their size. Prior to these coming in, we had very few small dogs, Gaunt said. A plan to provide health insurance for the more than 77,000 Nebraskans who cant afford it appears to have some new advocates. Theyre from Omaha, they have financial resources and influence on fellow businessmen. No, they arent Pete Ricketts. But they have been around longer than the first-term governor and may just rule the day. Walter Scott, former chairman of construction giant Peter Kiewit Sons, and Michael Yanney, a native of Kearney and former chairman of the Burlington Capital Group and America First investment firms have invited other business leaders to a briefing today at the Omaha Country Club to learn more about a plan promoted by three state senators. Omaha Sens. Heath Mello and John McCollister and Lincoln Sen. Kathy Campbell are sponsoring the bi-partisan effort that would use more than $1 billion in federal money to fund private insurance for an estimated 77,000 Nebraskans who are the working poor. The business community has remained largely neutral on the topic, which has been debated each of the last three years. Supporters have tried unsuccessfully to expand Medicaid to cover the low-income adults. Gov. Pete Ricketts has adamantly opposed the move saying he fears federal involvement will wane and leave Nebraska holding the bag. Scott and Yanney say they are concerned that Nebraska has elected to ignore more than $1 billion in federal payments, burdening Nebraska health care providers and employers with uncompensated care. They agree that the Affordable Care Act Obamacare is far from perfect. But they say they like this years proposal as a market-driven model. In making the business case for Scott and Yanney and other business leaders, McCollister said it would bring in $2.1 billion over five years to the state of Nebraska. The move would also add 10,000 jobs. Apart from the benefit to 77,000 people, it would be a boost to the Nebraska economy. McCollister said the proposal is patterned after similar legislation in Arkansas. The federal government would pay 100 percent of the costs through 2016; the federal share then would gradually begin to phase down to a 90-percent floor in 2020. Ricketts said hes worried that the federal money isnt a sure thing and could end without warning. McCollister has a contingency plan for that. He said hes encouraged that the business community and a number of his colleagues are willing to listen. McCollister also hopes to shake the negative image of Medicaid expansion terminology. He prefers to call it transitional health insurance for targeted Nebraskans. Thats the people who slipped through the cracks in the ACA. People who are employed in food service, construction, retail sales, cleaning and maintenance who do not have health care coverage and are ineligible for Obamacares private health care insurance subsidies. Others include students, spouses and some disabled Nebraskans. These are not lazy people who are just staying home and collecting benefits. Most are working adults and a great many are in rural Nebraska working multiple jobs. Lets hope cool heads can settle this issue. J.L. Schmidt is the statehouse correspondent for the Nebraska Press Association. Britain's Prince William visits the Imperial Palace, or the Forbidden City, in Beijing, capital of China, March 2, 2015. [Xinhua] The Palace Museum in Beijing, often referred to as the Forbidden City, has launched a new way of promoting itself internationally, by hosting traditional Chinese cultural events aboard on luxury cruises operated by global industry giant Royal Caribbean International. Shan Jixiang, the museum's director, said related gifts and products will be on display on many ships, and experts from the famous site will also give guest lectures on board, covering its collections, history and an overall appreciation of Chinese art. The cooperation will start on the Ovation of the Seas, the company's newest ship which launched in the United Kingdom in April and which will be based in Tianjin from June. Shan said visitor numbers to the museum have doubled in the past decade and officials are anxious to promote the attraction even wider. Yet still, he underlined just half a percent of its treasures stored on site are on public display. "The cooperation is a win-win situation for everyone, as it means more audiences around the world can be introduced to Chinese culture while on board," he said. Liu Zinan, Royal Caribbean's president for China and North Asia, called the arrangement so much more than just a joint promotion, it represents a significant cultural development which ultimately will be extended throughout the company's fleet, he said. Royal Caribbean is also inviting experts from the museum to suggest how the huge former palace can be best promoted on its ships, and this could even extent to permanent decoration. "We are sure the museum's culture will be welcomed on board, judging by the response already to lectures given on Quantum of the Seas by our staff last year," Liu said. Royal Caribbean operates four cruises in China and during Spring Festival, the giant Quantum will sail from Shanghai to Japan and South Korea. Pump prices likely on the rise in coming months Gas prices are likely to go back up following the OPEC+ decision to cut oil production by 2 million barrels a day, starting in November.... Spindle Items .. ETERNAL HAPPINESS All of us are chasing happiness. None of us wants to be miserable, angry, frightened , depressed or the like. If... Out of the Past 25 Years AgoOct. 22, 1997 Zoning laws in the Town of Tonawanda received much needed updating Monday as Councilman Raymond Sinclair presented amendments in underground... Family fun for everyone Halloween is every kids dream holiday, with costumes and candy, tricks and treats. Some of my favorite memories with my family have centered around Halloween,... Police in south China's Hainan Province said on Tuesday that they have caught 16 suspects and seized 23.4 kilograms of drugs in a crackdown on an armed drug ring. Police with the public security bureau of Danzhou City also confiscated one gun, seven knives, six vehicles and more than 116,000 yuan (17,632 U.S. dollars) in cash. Police said that they started the investigation in March 2015 after discovering that a Danzhou resident had allegedly been involved in drug dealing. Later, the police discovered a gang that had participated in drug trafficking since April 2014. Under the joint efforts of police from the provinces of Hainan and Guangdong and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, the gang was busted and the suspects, who were scattered in different areas, were all caught. The case is under further investigation. To tell or not to tell. The old dilemma of whether or not doctors should disclose HIV status to spouses has been renewed after a Chinese man filed a lawsuit against a hospital for failing to inform him of his wife's illness. Xiao Xin (pseudonym), files a lawsuit against a hospital for failing to inform him of his wife's illness that she has been infected with HIV. [Photo/TV Screenshot] The young husband, Xiao Xin (pseudonym), brought the lawsuit against a hospital in Yongcheng, Henan province, after he found he was infected with HIV last year. Last March, he and his wife went for a premarital health check at the Yongcheng Women's and Children's Hospital. "My check went smoothly, but doctors asked my wife to take three more blood tests. I had my concerns, but doctors said there was nothing to worry about," Xiao told Xinhua. The hospital told Xiao's wife she was infected with HIV, but kept the information from the husband. Xiao insisted that his wife was not properly informed of the risks of HIV either. He filed to sue the hospital for 1.2 million yuan in damages last July. The city court has not yet accepted his case, citing a backlog in cases as the reason. The Yongcheng Women's and Children's Hospital has not responded to requests for an interview. In recent weeks, Xiao's lawsuit has sparked new debates in medical and legal circles about the privacy of HIV-positive patients. Right to know? China's AIDS Prevention and Treatment Regulation says the privacy of patients shall be protected and their HIV status shall not be disclosed without consent. A Chinese law on Maternal and Children's Health says doctors should give "medical advice" if they find couples with infectious diseases who intend to marry. But the law's ambiguous wording does not specify whether doctors must advise an individual or both the spouse and patient, so doctors rarely divulge HIV status to spouses. "Usually, when couples come for premarital health checks, the doctors are not liable to disclose a patient's HIV status because of privacy issues," said Wu Xia, a doctor with the Beijing Maternal and Child Health Care Hospital. But some lawyers disagree. "When there are conflicting obligations to protect patient confidentially and prevent their spouse from infection, the right to health should take precedence over the right to privacy," said Wang Jijin, a Beijing-based lawyer. In common practice, the responsibility is mainly with the patient to tell their spouse or partner about their status, said Wu Zunyou, director of AIDS prevention at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. "But again there is the ethical dilemma -- most of those infected do not want to disclose their status, fearing discrimination," said Wu. Yunnan's practice Though national laws have allowed room for dispute, local laws in some areas have saved doctors from making the tough decision. In Yunnan Province and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, where the AIDS epidemic is worse due to an increase in cross-border drug flow, local law requires doctors to inform patients of their spouse's status. According to the Yunnan AIDS Prevention Regulation, a patient has one month to tell his or her spouse following a positive diagnosis. If they fail to do so, disease prevention staff will visit their families and inform them. By the end of October last year, China had 575,000 people infected with HIV, and about 88,000, or 15 percent, are living in Yunnan. "When the rule was first put in place in 2007, many people objected, but it was crucial for us to implement the rule to stop the disease from spreading," said Lu Lin, disease prevention chief in Yunnan. In the last eight years, Yunnan has informed 42,685 people of their spouse or partner's HIV-positive status. Lu said in the last five years, the disclosure rule has prevented at least 1,000 HIV cases. It took Feng, a 33-year-old AIDS patient, a long time before he allowed doctors to tell his wife about his diagnosis. "I was afraid that she would divorce me and my family would fall apart," Feng said. "My wife burst into tears when she tested negative for the virus. I never felt more relieved, he said. "The doctors repeatedly remind us to use condoms and take other precautionary measures to keep her from infection." Yunnan diagnoses at least 10,000 new HIV patients every year, 40 percent of whom are married or have steady sexual partners, said Lu. "It is very necessary for us to continue with the disclosure rule," he said. However, not all provinces can enforce rules like Yunnan. "In places where discrimination against HIV patients is severe, indiscreetly leaking information about their infection can cause unsympathetic and prejudiced reactions," said Wu. "It is impossible to make a national law, but local provinces should make their own laws according to the seriousness of their situation," he said. China hopes to launch its first Mars probe around 2020 as the module technology for the exploration of the planet is maturing, some aerospace experts recently disclosed in Beijing. China hopes to launch its first Mars probe around 2020 The exploration, which consists of plans to orbit, land and probe, has been listed as one of China's aeronautic projects in the coming years, according to Yuan Minhui, director of Beijing Space Science and Technology Information Institute. China attempted to send its first Mars probe on Nov. 9, 2011, however, the module failed to reach the correct orbit. In September 2014, India became the first Asian country to successfully send a probe into orbit around Mars. To keep up with the world's advanced technology, China was preparing a new exploration that would not only send a probe into orbit but also make it possible to land and explore on Mars, said Ye Peijian, the chief designer of "Chang'e 1," the first manmade satellite which was launched to orbit around the moon. Ye made such remarks in as early as May 2014. The technology to send a module to Mars is available as the satellite "Chang'e 2" has already reached into space at a distance of 83 million kilometers from Earth. The closest distance between Mars and Earth is 55 million kilometers. However, the difficult part of the project is the fact that the two planets only approach each other once in 26 months. Japan sent a Mars probe in 1998. However, the module failed to reach the designated orbit five years later. China is hopeful that they will be able to successfully launch and land the probe on Mars as the technology concerning the rocket and detector is no longer an issue, said Long Lehao, a rocket expert. Two Kilkenny mothers have founded an advocacy group to raise awareness around lengthy waiting lists for spinal surgery in children. Claire Cahill, who lives in Hugginstown and Michelle Long, who lives in Ballycallan recently founded the Scoliosis Network after it was reported that there are over 600 children on a waiting list for orthopaedic surgery at Our Ladys Childrens Hospital in Crumlin. The two mothers both have young sons with scoliosis (curvature of the spine). My five-year-old son Tommy has scoliosis. I was pregnant when I discovered that he had congenital scoliosis. He was born with a curve in the spine and it progresses as you grow, said Michelle. There is a huge issue with waiting lists and the longer you have to wait the worse the curve can get. This can be dangerous with small children as the lungs and heart can become compressed. As the condition worsens there is less lung capacity and their quality of life deteriorates, she added. Scoliosis was detected in six-year-old Darragh at the tender age of two and he is now on a waiting list for surgery. He has been on a waiting list since last August. Prior to this he spent 18 months waiting on a spinal MRI which had to be done before he could start his treatment for scoliosis. His curve progressed from 35-60 degrees. It is a treatable condition but you cannot get the treatment in time. It is heartbreaking - our children are missing out of their childhoods, said his mother Claire. After numerous previous surgeries Tommy has recently had surgery and had a rod inserted to help straighten and lengthen the back. He receives great support from Enable Ireland but there is no home physio service available to children on discharge from hospital. Although Tommys surgery went well he will require further surgery and will find himself once again on a waiting list, said his Mum, Michelle. There are currently over 200 children on the spinal surgery waiting list. Many of them are in a critical condition and a group of surgeons have founded a charity, Straight Ahead which offers a limited amount of free orthopaedic surgery to those most in need. The Scoliosis Network offers support and advice to parents of children with scoliosis and raises awareness of the need for cuts to waiting lists. Both women are keen to point out that they are campaigning on behalf of all families affected by the condition in the hope that services will improve. Every month and year they are waiting their lung function is decreasing and this is time that our children cannot get back. The public system is failing our children and there is no other option (there are no orthopaedic services for children in private hospitals). This is a massive issue for parents of children with scoliosis and causes stress and worry. It feels like we are constantly facing a brick wall, she added. On a recent visit to Kilkenny Minister for Health Leo Varadkar met with Claire and Michelle. They outlined the urgent need for a new orthopaedic theatre at the Children's Hospital (which is due to be completed next month) stressing that 'it must be open, staffed and functional from day one. The need for extra consultants, resources, beds, nurses and support staff was also outlined to the Minister. We spoke about our fears that although the theatre will open it will not make a difference unless fully supported. Recruitment of the extra staff needs to be funded and set in motion now. The Minister assured us that the opening of the new theatre was also his top priority. He acknowledged that there are some ongoing issues regarding a shortage of nursing staff, they said. Other areas highlighted with the Minister included increasing the number of suitable children who would be able to travel to the UK for surgery. The Minister spoke about the commitment of the current government and their spending to date on the theatre, the use of The Blackrock Clinic as a means to reduce lists and transferring of patients to the UK for treatment. Delays in surgery can cause a multitude of problems for children including increased deformity in the growing child, leading to more complex and difficult surgeries, increased blood transfusion requirements and longer recovery times. Both Michelle and Claire thanked the staff at St Aidan's National School in Kilmanagh and St Brendan's National School in Newmarket for all their help and support and for providing a positive environment for Tommy and Darragh. A coffee morning will take place on February 3 at 10.30am in the Newpark Hotel and all are welcome. Maureen Hegarty, the matriarchal figure of the Kilkenny Archaeological Society (KAS) and famed teacher at the Loreto Secondary school in the city was laid to rest on Saturday in Foulkstown cemetery after requiem Mass in St Canice's Church. A formidable woman she was one of the driving forces behind the establishment of Rothe House as the home of the KAS and championed many causes. She was secretary there for many years and in 1988 was elected president. Maureen was a long time contributor the Old Kilkenny Review, rarely missing a year with articles including two seminal works on Jerpoint; one in 1971 and the second in 2004, entitled, "Jerpoint Abbey: an historical perspective". Every piece penned by her was well researched and interesting. She had a fantastic memory right up the time she passed away. She wrote the history of the Presentation Nuns in Kilkenny and penned the obituaries in the journal for many years. Citation The following citation was read out by the late Dr John Bradley, of NUI Maynooth, when Maureen received an honorary Masters degree from the university in 2007. She has devoted a lifetime of service to the community and particularly in fostering the cultural and intellectual life of the city. Always efficient, and ever tactful, her secretary's reports published annually in the Old Kilkenny Review are a treasure trove of information, while her elegantly written accounts of lectures delivered to the society and published in the Kilkenny People have silently improved both the style and the clarity of many a lecture, John Bradley said. She didn't court controversy but didn't shy away from issues when they arose. The last being her fierce opposition to the Central Access Scheme (CAS) and the new bridge over the river. She had the foresight, back in 2014, to call for an independent evaluation of the county council's scheme. Sisters She has now joined that band of sisters who were the driving force of the KAS in the afterlife. They were Cissie de Loughrey, Mrs Kenealy, Kitty Lanigan and Daisy Phelan. Maureen Hegarty was born on September 1, 1921 to Denis Hegarty and Mary Gleeson in Johnswell, Kilkenny. The youngest of three children born to the couple she was predeceased by her brother Austin and sister Imelda. Denis was a national schoolteacher from County Kerry who was principal in Johnswell National School. P.M. Egan Mary Gleeson, her mother, belonged to the old Kilkenny family of P.M. Egan who was twice Mayor of Kilkenny City, Borough Treasurer at the time of his death and who published Guides to Kilkenny and Waterford. Maureen spent her early years in Johnswell attending the school where she was taught by her parents. She went to secondary school in Presentation Convent, Kilkenny, and later studied English and History at U.C.D. She worked through the war, teaching in Newport, Wales where she made life long friends. She returned to teach in Presentation Convent, Kilkenny and later in Loreto where she was Asst. Principal until she retired. Elected Maureen joined the Kilkenny Archaeological Society in 1952 and was elected to the Council in 1957. A tireless worker she published articles each year in the Old Kilkenny Review. During her tenure as Honorary Secretary of KAS she participated in the official opening of Rothe House on Sunday 17 April 1966. She facilitated the visit of the group of French pilgrims from Meaux who came to honour St. Fiacre. She started the annual Youth Heritage Project which had hundreds of local children submit projects from the schools for adjudication, thereby fostering an interest in their local heritage and history. She wrote the obituaries for the Old Kilkenny Review since the year 2000 when Margaret Phelan, her friend and mentor, died. She was elected an Honorary member of KAS Council at he AGM of 2014. She maintained her interest in the Society right through her illness and attended the KAS Christmas Party in the Club House Hotel in December 2014. On 31 January 2015 she read a piece she had written about the Michael Mac Liammoir visit to Rothe House in 1969. This was prior to the staging of the new Mac Liammoir play in Kytelers Inn which was a fundraising event for the Renaissance Project at Rothe House. Maureen enjoyed many outings with her friends and was delighted to participate in celebrations especially of her birthday each year. FOGRA - This article would not have been possible without the help and kindness of Mary Flood. Beggars are travelling from afar to Kilkenny where they can make an average of 500 per week from generous members of the public. At Kilkenny District Court last week it was outlined to the judge that one defendant travels from Dublin to the Marble City where he makes on average 100 a day begging on the city's High Street. Adrian Negra, 103 Ardmore Drive, Tallaght admitted the offence at High Street on December 18. The offence, which took place during the city's busiest shopping period, was committed under section 2 of the Criminal Justice (Public Order) Act 2011 which makes it and offence to beg in a manner that 'obstructs the passage of persons or vehicles'. The offence in question is that the defendant did while begging obstruct the passage of members of the public by enticing them to give him money or food for his pet while he did not hold a permit or licence. The court heard that the defendant, a Romanian national, has been living in Ireland for the past four years and is not working. The father-of-two indicated to gardai that he was making 100 a day begging. He said he is not on social welfare but does receive 135 in social welfare benefit per week for his two children. Late last year Mayor Joe Malone made national headlines when he publicly stated that people should not give money to people begging on the city's streets. He said that beggars were coming to Kilkenny and exploiting people's generosity. I am asking people to stop giving them money and they might go elsewhere, he remarked. We don't want this to be a haven for them. They are coming here to seize an opportunity. For more see page eight See page 8 for court report What are the tealeaves saying fundamentally? The huge number of signals, cross signals, coded messages, encrypted ideas and so forth make it very difficult to come to a clear understanding. It seems that so much is hinging on energy prices that we are in a veritable death grip of rising crude output and droopy demand. West Texas Intermediate is down more than 3.50% today. Brent North Sea oil, the world benchmark, seems to have recovered its premium advantage and is trading up 1.00%. We wouldnt be so quick to count the Brent chickens before they hatch, however. Brent is actually more vulnerable because of its status and because it is even more important as Europes benchmark product. Europe will soon be flooded with more oil from the Mideast because of Irans renewed status as an exporting nation. Iran was given the go-ahead by international bodies to resume sales of oil. Ironically, the United States is now the largest producer of crude oil despite Saudi Arabias efforts to push as much as 30% of American production off the market. The precariousness of oil has weighed heavily on U.S. equity markets. We think far too heavily. There is an enormous upside to cheap gasoline. (One of the facets of that upside happens not to be anything good for the environment.) Yesterday in Houghton Lake, Michigan, for a brief period of time, GasBuddy confirmed stations selling a gallon at just 47 cents a gallon prices unheard of in this century. Yes, it was a gas war, but nevertheless, it is mind-bendingly low. If gasoline prices keep falling as predicted into the 1.50 range, consumer savings per household will reach upwards of $1750 per year. We are talking tens of billions of spare dollars that will go into other kinds of purchases. Wall Street hasnt embraced that idea yet. We feel as if it will have to relatively soon. In the meantime, the three major U.S. stock indexes are either marginally down or marginally up, depending on which quarter hour you look at the boards. Investors seem uncertain. (We last looked at 4PM New York time.) Unlike Asia and Europe, the U.S. markets took little solace in the meeting of GDP projections by China in the last quarter of 2015. Possibly, that is because there were so many weak sectors in the worlds second-largest economy. Plus everyone now feels as if the books are cooked and the slowdown is much deeper than Chinese officials are letting on. Surprisingly, gold did not take advantage of tumbling U.S. equities, although little sister silver did, rising 1.00% on the day. Safe-haven U.S. T-bonds, (10-years), saw yields rise infinitesimally and face price fall commensurately. So, risk was off in the equities, but it was also off in almost every other market. Then there are IMF projections of growth in the world economy that have been scaled back. The U.S. economy is projected to grow by 2.6% this year and next year, down from October projections of 2.8%. Growth last year was 2.5%, the IMF estimated, so improvement is completely marginal. Weve said it before and feel obliged to say it again: without infrastructure investment, the U.S. will be stuck in an Old World growth pace. The next election has to bring a revolution in infrastructure expansion. Finally, next week will give us the next Fed meeting. Ugh. Nothing more needs to be said. Just Ugh. whatever they do will not have a calming effect on markets. Were on a carousel maybe ready to ride the roller coaster. Have your tickets ready. For those who would like a deeper analysis with detailed buy and sell recommendations, I invite you to try our daily video newsletter. Simply use the link at the bottom of this report to sign up for a free trial. Wishing you, as always, good trading, Gary Wagner thegoldforecast.com Palisade Radio Host, Collin Kettell: Welcome back to another episode of Palisade Radio. This is your host Collin Kettell. On the line with us today is returning guest Gwen Preston. Gwen is the Publisher of Resource Maven. Gwen, welcome back to the show. Publisher of ResourceMaven.com, Gwen Preston: Thanks for having me. CK: Yeah. We had you on several months ago back when you had started your service and I am happy to hear it has been a success for you. I want to talk to you about the macro trends you are seeing in the market. Gold has obviously stayed low. It is maybe even forming a bottom basing pattern, and there has been some excitement the last couple weeks based around the Chinese and US stock markets finally starting to crumble a bit while gold is holding up relative to these markets. Do you see any significance in what is going on with gold and as extension of that the gold miners? GP: Absolutely! As someone who focuses on gold I see significance in what gold does almost every day, but some have bigger picture perspective. What I have been saying for the last year I have really been that for gold to start to truly shine it would be ideal to see the US market plunging down and with that if possible the US dollar, at least flat line maybe weaken some. Those two things being big push backs against interest returning to gold. If everybody is still making money in the US market they are not going to put money in gold. They are feeling comfortable. They do not need a safe haven. They are certainly not going to put their money in gold miners with the track record that those miners have offered, the negative track record that they have offered. They are doing well in the big market. Of course, the US dollar being strong pushes down against US dollar price of gold. For those two things to turn should create a bit of a rotation. Investors would start being nervous, wanting a safe haven, and looking for undervaluation. They are going to look rather like, Okay, wait a sec. I have been doing well here. Things seem to be overpriced in the major market. I need something that is very undervalued, and the very obvious result of that search would be gold and gold miners. There is absolutely significance in it and I still am calling for the US market to do poorly, not necessarily in terms of a dramatic turndown. But I believe that the bull market is over in the US and I think that those markets are turning down. As for China, I am a little bit less concerned about what is happening with the Chinese market. I care more about what happens with the Chinese economy fundamentally. The Chinese market rose so dramatically between mid-2014 and mid-2015 but we are still really in a correction from that. It is headline-grabbing excitement for this 7% drop to now trigger trading halts and things like that. But the US market in terms of it is a volatile place for investors but those crazy shocks are not really that significant when it comes to the metals market and what is going to happen going forward. What matters there is the Chinese economy, which, of course, is a long conversation in itself. My overall perspective there is that the Chinese economy is doing fine. Sure, the GDP gross maybe 4%, 5%, 6%. I do not know the exact number; it is difficult to know. But that is against a very large base, right? When we have 14% GDP growth in China ten or twelve years ago the Chinese economy was much smaller, so 4, 5, 6% growth is still very significant in China and it all depends what you focus on. For example, China, one thing that I love to look at is uranium. China has 26 operating reactors right now. But it is building so many reactors it is almost difficult to believe how many reactors it has. It has sort of 20, another 25 under construction, and then the pipeline at the time being proposed totals 175. When you look at a commodity like uranium, China is absolutely a boom to that commodity. There is a lot going on. As to gold itself, I am certainly not alone in believing that gold has generally bottomed. I do not expect it to perform really well in 2016. I do expect it to finish 2016 higher than it started and a lot of that because of the US market topping and turning down, the US dollar perhaps trending down somewhat, and those things creating some anxiety around some need for investors to have a bit more of a safe haven and they glance over gold and see it being very cheap. CK: Yeah. Well, Rick Rule always uses the mantra that the bear market is the author of a bull market, and as a sector becomes extremely undervalued at some point new players come to the table. We have certainly seen that in 2015 in a big way. You had Carl Icahn come out with his big investment in the copper. There has been a lot more smart money talking about the precious metals. Even I heard from one of my listeners early this morning that Mark Hart is talking about investing in uranium now. You just mentioned that. We are starting to see all these things come together that could maybe spark the movement up. I want to ask you, Gwen, when you start to look at the miners and you try to decide, because there are so many out there, what is it that you are looking for to make a choice on where to put your money? GP: Right, yeah, good question. I mean you look at the sector and sure it looks undervalued but then what is your specific move? Absolutely! I try and break mine down into time frames. I have short term trades, I have medium term, and then I have long term. I actually see some really interesting opportunity in every single one of those, in each of those categories right now. On the short term, short term trades in the mining sector right now are about taking advantage of the opportunities that do happen to be there. If you take the big picture you step back, we do not know when things are going to move, I do not know if it is now, if this is the bottom. Those things are true and, yes, it can be a little bit difficult to make some big moves on the long term trend. But there is opportunity to make 20 to 30% upside in a short term trade if you really follow things closely. Take sort of a news opportunity or an arbitrage opportunity. Sunridge Gold is a great example of that. This is a Canadian company that has a very high grade gold and copper discovery in Eritrea, in East Africa. They are advancing it quite successfully through the bear market, but then a few months ago they got a takeout offer from the Chinese. The takeout offer would be cash that comes in and Sunridge Gold would return that cash to shareholders as soon as they have it and fold up business. They are not even going to try to continue going forward. They thank their shareholders for their support and shut up shop. The money coming in represents at least $0.35 a share that shareholders will get, potentially more depending on legal cost and exchange rate. Right now the companys trading at $0.27. Provided you can gain enough confidence in yourself, the deal is going to happen. Certainly Chinese deals have fallen apart before so there is some reason for pause there, that is why the gap exists. But I have confidence that the deal will close for a bunch of reasons. There you go. Go in and buy it for $0.27 and walk away with $0.30 to $0.38 in two months, cash in hand. It is really interesting opportunities like that if you pay close attention to the market. Then in the medium term. That is where you are looking for sort of the companies that are distinguishing themselves by being really ready to take advantage when the market even just starts to strengthen a little bit. If you are looking gold companies that have assets that are almost ready to develop and have shown very good economics at current metal prices. Now that is not actually a very long list of companies. You got Kaminak in that list. They just put out a very strong feasibility study. You have got Integra on that list. They are a little bit farther back, but they are working really hard and their asset is almost completely permitted already which is a major de-risking element. There are just not a lot of companies on that list. There are not a lot of assets that are almost ready to develop and have very good economics at current metal prices. These are the companies that are going to outperform in and of themselves even just as the market strengthen, and they stand on chances of being taken out before that even happens because the majors also look around and say, Okay, this is the bottom. We should spend at least a little bit of our cash re-stocking our now almost empty project development pipeline at good prices. There is quite a few in that list. It also includes things like some Canadian miners who have their costs in cheap Canadian dollars and then who get to sell their gold that they are producing in strong US dollars. They are making really good extra 25% just for the foreign exchange. There is really interesting opportunities like that that goes very well in the medium term. And then the long term. There is not as much rush to move into your long term holds, but this is the group where you look around and you see, for example, earlier stage explorer or project generator, companies that have very interesting portfolios of projects at their earlier stage, and the market is not interested in early stage asset at the beginning of a recovery. That interest happens a little bit later. Those companies will do well, sort of in the heart of the recovery they will do incredibly well. Now, in general, is the time to get in or you just wanted to take your time and really pick the cream of the crop there. Yeah, I find it a really exciting time actually. Certainly, there is a lot of us who have been sitting around waiting for this bottom, this endless bottom to end for some time. I can understand that there is some fatigue happening. A lot of investors are really hoping that, Okay, let us get the bottom over with. Let us start moving up. But if you can focus on there also being some near term opportunities, some short term trades that are over 20, 30% that earn some cash in short periods of time. That is a really good way to keep your interest going while you sift through those medium and long term opportunities as well. CK: The other thing about this market, Gwen, is that there seems to be something for almost any appetite. I mean your portfolio seems a bit more focused on the higher grade, really strong quality assets that will survive in a lower gold price environment. But even if you are in the camp where you like to look at optionality plays and you strongly believe in $1,800 or $2,000 gold in the next couple of years, there is a lot of massive size assets as a result of the 2000 - 2007 bull market that are simply not financeable in this market, but at $2,000 gold they could be. Do you have any interest in those types of deposit? GP: Absolutely! I would say there are those types of deposits. They are companies that are doing the projects bank model where they are going around and looking for assets of the range of sizes, big ones like you are talking about or even the medium size ones that are available for incredibly low prices. Yeah, absolutely, the opportunity out there, the hard part is almost narrowing your focus. If you are interested in everything else there it will be very difficult to make decisions because any company that has survived this five year bear market at this point has some good people, has some smart people taking advantage of opportunity. Pretty much all of them are doing interesting things. It is a matter of what your particular preference is whether you like the land bank model, whether you like the let us hold on to a big project that when the market is really strong again it is going to make major waves. Do you want something that is economic at the beginning of a recovery? Do you want something that's a play on a more specific commodity like uranium that you think is going to outperform earlier? You kind of have to pick your target. Otherwise, there is sort of almost too much opportunity. CK: Well, last week we put out a piece on uranium with Cecil Musgrave and it has gotten high acclaims. It is a very popular interview so far. We talked about a lot of the uranium companies that exist out there and there are not, too, too many left. It is a far more narrow field than gold, silver, copper. Do you have any favorite picks on the uranium space and how are you planning to deploy your capital there? GP: Sure. I would say my top pick actually for 2016, I had a short list of top picks that I put out and one of them was NexGen Energy. That is the explorer on the southwest corner of the Athabasca Basin that has the Arrow discovery. These are really incredibly high grade discovery that they did at the basement rocks of the Athabasca. The Athabasca is like a big vast tablet full of sandstone and then underneath the sandstone there is this much harder crystalline rock. A lot of the high grade uranium discovery that the Athabasca is famous for come from that border between the sandstones and the harder rock which they call the unconformity. But you can also find uranium exclusively in the basement rock, and that is much easier to mine because sandstone is very crumbly stuff, so it is very difficult to get in there and mine it whereas the basement rock you can actually build and underground mine a lot more easily and, therefore, cheaply. NexGen has discovered really high grade uranium in some very closely spaced, continuous zone at this Arrow project. One of the interesting things about NexGen is that they are still at a very early stage. They have not even put out an initial resource yet; that is coming in the next few months. It is going to be pretty impressive. I mean estimates sort of average 120 million pounds of uranium at an average grade perhaps 1.5%, maybe 2% U308. That is a really impressive uranium resource to put out initially. We will see what the details actually looks like, but NexGen, they have $38 million in the bank. They have got big plans for this year. I think they are really exciting. They are the most exciting exploration story in uranium in my opinion. On the production front, I really like companies that have the option to ramp up production quickly, easily once the price starts to strengthen. Because I do see some near term I think the uranium price is going to turn in the near term for all the complicated reasons that our supply and demand in uranium and how those interact with nuclear utilities and the contracts that they sign and how long those contracts are. If you add that all up it basically points to uranium doing well probably this year, starting to do well this year. I want companies that can take advantage of that right away. Uranium Energy Corp. is one of those. They have a permitted operable mill in Texas and they have a suite of en-situ leach projects that surround that mill. Basically, as soon as the economics work, I mean the economics work now, but as soon as the economics strengthen they can just turn on production and start making uranium and selling it into that stronger price environment. I really like that. I also see no harm in a seeing a bit of exposure to a major like Cameco and to if you just like the uranium price, Uranium Participation is a company that just owns uranium because they are just getting pretty much direct exposure to the price of uranium. Those four would represent a good suite of exposure to what I see as a good upside in uranium. CK: I am happy that you mentioned NexGen because in our uranium discussion last week we failed to mention that and had a couple distraught listeners wondering why we did not talk about them, so thank you for the update on NexGen. Gwen, I just want to finish up here ask you if you have any predictions or suggestions to offer for 2016 or any final comments. GP: Absolutely! I have mentioned uranium. I really am excited about uranium in 2016 as something that when you look at in the spectrum of mine commodities the one that has the strongest fundamental arguments right now is uranium. Gold is somewhat emotional. It is somewhat geopolitical and has a million influences on it so it is difficult to be really certain about gold. But uranium I can be a lot more certain about it. I really like uranium. I really like NexGen. I am excited about some of these short term opportunities because I really like being able to show my subscribers that regardless of a bear market there is still money to be made in mining and let us be honest, that is why we do this, right? We follow mining because we can make money at it. I love that that opportunity is there. I also expect to see some takeout in the gold space probably through the year, and those are going to be the cream of the crop explorers and developers that will get taken out by majors who as I mentioned have very completed project pipelines In general, I am excited about the year even if I do not expect it in itself to be dramatic and exciting. One thing that I would mention is that if any of your listeners are going to be in Vancouver in two weeks on January 23rd I am putting on a conference alongside Eric Coffin and Brent Cook. We are inviting our top pick companies, our favorite companies that we follow in our newsletters to present at this one day conference. We are going to do a short presentations. Each one of us is going to do a short presentation, and there is going to be a lot of coffee and lunch break time when everyone can chat with each other. Let us catch up with what is going on with our favorite companies and what we think is going to go on in the market this year. It is called the Metals Investor Forum. CK: Okay, great! Gwen, thank you so much for coming back on the show. GP: Thank you so much for having me. It has been great. Listen at http://palisaderadio.com/gwen-preston-gold-to-shine-with-the-markets-decline/ Palisade Radio is brought to you by First Majestic Silver Corp., one of the worlds purest and fastest growing silver mining companies. By Palisade Radio www.palisadecapitalcorp.com Gold prices rallied Wednesday as the Dow tumbled to multi-year lows and Nymex crude futures dropped to another 12-year low below $27 a barrel. Popular logic would dictate that gold would be a lot stronger in this nightmare scenario, notes Jack Howlett, Group CP at Mitsubishi. The long-time precious metals trader points out that last time the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at current levels, gold traded over $1,155 an ounce. Looks like the US stock markets are oversold, or gold has a 5% rally in it, he says. Somethings gotta give, and I wouldnt bet its the gold. By Sarah Benali of Kitco News; sbenali@kitco.com Will The Real Safe Haven Please Stand Up? Triland Metals Wednesday January 20, 2016 13:53 Despite golds rally Wednesday, analysts at Triland Metals say investors need to tread carefully and the yellow metal still needs to do a lot more to convince traders of a trend. In an afternoon research note, they say that despite golds push back above $1,100 as equity markets tumbled, the metal hasnt managed to break out above the $1,110 level hit earlier this month. Gold is a risk trade and gets sold like everything else - dollar and treasuries are the real safe havens, they say. Sentiment again is worryingly over-bullish given the limited price action when looking at the medium term picture, they add. February comex gold futures were last quoted up $15.40 at $1,104.50 an ounce. By Sarah Benali of Kitco News; sbenali@kitco.com Bargain Hunters Finally Look to Gold RBC's George Gero Wednesday January 20, 2016 10:00 Gold finally hitting $1,100 but it may not hold yet, says George Gero of RBC Wealth Management in a Wednesday morning note. [R]ussian ruble 80, Mexican peso 18, many currencies all taking weakness in the U.S. and other markets to low levels as U.S. ten year also below 2%, so bargain hunters are finally looking at gold, Gero writes. He adds, The weakness of our housing starts and economics today leaves traders wondering if the U.S. Federal Reserve is too focused on jobs figures not seeing [the] geopolitics; Far East, Middle East, Europe and South American problems. Divergence by gold is apparent as gold traders are reacting the way gold usually does, Gero adds. February Comex gold was last up $11.50 at $1,100.70 an ounce. March Comex silver was last up $0.014 at $14.135 an ounce. By Daniela Cambone of Kitco News; dcambone@kitco.com Three days left, "Go-Time" For Gold iiTrader Wednesday January 20, 2016 08:58 The remainder of this week is go-time for gold says trading house iiTrader.com in its morning Wednesday note. Equity markets have once again tanked overnight and the S&P took out the August front month lows at 1831. Gold has every reason to not only close out above first resistance at the 1095.6-1097.1 level but also the 1107.8-1108 level which aligns this years closing high with the 100 day moving average, iiTrader says. They note that their next major three star level comes in at 1118-1119.2 and the upside target is 1136.5-1137.2. Treasury prices continue to edge higher and have left gold in the dust, well, at least for now. With treasury yields at these levels, gold absolutely must become attractive, they write. iiTrader adds that it feels the U.S. Dollar Index will begin to stall at its current level of 99-100, as key economic data points come in short of expectations. The ECB meeting tomorrow isnt expected to bring fireworks but we believe calls for new stimulus measures in the future, along with easing from other central banks around the world will continue to support gold, the firm says. By Daniela Cambone of Kitco News; dcambone@kitco.com Commerzbank: Gold ETFs Post Net Inflow, Silver ETFs Outflow So Far In 2016 Wednesday January 20, 2016 08:25 Gold holdings of exchange-traded funds have risen so far in 2016 while silver ETFs have collectively seen outflows, says Commerzbank. Analysts cite Bloomberg data showing a 22.7-tonne inflow into gold ETFs Tuesday, the highest daily inflow since October 2011. Holdings in gold ETFs have increased by 50 tonnes since the beginning of the year, Commerzbank says. By contrast, silver saw outflows of a good 86 tonnes yesterday, part of which was attributable to the worlds largest silver ETF, the iShares Silver Trust. Silver ETF outflows since the start of the year have totaled 226 tons, which is presumably precluding higher prices. Platinum ETFs posted outflows of around 12,000 ounces Tuesday, while holdings in palladium ETFs remained stable, the bank adds. By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com Stock-Market Meltdown Continues; Gold Benefits Wednesday January 20, 2016 08:22 Gold prices have edged back above $1,100 an ounce as risk aversion continues, with equities and crude oil once again under pressure. The (stock-)market meltdown is extending into the third consecutive week, says Brown Brothers Harriman. Once again, the attempt to stabilize has failed, and bottom pickers have been punished. It is easy to line up poor news developments, including IMF (the International Monetary Fund) cutting world growth forecasts on the same day that the IEA (International Energy Agency) warns of an extended glut in the oil market, the world's largest mining company projecting further declines in iron ore prices, and poor earnings from one of the largest oil companies. As of 8:13 a.m. EST, the March S&P 500 futures were 33.80 points lower and Nymex February crude was down 81 cents. Gold is profiting from this difficult situation, say analysts at Commerzbank. Comex February gold was $11.20 higher to $1,100.30 an ounce. By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com What's New In Jewelry Consumption? - Metals Focus Wednesday January 20, 2016 07:58 Iran may be the only major gold jewelry consumer in the Middle East, according to Metals Focus analysts, who think that sanctions being lifted over the weekend will have an impact on the nation. [W]e would not be surprised if Iran is the only major gold jewelry consumer in the region to achieve meaningful gains in 2016," analysts of the U.K.-based precious metals research firm said in a note Tuesday. On the silver front, they focused their attention on major jeweler Tiffany & Co to see where silver consumption is headed. Focusing on their performance in the U.S., the value of comparable store sales (covering all products, not just silver) fell by 8%, they noted. Although the company cited the impact of a strong dollar on tourist spending, we would suggest that this outcome also partly reflects the impact, last year, of softer U.S. silver jewelry consumption. However, the analysts continued, a sharp downturn in U.S. retail demand is not in the cards this year. In fact, 2015 may prove an aberration, with 2016 seeing a modest gain, they said. Citing the firms latest five-year silver forecast, released Monday, they are calling for a 1% gain in global silver jewelry consumption in 2016. By Sarah Benali of Kitco News; sbenali@kitco.com People ride against snow in Hunchun, northeast China's Jilin Province, Jan. 19, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] Schools have been suspended and emergency workers are on standby as Chinese provinces brace for a week of unusually cold weather. China's National Meteorological Center (NMC) announced a warning Wednesday morning for snowstorms in southern China, predicting that temperatures could drop by 14 degrees Celsius, with cities such as Shanghai and Changsha to see temperatures hit thirty-year lows. Cold air moving south will bring up to 30 mm of snow to regions along the Yangtze River from Wednesday to Saturday. Beijing is forecast to see temperatures as low as minus 17 degrees Celsius, the lowest in almost three decades, but would only get a light sprinkling of snow. In Zhejiang province, two days of heavy snow will see most places covered by a 15cm blanket. Hail is expected in mountainous southern areas. Following a snowstorm alert, authorities in Zhejiang have even ordered the Qiandao Lake scenic area be temporarily closed. Schools in Changsha and Changzhou have been told to start winter holiday a few days ahead of schedule, while education authorities in Hangzhou have allowed students not to come to school. Agricultural authorities have warned farmers to add organic fertilizers to keep crops and vegetables from being damaged by frost and to reinforce plastic greenhouses. Nonetheless, farmers say losses are inevitable. "The temperature will stay below zero for several days. Only ten percent of my vegetables will survive," said Zhu Dazhi, a farmer in central China's Hunan province. Electricity companies have made plans to remove ice from key facilities and authorities are taking precautions to prevent traffic jams, power failures and train or flight delays to reduce the impact as the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday comes near. Extreme conditions similar to the winter storms of 2008 are unlikely, as the cold period will be shorter. The south of China was hit by the worst blizzard in five decades in January and February 2008, leading to casualties, widespread traffic jams, blackouts and crop loss. Th snow left 129 people dead and did 150 billion yuan (22.8 billion U.S. dollars) of damage. Follow China.org.cn on Twitter and Facebook to join the conversation. Lt. Ryan Buchanan, of North Kitsap Fire and Rescue, demonstrates one of the water cannons aboard the departments new boat Tuesday off the shore of Point No Point. MEEGAN M. REID / KITSAP SUN SHARE North Kitsap Fire and Rescues (from left) Assistant Chief Rick LaGrandeur, Lt. Ryan Buchanan and Chief Dan Smith ride in the cabin of the departments new boat Tuesday as Buchanan pilots the boat to Point No Point. MEEGAN M. REID / KITSAP SUN Lt. Ryan Buchanan, of North Kitsap Fire and Rescue, tightens one of the lines after docking the departments new boat Tuesday at Kingston Marina. MEEGAN M. REID / KITSAP SUN By Rachel Seymour of the Kitsap Sun KINGSTON When part of a road near Kingston washed away last month, North Kitsap Fire and Rescue warned residents along the road that emergency vehicles wouldn't be able drive to them until the road was repaired. In these situations, North Kitsap Fire's boat could be key to providing emergency service to the district's 75 miles of shoreline, said Michele Laboda, the fire district's spokeswoman. Thanks to a $409,813 federal grant and a $202,431 contribution by the fire district, a new and improved boat will be in service by the time it is christened March 12. "It's like a fire engine on the water," said Lt. Ryan Buchanan, who is one of nine firefighters trained to use the new boat. All firefighters eventually will be trained, Laboda said. A few more additions are needed before the new boat can go into full-time service, including mounts for more hoses and programming for the radio. The 38-foot boat can reach up to 36 knots about 41 mph and has advanced technology, such as infrared, along with more fire hose connections. Tuesday afternoon, the new boat was able to reach Point No Point County Park in less than 20 minutes from Appletree Cove in Kingston. While the 27-foot boat the district has had since 2001 is smaller than the new boat, it's not as fast. The old boat once reached up to 30 knots about 34 mph in its prime, Fire Chief Dan Smith said, although now tops out at about 22 knots 25 mph since the jet propulsion has aged. In addition to speed, more hose connections and he ability to spray water from the bow and stern, the new boat can pump 2,700 gallons of water a minute straight out of Puget Sound, Smith said. The older boat pumps 350 gallons of water and foam suppression a minute. The old system was made to include foam with the water. Without the foam, the old boat pumps about 125 gallons of water a minute. Foam suppression can be used to fight vessel fires, reducing the amount of water sprayed on the ship that could cause it to sink, Smith said. While foam is available on the new boat, the district realized it had mainly been using its boat for shoreline fires where foam suppression isn't needed. Advanced technology on the new boat will be another key in handling emergency situation. Infrared technology will help with searches for people in the water or along the shoreline, like the time a child was missing at Point No Point County Park almost three years ago. While the child was found safe, infrared could have helped speed up the search, Buchanan said. The infrared also can be used to locate "hot spots" where a fire could rekindle. Although the new boat is not officially in service, firefighters were able to use it last week during a difficult-to-access cabin fire along the shoreline near Hansville, Buchanan said. The new boat also has a larger heated cabin area where patients can be transported. After the new boat is in service full time, Smith said North Kitsap Fire will talk with other area fire agencies about use of the older boat. SHARE Janine Morris, right, and her daughter, Erin, 12, explored a section of Highway 302 near Victor in North Mason County that was closed for repair after the 6.8-magnitude Nisqually earthquake struck in February 2001. (Steve Zugschwerdt | Kitsap Sun file photo) Earthquake researchers dug a trench at the south end of Bainbridge Island in 2003 to find evidence of ancient earthquakes along the Seattle fault. Here, U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Bainbridge Island, questions seismologist Brian Sherrod, foreground, about how 15 million-year-old bedrock came to lie next to 15,000-year-old earth. In the background are seismologist Craig Weaver and federal geologist Elizabeth Barnett, both part of a team studying the ancient quakes. (Carolyn J. Yaschur | Kitsap Sun file photo) By Christopher Dunagan A bright-red splotch on a map of earthquake hazards marks the Kitsap Peninsula as one of the hottest danger zones in the United States. The more seismologists learn about earthquake hazards in Western Washington, the more they seem to emphasize the presence of a time bomb ticking beneath our feet. Now more than ever, residents are being urged to understand the risks of earthquakes and to prepare for an unprecedented level of shaking. Such concerns are punctuated by recent devastating earthquakes in Haiti, China and Chile with the South American quake holding special significance for the Northwest. The red splotch on the Kitsap Peninsula was added to the hazard map two years ago, as researchers continued to piece together a seismic puzzle called the Seattle fault. This dangerous fault has been found to be responsible for lifting up the south end of Bainbridge Island by 21 feet some 1,100 years ago. The fault stretches across Central Puget Sound and includes Bellevue, Seattle, Bainbridge Island, Bremerton and Port Orchard. Meanwhile, a bright-red stripe parallels the Washington coast, touching the southwest corner of the Kitsap Peninsula. This high-hazard zone is where maximum ground acceleration is predicted, reflecting the danger of a subduction quake that researchers now believe could reach magnitude 9. Subduction quakes result from sudden slippage where two tectonic plates are rubbing against each other. Off the Washington coast, for example, the incoming Juan de Fuca plate slides slowly under the North American plate. In some locations, the plates get stuck until they break loose in an earthquake. Lessons From Chile In February, a magnitude-8.8 subduction quake struck off the coast of Chile, killing more than 500 people and damaging more than 200,000 homes. Information gathered from the Chilean earthquake will be used to fine-tune predictions about what would happen from a subduction earthquake in Washington state, according to Art Frankel of the U.S. Geological Survey. The Chile earthquake will be important because we have never had a subduction earthquake of that magnitude with good measurements this close in, Frankel said. This could change things. Frankel and other seismologists will use information from instruments throughout South America to tell a story about anticipated ground motion during a subduction earthquake. Meanwhile, structural engineers will study damaged and intact buildings to predict potential damage in Western Washington and to improve building standards. The earthquake in Chile showed that structures built to modern seismic codes, such as those adopted for Washington, are able to withstand great earthquakes. But older buildings, often made of unreinforced concrete and brick, are vulnerable to collapse in a strong earthquake unless building owners brace the walls. One of the tragedies in Chile was the large number of deaths attributed to a tsunami triggered by the earthquake. Official flood maps successfully predicted where high water would occur. But some people especially tourists were unaware of the hazard; some were waiting for an official warning or visible sign of danger; and others left but came back to the waterfront before the largest waves arrived, according to a survey team from Californias Humboldt State University. Subduction quakes in the Northwest are relatively rare, happening about every 550 years. But that does not help in predicting the next big one, because intervals may be as close together as 200 years or as far apart as 1,000 years. The last subduction quake was in 1700. Nisqually Earthquake The earthquake seared into the memory of many Western Washington residents is the 2001 Nisqually quake, a magnitude 6.8 that originated beneath the Olympia area on Feb 28. For Cristie Grogger, who lived in Port Orchard at the time, the sound was like a garbage truck roaring down the street. It sounded like the trash man, Grogger said after the earthquake. But he was coming right through the middle of our house! It was just a fleeting thought, as the sickening, undulating motion threatened to tear the house apart, she said. Her instinct was to protect her 12-day-old baby. I remember thinking, Please God, I just had this baby. Let me experience this child. Dont end it now. I was really terrified. Damage from the earthquake, which shook the entire Puget Sound region, was later estimated at more than $1 billion. According to records compiled by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, 2,666 Kitsap County residents applied for federal disaster assistance. About $3.3 million was provided in housing assistance, with another $4.8 million in low-interest loans. Only four counties received more housing assistance: King with $19.9 million, Pierce with $11.9 million, Thurston with $5.9 million, and Grays Harbor with $3.7 million. The totals do not include financial aid to public agencies. Puget Sound Naval Shipyard alone received $8.2 million to repair several aging buildings damaged in the quake. Amazingly, only one death a heart attack victim was attributed to the quake. At 32 miles deep, the Nisqually quake is considered a deep earthquake. In the past 100 years, most of Washingtons largest earthquakes are classified as deep, or greater than 15 miles. They include the 7.1-magnitude quake in 1949 north of Olympia, which killed eight people, and the 6.5-magnitude quake in 1965 near Vashon Island, which killed seven people. Both caused extensive damage throughout the region and were felt as far away as western Montana. Based on the history of deep earthquakes, seismologists say there is an 84 percent chance that we will have another deep earthquake of magnitude 6.5 or greater within the next 50 years. Seattle Fault Local residents may remember the 1997 earthquake of magnitude 4.9, which occurred at the south end of Bainbridge Island and was linked to a branch of the Seattle fault. Damage was relatively minor. Besides many falling items and cracks in walls and ceilings, a mobile home fell off its foundation in Silverdale. The quake provided a wake-up call for local officials, who had just returned to Kitsap County from a weeklong earthquake-training exercise in Maryland. Small shallow earthquakes occur frequently with little damage throughout the Puget Sound region, but it was a shallow earthquake 1,100 years ago that suddenly raised the south end of Bainbridge Island by 21 feet. A repeat of that kind of earthquake could be as devastating as a subduction quake for Bremerton, Port Orchard and Bainbridge Island. A major earthquake on the Seattle fault would create a tsunami that could inundate many shoreline areas on the Kitsap Peninsula. On the Bremerton waterfront, for example, strong currents could break the Turner Joy from its moorings and push the ship into the Bremerton Boardwalk, according to a 2005 study conducted for the Kitsap County Department of Emergency Management. A big wave could rise over the boardwalk and affect other buildings close to shore. Computer models also show a substantial wave run-up in Sinclair Inlet to Gorst, where a funnel effect could cause water to rush rapidly into businesses at the head of the bay. Getting Ready Kitsap County Department of Emergency Management writes plans, conducts training and schedules drills to prepare for disasters including floods, windstorms and most of all, earthquakes. A 2008 vulnerability assessment describes the kind of problems that can be expected from an earthquake, including damage to buildings, roads, bridges and utilities. Travel, including trips to the store, may be difficult following an earthquake, and some stores may be unable to reopen. Thats why Kitsap County residents are urged to maintain supplies at home to live on their own for at least three days, assuming no power, water or other utilities. Immediately after an earthquake, most people will want to make sure their family members are safe, said Mike Gordon, operations manager for Kitsap County DEM. Because local phone lines may be overloaded, it may help to call an out-of-town relative or friend via long-distance lines. Family members should agree in advance about who to call. What I think about after an earthquake is the neighborhood, Gordon said. How can I help other people? If you make sure you are prepared yourself, then you can look to help others. Emergency managers are developing an inventory of vulnerable populations, such as older people who depend on caregivers and people who live in group homes, said Susan May of Kitsap DEM. Gordon said an update of the Kitsap County Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan has just been completed and will soon go to the Kitsap County commissioners for approval. The agency helps neighborhoods and businesses get prepared for an earthquake. Other training ranges from operating shelters to working in the countys emergency operations center. A training course on Friday is designed to show building managers and construction professionals how to identify hazards visually. Meanwhile, a wide-ranging earthquake drill scheduled for September will involve 40 public agencies, and businesses are invited to take part. Weve had a planning team working on this since January, Gordon said. We are incorporating several incident sites to put a strain on our resources. We want to test our ability to respond. By Ed Friedrich of the Kitsap Sun BREMERTON Kitsap County's far southern and western regions likely would be left out of a proposed ferry district. Kitsap Transit shared a map during a special board meeting Tuesday morning that comprised 85 percent of the county's residents. Those farthest from terminals at Kingston, Bremerton and Southworth would be least apt to ride the boats and vote for tax increases to pay for them. By being left out of the district, they wouldn't get to vote. Ninety-eight percent of the county's retail sales occur within those same boundaries and are subject to a ferry tax. "The rationale behind the reduced district was how far could we shrink the district and still generate enough revenue to pay for the enhanced service the community seems to want," transit Executive Director John Clauson said. The original cross-Sound ferry plan was commuter-oriented, with three round trips in the morning and three in the afternoon on each route. The agency heard from non-commuters who said they would expect service, too, in exchange for a "yes" vote. Three new levels were developed, with the most robust emerging as the front-runner. During peak season, May through December, it would feature 12 round trips Monday through Thursday, 15 Friday and 12 Saturday. October through April, there would be the six commuter sailings. Ferry districts have access to up to 3/10 of 1 percent of local sales taxes and the ability to implement a parking tax. The other option would be to keep the ferry operation as part of Kitsap Transit's public transportation benefit area (PTBA), which encompasses the entire county. Everybody would be eligible to vote. A tax increase would affect all retail sales. A PTBA can increase local sales tax up to 4/10 of 1 percent and can impose a motor vehicle excise tax. Either way, the recommendation is to fund the ferries with a 3/10 of 1 percent sales tax increase. "Either one would work," Clauson said. "I kind of like the special purpose (ferry) district only because it is clearly a separate entity from the transit side. People have this concern or suspicion that one operation is going to subsidize the other." The tax increase would raise enough to also cover the ferry service between Bremerton and Port Orchard, allowing the agency to shift $1.5 million a year to buses. Besides the enhanced service, the business plan has been changed in a couple of other places as a result of public input. It originally proposed round-trip fares of $11 on the Bremerton and Southworth routes and $14 on Kingston, based on the cost of alternatives. That has been changed to $12 for everybody. The cost would be $2 to go to Seattle. Washington State Ferries doesn't charge in that direction. The state collects $8.10 in Seattle. The fast ferry would be $2 higher. "Every time it's a $2 decision to get there faster," consultant Mike Anderson said. "Is it worth it? I think it is." The agency also heard that Southworth riders didn't want to pay years for others' service before getting their own. Ferries weren't projected to arrive until 2023 because there's no passenger-only ferry terminal. Research determined a boat could load from its bow in the car ferry slip, like WSF's Snohomish did, cutting years off the wait. The agency had hoped to educate board members for a vote at the Feb. 2 meeting. They need more time and will continue the discussion then. The next opportunity to place a measure on the ballot would be an April 26 special election, followed by the Aug. 2 primary and Nov. 8 general election. "If I had to give you a recommendation today, I'd recommend the general election," said Clauson, noting a huge turnout is expected for the presidential race. "There'll be little argument that people didn't have the opportunity to weigh in. It also gives you folks more time to make a decision." The business plan recommends that King County drive and maintain the ferries. It already has routes from West Seattle and Vashon Island to downtown Seattle. Three officials attended Tuesday's meeting. "This is a good model," said Chris Arkills, transportation policy advisory for King County. "It's a good thing for us, and a good thing for you. We've got crew and a labor contract, an excellent maintenance facility. We've done a lot of the trial and error. We think we could get you off to a strong start." Still to be determined is a time table. Reliability is important in getting travelers to change habits. The ferry Rich Passage 1 and Bremerton terminal are ready to go, but should there be a wait until a backup boat is built or risk starting sooner and breaking down and turning off people? Voters rejected Kitsap Transit fast ferry funding proposals in 2003 and 2007. SHARE "Them that's got shall get. Them that's not shall lose" Billie Holiday It was in April of 2014 that the water turned bad. Residents of Flint, Mich., reported that the stuff smelled. It was yellowish brown. You drank it and your hair fell out. Or you developed a rash. Or you were nauseous. Again, this was in April. According to a computer search, it was not until the following January that the Detroit Free Press, just an hour down the road, took note. It wasn't until March that The New York Times began reporting the story. It wasn't until Jan. 5th of this year almost two years later that Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder saw fit to declare a state of emergency and nine days afterward that he asked President Obama to declare the city a disaster area. And it is not until today that yours truly is writing about it. There are many points of outrage in the story of Flint's ill-fated attempt to save money by switching its water supply to the filthy Flint River. You could focus on findings that the river water contained fecal coliform bacteria. Or on the fact that chemicals used to kill said bacteria apparently created new contaminations of their own. Or on reports that much of the problem could have been avoided by adding an anti-corrosive agent to the water for about $100 a day, but the city declined. You could fix your anger on city officials who continued to insist, long after it was obviously untrue, that the water was safe. Or on state regulators who said the same even after a group of doctors reported finding elevated levels of lead in the blood of Flint's children. The World Health Organization says lead poisoning in kids can lead to brain damage, shortened attention span, anti-social behavior, hypertension, and damage to the reproductive organs, among other things. The effects are irreversible. So yes, this slow-rolling disaster offers many causes for anger. But one of them is the very fact that it has been a slow-rolling disaster. It is inconceivable that it would take so long for public officials to respond or media to notice if the water became unsafe in New York, Miami, Charlotte, Chicago, Atlanta or L.A. But Flint is none of those places. Rather, it is a hard-luck, hardscrabble, postindustrial wasteland, a shrinking town of 100,000 people, with a poverty rate of 41 percent and per capita income of less than $15,000. It doesn't even have a grocery store. In 2005, when New Orleans drowned, some of us seemed surprised that there were Americans too desperately poor to escape the path of a monster storm. There followed much media hand-wringing over the failure to report so fundamental a story as the continued existence of poverty. Yet here we are over a decade later, and once again it takes a calamity to make poor people visible. We saw the same pattern in Ferguson, Mo., where it wasn't until a teenager died and weeks of urban unrest followed that we learned how that city was pimping its poor. One is reminded of what happens when there's a blackout: Windows are broken and merchandise taken. No one is surprised by this. Under cover of darkness, people are seldom their best selves. Under cover of darkness, terrible deeds are often done. Well, news media have left the poor under cover of darkness. Our light shines on politics, the middle class, technological gimmickry and celebrity gossip, yes. But on those the Bible calls "the least of these"? Not so much. Our inattention frees politicians to ignore them as well. And all of a sudden you look up and it's been almost two years since 100,000 people had safe water to drink and we're just beginning to notice. That's unconscionable. News media's mission, it is often said, is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. Where the plight of the nation's poor is concerned, we seem to have failed on both counts. Leonard Pitts is a columnist for The Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132. Readers may contact him via email at lpitts@miamiherald.com. First the misleading headline: Free education system set to have cost parents more than $1 billion this year You read that and you would think this means that parents have paid $1 billion this year towards their kids schooling. The price of a free school education will soar to record heights this year. Official figures show voluntary donations from parents and others will this year have collectively provided more than $1 billion to bankroll schools since 2000. So it is not an annual figure but a figure over 15 years. Commentators have described that as a watershed figure with some arguing New Zealands free education system is broken. It is a meaningless figure, not a watershed one. If you add stuff up cumulatively you will always get a big figure. If you started in say 1996, then in 2012 you would also find $1 billion of fees and could call that a watershed figure. Unless there is a particular reason to start in 2000, the $1 billion figure is meaningless and just an invention to get a headline. Even worse nowhere in the article do they state how much the annual amount of donations currently is. Share this: Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Reddit WhatsApp More Pinterest Print Tumblr Yesterday we got a tour around Hillarys Hut. Due to asbestos it is closed for general use, but you can be guided through it. The hut is being preserved and restored by the NZ Antarctic Heritage Trust. They give the background: In December 1956 HMNZS Endeavour left New Zealand for Antarctica to support both the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition (TAE) 19551958 and the International Geophysical Year (IGY) 19571958 with a major programme of science. Fresh from conquering Mount Everest in 1953, Edmund Hillary was enlisted to lead the New Zealand party that would lay supply depots from the Ross Sea towards the South Pole for the first trans-Antarctic crossing. Led by the then Dr Vivian Fuchs, the expedition planned to cross the continent from the Weddell Sea. Pram Point, on the edge of the McMurdo ice shelf and four kilometres from the United States McMurdo Station, was chosen as the site for Scott Base. In January 1957 the team completed the buildings (six interconnecting units and three detached science buildings) that would form the antecedents of the modern-day Scott Base. A party of 23 men wintered over at the newly formed base. This team basically founded Scott Base. Hillary of course also got fame for making it to the South Pole on a tractor. His job was to lay out depots for the British explorers. But after he had done that, and as he was only 80 miles from the South Pole, he decided to head on down there and beat them to it I love the address. The main room in the hut. A very old beater. d And even older phone. I like how they say Todays Guess instead of Todays Forecast. The weather here can be quite variable. This is the emergency exit in case of fire. And with the exit open. Would not be great fun crawling out through that! NZ History has more details of the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Hillary was the first person since 1912 to reach the South Pole overland. Share this: Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Reddit WhatsApp More Pinterest Print Tumblr Stuff reports: Tourist beggars who claim their camper van was robbed have been asked by police to move on. A man and woman who say they are American tourists have been begging outside Ballantynes on Colombo St in Christchurch for more than a month. Since December, the pair have sat with a piece of cardboard sign held down by two water bottles. The sign reads: American tourists everything stolen from campervan. Sergeant Greg Hume said he had approached the couple numerous times and told them to move on. They had not reported any theft to police, he said. I have asked them to ensure the matter is reported to police by making an official complaint and they havent done it. The tourists told Hume they had been staying with friends since they lost their accommodation in a camper van. For whatever reason it, [the camper van] was left on the side of the road and then it got trashed apparently and their items stolen. People on the street have sympathised with their story but nearby businesses remain unconvinced. Chantelle Padget said the couple bought multiple items from the convenience store where she worked. They dont even come in here and buy cheap stuff, they will come in and buy cigarettes . . . thats why I dont believe them. Padget thought the tourists were getting at least $100 a day. It may be a noise-free Spring Festival for residents of Shanghai if the authorities successfully manage to curb the enthusiasm for fireworks this year. Starting January 1 this year, the city authorities have enforced a ban on fireworks inside the Outer Ring Road on all days, and throughout the city during heavily polluted days. And they are working to ensure the ban works during the festival, when fireworks are the norm. Shanghai will deploy at least 20,000 police officers during the festival period to enforce the ban and keep the city safe and clean, local authorities said yesterday. Police have been told to be on duty or patrol the densely populated streets and communities between 4pm to 7am from February 7 to February 11, and on February 22, when people usually set off fireworks to ring in the New Chinese Year, welcome the God of Fortune and celebrate the Lantern Festival. An estimated 260,000 volunteers will help the cops and promote safety awareness among people, spot illegal sales and lighting of fireworks. They will also help authorities to designate safety zones in communities and villages in areas outside the Outer Ring Road where fireworks are allowed. A survey of 2,500 people conducted by Shanghai Statistics Bureau showed that about 40 percent of them still wanted to buy fireworks during the Spring Festival holiday, posing a huge test of strength for authorities, said Bai Shaokang, director of Shanghai Public Security Bureau. "A strict ban enforced during the Spring Festival will hopefully help change peoples attitude about fireworks," said Jiang Ping, Party secretary of the Shanghai Political and Law Commission. Since the beginning of the new year, police and fire control officials have stopped 81 people from lighting fireworks and confiscated 14,155 boxes of illegally stored fireworks. Law enforcement authorities have also issued 232,900 yuan (US$35,400) in fines to violators. Posters and notices regarding the fireworks ban have been put up in communities and densely populated areas, as well as at Metro stations and public transportation vehicles, authorities said yesterday. Flash The Syrian air force in cooperation with the Russian warplanes have carried out 157 strikes against rebel positions over the past five days, hitting 579 rebel targets, state news agency said on Tuesday, citing a military source. A child from the Abu Sleiman family has a lunch at his house in the Syrian town of Beit Nayem, in the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus,on January 13, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] The airstrikes destroyed a fuel storage and a makeshift oil refinery as well as killing over 80 IS militants in Syria's northern province of al-Raqqa, the de facto capital of the IS group. 20 oil tankers were also destroyed as well as six convoys of armored vehicles, said SANA, adding that the convoy was heading from toward the northern province of Aleppo. The Russian airstrikes have been striking the positions of the IS and likeminded groups in Syria since last September. Government officials in Syria always hail the Russian involvement as efficient in dealing big blows to the radical insurgent groups in Syria, where over 250,000 people have reportedly been killed while half of the country's 23 million population were forced out of their homes. SHARE J. Miles Cary/Special to the News Sentinel Tony Kalocsay is the Knoxville managing partner of Drakes, a new restaurant concept featuring a diverse menu and craft beers on tap, is opening its first restaurant in Knoxville in February. Its in the Deane Hill Center 242, Morrell Road. Drake's, a new restaurant concept featuring a diverse menu and craft beers on tap, is opening its first restaurant in Knoxville in February. It's in the Deane Hill Center, 242 Morrell Road. (J. Miles Cary/Special to the News Sentinel) Drake's, a new restaurant concept featuring a diverse menu and craft beers on tap, is opening its first restaurant in Knoxville in February. It's in the Deane Hill Center 242, Morrell Road. Drake's features a dart board. (J. Miles Cary/Special to the News Sentinel) Drake's, a new restaurant concept featuring a diverse menu and craft beers on tap, is opening its first restaurant in Knoxville in February. It's in the Deane Hill Center 242, Morrell Road. The restaurant features two separate bars and dining areas and an outside patio. (J. Miles Cary/Special to the News Sentinel) By Ali James of the Knoxville News Sentinel Managing partner Tony Kalocsay has been busy putting the finishing touches on a new West Knoxville restaurant concept called Drake's. The restaurant will offer a relaxed atmosphere for families to eat out for lunch or dinner, and a club for dancing at night, he said. In the former Charlie Peppers and Puelo's location at 242 Morrell Road in the Deane Hill Shopping Center, the restaurant and pub has been completely transformed, with two large bars, and will open Feb. 1. The Lexington, Ky.-based Bluegrass Hospitality Group's latest addition is the eighth Drake's location and the second in Tennessee. Kalocsay has worked at every one of the Drake's locations, but since he relocated here from Nashville in December, he has missed the restaurant's eclectic menu, he said. It will feature traditional American-style pub fare such as regular- and mini-sized hand-pressed burgers, beer-battered fish and chips (at 16 ounces, Kalocsay says it's a big commitment), Sriracha wings and even deconstructed taco toppings so diners can build their own. "The garnish, guacamole, beans, sour cream, chicken or fish, salsa and sauteed peppers are laid out on a plate so you can build as you go," he said. Drake's will also offer a full sushi line, and Kalocsay said the crab Rangoon roll is a signature item and a must-try. "We have a Sushi window where you can see the people preparing it," he said. "We time it so that if you order sushi, tater tots and a burger, they will all come out to your table at the same time." One surprise item on the menu is the fried bologna sandwich. "I grew up eating it a lot and said, 'I can't do it,' but it's delicious," Kalocsay said. Drake's will feature a beer of the month, as well as a burger and a sushi dish of the month, to help keep the menu fresh. After 10 p.m., the dj's booth will kick into action, when Drake's transitions from restaurant to night club. The adjoining second barroom will be slightly quieter for those who want to sit and chat over a drink. The very first word that comes to Kalocsay's mind when describing the restaurant is "comfortable," he said. "When you come in, there is a very warm feeling," he said. Padded swivel bar stools, bar-height tables, and benches will make it easy to hang out and socialize with friends, Kalocsay said. It is an open-seating establishment, and customers can even ensconce themselves in the two armchairs in front of the open fireplace. When the weather warms up this summer, Drake's plans to swing the garage doors open to blend the indoors with outside, and offer patio seating. "I never enjoy myself at a restaurant where staff are forced to sing birthday songs and dance," Kaloscsay said. "We provide the environment for that fun to happen organically." The dance floor will be open on Thursdays until 1 a.m. and Fridays and Saturdays until 2:30 a.m. The disc jockey will play Top 40 music. While staffers are not required to do cheesy choreographed dances, the unique interview process was aimed at finding people who like to dance when the right song comes on. Televisions mounted from the ceiling are within easy eyesight for game days and when there are no games, they will play music videos. For families, there is a full kids' menu, which "comes with nothing yucky," the menu says. There is no loud music before 10 p.m. An extensive beer list is another important aspect of the Drake's concept. The carefully selected list is displayed on 24 taps mirrored at both bars. "We have a variety of craft beers, as well as the usual brand names people like," Kalocsay said. "We plan to rotate the selection, and have worked closely with SawWorks, Yee Haw and Black Horse breweries in town." There will be a promotion called "Take away Tuesdays." "It's a chance for brewmasters to come in and talk about their product, run a special, and give away glassware and swag to add that fun element," Kalocsay. said. "The craft breweries love the draft tap systems we have here," he said. "We keep the pilsner-like beers cold, and the craft brews that have more-complex flavor profiles, we keep at just right the temperature to showcase that." "Table Taps" are a novelty that Kaloscsay says the wait staff loves. The servers bring out a base for the table and then attach a long, clear cylinder with a tap filled with up to 120 ounces or the equivalent of two pitchers of a chosen brew for guests to fill and top off their own glasses. With the interior and exterior of Drake's all but finished Kalocsay plans to devote the next week or two to training staff and putting the kitchen through its paces. There will be a soft opening on the weekend of Jan. 29-30 where special guests, friends and family members will be invited to help raise money for KICKO Knoxville Inner City Kids Outreach. There will be a grand opening with a ribbon cutting at 10:30 a.m. Feb. 1, with the doors opening the public at 11 a.m.. Credit: Thinkstock SHARE KIDS EAT FREE Rushing around on a Wednesday night? Remember that kids eat free on Wednesday nights from 5 p.m. until close at We're Cooking. Fountain City, 4877 N. Broadway. Info: 865-249-6340, www.werecookingrestaurantsusa.com/ WOMEN'S BIKE NIGHT Cedar Bluff Cycles, 9282 Kingston Pike, is hosting a Women's Bike Night at 7 p.m. today. Stop by and listen to guest speaker Charlotte Mahan talk about her road- and mountain-biking experiences, including 32 years of Road Triathlons and 10 years of Off-road Triathlons. And of course they will be discussing all-important bike maintenance. This free event includes snacks and adult refreshments. R.S.V.P. to dr.mistyburch@gmail.com. More: Cedar Bluff Cycles, 865-692-1010 FREE CHILDREN'S CONCERT A Knoxville Symphony Orchestra string quartet will visit the Burlington Branch Library, 4614 Asheville Highway, at 11 a.m. today. Children between the ages of 3-5 years are invited to enjoy their stories about music with classical selections, sound effects, and hands-on learning for pre-school aged children. This is a free event and a parent or guardian must stay with child. More: 865-525-5431. TEEN CRAFT TIME Clinton Public Library, 118 S. Hicks St., offers free crafting time for teens in 6th through 12th grades every Wednesday afternoon. The next session will be at 3 p.m. today. All materials are supplied and there is no need to reserve in advance. More: 865-457-0519 or http://clintonpubliclibrary.org/events/category/teen-events/. IJAMS JEWELRY WORKSHOP Ijams Nature Center, 2915 Island Home Ave., will feature a salvage jewelry making workshop with local artist Sarah Brobst at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 21. Learn how to transform your old and worn necklaces, bracelets, watches, keys and more into new treasures. The workshop costs $20 per person. Participants must be 8 years old and up. Attendees can bring their own jewelry to create with, but there will be plenty of bins to dig through to make new accessories. Registration is required. Spaces are limited. More: call 865-577-4717 Ext. 110. BOOK SIGNING University of Tennessee Professor James Williams will read from and sign copies of his book, "From Thug to Scholar: An Odyssey to Unmask My True Potential" at 6 p.m. Thursday, at Union Avenue Books, 517 Union Ave., Knoxville. For more information, call 865-951-2180. Greg Johnson, KNS columnist. Greg Johnson Columnist SHARE Blount County was designated a high-intensity drug trafficking area this month. This map, released by the White House, shows HIDTAs in the continental United States as of January 2015. Actor Sean Penn didn't have to fly to the middle of Mexico for a clandestine meeting with then-fugitive drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman to "understand" the complexities of addiction, interdiction and the pain of substance abuse. Penn could have come to East Tennessee. Practicing what he calls "experiential journalism," Penn described his journey in "Rolling Stone" magazine, his prime purpose apparently to unilaterally surrender in the war on drugs. "Perhaps in the tunnel vision of our puritanical and prosecutorial culture that has designed the War on Drugs, we have similarly lost sight of practice, and given over our souls to theory," Penn wrote. Penn could have seen pragmatic practice, not "puritanical and prosecutorial" idealism or capitulation, had he come to Knoxville last week when Michael Botticelli, director of national drug control policy, convened a forum to discuss East Tennessee's drug problems. And, friends, we do have a problem. Blount County made news by being designated a high-intensity drug trafficking area. But Blount merely joins a disturbingly high number of area counties with that designation. Cocke, Grainger, Hamblen, Jefferson, Knox, Roane and Sevier counties were already declared HIDTAs. The problem is so much easier to define than to solve. U.S. Rep. Phil Roe, R-Johnson City, whose district includes several of those counties, wrote of the opioid abuse issue specifically in October last year and recently mentioned it as an issue of bipartisan concern. "I would love to do something with the (Obama) administration on opioid addiction," Roe, a physician, said last week. "It's a huge public health issue. It's really distressing when you realize young people in their teens, 20s, 30s or older are dying of something totally preventable." Roe noted in his writing last year, "1,263 Tennesseans died from opioid overdoses in 2014 alone, meaning nearly 100 more deaths were caused by opioid overdoses across the state last year than in 2013. I am deeply concerned by this epidemic and believe we need to take action in light of these staggering numbers." Participants at the forum told Botticelli the area needs a sustainable, comprehensive approach, from mental health resources to prevent the desperate from turning to drugs to recovery programs to help those entrapped in addiction escape. In other words, we must reduce the demand for drugs. But based on empirical evidence not "experiential journalism" we must relentlessly reduce the supply of drugs by shutting pill mills, busting meth labs and imprisoning killers like El Chapo, instead of glorifying them like Penn obviously hoped to do. Traffic backs up on northbound Interstate 75 Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016, after multiple weather-related accidents near Rocky Top. (TDOT/SPECIAL TO THE NEWS SENTINEL) SHARE By News Sentinel Staff A look traffic conditions in East Tennessee: I-75 North Interstate 75 North in Campbell County has reopened after a series of weather-related crashes closed a 28-mile stretch between Caryville, Tenn., and the Kentucky border earlier Wednesday. All northbound lanes reopened about 4:30 p.m., although motorists should expect slow-moving traffic into the evening, according to Mark Nagi, Tennessee Department of Transportation Region I spokesman. With the reopening of the interstate, the American Red Cross of East Tennessee has suspended plans to open two emergency shelters for stranded travelers in Caryville and Jellico. I-40 East A jack knifed tractor-trailer Wednesday blocked the right lane of Interstate 40 East at mile marker 421, according to the Tennessee Department of Transportation. The accident occurred at 3:58 p.m., and was expected to clear by 5 p.m., according to TDOT. Westbound traffic is affected with no delays. I-640 East A multi-vehicle crash blocked the right lanes of Interstate 640 East at mile marker 10 Wednesday, according to the Tennessee Department of Transportation. The lanes were expected to clear by 3:46 p.m., an hour after the crash occurred, according to TDOT. Westbound traffic is not effected. I-40 East A multi-vehicle crash blocked the left lane of Interstate 40 East at mile marker 377 Wednesday around 12:52 p.m., according to TDOT. The lane was estimated to be cleared by 2:30 p.m., according to TDOT. Westbound traffic is not effected. More details as they develop online and in Thursday's News Sentinel. SHARE Authorities are searching for a man who robbed the La Quinta Inn & Suites in Powell at gunpoint Monday night. (Knox County Sheriff's Office) Authorities are searching for a man who robbed the La Quinta Inn & Suites in Powell at gunpoint Monday night. (Knox County Sheriff's Office) A second man captured on security cameras during an armed robbery at the La Quinta Inn & Suites on Monday night has been deemed a person of interest. (Knox County Sheriff's Office) By News Sentinel Staff KNOXVILLE Authorities are searching for a gunman who robbed a North Knox County hotel Monday night. The robbery was reported about 8 p.m. at the La Quinta Inn & Suites, 7534 Conner Road, in Powell, according to the Knox County Sheriff's Office. The gunman took an undisclosed amount of cash and fled from the hotel on foot. No injuries were reported. The gunman was described as a white male; approximately 5 feet, 10 inches tall; 180-200 pounds; and dressed in all black. A second man who was captured by security cameras in the hotel lobby wearing a gray sweatshirt has been deemed a person of interest in the case. Anyone with information on the incident is asked to call KCSO at 865-215-2243. More details as they develop online and in Wednesday's News Sentinel. SHARE John Butler By Lydia X. McCoy and Gerald Witt of the Knoxville News Sentinel Local advocates for racial equality want Knox County to halt construction on middle schools in Gibbs and Hardin Valley until a federal investigation on possible civil rights violations is complete. On Friday, the county's Purchasing Department announced contractors for the projects, and in a Tuesday work session commissioners pushed their discussion on the contracts to Monday's regular meeting. Under the agreements, Denark Construction would build a $34.8 million middle school in Hardin Valley for 1,200 students, and Rouse Construction would build a $23.6 million Gibbs middle school for 800 students. The Knoxville chapter of the NAACP, in a letter from chapter president John Butler, asked the Knox County Commission to reject the two contracts for the schools. "Knoxville Branch NAACP opposes Knox County Commission approval of construction contracts for new Knox County schools at this time because construction of the proposed schools will likely result in an unjustified, adverse disparate impact on students of color," Butler read from the letter in Tuesday's work session. The letter said the county could also face trouble over a budget compromise to build the schools. "Therefore, the Knox County Commission, in partnership with the Knox County Schools, may be subject to findings of violation of (the federal law), if the Knox County Commission approves the building contracts or proceeds with construction activities prior to the findings provided by the U. S. Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights," Butler read. Commission pushed discussion on several items to next week's regular legislative meeting because Knoxville City Council also met in the same room on Tuesday night. The Office of Civil Rights confirmed it is investigating whether building the new schools violate federal desegregation standards. The NAACP chapter filed a complaint in November charging that statistics showed a pattern of the county building new schools only in communities that were 95 percent white. The former Gibbs Middle in Northeast Knox County was closed under a 1991 desegregation plan after an OCR investigation. Those students were bused to Holston Middle School in East Knoxville. The Gibbs community pushed for the middle school's return though the school system said there weren't enough students for one there. In 2015 under a memorandum of understanding among Knox County Mayor Tim Burchett, Knox County Schools Superintendent Jim McIntyre, commission and the school board, the county agreed to build new middle schools in Gibbs and Hardin Valley. Related: Feds probe Knox County's middle school building plan Education's OCR investigating building of new Gibbs middle school Gibbs community not giving up fight for middle school New middle schools process begins What happens to Holston if Gibbs gets new middle school? Bids are in for new Knox middle schools Superintendent: Hardin Valley, not Gibbs, should get new middle school Gibbs meeting focuses on middle school Board OKs Gibbs school, but commission has to pay for it wrap Flash Visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping met with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Secretary-General Iyad Ameen Madani on Tuesday to discuss regional issues and cultural exchange. Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) meets with Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Iyad Ameen Madani in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Jan. 19, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] Xi, on a state visit to Saudi Arabia, said that the OIC is a symbol of unity for Islamic countries and has made significant contribution to cooperation among them. China and the OIC, in more than 40 years of friendly exchanges, have found a way for different cultures, religions and social systems to get along. China welcomes the organization to serve as a bridge facilitating the development of ties between China and Islamic countries, Xi said. Xi said China appreciates the OIC's denouncement of terrorist attacks that took place in China, and is willing to build on common interests so as to have closer ties and grow together with Islamic countries within the framework of the "Belt and Road" initiative. The "Belt and Road" initiative was put forward by Chinese leaders in 2013 to facilitate interconnectivity and regional development. Xi said that there should be more dialogues between Chinese and Islamic cultures and that there should be more international cooperation to facilitate the resolution of the Palestine issue. China is willing to coordinate with Islamic countries on regional and global issues, Xi said. Iyad said that the OIC highly values its relations with China, and that it appreciates China's position on Middle East issues. The OIC expects China to play an even greater role on Middle East and African affairs. Xi arrived in Saudi Arabia Tuesday on the first stop of his three-nation tour of the Middle East, as the world's second largest economy seeks to boost political and economic ties with the region. Knox County School Superintendent Jim McIntyre listens during a school board meeting Monday, April 13, 2015. (WADE PAYNE/SPECIAL TO THE NEWS SENTINEL) SHARE By Lydia X. McCoy of the Knoxville News Sentinel KNOXVILLE The Knox County school board voted Tuesday night to approve a separation agreement with Schools Superintendent Jim McIntyre. Voting for the agreement were board members Gloria Deathridge, Tracie Sanger, Lynne Fugate, Karen Carson, Terry Hill, Mike McMillan and Doug Harris. Voting against the agreement was board member Patti Bounds, while board member Amber Rountree passed. As part of the agreement, McIntyre walks away with a lump sum of $227,256 in February minus normal employment required deductions, 18 months of medical insurance at his cost for himself and his family and the monetary value for all of his unused annual leave. He would be paid the lump sum on or before Feb. 15. On Jan. 4, McIntyre announced he was stepping down from the position after nearly eight years on the job, effective July 8 citing the political climate and changes to the upcoming school board as reasons for the decision if the school board approved the agreement. More details as they develop online and in Wednesday's News Sentinel. Justice gavel in courtroom. By Jamie Satterfield of the Knoxville News Sentinel A federal judge is refusing to toss out a lawsuit by a former South-Doyle High School science teacher who says she was fired after reporting a student's detailed threats to carry out a mass shooting. Emi Marie Ellison contends in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court school administrators did nothing to remove the student from class even as the student, identified only as a female member of the ROTC program and its rifle team, continued to detail plans for a mass shooting in January 2015 and fired her for voicing concerns and hiring a lawyer. She claims, via attorney James W. Friauf, the Knox County Schools system violated her First Amendment right of free speech "by terminating her employment for speaking on a matter of public concern." Knox County Deputy Law Director David Sanders sought a dismissal, arguing, in part, the student's privacy rights trump Ellison's free speech rights and the threats were not a "matter of public concern" under the law. In a ruling issued last week, Chief U.S. District Judge Tom Varlan sided with Ellison. "This court agrees that a potential attack on a school is a matter of public concern because it affects the safety of schoolchildren and school faculty," Varlan wrote. "A threat regarding a mass shooting would, therefore, not have the confidentiality protection, and, also noteworthy, is the fact that (Ellison) did not break confidentiality. She reported the threats to administrators within the school system and as such her speech did not even interfere with the purported government interest as (Sanders) suggests." Sanders did not deny in his motion that Ellison reported the student's threats to administrators or that the student remained in her class even as Ellison was told an investigation was underway. His only denial involved whether Ellison was fired or quit of her own accord. Schools spokeswoman Melissa Tindell declined to answer questions about the threat and how it was handled. "As a matter of practice, we do not provide information regarding matters in litigation," she said in an email. "I can tell you that when there are threats made against a school or schools, an assessment is conducted to thoroughly evaluate any potential safety risk." Ellison was hired in January 2015 to work as a science teacher at South-Doyle. She came with a heightened awareness of warning signs from her work as a teacher in Colorado, where one of the nation's first school mass shootings occurred at Columbine High School in 1999. According to the lawsuit, a female student "described in graphic detail" plans to carry out a mass shooting. The student told Ellison she "would pull the fire alarm so her classmates would be crowded in the hallway and easy targets, that it would be like shooting fish in a barrel and she would shoot (Ellison) last," Varlan wrote in summarizing the lawsuit's claims. Ellison reported the threats but nothing happened, according to the lawsuit. She took a week of sick leave. When she returned, the student remained in her class and "renewed her threats," records stated. On Feb. 2, Principal Tim Berry told her "the administration was handling the issue." Based on the tone of that conversation, however, Ellison hired Friauf. Ellison says she was fired 10 days later. Sanders contends she quit. A trial date is set for April 24, 2017. Employees with the City of Knoxville engineering crew remove barricades along Church St. in front of the Pryor brown parking garage to reopen the road Wednesday, June 17, 2015. The garage suffered a partial roof collapse on Sunday. (AMY SMOTHERMAN BURGESS/NEWS SENTINEL) Reflections after attending the opening of the state legislative session: n If you believe that the decision by House Republicans not to discipline state Rep. Jeremy Durham, R-Franklin and majority whip, will come back to bite them in the butt, raise your hand. Yeah, me, too. Given his track record, who knows what stunt Durham may pull next? And the Capitol Hill press corps will continue to try and get on the record the reason Speaker Beth Harwell sent him to Human Resources for counseling about what constitutes "appropriate behavior." It should be noted that a majority of Republican House members voted to hear the charges, but it fell short of the two-thirds majority necessary. The best information I have is that there were 48 principled Republican House members who wanted to pursue the matter. One vote short of two-thirds. Caucus Chair Glen Casada, R-Franklin, ruled that it would take two-thirds of the entire Republican membership, not just those present, to make a two-thirds majority. A larger number. Casada and Durham represent Williamson County together. Durham thinks most House Republicans and Gov. Bill Haslam are flaming liberals. n A couple of weeks ago I told you some of us had a paranoid conspiracy theory that higher ed reform was an effort to gut Board of Regents Chancellor John Morgan's power, he being an opponent of Haslam's privatization plan. Morgan has quit, blasted moving six four-year colleges out from under his group, and then he "opted out" all the colleges still under his purview from the privatization plan. So maybe the paranoid conspiracy theory wasn't so paranoid. n While the gas tax increase is dead, some transportation bills will likely pass. Look for a special use charge on electric cars, which do not pay gas taxes. It is an infinitesimal amount now, but improvements in battery life on the drawing board may lead to an explosion of electric car usage. Better to pass the taxes now rather than when there are more electric car owners. n Except for higher ed reorganization, no major legislation is expected to be considered (sorry, Insure Tennessee supporters), so look for the time to be taken up with social legislation and items suitable for election-year brochures. An attempt will be made to outlaw gay marriage, despite the Supreme Court ruling. If you have been solicited to contribute money to the lobbying effort for this legislation, why not give the money to your church instead? This legislation is not lawful and people soliciting money to pass it ought to be ashamed of themselves. n It's unusual for a freshman House member to head a committee. Kudos to state Rep. Eddie Smith, R-Knoxville, appointed by Harwell, to be the House chair of a special study committee to investigate diversity at the University of Tennessee and produce a report. The Knox delegation asked for the committee to be formed. The Knox delegation wants to know how almost $5 million gets spent by the diversity office. n State Rep. Joe Armstrong's trial is now scheduled to start two days before the Aug. 4 primary election. He will be on trial on election day, assuming he runs for re-election and assuming the trial is not put off again. Will he have a Democratic opponent? Ina Hughs Awhile back I wrote a column in which I said how unfortunate it is to blame all Muslims for the actions of radical jihadist terrorists. Just as it would be unfair to base all opinions of Christianity on Christians in Nazi Germany who fought to exterminate "the Christ killers" or to define Christianity by the standards of the Ku Klux Klan or zealots who murder in the name of being pro-life or fringe cults that commit atrocities as proof of divine allegiance. A number of people wrote to tell me how naive I am, that Muslims are to be feared and distrusted at best to be proselytized and at worst killed. This kind of thinking has been nourished by the political right and even some Christian preachers. Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. urged his school's students to carry guns to protect themselves from Muslims: "I always thought that if more good people had concealed-carry permits, then we could end those Muslims before they walk in and kill," he said in a speech to the student body. My goodness. WWJD? Not that. Several of those readers who took me to task for my column defending mainline Islam continue to send me articles "proving" the conviction that all Muslims are, by God, out to rape, behead and do away with the Western world. Islam is based on evil. They send pictures of ISIS thugs to prove it. Not one of them seems aware or interested in the fact that more Muslims than Christians have been killed by these terrorists. Nor do they seem disturbed by, or even aware of, the number of American mosques being burned or trashed and how Muslims in this country are daily ridiculed as a result of this groundswell of bigotry and wholesale vilification of Islam. Recently my denomination hosted a dialogue between the moderator of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and a well-known North Carolina imam. The clear message the imam made over and over is that ISIS and other jihadist terrorists do not represent Islam. What they claim as religious motives go against everything true Muslims hold sacred. And he should know. Terrorism is a real threat, but according to a report from the Center for Globalization, the threat to the U.S. from Muslim terrorists has been drastically exaggerated. The sample of Muslim Americans turning to terror is "vanishingly small." Measuring the U.S. Muslim population is a famously inexact science, the report goes on to say. "Census data don't track religion, but rather country of origin." The best estimates is that there are somewhere between 2 million and 7 million American Muslims. They serve in the military, teach our school children, sit on city councils and university boards. They stand next to us in the grocery stores, volunteer in blood drives, build homes for Habitat for Humanity, work in hospitals and libraries and banks and construction companies. They vote. I was ashamed when our politicians reacted so negatively to helping Syrian refugees, preaching instead a message of inhospitality and fear. As opposed to Canada. Why is anti-Muslim rhetoric out of step with reality? The answer is simple. We fear what we do not know, and what most Americans know about Islam is limited to the actions of radical jihadists. That fear has made us compromise our standards as Americans and for Christians, our faith. Several weeks ago, a line in the prayer of confession in my church struck me as so relevant to all this that I cut it out and pasted it on my refrigerator: "Perhaps our greatest sin lies in believing that we know where the boundaries of divine love and mercy are drawn. Forgive us, O God, when we deprive people of the love we owe them as people unconditionally loved by you." Shane West with the Public Building Authority blows snow outside of the Old Courthouse on Main Street after early morning snowfall Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. One to three inches of accumulation are expected for east Tennessee by the end of the day. (AMY SMOTHERMAN BURGESS/NEWS SENTINEL) By News Sentinel Staff Winter's first snow storm wreaked havoc Wednesday in East Tennessee, snarling interstates and causing many school closures to be extended through Thursday. Police departments activated emergency weather plans and bus service was curtailed. A car slid off a slippery road in West Knox County, killing the 19-year-old driver and injuring his passenger. The National Weather Service predicted 1-3 inches of accumulation by this evening. Some areas of East Tennessee have recorded as much as 4 inches, with parts of Knox County seeing 2.5 inches. Other totals range from 1 inch in Cocke County to 3 inches in Oak Ridge to 4 inches in Campbell County. Conditions are not expected to improve anytime soon, according to the National Weather Service forecast. Snow and freezing rain are expected to continue throughout Wednesday evening. The high is expected to reach only 32 with a low of 28. No snow is forecast Thursday, though there may be rain after 4 p.m. A high of 42 and low of 37 are forecast. Rain showers are expected to continue Friday, with snow following that evening. The high will be near 45 and low near 29. More snow is expected Saturday, however, before 2 p.m., and a chance of rain and snow showers follows from 2-3 p.m. Rain will continue throughout the evening, with a high near 36 and low around 20. Sunshine is expected to burst through Sunday, with a high near 40 and low around 26. Knox, Sevier and Anderson county schools will remain closed Thursday due to the weather forecast. A combination of slick road conditions and speeding contributed to a fatal crash on Solway Road around 10:52 a.m. Wednesday, according to the Knox County Sheriff's Office. James Cryder, 19, was driving a black 1996 Toyota Corolla when the car slid off the road just west of George Light Road, killing him and injuring his passenger, Jacob Raley, 20, who is being treated at the University of Tennessee Medical Center. Neither man was wearing a seatbelt, the Sheriff's Office said. Addresses were not immediately released on either man. A series of crashes closed the section of Interstate 75 North between Caryville, Tenn., and the Kentucky border, authorities said Wednesday afternoon. No deaths were reported, but a Campbell County dispatcher said authorities had not been able to reach all of the crashes by 12:30 p.m. Wrecks were reported near mile markers 132, 136, 141, 150 and 160, according to authorities. Tennessee Highway Patrol By News Sentinel Staff The Tennessee Highway Patrol offers these tips to be prepared for winter: -- Maintain your vehicle with a minimum of a half tank of gas. -- Make sure your battery is maintained (Any auto part store will check for free). -- Check your windshield washer fluid and wipers. -- Remember if your wipers are on, then your headlights are required to be as well. -- Keep blankets, flash lights and batteries in your vehicle. -- First Aid kits are important to have on hand in your vehicle. -- Keep a cell phone charger in your vehicle. -- Keep a set of jumper cables or portable booster in your vehicle. -- A candle, matches and or lighter are helpful for light and warmth. -- If your vehicle breaks down, activate your hazard lights and remain in your vehicle. Please drive safely and dial *847 (*THP) if you need assistance, or E-911 in the event of an emergency. You are here: Home Flash Chinese State Councilor Wang Yong will visit Indonesia from Wednesday to Friday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hong Lei said on Wednesday at a regular press briefing. Wang will meet Indonesian President Joko Widodo and they will attend the groundbreaking ceremony for a high-speed railway (HSR) that will link Jakarta with the provincial capital of West Java, Bandung. "This will be the first HSR in Indonesia," Hong said, adding that the project will promote bilateral pragmatic cooperation and comprehensive strategic partnerships. In October, China and Indonesia signed a joint-venture agreement on the construction and operation of the HSR. The Indonesian side will control 60 percent of the joint venture. By Choi Sung-jin The upcoming reopening of the Iranian market may prove to be a double-edged sword for Korean contractors, industry sources said Wednesday. Iran's pent-up demand for building social infrastructure and oil plants is a boon for order-thirsty construction companies, they said. However, if Tehran aggressively resumes exporting crude oil to revitalize its economy, it could lead to an aggravation of the overseas construction market. The Iranian government is expected to place orders worth $60 billion or more this year for building new gas and oil plants and modernizing the existing ones, according to industry officials. Teheran reportedly plans to invest most of the $100 billion that had been frozen under the West's economic sanctions into replenishing oil infrastructure, modernizing aged refinery facilities. Iran, a major oil producer, imports 5 million barrels of gasoline a day because of its outdated refining plants. Hyundai E&C and Daelim Industrial are expected to benefit from such plans. Others are less optimistic about another Middle East boom, considering the complex effects that Iran's comeback to the international business stage will have on the economies of other oil producing countries. Above all, Iran's resumption of oil exports may likely add fuel to a plunge in international crude prices, they said. Iran's daily oil production is expected to rise up to 4.3 million barrels before long, forcing Tehran to ship out most of it to save heavy storage costs. In the worst-case scenario, international oil prices could drop to the mid-$20 range in the near future, they said. This will strain the financial conditions of other Middle East countries, forcing them to cancel or postpone the placement of new orders, most of which have been set based on the assumption that oil prices will stay at around $75 per barrel. The financial crunch resulting from oil price fall could also spread to emerging economies if and when the Middle East countries withdraw their oil money invested in those countries. That will inevitably pull down the emerging countries' currency values, which will in turn force them to also revoke and put off major projects. "If Iran fails to earn money by resuming oil exports, the easing of economic sanctions will unlikely be of much help for Korean builders," an analyst said. An industry executive also agreed, saying, "Iran's comeback by itself is definitely a boon but the overall situations may not be so good, taking into account other factors such as oil prices and the economic situation of oil producers and emerging economies." Before 2010, Iran was the fifth-largest construction market in the Middle East, and sixth-largest in the world. Korean construction companies carried out 97 projects worth $12 billion in the country. "The growth potential of the Iranian market is big. If the country's fiscal conditions do not improve soon, however, Korean companies, which boast excellent construction ability but weak in funding, may find themselves in a disadvantageous position in competing with cash-laden rivals," said Kim Chong-guk, an official at International Contractors Association of Korea. "The government ought to provide support, which of course, will pay off handsomely in the long run, not just the construction industry, but for the whole country." By Lee Hyo-sik Choi Seung-woo Caffe Bene CEO Caffe Bene is struggling to bolster its faltering business at home and abroad amid increasingly intensifying competition. One of Korea's leading home-grown coffee franchises, the company has lost money for three consecutive years, failing to capitalize on the country's rapidly growing freshly brewed coffee market. In a bid to find a cash cow abroad, the coffee chain has been aggressively making inroads in China, the United States and other countries, but things haven't turned out favorably. With Caffe Bene's deteriorating financial health, company founder Kim Sun-kwon decided to give up his managerial control late last year in order to attract investment from a private equity fund. CEO Choi Seung-woo, who took the helm last October, has vowed to leave no stone unturned to turn around the struggling coffee franchise, which operates more than 1,400 stores domestically and abroad. In Korea, it operated 900 stores as of last December. However, the task seems to be easier said than done, according to industry analysts who say Caffe Bene, founded in April 2008, has a long way to go before reclaiming its lost glory. "Currently, more than 30 coffee franchises are competing in Korea. Several more are expected to enter the increasingly saturated industry this year," said an industry analyst, who declined to be named. "Given this intensifying competition, it will not be easy for Caffe Bene to reemerge as a market leader." The analyst pointed out that Caffe Bene founder Kim had focused too much on increasing the number of its stores, rather than on properly educating its franchise owners on how to run a coffee house. "It seems to me that Caffe Bene wasn't interested in offering high-quality, fresh-brewed coffee to consumers," he said. "What it sought was to make money quickly by attracting as many franchised stores as possible. Naturally, consumers decided to go to somewhere else that serves better coffee in a more customer-friendly manner." "Excessive" diversification is said to be another main culprit behind Caffe Bene's fall from grace. "The company should have mobilized more resources to foster its main coffee business," another analyst said. "Instead, it turned its eye to becoming a restaurant, a convenience store and other businesses. But the problem was none of them succeeded, leaving a huge debt on Caffe Bene's balance sheet." In addition, the coffee franchise's aggressive overseas ventures have taken things from bad to worse. "Caffe Bene should have built a much stronger home base before moving into foreign markets, but it didn't do so," the analyst said. "Given that it normally takes 10 years for foreign ventures to generate profits, I don't think Caffe Bene is financially strong enough to prop up its struggling overseas businesses." The company, which first entered China in 2012, now runs 505 stores in 12 countries, but none of them have managed to turn a profit. Losing money for 3 straight years In the first nine months of 2015, Caffe Bene earned a total of 86.3 billion won, with its net loss reaching 5.1 billion won. The firm is widely projected to underperform for the entire year in comparison to 2014. In 2014, its revenue fell to 128.9 billion won from 176.2 billion won in 2013 and 210.8 billion won in 2012. Its net loss also expanded to 7.4 billion won in 2014 from 1.2 billion won in 2013. To cope with the worsening bottom line, company founder Kim gave up his controlling stake last December to attract investment from a private equity fund. Kim's stake fell sharply to 7.3 percent from the previous 49.5 percent. The fund now holds an 84.2 percent stake in the company. "The latest change in company ownership is largely designed to improve its financial health," a Caffe Bene official said. "Under new CEO Choi's leadership, all Caffe Bene employees will do their best to get the company back on track. We will definitely turn around in 2016." The firm will place top priority on boosting its revenue and bolstering its tarnished brand image, he said. "CEO Choi and other executives have begun rigorous field management, meeting with store owners nationwide to hear about their concerns," the official said. "We will also listen carefully to what our customers say and reflect their voices in our policies. Above all, the company will do our best to offer the best-tasting, premium coffee in a comfortable setting." By Lee Hyo-sik Korea's imports of foreign beef rose to an all-time high in 2015 as consumers sought cheaper alternatives to cuts of meat from hanwoo, Korea's native cattle, government data showed Wednesday. Consumers here are expected to consume more imported beef this year in line with rising hanwoo prices. The country imported beef from Australia, the United States and other countries, worth $1.82 billion, up 8.5 percent from $1.67 billion in 2014. This is the largest amount spent on imported beef since 1995 when the Korea Customs Service began compiling such data. By weight, a total of 295,369 tons of beef was imported into the country last year, up 5.6 percent from 2014. By country, Australia accounted for 56.6 percent of Korea's imported beef, valued at $973 million, followed by the United States at 41.3 percent and New Zealand at 4.3 percent. Korea also bought beef from Canada and Uruguay. According to the Korea Rural Economic Institute (KREI), hanwoo prices have jumped to the highest level since 2010 when large numbers of beef cattle here were culled following an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. Prices of home-grown beef have been rising over the past few years in line with the declining number of beef cattle. In June 2015, the number stood at 2.65 million nationwide, down from 2.78 million in June 2014 and 2.94 million in June 2013. "We expect hanwoo prices will continue to head upward this year as farmers breed fewer cattle," a KREI researcher said. "As a result, more consumers opt to consume cheaper imported beef and this will increase the import volume." By Kim Jae-won British banking group Barclays will close its Seoul office as part of its global slimming down strategy, an official from the financial regulator said Wednesday. A director at the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) said Barclays told the authorities of its plan to close its banking and securities business in Korea. "Barclays plans to pull out of the Korean market," said the director, asking not to be named. Foreign banks have been withdrawing from the local market, or downsizing, as part of their global strategy to exit non-core businesses. Last month, U.S. banking giant Citigroup signed an agreement with Apro Service Group to sell its consumer finance subsidiary in the country, Citigroup Capital Korea. Barclays confirmed that it is looking for business chances in other countries, but said no firm decisions have been made. "We are constantly monitoring our opportunities in different geographies and businesses over the cycle," Barclays said. "If any firm decisions are made, we will provide an update." In December, Barclays said it had agreed to sell its Italian retail banking network of 89 branches, including a broadly balanced portfolio of assets and liabilities, to CheBanca!, a member of the Mediobanca Group. "This transaction is further evidence of the reshaping of Barclays Group to focus on our core businesses," said Barclays Group CEO Jes Staley. "We continue to make progress in the reduction of Barclays non-core assets as we target risk-weighted assets of around 20 billion pounds at the end of 2017." According to Barclays, its rundown of non-core businesses continued last year, with risk-weighted assets (RWAs) decreasing to 55 billion pounds in September from 57 billion pounds in June. The U.K. banking group said its announced sale of the Portuguese retail business in the third quarter last year, which will be completed in the first quarter this year, is expected to result in a further 1.7 billion pounds reduction in non-core RWAs. Barclays reported 4 percent growth in the group's adjusted profit before tax to 5.2 billion pounds for the first three quarters of 2015 from the previous year, reflecting improvements in all core operating businesses. Its adjusted return on average shareholder equity also increased to 7.1 percent during the period. Export-Import Bank of Korea Chairman and President Lee Duk-hoon, third from right, and Sri Lanka National Policy and Economic Affairs State Minister Niroshan Perera, fourth from right, gather with participants after holding a ceremony to open an office in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo, Tuesday. / Courtesy of Korea Eximbank By Choi Kyong-ae The Export-Import Bank of Korea, or Eximbank, will sign a 7 trillion won ($5.8 billion) agreement with Iran's central bank by March to help provide loans to Iranian businesses when they place orders with Korean companies. "The 7 trillion won (5 billion euros) will be extended through the Central Bank of Iran to Iranian government-led projects and private-sector companies which build plants and infrastructure such as roads and bridges," an Eximbank spokesman said Wednesday. But the loans will be available only when the Iranian government or a local company signs a business deal with a Korean company and applies for the loan to pay the Korean builder, the spokesman said. Eximbank also plans to extend loans worth 2 billion euros directly to Iranian companies if they order environmentally friendly ships from Korean shipbuilders, need funds during the course of building ships and for other infrastructure projects to be built by Korean companies, he said. With the international community's lifting of economic sanctions on Iran last week, Eximbank said it hopes Korea's exports to Iran will recover as quickly as possible to the peak of $6.26 billion. The bank said it will be aggressive in giving financial support to projects led by the Iranian government or local companies to help Korean companies better compete to win orders over rivals in China and Japan. "As Iran is soon to begin exports of its oil, there could be some orders from Iran to build large crude oil carriers and liquefied natural gas carriers. We will make the utmost effort to help Korean shipbuilders get those orders," the spokesman said. Eximbank also plans inter-bank loans with banks in Iran and to provide foreign-exchange services to support Korean exporters in the fields of auto parts, information, communication and technology, steel and petrochemicals. In an inter-bank loan, an Iranian bank borrows from a Korean bank at lower rates and gives the loan to its local customers at relatively higher rates to make a profit. Eximbank said it was "in talks with 10 Iranian projects valued at $21 billion to build ports, railways, petrochemical plants, and hydro and coal-fired plants." And to help Iran borrow more from multinational lenders for its projects, Eximbank said it is considering raising Iran's sovereign credit rating by one notch to C2, from C3. Iran has suffered years of sweeping economic and financial sanctions as punishment for its nuclear weapons program. Korea joined the imposition in 2010. In July last year, Tehran agreed with six world powers to dismantle much of its nuclear programs. As it has completed the necessary steps to implement the deal, restrictions on Iranian shipping, transport and other businesses are being removed. The July deal was signed between Iran and the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany, Russia and China. Won Jong-hee, lead singer of Korean punk band Rux, gives bassist Yoon Hyung-sick an affectionate shove during a performance in Rolling Hall on June 10, 2012. / Photo by Jon Dunbar By Jon Dunbar If Rolling Hall were a human living in America, it would now be old enough to drink. That's impressive for a venue in a country whose modern live music history only goes back the same amount of time, to around 1995. After a two-decade dark age, in which Korea's live music community was censored, blacklisted and oppressed by strict authoritarian governments, its re-emergence came about in the mid-90s in underground clubs across western Seoul around Yonsei and Hongik universities, in places like Rolling Hall, Drug and Skunk Hell. Rolling Hall should especially be celebrated, staying open in Hongdae, a neighborhood where rising rents seems to force out another club each month; in February, Rolling Hall's tinier neighbor Ruailrock closes its doors. This venue, with a capacity of 600, is one of Hongdae's larger music halls, along with Lezhincomics V-Hall, KT&G Sangsang Madang and yes24 MUV Hall. But unlike those three, Rolling Hall's name remains conspicuously non-corporate. All this should paint a picture of a music venue that's remained dedicated to Korea's live music community for 21 years and counting. It once nourished young upstart acts in the mid-'90s before they found success, including YB, Cherry Filter and Jaurim. It's also hosted foreign touring bands such as Andrew WK, Napalm Death and NoFX. It may come as a shock to those familiar with this staple of the Hongdae music scene that Rolling Hall originally started over in the nearby neighborhood of Sinchon. Originally founded in 1995 as "Rolling Stones," it was purchased in 1997 by current owner Kim Cheon-seong, brother of the founder. In the '90s, live music venues faced myriad legal restrictions, limiting their profits and leading to frequent crackdowns. The laws were revised at the turn of the century, allowing venues to offer live music and sell food and drinks. But shortly after that in 2000, the club was destroyed in an accidental fire. Bands and music companies came together in an act of charity, motivating Kim to relocate to its new basement location in the Hongdae district. Since then, it has continued to thrive as a venue for medium-sized performances by bands with a solid reputation in the local scene. "I didn't know I would do this for so long," Kim told The Korea Times in an interview last year. The basement club celebrates its birthday this year throughout January and February, with a full schedule of 18 shows on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays of most weeks. This weekend, ten bands will play over three days, headlined by electronic/house duo Peppertones, psychedelic rockers Guckkasten and 19-year veterans Cherry Filter. On Jan. 30, the last Saturday of the month, the stage welcomes Korea's oldest punk bands, Crying Nut and No Brain, among others. A full schedule is available on the club's Facebook page, facebook.com/rollinghall1995. Song Sung-gak president of KOCCA By Baek Byung-yeul The state-run Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) has been supporting local cultural content creators in various endeavors since its founding in 2009. KOCCA President Song Sung-gak revealed that the next "gold mine" for exporting Korean cultural products, branded under "hallyu" (the Korean wave), will be Chongqing, southwest China. "There are many Korean companies that already have entered markets in Beijing or Shanghai, but not in Chongqing yet," Song said during a press conference in Seoul, Tuesday. "The city is one of the world's largest with a population of some 30 million, and it will be the first key region to open the new hallyu era." To make it possible, KOCCA signed an agreement with the Chongqing Culture Industry Investment Group, Dec. 8, to connect Korean creators and local Chongqing companies. "The city government already offered to lease a building to Korean companies for three years free of charge. Also, they asked us to make a hallyu theme park there," the president said, adding that KOCCA plans to open its Chongqing branch in June. The agency already has offices in Shanghai and Beijing. Song continued that closer connections can be made by not only the Chinese city's large population, but also the region's "good will toward Korea." "As an agency helping local creators export their products abroad, we have kept three principles when expanding into overseas markets," he said. "There should be a big enough size of market, there should be friendly sentiment to Korea, and finally the place should be a strategic waypoint to spread to nearby areas. Chongqing satisfies all these conditions." In addition, KOCCA will open more international branches in Abu Dhabi in March, Sao Paulo in July and Jakarta in September. It will also send overseas marketers to the 28 Korean Cultural Centers operated in 24 countries by the government-run Korean Culture and Information Service (KOCIS) to give more opportunities for local creators to introduce their products overseas. With a budget of 292.7 billion ($241.2) this year, KOCCA will lay the groundwork for creating "big killer content." It will spend some 20 billion won to open the CEL Academy, an educational institute to foster content creators and 56.4 billion won to help creators produce and export their content overseas. The agency's ambitious move to expand overseas markets is in accordance with Park Geun-hye administration's goal to make the culture industry a new growth engine of Korea. "With a 40 percent increased budget from last year, we will push forward with 120 business plans this year. We will do our best to help the country's cultural content industry step up by pioneering a new market and creating new content," Song said. Flash Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday hailed the historic friendship and fruitful cooperation between China and Egypt and called for greater concerted efforts to promote bilateral ties. In his dedication to a special issue of the China Today magazine's Arabic edition, Xi noted that over the past 60 years China and Egypt have maintained sound and steady development of bilateral relations and "set a model for China-Arab and China-Africa relations as well as for South-South cooperation." Since ancient times, the people of China and Egypt, both among the world's oldest civilizations, have carried out friendly exchanges and promoted mutual understanding through the land and maritime Silk Roads, Xi noted, recalling that Egypt was the first Arab and African nation to establish diplomatic ties with the People's Republic of China. Noting that the two sides agreed in 2014 to build a comprehensive strategic partnership, Xi emphasized that China always treats and promotes its relationship with Egypt from a strategic and long-term perspective. "We are ready to work with the Egyptian side to carry forward our traditional friendship, learn from each other, and deepen our practical cooperation in various fields under the Belt and Road Initiative, so as to let our people share development benefits and enjoy a better life," Xi added. The special issue was dedicated to the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Egypt, and released in Cairo on Wednesday before Xi arrives for a state visit to the Arab country. Xi's Egyptian counterpart, President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, also offered a dedication to the magazine, in which he extended his warm welcome for Xi's visit. "Egypt treasures its close ties with China," he wrote in the message, expressing the hope that bilateral relations will enjoy continuous and sound development in various fields. Cairo will actively respond to Xi's call for reviving the Silk Roads, and welcomes more Chinese investment in its building of a "new Egypt," added the president. Egypt will work with China to achieve common interests and future development, which will also benefit the entire humanity, al-Sisi wrote. The Arab edition of China Today has been published by China International Publishing Group since 1964. It is the only Arab-language comprehensive monthly magazine in China. / Korea Times file Police are seeking an arrest warrant for a man who allegedly sexually harassed a teenage boy at a subway station in Nowon-gu, Seoul. The man, identified as Choi, 34, allegedly forced the teenager to touch him intimately for about 10 minutes, at 1 p.m. on Dec. 30. The boy was a volunteer at the Nowon Subway Station, helping elderly people. Choi also told the boy "I am a homosexual. Let's live with me," police said. Choi was discharged five years ago after serving two years and six months in prison for the sexual assault of minors. He was on probation and wearing an electronic surveillance anklet. The boy was too scared to fight back, because Choi is burly and wore a mask, police said. They were able to confirm his identity via CCTV footage when he took off the mask to smoke. By Jun Ji-hye South Korean firms operating in the Gaeseong Industrial Complex are suffering from dwindling orders in the wake of Pyongyang's fourth nuclear test, sources said Wednesday. The government is restricting entry of its nationals into the inter-Korean industrial complex out of concerns that heightened tensions between the two Koreas could threaten their safety. An official of a company at the complex said that potential buyers are restricted from visiting the site since the government's measure. "So we are experiencing difficulties in securing new buyers," the official told reporters on the condition of anonymity. "The existing buyers also appeared to be reluctant to place new orders out of concerns over possible manufacturing delays." He added that if the current situation is prolonged, it could deal a fatal blow to many companies in the complex. On Jan. 12, the Ministry of Unification permitted entry to a "minimum" number of South Koreans to the complex, namely managers directly involved in the operation of the factories. The measure followed the North's defiant claim that it successfully detonated a hydrogen bomb on Jan. 6. The government measure has reduced the number of South Koreans staying at the joint industrial zone by about 200. Currently, some 600 South Koreans are staying at the complex, and their factories are mostly working normally as of now, according to the ministry. However, officials of the firms are concerned about the possibility that the government could take additional action, including withdrawing all South Korean staff or closing the complex, if the North makes additional provocations. Seoul is continuing with its anti-North propaganda broadcasts via loudspeakers along the inter-Korean border, which Pyongyang is sensitive about. In addition, the United Nations Security Council is working on a resolution aimed at imposing harsher sanctions against the reclusive state. During her nationally televised address on Jan. 13, President Park Geun-hye said she is not considering taking the extreme measure of closing the complex at this point, but "whether or not to shut it down is fully up to the North." Another official of a South Korean firm told reporters, "The companies operating at the complex are already experiencing difficulties with the current situation. If the government takes any additional action, we will become even more desperate." A total of 124 South Korean firms are operating factories there with about 54,000 North Koreans working at the complex, which opened in 2004 as a symbol of inter-Korean reconciliation. When the North abruptly declared a shutdown of the complex in April 2013 in protest against Seoul-Washington joint military drills that followed the North's third nuclear test, the complex was closed for about five months, and South Korean companies suffered financial losses estimated to be about 1 trillion won. Meanwhile, projects that have been pushed for by South Korea's Red Cross to support families separated from the 1950-53 Korean War and to offer humanitarian aid to the North are also being put on hold following Pyongyang's nuclear test. A Red Cross official told reporters, "Our projects are making no progress because of the North's test." The Red Cross has been planning to deliver video mail from some 10,000 separated families living in the South to their relatives in the North this year. It also has been preparing for a project to confirm the life or death of members of the separated families and update the list of surviving members with the North. Other plans included offering humanitarian aid to the impoverished state in cooperation with the International Red Cross. Follow Jun Ji-hye on Twitter @TheKopJihye / Yonhap By Kang Seung-woo Seven foreigners who worked in Korea have joined the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group, a ruling party lawmaker claimed, Wednesday, citing information from the National Intelligence Service (NIS). He did not disclose their nationalities. They worked in Korea earlier this decade, and joined IS after leaving the country, according to Rep. Lee Cheol-woo of the Saenuri Party, a member of the National Assembly Intelligence Committee. The lawmaker also said the government has deported 51 foreign nationals suspected of being affiliated with international terrorist groups since 2010. The NIS revealed the information during a meeting with Saenuri lawmakers and foreign ministry officials at a session of the National Assembly to discuss the nation's readiness against escalating global terrorist threats, Lee said. "The agency believes that some 155,000 people from 57 Muslim countries are now living in the country," he said. "Various circumstances show that Korea is vulnerable to terrorist attacks." In November, the NIS revealed that a total of 48 foreigners deemed security risks had been deported from Korea over the past five years, meaning that three more have been deported since then. Amid growing Islamic terrorist activity that has expanded to Asia, concerns are rising that Korea may fall victim to an attack. Last week, IS conducted a terrorist attack in Jakarta, Indonesia, against civilians and tourists the first attack in Asia by the radical Sunni Islamist militant group. There were also warnings issued about threats in Singapore and the Philippines, spreading fears all over the region, even reaching Korea and Japan. On Friday, the Korea Airports Corp. received a phone call from a person speaking in Arabic threatening to blow up all airports in the country. Last year, IS vowed to attack the United States and other countries taking part in the so-called "crusader campaign" to fight the terrorist group, and Korea was included on the 62-nation target list, according to the foreign ministry. In addition, an Indonesian man was apprehended in November on suspicion of showing support for the al-Nusra Front, a Syrian affiliate of al-Qaeda, on social media channels over a period of months. Anti-terrorism bill Following the meeting the government renewed its call for the National Assembly to swiftly pass anti-terrorism bills. The bills are aimed at better protecting the nation from possible terrorist attacks, but have been gathering dust in the National Assembly for 15 years because the opposition party is concerned about giving more authority to the NIS. "The anti-terrorism bills are designed to protect the lives of the people and should not be the subject of a bargaining tool," said Kim Soo-min, a senior NIS official who participated in the government-ruling party meeting. Also, Kim refuted the claim that the bills infringe upon citizens' basic rights and that enhanced surveillance violates the right to privacy. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs also stressed the need for the passage of the bills. "Preemptively detecting and preventing threats should be made possible in order to effectively deal with terrorist attacks," said Second Vice Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul. He said that the bills would allow the government to come up with more elaborate countermeasures. By Lee Kyung-min Domestic law firms are expressing concerns that their businesses will be substantially impaired by more experienced foreign firms, should the legal market open wider without protective measures in place. "It is true that large law firms are increasingly becoming wary and pressured to compete with major global law firms," a lawyer from a large-sized law firm here said Wednesday on condition of anonymity. "Large law firms here are criticized for raking in counseling fees, but Clifford Chance, a U.K.-based law firm, reported more than 10 billion won in profit this year," he said. Considering the 3 trillion won legal market, he presumed that the global firms are making just as much profits here as the local ones, although there are no official statistics about it. "I think that all the other firms have the same concerns as we do," he added. "We think that proper measures are needed to guarantee fair competition." Lawyers here also said that foreign envoys should refrain from attempting to exercise any influence on determining whether and to what degree to further open Korea's legal market to foreign law firms. Such reaction comes two days after ambassadors from the U.S., the U.K., Australia and the EU visited the National Assembly to call for an amendment to a pending bill, which would ban foreign law firms from holding more than a 49 percent stake in joint ventures with local law firms. Following their visit, the National Assembly delayed discussing the Foreign Legal Consultant Act, which was among a backlog of bills. Korean lawyers claimed that the legal market will be subject to a gradual opening for competition with foreign firms, just like any other market under free trade agreements, and the pace and scope should remain under the discretion of the parties involved here, not under pressure from foreign countries. "I think that it was inappropriate for foreign envoys to make such an outrageous demand that resulted in delaying the perfectly legitimate parliamentary procedure," a Seoul-based lawyer said on condition of anonymity. "I think many others in the legal community have the same opinion as mine." The Korean Bar Association (KBA) agreed. "The protest visits to the National Assembly by the four ambassadors, who represent the interest of their countries' law firms, are a violation of Korea's sovereignty, overstepping their authority by forcing discrimination against local law firms for the sake of their own law firms," the group said in a statement. By Kim Se-jeong A group of lawyers have submitted a written opinion to the foreign ministry and to the Japanese Embassy in Seoul on the recent deal about "comfort women" made between Japan and Korea. Lawyers for a Democratic Society said Wednesday that the agreement was not put in writing and thus is not binding. The group earlier requested that the ministry disclose related documents exchanged between the two countries to determine whether the deal can be viewed as a treaty according to international law. "What was agreed to on Dec. 28 carries no legal weight in light of international law," the group claimed. "Also, it has failed to reflect any of the victims interests, a point hard to accepted even if it is a valid agreement." Under the compromise made on Dec. 28 between the Korean and Japanese foreign ministers, Japan will pay $8.3 million to care for 46 surviving victims in Korea, and the two nations agreed that the issue is resolved "finally and irreversibly." The lawyers' group said that the deal failed to yield any written text as required by the 1969 United Nations Vienna Convention. The convention requires a written text in its definition of an international agreement. "In light of international law, this is not an international agreement but a unilateral declaration which is invalid," the group maintained. The deal also failed to stipulate what Japan would do to prevent a recurrence of a similar act, according to the lawyers. "Agreements on human rights usually require the inflicting party to elaborate on preventive measures," it said, citing the United Nations General Assembly resolution on "basic principles and guidelines on the right to a remedy and reparations for victims of gross violations of international human rights law and serious violations of international humanitarian law." Considering these, the government has no right to declare a final and irreversible resolution to the issue, the lawyers said. They also criticized the administration for using the issue politically. "The government should act to help individual victims receive apologies and reparations from Japan." Almost 200,000 women are believed to have been enslaved to provide sex to Japanese troops during World War II. Victims and activists in Korea, and other countries, have demanded the Japanese government recognize its wrongdoing, apologize and make reparations. South Korea and Russia agreed to coordinate their efforts to draw a U.N. Security Council resolution over North Korea's recent nuclear test, the Foreign Ministry said. On Tuesday, South Korea's top nuclear envoy, Hwang Joon-kook, met with his Russian counterpart, Igor Morgulov, in Moscow, where the two sides discussed the security environment following the North's fourth nuclear test on Jan. 6, the ministry quoted Hwang as telling reporters after the talks. As North Korea advances its nuclear capabilities, it is important for the international community and especially the members of the six-party talks on North Korea's denuclearization -- South Korea, Russia, Japan, China and the U.S. -- to show a united response, the envoys noted. They also agreed that the North's test was a serious violation of past U.N. Security Council resolutions, which is unacceptable, Hwang was quoted as saying. With the council currently working on a new resolution to punish Pyongyang, Hwang and Morgulov agreed on the need for specific and clear measures. Morgulov, however, stressed Russia's position that the North Korean nuclear issue should ultimately be resolved through dialogue and negotiations. Hwang called on Russia -- one of the five veto-wielding permanent members of the council -- to help draw a strong sanctions resolution to force North Korea to come to the table for sincere talks about denuclearization. Russia and China, another permanent council member, have been reluctant to impose tough sanctions on Pyongyang. (Yonhap) South Korean general trading companies (GTCs) are turning their eyes to a potentially big Iranian market following the lifting of economic sanctions on the Middle Eastern country, industry sources said Wednesday. South Korea's five leading GTCs, including Daewoo International, are moving to restore ties with their former trading partners in Iran and consider various ways to explore new business opportunities there. In particular, the companies are considering participating in such businesses as energy, mineral resources, construction plants and food grain in the Iranian market, according to the sources. Iran is a resources power with the world's second-biggest deposit of natural gas and the fourth-largest deposit of crude oil. Iran's crude oil deposit was estimated at 157.3 billion barrels as of 2014. The United Nations lifted most economic sanctions against Iran on Jan. 16 in a follow-up to a nuclear deal. Local industries expect there will be big demand regarding Iran's refurbishment of its obsolete infrastructure. Iran reportedly has plans to replace crude pipelines and other infrastructure at a total cost between US$130 billion and $145 billion. Even under economic sanctions, South Korean GTCs have maintained their offices in Iran and monitored market trends of the country. Daewoo International, which has maintained an office inTehran since 1975, is most active in its business with Iran. The company has been making steady efforts to prepare for the lifting of sanctions. It has increased the number of Korean employees in its Tehran office from two to three. With 15 employees, including 12 local employees, Daewoo is stepping up preparations to capture the Iranian market. A Daewoo official said the bulk of its sales came from chemical fields last year and expects the plant and steel businesses to be brisk starting this year. Hyundai Corp. began preparing for the lifting of the sanctions in April last year, conducting market surveys for plants, electric devices, construction equipment, steel, automobiles and petrochemical fields. Its Tehran office is staffed with two Koreans and five local employees. SK Networks with about 10 employees in Tehran, including three Koreans, is engaging in exports and imports of steel products with Middle East countries. The company is considering developing fresh businesses with Iran like social overhead capital, construction and shipbuilding. The trading arm of Samsung C&T has two Korean and three local employees in Tehran and is considering a plan to participate in Iran's plant and infrastructure projects, while LG International is also taking a close look into business opportunities in Iran. Market watchers predict an increase in bilateral trade following sanctions relief. Trade between South Korea and Iran tumbled to $6.2 billion last year from $17.4 billion in 2011 due to the sanctions. (Yonhap) Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se, right, shakes hands with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Seoul, Wednesday. Blinken urged China to "show leadership" in international efforts to sanction Pyongyang following its fourth nuclear test. / Yonhap By Yi Whan-woo U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged China, Wednesday, to impose trade sanctions on North Korea in response to Pyongyang's latest nuclear test. "We believe China has a special role to play given the special relationship it has with North Korea," he told reporters following meetings with Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se and Vice Foreign Minister Lim Sung-nam in Seoul. Blinken also met Defense Minister Han Min-koo. "It has more influence and more leverage over North Korea than any other country because virtually all of North Korea's trade goes to and through China," he said. "So we are looking to China to show leadership on this issue." Without elaborating, Blinken said he and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will discuss China's role when they meet relevant authorities there for the U.N.'s "strong and comprehensive resolution" against North Korea. "I will just say everything is on the table starting in New York (at the U.N.), but also looking at this independently and in partnership with other countries," he said. Blinken left for China later Wednesday and is scheduled to meet Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui before heading home Thursday. Kerry will visit Beijing on Jan. 27. It is speculated that the U.S. wants China to reduce or cut its trade with North Korea for purportedly testing its first hydrogen bomb on Jan. 6, although Blinken did not elaborate. Facing international isolation, Pyongyang heavily relies on China for its trade, including imports of crude oil. Blinken's trip to Seoul came after a joint call from Seoul, Washington and Tokyo for Beijing's "constructive role" in imposing tougher sanctions on the Kim Jong-un regime while bolstering the trilateral security alliance. China was seen largely reluctant to impose economic sanctions in line with international demands due to concerns over a possible collapse of the Kim regime and an influx of millions of refugees. The reclusive state claimed to have tested its first hydrogen bomb on Jan. 6, in violation of a string of existing U.N. sanctions. It was Pyongyang's fourth nuclear test following those in 2006, 2009 and 2013. The latest test re-ignited debate over the possible deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) advanced U.S. missile defense system, on the Korean Peninsula, despite China's protest. Blinken said the U.S. had still not made any decision about THAAD. "We have been very clear that we will only proceed with THAAD on full consultation with our Korean partner," he said. During a meeting with Yun, Blinken said the two allies shared common ground that the "the great source of instability is North Korea" in the region. Citing President Park Geun-hye's warning to the Kim regime, Yun said: "This is the time to exercise our capability to let North Korea understand they have to pay a heavy price for their wrong behavior." Lim, who spoke with Blinken and Japanese Vice Foreign Minister Akitaka Saiki in Tokyo, Saturday, underscored a need to bolster the Seoul-Washington alliance. Before his visit to the foreign ministry, Blinken and Han discussed joint military reaction to North Korea's four nuclear tests, which Han assessed as "a grave threat" to the peninsula and the international community. Blinken said South Korea and the U.S. will face challenges from North Korea "in total solidarity" and that a strong response is critical. Members of the Canadian punk band Career Suicide perform at East 7th Punx, Los Angeles, Jan. 14, before flying to Asia for shows in Korea, China and Japan. / Courtesy of Albert Licano By Jon Dunbar Canadian hardcore punk band Career Suicide will give a concert in Seoul, Friday, as part of a quick five-nation world tour. "The next two weeks are about as crazy a travel schedule as Career Suicide has had in 10 years of touring and certainly the most insane trip any of us could have ever hoped the band would take us on," said the band on its Facebook page last week. Starting at home in Toronto, they play five dates in the U.S. before crossing back to Vancouver and heading to Hong Kong and Shanghai. After one Seoul date, they head to Tokyo for two weekend shows. The Seoul gig will be held at the newly opened GBN Live House in Mullae-dong, a metalworking district in southern Seoul being overrun by music and art venues. They'll be joined by four of Korea's loudest bands: Find the Spot, Scumraid, the Kitsches and Agari. Though they've played China and Japan before, this is their first foray into Korea. "We're aware of the punk and hardcore scene in Korea, and really wanted to take a chance on coming," guitarist Jonah Falco told The Korea Times. Formed in 2001, they're known for their 1980s old school hardcore influence, having evolved their own take over the last 15 years. For this tour they rushed to complete their latest full-length album, but remain unsure how many copies would be ready in time. Their last recording was released in 2008, an EP called "Cherry Beach." Career Suicide were mostly active until around 2008 when Falco's duties as drummer of the hardcore sextet F'd Up became more demanding. "Some of us are professional musicians outside of this band, but CS is definitely a labor of love more than anything else," said Falco. "We're just a part-time band, and we all have other obligations." That sounds surprisingly career-minded for a band called Career Suicide, but Falco thinks it fits perfectly with their style. "It's a name like The Damned," he explained. "No one wants to be damned or commit career suicide, but the point is you can still live a full and productive life with these false stigmas, and in fact they're nothing to be afraid of." Entry is 10,000 won and the show starts at 7 p.m. Students participating in the one-week Winter School Program pose with their teachers during their class at Sasang High School in Busan, Jan. 7. The teachers include the school's science teacher Kim Seung-man, third row fifth from right, and native English teacher of Busan Il Science High School Eric Wesch, back row fourth from left. /Courtesy of Sasang High School Nurturing scientific curiosity, honing language proficiency By Chung Hyun-chae BUSAN Studying science and improving English proficiency at the same time is a great challenge for most Korean students. However, it seems like no big deal for a group of high school students in this southeastern port city. Twenty-four students dreaming of becoming scientists made English presentations on a curiously shaped rollercoaster device they made in a classroom at Sasang High School, Jan. 7. The device was a Rube Goldberg machine, a contraption which was deliberately over-engineered to perform a simple task in a convoluted fashion. The students from 15 high schools in the nation's second-largest city were full of passion for science as well as the eagerness to express themselves in English. They are now taking their winter vacation as an opportunity to satisfy their scientific curiosity and hone their English proficiency. "A marble moves down two parallel pipes and rides a rollercoaster and finally smashes into a pyramid made of cards," said Go Min-jung, 17, a student of Jurye Girls' High School, as she presented her team's work in English in front of the other students. Then she rolled a marble onto the complicated rollercoaster, kickstarting a long chain of action. "It is a great opportunity for science students to make their own contraptions because we can rarely have this kind of experience at school," Go told The Korea Times. "Given that the principles of many different fields of science and math are applicable to both rollercoasters and Rube Goldberg machines, I could put my knowledge of science into practice during the program." She and 23 other students were participating in the Winter School Program launched by the Busan Metropolitan City Office of Education in 2011. The education office selected 40 programs proposed by school teachers and university professors for its winter school program which will continue until Jan. 23. Among those chosen was a one-week convergence science class designed by Kim Seung-man, a science teacher at Sasang High School, to provide students with science, technology, engineering, art and math (STEAM) education. Kim believes that STEAM education can improve students' creativity. "While inventing their own Rube Goldberg machines, complicated works of art, the students can develop their creativity," Kim said. He invited Eric Wesch, 30, a native English teacher at Busan Il Science High School, to help students express their ideas in English. "I thought it would be more practical if students make presentations in English," Kim said. "What makes this program unique is that it has two goals practicing science and building English presentation skills." Wesch agreed that science and English make a great combination. "As students learn scientific theories and the application of science from when they were young, by the time they get to high school, they have all these ideas, but they haven't had sufficient practice talking about it in another language," Wesch said. "Now they just need to practice their English to describe their knowledge of science. We've seen the shift in education. It's not just about studying English like a science and learning the rules. It's actually becoming more like an art." For the first two or three days, Kim gave lessons on physics including accelerated motion and the transformation of energy, and taught them how to build their own Rube Goldberg machines. Then Wesch taught the students how to speak about their ideas in English by assigning them small tasks. For example, he handed out six cartoons depicting Goldberg machines drawn by Rube Goldberg, an American cartoonist, to each group of six students, and had them explain the drawing using appropriate terms. "I could learn many useful words during the class," said Moon Nam-hee, 17, another student from Jurye Girls' High School. Asked why students focusing on the natural sciences applied for the program in which they should make presentations in English, which might be a burden to them, they said that English is important in studying science. "I heard that we will have to study at university using books published in English," said Lee Yu-rim, 17, a student from Kyongil High School. "In order to gain access to advanced technologies, we should interact with foreign countries. This is why we have to study English as much as we study science," Go added. South Korea's Red Cross said Wednesday its programs for families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War and humanitarian aid to North Korea now face a murky prospect as North Korea's fourth nuclear test froze ties between the two countries. The Red Cross has made video messages of about 10,000 separated family members to be possibly delivered to their relatives in North Korea, but whether they can be delivered remains uncertain due to the strained inter-Korean ties following the North's nuclear test on Jan. 6, it said. Seoul has also proposed to Pyongyang that the two Koreas exchange a list of how many separated family members from each side want to meet with their relatives living across the border. There are about 66,000 separated family members in South Korea, half of which have expressed a wish to confirm the fate of their relatives living in the North. "(Due to the North's nuclear test), there has been no progress over our projects on separated families and humanitarian assistance with North Korea," a Red Cross official said. The two Koreas arranged brief reunions of families split by the war, which ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, at a facility on Mount Kumgang in the North in late October. The event, the first since early 2014, involved fewer than 100 families from each side. The two sides have held 20 rounds of such reunions so far, but tens of thousands of more people are still on the waiting list. South Korea is seeking to hold the family reunions on a regular basis, calling on the North to allow such families to exchange letters. But Pyongyang maintains a lukewarm stance. (Yonhap) By Park Yoon-bae Deputy managing editor This year got off to a rocky start with China's stock market tumble clouding economic prospects and North Korea's claimed hydrogen bomb test raising tensions on the Korean Peninsula and through Northeast Asia. The two episodes have significant ramifications not only for South Korea but also for the world. President Park Geun-hye pointed out in her New Year address last week that South Korea faces a crisis in national security and the economy, at the same time. She has the right recognition of the brewing crisis. However, the problem is that the Park administration has limited options to speed up economic recovery and punish North Korea for its fourth nuclear experiment. The Chinese stock plunge and the North's gambling on nuclear weapons are separate developments. But the two have one thing in common: the South has little leverage to minimize the fallout that will affect its economy and national security. The North's alleged H-bomb detonation actually caught the Park government and the nation by surprise. It poses a grave threat to Park's trustpolitik, under which Seoul has tried to restore trust with Pyongyang through dialogue since her 2013 inauguration. The nuclear explosion is none other than the North's repudiation of her trustpolitik. This will inevitably put strong pressure on President Park to reconsider her North Korea policy toward reconciliation and ultimate unification. It is high time to set a new strategy to make the Kim Jong-un regime give up its nuclear ambition. Of course it is easier said than done. But without a drastic policy change, Seoul cannot achieve its goal of ensuring security and settling peace on the peninsula. Judging from experience, it is hard to deny that we have been naive in thinking that the reclusive communist state might take a path to denuclearization if the South embraces the North as "our brethren" and continues to engage with the isolated socialist state. The previous administrations under the late liberal presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun made much progress in inter-Korean reconciliation and cooperation by pushing for the "Sunshine Policy" of active engagement with the North. Then, the engagement policy suffered from a setback under the conservative government of President Lee Myung-bak as it took a hard-line stance against the North. Now, President Park runs the risk of scrapping her much-avowed trustpolitik. Regrettably, both the engagement policy and the hard-line policy have so far failed to end the North's nuclear weapons program. We have to admit that each policy has its own shortcomings to deal with the recalcitrant state, although Pyongyang is totally responsible for its persistent hostility and provocations against the South. Now, we should learn from the failures and start discussing how to work out a new strategy to prevent Pyongyang from conducting a fifth nuclear test or developing more sophisticated long-range missiles. For this, policymakers and experts need out-of-the-box thinking and a new paradigm. But South Korea, along with the international community, has taught the North the wrong lesson: that it may go unpunished for its provocative behavior. The six-party denuclearization talks involving the two Koreas, the U.S., Japan, China and Russia have long been stalled. The international sanctions against Pyongyang have not been good enough to end the North's nuclear threats, although the U.N. Security Council is working on a new draft resolution against the precarious Kim regime. Against this backdrop, Seoul needs to do more to take the initiative in international efforts to force the North into denuclearization. Most of all, the South must leave no stone unturned in prodding China to take a more active role. On the economic front, South Korea should create a framework to boost new growth engines. The nation has to push for structural reform to bring vitality to the sluggish economy so that it can avoid a replay of the 1997 Asian financial crisis. It is necessary to overhaul the export-oriented growth strategy that will not work in the face of a slowdown of the economic growth of China _ South Korea's largest trade partner. What is more imperative is to promote inclusive growth to allow all players to get a fair share of the economic pie and reduce the widening gap between rich and poor. The new economic team of President Park must focus more on stimulating domestic demand, creating jobs, especially for young adults, and stabilizing the livelihood of the people. Ahn Cheol-soo's preparatory committee for a new party is distancing itself from voters by operating in a manner that contradicts its stated purpose to innovate Korean politics. First, it appeared to be following the hasty recruitment practices of existing parties when it attempted to scout former senior officials only to then dump them because of their involvement in corruption cases. Following this recruitment drive debacle, Han Sang-jin, co-chair of the People's Party's preparatory committee, then came under fire for instigating a row about the nation's first President Syngman Rhee (1875-1965) by referring to him as the "nation's father." Facing strong backlash from Rhee's critics, Han paid homage Wednesday to Kim Gu (1876-1949), Rhee's main political rival, and visited the Korea Liberation Association, which promotes the legacy of Korea's independence fighters who opposed the 1910-45 Japanese colonial rule of the peninsula. The history row over Rhee is further polarizing Korean politics. This outcome is contrary to what the committee pledged to achieve at its formation ceremony announcing "an end to an age of unproductive ideological confrontation, and open an era of politics looking after the people's lives." It is not the job of Han or other politicians to make an accessment on past presidents and other historical figures that continue to invite controversy. There is still much division regarding Rhee's presidency. Some respect him for laying the foundations of a modern country, while others disregard him as a ruthless authoritarian. Some even blame him for post-Japanese national division because Rhee advocated forming a separate government in the southern half of the Korean Peninsula as early as spring 1946. Politicians should leave it to historians and focus on real priorities by focusing on alternatives to national issues. In his position as a founding figure of a party that preaches pursuit of new politics, Han should be directing all his attention on crafting policies that matter to voters, particularly because there are only weeks to go before the party will be officially launched early next month. The former sociology professor has already wasted too much of his time trying to assuage a political row triggered by his remark on Rhee. During this critical time for his new party, Han should keep himself and the party away from irrelevant debates on modern history and other non-issues. Otherwise, the party will be harshly judged by voters, who are weary of unproductive political wrangling. Already, polls show that the People's Party is losing support in the Honam region, the heart of Korea's liberal politics. The government renewed its call on Wednesday for the parliamentary approval of anti-terrorism bills to protect the lives of South Koreans, citing growing threats of terrorism around the world. In addition to the first bill proposed by the government in 2011 following the 9/11 attacks, a number of anti-terrorist bills are currently pending in the National Assembly. However, the bills have not yet been put to a full floor vote due to strong dissent from the opposition party on concern about giving more authority to the National Intelligence Service (NIS), South Korea's top spy agency. "There have been needless battles at the National Assembly for the past 15 years," said Kim Soo-min, a senior NIS official who participated in the government-ruling party meeting. "The anti-terrorism bills are designed to protect lives of the people and should not be the subject of a bargaining tool." The anti-terrorism bills have gained new momentum following the deadly attacks in Paris last year as the Saenuri Party and opposition parties agreed to begin discussions for the swift passage. "Collecting information is vital to punishing those who take part in terrorist acts or organize or join terrorist groups," Kim said. Kim refuted the claim that the bills infringe upon citizens' basic rights and that enhanced surveillance violates the right to privacy. Second Vice Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul, who participated in the meeting, also voiced that the passage of the bills is important, citing last week's attack by the Islamic State in Jakarta. "Pre-emptively detecting and preventing the threat should be viable in order to effectively deal with terrorist attacks," Cho said, adding that the bills would allow the government to come up with more elaborate countermeasures. (Yonhap) Sisters Marianne Stoeger, back row right, and Margareta Pissar, back row left, pose with co-workers treating leprosy patients on Soroko Island off the southern Korean coast in this picture taken in 1970 at the Sorokdo National Hospital. / Courtesy of Goheung County Office By Kang Seung-woo A local county office will recommend two Austrian nuns for the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of their devotion to treating leprosy patients for over 40 years on a remote island off the southern Korean coast. According to the Goheung County on Wednesday, South Jeolla Province, it plans to recommend Sisters Marianne Stoeger and Margareta Pissar for the prestigious prize, among others, in its program to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Sorokdo National Hospital that falls on May 17. Sorok is an island located about 1 kilometer off the mainland. Stoeger and Pissar came to Korea in their late 20s, in 1959 and 1962 respectively, to work as nurses at the state-run leprosy hospital established in 1916 and treat patients suffering from the disease. Since then, they've committed themselves to taking care of leprosy patients for over 40 years, buying medicine and physical therapy equipment with money out of their own pockets and inviting foreign medical teams to treat patients. They returned home in 2005. "Given that their sacrifice can become a paragon of the spirit of sharing in this era of material civilization, the planned recommendation can have a huge significance in marking the 100th anniversary of Sorokdo National Hospital," said an official of the office. The office said that their sacrifice encouraged visits by humanitarian aid organizations and volunteers to the island every year, with Sorok labeled as the "Heaven of volunteering." Leprosy, also known as Hansen's disease, affects the nerves and can cause deformities and skin disorders. The condition is not infectious once treated and a cure was found in the 1940s. However, during the 1910-45 Japanese occupation, colonial authorities selected the island as a place for the quarantining of patients with Hansen's disease and hundreds of Korean lepers were mobilized to produce war supplies, while subjected to forced sterilizations and abortions. While serving on the island, the two women were called "halmae" (grandma) by patients, because they had been as kind to them as grandmothers. To recognize their devotion, the Korean government presented them with medals in 1972, 1983 and 1996. Along with their 40-plus-year commitment, their departure also drew attention. On Nov. 21, 2005, the two nuns returned home without saying goodbye to avoid an emotional farewell with patients and residents there. They only gave a day's notice to the hospital and left a letter saying that they left quietly because they did not want to give pain in the wrench of parting. "We thank you very much for everything you did for us. Your hospitality was as high as Heaven. You showed love and admiration to strangers. If we did anything wrong to you, we beg your pardon," they wrote in Korean. Along with the Nobel Prize recommendation, the county office plans to make a documentary shedding light on the two nuns' lives and build a memorial hall to honor them. Song Chang-ho, head of the Family Committee over the Leukemia Issue (FCLI), answers questions during an interview with The Korea Times, at a hotel in Seoul, Wednesday. / Korea Times photo by Kim Yoo-chul By Kim Yoo-chul Samsung has reached a complete settlement in talks with the families of former workers who contracted leukemia on the job, said a representative of one of the three parties to the talks, who strongly urged the main advocacy group to join moves to resolve the long-running disputes. "I believe the leukemia issue had been completely settled through negotiations and agreements signed earlier by the three parties," Song Chang-ho, head of the Family Committee over Leukemia Issue (FCLI), said in an interview with The Korea Times, Wednesday. Song discussed the key points of the latest three-party agreement, which calls for the establishment of an external committee that will improve workplace safety at Samsung plants and prevent future cases of leukemia and other incurable diseases afflicting the former workers. "The main group Banolim never stops asking Samsung to accept all of its conditions, which I don't believe makes sense. About 150 sick workers voluntarily applied for compensation settlements. Most of them received compensation. That means affected workers want to settle the issue," the representative said. "Banolim was requesting that Samsung pay more, but these claims lack persuasiveness." Last year, Samsung launched a compensation committee, which consists of external specialists. Some workers and their families denounced Samsung's compensation measures, which they said were unilateral and veiled in secrecy. But Song said he is receiving more calls from afflicted workers for early compensation. "My advice to them is to accept the offer by the company and consider what to do next according to the situation. This is the smart way," he said. Song, a former Samsung Electronics worker, retired from the company after developing lymphoma cancer. While Song had been active with Banolim Founder Hwang Sang-ki, the group's "non-negotiable" stance toward the issue resulted in him ditching the group to create the FCLI. "The three parties agreed to implement strengthened precautionary measures for the safety of workers at Samsung plants and I think this agreement is to show Samsung's sincerity to compensate and to offer an apology to those affected. Banolim seems to believe that this is thanks to their continued street demonstrations, but I think it was a result of consensus," Song said. The latest agreement by the three parties focuses on establishing an independent ombudsman committee. It also includes guarantees by Samsung to maintain information related to workers' health and conduct spot checks for poisonous chemicals during manufacturing processes. If any harmful or toxic substances are detected during the checks, Samsung may limit its use of such chemicals, the agreement said. The committee will be led by a Seoul National University Professor Lee Cheol-soo and two other members. Samsung also offered workers access to key information related to their health and safety when applying for national insurance covering occupational diseases, which Song says is a "meaningful step" as complaints have long been made by civic groups over Samsung's failure to publicize health and safety information. Identity crisis Song said he feels sorry to see Banolim's "my way" approach to the issue regardless of the growing need of the families of sick workers to settle the issue. "The Samsung leukemia issue helped Banolim see its recognition in Korean society. Rather than seeking resolution, Banolim has kept fighting and that strategy was effective in some part; however, I think the advocacy group is now trapped in an identity crisis. If they lose their fighting spirit, then their positions will be nowhere to be seen. This is where Banolim is situated for the time being," said the representative. Song said Banolim doesn't have to stick to its original guns. According to his observation, the compensation issue is a matter that needs to be addressed between Samsung Electronics and affected families, rather than for furthering a political agenda. "We need a channel for people to hear our views on the issue. Previously, we let Banolim entirely handle the issue. But our view, even though it was minor, was neglected," he said. "The idea to set up a public committee with Samsung's money had gone too far. For us, this was Banolim's strategy to protract the dispute," he said. Song urged Banolim founder Hwang to find "something new" if he wants to keep the group going. "Banolim wants to settle all things at once. Their own way may be ended only if Samsung accepts all of their claims. Banolim needs to go back to the basics," said the representative. This time, I am going to tell you about eggs from Spain. The Ministry of Health suspects that eggs that were imported from Spain may contain, you guessed it, salmonella - and is conducting further testing. In the meantime, the MoH has asked the public to be sure to only eat eggs that have been thouroughly cooked, in order to minimize the risk of food poisoning. (Food poisoning is something to avoid, really, at all costs. It's awful. If you've never had it, you'll just have to trust me on that one, because I'm not going into the details here!) You can check if the eggs you have are from Spain - they will have code ES stamped onto them. Here is a list of countries that we currently import eggs from, and their corresponding codes. You will see one of these codes on the eggs you buy if they are imported (eggs produced locally do not have letter codes stamped on them): Spain = ES Holland = NL Italy = IT Ukraine = UA Turkey = TR Now that we know how to identify imported eggs, we will be more educated consumers. Personally, I'd rather get local eggs! How about you? Rookie girl group April were appointed in early January as ambassadors of the Korea Scout Association, reports The Korea Herald. April were chosen for their energetic image, and the group have recently finished shooting promotional materials for the national scouting organization. "We, together with April, will continue to support not just the 30 million scout members (globally), but also every single teenager out there," said a representative from the Korea Scout Association. Established in 1922, the Korea Scout Association oversees scouting activities across the country including national and international jamborees. The appointment may also help the Korea Scout Association in its recent bid to host the 25th World Scout Jamboree -- a prestigious international jamboree that is attened by tens of thousands of teenage scouts -- in 2023. In turn, being chosen as ambassadors could help boost April after a rocky start late last year. April debuted as a six-member girl group in August with the EP Dreaming and title track "Dream Candy" but leader Somin departed in November - only three months after the group debut - in order to focus in school. This pushed April's agency DSP Media to re-launch them as a quintet with the single "Boing Boing." --- Mickey is a writer and digital content creator based in Manila. He is a co-founder of ZAVI App and editor of the small business blog IndieMickey. He has also been bitten by the K-Pop fashion bug - follow him on Instagram @mickjami. The SLFP does not condone the continuation of the Emergency Regulations (The Public Security Ordinance) more than a day necessary Read more PRESS RELEASE Xi Jinping Article in Saudi Paper Calls for Win-win Cooperation on the New Silk Road Policy Jan. 19, 2016 (EIRNS)Xi Jinping arrived today in Saudi Arabia for a two-day visit, before going on to Iran and Egypt, in a trip aimed at intervening against the British provocation of Sunni-Shia warfare. Before arriving in Riyadh, Xi published an article in the Saudi paper Alriyadh titled "Be Good Partners for Common Development." The visit comes just days after China published its first "Arab Policy" document, laying out Chinas intention to extend the Silk Road concept into Southwest Asia. Xis article doesnt mention Iran or the war danger, but focuses on Chinas friendship and trade relations with the Saudis China is Saudi Arabias largest trading partner, and the Saudis are Chinas largest source of oil imports. "Over 2000 years ago," he wrote, "numerous camel caravans from the two sides travelled along the ancient Silk Road. Diplomatic envoys from the Seljuk Empire visited China during the Tang Dynasty. Zheng He, Chinas Muslim navigator in the Ming Dynasty, travelled to Jeddah, Mecca and Medina, and he described them as paradises where people enjoyed peace and harmony. The interactions and mutual learning between the Chinese and Islamic civilizations are an important part in the history of inter-civilization exchanges." Xi said the two nations should "bear in mind the strategic nature of China-Saudi Arabia relations.... Let us forge a win-win partnership of mutual benefit and common development," emphasizing PRESS RELEASE First State Hearing on Glass-Steagall in 2016 Jan. 20, 2016 (EIRNS)The Washington State Senate Financial Institutions and Insurance Committee will hold a hearing today on Senate Joint Memorial 8005, which calls on Congress to enact pending legislature to restore the FDR Glass-Steagall law. Memorials to Congress to reinstate Glass-Steagall are also pending in South Carolina (H 4486), New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The Washington State memorial asks that Congress enact legislation that would reinstate the separation of commercial and investment banking functions that were in effect under the Glass- Steagall act, prohibiting commercial banks and bank holding companies from investing in stocks, underwriting securities, or investing in or acting as guarantors to derivative transactions, in order to prevent American taxpayers from being called upon to fund hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out financial institutions. Bills to reinstate Glass-Steagall are pending in both the House and the Senate. The House bill by Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), HR 381, has 70 sponsors in all, and is being blocked from a hearing by the Committee on Financial Services chairman. The Senate bill by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, S. 1709, has 8 sponsors in all. When C.D. Wright died Jan. 12, American poetry lost one of the great ones, one of the figures who changed what the language can do, one of the writers whose lines and titles, sentences and similes are going to last at least as long as American English. Thats something I believe, but its also something that seems inappropriate, even rude, to say, because Wrights artistic powers cannot be separated from her deep sense of democracy, her work against boundaries, rankings and exclusions, her insistence that poetry, and society, should become, not a hierarchy or a star system or a way to exalt a singular self, but a way to be generous, to share the powers we get, to give of oneself, to let everybody come in. She came, as all her readers have noticed, from the Ozarks, the daughter of a judge and a court reporter whose stenotypes imprint adorns the interior pages of her 1998 mostly-prose poem Deepstep Come Shining. Wrights earliest poems, penned in Arkansas in the 1970s, exercised a scary, compact, post-Surrealist, Southern Gothic mode, shared with the charismatic, prolific, self-destructive poet Frank Stanford, whose life and death Wrights Translation of the Gospel Back Into Tongues (1982) remembers. Maybe you have to be from there to hear it sing, Wright would speculate later, in her beautiful compact sequence The Ozark Odes -- but part of the point of her projects was that you dont. The crackle and idiosyncrasy of her language, the concretely sensory weirdness of it all, meant that you didnt have to live Wrights life, or anything like it, to feel that she spoke to you. To learn how to write that way, she had to leave: first for San Francisco, where she encountered dry avant-garde techniques and wove them -- one of the first poets to do so -- into what had been steamy late Romantic modes. In San Francisco, too, she met Forrest Gander, later to become an important poet (start with Torn Awake) and a major translator and editor of Spanish-language poetry (look for his Lost Poems of Pablo Neruda soon). Gander and Wright fell in love and moved briefly to Mexico. Then, in 1983, Wright got a job at Brown University. For the next three decades, young American poets who wanted to sound both personal and strange, both observant and unpredictable, who wanted both to experiment and to sing, would try to study with her there. Advertisement Never exclusively Southern -- never exclusively anything -- Wright would make books, maps, objects about her original and her adopted homes. Mexico (to which they returned) figures in the splendid, terse bilingual retablos poems of the early 2000s: Escuchame / Chuparosa, one prays. Providence and its oceanside suburbs are part of the background in Tremble (1996): in Gift of the Book, lights go off / all over / rhode island, while I stay awake / reading / rereading... the long-awaited / prose / of your body. The body itself -- her body, the erotic body, the vulnerable body, the pregnant body, the warm body -- was the location of sorts for Just Whistle (1993), a book-length poem whose white-noise prose and twangy inset songs are just as strange, just as enticing, as when the poem came out: Wilco fans, Neko Case fans, take note. But Just Whistle was also an Arkansas book: Wright found her greatest powers first by finding a way to make new language spring up around where she was from. There was something about a hazy afternoon -- a long drive/ about no purse no stockings, about grasshoppers -- their knack for surprise / Something about finding a full set of clothes in the weeds, something about the Ozarks, about her own early life, about Stanfords too, about Southern English, about a Southern life that her poetry would pry loose, and re-plant, in new ground. The poetry of home that she wrote in String Light (1991) was also a poetry of finding freedom, of learning how far you can go and still love what you loved. That was the book that held Wrights epochal, often imitated, addictively teachable Personals, the poem that begins Some nights I sleep with my dress on, appreciates pimento cheese in peace and concludes Stranger, to tell the truth, in dog years I am up there. Its the book that begins with the inauspicious birth, beyond Pearl River past Petal and Leaf River and Macedonia, of a boy who will do things they never dreamed (the boy is Stanford, but he is also any American, any unlikely Chosen One); and its the book whose second poem concludes with a cross-stitch mantra: Even. If. The. Sky. Is. Falling. / My. Peace. Rose. Is. In. Bloom. Its a cliche to say that a powerful poet has taken some language or other and made it hers; it would be truer to say that Wright took this homey, sensual, serious, tatter-edged, organic language, and figured out how it might be shared, how she could take it with her, give it back, let it grow. Giving it back meant listening; it also meant traveling, collaborating with visual artists, and something close to straight-up documentary reportage. Deepstep Come Shining puts into bluesy, melodic, haunting sentences what Wright and the photographer Deborah Luster saw while driving around rural Georgia: The scrape of chairs on a stone floor. A sack of birds escaped in the house. Flesh, velvety dampness. Panic. (Ive compared it to Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.) One Big Self (2002), also undertaken with Luster, incorporated photographs and interviews from Louisiana prisons. Around the words of incarcerated people come Wrights own notices about a decrepit landscape (Dear Dying Town: The food is cheap), and about our prison-industrial complex. Its a book about the diffuse guilt we feel, or should feel, if we are fortunate Americans, and about the ideal (itself also American) of a great poem that helps everybody feel free. Its also a book by somebody who has been watching, and hearing, the prisoners themselves, each in their sometimes-defiant, sometimes-defeated, individuality. Louisiana, America, fate, money, cops, guards have told these people that their lives are interchangeable, same old blunders on a different hill. One Big Self would tell them something different. Its a work of journalism that never felt like journalism, a collocation of short quotes, a book thats both joyful and angry, a book to get lost in. After One Big Self came a big selection of poems from two decades and more, called Steal Away: thats the place to start reading her, maybe with Personals, or with a hot poem like Everything Good Between Men and Women. Or just spread out on the floor or get on a bus or sit down in the kitchen and open to a random page: shes that good, and that approachable, that often. Steal Away was the last book before the MacArthur genius fellowship in 2004 certified her as whatever a MacArthur fellowship certifies you as. It didnt change what she did, but it showed her that people were listening, and not just in the relatively insular poetry communities that sent fans her way early on. Readers queued up for Cooling Time: An American Poetry Vigil (2004), a collection or collation (drawn from her essays and poems) of tributes to mentors, notes on scenes, kind, strong advice for writers: It is poetry that remarks on the barely perceptible disappearances from our world such as that of the sleeping porch or the root cellar. ... It falls on the sweet neck of poetry to keep the rain-pitted face of love from leaving us once and for all. Now we can see her own literal face only in photographs, her own voice only in recordings; but the voice and the face, the voices and faces, in the poems are as present, as inviting, as sweet and as sharp as they ever were, in all those books and in those that came afterward: in Rising Falling Hovering (2008), an amazing, exhilarating, scary, determinedly international book, in part about parenthood, on some days my favorite, but not the one for beginners; and in One With Others (2010), a book-length essay that doubles as a prose poem about race, civil rights, growing up in the small-town South, and the one brave teacher who gave Wright a sense of what adults can and should do. (If you read memoirs, read that one. Prize committees did; they rewarded it, rightly so.) Poems from Wrights forthcoming Shallcross, have been pinging around the Internet faster than editors can post them: heres a good long one about An impossible child / No one could break or resist. I wonder whether the future is going to see Shallcross as her very best book. I loved the poems before I met the poet, but I loved knowing her too. I met C.D. and Forrest first at a writers conference, in a remote part of New England, while I was working on an essay about her. After a few days of conversation, I ended up, in a fit of fan-chutzpah, asking if they could drive me part way home (they did). We stayed in touch -- not often enough -- over the succeeding 15 years, in Rhode Island, in Minnesota, in New Mexico; they were good to, and certainly good for, me. Its easy for me to remember seeking her calm, considerate, unselfish advice, and wishing I could see our polyglot continent, with its lakes, its villages and its striving hipsters, as generously as she always did. Its also uncomfortable for me to write about her as a person, because I cant recommend that you go meet her. A critic cant do that even when great poets are alive, much less when theyve left us. What critics can do -- maybe all a critic can do -- is send you, with some encouragement or preparation, to the poems. The titles in Rising, Falling, Hovering insist on likeness, on the unpredictable affinities between language and the rest of the world, between people and other people: Like Having a Light at Your Back You Cant See But You Can Still Feel, Like the Ghost of a Carrier Pigeon, Like Something Flying Backwards. Those affinities, those likenesses, are all over Wrights work, whether it comes in prose blocks, or in short, hard lines like the stems on berries, or in long Whitmanesque lifelines. You can tell a Wright poem from its diction (demotic without being folksy); from its sensory world (tangy, unpredictable, warm, with touch, taste or motion, not just sight and sound, involved); from its cadence (irregular, sharp, yet -- if it were music -- able to hold a melody); and from its affect, disarming, inviting, genuine. Wright was our most democratic, most trustworthy major poet in 50, if not 100, years. I wish more writers -- more people -- could be more like her. The El Nino rainstorm had already turned Nick Bloms almond orchard into a quagmire. Still, he wheeled open the lid of a massive irrigation pipe. Fifteen minutes later, a gurgling belch heralded a gush of water that surged over the lip of the pipe and spread across five acres of almond trees. Blom is neither crazy nor self-destructive. Hes a volunteer in an experiment run by UC Davis that could offer a partial solution to Californias perennial water shortages, and in the process, challenge some long-standing tenets of flood control and farming in the Central Valley. The first notion that could be washed away is that the abundant rains spawned by the El Nino currents in the Pacific Ocean should be banked behind new or enlarged reservoirs. Instead, researchers believe they should pour that water onto fields and let it replenish groundwater overdrafted by farmers and cities during the states five-year drought. Advertisement Join the conversation on Facebook >> That hypothesis, however, runs counter to how many growers care for their trees in winter, how irrigation districts operate, how water rights are managed, and how state and federal authorities have controlled floods for a century. Each will have to expand their notion of how to use water for the greater good so they can smooth out the states wild swings between drought and abundance, researchers say. So they started small Tuesday three, five-acre plots southwest of Modesto, on the 1,300 acres Blom farms with his father, Nick Sr. and brother, Pete. We can build more reservoirs and we can raise the dams of reservoirs, but thats a very costly undertaking, said UC Davis hydrologist Helen Dahlke. Basically were trying to make use of the system that has been in place 40 or 50 years, when most farmers irrigated their fields using surface water, by just letting water run onto fields, and down a furrow. 1 / 5 Rancher Nick Blom tightens a valve at his Modesto orchard. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 5 Rancher Nick Blom looks over almond trees at his Modesto orchard. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 3 / 5 Rancher Nick Blom inundates his almond orchard as part of an experiment in Modesto. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 4 / 5 Rancher Nick Blom looks over equipment in one of his almond orchards. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) 5 / 5 Rancher Nick Blom inundates his almond orchard as part of an experiment in Modesto. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) Gravity did most of the work Tuesday, as storm runoff flowed down irrigation canals and forced its way up and over the lip of Bloms pipe. What Blom didnt use will flow downstream to other farms and eventually back to the Tuolumne River, which joins the San Joaquin River nearby. Hydrologists, plant scientists and others will monitor the fields to see how the water flows through the coarse soil below Bloms feet, and what effect it will have on the trees and their roots. Water could spur more fungal diseases, for instance. But it also could drown out worms and mites that can damage crops, said Roger Duncan, agricultural extension director for Stanislaus County. Researchers also will check to see if the flood water washes contaminants, such as the nitrogen from fertilizers and naturally occurring salts, into the groundwater. Theyll also compare yields on three fields treated different ways: leaving the trees fate to the weather, adding the normally small amount of winter irrigation, and pouring out several extra feet of water. Blom said he seldom irrigates over the winter, and gets about 2,200 pounds of almonds per acre. It took months to orchestrate the conditions that merged on the Blom family ranch, and Tuesdays downpour was not in those plans. Researchers cut back from the 8 inches they had planned to pour, to compensate for a couple of inches that had fallen since Sunday in a rare weather system that covered the Central Valley. The three five-acre plots needed to have soils that allow water to percolate through quickly, and a grower willing to risk his trees. Blom had volunteered for other experiments. He also sits on the board of the Modesto Irrigation District, which owns its own reservoir (with a neighboring district) that holds more than 2 million acre-feet of water from the Tuolumne River. Finding willing participants might be more difficult in other areas, where various federal and state agencies control the dams and canals of water projects that sprawl across dozens of irrigation districts and supply distant cities such as Los Angeles. Those districts and their grower members will be wary of watching their water disappear underground and potentially flow where it will benefit someone else. The Modesto Irrigation District delivers water to about 58,000 acres of farms, through a lattice of canals between the Tuolumne and Stanislaus rivers where they tumble toward the San Joaquin. Its coarse, alluvial soil absorbs water quickly, and most of it can be reached with wells of about 45 feet in depth, Blom said. Its a benefit to everybody, because we do sit in a basin of water, Blom said. If we can put water into that basin throughout our area its going to help everybodys groundwater. So, all the wells will be fine. That would include the city of Modesto, which uses both well water and surface supplies from the irrigation district. Dahlke said about 3.6 million to 5 million acres of agricultural land would have suitable characteristics for similar recharge projects. But she was well aware that such projects may not go smoothly in other districts that operate by strict rules about how and when they can release water. Often, agencies such as the Army Corps of Engineers release water in anticipation of storm events, not during them, Dahlke noted. If we know when they are making those releases, we can grab some of that water, Dahlke said. Dahlke said the concept will require a lot of cooperation, perhaps through incentives that will protect farmers and districts for using some of their allotted water on projects that provide a benefit beyond growing crops. I dont think individual farm owners will be very successful in the future if they dont start talking to their neighbors and start collaborating with other landowners, she said. Maybe its also time to look at the water rights system at some point, and figure out how we can modernize that system so it can accommodate practices like this one. Blom wasnt thinking of that kind of politics Tuesday. He just hoped he hadnt ruined a 17-year-old stand of almond trees. Im very optimistic that Ill be all right, he said. If its detrimental to the trees, I might lose five years out of the trees Ill get one good season of firewood. geoffrey.mohan@latimes.com Twitter: @LATgeoffmohan ALSO 2015 was the hottest year on record, according to new data The situation is dire as Borrego Water Districts aquifer is being rapidly depleted California to investigate whether Exxon Mobil lied about climate-change risks California Atty. Gen. Kamala D. Harris is investigating whether Exxon Mobil Corp. repeatedly lied to the public and its shareholders about the risk to its business from climate change and whether such actions could amount to securities fraud and violations of environmental laws. Harris office is reviewing what Exxon Mobil knew about global warming and what the company told investors, a person close to the investigation said. The move follows published reports, based on internal company documents, suggesting that during the 1980s and 1990s the company, then known as Exxon, used climate research as part of its planning and other business practices but simultaneously argued publicly that climate-change science was not clear cut. Advertisement Interested in the stories shaping California? Sign up for the free Essential California newsletter >> Those documents were cited in stories by reporters for Columbia University Energy and Environmental Reporting Fellowship, published in partnership with the Los Angeles Times. The nonprofit InsideClimate News also published several stories based on the documents. Shortly after the news reports, Harris office launched the investigation in response to the findings, the person said. New Yorks attorney general also is investigating the oil company as a result of the published reports. Exxon Mobil did not respond to several requests for comment made by telephone and email. A spokesman for Harris declined to confirm the investigation. U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance), who has called on federal authorities to investigate Exxon Mobil, praised Harris decision. Lieu said the investigation means that any damages won from Exxon Mobil could benefit Californians. I commend Harris for taking this action, he said. Lieu said he has sent letters to U.S. Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission calling for federal investigations of securities fraud and violations of racketeering, consumer protection, truth in advertising, public health, shareholder protection or other laws. Lieu said he hopes the decision by Harris, representing a state with the eighth-largest economy in the world, will prompt other states and the Justice Department to investigate. I think this action will be taken very seriously by Exxon Mobil, Lieu said. Richard Keil, an Exxon Mobil spokesman, previously said that the company denies any wrongdoing in regard to the climate-change reports. We unequivocally reject allegations that Exxon Mobil suppressed climate change research contained in media reports, Keil said in a statement issued in response to the letters sent in October by Lieu and Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord). Keil issued a statement with the same quote in early November when the New York investigation became public. Exxon Mobil continues to face calls from several current and former U.S. lawmakers for criminal investigations based on the media reports. They include Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Al Gore. It is unclear what approach Harris intends to take in Californias investigation. Harris office is casting a wide net and looking at a variety of issues, according to the person familiar with the matter. Legal experts say the SEC requires that companies disclose the risks of climate change to their business operations but that the agency has taken almost no action to enforce it. The moves by California and New York are seen as a step to fill that void. Exxon Mobil already has received a subpoena for documents dating from 1977 from the office of Eric Schneiderman, New Yorks attorney general. Schneiderman has at his disposal New Yorks Martin Act, a law that gives the states attorney general broad power to prosecute companies for financial fraud. Unlike federal securities law, the New York statute does not require the state to prove that a company intended to defraud only that it misrepresented relevant information or withheld it from investors. The law applies to any company doing business in the state. ivan.penn@latimes.com Twitter: @ivanlpenn Join the conversation on Facebook >> MORE BUSINESS NEWS $150-million mixed-use project pitched for vacant Panorama City site Economy grows, but so does deficit, thanks to tax breaks, budget office says Prices, sales in Southern California home market rise in December Aristides de Sousa Mendes faced a massive humanitarian crisis: It was June 1940, and the Portuguese diplomat stationed in Bordeaux, France, could not ignore nearly 120,000 refugees amassed down the road from the Portuguese consulate. The refugees lived in squalor in a field the size of three city blocks, without access to food, shelter or sanitary facilities. They were desperate to escape the Nazi persecution rolling toward them like the darkest of storm clouds. See more of Entertainments top stories on Facebook >> Advertisement Portuguese dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar issued a vehement directive to deny safe haven to the refugees, but Sousa Mendes still issued more than 30,000 visas in a matter of months. The story of this Portuguese Oskar Schindler and the repercussions of his defiant act of humanity are explored in the new dramatic oratorio Circular 14: The Apotheosis of Aristides. Composed by Neely Bruce, the show has its world premiere Sunday at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles. You may wonder why youve never heard this story, Bruce said in an interview last week. Because, of course, everybody knows about Schindler. Schindler, the factory owner credited with saving the lives of more than 1,000 Jews during the Holocaust, is vastly better known despite the fact that Sousa Mendes is credited with what scholar Yehuda Bauer has called perhaps the largest rescue action by a single individual during the Holocaust. His contribution to history hasnt received the same recognition mainly because Salazar took great pains to bury his story, Bruce says. After Sousa Mendes actions were discovered, his case went to the Supreme Court of Portugal, where he was essentially given a slap on the wrist. The punishment wasnt severe enough for Salazar, so the dictator had Sousa Mendes stripped of all diplomatic privileges as well as his license to practice law. When Sousa Mendes married his second wife, Andree Cibial, the couple were not allowed to marry in Portugal. Family members found it hard to secure employment. The petty cruelty involved was just ridiculous, Bruce says. Sousa Mendes died in poverty in 1954, and he was buried in a wooden box in the cemetery of Franciscan monks. Its a beautiful yet tragic tale, filled with larger-than-life characters all the hallmarks of great opera, Bruce says, adding that the piece has been in the works for more than five years and that he ended up writing the libretto himself. I wasnt writing a fairy-tale opera. I was writing an opera about real events, so I wanted to be as accurate as possible, says Bruce, who has often visited political issues in his compositions and once set the Bill of Rights to music. One of the biggest rewards of composing the oratorio was getting to meet some of the people whom Sousa Mendes saved, an ever-widening circle of people who are discovering the truth about the source of their visa. Salvador Dali and Curious George authors Hans and Margret Rey were among those rescued, but most were ordinary families. This is a story about political action in the face of great adversity, and about doing the right thing even if it has tragic consequences, Bruce says. He died alone and impoverished, but he did the right thing, and he always knew it. Circular 14: The Apotheosis of Aristides stars Los Angeles Opera tenor Robert MacNeil as Sousa Mendes; L.A. Opera soprano Marina Harris as his first wife, Angelina; L.A. Opera tenor Ashley Faatoalia as Salazar; New York bass-baritone Stephan Kirchgraber in the role of Rabbi Chaim Hersz Kruger, who inspired Sousa Mendes to issue as many visas as he could; and L.A. Opera soprano Katherine Giaquinto as Sousa Mendes second wife, Cibial. The spoken role of Sousa Mendes brother Cesar is played by Michel Gill from the Netflix series House of Cards. Gill also happens to be the son and grandson of Sousa Mendes visa recipients. Sousa Mendes was not officially vindicated for his actions until 1988, when the Portuguese parliament dismissed all charges against him and restored him to the countrys diplomatic corps by a unanimous vote. Bruce says works like Circular 14: The Apotheosis of Aristides should strengthen his legacy and spread the word to those who have still not heard the story of selfless heroism. ------------ Circular 14: The Apotheosis of Aristides When: 3 p.m. Sunday Where: Gindi Auditorium, American Jewish University, 15600 Mulholland Drive, Los Angeles Admission: $40 Info: sousamendesfoundation.org jessica.gelt@latimes.com The Hammer Museum announced the lineup for its third Made in L.A. biennial on Tuesday evening, and perhaps the most interesting through-line is the lack of any theme imposed by curators Aram Moshayedi and Hamza Walker. Instead, the shape of the exhibition opening in June will be formed largely by artists who resist or defy categorization, challenging notions of what an L.A. artist is. We were simply operating within the already given theme of Made in Los Angeles -- to take that at face value and to understand that within that, that announces a certain kind of heterogenic activity in the locale, said Walker, director of education and associate curator at the Renaissance Society, a contemporary art museum in Chicago. Advertisement See more of Entertainments top stories on Facebook >> The Hammer biennial, this year carrying the full name Made in L.A. 2016: a, the, though, only, showcases emerging and underrepresented artists in a variety of disciplines including sculpture, painting, film and video, fashion, music, literature and performance. Over 12 months, Moshayedi and Walker visited about 200 studios in Southern California, roaming as far south as San Diego, as far north as Ventura and as far east as Joshua Tree. They whittled participants down to 26 -- the slimmest Made in L.A. exhibition yet. The museums 2012 biennial included 60 artists; its 2014 event featured 35. But paring back participants was a purposeful less-is-more strategy. Each of those 26 contributions by artists are quite deep and heavy and substantive. Hammer Museum curator Aram Moshayedi Twenty-six is seemingly small in relationship to previous iterations of Made in L.A., said Moshayedi, a Hammer curator. But each of those 26 contributions by artists are quite deep and heavy and substantive. So often with these biennials, the ambition gets confused with the addition of more and more artists, and we really wanted to hone in and concentrate to create mini exhibitions within the exhibition -- everything from condensed monographic surveys to presentations of multi-year projects. During their search for artists, Moshayedi and Walker sought diversity. Participants hail from Lebanon, Colombia, Spain, Switzerland, Brazil and Australia, among others. The range of genres can be seen in performance artist Adam Linders site-specific dances and trumpet player Wadada Leo Smiths exhibition of drawn and painted scores produced from 1967 to 2014. In literature, visual artist-poet Dena Yago contributed an original poem to the exhibition catalog, and minimalist poet Aram Saroyan wrote the subtitle for the exhibition, a, the, though, only. We thought about the subtitle as a space to commission a new poem, Moshayedi says. Were also in conversation with him about some kind of performative element that would be in conjunction with the title. One key exhibition wont take place at the museum at all -- and you may or may not be able to see it. Artist Todd Gray will create a memorial to his late friend, the Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek, by wearing Manzareks clothes, in his everyday life, for the duration of Made in L.A. Its a living sculpture, Walker says. The idea is meant to challenge notions of ephemerality, as well as what constitutes a museum space. Guthrie Lonergan will show a Web-based project on the Hammers site involving other artists websites and mission statements; the point is to explore professional presentations of artists online. The two-person fashion house collective Eckhaus Latta was commissioned to produce an ad campaign for their upcoming line of clothes, and the designers will show a video of those ads in the museum. Among the new bodies of work and commissions in the biennial: film and video installations by Kenneth Tam, Martine Syms and Shahryar Nashat. Other new projects by emerging artists of note include installations by Rafa Esparza and Lauren Davis Fisher that will change during the exhibition. The biennial also will recontextualize the work of better known artists. It will present art star Sterling Ruby in a new light with a different body of work -- an installation of wrought-iron work tables from the artists studio that references labor movements. Kenzi Shiokava, 78, and Huguette Caland, 85, the oldest artists in the exhibition, will exhibit condensed surveys of their work. And cinematographer Arthur Jafa, who has worked with Spike Lee, will show a collection of mixed media collage look books that he created while working on films during the last 15 years. Made in L.A. 2016' illuminates what is so exciting and distinctive about L.A. as a cutting-edge art center right now, Hammer Director Ann Philbin said. Its truly remarkable how so many artists -- from vastly different backgrounds and disciplines -- have gathered here to make this such a vital destination for contemporary creative voices. Made in L.A. 2016 will be on view June 12 to Aug. 28. The full list of biennial participants is below. Kelly Akashi (b. 1983, Los Angeles) Huguette Caland (b. 1931, Beirut, Lebanon) Eckhaus Latta (est. 2011; Zoe Latta, b. 1987, Santa Cruz; Mike Eckhaus, b. 1987, New York) Rafa Esparza (b. 1981, Los Angeles) Lauren Davis Fisher (b. 1984, Cambridge, Mass.) Todd Gray (b. 1954, Los Angeles) Joel Holmberg (b. 1982, Bethesda, Md.) Margaret Honda (b. 1961, San Diego) Arthur Jafa (b. 1960, Tupelo, Miss.) Labor Link TV (est. 1988; Fred Lonidier, b. 1942, Lakeview, Ore.) Laida Lertxundi (b. 1981, Bilbao, Spain) Adam Linder (b. 1983, Sydney, Australia) Guthrie Lonergan (b. 1984, Los Angeles) Rebecca Morris (b.1969, Honolulu) Shahryar Nashat (b. 1975, Geneva) Silke Otto-Knapp (b.1970, Osnabruck, Germany) Gala Porras-Kim (b. 1984, Bogota, Colombia) Sterling Ruby (b. 1972, Bitburg, Germany) Aram Saroyan (b. 1943, New York) Kenzi Shiokava (b. 1938, Sao Paulo, Brazil) Daniel R. Small (b.1984, Centralia, Ill.) Wadada Leo Smith (b.1941, Leland, Miss.) Martine Syms (b. 1988, Los Angeles) Kenneth Tam (b. 1982, New York) Mark Verabioff (b. 1963, Kingston, Canada) Dena Yago (b. 1988, New York) deborah.vankin@latimes.com Follow me on Twitter: @debvankin MORE: Californias fault lines, stitched by hand: One artists tweaking of a homespun craft Q&A: Cecil Balmond on his sculpture for Santa Monica Boulevard and why it honors a Persian emperor FULL COVERAGE: Gallery and museum reviews The first ever Suicide Squad footage was an intense mix of DC Comics greatest supervillains mugging to deeply dramatic music. But this first, official Suicide Squad trailer takes the gang in a whole new direction, a fun direction. Could this Warner Bros. comic book movie be channeling ... humor? Director David Ayers adaptation of the DC Comics series builds a secret task force made entirely out of the undesirables and incarcerated villains. The deal is simple, if the prisoner can survive the near-impossible mission, they will receive a pardon for their crimes. And if they dont survive, then its one less big bad lurking about in Arkham (or wherever the comic book government is secretly housing comic book convicts). The movie version of the Suicide Squad is made up of Deadshot (Will Smith), Slipknot (Adam Beach), Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney), Enchantress (Cara Delevingne), Katana (Karen Fukuhara), Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman), Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), El Diablo (Jay Hernandez), and the ever loved, deeply popular Harley Quinn character played by Margot Robbie. Advertisement Usually paired with the Joker, Quinn and her Mr. Jay are clearly separate in this adaptation, however this trailer shows the new Joker (played by Jared Leto) and Quinn together in action. No doubt Leto will factor into the Suicide Squad in some way, but where he fits in, were not sure. Suicide Squad will premiere Aug. 5. MORE: A super-scary Jesse Eisenberg? Meet the new Lex Luthor (with hair) in Batman v Superman First look at Benedict Cumberbatch as Marvels Doctor Strange Review: Comic book icon Stan Lees Amazing Fantastic Incredible memoir doesnt live up to the superlatives There were more than 40 mass shootings in the United States last year, prompting many politicians to hold forth and a large number of Americans to simply shake their heads. What needed to happen, they asked, for these tragedies to stop? Now a new group is entering the debate: independent filmmakers. When the Sundance Film Festival begins Thursday, it will do so with a rare accumulation of movies about the subject of gun safety. All of them hope to raise questions, if not provide solutions, in a place that has long been a ground zero for cultural movements. SIGN UP for the free Indie Focus movies newsletter >> Advertisement Every conversation has to start somewhere, and sometimes that somewhere is Park City, Utah, said AJ Schnack, a documentary-film veteran who, with the input of Oscar winner Laura Poitras, has directed Speaking Is Difficult, a short about gun violence that will premiere at the festival. Clearly everyones been talking about the issue, but the hope is that by talking about it artistically we can have a different kind of conversation. Schnacks movie, a powerfully arranged collection of both everyday footage and 911 calls, is one of several films across both documentary and narrative categories to tackle mass shootings, defined by federal statute as the murder by gunfire of at least three people. Others include Kim Snyders community portrait Newtown, the Katie Couric-produced policy piece Under the Gun and even a scripted film, Tim Suttons The Dark Night. An impressionistic tale set during the prelude to a movie-theater shooting, Night is loosely based on the tragedy at a multiplex in Aurora, Colo., in 2012 during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises that claimed the lives of 12 people. Historically, Sundance, the nations most prestigious film festival, has displayed a flair for setting a cultural agenda. A decade ago, Davis Guggenheims An Inconvenient Truth helped kickstart a climate-change movement, and Gabriela Cowperthwaites Blackfish in 2013 was the beginning of a long campaign to influence a policy shift at Sea World. But rarely do multiple movies on a single issue come along at the same time, and from so many different angles. While Under the Gun, directed by past Couric collaborator Stephanie Soechtig, examines many of the policy aspects more directly, Snyders piece, about the December 2012 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, is concerned primarily with the aftermath of gun violence in one community. Legislative questions are not addressed, and even the killers name is not mentioned. Instead, viewers are given wrenching access to a place that more than three years later continues to grapple with an attack that claimed the lives of 26 victims, many of them small children. I have this need to know what he experienced, Mark Barden, who lost a son in the attack, says in heartbreaking tones. Imagine, he continues try[ing] to interpret what your 7-year-old experienced as hes being murdered in his first-grade classroom. Or David Wheeler, another parent who lost a child at Sandy Hook, says of what he and his wife Francine have endured since their son Ben was killed. Were all terrified of forgetting what he looked like or sounded like. Snyder, a New York-based filmmaker, traveled to Newtown just weeks after the attack and slowly won the trust of an understandably guarded community. She said she hoped to show both the tragic effects of violence and the resilience that can emerge in its wake. This film is not an either/or policy piece, she said of her movie, which is one of the most emotionally devastating movies this Sundance veteran has seen in some time. I was trying to create a portrait of a collective trauma, and do it in a way that becomes universal. I think it speaks more to the issue of how a society deals with grief. An even more observational style characterizes the work of Sutton, a veteran narrative filmmaker who here offers an homage to Gus van Sants 2003 Cannes prize winner Elephant in exploring the topic. Taking a restrained, meditative approach, he follows a series of largely young people in a suburban town on the day a movie-theater attack will soon take place. Sutton subverts expectations of who the shooter is while also reveling in the kind of banalities that heighten the effect of the impending brutality. This [movie] is going to be amazing, said one young moviegoer later in the film as she sat down in the theater, just after she compliments her friend on her eyeliner. Though he describes himself as politically to the left and in favor of more gun restrictions, Suttons film contains no overt ideology, and he said he had little desire to offer a policy rebuke. He hoped instead to offer exposure to the people who are affected by gun violence and, especially via long takes of a character cleaning and maintaining his gun, the weapons themselves. I wanted to show guns and the space they occupy in suburban America, Sutton, who grew up with modest exposure to guns in upstate New York, said. Theyre always around, and yet for a lot of people the only time they see them is in a Michael Bay movie. I wanted to get the audience really close to them, but not in a sensational or glitzy way. He added, I didnt want to explain or judge [gun usage]; i just wanted to observe. Its just a portrait of America right now. But while almost everyone behind these pieces says they want to stay away from policy prescriptions on gun ownership, they are all motivated by a growing political dissatisfaction. The last five months of 2015 alone, they noted, saw brutal tragedies in locations as varied as Roseburg, Ore., Houston and San Bernadino. I think its the zeitgeist, said Maria Cuomo Cole, who produced Newtown. Its burgeoning and burgeoning, and we are horrified and move on, then are horrified and move on again. As Americans were not very good at paying attention long-term; were mobilized and then fall back into our patterns. These films, she says, can create a more enduring reminder of the issues potency. (They also, it should be said, aim to offer an indie-film corrective of sorts to mainstream Hollywood, which on movie screens continues to glamorize gun violence.) Gun safety has occasionally flickered across the Sundance radar. In 2014, for instance, William H. Macys narrative piece Rudderless, about a campus shooting, closed the festival. But these new movies seethe in a different way, complementing and compounding one another. Taken together, they yield a composite portrait of a creative class angered by inaction. Schnacks movie, which will debut in the coming months as part of a new season of the Field of Vision documentary series, stacks 911 calls from mass shootingspeople in hushed scared tones speaking from hiding spots during the attacks to officious operators-- with a depressing repetiveness The idea that each time seems new and urgent to those victims is contrasted with the viewers growing sense of how familiar these calls have become. Only when the film culminates in a speech from shooting victim and former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D.-Ariz.) is there some emotional release, and hope for a policy solution. But whether these works of cinema can sway opinion is an open question. Even the most optimistic filmmakers say they know there are limits to how much they can move the needle on an issue on which many voters have long made up their minds. (That point was underscored recently when Taya Kyle, widow of American Sniper protagonist Chris Kyle, wrote a strongly worded op-ed for CNN arguing against gun safety laws.) The entrenched opinions on the issue, the filmmakers acknowledge, are infinitely more complex than the politics of responsibility articulated by movies like Blackfish. Sundance filmmakers must also contend with the idea that they are simply speaking to the converted, particularly in a left-leaning industry like the independent-film business. As influential as the festival is among tastemakers and media elite, only a few movies each year, at most, break out in the larger culture and carry the possibility of reshaping a debate. Festival organizers say they had no agenda in programming these movies. They simply slotted in the films because they saw a wave of powerful stories. I thought I knew a lot about Newtown before I saw this movie, said festival director John Cooper. And then I saw it and it changed my perception. You can be callous in looking at news stories in a way you dont when youre watching a film, he added. Thats why I think these movies can really help change the way you think. Either way, the festival and independent film world at large is unlikely to see the number of such movies slow down. Like Middle East war documentaries and other sprawling areas, the 2016 crop of gun movies may be less a moment than the beginning of a wave. As long as the problem doesnt go away, said Sutton, neither will the films. @ZeitchikLAT You Might Also Like: For Citizenfour director Laura Poitras, a bold new platform With #OscarSoWhite trending for the second year in a row, talk of an Oscars boycott is gaining momentum in some Hollywood circles and across social media. Actress Jada Pinkett Smith was first to draw a line in the sand after her husband Will Smith's performance in "Concussion" was passed over for a nomination along with performances by many other black actors. She wont even be watching this year, and adds, "Maybe it is time that we pull back our resources and we put them back into our communities." Spike Lee, long overlooked by the academy, was scheduled to be awarded an honorary Oscar this year, but in an Instagram post said he wont be there to receive it. Today, he told George Stephanopoulos on "Good Morning America" that he's going to a Knicks' game. He also clarified that he never used the word "boycott" to describe his plans, even though others have. JOIN THE CONVERSATION: ARE YOU PLANNING TO WATCH OR BOYCOTT THE OSCARS? Others in Hollywood, however, question the wisdom of a boycott. Whoopi Goldberg said Tuesday on "The View" that a boycott would be a "slap in the face" to host Chris Rock. "You want to boycott something?" she said. "Don't go see the movies that don't have your representation. That's the boycott you want." Janet Hubert, who played Aunt Viv in "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" with Will Smith, put out a video on Monday critical of Pinkett Smith's boycott call. "I find it ironic that somebody who has made...millions and millions of dollars from the very people that you're talking about boycotting just because you didn't get a nomination, just because you didn't win?" Hubert said. "That's not the way life works, baby." Still, the nomination haven't come easily for black actors. Hattie McDaniel was the first African American to win an Oscar in 1940, when she was honored in the supporting actress category for her role as Mammy in "Gone With the Wind." It took 24 more years for another black actor to be honored with the distinction of Oscar winner: Sidney Poitier was the first black male to win the lead actor category. And it took 38 more years for a black woman to win for lead actress -- that was Halle Berry. After "12 Years a Slave" won three Oscars in 2014, including best picture, many hoped the need for diversity discussions would diminish. But here we are now with a monochromatic cast of acting nominees. Again. (Hollywood does love a sequel.) What do you think: Should actors should boycott the Oscars? Will you boycott watching? Tell us why in the comments below or on Facebook michelle.maltais@latimes.com My life is a made-for-TV movie: @mmaltaisla 9:01 p.m.: This post was updated with additional information about calls against an Oscars boycott. Fetty Wap and Blink-182. Drake and Say Anything. Justin Bieber and Fall Out Boy. At a moment when the Internet has hastened the erosion of traditional genre lines, the idea of a pop idol or a rapper teaming with an emo band isnt as hard to imagine as it once might have been. But just because something can be envisioned doesnt mean someone has actually done it at least in real life. Give thanks, then, to Captain Cuts, the Los Angeles trio that gives virtual life to those fantasy-league collaborations on If Youre Listening Its Never Too Late, a delightful new mixtape that mashes up songs by todays chart stars with yesterdays drama kings. Posted last month on the free streaming site SoundCloud (where it quickly racked up more than a quarter of a million plays), the half-hour-long set conjures fond memories of a not-so-distant past no surprise, given that it grew out of Captain Cuts regular DJ gig at Taking Back Tuesday, a popular L.A. club night catering to emo fans who came of age in the early to mid-2000s. Advertisement Yet the mixtape is more than a millennial nostalgia trip. Its also a savvy demonstration of musical understanding that peaks when the trio seamlessly matches the yelping vocals from the All-American Rejects Swing, Swing to the pulsing electronic groove of Where Are U Now, the ubiquitous 2015 banger by Jack U featuring Bieber. At the time, the emo stuff wasnt really for the mainstream, said Ben Berger, one-third of Captain Cuts, along with Ryan Rabin and Ryan McMahon. It was something for the kids in the scene to hold on to and kind of build a community around. But when you listen back, its clear these guys were great pop songwriters. The melodies are hit melodies. Berger should know: When theyre not revising guitar-band history, the three (all between ages 28 and 30) work as freelance writers and producers in L.A.'s busy pop-music industry. Last year they scored a top 5 single with Shut Up and Dance, by Walk the Moon, and co-wrote and produced Roman Holiday, a cut from Halseys Badlands album, which entered the Billboard 200 at No. 2. Like virtually everything on Top 40 radio, the Captain Cuts sound is slick and precision-geared. Yet Berger said their goal isnt merely to impress other producers with their programming skills. Cool but approachable, he called it, adding, We want our music to be something that a kid and their mom can both enjoy. The three met as students at Harvard-Westlake School, where they played in various bands and learned to record themselves using hand-me-down equipment from Rabins father, the producer and film composer Trevor Rabin. After going to separate colleges, they reconvened in L.A. around 2010 and started writing together almost as a joke, Ryan Rabin recalled as he sat behind a mixing board in the trios cozy North Hollywood studio. We were like, Should we just try to make a funny Miley Cyrus song? he said. At first you think its going to be easy, added McMahon. Then you find out its actually really hard. Honing their abilities in part through work with Grouplove, the rock band in which Rabin plays drums, the producers kept at it and eventually won the attention of publishing companies and record labels. Now theyve built songs for acts such as Tove Lo, Sabrina Carpenter and the squeaky-clean sibling outfit R5. Jeremy Vuernick, an A&R executive at Halseys label, Astralwerks, said that Captain Cuts specialty is helping artists give shape to fanciful concepts, just as the trio did with its alternate-universe mash-ups. For Roman Holiday, Vuernick said, Halsey went to them with a landscape she wanted painted something kind of vintage-feeling and they took her vision and put it to sound. And these are guys, he added, wholl work till 8 in the morning to get it right. They were no less dogged making If Youre Listening Its Never Too Late, whose title is a riff on the name of a 2015 record by Drake. (As the result of a complaint from the rappers label over the use of his vocals, the Captain Cuts mixtape was recently removed from SoundCloud but is now streaming on YouTube.) To find instrumental parts and a cappella vocal tracks, many hacked from the Guitar Hero and Rock Band video games, the three searched the deepest crevices of the Internet, said McMahon. Then they assembled a spreadsheet listing the key and the beats per minute of each song they wanted to use and started lining up tunes to see which ones fit. This makes us sound like the biggest losers of all time, Berger said with a laugh. Yet every time they landed on a killer combination DJ Snake with Dashboard Confessional, or Paramore with Selena Gomez we knew we had to keep going, said Rabin. Earlier this month Captain Cuts brought the music back to its spiritual home for a jampacked party celebrating Taking Back Tuesdays one-year anniversary. The club night is scheduled next for Feb. 2 at the Echoplex in Echo Park. Its so fun, Berger said of watching a room react to an unexpected pairing. Its good advertising, too. Since we started doing this, weve had several people reach out, said Rabin. Theyll say, Oh, my God, this is amazing! Can we do a session for, like, a real thing? mikael.wood@latimes.com While the eastern half of the U.S. tweeted about the Grammy Awards ceremony, viewers of the broadcast on the West Coast needed to waited three hours to weigh in unless they happened to be watching inside the Staples Center. That will no longer be the case as CBS, the network rights holder to the trophy show honoring the recording industry, is catering to the social media crowd by airing the Grammys live on TV stations it owns in Los Angeles (KCBS), San Francisco (KPIX), Sacramento (KOVR) and Denver (KCNC). Starting with the 58th Annual Grammy Awards held on Feb. 15 at the Staples Center, the live feed of the ceremony previously shown only in the Eastern and Central time zones will be seen at 5 p.m. PT and 6 p.m. MT on CBS-owned stations. CBS affiliates that currently run the telecast on a delayed basis also have the option to take the live feed. Advertisement GRAMMYS 2016: Full coverage | Complete list of nominees All CBS stations and affiliates in the western time zones will continue to show a tape-delayed Grammys telecast in prime time as they have in the past. The Grammy Awards routinely ranks as one of the years highest-rated TV broadcasts. Last years event averaged 24.8 million viewers, with about one-third of them in the 18- to 49-year-old age group that advertisers covet. The Oscars, the Emmy Awards and the Golden Globes air live across all time zones. Most other live award shows air on a delayed basis in western time zones so that stations can take advantage of higher television usage levels in prime time. But live TV events have become valuable commodities as a growing number of viewers watch their favorite programs on their own schedule through video-on-demand platforms or Internet streaming. Commenting online about memorable moments that happen during awards telecasts has become part of the live viewing experience. NBCs Jan. 11 telecast of the Golden Globes generated 4.4 million comments on Twitter. Twitter: @SteveBattaglio MORE ON THE GRAMMYS Drake gets nominated by applying new models to rap traditions 2016 Grammy Awards nominations bring snubs (Rihanna) and surprises (Courtney Barnett) Best historical album Grammy reps jazz, Native Americans, prisoners and activists Despite the landmark year that 2015 was for transgender visibility on screens large and small, there is still a long way to go in order to fully represent trans experiences. Though many may feel inundated with examples of trans identity -- from actress Laverne Cox and writer Janet Mock to Jeffrey Tambor in Transparent or Eddie Redmayne in The Danish Girl -- actress Jen Richards isnt buying it. Right now were in the Sidney Poitier phase of trans representation, where the few that we have have to be so unassailable so that we can open doors, she said in an interview with The Times last year. But whats next is we need our hot messes, our rebels, our sexpots and drama queens. We need representation across the board. In an effort to vary such representation, Richards, who is transgender and known for being on I am Cait, teamed up with Laura Zak to pen the script for a Web series called Her Story. The series of six 10-minute episodes, available online for free Tuesday after a successful crowd-funding campaign, follows the lives of two trans women (played by Richards and Angelica Ross, who is also trans) and a queer woman (played by Zak) as they navigate the intersections of desire and identity. Advertisement Ahead of the release of the drama, Richards and Zak, along with producer Katherine Fisher, sat down with The Times to discuss creating Her Story and pulling together a team of primarily trans and queer women to get the job done. So tell me, how did the idea for this series come about? Zak: Jen and I met on the set of the Web series I starred in and co-wrote called #Hashtag. We had a tiny cameo together, but ended up talking and becoming friends. We originally explored a storyline where we would do a spinoff of #Hashtag with the relationship between our two characters, but after talking more, we eventually decided it deserved its own entirely new world and show. So the core origin was our chemistry and friendship and learning more about each others community. And what about you Kate, how did you come on board as producer? Fisher: Weve all known each other for years. I remember us doing a read-through -- I read Angelicas part very well -- and I just really fell in love with the script. They were getting produced by another company out of Chicago, but [when that fell through] I came in and convinced them to let me produce it. And they let me. We started pre-production three weeks later. As the writers, whats the message you wanted people to take away? Richards: I dont think it was so much that we were constructing a conscious message as it was wanting to ground a story in real characters and real experiences that we had never seen depicted in any other form of media. I had never seen relationships between trans women and cisgender women depicted. I had never seen friendship between two trans women -- much less a black woman and a white woman -- or the issues of a trans woman who passes or issues with disclosure and what its like to date. I hadnt seen any of this reflected, but it was my lived reality. [Crafting the script] was more about fidelity to the truth of Angelica and my experience and wanting to keep it as authentic as possible. You pack in a lot of topics in that one hour Richards: And there was more before the editing. One of the topics I really liked was the line about the tacit acceptance of trans people by the broader LGBT community and how we can be complicit in transphobia. With such complex topics, was it difficult putting them into the script? Zak: I dont think it was difficult to tackle that particular theme because that was one of the obstacles built in for [my character] Allie, and grappling with this attraction she was feeling. She was looking at her own [surroundings], of what she believed was a progressive queer community of friends, and seeing there were no trans people. And then learning through her friends reaction to her new connection with this person, the transphobia within the queer community. I think a lot of people outside of the queer community dont realize how much division there is within the LGBTQ world. For that part, the theme organically came out the story. Richards: What that line refers to is something that was present from the very genesis. A lot of people in the queer community, because theyre queer, see themselves as particularly progressive and therefore are cut off from some of these other issues. But their groups are often entirely white, middle class, college educated and cis. They have an intellectual understanding of a lot of these issues without any direct experience. Did you all run into any major hiccups pulling your team together? Richards: The big one was we really wanted a trans director because it was one of our intentions to employ trans people and make sure they were a part of every aspect of production. But there arent many trans directors out there who are at the level we wanted the work to be at and available and that we could afford. So we gave up on that and looked for queer women and women of color directors, ideally a queer woman of color. Thats how Sydney Freeland came to us. We knew her as a queer Navajo filmmaker whose other feature had a trans storyline and used a trans actor. We didnt know she was trans into well into meeting her, but we ended up hiring a trans woman of color because of her work rather than her identity and it was the exact identity we would have wanted anyway. I feel like the whole production had these types of happy accidents that ended up working out. Zak: Something else that presented challenges was the fact that when Jen and I first conceived of this, it was very small in scale. With Kate coming on, and Sarah Baker-Grillo and Sydney, it elevated the scope of what we were trying to make. So it got bigger and bigger as we went on. But on the other side of it, the project was attracting to it so many people who really believed in it. Fisher: I remember Skyping with Jen and being like, I just need to let you know that the budget is more now than what it was, nervous about what she was going to say. One of the bigger challenges was attracting the big, amazingly talented people and then trying to find a way to get them what they need to make the series we all envisioned. Both Jen and Angelica had fairly limited acting experience. As two of the leads, did that cause any pause? Richards: On multiple occasions I told them we might need to recast my part. [laughs] How terrifying that must be not knowing whether Angelica and I could act. Fisher: We had some leeway in casting, but Jen, Laura and Angelica were in it from the beginning. We [just decided that] were bringing in a supporting cast that can create the best space for them. Zak: I think that is where the truthfulness of the story and a lot of the lived experiences playing out in fiction form come to play because there is such an authenticity in both of their performances. Fisher: When we were in it, we knew this was going to be great. But it was something we had to think about. You spoke about the struggle of getting trans and queer women to be a part of every facet of production. We hear people make assertions that there arent trans or queer talent out there. What would you say to those people? Zak: I think its twofold. One is that they are out there. You need to do a minimal amount of work to find these professionals. They are working. They are talented and the level is high. You just have to make a conscious effort to find them. Fisher: And to hire them. It requires them having a chance to have their resume built up. Zak: Thats the other part of it, from my perspective of seeing it on the acting side as an actor. Creating more opportunities for people in the trans and queer community to learn these skills, because I would say the one difficult part we had was finding trans actors that were good. And thats not because theyre not out there. There are a lot of trans actors out there, but so far, I dont think there has been a system in place for training that there has been for cis actors. Fisher: Or agent representation. Richards: Look at what we did. Look at Happy Birthday Marsha that Mya [Taylor] and Cherno [Biko] are in. To me its a silly question and objection. When they say that, it has nothing to do with us. It actually reveals the paucity of their vision rather than the lack of talent. Get your life! Follow me on Twitter: @TrevellAnderson. When Anheuser-Busch InBev bought Golden Road Brewing in September, many craft beer drinkers in Los Angeles, whod followed the local brewerys rapid growth and expansion, were not surprised. There was a sentiment repeated in tweets, Internet forums and comment threads that Golden Road was built to sell. Its easy to grasp that narrative; Golden Road was different than the other upstart breweries that strove to transform L.A. into a craft beer destination. Golden Road started off bigger than nearly every other craft brewery in Los Angeles and grew faster than all of them. At the time of the sale, Golden Road was on pace to produce more than 45,000 barrels of beer a year (the next largest L.A. brewery could only produce a quarter of that), and Golden Road distributed its beer across California and into neighboring states. See more of our top stories on Facebook >> Advertisement But Tony Yanow, one of the founding partners of Golden Road Brewing, wants to put the built to sell rumors to rest. We didnt have a single conversation about selling the brewery before August [2015], he said during his first interview about the sale. There was not a thought about selling until then. So what changed in August? Yanow says there were a few reasons behind the sale, but it boils down to how quickly the craft beer marketplace has changed over the lifespan of the brewery, especially in Los Angeles. Simply put, he says it was an if you cant beat them, join them situation. Its just business, said Yanow. I dont think of it as selling out. I didnt sell out my soul, I didnt sell out my love for beer. I sold my business, and I find it hard to believe that anyone in my shoes wouldnt have done it too. It turns out that the challenge of operating a midsize craft brewery isnt so much making the beer, its getting that beer into bars and, even more importantly, onto shelves. In a world where the amount of shelf space is not growing, but the number of breweries is growing so quickly, its a fight to get your beer [into major retailers], said Yanow. And it is a fight that is becoming increasingly difficult as the biggest players in the beer world continue to consolidate, acquire more brands and strengthen their grip on distribution networks and retail accounts. Yanow said the Golden Road Brewing executive team was already feeling the pressure before last summers spate of acquisitions, and they knew the waters would get tougher ahead. When Meg [Meg Gill, co-founder of Golden Road] said they wanted to buy us, it was surprising, but it was also a relief, said Yanow, even though he said that he wanted nothing more than to run the brewery until he retired. Maybe my daughter would take it over some day, said Yanow. But the offer was too good to pass up. Financial details of the purchase were not disclosed, but Yanow said there wasnt really any reason to say no to that deal. They treated us really well, they gave us a really good valuation and they promised to keep all our people employed and give them opportunities for advancement. Yanow is particularly happy with that final stipulation. I wouldnt have done it without that agreement in place, he said. Whats next for Yanow? His two restaurants Mohawk Bend in Echo Park and Tonys Darts Away in Burbank were not a part of the Golden Road deal, and its business as usual at those bars. I want to do something different, he said. Im still the same guy, still the same beer lover, but the difference is now I have some of ABs money that Im going to go use for new beer projects. Hes looking at a few options from Ventura to Orange County, as well as launching a brewpub in Los Angeles. I dont have any interest in another big brewery, Ive done that, said Yanow, though he wouldnt reveal any details on the new brewpub. The beer world is changing, and the enthusiasm in L.A. is so vigorous. Its still really exciting to be a part of it. ALSO: Local bananas return to Santa Monica farmers market The Butchers Daughter vegetarian cafe opens today on Abbot Kinney Golden State of Cocktails returns to Los Angeles with drought-friendly drinks and plenty of whiskey The Democratic chairman of the state Senate transportation committee said he plans to hold oversight hearings on the bullet train to examine its management performance, construction schedules and cost estimates. The hearings, chaired by Sen. James Beall Jr. of San Jose, would provide the first significant legislative oversight of the project in four years, during which it has fallen far behind schedule and concerns have mounted over its costs and other uncertainties. Beall said his objective is to find a way to accelerate the construction schedule to reduce costs. The lawmaker said the hearings will be called soon after the state rail authority issues its 2016 business plan, which is expected in coming weeks. Advertisement See more of our top stories on Facebook >> The oversight will be much more extensive, said Beall, who has been involved in state transportation issues for decades. Dont doubt that we will instill some fiscal oversight of the high-speed rail. The business plan will lay out the states latest vision for how it will fund, build and eventually operate the 220-mph trains. It will be crucial to answering concerns that have grown in the last two years as expected construction in the Central Valley fell well short of plans owing to the states failure to obtain adequate parcels of land. At the same time, the state has not yet attracted private investors as it had hoped. The delays and funding shortfalls pose major obstacles to its existing plan, adopted in 2014, to complete an initial operating segment from Burbank to Merced by 2022. That link will require boring about 36 miles of tunnels through geologically complex mountains, building as many as six stations, erecting new high-voltage electrical lines and constructing a heavy maintenance facility. The initial operating segment is the proposed foundation block that would enable the state to attract private investors and complete the 500-mile system. The hearings will mark a sharp increase in the political oversight in Sacramento. Gov. Jerry Brown and Democrats have not scrutinized the project despite mounting questions from construction and rail experts and Republicans in Sacramento and Washington. A joint state legislative committee last week rejected a proposal to authorize an audit by the California state auditor, who has not examined the project for four years. The last audit raised warnings about a wide range of potential risks and recommended the project needed additional oversight. A new audit was requested by Sen. Andy Vidak (R-Hanford), who says the Legislatures refusal has been the direct result of enormous pressure on Democrats from Brown and the partys leadership, afraid that negative findings would jeopardize the project. It is the biggest program in the United States, and the refusal to have an audit is ridiculous, Vidak said. We wanted this audit to show the waste and abuse of this program. The inflated costs are outrageous. Spokesmen for Brown did not respond directly to Vidaks assertion, but said in an email, We remain strongly committed to this project...and support the Authoritys effort to modernize transportation, and do so transparently and with continued public input. Jeff Morales, chief executive of the rail authority, said last week in a letter to Assemblyman Mike Gipson (D-Carson), chairman of the audit committee, that the project is already subject to strong oversight. The committee denied the audit request on a straight party line vote. Gipson declined a request to be interviewed. Despite the rejection of an independent audit, lawmakers are taking steps to increase their own attention to the project. In addition to Bealls hearing, an Assembly budget subcommittee on transportation will hold a hearing next week, an apparent follow-up to a pledge by Speaker Toni Atkins to hold a hearing in response to an unpublished cost estimate that showed the cost of building an initial operating segment had jumped from $31 billion to $40 billion. The Times disclosed the cost estimate in October, noting that it was the product of two years of study by a team of engineers from the states principal contractor, Parsons Brinckerhoff. The estimate was not adopted in the 2014 business plan, however. Instead, the state stuck with a lower cost estimate from 2012. California High Speed Rail Authority officials have dismissed the cost estimate as only a draft. The Assembly hearing is scheduled to include testimony by Morales and rail authority Chairman Dan Richard. Also testifying will be Louis Thompson, chairman of a peer review panel mandated under the 2008 bullet train bond act. Thompson has recommended that the Legislature consider the creation of a special unit in the Legislative Analysts Office or elsewhere with the resources and continuity to keep an eye on the project continuously. He said he would reiterate that recommendation next week. Assemblyman Jim Patterson (R-Fresno), a member of the transportation budget subcommittee, said he intends to question whether the entire project can be completed for the advertised $68 billion. So far, the Democratic leadership has blocked any serious examination of the projects challenges, he said. It has been a white wash and a rubber-stamp look, Patterson said. I want to drill down on the limits of the states authority. It needs to be put through a significant wringer. In Washington, Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Turlock), chairman of the House rail subcommittee, said he plans to convene hearings this year, though a date has not been set. After The Times disclosed the Parsons Brinckerhoff cost estimate, a dozen members of Congress wrote a letter to the company demanding that it release the document. We have long warned that the authority is not being honest with the public about the true costs of constructing high speed rail in California, Denham and the other Republicans said. It is alarming that the authoritys lead consultant would raise warnings with the authority that would subsequently be hidden from the public. California voters in 2008 approved initial bond funding for the high speed system. At the time, the costs were estimated at $33 billion, less than half the current estimate. Since then, as costs rose the project was scaled back at both ends, with planners sharply reducing train speeds from Anaheim to Los Angeles in the south and San Jose to San Francisco in the north. Public opinion polls over the last three years have found that support has flagged as costs have risen. A new poll by Stanford Universitys Hoover Institution, released last week, found that 53% of voters want the opportunity to stop the bullet train and redirect funds to water projects. NEWSLETTER: Get essential California headlines delivered daily >> Despite the public concern, Brown has held his ranks together to support the biggest program of his administration. But some divisions have appeared among Democrats in recent months. Sen. Richard Roth (D-Riverside) is now opposed to the project, said Charles Dalldorf, Roths chief of staff. There is no direct benefit to his district, Dalldorf said. He hears about it almost every time he makes an appearance in the district. Assemblywoman Patty Lopez, responding to an outpouring of anger over the trains possible route through her low-income minority community in the San Fernando Valley, said last month that she was no longer supporting the project. Patterson said he suspects that Democratic members have lost faith in the project and are just biding time until Brown leaves office in 2018, a view that some legislative staffers say may accurately represent the views of some members. ralph.vartabedian@latimes.com ALSO L.A. council may tighten penalties for LAX taxi drivers who show racial bias The situation is dire as Borrego Water Districts aquifer is being rapidly depleted Lawmaker renews push for Marine killed in Iraq fight to receive Medal of Honor Good morning. It is Wednesday, Jan. 20. Animal control officers keep getting called out to a San Jose home on reports of a bobcat. It turns out neighbors arent seeing a wild animal but rather a 27-pound Maine Coon cat named Spock, who enjoys opening doors and watching YouTube videos. Heres what else is happening in the Golden State: TOP STORIES Legal settlements Advertisement Two men who were released from prison after they were wrongfully convicted of murder will receive $24 million from the city of Los Angeles. Kash Delano Register spent 34 years behind bars, while Bruce Lisker was jailed for 26 years for the murder of his mother. Both men were released after attorneys successfully argued that the LAPD had bungled their investigations. Todays action helps make amends for the many years these men will never get back, and for lives that will never be the same, according to a spokesman for City Atty. Mike Feuer. Los Angeles Times Serious allegations Yogi Bikram Choudhury took to the witness stand this week to deny allegations that he sexually assaulted or harassed women who were his devoted followers. Choudhury spent 40 years building an empire based on yoga postures done in a room where temperatures reach 104 degrees. Big lies is how the yogi explained the allegations against him. Los Angeles Times DROUGHT AND CLIMATE Rainy day: The Bay Area flooded Tuesday as rainstorms poured down during the morning commute. Power lines came down in Berkeley and a rock slide closed Niles Canyon Road in Fremont. SFGate L.A. AT LARGE Contracting practices: The city of Los Angeles plans to spend tens of millions of dollars on body cameras for police officers, but rather than go through a bidding process from scratch, city officials want to piggyback on a contract from Kern County. The move has prompted complaints from technology companies that say they were not given the opportunity to compete against Taser International. One member of the Police Commission says those concerns are just sour grapes from losing firms. Los Angeles Times Slow days: Times are tough for businesses in Porter Ranch. Children are leaving school, patients are transferring their prescriptions, and people are forgoing luxuries like having their hair and nails done. Business owners blame the natural gas leak in nearby Aliso Canyon. I could take out a loan, but who will pay it off for me? said the manager at a nail salon. Los Angeles Times New to Watts: The Internet is going crazy for the new restaurant from chefs Roy Choi and Daniel Patterson. Locol will try to make its market in fast-food central, also known as Watts. Los Angeles Times POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT On time train: State Sen. Jim Beall, chairman of the Senates transportation committee, plans to hold hearings on the management and oversight of the states proposed bullet train. He wants to speed up the construction schedule as a way to cut down costs. Dont doubt that we will instill some fiscal oversight of the high speed rail, he said. Los Angeles Times Dangerous conditions: Deaths in Orange Countys homeless population jumped between 2013 and 2015, according to records obtained from the coroners office. Last year, 181 homeless men and women died not including people the coroner was unable to identify. Natural causes and accidents, whether a drug overdose or traffic collision, were the leading causes of death. 89.3 KPCC On the hook: The city of San Francisco will pay $4.8 million to host pre-Super Bowl festivities. Some supervisors see that as a public subsidy and they want the Super Bowl Host Committee to cover the costs something its already doing for the city of Santa Clara, where the big game will be played. SF Weekly Cramped quarters: Fresno is the first city in the nation to regulate tiny homes on wheels, even though its not really a hub for the new type of development. However, the city is home to California Tiny House, which builds custom tiny homes for customers throughout the state. KQED CRIME AND COURTS High crime: Market Street between 4th and 5th streets generates the most crime reports of any block in San Francisco. Last year, this one block generated at least 1,400 police reports. You can get there on public transit easily, you can get away pretty quickly, the large crowds permit a level of anonymity where property crimes flourish, and the victims are preoccupied, said UC Berkeley criminologist Barry Krisberg. SFGate Man arrested: A 21-year-old Vista man was arrested in the killing of a 17-year-old girl who was shot during a botched robbery attempt in Marina del Rey, police said. Kristine Carman, who was visiting from Houston, was struck multiple times while sitting in a car. Los Angeles Times ENTERTAINMENT Hollywoods diversity: What does it matter that the nominees for this years Academy Awards ceremony are overwhelmingly white and male? Because its time its beyond time that we stopped limiting ourselves to the same sorts of stories, the same sorts of characters and then reinforcing those limitations year after year after year, writes critic Mary McNamara. Los Angeles Times CALIFORNIA CULTURE Ram it: Now that the Rams are headed back to Southern California, musician Elton John has recorded a cover of the 1986 jam Lets Ram it. Do you know how to ram it? On Air with Ryan Seacrest Noses in the air: Six of Americas snobbiest cities are in California, according to a survey from a real estate blog. Topping the list was Pasadena. Somehow Glendale and Fullerton also made the cut. Travelers Today On my own: Why would someone leave the cushy confines of Google? Because independent coders can make twice the money if they freelance. Id rather control my own destiny and take on the risk and forgo the benefits of nap pods and food, said one ex-Googler. Bloomberg East Coast vs. West Coast: Here are the nine similarities between New York and Los Angeles. LA Weekly CALIFORNIA ALMANAC Los Angeles will have clouds and sun with a high of 67 degrees. San Diego will have sun and a high of 66. In Riverside, clouds will give way to sunshine and a high of 68 degrees. It will be cloudy and 57 degrees in San Francisco. AND FINALLY Todays California Memory comes from David Wassenaar: When I was dating my wife, I came to visit Southern California for the first time. She lived in Redlands and picked me up from the Ontario Airport. I was from Michigan, and seeing the San Bernardino Mountains the first time was quite a thrill. Since it was summer, she took me to the beach in Newport and then up to my still favorite view of the Pacific and Newport Harbor, Corona del Mar. Little did I know then in 1970 that we would be sailing for many years out of that lovely harbor. To make a long story short, we were married in 1970 and spent our honeymoon traveling PCH and the 101 up to San Francisco and on to camping in Yosemite. Wow, did I fall in love with her and my state of California! If you have a memory or story about the Golden State, share it with us. Send us an email to let us know what you love or fondly remember about our state. (Please keep your story to 100 words.) Please let us know what we can do to make this newsletter more useful to you. Send comments, complaints and ideas to Alice Walton or Shelby Grad. A City Council committee moved Tuesday to tighten penalties for taxi drivers who face complaints of discrimination for refusing to pick up an airport passenger on the basis of race. The action was spurred by a recent undercover operation by two black police officers, who found that taxi drivers rejected 20% of their requests for rides at LAX. The committee that oversees trade and tourism suggested banning cab drivers from working the airport for a year if an investigation finds them guilty of racial discrimination against a potential passenger. Advertisement The last thing we want is for our city to have any part in discrimination, said Councilman Bob Blumenfield, who proposed the policy change. He also pushed to continue the undercover stings for a year to gather more robust data on racial discrimination. The City Council will vote on the suggestions next week. Lawmakers said the policy change was inspired by ESPN analyst Doug Glanville, who wrote an essay last fall for the Atlantic magazines website, saying a taxi driver refused to give him a ride because he is black. Glanville recounted that at LAX in September a white co-worker approached a United Taxi driver and asked to go to a downtown hotel, while Glanville walked to the back of the cab to put his luggage in the trunk. When the driver saw Glanville, he froze, and his entire demeanor shifted, he wrote. The essay stated that the driver repeatedly refused to take them to downtown, telling the pair to walk across the street and catch a bus. As they left to find another car, they watched the driver pick up a white passenger. Given the circumstances, Glanville wrote, it was hard to attribute his refusal to anything other than my race. In an interview with The Times, Glanville said he lodged his complaints with city officials calmly and deliberately because this is a persons livelihood. His concern, he said, wasnt specifically with the driver, but with systemic issues: Lax enforcement that encourages racism and bureaucratic barriers that discourage people from filing complaints when they experience discrimination. Its one thing to be blown off on a snowy day on downtown Chicago, and youre hailing outside, Glanville said. Its another to be in a controlled environment, like an airport, where there are a thousand cameras everywhere. Clearly, he had to feel comfortable doing this. Join the conversation on Facebook >> The driver told investigators that there was no racial aspect to his behavior, and was only confused about which passengers were first in line, according to Los Angeles taxi administrator Tom Drischler. In a separate investigation, airport officials who reviewed video footage of the incident decided that Glanvilles complaint was substantiated. The driver was suspended from working citywide for two weeks and barred from working at the airport for a year. Drischler said the investigation convinced him that racial discrimination among taxi drivers is a systemic problem that needs to be dealt with as strongly as possible. The undercover investigation revealed that taxi drivers refused requests for rides from two black men five times out of 25 requests, airport officials said. In some cases, the taxi drivers may have refused the rides because they asked to go a short distance, a request that taxi drivers often dislike. Drivers who refuse to carry passengers to cities near LAX, or berate them for living nearby, is the most common reason that customers complain to airport officials about taxi service, according to a two-year sample of complaints obtained by The Times. Cab drivers, who are allowed to work at LAX once every five days, say they depend on lucrative, long-distance fares from the airport to cover driving expenses, including insurance premiums and rental fees for their dispatch systems. At every turn, its come to our attention that our policies need improvement, Samson Mengistu, deputy executive director of Los Angeles World Airports, said at Tuesdays meeting. Laura.nelson@latimes.com Twitter: @laura_nelson ALSO Registration begins for $3,000 grants to retrofit homes against earthquakes The situation is dire as Borrego Water Districts aquifer is being rapidly depleted Lawmaker renews push for Marine killed in Iraq fight to receive Medal of Honor Im Davan Maharaj, editor of the Los Angeles Times. Here are some story lines I dont want you to miss today. TOP STORIES Attack at Pakistani University Advertisement Gunmen entered Bacha Khan University in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday and began firing. At least 20 people, including students and a professor, are dead. The Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack. Heres what else we know so far. Putting a Price on Freedom The cases of Bruce Lisker and Kash Delano Register were unrelated but had striking parallels. Both were arrested as teens and said LAPD detectives fabricated evidence of their guilt. Both won their freedom after attorneys challenged that police work. And now, L.A. will pay to settle their lawsuits: $7.6 million to Lisker, who was released from prison in 2009 after a Times investigation, and $16.7 million to Register. Heres why it could have been more. Exxon Mobil Under Scrutiny California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris is reviewing what Exxon Mobil knew about global warming and what it told investors, a person close to the investigation said. Prosecutors are trying to determine if the company committed securities fraud or broke environmental laws. The move comes after The Times and Columbia University, as well as InsideClimate News, published reports about Exxons internal documents and public position in the 1980s and 90s. An Exxon Mobil spokesman previously has said the company denies any wrongdoing in regard to the climate change reports. Who Were Those Iranian Prisoners? The prisoner swap announced alongside the historic nuclear deal with Iran came as a surprise. Iran agreed to free five. In exchange, the U.S. let go seven, as well as dropping warrants against 14 fugitives. Though the Obama administration portrayed those 21 as little more than sanctions-busters, many were allegedly assisting Irans military, spy services and nuclear program. At least two suspects allegedly lent logistical support to Hezbollah. Read on to find out more about them. Why the Oscars Fuss Matters As we told you about yesterday, the Oscars all-white acting nominations for a second year in a row have prompted calls for a boycott as well as a heated counter-response. With all the troubles in the world, some are asking, what does it matter? Times senior culture editor Mary McNamara has an answer: Film is art, and art matters. The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, the images we choose to create and share reveal who we are our hopes, our fears, our secrets, strengths and shortcomings. Does it matter to you? Join the conversation on Facebook. Immigration Will Have Its Day in Court A landmark ruling on immigration law and executive power could come in the thick of this years presidential campaign. At issue: President Obamas authority to give a lawful presence and work permits to as many as 5 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. A decision is likely to come in June, ahead of Julys nominating conventions. Even if the court rules in Obamas favor, implementing the program could be tricky. CALIFORNIA -- Small businesses in Porter Ranch feel the pinch amid the gas leak. -- Steve Lopez: Little Tokyo mourns a homeless man whose spirit would shine. -- The California Medical Assn. has issued guidelines to physicians on the states assisted suicide law. -- A foodie hot spot opens in Watts in an attempt to redefine fast food. NATION-WORLD -- Long after most U.S. troops have left Iraq, a U.N. report says civilians are dying in obscene numbers. -- Where are Irans billions in frozen assets, and how soon will it get them back? -- A European Union leader says the EU could fail as a political project amid the migrant crisis. -- Chris Christie stumps for votes in Iowa: Im like a fungus. I grow on people. -- Say goodbye to free parking at Aria, Bellagio and 10 other Las Vegas hotels. HOLLYWOOD AND THE ARTS -- Linda Ronstadt remembers Glenn Frey, including their poker game with Smokey Robinson. -- What is an L.A. artist? The Hammer Museum answers with its Made in L.A. biennial lineup. -- Younger creator Darren Star and actress Sutton Foster discuss their TV Land comedy. -- Coachella wont be the first place to see the Guns N Roses reunion. -- Viacom and CBS are hit with a shareholder lawsuit over Sumner Redstones condition. -- A trailer containing $250,000 in artworks by Matisse, Chagall and others was stolen in Chatsworth, police say. BUSINESS -- Warning of great challenges this year, the IMF cuts its world economic growth forecast. -- Is the best use of all that El Nino water to pour it out on dry soil? UC Davis researchers try it out. -- Commercial real estate in Inglewood is getting a boost from the Rams arrival, agents say. SPORTS -- Bill Plaschke: The San Diego Chargers should stay right where they are, thank you very much. -- Rams updates: The teams offense has a lot of room for improvement; Stan Kroenke seeks to borrow about $1 billion for the proposed stadium. -- Hockey enforcer John Scott will keep his All-Star captaincy, despite being traded and sent to minors. WHAT OUR EDITORS ARE READING -- Up to 500 kinds of bugs are living in your house, according to a study.(National Geographic) -- North Korea reportedly says it has invented hangover-free liquor. (BBC) -- The making of Adeles Carpool Karaoke video with James Corden. (Vulture) -- How many more elements can be added to the periodic table? (Smithsonian) ONLY IN CALIFORNIA When the late Pulitzer Prize-winning Times sports columnist Jim Murray first saw the PGA West Stadium Course east of Palm Springs, he wrote: You need a camel, a canoe, a priest and a tourniquet to get through it. And when players showed up for the 1987 Bob Hope Classic, they hated it, never to return until now. Heres why the PGA Tour is back, even if the golfers dont have a dromedary in tow. Please send comments and ideas to Davan Maharaj. After months of negotiations and political infighting, the wait is over: Drivers for Ubers lowest-cost ride service will be allowed to pick up travelers at Los Angeles International Airport starting at 8 a.m. Thursday. Uber is the second ride-hailing company to be granted full access to one of Southern Californias most lucrative ride markets. Its main rival, Lyft, started working at LAX in December. Were very excited to play a part in simplifying and modernizing the LAX experience, said Christopher Ballard, Ubers general manager of Southern California, in an interview with The Times. Advertisement See the most-read stories this hour >> Last summer, after months of debate, Los Angeles officials agreed to allow ride-hailing companies to apply for permits to work at the airport. Uber and Lyft spent months proving to officials that they could comply with the terms of their contracts. In December, Lyft became the first ride-hailing service to pick up passengers at Los Angeles International Airport. For more than two years, Uber and Lyft drivers have been allowed to drop off passengers at LAX. Travelers could request a higher-end Uber or Lyft car service, operated by a state-licensed livery driver, but the companies low-cost services were banned. As with any airport negotiation, its a very extensive process, Ballard said. A lot of work went into this on both sides of the aisle. Uber and Lyft drivers have been working at other California airports, including in San Francisco and Orange County, for some time. But LAX, the West Coasts busiest airport, has been seen as a key venue for the companies to prove that they can provide a viable alternative to driving, mass transit and taxis. Both companies expect to do a brisk business at LAX. During Lyfts first two weeks of full operations, drivers picked up and dropped off more than 50,000 people, airport officials said. The typical taxi trip from LAX to downtown is more than $50, not including tip. A ride with Uber or Lyft is closer to $30, although prices can climb during high-demand periods. In a prepared statement, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said travelers options will expand dramatically with the arrival of UberX. The introduction of ride-hailing at LAX marks the biggest change to ground transportation options there since the introduction in the 1980s of shared-ride vans such as Super Shuttle. Its always good when we expand passenger and customer choices, said Los Angeles Councilman Mike Bonin, whose Westside district includes LAX. Theres a market out there for Lyft, and theres a market out there for Uber. Starting Thursday, passengers seeking an UberX or UberXL ride will be able to hail the cars using the Uber app, then follow signs marked ride service to the upper departures level, where drivers will pick up passengers at the curb. Will you be taking an Uber back from your next flight? Join the conversation on Facebook >> The upper-level requirement was originally unpopular with both companies, because passengers will have to carry their luggage upstairs from baggage claim to catch a ride. Passengers seeking a ride in an Uber driven by a state-licensed town car operator the UberBLACK, UberSUV or UberLUX services will catch those rides on the lower level, where taxis and limos pick up. Drivers for both companies are required to wait in a holding area east of 96th Street until they get a request for a ride through the company apps. No more than 40 drivers per company are allowed in that area at one time. The LAX permit requires Lyft and Uber to each pay the airport a minimum of $25,000 per month from $4 fees for each drop-off and pickup. The fees, passed along to passengers, will go to the airports general operating budget. Taxis pay a similar fee, passed on to passengers, to make pick-ups at LAX, but drop-offs are free. laura.nelson@latimes.com For more transportation news, follow @laura_nelson on Twitter. ALSO Undercover sting by black police officers prompts crackdown on racial bias by LAX cab drivers After drone crashes into power lines, West Hollywood cracks down State Senate committee chairman plans oversight hearings on Californias bullet train A panel of justices Wednesday threw out the perjury and voter fraud convictions of former L.A. City Councilman Richard Alarcon and his wife, ruling that the trial judge had issued improper jury instructions. Alarcon, a veteran San Fernando Valley politician, and his wife, Flora Montes de Oca Alarcon, were indicted in 2010 and found guilty in 2014 of lying about where they lived so Alarcon could run for a seat on the Los Angeles City Council. Alarcon was a councilman until 2013, when he stepped down because of term limits. The justices on Californias 2nd District Court of Appeal found fault with Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge George Lomelis handling of the instructions, writing that we cannot conclude that the instructional error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Advertisement Alarcon, 62, said the case had been costly, both in terms of legal bills and the effect it had on his political career. The politician, who lives in Mission Hills, attributed his defeat in a state Assembly race in 2012 to the bad publicity generated by the criminal case. I feel incredible. Im very pleased that the appellate system works, Alarcon said Wednesday. We never felt we did anything wrong. It doesnt diminish the damage that was done, but well take the victory at this point. Alarcon was convicted of three voter-fraud charges and one perjury charge, but acquitted on 12 other counts. Montes de Oca Alarcon, 50, was convicted of two voting charges and one perjury count but acquitted on two others. Instead of serving a 120-day jail sentence, Alarcon served time under house arrest. His wife was sentenced to community service. Prosecutors will have to decide whether to retry the case in state court, seek a rehearing in the court of appeal or pursue an appeal with the state Supreme Court, said Richard Hasen, a law professor at UC Irvine. Hasen said he isnt surprised that the convictions were overturned, since the legal definition of residency is so murky. Figuring out what counts as domicile ... is so difficult, it provides a basis for plausible legal arguments that can be used in challenging a conviction, he said. See the most-read stories this hour >> Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey said in a statement that her office is reviewing the opinion and deciding on our options. Because of the felony convictions, Alarcon had been barred from holding elected office. Once Wednesdays ruling goes into effect, presumably he can run for office again, Hasen added. Alarcon, who now works as a consultant, said he has no intention of seeking another elected office. California law requires that candidates live in the districts they seek to represent. The state Elections Code defines residence for voting purposes as a domicile, a home where one intends to remain and return to after an absence. The Alarcons were accused of falsely claiming they lived in Panorama City, in the district Alarcon ran to represent, while actually residing five miles away in Sun Valley -- in a different council district. During the monthlong trial, defense attorneys told the jury that the Alarcons were staying in Sun Valley while renovating the Panorama City home -- considering it their permanent residence -- and planned to return to it once the work was done. Join the conversation on Facebook >> Deputy Dist. Atty. Michele Gilmer presented evidence suggesting that the Alarcons didnt plan to return to the Panorama City home, including blueprints from 2007 for developing the home into a multiunit residential complex. The jury also heard testimony from a police officer who said that Alarcon had been gone from his residence so long that a squatter moved in and changed the locks. Utility workers told the jury there was no gas used in the house between April 2007 and February 2009, making it impossible to cook, heat the home or take hot showers. After five days of deliberations, the jury sided with the prosecution, saying they werent convinced the Alarcons really intended to live in Panorama City. One juror said at the time that it was clear Alarcon had sought political gain by saying he lived in that neighborhood. The Alarcons appealed the conviction, arguing that one line of instruction from the judge misled the jury. Lomeli, the Superior Court judge, told the jury there is a rebuttable presumption that an officeholder must have lived in a residence sometime in the preceding year for it to be considered his or her domicile. Alarcons attorneys argued that this instruction improperly led the jury to rule in the prosecutions favor. NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >> The judge should have advised the jury that not living in the home for a year is not necessarily proof that the defendants werent domiciled there, the appeals court justices said in their decision. That error improperly reduced the amount of evidence the prosecution had to provide, according to Wednesdays ruling. The way the convictions were handed down showed the effect of the erroneous jury instructions, the judges wrote. The charges against the Alarcons spanned from 2006 to 2009. The jury acquitted Alarcon and his wife of charges from 2006 to October 2008, but convicted them of charges starting in November 2008. According to the appeals panel, jurors probably made those choices because the prosecution showed the Alarcons were absent from the Panorama City home starting a year before that -- around November 2007. Given these circumstances, we cannot conclude that the instructional error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, the justices wrote. Hasen, the election law expert, said prosecutors might have a harder time retrying the case because the jury instruction wont be delivered in the same way. Alarcon is one of several politicians to be targeted in recent years over the issue of residency. Six months before Alarcon was convicted, a jury in a similar case found former state Sen. Roderick Wright guilty of felony perjury and voter fraud. Wright also filed an appeal. Prosecutors also have secured convictions in residency cases in Vernon, Huntington Park, West Covina and other cities. Twitter: @skarlamangla @davidzahniser ALSO Former USC tight end arrested in carjacking during probe of robberies Federal agency to investigate fatal Greyhound bus crash in San Jose; victims identified Teen girl attacked as she waits for ride home from Ontario school Opponents of a proposed Armenian American Museum in Glendale voiced concerns over the potential for traffic and parking impacts, while backers endorsed the idea of creating a cultural hub and community resource during a public forum earlier this week. More than 100 people packed a meeting room at St. Gregory Armenian Catholic Church for a forum organized by the museum development committee. The contested site, a 1.37-acre, city-owned parking lot, is at Mountain Street and Verdugo Road, across from Glendale Community College and abutted by a residential neighborhood. Advertisement While concerned residents say theyre not against the idea of a 30,000-square-foot museum, theyre not a fan of the location. The museum should be in a central area of the city, where City Hall is, and there is a core civic center area, resident Tom Searson said in a phone interview after the meeting. I think thats probably the best location; theres an infrastructure there. Theres shopping, all these things that will attract pedestrian traffic. Adding a museum to the area could generate congestion that nearby streets cant handle, he said. Conceptual designs depict a two-story building with a facade resembling both local and Armenian mountains. Inside, a library with research facilities, exhibitions and a coffee shop are planned. Teacher Taline Arsenian, who was among those at the meeting, called the location, which is within walking distance of the college, ideal. Im looking forward to this museum opening, to students from our community and neighboring communities being exposed to all of the cultural awareness and education theyre going to get, she said. Berdj Karapetian, chairman of the museums project development committee, said half of the exhibits will be permanent, while the other half will be traveling collections that feature other cultures, including Korean and Indian. He said the museum isnt looking at other sites. One resident asked why the design couldnt reflect the architecture of nearby Spanish homes. Architect Aram Alajajian explained that differentiating the building was intentional, citing as examples the distinct designs of the Broad and Getty museums. Interested in the stories shaping California? Sign up for the free Essential California newsletter >> A museum is an iconic project, he said. An iconic building needs to stand out. In response to concerns over potential activities, Tigranna Zakaryan, the museums outreach director, said the property would not host weddings or other events completely unrelated to what the museum stands for. Several residents of the adjacent Rossmoyne neighborhood said they were worried about added traffic. A traffic study is planned, as are future reviews by City Hall. The Glendale City Council eventually would have to give its approval for the project to move forward. The traffic study likely will be conducted next month and take into account peak hours, especially when Glendale College students arrive in the morning, traffic engineer Jano Baghdanian said. While data still has to be collected, some things already are known about museum traffic. One [factor] with museums is that they do not generate traffic during peak hours; they generate traffic during the day. A majority of museum visits occur on Saturdays and Sundays, Baghdanian said at the forum. As for parking, the Verdugo and Mountain lot houses 176 spaces used by college students and visitors of the adjacent Glendale Civic Auditorium. More than a year ago, the City Council granted an agreement with the museums committee not to lease the lot while a conceptual design was prepared. While final details have a long way to go, the city already has stipulated that the museums construction must include an underground parking structure to replace the existing lot accessible by students in addition to spaces for visitors. While theres no price tag for the entire project, the first financial goal through fundraising is $10 million, Zakaryan said. She declined to say how much has been raised. Mikailian writes for Times Community News. arin.mikailian@latimes.com Los Angeles County supervisors voiced concerns about the rising cost of lawsuits against the Sheriffs Department on Tuesday and separately approved a $1.6-million settlement in the fatal shooting of an 80-year-old man by deputies in 2013. The supervisors discussed the countys annual litigation cost report, which showed a 24% increase in the total cost of lawsuits in fiscal year 2014-15 and a 50% increase in litigation expenses involving the Sheriffs Department. Lawsuit costs rose from $95.6 million to $118.9 million for the county and from $40.7 million to $61 million for the Sheriffs Department, according to the report. Advertisement The increase was largely driven by several big-ticket payouts for settlements and judgments in shooting and excessive-force cases. Steve Estabrook, the countys litigation cost manager, noted that the expense of excessive-force cases against the Sheriffs Department has risen steadily over the last three years from $13 million in fiscal year 2011-12 to $33.5 million in 2014-15. He said that the incidents that spurred the lawsuits dated back several years and that the number of cases filed has decreased during the last two years. Supervisor Hilda Solis said she was concerned about the rising costs. I understand the sheriff is working with us proactively on corrective plans, but I dont want to see corrective plans just for the sake of having a report that sits somewhere and no one takes action on it, she said. In a separate action, the board approved a $1.6-million settlement in a lawsuit over the fatal shooting of 80-year-old Eugene Robert Mallory, a retired Lockheed Martin engineer. The deputies were serving a search warrant at Mallorys home in the community of Littlerock near Palmdale in June 2013 while investigating reports of a suspected meth lab. No evidence of methamphetamine was found. Sheriffs officials at the time said that marijuana was discovered on the property. Mallorys wife filed a wrongful death suit against the department. According to a statement released by her attorneys at the time, deputies claimed that Mallory had confronted them with a gun, but his wife said he was sleeping in his bed when he was confronted and shot without warning. In a memo to the supervisors, county attorneys said the county denies the allegations in the lawsuit but recommended settling the case due to the risks and uncertainties of litigation. The supervisors approved the settlement without discussion. Twitter: @sewella The board that oversees the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power approved a plan Tuesday to increase power rates in a move it said was necessary to meet a slew of energy-related mandates and repair the citys degrading power infrastructure. If approved by the City Council, the rate hike would result in a systemwide 3.86% average annual rate increase and generate about $720 million over the next five years, DWP said. Agency officials say typical residential customers would see a smaller change a 1.56% average year-over-year increase to their monthly power bills. Advertisement But the citys ratepayer advocate said monthly bills for many of those customers would jump about $4 in the first year; the five-year cumulative total increase would be about $12. The boards 5-0 vote supporting the power rate increase came about a month after it endorsed a similar water rate hike. Board President Mel Levine said it would be irresponsible for City Council members to vote against the proposed power rate increase in the weeks to come. You would be voting to tell the citizens of Los Angeles that we are not going to comply with mandates that we have no choice but to comply with, and that were going to allow blackouts to continue, Levine said. DWP officials estimated that about 80% of power revenue would go toward meeting clean energy and climate change goals and requirements. In the coming years, the department must expand its use of renewable energy to cover 33% of power sales, eliminate once-through ocean water cooling (which will involve rebuilding nine generating units) and eliminate the use of coal-fired power. Much of the remaining 20% of the revenue would enable the department to replace infrastructure, such as utility poles. During Tuesdays meeting, nine speakers from various neighborhood, business and environmental groups spoke in support of the increase. But some expressed concern about the annual transfer of power revenue currently 8% to L.A.'s general fund. Attorney Walt McNeill, who represents plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit challenging the legality of the transfer, was the sole speaker opposed to the rate increase. The transfer, he said, patently violates Proposition 26, a statewide initiative passed by voters in 2010 that says government agencies cannot charge more for certain services than they cost to provide. As part of his review, Ratepayer Advocate Fred Pickel examined how DWP spends revenue. With the assistance of outside consultants, he found that compared with its peers, DWP paid out higher amounts of overtime and could improve productivity. Still, the report he issued Friday called the power rate increase just and reasonable. Then, on Monday, Mayor Eric Garcetti added his support, calling the increase critical to modernizing our aging electricity grid and bringing our power system into the 21st century. DWP officials said they hope to have the rate ordinance in front of the City Council by mid-February and in effect by April 1. If approved, the rates would go under formal review about 36 months later, Pickel said. The rate proposal also includes provisions requiring DWP to report periodically to the board and the ratepayer advocate on a series of key performance metrics. Twitter: @ByMattStevens ALSO Caltrans seeks 5,000 volunteer motorists for mileage fee pilot program Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles breaks ground for new headquarters in Pico-Union Cal State faculty wont go on strike over salaries -- for now Officials will begin accepting applications Wednesday for homeowners to get grants of up to $3,000 to earthquake retrofit single-family homes with a common structural flaw that can cause houses to fall off their foundation. Registration begins Wednesday and ends Feb. 20, and is run by a program that receives money from the state and the nonprofit California Earthquake Authority. Authorities expect as many as 1,600 grants to be available, nearly triple the number of grants available last year. Homeowners can register at earthquakebracebolt.com. Homes in more than 150 ZIP codes in California will be eligible for the grants. In Southern California, they include areas of Los Angeles, Pasadena, South Pasadena, Santa Monica, West Hollywood and San Bernardino. In Northern California, certain ZIP codes of San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Albany, Emeryville, San Leandro, Burlingame, Hillsborough, Millbrae, and Woodside are also included in the retrofit program. Advertisement Officials were scheduled to hold a press conference Wednesday morning at San Francisco City Hall to announce the opening of registration for the program. Single-family homes that qualify for the grant are typically built before 1979 with a handful of steps above the ground. The heavy house can rest atop a flimsy wood-frame perimeter that isnt bolted to the foundation when a quake hits, the house can topple or slide off. Engineers say its like pulling the rug out from under the house. These types of homes have been damaged in earthquakes as early as the 1906 San Francisco quake, as well as in the 1933 Long Beach, 1971 Sylmar, 1989 Loma Prieta and 1994 Northridge quakes, and last years Napa earthquake. To reattach an intact house to its foundation, an owner might have to pay to lift the entire structure several feet and pour a new concrete foundation, then lower the house, at a cost as high as $400,000. By contrast, the cost of a preventive retrofit is usually between $2,000 and $10,000, with an average price tag of $5,000, according to the California Residential Mitigation Program, which administers the grants. The solution is generally simple: add metal rods to attach the wooden house to the concrete foundation, and plywood to add stiffness and strength to keep the house on its foundation. There are more than 1.2 million houses in California estimated to be particularly vulnerable to earthquakes because of how they were constructed. You wouldnt feel safe driving a car that has no seat belts, and you shouldnt feel safe living in a house that hasnt been bolted to its foundation, Janiele Maffei, a structural engineer who heads the grant program, said in a statement. To protect their families and most valuable asset, all Californians should ensure their homes are properly braced and bolted. Interested in the stories shaping California? Sign up for the free Essential California newsletter >> City governments have not required homeowners to make seismic retrofits to single-family homes. After the 1994 Northridge earthquake, Los Angeles city building officials briefly considered requiring 50,000 single-family homes to be retrofitted, but the idea was rejected. The $3 million in state funding -- approved by Gov. Jerry Brown last year -- allows officials to expand the grant program to homes in more areas than has been offered in previous years; the last time the grants were offered about a year ago, only about two dozen ZIP codes were eligible. The grants are income-tax exempt at the state level, officials said. The California Earthquake Authority -- a publicly-managed nonprofit established by the Legislature in 1996 that operates with private funds and through the sale of earthquake insurance -- is also pitching in $1.8 million for the grant program. Expanding the program, known as Earthquake Brace + Bolt, is an important step forward in preparing California for a large earthquake, said Assemblyman Adrin Nazarian (D-Sherman Oaks), who sought additional funding for the program. Bracing and bolting homes to their foundation can help protect property and save lives. Homes in the following ZIP codes will now be eligible for the program: Los Angeles: (90004, 90005, 90006, 90012, 90013, 90014, 90015, 90017, 90019, 90020, 90021, 90023, 90026, 90027, 90028, 90029, 90030, 90031, 90032, 90033, 90036, 90038, 90039, 90041, 90042, 90057, 90063, 90065, 90068, 90071, 91604) Pasadena: (91101, 91102, 91103, 91104, 91105, 91106, 91107, 91108, 91110, 91114, 91115, 91116, 91117, 91118, 91121, 91123, 91124, 91125, 91129, 91131, 91175, 91182, 91184, 91185, 91186, 91187, 91188, 91189, 91191) South Pasadena: (91030, 91031) Santa Monica: (90401, 90402, 90403, 90404, 90405, 90406, 90407, 90408, 90409, 90410, 90411) West Hollywood: (90046, 90048, 90069) San Bernardino: (92404, 92405) Albany: (94706) Berkeley: (94609, 94618, 94702, 94703, 94704, 94705, 94707, 94708, 94709, 94710, 94720) Burlingame: (94010, 94011, 94012) Emeryville: (94608) Hillsborough: (94010) Millbrae: (94030, 94031) Oakland: (94601, 94602, 94603, 94605, 94606, 94607, 94610, 94611, 94612, 94613, 94618, 94619, 94621) San Francisco: (94101, 94102, 94103, 94104, 94105, 94106, 94107, 94108, 94109, 94110, 94111, 94112, 94114, 94115, 94116, 94117, 94118, 94119, 94120, 94121, 94122, 94123, 94124, 94125, 94126, 94127, 94128, 94129, 94130, 94131, 94132, 94133, 94134, 94135, 94136, 94137, 94138, 94139, 94140, 94141, 94142, 94143, 94144, 94145, 94146, 94147, 94148, 94149, 94150, 94151, 94152, 94153, 94154, 94155, 94156, 94157, 94158) San Leandro: (94577, 94578, 94579) Woodside: (94061, 94062) Follow us for the latest news in earthquake safety and El Nino: @RosannaXia and @ronlin See more of our top stories on Facebook >> ALSO Lawmaker renews push for Marine killed in Iraq fight to receive Medal of Honor Businesses in Porter Ranch struggling as customers relocate L.A. to pay $24 million to two men imprisoned for decades after wrongful murder convictions Negeen Sadeghi-Movahed dreams of hopping on a plane from John F. Kennedy International Airport straight to Iran, where she would spend weeks learning about her roots. It is, for the 22-year-old, one of the simple, hoped-for fruits of a nuclear accord with Iran. Roozbeh Farahanipour, 44, has a darker vision of a deal that strengthens a regime that doesnt care about human rights. Advertisement See more of our top stories on Facebook >> The historic pact is stirring diverse reactions in Southern California, home of the largest community of Iranians outside of Iran, whose experiences with the motherland can be starkly different. Sadeghi-Movahed embodies the attitude of many young Iranian Americans who welcome the deal with a sense of the adventures they could have and capture on Instagram in the land of their fathers and mothers. Farahanipour represents many in an older generation who have watched in anger and disappointment as the Iranian government has isolated the country from much of the international community. The only thing that gives me a good feeling is when I see fellow Iranians happy, said Farahanipour, the president of the West L.A. Chamber of Commerce. The thing is in the near future they will realize nothing is going to change. Poverty will continue, nobody will talk about human rights violations anymore and the regime will get stronger. Iranian and U.S. officials announced Saturday in Vienna that Iran had complied with the terms of last summers landmark deal to dismantle its nuclear program and that the sanctions that have crippled the nations economy would be lifted. The move will give the Iranian government access to more than $50 billion in frozen assets and oil revenue. It also allows some exceptions to trade embargoes against Iran. Any money that comes from Irans previously frozen assets, Farahanipour said, will fund state-sponsored terrorism instead of advancing human rights in that country. The deal marks a period of uncertainty for Iranians across generations, said Majid Rafizadeh, president of the International American Council. But skepticism over the accord including a lack of faith that Iranians will see sanctions relief trickling down, or fear that hard-liners will be empowered to suppress civil liberties are more common among older generations, he said. The older generation focus on the economic aspect of the deal, while the younger generation focus on building better ties with the world, traveling to the U.S., he said. Reza Marashi, research director for the National Iranian American Council, said Persian youth including those who were part of the diaspora should use the deals momentum to push for better relations, he said. Far be it from me to tell older Iranians what their view or relationship should be, but I can say that for 37 years, talking about how terrible the Iranian government is did not provide actions that would help the situation, Marashi said. If you encourage peaceful change, then over time the type of change you would like to see becomes more likely. For young Iranian Americans like Sadeghi-Movahed, the agreement isnt just about trade, terrorism and other geopolitical questions. Its also about the simple, even mundane, things she hopes the deal can deliver: being able to wire money to relatives, bring home Persian rugs, or talk on the phone with her family without having to use apps that smooth notoriously choppy connections. Many of her friends have family members who still live in Iran and cant afford certain medication as a result of the downtrodden economy. Now they can make sure the money to purchase that medicine gets transported, said Sadeghi-Movahed, who works for an organization in Orange County that mentors Iranian American women. But maybe the simplest test of all, she said, will be whether young, politically active Iranian Americans like her will be able to travel to Iran without ending up in jail, being harassed by police or generally getting a taste of what older generations fled. My parents worry that I will be targeted at the airport or by Iranian authorities for my dual-national identity, being an American citizen, Sadeghi-Movahed said. They also worry that the authorities could be tracking my political posts via Facebook and Twitter, since the Iranian government has a very harsh position on censorship. Many young Iranian Americans havent returned in years because their parents warned that they may be unknowingly caught in a battle between Irans hard-liners and more moderate politicians. They cite Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post reporter jailed in Iran for more than 500 days. Rezaian and three other Iranian Americans were released to the U.S. as part of a prisoner swap on Saturday. Im an outspoken feminist on the Internet and a lot of people worry, said Sadeghi-Movahed, who hasnt been to Iran since she was 8. It would be nice to go and see my family and not fear for the possible implications. Donya Nasser, the U.S. youth observer to the United Nations, said she would love to travel to Iran every year. Im tired of people telling me, Donya, be careful, Nasser, 23, said. She would like to spend a few months in Iran so she could master the Persian language, she said. Shed also like an easier way to call her family in Iran. Thanks to constant bans on new forms of communication, Iranians find themselves struggling to download the latest apps to make phone or video calls each month. First it was Viber and then WhatsApp and now its Imo, Nasser said. And its like, for Gods sake, all we want to do is talk to our family. She concedes that many of her generation have a more romantic view of Iran than older generations, which bore the brunt of the countrys inequities as well as its war with Iraq. They are more disillusioned, Nasser said. We only have memories of how amazing Iran is. When we think of Iran, we think of chelo kabab and sangak and mehmoonies, she added, referring to Persian food and parties. We have this intense love ... Its very much home in our hearts. Marashi said he understands why many people in America who trace their roots to Iran are concerned about the deal. Many have a personal story from the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the tales dont often end well. The deal doesnt guarantee an Iranian government that facilitates the aspirations of its own people. Im clear-eyed about that, he said. But it shows that if the Iranian community works together, we can build a track record of success. Despite the generational differences, Sadeghi-Movahed is convinced that Iranians of all ages can get behind the accord. My grandpa wasnt supportive at first. Then, as soon as it passed, he was very supportive, she said. She paused for a moment before mimicking his Persian accent: He said, I knew this was going to pass. Very good. sarah.parvini@latimes.com Twitter: @sarahparvini ALSO Why markets are anxious about Irans reentry into the global economy Are any of the Iranians in the prisoner swap a threat to national security? Where are Irans billions in frozen assets, and how soon will it get them back? An Islamic State propaganda magazine praised the couple responsible for the San Bernardino terrorist attack as martyrs for killing 14 people, and suggested that the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11 was inspired -- but not directed -- by the organization. An essay that opens the most recent issue of the English-language magazine, Dabiq, said the assailants, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, answered the call to terrorize crusaders in their very strongholds. Both were killed in a gun battle with police. Dabiq, which also serves as a recruitment tool for Islamic State (also known as ISIS), emphasized that Malik was willing to carry out an attack, unlike many men. Her participation made the attack unique, the essay said. Advertisement How much more deserving of Allahs blessing are a husband and wife who march out together to fight the crusaders in defense of the Khilafah! the article said, using the Arabic term for caliphate, or a state established and guided by Islamic law. FULL COVERAGE: Terror attack in San Bernardino >> The two attackers did not suffice with embarking upon the noble path of jihad alone, the essay said. Farook was praised as a noble brother while Malik was referred to as his blessed wife. Images of San Bernardino after the attack and Farooks bullet-riddled body accompanied the article. The killings were described as righteous in the magazine, which didnt mention that those shot were Farooks co-workers at the San Bernardino County Health Department who were attending a holiday party. Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino, said the magazine seems to confirm a previous ISIS radio report that these were inspired attacks, not coordinated by ISIS. FBI officials have said that the couple acted on their own, not at the behest of another organization. This is part of [a] two-part strategy; ISIS would prefer to orchestrate massive attacks against the United States. But they are more than willing to praise an attack which they inspired that killed more than a dozen people, Levin said. He noted that Islamic State uses a very derogatory term to describe non-Muslims who are victims of attacks. They are a death cult, Levin said. The 56-page online magazine also praised the couple for putting aside their lives, including family members and other obligations. Not only did they leave behind their comfortable lifestyle, but prior to the operation they left their baby daughter in the care of others knowing that they likely wouldnt see her again in this life, the essay said. A picture of the white crib in the couples Redlands home was also included in the magazines layout, along with a photo of a wounded man on a stretcher and law enforcement vehicles outside the Inland Regional Center, where the attack occurred. After completing the attack, which left 22 people wounded, Malik reaffirmed her allegiance to the leader of Islamic State in an online post, the two-page essay said. Maliks pledge was posted online shortly before the couple was killed in the shootout with police. The essay ended by expressing hope that the San Bernardino attack would awaken Muslims across the United States, Europe and Australia. Levin said the article clearly asked potential homegrown violent terrorists to heed the call to carry out attacks. The issue also confirmed that the masked militant nicknamed Jihadi John, who appeared in several videos depicting the beheadings of Western hostages, was killed by a drone strike in Raqqah, Syria. U.S. military officials had said in November that the Army was reasonably certain that the militant, identified as Mohammed Emwazi, was killed in a drone strike, the Associated Press reported. Malik and Farook were killed by police several hours after the Dec. 2 shooting. For news on crime and investigations in Southern California, follow @lacrimes on Twitter MORE: Get our best stories in your Facebook feed >> ALSO L.A. council may tighten penalties for LAX taxi drivers who show racial bias L.A. to pay $24 million to two men imprisoned for decades after wrongful murder convictions Where are Irans billions in frozen assets, and how soon will it get them back? No longer will clients of the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles have to sit in dark, windowless rooms, squeeze through narrow hallways or speak with lawyers about often-traumatic situations with their children present. The Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles -- one of the regions principal providers of free legal counseling to the poor -- broke ground Tuesday on its new headquarters at 1550 W. 8th St. The construction is projected to cost $17.6 million and will be completed in spring 2017. The foundation provides legal aid to low-income people in such matters as evictions, receiving government benefits and immigration. Advertisement Its going to be a great place, not a Taj Mahal, but a place that respects the dignity of its community and its members, executive director Silvia R. Argueta told donors, staff and others at a special ceremony Tuesday. It will be a dignified environment for our clients, for our staff and for all of you, our pro bonos, our supporters, to come and enjoy. The new building will occupy the same site as the former, two-story headquarters, which had been in use since the 1970s and had fallen into severe disrepair, Argueta said. Among the original buildings shortcomings were mold and asbestos, and the lack of an elevator for clients with disabilities. Dark windowless rooms also made the old building feel a little bit like a little dungeon, Argueta said. The new four-story headquarters will be accessible for people with disabilities and contain a reception area, intake rooms with glass walls to allow parents to speak privately with attorneys while their children remain in view next door. It will also offer a self-help resource center and a community conference room on the top floor. The foundation has been planning the new building for the last four years and fundraising for the past two, officials said. So far, more than $15 million has been raised and the campaign continues. The building will be called the Ron Olson Justice Center after Ron Olson, founding partner of the law firm Munger, Tolles & Olson, and previous 1984-1985 board president of the foundation. What a high, high privilege it is to be associated with this great institution, LAFLA, and its mission, Olson said, after being greeted by a standing ovation. This is an institution that adds dignity and fairness to its many clients, and ... adds legitimacy to this nations claim of democracy and a rule of law. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti also spoke at the ceremony, where he congratulated the staff and spoke about his admiration for members of the Olson family, who inspired him to pursue public service. Garcetti said he has noticed that a new Los Angeles is coming about, one in which there is more public concern for social and economic problems. I came to L.A. thinking, well, this is not a place thats known as a civil rights or human rights center, and immediately I found the opposite to be true, Garcetti said. LAFLA represents the very best of what the city is about. Twitter: @taygoldenstein ALSO Cal State faculty wont go on strike over salaries -- for now Can Roy Chois Locol fight South L.A.'s fast-food stranglehold? Erin Brockovich appeals to Porter Ranch residents as law firms push gas leak suits Residents of Watts have long asked for more sit-down restaurants with higher quality fare than the fast food joints that dot the local landscape. But with the opening this week of LocoL by chefs Roy Choi and Daniel Patterson, the neighborhood now has a foodie hot spot in its midst. In the line that snaked around the building Tuesday stood residents looking for a quick bite, Choi followers eager to taste anything he serves up and local employees relieved to find healthful dining options close to their job. Advertisement We have to travel to Lakewood, Downey, Gardena and Huntington Park for quality food, said Sandra Rogers, 51, of Hyde Park, who works nearby. This a godsend for them to do this for the community. Opening this week of LocoL by chefs Roy Choi and Daniel Patterson - Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times LocoL is part of a grand experiment by Choi, the man behind the Kogi BBQ food truck empire, as well as a handful of well-regarded restaurants in Los Angeles, and San Francisco restaurateur Patterson to re-imagine fast food by offering culinary-inspired fare at an affordable price in neighborhoods lacking casual and fine dining options. The duo said they hoped to challenge the notion that chef-created dishes have to be costly and fast food has to be greasy and fried. The core of the idea is how do we get the food to be 99 cents and sit right next to a Popeyes and sit right next to a Churchs or a KFC? Choi said. Thats where the chefs mind comes in. As an example of their innovations, the chefs cut down on meat and add grains, tofu and seaweed to their burgers--called burgs. The addition of beef garum provides a meaty taste, Choi and Patterson explained in 2014 at a symposium in Copenhagen where they revealed their plans. There are plans to open two restaurants in San Francisco and a second location in Watts and a year after that, a million, Patterson said. Burgers cost $4 and the bowl, which includes a hearty helping of noodles, beef chili and a tofu stew, rings in at $6. All drinks are $1. No soda is served at the restaurant. Watts resident Twaunce Price, a towering man with a big appetite, said he normally orders the biggest burger on the menu with an extra patty. He thought the LocoL cheeseburg would leave him hungry, so he ordered barbecue turkey foldies"--grilled folded tortillas stuffed with meat or vegetables. Im full and I didnt think I would because of this little old burger, Price said, sitting outside on the restaurants patio on the wooden cubes used as tables and chairs. Price said he spoke with his mother recently about the lack of dining options in their community. She said theres no healthy food in America, the 26-year-old recalled. I told her, There is. You just have to get out of the neighborhood to get it. He said he cant wait to bring her to LocoL. Los Angeles has been grappling with how to get more healthier restaurants into underserved areas. The city imposed a ban on some types of new fast food eateries, but there has been much debate about whether the law has been successful. A Rand Corp. study found that from 2007 to 2012, the percentage of people who were overweight or obese increased everywhere in L.A., but the increase was significantly greater in areas covered by the fast food ordinance. A Times analysis found the law has not made a huge change in the fast-food makeup of the region. Mesh screens cover the windows and doors at the restaurant, which gives the feeling of eating at a family cookout. R&B and hip-hop jams from the 90s throb through the speakers, transporting diners to a time when Guy, Keith Sweat and Total topped the charts. Choi darts around the restaurant, serving up dishes and getting feedback from customers. He stopped by Rhodella Mitchells table to get her verdict on the burg. Mitchell, 49, approved and thanked him for taking a chance and investing in Watts. Ive been leading up to this my whole life, he told her. I grew up in Koreatown. I know how hard it is to get great food and keep it at $2. Join the conversation on Facebook >> The restaurant is located at Wilmington Avenue and East 103rd Street, down the street from a strip mall with a fried chicken shack and a Chinese food spot. It has put a spotlight on a hard-luck community that is normally under a much harsher glare. Xenia Galaviz, 40, of Buena Park had never been to Watts before. On Tuesday, she was there with her husband and two sons, 30 minutes before the doors opened to try Chois latest creations. They shelled out $15 for enough food to feed the entire family. Growing up in Long Beach, I know our hoods dont get a lot of love, she said. For him to open it in Watts, it is inspiring. We had to support. And the prices are cheaper than McDonalds. Customer Tracy Mack agreed. This is wonderful, she said. Its long overdue. For more California breaking news, follow @AngelJennings. She can also be reached at angel.jennings@latimes.com. ALSO South L.A. ban on new fast-food restaurants has little effect Korean fluffernutter ice cream is real, thanks to Roy Choi and Salt & Straw Roy Choi partners with Munchery, brings free food, 20 microwaves to Koreatown A 22-hour search for two missing UC Santa Cruz students who were swept out to sea by a large wave was suspended Tuesday night after rescue teams failed to locate the pair. The lost students and three college friends were visiting Bonny Doon Beach in Santa Cruz at 5:03 p.m. Monday when a wave washed over the rock they were standing on, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. Three students were swept into the water, and two others found themselves stranded on the rocks below a 70-foot cliff on the beach. Rescue crews were able to rappel off the cliff and rescue the two students who were stranded on the rock, and one of the students who was swept out to sea was able to swim back to shore with minor injuries, authorities said. Advertisement Emergency crews lined the cliff and set up lights in the area as they searched for the two students who remained in the turbulent sea. Join the conversation on Facebook >> But the powerful waves prevented rescue swimmers from entering the water. At one point, a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter flew over the area and its crew thought they spotted the students in a cave. Rescue crews rappelled off the cliff to a rock outcropping near the cave, but were unable to find the students. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the family and friends of the missing persons, said Capt. Greg Stump, commander of the U.S. Coast Guard in San Francisco. Powerful surf continues to hit the California coastline, prompting large-wave warnings throughout the state. The Santa Cruz Fire Department advised swimmers to use caution while entering the ocean in the next few weeks. With large surf forecasted for the next few weeks these unfortunate types of events are more likely to occur, the fire department said in a statement. People can put themselves at risk as well as the lives of rescuers by not keeping a safe distance from the ocean and cliffs. Surf could reach up to 15 feet Wednesday along Californias central coast and cause strong rip currents that increase the risk of drowning, according to the National Weather Service. Swimmers who find themselves caught in a rip current should swim parallel to the shore until free. For breaking news in California, follow @VeronicaRochaLA ALSO Teen girl attacked as she waits for ride home from Ontario school Registration begins for $3,000 grants to retrofit homes against earthquakes SpongeBob SquarePants voice of Squidward held on suspicion of DUI A third person was arrested Tuesday in connection with a home-invasion robbery in Downey that left a 59-year-old man dead. The suspect, a 17-year-old male from Anaheim, was arrested on suspicion of murder for the Sunday morning slaying and he was booked into a juvenile detention center, according to the Downey Police Department. His name was not released. About 11:15 a.m. Sunday, officers found Jim Rudometkin dead in his home in the 10300 block of Lesterford Avenue. Ruling his death a homicide, the Los Angeles County coroners office said Rudometkin died of blunt trauma and heart disease. Advertisement Police said they believe Rudometkin was specifically targeted by the suspects, according to a statement. We do not believe this was a random crime. See more of our top stories on Facebook >> A witness saw two people talk with Rudometkin near the side door of his home, then force him inside. A third person later went inside the home, police said. When officers responded, police dispatch received a report that the three suspects had hopped over the fence behind Rudometkins home in a bid to escape. We got reports of suspects fleeing through the neighborhood on foot, said Downey Police Sgt. Terry Goeckner. Two of the suspects were taken into custody: Henry Willie Sao, 28, of Long Beach and Paul Darvis Misikei, 19, of Anaheim. Policed had launched a search for the third suspect, saying he fled in a white four-door sedan and had bushy black hair with a red-and-orange button-down shirt. Its unclear why any of the suspects may have targeted the man, who was a longtime real estate agent in the Los Angeles area. Police declined to specify whether any of the suspects had previous interactions with Rudometkin. Jim Emery, a real estate broker for Coldwell Banker Alliance Realty, told the Whittier Daily News that Rudometkin was unmarried and that the home involved in the robbery was previously owned by his parents, who had died during the last decade. Rudometkin was very kind, honest, quiet, gentle man. I cant imagine why anyone would have done what theyve done, Emery told the paper. Anyone with information about the incident is asked to contact the Downey Police Department at (562) 904-2308. For breaking news in California, follow @MattHjourno. ALSO Lawmaker renews push for Marine killed in Iraq fight to receive Medal of Honor Businesses in Porter Ranch struggling as customers relocate L.A. to pay $24 million to two men imprisoned for decades after wrongful murder convictions The University of California is scrambling to make room for the largest enrollment boost of California undergraduates in years 6,500 more for the fall 2016 term, with the most selective campuses taking the most new students. UCLA, Berkeley, San Diego and Riverside will each accept 750 more students this year; systemwide, nearly 14% more state residents are expected to gain admission. Thats good news for nervous high school seniors and transfer students who competed against 206,000 others in another record-shattering year for UC applications for 2016. The expansion has pressed officials to find more housing, hire additional faculty and expand support services. On Wednesday, UC President Janet Napolitano announced new efforts to build at least 14,000 more beds for undergraduate and graduate students by 2020. Advertisement A key priority is to ensure this housing is and remains affordable to UC students, Napolitano said at the UC Regents meeting in San Francisco. Many of our campuses are located in some of the most expensive real estate markets in California. Campuses are already busy hiring new professors and adding additional undergraduate courses. In November, regents approved Napolitanos plan to boost enrollment of California students by 10,000 over the next three years, a response to criticism about the rising number of students from other states and countries taking UC seats. Out-of-state students pay triple the $12,200 in annual tuition Californians pay. The Legislature approved $25 million for an additional 5,000 undergraduates this fall, but UC officials will actually admit 6,500 because enrollment dipped last year from 2014, the baseline year for the increase, according to UC spokeswoman Dianne Klein. The funds, however, will pay for less than half the cost of educating the students. That prompted concerns at the meeting that educational quality could decline without more dollars. Daniel Hare, a UC Riverside professor and chair of the Academic Senate, fretted that students could be deprived of more intimate, hands-on learning opportunities in teaching labs and performance studios that he said were crucial supplements to lectures. Youre slowly filling the balloon, and eventually its going to pop, he said. Everything we need to maintain for quality requires a commitment for resources that faculty are concerned are not being made. Join the conversation on Facebook >> Mohsin Mirza, UC Student Assn. undergraduate committee chairman, told the regents that it was highly irresponsible to accept more students without making sure they had proper housing, classes, mental health services and other support. He said one student was sleeping in the living room of his university housing, sharing space with two other students. Julia Schemmer, a first-year UC Riverside student, said students are sitting on floors at her campus because classrooms are so crowded. Riverside is undergoing a faculty expansion, however, to lower class sizes from the high 20s to the low 20s, according to Provost Paul DAnieri. Officials at individual campuses also expressed concerns about how to pay for needed support for all the new students. Its a huge challenge, said Steve Olsen, UCLA vice chancellor and chief financial officer. The state is saying they want affordability but more access. Those are the marching orders weve been given, and were doing everything we can to make sure that thats done in a way consistent with our goals for academic quality, Olsen said. As one short-term relief measure, Olsen said, UCLA will increasingly place three students in dorms designed for two as officials explore options to build or buy more housing. He said officials hope to eventually add 2,000 beds. He also said UCLA could hire hundreds more professors, teaching assistants, academic counselors, mental health specialists and other staff members. Similar planning is underway at UC Riverside. DAnieri, the provost, said one of the biggest issues is a major math problem: How to calculate the number of admission offers it should extend in order to snare 750 additional students who will accept and enroll. Officials have begun analyzing how many more courses will be needed. Some of the most popular freshman courses will probably be math, biology, chemistry and psychology, he said. But he added that the campus already has begun expanding enrollment and, at the same time, adding faculty to shrink class sizes. Because this is something weve wanted to do, were very much on track to deal with it. I wont call it a problem. I think its a great opportunity, DAnieri said. Were all about access especially for California students. Napolitano said UC officials would begin touring all 10 campuses to assess housing needs. She said she hoped to accelerate the timetable for the new beds, with new construction and purchase of existing property largely financed by outside parties. Klein said those parties were private financiers, philanthropists and others. In other actions, Napolitano asked that a proposal for an 8% hike in supplemental tuition for professional degrees in nursing be tabled for further study after several regents raised questions about it. Several regents also pressed UC officials for greater efforts to expand the number of African American, Latino and other underrepresented students at UC. For more education news, follow me @TeresaWatanabe See the most-read stories this hour >> ALSO L.A. cracking down on racial bias by taxi cab drivers Cal State faculty get support for possible strike from Los Angeles union members Women claim Yoga guru Bikram Choudhury sexually assaulted them; he denies UPDATE: 4:03 p.m: This article was updated with comments from UC President Janet Napolitano and others at the UC Regents meeting. This article was originally posted at 5 a.m. The drone wars continue. Three months after a drone flew into power lines and knocked out power to hundreds of West Hollywood residents, the city on Tuesday imposed strict limits on flying unmanned aircraft. In a unanimous vote, the West Hollywood City Council approved on final reading an ordinance that prohibits drones from taking photos, video or audio recordings of people where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy, such as their home or hotel room. Then on Wednesday, the Los Angeles city attorneys office announced that two men would be the first to face criminal charges under the citys new drone restrictions. Michael Ponce, 20, and Arvel Chappel, 35, could each face up to six months in jail for violating the ordinance, City Atty. Mike Feuer said in a statement. Advertisement City prosecutors say that on Dec. 12, Chappels drone forced an LAPD air unit to change its landing path. Days earlier, Ponce was cited for flying a drone within three miles of several hospital heliports near Griffith Park. The moves by West Hollywood and L.A. are the latest efforts at regulating drones, which have drawn anger in recent years after, among other things, being flown into the airspace of planes fighting wildfires. In October, the Los Angeles City Council approved an ordinance that made it a misdemeanor to violate Federal Aviation Administration drone regulations, including flying within five miles of an airport without permission. The new law in West Hollywood requires civilian drone pilots to register their aircraft with the city, in addition to the registration already required by the FAA. West Hollywood drone operators must place a city-issued permit sticker and identification number on the drone where it can be seen from the ground. Unless authorized by the FAA, drones in West Hollywood now are banned from flying at night. Drones also cannot fly above city parks during city-sponsored events in the park unless authorized to do so, and they cannot fly above City Hall or fire or police stations. Violators could be charged with a misdemeanor. The drone ordinance was recommended by Mayor Pro Tempore Lauren Meister after several drone-related incidents in the city. Meister said at a council meeting last month that at a summertime rally at West Hollywood Park in which hundreds of people celebrated the Supreme Courts ruling on gay marriage, there was a drone flying over, and people were very, very uncomfortable. In October, a drone crashed into electrical wires lining Larrabee Street and Sunset Boulevard, knocking one of them to the ground. The downed wire cut off power for nearly 700 Southern California Edison customers for three hours. West Hollywood resident Dan Berkowitz in November told the council that he had been sitting on his homes terrace, reading the newspaper in a bathing suit, when he heard a whirring sound. He looked up and saw a drone buzzing about 15 feet above him. Berkowitz said he was disturbed by this Peeping Tom, and that when he got up to get a closer look, the drone flew away. Im sure flying a drone is fun, but, please, keep it out of my face, out of my house and out of the power lines, he said. West Hollywood City Atty. Michael Jenkins told the council during the ordinances first reading last month that the regulations come amid a rapidly changing, fluid environment when it comes to federal, state and local drone regulation and that government agencies have been scrambling to address safety and privacy concerns. In the fall, Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a trio of bills that would have prohibited civilians from flying drones over wildfires, schools, prisons and jails. Drone technology certainly raises novel issues that merit careful examination, Brown wrote in his veto message. This bill, however, while well-intentioned, could expose the occasional hobbyist and the FAA-approved commercial user alike to burdensome litigation and new causes of action. hailey.branson@latimes.com Follow me at @haileybranson / Google+ ALSO Armenian American Museum plan in Glendale brings concerns over traffic Registration begins for $3,000 grants to retrofit homes against earthquakes Search fails to locate two UC Santa Cruz students swept out to sea Rep. Duncan Hunter is pushing again for the late Marine Sgt. Rafael Peralta to be recognized with the Medal of Honor, timing his request to a broader review of whether certain combat-valor medal recipients should have their awards upgraded. Hunter (R-Alpine) on Thursday wrote to the commandant of the Marine Corps, Gen. Robert Neller, asking that he submit a new nomination for Peralta to get the nations highest distinction for combat bravery. Hunter has been a major voice in the protracted controversy over whether Peraltas wartime actions in Iraq have been undervalued. It is my hope that the Marine Corps will continue to support Peralta for higher recognition, Hunter wrote. Nellers office said its policy was to not publicly discuss such correspondence. Advertisement Rosa Peralta accepts the Navy Cross on behalf of her son, Marine Sgt. Rafael Peralta, at Camp Pendleton in June 2015. (Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times) Peraltas family accepted the Navy Cross the second-highest medal on his behalf in June after having refused to do so for years. On Saturday, his younger brother, Rick Peralta, said the family had no comment on this extremely difficult situation. Rafael Peralta, 25, was an infantry rifleman with the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment. On Nov. 15, 2004, the Marines were clearing houses of enemy fighters in Fallujah, Iraq. After breachers kicked in the door to a building, Peralta and his squad walked into a back room and encountered intense, close-range automatic weapons fire from multiple insurgents, according to his Navy Cross citation. As the Marines returned fire, Peralta fell to the ground, mortally wounded from a gunshot to the head. The insurgents threw an enemy fragmentation grenade as they fled. When it landed by Peralta, he reached out and pulled the grenade to this body, absorbing the brunt of the blast, the citation said. The Marine Corps and Navy Department recommended the Medal of Honor based on eyewitness accounts by fellow Marines, the traditional standard of proof. However, then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates decided against it after a panel of forensic and medical experts determined that Peralta probably was too gravely wounded to have acted consciously. The Navy Department, citing its own investigations and medical opinions, authorized the Navy Cross in 2008, the highest medal that branch can give without Pentagon approval. It also chose to name a destroyer warship after Peralta. Two more defense secretaries after Gates have rejected appeals by members of Congress to give Peralta the Medal of Honor. This month, Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford told the DoDLive blog that he believed Peraltas heroism merited the medal. Dunford, who now serves as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke in the interview about Defense Secretary Ash Carters recent request for the Pentagon to review all recommendations made since Sept. 11, 2001, for service cross awards including the Navy Cross and the Silver Star. The stated goal is to see whether the military has been using consistent standards in evaluating nominations. hieu.phan@sduniontribune.com Phan writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune. ALSO Third person arrested in targeted killing of Downey real estate agent Businesses in Porter Ranch struggling as customers relocate L.A. to pay $24 million to two men imprisoned for decades after wrongful murder convictions Fresh off a strong debate performance and buoyed by rising poll numbers, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders returned to Iowa with an air of vindication. We began this campaign some nine months ago. The media was saying, Bernie Sanders, hes an interesting guy, he has interesting ideas but hes a fringe candidate. We already have the anointed candidate, the inevitable candidate, Sanders told hundreds of supporters gathered Tuesday afternoon at a winery here. Well, a lot has happened in the last nine months, he said, and the inevitable candidate is not quite so inevitable. Advertisement The crowd roared in support. Sanders, the professorial democratic socialist with an unruly cloud of white hair and wildly gesticulating arms, smiled and nodded in approval. Its a heady time for the independent Vermont senator. On Thursday, a Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll found Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton leading him by 2 percentage points among likely Iowa caucus-goers, well within the polls margin of error in the state that holds the first nominating contest in the nation in less than two weeks. The news out of New Hampshire, which holds its primary eight days later, was even better he has led Clinton in six of the seven polls that had been taken this year. A CNN/WMUR poll released Tuesday had him ahead, 60% to 33%. On Sunday, in the last Democratic debate before the caucuses, Sanders aggressively confronted Clinton. On the stump, Sanders connects with the frustrations of liberal voters who are tired of Washington politicians and establishment politics in the same way that GOP front-runner Donald Trump connects with those on the right. Sanders rails against injustices that he says are harming working families: the economy is rigged, the disparities in income and wealth among Americans are grotesque, wages are too damn low, lax campaign finance rules are undermining American democracy. Sanders doesnt criticize Clinton by name, but he draws several distinctions with her, noting he did not vote for the Iraq war, has never been paid six-figure speaking fees by Goldman Sachs and does not support super PACs. I dont represent the billionaire class; I never have. I dont represent corporate America; I never have, Sanders told about 200 supporters at a barn in Fort Dodge, Iowa, on Tuesday morning. He said when he kicked off his campaign, he was told he needed a super PAC to compete but refused. We decided to do it the old-fashioned way reach out to middle-class families and ask for their help, he said, adding that he was stunned by the end result 2.5 million individual contributions that averaged $27. According to the Des Moines Register, which tracks the candidates in Iowa, Sanders has spent nearly twice as much time in the state as Clinton has. Sanders said he has spoken in front of about 40,000 Iowans, and he hopes to make it to 50,000 by the Feb. 1 caucuses. Indeed, many in the crowd, such as Mike and Terry McCarville of Manson, had seen him speak before and were committed supporters. Theres no difference between the Democrats and the Republicans theyre all establishment politicians. Hes not, said Mike McCarville, 62. Hes not bought and paid for. Thats the biggest thing. seema.mehta@latimes.com Twitter: @LATSeema Officials on Tuesday suspended the massive search for 12 Marines who were aboard two helicopters that crashed off Hawaii last week. The around-the-clock effort failed to locate any sign of the 12 service members despite five days of searching by several agencies. Officials said at a late afternoon news conference that the Marine Corps was transitioning to recovery and salvage efforts and a memorial was planned for Friday at Marine Corps Base Hawaii. Advertisement The search began late Thursday when a civilian on a beach reported seeing the helicopters flying and then a fireball. Join the conversation on Facebook >> The Marines were alerted when the CH-53E helicopters carrying six crew members each failed to return to their base at Kaneohe Bay following a nighttime training mission. Hours later, a Coast Guard helicopter and C-130 airplane spotted debris about two miles off Oahu. The crash was near the north shore, but the search area spanned from the western coast of Oahu to the northeast corner of the island. The transport helicopters were part of the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing at Marine Corps Base Hawaii. Known as Super Stallions, they are the U.S. militarys largest helicopter, capable of carrying a light armored vehicle, 16 tons of cargo or a team of combat-equipped Marines, according to a Marine Corps website. The Coast Guard initially reported that the choppers had collided, but the Marines said later it wasnt yet known if there was a collision. The cause remains under investigation. All four life rafts from the helicopters were later found empty. There was no indication anyone had been on any of the rafts, based on their condition and the lack of any personal effects, the Coast Guard said. High surf complicated the mission for rescuers during the initial days of the search. A green laser near Haleiwa Beach Park struck a Coast Guard plane on Saturday night, forcing crew members to alter search patterns. Authorities searched for survivors around the clock. The Coast Guard assumes the best-case scenario when considering how long someone in the right equipment and right conditions could survive, Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Sara Mooers said. We err on the side of caution because the last thing that anybody wants is to suspend the search when theres still a possibility of finding somebody, she said Monday. Air crews wear personal flotation devices with their flight suits and get additional training on top of survival swimming training, the Marines said. Some of the life rafts were inflated, but it was unclear how they got that way, Mooers said. People have been found days or even weeks after getting lost at sea, Mooers said. They would have to survive the crash and then possible dehydration, exposure and fatigue, said Mario Vittone, a retired Coast Guardsman who is an expert on sea survival. Survival seems unlikely, Vittone said, but he noted that he doesnt know all the circumstances. The missing crew members are: Maj. Shawn M. Campbell, 41, College Station, Texas. Capt. Brian T. Kennedy, 31, Philadelphia. Capt. Kevin T. Roche, 30, St. Louis. Capt. Steven R. Torbert, 29, Florence, Ala. Sgt. Dillon J. Semolina, 24, Chaska, Minn. Sgt. Adam C. Schoeller, 25, Gardners, Pa. Sgt. Jeffrey A. Sempler, 22, Woodruff, S.C. Sgt. William J. Turner, 25, Florala, Ala. Cpl. Matthew R. Drown, 23, Spring, Texas. Cpl. Thomas J. Jardas, 22, Fort Myers, Fla. Cpl. Christopher J. Orlando, 23, Hingham, Mass. Lance Cpl. Ty L. Hart, 21, Aumsville, Ore. Tooraj Faridi liked to think of himself as a respectable businessman, a father of two and karate instructor at the local YMCA. All that was in jeopardy nine months ago when a SWAT team descended on his leafy suburban street of carefully tended brick ranch houses. The predawn raid resulted in the arrest of Faridi, 46, vice president of Smart Power Systems Inc., a Houston-based microelectronics company that federal authorities said had violated U.S. restrictions on doing business with Iran. Faridis home and business were searched. Rumors began to spread among neighbors about the clean-cut family man with the square jaw and large brown eyes. Nearly 50 friends attended his first court appearance, where prosecutors told a judge that FBI wiretaps and email surveillance showed that Faridis company had sold dangerous technology to Iran. Advertisement They tried to make it seem like it was this big act of terrorism. They said he was an asset of the Iranian military, Faridis attorney, Kent Schaffer, said of federal prosecutors. Faridi, his uncle and another Iranian American business partner were among seven U.S. prisoners and criminal defendants pardoned over the weekend in exchange for the release of American detainees held in Iran. Faridi, who had never gone to trial on the charges, worries now that hell never get a chance to prove his innocence. He feels a little bit of regret that he didnt have a chance to clear his name, Schaffer said. There will always be people who assume there was something to it. Born in Tehran, Faridi has lived in Houston for about 15 years, becoming a U.S. citizen while working at the business started in 1984 by his uncle, an electrical engineer selling commercial-grade surge protectors. His uncle also ran Faratel Corp., a Tehran-based company that prosecutors said was a sister company to Smart Power Systems. According to the federal grand jury indictment in the case, Faratel designs and builds uninterruptible power supplies for several Iranian government agencies, including the Ministry of Defense and the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. U.S. prosecutors alleged that the technology is used in a wide range of military systems, including surface-to-air and cruise missiles. Between 2010 and 2015, the procurement network in the U.S. allegedly shipped about $24 million worth of parts to Iran through Taiwan and Turkey, according to court records. Payment from Iran was procured through a variety of intricate illicit techniques, according to the indictment. Faridi contended that although his company shipped parts to Faratel, he never dealt with the Iranian government or intentionally violated the U.S. sanctions. Originally when this case was filed, the government alleged what they were doing was a threat to national security because they alleged the parts they were shipping could be used with nuclear devices, Schaffer said. But he said the defense was able to discount that by the end of the first court hearing. They had to admit the only connection my client had with the Iranian military was back when he lived in Tehran he served with the army and his assignment was he worked in the gymnasium, the lawyer said. He was hardly a spy for the Iranian government. Faridi was initially released on $75,000 bond, but his uncle, Bahram Mechanic, 69, also of Houston, remained in detention, as did his business partner Khosrow Afghahi, 72, of Los Angeles. Both maintained that they, too, were innocent. Mechanic became a U.S. citizen five years ago, and said he had been blacklisted from doing business with the Iranian government ever since. But he had a record: He had settled similar sanctions-related export violations in the 1990s after being sentenced to five years probation for another criminal export conviction in the 1980s. It would be at least a year before he and Afghahi stood trial. Though some of the governments classified evidence was initially unsealed, in order for the trios attorneys to review all of it, they had to obtain security clearances. They applied, but as of last week, only one of 15 attorneys had been cleared. The two men were desperate to return to their families. Afghahi has heart and prostate disease. He had lived in Iran most of his life but spent the last year caring for his son, who was being treated for prostate disease at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Mechanic was coping with the aftereffects of bladder and stomach cancer now in remission, plus diabetes and heart problems. Unable to receive all of the medications he needed behind bars, he suffered an enlarged prostate that necessitated frequent nighttime trips to the bathroom, his attorney said. But like the others, he refused to plead guilty. Mechanic said he had tried to comply with U.S. sanctions against Iran, and like his nephew, contended that he was guilty of nothing more than mistakes. The laws are very confusing; they change all the time. Mr. Mechanic has had lawyers over the years, but its very difficult to keep up with them, attorney Joel Androphy said. Federal authorities saw it as a serious breach. The proliferation of sensitive U.S. technologies to Iran and the direct support to their military and weapons programs remains a clear threat to U.S. national security, Assistant FBI Director Randall Coleman said when the indictment was unsealed in April. The businessmen-turned-defendants were waiting for the case to be resolved at trial when, two months ago, Mechanic was contacted by Fariborz Jahansoozan, an official at the Iranian interests section in Washington, Irans de facto embassy. Jahansoozan flew to Houston to meet with Mechanic at the federal detention center and asked whether he was interested in being part of a prisoner swap. Mechanic wanted to know more: What would the deal require? Would the charges be dismissed? Would he have to return to Iran, or face other travel restrictions? At the time, there were reports that the swap would include up to 19 people. It was like a lottery, Androphy said. He advised Mechanic to take the deal. We always felt he was innocent, but the problem is hes 69 years old and in jail. We thought we could win the case in court, but theres a prejudice against Iranians in the U.S., and you dont know if youre going to get a fair jury, even though hes a U.S. citizen. Getting a resolution this way seemed a good alternative, Androphy said. When Jahansoozan returned to Houston to meet with Mechanic again on Jan. 7, he had news about the deal: This is becoming a reality, he told him. The trio was sworn to secrecy, and didnt know the conditions of the swap until last Wednesday, when federal prosecutors called and notified them of the pardons. Mechanic was elated. It was important for him to be released, but it was more important to him that the president was saying you did not commit these crimes, that this was going to be acknowledged and nullified, Androphy said. He brought Mechanic a copy of the pardon on Friday, before President Obama signed it. At about 5:30 a.m. Saturday, the three men were assembled with two others also being freed and their attorneys in a room at the federal detention center in downtown Houston. There, they waited for the president to sign the final documents. But there were delays in the release of American prisoners, including Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian, being held in Iran. By 8 p.m., the warden sent the attorneys home, promising to call them two hours ahead of the signing of the pardons -- calculated to coincide with when the freed U.S. prisoners cleared Iranian airspace. The call came at 1 a.m. Sunday. A few hours later, the warden distributed pardons signed by Obama. Its dramatic: The warden literally hands the pardon to Mr. Afghahi and says, You are now free to leave, attorney David Gerger said, noting that after a day of hopes and false starts, the older man was relieved to rejoin his family. By 4:30 a.m., all three men had been released. Mechanic held a gathering at his home Monday night, attended by Afghahi, attorneys, friends and family. There, Mechanic shared Iranian pistachios; he wore street clothes and cologne for the first time in months. The optimism that had buoyed him during months in detention had paid off. His nephew Faridi did not attend the party. Like his uncle, his lawyer said, he plans to stay in Houston, to help run the family business as he did before. But he is less optimistic. He knows his life has been forever changed. People are already starting to say, well, we know you got a pardon from the president, but we still dont know if youre guilty of what youre accused of, his attorney said. On the other hand, he no longer has to live under the stress of having to go to trial and potential incarceration, Schaffer said. He can go on with his life. molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com Follow me for the latest in national news @mollyhf With Donald Trump beaming at her side, Sarah Palin told a cavernous barn full of Iowans on Tuesday that the New York billionaire would bust up that establishment once hes elected president. Hes going rogue left and right, man, Palin said as she endorsed Trump. Thats why hes doing so well. Palin provides Trump a key source of support in the race for the Republican nomination as chief rival Ted Cruz tries to cast him as liberal on abortion, same-sex marriage and other issues. Advertisement The former Alaska governor and vice presidential nominee is a polarizing figure but has a strong following of evangelicals and tea party supporters. At the rally in Ames, she hailed Trumps stand against illegal immigration and his aggressive posture toward U.S. adversaries. Are you ready for a commander in chief who will let our warriors do their job and go kick ISISs ass? Palin asked the cheering crowd at snowbound Iowa State University. Trump leads national Republican polls by a wide margin but is tied with Cruz in Iowa polls less than two weeks before the states Feb. 1 caucuses. The Texas senator is trying to emerge as the favorite of evangelicals, a crucial GOP constituency in Iowa and other states, but many have rallied behind Trump. See more of our top stories on Facebook >> Cruz suffered another blow Tuesday when Iowas popular Republican governor, Terry Branstad, said Cruz was heavily financed by Big Oil and could be very damaging to our state. Trump has made the same argument, saying Cruzs opposition to public subsidies for crop-based ethanol fuel threatened Iowa agriculture. Jamie Johnson, an Iowa Republican operative unaligned in the presidential race, said the combination of Branstads remarks and Trumps endorsement by Palin, the queen of the tea party, was a serious blow to Cruz. That is enough to tilt the Iowa caucuses, Johnson said. Cruz, whom Palin backed for Senate in 2012, told reporters in New Hampshire on Tuesday that she was fantastic. I will always remain a big, big fan of Sarah Palin, he said. In an email to reporters, Cruz spokesman Rick Tyler criticized Trumps campaign donations to Democrats and his support for corporate welfare and the 2008 bank bailout. Conservatives will not win with a candidate whos propped up Democrats and the Washington cartel, Tyler said. Palin, who has been promoting her new book, Sweet Freedom, a collection of Bible meditations, came to Trumps defense last month when his call for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States sparked a global uproar. She told followers on Facebook that Trump was committed to clobbering the bad guys, and putting the good guys first. Trumps temporary ban proposal is in the context of doing all we can to force the Feds to acknowledge their lack of strategy to deal with terrorism, she wrote. michael.finnegan@latimes.com Twitter: @finneganLAT seema.mehta@latimes.com Twitter: @LATSeema Finnegan reported from Los Angeles and Mehta from Ames. MORE POLITICAL COVERAGE Supreme Court to decide whether Obama can shield millions of immigrants from deportation The Latino vote is bigger and better educated than ever before, a new report finds With Iowa vote approaching, Bernie Sanders is gaining steam A massive drug empire spanning North and South America that delivered untold tons of heroin and cocaine from Colombia to the U.S. over two decades via sophisticated cross-border tunnels, private 747s and submarines. Intimidation, bribery and murder in two countries. And, finally, the recapture of the worlds most infamous drug lord, in part due to a visit by a pair of celebrities and a big order of tacos delivered to his hide-out. With allegations like these, what federal prosecutor in the U.S. wouldnt want to be the first to try Joaquin El Chapo Guzman when Mexican authorities extradite him to this country? The seven jurisdictions that have filed indictments against him and other alleged leaders and associates of the Sinaloa cartel had begun competing to get the first shot at him even before Guzmans second prison break in July. Mexicans are counting on the U.S. to be able to do what their justice system could not: Keep Guzman in jail. Advertisement U.S. Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch, who will ultimately decide, will be feeling political pressure from U.S. attorney offices in Chicago, Miami, El Paso and San Diego and two in New York. Maybe even New Hampshire, whose case involves a face-to-face meeting between El Chapo and an FBI informant. New York prosecutors could legitimately argue that they have expertise in putting away international bad guys. Chicago reportedly has living witnesses ready to testify. And how about some consideration for San Diego, which filed the first indictment 20 years ago, and has successfully prosecuted members of another Mexican cartel run by the Arrellano-Felix family? Ultimately, Lynch must leave politics out of her calculation. This case is too important to lose. Why? For one thing, Mexicans are counting on the U.S. to be able to do what their justice system could not: keep Guzman in jail while he answers to accusations about his part in decades of cartel-sponsored bloodshed and corruption. Convicting the head of just one of Mexicos illegal drug cartels may not stop the flow of cocaine and heroin to the U.S. But bringing justice to the perpetrators for so much death and carnage is not just important symbolically; it sends a message to other drug kingpins that they are not immune. Its also an important case to Californians. Authorities allege that the Sinaloa cartel distributed cocaine and heroin all over the U.S., but perhaps no U.S. region was as central to the operation as Southern California. The 29-page San Diego indictment against Guzman and 22 other people describes a network of warehouses from Alondra Boulevard off Interstate 5 to Otay Mesa, which connected to Tijuana through a 1,416-foot tunnel. The court documents read like a Wheres Where of Southern California, alleging money drops, meetings and distribution stops in such communities as Chula Vista, Cerritos, City of Industry, Baldwin Park, La Mirada, Paramount and Victorville. The cartel allegedly trucked tons of cocaine hidden in fake boxes of soap as well as chiles and other grocery products with the help of food importers Jesus, Jose and Antonio Reynoso. The case in San Diego got new life in October when Antonio Reynoso was extradited to the U.S. to face drug-trafficking charges. It may be as long as a year before Guzman arrives in the U.S. to face charges that could range from trafficking to murder. The timing is up to new Mexican Atty. Gen. Arely Gomez Gonzalez, whose predecessor, Jesus Murrillo Karam, famously boasted that the U.S. could have Guzman after he served 300 or 400 years in a Mexican prison. Six months later, Guzman escaped from a high-security prison through a mile-long tunnel connected to his cell. Gomez is wise to see the benefits of extradition. And she would be wiser still to expedite the process as much as possible. El Chapos lawyers are trying to stop extradition, claiming their client cant get a fair trial in the United States because of anti-Mexican sentiment such as that stirred up by presidential candidate Donald Trump. And no doubt the drug lords engineers are already plotting a third escape in case the lawyers motions are thrown out and Guzman is threatened with transport to a supermax prison in the U.S. In any case, there will be time enough for Lynch to do a thorough assessment of the relative strengths of the various indictments and choose the jurisdiction with the strongest charges, the most capable prosecutors and the best chance of winning their case and ending this one bloody chapter in the long brutal drug war. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook Although Donald Trumps presidential campaign has understandably garnered more headlines, the campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is truly the one worth parsing. Americans have welcomed racist demagogues before, but an avowed socialist? The most successful presidential campaign by a democratic socialist was that of Sanderss hero, Eugene V. Debs, in 1912. Debs won 6% of the vote. In the most recent CBS/New York Times poll, Sanders was pulling down 41% support from Democrats, and other polls show him running even or ahead in Iowa and New Hampshire. On the national stage, the Sanders phenomenon seems new; the closest antecedent is the campaign that socialist author Upton Sinclair waged for governor of California in 1934. In the depths of the Depression, just one year after Franklin Roosevelt became president, Sinclair switched his party registration from Socialist to Democrat, a change unaccompanied, however, by shifts in his beliefs or ideology. In his short campaign book I, Governor of California, and How I Ended Poverty, Sinclair laid out his plans to put the unemployed to work on a host of public projects. The manifesto spawned hundreds of End Poverty in California (EPIC) clubs. Six centrist Democrats and Sinclair all entered the Democratic primary for governor; to general astonishment, Sinclair won handily with just over 50% of the vote. Advertisement Until one month before the general election, Sinclair was widely believed to be leading the unpopular Republican incumbent, Gov. Frank Merriam, but a breath-taking campaign of falsifications by the states leading newspapers and movie studios helped give Merriam a come-from-behind victory. (MGM produced films depicting dangerous-looking characters, played by actors and extras, saying they were coming to California if Sinclair was elected; these films were then screened as newsreels in every movie theater in the state.) Sinclairs influence on California politics didnt end with his defeat. On the contrary, his campaign revitalized what had been a moribund Democratic Party. Among the thousands of activists whod flocked to his banner were a new crop of liberals who won election to the state legislature, among them Augustus Hawkins, the African American representative from South Los Angeles who carried much of the states landmark civil rights legislation while he served in the Assembly. Later he was elected to the U.S. Congress, where he authored important full employment legislation. Another Sinclairite, Jerry Voorhis, was a leading progressive U.S. Congressman for a decade until losing his seat in 1946 to a red-baiting campaign from Richard Nixon. Like young people in the 1930s, today millennials have paid a steep price for unregulated capitalisms failures. EPIC, said Stanley Mosk, a Sinclair supporter who went on to become Californias attorney general and a justice on the states Supreme Court, was the acorn from which evolved the tree of whatever liberalism we have in California. Its not a stretch to suggest that the current campaign of Bernie Sanders will have an analogous effect on the nations Democratic Party and its liberal movement. His critique of Wall Street has resonated deeply and widely within and beyond Democratic ranks, clearly prompting Hillary Clinton to embrace reforms she hadnt espoused previously such as cracking down on shadow banks, vowing to jail miscreant bankers. With polls showing Sanders leading Clinton among young voters, his campaign is creating a distinct cohort in American politics, much as the anti-Vietnam War presidential campaigns of Eugene McCarthy, Robert Kennedy and George McGovern activated a generation whose perspectives later came to dominate Democratic politics. Indeed, Sanders is mobilizing a generation already moving leftand in this, too, he resembles Sinclair. Like young people in the 1930s, today millennials have paid a steep price for unregulated capitalisms failures. The year Sinclair ran for governor, San Francisco and Minneapolis were swept by general strikes; once quiescent unions were hiring young organizers by the carload. Sanders announced his candidacy in the wake of Occupy Wall Street, the Dreamer movement, Black Lives Matter, and the fight for a $15 minimum wage. Polling has shown Americans under 30 view socialism more favorably than capitalism. In the improbable (but not impossible) event that Sanders wins the Democratic presidential nomination, he will certainly be subjected to a latter-day version of the calumnies heaped on Sinclair but like Sinclair, his influence will surely outlive his campaign. Hes prodding a party and a generation to define their missions as reversing Americas descent into plutocracy. Harold Meyerson is executive editor of the American Prospect. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook A message of optimism, of hope, of good cheer, and of loving service was brought to Menomonie Saturday a message that will linger long with those fortunate enough to have received it. Thursday, Jan. 27, 1916 In January of 1916, Helen Keller and her teacher, Mrs. Macy, came to Menomonie and gave a lecture at The Memorial. According to those who attended, Helen Keller spoke of the joy that life gave her. She was thankful for the faculties and abilities that she did possess and stated that the most productive pleasures she had were curiosity and imagination. Keller also spoke of the joy of service and the happiness that came from doing things for others. According to the original newspaper article about the event, Keller imparted that helping your fellow men were ones only excuse for being in this world and in the doing of things to help ones fellows lay the secret of lasting happiness. She also told of the joys of loving work and accomplishment and the happiness of achievement. Although the entire lecture lasted only lasted for little over an hour, the lecture had a profound impact on the audience. Sunday, Jan. 18, 2015 Downtown Menomonie is fortunate to have a diverse selection of shops, restaurants, and eateries. However, there is one thing that the downtown was lacking until August 2014 a wine bar. Barrel Room is owned and operated by Rick and Mary Bygd. As community members, they saw a need for a place to go for a good glass of wine and just to hang out. As business owners, they saw opportunity in the perfect location for their endeavor at 320 Main Street, the former Ms. Ellaneous, near the Mabel Tainter Center for the Arts and, as the couple observes: right in the heart of where everything is. ... Theres so much energy and passion in downtown right now, we have a huge opportunity to continue to grow that. The builing in which they are located is indeed something to see. To create the atmosphere the Bygds envisioned, there was an extensive renovation process on the historic building. According to Mary, Everything is original. The ceiling is yellow pine that probably floated down the river, thanks to the logging industry. ... The floor is all original as well. The maple floor has been there for at least 110 years. Wednesday, Jan. 23, 1991 Superintendent David Smette spoke to the Menomonie School Board Monday evening on the importance of making students responsible citizens. The talk led to a proposal that some type of recognition be given to students involved in community service. Smette said that in a fast-changing world with new considerations arising from technology, immigration and single-parent familiesit is necessary that students have a solid base to build on. In addition, Smette stated We are in a global society which demands that we work with and understand a variety of cultures. Menomonie has an excellent base, an excellent heritage and an excellent sense of community to build on, Smette said. He warned, however, that roughly two students are suspended from school each week. Ways must be found to get to those students, he said. Smette passed out a quotation by Earnest Boyer that states, Civic illiteracy is spreading, and unless we find better ways to educate ourselves as citizens, we run the risk of drifting unwittingly into a new kind of dark age. Wednesday, Jan. 26, 1966 Seaman Apprentice Roger L. Waite, USN, son of Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Waite, 206 24th Ave., Menomonie, completes rest and recreational visit to British Crown Colony of Hong Kong while serving aboard the attack transport USS Calvert. James P. Jeatran, former Menomonie resident, promoted to sergeant in the Wisconsin State Patrol. ... Because of increased use of banks drive-up facilities at Sixth Avenue and Second Street, it has become necessary for the First National Bank to add another drive-up window. The Flying Dutchman and his wife, Mary, are coming to the Menomonie area in the near future to begin plans for the opening of a riding school for girls on the former James Wildner farm, two miles southeast of the city. Atty. Carl L. Peterson was instrumental in getting them to locate in this community. The Wildner farm was sold recently to the Flying Dutchman by Rassbach Realty. The Flying Dutchman and his wife are no strangers to those who know a lot about horsemanship. In real life, they are Mr. and Mrs. Jan H. Janssen. Wednesday, Jan. 22, 1941 It was a significant day yesterday, Jan. 21, for the Mabel Tainter Free Library, because 50 years ago on Jan. 21, 1891 the library first opened its doors to the public. Starting with a comparatively small family of book borrowers at that time, the Memorial Library now serves a wide family of book borrowers who live in all sections of Dunn County. The late John Steele, who died recently, was the first to borrow a book from the Library. Certain bills relative to education that will affect Dunn County in one way or the other, if passed, have been introduced at this session of the legislature. Occupying the chief concern of educators and others is the bill for repeal of the teacher tenure law which has caused no little amount of change in the hiring of teachers throughout the state. Menomonie Fire Chief J.E. Johnson recommends that three additional volunteer firemen be appointed to make a total of 20 volunteers, which is the maximum allowed by city ordinance. Thursday, Jan. 27, 1916 A message of optimism, of hope, of good cheer, and of loving service was brought to Menomonie Saturday a message that will linger long with those fortunate enough to have received it. This message came with the visit of Helen Keller and her teacher, Mrs. John Macy, and both had a hand in imparting it Saturday evening to a splendid audience that filled The Memorial. The wonderful girl who has so brilliantly triumphed over the triple afflictions of blindness, dumbness and deafness, gave a talk with her own lips on Happiness, and it will be remembered always as a piece of inspired teaching by those who heard it. Steps were taken at a meeting of the school board Saturday looking to the ultimate erection of a modern school building in the Fourth ward to take the place of the antiquated Fowler and Coddington schools. A resolution offered by School commissioner Frank Pierce was unanimously adopted, which provided that a committee be appointed to find a suitable site for a building. In urging this resolution, Pierce said the old Fowler and Coddington schools were a disgrace to the city. They are unsanitary, it is impossible to heat them properly, and they are a constant source of danger. Friday, Jan. 23, 1891 The Memorial Free Library and Reading Room were opened to the public last Thursday. It has required months of painstaking labor to arrange, classify and catalogue the books; Miss Farnham, the librarian, has been greatly aided by Mr. C.E. Freeman, who has freely devoted much of his time and labor to this preliminary work. The library now contains nearly four thousand volumes and there are several hundred more purchased that have not yet arrived. Catalogues, or finding lists, have been printed at considerable expense and will be ready for distribution in a few days. This valuable gift by Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Tainter will live in its influence for a good long after they have passed away. Truly, the people of this city and county have been greatly favored. The special committee consisting of Messrs. A.R. Hall, Wm. Miller, J.H. Stout and R.J. Flint, appointed by the county board at its last meeting to visit various county insane asylums for the purpose of ascertaining the most suitable buildings, the cost of the same, the method of management and other important details, were engaged in that work several days last week. They visited the asylums located in Dodge, Jefferson, Iowa and Dane counties, and at each place were cordially received by the superintendent in charge and given every facility to gain all possible information in regard to the county system of keeping the chronic insane. In not a single instance was any evidence discovered that would tend to show it was not a good thing for the taxpayer as well as for the unfortunate persons who find a home in these institutions. Saturday, Jan. 20, 1866 Judge Bundy is the lucky father of another boy, now three in a row. Get a homestead, Judge, and four new axes. ... The Speakership of the Assembly was given to the Northwest, in the person of Judge H.D. Barron, of Polk County. He will make a good Speaker. It is hinted that a Festival is to come off soon, for we do not know what. No matter, only so we get something good to eat. The ladies always apply the money to a worthy purpose. ... It is their own business; but the Pioneers courtesy towards the Press looks a little shady. How the Press takes it, we have not seen. It is not among our exchanges. Wish it was! Not a pound of butter for sale in the whole town: a disagreeable fact, that. The printers live on sour kraut and buckwheat cakes. Tried pork couldnt stand it; tried it again, and sopped the pancakes in it. A greasy dose, that. Donald Trump is getting grief for his attack on Chief Justice John Roberts, which is actually an attack on Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who advocated Roberts confirmation to the Supreme Court but is now having second thoughts about Roberts. In an interview with ABC News, Trump, who, like Cruz, is running for the GOP nomination for president, said: Cruz fought like hell to get Justice Roberts in there. Justice Roberts turned out to be an absolute disaster. He turned out to be an absolute disaster because he gave us Obamacare. Even more bizarre, Trump tweeted that Roberts was a liberal. That brought down a Twitter-storm of mockery on his head from those who remember that Roberts wrote the majority opinion in a case gutting a key provision of the Voting Rights Act and joined the 5-4 majority in Citizens United. Advertisement But some of these critics may be making the same mistake that Trump made: thinking that Supreme Court justices are supposed to be robots or partisan hacks. Obviously, Roberts is a career-long legal and political conservative, just as his Democratic-appointed colleagues are political liberals. But members of both blocs call cases the way they see them -- and sometimes the call is one the justices home team objects to. As I wrote earlier, Obama appointees Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan have voted against the legal position proposed by the administration. Mark Tushnet, a professor at Harvard Law School, explains the situation well in his book In the Balance: Law and Politics on the Roberts Court: Judging from the personnel alone, youd expect that the Roberts Court would be a reliably conservative court. But, as conservative outrage at the Affordable Care Act decision indicates, it isnt. Not completely reliable, that is not a ventriloquists puppet for the Republican Party. Yet, though the picture is mixed, the Roberts Courts decisions correspond to the main constitutional positions associated with the Republican Party of the early 21st century. Trump seems to think Roberts should be a ventriloquists dummy for the Republican Party. Some of the chief justices liberal detractors seem to think he really is one. In an article in the Nation in 2014 (published before the second ruling in which Roberts voted to uphold a challenged provision of the Affordable Care Act) William Greider wrote: Republicans like to talk about impeaching President Obama, but there is a far more deserving candidate for impeachment -- Chief Justice John Roberts of the Supreme Court. While the Republicans in Congress have blocked Democrats from enacting much of substance, the GOP majority in control of the court has been effectively legislating on its own, following an agenda neatly aligned with their conservative party. Trump hasnt come out (yet) for impeaching Roberts. But keep an eye on his Twitter feed. Twitter: @MichaelMcGough3 To the editor: It used to be said that partisan politics ends at the waters edge. But Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Sen. Ted. Cruz (Texas) take their angry campaigns to new heights of hypocrisy in their criticism of the Obama administrations negotiation of the prisoner swap with Iran. (Ted Cruz and Donald Trump join in criticizing the U.S. prisoner swap with Iran, Jan. 16) Through quiet diplomacy, our government secured the release of four Americans. Under normal circumstances, all Americans would find some way to cheer about this news. But not Trump and Cruz, who bring up such nonsense as false moral equivalence and it should have happened years before. There is no doubt in my mind that if Trumps or Cruzs prescriptions for diplomacy with (or threats to) Iran had been followed, that nation would continue to pursue an atomic weapon, those four Americans would continue to languish in its prisons, and the Middle East would be an even more dangerous place than it already is. Advertisement Frank King, Coronado Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook To the editor: Jon Stokes makes a simple-minded argument against smart gun technology. He points out that there are significant engineering challenges and that some proposed solutions may introduce new risks. He concludes that there is no point in trying to design a smart gun. (Will smart guns make us less safe?, Opinion, Jan. 17) Of course, he has to stretch credulity to arrive at these results. For example, he theorizes that criminals will wander through a crowd with their laptops hunting for RFID-enabled guns. Good luck with that. Some of the design issues are real, and it will take time and ingenuity to figure out what works and what doesnt. But engineers dont say, Landing a rocket on its tail is hard, so lets not even try. Instead they work hard and try different approaches until the problem is solved. Advertisement Its too bad Stokes doesnt understand that. Geoff Kuenning, Claremont .. To the editor: The National Rifle Assn. and firearms enthusiasts have nothing against the development of smart guns. If left alone, the technology would evolve and a market for such guns would develop naturally. It is only when smart guns are mandated by federal or state governments that resistance develops and the market is disrupted. In 2002, New Jersey attempted to mandate smart-gun technology and only succeeded in ruining the market for these guns. Now, instead of allowing New Jersey to repeal its failed law and letting the free market take over, President Obama is doubling down on government interference with his executive action intending to shape the future of gun safety technology. I fear that the only thing that the president will shape is another disaster for smart guns. Steven Oetzell, Redondo Beach .. To the editor: Stokes argument against smart guns that they can be hacked applies to similar safety technology in cars, planes, dams and other critical infrastructure. Unfortunately, people exist who would cause mayhem by hacking into the electrical systems of planes and cars. This does not mean that such technologies should not be developed and used. The NRA wants gun owners to fear smart-gun technology even though it has the potential to save lives. Shame on it. Arch Miller, Arcadia Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook Good morning from the state capital. Im Sacramento bureau chief John Myers, your Essential Politics guide this week while Christina Bellantoni is away. More than five years ago, the political world buzzed over former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palins trip to New York City, where she ate pizza with Donald Trump, a photo op that ended with more talk about forks than politics. Fast forward to Tuesday, where the GOP presidential sweepstakes no longer includes Palin but instead seems squarely focused on Trump. Or, as the headline puts it in geographic terms: the most famous Alaska politician of her era and the candidate defending his New York values come together in Iowa. Cheering the rock and rollers and Holy Rollers and others assembled for Trump, Palin wholeheartedly threw her support behind the businessman-turned-front-runner. And you may never see a political figure better able than Trump to deliver a red-meat monologue than Palin. On the outsider movement: Were not going to chill. Its time to drill, baby, drill. On Trumps campaign: Hes going rogue left and right. Michael Finnegan and Seema Mehta have our detailed look at both the event and its potential to provide an 11th-hour boost to Trump in a close Iowa contest with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. CHRISTIE TO IOWA: 'I GROW ON YOU' Meantime, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was also in the Hawkeye State on Tuesday doing what hes done his entire political career: selling himself more than any particular ideology. And hes confident, reports Chris Megerian. The story includes a great quote from the campaign trail. "I'm like a fungus," Christie told a crowd in a Sioux City bar. "I grow on you." LEGISLATORS TAKE FIRST GLANCE AT BROWNS BUDGET Now that Gov. Jerry Browns budget is in their hands, legislators here in Sacramento are convening their first official hearings on the 2016-17 plan. On Tuesday, Democratic state senators raised a few questions about whats not in the governors fiscal blueprint: more money for social safety programs. And perhaps just as notably, the chairman of the state Senates budget committee suggested that there will be real debate about Browns call for stashing an extra $2 billion into rainy-day reserves. NEWSOM AND MINIMUM-WAGE HIKE: HE LIKES BOTH VERSIONS The odds now look good that if an initiative to raise Californias minimum wage makes it to the November statewide ballot, itll have the blessing of Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom. Melanie Mason reports that Newsom is backing rival minimum wage measures, as supporters of one of the proposals began submitting voter signatures on Tuesday to elections officials. So why endorse two different measures? The lieutenant governor supports raising the minimum wage period," said Newsoms spokesman. DOCTORS UNVEIL GUIDELINES ON CALIFORNIAS AID-IN-DYING LAW One of 2015s most closely watched debates at the state Capitol ended with the enactment of a law legalizing physician-assisted suicide a law that's yet to take effect. That's because the law, the first of its kind in state history, cant take effect until 90 days after the adjournment of the Legislatures pending special session on healthcare. Nonetheless, doctors are readying themselves for what comes next. Patrick McGreevy has an exclusive first look at the guidelines being issued to doctors about the assisted suicide law, guidelines that will also help doctors know their own rights when it comes to agreeing or refusing to participate. Just last week, opponents officially came up short in an effort to overturn the new law via ballot referendum. TODAYS ESSENTIALS The growing gap between eligible and voting Latinos may be the real takeaway from a study released on Tuesday. Kate Linthicum reports a Pew Research Center study finds growth in Latino voting power, but not equal to the potential based on population and demographics. And yes, part of the lack of national political power may be due to the dominance of Democrats in the states with the highest Latino populations. Christi Parsons and David Savage take a look at the U.S. Supreme Courts decision to weigh in on President Barack Obamas sweeping immigration plan and the impact the courts effort may have on the 2016 presidential race. Rep. Scott Peters (D-San Diego) will help Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack launch the Great Green Fleet today at Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego. Ships and aircraft in the fleet are powered by a blend of traditional fuel and biofuel. Phil Willon traveled up to the rural northern part of California where Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Duf Sundheim was campaigning over the holiday weekend. And, well, things were a little rough for the former state party chairman at an event with a local Tea Party chapter. LOGISTICS Miss yesterdays newsletter? Weve got it here. Did someone forward you this? Sign up here to get Essential Politics in your inbox daily. And keep an eye on our new politics page throughout the day for the latest and greatest. And are you following us on Twitter at @latimespolitics? Please send thoughts, concerns and news tips to politics@latimes.com. With the states assisted death law taking effect in months, the California Medical Assn. on Tuesday issued guidelines to physicians on writing prescriptions of lethal doses of drugs for terminally ill patients. The 15-page guide details the complicated legal and medical path that doctors must take before they can authorize medication to hasten a patients death, and helps physicians understand their legal rights to participate or not participate based on their own moral or religious values. We are starting to get a lot of questions both from our members, the individual physicians, but also the public, said Francisco Silva, general counsel of the medical association. They are trying to understand how the act is going to work. Advertisement The new law leaves some questions unanswered, including what the physician should write on the death certificate. The End of Life Option Act was signed by Gov. Jerry Brown in October, but it does not take effect until 90 days after the end of a special legislative session on healthcare. That date has not yet been set, but the session must adjourn before November. Citing the law, the medical association says patients who are at least 18 years old with the capacity to make medical decisions may request an aid-in-dying drug as long as their attending physician and a consulting physician have diagnosed a terminal disease that is expected to result in death within six months. The patient is required to make two verbal requests at least 15 days apart and one written request that is signed, dated and witnessed by two adults, as well as provide proof of California residency. The state request form is titled Request for an Aid-in-Dying Drug to End My Life in a Humane and Dignified Manner. Physicians must inform the patient that he or she may rescind the request for an aid-in-dying drug at any time and in any manner. A request for a prescription cannot be made on behalf of a patient through an agent under a power of attorney, an advance healthcare directive, a conservator or any other person. There may be circumstances in which patients with mental disorders would qualify, according to the law. The physician must refer the patient for an assessment by a mental health expert. At that point, no aid-in-dying drugs may be prescribed until the mental health specialist determines that the individual has the capacity to make medical decisions and is not suffering from impaired judgment due to a mental disorder, the guide says. Physicians are urged to counsel patients on the importance of having another person present when the drug is ingested, and to not ingest the drug in a public place, such as a street, park or place of business. The law is silent on what specific drug should be used. Silva said medical experts need to address this issue, probably by examining the best practices of Oregon, where a similar law has existed since 1994. Once the prescription is filled, the patient must complete a Final Attestation for an Aid-in-Dying Drug to End My Life in a Humane and Dignified Manner form within 48 hours before self-administering the drug. While the law is silent as to what cause of death should be identified on the death certificate, it does say taking an aid-in-dying drug shall not constitute suicide. The guide says physicians can list the cause of death that they feel is the most accurate, including the underlying terminal illness, or just write pursuant to the End of Life Options Act. The guidelines assure physicians that it is completely up to them whether to help a patient with aid-in-dying medicine. A healthcare provider who refuses to participate in activities under the act on the basis of conscience, morality or ethics cannot be subject to censure, discipline or other penalty by a healthcare provider, professional association or organization, the guidelines say. One physician who will not participate in the new law is Michael J. Schlutz, a Newport Beach oncologist. Advances in pain-control and hospice care address many of the issues terminally ill patients may be concerned about, he said. We think that people who are properly taken care of dont need to end their own lives, said Schlutz, who is a member of the Medical Oncologist Assn. of Southern California, which opposed the law. The guide says that physicians who participate are protected by the new law from criminal, civil and administrative liability if they follow the requirements. Join the conversation on Facebook >> Physicians are warned that they and others may be subject to criminal penalties if they coerce patients to take aid-in-dying medication, alter or forge a patients request for a prescription or destroy a recission request by the patient. It is expected and appropriate that the California Medical Assn. would put out guidelines to help physicians comply with the law, said Tim Rosales, a spokesman for Californians Against Assisted Suicide, which opposed the law. An employer or hospital may prohibit its employees from participating in the law while they are on premises owned or under management of the prohibiting employer. Providence Health & Services, which owns six hospitals in Southern California, will not allow physicians to prescribe lethal drugs on hospital grounds and prescriptions wont be filled on hospital grounds, according to spokeswoman Patricia Aidem. As a Catholic healthcare provider, we believe that intentionally ending a persons life is not consistent with the core principles of the professions of medicine and nursing, said a statement by the hospital chain, which added, Providence does not participate in any way in assisted suicide. The guidelines can be reached on the CMA website. Twitter: @mcgreevy99 ALSO 14 years in, Brown shows no sign of losing political muscle Amount of lobbying done in the shadows is growing, California ethics officials agree Kamala Harris should take bolder action on police shootings, civil rights advocates say The scientist who killed Pluto says there may be nine planets in the solar system after all. Caltech astronomer Mike Brown and his astrophysicist colleague Konstantin Batygin say theyve found compelling evidence that a giant planet orbits the sun in the dark, distant badlands far beyond Neptune. This so-called Planet Nine, described Wednesday in the Astronomical Journal, is about 10 times more massive than Earth and takes 10,000 to 20,000 Earth years to circle the sun, according to their calculations. For the sake of comparison, Neptune makes its round trip in 165 years. Advertisement Join the conversation on Facebook >> If its existence is confirmed by powerful telescopes on Earth, Planet Nine would rewrite our definition of the solar system and help solve some mysteries about its violent past. In more than 150 years, we have the first observational evidence that the planetary census of the solar system is incomplete, said Batygin, the studys lead author. Were truly living in a special time. Scientists have long wondered whether a Planet X exists in the dim regions far beyond the gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, which led to Plutos discovery in 1930. Their musings took on a new tone in March 2014, when a pair of astronomers announced that theyd discovered a brand-new dwarf planet. The body, known as 2012 VP113, lies in a region beyond the Kuiper belt, a giant ring of icy and rocky debris whose most famous resident is Pluto. It wasnt the only such object: Sedna, an icy 600-mile-wide rock discovered in 2003, also boasted this far-out orbit, and it seemed to be making its closest approach to the sun at a similar angle as 2012 VP113. This could be a coincidence or it could mean that a giant planet was lurking out there in the dark, influencing both their movements. Brown was intrigued. An expert on the far reaches of the solar system, his 2005 discovery of the dwarf planet Eris forced planetary scientists to reconsider Plutos status. Known for decades as the ninth planet in the solar system, Pluto has since been reclassified as a dwarf planet. After reading up on 2012 VP113, Brown went down the hall to see Batygin, who studies the evolution of the solar system. I walked in and said, Look, this is real; we have to figure out what is going on, Brown said. Batygin hadnt been thinking much about invisible planets in the solar system, but the data on Sedna and 2012 VP113 were intriguing. The two bodies are really outliers, Batygin said. Their orbits do not hug the orbit of Neptune, and hugging the orbit of Neptune is kind of a unifying feature among the vast population of Kuiper belt objects. So how did they get there? Neptune could not have been responsible, since it was too far away, Batygin said. Batygin and Brown considered other explanations. They studied the paths of half a dozen distant objects in the solar system, in the hopes that the shapes of their orbits would reveal the gravitational fingerprint of a hidden planet. They began to see a strange pattern: Compared with the orbital plane of Earth and the other planets, all of these objects orbits were tilted downward, and at about the same angle. Also, their orbits including their perihelia, the points at which each object came closest to the sun were clustered fairly close together, rather than being randomly distributed. Brown was baffled by these orbits, which often crossed one another. Theres no way these overlapping paths should remain stable, he thought unless there was something else out there that was massive enough to shepherd these objects along their mysterious tracks. Using sophisticated computer simulations, the scientists calculated that theres only a 0.007% possibility that these tightly clustered orbits arose by chance. We would have to get monstrously lucky to have the solar system that we have, Batygin said. The more he and Brown crunched the numbers, the more convinced they became that a massive planet was not just possible but likely. The scientists calculated that the planet would have a long, elliptical orbit whose closest approach to the sun was on the opposite side of the objects it was shepherding. But even at its nearest, it was still 200 astronomical units, or Earth-sun distances, away. At its farthest, it might be 600 or 1,200 astronomical units from the sun. (Neptune, by contrast, is about 30 astronomical units from the sun, and the outer edge of the Kuiper belt is 50 astronomical units away.) The computer simulation neatly explained the orbits of Sedna and 2012 VP113. But the true power of their prediction was that it described the behavior of other objects that the scientists did not set out to explain. The model showed that there must be a weird class of objects that move perpendicular to the planetary plane. At first, this seemed patently ridiculous to the researchers until they looked it up and found that there were, in fact, several known objects moving in a manner that matched their calculations. Thats when my jaw hit the floor, Brown said. Though 10 times more massive than Earth, Planet Nine would be tiny compared with the solar systems gas giants, Brown and Batygin said. In fact, this may be why its been banished to the interplanetary boonies, said Scott Sheppard, an astronomer at the Carnegie Institute for Science in Washington, who was not involved in the new study. Planet Nine may have formed closer to the sun but was hurled out of the area thanks to the gravitational influence of Jupiter or Saturn. It was probably the runt of the family, said Sheppard, who co-wrote the paper that originally piqued Browns interest. Planet Nine, if discovered where its predicted to be, would follow recent astronomical tradition. The last and most distant planet discovered in our solar system, Neptune, was found thanks to the mathematical predictions of Frenchman Urbain Le Verrier in 1846; German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle spotted it within a day of receiving Le Verriers calculations. Finding this new distant world, however, probably will be much harder than finding Neptune. At its closest point to Earth, it would be roughly 18.6 billion miles away, where little sunlight can reach. It will take powerful telescopes such as the Keck Observatory and Japans Subaru Telescope, both on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, to find Planet Nine, if its really out there. In some ways, the scientists noted, it might be easier to see planets around other, far more distant stars, simply because you know where to look directly at the star as a planet transits in front of it. In the case of Planet Nine, the researchers dont know exactly where it lies in its potentially 20,000-year-long orbit which means theres a lot of celestial ground to cover. Sheppard said his certainty that Planet Nine exists has now risen from about 50% to 60%. Now hes searching for more small objects whose orbits may bear the mark of Planet Nine in the hopes that it will help others figure out where the mysterious world might be. If they determine that Planet Nine exists, it could shed light on the solar systems tumultuous early years and help explain why the solar system looks the way it does today, scientists said. For instance, it could help account for the unusual demographics of our solar system, which looks quite different from the systems around other stars observed by NASAs Kepler space telescope. Kepler has found that planets of a few to several Earth masses super-Earths and mini-Neptunes are common around other stars. Yet our solar system seems to be missing these usual characters. If Planet Nine is real, Brown said, then our home in the galaxy doesnt look quite so different after all. Confirmation might also rehabilitate Browns image as the Pluto killer. I hope so, he said. My daughter is the one who told me I need to do this. Even before we started this, she said, Daddy, what you need to do is go find a new planet so that people will no longer be sad about Pluto. amina.khan@latimes.com Twitter: @aminawrite Follow @aminawrite on Twitter for more science news and like Los Angeles Times Science & Health on Facebook. MORE SCIENCE NEWS: 2015 was the hottest year on record, according to new data Toxins from algal blooms may cause Alzheimers-like brain changes Say cheese for science: Camera traps show how habitat protection aids biodiversity Local nonprofit leaders are hoping to raise $1 million to aid ethnic Armenians who are suffering the effects of a nearly five-year civil war in Syria, where President Bashar al-Assads regime and armed rebels are fighting each other, as well as the Islamic State, or ISIS. An estimated 250,000 people have been killed in the conflict, which has created a huge refugee crisis in the region and throughout Europe. Among the victims are Syrian Armenians, who are Christians, and have been displaced and deprived of basic needs such as food, water and shelter, while bombings and mortar shelling are threatening their lives, local charity officials said last week. Representatives of the Glendale-based Syrian Armenian Relief Fund and Armenian Relief Society gathered at the headquarters of the Western Diocese of the Armenian Church in Burbank last Wednesday to discuss an upcoming telethon to support Armenians in Syria. The Armenian community will come together, said Raffi Kandeerjian, vice president of the relief fund. The telethon, which will air live from 2 to 8 p.m. on Feb. 21 on Horizon TV, USArmenia, ARTN/SHANT and via web stream, will be produced by the relief fund. Established in 2012, the organization has already sent more than $1 million to help victims of the civil war during the past four years. Vazken Madenlian, chairman of the telethon committee, said the single events $1 million goal is a little ambitious, but he said, were talking about a matter of life or death. In the early part of last century, there were an estimated 250,000 ethnic Armenians living in Syria, relief officials said. However, in the past 20 years, that number dwindled to roughly 150,000 before the start of the war. There may now be less than 30,000 still living in Syria, mostly in the city of Aleppo, though reliable figures are unavailable. The relief fund has good accountability of how its funds are used to aid the beleaguered Armenian community in Syria, said John Titizian, chairman of the relief funds executive committee, and every dollar raised through the telethon will be sent to an aid group in Aleppo with none whatsoever diverted to overhead expenses. Most of the money has been used for food, water and medical aid, though some has been used to make repairs to buildings to make them habitable, officials said. Some money has also paid for relocation of displaced Syrian Armenians seeking refuge in Armenia or for tuition at schools in the Syrian cities where most Armenians live. The schools also provide a certain amount of normalcy in the midst of the chaos, Titizian said. Officials said there are an estimated 3,500 to 3,800 school children in Aleppo, and suspending their education would also make it harder for them to catch up when the conflict ends. In a phone interview last week, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank), who has advocated for humanitarian aid for Syrians, called the situation for Armenians in that country painfully poignant, given the fact that they had sought refuge there 100 years ago fleeing the Armenian Genocide in what is now the Republic of Turkey. Its highly important that an organized effort is made in the community, Schiff said. It is really a life-and-death situation for many people in Syria right now. -- Chad Garland, chad.garland@latimes.com Twitter: @chadgarland Opponents of the proposed Armenian American Museum project voiced concerns over the potential for traffic and parking impacts while backers endorsed the potential of creating a cultural hub and community resource during a public forum Sunday. More than 100 people packed a St. Gregory Armenian Catholic Church meeting room for a forum organized by the museum development committee. The contested site, a 1.37-acre, city-owned parking lot, is at the corner of Mountain Street and Verdugo Road, across from Glendale Community College and abutted by a residential neighborhood. While concerned residents say theyre not against the idea of a 30,000-square-foot museum, theyre not a fan of the location. The museum should be in a central area of the city, where City Hall is, and there is a core civic center area, resident Tom Searson said in a phone interview after the meeting. I think thats probably the best location; theres an infrastructure there. Theres shopping, all these things that will attract pedestrian traffic. Adding a museum to the area could generate congestion nearby streets cant handle, he said. Conceptual designs depict a two-story building with a facade resembling both local and Armenian mountains. Inside, there will be a library with research facilities, exhibitions and a coffee shop. Local teacher Taline Arsenian, who was among those at the meeting, called the location within walking distance of the college ideal. Im looking forward to this museum opening, to students from our community and neighboring communities being exposed to all of the cultural awareness and education theyre going to get, she said. Berdj Karapetian, chairman of the museums project development committee, said half of the exhibits will be permanent, while the other half will be traveling collections that feature other cultures, including Korean and Indian. He added the museum currently isnt looking into other potential sites. One resident asked why the design couldnt reflect the architecture of nearby Spanish homes. Architect Aram Alajajian said differentiating the building was intentional, citing as examples the distinct designs of the Broad and Getty museums. A museum is an iconic project, he said. An iconic building needs to stand out. In response to concerns over potential activities, Tigranna Zakaryan, the museums outreach director, said the property would not host weddings or other events completely unrelated to what the museum stands for. Several residents of the adjacent Rossmoyne neighborhood said they were worried about added traffic. A traffic study is planned, as are future reviews by City Hall. The Glendale City Council would eventually have to give its approval as well. The traffic study will likely be conducted next month and take into account peak hours of traffic, especially when Glendale College students arrive in the morning, traffic engineer Jano Bagdanian said. While data still has to be collected, there are some things already known about museum traffic. One with museums is that they do not generate traffic during peak hours, they generate traffic during the day a majority of museum visits occur on Saturdays and Sundays, Bagdanian said at the forum. As for parking, the Verdugo and Mountain lot houses 176 spaces used by college students and visitors of the adjacent Glendale Civic Auditorium. More than a year ago, the City Council granted an agreement with the museums committee not to lease the lot while a conceptual design was prepared. While final details have a long way to go, the city has already stipulated the museums construction must also entail an underground parking structure to make up for the nearly 200 spaces to be accessible for students in addition to its own spaces for visitors. While theres no final price tag for the entire project, the first financial goal through fundraising is $10 million, Zakaryan said. She declined to say how much has been raised so far. -- Arin Mikailian, arin.mikailian@latimes.com Twitter: @ArinMikailian Welterweight Jamal James of Minnesota remained unbeaten Tuesday night, delivering steady jabs and showing superior quickness to defeat Norwalks Javier Molina by unanimous decision at downtowns Club Nokia. The judges scoring -- 99-91 (Lou Moret), 98-92 (Sergio Caiz), 97-93 (Zachary Young) -- was surprisingly one-sided, given that the bout was in Molinas hometown and that the 2008 U.S. Olympian had some impressive moments. I didnt feel like the scorecards were fair, Molina said. One judge only gave me one round. No way that was right. Either way, I think I fought a good fight. Advertisement The early rounds looked like toss-ups to most at ringside. I got him to fight my fight, James said afterward. I kept him on the outside, stuck to my game plan. He had some tricky movement with his feet. The range was tough but once I found it, everything fell into place. Molina (17-2) shrugged off bruising at both eyes to pound James with combinations and an impressive counterpunch in the sixth after bringing the crowd to life with hard right-handed punches in the fifth. But James (19-0) remained busy, and his speedy attack kept Molina from delivering his more powerful blows. James jabs opened a cut near Molinas right eye in the 10th, requiring stitches. I am proud to win in his backyard, James said. The crowd was cheering for him. I was able to turn all of that off, listen to my corner and get the W. Earlier, super-middleweight David Benavidez of Phoenix battered Vermonts Kevin Cobbs (10-2) in the second round en route to a technical-knockout victory. Benavidez, younger brother of unbeaten super-lightweight Jose Benavidez, ended the bout 1:08 into the second. I knew I was going to get my opponent out fast. I saw him fight. He doesnt have that many skills, Benavidez said. He was running a lot in the first round and thats why I didnt get him out sooner. As soon as I got my hands ... good night. In the other television bout, Nashvilles Caleb Plant improved to 12-0 with nine knockouts by finishing Spains Adasat Rodriguez 2:37 into the sixth round. Follow Lance Pugmire on Twitter @latimespugmire The proposal sounds familiar. Build a new high school, and turn the existing high school into the new middle school. Convert another existing school into one handling just grades 4-5. Those were some of the recommendations in a December 2010 facilities report made by SDS Architects for the Chippewa Falls School Board. They echo some of the recommendations of a Facilities Planning Committee after the board commissioned a facilities report in 2014 from the architectural firm of ATS&R. That report was issued in 2015. A few recommendations from the 2010 study were adopted at the time, but otherwise was forgotten. There were things going that overshadowed it, said Jerry Smith, who served on the board in 2010 and is the current board president. It grew less important as it grew old. The school board on Monday voted 6-1, with board member Staish Buchner dissenting, to not place the Facilities Planning Committee recommendations on a $167 million referendum on the April ballot. So will the latest facilities study meet the same fate as the 2010 one? No, according to Smith and board members Amy Mason and Buchner. Smith said his goal is to have the board and district administration meet in February and plan on how to deal with the facilities report. Somewhere down the line, they have to do something about these buildings, said Buchner, who said he voted to place the item on a referendum to let the public decide the issue. Buchner, a former principal at the Middle School, said the airflow in that building is awful. At Hillcrest Elementary, the concern is about transportation and safety. At Halmstad Elementary, Buchner said the schedules for what happens in the building depends in part of how the lunchroom is being used. And one of the districts oldest schools, Stillson, has its own set of problems. We probably have to look at building by building and say, Yes, No. Mason said of making changes. Mason said she wants to see from ATS&R a priorities list, what needs to be done right now versus things that could wait. There are certainly facilities in our district that need to be addressed, she said, adding she believes there are some things that can be done to improve Hillcrest Elementary. Mason said she would like to hear community feedback about what should be done about another of the oldest district schools, Stillson Elementary. Whats the amount of money that you are willing to put into a school to save it? she asked. Former board member Roberta Rasmus, who served 18 years on the school board including time as the board president, said Stillson is served by a well and a septic system. She doubted land will be available when those need to be replaced. Sooner or later, there arent going to be answers to some of the problems, he said. The 2010 study tried to offer some answers, and a few of the recommendations were adopted by the board. For example, Southview Elementary was expanded. Rasmus said the study was used to place a priority on maintenance projects and safety measures. You do what you can within the confines of your existing budget, Rasmus said. Larry Sommerfeld was the boards president at the time of the SDS study. As I recall Bob Severson was buildings and grounds director at the time. He worked with SDS architects and their consultants in order to put together a list of costs for upgrading the Chippewa Falls facilities for ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), energy and life safety issues. They also examined how the district could expand existing facilities to meet future needs. A public meeting was held so that SDS could present their findings to the board. One result of this meeting was the district purchasing land for a future school. That 19-acre parcel the board bought is by HSHS St. Josephs Hospital in Chippewa Falls, and remains undeveloped. The 2010 study also put the cost of a new high school at between $65-80 million, with the cost going up to $114.3 million if the board also converted the middle school into a school for fourth and fifth graders. Years later, the ATS&R study put the cost for a new high school at $92 million. That includes the cost of buying land for the school. Other costs listed for options in the 2010 study were between $12.8-$34.4 million to convert Parkview Elementary into a school for fourth and fifth graders only; $24.7-$41.5 million to move the fifth grade to the middle school; and $21.6-$49 million to build a new elementary school. The concept of a neighborhood school is comforting, Rasmus said. But you need to think of what happens as a child moves through the school system, which Rasmus said shes sure people on the Facilities Planning Committee did. Buchner praised the work of the maintenance crew in the school district, keeping the buildings in what he said is pristine condition. But he cautioned: The cost of maintenance for these buildings is going to be bigger and bigger. Theres no way its going to be less. He added: Whether you like it or not, theres got to be a referendum. When that time comes, he said: In the end, I think that this town and the people with children in this town will say, I need this for my kids. Rasmus predicted the school board will be spending many hours making lots of hard choices, and coming back to the community with a proposal. Im confident that we have good people in the district and that they will help the board come through this, Rasmus said. I wish the best for them as they work through (the problems). But the community has to give them time, she said. A suicide car bomb struck a bus carrying employees of Afghanistans largest independent television broadcaster Wednesday evening, killing seven people and wounding 27, police officials said. The blast in western Kabuls Darulaman Road area hit a civilian bus transporting employees of Moby Group, which includes the Tolo TV news channel, the citys police chief, Abdul Rahman Rahimi, told reporters at the scene. The Taliban, which last year named employees of Tolo and 1TV, another major private broadcaster, as legitimate targets, claimed responsibility for the bombing. Advertisement See more of our top stories on Facebook >> Unfortunately, in the terrorist attack today in Darulaman Road in Kabul, we lost 7 staff members, Tolo TV said on its Twitter account. Rahimi condemned the bombing, saying the media and freedom of the press should never come under attack. Abdullah Abdullah, the chief executive of Afghanistans national unity government, said: Attacks on innocent civilians have no justifications. It contradicts all faiths, religions, beliefs and humanity. In a statement last October, the Taliban for the first time threatened specific media outlets, saying employees and offices of the private broadcasters were military targets due to their disrespectful and hostile actions toward the Afghan mujahid nation, as it sometimes refers to itself. Henceforth no employee, anchor, office, news team and reporter of these TV channels holds any immunity, the statement said. In the 14 years since the U.S.-led invasion toppled the Taliban government, the growth of private media has been seen as one of the major advancements in Afghanistan. The number of news organizations nationwide now exceeds 1,000, compared with 15 during Taliban rule. The Taliban has increased attacks on civilian targets in recent months as part of a fierce offensive that has wrested territory from the Afghan government. This week, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the United States and China called on the Taliban to resume peace talks with the Kabul government, but the insurgent group has not indicated whether it will participate. Latifi is a special correspondent. ALSO Where are Irans billions in frozen assets, and how soon will it get them back? Mystery deepens as two missing Hong Kong men surface in mainland China At least 21 killed in Pakistani university attack; Taliban claims responsibility Gunmen broke into a university campus in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday morning, fatally shooting students in their dorm rooms in an assault that left at least 21 people dead, police and hospital officials said. A commander of the Pakistani Taliban, which has frequently attacked educational institutions in a long insurgency against the government, claimed responsibility for the attack. A Pakistani army spokesman said four militants were shot and killed by army soldiers at Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, east of the city of Peshawar. Advertisement It was one of the most brazen attacks claimed by the Pakistani Taliban, and came barely one year after the militant group raided an army-run public school in Peshawar, massacring more than 150 people, most of them children. Officials and witnesses said the assailants took advantage of a thick wintry fog that had blanketed the campus, impairing visibility. They scaled a wall at the rear entrance to the campus around 9 a.m. after cutting a coil of barbed wire, and rushed toward a nearby dormitory for male students, lobbing hand grenades into the rooms, authorities said. Shahzad Khan, a security guard, said he opened fire at the assailants but ran out of ammunition. Witnesses said one professor and at least two female students were among the dead, along with campus security guards. Abdul Majeed, a photojournalist who visited the scene, said the bodies of students lay in the dorm rooms. The four attackers were shot and killed inside the dormitory, he said. Doctors said 19 bodies and 14 injured people reached a government hospital in Charsadda, while rescue teams raced from Peshawar, about 20 miles away, and other nearby cities. Officials feared the death toll would rise because many others were injured, some seriously. Students said the attackers opened fire indiscriminately. There was a thick fog and I heard gunfire, said Zakir Ali, a student who suffered a bullet injury. Faiz Muhammad, a resident, said that firing continued for at least four hours and that army troops besieged the campus, with helicopters circling overhead. I heard at least eight loud blasts inside the campus, Muhammad said. Pakistans chief of army staff, Gen. Raheel Sharif, visited the university after soldiers from the elite Special Services Group had cleared the campus. Sharif was grieved over [the] tragic loss, according to a statement from the military spokesman, Asim Bajwa. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said in a statement that the government was determined and resolved in our commitment to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland. A Pakistani Taliban commander, Umar Mansoor Narrray, told reporters by telephone that four attackers had been sent to the university in retaliation for a Pakistani military offensive that has targeted the group since mid-2014. But later, the Pakistani Talibans chief spokesman denied the group was behind the incident. The Pakistani army says the operation, dubbed Zarb-e-Azb, has killed hundreds of militants in the North Waziristan tribal region. But analysts say many fighters have moved to cities or across the border into Afghanistan, and the insurgent group has continued to carry out attacks. Pakistani intelligence agencies had issued a security alert Jan. 3, citing information that at least eight suicide bombers had entered the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa from Afghanistan and could try to target educational institutions. Since the December 2014 massacre at the army-run school, Pakistan announced a host of measures that officials said would fight terrorism, including lifting a moratorium on the death penalty. Human rights groups say more than 330 death row convicts have been executed since December 2014, although many of them were not found guilty in terrorism cases. As militant violence has risen in Pakistan over the last decade, educational institutions have been particularly vulnerable. Since the 1970s, more people have died in attacks on schools in Pakistan than in any other country, according to the University of Marylands Global Terrorism Database. In 2012, Pakistani Taliban gunmen shot Malala Yousafzai, the girls education activist who later won the Nobel Peace Prize. Wednesdays attack came on the anniversary of the death of the universitys namesake, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, also known as Bacha Khan, a pacifist who led nonviolent campaigns against British colonial rule. Ali is a special correspondent. Staff writer Bengali reported from Dhaka, Bangladesh. ALSO: After sanctions, politics in Iran are the next hurdle to better ties with U.S. Islamic State acknowledges death of Jihadi John in magazine Long after most U.S. troops have left Iraq, civilians are dying in obscene numbers Chinese state television broadcast a confession by a detained Swedish human rights worker Tuesday night, punctuating a state media offensive accusing him of endangering national security by funding grass-roots lawyers and writing reports about the countrys human rights record. Peter Dahlin, a 35-year-old Swedish citizen, appeared on the state broadcaster CCTV to apologize for financially backing Chinese nationals who went on to commit very serious crimes. Colleagues and outside observers said his comments appeared scripted and were likely made under duress. Dahlin said in the broadcast that his organization, the Chinese Urgent Action Working Group, gave about $500 per month to Chinese citizen lawyers who provide legal assistance to victims of government abuse forced demolitions, police beatings, extralegal abductions. He said the group also gave licensed lawyers about $3,000 to take on difficult cases. Advertisement I violated Chinese law through my activities here, Ive caused harm to the Chinese government, Ive hurt the feelings of the Chinese people, Dahlin said, echoing rhetoric that the ruling Communist Party often levels against its critics. I apologize sincerely for this and I regret that this ever happened. He spoke in slow, deliberate English against a nondescript background and beneath low-key lights. Dahlin vanished along with his girlfriend while on the way to the Beijing airport late Jan. 3 or early Jan. 4, according to a statement by his organization. Chinas Foreign Ministry later confirmed that he was detained on suspicion of endangering state security. His whereabouts remain unknown, and his girlfriend, a Chinese national, remains missing. The Chinese Urgent Action Working Group called Dahlins confession forced, and rejected the agencys accusations as baseless. Accusations of criminal activity involving rights lawyers only show that the authorities consider the promotion of human rights through public interest litigation to be a criminal activity, it said in a statement. Empowering Chinese citizens with legal knowledge and expanding access to legal aid to the most marginalized has always been the priority of China Action. Experts say Dahlin appears to have been swept up in a major crackdown on dissent by Communist authorities under President Xi Jinping. Last week, authorities charged seven human rights lawyers and their associates with a count of subversion of state power, which carries a potential sentence of life in prison. All have been held incommunicado for more than half a year. Dahlins confession comes days after Hong Kong-based bookseller Gui Minhai a Swedish citizen who published several books criticizing Chinas leadership gave a teary confession on CCTV admitting to a drunk-driving crime from 2003. Gui went missing in October while at his vacation home in Thailand; four of his colleagues at the Mighty Current publishing house have since disappeared. Many observers believe that they were abducted by mainland security agents. These types of pretrial forced confessions have really become a staple of criminal justice under Xi Jinping, said William Nee, a Hong Kong-based spokesman for Amnesty International. Beginning in 2013, the first full year of Xis tenure, Chinese state television has broadcast scores of confessions by human rights lawyers, outspoken journalists, wealthy businessmen, even a British citizen: Peter Humphrey, who was jailed in 2014 for illegally obtaining private information. Humphrey later said that police barred him access to medical care for a prostate problem until he confessed. Many of the conventions occurred before any judicial proceedings; critics call them a breach of due process that casts doubt on Beijings oft-stated commitment to bolstering the countrys rule of law. I think these are probably effective at striking fear into targeted groups whether thats book publishers in the case of Gui Minhai, or the domestic and foreign NGO community in the case of Peter Dahlin, Nee said. But I think its tremendously counterproductive from an international-image perspective. Theyre so highly edited, conspiratorial in tone, and almost certainly made under duress, that they cant possibly be taken seriously by any neutral observer. The state-run New China News Agency declared Wednesday that authorities have smashed an illegal organization that sponsored activities jeopardizing Chinas national security, and that suspects, including a Swedish man, have been put under coercive measures in line with the criminal law. In a separate report published just before the broadcast, the agency said that Dahlin also hired and trained others to gather, fabricate and distort information about China, providing Chinas human rights report to overseas organizations. The agency added that Dahlin is being held under residential surveillance, a form of secret detention that the U.N. Committee Against Torture has said puts detainees at a high risk of torture or ill-treatment. The reports connected Dahlin to the attempted flight of a human rights lawyers teenage son to Southeast Asia after his mother, Wang Yu, was detained last summer. Chinese authorities apprehended the boy, Bao Zhuoxuan, and two rights advocates, Xing Qingxian and Tang Zhishun, after they crossed into Myanmar. Xing Qingxian, who I once supported, has broken the law, Dahlin said in the broadcast. He illegally brought the son of lawyer Wang Yu across the international border. Yet Xings wife, He Juan, denied that Xing took money from foreign organizations. To my knowledge, my husbands actions had nothing to do with any foreigner. I dont think you can believe a word that Xinhua says, she said in a phone interview, referring to the New China News Agency. If this Peter guy did make a confession about this on CCTV, I think he must have done it against his own will. jonathan.kaiman@latimes.com Tommy Yang in The Times Beijing bureau contributed to this report. The disappearances of five men affiliated with a Hong Kong publishing house specializing in Chinese government exposes took several strange twists this week. One man appeared on state-run Chinese TV saying hed voluntarily returned to the mainland to face justice in a 2003 drunk-driving case. Meanwhile, the wife of another said she had received a handwritten letter, purportedly from her husband, reiterating that he too had returned to the mainland of his own volition to assist with investigations. Both of the men hold European passports. Gui Minhai, owner of the publishing house, Mighty Current Media, is a Swedish national who who vanished in Thailand in October. Lee Bo, also known as Lee Po who was last seen in Hong Kong in December and is a co-owner of a bookshop associated with Mighty Current is a British citizen. Three associates of theirs are also missing and were last seen in mainland China. Advertisement Friends, family members and Hong Kong lawmakers have all questioned whether Gui and Lee were taken to the mainland via extrajudicial means, and whether this signals that the Chinese Communist Party is willing to go to new lengths to punish its critics abroad. A protester is wrapped up with a rope made into a noose during a Jan. 10 march in Hong Kong calling for the release of missing booksellers from the Mighty Current publishing house. (Isaac Lawrence / AFP/Getty Images) In Sundays broadcast on CCTV, Gui tearfully said he had returned to mainland China of his own free will to make amends for a DUI case that left a 23-year-old woman dead in Ningbo. In the video, Gui says that although he now holds Swedish citizenship, deep down I still think of myself as Chinese. I hope the Swedish authorities will respect my personal choices, my rights and my privacy, and allow me to deal with my own issues. In his comments, Gui does not specify where the video was recorded, nor how he returned to the mainland. The video has been met with a wave of disbelief in Hong Kong and beyond. Nicholas Bequelin, Amnesty Internationals East Asia regional director, posted on Twitter that the segment was a very elaborate script, and a skillful mix of truths, half-truths and outright lies. Gui appears in two different shirts in the video, possibly indicating it was a compilation of multiple interviews made at different times. Others have said that the age on Guis Swedish passport does not match that of the man implicated in the drunk-driving case. I hope the Swedish authorities will respect my personal choices, my rights and my privacy, and allow myself to deal with my own issues. Gui Minhai, the owner of Hong Kongs Mighty Current Media publishing house Sweden has pressed China for answers about Guis case and location, and summoned the Thai ambassador in December for information. But Gabriella Augustsson, head of public information at Swedens Embassy in Beijing, said Wednesday that Swedish diplomats still had not received any information about his whereabouts. We continue to seek clarification, she said. If Gui was taken to mainland China against his will, she said, that would be very serious. According to the official New China News Agency, Gui was sentenced in August 2004 to two years in prison for the traffic case. The sentence came with a two-year reprieve akin to probation in the United States. But the news agency said that Gui worried that if he stayed in China, he could still go to jail if he did something wrong, and that he left the country in October 2004 using a fake identity. Chinese police issued a warrant for Guis arrest in August 2006, the agency said, for fleeing China and violating the terms of his reprieve. The news agency said Gui had been on Chinas wanted list ever since. Guis daughter, Angela, who is in Britain, told the Guardian newspaper this week that she could not deny or confirm details of the traffic case, but rejected the idea her father had returned to China of his own accord. I do still believe he was abducted, Angela Gui told the paper. I still think it is suspicious that he and his associates went missing. Even if [the confession] is true, I dont think that is why he is there. After the video of Gui was broadcast on Sunday evening, Lees family told Hong Kong media they had received a handwritten message, purportedly from him. The note, reprinted in the South China Morning Post, said that Lee had learned about the DUI case and had realized that Gui has a complicated history and is a morally unacceptable person. The letter, addressed to Lees wife, Choi Ka-ping, asserted that Lees circumstances represented no threat to Hong Kongs autonomy. Some people used my immigration methods as an excuse to wantonly attack one country, two systems and the Hong Kong government, the note read. This is ridiculous! Hong Kong, a former British colony of 7 million people, became a semiautonomous Chinese territory in 1997 under an arrangement known as one country, two systems. That framework was intended to preserve a range of civil liberties for Hong Kongers, including freedom of speech, that do not exist in Communist-run mainland China. Hong Kong also retained its own legal system, and under the Basic Law, which outlined how the territory would be administered for 50 years following the handover, mainland law enforcement officials are barred from traveling to the territory to make arrests. It would be a violation of the Basic Law if mainland law enforcement agencies had been operating in Hong Kong, the European Union delegation to China said in a statement earlier this month. This would be inconsistent with the one country, two systems principle. The delegation called on authorities in Thailand, China and Hong Kong to investigate and clarify the circumstances of the disappearances in conformity with the rule of law. On Monday, Hong Kong police said they had received a nine-word notification from their counterparts across the border in the Chinese province of Guangdong that Lee was in the mainland. But it did not specify where he was or what he was doing there. Meanwhile, Hong Kong Secretary of Security Lai Tung-kok said his department had written to Guangdongs public security bureau to request access to Lee. Lai said he has yet to receive any information on the three other missing Hong Kong men. Albert Ho, a Hong Kong lawmaker and chairman of a long-standing local group that supports political prisoners in mainland China, said: Well continue to exert maximum pressure on our government officials. They understand theyre duty bound to protect the basic liberty and safety of Hong Kong people. Its very, very embarrassing for the Hong Kong government to be unable to obtain some substantive information, he added. The disappearances have had a chilling effect on Hong Kongs once-vibrant trade in books critical of the Chinese leadership. Tomes about the private lives of mainland political leaders some well-sourced, others largely speculative have for years been popular purchases for mainland tourists on cross-border trips. Hong Kong publisher Jin Zhong said last week he had suspended plans for a book criticizing Chinese President Xi Jinping. Jin, head of the Hong Kong publishing house Open, decided this month to scrap plans to publish Xi Jinpings Nightmare by Yu Jie, a Chinese writer and democracy activist living in the U.S. Many booksellers are afraid of selling these kinds of books now, Jin said in a phone interview last week. This crisis is very severe. The whole thing about Hong Kongs safety in the publishing industry, including book and magazine publishing, is that we are guaranteed by law that Beijing and Hong Kong will not cross into each others territories and arrest people, Jin said. So this time we need to consider a lot of things, and take a step back in order to protect ourselves. Under such circumstances, he said, many of my family members said since you know theres such a risk, why do you want to do this? Do you not want your family anymore? Since you can avoid [persecution], why not just avoid it? So I decided to tell Yu Jie to hold temporarily and wait for a bit. Yu has already written one highly critical book about Xi Jinping, Godfather of China Xi Jinping. Several booksellers initially refused to publish the book, and the few who agreed faced heavy intimidation. One, Yiu Mantin, was arrested during a visit to mainland China before its release. Chinese authorities accused him of smuggling industrial paint, and in May 2014 sentenced him to 10 years in prison. Jin agreed to publish the book after Yius arrest; it was released in 2014. See more of our top stories on Facebook >> Last week, Yu wrote an op-ed in the local newspaper Apple Daily claiming that several other Hong Kong booksellers had refused to publish Xi Jinpings Nightmare, and he now planned to publish it in Taiwan. He called the democratic island a last lighthouse of publishing freedom in ethnic Chinese society. Lees Causeway Bay Books has closed since he went missing, and at least one prominent bookstore chain, Page One, has taken politically sensitive books off its shelves. On Jan. 10, thousands of Hong Kong residents gathered to protest Lees disappearance, shouting, Free Lee Bo! and waving banners that read missing person. After the video of Gui was broadcast on Sunday evening, Lees family told Hong Kong media they had received a handwritten message, purportedly from him. The note, reprinted in the South China Morning Post, said Lee had learned about the DUI case and had realized that Gui has a complicated history and is a morally unacceptable person. The letter, addressed to Lees wife, Choi Ka-ping, asserted that Lees circumstances represented no threat to Hong Kongs autonomy: Some people used my immigration methods as an excuse to wantonly attack One Country, Two Systems and the Hong Kong government, the note read. This is ridiculous! Ho, the lawmaker, said Lees bookstore is under pressure to move its inventory of 30,000 books from its warehouse, where Lee was last seen. Kaiman reported from Hong Kong and Makinen from Beijing. Tommy Yang in The Times Beijing bureau and special correspondent Violet Law in Hong Kong contributed to this report. ALSO Suicide blast targets Afghanistan media group, killing 7 Where are Irans billions in frozen assets, and how soon will it get them back? At least 21 killed in Pakistani university attack; Taliban claims responsibility Increasing HIV infection rates are raising fears that the Philippines will be faced with a public health crisis that it has long escaped. Since the Philippines reported its first case of HIV in 1984, the island nation has had one of the lowest rates of infection in the world; less than 1% of its 100 million population has been infected with the virus that causes AIDS. But that may be changing. Globally, new HIV infections have fallen dramatically in recent years, according to UNAIDS, the United Nations program to combat the disease. But in the Philippines, more than 20,000 new HIV infections were reported from 2010 to 2015 more than four times as many as had been recorded in the 26 years before that. Advertisement Along with India and Pakistan, the Philippines is seeing new infections and AIDS-related deaths sharply rise among men who have sex with men and among transgender women, sex workers and people who inject drugs. A nationwide study conducted by the Department of Health showed that in some areas, infection rates among these groups were higher than 5%. That 5% threshold is like a tipping point, said Dr. Genesis Samonte, head of the departments HIV/AIDS monitoring and tracking unit. There is already a large base of people who have the virus, so the rate of infection will be exponentially faster. No one is saying national emergency yet, but a lot of people are thinking it, said HIV activist Tony Benfield. Benfield, 53, vividly remembers the early days of AIDS, in the 1980s, when HIV had yet to be discovered as its cause and men were dying from what was called gay cancer. I lost many friends then. It offends and angers me that I continue to lose friends today, Benfield said. Back then, we called it for what it was. He died of AIDS, we would say. But 30 years and many medical advancements later, HIV-related deaths are shrouded by attributing them to more socially acceptable diseases such as hard-core pneumonia or brain tumor. In 2009, Benfield was working for a nongovernmental organization when he began offering free HIV screening and counseling to friends through home test kits. Covering the cost of the $2 test kit himself, he would go out in his spare time to parking lots of malls or coffee shops to meet people anywhere but the homes, offices or schools where they could be recognized. It was basic but utilitarian. And it was better than the other options available at the time: government-run testing centers where clients could wait most of a day to receive their test, or private hospitals that charged as much as $100. Benfields testing service spread, initially through word of mouth, later through social media. But as it grew, so did the problem. Before, one out of five tested positive, Benfield said. Now, its more like four out of five. Its depressing. In 2012, Benfield and some friends opened Sustained Health Initiatives in the Philippines, a small private HIV testing clinic. Benfield considered it a memorial of sorts to a friend he had lost to HIV-related complications. He did not know the friend was HIV-positive until after he had died. Its a train wreck coming. Cant anybody else see that? Benfield said. The government did see it as far back as 2009, when new HIV infections showed their first jump. Health officials noted that the virus, formerly transmitted primarily by female sex workers, now was being spread largely by men having sex with men. The increase hit some areas especially hard. Cebu City in the central Philippines saw one of the biggest explosions in infection rates. More than 70% of the total HIV infections are now attributed to men having unprotected sex with other men. Most of them are in the 25-34 age group. The Health Department puts AIDS-related deaths since 1984 at 1,501. But health experts and activists alike say the number is grossly understated, with many deaths quietly passed off as pneumonia or meningitis. From January to November 2015, there were 415 HIV-related deaths. Thats more than one death every day of mostly young gay men. Ignoring this is like saying that the deaths of gay men dont matter, said Jonas Bagas, former executive director of the Library Foundation, one of the first HIV awareness and advocacy groups in the Philippines. The Health Department forecasts total HIV infections will reach 133,000 by 2022 if the current trend continues. To reverse the increase in infections, we need to increase condom use and bring it up to the level of 80%. We need to get people tested and get them on treatment, said Samonte. Increasing condom use among men who have sex with men from its current level of 44% will mean overcoming social, religious and legal obstacles. Condoms are only sold in convenience stores and drug stores mostly behind the counter. In the heavily Roman Catholic country, condom ads and public service campaigns on HIV/AIDS are muted by protests from religious groups, which see them as promoting promiscuity. And existing laws bar minors from getting an HIV test or being offered condoms from public health clinics without parental consent. It no longer responds to the current HIV situation, said Rom Dongeto, executive director of the Philippine Legislators Committee on Population and Development. Isnt it baffling that the government has no massive and sustained information campaign about HIV and AIDS, given this dramatic increase in new infections? This is a public health issue that is exploding as we speak. The government is considering incorporating HIV education into public school curricula to catch risky behavior before it starts. Bic Bic Chua, executive director of Catholics for Reproductive Health, decried a recent decision by Congress to eliminate the Health Departments contraceptive budget. We are running a race against time against increasing maternal deaths, increasing teen pregnancies and increasing HIV rates. Nobody wins. We will all lose, said Chua. Santos is a special correspondent. Reporting for this story was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. ALSO China airs confession by Swedish rights worker; critics charge coercion Mystery deepens as two missing Hong Kong men surface in mainland China At least 21 killed in Pakistani university attack; Taliban claims responsibility The head of the European Unions leadership body warned Tuesday that the 28-nation bloc must develop a better strategy for handling the migration crisis, as it faces criticism that its existing policies do not work. EU failure to address the crisis, European Council President Donald Tusk warned, would bring grave consequences including the possible end of passport-free movement within the nations that are part of the Schengen Area. He went so far as to say the EU would fail as a political project if it could not efficiently control its external borders. Tusk told EU lawmakers that a summit scheduled in the Belgian capital, Brussels, on March 17 and 18 was the last moment to see if our strategy works. Advertisement His stark warning came after Hungary, Slovenia, Austria, Denmark and Sweden reintroduced border controls and other countries refused a plan to share the problem by agreeing to take a quota of migrants. The Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, an informal grouping known as the Visegrad Four, or V4, have expressed virulent opposition to a plan to relocate 160,000 refugees in Italy and Greece. This intransigence threatens to cause a domino effect in neighboring Slovenia and Serbia, both of which are on the so-called Balkan migrant corridor from Greece, where most migrants are arriving from Turkey, to Northern Europe. Both countries have threatened unspecified retaliatory measures if V4 nations slow down or prevent refugees from entering their territory. If Austria and Germany introduce certain measures that would mean tighter control of the flow of migrants, Slovenia will do the same, Karl Erjavec, Slovenian foreign minister, said at a news conference in Belgrade on Tuesday with Ivica Dacic, the Serbian foreign minister, who said his country would protect its interests. We cannot allow [other] borders to close and limit the flow of migrants so they stay in Serbia, Dacic added. Britain has been criticized for its contentious demand to be allowed to curb social benefit payments to EU migrants for four years after they arrive, a move London says is necessary for the country to remain in the bloc. As the migrant issue sparks disputes and division among EU states, officials in Germany, the main destination for people arriving in Europe, have expressed frustration at the EUs apparent inability to find a collective response to the migration, the biggest in Europe since World War II. The humanitarian aid organization Doctors Without Borders accused the EU of catastrophic failure over its handling of the estimated 1 million refugees and migrants who arrived on the continent in 2015, many of them fleeing conflict and poverty. About 3,000 new people are reportedly arriving in Greece every day, and almost 3,800 people died trying to cross the Mediterranean last year. In a report published Tuesday, the aid agency said the EU had considerably aggravated the migrant crisis. And it said border closures and police clampdowns on those seeking sanctuary, homes and jobs were forcing refugees to find increasingly dangerous routes to Europe, and lining the pockets of human traffickers. Not only did the European Union and European governments collectively fail to address the crisis, but their focus on policies of deterrence along with their chaotic response to the humanitarian needs of those who flee actively worsened the conditions of thousands of vulnerable men, women and children, said Brice de le Vingne, head of operations for Doctors Without Borders. On Monday, French police brought in bulldozers to clear part of a shantytown near Calais known as the Jungle, home to 5,000 migrants. Frances authorities have evicted 1,500 people from tents and shacks to create a buffer zone between the camp and the nearby highway. Many of the evicted families have been offered homes in 12-bed units created from shipping containers that have electricity and heating. However, the authorities are demanding migrants give their fingerprints before being allowed to move into a container home. Willsher is a special correspondent. Irans frozen money has begun to thaw. For years, Iran had tens of billions of dollars worth of funds that were languishing in banks, unable to be used, because of global sanctions. That began to change Tuesday, when the head of Irans central bank announced that the nation had successfully transferred billions worth of assets from banks in South Korea and Japan to banks in Germany and the United Arab Emirates. The transfers came with the lifting of some sanctions on Iran last week as part the deal Iran struck to place restrictions on its nuclear program. Advertisement The U.S. has a long history of sanctioning Iran, a longtime geopolitical foe, starting with Irans Islamic Revolution in 1979, and continuing through the 80s and 90s as U.S. officials accused Iran of backing groups seen as engaging in terrorism. The result is that Iran has been almost completely isolated from the international financial system, David S. Cohen, former Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, told Congress last year. Iran lost access to tens of billions of dollars worth of funds in foreign banks. Exactly how much money was locked up is hard to pin down. Some American experts believe it reached more than $100 billion enough, Cohen noted, to limit Irans ability to stabilize its currency and conduct foreign trade. Nader Habibi, a professor of economics at Brandeis University who has tried to figure out the exact number, says the nuclear sanctions lifted last week will probably free up only about $30 billion worth of assets. Irans central bank chief, Valiollah Seif, had a similar estimate this week about $32 billion. I think partly the dispute or disagreement is because some of Irans funds have been blocked for a long time, and they have nothing to do with the nuclear agreement, said Habibi, who thinks the larger estimates include Iranian funds that have been frozen in foreign banks dating back to the Iranian Revolution. I think this number [$32 billion] is closer to reality than $100 billion. Join the conversation on Facebook >> Much of the frozen cash comes from revenue accrued by Iran as it continued to sell a limited amount of oil to a small number of countries including South Korea, Japan, China and India. Although the oil sales to those countries were legal Iran was allowed to sell up to 1 million barrels per day before sanctions were lifted the money for the sales would sit in one of those banks in their countries, but [the money] could not be transported, because it was illegal under U.S. sanctions, Habibi said. There has been some concern that Iran might use the money its now recovering to fund opponents of U.S. policy in the Middle East, including the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah, the Palestinian militant group Hamas, and the Syrian government. But many experts think its more likely that Iran will primarily use the money to shore up its flagging economy and create jobs. By and large, theyre probably going to use this money at home, said Richard Nephew, a former sanctions chief of the U.S. negotiating team who is now a fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University in New York. What the government wants to do if President [Hassan] Rouhani can really control the course of events is put this money in the central bank as sort of a security to entice foreign investors to come to Iran and invest, said Habibi, who also cautioned that Rouhani was not the only one in control of political decisions in Iran. There is a lot of domestic demand for funds at the moment, Habibi said. Many projects have been half-abandoned because of lack of funds, and so some money will go to maintenance and repairs, for the auto industry and also for the oil industry. Iran also needs to buy a large number of new airplanes and parts for its aging aerial fleet. Although the newfound billions are eye-grabbing, Nephew thinks Irans ability to export oil again, import gasoline and petroleum products, and regain access to international creditors will probably play a bigger role in reviving the nations economy. Irans overall economic relief as a result of [the lifting of] sanctions is multiples of this amount currently frozen in banks, said Mark Dubowitz, director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a conservative think tank in Washington that has been critical of Iran. Ultimately it will prove to be a rounding error compared to what Iran will earn over the next number of years. NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >> At least 400 Iranians will be removed from U.S. government blacklists, while Europe will allow trade in software, gold and metals and transportation equipment, as the Los Angeles Times has reported. The U.S. embargo on trade with Iran will continue, but several exceptions will be allowed, including the import and export of food and carpets. But with the U.S. retaining the power to deem certain Iranians as terrorism sponsors, the U.S. can still frighten European banks away from certain investments in Iran, Nephew said. We didnt actually give them a blank check; we didnt clean the slate, Nephew said. We still have a lot of sanctions authority thats going to make life difficult for businesspeople in Iran. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Follow @MattDPearce for national news MORE ON IRAN After sanctions, politics in Iran are the next hurdle to better ties with U.S. Dont think that the U.S. and Iran are done butting heads Pentagon report: Iran took SIM cards from detained U.S. sailors phones In announcing a surprise prisoner swap alongside Irans fulfillment of its nuclear deal obligations, the Obama administration portrayed the 21 Iranians who were in effect pardoned as little more than sanctions-busters, emphasizing they had not been charged with violent or terrorism-related crimes. But many in the group were assisting Irans military, spy services and nuclear program, providing what one U.S. attorney called a threat to national security. At least two suspects reportedly lent logistical support to what the United States considers a terrorist group. Seven of the 21 were pardoned or had their sentences commuted as part of the trade for four Americans imprisoned in Iran. The other 14 were fugitives, believed to be overseas, and arrest warrants were dropped against them. Advertisement Among the 14 were Hamid Arabnejad and Gholamreza Mahmoudi, senior executives with Irans Mahan airline. U.S. officials say the airline ran supplies to Hezbollah, the Lebanese-based Islamic organization that the U.S. considers a terrorist group. The airline also is accused of providing logistics support, including covert travel, to the Quds Force, the elite overseas unit of the hard-line Revolutionary Guard. The U.S. has designated the Quds Force a supporter of terrorism since 2007. Arabnejad was separately accused of using Mahan to smuggle weapons to Syrian President Bashar Assad for the regimes violent crackdown against its own citizens, according to a 3-year-old Department of Treasury designation that imposes sanctions. In the prisoner swap, Tehran agreed to free four Americans who had dual U.S.-Iranian citizenship, including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian, after long ordeals in Iranian prisons. Iran separately released a fifth American, a student who had spent about 40 days in jail. In exchange, the United States freed six U.S.-Iranian dual nationals plus a seventh Iranian citizen, Nima Golestaneh, from U.S. prisons. The seven all chose to stay in the U.S. after their release, although Golestanehs immigration status is unclear. He was extradited from Turkey in February and pleaded guilty to hacking a Vermont aerodynamics company and defense contractor to steal software. Three of the seven Khosrow Afghahi of Los Angeles, and Tooraj Faridi and Bahram Mechanic, both of Houston were part of the same case. They are accused of shipping to Iran an estimated 28 million electronic parts valued at $24 million between July 2010 and April 2015, according to federal court documents in Houston. Prosecutors said the three violated U.S. export laws, used intermediaries in Taiwan and Turkey to conceal the illicit shipments, and shipped specialized circuits and microprocessors used in the guidance systems of cruise missiles and surface-to-air missiles. The three pleaded not guilty and were awaiting trials. They received pardons as part of the deal. Arash Ghahreman, another of the seven, had his 6 1/2-year prison sentence commuted. He was convicted in federal court in San Diego last summer for his role in a scheme to send fiber-optic gyrocompasses and electron tubes, which have both civilian and military uses, to Iran through a front company in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The proliferation of sensitive U.S. technologies to Iran continues to be a threat to U.S. national security, U.S. Atty. Laura Duffy, who handled the case, said at the time. Ellis M. Johnston III, Ghahremans lawyer in San Diego, said the gyrocompasses and other items were for commercial use. He said Ghahreman, who lives in Staten Island, N.Y., was relieved after his release and planned to spend time with his family. He just wants to have some privacy and figure out what happened over the last 72 hours, Johnston said Tuesday. Another prisoner who had his sentence commuted, Nader Modanlo, was sentenced to eight years in prison in 2013 for his role in helping Iran launch a spy satellite in 2005. The $10-million fee he forfeited for conspiring to provide illegal satellite services to Iran will not be returned. Ali Saboonchi, of Parkville, Md., was convicted in 2014 of illegally exporting American-manufactured industrial products to Iran, including cyclone separators used in petroleum refineries, and specialty filters used in nuclear plants and the oil and gas industry. His sentence was commuted. Among the 14 accused was Seyed Abolfazl Shahab Jamili, an Iranian businessman who was charged in absentia in 2013 with violating U.S. export laws by conspiring to buy specialized sensors called pressure transducers that can be used in gas centrifuges to enrich uranium. The Justice Department dismissed 10 criminal counts against Jamili on Saturday. The government is dismissing the counts against defendant Jamili based upon issues regarding securing extradition of the defendant and significant foreign policy interests, said the U.S. attorney for the district of Massachusetts, Carmen M. Ortiz. Some of the Iranians who were freed or who are not going to be pursued could still be prosecuted on other sanctions violations since the U.S. trade embargo against Iran remains in place. So do specific sanctions for Irans human rights abuses, support of terrorism and, most recently, its ballistic missile program. For the prisoner exchange, Iran initially submitted a long list to U.S. negotiators of Iranians and Iranian Americans in U.S. custody. Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch rejected several dozen names from the list, said a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity in discussing the process. Lynch was concerned about setting a precedent if individuals charged with terrorism or violent crimes were released. During secret talks that stretched over 14 months at the margins of the nuclear negotiations, the American side refused to characterize the exchange as a spy swap, which further complicated the criteria. The Iranian government considered Rezaian and the other Iranian Americans it was holding to be spies; the U.S. did not. Instead, the U.S. insisted that the releases be considered humanitarian gestures, the U.S. official said. As the hour of the swap neared last weekend, complications at both ends nearly derailed the exchange. One Iranian serving time in a U.S. prison initially refused to participate. He was nearing the end of his sentence and felt he might win an appeal. He eventually was persuaded to accept his release. In Tehran, the jet preparing to take Rezaian and the two other prisoners to freedom was delayed when Rezaians wife, Yeganeh Salehi, and his mother, Mary, could not be found. Salehi, an Iranian journalist, was on an Iranian no fly list, U.S. officials were told, and would not be allowed to board the aircraft. Diplomats scrambled to find the two and resolve the issue. In the meantime, members of the Swiss flight crew reached their maximum hours on duty and had to take a required rest. The three freed prisoners and Rezaians wife and mother were eventually allowed to board the Swiss plane and depart. The delays in Tehran also pushed back by several hours the release of the prisoners in the U.S., which had to be coordinated with several prisons across the country and timed with the departure of the Americans from Tehran. Times staff writer Molly Hennessy-Fiske in Houston contributed to this report. On 19 January the peace negotiating teams representing the Colombian government and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) guerrillas announced that they had reached an agreement over how a proposed definitive bilateral ceasefire is to be implemented and verified. End of preview - This article contains approximately 492 words. Subscribers: Log in now to read the full article Not a Subscriber? Choose from one of the following options Recent statistics reveal that the rate of unemployment in Ecuador has dipped to a promising 4.8 percent. TelesurTV reported that the National Survey of Employment and Unemployment (ENEMDU) released the figures revealing that the country has the lowest unemployment in Latin America. This is followed by Peru, which has 5.8 percent. The country's Minister of Labor Leonardo Berrezueta said that this is positive news, despite the economic issues that the region is facing. "It's a very encouraging figure in light of the fall in the price of oil, the appreciation of the (U.S.) dollar and the currency devaluation in neighboring countries. Despite all of that, we have protected employment," Berrezueta noted. The TelesurTV report underscored that the oil-exporting nation was hurt by the drop in the oil prices last year. Ecuador is also unable to devalue its currency to make it competitive like other South American countries. But ENEMDU figures prove that the country was able to deal with all these struggles, and still improved its employment efforts. According to Andes, the survey of the country covered more than 30,000 houses in both urban and rural locations. It also revealed that there were notable increases in the employment rate in areas like Ambato, Cuenca, Quito and Guayaquil. All these developments were attributed to the incentives that the country offered its investors. These entrepreneurs have been encouraged to maintain their businesses in Ecuador, and provide more jobs to its people. Andes also explained that if an employer increases the number of workers (with a six months minimum contract), there is a possibility of having a 100 percent deductible Social Security contribution. Those who also add more workers, despite losses, can also "have access to the exoneration of the anticipated payment to the income tax." In addition, contractual methods in various sectors of the government have also been implemented for flexibility options, but maintained the labor rights of workers. These policies in government were made possible through the nine-year leadership of economist and President Rafael Correa, said TelesurTV. Financial Times tagged Correa as a pragmatic leader who is responsible for using the country's oil wealth to create infrastructure projects and solve poverty in Ecuador. Last year, a separate Andes report noted that Ecuador listed a lower unemployment rate of 3.84 percent. It noted that the sectors that provide more jobs to the people are fishing, cattle raising, agriculture, hunting and forestry. The areas with the lowest unemployment rates last year were Cuenca, Machala and Guayaquil. 2015 Latin One. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Peru has reportedly fired its top anti-logging official. This move has sparked speculation that he was sacked after pressure from the timber trade, while being criticized by a leading US congressman and environmentalists. According to The Guardian, it was a presidential decision to dismiss Rolando Navarro. The former head of OSINFOR's dismissal was announced on El Peruano. The state-owned newspaper states no reason as to why Navarro was dismissed. Earl Blumenauer, the US Congressman for Oregon who champions anti-logging, told the publication that the dismissal of Navarro was "appalling," and was proof that illegal logging is still very much alive in Peru. Blumenauer said that Navarro's dismissal from his post was alarming. The former head of OSINFOR was sacked following a series of protests from various timber industry groups. During his term in office, Navarro was reported to ensure that illegal timber was seized and turned over to the proper authorities. The Congressman believes that Navarro's untimely dismissal from his post sends the wrong message to the country. Blumenauer is saddened by the situation, and hopes that Peru can do what it can to put a stop to the illegal logging trade, which has become a lucrative form of livelihood over the past few decades. The Congressman adds that the US government might take matters into its own hands should Peru not fulfill its end of the deal with the US to stop illegal logging. Just last year, Navarro felt the wrath of groups from the timber industry after he seized what was to be Peru's largest seizure of illegal timber. Navarro became the subject of mass protests from various groups in the timber industry. At one point, Navarro's name was even etched on a coffin in an effort to send out a message. Julia Urrunaga, Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) director for Peru, also decried President Ollanta Humala's unfair dismissal of Navarro, saying that he seems to be sending a message to all officials to not interfere with the "illegal logging mafia." She added that those who remain in office and fight for what is right should not be underestimated. She emphasized that while there be many social injustices abound, the ongoing efforts for reform cannot be silenced. Peru has had a long and violent history involving the clashes between anti-logging activists and the illegal timber industry. In 2014, BBC reported that four Peruvian tribal leaders were murdered on their way to a meeting to discuss ways to stop illegal logging. The report said that the men who were killed received several death threats from illegal loggers, who were the main suspects behind the killings. One of the those who was killed in the attack included the outspoken anti-logging activist Edwin Chota. 2015 Latin One. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Ryerson University students conduct a fundraiser to help pay the medical bills of Napu Boychuk, their schoolmate who was paralyzed during a swimming accident, while vacationing in Cuba. Friends, family and schoolmates are putting their heads together to provide financial aid to a Ryerson University dance student who was paralyzed, and most likely lost his chances of achieving his dreams due to a swimming accident last year. On December 13, 2015, the 29-year-old dance student at Ryerson was pulled by strong undertow current and hit an undersea rock while he was swimming with his father and sister in Cuba's Varadero beach. According to a CBC report, the collision shattered a portion of his spinal column, leaving him paralyzed and almost drowned. After his companions found him, Boychuk was resuscitated and transported immediately to the Cira Garcia hospital in Havana, where surgeons realigned his fifth and sixth vertebrae via surgical implant. According to a statement from the Ryerson theatre department, the surgery was successful, but the fourth year student did not recover his motor abilities in his arms and legs. This means he may not dance ever again. "He's a very talented and a very passionate dancer. What that means, being in his final year, is that he's gone through four years of rigorous dance training," Ryerson's theatre school head Peggy Shannon told Toronto's CTV News. As if that was not enough of a challenge, Boychuk's family is also facing a massive financial crisis for his months-long rehabilitation. Their insurance provider cut off coverage since January 7 because the family refused to fly Boychuk back to Canada. "The insurance wanted Napu flown out the very next day after his operation and we were told by the Canadian Embassy that the last young man who was flown out with a spinal cord injury died in flight," the student's father, Dan Boychuk, told CTV News. Furthermore, Dan Boychuk revealed that the insurance company claimed that his son's condition is "not an emergency." "They want to fly people out right away back to the host country regardless of the patient's interests," he added. Because of this, his friends and schoolmates have decided to conduct fundraisers to help with the hospital bills, as Boychuk is expected to stay in the Cuban hospital until mid-February. In fact, his classmates in the Ryerson theatre and dance program are planning on having weekend fundraising activities to earn money to pay off his hospital bills and treatment, which have already exceeded $20,000. Aside from that, they also established an online fundraiser via Tilt as well as a Facebook page dedicated to his recovery. If you wish to donate, simply click this link and follow the instructions on the site. 2015 Latin One. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Honduran president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, has made a pact with an international anti-corruption body to put a stop to criminal networks in Hondura's political systems. Hernandez hopes that this will appease the public's anger over the country's rampant corruption. According to a report with The Guardian, the Mission to Support the Fight against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (Maccih) will be granted powers to conduct their own investigations on politicians, judges and other forces in authority. Organized crime within state institutions has become one of the chief reasons that Honduras has become one of the world's poorest and most violent countries. Former Peruvian prime minister Juan Jimenez will head Maccih, and will be backed by the Organisation of American States (OAS). Last year, Hernandez was forced to reveal that the funds used for his 2013 election campaign were embezzled from the country's social security institute. The embezzled funds amounted to some $300m, and the fraud on the president's part accounted for the deaths of thousands. This was due to medical shortages and debilitating quality of health services in the country. The corruption scandal was an embarrassment to the country, and has incited anger among students, middle-class families, civil society groups and the political opposition. The groups united in protest to demand Hernandez's resignation. The protest group said that the new team should first work on the much heated social security scandal. There are also some concerns that the new team's war on corruption might be "all talk and no bite." Many argue that the new Honduran mission might only work for the benefit of Hernandez. The new mission will operate under the current prosecutor and Supreme Court, both of Hernandez's close allies. According to ABC, Hernandez called the agreement something that should be considered "historical." The president said that fighting corruption in the country is considered a mission, given that it is vastly controlled in many areas by gangs. Honduras has also been named one as one of the most dangerous countries in the world, having one of the highest murder rates, where many crimes go unpunished. Only time will tell if Honduras will be patient enough to wait for Maccih to carry out its work. While there have been some improvements, many Hondurans view Maccih as "something for show." While the institution has worked for its neighbor, Guatemala, many doubt that it will do the same in Honduras. 2015 Latin One. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Acupuncture a Sham? Study Finds Same Effect With Fake Method media@latinoshealth.com By Rachel Cruz Jan 20, 2016 04:30 AM EST Acupuncture provides no better relief than fake methods or sham treatments. A study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine established the facts. Researchers from the University of Melbourne in Australia discovered that acupuncture treatments offered 40 percent improvement for women who are suffering from hot flushes due to menopause. However, the same result is also true for fake acupuncture, EurekAlert reported. Some 327 Australian women in their 40s participated in the study and half of them were provided with 10 sessions of the standard acupuncture, a traditional Chinese treatment for body pains. The other half, which is the control group, was provided with a needle-stimulating method that was less painful as an actual acupuncture. However, the control group's needles were blunt and it didn't enter the skin. The needles also retracted when pressed. However, since these were fine needles, the participants were made to believe that it penetrated, per ABC Australia. After the sessions, both groups of women reported the same improvements and changes in the frequency and severity of their hot flushes. "This was a large and rigorous study and we are confident there is no additional benefit from inserting needles compared with stimulation from pressuring the blunt needles without skin penetration for hot flushes," said lead study author Dr. Carolyn Ee. The doctor also said that the participants may not have been reporting their symptoms correctly due to a placebo effect -- they saw and they believe that they were getting treated, regardless if this was the real or the fake method. Sydney Morning Herald reported that, unless there are more evidence on the effects of acupuncture, the experts cannot recommend this procedure for women who are looking for relief for menopause symptoms. Ee is actually familiar with the symptoms which led her to conduct the study. "I had tried acupuncture for one or two patients who suffered from hot flushes and they reported remarkable results," she told Reuters. "I was curious as to whether or not they improved because of the acupuncture or for another reason." She even admitted that the results did not surprise her. Meanwhile, Dr. Stephen Parnis of the Australian Medical Association stated that there had been instances were acupuncture did help patients in pain, such as those suffering from lower back pain or headaches. "But in this [study's] context it seems to be that whether it's pressure or acupuncture needles, they're both okay but they don't make a significant difference from one to the other," Parnis said. Subscribe to the latinos health newsletter! Zika Virus Update: Jamaican Women Advised to Delay Pregnancy media@latinoshealth.com By Julio Cachila Jan 20, 2016 05:30 AM EST The Jamaican Ministry of Health has urged women to delay getting pregnant due to current reports stating the possible connection between the mosquito-borne Zika virus and a birth condition known as microcephaly. The ministry urged Jamaican women, in a press release, to delay getting pregnant for about six months to one year. The ministry also advised them to take necessary precautions to avoid being bitten by mosquitoes to prevent being infected by Zika virus. The virus is transmitted through bites from carrier Aedes Aegypti mosquitoes, the same kind that causes dengue fever as well as chikungunya. The ministry also urged Jamaicans to destroy possible mosquito breeding areas. The ministry urged people to fix broken pipes and outdoor faucets, cut lawn grass and trim shrubs. The people were also advised to clean roof gutters and eaves to prevent any water from settling and becoming a breeding area for mosquitoes. Persons should also fill in and drain any low places in the yard where puddles are likely to form following rainfall, Health Minister Horace Dalley said. People were also told to use DEET-containing insect repellent and long-sleeved clothing for personal protection against infection. Jamaica hasn't had any reported case of Zika virus infection, Fox News reported. However, the illness has been spreading in different Caribbean countries such as Barbados and Haiti, as well as South American countries such as Brazil. It is believed that Zika virus caused the brain damage of more than 3,500 babies born in these areas. As such, Dalley said that it's only a matter of time before the virus makes its way into Jamaica. [The] virus is inching closer to Jamaica as several of our Caribbean neighbours have reported cases, he said. Zika virus was recently reported to have affected female inmates in a Colombia prison. Some of the women who were affected were pregnant. World Health Organization informed that Zika virus symptoms include mild fever, rashes, headaches, arthralgia, myalgia, asthenia, and non-purulent conjunctivitis. These show up about three to twelve days after being infected by a mosquito bite. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that currently there is no known preventive vaccine or medicine that can treat the virus. As such, prevention is key. The CDC advises everyone to be cautious in traveling to regions or places where Zika has been confirmed. Subscribe to the latinos health newsletter! 'Frozen Man' Resuscitated After Being Unconscious for a Month media@latinoshealth.com By Staff Writer Jan 20, 2016 06:00 AM EST A young man was successfully resuscitated after being found frozen and near death. The frozen man was Justin Smith from McAdoo, Pennsylvania and he was found unconscious in the snow the next morning by his father Don Smith. Justin was reportedly going home on the night of Feb. 20, 2015, at around 9:30 pm after a gathering with friends at Tresckow Fire Company. It was snowing that night and the subzero temperatures that ranged from 4 degrees Fahrenheit to below zero made him black out. Don immediately knew that the boot stuck in the snowbank was his son's, whom he found without a pulse and heartbeat. "He was blue... his face, he was lifeless. I checked for a pulse, I checked for a heartbeat, there was nothing," he said, as reported by ABC News. He was immediately rushed to at the Lehigh Valley Hospital in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. The paramedics performed CPR on Justin's cold limp body for hours. A coroner was called as the 26-year-old had no signs of life. Doctor Gerald Coleman of the Hazleton hospital ordered for him to be given more care in another facility. "But something inside me just said, 'I need to give this person a chance,'" Coleman said, as reported by the Times Tribune. Doctor Coleman told the paramedics: "This is probably going to be a futile effort but I think we need to do our best for him. Okay?" He was transferred via a helicopter to another hospital, Cedar Crest campus in Allentown with a special machine called extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). The machine reportedly helps unfreeze the blood to help it circulate inside the body again. After more than an hour in the machine, Justin's heart started beating. However, he wasn't conscious still. In the course of the next few days, his brain started showing normal activity after being frozen. His toes and pinky fingers were amputated due to frostbite but he has miraculously survived the ordeal. "The love that these doctors showed me at Lehigh Valley Network. I just wanted to thank every single person who had a part in this," Justin said, via 6ABC. "It's amazing and life is good now, you know." Justin was grateful to the doctors who refused to give up on him. Thanks to their quick thinking and initiative, Justin was able to go back to his schooling at Penn State where he aims to have a degree in Psychology. Subscribe to the latinos health newsletter! Donald Trump Has a Mental Disorder, Neuroscientist Claims media@latinoshealth.com By Czarina Malleta Jan 20, 2016 05:21 AM EST A neuroscientist claimed that billionaire businessman Donald Trump has a mental disorder, and therefore, is unsafe to become a world leader. According to an article by Raw Story, Harvard professor and researcher Howard Gardener said that Donald Trump is a "textbook" narcissist. The symptoms are reportedly so obvious that U.S. psychologists agree that Trump is under the same behavioural category like Napoleon Bonaparte, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi. This puts a lot of questions for the voters who will determine the winner for this year's election. If Trump was put in the White House, many are wondering whether he will act as an ally to his people or as a dictator who is unwilling to compromise. For those who are wondering, what exactly are the symptoms of the narcissistic personality disorder? According to Pysch Central, this disorder is characterized by "an overwhelming need for admiration." People who have this disorder usually lack empathy toward other people. Behavioural traits include snobbishness, patronizing attitude and dismissive attitude. Mayo Clinic stated that people with this kind of disorder may cause many problems in areas of their lives such as work, personal relationships, school and finances. People diagnosed with this disorder may grow unhappy when they are not given the kind of special treatment and admiration they think they deserve. "He's very easy to diagnose. In the first debate, he talked over people and was domineering. He'll do anything to demean others, like tell Carly Fiorina he doesn't like her looks. 'You're fired!' would certainly come under lack of empathy. Moreover, he wants to deport immigrants, but [two of] his wives have been immigrants," psychotherapist Charlotte Prozan said of Trump. Although Trump has a lot of haters, the mogul found a new supporter in Sarah Palin. New York Times reported that the former governor of Alaska and 2008 vice-presidential nominee gave her thumbs up for Trump in Iowa. "Are you ready for the leader to make America great again? Are you ready to stump for Trump? I'm here to support the next president of the United States - Donald Trump," Palin said while she stood beside Trump for a rally at the Iowa State University. Thus far, Palin is the highest-profile person who announced support for the presidential candidate. It's not clear what kind of impact this will bring from the Republican. However, since Palin has spent several years developing a network of supporters in Iowa, this endorsement may be helpful for Trump. Subscribe to the latinos health newsletter! Womb Detox: Inserting Herb Balls in Vagina Could Be Dangerous, Expert Warns staff@latinoshealth.com By Monica Antonio Jan 20, 2016 06:00 AM EST There's a new trend in the rise and it involves inserting herb balls inside your vagina. According to the Independent, a company called Embrace Pangaea is selling herbal womb detox pearls that claim to "cleanse the womb and return it to a balanced state." However, an expert warns that the womb detox could be dangerous to the body. According to Embrace Pangea's website, the herbal womb pearls are made from "ancient herbs" that are known to be helpful in feminine wellness such as mothersworth, cnidium monnieri, angelica, borneol and rhizoma. The herbal womb pearls detoxes the vagina by inserting a piece for one day. Embrace Pangea claims that the womb detox helps in aiding bacteria vaginosis, foul odor of the reproductive organ, edometriosis, fibroids and yeast infections. The herbal womb detox pearls are sold from $15 to $75. Buyers have an option to choose from an individual purchase or a variety of packages: distributor starter package ($300), monthly womb maintenance package ($75 to $180) and wholesale package ($500 to $1,050). Daily Mail says that the company also claims that the product can cause "vaginal tightening," which can result to a higher sexual pleasure. Your vagina (and your man), will thank you after you use these https://t.co/9Wx4fIEH0m pic.twitter.com/XscBbvmPOh xoNecole (@xonecole) January 12, 2016 However, with the womb detox on the rise, many are questioning if it's safe to insert a foreign object inside your vagina. According to gynaecologist Dr. Jen Gunter on her blog, putting "tiny bags of herbs" in your reproductive organ "is not only pointless it could be very dangerous." Gunter says that there is nothing wrong with your uterus and vagina, and if there's something's up, these organs is designed to let you know about it immediately by " bleeding profusely or itching or cramping badly or producing an odor." She also said that the vagina is like a "self-cleaning oven" that can cleanse itself, so any form of detox is not needed. "There is no such thing as a detox or a cleanse, they are fake terms used by snake oil salespeople to lighten wallets," Gunter warned. Moreover, the doctor explains that by leaving a foreign object, in this case the herbal detox pearl, in your vagina for a day or days is unhygienic and just opens more doors for bacteria to grow, leading to infection. There's also the risk of having toxic shock syndrome when you leave an object in your reproductive organ for too long. Gunter also questioned the herbal contents of womb detox pearls that were stated on Embrace Pangea's website, saying that the herbs could damage the good bacteria and cause irritation in the vaginas lining. Do you think of the herbal womb detox pearls work? Are you willing to risk the danger to try it? Subscribe to the latinos health newsletter! Healthy Food Options Found Less Accessible to Latino Kids media@latinoshealth.com By Ivan Menchavez Jan 20, 2016 06:49 AM EST It has been reported that there are more obese Latino kids than their peers. The reason could be because many of them do not have the option of finding healthy foods. NBC News informed that non-profit organization Salud America stated in their website that school cafeterias in communities where most of the population are Latinos do not have access to healthy food options. The only option they have is to get foods from the vending machines, which are mostly unhealthy products or junk foods. The director of the organization, Dr. Amelie Ramirez, believes that the concern authorities should provide more food options for kids at school. They must have many food choices including healthy alternatives. "We're encouraging schools to do away with their vending machines, and options like that, because children are surrounded by unnecessarily high caloric food," the director said. "Also within close proximity of these schools are convenience stores and fast food restaurants that also contribute to the increase in our Latino students' weight." The obesity problem amongst Latino children is increasing and the organization thinks that there is not enough action by the officials to stop or control the epidemic. "Our food portions have increased over time as well, so there are all these extra calories," Ramirez added. "In addition to the nutrition, our kids also don't have access to safe spaces for physical activity and exercise." Yahoo! News previously reported that many cities in the state of California have reached an agreement with public schools in 2010 to provide enough facilities for students to perform their physical activities. The state, which population composed of 38 percent Latino, has made significant progress. Nevertheless, the Latino organization wanted to make it a country-wide project to make sure it will help decrease the obesity epidemic amongst the children in the community. First Lady Michelle Obama has mandated to provide healthy food options in all schools in the country. However, the Latino community does not believe that the schools in their area are following the federal mandate. The study that was conducted by the organization suggests that schools, where students are predominantly Latinos, have weaker policies compared to white-majority institutions. Meanwhile, the University of California San Francisco news outlet reported that poverty plays a big factor on health. The future result could be devastating as they will end up living with various obesity-related diseases if these kids continue to gain access to unhealthy foods. Subscribe to the latinos health newsletter! In the search for a planet that can support human life, a nearby star may perhaps hold the answers for a group of astronomers in Chile, as well as those involved in the Pale Red Dot campaign. Using the European Southern Observatory's 3.6-meter telescope, the researchers have gone on a quest to look for an Earth-like exoplanet in the area around Proxima Centauri, which is the nearest star to the Solar System. According to Fox News Latino, the astronomers will glean information about the neighboring star, a red dwarf 4.2 light-years or around 25 trillion miles from planet Earth, to determine whether it is orbited by another planet. The latter's presence will be indicated by "wobbles" in the star's movement. Past investigations have led to speculations that the star has a companion orbiting it, raising hopes that the orbiting body may be a habitable one. "If our expectations are confirmed, that place will be the next-best site to look for extraterrestrial life," noted James Jenkins, an astronomer from the University of Chile. The observatory used for the hunt is located in the Atacama desert, at an altitude of about 2,400 meters. It is one of the facilities participating in the Pale Red Dot project, which is a collaborative effort to find an Earth-like planetary habitat around Proxima Centauri, as per EarthSky.Org. The public can follow the developments in the campaign, which began in Chile on January 15 this year and will continue through April. The name of the project was inspired by the well-known blue dot image of the Earth, as taken from Voyager 1 in 1990. Considering Proxima Centauri is a red star, researchers anticipate that a possible Earth-like discovery near it may appear reddish. Previously, in 2013, the move to search for habitable planets nearest to the Solar System was highlighted as astronomers announced that Proxima Centauri may align with a background star twice -- in October 2014 and in February 2016. This means that researchers will be able to make more definite calculations of planetary mass. As per Discovery News, the alignments will help researchers use Einstein's general relativity theory as it provides how gravity curves space, and even time. "Sometimes when gravity bends light waves, objects that previously weren't visible can be seen," its report went on. "When Proxima Centauri aligns with background stars, astronomers want to measure the distorted views of the background stars to get a more precise calculation of our neighbor's mass." As such, if there are any other planets orbiting the star, it is probable that a secondary change in the background stars' positioning may be observed. The results of this study is expected to be released by the end of 2016. WATCH: This week, the Facebook-owned instant messaging app WhatsApp announced it was eliminating the nominal $0.99-per year subscription fee it was charging customers after their first year using the service. As Latin Post previously reported, WhatsApp admitted the subscription model wasn't working, especially since many users without access to a debit or credit card had few avenues with which to pay the small fee. Those users, including many in Latin America, rely on WhatsApp as an alternative to costly SMS services to stay in touch. And as WhatsApp's announcement put it, they "worried they'd lose access to their friends and family after their first year." But there's more strategy behind the switch than that. As WhatsApp heads towards a billion users across the globe, the messaging service is setting off on an experimental path this year to figure out how to make real money from its massive user base. As Wired reported, in the next few months WhatsApp will begin testing ways to generate revenue from the huge number of businesses that use the app. Growth Over Revenue WhatsApp benefits from being part of Facebook, which bought the app for $19 billion and gave its CEO Jay Koum a deal of autonomy to focus on growth over revenue, and from a tiny staff (especially relative to the size of its user base) of about 120 employees. And WhatsApp has grown, but not as fast as Koum wanted. The app recently hit 990 million users, which as he told Wired, was actually frustrating. "On the one hand, this is a huge," said Koum. "On the other hand, it's a little embarrassing. We're about 10 million short." Eliminating the $0.99 yearly subscription fee, according to a quick back-of-the-napkin calculation, eliminates about $980 million per year in revenue. Right? Actually, according to Business Insider, a leaked document revealed revenues around $15 million for the first half of 2014. Considering WhatsApp had over 500 million active monthly users at the time, not very many users end up paying for the service anyway. But while dropping the subscription fee will nevertheless translate into a drop in some amount of revenue, it eliminates a reason why WhatsApp hasn't hit the big "billion" yet: Users dropping the app after the free year is over. "For people in India or Brazil," explained Koum, "it's very hard for them to pay. They don't necessarily have credit cards or the infrastructure to make payments." Mirroring Messenger? To make up for the subscription revenue, and to start making Facebook-level dollars off its (nearly) Facebook-level user base, Koum said that WhatsApp is going to begin developing products for businesses that use its app looking to connect with consumers. The details of how the company will go about doing this are still unclear, but Koum stated outright on WhatsApp's blog that the messaging app will not consider going the route of third-party ads. Instead, Koum is hinting at a more organic, personal service-oriented route to facilitate communication between businesses and customers on its chat service. "We've done really well in the consumer space," he told Wired, "but there is a whole other aspect of communication as you go through your day: You want to communicate with businesses." Koum gave examples like banks alerting and chatting with customers about fraudulent charges, airlines broadcasting flight delays, or people making reservations at a restaurant through WhatsApp. It sounds a lot like the direction Facebook Messenger has taken recently, for example allowing you to hail an Uber from within app. While WhatsApp has been kept mostly independent from the Facebook mothership, the app's new Messenger-like plans hints at a future where smart in-chat app services eliminate the need to ever leave Zuckerberg's social ecosystem -- soon expanded to another billion people. A new poll from Monmouth University shows Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders quickly closing in on frontrunner Hillary Clinton. In the latest national poll, 1,003 likely Democratic voters were asked whom they would support for the presidential nomination. Hillary Clinton only received 52 percent of the vote, a decrease from last month's 59 percent. By contrast, Sanders got 37 percent support in the poll, a substantial jump from December's 26 percent. Underdog Martin O'Malley trailed far behind with 2 percent support. This is the first time Clinton has a lead with less than 20 points in a Monmouth poll. In the last month, the Democratic front-runner has dropped in every major voting bloc. Her most significant loss has been in the field of self-proclaimed liberals, who now favor Sanders over the former New York senator and secretary of state, 42 percent to 51 percent. In December, Clinton was favored 57 percent to 21 percent in that category. Clinton has also lost ground with women voters, maintaining a much smaller lead of 54 percent to 35 percent, when compared to last month's 69 percent to 19 percent margin. Voters under the age of 50 have also shifted support, with Clinton dropping from 52 percent to 35 percent, to 39 percent to 52 percent. Sanders, however, still trails significantly among two major groups. Clinton has a comfortable 64 percent to 24 percent lead with voters over 50, who compose the majority of the primary electorate. In addition to that, black and Latino voters heavily favor Clinton. The latest poll shows Clinton at a 71 percent to 21 percent advantage, an increase from her 61 percent to 18 percent lead in December. Although Sanders' recent surge in Iowa and New Hampshire is likely to give him a chance in the primary race, Monmouth University Polling Institute director Patrick Murray believes he will have to overcome Clinton in those key demographics to stand a true chance. "Sanders is aided by the fact that most Super Tuesday contests are open to independent voters -- a group where he performs well," Murray said in the Monmouth report. "On the other hand, about two-thirds of the pledged delegates awarded on March will be from states where black and Latino voters comprise anywhere from one-third to a majority of the electorate. It looks like the demographic dynamic that hurt Clinton in 2008 may be what helps her in 2016." Equally significant, is the fact that Democratic voters believe Clinton will have a greater shot at taking down Trump (or whoever secures the Republican nomination) come November. Some 44 percent of people polled think Clinton will have the best chance at beating Trump, whereas only 16 percent favor Sanders. Intrexon Corporation announced in a press release on Tuesday that their British biotechnology company subsidiary Oxitec has reached an agreement with local officials of Piracicaba in Brazil to open a new factory that produces sterile, genetically modified mosquitoes, Oxitec reports. The company will release these genetically modified mosquitoes in the wild to decrease the populations of the Aedes aegypti that spreads Zika virus, dengue fever and chikungunya. "As the principal source for the fastest growing vector-borne infection in the world in Dengue Fever, as well as the increasingly challenging Zika virus, controlling the Aedes aegypti population provides the best defense against these serious diseases for which there are no cures," Oxitec CEO Hadyn Parry said. The partnership between Oxitec and Piracicaba officials was an extension of the "Friendly Aedes aegypti Project" launched last April 2015 in the CECAP/Eldorado district. Since the introduction of the genetically modified mosquitoes, the number of wild mosquito larva decreased by 82 percent and the offspring often does not survive. Oxitec first tested efficacy trials in some parts of Brazil as well as in Panama and the Cayman Islands that resulted to more than a 90 percent decrease of Aedes aegypti mosquito population. Brazil's National Biosafety Committee has already given Oxitec the approval to release the sterile insects to the rest of the country. In a report by FOX News, the Zika virus is linked with a birth defect called microcephaly, where the brain of a newborn fails to develop resulting to an abnormally small head. The outbreak has hit Brazil hard with its Health Ministry reporting more than 3,530 cases of the rare birth defect since October 2015. The number of cases in Brazil is very alarming as there were less than 150 cases reported in 2014, causing many pregnant women in the country to flee to the U.S. and Europe to avoid contracting the virus. The Brazilian government has also announced that a research for developing a vaccine against the Zika virus is already funded while eradication of mosquito habitats continues. "Today there is only one way to fight the Zika virus, which is to destroy the mosquito's breeding grounds. The final victory against the virus will only come when we develop a vaccine against that disease," Brazil's Health Minister Marcelo Castro said. The Zika outbreak has spread throughout Latin American and Caribbean countries as well as the U.S. with the first case reported in Oahu, Hawaii last Monday. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has already issued a travel alert to Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Puerto Roco, Suriname and Venezuela, per the CDC website. U.S. territory, Puerto Rico, will be welcoming U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew this Wednesday as the island continues to struggle with its growing deficit and public debts that are projected to balloon up to $24 billion in 2025, Fox News Latino reports. According to the publication, a visit from the Lew is a necessity for Puerto Rico since its government is planning to restructure their fiscal and economic plan in light of the current financial crisis they have been experiencing. Puerto Rico's deficit, according to officials as reported by the news agency, may rise to up to $16 billion from $14 billion over the next five years and at the same period of time, revenues are also expected to be down by $1.7 billion. The news outlet reports that the U.S. territory is looking at declaring bankruptcy because of the deficit including the $72 million public debt it holds. Puerto Rico is also already facing lawsuits so their government is looking for reform. "Continuation of these measures is neither sustainable nor in the interest of any stakeholder, as they will only deepen the financial gaps," Secretary of State Victor Suarez said as quoted by the publication. As Lew pays a visit to the island, he brings along with him a possible solution to the enormous financial problem on the U.S. territory. In a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan, Lew said "Only Congress can enact the legislative measures necessary to fully resolve this problem," he said as quoted by Marketplace. The trip is reportedly to support Puerto Rico in lobbying the U.S. Congress for a possible reconstruction of its mechanisms that may or may not ease out the financial crisis in the island, the publication further reports. "The information contained in the updated plan makes all the more clear that actions must be taken before the Commonwealth runs out of options to pay its debt and provide essential services to the people of Puerto Rico," President of the Government Development Bank Melba Acosta said as quoted by the Fox News Latino. However, the publication reports that Puerto Rico cannot declare bankruptcy because it is a U.S. territory and therefore under federal law. However, Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla urges that if Congress doesn't act soon, Puerto Rico will be under "humanitarian crisis under the United States flag," he said as quoted by the news agency. The governor has reportedly signed a debt-restructuring law which a federal judge ruled as unconstitutional. Meanwhile, an appeal is already on the Supreme Court and is still in process. ISIS militants confirmed that the most celebrated executioner known as "Jihagi John" is dead. In the eulogy written on page 23 of "Dabiq," the group's magazine, ISIS detailed Emwazi's death and confirmed the U.S. version of the events. According to BBC News, "Jihadi John" was killed on Nov. 12 when the car he was in was struck by an unmanned drone in the city of Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic State's self-proclaimed caliphate in northern Syria. The airstrike destroyed the car and killed him instantly. The eulogy also included a smiling picture of the militant, who the Islamic State militants described as an "honorable brother." During the airstrike in November, a U.S. defense official said that one British and two American drones were involved. But it was one of the American drones that fired a Hellfire missile that hit the car. It was also believed that there was one other person inside the vehicle. "He walked out of a building and got in the car. We struck it right after with zero collateral damage," a counter-terrorism official told ABC News last year. "The vehicle was on fire. It was a 100 percent flawless, direct hit." The official added that "Jihadi John" "evaporated" in the explosion. Aside from his death, the ISIS militants also described Emwazi's "harshness" towards the disbelievers of the caliphate. "His harshness towards the kuffar (disbelievers) was manifested through deeds that enraged all the nations, religions, and factions of kufr, the entire world bearing witness to this," the "Dabiq" article said, as per Washington Post. Meanwhile, Shirley Sotloff, the mother of one of the beheading victims of the Islamic State militants said on Tuesday that she's glad that the notorious executioner is finally dead. Kassig family's spokeswoman Jodi Perras said they had no comment about the news on Emwazi's death. "It's good," Sotloff said, Fox News quoted. "I'm glad that he's gone, but it doesn't bring back my son." Emwazi became known through his appearances in the ISIS' beheading videos of British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, U.S. journalist Steven Sotloff, American aid worker Peter Kassig, American journalist James Foley and Japanese journalist Kenji Koto, Newsweek noted. He was also known as "Sheik of Slaughter." It was also believed that the Paris attacks last year were the militants' way to avenge his death, which was a significant blow to the terrorists. Since Emwazi or "Jihadi John" is already dead, a new masked militant has replaced him in a recent execution video released by the group, USA Today has learned. The confirmation of the death of Mohammed Emwazi, a Kuwaiti-born British militant also known as Abu Muharib al-Muhajir, came Tuesday, Jan. 19, after the Pentagon confidently announced that they could have killed ISIS' "Jihadi John" when a U.S. drone strike had hit the intended target in Raqqa, Syria in November 2015. The New Jersey Governor Chris Christie made the headlines after making an announcement that he is in favor of Senator Ted Cruz's plan in terms of dealing with undocumented immigrants last Monday, January 18. As per the Washington Examiner, Byron York had a brief interview in regards to Christie's plans in dealing with undocumented immigrants. Christie then stated that he is in favor of Cruz's plan as it is more realistic than Donald Trump's, as per Politico's report. Cruz's immigration plan which is stated on his official website mentioned that is vision is "to strengthen national security, enhance the value of citizenship, and stop illegal immigration." Christie emphasized that there's no immediate need to make changes in terms of the level of immigration. What is more important however is to take action in dealing with the recent concerns such as the uncontrollable entry of undocumented immigrants. This issue has been a major concern for the candidates during various political rallies. Christie said, "And I think that could be done relatively quickly, but I don't think it's there now, and I don't think people want to see us increase the levels of immigration into this country until we get that under control." Christie told Time that Cruz's remarks were inappropriate, "You want to be President of the United States, you have to unite this country. And for him to somehow be implying that certain values are more appropriate, more American, depending upon what region of the country you're from is to me just asinine." Chris Christie may be taking Cruz's side in terms of his immigration reform agenda, but the New Jersey Governor however made it clear that he does not support Cruz's disrespectful remark against New Yorkers. Chris Christie's comment is in reference to Ted Cruz's previous remarks during his South Carolina debate, wherein Cruz stated that, "He explained that his views were that he was very pro-choice, he supported partial birth abortion, he was open to gay marriage, and his explanation for all of that was, 'I'm a New Yorker.'" In response to Cruz's remark, Donald Trump promptly defended himself, and the rest of New York by citing that the 9/11 aftermath should be viewed as something more than just a tragedy. Despite the fact New Yorkers went through a series of grief, they were still able to pick up the pieces and move forward. This should make your bucket list. China is about to finish building the longest open space suspension glass bridge in the world. Construction of the bridge is pegged for completion by May 1, 2016, according to Xinhua. Recently, workers were able to finish the steel beams on the structure. It isn't exactly completely made of glass, but the bottom is, so that's one way to overcome your fear of heights if you have one. Stretching over 430 meters or 1,410 feet from one mountain to another, China's new glass bridge will be able to offer a view of the valley 300 meters (984 feet) below and the forest floor 4,700 feet below. It also boasts of "the world's steepest ziptreck and highest Bungee platform." The glass bridge is located in the Tianmenshan National Forest Park in Zhangjiajie, which is in central China's mountainous Hunan Province. According to People's Daily Online, when it is completed, the humongous six-meter-wide structure will be able to hold 800 people at a time. Zhangjiajie's glass skywalk is also almost 20 feet wide. Zhangjiajie's glass bridge looks really intimidating, but this isn't the first time that China decided to connect two mountains using glass bridges in an attempt to boost tourism to the country's national parks. Last year, China finished another bold glass structure at the Shiniuzhai National Geological Park, which is in Hunan province as well. Located roughly 500 km or 310 miles far from the Zhangjiajie glass bridge, the Shiniuzhai bridge (274 m) is a glass bridge that was just opened in September. Suspended 900 feet (274 meters) across a canyon and boasting a 600-foot (182m) view of the drop below, the Shiniuzhai bridge received a warm welcome from tourists. There's also China's glass bridge at the Yuntai Mountain Geological Park. The glass walkway features a view of the cliff face at Yuntai Mountain Scenic Spot from 3,540 feet high. While all of these sound exciting, there's just one problem. The Yuntai glass bridge cracked while tourists were crossing it in October 2015. According to the San Francisco Gate, a pane of glass shattered on the bridge just a month after its opening when a tourist dropped a metal bottle on the pane. The incident prompted officials to close Yuntai's U-shaped glass pathway. By November 2015, online forums claimed the glass structure in Yuntai remains closed. As for Zhangjiajie's glass bridge, it looks like tourists are assured that no cracks will be happening. Speaking to Xinhua, Chen Zhidong from Zhangjiajie Scenic Area Management Co. said the skywalk has passed nearly 100 safety tests to safely hold 800 people without breaking. In addition, Chief Engineer Wan Tianbao claimed that more than 70 glass balls, each weighing 750 kg, have been placed on the glass bridge to make sure there's no vibration that will take place. He added that the glass passed wind, slippage and temperature resistance tests with flying colors. Check out photos of the glass bridge under construction in Zhangjiajie here. The new generation is an overwhelming part of the electorate, especially in the Latino community, according to a newly released analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau data from the Pew Research Center. The findings reveal that nearly half of the eligible voters of the Hispanic electoral are millennials and the Latino electorate is on the rise, although the low turnout projected may ultimately lead to little impact. A total of 27.3 million Hispanics will be eligible voters in Election Day 2016, and approximately 44 percent of this number -- 11.9 million voters -- is millennials. This makes the Latino millennials the most powerful among other racial or ethnic communities of the same age group. The numbers aren't so surprising given that the median age of the country's U.S.-born Latinos is 19. Research has revealed that around 3.2 million of the group's youth will have reached eligibility between 2012 and 2016. Annually, over 803,000 U.S.-born Latinos have become adults in recent years. These numbers highlight how consistently important the youth is to the Latino voting population since 2000. It stands in stark contrast to the white, black and Asian millennial voters, which have considerably declined in number between 2000 and 2016. While the youth takes up a huge chunk of the electorate, the immigrant vote remains just as consistent at one-quarter of the eligible Hispanic voters since 2000, with the immigrant eligible voters also projected to double to 6.6 million in 2016. In total, the Hispanic electorate swelled 4 million since 2012 and is now on pace to make up 11.9 percent of the total eligible voters in the country. Despite the rising numbers, the Latino vote isn't expected to make much of a dent in the coming elections. Voter turnout has been significantly low for Latinos in past elections. Although a sheer number has increased, only 48 percent of the eligible voters cast a vote in 2012, compared to 64.1 percent of whites and 66.6 percent of blacks. The Asian electorate marked a low turnout rate as well at 46.9 percent. Furthermore, millennials are generally less likely to participate in the elections. Latino millennials are particularly difficult to get voting with only 37.8 percent turning up in 2012. Another reason for the low Latino representation in the elections is the fact that major candidates often focus their campaigns in battleground states where the Latino population is not high. "The accidents of geography wind up playing against Latino voter registration and turnout," Sylvia Manzano, principal at the consulting firm Latino Decisions in Seattle, pointed out in a report from Bloomberg. Wanderlust prevails. Research has revealed that tourism hit an all-time high in 2015 despite the heights of security and terrorist threats worldwide. According to a report from the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), an impressive 1.2 billion people flew to a foreign country last year, a 4.4 percent growth from 2014. The development was largely prominent in Europe, which saw a 5 percent surge in arrivals reportedly due to the weaker euro. Within the region, Central, Eastern and Northern Europe logged in the most growth at 6 percent. Asia and the Pacific was not far behind as the region marked a 5 percent growth and a total of 277 million tourists, while the Americas also had a 5 percent growth with its 191 million travelers and the Middle East recorded a 3 percent growth for 54 million in total. However, Africa had a 3 percent decrease in arrivals as limited data revealed a steep 8 percent decline in arrivals in North Africa. "The robust performance of the sector is contributing to economic growth and job creation in many parts of the world," UNWTO Secretary-General Taleb Rifai said. "It is thus critical for countries to promote policies that foster the continued growth of tourism, including travel facilitation, human resources development and sustainability." He added, "2015 results were influenced by exchange rates, oil prices and natural and manmade crises in many parts of the world. As the current environment highlights in a particular manner the issues of safety and security, we should recall that tourism development greatly depends upon our collective capacity to promote safe, secure and seamless travel." The 2016 projections were generally positive throughout with a 4 percent increase in tourist arrivals expected worldwide. In terms of regions, Asia and the Pacific, the Americas and Europe are still on pace to be the strongest tourist draws of the year. The prospect of travel has endured the growing concern of safety and security in other countries. In the wake of attacks in Egypt, France, Lebanon, Tunisia, Mali and other nations, some tourists have been understandably wary of venturing out of their home countries. Although he acknowledged the presence of these threats, Rifai expressed his positive outlook for the industry as he called on the governments to include the tourism administrations in national security to ensure and support safe travel worldwide. In a report from The Guardian, the UNWTO executive reiterated the need to continue to travel. He said, "We must never allow the pretext of safety and security to curb and reverse our attitude towards making this world more open." The following editorial was published in Thursdays Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Political junkies say the race between Sen. Ron Johnson and Russ Feingold will be the same as most current political discourse: ugly and mean. Historically, rematches between candidates are often pretty negative affairs, Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette University Law School poll, told Journal Sentinel reporter Bill Glauber. Republican strategist Brian Nemoir told Glauber, Ron Johnson has the job of reminding people of why this guy wasnt elected six years ago, and Feingold has the job now of running against an incumbent and comparing the promises he made to what he has or has not delivered. I think at the end of the day these guys bring very different visions of our country to the table, Nemoir said. The contrasts will be crystal clear ... and if that means defining the other one in a light they consider less favorable, that is what is going to happen in this race. I dont know if there is an opportunity for either one to be better liked by the end of this. How depressing. These two should, instead, have a substantive debate about the issues that really matter to Wisconsin voters. They are capable of doing that they clearly see the world in very different ways. Their race is a proxy for the national struggle between conservatives and liberals and an important race for both parties. The Johnson-Feingold race is shaping up as one of the more important Senate contests in the country and outside groups are already spending millions of dollars on the campaign. What does that mean? Expect the airwaves to be clogged in the coming months with negative ads designed to define the candidates, Glauber reported. But thats not the kind of race Wisconsin voters deserve. They deserve a race thats based on a discussion of the issues, such as national security, jobs, the economy, education, trade, climate change and repairing the nations crumbling infrastructure. The candidates should answer questions like these: How will their lives be better? How will they be safer? How will they make ends meet? How will they get their kids educated without suffocating debt? Where will they find work? Will that work be able to sustain them? Voters deserve to hear clear, thoughtful statements from each candidate on his positions more than sound bites. They deserve new ideas on how to meet the nations challenges. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has said that 2016 should be a year of ideas for Republicans, but hes only partially right. It should be a year of ideas from Republicans and Democrats and anyone else who is going after citizens votes. Were under no illusion that mean and ugly will go away simply because we ask it to. Negative ads often work. But negative campaigning doesnt get the nation anywhere; it doesnt move improve lives. It poisons the debate. So in between the ads, maybe Johnson and Feingold can still find time to discuss substantive ideas and policy. Lets go there. Democratic Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders just got some unlikely supporters in the race against Hillary Clinton. After the recent Democratic debate concluded, a number of prominent people in the Republican Party expressed their support for the Vermont senator. According to Business Insider, the Republican National Committee sent four e-mails to reporters, which defended Sanders against Clinton's attack. The reporters went to Twitter and exposed the e-mails that defended Sanders against issues like single-payer healthcare, gun control laws and Wall Street. From last night: GOP operatives are openly working to boost Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary. https://t.co/BCM41sqdqx Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) January 19, 2016 The Republican National Committee's spokesperson Sean Spicer directly went to social media and expressed his support to Sanders. And as the debate ended, the GOP members showed that they "Feel the Bern" and said that for them, Sanders clearly won the debate against Hillary and, to an extent, against Gov. Martin O' Malley. On the other hand, a spokesman for the Republican action committee named America Rising said to reporters that, "Clinton needed a win last night. Instead, everyone is talking about how well Bernie Sanders, her chief rival, did." But perhaps this move by the Republicans is nothing more than the old saying, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." Case in point, this is not exactly the first time that the Democrats or the Republicans have endorsed someone from the opposite party. Make no mistake though, it's hard to see this as genuine endorsement, but more likely investing on the enemy who they think they can beat. For example, MSNBC reported that during the 2012 U.S. Senate Elections in the state of Missouri, Democratic candidate Claire McCaskill subtly helped her future opponent Rep. Todd Akin in his primary race, with the belief that she can easily beat him in the general elections. Her gamble proved to be right as McCaskill beat Akin in a convincing manner, winning by over 15 points. Now, the GOP seems to be doing the same thing because, according to Republican Gov. John Kasich, they think they're going to win every state, "if Bernie Sanders is the nominee." Bernie Sanders, who proudly describes himself as a socialist-democrat, does not exactly ring in a favorable manner to the majority of American people. There are still many stigmas attached to term of "socialism," as it is widely associated with the fallen Soviet Republic or even straight-up communism. This may come as bad news to Hillary Clinton as Sanders is steadily creeping in closer. But at the very least, when she claims that the Republicans do not want to face her come the general elections, she knows she's right. Jamie Foxx was hailed as true-to-life hero after he saved someone's life on Monday night, Jan. 18. Just like a scene from one of his action-packed movie, the actor bravely pulled out a man from a truck that burst into flames, just a few yards away from his home in Hidden Valley, California. The "Django Unchained" star told the California Highway Patrol (CHP) that upon hearing crashing sounds, he ran out to check it out. When he saw the burning vehicle and realized that the driver was still trapped inside, he sprang into action to free the man. According to TMZ, Foxx dragged the driver about 30 feet away from the crash site for fear that the vehicle will blow up at any moment. In a brief interview with ABC News, Foxx recalled that five seconds after pulling the driver out, the truck went up in flames. He added that another man helped him break the vehicle's window to save the driver. "He has EMT scissors. He hits the glass, I climb in and try to hit his seat belt, but he's hovered over, so the seat belt is on him." Foxx recounted. "So I grabbed the scissors from him, cut the seat belt, but it's on his neck. So I cut it off his neck." The California Highway Patrol identified the driver as Brett Kyle. The officers stated that the accident happened because the 32-year-old driver was speeding when his Toyota Tacoma drove into a drainage ditch by the road, crashed into a pipe and overturned a few times. The vehicle landed on the passenger side when the fire started. As the first to respond on the scene, the Venutra County paramedics immediately brought the injured man to the Robles Hospital and Medical Center for treatment. It was reported that Kyle is also under arrest for suspected drunk driving which led to the near fatal crash. As stated by Joe Kyle on ABC News, his brother Brett suffered major head, chest and neck injuries. In particular, his lung was punctured as a result of a broken collarbone. Joe added that "he would be in a much worse situation if Jamie Foxx didn't come along." Brad Kyle, the driver's father, also told the news outlet through tears, "It doesn't matter to me who it was, or what they do for a living, or whatever. Just the idea that someone would do that is so much more than I can fathom." Brett's dad also explained that he's tearing up because of happiness, stressing that he would have lost his son if it weren't for the actor's bold rescue. Meanwhile, despite this heroic act, the Grammy awardee did not boast about his deed. He even said that he is no hero. "No heroes...Just happy fathers," he wrote on Instagram. Ecuador is seeing a new momentum in terms of their employment statistics and according to TeleSur TV, they have the lowest rate of unemployment within the region. According to the outlet, the National Survey of Employment and Unemployment said that Ecuador has increased its suitable employment while subsequently decreasing its "inadequate employment" issues. With a 23.28 percent decline on poverty, Ecuador has basically lifted at least 1.3 million impoverished people in 2006. Currently, Ecuador is enjoying a minimal 4.8 percent unemployment, something that Leonardo Berrezueta, Minister of Labor, is very satisfied of. He said, "It's a very encouraging figure in light of the fall in the price of oil, the appreciation of the (U.S.) dollar and the currency devaluation in neighboring countries." The oil exporting country would have easily slid through a comfortable spot of consistent GDP if not for the decline in oil price. The country takes at least 7 percent of its total GDP from oil exports, and in 2015, some $7 billion or the 7 percent of that stake was lost. Citing another hurdle is Ecuador's inability to devalue its currency against the U.S. dollar in order to gain competitiveness in terms of their economic stand. These problems, however, did not hinder Ecuador's ability to increase its employment stats, even outgrowing Peru who currently has a 5.8 percent unemployment rate. The current state of Ecuador and its decline on the unemployment side has largely been related to the good governance of its president Rafael Correa. In another report by the TeleSur TV, Correa said during an anniversary celebration, "We are celebrating nine years of reborn hope, of fulfilled promises and of homeland for all." On Friday, Ecuador celebrated the ninth anniversary of Correa's "Citizen Revolution," a project that aims to transform the current situation of Ecuador's political state, while also working on pushing "progressive social gains." He also added, "Everything was worth it, and if we have to do it all over again we would not change one thing. A revolution is a constant and perfectible process." Correa's treatment on inequality and poverty has always led him to believe that with every victory, there is a new beginning for a challenge. Mentioning how his government takes full advantage of the country's main product, which is oil export, he took pride in saying that Ecuador has the highest rate of inversion and believes that they have the most infrastructures in the Latin America region. As for the upcoming presidential elections, he said, "A difficult year is coming, but we won't fail, we will successfully address the challenges and we will come out strengthen as a society." After WhatsApp recently announced its free service, questions about its possible complications came just in time for the popular app to address such queries. According to NeuroGadget, the former one-year subscription amounting to $0.99 significantly removed the appearance of ads on WhatsApp. That being said, the possibility of such ads will return, but the founder of WhatsApp was quick to announce that the ads will still be removed. However, there will be other forms of marketing that will be integrated with the app in order for it to gain revenue. In the announcement made on the WhatsApp blog, the company explained the context of maintaining the app despite the removal of its ads. The company said, "Starting this year, we will test tools that allow you to use WhatsApp to communicate with businesses and organizations that you want to hear from." These businesses and organizations that WhatsApp is trying to sell come in the form of banks, airlines and other institutions that users can relate to. Communications can range from queries on bank transactions to confirmation of flights. During the Technology Conference in Boston, Facebook Chief Financial Officer David Wehner implied that the company is considering venturing on the business to consumers (B2C) partnership. NeuroGadget says that companies, who will be charged for the times they perform survey, advisories and chats using WhatsApp. WhatsApp's decision to keep the application free of charge came to light when they realized that they nearly have a billion users that rely on their services in order to connect to their loved ones. Realizing that not all of their customers have credit or debit cards, WhatsApp decided to waive the fees. They also acknowledged the importance of communication, saying that they did not want their users to stop doing so just because they can't pay for the annual fee of the application. According to NeuroGadget, WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum made the initial announcement during the Digital-Life-Design Conference in Munich. Currently, WhatsApp is downloadable in different platforms such as the Nokia series, Symbian, Android iOS, BlackBerry 10 and Tizen. With a staggering number of on billion users worldwide, WhatsApp delivers its users free text messaging, sharing of video and audio files as well as group chats. Despite WhatsApp's latest announcement, users can still enjoy an ad-free WhatsApp without the insistent appearance of spam messages. With WhatsApp deciding to remove fees but capitalizing on multinational companies to earn revenue, the company strives to continue delivering an ad-free application that many users enjoy. A Canadian comedian, who calls herself simply Davison on Instagram, decided to do a little social experiment concerning people's views on Muslims. She used Tinder on her experiment and created two profiles: one of a Christian woman and the other a Muslim. She received a surprising result when her Muslim profile was blocked by Tinder. Davison revealed the surprising result on her LOLPervs (Davison) YouTube page, where she usually conducts sexual social experiments called "sexperiments." She started by asking viewers if they would give these women a chance at a date in the video. "In this week's sexperiment, it's Muslim versus Christian on Tinder: Davison created two identical Tinder profiles of a 27-year-old woman named Sara, with the same bio of 'faith' and same poses while dressing one in a Hijab and one in secular, modest clothing," read the description on the YouTube video. The video description revealed that Davison's social experiment aims to see how many matches each women gets. However, the main focus was on the number of matches the woman dressed as a Muslim. The Muslim Sara reportedly got more "Superlikes" than the Christian Sara. However, Davison was surprised to see later on that her Muslim Sara's profile was put "Under Review." Tinder eventually blocked the account after it was reported by several other users. Davison noted on her video that she sent several emails to Tinder asking them to reactivate the Muslim Sara's profile. She also included a link to a Facebook page to prove that she is a real person. Davison expressed her concerns to the Tinder administrators that her profile was blocked because of her religion. Davison expressed her doubts over the reasons why the profile was blocked. Few of the other Tinder users reportedly recognized her face from the two profiles she created. Others even asked her if she was doing a social experiment. "I have no way of knowing if it's that users were angry because they saw I had two identical profiles, or if it had something to do with the fact that I was Muslim that I was banned, but I find it very interesting that until today, Tuesday, I have a fully functioning Christian Sara profile and a completely blocked Muslim profile," Davison said in her video. She also noted how this situation is not uncommon among transgender users of Tinder. They are allegedly also banned from using the social dating site. However, Davison's social experiment only received harsh comments from Maysoon Zayid, co-founder and co-executive producer of the New York Arab-American Comedy Festival. She told The Daily Dot that Davison's experiment is "highly offensive" and also described her hijab as "cartoonish." Chile's capital of Santiago was engulfed by smoke and the smell of garbage fire last Tuesday, Jan. 19. Citizens of the city complained about the unbearable smell, which came from the burning garbage dump site located just outside the city. As reported by Latino Fox News, the fire actually broke out last Jan. 18, Monday at the Santa Marta Dump, but continued until Tuesday. The garbage dump is located just 19 miles southwest of the city. As of press time, the fire only affects a portion of the dump, but the breeze carried its emissions across the city of Santiago, according to EFE. The authorities added that the fire was caused by an "unusual heat wave" that affected the country's capital. According to the report, Santiago experienced its temperature rise up from 68 degrees Fahrenheit to a drastic 100 degrees Fahrenheit. As a preventive measure, the management of the garbage dump will halt operations and will stop receiving more trash until the fire is completely under control. Unfortunately, it does not help that decomposing garbage that is stored in the landfill is the type that releases gas emissions. Therefore, it cannot be extinguished simply by water. Firefighters said that the best thing to do with this type of fire is to bury it with dirt. Citizens are now starting to complain as the smell in some areas has become unbearable, but according to experts, they assured that the garbage emissions are non-fatal and are only harmful for people suffering from asthma or any other respiratory disease. However, this is not the first time that Santiago City was riddled by extreme smoke. Exactly two years ago, a fire that came from nearby forest has engulfed Chile's capital, which made the authorities to implement a health alert. The Guardian reported that the fire has caused more than $100 million in damages, which forced millions and millions of residents to inhale bad air. Then President Sebastian Pinera decided to announce a health alert for the four regions affected by the forest fire. He said that more than 70 forest fires that happened weeks before the announcement have affected more than 40,000 hectares of land. Chile's health minister handled the situation, and gave the citizens extra masks and oxygen tasks to protect them from the effect of the fires. Back in 2014, the air quality in Santiago was so bad that the deputy health secretary warned citizens to refrain from exercising outdoors. With the warning, exercising residents of Santiago went home as they witnessed the smoke cloud going nearer. Michelle Obama just loves Latino designers. It has been eight years since Michelle Obama has moved into the White House, and she has since become a style inspiration for many women. The First Lady of the United States isn't new to fashion, especially Latino designers. In fact, even before her White House residency, FLOTUS has been loyal to Latino designers and she has been known to wear their designs to the Obama administration's most historical events, according to We Are Mitu. As she enters her final year as FLOTUS, we look back at the Latino designers she has supported along the way. Chilean Designer Maria Cornejo Michelle Obama is in love with Maria Cornejo's fun yet classy ensembles. FLOTUS likes bright colors, so this is a no-brainer. At a school event, the First Lady wore a bright lime-green irregular top with matching purple and silver accessories. During one family trip, she wore one of Cornejo's chic black and white dresses and paired it with a slim and beaded belt. Check out FLOTUS rocking Cornejo's designs in photos here, here and here. Dominican Designer Oscar de la Renta One of the 52-year-old's best looks is Oscar de la Renta's blue-and-black ensemble, which she wore at the 38th Annual Kennedy Center Honors in December last year, according to People. A strapless number, the dress was perfect in highlighting her toned arms. While stylish and classy, the design's swirly blue pattern balanced out the dress for the holiday season. She paired the dress with a slicked back and pinned hairdo along with statement earrings as an accessory. However, the perfect accessory to her outfit at the time was President Barack Obama, who appeared debonair in a custom tuxedo. Here she is owning Oscar de la Renta's black and blue confection. Cuban Designer Narciso Rodriguez Michelle's most recent Narciso Rodriguez number was at President Obama's State of the Union address. The bright marigold, sleeveless, wool dress with a high neckline came straight out of the Narciso Rodriguez Fall 2015 collection. She rocked that dress so well that it immediately sold out even before the president finished his speech. Another Narciso Rodriguez ensemble that the First Lady took to a historical event is a body-hugging dress with a red design at the 2008 elections, which was the momentous day that her husband won the presidency. Showing more love for the Latino community, Michelle Obama wore a Narciso Rodriguez number at the Latino Broadway celebration. Check out the FLOTUS wearing Narciso Rodriguez in photos here, here and here. Cuban-Born Isabel Toledo FLOTUS wore Isabel Toledo at one of the Obama administration's most historical moments. Dressed in Toledo's lime-green lace midi bodycon ensemble and a matching coat, green leather gloves and green pumps, Michelle Obama made a statement at the 2009 Presidential Inauguration. We Are Mitu reported that Michelle had been wearing Toledo's designs, which are sold at an Ikram, Chicago boutique, even before moving into the White House. Here she is owning Isabel Toledo's dresses. Click here to see another photo. Technology is about to destroy humanity, according to famous physicist Stephen Hawking. While technology has paved the way for mankind's progress and development, Hawking says it will also be detrimental to the Earth's survival in the future. Humans should take caution since science could spell new ways of how things could go wrong for the survival of humans. According to Hawking, who turned 74 this month, the end of Earth and humankind could be a major technological disaster which is a "near certainty" in about 1,000 to 10,000 years. He also warned that the only way to escape this is for us to leave Earth, Hawking made the alarming comments on January 7 at BBC's annual Reith Lectures, where he lectured about black hole research. He made the warnings during the Q&A portion with the audience, where he was asked how he thought the world would end. According to the Radio Times, the world-renowned scientist said ahead of the lecture that the end of the world could be from a combination of major technological disasters such as global warming, nuclear war and/or engineered viruses. However, the professor from the University of Cambridge also said that there is still hope as long as humans figure out a way of leaving the planet and colonizing other planets. "Although the chance of a disaster on planet Earth in a given year may be quite low, it adds up over time, becoming a near certainty in the next thousand or ten thousand years...By that time, we should have spread out into space and to other stars, so it would not mean the end of the human race," he said. He added that this possibility could be 100 years away, and we should still be careful about not destroying Earth. "We are not going to stop making progress or reverse it, so we must recognise the dangers and control them," Hawking said. "We will not establish self-sustaining colonies in space for at least the next hundred years, so we have to be very careful in this period," he added. According to the Daily Mail, Professor Hawking and Tesla founder Elon Musk made an open letter warning that "Autonomous weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow," which means artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming powerful enough to become a risk and the cause of humanity's downfall. In his latest lecture, Hawking gave young scientists advice about retaining their sense of wonder about "our vast and complex" universe. He added that it is also future scientists' responsibility to help the public understand the effects of technology to the Earth. "It's important to ensure that these changes are heading in the right directions," he said. "In a democratic society, this means that everyone needs to have a basic understanding of science to make informed decisions about the future." Stephen Hawking will be broadcasting his Reith Lecture on BBC Radio 4 on January 26 and February 2. The Supreme Court announced it will review President Barack Obama's 2014 immigration executive actions, but not all presidential candidates are thrilled with the news. In November 2014, Obama announced the expansion of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) guidelines and the creation of the Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DAPA) program. With DAPA and DACA's expanded rules, nearly 4.9 million eligible undocumented immigrants, currently living in the U.S., would be temporarily avoid deportation and have three-year permits to stay in the country. Twenty-six states, led by Texas, have sued the Obama administration to halt the programs. After losing battles in the lower courts, the Obama administration petitioned the Supreme Court, or SCOTUS, for a review. On Jan. 19, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. Marco Rubio Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, has been consistent in his platform of opposing Obama's executive actions. He reiterated his stance to eliminate DACA and DAPA in a tweet after the court's decision to hear the case. I'm confident SCOTUS will agree Obama executive orders are unconstitutional. Regardless, as president, I will end them. Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) January 19, 2016 Rubio previously said Obama has been "ignoring, suspending, rewriting and violating" immigration laws as seen with the executive action. Hillary Clinton In a statement, the former secretary of state kept her pledge in supporting Obama's executive actions. "President Obama's executive actions on immigration are an exercise of long-standing executive authority, and the Supreme Court should uphold them. The stakes for families couldn't be higher. As President, I will implement DAPA and DACA, expand on these efforts to provide relief to more families, and continue to fight for comprehensive immigration reform." Bernie Sanders Fellow Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said he's "delighted" with the Supreme Court's decision to hear the case. Sanders said Obama acted appropriately in taking action to grant protections for Dreamers and the parents of U.S.-born or legally present children. "I am confident the president has the legal authority to take this bold action," said Sanders in a statement. "Clearly the best form of action is for Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform to put undocumented people on a path toward citizenship. But if Congress fails to act, as president I would uphold and expand the president's action." Martin O'Malley Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley applauded the court's decision. O'Malley, statement, also hit at Clinton and Sanders for their respective immigration records. "There is a cost to the political dysfunction in Washington," said O'Malley. "Look no further than the millions of New Americans whose futures are uncertain and whose families are at risk of being torn apart. They deserve to know why Secretary Clinton and Senator Sanders helped defeat comprehensive immigration reform in 2007 in Congress." O'Malley added that the current U.S. immigration system is "inhumane and inconsistent" with its values. He also said not one immigrant should risk deportation comprehensive immigration reform legislation is passed. "That's why I've promised to fully enact, protect, and expand these critical programs to cover millions more New Americans," he continued. "I am the only candidate who has gotten results on immigration reform, and I will not rest until we see real reform to bring our neighbors out of the shadows and stop tearing families apart." Supreme Decision Although the Supreme Court made the announcement on Tuesday, it will not render a verdict until June. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has helped lead the lawsuit first initiated by former attorney general Greg Abbott -- who now serves as governor for the Lone Star State, said the Supreme Court's announcement is not an indication that it will favor Obama's executive actions. "In deciding to hear this case, the Supreme Court recognizes the importance of the separation of powers. As federal courts have already ruled three times, there are limits to the President's authority, and those limits enacted by Congress were exceeded when the President unilaterally sought to grant 'lawful presence' to more than 4 million unauthorized aliens who are in this country unlawfully," said Paxton. The states joining Texas in the lawsuit are Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia and Wisconsin. __ For the latest updates, follow Latin Post's Politics Editor Michael Oleaga on Twitter: @EditorMikeO or contact via email: m.oleaga@latinpost.com. Alternative news outlet and social commentary site, Latino Rebels, launched a crowdsourcing initiative to track ICE deportation raids on Monday. The new data tool known as MigraMap is described as a "social media platform and global positioning system" that will allow users to digitally pinpoint the sites where ICE raids have occurred. The campaign encourages the community to submit self-reports of raids, upon which the data is fact checked and added to a color-coded map for reference. The tool also allows users to post their own personal stories and accounts. "We've taken a bold approach to our community equity building initiatives, by creating our own grassroots dataset campaign to help ICE raids' targets. We shouldn't depend on other platforms to inform us when and where these ICE raids occurred," Latino Rebels CEO Marlena Fitzpatrick said in a statement on their website. "At the same time, we're fostering self-expression and allowing our community to tell their own stories. The community has the power to inform other constituents by using this tool." The campaign was launched on Monday in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. and aims to give a spotlight and a voice to undocumented Americans and those who fight on their behalf. The initiative comes at a time when the Obama administration has decided to target undocumented immigrants with greater intensity. According to the Washington Post, the Department of Homeland Security has planned a series of raids throughout January, aiming to deport families who have entered the country since the start of 2015. Central American immigrants from countries such as Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador are the primary targets in this campaign. Last week, over 140 members of Congress signed and published a letter to the president, calling for an end to the deportation raids. "The brutality of violence in Central America is undeniable, and yet this administration has failed to provide a comprehensive refugee solution for those seeking international refugee protection," the letter read. Lawmakers called for a comprehensive alternative to the deportations, including refugee screening and resettlement, or relocation to international safe havens. As the federal government has begun thawing its once-deeply frozen relationship with Cuba, opportunities for business and trade have arisen. Yet another door opened last weekend, as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) officially dropped its telecom ban on Cuba. On Friday last week, the FCC announced that it had ordered Cuba to be removed from its Exclusion List for International Section 214 Authorizations. Effectively, the order introduces Cuba to the fold of countries around the globe where telecommunications companies can quickly receive a standard international authorization to begin developing facilities and services. Faster Go-Ahead for Telecoms Known commonly as the Exclusion List, the U.S. government holds a federal registry that identifies countries that are not covered by the international Section 214 authority, a globally-based regulatory structure for telecommunications. Before the Commission's order released on Friday, telecom providers would have to seek additional permissions from the FCC before providing services to Cuba. "Cuba was the last remaining country on the Commission's Exclusion List," noted the FCC's news release. "By removing Cuba from the Exclusion list, the Commission opens the door for U.S. telecom carriers to provide facilities-based telephone and Internet service to Cuba without separate approval from the Commission," the FCC stated. "Specifically, this action allows carriers seeking new international Section 214 authority for facilities-based service to Cuba to receive such authority sooner, and permits carriers with existing global Section 214 authority to provide services between the United States and Cuba without additional authorization." U.S. telecommunications companies will undoubtedly welcome the FCC's removing Cuba from its Exclusion List. AT&T, for example, has publicly requested such changes for months. The company eventually filed a comment with the FCC in December 2015, arguing, "Carriers with global Section 214 authority may provide service today to all countries except Cuba," and noting that "providing the same treatment for service to Cuba by removing this country from the exclusion list would help... increase the flow of information to and from the Cuban people" -- a major objective of the Obama administration's late-2015 rapprochement with the hermetic country. Accelerated Development in Cuba The FCC's move did not come as a surprise, though. The Obama administration has been pushing to open Cuba to the West since late 2014, after five decades of chilly relations. And since October of 2015, the FCC has been going through the process of considering the action; after the State Department officially recommended the FCC remove Cuba from its exclusion list. Cuba is a land of opportunity, a clean slate for new development, and an untapped market of millions -- especially young Cubans, who have demonstrated their propensity towards technology by setting up shadow Internet when the real thing wasn't available, even as the government considered such actions illegal and "counterrevolutionary." "Cuba has long ranked as one of the world's most repressive environments for information and communication technologies," said to Internet advocacy group Freedom House on the long-suppressed potential of networking Cuba. "High prices, exceptionally slow connectivity, and extensive government regulation have resulted in a pronounced lack of access... Most users can access only a government-controlled intranet rather than the global internet, with hourly connection costs amounting to 20 percent of the minimum monthly wage." Telecoms will be rearing to jump in, now that Cuba will be subject to the exact same regulations as any other country. In fact, U.S. telecoms have already begun, even before the FCC's action: Verizon announced in September that it would be the first U.S. wireless company to provide roaming service in Cuba, which was actually months after T-Mobile and Sprint began competing with each other on call and text plans between the two former cold war enemies. A wave of sexual assaults on women during New Year's eve, coupled with rising criticism over the government's no-limit policy on accepting refugees from North Africa, are causing Germany to restrict the flow of asylum seekers from that country. Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia have been declared 'safe havens,' and refugees from these countries could very well be either repatriated or have their requests for entry rejected. Plans have been called for to separate refugees with dubious status from the rest by placing them in repatriation hubs. A report filed by RT shows the dramatic increase of refugees from the affected countries. Asylum seekers from Algeria rose from 847 to 2,296 from June to December of last year, while Moroccan refugees jumped by 900% from 368 to 2,896. The article also cited strong statements made by Germany's economic Sigma Gabriel who chastised the governments of these nations for maintaining a double standard; he alleged that they were all too willing to accept aid from Germany, but were reluctant to receive back spurious claimants of asylum who did not qualify for the status. Yahoo News gives the reasons why the German governemt designated Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco as safe countries. German Chancellor Angela Merkel from the conservative party the Social Democratic Union pointed out that "unrest", as opposed to "full-scale conflict," is forcing many of its inhabitants to leave. Apparently, "unrest" may still merit a homegrown solution that can convince these people to live, while "full-scale contlict" makes habitation in these war-raved areas impossible. Setting a cap on the asylum seekers from these three North African countries can also grant a significant measure of relief to Germany, whose resources have been straining since its acceptance of 1.1 million refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq in 2015. News 24 adds that the Cologne incident fueled more fears over refugee-related violence. Authorities believed that asylum seekers from North Africa were responsible for the 660 ciminal complaints filed by German citizens that day; half of those cases were sexual assaults committed against women. To expedite both the investigation as well as the repatriation of dubious asylum seekers, Merkel proposed the creation of designated locations where these people could be housed and contained prior to their return to their native countries. Last Monday, U.S. ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro criticized Israel's West Bank settlement policy, claiming separate standards for Israelis and Palestinians. Arutz Sheva reports that in his speech at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) conference in Tel Aviv last Monday, Ambassador Shapiro accused Israel of selective law enforcement against Palestinians in Judea-Samaria. He claims that too much Israeli vigilantism goes unchecked on the West Bank and there is lack of thorough investigations that it begins to look like there are different standards of law enforcement for Jews and Palestinians. The ambassador was concerned yet preplexed by Israel's strategy on the settlements. He noted that as Israel continues to expand its settlements on the West Bank, it would make it difficult to support a negotiated settlement that involves mutual recognition and separation. According to The Times of Israel, the US ambassador's comments were met with a harsh response from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office, calling it "unacceptable and incorrect", especially due to the comments closely following the stabbing attacks of two Israeli women on the West Bank. The Prime Minister's office made it clear that "Israel enforces the law for Israelis and Palestinians" and "the Palestinian Authority is the one responsible for the diplomatic freeze, and continues to incite and refuse talks." Over at Channel News Asia a background on the stabbing and its victims sheds some lights on the US ambassador's comments and Israel's subsequent reaction. Michal Froman, who was stabbed last Monday was 5-months pregnant. Her injuries were not considered life-threatening. She is the daughter-in-law of the late Rabbi Menahem Froman, a Jewish peace activist who was one of the few Israeli's to meet with Hamas, the group which calls for Israel's destruction. The other victim was identified as Dafna Meir, a 38 year-old nurse and mother of six. She was at home with some of her children when attackers stabbed and killed her. The children were left unhurt and the attackers still remains at large. Meir's funeral in Jerusalem last Monday was attended by hundreds of mourners, including Israeli politicians and Jewish settlers carrying rifles. Her husband sat in the front row with two of their children. Meir's 17 year-old daughter recalled they were discussing nail color polish with her mother before she was brutally killed. The Prime Minister, in response to the stabbings, has strengthened security measures and said: "Whoever tries to harm us, we will bring him to justice. Only time will tell if peace can be found in the West Bank. Some analysts blame frustrations and slow progress for peace on the fractured Palestinian leadership and Israel's occupation of the West Bank. U.S. ambassador to Israel slams Israel's West Bank settlement policies during the annual conference of the Institute for National Security Studies. This public rebuke from Israel's top ally has then incited an angry response from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Speaking to the high-profile conference, U.S. ambassador Daniel Shapiro pointed out against Israel's expansion of settlements which raises questions on its commitment to establishing an independent Palestinian state. Shapiro also noted how Israel continued to legalize West Bank outposts despite prior pledges with United States. While U.S. remains to be Israel's closest friend and a reliable ally, Shapiro stated that they share the role in calling out Israel's errors. "Too much vigilantism goes unchecked and at times there seem to be two standards of adherence to the rule of law: one for Israelis and another for Palestinians," Shapiro stated. Reportedly in the West Bank, Israelis live under the Israeli civil law, while Palestinians are subject to Israeli military law. As a result, Palestinians allegedly have fewer legal protections as Palestinian offenders are quickly arrested or killed while Israelis committing violence are rarely brought to justice. Shapiro's criticism has immediately invoked a heated response from Israel's Prime Minister who deemed Shapiro's remarks inappropriate at a time of heightened violence between Israelis and Palestinians. "The ambassador's statements, on the day when a mother of six who was murdered is buried, and on a day when a pregnant woman is stabbed - are unacceptable and wrong." Netanyahu stated, as per Haaretz. The Prime Minister also rejected the allegations of double standards. Israel contends that the violence is the result of Palestinian campaign of lies and incitement rooted in frustrations over Israel's occupation. "Israel enforces the law on Israelis and Palestinians. The onus for the stalemate in the diplomatic process is the Palestinian Authority, which continues to incite and refuses negotiations." The Prime Minister's Office stated. Shapiro's remarks are purportedly the latest remarks voiced by the U.S. at the Israeli government, following the issue over Israel's controversial NGO bill. On Tuesday, Norway began sending refugees and migrants who battled temperatures approaching 30 degrees below zero to cross the country's Arctic border. The UN criticized Norway's treatment toward migrants stating this move might send people freezing to death. Mashable reported that 13 people boarded a bus to cross the Russian border after leaving a reception facility in Kirkenes, Norway. Immigration officers confirmed this report and said that the bus left at around 6 pm and eight men had volunteered to go. Sylvi Listhaug, one of the immigration minister, said that the migrants would be taken to Nikel and Murmansk, in Russia. Some migrants who feared deportation have already left the asylum center located in Vadso, which is located near the border. There have been no reports yet as to what happened to them. According to Al Jazeera, 30 asylum seekers, mostly Syrians, went on a hunger strike to demonstrate protest against Norway's plan of sending back 55 refugees to Russia by bus. An estimated 5,500 refugees and migrants capitalized on an opportunity which allows cyclists to pass through the northern Storskog crossing between Russia and Norway. This all happened in 2015 while the two countries prohibit people from crossing the border by car or on foot with legal documents. . In December, the newly appointed Norwegian immigration minister Sylvi Listhaug vowed to make the law tighter regarding the flow of refugees in the country. The minister announced that all refugees who crossed at Storskog without an appropriate visa would risk being sent back to Russia, as reported by The Guardian. Listhaug told the parliament on Tuesday evening that if Norway is to have a fair asylum policy, the country needs to send back those refugees who are not entitled to protection. Meanwhile, the UN warned Norway that it was likely to be in breach of the UN refugee convention. Vincent Cochetel, the UN high commissioner for refugees, expressed his fear and worried about refugees getting lost and freezing to death. "There are large cracks in the Russian asylum system. We believe Norway is wrong to regard Russia as a safe country for people who need protection," the commissioner said. Also, the European court of human rights rejected a last-ditch appeal made by Halvor Frihagen, an asylum lawyer in Oslo, to stop the deportations. Norway made a promise to relocate 9,000 Syrian migrants by the end of 2015. A woman was arrested in France after stripping and posing nude in a museum mimicking the painting by French artist Edouard Manet called Olympia. The detainee was known as Luxembourg artist, Deborah de Robertis, who claimed her actions were part of her performance art and should not have been discriminated against. Reportedly, De Robertis stripped down her clothes next to the painting of Manet, laid naked right in front of it and replicated the figure in the art work. There were a number of museum-goers in Paris's Musee d'Orsay admiring the works when De Robertis undressed. Security intervened immediately and Deborah was then arrested on Jan. 17. The defendant in response found the judicial decision unfair and is done in hypocrisy. Her lawyer Tewfik Bouzenoune stated that Deborah did nothing wrong and simply displayed an artistic performance. To prove the point, the Luxembourg artist was wearing a portable camera to film the public's reaction. This was also in part of an exhibition titled Splendour And Misery: Images Of Prostitution 1850-1910, The Guardian reports. "Putting an artist in custody sends a very bad message," said Bouzenoune, criticising the judicial ruling. While France has been known to have a more liberal view on sex and nudity, it seem that modern times call for debates to sex related art. To which De Robertis also had a comment to share. "They like nudity in art, they just don't want it to be moving. I don't understand how you can have this kind of exhibition if you are not prepared to go to examine nudity in the real world." Reportedly, this is not the first controversial exhibitions by the artist. Back in May 2014, De Robertis had also chosen Musee d'Orsay where she sat down and spread her legs exposing her vulva to mimicking Gustave Courbet's Origin of the World that depicts the female genitalia. Refugees #LoveYourNeighbor -- A GOD TV Call to Action "Some 59.5 million people have been forcibly displaced worldwide; 42,500 persons per day are forced to leave their homes; 51% of refugees are under 18 years of age." -- The UN Refugee Agency (unhcr.org) Contact: Al Gibson, Communications Officer, GOD TV, 407-862-5084, agibson@god.tv ALTAMONTE SPRINGS, Fla., Jan. 20, 2016 /Christian Newswire/ -- GOD TV is set to broadcast 'Refugees #LoveYourNeighbor' from January 22-31, a season focusing on the ongoing crisis and its horrific statistics as more people flee their homes due to conflict and persecution. The Network is airing programs that seek to find solutions to the crisis as well as motivate the Church to do more to help those who are hurting emphasising that the Christian response should be one of faith and not fear. "The Church must play its part in addressing one of the most pressing crises in the world today," says GOD TV President, Wendy Alec. "The refugee crisis is so close to God's heart, yet so little attention is drawn to it. I encourage GOD TV viewers to watch and be equipped to reach out to those who seek protection with a message of hope, compassion and enduring love." Some of the humanitarian organizations featured on GOD TV during the Refugee Season include: Samaritan's Purse; the Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East (FRRME); and British fostering and adoption charity, Home For Good. In addition to films from these organizations GOD TV will broadcast its own original productions including its flagship series, In Depth, with Wendy Alec as executive producer. Hosted by Joel Woodrow and Samantha Stephen the In Depth specials feature interviews with social justice visionaries such as Joseph Castleberry, Author of The New Pilgrims: How Immigrants are Renewing America's Faith and Values; Matthew Soerens of World Relief; Danielle Strickland of the Salvation Army; Dr Krish Kandiah who is President of the London School of Theology and Ann Buwalda of the Jubilee Campaign, which protects human rights and the religious liberties. GOD TV has also produced two original films for Refugee Season, one focusing on the work of Bridges Humanitarian Initiative that is helping the thousands of refugees fleeing Syria via the Greek Islands. The other, ICF Munich shows how German Christians are making a difference. Refugee Season includes the following films, some of which are making their global television premiere: The Stranger profiles three US immigrant stories, urging viewers to respond in ways that are consistent with Biblical principles. The Last Plight captures the despair of 600,000 Assyrian Christians and Yazidis seeking refuge after horrific IS terror attacks in Iraq. The Human Highway shows the humanitarian outreach of Samaritan's Purse, which offers hope to families fleeing Syria, helping them cope with the trauma of their journey. Victory In Christ captures heart-rending stories of displaced Iraqis. They've lost everything fleeing IS, but God hasn't abandoned them. Much of GOD TV's Refugee Season helps faith communities deal with fears linking refugees to terrorism, showing how rare it is for a refugee to commit terrorist acts. "While we can't ignore terrorism, we have to overcome the primary battle against fear," says Ann Buwalda. "Christians need to stand as dual citizens of heaven and earth, engaging in all arenas of life. We must see refugees through God's eyes and discover ways to pray for them." A joint social media effort is underway on Facebook and Twitter using the hashtag #LoveYourNeighbor. GOD TV and the partner organizations who've provided programming aim to create a buzz as viewers share or retweet about Refugee Season. Broadcast times can be found at god.tv, where the programs are also available via video on demand. (god.tv/refugees) GOD TV can be watched throughout the USA on channel 365 of DIRECTV and channel 103 of Glorystar as well as on cable in some cities. Viewers can also access GOD TV's webstream on their smartphone via the GOD TV App; computer (god.tv); or TV screen, (Roku). About GOD TV: GOD TV took to the airwaves in the UK in 1995 and now transmits from Jerusalem to a global reach of some 900 million people. The network's worldwide broadcast license is held by Angel Christian Television Trust Inc, a US not-for-profit corporation and GOD TV has offices in Kansas City, MO and Orlando, FL. GOD TV is owned by several Angel Charities internationally, which in addition to the network's media outreach, assist people in the developing world. GOD TV adheres to the Evangelical Alliance Basis of Faith. Its signal is broadcast Free To Air (FTA) and is accessible to all. Contact: GOD TV's Communications Officer, Al Gibson at agibson@god.tv Tel:407-862-5084 GOD TV Broadcast HQ: Jerusalem, Israel. International offices: USA (Orlando, Florida; Kansas City, Missouri) UK & Ireland (Plymouth, England), Europe (Hamburg, Germany), Asia & Middle East (Chennai, India; Sri Lanka), Africa (Cape Town, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya), Australasia (Melbourne, Australia). On Newsstands Now: Here's Everything You'll Find in CityBeat's Latest Issue From a Bigfoot hunt to delightfully spooky ghost stories from one of Cincinnati's watering holes, here are the stories you'll find in CityBeat's latest print edition. By CityBeat Staff Oct 19, 2022 For many of us, Bigfoot is a legend present only on an episode of Ancient Aliens, or perhaps only among the towering, mysterious pines of the Pacific Northwest. However, for CityBeat's latest issue, we went on a hunt for Bigfoot in a place where the massive furball had allegedly been spotted before Ohio's Pleasant Hill Lake Park... by The Fairmont Mount Kenya Safari Club is one of those rural African lodges that looks and feels like it shouldve been in the movie Out of Africa. The shadow of Mount Kenya is a great setting for a classic African lodge and to experience the Africa that you have always dreamed about. Africa is chaotic, frenetic and in your face but it can also be the calmest, most peaceful place in the world. The Fairmont Mount Kenya Safari Club is one of those places and it offers a lot to do. The Fairmont Mount Kenya Safari Club is about a 3.5-hour drive from the bustling Kenyan capital of Nairobi. Conversely, you can take a short 40-minute puddle jumper flight from the small Wilson Airport in Nairobi to the small town Nanyuki. From Nanyuki, its a 15-minute drive to the Fairmont Mount Kenya Safari Club. Here are 5 things to do at the Fairmont Mount Kenya Safari Club! Equator Crossing Ceremony The Fairmont Mount Kenya Safari Club actually straddles the equator. It literally runs right through the center of the hotel and is marked accordingly. Upon arrival, I was taken to an equator crossing ceremony. I actually got to dance (ish), play some drums with some Masai people and was even presented with a certificate of crossing the equator. I also saw a demonstration of how water circles opposite ways on each side of the equator. It was actually pretty interesting and felt like a 3rd grade science experiment. There were 2 water basins with a small hole in the middle: one in the northern hemisphere; and one in the southern hemisphere. Sure enough, the water circled in opposite directions. The Orphanage The highlight of my 3 days stay at the Fairmont Mount Kenya Safari Club was the on-site animal orphanage. I am a lover of animals and really enjoy getting the chance to see them up close. The orphanage at the Fairmont Mount Kenya Safari Club was set up to help injured or sick animals that couldnt survive on their own in the wild. They also do research and allow people to come and visit. Again, it was the highlight of my stay. I got to actually interact with a cheetah; which was a little nerve racking but very cool. I got to learn about species of monkeys and antelopes Id never seen before. I also got to see an ostrich literally in my face that was just walking around the orphanage hanging out! Another awesome thing in the orphanage was the baby hippos that you could actually feed. Baby hippos are pretty big but these hippos had no mother or way to survive on their own. They will be set free when theyre big enough to fend for themselves. The orphanage was really cool because it was like being on a mini safari in the animal kingdom but they had all sorts of rare species. They even took in endangered or injured animals from other parts of the world including llamas. Everyone loves llamas! Mountain Biking in the Bush If you follow me regularly then you know I love to ride my bike and really do anything adventurous. When the Fairmont Mount Kenya Safari Club offered me the chance to go mountain biking in the bush I couldnt pass it up! When I say the bush, I mean where the actual wild animals live including lions and elephants! We did a 10-mile track around the conservancy immediately around the hotel. Luckily, we didnt run into any lions or elephants but we did see plenty of buffaloes and zebras including some rare white zebras. Mountain biking in the bush was a really unique experience that Ive never seen offered anywhere else and I highly recommend it. Game Drives The Fairmont Mount Kenya Safari Lodge is not located in a big national park such as the Masai Mara. It is on private land and does possess a small conservancy as I mentioned with wild animals. However, a 45-minute drive away is a much larger conservancy where you can really get the feel for an African safari. The conservancy was ripe with zebras and has an area called the zebra plain with perhaps as many as Ive ever seen. We were lucky to get to see the zebras playing, fighting and running with each other in herds. It was really cool to watch and a very vivid memory. I hope youre following my Snapchat to see the videos! The conservancy was absolutely gorgeous to look at especially with the rain and sunbeams coming down from the distance. It made for great photos. They also have a chimpanzee conservation on the grounds where they care for some 40 chimps although theyre fenced off from the rest of the conservancy. Sunrise and Sunset Cocktails Sunrise and sunset are special in Africa. The big marble skies always lend for amazing light shows. I am always up early and from the Fairmont Mount Kenya Safari Lodge there is a direct view at the sunrise above Mount Kenya itself. If you know anything about mountains then you know that the only time you can generally see the summit is in the early morning before the clouds gather. Mount Kenya is no exception and the sunrises are breathtaking and well worth setting your alarm for. On the contrary, sunset is a time for cocktails and fires. The Fairmont Mount Kenya Safari Lodge has some great fire pits and there is no better place on Earth to enjoy a scotch than at sunset over a fire at an African lodge. It is the perfect setting-just make sure youre warm enough as it gets chilly after the sun goes down at 7000 feet elevation. Disclaimer: My stay at the Fairmont Mount Kenya Safari Lodge is part of an ongoing campaign I have going with Fairmont Hotels and Resorts. I receive financial compensation and was fully hosted for this trip. However, I have written everything here, all opinions expressed are mine and have not been influenced in any way-as always. Sharing is caring! Jan 20, 2016, 1:51pm ET Amid low gas prices, EV sales fall short of gov target Deliveries failed to reach half of President Obama\'s million-unit goal by 2015. Amid persistent low gasoline prices, electric vehicle demand has fallen short of President Barack Obama's 2015 sales goal. Announced in 2008 before gasoline prices collapsed from a 10-year high of more than $4 per gallon, the ambitious plan called for EV and plug-in hybrid sales to reach more than a million units. Despite gasoline prices staying above $3 per gallon for four years, only 400,000 EVs have been sold in the US since Obama announced the target, according to a Reuters report. The market failed to reach the figure despite billions of dollars in incentives, aimed at both consumers and automakers, and ever tightening fuel efficiency standards. EV adoption so far has been limited by a combination of high battery costs and low gasoline prices. The Nissan Leaf carries a mass-market MSRP, but with a range that many potential buyers believe is too short to completely replace their existing gasoline-powered vehicles. At the other end of the spectrum, the entry-level Tesla Model S can travel nearly three times as far as the 24-kWh Leaf but costs more than twice as much. Some analysts believe current gasoline prices will remain low into the foreseeable future. Oversupply and a change in Saudi Arabia price-manipulation strategy initiated the stumble, while Iran's fresh return to global oil markets could further extend the slump. Many automakers are still investing heavily in electrification technologies, and with good reason. Battery prices per kilowatt hour are expected to continue a downward trend in the coming years, eventually making long-range EVs competitive with gasoline-powered vehicles in terms of up-front price and long-term ownership costs. Sub-$2 gasoline prices will undoubtedly delay the meeting point, however the intersection is widely viewed as inevitable. The Chevrolet Bolt and Tesla Model 3 are expected to usher in the next generation of EVs with sub-$40,000 price tags and at least 200 miles of range. If the Obama Administration gets its way, federal incentives could bump to $10,000 to further offset the premium prices paid for EVs. Automakers are also under pressure to meet ever-tightening fuel-efficiency regulations, even if they are effectively forced to temporarily sell EVs or fuel-cell vehicles at a loss. Audi picks factory for electric Q6 production in 2018 Jan 20, 2016, 11:54am ET Likely labeled the Q6 e-tron, the model will be built in Brussels. Audi has confirmed plans to build its first all-electric crossover in 2018. Reports suggest the model will be known as the Q6 e-tron when it arrives on the market. The Tesla Model X fighter was presented in near-production form last year in Frankfurt, where it was referred to as the e-tron quattro concept. The e-tron quattro is powered by three electric motors, one for the front wheels and two for the rear axles. Combined output is expected to exceed 425 horsepower, with short-lived 'boost' bumping up to nearly 500 ponies. With around 600 lb-ft of torque sent to all four wheels, the crossover is claimed to reach 62 mph in just 4.6 seconds before topping out at 130 mph. A 95-kWh battery pack will be placed under the floor, maximizing interior space and keeping a low center of gravity. The company expects driving range to reach 310 miles, hinting at a potential range advantage over the Model X. US EPA numbers will likely be closer to Tesla's 257 mile benchmark, however, as the e-tron has less than six percent more battery capacity than Tesla's Model X 90D. Audi will build the high-riding e-tron in Brussels, forcing transfer of A1 assembly to Spain. The domino effect will displace Q3 production from Spain to Hungary in the future. Volkswagen Group also plans to build batteries in Brussels, making Belgium a key country for the company's global rollout of additional EVs and hybrids. The automaker has stepped up its electrification promises in the wake of the TDI emissions scandal. The company's turnaround strategy centers on shifting focus from the tarnished 'clean diesel' branding to battery-powered vehicles. Live images by Ronan Glon. Jan 20, 2016, 11:14am ET FTC panel debates merits of Tesla's direct sales model Dealer lobbyists have argued that traditional networks foster \'intrabrand\' competition that is good for consumers. The Federal Trade Commission has convened a panel to discuss the merits of direct sales in the automotive industry, a subject particularly relevant to Tesla Motors but also to smaller startups such as Elio Motors. FTC officials have previously argued in favor of eliminating state-level bans on direct sales, though the agency has officially maintained a neutral stance ahead of the expert gathering. Speaking at the event, Tesla general counsel Todd Maron specifically targeted General Motors as an example of established automakers pushing to maintain the status quo in an alleged attempt to avoid competition from newcomers. "With respect to General Motors, their position boils down to this: Because they voluntarily chose generations ago to use a certain business model, everyone that comes after should be required as a matter of law to use the same model," Maron said, as quoted by BuzzFeed. Tesla claims a traditional franchise structure is not optimal for the company's production strategy nor its customers. The EV maker focuses on custom-configured vehicles, rather than high inventory, and a franchisee would have to sell the cars at higher prices to make money. Representing an opposing point of view, industry analyst Maryann Keller argues that competition between same-brand dealers results in lower prices for car buyers. Dealership attorney Paul Normal expanded on the position, opining that dealers serve as consumer advocates. "Independent dealers also act as advocates for consumers and provide a local presence which is a convenient place for customers to go to solve their problems," he said, according to quotes published by Ars Technica. "Independent dealers add an extra layer of accountability." GM defended its position, claiming "the benefit of a nationwide network of thousands of dealerships is that General Motors customers never have to worry about driving to another state to buy, service or support their vehicles." Tesla apparently views the position as disingenuous, as GM has supported efforts to maintain or tighten state-level franchise laws that bar direct sales. Such laws are the primary roadblock in Tesla's plans to build its own nationwide sales and service network. "We also believe all automakers should operate in the marketplace under the same rules and requirements of how we sell, service and market our products," GM added. It is unclear if the FTC will step up pressure on state legislatures to amend franchise laws in Tesla's favor. The state-by-state legal battle could enter a more heated phase as the company attempts to ship its mass-market Model 3. Geneva LIVE: 2016 DS 3 Mar 2, 2016, 8:30am ET The 3 is positioned at the bottom of the DS lineup. PSA Peugeot-Citroen's newly-emancipated DS division has introduced the facelifted 3 at the Geneva Auto Show. Positioned at the bottom of the DS lineup, the six-year old 3 gains a restyled front end that falls in line with the French premium car maker's latest design language. The updates are relatively minor, and the new look is largely characterized by a hexagonal grille with a chrome frame that underlines the headlights, and a new lower bumper. The back end receives new-look LED tail lamps with a 3D design. The bulk of the 3's switch gear is pulled directly from the Citroen C3 parts bin, but the cabin has been upgraded with a seven-inch touch screen that's compatible with Apple CarPlay. Additionally, the hatchback can be ordered with automatic city braking, a hill start assist function, parking sensors on both ends, and a rear-view camera. Full technical specifications are being kept under wraps for the time being. The only engine that DS has detailed so far is the turbocharged 1.6-liter four-cylinder unit that powers the range-topping 3 Performance. It sends 208 horsepower and 221 lb-ft. of torque to the front wheels via a six-speed manual transmission and a Torsen limited-slip differential. The Performance models will ride lower than the standard DS 3 and have wider front and rear tracks for improved road-holding. Aesthetically, the DS 3 Performance gains 18" wheels, a dual exhaust setup and a set of gloss black front brake calipers. The 2016 DS 3 hatchback and the 2016 DS 3 Cabrio will both go on sale across Europe shortly. DS eventually hopes to sell cars in the United States, but there's virtually no chance of ever seeing the 3 on our side of the Atlantic. Live photos by Ronan Glon. An Emmaus man accused of fatally shooting an Allentown store owner 18 years ago reportedly told detectives the victim thought he was stealing and stabbed him before he opened fire. An Emmaus man admitted to fatally shooting an Allentown store owner 17 years ago, authorities said. (lehighvalleylive.com file photo) John Milton Edinger, 44, of the 900 block of Glenwood Street in the borough, appeared in court Wednesday for his preliminary hearing on charges of homicide and robbery in the July 22, 1998, fatal shooting of Adel Malek. District Judge Ron Manescu sent all the charges to Lehigh County Court, where Edinger now faces possible trial. Edinger remains in jail without bail. Malek's daughter, who was in the courtroom for the hearing, declined to comment afterward. Allentown Detective Erik Landis testified he interviewed Edinger last month, and Edinger admitted shooting Adel Malek on July 22, 1998, inside the Apotheca Store at 1341 Union St. in Allentown. Edinger told police he was "dope sick" that day, and went to the store with a .22-caliber revolver in his waistband, Landis said. Edinger was holding the gun through the pockets in a sweatshirt he was wearing, and Malek thought he was stealing, Landis said. Malek wanted to see Edinger's hands, and came around the counter with a knife and stabbed Edinger in the leg, Landis said. "At which point, (Edinger) panicked and shot him," Landis said. Edinger told police he thought he shot Malek once, but Malek died from multiple gunshot wounds. Police retrieved three bullets from Malek's body, as well as a bullet fragment from the store and the knife. "He seemed almost relieved, to tell us after all these years," Landis said. A key witness who helped Edinger immediately after the crime testified Wednesday about coming forward to police last year with information because of his immigration legal troubles. He provided a different account of what happened that day. Alejandro Fernandez Tavera, who goes by Alex Fernandez, is being held on an immigration detainer and faces deportation to the Dominican Republic. "I did this because I need help, I need something done with this immigration stuff," Tavera said on Wednesday, adding if he wasn't "jammed up" with his immigration case, "I wouldn't be here." Tavera said Edinger came to his house, bleeding, the day of the shooting. Edinger said he robbed the store at 14th and Union streets, and that the owner stabbed him, Tavera testified. "(The store owner) didn't want to give him the money ... (Edinger) said he shot him," Tavera said, adding that Edinger used an ethnic slur to describe Malek. Tavera helped clean Edinger up, and stored the bloody clothes and towels in his basement. Edinger put the .22 revolver in a breaker box in the basement, then came back a week or two later and picked up the items, Tavera said. Tavera was picked up in August on the deportation detainer. He said he wrote a letter to a friend with information about the shooting, and had it delivered to police. "I gave them the information they needed to hear," he said. Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. Lehigh University sign The group Stop Animal Exploitation Now called out Lehigh University last week after its review of federal documents found the university reported two instances to the federal government in which research hamsters had been mistreated in 2015. (lehighvalleylive.com file photo) An animal research watchdog group that criticized Lehigh University for its treatment of two hamsters has asked the university president to launch an internal investigation and ban future animal tests. Michael A. Budkie, executive director of the the Ohio-based group Stop Animal Exploitation Now, sent a letter Tuesday to Lehigh President John D. Simon. "While this evaluation is being performed, please keep in mind that animals are not simply objects to be utilized however we see fit," Budkie wrote. "Instead, these are sentient beings whose lives matter to them, belong to them, and should not be ended or altered merely to meet human ends." SAEN called out Lehigh last week after its review of federal documents found that Lehigh reported two instances to the federal government in which research hamsters had been mistreated. In the first incident last March, a hamster was deprived of food or water for 36 hours. In April, researchers euthanized a hamster using carbon dioxide and placed it in a plastic bag in a freezer. The animal was later found outside the bag, Budkie said, after it awakened and tried to escape. In a July 2015 letter to the National Institutes of Health, a Lehigh administrator disclosed that as a result of its findings, officials had relieved the research facility director of his duties as chairman of the Institutional Animal Care & Use Committee, an internal review board. Lehigh also barred two people involved from its animal research facility, but SAEN said its responses didn't go far enough. SAEN said everyone involved in the incidents should be permanently barred from using animals. The group, which monitors research facilities nationwide, also asked Lehigh to consider eliminating animal experiments altogether "in favor of investigating cutting edge technology, including 3-dimensional bio-printing, organ-on-a-chip technology, etc." Lehigh has not said what the hamsters were used for, and its self-reporting of the incidents does not shed any light on that. In a statement Wednesday, Lehigh did not address the SAEN letter specifically but said the university is in good standing with both the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Institutes of Health's Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare, the government body that provides guidance on the use of laboratory animals. "We remain committed to continuous efforts to enhance the efficacy of the university's animal welfare program and to the ongoing protection of animals used in research," said Lehigh spokeswoman Lauren Weaver. Last week, Lehigh noted that it reported the incidents on its own and received assurances from the National Institutes of Health of its responses to the incidents. "(The Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare) expressed satisfaction with the corrective actions regarding these incidents," Weaver said then. "Lehigh University remains committed to protecting the safety, health and welfare of all animals." SAEN filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture alleging Lehigh violated regulations regarding personnel, animal handling and veterinary care. It is urging the maximum penalty of $10,000 per infraction, per animal. In his letter Tuesday, Budkie said SAEN believes "a progressive university such as Lehigh has an obligation not only to act ethically, but also to prepare your students for their own future in the best possible way, by exposing them to cutting-edge technology, which will prepare them for scientific professions on the frontiers of scientific achievement." Jim Deegan may be reached at jdeegan@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @jim_deegan. Find lehighvalleylive on Facebook. Bethlehem police arrested the suspect in an armed robbery of a South Side business within hours of the crime, after staking out his home, police Chief Mark DiLuzio said Tuesday night. Ramon Rivera (Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com) DiLuzio also revealed the suspect, 43-year-old Ramon Rivera, was caught with heroin and drug paraphernalia and a search of his South Side home turned up more of the same. Rivera brandished a semiautomatic handgun in the holdup about 5:20 a.m. Monday at Pat's Newstand, 327 S. New St., according to police. He allegedly threatened the clerk and demanded all of the money from the cash register in what DiLuzio labeled a "terrifying crime." The female clerk gave Rivera about $500 and called police after Rivera ran from the store, police said. The clerk was uninjured. Investigators received an anonymous tip identifying Rivera as the robber and obtained a warrant for his arrest, police said. "Officers from the Bethlehem Police Department's Street Crimes Unit and Special Operations Unit established surveillance of Rivera's residence" in the 900 block of Mechanic Street, DiLuzio said in a news release. "At approximately 2:30 p.m., Rivera was observed leaving his residence. Rivera was taken into custody without incident a short distance." Members of the department's Special Response Team simultaneously executed a search warrant at Rivera's home, police said. The handgun was not recovered, though some ammunition was seized, DiLuzio said. Rivera was arraigned before District Judge Jacqueline Taschner on charges of robbery, terroristic threats, simple assault, reckless endangerment and theft and sent to Northampton County Prison in lieu of $150,000 bail. "All police officers involved in this investigation (patrol, detectives, street crimes and special operations) did an outstanding job in identifying Rivera and arresting him without incident within nine hours of this terrifying crime," DiLuzio said in a statement. The police chief invites anyone who sees something strange or suspicious to dial 911, and those with information on drug activity or any crime to call the the Bethlehem Police Department Tip Line at 610-691-6660 or non-emergency dispatch line at 610-865-7187. "You can remain anonymous," DiLuzio stated. "Your information may solve a crime, prevent a crime or save a life." Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. A Bethlehem woman who was the driver during a November robbery in the Marvine-Pembroke housing development identified a 24-year-old man as the gunman during a hearing Wednesday. Almeen Jamal Jenkins (Prison photo) Faith Jallah testified during a preliminary hearing before Senior District Judge Joseph Barner that she did not know Almeen Jamal Jenkins, of the 1300 block of Livingston Street, prior to the robbery at 5:30 p.m. Nov. 20. Jallah later would have someone take a photo of Jenkins' identification card with her smartphone to connect him to the crime. She pointed to Jenkins, seated at the defense table dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit with shackles and handcuffs, and told the court was the one with the gun that day. "Almeen took out the gun and pointed it and said, 'This is how it's going to go down,'" Jallah recalled. Following the hearing, robbery, aggravated assault and related crimes against Jenkins were sent to Northampton County Court, where he now faces trial. Jenkins remains at Northampton County Prison in lieu of 10 percent of $75,000 bail. He pleaded not guilty to all charges and rejected a proposed plea arrangement prior to the hearing. Jallah testified she was working in Manhattan on Nov. 20 and drove with two male friends, both from New York, into Bethlehem. Yzire Jenkins-Rowe, 18, of Bethlehem, who Jallah knew, needed a ride and the group picked him up at Livingston Street. Jenkins was with Jenkins-Rowe and both got into Jallah's vehicle. Jenkins and Jenkins-Rowe asked Jallah to first drop them off at the Friendly Food Mart at Livingston and Pembroke streets. Once there, Jenkins and Jenkins-Rowe went inside the business, came out and got back in the car, she said. The group then traveled to the 1300 block of Eastwood Street and picked up Richard Rasun Decaires, 20. During the ride, police say Jenkins had an argument with one of the men from New York. Jenkins pulled out a handgun and pointed it at one of the men in the backseat, Jallah testified. "I was scared," Jallah said, adding she stopped the car, ran to the home of a stranger in the Marvine-Pembroke development and called police. Jallah testified both male passengers from New York were assaulted inside her vehicle and stripped of their clothing. An estimated $2,000 cash and clothes was stolen from one man while a laptop computer, clothes and an undetermined amount of cash was stolen from the other, she said. Court records say Jenkins pistol-whipped and threatened one of the victims with his handgun while Jenkins-Rowe assaulted the man and stole from him. Decaires stood next to Jenkins-Rowe as the robbery occurred, blocking the victim from leaving the vehicle, police said. James Madsen, the court-appointed attorney representing Jenkins, attempted to poke holes in Jallah's testimony, asking, "How do you know my client is Mr. Jenkins? You never saw my client strike anybody or take property from anybody?" Jallah said a photo taken on her cellphone of Jenkins' identification card connected him to the crime and her friends told her Jenkins was the gunman. Bethlehem police Detective Sean Moloney testified Jenkins denied the gun belonged to him during questioning, but admitted to pistol-whipping one of the victims. Madsen still tried to convince the judge there wasn't enough evidence to charge Jenkins with robbery. "There's no proof of the robbery here, other than hearsay," he said. So I'm going to ask that the robbery (charge) be dismissed. They haven't proved robbery at all." But Northampton County Assistant District Attorney Kelly Lewis Fallenstein quickly pointed out prosecutors didn't have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt during a preliminary hearing, but show a preponderance of evidence. "What we needed to establish is that a robbery occurred ... that three individuals inside a car were essentially robbed," she said. A formal arraignment has been scheduled for March 31 in Northampton County Court. Co-defendant waives hearing: Co-defendant Yzire Jenkins-Rowe Wednesday gave up his right to a preliminary hearing. He is charged with robbery, conspiracy to commit robbery, theft, receiving stolen property and simple assault. Edward Andreas, the public defender representing Jenkins-Rowe, said in a proposed plea arrangement, Jenkins-Rowe would plead guilty to all charges if prosecutors dropped the robbery charge. Jenkins-Rowe remains at Northampton County Prison in lieu of $50,000 bail. Co-defendant Decaires is facing two counts of felony conspiracy to commit robbery. Due to a conflict with his attorney on Wednesday, Decaires's preliminary hearing was to be rescheduled. Decaires remains at Northampton County Prison in lieu of $35,000 bail. Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @pamholzmann. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. A $12 million reliability upgrade to power lines in the Northeast Bethlehem area continued to take shape Wednesday, as a helicopter was used to string rope along newly installed poles in the city. "What will happen after that, once these ropes are strung, then we'll attach the actual electric line to that rope and pull that through and attach it to the insulators on the line," PPL Electric Utilities spokesman Joe Nixon said. A Winco Powerline Services helicopter on Jan. 20, 2016, strings rope along newly installed power lines, seen from Henderson Street in Northeast Bethlehem, as part of a $12 million upgrade to a 6-mile-long, 69-kilovolt power line in the area. (Kurt Bresswein | For lehighvalleylive.com) PAR Electrical Contractors Inc. began installing all-new poles late last summer for Allentown-based PPL, and the project is expected to wrap up by late spring or early summer, Nixon said. The helicopter contractor is Aurora, Oregon-based Winco Powerline Services. The rope used Wednesday was fed from spools atop trucks parked outside a strip mall at Easton Avenue and Stefko Boulevard. The pilot would return to a PAR worker in a bucket truck, who would connect the rope to be woven through pulleys on the new poles. Once done, the pilot would return for more rope to repeat the process. The six-mile-long, 69-kilovolt line links PPL's Siegfried Quarry substation in Freemansburg to its North Bethlehem substation in Hanover Township, Northampton County. Helicopters will be seen in use as the project progresses northwestward, including over the Routes 22 and 512 interchange. "We use helicopters because obviously it's a lot more efficient, a lot faster," Nixon said. The work is part of PPL Electric Utilities' plans to invest $1 billion annually for five years in power line upgrades, smart-grid technology for assessing outages and rerouting service, and tree-trimming, Nixon said. Parts of the line being replaced in the Bethlehem area date to the 1920s, he said. "It's really a benefit for customers," Nixon said. Power for the line does not come from one source but is part of the Mid-Atlantic region grid operated by PJM Interconnection, based in the Valley Forge area in Montgomery County. PPL had to coordinate and reroute power from the line being replaced to avoid disruptions of service. The substations the line feeds transfer power to smaller lines, and transformers atop utility poles dial down that power for customers' use. Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. A former Phillipsburg man already serving time for burglaries in Easton and Wilson Borough faces new charges in five additional break-ins in Easton. Jared J. Kukor (Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com) DNA evidence on cigarette butts and blood found at one break-in, plus fingerprints and his own identification card showed at pawn shops, led to the new counts against 30-year-old Jared J. Kukor, according to court records. Kukor was sentenced in May 2015 to between five and 10 years for the previous burglaries. His address is listed in court records as the State Correctional Institution at Mahanoy in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania. He was arraigned in the new cases Jan. 8 and was awaiting a preliminary hearing as of Tuesday. District Judge Richard Yetter III ordered Kukor held in lieu of $210,000 bail. The break-ins that led to the new charges occurred between April 2013 and May 2014 and included three in one week in June 2013, all in Easton's West Ward. The previous break-ins for which Kukor was sentenced took place during that same week in June 2013, on McCartney Street on Easton's College Hill, and in May 2014 on North 17th Street in Wilson. Easton police Detective Matthew Rush investigated the latest round of burglaries, beginning April 11, 2013, at a home in the 900 block of Washington Street. Police found an estimated $825 in copper pipe and wire missing from the basement, and discovered the cigarette butts on the floor and blood on a plastic bag moved to access the pipes, records say. Pennsylvania State Police laboratory analysis linked DNA from the evidence to Kukor, police said. Then on June 11, 2013, Rush investigated the theft of multiple video-game systems valued at $620 in all and a flatscreen television valued at $1,468, from a home in the 800 block of Bushkill Street. Police traced some of the consoles to Game Stop, 315 Northampton St., where Kukor could be seen on video surveillance selling the items, police said; he provided a New Jersey identification card with his name. Kukor allegedly also used his ID to sell the television at Easton Exhange, 58 Centre Square. Kukor showed his ID at JC Jewelry and Gifts, 101 Northampton St., to sell some of the $2,222 worth of jewelry he stole June 14, 2013, from a home in the 200 block of North 11th Street, according to police. Investigating a burglary June 17, 2013, at a home in the 200 block of North Seventh Street, police recovered palm- and fingerprints that state police analysts linked to Kukor, court records say. Again, he used his New Jersey ID to sell some of the jewelry he stole, this time to ANS Coins, 56 Centre Square, police said. Police said they also recovered Kukor's prints from the fifth break-in, discovered May 5, 2014, at a home in the 100 block of North Eighth Street. That break-in netted Kukor an estimated $7,000 in jewelry, records say. Kukor faces the following newly filed charges: two counts of receiving stolen property, three counts of burglary and five counts of theft. Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. EASD meeting More than 60 people attended the Easton Area School Board meeting, Jan. 19, 2016, in the high school cafeteria. (Rudy Miller) The Easton Area School District's much-anticipated elementary redistricting plan drew a mixed reaction when it was released Tuesday to a crowd of more than 60 residents. Forks Township resident Danielle Schaeffer was devastated to hear her second-grade daughter will have to switch from Shawnee Elementary School to Forks Elementary. This Easton Area High School redistricting map was released Jan. 19, 2016. She already moved her child from Wilson Borough and it will be tough for the youngster with social anxiety disorder to adjust again. "This is the face of those 313 students you are affecting," she said. The only other complaint was over the difficulty reading the map projected on a screen for the crowd. School board President Frank Pintabone said a copy of the map would be up on the school website after the meeting. The school district will realign boundaries because fifth-graders will attend elementary schools rather than the middle school starting in 2016-17. That will make room for Paxinosa Elementary School students, who will vacate their school for one year and move to the middle school to allow for Paxinosa renovations. The Paxinosa children will move back in 2017-18, and children from Easton Area Academy will move to the middle school campus permanently. Superintendent John Reinhart said the new boundaries were drawn with an eye toward disrupting as few children as possible. Only 9.3 percent of elementary students will have to switch schools, officials said. The district tried to keep class sizes minimal and keep school populations equitable across the district, he said. Reinhart told PTA council President Michelle Robertson he wasn't sure whether he could exempt next year's fifth graders from the move. Robertson said those children would be forced to move to a new school for one year and then go to the middle school. Robertson thanked the board for releasing the map in January, making good on a previous promise. New boundaries North of Newlins Road East and east of Richmond Road in North of Seip Avenue to Van Buren Road in The Highlands neighborhood on In In In In Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @RudyMillerLV. Find Easton area news on Facebook. Lehigh Valley Health Network in recent days sent letters to a "small" number of employees who will lose their jobs in a consolidation of the Salisbury Township company's medical practices. While more patients are using the services of Lehigh Valley Physician Group -- and the network's outpatient services overall -- "where there are multiple practices nearby," the network is combining services that has "resulted in changes to our workforce," according to a statement. "The number of staff affected by these changes is small, but every single individual is a colleague and is important to us," the statement said. "We are working with each person affected by the changes and anticipate the majority of them will remain with LVHN in different capacities." The physician group employs more than 700 doctors in more than 140 practices, according to its website. It might not be the last time the network has to take such action, the statement said. "We will continue to make periodic adjustments based on market needs as well as local and national trends in health care," the statement said. The network "is experiencing budget challenges" not unlike many hospitals and health networks, the statement said. "As part of health care reform, health networks are focused on keeping people healthy and out of the hospital, and operating as efficiently as possible," the statement said. "To overcome these challenges, health systems must make adjustments to their care delivery and staffing plan." Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. UPDATE: Northampton County workers sent home due to bomb search The Northampton County Courthouse has been evacuated due to a bomb scare. The bomb threat was broadcast to sheriffs deputies at 1 p.m. The deputies went from room to room ordering employees and patrons out of the building at 669 Washington St. in Easton. People were ordered to go across Washington Street away from the courthouse. By 1:15 p.m. sheriffs ordered people to move a block west across Seventh Street away from the courthouse by order of the fire department. People on the other side of the courthouse were ordered out of the parking deck and into the lot on the south side of Washington Street. Easton police cars arrived with lights flashing to keep cars from driving near the courthouse. Easton police Lt. Scott Casterline confirmed a bomb threat was phoned in. He said Easton police are assisting Northampton County sheriffs. Northampton County Director of Administration Luis Campos had no information about the threat. He was outside with everyone else. Sheriffs deputies on the scene also had no comment. As of 2 p.m. the building was still being searched. Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @RudyMillerLV. Find Easton area news on Facebook. All of Mountmellick's sewerage network is overloaded with a mix of sewage and rainwater, with repeated overflows over Christmas. Overflows began on the Davitt road on December 12 and hit again on Christmas day, Stephen's day and December 28. The town has a combined sewer, which takes in surface water as well as sewage. A resident of Davitt road who spent most of last week pumping waste away from his home, is angry that the system was not upgraded. A council report in 2004 found there was too many buildings on the system, and then it gave planning permission for more estates, the resident said. He is also angry that it was left to residents and fire crews to pump the sewage. I rang Irish Water and the council but had no response since Christmas. They knew this water was coming and everyone went on holidays. I can't praise the fire crews enough but we feel very badly let down. There should have been monitoring, we were left high and dry, the homeowner said. Laois County Council's Director of Services for water Michael O'Hora, said the fire service works as a unit with them, while Director Kieran Kehoe said the council have attended the scene any time a request has been received, including road crews and water services staff. It is very regrettable but these things happen, we have had six or seven weeks of constant rain caused by climate change. New areas are flooding. We are identifying problems and dealing with them, Mr O'Hora said. The council have since drawn up a plan to temporarlily divert surface water from Davitt Road, approved for funding by Irish Water, to start when floods recede. The problem is not just planning. The combined sewer is surcharged because of the heavy rain. Our roads section is laying surface water drainage sewers in Acragar which will ease the problem, Mr O'Hora said. An upgrade is urgent. All of Mountmellick is surcharged, and very overloaded. It's up to Irish Water to say when it will be funded but it is urgent, he said. Irish Water confirm that a contractor is approved to separate surface water from the sewer at Davitt road, along with the temporary solution. Irish Water added that on December 12, staff from the council and water services attended for 19 hours, and fire services, roads crews and water staff attending for 9 hours on Christmas day, 12 hours on Stephen's day, 8 hours on December 28 and 4 hours on December 30. The proactive response ensured that no homes in this area have been flooded despite the very bad weather, a spokesperson said. Sinn Fein TD Brian Stanley has met with residents. The problems at Davitt Road and Connolly Street and flooding at Manor Road are just the latest signs that the system is unable to cope with the towns expansion. This could have been avoided. 12 million was announced in letters to residents in 2009 and not one red cent has been spent on the scheme, he said, while noting that older houses in the town are not connected, and urging speed on the remedial works. Portlaoise's Tidy Towns members feel like they are running on the spot when it comes to earning extra points from the group that rates towns for litter. Portlaoise was deemed to be 'moderately littered' in the final litter survey of 2015 by Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL). Despite the best efforts of the Tidy Towns, Laois County Council and the residents associations in the estates, it just feels like we're running on the spot, Chairperson of Portlaoise Tidy Towns, Cllr Jerry Lodge said. We are struggling to get into the higher category and it's taking longer to earn extra points, he said. Despite being fourth from the bottom of the league table, the IBAL had some positive things to say about certain areas of the town, praising the shopping centre, Market Square and Main Street. Some of the top ranking sites in Portlaoise included Laois Shopping Centre, Main Street and Market Square - they were well presented and maintained, the report said. By far the most heavily littered site was an abandoned housing development on Ballyfin Road it was characterised by burnt out premises and wasteland at the entrance. If Clonminam Business Park isnt addressed it could quickly become a seriously littered site. Cllr Lodge feared litter issues could deteriorate. Unfortunately the problem is only going to get worse as we are going to have to pay by weight for our refuse now, he said. I'm afraid that the dumping problem will escalate if pay by weight does become a reality. Overall it wasn't a bad report, some areas received grade As and I do think our low grading was not warranted as most of the comments in the report were positive. But we need to keep working on things. The Ballyfin Road is being taken care of, Laois County Council are working speedily on that and I think it should be remedied by the next report. I've put in a motion for the next Portlaoise Municipal District Meeting asking the council to update us on their plans for Clonminam, he said Cllr Lodge says Portlaoise could be a top 10 town It's good to see things through someone else's eyes every so often. It's sometimes hard to see things when you're looking at them all the time yourself. But I don't see any reason why Portlaoise couldn't figure in the top 10 in the future, he said. The sad but very evident case in Chernobyl is that these children are completely unloved and forgotten. The sad but very evident case in Chernobyl is that these children are completely unloved and forgotten. The 2013 Laois Rose Sarah Conlon has just returned from a trip to Belarus with Chernobyl Children International, where she visited Vesnova Childrens Mental Asylum. After much fundraising, Sarah embarked on this journey on February 23 with 15 other roses from around the world, including the 2013 Rose of Tralee Haley OSullivan. The roses spent most of their time in the high dependency units of the asylum, with children who suffered from severe physical and mental disabilities. We wanted to show the children some of the love that each of us take for granted daily. We fed, bathed, dressed, changed, walked and spent precious time with them. This was the end of the road for some of these children. Any that live beyond 18 will probably be sent to an adult mental asylum. which are often mixed gender and full of convicted criminals. I cannot bare to think of it, she told the Leinster Express. These children, who in most cases have been abandoned by their families, receive very little human contact, and the trips by Chernobyl Children International are usually the only affection they receive throughout the year. Sarah said that life in Belarus cannot be compared to life in Ireland. At times I felt like it was not a reality. Things like basic human rights, these children do not have, she said. Sarahs most memorable experience was during a visit to a Home of Hope, where a local couple fostered children from the asylum. When the translator explained the story of one little girl, no more than 8 years old, she burst into tears. She lived a horrific life full of abuse from her parents, and when she first moved in she was terrified of any human touch or affection. I gave her my sash to try on, and a hat with bunny ears, which she loved! When we were leaving she tried to give me back the hat. I explained that the hat was for her to keep. She threw her arms around me in the most powerful embrace I have ever felt. At that moment I realised how cruel the world can be, she said. Sarah and the rest of the roses were devastated when it was time to part ways with the children. We were heartbroken on the morning of our departure. My experience as Laois Rose has been phenomenal. The memories I have made, the people I have met and the events I have taken part in I will carry dearly forever. Dessie Dolan Jr, one of the greatest players of his era and now a pundit with RTE, has joined the billing at the Leitrim Supporters Club event in Croke Park this Thursday, January 21. Despite being unfamiliar with the substitutes role, the Westmeath All-Star, and son of former Leitrim manager Dessie Snr, is stepping in to replace John OMahony who is unfortunately no longer in a position to attend due to an unavoidable clash of events. We are thrilled that Dessie is making himself available, explained Ferghal McGill, secretary to the Dublin branch. He was delighted to be asked and has many fond associations with Leitrim, none more so than the involvement of his father as senior county manager. His contribution on the night will be fascinating for all to hear. The large expected crowd will also hear from Leitrim fiddling legend Ben Lennon. The Kiltyclogher native will chat about his life and before treating those in attendance to some traditional tunes. Doors to the Celtic Suite of Croke Park at 7.30, with parking available in the Cusack Stand car park A free bus will travel from Leitrim to the launch, with the following departure times: Drumshanbo Pool: 4.30; Pairc Sean Mac Diarmada: 4.45; Bornacoola GAA Club: 5pm. The announcement of capital funding for new community nursing units is expected to be released before the general election. The Leitrim Observer has been informed that the Department of Health is waiting on a list of priority locations from HIQA before making its final decision. Locally, the wait for funding information which had been expected last year along with the delay in transferring patients to Ballinamore Community Hospital is adding frustration to service users who are disillusioned by the lack of progress on restoration of nurse led care at St Patrick's Hospital. Last week the Leitrim Observer reported a delay in the transfer of 20 patients from St Patrick's Community Hospital to the new Nursing Unit in Ballinamore. The move is essential to secure re-registration of the Carrick public nursing home. The move which was expected to take place before Christmas has been delayed to allow recruitment of staff for Ballinamore's care facility. General election candidate, Cllr Martin Kenny has stated that Sinn Fein is committed to proper provision of community and day care services for elderly people throughout the country and that includes the restoration of full nurse led day care services to St Patrick's Hospital. He said Sinn Fein's 'Better for Health' policy would deliver investment and additional personnel to ensure this. Green Party candidate Leslie O'Hora has a signed a statement of support for St Patrick's Hospital from party leader Eamonn Ryan. Many independent candidates have pledged their support but without costed financial plans. An important announcement on funding in the next month could elect or destroy election candidates in the constituency, but as the wait continues local families carry the hardship of service cuts in their daily lives. Five Leitrim craft and design businesses will exhibit at Showcase in the RDS from January 24 -27. Leitrim Design and Craft Businesses will target 5,000 international buyers visiting the Enterprise Zone at Showcase in Dublin later this month. The small craft and design businesses, representing 22 counties around Ireland, have all been supported by their Local Enterprise Office, making it possible for them to sell to international retail buyers from more than twenty countries such as the US, France, Japan, China and Italy. Leitrim will be represented by five craft and design businesses within the Enterprise Zone, which include: Jean Whitfield, Jean Whitfield Jewellery, Dromahair, Jo Gray, Jo Gray Collections, Drumshanbo, Alan McCluney, Leitrim Pottery, Rossinver and Roy Humphreys, Roy Humphreys Woodturning, Mohill and the Leitrim Design House. Showcase at the RDS runs from January 24th to 27th and is the first major trade event of the year, organised by the Design & Crafts Council of Ireland . A wide range of creative sectors will be represented within the Enterprise Zone this month, such as ceramics, knitwear, jewellery, interiors, skincare and giftware. Joe Lowe, Leitrim Enterprise Office said, Thanks to practical business supports through the Local Enterprise Office in the Local Authority, our local craft and design businesses are well-placed to secure substantial international orders during the four days of Showcase, helping them grow and expand into new markets. Frank Curran, CEO Leitrim County Council said, Leitrim will continue to be at the forefront when it comes to craft and design in Ireland. More info on: showcaseireland.com Today in Parliament the Minister for Immigration was forced to explain why G4S were housing asylum seekers behind red doors, leaving them open to targeted attacks. The Minister, who said he was deeply concerned, in response sprang into action announcing an audit of asylum seeker accommodation in the North East. Good to see the Minister reacting so quickly to something that was only in the papers that morning you might think. Not so. Suzanne Fletcher, former Liberal Democrat Councillor and now Chair for Liberal Democrats for Seekers of Sanctuary, has been campaigning on this issue doggedly for years. In fact, it is predominantly down to her campaign work that this became a news story today. Four years ago, when she was working with asylum seekers in the area she became aware of the issue and rather than say it is a problem for someone else to deal with, she took up the mantel herself. Suzanne complained to G4S submitted evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee and got Ian Swales to take up the issue in the Public Accounts Committee. Funnily enough G4S said theyd never received any complaints. I took this up with the Minister directly today, continuing Suzannes tireless work, he assured me that he had taken this up with G4S and that his investigation will look into why the issue wasnt addressed sooner. I will make sure that we get answers to this and keep an eagle eye out for further developments, as I am sure Suzanne will, but I want to take this opportunity to congratulate her and all the Liberal Democrat campaigners who work day in and day out with dogged determination to fight for change and improvement to our local communities up and down the country, often with little reward. On this occasion all that work has paid off and as a result the most vulnerable in our society will hopefully be able to get on with their lives in a little more peace. There will be many other issues and this should serve as a reminder that one person can make a difference and by working together we can ensure that issues can breakthrough into the heart of power. Well done Suzanne and keep going. * Alistair Carmichael is the MP for Orkney and Shetland and Liberal Democrat Chief Whip. With the exception of Cuba and North Korea Coca-Cola is sold in every country on earth. Altogether, 1.7 billion servings of their products (the group has a portfolio of around 500) are sold every day, and that number is increasing year on year. While Africa produces around 10% of the companys total revenue and volume the group expects this to double in less than six years, meaning that by 2020 the continent will boast more Coca-Cola consumers than the US and Europe combined. While the comparison of a political party and the sales strategy of a multi-national corporation on another continent may seem poles apart, Coca-Colas success story provides some valuable lessons for an organisation needing to re-launch its brand to overcome a number of barriers to reconnect with a disillusioned electorate. Real-time data Coca-Cola is obsessional in collecting what it calls real-time data that is, collating localised sales reports regarding promotions, distribution, product placement etc. and reacts to it (relatively) instantly by adapting the product (i.e. how the drinks are sold) in order to help maximise sales. While the Lib Dems need to have a shared list of policies, these policies need to be prioritised, packaged and presented to the electorate at local level so then local parties can adapt to changes in local attitudes and local events. While a policy announcing increased spending on national flood defences would be welcomed across the country, the policy would have a higher precedence in areas recently effected by flooding (such as Cumbria) than in those who werent. Micro-Distribution Centres Due to the poor transport and freight infrastructure of many remote areas in Africa, top-down distribution models (i.e. bringing the products from the warehouse to the stores in a huge lorry) do not work in the same way they do in North America and Europe. To overcome the limitations in infrastructure many locals buy Coca-Cola products in bulk and then sell them on (usually transporting them by bike and handcart) in hard-to-reach areas. To help facilitate this Coca-Cola have set up over 3000 Micro-Distribution Centres (MDCs) across the continent to help distribute their products even further. On this note local Liberal Democrats should try and have representatives as close to the electorate as possible, preferably with street level representatives, in order to act as their own kind of MDC so then they can collate and disseminate information quickly and to improve real-time data. This, backed up with street-level Focus leaflets, can allow these representatives to become go-to people for information and local issues; allowing them to feed into real-time data ever more effectively. Adaptive local marketing As local distributers in the more remote areas of Africa have little money for marketing the products they sell from their bikes and handcarts, they are completely (if inadvertently) reliant on the companys aspirational global marketing of the Coca-Cola brand. While the current global slogan for Coca-Cola is open happiness, that message is localised dependant on the needs and attitudes of the area. In Latin America, happiness is represented as part of family life, while in South Africa happiness is celebrated as a form of sereet-I, or community respect. To effectively promote Liberal Democrat policies nationally, overarching policy statements and goals must be loose enough to allow for being repackaged and reshaped according to the local needs as mentioned above and as shown in the real-time data. Primarily, the reason Coca-Cola is a successful global brand is because there is a huge demand for their products. However, the reason that demand exists is because Coca-Cola are adaptive to local markets. The company uses instant feedback to help shape their approaches and changes its distribution practices to meet the needs of their customers. Their voice is global, but their message is local, and allows consumers to buy a lifestyle rather than just a product. The Liberal Democrats also have an inspirational message based on liberty, equality and community but how this message is reflected across the country has to differ because different areas of our country differ, as each area having its own needs, wants and priorities. Like Coca-Cola our thinking must be global, but our vision must be local. * Ian Thomas is the pseudonym for a party member. His identity is known to the Lib Dem Voice editorial team. The first leaders debate of the Scottish election campaign took place in Dundee this week. Liberal Democrat Willie Rennie faced SNP First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, Labours Kezia Dugdale, Conservative Alex Johnstone (standing in for leader Ruth Davidson) and Patrick Harvie. He strongly attacked the SNPs record, saying, according to the Evening Telegraph: Nicola presents herself as an anti-austerity party but look at her record in comparison with George Osborne. She wants to match him on the income tax, she wants to undercut him on air passenger duty and she is undercutting him on the council tax. This is not an anti-austerity party, they talk left but act right. They need to match up their record with their rhetoric. This is consistent with what hes been saying for some time. In December, the SNP Government were forced into yet another humiliating freedom of information climbdown as they had to release a memo from Nicola Sturgeons poverty advisor which highlighted that the SNPs universal benefits disproportionately helped the better off. At that time, Willie said: It is no wonder they tried to prevent the release of this report. The verdict from the experts is in. The SNP talk about helping the poorest in society but their policies are targeted at the middle classes. The First Minister has the powers she needs to reduce the burden on people struggling to get by but her rhetoric has not been matched by her actions. That same Government poverty advisor has suggested in a report out today that public services affecting the vulnerable should not be cut and that an end to the Council Tax Freeze should be considered. Willie commented: This report calls for bold government action on a range of policies, including council tax, but the First Minister has already showed that her government cannot follow through. The independent advisor says quite clearly that access to public services should not be closed off to anyone but particularly to people on low incomes. Those public services, like nurseries and schools, are provided by local authorities and are going to be the first to suffer under the SNPs cuts. The 1m announced by the First Minister is barely a drop in the ocean for the Scottish Government. There are immediate steps the First Minister should take to reduce poverty and inequality in Scotland, including lifting the threat of financial penalties facing local authorities if they raise council tax even by 1. But instead she is sweeping poverty under the carpet. The First Ministers own advisor says its time to consider a thaw in the council tax freeze and warns against cuts to public services. But Nicola Sturgeon has already shown that she is not listening. Willies comments arent particularly new. Back in 2009, Tavish Scott highlighted how SNP policies like the Council Tax freeze helped the rich more than the poor. From the Herald at the time: Mr Scott said SNP policies of freezing council tax, providing free prescriptions, free schools meals and the abolition of tolls on the Forth Road Bridge and the Tay Bridge would cost 950 million. It would mean a two-child family on an income of 15,000 a year, which he said was the income of at least 40% of Scottish households, would only be 6 better off over a year. The same family on an income of 100,000 would be 802 better off over a year, Mr Scott claimed. He told the partys annual conference in Bournemouth: Over four years the SNP will have spent 950 million on a set of distorted priorities and hand-outs that give more to the rich than to the poor. This is what you find. If you have two children and earn 100,000 then you will have gained 802 per year from the SNP. Willie also suggested that the massive Amazon warehouse in Dunfermline hadnt delivered for the area. From the Courier:< Willie Rennie, who represents the region at Holyrood, made the shock claim during the first leaders debate ahead of Mays election. The company, which pledged to take on 750 permanent workers and employ 1,500 temporary workers at peak times such as Christmas when it opened in the kingdom, has been implicated in a series of controversies involving workers. Mr Rennie told students at Dundee Universitys Dalhousie Building: The quality of the experience (for staff) is terrible and they (ministers) need to bring these kind of things to an end. I think Fife would be far better off if we had invested in home-grown industries rather than chasing tax- dodging companies. Its good to see someone actually bothering about not just pay, but peoples actual experience at work. Amazons employment practices have been questioned before, with staff citing some pretty draconian rules. All in all a good start from Willie. If hes criticising the SNPs tax plans so much we can expect some radical ideas from him when he sets out the Lib Dem stall next month. * Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings SENTENCING has been adjourned in the case of a former addict who has admitted breaking into two houses on the northside of Limerick city. David Ryan, aged 28, of Knockalisheen, Meelick Road, has also admitted trying to obtain Xanax tablets by using a prescription pad which had been stolen from a doctors surgery. During a sentencing hearing, Garda Aidan ORiordan said he was alerted to the theft of the prescription pad at around 7am on October 9, 2014. He said the defendant presented at Kings Island Medical Centre a number of hours later but did not obtain any tablets as staff had concerns. While the prescription was torn up and thrown away, gardai were able to reconstruct it and Garda ORiordan said it was from the pad which had been reported stolen earlier in the day. Judge Tom ODonnell was told Ryan was apprehended at around 2pm on the same day after he was caught red handed after gardai were alerted to a burglary at Shelbourne Park. The second burglary offence happened on June 25, last while the defendant was on bail in relation to the earlier incidents. Garda Ciaran McCarthy said that the owner of a house in St Marys Park disturbed Mr Ryan when she returned home and that he was arrested a short time later. Lorcan Connolly BL, defending, said his client is not going to be a successful career criminal. He said Ryan was under the influence of an intoxicant when he committed both burglaries and was so out of it at the time that he could not be interviewed by gardai. He said his clients sole motivation at the time was to feed a chronic addiction, which he has managed to address while in prison. He said the father-of-one is a troubled young man, who had a work history before going on a significant downward spiral when he began abusing heroin. Judge ODonnell was told he has engaged with the prison authorities and has grasped the educational opportunities given to him since he entered custody. He is now drug free which is very positive, said Mr Connolly. The case was adjourned to March 16, next for sentence. THE company responsible for marketing Limerick is getting a major revamp and councillors have urged that changes should be made quickly amid fears that if action isnt taken soon, 2016 will be a write-off . Failte Ireland recently announced that it will provide more than 1.8 million to fund 23 key events and festivals throughout the country this year as part of the Governments tourism drive. However, no event in Limerick is to receive any funding under this tranche which has angered councillors. They say that other events have been downgraded by Failte Ireland in the past from international to regional. A further round of funding for successful regional applicants will be announced in February. Labour councillor Joe Leddin raised the issue at a meeting in City Hall this Monday, where he sought to establish a committee in partnership with Limerick Chamber and tourism providers to oversee the roll-out of a professional series of events. He outlined that he learned from hotel bosses in the city that guests had booked on New Years Eve, with the expectation that a major fireworks display would be held. But no major events for New Years Eve were arranged. Cllr Leddin said there is a huge disparity in the criteria for applying for various levels of funding with Failte Ireland, which he finds hugely questionable. Now were in the middle of the 2020 bid [for European Capital of Culture] and there is no one in charge of marketing. Somebody has to be the instigator and take the lead here. I dont expect well have Bruce Springsteen next New Years Eve but lets get the basics right, and have something lined up for Bank Holiday weekends, like the Great Limerick Run during the May weekend, he urged. Mary Hayes, of the councils economic development and planning office, said there was some restructuring going on in this area. Eoghan Prendergast, the former head of the Limerick Marketing Company, which was set up by the council in 2014, has moved into the housing department, so the role of chief executive of that company also known as Limerick City and County Marketing Ltd is now vacant. The council recently advertised for a head of communications/marketing, on a 65,000 annual salary. Kieran Lehane, the councils head of the metropolitan area, said it invariably fell back to local authorities over the years to fund and manage events, but that is not really our business. Fianna Fails Joe Crowley said a steering group should be established to drive festivals in Limerick, in terms of recognition and funding. Our marketing company by all standards seems to be defunct, he said. Fine Gael councillor Daniel Butler said he is worried that Limerick will lose out on more events and that 2016 will be a write-off. He said he is aware of a group of tattoo artists in the city who are trying to organise an international tattoo festival, and urged that they be given some form of assistance. The difficulty, he said, is knowing where to turn to for funding and support. There is a lot of hidden talents in the city that arent encouraged or recognised, he added. Fianna Fail councillor James Collins said: We are now nearly in February and were still getting answers about organisational restructures. They are not answers but excuses. There is a void there that needs to be filled, and we need to be pro-active. Fine Gael councillor Michael Hourigan added at the end of that discussion, Id like to hear publicly what happened with the Limerick Marketing Company. He was asked to put the question in writing for the next meeting. MEMBERS of the Irish Medical Organisation are due to meet with management at the University Hospital Limerick today, to discuss industrial action that is scheduled to take place next week. On Friday evening, interns or non-consultant hospital doctors voted unanimously in favour of strike action, following months of non-payment for overtime work. A spokesperson for the IMO told the Limerick Leader that, in the absence of a resolution at the meeting, strike action will take place on Monday. Speaking after the official result, IMO vice president, Dr John Duddy said: It is difficult to imagine any other employer refusing to pay for hours worked. Doctors take their responsibilities to patients seriously and this vote for industrial action is indicative of the level of frustration felt by doctors and the lack of respect hospital management and the HSE have for their employees. A University of Limerick Hospitals Group spokesperson said that they were disappointed that the union members voted in favour of strike action, and that they hope to find a resolution at a meeting with the IMO, this Wednesday. Earlier last week, a spokesperson for the UL Hospitals Group said the issue was in relation to NCHDs who are not rostered for overtime work, and that all rostered overtime workers are being paid. The spokesperson added that, with the exception of a small number of individuals, unrostered overtime NCHDs were to be paid by the end of last week. Once the remainder of claim forms have been correctly completed, these will also be processed and all staff paid by the end of the month. UL Hospitals Group greatly values the hard work done by all of our highly skilled NCHDs and looks forward to resolving this matter, the spokesperson concluded. NA Piarsaigh report a clean bill of health as they begin the final countdown to their February 6 All Ireland club SHC semi final. The Limerick and Munster club hurling champions have played challenge games against UL and Davy Fitzgeralds Clare hurlers over the past two weeks. The Caherdavin club are preparing for next months Thurles clash with Wexfords Oulart The Ballagh. Na Piarsaigh are bidding to follow in the footsteps of Kilmallock, who reached the 2015 March 17 All Ireland club final. The south Limerick side were beaten in that Croke Park final by Kilkennys Ballyhale Shamrocks on St Patricks Day as they Limerick quest continued for a first ever senior club crown. Not only are Na Piarsaigh favoured to advance past the Wexford and Leinster champions but they are the outright favourites to lift the Tommy Moore Cup with a final win over Galways Sarsfields or Antrims Cushendall. Na Piarsaigh manager Shane ONeill is hopeful of a full panel for the first time in the 2015-16 season. David Breen didnt start the Munster final due to injury but did make a substitute appearance and is back fit. It promises to be a busy couple of weeks for many of the Na Piarsaigh team with their quest for five-in-a-row of County Premier U-21 titles getting underway on February 9. Corner forward Peter Casey will be part of that U-21 set-up and will be in action one week before the All Ireland semi final when Ardscoil Ris play St Colmans Fermoy in the Harty Cup semi final on January 30. Jan 14, 2016, 4 PM Two of the seven Bhutan Phonograph Records stamps issued April 15, 1973, are affixed to this first-day cover that a collector ordered from the Bhutan Stamp Agency in Nassau, Bahamas, shortly after the stamps were issued. Front, left, and back of the April 4, 1973, new-issue brochure from the government of Bhutan announcing the playable Phonograph Records stamps: The First Postage stamps issued in the world that actually Talk. This envelope from the Bhutan Stamp Agency in Nassau, Bahamas, contained the new-issue brochure for the Phonograph Records stamps that was mailed to Krommer. Collector Norbert Krommer of Ontario, Canada, ordered both Phonograph Records stamps and FDCs from the Bhutan Stamp Agency, as can be seen on this invoice dated April 19, 1973, four days after the stamps were issued. Norbert Krommer's Phonograph Records stamps and FDCs arrived in this large registered envelope. Note that the $1.32 franking matches the required postage and registration fee listed on the invoice pictured in the third illustration. By Charles Snee My story (Linns, Nov. 30, 2015) about a registered cover from Qatar bearing a set of Sheik Ahmad gold-foil stamps that sold for more than $1,100 on eBay precipitated some fascinating feedback from readers. One of the more engrossing of these replies came from Canada dealer and specialist John Jamieson of Saskatoon Stamp Centre in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. I found your article on the Qatar gold foil circular stamps sold on e-bay rather interesting and thought I might have a bit of a follow-up for you, Jamieson told me via email Dec. 15. Jamieson then proceeded to relate a story about a trio of first-day covers for the quirky, plastic 1973 Phonograph Records stamps from Bhutan (Scott 152-152F) that can be played on a stereo turntable. Connect with Linn's Stamp News: Like us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter Keep up with us on Instagram Pictured nearby is one of the covers, franked with a 10-chetrum yellow on red and a 25ch gold on green Phonograph Record stamp. A handstamped cachet at left features a person in native attire dancing. A mountain scene, appropriate to Bhutans remote location in the Himalayas between Tibet and China, is in the background. BHUTAN and FIRST DAY COVER are printed above the cachet Two April 15, 1973, oval postmarks struck in purple tie the two stamps to the cover. Each of the other two FDCs is similar to this one, except for the frankings: a 3-ngultrum silver on purple and 9nu black on yellow on one, and a 1.25nu silver on blue, 7nu silver on black, and 8nu red on white on the other. A larger envelope, without the illustrated cachet, was used to accommodate the larger diameter of the 3nu and 9nu Phonograph Record airmail stamps. Because the third FDC bears the 1.25nu, 7nu, and 8nu stamps, only the mountain scene was used for the cachet. Way back in 1973, when we still had a retail store, we used to bring in new issues for clients, Jamieson explained to me. When the Bhutan Phonograph Records came out, I thought they were too weird and decided to bring in a couple of sets to see how they sold. I even recall playing them on my record player at the time. They did sell, and I pretty much forgot about them for the next 40 years. Fast forward to April 2014. Jamieson was attending a stamp show where he noticed some Phonograph Records stamps and FDCs in the stock of fellow Canadian dealer Bill Longley. The items were on consignment from a client [of Longleys] and nostalgia got the best of me, Jamieson recalled. I bought the two mint sets he had and the trio of FDCs, he said. At this point, one of the ironclad rules of our great hobby came into play: The stories behind the stamps can be as fascinating as the stamps themselves. Not only did Jamieson acquire a great set of covers, but also included with them were the following items: the original brochure from the Government of Bhutan, trumpeting its Talking Stamp Issue; the Bhutan Stamp Agency envelope used to mail the brochure to the original buyer of the stamps and FDCs; the buyers original Bhutan Stamp Agency invoice, dated four days after the stamps were officially issued; and the large Bhutan Stamp Agency registered envelope used to mail the stamps and covers to the buyer. Illustrated nearby are both sides of the brochure, which carries an April 4, 1973, dateline 11 days before the April 15 official first day. On the left is the front of the brochure, opened out; the back of the brochure, also opened out, is seen at right. In mildly broken English, the brochure describes the stamps, indicates that they are playable on any Victrola or gramaphone, and provides instructions for ordering stamps and first-day covers. Four of the seven issued stamps are shown actual size on the brochure: 25ch and 3nu on the front, and 7nu and 10ch on the back. At the time the Phonograph Records stamps were issued, the authorized agent for Bhutans stamps was based in Nassau, Bahamas. As can be seen on the April 19, 1973, invoice pictured nearby, one Norbert Krommer of Lindsay, Ontario, Canada, purchased five sets each of the Phonograph Records postage (Scott 152-152B, 152D, 152E) and airmail (152C and 152F) stamps, one set of FDCs franked with the postage stamps (three stamps on one cover, two on the other), and two sets of FDCs franked with the airmail stamps (two stamps per cover). Total cost at the time, including the agencys $1 handling fee and postage and registration of $1.32, came to $28.75. Shown at top in the final illustration is the envelope containing the brochure that was sent to Krommer from the Bhutan Stamp Agency. At bottom is the large registered envelope used to mail Krommers order to him. Four Bahamas Queen Elizabeth II stamps from the 1971 regular issue $1 single (Scott 328), 15 pair (324), and 2 single (314) exactly satisfied the required $1.32 for postage and registration. Jamieson priced the FDC set and accompanying items at almost four times the Scott catalog value for the complete set of seven stamps. Even so, he sold the intact lot within a few months. Had the brochure, invoice and associated postal history not been part of the lot, the FDCs likely would have sold for less than Jamieson initially asked. Why? Because collectors treasure the stories behind the stamps and covers. And the better the story, the more a collector is likely to pay. This explains why the United States 1918 24 Jenny Invert airmail error attracts such widespread attention and spirited bidding every time one comes across the auction block. Not only is it an eye-catching error, but the story of its discovery is still fresh and exciting 97 years later. Jamieson told me that he counts his encounter with these exotic Bhutan FDCs as an enjoyable one. From time to time such weird and wonderful stuff really does sell, he said. Are you curious to learn more about the origins of Bhutans ground-breaking stamps, including those printed on steel, silk cloth, heat-molded plastic, and compact discs? My From The Scott Editors column in the June 2009 Scott Stamp Monthly, titled From 3-D to CD: innovative firsts found among Bhutanese stamps, is a good place to start. Leila, my friend.This morning my mother, who had never met Leila, told me that she felt a connection to her, from what she knew of her, from what she saw in her images.I am sure there are a lot of people who feel the same connection.Everyone who is alive, and loves life, is connected to Leila.Not only to Leila, since most humans don't know her, but to her spirit.Leila's spirit is one of love, warmth, creation and generosity.Leila's spirit is curious, open, outgoing and intelligent.Those who killed her are dead, they have always been dead.They are just waiting for death to catch up with them.Leila? She is alive.Because her spirit is.had been on assignment in Burkina Faso for Amnesty International for less than a week, working on a series of photographs focused on womens rights, says the. [she] brought a lyrical quality to her work while seeking to avoid easy sentimentality.The NYT quotes Aida Alami, journalist and childhood friend: I saw her before she left for Burkina Faso, and she said, Dont worry, I have been to more dangerous places. She was so optimistic, she thought that nothing bad could ever happen to her.On her powerfulseries, she wrote on her website: In reaction to Europes policies to tighten its borders, a new terminology emerged in the popular language to express a symbolic resistance to all laws depriving the freedom to migrate. Hrag (to burn) and Harragas (the burners) have become common codes among a desperate youth willing to sacrifice everything to reach the shores of Europe. We and our partners use cookies to Store and/or access information on a device. We and our partners use data for Personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, audience insights and product development. An example of data being processed may be a unique identifier stored in a cookie. Some of our partners may process your data as a part of their legitimate business interest without asking for consent. To view the purposes they believe they have legitimate interest for, or to object to this data processing use the vendor list link below. The consent submitted will only be used for data processing originating from this website. If you would like to change your settings or withdraw consent at any time, the link to do so is in our privacy policy accessible from our home page. Conservative. Idaho. Software engineer. Historian. Trying to prevent Idiocracy from becoming a documentary. Email complaints/requests about copyright infringement to clayton @ claytoncramer.com. Reminder: the last copyright troll that bothered me went bankrupt. "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose." -- Rom. 8:28 The homing pigeon is a variety of domesticated rock pigeon (Columba livia domestica) that has been selectively bred to be able to find its way home over extremely long distances. China currently has an air pollution problem so severe that smog is occasionally dense enough to be visible from space. But the frequently choking haze is providing an unexpected benefit to racing pigeons in one of China's most polluted regions, helping the birds to navigate home faster, researchers have found. Using publicly available data gathered from environmental and pigeon racing agencies, scientists analyzed pigeon performance in 415 races that took place on the North China Plain, where concentrations of air pollution are higher than anywhere else in the country, the scientists reported. By comparing the pigeons' racing times to records of pollution levels on race days, the researchers hoped to learn whether air pollution might affect how well the pigeons performed during the races, the scientists said. Racing pigeons, also known as "homing pigeons" for their ability to find their way back to a home base, are specialized birds that are bred and trained to compete in tests of navigation and speed, averaging about 37 mph (60 km/h), the researchers said. [10 Amazing Things You Didn't Know About Animals] Homing pigeons are considered so swift and reliable in their navigation that during World War II, hundreds of thousands of British homing pigeons were used by the army, the Royal Air Force and the Civil Defense Services, according to the Royal Pigeon Racing Association (RPRA). The birds would carry messages in tiny backpacks or in containers strapped to their legs, winging their way "home," where the messages would be delivered to the recipients. Though these high-performing homing pigeons are the same species as the feral pigeons you might see pecking at trash in city parks and streets, they're "a world away" from their guttersnipe cousins, the RPRA said on its website. With proper care, racing pigeons can live for more than 20 years, while their urban relatives generally live only 3 to 4 years, the website said. A valiant effort The researchers evaluated racing data from 2013 and 2014, specifically from the fall months, the time of year when air quality in the North China Plain is typically at its worst. Since pigeons rely on scent and sight to orient themselves while flying, the scientists said in the study, it would be reasonable to expect that high levels of pollution would make pigeons fly slower and that low visibility would impede the birds' ability to plot an accurate course. The researchers also considered other variables that could affect how well the pigeons performed: race distance, wind direction and speed, and other weather conditions. But the results of the scientists analysis surprised them: When the air quality was worse, pigeons flew home "significantly faster," the scientists reported, though why exactly the birds would perform better under worse conditions was unclear. The scientists suggested that perhaps visual cues weren't as important to the birds' navigation as expected, so reduced visibility wouldn't affect their flight speed. In fact, previous studies showed that pigeons could navigate home even without familiar landmarks or when they flew while fitted with frosted lenses that clouded their vision. But that still wouldn't explain why pigeons would actually fly faster when pollution levels were high. The scientists pointed out that scent cues are important to all birds, and may be especially important for homing behavior in pigeons. The researchers said they suspected that haze pollution, rich in organic and inorganic compounds, might prove useful to the birds by providing stronger signals that the pigeons use to map a homeward course. Another possibility, the researchers proposed, was grounded in the pigeons' sense of self-preservation. Perhaps the birds recognized the poor air quality and were simply trying to get home faster so they could get out of the polluted air as quickly as possible, the researchers said. Thick haze would also hide potential predators from the birds' view, providing another motivation for the pigeons to hurry home. While this study indicates that some racing birds may temporarily benefit from poor air quality, there will be no winners if China's air pollution problem continues to escalate. In recent years, experts have expressed growing concern about record-breaking smog levels, telling Live Science that "everybody is at risk" at this level of pollution, and that exposure to highly polluted air over time could lead to serious health concerns for China's residents in the future. The findings were published online Jan. 5 in the journal Scientific Reports (opens in new tab). Follow Mindy Weisberger on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science. People who go into cardiac arrest (their hearts stop beating) on the middle or upper floors of high-rise buildings may be less likely to survive the ordeal than those on the lowest floors, found a new study from Canada. Over the five-year study period, 4.2 percent of patients in Toronto who went into cardiac arrest while located below the third floor survived, whereas 2.6 percent of those on floors 3 and above survived, according to the study. In fact, less than 1 percent of those above the 16th floor survived, and in the data set, there were no cardiac-arrest survivors from above the 25th floor. To improve survival of people experiencing cardiac arrest in high-rise buildings, bystanders should do everything possible to reduce delays for first responders, said Ian Drennan, an author of the new study, an advanced-care paramedic and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Toronto. "If they can notify somebody at the front desk, the security concierge or anyone there that 911 responders are coming, let's make sure that the building's open, that the elevators are waiting and that they have access to get on the elevators to get up to the floors," then that can increase survival, Drennan said. [10 Amazing Facts About Your Heart] Heightened risk? Once a patient's heart stops beating, his or her chance of survival decreases by 7 to 10 percent for every minute that passes before the use of defibrillation (electrically shocking the heart back into action), the authors wrote in their study. Previous research had found that longer times spent waiting for first responders to arrive on the scene were associated with lower survival rates after cardiac arrests, the authors wrote. Research had also found that in high-rise buildings, it could take several minutes for first responders to reach a patient after arriving at the building, adding an additional delay, the authors wrote. For example, a 2007 study in New York City measured the time it took first responders to reach patients after arriving on scene at different types of buildings and locations the "vertical response time," as the study termed it. "We found that when EMS [emergency medical services] was called for an medical emergency, there were substantial delays in reaching the patient, and particularly from the time the medics left the ambulance in search of the patient," said Dr. Robert A. Silverman, who was the first author of that 2007 study and is an associate professor of emergency medicine at Hofstra Northwell School of Medicine in Hempstead, New York. "The greatest delays were found in multistory, residential buildings," Silverman told Live Science. "Barriers to reaching the patient included the height and complexity of the layout of the building, locked lobby doors, and the lack of an escort that could have facilitated movement to the location of the patient," along with slow-moving elevators, Silverman said. But it was unknown before now how such delays affected patient survival, Drennan said. To find out, Drennan and his colleagues analyzed data from a medical database of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests that occurred in private residences in Toronto and the surrounding area between 2007 and 2012. The researchers also measured the "vertical response time" and found that emergency workers took 3 minutes, on average, to reach patients below the third floor, but an average of nearly 5 minutes to reach patients on the third floor or above. Recommendations People can help by getting trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and making sure that automated external defibrillators (AEDs) which are defibrillation devices designed for bystander use are available, Drennan said. 'Time is everything in a cardiac arrest. The sooner the patient receives care, including bystander CPR, the more likely [he or she is] to survive," Silverman added. The study appeared Monday (Jan. 18) in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. Follow Ashley P. Taylor @crenshawseeds. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science. Legendary explorer Ernest Shackleton and his men boarding the boat that would take them to South Georgia. It's been a century since Sir Ernest Shackleton led some of the first major expeditions to Antarctica, but today, medical sleuths suggest Shackleton might have had a hole in his heart, possibly explaining the health problems he had all his life. A famed explorer, Shackleton led the Nimrod Expedition of 1907 to 1909, members of which were the first people to climb Mount Erebus in Antarctica, the southernmost active volcano on Earth. But the adventurer is best known for leading the Endurance expedition 100 years ago, when his ship Endurance, the strongest vessel of its time, was crushed by sea ice off the coast of Antarctica. Although Shackleton and his crew faced near death, they all succeeded in returning home. The Endurance expedition was the third of four Antarctic expeditions that Shackleton undertook. It was also the only one during which he did not suffer a physical breakdown, according to a new paper by two doctors, retired anesthetist Ian Calder in London, and cardiologist Jan Till, of the Royal Brompton Hospital in London. [Antarctica: 100 Years of Exploration (Infographic)] Shackleton was capable of great acts of endurance for instance, he made the first crossing of the mountains and glaciers of South Georgia without any health issues. However, during other expeditions, Shackleton alarmed his companions with repeated attacks of breathlessness and weakness, Calder and Till wrote in their study. Now, Calder and Till suggest that Shackleton's breakdowns were because of a hole in his heart. They detailed their findings Jan. 13 in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. Calder began investigating Shackleton after his own experience crossing South Georgia, a remote island in the Southern Ocean. "I have always been interested in the 'heroic age' of Antarctica, the space exploration of its day," Calder told Live Science. "South Georgia is still a formidable challenge it is so isolated, and the weather so severe. It made me more interested in Shackleton's life and death." This lifeboat is a replica of the one that Shackleton used in a 1916 expedition. (Image credit: Shackleton Epic) In the new research, he and Till analyzed records held in the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge, England. Diary entries made by Dr. Eric Marshall, the medical officer on the Nimrod Expedition, revealed that Shackleton had a heart murmur on two occasions, the researchers found. For instance, in an entry made on Beardmore Glacier dated Jan. 21, 1909, Marshall wrote, "[Shackleton] very unwell, walked by the sledge all day Midday-Pulse on march thin & thready, irregular about 120." However, Shackleton recovered within a few days, and was one of the strongest members of the party by the end of the journey, marching for 30 miles to prevent the Nimrod from leaving without them. Based on Shackleton's history of attacks of breathlessness, weakness and color change, and Marshall's findings of a heart murmur and an irregular pulse, the researchers diagnosed Shackleton with a congenital atrial septal defect, or hole in his heart. Shackleton died at age 47 after arriving in South Georgia at the beginning of his fourth expedition, probably due to heart problems exacerbated by his smoking. The researchers suggested that Shackleton knew that he had something wrong with his heart his father was a doctor, and Shackleton often avoided being examined by doctors who might have tried to prevent him from going to Antarctica. "We feel sure that he knew there was an issue with his heart, but at that time there was no way of finding out what it actually was no EKGs, no ultrasound, no scans and so on and absolutely no treatment even if the problem had been identified," Calder said. "His collapses were infrequent, and the alternative was to revert to the mundane, by comparison, life of a seaman." Today, about 2,000 babies are born yearly in the United States with an atrial septal defect, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The hole in the heart's wall sometimes closes on its own. But doctors can also do surgery to repair the hole, or give medications to help treat the symptoms. "Some may feel that Sir Ernest was irresponsible in undertaking the leadership of Antarctic expeditions if he suspected a problem," Calder said in the study. "But to paraphrase Dr. Johnson, there is seldom a shortage of prudent people, whilst the great things are done by those who are prepared to take a risk. Few would deny that the quality of Shackleton's leadership during his third expedition 100 years ago was crucial to the survival of the party and remains an inspiration and example for generations to come." Follow Charles Q. Choi on Twitter @cqchoi. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science. Researchers in Kenya recently unearthed evidence of what may have been a violent skirmish or battle. Of 27 people unearthed, 10 showed signs of violent injury, such as clubbing wounds or wounds from an arrow. The site, which is about 10,000 years old, may harbor the oldest known evidence for warfare. Here, the skull of a man who was clubbed in several spots on his head before death. Skeletons unearthed in Kenya may be the oldest known evidence of human warfare, according to a new study. The skeletons of 27 people who died about 10,000 years ago bear marks of blunt force trauma and projectile wounds, the researchers said in the study. The victims included men, women and children. "That scale of death it can't be an individual murder or homicide amongst families," said study co-author Robert Foley, an anthropologist and archaeologist at the University of Cambridge in England. "It was a result of some intergroup conflict." [See Images of the Grisly War Victims] The findings could help answer questions about the roots of war and human aggression, Foley said. Warlike by nature or nurture? Are humans noble savages, or is the life of mankind nasty, brutish and short? For millennia, philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes have debated when and how war emerged in the human experience. Some anthropologists have argued that organized warfare didn't emerge until complex societies with political hierarchies rose to power. Others claimed war emerged after the agricultural revolution, when people had finally amassed enough resources, such as livestock, worth fighting over. By that reckoning, true warfare rather than squabbles between friends or family gone horribly wrong would have been completely foreign to ancient hunter-gatherer groups. But others note that humans' closest living relatives, chimpanzees, organize violent attacks on lone chimps that stray into their territory. And modern-day hunter-gatherer communities, such as the Yanomami Amerindians in the remote Amazon jungle, regularly engage in violent and warlike skirmishes against neighboring villages. Grisly find Still, all of the evidence for warlike behavior in ancient people was indirect. More specifically, it was based on analogies with nonhumans, or on comparisons of modern hunter-gatherers, whose societies are threatened by habitat loss and colonialism, with ancient ancestors who did not face the same pressures, Foley said. The new bones, which were uncovered at a site called Naturak, on the southwest edges of Lake Turkana in 2012, provide the first direct evidence of warfare in ancient hunter-gatherers. The discovery came as part of the larger In Africa project, led by Marta Mirazon Lahr, a researcher of human evolutionary biology at the University of Cambridge. The project aims to study the origin of Homo sapiens in East Africa. Over the millennia, sediments from the lake provided the perfect conditions to preserve the bones, while falling lake levels have revealed the fossils over time, Foley said. In this instance, the bones were once buried in a lagoon and were in the process of being revealed, with some partially visible at the surface. When the team dug deeper, they found a total of 27 skeletons, some nearly complete and some with just a few fragments, all dating to between 9,500 and 10,500 years ago, according to the paper, which was published today (Jan. 20) in the journal Nature (opens in new tab). "It's not a cemetery; people haven't been deliberately buried there," Foley told Live Science. "They've fallen and been left where they died." Many of the bodies harbored blunt force trauma head wounds, as well as what look like arrow wounds to the head and neck. The murder weapons included projectiles, most likely bows and arrows, as well as wooden clubs, the researchers said. Men, women and children were killed; one woman was found with broken knees, lying on her side with her wrists in front, as if they were bound. Intergroup conflict The number of casualties rules out the notion of an interfamily feud, Foley said. More people from the group may have been killed, and still others may have escaped, which suggests the group was larger than the average hunter-gatherer group. (Most hunter-gatherer groups tend to hover around 25 to 30 people per encampment, Foley said.) And given the simple tools used to deal death, the attacking group was probably larger still, he added. This idea suggests that the two warring groups were likely more settled than the average hunter-gatherer population, Foley said. That's not surprising, as hunter-gatherers who tend to stay in one place for longer periods often live near lakes, where food is plentiful and unlikely to be depleted by long stays, he added. "That fits into the idea of a slightly more densely packed population where intergroup conflict is likely to arise," Foley said. "It's quite difficult to have a war with a highly mobile group that's very dispersed." Although archaeologists have found ancient murder victims that are hundreds of thousands of years old, there was no way to tell what spurred the violence or whether it was part of a larger armed conflict, Foley said. The new findings suggest that war or warlike conflict is a truly ancient part of the human experience, he said. "Violence is a pretty ubiquitous part of the human behavioral repertoire," Foley said. "Having said that, so too is altruism, cooperation, caring." Follow Tia Ghose on Twitterand Google+. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science. People who take prescription opioids, which are used for treating pain, for longer than a month may have an increased risk of developing depression, according to a new study. Pain itself can also lead to depression, but in the study, the link between depression and opioid use held even when the researchers accounted for the potential contribution of pain to depression, according to the study. Therefore, if people who are taking opioids for pain notice they have been feeling depressed, both they and their doctors should be aware that the use of the drugs, and not just the pain, may be a potential source of the depressed mood, the researchers said. "We really did rigorous control for pain, and we feel strongly that these results are independent of the known contribution of pain to depression," said study author Jeffrey Scherrer, an associate professor of family and community medicine at Saint Louis University in Missouri. [7 Ways Depression Differs in Men and Women] In the study, the researchers looked at data from three large groups of people who started taking opioids around the time the study started. The first group had nearly 71,000 people; the second had nearly 14,000 people; and the third had nearly 23,000 people. The ages of the people in the study ranged from 18 to 80 years. The people did not have depression at the start of the study. The researchers followed up with the participants for seven to 10 years, depending on which group the people were in. The researchers found that 12 percent of the nearly 71,000 people in the first group, 9 percent of the nearly 14,000 people in the second group and 11 percent of the nearly 23,000 people in the third group had developed depression during this time. They also found that the longer the people took the opioids, the greater their risk of depression was. For example, in the group with almost 71,000 people, 11.6 percent of those who used opioids for one day to one month developed depression, compared with 13.6 percent of those who used opioids for one to three months and 14.4 percent of those who used the drugs for longer than three months. And in the group with nearly 14,000 people, 8.4 percent of those who used opioids for one day to one month developed depression, compared with 10.6 percent of those who used opioids for one to three months and 19 percent of those who used the drugs for longer than three months. The opioids included in the study were codeine, fentanyl, hydrocodone, hydromorphone, levorphanol, meperidine, oxycodone, oxymorphone, morphine and pentazocine. Many experts say that opioids are overprescribed in the U.S. There were 259 million prescriptions written for opioids in 2012, which is more than enough to give every American adult their own bottle of pills, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2014, prescription pain relievers were linked to nearly 19,000 overdose deaths. It is not clear why the long-term use of opioids is linked to a greater risk of depression, but it may have something to do with lowered levels of testosterone, Scherrer said. "We know that chronic opioid use leads to low testosterone in males and females, and that is known to be related to poor mood," he told Live Science. A behavioral pathway is also possible, as "some patients may start to lose control and develop early symptoms of [opioid] misuse, which is known to be related to depression," he noted. The study was published online Jan. 11 in the journal Annals of Family Medicine. Follow Agata Blaszczak-Boxe on Twitter. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on Live Science. To the editor: When arriving home after work, I noticed a flyer left on my door from City Council District 2 candidate Juan M. Medellin Jr. and content with his platform. Several days later, I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Medellin and his wonderful wife and children. Mr. Medellin is a humble and intelligent man who deeply understands the concerns and issues of our district. I came to know how he is very much involved in his community, especially with our youth and caring for the people. Being a paramedic, it is his natural instinct to help those in need. He understands the concern about the Concord Hills neighborhood, where only one entrance/exit exists, thus creating much traffic and inconvenience. As he has been a volunteer firefighter and paramedic, he understands the needs of our first responders. In our city, we need to ensure proper enforcement of ordinances and proper maintenance of our streets and parks. District 2 needs someone who understands this area, and he has been a resident of this district most of his life. Therefore, he can take a proactive approach to tackle the issues on hand. He has walked the streets of Santo Nino and Larga Vista all his life. Mr. Medellin is District 2, a hard-working blue collar individual who is humble yet determined to improve his community where he grew up. He is his own man who will look out for us and not any special interests or backdoor agendas. His campaign has not involved expensive venues, concerts, posters or billboards, or donations from special interests just the commitment and passion to serve. Seeing his children, I can relate to how he wants the future of our community to be stronger, free of political pressure/favoritism and better for them, for their kids and for all of us. I am asking all of the residents of District 2 to vote for Juan M. Medellin Jr. for the sake of our future and our precious community. Sincerely, Diego Hernandez Check out our latest E-Edition Accessible anytime and anywhere on your desktop, tablet and smart phone devices. The Lodi News e-Edition is enhanced with the latest digital tools, including RSS feeds, social networking and much more. Check out our latest E-edition! Local Cystic Fibrosis (CF) campaigner, Jillian McNulty is set to meet with the Minister for Health, Leo Varadkar next Monday. Ms McNulty has spoken of her dismay over the Health Service Executives (HSE) stonewalling on funding for Orkambi - the drug that is set to transform the lives of CF sufferers across the world. Chief executive Tony OBrien has said the HSE cannot afford to pay for the drug, which will reportedly cost 160,000 per patient per year. As previously reported in the Longford Leader, Ms McNulty began taking Orkambi as part of a clinical trial nearly two years ago. In that time, her life changed dramatically as her health improved ten fold. Im meeting with Minister Varadkar next Monday and I am going to tell him my story; he already knows it, but Orkambi needs to be funded now and he needs to know this, Ms McNulty told the Leader on Monday. In a letter posted to Mr OBrien and the National Centre for Pharmacoeconomics (NCPE) before Christmas, the Longford woman described how her life transformed after she began taking Orkambi two years ago as part of a trial of the drug. Within a few months my body started changing, during my runs I could breathe deeper, its not something I can explain correctly because I dont think Ive ever known what its like to breathe properly, Ms McNulty said in the letter which was also sent to over 30 senators and TDs. I hope that Minister Varadkar will listen to what I have to say; I wrote to the HSE about the matter and Tony OBrien indicated that people who need Orkambi will get it, but the really is that nobody knows what is happening and we are anxious to get this sorted out before the election, she added. Orkambi will reportedly cost 92 million each year - the equivalent of annual funding for Temple Street Childrens Hospital. I am freaking out a little, Ms McNulty admitted while chatting from her home on Monday. I dont want to lose this drug; it is a very worrying time. Meanwhile, a petition directed at the Minister for Health to approve the life-changing drug Orkambi for CF patients, has received more than 35,000 signatures since it was started on Facebook just four weeks ago. Drumlish mother-of-three Hazel Robinson - whose 13-year-old daughter Gypsy was diagnosed with CF at birth - started the petition after it emerged late last year that the drug might not be made available in Ireland. The petition will run for another few days and then I will print it off and give it to Jillian [McNulty] who plans to hand it to Minister Varadkar when she meets with him next Monday, added Ms Robinson. I wont feel safe, to be honest with you, until I see the tablet in my daughters hand. Ms Robinson then went on to describe the current development over the drug as urgent. With CF when the damage is done, thats it, she explained. Its annoying that we have to fight with our own government to get a life saving drug; we are fighting for life and that is what we are doing. I am a mother fighting the world. CF campaigners will join with the Right to Change march which takes place in Longford town on January 23 next. Proceedings kick off on the Battery Road at 1:45pm and Ms Robinson is calling on all those who want to change the health system in Ireland to join in the march on that date. Family & Parenting, School & Education, Local News, Press Releases By Long Island News & PR Published: January 20 2016 Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced that the State University of New York is now accepting applications for the Carey Gabay Scholarship Program. Albany, NY - January 19, 2016 - Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced that the State University of New York is now accepting applications for the Carey Gabay Scholarship Program. This scholarship was announced by Governor Cuomo last year in honor of Carey Gabay, an attorney and public servant, who was tragically killed as an innocent victim of gun violence in October at the age of 43. This program will provide full-ride scholarships to five incoming SUNY students who exemplify Careys commitment to social justice, leadership, and mentoring, as well as his personal story of succeeding academically despite having an economically disadvantaged background. Carey was the perfect example of how hard work and service to others can make a difference in life. He could have done anything and yet, and chose to take his success and use it to give back to his community, said Governor Cuomo. We remember Carey in the work that we do every day to improve the lives of New Yorkers, and we hope that these scholarships will help other young people change the world through public service. Carey proved that, when given the opportunity to succeed, anything is possible, so I encourage eligible students to apply for these scholarships and help us continue to build a better state for all. Carey grew up living in public housing and attending public school in the Bronx. After a successful high school career, he went on to graduate from Harvard University and Harvard Law School. He had a longstanding commitment to public service and giving back those around him, and while at Harvard University, he ran to become the president of his undergraduate student body. More recently, he worked tirelessly in public service, first as an Assistant Counsel to Governor Cuomo and later as First Deputy Counsel for the Empire State Development Corporation. The Carey Gabay Scholarship Program will annually award full-ride scholarships to five students to attend four-year SUNY colleges beginning in the 2016-17 school year. These scholarships will cover all costs of attendance, including tuition, room and board, college fees, books and supplies, and transportation and personal expenses. Applications are available here, and are due on March 15, 2016. Tech & Science, Local News, Business & Finance, Press Releases By Long Island News & PR Published: January 20 2016 U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer today announced a campaign to identify and locate dead zones, particularly in New York City and on Long Island. Schumer said there are many areas throughout New York City and ... New York, NY - January 19, 2016 - U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer today announced a campaign to identify and locate dead zones, particularly in New York City and on Long Island. Schumer said there are many areas throughout New York City and Long Island that experience poor quality when it comes to cell phone network speed, network reliability, data performance, call performance and text performance. Therefore, Schumer is asking New Yorkers to report to his office the specific locations of dead zones in their area and which wireless carrier they use. New Yorkers who wish to participate in this crowdsourcing effort can submit their local cell phone dead zones via the Senators website. Schumer said the information will be used to help wireless carriers better track New York City service interruptions for their coverage maps. Schumer will report the results to wireless carriers so that they can make sure the dead zones is fixed. Cell phones are essential for New Yorkers, but what good is a cell phone unless you have good coverage? said Senator Schumer. New Yorkers are using wireless carriers far more than landlines to keep in touch with loved ones and to place important calls and so, our wireless carriers need to make sure our cell phone coverage is uninterrupted. Im urging New Yorkers from all over to submit dead zone locations to my website so that wireless carriers can make sure they are fixed. Schumer argued that poor wireless service, and often times, inaccurate coverage maps that hide dead zones, hurt consumers and businesses in New York City in several ways. For instance, a lack of wireless coverage across New York City could be a threat to public safety. Wireless services also support global positioning system (GPS) products that are essential to residents and tourists alike. Schumer said the lack of wireless coverage could make tourists reluctant to travel to an area knowing they will not have the ability to use their GPS technology to explore the area or make calls in an emergency situation. For these reasons, Schumer said quality wireless service must be an essential part of modern U.S. infrastructure, just like water, housing and clean air, and consumers deserve access to information that allows them to make informed decisions about their wireless carriers. Schumer said that wireless carriers need to do everything possible to ensure that New Yorkers have access to cell phone service at all times. Thats why the Senator has launched this crowdsourcing campaign and will make a push to get maddening dead zones patched up. In the same way typical crowdsourcing seeks to raise money with the help of aggregate crowd support, Schumers plan will source data and then deliver it to respective carriers. Tech & Science, School & Education, Local News, Press Releases By WFSD News Published: January 20 2016 William Paca Middle School music teacher George Ober was invited to present his concept of Flipperentiation: The In-Class Blended Learning Approach to Instruction for the Association for Educational Communication and Technology (AECT) International Convention held ... Mastic Beach, NY - January 19, 2016 - William Paca Middle School music teacher George Ober was invited to present his concept of Flipperentiation: The In-Class Blended Learning Approach to Instruction for the Association for Educational Communication and Technology (AECT) International Convention held this past fall in Indianapolis, Indiana. His submission was chosen from more than 900 proposals from across the nation, predominantly from university-level educators. Flipperentiation is a multi-dimensional approach to infusing technology in the classroom that accelerates learning in the 21st century. Using existing school technology or student technologies (personal devices) for a flipped, blended classroom, students can utilize technology to develop their learning. In his presentation, Mr. Ober highlighted the point that currently there is a gap between case study research and the practical application of technology processes in the public school classroom. Mr. Ober believes that his concept of Flipperentiation offers solutions to bridging this gap by designing effective digital classroom environments that offer more possibilities in designing curricula activities and materials, enhancing student engagement, embedding formative assessment and improving student learning outcomes. William Paca Middle School music teacher George Ober As many new technologies continue to emerge and become available in the classroom, multiple opportunities for lesson delivery, assessment and specialized learning will be created, thus providing teachers the ability to customize curriculum, design assessment and find best approaches to improve how students learn, said Mr. Ober. Therefore, it will be important for the teacher to determine which modalities of technology work in their classroom in conjunction with the course curricula to develop the best environment for student growth and learning to take place. Attendees of his workshop/presentation discussed and designed a customizable, flipperentiated classroom using various technological tools to create visuals, embed assessment, and build collaboration into lesson development for immediate use in their classroom. Additionally, participants learned the importance of embedding visual tools in lessons for the development of skills, learning key concepts, modeling exemplary student work or demonstrating processes necessary for student learning. This allows for the transformation of the classroom to a student-centered environment with the teacher as facilitator of the process. Flipperentiation reconstructs traditional classroom activities into a more digitized setting; frees up classroom time for individualized student instruction; lets students learn at their own pace; and allows for individual and collaborative learning with ongoing formative assessment, said Mr. Ober. This enables the teacher to provide instant feedback to individual or groups of students based on their specific needs. Mr. Ober also presented at a featured pre-conference two-hour workshop and one-hour introduction to Flipperentiation at the New York State Association for Computers and Technology in Education; and he has been invited to present at the Pennsylvania Educational Technology Expo and Conference in February. Looking to stay up to date about all of the news stories and local headlines that are important to Long Islanders? We've rounded up the top coverage for all of the important topics from multiple sources around Long Island, so you can be sure you've got the most recent update on the top stories for Long Island. Have an idea for a news story? Email us at news@longisland.com Columnists Press Releases Our Grove friends Lili Dones and Santiago Villages have a friend who has a container going to Venezuela and he has agreed to give them some space for a good cause. "We are using it to send necessary items that are hard to find due to the tremendous scarcity of nearly everything [in Venezuela]," says Lili. If you no longer have use of medical / mobility equipment such a walker, or cane or light-weight wheelchair or walking aids in relatively good condition, they will come and pick up the items for shipment. "People are struggling for life's necessities in this country where people lived as we do now," says Santiago. "The first time I visited Caracas (back in the day) I was baffled by the incredible standard of living this country afforded it's people. Coming from Colombia next door, and having lived and been brought upon in the United States, all I could think of was, 'WOW how fabulous a people that lived high on the hog.' 'Extraordinary' would be the word that comes to mind. So guys one never knows. There but for the Grace of God, go I," he went on. "There is not a moment without some duty." -- Cicero. But what is duty? Is duty the voice of conscience? Is duty the express... Khalifa Umar Mansour, the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistans leader for Peshawar and Darra Adam Khel, from a previous propaganda tape. Image from Dawn. A suicide assault team from a faction of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan launched an attack on a university in the countrys northwest today, killing more than 20 students and faculty before security forces intervened to end the siege. The attack was claimed by a dangerous Taliban commander who plotted the assault on a military school in Peshawar as well as an airbase near the same city over the past two years. Four jihadists dressed in military uniforms and armed with AK-47 assault rifles and suicide vests attacked Bacha Khan University in the northwestern district of Charsadda earlier today, Dawn reported. The jihadists indiscriminately opened fire on students, teachers, and security guards alike. Pakistani soldiers and police deployed to the university and engaged the gunmen, killing all four before they could detonate their vests. The attack was claimed by Khalifa Umar Mansour, the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistans leader for Peshawar and Darra Adam Khel. According to Dawn, Mansour published a claim of responsibility on his Facebook page (the page is no longer available). Mansour is best known for the brutal December 2014 attack on a military high school in Peshawar that killed more than 120 people, mostly students. He also is responsible for the September 2015 suicide assault on the Pakistani Air Force camp in Badabair. Mansour, who is also known as Umar Narey, has been featured in Taliban propaganda in the past. Mohammad Khorasani, the official spokesman for the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistans emir, Mullah Fazlullah, condemned the attack, terming it against Shariah,' Dawn reported. Khorasani said the attack was against sharia, or Islamic law, presumably because civilians were directly targeted. Khorasani also was critical of Mansours December 2014 assault on the military school in Peshawar; he said that the students were not to be targeted. Khorasanis criticism of Mansour is understandable as the assault on the Peshawar military academy in December 2014 brought the wrath of the Pakistan military down on the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan. The military, which pushed off US and Western requests to target jihadists based in North Waziristan for more than a decade, launched an operation in that tribal agency that targeted the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan and some allied group. But the military, despite claims to the contrary, did not target so-called good Taliban factions such as the Haqqani Network and the Hafiz Gul Bahadar Group. These two Taliban factions are considered by powerful military and intelligence factions to be assets to the Pakistan government as they serve as a bulwark against Indian influence in Afghanistan. The Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan remains a potent threat to the government despite multiple military offensives against the group throughout the northwest since 2007. While the Pakistani military has targeted the group in different districts, the Pakistani Taliban moves to other areas and receives the support of the good Taliban factions to continue operations. Additionally, Pakistani Taliban fighters routinely slip across the border into lawless areas of eastern Afghanistan to escape limited military offensives. Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal. Are you a dedicated reader of FDD's Long War Journal? Has our research benefitted you or your team over the years? Support our independent reporting and analysis today by considering a one-time or monthly donation. Thanks for reading! You can make a tax-deductible donation here. COLUMBUS For Arnie Otten, a retired banker from York, the meeting held by the Nebraska Department of Roads gave him a chance to weigh in on a project that is meaningful for him. One of the projects under consideration for phase two of the Build Nebraska Act would turn U.S. Highway 81 into a four-lane highway from its intersection with Highway 64 south to York. Ive been working on 81 for 37 years, said Otten. Im pleased to see that (proposal). For phase two of the Build Nebraska Act, NDOR is considering a projects economic impacts on the community as well as engineering and accounting cost-benefit analyses to help prioritize projects. The department has scheduled meetings with stakeholders and other residents across the state for feedback on proposed projects and the new prioritization process. In Columbus, a stakeholder meeting was held Tuesday afternoon with city and county officials as well as area business representatives with an open house in the evening. Meetings were held last week in Alliance and Lexington and the fourth will take place Thursday in Ashland. NDOR deputy director of policy and administration, Miki Esposito, said while stakeholders believe economic development is important, there are regional differences. They have a lot of ideas of what that means in Norfolk and Columbus versus Omaha, depending on the industries serving those communities, said Esposito. Ten jobs may not mean a lot to some areas, but make a big difference to others. Esposito said leaders also dont necessarily see eye to eye on how much weight a projects economic impact should have compared to the engineering assessments, such as cost and increased transportation efficiency, though they agree projects that address safety concerns should be prioritized. District 3 engineer Kevin Domogalla said his biggest takeaway from the discussions was how important economic concerns and the chance to participate in the process are to stakeholders. Its a good opportunity to include city leaders and the public in the process, said Domogalla. We did consider economic impacts previously, but not to the extent that we will now. Brandie Neemann of NDORs planning and project development division said theyve gotten a lot of positive feedback from communities on these projects. Folks that were visiting like that were asking for input on whats meaningful to different communities, whats growth and prosperity, Neemann said. Two projects would directly affect the Columbus area turning Highway 81 into a four-lane road to the south and expanding U.S. Highway 30 to four lanes from near Columbus to Grand Island. Omaha Sen. Bob Krist has proposed eliminating the Build Nebraska Act, which generates about $70 million in roads funding each year by diverting a quarter-cent of the state sales tax. Esposito said NDOR will be watching developments at the Unicameral, but he didnt seem overly concerned. I think theres broad support for the Build Nebraska Act, she said. Phase one of the Build Nebraska Act includes four projects that are completed or under construction and eight under development. All projects in phase one will be completed or under construction by 2023, when phase two will begin. Esposito said the department plans on traveling across the state again in the spring to gather feedback on updated proposals. The department plans on announcing the projects for phase two this summer. The Department of Roads budgeted $600 million for phase-one projects and another $600 million for phase two. COLUMBUS An Omaha firm has been hired to design the proposed library/cultural arts center, but Columbus City Council members still dont agree on how the project should proceed. The city council voted 6-2 Monday night, with Jim Bulkley and Dennis Kresha in opposition, to award a design contract to Alley Poyner Macchietto Architecture for the building planned at 14th Street and 24th Avenue. If the project is completed, the architectural firm would receive $179,500 plus 8 percent of the guaranteed maximum price. The payment would total $1.46 million using the projects initial estimated price tag of $16 million. However, council members still havent determined exactly how much money theyre willing to commit to the building. The council must decide between now and the end of February whether to ask voters in May to extend the half-percent local sales tax to fund the citys portion of the costs and some elected officials think that timeline is too short. Council members agree the 1 percent local sales tax, set to expire in April 2017, must be extended. Revenue from that tax is used for equipment and vehicle purchases, capital projects, street and drainage improvements, debt reduction and the citys economic development program. Mayor Mike Moser even offered up a plan Monday night that would use some sales tax revenue to provide property tax relief. Property taxes seem to have the citizens ire more so than sales taxes, he said. Without the sales tax money, city leaders would likely be forced to make significant budget cuts or raise the property tax levy to make up for the lost revenue stream. The sticking point in recent council meetings has been the half-percent tax and whether the city is ready to ask voters to extend that measure. Its expected to sunset around September or October, when bonds issued for the Pawnee Plunge Water Park expansion are repaid, and some council members are ready to include an extension of the tax on the primary election ballot. Others, however, believe that would be jumping the gun. Councilman Ron Schilling said hes not comfortable asking voters to authorize a half-percent tax extension until firmer plans for the library and public safety projects are set. Were supposed to go out here and say, OK people, put your money out here and well see what we can do with it. And I dont think thats fair to our constituents, he said. They need to know exactly whats going to happen. Schilling said he supports the library project, but wants something done with the aging downtown fire station first. He called it a situation of wants vs. needs. And needs, as far as Im concerned right now, is a fire station, and we dont even have a start in that, Schilling said. A proposed public safety building would house both the fire and police stations, as well as animal control and 911 dispatchers, but city officials havent even settled on a location for that building and some, including Moser, dont like the preliminary price tag of $16.5 million. The mayor said hed like to look at remodeling the existing police station and building a more sensible fire station to replace the deteriorating downtown space. Bulkley also has called for a reduction in the price tag for both projects. Bulkley, Schilling, Kresha, Moser and Councilman Rich Jablonski all said a vote on the half-percent sales tax should be pushed back until more concrete costs and other details are available for the capital projects. Its too open-ended, Jablonski said. Like Ive always said, theres too many moving parts to this thing; there always has been. It just needs to be reined in. Those wanting to hold off on the sales tax vote believe the measure stands a better chance of being approved if citizens have more information on the projects. For the library project, that information should come from the design contract awarded Monday night. Alley Poyner Macchietto Architecture will receive $35,000 to organize public information meetings, complete surveys and develop a floor plan and renderings for the building prior to a public vote. The remainder of the contract amount would be paid if the project advances to the construction phase. A design firm has not been selected for the public safety project, but that could happen in the near future. Council members Terry Reardon and Beth Augustine-Schulte said theyre comfortable asking voters to extend both local sales taxes in the May election since Columbus residents also must sign off before bonds can be issued for the library project. Ultimately, the public will have a say in that, Reardon said. Theres one more hurdle to clear. The goal is to raise at least half of the total cost for the library building through private fundraising, grants and other contributions. Library Director Drew Brookhart reported Monday night that $2.3 million has been raised so far. Weve come a long way and this is the next step to take, he said, referring to the sales tax vote. City council members will continue to discuss the sales tax plan at their Feb. 1 meeting. LINCOLN Sponsors of legislation to access federal Medicaid expansion dollars to purchase private health care insurance for the working poor said Tuesday they have devised a plan that would have no impact on the state tax-supported general fund. The proposal would require small premium contributions from most enrollees and some co-pays while pointing recipients to employment, education and skills training programs. The state would turn to its health care cash fund as "a backup" for financing the plan, which would extend health care insurance coverage to 77,000 Nebraskans, 72 percent of whom are employed in low-wage jobs. The cash fund includes tobacco settlement funding that compensated states for tobacco-related health care costs. Although the bill makes use of an Arkansas model, Appropriations Chairman Heath Mello of Omaha described the legislation as "a third-way approach" that does not expand the current Medicaid program, but accesses an estimated $2 billion in federal funds available to the state during the next five years to expand health care coverage to uninsured Nebraskans. Senators immediately formed battle lines over the legislation, LB1032, introduced by Sen. John McCollister of Omaha along with 15 co-sponsors. As the bill was being placed before the Legislature, 15 other senators joined a Platte Institute for Economic Research news conference in the Capitol Rotunda to signal their opposition to the measure. "This is the first time that conservatives (in the Legislature) will all be on the same page," Sen. Bill Kintner of Papillion said. If none of those 31 senators who have expressed themselves thus far changes sides in coming weeks, the bill would need to gain the support of all but one of the remaining 18 senators to reach the 33 votes required to clear a filibuster mounted by opponents. The legislation provides "a pathway to job training and job placement," Sen. Kathy Campbell of Lincoln said. Recipients would have an opportunity to "transition out to their own health care, employment and education," she said. Thirty-one states have expanded their Medicaid programs to access the additional federal dollars now available under the Affordable Care Act to increase health care coverage in their states, McCollister noted. Republican governors in nine states have chosen to participate, he said, and four or five additional Republican governors are in the process of considering joining in. At stake is 100 percent federal funding of expanded health care coverage in 2016 followed by gradual reduction of the federal share to a 90 percent floor in 2020. The recipients are people who fell through the gap in Obamacare coverage opened by a U.S. Supreme Court decision that allowed states to opt out of Medicaid expansion. Gov. Pete Ricketts announced his firm opposition to Nebraska's participation during his State of the State address to the Legislature earlier this month. Campbell, McCollister and Mello said they will meet with the Republican governor soon to brief him on the details of their plan. "We will show this actually is a conservative approach," Mello said. "It's not partisan; it's not ideological." It is, in fact, "an innovative, free market approach," McCollister said. McCollister and Campbell are Republicans; Mello is a Democrat. The plan would create an estimated 10,000 new jobs, many of them in health care, McCollister said, and provide the state with "an economic tailwind." The legislation responds to the governor's stated concern that the federal government might abandon its funding commitment by automatically terminating the new program if that occurs, the three senators said. Introduction of the legislation triggered dueling news conferences in the crowded Capitol Rotunda. First came the Platte Institute, arguing that the model established in Arkansas and Iowa created "a new entitlement for able-bodied adults that is exceeding enrollment projections and trapping more citizens in poverty." "Creating a new Medicaid private insurance entitlement with higher reimbursement rates for able-bodied, childless adults means placing a higher priority on the expansion population than those on Medicaid right now: children, pregnant women and low income parents, the disabled and elderly Nebraskans with long-term care needs," Jessica Herrmann said. Herrmann is the Platte Institute's director of research. McCollister was executive director of the institute before he became a candidate for the Legislature. Ricketts was founder and president of the conservative think tank. Nebraska Appleseed said the proposal would "create a path to affordable health care coverage for 77,000 uninsured Nebraskans." The plan would "allow Nebraska to recoup approximately $2 billion in federal taxes to fund health coverage for hard-working Nebraskans and support economic development across the state," Appleseed stated. Dr. Joe Miller of Lexington, president of the Nebraska Academy of Family Physicians, said his organization composed of 875 members "enthusiastically supports the bill." Sarah Parker of Lincoln said she fell into the coverage gap when she quit her full-time job and opted to work half-time so she could care for her father, who had Parkinson's Disease, at home. "I don't need an entitlement program," she said, "but I do need a little help right now. Please, give us this chance." Patrick Kilbride Patrick Kilbride We live in a world of innovation haves and have nots. A relatively small group of nations produces the vast majority of paradigm-changing technological innovations and related products. Meanwhile, the rest of the world tends to characterise itself as net consumers of innovation. These characterisations foster policy mindsets that lock countries into their respective positions: a country that considers itself an innovative producer will tend to favour stronger IP rights in order to further stimulate innovation at home and safeguard its assets overseas; a net consumer of innovation may believe its national self interest lies in policies that devalue IP rights in order to cheapen access to innovative products. However, all nations ultimately share the objectives of (1) maximising innovative output, and (2) maximising access to that innovation. A common, global approach to IP policy could result in enhanced outcomes on both fronts. Research by the US Chamber of Commerces Global Intellectual Property Center (GIPC) suggests that high intellectual property standards create the conditions for innovation success on the macro-economic scale. Specifically, GIPC analysis shows a strongly positive correlation between stronger IP systems and universally desirable outcomes, such as innovative output, access to finance for start-ups, job creation in knowledge intensive industries and private sector spending on research and development, to name a few. The results suggest that as countries of all sizes and levels of development enhance their IP standards they increasingly reap rewards that previously belonged to only a favoured few highly developed nations. Looking beyond the empirical evidence, I believe that beyond simply putting IP laws and resources in place, the critical ingredient in an innovation ecosystem is confidence. The most successful innovative nations foster an environment where respect for IP rights is institutionalised. In that environment, while individual administrative and judicial decisions may - and frequently do - go against rights holders, there is strong confidence that collectively such rights are systemically protected, enabling would-be innovators to take risks and invest substantial capital in the research and development of innovations. Conversely, in many countries that are not today large-scale innovative economies, the IP regime, often weak to begin with, is usually further undermined by political rhetoric and policy measures that actively reduce the ability of innovators to rely on the system with any degree of confidence. This suggests that there are three prerequisites for a strong IP system that supports an innovative economy: first, and fundamentally, a strong policy commitment to intellectual property through laws and mechanisms that promote patents, copyrights, trade marks and trade secrets; second, enforcement mechanisms sufficient to provide an effective deterrent against infringement, counterfeiting and piracy; and, third, a vocal and consistent political commitment to IP-led innovation. With these three elements in place, innovators anywhere can risk and invest with confidence and any country can succeed in becoming an innovative economy. Patrick Kilbride will be speaking at Managing IPs International Patent Forum in London in March. For full details, see our event page. Marie Claire newsletter Celebrity news, beauty, fashion advice, and fascinating features, delivered straight to your inbox! Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Thank you for signing up to . You will receive a verification email shortly. There was a problem. Please refresh the page and try again. By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions (opens in new tab) and Privacy Policy (opens in new tab) and are aged 16 or over. Hurrah! Katie Holmes is set to star in next Sex and the City movie Katie Holmes is being lined up to star alongside Sarah Jessica Parker et al in the next eagerly awaited Sex and the City movie. She may have been taking on smaller roles since giving birth to Suri, two, but Katie is set to dive straight back into our good books by starring in the Sex and the City: The Movie sequel. The actress has reportedly been approached to take on the role of a feisty New York businesswoman who takes on Kim Cattrall's man-eating Samantha Jones. One source said: 'The character they want her to play is a really ballsy, high-powered company executive who tangles with Samantha.' Nevermind the war of work it's the battle of the boardroom ensembles we'll be watching like hawks! We. Can't. Wait! SEE MORE KATIE HOLMES PICS HERE SEE OUR TOP TEN CARRIE BRADSHAW FASHION MOMENTS HERE LINCOLN A ban on the sale and use of flying lanterns in Nebraska sailed to first-round approval Tuesday. The bill (LB136) to ban the lanterns was introduced in the Legislature last year by Sen. Jerry Johnson of Wahoo. They use a flame to produce heated air in a balloon-type covering, which allows them to float high in the air. There is no control over the lanterns once they're launched. The Judiciary Committee advanced the bill unanimously. Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers was absent for the vote, but said Tuesday he strongly supports the bill. There is no compelling state interest in allowing something that is a hazard and has no societal value whatsoever, he said. The invitation to do damage to private or public property is not something the Legislature should approve, he said. Sen. Curt Friesen of Henderson also supported the ban, considering the distances the lanterns can travel. Theres too much risk involved and when conditions are dry and these things land on somebodys roof, theyre just an instant, almost, fire hazard. They're going to start something on fire, Friesen said. Steve Dewald, manager of the Archer Daniels Midland plant in Columbus, testified last year that lanterns have drifted over ethanol plants and landed, still burning, near explosive materials, endangering employees. Last year at the bills hearing, fireworks dealers turned out to oppose the bill. Information from 10 fireworks dealers showed that over three years, approximately 400,000 flying lanterns had been sold in Nebraska by those dealers alone, bringing in $600,000 to $700,000 in tax revenue. At least 25 states ban flying lanterns, Johnson said. Missouri and Kansas are also considering bans, he said. The city of Lincoln approved a ban last year. A violation would be a Class V misdemeanor, punishable by a $100 fine. It's the third time a state senator has attempted to ban the lanterns. The bill advanced from first-round debate on a 30-0 vote. Swiss-based trader and miner Glencore has sold 100,000 tonnes of Urals for loadings from Primorsk on Jan. 16-17 to Chevron for delivery to the US Gulf Coast, traders said, making a return to the United States after a four-year hiatus. Glencore originally bought the cargo from Russia's Rosneft under a five-year pre-finance agreement, according to the traders. Rosneft declined to comment. Glencore does not typically comment on its trading deals. The cargo had been loaded from the Baltic Sea port of Primorsk on the vessel called Sparto, port agents' data shows. Sparto was heading to Skagen in Denmark, where it would be re-loaded onto another tanker for shipment to the United States, traders said. Vienna-based JBC Energy research said on Tuesday Urals flows to the United States, which were last seen in the first half of 2012 may return as U.S. WTI crude contracts are selling at a premium to Brent. Reporting by Reporting by Olga Yagova Vacations on a ship 125 years ago that was considered revolutionary. What many dont know is that the modern cruises already started in 1891 on a Hapag ship. On a cold January morning, nearly 125 years ago, nobody could have guessed that the idea would turn into such a success story. In any case, on January 22, 1891, it seemed as if all of Cuxhaven had turned out to marvel at the group of intrepid travelers making their way up the gangway of Hapags flagship, the Augusta Victoria. They were venturing off to new shores aboard one of the largest and most modern steamships in the world: on a two-month pleasure cruise around the Mediterranean. Excursions were planned in 13 port cities. Transport, accommodation, first-class service and a topical animation program were provided by one single operator: Hapag. January 22, 1891 was not only the date of departure for the first modern cruise trip, it also marked the start of the worlds first all-inclusive package tour. This was the first organized vacation set up from one single source and the start of a tourism product that today is booming more than ever before. Albert Ballin, Hapags young Director General, also stood on the pier in Cuxhaven, and he must have been particularly tense. This tour was his idea, his very personal project. He had campaigned for it and overcome considerable resistance. After all, the unanimous opinion at the time was: who would voluntarily spend weeks on a ship? Yet the world at the close of the 19th century had for the first time grown closer together thanks to modern modes of transport. The far ends of the earth had become accessible and society had produced an affluent clientele who wanted to discover these worlds albeit without enduring the perils and hardship they had previously faced when traveling under their own steam. At the time, none of the travel bureaus, no railway company and no hotel possessed the capability of offering travel arrangements, accommodation and a tourist program in one convenient package. A ship was the only way of combining all three. Only 33 years old at the time, Hapags young Director primarily owed his success to his extraordinary intuitive powers, paired with his ability to not only seize on trends but also to implement them profitably. Ballin saw his opportunity precisely where Hapag had a problem: during winter the companys prestigious flagship, the Augusta Victoria, lay idly at anchor. No traveler was willing to brave the tempestuous North Sea during the stormy season. Ballin proposed to the board of directors that they send the steamship to the Mediterranean for the winter as a pleasure cruiser for leisure tourists. The tour would take in the Orient, Europes dream destination and the fashionable escape for affluent travelers. Ballins colleagues had long grown accustomed to his unconventional ideas. However this time, he seemed to have gone too far. These gentlemen belonged to an era when nobody took to sea without good cause, when an Atlantic crossing was still likened to a prison sentence with the prospect of drowning. And now Ballin was proposing a sea journey purely for pleasure? Their response was unequivocal. Ballin came to the sobering realization that even in my closest surroundings there is no shortage of people who believe I am quite mad. The Hapag directors felt certain that nobody would spend money on such a venture, and certainly not such a vast amount: priced between 1,600 and 2,400 gold marks, the classless tour, offering only first-class service, costed twice or even three times the annual income of an average worker. But Ballin prevailed and very soon his calculations were proved right: Even the first offer of an excursion met with an international response that exceeded all expectations. There was nowhere near enough space to accommodate all of those who showed an interest. In the end, Ballin, who accompanied his premiere as host, welcomed 174 Germans, Britons and Americans on board in Cuxhaven, among them only 67 females, for the most part adventure-seeking British ladies. It was to be an historical journey, and Ballin, who also had a natural talent for public relations, not only invited journalists from leading newspapers but also one of Germanys most famous illustrators, Christian Wilhelm Allers, on board. With his help, he created another innovation: the ships newspaper. The first leg of the voyage proved laborious as storms in the Bay of Biscay badly affected the passengers. However, once the ship reached calmer seas in the Mediterranean, the trip of the Augusta turned into an unmitigated triumph. The 145-meter long and 17-meter wide ship, the largest vessel ever to have called at ports in this region, was officially welcomed and enthusiastically received everywhere. The mood amongst the travelers could not have been better, and even their appetites left nothing to be desired. While below deck the stokers toiled away, and while Master Heinrich Barends and his 245-man crew contributed just as much to the success of the voyage as the tireless musicians, it was Albert Ballin who took it upon himself to take care of virtually everything. Whereas life on the Augusta Victoria was very organized, the long excursions ashore often turned into veritable adventure trips. At the time, foreign lands were still very outlandish and had only partially been developed for tourists. Hapag relied on the services of the British travel agency Thomas Cook & Son. Their refreshment tents were very popular in the desert, however, the travel arrangements to get there proved rather problematic. One particularly adventurous group of gentlemen from Hamburg nearly fell victim to a snowstorm in the Lebanese mountains. Ballin forced the ship to wait in Beirut until the unwitting survival tourists made it back on board. The Augusta returned to Hamburg in March to a triumphant reception. Everything was jam-packed on shore, wrote the illustrator Allers. In many places, they waved bed sheets and table cloths as handkerchiefs were deemed too small, he went on. The success of the trip had proven Ballin right: he had discovered a market niche. And it was one which Hapag would from thereon develop consistently. The company began regularly and successfully organizing cruises and in 1905 acquired the most eminent travel agency in the German Empire, Carl Stangens Reise-Bureau in Berlin, continuing the business under the name Reiseburo der Hamburg-Amerika Linie (Travel bureau of the Hamburg-America Line). The Norddeutsche Lloyd followed suit and soon the two major shipping companies became Germanys largest tourism operators. Damens port solution for ballast water management on course to help compliance with upcoming IMO regulation. More and more countries are ratifying the IMOs Ballast Water Management Convention (BWMC) and it is very likely that it may enter into force as early as the first half of 2017; in any case, it is only a matter of time. The shipping community must prepare for challenges to meet its requirements. Damens InvaSave is a solution that will help pave the way for compliance in ports. This mobile ballast water discharge technology is on track to obtain IMO type approval as it enters into the last phase of certification by the Dutch flagstate. The InvaSave technology has been tested in various representative challenging water conditions and the official land-based testing was completed at the MEA test institute in the Netherlands in 2015. Damen announced that final shipboard tests have commenced this week on board of the 800TEU container vessel Henrike Schepers. Test protocols are in line with IMO BWMC test guidelines and additional requirements of the Dutch flagstate. Unlike conventional on board ballast water treatment systems, InvaSave is a mobile discharge technology for port services. Therefore, during the shipboard tests ballast water will be taken in untreated and the efficacy of the technology will be validated upon discharge only. IMO type approval is expected to be obtained Q3 2016 and a patent is pending. Damens Manager Ballast Water Treatment, Gert-Jan Oude Egberink said, InvaSave is the worlds first and only technology on the market today to treat ballast water at discharge in only one step. It can therefore serve as a port-based alternative for those ship owners that may not want to retrofit an on board treatment system, perhaps because their ships operate on non-exempted fixed routes or their ships are so old as to make any investment in such a system prohibitively expensive. Alternatives like InvaSave are also required for ports that need to provide backup in the case of emergencies when ships on board treatment systems fail. Damen can deliver the InvaSave technology in a self-sufficient mobile container, which can be put onboard a service barge or moved around the port on a trailer or a pontoon. A vessel needing to discharge its ballast water can connect to the InvaSave unit, which then processes the water and discharges it in the port in compliance with the IMO D2 standard. For vessels with much larger ballast water capacities, it is possible to interconnect several systems. If mobility is not required, the InvaSave containers can also be stacked and interconnected on shore. The first InvaSave systems will be operational at Groningen Seaports located in the Dutch Waddensea, a protected Unesco world heritage site, after the IMO BWMC enters into force. This project is developed with the aid of a subsidy from Waddenfonds, a Dutch foundation that aims to protect and develop the ecology and economy of the region. The port service shall be provided by the Dutch waste company Van Gansewinkel. Oude Egberink said, Port-based ballast water treatment has added value for ports clients as it increases the support services offered to customers, it will prevent expensive delays in ports caused by failing onboard systems. And some types of vessels dont need to invest in an onboard BWT system at all. Marines toured Japan Ground Self-Defense Force 1st Anti-Aircraft Battalion facilities Jan. 13 on Camp Komakado, Shizuoka, Japan. The visit strengthened the relationship between Marines and members of the JGSDF by allowing the service members to explore static displays of anti-aircraft defense equipment and vehicles, discuss training and tactical procedures, and eat meals together. Today was a very big step for our Marines, said 1st Lt. Yosef E. Adiputra, the officer in charge of 2nd Low Altitude Air Defense Battalion, Marine Aircraft Control Group 28, currently assigned to the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, III Marine Expeditionary Force under the unit deployment program. Given the American presence in the Asia-Pacific region, it is crucial for us to build that cohesion with our counterparts here in Japan so we can build relationships and partnerships and learn from each other. The Marines rode onto Camp Komakado on a JGSDF truck and filed into a conference room in the 1st Anti-Aircraft Battalion building, where they received a brief on the equipment and operational capabilities of the unit. The Marines then toured the building and viewed static displays of tactical vehicles and weapon systems at the JGSDF motor pool. We are very pleased to be able to present our facilities to Marines, said JGSDF 1st Lt. Takahashi, with the 1st Anti-Aircraft Battalion. We want them to see how we train and discuss our tactics so we can learn from each other and develop a strong relationship. The Marines also tour included a visit to the Improved Moving Target Simulator, during which Marines tried their hand at operating a simulated Personal Surface to Air Missile and firing at animated targets. According to Adiputra, a Queens, New York, native, the 1st Anti-Aircraft Battalion is structured much like a Marine Battalion. The way their unit functions is very efficient and very impressive, said Adiputra. They are very capable and the similarities help us relate better, while the differences allow us to learn from each other. The facilities tour ended with the martial arts training facility, where members of the JGSDF demonstrated various facets of the program; such as hand-to-hand, rifle-bearing and Kendo-based combat techniques. After the demonstrations, the Marines and JGSDF members gathered on the rooftop of the battalion building and posed for photos before enjoying lunch together. Japan and the United States are critical allies with an important relationship, said Takahashi. When I visited Okinawa last year, I was treated very well by the Marines, so I wanted the Marines to have same experience here. That's why we invited Marines. Our friendship is very important and this was a great opportunity to build on it. Financial Crisis in the Making that QE-4 Cant Stop! The Great Credit Crisis of 2007 led to The Great Recession, and yet the FED still repeated the same mistakes. The FED kept the easy money policy in effect, and not only that, but, it also introduced Quantitative Easing and handed over FREE money to the large banks and corporations. Apparently, they have not learned anything from the last crisis and it looks as though they are on the path of pushing the economy into a deep recession, again. The dangerous part about this, is that they have already used up all of their ammunition, and there is now none left. In order to deal with the forthcoming financial crisis that we are presently facing in 2016. How Wall Street led the US Fed to do what it wants: The chart above is self-explanatory. It is very clear from the chart above, that throughout, Wall Street has dictated what it wants and the FED has obliged. Each rise has been supported by the FED. This indicates that the real economy never recovered in order to support the lofty valuations of the SPX, while all along, it was merely the easy monetary policy which kept the markets elevated. The markets are again prodding the FED and other bankers to act: The markets are once again taunting the FED. Sources indicate that some FED governors are already voicing concerns that raising rates were a mistake. However, many believe that, if the market continues to fall, which it will, it is only a matter of time before the FED announces new measures in order to support the markets. Why the rate cut will not sort out the problem: The above chart shows the growth of the American economy from 2006 and onwards. After the initial recovery from depressed levels, real growth has never taken off. The growth keeps slipping into negative territory which indicates that the QE and the rate cuts have not benefited the real economy. All of the benefits have been accrued by the bankers and stockholders of publicly traded corporations. What are the latest GDP forecasts ? According to the chart above, the records for 2015, Q4, real GDP is down The trend continues to fall, making the economic outlook appear dismal, in the upcoming financial quarters. The Fed Fund Future suggests a minor hike ( if any in 2016): The market participants have already toned down their expectation of any FED rate hikes occuring in 2016. As many as 33.9% of people believe there will be NO HIKE, however, the number is likely to rise within the coming few weeks. I believe that instead of any rate hikes, the FED will be looking to correct their mistake of raising rates, while the world economy was/is still fragile. The San Francisco FED President John Williams, admitted, We got it wrong (in reference to the earlier statements by FED officials regarding oil being good for the economy). Is the FED the only one who has followed easy money policy ? No! Along with the US FED, the ECB, the Bank of Japan, Peoples Bank of China, the Bank of England and various other nations, have resorted to maintaining an easy monetary policy, for far too long. Presently, it is impossible to correct the original forces that created these problems, many years ago. Compare the expansion of the balance sheet of the respective central banks with their GDP, the numbers are freighting! Even with concerted efforts of the entire world, the world growth is struggling and going into economic contraction. With China likely to continue to enter into a slow growth trajectory, US forecasts are also reflecting a slowing growth. Chances are extremely high that the growth in 2016, is going to be much lower than what has been currently reported. The Global Reset The world leaders as well as the central banks, around the world have merely placed a bandage on their bleeding economies rather than enduring the pain, and pumping money into the real economy to generate long-term growth, they have opted to appease the stock markets, thus, creating a large Asset Bubble, today. The outcome of their actions, have placed the world economy in jeopardy, which is evident by the collapse of the commodity markets which are being lead down by collapse of oil and currency wars among nations, etc. The only way we can get out of this predicament is to do what is now required, and let the markets implement The Global Reset. Growth has always returned to the economy after the excesses have been ironed out. Conclusion: It is going to be a sordid year for the stock markets! The US markets have just finished their worst two weeks of the New Year that have ever been recorded. This is an indication of what is to come in 2016. The FED is likely to panic and try to correct their past mistake of raising rates, of last December 2015. They will most likely do whatever it takes, but this time, the markets will not be receptive to their actions, mostly. The best investments are going to be in gold and US Government Bonds, which I will share in my next post. Continue to follow my analysis and trade signals so as you know when the best time to invest in them is, and how to invest in them, SUCCESSFULLY. Join Fellow Trades and Myself at: www.TheGoldAndOilGuy.com Chris Vermeulen Join my email list FREE and get my next article which I will show you about a major opportunity in bonds and a rate spike www.GoldAndOilGuy.com Chris Vermeulen is Founder of the popular trading site TheGoldAndOilGuy.com. There he shares his highly successful, low-risk trading method. For 7 years Chris has been a leader in teaching others to skillfully trade in gold, oil, and silver in both bull and bear markets. Subscribers to his service depend on Chris' uniquely consistent investment opportunities that carry exceptionally low risk and high return. 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. Marc Faber Warns Invest In Gold Now As Stock Market To Crash Marc Faber, editor of the Gloom, Doom & Boom Report, has advised investors that now is a good time to invest in gold because stocks will crash over 40% and the world is on the verge of a new liquidity and debt crisis. Faber says investors would be prudent to diversify into safe haven in gold bullion which has risen 3% this year and is currently at $1,096 an ounce. He recently told MarketWatch that the stock-market downturn could result in stocks hitting lows not seen in five years. Faber warns that the S&P 500, which fell to 1,881 yesterday, could drop to its 2011 low below 1,200. According to FactSet data, that would be 1,099.23, set that October. Faber referred to that outcome, a more-than-40% plunge in the broad stock-market benchmark, as his medium bearish scenario. His most bearish prognostication envisages the S&P 500 falling back to its 2009 nadir, which FactSet data put at 676.53, MarketWatch reported. The main factor is diminishing global liquidity because of the decline in oil prices. A rapid appreciation of the U.S. dollar may send Brent oil as low as $20 a barrel, according to Morgan Stanley and other analysts. Crude oil (WTI) fell sharply to below $28 a barrel today on deepening concerns about oversupply, fragile demand from China and the slowing global economy. Faber has correctly warned that the price of crude oil indicates a shrinking global economy. When oil prices increase, it basically is a consequence of expanding [global] liquidity, Faber said, so inversely, this unrelenting fall suggests contraction. Faber cautioned that the situation could change because of global central bank tactics. It is impossible to make predictions because we dont know the extent of the madness of central bankers, he said. He has been a harsh critic of the quantitative easing measures of the Federal Reserve and other global central banks. He has warned that their zero percent interest policies have resulted in the world becoming vastly more indebted and therefore more vulnerable to a new and worse global debt crisis. Faber favours allocated and segregated coin and bar storage in Singapore. Watch Marc Faber Webinar Video on Storing Gold in Singapore Download Essential Guide To Storing Gold In Singapore Precious Metal Prices 20 Jan LBMA Gold Prices: USD 1,093.20, EUR 999.73 and GBP 771.08 per ounce 19 Jan LBMA Gold Prices: USD 1,087.00, EUR 999.77 and GBP 759.79 per ounce 18 Jan LBMA Gold Prices: USD 1,090.45, EUR 1,001.06 and GBP 763.67 per ounce 15 Jan LBMA Gold Prices: USD 1,081.80, EUR 991.38 and GBP 753.17 per ounce 14 Jan LBMA Gold Prices: USD 1,090.75, EUR 998.03 and GBP 759.10 per ounce This update can be found on the GoldCore blog here. Mark O'Byrne IRL 63 FITZWILLIAM SQUARE DUBLIN 2 E info@goldcore.com UK NO. 1 CORNHILL LONDON 2 EC3V 3ND IRL +353 (0)1 632 5010 UK +44 (0)203 086 9200 US +1 (302)635 1160 W http://www.goldcore.com/uk/ WINNERS MoneyMate and Investor Magazine Financial Analysts 2006 Disclaimer: The information in this document has been obtained from sources, which we believe to be reliable. We cannot guarantee its accuracy or completeness. It does not constitute a solicitation for the purchase or sale of any investment. Any person acting on the information contained in this document does so at their own risk. Recommendations in this document may not be suitable for all investors. Individual circumstances should be considered before a decision to invest is taken. Investors should note the following: Past experience is not necessarily a guide to future performance. The value of investments may fall or rise against investors' interests. Income levels from investments may fluctuate. Changes in exchange rates may have an adverse effect on the value of, or income from, investments denominated in foreign currencies. GoldCore Limited, trading as GoldCore is a Multi-Agency Intermediary regulated by the Irish Financial Regulator. GoldCore is committed to complying with the requirements of the Data Protection Act. This means that in the provision of our services, appropriate personal information is processed and kept securely. It also means that we will never sell your details to a third party. The information you provide will remain confidential and may be used for the provision of related services. Such information may be disclosed in confidence to agents or service providers, regulatory bodies and group companies. You have the right to ask for a copy of certain information held by us in our records in return for payment of a small fee. You also have the right to require us to correct any inaccuracies in your information. The details you are being asked to supply may be used to provide you with information about other products and services either from GoldCore or other group companies or to provide services which any member of the group has arranged for you with a third party. If you do not wish to receive such contact, please write to the Marketing Manager GoldCore, 63 Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin 2 marking the envelope 'data protection' 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication. Will the Crude Oil Price Crash become even Worse in 2016? A patient mind is the best remedy for trouble- Plaut 2015 was not a good year for speculators trying to time the oil markets. Oil kept cutting through each support level like a hot knife cutting through butter. It would give the appearance that it was ready to mount a rally, but that rally would fade, and oil prices would drift lower. We penned an article in Nov of last year, where we stated that oil would have to close above $50 on a weekly basis for it to see higher prices. However, it failed to do that and drifted lower. When it closed below $32 on a weekly basis, it neutralized any tiny bullish signals it was issuing in 2015. Is oil close to putting in a bottom or will it once again let everyone down and plunge into a series of new lows. There is a saying that the cure for low prices is lower prices and vice versa; having said, that we expect one final wave of selling before oil bottoms out and starts to trend slowly upwards. We do not expect any violent upward reversals unless the situation between Iran and Saudi heats up to the point that a new war breaks out. According to the IEA, oil demand for 2016 is expected to remain almost unchanged from 2015. In 2015, it stood at 96.43 million barrels per day (Mb/d) and in 2016, it is expected to be 96.49 Mb/d. The interesting part is that the IEA expects supplies to drop from 96.97 Mb/d to 96.88 Mb/d; the IEA is generally notorious for missing its projections. We are not sure that the current projections fully factor in the new supply of Iranian oil set to hit the markets. Additionally, Russia has stated that they have nointention of cutting down oil supplies and the same holds true for Saudi. Russia pumped a record 534 million tons of crude oil in 2016, and the countrys oil and gas condensate production increased by 1.4% year-on-year. Bloomberg noted that Russias oil production was poised to challenge its post-soviet record in the last of week of 2015 and surge to 10.86 million barrels per day. On the same token, Saudi Arabia instead of cutting production has been pumping oil close to its maximum capacity. From the supply side, there are no positive factors that would contribute to a sustainable upward trend for oil. What you need to remember is that the oil market tanked suddenly, and this occurred while the Top Analysts were making calls for higher prices and also by the Peak Oil theory experts. What happened to the peak oil theory by the way? Instead of oil production peaking, we seem to be awash with oil. And the Peak Oil experts have vanished into the woodwork. Hence, just as the oil market collapsed when everybody was proclaiming higher prices, oil will probably stabilize sometime in 2016 as everyone expects it to keep crashing. As it has broken through several levels of support, it will need to trend sideways for an extended period before it has any hope of breaking out. As it has closed below the psychological level of $30 on a weekly basis, it is likely it will experience one more downward wave before a tradable bottom is in place. A move to the $23-$25 ranges is now a strong possibility, and as long as oil does not close below $23.00 on a weekly basis, oil will start putting in a slow bottoming formation. Once a bottom is in, do not expect miracles from oil, trading will probably be limited to a tight range of $24.00-$36.00 for some time. Only a monthly close above $40 will signal that the trading range is going to shift to a slightly higher zone of $36.00-$58.00 with a possible overshoot to $65.00. Two small bullish factors; MACDs putting in a series of higher lows, and so they are diverging from the price of oil and RSI is holding steady; it has not dipped to new lows yet. The carnage is not over yet, and so we would hold off getting into oil stocks as many companies are going to go belly-up as their debt becomes unserviceable; this will create great opportunities in this sector, but, for now, it would be better to hold onto your gunpowder. A better play for speculators (the keyword being speculators) would be to play this sector directly via ETFs such as UCO, OIL, and USO, but we would wait till oil, at least, trades down to $25 or better before deploying any funds into this sector. Conservative players would be better off waiting for the dust to settle down. There will be many great stocks to purchase later on in the year. Many companies in the oil sector will go bankrupt as they will soon be unable to service their debt and then you will be able to come in and pick up the players best poised to benefit from higher oil prices. An ounce of patience is worth a pound of brains. Dutch Proverb by Sol Palha www.tacticalinvestor.com Sol Palha is a market analyst and educator who uses Mass Psychology, Technical Analysis and Esoteric Cycles to keep you on the right side of the market. He and his partners are on the web at www.tacticalinvestor.com. 2016 Copyright Sol Palha- All Rights Reserved Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors. 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication. A number of the maximum superior early civilizations on earth have called Egypt domestic. The ones cultures left their top notch mark with the extremely good Pyramids, which remained unchanged as Egypt evolved around them. So travel to Egypt this year and enjoy your holidays. Its ancient legacy is threaded subtly with its wealthy contemporary way of life, to create a captivating and delightful USA on the corner of the African continent. In spite of political, financial and social turmoil, Egyptians stay proud and defiant and are as welcoming as ever to site visitors to their land. Monuments With sand included tombs, austere pyramids and big Pharaonic wats or temples, The red sea exhibits the traveler in anyone. Check out the region of the Leaders in Luxor, in which Tutankhamuns grave was uncovered, and spot the shining discovers inside the Egypt artwork gallery in Cairo. Hop off a Globe vessel to see Dendara, Edfu or one of the other riverside temples, mixture Pond Nasser to look Ramses IIs paintings of art at Abu Simbel, or travel into the desolate tract to find out the information of Roman dealing outposts. Egypt family packages are easily affordable for every interested person.You never recognize your donkey may fall across yet any other discover, for that is the manner many beyond findings have been created. Two notion structures The purple sea once determined a country from Al-Qahira Cairo, the metropolis winning. The city comes with growing minarets and historic academic establishments and mosques, a number of the best shape of historic Islam. Concurrently, Egypts nearby Christian believers, the Copts, have carried on their customs those human beings including the churchs liturgical language and the conventional agenda one-way link to plenty of length of the pharaohs. Tap into the records in far flung desolate tract monasteries and historic chapels. Seaside locations and more than that That empty seashore with not anything however a romantic cottage and a overflowing reefs overseas offshore: theyre expecting you inside the red sea. The shore along the pink Sea has a sturdy wasteland beauty above the waterline and a psychedelic dynamics beneath pleasant to understand more approximately on a multiday journey to one of the globes excellent delves or on a days snorkeling jaunt alongside a reefs partitions. There is simply as a great deal vicinity and elegance in Egypts extensive deserts. Whether or not youre viewing the solar growth among the high-quality sorts of the White-colored barren region or the glowing skyline from luxurious of a hot springtime in Siwa Haven, Egypts scenery are continuously extraordinary. Human beings Goodness The Red sea is so important that without the go with the flow there might be no rich location, no food, and no electricity. Despite the fact that people's existence is gradually really divided from the water, the sector nonetheless places a mainly incredible component. Happily for visitors, the glide is likewise the first-class place from which to look among the most excellent common place conventional common place monuments, that's the coolest purpose why an international vacation contains directly to be this type of well-known manner traveling. Natural beauty of the barren region Whether youre viewing the sun boom from the good sized tiers of Mt Sinai (Gebel Musa) or the glowing skyline starting from a warm springtime in Siwa Haven, Egypts barren region surroundings are constantly remarkable first-rate elements, due to the fact they make up ninety five% of the United States of America. There are a number of opportunities to rest into the unlimited subject of sand and sea. For more information: https://www.travel2egypt.org/ Get ready: The first winter storm of the season likely will hit the Martinsville-Henry County area later this week. Forecasters are almost certain of that, based on the consistency of weather forecasting computer models. Youre definitely going to get some snow in southern Virginia, said Chris Fisher, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Blacksburg. How much is still to be determined. Thursday night, the weather service was predicting that snow will start falling during the early morning hours on Friday and continue through late afternoon, followed by a period of snow, sleet and freezing rain. The precipitation is expected to change to all snow after 10 p.m. and continue into Saturday, according to the forecast. At least seven inches of snow is possible locally, along with a slight coating of ice. Patrick County could get at least nine inches of snow, the forecast showed. Fisher said some computer models are predicting more snow while some are predicting less. The precipitation will be due to a low pressure system that will pump moisture from the Atlantic Ocean into cold air that will make its way down from the north. The potential exists for the storm to be a historic snow event across the Mid-Atlantic states as the low moves up the coast, according to an analysis on the weather services website. Temperatures in the upper 20s and low 30s are in the forecast for Thursday night and Friday. The freezing point is 32 degrees. It will be plenty cold enough for snow, Fisher said. Meteorologists will become more certain of snowfall amounts as the storm gets closer to Virginia and they see the exact path it takes. Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) and Martinsville Public Works Department crews are monitoring the weather closely. Well have a good idea probably by Thursday as to how much snow the area will get, said Lisa Price Hughes, resident administrator at the VDOT office in Bassett Forks. If a lot of snow is forecast and rain is not expected to fall first, VDOT will pretreat heavily-traveled roads with brine, a saltwater solution, Hughes said. Weve had really good results from it during previous winter storms, she said. It bides us some extra time in getting crews onto highways after snow starts falling because it delays the snow bonding to the roads. But if rain is expected before snow, brine is not applied to roads. Rain would wash it away, Hughes said. A little accumulation of snow and/or ice is needed on roads in order to apply salt and sand, she said, adding that with bare pavement, traffic will just whip it off. Once snow starts falling in Martinsville, city crews will start treating bridges and the bad spots such as the hill on Liberty Street behind the Village of Martinsville with calcium chloride and salt, then they will move on to roads and streets, said Public Works Director Jeff Joyce. According to Joyce, calcium chloride usually is applied to bridges because they often freeze faster than roads. Dont be surprised to see some light snow later today and tonight as a fast-moving, yet much weaker system moves across the area. It will mainly be a mountain event, but there could be a brief burst (of snow) across Southside, Fisher said. Any snow that falls in the Martinsville-Henry County area is generally expected not to stick to the ground or roads, but there could be a coating in some isolated areas, he said. How do we keep todays youth off drugs? That was one of the big questions brought up during a Martin Luther King Jr. Day community discussion at St. Paul High Street Baptist Church on Monday. Henry County Sheriff Lane Perry, one of two main speakers at the event, answered several questions from community members regarding drug use in the county. A few community members voiced the opinion that law enforcement needs to spend more time in local classrooms, teaching young folks that drugs will start them off on the wrong path in life. During the discussion, Perry said that the majority of crimes committed in Henry County from petty theft to murder inevitably can be traced back to drugs. Theres little doubt thats an accurate assessment. It would stand to reason, then, that the best way to prevent young people from ending up on a criminal path would be to teach them about the dangers of drug use as early as possible. Or would it? In 1983, a former LAPD chief and the Los Angeles Unified School District joined forces to create Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or D.A.R.E. It was the beginning of the Reagan-era War on Drugs, and the program spread across the country like wildfire. Students who entered D.A.R.E. signed a pledge not to use drugs or join gangs and learned about the dangers of drug use from trained law enforcement officers. Those lessons introduced students to a spectrum of drugs, everything from tobacco to alcohol to marijuana to crack to heroin and beyond, and explained how deadly and addictive those drugs can be. The only problem was, the program didnt work. In fact, some studies say it had the opposite effect. A 1995 report for the California Department of Education found that almost 70 percent of participants reported neutral to negative feelings about the officers delivering the anti-drug message. A 1998 report for the National Institute of Justice found that D.A.R.E. ended up making many students more curious about using drugs than they were before. David Satcher, Surgeon General of the United States, concluded in 2001 that D.A.R.E. was ineffective at best and sometimes counterproductive. Thats just a sampling of studies, all of which point to a consistent problem with zero-tolerance policies on drugs, summarized by Marsha Rosenbaum of the former Lindesmith Center. In D.A.R.E.s worldview, Marlboro Light cigarettes, Bacardi rum and a drag from a joint are all equally dangerous, Rosenbaum said. For that matter, so is snorting a few lines of cocaine. Kids shouldnt be smoking cigarettes, but obviously, theres a world of difference between sneaking a cigarette and doing a line of cocaine. If children are taught that all drugs are equally bad, including drugs they may already have tried and drugs they may never even have heard of before D.A.R.E., its easy to see how a young person might think: In for a penny, in for a pound. The results of those studies werent lost on D.A.R.E. In 2009, D.A.R.E. adopted a totally new curriculum focused on life skills and making smart choices rather than lectures about drugs. That reorganization is to be commended, but ultimately, D.A.R.E. and programs like it are attempts to repair at school a problem that begins at home. People seldom develop serious drug addictions on a whim. They begin taking hard drugs because they have dysfunctional home lives; because people talk at them rather than listening to them; because theyre crippled by poverty; because theyre depressed. Try as we might, those problems cant be fixed with school programs alone. In Defence of Marxism is committed to safeguarding your privacy. At all times we aim to respect any personal data you share with us, or that we receive from other organisations, and keep it safe. This Privacy Policy (Policy) sets out our data collection and processing practices and your options regarding the ways in which your personal information is used. This Policy contains important information about your personal rights to privacy. Please read it carefully to understand how we use your personal data. We may update this Policy from time to time without notice to you, so please check it regularly. The provision of your personal data to us is voluntary. 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Please let us know if you have any queries or concerns whatsoever about the way in which your data is being processed by emailing the Data Protection Manager at webmaster@marxist.com The Corbyn movement that began last summer represented the beginning of a political revolution inside the Labour Party. But this transformation is not yet complete. On the one hand, thanks to his enormous grassroots support, Corbyn has weathered the storm of hysteria and attacks from the Tory press and the Blairites, emerging stronger in his position as leader. On the other hand, however, the right wing of the Labour Party, residing primarily in Westminster, has not been completely routed and continues to skirmish with Corbyn in an attempt to destabilise and discredit him as leader. Corbyn has won many battles thus far; but Labours civil war is far from over. Having dominated the Party for over two decades now, the Blairite wing has been unable to accept Corbyns victory and the new kind of politics that the left leader represents. Indeed, as the most ardent devotees to the needs of capitalism consistently attempting to prove their role as reliable statesmen by prostrating themselves before the Establishment at every opportunity such ladies and gentlemen will never be able to concede defeat to the Corbyn movement. Any plots to remove Corbyn, however, were quickly scuppered by his tremendous landslide result in the leadership election, and by the flood of Corbyn-supporters into the Labour Party. Conscious of their weak position, the Blairites have instead sought to bide their time, regrouping and fighting a guerrilla war from their stronghold within the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP). But such attacks have so far failed to make a dent in the support for the new Labour leader. Indeed, in many cases, vitriolic attacks and mudslinging from the Blairite camp have instead backfired. In their attempts to undermine Corbyn, the Labour right wing has only served to highlight how out of touch they are with both rank-and-file members and wider society alike. Indeed, aYouGov poll from November last yearshowed that a clear majority of Labour voters blamed right-wing MPs not Corbyn for divisions within the Shadow Cabinet. Test of strength A rapid series of events have played a role in putting the Blairites on the back foot and solidifying Corbyns leadership. Firstly, strong opposition by Corbyn and his supporters has helped to (temporarily) defeat the Tories on important issues such as tax credit cuts. Secondly,Labours victory in the Oldham by-election, where the Labour candidate secured an increase in the vote share for the Party, demonstrated the absurdity of all the doom-and-gloom predictions from the mainstream press, with their accusations that a Corbyn-led Labour Party is unelectable. Finally, and most importantly, was the vote overbombing in Syria. Only days before the vote in Parliament, the Tory media was revelling at the prospect of over 100 Labour MPs rebelling against their leader and siding with the Cameron government in their enthusiasm for war. But as the debate progressed and the hour of judgement drew nearer, it was clear that outside of the Westminster bubble a groundswell of opposition to the bombing was developing on social media, in local constituencies, and on the streets. A broad movement of Corbyn supporters and anti-war activists put pressure on their political representatives, whilst several surveys (including one initiated by the Labour leader himself) indicated that around 75% of Labour supporters opposed the bombing, forcing many Labour MPs who were sitting on the fence to think-twice about supporting the Tories in the vote for bombing. In the end, the number of Labour MPs voting for bombing was reduced to 66, and Corbyn secured a majority of support for his anti-war position both within the Shadow Cabinet and the wider PLP. The ramifications of this vote, however, will continue to cast a shadow for some time to come. The 66 warmongers have rightly earnt the wrath of Labour members, and have now singled themselves out for deselection in the future. Furthermore, the vote has acted as a warning shot across the bows of the so-called moderates, demonstrating the potential strength of the army that can be called upon and organised to defend Corbyn and his policies in the event of any intrigues, attacks, or attempted coups by the Blairite Fifth Column that remains within the Labour Party. Transformation beneath the surface Even the right-wing press have now been forced to acknowledge Corbyns strengthened position as leader the result of the metamorphosis that is taking place within the Labour Party. Labours problem,the Economistwrites (16thJanuary 2016), from its class perspective as the serious mouthpiece of the ruling class, isthe fact that its leader is getting stronger. More centrist members are leaving as lefties sign up (over half the party has joined since the election in May). The prospect of a candidate with the infrastructure to beat Mr Corbyn is more remote than ever. Swathes of centrist MPs could lose their seats Elsewhere,the Guardianhas recently published the results of its investigations into the changing Labour landscape, highlighting the transformation that is has been quietly taking place on the ground a transformation that is sinking ever-more solid foundations within the Party for Corbyns leadership and programme. Jeremy Corbyns hopes of remouldingLabour,Ewen MacAskill reports (13thJanuary 2016), have been boosted by a detailed Guardian survey into the party at grassroots level that shows overwhelming support for him, a decisive shift to the left and unhappiness with squabbling among MPs. The Guardianreport indicates how Labour has been rejuvenated by the Corbyn movement, witha revival of branches that had been moribund for years and close to folding and a two-to-five-times increase in membership across most constituencies. At a national level, the same article continues, Labours membership has almost doubled since the last general election, now standing at a figure of almost 390,000. Interesting, this incredible growth in membership comes despite an outflow of around 8,500 disgruntled New Labour types, who have quit the Party in protest against Corbyns resounding election last September. To add insult to injury for the Blairites in the PLP, already wounded by the meagre 4.5% that their candidate Liz Kendall received in the leadership election, the new Corbyn-supporting members are joining at a rate ten times greater than the moderates who are leaving. Tensions increase This transformation within the Labour Party, however, is far from complete. On the one hand, those newly politicised and radicalised layers that have actively thrown themselves into the Party looking to change society and defeat the Tories are coming up against the stultifying atmosphere and ossified crust that exists within the Partys structures; a remnant of Labours rightward shift and political stagnation under Blair, Brown, and Miliband. Some constituencies, the Guardian article notes, [are] reporting potential rifts between long-term members used to rule-bound discussions and the younger ones seeking more zest and passion in their politics.At some point, according to Christina Watkins, constituency secretary for Southampton and Romsey CLP, there is going to be a collision between these older and younger people: those that see this as a return to the old politics and those who see it as a new kind of politics. On the other hand, the growth in membership has not yet been universally reflected within the actual structures of the Party. At every level, from wards and constituencies, through to the PLP and the Party apparatus, it is clear that the right-wing Labour establishment is seeking to maintain a bureaucratic grip on the Party. Many of the local branch secretaries and chairs are still a reflection of the past; not to mention the councillors and most obviously the MPs. The Labour leader has commendably survived months of endless attacks, both from a hostile press and a cabal of uncooperative colleagues. Now he is beginning to put the pieces in place for the battles that clearly lie ahead, most notably on the question of Trident, with Maria Eagle a firm supporter of maintaining Britains nuclear arsenal replaced by the anti-Trident (although not particularly pro-Corbyn) MP for Islington South, Emily Thornberry, as Shadow Secretary for Defence. Meanwhile, Hilary Benn has had his wings clipped as Foreign Secretary, following his outspoken support for bombing in Syria, and has been told he must support Corbyns position on issues of foreign policy. Despite its mildness, Corbyns shadow cabinet reshuffle was nevertheless received with a hysterical response from the right-wing press and the Blairites. In a vain attempt to destabilise Corbyn, Catherine McKinnell, the Shadow Attorney General, resigned from the Labour frontbench, whilst three junior shadow ministers stood down in what was clearly a co-ordinated but ultimately underwhelming attempt to undermine the Labour leader. Indeed, even the so-called neutral media themselves have been involved in these machinations, with the BBCs Political Editor, Laura Kuenssberg, being accused by Corbyns director of communications, the left-wing journalist Seamus Milne, of deliberating attempting to damage Corbyns leadership and aid the Tories by persuading one of the three junior shadow ministers to resign live on the BBCs Daily Politics show, shortly before Prime Ministers Questions. In the end, even this orchestrated campaign against Corbyn by all the various pillars of the Establishment was received with nothing more than a whimper, again demonstrating both Corbyns growing strength and the weakness of the Blairites on the ground, due to their lack of any real roots within either the Party or society in general. Complete the Corbyn revolution! Whilst Corbyn has proved his position to be more secure than the Labour right wing and the ruling class were initially hoping for, in truth, this modicum of stability has come partially as a result of compromise with those Labour MPs who do not back him or his programme. For example, the reality is that Corbyns reshuffle did not go far enough. The Shadow Cabinet remains full of those who do not genuinely support Labours left-wing leader and the policies he stands for, including prominent Blairites such as Lord Falconer and Hilary Benn. Above all, the Parliamentary Labour Party needs to be brought into line with the wishes and desires of the rank-and-file, who overwhelming support Corbyn and his left-wing programme. As demonstrated by the Syria vote, there is still a bastion of Blairites who despite all the pressure from below refuse to listen to the voices of the ordinary people they are supposed to represent, instead acting as nothing but marionettes for the ruling class. These careerist creatures must go. In this respect, the Corbyn revolution needs to be carried to its logical conclusion. Whilst the Guardian survey indicates that there is little interest at constituency level in deselection, it is clear that the question is at the forefront of everyones minds, hanging like the Sword of Damocles over the heads of those right-wing MPs who refuse to back Corbyn and the desire for a fundamental change that he represents. Not only has the Syria vote highlighted the antagonisms that still exist within the Labour Party and made deselection a burning issue, but asthe Guardianhighlights (15thJanuary 2016)in relation to the case of Stoke-on-Trent, home of the highly-unpopular parachuted Labour MP, Tristram Hunt the upcoming boundary changes being pushed through by Cameron and the Tories mean that question of selecting new parliamentary Labour candidates will be posed point blank in the next few years, regardless of the desires by Corbyn, Momentum, and others to ignore this elephant in the room for the sake of calm and unity. All it would take is one prominent case of deselection, and the whole situation could take on a logic of its own, spreading like wildfire across the Labour movement. Defend Corbyn! Fight for Socialism! Needless to say, the Blairites would not tolerate any threat to their Westminster careers. They consider themselves to have a divine right within the Labour Party to do and say as they please, regardless of the will of the membership, and they would rather see Labour lose and Corbyn deposed than allow the Party to come fully under the control of the Corbyn movement. For these professional politicians, it is a question of rule or ruin. Simon Danczuk, Labour MP for Rochdale and one of the most prominent of Corbyns critics, has been silenced for the time being, following his suspension over allegations of scandal and sleaze; but dozens of other right-wing Labour MPs remain hiding in the shadows, ready to stick the knife in when the time is right. The more sober-headed voices of the ruling class are openly admitting that Labour is, in reality, two different parties within one: a party of the past, of New Labour acolytes and so-called moderates who represent the interests of big business and the 1%; and a party of the future, of Corbyn and his supporters who represent the desire for change felt by the mass of ordinary people.Leading Blairite figuresare even advocating a split. The period ahead will be the most turbulent and volatile in history, with crisis at every level: economically, socially, and politically. Faced with a new world slump, which is already on the horizon, the Tories will be forced to carry out years of austerity, cutting to the very bone of British society. With Cameron and the Conservatives facing their own internal crisis, the ruling class will be increasingly forced to rely on the Labour Party to hold up the system. Hence the calls emanating already from some quarters of the bourgeois press, such asthe Economist,who openly suggestusing the nuclear option, as they call it: for moderate [read: right-wing Labour] MPs to declare independence from Mr Corbyn and sit as a separate group in the Commons. It is time for Corbyn to openly recognise and acknowledge what the serious strategists of capitalism have already concluded long ago: there can be no unity between the antagonistic interests of the bosses, represented by the Blairite cabal inside the PLP, and the aspirations of workers and youth, represented by the Corbyn movement. Only when Labour is led at all levels by those willing to support Corbyn in opposing war and austerity can there be genuine unity. Only then can Labour launch the fightback that is needed against the Tories, and for a socialist alternative. WINDSOR LOCKS - American Airlines will offer nonstop daily service from Bradley International Airport here to Los Angeles International, or LAX, Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy announced Wednesday afternoon. Tickets don't go on sale until Tuesday and fare information was unavailable. Service begins June 2 using 150-seat Boeing 737-800 aircraft. Bradley International Airport reported 2.72 million passengers boarding in calendar year 2015, that's up 1.4 percent from the 2.68 million passenger departures in calendar year 2014. (pdf) A quarter of those travelers are from Western Massachusetts. American Airlines said the daily departure from Bradley is scheduled at 7 a.m. with an arrival in Los Angeles at 10 a.m. local time. The inbound flight is scheduled to depart Los Angeles at 9 p.m. and arrive at Bradley at 5:20 a.m. Nontstop service to the West Coast has been a longtime goal of Bradley and of the Connecticut Airport Authority that owns the airport and is charged with developing its potential. For years, Connecticut Airport Authority officials have seen service to Los Angeles as a way to connect Connecticut and Western Massachusetts with Asia because the airport -- dubbed LAX -- is a hub for Asian travel to the US. In a prepared statement Malloy said: "This new flight further connects us to the world - it's good for business and it's good for residents. Our future as a state is linked directly to our transportation system, and as we build up Bradley Airport, we are helping businesses large and small. This announcement is indeed another step forward for Connecticut." Last year, Hainan Airlines added more nonstop flights from between Shanghai and Boston's Logan international. In Windsor Locks, American's announcement follows Irish Airline Aer Lingus announcement last fall that it will start offering nonstop flights from Bradley to Dublin starting Sept. 28. Aer Lingus flights are expected to leave Bradley at 6:10 p.m. daily, arriving in Dublin at 5:20 a.m. the following day. Return flights will leave Dublin at 2:20 p.m. and arrive back in Connecticut at 4:20 p.m. Aer Lingus is also adding flights to Los Angeles starting in May 2016 and followed by Newark, N.J., and Bradley in September 2016. Like Los Angeles, Dublin is seen as a gateway, too, because it is Aer Lingus' hub to cities in the United Kingdom and on the European Mainland as far east as Warsaw. United Airlines also recently launched service from Bradley to service to Denver, Colorado. With the additions of Dublin and Los Angeles, Bradley will offer nonstop flights to 17 cities, 16 of them in the United States. A full list is available here. Bradley International Airport contributes $4 billion in economic activity to Connecticut and the surrounding region, representing $1.2 billion in wages and 18,000 full-time jobs, according to the Connecticut Airport Authority. SPRINGFIELD -- The Pioneer Valley has, or in the case of Springfield will soon have, new passenger rail stations and railroad tracks. But what the region is missing is frequent passenger trains, a deficit economic development officials from Springfield, Holyoke, Northampton, Greenfield and Amherst met Wednesday at the Springfield Union Station construction site to rectify. In the process, they learned they'll need a solid business plan to even begin the two-to-three stage process of starting frequent north-south commuter trains. They also learned that east-west commuter service between Boston and Springfield through Worcester would take even longer and be even more expensive. That won't stop mayors from those cities from making their pitch Feb. 3 when they meet with state lawmakers and administration officials, including Massachusetts Department of Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack. Due to be open to the public in December, the $88.5-million rehabilitation of Springfield Union Station into an intermodal bus-rail-transit hub is the highest profile rail project in the region. Christopher J. Moskal, executive director of the Springfield Redevelopment Authority which owns the depot, said planners expect it to draw 5 million rail and bus passengers a year in its first year of operation, a number that could swell to 8 million or more with more service. Union Station will offer both intercity buses run by PVTA and intercity bus service by Peter Pan Bus Lines and others, Moskal said. Timothy W. Brennan, executive director of the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission, said state and federal governments spent $125 million purchasing and upgrading the "Knowledge Corridor" rail line along the Connecticut River serving Springfield, Holyoke, Northampton and Greenfield. Station platforms were built in Greenfield, Northampton and Holyoke. But as of now, there is only one train a day that traverses the whole of Valley; Amtrak's Vermonter. Springfield has a total of six north-south Amtrak trains a day, that includes the Vermonter and a number of shuttles to New Haven. "It is obvious that there is a significant public investment," Brennan said. "And in order to get a return on that investment we are going to need to attract more rail service." And now is the time to add that service, said Kevin Kennedy, Springfield's chief development officer. Because Union Station's opening is just months away after years of stalled plans in which many gave up on ever seeing the grand station, built in 1926 but closed in the 1970s, refurbished. "Our message to you is that this is real, this is happening," Kennedy said while leading a tour of the cavernous great concourse. There are a number of projects underway: Connecticut plans to add 12 additional north-south round trips a day between Springfield, through Hartford and on to New Haven where the commuter service will mesh with Amtrak's busy Boston-New York corridor. But Connecticut has had to push back its start date a full year until January 2018 after finding the track south of Springfield to be in poor repair. Connecticut has set aside $643 million - $208 million of federal funds and $435 million of state funds - to enhance rail service from New Haven through Hartford to Springfield. For commuter service from Springfield north, the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission has a study saying frequent commuter service from Springfield to Greenfield might cost $3 million to $4 million a year in operations subsidy. That wouldn't count the cost of the actual trains. Marcos A. Marrero. Director of Planning & Economic Development said every transportation system is subsidized by tax dollars in some way. And, give the subsidies the MBTA gets for metro Boston its certainly time for Holyoke and its neighbors to get a share. Guy Bresnahan, manager of state and federal rail projects for the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, said that Western Massachusetts communities need to present a business plan to the state in order to get that service up and running. Brennan, of the Planning Commission, said it could take two or three years to start running those trains. The operations subsidy might come from the federal government. The valley was supposed to get hand-me-down surplus trains and locomotives from the MBTA. Linda Dunlavy, executive director of the Franklin Regional Council of Governments said the MBTA's own operational problems mean it won't be giving up any equipment anytime soon. East-west commuter service from Springfield through Worcester to Boston would be even more of a long shot than the north-south commuter service, MassDOT's Bresnahan said. CSX owns the tracks and for its freight trains and is not keen on leasing them to a passenger operator. The tracks would also require major upgrades to allow trains to run at speed. Long-distance Amtrak service is also a possibility, Brennan said. The state has completed a study that says there would be enough passenger demand to justify eight round trips a day from Boston to New Haven via Worcester and Springfield, one round trip from Boston to Montreal via Worcester and Springfield and one trip from New Haven to Montreal via Springfield. The new trains, called the inland route, helps bring train traffic from the congested, flood-prone coastal route Amtrak now uses. But it will be costly to bring that level of passenger service here. Boston to New Haven through Worcester and Springfield would cost $650 million in infrastructure and for 10 new trains. The Montreal service would push that cost to $1.2 billion. In Northampton, people are just calling for more passenger service be it for business or pleasure, said Terry Masterson, economic development director in that city. "There is this great sense that people want to know they can get somewhere," he said. "People use it to make decisions about where to live, where to have a second home." Springfield Mayor Domenic J. Sarno the economic possibilities of making commuting from Springfield to Boston are obvious. One only need look at how fast housing prices are rising in there versus the affordability of Springfield. chris-rock-oscar.jpg Chris Rock is set to host the Academy Awards on Feb. 28. (ABC photo) Amid calls for a boycott of the Academy Awards, the specter of Chris Rock stepping down as host of the Oscars broadcast has been raised. The African-American comic and actor is said to be facing pressure to bow out as host of the 88th annual Oscars in response to the lack of racial diversity among the Oscar nominees. On Instagram, "Fast & Furious" actor Tyrese Gibson, who is also black, called on Rock to "do the right thing" and step down. "Make a statement," Gibson said. "We're relying on you to do the right thing. There is no joke you can crack to ever change the way we all feel." Rapper 50 Cent posted a picture of Rock on Instagram with the caption, "Chris please do not do the oscars awards. You mean a lot man, don't do it. Please." The website Naughty Gossip reported that "behind the scenes Chris is under extreme pressure to pull out. Many leaders in the black community think he would help progress be made if he quits his hosting job." However, others feel Rock will use the opportunity to comment on the diversity issue. "I don't think Chris would bail - if anything, this gives him the world's biggest platform and an excellent area for jokes that only he can do," Dave Boone, who wrote nine Oscar telecasts and was the head writer for the 2015 edition, told the New York Daily News. "Years ago when Whoopi (Goldberg) was hosting, (controversial director Elia) Kazan was getting the lifetime achievement award. I gave her a line, 'I thought the blacklist was me and Hattie McDaniel.' At the time, it was a joke that only Whoopi could do." Former talk show host Arsenio Hall tweeted in favor of Rock staying onboard. "Here's my 1 cents. I REALLY hope Chris Rock does NOT pull out of the Oscar hosting gig. It's so important that he's on the mic that nite." Rock has not commented on the controversy, other than a Tweet referring to the Oscars as the "white BET Awards." Jada Pinkett Smith, wife of Will Smith, first suggested an Oscar boycott on Twitter on Saturday. Two days later, director Spike Lee revealed he would not attend the show. In response to recent criticism, Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs has stated that the organization is taking steps to diversify its membership. I don't want Chris Rock to boycott Oscars. Mainly because his first joke of the night is probably going to be FIRE! John Ketchum (@Ketchcast) January 20, 2016 I know Chris Rock will make a meal of the Oscars controversy, but it'd be great and meaningful to have the show address it forthrightly too. Mark Harris (@MarkHarrisNYC) January 20, 2016 DailyBank Investment Consultant [mailto:bankinvestmentconsultant@email.bankinvestmentconsultant.com]Monday, January 18, 2016 9:02 AMharris_curtis@sbcglobal.netETF Market's Top Performers, By the NumbersFund flows over the course of a number of years now have been pointing decidedly in favor of passive strategies, he says, be they index, mutual funds or ETFs.Home | SubscribeDaily Jan 18, 2016by ANDREW SHILLING Fund flows over the course of a number of years now have been pointing decidedly in favor of passive strategies, he says, be they index, mutual funds or ETFs.READ MORE The investing strategy Warren Buffett recommends to his wife when he dies could lead to high stress for other investors during volatile markets since it calls for a high allocation to stocks.READ MORE The energy industry lost its power in 2015. The price of oil plummeted, which, while nice at the gas pump, cost investors millions.READ MORE by CULLEN ROCHE Blog: Cullen Roche offers four key points to keep in mind while handling a market downturn.READ MORE by BARRY RITHOLTZ The word uncertainty, when spoken by befuddled pundits, usually means they are coming to grips with their own imperfect mental models, writes Barry Ritholtz.READ MORE by MARGARIDA CORREIA The Birmingham, Ala.-based bank posted $100 million in fourth-quarter revenue from its brokerage, trust and insurance services operations, up almost 10% year-over-year.READ MORE by BRIAN COLLINS The reverse mortgage industry is optimistic after recent reforms to the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage by the FHA and newfound respect from financial planners.READ MORE by ANN MARSH M&A deals in the fee-based RIA space to hit about 250 this year and double by 2019, Tiburon predicts.READ MORE In the midst of global turmoil, these funds have turned in the best performances over three years.READ MORE SEE ALL SLIDESHOWS MORE IN WEB SEMINARS FOLLOW US:@BIConlineFacebookFor more information about reprints and licensing content from Bank Investment Consultant, please visit www.SourceMediaReprints.com or contact PARS International Corp. (212) 221-9595. You are currently subscribed to Daily as: harris_curtis@sbcglobal.net.You are receiving this email as part of SourceMedia. Please do not reply to this message. To learn more about SourceMedias use of personal information, please read our Privacy Policy.Unsubscribe from this mailing listManage your profileSourceMediaOne State Street Plaza, 27th Floor New York, NY 10004Phone: (800) 221-1809 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. If youve already reviewed the agenda for the 2016 Governors Conference on Tourism and Recreation, you mightve noticed each breakout session is tagged with a designation of MARKETING I, MARKETING II, BUSINESS, or RESEARCH. Thats because, for the first time, were offering breakout session tracks to help you more easily identify the sessions most relevant to your general industry sector, specific business or organization, or individual position. Full Event Information: https://t.e2ma.net/message/m1dhk/qk7jif Send Letters to your Representatives in Congress: Use a POP Vox account Find Your Representatives in Congress: US House ... US Senate ... or easier HERE US House Leadership: HERE US Senate Leadership: HERE US House Clerks Off. HERE (Good Links)How to Lobby your Congressmen: CLICK The Senator popped into UDAP Bear Spray Industries http://www.udap.com/ which distributes powerful pepper spray to fend off bear attacks, or for personal defense. "With the outdoor economy we have in the state and the quality of life we have in the state and the schools we have in the state, I think its a real opportunity that people will move here, sometime move back here, and start their own business and add to our economy," said Sen. Jon Tester/D-Montana. Tester added that there will be a forum called the Small Business Opportunity Workshop http://www.matr.net/article-69598.html on Feb. 16th in Billings to help grow small business in the state. By John Emeigh Full Story: http://www.kbzk.com/story/31000037/tester-touts-butte-business-to-encourage-development Montana has been selected, as one of only five states, to host an intensive workshop focused on empowering communities to revitalize their downtowns and public places. The two-day workshop, titled "Cultivating Place in Main Street Communities," will bring national downtown and Placemaking experts to Montana this spring. The Department of Commerce (DOC) will extend invitations to member communities of the Montana Main Street Program http://comdev.mt.gov/Programs/MainStreet to attend at no charge. "In small towns and large cities across the country and in Montana, the key to building robust and resilient local economies is in creating unique, vibrant communities," Director Meg OLeary of the Department of Commerce said. "Our Montana Main Street Program supports these efforts. This new training will be a valuable addition to all of our other program resources." The National Main Street Center (NMSC) and Project for Public Spaces (PPS) have jointly launched the new training program to help revitalize towns and communities through Placemaking a citizen-led process that helps activate downtowns and community gathering places. Placemaking provides a powerful set of tools for change that communities can apply to the revitalization of downtowns, making immediate and affordable changes to public spaces while also building local support and demonstrating to stakeholders the potential for further long-term projects and investments. Attendees will plan community projects and identify potential funding resources in order to implement successful projects following the training. Generous funding by the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Foundation will cover all expenses of the training, including lodging costs. The Montana Main Street Program, established in 2005 and currently serving twenty-five communities across the state, helps communities strengthen and preserve their historic downtown commercial districts by focusing on economic development, urban revitalization, and historic preservation through long-range planning, organization, design, and promotion. Montana Main Street staff are working with NMSC and PPS to finalize training details, location, and agenda. https://t.e2ma.net/message/1b86m/1vvibo The Montana Small Business Development Center (SBDC) Network is encouraging entrepreneurs to submit their business ideas for consideration at the third annual "Shark Tank" style live pitch competition coming this spring. The competition will be held at the Montana SBDC Invest in Success small business conference on March 15-16 in Havre. "The entrepreneurial spirit in Montana runs deep, and this event puts a spotlight on the innovation and enthusiasm of Montana entrepreneurs," said Department of Commerce Director Meg OLeary. "The competition offers an opportunity for Montanans to present their business ideas to seasoned professionals and receive the feedback and resources needed to turn them into reality." Author: Teresa Cooper Full Story: http://commerce.mt.gov/News/PressReleases/ArtMID/19685/ArticleID/2971/Montana-Entrepreneurs-Encouraged-to-Enter-%E2%80%9CShark-Tank%E2%80%9D-Style-Competition-at-Small-Business-Conference Former Vanns Inc. chief financial officer Paul Nisbet has pleaded not guilty to a charge of conspiracy in a federal case in which prosecutors allege he helped the former CEO defraud the company. Nisbet, who appeared in U.S. District Court on Jan. 12, previously signed a plea agreement in the case. The conspiracy charge carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and mandatory restitution. Prosecutors in the federal case allege former CEO George Manlove and Nisbet used their positions in the company to defraud Vanns. DILLON KATO [email protected] Full Story: http://missoulian.com/news/local/former-vann-s-cfo-pleads-not-guilty-to-federal-conspiracy/article_d9b5aa52-5695-59c0-964b-ff8923cc4594.html Missoula airport and development officials werent surprised by American Airlines announcement last week that it would make its first inroads into Montana in Bozeman. "In fact, we were hoping it would happen" after Missoulas application for a $750,000 federal grant failed last fall, airport director Cris Jensen said Tuesday. Missoula International joined forces in November with Bozeman Yellowstone International to court American for seasonal service to Dallas/Fort Worth to and from both cities. KIM BRIGGEMAN [email protected] Full Story: http://missoulian.com/news/local/missoula-s-first-effort-to-land-nonstop-texas-connection-fails/article_d2cdb7bc-de16-583c-b3d1-facae44332d9.html by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, January 20, 2016 Hidden in the text of a press release announcing an extended partnership, AOL announced Wednesday that it plans to take an equity stake in Taboola to demonstrate "the desire of the parties for close collaboration on this long-term strategy." When asked how much of a stake, an AOL spokesperson told SearchBlog that "while were not disclosing, we always look for opportunities to go beyond just a vendor-customer relationship and deliver on a more long-term strategic vision." As one of the Webs largest publishers, AOL is familiar with many issues publishers face when their content gets consumed off the network. "Our deeper partnership with Taboola through an investment ensures well be able to collaborate much more closely on new platform and data enhancements," an AOL spokesperson confirms. advertisement advertisement Taboola's technology relies on multiple signals such as the type of content the person most frequently consumes, time of day, day of the week, social preferences, device type, location, and referral source. AOL will integrate Taboolas platform across its brands such as AOL.com, The Huffington Post, TechCrunch, Engadget, AutoBlog, AOL Mail and MapQuest in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada. The deal between AOL and Taboola aims to combine search and discovery on publisher sites, similar to the agreement Taboola made with Baidu last year. In May 2015, the Chinese search engine announced a multimillion-dollar investment partnership in Taboola, an investment that followed a $117 million Series E round of financing in February. Taboola's content marketing platform links widgets to content, allowing marketers to connect related articles, videos, and slide shows from within the site and other publishers. The company estimates that it serves more than 300 billion recommendations to about 750 million unique visitors monthly on USA TODAY, Business Insider, Chicago Tribune and The Weather Channel, among others. The links in the related content widgets typically appear at the bottom of a blog post or news article, but in the past gained a reputation for linking to the worst the Web has to offer. Some have called it spam rather than content. For publishers the content provides a direct link from one page to another, but also from search engines Bing, Google and Yahoo to pages on their site. Optimizing that content pushes Web pages closer to the top of search engine query results. by Aaron Goldman , Op-Ed Contributor, January 20, 2016 Usually what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but this time I'm kissing and telling. Here are four things I saw at the Consumer Electronics Show the week before last that will have a lasting impact on the social media space: 1. Snapchat logo on Luxor.This was the first thing I noticed after arriving on the Las Vegas strip following a long drive up from Phoenix (long story but, no, we didnt stop in bat country) and it proved Snapchats coming to play and here to stay. Given that the beam of light atop the Luxor is one of only two manmade objects that can be seen from outer space, its clear that Snapchat was not only hell-bent on raising awareness beyond Millennials at CES, but beyond mere earthlings. With noise being made about an ads API, its also clear that Snapchat is ready to fully monetize. All brands should be taking notice and become (more) active on Snapchat today, so that theyre ready to capitalize on (more) ad opportunities in the near future. advertisement advertisement 2. VR everywhere. Forget TV everywhere. Were entering an era of VR (virtual reality) everywhere, and it was everywhere at CES. From Facebook Oculus, with its $600 Rift device, to Google Cardboard, which goes for around $20, VR has become more advanced and more accessible all at the same time which may prove to be the tipping point for consumer adoption. What does this mean for social media? The next wave of social networks wont be sites or apps that let people interact via text, pics, and video, but rather through immersive multimedia. Maybe Ill even be able to get a Second Life out of this shirt! As with every new digital medium, itll start with porn and no surprise, there was plenty of that in Vegas before moving quickly into mainstream categories. The time is now for brands to explore VR and think through how they can add value to the ecosystem or at least grab consumer attention within it. 3. Flo Rida shilling for AOL. CES and Vegas, for that matter is always awash in celebs, and this year was no different. Nick Cannon gave a talk at C-Space on digital media, Lady Gaga played the Media Link Baller, er, Executive Party, the Jonas Brothers were getting Brandish with ad celeb Sean Finnegan, and Flo Rida headlined the AOL party at OMNIA. It all serves as a stark reminder of the power of influencers in the (social) media world. If you can get a plug from someone with a big following, it can have a massive impact for your brand. Of course, not all brands can afford to pay for celebrity endorsers or even one celebrity tweet but for those that can, its going down for real! 4. Ad Tech, Mar Tech, Media Tech, oh my! You couldnt take a step in Vegas during CES without tripping over an ad-tech (ad technology) vendor but dont let them hear you call them that! Indeed, ad tech has become a four-letter word in our industry, largely due to skepticism from the investor community. Cory Treffiletti tried to put a positive spin on it in his Online Spin column and hes got a good vantage point, having been part of an ad tech acquisition by one of the leading mar-tech (marketing technology) companies. Dave Morgan, however, thinks ad tech should be worried about the rise of mar tech. Im not sure were looking at things through the right lens, though. Whether its ad tech or mar tech, the key to success for these companies and the constituents they serve clients and investors, hopefully in that order! is whether their business model is SaaS (software as a service) or arbitrage. There are still way too many ad-tech vendors and many of them shelled out big bucks for a presence at CES that just provide a managed service or ad-network offering. These folks typically have a thin user interface on top of proprietary algorithms that manage ad placements. As a client, you dont have the ability to control all campaign parameters yourself, nor see exactly where your ads are running. These types of companies will not last much longer and betting on them from a client or investor standpoint is as foolish as splitting sixes against a ten in blackjack. Were starting to see a new category emerging between ad tech and mar tech with the data science and transparency that clients and investors need to succeed. Its called media tech, and it differentiates from ad tech by including content solutions, but doesnt get into full CRM like mar tech. The winners here will be those focused on SaaS for cross-screen media activation and analytics. And at the core of the leading platforms will be social media data. Whether its creating audience segments or measuring brand engagement, social data can help maximize media value for all players in the ecosystem. Indeed, my biggest takeaway from CES is that its never been a better time to be in social media so cheers to all of you insiders out there and, remember, always bet on Zuck. by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, January 20, 2016 AOL plans to take a minority equity stake in Taboola that will allow the two companies to collaborate on challenges that publishers face daily. Engineers from the two companies will work on solving a variety of issues such as those related to site visitors consuming content off the publisher's network. The two companies announced a partnership Wednesday aimed at delivering content and advertising for millions of site visitors across AOL.com, The Huffington Post, TechCrunch, Engadget, AutoBlog, AOL Mail and MapQuest in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada. "We expect that collaboration to happen across various teams from both companies," an AOL spokesperson told Search Marketing Daily. AOL has made investments in companies similar to Taboola. It acquired Gravity in 2014 to drive content personalization. advertisement advertisement "We're doubling down on that team and leveraging the platform as our personalization engine to connect AOL users with original and syndicated content," the spokesperson says. The Gravity team will join AOL's Core Platforms team, part of the organization directed by AOL Global CTO Bill Pence. The team will continue to focus on what the spokesperson called "passive" personalization and engagement, especially in video and products like go90. "These things almost always come down to either building, buying or partnering," says the AOL spokesperson. "We explored building out a larger scale monetization business, and then made the business decision to focus Gravitys personalization efforts on content." AOL partnered with Taboola to improve monetization because its engineers built a large-scale business and have a proven track record of returning value to publishers, the spokesperson says. A second language is a skill that many strive to attain. Some find it much easier than others; new research shows that measurable connectivity between specific brain areas might predict your level of success. Share on Pinterest The activity of your brain at rest can predict your success at learning a second language. Learning your native language as a child is tricky enough, but learning a second is a labor of love. Once we have left the golden years of youth, learning new linguistic skills can be a hard-won battle. Researchers at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure the normal resting activity of students brains before embarking on a French language course. The team, led by Xiaoqian Chai and Denise Klein, measured whether differences in connectivity predicted the success of the language students. The results, published in The Journal of Neuroscience this week, are a tantalizing peek into why some people seem to learn second languages with more ease than others. Resting-state connectivity Even at times when you are consciously thinking of nothing at all, the brain still presents measurable activity. It never truly sleeps. Distant areas of the brain send messages back and forth on a constant basis. These changes in activity across the brain leave signature signals that can be picked up by fMRI. Sections of the brain that are spatially distant from each other continuously interact. This is called functional resting-state connectivity. Predicting the acquisition of language learning Chai and Klein took fMRI scans of 15 adult English speakers before beginning an intensive 12-week French language course. The researchers tested the students verbal fluency and reading speed before and after the course. Verbal fluency was measured by asking the students to speak in French for 2 minutes and counting the number of unique words spoken. Reading speed was measured by counting the number of words spoken per minute from a given text. The team specifically investigated connections between the rest of the brain and two areas implicated in certain aspects of language; the anterior insula/frontal operculum (AI/FO), which is known to play a part in verbal fluency, and the visual word form area (VWFA), an area important for reading. The neuroscience of language Speech is a complex beast that requires a multitude of skills. Humans are so adept at the task that they rarely pause to consider just how wonderful our mastery of language truly is. An ability to decipher squiggles and symbols into words, and then those words into sentences and the sentences into meaning and intent is only a snippet of the job. From meanings and intent, we form words and opinions of our own; these words and opinions can then be converted into complex sounds. Speech involves the virtually miraculous control of more than 100 individual muscles working in perfect sync to articulate meanings into sentences. The sentences formed will conform to the specific syntax of our mother tongue in a format that will be understood in the particular context we find ourselves. The understanding and production of language is mind-blowing in the truest sense of the term. The AI/FO and VWFA are just two areas of the brain that appear to play significant roles in the generation and understanding of speech. As such, they made useful targets for the experiments that followed. In a breakthrough for regenerative medicine and tissue engineering, researchers have developed a tool that will help scientists directly transform human cells from one type to another. They see the breakthrough as bringing regenerative medicine a step closer to growing whole organs from patients own cells. Share on Pinterest The researchers say their predictive system allows experimental biologists to bypass the need to create stem cells in converting human cells from one type into another. In a Nature Genetics paper, the team led by scientists from the University of Bristol in the UK notes that the current method for directly reprogramming human cells from one type to another called cell transdifferentiation takes a long time because it relies on trial and error to find the correct transcription factors. Transcription factors are proteins that among other things help to regulate gene expression. All the cells of our body carry the same genes, but different genes are expressed and silenced in different cell types. To transdifferentiate one cell into another, you have to change the arrangement of which genes are switched on and which are switched off and for this, you need a unique set of transcription factors, depending on which genes you are dealing with. There is another way to create new cells of a certain type, and that is to go via pluripotent stem cells immature or precursor cells that have not yet decided which type of cell they are. But, as Julian Gough professor of bioinformatics at Bristol explains, their predictive system means you do not have to go down this path: The barrier to progress in this field is the very limited types of cells scientists are able to produce. Our system, Mogrify, is a bioinformatics resource that will allow experimental biologists to bypass the need to create stem cells. Pluripotent stem cells can be used to treat many different medical conditions and diseases. There are two types: embryonic and artificial. Embryonic stem cells are derived from embryos, and while they are the best quality stem cells, there are ethical concerns about their use plus, the process of harvesting them from embryos for therapeutic use is expensive and difficult. The first human artificial pluripotent stem cells were created nearly a decade ago by a team led by Shinya Yamanaka, of Kyoto University in Japan. It took them a long time using trial and error to find the four transcription factors that allowed them to reprogram fibroblasts from the skin of mice into pluripotent stem cells. Since then, scientists have only been able to discover further conversions for human cells a handful of times. A breakthrough in the transformation of human cells by an international team led by researchers at the University of Bristol could open the door to a new range of treatments for a variety of medical conditions. Their paper, published in Nature Genetics, demonstrates the creation of a system that predicts how to create any human cell type from another cell type directly, without the need for experimental trial and error. Julian Gough, professor of bioinformatics at the University of Bristol, said: 'The barrier to progress in this field is the very limited types of cells scientists are able to produce. Our system, Mogrify, is a bioinformatics resource that will allow experimental biologists to bypass the need to create stem cells.' Pluripotent stem cells - or cells that have not yet 'decided' what to become - can be used to treat many different medical conditions and diseases. The first human artificial pluripotent stem cells were created by Japanese researcher Shinya Yamanaka in 2007, through a process of educated trial and error that took a long time. In the nine years since, scientists have only been able to discover further conversions for human cells a handful of times. Professor Gough said: 'Mogrify predicts how to create any human cell type from any other cell type directly. With Professor Jose Polo at Monash University in Australia, we tested it on two new human cell conversions, and succeeded first time for both. The speed with which this was achieved suggests Mogrify will enable the creation of a great number of human cell types in the lab.' 'The ability to produce numerous types of human cells will lead directly to tissue therapies of all kinds, to treat conditions from arthritis to macular degeneration, to heart disease. The fuller understanding, at the molecular level of cell production leading on from this, may allow us to grow whole organs from somebody's own cells. 'This represents a significant breakthrough in regenerative medicine, and paves the way for life-changing medical advances within a few years from now, and the possibility in the longer term of improving the quality of longer lives, as well as making them longer.' To achieve this game-changing result, Professor Gough worked with then-PhD student Dr Owen Rackham (who now works at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore) for five years to develop a computational algorithm to predict the cellular factors for cell conversions. The algorithm was conceived from data collected as a part of the FANTOM international consortium (based at RIKEN, Japan) of which Professor Gough is a long time member. The algorithm, called Mogrify, has been made available online for other researchers and scientists, so that the field may advance rapidly. How much alcohol you drink and how hard it affects you are rooted in your DNA. Much studied in Asian populations, this study at the University of Valencia contributes conclusive evidence to an emerging Western scientific literature on the subject. A study carried out at the Universitat de Valencia (University of Valencia, UV) has underlined the genetic component to the consumption and effects of alcohol. Specifically, it points to a "lazy" variant of the Alcohol Dehydrogenase 1B (ADH1B) gene, known to regulate the activity of a key group of enzymes. When we drink, the alcohol rushes into our bloodsteam, where the alcohol dehydrogenase enzymes metabolise, or break down, the ethanol into acetaldehyde. If this happens quickly, lots of acetaldehyde accumulates in a short amount of time, which can lead to adverse effects such as flushing, nausea, and headaches. Conversely, if the ethanol is metabolised slowly, the alcohol remains intact in the blood for longer periods, prolonging its more pleasant, euphoric effects. The speed at which this process takes place, the metabolic rate of ethanol, is where the ADH1B gene comes in. A super efficient gene can make the effects of alcohol more unpleasant, while carriers of a "lazy" variant enjoy longer highs. This may influence the tendency of carriers of one or the other variant to drink more or less alcohol. Francesc Frances, at the Department of Legal and Forensic Medicine at the UV, summarises: "The main conclusion of this work is that this genetic polymorphism [the different variants of ADH1B carried by different people] seems to be linked to levels of alcohol consumption", adding that "this association is even more evident in the male population, perhaps due to the existence of fewer inhibiting social stereotypes". The link between the "lazy" variant of the ADH1B gene and a greater alcohol consumption has long been proven by science within Asian populations. This study is one of the first to offer conclusive proof of this also being the case in the West. Better treatment Although, as Frances points out, science is still in the early stages of understanding the influence of genes on certain behaviours, the findings of this study can be applied, for instance, in alcohol detox treatments. Knowing whether a patient has this "lazy" gene variant can help determine the relative weight of genetic predisposition and environmental factors in their drinking habits, indicating one course of treatment or another. On the longer term, this kind of study may have applications within legal and forensic medicine, given the strong association between crime and alcohol consumption. Advertisement A Central Role for Blimp1Scientist have known about the functions of plasma cells for quite a while. However, details of how the differentiation and function of these cells are regulated were still unknown. Now an important key to understanding the function of plasma cells has been discovered by a team headed by Meinrad Busslinger, Senior Scientist and Deputy Director at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna, Austria. In a five-year project, the team succeeded in deciphering the role of the protein Blimp1 as a central regulator of plasma cell development and function. In its current issue, the science journal Nature Immunology publishes the results of the team in Vienna as well as the work of Australian colleagues that complements the Viennese results.In detailed studies, scientists at the IMP identified all genes that are involved in the development of plasma cells in mice. First author Martina Minnich, whose PhD-thesis provided the groundwork for the publication, explains the results: "We found that more than 50 percent of these genes are regulated by Blimp1. Therefore, this factor must be of vital importance for plasma cells. Furthermore, we were able to show for the first time that Blimp1 not only switches genes off but can also switch other genes on. This is an important discovery for the understanding of plasma cell development.""Most of the essential functions of plasma cells are controlled by the factor Blimp1", Meinrad Busslinger summarizes the results. "It regulates their mobility and migration to the bone marrow. Blimp1 is also responsible for the enormous increase in size of the endoplasmic reticulum and the strong up-regulation of antibody production in plasma cells. Humoral immunity would not be possible without Blimp1."No Antibodies without Blimp1Even though Blimp1 is necessary for the development of plasma cells, mature plasma cells can survive without this factor. However, when Blimp1 is switched off, they become non-functional as they no longer produce antibodies. This unexpected finding is the result of work carried out at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI) in Melbourne, Australia. The study, which is published back-to-back with the Austrian paper, was led by Stephen Nutt, Head of the Division of Molecular Immunology at WEHI. The picture that emerges from the Australian study perfectly complements the results obtained at the IMP.Insight into the manifold functions of Blimp1 is not only important for our understanding of the immune system but may also be relevant for human medicine. Mutations in the Blimp1 gene can block the further differentiation of B-cells, which contributes to the formation of malign B cell tumors known as lymphomas. Moreover, quiescent plasma cells can sometimes switch to uncontrolled cell growth and thus turn into plasma cell tumors or multiple myelomas.Another aspect of the immune system that is highly relevant for medicine is the broad spectrum of autoimmune diseases. Conditions like systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) are an example for the serious damage to organs and tissue caused by misguided immune responses which generate plasma cells producing auto-reactive antibodies that turn against the body's own tissue.Source: Newswise In a January 7, 2016 interview with the official Egyptian Al-Ahram daily, Gregory III Laham, Patriarch of Antioch and All the East and leader of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, expressed concern over the fate of Christian communities in the Arab world. The Patriarch is a strong supporter of Christian-Muslim dialogue - he was one of the dignitaries who walked out on a speech by Senator Ted Cruz when the latter insisted that Israel was the best ally of Middle Eastern Christians.[1] In the interview, he states that Christians in the Middle East have always stood up for Muslims, but he also says that Christians today lack faith that Muslims are willing to accept them and cooperate with them in a positive manner. The following are excerpts from the interview:[2] Patriarch Gregory III Laham (image: alarabiya.net, September 12, 2014) "I Requested From [President Sisi] That Egypt Lead The Arab World Today" "When I met with President [Sisi of Egypt], it was a loving, beautiful, spiritual meeting with a great president. It was a spiritual meeting because we exchanged sacred verses, from the Koran and the Gospels. I belatedly expressed holiday wishes for the Prophet Muhammad's birthday, and I thanked [Sisi] for his holiday wishes to the Christians during these holidays [i.e. the Prophet's birthday and Christmas]... I requested from the president that Egypt lead the Arab world today, which is presently without a leader. It is Egypt that [today], as in the past, is suited for this role. It is the biggest Islamic country [in the Middle East] and the biggest Arab country, and also the country with the largest number of Christians... "Why Has The Arab League So Far Not Fulfilled Its Role In The Syrian Crisis?" "There is great division [in the Arab world], whether open or secret. If there were a [united] stand, then it would be possible to defeat ISIS, which is a global threat. In addition to the Arab stand there must be a global stand, and not like what we see now, with Russia in its orientation, America in its orientation, Saudi Arabia in its orientation - this strengthens ISIS... The solution is for the Arab League to present a map for peace in Syria, and not to wait for Europe or New York to be the one to present a solution. Why has the Arab League so far not fulfilled its role in the Syrian crisis?... "These days I pray, I visit all the churches, and I say: May we have trust in those who agreed in New York to fight terrorism and to resolve the Syrian issue - this despite my fears... I pray that there might be someone to preserve some good and to work for good in the region. We have had enough blood, tragedy, and destruction. Won't someone put the people's suffering ahead of their [own] interests? I call on the world to stop the killing and the blood[shed]. There are three million children without schools, twenty thousand schools have been destroyed. The world must take cognizance of its responsibility and work for peace... "There Is A Lack Of Trust That The Muslims Today Are Willing to Cooperate In A Positive Manner With The Christians And To Recognize The Existence Of The Other" "There is a great wound [in Muslim-Christian relations], and we must build mutual trust. These days I am in the midst of writing a letter to the presidents, kings, and emirs of the Arab and Muslim [countries] in order to say to them, in a letter from an Arab [Church] patriarch to the Muslims, that we love you. Sixty-five years ago, the Catholic Church issued an official document on interfaith relations, and in particular relations with the Islamic faith. This document has come to be [studied] in Christian schools and institutions, in the monasteries, and everywhere. I hope that some of the [Muslim] documents [on tolerance] that have been issued, whether from Amman or Al-Azhar, or recently from Syria, will also become widespread. To date we have still not seen [these ideas] translated on the ground, in the street, in the schools, or in the curricula. The Christians are apprehensive: we hear nice words, but we do not see this [translated] on the ground. [Whereas] we, the Arab Christians, always defend Islam and our Muslim brothers - no one defends Islam like the Arab Christians do... "The wound [of which I have spoken] is that there is a lack of trust that the Muslims today are willing to cooperate in a positive manner with the Christians and to recognize the existence of the other. Is it reasonable that some Muslims receive aid from the Red Cross and then scratch out [the cross] because it is a [religious] symbol? And there are some who receive aid from Christians, and when they are asked from whom they received it, say: We got it from some kuffar. "Back to the 'wound': I spoke of the destruction of 150 churches, 33 Christian villages, and the killing of a great number of Christians in northeastern Syria. I said that our remaining alive is a miracle in and of itself. "Do you think that when ISIS came it just targeted Christians? Do you think that it distinguishes between the blood of one Syrian and another? In truth ISIS... is not Islamic, and I deny that it has any attribute of faith. [Its] takfir extends to Muslims as well as Christians. When it kills Christians, its intention is to spread sectarian strife (fitna)... " Endnotes: On December 31, 2015, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree to update the National Security Strategy for the Russian Federation.[1] According to Russian legislation, the documents relating to strategic planning have to be updated once every six years. The previous National Security Strategy was adopted in May 2009. The document assumes that Russia will maintain its status as one of the world's leading nations. It confirms that Russia OChas demonstrated its ability to maintain its sovereignty, statehood and territorial integrity, as well as to defend its citizens abroad.OC The document mentions that there has also been an increase in Russia's role in resolving the most pressing international problems, in settling military conflicts, and in promoting legal standards in international affairs. According to the document, the prevention of military conflicts will be achieved by means of a nuclear deterrent policy.[2] Following are excerpts from Chapters 2 and 3 of the document, describing the Russian authorities' view on the country's place in the world and its national security priorities for the next six years.[3] Image: Iwm.at "Chapter 2: Russia In The Modern World" "7. State policy, which provides national security and socio-economic development of the Russian Federation, also facilitates the implementation of strategic national priorities as well as the defense of national interests. A stable sustainable foundation has already been created which strengthens the Russian Federation's economic, political, military and moral potential, and which increases Russia's role in the polycentric world that is now taking shape. "8. OCThe Russian Federation's role in resolving the most important international problems, in the settling of military conflicts, and in providing strategic stability and the rule of international law has increased. "9. The Russian economy demonstrates the ability to maintain and to strengthen its potential in the face of international economic instability and restrictive economic measures against the Russian Federation, which have been introduced by some countries. "10. There are positive trends in providing measures to improve the health of the Russian population. Natural population growth and the average life span have increased. [...] "12. Russia's growing strength has been accompanied by new threats to its national security... The Russian Federation's independent domestic and foreign policies are discouraged by the U.S.A. and its allies, who want to maintain their dominant role in international affairs. Their containment policies toward Russia imply political, economic, military and public diplomacy pressure. "13. As the new multipolar world model takes shape, it is accompanied by the growth of global and regional instability... Competition between different countries encompasses the values and models of social development, as well as human, scientific and technological potential. Special importance is given to leadership in the development of the world's oceans and Arctic resources. To reach international prominence, countries must utilize the full spectrum of political, financial, economic and informational instruments. Special security services are greatly increasing their involvement in this process. "14. OCThe acceleration in development of offensive weaponry and its modernization and deployment weakens global security as well as international arms control agreements. Uniform security principles are no longer compatible with conditions in the Euro-Atlantic, Euro-Asian and Asia-Pacific regions. Militarization and armament build-ups are moving forward in the regions which neighbor Russia. "15. Russian national security is threatened by the growing potential of the NATO force, its violation of the norms of international law on a global scale,OC further expansion of the [NATO] alliance, and its approach towards Russian borders. Opportunities to maintain global and regional stability are dramatically decreasing while U.S. anti-missile defense systems are deployed in Europe, Asia Pacific and the Middle East. These moves will bring about the realization of the OCGlobal StrikeOC concept, that is, the deployment of highly precise non-nuclear arms systems, including space systems. [...] "17. OCU.S. and European support for the anti-constitutional coup in the Ukraine has led to a deep split in Ukrainian society and to armed conflict. In the long run, the growth of Ukrainian nationalistic, ultra-right wing ideology, the maintaining of Russia's image as the enemy, and a deep social and economic crisis will make the Ukraine a pocket of instability in Europe, with borders that are closed to Russia. [...] "19. There is a risk of increasing the number of countries possessing nuclear armaments, and of the dissemination and utilizing of chemical weapons... A network of U.S. military biological labs is expanding in the countries neighboring Russia. "20. The physical safeguarding of dangerous objects and materials is becoming more critical, especially in politically unstable countries. This fact, along with the uncontrolled dissemination of regular weapons, makes it easier for terrorists to acquire all these weapons. "21. Increasing confrontation in the global information area is having a growing influence on the global environment. This is caused by the frenzy of certain countries to use information and communication technologies to realize their geopolitical goals [while] manipulating collective consciousness and falsifying history. "22. There is evidence of the increasing influence of political factors on economics. Certain countries tend to use economic methods, including financial, trading, investing and technological policies, to realize their geopolitical goals. All these factors weaken the stability of the international economic relations system. Structural imbalances in the world economy and financial system, growing sovereign debts, and volatility in energy markets are all linked to a high probability of crises in the global economy... [...] "25. ...Regional trading and economic agreements have become some of the most important instruments to prevent such crises. Interest in the use of regional currencies seems to be increasing. "26. To prevent national security threats, the Russian Federation concentrates on strengthening the internal and national unity of its society, providing social stability, religious tolerance and economic modernization, and improving its defensive capability. "27. To defend its national interests, Russia pursues an open, rational and pragmatic foreign policy, avoiding costly confrontations (including a new arms race). "28. The Russian Federation bases its foreign relations on the principles of international law, providing security to all countries reliably and equally, promoting mutual respect among all nations, and enabling them to maintain their cultures, traditions and interests. Russia is interested in the development of mutually beneficial and equitable trade and economic cooperation with other countries, and is a responsible party in the multilateral trading system... "29. In regards to international security, Russia remains committed to first use all political and legal instruments, diplomacy and peace-making mechanisms. Armed force becomes possible only when all nonviolent measures have proven ineffective." "Chapter 3: National Interests And Strategic National Priorities" "30. Long-term national interests include: OCo Strengthening the country's defense; firming up the constitutional system; sovereignty and independence; state and territorial integrity of the Russian Federation. OCo Maintaining national consensus; political and social stability; development of democratic institutions; enhancement of the interaction between the state and civil society. OCo Improving living standards; promoting health; providing for the stable demographic growth of the country. OCo Preserving and developing cultural, moral, and traditional Russian spiritual values. OCo Improving of the competitiveness of the national economy. OCo Keeping the status of the Russian Federation as one of the dominant powers, based on strategic stability and mutually beneficial partnership relations in a polycentric world framework. "31. Realizing national interests depends upon the realization of the following national priorities: OCo Defense; OCo State and social security; OCo Improving living standards for Russian citizens; OCo Economic growth; OCo Science, technology, education; OCo Healthcare; OCo Culture; OCo Preserving ecological systems and rational environmental management; OCo Strategic stability and equitable strategic partnerships." Endnotes: It must have been a proud moment for her parents when she was posthumously honoured with the Ashok Chakra in 1987, but her absence in their lives would have hurt more than ever. The void she left in their lives must have made their hearts bleed. They lost a daughter, a loss that could never be replaced. Fifth September, 1986, was the day Neerja Bhanot, a model and a flight attendant, was killed in the Pan-Am-Flight-73-hijack and its a story India shall never forget. Neerja would talk about the training that Pan Am used to give, including what to do in case of a hijack. Once, my mother told her: Agar aisa kuch hua, you just run away. Neerja replied: Mummy, tumhari jaisi maa hongi to is desh ka kya hoga? Mar jaoongi lekin bhagoongi nahin recalled Aneesh Bhanot, Neerjas brother in an interview. Neerja Bhanot lived up to her promise. She fought to save lives till her last breath. Two days later, she would have turned 23. Heres the story of how Neerja Bhanot, an ordinary 23-year-old girl, managed to save 360 lives on a hijacked flight and became the youngest recipient of Ashok Chakra, Indias highest peacetime military decoration award for valor, courageous action or self-sacrifice away from the battlefield. Facebook The day was 5th September 1986. The Pan Am Flight 73 was to depart from Karachi and fly to New York via Frakfurt. Neerja Bhanot was on board as the senior flight purser on Pan Am Flight 73 on that unfateful day. Four armed terrorists dressed as Karachi airport security guards boarded the aircraft at Jinnah International Airport in Karachi. The plane was hijacked. When Neerja Bhanot tried to alert the cockpit crew, the terrorist held her by her ponytail. She still managed to shout out a warning through a secret code. The cockpit crew escaped at once, as per their mandate, so the aircraft couldnt be flown forcibly. The terrorists threatened to shoot Rajesh Kumar, a passenger on the flight, if the cockpit crew wasnt brought back to the aircraft in the next 15 minutes. Rajesh was shot dead, and his body thrown out of the plane. The cockpit crew was gone and the only person who could have saved the day was Neerja. She took charge and fought on, not for herself but for the 360 people trapped inside the aircraft. The terrorists held the cabin crew at gunpoint and ordered them to collect passports of the passengers. Knowing theyd shoot the Americans among them, Neerja swiftly hid their passports, even disposed some off the rubbish chute. There were 41 Americans on board, only two died. Seventeen hours later, the terrorists opened fire. They were armed with assault rifles, pistols, grenades, and plastic explosive belts. Neerja Bhanot put aside all fears and took charge. She used her presence of mind to get to the emergency exit. No, she didnt flee. She couldnt. She was a patriot, she couldnt see innocent men, women and children bleed at the hands of these terrorists. She opened the emergency exit and helped the passengers evacuate the aircraft. She was shot to death while protecting three children. She took a bullet to protect other people. She died fighting terrorism. She gave up her life shielding humanity. She lived a brave life, and died a hero. Twenty people died in that hijack. Neerja died so that 360 others could live. Facebook Our first reaction to the news was of shock, despair and some anger. In those days, we only had Doordarshan, so information was difficult to get. My mother, however, was sure she would not come back. Her brother recalled that horrifying, unfateful day his family may never be able to forget. Neerja was the laado of the family, the youngest and most pampered. My parents had wished for her, and in a news article after her death, my father had mentioned how, when she was born on September 7, 1962, the maternity ward matron here at Chandigarh hospital rang up to inform, its a girl. To her surprise, he gave her double thanks, for Neerja was a prayer answered after two sons, 30 years later, this memory shared by her brother still makes our eyes moist. Neerja was the kind of braveheart we only hear about in stories. Your sacrifice did not go to waste, Neerja. The nation will always remember you, as the brave young girl who punched terrorism in the face and emerged as a hero for generations to come. Trying to keep both this and my new sciam blog going has been a bit of a strain. I've decided therefore that from now on all my science writing will be hos... Chipotle Mexican Grill will close all of its U.S. stores for part of the day Feb. 8 while its employees attend a national team meeting, a company spokesman said Friday. The meeting will discuss food-safety changes, allow employees to ask questions and thank them for their hard work during this difficult time, Chipotle spokesman Chris Arnold said in an email. Stores will open at 3 p.m. local time that day, he said. As of September, Chipotle has 1,906 restaurants worldwide, 1,895 of which are in the U.S. The Denver-based burrito chain has struggled to attract customers after E. coli outbreaks were linked to the companys restaurants. Chipotles December sales were down 30 percent, according to a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In November, Chipotle temporarily closed 43 restaurants in Washington and Oregon after 22 E. coli cases were linked to its eateries. Those locations have since reopened. A month later, 141 Boston College students were reported to have contracted norovirus after eating at a Chipotle in Brighton, Mass. The chain specifically mentioned this incident in an SEC filing last week, saying that it worsened the adverse financial and operating impacts from the E. coli outbreaks. Chipotle also said it was served with a federal grand jury subpoena in early December in connection with a criminal investigation being conducted by the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Central District of California in conjunction with the U.S. Food and Drug Administrations Office of Criminal Investigations. The company said it was asked to produce a broad range of documents related to a norovirus outbreak in August at a Simi Valley Chipotle restaurant. Chipotle has said it will fully cooperate in the investigation. The Deputy Foreign Minister for International Economic Relations, Dimitris Mardas, met at the Foreign Ministry today with the Jordanian Ambassador to Greece, Fawwaz Al-Eitan. The discussion, which took place in an excellent atmosphere, focused on issues of common interest, with emphasis on the further expansion and strengthening of bilateral cooperation between the two countries. The collocutors referred to the recent political consultations and the planning for the next meeting of the Greek-Jordanian Joint Interministerial Committee, which will take place in Athens within the current year. With regard to business cooperation, Mr. Mardas stated that the Greek sides priority is expansion of trade transactions, stressing the dynamic in the Greek construction sector and in agro-technology and irrigation systems. The Jordanian Ambassador referred to the potential for scientific and technological cooperation on the level of universities, as well as to potential synergies in the energy sector. In the spirit of the platform statements of Deputy Foreign Minister Dimitris Mardas, a list of delicatessens in 70 countries was posted today on the Foreign Ministrys economic diplomacy portal, AGORA. The data were collected from the Greek Missions abroad (Economic and Commercial Affairs Offices, Embassies and Consulates). The purpose of the endeavor is to inform Greek food and beverage producers and exporters with regard to sales points abroad where they can promote their products. Given the excellent quality of Greek food and beverages, and the increasing demand for these abroad, delicatessens are emerging as an ideal channel for promoting high-quality products and, as such, are high among the preferences of consumers particularly consumers belonging to the highest income groups. Our ultimate goal is for Greek products of high gastronomical and nutritional value (organically produced products, PDO & PDI products) to become familiar and accepted throughout the world. The Foreign Ministry through its extensive network of missions abroad, and mainly the Economic and Commercial Affairs Offices will make every effort in this direction. For more information, interested parties may address themselves to our Missions in countries of their interest. N. KOTZIAS: I would like to thank the President of the House of Representatives of the Republic of Cyprus, who was so kind as to brief me on the developments in the Cyprus issue, on the course of Greek-Cypriot relations, on the activities of Cyprus in the European Union and globally, particularly in the field of Interparliamentary contacts and relations. The important role played by the current President of the Cypriot House of Representatives both in the domestic developments of Cyprus and in the overall international relations developed by the institutional system of Cyprus is well known in Greece. I would like to thank him once again and take this opportunity to address a warm welcome of solidarity with and support for the Cypriot people, and I would like to underscore that the Greek government supports a substantial and just settlement of the Cyprus issue, which hinges on the withdrawal of Turkeys occupation forces and the resolution of the guarantees system. Cyprus can live in real security within the European Union, within the UN, having its own system of security, which will safeguard both communities and the island itself in the international system. I thank the President very much for his visit and the interesting conversation we had. Y. OMIROU: I would like to express my great pleasure at todays meeting with the Foreign Minister of Greece, Nikos Kotzias. At the same time, I would like to convey to him the great trust and love of Cypriot Hellenism. N. KOTZIAS: Thank you very much, Mr. President. You honor me. Y. OMIROU: It is no exaggeration to say that the Greek government, and, naturally, par excellence, the competent Foreign Minister, has consolidated in the international community the right perception: that the solution of the Cyprus problem cannot exist without the abolition of the anachronism constituted by the so-called guarantees of 1960. No country, apart from Cyprus, following the Second World War, has been subject to guarantees and guarantors. Second, that the solution of the Cyprus problem means, presupposes, withdrawal of the occupation forces. These are the quintessence of the Cyprus problem; this is what we mean when we say, it is a problem of invasion and occupation. It is the presence of the troops and it is the framework of guardianship we inherited from 1960. Of course, the Minister is fully up to date on the course of the negotiations, in which, in my opinion, there is a danger of an excessive optimism that is being cultivated by certain circles, abroad, of course, internationally European Union, United States. We need to be careful, because they need to turn to the Turkish side: Instead of overly optimistic statements, they need to work to persuade Turkey to abandon, at long last, its longstanding intransigence on the Cyprus issue. Again, my warm thanks to the Minister. N. KOTZIAS: As I said the day before yesterday, in Brussels, the Cyprus issue is not a problem of statements, beautiful statements. It is a matter of hard work, to the benefit of the people of Cyprus. Y. OMIROU: Thats very right. JOURNALIST: Mr. Minister, would you like to tell us something about the processes under way and the talks at Davos during these days? N. KOTZIAS: I think those carrying out the talks will speak, at Davos itself. I think that Davos is a good opportunity for all of the governments and players to have meetings with those on whom the economic course of Europe and the global system for protection of the environment and a number of local crises and problems depend. Thank you. Via Diario de Pernambuco, a startling report: Casos de dengue crescem 40% no estado. [Dengue cases grow 40% in state] But it's a lot more than that. The Google translation, edited, and then a comment: Within a week, 70 new cases of microcephaly were registered in Pernambuco. The growth in the index is accompanied by another worrisome number. Between the 3rd and 9th of January, 923 cases of dengue were reported. The number represents an increase of 40.92% over the same period last year. Between August 1, 2015 and January 16, microcephaly statistics already reached 1,306 notifications. Of this total, 506 (38.7%) follow the parameters of the World Health Organization (WHO), which considers babies with head circumference equal to or less than 32 centimeters. In all, 123 cases were confirmed, twenty more than in the last report (released January 12th), and 106 were disposed of - taking into account the results of imaging studies of babies. In cases of microcephaly, 68.2% of notifications involved girls. They were recorded in 112 cities of Pernambuco state. According to the state Department of Health, there have been five cases of stillbirths and four that died soon after birth. To date, no cases officially had microcephaly as the underlying cause of death. Two of the children were from Recife, three from Ipojuca, and one each in Sao Lourenco, Bodoco, Bom Jardim and Petrolina. Suspect cases - taking account of pregnant women with rashes on the skin - have already been realized in 69 municipalities in 548 pregnant. Six women have had confirmation of intrauterine microcephaly. Dengue The State Department of Health reported that, between the 3rd and 9th of January, 923 cases of dengue were reported, with 61 confirmations in 86 cities. The number represents an increase of 40.92% over the same period in 2015 when 655 suspected cases were reported. Of these, 269 have already been confirmed. Three deaths are being investigated. Municipalities with more incidence (considering the number of cases per 100 000 inhabitants) in the last eight weeks were Sanharo (608), Joao Alfredo (764), Tuperatama (157), Brejo da Madre de Deus (937), Potion (212) Sheds (375), Itaquitinga (304), Cumaru (225), Nazare da Mata (397) and Belo Jardim (907). Chikungunya In the same period, between 3 and January 9, 255 suspected cases of chikungunya were reported in 48 municipalities. Of these, eight have been confirmed and 38 discarded. In the last year 2,605 suspected cases of chikungunya have been reported, with 450 confirmed cases and 589 discarded. Zika Between the 3rd and 9th of January, 200 suspected cases of Zika were reported. In 2015, from the start of compulsory notification of Zika (December 10) 1,386 cases of the disease have been reported. In 2015, 14 were confirmed cases of Zika in the municipalities of Olinda (3), Recife (8), Jaboatao dos Guararapes (1), Frei Miguelinho (1) and Goias (1). Also 12 cases were discarded. Of those discarded, 11 tested positive for dengue. SANILAC COUNTY The Sanilac Drug Task Force has reported three separate drug busts within the county in the past 10 days. On Jan. 9, the task force executed a search warrant at a residence in the 250 block of Croswell Road in Croswell. Seized during the search were packets of pre-packaged field-tested cocaine, two long guns, a safe, drug paraphernalia and over $800 in cash. As a result, a 71-year-old male resident was arrested and transported to the Sanilac County Sheriffs Corrections Division and released pending lab analysis of the seized drugs. Investigators were assisted by the Croswell Police Department and the Sanilac County Sheriffs Uniform Service. Last week, on Jan. 11, the task force assisted the Sandusky Police Department on a suspected heroin overdose death at an apartment located on South Morse Street in Sandusky. Investigators obtained a search warrant and recovered suspected heroin, prescription medications, marijuana and other drug paraphernalia that may be tied to the death of a 36-year-old Deckerville man. The apartment where the death occurred was rented by a 47-year-old male, who was arrested and charged with possession of heroin and maintaining a drug house. The death investigation is ongoing. On Jan. Saturday, the task force was assisted by the Sanilac County Sheriffs Uniform Services and the St. Clair County Sheriffs K-9, and made a traffic stop and seizure of field-tested cocaine, heroin and marijuana in Marion Township. In addition to the seized drugs, officials found a 2006 SUV and more than $750 in cash. A requested search warrant was then issued, and additional illegal controlled substances were found in the 7100 block of Maplegrove Road in Palms. The search resulted in the seizure of marijuana, plants, illegal prescription pills, suspected ecstasy, cocaine and packaging materials supporting drug sales, along with over $1,500 in cash. The 43-year-old driver and occupant of the residence was transported to the Sanilac County Sheriffs Corrections Division for booking and was released pending lab analysis of the seized drugs. The task force reported that no one has been arraigned yet on the charges. LAS VEGAS -- Israeli Weapons Industries has added a number of features to its 5.56mm Tavor rifle to appeal to American shooters. The Tavors bull-pup design, with its magazine well and operating system seated behind the pistol grip has never been embraced by western shooters who prefer the AR15 design. IWI officials cant change the basic design, but the new X95 features significant changes such as a traditional trigger guard instead of the standard Tavor guard which protects the whole hand but tends to leave the trigger vulnerable. Anything people have complained about we have tried to address it, Rebecca McCoy, commercial sales representative for IWI, said Monday at SHOT Show's range day. The shooter can also change back to the standard Tavor guard in a few simple steps, McCoy said. IWI has also moved the magazine release slightly forward and above the trigger, so its more like an AR15-style release, McCoy said. There is also more real-estate on the forward grip for lights and other accessories, she said. We put modular rails all around here; youve got your Picatinny rails on the top and youve also got rails on the side and rails on the bottom, McCoy said. The X95 is equipped with quick-release rail covers. The charging handle is now moved back toward the buttstock, so its closer into the body. The gun also has a more streamedlined bolt release, flip-up iron sights and a six-pound trigger versus the 10-12 pound trigger on the standard Tavor, she said. --Matthew Can be reached at matthew.cox@military.com. Pernambuco, with 1,306 suspected cases, 33% of the total, is the one with the largest number of reports. Next are Paraiba, with 665 cases, Bahia, with 496 and Ceara, with 216. Rio Grande do Norte has 188 cases. A new directive from Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert Neller announces dramatic changes to the service set to take place by the end of next year. Neller, who took command of the Corps in September, released a 13-page "fragmentation order" Tuesday that builds on guidance set forth by his predecessor, Gen. Joseph Dunford, but also includes a handful of brand-new initiatives. Among these: a process that will offer more promotion looks for lance corporals and corporals, the installation of company-level unit fitness instructors to create stronger Marines, and an expansion of Marine Corps cyber, electronic warfare and information operations career fields. In his FRAGO, titled "advance to contact," Neller said the order builds on feedback he has received from Marines, sailors and support staff across the fleet. While not formally at war, Neller said, the Marine Corps finds itself facing a high operational tempo and constant global threats not consistent with an interwar period. The Corps, he said, must stay ready and become more modern while continuing a host of ongoing operations. "This will require pragmatic institutional choices and a clear-eyed vision of where we intend to be in 10-20 years," Neller wrote. Structure changes and promotions The commandant promised to carry on Dunford's work of reviewing total Marine Corps force structure, setting a fall 2017 deadline to complete a comprehensive review that emphasizes the Marine air-ground task force, air elements, logistics, and support units to ensure that the service has the right number of jobs and proper rank structure in each field to take on future challenges. Neller said the Corps would make structure changes as necessary to meet the requirements of the future force, and suggested the service would be willing to pare down some units significantly in order to become more modern and capable. "We will be willing to accept risk in the size and organization of our units in order to create the capabilities we need for the future," he wrote. Neller also announced plans to review Marine Corps promotion processes, the systems by which personnel are assigned, and retention rates past the first and second terms of service "in order to reward high performing Marines." This effort appears to build on a Dunford initiative that provided fast-track promotions to specially selected infantry squad leaders in order to resource top talent and fill manning gaps in the infantry community. But the Neller effort goes further. The Marine Corps, he said, would implement a time-in-grade promotion review process at the battalion and squadron level for lance corporals and corporals to ensure quality Marines were evaluated for promotion in a timely manner. Currently, both lance corporals and corporals are required to serve eight months in their rank before becoming eligible for promotion, but numerous other factors affect their promotability. They must also reach a minimum composite or "cutting score" that is determined by the Marine Corps' manpower needs as well as the individual Marine's job performance and professional education. It's not clear if Neller's directive signals a move away from the cutting score system, or just a guaranteed promotion look after a designated time-in-grade threshold. Both the manpower review and the promotion changes, he said, would be completed by April. The Marines' structure review will also include an evaluation of waterfront and staff assignments, to ensure that the Corps' structure is best suited to "meet the needs of our evolving relationship with the Navy." A staff realignment to that end is due to be completed by the end of 2016. Modernized warfare In a nod to the changing nature of warfare, Neller said the Marine Corps would beef up its information operations, cyber and electronic warfare capability within the three Marine expeditionary forces and within the Marine operational forces. This move signals coming opportunities and incentives for Marines in all three job fields in the next two years; according to the FRAGO, this change will be completed by the end of fiscal 2017. "We will look at advances in technology that create opportunities to adjust table of organization structure spaces that more appropriately meet current and future force operational requirements," Neller wrote. To this end, the Marine Corps will also develop more training, simulation and experimentation opportunities, particularly those that emphasize computers and intelligence; night operations; operations in a nuclear, biological and chemical environment; and the ability to make rapid decisions in dynamic and uncertain situations, Neller said. The focus of these training efforts will be the junior leaders in the enlisted and officer ranks. "We will emphasize decentralizing authority and placing accountability down to the lowest level of leadership -- to train as we will fight," he wrote. The document also revealed plans to design an "experimentation roadmap" that will put cutting-edge and emerging technology to the test during scheduled exercises and provide more virtual training opportunities in conjunction with traditional MAGTF training. "Enabled by technology, we will increase the amount of training each unit can accomplish -- to 'increase the reps' in mentally and physically stressing environments for all elements of the MAGTF before they do so on the battlefield," Neller wrote. The Marine Corps also plans to pursue technologies such as unmanned aerial systems, or drones, robotics and artificial intelligence, and autonomous technologies that can aid operations, according to the FRAGO. New training for fitness In a dramatic move, Neller announced the creation of a company-level force fitness instructor program set to take effect by the end of 2017. Those instructors, he wrote, will work with unit commanders to develop a physical training program for the company, battery or squadron to which they are attached. This development is likely linked to the Marine Corps' development of gender-neutral physical standards for ground combat jobs, and the opening of previously restricted military occupational specialties to women no later than April of this year. Multiple Marine officials involved with research efforts to determine the impact of opening the infantry to women said unit fitness trainers might help to bring male and female Marines to their physical peak and make them better-equipped for combat jobs and less prone to injury. More training, operations with special operations forces As the Marine Corps continues to operate globally, the document announces plans to develop an "integration model" with special operations forces by the end of this fiscal year. This builds on Dunford's guidance and recent efforts to do more with the SOF community, including a pilot program that deployed six-man SOF liaison teams with Marine expeditionary units that debuted last year. Neller emphasized reducing unnecessary redundancy while deploying crisis response forces and working to streamline Marine Corps efforts with SOF operations. "Since Marines and SOF will remain forward deployed, we must create true integration models to maximize the capabilities of the full sea-based MAGTF, including command and control, alongside our SOF partners," he wrote. Concluding the FRAGO, Neller emphasized his wish to cut through Marine Corps bureaucracy and promote creative leadership and a different approach to changing problems and challenges. "As we move forward, we will no doubt make mistakes. This is to be expected from aggressive but calculated actions," he wrote. "As long as we do so with resolve and learn from our actions, we will make progress. Marines have a bias for action. We will set measures of effectiveness and conduct continual assessment in order to adjust our course." -- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@monster.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HopeSeck. LAS VEGAS -- CMMG Inc. updated its Mk47 Mutant line that blends AR15 and AK47 designs with shorter barrels and a new Krink muzzle device designed to reduce recoil and redirect blast. The Fayette, Missouri-based arms maker, said its Mutant is now available with 8-inch, 10-inch and 13-inch barrels -- and with a new Krink muzzle device. The Mk47 AKS13 was among the products on display Monday at a nearby range as part of SHOT Show, the nation's largest small arms exposition expected to draw some 60,000 attendees at a sprawling conference center here in the city. The 7.4-pound rifle retails for $1,749.95 and includes the device pinned and welded to a 13-inch barrel to meet the 16-inch legal requirement, according to the company. The muzzle made the rifle noticeably quieter with far less rearward blast. Tim Zick, a spokesman for the company, said the company is riding high after last year's unveiling of the Mutant, which he said remains popular with hobbyists, enthusiasts and hog-hunters who like to shoot cheap surplus 7.62x39mm ammunition from large magazines. "The exposure we've gotten has really helped us out and really elevated the brand," he said during an interview with Military.com. "We're excited about the new short barrel models that we have out here today with the Krink muzzle device." Zick said the company plans to unveil more versions of the Mutant later this year. --Brendan McGarry can be reached at brendan.mcgarry@military.com. Follow him on Twitter at @Brendan_McGarry. Air Force Gets Its Own Combat Dive Badge After Using the Navy's for Years Air Force officials said there is a notable distinction between Navy divers and their divers, which was a key reason for... The Taliban has taken over "some" districts in Afghanistan's flashpoint Helmand province as Afghanistan National Army (ANA) units struggle against their own corrupt leadership and desertions in the ranks, a U.S. military spokesman in Kabul said Tuesday. The fight in Helmand, center of the poppy and heroin trade and a main source of funding for the Taliban, has resulted in the loss of several areas to the enemy but Army Brig. Gen. Wilson A. Shoffner repeatedly declined to name them. When asked several times where the lost districts were, Shoffner said it was "hard to specify exactly how many at any given time. But there are some that -- where the Taliban have control." "Again, those districts that we're talking about, things change rapidly. And I'll leave it that they are contested. It's difficult to pin down an exact number that are under Taliban control at any given time. They do go back and forth," Shoffner said. Earlier, Shoffner had been specific in discussing Afghanistan as a whole. "Afghanistan has 404 districts in total. We assess that right now, the Taliban have control of only nine of those districts. We assess they have influence in about 17 others." In Helmand, "the area in and around Marjah remains a contested area, and that's as far as I'll go there," said Shoffner, deputy chief of communications for NATO's Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan and main spokesman for Army Gen. John Campbell, the U.S. Forces-Afghanistan commander. Marjah in central Helmand was the focal point of the U.S. Marine offensive in 2010 that took back control of the area from the Taliban. Marjah was also the scene earlier this month of the battle in which Army Staff Sgt. Matthew Q. McClintock was killed as a U.S. Special Forces team went to the aid of Afghan forces. In a video briefing to the Pentagon from Kabul, Shoffner said efforts to counter the Taliban's offensive in Helmand, which began last October, have been hampered by the poor morale and leadership of the ANA's 215th Corps, the main unit in the province. "I can tell you that in the 215th Corps, the corps commander has been switched out, two of the brigade commanders in the 215th Corps have been changed out, as have several members, key members, of the staff," Shoffner said. As for the previous leaders of the 215th Corps, Shoffner said "we had some individuals who were corrupt" in how they handled pay for the troops and equipment. In discussing the 215th Corps, Shoffner ran through a litany of organizational, equipment and leadership problems that U.S. advisers have been attempting to address within the ANA since the U.S. entered Afghanistan in force in late 2001. In the 215th Corps, "they had problems with equipment maintenance. They had problems with units that had been attrited. They had problems with poor leadership. What we have found when units have an issue with attrition, it typically is traced back to poor leadership," Shoffner said. Overall, the ANA was short about 25,000 troops because of desertions, he said. "These are important changes, and those new leaders are still going through the process of establishing themselves," Shoffner said of the 215th Corps. Overall in 2015, the first year in which the ANA was on its own in the fight against the Taliban, the ANA had "mixed results" in its operations, Shoffner said. The ANA did "fairly well" in operations that were planned beforehand, but had difficulty in responding quickly to a crisis, he said. -- Richard Sisk can be reached at richard.sisk@military.com. Just weeks after previously closed military ground combat and special operations jobs were declared open to women, the Marine Corps' special operations command has had its first female applicants. Maj. Gen. Joseph Osterman, commanding general of MARSOC, told Military.com the command has already received several requests from female Marines to enter the assessment and selection pipeline to become a critical skills operator. While Osterman could not specify how many women had applied, he said the first female applicant surfaced only days after the Jan. 4 deadline Defense Secretary Ash Carter set for new jobs to open. "The very first week of January we had one female applicant on the West Coast," Osterman said. "Unfortunately, there was something in the prerequisite stuff she didn't have, a [general technical] score or something. It was, 'get re-tested and come on back,' that kind of thing." Osterman said MARSOC is actively soliciting and recruiting qualified female Marines to join the command's ranks. The command does not have, as Osterman put it, a "street to fleet" recruiting program; rather, it recruits from within the ranks of the Marine Corps. To qualify for MARSOC critical skills operator assessment and selection, a Marine must be a seasoned corporal or a sergeant, or a first lieutenant or captain. The Marine must also have a minimum GT score of 105 and a minimum physical fitness test score of 225 out of 300, and be able to pass a command swim assessment and meet medical screening criteria. "We've actively identified all the females in the Marine Corps writ large who meet all the prerequisites just like with our normal screening teams," Osterman said. "We've notified or contacted every one of them and let them know, 'it's open, you're eligible.'" MARSOC submitted its broad implementation plan to the Secretary of Defense at the beginning of January after receiving input from the Marine Corps and U.S. Special Operations Command, Osterman said. In terms of training and job skills, he said, the command does have an advantage over the Marine Corps in that there were already clear gender-neutral physical standards in place for critical skills operators, while the Corps has only recently created such standards for infantry jobs. MARSOC's training pipeline is notoriously grueling. After a three-week initial assessment and selection period that tests physical fitness and a range of other aptitudes, Marines enter a second, 19-day assessment and selection training phase. Applicants who make it through both A&S phases can then begin a nine-month individual training course that covers survival, evasion, resistance and escape [SERE], special reconnaissance, close urban combat, irregular warfare and many other skill sets. Osterman said Wednesday that 40 percent of Marines who enter the MARSOC pipeline go on to become critical skills operators. "When [Marines] go into assessment and screening, it's a very holistic psychological profile. It's swim, it's physical fitness, but we don't even count the PFT as part of the evaluation. It's much more comprehensive than that," Osterman said. "It's a pretty sophisticated standardization system which is nice in that, again, we already had this and it's gender-neutral already." MARSOC is also making plans to prepare its leadership for the advent of female trainees and operators, Osterman said. A December study by the Rand Corporation found that 85 percent of 7,600 surveyed operators within all of SOCOM opposed the idea of serving alongside female counterparts. Many cited fears that female operators would harm combat effectiveness and provide a distraction down range. Acknowledging the study, Osterman said he planned to hold a town hall meeting for MARSOC leadership to discuss the implementation of Carter's gender integration mandate and to discuss thoughts and concerns. "The tone and tenor from my perspective is, the concern was mostly about standards," Osterman said of the Rand report. "Our standards are as they've always been and we're not changing them." On a personal note, Osterman said he could see benefits to having female operators downrange. "There are things that women can do, as I've seen many times in Afghanistan and Iraq, where there's a lot of value added in the combined arms kind of approach," he said. -- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@monster.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HopeSeck. Sarah Palin publicly addressed her son Track's arrest on domestic violence charges during her first post-endorsement appearance Wednesday on the campaign trail for Donald Trump, appearing to link his alleged behavior to post-traumatic stress disorder -- even using it to criticize President Obama's veteran policies. Speaking to the pro-Trump crowd in Tulsa, Okla., Palin referred to her son's case as the "elephant in the room." After telling the crowd they deserved a commander-in-chief who "will let [military members] do their job and go kick ISIS' ass" and not "leave our wounded warriors behind," the former Alaska governor asked if she could "get a little bit personal." "I guess it's kind of the elephant in the room because my own family going through what we're going through today, with my son, a combat vet having served in the striker brigade fighting for you all, America, in the war zone," she said. "But my son, like so many others, they come back a bit different. They come back hardened. They come back wondering if there is that respect for what it is that their fellow soldiers and airmen and every other member of the military have sacrificially given to this country and that starts at the top." Palin said military members look at Obama and question whether he knows the sacrifices they make to "secure America and to secure freedoms." "So when my own son is going through what he is going through coming back, I can certainly relate with other families who kinda feel these ramifications of some PTSD," she said. Track, a 26-year-old Iraq veteran, was arraigned Tuesday on charges of domestic violence assault, interfering with a report of domestic violence crime and possession of a firearm while intoxicated. According to the police affidavit posted by KTVA-TV, officers were called to the residence Monday night following two 911 calls -- the first from Track's girlfriend and the second from him. The woman claimed Track had "punched her in the face and that a firearm was involved," according to police records. The charges against Track were filed the same day Palin appeared at an Ames, Iowa, rally to endorse Trump, the current GOP frontrunner. Palin, a Tea Party favorite and the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, told the crowd that "things will change under President Trump." She went on to criticize the GOP establishment as well as Obama's foreign policies. The Coast Guard and Marine Corps are calling off the search for 12 missing Marines after five days of 24-hour effort, officials announced Tuesday evening in a Hawaii press conference. Capt. Jim Jenkins, chief of staff and acting commander for the Coast Guard's 14th District, said the service would formally suspend its search at sunset Hawaii time, or about 11 p.m. Eastern time. Jenkins said the Coast Guard, which led the search and rescue mission, had recovered pieces of the two CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters that apparently collided off the north coast of Oahu Thursday night, but had yet to recover any survivors of the crash. It's a tragic development for the Marine Corps community, which has held out hope that survivors would be found despite choppy seas and days of fruitless searching. The decision, Jenkins said, was made with the Marine Corps and after careful analysis of the case and all the search efforts to day. "The decision to suspect the search without finding survivors is particularly difficult," Jenkins said. "We will continue to provide any comfort we can from this terrible loss." Marine Brig. Gen. Russell Sanborn, commanding general of 1st Marine Aircraft Wing, said efforts would now turn toward recovery and salvage operations. An aircraft mishap board would continue to analyze all the evidence and investigate the tragedy in order to make recommendations and findings, Sanborn said. Some remaining underwater rescue and salvage assets, including the salvage ship USNS Salvor, may remain on the scene to recover debris and remains in order to give closure to the families of those presumed lost, Sanborn and Jenkins said. It's still not clear what may have caused the tragic crash. Officials have said the two aircraft were on a routine night training flight and were due to return to their unit at Kaneohe Bay before they went down sometime before 11 p.m. Thursday. Coast Guard officials were first notified of a possible emergency when civilians reported seeing a "flare" and a "fireball" over the water off the shore of Oahu. "To families that are most affected by this, our prayers and our support are for them," Sanborn said. The Marines missing in the crash are are Maj. Shawn M. Campbell, 41, of College Station, Texas; Capt. Brian T. Kennedy, 31, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Capt. Steven R. Torbert, 29, of Florence, Alabama; Capt. Kevin Roche, 30, of St. Louis, Missouri; Sgt. Dillon J. Semolina, 24, of Chaska, Minnesota; Sgt. Adam C. Schoeller, 25, of Gardners, Pennsylvania; Sgt. Jeffrey A. Sempler, 22, of Woodruff, South Carolina; Sgt. William J. Turner, 25, of Florala, Alabama; Cpl. Matthew R. Drown, 23, of Spring, Texas; Cpl. Thomas J. Jardas, 22, of Fort Myers, Florida; Cpl. Christopher J. Orlando, 23, of Hingham, Massachusetts; and Lance Cpl. Ty L. Hart, 21, of Aumsville, Oregon. In the aftermath of the crash, the Marine Corps community rallied around the families and circulated the hashtag "#PrayforPegasus," using the nickname for Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 463, home of both the choppers that went down. Sanborn said Marine Corps Base Hawaii planned to hold a memorial service for the lost Marines Friday. -- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@monster.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HopeSeck. SALT LAKE CITY, Utah Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus hosted a ship-naming ceremony Jan. 19 to announce SSN 801, a Virginia-class attack submarine, will bear the name USS Utah. The submarine will be named to honor the history its namesake state has with the Navy. Utah was home to the Naval Supply Depot Clearfield, which by the end of World War II was the world's largest naval supply. It boasted approximately 16 million total square feet and employed nearly 8,000 civilian employees. It was responsible for buying and selling ship equipment and supplies and for managing the movement of personnel for three West Coast ports that attended to the Pacific Fleet. In addition, the depot distributed automotive and other material for selected activities in three naval districts stretching from North Dakota to Texas. The future USS Utah will be the second naval vessel to bear the name; the first, a battleship designated BB-31, was commissioned in 1911 and had a long, honorable time in service. The early part of BB-31's career was spent conducting gunnery and torpedo defense exercises. In 1914, BB-31 became involved in the Mexican Civil War when it assisted in transporting Mexican refugees to Tampico. Following this mission, it was charged with searching for SS Ypiranga, the German ship that was carrying munitions for the Mexican dictator Victoriano Huerta. After this search proved unfruitful, BB-31's battalion spent the next two months fighting in Vera Cruz. Seven men from her battalion earned Medals of Honor as a result of their actions during this time. Shortly thereafter, BB-31 returned to conducting battle exercises in the Caribbean until the outbreak of World War I. During this time, BB-31 had the opportunity to act as both the flagship for Battleship Division 6, operating out of Ireland, and later, was part of the honor escort for George Washington during its time transporting President Woodrow Wilson to France. In 1929, it was BB-31's opportunity to have high-ranking officials on her decks when she transported President-elect Herbert Hoover and his official party to Rio de Janeiro. Two years after this honorable voyage, BB-31 was converted to a mobile target. This allowed it to be controlled by radio gear. It then spent the next nine years training naval aviators in dive, torpedo and high-level bombings. While conducting anti-gunnery exercises in Pearl Harbor, BB-31 was struck by a torpedo and capsized during the initial stages of the Japanese attack. She was struck from the Navy record Nov. 13, 1944 and received a battle star for her service in World War I. Virginia-class attack submarines provide the Navy with the capabilities required to maintain the nation's undersea supremacy well into the 21st century. They have enhanced stealth, sophisticated surveillance capabilities and special warfare enhancements that will enable them to meet the Navy's multi-mission requirements. These submarines have the capability to attack targets ashore with highly accurate Tomahawk cruise missiles and conduct covert, long-term surveillance of land areas, littoral waters or other sea-based forces. Other missions include anti-submarine and anti-ship warfare; mine delivery and minefield mapping. They are also designed for special forces delivery and support. Each Virginia-class submarine is 7,800-tons and 377 feet in length, has a beam of 34 feet, and can operate at more than 25 knots submerged. They are designed with a reactor plant that will not require refueling during the planned life of the ship, reducing lifecycle costs while increasing underway time. The submarine will be built under a unique teaming agreement between General Dynamics Electric Boat (GDEB) and Huntington Ingalls Industries' Newport News Shipbuilding division wherein both companies build certain portions of each submarine and then alternate deliveries. Utah will be delivered by GDEB located in Groton, Connecticut. While other families were looking forward to the holidays, Rachel Clinger was awaiting news of her husband, who had disappeared a week before Christmas from his New Jersey military base. The wait did not last long -- Marine Sgt. Tristan Clinger's body was found days later. Clinger, she said, had battled depression but feared he would be discharged if he got help. He is not the only one. Experts who work with both active-duty military and veterans say the stigma of mental illness -- whether combat stress, depression, anxiety or substance abuse -- continues to be an impediment to treatment, often leading to tragic consequences. With over 2.5 million men and women having served in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last decade, plus thousands more currently stationed overseas, experts say it's more critical than ever to make sure those who need it find a pathway out of despair. "We had six suicide calls into our office in one day -- one day," said Paul Rieckoff, founder and head of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, the largest service organization focused solely on the recent generation of vets. He's been working diligently for over a decade to connect them with available services and lobbying on the Hill for better access to care. "I think we have made some headway, but there is a long way to go and at the end of the day, there is still stigma and fear of being labeled 'a broken, damaged veteran,'" he told FoxNews.com. He believes the problem is worse than assumed, particularly among young veterans. The most frequently used statistic -- 22 veterans committing suicide a day -- is based on older numbers, and does not take into account veterans who fall through the cracks, he said. "It's much higher. ... We think we are losing a lot of young people," Rieckoff said. Case in point: The suicide of Tyler Schlagel, 29, a former Marine corporal, on Dec. 9 was the 14th in his military unit since the group returned from Afghanistan in 2008. According to a recent report, even more have attempted suicide, one three days after Schlagel's death. No one knew how badly he was suffering, even his closest friends and family. "They set up all these hotlines and things for guys to get help," David Gwinn, a Navy corpsman who served with Schlagel and had survived his own suicide attempts -- twice, told The New York Times. "But what do you do when most of the guys don't want help?" Stigma can manifest itself in different ways, said Dr. Wendy Tenhula, national mental health director for the integrated VA/DoD mental health program. Service members and veterans fear there will be professional and social repercussions for seeking help. They don't trust medications or therapy or both. They are embarrassed, and chafe against "being seen as or being labeled as weak or incompetent or dangerous," she said. Sometimes the stigma is so internalized, the individual refuses to see they need help. Many self-medicate with alcohol and drugs; they withdraw, and avoid contact. "The resistance to getting help takes many forms but it comes down to this -- it hurts, and they don't know how to come in and get that help and to sit with that hurt," said Dr. Tracy Stecker, a research health scientist at the VA in Charleston, S.C., who engages in mental health outreach. According to figures provided to FoxNews.com, nearly 1 million active-duty service members were diagnosed with at least one mental disorder between 2000 and 2011, and the numbers increased as the wars wore on. From 1998 to 2011, 2,990 service members took their own lives while on active duty. But like Sgt. Clinger, whose funeral services were held in Ohio on Jan. 8, the majority (55 percent) of victims were never deployed overseas, suggesting mental health in the military is more than just a combat-related issue. Clinger's death is under investigation. Starting in 2008, the Defense Department has waged a multi-pronged war against stigma, in a bid to reach more people. Rules were changed: the military began embedding mental health providers in units, and took the mental health question off of the questionnaire for security clearances. They launched an anti-stigma campaign called "Real Warriors. Real Battles. Real Strength" to convey that emotional struggles following wartime service are common, and not an indicator of weakness. They invested in research and outreach. "Most service members who seek and receive psychological health support improve and remain on active duty. Because getting help often leads to a full recovery, seeking mental health care is not a career ender," Navy Capt. Anthony Arita, director of the Deployment Health Clinical Center at the DoD, said in a statement. That said, he acknowledged "not all service members and veterans who need treatment receive it, due to a variety of barriers and challenges," including stigma. Meanwhile, the VA has embarked on a similar outreach campaign, including the Veterans Crisis Hotline, which has taken more than 2 million calls since its inception in 2007. In 2011, the VA launched an interactive website called "Make the Connection" to help vets, families and communities with resources and strategies for self-diagnosis and accessing treatment. According to the VA, more than 1.5 million vets sought help for PTSD and other mental health problems in fiscal 2014, including over 536,000 for substance abuse, and 535,000 for PTSD (of those, over 141,000 were recent veterans). "Something we do know is that more and more veterans are coming to the VA for mental health care," said Tenhula. "We can't point for sure to a reduction in stigma, but we do know that more veterans are seeking care and more veterans are reaching out and helping each other." The U.S. will deploy "certainly hundreds" more troops to Iraq to train additional brigades which Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has pledged will take back Mosul from ISIS this year, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad said Wednesday. The extra troops will inevitably boost the costs of the campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria that totaled $5.53 billion through Dec. 15, or about $11 million daily, said Army Col. Steve Warren, a spokesman for Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve. Most of the costs have been incurred by the air campaign. Warren said the U.S. and coalition allies have flown 65,492 sorties to date, including 9,782 airstrikes. A total of 6,516 of those airstrikes were in Iraq, and 3,266 in Syria, he said. Warren said that the new deployment of trainers will be in addition to the 1,300 soldiers from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, who will deploy to Iraq this spring to replace the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division in the training role. The 1st BCT will return to Fort Drum, N.Y. "The reason we need new trainers, or additional trainers, is that's really the next step to generate the combat power needed to liberate Mosul," Warren said. "We need more (Iraqi) troops trained in more specialties," such as commandos and snipers, to mount a push north from Baiji up the Tigris River valley to attack Mosul, he said. "We don't have a solid number yet" on how many new trainers will deploy to join the estimated 3,550 U.S. troops now on the ground in the campaign against ISIS, Warren said. "It's certainly hundreds -- that will probably be at the top end not thousands, hundreds," but additional U.S. support troops may also be needed for the Mosul buildup, he said. The number of new U.S. troops will also be conditional on the number of additional trainers U.S. allies were willing to provide, Warren said. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter met in Paris Wednesday with NATO and allied defense ministers to gauge their willingness to contribute more troops and step up the campaign against ISIS. The meeting included Australian Minister for Defense Marise Payne; French Minister of Defense Jean-Yves Le Drian; German Minister of Defense Ursula von der Leyen; Italian Minister of Defense Roberta Pinotti, Dutch Minister of Defense Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, and British Secretary of State for Defense Michael Fallon. In a joint statement after the meeting, the ministers agreed "to accelerate and intensify the campaign against ISIL/DAESH (two other acronyms for ISIS) in order to deliver a lasting defeat to this barbaric organization." In a video briefing from Baghad to the Pentagon, Warren said that the successful effort to isolate and retake Ramadi in coordination with coalition airstrikes would serve as the template for the Mosul campaign. However, Ramadi was a city of about 300,000 before it fell to ISIS, and a much larger force will be needed for Mosul, which is Iraq's second largest city after Baghdad with an estimated population of two million. Warren said that two Iraqi brigades spearheaded by the elite Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) troops led the main assault to take Ramadi's city center, and about eight brigades would be needed for a similar effort in Mosul. Warren also cautioned that taking a city does not end the fight. He said that clearing operations in Ramadi were still encountering sporadic counter-attacks and that Iraqi forces were involved in a "slow and painstaking process." He declined to put a timeline on when Ramadi would be completely secured. The removal of improvised explosive devices was a major obstacle for Iraqi forces, he said. "They've literally found thousands of booby-traps, buried explosives, houses rigged to explode with a single trip-wire," Warren said. The problems encountered in retaking Ramadi should add a note of caution to predictions of taking Mosul this year, Sen. Jack Reed, R-R.I., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told reporters at a roundtable session last week after returning from meetings with U.S. military leaders in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa. Reed said that taking back Mosul could be "months and months away." He said that Kurdish Peshmerga forces had largely succeeded in ongoing efforts to isolate Mosul to the north, east and west, and now awaited a push from the south by the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF). U.S. airstrikes were increasingly beginning to focus on Mosul to aid the isolation effort, Warren said. Since Jan. 13, the U.S. has carried out 47 airstrikes in and around Mosul, including one Monday that hit a building serving as a "cash collection point" for ISIS. The strike Monday was the ninth on an ISIS cash center in both Iraq and Syria. Warren said the U.S. estimated the strikes have deprived ISIS of "tens of millions" of dollars and he noted news reports that ISIS has been forced to cut pay by half for its fighters. "This is really putting the squeeze on them, hitting them in the pocketbook," Warren said, but the strikes have also caused civilian casualties. The U.S. has made the avoidance of civilian casualties a hallmark of the campaign against ISIS but "Yes, we were prepared to accept civilian casualties in conjunction with the cash strikes," Warren said. He estimated the number of civilian casualties in the nine cash strikes as "in the single digits." -- Richard Sisk can be reached at richard.sisk@military.com Doctors learned a great deal about post-traumatic stress disorder in the years following the Vietnam War. Terence M. Keane, Ph.D., director of the Behavioral Science Division of the Veterans Affairs Department's National Center for PTSD in Boston, last week called the decades-long advances in diagnosis and treatment "stunning." But Keane believes it was the 9/11 attacks -- which shook America far beyond the attack locations in New York; Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania -- that brought PTSD home to the country as a whole. "Now everyone understood the issues of trauma, issues of war -- there was no question," Keane told Military.com. "And people knew more about PTSD after 9/11 within a week. That was a major change in this country." "I think it contributed to the recognition on part of our population that if we send people to fight, we give them whatever support they need" when they come home, he said. Keane, in addition to his work at the VA Medical Center in Boston's Jamaica Plain neighborhood, is a professor of psychiatry and assistant dean for research at Boston University School of Medicine. On Friday, VA Secretary Bob McDonald presented Keane with the VA's John Blair Barnwell Award, recognizing him as a world leader in the field of traumatic stress. The award is named for educator and physician-scientist Dr. John Blair Barnwell, who was director of research and education at the VA in the 1940s. McDonald, who also used his Boston visit to pitch the VA as a career choice to more than 200 healthcare workers now training at the Boston facility, noted Keane's research as an example of the kind of trailblazing work that the VA does. "This excellence [in research] that we had in the past is continuing today" with the VA's work in PTSD and other injuries, McDonald said. Keane, in remarks after receiving the award, said the importance of the work the VA does and the patients it serves make it the most rewarding place to treat patients and conduct research. "Not only is our mission to care for combat veterans supremely important to this nation, our patients readily serve as active participants in our research studies in remarkably altruistic ways." Keane said, adding that the typical response of veterans asked to take part in a study is: "'If you think it will help other folks, doc, I'll be happy to participate.'" PTSD Pioneer Keane has been studying PTSD for decades. He is one of the VA's pioneers in the illness. He was studying it, he said, "before it was [called] PTSD." Even before much of the country, including the government, recognized it as something real, he said, recalling a time when many denied that combat trauma played a role in service members' and veterans' mental health problems. In some places, veterans groups such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars -- still largely made up of World War II vets -- refused entry to Vietnam veterans. And even among some Vietnam vets, there could be dismissal of trauma-induced mental health issues. "The atmosphere was 'these are all a bunch of crybabies,' " Keane said. "I had a cousin who was a Vietnam veteran, and he said, 'Terry, aren't these all guys who were the ones in trouble before they got sent [to Vietnam]?' " Keane said that as he became interested in mental health problems of Vietnam veterans and the schism that developed within the U.S. over the war, he researched and found there also were conflicting views of whether Americans should have been fighting in Europe during World War II. "That the country was attacked by Japan is one [thing], but there was a lot of discussion in the country about what we should do there" in Europe. "There was isolationism, which was historic in our country," he said. But World War II ended within five years. It also ended in total victory for the U.S. Lesson from a quagmire "Vietnam was the quagmire we're trying to avoid in Iraq and Afghanistan," Keane said. And even though those conflicts have gone on longer than even Vietnam, and though many may have opposed them from the start, the country has shown itself able to separate the service members and veterans from the wars. Separating a conflict from those sent to fight it "was a lesson that was very hard fought." "It is something that was learned, and I think it was to the leaders' credit -- the leaders in Persian Gulf War I and then even in the early parts of Gulf War II [Iraq and Afghanistan] actually served in Vietnam. And so they knew the price of making that mistake. They took it very seriously to ensure that didn't happen again." -- Bryant Jordan can be reached at bryant.jordan@military.com. Follow him on Twitter at @bryantjordan. Glen Hill Farm founder Leonard Lavin has a personality tailor-made for Thoroughbred racing. While tough and demanding of his racing operations employees on one hand, he has been equally accepting during the tough times and bad breaks hes endured through 50 years as an owner and breeder. He has the highest expectations for and is hardest on the ones he loves, said Craig Bernick, Lavins grandson and president of Glen Hill, while accepting the Eclipse Award of Merit Jan. 16 on his grandfathers behalf. Hes been a hard but fair boss. Another who has repeatedly run head-long into Lavins iron will is Hap Proctor, who managed Lavins Glen Hill Farm near Ocala for 23 years and is now retired. Proctor, the son of Lavins first trainer, Willard Proctor, said his former boss could certainly lose his temper but quickly added that he could take a tongue-lashing, too. Proctor recalled only three times that he went over the top about something Lavin had done. The first time he remembered well. Proctor had a string of Glen Hill horses at the track in California, before hed moved to the farm. I mean I really reamed him out over something, Proctor said. I felt terrible about it later, and I was sure he was going to fire my butt. I wouldnt answer the phone for a week. But, you know, the next time we spoke there was never anything said about it. Never. If he felt I was right, it never bothered him, and it never ruined our relationship. Proctor said he never took a dressing-down from Lavin personally either. After being raised by my dad, I might ask him, You were hollering at me?, Proctor said dryly. Really, we had a good relationship that way. A lot of people you work for, you cant do that. Straight talk is a family trait running strong in the Proctor clan, so perhaps the long association between the Lavins and the Proctors is a key to their many successes together. Willard Proctor became Lavins first trainer in 1967. Then based in Chicago, Proctor was one of three trainers recommended to Lavin by an executive at Arlington Park. The first racehorse Proctor picked out for Lavin that summer was Gabby Abby, an Illinois-bred daughter of Some Chance who went on to win the Indian Maid Handicap at Hawthorne Race Course in 1967 and the Santa Ana Handicap the following year at Santa Anita Park. They were off and running. Hap Proctor was hired to train some Glen Hill horses in 1982. He and his brother, Tom, worked side by side at the track while their uncle Allan was running the Florida farm. Allen also had a previous stint as a trainer. Hap took over managing the farm in 1990 and ran it until 2013. Its been good for the Proctors and good for the Lavins, I believe, Proctor said. Dad broke him in pretty well and he learned to put up with all our ornery and contrary ways. Once he learned how to deal with Dad, he was able to get along with all of us. Proctor added that hes admired Lavins perseverance over the years and persistent willingness to take a shot, regardless of the apparent odds. Not everything hes done has been a home run, but it never bothered him, he said. He took the hard knocks as well as anyone and just went on with it, trying something else the next year. When I left California, all my friends were worried. What are you going to do when hes not around anymore, they said. Mr. Lavin was in his 70s at the time. Proctor began chuckling, thinking back on those conversations. Its silly now. Here I am, retired, and hes still going. A lawyer's commentary on cultural property law and its impact on cultural property crime, antiquities trafficking, looted archaeology, illicit trade, art theft, heritage preservation, and museum risk management. Only the pure in heart can make a good soup. Ludwig van Beethoven is credited with that statement, and if the composer were alive today, hed likely smile to learn that dozens of pure-hearted cooks, both amateur and professional, will gather together under one roof to benefit the Keystone Musical Arts Center. The KMAC Soup Cook Off will take place from noon to 4 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 31 at the Park Inn, 5401 Carlisle Pike, Hampden Township. Soup Cook Off creator Gwen Forlizzi has had such great success with The Annual Cystic Fibrosis Soup Cook Off held in Harrisburg that she decided to expand the event to benefit other charities, and thats when Keystone Musical Arts Center contacted her to coordinate its inaugural cook off. Guests will have the opportunity to sample more than 40 soups, stews and chilies and then vote for their favorites. Chefs whose culinary creations receive the most votes will receive trophies and prize money. Doris Deardorff is looking forward to the event. The amateur cook will bring a curried sausage potato soup with apples and onions, and a dessert soup, made with red-wine poached pears and mulling spices. I love to cook and this gives me a chance to do what I love, meet other people and benefit a good cause, said Deardorff, who has competed in cook-offs in the past. Her secret to making a good soup is keeping her finger on the pulse of the community when it comes to flavor trends. Indian flavors are very popular right now, she said. She also believes that a good soup shouldnt be rushed. Ive been experimenting for several months now, said the Harrisburg resident who relies on her daughters, neighbors and co-workers for feedback. KMAC Executive Director Terry Selders said proceeds will help his organization build out its new West Shore facility located near the Hampden shopping center. The new facility will make possible the addition of group classes, ensembles, plus music therapy and homeschool programs that are greatly needed in the community. Doug Krick Jr., of Dodge City Steakhouse, who hadnt yet decided on what he was bringing to the cook off, said his secret to a good soup is an even balance of flavors. Not too spicy or salty. Its also important to get the right level of stock to cream, and herbs to protein. Krick said he enjoys competing in the soup cook offs and is especially delighted when people smile and return for seconds. Other participating restaurants include Carrabbas Italian Grill, which will offer a spicy lentil soup, and Susquehanna Seasonal Grill and Wine Bar, which will offer a butternut squash soup. MoMos BBQ & Grill will compete with a Texas Brisket Chili and a BBQ Shrimp Bisque, and Isaacs will serve up its popular Pepperjack Tomato. During the event, teachers, students and friends of the musical center will entertain the crowd with acoustic music. Performers include Shea Quinn (The Luv Gods), Jeff Feltenberger (The Badlees) and Phil Freeman (Small Town Titans). Water, tea and sodas will be provided at no extra charge, and a cash bar will be open for wine and other beverages. Drawings will be held for gift baskets filled with items donated by local merchants and organizations. Its the perfect time of year for this, and Gwen does a good job putting the soup cook offs together, Krick said. Tickets can be purchased online for $10 at http://thesoupcookoff.com/tickets, or $15 at the door. Children ages 5 and younger are admitted free. For more information, visit www.thesoupcookoff.com HONOLULU Officials Tuesday suspended the massive search for 12 Marines who were aboard two helicopters that crashed off Hawaii last week. The around-the-clock effort failed to locate any sign of the 12 service members despite five days of searching by several agencies. Officials said at a late afternoon news conference that the Marine Corps was transitioning to "recovery and salvage efforts" and a memorial was planned for Friday at Marine Corps Base Hawaii. Included in the list of 12 missing Marines is Adam Schoeller, a 2008 graduate of Boiling Springs High School whose parents live in Gardners. The search began late Thursday when a civilian on a beach reported seeing the helicopters flying and then a fireball. The Marines were alerted when the CH-53E helicopters carrying six crew members each failed to return to their base at Kaneohe Bay following a nighttime training mission. Hours later, a Coast Guard helicopter and C-130 airplane spotted debris 2 1/2 miles off of Oahu. The crash was near the north shore, but the search area spanned from the western coast of Oahu to the northeast corner of the island. The transport helicopters were part of the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing at Marine Corps Base Hawaii. Known as Super Stallions, they are the U.S. military's largest helicopter, capable of carrying a light armored vehicle, 16 tons of cargo or a team of combat-equipped Marines, according to a Marine Corps website. The Coast Guard initially reported that the choppers had collided, but the Marines said later it wasn't yet known if there was a collision. The cause remains under investigation. All four life rafts from the helicopters were later found empty. There was no indication anyone had been on any of the rafts, based on their condition and the lack of any personal effects, the Coast Guard said. High surf complicated the mission for rescuers during the initial days of the search. A green laser near Haleiwa Beach Park struck a Coast Guard plane Saturday night, forcing crew members to alter search patterns. Authorities searched for survivors around the clock. The Coast Guard assumes the best-case scenario when considering how long someone in the right equipment and right conditions could survive, Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Sara Mooers has said. "We err on the side of caution because the last thing that anybody wants is to suspend the search when there's still a possibility of finding somebody," she said Monday. Aircrews wear personal flotation devices with their flight suits and get additional training on top of survival swimming training, the Marines said. Some of the life rafts were inflated, but it was unclear how they got that way, Mooers said. There are various ways that could happen, including a cord being pulled by debris, said Irish, the Marine captain. People have been found days or even weeks after getting lost at sea, Mooers said. They would have to survive the crash and then possible dehydration, exposure and fatigue, said Mario Vittone, a retired Coast Guardsman who is an expert on sea survival. Survival seems unlikely, Vittone said, but he noted that he doesn't know all the circumstances. The missing crew members are: Maj. Shawn M. Campbell, 41, College Station, Texas. Capt. Brian T. Kennedy, 31, Philadelphia. Capt. Kevin T. Roche, 30, St. Louis. Capt. Steven R. Torbert, 29, Florence, Alabama. Sgt. Dillon J. Semolina, 24, Chaska, Minnesota. Sgt. Adam C. Schoeller, 25, Gardners, Pennsylvania. Sgt. Jeffrey A. Sempler, 22, Woodruff, South Carolina. Sgt. William J. Turner, 25, Florala, Alabama. Cpl. Matthew R. Drown, 23, Spring, Texas. Cpl. Thomas J. Jardas, 22, Fort Myers, Florida. Cpl. Christopher J. Orlando, 23, Hingham, Massachusetts. Lance Cpl. Ty L. Hart, 21, Aumsville, Oregon. This years Vodafone Ghana Music Awards is fast approaching and all eyes are on who will take the overall Artiste Of Year award home. Whilst others are rooting for Guru and Bisa Kdei to take it, former manager and confidant of controversial dancehall musician Shatta Wale, Bulldog in a post on Facebook is rooting for Stonebwoy to win that category. This is what his post said; I was part of a school of thought that thought Sarkodie should have won Artiste of the year last year based on the writings on the wall at the time. BHIM NATION president won and it was good for the Reggae & Dancehall fraternity, making it the second time in succession a reggae and dancehall act had won. It followed with countless award nominations around the world, he won almost all and made Ghanaian Reggae and Dancehall proud with international collaborations and performances. His musical strides in 2015 was impeccable. History will repeat itself. #WRITINGISONTHEWALL #MYARTISTEOFTHEYEAR2015 #grateful #thywillbedone #killdemwithlove #sikanhyira 20.01.2016 LISTEN Many people would anticipate that as a gospel musician,joining a political party could end up derogating your career. This is because politics is presumed to be a 'dirty' game being played by unbelievers. But to Ghanaian Gospel musician Linda Dankyi-Koranteng, popularly known as Obaapa Linda who is noted with the hit song "Igwe thank you", she doesn't see anything wrong for a gospel musician to join a political party. She was answering a question pertaining to whether gospel musicians can join political parties. Explaining her view in an inspired interview with Dj murphy Lee of sunyani based Storm 101.9 fm,Linda said: "I don't see anything wrong with gospel artists joining a political party. This is because during elections you need to vote for the best person to manage the country. We all buy the same fuel...we don't have gospel musicians fuel nor worldly people fuel,we all buy the same fuel...the law governs each and everyone...No one is above the law so there is nothing wrong with it",Linda explained to Dj Murphy. Stressing further on the issue,Linda entreated gospel musicians to endeavor to join a political party that can change the plight of the people: "Just listen to your instincts and join a political party that can change the plight of the people. If I will stand on any political platform and perform,I would do so to win souls for christ", She noted with passion. Obaapa Linda is currently working on her new video titled "Ayeyie" which is due to be out in february, 2016. 20.01.2016 LISTEN JAMIE Foxx has been hailed a hero for saving a mans life whose truck burst into flames outside his home. Brett Kyle was driving under the influence at a high rate of speed in Hidden Valley, California, when his truck flew off the road and into a drainage ditch, rolling multiple times. Jamie Foxx Saves Man's Life Foxx pulled Brett Kyle from the burning wreckage after his car flew off the road The oscar-winner heard the crash and called 911, before dashing out to find the car on its side and up in flames. Foxx and another man broke the car window, cut the seatbelt and pulled the 32-year-old from the wreckage. Responding to claims he saved the mans life, the Django Unchained actor said: Im not a hero, but I had to do something. A member of his team confirmed the incident, adding: Jamie didnt hesitate. He jumped out and ran to the car. Kyle, who was arrested for driving under the influence, suffered major head, chest and neck trauma after the Toyota Tacoma crash. His family said he is expected to be hospitalised for some time, and have thanked Foxx for stepping in to help. Jamie Foxx Saves Man's Life1 . The Hollywood star uploaded an Instagram post of him hugging the victims dad The Dreamgirls actor uploaded an Instagram post of him hugging Kyles dad early this morning. He wrote: Met the father of the young man from last night today. This is all that matters. That a man, a son, a brothers life was spared last night. God had his arms wrapped around all of us No heroes Just happy fathers. Brad Kyle, the victims dad, said he saw a number of cars drive past the burning vehicle on the actors home CCTV footage before Foxx rushed to help. He said: It doesnt matter to me who it was or what they do for a living. Just the idea someone would do that is so much more than I could fathom. Hes got two sisters and a brother. They would have lost their brother if it wasnt for him. Manny Ortiz, Foxxs property manager, said the Hollywood star suffered minor cuts and burns to his hand during the scramble to get Kyle out. -thesun The Hague (AFP) - War crimes prosecutors will Thursday seek to convince the International Criminal Court to put infamous Lord's Resistance Army commander Dominic Ongwen on trial on charges including keeping sex slaves in a rebel army. Known as the "White Ant", Ongwen faces 70 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role from 2002 to 2005 in the rebel group's reign of terror in northern Uganda, led by its fugitive chief Joseph Kony. A former child-soldier-turned-warlord, Ongwen was Kony's one-time deputy and one of the most senior commanders of the LRA, which is accused of slaughtering more than 100,000 people and abducting 60,000 children in a bloody rebellion against Kampala that began in 1986. In the five-day confirmation hearing starting on Thursday, prosecutors will lay out the charges to a three-judge bench seeking to show that the evidence is solid enough to put Ongwen in the dock. The judges will then have to determine whether Ongwen should stand trial. The prosecution will focus in particular on four attacks on camps housing people forced to flee the LRA's violence. More than 130 people -- many of them children and babies -- died in these attacks and dozens of others were abducted, prosecutors said in the court document containing the charges. "LRA fighters under the joint control of Dominic Ongwen... abducted civilians, forced them to carry looted items... shot at them and threatened them with acts of violence," the charges read. In one instance after an attack on the Odek camp, northern Uganda, in April 2004 in which at least 61 men, women and children were killed, "one individual was forced to kill an abducted man from Odek with a club and forced to inspect decomposing bodies, including that of his father," prosecutors said. - Sex slaves - Ongwen, who has been wanted by The Hague-based ICC since 2005 in the court's longest-running case, was originally charged with seven war crimes and crimes against humanity. The ICC's chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda however in December broadened the charges to 70 which now also include eight sexual and gender-based crimes. Kony, Ongwen and senior commanders of Ongwen's notorious Sinia brigade "pursued a common plan to abduct girls and women to serve as domestic servants, forced wives and sex slaves," prosecutors said. "The victims had no choice but to submit to rape, enslavement, sexual slavery and become forced wives," they said. Ongwen is further charged with using children under 15 years old to fight in the LRA rebel army. - Victim? - Born in 1975, Ongwen was transferred to The Hague a year ago shortly after surrendering to US special forces operating in the Central African Republic. President Barack Obama had deployed a small number of US troops to the region to aid the hunt for Kony, who remains at large. Washington had also offered a $5 million (4.5-million-euro) reward for Ongwen's capture. Experts believe Ongwen fled after falling out with Kony and almost being killed. The LRA first emerged in northern Uganda in 1986, where it claimed to fight in the name of the Acholi ethnic group against the government of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. But over the years the LRA has moved across porous regional borders: it shifted from Uganda to sow terror in southern Sudan before moving into northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, and finally crossing into southeastern Central African Republic in March 2008. Combining religious mysticism with an astute guerrilla mind and bloodthirsty ruthlessness, Kony has turned scores of young girls into his personal sex slaves while claiming to be fighting to impose the Bible's Ten Commandments. Ongwen's own troops were notorious for their punishment raids, during which they would slice off victims' lips and ears as a grim calling card. But rights groups say Ongwen was himself initially a victim -- abducted at 14 by the LRA as he was walking to school -- which may prove a mitigating factor, should he be found guilty at trial. Manaseh Azure Awuni 13.01.2016 LISTEN It is pathetic, disturbing and very dangerous when the faith of Ghana is left in the hands of journalists who dont know the difference between data and information. Such journalists will not add anything to the economy beyond soiling the name of innocent and hardworking people who are doing all they can to get Ghana on sound tracks. Most of them produce nothing but jealousy and envy riddled articles which add nothing to the nation beyond fabricating stories on their pursuit of fame. Such journalist are reckless and more national security threats than the imported accused terrorist we are all crying about now. Unfortunately for Ghana, one such journalist is in the person of Manaseh Azure Awuni. This is just a conclusion, please read on for the premises on which I got this conclusion. Azure, it is a good thing that you are trying to expose corruption at least it is good for you to be known like Anas Armeyaw Anas. You want to also get the opportunity to deliver speeches at national conferences and be interviewed by international media organizations. And even more importantly, you want to save national resources from selfish thieves. That is a great job that only someone who has the urge to contribute to the progress of the nation will do. As a nation which is not so blessed with positive social culture, it is good to know that we have some people among us who will do everything to protect national resources like Anas Armeyaw Anas and Martin Amidu. I must however caution you that in trying to rise to fame through fighting corruption, you must do that with truth and clean heart; for any theory that is premised on lies will collapse from the most basic scrutiny. Before I continue further with Azure, let me say that I am somehow disappointed in Haruna Iddrisu for giving audience to Azure and his masters. The saying that monkeys play by sizes is very true that, when a baby monkey goes for a fight with a father monkey, then there should be arrangements for a monkey funeral. From what I have read from Azure, and how I know Haruna Iddrisu, I can only compare a debate between the two to a debate between a university professor and a kindergartener; while the professor will be quoting philosophers and presenting modules, the kindergartener will be talking about biscuits and what his mom will be cooking for the night. At the end nobody benefits; the listeners will be bored, the professors time, energy and knowledge will be wasted just as the resources that would be used to organize such debates. An SSS 1 student who is serious can debunk every Azure theory. They are half-cooked, partial lies and generally come in the form of raw data that can be obtained by anybody who cares nothing tangible, just a desperate desire to be famous. Sometimes I want to compare Azure to a pampered child who complains of being insulted even at the cry of a bird. Such a child feels the world belongs to him. Nobody else deserves any good but him; and when others are acknowledged for their hard work, his parents must console him for no fault of the winners, but his own laziness. But upon further analysis, Azure does not fit into this pampered child category. He would have, if he was intelligent and or capable of presenting something of substance. Unfortunately he is none of that. He is just a guy who wrote a full article to explain why he did not get a first class during his bachelors; a guy who wrote another article to explain why he did not win the Journalist of the year award after someone deserving (Mabel Aku Banasseh) had taken it. Sorry, I dont want to release all my bullets on this guy. Let us touch on the issue at hand. I really cant tell where exactly I was when I saw the so-called expose showing internal correspondence between the ministry of Employment and one of its agencies. To be frank, I am not going to go into the quotation of laws with heads and tails. I am not a friend of history and legal terms. I just dont like memorizing things. As such I am going to be concentrating on the logic and applying my audit knowledge in breaking down what Azure presented to the public as evidence of wrong doing. To begin with, I want you to forget about my audit background and just consider this basic scenario. Imagine that I am someone policing your wife for you not for anything but largely because you believe all women in your area are cheating; doing everything I can to submit all relevant pink sheets to show that she is cheating. Then all the evidence I presented to you was a picture of your wife entering or standing in front of one of the houses in your community. As a reasonable person, will that be enough for you to call your wife names? If you will send your wife packing or call her names because of this blank-means-zero evidence, then trust me, you are the Inspector General of Idiots! Azures evidence is not different from this scenario; lets read on! Tackling the infant logic Azure is feeding us with; you went to a ministry and with the help of someone, obtained internal correspondence between the ministry and one of its agencies that contains various sums of money; then by your extreme laziness, run to the public with those correspondences that you have discovered fraud or misdoings. Will any serious and deep thinking person believe this story? As someone who wants the truth, you should have obtained all necessary evidence supporting the use of the monies involved. It is an aggravated ignorance to just tell me that a minister spent close to one million Ghana cedis on a foreign trip; as such we should panic. This is childish, mad love for fame at the highest level and fatal dose of jealousy and pull him down journalism. Basic questions such as how many people were involved? How many days did they spend? And what expenditure was incurred would have been enough to tell you that you have no evidence beyond receipts for authorized expenses. The second biggest problem I have with journaliar Azure is how he titled the article at www.myjoyonline.com which stated that; Haruna Iddrisu spends 900,000 YEA money on one international conference. And even went further to say in the body of the article that. Joy News' Manasseh Azure has revealed Employment Minister Haruna Iddrisu made financial demands on an employment agency under the ministry to finance his foreign travels. Read this and tell me if Azure was not out to destroy somebody without even an iota of insane evidence because as a matter of fact, we all know he has never presented anything sane of his own. Why is it not the Ministry but Haruna? Did you say his foreign travels? Are you kidding me? Did he go there for a family vacation or a honeymoon? Why will you not leave his personality and handle the issue at the ministerial level? Why do you want to rise to fame through the concoction of stories that will be rejected by even the Mad Men Union of Ghana? Hmmm., and when I thought this was over, I just saw another article entitled I'm yet to refund YEA money - Haruna Iddrisu admits. Is it the ministry is yet to refund the money or Haruna is yet to refund it? I do not need to explain further; you can see the desperate attempt by a hired platform with its journaliars doing all they can to destroy someone they believe is defying all odds to remain clean in an environment where thievery if the order of the day. Anas did not get international recognition through this illogical submissions, he presented facts and sometimes video evidence. Trust me no serious international organization will even read your submission if all you have is what you presented. Indeed foreign firms will run from your ilk: you are not a corruption fighter Azure you are a fame chaser who steals incomplete documents and submits them as evidence; you are nothing but an office rat you steal documents but lack the requisite knowledge to convert them to something meaningful than chewing them. Mabel Aku Banaseh is not rising to fame because of lies and witch hunting; the reason she won the GJA journalist of the year award that you thought you should have won was because she wrote objectively; she wrote on the subject matters rather than personalities. No wonder she is able to write a book that is gaining recognition everywhere. That is how a promising journalist behaves. As an auditor, what is presented might not even make it to my audit workpapers. I will need a budget and schedule of expenditure, and perhaps sample evidence (invoices) to show that whatever is presented in the schedule of expenditure was actually incurred. Corruption cannot be fought on hate and jealousy; such traits are the weapons of the evil, the mechanisms of a loser; and largely, the strategies of a directionless fully grown man who is pushed by a class of rich men to help destroy others for their selfish interest. I really dont know what exactly Azure wants to achieve by publishing correspondence from a ministry to one of its agencies requesting money. Is it against policies for the ministry to request money from its agencies? Where did you indicate that in your publication? Was the amount used for expenditure that is not sanctioned? If so where is that presented in your article? So why at all are you making noise for nothing? You just want us to see letters from a ministry requesting money from an agency? Back to the evidence, one of the childish submissions centered on the amount that was to be reimbursed by the ministry to its agency after payment had been received from the ministry of finance. On audit stand point, the first thing we would have done is to look at the internal controls to make sure that there are policies and provisions that allow the ministry to borrow from the agency. This obviously is true, so all is well for the first step. Our next step would have been to verify that the amount is not aging more than it should be outstanding there is no such policy mentioning when such borrowings should be paid back. While this can be a weakness in internal controls, it will not even be a control failure because the control does not even exist as per what I know now there is no wrong doing whatsoever. We would have just recommended that a policy be established giving timelines to pay such monies back. Finally, we would have inquired from the ministry of finance to confirm that they actually owe such amount to the Ministry of employment. Indeed we would have sent a blank confirmation so they fill it with the amount outstanding. Azure, can you present your audit confirmation letter for this procedure? So where is the crime? Did Haruna receive the money from the Finance Ministry through his personal account but refused to pay it to the agency? What then is this noise for? Did you even make any attempt to verify from the Ministry of Finance as to whether they owe the Ministry of Employment such monies? What kind of journalist and corruption fighter are you? Now let me make it clear here that what Azure presented in that pool of ignorance called a revelation is not even worth a discovery and will not merit an investigation by an auditor or fraud examiner. He did nothing special; he just published letters from the ministry which makes no sense. In almost all ministries you will find such correspondence; they are not confidential documents that are locked in the ministers house. The lowest ranked worker at the ministry can also get access to them. So everybody could lay his hands on such documents. Having said this, let me make it clear to you that Azure is more a danger to Ghana than the people he tries to pull down in the name of misdoings. In this era of Sakawa, you are considered an agent of crime if you jump to the internet with letters bearing the signatures of big men in government; you are promoting fraud than fighting it. But I am going to pardon Azure for this ignorance: seasoned journalists who know what they are doing would have analyzed the letters without publishing them but as we all know, Mba Azure lacks analytical skills, and so as normal of him, he submitted the raw data thinking he is giving information. Another way a journalist with even the lowest IQ would have handled this, is to blacken out the signatures because they will be considered sensitive information when made public. Unfortunately this momoni journalist cannot think beyond contacting people to give him copies of internal correspondence. Azure, I have an advice for you; please go back to school and learn more; wait, I heard that you are done with your masters. Honorable witches of West Africa! I am not very sure you need more schooling then; perhaps you should shed away the title of a journalist and go for mentoring from the noble Anas. There, you will learn what journalism is. Advice number 2: select your targets intelligently In my language, there is a saying that if you kill an evil animal, then you must seek protection from its ghost I hope you are ready to handle the person you woke up, good luck boy!! I am 100% sure that the likes of you are getting prominence attacking government because the likes of Haruna Iddrisu are no more party communicators. It is clear that you are going round looking for instances to help you gain fame; but in the cause of doing that please do not concoct lies that you cannot defend and even more important, do not go for people who know their stuff like Haruna Iddrisu. It is only a fool who will have difficulty identifying people who can beat him. Note this is a proverb; I am not calling Azure a fool!! I heard people questioning why we are all defending him (Haruna); sorry we are not. He does not even need our defense. He knows exactly what he is doing. He is analytically keen, philosophically outstanding and when it comes to knowing what to say at what time and to whom, his par is yet to be created in the current generational politicians. The truth is, that guy (Haruna) is fire and people who dont even like him know that! My final advice, please get close to people in the know. Seek advice on certain issues you make public before you do so. I dont even know the number this current incident will take on your list of erroneous articles that you published ignorantly thinking you are in possession of detailed evidence. Do you remember the other time you published details of audit workpapers claiming they were audit reports? That was big shame right? A journalist should be multidisciplinary or make friends in other disciplines. You make economic pronouncements when you can barely define economics; you comment on audit related issues when your knowledge about audit is even weaker than a childs knowledge as to how babies are made. I understand your desperation sir! But please wait for the right time to shine. A journalist informs; and to inform you must have information in hand. What you have is data that needs to be processed to information. Since you have successfully demonstrated to all that you lack the knowledge to convert data to information, please seek help! To conclude I think as Ghanaians we need to be very careful about how we fight corruption. It is good to expose the rot, but when we do, we should try not to make people look horrible when they are not. We dont need to publish mere letters as evidence of misdoings. That is not the best to do. I think we will push away hardworking people when we go in the Azure direction. I love people who fight corruption genuinely, but never the style that is employed by Azure and his pay masters. Perhaps in future, Azure will grow from a journaliar to a journalist; for now he is not! He is only a desperate young man who is pushed everywhere like a funeral veil for the benefit of his maters. He lacks basic knowledge of journalism. He is weaker in analysis, logically pathetic and a novice in evidence gathering. God bless our motherland Ghana. Abubakari Sadiq Iddrisu Assurance/Audit Staff, Ernst and Young LLP, NY. Certified Public Accountant, NY. Member, American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. MBA Public Accounting, Iona College, NY. B.A Economics, Lehman College, NY. [email protected] https://www.facebook.com/prince.n.sadiq Disagrees with publishers view Dear Editor: I refute Sentinel Publisher, Gary Adkissons column Jan. 9 titled, We are better than this, which was his response to a Sentinel phone message describing Barack Obama with the N word. The fact that Mr. Adkisson uses the word Christian a whopping nine times in his 13 inch, We are better rant makes it rather clear to whom which group of our citizens he is directing his ire. He crosses over the line of professionalism when he transitions the Obama phone message into writing that, hatred is not too strong a word to describe their feelings and many are Christians. Does your politically correct (of course) publisher believe that Central Pa. readers are a bunch of mindless morons? Apparently, he does. This insulting, not so subtle inference is blatantly bias, prejudiced, degrading, and downright wrong. He needs to apologize not only to his entire staff, but also to his salary paying subscribers. It goes without saying that a Christian conservative would not have left that message. It also goes without saying that anytime conservatives offer even the slightest Obama policy criticism they are immediately branded as haters, mean spirited, etc. Conservatives need to reject this complete nonsense for what it is. In our society of absolutely no mainstream media opinion diversity, I challenge the publisher Adkisson to display balance by writing a second column also titled We are better than this. It could even describe a female presidential candidate whom is still in the race despite multiple criminal activities and scandals. Wow an American newspaper publisher actually presenting balance. Ha ha ha ha ha. Ill win the Power Ball Jackpot five consecutive times before that ever happens. David Delp Harrisburg 19.01.2016 LISTEN Previous Chiefs of the Defence Staff and Service Chiefs were pulled out of the military without anybody knowing their party affiliations. Not so with Vice Admiral Matthew Quashie, whose as it were valedictory speech during his pullout activity and the accompanying speech exposed his party preference rather obscenely something unusual of military officers of his rank and caliber. It was a speech lacking in the kind of finesse which such orations should spot, more so from someone who understands the importance of camouflage and concealment and its application in everyday life and above all, diplomacy. Military officers with passed staff college labels are diplomats in their own right and are expected therefore to be mindful about their language and general conduct. His speech was deficient of the decency and diplomacy Generals should exhibit, especially since officers are gentlemen. He appears to be longing to join the ranks of dirty politicians: when the punches start coming therefore as those in the gutters of local politics experience often, he should not be surprised. Hear him: The recent spate of internal wrangling with attendant killings in political parties does not augur well for the country. If within their own party they can do that, how about if it is another party? They should learn to control themselves. They should learn to jaw-jaw instead of war-war. Without his name being attached to the above, we could have bet they were uttered by the National Democratic Congress' (NDC's) General Secretary, Asiedu Nketia. For an outgoing Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS) to speak the way he did on a subject which is the preserve of politicians, we are amazed as are many other Ghanaians. At first we thought it was a mix-up of sorts from the reporter who covered the event. It has become clear, however, that he actually said what was attributed to him and we must say we are disappointed in a man we used to think was a gentleman. Seeking favours from the president perhaps so he can be considered for a diplomatic service assignment does not require him to debase himself to this level. If we may ask him, which political party was he referring to in the innuendo-like remarks which we doubt very much has won the heart of the president who these days is so busy that such oratory pranks hardly attract him. If he loves his country so much that he can withstand the consequences thereof, he could have rather expressed umbrage over the open thievery of the public purse and the rooftop corruption in the country. Internal wrangling within parties is not his business to discuss or even give unnecessary admonitions on. Indeed, if he did not have anything to say at that stage of the activity, he should have just shut up and prayed and hoped for a successful transition to a civilian life. What a way to end a military career spanning close to four decades! The Official opening ceremony of the 8th Gender Pre-Summit today, Tuesday 19 January 2016, brought together over four hundred delegates from across the continent and abroad in the AU Headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The Nelson Mandela plenary hall at the New AU Conference Center was full to capacity with women leaders in all the socio-economic and political sectors who gathered to exchange views on the theme: 2016 African Year of Human Rights with Particular Focus on the rights of Women. The objective of the meeting is to bring together the voices of key actors dealing with gender equality and women's empowerment, to update and discuss critical developments related to the empowerment and rights of women, so as to influence and shape the discussions and decisions of the policy makers during the 26th African Union (AU) Summit. The event was organised by the Directorate of Women, Gender and Development of the AU Commission in collaboration with partner organisation, under the patronage of H.E Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, Chairperson of the African Union Commission (AUC) Addressing the distinguish delegates at the official opening of the Gender Pre-Summit, Dr. Dlamini Zuma, retirated that, the year 2016, marks an important milestones in the continent as well as the global women's development agenda. We should be the change we want to see Women should be change agents . to transform, not to conform. Said the AUC Chairperson. She further challenged all African Women to strongly reflect on these three valuable words and encouraged them to device strategic mechanisms aimed at reinforcing and broadening the participation of women in all important positions at national, regional and international levels. On the other hand, Chairperson Dlamini Zuma underscored the need to stregthen the Pan-African Women Organizations (PAWO) at the grassroots to drive the vision of integration in the Continent. The AUC Chairperson regretted that despite all the efforts done so far by the AUC to stop conflicts and wars in Africa, various parts of the continent continue to be affected by conflict and insecurity, with women being disproportionately impacted. She called on all the Members States to work towards ensuring that the continent meets the target of silencing the guns by 2020. Dr. Dlamini Zuma recalled that the African Union has developed a list of legislative and policy instruments to help in advancing the agenda of Women in peace, and Security at various levels yet the protection of women in times of conflict and peace-progress notwithstanding is still poor. It is time for a radical transformative campaign for change and implementation of all the legal frameworks already in place to enhance women's empowerment particularly under Agenda 2063, concluded the AUC Chairperson. (See complete speech of the AUC Chairperson on the AU Website: www.au.int). Ms. Bineta Diop, AU special Envoy on Women, Peace and Security, said the time is ripe for women to catalyze their efforts, reinvigorate their commitments and raise once more their voices, loud and clear to say that Africa needs action, that Africa must walk the talk so as to break the cycle of violence on women and deprivation that ultimately continues to hold Africa in poverty and instability. This Year 2016 offers us another opportunity to put on the table the quest, I should say, the demand by African women for their rights to be recognized as Human rights, to be upheld and to resolutely take the path of implementation, a path to transformation. And Indeed Africa has defined the road to that transformation through Our Agenda 2063, an agenda for today and tomorrow, as solid future can only be achieved through wise investment today......We, Women of Africa, must seize this opportunity as we all know that Africa will not achieve its Agenda without the women and youth of this continent. She underlined (See complete speech of Mme Bineta Diop on the AU Website: www.au.int) Mr. Lebohang Motlana Director of the UNDP Regional Service Centre for Africa recognized the importance of the ongoing gender Summit as it sets the pace and platform for discussing critical gender issues which also resonate with the United Nations ideals on Humans Rights. The UNDP Representative highlighted some of the supports of the UN to the AU such as observing democratic elections in various African countries, pointing out that, it is with democracy that certain virtues such as respect of women's rights arises. He underscored the urgent need for policies to foster equal education, equal employment and wage opportunities to empower women in today's societies ; Women's Rights are Humans Rights and Human Rights are women's rights and this is non negotiable, he concluded. (See complete Speech of the UNDP Director on the AU Website: www.au.int) Dr. Khetsiwe Dlamini, UN Women Chief of Staff, noted that the He for She Campaign support will go a long way in mobilising coordinated interventions to achieve gender equality as it involves the participation of men while putting women in the lead towards the fight for equality. While emphasizing the unrecognized role played by women in the labour force as pertinent social investors who contribute to their countries' GDP, Dr. Dlamini took this opportunity to urge women as well as men to fast track progress of gender equality through provision of finances to foster implementation of inclusive gender policies. The UN women Director reiterated the need to end all forms of violence against women. Mrs. Ruth Ocheng, representative of the Gender is my Agenda Campaign (GIMAC) commended the African Union for declaring 2016 the year of Human Rights with particular focus on the rights of women and the adoption of the Agenda 2063. She emphasised that this will put the African Union in a position of driving Africa's development agenda. Khartoum (AFP) - The head of Sudan's powerful National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) vowed Islamic State group jihadists would not be allowed to use the country to cross into Libya, a media source reported Tuesday. "Sudan will not be a crossing for Daesh and extremists," said NISS chief Mohamed Atta al-Mawla Abbas according to the Sudan Media Centre (SMC). Daesh is one of the names used for Islamic State, which is also called ISIL. "We will not tolerate any organised or cross-border crime Sudanese territory is used in," he said. The SMC, seen as close to the security forces, said he was speaking at the graduation of new members of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a controversial counter-insurgency unit. There have been reports in Khartoum-based media that young Sudanese have travelled to Libya to fight with radical Islamist groups, with some reported to have been killed. Last year students from a private university in Khartoum travelled to Turkey, from where they are believed to have joined the IS group in Syria. Some of the students held western passports. The security chief also repeated claims from Khartoum that rebels battling government forces in Sudan's western Darfur region have been fighting in Libya. "For the Libyan state, we want security and stability and peace and we do not want insurgents going to Libya and coming back and sabotaging peace in Darfur," he told the graduating RSF troops. RSF forces sent to crush rebels in Darfur and the southern Blue Nile and South Kordofan states have been accused of rights abuses, which the government has denied. Unlike the regular military, the RSF come under the umbrella of the NISS. Paris (AFP) - A remote, rural Burkina Faso community has turned to Facebook to seek the release of an elderly Australian doctor kidnapped with his wife at the weekend by Al-Qaeda-linked jihadists. The dusty town of Djibo in the far north of Burkina Faso not far from Mali opened a Facebook page following the capture of "the doctor of the poor", Dr Ken Elliot, and his wife Jocelyn, on the night of January 15-16. The elderly couple from Perth have spent some 40 years running a 120-bed clinic, the only medical facility in the region. A Facebook message posted Tuesday by the people of Djibo said "the patients of the hospital of Dr. Elliot, distressed at the kidnapping and in view of the duration of his detention, envisages public demonstrations." "We are calling upon all of the citizens and governments of the international community ... to undertake actions necessary for the liberation of Dr #Elliot," it added. The message came a day after hundreds of students in khaki uniforms with hand-printed cardboard placards reading "Free Elliot" turned out in the town with their teachers. "Our small voices are crying our pain along with the dozens of sick people I've seen leaving the clinic these last three days," said a post by Adama Dicko. "I'm sure you've already looked after a relative of the people who kidnapped you," he added. The page titled "Djibo backs Dr Ken Elliot", featuring photos of the white-haired and bearded doctor at work in the clinic, already has 4,200 followers, with messages largely from the medic's Burkinabe friends but also from his family and other Australians. A former Australian hostage who spent 15 months in Somalia, Nigel Brennan, had a message of hope. "Something like 96 percent of people come out alive," he said. "Very few people die in captivity." The whereabouts of the West Australian couple in their 80s who moved to Burkina Faso in 1972 remain unknown. The Burkina government has said the pair were kidnapped in Baraboule, near the west African country's borders with Niger and Mali. News of the kidnapping came at the weekend as a jihadist assault on an upmarket hotel in Burkina Faso's capital Ouagadougou left at least 30 people dead, including many foreigners. A spokesman for Malian militant group Ansar Dine, Hamadou Ag Khallini, told AFP in a brief phone message that the couple were being held by jihadists from the Al-Qaeda-linked "Emirate of the Sahara". He said they were alive and more details would be released soon. The Emirate of the Sahara is a branch of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) operating in northern Mali, according to experts. The group has claimed the attack on the Ouagadougou hotel. Accra, Jan. 19, GNA - The Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has held an awards ceremony for more than 197 workers, who retired from the Authority in 2015. The workers, including 35 women, had served the organization in different capacities, for between 8 and 42 years. They each received plaques and flat screen television sets. Mr George Blankson, Commissioner General of GRA, congratulated the retirees for their dedicated contributions to the Authority and the country over the years, saying they had helped to accelerate the country's development and economic growth. He said the revenue they mobilized had kept government's programmes and activities running to improve the lives of the people. Mr Blankson urged those in active service to aspire to work diligently so they can be proud of their contributions when the time comes for them to retire. Touching on the take-over of the core functions of classification, valuation and risk management from the destination inspection companies, Mr Blankson said the teething challenges had been overcome and that the GRA would build on the successes chalked for improved performance in the future. Dr Edward Larbi-Siaw, a Tax Policy Advisor at the Ministry of Finance, said the introduction of withholding taxes are not to punish taxpayers. He said there was the need to educate people to the necessity to widen the tax base. Comparing Ghana's tax rates with those in some African countries, Dr Larbi-Siaw said the evidence had shown that Ghanaian rates were not as high as it was perceived. He said while Ghana has income tax rate (CIT) of 25 per cent and Value Added Tax (VAT) of 17.5 per cent, Niger applies a rate of 30 and 19 percent respectively. Burkina Faso has CIT of 28 per cent and VAT of 18 per cent. Similar stories can be told of Togo and South Africa where the rates are 28 and 18 per cent; and 28 per cent CIT and 14 per cent VAT respectively. Kenya, on the other hand, charges 30 and 16 per cent respectively, while in Cameroun CIT is 33 with VAT at 19.25. CIT in Chad, he said, was 40 per cent and VAT was 18.6 per cent. GNA 19.01.2016 LISTEN Accra, Jan. 19, GNA - STAR-Ghana has rolled out the process of vetting about 221 institutions who successfully submitted proposals aimed at helping to achieve peaceful, credible, issues-based and inclusive elections in 2016. Ghana News Agency sources from STAR-Ghana indicate that 38 media institutions were able to submit proposals by the deadline; whilst 171 Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) submitted proposals for the Open Component in addition to 12 institutions which submitted for the Strategic Component. The overall indicative budgets for the three calls are: Open Component - US$1.5m; Strategic Component - US$500,000; while the Media Component is US$600,000. STAR-Ghana activity calendar indicates that the Project Management Team and Independent Assessors will be between January 18 and 26, assess grant applications; from January 27 - February 2, a Grant Sub-committee will review applications recommended for funding by the assessors. The Grant Sub-committee will on February 3 meet to discuss applications and recommend grants to the Steering Committee for approval; and from February 4 to 10, STAR-Ghana will contact recommended grantees and make appointments to conduct due diligence. The source said the due diligence will be conducted between February 11 to 17 and reports submitted to the STAR-Ghana Steering Committee by February 19. The STAR-Ghana vetting process continues on February 21 with a Steering Committee meeting to discuss and agree on grants to be approved; and that from February 21 to 28, the STAR-Ghana Project Management Team will follow up with successful grantees and finally on March 1, Contracting and disbursements will begin. In another development, Mr. Ibrahim-Tanko Amidu, STAR-Ghana Programme Director/Team Leader in an interview with GNA explained that STAR-Ghana has a vision to see an active and engaged civil society capable of articulating citizens' demands and an effective state that is responsive and accountable to its citizens. He said STAR-Ghana's goal is to develop a vibrant, well-informed and assertive civil society, which is able to contribute to transformational national development and inclusive access to high quality, accountable public services for all Ghanaians. Mr. Ibrahim-Tanko noted that the second phase of STAR-Ghana project is a five year programme being funded by UK Aid, DANIDA and the EU with a total budget of 22million. He explained that the second phase of STAR-Ghana is conceptualised by the Steering Committee (SC) through broad and nationwide consultations with key stakeholders. The Steering Committee, the highest level of authority under the programme is responsible for the overall management and strategic oversight and direction of STAR-Ghana. He noted that the second phase of STAR-Ghana is managed by a consortium led by Christian Aid with Mango, Social Development Direct, Overseas Development Institute, Nkum Associates and On Our Radar. He said the key shift from its predecessor programme is the new strategic focus on facilitating and supporting processes and interventions which aim at systemic changes in socio-economic and political institutions/structures in Ghana. STAR-Ghana will therefore act as a Convener, Catalyst and Coordinator of civil society action towards systemic and transformational change. GNA 19.01.2016 LISTEN Accra, Jan. 19, GNA - Seven men who were arrested with weapons during a military training in Dzantong-Daboise, near Salaga in the Northern Region have made their second appearance at an Accra Circuit Court. Issah Suale, Mason, Mahama Saani Muftawu, Trader, Mohammed Alhassan, Iddrisu Ibrahima, Teacher, now at large, have been charged with possession of firearms without authority and unlawful training. The others, Mohammed Alhassan, a nurse at the Tamale Teaching Hospital, Alhassan Abdul-Dayan, a teacher and student of Valley View University College Techiman Campus, Abdulai Ibrahim Wumpuni, an auto mechanic, Umar Ibrahim Alhassan, an auto mechanic and Andani Moahmed Toufig, a teacher were charged with abetment of unlawful possession of firearms. The accused persons are alleged to be members of 'TABLIGH Brothers' an International Mobile Preacher Wing of Sunni Muslims. The seven, who denied all the charges, were found in their possession two AK47 rifles, a laptop with videos and documentaries of Islamic militant activities. At Tuesday's sitting, Mr Alex Mantey Osei lamented over his inability to have access to his clients. According to him, he has not had the opportunity to have enough conference with his clients, adding that was very crucial. Prosecuting Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Aidan Dery submitted that they were putting together pieces of information gathered by the BNI and prayed for more time. The court presided over by Mr Aboagye Tandoh remanded them into lawful custody to reappear on February 1. It further ordered the BNI to offer counsel access to his clients. The facts as narrated by DSP Dery are that on December 24, last year, Suale, Muftawu and Ibrahim arrived at Dzantong- Daboise village near Salaga with two motor bikes. Prosecution said the youth within the community suspecting them to be ritual murderers looking for a place to bury a corpse of murdered person, accosted them. According to prosecution, the youth arrested Suale and Muftawu but Ibrahim escaped. When their bags were searched, two AK47 rifles were found. When the rest of the accused persons attempted to rescue Suale and Muftawu, they were also arrested. Prosecution said 16 spent AK47 ammunition shells were found in the room of Umar Ibrahim Alhassan. DSP Dery said the Police recovered a Toshiba laptop with videos and documentaries of Islamic militants' activities from Mohammed Alhassan. During interrogation, prosecution said Suale and Muftawu said they went to Dzantong-Daboise to locate a quiet and secured place to practice the firing of weapons. GNA Accra, Jan. 19, GNA - The Krokrobite District Command of Ghana Police Service, have arrested seven people in connection with a mob attack on the Bortianor Chief's Palace leading to the stealing and destruction of property. According to a police source the culprits are: Tei Ofoli Quarcoo, alias Red; Ring Leader, Alex Armah, alias Shark; Tetteh Ojuku, Asare Beli; Kwao Opolo, Tunde, and Fiifi Atoope. They have been provisionally charged for stealing of the Bortianor Stool and attack of palace and elders. Two victims of the mob attack appealed to the Inspector General of Police for justice. Joseph Tetteh Amui, 38 and Peter Adama Armah, 29, who carried their injured pictures to Ghana News Agency in Accra, said they were attacked on December 29, 2015 in their home by a mob numbering about 50 who inflicted cutlass wounds on them and molested their family members. They said their offence was to report to the police about a mob attack on the Bortianor Chief's palace, who vandalised property. GNA Accra, Jan. 19, GNA - A carpenter, who broke into the room of a car dealer and stole a flat screen television set and a laptop at Ashongman, has sentenced to 10 months imprisonment by an Accra Circuit Court. Emmanuel K. Mensah is alleged to have told a witness, who saw the action, that it was the complainant, Mr Frank Kusi, who had asked him (accused) to collect the items. Charged with unlawful entry, causing damage and stealing, Mensah at the last sitting, denied the offences. However, when he appeared in Court today, Mensah changed his plea and was convicted by the Court presided by Ms Patricia Quansah. On the charges of unlawful entry and causing damage, the Court sentenced Mensah to a fine of 3,600 each. On the charge of stealing, Mensah was sentenced to 10 months imprisonment and sentences are to run concurrently. Prosecuting Chief Inspector Francis Tarsan told the Court that the complainant, Mr Kusi resides at Ashongman whilst the accused resides at Aburi. He said Mensah entered complainant's premises in his absence and used a pinch bar and screw driver to break into Mr Kusi's room and made away with the television set valued at GHa3,648.00 and a laptop worth GHa622.00. As soon as Mensah brought the items out, a witness quizzed him on where he was sending the items. Mensah told the witness that it was the complainant, who had asked him to come for the items. The witness who doubted Mensah's claims then called the complainant on his phone and sensing danger, Mensah bolted and left behind the stolen items and his motor bike. Chief Inspector Tarsan said Mensah later took cover in the area and then sent a school boy to bring him the motor bike parked in Mr Kusi's house. The complainant, who had then returned home, accosted the school boy who took him to where the accused was hiding. Mensah was arrested by the Police and during interrogation, he demonstrated how he broke into the complainant's room. GNA 19.01.2016 LISTEN Accra, Jan. 19, GNA - Mr Winfred Osei Owusu, President of Cashew Industry Association of Ghana on Tuesday, called for a higher level of commitment from policy makers towards the development of the cashew sector. According to him although the sector is a burgeoning industry that contributes to foreign exchange earnings, stems the tide to rural to urban migration through local level employment and transformation, it lacks the needed recognition by government. He said apart from the absence of an administrative body, legally mandated to steer the affairs in the cashew value chain, there are challenges with cashew production capacity and accessibility to credit facilities to farmers, leading to a shortfall in the level of performance of the crop. Mr Owusu said in spite of its enormous potential to generate wealth and employment for Ghanaians and foreign exchange for the nation, the current state of the cashew market shows that Ghanaians are not in control, as foreigners with the advantage of their home government subsidies are crowding out local traders and even processors. He said the situation has created chaos in the cashew market-place, where local and foreign, small and large traders are all operating in a playing field that has no regulations as found in more structured markets such as Cote d'Ivoire. Mr Osei Owusu therefore advised government and policy makers to take a queue from the success of the cocoa sector structure and organisation, for the realisation of the expected expansion, recognition and success of the cashew sector. He was addressing participants at the opening of the first ever national cashew dialogue on the theme: 'Revitalising the Cashew Sector: An Opportunity Neglected by the Nation,' in Accra. The dialogue, which is being organised by the Cashew Industry Association of Ghana (CIAG), is part of a six-month advocacy programme mainly sponsored by the Business Sector Advocacy Challenge Fund, and aims at impressing upon policy makers, especially parliamentarians to intensify lobbying on the challenging issues in the cashew sector for improved performance and recognition. . It brought together about 100 stakeholders within the cashew growing industry, to have discussions with key government organisations, including the Ministries of Trade and Industry, Finance, Food and Agriculture, as well as the Ghana Export Promotion Authority. Dr Gideon Kofi Agbley, Acting Executive Secretary, CIAG, said the sector contribute between 400 and 500 million dollars revenue to help in the country's current economic crisis, and with the potential prospect of cashew production locally, it was anticipated that the crop would increase from its current 50,000 to 200,000 metric tonnes annually with a processing capacity of about 90 per cent. The sector currently has 14 processing factories in the country with a processing capacity of 60,000 MT while the country produces 50,000 MT of raw nuts. He explained that with the support of BUSAC and African Cashew Alliance, the Association has begun series of activities as part of its advocacy campaign, hoping to bring the challenges within the sector before duty bearers and to chart a way forward. Mr Kwaku Aidoo, President of the Ghana Cooperative Famers Association, called for the removal of the Export Premium in the sector, which he said is a disincentive and frustration to cashew farmers and the market because of its monopoly. GNA PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti Stone-throwing demonstrators on Monday smashed car windows and set at least two vehicles ablaze in Haitis capital, hours after several electoral offices were attacked in northern towns as the country prepares for a Jan. 24 presidential and legislative runoff. Roughly 2,000 protesters took to the streets in downtown Port-au-Prince calling for new elections and the immediate removal of outgoing President Michel Martelly, among other grievances. Roads were blocked with flaming tire barricades and more than a dozen motorists had their cars pelted with rocks. A truck and an SUV were torched by young men near a police station. Police dispersed opposition protesters and cleared most roadblocks by late afternoon. Officers scattered some demonstrators with tear gas in the downtown slum of Bel Air, one of many impoverished areas where young people whove never held any kind of steady job are easy pickings for political actors looking for protesters for hire. High school science teacher Elisme Nerius walked his 9-year-old son home from school near a barricaded intersection where black smoke was still billowing from burning tires. My hope is that when my boy is old enough to vote this country can finally hold decent and calm elections, Nerius said. In northern Haiti, Police Inspector Michel Henri said three electoral offices were set on fire late Sunday in towns around the city of Cap-Haitien and at least two others were damaged by hurled rocks. Henri said the three offices that were set ablaze werent totally destroyed because locals managed to douse the flames. Gerardo de Icaza, electoral observation director at the Organization of American States, tweeted Monday that the OAS mission deplores and strongly condemns the violence targeting offices of Haitis Provisional Electoral Council. The OAS called on Haitian political actors to reject violence and act peacefully. Last month, several government buildings were burned and one demonstrator was killed in scattered violent protests sparked by the release of final legislative election results. Campaigning for Haitis presidential runoff kicked off earlier this month, but only government-backed candidate Jovenel Moise has been campaigning. Opposition presidential candidate Jude Celestin is boycotting the scheduled Jan. 24 vote and said his party will not send any monitors to polling stations. Celestin leads an opposition alliance alleging widespread electoral fraud in favor of Moise, Martellys chosen successor. 19.01.2016 LISTEN (A GNA feature by Alexander Nyarko Yeboah) Accra, Jan. 19, GNA - There has been a lot of talk about the Government's decision to bring two ex-Guantanamo Bay detainees to Ghana. A lot of fear has been expressed by a cross-section of Ghanaians about the security implications that decision could have on the nation's peace and security. There are ongoing talks with the Christian Council, the National Chief Imam, and civil society organizations to garner support for this decision. But is it worth the fear? Is the bringing of these two perceived former terrorists capable of destroying the peace and security of this nation? Well that is a question we all must answer. To begin with, one must know that terrorism is a growing phenomenon in the world which, if not checked, may expand to all parts of the globe. It is therefore not wise to sit at one corner and think that place is safe, and that we make a place unsafe because we intend to rehabilitate some detainees from Guantanamo. There are many developments that could attract terrorism to Ghana if care is not taken, and that is what must attract our fear and utmost attention. One of the causes of modern day terrorism is religious extremism. This is a situation in which members of a religious organization are prepared to do anything so long as they believe it promotes the interest of their faith. In some instances, some devotees could be indoctrinated to the extent that they could inflict body harm on themselves simply because their leaders have asked them to do so. In the Christian faith for instance, it is on record that some pastors have asked their members to drink poison and die because the world is coming to an end, to which they complied due to the enormous powers the leaders wield over their members. It is also much talked about that suicide bombers believe they are candidates for heaven should they die in the course of fighting for their faith. And so it is not wrong when Karl Max said that 'religion is the opium of the masses,' because it has the ability to dull the senses such that one may do things that do not make sense in the eyes of reality. In this regard, a nation that wants to be free from terrorism is the one which would ensure that it avoids fundamentalism by ensuring that all religious leaders become responsible in their utterances. We should therefore ensure that we bring reality closer to some of the teachings we give to our members and understand that the mind is more powerful than any religious inclination. We should have the ability to subject any religious inclinations to common sense and human reason. Again, the nation should endeavor to promote all religions in the country so that one religious group would not feel marginalized, otherwise any marginalized sect would become willing tools in the hands of terrorist who would use them to prosecute their agenda. Ghana has so far done well in promoting tolerance between the two dominant faiths, Islam and Christianity. If we want to avoid terrorism and continue the peace we are enjoying, we must move beyond that to eschew all kinds of hate speech and utterances that denigrate members of other religions as if ours is the best. We must understand that every religious faith has as a common denominator, which is, the need to serve a superior being and intend to guide our lives here on earth. With this understanding we can co-exist side by side with members of different faiths. The United States of America, by virtue of its super-power status and its desire to dominate world politics, has stepped on many toes over the years, and made a lot of enemies in some parts of the world. However, bringing Mahmud Umar Muhammad Bin Atef and Khalid Muhammad Salih Al-Dhuby to Ghana for rehabilitation should not scare us. What should be a matter of concern is the ability of our government to play a neutral role in the ongoing Middle East conflict. We should be able to look the U.S and its allies in the face and tell them the truth when we feel they are wrong in dealing with the people of Palestine. Again, back here at home our concern should be geared towards improving the economic circumstances and living conditions of the people, as well as making efforts to close the social gap. People become vulnerable and susceptible to all kinds of influences when they cannot make ends meet. As such, instead of making the two Gitmo detainees a subject for debate on terrorist activities in Ghana, we should know that as the saying goes, 'a hungry man is an angry man.' We all attest to the hardship we find ourselves in as a nation, so it is time we concentrated on how to salvage this worrisome situation which also has the potential to drive us into a state of lawlessness. All these put together, it is obvious that rather than merely bringing two Gitmo detainees into the country, Ghana also has a number of risk factors that predisposes her to terrorism if care is not taken. We must understand that fire would burn only when there is reasonable fuel to keep it burning. Even if the two men are a threat to our security, we should be interested in finding out what situations we have on the ground that could light the spark of terror in the first place. This is because even if we decide to send them away, that in itself may not prevent a situation that has been waiting to surface all along but which we were blinded to. Indeed, Ghana just like any other nation in the world is at risk when it comes to issues of terrorism. Perhaps this whole Gitmo incident is at best a wake-up call that would make us put in place the requisite structures so that we do not end up like other countries. GNA 19.01.2016 LISTEN Amasaman (G/A), Jan. 19, GNA - Nii Gyaase Gbotsui I, the Chief of Doblo Gonno, near Amasaman in the Ga West Municipality has offered land for the construction of a Town Council Hall. The facility when completed would help create job opportunities for the youth such as cleaners. Nii Gbotsui made this known in an interview with the Ghana News Agency after a general meeting with sub-chiefs, elders and the people in the area. He said he had already given out land for the construction of a junior high school block in the town to help promote quality teaching and learning. Nii Gbotsui said the community would also construct a community centre, a clinic, market, lorry station and a police station. He therefore appealed to the Ga West Municipal Assembly and the Member of Parliament for the area Mr. Emmanuel Okai Laryea to assist the community in these projects. He said to ensure a peaceful election in November the youth should beware of politicians who would influence them with money to cause mayhem. Nii Gbotsui also advised them to desist from social vices like smoking of cigarette, marijuana and alcoholism that could blur their sense of judgement and put their lives in danger. GNA 19.01.2016 LISTEN Accra, Jan. 19, GNA - The Ghana cedi has made its mark in Guangzhou city and is now accepted by restaurants in the Chinese city. This follows negotiations that had existed between Ghana and the China in the past days to accept the Ghanaian currency. A statement copied to the Ghana News Agency stated that, Mr Horace Nii Ayi Ankrah, Deputy Ambassador to China, during a two- day working visit to Guangzhou, briefed management of the business entities of the advantages of accepting the cedi in a trading city like Guangzhou. Mr Ankrah was in the vicinity to interact with Ghanaian traders who had travelled to Guangzhou to trade. He assured the few traders he met that the Mission in Beijing would do everything in its power to assist them in their endeavours. GNA 19.01.2016 LISTEN Accra, Jan. 19, GNA - The Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems Limited (GhIPSS) says it is in the process of acquiring more Point of Sales devices (Pos) to further promote and encourage the use of the e-zwich card for transactions. The move is to help reduce the use of fiscal cash for purchases and push the agenda of making the Ghanaian economy a 'cash-lite' one. Speaking with a cross section of the media in Accra, Mr Archie Hesse, the Chief Executive Officer, GhIPSS, said the inadequate number of Pos partly account for the low usage of e- zwich cards to pay for goods and services. Last year, the total value of transactions recorded on the e-zwich platform reached GHC 922.3 million, a more than 238 percent jump on the 2014 transaction value of GHC 272.7 million. Mr Hesse attributed the increase partly to the use of the e-zwich for the payments of allowances for National Service Personnel, beneficiaries of the Livelihood Empowerment against Poverty (LEAP) and the payment of caterers under the National School Feeding Programme. Mr Hesse said discussions were far advanced with some remittance companies to allow direct transfer of remittance onto individual beneficiary e-zwich cards. 'When this is done you can directly receive remittances onto your e-zwich card. This will do away with the usual bottlenecks associated with receiving remittances from abroad,' he said. He said his outfit would this year focus on the adoption of the numerous payment platforms it had rolled out. To further encourage the use of the e-zwich cards, he said GhIPSS would engage with the government to ensure that beneficiaries of the Youth Employment Agency (YEA), as well as the Controller and Accountant-General's Department (CAGD), are paid via the e-zwich platform. GhIPSS is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Bank of Ghana incorporated in May 2007 with a mandate to implement and manage interoperable payment system infrastructures for banks and non bank financial institutions in Ghana. In line with its mandate, GhIPSS has implemented and currently manages the National Switch and Biometric Smart Card Payment System, e-zwich and the Cheque Codeline Clearing (CCC) and Automated Clearing House (GACH) systems. GNA Kumasi, Jan 19, GNA - The Golden Pride Savings and Loans Limited (GPSL) continues to make strong strides - expansion of its business operation with the opening of a new branch office in Kumasi. This brings to eight, the number of branches it had established within the past 36 months. These are in four regions - Greater Accra, Ashanti, western and Brong-Ahafo. GPSL is owed by the Ghana Mine Workers Union (GMWU) and has its headquarters at Obuasi. Mr. Johnson Boadi Asamoah, the Managing Director, pledged to protect the savings of customers and support small businesses to grow to create wealth and jobs. Their goal was to become a universal bank, something, he said demanded adoption of best management practices and proper internal controls. He spoke of the introduction of innovative products to attract more customers and said they already had products for child welfare and education. Nana Wiafe Akenten III, Omanhene of Offinso, urged the management to be transparent and truthful in its dealings with customers. It should also come out with products that would meet the needs of customers. GNA 20.01.2016 LISTEN 19th January 2016, Tema, Ghana: GTP, the textile manufacturer and brand celebrated for their colourful prints and lively fabrics commemorates an iconic benchmark today 50 years of commitment to Ghanaian fashion, culture, communities and economy. To mark the occasion, the company, now formally known as Tex Styles Ghana Ltd, hosted a morning of festivities including a photo exhibition depicting 50 years in the brands history, speeches by key dignitaries, a fashion show and performances by the GTP Jubilee Choir. We are tremendously honoured to have reached the half century mark as a company, said Mr. Kofi Boateng, Managing Director of Tex Styles Ghana Ltd, This day is about recognizing the special place that GTP holds within our community. ...For 50 years we have been woven into the fabric of Ghanaians lives and thats an accomplishment we are truly proud of. Several key dignitaries attended the celebration, including the Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry Mr Kweku Ricketts Hagan, who spoke at the event to congratulate GTP on their jubilee achievement as well as their contribution to the national trade and employment. Reverend Dr. Joyce Aryee delivered the 50th Anniversary Prayer and both the Honorary Isaac Ashai Odamtten, Mayor of Tema and Mr. Solomon Kotei, ICU General Secretary, spoke at the event to recognize GTP for all they have accomplished over the past 50 years. TexStyles Ghana Ltd, manufacturer of the GTP and Woodin range of African prints, is a subsidiary of the Vlisco Group, global leader in fashion brands with an African heritage. As one of the largest tax payers in Ghana, the company contributes immensely to employment, health delivery, social support and environmental education across the nation. Milestone dates for GTP: The companys rich history dates back to Kwame Nkrumahs presidency: 1966: Factory incorporated as Ghana Textiles Printing Company, a wax printing company owned by the Ghana Government, Unilever PLC & Gamma Holdings 1976: Government of Ghana assumes majority shareholding & UAC (United African Company) retains management control 1982: Workers ejected UAC management and take over control of the factory, leading to Unilever and oversee shareholders losing management control 1994: Unilever resume management control 1996: Gamma Holding (represented by Vlisco) assume majority shareholder and management 1998: Gamma Holding buys out Unilever 2004: Company name changes to Tex Styles Ghana Ltd 2010: Actis Group of UK acquires 100% of Vlisco group shares 2016: Company marks Golden Jubilee Commitment to social responsibilities Over the past 50 years GTP has never lost sight of its passion for the people within its communities, initiating various programs to contribute to the nations overall development. Employees are assisted with free lunch programs, free transport, scholarships for any employees wards entering the senior high school, HIV awareness campaigns and free medical care Assistance to disadvantaged groups in the community including: Donating bed sheets and pillow cases to over 15 hospitals thus far; Donating cloth for orphanages; Donating funds to the National Heart Foundation and assisting them with their Annual Charity Ball; Supporting Dr Wiafe Addai in propagating the Breast Cancer Awareness campaign, Promotion of the Made in Ghana campaign to boost local economy and the Inauguration of the nations first water treatment plant to contribute to national sustainability goals. I would like to personally thank all our GTP customers and consumers for their continuous patronage of our products which has kept us in business so far. We look forward to another 50 years of success in bringing quality products designed with creativity and originality while never forgetting to give back to the community that has supported us so loyally, said Mr. Boateng. A FEMALE STAFF MODELLING ON THE RUNWAY AT THE CELEBRATION A STAFF FLAUNTING HER BEAUTIFULLY DESIGNED 50TH ANNIVERSARY CLOTH ON THE RUNWAY DR. JOYCE ARYEE, MR. ALAN KYEREMANTENG AND OTHER SPECIAL GUESTS ON A FACTORY TOUR (1) GHANA'S MOST BEAUTIFUL 2015 Miami (AFP) - US government scientists are widely expected to announce Wednesday that 2015 was the planet's hottest year in modern times, amid mounting concerns over the pace of climate change worldwide. Last year's global average temperature over land and sea surfaces is scheduled to be revealed at 11:00 am (1600 GMT), in a conference call between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the US space agency NASA and reporters. Scientists who track climate expect 2015 will beat 2014 for the warmest since the 1800s, particularly since NOAA announced in December that global heat records were broken in nine months of the year, including the last seven in a row. The "first 11 months of 2015 were the warmest such period on record across the world's land and ocean surfaces," NOAA said in that report, the same kind it delivers each month, tallying the world's extreme weather events and temperature averages. Jake Crouch, climate scientist at NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information, added: "At this point we're virtually certain that 2015 will be the warmest year on record." Another group, Berkeley Earth -- a US non-profit organization that says it was founded by people who saw some merit in the claims of climate change skeptics -- has already released its findings. "2015 was unambiguously the hottest year on record," it said in a statement last week. "For the first time in recorded history, the Earth's temperature is clearly more than 1.0 C (1.8 F) above the 1850-1900 average." The group was previously more cautious than NOAA in anointing 2014 the hottest year on record. Berkeley Earth said its scientists determined that 2014 ended in a statistical tie with 2005 and 2010. This time, though, record highs in much of South America and the Middle East, and parts of the United States, Europe and Asia leave very little wiggle room. "Now, however, it is clear that 2015 is the hottest year on record by a significant margin," said executive director Elizabeth Muller. Specifically, 2015 exceeded the previous record-holder 2014 by 0.14 degrees Celsius, according to the global surface temperature average on land and sea for the year, it said. - A series of records - In a sign that the planet is warming faster than ever due to greenhouse gases spewed into the atmosphere when fossil fuels are burned, the 10 hottest years on record -- with the exception of 1998 -- have all occurred since 2000, NOAA says. Berkeley Earth framed it another way, pointing out that the Earth is about halfway to a milestone -- reaching the international target of seeing global average temperatures rise two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. The Earth "may begin to cross that threshold in about 50 years," said Berkeley Earth scientist Robert Rohde. NOAA has said that the only way for 2015 not to set new records would be if December were unusually cold -- 0.43 degrees Fahrenheit (.24 Celsius) colder than the coldest December on record, which came in 1916. For the United States alone, 2015 was the second warmest on record, NOAA said earlier this month. - Political climate - The United States, a leading world polluter, still grapples with the outsized presence of climate change deniers and skeptics in the halls of Congress. NOAA's announcement on Wednesday also comes against a backdrop of the recently completed Paris climate talks, at which the goal of capping global warming at 2 C above preindustrial levels was enshrined. In an editorial this month in the New York Times, former astronaut and NASA climate scientist Piers Sellers applauded that goal but, revealing he has pancreatic cancer, also lamented that he will not be able to see the solutions play out in his lifetime. "I think that future generations will look back on 2015 as an important but not decisive year in the struggle to align politics and policy with science," he wrote. "This is an incredibly hard thing to do." Pupils of Aboso Methodist Junior High School in the Prestea Huni-Valley district are calling on the government to provide them with toilet facilities. The school with student population of about 900 does not have toilet thereby compelling the students to visit nearby bushes around the school to ease themselves. According to them they share bushe around the school with wee smokers The students revealed that lack of toilet facilities in the school always compel them to defecate in the bushes around of which they are expose to a lot of dangers. The pupils also disclosed that the absence of computer lab always compel the teachers to use their own lab tops to teach them of which making the learning of ICT uncomfortable to study. With respect to their classroom, the student made it known that all the classroom floors and the roofs are in its deplorable state. The Headmistress of Aboso Methodist School, Madam Rebecca Bedai, speaking to Modern Ghana affirmed all the issues raised by the pupils. Madam Rebecca Bedia said letters has been sent to Methodist Church Head Office in Accra to attend to their needs almost a year now but to no avail. She said the school dont have ICT lab for the student to do practical thereby affecting the performance of the student. She, therefore, appeal to government, NGOs and individuals to support them address the situation. Ghanaians are alarmed! Ghanaians are petrified!! Ghanaians Are horrified!!! Ghanaians are yellow from the fear that has gripped the nation. You have sowed the seeds of pandemonium Mr Compassionate President, especially that recently our next door neighbour, Burkina Faso, was a victim of terrorism. People now do not only have to deal with the burdens of surviving under the circumstances of fiscal drought that your confused outfit has brought about. They are being burdened with extreme fears that cannot be assuaged by political rhetoric or cosmetic press conferences. Ghanaians do not have to suffer your collusion with the Americans against them! The fallible utterances of a US Diplomat, Mr Daniel Fenell, made the story more suspicious. Initially, he stated that caring for those Guantanamo imports was the sole responsibility of the government of Ghana. Then he was soon made to swallow his words. He retracted and stated that it was rather the joint responsibility of both the Ghanaian and American governments. That was a clear indication of the muddled nature of the exercise, throwing dust into the eyes of helpless Ghanaians. Worse still, Ministers like Hanna Tetteh, and the security Capos have denied been privy to the discussions regarding your Gitmo guests. So you took all the 230 million US Dollars to yourself or what? I mean, if you had paid them into the national coffers, at least wed know that you traded our peace and security for moneys which are available for reconstruction projects that may arise from the destruction that your Gitmo friends and their accomplices can unleash on us. It was said that Kwesi Pratt confirmed that you took money from the Americans against hosting the detainees. It seems as if you are living in denial. Barack Obama broke International Laws, and you flouted our constitution. That is TREASON, Sire! This nation is your Boss! You have no right to do anything on the blind side of Ghanaians, especially when it is related to the security of their existence! We instruct you to immediately regurgitate the money given you, and export those two characters back to the USA. Why should the Americans create the irony of refusing them legal status on the land of the free? Why has their country refused to take them in? Why dont the Americans send them back to where they were arrested from? We can barely survive your uncompassionate rule. We cannot deal with the fear that you are coupling your incompetency with. Besides, initially, the Guantanamo Bay celebrity terrorists were supposed to be women, so how come you received men rather? Or was it arranged by Andrew Solomon? Have they had gender reassignment surgeries to become men or what? What are you doing? Do you loathe this nation so much? You wouldnt do that even to your enemies! What are you doing to us? Bad governance, insouciance, misplaced priorities like giving Madam Akua Donkor GHs5000 (five thousand Ghana Cedis) monthly as fuel allowance allegedly, and now fear!!! My GOD, what have we done wrong? Parents are agitated because they do not know what hell will be unleashed on the nation with the advent of perceived terrorists in our midst. Snippets of information indicate that people are abandoning their properties in the vicinities of the abodes of your Gitmo friends. Didnt you realise that according them luxury accommodation in plush neighbourhoods was wasteful? Please confine them to the Flagstaff House near you, and under the watchful eyes of the Presidential guards that are rotated monthly in expensive parades. Let me state that I am sick and tired of hearing the term Islamic Terrorists! There is nothing Islamic about a terrorist who uses the camouflage of religion to perpetrate heinous crimes. No devout Muslim, knowledgeable in the teachings of this religion of peace would be involved in terrorising innocent souls, even if they belonged to supposed enemy states. More innocent Muslims were killed by so-called Islamic terrorists than victims from other religions put together. Muslims have suffered on two fronts, slain by Islamically labelled murderers, and persecuted by nations purportedly fighting terrorism. Then you have the audacity to indulge in the treasonable act of throwing the nation into a state of fear, pandemonium, and uncertainty. It would seem as if your outfit has a very spiteful programme for Ghanaians. The suspicion that you might use these Guantanamo Celebrity Ex-detainees to unleash on the country confusion prior, during, and post elections seems quite plausible. Or maybe their presence in the country is a mere alibi for your treasonable caprices! We are now a nation of confused and indignant citizens. Youve got only ten months in office, inshallah; wouldnt it be more prudent to use the time to cleanse your image somewhat? Ghana shall remain peaceful, and Ghanaians shall be at peace with themselves because we shall arise for change at the polls. You know what, just resign, Sir! Just resign and spare us the tragedy of your nefarious activities!!! Three weeks ago I visited Fort St. Anthonio in Axim. The magnificent and highly fortified fort is more than 500 years old, but it is still stronger and is sure to last longer than most of the buildings government built last year with millions of the Ghanaian tax payers' sweat. The strength of the building after five centuries was, however, where my admiration of that colonial monument ended. The fort is a cruel reminder of the worst form of man's inhumanity to man. Fort St. Anthonio is one of the forts and castles that once housed African slaves prior to their shipment abroad. The tour guide narrated the cruelty of the wicked Dutch Governor Gomez, who physically tortured the slaves and sexually abused the women. He showed me the open space where hundreds of slaves were subjected to the merciless vagaries of the weather as they awaited their transportation. The cells, the dungeons and the tunnel of no return still serve as a stark reminder of how human beings endured treatment that cannot be meted out to wild beasts today. I once visited the Cape Coast Castle with some school mates and one of us, after listening to the harrowing tales of cruelty meted out to the slaves remarked: If you listen to these stories you feel like stoning the next white man you see in the street. But we still worship them. Why do we blame the White man for the slave trade? Why do we still think Europeans owe us compensation and apology? This mentality is the reason Africa is not seeing the real progress it needs. We tend to blame everyone else, except ourselves. Who is guilty of the slave trade? If I am to apportion blame, I will put 95% of the blame on Africa for the slave trade. The Europeans may be responsible for only 5% of the atrocities committed in that period. The reason? No single slave would have left the shores of the Gold Coast (now Ghana) if the chiefs and people had not been willing to sell their energetic young men and women. Even if European slave raiders used brutal force to capture the slaves, the local people could have ambushed and killed them before they reached the shores of the Gold Coast with the slaves. Our ancestors were great warriors. But they were more willing to fight one another than unite and fight the colonial masters. The few kingdoms, like the Asante Kingdom, which stood up to the colonial masters in wars, had to face their fellow blacks who fought alongside the Europeans. That betrayal of the collective interest of the Black race continued after Independence. The likes of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah who were serious about African unity, development and the industrialization of the continent made a grave mistake by focusing on the white man as their enemy. They forgot that the most evil and treacherous enemy was within. They realized, rather too late, that some of their kith and kin were more comfortable having the white man rule over Ghana than one of their own as long as their individual interests would be served. When the first generation of hot-blooded zealots who won independence for Africa left (or were forced to leave) the political scene, a set of stooges more willing to win favour from the world's Super Powers took over. The first generation of African leaders were mostly overthrown with the help of the Super Powers. The African leaders who came after them wanted to be in the good books of the super powers. Majority of them were (and are still) corrupt. And they needed the blessing of the big boys who would protect them in times of need. The big boys only offered such protection or the assurance of it on certain conditions. Their nations had interests in the wealth of Africa. And they had willing collaborators to help them deplete such wealth. From the unsophisticated traditional rulers in the Gold Coast who traded energetic young men and women for booze to the elite politicians of 21st Century Ghana, the story of the African leader has not changed. Greed is their creed, and they are prepared to sell their nations for favours. If you understand this philosophy, you will have no problem understanding why the President John Dramani Mahama of Ghana decided to accept two terror suspects who were detained in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba in America for 14 years against nationwide outcry and condemnation. Interviews granted by Ghana's Foreign Minister and the Interior Minister have revealed that they knew very little about the deal. The Minister for Justice and Attorney-General is reported to have told a journalist that she did not know about the deal, but she is denying ever making such statement. And I hope you are not one of those who have fallen for the lame reason given by our President for accepting the terror suspects. From leaked intelligence reports, one of the suspects poses very high security risks to us. There is no report that shows that these two have been cleared of those risks. The American Congress has passed a law banning ex-Guantanamo Bay detainees from entering the US. The people of America have vowed not to accept them on their soil. Why Ghana? And if government says there is no reasonable ground to suspect that the two men were ever involved in acts of terror, then why is the national security monitoring their movements and phone calls? Were they humanitarian workers prior to their arrest and detention? It is also unfortunate to say we are accepting them on the basis of compassion. We would only be exercising compassion if they were homeless or stranded. If the suspects were cleared and released by America, why are detaining them in Ghana? Why don't we allow them to live anywhere in the world they choose to? Our President has endangered the lives of Ghanaians by bringing the attention of terrorists on us. But they claim its part of our foreign policies to help other nations who need help. What is our foreign policy? If you strip the term foreign policy of all its technical jargons, you will be left with national interest abroad. Apart from deciding on where to beg, the foreign interest of most African governments is often how to win the favour and support of the powerful nations. If two 90 year-old Americans and 200 15 year-old Ghanaians were drowning and the American President had the opportunity to save either of the two groups, I am sure he would first think about his citizens. If the Ghanaian president were also faced with the same option, he would think of saving the two Americans in order to win the favour of America. That has been the pathetic thinking that has shaped our foreign policy. We sell ourselves cheaply and turn around to blame others for our woes. Last year about 50 beggars with the ignoble description of African heads of states assembled in India under the auspices of the India-Africa Summit. We shamelessly accept descriptions like the UK-Africa summit, China-Africa Summit, Canada Africa summit etc., but we still have problems when some describe Africa as a country. Because of greed, our leaders hand their resources to these countries and turn round to beg. The Indian government announced afterwards that it would give Africa loans worth $10 billion over a five-year period. Meanwhile Africa loses more than $50 billion dollars every year through illicit financial flows from the continent. These illicit flows are facilitated by the so-called leaders of our continent through fraudulent contracts and senseless tax holidays and trade agreements. Last year about 50 beggars with the ignoble description of African heads of states assembled in India under the auspices of the India-Africa Summit. Americans who created the Guantanamo Bay will not risk taking any of the ex-detainees on their soil. But we claim we are compassionate. By this action, America has eaten pepper and we are suffering chest pain. And this is not the first time we are risking it all to please the Super Powers. When the Chinese invaded our country and destroyed our water bodies in search of illegal gold, our government announced a programme to flush them out. National security, the police and the military were deployed. A few hundreds of them were deported by the immigration of Ghana. There were reports that the Chinese government was not happy with the action. A few weeks later, the government asked all the security personnel to withdraw from the operation. Had we flushed out all the galamsey operators from the illegal mines? No! So why are we withdrawing the security agencies? To please Beijing. What happened afterwards? The Chinese are back again. With the support of local chiefs and politicians, cocoa farms are being destroyed to make way for illegal miners. Indeed, we have a compassionate government and President. The decision to risk our nation in the case of the Guantanamo two has also exposed the hypocrisy of this government. This is the same government, which said in 2010 that Ghana would not be part of the proposal by ECOWAS to use military intervention in Cote d'Ivoire in order to restore constitutional rule and forestall an imminent war in that country. The government said we would be opening ourselves up for enemies who could harm us. Former President Mills, whose deputy is now President Mahama, said at the time that we should mind our business. This is the shameless hypocrisy of our government. When our next-door neighbour's house was on fire, the government said we should mind our own business. But when a distant friend desperately wants to fulfill a political promise, our government endangers the lives of its citizens and explains that we are members of the international community. Mohammed Bin Atef is said to be a high risk detainee Many reasons have been assigned for the reason to risk the security of our nation for the two toxic parcels from Guantanamo. The American government has denied any financial exchanges. But monetary gain is not the only reason President Mahama would take such risk. The willingness of nations such as Ghana to risk it all to serve the interests of the powerful nations does not make them learn from their mistakes. Our elders say if a man is stung by a bee, he does not set out to destroy all beehives. But since the wars in Vietnam and the Gulf regions, America is yet to learn the lessons of this wise saying hence the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. America should have known that it was easy to arrest and detain people in Guantanamo but how to get rid of them was going to be the problem. America acted like the iron-plated throat which granted passage to a sharp knife without thinking about how the fragile anus was going to expel it. Thanks to leaders like President Mahama, their work has been made easy. And they will never learn. I oppose this deal not because I hate America. I oppose it because I love Ghana more than America. I oppose it because if Barack Obama attempted to accept terror suspects from Ghana, Americans would impeach him and subject him to a psychiatric examination. I oppose it because I know my president and his government do not act in my interest. The corruption, the shady contracts and policies that disadvantage the ordinary Ghanaian but enrich the ruling class are reasons I don't trust my government. I oppose it because common sense teaches me that this decision is not in the interest of Ghanaians. The Americans know it. And my President knows it. He did not want to offend America. But he should have learnt the wisdom of our sages of old: For the fear of offending others, a man may swallow phlegm, but no wise man will swallow poison for the fear of offending bystanders. The Writer is a senior broadcast journalist with Joy 99.7FM. His email address is [email protected] 20.01.2016 LISTEN Today workers hit the streets to protest high tariff hikes, otherwise referred to as 'killer tariffs', and general economic hardship confronting Ghanaians. Government and organised labour have been engaged in a cat-and-mouse game over the subject for some time now. Nobody in Ghana denies the veracity of the economy being troubled, the repercussions evident in rising cost of living. Ghanaians think that the unsavoury situation is the result of the mismanagement of the economy by the government. Be it as it may, there is a general downward spiral of the real income of salary earners who think that the so-called single spine salary structure has only worsened their plight rather than ameliorate it as politicians at the helm would want everybody to believe. The unusual increase in the cost of utilities, coupled with that of petroleum products at a time when the international price of crude oil has been occasioned by an all-time low, have provided the spark for today's demonstration. While government maintains that it must go that way in order to cure the ailing economy, labour thinks the level of increase is not only astronomical, but also uncaring about the plight of workers. It is interesting that government, as it recognises the right of workers to demonstrate, has already served notice that it would not back down on the taxes it has imposed on the energy sector. We are at a loss therefore over what significant effect the paltry reduction of the tariff hike would bring to workers who under the circumstances pay more to maintain themselves and families. . It is our hope that government's position is not cast in steel for which reason it cannot be rescinded. Let government reason with the people of Ghana, all of who are feeling the pinch of the challenged economy. Even as they march in the streets across the country to state their cases a constitutional right we call on the law enforcement agents who have been detailed to render them the necessary protection needed under such conditions, not to do anything that would push Ghanaians to revisit a previous demonstration which claimed the eye of a protester. All eyes would be on the police to see how they manage today's mission. The last time a demonstration was held, the man who is the Acting IGP today was in-charge of operations. COP Christian Yohunu has taken over the position from him and it is expected that both would ensure that nothing untoward happens. We have confidence in the Acting IGP, who has already assured organised labour that he would provide the necessary police support to make the event a successful one and bereft of incidents. The Greater Accra Regional Police Commander, Dr. Akuffo Damapare, and the Operations Commander, it is our position, would do their best to restore confidence in the law enforcement agency. We also call on those embarking on the strike action to be mindful about their limitations so that all starts well and ends peacefully. 20.01.2016 LISTEN New Patriotic Party (NPP) presidential candidate, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has broken his silence on the controversial decision by the Mahama-led NDC government to accept suspected hardcore terrorists from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Ghanaian soil, describing the decision as 'failure of leadership.' The problem we face is yet another case of failure of leadership by the president and is hard example of his belief that he is answerable to no one, not even to the laws of the Republic, he fired. Nana Akufo-Addo's rejection of the settling of the suspected terrorists in Ghana has been supported by the flagbearer of the People's National Convention (PNC), Dr Edward Mahama, who says it was bad for President Mahama to host the two former Guantanamo detainees in the country. Nana Akufo-Addo was paying tribute at the funeral of the late Alhaji Alhassan Bin Salih, a former member of the Council of State during the Kufuor regime, in Wa yesterday. I am certain that if Alhaji Bin Salih were around today, he would be horrified about some of the careless language being employed by some in the discussions on the resettlement in our country of former Guantanamo Bay detainees, he said. According to the NPP flagbearer, President John Mahama breached Ghana's anti-terrorism laws by agreeing with the United States government to host the two former detainees Mahmud Umar Muhammad Bin Atef and Khalid Muhammad Salih Al-Dhuby who have been described as the foot soldiers of Osama Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda group. . Nana Addo said Section 35 of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 2008 (Act 762) prohibits the transaction into which President Mahama entered with the United States government and described the president's action as lawlessness in the highest levels of the state, adding that it could not produce good governance. Since he claimed that only Presidents Rawlings and Kufuor have the right to criticise him, I would have wished that he had found them worthy and consulted those our two former leaders before he took this grave decision that has consequences for us all. If he had done so, the Ghanaian people may have all been spared the disquiet and anxiety in this time of justifiably heightened fear of global terrorism, he said. He described Alhaji Bin Salih as a personality who stood not just for the NPP, but stood and fought for the peace and integrity of Ghana, saying, He believed in religious tolerance. By William Yaw Owusu 20.01.2016 LISTEN Dear Nana Akufo-Addo; an august Ghanaian statesman, Sir, you are one of the few household names in Ghana's political fraternity due to your unflinching presidential ambitions. Before I proceed, I say kudos to you for consistently doing a yeoman's job in our murky political arena often described as a dirty game. Let me be blunt; your credentials as a veteran Ghanaian politician are simply unparalleled, and I dare say that you can make a better president for Ghana. Oh who can debunk the assertion that, "Nana Akufo-Addo is acknowledged as one of the leaders of the pro-democracy movement in Ghana," according to Wikipedia? In fact, it is widely acclaimed that in the past military regimes of our country, you being a youthful advocate brimming with priceless passion, pioneered and fought erstwhile dictatorships. Indeed, you are a rare political strategist within the New Patriotic Party (NPP). And from a standpoint of an independent-cum-professional blogger; I am convinced in heart and soul that your political vision for Ghana as NPP's 2016 flagbearer, is no less than radical. For on paper through your exquisite oratories, you seem to be the best alternative to our incumbent president in the midst of our unstable economy which is in the doldrums. However, your presidential fate on the day of our general elections, November 7, will be determined by divine providence through the electoral decision of the citizenry. I can only wish you good luck in the forthcoming presidential elections since you are desperate for a win at all costs. And you are bound by Ghana's ethos of peace, love and harmony to concede defeat as an honourable politician who holds multiparty democracy in high regard. But if victory eventually becomes yours upon the declaration of electoral results by the Electoral Commissioner, you ought to govern this country with a great deal of economic efficiency. For the ambitious policies you preach in your ongoing campaigns need to materialise in your triumphant government. Besides, some of us are quite sceptical of your economic claims such as the scrapping of import duties. Do you really think it is a pragmatic thing to do if you wrestle power from president Mahama's government? Again, people doubt your tainted personality to combat corruption if you are elected president of our grossly corrupt nation. Prove them wrong with real integrity now, Mr. Akufo-Addo! Also, you proclaimed in late December last year that your 2016 resolution is to become president of Ghana. That is why you are fond of juicy rhetoric as a presidential aspirant. Yes, you once pronounced that, "I continue to be a passionate believer in Ghana's potential, and I remain confident that, despite our present economic difficulties, we have it within us to rise up and revive the fortunes of our country." Interestingly, the potential president of Ghana appears to have lost absolute control over his own party which has been torn apart by intense internal strife. Finally, I leave the sovereign masses to decisively respond to your soulful appeal that, "Give me the chance to change Ghana." Yours faithfully, Sir Article. Source: sirarticle.blogspot.com 20.01.2016 LISTEN Officials of the companies, including Richard Adjei (1st from left) with the orphans Elie Company Limited (ECL), a vehicle testing and inspection station and Fix Consult, an advertising agency, has collaborated with Kasapreko Company Limited to donate assorted non-alcoholic beverages, food items and clothing to the Rising Star Orphanage at Dodowa. The items, worth GH10,000, was meant to support the children for the New Year celebrations and academic development. The orphanage offers non-formal education to the orphans and teaches them Arithmetic, English and General Science. Samuel Kwesi Sackey, Managing Director of Elie Company Ltd, said the donation, which was part of the company's social responsibility, was to help needy children. He said his outfit remains passionate about the development of underprivileged children and their wellbeing, advising orphans to remain obedient to their caretakers and take their lessons seriously. Seadorf Bosiako, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Fix Consult, asked the children not to engage in activities that could restrict their growth into responsible adults. . He pledged his support to the development of the orphanage, stating we are ready to support the orphanage's activities anytime we are called upon. The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Kasapreko Company Limited, Richard Adjei, said Kasapreko collaborated with the two companies to make the donation because the initiative was in line with his company's mission. One of our missions at Kasapreko is to empower the needy in society and to show them love through the act of giving. It is this principle that made us support the donation, he said. Victoria Sampson, Director, Rising Star Orphanage, expressed gratitude to them for supporting the children. A Business Desk report 20.01.2016 LISTEN Vincent Kaledzi (3rd left) and Ebenezer Faulkner (4th) displaying shell products Vivo Energy Ghana Limited has partnered Star Oil to distribute Shell branded lubricants across the country. At a ceremony to officially launch the partnership which was attended by representatives of Star Oil and Vivo Energy Ghana Limited, the Managing Director of Star Oil Company Limited, Vincent Kaledzi indicated that for almost two decades, Star Oil has made great strides to grow indigenous oil marketing companies in Ghana. He said Star Oil Shell Lubricant Sale Partnership aims to make Shell lubricants more accessible to the public. The Managing Director of Vivo Energy Ghana, Ebenezer Faulkner, said the partnership will benefit both Vivo Energy Ghana and Star Oil Company Limited. Vivo Energy Ghana will enjoy improved coverage and penetration of our quality Shell lubricants, while Star Oil will attract even more customers, as their service stations will now also address customers' lubricant needs with high quality Shell products, said Mr. Faulkner. Star Oil Company Limited is in the process of fully automating all its fuel stations across the country. Star Oil Star Oil Company Limited is a wholly Ghanaian-owned Oil Marketing Company (OMC). The mission of Star Oil Company Limited is to own and operate facilities for the storage, handling and marketing of petroleum products in all districts of Ghana in the most efficient and cost-effective manner in order to realize a reasonable rate of return on investment. . Vivo Energy Vivo intends to become Africa's most respected energy business. Vivo Energy Ghana, the company that distributes and markets Shell-branded fuel and lubricants, was established in 2013. The Shell brand has been in Ghana since 1928. 20.01.2016 LISTEN Madam Charlotte Osei has listened to the NDC (we are not using a new register today or tomorrow), and to the eminent Five-member panel that has not been honest and realistic. The Commissioner has ruled that she is going to use the existing register as it is, without specifically saying there will be pruning or cleaning. This decision has been openly rejected by NPP, Let My Vote Count Alliance (LMVCA), and the other genuine opposition parties. Madam Osei categorically mentioned that the alleged 76,000 Togolese voters would not be removed from the register, because the NPP has no proof. The Commissioner has declined to seek clarification of the pictures and names of the voters from the Togolese Electoral Commission, and President Mahama might have obviously managed to get the Togolese President to refuse to comment or release any information. And Dr. Bawumia cannot mention names to prove his case. Ghanaians must not be slaves to this repressive NDC government. One of the NDC agents who carried out the operation of recruiting the 76,000 Togolese voters came up boldly to confess and confirm the truth, and the local papers reported this fact. Is it not strange that none of the five members on the panel could recollect the confirmation of this shameful incident by that NDC man? And Asiedu Nketia and his party think they are blameless. There is no need for Dr. Bawumia to be arrested; it is rather the NDC government that has made things difficult for Bawumia to support his findings. By way of reference, it may be recalled that only former President Rawlings and his party knew where the 2 million voters who could not get access to the photo ID cards before the 2000 elections were hiding, and he allowed thumb-printing to go along with the photo ID card registration. That was the first violation or blemish to the voters' register, and those dubious thumb-printed names are still in the register. The interesting thing was that the late senior President Eyadema of Togo graciously closed the Togo borders on the day of voting, without which the Presidential election results might have been different. May the Lord bless his soul! We are still on whether or not we have democracy and decency in Ghana. The Commissioner agrees that the EC admits multiple registration of voters, but the Commission dismisses NPP's submission that there were also double and multiple registrations with multiple voter identity (ID) numbers. They seem to have forgotten that the former Commissioner, Dr. Afari-Gyan, bought a second set of voter cards which made all those complications possible. The inclusion of Justice VCRAC Crabbe and another person on the panel was opposed by the supporters of a new register, because of their previous objection to the compilation of a new register; their report was therefore rejected in advance. Many Ghanaians reject the Commissioner's decision. There are more and weightier reasons why a new voters' register is needed. At the time of President Kufuor in 2008, when the NDC complained of bloated figures in 13 constituencies in the Ashanti Region, the EC cleaned the registers. But at time of President Mills, bloated figures detected by the NPP in the Volta Region registers were not cleaned by the EC, at the instigation of government. In 2008 at the Agbogba polling stations in Accra, new names were added to the registers by NDC macho men, and at Osu, a voters' register was detected being compiled in the house of the then NDC member of Parliament. These additions are in the current register. . Since 2009, the two NDC Presidents, Mills and Mahama insisted that new registrations should be done under protest, meaning that no one should be prevented from registering, and anyone who had a complaint, could do so later. No complaints were taken up, and the order itself was not reasonable; those in doubt could have been given 3 days to prove their case before they could register. And the government always dispatched the police to the polling stations to ensure that the order was kept. It was this free registration that made it possible for infants and aliens to be led to the registration centres by party agents, and it was this practice that got the registers bloated. Usually, it was to the advantage of the NDC, because they used their macho men and party gangsters to force the registrations with the backing of the police. If other party agents protested, they were beaten before the police, and no arrests were made. The registers were written by the EC staff on the orders of the then Commissioner. A horrible incidence happened in Ashanti where NDC agents brought down certain northerners from Tamale and Bawku to register at centers in Kumasi. Some of the guys were arrested and sent to the police station, but were immediately released on orders from above. The police always supported the actions of the NDC. Even if the Commissioner decides to prune or clean the register, what criteria will she use? What is she removing, and what is she retaining? Pruning the register is never the right solution to the uncountable names fraudulently put in the current register. Thus, there is sufficient proof of NDC government's link with the police and the EC in helping the NDC party to have more registered voters than the other parties. A new register is therefore needed. The credible electoral process will also be dealt with later. The Electoral Commissioner must know that the matter is not yet ended. To be continued. By J.Y. Owusu-Adu Vice chairman of the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament Atta Akyea has descended heavily on the governor of the Central bank, describing him as a man fond of giving excuses. The attack follows the failure of Dr. Henry Kofi Wampah to appear before the committee for the second time after refusing to appear Tuesday. The committee rejected an excuse by the deputy governor of the bank that his boss was attending to some official assignments. The committee subsequently directed that all hearings regarding the bank will be addressed by the governor himself. Expressing anger over the development, the Abuakwa South MP said the governors posturing towards the committee is intolerable. The governor is fond of excuses, this particular governor is fond of excuses, I have to say it out, he fumed. Dr. Wampah was expected to appear with his deputies to explain adverse findings against the Central bank of Ghana as captured in 2011-2013 audit report. 20.01.2016 LISTEN PNC flagbearer Dr. Nasigri Mahama share pleasantry with the National Chairman National Chairman of the People's National Convention (PNC), Bernard Anbataayela Mornah, has disclosed that his party has extended an invitation to other parties for a merger to win the 2016 general elections. Speaking at a press conference held at the party's headquarters in Accra on Tuesday, the chairman explained that the decision to opt for a merger was approved at the party's recent congress held at Wa in the Upper West region. He mentioned that the party was waiting for the response from its sister parties, which he believes would be positive, adding that in case of a negative feedback, the party would go ahead with its campaign. As a party, the PNC is currently involved in restructuring of the entire organizational set up of the party and undertaking critical reforms, human and institutional capacity enhancement through the needed training and skills development, as well as complete moral and innovative shift to protect the ordinary Ghanaian from ongoing misery and despondency, he added. He said the goals the party set for itself in the 2015 Congress had been achieved which empowered the current executive to carry out extensive rebranding of the party. The goals, the chairman said, include proposal for constitutional amendments, election of officers, consideration for a merge and report of the state of the party. The chairman also mentioned that the party was in the process of consoling those lost in the elections to promote unity. Mr. Mornah stressed that though the party has some internal challenges, it stood the chance of winning the 2016 elections in view of what he described as animosity, violence, indiscipline in the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) and New Patriotic Party (NPP). By Solomon Ofori 20.01.2016 LISTEN Six more people have died from the outbreak of pneumococcal meningitis disease in the Techiman North and South Districts of the Brong Ahafo Region. The disease which has so far recorded 21 cases and claimed nine lives in Tain, Wenchi and Bruohan in the Brong Ahafo Region, claimed its latest victims over the weekend when it spread to Techiman in the same region, bringing the death toll to 15 people. Municipal Health Director for Techiman, Dr Damien Punguyire, who confirmed this, said the district has recorded 18 cases, out of which six people lost their lives. He said health authorities in the district were investigating suspected cases, adding that the Ministry of Health (MoH) has also released some money to the region to help fight the disease. Meanwhile, health officials in Techiman in the Brong Ahafo Region have stepped up surveillance and monitoring following the death of six people from pneumococcal meningitis infections. Deputy Minister of Health Dr Victor Bampoe has already met with the Epidemic Management Committee in Techiman to discuss ways of combating the outbreak and hinted that an amount of GH150,000 has been released to fight the disease. Dr Bampoe also visited some of the meningitis-affected districts such as Tain, Wenchi and Techiman. . Dr Punguyire has, however, assured that the disease is under control. We have not reached an epidemic or an outbreak level. But we are recording cases that are moving towards an outbreak. We are going to communities where cases are coming from to follow up and ensure that there are no cases that are left and we are also asking people to report early when they discover any signs or symptoms of the ailment, he told a local radio station. The disease has also been recorded in the Northern Region. Dr Punguyire says medical supplies have been dispatched to the Brong Ahafo Region to ensure health workers make progress at controlling the disease. Bacterial meningitis is contagious. The bacteria are spread through the exchange of respiratory and throat secretions. If you have close contact with a person who has viral meningitis, you may become infected with the virus that made that person sick. However, you are not likely to develop meningitis as a complication of the illness. Signs and symptoms of meningitis include sudden onset of severe headache, fever, vomiting, neck stiffness and photophobia (dislike for light). Other symptoms include lethargy, coma and convulsions. In babies, there may be bulging of the anterior fontanelle (soft part of the bead). By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri 20.01.2016 LISTEN Some residents of Lolonya and some surrounding communities with their gallons in a queue to get water at Akplabanya Residents of Lolonya in the Ada West District of the Greater Accra Region say bathing is their least priority because there is no access to water in their community. Residents are afraid the situation may cause an outbreak of diseases in the community. They have complained of how long they have to trek long distances to Akplabanya, about three kilometers away, to get clean water daily as a result of water sources drying up in Lolonya. They are, therefore, appealing to the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) to get their area connected to a source of potable water. Residents also narrated how irregular they used to get water supply from the GWCL, but had to be disconnected by the GWCL about two years ago for reasons best known to their supplier. . About 15 wells in the area were either dried up or filled with garbage, compelling residents to trek long distances to Akplabanya in search of potable water for their domestic use; a situation that has badly affected pupils' punctuality and regularity to school. Speaking with DAILY GUIDE, Ebenezer Tei, an opinion leader in the area, disclosed that wells have dried up since August last year so we walk long distances to Akplabanya to fetch water. Sometimes, we hire a mini truck or tractor to convey our receptacles to Akplabanya to buy water. According to him, management of the Songor Salt Project Company had been supplying them with water on irregular basis because of the huge financial burden that it was having on the budget of the company. He fears for an outbreak of water-borne disease if the problem is not addressed immediately. When contacted, officials of the GWCL at the Ada East District were tight lip over the disconnection of the entire Lolonya community. From Vincent Kubi, Lolonya NEW YORK The Islamic State group has acknowledged the death of the masked militant known as Jihadi John, who appeared in several videos depicting the beheadings of Western hostages, the SITE Intelligence Group reported Tuesday. SITE, which monitors terrorist activity, reported that IS published a eulogizing profile of Jihadi John in its English-language magazine Dabiq on Tuesday. Jihadi John had been identified by the U.S. military as Mohammed Emwazi, a Kuwaiti-born British citizen. His harshness towards the kuffar (disbelievers) was manifested through deeds that enraged all the nations, religions, and factions of kufr, the entire world bearing witness to this, the Dabiq article said, according to a translation provided by SITE. Army Col. Steve Warren, a U.S. military spokesman, said in November that the Army was reasonably certain that a drone strike in Syria had killed Emwazi, who spoke in beheading videos with a British accent as he wielded a knife. Separately, a U.S. official said three drones two U.S. and one British targeted the vehicle in which Emwazi was believed to be traveling in Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic States self-proclaimed caliphate in northern Syria. The official said the U.S. drone fired a Hellfire missile that struck the vehicle. Jihadi John appeared in videos posted online by the Islamic State starting in August 2014 that depicted the beheadings of U.S. journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley, U.S. aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig, British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, and Japanese journalist Kenji Goto. Sotloffs mother, Shirley Sotloff, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that she hadnt heard about the IS announcement but assumed Emwazi was dead following the Armys announcement last fall. Its good, she said. Im glad that hes gone, but it doesnt bring back my son. Jodi Perras, a spokeswoman for the Kassig family in Indianapolis, said they had no comment on the news about Jihadi John. In the gruesome videos, a tall masked figure clad in black and speaking in a British accent typically began with a political rant taunting the West and a kneeling hostage clad in an orange prison-style jumpsuit before him, then ended it holding an oversize knife in his hand with the headless victim lying before him in the sand. The videos dont make clear if he carried out the actual killings. He also appeared as a narrator in videos of other beheadings, including the mass killing of captive Syrian government soldiers. Emwazi was believed to be in his mid-20s when he was killed. He had been described by a former hostage as a psychopath who enjoyed threatening his Western captives. Spanish journalist Javier Espinosa, who was held by the IS in Syria for more than six months after his abduction in September 2013, said Emwazi would explain precisely how the militants would carry out a beheading. The hostages nicknamed three British-sounding captors the Beatles, with Jihadi John a reference to John Lennon, Espinosa said. Emwazi was born in Kuwait and spent part of his childhood in the poor Taima area of Jahra before moving to Britain as a boy, according to news reports quoting Syrian activists who knew the family. He attended state schools in London, then studied computer science at the University of Westminster before leaving for Syria in 2013. 20.01.2016 LISTEN The Ambulance vehicle donated by Hon. Inusah Fuseini Member of Parliament (MP) for Tamale Central in the Northern Region, Alhaji Inusah Fuseini, has donated a brand new ambulance to the Ambariya Islamic Institute. According to him, the donation followed a request made by the leader of the Sunni sect in Tamale, Sheik Abubakari Saeed, for a welfare van to help transport sick and deceased Muslims within the community. A three-classroom block and a fully-furnished computer laboratory have also been provided by the MP to cater for the educational needs of the members of the community. He has also donated a Nissan Patrol to the Daawa committee and a school bus to the institute to help in transporting its students. Alhaji Fuseini stated that the constituency is currently peaceful and getting developmental projects, but was quick to add that he needs the support of constituency members in order to bring more developmental projects to the constituency. The leadership of the Anbariya Central mosque expressed their sincere gratitude to the MP for his timely response to their request, commending him for his attempts at promoting development in the constituency. They prayed for him, invoking Allahs guidance in all his endeavours and called on his colleague MPs and Muslims in general to emulate his example in promoting the advancement of the Islamic religion. From Eric Kombat, Tamale 20.01.2016 LISTEN THE Mayor of Kumasi, Mr. Kojo Bonsu has defended that there is no financial wrong doing regarding the $4.4 million reportedly expended on the recreational facility in Kumasi. He described as frivolous and mischievous the allegations of financial impropriety against him by a section of the Assembly, who are asking for his arrest. Mr. Bonsu explained that, the fact that the Assembly's estimated budgetary allocation for the Rattray Park project was exceeded does not warrant the corresponding hullabaloo. He said the practice of exceeding budgetary allocations in executing projects is a normal practice in most public institutions, including the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA), provided the necessary laid down procedure in expending such additional resources are followed. The Mayor, therefore, explained that the Assembly's exceeded expenditure in the execution of the project in variations in the prices of some equipment, which were mostly imported. He said in spite of these, the Assembly followed the Procurement Act, Financial Administrations Act and all due process of law, in expending those resources and that all the excesses incurred on the recreational facility would be audited by both the Internal Audit Unit of the KMA and the Auditor General, in line with the laws of the land. In response to the allegation of diversion of funds for priority projects, Mr. Bonsu said it is without evidence since the Aboabo and Miklin Storm drains were progressing. He said the construction of the 200-seater library facility at Amankwatia is on-going and has not been abandoned as claimed by his accusers. The mayor also emphasized that there is no illegality in the release of funds to the contractor working on the Assembly Hall project at Kumasi Academy (KUMACA). Mr. Bonsu indicated that the action by his accusers to draw the attention of the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament (PAC) was alien to parliamentary practice. He explained that, the PAC, per the Standing Order 165 of Parliament only scrutinizes audited accounts of various state institutions submitted to Parliament by the Auditor General and called on the residents of Kumasi to disregard the ugly noises being made by a few aggrieved members of the Assembly. Mayor Bonsu said attempts by a group of Assembly men to distract his vision of bringing development to Kumasi by petitioning PAC, Police, BNI and EOCO would not sidetrack him. He concluded that his resolve and commitment is to pursue the vision of the President. From Sebastian R. Freiku, Kumasi Ghana's award winning comedian, Kofi Adu A.k.a Agya Koo, has endorsed a leading Ghanaian UK brand, Omegahause Multimedia recommending that their professional artistry be patronised by all. According to Agya Koo, who was on a usual visit to the UK, Omegahause which is located at 189 Wood Street, Walthamstow, United Kingdom, has the answer to all photography, video and graphic works. Agya Koo, who has appeared in many Ghanaian movies, is indeed proud to be associated with the Omegahause Brand in the UK. "At the mention of your parties, weddings, executive ceremonies, DVD's, CDs and all graphics only one name stands tall in Europe, Omegahause Multimedia UK," Agya stated in a promo Video released this week. Omegahause Multimedia has been operating for 10-years now with two different branches in London UK and has since built an impressive image over the past years. The company led by Joe Baidoo Cobbina, specializes in large format printings, video coverages, sourvenirs with jobs well done in organized brand packages. Sorry, we can't find the content you're looking for at this URL. In a ceremony at the Kaduna State Government House, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, chair of the Dangote Foundation; Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; and U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria, James Entwistle, joined governors from Kaduna, Sokoto, Yobe, and Borno to launch an ambitious new partnership committing political and financial resources to strengthen and sustain routine immunization programs that will save more lives and keep Nigeria polio-free. The witnessing of new Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) served as an opportunity to review successes and lessons learned from existing programs in Kano and Bauchi states. To extend these efforts, the executive governor of Kano State signed a fourth-year extension to the state's existing MOU. Professor I.F Adewole, Nigeria's health minister, congratulated the states and partners for making a significant investment in immunization. These are tough financial times in Nigeria, but the health of children cannot wait. The country has an ambitious plan to introduce new life-saving vaccines over the next several years, and today's commitments will ensure we can get those vaccines to the children who need them most. Through the MOUs, the governors commit to effective governance, leadership, and financial accountability to reduce child illness and death from diseases such as measles, pertussis, and hepatitis through increased routine immunization in their respective states. The other partners will bring the financial and technical support needed to operationalize the program. All signatories pledged to improve routine immunization coverage in northern Nigeria systematically and sustainably, where vaccine coverage rates are low. These agreements strengthen our partnerships with Nigerian states working to provide health services to all their citizens, said Dangote. Building on their recent success in eliminating polio from the region, Nigerian governors have and will continue to play a vital role in establishing a legacy of sustained commitment to routine immunization. The objective of the MOUs is to reach 80 percent of the target population in the signing states with the necessary life-saving vaccines by December 2018 to prevent common childhood diseases and ensure a polio-free environment. To achieve this, key components of the program include the operationalization of the 'Primary Health Care Under One Roof' policy that will see a single management body oversee the program. The implementation of regular audits and reports will ensure transparent funding and financial discipline is paramount during implementation. Contributions towards the costs of the program by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Dangote Foundation, and state governments will be staggered across three years: 30 percent in year one, 50 percent in year two, and 70 percent in year three with the states taking progressive responsibility for financing immunization services. These commitments will improve immunization coverage and help provide reliable health services in Nigeria. The States will be able to reap the full return on their investment through the number of lives improved and saved, and communities will remain protected from vaccine-preventable diseases for years to come, said Gates. Nigeria's governors have the opportunity to build health systems strong enough to stop future outbreaks. These MOUs offer the model platform to capitalize on the prospects of evidence-based approaches. Results will include stronger systems for immunizations, equal access to routine immunization services, and building capacity for Nigerian states to lead in developing solutions for its people, said Ambassador Entwistle. Dr. Bawumia in a hand shake with president Mahama 20.01.2016 LISTEN The running mate of the main opposition New Patriotic Party Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has said the ongoing ministerial reshuffle by President John Mahama will amount to nothing. According to him, Ghanaians need a reshuffle that will impact the quality of lives and create jobs and not one intended to win elections. The ongoing reshuffle appears to be one to do with winning an election rather than one aimed at addressing the challenges faced by Ghanaians. In this regard, I am convinced that the ongoing reshuffle by the President will be meaningless. Thankfully, the ultimate Reshuffle will be done on November 7th by the people of Ghana, Dr. Bawumia wrote in a Facebook post Wednesday. His comments come on the back of the Tuesday reshuffle which saw Interior minister Mark Woyongo moved from the ministry to the Presidency and former Chief of Staff Prosper Bani back in government. A government statement that announced the changes indicated that it was the first batch of an ongoing changes to be effected in the structure of government. Below are details of the comments by Dr Bawumia Reshuffles are normal with all governments. However, with the record of the current government and the current state of the Ghanaian economy with its attendant hardships, what the people of Ghana desire is a reshuffling / change from amongst others: the hardships that afflict our people; the unprecedented joblessness affecting the Ghanaian youth; the astronomic increases in taxes, utility prices and fuel; the cancellation of teacher and nursing training allowances; the decline of agriculture and manufacturing and the unprecedented corruption under this government the incompetent economic management of this government. The ongoing reshuffle appears to be one to do with winning an election rather than one aimed at addressing the challenges faced by Ghanaians. In this regard, I am convinced that the ongoing reshuffle by the President will be meaningless. Thankfully, the ultimate Reshuffle will be done on November 7th by the people of Ghana. 20.01.2016 LISTEN As part of effort to supplement the provision of learning materials for schools, CMG Empowerment Ghana has donated books to support One Book, One Pen project introduced by B Y Foundation with the aim of providing learning materials for 10,000 students across the country The book titled How to study smarter for outstanding academic excellence is written by Daniel Owusu, Founder of CMG empowerment, connect career international, girls for change and turn up Africa Respectively. The book provides insight on how to achieve academic excellence through studying, its gives in-depth knowledge on strategies for study. According to CMG empowerment, the donation was made to complement the effort BY Foundation is making to provide learning materials for students across the country. BY Foundation embarked One Book, One Pen project to help deprived communities with learning materials. The project is targeted at students with poor backgrounds who cannot afford books. The project has so far covered communities such as Abetenim, Tetekaso, Woraso, in the Ashanti Region, , sogakope in the volta region, some communities in the Western Region and in the Greater Accra Region. Speaking after the donation, CEO of BY Foundation said he believes the books received will go a long way to help in putting smiles on the faces of rural pupils. The rationale behind the project is not just the name but the impact. The name of the project is one book, one pen but we have provided more for individual students in the areas we have covered so far. It is our dream to provide learning materials to these students whose parents cannot afford them. He said Sometimes when you visit the schools with these donations, the zeal and the happiness with which the kids receive the books even inspire me to do more. Authorities at the Opoku Ware Senior High School have strongly defended their decision to expel three alleged homosexual students. The school has been criticized by some human rights activists for its action describing it as unjust. But the headmaster of the school, Dr. Alexis Frimpong Nimoh claims the students posed a threat to their colleagues hence the decision to suspend them. He has also rejected criticisms that the schools action was unjust. According to him, the students would have convinced others to become gays if they had not been expelled. We didnt want them to pollute others into it. You see this is something that they initiate others into, and they are very powerful and when you trace you would see that they have influence from outside. Mr. Nimoh added that most of the parents of the suspected homosexuals were not aware that their wards were into such acts. The three boys, were suspended after a disciplinary committee established they were homosexuals, following a caught-in-the-act report made against them by their colleagues. Meanwhile, the mother of one of the alleged homosexuals said, the school has been unfair to her ward. 20th January, 2016. Accra. The Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), West Africa, the sub-regions leading CSR strategy development, advocacy, events, policy organization has lauded Ghana and its leadership for being recognized by the United Nations as co-chair of a group of 16 eminent Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Advocates selected across the world. According to Mr. Kojo Williams, a CSR Advocate and the Centre for CSRs Lead Project Manager; The concept of Corporate Social Responsibility is getting demystified at a commendable pace in Ghana. Interestingly, while corporates and Ghanaians in general, are grasping with understanding and contextualizing CSR, the world is moving on to issues such as sustainability, greening and climate change. The recognition accorded Ghana in the global discourse of sustainability and the appointment of its President as a co-chair, is a great responsibility. It also attests to the fact that Sub-Saharan Africa has a significant input into achieving the Sustainable Development Goals for the world. The Sustainable Development Goals adopted by world leaders at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit on 25 September 2015 represents a commitment by all nations to work together to end poverty, achieve shared prosperity, build peace, and secure a life of dignity and a healthy planet for present and future generations. The Centre for CSR, West Africa through advocacy and awareness creation is educating stakeholders including corporate organisations, government agencies, academia, media, etc, in the CSR spectrum across the sub-region to help ensure socially-responsible corporates, good corporate governance system, sustainability practices and preservation of the environment. Its flagship initiatives include: Ghana CSR Excellence Awards, the West African CSR and Community Development Conference and Workshops on CSR Reporting for Journalists (2016 edition to be held in Accra, Lagos and Pretoria in March and April). The Centre works with local and international organisations and partners such as the Association of Ghana Industries, Plan International, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), Ghana Chamber of Commerce and Industry and more than 25 media organisations. 20.01.2016 LISTEN I had a chance to watch Mrs. Charlotte Kesson-Smith Oseis interview with Mr. Samson Lardy Ayenini, on general electoral matters, this morning and came away with three things Mrs. Osei is unquestionably brilliant and knows quite a bit about her job as Chairperson of the Electoral Commission (EC) that makes her immediate predecessor, Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan, seem pedestrian and a scandalous administrative misfit, even as the former Legon political scientist embarrassingly demonstrated the same before the Atuguba-presided Supreme Court panel that adjudicated the 2012 Presidential-Election Petition. Indeed, one wonders why it took so unbearably long to shove this churlish pretender out of the way. Maybe it is about time we began talking about term limits for the key operatives of the EC. Yes, she is brilliant; but Mrs. Osei also confirmed for me my characterization of her as being smartly or savvily disingenuous. She has called New Patriotic Party (NPP) leaders like Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, the partys 2016 Vice-Presidential Candidate, and his associates elitist, because these leaders have rightfully demanded a stringent and credible method for determining ones citizenship in order to be declared eligible to vote. Years ago, as I vividly recall, a National Identification Card (NID) program was established, with Prof. Ernest Dumor named as either its National Chairman or Coordinator. Well, when she appeared on Newsfile, the flagship current affairs program on MyJoyOnline.com / Joy-Fm TV, one had expected the EC Chairperson to have forcefully spoken to the imperative need of making the National Identification Card program ubiquitous and efficient. Instead, it seemed that she preferred to cavalierly impugn the motives of the likes of Dr. Bawumia and other well-meaning and levelheaded advocates of a credible citizenship verification system, than pressure the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) to adequately fund the program in order to make it more efficient and accessible for many progressive reasons, including electoral register credibility and national security. And I find this stance to be extremely disturbing, particularly since until she was transferred to the EC from the National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE), the functionally closest institution to the Electoral Commission, in terms of crucial matters verging on civic responsibility and the nations fledgling democratic political culture, it was precisely this duty of promoting civic responsibility and electoral credibility that she was charged with. On the preceding count, therefore, this professionally trained administrator did not come off to me as more than passably competent, even if she also clearly appears to be a laudable improvement on the performance of the administrative dead-wood that was Dr. Afari-Gyan. For starters, she repeated her patently untenable assertion that all Ghanaian citizens, except Mr. Abu Ramadan, the former New Patriotic Party Member of Parliament for Bawku-Central, who spent quite a considerable time in the slammer at least longer than Mr. Tsatsu Tsikata did at the Nsawam Medium-Security Prison for criminally causing financial loss to the state had a right to use their National Health Insurance Authority-issued Health Insurance Card to both prove and establish the authenticity of their citizenship. What also annoyed me quite a bit was the EC Chairs cavalier attitude in her claim to be eagerly looking forward to duking it out with Mr. Ramadan, whose mother is reported to have been born and raised in Ghana, in court. Ultimately, I still found Mrs. Osei to be delectably lambent-witted. One wonders why she is not President of Ghana, instead of the hopelessly bumbling, terrorist-courting and politically reckless Mr. John Dramani Mahama. I also felt ashamed and sorry for those pressuring her to resign because she is alleged to have contravened the Constitution by drawing salaries from two public establishments at the same time. Well, as it turns out, the so-called General Reinsurance Company, or some such corporate entity, on whose Board of Directors Mrs. Osei sat, is actually a privately owned and operated firm. I couldnt help but admire the cryptic manner in which the EC Chair responded to her detractors, by simply alerting Mr. Ayenini, her fellow member of the bar, to the fact that good lawyers generally tend to appreciate the Constitution and the legal system in ways that ought to make those demanding her job think twice before presuming to so facilely and quixotically take her on. On the whole, you couldnt call her an ugly black woman with good sense, as Dr. W. E. B. Dubois had the inglorious misfortune to characterize Mr. Marcus Mosiah Garvey, the legendary Jamaican-born global African liberation fighter. Garvey had described American mulattoes as treacherous white ally pretenders to Negritude. In short, Charlotte Kesson-Smith Osei may not be very pretty, but she is smashingly attractive, nevertheless. *Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs Seth Terkper, Finance Minister 2 20.01.2016 LISTEN The Ghana National Union of Polytechnic Students (GNUPS) has expressed dismay at the introduction of utility levies on polytechnic students, and the recent price hikes in utility tariffs by the government. GNUPS is surprised at the government, a statement issued and signed by the Public Relations Officer of GNUPS, Mr. Elvis Osei Amponsah, indicated. According to the student body, the government, which prides itself as being social democrat, should introduce social intervention programmes and policies to ease the burden on its citizenry. Government, by its recent posture, has, with shenanigans, gone ultra vires to what it professes to be its political ideology. We are calling on the government to sit up and innovate ideas that will arrest the ever-increasing economic hardships that is being visited on this country, especially the vulnerable ones, the statement said. Utility levies on Polytechnic students The statement, which was copied to The Chronicle, lamented that Tertiary Education in Ghana has finally become a preserve for the rich, due to lack of government support for the running of our schools. The students revealed that many students, in recent years, have had to make a difficult choice of deferring their programmes due to their inability to pay the fees, stressing that students in the tertiary institutions currently pay directly for everything in connection with their training, except the salaries of lecturers, which we do through payment of our taxes, and the government doesnt seem to be bothered about this. It reminded Ghanaians of the government's unsuccessful attempt to push a cost-sharing policy on utilities down the throats of tertiary students. PRO Osei Amponsah noted: Our suspicion of a deceit on the part of government on the matter went further when Vice Chancellors of Ghana and CORP attempted to negotiate with students on a charge for utilities this academic year. In a response to threats of unrests from students, a deceitful government, acting through Mr. Okudzeto Ablakwa, came to refute reports of government passing on the cost to students. It has become abundantly clear that the government, for want of cheap political points, is playing a head-knocking advocacy by telling ECG to go after our schools for their cash, asking management of our institutions to charge students towards settlement of the debts, and revert to washing hands before students on its involvement in any arrangement to charge us the cost of utilities. Increase in utility tariffs and taxes On utility tariffs and taxes, it said: How justified is government in the astronomical increment of utility tariffs in the face of DUM-SO? Government should pay the huge debt it owes the utility companies if government is sincere about its commitment to resuscitate the companies. This is the height of irresponsibility and insensitivity; that government plays oblivion to its own mess, and then pours the ravaging consequences on the feeble citizenry. Osei Amponsah's statement asks how justified is the government in the astronomical increment of petroleum products in the face of the sharp decline in global prices and the relative stability of the Cedi in recent times? In any case, why is government egregiously running away from its own baby, the automatic price adjustment formula? What we find striking and unconscionable is when government fails to retrieve substantial amounts of money that have been siphoned from the state purse by some officials, and yet comes to impose UNSYMPATHETIC policies on citizenry. Most of those kleptomaniacs have gotten away with those monies, which could otherwise, be used in the interest of the state to relieve the humongous hardships which we are suffering now. Those monies must be retrieved and the culprits prosecuted before we can entrust government with additional resources. From Richard Owusu-Akyaw, Kumasi Cocoa beans being dried 20.01.2016 LISTEN Two teenagers are in the custody of the New Edubiase police after they were alleged to have stolen a bag of un-dried cocoa beans and also possessing substances suspected to be marijuana, locally known as wee. Kwabena Atta, 18, and Kwadwo Father, 19, both residents of Amansie-Nkwanta near New Edubiase, were spotted sneaking out of the community with the contraband goods, and were arrested by neighbours before being handed over to the New Edubiase Police. An eyewitness, Mr. David Okyere, who is also a former Unit Committee Member, told The Chronicle in an interview that the two suspects were caught around 10 p.m. on Friday, trying to bolt with the items packed into a sack. He said a neighbour drew their attention to the incident, following which they confronted the suspects, who are known to be residents of the community. Mr. Okyere said upon their arrest, seven wraps of a substance suspected to be Indian hemp in paper were retrieved from them, whilst a bag containing the un-dried cocoa beans, suspected to have been stolen, were also taken and handed over to the police. Meanwhile, a Police CID at the New Edubiase Station, Inspector Nuhu Abdulai, who confirmed the incident to the paper during a telephone interview, said the two suspects were in the custody of the police, and were being interrogated as part of investigations. From Issah Alhassan, Kumasi 20.01.2016 LISTEN Looking at the alarming rate at which the pneumococcal meningitis disease is spreading in some parts of the Brong-Ahafo Region, a concerned Assembly Member of the Dadiese Electoral Area in the Wenchi Municipality, Mr. Amos Osei Kofi, who is also a Teacher at Wurompo L/A Basic School, has called on the Director General of the Ghana Education Service (GES) to close all schools in the Municipality to curb the rapid spread of the disease. Speaking to The Chronicle in an interview, Mr. Osei indicated that during a brief by the Wenchi Municipal Health Directorate at an Assembly meeting, the members were sensitised on the mode of transmission of the disease, and that congestion was identified as one of the means for the spread. According to him, members of the Wenchi Municipal Assembly were told that Bacterial Meningitis was contagious and that it could also be spread through the exchange of respiratory and throat secretions. Mr. Osei continued that if one had close contact with a person who had viral meningitis, the person may become infected with the virus. He reiterated that considering all the factors, it was likely the conditions in the classrooms could boost the spread of the disease, because some of the classes are made up of over 45 pupils, and since the children know little about the disease, it could easily be spread. According to the concerned Assembly Member also a teacher, the number of cases reported in the Wenchi Municipality, particularly from the remote areas, had increased after school re-opened almost two weeks ago. He revealed that at the Awisa L/A Basic School, over 25 school children were rushed to the hospital after symptoms of the disease were detected. At Atuna L/A Basic School, a similar incident happened, with a total of nine children attacked and rushed to the nearby hospital. Mr. Osei revealed further that one person has been reported dead in the Wenchi township, however, media reportage on the disease, its mode of transmission and how to prevent it has been very low, because the disease has been predominant in the remote areas, where accessibility is bad due to the poor road infrastructure and communication network. The Assembly Member commended the Wenchi Municipal Health Directorate for proactive measures to sensitise members of the Assembly about pneumococcal meningitis and how it could be curbed in the municipality, but called on them to intensify it in the various communities. The first pneumococcal meningitis disease case was first reported in the Tain District, in December 24, 2015. The Tain District is close to the Banda District, Wenchi, Berekum and Techiman municipalities. With the exception of Berekum, all the aforementioned districts have reported cases. In the Techiman Municipality, a total of five deaths have been recorded out of 14 reported cases as a result of the meningitis outbreak, which is caused by bacteria that causes inflammation of the covering of the brain and spinal cord. The Municipal Health Director of Techiman, Dr. Damien Punguyire, made this known to the Emergency Epidemics Management Committee of the Assemblys meeting with stakeholders on Tuesday, January 19, 2016. Dr. Damien Punguyire said the first case of the disease that came to the attention of the health authorities was reported on December 29, 2015, and so far, 14 cases in the Techiman Municipal and Techiman North District have been reported, with five deaths. He said four confirmed cases two of pneumococcal meningitis and two of meningococcal meningitis (W135) saying the identification of W135 in the Municipality was a source of worry to the health authority, because of its tendency of causing massive outbreaks. The signs and symptoms, the Health Director cited, included sudden onset of fever and severe headache, nausea/vomiting and bulging fontanelle in infants, while others include convulsion/coma, stiff neck, which result could be lethal if not treated promptly. He, therefore, advised individuals with symptoms of the disease to report early to the nearest health facility. Dr. Punguyire said since his attention was drawn to the outbreak in the Tain and Wenchi Districts, he had sensitised health workers in the Techiman Municipal and Techiman North District to look out for possible cases. The response of the Health Directorate, he said, include carrying out a record review across all health facilities, alerting all health facilities on the outbreak, and given cases definition, while others include contact tracing, visits to communities where cases came from, community durbars to educate people on preventive measures, and radio discussions. He said the disease is transmitted by direct contact with secretions from the throat and respiratory tract of an infected individual and carriers, adding that the dry weather condition causes minor cracks in peoples' throats, which facilitates the spread of the disease. He, therefore, advised the general public to take in lots of water and fluids to keep their throats wet, desist from smoking, and avoid overcrowded environments, and called on the general public to observe good manners when sneezing or coughing in public to prevent the spread of the disease. From Michael Boateng, Sunyani 20.01.2016 LISTEN The Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, Nii Osah Mills, his Deputy, Kwabena Akandor, and officials from the Minerals Commissions have visited the Obuasi Municipality to cool tempers between Anglogold Ashanti and small scale mining (galamsey) operators in the Obuasi municipality. The visit, according to the Minister, is to enable his ministry meet with the Municipal Security Committee, and to also have the firsthand information in settling the differences which has resulted in a recent demonstration by the youth in the area. The youth have threatened to boycott the polls if the authorities fail to address their concerns, to ensure lasting peace in the area. According to the Minister, gold is the pillar to the economy of Ghana, despite the fall of prices, and for that matter, there is the need to listen to both parties to resolve any future misunderstanding which could be a threat to the peace the citizens and AngloGold were enjoying. Minister Nii Osah Mills pleaded with both sides to be patient and allow peace to prevail, as the government would do anything possible to ensure lasting peace. He stated that his outfit had heard both parties, and that they would consider a lot of issues before drawing conclusions. He, however, directed that the small scale miners should hold on with their activities and refrain from further invasion of Anglogold concession, and desist from any kind of demonstration, while solutions are found to the impasse. The Minister also advised those in small scale operations to come together and form groups to apply for a permit from the Mineral Commission for proper mining and their own safety, and urged them to take advantage of the group to secure their jobs to enable them take good care of their families and children, and also help in the settling of the whole matter once and for all. Mr. Kofi Adams, Chairman of the small scale miners, commended the Minister for his timely intervention, and expressed the hope that his visit would bring a lasting solution to the problem at hand. From Ernest Anane, Obuasi Alhaji Mohammed Muniru Limuna 20.01.2016 LISTEN The entire Northern Region is in serious shock and disbelief over the decision by President John Dramani Mahama to move Alhaji Mohammed Muniru Limuna, the Regional Minister, to the Food and Agriculture Ministry, at this crucial moment when the region was preparing for the 2016 elections. The region is now sharply divided over the decision, as majority of the people are faulting President John Dramani Mahama for replacing a very competent and hardworking Minister with a completely unknown person. Others are also commending the President for rewarding and promoting Alhaji Limuna as a Cabinet Minister. Majority of the people in Northern Region; including Chiefs, religious leaders, opposition political parties and the Civil Society Organisations have always lauded Alhaji Limuna for his hard work, openness, time consciousness and political maturity, which saw the unification of the people and all political parties than ever before. Monitoring from the various radio stations in Tamale, some of the people during phone-ins expressed their views that the appointment of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Parliamentary Candidate for Walewale, Abdellah Abubakari as Northern Regional Minister designate was a calculated attempt by the ruling party to brighten their chances in the Walewale Constituency in order to make the New Patriotic Party (NPP) running mate, Dr. Mahamoud Bawumia unpopular. Some of the NPP serial callers in Tamale, including one Ibn from Moshie Zongo, Abdul Ganiyu and Abdellah Red, said the removal of Alhaji Limuna who served as a unifier and created a congenial working relationship with all the opposition political parties could affect the peace of the region. According to Red, the NDC and the President did not have the people of Ghana at heart and that it was rather the President, John Dramani Mahama who ought to be reshuffled for Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to take over the helm of affairs of this country. According to him, NPP was not threatened by the reshuffle because it would not affect their chances of winning power in 2016. One Mutawakilu and Kanayo of NDC said that those in NDC were also not happy about the reshuffling of Alhaji Limuna because of his personal relationship with all manner of people and the number of developmental projects he had championed. They, however, said that they respect the decision of the President, welcome the new Regional Minister and pledged their support to Abdellah Abubakari. Some traditional leaders and religious leaders who spoke to The Chronicle about their position on the reshuffling of Alhaji Limuna expressed some level of disappointment but gave President Mahama the due respect for his decision. According to Chief Diema-Naa Mohammed Hafiz Choggu and Sheikh Aminu Bamba, Principal Imam of Al-Qudwah Mosques in Tamale in separate interviews, said that they would have asked the President to allow Alhaji Limuna to stay in the region to lead the people into election 2016, since the complexity and volatile nature of the Northern Region require people like Alhaji Limuna to be in leadership. However, they described the new Regional Minister designate Abdellah Abubakari as another fine gentleman who was a development worker with ActionAid Ghana and also know much about the region. Chief Diema-Naa recounted the way Alhaji Limuna created the atmosphere of peace in the region by bring on board all the leadership and supporters of the various opposition parties to participate in the National Sanitation Exercise in the region, provided the parties with cleaning tools to distribute in their strongholds and even provided over 500 crash helmets for their supporters. He, therefore, hoped that the coming Regional Minister would be equally non-partisan, put the region first and unite the people, especially in an election year. Attempts to speak with the Northern Regional Chairman of the NPP, Daniel Bugri Naabu proved unsuccessful, but the Regional Chairman of the NDC, Alhaji Sofo Azorka expressed mixed feelings. According to him, the shoe size of Alhaji Limuna would definitely be far bigger for anybody who would step in. But he was confident that Mr. Abdellah Abubakari, whom he described as a fine gentleman would equally rise to the task. From Edmond Gyebi, Tamale 20.01.2016 LISTEN Measles still remains a foremost source of morbidity and mortality in Nigerian children, regardless-of being vaccine-avertable. The precarious scenery of measles has made it to garner such headlines like, Nigeria to immunise 35 million children against measles Official, October 3, 2013, Measles, child killer disease, ravages 12 Northern Nigerian States, March 17, 2013, Kebbi records 93 more cases of measles in rural areas, January 22, 2013, Bauchi records 80 per cent measles immunisation coverage, December 13, 2015, "Measles: 515, 531 Ekiti children for immunisation, 19 Jan 2016", "16,000 Nigerian children under five die everyday in 2015 WHO", and so many others. The Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) said during the kick-off of the 2015 Annual Physicians Week on Sunday October 25 2015 that record exposed that escapable childhood maladies like measles remains one of the primary causes of death among Nigerian children with 2013 alone, recording 145, 700 measles deaths globally and about 400 deaths every day or 16 deaths every hour. The United Nations International Children Emergency Fund (UNICEF) stated that measles killed 112 Nigerian children in 2015. This is not even as it said in 2014 that, there were nearly 150, 000 measles deaths worldwide in-relation-to nearly 500 deaths every day or nearly 20 deaths every hour. The UNICEFs Dr. Emmanuel Idoko made this known in Abakaliki on January 19 2016, at a one-day media course-meeting on the 2016 Measles Vaccination Campaign (MVC). The worry is that there were 22, 567 suspected cases across the 36 states of the federation and Abuja in 2015. Wrong attitude towards the fight What the headlines mean is that Nigeria is trading on a dangerous path with measles characteristically; being that it is a communicable disease that proliferates swiftly among children. Studies have sought to find out if there is any association between measles immunisation coverage and measles outbreak, because of the incessant news of measles that come out of Nigeria, but corruption and biddableness against the fight have been noticed as culprits why the battle is yet to be won. The National Surveillance Officer, World Health Organisation (WHO), Dr Irene Isibor frowned at the 19th Biennial Conference and Annual General Meeting of the Medical Womens Association of Nigeria, held at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idi-Araba, Lagos, saying that "due to peoples wrong attitude" most children in Nigeria still die from vaccine-preventable diseases such as measles. Everyday in 2015, 16,000 children under five years continue to die, mostly from preventable causes. Child survival must remain the focus of the post-2015 development agenda. The distribution of the estimated deaths among children under five years of age, from diseases that are preventable by vaccination in 2008 in Nigeria shows that measles accounts for 118, 000. she said. The most vulnerable are children under nine months, which is the main reason children are supposed to habitually get measles vaccination at age nine months. Campaign survey has shown, however, that many children do not get it. Immunisation coverage dropped, hence, much effort is not made to increase measles immunisation in children between 9 and 59 months, bearing in mind that measles immunisation coverage in urban and rural areas was not markedly different, said experts. Mr. Chukwuemeka Anthony Umeh at Hospitals Management Board, Bayelsa State, in a hypothesis made available to Pan African Medical Journalin 2013, said, "Efforts at immunising children against measles was intensified in Nigeria with nation-wide measles vaccination campaigns in 2005-2006, 2008 and 2011 targeting children between 9 and 59 months. However, there were measles outbreaks in 2010 and 2011 in Abia State." Measles scare Measles has become a cause for concern in Nigeria as many children are becoming victim, every day. It means that if nothing urgent is done measles may wipe a lot more children, apart from the number it has already recorded. Oyo State Government, for example, was thrown into mourning early this year when five children were lost to the disease. Three million children between nine and 59 months were to be vaccinated during an exercise, scheduled for Nov. 21 to Nov. 25, 2015, according to Malam Hamza Ikara, Health Educator, Kaduna State Primary Healthcare Agency (SPHCA). The World Health Organization (WHO), in partnership with the Ministry of Health in Taraba State, on November 14 2015 heralded plans to vaccinate no fewer than 760,128 children against measles in the state. The exercise was to hold between November 21 to November 25. No fewer than 97,000 children were to be vaccinated against measles in the Dutse Local Government Council of Jigawa, Alhaji Sani Yusif, the Health Education Officer spoke through the councils Information Officer, Malam Yau Garba in Dutse in November 2015. The Chairman of Kebbi State Primary Healthcare Development Agency, Dr Farouk Wakili said his states campaign was targeted at 700,000 children. Politics of Vaccination While families and states and crusaders are crying over the children who lost their lives to measles, checks revealed that 25 million Nigerian children are yet to receive vaccination against measles. What this means is that the country should expect an increase in the number. There are still children among those suspected or confirmed cases of measles. Over 63 percent are zero doses, which means they have never had any immunisation, said Dr Damaris Onwuka, the director of disease control and immunisation at the National Primary Health Care Development Agency Conversely, there was a planned nationwide campaign to immunise at least 39 million children aged nine months to 59 months in November 2015. But that idea became a tall dream as the National Primary Health Care Development Agency did not meet up; it reiterated that the exercise would culminate into this year. How more than 25 million children born in the last five years did not have any vaccination against measles, figures show, do not meet the eyes. National coverage of measles vaccine when combined with oral polio vaccination did not exceed 70 percent between 2003 and 2010. A first phase of the latest stand-alone measles vaccination will target children in 19 northern states and the FCT between Nov 21 and 25, 2015. A second phase from January 28 to February 1 next year (2016) will target 17 southern states, Dr Chinedu Okoronkwo of the agency told News Agency of Nigeria (NAN). Where the immunisation money goes The irony is that governments at all levels and the international community are not paying lackadaisical approach in the combat against measles. Monies are being budgeted and projected to curb the menace, but how the authorities responsible for the management the money have not been able to arrest the situation calls for concern. Around 10 percent of the entire campaign cost is borne by federal and state government, contributing $3.731 million to operational spending. The rest, including vaccines said to have arrived the country recently, is paid for by international donors through the Global Alliance for Vaccine Initiative, GAVI, reported Daily Trust. At least, indications are that the campaign against measles will cost an estimated $45.5 million. Curbing the menace To fight the scourge to standstill, Isibor pinpointed out three key steps to close the immunisation gap including integrating immunisation with other services such as post-natal care for mothers and babies, Daily Times reported. The source added that others were strengthening of the health system to accommodate all categories, especially during crisis with regards to assuring that everyone can access vaccines and afford to pay for them. To fight this scourge and other such health conditions, the NMA called for immediate declaration of national emergency in the health sector; and put all machinery in place towards eradicating the negative health situation from the country, reported NAN. Odimegwu Onwumere is a Poet/Writer; he writes from Rivers State. ([email protected]). Tel: +2348057778358. Map showing the location of Guinea Bissau in west Africa where a Al-Qaeda jihadi on death row until his escape has been re-arrested after crossing into Guinea, security sources said. By (AFP/File) 20.01.2016 LISTEN Nouakchott (AFP) - An Al-Qaeda jihadist, on death row until his escape on New Year's Eve, was sent back to Mauritania Wednesday following his arrest after he crossed the Guinea-Bissau border into Guinea, according to an airport source and images shown on national television. Cheikh Ould Saleck, 31, and another man suspected of having helped him in his escape, were deported from Guinea to Mauritania on Wednesday evening by special flight, the source said. Accompanied by a police convoy, the pair were whisked out of the airport in the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott to an undisclosed location. Their arrest took place on Tuesday evening about 15 kilometres (nine miles) from the town of Boke in Guinea, near the Guinea-Bissau border, a security official told AFP. According to a gendarme at the scene one of the men opened fire on the gendarmes but missed and fired into the air to cover his escape. "The fugitive was caught by people after they heard gunfire," the gendarme added. Prior to his arrest, Ould Saleck, on death row since 2011 over an Al-Qaeda plot to assassinate Mauritania's president, was last seen by fellow inmates at Nouakchott's central prison at midday on December 31. His absence from evening prayers that day alerted his fellow inmates, who went to fetch him and found his cell locked. A guard smashed open the door and found a flag of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the group's north African franchise, according to a prison source. Ould Saleck's wife and sister, who visited him often in prison, were arrested on January 4 in Nouakchott. 20.01.2016 LISTEN Accra, Jan. 20, GNA - A two-day regional consultation on drug policy reform in West Africa to assess the impact of the international inventions on national drug policies is underway in Accra. The dialogue organised by the West Africa Civil Society Institute (WASCI) with support from Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) provide opportunity for government officials and national law enforcement agencies to discuss drug policy issues and reforms identified at the national level meetings. The meeting brought together 40 participants from 11 West African countries including Benin, Cape Verde, Cote D'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal and Sierra Leone. Mrs Nana Yaa Afadzinu, Executive Director of WASCI, said West Africa was increasingly becoming a hub in the global drug trade because it is a transit point for narcotics from Latin America through to Europe, and that organised crime syndicates are also operating with increases in local drug production. She noted that this development was documented in a 2014 report by the West Africa Commission on Drug, 'Not Just in Transit: Drugs, State and Society in West Africa' which emphasized decriminalizing some degree of drug use and possession for personal use. Mrs Afadzinu said the report emphasized that the criminalization of drug use worsens health and social problems and puts huge pressures on the criminal justice system as well as increases corruption. She said in 2013, UNDOC conducted a West Africa Threat Assessment that estimated the yearly value of cocaine transiting through West Africa as 1.25 billion dollars, which was more than the annual budget of many countries in the region. Mrs Afadzinu stressed that the prevalence rate of cannabis use in West Africa stood at 12.4 per cent, higher than Africa 7.5 per cent and the global average of 3.9 per cent and that the independence of governance systems and security institutions were at risk of being undermined by corruption and organized crime. She said numerous actions had been taken at regional level and across Africa for a balance approach on the issue of drug policy reform using the African Union plan of Action on drugs 2013 -2017 as a guideline. The Executive Director said it is expected that at the end of the two-day meeting, participants would clearly identify milestones and challenges under the current drug policy measures in the region and stimulate and create regional momentum for drug policy reform in West Africa. Mrs Christiana Kafando, Commissioner for West Africa Commission on Drugs said Africa needs to speak up with one voice and act in unity as far as the global drug policy reform was concerned. She said drug trafficking was an international issue and that West Africa countries should not be left alone to bear the full burden of the struggle against criminal organizations that were often better equipped than the institutions fighting them. 'The international community must share the burdens created by drug trafficking through West Africa, arriving from South America and Asia and being sold to Europe and North America. Nations whose citizens consume large quantities of illicit drugs must play their part and seek humane ways to reduce demand for those drugs,' she added. GNA Nsoatre (B/A), Jan. 20, GNA - Ms Agnes Kusi, the Sunyani West District Chief Executive (DCE), has said the Assembly was established to cater for the needs of all residents of the District. Ms Kusi said this at separate mini durbars organised by the chiefs and people of five communities in the District during a two-day tour to cut the sod for five building projects being funded by the District Development Fund (DDF). The total cost of the projects is GHa558,943.00. The projects are a three classroom block designed with ancillary facilities for Yeboah Pene D/A Primary School at Attakrom, near Chiraa and the construction of a fenced Community Health Planning Services (CHPS) Compound. The rest are the construction of school kitchen and five-seater latrine for Community Development Vocational and Technical Institute at Nsoatre; the paving of Awuah-Domase maize market and the construction of a 20-seater KVIP latrine at Tanom. Ms Kusi said the nation could not progress if Ghanaians, especially members of the assembly neglected their primary responsibilities for partisan politics to determine the direction of their decisions at the Assembly. She implored the members of the Assembly to put partisan interests aside for the common good of the people, else they would do disservice to the very people on whose mandate they were serving. The chiefs of the beneficiary communities on behalf of their people expressed their appreciations to the government for responding to their request promptly and promised to take good care of the facilities. GNA NPP 2016 Vice Presidential candidate Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has dismissed governments latest reshuffle as meaningless. Although he admits reshuffles are normal with governments, he expressed frustrations that the reshuffle is targeted at electoral gains instead of addressing the utmost needs of Ghanaians-an improved economy. President John Mahama announced 10 changes in his government last Tuesday . The major talking point is the nomination of former Chief of Staff, Prosper Douglas Bani. He makes a comeback as the Minister Designate for the Interior. But the opposition figure remains unimpressed. The ongoing reshuffle appears to be one to do with winning an election rather than one aimed at addressing the challenges faced by Ghanaians he said in a facebook post Wednesday. Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia however consoled himself with his belief, Ghanaians will vote out the government on November 7 when the nation is expected to go to the polls. Thankfully, the ultimate reshuffle will be done on November 7 by the people of Ghana. Story by Ghana|myjoyonline.com|[email protected] 20.01.2016 LISTEN The Eastern Regional Communications Officer of the ruling party, National Democratic Congress, NDC, Mr. Jamal Konneh has expressed his disappointment in the flag bearer of the New Patriotic Party, NPP Nana Addo Dankwah Akufo-Addo. After the arrival of the two Gitmo persons in the country, groups, organizations and politicians declared their stand on acceptance or non-acceptance of the ex-Guantanamo detainees, but the NPP flag bearer was silent on the issue. This lead to many Ghanaians requesting to know the stand of Nana Addo as the flag bearer of the major opposition party in Ghana. The NPP flag bearer finally broke his silence by saying that, the president of the republic, Mr. John Mahama has flouted the law by bringing into the country the two ex-detainees. He quoted section 35 of the Anti-Terrorism Act, which states that the director of immigration or an officer authorized by the director shall not grant an endorsement or authority to permit a person to enter this country if there are reasonable grounds to suspect that the person is, will or has been involved in the commission of a terrorist act. But Mr. Konneh says he feel very bad about the comment made by Nana Addo who is known to be a legal practitioner who has practiced law for several years. "Nana Addo a legal practitioner is the best person to know that Mahmmoud Omar Mohammed Bin Atef and Khalid Muhammad Salih al-Dhuby are not terrorist but suspected and detained. How can he state an anti-terrorism act on people who are not terrorist"he questioned. He disclosed this on the New Analysis Program on Top 103.1 FM dubbed Ene Ghana with host Kwesi Fokuo Kudom Kayasso. Meanwhile in relation to Nana Addos statement, the government of Ghana through a statement signed by the Minister Of Communications, Dr. Edward Omane Boamah has stated that for the avoidance of any doubt, the government wishes to place on record that, it has acted strictly within the law at all times. Hence any claim made by Nana Addo are contrary and a complete misinterpretation of the anti-terrorism act (act 762). The statement concluded that the government has put in place adequate measures to ensure the peace and security of Ghanaians for the two years the two individuals will remain in the country. Revenue due the state is going down the drain due to the smuggling of the nations gold through Togo. The smuggling has come about as a result of a 10% tax slapped on gold transactions recently. Joy Business sources reveal that gold buyers in Bibiani, Tarkwa and Prestea, mostly Indians are no longer charging the new 10% tax on the purchase of gold because gold dealers are not willing to pay the tax component on the transactions to Government. The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Okobeng Mining Company, Nana Okobeng Amponsah tells Joy Business he was recently confronted with a situation where he had to pay in excess of 100,000 cedis as tax on a 1,000,000 cedi worth of gold he sold to an Indian gold dealer. Government should stop the activities of these illegal gold buyers, he said. According to Nana Okobeng, the gold dealers do not give any receipt to cover the tax deductions on the transactions. He therefore suspects that the Indian gold dealers are stealing from the state through the imposition of the tax and subsequent enforcement by such dealers. These people are not licensed gold dealers in the first place so why are they collecting taxes on gold shipments on behalf of the country, he queried. Nana Okobeng says he was shocked that another Indian gold buyer asked him to pay 3% tax on the gold instead of the stipulated 10 percent. Gold dealers mostly in Tarkwa, Prestea and Bibiani are asking government to ensure proper documentation to be issued on the recent 10% taxes being charged. They however called for a reduction in the taxes in order to avoid smuggling of the precious commodity. When asked why they do not sell their gold directly through the Precious Minerals Marketing Company but rather through Indian shops, Nana Okobeng said the Precious Mineral marketing company must establish offices in the districts to avert the dangers associated with the transaction and transportation of gold to the market. Lawyer for the two Ghanaians challenging the decision by President John Mahama to accept the two suspected terrorists says he will be pushing for the deportation of the two ex-Guantanamo detainees if the court rules that the president's action was illegal. Nana Agyei Baffuor Awuah says the action is also to serve a useful purpose for the future and to determine how a future president can act if confronted with a similar challenge. President John Mahama has been heavily criticized for agreeing to host two Yemeni suspected terrorists who were held in detention at the Guantanamo Bay by the US for 14 years. He has also been criticised for allegedly breaching sections of the anti-terrorism act and putting the country in danger by accepting the two. But the president and his spokespersons have dismissed the claim. President John Mahama at a recent meet the press encounter said his decision was a singular act of compassion towards two innocent people who were wrongfully arrested and detained for 14 years by the US. He said he as commander in chief of the Ghana Armed Forces he will not do anything that will put the country in harm's way. But many Ghanaians are still in doubt and in fear. Two Ghanaians, Henry Nana Boakye of Kumasi and Margarat Banful of Accra have decided to challenge the president's decision in court. Their lawyer Baffuor Awuah told Joy News his clients want the Supreme Court to subject the action of the president to strict legal interpretation. Even though he conceded that the president has powers to take some decisions in the interest of the country, he noted such powers must be exercised within the laws of the land. "Even if he has power there is a procedure. What is the procedure by which the president undertook this decision?" he demanded. He said the action by his clients are not targeted at the person of the current president. Asked if the purpose of the suit is to call for the deportation of the two suspects, the lawyer said the suit is only to seek interpretation but if the court ruled that the president's decision was ultra vires then they would have no choice but to ask for consequential orders that will press for the deportation of the two. The Principal Consultant to the Association of Caribbean Experts is proposing active participation of civil society in Ghanas oil and gas industry. Dr. Anthony Paul says strong and effective civil society participation will help to minimize potential mistakes in the industry. He revealed the absence of such strong institutions means some oil producing countries encounter challenges at production stages. Dr. Paul says not only should civil society groups be visible, but they must have the capacity to demand transparency and accountability from government. In an interview with Luv Biz on the sidelines of Oil and Gas training programme for some selected journalists in Accra, he said the civil society organizations should scrutinize activities of the industry on behalf of the citizenry. The Africa Center for Energy Policy (ACEP) and Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC) has been critical on some government decisions especially on some oil contracts. Dr. Paul says the development is a good start for Ghana. Ghana must work on the accountability systems and procedures, those that people can say this is how the decision was made, that part will be important. He stressed. Meanwhile, Dr. Anthony Paul says Ghana urgently needs natural gas master plan. Drawing on experiences and lessons from Trinidad and Tobago, which analyzed gas market and resources in the early stages of production to meet the countrys needs means an introduction of master plan is not out of place. After 5-years of going commercial with oil discovery, Ghana has neither Gas Policy nor a Gas Act, situation experts have warned of dire implications. Despite assurances from Petroleum Minister, Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah announcing in September 2015 of Gas Master Plan being finalized, the situation remains unchanged. Accra, Jan 20, GNA - A meeting of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament in Accra on Tuesday came to an abrupt halt, and rescheduled for the next day because officials of the Bank of Ghana were not prepared to answer questions from the Committee. The Committee, which began sitting on Monday, was meeting the Ministry of Finance and allied agencies, including the nation's central bank, to see how far they had implemented the recommendations of the Auditor General's Report for the years 2011, 2012 and 2013. However, Mr Leslie Akrong, an Assistant Director, after taking the oath, said they were not fully prepared for the questions, because of the short notice of the invitation on the matter being queried. Mr Kweku Agyeman-Manu, the Chairman of the Committee, said without being properly briefed on what was transpiring, the Committee could not continue its work for the day. Before the Committee adjourned its sitting, the Ghana Revenue Authority, (GRA) appeared. They answered questions bordering on the dishonouring of cheques by banks. Mr Gyimah Asante, the acting Commissioner in charge of Domestic Tax, said the GRA has recovered all such dishonoured cheques. GNA Wamfie (B/A), Dec. 20, GNA - Deputy Superintendent of Police(DSP) Stephen Tettey, on Wednesday warned that Ghana Police Service would not tolerate any acts that would breach the peace and stability in the district during this year's electioneering. He said the Police are prepared and alert to deal with miscreants during this year's presidential and parliamentary elections. DSP Tettey who is the Dormaa East District Commander, who said this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency in Sunyani, explained that the Police would move away from the culture and cycle where some traditional rulers and opinion leaders in the area come in to plead for their family members and close associations who commit criminal offences. 'Normally those people come in to water down on the cases. It's not to suggest that we do not ensure trial of criminal cases in this area, consideration to prosecute a criminal depends on the gravity of offence. We are determined to flush out such criminals who would foment trouble in the electioneering regardless of who their associates are', the Police Commander stressed. DSP Tettey warned that the Police would deal with persons who would not accommodate dissenting views from political opponents before, during and after the elections. GNA Kumasi, Jan. 20, GNA - A day's forum on the national plan of action to enhance women's role in peace building and conflict prevention has been held in Kumasi. It was organized by the Gender, Children and Social Protection Ministry and brought together, women groups, the security agencies, traditional leaders and civil society organizations. The implementation of the action plan is in conformity with the resolution on women and peace and security adopted by United Nations (UN) Security Council in year 2000. Mrs. Augustina Gyamfi, acting Director of the Department of Gender, said it was important to take deliberate steps to deepen women's involvement in every effort for the maintenance of peace and promotion of security. Additionally it was incumbent on the nation to put in place measures to protect women and girls from gender-based violence. Ghana has been described as 'Island of peace' in the midst of the civil strife in some African states, because of the over 20 years of uninterrupted democratic governance, but she said, that should not make anybody oblivious of the fact that it has had its share of intra-state conflicts. Mrs. Gyamfi cited the numerous chieftaincy and land disputes across the country to buttress her assertion. She spoke of steps taken to establish a ministerial body, comprising the key ministries, to oversee the implementation of the action plan referred to as 'GHANAP'. She encouraged women to take responsibility and actively participate in conflict management and peace promotion in the society. Mrs. Euphemia Akos Dzator, International Consultant on Gender and Security, said the forum was meant to help build the capacity of relevant actors, especially women to become agents for peace as the nation prepared to go to elections. She pointed out the Security Council Resolution was the first formal and legal document to address the plight of women and girls in conflict situations. 'Resolution 1325' urges all actors to increase the participation of women and incorporate gender perspectives in all United Nations peace and security efforts. GNA Wa, Jan. 20, GNA - Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, 2016 Presidential candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), has appealed to Ghanaians to stop the culture of introducing religious divisions into the debate on the former Guantanamo Bay detainees. 'Let us disagree by all means on the many political things that confront us, but I pray that we refrain from introducing religious divisions into the debate, for the issue at stake is not a religious one,' he said. Nana Akufo-Addo made the call in Wa while paying tribute to the late Alhaji Alhassan Bin Salih, a former Member of the Council of State under the erstwhile Kufuor administration. 'I am certain that, if Alhaji Bin Salih were around today, he would be horrified at some of the careless language being employed by some in the discussions on the resettlement in our country of former Guantanamo Bay detainees', he noted. The NPP Presidential candidate for the 2016 general election referred to Alhaji Bin Salih as someone who stood not just for the NPP but also fought for the peace and integrity of Ghana. 'The problem we face is yet another case of the failure of leadership by the President of the Republic and a sad example of his belief that he is answerable to no one, not even to the laws of the Republic, like section 35 of the Anti-Terrorism Act (Act 762), which, as President, he is sworn to uphold', he stated. Nana Akufo- Addo stated that the law prohibits the transaction into which he had entered with the United States, adding that lawlessness at the highest levels of the State could not produce good governance. 'Since he claims that only Presidents Rawlings and Kufuor have the right to criticise him, I would have wished that he had found it worthy to consult both of our two former national leaders before he took this grave decision that has consequences for us all', he stated. Nana Akufo-Addo noted that if President Mahama had done so, the Ghanaian people may well have been disquieting anxiety, in this time of justifiable heightened fear of global terrorism, that they were being led by a President who, ostensibly in the name of compassion, preferred to ignore laws designed to defend the most sensitive area of all - the nation's security. He called for prayers for the nation and its leaders and for a good heart to guide them in all what they do. Mr. C. K. Tadem, Chairman of the NPP Council of Elders described Alhaji Bin Salih as someone who was more helpful to those who showed sincerity and compassion towards mankind. He noted that it was not just enough to glorify their members that have departed but for them to do their best to complete what they wanted to achieve before departing, that is to capture power from the National Democratic Congress. Mr Tadem said Nana Addo is the only man that could save this country from the current power crisis and economic hardships that President Mahama and his government has plunged the country into. He noted that it would take a united party to do that and called on all members to throw away any differences and rally behind the party's candidate for victory. Alhaji Nurudeen Moomen, a brother of Alhaji Bin Salih called on all to use the occasion to build a relationship of trust among members and eschew enmity which he said was detrimental to the course of winning the 2016 elections. GNA 20.01.2016 LISTEN Accra, Jan 20, GNA - The Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana (PPAG) has introduced a Leadership and Development Programme Plus (LDP+) tool to enable institutions to determine pitfalls within their organisations and come up with action plans to solve those challenges. The LDP+ is a participatory leadership development process that enables teams to face challenges and achieve results through a process of action-based learning. The LDP+ tool allows both leaders and co-workers within institutions to generate ideas and make it easy for performance monitoring. Mr Albert Wuddah-Martey, Director of Programmes PPAG, made this known at a stakeholders meeting in Accra. He said 'This will allow team leaders apply all that they have learnt in addressing challenges and will as well ensure staff members demonstrate leadership attitudes towards work'. Ms Lourdes De La Pezza, USAID Facilitator of LDP+, said the tool enables institutions and facilities to draw up their own mission and vision as their guiding principle to achieve their targets. She said the process allows institutions and facilities to scan their obstacles and root causes, draw a priority action plan, align and mobilize for a stakeholder meeting to come up with solutions and inspirations to motivate others to achieve the said target. 'This is a self-assessment tool that keeps workers on their toes at all times and does not give grounds for laziness and idleness in organisations,' she added. Mrs Elizabeth Acheampong, Kotoso Project Coordinator in the Kwahu East District, noted that the project during its implementation in the District has been able to increase the uptake of reproductive health and safe motherhood services by 21 per cent among men, women and young people by the end of November, 2015 though the target was 25 per cent. Nana Ama, Project Coordinator at Sogakope in Volta Region giving her report also stated that the implementation of the project has made Sogakope PPAG Young and Wise Clinic the first point of call in adolescent sexual and reproductive health information and services for the youth in the township. She said the model has been effective in the Sogakope township to the extent that it has increased the number of youth between the ages of 15 - 24 having Access to Sexual Reproductive Health services in the clinic from 89 to 101 per month. GNA Accra, Jan. 20, GNA - "Airtel Rewardz", a loyalty programme of Ghana's fastest growing telecom company, Airtel, has given 280 customers the opportunity to redeem exciting gifts and offers with their loyalty points over the Christmas holidays. A statement issued in Accra by Mr Richard Ahiagble, Head, Corporate Communications and copied to the Ghana News Agency, said customers excitedly redeemed Koala and Cigusta shopping vouchers, Silverbird tickets, spa treats at Spa Body, dinner for two at Royal Richester and discounts on meals at Aboude Restaurant in Kumasi. Ms Rosy Fynn, Marketing Director of Airtel Ghana said, 'Airtel Rewardz is our breakthrough loyalty programme designed to reward and celebrate our customers for every spend they make on the Smartphone Network all year round. It is our way of saying thank you to our customers.' She said every Airtel customers could benefit from Rewardz by simply using their lines. As they call, text or use data, they accumulate points, for every 10 pesewas earns customers one (1) point. "These accumulated points can be exchanged for items from the loyalty catalogue in the form of voice, data or SMS products as well as products and services from benefit partners," it added. "Points earned by customers entitle them to free devices, lunch, dinner and breakfast vouchers, shopping vouchers, spa treatments, movie tickets and many more," it said. Ms Fynn explained that 'Every Airtel customer can benefit from "Airtel Rewardz" by subscribing to the programme through the short code *566# or by texting EN to 566.' Airtel Rewardz is an innovation resulting from the company's commitment to enriching the lives of its customers and for showing its appreciation for customers' loyalty. In the spirit of its values of Alive, Inclusive and Respectful, Airtel Ghana continues to add to its portfolio a number of exceptional and exciting products, services and partnerships. GNA Bihar Government approves 35 per cent job reservation for women Published: January 20, 2016 Bihar Government has formally approved 35 per cent reservation for women in government jobs in the state. Decision in this regard was taken by state cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar in Patna. This 35 per cent reservation for women will be applicable to in all government jobs including reserved and unreserved category. Presently state is already providing 35 percent reservation for women in recruitment as police constables and sub-inspectors. There is also 50 percent reservation for women as primary school teachers and in the Panchayati Raj system. Background During 2015 state assembly election campaigning, Nitish Kumar who was chief ministerial candidate of the Grand Alliance comprising of Janata Dal-United (JDU), Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Indian National Congress (INC) had promised 35 percent reservation for women in all government jobs if he formed a government again. Month: Current Affairs - January, 2016 Topics: Bihar Current Affairs 2016 Reservation Women Related Issues Women Reservation Latest E-Books We attempted to send a notification to your email address but we were unable to verify that you provided a valid email address. Please click here to update your email address if you wish to receive notifications. Otherwise, you may click here to disable notifications and hide this message. IVA Struggling with debt? Compare your debt options and write off up to 80% of your unsecured debts from 80 per month Get Started for free What is an IVA? With an Individual Voluntary Arrangement (IVA) you can make affordable monthly payments towards a percentage of your debt for 5 years. At the end of the 5 year plan, your remaining debt will be completely written off. 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This often restricts people to a certain criteria which you will have to meet: Over 5000 worth of unsecured debt You must have 2 or more creditors of 2 or more lines of credit Must live in England, Wales or Northern Ireland Must be insolvent Must be willing to pay at least 70 per month into their IVA Must have some type or types of regular income What debts can I include in an IVA? You can include a wide range of unsecured debts within your IVA. These include: Credit card debt/credit cards Loans/loan debt Payday loans Council tax arrears HMRC debt Overpaid benefits Catalogues Gas and electricity arrears Overdrafts/overdraft debt Water arrears Income tax arrears Debts to friends and family Other unsecured debts Note: If you are a resident of Scotland, you will need to apply for a Scottish Trust Deed (legally binding). Speak to our advisors for Scottish Debt Advice. What debts cant be included in an IVA? Secured loans Your mortgage (if you still live in the house) Car finance (if you still have the car) Rent arrears for your current property Court fines/Police fines Hire purchase arrears (if you still have the product) Log book loans (if you still have the vehicle that the debts are secured on) Student loans Other secured debts What does I.V.A stand for? IVA stands for Individual Voluntary Arrangement. It is a formal way to consolidate your debts into one affordable monthly repayment, resulting in the debtor becoming debt free at the end of their payments. Can I apply for an IVA online? Use the IVA Calculator to check your eligibility Prepare your IVA proposal and apply for your IVA. When your IVA is accepted, your creditors can no longer contact you. Pay 60 low monthly payments. After 5 years, you are out of your IVA and completely debt free. Will an IVA affect my employment? In most occupations, your credit rating or credit scoring is not a factor and it may never have been checked in the past, it may also be likely that it is not checked in the future either. There is no law to tell you that you must advise your employer that you have entered an IVA or that you owe money. They will not be notified by your insolvency practitioner. If you wanted to keep it a private matter, in most cases this would be absolutely fine. With some roles such as financial advisors, solicitors or bank workers it may make up part of your contract to advise them of changes like this. In these situations we would advise to inform your employers of your intentions before you enter into any arrangements. This way there will be no nasty surprises for you later down the line. More often than not, we find that your employer would not be concerned by your IVA and that it would not affect your employment status. An IVA is a formal solution and could affect some employments, such as if you were a solicitor or accountant for example. We would always recommend that you receive approval from your employers that your job isnt affected before you sign up for anything. Will an IVA impact my partner? There are certain situations where you may not want to involve your partner at all in your IVA proposal due to personal reasons. Insolvency Practitioners are very aware of these circumstances and can operate solely via telephone and email and at your convenience, so rest assured that your matters can be kept completely private. If the debts which you are looking to place into your IVA are in joint names, then this would be different. Your IP would look to place all of your debts into an IVA, including joint debts therefore you would have to inform your partner of your plans. If your debts are solely yours, then there would be no negative impact on your partner, their credit score would remain unaffected and they would not be entered onto any registers or be tainted in any way. Will an IVA affect my credit score/credit file? Whilst you are in your arrangement, you will not be able to get any credit. An IVA will stay on your credit file for 6 years, so 12 months after a typical IVA. When this time has passed and your monthly payments have ended, you will be able to rebuild your credit rating. What proof will I need to apply for an IVA? Proof of ID Passport/driving license/birth certificate/utility bills/national insurance identification/credit agreement Bank statements 3 months bank statements with all transactions displayed Proof of income 3 months payslips/P60/proof of benefits How long does it take to set up an IVA? Your initial call will only last around 5-10 minutes. The IVA process will be explained to you and you will be told what further information you will need to provide to proceed with your IVA proposal. Once you have returned the required information, an IVA will usually take between 7-14 days to get into place. You will be protected from creditors within this time, your advisor will provide you with documentation via email. How long does an IVA last? Most IVAs will last for a length of five years. The i v a will remain on your credit file for a period of six years and is placed on the Insolvency Register for that period. You can work out what date it will be removed from your credit file, it will be six years from the start date of the IVA term. So if the IVA started on 1 January 2000, it should be removed from your credit file six years from that date, which would be 1 January 2006. When you apply for an individual voluntary arrangement your Insolvency Practitioner (IP) will tell you if you qualify for an IVA, how long it lasts, how much it costs and provide you with any other debt advice which you may need. How much will debt advice cost for an Individual Voluntary Arrangement? The advice cost for individual voluntary arrangements is free of charge. Your I.V.A company will tell you if you qualify for an IVA. They will talk to you about your different debts, provide you with free debt advice and check if your creditors are likely to approve your proposal for your IVA for debt. How does an IVA affect your life? By taking out an IVA you may affect your overall financial position. You will not be allowed to take out credit for 6 years. You will struggle to get a mortgage or remortgage your existing property. It also may affect any future increase in earnings or windfalls you may receive, as these will need to be paid to your insolvency practitioner. Your insolvency practitioner will take control of your debts for this period, they will deal with all of your creditors and this is legally binding. That means you will not be allowed to take out any more debts whilst in the IVA. Once the plan is completed, any debts which you accrue will be managed by yourself. Your ability to take out further debts in the future will not be impacted once the IVA has completed. What is the IVA protocol? The I.V.A protocol is a voluntary set of guidelines which your Insolvency Practitioner (IP) can sign up for which improves the efficiency of Individual Voluntary Arrangements. When you apply for debt advice, it is important that you understand the steps of the debt solution, so you can decide whether or not the solution is the best one for your circumstances. How do I know if creditors will accept my IVA? Generally speaking, most creditors will approve voluntary arrangements for unsecured debt. But some debts can not be included within one formal debt solution. Your Insolvency Practitioner will tell you how likely it is that your creditors will be willing to accept your proposal, based on the voting creditors. Can I pay in one lump sum? There are occasions when you may be eligible for a debt solution which is payable in a one off lump sum as a final settlement to your creditors. This is usually when the money is being gifted from some one else, or you have received inheritance or a windfall for example. With a one-off lump sum payment, the advice is usually the same as when you normally apply for an IVA. You wouldnt have to make regular payments into the solution, your IP can provide you with more advice on one off lump sum solutions for your debts. Your IP will provide you with more advice on the debt IVA and explain what is IVA to you. Who regulates the debt industry? At present the debt industry is not regulated. Some Insolvency Practitioners offices choose to sign up to the Insolvency Practitioners Association (IPA) or register with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). You can contact the IPA using the contact details or email address on their website. Your creditors do not regulate the debt industry and your creditors will not be able to impact any decisions which the IPA or FCA make. In our experience, the regulators will take assertive action on any advisers or businesses which do not comply with their strict codes of practice. To check if a person is regulated by the FCA, enter their name into the search box in the FCA website. Should I use a debt charity? There are thousands of companies which provide debt help in the UK. You may be looking for an alternative to a private company. You should know that charities usually pass their fee charging products to sister companies which charge fees and disbursements, just like private companies. So what you initially thought was a good option, on further analysis could be different to what you originally thought. Charities do have their part to play though. They can help you if you have a problem with your bank accounts, maintenance arrears, living costs, credit reference agencies, child support arrears, bankruptcy, assets, accountancy issues, mortgages, creditor issues, insurance providers, mobiles, your bank account, rates arrears, PAYE contributions or if you want to work out your expenditure. They can make sure that you speak to an adviser or supervisor and look at proposals to offer your lender. A petition has started with the possibility of a debate in parliament about how charities represent themselves and their services. Which charities help with debt? You can contact Money Advice Service, National Debtline, Step Change, Shelter or a combination of the three. Charities are particular useful for a low debt level under 1,000. If the debt is high (such as a debt value of 10,000 or more) you would usually seek an assessment from a professional adviser. If you do decide to use a charity to guide you, make sure you check their charity number and the registration number on their website to make sure you are content that their team can answer your questions in the right ways. A lot of clients of charities have a minimum debt level which does not meet the basis for an IVA, so you could always chat to a charity that is happy to act on your behalf for low debt levels. Although an I.V.A could be the answer to your debt problem, its important to understand the monthly payment so call us on our free phone number. Anyone customers can receive expert feedback on their rights from debt charities, if they cant help they will usually point you in the director of firms which help with IVAs. We are homeowners, will lenders see my proposal differently? In some cases yes. In the majority of cases, if you are a homeowner you will not need to remortgage or take out any additional finances that will effect your property. You will need to sign a additional restrictions which remove your ability to take out additional credit tied to your property, which is something that is restricted once you are in an i.v.a. There are exceptions to this, such as when you have a lot of equity in your property/properties. If you own half of a property and another party owns the other half, only your equity will be affected. If you are landlord and you are in a position of equity, your IP may review your trading position or business to make sure the figures in question are in order. This is usually the case if you have two or more properties, as sometimes the equity can be used to form a repayment to your creditors. But this usually depends on the amount of value built up in your properties. Banks and building societies will not change the terms of your mortgage as long as a contribution is still being made for the duration of your arrangement. Your mortgage payments will be added to your expenses and accounted for within your budget, as long as you can provide evidence that you can afford to continue to make payments into your mortgage for duration of the plan. LOOKING FOR HELP? 100% Confidential. Thousands Helped. No upfront fees business Don't expect additional steel imports from China: Tata Steel 2015 was a year that commodity producers would like to forget in a hurry, but TV Narendran, Managing Director of Tata Steel, hopes 2016 holds better prospects for the steel industry. you are here: Recommendations of RV Easwar Committee on simplification of the provisions of IT Act, 1961 Published: January 19, 2016 Expert Committee to simplify income tax laws headed by Justice (retired) R.V. Easwar has submitted its report to Union Finance Ministry. The 10 member committee has recommended simplifying provisions related to tax deduction at source (TDS), tax refunds and claims of expenditure for deduction from taxable income. It also has suggested several taxpayer-friendly measures to improve the ease of doing business in the country, accelerate process of tax dispute resolutions and reduce litigation. Key recommendations are Deferring the contentious Income Computation and Disclosure Standards (ICDS) provisions and making the process of tax refunds faster. Deletion of a clause in IT Act, 1961 that allows the IT department to delay tax refund due beyond six months. In case of delay in refunds levying higher interest. IT department should stop the practice of adjusting tax demand of a taxpayer against legitimate refunds due whose tax return is under assessment. Treat stock trading gains of up to 5 lakh rupees as capital gains and not business income. TDS rates for individuals must be reduced to 5 per cent from current 10 per cent. Dividend income should be treated as part of total income. Exempting non-residents not having a Permanent Account Number (PAN), but seeking to provide their Tax Identification Number (TIN) for the applicability of TDS at a higher rate. Most of the working processes of the IT departments should be conducted electronically in order to minimize direct human interface. Eligibility criteria under the presumptive tax scheme to be increased to 2 crore rupees from 1 crore rupees to make it easy for small businesses. Such scheme should be also for professionals. Background Union Government had constituted this committee in October 2015 by following up on a promise to provide a fair and predictable tax regime. The committee was tasked to suggest recommendations to overhaul the IT Act, 1961 to remove ambiguities that cause unnecessary litigation and update the laws based on various judgements. Month: Current Affairs - January, 2016 Topics: Committees Current Affairs 2016 IT Act RV Easwar Committee Taxation Latest E-Books The Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) voiced its concerns over Westpacs credit card screening process. First it was Commonwealth Bank of Australia [ASX:CBA]. Last year the Senate performed an inquiry into CBAs financial planning scandal. The senate commented at the time, Here we are, 15 months or so later, and it feels like the same problems, the same culture, the same behaviour, the same techniques, are being used again. More recently it was ANZ banking group [ASX:ANZ]. Two disgruntled employees took ANZ to court over their dismissal, stating the banks culture encouraged unethical conduct. And now its the turn of Westpac Banking Corp [ASX:WBC]. The Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) voiced its concerns over Westpacs credit card screening process. Apparently Westpac failed to directly inquire about income and job status when credit card customers wanted to increase their limits. If it sounds familiar, it should. This situation is similar to the events which caused the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Westpac adopting bad habits On the eve of the GFC big US investment banks gave mortgage brokers the green light to offer loans to risky individuals. And risky might even be an understatement. It came to light that individuals with no hope of repaying their loan were given one anyway. So why did big banks want more loans? Because they could sell these loans to investors. Ill explain. Banks had created these new products called CDOs. In these products they packages loans which contained anything from really safe loans (AAA) to the most risky loans (BBB). And because all these different loans were put together the banks considered them diversified. Therefore rating agencies like Standards and Poor (S&P) and Moodys gave these CDOs a AAA rating. That high rating masks the risk under the surface. But were getting a bit off topic now. The point is Westpacs screening process for credit cards are slipping. Just like the US banking standards before the GFC. Westpac says its under control In respond to the ASICs accusations Westpac has changed its processes and launched a review program. The review may seek to refund customers who are in financial difficulty because of their increase credit limits. Westpac was quick to act, issuing a statement to addressing ASICs concerns: Where an increase in credit limit has caused a customer a financial issue, Westpac will put the customer right, through our financial hardship provisions, including providing a refund. But I suspect, just like CBA and ANZ before them, Westpac are just apologising for getting court. Not for doing the wrong thing. Be a bank, not a friend More and more banks are now trying to act as customers friend rather than their bank. One theory for doing this is the competitive edge that a friendship with customers offers. Customers will be more loyal to a friend than they would be to a company, right? But I disagree. Once banks cross that threshold of becoming the customers friend, strict social norms must be upheld. Now Im not saying its impossible for a company to be a customers friend. However, for banks its almost impossible. If you just take a look at whats happened in the past few months, banks are being caught regularly for acting unethically. And this is a death sentence for a friendship. Just think about it. What would you do if your friend lied to you and abused your trust constantly? Youd probably get a new friend. Breaking trust in a social setting is much worse than in a formal business setting. Why is it worse? Because its harder to remedy the problem. Whereas if a company broke trust in a formal setting, it wouldnt be as hard to rectify. But I doubt banks will stop their friendly campaigns. What to do about Westpac shares Westpac, along with all four major banks, have been a drag on the market this year. Out of the 12 trading days we have had so far, Westpac recorded three days of positive returns. Source: Yahoo finance Finch Rating is adding to the pessimism surrounding banking profits for 2016. The rating giant stated profits will likely slow due to ongoing asset competition, higher funding costs and an increase in loan-impairment charges. Morgan Standley also believe the banks will be hurt, but by declining oil price. The big four banks have $31 billion in loans to oil and gas companies. Thus all four banks, according to Morgan Standley, will incur losses in the first half of the financial year. Just like last year, 2016 might not be the year of the banks. Yet its still early in the year and banks may just surprise everyone counting them out. Harje Ronngard, Junior Analyst, Money Morning PS: Even the big four banks arent a certain investment anymore. The uncertainty surrounding China and the state of the global economy has beaten down Blue-Chip stocks. According to Money Morings Publisher Kris Sayce there are five beaten down Aussie Blue-Chips that are a buy today. Kris has close to 20 years experience in analysing stocks. His experience ranges from brokerage houses to leading wealth management firm. But Kris has found his home at Port Philip Publishing. Kris understands that investing your money isnt easy, especially in a declining market. In his report Kris will show you the best five Blue-Chips that are oversold. Theres a common denominator that makes these 5 Blue-Chips a buy and Kris will show you how to identify it for the future. To get your free copy today, click here. 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According to a probable cause statement, 34-year-old Julie Hughes, of Sullivan, knowingly trespassed in the Woodland Lakes Subdivision on Jan. 11. She had reportedly been banned from the subdivision since June. The statement said a deputy with the Washington County Sheriffs Department was dispatched to the 300 block of Walnut Street for a domestic disturbance. The report shows Hughes threw several items from a camper at her boyfriend, who was standing outside the camper, and used a knife in an attempt to stab the man in the chest. According to the statement, the man was able to move out of the way but his thumb was sliced open in the process. The report states he pushed Hughes away from him, causing her to drop the knife and fall to the ground striking her head. The report said the man then kicked the knife away. The deputy reported that when he arrived he found the knife on the ground near the front porch and that it had blood on it. The male was later treated by Washington County Ambulance District personnel for a stab wound. The deputy reported that he placed Hughes under arrest and secured her in the back seat of his patrol vehicle and locked the door. The report said that while the deputy continued to process the scene Hughes slipped out of her handcuffs, unlocked the doors and exited the patrol vehicle. The deputy reportedly took Hughes back into custody and secured and seat belted her in the back of the patrol vehicle for a second time. Again she slipped out of her handcuffs, unlocked the vehicle and exited. Hughes is being charged with a class C felony of domestic assault in the second degree, a felony of armed criminal action, a class D felony of unlawful use of a weapon, a class D felony of escape from custody and a class B misdemeanor of trespassing in the first degree. Hughes was booked into the Washington County Jail on a $52,500 bond. January 20, 2016 Syria - Some Preliminary Positioning For An Endgame When the Russian campaign in Syria started Obama promised that it would end in a quagmire. Various media and opinion writer picked up that narrative. It was false as Russia was and is executing a well thought out campaign. Being confronted with reality the U.S. media is now changing its false narrative. The LA Times writes: The Latakia attack mirrors similar government gains across the country, as forces loyal to President Bashar Assad, backed by Russian air power, have been on the offensive. ... It's a dramatic shift for the forces of Assad, who less than six months ago had warned supporters that the government would have to "give up areas" after a string of humiliating setbacks. ... The gains have strengthened the government's position in the run-up to Syrian peace negotiations scheduled to begin next week in Geneva. The Obama administration and its anti-Syrian allies had hoped for a defeated Syrian government in Geneva that would agree to their capitulation conditions. They now have to change the narrative. Peace talks in Geneva, they now argue, can not take place because the Syrian government is winning. Headlines the Washington Post - Russian airstrikes are working in Syria enough to put peace talks in doubt: [A]fter 3 months of relentless airstrikes that have mostly targeted the Western-backed opposition to Assads rule, they have proved sufficient to push beyond doubt any likelihood that Assad will be removed from power by the nearly five-year-old revolt against his rule. The gains on the ground are also calling into question whether there can be meaningful negotiations to end a conflict Assad and his allies now seem convinced they can win. The situation on the ground in Syria is definitely not conducive to negotiations right now, said Lina Khatib of the Paris-based Arab Reform Initiative think tank. The Arab Reform Initiative is a bastard child of the U.S./Middle East Project, Inc. and various Middle East dictatorships. The Middle East Project was founded by Henry Siegman, a former National Director of the American Jewish Congress and has various hawkish U.S. politicians like Scowcroft and Brzezinski as its senior advisers. In their view the Syrian government has to be regime changed and can not be allowed to win. Negotiations will have to be put off until the government is likely to fall. Thus the U.S./Saudi/Turkish controlled "opposition" of militant Islamists wants to exclude the Kurds and non-militant opposition from any negotiations and sets additional conditions that make negotiations impossible. They practically demand that Russia and Syria declare and keep a one-sided ceasefire before any ceasefire negotiations can happen. In the meantime various parties are positioning themselves for the larger endgame. The Kurds in Syria want a corridor along the Turkish Syrian border to connect their areas in the east with the Kurdish enclave in the west. They are fighting against The U.S. supported gangs north-west of Aleppo with Russian support and with Russian and U.S. support against Islamic State gangs north-east of Aleppo. The U.S. is invading Syrian ground and building an airport in the Kurdish areas in east Syria. This probably to later support and guarantee an oil-rich Kurdish state: The airport, known as Abu Hajar, lies southeast of the town of Remelan, site of one of Syrias largest oilfields, run by the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units, which sells its production through Iraqi Kurdistan. The Russians may counter that move with their own airport in the area. Israel, which buys most of the Kurdish oil and just again made friend with Turkey, is now officially calling for an independent Kurdish state. The Turks will not like that at all. Turkey wants to prevent a Kurdish corridor along its border. It has instigated the "Turkmen" insurgents in Syria under its control to attack the Islamic State from their Aleppo-Avaz-Turkey corridor towards the east right along the border fence where Turkey can provide artillery support. That campaign stalled after a few days and several captured towns are now back in the hands of the Islamic State. New Turkish equipment and soldiers arrived on the Turkish border near the Jarablus border crossing which is currently in the hand of the Islamic State. It is the Islamic State's only open crossing to a somewhat friendly state. Should the Kurds come near to that crossing Turkey is likely to invade Syria to set up a wider buffer against the Syrian Kurds. In Iraq the Turks continue to occupy bases in Iraqi Kurdistan under the protection of the Iraqi-Kurdish mafia boss Barzani. This despite threats from the Iraqi government. But that government is now again controlled by the U.S. The Iranian influence had waned after clashes between the Iranian General Suleiman and the U.S. installed Prime Minister Abadi: A source in the office of the Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi said, The United States delay of its support to Baghdad was not a coincidence or an unintentional lazy reaction. It was a strategic decision to: Teach Iraq a lesson for rejecting U.S military bases; To observe the Iranian military capability and inability of Tehran to use air power and intelligence gathering to defeat ISIS; To submit Baghdad to its will and dictate its conditions. That the U.S. used the ISIS phenomenon to again achieve regime change and U.S. control in Iraq was confirmed by Obama in an interview with Thomas Friedman: The reason, the president added, that we did not just start taking a bunch of airstrikes all across Iraq as soon as ISIL came in was because that would have taken the pressure off of [Prime Minister Nuri Kamal] al-Maliki. ... But all those U.S. games are just short term thinking. The Kurdish areas in Iraq and Syria are landlocked and none of their direct neighbors has interest in a Kurdish state. After his mandate ran out and was not renewed by the parliament Barzani's presidency in Iraqi Kurdistan is illegitimate. The next ruler in the Kurdish areas in Iraq is likely to be less friendly with Turkey and the U.S. In Iraq the influence of Iran with the people will always be bigger than U.S. influence with parts of the elite. In Syria it is Russia that will dictate how the future of the state will look. In the long run the U.S. has little chance to keep its currently regained dominant position. Obama is repeating his predecessors mistake of believing that U.S. meddling in the arena can be successful and continue forever. The Islamic State is receding. It recently had to cut its wages by half. It is under continues bombing and has to fight ever bigger battles with ever higher losses. The population in the areas it holds is not happy. It will soon again revert to a guerrilla movement of underground terrorist cells. Then other interests of the various actors will again come to the fore, the U.S. will no longer be needed and again be dispelled from the theater. Then the U.S. will again wonder why it did not learn from the earlier lesson. Posted by b on January 20, 2016 at 13:42 UTC | Permalink Comments next page next page DEAR ABBY: I live in Israel, and for the past five years Ive been having an affair with a great guy Ill call Yuri. I married very young to a man who is kind and very Orthodox. I love my children and grandchildren. Yuri thinks we should leave our spouses and make a fresh start. (Im not Orthodox and neither is he.) I am afraid if I do, I may lose my children and grandchildren. On the other hand, I cant survive without Yuri. I have always had lovers since I discovered how Orthodox my husband is its a survival thing. I am going nuts. What should I do? IN TURMOIL IN ISRAEL DEAR IN TURMOIL: Consider VERY carefully what a new life with Yuri will cost you, because its going to be emotionally expensive. Right now you are part of a community, with standing in that community. If you leave it, all of that will be gone, and you will likely be shunned. While running away with your lover may seem romantic, I would be very surprised if it didnt spell the end of your relationship with your children and grandchildren. A decision like this should not be taken lightly; it needs to be made rationally. If you are going nuts, you are NOT thinking rationally, so please, discuss this with a counselor more familiar with Orthodox custom than I. DEAR ABBY: My ex sent our children letters from prison. I didnt give them the letters because he was abusive. In one of them he asked our daughter to forgive him and not punish him forever. Abby, her father had abused her, and hes asking for her to stop punishing HIM? She was going to kill herself because of what he did to her. My daughter went through several years of intense counseling and still battles depression, so there is no way Ill permit him to have contact with her or my other children. I have had no contact with him since we split up several years ago. My lawyer mailed the divorce papers and that was that. Should I write him a letter and tell him what I think? NOWHERE IN TEXAS DEAR NOWHERE: No, your lawyer should. One of the hallmarks of abusers is that they tend to blame their victims for their actions. The statement in your exs letter accusing your daughter of punishing him with her silence is troubling. Shes under no obligation to forgive her abuser. When he is finally released from prison, one of the conditions may be that he must have no contact with minors. And if by then your children are no longer minors, one can only hope that they have become mature enough to protect themselves emotionally and physically, if necessary from their father. DEAR ABBY: Im 13, and a girl in my grade likes me REALLY likes me, but I think Im too young. All my friends say I should go for it and have her as a girlfriend, but Im not sure I should. I need professional help. NOT QUITE READY IN GEORGIA DEAR NOT QUITE READY: Determining when a person is ready for a romantic relationship isnt something other people can or should decide. If youre not sure you want a girlfriend right now, the fact that she likes you REALLY likes you isnt as important as what YOU think and YOU feel. You appear to have a good head on your shoulders. Let it be your guide and dont allow your well-meaning friends to push you into anything. DEAR ABBY: I was married for 27 years before my divorce. The ending of my marriage was both painful and unexpected. I was in therapy throughout the divorce and for some time after. Later I moved to another state so I would no longer have to risk running into him. But just when I think I have moved on, something is said or something happens that brings my pain and anger back to the surface. I heard once that when one is in a serious relationship, that it can take twice as long to get over it. Is this the same for a marriage? Can I expect it to take 2 times 27 years before I am finally over my ex and my divorce? UNEXPECTED DIVORCE DEAR U.D.: There is no set timetable for getting over a divorce. Much depends on the reasons for it. Some people hang onto their pain and anger for the rest of their lives. Others grow beyond the experience and are able to move on. They cultivate new friends and interests, and sometimes find a romance to replace the one that was lost. I predict you will move beyond your pain and anger when you are ready for another relationship. DEAR ABBY: I am a woman married to a woman. Recently we attended her family reunion. Her first cousins (all female) decided to have a meeting. When my wife returned from the discussion, her mom asked her what it was about. My wife replied that they were planning a trip with just the female cousins no men. I feel hurt and excluded, as I am a woman, too. Am I wrong? I can understand not wanting husbands on an all-girl trip, but am I not the exception? OUT OF THE LOOP IN ALBERTA, CANADA DEAR OUT: No. This trip is for cousins only; no spouses. Although all the other spouses are men, you are not a cousin, so stop looking for reasons to be hurt. My advice is to let it go. Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Contact Dear Abby at www.DearAbby.com or P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069 The Liberal Trudeau administration, which has yet to finish its first year, is not prepared to address the mauling that the Canadian economy has suffered in the past few years. This according to Interim Conservative Leader Rona Ambrose, who on Monday (January 18) offered an olive branch to her partys bitter rivals in a bid to help improve the countrys battered fiscal state. I'm asking [Trudeau] to meet because I want to offer him my support to work with the government to discuss what is the rapidly deteriorating economic situation in Canada, Ambrose said in a speech, as quoted by CBC News. While both parties have majoreven incompatibledifferences in matters of policy, Ambrose said that she and her group are willing to assist the government in drafting a strong plan of action and in expediting the creation of a working budget, amid a backdrop of continuous oil price crashes and an ever-weakening petro-currency. On his part, Trudeau said that he is open to discussions with Ambrose, while maintaining that Conservative policieswhich have been blamed by various quarters for the current crisishave no place in the new government. For 10 years we've had a government that has been focused on cutting its way into balance and not focused on the kind of growth that Canadians need, Trudeau said. Observers said that the Canadian economy is on its 10th consecutive year of underperforming, with the current context of low commodity prices pointing to more difficult years ahead. According to Trudeau, one of his main projects is stimulating greater dynamism in the job market. Our finance minister is working very, very hard, along with our other colleagues, to ensure that the budget we put forward is the one that is going to create the kind of growth that Canadians expect and deserve, Trudeau said. DEAR HARRIETTE: My wife is the perfect traveling companion. She is flexible with schedules, always thinks of fun activities and travels lightly. The one thing I wish I could change about her is her refusal to even try to learn the language of the country we visit, typically Latin American countries. She insists on speaking English, and I find it a bit embarrassing. She claims everyone knows at least some English, but weve been proven wrong more than a few times. I want to get her to expand her horizons, but she seems to think English is the most universal language on the planet. Could I gift her Rosetta Stone for her birthday? No Language Barriers, Detroit DEAR NO LANGUAGE BARRIERS: Try a different approach. Consider inviting your wife to take a language class with you. Suggest it as a fun activity for the two of you kind of like a date. Entice her with the romanticism of learning a language together. If you can make it seem like a fun bonding activity, she may consider it. Beyond that, make sure that you have learned as much as possible so that you can manage communication for the two of you when you are abroad. DEAR HARRIETTE: I was on a plane recently and sat next to a man who had atrocious body odor. It wasnt an incredibly long flight, but I doubt this man knew how he smelled. I considered saying something to him, because Id always want someone to tell me if I had an offensive odor. I ended up not saying anything because I was scared of how hed react. I have told close friends if they smell of body odor, and they have always been grateful. However, this man was a stranger. What kind of relationship do you have to have with someone to point out body odor? I know I would be grateful if someone were to mention something like this to me. Stinky Stench, Boston DEAR STINKY STENCH: It was wise of you to keep your comments to yourself during your flight. It would have been terribly awkward for you to be sitting next to him after making this revelation. That said, you could have requested a seat change. You could have gone over to the flight attendant privately and told him or her that your neighbors body odor was making you sick to your stomach and that you need to move. Whenever possible, a flight attendant will try to accommodate such requests without causing anyone embarrassment. In terms of letting the man know, the only way that I think you could have let him know is if you befriended him on the flight and asked, just before deplaning, if you could share something with him that is uncomfortable to discuss. With his blessing, you could tell him that you noticed he had an unusual odor coming from his body and you thought he might want to check it out, for health purposes. DEAR HARRIETTE: Yesterday, my mother called me to tell me she had organized a family vacation. I knew we would go on a family vacation sometime this summer, but she called me with hotel rooms already booked! The timing is horrible for me, and I do not want to go. I would be sharing a hotel room, so the room would have to be booked regardless. I have already tried apologizing to her and telling her I cannot go because of the timing, and she refused to accept my refusal. I told her I was sorry, but was not aware of how quickly and surreptitiously this would be set up and booked. She called me selfish and said since I do not have a real reason to not go, I would be attending. I head off to college a few days later, and I need to get ready. She knows this. Somehow, I need her to remember the priority. What should I do? Too Busy to Get Away, Syracuse, New York DEAR TOO BUSY TO GET AWAY: Show some compassion along with clarity. Remind your mother of the to-do list that you have created to prepare for school, and point out that you need those few days leading up to heading off for school to complete it. Tell her you had hoped to have her help with the list, but if she must go, you understand. To be responsible, you feel strongly that you cannot vacation when you should be prepping for college. Lifestylist and author Harriette Cole is president and creative director of Harriette Cole Media. You can send questions to askharriette@harriettecole.com or c/o Universal Uclick, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106 Edyta Blaszczyk|Odessa American A man was taken into custody following a brief standoff Tuesday afternoon in Midland County, but the identity of the man has not been released. Law enforcement officials received a shots-fired call at about 4 p.m. at a residence on South County Road 1313 just north of West County Road 124, according to Lt. Benny Matlock with the Midland County Sheriffs Office. It originally was reported as a disturbance, he said. A Texas Tech University student from Midland volunteering for Ben Carsons presidential campaign was involved in a crash in western Iowa and later died in an Omaha, Nebraska, hospital, according to the Des Moines Register newspaper. Braden Joplin, whose Facebook page indicates he is from Midland, had more serious injuries than the other occupants in the vehicle, which, according to the newspaper, hit a patch of ice and flipped then was hit by another vehicle near the town of Atlantic. The report indicates the staff driver and passengers were sent to Cass County Memorial Hospital in Atlantic with injuries. Joplin died just after 4:30 p.m., the Register reported, citing a statement from hospital officials. The accident happened Tuesday morning, according to the Register, which also reported Carson cancelled campaign stops Tuesday and Wednesday and, according to a campaign spokesperson, was traveling to Omaha to be with the family and help in any way he can. The newspaper reported Joplin, 25, is a student at Texas Tech and had been in Iowa since early January volunteering for the Carson campaign. Carson volunteer transported to Omaha for serious injuries from campaign van crash Tuesday: https://t.co/5EY9cXZ6fl pic.twitter.com/LhSaU1bQo5 Des Moines Register (@DMRegister) January 19, 2016 Several of Carsons rival Republican presidential candidates offered their sympathies over social media. Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum each offered prayers over Twitter to those involved in the crash. Joplin said in a previous interview with the Register that he was studying agriculture economics at Texas Tech but decided to take off this spring semester to save some money. The newspaper wrote that Jopin said he started volunteering for the campaign in Iowa on Jan. 4 and planned to stay in the state the entire month. (Carson is) an inspiring man, Joplin told the Register. I feel like he can bring hope to a nation thats in turmoil. Despite the lack of recognition for Straight Outta Compton in this year's Academy Awards, the film's producer and subject, Ice Cube, appears extremely proud of the final cut, calling it a "slice of American history." Straight Outta Compton wowed critics and fans alike with its honest, hard-hitting portrayal of police brutality in America, executive malpractice in the music business and five ambitious artists who had, arguably, the greatest influence on the later trajectory of hip-hop. While the film may have contained historical inaccuracies, depending on whom you ask, its visceral account of hip-hip history cannot be denied. The film's subject, rap group NWA, experience a rise to international fame that was as shocking as it was necessary. Straight Outta Compton allowed audiences to experience this excitement all over again. According to Ice Cube, whose birthname is O'Shea Jackson, Sr., "Getting the recognition from the film industry with a movie like Straight Outta Compton. People heard about it. Heard it in the making. A lot of people was quick to dismiss it as 'It's just gonna be this rap biopic.' But it's actually a slice of American history. So, we wanted to treat it like a slice of American history. And we wanted to talk about all the things that created N.W.A. We didn't create ourselves. It was the circumstances that we grew up in. We tried to make sense of it. And we tried to make art out of it to make sense of it. And ended up people loving us all over the world for it. And here we are." While historical dramas appear to be very popular among the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, (Selma, 12 Years A Slave, Spotlight, The Immitation Game, Argo, etc.) certain historical chapters seem to be left out. Many wonder why a film regarding the history of a seminal band that influenced both musical output and public perception would be largely left out of the awards. Musical biopics like Ray won two Oscars, and Walk The Line won one. Why should a critically and commercially lauded film like Straight Outta Compton be left out if, as Ice Cube says, it truly is a slice of history? 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The recent nominations for the 88th annual Academy Awards have caused quite a commotion in the media and on social media. After director Spike Lee and actress Jada Pinkett Smith spoke out about the lack of diversity in the appointed nominees, Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs decided to share her opinion toward the situation. On Monday (Jan. 18), Isaacs revealed her feelings surrounding the lack of color at the Oscars and the steps the organization is taking to create change. In light of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, talk of discrimination rang high in Hollywood. Both Lee and Pinkett Smith shared their thoughts on the 2016 Oscar nominees, ultimately deciding they would be boycotting the award ceremony this year. After much criticism surrounding the topic, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President released a public statement acknowledging the pattern that's been taking place in the Academy for years. She posted the statement on the organization's official Twitter account. A statement from Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs pic.twitter.com/Nqhgc7sbqG The Academy (@TheAcademy) January 19, 2016 "Id like to acknowledge the wonderful work of this years nominees," Isaacs wrote. "While we celebrate their extraordinary achievements, I am both heartbroken and frustrated about the lack of inclusion. This is a difficult but important conversation, and its time for big changes. On Thursday (Jan. 14), Isaacs hit the stage at the Samuel Goldwyn Theatre in Beverly Hills, California with actor John Krasinkski and directors Guillermo Del Toro and Ang Lee, to announce the official list of actors, directors, costume designers, and more nominated for their work in film. The categories were dominated by white actors. Isaacs issued a promise to implement changes in the near future, which will involve detailed review of their membership recruitment process. She's looking to explore more diversity in the Academy itself, as well as, more color in the nominee selection. "In 2016, the mandate is inclusion in all of its facets: gender, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation," Isaacs wrote. "We recognize the very real concerns of our community, and I so appreciate all of you who have reached out to me in our effort to move forward together." The 2016 Oscars are scheduled to take place on Sunday (Feb. 28) at 7 p.m. ET on ABC. The ceremony will broadcast live at the Dolby Theater at Hollywood & Highland Center. 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. On Monday night (Jan. 18) things got messy between former Love & Hip Hop: Hollywood star Masika Kalysha and Fetty Wap. The two are allegedly expecting their first child together; Kalysha is 6 months pregnant and claims that the "Trap Queen" rapper is the father. She called the Jersey emcee out on Twitter, saying he's a "deadbeat dad." According to a recent interview with US Weekly, Kalysha insists that on several occasions she suggested Fetty Wap get a paternity test. "I tried to demand him taking a paternity test. He doesn't want to take one. I asked him seven times, 'Will you just volunteer and do it?' He refuses," she said. This in turn sparked animosity in a series of tweets that have since been deleted. Kalysha calls out Fetty Wap as a philandering male Lothario who does not want to take care of his child. Warning: Graphic language below A photo posted by The Shade Room (@theshaderoominc) on Jan 18, 2016 at 7:44pm PST On Jan. 8, Fetty Wap did an interview with the Shaderoom where he claimed Kalysha purposefully got pregnant and planned the whole outcome ahead of time. However, judging by their social media exchange above, the two willingly played a game of Russian roulette after admittedly engaging in unprotected sex. The new baby will be Wap's third baby (if it is, in fact his). He has two children with other women. 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Following in the footsteps of other rappers and businessmen, Indiana rapper Freddie Gibbs has decided to release his own strain of marijuana. The potent OG cannabis is entitled Freddie Kane. Freddie sat down with Cypress Hill's B-Real in The Smokebox to discuss the details of his strain, and his inspiration for creating his own brand of cannabis. The Smokebox is a segment on BREALTV in which rapper B-Real interviews another rapper or industry professional, generally inside of a vehicle while smoking marijuana. B-Real seems to prefer blunts, or marijuana cigarettes rolled in cigar paper, over glass pipes, vaporizers, and other methods of ingesting the drug. WARNING: THE FOLLOWING VIDEO FEATURES GRAPHIC LANGUAGE "We got this Freddie Kane Strain, smoking a little of it right now," he said. "It's Freddie Kane OG. We coming with the oils, all different kind of flavors so be on the lookout for that Freddie Kane OG... Looking at guys like you, Berner, I see you n***as doing your s**t," Gibbs continued. "I'm really not just a rapper like, 'I'm about to put my name on weed. Nah, definitely not. I'm definitely working with the culture." Gibbs recently released his acclaimed album Shadow of a Doubt, which was an apt follow-up to his collaboration with legendary hip-hop producer, Madlib, on Pinata. Shadow of a Doubt charted at number 76 on the Billboard 200, 11 on the Billboard "Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums," and 4 on the Billboard "Independent Albums" chart. Despite his affinity for cannabis, however, Freddie Gibbs told The Smokebox that is determined to stay fit and lead a healthy lifestyle. The Gary, Indiana rapper detailed his workout regiment, and asserted that, other than marijuana, he was entirely drug-free. Gibbs also went on to discuss the making and influence of the song "Extradite," which was collaboration with Black Thought of The Roots. 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Bernie Sanders has run quite a leftist campaign. This point would not likely elicit protest from the presidential candidate. However, there are certain issues on which Sanders is less liberal than one may expect. The candidate previously supported amnesty for gun shop owners who sold weapons to criminals, and has voted against background checks for gun owners. Yet, in almost every other policy issue, Sanders has remained consistently to the left. Thus, some wonder why Sanders, a vocal supporter of the Black Rights Matter movement and the redistribution of wealth, would oppose reparations. National correspondent Ta-Nehisi Coates of The Atlantic, among others, are now questioning avowed socialist Vermont Senator Bernie Sander's unwillingness to support federal reparations for slavery. When asked if Sanders supported reparations for slavery at an Iowa Forum, the candidate replied, "No, I don't think so. First of all, its likelihood of getting through Congress is nil. Second of all, I think it would be very divisive. The real issue is when we look at the poverty rate among the African American community, when we look at the high unemployment rate within the African American community, we have a lot of work to do. So I think what we should be talking about is making massive investments in rebuilding our cities," he continued, "in creating millions of decent paying jobs, in making public colleges and universities tuition-free, basically targeting our federal resources to the areas where it is needed the most and where it is needed the most is in impoverished communities, often African American and Latino." This seems like a moderate and reasonable response to many who agree with Sander's pragmatism and see the issue of reparations as divisive. But it is worth questioning-- when has Senator Bernie Sanders ever seemed "pragmatic." His plan for "free education for all," the elimination of student loans, and a complete dismantling and restructuring of Obamacare into a single-payer system, are all extremely unlikely, if not impossible, to make their way through Congress, let alone become functional laws. Some argue that along with his other quixotic notions, reparations should become part of the national conversation that has shifted through Sanders's liberalism. The legacy of racism in many of America's most important institutions still disproportionately affects African Americans, and thus, some feel that Sanders's proposals do not fix the problem. 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The Republican National Committee has severed its ties with NBC News, instead choosing CNN as the destination for their highly sought-after "Super Tuesday" debate. The debate will take place on an extremely crucial nights for the Republican candidates, as several states' delegates will choose the candidate they want to receive the party's nomination for President. "The Republican National Committee has decided to move forward without NBC's participation in our February debate in Houston, Texas. The RNC has awarded the debate to CNN, who will broadcast it on Thursday, February 25th in Houston at a location to be decided," RNC Chairman Reince Priebus wrote in a statement, according to CNN. The cancellation follows CNBC's GOP debate over two months ago, in which many conservatives believe the moderates engaged candidates in "gotcha questions." Many denounced the network, leading to the friction that has manifested between the RNC and NBC News. According to GOP.com, the Republican National Committee held a vote on Monday, which resulted in a unanimous decision to cut ties with NBC. In October, Preibus wrote "We simply cannot continue with NBC without full consultation with our campaigns." Super Tuesday is something of a political holiday in the United States wherein many states hold their primaries and award their nominations. These states include, Alabama, Alaska, American Samoa, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia. Needless to say, failure to emerge victorious on Super Tuesday could end one's presidential bid, or bitterly extend the nomination process. Although e heavy emphasis has been placed on the Iowa Caucuses (February 1) and the New Hampshire Primary (February 9th), the most important date in the presidential primary contest is "Super" Tuesday, March 1st. 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Yasiin Bey, formerly known as Mos Def, has announced his retirement from both music and movies following his arrest from South Africa for holding an alleged fake passport and residing in the country illegally. Bey posted a freestyle on Kanye West's website in which he alluded to being kicked out of the African nation. The freestyle begins "No more parties in SA," a reference to both Bey's situation and Kanye West's recent single. Bey's retirement announcement came after the freestyle the Brooklyn rapper posted on KanyeWest.com, in which he called Kanye a "real friend." The announcement, spoken by Bey instead of rapped, states that the rapper will halt all music and acting jobs "effective immediately." Bey speaks of South African governmental malfeasance, and asserts that he is a "world citizen" and thus entitled to such a passport. In the recording, Bey seems quite eager to leave South Africa. According to NYDailyNews, Bey came to South Africa as an American, but overstayed his visa alongside members of his family. When asked why Yasiin Bey did not have a United States passport by Okayafrica.com, his official representative replied, "He considers himself a world citizen and wanted to use his World Passport in support of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. Although South Africa did not sign the declaration in 1948 - probably because they were governed by Apartheid at the time - Nelson Mandela believed it was a necessary document for the continued growth of South Africa after the abolishment of Apartheid." Yasiin Bey also revealed, in the recording posted to Kanye's site, that he would be releasing an album later this year. This is bittersweet news for many Hip Hop fans that eagerly await its release, but not its implications. Bey will be sadly missed in the Hip Hop and acting communities. 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band took time out of their River Tour stop at Chicago's United Center to perform a cover of the Eagles' "Take It Easy" in tribute to Glenn Frey, whose death on Monday (Jan. 18) hit the music world by surprise. Springsteen performed the cover without his backing band, although violinist Soozie Tyrell does join him mid-song. After he finished the moving interpretation of the track, which originally appeared on the Eagles' 1972 self-titled debut album. he yells Frey's name to the crowd who applaud wildly. Frey, who was one of the original founding members of the Eagles along with Don Henley, Randy Meisner and Bernie Leadon, died on Monday (Jan. 18) at the age of 67. In addition to "Take It Easy," Frey was essential to writing some of the band's biggest hits including "Tequila Sunrise," "Desperado," "Hotel California" and "Life in the Fast Lane." He was also known in part for his solo career. In similar fashion, Springsteen also performed a cover of David Bowie's "Rebel Rebel" during his band's tour opener in Pittsburgh on Saturday, Jan. 16, dedicating the performance to the times he spent with the iconic artist who died just last week at the age of 69 after an unfortunate 18-mont-long battle with cancer. Springsteen's 24-date North American tour was launched in support of his latest release, a box set reissue of his classic 1980 album The River, titled The Ties That Bind: The River Collection. According to The Boss' official website, the tour is said to display an "in-sequence, complete performance of The River album in addition to other Springsteen favorites." 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. On Monday night, some very shocking news was revealed to fans after Forrest Hill Drive rapper J. Cole participated in an MLKDay live stream, when Creed director Ryan Coogler spilled the beans that the Forest Hills Drive rapper secretly wed his college sweetheart. Although it was rumored some time ago that he and his longtime girlfriend, Melissa Heholt, had gotten engaged back in 2015, it appears that the St. John University graduates made it official. In celebration of the MLK holiday, Cole was front and center during a live stream in New York City with Coogler and the two touched on a variety of topics, including wedded bliss."How did getting married change you?" he asked, according to E! News. The rapper was definitely caught off guard by the question being that he had been mum on the topic of the engagement and revealed a shocked expression to Coogler saying, "Oh what is that, G my man?" Cole appeared flustered and taken aback but was a good sport about it as Coogler mentioned, "I never interviewed somebody before, was that off limits?" Cole's lighthearted reply, "yea that was like one thing not to do," he expressed emphatically. J. Cole just got forced to admit that he's married at #MLKNOW pic.twitter.com/qH301f8Txa Only Hip Hop Facts (@OnlyHipHopFacts) January 19, 2016 Despite the line of questioning, not much more was revealed by way details surrounding the duo's big day. However, what we do know is that is was a long time coming for the couple who have been together for the past 10 years after first meeting at St. John's University in Queens, New York. Of late it appears that the rapper has much to celebrate, as the HBO special highlighting his sold out Forrest Hill Tour aired at the top of the month. Not to mention rumors of a secret project between Cole and Kendrick Lamar being in the works. 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Detroit electronic music musician and saxophone player GRiZ has announced a brief tour next month, honestly titled My Friends Decided to Come to Your City & Play Some Super Rad Small Shows While I Write My Next Album. The mouthful of a tour name is only 10 dates long, but he will perform a mix of DJ sets and live shows in cities like Detroit, Denver, New York City, and Los Angeles. This will be the prelude to a busy spring and summer with plenty of festival dates at events like BUKU Music & Art Project, Bonnaroo and Mysteryland. In December, GRiZ spoke to us about the album that he is currently working on. He called the record "fantastic," saying that everything in the universe was aligned at the moment to make a great album. "I think that the universe is helping me make music right now. Sometimes the universe hinders your creative ability. This time around it seems like the universe is helping me and my brain is working a bit more creatively and quickly." He also noted that there will be some cool features. Check out the tour dates below. Tickets will go on sale tomorrow, Jan. 21 at 10 a.m. PST. Head to his website to pick up yours. Griz My Friends Decided to Come to Your City & Play Some Super Rad Small Shows While I Write My Next Album Tour Dates: 02/05: For Collins, CO @ Aggie Theatre 02/06: Denver, CO @ Cervantes' Masterpiece Ballroom 02/07: Boulder, CO @ Fox Theater 02/12: Detroit, MI @ St. Andrew's Hall 02/13: Detroit, MI @ Populux (DJ Set) 02/19: Los Angeles, CA @ The Roxy Theatre 02/20: Los Angeles, CA @ Masonic Lodge @ Hollywood Forever Cemetery 02/25: Brooklyn, NY @ Output (DJ Set) 02/27: New York, NY @ The Studio @ Webster Hall 03/04: Aspen, CO @ Belly Up 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Please enable JavaScript to experience the functionality of this website. - MWEB It is wicked to place political ... Thousands of private school teachers, students and their parents marched on the Florida Capitol Tuesday to demand the state's teacher union give up its legal challenge of a voucher program serving low-income children. The program, which is funded by donations from corporations that receive state tax credits in return, was created in 2001 at the urging of then-Gov. Jeb Bush. While the Florida Supreme Court has invalidated a companion voucher program for diverting public funds to religious institutions, the corporate tax credit scheme has so far avoided judicial scrutiny. "That's null and void when you're failing our children," Shantae McGarr, principal of Grant Park Christian Academy in Tampa, said of the legal question. "I'm looking at the future. When it comes to the children's future, I mean, education is key, so if they're in a school that's failing, then what kind of future are they going to have?" In its lawsuit, however, the Florida Education Association contends the Legislature illegally sidestepped the state Constitution in creating the program and that the tax credits amount to a public financing of private education. "To close schools and bus kids from all across this state to rally and use them as props for for-profit places I think is unconscionable," said FEA President Joanne McCall, who added she has no plans to drop the union's suit. A man was killed in an industrial accident in Orlando, deputies said early Wednesday morning. The incident happened at about 5 a.m. at the Taylor Farms facility at 7492 Chancellor Drive. A 911 call came in at 4:56 a.m., deputies said. When they arrived, they found an approximately 38-year-old man stuck in heavy machinery. He was pronounced dead at the scene. The man, who officials said worked for the company for a few years, died while working inside the 24-hour food processing plant. "They'll try and look into what occurred and if there was something wrong with the equipment. That's all going to be part of the open investigation," said Lourdes Clayton, a spokeswoman with the Orange County Sheriff's Office. Employees at the scene said they have been told the business will be closed for the rest of the day. Taylor Fams sent the following statement to News 13 on Wednesday night: "We are deeply saddened by the loss of a Taylor Farms team member from our plant sanitation crew in a tragic accident (Wednesday) at our facility in Orlando, Florida. Our employees are the heart of this company and we are grieving the loss of one of our own. We have been in constant touch with his family and have offered our full support. Taylor Farms is conducting a full investigation of this tragic accident and is assisting OSHA and local authorities in their investigations." For the past two weeks, staff and volunteers at the Florida Wildlife Hospital and Sanctuary in Brevard County have been raising three North American river otter pups. At about 5 weeks old, the fluffy patients remain highly dependent on their caretakers. The pups, which are from the same litter, were found in Titusville at a residential construction site. When the den was discovered, an adult otter ran off and never returned. Tracy Frampton, the hospital's executive director, said the otters are "doing well, but their condition could change at any moment." "No matter how hard we try, mom does a better job than we do," Frampton said. If the otters survive the critical early period, they will eventually be moved to a large, outdoor enclosure with a pool and will be fed live food. A release is penciled in for July or August. Frampton said the hospital is mostly in need of financial donations, plastic playground equipment and 12-inch PVC pipes. Raising each otter will cost about $2,300, the hospital said. "If you find otter pups in the wild, leave them alone," Frampton said. "As tempting as it is to intervene, their mom is probably nearby and returning shortly." (Photos by Florida Wildlife Hospital and Sanctuary) (Photos by Florida Wildlife Hospital and Sanctuary) MINNEAPOLIS - Xcel Energy has become a safer place to work over the past eight years, as measured by a key safety indicator tracked by the U.S. Occupational Safety & Health Administration. OSHA uses a Recordable Incident Rate to measure the safety of workplaces. It is a mathematical calculation that describes the number of employees per 100 full-time employees that have been involved in a recordable injury or illness. Across Xcel Energys eight-state service area, the OSHA Recordable Incident Rate has declined from 2.42 in 2008 to 0.9 in 2015. For Xcel Energys Texas-New Mexico region, that rate has declined from 2.95 to 1.03. Plainview police are continuing an investigation that involved a man being stabbed in the chest at a Plainview nightclub. According to police, Espinosa Hernandez, 32, of Plainview has been released from a Lubbock hospital after he was stabbed early Saturday morning. AMES, Iowa Donald Trump is brandishing the endorsement of conservative Republican firebrand Sarah Palin in the increasingly intense 2016 GOP presidential sweepstakes, giving the billionaire businessman a boost against Texas Sen. Ted Cruz less than two weeks before Iowas kick-off caucuses. Media heads are spinning, the former vice presidential candidate said after taking the stage at a Trump rally Tuesday at Iowa State University. This is going to be so much fun. Palin, the former governor of Alaska and 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee, said that with Trump as president, America would no longer apologize. No more pussy-footing around, Palin said. The endorsement comes as Trump is locked in a dead heat with Cruz in Iowa. The two have been ramping up their attacks against one another as the Feb. 1 caucuses have neared. In the statement announcing the endorsement, Trumps campaign described Palin as a conservative who helped launch the careers of several key future leaders of the Republican Party and conservative movement. The statement also quoted Cruz as once saying he would not be in the United States Senate were it not for Gov. Sarah Palin. ... She can pick winners. Campaigning in New Hampshire, Cruz said, Regardless of what Sarah intends to do in 2016, I will remain a big, big fan of Sarah Palin. Palin endorsed Cruz in his 2012 Senate race and said as recently as last month that he and Trump were both in her top tier of candidates, making the endorsement a symbolic blow to Cruz. Palins remarks in Ames, Iowa, were signature Palin, combining the folksy charm and everywoman appeal that initially made her a GOP superstar with defiant taunting of a busted GOP establishment that she slammed for counting both Trump and herself out. Palin offered her full-throated support for Trump and slammed President Barack Obama as the capitulator in chief. Trump, she said, would be a commander in chief who would let our warriors do their job and go kick ISIS ass! She also took aim at the Republican establishment for attacking their own front-runner and offered a challenge to those who have suggested that Trump, whose positions on issues like gun control and abortion rights have shifted over the years, isnt conservative enough. Oh my goodness gracious. What the heck would the establishment know about conservativism? she said. Who are they to tell us that were not conservative enough? ... Give me a break. Trump, whose team had been touting a major, surprise announcement, praised Palin as a friend, and a high-quality person whom I have great respect for in a statement. Were going to give em hell, he said after her speech. Palin will also be joining Trump at two events Wednesday, including a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Palin was a virtual newcomer to the national political arena when 2008 GOP presidential nominee John McCain named her as his running mate. She has since risen to prominence as one of the most outspoken conservatives in the party. She signed on as a Fox News commentator after resigning as Alaskas governor in 2010, a job she held until last year. Trump and Palin did not discuss how the endorsement had come about, but Trumps national political director, Michael Glassner, previously worked for her. Trump said earlier Tuesday that he doesnt typically put much stock in endorsements, but said of this one, I think it could very well result in votes. GOP consultant Kevin Madden said the timing will likely help Trump crowd out Cruzs message as the Iowa caucuses approach. I think it helps Trump overwhelm the news cycle with Trump coverage at a critical time, he said. Madden also said Palins support could help shield Trump from charges that his past positions make him too liberal to be the GOP nominee, giving Trump some rhetorical cover from a conservative validator in the eyes of many grassroots conservatives. But some rally-goers at Trumps event Tuesday evening said they werent sure whether Palins support would help Trump win over voters. Several referenced what they saw as her poor performance as a vice presidential candidate. I dont think its going to be a detriment, but I dont think its going to be a huge asset, said Stephen Freese, 56, of Burlington, Iowa, who works in construction. I dont think shes really credible anymore, said Bruce Dodge, 66, a retiree who lives in Ankeny, Iowa. The event came a day after Palins oldest son, Track, was arrested in a domestic violence case in which his girlfriend told police she was afraid he would shoot himself with a rifle. Track Palin was charged with assault, interfering with the report of a domestic violence crime and possessing a weapon while intoxicated in connection with the incident. Earlier Tuesday, Trump received an endorsement from the daughter of movie star John Wayne. Standing in front of a life-size, rifle-toting model of the actor in full cowboy gear, Trump accepted the endorsement of Aissa Wayne at the John Wayne Birthplace Museum in Winterset, Iowa. America needs help and we need a strong leader and we need someone like Mr. Trump with leadership qualities, someone with courage, someone thats strong, like John Wayne, she said. Scott Bauer in Center Barnstead, New Hampshire, and Rachel Doro in Anchorage, Alaska, contributed to this report. Perhaps the most disturbing thing about 2015 was the number of incidents, across the country, of fatal encounters between police officers and members of the minority community. In some of these cases we still dont know what really happened; the accounts of witnesses and the officers involved have often been wildly contradictory. In others incidents, though, its pretty clear that excessive force was used, and charges up to and including murder have been filed against some officers. This was due in large part to the existence of video from dash cameras on police cars, and from cell phones carried by civilians who just happened to be there. We can only guess how many such cases never came to light before those technologies emerged. But this is not Ferguson, Mo.; this is not Baltimore; this is not Chicago. This is Meriden, which recently made the prudent decision to equip police officers with body cameras, and more cruisers with dash cameras. Thats not a silver bullet for any and all disputes that might emerge between the police and the public, but its a step in the right direction. Another positive step was taken quite a while back, when the Police Department renewed its commitment to the idea of community policing after an unfortunate interlude when the City Council cut funding and the previous chief dismantled the program. Under the present chief, the MPD speaks of building a pro-active working partnership with neighbors, businesses and elected officials. And yet, even in a city the size of Meriden, and even with a department that officially takes a positive and cooperative approach toward the community at large, there are bound to be incidents that bring out disputes between the police and civilians, including the minority community. People can complain about police behavior, of course, but the only agency they can complain to is the Police Department itself. If we have a problem with a doctor or a lawyer or a plumber, theres a state board or department we can turn to. If we have a problem with a politician, we can vote him out of office. Does it make sense that an agency with the authority to stop us on the street, apply such force as it sees fit and haul us off to jail should have only itself to answer to? Are the police uniquely capable of policing themselves? In a recent case, Meriden-Wallingford NAACP President Jason Teal announced an investigation into the arrest of a resident, during which she was injured. Although Internal Affairs had rejected her claims of wrongdoing by a police officer, Teal said the NAACP was acting its capacity as a watchdog group, since the police and eyewitness accounts of what happened differed profoundly. Detective John Williams, president of the police union, retorted that the MPD investigation was thorough, accused Teal of jumping on the bandwagon and wished he would stop bullying us. This is hardly the kind of response thats likely to build a pro-active working partnership with neighbors. Rather, it sounds defensive, even combative just the kind of response thats bound to make people wonder how they can get a fair hearing from anyone inside the thin blue line. Policing is an honorable job, and we have no doubt that most officers behave with professionalism when theyre out there apprehending criminals, maintaining order and facing danger. So its understandable that many of them will object to the very idea of having a civilian board looking over their shoulders. On the other hand, there are bound to be a few bad apples in every basket. And some police management organizations believe that such boards can foster improved community-police relations. Meriden should at least consider establishing such a review board, independent of the Police Department. By all means, this must not be a panel with an anti-cop attitude; that would only create a bunker mentality at the MPD. Rather, it could be seen as an expansion of community policing. The department has already expressed a desire to become the benchmark by which other communities and police departments measure their success. A civilian review board could be another means to that end. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Buc-ee's, the fast-growing convenience store/gasoline station/and deli chain known for its clean bathrooms, has sued its brisket supplier for "unilaterally" raising the cost of barbecue. Buc-ee's says the increase in brisket prices has cost the chain $550,000. Buc-ee's, which is based in Lake Jackson and has grown to 24 locations in central and southeastern Texas, filed the lawsuit earlier this month in Brazoria County against it brisket supplier, Sadler's Smokehouse. LONESTAR LIFE: How 20 Texas icons got their names The two companies made an agreement in 2013 on how they'd buy and price select smoked brisket, according to the lawsuit, which included a copy of the pact. The deal included a provision that the price could not change unless Sadler's sent a written notice to Buc-ee's if it had a "significant change in circumstances" such as higher freight costs, according to the lawsuit. If the two companies couldn't agree on a new price, representatives of both companies were to meet to discuss brisket prices at Buc-ee's office in Lake Jackson. And if they couldn't strike a deal after that, either company could terminate the contract for sandwich meat, according to Buc-ee's. The chain, which sells both chopped beef and sliced beef sandwiches, said it never received a request to boost the cost of brisket and ended up paying more than agreed to. Buc-ee's is asking the court to require Sadler's to provide an accounting of brisket purchasing and supply activity between Oct. 1, 2014 through Nov. 1, 2015. Neither Buc-ee's nor its lawyers responded to requests to comment. Sadler's Smokehouse was founded in 1948 selling smoked meat to the public from a small stand in Henderson, Texas, according to its website. BOOMING BUSINESS: Dallas area finally gets its first Buc-ee's location While the company stayed in Henderson, it decided to focus on its fast-growing wholesale business. In the Houston area, Sadler's pit-smoked meats are available from several retailers including Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, Fiesta Mart and Brookshire Bros. Sadler's Smokehouse did not return a call seeking comment. The city has received three bid proposals for a contract valued at $105 million to be the exclusive vendor of food and drinks at the Alamodome for the next 15 years. The new contract is part of a transformation at the Alamodome, which will soon begin a $42 million renovation that will replace its concession stands and double the width of its concourse, among other changes. The current contract-holder, Aramark Corp., has been the arenas exclusive concessions vendor since it opened in 1993. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Arnold Schwarzenegger's former 1977 Mercedes-Benz Unimog, a ridiculous truck that looks more like a tank, is being sold by a Texas company on eBay for a whopping $350,980. The silver truck comes with a 6.4L Turbocharged Diesel I6 Engine, a tire inflation system and several other crazy bells and whistles. RELATED: Texas company builds Jeeps, trucks that will destroy every other vehicle on (or off) the road It also comes with photos of Schwarzenegger leaning against the Unimog, a rearview camera system and vinyl air-ride seats, according to the eBay posting. RELATED: Texas Armoring Corporation's bulletproof vehicle customizations The Unimog has 1,865 miles on the odometer. Arnold has long shown an appreciation for vehicles as macho as the action heroes he has portrayed during his silver-screen days. Now you can buy one of them, according to the listing. RELATED: Armored vehicles that can be purchased online The vehicle was previously sold by the The Governator for $275,000, according to Mercedes Blog. The auction page on eBay states the current seller is Texas Direct Auto. The auction on eBay for the large vehicle will expire at 2:30 p.m. on Thursday. Schwarzeneggers latest films have included Maggie and Terminator Genisys. Click through the slideshow to see photos of the vehicles interior and exterior. twhite@mysa.com Twitter: @tylerlwhite This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Texas is a whale that flies. Two states and a foreign country. A place to surf 435 miles miles from the sea. When a marketing agency was tasked with pitching Texas as the perfect destination for travelers in the 1960s, they had to revamp a public image that was as flat and bleak as a wasteland of tumbleweeds and cowpokes. "Visitors were shunning the state in droves," said Robert Burk, a senior executive for Braniff International Airlines, in a 1971 article for the Texas Star. The national travel market was thriving, but Texas' share of that success was a mere 1.5 percent and dropping. RELATED: The long-lost amusement parks of Texas A dramatic change of course was needed, so in 1963 the state created the Texas Tourist Development Agency (TTDA) and invested $130,000 to rebrand the Lone Star state. Working with private businesses and agencies across the state, including Texas Department of Transportation and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, the TTDA developed a series of tours that showcased the surprising (at that time) diversity of things to do and see in Texas. RELATED: 12 Texas beaches to visit before you die Billed as "America's biggest winter vacation bargain," Texas had "seven seasons of sunshine" and "seven regions of fun." Seven tailored tours included the Hill Country Holiday, the Great West Getaway, the Woodland Retreat and the Tropical Paradise. Dallas was the cornerstone of Metroplex Magic; Houston was the port for the Golden Gulf Bonanza. And the host for the International Invitation was sunny San Antonio. Posters and flyers in the gallery above illustrate the creative, sometimes far-fetched, campaign that helped persuade tourists to bring their dollars to Texas. By 1970, visitors to Texas had increased to 21,000,000 from 6,900,000 in 1964. Visitor spending had more than doubled, almost reaching $1.5 billion. After 24 years of preening the public image of Texas, the TTDA was dissolved into other state agencies. Today, tourists head to the Lone Star state in droves. Along with California, Florida and Hawaii, Texas is consistently among the top most popular states for visitors. And cities like San Antonio are continuously tapped for top lists on international travel. RELATED: The ultimate San Antonio day trip on the ultimate American road trip Tourist spending reached $70.5 billion in 2014, directly supporting 630,000 jobs. As an industry, tourism is second only to oil and gas and its related manufacturing. jmscott@mysa.com According to the Jordanian government, the terrorist Ahlam Tamimi, who masterminded the Sbarro massacre in 2001, cannot be extradited to the... The U.S. State Department is renewing its warning to Americans headed to Mexico that they risk being murdered, carjacked or kidnapped by armed gangs in certain Mexican states. There were 100 U.S. citizens murdered in Mexico in 2014 and 81 the year before that. "Crime and violence are serious problems and can occur anywhere, and U.S. citizens have fallen victim to criminal activity, including homicide, gun battles, kidnapping, carjacking and highway robbery," notes the warning that was posted Tuesday. "While many of those killed in organized crime-related violence have themselves been involved in criminal activity, innocent persons have also been killed." The report also notes that Mexico has dedicated "substantial resources" to protecting visitors to major tourist destinations and that there is no evidence organized criminal groups target U.S. residents or visitors based on their nationality. "Gun battles between rival criminal organizations or with Mexican authorities have taken place in towns and cities in many parts of Mexico and have occurred in broad daylight on streets and in other public venues, such as restaurants and clubs," notes the warning. Criminal organizations have used stolen cars, buses and trucks to create roadblocks on major thoroughfares to block the access of military forces and police. "The location and timing of future armed engagements is unpredictable," it states. "We recommend that you defer travel to the areas specifically identified in this Travel Warning and exercise extreme caution when traveling throughout the other areas for which advisories are in effect." The warning for Mexico was last issued in May and includes state-by-state assessments of security conditions. The State Department currently has travel warnings for 37 countries. Given the United States and Mexico share a a 2,000-mile border, that Mexico greatly relies on U.S. tourists, and approximately $1.6 billion dollars in trade crosses that border each day, public discussion of the security situation there can be a sensitive topic. Mexico has been touchy about the issue and was embarrassed last year with the prison break of Sinaloa Cartel boss Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman Loera, who fled via a tunnel dug beneath his cell. With his recent capture, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto took to Twitter to tell the world: "Mission Accomplished." Authorities there now want to speak with a Mexican actress Kate Del Castillo about how she and U.S. actor Sean Penn were able to visit with Guzman while he was on the run. Take a closer look at some of the new drug gangs that are plaguing Mexico in the gallery above. A former Bandera County sheriffs deputy has been sentenced to 40 months in prison and fined $4,000 for misusing his government computer access as part of a narcotics trafficking conspiracy, court records show. Thomas Cuellar, whod worked as a bailiff/warrant officer at the Sheriffs Department for three years until his arrest in 2011, was given until Jan 26 to surrender under the sentencing agreement approved last month by U.S. District Court Judge Alia Moses in Del Rio. A federal court judge has dismissed a Kerrville mans lawsuit against the city and police, whom he accused of violating his rights by chasing him into his residence and punching him during a 2014 arrest. Were in wholehearted agreement with the courts conclusion, Kerrville Police Chief David Knight said Tuesday. It was dismissed on the merits of the case. Defendants Harry Holt Jr. and Ryan Cockrell asserted qualified immunity as police officers from the litigation brought last February by Wesley Fife, 28. The city of Kerrville, also named in the suit, was accused of failing to properly train and supervise its officers, partly because the arrest wasnt recorded. The dispute stemmed from complaints about noise and marijuana use at a Jan. 14, 2014 party at an apartment on Legion Drive, to which officers responded twice. The officers said Fife then on probation for a prior marijuana offense was seen trying to sneak out a back window on their first call there, but remained inside the party when he saw them. Responding to a subsequent complaint, the officers said they ordered Fife to stop when he left the party, but instead he fled into his own apartment with officers in foot pursuit. Cockrell reported that Holt grabbed Fifes shirt as they entered the residence, then punched Fife in the head to subdue him. Fife was charged with evading arrest and resisting arrest, but court records show the misdemeanor charges were later dropped. The suit filed in U.S. District Court in San Antonio by attorney Richard Ellison claimed Holt broke into plaintiffs apartment, without a warrant or probable cause, and violently assaulted him. Defense attorney Mick McKamie said the officers actions were objectively reasonable, entitling them to immunity, since Fife had refused orders to stop and resisted being handcuffed. The incident wasnt recorded, he said, because Holt turned his microphone off when it vibrated, indicating it was too far from the patrol car to function or was low on batteries. Plaintiff treated any injuries he may have incurred as de minimus when he told officer Holt that he hit like a girl, McKamies motion for summary judgment said. U.S. Magistrate Judge John Primomo dismissed the case with prejudice on Nov. 9 and ordered all costs taxed against Fife, records show. Ellison couldnt be reached for comment. Knight said Holt hasnt worked at the department since last March, but declined to detail the circumstances behind his departure. zeke@express-news.net A man was shot by the passenger he was dropping off Tuesday evening on the West Side, according to San Antonio Police. Sgt. Steve Almanza said the man shot, believed to be in his 30s, was dropping off the suspect before 9 p.m. somewhere along North San Ignacio Avenue. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate SAN ANTONIO Police investigating events that lead to the suicide of an Alamo Heights teen are still eyeing criminal charges for those involved in the case, but have yet to identify any specific suspects, charges or a timeline for the conclusion of investigation. San Antonio Police Department spokesman Sgt. Jesse Salame said investigators have been sifting through evidence related to the death of David Molak, whose family has said he was bullied on social media for months before his suicide. Salame said police are also sorting through rumors that have sprung up since the teens body was discovered in the back yard of his familys home on Jan. 4. RELATED: Some say privileged culture in Alamo Heights to blame for bullying, Molak's suicide "There is nothing imminent," Salame said. "We are investigating it potentially as a criminal allegation, as to exactly what that is, it just depends on where the evidence leads us and what we are able to prove." Some online commenters, both students and parents, have singling out a 15-year-old freshman who they said was the ringleader of the cyberbullies who targeted Molak. The freshman had posted a picture of himself on the photo-sharing app Instagram posing with Molaks girlfriend in October. The caption tagged Molak and said the boy was going to steal your girl. It sparked reactions from scores of other students, including Molak, that grew increasingly heated. After Molaks death, online commenters claimed the freshman had a history of bullying and also caused the accidental drowning of a classmate at Dunlap Lake near New Braunfels in 2013. But interviews and public records show the allegations of bullying in the drowning incident were never proven. RELATED: Records: Rumors of alleged Alamo Heights bully causing death of classmate in 2013 not true The rumors for us are (just) rumors, and we are concerned with facts, Salame said. Due to the nature of the investigation, Salame said police cannot release specific details related to the case at this time, and that it is unclear when answers will come. Theres no timeline. You cant really put a timetable on these things, he said. You do your best to work as quickly as you can, but wed rather get it right than get it done quickly. RELATED: Alamo Heights student suspended after 'bullying' incidents in October involving teen who killed self SAPD chief William McManus attended Molak's funeral earlier this month along with hundreds of family and friends. Its an unspeakable tragedy that anyone would kill themselves, that it would get so bad that they would kill themselves because of bullying, said McManus. While SAPD is investigating the case, state leaders are working to on legislation that would prevent similar cases of bullying, and make them easier to prosecute when they do happen. State Sen. Jose Menendez announced Tuesday that he plans to file a bill in the next Texas legislative session that would create Davids Law. The law, named for Molak, will update anti-bullying laws to incorporate social media and empower law enforcement and school administrators to go after and punish bullies, Menendez said in an email announcing the plan. RELATED: San Antonio senator says he'll file 'David's Law' bill targeting cyberbullying after teen's suicide I will work with families, school administrators, law enforcement, and others to ensure our schools have the tools they need to keep our students safe and protected from cyberbullying. No student should be afraid to attend class because they were harassed online, Menendez said in an email announcing his plans. Staff Writer Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje contributed to this report. mdwilson@express-news.net Twitter: @MDWilsonSA This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate SAN ANTONIO A San Antonio family has filed a lawsuit against Mission Park Funeral Homes and Cemeteries after the wrong corpse was dressed in their loved ones suit and jewelry. Filed last week in state district court in Bexar County, the suit accuses the funeral home of negligence. According to the claims, Jose C. Perez died Feb. 9. Relatives said they delivered Perez's favorite suit and jewelry to Palm Heights Mortuary, a Mission Park company, on Feb. 12. At the time, the lawsuit states that the family was told Perez's body had been moved to another location of the funeral home without notification. The family was then assured by Mission Park staff that their loved one would be dressed appropriately for the viewing and rosary. RELATED: Police: Repo man accidentally tows SUV with baby in back while father shops at San Antonio H-E-B But at a private viewing, the family was presented "with the body of another deceased man" and were told by the staff that "they did not know where their father's remains were, and conducted a 2- to 3-hour search" until Perez's body was found at another funeral home, according to the lawsuit. The document states that the funeral home is guilty of negligence by failing to provide a proper receipt upon acceptance of Jose C. Perezs remains; failing to make a proper identification and transport of the human remains in their possession; and not properly securing Perezs suit and jewelry before allowing it to be put onto another deceased man. The Perez family suit seeks monetary relief in an amount over $200,000, but not more than $1 million, the suit states. Meanwhile, the family of Julie Mott also filed suit against Mission Park last week, accusing the company of negligence after Mott's body was stolen in August after a memorial service. RELATED: Family of woman whose body was taken from casket sues funeral home in San Antonio Her body has never been found. The family is seeking $1 million in damages. ezavala@express-news.net Twitter: @elizabeth2863 This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate SAN ANTONIO A tow truck driver accidentally repossessed an SUV with a 1-year-old boy in the back seat Monday night at an H-E-B on the North Side. San Antonio Police Department Sgt. William Rohn said officers were initially called to the store, 6832 San Pedro Ave., around 10:30 p.m. after receiving a report that a vehicle with a child inside had been stolen. Rohn said officers were quickly able to determine that the vehicle had been repossessed, rather than stolen, and tracked it down to a nearby tow yard. Officers found the SUV and its driver, who was still at the H-E-B, around the same time. Rohn said the man told police that he only left the child inside the vehicle for a few minutes. The tow truck driver told authorities that he did not see the child inside the SUV while he was hooking it up. Rohn said he is not expected to face any charges. The tow truck driver did not know that there was anybody in the back seat of the vehicle, Rohn said. He had many items in the back, so he was unable to see. The child, who slept through the ordeal, was not injured. Rohn said the driver is expected to receive a citation for leaving the child in the vehicle. mdwilson@express-news.net Twitter: @MDWilsonSA An alleged drug smuggler drove his vehicle into the Rio Grande Friday in Brownsville in an effort to evade Border agents, according to a news release issued Wednesday. Agents working near the Rio Grande River saw a marijuana-laden Ford pickup driving in the area. When more agents approached the scene, the pickup driver made a U-turn and traveled south. Barack Obama is a citizen born and raised in the United States of America. It says so much about our nation, good and bad, that he now enters the last year of his presidency, yet 1 in 5 of his fellow Americans dont believe the preceding sentence. At noon, one year from today, a hand will be placed on a treasured Bible of personal or historic significance and the 45th president of the United States will be sworn in. He or she will assume our nations highest elected berth without any suspicions as to place of birth. What has always been an uncontested fact of a presidents beginning will return to just that with no sitting president feeling compelled, as President Obama was in 2011, to show his papers, i.e., his birth certificate. I believe that most criticism and opposition to President Obama is rooted in genuine policy and ideological disagreements about the role of government. The quality of their arguments and the veracity of their facts may vary, but they spring from waters of honorable dissent, and not dark and toxic racial undercurrents like birtherism. But anyone who thought that Obamas ascension to the White House meant we were entering God, I hate this phrase a post-racial era was naive. Last week, Congressman Mo Brooks, R-Ala., said of Obama, There probably has not been a more racially divisive, economic-divisive president in the White House since we had presidents who supported slavery. First, from Andrew Johnson on, that is a long list of presidents who governed a nation that was brutally racially divided in laws dictating every stage of a persons life, from what hospital they could be born in, to what schools they could attend, who they could marry, what jobs they could hold and in what cemetery they could be buried. Most of those presidents did little to change that. Second, this is like blaming nonviolent civil rights marchers in Birmingham for the police hoses and dogs unleashed on them, or blaming Freedom Riders for being beaten by mobs in bus terminals. Whoever was going to be our first black president, be it Colin Powell or J.C. Watts, would have been seen by someone like Brooks as racially divisive because of ugly prejudices he would have stirred and brought out. Without intent, whoever would be our first black president would roil racial waters, especially someone named Barack Hussein Obama, born in Hawaii of a black Kenyan father and a white Kansan mother, and who, as a child, lived for three years in Indonesia. No one has traveled farther from our geographic and imaginative periphery to occupy the Oval Office. The first line of President Obamas (a long way from being written) obituary and every encyclopedia entry will mention him as the first African-American president of the United States, but he is one of our most consequential presidents, whatever you think about the consequences. In a recent issue of Politico, Michael Grunwald wrote, What hes done is changing the way we produce and consume energy, the way doctors and hospitals treat us, the academic standards in our schools and the long-term fiscal trajectory of the nation. Gays can now serve openly in the military, insurers can no longer deny coverage because of pre-existing conditions, credit card companies can no longer impose hidden fees and markets no longer believe the biggest banks are too big to fail. Solar energy installations are up nearly 2,000 percent, and carbon emissions have dropped even though the economy is growing. Even Republicans like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, who hope to succeed Obama and undo his achievements, have been complaining on the campaign trail that hes accomplished most of his agenda. Theres so much more. The point is that as time goes by, as with all presidents, well debate what Obama did or didnt do in office. Nothing else. Thats all that matters. Cary Clack is a San Antonio writer. The outbreak of hostilities between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz may not be edifying, but it is clarifying. Cruz represents the arrival of tea party ideology at the presidential level. He espouses a constitutionalism that would disqualify much of modern government, and a belief that Republican elites are badly, even mainly, at fault for accommodating cultural and economic liberalism. Trump has adopted an ethno-nationalism in which the constraints of political correctness are lifted to express frankly nativist sentiments: that many illegal immigrants are criminals and rapists who threaten American jobs, and that Muslims are foreign, suspicious and potentially dangerous. These approaches can overlap, but they are not identical. Cruz is attacking Trump as a fake conservative on gun and property rights and as a New York liberal on cultural matters. For his part, Trump defends those portions of the welfare state that benefit the working class, opposing cuts in Social Security and an increase in the retirement age. Cruz is the conservative true believer. Trump is the wrecking ball of political convention. They are not only two strong personalities; they demonstrate two different tendencies within the right. Trumps attacks on Cruz have begun drawing both blood and protests from ideological conservatives. Either cut the crap, warns radio host Mark Levin, your accusations ... that Cruz is Canadian, a criminal, owned by the banks ... or you will lose lots and lots of conservatives. Levin and others registered no protest when Trump denigrated women, minorities and the disabled. But this is Trumps greatest political talent exploiting weaknesses like a dentist drilling the most sensitive spot. Trumps questions about Cruzs Canadian roots are not primarily about constitutional interpretation. The issue is simpler: Why would voters who support the forced expulsion of 11 million undocumented people want a president born north of the border? Trumps mention of undisclosed Wall Street contributions highlights the contrast between Cruzs outsider brand and insider resume. And Cruzs proposal for a value-added tax as Marco Rubio has pointed out may be disqualifying for many economic conservatives. In a Trump-Cruz battle, I would not bet against Trump. Much of the Republican donor class is convinced that Cruz is the political equivalent of Barry Goldwater, in part because of his very conservative social views. A Trump-Clinton contest, however, is beginning to appear more winnable. Donors, one leading Republican figure told me, are trying hard to get comfortable with Trump. But here is the problem. Donors, analysts and media are drawn to the horse-race aspect of politics: establishment vs. anti-establishment, insider vs. outsider. But Trump is proposing a massive ideological and moral revision of the Republican Party. It would be the anti-immigrant party; the party that blows up the global trading order; the party that undermines the principle of religious liberty; the party that encourages an ethnic basis for American identity and gives strength and momentum to prejudice. We are already seeing the disturbing normalization of policies that recently seemed unacceptable, even unsayable. Trump proposes the expulsion of 11 million people or a ban on Muslim immigration, and there are a few days of outrage from Republican leaders. But the proposals still lie on the table, eventually seeming acceptable. But they are not acceptable. They are not normal. They are extreme and obscene and immoral. The Republican nominee for the sake of his party and his conscience must draw these boundaries clearly. Cruz is ill-equipped to play this role. He is actually more of a demagogue than an ideologue. So he has changed his views on immigration to compete with Trump and raised the ante by promising that none of the deported will be allowed back. Instead of demonstrating the humane instincts of his Christian faith, Cruz is presenting the crueler version of a pipe dream. For Republicans, the only good outcome of Trump vs. Cruz is for both to lose. The future of the party as the carrier of a humane, inclusive conservatism depends on some viable choice beyond them. michaelgerson@washpost.com Posted on 01/20/2016, 9:45 am, by mySteinbach Manitoba Public Insurance completed the first nine months of the 2015 fiscal year with a net income of $10.9 million and total earned revenues that were $51.1 million higher than over the same period last year. The positive financial picture can be attributed to a number of factors including growth in the volume and value of motor vehicles insured, and because of ongoing efforts to reduce corporate operating costs. We are pleased to remain in a good financial position heading into the final quarter of the fiscal year, said Heather Reichert, vice-president, Finance and Chief Financial Officer, Manitoba Public Insurance. However, its important to keep in mind that the winter months can be unpredictable in terms of the frequency and severity of claims. We are determined to keep rates low and stable for all Manitobans, said Reichert. Manitoba Public Insurance prides itself on being a fiscally responsible corporation and we will continue to focus on controlling our operating costs, while working with the Public Utilities Board to ensure automobile insurance rates in Manitoba continue to remain stable and predictable into the future. Earlier this year, the Public Utilities Board approved Manitoba Public Insurances request for no overall rate increase for 2016-17 making it the 12th time in the past 15 years that Manitobas public auto insurer has not requested a rate increase. During that time, the cumulative rate decrease for Manitobans has been 9.7 per cent. This is the Schneider-Farris Family's Blog. Keep up with what we are doing by logging into this site regularly! (The reason this site is called "Tragedy and Triumph" is that when I first founded this site, my husband, Dan, had been in a horrible accident, and he recovered. His recovery was a miracle! Go back to the 2005 archives to read our story.) Microsoft Lumia 650 is a soon-to-released Windows 10 Mobile smartphone which, according to some sources, will be the last to be offered in the Redmond, Washington-based companys Lumia range (as we await the Surface range). This affordable, productivity-focused smartphone features a premium-looking design, an HD OLED display and, of course, the latest Windows 10 Mobile OS. Where to Buy LG Android Phones Jumia.com.ng from 17,000.00 Buy Now Konga.com from 30,000.00 Buy Now Design and Display In a way, one may be right in saying that the Microsoft Lumia 650 is more like what the Lumia 950 and its XL variant should have looked like. Although the rear is made of plastic, the phone features a more premium design with a diamond-cut, anodized aluminium frame. It has a matte finish to make it comfortable to handle. The Lumia 650 shows off an attractively svelte profile at just 6.9 millimetres, while weighing only 122 grams. Microsoft Lumia 650 sports a 5-inch touch display with an HD resolution of 1,280 x 720 pixels. The OLED screen promises great colours and deeper blacks for enjoyable viewing. Camera and Storage Microsoft Lumia 650 packs a decent pair of cameras that will suffice for the needs of most business users. On the rear, you will find an 8-megapixel shooter, which the phones maker says offers rich capture and living images capability. You also get a 5-megapixel snapper on the front for video calls and wide-angle selfies, if you are into that. Onboard storage of 16GB capacity provides ample room for files and images. You will also be able to include additional storage of up to 200 GB using a microSD card. Performance, OS and Other Features Under the hood, the Microsoft Lumia 650 packs a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 212 processor with speeds maxed at 1.3 GHz. This CPU is paired with paltry 1 GB of RAM. Looking at this configuration, it is clear that one should not expect this device to deliver out-of-the-world performance. However, the Windows platform is known to be very efficient even with limited resources. So, expect the Lumia 650 to perform smoothly. Microsoft Lumia 650 boots Windows 10 operating system, which will come as good news to business users. It is built to enable productivity, coming with newest Office apps out-of-the-box and supporting business applications. You also have the digital personal assistant Cortana to help you stay organised and get things done more efficiently. It is a tad disappointing that Microsoft can only provide a 2,000mAh battery. But then, the juicer should be manageable given the chipset used and manageable screen resolution. The Microsoft Lumia 650 also supports 4G LTE (Cat. 4) for super fast downloads and hassle free video streaming. Microsoft Lumia 650, which will be offered in white and black colour variants, supports dual-SIM feature. It features Bluetooth 4.1 and NFC. Other interesting features include HD Voice and Wi-Fi calling. Pricing and Availability Microsoft Lumia 650 is not yet available in Nigeria. When available, you can buy it at leading online stores in the country. Microsoft Lumia 650 Price in Nigeria is expected to range from N35,000 to N45,000 depending on your location in Nigeria. The Woman Who Made Science Beautiful Atlantic Denmark sets world record for wind power consumption TreeHugger (resilc) We cannot afford another digital divide Financial Times (David L) How Much Would Donald Trumps American-Made iPhone Actually Cost? Motherboard (resilc) Mr. Market is Still Not Happy China? Refugee Crisis Obama changes tack on Russia, calls up Putin Asia Times (margarita) Syraqistan Imperial Collapse Watch Big Brother is Watching You Watch Terrorism Act incompatible with human rights, court rules in David Miranda case EM: So a bunch of High Lords deem that Mirandas detention was lawful even though the law under which it was made is itself unlawful. Lord Kafka will be pleased to hear of this. BBC journalist Rana Rahimpour stopped from flying to US BBC 2016 Supreme Court to decide whether Obama can shield millions of immigrants from deportation Los Angeles Times. Yours truly said at the time the move was dodgy. Bizarre Contract Dispute Putting Thousands Of Migrant Children At Risk Huffington Post One Chart to Explain Politics Today Wonk Wire (furzy) Meet Debbie Wasserman Schultzs First-Ever Primary Challenger: Tim Canova Glenn Greenwald, Intercept (resilc). I hope he gets lots of out of state donations. Would serve her right. 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One Diagram Comparing State Economies How Much (furzy) Black Injustice Tipping Point Gunz Gun Culture and the American Nightmare of Violence Henry Giroux, Bill Moyers Davos: Chief executives more pessimistic about growth BBC Oil Market Tests Banks Ability to Weather Losses New York Times Antidote du jour (Nikolai Zinoviev): See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here. Yves here. This post is more important than it seems for several reasons. First, it reveals one of the dirty secrets of modeling: if you tweak assumptions within plausible ranges, you can come up with wildly different outcomes. Second, it identifies what some of these assumptions are in the now-hot-topic of whether letting more migrants enter is an economic cost or an economic burden. Although this article discusses various studies of the cost and benefits of immigration in Europe, the same methodological issues are likely to apply to similar work in the US. BY Nuria Boot, as a Research Assistant in the area of Competition Policy, and Pia Huttl, an Affiliate Fellow at Bruegel. Originally published at Bruegel Whats at stake: Many research institutes have estimated the economic impact of migrants, in particular regarding fiscal budgets and the labour market. These studies often give contradictory results. This blogs review looks at the different assumptions and approaches behind these results. The German Council of Economic experts describes four scenarios for labour force potential and expenditures related to refugees. They divide integration into 3 stages: asylum application, approval and labour market integration. The scenarios are linked to assumptions on direct fiscal expenses during the 3 stages of integration. Base scenario This assumes that the asylum application takes 4 months, and the decision8 months. Asylum applicants receive benefits, then benefits continue if they are recognized as refugees, or they receive a lump sum after rejection. The report assumes a 40% participation rate and an 80% unemployment rate upon recognition. After 5 years, they assume that the participation rate increases to 70%, while the unemployment rate drops to 20%. Faster procedures, quicker integration The second scenario assumes 6 months from arrival to asylum decision, and faster labour market integration, with an 80% participation rate after 5 years and a 10% unemployment rate. Greater inflows, slower procedures, slower integration The third view assumes 20% more arrivals per year than in the base scenario, 18 months until the asylum decision and slower labour market integration, with a participation rate of 60% and an unemployment rate of 30% after 5 years. Higher expenses better integration The last scenario assumes higher benefits for asylum applicants, and higher lump sums for both training measures and upon rejection. Labour market integration is assumed to be better than in the second scenario, with an unemployment rate of 5% after 5 years, while the participation rate is also assumed to be 80% after 5 years. Importantly, all the scenarios assume that the number of refugees coming to Germany drops relatively quickly, from a million in 2015 to 200,000 in 2020.However limiting this number would require political measures. Depending on the scenario, migration, as well as social and integration benefits for asylum seekers and recognised refugees will result in direct annual additional gross expenses for public budgets in the range of 5.9 to 8.3 billion in 2015 and 9.0 to 14.3 billion in 2016 (0.2-0.3 % of GDP in 2015 and 0.3-0.5 % of GDP in 2016). Slower procedures combined with worse labour market integration would likely raise these costs noticeably (figure below). Source: Annual Economic Report 2015/16 Focus on Future Viability, Sachverstandigenrat Holger Bonin investigates the impact of current immigration on the German budget. He presents a simple tax-transfer-calculation for 2012 based on data from the socio-economic panel of Germany. He finds that in 2012 , the average non-citizen paid 3300 more in taxes than they received in terms of social transfers and free schooling. Bertolla et al from CESifo point out that when all public expenditure is included, this number turns actually negative. They adjust Bonins calculations, and find a net cost of 1800 to 1450 per non-citizen in 2012. The key difference driving this result is the inclusion of fixed costs, such as military expenditure, in government spending. In a second question, Bonin explores the impact of future immigration on the German budget. Here, he takes into account all public expenditures, and assumes that immigrants will have the same tax and transfer profiles as non-citizens already living in Germany, which translates into lower employment rates and lower income compared to the native population. The author assumes similar favourable age structure of future immigration, and a yearly influx of 100,000, 200,000 and 300,000 people. Using a generational accounting study, he finds that future immigration is more of a burden to the public finances than a benefit. He finds that for 200,000 immigrants per year, to achieve a balanced budget in an intertemporal calculation, the primary surplus would have to increase by 3.7 %, compared to 3.3 % without migration. Holger assumes that new immigrants make lower net contributions than migrants already living in Germany. Assuming migrants are higher qualified, the net burden decreases. Christian Dustmann and Tommaso Frattini look at the fiscal impact of immigration on the UK economy since 1995. Similar to Bonin, the authors use a tax-transfer calculation based mainly on the UK Labour Force Survey to find the net fiscal contribution of migrants between 1995 and 2011. Government expenditures on goods and services are mainly allocated pro rata to the different population groups. However, for public goods a distinction is made between pure public goods and congestible public goods, for which the costs may increase with the size of the resident population. Only the costs for the latter are assigned to migrants. The authors find that from 1995-2011 the resident immigrant population from European Economic Area (EEA) countries made a positive fiscal contribution, while those from non-EEA countries contributed less than they received; however, native workers also make a negative contribution during this period. Moreover, they find that both groups of immigrants that arrived after 2000 made a positive contribution. These estimates have been criticised by Migration Watch UK, mainly on the grounds that government revenue from recent migrants has been seriously overestimated, while costs of public service provision have been underestimated. Using different assumptions over the same period, Migration Watch finds negative fiscal impacts for all groups. Rowthorn, re-evaluates Dustmann and Frattinis estimates for recent migrants. His adjustments include all Migration Watch assumptions excluding those for debt interest and personal taxes (income tax and national insurance). They also include an adjustment for native labour displacement and his own estimate of the migrant share of debt interest. He finds negative impacts for both groups of migrants. The 2014 update of Dustmann and Frattini does not really change their initial results (see figure below), the main difference being that more recent public expenditure data published by HM Treasury is used to allocate expenditures. As a side remark, the authors point out that migration can be temporary, and that remigration is an underexplored issue. If migrants return to their country of origin after reaching their career peak or upon retirement it would relieve to the fiscal system. This is further explored in a socio-economic panel study at DIW by Dustmann and Gorlach, who propose a general theoretical framework for modelling temporary migration decisions. The authors find that temporariness of migration has typically not been accounted for in the past. This can change results significantly, as most of the fiscal burden may be borne by the country in which migrants settle after retirement. As a general critique to the studies above, Marcel Fratzscher and Simon Junker from DIW point out that measuring the economic value only in terms of taxes and government benefits received, without incorporating refugees contribution to economic performance, is false and misleading. There are two sources of positive economic effects: employed refugees stimulate the economy on the supply side by contributing to corporate production and refugee-related expenditures come with positive demand impulses as high demand helps business overall. The authors outline a model on the economic potential of refugees, capturing the effects arising in the macroeconomic cycle incorporating multipliers. They assume that the refugee influx declines gradually from 1.5 million people in 2015-2016 to half a million in 2018-2020. They assume late entry into the labour market, with refugees taking up employment only after 2 years. The following assumptions hold: Baseline scenario : Unemployment rates are assumed to be 60% in years 2-5, 45% in years 6-10 and 30% in year 11 and later. Participation rate is 80%, while labour productivity is assumed to be 67%. The acceptance rate is 45%. Costs related to care, accommodation and integration during the application stage are assumed to be 40% of per capita income, while social benefits for unemployed refugees are 30% of per capita income. : Unemployment rates are assumed to be 60% in years 2-5, 45% in years 6-10 and 30% in year 11 and later. Participation rate is 80%, while labour productivity is assumed to be 67%. The acceptance rate is 45%. Costs related to care, accommodation and integration during the application stage are assumed to be 40% of per capita income, while social benefits for unemployed refugees are 30% of per capita income. Pessimistic scenario: Unemployment rates are 65% in years 2-5, 50% in years 6-10 and 35% in year 11 or later. Participation rate is 75%, while labour productivity is assumed to be 50%, rising to 67% over time. The acceptance rate is 40%. Costs during the application stage are 66% of per capita income, while social benefits for unemployed refugees are 40% of per capita income. Optimistic scenario: Unemployment rates are 50% in years 2-5 falling to 38% and 25% over time. Participation rate is 85%, while labour productivity is the same of the baseline scenario. The acceptance rate is 50%, and the costs related to the first years and beyond are assumed to be half of the pessimistic scenario. The multipliers assumed are 0.5 in the baseline and the optimistic scenario, and 0.4 in the pessimistic scenario, in order to factor mainly the direct effects. As a result, the initial costs are predominated by positive effects in the long run (see figure below). Even in an unfavourable scenario, in which significantly lower productivity and high costs are assumed, the breakeven point appears a few years later. Researchers theorize defects could improve solar cells (Nanowerk News) Scientists at the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) are studying what may seem paradoxical - certain defects in silicon solar cells may actually improve their performance. The findings run counter to conventional wisdom, according to Pauls Stradins, the principal scientist and a project leader of the silicon photovoltaics group at NREL. Deep-level defects frequently hamper the efficiency of solar cells, but NREL theoretical research suggests that defects with properly engineered energy levels can improve carrier collection out of the cell, or improve surface passivation of the absorber layer. Researchers at NREL ran simulations to add impurities to layers adjacent to the silicon wafer in a solar cell. Namely, they introduced defects within a thin tunneling silicon dioxide (SiO2) layer that forms part of "passivated contact" for carrier collection, and within the aluminum oxide (Al2O3) surface passivation layer next to the silicon (Si) cell wafer. In both cases, specific defects were identified to be beneficial. The simulations were accomplished using NREL's supercomputer and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center. Schematic of a good defect (red cross), which helps collection of electrons from photo-absorber (n-Si), and blocks the holes, hence suppresses carriers recombination. The research by Stradins, Yuanyue Liu, Su-Huai Wei, Hui-Xiong Deng, and Junwei Luo appears in Applied Physics Letters ("Suppress carrier recombination by introducing defects: The case of Si solar cell"). Finding the right defect was key to the process. To promote carrier collection through the tunneling SiO2 layer, the defects need to have energy levels outside the Si bandgap but close to one of the band edges in order to selectively collect one type of photocarrier and block the other. In contrast, for surface passivation of Si by Al2O3, without carrier collection, a beneficial defect is deep below the valence band of silicon and holds a permanent negative charge. The simulations removed certain atoms from the oxide layers adjacent to the Si wafer, and replaced them with an atom from a different element, thereby creating a "defect." For example, when an oxygen atom was replaced by a fluorine atom it resulted in a defect that could possibly promote electron collection while blocking holes. The defects were then sorted according to their energy level and charge state. More research is needed in order to determine which defects would produce the best results. The principles used in this study are applicable to other materials and devices, such as photoanodes and two-dimensional semiconductors. Localized oxidative killing of tumor cells by glassy iron nanoparticles (Nanowerk News) Amorphous iron nanoparticles have a specific toxicity in tumor cells. In the journal Angewandte Chemie ("Synthesis of Iron Nanometallic Glasses and Their Application in Cancer Therapy by a Localized Fenton Reaction"), Chinese scientists describe their design and synthesis of a special amorphous state of nanoparticulate iron, which can locally release reactive iron species in the acidic and hydrogen peroxide rich environment of cancer cells, providing new possibilities for theranostics and chemodynamic therapies. A Trojan Horse for Cancer Cells - Localized oxidative killing of tumor cells by glassy iron nanoparticles. ( Wiley-VCH) Cancer cells are characterized by their relatively acidic cell environment and their production of significant amounts of hydrogen peroxide compared to healthy cells. Some chemodynamic approaches for cancer treatment thus employ the Fenton reaction, that is, iron ions reacting with the hydrogen peroxide to produce reactive oxygen species (ROS), which in turn can damage and destroy the cancer cells. However, the transport of iron ions to the target cells is problematic, and crystalline iron nanoparticles are not as effective. Therefore, Jianlin Shi and Wenbo Bu and their groups at Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, in collaboration with Fudan University of Shanghai, China, have now prepared iron nanoparticles in an amorphous, glassy state. "Interestingly, the amorphous iron(0) nanoparticles present several unique physicochemical properties," the scientists write, and: "The results confirm that the amorphous iron nanoparticles, hydrogen peroxide, and acidic conditions act synergistically as nanotechnology to kill cancer cells." In addition to their potential as drugs, other advantages are a good contrast for magnetic resonance imaging and the possibility of magnetic targeting. "Ideally, a perfect carrier should release its cargo at once when it is transferred from neutral to mildly acidic conditions, such as those in the tumor microenvironment," the authors write. Using magnetic resonance imaging, they proved by in vitro and in vivo tests that the anticipated mechanism was working. SHARE Lee Memorial Health System said Chadwick Leo, D.O. joined the professional staff of Lee Physician GroupObstetrics and Gynecology. Events Iberiabank will host Karna Small Bodman, former deputy press secretary and best-selling author, for two lectures in February. Bodman will talk about her experiences in the White House. The first lecture will be held in Naples on Feb. 9 at the iberiabank branch located at 3838 U.S. 41 N. Reservations may be made by calling 239-403-5123. The second lecture will be held on Marco Island at the Iberiabank branch at 605 Bald Eagle Drive. Reservations may be made by calling 239-393-2400. Both events will begin with a reception at 5:30 p.m. and the presentation at 6 p.m. Iberiabank also will present Veterans Affairs accredited attorney Daniel Burzynski, who will help local veterans better understand the many benefits available. Dr. Deborah Lux will join the presentation to talk about Collier County Honor Flight. The presentation is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Jan. 26 at the North Naples branch at 2180 Immokalee Road. Information: 239-593-2021 Capital Wealth Advisors will hold seminars from 10 a.m. to noon Jan. 26 and Feb. 8 at The Naples Grande Hotel. The topic will be new Florida laws on family trust companies. Information: 239-434-7434 The Collier County Women's Bar Association will hold its "Be Your Best at Marketing" program at 11:45 a.m. Jan. 27 at Northern Trust Bank, 4001 U.S. 41 N., Naples. Information: www.ccwba.org; 239-659-5066 Applications Applications for the 2016-2017 Leadership Bonita Class, hosted by the Bonita Springs Area Chamber of Commerce, are available at www. BonitaSpringsChamber.com. To submit your business news directly online, go to naplesnews.com/BIZwire or email news@naplesnews.com. Arabesque owner Sheryl Sashin, left, works with client Cheryl Andrews to design invitations to a Naples Winter Wine Festival vintner dinner on Friday, Jan. 15, 2016, in Naples. Arabesque is one of only 12 retailers in the U.S. authorized to carry the Imporium line of writing instruments from the German company Lamy. (David Albers/Staff) SHARE Arabesque on Fifth Avenue South in Naples is one of only 12 retailers in the U.S. authorized to carry the Imporium line of writing instruments from the German company Lamy. (David Albers/Staff) Arabesque on Fifth Avenue South in Naples is one of only 12 retailers in the U.S. authorized to carry the Imporium line of writing instruments from the German company Lamy. (David Albers/Staff) Sheryl Sashin, owner of Arabesque on Fifth Avenue South in Naples, is one of only 12 retailers in the U.S. authorized to carry the Imporium line of writing instruments from the German company Lamy. (David Albers/Staff) Arabesque on Fifth Avenue South in Naples is one of only 12 retailers in the U.S. authorized to carry the Imporium line of writing instruments from the German company Lamy. (David Albers/Staff) By John Osborne There's a marked difference between a pen and a "premium writing instrument." Few know that better than Sheryl Sashin, owner of Arabesque of Naples, a fine stationer and gift shop at 350 Fifth Ave. S. As one of just a dozen retailers in the country authorized to carry an exclusive new line of pens er, premium writing instruments from Germany, Sashin said she couldn't be prouder of the distinction. "Lamy, a German company, recently came out with Imporium, which is a little higher priced than its other products," said the former manufacturing sales rep in Connecticut who opened her Southwest Florida store 16 years ago. "They introduced the line in Germany in October, in England in November and in the U.S. about three weeks ago. Only 12 retailers in the country are allowed to carry it, and I feel honored and blessed to be one of them." While a Lamy Imporium black fountain pen retails for around $520, Sashin said prices for her store's other premium writing instruments including the Faber-Castell product line run the gamut. "The lowest-priced Lamy we have is $37, and then there's a fountain pen from Caran D'Ache a Swiss company that's gold plated with real Chinese lacquer that sells for around $1,400," she said. The exclusivity of those writing instruments aside, Sashin said Arabesque's main focus is on high-quality stationery for businesses and important social occasions. "We have partnered with all the old, traditional companies such as Crane and William Arthur," said Sashin, whose 2,500-square-foot store designs wedding stationery for around 40 ceremonies each year. "I create and design the artwork for invitations because art has always been a tremendous joy and passion for me." With an eclectic mix of other products that includes Waterford Crystal, Sasha Nicholas china, leather goods and Sonny Angel collectible dolls, Sashin said her independent operation is able to switch up inventory whenever she likes. "Since I'm not a corporation or a chain, if I find something I love, I can buy it," she said. "I can turn on a dime if the urge strikes." As a satisfied former client, Lynne Hedberg liked Arabesque so much she eventually began working there. "First I was a customer, and I enjoyed the store because each client is appreciated and cherished," said Hedberg, who has worked at Arabesque for seven years. "I still enjoy the Old-World charm of the assorted textures of quality papers, and Sheryl also has a marvelous selection of innovative, beautiful and carefully selected gifts. It was that genteel combination that drew me back many times over the years, and now I have been blessed to share this atmosphere with Sheryl." For her part, customer Amy Heuerman, of Naples, drew upon her unique perspective to describe her experience with Sashin's store. "I had a business that sold invitations and stationery to stores like this, so No. 1, I love paper, and No. 2, I'm really picky when it comes to stores like this," she said. "Because I have that experience, I really think Sheryl's store is superb. It's creative, it's high-end, and I just think she's excellent. She did my wedding, and we bounced ideas off each other until we had something unique that 'had my name on it.' " And if you know someone who's hard to buy for, Heuerman said Arabesque is a great place to pick up one-of-a-kind gifts. "If you now that person who already has everything, Arabesque is definitely the place to go for their gifts," she said. Arabesque of Naples is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Wedding appointments are available on Sunday. "If people are still here shopping after 5 p.m., we generally don't chase them out," Sashin added with a laugh. Brigadier General Frank Lissner of the Royal Danish Army spoke Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016 in North Naples about combating the Islamic State and the evolving nature of terrorism. (Greg Stanley/Staff) SHARE Brigadier General Giovanni Magazzoni of the Italian Air Force spoke Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016 in North Naples about combating the Islamic State and the evolving nature of terrorism. (Greg Stanley/Staff) Brigadier General Mikael Christofferson of the Swedish Royal Air Force spoke Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016 in North Naples about combating the Islamic State and the evolving nature of terrorism. (Greg Stanley/Staff) Brigadier General Gerd Bischof of the German Air Force spoke Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016 in North Naples about combating the Islamic State and the evolving nature of terrorism. (Greg Stanley/Staff) By Greg Stanley of the Naples Daily News Scoffing at calls made last month by Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz to carpet-bomb the terrorist group ISIS into oblivion, four European generals told a North Naples audience Tuesday that more bombs won't defeat the Islamic State. "It would be very hard to do more bombing than we are doing right now," said Brigadier General Frank Lissner of the Royal Danish Army. "We cannot do more because the problem is we have to identify the target before we hit it. We have these rules of engagement that we should be certain that it is a military target and that there are no civilians in the collateral damage." Other GOP candidates also have called for tough military action against ISIS, including Donald Trump who said, "I would just bomb those suckers." And retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, who argues the military, including ground troops, should "destroy them." Lissner and the other generals, who represent their countries to U.S. Central Command in Tampa, said the military alone won't topple the Islamic State. Western armies can try to assist, equip and train moderate groups to fight the Islamic State. But as was proved in repeated failed attempts to do just that in Syria, vetting the groups can be too precarious and the training can come too late or even too early to be effective, said Gerd Bischof, Brigadier General of the German Air Force. Weapons given to a friend one day could be shooting at you the next, he said. "The military is the first responder," Bischof said. "It's always the first responder, but there must be other answers, too." Bischof and Lissner, along with brigadier generals Giovanni Magazzino of the Italian Air Force and Mikael Christofferson of the Swedish Royal Air Force, spoke at the invitation of the European American Network, a local group that helps people with mostly European ties make connections in the area. The group has hosted panels with a number of European generals and military leaders from Central Command over the last five years to speak on Iraq, Afghanistan and, more recently, on the rise of the Islamic State and the record-setting influx of migrants and refugees in Europe. The Islamic State is showing how terrorism is evolving, Bischof said. It's becoming more social media savvy and more obviously cruel. It's shown, too, that terrorist cells are born or flock to ungoverned and unstable areas, which handcuffs almost anything a military force can do to stamp it out, he said. "If you get them out of Iraq and Syria they will go to Libya and Yemen," Bischof said. "They will continue to evade and we will continue to fight and that is the future of the future." Looking at a map of the Middle East, Bischof said he is most concerned the next crisis will come in Libya, where the country has become more and more unstable since the fall of Moammar Gaddafi in the Arab Spring. "We thought that if Gaddafi fell it would become a better country," he said. "But it's so complicated. Libya is so unstable that I expect it will be the next choke point for terrorism." To fight, western countries need to continually push for stability, Bischof said. "There's no quick fix," he said. "You need to address humanitarian and educational aspects. Basically, the aim must be to support governments to produce good governance, otherwise we'll just see the next nest or focus of terrorism." "We need to defend our values, too, and to have appropriate self-esteem or you become a victim of the terrorism," Bischof said. "Make sure your country or your nation is doing the right thing, and then do it." SHARE By Arek Sarkissian of the Naples Daily News TALLAHASSEE Gov. Rick Scott's Commission on Health Care and Hospital Funding met for the last time Tuesday and released a summary of its observations, which concluded that Florida's medical industry lacks transparency in pricing, includes too many cost controls and has too much government involvement. The commission of Scott-appointed members spent 15 meetings over eight months hearing testimony from medical experts, patients and academics. The eight-member panel and co-executive directors Liz Dudak, of the state Agency for Health Care Administration, and state Surgeon General John Armstrong, also gathered price data from hospitals and made them available on a public website. The results of the meetings are observations because only one member of the panel was an actual physician, commission Chairman Carlos Beruff said. "We don't have the expertise to make the recommendations to implement," Beruff said. "So our observations are within our capabilities." The last meeting included a presentation of state Sen. Don Gaetz, who spoke on behalf of Senate President Andy Gardiner. "Your recommendations, just like my bills, will be subject to that objective, nonpolitical analysis," said Gaetz, R-Niceville. "And those will be the cost or savings numbers that will be taken seriously." The six-page summary of observations made by the commission detailed the lack of a free market system. More than 70 percent of hospital admissions in 2013 were covered by a government-sponsored source, which included Medicaid, Medicare, the military Tricare health program or the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the summary states. "With more than two-thirds of utilization generated from government resources, and the state's share of those costs comprising more than one-third of all state spending during 2014, there is a persistent influence of government regulation and oversight across the industry," the summary states. The lack of a free market system also was spurred by a state law that requires hospitals to obtain a Certificate of Need before they are allowed to increase the size of a facility. The requirement was initially established as a way to control health care costs by restricting the need for hospitals, nursing homes and hospices based on the documented need in the community, but it actually made them worse, the summary states. The summary also spoke of a lack of transparency in pricing, which left consumers without the opportunity to shop around. Another issue was a fee-for-service pay schedule where health services are reimbursed without regard for performance. The long line of presentations the commission took in from medical experts over eight months led it to determine that the industry is moving toward a performance-based model. Many of the obstacles that prevented Florida from embracing a free market system will be discussed during this year's legislative session, and they were highlighted by Gaetz in his testimony before the commission. He said a solid health care system should be supported by access, affordability and quality, and only some of those issues will be addressed this year. He pointed to bill SB 1496 by state Sen. Rob Bradley, R-Fleming Island, which would require licensed medical facilities to provide patients with upfront pricing. "Transparency is good for its own sake and that's why Sen. Bradley's bill is worthwhile and that's why I support it and I hope it will pass," Gaetz said. "But like I said, providing all the prices on the menu to a hungry man won't guarantee that he gets fed." Gaetz told commissioners the Legislature also will take up bills that would remove the state's hospital certificate of need law. HB 437 by state Rep. Chris Sprowls, R-Palm Harbor, would eliminate the certificate of need for hospital construction. SB 236 by state Sen. Denise Grimsley, R-Sebring, would eliminate the certificate of need for facilities to be built in rural areas. Gaetz also mentioned his own SB 1144, which would eliminate the certificate of need for medical facilities and nursing homes that help a large percentage of patients who fall well below the federal poverty line. After the meeting, Gaetz said Gardiner would prefer that nursing homes be included in the elimination of certificate of need, which was not included in Sprowls' bill and may create a rift between the two legislative chambers. "I can't speak for the president but I've heard him say it's all or nothing," Gaetz said. None of the commission observations or proposed legislation up for discussion this year would be the top remedy for problems in Florida's health care system, but the bills indicated a start toward a solution in the years ahead, Gaetz said. At $32.9 billion in federal and state dollars, the state's health and human services program, which includes Medicaid and programs administered by the state Department of Health, was 42 percent of this year's $78.2 billion budget. "I think as the chairman said, there are no bumper sticker answers no political answers," Gaetz said. "This is a serious topic that consumes 42 percent of the state's budget and consumes people's lives." Contact Daily News reporter arek.sarkissian@naplesnews.com or 850-559-7620 FILE PHOTO -- The VIP Sprint race gets underway. The 39th Annual Great Dock Canoe Race, with a "Hunger Games" theme, filled the bay with canoes and the dock with spectators at Crayton Cove on Saturday. Lance Shearer/Special to the Daily News By Joseph Cranney of the Naples Daily News This years running of the Great Dock Canoe Race in Crayton Cove could also be the last. Due to what Mayor John Sorey described as funding issues, planners of the long-standing Naples tradition announced Wednesday the event would end in May. Sorey said the events founder and longtime emcee, Vin DePasquale, has had to pay $8,000 out of pocket to fund the event. Kate Walter, an event spokeswoman, said the decision wasnt made for financial reasons. She said DePasquale only wants to give the 40-year event a proper sendoff. They just wanted to go off on a high note, Walter said. Sorey said he and City Manager Bill Moss have reached out to local organizations to look for new planners and sponsors, but the conversations have not been fruitful. I think its part of the cultural fabric of the city, Sorey said of the event, which is sponsored by The Dock at Crayton Cove restaurant. Since 1977, crowds have gathered at the Dock at Crayton Cove to watch canoe races and mark the end of tourist season. Participants are given a theme to decorate their boats and a cash prize is handed out to the best dressed. This years theme is The Last Dance, a nod to the disco era from which the canoe race spawned. A $5,000 grant is also annually awarded to a childrens charity. This years grant recipient is the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Sorey said the effort to find a new host could go until October, when planning for the canoe races typically starts. But Sorey doesnt support the event being publicly funded. I dont think it should necessarily be a city project, Sorey said. Longtime City Councilman Bill Barnett said he is depressed the event might be ending and described it as one of the citys oldest traditions. In a news release, the event staff described the city as a generous longtime sponsor of the race. This event has become a Naples tradition among the community and it will be bittersweet to host the finale, Vin DePasquale, the event founder, said in the release. People of all ages, residents and visitors alike, tell us how much they look forward to this each year and how wonderful it is that were able to support a great cause. The final running of the event will take place on Saturday, May 14. A parade of the decorated boats begins at 11 a.m. and will be followed by seven races, including the Ambitious Amateurs race, which competes for medals, and the Truly Tenacious race of boaters aged 65 and older. Photo galleries: Unfair but balanced commentary on tax and budget policy, contemporary U.S. politics and culture, and whatever else happens to come up By Jay Schlichter of the Naples Daily News The search has been called off for Thomas Jardas and his 11 fellow Marines following a double helicopter crash in Hawaii last week, but the 22-year-old's friends aren't giving up hope. A prayer vigil is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Cypress Lake High School, where the Fort Myers resident graduated in 2011, organized by a member of his same graduating class. Savanna Reid, 22, started a Facebook page called "Stay Strong for Tommy" and invited her fellow classmates and the public to attend the event to pray for Jardas. "People have been thanking me for setting it up, but this is something I know Tommy would have done for any of us," Reid said. "He has the biggest heart." As of Wednesday afternoon, Reid said more than 200 people have contacted her to say that they will be coming, including Tracy Perkins, the high school's former principal who was there when Reid and Jardas were students. Reid said the current principal, Angela Roles, has been very accommodating and helpful in allowing her to set up the vigil. One of Jardas' best friends, Ryan Mitnick, said that the family is holding a memorial service on Monday. However, the location and time is not being released as Mitnick said the family would prefer to have the event for those closest to Jardas. Jardas was aboard one of two CH-53E helicopters, carrying six crew members each, when they failed to return to their base at Kaneohe Bay following a nighttime training mission on Jan. 14. Hours later, a Coast Guard helicopter and C-130 airplane spotted debris 2 1/2 miles off of Oahu. A massive search was conducted by the Marine Corps, Coast Guard and Navy, and finally suspended after the five-day effort failed to locate any sign of them. Coast Guard officials said the Marine Corps would transition to "recovery and salvage" efforts. A memorial is tentatively planned for Friday at the Marine Corps Base Hawaii in Kaneohe Bay. "The decision to suspend the search without finding survivors is particularly difficult," said Capt. James Jenkins, chief of staff and acting commander of the Coast Guard 14th District in Honolulu. The search began late Thursday when a civilian on a beach reported seeing the helicopters flying and then a fireball. The crash was near the north shore, but the search area spanned from the western coast of Oahu to the northeast corner of the island. The transport helicopters were part of the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing at Marine Corps Base Hawaii. Known as Super Stallions, they are the U.S. military's largest helicopter, capable of carrying a light armored vehicle, 16 tons of cargo or a team of combat-equipped Marines, according to a Marine Corps website. The Coast Guard initially reported that the choppers had collided, but the Marines said later it wasn't yet known if there was a collision. The cause remains under investigation. The Marine Corps will strive to "discover all of the facts" surrounding the crash, said Brig. Gen. Russell Sanborn, commanding general of the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing. They will continue the recovery of any debris and "any other remains that may discovered," he said, "so that we can give closure to those families that are still out there that still want that final piece of the puzzle." All four life rafts from the helicopters were found but they were empty. There was no indication anyone had been on any of the rafts, based on their condition and the lack of any personal effects, the Coast Guard said. High surf complicated the mission for rescuers during the initial days of the search. A green laser near Haleiwa Beach Park struck a Coast Guard plane Saturday night, forcing crew members to alter search patterns. Authorities searched for survivors around the clock. The Coast Guard assumes the best-case scenario when considering how long someone in the right equipment and right conditions could survive, Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Sara Mooers said. "We err on the side of caution because the last thing that anybody wants is to suspend the search when there's still a possibility of finding somebody," she said Monday. Aircrews wear personal flotation devices with their flight suits and get additional training on top of survival swimming training, the Marines said. People have been found days or even weeks after getting lost at sea, Mooers said. - - - The Associated Press contributed to this report. SHARE The unusual winter storm that swept through the Naples area was a material reminder how vulnerable one of Southwest Florida's vital economic assets is the beach. We emerged unscathed on Nov. 30 from hurricane season. It was the 10th consecutive year of escaping a Southwest Florida hit from a major storm, following the beach-eroding triple whammy of Hurricane Charley in 2004 and hurricanes Katrina and Wilma in 2005. Then along came Sunday's fast-moving storm with winds exceeding 70 mph that hit area beaches head-on. The degree of erosion to Collier beaches isn't determined yet. Whatever that is, an immediate reaction may be to look toward the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for financial assistance. That's been done following past hurricanes and tropical storms. Yet, with a national debt nearing $19 trillion, which the U.S. Treasury breaks down to about $158,000 per taxpayer, we suggest it's appropriate to ask state and regional leaders if they're doing everything they can financially to support our beaches. Is the weekend storm that beat up Collier beaches the nation's responsibility to repair? Or are ample beaches part of the reason 75 percent of the voters in 2014 approved Amendment 1? With tourism re-energized, is it time to reassess whether the tourist tax charged in Collier is high enough and appropriately allocated toward beaches? We suggest Amendment 1 and the bed tax are the first places to look, not Washington. Amendment 1 Beaches were to be one of the beneficiaries when Amendment 1 was sold to voters. Amendment 1 directs some of the documentary stamp tax on property sales into a trust fund for land acquisition and conservation. It's initially raising $750 million a year. Last year, the Legislature raided the fund to prop up other parts of the budget. Nearly a third of the money went to state agency salaries and operations. Comparatively, just $32 million in this year's state budget is for beaches, according to Gov. Rick Scott's 2015-16 budget approval message. In his proposed 2016-17 budget, Scott touts that $907 million is set aside, complying with Amendment 1. Yet his proposed budget includes just $25 million for beaches, compared with $35 million to enhance state parks and $50 million for springs. Beaches are more important to Florida's economy. The state's math doesn't add up when it comes to replenishing beaches. Consider: -- Florida has 1,260 miles of coastline and 825 miles of sandy shore, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection. Any of those stretches is just as vulnerable to a storm as the Collier beach hit this past weekend. -- A 2014 renourishment of 2 miles of Lovers Key and Bonita Beach cost $5.2 million. -- The 2013 Collier sand-hauling renourishment cost $9.5 million for a few miles along Vanderbilt Beach, Pelican Bay, Park Shore and near Lowdermilk Park. A dredging bid for that work was $32 million; that alone would exhaust every dollar of what the state is budgeting annually for beaches. Tourist tax Late last year, the nonprofit Collier Citizens Council renewed the idea of increasing Collier's 4 percent tax on hotel stays and short-term rentals to 5 percent. The extra penny could raise about $4 million more a year. Hoteliers and tourism promoters typically have opposed it, yet it could go toward beaches. According to the state Department of Revenue, 23 of 62 Florida counties with the tax levy either 5 or 6 percent. Going up the Gulf Coast, that includes Lee, Charlotte, Manatee, Sarasota, Pinellas and Hillsborough counties, state agency records show. Who should pay? When beaches need renourished, who should pay? It took 10 years to resolve a Collier dispute with FEMA over reimbursement due for erosion in the 2005 storm season. Collier got a $7.7 million federal refund in the end. That was great for Collier taxpayers. But how many storms in how many areas of the nation will become the responsibility of the bloated federal budget? If a state and region exhaust all local financial options, then yes, turn to FEMA as a last resort. We question if that's the case with beaches eroded by the weekend storm. SHARE Andrew R. Joppa, Naples State of distortions A president is allowed a certain amount of "puffing" in the State of the Union address. The president is not, however, allowed willful distortions of reality that misinform and misdirect the American people. President Obama suggested, by inference, that since our military and economy remained the strongest in the world that this was an accomplishment of his administration. In fact, all these citations documented were that it is impossible to destroy an "800-pound gorilla" in seven years no matter how hard he tried. Yes, we are still the biggest and "baddest" gorilla on the block, but for him to claim any degree of credit for the declining residual strength of our military and economy is specious. He bemoaned the level of partisan politics. He failed to mention that he had been intentionally causal in deepening the divide among Americans with his unending diatribes, highlighted by his "elections have consequences" retort to being challenged, and his rejection of Congressional legislated positions with his absurd, "I have a pen and a phone." In addition, his constant harangue that Republicans hate everyone and everything as they tried to maintain any degree of constitutional dignity, while he assaulted all legality, deeply inflamed the American debate. He once again offered up universal praise for Islam and lamented the (nearly non-existent) attacks on Muslims and mosques. Instead of praising America's remarkable restraint in the face of a deadly enemy, he attacked America for a limited number of indiscretions. All of this without any serious comment on Islamic threats or the carnage that has occurred to date. His theme should have been, "This is my last year the union will become stronger in 2017." Robert Ehrlich is the former governor of Maryland SHARE Vann Ellison, Executive Director, St. Matthew's House, on NewsMakers 3-23-14. By Robert Ehrlich ,And Vann Ellison Deep-rooted challenges facing our country often simmer in the background during election years because they have been with us for generations, failing to garner headlines or "trend" on Twitter feeds. Or they may receive only token acknowledgement among national priorities in the case of President Obama's final State of the Union address last week. One such challenge is President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty, which created the modern welfare state and the mixed results in achieving its mission a half-century later. With all the arguments about income inequality, one would think helping those struggling to get on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder would be front and center on the national agenda. After all, there has been constant talk over the last several years about the "unfairness" of compensation for corporate CEOs, hedge fund managers and whoever else is deemed to be in the top 1 percent of economic achievement. Another way to address income inequality is to modernize an outdated system to better help the bottom 15 percent, or 46 million Americans, escape poverty. Fortunately, a policy forum held in the key primary state of South Carolina this month did just that. Including several presidential candidates, the event raised concerns about how effective this so-called war, waged largely from government office buildings in Washington, D.C., has been. Named after legendary public servant Jack Kemp, the forum recalled his legacy of expanding economic opportunity for all. Whether the subject of intense media scrutiny on the mean streets of Baltimore or largely hidden from public view in relatively wealthy Naples, poverty remains America's No. 1 social ill. House Speaker Paul Ryan, one of the co-moderators and a protege of Kemp, defined the problem of the "poverty trap" caused by a tax code and welfare system that rewards benefits and penalizes work. Equally important, he described how the last 50 years have witnessed the advent of 80 unique, non-coordinated anti-poverty programs targeted to every need imaginable. The bottom line: the nation's poverty rate is nearly 15 percent, having changed little since the 1960s. Each year, the Government Accountability Office (the watchdog auditing function of Congress) documents fragmentation, duplication, and overlap among the nation's annual $1 trillion worth of poverty assistance programs, which they maintain adversely impacts service delivery. What this means in practice is at any given time the wrong benefits are provided to the wrong people hardly the type of targeted relief required. Moreover, soon after, Congress forgets what they have authorized; programs are put on bureaucratic auto-pilot. Anyone interested in achieving results with the federal government, whether as a governor attempting to effectively implement programs statewide or the head of a nonprofit trying to make them work on the streets, has experienced the utter frustration of applying for federal waivers or having to follow program "guidance." Such terms are Washington-speak for bureaucratic procedure, which is what happens when "inputs" are measured instead of "outputs." Government does a fine job of measuring resources going into programs but is far less concerned about how many individuals secure employment. Florida's presidential candidates are among those who understand the need to empower individuals, not government. Sen. Marco Rubio highlighted his flex grant plan which would allow state and local entities more power to innovate and develop initiatives that meet local priorities. Championing the free enterprise system, he undercut arguments from the political left about income inequality, saying it's the only system in the world that can make poor people richer without making rich people poorer. Former Gov. Jeb Bush, who released a plan to devolve funding to the states, talked about how compassion should never be measured in dollars, only results. Gov. John Kasich is coordinating the myriad government assistance programs in Ohio and advancing the concept of states being the "laboratories of democracy" through innovation. For example, combining employment opportunities and welfare assistance into one facility would end the practice of rubber-stamping people through the system without addressing the need for a job. The well-respected community activist Bob Woodson condemned both political parties, accusing Republicans of insufficient sensitivity to the underclass, while Democrats continue their victimization rhetoric. Despite the absence of Democratic presidential candidates at the forum, we may yet see the two parties describe their respective solutions for expanding opportunity and eliminating poverty before this election is over. That would not only capture the public's attention, but it would renew a second "War on Poverty." This is the war Kemp started and the one we should finish as a matter of common decency. * * * * * __ Robert Ehrlich was the Republican governor of Maryland from 2003-07. Rev. Vann Ellison is CEO of St. Matthew's House. Republic of Decor is the newest hot spot in town featuring the best, most stylish, trend right home furnishings and gift items. The 1,500 square foot store which opened in November is located in the Naples Design District on 1st Avenue North. The shop features decorative accessories, tabletop items, accent furniture, pillows, candles, stylish gifts, artwork, books, chocolates and packaged gourmet food treats. Selected from a wide range of vendors and artists, the product assortment is eclectic but has a focused point of view. Curated pieces from young designers and artisans makes the shopping experience extra special. The interior of the store is breathtaking, whether you look down at the French wide plank wood floors or over at the custom wall coverings or up at the 30 arched industrial ceiling, no detail was forgotten about. The finishes are incredibly inspirational. The store is filled with beautiful things that provide instant gratification. Whether you need pieces to update your home or great gifts to impress, Republic of Decor delivers. Republic of Decor is the brain child of David Fruscione, an award winning designer who has worked for nearly 20 years for some of the best brands in retail. David spent many years working in San Francisco as Senior Interior Designer for Banana Republic, creating new concepts and store experiences globally. He then moved to Southwest Florida to become Store Design Creative Director for White House I Black Market, Chicos, and Soma, successfully evolving the stores into the future. His passion for retail inspired him to follow his dream to create a brand of his own. It was time to invest in myself, break free of the corporate world and fulfill a lifelong desire to go out on my own, said David. He earned a BFA in Interior Architecture from California College of the Arts in San Francisco, a BS in Marketing from SUNY College at Buffalo, and an AS in Buying & Merchandising from the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC, a powerful trifecta to launch a successful brand. It has been a dream come true to design my space, select all the product, do the visual merchandising and tackle social media marketing. Wearing all the hats of a small business owner is empowering and exhilarating, David says. Naples is such a great place to establish the brand, the possibilities are endless! We needed a great home accessories store that offered something new, fresh and modern. David is committed to making Republic of Decor the first stop for savvy, sophisticated customers who want to be exposed to beautiful, unique product on the market. Republic of Decor also provides interior decorating services for discerning, quality- conscious clients who seek assistance in design choices for their primary residences and vacation homes. David's forte is to transform spaces using his natural intuition, out of the box thinking and extensive educational background. Commercial, hospitality projects, holiday, and event decorating are also available. Through personal attention throughout the design process, Republic of Decor informs, inspires, and assists you by transforming your spaces while also creating your own personalized expression. Stop by to visit the beautiful store to learn more. Open Monday - Friday 10am-7pm, Saturday 11am-6pm and Sundays by appointment. The Small Firms Association (SFA) has announced that Ballingarrane, Clonmel-based company EireChrom Ltd has been selected as a finalist in the SFA National Small Business Awards 2016. From over 430 applicants, five finalists across seven categories have been selected. EireChrom features in the AIB sponsored "Outstanding Business Category" for small business. The other category finalists include Dunmasc Genetics Laois; PolyPico Galway; Sweet Spot Sourcing, Kidare; Woodrow Sustainable Solutions Sligo; and Italian Tile & Stone Dublin. Established in 2013, EireChrom has grown rapidly to become Irelands market leader in the highly specialized area of Mass Spectrometry - an advanced separations science technique that has both quantitative and qualitative uses within the Chemical Analysis and Life Science sectors. EireChrom Ltd are located in Mahon, Co. Cork and Clonmel. They are widely regarded by industry as the go to experts in the areas of Clinical Research; Drug Development and Discovery; Environmental/Food and Beverage Testing; Forensic Toxicology; Biomarker Research and Omics Discovery. EireChrom consistently delivers a fresh and innovative customer experience that enables its end-clients to meet their analytical challenges and targets. EireChrom offer a holistic approach, which incorporates consultancy and training services, continuous customer support, sample preparation and supplies. The company has vast Chromatography and Mass Spectrometry hands -on experience, coupled with Method Development knowledge. Its areas of expertise within the Industrial Sector include: Biopharmaceuticals Clinical Drug Discovery & Development Food & Beverage Chemical & Pharmaceutical Industry The aim of the awards is to celebrate the achievements of Small Business in Ireland and to recognise the vital contribution of the small business sector to Irish Industry. Awards prize package for all finalists includes an exhibition stand at that SFA National Small Business Showcase in February, a strategic management masterclass weekend, a voucher for a Skillnets Management Works management team/CEO course, as well as broad-ranging national and local media coverage, valued at 50,000. The Gala prize giving ceremony will take place in March when the category winners and overall winner will be announced. A Cashel industrial plant vacant for nearly four years has been sold with the new industry expected to provide a major jobs boost for the town. A Cashel industrial plant vacant for nearly four years has been sold with the new industry expected to provide a major jobs boost for the town. The former Johnson and Johnson factory on the Dublin road has been bought by an unnamed Singapore pharmaceutical company. It is understood that the new owners want to use the Cashel plant as a European base for their operations. Minister of State Tom Hayes confirmed that he had spoken to the new owners before Christmas and he was delighted with their enthusiasm for the plant. Minister Hayes said the number of jobs to be created was still to be announced but he he expected it to be sizeable. The news came in the same week that Independent TD Seamus Healy had slated the government for what he described as its neglect of Tipperary. While Enterprise Minister Richard Bruton had announced jobs initiatives for many parts of the country, including advance factory facilities for nine towns, there had been no mention of Tipperary. Deputy Healy said only two new jobs had been created in all of Tipperary in 2014. There were 64 new jobs and 62 job losses in the county. Worse still, there was a net loss of 321 IDA Jobs in the county over the last 3 years. Yet the towns of County Tipperary were all omitted from the plan to spend 150 million on providing advance factories and offices to encourage inward investment in its plan for jobs, he claimed. The towns named for these advance facilities were Sligo, Tralee, Castlebar, Galway, Dundalk, Limerick, Athlone, Carlow and Waterford. He said these locations would now have a huge advantage over Co Tipperary in the location of new jobs and would compound the discrimination against Co Tipperary over the past two years by IDA. He said there was no mention in Minister Brutons announcement of any town in Tipperary or the building of advance factories or office facilities on any of the sites that are available throughout the county - in Tipperary town, Archerstown in Thurles, Lisboney in Nenagh, Benamore at Roscrea, Clonmel, Cashel or Carrick-on-Suir. It is quite obvious that there is no commitment to job creation for County Tipperary through IDA companies into the future, the Independent TD said. However Deputy Healy said this week he absolutely welcomed the news announced for Cashel and hoped that more announcements would be forthcoming for the county. He pointed out that he had already raised the Johnson and Johnson plant with Minister Bruton in the Dail, describing it as a state of the art site that was ideal for investment. In reply, Minister Bruton informed him that the plant was in the process of changing hands. He said IDA Ireland understood that discussions between the Company (J&J) and a private investment entity are ongoing at present. He said the IDA is making contact with the new owner through J&J and he had asked the IDA to work with the new owners to try to deliver high value sustainable jobs for Cashel. The existing site in Cashel to be taken over by the Singapore company has been vacant since June 2011 but has been well maintained in the intervening period. Minister Hayes said - I have spoken with the buyers just before Christmas and was delighted to see their enthusiasm for the area as well as their praise for the sites accessibility and transport links and it must be said, their glowing endorsement of the work ethic of the Irish people. He added - The company expressed their wish to buy the site in order to establish a European base and myself and the IDA pushed hard for the Cashel plant to be chosen, although they were very impressed at the outset by the plant, by the area and by its accessibility to the M8. We have yet to finalise the details of how many jobs will be created and that will be announced in due course but we do expect the number to be sizable. It is great news for Tipperary and in particular for Cashel and I am delighted to have been a part of the process to secure a major employer for the county. For the first time in the history of the State, a Clonmel solicitor has been sworn in as a High Court judge. For the first time in the history of the State, a Clonmel solicitor has been sworn in as a High Court judge. Donald Binchy, of Binchy Solicitors, Clonmel accepted his seal of office last Thursday from President Michael D. Higgins and on Friday before the Supreme Court he was sworn in as a High Court Judge. The fifty one year old will sit as a High Court judge for the first time next Monday. Mr Binchy told The Nationalist that the people of Clonmel and South Tipperary and his colleagues had been very kind and really generous in their support since the appointment was made. Mr Binchy, a former President of the Law Society, like his late father Don, spoke of an immense sense of pride at the appointment and said he was looking forward to the very interesting challenge that lay ahead. To sit as a judge in the High Court will be the pinnacle of my career. It is a very appealing challenge and a privilege to be put in charge of adjudicating on peoples rights and entitlements he said. Becoming a High Court judge never entered his mind until recently when he realised that a good number of appointments were to be made and he decided to avail of the opportunity to apply for the position. I realised there was a lot of vacancies and went for it. After twenty seven years practising as a solicitor I had arrived at a crossroads. If I wanted to look at a career change of sorts this was the time to do it, he said. Binchy Solicitors was established in 1918 by his grandfather James Binchy operating out of Bruce Villa before the firm moved to its present location, about twenty years ago, at Quay House, Clonmel. Donald was one of four children of Don and Joan Binchy (both deceased). He has one brother Fred, a solicitor in the business, and two sisters, Mary Rose and Grace. He is married to Claire Cusack and they have three children - Emily, Donnacha and Ronan. He went to school in SS Peter & Pauls and Clongowes Wood, County Kildare before studying law at University College Dublin. There was never any family pressure but it was a family tradition and I decided to follow my father Dons footsteps and become a solicitor he said. He qualified as a solicitor in 1987, joining his father and eldest brother Fred at Binchy Solicitors. He has been with the family company since with the exception of a two year period in the late eighties when he went to work with a commercial firm in Dublin specialising in funds and re-insurance. One of the highlights of his career as a solicitor involved the role his father Don, Fred and himself played as a team in securing the future of Kentz in Clonmel. A bank had appointed a receiver and that would have been the end of the group but for an application made by Binchys to have an examiner appointed which was successful. Donald went to Malaysia with company representatives to help secure an investor and the firm was saved and a model for the company to survive was put in place. We delivered as a team and that gave us all enormous satisfaction he said. Another highlight of his career was following in his fathers footsteps as the solicitor for South Tipperary County Council. When his father retired from that position after forty years as solicitor of Clonmel Corporation and twenty years for the County Council, Donald applied and was successful and was appointed to the post in 1995. As a High Court judge he has to remove himself from the family business but said it was business as usual for Binchy Solicitors and the solicitors in the practice including his brother Fred, Claire McCarthy, Aine Ryan and Finbarr Tobin. We have always been a firm, its not about an individual. It is still business as usual and the clients I have dealt with over the years will still be looked after by the very experienced team in the company. he said. Terror Groups Eyeing Israel's Destruction from inside NGOs Two stalwarts go sleuthing: "The research suggests that antisemitism is the fuel that primes the PSC engine" 'For as long as these antisemites wrap themselves up in the Palestinian flag, too many people are willing to turn a blind eye. Only against Jews is this type of racism openly tolerated. It is flourishing in schools, colleges, universities, unions and in city councils. In fact, so rampant is the disease now, in some settings you can be ostracised if you do not partake in the frenzy yourself. Bashing Jews has becomes a trendy position for the ignorant social justice warrior. "Palestinianism" is a viral "ponzi scheme" and as it spreads, it carries antisemitism in the undergrowth.' David Collier (2017) 'This new rise in antisemitism, which I had thought long dead, was not shaven-headed white imbeciles from the far right. It was Muslims, a large chunk of it.... Suddenly I grasped that the British far left didnt want people to know about antisemitism because it pointed the finger at people they really, really liked. From that moment on, it all fell into place.... Time and again the same tropes emerged, the same sort of stuff that Streicher and Goebbels would have commended and uttered.... And from that a whole bunch of other stuff emerged: the old blood libel business (a favourite of the repulsive Jenny Tonge).... Nice, avuncular, Jeremy Corbyn, with his peace badges, happily laying a wreath at the graveside of Palestinian terrorists who murdered innocent Jewish athletes, oh, and much much more.... It is the same antisemitism, exactly the same: the obsession with Israel to the exclusion of everything else, the conspiracy theory paranoias, the derangement.... Heres the test if you cannot see the flagrant racism in the BDS movement, and if you are obsessed with the perfidy of the Middle Easts only democracy to the exclusion of all else, you are an antisemite. That means a good proportion of the Labour Party, including the leader, and almost all of Momentum: no brown shirts, no marching bands, but the same old filth, dressed in the clothes of a polytechnic geography lecturer.' Rod Liddle (2018) Pro-Israel Down Under Shalom and Welcome to my blog! I'm the little Aussie blogger who took the screenshot and broke the story of Stephen Sizer's notorious 9/11 post, and I've since broken two other stories that subsequently went viral, one Australia-wide and one, thanks to the sterling work of two other bloggers, worldwide. I remain very surprised and very honoured to have been co-winner, Best Pro-Israel Blog, Hasby Awards, 2013 Please "Like" me on Facebook; my Facebook page is here 'In a region where women are stoned, gays are hanged, Christians are persecuted, Israel ... is different.... Of the 300 million Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, only Israel's Arab citizens enjoy real democratic rights.... Israel is not what is wrong about the Middle East. Israel is what is right about the Middle East.' Bibi Netanyahu (20 Iyar 5771; 24 May 2011) Scroll to end for more quotations Tired of anti-Balfour agitprop? Balfour and Beyond Try this for Sizer 'Before the June 1967 Six Day War, there were no such things as "settlements". Palestinians were trying to destroy and displace Israel anyhow. The core problem is not, and never was, "settlements," but the right of Israel (or any non-Muslim nation) to exist inside any borders in that part of the world. If you take a stand that is based on a lie, then that stand cannot succeed. If you try to oppose antisemitism but pretend it is the same thing as "Islamophobia," then the structure on which you have made your stand will totter and all your aspirations will fail. If you try to make a stand based on the idea that settlement construction rather than the intransigence of the Palestinians to the existence of a Jewish state is what is holding up a peace deal, then facts will keep on intruding.' Douglas Murray (31 December 2016) https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9685/britain-little-lies BDS is Antisemitic The Bigotry & Immorality of BDS 'Islamophobia does NOT come from the same wellspring of hatred as antisemitism. Antisemitism is a true prejudice because the hatred and demonisation it promotes derive entirely from lies and a repudiation of rationality itself. Islamophobia is a false allegation of prejudice which is deployed to silence rational criticism based on actual facts about attitudes and practices within the Islamic world. [L]ethally compromised even-handedness is to misunderstand, and thus minimise, antisemitic attitudes and behaviour while shutting down legitimate and necessary discussion of the threat from the Islamic world even to demonise as Islamophobic anyone who draws attention to the extent and consequences of Muslim antisemitism.' Melanie Phillips (14 December 2016) "Selling a house to a Jew is a betrayal of Allah" Maps of Mendacity & Mischief These misleading maps were deliberately prepared to date from 1946 intentionally papering over the momentous events that had occurred between 1917 and 1945. Attempts to unravel binding precepts of international law established between 1917 and 1945 and failing to insist on their being upheld and enforced has a lot to do with the sorry situation the world finds itself in today. David Singer (2016) How They Twist the Truth! Jews have re-assumed the role of the canary in the mine and are the first to be targeted, but the world would face the same threat if Jews did not exist. Israel has been at the front lines confronting Islamic extremism but has received scant support... For Jews, the writing has been on the wall for a long time. The virulence of the antisemitic hatred closing in on Jews in Europe (and elsewhere) is horrifying... Europe is today facing a crisis as serious as the confrontation with Nazism. If Western leaders continue behaving like Chamberlain and fail to stand up to this global threat, it could usher in a new Dark Age in which the Judeo-Christian culture is subsumed by primitive barbarism. The writing is on the wall Isi Leibler (12 January 2015) Expose The Lies! There is a war of lies and deceit on the internet generating unbelievable hate by denigrating and delegitimising the legal rights conferred on the Jewish people by the League of Nations in 1922 and the United Nations in 1945. The idea that there are two narratives on the Arab-Jewish conflict is rubbish. There is only one the factual truth that details the return of the Jewish people to reconstitute the Jewish National Home in its ancient biblical, ancestral and historic homeland after 3500 years of dispersion with the unanimous endorsement of the nation states then comprising the League of Nations.... Generals cant fight a war without soldiers. Jews around the world need to join the fight or vacate the internet to the Jew-haters and their lies that repeated often enough eventually become accepted as truth. David Singer (2016) Exposing Lies The "Apartheid" Slur The division of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) into three separate areas A, B and C was agreed on by Israel and the PLO pursuant to the Oslo Accords. 95% of the West Bank Arabs live in Areas A and B and their daily lives are under the total administration and control of the PLO since the Palestinian Authority was disbanded by Abbas in January 2013. The PLO has total security control in A and shares security control in B with Israel. Israel has total administrative and security control in C. Israel is entitled to and will continue to take responsibility for the security of Jews living in the West Bank. Jews were given the legal right to settle in the West Bank under article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the UN Charter. They did so for decades until they were driven out in 1947 and not able to return there until 1967. There are Arab roads only in the West Bank that Jews are not allowed to use. Jews are also forbidden from entering Area A. Selling land to Jews is forbidden by the PLO under pain of death. The PLO runs the daily lives of 95% of the West Bank Arabs and Hamas runs the daily lives of 100% of the Gazan Arabs. They have been under occupation and subjugation by these two evil groups for the last ten years and given no say in their future or any opportunity to elect others to lead them following the disastrous political decisions of their leaders over the past ten years. Hamas and the PLO do not accept the continued existence of a Jewish State and call for its disappearance. The narratives did not begin in 1948 they began in about 1917. How do you make peace with an enemy that has been obsessed with not recognising any Jewish national rights in former Palestine for the last 100 years? David Singer (2016) Telling the Truth The Jews of the Holy Land ... are surrounded by hostile states 650 times their territory and sixty times their population. Yet their last, best hope of ending two millennia of international persecution - the State of Israel - has somehow survived. When, during the Second World War, the island of Malta came through three terrible years of bombardment and destruction, it was rightly awarded the George Cross for bravery. Today, Israel should be awarded a similar decoration for defending democracy, tolerance and Western values against a murderous onslaught that has lasted twenty times as long. Andrew Roberts (historian) A voice of courage & reason He knows, y'know An Aussie demo against BDS On the left, black people are usually allowed to define whats racism; women can define sexism; Muslims are trusted to define Islamophobia. But when Jews call out something as antisemitic, leftist non-Jews feel curiously entitled to tell Jews theyre wrong, that they are exaggerating or lying or using it as a decoy tactic and to then treat them to a long lecture on what anti-Jewish racism really is. Jonathan Freedland (The Guardian, 29 April 2016) An awkward fact for some! Socialist thought was tainted from its very origins with the heavy baggage of anti-Jewish stereotypes. Robert Wistrich, From Ambivalence to Betrayal:The Left, the Jews, and Israel (2012) BDS hypocrisy! Want more? Israel is understandably obsessed with security, but its greatest security lies ultimately not in the Israeli Defence Forces, but in political warfare.... Most of the world is not deeply interested in what happens in Israel, and probably does not want to be deluged with legalistic defences of particular actions. What it wants is a clear, calm, repeated case. It is a case aimed more at public opinion than at foreign ministries about freedom, democracy, a Western way of life and the need for the whole of the free world to fight terrorism. Sometimes you hear Israelis say: It doesnt matter what we say. The whole world is against us. You can see why they say it, for they are indeed unfairly treated. But when they say it, they are uttering a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they wont say what needs saying, no one else will say it for them. Charles Moore (2010) #Je suis ISRAEL Aujourdhui, lantisemitisme est masque par lantisionisme. Il faut dire les choses comme elles sont! ["Today, antisemitism wears the mask of anti-Zionism. We must tell things as they are!"] Nicolas Sarkozy (27 May 2015) Once again the armies of the Arab nations are coordinating their military efforts to destroy Israel - whatever they say about wishing merely to regain the lost territories.... [I]f the present Arab offensive had been launched at the pre-1967 frontiers, then the Israelis would indeed have been fighting to avoid annihilation. It seems now that the Israelis were right to maintain the ceasefire lines gained in 1967, and that to do so is the only guarantee of their continued safety. Alan Sillitoe (The Times, 11 October 1973) A nuclear Iran threatens our existence Iran and ISIS are competing for the crown of militant Islam... In this deadly game of thrones, theres no place for America or for Israel, no place for Christians, Jews or Muslims who dont share the Islamist medieval creed, no rights for women, no freedom for anyone... [T]he greatest danger facing our world is the marriage of militant Islam with nuclear weapons. To defeat ISIS and let Iran get nuclear weapons would be to win the battle, but lose the war. We cant let that happen...[T]he days when the Jewish people remained passive in the face of genocidal enemies, those days are over. We are no longer scattered among the nations, powerless to defend ourselves. We restored our sovereignty in our ancient home. And the soldiers who defend our home have boundless courage. For the first time in 100 generations, we, the Jewish people, can defend ourselves....Even if Israel has to stand alone, Israel will stand. But ... I know that America stands with Israel... You stand with Israel, because you know that the story of Israel is not only the story of the Jewish people but of the human spirit that refuses again and again to succumb to historys horrors. Bibi Netanyahu (12 Adar 5775; 3 March 2015) The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews. Other nations drive out thousands, even millions, of people, and there is no refugee problem.... [N]o one says a word about refugees. But in the case of Israel displaced Arabs have become eternal refugees.... Other nations - when they are defeated - survive and recover, but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed.... [A]s it goes with Israel, so it will go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us. Eric Hoffer (1968) My archived Tuesday blogs at Elder of Ziyon , Most of the present Arab countries were given their freedom after the 1914-18 War, or after the 1939-45 War.... Yet to listen to Arab spokesmen one might think that they had been cheated ... because they have not also got Israel. Israel is only .2 per cent of the land where Arab States have been established. Surely no fair-minded man can begrudge the Jews their own promised land when it is remembered that for every 2 acres that went to make up Israel, 1,000 acres became Arab.... Why is there an Arab refugee problem? The oil-rich countries have the money. There is no shortage of land, and the Israelis have the technical knowledge to show how it could be developed and made fertile. Bring those things together and the problem could be solved. 3rd Earl of Balfour (1968) Blog Archive January 7, 2015 has already its place in the history of infamy, but also will be the date when the defenders of freedom and democracy will rise and pay tribute to those who died for their freedom and ours. Therefore, we must not forget on which side we are and who are our allies in the defense of the West and its values. Whether we admit it or not, the West is at war with an enemy who will not stop to destroy us... The State of Israel boasts a commandment that, in one of the darkest hours in the fight for liberty Winston Churchill taught: "Never give up". Israel has proven to be a key ally in the fight against Islamism and also an example of how a liberal democracy can resist the jihadist stake and thrive as a Western nation ... Not only France but also all the West should look to Israel to defeat Islamism... friendsofisraelinitiative.org [I]ts impossible to believe that an active antisemite wouldnt if only opportunistically seek out somewhere to nestle in the manifold pleats of Israel-bashing, whether in generally diffuse anti-Zionism, or in more specific Boycott and Divestment Campaigns, Israeli Apartheid Weeks, End the Occupation movements and the like....[T]ell me that not a single Jew-hater finds the activity congenial, that criticising Israel can never be an expression of Jew-hating, not even when it takes the form of accusing Israeli soldiers of harvesting organs... Howard Jacobson (The Independent, 27 May 2013) What has happened to the 800,000 Jews who lived for over 2000 years in the Arab lands ...? Where are they in Arab society today? You dare talk of racism when I can point with pride ... to the fact that it is as natural for an Arab to serve in public office in Israel as it is incongruous to think of a Jew serving in any public office in an Arab country, indeed being admitted to many of them. Chaim Herzog (6 Kislev 5736; 10 November 1975) I stand with Israel, I stand with the Jews.... I defend their right to exist, to defend themselves, to not let themselves be exterminated a second time. And, disgusted by the antisemitism of many Europeans ... I am shamed by this shame that dishonours my country and Europe. Oriana Fallaci For Western countries to side with those who question Israel's legitimacy, for them to play games in international bodies with Israel's vital security issues, for them to appease those who oppose Western values, rather than robustly to stand up in defence of those values, is not only a grave moral mistake, but a strategic error of the first magnitude. Israel is a fundamental part of the West. The West is what it is thanks to its Judeo-Christian roots. If the Jewish element of those roots is lost and Israel is lost, then we are lost too. Jose Maria Aznar Israel is, for us, a normal and a special country. A normal country, because it is just like any other democracy. A special country, because the Jewish culture, which eventually became the Judeo-Christian culture of the dignity of man, is the conceptual foundation of liberalism and democracy. This is why attacking Israel is tantamount to attacking Europe and the West. This is also why disputing Israel's legitimacy and its right to existence means questioning democracy. And this is why we are Friends of Israel. By defending Israel, we are defending ourselves. Marcello Pera Israel ... is beset today by a unique combination of threats. It must defend its people from attack while defending its very right to exist. No other nation in the world faces this dual challenge. To deny Israel's right to confront some of the world's most vicious terrorist groups in order to ensure the safety of its citizens is to corrode international norms from within ... The assault on Israel is one part of a more general assault on the West, on democracy, and on the moral and cultural heritage that grew from the fruitful interaction of Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome ... Should these efforts succeed, similar efforts will certainly be turned against other western democracies. George Weigel Apart from America itself, Israel still stands as the world's brightest model of national self-liberation based on ideals of individual responsibility and human freedom. Israel's ability to withstand Arab attempts to destroy it in one of the longest and most lop-sided wars ever fought serves as an indelible testimony to the strength of democratic culture.... We know from the past that the West paid dearly for ignoring Hitler's war against the Jews. One can only hope it will not pay as dearly for having ignored or underestimated for so long the Arab war against Israel and the Jews. Ruth Wisse The choice before us is not between victory and defeat, but between victory and annihilation. We therefore have not the slightest intention of allowing the re-creation of the conditions of vulnerability in which we found ourselves, abandoned and alone, in the summer of 1967. Diplomat Michael Comay (1970) I am duty-bound to defend freedom, culture, peaceful coexistence, the civic education of children, and all the principles that the Tablets of the Law have rendered universal. Principles which Islamic fundamentalism systematically destroys. This means that, since I am a Gentile, a journalist and a leftist, I have a triple moral commitment to Israel. Because, if Israel were to be vanquished, modernity, culture and freedom would also be crushed. Even though the world has failed to wake up to this fact, Israel's struggle is the world's struggle. Pilar Rahola About Me Daphne Anson I'm a writer/researcher, with many academic books and articles under my own name. Daphne Anson is my blogging alias. Combining the names of two ships, it's a moniker of special significance to me - I'm a naval history buff. I use an alias owing to a perceived need to keep my blogging and professional identities separate. An Aussie, I've long been interested in politics and foreign affairs, having studied International Relations in the USA and Britain for my first degree, and I also hold a doctorate. I began blogging in response to the exponential rise in antisemitism and hostility to Israel in the wake of the Mavi Marmara affair. Another reason I use an alias: http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2015/08/alias-two-ships-daphne-anson.html View my complete profile Followers Clonmel is in line to benefit from a 10 million investment and the creation of 80 jobs in one of its flagship industries, after the C&C Group's announcement that it intends to consolidate production from sites in Shepton Mallet in England and Borrisoleigh into its drinks manufacturing site at in the town. In a statement on Tuesday the company announced that under the proposal, production and packaging will be transferred on a phased basis from the facilities in Shepton Mallet and Borrisoleigh. Consequently, Clonmel will become the core manufacturing site for both Bulmers and Magners cider, Tipperary Water and our range of niche premium beers and ciders. The Wellpark Brewery in Glasgow is unaffected by the proposal. In support of the proposal, the Group will invest in excess of 10 million in enhancing packaging and logistics capability in Clonmel, creating 80 additional roles. The statement followed newspaper reports on Tuesday morning that C&C, which signalled in its last financial statement that it was seeking to cut costs by 15 million a year, intended to close its water bottling plant in Borrisoleigh and its cider-making facility in Shepton Mallet in Somerset. A source close to the company told The Nationalist that the staff who will lose their jobs in Borrisoligh will have first option on the new jobs at the plant in Clonmel, and that the transfer of production and packaging from Shepton Mallet and Borrisoleigh will be completed by the summer. In its statement C&C stated that Borrisoleigh would remain as a key transport hub and that the logistics and warehousing operations would be maintained in the town. Regrettably, net roles lost across the operational network is estimated at 180, of which 127 are in the UK and 54 in Ireland. This has been a difficult decision for the group and it is sad that the consolidation of production at the Clonmel site is the only viable option to maintain long term competitiveness. C&C recognises the impact on employees and will work to provide support, training and, where possible, alternative employment. Continued on Page 4 On December 29 more rain, a full month's rain in one day, fell in Carrick-on-Suir than in any other part of the country. Although the town's nineteen year old flood defences held, Carrick-on-Suir experienced its worst flooding in living memory. The pumping infrastructure was not able to cope with the deluge and the breakdown of a crucial pumping station located outside Davin Park compounded the problems. Members of Tipperary County Council were told on Monday that the foul and storm pipes and back up pipes controlled at that pumping station broke down and were unable to function. Attempts to get the combined pumps up and running at that station proved futile because the control panels of the station were covered by flood wat ers and could not be accessed. The breakdown in the pumping system at that point was explained to councillors at a meeting in Nenagh. Carrick-on-Suir councillors Kieran Bourke and David Dunne highlighted the suffering endured by the people of Carrick during the unprecedented floods and demanded answers concerning the performance of the pumping system in the town. Cllr. Bourke said Carrick was unique in that the highest rainfall in the country was recorded in the town on December 29 and that it was the only town in the county that was tidal. It was most alarming, said Cllr. Bourke, that even though the town's flood wall was not breached, Carrick-on-Suir still experienced such a flooding nightmare and he wanted answers as to why the pumping system was not able to cope. He said it was evident that the water on the quay was higher than the level of the river and the level of water backing up onto the N24 and the bursting of the banks of a small stream all added to the problems. He wanted to know if the sewer pipes were deliberately turned off on December 29 because of fears of the effect on the sewerage treatment plant and he wanted to know why the pumping mechanism did not work in the town. He called on the council to provide full readings for all of the pumps from December 27 to January 4 in the town. Cllr. Dunne said it was too simplistic to blame the town's problems on a stream breaking its banks. He wanted to get a detailed analysis of the pumping systems in the town, both the council pumps and the sewerage pumps. He asked if the pumps were big enough, were the pumps monitored and did they trip out and were they turned back on manually, were the control panels of the pumps in the right places and he wanted to know why they were flooded. It was not good practice, he maintained , that two separate companies were looking after the pumps. Both councillors paid glowing tributes to the outdoor staff and to all of the emergency services involved in assisting householders and business people in the town. They praised the Carrick-on-Suir River Rescue Group, whose premises were badly damaged by the floods, and they paid tribute to the tremendous community spirit in the town which saw neighbour help out neighbour during the ordeal. Director of Services Sean Keating explained that the pumping station, which was responsible for foul and storm water pipes and back up pipes for both , at Davin Park was cut off and the control panels at the station went out. The loss of that pumping station did not affect the other five stations in the town.. This pumping infrastructure was separate to the OPW pumps which were located on the quay. The OPW had four pumps on one site ,one of which may have gone down. He told the meeting that an attempt was made to access the control panel in the pumping station at Davin Park but it could not be accessed because it was still submerged in water. The same situation applied the following morning and on the Thursday they managed to get the foul pipes working but not the storm water pipes. Mr. Keating said he had since met representatives of the company contracted to look after that pumping station by Irish Water.He would provide all of the information to elected representatives concerning what was and what was not working and all of the readings of the pumping stations in the town from December 27 to January 4. He said the feasibility of raising the level of the control panel at that station and the feasibility of increasing storm water pumping capacity would be looked at. They would also look at increasing the capacity of all the pump stations in the town. The outstanding lifelong contribution to the Irish co-operative movement by the former Chairman of Avonmore and Glanbia Co-operatives, John Duggan Ballynennan, Drangan, has been recognised nationally by the industrys highest national honour - The Plunkett Award for Co-operative Endeavour. Mr. Duggan attended the ceremony in Dublin with his son, Colm and daughters, Miriam Nugent and Bridget Duggan. Presenting the award, ICOS President Martin Keane said - John Duggan is a true visionary, who in the pursuit of excellence, devoted an enormous proportion of his life and energy to the Co-operative movement for the betterment of fellow farmers and Irish farming in general. Johns exceptional personal contribution is recognised by this prestigious award which is named after Horace Plunkett, the founder of the Irish co-operative movement. It is a testament to his selfless commitment to the co-operative movement where he made a significant and strategic contribution to structural change in the industry and to the widespread benefit of farmers, producers, shareholders and rural communities. As the Chairman of Avonmore Co-operative and PLC, John Duggan was instrumental in the formation of Glanbia Co-operative through the amalgamation of Avonmore and Waterford Co-operatives in 1997, following which he was elected as its first Chairman, a position he held until 2000. He retired from the Board of Glanbia in 2001. During all of his period as Chairman of Avonmore and subsequently Glanbia, he served not just on the Board but also on the Council of the Society, the South Tipperary Regional Advisory Committee and the Drangan Area Advisory Committee. He retired from the Drangan Committee at the end of 2006, after 43 years of unbroken and distinguished service. He was first elected to the Committee of Management of Drangan Co-operative Society Limited in 1963. Together with his colleague John Ryan he represent Drangan on the 16 member steering committee set up by eight local creameries in south Tipperary. This subsequently resulted in the formation of South Tipperary Farmers Co-operative in 1967 where he was also elected as its first Vice-Chairman and then Chairman from 1970 1973. He subsequently played a major role in events leading to the formation of Avonmore Farmers Co-operative Society Limited in 1973. He served as Vice-Chairman and then Chairman where he supported and promoted the successful creation Avonmore Creameries plc. Mr. Duggan has served with distinction on bodies at national level including ICOS, Bord Bia, Teagasc, FBD plc and numerous Department of Agriculture advisory committees. He currently serves as Chairman of the Single Farm Payments Appeals Committee, which was set up by the Department of Agriculture to deal with farmers experiencing problems with the Single Farm Payments system and allocation of Entitlements from the National Reserve. Mr. Duggan has been a lifelong supporter of Macra na Feirme including Chairing the South Tipperary and Tipperary Executives of Macra where his qualities as a debater and public speaker were legendary including competition at national and international levels. As a former hurler with his local club, he is an ardent and knowledgeable supporter of his native Tipperary GAA and a regular attendee at games. John was married to his beloved wife Breda (McGrath) who passed away in 2013. They have one son, Colm and two daughters, Miriam and Bridget and five grandchildren. John continues to farm with his son on the family farm at Ballynennan, situated between Drangan and Mullinahone. The Plunkett Award is the premier honorary award made by ICOS annually. It is presented to one individual each year who is regarded as having made an outstanding lifelong contribution to the co-operative movement in Ireland. ICOS (the Irish Co-operative Organisation Society) represents over 130 co-operatives in Ireland including the Irish dairy processing co-operatives and livestock marts whose associated businesses have a combined turnover in the region of 14 billion, with some 150,000 individual members, employing 12,000 people in Ireland, and a further 24,000 people overseas. Societe Generale SA is pulling back from the U.S. mortgage bond business just two years after building out the unit, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. The French bank is instructing traders of U.S. government-backed mortgage bonds to stop buying the securities, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the matter is private. The directive comes as senior executives at the lender discuss scaling back from the $5.4 trillion market, the people said. Jim Galvin, a spokesman for the bank, declined to comment. Societe Generale has seen a number of mortgage bond traders depart over the last year, including Tae Park, a managing director who was charged with putting together the team in 2014. The bank aimed to "grab market share" as competitors such as Barclays Plc, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and Morgan Stanley retrenched from the business, Park said at the time. "Banks are discovering the returns don't necessarily justify being in these businesses anymore," said Gerard Cassidy, the head bank analyst at RBC Capital Markets. "This is a transition period, where global banks are picking a niche, rather than being everything to everyone." The French bank has tried pressing in on other U.S. structured debt markets in recent years. It created a U.S. commercial mortgage bond team based in New York last year by hiring more than 10 people from Royal Bank of Scotland. Societe Generale sought to "develop asset-backed product capabilities that will take advantage of a trend towards increased securitization to finance the economy," according to a statement at the time. The bank's SG Americas Securities LLC unit was named in 2011 as one of the primary dealers required to bid at Treasury auctions and able to trade with the Federal Reserve. Privacy Overview This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful. (NaturalNews) The president of the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, has fired a pro-GMO professor as part of plans to permit countries within the EU to ban genetically modified crops, despite some scientific and industry claims that they are safe.Jean-Claude Juncker, who is also the former prime minister of Luxembourg, dismissed Prof. Anne Glover, Britain'sreported, because he felt that her pro-GMO views were themselves controversial, though not everyone supports his action."It's a sad day for science, policy, politics and the public in Europe," Prof. Colin Blakemore of the University of London said.Dr. Roberto Bertollini, chief scientist and the World Health Organization's representative to the EU, also criticized Juncker, accusing him of an "unwillingness to accept independent scientific opinion," the British paper said."Ideology and vested interests continue to dominate the public debate in Europe and elsewhere irrespective of the attempts to bring knowledge and science based advice in the picture," said Bertollini.Juncker's decision to dismiss Glover came as the French government made it clear that her pro-GMO stance on genetically modified biotechnology was not acceptable and that her position should be eliminated."She's controversial because of her views on GM. Juncker doesn't like the idea of GM crops being approved by the EU on scientific grounds. Even worse, she had upset the French," one EU source toldLuxembourg has joined France, Austria, Greece and Hungary in banning GM crops on political grounds. As for his opposition to GMOs, Juncker's position is well-known, the paper said.reported further:"The current chief scientific adviser presented one-sided, partial opinions on the use of genetically modified organisms in agriculture, repeatedly claiming that there was a scientific consensus about their safety," said a letter signed by Greenpeace and other groups in July. "We hope that you as the incoming commission president will decide not to nominate a chief scientific adviser."In September, Glover angered countries with anti-GMO policies when she told a Scottish scientific conference that there was "not a single piece of scientific evidence" that would support GMO bans on safety grounds."No other foodstuff has been so thoroughly investigated as GM," she told the conference. "Opposition to GM, and the benefits it can bring, is a form of madness I don't understand."Conservative Minister of the European Parliament Julie Girling said Juncker was ignoring a previous promise provided by him to the EU parliament in July that Glover's job was secure."I fear Mr Juncker has caved in to the green lobby. They have been very vociferous," she said. "He has reneged on promises he gave to us."British farmers have also criticized Juncker's decision, calling it "deeply troubling.""At a time when we need to address serious concerns around food security, energy security and the collective EU response to the threat of climate change; it is deeply concerning that the voice of science should be stifled," Meurig Raymond, the president of the National Farmers Union, said, as reported byPro-science groups like GM Watch praised Juncker's decision to eliminate Glover's position, largely because the group said it lacked transparency and accountability: Broken promises Pattern of TSA recklessness, illegality (NaturalNews) Rape culture stems from an idea that some people (primarily men), are entitled to impose their will on the bodies of other people (primarily women), without their consent. This deeper, underlying idea also has other manifestations in the culture among them, the idea that the government has the right to subject citizens to intrusive and degrading searches , again without their consent.In the latest example of this toxic trend, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) recently made a quiet, unannounced change to its regulations for the use of full-body scanners at airports. The new rules say that although most passengers will still be allowed to opt-out of the controversial scanners and receive a pat-down search instead, TSA agents can at their own discretion deny any passenger the right to a pat-down and force them to use the scanner. Passengers who refuse will not be allowed to pass through security and go to the gate.The document does not explain the reason for the change, or spell out any criteria TSA agents must use to deny someone the right to refuse a full-body scan.George McHendry, an assistant professor of communications at Creighton University, noted that by not providing these guidelines, the TSA will be more likely to come under fire from certain demographics that have preferred to avoid the scans, such as disabled or transgender people."The pat-down becomes a way for them to get you through security with minimal resistance," McHendry said. "It's been a pretty good pressure valve for that."Notably, the rule change breaks a promise the TSA made in 2009: that the full-body scans would always be voluntary."The TSA is going back on its word," said TSA watchdog Fred Cate, a law professor at Indiana University. "The scanners were sold to Congress and the public on the promise that they were optional, but for at least some people, that is no longer the case."In fact, previous TSA promises mean that the new regulations may actually violate the law. According to Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the TSA has repeatedly promised courts in writing that the use of scanners is optional. A federal appeals court that upheld the constitutionality of the scanners based its decision on these promises."The TSA lacks the legal authority to compel travelers to go through the body scanners," Rotenberg said.The quiet rule change is consistent with the TSA's overall approach, which is to avoid scrutiny of its full-body scanner policy. According to Marc Scribner, a research fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the TSA has repeatedly ignored federal rulemaking regulations and as a consequence, travelers remain constantly unclear about their rights."We're in bizarro-world with TSA," Scribner said."It wasn't clear before what the policy was. Now it's even less clear," Scribner said. "I don't know if they could have done anything worse."This increase of confusion actually undercuts the stated goal of increasing airline security, said Indiana University law professor Fred Cate."Almost anywhere else in government or industry, if you don't do things by the rules, it's something people can complain about," Cate said. "Here if you don't do something by the rules, they just say you don't know what the rules are or we can't tell you."The full-body scanners have attracted a wide range of opposition, on fronts ranging from privacy concerns (over the ability to take and store naked photos of passengers), to their immense cost and the fact that they were pushed through without voter input, to complaints that their safety is not proven and that their use violates the Fourth Amendment right to be protected from unreasonable searches Children poisoned while government drags its feet Will those responsible face justice? (NaturalNews) The Obama administration has declared a federal state of emergency in Flint, Michigan, due to pervasive contamination of the city's water supply that has harmed tens of thousands of residents including afflicting the city's children with irreversible lead poisoning.The crisis began in April 2014, when the city sought to save money by pulling water from the contaminated Flint River rather than piping it in from Detroit's municipal supply. This measure was meant to be temporary, pending the construction of a pipeline to bring water in from Lake Huron.Residents immediately began complaining that the water was cloudy and foul-smelling. Over the following months, government officials kept insisting that the water was safe, even as the city's children started to show signs of sickness and brain damage.Lead is a potent neurotoxin that accumulates in the body. It can cause permanent brain damage, particularly in children. There is no safe level of lead exposure.The summer of 2014 saw growing calls for the city to stop drawing water from the Flint River, spurred by growing health complaints and the finding of fecal contamination in the river. In October 2014, a General Motors engine plant announced that municipal water had been rusting its parts. In January 2015, the city of Detroit offered to reconnect Flint to its system, but the city government continued to insist the water was safe. This promise was repeated in March.Then in September 2015, a group of doctors announced the results of tests confirming that the proportion of Flint children with high blood levels had doubled since 2014. Even then and even as other contaminants kept being found in the water the state kept claiming the water was safe.On September 29, Michigan governor Rick Snyder finally admitted that lead levels in Flint's water were high. On October 8, he announced plans to reconnect Flint to the Detroit water system.But the health damage had already been done In November, Flint voters tossed out mayor Dayne Walling over his handling of the water issue, replacing him with Karen Weaver. Shortly thereafter, Weaver declared a municipal state of emergency over an epidemic of lead poisoning in children."The City of Flint has experienced a man-made disaster," she said.Two weeks later, the director of the state's Department of Environmental Quality resigned. Then a week after that, Gov. Snyder declared a Michigan state of emergency in Flint.A week and a half later, on January 16, president Obama declared Flint the site of a federal state of emergency, and ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security to begin relief efforts.Prosecutors from the state of Michigan and the federal government are investigating whether any crimes were committed surrounding the switch in water supply and the ongoing insistence that the water was safe. The Michigan department of health is also investigating whether a surge in cases of Legionnaire's disease around Flint is related to the new water supply.Finally, a class action lawsuit has been filed on behalf of "tens of thousands" of Flint residents who incurred health damage and financial costs (including the need to purchase gallons of bottled water per week), as a result of the city and state's mishandling of the situation. The lawsuit alleges that the city's switch to poisoned water deprived them of their civil rights simply to save the government money."For more than 18 months, state and local government officials ignored irrefutable evidence that the water pumped from the Flint River exposed [residents] to extreme toxicity," the lawsuit reads. "The deliberately false denials about the safety of the Flint River water was as deadly as it was arrogant." The NIH's stance: not funding these Franken-efforts Researchers pressing forward despite 'negativity towards all chimerism studies' Animals with human hair and human intelligence on the horizon? (NaturalNews) Just when you think the world can't get any more bizarre, it does.Case in point: the latest in "let's play Mother Nature" news, is that United States researchers now have their sights set on growing human organs ... inside farm animals. Oh, but it gets better. The point of all of this? It's to then take the Franken-organs and use them for transplant procedures , despite the fact that not enough is known about this. As a result, there are lots of folks with Island of Dr. Moreau movie thoughts.At the very least, ethical concerns abound Wow!Talk about inter-species dilemmas, ethical boundaries being pushed, and of course, a distinct departure from Mother Nature unfolding as it should: without humans severely interfering, and ultimately compromising life, every step of the way.The plan involves growing human tissue inside the likes of pigs and sheep, so that livers, hearts and other organs can be created and used for transplants. Such injections of cells from one species into the embryo of another creates mixtures that are referred to as "chimeras." In the case of incubating human organs in farm animals, human-animal chimeras are created.The eyebrow-raising technique has drawn criticism from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), who just a few months ago, reversed their previously-held decision about such methods. A September 2015 announcement by NIH said that, "The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is informing the research community that it will not fund research in which human pluripotent cells are introduced into non-human vertebrate animal pre-gastrulation stage embryos while the Agency considers a possible policy revision in this area." The agency goes on to say that, " NIH will not consider requests for administrative supplements or revisions to any grants or modification to R&D contracts that include costs for or involve research introducing human pluripotent cells into non-human vertebrate animal pre-gastrulation stage embryos. Ongoing NIH awards will be addressed with the awardees on a case-by-case basis."The NIH, therefore, has made it clear that they frown on the idea across the board, ranging from current research funding requests and contract proposals which are pending submission, to peer reviewed competing applications. It was the discovery that such efforts were occurring from other funding sources (including a $1.4 million grant from the U.S. Army that will focus on growing human hearts in swine), that spurred the NIH to make such declarations.In particular, three research teams are said to be involved with human-animal chimera efforts (two in California and one from the University of Minnesota). Despite there not being any published scientific papers touting these teams' so-called successes,believes that approximately 20 pregnancies of pig-human or sheep-human chimeras have taken place over the past year in the United States. However, none of these animals have been brought to term.As you might guess, human-animal chimera advocates are scratching their heads over the NIH's funding decisions, most notably in a letter touting the benefits of growing human organs in farm animals. The letter, penned by several university professionals, including Daniel Garry, a cardiologist who leads a chimera project at the University of Minnesota, states, "By eliminating federal funding for this research, the NIH casts a shadow of negativity towards all chimerism studies regardless of whether human cells are involved." The letter appeared inmagazine, where the authors also state their collective belief that such efforts are essential for learning purposes, including gaining an understanding of disease, development and therapeutic discoveries.On the flip side, are those who fear that some of these animals might end up taking on behaviors and physical characteristics that are eerily representative of humans. We're talking about animals with a close to human-like thinking ability, or perhaps ending up with patches of human hair. "We are not near the island of Dr. Moreau, but science moves fast," says NIH ethicist David Resnik. However, the says that, "The specter of an intelligent mouse stuck in a laboratory somewhere screaming 'I want to get out' would be very troubling to people." The scenario he presents is worrisome to many people, although Hiromitsu Nakauchi says he's not concerned.Nakauchi is a stem-cell biologist at Stanford University who has attempted to make human-sheep chimeras. The picture painted by Resnik, he feels, is an over-exaggeration. "If the extent of human cells is 0.5 percent," he says, "it's very unlikely to get thinking pigs or standing sheep. But if it's large, like 40 percent, then we'd have to do something about that."(1) TechnologyReview.com (2) Grants.NIH.gov (3) Science.ScienceMag.org A dozen giant sperm whales died after washing up along the Dutch island of Texel and the German islands of Wangerooge and Helgoland this year. Experts say the whales seem to be either starving and disoriented. Whale strandings have always been a problem for Texel, an island off the northern coast of Holland, because the North Sea is extremely shallow and doesn't allow the animals to properly make use of their sonar. But this year is the first to see so many whales beached in German waters. When whales are unable to use their sonar the animals' method of navigation and hunting using reflected waves to locate distant objects and sense their shape and movement they often become lost and exhausted. In this case, researchers say the "blinded whales" likely made a wrong turn into shallow waters, beached themselves, and died. Sperm whales are the largest toothed-whales on Earth, not to mention the largest toothed predator. They can grow up to 67 feet long and weigh over 50 tons. Beaching can be fatal for large whales because it causes fast and severe muscle damage and their blowholes, which they use to breathe, can get clogged with sand. The two dead sperm whales that washed up on the German island of Wangerooge appeared to be starving. Dutch paleontologist Aart Walen explained that the contents of their stomachs contained only small pieces of squid. Normally, up to a hundred squid are found in the stomach of dead sperm whales. Attempts to save the whales were made when they were initially found, but the efforts failed. The main concern now is removing the whales before gases created during decomposition cause the whales carcasses to rupture or explode. Related Articles Right Whales: Saving The Iconic Endangered Species, a Q&A Humpback Whales Make Slow Migration To Hawaii This Season For more great nature science stories and general news, please visit our sister site, Headlines and Global News (HNGN). -Follow Samantha on Twitter @Sam_Ashley13 The rare Central and South American canid species "bush dogs" are seldom seen throughout their natural range on those two continents, but researchers from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute recently caught a few of these elusive critters on film in remote areas in Panama. That's exciting, and ultimately, it could help conservationists better protect this near-threatened species. "Our group of biologists from Yaguara Panama and collaborators are working on an article about big mammals using camera trapping data that spans Panama from the Costa Rican border to the Colombian border," Ricardo Moreno, co-author of the study and a Smithsonian Research Associate, said in a news release. "The bush dog is one of the rarest species that we photographed." Bush dogs, scientifically known as Speothos venaticus, are short-legged and stubby, standing only about a foot tall at the shoulder. Generally speaking, they are tropical forest-dwelling animals that tend to hunt in packs of up to 10 animals. While hunting, bush dogs will sound high-pitched whines to maintain contact with group members and yap like puppies when they chase their prey - which mainly consists of large forest rodents like agoutis and pacas. While bush dogs appear to be relatively active by day, they are remarkably hard to see and are very rarely reported even in highly populated areas. That's where digital camera traps - cameras that take pictures automatically when their infrared sensors detect an animal's body heat - come into play. Camera traps are often used in wildlife studies, when scientists are unable to constantly monitor an area or their presence may scare away the critters of interest. In the latest study, camera traps snapped photos of bush dogs at four sites ranging from Cerro Pirre, near the Colombian border in eastern Panama, to Santa Fe National Park in the western part of the country. However, photos were obtained on only 11 occasions out of nearly 32,000 camera-days - which is a total of the number of cameras multiplied by the number of days they were in operation. (Scroll to read more...) In addition to the Panama sightings, researchers spotted bush dogs at five additional sites, including Fortuna, which lies west of Santa Fe, Panama. This suggests the species has found suitable habitat all across the country "We think that it [the bush dog] will soon cross the border into Costa Rica," Moreno added. While not much else is known about this species' distribution, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimates bush dog populations have declined by up to 25 percent in the past 12 years, earning a "near-threatened" status. Unlike other wild animals of Panama, bush dogs do not appear to be directly impacted by humans. Instead, the animals' main threats are habitat loss and deforestation - roughly 15 percent of Panama's forests were lost between 1990 and 2010, researchers say. This is of particular concern, because it is believed that bush dogs require large tracts of forest to survive. Other threats include availability of prey and exposure to various diseases. Their findings were recently published in the journal Canid Biology & Conservation. Related Articles Newborn Mountain Lion Kittens Discovered In Southern California [VIDEO] Endangered Piping Plover Birds Return To Lake Ontario For First Time In 30 Years For more great nature science stories and general news, please visit our sister site, Headlines and Global News (HNGN). -Follow Samantha on Twitter @Sam_Ashley13 State and federal investigations are underway into a deadly bus crash that killed two women Tuesday in the San Francisco Bay Area and tied up traffic on a busy highway until late in the evening. National Transportation Safety Board investigator Jennifer Morrison told reporters Wednesday a camera was recovered from the Greyhound bus that flipped onto its side during the rainy morning commute. She said the agency hasn't viewed the video yet. The two women killed identified Wednesday by the Santa Clara County Coroner as 51-year-old Fely Olivera, of San Francisco, and 76-year-old Maria De Jesus Ortiz Velasquez, of Salinas were thrown from the windows of the bus. As the two funerals were being planned, the California Highway Patrol's Coastal Division Multi-Disciplinary Accident Investigation Team geared up to lead the investigation into the fatal crash. At the same time, the NTSB began conducting a parallel investigation. Morrison said investigators hope to interview the driver, Gary Bonslater, 58, of Victorville, who reported being "fatigued" before the crash. Morrison declined to discuss possible causes of the wreck, saying she and seven other investigators arrived late Tuesday and have just started their inquiry. She says they'll examine the 2014 MCI motor coach for mechanical and structural defects while looking into road conditions and the driver's actions before the crash. Federal data show that officials inspected 1,882 Greyhound vehicles and 3,065 drivers over the past two years and that Greyhound buses were involved in six deadly accidents during that period. The deadly accidents do not include Tuesday's accident in San Jose. NTSB investigators are examining human and mechanical factors in fatal Greyhound bus crash. pic.twitter.com/rITgm9VeH3 Marianne Favro (@mariannefavro) January 20, 2016 Authorities said Bonslater lost control of his rig around 6:30 a.m. Tuesday on U.S. Highway 101 at the state Route 85 connector in South San Jose. Nine of the 20 people on board, including Bonslater, were taken to the hospital. By Wednesday, all the patients had been released from three hospitals, except for one person, listed in good condition at Regional Medical Center of San Jose, officials said. Bonslater told the CHP he had not fallen asleep, but stopped for coffee before the crash in hopes it would make him more alert, officials said. Until Tuesday, he had a clean driving record. "We do apologize," Greyhound spokeswoman Lanesha Gipson said. "Safety is the cornerstone of our business." While Gipson wouldn't speculate on whether the bus driver had been fatigued, she did say Greyhound requires that drivers get "nine hours of rest" after each 10-hour shift. Larry Hanley, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents Greyhound bus drivers, told NBC Bay Area he did not have firsthand knowledge of the accident early Tuesday morning. Hanley did say that the union has been pushing Congress to include bus drivers in the Fair Labor Standards Act. On average, inter-city bus drivers earn about $13 an hour. They can work 70 hours a week and they get overtime pay past 40 hours, according to the union. Every 10 hours, they must take a break. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, fatigue has contributed to about 3 percent of all fatal crashes nationwide since 2005. Thirteen percent of all big rig and bus crashes were caused by driver fatigue in 2006 and 2007. Lengthy shifts behind the wheel were also one of 2014's top violations for truckers and bus drivers, federal officials found. Most drivers have multiple jobs and are often fatigued, Hanley said. "Theres a crisis in America," Hanley said. "The bus industry is forcing drivers to work too many hours to make a living wage." Friends and family of anyone who was on Greyhound bus No. 6876 can call 1-800-972-4583 to check passengers' status. NBC Bay Area's Terry McSweeney, Kristofer Noceda, Marianne Favro, Michelle Roberts, Cheryl Hurd, Rhea Mahbubani and the Associated Press contributed to this report. It looks like California voters will decide this November if they want to raise the state's minimum wage. A faction of California's largest union began submitting signatures Tuesday for a ballot initiative asking voters to raise California's minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2021, one of two competing proposals vying for the November ballot. Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom joined SEIU's United Healthcare Workers West in San Francisco as union officials turned in signatures. The group said it has collected 600,000 names, far more than the nearly 366,000 required to qualify an initiative this year. The initiative, the latest in a nationwide effort by unions and other groups to raise the wage, would raise the state's minimum wage by $1 a year starting in 2017 until it hits $15 in 2021. After that, increases would be automatically tied to the cost of living. Newsom owns nine restaurants and said raising the minimum wage is the right thing for everyone. "The one thing I know is that businesses cant survive in a world that is failing," Newsom said, adding income inequality is "the issue of our time." But, in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood, the owner of Trattoria Pinocchio calls it a job killer. Giovanni Zocca says people who vote for the measure shouldnt complain when a plate of spaghetti goes for $30. "As soon as they raise it, everything is going to go up," Zocca said. San Francisco is already on a track for a $15 an hour minimum wage by 2018. The cities of Los Angeles, Seattle, Oakland and Berkeley have also approved phased-in increases to eventually take their minimum wage to $15 an hour. The latest Field Poll shows 68 percent support for the measure, but initiatives generally start out strong, with poll numbers dropping as Election Day nears. The state council of SEIU also is collecting signatures for a competing minimum-wage initiative that would bring it to $15 by 2020, a year earlier, and provide six paid sick days annually. The union has pledged to spend $20 million to $30 million on a statewide campaign. Lawmakers are also considering whether to attempt to pass a minimum-wage increase through the Legislature. Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, cautioned supporters during his budget announcement earlier this month that increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour would cost the state general fund about $4 billion a year. The SEIU state council has said it hopes both measures can eventually merge to avoid voter confusion and present a unified campaign. Illinois politicians are responding to a proposal made Wednesday by Senate Republican leader Christine Rodogno and House Republican leader Jim Durkin to place Chicago's public schools under state supervision and allow the school system to declare bankruptcy in order to combat a $480 million budget shortfall. Democrats have largely opposed the proposal. Illinois Senate President John Cullerton (D) claims the plan is mean spirited and evidence of their total lack of knowledge of the real problems facing Chicago Public Schools. State Senator William Delgado (D), chairman of the Senate Education Committee, said, The governor has forced the state into a financial crisis, and now he wants to take over one of the biggest public school systems in the nation. I find it hard to believe that this decision has the best of CPS students and family in mind. Kelley Quinn, spokeswoman for Rahm Emanuel said, The mayor is 100 percent opposed to Governor Rauners plan to drive CPS bankrupt. If the governor was serious about helping Chicago students, he would start by proposing, and passing, a budget that fully funds education and treats CPS students like every other child in the state. Forrest Claypool, CEO of Chicago Public Schools, echoed this sentiment, claiming, the governor is defending a school funding system that is separate but unequal. Our children are facing systematic discrimination. CPS represents 20 percent of state enrollment but gets just 15 percent of state funding, even though 86 percent of our children live in poverty. Claypool continued, The missing 5 percent represents nearly $500 million, the exact amount of our budget gap. State Senator Matt Murphy (R) reacted to Claypools claim, saying, The debt is unsustainable and grew while CPS was getting more, not less as Claypool erroneously claims, than their proportional share from state. During todays press conference, Christine Radogno said, We dont come to this position lightly but the track record of Chicago and its public school system is abysmal. Despite a $600 million financial advantage provided by the state, Chicago continues to dig their financial hole deeper. Of their plan, Durkin said, CPS is facing massive layoffs and a possible teachers strike. And despite credit downgrades to junk status, CPS is now looking to pay for hundreds of millions of dollars in short-term operating expenses. Christine Radogno concluded her speech by saying, The city doesnt need a bailout, it needs a renaissance. A suburban elderly couple who went missing after leaving for a doctors appointment this week has been located. Donald Warren, 87, and his wife Janette Warren, 80, had been last seen by family members Tuesday morning in the area of North and Harlem avenues, according to Wood Dale police. Its not clear if they ever made it to the doctors office for their appointment, but family members told police early Wednesday morning that the couple still hadnt returned home. Both suffer from mild to severe dementia and may be in need of medication, police said. There was a confirmed sighting of the Warrens at Irving and Western in Chicago on Wednesday, according to Wood Dale police. The couple spent about two hours at the gas station and Dunkin Donuts between approximately 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.olice confirmed the couple was pulled over in Deerfield. A police officer also reported seeing in the opposite direction of their home. The officer said the couple went to a Thorton's gas station in suburban Cary. Police are searching for a suburban elderly couple who went missing after leaving for a doctors appointment this week. NBC 5s Charlie Wojciechowski reports. Security cameras captured the pair inside, where Donald Warren is seen buying a cigar. Outside, the two flagged down a Cary police officer and asked for directions. "They did contact a Cary Police officer at a gas station saying they would stay at a hotel for the evening," Rivas said. "That gives us some solace, but we are still concerned about the medical needs." Their vehicle was heading east on Route 14 in suburban Cary around 1 a.m. Wednesday. The pair was seen driving a 2006 Silver Dodge caravan with Illinois plates 18843CV. Authorities said the vehicle has distinct markings on the side featuring the logo of the Cavaliers Drum & Bugle Corps., an organization Donald Warren has belonged to for several years in the Rosemont area. Wood Dale Police "What we are doing is checking area hospitals, contacting police departments in the area as well as contacting IDOT to see if their plate has gone through one of their tollways," said Wood Dale Deputy Chief Mike Rivas. As other towns struggle to cover the costs of body cameras, South Windsor is praising the organization that made it possible for their department to purchase them. The Hartford Evergreen Lodge of Freemasons donated $26,000 to the South Windsor Police Department, which allowed them to purchase a total of 24 cameras. They have uploaded 500 GB of video since the first shipment of cameras came in July. They received another shipment last week. "Its going to capture everything as the officer sees it as it unfolds," Deputy Chief Scott Custer said. "We think theyre a great tool for increasing peoples trust in law enforcement for documenting evidence." It is a pricey investment because they have to purchase more than just the cameras. They also have to pay for a storage system. It is something Deputy Chief Custer says would not have been possible this year without the help of the Hartford Evergreen Lodge of Freemasons. The town issued them a proclamation Tuesday night and thanked them for their donation. It is a stark contrast to departments like Berlin who quit using the cameras because of problems with cost and video storage. South Windsor police say knowing that just makes them appreciate the donation even more. The Freemasons say they are reaching out to see if they can help more. "We spoke to a lot of lodges who are just so impressed by it and theyre trying to find ways to be involved in the community and help out the police as well," Dwaine Clarke, who spearheaded the effort said. Lawmakers say they plan on discussing the financial burden of body cameras during the next legislative session. A 25-year-old Glastonbury man has been sentenced to three years in prison for giving laced heroin to his teenage girlfriend, who proceeded to give it to a 14-year-old girl who later died. Emergency personnel, including East Windsor Police, responded to an East Windsor home on Feb. 15, 2014 to investigate a possible drug overdose and a 14-year-old girl was transported to Connecticut Childrens Medical Center in Hartford, where she died the following day of heroin and fentanyl intoxication. Police investigated and determined that Ryan Poulin, 24, formerly of Glastonbury, was dating a 16-year-old East Windsor girl and drove her to Hartford to buy heroin, which they used together, according to a news release from the U.S. Department of Justice. Officials said Poulin and an acquaintance had gone to Hartford on Valentines Day in 2014 to meet with a heroin dealer and bought two bundles of 20-dose bags of New World heroin for $80, then went to Portland, where Poulins acquaintance injected himself with three bags of the New World heroin and passed out, officials said. Poulin immediately left and went to his girlfriends house later in the afternoon, where they injected the heroin, went out to dinner for Valentines Day and injected more heroin upon getting home, authorities said. The next thing Poulin remembered from that evening was that someone put him in the shower to revive him, officials said. The next morning, Poulin gave a bag of the New World heroin to his girlfriend, but she thought it was too strong and traded it, giving it to her 14-year-old friend in exchange for a different bag of heroin, authorities said. On the morning of Feb. 15, 2014, Poulins girlfriend and her 14-year-old friend injected heroin. After showering, the 14-year-old girl went to sleep and never woke up. Poulin was arrested on a federal criminal complaint on July 31, 2014 and he was released into a substance abuse and counseling program, but he has been detained since Sept. 26, 2014, when his bond was revoked for violating the conditions of his release. He pleaded guilty on Sept. 21, 2015 to one count of distributing a controlled substance to a minor and was sentenced on Tuesday to three years in prison, followed by six years of supervised release for distributing heroin to a minor. This is truly tragic story and one that is playing out in our state at an alarming rate, U.S. Attorney Deirdre Daly said in a statement. There were nearly 400 heroin-related overdose deaths in Connecticut in 2015, which is an increase of approximately 50 percent since 2013. This epidemic is deeply disturbing and must be addressed from a number of perspectives. From the law enforcement perspective, together with the DEA and local police departments, we will continue to prioritize investigations of heroin overdoses and prosecutions of traffickers responsible for overdoses. A long-term Drug Enforcement Administration Hartford Task Force investigation has focused on distribution of Fentanyl-laced heroin that contributed to several heroin overdoses in the Hartford area, officials said. Fentanyl is a powerful opioid analgesic used to treat moderate to severe chronic pain that cannot be controlled with other medicines. It is approximately 80 times more potent than morphine, and is potentially lethal, even at very low levels. Conservative firebrand Sarah Palin joined Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in Oklahoma Wednesday as part of her endorsement pledge in the increasingly intense race for the GOP nomination. "Are you all ready to work to make America great again?" Palin asked a crowd of thousands packed into an arena at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma, echoing Trump's campaign mantra. Palin, who was absent from Trump's Wednesday morning event in Norwalk, Iowa, despite a scheduled appearance, rejoined the Trump campaign in Tulsa, warming up the crowd ahead of the candidate's speech. But Palin also struck a personal tone, alluding to problems her son and other returning military vets endure when returning to civilian life. "It's kind of the elephant in the room," she began, addressing her family's struggle. Palin's oldest son, Track, was arrested earlier this week in a domestic violence case in which his girlfriend told police she was afraid he would shoot himself with a rifle. Track Palin was charged with assault, interfering with the report of a domestic violence crime and possessing a weapon while intoxicated in connection with the incident. "They come back a bit different. They come back a bit hardened," she said. "They come back wondering if there is that respect for what it is that their fellow soldiers and airmen and every other member of the military so sacrificially have given to this country. And that starts from the top," she said. A spokeswoman for Trump's campaign did not immediately respond to questions about why Palin was a no show at the Iowa event. Palin, the former governor of Alaska and 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee, erupted onto the stage in Ames, Iowa, Tuesday, announcing her support for Trump and declaring "no more pussy-footing around." "Yesterday was amazing in every way," Trump told supporters, as he kicked off another day of campaigning with less than two weeks to go before Iowa's kick-off caucuses. "Sarah came along and she said we love what's happening. It's a movement." The endorsement comes as Trump is locked in a dead heat with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in Iowa. The two have been ramping up their attacks against one another as the Feb. 1 caucuses have neared. Campaigning in New Hampshire, Cruz said, "Regardless of what Sarah intends to do in 2016, I will remain a big, big fan of Sarah Palin." Palin endorsed Cruz in his 2012 Senate race and said as recently as last month that he and Trump were both in her top tier of candidates, making the endorsement a symbolic blow to Cruz. "I think it throws a pie into Sen. Cruz's face," said Trump supporter Tim Oelschlager, 56, who was at Wednesday's event in Norwalk. "It's kind of like somebody barbecuing in your backyard, setting up a tent in your backyard." In a phone interview with "Today" show host Savannah Guthrie Wednesday, Trump said Palin approached him about throwing her support behind his campaign in a "string-free" endorsement. "She never said, 'Gee, I'd like to do this, I'd like to do that.' She never made a deal, like so many people want to try to make deals," he said. "She just said, 'I really like what's going on. It's an amazing thing. I've never seen anything like it in politics.'" Asked whether he'd consider Palin being his vice-presidential running mate, Trump said he had not discussed anything with the fomer Alaska governor, but that there "certainly would be a role somewhere in the administration" for her if he was elected. Palin was a virtual newcomer to the national political arena when 2008 GOP presidential nominee John McCain named her as his running mate. She has since risen to prominence as one of the most outspoken conservatives in the party. She signed on as a Fox News commentator after resigning as Alaska's governor in 2010, a job she held until last year. Trump and Palin did not discuss how the endorsement had come about, but Trump's national political director, Michael Glassner, previously worked for her. Trump said earlier Tuesday that he doesn't typically put much stock in endorsements, but said of this one, "I think it could very well result in votes." During his remarks in Iowa on Wednesday, Trump also zeroed in on Cruz, offering some of his most pointed attack lines yet. In addition to repeating questions about whether Cruz's Canadian birth makes him ineligible to be president, he also pointed to bank loans Cruz failed to disclose. "Goldman Sachs owns him, remember that folks," Trump charged. "I think when you go to caucus, you should think about that problem." Palin's endorsement speech Tuesday evening combined the folksy charm and everywoman appeal that initially made her a GOP superstar with defiant taunting of a "busted" GOP establishment that she slammed for counting both Trump and herself out. Palin offered her full-throated support for Trump and slammed President Barack Obama as the "capitulator in chief." Trump, she said, would be a commander in chief who would "let our warriors do their job and go kick ISIS' ass!" She also took aim at the Republican establishment for "attacking their own front-runner" and offered a challenge to those who have suggested that Trump, whose positions on issues like gun control and abortion rights have shifted over the years, isn't conservative enough. "Oh my goodness gracious. What the heck would the establishment know about conservativism?" she said. "Who are they to tell us that we're not conservative enough? ... Give me a break." A six-month-old tiger cub found roaming the streets of Hemet, Calif., last year before being taken in by an animal rescue facility in San Diego County has died, the facility confirmed Tuesday. Himmel a Bengal-Siberian cub first arrived at the Alpine-based nonprofit, Lions, Tigers and Bears (LTB), on Sept. 5, 2015, malnourished, declawed and suffering from an umbilical hernia. Lions, Tigers and Bears The tiger was first found on Sept. 3, 2015, abandoned in Hemet, northeast of Temecula. A woman turned him into the Humane Society in San Jacinto County, and California Department of Fish and Wildlife officials then sent the cub to LTB in Alpine, where he had been living ever since. On Tuesday, the facility announced Himmel had died. It is with a heavy heart and incredible sadness that we must share with you the news that Himmel, the young 6 month old tiger cub, has tragically passed away, the statement from LTB said. [[336710271,C]] According to the big cat and exotic animal rescue facility, the tiger cub underwent a routine procedure last week to be neutered, vaccinated and to repair his hernia under the lead of LTBs veterinarian, Dr. Jane Meier. The surgery went well and was uneventful. As Himmel was transitioning into surgical recovery, he suffered profound respiratory failure and collapse, LTB explained. Despite the best resuscitation efforts of the veterinary team and animal care staff, Himmel did not recover. Dr. Meier believes the most likely cause of Himmels death was a severe allergic reaction, anaphylaxis, which occurred in response to one of the injections Himmel was given at the end of his surgery. This is the most serious type of allergic reaction and is often fatal. It is the same kind of reaction cause by peanut allergies in people and can happen so quickly and severely that even aggressive treatment is ineffective," the vet added. [[325523701,C]] When the abandoned cub first arrived at LTB, staffers knew the animal had potential underlying health issues in addition to the hernia and being malnourished and declawed. However, LTB said staffers thought that with care and proper nutrition, the once-frail, 25-pound cub could morph into an active tiger. Still, animal care experts knew the cub though happy and playful had a long road ahead of him. Following this procedure, LTB says Himmel was also scheduled to have reparative surgery on his declawed paws next month. LTB says that any decision to perform medical procedures on its animals comes with careful weighing of the risks and benefits, and much planning, always putting the patients well-being first. [[324298901,C]] The sudden loss of Himmel is a stark reminder of how even after thoughtful and thorough consideration of the benefits and hazards, you can never completely eliminate the risks of a medical procedure, the facility said. Himmel's passing is not only a blow to our sanctuary team, but one of the tragic consequences that stem from the indiscriminate captive breeding of exotic animals. With no family history to reference, it is hard to pinpoint an animal like Himmel's underlying issues. Himmel was named after longtime San Diego newscaster and LTB supporter Larry Himmel after an online naming contest in October 2015. LTB described the cub as playful, goofy, awkward and sweet and chock full of personality, despite all he had endured. Himmel could always bring a smile to your face with his contagious pure bliss attitude on life, the facility added. Himmel may not have been with us for long, but he left boundless paw prints on our hearts that will last forever. LTB said the tigers passing will continue to fuel the sanctuarys passion to stop exotic animal trade and help animals live safely and peacefully on its 94-acre property in east San Diego. Experts believe Himmel is one of many tigers bred only for profit and then abandoned. A class-action lawsuit filed in federal court Tuesday accuses Chipotle of trying to cover up a norovirus outbreak that sickened at least 234 people who ate at the Mexican fast food restaurant in Simi Valley, California. The lawsuit, which seeks a trial by jury and unspecified damages, was filed Tuesday on behalf of six Grace Bretheren School students and one parent who fell ill after eating at Chipotle's Simi Valley location in August. According to the lawsuit, a kitchen manager suffered gastorintestinal symptoms while at work Aug. 18 but allegedly continued handling and preparing food until he saw a doctor Aug. 20 and was diagnosed with norovirus. That day, Chipotle shuttered its Simi Valley restaurant and enacted its "Norwalk Protocol," a procedure initiated when at least two customers complain of foodborne illness symptoms. The restaurant's corporate office, however, did not immediately contact health officials or customers, the lawsuit alleges. "Chipotle chose instead to try and conceal all evidence of the outbreak by disposing of all food items, bleaching all cooking and food handling surfaces and replacing its sick employees with replacement employees from other restaurants before notifying county health officials of the outbreak," the suit claims. The manager of the Ventura County Environmental Health Division's food safety program is quoted as saying authorities "didn't have the opportunity to sample food or do some of the things we normally do to investigate a foodborne illness outbreak." The lawsuit alleges Chipotle tried to cover up the outbreak because it was also dealing with "another public relations disaster" linked to a foodborne illness outbreak in Minnesota and "wanted to protect its stock price from plummeting by putting corporate profits ahead of public health and safety." Chipotle spokesperson Chris Arnold declined to comment on the lawsuit Wednesday morning, saying in an email to NBC, "As a matter of policy, we do not discuss details surrounding pending legal actions." Arnold added, however, that Chipotle "took all appropriate actions when this incident began, including reporting it to health officials in Ventura County." The lawsuit claims Chipotle waited to report the outbreak. The chain's founder and CEO, Steve Ells, told the "Today" show last month he was "deeply sorry" for outbreaks of norovirus and E. coli that have plagued customers around the country over the past several months. He vowed to make Chipotle "the safest restaurant to eat at." Ells said in a statement Tuesday the chain has "been implementing an enhanced food safety plan that will establish Chipotle as an industry leader in food safety." He said much of the plan is already in place, adding that food suppliers are also subject to rigorous, "unprecedented" safety standards. Last year's norovirus in Simi Valley came on the heels of a salmonella outbreak linked to tomatoes in Minnesota. E. coli connected to Chipotle sickened dozens of people in nine states last November, and five more cases were reported in December. Also last month, 141 college students contracted norovirus at a Chipotle restaurant in Boston, prompting a Massachusetts woman to sue on behalf of her son, who fell ill. Federal officials recently launched a criminal investigation into the restaurant chain and Chipotle was subpoenaed shortly after. The company has announced plans to launch a new marketing campaign in February and will close restaurants nationwide for three hours Feb. 8 to brief employees on food safety. Natural gas has been spewing from a ruptured well at SoCal Gas' Aliso Canyon Storage Facility near Porter Ranch, leading to thousands of residents relocating from the area, with some complaining of health problems. A relief well that the Southern California Gas Company began drilling in early December should reach the bottom of the 8,500-foot-deep well by late February or sooner, when it will be permanently taken out of service, according to the company. Below, a look at the relief well operation. Click on the graphic for a larger view. Miami-Dade Police are investigating after a man was shot in the chest Tuesday evening. It happened around 5:30 p.m. near 60th Street and 30th Avenue in northwest Miami-Dade. The victim's girlfriend told NBC 6 he was shot outside her home. He was transported to Jackson Memorial Hospital, but later pronounced dead. The victim's name has not been released, but family members said he was in his 40s. Police have not said whether any arrests were made. If you know anything about this shooting, you're urged to contact Crime Stoppers at (305) 471-TIPS. It's a controversial debate over the official presence of the Cuban government in South Florida. With the re-establishing of diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba, there are talks in Washington, D.C. to set up a Cuban consulate in Miami, but some politicians are pushing back against the idea. "Not in our backyard" is the resounding message from some local politicians as they try to block the Cuban consulate from potentially opening in Miami, prompting tough legal talk from Mayor Tomas Regalado. "I would sue the federal government as a person and as the mayor of Miami," Regalado said. Beyond the threat of litigation, Regalado said his first priority is to his community, "It would affect the peace and stability and health of the residents of the City of Miami." With a huge population of Cuban exiles in South Florida, Regalado argues that a Cuban consulate would inflame passions and pose a security risk, with a threat of widespread protests. "The issue is that a Cuban consulate here would be an unfunded mandate. The City of Miami Police Department, if the consulate is in the City of Miami, will have to protect those who are protesting, those who want to come in and the diplomats who are inside," Regalado said. After more than 50 years of strained relations, and complicated politics between Miami and the island nation, others are more open to the idea. Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos Gimenez said the talks are premature and proposed a more moderate approach, "We're a big city, we have to act like a big city, a big town and so we will deal with it. Do we want it right now? I don't think it's appropriate to have it right now but again, that is the choice and that's the duty of the federal government." Since Cuba reopened its Washington embassy in July, many consider a consulate on U.S. soil to be the next logical step. As the old Cuban consulate lies dormant for decades, there is still no exact location yet for this proposed diplomatic outpost. The Miami-Dade County Commission could vote on a resolution later this week that would urge President Obama to reconsider his plans for a consulate in Miami. Ultimately though, this is a federal decision. The Classic Stage Company made news for the wrong reasons at the turn of the year when Tonya Pinkins, who was to star in the upcoming Mother Courage and Her Children, departed the production during previews after clashing with longtime CSC artistic director Brian Kulick. Pinkins (Jellys Last Jam) publicly argued that the famous role in Bertolt Brechts 1939 anti-war drama about a canteen woman determined to make her living in the midst of the Thirty Years' War, had been neutered by CSC, after being created through the filter of the white gaze. An untruncated version of the Tony winners unusual statement can be found here. Few of us are privy to changes that may have been made behind the scenes in the intervening few weeks, but I found the Mother Courage that finally opens tonight at CSCwith five days left before it closesto be a realistic story of an opportunistic woman trying to balance the needs of her family against the unknowable travails of life in wartime. Broadway actress Kecia Lewis, who succeeded Pinkins in the role, certainly doesnt read as delusional. "Delusional" is the word Pinkins and Kulick hit an impasse over. Pinkins said she opposed the director's view of Brecht's heroine as "a delusional woman trying to do the impossible." "Why must the black Mother Courage be delusional?" wrote Pinkins, who described the canteen woman as "the epitome of every ... immigrant woman hustling to provide for her family. Kulick acknowledged using the "strong" word to characterize a "potential end point" for Mother Courage, observing that Brecht's own notes say "the point of 'Mother Courage' is that she does not learn from the events of the play." As these things sometimes go, star and director attempted to rework the ending of the drama, but compromise proved unattainable, leading to the surreal string of developments that now has "Mother Courage" opening just as it's preparing to close. Lewis, as I was saying, is not delivering a performance anyone would characterize as "delusional." She is, rather, frantic and resigned, yet somehow still hopeful she will find safety in an environment where it cant possibly be found. Despite its 17th-century setting, "Mother Courage" is considered a response by Brecht to the rise of Nazism. Kulicks version, for purposes unclear, relocates the plays action to a generic version of present-day Congo. The change in setting, without sufficient explanation, also was among the reasons Pinkins cited for her departure (she called the decision a "decorative motif"). With the modernization, Courages famous canteen wagon, in which she drags along items to sell to revolutionaries, has become the back half of a motorized Jeep. Theres profit to be made in war, and Mother Courage knows it, but her pursuit of some means by which she can feed her family will be her familys undoing, and her own. What is delusional about Mother Couragethat is, any company's "Mother Courage"is that the protagonist thinks she can make money from war without suffering consequences. Lewis originated the role of Asaka in 1990s Once on This Island, and also has had a recurring role as a judge on Law & Order: SVU. Producers warned that the actress, with little time to prepare, might be working from a script in some scenes and requesting lines in others. She did both at a performance this weekend, though not to exceptionally distracting effect. By my count, Lewis called for a line five or six times. What I saw, beyond that issue, was a performer of tremendous confidence, taking on a role with a sharp perspective on her character. Lets acknowledge the fortitude it takes for an actress to step into a classic and fraught leading role with less than two weeks to prepare, shall we? Lewis, with her performance, exhibits a hardness few mothers could muster. More than anything, shes a realist. A powerless realist. We meet Mother Courages three children, Eilif, Swiss Cheese and the mute Kattrin (Curtis Cook Jr., Deandre Sevon and Mirirai Sithole), and watch as each is lost over years to wars old and new. Among the more chilling scenes is one when Lewiss Courage attempts to barter with a solider for the return of Swiss Cheese, but bungles her negotiation, sending the boy to his death in the process. All three actors playing Courages children have a keen and focused take on their roles, though none is more effective than Sithole as the speechless Kattrin, who gives her life trying to warn villagers in a town too far away of an impending invasion. The villagers could not possibly hear her distant grunts, but it doesn't keep the girl from trying. Kevin Mambo, of Fela!, gives a warm portrayal of the cook, who does battle with Courage but holds a sweet spot for her in his hard heart. Some back story and commentary about war have been hacked away to keep the runtime to barely more than 2 hours. We are abruptly moved forward years at a time with announcements blared over a prison-style loudspeaker system. Duncan Sheik, who in fact really is everywhere right now (Spring Awakening, American Psycho), has contributed the bare bones of a score to the bold, discomforting and well-performed proceedings. Mother Courage and Her Children, through Jan. 24 at the Classic Stage Company, 136 E. 13th St. Tickets: $61-$126. Call 212-677-4210. Follow Robert Kahn on Twitter@RobertKahn Russian warplanes were taking off Wednesday from their base in Syria's coastal province of Latakia, which was bustling with activity as Moscow pressed its air blitz days before scheduled peace talks. A pair of Su-25 jets flew past, returning from a mission shortly after sunrise, and air force crews readied combat jets for more missions. Two heavy transport plans were parked near the main terminal as soldiers toting assault rifles stood guard. Since Russia launched its air campaign in Syria on Sept. 30, its warplanes have flown nearly 6,000 missions. The number is impressive for a compact force comprising just a few dozen warplanes. The Russian military brought a group of Moscow-based reporters to the base on Wednesday to see the operations. Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Tuesday that over the previous four days Russian warplanes had flown 157 sorties striking 579 targets in six Syrian regions. The Russian military has said it was targeting the Islamic State group and other extremists and has angrily dismissed Western accusations of hitting moderate rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad. Moscow also has rejected claims that its aircraft have hit civilians, saying they only target military facilities away from populated areas. The Syrian government and the opposition are set to sit down for talks in Geneva, scheduled for Monday. The negotiations are meant to pave the way for a political settlement with a new constitution and elections in a year and a half, but hopes for their success are dim. International negotiators, including the United States and its allies and Assad's backers, Russia and Iran, have failed to reach common ground on which of the myriad Syrian militant groups should be considered extremists and fair game for strikes and which should be part of political talks. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry were meeting in Switzerland on Wednesday to try to resolve the differences over who is eligible to join the U.N.-mediated peace talks. Meanwhile, the relentless Russian air campaign has helped the Syrian army recover and regroup after a series of failures last year and score significant battlefield gains in recent weeks. Some believe that a string of military successes would likely encourage Assad's government to take a tough stance in the talks. The Syrian conflict, which began in early 2011 with protests against Assad's rule, has turned into an all-out war that has killed a quarter of a million people and displaced millions in nearly five years of fighting. The most visible difference at the Hemeimeem base since The Associated Press first visited in October is the presence of state-of-the-art air defense weapons. Towering launch tubes and massive radar arrays of the long-range S-400 air defense missiles could be seen at the edge of the base. Russia deployed the powerful weapons, capable of hitting targets 400 kilometers (240 miles) away, after Turkey shot down a Russian warplane along the Syrian border on Nov. 24. Turkey said it downed the jet after it violated its airspace for a few seconds, while Russia insisted its plane had stayed within Syrian airspace. The incident was the first time in more than half a century that a NATO nation had shot down a Russian plane. President Vladimir Putin denounced the Turkish action as a "stab in the back." The Russian military quickly sent the S-400s to the base and warned that it would fend off any threat to its aircraft. Russia also punished Turkey by imposing an array of economic sanctions, including a ban on the sale of package tours. Relations have remained tense, and Putin in December warned Turkey against ever violating Syrian airspace. With the S-400s deployed at the Russian base, just about 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of the Syrian border, much of Turkey's territory is within their range. To augment the air defenses, Russia has kept a navy ship carrying long-range air defense missiles off the Syrian shore. And Russian fighter jets have begun escorting strike jets on their combat missions to fend off any air threat. One of the sons of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was arrested on suspicion of domestic violence assault Monday night, according to the Wasilla Police Department. In the midst of a violent argument in his girlfriend, Track Palin, 26, allegedly pointed a gun at his head and threatened to shoot, NBC News reported. He assaulted her, interfered with her ability to report domestic violence and had a firearm in his possession while he was intoxicated, the department said in a news release Tuesday. He was being held without bail until his arraignment on three charges, police said: "assault in the fourth degree (domestic violence), interfering with a domestic violence report, and misconduct involving weapons." Alaska court records classified the charges as misdemeanors. The records said Palin was scheduled to appear in court for his arraignment Monday, but no defense attorney was listed. It wasn't immediately clear if Palin had retained an attorney. Palin's court appearance was scheduled just hours after Donald Trump announced his mother had endorsed him for president. The Trump campaign said Sarah Palin planned to join him on for campaign events on Wednesday. She didn't immediately release her own statement regarding the endorsement. A man accused of making a threat towards Philadelphia and New York police officers is now in custody. The man, who has not yet been identified, turned himself in at a Bronx police precinct Wednesday afternoon and is being questioned by detectives, according to NBC4 New York. Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross Jr. told NBC10 the New York Police Department received an anonymous tip Wednesday reporting the man planned on harming both NYPD and Philadelphia officers. As I understand it, NYPD relayed this info to us because they thought there was something to it or at least wanted to take the necessary precautions, Ross said. Sources told NBC4 that the suspect mentioned by the New York City tipster had pledged allegiance to ISIS. Both the NYPD and Philadelphia Police Department issued a safety alert as a precaution. The two departments and the FBI then launched an investigation. We do not know if this individual threat is credible but I know NYPD and other authorities are running on it as though it is, Ross said. The suspect in the threat had outstanding warrants for other crimes, according to NBC4. Ross also told NBC10 the suspect has a few addresses in Philadelphia. The news comes nearly two weeks after a gunman ambushed Philadelphia Police Officer Jesse Hartnett, shooting him at point-blank range. The suspect in the shooting, 30-year-old Edward Archer, allegedly claimed he shot Hartnett in the name of Islam and pledged allegiance to ISIS. Police later received an anonymous tip claiming Archer was part of a group of four radicals in Philadelphia who planned on carrying out more attacks on officers. FBI officials said last week however that their investigation concluded Archer was not part of a terror cell and there were no indications that additional attacks were imminent. Ross did not reveal whether the man who was taken into custody Wednesday was connected at all to Archer or the previous threat against Philadelphia officers. This story is developing. Check back for updates. In another example of El Nino's strange effect on sea creatures, a great white shark swam close enough to shore to get hooked by a fisherman off the San Clemente Pier Monday. Penny Novak was taking a midday stroll with her family when she saw a fisherman struggling with his line at the end of the pier. "When we looked over the edge, there it was, Novak said. Its head was fully out of the water, its mouth was open. It was just like something out of a movie. Immediately, she took out her phone and began recording the fight. For about 15 minutes, the fisherman tried to get the shark to let go, she said. He had no interest in trying to reel in the large creature. "Then finally, it went under the water for a little bit. We all thought maybe it died, and then all of the sudden it came back up and we heard like a big, loud crunch, and then it like moved around a little bit and broke free and then took off, said Novak. NBC 7 showed video of the encounter to Andrew Nosal, a marine biologist with Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He confirmed the shark was a great white and estimated it was about six feet long. That means the shark was a baby; great whites dont usually mature until theyre nine feet long, Nosal said. A sighting like this is not uncommon, according to the biologist, though young great white sharks are typically seen off the Orange County and northern San Diego County coasts in the summer months. Warmer winter waters, caused by El Nino, most likely drew the shark closer to the beach. Keeping the shark on the line put it in a life-threatening situation, Nosal explained. Sharks such as great whites need to keep moving forward in order to breathe. "In this case, the shark couldn't really do that, said Nosal, so it was probably losing oxygen during that fight. But luckily at the end, it seems to have broken free and seemed to swim off, which is a really good sign." When she first spotted the shark so close to San Diego County, Novaks first thought went to her family members. "I was a little freaked out because my family likes to surf so I was thinking, oh my gosh, this is just like 'Jaws,'" she said. But Nosal said seafarers have little to fear from these young sharks, especially compared to their older relatives who like the colder waters of Northern California. "We've actually detected some tagged baby white sharks off of Scripps Pier in La Jolla, said Nosal. So they're around, and we normally don't see them, and that's a testament to the fact that they're not really interested in us and they typically keep their distance." He explained any big shark with a big mouth could potentially be dangerous, but the younger ones just feed on fish and are unlikely to approach a human. The oldest Christian monastery in Iraq has been reduced to a field of rubble, yet another victim of the Islamic State group's relentless destruction of ancient cultural sites. For 1,400 years the compound survived assaults by nature and man, standing as a place of worship recently for U.S. troops. In earlier centuries, generations of monks tucked candles in the niches and prayed in the cool chapel. The Greek letters chi and rho, representing the first two letters of Christ's name, were carved near the entrance. Now satellite photos obtained exclusively by The Associated Press confirm the worst fears of church authorities and preservationists St. Elijah's Monastery of Mosul has been completely wiped out. In his office in exile in Irbil, Iraq, the Rev. Paul Thabit Habib, 39, stared quietly at before- and after-images of the monastery that once perched on a hillside above his hometown of Mosul. Shaken, he flipped back to his own photos for comparison. "I can't describe my sadness," he said in Arabic. "Our Christian history in Mosul is being barbarically leveled. We see it as an attempt to expel us from Iraq, eliminating and finishing our existence in this land." The Islamic State group, which broke from al-Qaida and now controls large parts of Iraq and Syria, has killed thousands of civilians and forced out hundreds of thousands of Christians, threatening a religion that has endured in the region for 2,000 years. Along the way, its fighters have destroyed buildings and ruins historical and culturally significant structures they consider contrary to their interpretation of Islam. Those who knew the monastery wondered about its fate after the extremists swept through in June 2014 and largely cut communications to the area. Now, St. Elijah's has joined a growing list of more than 100 demolished religious and historic sites, including mosques, tombs, shrines and churches in Syria and Iraq. The extremists have defaced or ruined ancient monuments in Nineveh, Palmyra and Hatra. Museums and libraries have been looted, books burned, artwork crushed or trafficked. "A big part of tangible history has been destroyed," said Rev. Manuel Yousif Boji. A Chaldean Catholic pastor in Southfield, Michigan, he remembers attending Mass at St. Elijah's almost 60 years ago while a seminarian in Mosul. "These persecutions have happened to our church more than once, but we believe in the power of truth, the power of God," said Boji. He is part of the Detroit area's Chaldean community, which became the largest outside Iraq after the sectarian bloodshed that followed the U.S. invasion in 2003. Iraq's Christian population has dropped from 1.3 million then to 300,000 now, church authorities say. The destruction of the monastery is a blow for U.S. troops and advisers who served in Iraq and had tried to protect and honor the site, a hopeful endeavor in a violent place and time. Suzanne Bott, who spent more than two years restoring St. Elijah's Monastery as a U.S. State Department cultural adviser in Iraq, teared up when the AP showed her the images. "Oh no way. It's just razed completely," said Bott. "What we lose is a very tangible reminder of the roots of a religion." Army reserve Col. Mary Prophit remembered a sunrise service in St. Elijah where, as a Catholic lay minister, she served communion. "I let that moment sink in, the candlelight, the first rays of sunshine. We were worshipping in a place where people had been worshipping God for 1,400 years," said Prophit, who was deployed there in 2004 and again in 2009. "I would imagine that many people are feeling like, 'What were the last 10 years for if these guys can go in and destroy everything?'" said Prophit, a library manager in Glenoma, Washington. This month, at the request of AP, satellite imagery firm DigitalGlobe tasked a high resolution camera passing over the site to grab photos, and then pulled earlier images of the same spot from their archive of pictures taken globally every day. Imagery analyst Stephen Wood, CEO of Allsource Analysis, reviewed the pictures for AP and identified the date of destruction between Aug. 27 and Sept. 28, 2014. Before it was razed, images show a partially restored, 27,000-square-foot religious building. Although the roof was largely missing, it had 26 distinctive rooms including a sanctuary and chapel. One month later, "the stone walls have been literally pulverized," said Wood. "Bulldozers, heavy equipment, sledgehammers, possibly explosives turned those stone walls into this field of gray-white dust. They destroyed it completely," he said. "There's nothing to rebuild." The monastery, called Dair Mar Elia, is named for the Assyrian Christian monk St. Elijah who built it between 582 and 590 A.C. It was a holy site for Iraqi Christians for centuries, part of the Mideast's Chaldean Catholic community. In 1743, tragedy struck when as many as 150 monks who refused to convert to Islam were massacred under orders of a Persian general, and the monastery was damaged. For the next two centuries it remained a place of pilgrimage, even after it was incorporated into an Iraqi military training base and later a U.S. base. Then in 2003 St. Elijah's shuddered again this time a wall was smashed by a tank turret blown off in battle. Iraqi troops had already moved in, dumping garbage in the ancient cistern. The U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division took control, with troops painting over ancient murals and scrawling their division's "Screaming Eagle," along with "Chad wuz here" and "I love Debbie," on the walls. A U.S. military chaplain, recognizing St. Elijah's significance, kicked the troops out and the Army's subsequent preservation initiative became a pet project for a series of chaplains who toured thousands of soldiers through the ruin. "It was a sacred place. We literally bent down physically to enter, an acquiescence to the reality that there was something greater going on inside," remembered military chaplain Jeffrey Whorton. A Catholic priest who now works at Ft. Bragg, he had to collect himself after viewing the damage. "I don't know why this is affecting me so much," he said. The U.S. military's efforts drew attention from international media outlets including the AP in 2008. Today those chronicles, from YouTube videos captured on the cell phones of visiting soldiers to AP's own high resolution, detailed photographs, take on new importance as archives of what was lost. One piece published in Smithsonian Magazine was written by American journalist James Foley, six years before he was killed by Islamic State militants. St. Elijah's was being saved, Foley wrote in 2008, "for future generations of Iraqis who will hopefully soon have the security to appreciate it." A former White House supervisor is facing a federal criminal charge, accused of doctoring time sheets and pocketing taxpayers' money, according to FBI records obtained by the News4 I-Team. Andrea Turk is scheduled to appear in D.C. federal court Thursday afternoon for a preliminary hearing on a charge of theft of government property. According to the FBI records, Turk executed a scheme to manipulate time sheets for personal gain while serving as a manager who oversaw and approved time sheets and employee work schedules at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Turk -- who was fired from her job at the White House in 2013, according to court records -- served as White House Director of Information Services beginning in 2009. She supervised a staff of 15 while serving in the post, earning $85,000 per year. Her employees were switchboard operators, according to FBI records. An FBI special agent said one of those employees was victimized in Turk's scheme, court records show. Investigators said Turk insisted an employee accept extra, unearned overtime pay, and then funnel the proceeds back to Turk. "(The employee) initially responded that she did not want to assist Turk in this manner and suggested that Turk seek financial assistance or ask for a loan," the FBI affidavit said. "When (the employee) also expressed concern that she and Turk would be discovered and get into serious trouble, Turk replied that the Human Resources department did not pay attention to such issues and would never discover their conduct." According to court records, the FBI said the scheme occurred during 20 pay periods between 2012 and 2013, indicating it likely generated thousands of dollars for Turk. The records indicate Turk's employee was able to keep some of the proceeds of the time-sheet doctoring but also said the employee felt "obligated" to perform personal favors for Turk. Those favors included babysitting and picking up Turk's child from daycare. Turk had expressed concerns about her own financial well-being, according to FBI agents. Turk did not immediately return messages seeking comment. "When we became aware of the facts described in the complaint we took appropriate personnel actions, including terminating the employee, and referred the matter to the Department of Justice," a White House official said. "With respect to any questions about the law enforcement investigation, we would direct you to the Department of Justice." The FBI records detail how agents describe the operation of the alleged scheme. "(The employee) made the first payment to Turk in cash," the records said. "Following the initial cash payment, Turk requested that Employee A make future payments via online wire transfers, directly from (the employee's) bank account to Turk's bank account. Turk provided Employee A with her bank account information." The court records do not specify the identity of the other employee referenced in the FBI investigation. The FBI declined requests for comment on the case, including whether that employee is also under investigation. Turk did not immediately return messages seeking comment. Thousands of small businesses are squaring off against a huge corporation accused of intimidating clients into paying unwarranted sums of money in fraudulent lawsuits, which center around machines thousands of shoppers use every day. The Manhattan-based firm Northern Leasing Systems rents out credit card processing equipment and agreed in 2012 to settle a civil lawsuit and refund $3.6 million to some clients. The company had been accused of stealing money from customers bank accounts, according to the New York State Attorney General. Now, Northern Leasing could be headed back to court over new allegations of forgery and a racketeering scheme, according to court documents and attorneys. D.C.-based beauty shop owner Latricia Hardy told the News4 I-Team she also did business with Northern Leasing and feels deceived. Its hard, but you have to go on, Hardy said, speaking to the I-Team inside her Capitol Hill salon, on the bottom floor of a building thats been in her family for decades. Hardy said shes been fighting for several years to keep a judgment Northern Leasing won against her from damaging her credit. That judgment, handed down from New York City Civil Court, told Hardy she lost a lawsuit and owed Northern Leasing nearly $7,000 on a contract she signed to rent the companys credit card equipment in 2010. The problem, according to Hardy, was that she never even knew she had been sued in the first place. Her close friend Edwina Montague tried to help Hardy sort through her legal struggles. She is such a good force in this community, Montague said of Hardy, describing her friend as a well-known face in the neighborhood. To see someone like her and have something that negative hit her -- it bothers me." Hardys contract to rent Northern Leasings credit card equipment for 48 months was marked non-cancelable, but she said she decided to stop paying for it after two years because her customers at the salon werent using credit cards. She said she tried to get out of the contract, writing and calling the company multiple times, and when that didnt work, they noticed a discrepancy involving the serial numbers on Hardys leased credit card machines, Montague said. The equipment that she actually had in no way reflected the numbers on the contract, Montague said, showing the I-Team photos of the equipment serial numbers that did not match the numbers on Hardys contract. Montague and Hardy said they told Northern Leasing they thought those details should have voided the contract, but Northern Leasing told the I-Team Hardy confirmed she had all of the correct equipment in a phone call when she first signed her contract in 2010. Northern Leasing also said Hardy was served before the civil court judgment came down, and added: Ms. Hardy is seeking some way to abrogate the lease contract without fulfilling its terms and Northern Leasing has been damaged by her unwillingness to fulfill her responsibilities pursuant to the lease contract. The various judges (including one in Washington, DC where the lessee filed a complaint against us), however, have rejected all of Ms. Hardys pleas and have held the lease contract to be valid and enforceable. From a legal standpoint, the lessee has made a number of efforts to vacate the judgment and the courts in both New York and DC have rejected her efforts. The I-Team found Hardy is one of thousands of small business owners Northern Leasing has sued for payments. The company filed 2,300 cases across the country in 2015. New York attorney Krishnan Chittur is now trying to turn the legal tables on the company. He doesnt represent Hardy, but he has hundreds of other clients and is suing Northern Leasing in three cases in federal court, alleging a racketeering scheme that he says typically involves forgery and fraud. Weve come across too many of them for this to be coincidental, Chittur said of the cases involving Northern Leasing. Northern Leasing also previously said in a statement that it prides itself on the fairness of its business practices and open dialogue with lessees. Latricia Hardy and Edwina Montague told the I-Team theyll continue to fight to clear Hardys credit, and on principal. "I'm sure there are a lot of other small business owners such as Ms. Hardy that want to be servicing their community, Montague said. It's a shame when that's the backbone of this country, to have them hindered." With a historic blizzard expected to wallop the D.C. area, residents are getting ready to hunker down and ride out the storm. But once it's safe to venture back outside, they'll be able to do something that's been banned for 15 years: sled down Capitol Hill. In December, D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton added language permitting sledding on Capitol grounds to a new federal spending bill, lifting a ban that took effect in 2001. Language added to the 2016 omnibus spending package instructs Capitol Police not to interfere with sledders in the future, and President Barack Obama signed it into law. The Library of Congress relays the language used in the bill: "Use of Grounds.The Committee understands the need to maintain safety and order on the Capitol grounds and commends the Capitol Police for their efforts. However, given the family-style neighborhood that the Capitol shares with the surrounding community the Committee would instruct the Capitol Police to forebear enforcement of 2 U.S.C. 1963 ("An act to protect the public property, turf, and grass of the Capitol Grounds from injury") and the Traffic Regulations for the United States Capitol Grounds when encountering snow sledders on the grounds." Last winter, determined children and families gathered for a "sled-in" to protest the ban after U.S. Capitol Police warned that sledding was prohibited on Capitol Hill. Local blog Popville.com reported details of the March 5, 2015 "sled-in," which was shared via a Change.org petition. "If you are up for a little civil disobedience, a sled-in is planned for today.... Come armed with sleds!" the petition said in part. While the sled-in wasn't legal, Capitol Police did not enforce the ban that day. Holmes Norton said she's looking forward to giving families a chance to enjoy the snow. "Capitol Hill is this city's iconic snow sledding hill, and Congress got out of the way, allowing our kids to freely enjoy what promises to be one of the best snowfalls in years," she said. "Last year, when D.C. families came together with strong community support for non-enforcement of the antiquated sledding ban on Capitol Grounds, they empowered our efforts in the Congress. All families need to worry about now is picking the best time to go sledding." A teenager was stabbed Wednesday afternoon near a high school in Northwest D.C., officials say. The Woodrow Wilson High School student was attacked during a fight about 3:35 p.m. on the 4500 block of 40th Street NW, near the Tenleytown-American University Metro station and the Sears Home Appliance Showroom, D.C. police said. The injuries do not appear to be life-threatening. Police are seeking two teenage boys, both described by police as Hispanic and 16 or 17 years old. The first suspect has a light complexion, stands 5-foot-6 to 5-foot-7 and was wearing a black-and-green jacket. The second suspect has a light complexion and weighs 130 to 140 pounds, police said. Anyone who sees the teens is asked to call 911. Wilson High School Principal Kimberly Martin told students and parents in an email Wednesday evening that the student is expected to make a full recovery. "I want to assure you that the safety of all Wilson High School students is our top priority, and we remain committed to ensuring that your students are safe," Martin said. Counselors are available to help students, the principal said. Stay with News4 for more details on this developing story. Kabul: Seven people were killed Wednesday when a suicide bomber struck a minibus carrying employees of popular Afghan TV channel TOLO, just months after the Taliban declared the network a legitimate "military target". The bombing near the Russian embassy in downtown Kabul also left 24 people wounded, in the latest in a wave of attacks despite an international push to jumpstart Taliban peace talks. No group has so far claimed responsibility for the bombing, which marks the first major attack on a media organisation in Afghanistan. "Our office bus taking TOLO staff home came under attack," an employee at the channel told AFP, requesting anonymity. The bombing left some staff members burning inside the vehicle, another employee said, adding that the bus was mostly filled with behind-the-scenes workers from the channel's graphics and dubbing departments. The loud explosion sent a plume of smoke rising in the sky, with ambulances and firefighters rushing to the scene which was littered with charred debris. The interior ministry said the attack left seven people dead and 24 others wounded. The Taliban in October declared TOLO and 1TV, both privately run news stations as legitimate "military targets". The group said the move was in response to their reports claiming that Taliban fighters raped women at a female hostel in Kunduz, after the group briefly captured the northern city in late September last year. The Taliban rejected the reports as fabrications, saying they were examples of propaganda by the "satanic networks". The attack, which highlights the growing dangers faced by journalists in Afghanistan, comes just two days after a second round of a four-country meeting in Kabul aimed at reviving talks with the Taliban. Delegates from Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the United States convened in the Afghan capital Monday for a one-day meeting seeking a negotiated end to the 14-year Taliban insurgency. The first round of the so-called "roadmap" talks was held in Islamabad last week as the four nations try to lay the groundwork for direct dialogue between Kabul and the Islamist group. Taliban representatives were notably absent in both rounds and analysts caution that any substantive talks are still a long way off. The Taliban has stepped up attacks on government and foreign targets in Afghanistan this winter, when fighting usually abates, underscoring a worsening security situation. Observers say the intensifying insurgency highlights a push by the militants to seize more territory in an attempt to wrangle greater concessions during talks. Pakistan -- the Taliban's historic backers -- hosted a milestone first round of talks directly with the Taliban in July. But the negotiations stalled when the insurgents belatedly confirmed the death of longtime leader Mullah Omar, sparking infighting within the group. The four-country group is set to hold the next round of discussions on February 6 in Islamabad. The lawyer for a man accused of helping a friend try to join ISIS fighters accused the FBI and prosecutors of creating cases against young Muslim men. Joseph Hassan Farrokh, 28, of Woodbridge, Virginia, was arrested Friday afternoon at the Richmond International Airport as he attempted to board a flight to Chicago. Officials said once he reached Chicago, he intended to board a flight to the Middle East. Mahmoud Amin Mohamed Elhassan, 25, also of Woodbridge, was arrested Friday evening after returning from driving Farrokh to Richmond. Both defendants made their initial court appearances Tuesday. Elhassan was arrested after he lied to FBI investigators about where Farrokh was going, prosecutors said, but his lawyer, Ashraf Nubani, says Elhassan is a victim of prejudice against Islam or Muslims. As the case unfolds, Nubani hopes to show the FBI created this case. The issue is the way the government goes about these cases, Nubani said. They had three informants in this case who were looking for people that they can get in trouble. They thought that they found someone, and my client is only charged with aiding and abetting that someone. More than a dozen friends who attend the same Islamic Center as the defendants attended the hearing. One told News4 Elhassan was taking community college classes and never showed signs of radicalism. Farrokh is charged with attempting to provide material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization. According to the criminal complaints, he had been trying to leave the United States and join ISIS in Syria since Nov. 20, 2015. The complaints state Elhassan introduced Farrokh to a person who Elhassan believed had connections to individuals engaged in jihad overseas. The person was an FBI informant cooperating with law enforcement as part of a plea deal for a reduced sentence in a criminal case, according to the complaint. Farrokh and Elhassan each face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, if convicted. The defendants will return to court within the week for bond hearings. Elhassan's attorney said he'll ask for his client be freed on bond before trial. Storm Team4 is anticipating a major snow event at the end of the week -- which means you'll need to be ready to shovel your sidewalks. Some communities even fine residents over snowy sidewalks. Check your local laws below, and before you head out, read these tips for safe shoveling. Also remember that your neighbors who are senior citizens or who have disabilities may need help before, during and after the storm. THE DISTRICT D.C. homeowners who don't clear their sidewalks and curb cuts of snow within 24 hours of a snowstorm face $25 fines. The fine is $150 for businesses that don't clear snow within eight daylight hours, according to a new law. Residential property owners age 65 or older, or those with disabilities, are exempt from the law, GreaterGreaterWashington.com reports. Volunteers will be on call to shovel for these residents; dial 311 or 202-737-4404 to reach them. MARYLAND Montgomery County: Residents and businesses must clear sidewalks around their property within 24 hours after a snowstorm ends. Barnesville, Brookville, Chevy Chase and Poolesville follow these rules, as do unincorporated areas such as Silver Spring. Other city rules are listed below and on the Montgomery County website: Takoma Park: Residents must clear sidewalks before 7 p.m. on the day of snowfall or four daylight hours after nighttime snow. Rockville: Residents and business owners have between 24 and 72 hours to shovel their sidewalks. The more snow on the ground, the longer you'll have to shovel. (For up to 3 inches of snow, you must shovel within 24 hours; from 3 to 9 inches, you have 48 hours; for 10 inches or more, you have 72 hours). Gaithersburg: Residents and business owners have 12 hours to shovel after snow stops falling. Prince George's County: Residents must have their sidewalks cleared by 48 hours after snowfall. After a warning period, county inspectors can issue a $100 fine for sidewalks that have not been shoveled. Frederick County: Follow the county's suggested shoveling procedures so snow plows do not push snow back in front of driveways. The city of Frederick requires residents to shovel their sidewalks 12 hours after the end of snow. Laurel: Authorities on Monday extended their shoveling deadline until Sunday, Jan. 31. Officials are encouraging residents to help their senior citizen neighbors by shoveling their driveways and sidewalks. They also suggest teaming up with others to clear areas around community fire hydrants and storm drains. Laurel officials distributed a list of companies who said they will take small residential shoveling jobs for a fee, but encouraged residents to shop around: Ms. Honey Do: 240-456-0260 Mr. Fixer: 301-601-1739 Pure Quality: 240-550-5459 The Handyman: 202-910-1832 Rolando Handyman: 323-896-6110 PNP Management: 888-345-8969 x 357 or 202-320-9453 VIRGINIA Alexandria: Residents have between 24 and 72 hours to shovel, depending on the storm response level, which you can check at www.alexandriava.gov. At Level 1, you have 24 hours to shovel; at Level 2, you have 48 hours; at Level 3, you have 72 hours. Arlington County: Shovel within 24 hours of snow accumulation of fewer than six inches. Snowfall of more than six inches must be cleared within 36 hours. The shoveling deadline will be posted on the Arlington website, along with tips for residents who are physically unable to shovel. Fairfax County and the city of Fairfax: Residents are encouraged but not legally obligated to shovel their sidewalks. Falls Church: Residents have 12 hours after snow to shovel their sidewalks, or risk a fine. Manassas: Residents have 12 hours after snow to shovel their sidewalks. Manassas Park: Residents must clear their sidewalks during the first eight daylight hours after it snows. Loudoun County: Generally, property owners have six hours, or until noon the day after a nighttime snowfall, to clear sidewalks. The exception is on Sundays, when you have until noon Monday. Prince William County: Residents are encouraged but not legally required to shovel their sidewalks. The city of Worcester, Massachusetts, will reimburse close to 350 people who had their cars towed after a winter parking ban went into effect during the early morning hours. The Telegram & Gazette reports a higher-than-anticipated snowfall caused the city to initiate the parking ban around 1:00 a.m. Monday, retroactive to 11:30 p.m. Sunday. The ban was tweeted by the Department of Public Works & Parks' SnowParkingBan Twitter account at 1:02 a.m., but the city's emergency messaging system didn't send the alert until about 8 a.m. Monday. Some resident spoke out about the fines. Luis Rivera said, "iI's kind of inconvenient because if you ask me they just authorize people to just take money from everybody else overnight. So everybody's sleeping, getting ready to go to work the next day. Next thing you know they owe $127 plus a ticket which is $50." Spokesman John Hill says 739 people were issued $50 tickets for violating the ban. Police say a total of 347 of those violators had their vehicles towed. DPW Assistant Commissioner Matthew Labovites says officials incorrectly determined that the ban wouldn't be necessary. A month after signing a letter of intent with the city, state, and three public authorities to move ahead with plans for a Labor Day Weekend full of racing on Seaport District streets, Grand Prix Boston gained a new opposition group Tuesday with a splashy website. NoGrandPrixBoston.org doesnt say whos behind the site, and NECN could not independently confirm the identity of a person who responded to e-mail queries on behalf of the group and who wasnt available for an on-camera interview before the deadline for this story to be edited and broadcast. The site includes a letter to Mayor Martin J. Walsh urging him to cancel the planned race, saying in part: We foresee a great deal of disruption and chaos that will occur in our neighborhood before, during, and after the race. Grand Prix is planning to have Indy-style cars racing at speeds approaching 200 m.p.h. on a 2.2-mile course that includes parts of D and Congress Streets and the Haul Road, including a section that will pass under the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. The letter of intent states that no city, state, or public authority money will be used to pay for the event, and Grand Prix will take responsibility for restoring all city streets after the race weekend. The No Indy Car group says it fears there could be 4 to 6 months of construction shutting down streets, Interstate 90 on- and off-ramps, and MBTA stations, including the removal of the median on Congress Street and widening of Cypher Street, at the west end of the BCEC. Its also concerned about crowds of up to 200,000, many of them consuming alcohol, and race-car noise they assert could reach 140 decibels. This race is completely disruptive of our lives for an inordinate period of time several months of disruption every year for 5 years or longer, the group says, is far too long to bear. Grand Prix Boston rejected many of these concerns as not founded in fact and said: Weve continued to meet with residents, abutters, business owners, neighborhood associations, and literally anyone else who has requested information from us. We have a community page right on our website outlining the community groups with whom we have met. At every turn, we've shared renderings and drafts, and have welcomed input and, in fact, made route changes based on input from the community and from city and state agencies. Mayor Walshs press secretary, Bonnie McGilpin, said: The mayor is reviewing the letter, and his office is happy to meet with community groups to discuss the Grand Prix coming to Boston. He remains confident that the event will be good for the City and bring visitors to Boston. He has made it clear to IndyCar that community engagement is key to this process as it moves forward." While many people who live and work in the area have expressed concerns about disruption and noise related to Grand Prix, many also are excited about it and agree it could be a fun event that brings lots of tourism and positive attention for the city. I think Grand Prix in Boston would be something spectacular, said Brandon Carpenter of Gardner, Mass., who works in the district. He acknowledged that they're going to have to block off a lot of roads. It's going to be hard on traffic. But Michelle Cordo of Bostons Back Bay, who works in an office on Seaport Boulevard, said: Were in a construction zone as it is, so how much more disruptive can it really be. Brenden Agrela, who commutes daily from Smithfield, R.I., agreed: We have a lot going up and around to begin with, so it kind of adds to the noise. The mother of slain journalist James Foley said Wednesday the family was "delighted" to see the return of four Iranian-American citizens freed by Iran in a prisoner swap with the United States and is hopeful that the U.S. government will make hostages more of a priority. Foley, 40, went to Syria in 2012. He was captured that November and was beheaded by Islamic State militants in a video released in August 2014. Diane Foley, of Rochester, New Hampshire, told The Associated Press on Wednesday the prisoner release gives her hope that what happened to her son and others in Syria won't be repeated. "We Americans can do better, and God willing, we will ... protect our citizens and help them when such a situation happens," she said. The Islamic State group has acknowledged the death of the masked militant known as "Jihadi John," who appeared in videos showing the beheadings of James Foley, U.S. journalist Steven Sotloff, U.S. aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig, British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, and Japanese journalist Kenji Goto. "ISIS is definitely a threat, and that's why we need to be strong in terms of protecting our own and one another, and have coalitions for peace with our allies, as well as coalitions for war, that we need to be strong together against these threats," Diane Foley said. Foley testified before a House subcommittee last year, demanding proof that U.S. policy not to negotiate with terrorists is saving American lives and decreasing the rate the U.S. citizens are being captured. She is working on a book about her son. She said the family was heading Wednesday to the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, where a documentary about Foley will make its debut. The film, titled, "Jim: The James Foley Story," is by his childhood friend, Brian Oakes, and is scheduled to be shown on HBO next month. She said the family's focus is to help protect journalists reporting from conflicts and continuing her son's legacy. "He wanted to bring hope to kids in conflict zones in our inner cities, and that's what we're striving to do," she said. He's leading most New Hampshire polls, but Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has spent less time in the state than all but two of his competitors. According to necn's 2016 Candidate Tracker, Trump has visited 25 times and made a total of 31 stops. The only candidates who have been there fewer times are Rick Santorum (18 stops) and Mike Huckabee (nine), neither of whom are mounting a serious campaign in the Granite State. In fact, several candidates who have already dropped out of the race Lindsey Graham (176 stops), George Pataki (100) and Rick Perry (45) have spent more time in New Hampshire than the Republican frontrunner. [[302756881, C]] Recent polls have have Trump leading in New Hampshire by as much as 18 to 20 percentage points, with a RealClearPolitics average showing him with a 17.7-point edge in January. Trump's ability to remain atop the polls without meeting a large number of New Hampshire voters has some concerned it could hurt the state's first-in-the-nation status, according to the Boston Globe. The newspaper even pointed out that Trump has "rarely even spent the night in New Hampshire" during the campaign. "He's just parachuting in and leaving," longtime GOP operative Ryan Williams said. "A Trump victory would give some ammunition to other states who are jealous about New Hamphire's status." Chris Christie is currently leading the Republican field in New Hampshire stops with a total of 156, more than five times as many as Trump. "Putting in hours and days is no guarantee it's going to translate into increased poll numbers," Dean Spiliotes, a Southern New Hampshire University political scientist, said back in the fall when Trump was still the frontrunner. He said that technology, social media and campaign finance has "renationalized the primaries at some level" where candidates can still make connections with voters. On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders (76 stops) and Hillary Clinton (69) have spent almost the same amount of time in the state this cycle. Sanders has been atop recent state polls of the Democratic race. The New Hampshire primary is scheduled for Feb. 9. Necn's candidate tracker compiles campaign visits collected from media reports, candidate schedules and plans confirmed by the station. A new poll has Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders leading Hillary Clinton by a whopping 27 percent in New Hampshire. The CNN/WMUR poll, released Tuesday by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, has Sanders with the support of 60 percent off Democratic primary voters, followed by Clinton at 33 percent and Martin O'Malley at 1 percent. Only six percent remain undecided. "This poll suggests that our campaign has real momentum and that the American people want to go beyond establishment politics and establishment economics," Jeff Weaver, Sanders' national campaign manager, said in a statement. "But it's just a poll and we take nothing for granted." That's a substantial change since the UNH Survey Center's last poll, conducted in early December. That poll had him leading Clinton by a 10 percent margin. With the Feb. 9 New Hampshire Primary just three weeks away, both Sanders and Clinton are scheduled to be in the state this week. Sanders has stops scheduled in Peterborough, Manchester, Nashua and Wolfeboro on Thursday. Clinton arrives in state on Friday for stops in Rochester, Concord and Manchester. Archbishop of Papua New Guinea visits Norwich The Archbishop of Papua New Guinea, Clyde Igara, was reunited with ten pilgrims from the Diocese of Norwich on January 16 during his visit to the UK to attend the Primates meeting organised by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Ten of the Diocese of Norwich pilgrims from the 2015 pilgrimage to Papua New Guinea, took the opportunity to reunited with each other and the Archbishop to speak of their experiences. Last summer Bishops Graham and Jonathan led ten pilgrims on a pilgrimage to the Anglican province of Papua New Guinea; the pilgrimage was shared with seven pilgrims from Waiapu Diocese in New Zealand and four from Rockhampton Diocese in Australia. The reunion, that took place in Granary Court at Bishop's House in Norwich, was to enable time to remember and reflect on the extraordinary pilgrimage. The pilgrims recalled the highs and lows of the journey and reflected on what they have taken away from the pilgrimage. The Archbishop then also spoke a little about his hopes and expectations of our link with each other. Archbishop Clyde reminded the gathering that Papua New Guinea has over 800 different languages the largest concentration in the world which means over 800 different cultures; what holds them together, he said, is Gods doing. The link between the Diocese of Norwich and Papua New Guinea goes back to the early 70s, when the first Archbishop of Papua New Guinea (who was from Norfolk) and the then current Bishop of Norwich, Lancelot Fleming, first set up the link. In the years since, there have been exchanges of personnel, mostly on short visits, but sometimes longer. Last year, a couple from South Norfolk (Lynn and Tony Fry) took a sabbatical to volunteer in Papua New Guinea for eight months or so; many decades before this, a young priest from Papua New Guinea came here for some much valued curacy experience. Pilgrimages like the recent one, give mutual benefit to all partners, the Archbishop said. Overseas partners bring fresh perspectives on Christ in the world and take away a deeper understanding of the impact of a strong faith on the everyday lives of Papua New Guineans. The Anglican Church is no longer a baby church, he said, we now relate to each other adult-to-adult, as witnessed by the Archbishops attendance at the recent Primates meeting in Canterbury. Life should never be just for self, he said, underlining the Christian ethos of mutual care and support to all neighbours across the world. In response the Bishop of Norwich, The Right Revd Graham James, said that our pilgrimage was to learn from the church in Papua New Guinea about its martyrdoms, witness, suffering and sacrifice in recent times. The pilgrims had visited Martyrs School, near Popondetta, on Martyrs Day and commemorated with Papua New Guineans the martyrdom of seven Anglicans during the Japanese invasion in 1942. Bishop Graham also stressed the importance of church-to-church links between the two countries as well as links between their bishops and looked forward to meeting the Archbishop and members of his Church again in the future. Every other year Papua New Guinea is also the focus of the Diocesan Lent Appeal and this year the appeal will focus on raising money for a school in Orobada, Papua New Guinea. Reza Gul, 20, was admitted to a hospital after the attack in Ghormach district in the northwestern province of Faryab on Sunday. (Photo: AFP) Kabul: A photograph of an Afghan woman whose nose was sliced off by her husband in a fit of rage has sparked widespread outrage, with activists demanding punishment for the barbaric act. Reza Gul, 20, was admitted to a hospital after the attack in Ghormach district in the northwestern province of Faryab on Sunday. Her husband is said to have fled to a Taliban-controlled area. Mohammad Khan (the husband) cut off Reza Guls nose with a pocket knife, Faryab governors spokesperson Ahmad Javed Bedar told AFP. The incident highlights the endemic violence against women in Afghan society, despite reforms since the hardline Taliban Islamist regime was ousted in a 2001 US-led invasion. Such a brutal and barbaric act should be strongly condemned, Kabul-based womens rights activist Alema told AFP. Such incidents would not happen if the government judicial system severely punished attacks on women, added Alema, who goes by one name. The disfigured womans photograph was widely shared on social media, prompting calls for tough action against the husband. Bedar said Gul would need reconstructive surgery, which was not possible in the local government hospital. It was not immediately clear what prompted the husband to attack Gul, the mother of a one-year-old child who was married off five years ago as a teenager. Bedar said Khan, an unemployed man, had recently returned from neighbouring Iran and may have joined the Taliban after fleeing home following the attack. The government has vowed to protect womens rights but that has not prevented violent attacks. Horrifying cases like this one happen all too often in Afghanistan, Heather Barr, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, told AFP. The level of impunity for violence against women encourages some men to continue to feel that women are their property and violence is their right. In November a young woman was stoned to death after being accused of adultery in the central province of Ghor. And last March a woman named Farkhunda was savagely beaten and set ablaze in central Kabul after being falsely accused of burning a Koran. The mob killing triggered angry nationwide protests and drew global attention to the treatment of Afghan women. In 2010, Time magazine put the photograph of a mutilated 18-year-old, Bibi Aisha, on its cover. Her nose was cut off by an abusive husband. The cover provoked a worldwide outpouring of sympathy for Aisha, who was taken to the United States where she was given a prosthetic nose. Puppet Labs is a company I've written about often. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, its CEO, Luke Kanies, is an easy guy to talk with and can always be relied upon for an interesting perspective and readily consumable soundbite. Secondly, what the company is doing in IT automation is increasingly the key to unlocking enterprise agility. In the old world, typified by traditional enterprises, IT departments would create an application and rack and stack physical hardware on which to run those applications. Their servers were fixed assets that were there to do one thing: run a particular application for the foreseeable future. As such, they were carefully maintained and managed to ensure application reliability. In the modern world, typified by web-scale consumer Internet brands, servers are generally virtual assets that come and go at will. Applications scale up and down, come into existence and rapidly die, and the servers upon which those applications run are often virtual boxes created by compartmentalizing a physical server to support a number of different "virtual servers." In this model, servers are expendable and treated as such. Some people characterize these two different approaches as, "pets versus cattle." Traditional IT treats servers as pets, to be coddled and preened; new IT regards servers as cattle, useful for the time being, expendable when no longer required. Puppet is in the business of IT automation and helps organizations automate the provisioning and deprovisioning of all this virtual infrastructure. The company, along with its generally accepted number one rival, Chef, has grown to scale over the past few years by being seen as the shining light of new IT and, more importantly, by enabling existing and new enterprises to deliver IT in an agile manner. Puppet is today announcing that it has secured an additional $22 million funding round by way of a credit facility from Silicon Valley Bank. At the same time, Puppet has appointed former Genentech Chief Financial Officer Lou Lavigne to its board of directors and audit committee chair. While the additional capital is useful, it is somewhat interesting that this is via a credit facility. That is less usual than the regular venture-backed equity raise and might have people wondering about the approach. That said, Kanies has always been clear about growing his business in ways that are right for him and his shareholders, and not simply to fulfill the usual Silicon Valley norms. The positive side of a credit facility is that it doesn't have an impact on the balance sheet of the company, although some might suggest that it is less of a seal of approval of the company's performance than a traditional equity deal. Either way, the funding, along with Puppet's intention to greatly expand its Portland, Oregon, headquarters is an indication that the company is heading in the right direction. Something tells me Puppet has a lot of work ahead of it, helping companies move from a pet-preening culture to a cattle-raising one. The cry "Netflix to crack down on VPNs" reverberated in discussions on Reddit and then escaped onto Facebook and the press over the past week. The urgency of the alarm was more fitting of the repeal of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution than simple restrictions of a video service. Ultimately, internet privacy technologies used to foster free speech in repressive countries will prevail over Netflix's ability to block VPNs. Until recently, most of the world's population was restricted from watching Netflix streaming services. The restrictions weren't set by censors or authorities in the countries themselves, but are laid out in the licensing agreements from the studios that provide Netflix video content. VPNs and smart DNS proxy services circumvent these restrictions by making subscribers who live in restricted regions appear to be streaming within U.S. boarders. Worries about Netflix policing VPN and smart DNS proxy services began when the company announced it is expanding its streaming service to 130 new countries. This necessitated revisiting its many agreements to license content for each of the 130 countries, or the fraction of those countries that the studios would allow. Each country has a catalog of eligible video content available for streaming within its borders. In order to both provide content to new countries and meet its agreements with studios, Netflix would need to crack down on the services that allow ineligible content from reaching the wrong regions. Demand for access to Netflix's U.S. catalog among international subscribers is expected to keep growing until Netflix "can offer people the same films and TV series everywhere," according to a blog post by Netflix VP of Content Delivery David Fullagar. He also said that "in coming weeks, those using proxies and unblockers will only be able to access the service in the country where they currently are." Fullagar's comments suggest an arms race between Netflix and its international subscribers. It is technically impossible for Netflix to block all of its international subscribers. Even if the company could, it would lose substantial revenues from places like China, where it has over 20 million users (some of whom already use anticensorship and privacy technologies). To fulfill its obligation to its content licensors, Netflix will block the most obvious users of the most easily detectable unblocking services. In response, most of them will shift to better anti-censorship services. Netflix will be able to detect the smart DNS proxies because they don't mask the subscribers' country-specific IP address, which must match a whitelist of the allowed addresses from the country for which the video content is licensed. VPNs, however, can be much harder to detect and block. Netflix will be able to easily identify and block all the IP addresses in the regional internet registries, such as ARIN and RIPE, allocated to VPN services. There will be many dynamic and residential IP addresses allocated to entities that can't be traced to the VPN services that are owned through another controlled entity or are leased from an Internet Service Provider. VPN services, especially those serving people in politically repressive countries, avoid being associated with the IP addresses used to deliver undetectable encryption and proxy services. Compounding the difficulty of identifying the IP addresses associated with VPN services, VPN protocols can be obfuscated to look like normal traffic so that sensor can't detect them. For example, projects such as OpenVpn and the Tor network use openvpn_xorpatch to slide encrypted traffic past internet censors. Privacy technologies such as the Tor Project and OpenVPN are funded by a diverse group of public and private entities, such as Reddit, Princeton University, Federal Foreign Office of Germany, SRI International, and the U.S. Department of State, all of which will continue to improve technologies used to avoid detection by the censors in repressive regimes. VPN services that help foreign subscribers watch Netflix will also benefit from this research in privacy technologies. Netflix will make enough of an effort to block the most obvious unblocking services, but it won't be able to technically and won't want to, financially block all 54 million of its users that GlobalWebIndex says access the service via VPN. Sunny Leone's been receiving praises from different parts of the country for her recent interview. Mumbai: B-town is abuzz with Sunny Leones recent interview where the actress held her chin high and tackled all the absurd and misogynistic questions that were aimed at her by a television journalist. By putting up a brave front, the actress not only won the interview but also won over the Internet. Ever since her interview got aired, the actress has been receiving praises from different corners of the country. The entire Bollywood industry came forward and showed their support to the actress for her calm, composed and mature answers in the interview. Among other "clear" questions, the journalist had also asked Sunny if not bagging a film with Aamir Khan would affects her, to that, the actress sweetly replied, "It doesnt affect me. I am still going to be an Aamir Khan fan and I am still going to watch all his movies." While many of us were applauding the actress for her strength and grace, the actor himself has reacted on the interview. I think Sunny conducted herself with a lot of grace and dignity in this interview.... I wish I could have said the same about the interviewer. And yes Sunny, I will be happy to work with you. I have absolutely no problems with your "past", as the interviewer puts it. Stay blessed. Cheers, Aamir Khan reacted after watching the interview. These are the excerpts from the interview where the journalist questioned Sunny about Aamir Khan. Journalist: You think that Aamir Khan would ever work with you? Sunny: Probably not because of my background. Journalist: Would you like to work with him? Sunny: Of course, who wouldnt. Journalist: So you would like to work with Aamir but Aamir would not want to work with you, how does this reflect on you then? Sunny: It doesnt affect me. I am still going to be Aamir Khan fan and I am still going to watch all his movies. Also read: Journalist tried to target Sunny Leone on her past and this is how she won hearts Recently, we saw actors like Anushka Sharma, Alia Bhatt, Rishi Kapoor, Vidya Balan and many celebrities applaud the actress for staying true to herself and not losing her calm. Today, Bollywood's Mr. Perfectionist, Aamir Khan also joined the club. The actor's kind reaction overwhelmed Sunny. I think my heart just dropped seeing this!! Thank you so much for the support. It means the world and beyond to me! https://t.co/ayZmahPcIr Sunny Leone (@SunnyLeone) January 20, 2016 Priyanka Chopra is all set to return in season 2 of her hit American television show 'Quantico' on March 6. The actress is currently braving the bitter Montreal winter to shoot for the upcoming episodes. She posted a series of pictures where she can be seen all bundled up with her co-stars. Priyanka, who was shooting in subzero temperatures, thanked her director Jennifer Lynch. She posted, "#Quantico !coming back soon!! March 6th!thank u @thinkajen it was -25 degrees today! Frozen to my bones but such fun with u!" PC posted this unique picture of her standing in the snow and added the caption: Making footprints on fresh snow.. Kinda like my life Priyanka, who plays the character of FBI agent Alex Parrish in the ABC series, was recently awarded with the Peoples Choice Award in the Favourite Actress in a New TV series category for Quantico. Two young women- really young women- are on the cover of the book. If you take just the faces out and put them in a class photo, you'd be looking at the faraway gazes of two girls, who'd rather be away at a playground. But then this is a picture from many many decades ago, when in place of uniform skirts and tops, the girls wrapped long mundus around them and wore their hair into high topknots. Sethu Lakshmi Bayi and Sethu Parvathi Bayi sit there, waiting to be uncovered in the 700 pages that the book runs into. They are the principal characters in The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore written by Manu S. Pillai after six years of research. If you are the prejudiced type, you might have easily decided the author is an old man, another history buff. But once you learn Manu is just 25, was born in Kerala, had gone to college in Pune and London, worked with Dr Shashi Tharoor and at the House of Lords, you pick up an imaginary pair of scissors and cut your prejudices into little pieces. Manu was born in Mavelikkara, he says in an e-mail interview, "by a complete accident, because my parents have been in Pune for decades." And it's in Mavelikkara that both the Sethu sisters were born, nearly a century before Manu. It is also there that his love for history begins. "Every summer we'd come to visit my grandparents, and sitting in their old house, gorging on mangoes and jackfruit, I first got into Kerala history- old stories about our family, about the ruined temple in the backyard, about various traditions concerning goddesses and village heroes. I picked up from there and got interested in Kerala history at a broader level." Even at a young age, he enjoyed being around older people, wanting to do things they did. The more he picked up history, the more he loved it. Some of it surprised him, some excited him, but everything kept him going. "There's a lot of power politics in history. The very fact that every new government in this country goes out first to review history books and change the syllabus in schools, shows how political history is." And now he has written history that could surprise and excite others. Sexual freedom was also remarkable so that while polygamy was happily recognised in other parts of India, in Kerala, women were allowed polyandry. Nair women could, if they wished, entertain more than one husband and, in the event of difficulties, were free to divorce without any social stigma. Widowhood was no catastrophic disaster and they were effectively at par with men when it came to sexual rights, with complete autonomy over their bodies. "The status of women is just the tip of the iceberg. Did you know there were thousands of Chinese soldiers who lived in Calicut, and who left behind a half Chinese half-Malayali community called Chinna Kribala? You and I probably have Chinese blood somewhere in our veins," Manu says. But what really got him to write the book is the fascination he felt for Sethu Lakshmi Bayi. "Why did she leave Kerala after ruling over millions here? Why did she give up palaces and riches and choose obscurity in Bangalore? Why was she written out of history? The Ivory Throne investigates Travancore and its history using her life story, and the court drama around her, as its foundation." He had conducted extensive research through the archives of London, Kerala, and Delhi, went through libraries of three continents, and recorded many interviews. It's all been a lot of work, and one day he hopes to return to fiction, which he used to write in teenage. Today, he tells you he is dropping the 'unemployed writer' card, because he is living out of a suitcase. "Since October and for the foreseeable future-- I am moving around with the book to do launches in various cities (Thiruvananthapuram on January 29), with my battered red suitcase for company!" Dear Rohith Vemula, I am writing this letter because your letter moved me. I wanted to reply to it, talk to you, listen to you. We have never met, though I believe you were in the social science department that once used to invite me often. I was wondering why no faculty member got up to defend you, why no one took you home. I wonder why no one told your mother that you had no hostel, but lived in a tent outside the university. I want to begin with this everyday sense of neglect because those who capture you for the headlines are taxidermists of the moment; they freeze a life into a second and forget that sense of being that made you what you were: A man who cared, a man who protested, who believed that protest and research went together, that being from a backward class meant being more than backward. You and I know how universities function. They are bureaucracies which forget to pay scholarships, but demand research reports regardless. They are hypothecated to politicians who decide the fate of students. Expelling five students who are from the backward classes makes little difference, especially when a regime classifies you as casteist, extremist and anti-national three stigmas which have become three signs of grace. It is a pity that no report told me what your thesis was about. I would have loved to talk to you about it. You have dealt with vice-chancellors and ministers as dictators, and I sense your helplessness and humiliation at being suspended unfairly and treated without dignity because you were an easy target. Your vulnerability colours the place, yet no one seems to sense it. There will be inquiring committees which will banalise your situation and talk of the problem that you were a student, activist and from a backward class. Dissenters never had an easy life in the university. An inquiry report of a man who wanted to travel to the stars would be the final obscenity. I guess politics is murky, but political activists have always dreamt of an ideal and just world. As a group you protested against the death penalty to Yakub Memon. It was an attempt of one struggle to reach across to another, to express the solidarity across particular battles. What is beautiful is that the university still cares about this kind of connectivity of struggles and of disciplines, of researchers despite the V-C and ministers. I was trying to imagine you sitting in your tent, imagining what the future will be. One sensed your humiliation, the feeling of despair at being restricted to some parts of the university, of being treated as a pariah twice over. One senses you had friends like Ramu, who you borrowed money from and whose room you used for the last act. Bureaucrats forget that the hostel is more than a residence, a locality; it is home, refuge, identity, it is community, a student utopia. By denying it to you, even when the charges were not proven, they were eating into your vulnerability. You were silent about yourself even as you protested about the treatment of others. It is your vulnerability that bothers me. You wanted to write and you felt the desperation of not writing. You wanted to write like Carl Sagan and travel to the stars. Yet, you felt that the magic of writing was still an impotent wish. Sagan had dreams of a different kind of astronomy, of life on Mars, dreams which he expressed with words that added a literary touch to astronomy where number and distance acquired a touch of intimacy. To write like Sagan was a dream-like vision because astronomy and science fiction went beyond the everyday darkness of politics. Every reformer battling odds needed a second, even a third self to sort out the utopias in him. Your dreams were not limited to the world of the backward class alone, but of the worlds yet to come. One senses that beyond the stars the mystique of writing haunted you. For you, it was not politics that screamed of impotence. Politics only reeked of corruption. It was not being able to write. One senses you felt the act of writing inside you, experienced the textures of thought that link word and feeling. Writing haunted you and for you a book, a manifesto would have been the beginning of liberation. You understood the meaning of the book and one must pay tribute to that. Reading and writing are the two dreams of a university. One must have sensed your feeling of loss that you lacked a room of your own to write. All we have now is your last note and your silences. You died in silence in a season of literary festivals. I hope next year that they dedicate a special session to the sense of the writer in you. I cannot wave you as a flag. I wanted to see you as a friend, wished to see you as a person a person who wanted to preserve his individual self, who wanted to be more than a vote or a number who felt he had never been treated as a mind. Sociology, you felt, could not exhaust you, because you know you were a glorious thing made of stardust. Yet you were part of the community, its politics, But your letter warns people not to stereotype you, collectivise you. You were lonely and alone, and yet a part of many collectives, drawing your inspiration from many a group. Your dream is not a dream. It is a dream all dreamers can share and in invoking the citizenship of the dream and the commons we call protest, you have touched a chord, becoming a tuning fork for the unfulfilled dreams of today. Your silence became a symphony of the unsaid and the unfulfilled. Yet your text, the letter, the fragment you left behind meant so much. It was your first and yet final letter. It is a toast to life, which mentions the lives lost in you. You want to account for yourself before you provide that literal piece of accounting. It is a reminder that you as a student might have unfulfilled wishes, that the university remains a collection of unfulfilled promises. You did keep the vision intact without your belief being colored, untouched by filters of artificial art. I hope they name a star after you. That much the world owes you. I have never met you. But your absence will haunt all the universities I know. One hopes the university stops being a rusticator of dreams. Another social scientist RCom is still awaiting 800 MHz spectrum liberalisation demand letter from DoT in 4 circles where there is no market price benchmark. New Delhi: Reliance Communications on January 20, said it has paid Rs 5,383.84 crore as spectrum liberalisation fee to DoT for radiowaves in the 800/850 MHz band held by it in 16 telecom circles. "RCom has on January 20, 2016 paid an aggregate amount of Rs 5,383.84 crore as liberalisation fee to DoT in relation to spectrum in the 800/850 MHz band held by it in 16 telecom circles," the company said in a statement. "The Kolkata High Court, vide its judgment dated January 14, 2016, has already directed that RCom is not required to furnish any bank guarantees for disputed OTSC, as required by DoT." On Monday, Reliance Communications and Reliance Jio Infocomm entered into spectrum-trading and spectrum sharing agreements allowing Reliance Jio to now get spectrum in 850 MHz band from RCOM in 9 Circles, enabling it to offer 4G LTE services. Spectrum trading will happen in 9 circles; subsequently Reliance Jio and RCom will share spectrum in 17 circles. Sources said eventually, spectrum sharing to be done in all 22 circles (to begin with, 17 circles in Phase 1 as RCom is still awaiting 800 MHz spectrum liberalisation demand letter from DoT in 4 circles where there is no market price benchmark [Rajasthan, Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu) and in last circle, J&K, there are some technical considerations which are being sorted out. As per sources, RCom got immediate payout of Rs 4,500 crore from Rel Jio, and these proceeds were used to pay the Spectrum liberalisation cost. Access to enhanced spectrum footprint in the 800 MHz band will complement RJIL's LTE services rollout, providing increased network coverage and superior service quality. The spectrum arrangements between RJIL and RCom will result in network synergies, enhanced network capacity and optimise spectrum utilisation and capex efficiencies. Both operators see considerable savings in operating costs and future investment in networks. Sources said that in all circles where RCom's spectrum holdings come down to 1.25 MHz post spectrum trading deal with Reliance Jio, the company will be get 3.75 MHz of 800-850 MHz band spectrum from MTS once it proposed merger with the Russian firm is completed. In November, India's fourth-largest telecom operator RCom announced acquisition of Sistema's Indian telecom unit in an all-stock deal that will create an operator with 118 million subscribers. As per the deal, SSTL will hold about 10 per cent stake in RCom and pay off its existing debt before closing the deal. Russian tycoon Vladimir Evtushenkov-controlled AFK Sistema currently holds 56.68 per cent stake in SSTL while Russian government owns 17.14 per cent interest. Shyam Group has 23.98 per cent stake and the rest is owned by small investors. SSTL offers mobile telephony services under MTS brand across nine telecom circles in the country. Reporter Mary Schenk is a reporter covering police, courts and breaking news at The News-Gazette. Her email is mschenk@news-gazette.com, and you can follow her on Twitter (@schenk). Reporter Debra Pressey is a reporter covering health care at The News-Gazette. Her email is dpressey@news-gazette.com, and you can follow her on Twitter (@DLPressey). Columnist Tom Kacich is a columnist and the author of Tom's Mailbag at The News-Gazette. His column appears Sundays. His email is tkacich@news-gazette.com, and you can follow him on Twitter (@tkacich). One of Editor & Publishers 10 That Do It Right 2021 A protein that is constantly expressed by cancer cells and quiescent in healthy ones appears to be a solid target for reducing cancer's ability to spread, scientists report. The WASF3 protein enables cancer cell invasion, and by interrupting its relationship with another protein that helps WASF3 keep its form and function, scientists have suppressed the ability of highly invasive human breast and prostate cancer cells to metastasize through an artificial surface that mimics invading a blood vessel. "Ninety-five percent of all cancer deaths are due to metastasis, not due to the primary cancer," said Dr. John Cowell, professor of pathology at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University and associate director for basic science of the university's Cancer Center. "If metastasis is your target, this is the protein you should be targeting." Cowell is corresponding author of the study in the journal Cancer Research, which shows interfering with WASF3's relationship with CYFIP1, is deadly to WASF3. "CYFIP1 stabilizes the protein complex," he said. "The whole thing has to be together to be stable; otherwise it just falls apart." The WASF3 finding has applicability to a wide range of cancers, including other common cancers such as melanoma and pancreatic cancer, Cowell said. His team first suspected WASF3's role in metastasis in 2002 when they first identified the gene in a child with neuroblastoma. They knocked the gene out a decade ago and saw it stopped cancer spread, then used mass spectroscopy to discover the proteins WASF3 interacts with and found CYFIP1 high on the list. More recently, his team worked with Dr. Eileen J. Kennedy, assistant professor in the University of Georgia College of Pharmacy, to develop stapled peptides that essentially disconnect WASF3 from its stabilizing force CYFIP1. "It's the same effect. WASF3 goes away and, guess what, so does invasion," Cowell said. There is already one clinical trial underway for a peptide that interrupts the interaction between two other proteins. "So the therapeutic pendulum is swinging toward these peptides," he said. The scientists note that the cells' ability to proliferate - not considered a part of metastasis in which breast cancer cells, for example, spread to the lungs - was unimpeded. "Cells can and will grow at the primary site," Cowell said. More traditional cancer therapies, including drugs and/or surgery, often are effective at removing a large mass that can result from such proliferation. However, there are currently no therapies available that target metastasis or WASF3 specifically, Cowell said. Lab Diagnostics & Automation eBook Compilation of the top interviews, articles, and news in the last year. Download a copy today "We thought: Let's find out if we can target the protein-protein interaction," he said. CYFIP1 essentially enables WASF3 to sit on ready inside cells. In a healthy cell, WASF3 could be active for a short time to aid wound healing, for example, then go quiet again. But cancer hijacks its ability to promote metastasis and keeps it turned on. In fact, higher WASF3 expression has been documented in a wide range of metastatic cancers. Cowell suspects that the usually healthy relationship also is part of a sort of fail-safe mechanism. "Inside your cell, there are surveillance mechanisms that are watching proteins all the time and if they find a protein that is not folded exactly right, they kill it. CYFIP1 holds WASF3 in its right conformation to function and also to avoid the surveillance system that would normally kill it." While the entire WASF family of proteins has been implicated in healthy cell movement, only WASF3 seems to help cancer cells invade and metastasize. When the scientists knocked down WASF1 and 2, which also bind to CYFIP1, the cancer cells' ability to invade was not affected. Cowell notes that there are likely many genes involved in metastasis and many likely intersect at some point. "The critical thing is, all you have to do to a cancer cell is kill the function of this protein, and it can't metastasize." The scientists are finding similar results in mice with breast cancer and in zebrafish given human cancer cells. Future studies will need to examine stability and toxicity of the stapled peptides. "The stage we are at is the proof of principle that targeting this particular complex has the potential to suppress invasion or metastasis," Cowell said. Cowell and his team reported in 2010 in the British Journal of Cancer the increased expression of WASF3 in high-grade human prostate cancer tumors and that knocking down WASF3, reduced prostate cancer cell motility and invasion. Researchers at the University of Twente in The Netherlands are working on a biopsy robot that combines the best features of MRI and ultrasound, aiming to improve the diagnosis of breast cancer and muscle diseases. Current screening techniques for breast cancer result in 10 to 20 per cent of patients wrongly being sent home with good news, says UT researcher Foad Sojoodi Farimani. He is one of the project leaders of the European research project MURAB, which stands for MRI and Ultrasound Robotic Assisted Biopsy. Farimani's goal is to significantly reduce this percentage of false negatives. 'If a mammography shows a suspicious image then we need to take a small piece of tissue for lab examination. But it's difficult to determine precisely where the biopsy should be carried out. As a result we overlook too many patients who do indeed have a problem. That's an issue we hope to solve.' Expensive MRI and cheap ultrasound A biopsy in the MRI scanner could present a solution, explains Farimani. 'MRI does not generate any radiation, has no side effects, and you can determine very precisely where you should do your biopsy. But it's very expensive and it takes about 45 to 60 minutes a patient. Even wealthier countries can't afford any large-scale screening programmes with MRI.' This is why the UT researchers are collaborating with parties such as Siemens, KUKA and universities in Verona and Vienna to build a robot that combines the best aspects of an MRI scan with cheaper and less precise technologies, such as an ultrasound sensor and a pressure sensor. Muscle diseases This will mean that patients need to spend just 15 to 20 minutes in the MRI scanner. 'This produces an offline MRI image that you can combine, during the biopsy, with online images from the ultrasound sensor,' says Farimani. 'One of the biggest challenges in this project is to use the precise MRI image to locate suspicious tissue in the much more indistinct ultrasound image.' In addition to breast cancer, Farimani and his colleagues are also focussing on biopsy for muscle diseases. But ultimately, he says, the technology should be suitable for all diagnoses where a small piece of human tissue needs to be removed from the body. Collaboration with hospitals Dutch hospitals such as Radboud University Medical Center and the ZGT hospital group are also involved in the research project. The UT is working with these parties to bring the technology into line with market wishes. 'The robotics in this project might actually be the simplest issue. Actually getting medical technology to market is often easier said than done,' adds Farimani. The MURAB project got underway quite recently. In November, MURAB received a Horizon2020 grant of 4.3 million euros. Some 1.2 million euros of this are going to the UT, which is managing the project. Besides Farimani, professors Stefano Stramigioli (project leader) and Ferdi van der Heijden are also responsible for project coordination; they are members of the CTIT research institute at the UT. Approximately 2.6 million babies were stillborn in 2015, or around 7200 every day globally. Falls in stillbirth rates since the year 2000 are failing to keep pace with falls in childhood and maternal mortality rates, say the authors of The Lancets new Ending preventable stillbirths Series. Of the 2.6 million stillbirths (which happen during the final trimester of pregnancy, or after 28 weeks gestation), half occur intrapartum (during the birthing process). While 98% of stillbirths occur in low-income and middle-income countries, they also remain a problem for high-income countries. Series co-lead Professor Joy Lawn from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, UK, and colleagues found that from 2000 to 2015 [paper 2], the global average stillbirth rate fell from 247 per 1000 total births to 184 - equivalent to an annual rate of reduction (ARR) of 20% for stillbirths. They say: Thus, although some progress has been made, this reduction has been slower than for maternal (ARR 30%), neonatal (31%), and postneonatal mortality of children younger than 5 years (45%) over the same period. The authors also highlight that, for every country to reach the Every Newborn Action Plan stillbirth target of 12 or fewer stillbirths per 1000 total births by 2030, this global ARR will need to more than double to 4.2%. A total of 94 mainly high-income countries and upper middle-income countries have already met this target, yet most of these still have wide equity gaps between the poorest and richest families which need to be addressed. Notably 56 countries, mainly in Africa, will need to at least double their progress to meet the target. The Series also provides new findings on the preventability of stillbirths. Data from 18 countries suggests that congenital abnormalities account for a median of only 74% of stillbirths, dispelling the myth that all stillbirths are inevitable and are due to congenital conditions. Many disorders associated with stillbirths are modifiable and often coexist, such as maternal infections (malaria and syphilis account for 8.0% and 77% of stillbirths respectively), non-communicable diseases, nutrition and lifestyle factors (each about 10%), and maternal age older than 35 years (67%). Pre-eclampsia and eclampsia together contribute to 47% of stillbirths, while prolonged pregnancies contribute to 140% of stillbirths. The authors highlight a number of countries that have made impressive progress. Among high income countries (HIC), the Netherlands had the highest annual rate of reduction from 2000 to 2015 (68%), attributed to improvements in antenatal care and care at birth, a wide-scale perinatal audit, coupled with a focus on womens health before and during pregnancy. Among low and middle-income countries (LMIC), Cambodia (ARR 36%), Bangladesh (34%) and Rwanda (29%) have made faster progress in stillbirth prevention than their neighbours. Rwanda for example has doubled the number of births in health facilities and improved the quality of this care as well as that of antenatal care. Professor Joy Lawn and colleagues say: Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest stillbirth rates and the slowest rates of progress worldwide, especially in countries with conflicts and emergencies. Thus at the present rates of progress, over 160 years will pass before the average pregnant woman in sub-Saharan Africa has the same chance of her baby being born alive as does a woman nowadays in a high-income country. Stillbirths remain a problem in high income countries (HIC) where variations in stillbirth rates across countries and large equity gaps persist. Estimates [paper 4] show an average stillbirth rate (after 28 weeks gestation) in 49 HICs of 35 per 1000 total births. Country-specific rates varied widely from 13 (Iceland) to 88 (Ukraine). The annual rate of reduction (ARR) from 2000 to 2015 varied with eight countries showing ARRs of less than 1%, and five countries with ARRs of more than 4%. Dr Vicki Flenady, Mater Research Institute, University of Queensland, Australia and colleagues conclude that if all high income countries (HICs) achieved stillbirth rates equal to the best performing countries (stillbirth rate 20 or less per 1000 births), an estimated 19400 late gestation (28 weeks or more) stillbirths could have been avoided in 2015. National mortality audit data suggest substandard care contributes to 2030% of all stillbirths in HIC. In high-income countries, a woman living under adverse socioeconomic circumstances has around twice the risk of having a stillborn child when compared to her more advantaged counterparts. Stillbirth rates for women of south Asian and African origin giving birth in Europe or Australia are two to three times higher than white women. Stillbirth in disadvantaged women can be addressed through education and alleviation of poverty, as well as improved access to health care, especially timely, culturally appropriate antenatal care. Flenady and colleagues also call for national perinatal mortality audit programmes to be implemented in all high-income countries, including a systematic approach to classifying the causes of stillbirth and research focusing on stillbirth prediction, understanding placental pathways to stillbirth and causal pathways to unexplained stillbirth. They add that interventions to increase the number of women beginning pregnancy with a normal bodyweight are crucially important to improve pregnancy outcomes and longer-term health. They also show that stigma and fatalism persists in high income countries. The International Stillbirth Alliance Survey conducted for the Series showed that around half of parents felt their community believed that parents should not talk about their stillborn baby because it makes people feel uncomfortable. One parent said many women told me that my sons death was likely nature taking care of my mistakes. Flenady and colleagues conclude that Stillbirths are a major public health issue in HICs and reductions in rates have not matched those for neonatal mortality. Variation and socioeconomic disparities in stillbirth rates, suboptimum uptake of interventions, low proportions of stillbirths attributed to congenital abnormality and high proportions classified as unexplained, and the contribution of substandard care factors suggest stillbirths are not inevitable, and that further reduction in HICs is possible. Dr Frederik Fren, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo, Norway, and colleagues review progress made since the previous Lancet Stillbirths Series published in 2011. They say that worldwide attention to babies who die in stillbirth is rapidly increasing, from integration within the new UN Secretary Generals Global Strategy for Womens, Childrens and Adolescents Health, to country policies inspired by the Every Newborn Action Plan. Many countries specifically requested inclusion of a stillbirth target that, if achieved, would prevent over half of stillbirths worldwide. However of 67 LMIC countries with accessible plans only 15 even mention stillbirths. Authors note that Still, in most countries, implementation of the recommended community actions and health interventions for antenatal and intrarpartum care is generally low. Hardly any development funding for implementation has been disbursed. Fren and colleagues discuss how both the plans above have helped increase the recognition and prioritisation of stillbirths. However they note that some points have still not been made strongly enough, such as the recognition that stillbirths are not just abstract numbers but are babies that die; and that prenatal health is the biological foundation of life-long health for every newborn to enable him or her to attain the maximum level of health and potential during their lifetime, and reduce the later risk of non-communicable diseases. Dr Alexander Heazell, Maternal and Fetal Health Research Centre, St Marys Hospital, Manchester and colleagues highlight the often underappreciated implications of stillbirths on parents, families, health-care providers and societies worldwide [paper 3]. They estimate that 6070% of grieving mothers in high income countries (HIC) reported grief-related depressive symptoms that they regarded as clinically significant 1 year after their babys death. In about half of cases, these symptoms endured for at least 4 years after the loss. If these figures are extrapolated to the 26 million women who had a stillbirth globally each year, an estimated 42 million women are living with depressive symptoms after stillbirth. Stigma was also particularly evident in low and middle income countries (LMIC), in cultures where talking about death is taboo, and where the dead baby was not yet deemed to be a person. In these contexts, mothers accounts suggested that they suppressed grief in public, instead choosing to deal with the emotions privately and alone. Differences in post-stillbirth care were revealed by the International Stillbirth Alliance survey (LMIC n=117, HIC n=2020), which reported that parents in LMICs were less likely than those in HICs to be offered contact with their baby (35% in LMICs vs 94% in HICs), the opportunity to see and hold their baby (42% in LMICs vs 95% HICs), make memories (35% in LMICs vs 87% in HICs), and name their baby (39% in LMICs vs 83% in HICs) after a stillbirth. The authors conclude: On the basis of these data, the key element of what works to reduce the impact of stillbirth on bereaved parents and families can be summarised as seeing through the eyes of those affected. This includes staff who understand what different parents and families need and when they need it; communities that acknowledge grief and loss and do not stigmatise those who have had stillbirths; employers who provide effective leave arrangements; and governments that provide tangible support, such as funeral costs, and paid leave from work commitments. Stillbirth is associated with substantial direct, indirect, psychological, and social costs to women, and to their families, society, and government. In the final paper, Dr Luc de Bernis, UN Population Fund, Geneva, Switzerland, and colleagues [paper 5] say that the estimated 7200 stillbirths that occur every day are hidden in global public health and womens rights initiative despite the evidence shown in 2011. Nearly half are intrapartum stillbirths and are highly preventable with high-quality care at birth and early identification of at-risk pregnancies. Even though the promotion of womens and childrens health inherently includes the prevention of stillbirths, intentional efforts are necessary to address stillbirth since progress has lagged behind. Thus the authors propose three ways to effectively and appropriately incorporate stillbirths in post-2015 initiatives for womens and childrens health in order to meet the full potential of efforts. These criteria include: acknowledge the burden of stillbirths; address actions needed to prevent stillbirths with antenatal and intrapartum care; and monitor stillbirths with a target and/or outcome indicator. The paper highlights the already agreed goals, targets and indicators including the Every Newborn Action Plan, calling on every country to achieve a rate of 12 stillbirths or fewer per 1000 total births by 2030. In addition, the authors highlight a number of important milestones related to family planning, antenatal care, care during labour and birth, post-mortem respectful and supportive care and reducing stigma as well as improved monitoring and research in this area. The authors say: As the use of the Millennium Development Goals came to an end in 2015, 2016 must be a turning point for ending preventable deathsstillbirths, and maternal, newborn, and child deathsOne of the most important contributions to ending preventable stillbirths will be the intentional incorporation of stillbirths into global, regional, and national policy frameworks for womens and childrens health. They conclude: Every Woman Every Child has called for prioritization of stillbirths post-2015 but stillbirth prevention and response will need to be done differently to reach the full potential of 2030 with 126 million more mothers and children alive, including 21 million stillbirths prevented. In a linked Comment, The Lancet Editor-in-chief Richard Horton, and Senior Editor Udani Samarasekera, write: Plasma cells play a key role in our immune system. Now scientists at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna, Austria, and at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI) in Melbourne, Australia, succeeded in characterizing a central regulator of plasma cell function. The results of both teams are published in two back-to-back papers in "Nature Immunology" today. Legend: Cross section through a plasma cell (schematic diagram). An abundance of endoplasmic reticulum is visible within the cell and secreted antibodies outside. IMP /IMBA Our environment teems with microorganisms and viruses that are potentially harmful. The reason why we survive their daily attacks is the ability of the immune system to neutralize these invaders in numerous ways. Plasma cells are key players in this process. They fight infections and establish long-lasting protection against pathogens. Plasma cells are white blood cells that develop from B-cells. They are the effector cells of the humoral immune response. Their main function is to produce antibodies that patrol the body in large numbers to neutralize harmful invaders. A functional plasma cell produces up to 10,000 antibodies per second to release them into the blood stream. This outstanding achievement can be visualized with a powerful microscope, as active plasma cells are packed with antibody-producing vesicles, constituting the so-called endoplasmic reticulum that is essential for antibody assembly and secretion. B-cells need to be activated by antigens (foreign substances) in order to develop into plasma cells. They first form plasmablasts that migrate to the bone marrow where they survive for many years or even decades. The long-lasting protection provided by active vaccines is based on this immunological memory of plasma cells. A CENTRAL ROLE FOR BLIMP1 Scientist have known about the functions of plasma cells for quite a while. However, details of how the differentiation and function of these cells are regulated were still unknown. Now an important key to understanding the function of plasma cells has been discovered by a team headed by Meinrad Busslinger, Senior Scientist and Deputy Director at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna, Austria. In a five-year project, the team succeeded in deciphering the role of the protein Blimp1 as a central regulator of plasma cell development and function. In its current issue, the science journal "Nature Immunology" publishes the results of the team in Vienna as well as the work of Australian colleagues that complements the Viennese results. In detailed studies, scientists at the IMP identified all genes that are involved in the development of plasma cells in mice. First author Martina Minnich, whose PhD-thesis provided the groundwork for the publication, explains the results: We found that more than 50 percent of these genes are regulated by Blimp1. Therefore, this factor must be of vital importance for plasma cells. Furthermore, we were able to show for the first time that Blimp1 not only switches genes off but can also switch other genes on. This is an important discovery for the understanding of plasma cell development. Lab Diagnostics & Automation eBook Compilation of the top interviews, articles, and news in the last year. Download a copy today "Most of the essential functions of plasma cells are controlled by the factor Blimp1", Meinrad Busslinger summarizes the results. "It regulates their mobility and migration to the bone marrow. Blimp1 is also responsible for the enormous increase in size of the endoplasmic reticulum and the strong up-regulation of antibody production in plasma cells. Humoral immunity would not be possible without Blimp1." NO ANTIBODIES WITHOUT BLIMP1 Even though Blimp1 is necessary for the development of plasma cells, mature plasma cells can survive without this factor. However, when Blimp1 is switched off, they become non-functional as they no longer produce antibodies. This unexpected finding is the result of work carried out at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI) in Melbourne, Australia. The study, which is published back-to-back with the Austrian paper, was led by Stephen Nutt, Head of the Division of Molecular Immunology at WEHI. The picture that emerges from the Australian study perfectly complements the results obtained at the IMP. Insight into the manifold functions of Blimp1 is not only important for our understanding of the immune system but may also be relevant for human medicine. Mutations in the Blimp1 gene can block the further differentiation of B-cells, which contributes to the formation of malign B cell tumors known as lymphomas. Moreover, quiescent plasma cells can sometimes switch to uncontrolled cell growth and thus turn into plasma cell tumors or multiple myelomas. Another aspect of the immune system that is highly relevant for medicine is the broad spectrum of autoimmune diseases. Conditions like systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) are an example for the serious damage to organs and tissue caused by misguided immune responses which generate plasma cells producing auto-reactive antibodies that turn against the body's own tissue. Meinrad Busslinger: More than 2.6 million stillbirths continue to occur globally every year with very slow progress made to tackle this 'silent problem', according to new research published in The Lancet. Despite significant reductions in the number of maternal and child deaths, there has been little change in the number of stillbirths (in the third trimester of pregnancy) even though the majority are preventable. Half of all stillbirths occur during labour and birth, usually after a full nine month pregnancy, and the research highlights that most of these 1.3 million deaths could be prevented with improved quality of care. Globally, 98% of all stillbirths occur in low- and middle-income countries. At the current rate of progress, it will be more than 160 years before a pregnant woman in Africa has the same chance of her baby being born alive as a woman in a high-income country today. However, the problem also remains significant in high-income countries where the number of stillbirths is now often higher than infant deaths. The Ending Preventable Stillbirth research series states the annual rate of reduction for stillbirths is 2.0%, much slower than progress made for maternal (3.0%) and child deaths (4.5%). It also reveals the hidden consequences of stillbirth, with more than 4.2 million women living with symptoms of depression, often for years, in addition to economic loss for families and nations. Series co-lead, Professor Joy Lawn from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said: "We must give a voice to the mothers of 7,200 babies stillborn around the world every day. There is a common misperception that many of the deaths are inevitable, but our research shows most stillbirths are preventable. Half of the 2.6 million annual deaths could be prevented with improved care for women and babies during labour and childbirth, and additionally, many more lives could be saved with effective care during pregnancy. We already know which existing interventions save lives. These babies should not be born in silence, their parents should not be grieving in silence, and the international community must break the silence as they have done for maternal and child deaths. The message is loud and clear - shockingly slow progress on stillbirths is unacceptable." New estimates of stillbirth rates for 195 countries developed by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine with the World Health Organization and UNICEF reveal huge inequalities around the world. Ten countries account for two-thirds of stillbirths with India having the highest number, estimated at 592,100 in 2015. The highest rates are in Pakistan (43.1 per 1,000 total births) and in Nigeria (42.9). The lowest rates are in Iceland (1.3), Denmark (1.7), Finland (1.7) and the Netherlands (1.8). Netherlands is also making the fastest progress, reducing stillbirths by 6.8% per year. The United States is one of the slowest progressing countries with a reduction of 0.4% per year. In every region around the world there are countries that are outperforming their neighbours, for example Rwanda is the fastest progressing country in Africa (annual rate of reduction of 2.9%) demonstrating that most stillbirths are preventable and progress is achievable. UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, said: "Childbirth is one of the most risky moments of life for both mothers and babies. We must make a global push to eliminate the tragedy of the millions of mostly preventable stillbirth deaths that occur every year. That is why a focus on a continuum of care, from family planning through pregnancy to birth and beyond into childhood and adolescence, is a key element of the Every Woman Every Child movement and the Global Strategy for Women's, Children's and Adolescents' Health." The new research includes the first global analysis of risk factors associated with stillbirth, underlining that many deaths can be prevented by: Treating infections during pregnancy - 8.0% of all stillbirths are attributable to malaria, increasing to 20.0% in sub-Saharan Africa, and 7.7% of all stillbirths are associated with syphilis, increasing to 11.2% in sub-Saharan Africa. Tackling the global epidemics of obesity and non-communicable diseases, notably diabetes and hypertension - at least 10% of all stillbirths are linked to each of these conditions. Strengthening access to and quality of family planning services - especially for older and very young women, who are at higher risk of stillbirth. Addressing inequalities - in high-income countries, women in the most disadvantaged communities face at least double the risk of stillbirth. The research also highlights the underappreciated psychological, social and economic impacts of stillbirth on parents, families, caregivers, and countries. New estimates suggest at least 4.2 million women around the world are living with symptoms of depression due to stillbirth, suffering psychological distress, stigma and social isolation, as well as increased risk of family breakdown, and even abuse and violence. Christina Sapulaye from Malawi, who experienced a stillbirth last year, said: "It was a very painful situation to me and I never knew what to do... I am being stigmatised by my own people and was divorced due to the stillbirth, and now I am by myself with my little kids." Fathers also commonly report suppressing their grief, and almost half of 3,503 parents surveyed in high-income countries felt society wanted them to forget their stillborn baby and try to have another child. The economic impact of stillbirth for families ranges from funeral costs for their baby to loss of earnings due to time off work, with data suggesting 10% of bereaved parents remain off work for six months. The direct financial cost of stillbirth care is 10-70% greater than for a live birth, with additional costs to governments due to reduced productivity of grieving parents and increased welfare costs. Dr Alexander Heazell, Series co-author from the Tommy's Stillbirth Research Centre at St Mary's Hospital, University of Manchester, said: "The consequences of stillbirth have been hugely underestimated. Our research suggests that grief and symptoms of depression after stillbirth often endure for many years. It is vital we, as carers, see the loss through the eyes of those parents affected to provide sensitive and respectful bereavement care. We know that something as simple as supporting parents to see and hold their baby and providing bereavement support can reduce the long-term negative impact of stillbirth. Dealing with stillbirth can also have a psychological impact on health workers; consequently, better training and provision of support for those looking after affected families should also be a priority." While there is currently significant investment in care and research for babies after they are born, the research calls for more focus on the baby before birth, with increased funding that reflects the scale of 2.6 million deaths a year. They argue that high-quality care during pregnancy and labour would result in a quadruple return on investment by saving lives of mothers and newborns, preventing stillbirths, and also improving child development. Series co-lead, Vicki Flenady, Associate Professor from the Mater Research Institute - University of Queensland, said: "There is a huge variation in progress on stillbirths, even in high-income countries, from rates of 1.3 to 8.8 stillbirths per 1,000 total births, with stigma, taboo and fatalism still a reality. All countries should implement and respond to high quality national audits of these deaths, which will lead to improvements in quality of care. This has been the case in the Netherlands, which has had the steepest reduction in stillbirth rates. If every high-income country achieved stillbirth rates of 2 or less, like the best performing countries, then nearly 20,000 stillbirths could have been prevented in 2015." The Ending Preventable Stillbirth Series was developed by 216 experts from more than 100 organisations in 43 countries and comprises five papers. The research provides compelling evidence of the preventability of most stillbirths, forming the basis for action from parents, health care professionals, and politicians. It follows the research group's 2011 series on stillbirths also published in The Lancet. A new study has revealed traditional Chinese acupuncture treatments are no better than fake acupuncture for treating menopause symptoms. But, in a surprise finding, both the real and sham treatments showed a 40 per cent improvement in the severity and frequency of hot flushes at the end of eight weeks of treatment. The benefits were sustained at six months after treatment. The University of Melbourne study, funded by the NHMRC and supported by Jean Hailes for Women, is the largest of its kind to date. Acupuncture is a traditional Chinese medicine treatment where thin needles are inserted into the body at specific points. A group of 327 Australian women aged over 40 who had at least seven moderate hot flushes a day, were enrolled into the study. Half the group was given 10 sessions of standard Chinese medicine acupuncture. The other half received fake or 'sham' acupuncture, that is, stimulation of the skin using blunt-tipped needles, which has a milder effect without penetrating the skin. Lead author of the study, the University of Melbourne's Dr Carolyn Ee, a general practitioner trained in Chinese medicine, said there were several plausible explanations for the improvement in both groups. She said the placebo effect is one possible reason and attending a clinic to talk about symptoms could help and that hot flushes tend to improve spontaneously with time. "This was a large and rigorous study and we are confident there is no additional benefit from inserting needles compared with stimulation from pressuring the blunt needles without skin penetration for hot flushes," Dr Ee said. "If women want to consider having acupuncture for hot flushes, they should know that although previous studies show it is better than doing nothing, our study demonstrates that needling does not appear to make a difference". Women with breast cancer or who have had both ovaries removed were not included in the study. "These women suffer hot flushes that are more severe and often earlier in life, so we think they warrant specific research because breast cancer survivors can't take Hormone Replacement Therapy," Dr Ee explained. She stressed that while acupuncture is a relatively safe treatment, women should also discuss other treatment options for their hot flushes with their doctor. Previous studies have shown acupuncture is effective for chronic pain, including low back pain, neck pain, and osteoarthritis; tension-type headache; chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting; period pain; and hayfever. Dr Mandy Deeks, Deputy CEO of Jean Hailes for Women's Health and a psychologist, said the study highlighted the importance of women talking about health issues. "For women, having someone to discuss their menopausal experiences with is a positive step. We know from research that having a positive relationship with a health professional makes a big difference to health outcomes," Dr Deeks said. New Delhi: India wants to have constructive engagement with China along the northern borders, Army Chief General Dalbir Singh Suhag said on Friday, holding that there has been significant improvement in understanding between the two countries on the boundary front. Even though intrusions have taken place in the disputed areas along the Line of Actual Control, there has been a significant improvement in understanding between the two countries, he said, addressing the Army Day parade here. "India wants to have constructive engagement with China along the northern borders," Suhag said. The Army Chief pitched for modernisation of weapons and equipment to counter different kinds of challenges facing the force. He complimented the soldiers for giving a befitting reply to the enemy at the Line of Control, which has been "active" due to cross-border firing and continuous infiltration attempts. Referring to modernisation, Suhag said that to counter different kinds of challenges and commitments, it is important to modernise weapons and equipment. He said that he was happy that the government has sanctioned a number of modern weapons and equipment in the last one year. The priority for the army was new artillery guns, upgradation of mechanised forces, enhancement of army aviation capabilities, he said, noting that better arms needed Suhag said the army has already started induction of weaponised version of Advanced Light Helicopter. India wants to have constructive engagement with China along the northern borders, Army Chief Gen Dalbir Singh Suhag said on Friday, holding that there has been significant improvement in understanding between the two countries on the boundary front. Even though intrusions have taken place in the disputed areas along the Line of Actual Control, there has been a significant improvement in understanding between the two countries, he said, addressing the Army Day parade here. "India wants to have constructive engagement with China along the northern borders," Suhag said. The Army Chief pitched for modernisation of weapons and equipment to counter different kinds of challenges facing the force. He complimented the soldiers for giving a befitting reply to the enemy at the Line of Control, which has been "active" due to cross-border firing and continuous infiltration attempts. Referring to modernisation, Suhag said that to counter different kinds of challenges and commitments, it is important to modernise weapons and equipment. He said that he was happy that the government has sanctioned a number of modern weapons and equipment in the last one year. The priority for the army was new artillery guns, upgradation of mechanised forces, enhancement of army aviation capabilities, he said, noting that better arms needed. Suhag said the army has already started induction of weaponised version of Advanced Light Helicopter. Earlier this week, Suhag had said acquisition of artillery guns, third generation missiles, upgrading armoured vehicles, augmenting army aviation and strengthening infantry were among "critical areas" for force modernisation which are being fast-tracked. Are You Cooking Up a Covid Mutation in Your Body? As XBB Alarms, News18 Explains How Variants Come About Hyderabad: IT minister K.T. Rama Rao said the government would introduce a scheme which provides for automatic approval of house construction plans if officials do not clear applications within 15 days. He said the government had already made the process of issuing occupancy certificates faster and applicants were getting approvals in 15 days. Speaking at the real estate summit held by the Telangana Real Estate Developers' Association, Confederation of Real Estate Developers' Association India, Telangana Developers Association and the Telangana Builders Federation, the minister said that the building approval policy would become popular like the state's industrial policy, TS-iPASS. Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Raos aim is to introduce corruption free administration in all departments. During a Cabinet meeting the CM said that speedy approvals will indicate the efficiency of ministers, he said. Recollecting the promises made to the real estate sector, Mr Rama Rao said the government had resolved 31 of the 40 major issues. Several construction companies from Mumbai, New Delhi and Bengaluru are working in Hyderabad but very few Hyderabadi construction companies are working outside the state. I want their contribution to increase, he said. The government is ready to provide basic infrastructure to construction companies. We have already planned to construct 11 expressways with an estimated cost of Rs 11,000 crore, setting up of two more water bodies at Shamirpet and Ramoji Film City costing Rs 7,500 crore and a six-lane expressway from Manchirevula to Nagole along the banks of the Musi, he said. Association representatives S. Ram Reddy, P. Dasharath Reddy, C. Prabhakar Rao, G.V. Rao, T. Ram Reddy and R. Chalapathi Rao others took part in the summit. Hyderabad: The BJP on Tuesday alleged that PhD scholar Rohith Vemula stood in support of terrorism in the Yakub Memon hanging issue. BJP national general secretary P. Muralidhar Rao said the scholars suicide had nothing to do with Dalit issues or rights. Mr Rao said, the context of the clash between student groups was Rohiths stand in support of terrorism, including against the hanging of Yakub Memon. Rohith Vemula;s suicide note is self-revealing. Connecting incidents related to his ideological adversaries is baseless and orchestrated, Mr Rao said. He claimed it was clearly evident from the suicide note that Rohith was in conflict with himself. Disciplinary action was taken against Rohith on the advice of the court and a lenient stand was taken by the university authorities by permitting him to stay in the campus except the hostel, Mr Rao said. He said the suicide had been made into a political issue by the Congress, a section of media and some political and non-political groups. Nowhere in the note, has he (Rohith) has made any reference to his friends or enemies as the reason for his decision to commit suicide, he said. He called Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhis hurried visit to the UoH campus unprincipled behaviour and said it was unfortunate that a national party was stooping to such levels. He said the Congress had done gross injustice to Dr B.R. Ambedkar and harassed him all through his life. Lift suspension of others, urge TRS TRS MP Konda Vishweshwar Reddy on Tuesday met the two-member HRD committee and sought immediate lifting of suspension of four PhD scholars. He urged the team, comprising officer on special duty Shakila T. Shamsu and deputy secretary Surat Singh, to release the Rs1.75 lakh fellowship due to the students. I dont want to politicise the issue. Let the inquiry be taken to a logical end, he told. UoH falls in the Lok Sabha constituency represented by Mr Vishweshwar Reddy. Similarly, Telangana BJP president G. Kishan Reddy accused rival parties of targeting Union minister Bandaru Dattatreya and the BJP though they had no connection with the suicide. He claimed the students had been suspended before Mr Dattatreya wrote to the ministry. He said the ABVP activist was attacked early on August 4, and the five scholars were suspended August 31 and Mr Dattatreya had written to the ministry on September 17. First look - JMS returns to Thor as the Thunder God prepares to battle Thanos in Death Notes special Thor visits Thanos' past and future with a host of all-star creators TT terrorist dies in American jail Attorney Farid Scoon, who represented Ibrahim, 70, in his extradition matter, yesterday confirmed his death. Scoon said Ibrahim, whose body never took to incarceration died from heart complications at about 10.10 am yesterday at United States Medical Centre for Federal Prisoners, Missouri. It is unfortunate, that an innocent man was convicted of a crime that he had absolutely no guilt and had to spend the last winters of his life in a maximum security prison in the United States, Scoon said. Scoon said arrangements were being made by Ibrahims family to have the body returned to this country. On December 4, 2015, Justice Nadia Kangaloo deemed Ibrahim also known as Amir Kareem and Winston Kingston a terrorist after the State invoked provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Act 2005. The judge also ordered all of Ibrahims assets, whether local or foreign, be frozen. A federal jury convicted Ibrahim of multiple terrorist offences in May, 2011, after a four-week trial. The trial established that Ibrahim provided religious instruction and operational support to a group plotting a terrorist attack at JFK Airport. Ibrahim, former Guyana MP Abdul Kadir and TT national Abdel Nur were arrested in Trinidad in 2007. They were extradited to the US and after a trial in 2010, Russel Defreitas and Kadir were convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Nur pleaded guilty before trial and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. All lives matter Performing in position number ten with her powerful and gripping social commentary piece All Lives Matter, Mutroo rose head and shoulders above a most competive field of artistes, as her song - which was a reflection of the current crime crisis in this country plus strife worldwide - resonated with the audience. Mutroos most telling part of her song was how the entire world made such a fuss when France was bombed by ISIS last November leaving 130 dead, but months before in April, when the same ISIS bombed and killed 147 persons in Kenya no similar fuss was made. All lives matter, the 27-year-old Theatre Arts teacher sang. Another powerful performance came from Wendy Garrick who sang For We To Overcome. The seven times Tobago Calypso Queen, donned in a white African styled skirt suit, with slivers of yellow, told the audience in song that as a community TT needs to deal with its children before they lose their innocence, or else we face the reality of what they would become after failing them. And feeling the painful situation with some of our youths, she sang with that emotion, and at one time got off the stage to dance in front the audience to the pulsating beat of the drums, a la Ella Andall, another top TT songstress. Garrick was one of several competitors who chose to sing on youth crime in the country. Among them, Tricia Sobers with The Blood That Speaks, Marion Paponette with Save Them, Lady Adana (Marsha Clifton) with A Murder A Day, Morisha Ransome with Shoulda Invest Time and Natasha Edmund with I Beg To Differ. Warrior Empress (Allison Bernard) opened the competition with a solid performance of Black and Ready, a social commentary number calling on the African men to rise up and empower themselves instead of remaining in that Little Black Boy zone as sung by Gypsy 19 years ago, to regain all that is us as a blessed society. In a similar tone, Giselle Fraser- Washington of Tobago rendered Unbreakable Trinbago. On a lighter note, Roslyn Reids Its All Because of You, a number praising past masters of the calypso artform for paving the way for the likes of her was well received, so too were Terry Lyons Culture Army, Spiceys (Tamico Moore) DChampion, Malaika Ballantynes Trini Vibes and Shanaquas (Rachael Fortune) Pan Jam in De Rama. Unfortunately for Shanaqua though the song was a musical gem, in tribute to great musicians, who recently passed away, Raf Robertson and Jit Samaroo, it was evident it was not properly rehearsed. But it was Sexy Suzie (Natasha Nurse) who brought the house down with her rib tickling The Results are In a la Maury, the (NBC US TV series), insisting to her boyfriend that the child is definitely his. She sang to him: Dont study Maury and his DNA ratchify, I doesnt horn, I didnt horn and Ill never horn. The audience was in stitches throughout the performance. Apart from a very engaging audience who hurled wise cracks throughout the night, Suzies delivery of her song was a welcome break from the heavy topics dealt with for the major part of the night. Sasha-Ann Moses, Meguella Simon, Mahalia Regis, Lesley-Ann Ellis and Georgia Mc Intyre also competed for the top prize. Ayana Webster Roy, Minister of State in the Office of the Prime Minister and Nyan Gadsby-Dolly, Minister of Community Development, Culture and the Arts were in attendance at the event which saw Dr Jeanine Remy and Susan Mohip given special awards. I am sorry High Court judge Justice Norton Jack yesterday sentenced Kerwin Charles, 25, for the unlawful killing of Zaffar Khan, 19, and the wounding of Nigel Buck Herbert, 22, and Nigel Benjamin on July 5, 2009, at Jean Avenue, in Diego Martin. Although Charles was sentenced to 12 years hard labour, he has spent the last six years awaiting trial so this period was deducted and he was given a discount for his guilty plea. His attorney, Shontel Hinds in a further plea in mitigation, presented to the courts an apology letter penned by Charles addressed to Khans mother who was present at the hearing. In the letter, Charles said, If I could have traded my life for his, I would, just not to put you through all this stress, pain and hurt. I didnt mean for this to happen, I swear it on my life that it was an accident and it was not meant to happen. I hope you find some kind of comfort hearing this from me. I never got to speak to you and your family or ever sent my condolences. I hope you accept them after all these years and my sincere apologies. Charles pleaded guilty to the lesser charges last November. State prosecutors in presenting the facts to the court said that on the day in question, at about 8 pm, Khan, Herbert and Benjamin were liming by a shop along the roadway when a woman approached them and she and Herbert began arguing. During the argument, Charles and three other men emerged from a nearby house and went to the scene where the situation escalated between the two groups. At some point during the argument, Benjamin told Charles and his companions to go home and do something with their lives. Charles and his companions left, but returned about 15 minutes later, and took up position in an abandoned house opposite the shop. At about 9.40 pm as Benjamin was leaving the group to go home, he was followed by Charles and two other men. All three were armed with pieces of wood. After catching up with Benjamin, Charles took the piece of wood and started beating him across the back. During the fight, Herbert and Khan intervened and attempted to break up the fight, but Charles, who had a knife in his possession stabbed Herbert in his right leg. Benjamin was cut on his stomach, and Khan received a deep stab wound to his lower stomach area. After the incident, Charles said, Well I sorry boy. I didnt mean to stab all you. I didnt mean to stab all you. Khan was taken to Port-of- Spain General Hospital where he was pronounced dead. Senior state prosecutor Tricia Hudlin-Cooper appeared on behalf of the State Hardware up in flames He explained part of the warehouse was not operational, but the other end of the hardware was used for storing hardware materials. My house was next to the warehouse and the fire destroyed the entire house. I dont have a clue on the cost of my losses... all I know is that I have lost everything, he said. Bachew added that he was not home at the time the fire broke out and received a call at about 11 am from someone saying the building was on fire. He said when he arrived on the scene he was surprised to see how quickly the fire officers responded. I must say the fire officers were on the scene within five minutes, and they were here ready to take on the fire. He continued, Everything in the building was dry and the breeze was blowing so the fire spread very quickly throughout the structure... the fire officers tried their very best. Bachew said all he can do is try to rebuild and start all over again. Leo Ramkisoon, president of the second Fire Service Association commended officers for their quick response. He said fire tenders from Wrightson Road Fire Headquarters and San Juan Fire Station responded to the call. He also noted that WASA, TTEC and water trucks from the San Juan/Laventille Regional Corporation assisted. Ramkissoon said losses could be in the region of $2 million to $3 million. Investigations are continuing Minister: Lets talk Speaking with reporters during the TT Energy Conference at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Port-of- Spain, Trotman said, Our previous governments had signed an MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) which expired last year. I believe the time is right for us to sit again and craft a new one, looking particularly at the development of our oil and gas sector. Disclosing that he spoke with Energy Minister, Nicole Olivierre, on this matter during the opening day of the conference on Monday, Trotman said he reminded Olivierre that, our President and your Prime Minister met last year to discuss this, and few other matters, and we do need to get together. Following the September 7, 2015 general election, Guyana President David Granger met with Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley at the Office of the Prime Minister in St Clair on October 7 last. Rowley and Granger exchanged views on deepening the collaboration already initiated in agriculture, skills development, and energy cooperation between both countries. Trotman said now that Rowley and Granger have met, it was time for Olivierre and himself to meet at the second level and Guyana is anxious to look at the process of entrepreneurship. On Monday, Energy Chamber chairman Vincent Pereira noted that the recent Liza oil discovery in Guyana represented a significant opportunity for TT-based companies. Stressing that the current scenario of volatile global oil prices underscores the need for Caricom countries to work together with one vision of integration, Trotman said, We will not compete. We will support each other. According to Trotman, Responsible governments have to steer companies towards national interests and regional interests. While accepting that companies must look at their profit margin and their rate of return, Trotman reiterated, Responsible governments have to ensure that even as they get their rates of return, they do so within a context that is nationally, and regionally acceptable. He believed that both situations are not mutually exclusive, and can be achieved once the will is there. The minister said that in terms of energy, TT has been, in a sense a big brother to the region. Trotman added that in this regard this country has, ably acquitted itself, selflessly and sometimes to its own detriment. In the current circumstances, Trotman said Guyana sees itself, more as the country to assume that new role, not as a power player per se, but as a country that can perhaps fill gaps that TT would have left. Apart from its recently discovered oil and natural gas reserves. Dominican Republic Energy Minister, Dr Antonio Isa Conde, in his address to the conference yesterday, said his country will shortly make available to interested investors more than 12,590 linear kilometres (7,885 miles) of 2D seismic lines, in a virgin territory with no concessions granted for the prospecting and production of hydrocarbons. Isa Cone also said the Dominican Republic offers a favourable investment climate to potential investors which is hand-in-hand with a democratic government which conducts itself with a vision of development. Hyderabad/Guntur: A controversy arose over the caste of Rohith Vemula, with self-declared documents filed his parents showing that they belong to the Vaddera community a Backward Classes group surfacing on Tuesday. Rohiths father Manikumar and mother Radhika had filed the papers with officials of the Guntur revenue department. Rohiths family rubbished these claims and said that they belong to the SC community. Gurazala mandal tahsildar Phanindra Babu said the documents of declaration were filed by Rohiths parents with the mandal revenue inspector in 2014 for the birth certificate of his brother Vemula Rajach-aitanya Kumar. The application had been made by Rohiths grandfather Vemula Venkateswarlu. Mr Phanindra Babu said, The caste of Raja-chaityanya Kumar was Vaddera as per documents submitted to us and the officials conducted an inquiry and issued the birth certificate. Asked about the certificate, Rohiths brother Rajachaitanya said: It is a lie to say that we belong to the BC community. We belong to the SC Mala community. We required certificates of my brother. Instead of focusing on why my brother ended his life they want to divert the issue. BJP state president G. Kishan Reddy said, As per certain documents that surfaced on the social media, Rohith belongs to Vaddera caste. There is a video also posted on social media which shows Rohith's grandmother saying his family belongs to the Vaddera community. ABVP leader A. Giri Prasad distributed the documents to the media. A senior intelligence official of TS police said, "Rohith's caste issue has come to our notice. As a case is booked under the SC/ST Atrocities Act (on Union minister Bandaru Dattatreya) we will investigate which caste Rohith belonged to." Meanwhile, A video that was leaked on Tuesday purports to show ABVP activists questioning PhD scholar Rohith Vemula for tearing up their poster. Rohith is heard saying in the video that he did not like saffron and Hindutva. The incident is said to have occurred last year. An ABVP activist apparently recorded the video on a mobile phone during the incident. Will you tear anything related to saffron even if that is in your home, an ABVP activist asks Rohith. Yes I will, he replies. However, no complaint was been made to the university regarding the tearing up of the poster. The video was widely shared by BJP and RSS activists on social media to accuse Rohith of being anti-Hindu. Carib Brewery workers await salary increases They expected retroactive payments to be made by January 28. However, the company has appealed the ruling. Speaking with Newsday at the Brewery in Champs Fleurs, president of the National Union of Government and Federated Workers (NUGFW), Carl Rose, said the negotiation period was 2013 to 2016. During negotiations, he said the bilateral talks broke down, and it went to conciliations. He said at the conciliations Carib Brewery asked the Ministry of Labour to send the matter to the Industrial Court without meeting with the union. St Rose said the union asked for 18 percent and Carib Brewery was only willing to pay 12 percent. In addition, he said after viewing the financial documents of Carib, the Court saw that the profits made by the Company enabled them to give fair and just increases to the workers. Unfortunately, they have no regard for the livelihood of the workers or their families, Carib has not only decided to appeal the decision of the Court, but has also asked for a stay of execution, St Rose explained. He said now that the country is faced with recession,and many workers are fearful of losing their jobs due to the fact that some businesses genuinely cannot afford massive capital payments. How can a company that has not even felt the impact of the recession, and whose financial books reflect massive profits despite the state of the nation, not afford to treat workers fairly? he asked. Medical body renews call for Continuing Medical Education Chamely was speaking at the installation of the new TTMA executive at Soongs Great Wall restaurant and lounge, Circular Road, San Fernando on January 16. As a fraternity, we not only serve, but we also teach all day long. We educate our patients, we instruct our juniors, and we share generously, with each other, as peers. Since were constantly teaching, we also have to be constantly learning. Even with the academic rigour that comes with our profession, no two situations are alike, so must match best practice education to sound instinct, and reason with expertise, Chamely said. Health Minister, Terrance Deyalsingh who was also in the audience listening heard, Chamely say: Our learning curve is lifelong which is why the Association will continue to advocate strongly, as we have done, vociferously for the last six years, for the mandating of Continuing Medical Education (CMEs) to ensure the provision of evidence based, calibre medical care, to those we treat. She also pledged the Associations support in the battle against Non communicable diseases, (NCD), which Deyalsingh, in his address, had identified obesity as having reached a crisis proportions locally. Let me respond to your challenge to us all tonight and take this opportunity to pledge our support as an Association in the fight against NCDs, and improvements in maternal and child health. Please feel free to call upon the expertise of the Association for discussion and input in any matter you feel would benefit from our counsel, Chamely said. The 2016 TTMAs executive and branch chairmen are President: Dr Stacey Chamely; Secretary: Dr Darren Dookeeram; Treasurer: Dr Rohit Dass; PRO: Dr Liane Conyette; North Branch chairman: Dr Marissa Nimrod; Central Branch chairman: Dr Vishi Beharry; South Branch chairman: Dr Christi Ramsingh and Tobago Branch chairman: Dr Christine Daniel US Military Really Didn't Want You to Know What's in New Washington Post Investigation BENGALURU: Expressing concern over the manner in which Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) was managing its accounts, the Karnataka High Court on Tuesday orally observed, Dissolve BBMP or appoint an administrator if you (BBMP) cannot manage your accounts. The high court made the observation while hearing the petition filed in public interest by Namma Bengaluru Foundation (NBF) and Member of Parliament Rajeev Chandrasekar seeking Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) audit of the finances of BBMP. The division bench headed by acting chief justice S.K. Mukherjee, who made the above observation, was astonished while hearing the case wherein it was alleged that hundreds of crores of tax receipts and revenue collected by BBMP have not been credited into the main bank accounts but deposited in miscellaneous accounts by some officials in BBMP. It is further alleged that over 900 bank accounts are being operated by the BBMP officials, adding that such a large number of bank accounts for one institution located within the same city calls for inquiry as to how accounts are opened and operated in various public sector and private sector banks. The PIL further wanted CAG to audit BBMP finances from 2011 and to submit its findings to the court, state government to conduct comprehensive investigations against BBMP, its commissioner and other officers of the Palike, to identify the reasons for the failure to conduct timely audit of the BBMP. In his letter to Chief Minister Siddaramaiah in October, 2015, Rajeev Chandrasekar had requested him to order a CAG audit into BBMP accounts. He had highlighted the rampant and deliberate mismanagement of the BBMP finances, resulting in thousands of crore of rupees of its revenue, including tax collected from citizens, being siphoned off and not being used for the citys development. The petition also stated that BBMP finances have not been audited for years and last internal audit was done in 2011. Senior advocate Sajan Poovayya argued the matter on behalf of NBF and Rajeev Chandrasekar. It states that the last Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) audit of BBMP was conducted for the year 2009-10 and had exposed large scale financial irregularities. In its report tabled in the Legislature, CAG had cast serious aspersions on the BBMP accounting and financial practices. The shortfall in certification of accounts by Chartered Accountants during the years 2008-13 has been observed by the CAG, its added. After hearing the matter, the high court has asked the state government to respond on the matter and further adjourned the case. Junior doctors of government medical college hospital take out protest rally on Tuesday on the campus KOZHIKODE: As many as 800 junior doctors and housesurgeons of Government medical college hospital (MCH) here who went on a strike on Tuesday demanding the release of their stipend for December called it off later in the day. The decision was taken following the receipt of a government order for allotment of the delayed stipend. According to MCH Post graduate students' Association president Dr Mohammad Musthafa P.P, about 540 P.G students, 250 house surgeons and dental PG students had not received their stipend for December. We cannot live as a majority amongst us have family and children. The issue was brought into the notice of MCH principal many times and a token protest was carried out on January 12, he said. The junior doctors went on protest mode on Tuesday as they did not get the stipend on Monday as assured by the authorities. Except for emergency services like casualty, ICU and labour ward, the doctors desisted from turning up for duty. They received the government order on Tuesday evening. The discussion held with Principal in the morning had failed to reach a consensus as the authorities could not give a written assurance about the disbursal of the stipend. Sources said that due to the non-release of government fund, authorities had distributed the stipend of the last two months from another account. Hyderabad: Protests intensified at the Hyderabad Central University on Wednesday over the alleged suicide of Dalit researcher Rohith Vemula even as more politicians headed to the campus, demanding the resignation of Union Minister Smriti Irani. Smriti Irani on Tuesday asserted that Rohith's suicide was not a Dalit versus a non-Dalit confrontation and attempts were being made to 'ignite passion' in the case of the Dalit scholar's death across communities. Read: HCU scholar's suicide goes awry, call for removal of Irani, Dattatreya grows "This is not a Dalit versus non-Dalit issue as some people are trying to portray. There has been a malice attempt to ignite passions and present this as a caste battle it is not. This is an issue which is being investigated by local police and sub judice in the High Court," she told the media here. She alleged that the suicide note of Rohith, which was being circulated across the media, was not the authorized copy and read out a quote from the original letter in which no political organisation or politician was being held responsible for his fate. "We requested the police to give us the copy of the suicide note so that rumors can be laid to rest. I hold that note in my hand and it does not mention any university official, any national political organization or any MP. I quote him, 'to the ASA (Ambedkar Students Association) family, I am sorry for disappointing you, you loved me very much but there is some bad water in us. I wish all the very best for the future', this is the only reference to any organization in the suicide note that we have procured from the local police," Irani said. Read: I have nothing to do with Dalit student's suicide: Bandaru Dattatreya Stressing that attempts were being made to misrepresent the facts in the case, she requests to not encourage any 'rumor mongering' in the case and she called on the people to be extremely responsible since it was easy to ignite passions and then regret at leisure. "We are seated before you with facts and not conjecture and I again say it that it's not a Dalit versus a non-Dalit issue. We have sent a fact-finding team recognizing it is the jurisdiction of the state government," Irani said. She hit out at the Congress for trying to politicise the issue and said that they did not know the concept of 'following' procedure in a case. "When an MP communicates to us, we have to seek facts from the University. Congress wants to shoot politically on this issue and that is expected from them but unfortunate. This problem persisted during the Congress rule also, if they had fixed this four years ago, possibly Rohith would have been alive today," she said. The Congress has been demanding the resignations of the HRD Minister, Minister of State for Bandaru Dattatreya and Hyderabad University Vice Chancellor Appa Rao over the Dalit scholar's suicide. Read: HCU suicide: Under fire, Dattatreya says only forwarded students' representation Under attack, the university Vice Chancellor claimed there had been "no pressure" from Union Ministers or the HRD Ministry to act against the youth but offered to facilitate talks to restore peace on the campus. Read: No pressure from ministers to act against Rohith: HCU Vice Chancellor The body of Vemula was found hanging in the varsity's hostel room on Sunday, which sparked massive protests. Minister of State for Labour and Employment Bandaru Dattatreya has been accused of being responsible for the death. CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury, spokesperson of TMC Derek O'Brien and YSR Congress president Y S Jaganmohan Reddy interacted with the students, who have been on warpath demanding justice for 26-year-old Vemula Rohith Chakravarthi who was found hanging in his hostel room on Sunday. Police took into preventive custody some activists of the pro-CPI All India Students Federation (AISF) when they tried to hold a demonstration near the residence of Union Read: 'Rahul attempting to divide society over student's suicide,' says BJP Yechury said the incidents in the HCU are part of a larger issue of BJP's alleged "game" of turning the country into a 'Hindu Rashtra' and demanded resignation of HRD Minister Smriti Irani and an "independent inquiry" into the incident. "It is part of the larger issue of intolerance. Intolerance is also part of the larger issue. The larger issue is transform this secular, democratic, republic of India as our Constitution says, into what they want, a rabidly intolerant fascistic Hindu Rashtra. That is the larger game," the CPI(M) leader alleged while talking to reporters. "We are saying let there be an independent inquiry. It could be judicial, non-judicial, but something which is not foisted by the same minister who has through her pressure created this situation and the unfortunate suicide. So let that be there and all those who are part of this conspiracy, I would call, it's a criminal conspiracy, according to the new law we passed in Parliament, they must be tried according to the criminal offence," he said. "The HRD Minister has to go," Yechury said. He also said that his party would represent to the President, who is the visitor of the university, and ask him on what basis the HCU was conferred the best university award by him last year. Read: Rohith's caste kicks off storm, his tiff with ABVP over poster goes viral He said his party MP from Kerala, T N Seema, has written to the President saying that it is not morally tenable for her to continue as a member of the court of the university in the prevailing situation unless the vice chancellor is dismissed by the court. O'Brien said TMC would coordinate with other parties in supporting the agitating students. "This is the fight for justice versus injustice. This is intolerance. There is a documentary evidence from whatever we have seen that clearly points to pressure, ruthless kind of pressure. Parliament is closed now but we will bring Parliament here," he said. "Chief Minister of Delhi is coming, we are coordinating with all the politial parties. The boys want the support. We said we will help them to coordinate with all the parties who want to come here. More will come", O'Brien said. Read: HCU suicide: Rahul, Kejriwal attack Irani, Dattatreya; BJP rejects resignation demand RPI leader Ramdas Athawale, whose party is an ally of the BJP, also visited the campus but was "asked to leave" by a section of students. Vice Chancellor Appa Rao asserted that there had been "no pressure" from Union Ministers or the HRD Ministry to act against the youth. He also claimed that the youth did not mention his suspension as the reason for the extreme step in the suicide note and that he had favoured leniency for the students allegedly involved in the ABVP leader attack in view of their background so that they could continue to get their scholarship to pursue their studies. Read: Hyderabad youth suicide: GHMC polls add fuel to the fire "I am not sure whether suspension has really been the cause for suicide. At least not from the face of the suicide note as left by the student," he said. Rao said he was deeply disturbed by the loss of a precious life and the disruption of academic activities. He also sought to distance the HRD Ministry and the two ministers Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya from the decisions taken by the University which allegedly forced Rohith Vemula to commit suicide. Read: Rahul Gandhi blames Bandaru, V-C for Rohiths suicide "There was no pressure. We took the letters received as routine letters," he said, adding, "there was no phone call from either of the ministers or any ministry official". Rohith was among the five students suspended by the varsity over the alleged assault on a ABVP student leader Sushil Kumar in August last year. Last month, the HCU authorities denied them access to hostel and other buildings on the campus, except classrooms and workshops. The other four students continued their sit-in at a make-shift tent on the campus, where Rohith was also holding protest from last month terming their suspension as "undemocratic. The incident has snowballed into a major row with BJP's rivals wading into it and demanding the removal of Irani and Dattatreya, accusing them of being responsible for the death. The agitating students are demanding resignation of Dattatreya, removal of Vice Chancellor Rao, Rs five crore compensation to Rohit's family and employment to a member of his family, besides revocation of suspension of four students. Rallying under the banner of Joint Action Committee for Social Justice, the protestors alleged that the five students were suspended following a written communication by Dattatreya to the Union HRD Ministry. However, dismissing allegations against him, Dattatreya had earlier said, "Anti-social, anti-national activities were going on in the university. ABVP activists were beaten up. At that time, ABVP gave a representation. I forwarded the representation to the Ministry (of HRD). I dont know what action they did. BJP or I have nothing to do with the incident." Dattatreya had sought action against 'anti-national acts' happening on HCU campus. Striking a conciliatory note, the Vice Chancellor offered to facilitate talks with the students to understand their concern and resolve matters in an amicable manner. In an appeal, he said, "We are all saddened by the tragic incident in which we have lost the life of one bright student Vemula Rohith Chakravarthi. Let us also join together in sharing the grief with his family members." "We also have to note and learn the ways and means to avoid such incidents on our campus. Let us pledge to give our time and thought process to prevent recurrence of such incidents that disturb the peace on the campus," he said. "As this semester is a shortened semester and we have a hectic schedule ahead, let us not miss out on class work, research and administrative work from today. It is appealed to all members of the university to put all our heads together and learn to work in this crisis situation," Rao said. It is further appealed that a group of senior faculty colleagues and dean, students welfare, need to engage in discussions with the students to understand their concerns, resolve matters in an amicable manner and also to pre-empt such issues of the students in future, Rao added. (Newser) When 21-year-old Elizabeth Luebke traveled an hour and a half south from her home in Oshkosh, Wis., to Milwaukee for a concert, she wound up at an after-party wearing a tank top, shorts, and fishnet stockingsand at around 4:30am left angrily after arguing with a friend, reports FOX6 News. It was minus 5.8 degrees Fahrenheit, and the wind chill was a frigid minus 27.5 degrees. Security video footage from a nearby business shows her suddenly collapsing in front of a house and eventually stopping moving altogether, reports BuzzFeed. Her body was found by a passerby at 9am, just around the corner from the party. Luebke, who also went by the name Lana Kane, had frozen to death, but alcohol appears to have been a factor. A friend of Luebke's says she arrived at the party "really, really drunk," while her mother says her daughter had a history of binge drinking and had been hospitalized in October with a blood-alcohol level five times the legal driving limit, reports the New York Daily News. Luebke wrote on her Facebook page in December that she'd quit drinking, and some of her friends said she'd been sober for the past several weeks. Tributes online mention her as "one of the last people to deserve this," while police advise against ever walking alone in subzero temps. (This woman froze to death in Georgia trying to help her just-out-of-reach husband.) (Newser) The Islamic State has finally confirmed the death of the man known as Jihadi John, something tentatively announced by US officials following an airstrike back in November, CNN reports. The confirmation comes via an obituary published by ISIS' Dabiq magazine. The obituary provides details about Jihadi Johnreal name Mohammed Emwazias well as a photo of him without his trademark balaclava. Among the claims the article makes about Emwazi is that he "pretended to be unintelligent to trick MI5 officers," according to the Telegraph. The article states he pretended to be dumb when stopped by authorities while attempting to travel from Britain to Kuwait. Later it claims he was able to travel to Syria to join ISIS "right under the nose of the much-overrated MI5 British intelligence agency." Emwazi first came to international attention in August 2014 in an ISIS execution video, the BBC reports. He would go on to appear in multiple execution videos and was given the nickname Jihadi John. Emwazi moved to Britain at age 6, became a citizen, and would go on to get a degree in computer programming. According to the Telegraph, the Dabiq article appears to praise him for his part in the beheading videos. "His harshness towards the kafir (non-believers) was manifested through deeds that enraged all the nations, religions, and factions of kafir, the entire world bearing witness to this," the article states. It also praises him for his "mercy, kindness, and generosity towards the believers," exemplified by the time he gave a concubine to another man as a gift. (Read more Islamic State stories.) (Newser) Is Ethan Couch throwing his mom under the bus? A lawyer for the "affluenza" teen has suggested that he may have traveled to Mexico against his will, meaning his mother, Tonya Couch, could have kidnapped him, reports CBS News. After a hearing in the case in Texas on Tuesday, attorney Scott Brown said the question of whether the 18-year-old "was voluntarily or involuntarily taken to Mexico is something that is still being investigated." Couch, who was on probation in Texas for killing four people while driving drunk, was found with his mother in Mexico last month, and she has been charged with hindering the apprehension of a felon. Tonya Couch was quickly deported to the US, where she was released on bail last week. Ethan is still in a Mexico City detention facility, and he could be there for a while: Brown says the teen's Mexican lawyers will stop fighting his deportation to the US, reports Reuters, though a Mexican immigration official says the challenge has yet to be withdrawn and it will be at least another month before Couch can be deported. In Tuesday's hearing, prosecutors had planned to argue that Couch's case should be moved to adult court, but it was postponed because Couch was absent and his parents hadn't been notified, reports the Dallas Morning News. (MADD has started a petition to move the case to adult court.) (Newser) A sad day for the Ben Carson campaign: The GOP candidate canceled Tuesday and Wednesday campaign events after the death of a volunteer in a car crash in western Iowa. Braden Joplin, a 25-year-old from Midland, Texas, was fatally injured and three other campaign workers were hurt Tuesday afternoon when their van flipped over on an icy road and was hit by another vehicle, reports NBC News. Joplin was flown to a hospital in Nebraska, while the other three were treated locally and released. Politico reports that Carson, who was in South Carolina at the time, flew to Nebraska when he heard the news and paid for a private jet to bring Joplin's family out from Texas. "One of the precious few joys of campaigning is the privilege of meeting bright young men and women who are so enthusiastic about their country that they will freely give of their time and energy to work on its behalf," Carson said in a statement. "America lost one of those bright young men today. I had the privilege of knowing Braden Joplin personally, and am filled with a deep and profound sadness at his passing." Other candidates, including Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton, tweeted their condolences, while Bernie Sanders mentioned Joplin at the start of a rally in Iowa City, the AP reports. "I have a lot of respect for any young person who gets involved in the political process," Sanders said. "Our hearts go out to the family of the young man." (Read more Ben Carson stories.) (Newser) A mysterious package has emerged from a pink Miami Beach mansion once owned by Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. The current owner, Chicken Kitchen founder Christian de Berdouare, bought the waterfront estate for $9.65 million in 2014 with the plan to tear down the old mansion, unaware of Escobar's link to it. When he learned the former boss of the Medellin cartel owned the home before it was seized by US authorities in 1987, he hired professional treasure hunters to sweep the placea smart move given that Escobar was known to hide goods in secret compartments in walls and floors. Among the discoveries: a "suspicious" foot-long cylinder wrapped in plastic and containing "a white paste" that was found beneath an old stove in the garage, says de Berdouare. Police have concluded it doesn't contain cocaine or ecstasy, reports the Miami Herald, but further details on what it might be weren't available. Workers were also aware of a safe hidden beneath a tile under a marble staircase, but de Berdouare says it was stolen "within the last 30 days." Authorities previously warned de Berdouare that Escobar's old cronies might try to recover some of his property, reports NBC News. "We don't know what it had inside or if it was empty," he says. Demolition has since begun at the property, where de Berdouare plans to build a new home. "I'm very excited to see the house of the devil disappearing right before our eyes," he tells the AP. "This was the biggest criminal in the history of the world." His wife adds that "there was a very negative energy inside the house," which she had blessed by a Catholic priest before it was torn down. NBC reports it isn't clear if Escobar ever set foot in the house, which might simply have been a base for his cohorts. (Sean Penn has some regrets about that El Chapo interview.) (Newser) Fortunately, a Virginia mom missing for nearly two months was found safe on Tuesday, both her family and Blackstone police confirm to WTVR. Unfortunately, Crystal Griffin Redd was arrested by the Georgia police who discovered her, as she was wanted for embezzlement back in her hometown. Redd vanished on Nov. 20 after being spotted on a surveillance video at the Food Lion where she worked removing money from a safe, the station notes. "She's seen on video leaving with what we believe is the money and she comes back in a short time later to finish up her shift and then she leaves for good," the Blackstone police chief tells WTVR. Thousands of dollars went missing, as did Redd and her live-in boyfriend, Jim Bravis Redmond Jr. Police told her mom, Sandra Griffin, that a man had been found with Redd when she was stopped by cops. "I think something made her snap, something scared her," Griffin tells WTVR. "I don't think she had any intentions when she went to work that day, to do this." Redd reportedly never reached out to her two kids or any other family while she was gone. Although Redmond isn't facing charges, all of his stuff in the apartment he had shared with Redd had been cleared out when the two disappeared, per Griffin, while Redd's belongings were mostly still there. And WTVR notes Redmond is also deemed a deserter by the Army, which is looking for him as well. (The body of a missing mom was found in Oregonand it wasn't foul play.) (Newser) Things have gone "from bad to nightmare" for Hillary Clinton thanks to a new CNN/WMUR poll out of New Hampshire, per the Washington Post. The pollwhich quizzed 927 of the state's likely Democrats from Jan. 13 to 18shows Bernie Sanders has expanded a solid lead in early December by 10 points to an insane 27-point lead with a 4.8-point margin of error. Another good sign for Sanders: About 52% of voters say they've decided who will get their vote in the primary. The only downside for the Vermont senator is that his support "rests heavily on groups whose participation in New Hampshire primaries is less reliablenotably younger voters and those who aren't registered Democrats," reports CNN. Clinton trails by 45 points among undeclared voters, but just nine points among registered Democrats, though she led Sanders by 7 points in the latter category in December. Sanders is also enjoying a 91% favorability rating"which is basically where Michael Jordan's favorability ratings would have been in Chicago in 1993," quips the Post. Clintonwho was described by 55% of respondents as the "least honest" Democratic candidatesits at 65%. However, Clinton does show an advantage nationally with minorities and voters over 50, per Time. She leads Sanders by 15 points among Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters in a Monmouth University poll released Tuesday, with a 5.2% margin of error. (Read more Hillary Clinton stories.) (Newser) When Don Smith found his son, Justin, lying in a McAdoo, Pa., snowbank on Feb. 21, 2015, after Justin had tried to walk home from a bar the night before, it was a terrible sight. "I remember holding him," the elder Smith said in tears Monday, per the Morning Call. "He was like a block of concrete." Don says his son wasn't breathing, lacked a pulse, and had limbs turned black from the cold. Doctors surmise Justin had slipped, hit his head, and blacked out, per CBS News, and he spent about 12 hours in the snow on a night that dipped to minus 4 degrees. Although ABC News says paramedics tried to revive Justin with CPR, the Morning Call notes a coroner was called and a sheet drawn over the Penn State student's head. But an ER doctor at Lehigh Valley Health Network didn't give up: He persuaded doctors to try a life-saving procedureand thanks to that procedure, Justin, 26, was on hand with his family Monday to thank those doctors for saving his life. That procedure is called extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, and it involves taking blood out of a person's body, warming it and pumping it with oxygen, then putting it back in. Dr. James Wu, the surgeon who did the procedure, says the freezing temps actually helped Justin. "Very low temperatures can preserve the brain and other organ functions," he said at the news conference, per ABC. It took Justin 15 days to come out of his coma, per CBS, and he lost his toes and pinkies to frostbite, but he suffered no apparent brain damage. Dr. Gerald Coleman, the doctor who made the initial call to try the procedure, is thankful he did. "This case has taught me that sometimes you have to go with your gut, even when all logic demands otherwise," he said, per the Morning Call. As for Justin, he's trying to finish up his psych degree via online courses and his friends have a new nickname for him: Iceman. (A similar miracle out of Norway, where a woman's body temp dropped to 56.7 degrees.) (Newser) The oldest Christian monastery in Iraq has been reduced to a field of rubble, another apparent victim of the Islamic State's relentless destruction of ancient cultural sites. Satellite photos obtained exclusively by the AP confirm the worst fears of church authorities and preservationistsSt. Elijah's Monastery of Mosul has been completely wiped out. "A big part of tangible history has been destroyed," says a Chaldean Catholic pastor in Southfield, Mich., who attended Mass at the monastery almost six decades ago. The destruction of the 1,400-year-old monastery is a blow for US troops and advisers who served in Iraq and had tried to protect the site. Suzanne Bott, who spent more than two years restoring St. Elijah's as a US State Department cultural adviser in Iraq, teared up when the AP showed her the images. "Oh no way. It's just razed completely," she said. Those who knew the monastery wondered about its fate after the extremists swept through in June 2014. At the request of the AP, satellite imagery firm DigitalGlobe recently pulled a series of images of the same spot from its archive of pics taken globally every day. An analyst reviewed the pictures for AP and identified the date of destruction between Aug. 27 and Sept. 28, 2014. "They destroyed it completely," he says. "There's nothing to rebuild." St. Elijah's has joined a growing list of more than 100 demolished religious and historic sites, including mosques, tombs, shrines, and churches in Syria and Iraq. "I can't describe my sadness," the Rev. Paul Thabit Habib said from Irbil after seeing pictures of the decimation in his hometown. "Our Christian history in Mosul is being barbarically leveled." (Read more Iraq stories.) (Newser) Two newly issued arrest warrants in the United Arab Emirates are making headlines given the unusual nature of the crime: some crazy dancing. More specifically, the two men were "making outrageous physical movements" while dressed in military uniform, reports the BBC. Sadly, the video posted by the duo does not appear to be available anymore. The International Business Times makes an educated guess: "In traditional UAE dance, men often show off their rifle spinning techniques." Though Gulf News suggests "obscene gestures" were at play. It's not clear whether the men are soldiers themselves or were just dressing the part, but the military is clearly sensitive about its image. "Some irresponsible persons were behaving improperly and in a manner that was certainly contemptuous of the local community which looked to its armed forces with deep respect and veneration," say prosecutors. (Read more weird crimes stories.) Hyderabad: Acting Chief Justice Dilip B. Bhosale of the Hyderabad High Court on Tuesday directed the registry to list the petition of D. Prashanth and others suspended students of Hyderabad Central University before Justice P.V. Sanjay Kumar for hearing. Mr Bojja Tarakam, senior counsel appearing for the petitioners on Tuesday made a mention before Justice M.S. Ramachandra Rao reminding him that as per the roster, the plea of the students was listed before him and he had adjourned the matter for hearing after the Sankranti vacation. M. Tarakam urged the judge to take up the matter in view of its urgency though it was not listed today. The judge pointed out that a case pertaining to Sushil Kumar who was allegedly injured in the assault during a protest by some students against the hanging of Yakub Memon was already listed for hearing by Justice Sanjay Kumar. The mother of Sushil Kumar moved a plea seeking protection for her son and also to direct the police to take action against the students responsible for assaulting her son. Justice Sanjay Kumar directed the varsity authorities to file the counter affidavit on the matter. As both the cases were connected to each other it would be proper to hear both the petitions by Justice Sanjay Kumar and referred the case to the Acting Chief Justice and the ACJ accordingly allotted to the case to Sanjay Kumar. Meanwhile, the Hyderabad Central University authorities filed a counter affidavit stating that certain postings of Sushil Kumar on Facebook against the protest of Ambedkar Students Association on the campus against the hanging of terrorist Yakub Memon led to the clash. Later, the varsity suspended D. Prashanth, Rohit Vemula, P. Vijaya Kumar and C. Seshiah and later their suspension were revoked keeping in view their financial condition but barred them from the hostel. The suspended students while contending that they were placed under suspension following pressure from the BJP leaders and said that their suspension is against to the Constitution and SC and STs Atrocities Act. The matter will likely to come up for hearing on Jan 25. The world's oldest man has died. Yasutaro Koide from Japan passed away on Tuesday at the age of 112, just two months short of what would have been his 113th birthday. According to Japanese officials, he had suffered from chronic cardiovascular problems. Five months prior to his death, the Guinness Worlds Records had honored Koide at the Japanese city of Nagoya. At that time, Koide, who was still in good health, was attending a day care center. A representative for Japan's Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, Akira Yamase, stated that Koide had died at a hospital in Nagoya, where he had moved to roughly five years ago to be closer to his daughter. "I felt very honored that I have had a chance to meet Mr. Yasutaro Koide last summer, surrounded by his warm family and relatives," the Vice President of The Guinness World Records Japan, Erika Ogawa, said reported by Guinness World Records. "The stories of his adolescent years encouraged all of us who were there. I would like to express my sorrow and condolences to him and his family." Erika was the one who handed the certificate to Koide back on August 20. Koide had said that not smoking and drinking, or overdoing things, were his secrets to living a long life. When he was younger, Koide had worked as a tailor for a men's clothing shop Koide was born on March 13, 1903, the same year that the Wright brothers carried out their first ever powered flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. A year later, Japan would become embroiled in a war with the Russians. With Koide's death, the title of the oldest living man in Japan belongs to Tokyo native, Masamitsu Yoshida, who is 111. It is unclear whether or not Yoshida is the world's oldest man alive. Guinness World Records has stated that it would be investigating to see who is the oldest man alive now. The world's oldest living person is Susannah Mushatt Jones, who is 116. Jones lives in Brooklyn, New York in the United States. The world's oldest man to ever live, according to Guinness, was Jiroemon Kimura, who was from Japan. Kimura died at the age of 116-years-old and 56 days. The world's oldest person to ever live was Jeanne Calment, who died at the age of 122-years-old and 164 days. Calment was from France. If Donald Trump wins the GOP nomination, the Democratic candidate who would have the best shot at beating him is Hillary Clinton, the latest Monmouth University poll released on Tuesday reported. The poll, which surveyed 352 Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters, found that 52 percent of them stated that they would vote for Clinton, who was the former Secretary of State and was once the nation's First Lady, over Bernie Sanders. Sanders, the Senator of Vermont, received 37 percent of the vote. Although Clinton is still the frontrunner, this recent poll marked the first time that the size of her lead fell to under 20 points. In Monmouth University's December poll, Clinton received 59 percent of the votes, which was significantly higher than Sanders' 26 percent. When the poll asked the voters whom they believe has a better shot at beating Trump, 44 percent voted for Clinton. Only 16 percent of the voters believed that Sanders could win over Trump. 35 percent of the voters stated that both candidates would have an equal shot at beating Trump. For the second-leading Republican candidate, Ted Cruz, 39 percent said Clinton had a better shot than the other candidates at defeating Cruz. 17 percent believed Sanders would have the edge and 37 percent agreed that both candidates had an equal chance of beating Cruz. Other findings from the poll included: -Clinton has lost the support of liberals. 57 percent supported Clinton while 31 percent picked Sanders back in December. In the New Year, Sanders is leading with 51 percent support compared to Clinton's 42 percent. -Sanders also leads in support from people in the age group of 18 to 49 (52 percent for Sanders vs. 39 percent for Clinton). -Clinton continues to have more support than Sanders among older voters over the age of 50, and black and Latino voters. -Voters believe Clinton would do a better job with health care and gun control. -Voters believe Sanders would be better at handling Wall Street and at closing the gap between the rich and poor. For more information on the poll, click here. Armed militants targeted a university in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday, killing at least 19 civilians, with some outlets reporting that 22 civilians were killed. Early reports stated that students, police and one chemistry teacher, Syed Hamid Husain were among those who were killed. Husain reportedly used a pistol to shoot back at the terrorists so that his students could runaway. A local police officer stated that 35 wounded people were being treated at a hospital, according to Reuters. The minister of the province, Mehmood Khan, stated that four terrorists were killed in the attack that occurred during a ceremony at Bacha Khan University in Charsadda. Khan expects the civilian death toll to increase. Army spokesman Lt. Gen. Asim Bajwa stated that the terrorists threw grenades before storming onto campus with guns. Senior commander, Umar Mansoor with the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, stating that it was carried out in retaliation to the military's operations against them that have tried to limit the group's power. The spokesman for the terrorist group's central organization, Mohammad Khurrassani stated, however that the group, "strongly condemn the attack on Bacha Khan University in Charsadda and disown the attack, saying this is not according to Shariah," CNN reported. CNN analyst Phil Mudd argued that the Taliban is most likely responsible since the group has carried out similar attacks in this particular region. The university is located less than 25 miles away from the school that was targeted by the Pakistani Taliban December 2014. In that attack, 145 people with 132 of them being children were killed. At the time of the attack, the school was honoring the 28th anniversary of the death of Abdul Ghaffar Khan, who was also known as Bacha Khan. Khan was an independence activist and a pacifist during the 1920s. The university is named after him. Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has condemned the attack, stating, "We are determined and resolved in our commitment to wipe out the menace of terrorism from our homeland. The countless sacrifices made by our countrymen will not go in vain Inshaallah." India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi released this statement via Twitter: "Strongly condemn the terror attack at Bacha Khan University in Pakistan. Condolences to families of the deceased. Prayers with the injured." U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan, David Hale, said in his statement, released on the U.S. Embassy Website, "I strongly condemn today's appalling attack on Bacha Khan University in Charsadda. The blatant disregard for human life displayed by these attackers is intolerable. It is especially reprehensible that the attackers targeted an educational institution where students and educators are seeking to better themselves and the nation of Pakistan. ... The United States stands with the government and people of Pakistan and is committed to supporting their efforts to fight terrorism. We support Pakistan's efforts to bring to justice those behind the attack." ISIS has completely destroyed St. Elijah's Monastery, Iraq's oldest Christian monastery, the Associated Press confirmed via satellite images. In the images, which were taken in 2014 but requested by the AP this month, the monastery's walls appear to have been "pulverized," imagery analyst Stephen Wood stated. Wood, who is the CEO of Allsource Analysis, believes that the monastery was most likely destroyed sometime from August to September 2014. "Bulldozers, heavy equipment, sledgehammers, possibly explosives turned those stone walls into this field of gray-white dust. They destroyed it completely," Wood said. St. Elijah's Monastery was in existence for 1,400 years and was a sacred place of worship for generations of people who have visited it - most recently for U.S. Troops. Before ISIS, which also goes by the Islamic State and ISIL, completely wiped it out, the Monastary had 26 rooms, which included a chapel and a sanctuary. Catholic Priest Rev. Paul Thabit Habib, 39, who is currently living in exile in Irbil, Iraq, was shocked to see the images. He said in Arabic, "Our Christian history in Mosul is being barbarically leveled. We see it as an attempt to expel us from Iraq, eliminating and finishing our existence in this land." "A big part of tangible history has been destroyed," Rev. Manuel Yousif, who attended mass at the Monastery almost 60 years ago, said reported by the New York Times. "These persecutions have happened to our church more than once, but we believe in the power of truth, the power of God." The reverend is a Chaldean Catholic pastor in Southfield, Michigan. "Unfortunately, there is this systemic destruction of precious sites, not only cultural, but also religious and spiritual. It's very sad and dramatic," the spokesman for the Vatican, Rev. Federico Lombardi, said. ISIS, which has a history of targeting cultural, religious and historic sites, has destroyed more than 100 locations. The group, which has control over several areas in Iraq and Syria, has also thousands of civilians in these regions. The FBI has opened an investigation into an associate professor at Kent State University in Ohio for potential ties to the Islamic State, the terrorist group that is also known as ISIS and ISIL. The FBI has stated that it will not comment on the case "because this is an ongoing investigation," CBS News' Paula Reid reported. Reid added that the Bureau has open investigations related to ISIS in all 50 states. The investigation into Julio Pino was brought to light after the FBI began interviewing some of the students with the school's newspaper. According to the editor of the Kent Stater/Daily Kent Stater, Emily Mills, the FBI interviewed her to ask about the stories she wrote on Pino months ago and to get more information on the professor. According to officials involved with the case, reported by CBS affiliate WOIO, Pino is also being accused of attempting to recruit his students to join ISIS. Pino has denied all allegations and said that he does not agree with the ISIS and its ideologies. P He said to Kent State student media, "I've not broken the law. I don't advocate that anyone else break the law, so I'll stand by that statement that I fulfill my duties as an American citizen by speaking out on issues that some people find controversial, of course, but no, I have not violated any laws that I'm aware of or that anyone has informed me of." University President Beverly Warren tweeted that "there is no threat to our campus." Warren added that the University is working with the FBI. Pino, who is a Cuban-born convert to Islam, teaches two history classes that are focused on Latin America. Pino, who has reportedly been on the FBI's radar since 2014, has made several controversial comments, including anti-Israel rhetoric, in the past. Charges are not expected to be filed against him within the near future. The Daily News-Miner encourages residents to make themselves heard through the Opinion pages. Readers' letters and columns also appear online at newsminer.com. Contact the editor with questions at letters@newsminer.com or call 459-7574. New Delhi: It seems that Aamir Khans comment on intolerance will never stop haunting him. This time the secretary of department of industrial policy and promotion (DIPP) has attacked former Incredible India endorser. Defending his exit, Amitabh Kant, a key driver of the much-acclaimed initiative, on Monday said the actor had damaged the brand identity of the country with his remarks on intolerance. "A brand ambassador promotes a brand. People will come to India and tourist flow will increase only if the brand ambassador of 'Incredible India' promotes India as incredible India. But if the brand ambassador of India says India is intolerant, he is surely not working as a brand ambassador of India," Kant, invited as chief guest, said at the 36th convocation of National Institute of Design (NID), on Monday. The top bureaucrat was answering a query on Khan's removal from the tourism ministry's Incredible India campaign. "He is damaging the brand identity of the country. People will not come to India after hearing him. An ambassador has to promote the brand, not destroy the brand. The brand ambassador must be the best brand ambassador for promoting India, he cannot be the destroyer of the brand," added Kant. This is the first time that a concerned official from the concerned ministry has made a comment on Aamirs removal as Brand Ambassdor of Incredible India. Days ago, Kailash Vijayvargiya and Ram Madhav, both key figures, in ruling BJP have also attacked the PK actor for his commnets at Ramnath Goenka Award Ceremony. Kant also also lauded the initiatives launched by the PM Modi-led Centre, especially 'Start up India, Stand up India'. For all the Latest Entertainment News, Bollywood News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. San Francisco: Apple on Tuesday had a new victory in a long-running patent lawsuita court-ordered ban on older-model Samsung smartphones. An injunction issued by US District Court Judge Lucy Koh in the heart of Silicon Valley was to take effect next month and targeted Samsung smartphones that were essentially no longer hawked in this country. We would like to reassure our millions of loyal customers that all of our flagship smartphones, which are used and loved by American consumers, will remain for sale and available for customer service support in the US, Samsung said in a statement posted online. We are very disappointed that Apple has been granted an injunction on select Samsung legacy mobile phones. Kohs ruling on Monday stemmed from a trial at which Samsung was found to have infringed on patented Apple technology for automatically correcting typed words and for sliding a finger across a scree to unlock a device. Samsung devices targeted at the trial included an array of Galaxy, Stratosphere, Nexus and Admire models from prior generations. The judge concluded that a permanent injunction was warranted because Apple would suffer irreparable harm if Samsung continued using the patent features at issue in the trial, and that money damages would not be sufficient compensation. Koh also barred Samsung from sale or development in the US of software that would implement the features deemed to have been infringed on during the patent litigation. While this will not impact American consumers, it is another example of Apple abusing the judicial system to create bad legal precedent which can harm consumer choice for generations to come, Samsung said. Apple and Samsung have established themselves as fierce competitors in the smartphone market and this lawsuit, filed by the California-based iPhone maker in early 2012, is but one action in a worldwide constellation of litigation between the companies, Koh said in her ruling. New Delhi: One person, who is suspected to be associated with a terror outfit, has been detained and three of his associates are being questioned by a team of Delhi Polices Special Cell at Roorkee in Uttarakhand. The detained suspect, identified as one Akhlaq, is likely to be brought to Delhi and produced before a court here. The suspects are believed to have been planning an attack at the ongoing Ardh Kumbh Mela in Haridwar, a police source said today. The Special Cell tracked down the suspects in a joint operation with a central intelligence agency and they are conducting search operations throughout Uttarakhand, the source said. The detained suspect is also being questioned in connection with the recent terror attack at Punjabs Pathankot as he is believed to have links with terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed, the source said. Yesterday, the Special Cell of Delhi Police had arrested a person with suspected al Qaeda links from Nuh town in Haryanas Mewat district. In a joint operation with a central intelligence agency, two persons were apprehended from there, of which one was arrested by the Special Cell, senior officials claimed. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Prime Minister Narendra Modi condemned the terror attack at Bacha Khan University in Pakistan (Photo: PTI) New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday condemned the terror attack at Bacha Khan University in Pakistan and expressed condolences to the families of the deceased. "Strongly condemn the terror attack at Bacha Khan University in Pakistan. Condolences to families of the deceased. Prayers with the injured," Prime Minister Modi tweeted. In Pakistan, heavily-armed terrorists today stormed the university in Pakistan's restive northwest Khyber- Pakhtunkhwa province and opened indiscriminate fire on students and teachers. At least 21 people have been killed and over 30 others injured in the attack. Over 3,000 students were present inside the university to mark the death anniversary of Khudai Khidmatgar Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan alias Baacha Khan, who died on January 20, 1988. The Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has claimed responsibility for the attack. (ANI) Islamabad: Around 10 armed men attacked the Bacha Khan University in northwest Pakistans Charsadda town on Wednesday, local media reported, adding, gunfire and explosions were also heard. At least 20 persons have been killed in the attack and several others are injured, according to AFP. The gunmen stormed into the university in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and opened fire at students and teachers, reports said. Around 600 guests and more than three thousand students are present in the university campus, reports said. "Armed men stormed into the university premises earlythis morning," Sardheri police officials said. The attack comes an year after Taliban terrorists had killed 134 students in an Army-run school in Peshawar. Here are the highlights: For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had not offered any gratification to voters in the assembly elections last year and no offence of bribery was made out against him, a court here has said while dismissing a criminal complaint seeking his prosecution. The courts order came while refusing to direct the police to lodge an FIR against Kejriwal for allegedly exhorting voters to take bribe from Congress and BJP and vote for Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the last assembly elections in 2015. In the given case, the accused (Kejriwal) has not offered any gratification to the voters for casting votes in favour of his party. He has merely stated that allurements are generally offered by some parties, if offered this time, do not refuse the same but cast vote in favour of his party. He himself has not offered any gratification in lieu of casting votes in favour of his party, Metropolitan Magistrate Babru Bhan said. In my considered opinion, no offence is made out against the accused. Hence, the application of the complainant under section 156(3) CrPC and the complaint is hereby dismissed, the magistrate said in the four-page order. The court passed the order on the complaint of advocate Ikrant Sharma who had alleged that during election campaign in January last year, Kejriwal had abetted the voters of Delhi for accepting illegal gratification from BJP and Congress as a reward for casting their votes. The court referred to section 171B of the IPC where offence of bribery in relation to elections has been defined which says that accepting either for himself or for any other person any gratification as a reward for exercising any electoral right is an offence of bribery. It said that for abetment of this offence, a person must instigate a voter to accept the gratification for exercising his electoral right. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Beirut: The Islamic State group has released 270 of more than 400 civilians it had abducted during its assault on the eastern Syrian city of Deir Ezzor, a monitor said. Those released included women, children under 14 years old, and the elderly, said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. He said they had been freed late yesterday after undergoing questioning by IS jihadists to determine whether they had ties to Syrias regime. They will not go back into Deir Ezzor city, but will be spread out among local tribes in the province, Abdel Rahman told AFP. IS still holds 130 civilians, mostly teenage and adult men, whom Abdel Rahman said were being questioned. If IS sees that they have no ties to the Syrian government, they will take a religious course and will be released, he said. IS launched a multi-pronged assault on Deir Ezzor city on Saturday, with dozens of its fighters carrying out suicide bomb attacks as they stormed government positions. The group is now in control of 60 per cent of the city and has tightened its siege around it by capturing surrounding towns. As IS overran Al-Baghaliyeh, an agricultural area northwest of the city, it abducted another 50 people, mostly men, Abdel Rahman said, but it was not immediately clear whether they were civilians or pro-regime fighters. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi today strongly condemned the terror attack at a university in Pakistan and expressed condolences to the families of the deceased. Strongly condemn the terror attack at Bacha Khan University in Pakistan. Condolences to families of the deceased. Prayers with the injured, he tweeted. Heavily-armed Taliban militants stormed the prestigious university in Pakistans restive northwest Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province this morning, firing indiscriminately on students and teachers. At least 25 people were killed and about 50 others injured in the attack as per the latest information. According to officials, up to 10 attackers were believed to be involved in the attack. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Several changes have been made for this years Republic Day. For example the duration of the show, which was 115 minutes previously, will now be restricted to 90 minutes. More changes that have been made are as follows: Indian Army dog squad Armys dog squad will be a part of this Republic Day parade at Rajpath after 26 long years. 36 dogs out of 1,200 Labradors and German Shepherds, have been selected by the army to march down Rajpath. French contingent A French contingent of 130 soldiers will march down Rajpath with Indian troops for the first time in the history of the Republic Day parade. French President Francoise Hollande is the chief guest this year. All-women stunt contingent For the first time, an all-women contingent of the Central Reserve Police Force will be displaying their motorcycle riding skills at Rajpath. The 'Women Daredevils CRPF contingent includes 120 women from the CRPF's three women battalions and Rapid Action Force. No camel contingent The Border Security Force camel contingent will not be seen at Rajpath and this is happening for the first time in the history of Republic Day parade. No CRPF, ITBP contingents The Central Reserve Police Force, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, the Sashastra Seema Bal will not be participating at this years Republic Day parade. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Kabul: Nearly a dozen people lost their lives after a suicide bomber struck with mini bus carrying employees of a popular news channel in Afghanistan. The bombing near the Russian embassy in downtown Kabul also left 24 people wounded, in the latest in a wave of attacks despite an international push to jumpstart Taliban peace talks. Till last reports no terror group had come out to claim the deadly attack. Some eyewitnesses shared pictures from the spot on social networking sites. Firefighters arrived at the scene, trying to put out the fire engulfing one of the nearby buildings, reportedly next to the Russian embassy. Kabul blast update: a car is in fire infront of Russian embassy. It is a suicide attack: eyewitness. pic.twitter.com/jJOl2S2aLA zakaria hassani (@zakariahassani4) January 20, 2016 In October last year, Taliban had declared TOLO and 1TV, both privately run news stations as legitimate military targets. Taliban claimed that this is for the revenge they sought to take for the news which read Talibanis rape women at a hotel. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi : If you are planning to visit Maldives to witness the famous sparkling blue lights on the beaches, wait, now you neednt go so far to watch the phenomenon. Instead, now the attraction is available in our very own Mumbai. You dont believe us, well, then you should look at this pic. The phenomenon was first captured by Sayli Bhalekar who then told her friends Abir Jain and Nilesh Mane. Later, they took a walk to the beach and saw the phenomenon themselves. Wherever we placed our feet, the surrounding area started glowing. It was like watching an animation film, Abir and Nilesh said. On being asked the local residents informed that this has been happening since Thursday. The phenomenon is called Bioluminescence and is caused by phytoplanktons, tiny organisms about 0.55 mm in size. When they wash up on the shore, a protein called luciferase is activated. This triggers a chemical reaction causing the blue lights. Now, Abir Jain and Nilesh Mane, who are zoology students, have taken samples of the water and plan to publish a scientific paper on the phenomenon of blue waves. So head to Juhu beach to witness nature at its sparkling best. New Delhi : Prime Minister Narendra Modi today strongly condemned the terror attack at a university near Peshawar, a gesture appreciated by his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif who said terrorism is a common enemy and a cooperative approach was essential to eliminate it. Strongly condemn the terror attack at Bacha Khan University in Pakistan. Condolences to families of the deceased. Prayers with the injured, Modi tweeted just hours after the grisly attack in which 20 people and four terrorists were killed. Sharif appreciated Modis statement with regard to the tragic and cowardly terrorist attack against the innocent students and faculty members of the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda, Pakistan Foreign Office said in Islamabad. This incident is yet another reminder that terrorism is our common enemy and a cooperative approach is essential to eliminate it from the region, Sharif was quoted as saying in the statement by the Foreign Office. Heavily-armed Taliban militants stormed the prestigious university in Pakistans restive northwest Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province this morning, firing indiscriminately on students and teachers. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi : Days before Indias 67th Republic Day celebrations, an intercept of a Bangladeshi mobile number has sent security agencies and Intelligence Bureau into a tizzy. IB sleuths on January 15 twice intercepted the coded phrase "doctor medicine lekar jayega" alerting the Indian authorities of all incoming calls from Pakistan and Bangladesh based on a specific area or series of numbers. According to reports, Bangladesh-based Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT) is planning to carry out terror strikes at 23 locations across India, including Gurdaspur and Pathankot again. The report further adds that this time malls, bazaars and educational institutes could be on the group's radar. HuT is planning these strikes with assistance from Jaish-e-Muhammed (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). Notably, HuT's armed wing called Harakat ul-Muhojirinfi Britaniya trains its cadres in chemical, bacteriological, and biological warfare thus worrying the Indian authorities. Punjab Police is taking the alert quite seriously especially after officials recently found a GPS device outside the barracks of the Railway Police Force (RPF) office in Ferozepur, a city which shares the border with Pakistan. Significantly, this is the second high alert after the December 27 IB note that warned of a "spectacular" attack by at least 15 terrorists of JeM and LeT. This alert was raised just ahead of the Pathankot strike. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Work in progress on MG Road as barricades get replaced by dividers. BENGLAURU: Tripping and spraining your legs while walking on uneven footpaths will be a thing of the past as the BBMP is contemplating comprehensive development of pedestrian ways across the city. Footpaths will be upgraded on the lines of TenderSure to ensure that walking on these paths is a pleasure. One of the stretches identified is MG Road, where the footpath will be developed at a cost of `8 crore. Once completed, it will resemble TenderSure kerbs, without the utility ducts running under it. Already, TenderSure footpaths have been appreciated by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah. Priority will be given to aesthetics with bollards to make walking a pleasure and to prevent motorists from parking on footpaths. Since the other side of the MG road, boulevard, has been developed beautifully, the footpath too will be upgraded, a BBMP source said. A total of Rs 40 crore has been earmarked for the development of footpaths along the Namma Metro corridor, except underground stretch, measuring about 20-odd kilometres. Footpaths beneath Metro corridor will be developed on cost-sharing basis with the BBMP alone spending about Rs 32 crore. Already tenders have been floated for both footpath upgradation and constructing medians. Some of the areas where median work will be taken up are Mekhri Circle, Sankey Road and Nagarbhavi area. The BBMP has prepared a Detailed Project Report (DPR) for both footpath upgradation and median works. Panel to relook at road widening Bengaluru: Mayor Manjunath Reddy recommended the setting up of a committee under Special Commissioner (Projects) in order to re-examine the roads, which were notified for widening about a decade ago. Addressing a review meeting on Tuesday, Reddy said in 2005-06, as many as 216 roads were notified for widening. While 92 roads fall under core areas, 124 are located in newly-added areas. He said since the roads were chosen long ago, there was a need to re-examine whether widening was necessary in all the roads. Reddy stressed that in last 10 years, only 32 roads were widened out of the proposed 216 and works were being carried out on 13 roads. Srinagar: Twenty-six years after Kashmiri Pandits were forced to flee the Valley, former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir Farooq Abdullah has put the blame on them for not returning to their homes. "They have to realise that nobody is going to come with a begging bowl and say come and stay with us. They have to make the move," he said. He was speaking at the launch of a book of first hand narratives of stories of persecution and struggle by several generations of Pandits evicted from the state and who yearned to return to a peaceful co-existence with their Muslim neighbours. Abdullah said that several Pandits who had made their homes in Delhi had come to see him when the J-K government asked them to return to the Valley. "When the government made a move that the officers and doctors who are settled here should come back, they came to see me and said, look our children are now in schools here, our parents are ill and need medical care, we can't leave them back. So for God's sake let us live here," he said. "Don't wait till the last guns stop firing. Come home!", he urged, adding "Who are you waiting for? Don't wait. You think Farooq Abdullah will come, hold your hand and take you there." Noting that it was tough unless they make the first move, Abdullah said, "Yes, onus is on them to come home." Kashmiri Pandits were driven out of their homeland in 1990 to live in exile and 26 years since then governments at both central and state levels have changed. Myriad policies have also been formulated but "the rhetoric remains unchanged", said Varad Sharma, who along with Siddharth Gigoo edited the book "A Long Dream of Home: The Persecution, Exodus and Exile of Kashmiri Pandits launched last evening. Abdullah said he had made efforts to help the Pandits return to the Valley but they continued to remain skeptical. "I met them as a Chief Minister and even after that, I have gone to their homes (to request them to return.) It's not only me, but even Hurriyat leaders have come to you and told you to please come back," the former Chief Minister said. There have been several attempts in the past to rehabilitate the Kashmiri Pandits in the Valley by proposing the erection of townships but that, Gigoo said, "will not be home. It will be nothing less than a house arrest." According to Gigoo, Sharma and other contributers to the book, the Pandits essentially want "justice", which means getting back their way of life - a peaceful co-existence with their neighbours, i.e. the Kashmiri Muslims and more importantly, no threat to their lives. Sharma suggests a "dialogue" to restore peace in the Valley. According to Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, the major impediment in the rehabilitation of Kashmiri Pandits lies in the fear of losing their lives and homes all over again. "Kashmiri Pandits will find reconciliation very difficult because they have gone through a deep sense of hurt and betrayal," he said. Despite assurances by authorities about "reduced militancy" in the state, Tharoor pointed out that the Pandits continue to reel under the post traumatic effect of their ouster that followed a massive devastation of property and loss of lives. "Even though Farooq has his heart at the right place but even he cannot guarantee the security and nobody wants to be the guinea pig," he said. The four-footed contingent, colourfully bedecked are a major attraction at the parade every year. New Delhi: In an afterthought move, the BSF camel contingent has been finally called in to march down the Rajpath, keeping alive the 66-year-old tradition of the Republic Day ceremonial parade and its celebrations. With less than a week to go for the national event, the iconic contingent today took part in dress rehearsals for the first time after it was made to skip the same exercise on January 17 and 18. The four-footed contingent, colourfully bedecked are a major attraction at the parade every year. Officials said the Border Security Force authorities were informed yesterday evening by the Ministry of Defence to mobilise their squad and participate in the drill at the Rajpath today morning. "The camel contingent today participated in the dress rehearsals for the first time. The squad has been here for the last about three months but no intimation for participating in the rehearsals for January 26 parade were made earlier. It skipped the scheduled and notified rehearsals held on January 17 and 18," the officials said. The 90-camels contingent, 54 with troops and the rest with band personnel, first became part of this national festival celebration in 1976 after it replaced a similar squad of the army which had been participating in the Republic Day parade since it first took place in 1950. The BSF is the only force in the country to have these majestic and elegantly dressed four-legged animals for both operational and ceremonial duties. They are used by BSF personnel for patrolling along the Thar desert running along the Indo-Pak International Border in Rajasthan. The contingent had been the intrinsic part of the parade at the Rajpath on every January 26. "The contingent has been practising at other facilities till now and it can surely give its best by putting its best foot forward in the last few days before January 26," they said. According to tradition, the lead camel contingent on Republic Day showcases smartly dressed and large-moustached and armed BSF border guards, the second follows with bandsmen in beautiful multi-colour dresses on the back of the camels playing martial music. Visakhapatnam: Organisers of 10-K Run and 5-K Run, which was organised as part of the Visakha Utsav-2016, appear to be in the dock with the winners alleging that they were cheated as the winners cheques they received had bounced. The winners also said that the organisers of the Visakha Utsav have dented the image of the Vizag. The disappointed winners approached the police demanding action against the organisers of the run. It may recall that several organisations, including Prisms, Awake Welfare Society and few others, organised the 5-K Run and 10-K Run on January 2 (Sunday) as part of Visakha Utsav-2016. The run was flagged off by AP ministers Ganta Srinivasa Rao and Palle Raghunatha Reddy. The organizers had announced cash prizes of Rs 15,000, Rs 12,000 and Rs 10,000 for the first, second and third place for both mens and womens categories in 10-K Run. Similarly, winners of the first three places in both the mens and womens categories in the 5-K run were to get Rs 10,000, Rs 7,500 and Rs 5,000 in cash. The winners P. Sivaji, K. Ramesh, K. Vara Prasad, P. Ramani and a few others said that one Pawan of Prisms had raised Rs 30 lakh from the various sponsors for organising the run and present the prize money totalling Rs 1.2 lakh. We had staged protest in front of collectorate on January 4 against the organisers for cheating us by not distributing the prize money. Now Pawan again cheated as by issued cheques to only six out of 12 winners and the cheques have bounced due it insufficient balance in his bank account, the winners said. The cheated winners lodged a complaint with III-Town police against Pawan and a few others demanding action against them. Inspector B. Venkata Rao said that they have received a complaint from the winners of the event and will examine it and register a case. Sources said that Pawan has been threatening the winners that he will commit suicide if the winners demand the prize money. Heres where we are in Connecticut: Politicians blame each other as they stare at the fading taillights of the luxury car, paying no attention to the out-of-control truck barreling their way. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy is right when he said, in an exclusive interview with Hearst Connecticut Media this week, that this is not the time for anyone to fingerpoint. It does no good and though assigning blame is natural, it also is emblematic of Connecticut legislators who are stalled on progress. GE one of the largest employers in the state announced last week that after 42 years headquartered in Fairfield, it is moving to Boston. It is heading out of Connecticut and no amount of blame will get it to come back. So the politicians, Malloy included, have to put their full attention on the out-of-control truck the substantial deficit in the new state budget that starts in July and even more massive deficits in the following two years. On Friday the legislatures nonpartisan Office of Fiscal analysis projected the upcoming new budget will be short just over $500 million, mostly because of reduced revenues from income taxes, and by 2017-18 the gap will grow to a projected $1.72 billion and $1.87 billion for the following year. If household budgets operated this way, everyone would be bankrupt in no time. Bad enough that this fiscal year started in July with tax increases, and by fall when revenue projections fell short the governor had to make $360 million in cuts. The General Assembly tinkered with adjustments in a special session in early December. But no amount of shuffling numbers around will satisfy the ballooning deficit. This time and theres not much time true economic reform has to happen to get Connecticut on solid footing and make it conducive to business growth and household stability. What should that economic reform look like? Certainly it must include a reasonable system to address crushing pension obligations; Malloy and state Comptroller Kevin Lembo are working on plans. In an election year for the state House and Senate, it would be a challenge to overhaul the way Connecticut does business with its patchwork of local property taxes and parcels of economic incentives. Therefore, to be realistic, the governor should operate like a business leader and convene a think tank of stakeholders and the brightest minds to tackle the states entrenched problems. A first step would be to pull together all the efforts already under way, such as the Commission on Economic Competitiveness, formed last year, or the results of the Project BEST conference in November with municipal, business and labor leaders. Give the think tank a firm and quick deadline. Appoint a driver to turn ideas into reasonable legislation and then get it all passed. Deal honestly, without blinking, with the states looming budget deficit and businesses and residents alike will feel more secure. Connecticut is a state of natural beauty, Yankee ingenuity and shimmering potential. Yes, it can be a place to stay. Now, stop blaming each other and get to work. Lucknow/New Delhi: BJP president Amit Shah has got a clean chit from the UP police in a case related to hate speech in Muzaffarnagar in April 2014 during the Lok Sabah elections. The police told the court that they could not find any evidence against the BJP chief. The final report would now be placed before the judicial magistrate who will take a final call in the case. The state police had lodged an FIR in Kakroli police station against Mr Shah, accusing him of making an objectionable speech in 2014. Mr Shah had allegedly said that, If Modi wins, mullas (Mulayam) government will fall. Amit Shah set to be BJP chief again With Amit Shah set to be re-elected as BJP president the process for election to the top party post got under way on Wednesday following issuance of notification of the poll schedule. Nominations for the post of party president would be accepted on January 24 and scrutiny will take place the same day. The election, if required, would be held on January 25. Mr Shahs tenure at the helm of the party is ending on January 23 and he is likely to be re-elected unopposed, party sources said. If re-elected, this would be the first full tenure for Shah as he is now completing the remnant of the three-year term of Rajnath Singh, who left the post after joining the Union Cabinet. CALGARY, Jan. 19, 2016 /CNW/ - ATB Financial's book of loans to small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) in Alberta tells a story of optimism not always easy to read in the accounts of job losses, falling oil, and a lower dollar these days. "We are not saying that we should all somehow ignore the challenging news out there, because it is quite real, and it does have a real human cost," said Wellington Holbrook, ATB's Executive Vice-President, Business & Agriculture. "But we are saying that there is room for hope, and a sense that the women and men who run small and medium sized businesses in our province are facing that challenge head on." Holbrook pointed to new numbers that reveal ATB's significant activity in the marketplace. In the third quarter of the current fiscal year, ATB authorized 5,472 loans to small and medium-sized businesses. That is a jump of almost 30 per cent compared to the same number in the same quarter of the previous year, when 4,222 loans were approved. Year to date, ATB loan volumes and values are keeping pace with the rate experienced in the nine months a year ago. "That might sound like nothing has changed, but, look closer," Holbrook said. "We are coming off a record year in terms of our support for small and medium-sized business, so, to keep up with that is remarkable. And worth telling people about." For the nine months that ended December 31, 2014, ATB bankers authorized 12,692 loans for a dollar value of $2.79 billion. For the same period that ended December 31, 2015, those numbers are virtually identical: 12,629 loans for a dollar value of $2.79 billion. "We have not changed our standards in assessing the risks involved," Holbrook said. "We do our due diligence. We are bankers, after all." Holbrook said ATB continues to see strong performance with its small and medium sized business loan portfolio, particularly when compared to the challenges facing Alberta's larger businesses, especially those directly involved in oil and gas. He also stressed ATB's loan activity should be seen as more than simply money owed to the bank. "A loan doesn't just sit there," Holbrook said. "That money does stuff, it creates activity, whether in people or jobs or equipment." Holbrook also pointed to two other significant facts in the unfolding ATB loan story: In the first 9 months of this fiscal year, ATB completed more Canada Small Business Loans Act loans than any other financial institution in Alberta , and , and More than 95 per cent of ATB loans to small and medium-sized businesses are provided to companies not directly involved in oil and gas. All this news from the ATB loans front comes as the latest ATB Business Beat,conducted from November 2 to 13, 2015, found 72 per cent of the Alberta companies surveyed that have borrowed money during the last three years, whether they are ATB customers or not, received all or even more of the money requested. Unfortunately, almost a quarter of businesses surveyed (23%) didn't get all the financing they needed, which raises the question as to how financial institutions can do even more to help entrepreneurs achieve their goals. The survey also found that 60 per cent of respondents said their borrowing needs remained unchanged during the last year, while 22 per cent said their needs are greater than the previous year. "Whatever your opinion or your unique circumstance, it is important to talk to a professional and have a good understanding of what additional funds could be used for, how payments would fit within your overall cash flow requirements, and how debt financing might be used to your advantage," said Holbrook. Read the whole Business Beat, including the latest ATB Business and ATB Economy indexes here SOURCE ATB Financial For further information: Barry Strader, Corporate Reporter, ATB Financial, Mobile: (780) 886-4398, Office: (780) 495-1343, Email: [email protected] Ms Irani said Mr Rao on November 17, 2014, had mentioned that seven students from the marginalised sections had committed suicide in three semesters in the university. Hyderabad: HRD minister Smriti Irani on Wednesday used a letter written by Congress MP V. Hanumanth Rao in November 2014 to the ministry in an attempt to deflect criticism from the Opposition parties following the suicide of HCU student Rohith Vemula. Ms Irani said Mr Rao on November 17, 2014, had mentioned that seven students from the marginalised sections had committed suicide in three semesters in the university. The minister said Mr Rao also wrote about land-grabbing and embezzlement of funds at the university. He was referring to incidents that took place during the Congress regime. The BJP now says that if the Congress governments had acted in time, the conditions would not have risen for Rohith to end his life. Mr Rao had written: Seven students have ended their life over three semesters. There was also a rape and kidnap attempt in the university... the university ranking has fallen from No. 1 to No. 10 and NAAC rating has dropped by five per cent... there are allegations of transfer of university land of Rs 200 crore to a private state government employees housing society... the then VC spent Rs 1.75 lakh on a mobile phone and spent `5 crore for renovation of his bungalow... spent Rs 1.75 crore to lay a road Mr Rao stated that the then V-C was intelligently avoiding MPs by conducting meetings when Parliament is in session. Huge differences in both parties letters Union HRD minister Smriti Irani said her ministry had followed the same procedure for the letters written by minister Bandaru Dattatreya and Congress MP V. Hanumantha Rao, but there are huge differences between both the letters. Mr Raos letter is about corruption and irregularities and does not mention divisive issues. In contrast, Mr Dattatreyas letter, in favour of the BJP-allied ABVP, says the university has become a den of casteist, anti-national and extremist politics. Mr Rao said, If the minister had responded to my letter immediately, Rohith would not have had to commit suicide. Though I wrote almost a year ago there has been no response till now. Postpartum psychosis is a serious mental health illness that can affect someone soon after having a baby. It affects around 1 in 500 mothers after giving birth. Many people who have given birth will experience mild mood changes after having a baby, known as the "baby blues". This is normal and usually only lasts for a few days. But postpartum psychosis is very different from the "baby blues". It's a serious mental illness and should be treated as a medical emergency. It's sometimes called puerperal psychosis or postnatal psychosis. Symptoms of postpartum psychosis Symptoms usually start suddenly within the first 2 weeks after giving birth - often within hours or days of giving birth. More rarely, they can develop several weeks after the baby is born. Symptoms can include: hallucinations - hearing, seeing, smelling or feeling things that are not there delusions thoughts or beliefs that are unlikely to be true a manic mood talking and thinking too much or too quickly, feeling "high" or "on top of the world" a low mood showing signs of depression, being withdrawn or tearful, lacking energy, having a loss of appetite, anxiety, agitation or trouble sleeping sometimes a mixture of both a manic mood and a low mood - or rapidly changing moods loss of inhibitions feeling suspicious or fearful restlessness feeling very confused behaving in a way that's out of character When to get medical help Postpartum psychosis is a serious mental illness that should be treated as a medical emergency. It can get worse rapidly and the illness can risk the safety of the mother and baby. See a GP immediately if you think you, or someone you know, may have developed symptoms of postpartum psychosis. You should request an urgent assessment on the same day. You can call 111 if you cannot speak to a GP or do not know what to do next. Your midwife or health visitor may also be able to help you access care. Call your crisis team if you already have a care plan because you've been assessed as being at high risk of developing postpartum psychosis. Go to A&E or call 999 if you think you, or someone you know, may be in danger of imminent harm. Be aware that if you have postpartum psychosis, you may not realise you're ill. Your partner, family or friends may spot the signs and have to take action. Treating postpartum psychosis Treatment usually happens in hospital. Ideally, this would be with your baby in a specialist psychiatric unit called a mother and baby unit (MBU). But you may be admitted to a general psychiatric ward until an MBU is available. Medicine You may be prescribed 1 or more of the following: antipsychotics to help with manic and psychotic symptoms, such as delusions or hallucinations mood stabilisers (for example, lithium) to stabilise your mood and prevent symptoms recurring antidepressants to help ease symptoms if you have significant symptoms of depression and may be used alongside a mood stabiliser Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is sometimes recommended if all other treatment options have failed, or when the situation is thought to be life threatening. Most people with postpartum psychosis make a full recovery as long as they receive the right treatment. Psychological therapy As you move forward with your recovery, you may benefit from seeing a therapist for cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). CBT is a talking therapy that can help you manage your problems by changing the way you think and behave. Other forms of support It can be hard to come to terms with the experience of postpartum psychosis as you recover. Talking to peers and others with lived experience of the illness may be helpful. Some inpatient units and communities have peer support workers who have experienced the illness, and you can also access support through charities. Causes We're not sure what causes postpartum psychosis, but you're more at risk if you: already have a diagnosis of bipolar disorder or schizophrenia have a family history of mental health illness, particularly postpartum psychosis (even if you have no history of mental illness) developed postpartum psychosis after a previous pregnancy Reducing the risk of postpartum psychosis If you're at high risk of developing postpartum psychosis, you should have specialist care during pregnancy and be seen by a perinatal psychiatrist. You should have a pre-birth planning meeting at around 32 weeks of pregnancy with everyone involved in your care. This includes your partner, family or friends, mental health professionals, your midwife, obstetrician, health visitor and GP. This is to make sure that everyone is aware of your risk of postpartum psychosis. You should all agree on a plan for your care during pregnancy and after you've given birth. You'll get a written copy of your care plan explaining how you and your family can get help quickly if you become ill, as well as strategies you can use to reduce your risk of becoming ill. In the first few weeks after your baby is born, you should have regular home visits from a midwife, health visitor and mental health nurse. Recovering from postpartum psychosis The most severe symptoms tend to last 2 to 12 weeks, and it can take 6 to 12 months or more to recover completely from the condition. But with treatment and the right support, most people with postpartum psychosis do make a full recovery. An episode of postpartum psychosis is sometimes followed by a period of depression, anxiety and low confidence. It might take a while for you to come to terms with what happened. Some mothers have difficulty bonding with their baby after an episode of postpartum psychosis, or feel some sadness at missing out on time with their baby. With support from your partner, family, friends and your mental health team, or talking to others with lived experience, you can overcome these feelings. Many people who've had postpartum psychosis go on to have more children. Although there is about a 1 in 2 chance you will have another episode after a future pregnancy, you should be able to get help quickly with the right care and the risks can be reduced with appropriate interventions. The Attorney General of the Federation and Minister for Justice, Mr. Abubakar Malami (SAN), has said the present administration will not... The Attorney General of the Federation and Minister for Justice, Mr. Abubakar Malami (SAN), has said the present administration will not spare judges who are found to be corrupt.Malami said unlike in the past when indicted judges were only sent on compulsory retirement, any judge found culpable in the new dispensation risked criminal prosecution and forfeiture of assets as additional consequences.The minister said this in Lagos on Tuesday, according to a statement made available to our correspondent by a group, Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project.According to SERAP, Malami delivered a paper in Lagos at the presentation of the groups latest report, titled, Go home and sin no more: Corrupt judges escaping justice in Nigeria.Malami, who was represented on the occasion by his Senior Special Assistant on White Collar Crimes, Abiodun Aikomo, was quoted to have vowed that acts of judicial impunity on the part of judges would not be tolerated by the President Muhamadu Buhari-led administration.He noted that the Nigerian judiciary had been losing public trust and confidence as it appeared as judges enjoyed total immunity from prosecution for alleged corrupt practices.The AGF added, As we may be aware, this administration promised Nigerians that it will promptly address the challenges facing our nation in the three areas of corruption, economy and security. Let no one be in doubt, the legitimate expectation of Nigerians in this regard shall be met.In this regard therefore, I am reiterating that the fight against corruption shall be total and will not exclude judicial officers, who are found wanting. After all, it is beyond doubt that a corrupt judge cannot meaningfully contribute to the fight against corruption.Malami said judges would be continually reminded of the judicial oath that they took, which mandated them to deliver justice without fear or favour, affection or ill-will, independently and impartially.In reality, it cannot be over-emphasised that systemic corruption and impunity are prevalent in Nigeria, and that they cut across all sectors of the society, unfortunately, including the judiciary an institution that is universally believed to be the hope of the common man.Ideally, the judiciary in a democratic state ought to be accountable less to public opinion and more to public interest. It should discharge its constitutional roles by being principled, independent and impartial, he stated. The Lagos State Governor, Akinwunmi Ambode, on Tuesday said crime had reduced in the state. Ambode, who spoke during the second Quarte... The Lagos State Governor, Akinwunmi Ambode, on Tuesday said crime had reduced in the state.Ambode, who spoke during the second Quarterly Town Hall Meeting at the City Hall, explained that statistics showed that crime rate reduced by 65 per cent during the last quarter of 2015 compared with 2014.He added that his administration would continue to stay true to its policy built on a tripod of security, infrastructure development and job creation.He said, In the last quarter, we invested massively to re-energise and reinvigorate the state security infrastructure to bring it to a level comparable to what obtains in other modern city states. The investment in security has led to the reduction of crime rate in the last quarter of 2015.I am happy to report that our state is a lot safer today as statistics shows that crime rate reduced by 65 per cent during the last quarter compared with Year 2014.Ambode, who said he would continue to work tirelessly to deliver good governance for the collective good of all Lagosians, explained that a safer Lagos would attract investments.He added that in another spirited effort to tackle crime, his administration invested in the Light Up Lagos project, through which streetlights were being restored on major highways and inner roads in the state.The governor also said his administration had donated 49 transformers to communities, while over 300 roads had been rehabilitated.He added that 66 major road projects were at various stages of completion.In addition to this, the construction of two roads in each of the 20 local government and 37 local government development areas in the state was inaugurated last week. A total of 114 roads will be delivered through this intervention in the next six months at a cost of N17.5b, the governor said.Ambode also listed other strides of his administration in the last quarter to include the injection of 434 new BRT buses, the commencement of construction of flyovers in Ajah roundabout, Abule Egba Junction and Berger bus stop.He said the state government had embarked on the rehabilitation of schools, construction of new classroom blocks and the provision of furniture to the tune of N2.5bn, jointly funded with the Federal Government. Hyderabad: An ATM machine of the HDFC Bank caught fire at Nagole on Wednesday. However, cash was not damaged. Fire officials think a short circuit might have caused the fire. Fire officials said HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank ATMs are located adjacent to each other on Nagole crossroads. Around 5.30 am the guard inside the ICICI Bank booth heard noise and came out. He found the noise was coming from the HDFC Bank ATM machine. There were sparks behind the machine and soon it became a big fire, said Moula Ali fire officer G.B. Chandra Shekar. The ATM, the air conditioner and the booth were destroyed in the fire. By 7.30 am the fire was brought under control. A social critic and chieftain of the United Progressives Party, UPP, Professor Protus Nathan Uzorma, has advised the agitators for a pre... A social critic and chieftain of the United Progressives Party, UPP, Professor Protus Nathan Uzorma, has advised the agitators for a president of Igbo extraction in 2019, to discard the idea, as it remains a tall dream.Professor Uzorma, who made his feeling known during a press conference in Owerri, however, advised that Ndigbo should rather begin to organize themselves for the 2023 presidential race, instead of embarking on a wild goose chase in 2019.It was his considered opinion that since the sitting president is constitutionally entitled to a second tenure and would definitely go for it, it would be a mirage for Ndigbo to achieve the feat.The UPP chieftain, who dismissed the All Progressives Congress, APC, administration in Imo State as a disaster that has impoverished the masses over the years, also warned that it would only take divine intervention to rescue the state from its current state in abyss.Speaking on the nations democratic engineering since 1999, Uzorma noted that although the nation had made some giant strides within the period, a lot still needed to be done to differentiate it from military despotism.After taking a critical look at the nations economy, Professor Uzorma lamented that the exchange rate of the Naira had continued to slide.stressing that this situation has disastrous economic consequences to Nigeria and Nigerians.Where are we heading to and what is the future of our nation and its citizens?Before President Muhammadu Buhari came on board, our economy was a little bit stable but it is no longer so toady, Uzorma lamented.Answering a question, the UPP chieftain opined that the fall in the prices of oil may have contributed to the current economic mess because Nigeria runs an oil-based economy. The Federal Government has confirmed 212 suspected cases of Lassa Fever in 64 Local government areas across 17 states in the country, eve... The Minister of Health, Prof. Issac Adewole, who disclosed this, yesterday, in Abuja at the Emergency National Council on Health meeting with state Commissioners of Health and other stake- holders in the health sector, said the current out-break was a national embarrassment.Adewole, who debunked rumours in some quarters that the disease was a gimmick to get money from the government, said objective of the meeting, was to facilitate discussion on control of the ongoing disease outbreak; to develop strategies of prevention and management of all cases in Nigeria, among others.He said: There is a high level of denial and a conspiracy of silence in some of our states. I think people take delight in saying we have no case and to me that is not the issue.In fact, if you are able to pick a suspicious cases, to me that is the issue because that goes to tell us that the surveillance system is at work.We also want to alert all health professionals in the country that they should report any case. I have described the outbreak as a national embarrassment. We can manage embarrassment, but when we allow another outbreak to occur in August this year, it will become a national shame to all of us. One of the things we will do to prevent us from dragging this nation into shame is to stamp out Lassa Fever.Healthcare managers should not deceive their political leaders that all is well. All states should consider themselves at risk.He noted that 17 states have been affected.It has affected 64 local governments across the country and we have been able to pick 212 suspected cases. It dates back from August last year, not just this year. It is better to over-count suspected cases than to under-count.The real hot spots are Niger, Bauchi, Taraba, Kano, Edo, Nasarawa, Plateau and Rivers, but for us to be honest with ourselves, all states should consider themselves at risk and please, put up measures to contain, prevent and reassure the community that we are on top of the situation, he asserted. The Olubadan of Ibadan, Oba Samuel Odulana Odugade 1, is dead, sources said last night. The monarch was 101. He would have been 102 in... The Olubadan of Ibadan, Oba Samuel Odulana Odugade 1, is dead, sources said last night.The monarch was 101. He would have been 102 in April.The Olubadan lost consciousness before he eventually passed on, it was gathered.Details about Oba Odulanas death were sketchy but he had been indisposed for some time on account of old age.One of his sons, Prof. Femi Lana, declined comment last night. Some Ibadan chiefs contacted also kept sealed lips but sources close to the family said the body of the late monarch had been taken to a morgue.The personal assistant to the late monarch, Chief Isiaka Akinpelu, denied that the monarch had passed on. He said it was a rumour, adding that Oba Odulana ate yesterday.His death will throw the city into mourning after the brouhaha that followed the promotion of nine high chiefs on January 1. The action pitted the Olubadan-In-Council against the state government.Oba Odulana mounted the throne in 2007 as the 39th Olubadan. He was the 17th Olubadan since the title was elevated from Baale Ibadan to the Olubadan in 1930.The first traditional ruler to bear the new title was Oba Okunola Abass who reigned between 1930 and 1946.Next in line to the throne is the Balogun of Ibadan, High Chief Saliu A.O. Adetunji.He ascended the throne following the demise of Oba Yunusa Ogundipe Arapasowu I, who ruled from 1999 to 2007.The late Olubadan hailed from the Ladunni Compound in Oja Igbo within the Ibadan metropolis. He was born at Igbo-Elerin, Lagelu Local Government Area on April 14, 1914, to Pa Odulana Ayinla.He began his elementary education at Saint Andrews School, Bamigbola, in Lagelu Local Government Area in January, 1922 before obtaining a transfer to Saint Peters School, Aremo in 1929.In December 1936, the late monarch completed his middle school education at Mapo Central School. He developed his education through correspondence courses.He had a stint with the United African Company (UAC) as a produce clerk, before taking up a teaching appointment at the Church Missionary Society (CMS) Elementary School, Jago, Ona-Ara Local Government Area in 1938.Oba Odugade I also taught in several schools between 1939 and 1942.However, the late monarch willingly vacated the teaching job for a more challenging duty as an Army officer during the 1939 Second World War.After the end of the war in 1945, he was saddled with the responsibility to demobilise returning soldiers in Lagos, a role which earned him an exemplary character award of the Army 4th Brigade.He was subsequently appointed to man the Colonial Office Education Department in 1946.He voluntarily retired from the civil service to embrace politics. The late Oba Odugade I aided the establishment of both primary and secondary schools in various parts of the old Western Region.In the 1959 pre-independence federal elections, he contested to represent his constituency as a member of the House of Representatives.His political career ended with Nigerias first military coup on January 15, 1966 after which he went into philanthropy and community mobilisation.The late Oba graced the Ibadan socio-cultural landscape with so much fanfare. For instance, he was a co-founder of prime organisations, including Ibadan Economic Foundation and the Ibadan Progressive Union, among others. Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State, yesterday, regretted that the current tension in the Niger Delta was created by the immediate pas... Governor Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State, yesterday, regretted that the current tension in the Niger Delta was created by the immediate past Peoples Democratic Party, PDP-led administration through the empowerment of people he described as wrong guys who showed capacity for violence.He urged the new Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Pastor Usani Uguru and the Minister of State, Niger Delta Affairs, Prof. Claudius Daramola to reform the ministry, saying, You have a huge challenge due to the disastrous performance of your predecessors under the last PDP government which made more noise about the Niger Delta than work.They empowered the wrong people because they showed capacity for violence and then ignored the real people who were peaceful, who just wanted development. Therefore, you have a huge task to bring development and carry out massive reforms for our people and you need to re-enlighten our people to recognise that the long term challenge of bringing prosperity to our people will not necessarily continue to be driven by intervention agencies, it has to do with creating jobs and making the region peaceful.Oshiomhole spoke when the new leadership of the Niger Delta Ministry, led by the minister, Pastor Uguru, paid him a courtesy visit at Government House, Benin City.Uguru, who spoke earlier, said: We are in the state to assess the progress in the Niger Delta states. It is our position that we should not begin projects in the state without the knowledge, commitment and collaboration of the home government because this will help us in future planning to agree even before we propose any project.We want to channel our resources in a way that will be best utilized so as to avoid wastage. We are also going to take priorities very seriously, we will put resources where they will be optimally utilized.Oshiomhole further admonished the ministry to pay serious attention to the issue of environmental degradation. I am very worried about the damage to the environment by major oil companies that are allowed to flare their gas even in the 21st century. The technologies are there. It is possible to convert the gas we are wasting away to resources for our country, he said. The Abuja Division of the Federal High Court, yesterday, granted bail to the embattled National Publicity Secretary of the Peoples Democ... Metuh, who was on Friday remanded in Kuje Prison by Justice Okon Abang, was brought to court yesterday in handcuffs.He is answering to a seven-count criminal charge preferred against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.His firm, Destra Investment Limited, was also charged before the court over alleged N400 million fraud involving the Office of the National Security Adviser.Specifically, EFCC, alleged that Metuh had in November 2014, collected N400 million from the erstwhile National Security Adviser, NSA, Col. Sambo Dasuki (retd).The fund which was withdrawn from an account the Office of the NSA operated with the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, was allegedly transferred to Metuh through account no. 0040437573 which Destra Investments Limited operated with Diamond Bank Plc.EFCC insisted that whereas the fund was earmarked for campaign activities of the PDP, it said that Metuh diverted most of it to his personal use.It alleged that Metuh converted part of the money to $1 million which he used for his personal business.Besides, Metuh was alleged to have transferred N21.7 million to another chieftain of the PDP, Chief Tony Anenih.Meanwhile, Metuh, who earlier pleaded not guilty to the charge, yesterday, prayed the court to release him on bail pending the determination of the case against him.The application which he filed through his team of lawyers, comprising four Senior Advocates of Nigeria, SANs, was predicated on provisions of sections 35 and 36 of the 1999 Constitution, as amended, as well as sections 156, 162 and 165 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act, 2015.His lead counsel, Chief Chris Uche, SAN, who argued the application, yesterday, urged the court to grant his client bail on self recognition.Insisting that allegations levelled against Metuh are ordinarily bailable, Uche told the court that his client voluntarily submitted himself to the EFCC.Uche maintained that his client had every opportunity to escape from the country prior to the time he was invited by the anti-graft agency, but refused to do so.Besides, he drew the attention of the court to the fact that the former NSA, Dasuki, and other persons also facing similar charges by the EFCC have all secured bail from different courts.Meantime, the EFCC, yesterday, opposed Metuhs bail request, saying he has the capacity to interfere with ongoing investigations against him.The prosecuting counsel, Mr. Sylvanus Tahir, who is the Assistant Director, Legal & Prosecution Department of the EFCC, told the court that Metuh attacked operatives of the agency and tore pages of his statement.He urged the court to consider the criminal nature of the charge which he said attracts a maximum sentence of seven years imprisonment upon conviction, and deny the accused person bail.After listening to all the parties, yesterday, Justice Abang, in a bench ruling, said he was favourably disposed to granting bail to the accused person.The judge who agreed with Metuhs lawyer that the offences are bailable, said the EFCC could not establish its allegation that the accused person destroyed his statement.To hold the view that the accused person, if released on bail, will act in the same manner is speculative. The court does not act on speculation. The alleged conduct of the defendant while in custody of the EFCC cannot be a factor to be considered in refusing his application for bail, the Judge held.He said the paramount thing was for the court to impose conditions that would compel the attendance of the accused for trial, saying he is in the eyes of the law presumed innocent until proved guilty.Consequently, Justice Abang ordered Metuh to produce two sureties who must deposit the sum of N200 million each.He maintained that the sureties must not only be residents of Abuja, but also owners of landed property within the Maitama district of the FCT.They are to submit the Certificates of Occupancy of the property to the Chief Registrar of the court for verification, as well as submit their three years tax clearance.According to the court, the sureties must swear to an affidavit of means and also submit two recent passport photographs.More so, Justice Abang ordered Metuh to surrender his international passport to the Chief Registrar of the high court.He directed that the prosecution should within 24 hours upon receiving notification that the accused has perfected the conditions, personally conduct a verification with a view to ensuring that all the terms were duly perfected.However, the court, yesterday, declined Metuhs prayer for it to restrain the EFCC from re-arresting him upon fulfilment of the conditions.While adjourning full-blown hearing on the matter till January 25, the judge asked the EFCC to summon its witnesses to be prepared for trial. The Senate on Tuesday adopted President Muhammadu Buharis request asking it to discard the original budget proposals he presented to the... The Senate on Tuesday adopted President Muhammadu Buharis request asking it to discard the original budget proposals he presented to the Joint Session of the National Assembly on December 22, 2015 and work with a corrected version of the bill, after two weeks of controversy.The development followed the Upper Chambers adoption and approval of a letter from Buhari, read by the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, on the floor of the Senate.Buhari, in the letter, had indicated the intention of the executive to check the proposals to ensure that there were no errors in the detailed breakdown.He told the lawmakers that necessary corrections had been completed on the budget and that the corrected version of the money bill had also been submitted to the National Assembly.The President, therefore, said that the National Assembly would be given both the original copy he had submitted to the apex legislative assembly since December 22, 2015, and the copy containing the corrections.Buhari acknowledged that he was aware of the controversies and confusion the corrections made on the budget proposals had provoked in the polity.He explained that the draft bill did not change, neither were there any changes in the figures of either the sectoral allocations or the total budget figures.The letter partly read, It will be recalled that on Tuesday 22nd December, 2016 (he means 2015), I presented my 2016 budget proposals to the joint sitting of the National Assembly. I submitted a draft bill accompanied by a schedule of details.As of the time of submission, we indicated that because the details had just been produced, we would have had to check to ensure that there were no errors in the detailed breakdown contained in the schedule.That has since been completed and I understand that the corrections have been submitted. The National Assembly would, therefore, have the details as submitted on the 22nd and a copy containing the corrections submitted last week.It appears that this has led to some confusion. In this regard, please find attached the corrected version. This is the version the National Assembly should work with as my 2016 budget estimates.The draft bill remains the same and there are no changes in any of the figures.Saraki told his colleagues after the adoption of the document that what was paramount in the hearts of Nigerians was the content of the budget and how it would impact on their lives.He said the controversies generated with respect to corrections being made on the bill by the Presidency should be a thing of the past.He, therefore, noted that the Senate would commence debate on the budget proposals today and continue on Thursday and Tuesday next week.Consequently, Saraki directed the Senate Leader to ensure that copies of the budget estimates were produced and distributed to members in preparation for debate.Meanwhile, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr. Yakubu Dogara, on Tuesday stopped a protest by the opposition Peoples Democratic Party over the corrections proposed to the 2016 budget by President Buhari.The PDP lawmakers, led by the House Minority Leader, Mr. Leo Ogor, raised objections soon after Dogara read a letter from Buhari, informing lawmakers on the alterations to the N6.08tn estimates.In the letter, the President emphasised that the total figures in the budget remained unchanged except that he made necessary corrections to some provisions.Dogara had hardly read the letter when Ogor jumped up from his seat to protest that what the President did was an amendment and not mere corrections. The Chief of Army Staff, Gen. Tukur Buratai, on Tuesday spoke for the first time on the bloody clash between soldiers in his convoy and m... The Chief of Army Staff, Gen. Tukur Buratai, on Tuesday spoke for the first time on the bloody clash between soldiers in his convoy and members of the Islamic Movement in Nigeria (also known as Shiites) in Zaria on December 12, 2015, justifying the action of his men which reportedly resulted in the death of scores of members of the sect.Buratai, who spoke at the headquarters of the National Human Rights Commission in Abuja during the opening ceremony of the sitting of an investigative panel set up by the commission on the clash.Buratai, who explained how his convoy was held hostage by members of the sect, said his convoy was blocked in Zaria. He added that his men acted within the rules of engagement in trying to clear the way.He said, The circumstances that led to the incident of December 12, 2015 have been well articulated by officers that were involved. I was in the convoy. It was my convoy, the convoy of the Chief of Army Staff.I left Dutse that morning, hoping to arrive Zaria on time, to attend the passing out parade of the 73 Regular Recruit of Intakes. But, the convoy was blocked when we entered the Zaria City.What transpired has been documented by the officers that were with me. They have also made their own statements. And they are here to give full account of what transpired. We are here because we respect human rights.We are here because we know the sanctity of the human life which we have sworn to protect. One of our constitutional roles is to defend the territorial integrity of Nigeria, which also include the totality of the protection of human rights and indeed, the property of every Nigeria. We have laid down our lives as army officers and soldiers over the years in the course of performing our constitutional roles.There is no way we will pick our weapons and deliberately violate the rights of the people, that we have been paid to defend and protect. This is quite fundamental. We have constitutional responsibility. Drawn from that constitutional responsibility, we also have our rules and regulations. And drawn from that, we have a duty to perform in restoring peace and order where such peace and order are being disturbed. So, we followed our rules of engagement, which are derived from the various laws.He said those accusing the Army of violating the rights of members of the group were insincere. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has said that it will obey court orders in the ongoing prosecution of corrupt public office ... The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission has said that it will obey court orders in the ongoing prosecution of corrupt public office holders.The Chairman of the EFCC, Mr. Ibrahim Magu, told journalists on Tuesday in Abuja that the EFCC had no reason to disobey court orders.Magu said the campaign against corruption was not about him or the EFCC but the collective desire of Nigerians to move the country forward.He said, We have never had any reason to disobey any court order and we will not disobey court orders. It is not about me, it is about the desire to move this country forward.Magu spoke amidst complaints in some quarters that the commission was committing acts of rights violation against detained suspects.A Lagos based-lawyer, Mr. Ebunolu Adegboruwa, had accused the commission of violating the rights of the spokesperson of the Peoples Democratic Party, Chief Olisah Metuh, in a suit he filed against the commission.Also, an Austrian who has been detained at the headquarters of the commission, Mr. Wolfgang Reinl, also complained of rights abuse against the commission in a letter written to the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Mr. Abubakar Malami (SAN), by his lawyer, Mr. Emeka Obegolu on January 8,2016.The commission also came under criticism in some quarters for re-arresting the former National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki (retd.) and the Director General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, Mr. Patrick Akpobolokemi, immediately after they were granted bails by various courts.The EFCC Chairman did not give room for a question and answer session with the media as he promised to meet them at a later date. Tamoghna Halder, a Kolkata native, said he would join Rohith Vemula if the Centre ignores his demand. Mr Halder is pursuing his research in economics and said he is sensitive and people call him emotional. Hyderabad: An NRI PhD scholar at the University of California, Davis, put out a threat on Facebook that he would commit suicide if Union ministers Smriti Irani and Union minister Bandaru Dattatreya are not sacket over the suicide of UoH research scholar Rohith Vemula. Tamoghna Halder, a Kolkata native, said he would join Rohith Vemula if the Centre ignores his demand. Mr Halder is pursuing his research in economics and said he is sensitive and people call him emotional. Friend comments Halder is safe He had set a deadline of 12 noon (IST), January 19. After serious thought, I have decided, that it is the time to perform my last performance. Not just in solidarity of Rohith. But in solidarity with the farmers who died in India as well. In solidarity with Akhlaq. In solidarity with everyone whom the State was able to murder through its fascist machineries. No. I am not saying that this is the most democratic way of protest, he said. Several people asked him to not take the extreme step, but Mr Halder has not responded. He also did not respond to this newspaper. His friend Saunak Sarkar stated in the comments section that Mr Halder was safe. Twelve cars have been stolen in Margate this month, according to a report. MARGATE -- Thieves have stolen 12 cars in Margate so far this month, according to a report. All of the cars were entered because they were unlocked, the owners left the valet keys in the vehicles or the home's garage wasn't locked, ShoreNewsToday.com. The rash of car thefts is highly unusual in the oceanfront Atlantic County city of about 6,300. According to the most recent Uniform Crime Report data available from the State Police, nine vehicles were stolen in Margate in the first 11 months of 2015. One vehicle was stolen in the city in all of 2014, State Police said. Last week, both of former city commissioner Brenda Taub's cars were stolen out of her driveway in the same night. One of the cars, a 2012 GMC Yukon was recovered in Virginia and is being shipped back to New Jersey, the report said. Police again urged residents to lock their cars. Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook. NEW ALBANY, Ind. -- A Hackensack teenager was extradited to Indiana this weekend after he was charged in connection with threats made against a local high school and other schools on social media, WDRB of Louisville, Ky., reported Tuesday. The 17-year-old suspect, who was not identified due to his age, was charged following a four-month investigation into threats made against New Albany High School in April. That threat was followed by other threats in September, including one promising a "slaughter" at a New Albany preschool and other Indiana schools. The threats came via a Facebook account that had been hacked, authorities in Floyd County told The News and Tribune newspaper. Authorities said in September the threats all seemed similar and likely related. New Albany police said at the time that none of the threats appeared to be substantiated but security was increased at several schools as a precaution. Paul Milo may be reached at pmilo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@PaulMilo2. FindNJ.com on Facebook BOGOTA -- A borough man sold crack cocaine to an undercover detective, Acting Bergen County Prosecutor Gurbir S. Grewal said. Police arrested John Goins, 47, on Friday at his Leonia Avenue home. Goins, a carpenter, sold less than half an ounce of crack cocaine to a detective with the prosecutor's office Narcotics Task Force in September, Grewal said. He was charged with distribution of a controlled dangerous substance. Goins was sent to Bergen County Jail on $25,000 bail, with the option to pay 10 percent in cash. Myles Ma may be reached at mma@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MylesMaNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook. MOUNT HOLLY -- A Pemberton Township man who was shot by state police after he struck two troopers with his vehicle during a 2014 drug sting has admitted to dealing crystal meth. The state Attorney General's office said Juan Gutierrez-Valencia, 25, pleaded guilty Tuesday to first-degree possession of methamphetamine with the intent to distribute, second-degree unlawful possession of a handgun and fourth-degree obstructing the administration of law charges in Burlington County Superior Court. The charges stem from the state police and federal Drug Enforcement Administration's "Operation Speed Racer" investigation into meth and heroin distribution networks in Burlington and Ocean counties. Gutierrez-Valencia admitted he met up with an undercover detective at a Mount Laurel hotel on July 7, 2014 with the intention of selling him 2 kilograms of crystal meth. When the detective spotted the drugs and got out of Gutierrez-Valencia's vehicle to signal the state police's TEAMS Unit to swoop in and make the arrest, Gutierrez-Valencia fled. He hit and injured two state troopers with his vehicle in his escape attempt, spurring a third to fire a shot that struck Gutierrez-Valencia's arm. Police also found a stolen 9mm handgun in Gutierrez-Valencia's vehicle after he was taken into custody. The Attorney General's Office said the police-involved shooting spurred an investigation by its Shooting Response Team, which deemed it a justified use of force. The state will seek to put Gutierrez-Valencia away in prison for 10 years, with 3 1/2 years of parole ineligibility, when he is sentenced on April 1. Gutierrez-Valencia's guilty plea was the fifth to stem from Operation Speed Racer after four men from New Egypt and North Hanover -- who aren't connected to Gutierrez-Valencia -- admitted last week they attempted to sell $130,000 of black tar heroin to an undercover detective. New Egypt men Guadalupe Madrigal-Mejia, 36, Juan Mendez, 48, and Antonio Esqueda, 34, were arrested alongside a North Hanover man, 31-year-old Elias Corona-Sanchez, at a New Egypt home shared by three of the men on the day after Gutierrez-Valencia's arrest. Madrigal-Mejia and Corona-Sanchez admitted in court on Jan. 11 that they arranged to sell two kilos of the heroin, supplied by Mendez, for $65,000 each to an undercover detective. After the detective saw the drugs in the home, authorities moved in and discovered Mendez in a vehicle outside as well as a stash of cocaine in Esqueda's bedroom. Cocaine distribution materials were discovered throughout the Jacobstown Road home. Both Madrigal-Mejia, also known as "Lupe," and Corona-Sanchez, also known as "Peligro," pleaded guilty to a first-degree heroin distribution charge, and the state will recommend each serve 10 years in state prison. Mendez pleaded guilty to second-degree possession of heroin with the intent to distribute, and the state is seeking a sentence of 7 years in state prison. Esqueda pleaded guilty to third-degree possession of cocaine with the intent to distribute and is facing five years in state prison. All four are scheduled to be sentenced on April 15. Michelle Caffrey may be reached at mcaffrey@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @ShellyCaffrey. Find the South Jersey Times on Facebook. HADDON TWP. -- D.J. Creato is innocent. That's what a website launched early this week by an unknown group of supporters hopes to convince its readers. The website, djcreatoisinnocent.com, claims authorities were banking on motive when they charged Creato with first-degree murder in the Oct. 13, 2015 death of his 3-year-old son, Brendan. In this undated Facebook photo, D.J. Creato, now 22, is seen smiling with his late son, Brendan, who was found dead on Oct. 13, 2015. "It's a crime when an innocent man is in jail," a statement on the website's homepage -- which features a smiling photo of father and son -- welcomes visitors. Creato was arrested last Monday on murder and child endangerment charges. He was arraigned in Camden County court Tuesday and held on $750,000 bail. At his arraignment, Camden County Prosecutor's Office Assistant Prosecutor Christine Shah said Creato was responsible for the toddler's death so he could continue a 4-month relationship with a 17-year-old, who apparently had a disdain for children and for Creato's continued contact with the boy's mother, Samantha Denoto. The authors published the website on Sunday, Jan. 17 and the page is registered under a Toronto-based hosting company. Creato's attorney, Richard J. Fuschino Jr., declined to comment on both the website and if there's been any movement regarding his client's bail. "From family friends, lawyer statements, and lack of news reports suggesting otherwise, it seems that the investigators had targeted D.J. Creato from day 1," the website's "Logic" page reads. That "Logic" page also carries a disclaimer before the authors present their findings: "This page is the one that's essentially opinion-based and reflects only the authors' views. If you have a different view, or if you agree with the authors (which may happen after you read this page carefully and with an open mind), the authors would not like to hear about it personally." From there, the page frames the issue like this: Did Creato kill his son to continue his relationship with New York college student Julia Spensky? Or, was Creato framed and struggling to clear his name because "hard evidence" has yet to be found. While it's unclear what the authors mean by hard evidence, the results of autopsies and toxicology tests were used to conclude two months after the tot's death that he either succumbed to drowning, asphyxiation or blunt-force trauma. The website also poses "unanswered questions," such as if there was DNA evidence on Brendan's body; whether any video surveillance of the scene that morning exists; witness testimony and if any footprints were discovered near the Cooper River where the boy's body was found. The Camden County Prosecutor's Office previously declined to respond to any media inquiries regarding the case. The "Facts" page reveals that there are "possible biases" on the part of the "writers" of the website, but they are "irrelevant as they won't be using those things to defend Creato here." The authors add that revealing their identity could endanger their lives, so those behind the website chose to already-published facts to "explain how they came to their logical conclusions about why DJ is innocent." A timeline starting on Oct. 13, the day Creato called 9-1-1 to report his son missing, and ending on Jan. 12 when he was arraigned, is supported by numerous news articles. For the most part, the developments are present in short sentences and without bias. "So please read with an open mind, and really think about it," the opening caveat concludes. Greg Adomaitis may be reached at gadomaitis@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @GregAdomaitis. Find the South Jersey Times on Facebook. BRIDGETON -- A South Jersey man was arrested Tuesday in connection to a sexual assault involving a minor, authorities said. William Ridgeway, 53, of Bank Street, faces charges of endangering the welfare of a child, sexual assault, and parole violation. The arrest stems from 2007 when charges were filed against Ridgeway for sexual contact and endangering the welfare of a child, according to police. Bridgeton Police conducted an extensive search for Ridgeway after the charges were filed earlier this month. Authorities located Ridgeway sleeping in a garage behind Bank Street, where he was arrested without incident Ridgeway is being held at the Cumberland County Jail in default of $100,000 bail. Brittany Wehner may be reached at bwehner@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @brittanymwehner. Find the South Jersey Times on Facebook. There really is a Dubliner at the helm at The Dubliner on the Delaware, one of New Hope's newest restaurants. Robert Lynch grew up in Dublin, Ireland before immigrating to the United States and working in the restaurant industry. He and wife Margaret opened the Dubliner with partner Mike Scully in September. In the short time it has been open at the location that for years was home to New Hope's legendary restaurant Mother's, the Dubliner already has gained a regular clientele for those in search of Irish fare, whiskies, beer and music. Lynch said customers are appreciative of a tavern that knows the proper way to pour a pint of Guinness. (Fill three quarters of the way before stopping, let it settle, then top it off.) The owners collaborated on the menu, which has a variety of Irish favorites, plus a good amount of traditional American tavern fare, some of it flavored with Irish ingredients. We started with the corned beef hash, $10, which is listed as a starter, but is the perfect size for lunch or a light supper. Diced corned beef in sizeable chunks are combined with chunks of potato and topped with two over-easy fried eggs and a sprinkling of green onions. This dish includes really good corned beef and plenty of hearty flavor. A pear salad, $9, is a hefty portion of baby lettuces topped with sliced pears, Cashel blue cheese, and a sprinkling of walnuts. A lemon herb vinaigrette and chopped chive finish this pleasant salad, which can be combined with salmon or chicken for an up charge to make a full meal. The Irish fritters, $9, are a customer favorite, according to Lynch. Corned beef, sauerkraut and Swiss cheese are rolled into a pastry covering and deep fried, then served with a side of Russian dressing. This is a heavy appetizer, probably best served with a favorite beer. From among the entrees we chose the pub salad, $8, adding chicken, $6, to make it a meal. Crisp lettuce is topped with Dubliner Cheddar, pickled eggs, cucumbers and cherry tomatoes, then finished with a nice balsamic vinaigrette. We also sampled the traditional shepherd's pie, $13, which turned out to be the favorite of the meal. Seasoned ground beef was layered first in a ramekin, topped by a mixture of peas, carrots and onions, with fresh mashed potatoes covering everything. This was a warm, flavorful, hearty, homespun meal. Lamb stew, $21, is one of those dishes that tend to come down through families, and each is different. At the Dubliner the chunks of lamb, carrots, potatoes and celery are braised in a combination of Guinness and red wine, and the alcohol dominates the flavor. It isn't thickened to the gravy of a traditional stew, giving it a consistency more like soup. If you enjoy meat with the lingering hint of alcohol, this would be a good choice. For dessert we had a very American slice of key lime pie, $8.50. Tangy and fresh, it was a pleasant ending to the meal. The Dubliner has more than Irish food; Irish musicians perform Monday, Friday and Saturday nights at this casual pub that brings of bit of the Emerald Isle to the area. The Dubliner on the Delaware LOCATION: 34 N. Main St., New Hope, Pa. CONTACT: 215-693-1816. WINTER HOURS (for kitchen): Mon.-Fri. 4-10 p.m., Sat.-Sun., 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Weekday service will resume in the spring. CREDIT CARDS: Most major. FOOD: Good to very good traditional Irish dishes dominate the menu, which also has plenty of American tavern favorites. SERVICE: Helpful and pleasant. AMBIANCE: The renovated restaurant still features a street view of New Hope, with a room at the back for live music and a small bar. COST: Starters $7-$12, entrees $13-$21, sandwiches and burgers $11-$14. Full bar Follow The Times of Trenton on Twitter @TimesofTrenton. Find The Times of Trenton on Facebook. WIP host Josh Innes used a slavery term to describe a white player on the Eagles, while sitting next to ex-Eagle Hollis Thomas ... and he'll miss just three days of his radio show. EAGLES: Chip Kelly finally talks about nasty Eagles divorce After saying on the air that Eagles lineman Jason Kelce was a "house negro" and apologizing (while still calling Kelce a "lap dog" and "kiss-ass"), Innes was suspended by WIP for three days, according to Philly.com. "Comments made by Josh Innes during his WIP-FM program yesterday in regards to Eagles center Jason Kelce were inappropriate and unacceptable," WIP said in a statement. "We do not condone or approve of those comments." Innes later called himself the "dumbest human being on the planet" while apologizing. "It all came out poorly," he said, "and I see that people are making fun of me across the country and you should make fun of me across the country because I'm stupid. Like, it was in no way meant to offend anybody, it was stupid is all it was and I apologize for that." Follow Charles Curtis on Twitter @charlescurtis82. Find NJ.com on Facebook. University of Hyderabad students burning the effigy of Union HRD minister Smriti Irani after her claims on the suicide of dalit student Rohith Vemula. (Photo: DC) Hyderabad: The two-member fact-finding committee sent by the Union HRD ministry to probe the suicide of PhD scholar Rohith Vemula in the University of Hyderabad is learnt to have found fault with the university administration for its inept handling of the students suspension issue, which triggered unrest on the campus for the past four months. The committee is expected to submit its report to the ministry by Saturday. Based on this report, the ministry is likely to sack Prof. Appa Rao Podile as vice-chancellor. Prof. Appa Rao took over as VC only in September 2014 and if suspended he would become the VC with the shortest tenure at the UoH. His six-year term is set to end in 2020. The committee is said to have felt that there is strong resentment against Prof. Appa Rao among dalit students ever since his tenure as chief warden in the campus between 2001 and 2004. Prof. Appa Raos tenure as chief warden was also mired in controversy as he faced similar allegations of discriminating against Dalit students in hostels and messes, which led to suspension of a few Dalit students and violent incidents on the campus then. I cut the quantum of punishment: Vice Chancellor Vice Chancellor Appa Rao Podile, in the eye of a storm, has reiterated that he will not quit the post in UoH, and rejected allegations that he is a BJP man. I am not a party person. I have been appointed through a normal selection process involving 190 candidates and selected on the basis of merit, he asserted, dismissing the charge that he was a nominee of a Union minister. It is only a coincidence that the VCs selection happened during NDA period. As the head of the university, people think I am responsible for the suicide of the research scholar. The case was ongoing even before I took charge, he said. He was targeted as the suspension was withdrawn by in-charge VC Professor Sharma, but it was implemented in a diluted form by the new VC, following a court case. Mr Appa Rao wants the functioning of the university to carry on unhindered. Stressing that he was lenient with the five expelled students and reduced the scale of punishment against them by overstepping the recommendation of the full EC committee, Mr Appa Rao said studies, research work and administrative functions cannot wait. Students, the V-C said, would wait for the High Court decision over a plea to lift the suspension of the group of research students. ABVP leader N. Susheel Kumars mother filing the petition and the court taking it seriously created a situation in which the university could not avoid taking action. Under pressure to give an Action Taken Report (ATR), he effected the suspension of the students from the university hostel, the VC said. It was in mid-November 2015 that the HC sought the ATR and gave the university just a few days time. In the full meeting held on 27 November 2015, I proposed to the EC to be a bit lenient. The punishment recommended by the proctoral board suspension of the students for the entire semester would deprive these students of the scholarships. As chairman of EC, I have reduced the scale of punishment to simple suspension from the hostel. It was made clear the students would be permitted in schools, departments, library and academic block, but not in groups in the hostel, administration wing and other public places on the campus, he explained. Mr Appa Rao said he taught microbiology to Rohith, who committed suicide, and his loss was a personal loss to him. He wanted to meet Rohits family now and would do the best for them. Appa Rao is a native of Thullur in Guntur district. Sitaram Yechury says Ministers, V-C are criminals CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury on Wednesday said that the issues leading to the suicide of Rohith Vemula should be treated as a criminal offence and Union minister Bandaru Dattatreya, HRD minister Smriti Irani and university VC Appa Rao Podile be booked under the recently ame-nded SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act. Mr Yechury said he will seek intervention by President Pranab Mukherjee and ask him as on basis the university was given the Visitors Award for Best University last year even as 12 Dalit scholars had committed suicide in the university over the last few years. CPI(M) Rajya Sabha member Seema has written to the President and the Vice-President to immediately call a meeting of the university court to remove Appa Rao from the post of VC. He said Prime Minis-ter Narendra Modi should order an inquiry and sack those responsible for the death of Rohith Vemula. Committee may consider discrimination allegation The committee took serious view of the same allegations of discrimination and violent incidents on the campus cropping up within four months after he assumed office as VC. These observations made by the inquiry committee while taking the depositions from suspended Dalit students, other students, research scholars and faculty members as part of its two-day inquiry would be crucial in deciding the fate of the VC, said some senior faculty members and students, who deposed before the committee. The committee comprising Shakila T. Shamshu and Surat Singh completed their inquiry on Wednesday and they refused to comment on their probe. Saturday is scheduled to be a big day for the nation's high school students - the last administration of the current version of the SAT before the exam undergoes a major overhaul. But, with a major storm threatening the East Coast, it is unclear if many students will get a chance to sit for the test this weekend. College Board officials said Wednesday they will close individual test centers this weekend if the weather is dangerous. "Our primary concern is the safety of everyone taking exams," the College Board said in a statement. "As soon as we have confirmation that a test center is closed due to inclement weather, we will post the test centers and the make-up dates on the SAT website, sat.collegeboard.org." The SAT website was not working Wednesday due to scheduled maintenance. But it should be online again soon, College Board officials said. The decision on closing test centers will be made on a case-by-case basis. So, it is possible some New Jersey test centers will close while others will remain opened, depending on the track the storm takes, snow totals and possible flooding. Many high school students worried about the changes to the SAT planned to hedge their bets by taking both the old version of the test on Jan. 23 and the redesigned version that debuts March 5. Because colleges will accept scores from either version of the test, students can submit their best scores with their college applications. The College Board announced in 2014 that the SAT would undergo a major redesign this year. The new SAT, set to debut next month, will no longer test obscure vocabulary words and the math section will focus on word problems. The new version will also include an optional essay and eliminate the penalty for guessing that existed on the old test. The changes will be the first major revision to the SAT since 2005. "Colleges will accept scores from both current and new SAT until 2018," the College Board said in a statement. Kelly Heyboer may be reached at kheyboer@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @KellyHeyboer. Find NJ.com on Facebook. When asked about the call for a boycott of the Oscars because of a lack of diversity in the nominations this year, Stacey Dash went further than the Academy Awards in her own critique. "I think it's ludicrous, because we have to make up our minds," the actress and Fox commentator said on on "Fox & Friends" Wednesday. "Either we want to have segregation or integration. And if we don't want segregation then we need to get rid of channels like BET. And the BET Awards. And the Image Awards, where you're only awarded if you're black. If it were the other way around, we would be up in arms. It's a double standard." "Just like there shouldn't be a Black History Month," continued Dash, who turned 49 Wednesday. "We're Americans, period. That's it." Director Spike Lee and actress Jada Pinkett Smith have been vocal about their plans to not attend the awards ceremony in February, citing an absence of diversity in the nominations. As with comments she's made on Fox News in the past, Dash, an alumna of Paramus High School known for starring in the movie "Clueless," drew a flood of critical tweets, making her a worldwide Twitter trend. She said that if there is a dearth of roles for black actors and actors of color, that "needs to change." But she went on to cast the ubiquity roles for white actors as a political problem. "What I find astounding is that we've had a president who is black in office for the past eight years who gets most of his funding for the liberal elite in Hollywood," Dash said. "Yet there are not many roles for people of color. How can that be? And why is it just now being addressed?" In December, Fox suspended Dash for using on-air profanity when talking about President Barack Obama's address to the nation. "Maybe there needs to be more diverse people in the process of electing -- in the Academy," she continued, referring to the Oscars. "I hope that they're looking for the best movies and the best actors," she said. "The good news is that there's attention brought to it now." On Monday, Montclair actress Janet Hubert, Will Smith's onetime co-star in "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" -- she was the first actress to play Aunt Vivian -- slammed Jada Pinkett Smith for her decision to boycott the awards, claiming that Pinkett Smith made the move because her husband wasn't nominated for his role in "Concussion." Here are some of the many reactions to Dash's comments on Twitter: [&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="//storify.com/NJentertainment/stacey-dash-calls-oscar-boycott-ludicrous" target="_blank"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;View the story "Stacey Dash calls Oscar boycott 'ludicrous'" on Storify&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;]&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;h1&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Stacey Dash calls Oscar boycott 'ludicrous'&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/h1&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;h2&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;The actress drew a flood of criticism after saying there should be no Black History Month and BET&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/h2&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Storified by &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="https://storify.com/NJentertainment"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;NJ.com&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;middot; Wed, Jan 20 2016 20:14:05 &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;*Sees Stacey Dash is trending worldwide* ugh. What did she say this time? https://t.co/wvC5069W5qMichelle Phi&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Every time Stacey Dash talks, a book dies.Trav NEVER Chills&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Stacey Dash just might be the worst.Taylor Rooks&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Me watching Stacey Dash get dragged on her birthday https://t.co/y0KwHWrKCVRae&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;You all do realize that being ultra conservative and saying outlandish things is Stacey Dash's career now right? Don't pay it no mind.Everette Taylor&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Mrs. Dash &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; Stacey Dash https://t.co/RnMHcmOY3EM.J.G.&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Kanye West gotta put Stacey Dash on another plane.Victor Pope Jr&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Stacey Dash wants us to get rid of everything that celebrates black people but wants to keep all the things that celebrates whites. Really?Ashley Nicole&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;It almost seems like Stacey Dash was created by white, male Fox News hosts (pictured below), Weird Science-style. https://t.co/v8miJynBfrRex Huppke&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Stacey Dash is real life clueless why is anyone inviting her to their show for an opinion on anything.....Johnny Boy &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Stacey Dash: &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;quot;There should be no Black History Month&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;quot; ME: https://t.co/eC2L3QBpWYDeMarko Gage :)&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Stacey dash and Raven Symone are in the running for the most annoying celebrities of all time.Jasmine King&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Me when Stacey Dash tries to erase blackness. https://t.co/h6KvwMBodBRegular, Schmegular&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Stacey Dash is PAID to be polarizing, that's her gimmick, ignore her @REALStaceyDashISIS WHITE&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Mario Kart: Double Dash &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; Stacey Dash https://t.co/Wh2sGrHE54X&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/div&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup. Find NJ.com Entertainment on Facebook. showtime-dark-net Anisha Vora, a New Jersey victim of revenge porn who is now an advocate for other victims, details her case in Showtime's new series about the Internet's seedy side, "Dark Net." (Showtime) In the premiere episode of "Dark Net," Showtime's new eight-part documentary series about the less savory aspects of the World Wide Web, the narrator offers a note of reassurance. Or is it a threat? "You may never have to be -- or get to be -- alone again." The series dives into the underbelly of the Internet (and here you thought the Internet was composed entirely of underbelly!), particularly the unregulated part that can't be reached by normal search engines, where you'll find the bio-hackers, cyber-kidnappers, online cults, and the fetishists and pornography addicts who apparently can't be satisfied by Google. The premiere episode is about forging romantic connections online -- it follows an American couple who conduct their S&M relationship long-distance as well as a Japanese man in a long-term relationship with the wide-eyed, giggling and ultra-supportive Rinko, who happens to be made entirely of bits and bytes. But it's also a cautionary tale about what can happen on the Web when romantic love goes south. Case in point is New Jersey's Anisha Vora, who in 2012 learned that her ex-boyfriend had been posting naked photos of her on hundreds of websites, including Facebook and Tumblr. He later intensified his campaign, posting her phone number and address online and luring strangers to her door under the pretense that she harbored rape fantasies. Her ex was eventually charged with invasion of privacy and served three months of a six-month sentence. "He stopped posting after his two arrests but my material lingers on in the Internet world due to others reposting," Vora tells NJ Advance Media. Vora has since left the state and now volunteers as an advocate for revenge porn victims at the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative. "Any chance I'm offered to speak out, I take." TV HANGOVER SHOW: More 'Making a Murderer'? 'The Bachelor' needs less cankles Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Stitcher or Soundcloud. "I never tell people, 'Don't send the pictures,'" she says in "Dark Net," "because you should be able to trust someone and be able to have that intimacy where you can send a picture and you don't have to worry that it's going to show up on 2,000 websites." Future episodes will look feature a filmmaker who lost his eye in a gun accident and replaced it with a camera; a man who monitors almost every aspect of his life through hundreds of tracking systems; and the cyber detectives who investigate the flourishing world of child pornography. "Dark Net" is produced by Vocativ, a media company that uses proprietary intelligence technology to monitor and identify trends on the dark web. The series premieres Thursday at 11 p.m. Vicki Hyman may be reached at vhyman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @vickihy or like her on Facebook. Find NJ.com/Entertainment on Facebook, and check out TV Hangover, the podcast from Vicki Hyman and co-host Erin Medley on iTunes, Stitcher or listen here. NEWARK The criminal convictions of Ali Muhammad Brown began in 2005 with a bank fraud case in federal court in Washington State. Brown was later convicted in Washington in 2008 for assault and in 2012 for communication with a minor for immoral purposes. Then in 2014, Brown allegedly killed three men in Washington and traveled to New Jersey, where he is accused of fatally shooting Livingston teen Brendan Tevlin before committing two armed robberies. Citing Brown's "downward spiral of criminality," Superior Court Judge Michael Petrolle on Wednesday sentenced him to 36 years and six months in state prison on his conviction in one of the robbery cases. In that case, Brown, 31, of Seattle, was found guilty by a jury on Nov. 17 of robbery and weapons offenses for robbing a man at gunpoint on July 10, 2014 in the parking lot of an apartment complex in West Orange. While imposing the sentence, Petrolle noted that Brown's criminal record demonstrates a "descending progression" from property crime to violent crime. "In bringing that handgun here, he has escalated the level of his aggression and, in using it here, he has brought the potential for death and actual threat of serious bodily injury in New Jersey," Petrolle said. Under the judge's sentence, Brown received a 35-year prison sentence for the first-degree robbery charge and two weapons offenses, and an 18-month prison sentence for the charge of unlawful possession of hollow point bullets. Those sentences are to be served consecutively. Brown will likely serve about 33 years before becoming eligible for parole, and he will receive credit for roughly a year and a half of time served, the judge said. While a first-degree robbery charge normally carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, Petrolle granted the state's application for an extended prison term, which ranged from 20 years to life in prison in Brown's case. The judge determined Brown is eligible for such a term in light of his at least three prior convictions. Brown declined to make a statement during Wednesday's hearing. During the hearing, Brown's attorney, Albert Kapin, called on Petrolle to impose a 20-year prison sentence, arguing in part that Brown's criminal history is not as significant as the records of many other offenders in New Jersey. Kapin also claimed Brown was unlikely to commit another offense, given the prison time he was facing. But Essex County Assistant Prosecutor Jamel Semper, who tried the case, asked the judge to impose a life sentence, which equates to 75 years in prison. In addition to Brown's criminal history and the need to deter him, Semper pointed to the risk that Brown will commit another offense. Semper said Brown committed "a calculated and deliberate act of violence" by cloaking himself in camouflage and robbing the victim at gunpoint. Noting the fake ID later found on Brown, Semper said he actively attempted to elude law enforcement. At the time of the West Orange robbery, Brown was wanted for the three homicides in Washington and he was a fugitive out of Point Pleasant Beach, Semper said. Semper said Brown was "simultaneously blending into society, while also eluding police, while also targeting our citizens." "His criminality represents a clear and present danger to the citizens of Essex County," said Semper, adding that "the need to deter this defendant is overwhelming." In the robbery case, Brown, while wearing a mask, approached the victim at about 6 a.m. as he opened a passenger side door of his vehicle in the parking lot of an apartment complex at 200 Mount Pleasant Avenue in West Orange. Brown stole the man's wallet and other belongings, according to Semper. While pointing a handgun at the man, Brown then ordered the victim to get inside the trunk of the man's vehicle before he fled the scene, Semper said. When police arrested Brown on July 18, 2014 in a nearby makeshift campsite, officers found him with various items, such as the handgun, the clothing used to mask his face and the victim's wallet, including his driver's license, Semper said. RELATED: Brendan Tevlin's alleged killer convicted in an armed robbery, facing 20 years Brown is still facing murder, terrorism and related charges in the June 25, 2014 shooting death of Tevlin. Authorities have said Brown gunned down Tevlin, 19, when Brown and at least three other men attempted to rob Tevlin at a traffic light at Walker Road and Northfield Avenue in West Orange. While the other men fled the scene, Brown moved Tevlin's body into the passenger seat of Tevlin's Jeep Liberty and drove it to a nearby apartment building, where he abandoned it, authorities said. Brown who also faces charges in the three homicides in Washington State has told investigators he killed Tevlin as an act of "vengeance" for innocent lives lost in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Iran. Before he was sentenced by Petrolle, Brown appeared briefly on Wednesday before Superior Court Judge Ronald Wigler in the murder case. During that hearing, Kapin indicated he would be pursuing motions in the case, including a challenge to the terrorism charge. Brown also is charged with robbing a man at gunpoint on June 29, 2014 at a coffee shop in Point Pleasant Beach. Bill Wichert may be reached at bwichert@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @BillWichertNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook. NEWARK - For the third time since taking office, Mayor Ras Baraka has hired a new communications director. Frank Baraff, a veteran publicist and political strategist who worked on Baraka's 2014 campaign, was brought on board earlier this month to succeed recently departed director Felipe Luciano. Since 1979, Baraff has worked as a strategist and media consultant with politicians on the national, state and local levels. His long list of clients include 20 years with former New Jersey governor Dick Codey, and stints working for former New York Congresswoman Bella Azbug, former Irvington Mayor Wayne Smith and West Orange Mayor Robert Parisi. He has also served as press secretary to former Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton, and worked on campaigns for federal office by such notable names as U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro. Prior to beginning his new job at City Hall, Baraff had been on staff at New York City strategic consulting firm The Advance Group. In an interview Tuesday, the Maplewood native said he was compelled to return to Newark after bearing witness to Baraka's engagement of interest groups from all corners of the city. "If you look at almost all of his programs, they have that kind of a broad base input. It's a unique way of managing a city," he said. Upon taking office in July 2014, Baraka hired local public relations consultant Sakina Cole as communications director. Cole left the post just seven months later, however, to pursue opportunities with her private communications firm, Cole Media Inc. - which has since been awarded a no-bid contract to provide marketing and branding services for the city. She was replaced by Luciano, a former New York City activist and television reporter, at the $106,817 post. Details of his recent exit were not immediately available. The city also added a press secretary Marjorie Harris, to its communications roster last March. In his new role, Baraff said he plans to increase the use of social media, video and other forms of outreach to help residents and other community stakeholders be both informed and involved in city affairs. "I believe that there's a story to tell about Newark and about this administration," he said. "I'm going to make sure that the story gets out to people." Dan Ivers may be reached at divers@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @DanIversNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook. MONTCLAIR -- A physician who works at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Manhattan faces sexual abuse and other charges involving two female patients, WABC 7 reported Tuesday. Dr. David Newman, identified by the New York Daily News as a Montclair resident, allegedly gave a 22-year-old patient a dose of morphine at the hospital's emergency room Jan. 11. The woman had come to the hospital complaining of shoulder pain. Newman gave the woman the dose of the painkiller even though she'd said she already received one, authorities quoted by ABC 7 said. Newman then groped her and ejaculated on her, according to the Daily News. A second woman has since come forward and said Newman assaulted her at the hospital when she went there for a cold in September. Newman, a 45-year-old Iraq War veteran, has been charged with assault, two counts of sexual abuse and facilitating a sexual offense. Mt. Sinai said it has suspended Newman pending the outcome of the investigation and is also conducting an inquiry into the allegations. Paul Milo may be reached at pmilo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@PaulMilo2. FindNJ.com on Facebook NEWARK -- The investigative unit of the Essex County Prosecutor's Office is officially under new leadership. Quovella M. Spruill, who has been with the prosecutor's office for nearly two decades, was sworn in as the department's chief of detectives at a ceremony in Newark Wednesday morning, becoming the first African-American woman to ever hold the position. "I hope to continue on the progress that we've made," Spruill said, as her husband, two children and dozens of police officers from around the county looked on. "I want to leave this place better than I found it. I want to leave everyone looking at how we conduct our business better, and how we serve our citizens better." A Newark native, Spruill received her bachelor's degree from the New Jersey Institute of Technology and her master's from Seton Hall University before joining the prosecutor's office as an investigator in 1998. Spruill previously spent time in a number of units, including homicide, special victims and the professional standards bureau, before being named deputy chief of detectives in 2012. Spruill replaces Anthony Ambrose, who was installed head of public safety for the City of Newark last month amid a recent shakeup of the city police, fire and emergency services departments. Ambrose joined other officials in praising the new chief of detectives before the swearing-in, saying Spruill was his "right arm" during his tenure at the prosecutor's office. Acting Essex County Prosecutor Carolyn Murray called the new chief of detectives "invaluable," saying that in Spruill she has a partner who shares her own goal to make sure the office "conducts itself ethically and at the pinnacle of prosecutorial excellence." Spruill acknowledged that she is assuming leadership of the department's police operations at a time when its 120 officers and administrators are being asked to do more with less. In an interview following ceremony, Spruill said one of her first challenges will be ensuring that investigators have access to the latest technological tools, so as to better help prosecutor's office investigators and officers from other agencies reduce crime. Earl Graves, Essex County Prosecutor's Office Deputy Chief of Detectives and Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 205 Superior's Officer's Union president, said following the ceremony that both Spruill and the new tools will be benefit to the department. "We look forward to working with her," he said. "She's someone who knows all the ins and outs of the office. Basically, we couldn't ask for a better leader." Vernal Coleman can be reached at vcoleman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @vernalcoleman. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Bengaluru: It is a common practise in our family to donate bodies to medical colleges after death," said 45-year-old Mallikarjun, a Bengalurean, who gave away the body of his 76-year-old father, Doddavasappa H. Bevianamarad to the Kempegowda Institute of Medical Sciences (KIMS) on Wednesday. Doddavasappa was bedridden for the last one year after a second stroke left him paralysed. I was inspired by my cousin, who had donated his fathers body to an Ayurvedic College in Gadag, said Mr Mallikarjun. Asking others to donate bodies to medical colleges, he said, Thousands die in our country every day, and there is a severe shortage of cadavers in medical colleges. This seriously affects the quality of research and teaching. It is important for people to come forward and donate the bodies," he said. One of the major reasons for the shortage is that body donation is still considered a radical idea. Due to sentimental, religious or superstitious beliefs, relatives either bury or cremate the body. At a press conference at KIMS Hospital on Wednesday, Mallikarjun said, I am motivated by thousands of people across the country, including former Chief Minister of West Bengal Jyoti Basu, freedom fighter Laxmi Sehgal and Kannada actor Lokesh, who donated their bodies after death for medical research and betterment of the society." KIMS Administrative Officer Dr Madhushankar said, There is a myth that bodies of their loved ones would be mutilated and not treated with dignity. Let me clarify that we use the bodies for research and take all due care." He said a medical college with 150 students in a batch requires at least 15 bodies every year for students to practically learn surgical procedures. But because of the acute shortage, such colleges will have to make do with just one body. Hyderabad: Following a hue and cry from top hotels and clubs, the Telangana state government is all set to exempt star hotels, clubs, bars and liquor shops located within 100 metres of highways along core areas of the city from a ban on selling/serving liquor. The government will amend the rule along the lines of Karnataka state stating that a National Highway or State Highway shall not include parts situated within the limits of a municipal corporation or city. Several prominent hotels and clubs in the city received notices from the excise department asking them to relocate from highways as per Supreme Court orders. These establishments have been demanding the government relax the norm. They brought the issue to the notice of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, who agreed to amend the rule. The roads and buildings and transport departments have been asked to submit a proposal to the government to this effect for approval. Excise and prohibition commissioner R.V. Chandravadan has convened a meeting with officials and liquor traders to discuss these issues on January 22 and 23. The excise department will study the procedures being adopted in neighbouring states of Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Odisha. The department has served notices to 5,000 such establishments asking them to relocate within 15 days. However, managements of some hotels and clubs in city have threatened to move the court against relocation orders if the government fails to amend the rule in core areas of the city. Hyderabad: University of Hyderabad proctor Dr Alok Pandeys alleged affiliation with the RSS was a matter of discussion on the campus on Wednesday. Students shared screenshots of Prof. Pandeys Facebook posts, in which he praises the RSS and the BJP. In a series of photographs of an RSS event shared by the proctor, the caption reads, Look at this you idiots, who dont leave any chance to abuse RSS. Students allege the proctor played an important role in the suspension of Rohith and four other students after taking orders from RSS leaders. Prof. Pandey was one of the people who misused his official powers and suspended Rohith and four other ASA leaders. Earlier, when their suspension was revoked by the former vice-chancellor, this RSS pracharak threatened to resign from his post, said Dayal Paleri, a student who shared the screenshot of Pandeys FB posts. The agitators alleged that Prof. Pandey and vice-chancellor had been conspiring to suppress the voice of dissent and promote saffron ideas. Mohan Guruswamy debunks RSS claim Prominent academician Mohan Guruswamy has pleaded for introspection on Rohith Vemulas death instead of focusing attention on the caste belonged to. He also played down the video circulated by RSS-ABVP activists on social media, in which the deceased PhD scholar denounced Hindutva. Said Guruswamy on his facebook page, Rohith, it is said, was not a Dalit. In local terms, his community is not a Mala or Madiga. He belonged to the Waddar caste of stonecutters and quarry workers, who are listed as a backward caste community. The plight of most Waddars is worse than that of most Dalits. They are economically and socially at the bottom of the ladder. Waddars have been pressing for their inclusion in the SC category for long. My friend, the late MB Kumar, spent most of his life fighting for this. Waddars are widely and thinly dispersed and hence no political party has seen any (scope to) profit (from helping them). The local police and the TRS leadership have been making much ado about the fact that Rohit Vemula was a Waddar and not a Dalit. Suppose it was so. Does it then mitigate the crime against him, the academician asked. The ABVP/RSS has been circulating a video clip of Rohit Vemula showing him denouncing the notion of Hindutva in acerbic language. I have seen this clip. In this clip Rohit is being interrogated by ABVP supporters and he answers that he will fight it everywhere and anywhere. He is speaking in Telugu. The literal translation in English of the term he uses to state this is a commonly used four letter word, he said. He added that this was a time for introspection. Why did things happen this way? Why was (Rohith) pushed to extinguish his life? Maybe there is something we might yet learn from this. China is losing its biggest asset, the American companies even as it struggles with slowdown. (Representational image) Beijing: One out of four US companies active in China has moved some operations out of the country or is planning to, as conditions worsen in the worlds second-largest economy, an American business group said on Wednesday. Foreign investment has been a key part of Chinas transformation in recent decades, which has seen it become the factory of the world and its largest trader in goods, but growth is now slowing and it faces rising competition on labour costs from rivals in Asia and elsewhere. According to a survey, more turbulence may be in store for Chinas economy in 2016 as consumers decide to trim their expenditure a development could prove to be double whammy as the country tries to shift to the consumption model to escape from the global slowdown. A survey by ANZ bank published on Wednesday showed Chinese consumer confidence at a record low this month, and data from US-based research groups China Beige Book showed fourth-quarter job growth and wage gains at four-year lows. Those surveys were echoed by shoppers canvassed by Reuters in Shanghai, who said they would keep their spending in check and more likely cut back. The American Chamber of Commerce (ACC) in the Peoples Republic of China said more than three-quarters of respondents to its annual business climate survey 77 per cent said they felt less welcome in the country last year. It was a significant jump on the 47 per cent in 2014, and came in the wake of wide-ranging monopoly probes that have targeted foreign firms, some of which have paid huge penalties to Chinese authorities. Some of the policies which are being considered or have already been enacted are fundamentally leading China in the wrong direction, said Lester Ross, the chambers vice chairman. Among the 25 per cent who have moved some of their capacity elsewhere in the last three years, or are planning to do so, the most common driver was rising labour costs. But the chamber said almost one in 10 said they were doing so because of regulatory challenges. Internet censorship emerged as a major concern for many firms, with almost 80 per cent saying that Chinas sprawling online control apparatus had a negative impact on them. Chinese authorities strictly censor websites in the country, and limit access to those outside with a web of controls known as the Great Firewall of China. More than 70 per cent of US firms said that as a result they were unable to access websites and information sources crucial to their business. More than half found the inability to use some online tools Facebook, Dropbox, Instagram, YouTube, and Gmail are all blocked in China hindered their ability to operate. Among the firms that were switching operations away, almost half 49 percent moved them to other developing Asian countries, while 38 percent went to North America. US firms sometimes face controversy in their home country over operations in China, with accusations that they are exporting jobs, and some have moved capacity back in recent years, drawn in part by cost savings due to an energy boom and stable wages. The monkey which successfully had its head placed on another body. (Photo: Via web) London: The scientist who claims to be about to carry out the first human head transplant says that he has successfully done the procedure on a monkey. Maverick neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero has tested the procedure in experiments on monkeys and human cadavers, he told New Scientist. Dr Canavero says that the success shows that his plan to transplant a humans head onto a donor body is in place. He says that the procedure will be ready before the end of 2017 and could eventually become a way of treating complete paralysis. I would say we have plenty of data to go on, Canavero told New Scientist. Its important that people stop thinking this is impossible. This is absolutely possible and were working towards it. The team behind the work has published videos and images showing a monkey with a transplanted head, as well as mice that are able to move their legs after having their spinal cords severed and then stuck back together. Fusing the spinal cord of a person is going to be key to successfully transplanting a human head onto a donor body. The scientists claim that they have been able to do so by cleanly cutting the cord and using polyethylene glycol (PEG), which can be used to preserve cell membranes and helps the connection recover. The monkey head transplant was carried out at Harbin Medical University in China, according to Dr Canavero. The monkey survived the procedure without any neurological injury of whatever kind, the surgeon said. Theoretically, acupuncture may improve serotonin levels, and may improve hot flushes the same way an antidepressant does. (Photo: Pixabay) Women with menopausal hot flashes who get acupuncture do experience some decrease in symptoms, but so do others who get a placebo version of acupuncture, with no needle insertion, according to a new study. The reason I began this research was because I had tried acupuncture for one or two patients who suffered from hot flushes and they reported remarkable results, said lead author Carolyn Ee of the University of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia, a family physician trained in acupuncture. I was curious as to whether or not they improved because of the acupuncture or for another reason, Ee told Reuters Health by email. So I wasn't actually very surprised, as I was already entertaining the fact that acupuncture may not fully explain the clinical improvements. Serotonin, a chemical that carries signals between nerves and may also play a role in maintaining body heat, is reduced after menopause. Hot flashes reportedly improve with use of certain antidepressants that change serotonin levels. Theoretically, acupuncture may improve serotonin levels, and may improve hot flushes the same way an antidepressant does, Ee said. But the improvement could be due to something other than needling, like therapist interaction, she said. The answer seems to be that needling makes no difference, although the overall effect of seeing a therapist regularly and having blunt stimulation of the skin does improve hot flushes, Ee said. The researchers included 327 women in Australia over age 40 in late menopause or postmenopause reporting at least seven moderate hot flashes daily, which qualifies in Chinese medicine as kidney yin deficiency. For eight weeks, half of the women received 10 treatments of standardized Chinese medicine needle acupuncture designed to treat kidney yin deficiency, while the other half got a sham version that did not actually involve needle insertion. By the end of the study, 16 percent of women in the acupuncture group and 13 percent in the sham group had dropped out. Average hot flash scores were similar in both groups: both had reductions of about 40 percent since the beginning of the study, and the reduction was sustained for six months. Other outcomes, like quality of life, anxiety and depression were also similar for both acupuncture and sham, the researchers reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Most trials including this most recent larger trial comparing acupuncture to sham acupuncture found no significant difference in hot flash frequency or severity between the two treatments, said Dr. JoAnn V. Pinkerton, executive director of the North American Menopause Society, who was not part of the new study. In the 2015 North American Menopause Society review of non hormonal therapies for hot flashes, we state that acupuncture cannot be recommended for the treatment of hot flashes, Pinkerton told Reuters Health by email. Instead, the organization recommends either cognitive behavioral therapy or hypnosis when hormone therapy is not appropriate and non hormonal prescription therapies not desired, she said. There's very strong evidence that (acupuncture) is superior to sham acupuncture for chronic pain, including osteoarthritis, low back pain, neck and elbow pain, Ee said. It's also effective for tension headaches, period pain and hay fever. Acupuncture is relatively safe but can cause some bruising or bleeding, she said. It is technically an effective treatment for hot flashes, since both acupuncture and sham are better than doing nothing, she said. I would recommend that women consider all their options, be presented with the evidence, and decide accordingly, Ee said. If they wish to continue having acupuncture, they need to be very clear that our findings show that the needling itself does not make any difference. Lifestyle changes like layering clothing, keeping the ambient temperature to around 18 degrees Celsius or 64 degrees Fahrenheit, losing weight and avoiding triggers such as hot drinks and alcohol can help treat hot flashes, and hormone replacement therapy or antidepressants can be effective options for some women, she said. However, some women may choose to continue having acupuncture if they have found that nothing else works for them, or if they cannot tolerate hormone replacement therapy or other treatments, she said. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Charter is moving its high school into the former campus of Alfred Lawless High in the Lower 9th Ward. The Orleans Parish School Board voted in August to change the campus' name entirely. This sign shows the King name with the Lawless name seemingloy whited-out underneath. The Oxitec biotech firm said tests that began in April 2015 have shown that the release of genetically modified sterile male mosquitoes succeeded in reducing a variety of disease-transmitting mosquito larvae by 82 percent by year's end in a neighborhood of the city of Piracicaba. (Photo: AP) Sao Paulo: Genetically modified mosquitoes could help Brazil combat the Zika virus, tests results released Tuesday by a British biotech firm suggest. The South American nation has been scrambling to contain the spread of Zika, which has been linked to a recent surge in birth defects including microcephaly, a rare condition in which newborns have smaller than normal heads and their brains do not develop properly. In a statement Tuesday, the Oxitec biotech firm said tests that began in April 2015 have shown that the release of genetically modified sterile male mosquitoes succeeded in reducing a variety of disease-transmitting mosquito larvae by 82 percent by year's end in a neighborhood of the city of Piracicaba. The Aedes aegypti mosquito also transmits dengue fever and chikungunya. The genetically modified mosquitoes themselves don't spread disease because only the females bite. Piracicaba's city health department confirmed the tests and results. Joseph Conlon, a technical adviser for the American Mosquito Control Association, called the results "novel and potentially efficacious." Colon said the procedure is not 100 percent effective, but if it is allowed to proceed to full measure, it will "reduce the mosquito population below disease transmission levels with minimal effect on the environment." He added that the Aedes aegypti "are notoriously difficult to control by conventional spray methods such as truck or aerial sprays." The Brazilian army has been helping in efforts to control the mosquito population by eliminating standing water. Most of the 3,530 babies the Health Ministry says have been born with microcephaly in the country since October have been concentrated in the country's poorest regions, such as the northeast. But worries about Zika have prompted residents in wealthier cities such as Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo to stock up on mosquito repellent. Fewer than 150 cases of microcephaly were seen in all of 2014. WASHINGTON (AP) The House Jan. 6 committee plans to unveil "surprising" details at its next public hearing about the 2021 attack at the U.S. Capitol. The session Thursday afternoon is likely to be the last public hearing before midterm elections next month. The panel is expected to include new evidence from the U.S. Secret Service about its actions with Donald Trump that day. Ahead of a report later this year, the panel is summing up its findings. The committee says Trump, after he lost the 2020 presidential election, launched an unprecedented attempt to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden's victory. They say the result was the deadly mob siege of the Capitol. Washington: A new study finds that survival rates from cardiac arrest decrease the higher up the building a person lives. Ian Drennan, lead author of the study, said that cardiac arrests that occur in high-rise buildings pose unique barriers for 911-initiated first responders. He added that building access issues, elevator delays and extended distance from the emergency vehicle to the patient can all contribute to longer times for 911-initiated first responders to reach the patient and start time-sensitive, potentially life-saving resuscitation. Looking at data from 8,216 adults who suffered an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest treated by 911-initiated first responders in the City of Toronto and nearby Peel Region from January 2007 to December 2012, they found 3.8 per cent survived until they could be discharged from a hospital. Survival was 4.2 per cent for people living below the third floor and 2.6 per cent for people living on or above the third floor. But Drennan said when they went back and looked at the exact floor the patients lived on, they found decreased survival rates as the floors got higher. Survival above the 16th floor was 0.9 per cent (of 216 cases, only two survived). There were no survivors to hospital discharge of the 30 cardiac arrests above the 25th floor. While this study was intended to compare the rate of survival to hospital discharge for cardiac arrests that occur on higher versus lower floors of residential buildings, it also highlighted the fact that response times for 911-initiated first responders are traditionally measured from the time a call is received by the 911 dispatch centre to when the first emergency vehicle arrives on the scene. The study has been published in Canadian Medical Association Journal. Community Its now easier than ever to connect and chat with others in your local area. You can connect with your community by asking general questions, give area updates and recommendations and even let your community know about local events that are taking place. "Antibirth," a film shot in Sudbury last year, is screening at the Sundance Film Festival later this month . The film has multiple screenings starting Jan. 25 at the famous Utah film festival. "Antibirth," a film shot in Sudbury last year, is screening at the Sundance Film Festival later this month The film has multiple screenings starting Jan. 25 at the famous Utah film festival.Written and directed by Danny Perez, the film stars Natasha Lyonne, an Emmy-nominated actress, best known for her work in the "American Pie" series as well as the Netflix series "Orange is the New Black."It also stars Chloe Sevigny, who received an Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for the film "Boys Don't Cry," and won a Golden Globe for the HBO series "Big Love."As if those two names werent enough, Canadian Meg Tilly, who won a Golden Globe Award and received an Academy Award nomination in 1986 for her work in "Agnes of God," also stars. Tilly also stars in films like "The Big Chill" and "Valmont," and is most recently known for her work in the television series "Bomb Girls."Filming took place at iconic places such as Northern Breweries and the old Mine Mill Hall. Most of the movie, though, took place at the Northern Ontario Film Studios (at the site of the old Barrydowne Arena) to allow for a controlled environment.The film was produced by Hideaway Pictures and Traverse Media.Sudburian David Anselmo, who owns Hideaway Pictures and is the CEO of Northern Ontario Film Studios, is attending Sundance for the first time.We are very proud to be headed to Sundance this year with 'Antibirth' in the highly sought after Midnight Madness screening, he said, in an email to NorthernLife.ca.From my understanding, we are just one of two Canadian feature films at Sundance this year.When we were filming the movie, we knew we had something special. We had a great team all around on this one, and our director had a very unique creative vision. It was tough at times to execute the vision, but our entire team pulled it off.Anselmo said another Northern Ontario film "The Grandfather Drum," shot in Thunder Bay is also being screened at Sundance.When only 70 films are accepted from around 7,000 submissions, it is very gratifying not only to see my film there, but two films from the North, he said.We are seeing a lot of films coming out of Northern Ontario these days that are getting internationally recognized. I'm proud to contribute to our growing reputation of making quality films in Northern Ontario.The plot of "Antibirth" is as strange as the title. From the description: In a desolate community full of drug-addled Marines and rumors of kidnapping, a wild-eyed stoner named Lou wakes up after a wild night of partying with symptoms of a strange illness and recurring visions as she struggles to get a grip on reality while stories of conspiracy spread. All are welcome to attend celebrations in Greater Sudbury in honour of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which runs until Jan. 24. The week of events aims to promote goodwill among Christians of different faith traditions. All are welcome to attend celebrations in Greater Sudbury in honour of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which runs until Jan. 24.The week of events aims to promote goodwill among Christians of different faith traditions.The week launched with an Ecumenical Prayer Breakfast on Monday at St. Patricks Church on Walford Road. Former mayhor Jim Gordon, who now chairs the Project Hope efforts on behalf of Syrian refugees, was the guest speaker.Today, St. Johns Anglican in Copper Cliff hosts the Copper Cliff Ministerial Service at 1:30 p.m.The New Sudbury Ministerial Service will be held Jan. 21 at St. Stephens on the Hill at 6:30 p.m. with Stewart Walker speaking.A Service of Prayer for Persecuted Believers is set for Jan. 22 at 7 p.m. at St. Patricks Church on Walford Road.The Garson Ministerial brings the week to a close with a service on Jan. 24, at 7 p.m. at First Baptist Church of Sudbury, 2603 Falconbridge Hwy. Participating in the Garson service are the following churches: First Baptist Church of Sudbury, Garson; Trinity United, Garson; St John the Evangelist, Garson; and All Saints Anglican, Coniston.At these events, freewill offerings will be donated to different charities, including Sudbury Life Line.Full details can be found at SudburyChristian.ca. Actors and technicians from film industries across India have come out in support of Sunny Leone after her recent controversial interview, which many described as sexist and disrespectful to actors and women. The Indo-Canadian actress was repeatedly asked about her stint as a porn star by host Bhupendra Chaubey and if she regrets her past, despite her making it clear that it was her profession. The interviewer has been receiving flak on social media for his insensitivity and Shruti Haasan was one of the first actors from Ktown to raise her voice on the issue. Shruti, who is often known for speaking her mind, was all praise for Sunnys classy demeanour. She posted on Twitter, Well done @SunnyLeone keeping it together in the face of opinionated misguided questions. Vidyullekha Raman, another Tamil actress, expressed her admiration for Sunny keeping it cool. As the incident started getting more attention, the number of Btown celebrities who were in awe of Sunny witnessed a considerable rise. Anushka Sharma, Farah Khan, Vidya Balan, Riteish Deshmukh, Radhika Apte and many others expressed their dislike over the interview, and appreciated Sunny for facing all the questions with a smile. When Sunny said she is keen to work with Aamir Khan, the question posed by the interviewer was whether she thinks Aamir would reciprocate, given her past. Interestinlgy, the man himself responded through Twitter. He posted on his social media account, I think Sunny conductd herself wid a lot of grace & dignity.I wish I cud hav said the same abt the interviewer. Sunny,I wil b happy 2 wrk wid u.I hav absolutely no problems wid ur past, as the interviewer puts it. Stay blessed. Love (sic). Syrian family's grandfather to arrive Sunday Three weeks after they began their new life in Canada, the first family of Syrian refugees to come to Sudbury will soon be reunited with a grandfather they were forced to leave behind in Lebanon. A family of Syrian refugees arrived in Canada on New Year's Eve. File photo. Three weeks after they began their new life in Canada, the first family of Syrian refugees to come to Sudbury will soon be reunited with a grandfather they were forced to leave behind in Lebanon. In an email Wednesday, Nilgiri Pearson, co-ordinator of Lifeline Sudbury, said the Quarquoz family expects their grandfather to arrive Sunday. (He) has been medically cleared to fly and is scheduled to arrive in Canada on Saturday, and in Sudbury on Sunday, Pearson said. Given our experience of the last few weeks this is not a guarantee, but it is encouraging. The grandfather, who is 80, was supposed to travel with the family when they left a refugee camp in Lebanon and arrived in Sudbury on New Year's Eve. But for some reason, he wasn't issued the same travel documents that rest of the family received from the Canadian government. That issue was worked out and he was supposed to arrive Jan. 10, but unspecified medical issues prevented him from boarding the plane. When the family arrived in Sudbury, they expressed a mix of happiness to be here and sadness they had to leave their grandfather behind. The father told reporters it was the family's most pressing concern. "The first thing he wants is his dad to come here," said Abdul Hak Dabliz, Imam of the Sudbury Mosque, who acted as the translator for the family first's media interview. If all goes according to plan, he should get his wish Sunday. EVANSTON, Ill. -- The Reva & David Logan Foundation has awarded a $50,000 social justice grant to Northwestern University professor Brent Huffman and Kartemquin Films to help raise awareness about the plight of an ancient archeology site featured in the documentary film Saving Mes Aynak. The film, produced and directed by Huffman, follows the frantic efforts of archaeologists working to save the ancient Buddhist site of Mes Aynak in Afghanistan from imminent destruction. A Chinese state-owned mining company plans to demolish the site to harvest an estimated $100 billion worth of copper buried directly beneath the archaeological ruins. But only 10 percent of Mes Aynak has been excavated, and some believe future discoveries at the site have the potential to redefine the history of Afghanistan and the history of Buddhism itself. Huffman called the grant a game-changing development because it allows him to hire an outreach team and to keep traveling with the film to lecture about the importance and significance of Mes Aynak. The outreach campaign has three goals: to preserve Mes Aynak as a protected cultural heritage site; to widen public perspective of Afghanistan's cultural heritage; and to strengthen the Archaeology Department at the Afghan Ministry of Culture in Kabul to protect Mes Aynak and other important historical sites in Afghanistan, Huffman said. Mining, originally slated to begin this year, has been delayed by several factors, including the documentary film, security and the Chinese economy. But the Afghan Ministry of Mines is still pushing for mining to happen as soon as possible and the site is still under threat, Huffman said. My work and the films work to raise awareness and save Mes Aynak is still not done. But I will never give up the effort or give up hope. Saving Mes Aynak has won more than ten domestic and international awards and will be screened around the world in the upcoming months, including at the Louvre in Paris as part of the Film International Conference on Art, 9th Edition. It will also air in India, Nepal, Australia, Czech Republic, Canada, Singapore and Hong Kong. Huffman and Saving Mes Aynak also have partnered with Icarus Films, one of the world's leading distributors of documentary films. Icarus will oversee the North American educational, home, and digital release of Saving Mes Aynak. The Reva & David Logan Foundation is a Chicago-based family foundation that provides strategic grants to support the arts, investigative journalism, scholarship and social justice. The foundation is designed to serve as a catalyst for well-chosen projects that would not be successful without its creative or financial support. Through the grantees, we expect to learn a lot about our choices and ourselves, David Logan said. Saving Mes Aynak has premiered at a selection of high profile film festivals including the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, American Documentary Festival Palm Springs and Dokufest Kosovo. Upcoming screenings of Mes Aynak: Celluloid-fame Chandini Geetha has done only a couple of films, yet she is a familiar face to the Malayalam film audience; thanks to her role as Rosy in Kamal's Celluloid. However, the actress, who is now getting ready for the shoot of her third film, Sujith S Nair's Vakku, suggests that the fame is not as obvious to her as you might think. No one ever comes to me and asks 'Aren't you the girl from Celluloid?' In fact, even on the sets, I have to go to the senior actors and introduce myself as 'Chandini from Celluloid for them to realise I was the one who acted in it. I just had such a different look in the film that people can't understand that I'm the same person! My look in the second film wasn't much noticed either because it wasn't a commercial film. So Vakku will be the first time that people will see me in my original look," chirps Chandini. Vakku takes a look at how parents give a lot of leniency to students these days for everything else, if he or she scores good marks and explores the ills they can lead to. Chandini will be playing the role of a studious, orthodox, Muslim girl in the film. Is she as studious as her character in real life? "Ummm. . . Not really" she says with a giggle and adds, "If you ask my teachers, they might not have too many complaints about me, but then they wouldn't have too much praise either. I just get average marks in my subjects. During schooldays, I was far worse. But by the time I reached Class XI, I improved and became an average student." Referring to choosing to the long time she spends between projects, she says, "I only want to do interesting projects. I decided to do Vakku because it is written by Madhupal sir and someone as senior as Madhu Ambat is doing the camera. Everyone tells me that it is sheer luck to be able to even be a part of a frame set by Madhu Ambat. I realise that this makes it look like I'm on a break. I'll rather just take the break than project myself active in social media," she signs off. Pakistani troops clear way for an ambulance transporting a lifeless body of a victim from Bacha Khan University in Charsadda town, some 35 kilometers (21 miles) outside the city of Peshawar. (Photo; AP) Peshawar: At least 25 people, including the attackers, died in an armed assault on Bacha Khan university in Pakistan on Wednesday, where witnesses reported two large explosions as security forces moved in under dense fog to halt the bloodshed. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, which had massacred 134 school children at a school in Peshawar in December, 2014, claimed responsibility for the attack at the Bacha Khan University in Charsadda. Strongly condemn the terror attack at Bacha Khan University in Pakistan. Condolences to families of the deceased. Prayers with the injured. Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) January 20, 2016 Read: Narendra Modi condemns and expresses grief over Bacha Khan University terror attack The number of dead rose rapidly after armed men stormed the Bacha Khan university in Charsadda, about 50 kilometres (30 miles) from the city of Peshawar, in the latest outrage to hit the militant-infested region. Police, soldiers and special forces swarmed the university from the ground and the air in a bid to shut down the assault, as television images showed students running for their lives. Pakistani troops arrive at Bacha Khan University in Charsadda town, some 35 kilometers (21 miles) outside the city of Peshawar. (Photo: AP) The death toll in the terrorist attack has risen to 21, regional police chief Saeed Wazir told AFP hours after the alarm was first raised. He said the operation had ended and security forces were clearing the area, with most of the student victims shot dead at a hostel for boys on the campus. More than 30 others including students, staff and security guards were wounded, he added. Read: Pak varsity attack: professor gunned down while fighting militants Emergency official Bilal Faizi described seeing five bodies, all with bullet wounds. Military spokesman Major General Asim Bajwa said on Twitter that four attackers had been killed. Update: Snipers killed 2 more terrorists on roof top, total Terrorist killed so far 4. All buildings (and) roof top taken over by Army. op continues, he wrote earlier. Update:Snipers killed 2 more terrorists on roof top,total Terrorist killed so far 4.All buildings&roof top taken over by Army.op continues-3 AsimBajwa (@AsimBajwaISPR) January 20, 2016 It was not immediately clear if the four were included in the toll of 12 given by police chief Wazir. Teacher fighting back Students spoke of one hero teacher -- named by media as Syed Hamid Hussain -- fighting back against the intruders, shooting his weapon in a bid to protect his charges. Syed Hamid Hussain, Chemistry professor, Bacha Khan University (Photo: Facebook) Geology student Zahoor Ahmed said his chemistry lecturer had warned him not to leave the building after the first shots were fired. He was holding a pistol in his hand, he said. Then I saw a bullet hit him. I saw two militants were firing. I ran inside and then managed to flee by jumping over the back wall. Another student told television reporters he was in class when he heard gunshots. We saw three terrorists shouting, Allah is great! and rushing towards the stairs of our department, he said. One student jumped out of the classroom through the window. We never saw him get up. He also described seeing the chemistry professor holding a pistol and firing at the attackers. Then we saw him fall down and as the terrorists entered the (registrar) office we ran away. Syed hamid Hussain from chemistry department has been martyred in Charsadda attack...May his Soul rest in peace... https://t.co/5vVQibp4GL Khama Bagosh (@riazahmadtmg) January 20, 2016 Pakistans President Mamnoon Hussain confirmed the lecturer, Dr Hamid, had died. Witnesses said dozens of personnel in combat fatigues and carrying automatic weapons had descended on the campus after the attack began, as helicopters buzzed overhead and ambulances raced to the scene. Officials at hospitals in the city confirmed they were receiving injured patients, and Shaukat Yousafzai, provincial information minister told media that some of the injured were being taken to Peshawar. This photograph taken from a mobile phone shows Pakistani security personnel taking position outside the Bacha Khan university following an attack by gunmen in Charsadda. (Photo: AFP) Security tightened No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, which had echoes of a Taliban assault on an army-run school in Peshawar in December 2014 that killed more than 150 people, most of them children. There are many staff members and students on the campus, university vice chancellor Fazal Raheem Marwat said, adding he had been on his way to work when he was informed of the attack. There was no announced threat but we had already beefed up security at the university. Naik Mohammed, security chief at the university, said the attackers had entered close to a campus guest house. The 2014 Taliban assault on the Peshawar school was Pakistans deadliest ever attack, and prompted a crackdown on extremism in Pakistan. After a public outcry, the military launched an offensive against extremists in the tribal areas where they had previously operated with impunity. Read: Slaughtered in the classroom: Pak Taliban brutally murders 132 children in Peshawar school Pakistans Jinnah Institute said in a report released Tuesday that the National Action Plan (NAP) helped curb extremist violence last year, although targeted attacks against religious minorities spiked in the Muslim nation of some 200 million people. The NAP has allowed improvements in two areas: the first actual implementation of prosecution against hate speech, and the arrest of terrorists from sectarian organisations which feed religious violence, said one of the authors, Syed Hassan Akbar. On Tuesday, a suicide attack at a market on the citys outskirts killed 10 people, in addition to the bomber. Joe Kelleher was hoping to have a relaxing New Year's with his family. Instead, he had to scramble to change his business's insurance carrier. On Dec. 31, Kelleher found out Community Healthcare System and Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield had failed to reach a new contract, leaving patients with the insurer technically out of network at the system's three Northwest Indiana hospitals. So he had his general manager on New Year's Eve quickly switch the company's employees to United Healthcare. "I'm sure these folks in the boardroom are in front of the fireplace having a nice holiday season, while folks with medical issues are concerned about the future," said Kelleher, 45, of Munster, who owns a software development firm in Hammond. "It's very unfortunate that it comes to these types of negotiations and people's lives and their health are almost being used as pawns." Patients are caught in the middle of the dispute between Anthem and Community and how much the insurer should pay the hospital system for its services. The two sides were unable to come to an agreement for a new contract for 2016, at a time when the entire health care industry is under pressure to reduce costs. Community is allowing Anthem patients to keep paying in-network rates through the end of February as it continues negotiating with the insurer, which represents about a third of its patient base. Beyond that, it's unknown what will happen to those currently receiving care at Community Hospital in Munster, St. Catherine Hospital in East Chicago and St. Mary Medical Center in Hobart. Outpatient physician offices in the Community Care Network are not affected, though the termination could inhibit their ability to provide inpatient services at or refer patients to Community-affiliated hospitals. Matthew Wellever, a 33-year-old Hegewisch teacher with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois insurance, said his wife is due to give birth at Community Hospital in April, but he's been unable to get clarification on whether they'll be be covered at that time. "Blue Cross suggested I call the hospital. The hospital puts me back to Blue Cross. They've been putting me back and forth between the two of them," he said. "It's been a nightmare." Wellever said it's even more distressing because his wife's pregnancy is considered high-risk, so she has to see a doctor at least bi-weekly through her delivery. "Basically we're stuck trying to find a new doctor and hospital to have the baby at," he said. "Had we known ahead of time, we would have found another hospital to start with." He said they plan to switch to the University of Chicago, but that will mean longer commutes to appointments for his wife and to visits for her family in southern Indiana. "I've always thought Community was a really good health care system. It has soured my opinion of them," he said, adding: "I feel used to help put money in people's pockets." For its part, Community has stated that Anthem is demanding "significantly" lower rates than their previous contract. The sides continue to talk, and many expect a deal to be reached before March. "It's just a negotiating ploy between both of them. They're going to see who flinches first," said Jeff Sopko, a Steger insurance broker. "The ones that are caught in the middle are the members of Anthem and the customers or patients of Community. The ones that suffer are the clients." But Will Glaros, an employee benefits specialist with Meyers Glaros Group in Schererville, said this is uncharted territory for Northwest Indiana, as it's the first hospital-insurer contract termination he's seen in 37 years of business. "We're all going to learn from this one," he said. Neither side has clarified whether a patient who is due to give birth or receive ongoing cancer treatment at a Community hospital past February will continue to get the same benefits if the two don't reach an agreement. A Community spokeswoman referred The Times to a frequently asked-questions section on its website, which says it's "very likely" such a patient will continue to be charged in-network rates after Feb. 29. "Health plans are required to provide continuation-of-care benefits for a period of time after a network change," the site reads. "Patients should check with their employer and/or Anthem to verify your eligibility for continuation of care." An Anthem spokesman did not respond to requests to provide clarity on the issue. Many local unions are insured by Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield. The Operating Engineers Local 150, for instance, has Anthem insurance for its approximately 17,000 members and dependents in northern Indiana. The contract negotiations have many of them concerned. "These three hospitals provide an important link in health care to the people of Northwest Indiana," said David Fagan, financial secretary for Operating Engineers Local 150. "If they're unable to resolve the issue, we'd have to encourage members to seek elective services at other facilities still covered by the Anthem PPO network." Cindy Boyd's husband is in that union; the 57-year-old retired AT&T employee said she's considering switching their care to Franciscan St. Anthony Health in Crown Point. A neighbor, Debbie Bianchi, a 59-year-old retired postal worker with Blue Cross Blue Shield, noted that she's been eyeing a new doctor affiliated with Methodist Hospitals Northlake Campus in Gary. Kelleher, the small-business owner, lives two blocks from Community Hospital in Munster, and his wife receives breast-cancer treatment from doctors affiliated with the facility. He said the timing of the situation he first learned about the dispute around Christmas and had to switch insurers on New Year's Eve was perhaps the most unfortunate aspect. "Nobody likes to talk about greed during the Christmas holiday season. You have these upper-echelon executives that are just greedy. They should be ashamed of themselves," he said, adding: "It's extremely unfortunate that it's gotten to this point." A Hobart native has seen first hand the economic potential of the marijuana industry and wants to spark interest among Northwest Indiana investors. The Kingery Group Chief Executive Officer Dawn Marie will prepare Region businesses for marijuana legalization and tell about opportunities at Northwest Indiana's first Cannabis Business Workshop at 10 a.m., March 5, at Ambassador Banquets in Hobart. Medical marijuana is now legal just across the border in Illinois and Michigan. States like Colorado, Oregon and Washington have approved its recreational use. A Gallup poll in October found 58 percent of Americans supported legalizing it nationally. Some people believe it's only a matter of time before it's legal in Indiana as well, although that would almost certainly be the result of a repeal of the national prohibition. Speakers at the daylong March 5 conference include lawyer Patrick McEuen, Sandy McEuen from the Indiana Cannabis Chamber of Commerce, marijuana investment private retreat owner Khadijah Adam and hemp butter entrepreneur Kyla Hill. They'll talk about how to invest in the cannabis industry and how to provide business services the budding sector will need. "This area is an incredible crossroads and hub for transportation," Marie said. "When this does become legal, why not start making money on it? Why should this money go elsewhere?" Marie expects marijuana will be legal nationally by 2020, and says businesses should prepare for the inevitable, given the direction of public opinion polling. She is a Hobart native who moved to Colorado and lived there when marijuana was legalized. "It impacted every business in the state," she said. "They needed to get new insurance, new liability insurance. It was hard for these companies to find insurance that wouldn't cost them an arm and a leg." The cannabis industry grew rapidly in Colorado and it creates many opportunities, but companies need to make sure they have adequate capital and revenue streams, Marie said. Entrepreneurs can start dispensaries or glassblowing companies, and such business will create new jobs like budtenders and growers, she said. The cannabis industry also will need ancillary support, such as from accountants, IT firms, packagers and others. The conference will cost $50, and limited seating is available. Marie hopes to stage similar workshops across the state every few months if there's strong enough interest. For more information, or to sponsor the event, call (720) 486-4356 or find Indiana Cannabis Networking on Facebook. To register, go to https://the-kingery-group.ticketleap.com/indiana-cannabusiness-workshop/dates/Mar-05-2016_at_1000AM. *This story has been corrected from an earlier version. HAMMOND | The Unilever plant in Hammond has had its own Cal Ripken Jr., a reliable workhorse who toughed it out day after day, a guy as sturdy as the 83-year-old factory's brick facade. Timothy Lockett, the Calumet Region's iron man of soapmaking, clocked in at the bar soap factory at the corner of Calumet Avenue and Indianapolis Boulevard every day for 30 years. The Hammond native and current Merrillville resident never once called in sick with a cold, the flu or an excuse to sneak off to an afternoon Cubs game at Wrigley Field. Lockett, who's retiring and moving to his wife Mary's home state of Texas, put in three decades of sometimes grueling shift work including plenty of 16-hour overtime shifts without ever missing a single day. Lockett, 58, had perfect attendance for his entire 30-year career at Unilever, said Charlotte Davis, a human resource business partner at the Unilever Hammond plant. "We are not aware of anyone else at our factory who has achieved the same," she said. Lockett did go on family vacations. But he punched in whenever he was scheduled to work and never left early. That's so important to the plant's production that the company has given out gift cards to anyone with perfect attendance at the end of the year. His motivation for showing up every single day was to provide for his family and a wife he loves so much that he can tell you the exact minute he first met her at an Arizona Bible college nearly four decades ago. They had four children together. "My beautiful wife has been my greatest motivation," he said. "I call her honey, and tell her, 'I've got to go make money for my honey.'" A colleague said Lockett was inspiring, and not just for his dedication to his family and his job. He's also a minister at the Upper Room Church in Gary, and often dispensed wise words to his colleagues at the soap factory. "It's a job that can get to you sometimes," said Doreen Soucy, who has worked with Lockett for years. "It can be quite physically and mentally challenging. He'd always tell you not to worry." Lockett had sayings for trying times. He often told colleagues if they didn't mind, it didn't matter. He encouraged them to be like pine trees when snow falls on the branches, and just let it slide off. He always gave co-workers words of inspiration whenever they were aggravated or stressed out, Soucy said. He would seek them out and offer words of consolation when their parents or other family members passed. "He's wonderful. He's philosophical," she said. "He's kind and patient and inspiring." Soucy, who teared up when talking about how much she would miss her colleague, said Lockett always helped out other workers, such as if they had a jam in the conveyor system or a stack of paperwork to turn in. He had been one of the five most senior employees at the plant and often was turned to as a source of institutional knowledge. Lockett, who was one of 14 children raised in Hammond, wanted to land a job at Unilever after he was laid off from the city's Parks Department more than three decades ago. He heard the pay scale and benefits were good and was thinking of how he could best provide for his new family. Every day for nearly a year, he prayed he would be blessed with a good job and called Unilever's personnel manager to tell him he would be eager to work at the plant, which makes Dove and other Unilever soaps. One morning, the manager called him back and Lockett could hear the smile in his voice. The factory finally had an opening. Lockett started as a general laborer who did whatever was needed. He mopped floors, unloaded box cars and cleaned up. Eventually, he worked his way up to being a machine operator so he could earn more pay. He operated a variety of machines, including the automated packaging system that packs soap into the cases. He looked forward to going to work every day. He wanted his wife to enjoy a good quality of life. "She's very sweet and understanding and exciting to be with," he said. "She's my soul mate. I was speechless when I first met her, but now I can talk to her without ever being lost for words." They have found a dream house with four bedrooms and three bathrooms in Texas, where he will retire after he worked his last day at Unilever on Friday. He looks forward to reading, riding bikes and enjoying other fun activities with his wife. "It's going to take some adjustment, not getting up and going to work," he said. There's always a celebration of fine food, culinary talent and community when a passionate team of area chefs gather together. The American Culinary Federation Chefs of Northwest Indiana met recently for the organization's annual Chef of the Year Award Dinner. More than 60 chefs, food lovers and culinary experts gathered at the Radisson Star Plaza in Merrillville for the event featuring a seven-course meal by Radisson Star Plaza chef Kenneth Regan. In addition to awards presentations and dinner, the evening was also a celebration of the group's 20th anniversary. "This has been a unique experience for everyone," said Jim Galligan, Valparaiso University Catering Chef, about being involved in the ACF local chapter. Galligan was the first president of the group. "It also gives us the opportunity to share our knowledge. We're going into our third decade now and it's really been a fun ride," Galligan said, as he outlined the chapter's history for event guests. The Northwest Indiana chapter got its start in 1995 when chef Muhammad Siddiqui and chef Debra Ward thought it was important to establish a chapter in Northwest Indiana "between Chicago and South Bend, and north of Indianapolis." The group formed and had its first meeting in January of 1996. On the organization's website, visitors will find a history of the chapter as well as information about The American Culinary Federation. The American Culinary Federation Inc., founded in 1929, the website states, is a "not for profit organization for chefs and cooks." "The organization's principal goal is to promote the professional image of American chefs worldwide through education among culinarians at all levels, from apprentices to the most accomplished certified master chefs." During the recent event, the group presented the Chef of the Year Award, Student Culinarian Award, various honorary accolades and also swore in key members of the Board of Directors. Outgoing President/chef Tim Merkel presented the Chef of the Year Award to Cheryl Molenda. Molenda is a retired executive sous chef from The Inn at Aberdeen who is now doing pastry creations at 95Ate5 Brew Pub in St. John. Molenda said she was "honored" to step into the role of president once again. She was previously president a few years ago. Not only does the ACF organization offer a great opportunity for personal growth but Molenda said "the ACF helps me give back to the community through our many fundraising events that we participate in." Among groups and charities the chefs have worked with are Meals on Wheels, Tri Kappa Home and Kitchen Tours and Tasting, March of Dimes and Nazareth Home, among others. Officers sworn in at the dinner event were Molenda as president; Jack Mix as vice president; David Siano as secretary; Nico Luna as treasurer; and Marsha Halford as sergeant at arms. Chef Merkel presented the Student Culinarian Award to Jennifer Miller of Ivy Tech. Miller will also compete in a professional baking competition in February in St. Louis. About receiving the student award, Miller said it was an "amazing" honor. Chef Alice Pickford of Wells Street Beach in Miller has been involved with the ACF local chapter for more than 15 years. She said it's always been a great experience attending meetings and working with the other chefs involved. "I've really enjoyed it. Everybody's really supportive. It's a nice organization," she said. Ruben Calvo, chef/owner of Ruben's Mexican Grill in Dyer, called the group "a small chapter with a big heart," referring to the community outreach efforts of all the chef members. Jack Mix, chef/owner of 95Ate5 Brew Pub received an honorary award for all of his work during the organization's meetings and for his willingness to always lend a hand. Mix said he was thankful for the honor adding "If you have a passion for something, you really can't get enough of it." Mix said he enjoys working with all the local chefs. "It's like a support group," he said, with a laugh. Radisson Star Plaza's chef, Kenneth Regan, was lauded for his lavish menu starring dishes such as Sweet Sausage and White Bean Soup with Kale; Maple Glazed Salmon with Truffle Yukon Chips and Shaved Asparagus; Cabernet Braised Short Ribs with Horseradish Potato Puree and Carrot Foam; and more. For more information on the local chapter and the parent organization, visit acfchefsofnorthwestindiana.org or acfchefs.org Last fall, the hit Northwest Indiana Mexican restaurant chain El Salto delved into the fast food market. The El Salto concept of fast food isn't your average one. With the opening of El Salto Express, the restaurant is still celebrating its favorite dishes but offering it to customers in a quicker and more abbreviated format. This is the first express version of El Salto, which has other sit-down eateries in Munster, Valparaiso, Chesterton and Merrillville. Diners will recognize the concept of customizing one's meal options from another popular food joint in the national marketplace. But El Salto's menu focuses on more authentic fare. During a recent Sunday evening visit to El Salto Express, we ordered the popular Burrito Bowl. Once you order your main dish then you're asked to choose a variety of ingredients for the recipe. (Diners pick their meat and assorted toppings). Our Burrito Bowl ($6.50 for chicken) starred shredded chicken and we chose pinto beans, lettuce, tomatoes, shredded cheese, sour cream, red mild salsa and corn to embellish the dish. Other topping choices are black beans, pico de gallo, jalapenos, red hot salsa, guacamole ($1 extra) and queso dip ($1 extra.) The shredded chicken proved to be well seasoned and all the other ingredients were fresh and flavorful. Among other options at the eatery which diners may choose are Tacos, Burritos, Taco Salad, Salad Bowl, Nachos and Tortas. Meat choices at El Salto Express include Steak, Ground Beef, Carnitas and Chorizo. Other options are Shrimp and Veggie. Diners may also order Chicken or Tortilla Soup ($4.50). On the Ala Carte side of the menu, customers will find Corn in a Cup ($3.50); Quesadillas ($2.50); and Tamales ($3 each). For the ninos (kids), the menu features a Taco dinner ($4) a Kids Quesadilla ($4); or Cheese Nachos ($3). The meal comes with chips and a small soft drink. Various sides, drinks and desserts are also featured at El Salto Express. The restaurant has a drive-thru window and in addition, catering is offered. In the three years Ive had the privilege of serving as governor, Ive come to love the Region. Having lived most of my life in Columbus, I can see why Northwest Indiana has its own moniker. The Region is unique in that landmarks like U.S. Steel or the Port of Indiana-Burns Harbor replace the cornfields typically associated with the Hoosier state. Rather than the gentle hills one might find in southern Indiana, the shores along the Indiana Dunes rival the beaches offered at any coastal destination. The Region is a unique part of Indiana, but it is an integral part of the Hoosier story. What makes Northwest Indiana great is what makes all of Indiana great: our people. Ive seen firsthand the kindness and generosity that is the hallmark of Hoosier hospitality, and if there is one thing I can report back it would be that Hoosiers are the best people on earth. Indiana is the heart of the heartland and not because of our geographic location, but rather who we are and what we stand for. We think of the first responders who saved a young boy in the Miracle on Mount Baldy or community leaders banding together in Gary to help build homes on Jackson Street. Ive been privileged to meet with steelworkers, entrepreneurs, health care providers and teachers. And with each visit, I am inspired by the determination of the Hoosiers who call the Region home. No matter the challenges we face, Northwest Indiana rolls up its sleeves and gets the job done. INDIANAPOLIS Businesses that use a just-in-time scheduling system for their employees soon could be protected from local regulations aimed at limiting the controversial practice. The Indiana Senate voted 48-2 Tuesday to send Senate Bill 20 to the House. It bars local governments from enacting an employer scheduling ordinance that is more restrictive than state or federal law. Currently, Indiana has few limits on employer scheduling practices. Businesses generally are free to require employees be on-call and show up for work on demand, as well as accept being sent home early from a scheduled shift with no extra compensation. State Sen. Phil Boots, R-Crawfordsville, sponsor of the measure, said he only wants to ensure businesses with multiple locations are not subject to different requirements in each community. But state Sen. Karen Tallian, D-Ogden Dunes, who voted against the legislation, said if local officials believe their citizens should, for example, get their work schedules a week in advance, local governments should have the power to mandate that. No Indiana localities have yet enacted an employer-scheduling ordinance. In recent years, the Republican-controlled General Assembly has barred local ordinances requiring businesses provide a minimum wage, working conditions or employee benefits, such as sick leave, that are more generous than required by state or federal law. A separate proposal approved Tuesday by a House committee, House Bill 1053, also would block local ordinances limiting retailer use of plastic shopping bags. Within the next five years or so swaths of the jobs we take for granted will be done by robots. (Representational image) London: One evening last autumn, four experts in the field of artificial intelligence arrived in Westminster with an urgent message for the British government. Theres a robot revolution on the way, they said, and unless we prepare for it were in trouble. The briefing was a quiet affair I was one of only a few journalists invited, for fear of headlines like The Terminator is coming. However, by the time the last AI expert had said his piece, it was hard to imagine how a hack could over-hype the story. Computers really are set to take over, it turns out. Were rolling unstoppably towards servitude to machines. The four experts spoke in turn, each about a different point in the future, like biblical prophets warning of the End Times. The most farseeing prophet was theoretically the most alarming. He talked about the singularity, the point at which a computer will be capable of recursive self-improvement; of designing and building machines cleverer than itself and far, far cleverer than us. He said this point might be only 45 years away. How do we ensure these brilliant robots dont turn against us? The next seer had a less apocalyptic vision, but it was perhaps more frightening for being so immediate and inevitable. Within the next five years or so, he said, swaths of the jobs we take for granted will be done by robots certainly the blue-collar ones: cleaning, washing up, driving vans, sorting post. He smiled. He was a very jolly prophet. I see it as a liberation, he said, a freeing of the toiling masses from manual labour. I saw it then, and still see it now, as a potential catastrophe. To grasp the scale of the problem and how very imminent it is, look at America. It is a continent defined and created by roads. In more than half of all US states, the top job, the one done by more people than any other, is truck-driving. There are 3.5 million truck drivers and a further 5.2 million employed in the trucking industry. Just think of all those men crisscrossing the country; rumbling from Savannah, Georgia to Sacramento, California, sprinkling dollars like fish food along the way, in cafes, gas stations, motels. Whole towns depend on the appetites of truckers. Now consider the fact that Daimler has just unveiled its first self-driving truck. Hard on the heels of truckers will be waitresses and burger-flippers. A smartalec company called Momentum Machines has announced that its robot can make a perfect hamburger all toppings sliced, placed and cooked in less than half the time it takes a human. A burger every ten seconds and no need to pay a machine, or let it smoke, pee or sleep. Bionic butlers, nannies, bionic legs, smart hearts, compliant robot sex dolls, robot nurses are already on the market. The revolution is here. Yes, technology is wonderful, its given us longer, happier lives. But what happens when the jobs begin to go? What will fill the yawning gap left by gainful employment? The standard AI answer is that governments of the future will have to pay a living wage. Benefits such as pensions will have to be de-linked from earnings. Money for nothing and your beers for free. What of the self-worth work brings? What about what to do all day? Since that night last year, Ive heard more than one AI expert suggest that most blue-collar workers will be thrilled at the chance to explore their creativity. Id like to say that, faced with this upheaval, a ripple of urgency went through our policy-makers. Id like to tell you there was much talk afterwards about how the Tories great make work pay programme was going to cope in this brave new world, about what students might do as starter jobs. Id like to imagine that, since that night, a group of movers and shakers meet regularly to plan for the automated age. What I suspect the audience thought, if they paused for thought between tweets, is, Thank God for that. Policy-making couldnt possibly done by AI. I wouldnt be so sure of that. Imagine a robot with access to the entire Internet; to the costs and findings of every policy ever enacted worldwide. Wonks, youll be first against the wall. Time to prepare. By arrangement with the Spectator CHICAGO A man was arrested early Wednesday at the Hegewisch South Shore station after a fight with Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District Police, an official said. The man boarded westbound Train No. 106 at the Hammond station at 6:32 a.m. wearing sweatpants and no shoes, NICTD Police Chief Bob Byrd said. He allegedly told conductors he had no money to pay for a ticket. Conductors called for transit police assistance, who met the train at the Hegewisch station in Chicago, Byrd said. Officers there attempted to question the man, and a fight ensued. Transit Officer Raul Agosto and Pat O'Meara, a retired Calumet City police chief, assisted in attempting to subdue the suspect, who was Tasered multiple times during the struggle, Byrd said. Chicago police officers arrived and helped take the suspect into custody, Byrd said. Agosto was not injured in the incident. The police activity caused a 30-minute delay of the train into Chicago. CROWN POINT A Chesterton man accused of driving drunk and causing a fatal crash is challenging if proper protocol was followed to test his blood alcohol content. Michael T. Knezevich, 29, appeared Tuesday in front of Lake County Criminal Judge Samuel Cappas for a lengthy hearing on the issue. He is scheduled to stand trial next week on charges of reckless homicide, operating a vehicle while intoxicated causing death, causing serious bodily injury when operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated and operating a motor vehicle with a blood alcohol content over 0.15, according to court records. He is accused of causing a three-vehicle crash Sept. 15, 2012, in the area of U.S. 41 and 109th Avenue. Sandra Marvel, 66, of St. John, was a passenger in a vehicle involved in the crash and was killed. A test determined Knezevich's blood alcohol content was 0.271, according to Indiana. The legal limit in Indiana is 0.08. Susan Prybys, a phlebotomist for a laboratory at Franciscan St. Anthony Health in Crown Point, testified that she collected Knezevich's blood at 7:55 p.m. on the day of the crash. Prybys explained how the blood was stored in a tube with a gold top, which is the same type of tube that blood is placed when it is being tested for alcohol. Defense attorney Michael Woods, who represents Knezevich along with attorney Paul Stracci, questioned Prybys about the policies and procedures outlined in a document about how to handle blood samples that are requested by a police officer. Prybys, reading from the document, said if the sample is requested by the police officer it is supposed to go in a tube with a yellow top. Prybys said that based on the order she received, she thought the blood test was requested by a doctor, not a police officer. Still, Prybys said in her experience all blood samples tested for alcohol were placed in the tubes with gold tops. The colors on the tubes help distinguish what types of test will be done and what additive is put into the substance. Catherine Negovetich, a medical technician, later testified that the gold-top tubes help separate blood cells from the serum so that the blood alcohol content could be determined. Negovetich walked through the procedures that are done to test the samples, which rely heavily on machines and computers. For example, the tube is centrifuged for at least 10 minutes to further separate the cells and serum. It then takes about 20 to 30 minutes for the test to compute the blood alcohol content, Negvetich said. Woods questioned why the laboratory's computer records indicate the area where Negvetich worked received the sample at 8:11 p.m. and completed testing by 8:18 p.m. Negvetich said the sample was, "apparently not," centrifuged. She also said she wasn't aware that manufacturers recommended that samples be clotted for at least 30 minutes before testing. Under questioning by Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Mark Watson, Negvetich said she wasn't familiar with record keeping, and that she was basing her testimony on the times the records showed. The hearing was expected to continue later this week. CROWN POINT Lake election officials fined Gary Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson's re-election campaign $2,200 Tuesday for late and erroneous financial reports. However, the county elections board refused on a 3-2 party-line vote to request the prosecutor's office to conduct a criminal investigation. Mayoral critics Robert L. Buggs Sr.and James Nowacki denounced the decision as a cover-up. "I've not been allowed to present my case. The (board) majority is sweeping this under the rug," Buggs said. Nowacki promised to appeal it to the Lake Circuit Court. Justin Murphy, chairman and a Democratic elections board member, said the board addressed the complaints with a 10-month examination of campaign finance violations and the largest fine he could remember being levied against any candidate. Michael Mellon, a Republican board member, said he and his fellow Republican member believed there was enough information of potential election law violations intentionally committed to warrant a possible prosecution, but were outvoted. The mayor, who attended but didn't address the board, said afterward her campaign did issue reports with "sloppy record-keeping and inaccurate calculations," but she said calls for a criminal prosecution were simply political partisanship. Buggs and Nowacki, who unsuccessfully challenged Freeman-Wilson in last spring's Democratic Party primary, filed complaints that the mayor's campaign misidentified donors and miscalculated donations and spending. Buggs said he found more than 200 discrepancies in the mayor's 2013, 2014 and 2015 reports. The mayor hired campaign consultant Kenard Taylor to correct the reports but declined to turn over its bank records. "We are still spinning our wheels," Mellon said of efforts to understand how cash balances could have been wrong by tens of thousands of dollars. Freeman-Wilson said there was no money missing, only untrained campaign workers who didn't communicate well about money matters. She said Taylor is now her campaign treasurer. Taylor said complex campaign finance laws have confounded other area political campaigns as well. Freeman-Wilson said it wouldn't have been appropriate to turn over bank records to the elections board, since that would set a precedent for political opponents to delve into candidates' financial strategies by filing frivolous election board complaints. The mayor's campaign is still working on its 2015 reports. INDIANAPOLIS | Indiana communities no longer may be permitted to regulate guns, ammunition or firearm accessories within their borders. The Indiana House voted 77-21 for Senate Bill 292 on Monday, pre-empting all local ordinances that relate to guns and taking away the right of local governments to enact any gun-related provision different from state law. State Rep. Mike Speedy, R-Indianapolis, the sponsor, said Indiana needs one set of gun laws because otherwise law-abiding gun owners could get tripped up unnecessarily by a local rule they may not even know about. But state Rep. Vernon Smith, D-Gary, said he doesn't believe that's a serious problem since no one has come to him complaining about Gary's gun ownership rules. "I don't understand why we're doing this except to score points with the NRA," Smith said. The legislation now returns to the Senate for lawmakers there to agree to changes made by the House. HAMMOND | The city is preparing to make payments to Unilever and Munster Steel out of funds left over from recently closed tax increment financing districts. The City Council is scheduled to take a final vote on appropriating the $878,519 for the Hammond Redevelopment Department on Feb. 25. Most of the funds will pay for the city's $400,000 commitment to Unilever's beautification project at the company's North Hammond plant and $353,000 in obligations to Munster Steel, according to City Councilwoman Janet Venecz, D-at large. The remainder will go to attorneys fees associated with tax sale properties, and the Southern Shores plan, which focuses on developing Indianapolis Boulevard through Hammond and Whiting. I think the money is going to very worthwhile projects, Venecz said. The Unilever project is great. Munster Steel that is going to be a great new asset for the city, and it's going to bring in businesses that want to surround that property. Munster Steel is planning to move from its current location at 45th Street and Calumet Avenue to the West Point Plaza Industrial Park near Gostlin Street and White Oak Avenue. Phil Taillon, executive director of the city's Department of Planning and Development, said Munster Steel is still working on its site plan, so it's not ready for the funds yet though the money still needs to be appropriated. As for Unilever, the city is helping to pay for the cost of a new wrought iron fence around the North Hammond plant. Hammond closed the TIF district created in 2002 to benefit Unilever last year, along with the North Hammond TIF district that was used for the industrial park where Munster Steel is locating, according to Taillon. CALUMET TOWNSHIP Less than two weeks before Velia "Val" Taneff and her daughter were found strangled to death, a person of interest in the homicides had tried to strangle another person at the Taneff property, according to court records. James A. Lohnes, 44, of Crown Point, was identified by the Lake County Sheriff's Department this week as the person of interest in the homicides. As of Wednesday, Lohnes had not been charged in the murders. Velia Taneff, 86, and Lana Taneff, 63, were found strangled to death Sunday. Their deaths were ruled homicides. Lohnes was charged Wednesday with auto theft, a Level 6 felony, and is accused of stealing Velia Taneff's 2003 Cadillac STS that was later found in Ohio. In a separate case, Lohnes was charged with three counts of criminal confinement, strangulation, battery resulting in moderate bodily injury and battery resulting in bodily injury. The charges stem from a Jan. 6 incident that happened at Velia Taneff's home. A man was doing a job for Velia Taneff when she called police to remove someone else from the property. After police left, Lohnes got into the man's vehicle with a beer, though the man did not want him in his car. Lohnes is then accused of putting his arm around the man's neck and punching him, according to the affidavit. The elder Taneff began kicking Lohnes to get him off of the man, according to the affidavit. The man drove Lohnes home once he had calmed down, because he feared what he might do next, according to the affidavit. About a week and a half later, Lohnes was arrested at 11:05 p.m. Saturday on the Ohio Turnpike near Montpelier after an Ohio State trooper saw him walking near Taneff's vehicle that was parked along the side of the road. He told the trooper that a friend, Velia Taneff, had gone to a nearby gas station, because they had run out of gas, according to the affidavit. The trooper noticed bottles of beer in the car, and Lohnes slurring his speech, according to the affidavit. The Ohio officer arrested Lohnes on a charge of operating a vehicle while intoxicated. The trooper went to a nearby gas station to look for the friend Lohnes had described, but never found anyone matching the description. In Calumet Township, a Lake County officer at 5:24 p.m. Sunday responded to Taneff's home in the 2300 block of West 44th Avenue after a requested welfare check on the elder Taneff. The person is friends with Taneff and is also related to Lohnes. He is also the person who was attacked by Lohnes on Jan. 6, according to court records. According to the affidavit, the man grew worried after he couldn't get in touch with the elder Taneff, who he usually spoke to on a daily basis. He also told officers that he couldn't find Lohnes, who he described as a "bad man, had done some bad things," according to the affidavit. The man also told police Lohnes was supposed to do work for Taneff, but he had never done it. Police noticed the Taneff home was unlocked, which the officer who knows the family noted was unusual. Velia Taneff's 2003 Cadillac STS was missing from the property. Using OnStar, police tracked the vehicle to Ohio. When officers searched the home's basement, they found Lana Taneff's body. She had been strangled to death, authorities said. Officers found dried blood on and near her body. The tenants who lived next door told police they had not heard from the elder Taneff, though she usually called them on Sundays. The couple said they had found cigarette butts, which was unusual because Velia Taneff didn't allow tenants to smoke in the building. Velia Taneff's body was found in an upstairs apartment. She had also been strangled to death, and there was dried blood around her face. When Lake County Sheriff's Department detectives interviewed Lohnes in Ohio, he told them the elder Taneff had allowed him to keep her car for the weekend. He told them he was planning on driving to Massachusetts to pick up his girlfriend. Two of Velia Taneff's children told police their mother never let anyone borrow her cars, which she treated like they were her "babies," according to the affidavit. Even her own children weren't allowed to drive her Cadillacs. Lake County Sheriff John Buncich said detectives were still piecing together the details of the homicide. He wasn't sure when charges would be presented to the Lake County prosecutor's office. The investigators remained Wednesday in Ohio, Buncich said. It wasn't yet clear when Lohnes would be extradited to Lake County. Velia Taneff was a former radio talk show host and she well known in local politics. She had served on several Lake County government advisory boards. She previously ran unsuccessfully for Lake County commissioner and for the Calumet Township board. Lana Taneff was born with severe vision problems and was declared legally blind. She had been fighting breast cancer for the past few years. SCHERERVILLE The pungent smell of smoke hung in the air Wednesday at Stan's Auto Salvage, but a blanket of snow covered most visible signs of a blaze that consumed more than an acre of the yard Tuesday and burned through the night. Chip Lukasik, whose father started the Schererville business in 1961, said the fire "ruined a good night for at least 100 firefighters." "It's just an unfortunate situation for everyone involved," Lukasik said, as he stood behind a counter in the business's office Wednesday afternoon. He said firefighters did "an excellent job" by containing the fire and preventing it from spreading to any of the buildings on the property at 7967 Wicker Ave. He was encouraged by the outpouring of support he's received, he said. The fire burned numerous smashed vehicles, officials said. Its cause remained under investigation Wednesday, Assistant Schererville Fire Chief Robert Patterson said. Lukasik said the fire was called in by a passer-by on Alexander Street, which runs behind the business to the east. Several employees were on scene at the time, but they learned about it from emergency crews, he said. Patterson said firefighters were called to the business about 7:20 p.m. and found a large fire. Obviously with a fire like this, where you have cars stacked on top of cars, you get air pockets and it creates flares, Patterson said. We were trying to get out to spots where you cant even get a vehicle. Patterson said there was one hydrant on the property near the main office, but the site is so large, it was not sufficient to battle the blaze. Several departments brought tanker trucks to the scene, which were used to relay water to the blaze in the field, he said. That always takes time, but once we got everything set up, it worked beautifully, Patterson said. Ladder trucks assisted in hard-to-reach areas of the property, he said. Morgan Olson, of St. John, and Hayden Karstensen stood at the south end of the parking lot at Drenths Highway Garage about 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, looking out across a field as the fire burned in the distance. They said they heard periodic booms and saw sparks as firefighters moved in truck after truck to douse the flames. A front loader appeared to be moving cars away from the flames but stopped after one explosion, they said. Lukasik said he had been stockpiling the smashed vehicles while waiting for steel prices to rise. Tariffs recently placed on imported steel haven't yet led to much of a rise in prices for scrap metal, he said. Employees drain all of the gas and oil and remove batteries from vehicles before they're smashed. Any explosions or sparks could have resulted from burning airbags or fumes that remained after the draining of fluids, he said. Lukasik, who runs the business with his brother Pat Lukasik and son Dan "Boone" Lukasik, said employees keep the yard clean. "We try to abide by all the rules and just be good neighbors and good people," he said. In addition to buying salvaged vehicles, Stan's operates a 24-hour towing service and contracts with Munster, Dyer, Schererville, St. John and Lake County. Lukasik said the last major fire at the property was about 35 years ago, when the body shop burned. The body shop was closed eight or nine years ago, he said. Fire crews from St. John, Lake Hills, Highland, Munster, Crown Point, Lake Ridge, Merrillville, Cedar Lake, Lowell and Crete Township all assisted in fighting the fire, Patterson said. No firefighters were injured battling the blaze. With the conditions last night with the cold and snow, its wonderful to know everyone went home safely, he said. It was a tough fire, but everyone did a great job. Crews remained on scene until around 4 a.m., Patterson said, tending to flare ups at the scene. Schererville firefighters were called back to Stans later Wednesday morning when a few vehicles flared up again, he said. The loss estimate is unclear, because the vehicles were all slated for scrap, he said. GARY A 37-year-old man who previously spent time in prison after admitting to molesting and killing a toddler is now facing a new murder charge, according to court records. Kevin D. Riley, of Gary, was charged Tuesday with murder in the Jan. 13 homicide of April D. Bailey, who was shot in the face. Bailey, 39, was outside her home in the 4700 block of Delaware Street in Gary, and she was believed to have been speaking to Riley, her ex-boyfriend, on the phone when she returned home from the store, according to court records. She went outside after a tan vehicle with dark-tinted windows arrived outside her house. Bailey was seen speaking to a woman who had arrived in the vehicle before witnesses heard a gunshot. The woman who was with Riley on Jan. 13 told police they drove to Bailey's home to speak to her, though court records did not indicate what they were talking about. At some point, Riley got out of the car and shot Bailey in the face, according to the affidavit. Police found a cell phone underneath Bailey's body, and a .380-caliber casing was found on the scene. The next day, police searched Riley's home in Gary and discovered a box of ammunition that is similar to the casing found on the scene, according to the affidavit. He was charged that day with failure to register as a sex or violent offender, according to court records. He had his initial hearing on those charges last Friday when a public defender was appointed to his case. As of Tuesday, Riley remained in Lake County Jail without bail, according to court records. Riley had previously spent time in prison after he pleaded guilty in 1997 to involuntary manslaughter and criminal deviate conduct in the homicide of 10-month-old Davonta Reed, of East Chicago. According to the Indiana Department of Correction website, Riley was released from prison Feb. 26, 2014. Riley admitted that Aug. 24, 1995, he molested and then stomped on Davonta. Riley was 16 years old when the homicide happened. He had spent the past couple of months last year appearing in court after the Lake County probation department filed a petition to revoke his probation. According to court records, the probation department withdrew its petition Dec. 15, and Riley was allowed to remain on probation. Bengaluru: A day after the KPCC office bearers meeting passed a resolution not to give bypoll tickets to non-members of the party, Chief Minister, Siddaramaiah, KPCC president, Dr G. Parameshwar, Bengaluru development minister, K.J. George, Energy minister, D.K. Shivakumar and food and civil supplies minister, Dinesh Gundurao reportedly batted in favour of Mr Byrathi Suresh, an aspirant for the Hebbal seat stating he was a co-opted member of the party in the Legislative Council. Even though all leaders conceded that the "final decision" on selecting candidates rests with central leaders in New Delhi, they contended in the same breath that when Mr Suresh is a co-opted member, how could he be termed an outsider? Going by their statements favouring Mr Suresh, it appears that Mr Siddaramaiah has the upper hand in candidate selection nudging out Congress veteran, C.K. Jaffer Sharif's grandson, Rehman Sharif out of the race. Meanwhile, a delegation of Muslim leaders met Dr Parameshwar and urged him to give the ticket to a community leader. Chief Minister, Siddaramaiah said the party had not yet decided whom to field in which constituency. "Congress party follows a prescribed method to select candidates, whether it is Hebbal or any other constituency," the CM said. In response to a question, Mr Siddaramaiah shot back asking who had said Byrathi Suresh was an outsider? KPCC president, Dr Parameshwar dropped enough hints that Mr Suresh is a co-opted member in the Council. "Ultimately, it is the decision of central leaders," he said. The party's Hebbal candidate selection panel chief and minister, K.J. George said there was no fixed rule in politics that a particular constituency belongs to a community. "In 2013, a minority candidate was fielded from Hebbal, the same rule need not be applied in this bypoll," he said Meanwhile, Byrathi Suresh met fellow Kuruba, H.M Revanna to convince the latter not to contest the by-poll from Hebbal. The meeting was anything but pleasant with Revanna reportedly giving Byrathi a dressing-down. GARY The Urban League of Northwest Indiana is accepting nominations for the 2016 Diversity and Inclusion Awards. The awards are presented to outstanding businesses and organizations that embrace and effectively incorporate diversity and inclusion in the organization. There are four award categories: * Community Impact Award will be presented to an organization which actively creates initiatives, engages diverse citizens and develops opportunities for inclusion. Youth/Student groups are encouraged to apply. * Leadership Award will be presented to an organization which influences diversity and inclusion on a national and/or global level and the includes highlights the Northwest Indiana region. Again, Youth/Student groups are encouraged to apply. * Workforce Diversity Award will be presented to an organization that implements innovative strategies to attract, select, promote and retain employees from under-represented populations. * Moving the Needle Award is for nominees with exception effort in all three above categories. All Diversity and Inclusion award nominations are reviewed by a committee of diverse professionals. The review committee is charged with identifying organizations that reflect the best practices in infusing diversity in various levels of their operations. Each nomination is reviewed by individual committee members for each award category. There's an opportunity for committee members to ask questions and share feedback about the strength of each nomination reviewed. That information is then ranked. The review committee examines the scores to determine winners in each category. The rating process is based on documented evidence of inclusion and best practices that are identified in each nomination packet. Applications are due by noon Feb. 1 at the office of the Urban League of Northwest Indiana, c/o Diversity Awards Nominating Committee, 3101 Broadway, Gary, IN 46409 The awards will be announced and presented at an 11:30 a.m. lunch March 24 at Avalon Manor in Hobart. For reservations, visit the Urban League's website at www.ulofniw.org or call the office at (219) 887-9621. The 2015 award winners are not permitted to apply for the 2016 awards. VALPARAISO The city's diversity task force on Tuesday learned about strategies to encourage diversity and inclusion from an Illinois community that has been on the cutting edge in those areas. The Altogether Valpo task force hosted a presentation at the Valparaiso Chamber of Commerce by officials from Oak Park, Illinois, who have worked toward creating a more inclusive community. Cedric Melton, community relations director for the village of Oak Park, and Tom Zapler, chair of the village's community relations commission, described the history of the villages efforts to promote racial diversity and its current activities. Melton said Oak Park was proactive in promoting racial integration in the 1960s and 70s, when white flight was sweeping neighboring communities. In 1968, the village passed a fair housing ordinance, and in 1971 established a community relations department. The village also adopted a diversity statement in 1973, which highlights its commitment to equality. All kinds of people feel welcomed in Oak Park, Melton said. We feel thats the way it should be in the United States. The community relations department enforces the fair housing ordinance and provides services to enhance the quality of life and promote diversity, Melton said. Areas of service include tenant/landlord relations, community outreach and special events, he said. The department mediates disputes between tenants and landlords, and facilitates conflict resolution between neighbors. It also coordinates a village festival, Fourth of July parade, block parties and a summer youth employment skills training program. One of the most successful activities has been a Dinner and Dialogue Series that enables residents of differing backgrounds to get to know each other in a small group setting. The series is an offshoot of the Jane Addams Hull House Association Center for Civil Society's Chicago Dinners Project, which encourages conversations to create an understanding of diversity and build a stronger sense of community. The dinners not only unite people of differing racial backgrounds, but old with young, rich with poor, gay with straight, Zapler said. Both Zapler and Melton praised Valparaiso for the work it already has done in promoting diversity and inclusion. Valparaiso Mayor Jon Costas formed the Altogether Valpo task force in August as part of implementing the ValpoNEXT initiative. The group is focusing on inclusion, housing and hiring, and will make recommendations to the City Council. I think youre definitely on the right track, Zapler said. Youre well on your way to having a good program in this city. For more information about Altogether Valpo, visit www.valpo.us/altogethervalpo. VALPARAISO The Porter County Board of Commissioners remain on track for breaking ground for a new animal shelter in May. The three construction/design firms or teams of firms that showed interest in the project have been ranked and will soon be invited to submit proposals, said Commissioner Jeff Good, R-Center. A couple of committees will first decide what is expected of the building and the facilities inside, he said. The firms will then be presented with those parameters and be asked to provide designs and costs by April 7. Commissioner Laura Blaney, D-South, said she is overseeing one of those advisory committees including representatives from the county, a dog rescue group and a veterinarian. The aim is to avoid duplicating services already offered locally and identify what is needed, she said. The goal is to end up with a new building under the cost of $2 million, Good said. The new shelter will be built at the site of the Porter County Expo Center south of U.S. 30 along the east side of Ind. 49, he has said. The site will be accessed at the same traffic signal along Ind. 49 that is used by the sheriff's department. The project is being pursued with a unique design-build approach, which allows the county to modify the project along the way to meet needs and cost, Good has said. The commissioners also announced Tuesday that they are seeking applications through Jan. 29 for an advisory board as part of the new stormwater improvement fee and program. One person will be appointed from each of the three commissioners districts and two will be appointed at large, Good said. Good stressed that he is seeking applicants based on skills and not on politics. The county commissioners and council approved a new annual fee, which amounts to $120 for the typical homeowner in the unincorporated areas, to raise money for stormwater improvement efforts. VALPARAISO While most Northwest Indiana snowbirds have already completed their trek down south, a bird of another kind was somehow left behind. An American white pelican, undernourished, emaciated, and blind in one eye, has been brought to Moraine Ridge Wildlife Rehabilitation Center. The centers director, Stephanie Kadletz, took a phone call Friday from a fellow wildlife rehabilitator in Culver, just southeast of Knox, who said the bird had been hunkering down under a kayak near Lake Maxinkuckee. Kadletz has experience with pelicans. A native of Florida, she's rehabilitated American white pelicans and about 1,000 brown pelicans. She drove to Culver on Saturday and brought the bird back to the Valparaiso center. Most likely, the female bird injured one eye through some kind of trauma, like being hit by a car, Kadletz said. Pelicans rely on their keen eyesight to capture fish, so the bird may have been handicapped by her injury and could not feed properly. Although pelicans can be found in Indiana during warmer months, the bird may have been part of a group traveling south from summer breeding grounds in Canada. The Culver bird was most likely left behind when it could not keep up. Because weather has been so warm, migrations may have been later than usual this year, Kadletz said. But this time of year, they should not be here. Kadletz consulted with Brad Bumgardner of Indiana Dunes State Park, who said the Willow-Slough Fish and Wildlife area in Morocco, Indiana, sees about 100 pelicans in the summer. Most sightings are in southern Indiana Goose Pond Fish and Wildlife area in Linton, Indiana, hosts about 1,000 pelicans each spring. According to the National Audubon Societys website, the bird, with a 9-foot wing span, is one of the largest in North America. Kadletz said the bird is recuperating indoors and is eating well. She plans to have a veterinary ophthalmologist examine the bird to determine if its blindness will prevent it from being released back into the wild. Once the pelican recovers, Kadletz might use her contacts in Florida to place the bird in a sanctuary or be released, depending on its ability to fend for itself. Kadletz said the birds eat up to 10 pounds of fish daily more if they are undernourished and trying to get back to normal weight. The center is seeking donations of whole fish anything but catfish, because of the barbs on its fins. Who would have thought? A pelican in Indiana in January, Kadletz said. PORTAGE A Meet the Author black tie affair begins at 7 p.m. Friday at Woodland Park, 2100 Willowcreek Road. Northwest Indiana resident Nashanta Robinson will be signing her book, "From Sunrise to Sunset: A Poetic Journey,"which is a compilation of poems and short stories involving Robinson's life and various events. This book highlights where she has been, her trials and triumphs in between and where she is now. The journey has not been easy, but with Gods help, she has been able to overcome death, rape, suicide and so much more. I hope that through these poems and stories, I can reach someone that is going or has gone through what I did, she said. Doors open at 6 p.m. Guest will receive light refreshments and a copy of the book. There will also be a silent auction where all proceeds go to benefit nonprofit community health center, Northshore Health Centers. Tickets are $30 or $50 for a couple. Tickets can be purchased at the door for $35. to purchase ahead of time, visit www.eventbrite.com/e/meet-the-author-a-black-tie-affair-tickets-19541503162. PORTAGE Two Illinois residents were arrested Tuesday night and charged with dealing marijuana following a traffic stop. Yesun Erdenekhuyag, 25, of Chicago, was charged with maintaining a common nuisance, dealing marijuana, possession of marijuana and possession of paraphernalia. Badmaarag Mashbat, 22, of Des Plaines, was charged with visiting a common nuisance, dealing marijuana, possession of marijuana and possession of paraphernalia. Police stopped a car driven by Erdenekhuyag in the area of U.S. 20 and Ind. 249 just after 11 p.m. Tuesday after a complaint that the car was being driven recklessly in the area. When the officer noticed an odor of raw marijuana coming from the vehicle, Erdenekhuyag allegedly admitted the two had been smoking the drug. He told police they were en route from Chicago to Washington, D.C. In searching the vehicle police found marijuana that appeared to be packaged for sale. They also found a smoking pipe. The two were taken to Porter County Jail. VALPARAISO A woman told police she awoke late Tuesday night to find a man standing in the doorway of her bedroom. It turned out she once knew the man, who was identified by police as Mark Myers, 49, but he allegedly had broken into the home and refused to leave. The woman said Myers pushed her backwards after she told him to leave, Valparaiso police said. When police arrived at the home in the 600 block of Chicago Street, they found Myers sitting in a living room recliner. He reportedly did not believe the uniformed officer was from the Police Department and gave a false name and resisted being taken into custody. He is charged with a felony count of residential entry and misdemeanor counts of resisting law enforcement and criminal mischief. CROWN POINT A jury trial date remains uncertain in the state's capital case against a man accused of shooting to death Gary Patrolman Jeffrey Westerfield. Carl Blount, 27, of Gary and Portage, appeared Wednesday in front of Lake County Criminal Judge Samuel Cappas. Blount, wearing a striped Lake County Jail uniform, did not say anything during the brief hearing. One of his three public defense attorneys, Richard Wolter, told Cappas they were waiting for a DNA report in the case. Wolter said the report is expected to be completed by the end of the month. Wolter said they should be prepared to select a trial date by the next omnibus hearing, which is now scheduled for March 9. Deputy Prosecuting Attorney David Urbanski did not object to continuing the omnibus hearing to March. Blount has pleaded not guilty to a murder charge in Westerfield's homicide. The state is seeking the death penalty against him. Westerfield, 47, was shot to death in his patrol car on July 6, 2014, in the 2600 block of Van Buren Place in Gary. Police previously said he was in the area searching for Blount, who was a suspect in a domestic disturbance. Blount's half-brother, Dontae Blount, told police Carl Blount admitted during an emotional outburst to shooting an officer, according to the affidavit. He also told detectives he gave Carl Blount the gun allegedly used in the homicide. Over the weekend, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced an agreement restricting horse drawn carriages to Central Park. Now, there's growing questions about whether the Mayor may have been premature in announcing that the opposing sides had actually reached a compromise, as NY1's Josh Robin has the latest. Ian McKeever and other carriage drivers say there is no deal and it will remain that way until their demands are met. That is the number of horses should remain at about 200 until a Central Park stable is built. Officials had said that all parties agreed to roughly half that number by December with even fewer when the stable is to open in 2018. "What we put out in terms of a press release was what the administration, what this Council and with this industry the Teamsters representing the workers," said City Council Speaker Melissa Mark Viverito. "That is that is what has been presented." The Teamsters aren't so sure, although officially the union declined comment. "We need our horses," said Christina Hansen horse carriage driver. "We need to have our horses, we need to have our horses be protected." Not surprisingly, there's also talk about lawsuits from horse carriage drivers, from pedicab drivers and also from people upset at turning over parkland to stables. Pedicab advocates protested outside City Hall to placate the politically connected carriage drivers, the deal banishes pedicabs north of 85th Street in the park, where there are few tourists. "A horse carriage can operate, but we can't?" said Gregory Klaeboe, pedicab driver. "Why are we being singled out." The main animal rights group NYCLASS says, it generally supports the compromise, believing it will lead to a ban. But they want more protections against extreme temperatures. Others say horses remain endangered until the carriage industry ends entirely. "When the mayor promises runs on a campaign promise and says over and over again he is banning this industry, that's what we hold him to," said Edita Birnkrant, Friends of Animals. And as for the park a pricetag on the stables could run in the tens of millions of dollars money that longtime parks advocate Tupper Thomas says may be misplaced. "And I think that we have to really think about this use of a park space for private business will they paying rent, is it a concession how does that actually work?" said Tupper Thomas of New Yorkers for Parks. Some details may emerge Friday, when the City Council holds its first hearing on it. Hyderabad: With GHMC elections round the corner, the sensational research scholar suicide in the Central University here has come as a godsend to politicians of many hues, and several leaders are out to fish in troubled waters or add fuel to the fire. The Telangana Rashtra Samiti government was quick to file an FIR, putting the blame for the suicide on Union minister and city MP Bandaru Dattreya, some other BJP leaders and the Vice-Chancellor. TRS leader K Kavita criticised Bandaru Dattatreya for writing a letter to Union HRD minister Smriti Irani, in which he had cited cases of indiscipline and extremist influence in the university. Kavitas Telangana Jagruti staged a protest outside the residence of Dattatreya Tuesday, demanding his resignation. Congress local leaders brought partys national vice-president Rahul Gandhi to the campus, all the way from Delhi. ABVP leader A. Giri Prasad said these politicians were trying to take advantage of the situation so as to win votes in the forthcoming GHMC polls. A senior intelligence official here said, Definitely there are attempts to politicise the issue. But, the BJP does not have a Dalit vote bank here. So it will not affect them. Congress, which has no hopes to win the civic polls, is still making a try. YSRC is not contesting the polls, but as the deceased Rohith hails from its stronghold in Guntur, party president YS Jagan Mohan Reddy visited the house of Rohit in Uppal and consoled the family. All Dalits are not amused by the sudden support for them, though. Some of the online posts by dalits are questioning as to where these leaders were, all along. Congress leader V Hanumantha Rao put the blame on University VC Appa Rao Podile. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal targeted PM Modi and demanded an apology from him. A delegation of Trinamool Congress led by party MP Derek OBrien visited HCU on Tuesday evening. BJP may not act on its only MP in TS Though an FIR has been lodged against Union minister of state for labour Bandaru Dattatreya and a strong demand raised among students and the Opposition parties to sack him over the dalit scholar suicide, the Centre is unlikely to take any action. The BJP also rejected outright the demand for the resignation of its sole representative in Parliament from TS and one of its prominent OBC faces. The BJP feels there is no link between Rohiths suicide and HCUs action against him and other students on a complaint against them. As the issue snowballed into a major political furore and the BJPs rivals demanded the sacking of Mr Dattatreya and HRD minister Smriti Irani, the BJP feels any action against its leaders would only give credit to the Oppositions charge that it was anti-dalit. The Union home ministry Tuesday sought a report from the Telangana government on the alleged suicide, which it hopes to get by Wednesday. The MHA is keeping a close eye on the situation and is in touch with state officials to foil any law and order disruption or violence in the state. Defending Mr Dattatreya and HRD minister Smriti Irani, the BJP said the former had merely forwarded a complaint about the alleged anti-national activities of some students on campus to the HRD minister, who in turn referred it to the institution for appropriate action. PUL-I-KUMRI, Afghanistan Zahra said a neighbor raped her in her home on Friday. It was the most humiliating event in her unremittingly painful life, and the next day she begged her husband, Najibullah, to move their family so the man could not attack her again. He refused. On Sunday afternoon, she poured kerosene over Najibullah and lit him on fire. I stepped back and watched him burn, Zahra said. I thought, Someone is going to die, and it is going to be him or it is going to be me. Since then, she has been held at the womens shelter here as investigators try to sort out the facts of the case. For his part, Najibullah, in a brief interview with a reporter at the hospital here, said that he believed she had attacked him because she was mentally ill. But his condition was still too poor for prosecutors to fully question him. Her violent act has unexpectedly brought quiet expressions of support from other Afghan women, some of whom say they are fed up with lives of abuse with no recourse. And it immediately evoked a morbid fascination in the Afghan news media; on Monday, local reporters unabashedly walked into the hospital where Zahras husband is being treated for first- and second-degree burns, peering into rooms and asking doctors, Where is the man who was set on fire by his wife? Q. Who are the Pakistani Taliban? A. The Pakistani Taliban, formally known as Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, is a loose and increasingly divided umbrella organization that once represented roughly 30 groups of militants. The group was officially founded in 2007 by a prominent jihadi commander, Baitullah Mehsud, and for years it and allied groups like Al Qaeda have been based in the Pashtun tribal areas in northwestern Pakistan, particularly in North and South Waziristan. Image Baitullah Mehsud, right, in 2004 in South Waziristan. Credit... A. Majeed/A.F.P. Getty Images Many Pakistani Taliban commanders fought in Afghanistan as part of the movement that swept to power in Kabul. When American forces ousted that movement in 2001, many of its leaders fled across the border into Pakistan. The Pakistanis among them played host to their Afghan counterparts as well as hundreds of fighters from Al Qaeda providing them with shelter, logistical support and recruits. Under pressure by the United States, the Pakistani Army made tentative efforts to dismantle those sanctuaries in 2003 and 2004, but it was too late. The tribal militiamen, enriched and radicalized by their Qaeda guests, chafed under the armys attempts to impose control. 8. Bank of America reported a better-than-expected profit in the fourth quarter, but as with many of the nations biggest banks, it was showing strains from soured energy loans. U.S. crude fell to a little under $29 a barrel, a low last seen in 2003, and U.S. markets lost most of their early gains. The Dow and the S.&P. 500 edged up only slightly for the day, and the Nasdaq fell 0.3 percent. _____ If youve seen Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Gilda, youve seen the work of the choreographer Jack Cole. And yet hes hardly a household name, despite being one of the first to bring the energy and rhythmic attack of jazz to musical theater. Even so, Coles work has long languished in the archives, along with the often second-rate movies he worked on in the 1940s and 50s. Now, in the Museum of Modern Arts retrospective All That Jack (Cole), which opens on Wednesday, 18 of these films will return to the screen, many for the first time in decades. The Cole numbers are often the most compelling reason to revisit movies like Down to Earth (1947, starring a young Rita Hayworth), On the Riviera (1951, with Danny Kaye) and The I Dont Care Girl (1953, with a rambunctious Mitzi Gaynor). They were never meant to be masterpieces. At the time people went to the movies three to four times a week, Dave Kehr, an adjunct curator in MoMAs movie department and a curator of the Cole series, said by phone recently. These movies were shown for a few days and then put back in the closet. Its hard not to be drawn in and sometimes taken aback by the vitality and sexual exuberance of Coles dance numbers. The dancers practically sock you in the face with their high kicking, hip swinging and slides, often on elevated platforms or suspended staircases without any visible form of support. More craftily, Cole, who died in 1974, turned his leading ladies including Betty Grable, Jane Russell, Gaynor and, in particular, Marilyn Monroe and Hayworth into irresistible bombshells, amping up their sex appeal with suggestive glances, come-hither lips, and bumps and grinds taken directly from the vocabulary of burlesque. The male dancers were no less objectified. Deployed in phalanxes barely dressed or done up in tuxedos their main function was to support their leading ladies (as in Diamonds). Cole knew exactly what he was selling. There may also be some halfhearted attempts to get preferred shareholders to waive their anti-dilution rights, but the waiver has to be unanimous, so dont expect it to happen often. Boards will also hire financial advisers to show that this is all fair to the employees and there was no other choice but to do the down round and reduce the value of the common stock. Expect the financial advisers to always find that this is the case. Employees Versus New Money This leads to the second battle. Silicon Valley is a place where failure is held up as a virtue. Employees arent going to stick around long if they see their equity stake wiped out. They will move to the next start-up and take their chances there. The down round is a lemon signal to the market that the companys business plan is not working out. And one of the thorniest issues in dealing with down rounds is how a former unicorn keeps its employees after destroying the value of their shares. In some cases, the employees will be out of luck and left with nothing. This is more likely to happen if the company is sold at a lower valuation than if it raises money in a down round. But even if the common stock has some value, it is likely to be worth much less and certainly not a billion dollars. Jawbone, for example, recently did a down round at roughly half its previous $3 billion financing, carving out additional common shares for employees to make up for their loss. Foursquare also did a recent down round and publicly stated it was raised on employee-friendly terms, implying a common stock issuance. The preferred shareholders, however, will still have to be paid first for the employees to collect on their new common shares. These actions may end up being more about public relations than an actual payout. If stock incentives are often no longer an option, since all of the stock worth anything is held by investors in the preferred category, cash bonus plans or other incentive plans that pay cash in the event of a success may be necessary. The problem, of course, is that it just isnt as good as cold-hard stock with its potential for a big payout. So expect some hard bargaining and companies searching for ways to win back the loyalty of their employees. These efforts are likely to fail. No one likes to be told that, after winning the lottery, they have to give up the money. And so, it is no surprise that some companies do not survive down rounds, not because of finances, but because they can no longer keep their employees. WASHINGTON A six-year trend of declining federal budget deficits will end this year, sooner than expected, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported on Tuesday a development that injects new questions into the presidential race for candidates proposing trillions of dollars in new tax cuts or spending. Budget analysts had already forecast that annual deficits would begin growing again as the nation confronts the health and retirement costs of its aging population, but the shift was expected to happen after 2018. The budget office now says the reckoning will arrive sooner, in large part because Congress and President Obama agreed late last year to permanently extend a raft of tax cuts for corporations and individuals. The deficit for this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, is projected to be $544 billion $105 billion more than last year, and $130 billion more than the budget office had projected last August. Over 10 years, through fiscal year 2025, deficits would add up to $1.5 trillion more than the budget office had predicted. After small increases in deficits over the next two years, the budget office said, they will go up more sharply after 2018 and begin exceeding 3 percent of the nations total economic output, or gross domestic product. That is the limit that economists generally consider sustainable in a growing economy. Freshii plans to make lemonade out of Chipotles lemons. The Canadian restaurant chain, which offers everything from a juice cleanse to customized wraps and quinoa bowls, will sell the Mexican items on its menu for half price on Feb. 8, the day Chipotle Mexican Grill will close all its stores for a few hours for an employee meeting on food safety. In a world full of generic promotions, we wanted to do something fun and timely to relieve some of the anxiety around whats a pretty serious topic, said Matthew Corrin, Freshiis founder. Chipotle has been hit with a string of food safety problems that have sickened hundreds of people in several states since last summer. The spate of food-borne illness cases caused a decline in sales, the company said, and has contributed to a drop in Chipotles stock price over the last several months. A federal grand jury in California is also looking into an incidence of food-borne illness last summer at one of Chipotles restaurants in the state, the company reported. In an effort to recover its damaged reputation and restore customer confidence, the company disclosed last week that it would close its stores at lunchtime on Feb. 8 to brief all of its employees on new safety protocols and practices it has put into place over the last few months. Nielsen is getting more social. The media research firm plans to announce on Wednesday that it is working with Facebook to include conversations about TV programs on the social network in its measurement system. Now called Social Content Ratings, the metric will also include TV-related chatter on Twitter. The deal is part of a broader effort at Nielsen to improve its methods for measuring how people watch television today. The company has faced harsh criticism in recent years from TV and advertising executives, who complain that Nielsen has failed to keep pace with the digital transformation that has reshaped the industry. As a result, they say, it is not accurately capturing the real audience for shows. Last week, for instance, television network executives expressed frustration over the lack of measurement of programs on the streaming service Netflix. Nielsen has tried to fight back, introducing a series of services that track digital viewing. About three years ago, Nielsen struck a deal with Twitter to measure television-related conversations on Twitter. For example, the companies released data for the Republican presidential debate on Fox Business Network last week. The program elicited 1.2 million Twitter messages, written by 247,000 unique authors, that were seen by a total of 6.4 million people. Pregnant women who feel sick and have visited countries in which the Zika virus is spreading should see a doctor soon and be tested for infection even though the tests are imperfect, federal health officials said on Tuesday. That advice was at the core of interim Zika-related guidelines for pregnant women issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The authors are specialists in emerging diseases and reproductive health. The guidelines included a testing algorithm to show doctors how to proceed with a worried patient who is pregnant and has recently lived in or traveled to an area where the virus is being transmitted. Infection with the virus has been linked to brain damage and microcephaly unusually small heads in infants. Bleak Street, Arturo Ripsteins new film, turns a lurid tabloid true-crime story into a somber, surreal, monochromatic dream. Based on a murder case that shocked Mexico in 2009, the film is less interested in sensationalism or sleuthing than in the operations of fate. When characters invoke destiny, they sometimes have happy outcomes in mind, but every gray-shadowed, elegantly grotesque frame points in the opposite direction, toward death and other sorrows. Mr. Ripstein, a few years older than David Lynch a North American kindred spirit started out in the 1960s as a protege of the exiled Spanish maestro Luis Bunuel, whose socially conscious surrealism is an obvious influence. Bleak Street, through drawn from recent history, unfolds in a stylized world that recalls old movies and pulp novels. It is populated by masked, pint-size wrestlers and middle-aged prostitutes, by married couples vacillating between resignation and bitterness, by the desperate, the defeated and the determined. Mr. Ripstein follows these sad souls down misty alleys, into bleak motels and cramped bedrooms. The dramatic action unfolds in a single day as a series of vignettes that coalesces into a grim existential joke. The wrestlers, Alejandro and Alberto (Juan Francisco Longoria and Guillermo Lopez), who are twins, wear the masks favored by Mexican luchadores, never revealing their faces, even to their wives and children. They are small-scale doubles mascots or reflections of more conventionally scaled fighters who are their rivals as well as their protectors. Known professionally as Little Death and Little AK, Alejandro and Alberto take their work seriously and are ferociously loyal to each other and to their mother. They spend the day preparing for a match that will be followed, according to longstanding custom, by a night of paid female companionship. That is provided by Adela (Patricia Reyes Spindola) and Dora (Nora Velazquez), whose lives give the films title its saddest resonance. Dora lives with her sexually confused husband and their rebellious daughter, while Adela shares a room with her mother, whom she exploits and abuses. The women have money troubles to go with their other frustrations, and plan a simple robbery to make things a little easier. Bengaluru: The temperature is set to soar outside an up-market hotel here on Wednesday as two lieutenants of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, veteran Congress leader C.K. Jaffer Shariefs grandson Rehman Sharief, an entrepreneur backed by Vokkaligara Sangha, and a businessman and camp follower of the late deputy chief minister M.P. Prakash, all ticket aspirants for bypoll to Hebbal, will face a screening committee to push their individual winability factor. With more than a dozen contenders vying for the ticket, KPCC has constituted a screening committee to interact with each aspirant and submit a report to state unit president Dr G Parameshwar on pros and cons of fielding each of them. The committee, too, has several membersMember of Parliament Muddahanume Gowda, vice president of state unit B.L. Shankar, senior leader N.S. Bosa Raju, Mr M.D. Lakshminarayan and Mr Ivan DSouza, both MLCs, city unit president Shekar, and city in-charge minister K.J. George. Each aspirant is likely to turn up with his supporters at the hotel and this could result in sloganeering and tension at the venue, particularly in view of the rivalry between Mr H.M. Revanna and Mr Byrathi Suresh, both camp followers of Siddaramaiah, and leaders of various communities demanding the ticket for their candidate. The others in the race are Mr Rehman Sharief, Mr N.K. Chandrashekar, backed by Vokkaligara Sangha, R.V. Venkatesh, chief whip in the Legislative Council, and Mr Ravi Shankar Shetty, an associate of the late Mr Prakash. Sources in the party said Mr Digvijay Singh, party general secretary in charge of Karnataka, Mr Siddaramaiah and Dr Parameshwar would meet subsequently to pick the candidate for Hebbal. These leaders would announce the candidate for bypolls scheduled for February 13 after consulting party president Sonia Gandhi, sources added. Meanwhile, AICC general secretary in charge for Karnataka Digvijay Singh will be arriving here in a couple of days to discuss and finalise the candidates for Hebbal and the other two Assembly constituencies which will go to polls. Bypolls would also be held to fill vacancies in Bidar and Devadurga (R) Assembly constituencies on the same day. Six years before he died, Himan Brown, the creator of the radio dramas Dick Tracy and Inner Sanctum Mysteries, signed papers ensuring the bulk of his $100 million estate would go to a charitable trust under the sole control of his longtime lawyer. Now a lawsuit alleges that the lawyer, Richard L. Kay, duped Mr. Brown, who was 94 at the time, into leaving the radio-era fortune in Mr. Kays hands. The court papers assert Mr. Kay has exploited his position overseeing the trust for his own benefit. Filed in Surrogates Court in Manhattan, the suit claims Mr. Brown intended for the money to go to another charity he had created and had led for years, Radio Drama Network, where two of his grandchildren are on the board. The board members of Radio Drama Network are asking a judge to remove Mr. Kay as the estates executor and to transfer the money to their charity. Through his lawyer, Mr. Kay denied he ever misled Mr. Brown, much less defrauded him. The lawyer, Michael B. Kramer, said the radio producer was mentally sharp in October 2004 when he decided to divert his money to the newly created Himan Brown Charitable Trust, rather than leave it to Radio Drama Network. Himan Brown was on top of things until weeks before he died, Mr. Kramer said. He was a brilliant man. A prominent emergency room doctor at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan was arrested on Tuesday and accused of drugging, groping and masturbating on a female patient and groping another in separate episodes several months apart, the authorities said. The charges against the doctor, David H. Newman, 45, a proponent of reforms in emergency care who has written widely about improving doctor-patient relationships, describe him targeting young women for abuse when they sought medical treatment. In one case, a 29-year-old woman called the authorities on Jan. 12 and said she had gone to the emergency room at Mount Sinai on the Upper East Side for shoulder pain, where between midnight and 2 a.m. that day she was assaulted by Dr. Newman, the police said. Nurses initially gave the woman pain pills and a morphine shot before taking her in for an X-ray, a law enforcement official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a continuing investigation. Then Dr. Newman came into her room and gave the woman another shot of morphine, even after she told the doctor that she had already received one. Smiles seldom grace Claidel Mateos face anymore. His grin once brought great comfort to his mother, Katherine Luna Mateo. Whenever she saw it, she knew he was happy. Nowadays, his feelings and needs are painfully ambiguous. Claidel, 13, has autism and is unable to speak. Still, he made great strides over the years. He learned to follow instructions, like setting the table for meals, and to point to things he wanted. He engaged in games of hide-and-seek with his mother and would sit at attention while she read to him. But with adolescence came drastic changes in his behavior. Tantrums and aggressiveness became staples of his new personality. My son, after he turned 10, hes always crying, sad and angry, Ms. Luna Mateo, 45, said. Instead of going forward, hes going backwards. Marie L. Garibaldi, who as the first woman to serve on the New Jersey Supreme Court voted to uphold the death penalty and wrote decisions that defined sexual harassment in the workplace and declared Princetons all-male eating clubs discriminatory, died on Friday in Hackensack, N.J. She was 81. The cause was complications of a stroke, Robert Tanzola, a cousin by marriage, said. When Justice Garibaldi was appointed in 1982 by Gov. Thomas H. Kean, the courthouse chambers in Trenton lacked a womens room. When she retired in 2000, three of the seven justices were women, including the chief justice, Deborah T. Poritz. Justice Garibaldi, a judicial pragmatist who tilted conservative in criminal cases, served on a court that gained a national reputation in the 1970s and 80s as innovative and progressive through its pioneering rulings on school financing and local zoning. Justice Garibaldi, a Republican, ruled that a divorced parent could leave the state with her children if the move would benefit them. She upheld the right of a murder victims survivor to address the jury in death-penalty cases. And she declared that a prosecutors use of challenges to exclude black jurors violated a defendants right to an impartial trial. Some council members expressed relief on Tuesday that the issue may finally be out of their hair. Ill probably support the agreement, Councilman Rory Lancman of Queens said, because my goal is to protect the drivers jobs and keep the horse carriages for New Yorkers. But Mr. Lancman, a fellow Democrat, made clear that he was not impressed with Mr. de Blasios handling of the situation, particularly a plan to use public funds estimated at $25 million to convert a park maintenance facility into a new stable. It really is ridiculous that we have to spend $25 million and upend not one but two industries because the mayor will not stand up to his donors, Mr. Lancman said. The Council speaker, Melissa Mark-Viverito, also a Democrat, said she felt confident that the deal would be approved. Yes, there are going to be some individuals who are unhappy with it, Ms. Mark-Viverito said at City Hall, adding that lawmakers would focus on the best interest of the city and how do we move forward. But she declined, three times, to explain the rationale behind the partial pedicab ban, and she grew frustrated when a reporter asked about concerns from parks advocacy groups. At the end of the day, the city owns the park, Ms. Mark-Viverito said. The city owns this facility, and the city is making a decision to invest in this facility. Asked if she thought the parks belonged to the public, Ms. Mark-Viverito replied: Of course they do. As she was speaking, scores of pedicab drivers gathered on nearby Broadway, though most appeared to arrive by nonpedicab methods of transportation. Most had heard about the deal only the day before. Updated 10:20 a.m. Good morning on this freezing Wednesday. When 2015 drew to a close, the doors were shut on two of Manhattans few remaining stand-alone diners. They were Market Diner on 11th Avenue, a lingering relic of Googie architecture, and the Empire Diner on 10th Avenue. (Empires last iteration had been glammed up to suit the times, but, apparently, not enough to pay the rent.) The passing of these blue-plate landmarks got us wondering about the state of the New York diner. Theres no standard definition of a diner, according to Jan Whitaker, who runs a blog on restaurant history. The key thing is a kind of friendliness, not rushing you to get out, not impersonal like a fast-food restaurant, she said. Its an attempt to stem the tide of corporate donations that began with the Supreme Courts Citizens United ruling in 2010, which allowed companies and labor unions to give unlimited sums. More than top secret. Intelligence officials say they have found emails on former Secretary of State Hillary Clintons private computer server that they consider to be of a higher level of classification than top secret. Its not clear whether she sent or received the dozens of emails. Michigans governor: I let you down. Gov. Rick Snyder apologized to the residents of Flint for the citys contaminated water supply. The mayor of the city discussed the crisis with President Obama on Tuesday. Mr. Obama will be in the state today, attending the North American International Auto Show and showcasing the recovery of the auto industry since his bailout of General Motors and Chrysler during his first year in office. Star-powered gathering. The annual World Economic Forum, attended by thousands of political and financial luminaries, begins today in Davos, Switzerland. At least one person North Koreas foreign minister accepted an invitation that was later revoked. It was inevitable that the prisoner exchange with Iran would be questioned as soon as it was announced and not just by Republicans who mechanically assail anything President Obama does. The notion of making concessions to a hostile adversary to secure the release of ones fellow citizens has always been controversial, pitting the innate longing to win their freedom against the risk that handing over money or releasing prisoners in exchange will only encourage the captors to seize more. This dilemma has bedeviled many presidents and governments through history, with no simple or single answer. In this case, President Obama did the right thing. It was right because the negotiations that led to the prisoner exchange were part of a diplomatic process that also produced the landmark agreement on Irans nuclear program that has lessened at least one source of tension in a very dangerous corner of the world. Irans release of its prisoners was not actually a part of the nuclear deal, but it was a conciliatory gesture signaling what the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, described on Twitter as a new chapter in our relations w/ the world. However much the Republican candidates would like to portray it as such, the Iranian case was far different from the kidnappings practiced by terrorist groups like Al Qaeda or the Islamic State, in which the goal is either huge ransoms or the perverse publicity of cruel executions. The United States, unlike some European governments, has long refused to submit to terrorist extortion. The freelance journalist James Foley, for example, was reportedly executed by the Islamic State in August 2014 after the United States refused to pay a 100-million-euro ransom. There is no way to know whether Mr. Foleys tragic death prevented any other Americans from being executed or whether paying a ransom would have saved his life. That is the terrible unknown that governments must confront in their responsibility to protect their citizens in an increasingly dangerous and complex world. But if there is a heart-wrenching logic to refusing to surrender to blatant ransom demands, the preferred option whenever possible must be to turn to diplomacy as the United States did in the many prisoner swaps of the Cold War, including the one dramatized in the movie Bridge of Spies, and as Mr. Obama did with Russia in 2010, and with the Taliban and Cuba in 2014. And as he did with Iran. As soon as 26 states took it upon themselves to sue President Obama over the sensible, humane executive actions he took in late 2014 to protect millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation, it was inevitable that the lawsuit would land on the Supreme Courts doorstep. On Tuesday morning, the justices announced that they would hear the case, which means a decision will most likely come down by the end of June. The states should never have been allowed standing to sue in the first place, and their substantive claims are groundless. There are more than 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. No one, besides Donald Trump, believes the nation has the resources, or the will, to deport them all. The clearest solution is to focus on removing those who pose an actual threat to public safety while deferring action on most of the rest and helping them come out of the shadows. In 2012, the Obama administration allowed young immigrants who were brought here as children to be given work permits and be exempted from deportation, a program that has worked well. In November 2014, the president announced a plan to offer work permits and a three-year reprieve from deportation to as many as five million undocumented parents of American citizens or permanent residents, provided they had no criminal record and had lived in the country at least five years. Getting hardworking people who have deep roots in their communities out of the shadows isnt a new issue. In a 1980 presidential debate, George Bush decried the harsh efforts to marginalize undocumented immigrants. Were creating a whole society of really honorable, decent, family-loving people that are in violation of the law, he said. Mr. Obama, along with other reality-based politicians on both the left and the right, understands this, but congressional Republicans have refused to pass any meaningful immigration reform. The Obama administration is providing seed money for two advanced nuclear reactor designs, part of its effort to keep nuclear power in the nations energy mix over the next several decades. The Energy Department said it would provide up to $40 million each to two companies, X-energy and Southern Company, over about five years to help develop the alternative reactor designs. As a start, the department, which announced the investments last Friday, is giving each company $6 million this year. Nuclear energy, which produces practically no greenhouse gas emissions, accounts for 19 percent of the electricity produced in the United States. But safety and radioactive waste handling have long been issues, and in recent years abundant, inexpensive natural gas has disrupted the economics of energy production, making some nuclear plants unprofitable. A few plants have been closed and only five new plants are under construction. The Energy Department has worked to extend the operating lifetime of existing plants for 20 years beyond their original 40-year licenses. Even so, without further licensing extensions, many of the nations 99 operating plants will have to shut down by 2030. Hyderabad: Though it may appear not to have any direct bearing on Hyderabad city, the ban on beef in Maharashtra and some other states has come as a handy tool for the MIM in its poll campaign in Muslim-dominated areas of the city. MIM president Asaduddin Owaisi has been mentioning the beef ban during his campaign speeches while imitating Prime Minister Narendra Modi's style of addressing the public. Whenever Mr Owaisi raises the issue, he begins with mitro (friends) in the PMs style and goes on to say mitro may work anywhere but not in Hyderabad, bada (Beef) alone will work in Hyderabad. He raised the beef ban while referring to modernisation of slaughterhouses in the city and also while citing his conversation with a dalit student of Hyderabad University during his visit to express solidarity with students protesting the suicide of Rohith Vemula. A student asked me why Modi magic didnt work in Hyderabad in the general elections. He said we can even celebrate beef festival here and I replied we celebrate it every day in our city, Mr Owaisi said. Besides, he also takes pains to explain the financial impact of beef ban on families who depended on its sale in states where it has been banned. During his campaigning, the MIM chief has been announcing that CCTV cameras will be installed in communally sensitive areas of South Zone and West Zone from his MPLADS to keep a vigil on troublemakers and financiers. Bertolt Brechts Mother Courage doesnt fit the mold of a conventional heroine, or even the mold of a conventional antiheroine. But Kecia Lewis, who plays the role in the Classic Stage Companys terrific production of Mother Courage and Her Children, certainly deserves some sort of badge of honor. Ms. Lewiss commanding performance would be impressive under any circumstances, but the drama surrounding her undertaking the part makes the achievement all the more remarkable. As theater watchers are likely to know, Ms. Lewis stepped into the production at the last minute when the star who was first cast, Tonya Pinkins, departed just two days before the originally scheduled opening, eventually citing the traditional artistic differences with her director, Brian Kulick, albeit with nontraditional rancor. When I saw the show on Saturday, Ms. Lewis had given just four performances. Technically, it showed. She called for assistance a couple of times in the first act barking the word Line! fully in character and carried and consulted a script not infrequently during the second. But these necessary aids were surprisingly easy to ignore, because Ms. Lewiss rendering of her complex character, who doggedly profits from a yearslong war, even as it ravages her family, was so powerful, complex and persuasive. (Brecht might almost approve of Ms. Lewiss reliance on her script, because it kept us aware of the artifice of the drama even as we were drawn into it in keeping with his theories of the necessary alienation from simplistic emotional involvement in the mechanics of the story.) Tourism in Turkey could suffer following the terrorist attack in Istanbul on Jan. 12 in the heart of the citys historic district near the famous Blue Mosque. The explosion the work of an Islamic State operative killed 10 tourists and came just a few months after the Oct. 10 terrorist bombings in the capital city of Ankara where more than 100 people were killed. Turkey travel specialists report that, given last years attacks and the countrys shared border with Syria, travelers were already skittish about visiting, and the events of earlier this month will only compound their concerns. Karen Fedorko Sefer, the owner of the Istanbul-based Turkey tour outfitter Sea Song Tours, said that several of her clients who have trips scheduled in the next few months have canceled. Bookings were already slow for 2016 because of a combination of whats going on in the region and the attacks in Paris last year, but now, I expect them to be at a standstill, she said. Also, a rebound wont happen anytime soon, she said. While France is a familiar destination and may be more appealing for people to go to, Turkey is considered somewhat exotic so people arent going to immediately rush here, she said. The authorities say a woman lied when she told the police her daughter, 8, was killed when a gun accidentally discharged after falling off a table. Sgt. Ashley Henson of the Paulding County sheriffs office said Tuesday that Marsha Lynch, 45, and her son, Quincy Lynch, 23, face charges in the death of Sharia Lynch. Ms. Lynch told deputies in October that a bullet hit her leg, then hit her daughter in the head. Sergeant Henson said an investigation showed the bullet hit the girl first and then hit Ms. Lynch and that the gun could not have accidentally discharged. Ms. Lynch faces an obstruction charge. Quincy Lynch is charged with involuntary manslaughter and reckless conduct. Democrats backing Hillary Clinton, nervously eyeing Senator Bernie Sanderss growing strength in the early nominating states, are turning to a new strategy to raise doubts about his candidacy, highlighting his socialist beliefs to warn that he would be an electoral disaster who would frighten swing voters and send Democrats in tight congressional and governors races to defeat. It is a scenario many Democrats long dismissed as even remotely plausible: the 74-year-old Mr. Sanders, a registered independent who self-identifies as a democratic socialist, as their nominee. But the possibility of his defeating Mrs. Clinton in Iowa and New Hampshire next month has prompted some of her prominent supporters to discuss how they could attack Mr. Sanders if his candidacy began to look less like a threat and more like a runaway train: calling him unelectable and warning Republicans would have a field day if he were the Democratic nominee. Here in the heartland, we like our politicians in the mainstream, and he is not hes a socialist, said Gov. Jay Nixon of Missouri, who is term-limited and working to elect a Democratic successor. Hes entitled to his positions, and its a big-tent party, but as far as having him at the top of the ticket, it would be a meltdown all the way down the ballot. And after months of ignoring Republican cheerleading for Mr. Sanders, Mrs. Clintons campaign has started aggressively highlighting how much the opposition is openly providing him aid and comfort mostly recently in a new ad by Karl Roves group American Crossroads that echoes Mr. Sanderss attacks on Mrs. Clintons ties to Wall Street. WASHINGTON Bill Silverstein walked into the Holocaust Memorial Museum here Tuesday with a small cardboard box under his arm and the plight of refugees on his mind not only those now fleeing Syria, but also those from another crisis that held the worlds attention nearly seven decades earlier. In a lab at the museum reserved for special artifacts, Mr. Silverstein watched intently as a white-gloved curator unfurled the contents of the box, which he and his brother, Tom, were donating. Inside was a blue-and-white flag that once flew on the mast of the Exodus, a ship memorialized in book and film after the British turned it away from Palestine in 1947 with 4,500 Holocaust survivors and other refugees on board. The survivors, including about 1,000 children, had to return to Germany. Examining the flag, Sara J. Bloomfield, the director of the museum, declared it a rare treasure. She said she could not help thinking of the parallels between the refugee crisis after World War II when hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors were kept in displaced persons camps with nowhere to go and the current crisis in Syria, which has led more than a million people to seek safety in Europe. Its about the plight of refugees and the indifference of the world, she said. Bill Silverstein agreed. He said the flag, which is almost identical to what became the Israeli flag a year later after the creation of the Jewish state, was an important reminder for humanity of what can happen when the world turns its back on those in need. This is particularly relevant today, he said in an interview, because of whats going on in the world with displaced persons and refugees. WASHINGTON Intelligence officials reviewing emails on former Secretary of State Hillary Clintons private computer server have found information they consider to be of a higher level of classification than top secret, according to a letter sent to lawmakers last week by the intelligence agencies inspector general. The letter, dated last Thursday, says that some of the information in Mrs. Clintons emails has been determined to be top secret/SAP. That designation is usually given to information about special access programs often intelligence-gathering programs and other secret programs run by the Pentagon and the C.I.A. that are among the governments most closely guarded secrets. The letter to Congress, from I. Charles McCullough III, the inspector general for the nations intelligence agencies, provides no specifics about the classified material. It is not clear from the letter whether Mrs. Clinton sent or received the emails, nor how many contained the classified information. WASHINGTON For most observers, the main issue raised in the Supreme Court case Bank Markazi v. Deborah Peterson was whether victims of some of the bloodiest terrorist attacks of the 20th century would finally be paid reparations. But it is another legal question at the core of the case that has set up a profound test of the balance of power between Congress and the judiciary. And the party raising the issue is even more remarkable: the central bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The banks lawyers argued that Congress usurped the authority of the courts, under Article 3 of the Constitution, when it passed a law in 2012 declaring that $2 billion in frozen Iranian assets should be available to compensate victims of terrorism. Lower courts have ordered that the money go to the victims of terrorism sponsored by Iran. The Iranian government did not defend itself against the accusations of sponsoring terrorism, but the bank filed suit in a bid to avoid forfeiting the money, which Congress and the Treasury Department said was brought into the United States in violation of sanctions. But outside groups that have long pressed for Mr. Obama to act on his own believe the moment is close at hand. In his State of the Union address last week, the president made a lengthy plea to fix our politics, specifically calling for reducing the role of money in campaigns and denying hidden interests the ability to bankroll elections. The discussions are intensifying at a time when Mr. Obama has made it clear that he is looking for expansive ways to use his executive power before leaving office. Well do audacious executive action throughout the course of the year Im confident about that, Denis R. McDonough, his chief of staff, told reporters the morning after Mr. Obamas speech. He added that the president had informed his staff that the central question he would be asking himself about potential actions was, Why not? Were going to lean pretty hard into it, Mr. McDonough said. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has been among the advocates for the move, officials and advocates said. Administration aides said that top White House officials, including David Simas, who leads Mr. Obamas political team, and W. Neil Eggleston, the White House counsel, were weighing the move but had not yet reached a decision. Still, proponents heard last weeks speech as a signal that a president who came to office promising to transform politics and has often called for campaign reforms but has never used his authority to force them was ready to act more aggressively. This issue of dealing with the systemic problem of money in politics is outrageously popular, and theres no rational reason for the administration to be presiding over an approach of do-nothingness it has been a huge disappointment, said Lisa Gilbert, the director of Public Citizen. We took this loud call to action in the State of the Union as a signal that they are changing course. Mr. Obama has not yet done the simple thing that he can do, Ms. Gilbert said, referring to the executive order, adding that last weeks speech was finally an acknowledgment that this is not the legacy that he wants on this issue. PRINCETON, Oregon Tensions have run high in eastern Oregon since an armed group seized the headquarters of a national wildlife refuge early this month, but the primary opponents in the standoff have been pretty clear cut: The antigovernment protesters are facing off against law enforcement agents, who are trying to figure out a peaceful end to the illegal occupation. But in recent days, as the standoff has dragged toward its third week, a new element has been added to the chemistry: counterprotesters who are converging here to denounce the occupying faction in person at the refuge headquarters and demand that federal public lands remain open for all. The newcomers include environmental activists, retired federal workers and a couple of long-distance hikers. Were here to say the Malheur is not occupied by the militia were here, were on the land, Kieran Suckling, the executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental advocacy group in Tucson, Ariz., said Tuesday during a rally at the refuge. About a dozen people joined him, from places like Eugene, Oregon and Spokane, Wash., and waved signs at passing vehicles. The advent of a new assortment of outside protesters has again shifted the dynamics of the situation at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. At first, when a band of armed men and women led by Ammon and Ryan Bundy seized the refuges headquarters, they sought support from the local community for their demand that millions of acres of federal land be placed in local, state or private hands. Instead, community leaders asked the Bundy group to leave. F.B.I. agents and sheriffs deputies from around Oregon then converged in the nearby town of Burns. Tunisia on Tuesday declared a curfew in the city of Kasserine after clashes between the police and more than 1,000 young protesters demonstrating for jobs. The Interior Ministry said 20 protesters and three police officers had been injured in the clashes. Tensions have risen in Kasserine since Sunday, when an unemployed youth killed himself to protest his rejection for a government job. Five years ago, another unemployed youth in the neighboring town of Sidi Bouzid set himself on fire, arousing a popular uprising that overthrew Tunisias longtime ruler, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. The protests eventually gave rise to the Arab Spring uprisings across North Africa. Naga Chaitanya is busy shooting for his upcoming film Majnu a remake of the Malayalam hit film Premam. The film directed by Chandu Mondeti has three female leads and two of them, Shruti Haasan and Anupama Parameswaran, who acted in the original movie have been confirmed. Though there were reports that the third lead would be played by Aisha Sharma, Regina Cassandra or Rakul Preet, sources say that the makers have finally roped in Madonna Sebastian, who will reprise her role in Premam. Her character came as a surprise in the original movie and the Telugu makers too decided to rope her. The movie will see Naga Chaitanya in three phases teenage, college, and as a matured young man. Vietnam said Tuesday that China had moved an oil rig into disputed waters in the South China Sea. The rig was at the center of a standoff between the countries in May 2014. A Foreign Ministry spokesman, Le Hai Binh, said in a statement posted on the ministrys website that Vietnam had raised concerns with China over the movement of the Haiyang Shiyou oil rig and had demanded that China stop any drilling and remove the oil rig from the area where the two countries continental shelves overlap. He said Vietnam wanted to protect its legal rights and interests in the area in line with international law. The 2014 dispute set off deadly anti-China riots in Vietnam. China eventually withdrew the rig. Amid confusion over new United States visa rules intended to deter terrorists, a British journalist who works for the BBC was denied permission to board a flight to New York at Heathrow Airport on Tuesday because she was born in Iran. The journalist, Rana Rahimpour, had hoped to surprise her brother in New Jersey this week by appearing at his sons sixth birthday party with her daughter, but was turned away from her flight because of a new regulation that requires European Union citizens who are dual nationals of Iran, Iraq, Syria or Sudan, or have traveled to those countries in the past five years, to obtain a visa in advance. Other Europeans are able to travel to the United States for up to 90 days through a longstanding visa waiver program. Ms. Rahimpour, who has not been able to travel to Iran for many years because of her work for the BBCs Persian-language service in London, said in an email that her request for the sort of routine visa waiver that British citizens are entitled to was not denied until she appeared at the airport. JERUSALEM Nine people have been arrested in connection with a suspected price-fixing scheme for high school trips to former Nazi camps in Poland, the Israeli police said Tuesday. The authorities raided tour company offices and confiscated equipment and receipts, a police spokesman, Micky Rosenfeld, said. According to reports in Haaretz and by other Israeli news organizations, schools that send students on the tours are supposed to be able to choose the best prices from among several companies offering tours of former concentration camps and other sites in Poland that have connections to the Holocaust. The companies are on a list provided by the Education Ministry, and parents were charged about $1,500 for an eight-day tour. But an inquiry led investigators to suspect that the tour operators had conspired to remove competition by fixing prices and dividing up the business from the schools. That would be a violation of Israeli antitrust law, Haaretz reported. Since Oct. 1, some 25 Israelis along with an American Jewish student and a Palestinian bystander have been killed in near-daily attacks by knife, vehicle and gunfire, along with 155 Palestinians, most of whom Israel describes as assailants. Some Israelis, like the defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, say this wave will peter out when it produces no clear results. Others, like Isaac Herzog, the leader of the opposition in Parliament, believe it is the beginning of a third intifada. Palestinian political leaders fear a harsher crackdown by Israel and more useless sacrifice, but they embrace the young dead as martyrs to the cause of Palestinian resistance to Israels occupation of the West Bank, accuse Israel of an excessive shoot to kill policy, which the military strongly denies, and are under increasing pressure to act. Sundays killing of the Israeli mother, in the settlement of Otniel, and a stabbing the next day of Michal Froman, a pregnant Israeli in the settlement of Tekoa, near Bethlehem, may represent another new phase in this round of violence, with attacks inside the settlements themselves. But the suspect in the Tekoa attack, a Palestinian 15-year-old who was shot and wounded, told the police that a relative who tried to stab Israelis had been killed two months earlier near Hebron, an echo of the now-familiar circular story involving the Jaradats of Sair. Daoud al-Zaatari, Hebrons mayor, sees the violence as a boiling up of anger from a young generation who were born after Oslo, the agreements of the mid-1990s that set up the interim Palestinian Authority and were supposed to lead to an independent Palestinian state. But now they and we find ourselves lost, he said. Travel is restricted, there are few jobs, and doors are closed. These young people, he said, are not political, but angry at the political system that delivers them nothing. The violence has sprung with no plan or strategy by the Palestinian Authority or Fatah, he said, referring to the party of the Palestinian Authoritys leader. Thats what makes things confusing, both for us and the Israelis. Mr. Obama has almost never talked about that side of the campaign, the short-of-war coercion that was part of what his aides once called the light footprint strategy of avoiding full-scale military action. But he alluded to its success obliquely on Sunday when he expressed pride in the fact that weve achieved this historic progress through diplomacy, without resorting to another war in the Middle East. By some accounts, it was a close call. Michael D. Morell, a former C.I.A. deputy director, declines to talk about the actions taken against Iran but says that as Irans program accelerated in Mr. Obamas first term, conflict loomed. Before the negotiations for the nuclear deal began, he said, we were closer to war with the Islamic Republic than at any time since 1979. The chances of war breaking out over the Iranians nuclear program were higher in the Obama administration than they were during the George W. Bush administration that preceded it, if the public and private accounts of dozens of officials who served in one or the other and a few in both are to be believed. Mr. Bush, wrapped up in two wars already and his credibility on going after weapons of mass destruction so destroyed after the 2003 Iraq invasion, never seriously contemplated military action against Iran. When his vice president, Dick Cheney, advocated bombing a secret nuclear reactor in Syria in 2007, partly to make a point to Iran, Mr. Bush rejected the proposal out of hand, a tale Mr. Cheney tells with some bitterness in his memoir. During Mr. Bushs last year in office, Israel sought and was denied, again over Mr. Cheneys objections the bunker-busting bombs and other equipment it needed to carry out an effective strike on Iran. It took Israel years to develop its own lesser ability, and during Mr. Obamas tenure, according to the recent memoirs of a former Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, Mr. Netanyahu nearly pulled the trigger three times, coming closest in 2012. We planned to do it, Mr. Barak said. Mr. Obama stood by Mr. McGurk even after the disclosure of steamy personal emails between Mr. McGurk and a correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, which derailed his nomination to be ambassador to Baghdad in 2012. Facing resistance from Republicans on Capitol Hill, Mr. McGurk withdrew his name. But the White House found him a job at the State Department working on Iraq and Iran, and Mr. McGurk later married the journalist, Gina Chon. Since then, Mr. McGurk has played a central role in three of the administrations most sensitive diplomatic efforts in the region: helping to broker the transition to a new Iraqi government in 2014, holding together a 65-country alliance to combat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and leading the secret talks to free the Americans held in Iran. Mr. McGurks peripatetic travel schedule as special envoy allowed him to moonlight as a negotiator for the Americans held in Iran, since he could easily arrange trips to Geneva for meetings with Iranian security officials. At midnight on New Years Eve, he recalled, he sat across from his Iranian counterpart, trying to reach an agreement on the sequence under which the United States and Iran would release their prisoners. From his window in the InterContinental Hotel in Geneva, there was a dazzling view of fireworks exploding over the lake. He did not stop to look. We barely budged, he recalled. It was the final stage of a grueling diplomatic odyssey. The deal almost fell apart at the last minute over a dispute with the Iranians about allowing the wife and mother of one of the freed Americans, Jason Rezaian, a reporter for The Washington Post, to board the plane with him in Tehran. To make sure that snag was resolved, Mr. McGurk stayed on the phone with a Swiss diplomat who was standing on the tarmac in Tehran, relaying updates to him about each of the Americans as they got off an airport bus and on the plane. Mr. McGurks career traces the arc of American involvement in Iraq. A graduate of Columbia Law School who was a clerk for Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, he arrived in Baghdad in January 2004, when the war effort was at a low ebb. He helped draft an interim Constitution for the incoming Iraqi government, an experience that gave him an expertise in Iraqs feuding political factions. A eulogy for the Islamic States most notorious executioner appeared online in the groups official, English-language magazine on Tuesday, confirming that the militant known as Jihadi John was killed in an airstrike last year in northern Syria. The United States military said in November that it was reasonably certain that the militant, whose name was Mohammed Emwazi, was killed in an airstrike near Raqqa, Syria, a stronghold of the Islamic State. But confirmation had proved elusive. The eulogy in the magazine, Dabiq, seemed to erase any doubt. It identified Mr. Emwazi by his assumed name, Abu Muharib al-Muhajir, and said he had been killed on Nov. 12 when the car he was riding in was hit by an airstrike carried out by a remotely piloted drone. The car was destroyed, and he was killed instantly, according to Dabiq. The agreement for the mutual release of prisoners by the United States and Iran last weekend has been officially described as a humanitarian swap. But there was no physical exchange of people, as seen in movies. Six of the seven freed by the United States are naturalized or native-born Americans with dual citizenship, some quite successful before they were imprisoned. Most, if not all, have no immediate plans to move to Iran despite what some emotionally described as unfair American prosecutions that have stigmatized them. As three of the five Americans who were freed in Iran began to tell their stories of deprivation, and of the tense final hours before they were permitted to depart, the prisoners released in the United States also began to talk for the first time. Yet their expressions of happiness and relief were mixed with bitterness and frustration. Under the presidential order that commuted the punishments, none can appeal convictions, and any criminal records will stand. I havent had much time to digest my quote-unquote freedom, Nader Modanlo, 55, a Washington-area entrepreneur who had been in the satellite business, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. Its difficult to start a new life. BEIRUT, Lebanon Russian airstrikes hit Islamic State militants Tuesday in the eastern Syrian province of Deir al-Zour, in the village where the extremist group had been accused of massacring as many as hundreds of people over the weekend, the Russian military said. The strikes, which Russia said had killed at least 60 militants, came as intense fighting continued for a fourth day around the provincial capital, and a resident described seeing bodies of government soldiers who had been hanged, and truckloads of corpses. I saw a couple of Islamic State vehicles carrying bodies from regime areas, said the resident, who opposes both the Islamic State and the government of President Bashar al-Assad and works undercover inside the Islamic State. They were full of beheaded bodies. Q. What sparks your imagination about Elektra? A. I love the story because this woman is really so hard-core about her beliefs and her mission, and I can relate to that. Ive actually become a little less like that, due to my health issues. Q. Youve had problems with dizziness and insomnia. A. Its been like, O.K., I really have to pull away and take breaks and not work as hard until Im better. Im learning that everybody has a limit and maybe this character you dont really see her limit, but she also hands a lot of stuff off to Orestes, her brother. She gives him the dirty work. Its all her plotting, and shes obviously very smart. Maybe Im learning from Elektra that sometimes you need to delegate. Q. Whats it like to play Elektra? A. I feel like she is a part of me. I try to embrace the way that Im feeling in the moment and not fight it. Thats something that I think Ive always done, and with Elektra I almost feel Im playing a rougher, more primitive version of myself. I definitely have anxiety and panic problems and issues that I would imagine that she has. Trauma. PTSD. [Laughs] Bailey Nolan is Chrysothemis, and in one section she dances with a tree branch. She hasnt done it in a long time, and you can tell that shes not as physically fit as she was, but that doesnt matter; you have to push yourself to the point where you feel youre going to pass out. Then we come together and we have to sing. I told her, If your breathing is so heavy that you cant sing, Im going to follow your breath. Thats maybe a strength of the work. Its pushing someone to surrender. Thats not easy for people. The beautiful part of that section is that you see her struggling. Chrysothemis is in between the mother, Klytemnestra, and Elektra. Shes Switzerland in a way. Shes doesnt really choose a side. I hate people like that. Make a choice. Q. In terms of movement, is Elektra a return to choreography for you? A. It is a dance. And theres more dance movement in it than I have probably done in 10 years. I choreographed all of it, which was hard for me, because I hadnt done it in a while, but it was also so nice. I was having ear and dizziness issues. Using my voice was more difficult, so I was using my body, and movement is one of the things thats helping me so much. Its almost like a weird message: You need to move more. Rohith Vemulas suicide on campus at the University of Hyderabad (UoH) on Sunday evening has triggered massive protests at universities and colleges across the country, demanding for justice to be brought to those believed to be responsible for driving him to the extreme step. However, it has also led to the rising debate about the need for student politics in college campuses across the country, especially with the rising instances of violence that have been associated with it over the past couple of years. Whether its Rohiths suicide, students at the Film and Television Institute of India being assaulted by police or members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad threatening college administration with violence for screening a documentary, violence has been a recurring theme with many protests happening on campuses in India. Author Sriram Karri, who has been vocal about his views on student politics being removed from college campuses says, After the decline of the trade unions, student unions have become an extension of political parties. You have a body which is broadly affiliated to either the Congress, CPI/CPI (M) or the BJP, and these student unions extend the logic and agenda and fight. This opens the door for politics to enter campuses and do whatever it wants, which is very sad. But the need for student politics seems to be much more clearer to students themselves. The English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU) in Hyderabad had also recently seen its share of activism on the part of its students, who have been demanding transparency and better engagement with the universitys management. When measures as random and illogical as the UGCs decision to remove the stipend of all research scholars are taken, it is the basic duty and the moral responsibility of students to protest and there should be a dialogue. This dialogue is what is not happening anywhere. What we saw is (in UoH) the tragic result of that, says a PhD scholar from EFLU who wished to remain anonymous. M. Deepu, a former student of UoH and who is still active with the Amedkar Students Association that Rohith was a part of, adds that external political parties influencing student unions within campuses is the real problem. In more established unions, the problem is that as soon as an issue happens they dont try to debate it in the campus. They try getting powers from outside to intervene. In the case of UoH, theyve really overstepped the line. Their strengths should rely on mobilising people and getting people to agree with them, she says. The whole idea of politics on campus is not just to mirror whats going on outside. These are groups of students who come together with certain shared ideologies and fight for shared interests, which might not have anything to do with the ideologies of larger political parties, adds the PhD scholar from EFLU. While solutions for violence are unanimously about better dialogue between students themselves and authorities, Congress MP from Thiruvananthapuram Shashi Tharoor says that political parties themselves shouldnt have such a huge say in the way student unions function: In a democracy like ours it is difficult to keep political parties out of student unions, though my alma mater (St Stephens) has successfully done so our elections were organised around personalities and programmes rather than political ideologies. But as a politician I accept that the existence of student unions affiliated to political parties cannot be reversed and it is best to urge the parties to be responsible in guiding their wards. Robert Fairchild, on leave from Broadways An American in Paris, could have turned on all his ego as the lead man in Who Cares? Wonderfully, he did the opposite, focusing all his attention on his three leading ladies and often effacing himself in his partnering of them, while happily embodying the musics jazz rhythms and poetically vernacular spirit. And in that ballets Fascinatin Rhythm solo, Tiler Peck gave (even more than on previous occasions) one of the most astounding performances before the public today: teasing rhythmic brilliance, impish speed and sensational oomph. Mr. Litton opened with the overture to Bernsteins Candide, a favorite of orchestras. (City Ballets band played it at a gala in 2010 under its last music director, Faycal Karoui.) Mr. Litton has rearranged the orchestras seating to create a new balance of sonority. On Tuesday, Mr. Litton and his players ascended into full view to play this opener while the curtain remained lowered; the sound of the rearranged strings and wind sections became all the more exciting. This high-energy overture is, in its way, a good orchestral showpiece loquacious speed, rattling brio, complex ensemble though I find it introduces tunes for the first time as if it were reiterating them for the hundredth. This performance suggested that this orchestras sound is becoming both brighter and fuller. Musically speaking, this program was pleasing but lightweight fare. More will emerge of Mr. Litton the dance conductor when he tackles Bizet, Verdi, Tchaikovsky and Hindemith later this week. But he is already well qualified. His many recordings include not only those Bernstein scores but also all the Tchaikovsky symphonies, and now he works for the company with the greatest number of Tchaikovsky ballets. He made his debut in November with George Balanchines The Nutcracker, and showed his skill at drawing out fresh aspects of phrasing and sonority. He also seems an effective accompanist to individual dancers. The first obvious change Mr. Litton has made is to the overture to Fancy Free, which Bernstein set as a recorded vocal blues song, Big Stuff (lyrics and music by the composer). Since 1980, City Ballet has used the Dee Dee Bridgewater recording; the 1944 premiere used a recording by Bernsteins sister, Shirley. But Bernstein originally had Billie Holiday in mind. (Robbins admired her, too.) And one of Ms. Holidays several accounts of this song is now played in Mr. Littons rendition. Dare we hope that Mr. Litton will move on to revise the awful Kay orchestral arrangement of Who Cares? I never hear it without wanting to jump into the orchestra pit and destroy the percussion. And, alas, I never watch the current production without wanting to destroy the costumes, hideous in color scheme and pattern. Big Wall Street banks are pushing back at an attempt by the A.F.L.-C.I.O. to ban an executive perk that rewards executives who leave their posts for jobs in the government. So-called government service golden parachutes allow bank executives heading for top government jobs to be paid their unvested stock and equity awards when they leave, rather than forfeit them as they normally would at resignation. The labor organization said on Wednesday that it was seeking to ban the practice at Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Lazard and Bank of America. The issue has emerged in recent years as attention has turned to the revolving door between Wall Street and Washington. The Justice Department got its wish on Tuesday, at least in a backhanded way, when the Supreme Court unexpectedly granted review of an insider trading conviction. After rejecting the governments request to review the decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in United States v. Newman in October, which overturned two convictions for insider trading, the Supreme Court decided to review a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in United States v. Salman that upheld a conviction for trading on inside information. Even though Justice Department lost a number of convictions as a result of the decision in the Newman case, the Salman case may be a better vehicle for the department to argue that the justices should take a broad view of the circumstances that will support finding that providing inside information was illegal. To prove an act of tipping is illegal, the Supreme Court stated in 1983 in Dirks v. S.E.C., the test is whether the insider personally will benefit, directly or indirectly, from his disclosure. That benefit can be tangible, like money or services, or when an insider makes a gift of confidential information to a trading relative or friend. Martin Shkreli loves to talk. Whether on Twitter, in online streaming videos or in interviews with the news media, Mr. Shkreli, a New York businessman, has shown little reserve when it comes to discussing the pending federal securities fraud charges against him, or his rationale for increasing the price of a decades-old drug by more than 5,000 percent at a pharmaceutical company he ran until last month. On Tuesday, Mr. Shkreli, 32, will get his chance to talk some more. A congressional committee has served a subpoena on him and ordered him to appear for a hearing to discuss pricing trends and other developments in the drug industry, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times. The subpoena directing Mr. Shkreli to appear before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform was served by email to one of his lawyers at Arnold & Porter on Jan. 11. But whether or not Mr. Shkreli will appear on Tuesday, let alone testify, is an open question. Wednesday afternoon, Senator Susan Collins, the chairwoman of the Senate Special Committee on Aging, took to the floor of the Senate, to provide an update on that committees own investigation into large increases in drug prices. Ms. Collins, a Maine Republican, said Mr. Shkreli had refused to comply with a committee subpoena sent on Dec. 24 seeking documents by asserting his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Joshua B. Newman, a New York entrepreneur charged last year with defrauding investors in several CrossFit training ventures, has reached a plea deal with federal prosecutors in New Jersey. Prosecutors said in a court filing on Tuesday that the deal with Mr. Newman was reached recently after months of negotiations. A criminal complaint was filed in May. The terms of the plea agreement were not disclosed. Mr. Newman is scheduled to appear before Judge William H. Walls of Federal District Court in Newark on March 23 for a plea proceeding. The filing with the court did not explain why the hearing was being held roughly two months after prosecutors and Mr. Newman reached an agreement. The agreement means a grand jury will not need to consider whether to indict Mr. Newman. A newer and larger offshoot, the Global Shapers Community, brings together those under 30 to network and organize local projects in 450 hub cities around the world. Each year, a handful of the participants are invited to the conference. Two other programs, the Technology Pioneers and the Schwab Foundations Social Entrepreneurs of the Year awards, accept public nominations and involve their winners in World Economic Forum programming and events. One of this years Young Global Leader inductees, Alfa Demmellash of Rising Tide Capital, is not headed to Davos she has a 5-month-old baby at home but she is already taking advantage of the forums networking opportunities. The program coordinator flew out from Switzerland to come visit us in New Jersey and spent a long time getting to know our staff and mission, she said. They actively network you and look to connect people who may be aligned on certain projects. Ms. Demmellashs nonprofit organization works to build entrepreneurship and strengthen small businesses in economically struggling communities. Based in Jersey City, it is planning a national expansion and is talking with the Blackstone Group and others in the World Economic Forum universe about working together on various initiatives. This annual gathering in Davos is intended to create serendipitous collisions. Jane Chen, a founder of Embrace, a maker of portable infant warmers, met Marc Benioff, the billionaire founder of Salesforce.com, at one of the conferences morning meditation sessions two years ago. Mr. Benioff later invested $1 million in her business. You need to spend a half a day before you get there figuring out what your goal is and how to achieve it Who do you want to meet? What do you want to learn? but then, when youre there, you need to be flexible and fluid, said Ntiedo Etuk, a 2012 attendee and a founder of two companies, the educational game maker DimensionU and the fitness class marketplace YourGuru. Such opportunities do not come cheap. The World Economic Forum charges most corporate participants membership fees that can top $100,000. For social entrepreneurs, the fee is often waived, and Technology Pioneers generally pay a sliding-scale fee based on their revenue. Several of this years participants said they paid no fee at all. DAVOS, Switzerland The power brokers assembled here discuss the marvels and potential of what ever-new software and robots can bring in terms of efficiency and productivity, but the Vatican has issued a more sobering message. In a letter to the World Economic Forums executive chairman, Klaus Schwab, Pope Francis beseeched the business moguls and government leaders to remember the poor. We must never allow the culture of prosperity to deaden us, to make us incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other peoples pain, and sensing the need to help them, as though all this were someone elses responsibility and not our own, Pope Francis wrote in the letter, quoting from a previous papal letter. It is a theme that the pontiff has hit on throughout his papacy, including at previous World Economic Forums. Under the rules governing home confinement, Mr. Gupta can go to work, visit a doctors office or attend religious services, Mr. Sickler said. With permission, you can go shopping or get a haircut, he said. But neighbors should not expect to see Mr. Gupta at some of the Upper West Side venues he liked to frequent restaurants like Pappardella. They dont let you do anything socially related go to dinner, go to the movies, Mr. Sickler said. When Mr. Gupta was assigned to Devens, he was sent to the facilitys minimum-security camp, which houses 124 inmates. The camp is separate from the main prison, where Mr. Rajaratnam is serving an 11-year sentence for insider trading. Inmates in the camp do not come in contact with prisoners in the main compound. But last summer, Mr. Gupta, 67, was transferred to the main compound, which houses 1,046 inmates and offers medical facilities. In April 2015, he was sent to the prisons Special Housing Unit for having an unauthorized item: an extra pillow. Mr. Gupta had grabbed the extra pillow, as many inmates do, to help ease a bad back. Rajat ended up finding the medical center more to his liking than the camp, Mr. Sickler said. They didnt nitpick so much. He was also afforded a greater degree of privacy in the main compound, where inmates are housed in cells, rather than in open barracks. Mr. Gupta, who traveled tirelessly for business and was a prodigious networker during his career, appears to be eager to get back to the world he once inhabited. He is already working out of the offices of Purnendu C. Chatterjee, an old friend from McKinsey who amassed a fortune by investing in public and private companies after leaving the firm. Mr. Chatterjee was one of Mr. Guptas most passionate defenders when he was convicted of insider trading, going so far as to doubt the basis for the verdict against his friend and writing a letter to the court on Mr. Guptas behalf before his sentencing. Under that doctrine, an upstream company can be considered a joint employer of another companys workers even if it doesnt exert direct or indirect control over them. If the upstream company handles payroll and provides facilities, equipment and transportation for workers of a contractor that it hires, for example, and if the workers are easily replaceable, this might warrant considering it a joint employer, even if it doesnt supervise the workers or hire and fire them. According to the guidance, quoting a federal circuit court opinion, courts have found economic dependence under a multitude of circumstances where the alleged employer exercised little or no control or supervision over the putative employees. In a blog post accompanying the guidance, Dr. Weil noted that the joint employment issue had become more urgent as companies had adopted a greater variety of arms-length arrangements with workers. He cited recent victories by the department, on behalf of workers, against DirecTV, which a federal court in Washington State deemed last year to be a joint employer of installers hired by a contractor, and J & J Snack Foods, which agreed to pay over $2 million in back wages and damages to workers hired by two staffing firms the company used. Unlike a law or a formal regulation, Dr. Weils guidance does not receive deference in courts, which are free to disregard it. But Michael C. Harper, an expert on employment and labor law at Boston University School of Law, pointed out that such guidance could influence actions by employers, often under the influence of management lawyers urging clients to take pre-emptive action. Conversely, plaintiffs lawyers may find the interpretation helpful when litigating cases. You have a document you can present in court, said Benjamin I. Sachs, a professor of labor and employment law at Harvard Law School. You can say the administrator of the wage and hour division sees it this way. Mr. Harper warned, however, that the guidance risked creating confusion around some of the same issues it was written to clarify. He suggested that economic dependence was itself a vague concept. If I operate a hamburger joint across from a big manufacturing plant, Im dependent on that plant, he said, but my employees are not employees of that plant. Mr. Harper said that as a policy matter he preferred applying the joint employment concept in a way that focused on the capitalization of the downstream company. Under that approach, if the contractor or franchisee runs a fly-by-night operation with little or no capital, then the upstream company should be pursued as a joint employer, he argued. If the contractor or franchisee has capital and can afford to pay back wages, then it would generally be the one the department pursues. WASHINGTON In a victory for class-action plaintiffs, the Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled by a 6-to-3 vote that courts may not dismiss lawsuits simply because a defendant has offered to give the lead plaintiff everything he sought. A contrary decision would have allowed companies accused of minor but mass wrongdoing to pick off plaintiffs one by one, frustrating their ability to band together to sue over their claims. Once unaccepted, the offer is off the table, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in summarizing her majority opinion from the bench. In dissent, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said that approach gave plaintiffs too much power. If the defendant is willing to give the plaintiff everything he asks for, there is no case or controversy to adjudicate, and the lawsuit is moot, he wrote. The case, Campbell-Ewald Co. v. Gomez, No. 14-857, arose from a text message on behalf of the Navy sent to Jose Gomez in 2006. Get a career, the text said. An education. And a chance to serve a greater cause. Mr. Gomez was 40 at the time, well above the age range for Navy recruits. The Afghan Taliban said they were searching for a man who cut off his wife's nose (Photo: Pixabay) Maimana (Afghanistan): The Afghan Taliban said Wednesday they were searching for a man who cut off his wife's nose, condemning the attack as "un-Islamic", after online images of the young woman sparked widespread outrage. Mohammad Khan has been on the run since he attacked his wife Reza Gul, 20, with a pocket knife on Sunday, severely disfiguring her face. The couple lived in restive Ghormach district in the northwestern province of Faryab, which is largely under Taliban control. Khan is believed to have fled to an area near the border with Turkmenistan, local residents told AFP. "We are searching for the husband and want to find out what made him take such action," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told AFP, rejecting local media reports that Khan had joined the militant group. Local Taliban official Noor Mohammad branded the attack as "un-Islamic". He said the group, who deprived women of many of their basic rights during their five-year rule, were "outraged by this incident". "We are trying to find the husband," Mohammad added, without elaborating on what the militant group, known for their brutal justice, would do to Khan if they found him. The incident is yet another example of the endemic violence against women in Afghan society, despite reforms since the hardline Taliban Islamist regime was ousted in a 2001 US-led invasion. The Afghan government has vowed to protect women's rights but failed to prevented violent attacks. In areas under Taliban control, the militant group often act as arbitrators of justice, and they had previously intervened in Gul's case to stop the persistent domestic abuse. Gul was married off five years ago as a teenager and was regularly beaten by her husband, forcing her to flee to her parents' home in a Taliban-controlled area, she previously told AFP. While there, she said, the insurgents made her unemployed husband swear on the Koran that he would not hurt her again. But soon after she returned to him, he sliced off her nose. Gul is currently in hospital in Faryab along with her two-month-old daughter. Provincial authorities in Faryab are making arrangements to send Gul to Turkey for reconstructive surgery, which is not available in Afghanistan. "The Turkish officials have promised that they will help in sending her to Turkey for treatment," Mohammad Marouf Samar, the province's acting health director, told AFP. "We are trying to get her national identification card and passport so she can travel," said Ahamad Javed Bedar, spokesman for the provincial governor. The tectonic plates of fashion are shifting. Donna Karan left the company that bears her name. Ralph Lauren stepped up to become chairman and relinquished the chief executive title at his company. Harold Koda, the curator in chief of the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, passed the reins to Andrew Bolton. And now Grace Coddington, the 74-year-old creative director of American Vogue, the yin to the editor Anna Wintours yang, and an accidental celebrity since the 2009 documentary The September Issue, is dialing down her role at the magazine. She will, said a spokeswoman for Conde Nast, which owns the magazine, become creative editor at large, doing several articles a year for the glossy and exploring outside opportunities. Though Wednesdays announcement was a long time coming in a 2014 interview with me for The Financial Times, Ms. Coddington said, Ive been saying, Im going to leave tomorrow for the last 10 years and though Vogue says it has no immediate plans to replace her full time, it is bound to shake up the industry for a few reasons. First, because it signals a potential change in direction at the most famous fashion magazine in the world, one that has not had real movement at the top for decades. (Ms. Wintour has been editor in chief since 1988, the same year Ms. Coddington took her role; Phyllis Posnick, the executive fashion editor, has been with the magazine since 1987; Tonne Goodman, the fashion director, joined in 1999.) Second, because Conde Nast has been in a relatively turbulent state for the past few months, as it wrestles with the relationship between the print and online worlds, with longtime editors such as Linda Wells of Allure being replaced and with the closing of magazines such as Details. As the companys artistic director, Ms. Wintour is involved in all such decisions, and her moves when it comes to the companys flagship (and her own magazine) will clearly be seen as indicative of wider future editorial strategy. PARK CITY, Utah Gun violence can be an awkward subject at the Sundance Film Festival. Over the years, the event has helped popularize some would say glamorize extreme gun imagery in movies; Quentin Tarantino was incubated and hatched here. But this year Sundance programmers, with deep commitment to freedom of expression, and their selected filmmakers seem to be taking a position that real guns, not the movie kind, ought to be more tightly policed. At the very least, four major gun-themed films having their world premieres at the festival, which begins here on Thursday, want to amplify the debate on firearms in America. For me, its just not O.K. for us as a country to have decided that this carnage is the price of doing business, said AJ Schnack, the director of Speaking Is Difficult, a documentary short that begins with the recent mass shootings in San Bernardino, Calif., and ends with a plea for gun control. The Oscar-winning documentarian Laura Poitras (Citizenfour) is one of the films executive producers. Sundance will also give a megaphone to Tim Sutton, who wrote and directed Dark Night, a drama inspired by the Aurora, Colo., movie theater massacre in 2012, and Kim A. Snyder, whose Newtown examines the continuing community trauma caused by the 2012 mass shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. Part of Ms. Snyders harrowing documentary looks at how little has changed in regard to gun reform. Ms. Weinstock said she hoped the $5 million adoption center the city is planning to build beside the Manhattan shelter would have its entrance on 109th rather than 110th Street, to make it seem more separate from the shelter itself. We want the public to see us the way they see Animal Haven and A.S.P.C.A. warm and friendly, she said. Warm and friendly can be tough to pull off when the agency must take every animal that is brought in something Animal Care Centers contract with the city requires and it does not have the room or the capability to treat them all. Caring for 35,000 animals is an impossible task, Ms. Weinstock said. Last year, the shelters euthanized 15 percent of cats and 9 percent of dogs. (The shelters also take in hundreds of rabbits but do not euthanize any unless it is medically necessary.) The daily at-risk lists that the agency puts out candidates for euthanasia if not adopted by the next morning often include animals who were listed as normal on an initial medical exam and as having major conditions days later. Upper respiratory infections like kennel cough spread quickly through the shelters and can easily turn into pneumonia. All the brand-new dogs and the sick dogs are traveling in the same hallway all the time, said a volunteer at the shelter in East New York, Brooklyn, who declined to give her name for fear of losing her post. If a dog has kennel cough and theyre in the adoptions room, sometimes its not recognized for a day or so. The Farm Colony. It sounds remote. It is remote, so distant from the rest of New York in its wooded isolation at the center of Staten Island that the bank robber Willie Sutton was able to work there quietly hiding in plain sight for a few years after a 1947 prison break. As a city employee, at that. It is so remote that it was forgotten by just about everyone after it closed as a home for the aged poor in 1975; everyone, that is, except Staten Islanders who chafed while the abandoned 96-acre campus, officially part of the New York City Farm Colony-Seaview Hospital Historic District, fell into hopeless disrepair. That is the Farm Colony today: a place of advanced ruin and intense vegetation, like a Mayan site where buildings appear at first to be natural formations, until you spy human-laid masonry under the enveloping, strangling greenery. To the Editor: Smaller U.S. Bombs Are Adding Fuel to Nuclear Fear (front page, Jan. 12) reports that the Pentagon has been testing a precision nuclear warhead that can be delivered by cruise missile. It points out how critical voices, not least a former secretary of defense, William J. Perry, have underscored the dangerous logic that lies behind this revitalization: More precise nuclear warheads of lower yield, or explosive force, will reduce the militarys reluctance to employ such weapons in battlefield settings. A more usable arsenal will erode the taboo on nuclear use that has persisted for 70 years. Once a nuclear weapon is deployed, even one of comparatively low yield, the current firewall against any use of nuclear weapons will be breached. Subsequently the issue of yield will prove to be a relative one. In the heat of the moment whatever seems needed to get the job done will appear reasonable. Nuclear weapons use will be normalized, and both military and political leaders will feel under compulsion to escalate to the use of strategic weapons. These innovations are likely to erode the protections provided by deterrence among the superpowers, provoke proliferation among nonnuclear weapons states and increase the risk transfer to nonstate actors. A Hong Kong publisher specializing in books banned in China has disappeared mysteriously, sowing fear among Hong Kongers that the Chinese government is growing bolder about encroaching on their liberties. As the saga continues to unfold, Beijing is reacting bizarrely, and in ways that suggest that the story is the extension of a long-running power struggle at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party. Mighty Current is an obscure Hong Kong publishing company that churns out gossipy titles about China and its top leaders. On Dec. 30, Lee Bo, 65, an editor at the company, received a phone order for a dozen books, including several about the private life of President Xi Jinping. That evening he went to get the books in a warehouse in a quiet part of town. He never returned. Two of the companys co-owners and two employees had disappeared before him, one after the other, beginning last October. Within days of his disappearance, Mr. Lee called his wife, and faxed a message to colleagues saying he was O.K. and had gone to China in his own way. This was ominous, for his wife had found Mr. Lees travel documents at home; she began to worry that he had been abducted and forcibly brought to the mainland by Chinese government operatives. Concern deepened after the mainstream Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao reported that the local police were in possession of footage from surveillance cameras at the book warehouse showing Mr. Lee being shadowed by strangers as he walks into an elevator. A witness claims to have seen him being forced into a car by several men and driven off. To the Editor: Re Poland Deviates From Democracy (editorial, Jan. 13): Thank you for urging the European Union to condemn Polands slip toward authoritarian rule. Unfortunately, we doubt that Jaroslaw Kaczynski, head of the ruling Law and Justice Party, will bow to outside pressure. His record exposes unwavering contempt for democratic ideals. He has purged his party of dissent. He denies the legitimacy of elected officials after losing the 2007 elections, he refused for years to shake the winners hands. When a plane carrying his brother, Lech (then Polands president), crashed over Russia, Mr. Kaczynski howled that Russia had assassinated Lech and that Polands leaders were complicit. In punishing internal opposition and rejecting election outcomes, Mr. Kaczynski spurned democracy itself. Given this behavior, his assaults on the judiciary and media are grimly unsurprising. Mr. Kaczynski recently reopened the investigation into his brothers death. He will likely officially accuse Russia. With the E.U. threatening sanctions, we hope that Poles tire of conflict on both fronts. Only the Polish people can restore the short democratic tradition that Mr. Kaczynski has discarded. The scene was a lagoon on the shore of Lake Turkana in Kenya. The time about 10,000 years ago. One group of hunter-gatherers attacked and slaughtered another, leaving the dead with crushed skulls, embedded arrow or spear points, and other devastating wounds. The dead, said the scientists who reported the discovery Wednesday in the journal Nature, seem to have been scattered in no apparent order, and eventually covered and preserved by sediment from the lake. Of 12 relatively complete skeletons, 10 showed unmistakable signs of violent death, the scientists said. Partial remains of at least 15 other people were found at the site and are thought to have died in the same attack. The bones at the lake, in northern Kenya, tell a tale of ferocity. One man was hit twice in the head by arrows or small spears and in the knee by a club. A woman, pregnant with a 6- to 9-month-old fetus, was killed by a blow to the head, the fetal skeleton preserved in her abdomen. The position of her hands and feet suggest that she may have been tied up before she was killed. Bette Midler has never seen Hello, Dolly! onstage. Sure, shed seen the movie, and she was generally familiar with the story, but when the producer Scott Rudin started calling her some months ago, asking her to consider starring in a revival of the musical on Broadway, she realized she needed to do some homework. She went to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts to watch a film of Carol Channing in the 1995 revival, and to YouTube to watch clips of Pearl Bailey in the 1975 revival. She watched The Matchmaker, a 1958 film starring Shirley Booth, which is adapted from the same Thornton Wilder play that inspired the musical. And that was not all. She read production notes from Gower Champion, who directed the original production in 1964. She listened to cast albums. And finally she read the script, which persuaded her that the title character, a turn-of-the-century widow named Dolly Gallagher Levi, had more need and desperation than she had realized. She said yes. It has an enormous amount of weight, and the score is irresistible, Ms. Midler said in a telephone interview hours after her agreement to star in a revival of Hello, Dolly! was announced. Its a very American thing, with a joyous quality, a kind of can-do quality, and an incredible sweetness, and in these dire times, when the whole world seems to be on fire, it seems like something people would love to see. Travel warnings about the Zika virus, especially for pregnant women, are very much in the news now, but the germ was discovered more than a half century ago, and you may have already visited places where it flourishes. As of December 2015, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta reported evidence of transmission of the virus in at least 45 countries in Africa, Asia, the Americas and the Pacific islands. There were cases reported in Mexico and El Salvador in November 2015, and one in Puerto Rico in December. Travelers should be concerned, but there is no need for panic. There are two things that make people pay attention, said one expert, Dr. Kamran Khan, an infectious disease doctor and scientist at St. Michaels Hospital in Toronto. It showed up where it has never been before, and it is rapidly spreading. Thats because Aedes mosquitoes are widespread throughout most of Latin America and parts of the U.S. Mosquitoes of the Aedes species (the name derives from a Greek word for unpleasant) seem to be the main vector. These mosquitoes also spread dengue and chikungunya, two other, more severe, viral infections. Sarah Palins son Track arrested at her home, girlfriend concerned he would shoot himself The day before former Alaska governor Sarah Palin offered her high-stakes, high-profile endorsement of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, her son Track Palin was arrested on domestic-violence charges after a fight with his girlfriend, who said she was concerned he would take his own life with an AR-15 rifle. About 10 p.m. local time Monday, police in Wasilla, Alaska, responded to a disturbance at Sarah Palins home, where Track, 26, an Iraq combat veteran, lives with his parents. According to a police affidavit posted by KTVA Alaska, a woman, later identified as Tracks girlfriend, Jordan Loewe, called 911 to say that Track had punched her in the face and that he had a firearm. Track also called 911, saying Loewe was drunk. When an officer arrived, he found Track outside, talking on the phone. I observed that the male had a visible injury to his right eye and the area around his eye, Officer Andrew Kappler wrote. His eyes were bloodshot and I detected a strong odor of alcohol on his breath and person. Upon contacting Palin, he was uncooperative, belligerent, and evasive with my initial line of questions. Track was asked why 911 was called and where the woman who had called 911 was. Palin stated that he didnt know where she was and denied that there was a firearm involved, but did state that there were several spread throughout the residence, Kappler wrote. Due to Palins escalating hostility, the unknown whereabouts of the female 911 caller, and Officer safety, Palin was placed into handcuffs. Officers searched the home and found Loewe hiding and crying underneath a bed. She told her side of the story. She and her boyfriend of one year, Track Palin, left a different residence together and were arguing the whole way home, Kappler wrote. Once they got to his home they argued in the car, then in the driveway. They were screaming and he was calling her names. Though she had not yet called 911, Loewe said, she told Track that she had called police in an attempt to calm him down and to scare him away from touching her,' as Kappler wrote. The strategy allegedly did not work. Palin approached Loewe and struck her on the left side of her head near her eye with a closed fist, the affidavit read. Loewe got on the ground in a fetal position because she didnt know what else he would do. Palin then kicked Loewe on the right knee. The argument escalated. Track went inside the home and emerged with a gun, Loewe alleged, yelling, Do you think I wont do it? Loewe stated Palin cocked the gun and was holding the rifle out next to him with the his [sic] right hand near the trigger and his left hand near the barrel, with the barrel just away from his face pointed to the side, Kappler wrote. Loewe was concerned that he would shoot himself and ran outside and around the house. She didnt see where Palin went, so she went inside and up the stairs, where she hid under a bed. Officers found the involved firearm, an unloaded AR-15, and observed Loewe to have bruising and swelling around her left eye as well as a small red area near her knee. The final couple of weeks before Iowa and New Hampshire are often among the most volatile of the primary season. The candidates start attacking one another, voters start making up their minds, and even the smallest shifts can bring a wave of media coverage that reshapes the race at a crucial stage. There is no way to know whether a new poll from the American Research Group is correct in suggesting that such a story is unfolding in New Hampshire. It shows John Kasich surging into a strong second place in the Republican race with 20 percent of the vote. If true, it would be a big turn in the race. I cant say whether Mr. Kasich has really surged in New Hampshire; it is always better to look at all the evidence, and there just arent many recent polls in New Hampshire. WASHINGTON A little more than 1 percent of the nearly 45 million foreign visitors to the United States overstayed their work or tourist visas last year, according to a long-awaited report by the Department of Homeland Security. The report, released late Tuesday, comes as Congress is examining the visa system in the United States after the mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., last month that left 14 people dead and 22 wounded. Tashfeen Malik, one of the attackers, was granted entry to the United States under a K-1 visa, also known as a fiance visa. Her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, was an American-born citizen. Both died in a shootout with the police. The attack is believed to have been inspired by the Islamic State terrorist group. Lawmakers fear that terrorists could exploit weaknesses in the visa program, including the programs inability to accurately track people who overstay, to carry out attacks on American soil. The report, which lawmakers have been demanding for nearly 20 years, shows that the number of overstays about a half-million in all was slightly higher for citizens of countries where a visa is required to visit the United States than for those from countries like France and Germany who are exempt under a visa-waiver program. About 38 countries, mostly in Europe, participate in the visa-waiver program, which allows their citizens to visit the United States without a visa on trips of 90 days or less. Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, facing protests and lawsuits into the states handling of contaminated drinking water in Flint, apologized to the people of Flint for the crisis over lead-contaminated drinking water in the city and said he would work to fix the problem during his State of the State speech on Tuesday (January 19). No citizen of this great state should endure this kind of catastrophe. Government Failed You - Federal, state, and local leaders by breaking the trust you placed in us. Im sorry most of all that I let you down. You deserve better. You deserve accountability. You deserve to know that the buck, buck stops here with me. Most of all. You deserve to know the truth. I have a responsibility to tell the truth. The truth about what weve done. And what I will do to overcome this challenge, Snyder said. Snyder, a Republican, asked lawmakers to authorize $28 million in spending on diagnostic tests, health treatment for children and adolescents, replacement of faucets and fixtures in Flint schools and day care centers and a study of the citys water pipes. He also said additional funding would be needed. Criticism of the state and federal response has grown in recent days over the crisis in Flint, a financially strapped city of just under 100,000 residents about 60 miles (100 km) northwest of Detroit. Flint was under control of a state-appointed emergency manager when, seeking to save money, it switched its source of tap water from Detroits system to the nearby Flint River in 2014. Flint returned to using Detroits water in October after tests found elevated levels of lead in the water and in the blood of some children. Lead contamination can cause brain damage and other health problems. The more corrosive water from the Flint River had leached lead from the city pipes more than Detroit water did, leading to the contamination. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said it was reviewing its handling of the crisis and acknowledged it did not respond fast enough. The environmental agency said Tuesday that while EPA worked within the framework of the law to repeatedly and urgently communicate the steps the state needed to take to properly treat its water, those necessary (EPA) actions were not taken as quickly as they should have been. The U.S. environmental agency said its oversight was hampered by failures and resistance at the state and local levels to work with us in a forthright, transparent and proactive manner. Snyder promised to release on Wednesday (January 20) Flint-related emails from 2014 and 2015. He has rejected calls for his resignation by some protesters. You will have answers to your questions about what weve done and what were doing to make this right for the families of Flint. Anyone will be able to read this information for themselves, Snyder said in his speech at the Capitol building. About a 1,000 people protested at the Capitol on Tuesday (January 19), some holding baby bottles filled with brown water. At least three lawsuits have been filed over the crisis. The latest on Tuesday (January 19) in Genesee County court seeks an injunction to stop Flint from issuing shutoff notices to residents, who are still receiving bills for water declared undrinkable. The lawyers have heard from more than 500 people. Some have reported rashes, hair loss, seizures, unexplained miscarriages, psychological breakdowns, and financial hardship, attorney Cary McGehee said. Other Flint residents in November filed a federal lawsuit accusing the city and state of endangering their health. On Saturday (January 16), Obama declared a federal emergency over the Flint water crisis but denied an additional request for a major disaster declaration sought by Snyder. Snyder said during the State of the State he would appeal that ruling. Even some Democrats who participated in the effort to discredit the women acknowledge privately that today, when Mrs. Clinton and other women have pleaded with the authorities on college campuses and in workplaces to take any allegation of sexual assault and sexual harassment seriously, such a campaign to attack the womens character would be unacceptable. Back then, Mr. Clintons aides, having watched Gary Harts presidential hopes unravel over his relationship with Donna Rice in the 1988 Democratic primary race, were determined to quash any accusations against Mr. Clinton early and aggressively, former campaign aides said. Mrs. Clinton had supported the effort to push back against the womens stories. Much of her involvement played out behind the scenes and was driven in part by her sense that right-wing forces were using the women and salacious stories to damage her husbands political ambitions. Image Lena Dunham, who has been campaigning for Mrs. Clinton, in Des Moines this month. Credit... Brian Frank/Reuters Her reflex was to protect him and his future, and early on, she turned to a longtime Clinton loyalist, Ms. Wright, to defend him against the allegations, according to multiple accounts at the time, documented in books and oral histories. We have to destroy her story, Mrs. Clinton said in 1991 of Connie Hamzy, one of the first women to come forward during her husbands first presidential campaign, according to George Stephanopoulos, a former Clinton administration aide who described the events in his memoir, All Too Human. (Three people signed sworn affidavits saying Ms. Hamzys story was false.) When Gennifer Flowers later surfaced, saying that she had had a long affair with Mr. Clinton, Mrs. Clinton undertook an aggressive, explicit direction of the campaign to discredit Ms. Flowers, according to an exhaustive biography of Mrs. Clinton, A Woman in Charge, by Carl Bernstein. Packed with biography, campaign promises and attacks on her Republican rivals, a new 60-second ad from Hillary Clinton, titled This House, offers what sounds like her closing argument to Iowa Democrats, asking them to vote for her on Feb. 1. A similar ad with a different ending will be shown in New Hampshire. On Screen Opening on the White House, the ad shows a sweltering industrial plant, a fighter taking off from an aircraft carrier and a family of four sitting down to dinner. The person who lives here, a male narrator intones, has to solve problems as big as the world and as small as your kitchen table. Viewers are taken on a quick tour of Mrs. Clintons extended career in public service: surrounded by children as first lady, when she helped get health care for eight million kids; as a senator from New York, standing grim-faced in a trench coat amid the debris at ground zero, where, the ad says, she helped a city rise again; and speaking soberly to an attentive President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, as the voice-over says she has stared down hostile leaders around the world. She is seen on the campaign trail and in the Situation Room with President Obama as the ad calls her the one candidate for president who has everything it takes to do every part of the job. The ad rattles off Mrs. Clintons touchstone promises: to defend Social Security and Medicare against privatization, protect Planned Parenthood from shutdown, take on the gun lobby and finally get equal pay for women. Clips of a shouting Donald J. Trump and of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas aiming an assault weapon at a gun range symbolize the threat as the narrator says Mrs. Clinton will stop the Republicans from ripping all our progress away. The super PAC supporting Senator Marco Rubio of Florida has turned its sights on Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, releasing two ads with companion websites attacking him, including this one, titled Calculated. On Screen An image of Mr. Cruz standing next to a damning line from The Texas Tribune says he has made A clean break from his own record, while a narrator accuses the Texas senator of shifting his positions for political gain. An up-close shot of Mr. Cruz giving an interview rolls in slow motion as the screen text and the voice-over faults him for changing his stances on immigration, refugees, ethanol and trade. A webcam image of a villainous-looking Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, goes full screen, his mouth moving but only the narrators voice audible: Cruz first praised the traitor Edward Snowden. The ad then shows Mr. Cruz pointing as the narrator asks: Whats changed for Ted? He wants your vote. The ad closes with footage from a Cruz ad, of the senator wearing a quarter-zip sweater, and a play on the campaigns new slogan TrusTed, changed to CalculaTed WASHINGTON A bill that would have greatly tightened screening procedures on refugees from Syria and Iraq failed on a procedural vote in the Senate on Wednesday, saving President Obama from another vexing veto scenario on an issue that has divided the country. While the measure passed overwhelmingly in the House late last year, Senate Democrats had vowed to stop it, and the matter quickly became enmeshed in presidential politics, presaging what is all but certain to be a contentious and protracted proxy battle for the White House fought in Congress this year. Over and over again, Republicans remain committed to pledging loyalty to the divisive platform they have built for Donald Trump, said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, tying the issue of the refugee screening to Mr. Trumps proposal to bar Muslims from entering the United States. Three Republican senators running for president left the campaign trail briefly and returned to vote on the measure, an outgrowth of the terrorist attacks in Paris and elsewhere last year and of increasing unease among American voters over the nations security. Track Palin, the eldest child of former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, was arrested and charged in a domestic violence case in which his girlfriend said he punched her in the head and threatened to fire a rifle, court and police documents said. The charges against Mr. Palin, 26, were filed on Tuesday, the same day that Mrs. Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee in 2008, endorsed Donald J. Trump at a campaign event in Iowa. Mrs. Palin made no mention of the accusations against her son at that event. But on Wednesday after a day of news coverage about the accusations she addressed the elephant in the room during a Trump rally in Tulsa, Okla., saying her son had suffered trauma while serving in Iraq. According to the court documents, Mr. Palin was charged with three misdemeanors: assault, interfering with reporting of a domestic violence crime, and a weapons charge. He was arraigned on Tuesday and entered a plea of not guilty, with bail set at $1,500, a court document showed. This is going to end no time soon, said David M. Anderson, a professor of African history at the University of Warwick and a renown expert on modern Kenya. The Shabab may be hatching a renewed bid to take over Somalia, which remains in varying degrees of turmoil, depending on the area, with the national government widely reviled as corrupt and weak, and small, clan-based city-states popping up across the country. Or something else may be driving the Shababs hunger for weapons, something the West is particularly worried about. In recent months, the Islamic State has planted its black flag in Somalias soil. The group is drawing a small trickle of disgruntled Shabab defectors who believe that the Shabab should ditch its longstanding relationship with Al Qaeda and join the worlds leading brand of militant Islam. Already, Shabab and Islamic State fighters have clashed in northern and central Somalia, raising fears that some areas of Somalia could slide into an intra-Islamist free-for-all, like in Syria. The Shabab are now mimicking the Islamic State, said Rashid Abdi, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, which studies conflicts worldwide. They are trying to regain public support by saying: Were not just chickens who go for soft targets. Were men who go after military bases. The attack, at the height of the evening rush hour in the capital, left six employees of the production company dead, the police said, as well as a seventh person who could not immediately be identified. At least 25 others were wounded. A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement, saying the bomber had specifically targeted Tolo TV employees. Thanks to Almighty God and his support, and with the prayers of those Muslims who were vexed by spy workers of Tolo, the attack was successful, the statement said. The vehicle was destroyed and swallowed by fire with all its spies, and its corrupt passengers killed. It warned that more attacks would follow unless Tolo TV apologized for its malicious acts to the Taliban, to the Afghan people and especially to the residents of Kunduz. The Taliban spokesman later posted an image on Twitter of the Tolo TV logo crossed out with a large red X. It was the fourth attack in Kabul this month. The Taliban have claimed three of those, even as they have pressed military offensives on population centers in other parts of Afghanistan. The Taliban have been on the offensive since the United States and its allies withdrew most combat troops at the end of 2014, and the insurgents now control more territory than at any time since they were driven from power in 2001. At the same time, a barrage of militant attacks in major cities including at least one from the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan has left the public wary. CORVALLIS Two Forest Grove residents pleaded not guilty to murder charges Tuesday afternoon in connection to Friday nights fatal shooting at Sharis Restaurant in Corvallis. Michael A. Deyette II, 43, and Brooklyn Shepard, 35, pleaded not guilty during separate arraignments Tuesday afternoon in front of Judge Locke Williams in Benton County Circuit Court. Deyette II was arrested Monday afternoon outside a house in Forest Grove on a Benton County warrant for murder, first-degree assault and unlawful use of a weapon in the killing of 29-year-old Jason Scott Williams of Corvallis. Shepard, who was wounded in the shooting, was arrested Monday evening. Deyette II pleaded not guilty to murder, conspiracy to commit murder, first-degree assault, unlawful use of a weapon against another, and second-degree criminal mischief. His security was set at $1 million. Court-appointed defense attorney Mike Flinn is representing Deyette II in the case. Chief Deputy District Attorney Ryan Joslin is representing the state in the case. Amie Matusko, assistant district attorney for Benton County, sat in for Joslin Tuesday. Flinn did not request a release for Deyette Tuesday, but told Williams that he may request to file motions against the indictment at a later time. Shepard pleaded not guilty to murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Her security was set at $1 million. Court-appointed defense attorney John Rich and attorney Holly Allen are representing Shepard in the case. Matusko is representing the state. Rich asked Judge Williams during the arraignment to release Shepard on her own recognizance, noting that she was shot in the incident, has four children and a mother in the area who was recently diagnosed with cancer. But Matusko disagreed. The proof is evident, Matusko said during the arraignment, adding that Shepard had a previous warrant for her arrest due to failure to appear. Court records were not immediately available Tuesday afternoon. Deyette II and Shepard remained in Benton County Jail Tuesday and are scheduled to appear in court Wednesday afternoon for bail review hearings. In murder cases, often theres no bail and no release opportunity, Joslin said Tuesday following the arraignments. The court in these cases initially set security at $1 million and the state has a right to ask for no bail, which we have asked. The court has to make a finding that the proof is evident or the presumption of guilt is strong. Investigative reports, including the probable cause affidavits for both Deyette II and Shepard, have been sealed in the case. Joslin said Tuesday the District Attorneys Office requested the documents be sealed to the public, citing an ongoing investigation. Its fairly common in more serious cases where the facts continue to develop and unfold to seal those, Joslin said Tuesday. Theres still some continuing investigation; you dont want to jeopardize that by making those facts public at this point. According to previous statements from the Corvallis Police Department, Shepard was arrested Monday evening on one count of murder on the theory that she may have aided and abetted in Williams killing. Shepard and Deyette are neighbors and are romantically involved, the police statement said. Williams was shot to death about 7:45 p.m. Friday in the parking lot of Sharis Restaurant, 1117 N.W. Ninth St. The Williams killing is the 14th homicide in Corvallis since 1990. CAIRO Attacks on education have long been a signature atrocity of the Pakistani Taliban, whose militants have set schools on fire, banished girls from classrooms and gunned down students at their desks in a quest to impose an extremist ideology on Pakistani society. The height of the attacks seemed to come in December 2014 when gunmen swarmed through a school in Peshawar, massacring dozens of schoolchildren in an assault that prompted widespread revulsion and a fierce military crackdown on militants. But on Wednesday, Pakistanis were drawn back into their national nightmare. At least four Taliban attackers stormed a university campus in another northwestern town, gunning down at least 20 people, most of them students and teachers. SEOUL, South Korea The United States and its allies will bolster sanctions and go on the defensive against North Korea in ways that China may not like if Beijing fails to lend greater support to efforts to curb the Norths nuclear ambitions, a top American diplomat said here on Wednesday. The diplomat, Deputy Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, made the warning a day before he planned to meet with Chinese officials in Beijing to pressure them to use their economic leverage over North Korea to force it to end its nuclear weapons program. I think what we will be talking to China about is that we will, both in terms of sanctions and in terms of our defense postures, have to take additional steps in order to use the leverage we have in order to defend ourselves and our allies if North Korea doesnt change its behavior, Mr. Blinken said in an interview. Some of those steps wont be directed at China, but China probably wont like them, he said. Mr. Blinken refused to go into detail. But he said that everything is on the table, including so-called secondary sanctions, of the type the United States most recently used against Iran, which would target third-party countries doing business with North Korea. GONFREVILLE-LORCHER, France The French rapper Medines songs are full of wordplay and jarring twists. In one video, a woman who appears to be wearing a burqa whips around to reveal a nuns habit and a sign reading, No burqa, a wry comment on Frances ban on conservative Muslim dress. A cake marked halal, when sliced open by a woman dressed to symbolize France, reveals layers in the colors of the national flag, signaling that Muslims can be French, too. While such satire is often celebrated in France, Medine, a Muslim of Algerian descent, has found himself accused of being a fundamentalist and failing to respect the basic principles of the republic. In contrast to the respect accorded to the irreverent cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo, the satirical newspaper that was the target of a terrorist attack last year, he said, his work is looked on with the condescension that is reserved for everything coming from the housing projects. For more than 30 years, since rap made its way here from America, France has had a subculture of hip-hop artists like Medine, often referred to as rappers with a conscience. Most of them are of Arab or African descent, and they pride themselves on giving voice to the millions who make their lives in isolated low-income housing projects. They are now clashing perhaps more than ever with the countrys expanding far right and its vituperative denunciation of migrants and relentless hostility toward Muslims. Those efforts have included: a new guidebook to the country aimed at the small number of refugees who already speak German; a shorter pamphlet available in 13 other languages; a phone app with versions in Arabic, Persian and French; a video podcast series featuring helpful hints in English from a young journalist born in Munich to parents who fled the Vietnam War; and, perhaps least successfully, an attempt to instruct the newcomers in proper behavior in the form of a 14-panel cartoon similar to an airplane safety information card. That doesnt mean that todays Syrian is yesterdays Jew, said Denis Peschanski, a French historian who has written on Frances wartime internment camps and who heads the scientific committee for the memorial. But he noted that there was a similar urge in France and the rest of Europe to keep refugees out or, when they cannot be kept out, to keep them away. We are confronted with populations that are threatened by death, and that can die if nothing is done, he said, referring to those displaced by the current conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere. It was the case for Jews yesterday; it is the case for Syrians today. The ruined barracks here have been left standing, but the memorial building itself is a monolithic slab of ocher concrete that spans the length of a giant trench in the middle of the camp. Designed by the French architect Rudy Ricciotti, it runs more than 800 feet long and 60 feet wide, with a gentle upward slope that does not exceed the height of the ruined barracks, like a colossal artifact that was only recently excavated. The French military built the camp in 1939 near Rivesaltes, a small town just north of Perpignan. Only one small section of the 1,500-acre camp is used for the memorial; most of the rest is still owned and used by the military. In addition to discussing the military campaign against Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria, the meeting in Brussels will focus on ways that countries can help with reconstruction of cities that were held by the Islamic State, and on countering the groups propaganda. The countries invited to the meeting have different capabilities, different things they can bring, and in some cases things that they can bring to the fight they are better suited to do than either France or the United States is, Mr. Carter said after he met Wednesday with the defense ministers of Australia, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Britain, countries that have largely led the efforts to defeat the group. Those six nations are also expected to join the meeting in Brussels next month, as are some Arab countries, including Iraq and Jordan. No Arab countries participated in Wednesdays meeting. Nothing can compensate the loss of such heritage, he said. The Islamic State has damaged or destroyed scores of historic sites and monuments as part of a nihilistic campaign to eradicate remnants of cultures it considers anathema to its extremist vision of Islam. They have included ancient ruins like Nineveh, Nimrud and the tomb of Jonah in Iraq; Palmyra in Syria; and medieval Islamic sites like the tombs of Yahya ibn al-Qasim and Ibn Hassan Aoun al-Din in Mosul. St. Elijahs was near the Mosul airport, on land that during Saddam Husseins rule was part of a military base, putting it off limits to most Iraqis for decades. There were 26 rooms in varying states of decay arrayed around a central courtyard. The 11th-century church at the site had a baptistery, nave and altar that were largely intact, though its walls had cracked enough to let in sunlight and rain. JERUSALEM Israeli security forces have arrested five Palestinian men the authorities said were planning an attack organized and funded by Hezbollah, Israel announced on Wednesday. The leader of the suspected cell, based in Tulkarm, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, was recruited online through social media by Jawad Nasrallah, son of the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, according to statements from the Israeli Army, the police and the domestic security agency, Shin Bet. According to the statements, the group was told to surveil Israeli forces and received instructions and guidance regarding executing terror attacks, including suicide bombings, and it was given $5,000. Israel has been on guard for an attack by Hezbollah, the Shiite militia and political movement, ever since Samir Kuntar, a Hezbollah commander, was killed in an explosion near Damascus, Syria, in December. Mr. Kuntar, a Lebanese Druse, served nearly 30 years in prison for his role in the killings of an Israeli police officer, a civilian and his daughter in 1979 as part of a Palestine Liberation Organization operation. He joined Hezbollah after his release from an Israeli prison in 2008 in a prisoner exchange. Hezbollah blamed Israel for Mr. Kuntars death and vowed revenge. The special United Nations envoy for the Syria conflict, Staffan de Mistura, has been ambiguous about any progress. Speaking from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, Mr. de Mistura told the BBC he was optimistic the talks could be scheduled in January. But he also told CNN that they might not start on Monday. The United States has signaled that it is looking for common ground with Russia and is ready to soften its insistence that Mr. Assad step down before any political transition can commence. But the American allies Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar have not embraced that compromise. Nor have the Syrian opposition politicians and insurgents that they support. The opposition delegates were announced by Riad Hijab, who leads the opposition council that met in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, late last year in an attempt to unite behind common principles and negotiators. He has maintained that it makes little sense to negotiate a political settlement before sieges are lifted and humanitarian aid can be delivered. The Russians want to add more opposition names to the negotiations ones more to their liking, which means more supportive of the Assad government. On Monday, though, Mr. Hijab declared that the councils delegates would not attend the talks if any other set of opposition delegates were included. George Sabra, a Christian dissident who was also named to the councils negotiating team, told the opposition channel Orient TV that no country or side could interfere with Syrians right to propose whoever they want to represent them, and no one has the authority to put forward any names other than the council. Yet other opposition figures are also seeking to attend, some with the backing of Russia. Among them are Kadri Jamil, who recently served in Mr. Assads cabinet and is seen by many antigovernment Syrians as a tolerated house opposition figure, and a longtime dissident, Haytham Manaa, who served many years in Syrian prisons but was long skeptical of the armed insurgency. They also include representatives of the Kurdish groups that have established a semiautonomous zone in northeast Syria. Adding to the complications, Turkey, facing a Kurdish insurgency in its east, is likely to object to any Kurdish representation. Bonnie Prince Billy POND SCUM The Peel Sessions a legacy of the trailblazing BBC radio disc jockey John Peel, who died in 2004 comprise many dozens of in-studio band performances, often charged with a spirit of ragged discovery. Will Oldham, a.k.a. Bonnie Prince Billy, has compiled an albums worth of his own highlights from the show on Pond Scum, out on Friday, Jan. 22, on Drag City. Covering an eight-year span, they share a hushed and crackly intensity, often with little more than voice and acoustic guitar. Some tracks, like Jolly Five (64), have circulated as bootlegs; Beezle, an incantatory outlier, was never released in any form. A brief, wobbly cover of The Cross, a come-to-Jesus song by Prince, underscores the tonal instability at the heart of Mr. Oldhams enterprise but no more so than (I Was Drunk at the) Pulpit, which he originally released under the guise of Palace Brothers, and which appears here at a heavier, more deliberate clip. Myra Melford and Ben Goldberg DIALOGUE Ms. Melford, a pianist, and Mr. Goldberg, a clarinetist, formed a close musical alliance about a dozen years ago, working in each others bands and honing an even-keel, intuitive rapport. Their new album, plainly titled Dialogue (BAG Production), confirms the quiet potency of that bond: Its a set of chamber miniatures fleshed out in real time, in ways that never feel pedantic or forced. The compositions cover a welcome dynamic range: Ms. Melfords Moonless Night opens in a pool of somber reflection, and slowly moves toward emotional release. Mr. Goldbergs Your Life Here has a spry, inquisitive melody set against a bittersweet toll of chords. Both artists play with elegant composure, and the album captures their sound beautifully. Theres never a moment when the music feels provisional, or when the duo suggests anything other than a complete entity unto itself. Corvallis police have arrested two Forest Grove residents in connection with Friday nights fatal shooting at the Sharis Restaurant in Corvallis. Michael A. Deyette II, 43, was arrested outside a house in Forest Grove at about 1:45 p.m. Monday on a Benton County warrant for murder, first-degree assault and unlawful use of a weapon in the killing of 29-year-old Jason Scott Williams of Corvallis, police announced Monday night. Deyette was taken into custody without incident with the help of the Washington County Tactical Negotiations Team and Forest Grove Police Department and was transported to the Benton County Jail, where he was being held on $1 million bail. At about 6:25 p.m., police arrested 35-year-old Brooklyn F. Shepard of Forest Grove, who was wounded in Fridays shooting. According to a statement issued by the Corvallis Police Department, Shepard was arrested on one count of murder on the theory that she may have aided and abetted in Williams killing. She also was being held in the Benton County Jail. Shepard and Deyette are neighbors and are romantically involved, the police statement said. Both are scheduled to be arraigned on Tuesday in Benton County Circuit Court. Williams was shot to death about 7:45 p.m. Friday in the parking lot of Sharis Restaurant, 1117 N.W. Ninth St. Ninth Street was blocked off in front of the restaurant for most of the night as police interviewed witnesses and processed the crime scene while Williams body lay on the sidewalk, covered by a sheet. Officers from multiple law enforcement agencies, including the Corvallis Police Department, Benton County Sheriffs Office and Oregon State Police, responded to the incident. Officers and at least one police dog searched the area Friday night, but no suspect was arrested in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. Lt. Cord Wood, a spokesman for the Corvallis Police Department, said at the time there was no reason to believe there was an immediate threat to the public. The second, female victim and Williams are acquaintances and had been at the restaurant together prior to the shooting, the department said in a statement issued Saturday. The multiagency Linn Benton Major Crime Team has been investigating the incident. The Williams killing is the 14th homicide in Corvallis since 1990. Before Fridays incident, the most recent homicide in the city was the killing of Kimberly Hakes. Hakes, 42, was found dead on Feb. 15 at a camp for homeless people in Alan Berg Park, across the Willamette River from downtown. No arrest has been made in that case. When a grand jury decided late last month not to indict the two police officers involved in the fatal shooting of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old whose killing outside a Cleveland recreation center became a cause celebre of the Black Lives Matter movement, the task of announcing the verdict fell to the Cuyahoga County prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty. McGinty, who is in the midst of a heated Democratic primary race, appeared decidedly unhappy to be handling the case. When he presented himself to the TV cameras on Dec. 28, he shifted from foot to foot and often looked fixedly at his prepared statement. He said he told Rices mother that what happened to her son was undeniably tragic. Nevertheless, he went on, Given this perfect storm of human error, mistakes and miscommunication by all involved that day, the evidence did not indicate criminal conduct by police. Perfect storm of human error was a revealing choice of phrase to describe what happened in Cleveland. McGinty evoked a remarkable convergence of factors to describe a death that was, in fact, a direct result of two simple errors made in sequence in a matter of minutes. On the afternoon of Nov. 22, 2014, a man waiting for the bus near the Cudell Recreation Center, on Clevelands west side, called 911 and reported: Theres a guy with a pistol. Its probably fake, but hes like pointing it at everybody. The man added that the person with the gun was probably a juvenile. A police dispatcher swiftly notified patrol cars of a guy sitting on the swings pointing a gun at people, without the caveat that it might not be real. As the officers Frank Garmback and Timothy Loehmann pulled up at the scene, Rice approached their car with his hands out of his pockets, then dropped them to his waist. Loehmann fired almost immediately. It was only later that a detective noticed a green plastic B.B. next to the guns magazine and realized that the weapon was a replica. An incompletely related report and an inaccurate assessment of a threat: Neither was unavoidable, and the way in which one led to the next was not complicated. But calling the incident a perfect storm implicitly presented the people involved not as individuals with agency but as unwitting executors of a systemic failing beyond anyones control. It expressed a measure of regret while lifting the incident out of the range of arguments about race and police violence. In the terms of Old Testament prophets and insurance underwriters, it recast an act of man as an act of God. When did perfect storm become a metaphorical absolution? The phrase, in the sense that McGinty meant it, has its origins on a cold, clear morning in the winter of 1993, when an aspiring writer named Sebastian Junger drove from Cape Cod to meet a meteorologist named Bob Case at the National Weather Services office in Taunton, Mass. Junger was writing about the sinking of the Andrea Gail, a swordfish boat that went down in the North Atlantic with all hands in an October 1991 storm. The storm was a ferocious anomaly, a product of a three-way collision between a storm system moving eastward from the Great Lakes, a hurricane sweeping up the coast and a cold front from Canada. Case sat for hours trying to explain it to Junger, but I struggled to understand what he was talking about, Junger recalls. He finally, in frustration, said, Look, it was the perfect storm! Dont Expect the School to Know Anything Linda Gervais, Maine Five years ago, at age 8, our daughter Eliza was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. I didnt think I had to do any research. We thought the district would already have in place appropriate medical care for a newly diagnosed child. But ultimately, we had to learn every Maine law and federal law regarding Americans with disabilities to advocate for appropriate care at school. There is no nurse at our elementary school, just a part-time nurse who goes between schools. In a meeting, we were told the school secretary would give her shots. It was terrifying. It was not the secretary we were scared of, just the sheer amount of responsibility she had in a large school district. Also, she had not volunteered. The head of nursing said thats what other secretaries had done in other schools, so thats what she could do. We were told a group of other people would be trained to give Eliza insulin shots when she needed them. Our concern was it would be a different person each time. I contacted the American Diabetes Association when we got home. We should have been figuring out our new normal as a family. Instead, we were fighting to make sure shes safe and thriving in school, which we wouldnt have thought wed have to do. It was disappointing. I ended up sitting outside the superintendents office to get a meeting. We werent asking for a nurse; we were asking for a consistent person. He was very helpful. Eventually, they hired a full-time health aide. It was not just my daughter who benefited. This incredible woman helped the whole school. Shes now part of the family. She visits us in the summer, and shes another grandmother to our daughter. Christiane Taubira, Frances former minister of justice, will discuss her individual path, her political struggles, and how she sees the world through her political convictions during a public lecture at New York University on Friday, Jan. 29, 11 a.m. (NYUs School of Law, Tishman Auditorium, Vanderbilt Hall, 40 Washington Square South [between MacDougal and Sullivan Streets]). Born in Cayenne (French Guiana), Taubira was Frances Minister of Justice from 2012 to January of 2016. Previously, Taubira gave her name to a law, passed in 2001, recognizing the Atlantic slave trade and slavery as a crime against humanity. In her book "L'Esclavage raconte a ma fille" (Slavery Explained to My Daughter), Taubira discusses the history of French enslavement of Africans and their descendants and describes the moral, social, economic, and political effects of slavery that persist among the descendants of enslaved people. In 2013, she introduced the law that legalized same-sex marriage in Francea law allowing same-sex couples to adopt children. The lecture will be in French with simultaneous English translation. It is free and open to the public. The event is co-sponsored by the following at NYU: the Institute of African American Affairs (IAAA), the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty and Diversity, the Institute of French Studies, the Center for French Civilization and Culture, and La Maison Francaise. To RSVP (required) or for more information, please call 212.998.IAAA (4222). For updates and more information please visit the IAAA website: nyuiaaa.org. Subways: A, B, C, D, E, F, M (W. 4th St.); 1 (Christopher St.). Two Forest Grove residents pleaded not guilty to murder charges Tuesday in connection to Friday nights fatal shooting outside Sharis Restaurant in Corvallis. Michael A. Deyette II, 43, and Brooklyn Shepard, 35, entered the pleas during separate arraignments Tuesday afternoon in front of Judge Locke Williams in Benton County Circuit Court. Deyette was arrested Monday afternoon outside a house in Forest Grove on a Benton County warrant issued in connection with the killing of 29-year-old Jason Scott Williams of Corvallis. Shepard, who was wounded in the shooting, was arrested Monday evening. Deyette pleaded not guilty to murder, conspiracy to commit murder, first-degree assault, unlawful use of a weapon against another, and second-degree criminal mischief. His security was set at $1 million. Court-appointed defense attorney Mike Flinn is representing Deyette II in the case. Chief Deputy District Attorney Ryan Joslin is representing the state in the case. Amie Matusko, assistant district attorney for Benton County, sat in for Joslin Tuesday. Flinn did not request a release for Deyette Tuesday, but told Williams that he may request to file motions at a later time. Shepard pleaded not guilty to murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Her security was set at $1 million. Court-appointed defense attorney John Rich and attorney Holly Allen are representing Shepard in the case. Matusko is representing the state. Rich asked Judge Williams during the arraignment to release Shepard on her own recognizance, noting that she was shot in the incident, has four children and a mother in the area who was recently diagnosed with cancer. But Matusko argued against the release. The proof is evident, Matusko said during the arraignment, adding that Shepard had a previous warrant for her arrest due to failure to appear. Court records regarding the previous case were not immediately available Tuesday afternoon. Deyette II and Shepard remained in Benton County Jail Tuesday and are scheduled to appear in court Wednesday afternoon for bail review hearings. In murder cases, often theres no bail and no release opportunity, Joslin said Tuesday following the arraignments. The court in these cases initially set security at $1 million and the state has a right to ask for no bail, which we have asked. The court has to make a finding that the proof is evident or the presumption of guilt is strong. Investigative reports, including the probable cause affidavits for both Deyette II and Shepard, have been sealed in the case. Joslin said the District Attorneys office requested the documents be sealed to the public, citing an ongoing investigation. Its fairly common in more serious cases where the facts continue to develop and unfold to seal those, Joslin said Tuesday. Theres still some continuing investigation; you dont want to jeopardize that by making those facts public at this point. According to previous statements from the Corvallis Police Department, Shepard was arrested Monday evening on one count of murder on the theory that she may have aided and abetted in Williams killing. Shepard and Deyette are neighbors and are romantically involved, the Police Department said on Monday. In an earlier statement, the department said that Shepard and Williams were acquaintances and had been at the restaurant together before the shooting. Williams was shot to death about 7:45 p.m. Friday in the parking lot of the restaurant at 1117 N.W. Ninth St. Northwest Ninth Street was blocked off in front of the restaurant for most of the night as police interviewed witnesses and processed the crime scene while Williams body lay on the sidewalk, covered by a sheet. Officers from multiple law enforcement agencies, including the Corvallis Police Department, Benton County Sheriffs Office and Oregon State Police, responded to the incident. Officers and at least one police dog searched the area Friday night. Lt. Cord Wood, a spokesman for the Corvallis Police Department, said at the time there was no reason to believe there was an immediate threat to the public. The Williams killing is the 14th homicide in Corvallis since 1990. Before Fridays incident, the most recent homicide in the city was the killing of Kimberly Hakes. Hakes, 42, was found dead on Feb. 15 at a camp for homeless people in Alan Berg Park, across the Willamette River from downtown. No arrest has been made in that case. The Chambers County Commission voted Tuesday evening to authorize the county engineer to apply for federal aid funds through the Alabama Department of Transportation for the widening, resurfacing and traffic striping of some county roads. The roads listed on the countys request to receive federal aid funds include County Road 279 (Ben Brown Road) from the Lee County line north approximately 2.03 miles to U.S. 29; County Road 212 (State Line Road) from the Georgia state line north approximately 6.33 miles to County Road 222; County Road 195 (Hopewell Road) from County Road 279 east approximately 1.5 miles to the Fairfax Bypass; and County Road 388 from U.S. 29 east approximately 0.89 miles to County Road 279. This is just us getting ahead of the game, said County Engineer Josh Harvill. This is not saying were going to pave the project next month. Harvill said getting all the necessary paperwork in and getting the plans ready can sometimes be a 6- to 18-month process, depending on the magnitude of the project. We get $533,000 a year currently, and federal funds have to be matched locally with a 20 percent match, Harvill said. Those funds right now have been saved and we are applying all the ones we have been getting annually for the past two years to the Phillips Road project. The commission also approved a quote from Evergreen Landscaping Services in the amount of $10,600 for tree removal services at Huguley Industrial Park. Harvill said the payment will be reimbursable from the countys 106 Fund. We are in the process of doing a lot of improvements in the industrial park, Harvill said. Over 200 trees will be removed along the road surface on the right of way, according to Harvill. In other business, the commission: Heard a report from Valerie Gray, executive director of the Chambers County Development Authority, who provided an end-of-year report for 2015. Approved the purchase of two current production model Ox Maverick HD 16x60, dump truck bodies from the ACCAs (Association of County Commissions of Alabama) joint bid list. Approved financing the purchase of the county highway departments 2016 dump trucks and lowboys with Farmers and Merchants Bank. Approved declaring one 1997 Dodge Ram van as surplus, to be sold at an auction in March 2016. Authorized Attorney Skip McCoy to forward a proposed bill regarding the countys sales and use tax to the legislative delegation for their consideration. Authorized McCoy to file a validation complaint with the countys circuit court in regards to the refunding of 2008 General Obligation Warrants. Approved a resolution insuring that line-item invoices do not get out of variance. Approved the appointment of a Community Corrections Program Committee. DOROTHY LOUISE TURNER 1921-2016 Funeral service for Mrs. Dorothy Louise Turner, 94, of Dadeville, will be Wednesday, January 20, 2016 at 11:00 am at the Union United Methodist Church. She will lie in state for one hour prior to the service. Rev. Dana Miller will officiate. Burial will follow in the Union United Methodist Church Cemetery. The family will receive friends on Wednesday, January 20, 2016 from 9:30 am to 10:30 am at Union United Methodist Church. Mrs. Turner passed away on Monday, January 18, 2016 at Lake Martin Community Hospital. She was born on October 9, 1921 in Tallapoosa County, Alabama to John Eric Ponder and Josie L. Carroll Ponder. She was a member of Union United Methodist Church. Mrs. Turner retired from Dale Manufacturing Company after many years of faithful service. She was known for her beautiful quilts that now after years of being blind she can see. She enjoyed spending time with her family and friends. Her later years were spent at Dadeville Healthcare where she enjoyed making new friends and always had a smile on her face. She will be greatly missed by everyone who knew her. She is now seeing and walking with the Lord. She is survived by her son, Johnny Turner (Jeanie), of Dadeville; daughter, Phyllis Pitchford (Graham), of Dadeville; son, Steve Turner (Sharon), of Dadeville; Eight Grandchildren; Fifteen Great Grandchildren and Four Great Great Grandchildren. She was preceded in death by her husband, Grady Frank Turner; parents; sisters, Marion Pitchford, Florence Roberts, Walene Casaday and brother, Harold Ponder. Memorial messages may be sent to the family at www.langleyfuneralhome.com. Langley Funeral Home is in charge of the arrangements. A Yorba Linda car wash that cheated 16 of its workers must pay $68,656 in back wages and damages, federal officials said Tuesday. Riverbend Hand Car Wash on La Palma Avenue made its employees arrive at a certain hour in the morning but refused to pay them for their time until a manager called them to clean cars, according to a U.S. Labor Department investigation. The car wash, which is owned by Humanage Acquisitions, a limited liability company, also refused to pay overtime, the labor department said. In some cases, employees were paid in cash at a straight-time rate, and the company failed to keep accurate records, according to the investigation. Majd Aboul Hosn, co-owner of the business, said his workers were paid a legal wage but that some chose to arrive before their scheduled shifts because of transportation constraints. He denied failing to pay overtime but said he agreed to the labor department settlement because he lacked documentation. Aboul Hosn said he bought the car wash two years ago with a foreign partner, and they retained its manager. It had been running this way for 22 years, he said. The on-site manager was not familiar with the labor laws. He added, Most guys in this industry are bad guys. But we treat our workers better than any other car wash owner. We paid $10 an hour before it was the minimum wage. We paid them when they got sick. What happened to us was not fair. The car-wash industry has been cited by federal and state authorities for rampant wage theft in California and other states. With 20,000 mostly Latino workers in Southern California, many of them less than fluent in English, the industry has one of the highest levels of workplace violations recorded by the California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement. Between 2009 and 2014, inspectors issued 1,423 citations for failure to pay workers compensation, minimum wage and overtime, refusing to provide itemized pay statements, denying rest and meal breaks, and operating without a license. Car washes in Los Angeles and Orange counties and other parts of the state were assessed more than $16 million in penalties and back wages. In Los Angeles, some 40 car washes have unionized in the past four years under the Clean Car Wash Campaign, funded by the AFL-CIO and the United Steelworkers. Campaign director Justin McBride applauded the federal enforcement effort but noted the U.S. Department of Labor is only able to enforce federal minimum wage, which is set at $7.25. Since Californias minimum wage is higher, up from $9 last year to $10 today, No doubt these workers are owed even more money, he said. Workers in this industry are among the most vulnerable that we see, said Rodolfo Cortez, director of the Wage and Hour Divisions district office in San Diego. Other employees who are being paid this way should give us a call. Information on wage and hour rules for employers and workers is available at www.dol.goc/whd. Labor department hotlines operate at 866-487-9243 for English speakers and 877-552-9832 for Spanish speakers. Contact the writer: mroosevelt@ocregister.com; on Twitter @MargotRoosevelt Re: Wanted: More foster parents in Orange County [Front page, Jan. 10]: I was appointed director of Albert Sitton Home in April 1978 and began working with the private sector to raise more than $8 million to build Orangewood Childrens Home in 1980. At that time, we had 68 beds in an old, institutional-type structure built next door to Juvenile Hall. We opened Orangewood in 1985 with 154 beds, which were soon filled. Expansion four years later brought the capacity to 235. In those days, there were few preventative programs or emphasis on keeping families together or placing kids with relatives. I did a study in 2005 on the re-use opportunities for Orangewood as the population declined. But even then I could not have envisioned Orangewoods population dropping below a daily average of 100 kids. Even with these lower numbers, Orangewood cared for hundreds of children on an annual basis and was an important component of the continuum of care for abused and neglected children in the county. More recently, especially with the emphasis of child-welfare activists and then the Legislatures Assembly Bill 403, I was concerned about the future of Orangewood as an Orange County resource and just exactly where the more damaged youths could be appropriately placed. I recognize that, in a perfect world, these children should be placed in the least-restrictive setting and most hopefully with a family that is up to the task. But its a very fine line in terms of trying to make the system work. Pressures to move the kids quickly from emergency shelter care or from a long-term group-home setting can have unintended consequences. As seen in Los Angeles County, some children have been placed in questionable settings with relatives or foster parents who were ill-equipped to care for them. And as a result there have been a number of highly publicized deaths of children, not to mention the youths who have had to stay in inappropriate settings because of the lack of a more suitable placement. So, it remains to be seen whether these well-intended reforms will make things better for victimized children. Certainly there has been important and successful strides in getting to where we find ourselves today. Orange County can point with pride to the level of care provided over the years. It will now be necessary to build on these successes to find the appropriate resources needed to achieve the public policy goals of AB403. William G. Steiner Orange former O.C. supervisor Who wants war with Iran? The three letters published Sunday under the heading President without a paddle [Letters, Jan. 17] express disappointment that the recent incident involving two Navy boats that strayed into Iranian waters ended peacefully. It seems that the writers of these letters would have preferred a violent confrontation resulting in the death or serious injury of one or more, perhaps all 10, sailors. This could have led to more confrontations and all-out war with Iran, and would certainly have destroyed the so-called nuclear deal that so many in this country oppose. Are people who do not like the president willing to foment a war that would result in the death of thousands of people in order to sully his reputation? Sidney Hatchl Santa Ana After much speculation of a tenant shakeup at the year-old 4th Street Market, operators of the food hall announced plans Wednesday to replace four vacating food stands with four fresh concepts. Among the restaurants closing Feb. 1 are three run by Jason Quinn. The popular Santa Ana chef is pulling Noodle Tramp, PFC and Wagyu Chuck because they are not financially viable, he said. I dont want to say its heartbreaking, but were sad about it, Quinn said of the closures. Also, closing Feb. 1 is Ink Waffles, a gourmet waffle sandwich shop. Quinn will continue to operate Recess Libations, but plans to make a few modifications to the tap-only bar including adding hand-shaken cocktails. The four closures come a year after Santa Ana developer Ryan Chase opened the food hall, a 20,000-square foot marketplace intended to be a game-changer for downtown Santa Ana. Most of the 15 food tenants had one-year leases. Restaurants sticking around include MAR, Dos Chinos, KTCHN DTSA, Stockyard Sandwich Co., Front Porch Pops & Torch Smore Co., Chunk-N-Chip, Radical Botanical, Portola Coffee Lab and Electric City Butcher. Chase said when he opened 4th Street Market, he knew that some tenants wouldnt make it. In fact, he said the intention of the incubator marketplace is to provide entrepreneurs an easy point of entry for testing the viability of their restaurant concepts. He said most owners can start a business at the food hall with about $15,000 compared to $300,000 needed for most brick and mortar start-ups. Still, the exit of Quinn chef-owner of the critically acclaimed Playground could be viewed as a setback as he was seen as huge draw to the marketplace. But Chase said hes taken great strides to line up a new slate of food concepts that should increase the food halls profile. With visits averaging about 1,000 a day, Chase said 4th Street Market has put Santa Ana on the radar of Orange County foodies. Its given us the critical mass we need to be a destination food spot and part of the food scene in Orange County, said Chase, who owns several downtown Santa Ana properties. Two of the new restaurants coming next month will be run by existing food hall operators. The owner of MAR is opening Terra. The restaurant will feature rice and noodle bowls, stir fry, salads and a vegetarian black bean burger. Bobby Navarro, a spokesman for the food hall, said the menu should satisfy diners who have complained of the lack of healthy food options at the marketplace. The owner of Dos Chinos plans to open a Vietnamese pho food stand in the spot where Noodle Tramp operates. The other two restaurants coming include Pig Pen Delicacy (pork-centric comfort foods) and a pizza joint called Jinnys. Quinns three concepts and Ink Waffles will serve their last meals Jan. 31. The four new restaurants are expected to open soon after in February. As for Quinn, he said 4th Street was intended to be a revolving door for chef-driven concepts. However, he didnt anticipate that his modern cafeteria-style concepts would be among the first to exit. While each food stand had a steady stream of loyal fans, he said there wasnt enough volume to keep all three going. In the case of Wagyu Chuck, he said diners were unwilling to pay $9 for a gourmet burger made from house-ground Wagyu beef and scratch-made buns. Quinn thought the burger was an absolute steal of a deal, but other people said it was a ripoff. Last year, Quinn closed Honor Roll, a gourmet food supply store, and Dough Exchange, a bakery shop at the food hall because they didnt have a big enough audience to sustain the businesses. Quinn said trimming his investment in 4th Street will allow him to re-focus on Playground. He recently took over a vacant taco shop next door. Hes overhauling the space to add more seating to his 110-seat restaurant, which is constantly turning away guests on weekends. In the coming weeks, he plans to add 40 more seats and triple the size of his kitchen. Eventually, the space will be built out to accommodate up to 200 guests and private events. The latter is expected to be a huge boon to his sales, as he currently has no space to accommodate requests to host private parties. He said he estimates hes turned down $3 million in sales over the last four years from his inability to host private events. Though he will have a larger kitchen, Quinn said he has no plans to open Playground at lunch. However, he said hes considering selling some Lunchbox favorites, including the Thai noodle soup and fried chicken, at the old Dough Exchange storefront next door to Playground. He uses the space for kitchen prep. Were still in love with our (Lunchbox) recipes and wed like to share them, he said. Contact the writer: nluna@ocregister.com SWEET HOME Circuit Court Judge David Delsman has issued an opinion that although it'll have to pay its share of annual maintenance fees, a group of homeowners near Sweet Home will not have to pay an annual fee to cross railroad tracks owned by the Albany & Eastern Railroad. Judge Delsman heard the case on Aug. 17, 2015. The issue started three years ago when several homeowners in a small development known as Country Lane were notified by the Albany & Eastern Railroad that they would need to pay a one-time $600 crossing registration fee and an annual maintenance fee of $120. They were told they could be charged with trespassing if these fees weren't paid. But the homeowners argued families had been using the crossing for decades without fees and that with or without an easement on their property deeds, the fact that property owners used the crossing without issue created a presumptive easement. Attorney Dan Armstrong of Corvallis represented the homeowners and Tre Kennedy of Lebanon represented the railroad. This was bet-your-home litigation. The odds and costs were stacked against these folks and fighting back was risky, Armstrong said. But they banded together as neighbors and beat a bully. This ruling should stop this train from trying to cause similar trouble to other neighbors along its tracks. Armstrongs case laid a foundation that a mistake was made on 1928 court documents when two acres of the original 75-acre property was deeded to the railroad. Weve always said that in 1928 no one sells two acres to a railroad and knowingly landlocks 70 acres, he said. Homeowner Mike Martell was adamant he was not going to pay the railroads fee, saying that the railroads actions could have made our homes worthless. We had no choice but to fight, so we fought back, he said. I vowed that we wouldnt pay one dime to the railroad and now we wont. We faced great odds and found a great lawyer who worked with us. We beat a railroad. According to Judge Delsmans opinion issued Jan. 13, homes had been constructed on the property by 1953 and all of the lots were occupied by 1963. Those families have used the crossing ever since without a demand for payment by the railroads past owners. The Albany & Eastern a short-line railroad based in Lebanon bought the railroad in 2007 and its underlying property in 2012. The railroad began updating its leases per federal rules and thats when the issue of crossing fees arose. Similar activities occurred in other states as well. The Albany & Eastern also said during the course of the suit that the proposed fees were less than the actual cost of maintaining the crossings and rights-of-way. The residents only means of access to their property was across the railroad tracks at the location of the Murray easement, Delsman noted. Two early residents testified that their access across the tracks was never restricted. Residents didnt feel they were trespassing, nor did they feel they needed the railroads permission to cross the tracks. He added, In further support of an honest belief in a claim of right, deeds to five of the eight lots contained easement language that purported to grant a right of ingress and egress over the railroads property. Delsman agreed with the plaintiffs that they had a prescriptive easement developed over time. He said to prove that, the homeowners had to prove they had an open, notorious and adverse use for a continuous 10-year period. The parties agree that the homeowners had openly and publicly used the cross for more than 10 years and the railroad had done nothing to stop them. Delsman added that there was no evidence the railroad ever granted written permission to the property owners to use the crossing, but What is apparent from the evidence is that at some point the railroad began operating under the erroneous assumption that the Country Lane crossing was a public crossing. As a result of that mistake, the railroad took no action to limit unauthorized use of the crossing. He said the railroad also allowed complete and unfettered crossing rights and maintained the cross for the benefit of the public and the Country Lane residents at its own expense. Delsmans ruling requires the property owners to share maintenance costs, liability risks and all other rights and responsibilities as required under federal, Oregon and local law or regulation. Its always been a business decision that most likely will be resolved at the appellate court level, Kennedy said. He said the railroad has 30 days from the time an official judgment has been entered to file an appeal. SYDNEY After Mandy Santoss teething 8-month-old son woke her every two hours one night demanding to be fed, she walked into a Sydney supermarket looking for a can of baby formula. As the 31-year-old professional violinist stood in the baby-food aisle, trying to choose a product, her 2-year-old daughter hung onto her leg, chewing on a cookie. Her little boy was with a relative. Hes very clingy and Im too tired, Santos said, referring to the baby. Im going to wean him slowly. But there was a catch: Despite fully stocked shelves of formula made by Procter & Gamble, Nestl, Danone and others, this supermarket in the Coles chain sells only two cans to each customer at a time. The rule is designed to frustrate a thriving underground market that ships Australian formula to Chinese cities, where only 16 percent of new mothers breast-feed their children exclusively, according to Chinas National Health and Family Planning Commission. Private profiteers can resell a roughly two-pound can of formula in China for as much as three times the Australian price, said Michael Harvey, a dairy-industry analyst at Rabobank, a big agricultural financier. There is clearly money in it, he said in an interview. Several milk-contamination scandals, including one that involved the hospitalization of 54,000 children in 2008, have made many people in China suspicious of their food supply. The one-child policy, which is now being abandoned, made the 16 million babies born every year in China even more precious to their parents. Experts say Chinese food rules are as tough as Australias they are both based on international standards known as the Codex Alimentarius, which are overseen by the World Health Organization and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. But many Chinese parents do not trust their government to enforce the rules. The Chinese consumer wants the formula with the English writing on it, said Jan Carey, the chief executive of Australias Infant Nutrition Council, a lobby group for baby-food makers. Australia is not the only place where sales limits have been imposed. Britain, Hong Kong and New Zealand also have them. But the problem is more acute in Australia. The countrys clean environment and reputation for safe food appeals to Chinese parents, according to Simon Hansford, a formula consultant who has been to China more than 80 times and once owned a milk-powder factory. They love their Louis Vuitton and BMWs, he said in an interview. They think if the formula is sold in the big supermarkets and pharmacies, its a famous brand. While well-intentioned, the supermarkets policy means exhausted Australian mothers have to stock up every couple of weeks or seek out stores with more generous limits. At the Coles visited by Santos, the violinist, a notice in English and Chinese says: While this is regrettable we are trying to help make this product available for our customers who require it. The rule is not always enforced. Two months ago, a woman from the southern city of Melbourne posted a photo on Facebook of four people filling two shopping carts with baby formula. The group of four adults cleared a pallet of more than 50 tins despite the stores four tins per person limit, she told the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper. It felt like a smooth operation, like they did this all the time. Chinese buyers send the formula home by regular mail, a process that does not require special paperwork if the shipment weighs less than 22 pounds. Reports that temporary shops are opening in busy areas to sell and ship formula suggest that the trade is becoming more sophisticated. A spokeswoman for Australias Department of Agriculture and Water Resources said the agency is investigating allegations that formula is being sent overseas in breach of shipping rules. Ironically, most of the formula sold in Australia comes from elsewhere. The most popular brand, Aptamil, is made by French diary giant Danone in New Zealand, a country that has so many cows it is sometimes referred to as the Saudi Arabia of the global milk trade. In China, Danone sells formula under the Karicare brand, which it promotes as a 100 percent New Zealand product. Breast-feeding advocates are aghast at the trade, which they think preys on vulnerable women in China. Nina Berry, a researcher at the Sydney School of Public Health and a spokeswoman for the Australian Breastfeeding Association, described the prices being paid for foreign formula in China as extortionate and questioned the ethics of food companies that market the product. Some experts want China to ban the advertising of baby formula. Women with infants are doing very undervalued work, with very little support, often in isolation and unable to access the personal support, professional advice or industrial protections they need, Berry said in an email. The baby-formula industry is acutely aware of the criticism and says children should be breast-fed for only their first six months. Privately, industry advocates say many Chinese mothers choose formula so that they can return to work quickly and save money to fund their childrens education. Seeing the opportunity, Australian manufacturers are scrambling to meet demand. But the adjustment is not happening quickly. It takes some six months to increase production, because ingredients such as vegetable fat and vitamins have to be ordered well in advance. Nonetheless, investors sense big profits coming. Baby-food makers were among the most successful companies on the Australian stock exchange last year. A $5,000 investment in one company, Bellamys Organic, on Jan. 1 last year was worth $49,000 by New Years Eve, according to CommSec, a stockbroker. Two new burger restaurants rolled into Orange County last year, setting up shop at competing malls. Hopdoddy, from Texas, debuted at Fashion Island. Holsteins from Las Vegas took over the sprawling Charlie Palmer space at South Coast Plaza. The former has nearly a dozen units across several states. The latter, just Vegas and this one. Each serves more than a dozen different burgers, of which I sampled most of those made with beef and a couple of lamb. Both places make a great burger. Heres how they stack up: HOPDODDY Fashion Island, 401 Newport Center Drive, #311 (between Macys and Sushi Roku), 949-640-2337, hopdoddy.com Atmosphere This place got its start in Austin, Texas, in the hipster district known as South Congress. It imported a bit of that music-driven vibe with large photographs of rock concerts and electric guitars. The bright, airy, vividly-colored dining room is anchored with a horseshoe-shaped bar and elevated booths around the perimeter. Large, voyeuristic windows reveal an all-scratch kitchen with no room to hide. And while I dont think its absolutely necessary to have a tattoo in order to work here, clearly it helps. Burgers The menu offers 14 burgers, eight made with beef (mostly Angus), one with bison, one lamb, plus the completely unnecessary but politically correct chicken, turkey, tuna and veggie. The average price is around $10.50. You can actually watch the cooks grind the high-quality beef and form it into loosely packed patties, roughly one inch thick. My favorite is El Diablo ($9.25), topped with fresh serranos, habaneros, pepper jack and chipotle mayo. The servers always suggest either medium or medium-rare, depending on which burger you select, but the kitchen is very inconsistent when it comes to hitting those marks. As for the bun, youll want the basic white one, which is soft and pillowy yet sturdy enough underneath to do the job. Fries If you look into the kitchen, youll notice a stack of 50-pound bags of fresh Kennebec potatoes. And if you go at the right time, the freshly cut fries are awesome. The right time would be off hours, like the middle of the afternoon or later in the evening, which is when Ive enjoyed perfect fries here. However, twice when Ive dined at the height of the lunch rush, the fries have been cold and, dare I say, stale. I get the sense that when they get busy, they cook bigger batches and dole them out as needed. But when theyre slow, they cook everything to order. The difference is dramatic. Also, they stingily ration the ketchup here. Milkshakes I dont know why, but whenever Ive ordered a milkshake here, mine comes in a cheap plastic disposable cup while everyone else gets a real glass. Maybe I look like sort of person who might spill my drink? The shakes are just OK. Theyre topped with almost as much whipped cream as there is actual milkshake in the cup. Bar They make a decent margarita with fresh lime. And theres an interesting Bloody Mary made with beet juice, which is actually quite good, although I cant fathom why its called a Bloody Mary. The beer selection is limited to just a handful of good, local craft brews, including Barley Forge, Artifex and Noble Ale Works, impressively served in frozen goblets. HOLSTEINS South Coast Plaza (at Bloomingdales), 3333 Bristol, Costa Mesa, 714-352-2525, holsteinsburgers.com Atmosphere Formerly home to one of the areas most luxurious restaurants, the reworked ambiance here is still fairly upscale, with playful bovine art, comfy chairs and carpeting in the dining room, and a huge bar and lounge on the other side. Service is proper without being hoity-toity. After several visits, Ive never seen this place fully packed, which is great because the dining room invites lingering. Burgers The kitchen offers 13 different burgers, seven made with beef (American Kobe and Angus), plus lamb, and to try to please everyone, there are turkey, chicken, salmon and vegan options. The average price sits around $14.50. The best of the lot is the Gold Standard ($15.50) made with a dry-aged Angus sirloin patty, just over an inch in thickness, topped with aged goat cheddar, smoked bacon and confit tomatoes, plus arugula and garlic aioli. Despite the arugula, its not as froufrou as it sounds. The meat is cooked perfectly medium-rare not rare, not medium with a slight char around the edges. Fries The french fries are coated with a fine layer of powdered starch, which reminds me and Im embarrassed to know this, but I have a long memory of the dreadful frozen fries at Arbys. The onion rings are a better option, but woefully unsalted and not so good as to be crave-worthy. Milkshakes I suppose this is where the restaurants name comes into play, since Holsteins are best known as dairy cows, not beef cattle. And the concept here is to put liquor in the milkshakes, which I assume is much more popular in Las Vegas than Orange County. That said, the milkshakes and malts here ($9-$13), with or without booze, are delicious. Once you take a sip, you cannot stop. I can envision myself coming here for a milkshake even when Im not hungry. Bar The beer list is seriously mind-boggling, with more than 200 bottles, cans and drafts from which to choose. Whoever assembled this list is clearly a hoarder, and good for them. The Bloody Mary is thin, but the michelada is beautiful. The wine list is solid. SO WHO WINS? Atmosphere: Its a draw, but Hopdoddy is probably more fun Burgers: Nobody loses, but Holsteins wins by a nose Fries: Hopdoddy, by a mile Shakes: Holsteins, by a mile Bar: Holsteins, in a blowout Contact the writer: bajohnson@ocregister.com or on Instagram: @bradajohnson A civil court judge on Tuesday gave suspected members of rival crews more time to fight their inclusion on a pair of gang injunctions aimed at cracking down on gang activity in some of Placentias oldest neighborhoods. Orange County Superior Court Judge Kim Dunning focused her attention on overcoming procedural hurdles before planning future hearings that will center on whether the proposed injunctions against the Plas and La Jolla street gangs are made permanent and who should be targeted as members of the gangs. At least a dozen people fighting their inclusion on the gang injunction, as well as another dozen family and supporters, showed up to the hearings on Tuesday. Most said they have had difficulty in finding legal representation. Judge Dunning gave them until Feb. 19 to file the required court paperwork. Opponents of the injunction were pleased at the judges decision. So far, more than 40 of the 51 people on the injunctions have denied having gang ties. Its such a relief, said Gaby Hernandez, a spokeswoman for Chicanos Unidos and a main organizer of opposition to the injunction. For once, we have a judge who is saying this all needs to be fair. Kim McGill of the Youth Justice Coalition who has been in touch with those named in the La Jolla injunction, particularly eight people who are currently in jail and cannot represent themselves was particularly glad that the judge is allowing those who filed incorrect paperwork to fix their inadvertant mistakes. I think its historic, McGill said. Ive never seen a judge do that, to say just because they filed the paperwork incorrectly, doesnt mean they didnt try. This gives us some time to file the paperwork and get things in. Gang injunctions are civil court orders limiting the actions of documented gang members in specific areas where law enforcement has identified increases in gang-related crime. The Placentia injunctions cover a little more than a mile of largely residential neighborhoods, including apartments and single-family homes. The identified safety zones also include a shopping plaza, two public schools and parks. Those named in the injunctions are barred from associating with other gang members, publicly consuming alcohol, selling drugs, showing gang signs or wearing gang clothes, among other restrictions. Ignoring the terms of a gang injunction can land someone in contempt of court, a misdemeanor that carries up to a six-month sentence. Placentia police and Orange County District Attorneys Office officials say the injunctions are needed to protect those who live in the gang neighborhoods but are unable to call police without retaliation. The original injunction filings pointed to several dozens of incidents of drug and guns sales, at least nine robberies and more than 20 assaults that have taken place in the two areas in recent years. In a filing earlier this month, a Placentia gang detective noted that there have been many more recent indicents of loitering, tagging, intimidation and reported shootings in the neighborhoods. Opponents question the level of violence in the neighborhoods, contending that crime has dropped in recent years. They contend that the injunctions lead to restrictive law enforcement tactics and civil rights violations. Another Orange County Superior Court judge gave preliminary approval to the injunctions several months ago, also ruling that those denying their alleged gang status are not currently subject to the terms of the injunctions. Both sides are scheduled to return to court on April 14, to discuss the scheduling of hearings for those wishing to fight their inclusion on the injunctions, as well as debating whether to make the injunction permanent. WASHINGTON Senate Democrats on Wednesday blocked a bill that would crack down on Syrian and Iraqi refugees coming to the U.S. as the debate turned into a referendum on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his policies. Senate Democrats sought to force election-year votes as Trump who holds a commanding lead in national polls for the Republican presidential nomination has called for barring Muslims from coming to the United States. Republicans wanted similar votes on politically fraught amendments. The Senate fell short of the three-fifths needed to move ahead. The vote was 55-43. The House legislation would require new FBI background checks and individual sign-offs from three high-ranking federal officials before any refugee from Syria or Iraq could come to the United States. The American Security Against Foreign Enemies Act cleared the House in November in the aftermath of the Paris attacks. It received 289 votes, a veto-proof margin that included 47 Democrats despite President Barack Obamas opposition. This bill is just another step in the absolute wrong direction, the direction of Donald Trump, Reid told reporters before the vote. The Democrats are committed to opposing the hateful views of Trump and his Republican enablers. But Senate Republicans who backed the House bill said it is difficult to effectively vet immigrants from war-torn countries like Syria and Iraq, where record keeping is poor or may not exist at all. They also said senior U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials have expressed concern that the Islamic State may try to exploit the refugee screening program. So it is any wonder that the citizens we represent are concerned? McConnell said. No wonder dozens of Democrats joined with Republicans to pass this balanced bill with a veto-proof majority over in the House. Three of the Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz of Texas, Marco Rubio of Florida and Rand Paul of Kentucky left the campaign to return to Washington to vote for moving ahead on the measure. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders of Vermont missed the vote as did Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who was campaigning for Jeb Bush in New Hampshire. Two Democrats from GOP-leaning states Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia voted with Republicans to move ahead on the legislation. For Democrats facing tight 2016 elections, opposing the bill may put them in the difficult position of rejecting what many consider to be a reasonable anti-terror measure in the wake of a terrible tragedy. Those concerns surfaced ahead of the House vote in November when White House aides went to the Capitol to win over Democrats in a private meeting. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, D-N.Y., told them, in a forceful exchange, that voting no could hurt Democrats at the polls, according to aides in attendance. In addition to the amendment on Trump, Reid said Democrats also wanted to propose an increase in anti-terrorism money for local police forces and airport security and banning the sale of guns and explosives to people on federal terrorism watch lists. This House bill, Reid said, scapegoats refugees who are fleeing war and torture instead of creating real solutions to keep Americans safe. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said the bill is a security test, not a religious one. This reflects our values, Ryan said. This reflects our responsibilities. Cruz announced Tuesday he was canceling two events in New Hampshire and rescheduling two others in order to return to Washington to vote. While Republicans said the bill contains no religious tests for the refugees, Cruz and White House rival Jeb Bush have suggested giving preferences to Christians. Obama has scolded politicians for raising worries over taking in refugees fleeing the Islamic States harsh rule in Syria and Iraq, where it controls territory. Apparently, theyre scared of widows and orphans coming into the United States of America, Obama said when the House voted last year. The White House has said Obama will veto the legislation if it reaches his desk. Voters concerns about terrorism have surged at the same time their confidence in the governments ability to defeat IS and other extremist groups has plummeted, according to a national survey conducted in December by the Pew Research Center. . AP writer Donna Cassata contributed to this report. ORANGE Chapman University plans to name its law school library after a couple whose foundation has donated $5 million. University officials will name the Fowler School of Law library in honor of Hugh and Dazel Darling. The Hugh and Hazel Darling Foundation has supported the universitys Fowler School of Law for more than a decade, most recently with a gift to the library of $2.78 million. The gift will be invested in a permanent endowment, with income to go to the Hugh and Hazel Darling Law Librarian Chair, currently held by Professor Linda Kawaguchi. Hugh Darling was a long-time Los Angeles-area attorney, a former mayor of Beverly Hills, and president of the Los Angeles County Bar Association. When he died in 1986, his widow created a trust to benefit education in California, particularly legal education and programs. The foundation also has libraries named after the couple at several institutions, including UCLA and Azusa Pacific University. A special ceremony will be held in March to dedicate the Hugh and Hazel Darling Law Library. Endowed chair donors can name a historical figure to be commemorated in a bronze sculpture on campus, and the foundation has asked for a bust of Sir Winston Churchill, because he was a hero to Hugh Darling. Contact the writer: rkopetman@ocregister.com TEHRAN, Iran Irans supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, cautiously welcomed on Tuesday the completion of the nuclear deal and the lifting of economic sanctions this past weekend, while at the same time dashing any expectations that the event marked the beginning of a detente with the United States. Hopes of new and more productive relations had been raised after a prisoner swap that released four Americans and swift action to return 10 sailors who ended up in Irans territorial waters near an important naval base. In both cases, Obama administration officials said, strong personal relations that were built up during the protracted negotiations on the nuclear agreement proved critical. But on Tuesday, in a letter to President Hassan Rouhani published on his website, Khamenei.ir, Khamenei struck a far different tone, warning the government to guard vigilantly against American deceptions, saying it was time to ensure that Irans opponents honor their part of the deal. The comments came amid indications that an influential panel had disqualified hundreds or perhaps thousands of reformists from running in February elections for the parliament or the Assembly of Experts, whose responsibilities include choosing the next supreme leader. While there has not yet been any official confirmation of the disqualifications, the possibility added to the growing recognition that the supreme leader will not allow Rouhani to extend his foreign policy achievements into more domestic freedoms, as he once promised to do. That would smack of U.S. influence in hard-liners eyes, and Khamenei was adamant that Irans ideological enemy was still not to be trusted. The deceptions and breaches of promises by arrogant governments, in particular America, on this issue and other issues, should not be neglected, Khamenei said in the letter. Khameneis warnings seem to have been prompted in part by new U.S. sanctions over Irans ballistic missile program announced less than 24 hours after the previous sanctions were lifted and by remarks by conservative members of Congress. Khamenei urged Rouhani to be on his guard. The comments made by some American politicians in the last two, three days are cause for deep suspicion, he wrote. But the warnings also reflect a pattern that goes to the heart of Irans opaque and factionalized political system and was visible throughout the nuclear negotiations, as Khamenei played both sides of Irans divide between reformers and hard-liners. While praising the work of the negotiators, he frequently laid down red lines that seemed to reassure the hard-liners that Iran would not be bullied during the talks. That dynamic seems to be playing out in the aftermath of the nuclear deal, with the supreme leader coming down hard on anything or anyone seeming to promote greater freedoms, as the latest political dispute underlines. On Sunday, an ally of the president, Hossein Marashi, a reformist leader, said that out of 3,000 reformist candidates who had registered nationwide, only 33 had been allowed to participate. While there is a 20-day appeal period, few analysts think the Guardian Council, which vets candidates for all elections and is dominated by hard-liners, would radically alter its decisions. In the Tehran metropolitan area, Irans most populous, only four reformists out of 760 candidates were pronounced qualified to run, one newspaper affiliated with that faction, Arman-e Emrouz, wrote on Monday. Hard-liners said the reformists were trying to make the council look bad by registering thousands of candidates they knew lacked the credentials to qualify. Their plan is now to undermine the legality of the Guardian Council, said Hamidreza Taraghi, a political analyst close to the hard-line camp. But even so-called hard-liners have been disqualified. These people just want to create tension. But reformists argued that the council, in line with other hard-line factions, was overly sensitive to hints of liberalizing and was eager to crack down on anybody who was at all critical of how the country was run. With or without the nuclear deal, all of them would be disqualified, said Farshad Ghorbanpour, an analyst with close ties to Rouhani. They simply cant stand criticism. Khamenei, in his letter to Rouhani, also sought to remind the Iranian government that the country had paid a heavy price for the lifting of sanctions, and that no one should be cheerful about the outcome. Writings and statements that try to ignore this truth and pretend that we are indebted to the Western side are not behaving in a sincere manner toward the public opinion of the people, he wrote. The lifting of sanctions alone is not enough to revive Irans economy, Khamenei wrote, adding that the government must focus on economic policies that promote self-sufficiency and must create an economy of resistance. The ayatollah said nothing in his letter about the prisoner agreement between Iran and the United States reached over the weekend, in which Iran released five Americans, including four dual citizens, and the United States released seven Iranians, including six dual citizens. Three of the prisoners freed by Iran, Amir Hekmati, Jason Rezaian and Saeed Abedini, who were reunited with relatives from the United States while undergoing medical checks at U.S. military facilities in Germany, are expected to return to home in coming days. Hekmati, 32, spoke publicly for the first time about his ordeal in a brief appearance Tuesday before reporters assembled outside the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. A Marine veteran, he was the American incarcerated the longest in Iran, serving a 10-year term since August 2011 for aiding a hostile power. I was at a point where I had just sort of accepted the fact that I was going to be spending 10 years in prison, so this was a surprise and I just feel truly blessed to see my government do so much for me and the other Americans, he said. Rep. Dan Kildee, Democrat of Flint, Michigan, who accompanied Hekmatis relatives to Germany to see him, said during a telephone news conference earlier that Hekmati was eager to resume his life. Kildee said Hekmati did not know he was going to be released until Saturday, when he was freed. Right now hes focused on getting his feet underneath him, the congressman said. He has an optimism about the future which is extraordinary for a person who has gone through what hes gone through. WASHINGTON President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have a simple explanation for their surprising success in getting Iran to dismantle much of its nuclear infrastructure, ship out 98 percent of its nuclear fuel and release five American prisoners: Patient diplomacy, backed by escalating economic sanctions, accomplished more than military action ever could have. When the final history of this remarkable encounter between Washington and Tehran is written, the story is likely to be far more complex. Yes, diplomacy and economic pressure were critical, but even several of Obamas top aides doubted as recently as a year ago that, in the end, Irans mullahs and generals would actually dismantle a program in which they had invested both national pride and billions of dollars. Those aides had good reason for skepticism: While all comparisons between North Korea and Iran are fraught, if economic pressure alone could do the trick, Pyongyang would have given up its nuclear program two decades ago. But Obamas strategy had a major coercive element as well. This included a series of covert actions that repeatedly, if briefly, set back the nuclear program and convinced Iranian elites that its secrecy had been compromised. And then there was the fear, in Washington and Iran, that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel would launch a pre-emptive attack. Obama has almost never talked about that side of the campaign, the short-of-war coercion that was part of what his aides once called the light footprint strategy of avoiding full-scale military action. But he alluded to its success obliquely on Sunday when he expressed pride in the fact that weve achieved this historic progress through diplomacy, without resorting to another war in the Middle East. By some accounts, it was a close call. Michael Morell, a former CIA deputy director who was intimately involved in the decision-making on Iran, puts it simply: Before the negotiations for the nuclear deal began, we were closer to war with the Islamic Republic than at any time since 1979. The chances of war breaking out over the Iranians nuclear program were higher in the Obama administration than they were during the George W. Bush administration that preceded it, if the public and private accounts of dozens of officials who served in one or the other and a few in both are to be believed. Bush, wrapped up in two wars already and his credibility on going after weapons of mass destruction so destroyed after the 2003 Iraq invasion, never seriously contemplated military action against Iran. When his vice president, Dick Cheney, advocated bombing a secret nuclear reactor in Syria in 2007 partly to make a point to Iran Bush rejected the proposal out of hand, a tale Cheney tells with some bitterness in his memoir. During Bushs last year in office, Israel sought and was denied, again over Cheneys objections the bunker-busting bombs and other equipment it needed to carry out an effective strike on Iran. It took Israel years to develop a lesser ability themselves, and during Obamas tenure, according to the recent memoirs of a former Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, Netanyahu nearly pulled the trigger three times, coming closest in 2012. We planned to do it, he said. Obama had little doubt that if Israel started a conflict, the United States would be unable to stay out. That was the conclusion of a series of classified war-gaming exercises conducted at the National War College, the Pentagon and inside U.S. intelligence agencies. In public, Obama credits the broad, remarkably effective sanctions regime which Netanyahu at first warned would never work for convincing Irans Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other hard-liners that they had no choice but to pursue another path. Certainly it played a major role in Irans calculus, as oil shipments dropped by more than half and Iranian tankers bobbed at sea for more than a year, unable to deliver their goods. Mohammed Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, has repeatedly argued that the unjust sanctions were counterproductive, noting correctly that Irans number of centrifuges and its fuel stockpile expanded as the economic noose tightened. That is true but eventually, the price became too high. What Obama does not say because he cannot without describing classified programs is that many of his own aides believe that an American covert sabotage program that began in the Clinton administration and steadily escalated over the next 15 years also played a critical role in persuading the Iranians to cash in the program. Court records that were made public in the prosecution of the Tinner family in Switzerland, a supplier of nuclear equipment to Libya, Iran and other countries as part of A.Q. Khans black market in atomic technology, made it clear that the CIA had recruited insiders to provide the Iranians with faulty goods. In 2006, power supplies for the countrys centrifuges blew up; it turned out they had been diverted, and tinkered with, by the United States before they were delivered. The assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists, widely assumed to be the work of Israels Mossad, grew so intense at one point that Hillary Clinton, then the secretary of state, publicly denounced the killings, being careful not to name Israel. Bush authorized, and Obama accelerated, perhaps the best-known piece of covert action: the broad cyberattacks against the Natanz nuclear enrichment site in Iran, using what became known as the Stuxnet computer worm. Despite its sophistication and the roughly 1,000 centrifuges destroyed it probably slowed the program for only a year or so. But the operation, code-named Olympic Games, made it clear to the Iranian elite that the United States and Israel were deeply inside their program, and clearly had turned some scientists and other workers who helped get the destructive code into the nuclear facilities. It may be years before anyone knows for sure how much of a role these tactics played in Irans ultimate decision. It might be that they would have given up the program anyway, given enough time. But in commentary published Tuesday, Graham Allison of Harvard, who wrote the definitive history of the Cuban missile crisis, engaged in some what-might-have-happened speculation if Obamas diplomatic, economic and coercive effort had not worked. If Netanyahu had succeeded in killing the deal, or Republicans in Congress had blocked it, the sanctions would have collapsed, he said. As Iran sped closer to a bomb, the Israelis would have renewed their threat to attack, and Republican candidates for president would blame Obama for having failed to prevent Irans acquiring a bomb. The world, Allison concluded, could well have been on the brink of a third major war in the Middle East. An overturned big-rig snarled traffic on FasTrak lanes of the 91 freeway in Anaheim Hills Tuesday afternoon. Authorities were called at 2:24 p.m. to the 91 freeway just west of Imperial Highway to a semi-truck on its side, California Highway Patrol Officer Denise Quesada said. The rig crashed into a center divider, sending large chunks of concrete into lanes and spilling some fuel, Quesada said. A SigAlert was issued at 2:35 p.m. while the rig was moved and debris was cleaned up. All lanes were re-opened at 7:19 p.m. The two FasTrak lanes in both directions of the freeway were blocked. It is unclear if there were any injuries or if other cars were involved in the crash. Contact the writer: 714-796-7865 or afausto@ocregister.com SACRAMENTO A faction of Californias largest union began submitting signatures Tuesday for a ballot initiative asking voters to raise Californias minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2021, one of two competing proposals vying for the November ballot. Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom joined SEIUs United Healthcare Workers West in San Francisco as union officials turned in signatures. The group said it has collected 600,000 names, far more than the nearly 366,000 required to qualify an initiative this year. The initiative, the latest in a nationwide effort by unions and other groups to raise the wage, would raise the states minimum wage by $1 a year starting in 2017 until it hits $15 in 2021. After that, increases would be automatically tied to the cost of living. The cities of Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley have approved phased-in increases to eventually take their minimum wage to $15 an hour. The state council of SEIU also is collecting signatures for a competing minimum-wage initiative that would bring it to $15 by 2020, a year earlier, and provide six paid sick days annually. The union has pledged to spend $20 million to $30 million on a statewide campaign. Lawmakers are also considering whether to attempt to pass a minimum-wage increase through the Legislature. Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, cautioned supporters during his budget announcement earlier this month that increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour would cost the state general fund about $4 billion a year. The SEIU state council has said it hopes both measures can eventually merge to avoid voter confusion and present a unified campaign. The Fullerton Police Department is rolling out new patrol cars utility vehicles with more crime fighting features that are safer while being more efficient than the cars they are replacing. The department is transitioning from the Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptors, which are no longer produced, to Ford Police Interceptor utility vehicles. Four of the new models have already debuted in Fullertons 25-vehicle fleet. The department plans to purchase eight more in 2016 and eight in 2017, said Capt. John Siko, who is overseeing the transition of the entire fleet over the next few years. Fullerton typically replaces six to eight police vehicles a year, depending on wear and tear and mileage. The SUV provides a lot more vision for the officer because they sit up a lot higher, Siko said, adding it is a lot easier to put bad guys in the back. The new Interceptors are powered by a V6 engine, smaller than the V8 in the Crown Victoria. But, Fullerton police matched up the two models in a drag race on the runway of the Fullerton Airport and the SUV ran just as fast as the Crown Victoria, Siko said Because it is a bigger, heavier version, we thought it was going to be slower, he said. We put them head-to-head and they were equal. The Interceptors are equipped with beefed-up braking, cooling and suspension systems and operate on an all-wheel drive so torque is distributed to all four wheels. The vehicles can also switch automatically into Pursuit Mode based on a variety of factors it detects such as the rate of acceleration boosting the engines power and ability to switch from forward to reverse easily. Pursuit Mode is less fuel efficient. The Interceptors will house the departments 24Seven computer system designed by Fullerton Crime Analyst Tamra Otley displaying the previous days crime bulletins and names of parolees and sex offenders in town, along with other information, all which can be shared amongst officers in real time. The new Interceptors cost about $30,000 each, Chief Dan Hughes said, not including the cost of the communication systems. The old vehicles are typically sold at auctions with the proceeds going back into the vehicle replacement account, the chief said. AND A NEW LOGO While the department breaks out its new Interceptors, Hughes said it felt like a good time for a modern logo. The citys circular seal used on the doors now hasnt been changed much over the past 50 years. A committee spent several months crafting new designs. The new logos features the word FULLERTON in black lettering on the driver and passenger doors and below it the word POLICE in larger gray lettering. Also included is an American flag decal with a horizontal thin blue line across the center. The thin blue line is a universal symbol for law enforcement, Siko said, representing fallen officers and the relationship between the community and the police as protectors. The cost of applying the logo is about $150 per vehicle, the captain said. All vehicles are getting the new logo now. Nov. 12, 1924 Jan. 18, 2016 Ernest Wilbur Ross was born Nov 12, 1924, to Franz Oscar Ross and Esther Helen (Hurtig) Ross. Ernie was the youngest of nine children, Alf, Arnold, Amy, Walter, Leona, Harold, Evert, (Ernie) and Edith. The family lived on leased land from the Rose Bud Indian Reservation and ran a small store in Carter, South Dakota. In 1935, they moved to Crawfordsville to escape the persistent dust storms during the Great Depression. On the way, they stopped to pick potatoes, rest and make a little money in Idaho. His parents bought the Crawfordsville Market (still in operation by another family today) where Ernie worked part time while going to school. Ernie graduated from Sweet Home High School in 1942. He and his best friend were drafted into the army and assigned to the horse cavalry. In 1943, he was shipped to England where he was part of Patton's 3rd Army forces. In Germany he helped free prisoners of the Nazi concentration camp in Ohrdruf. Upon conclusion of the war he stayed on as part of the United States occupation forces, Special Investigation Services, as a Military Policeman in Germany and Austria. In October 1944, Ernie met Elizabeth Betty Plechl while delivering food with an army chow truck to USA border guards in Ach, Austria. Betty and her friend, Lisa, who lived close by the guard station liked to go dancing every Saturday in the town where Ernie was stationed. But, that Saturday evening it was not Terry driving the chow truck, but a young blond guy Ernie. The girls weren't sure about him, but, a close friend of theirs who did Ernie's laundry said he's very nice and trustworthy. You can go with him. Three years later, they were married and living in Lebanon with their son Ernie Jr.! Ernie returned to his previous job as a "pond man" at Nylund Lumber Company. In his "off" hours, he and Betty built their own home from scratch including pouring concrete, wiring, flooring, roofing, cabinet making, laying tile and plumbing. During construction three more children were born, who picked up many skills working alongside their parents. Ernie was instrumental in bringing his much loved wife's family to the United States from war-torn Europe. During the Korean War, Ernie served again as a Military Policeman in Pittsburgh, California in 1950. With the house construction completed, and children launched, Ernie and Betty enjoyed traveling throughout the United States, Canada and Europe visiting relatives and friends. After Nylund closed Ernie worked at Willamette Industries until his retirement. In retirement beautifully hand crafted furniture emerged from Ernie's workshop blessing many relatives and friends' homes. Ernie shared his many talents with anyone with a desire to learn. Through the years Ernie and Betty welcomed many relatives and friends to their home including extended stays by nieces and nephews and his mother and mother-in-law who stayed for years. In July 2015 Ernie invited Jesus into his life and joined St. Edwards Catholic church with the help and guidance of Father Peter O'Brien. Ernie enjoyed a mean game of cribbage and pinochle, but with Scrabble, Ernie took game playing to a new level. Ernie's loving smile, humility, faithfulness and unconditional love for Betty and family will be sorely missed. Ernie was preceded in death by his twin sons, infant Frank and adult Ernie Jr. Ernie is survived by his wife, Betty; children Linda (Doug) Grieve, Barb (Dan) Rider and Tom (Suzi) Ross; six grandchildren, Cindi, Tiffany, Chad, Tyler, Matt and Adam; many great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild. A service will be at 9:30 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016, at St. Edwards Catholic Church, 100 Main St., Lebanon. A recitation of the rosary will be at 9:30 a.m. will Mass at 10, followed by a reception. SEOUL, South Korea U.S. and South Korean officials vowed Wednesday to make North Korea pay a high price for its defiant nuclear test earlier this month that caused worries about advancement in the Norths bomb program. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in South Korea on a diplomatic push for tougher sanctions that can force change in the North. Key to those efforts is whether China, the Norths last major ally and a veto-wielding U.N. Security Council member, will join in imposing any harsh punishment on the North. We couldnt agree more on the need for a very clear and very strong international response, Blinken said at the start of a meeting with South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se. Blinken said Seoul and Washington are working closely in New York with the United Nations Security Council Yun said it is time for the international community to stay united to make North Korea face the consequences for its bomb test. This is North Korea versus international community, he said. North Korea says it conducted a hydrogen bomb test on Jan. 6. Many governments and experts remain highly skeptical about the Norths claim, but whatever device North Korea detonated will likely push the country a step closer toward its goal of manufacturing a miniaturized warhead to place on a missile that can threaten the U.S. mainland. After the bomb test, the rival Koreas resumed psychological warfare with Seoul blasting anti-Pyongyang broadcasts from border loudspeakers, while Pyongyang does the same and also floats propaganda leaflets over the border by balloon, according to South Korean officials. In a city built on luring tourists with cheap thrills and free cocktails, a big part of the Las Vegas Strip will soon slash its most basic freebie: parking. MGM Resorts International announced Jan. 15 that it will become the first major casino company to start charging visitors for parking. The move could bring in millions of dollars annually and dramatically change a tourism hot spot that increasingly caters to visitors who come for pricey attractions besides gambling. Experts called the parking fee surprising, but it follows another trend MGM pioneered: the resort fee, now the standard on the Strip. Sin Citys largest hotel-casino operator said it will charge up to $10 for overnight self-parking at most of its Strip properties starting this spring, coinciding with the April opening of the Las Vegas-based companys T-Mobile Arena. MGM Resorts has 35,310 rooms and 37,000 parking spots on the Strip, which come at a premium during major events. The parking fees will be charged at Mandalay Bay, Delano, Luxor, Excalibur, Monte Carlo, New York-New York, Vdara, Aria, Bellagio, the Mirage and MGM Grand. Valet parking will cost more, but some parking at the Circus Circus hotel and the Crystals and Mandalay Bay Place shopping centers will still be free, as will MGMs properties in Mississippi, Michigan and China. Parking at some Strip hotels will be cheaper than others, and Clark County residents will get a grace period. Those in MGMs loyalty program can earn free parking rewards. The fees fall in line with casinos focus on growing their database of gamblers through reward programs, according to gambling analyst Alex Bumazhny with Fitch Ratings. As a leader in the convention business, MGM also may see it as a small addition for business travelers with expense accounts, though $10 is much higher than the $4 charged by casinos in rival Atlantic City, Bumazhny said. Many of the MGM properties charging for parking are on the southern end of the Strip, which could make it less likely that a visitor heading to a specific restaurant or show would park elsewhere. I dont know that people will try to game the system. People will accept it or (itll) turn them off and they may try another property, said Bumazhny, predicting that the fees will cut into MGM revenue from its restaurants and hotels. Customers near and far vowed on social media to take their business elsewhere, even urging a letter-writing campaign to the company. The fees shake up a long-held entitlement of free parking among locals, said Michael Green, a history professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. They expect tourists to foot the bill on amenities that locals enjoy, he said. Gambling revenue used to offset those costs easily, but the focus has shifted to other offerings since Nevada stopped being the only state with legal gambling in 1978, the professor said. Thats one reason to move to fee-based parking 70 percent of MGMs revenue comes from outside the casino, including celebrity restaurants, high-end shops, shows and nightclubs, said Corey Sanders, the companys chief operating officer. Though MGM may be the first to disrupt the Strips parking model, Sanders said he believes competitors will follow suit. It took about five years for Strip properties to take up the resort fees that MGM started in 2008, Bumazhny said. Therell be initial backlash, but a month from now, three months from now, people will completely forget about it, Sanders said. In general, these decisions are really hard decisions to make, but I think we have enough positive things to say about it and are creating enough enhancements to justify it. MGM said it is also building a 3,000-space parking garage at the Excalibur site and making $36 million in upgrades to existing ones, using the new parking revenue to help offset some of its costs. Across the Strip, it remains to be seen whether competitors will take up the concept. The Cosmopolitan casino-hotel says it doesnt have plans to follow MGM Resorts footsteps but said its always evaluating the business. Other major casino operators have not commented. Fifty-eight percent of the citys 41 million visitors in 2014 drove to Las Vegas, the tourism officials said. But Green, the historian, warned the costs would likely further alienate residents. Locals tend to increasingly feel priced out of the Strip, he said. Its catering to big-money visitors, but actually it always did that. Locals just happen to get the benefits. Now there seem to be fewer benefits. Westminster police say they are are searching for a man who is believed to have shot his girlfriend during a domestic dispute Monday. Authorities received a 911 call about 5:30 p.m. for a shooting at a home in the 15100 block of Vermont Street, according to Sgt. Eddie Esqueda, spokesman for the Westminster Police Department. When officers arrived, they found a woman had been shot and her boyfriend, suspected to be the shooter, had fled. She was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries but the man, Abdul Rashad Bynum, was nowhere to be found. Investigators learned that the pair had been arguing and Bynum, 31, pulled out a gun. The woman, who has not been identified, and other family members hid from Bynum inside a bedroom. Bynum is suspected of shooting one round through the bedroom door, striking the adult female, Esqueda said. He is wanted on suspicion of attempted murder. No one else was injured. Bynum drove off before police arrived in a black Chrysler 300 sedan with the license plate number 7CGP801. He is described by police as 5-feet, 10-inches tall, weighing 200 pounds with black hair and brown eyes. Police say he has a thick Jamaican accent and should be considered armed and dangerous. Anyone with information is asked to call 911, Detective J. Wilson at the Westminster Police Department at 714-548-3212 or Orange County Crime Stoppers at 1-855-TIPS-OCCS. Contact the writer: 714-796-7865 or afausto@ocregister.com If you bought a house last year, it was reassessed by the Tax Man and youre paying property taxes based on that new value. If youre a business, and youre crafty, thats often not the case. This has infuriated critics for decades, and spawned myriad failed attempts to revamp the sacrosanct Proposition 13. A new bill by state Sen. Pat Bates, R-Laguna Niguel, aims to close a loophole that billionaires regularly sail through. Bates approach is backed by the likes of the Howard Jarvis Tax Association, which authored Prop. 13 and generally opposes attempts to monkey with it. It also has staunch critics, however, who say it will create an entirely new class of protected businesses. Senate Bill 259 specifically targets transactions like the one put together in 2006 for Michael Dell, the billionaire of Dell Computer fame. Dell agreed to buy Santa Monicas Fairmont Miramar Hotel for $200 million, but backed out of that deal after his lawyers figured out a way to keep the luxurious property from being reassessed. They simply ensured that no one got majority control. Instead, 49 percent was sold to the property trust of Dells wife, Susan Dell; 42.5 percent went to Dells MSD Capital LP; and the remaining 8.5 percent went to a third entity, in which Michael Dell held majority control. Thanks to the vagaries of Prop. 13 which only triggers reassessment of commercial property when a full 50 percent of control passes to a single entity the Fairmont was not reassessed, thus saving the Dells some $1 million a year in property taxes, according to Los Angeles County. Los Angeles fought to reassess the property, and lost. Bates bill would trigger reassessment when 90 percent or more of ownership interests are sold or transferred within three years, even if no one gets a majority interest. Proposition 13 exists to ensure that property taxes do not go out of control for any California homeowner or business. It does not exist to enable some to avoid paying the property taxes they legitimately owe, said Bates in a prepared statement. The bill was approved on a 6-0 vote in the Senate Governance and Finance Committee on Jan. 13. SB 259 has been introduced to correct an outdated interpretation of change of ownership that we believe is the subject of multiple instances of illegitimate tax evasion, says a support letter from David Wolfe of the Jarvis group. HTJA has always believed that anyone, individual or business, should pay the property taxes they legitimately owe. If the law is being abused in such a way that leads to unfair tax policy, it should be corrected. Not everyone agrees that this is the way to fix things. Lipstick on a pig, said Lenny Goldberg, who has been trying to undo what he considers the unfair provisions of Prop. 13 ever since it became law. Its attempting to put a gloss on a broken system. It still allows the loopholes to be used, and adds a new class of protected properties. Because stock sales in publicly-traded corporations or partnerships would not trigger commercial reassessments under Bates bill, the Disneys of the world would be permanently protected, Goldberg charges. (C)orporations such as Chevron and Intel will continue to be assessed at 1975 values, an absurd tax policy that will continue despite the fact that their stock ownership has changed hands many times since 1978, says a letter of opposition from Goldbergs California Tax Reform Association, signed by him and Sandra Corbin. The inequity created here will magnify the benefit to publicly-traded corporations as opposed to privately-held property, a distinction with no meaning in property tax law and which has already permitted 40 years of tax avoidance. Bates bill would raise about $26 million more a year in property taxes. Goldberg might call that a spit in the ocean, as Californians paid $58 billion in property taxes in 2013-14, according to the California Legislative Analyst. SB 259 not only fails to accomplish its purpose, but it also makes inequities in the system worse, Goldberg said. Were happy that everyone has finally recognized that it is a completely broken system, and that theres a growing movement for change. But this is meaningless, he said. The bill now goes to the Senate Appropriations Committee for consideration. It would require a two-thirds vote by the Legislature, and the governors signature, before becoming law. Contact the writer: tsforza@ocregister.com BEIRUT The extremist militia Islamic State on Tuesday confirmed the death of one of its executioners, a Kuwaiti-born British national nicknamed Jihadi John by Western media. He was killed in a U.S. drone strike Nov. 12 in the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa, Syria, the group said in its English-language propaganda magazine Dabiq. The Pentagon on Nov. 13 had said it had a great deal of confidence that Mohammed Emwazi, who became infamous from beheading videos in which he spoke with a London accent, was evaporated in a strike against a car. Emwazi first surfaced in a video in the beheading of U.S. journalist James Foley in August 2014. Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said Emwazi participated in the videos showing the killings of U.S. journalist Steven Sotloff, U.S. aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig, British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, Japanese journalist Kenji Goto and other Islamic State hostages. In a three-page article, Dabiq praised Emwazi as a martyr who had fought in the Syrian civil war since 2012 beginning with the al-Qaida linked Nusra Front. Meanwhile, scores of Syrian regime forces and Islamic State militants were killed during clashes between the two sides over the past two days in eastern Syria, a monitoring group said Tuesday. At least 120 Syrian soldiers and their allies were killed; 40 of them were executed when Islamic State militants attacked the regime-held area of al-Baghaliyeh, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported. The Britain-based monitoring group said that 70 militants from Islamic State were killed, 28 of them suicide attackers. In recent weeks, Islamic State strongholds in Syria have been the target of intensified airstrikes separately mounted by a U.S.-led alliance and Russia. Russian officers and engineers arrived in Qamishli, one of only two areas in the mainly Kurdish-held northeast, where government forces retain a presence, to study the possible expansion of the airport there. Russia started airstrikes in Syria in support of the government in September. Moscow has supported the Kurds against rebel forces in recent weeks. In al-Hassakeh province in the northeast, the Observatory said that U.S. forces have almost finished preparing an airbase that could be used for U.S. planes to strike Islamic State bases across Syria. American technicians have been working for the past few weeks to expand and prepare the agricultural airport at Rumeilan with a runway specialized for warplanes. The area is controlled by Kurdish forces which have been Washingtons main ally on the ground against the extremist militia. The airbase will also serve as headquarters for Americans who have entered Syrian territory, the Observatory said. In October, the U.S. announced that a contingent of fewer than 50 special forces would be sent to Syria to coordinate with local forces against Islamic State. Meanwhile, new humanitarian deliveries were made Monday to the pro-regime Shiite villages of Foua and Kefraya besieged by hardline Islamist rebels since April in northwestern Syria, and Madaya on the outskirts of Damascus. Reports of starvation in Madaya, a mountain town with 40,000 people near the Lebanese border and besieged by regime forces, triggered a global outcry. The United Nations says nearly 400,000 of the 4.5 million people living in what it terms hard-to-reach areas in Syria are living under siege. More than 250,000 people are estimated to have been killed in Syrias conflict since it started in 2011. Peace talks are to be held next week in Geneva, but the U.S. expressed skepticism that the meetings will begin as planned Jan. 25. Quite a bit of work is still needed to make the meeting occur, State Department spokesman John Kirby said. The United Nations on Monday had yet to issue invitations for the Syria peace talks because key countries have not agreed on who should represent the opposition, a U.N. spokesman said. 2016 Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH (Hamburg, Germany) Visit Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH (Hamburg, Germany) at www.dpa.de/English.82.0.html Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Topics: t000141113,t000029726,t000002537,t000002707,g000362697,g000362669,g000219715 It was June 27, 1988, and Andrew Trejo was about to graduate from fifth grade. His mother, Kristyne Olivia Trejo, had promised him she would be at the ceremony at Fremont Elementary School in Santa Ana. He spotted his grandparents in the crowd, but saw no sign of Trejo, who had planned to attend a drug addiction recovery meeting earlier that morning. I cried, Andrew Trejo, who was 10 years old at the time, said Tuesday. I hoped she would be back in time. He would never see her alive again. In the 28 years since Kristyne Trejo disappeared, her family filed a missing persons report, hired private investigators, and had her case aired on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, to no avail. Last week, the family finally learned her fate. Law enforcement agencies had matched DNA from Trejos relatives with a skull and arm bone found in November 1989 in the remote desert area of Pinon Hills in San Bernardino County. Im sad that were not bringing her home alive, but at least we have her, Andrew Trejo said at a press conference at the Santa Ana Police Department. We can properly lay her to rest and can start the process of healing. Last year, an investigator working the case informed Trejos family of Orange Countys first Identify the Missing event where those with missing loved ones could submit DNA to be matched against collected unidentified remains. Though skeptical, Andrew Trejo, his sister, Tina Marie Costa, 33, and her daughter, as well as Kristyne Trejos brother and aunt, went and submitted to cheek swabs. In all, 34 families gave 47 DNA samples at the October event. Kristyne Trejos DNA had been in a federal database for years, after the bones were tested in 2005 at a California Department of Justice lab and results were obtained in 2008. The family said they visited the area where she was found on Friday. That there just was horrible to know that somebody would really leave somebody out there to be by themselves, Costa said. How and when Trejo died is still unknown, but there is an open homicide investigation, said San Bernardino Coroner Investigator Bob Hunter. Communication will need to take place between San Bernardino homicide and our folks so they can start seeing what they can piece together, said Carlos Rojas, chief of the Santa Ana Police Department. Trejo worked as a waitress and had been living alternately with her parents and children and at an Orange County drug recovery center. Me and my brother gave her strength, said an emotional Costa, who was 5 years old when her mother went missing. Andrew Trejo, now 37 and working as an Orange County gravedigger, said his mother never would have left her children. She disappeared on us before, but never for that amount of time, he said. Family members never thought of anyone who would wanted to hurt Trejo, but questions remained about her then-husband, who is the siblings father. Ive asked him personally, and hes always denied knowing anything, her son said. The September after Trejo went missing, a weird telephone call was placed to her parents home on her sons birthday. Andrew Trejo picked it up and heard someone breathing and weeping. For some reason I said, Mom is that you?, he said. I heard weeping and some crying and then they just hung up. The family plans to bury Trejo in a private ceremony. Like Orange County, the San Bernardino County coroner hosted a DNA collection event in June. They are close to matching a DNA sample from that day to unidentified remains in another county, Hunter said. Each county has hundreds of unidentified bodies, officials have said. More such events are needed, they said. This needs to be a national event annually for every county in the United States, Hunter said. Contact the writer: 714-796-2478 or lcasiano@ocregister.com Buford Arning, a retired building supply executive in Statesville, N.C., went to church each week until a pinched nerve made it hard for him to leave his house. He believes in living a faith-filled life. But he does not demand piety of his preferred presidential candidate, Donald Trump. Am I a Bible toter that gets out and preaches on the side of the street and tries to convert everybody? No, said Arning, 62, who calls himself an evangelical voter. He said he believed that Trump was a Christian man, and that was good enough. Trump may not be as spiritually minded as former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, who was a Southern Baptist minister, but I think his values are very much the same, Arning said. His personal life is saintlike compared to Bill Clintons, he added. Brash, thrice-married, cosseted in a gilded tower high above Fifth Avenue and fond of swearing from the stage at his rallies, Trump, who has spent his career in pursuit, and praise, of wealth, would seem an odd fit for voters who place greater value on faith, hope and charity. Yet polls increasingly show Trump well in front of the crowded Republican field among white evangelical voters, despite competition including Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, whose father is an evangelical pastor; Huckabee, the 2008 Iowa caucus winner; former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a Roman Catholic whose story of raising a daughter with a disability struck a chord with voters and helped push him to victory in the 2012 Iowa caucuses; and Ben Carson, a Seventh-day Adventist who brought prayer into the operating room as a neurosurgeon and has spoken frequently about his Christian beliefs as a candidate. A New York Times/CBS News poll last week showed Trump, a Presbyterian, dominating the field with 42 percent of evangelical voters; Cruz was second with 25 percent. In dozens of interviews with evangelical voters in 16 states, from every region of the country outside the Northeast, those supporting Trump sounded a familiar refrain: that his heart was in the right place, that his intentions for the country were pure, that he alone was capable of delivering to a troubled country salvation in the here and now. He is the only one who can pull us back from the abyss, said John Juvenal, 67, a lifelong Republican and retired police officer from Oklahoma City. Strong support among conservative Christians could help Trump regain his lead in Iowa, where Cruz has pulled ahead in the polls. And Trump is making an effort to convert them. Last Sunday, he assured CNN that he had a great relationship with God. I try and do nothing thats bad, he said. I live a very different life than probably a lot of people would think. On Monday, Trump spoke at Liberty University, the Lynchburg, Va., institution founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell. Trump has been wooing Jerry Falwell Jr., and Falwell lavished praise on him, comparing Trump to Jesus and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. for voicing unpopular thoughts. Larry Ryman, a 74-year-old street preacher who lives near Findlay, Ohio, said he did not know whether Trump was a man of God. Ill tell you what, said Ryman, a staunch supporter of Trump. If he isnt, hes talking like it. In the interviews, many evangelicals said they saw Trump as a decent man who simply wanted to get things done. Weve had an administration the last eight years of someone that never, ever hired anybody and was responsible for a payroll, who filled 90 percent of his Cabinet with academia, teachers and professors, Arning said. I want a guy thats run a business. I dont care if its a bulldozer and hes cleared lots for 20 years. For many others, Trump speaks the truth and mirrors what they are feeling: fevered anger at President Barack Obama, distress about the economy and fear that terrorists could pose as Syrian refugees to infiltrate the U.S. heartland. Rather than recoiling from his harsh language about immigrants and insults of people he dislikes, these voters said Trump was merely being honest. Spirituality is a big issue, but we need somebody whos strong, said Charles E. Henderson, 61, a disabled veteran from Lexington, Ky., who grew up attending a Nazarene church. He called Trump outspoken and decisive, adding, Lots of times the preachers and everything, they have a tendency to be just a little bit weak. Evangelical voters are hardly monolithic in their political views, and plenty said they were leery of Trump. Margaret Chapman, 83, a retired nurse from Sierra Vista, Ariz., who attends a nondenominational Christian church, said she supported Cruz, whom she deemed a man of faith and a total family man. She noted Trumps past, saying: Just from his past life, he didnt seem very godly. I cant see that he has really changed, but maybe he has. Deryck Mullady, 34, of Cincinnati said Trump had said things that were totally against what Jesus taught and what we read in the Bible. He said he disapproved of some of his Christian friends who, in past elections, emphasized the religious conviction of the candidates they voted for but say it doesnt matter now and are backing Trump. And Sherrie Haussecker, 55, who attends a nondenominational church every week in Indianapolis, said she found Trumps message deeply negative. Not all Christians that say theyre Christians are Christians, she said. With a few taps on my phone, I summon a driver and his immaculate Nissan Maxima to a quiet Santa Ana street. I track his approach from the I-5 while I wait. Ubers app displays my drivers first name, Ahmad, his photo, vehicle make and model and license plate number, along with his user rating. He greets me with a huge smile, easy laugh and were off, listening to the Beastie Boys Brass Monkey. Ahmad arrived five minutes after I plotted a trip to Laguna Beach using UberX, the least-expensive option in the Uber ride-sourcing fleet. The app spat out estimated fares between $24 and $32 and showed me three available drivers in the area. It assigned Ahmad since he was the closest. App-based, on-demand ride services like Uber have become increasingly popular. While its hard to pinpoint how many consumers are using them, Ubers recent $18.2 billion valuation and pushback from the taxi industry offer proof of its rising popularity. The utility of these services is apparent in dense cities like San Francisco and New York, where cabs have long been a part of daily life. Some argue the taxi industry was ripe for disruption due to regulations, monopolies, restricted supply and service-quality issues. In sprawling Los Angeles and Orange County, youre more likely to see a celebrity or surfer than a hailable taxi. Still, the market for Uber-like services is less obvious here, given the high rate of car ownership and the long distances people travel. Depending on your budget, the convenience of ditching your car in Southern California may or may not be justified by the cost. INDUSTRY DISRUPTION These new car services have put the taxi and limousine industry in a frenzy. In a February report, market research firm IBISWorld noted the biggest technological impact on the (taxi and limousine) industry over the past five years has been the introduction of transportation network companies such as Uber that connect passengers with drivers through mobile applications. Such innovations threaten to fundamentally change the way the industry operates, the report says. The Taxicab Paratransit Association of California opposed the California Public Utilities Commissions decision to create a special transportation network company category to regulate services such as Uber, Sidecar and Lyft. The commission said these services filled streets with more traffic and distracted, inadequately screened drivers with insufficient insurance, according to a statement. State regulations require the new car services to provide criminal background checks, a 19-point vehicle inspection and commercial liability insurance coverage of at least $1 million per incident while in service. Earlier this year, ride-sharing companies, state legislators and taxi firms tussled over exactly how much insurance ride-sharing drivers must carry. A bill recently approved by the Legislature requires the following insurance minimums for ride-sharing drivers: at least $50,000 per person and $100,000 per incident for death and personal injury, and $30,000 for property damage once the driver is available. They must also provide an additional $200,000 in excess liability coverage when the drivers personal policy is insufficient. Once signed by the Governor, the bill should go into effect in July. While these services appear to be competing with cabs in the area, they also are creating a fresh desire for on-demand drivers. They can help fill a gap and provide more competition in areas where there may be less competition, says Ross Rubin, a Reticle Research analyst. I can go to West Hollywood, have a blast, eat and drink and not worry, says Long Beach Realtor Sal Saenz, 53, of using Uber. Sometimes I would drive when I probably shouldnt have, which weve all done. But now its so easy you can actually see how far they are from your house and can see their little car driving up the street. You know theyre really on their way. Saenz has taken Uber from a friends home in Seal Beach to a party in downtown Santa Ana or Long Beach for dinner or drinks. You dont have to have money with you, he says, since the app automatically charges a credit card on file or PayPal or Google Wallet accounts. It makes so much sense. Theres no reason to drive. TRIP TO THE BEACH The utility and cost of Uber was demonstrated in my recent trip to Laguna Beach. I arrive at Main Beach in less than 35 minutes, thank my driver and hop out of the car. Uber emails me a receipt with address and time of my pickup and drop-off, distance traveled and a breakdown of my $41.41 fare. (The fare is higher than estimated because we took the 73 Freeway, which added a $7.35 toll. In all fairness, I had declined my drivers offer to let me choose my route, something I would change on my next venture.) After an hour watching the enormous waves and frying my pale skin in the sun, I stand at the intersection of Ocean and South Coast Highway and request another UberX ride. But the app says no UberX is available. I can get an UberBLACK (think Lincoln Town Car) back to Santa Ana for an estimated $76 to $99 or an UberSUV (think Cadillac Escalade) for roughly $96 to $123. I start to panic and check UberXs once more before pulling the trigger. Ah-hah! One is in the area for an estimated $24 to $32. Sold. I request my ride and watch as the app tracks the drivers approach on the opposite side of South Coast Highway. My driver, Ruslan, texts me that hes in a parking lot next to a bar. Im a little lost but can see a blue icon (me) on the map moving toward his parked Ford Explorer. He opens the door to the back seat for me, and, oh joy, air-conditioning! About 28 minutes later Im back in Santa Ana and my credit card has been charged $28.03. CONCLUSION I wouldnt ordinarily indulge in a $70 trip to the beach, but it would be tempting for a night on the town, especially if divided among friends. Contact the writer: musheroff@ocregister.com HONOLULU Health officials say a baby born in a Hawaii hospital is the first in the U.S. with a birth defect linked to the Zika virus, a tropical illness currently found in Latin American and Caribbean countries. The Hawaii state Department of Health said the babys mother likely contracted the disease while living in Brazil last year and passed it on while her child was in the womb. Here are some questions and answers about the case. Q. IS THERE A RISK THE VIRUS WILL SPREAD IN HAWAII? A. Not from this case. The Zika virus is spread when a mosquito bites an infected person and then bites someone else. It is not transmitted from person to person. Dr. Sarah Park, the Hawaii state epidemiologist, said Tuesday the mother no longer had the virus when she arrived in Hawaii and the baby no longer had it at the time of birth. There was no chance a mosquito could have bitten them and spread it to others. One of the mosquitoes that can carry the virus, Aedes aegypti, is not common in Hawaii. It has been found in some pockets of the islands and is blamed for an ongoing outbreak on the Big Island of the dengue virus, which is spread the same way as Zika. Dengue can cause high fever, headache, nausea and other symptoms. Q. HAVE PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES CONTRACTED THE VIRUS BEFORE? A. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said at least 26 travelers returning to the U.S. have been diagnosed with Zika since 2007 all of them believed to have caught it overseas. In addition, a person in Puerto Rico who had not traveled was diagnosed with the illness. On Tuesday, Illinois said two pregnant women tested positive for the virus after traveling to countries where Zika is found. Physicians are monitoring their health and pregnancies. Since 2014, the state of Hawaii has documented six people as having caught the virus in other countries, but there is no sign the disease spread to other people in the islands. Q. HOW DOES THE VIRUS AFFECT PEOPLE? A. Zika causes only a mild illness in most people. Those infected can show fever, rash and joint pain that may last several days to a week. In Brazil, which is combatting a large outbreak, there has been a significant increase in cases of a birth defect linked to Zika. The birth defect is called microcephaly and involves babies being born with smaller than expected heads that may not have developed properly. Dr. Cynthia Moore of the CDC told reporters during a conference call last week that its hard to predict at birth how the condition will affect a child. But in severe cases, babies with microcephaly may have seizures, vision problems and developmental disabilities. Q. WHAT ARE MEDICAL EXPERTS ADVISING PEOPLE TO DO? A. The CDC has issued an alert asking women at any stage of pregnancy to postpone travel to 14 destinations in Latin America and the Caribbean. The agency also has advised U.S. travelers to take steps to protect themselves against mosquito bites if they visit places in Latin America or the Caribbean where Zika has been spreading. The advice includes wearing long sleeves and long pants and using insect repellent. Park said the Hawaii case is a reminder that theres potential for diseases to be introduced to new areas. Its a global village, people travel easily from various areas. You cant just say that were so far away from where the disease is normally recognized that theres no possibility of ever seeing it where we live, Park said. She urged people in Hawaii to get rid of potential mosquito breeding sites around their property. Standing on the footbridge leading into the heart of the Bolsa Chica wetlands, Shirley Dettloff reflected on the 40-year path to this spot in space and time. The 80-year-old former mayor of Huntington Beach and one of the founding members of Amigos de Bolsa Chica can sometimes hardly believe what she and her small group achieved. We are ordinary people who did extraordinary things, Dettloff said. On a sunny, windy morning, Dettloff watched the customary parade of joggers, walkers, photographers, bird-watchers and a school group on a field trip enter the thriving 1,500-acre wetlands. Forty years ago, Dettloff was one of about 25 local residents who joined forces to fight plans to develop the area with thousands of homes and even a marina in one of the few remaining areas of coastal wetlands in the state. To do that, the Amigos had to fight off corporations, lobbyists and politicians and even a state that back then had few of the environmental protections and groups that now safeguard the coast. It was unbelievable, the odds against us, said Huntington Beach resident Tom Livengood, 77, a two-time president of the Amigos. This year, the Amigos de Bolsa Chica will celebrate 40 years as the original and now leading environmental advocates for the coastal wetlands with a variety of events. On Jan. 19, the group that held its first formal public meeting on Jan. 16, 1976, was recognized by the Huntington Beach City Council. The reason I like this anniversary, Dettloff said, is the fact that people who worked so hard and never were noticed will be recognized. Like many pioneers, Dettloff has said that had she and her comrades known what they were getting into, they might have thought twice. I dont think the early band of Amigos would have signed on if they had known what lay ahead, Dettloff said, noting the decades-long battle through federal and state commissions, the courts, the Legislature, county supervisors and city councils. Then, after a moments reflection, she admitted she probably would have taken it on anyway. When the Amigos were formed with the help of the League of Women Voters and the American Association of University Women, two organizations opposed to the development of the wetlands, they were babes in the political woods. No reasonable observer would have predicted they would succeed. At the time, the Coastal Act and California Coastal Commission were in their infancy. The Amigos were fighting to save a degraded, dirty oil field. Most folks called it a swamp, as the term wetlands was not yet in vogue. Huntington Beach was still connected to its roots as an oil city. And Bolsa Chica was adjacent to Huntington Harbour, which to many was a positive example of how a dirty old swamp could be made into something beautiful and lucrative. When we started, (environmentalists) were one step from being considered hippies, Dettloff said. We had to make people see we were thinking human beings. In 1970, Signal Landmark purchased 2,000 acres of then-decrepit but valuable seaside property with the goal of creating an elegant residential community and a marina much like the adjacent man-made harbor to the north. Huntington Harbour had been created with little dissent, so there was no reason to expect the Marina Plan for the new development to face significant obstacles. The proposed development had a lot of support from elected officials, Livengood said. But Dettloff and others wanted no part of another development, especially with wetlands disappearing up and down the coast and along the Pacific Flyway for migratory birds. Whatever the Amigos lacked in money, political connections and acumen in the early years, they would pick up along the way. Going through the crucible of public and governmental hearings, debates, presentations and votes, one thing became clear while passion rallied the troops and burned within, science and facts won the day. Every member of the Amigos was educated on the scientific value of wetlands, Dettloff said. Former adversaries admit the rational, scientific approach worked well for the Amigos. The dynamic was very different, said Peter Denniston, a former president and chief executive of Signal Landmark for two years in the late 1980s. Often you deal with extremists or eco-terrorists who want to stop anything period. About the Amigos, Denniston, who would later lead successful development efforts in Playa Vista and the Ballona Wetlands area, said, They were not extremists. Obviously they were conservationists who were committed to the environment. Over the years, buoyed along by shifting public attitudes, strengthened environmental regulations, strong legal support, and relentless lobbying and campaigning, the Amigos incrementally won decisions and support. In 1997, the group achieved its biggest victory when the state purchased 880 acres of Bolsa Chica. Although oil companies continue to operate at the eastern edges of the wetlands and a portion of a mesa has been developed, the bulk of the wetlands is now open space and habitat for birds and fish. After the land was acquired, efforts turned from preservation to restoration. Much of the money for Bolsa Chicas restoration came from mitigation funds from expansion of the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. In 2006, a $147 million project opened a channel from the ocean to the wetlands for the first time since 1899. The move greatly expanded the open water. About 50 species of fish, including sharks and stingrays, have been found since the channel opened. Today, much of the Amigos activities revolve around outreach, partnering with the Bolsa Chica Conservancy, a group formed in 1990 to help maintain the ecosystem and educate children. As Dettloff watches several ducks paddling across the water, she talks about the enduring lesson. Fighting for something thats important is the obligation of every citizen, she said. Law enforcement officers arrested Eugene-area residents Jessup Bittner, 41, and Melissa Kittell, 44, Wednesday morning following a 10-mile car chase and search at the Santiam River Southbound Rest Area north of Albany. According to a news release, an Oregon State Police trooper attempted to stop a red Ford Ranger driven by Bittner on Interstate 5 southbound near milepost 249 for a traffic violation around 9:40 a.m. Bittner attempted to elude the trooper and exited at the rest area. During the pursuit, it was determined that the vehicle was stolen. At least 15 members of law enforcement, an OSP aircraft and a Linn County Sheriff's Office patrol boat, as well as a Salem Police K-9 unit, searched for Bittner and Kittell, his passenger, after they pulled into the rest area. OSP officials say Bittner forced a woman from her car in an unsuccessful attempt to steal it. Bittner and Kittell then fled into a large wooded area between the Willamette and Santiam rivers. "It's an ominously large area to search," said Lt. Tim Fox of the Oregon State Police. OSP troopers, along with the Marion County Sheriff's Office, Linn County Sheriff's Office and Salem Police Department, set up a perimeter in the area. With help from an OSP airplane, the pair were spotted and caught almost two hours after the chase began. The plane was able to direct officers and the patrol boat to the suspects' area. The Salem PD Patrol K9 located Bittner and Kittell a short time later. Bittner suffered multiple dog bites when he was captured, and both were treated for hypothermia. Both were lodged in the Marion County Jail. Bittner was booked for unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, possession of a stolen vehicle, attempt to elude in both a vehicle and on foot, and reckless driving. Kittell was booked for unauthorized use of a vehicle, possession of a stolen vehicle and attempt to elude on foot. Any other pending crimes will be referred to the Marion County DA. Wal-Mart is giving a raise to more than 1.1 million workers next month, a bigger wage increase than the countrys largest private employer had previously announced. Under the plan, hourly employees will get either a raise to at least $10 an hour or at least a 2 percent increase, the company said Wednesday in a statement. The new minimum pay for top-level hourly employees will increase to $15 an hour from $13, according to memo given to employees. All workers will make at least $10 an hour, which the company had previously announced. Chief Executive Officer Doug McMillon has been raising wages since last year in a bid to retain and attract better workers as worlds biggest retailer tries to improve the quality of its U.S stores. The company started raising its minimum wage last year to $9 an hour and had announced plans to lift its base pay again this year to $10. But that move upset many long-time employees, who said it was unfair to senior workers who got no increase and would be making the same or close to what newer, less- experienced colleagues earn. With Devon Modsters commitment Monday to UCLA, Servite safety/cornerback Keyon Riley (6-2, 195) now ranks as Orange Countys top uncommitted recruit in the class of 2016. For the honor, Riley edges San Clemente offensive lineman Donte Harrington, whose stock has risen in recent weeks. Riley said Tuesday night that he has narrowed his decision to UCLA and Colorado State but hasnt made an official visit to either school. The good news for Riley is that he said both schools are not pressuring him for a decision. He played safety and corner for Servite and runs the 400 meters for the Friars in track. Read more about Riley in Dan Albanos recruiting notes on Friday. Corporate and financial PR agency Intermarket Communications has appointed Michael Kingsley to the role of senior account supervisor. Michael Kingsley Kingsley was previously vice president and head of media relations at brokerage and trading services firm Convergex, which he joined in 2013 and oversaw media and PR. Prior to that, he counseled clients and internal teams on media strategy at Emanate PR, where he served as vice president. Kingsley, who has a journalism and media production background, was formerly a TV producer at Bloomberg Television and the Fox News Channel. At Intermarket, Kingsley will oversee communications initiatives for the agencys financial services clients, which includes asset managers, investment banks and exchanges. New York-based Intermarket, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, recently added a bevy of new clients to its roster, including AcadiaSoft, Arthveda Capital, Bank Leumi USA, Broadhaven Capital Partners, Reaves Asset Management and RBC Wealth Management. The independent agency in a statement said it is currently boosting staff in response to both a surge in business and a recent diversification of key practice areas, which now includes food, nutrition and education. Other recent hires at the agency include senior account executive Eleis Brennan, and assistant account executive Benjamin Sheng. Intermarket saw net fees of more than $3.8 million in 2014, making them among the top 10 agencies for financial PR and investor relations, according to ODwyers rankings of PR firms. Media relations and corporate communications agency Global Communicators, LLC has appointed Philippe Bartholin to the role of senior account executive. Phillippe Bartholin Before joining Global Communicators, Bartholin was a business development manager at Patton Boggs LLP, which he joined in 2010. Prior to that he was a business development specialist at The Louis Berger Group, Inc. At Global Communicators, Bartholin will direct the agencys consulting work with Stonehouse Water Technologies, a Milwaukee-based designer of water purification systems. Hell also provide counsel for GCs work with the Caribbean Export Development Agency, the trade and investment promotion group that hosts the annual Caribbean Investment Summit, and will work on the development of a global branding blueprint for American University in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Sarajevo. Global Communicators president and CEO Jim Harff referred to Bartholin as a colleague whose corporate and academic background in international strategic communications and management fits so compatibly with GCs mission over almost two decades. Washington, DC-based Global Communicators, whose services include travel and tourism, environment, economic development, government affairs and crisis communications, was founded in 1997. Chicago-based Henson Consulting has appointed Kris Garvey to the position of senior strategist and director of operations, a newly minted position for the agency. Kris Garvey Garvey arrives at Henson from MSLGroup, where she served as deputy managing director and consumer practice leader for the Publicis PR units Chicago office. Prior to that, Garvey was executive vice president and deputy general manager at Weber Shandwicks Chicago office, a position she held for 10 years. She previously served as vice president at Edelman as well. At Henson, Garvey will guide agency operations and lend ongoing support for staff, practice leaders and founder and CEO Kathleen Henson. Henson in a statement called Garvey one of those rare leaders in the public relations industry who has equal amounts of passion and energy for driving creativity and strategic direction for her client business and providing operations excellence to ensure the agency is set up for success. Founded in 2001, full-service agency Henson Consulting staffs 41 and celebrates its 15-year anniversary this month. A District Court judge gave gardai ten minutes on Monday last to shut down a shebeen and threatened to make a report to the Garda Ombudsman if it wasnt done immediately. A District Court judge gave gardai ten minutes on Monday last to shut down a shebeen and threatened to make a report to the Garda Ombudsman if it wasnt done immediately. At Edenderry District Court Judge John Coughlan said it was an absolute disgrace that The Long Bar, Edenderry had been trading without a licence, and continued to trade while its owner stood before him. He ordered gardai to immediately close the premises, and initially threatened to jail the tenant, Michael Iancu, who has been leasing the premises. Last month, also at Edenderry District Court, State Solicitor John Hughes, who was prosecuting Mr Iancu for trading without a licence, asked him to rectify his situation or close his premises for the month long adjournment to yesterdays court. He said the pub, which has no licence since 2009, was effectively operating as a shebeen and Judge Catherine Staines expressed her displeasure that Mr Iancu had been trading without a licence. She was particularly unimpressed that he had left court early to open the pub and adjourned the case to March 26 for finalisation. Yesterday however, Judge Coughlan described Michael Iancu as a guest in this country, and said the first thing hed done was defraud the Irish taxpayer. Solicitor Donal Farrelly repeated previous submissions to Judge Staines, that his client, who is looking after two children, is in a dire financial situation. He said a licence application will be before the court in April, and that Mr Iancu had put him in funds to make the application. In the witness box, after asking the judge to give him a chance to explain himself, Mr Iancu said hed come to Ireland from Romania via England on a holiday visa fifteen years ago. Judge Coughlan told him he was illegal, having come through the UK when there was no European agreement between Ireland and Romania, and told Inspector Kieran Keyes that it was an absolute disgrace that a liquor licence was granted to someone who entered this country illegally. However, Mr Iancu insisted that he is legally in Ireland, that he has two children and pays his taxes here. He said his accountant, who was from South Africa has gone missing and in her absence he is trying to manage his accounts. He accepted that his tax affairs are not in order. Mr Iancu was also before the court regarding debts to two suppliers, Bulmers and MJ Gleeson. Mr Farrelly said his client had planned to make an offer to the companies based on his previous trading situation, but said that had changed now. Judge Coughlan adjourned all cases to June ordered gardai to check the legality of Mr Iancus status in Ireland. Loading... OilVoice will be with you shortly... WASHINGTON The British Parliament set out Monday afternoon to debate a question that is often argued on this side of pond but has never before been taken up in the halls of Westminster: Is Donald Trump dangerous? Or is he merely a buffoon? The man who would Make America Great Again, it turns out, has already done a great job of unifying Great Britain. Members of Parliament from across the political spectrum took turns insulting the American billionaire. "Daft and offensive." "Ridiculous xenophobe." "Impulsive, not well informed." "Objectionable and hateful." "Buffoonery." "The orange prince of American self-publicity." "What is under his hair?" British legislators giggled as a colleague read aloud some of the puffy plutocrat's utterances on global warming ("It's freezing and snowing in New York") and on the "great" and "inexpensive" border wall he wants to build. "Let's be clear: Donald Trump is an idiot," said Gavin Newlands, an MP from the Scottish National Party. A Tory MP, declaring Trump "crazy" with "no valid points to make," said he would like to see Americans challenge Trump with the words that brought down Joe McCarthy: "Have you left no sense of decency?" "I don't think Donald Trump should be allowed within 1,000 miles of our shores," said Labour MP Jack Dromey. "Trump is free to be a fool, but he is not free to be a dangerous fool in Britain." Still, the result was good news, of sorts, for the Republican presidential candidate: While there was universal consensus that the billionaire developer is appalling, there was little interest in banning him from entering Britain if only because that would make him a martyr. Half a million Britons, reacting to Trump's pledge to ban Muslims from entering the United States, had signed a petition calling for Trump to be banned from Britain. A travel ban is up to the Home Office, not Parliament, but legislators decided to have a debate because, as Labour MP Paul Flynn said in introducing the topic, "it is very difficult to ignore a vox pop." Flynn was apologetic about the debate because it "might well be interpreted as disrespect" to America. But for Americans watching, it was useful proof that Trump is a reviled and preposterous figure to our most important ally and that America would be the laughingstock of the world if we elect him. MP Sarah Wollaston, who represents Dartmouth, noted that the Pilgrims sailed from there four centuries ago "to escape the kind of religious persecution that we are addressing today." She argued that if Britain were to ban Trump, it "would send a very clear message to the people of the United States about what we feel about those who demonize an entire people for no reason other than their religion." On Monday, Trump was at Liberty University in Virginia, warning his evangelical Christian audience that "our country is disappearing fast." Across the Atlantic, in the Grand Committee Room of Westminster Hall, Tulip Siddiq, a Muslim and an MP, was at that moment speaking about the "need to stop a poisonous, corrosive man from entering our country." She listed some of his many attacks on women, his racist "dog whistles" and his proposed ban on Muslims. Some Tories lamented the sad state of the Republican Party. Conservative Steve Double said he was "surprised" by Trump's support because he "seems to cut right against the heritage and the values that I understand the Republican Party to have." But while there was no defense of Trump in the House of Commons, most in the debate thought it counterproductive to ban him from Britain, rather than employing, as one put it, "a classic British response of ridicule." That British natural resource was in abundant supply in Parliament on Monday. Conservative Paul Scully, though calling Trump's conduct "not acceptable for an aspiring world leader," said travel bans to Britain are issued for "incitement and hatred, but I've never heard of one for stupidity." Gavin Robinson, from Northern Ireland, described Trump's style of discourse: "He throws a dead cat on the table, and people stop and listen to him." One of the most powerful contributions came from Naz Shah, a "proud British Muslim woman" who called Trump "evil" and a "demagogue." But she said she wouldn't ban Trump from Britain but rather "invite him for a curry." "Given that it is Martin Luther King Day," she said, invoking the American holiday, "I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear." American Airlines will begin offering a daily nonstop flight between Omahas Eppley Airfield and Los Angeles International Airport on June 2. The airline will fly the route with an Airbus A319, which seats 124 to 128 passengers, depending on the version of the aircraft. A nonstop flight from Omaha to the West Coast, especially to Los Angeles, has been a major goal of ours for several years, said David Brown, president and chief executive of the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce. The new service will serve as an important economic development tool, he said. We can really tout that to companies already invested here and to companies that might be considering an investment here, Brown said. The last time a daily, year-round nonstop flight was available to the L.A. area was in 2008, when Midwest Airlines provided service to Los Angeles International Airport. Last year, Southwest Airlines offered a daily, seasonal nonstop flight to Los Angeles International during the summer months. That service also will return this year, said Chris Martin, director of airline affairs and airport operations for the Omaha Airport Authority. I think anybody going to L.A. this summer will be able to get a good deal, Martin said. The American Airlines flight will leave Omaha at 7:30 a.m. and arrive at the Los Angeles airport, known as LAX, at 8:50 a.m. It will leave Los Angeles at 6:18 p.m. and arrive in Omaha at 11:18 p.m. Flights will be available for purchase starting Saturday. Say youre a clerk at the Douglas County Treasurers Office and a woman comes in to transfer ownership of her car to her son, but he hasnt signed the title. Its OK, I sign his name all the time, the woman says, reaching for a pen. No, no, you say. Thats not just bending a rule. That would be breaking the law, which requires owners to sign auto titles. That bright line of the law is one difference in ethical decision-making between running a government office and running a business office: Businesses must stay within the law, but arms of the government are charged with enforcing laws. Yet the principles of ethics treating people fairly, avoiding conflicts of interest, being honest, respecting peoples freedom, accepting responsibility apply equally to business and government, according to a program called Elevate Ethics Academy. More than a dozen businesses have piloted the academy, and now a broadened version is open to businesses, nonprofits and governmental agencies in the Omaha area. The program, developed by the Omaha Business Ethics Alliance at Creighton Universitys Heider College of Business, gives managers and executives the tools and confidence they need to keep their operations on an ethical pathway. Douglas County Treasurer John Ewing said he wanted his office to take part in the pilot program to build on the ethics training that his staff receives annually. His office was the first governmental agency to participate in the program. Ethics is more than just the idea of dealing with money, said Ewing, a retired deputy police chief. Its how you deal with people in your organization, how you deal with your customers. Ewing had taught courses on investigating ethical complaints for the Ethics Alliance, drawing on his experience as a fraud investigator for the Omaha Police Department. I believe its important to not only trust your people but also to verify that people are doing the right things, he said. Ewing campaigned for office in 2007 partly on a promise to restore fiscal integrity to the Treasurers Office. A manager was convicted in 2005 of embezzling $120,000 over a period of years. Soon after taking office, Ewing fired an employee after a routine examination of the handling of bad checks. Thats the kind of problem that the Elevate Ethics Academy tackles in its four 90-minute sessions. In a room last week at the Omaha-Douglas Civic Center, the Ethics Alliances education and research manager, Rebecca Shively, led 25 managers and supervisors from the Treasurers Office through a discussion about making decisions to resolve ethical dilemmas. Sometimes both choices of action seem right, she said, citing the case of an employee who wants to warn a co-worker who is buying a house that he is about to be fired. Should the worker keep quiet or tell his co-worker? You can defend both choices, Shively said, and neither is ideal. The important thing is to slow down, make sure you understand the situation and consider how the different options would affect the people involved. During the session, some of the attendees said their choices in a government office are limited by legal requirements. Policy, we can work with you, one said. Statutes, we dont get to. Another scenario concerned a person seeking a refund on taxes and licensing fees, saying he had sold his car and needed the money for medical expenses. But he had missed the legal time limit for a full refund. Id reach into my own pocket if I had to, one manager said. A lot of people come up with a story, another said. How do you know its true? Nunzio Gagliolo, who manages the Treasurers Office at 108th Street and West Maple Road, said treating customers fairly is an important part of government work. We see some very difficult customers every day, he said. Theres some, we know theyre lying between their teeth. We have our policies and guidelines that we have to follow. The group also discussed how a supervisor should deal with a troublesome employee who misses work and doesnt interact well with the public and fellow employees. Some suggested referring the employee to an assistance program and taking other steps before firing. Their consensus was that it would be more difficult to fire an employee at a government office than at a business because of strict rules on hiring and firing. In any case, Shively said, its important to embrace a process for making ethical decisions because problems can arise suddenly. It becomes easier with practice, she said. Beverly Kracher, director of the Ethics Alliance and the Daugherty Chair in Business Ethics & Society at Creighton, said the session for the Treasurers Office was complementary as part of a pilot program for the academy. So far this year, nine businesses are signed up for the academy, which costs $4,500 each for a program with 25 people. No other government agencies have signed up. A grant is available for some nonprofit agencies to participate. Kracher said government offices may be subject to employee hiring-and-firing laws, but so are businesses, especially large ones, and the principles taught in the academy work in both situations. The academys decision-making model calls for understanding a dilemma, imagining the options, thinking through the consequences of each option and deciding on the right thing to do and why. This applies across organizations, whether theyre small, medium or large, for-profit or not-for-profit or governmental agencies, not only in business but in our personal and professional lives, Kracher said. We are interested in positive, practical business ethics, and we want our tools to be practical, too. In addition to decision-making, academy clients can choose topics including ethical leadership, ethical communications, recognizing ethical blind spots and generational differences. Participants get follow-up practice exercises by email so they can stay attuned to ethical concepts. In the future, Kracher said, the academy will add workshops on confidentiality, work-life balance and other topics. The alliance has community programs and is starting a Business Ethics City Lab to test concepts and practices in the Omaha business community. Treasurer Ewing said his offices supervisors have a responsibility to be ethical leaders for the 100-person staff. We want it to permeate the organization, he said, because our leaders in the organization will make sure that everybody does the right things. DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) A man facing federal firearms charges in Iowa who was found in Cuba attempting to escape prosecution has been returned to Iowa and faces a court hearing to determine whether he should remain in federal custody until his trial. Shawn Michael Wegmann, 38, who had been in custody in Florida since Cuban officials turned him over to federal marshals on Dec. 8, was returned to Iowa on Friday. He appeared in court Wednesday in Davenport, where his trial is to be held, to face a new charge of failure to appear while on pre-trial release. The judge set a hearing for next Wednesday to determine whether Wegmann should remain in custody until his trial. Jeffrey Lang, Wegmann's court-appointed attorney, declined to comment Wednesday. Wegmann had been charged in a federal indictment filed in September with being a felon in possession of firearms and possessing stolen guns. Four other men, also convicted felons prohibited from possessing weapons, are indicted in the same case involving an assortment of rifles and shotguns, some which authorities say were stolen. Court records said he had been scheduled to enter a guilty plea on Oct. 21 but he failed to appear in court. Wegmann had been living with his wife in Kirklin, Indiana, while out on bond awaiting trial. Federal authorities said at some point on Oct. 23, Wegmann removed his GPS ankle monitor. Federal probation officers responded and found the device attached to the bumper of a van in a Sam's Club parking lot. A warrant was issued for his arrest. About a week later, investigators say he arrived in Havana on a 13-foot Boston Whaler reported stolen from a marina in Key West, Florida. Cuban authorities notified the U.S. Marshals Service on Nov. 3 that Wegmann was in their custody. Fingerprinting revealed he was wanted in Iowa. "Wegmann is the first fugitive who has been returned to the United States by the Cuban government after fleeing to Cuba since diplomatic relations began nearly a year ago," said U.S. Marshal Amos Rojas Jr., in a statement released last month when Wegmann was flown from Cuba to Florida in a chartered jet. Court documents indicate Wegmann was indicted Jan. 12 on the new charge of failure to appear. He was in custody in Florida until he was returned to Iowa. Rojas told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that Cuban immigration authorities "were just amazed that he actually survived" crossing the Florida Straits in the little boat with a 40-horsepower motor. Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. DES MOINES Senate lawmakers in Iowa on Tuesday considered a ban the box bill that would limit when employers can ask job applicants about their criminal histories, and the legislation could have momentum after Gov. Terry Branstad made a criminal justice overhaul a priority in his annual speech to the Legislature. A three-member panel of the Senate Judiciary Committee discussed the bill Tuesday but took no action. They plan to meet soon to decide whether to advance the legislation to a full committee. The bill would prohibit an employer or employment agency from inquiring about an applicants criminal history until the applicant has been selected for an interview or after he or she has been given a conditional job offer. Supporters say the bill offers a second chance to applicants who have been turned down for work. Critics say the legislation could be a liability to employers and subject them to lawsuits. A great tragedy say activists after 200 bodies are recovered from roof of Pakistan hospital International news brief: Confident of Pak's commitment, ability to secure its nuclear assets, says US & more From 'dangerous' to 'secure and confident': US makes a u-turn after Biden's comment on Pak The persecution of Hindus in Pakistan continues with a Hindu girl forcibly converted and married Bacha Khan University terror attack: Indian schools yet to implement safety guidelines Feature oi-Vicky By Vicky The attack on the Bacha Khan university in Pakistan shows yet again that educational institutions are soft targets for terrorists. The Tehrik-e-Taliban which carried out the Peshawar school attack in December 2014 has claimed responsibility for the Bacha Khan attack as well. After the Peshawar attack, a set of guidelines had been issued by India for educational institutions to follow. However, a majority of the institutions are yet to implement the same. [Live: Pakistan terror attack: Death toll mounts to 21] It must be noted here that several schools in Pakistan had remained shut a couple of days back after Intelligence Inputs had suggested that an educational institution would be targeted. Educational institutions remain a soft target for terrorists not just in Pakistan but in other parts of the world as well. It may be recalled that the al-Shabab had on April 2 2015 had entered Garissa University College in Garissa, Kenya, killing 147 and wounding dozens. Why are educational institutes a soft target? Emma Bradford and Margaret A. Wilson, forensic psychologists at the University of Liverpool, in an analysis for the Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology said that terrorist organizations might choose to target educational institutions is that schools and school children act as powerful symbolic targets," wrote . Attacks on these targets evoke a strong emotional response, they also wrote. While this is one of the reasons, the other is that educational institutions remain largely unguarded. It is very difficult to provide extensive security for schools and the fact that there are so many students present in one campus also makes it a favourite among terrorists to target. Schools yet to implement Standard Operating Procedure: Schools have not just been a soft target for terrorists. In India there are various instances of naxals too attacking schools. Naxals attack schools to send a message to villagers that they should not educate their children. The naxal battle is half lost if the villagers are educated. In the aftermath of the Peshawar attack, India had issued guidelines and also put in place a standard operation procedure. Most schools are yet to implement the same. Intelligence Bureau officials say that all educational institutions must adhere to the norms. [Peshawar school terror attack: Home Ministry issues SOPs for schools] The standard operating procedure states: All schools must have a concrete boundary wall. There must be at least three gates and each should be manned by a guard. Each of these gates must have a telephone connected to the school Wireless modes of communication must also be given to the guards CCTVs are mandatory at all schools. CCTVs must be installed both inside and outside the schools more importantly at the entry points. Install a public announcement system. Mock drills must be conducted regularly Guards must be trained on how to handle situations pertaining to abductionIn the event of an attack, children must ensure that the children are evacuated and the gates of the school closed. Set up alarms in schools and have connectivity with the police control room. Teachers must be trained to handle such situations. Children must be priority for the teachers and they should train them on how to act in a situation. In the event of a firing children must be told to lie to the ground. Safe passages must be provided in schools. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Wednesday, January 20, 2016, 14:02 [IST] Rohith Vemula suicide brings global attention to prevalence of caste-based discrimination in India Feature oi-Oneindia By Maitreyee Boruah The anti-reservation lobby has always vociferously denied the existence of caste-based discrimination still rampant in our society. It is time for us to move beyond the controversial issue of reservation to end subjugation of people on the basis of caste and creed. Caste-based discrimination is a reality, and unless and until we don't admit its existence, the malice of the age-old caste war won't end. The tragic suicide of Rohith Vemula, a 26-year-old research scholar from Hyderabad, has once again brought into focus prejudice and violence faced by the Dalit community, even in revered spaces like a university. The intolerance against the minorities-be it Dalits, Tribals or Muslims-plays at various levels, right from the social to political spectrum. The circumstances under which Rohith was forced to take the drastic step--of hanging himself in a hostel room inside the campus of the Hyderabad Central University--has brought attention to the systematic discrimination faced by Dalit students in higher educational institutions. In fact, 131-odd academicians from across the globe have issued a statement voicing their concern about the widespread prevalence of caste-based discrimination in Indian universities. The statement has been signed by noted scholars and academicians like Rupa Viswanath of the University of Gottingen in Germany, Joel Lee of the Williams College in the US and French scholar Christophe Jaffrelot, to name a few. Dalit students face discrimination In the beginning the statement says, "We of the global scholarly community make an urgent appeal that justice be done in the most recent case of caste discrimination in Indian higher education, that of the University of Hyderabad's prejudicial suspension of five young Dalit men pursuing PhDs. [Read: Should India rise at the cost of wasted youth politics?] It was ordered under political pressure, without even allowing the young men in question to speak in their own defense. It directly contravened an earlier decision made by the University administration itself, which had exonerated them of any charges of wrongdoing charges which had been trumped up by political rivals opposed to the activism of these young men." Failure of higher educational institutions Lamenting on the tragic and untimely death of Rohith, the academicians write, "This prejudice has now exacted a terrible price. One of the five, a scholar of great promise, Rohith Vemula, committed suicide on January 17. Unable to bear the despair of having his one chance at a future snatched from him, of his value being reduced, in his own eloquent parting words, to nothing but "a vote" and "an immediate identity," he took his own life. As scholars we know that individual actions are never just that. This suicide is not an individual act. It is the failure of higher educational institutions in democratic India to meet their most basic obligation: to foster the intellectual and personal growth of India's most vulnerable young people. Instead, Rohith now joins a long list of victims of prejudice at premier institutions in the country, where pervasive discrimination drives so many Dalit students to depression and suicide, when not simply forcing them to quietly drop out." Justice for Rohith In strong words, the academicians have demanded that justice should be immediately delivered by investigating the death of Rohith and reinstating four of Rohith's friends, who are still under expulsion. "As international scholars of South Asia, we ask the authorities at the University of Hyderabad to immediately reinstate Mr. Vemula's four peers, to provide support to his family, and to launch a police investigation into his passing. But that is not enough. The University of Hyderabad must ensure not only that justice be done now, but that further injustice be rigorously prevented. It is vital to the life of any academic institution to actively nurture students exactly like Rohith, whose contribution to civic life and healthy political debate made the university the place of learning and personal transformation it should be. Measures must be implemented to ensure that such students are supported and allowed to thrive when they enter what is all too often the hostile, casteist environment of higher education in India. A university where students turn away from life with the regularity they have at the University of Hyderabad requires urgent and massive re-hauling," reads the statement. End political interference The international scholars have condemned the direct involvement of politicians in encouraging caste-based discrimination in educational institutions. "The involvement of political leaders in buttressing caste discrimination in Indian universities, and the double standards applied by university administrations to anti-caste student activity, directly contribute to the negative reputation India is earning among scholars worldwide. We urge the University of Hyderabad to restore our confidence by living up to its obligation to end institutionalized discrimination, to educate all students in a climate of respect and empathy, and to resist political pressures to do otherwise. We are all watching," adds the statement. Hope such words of caution by eminent scholars of global repute help the Hyderabad Central University set its house in order and end discrimination of students on the basis of their caste and religion. OneIndia News From temple of wisdom to soft terror targets, educational institutes face the line of fire Feature oi-Pallavi The second attack on an temple of wisdom in Pakistan has got us thinking why the most vulnerable of the social set-up are increasingly being targeted. In fact, experts believe that terrorist attacks on schools have soared in the past 10 years. According to Global terrorism database, South Asia reports 1,147 attacks on school in 2013, Middle East and North America reported 284, Southeast Asia 271 and Sub Saharan Africa 119. In fact, between 2004-2013, Pakistan reported the highest number of attacks with 724, Iraq 184, Afghanistan 205, and Thailand 213. According to the University of Maryland's Global Terrorism Database, more than 125,000 terrorist attacks around the world have been reported since 1970. Since 2004, there has been a sharp rise in the attack on schools, starting the one in Beslan in Russia which claimed the lives of 334 people, including 186 children. [Read: Bacha Khan University terror attack: Indian schools yet to implement safety guidelines] The Peshawar attack in 2014 painted a gruesome picture of the latest strategies of terrorism. Attacks on public places were not powerful anymore since attacks on schools and universities sent out a symbolical message, ensuring that the root of enlightenment is blocked. There is one more reason, as the Pakistani Taliban claimed,"We selected the army's school for the attack because the government is targeting our families and females." "We want them to feel our pain." But does that remain contained to revenge alone? Curbing the western influence Consider Nigeria's Boko Haram, whose openly condemns the Western influence on education. And to make a point, it conducted the largest attack on a school and abducted close to 300 school girls and forced them into marriage. Justifying their action, they even said that targeting schools was their religious duty and they intend to continue with it. [Read:Live: Pakistan attack: Death toll mounts to 21, TTP claims responsibility] The trend shows that extremists in Pakistan and Afghanistan in South Asia, and the Middle East who have been largely driving the growth in terror attacks on schools. In a 2013 paper in the 'Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology', Emma Bradford and Margaret A. Wilson of the University of Liverpool's Department of Applied Psychology identified the possible motivations of targetting schools as- symbolic value, media coverage, and the simple ease of inflicting irreversible damage to a target affiliated with the government. But does that serve a purpose or is it pushing the idea of jihad and Islamic ideas further into darker zones? That is yet to be realised by the terror masterminds A new energy in France-India relationship India oi-IANS By Ians English New Delji, Jan 20: French President Francois Hollande visits India as guest of honour at the Republic Day parade on January 26. Is the visit a sign of the coming of age of Indo-French relations? It's been almost two years to the date from Hollande's first visit to India as president. In the interregnum, a lot has changed around the world and in bilateral relations. The world is confronted with its biggest geostrategic challenge in the shape of the Islamic State (IS), which has emerged as a major threat to peace and security around the world and whose agents have already carried out numerous attacks in France, the US and many other countries. The IS attacks in the Middle East have also led to the biggest refugee crisis since the Second World War and over a million refugees have landed in the European Union. Hundreds more have perished in their attempt to cross the Mediterranean Sea, seeking the safety of Europe. The situation of the world economy is hardly any better, as over the last year or so it has been rattled by the Chinese tsunami and a European economy that seems stuck in low, jobless growth, with very few bright spots, including India, which seem to be keeping the global economy afloat. With its expected GDP growth of about seven percent this year, India has kept its place as the fastest growing large economy in the world for the second year running. Businesses from around the world, including France, are now looking at India with renewed expectations. Ever since India elected Narendra Modi as prime minister in May 2014, there seems to be a new spring in the step of Indian relations with France. Modi was in France twice in 2015, once on a bilateral visit in April and then again in November for the Climate Change Summit in Paris. Besides, Indian and French leaders have taken time out for bilateral discussions at practically all multilateral events like the UN General Assembly meeting in New York in September and the G20 meet in Antalya, Turkey, in November. French troops take part in marching practice at Rajpath Anyone looking for signs of this new sense of purpose and direction in the relationship needs to only look at fresh movement in the long-pending deal over the purchase of the French Rafale multi-role medium range combat aircraft. After having been stuck for nearly seven years, when in January 2012, India finally opted for Rafale as the aircraft that would become the new backbone of the Indian Air Force, with 128 fulfilling the role, the French government and Rafale-manufacturer Dassault were hoping it would be only a matter of a few months more to close the deal and begin the supply of the aircraft. On his first visit to France, at a joint press conference with Hollande in Palais Elysee, Modi sprung a surprise and announced that India would buy 36 Rafales in fly-away condition, saying that the terms of this deal would be finalised shortly. The announcement came as a big relief to Dassault, which was on the verge of closing down the Rafale assembly line as it had no firm orders on hand from anywhere. Eight months later, as Hollande reaches India, hopes are high that the deal would be sealed during this visit with clear timetables for delivery of the aircraft and setting the scene for a bigger defence deal between the two sides. Modi sees a big role for the French in creating a real manufacturing hub in the country, especially in areas where the French are normally strong, notably railways, aviation, defence, automobile, nuclear power etc. During his visit to France in April last year, Modi highlighted several times the focus of his government in improving the manufacturing sector and with several very aggressive incentive schemes to get the Indian private sector and foreign companies as well to invest more aggressively in order to boost the manufacturing capacities in the country. Besides, Make in India, France is an equally good and logical partner for India in the implementation of several other projects that the country has been focussing on. One of the most important areas for enhanced bilateral cooperation in the urbanisation of India. In the smart city project, the French have already evinced interest in undertaking the work in three cities. Another key area where France could lend a helping hand to India is the country's power sector, in conventional, nuclear as well as renewable energy sources. The biggest boost in this collaboration was received during the Climate Change Summit. At the event, India, along with dozens of other nations, launched the International Solar Alliance, aimed at pooling resources and technologies to boost the solar energy power plants throughout the nations that are blessed with adequate number of sunny days. So far, the Indo-French business relationship remains overwhelmingly dominated by the behemoths, with very little engagement of the smaller companies, which ironically make up the bulk of both Indian and French economies. The small and medium enterprises (SMEs) sector is involved only in small volumes of trades in very traditional segments such as textiles, food, gems and jewellery. But the reluctance of more SMEs to trade or do business with each other has led to a stagnation in Indo-French trade, which has been hovering around the seven billion euro mark for almost all of the past decade, despite several ambitious targets set by leaders on various occasions. This pales in comparison to the trade between India and Germany or India and the UK, both of which are nearly thrice as high as that of France. The new focus areas of India could be the big breakthrough in this relationship which could help take the bilateral trade to the next level and give the bandwidth which has been missing from this crucial relationship for a long while. IANS Who in India can see partial solar eclipse 2022 on Oct 25 Delhi air quality projected to cross 301 by Sat; GRAP stage II comes into effect ahead of Diwali Arvind Kejriwal to visit Hyderabad University on Thursday India oi-PTI New Delhi, Jan 20: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal will visit the University of Hyderabad on Thursday to meet the students and family members of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula who committed suicide. Kejriwal, who was scheduled to visit Bengaluru for undergoing naturopathy treatment for his chronic cough on January 22 for ten days, has deferred his visit and will now go there on January 27. "The Chief Minister will visit the University of Hyderabad tomorrow to meet the students and the family members of the Dalit scholar who committed suicide," said sources in Delhi government. AAP leaders Ashish Khetan and Ashish Talwar today reached Hydrabad to meet protesting students there. Kejriwal had on Tuesday demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi sack HRD Minister Smriti Irani, Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya and apologise to the nation over the suicide by the Dalit student, questioning their "interference" in the internal affairs of the institution. Rohith, a PhD scholar, who committed suicide on Sunday night, was among the five research scholars who were suspended by the University in August last year over an alleged assault case. They were also kept out of the hostel. The issue took a political turn with allegations that the extreme step taken by Rohith was a result of discrimination against dalit students at the behest of Dattatreya, following his letter to Irani, seeking action against their "anti-national acts". Meanwhile, Kejriwal will go to Bengaluru for undergoing naturopathy treatment for his chronic cough on January 27 for ten days instead of January 22. PTI TS EAMCET 2022 Seat Allotment Result 2022 for round 2 on Oct 16: How to check and more Dalit scholar death: Student leaders trash Smriti Irani's statement India oi-PTI Hyderabad, Jan 20: Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani has made a "wrong statement" regarding the protests in Hyderabad Central University over the alleged suicide of a Dalit scholar and the ongoing row in the institution, student leaders spearheading the agitation claimed here on Wednesday. "We would like refute each and every point," a leader of the agitating students said. The students held consultations after Irani addressed a press conference in New Delhi. Hyderabad varsity issue not Dalit versus non-Dalit: Smriti Irani He said the Dalit and student movements have come together in the university following the alleged suicide of Vemula Rohith Chakravarthi. The minister mentioned that an executive council in the university had Dalit representatives but the body only had a co-opted SC member, he said. On Irani's statement that a Congress leader (MP Hanumantha Rao) had also written on issues concerning the university, he said the minister should direct the university to implement the SC and ST sub-plan. The minister stated that the suicide note of Rohit was the only document made available to her but the deceased had written to the Vice Chancellor earlier, he said. The issues should not be made a BJP versus Congress issue as it is an issue of Rohit's alleged suicide and human rights, according to him. The minister described the punishment given to the student as "lenient" but "social boycott" and "institutional murder" cannot be "lenient", the student leader said. The students demanded the arrest of all those figuring in the FIR including Vice Chancellor Appa Rao Podile. The protesting students also burnt an effigy of the minister inside the campus. PTI Dalit student's death gains political heat, campus protests on India oi-PTI Hyderabad, Jan 20: Protests intensified at the Hyderabad Central University today over the alleged suicide of a Dalit research scholar even as more politicians headed to the campus, demanding resignation of Union Minister Smriti Irani. Student's suicide: "System at Hyderabad Varsity needs to be overhauled" Under attack, the university Vice Chancellor claimed there had been "no pressure" from Union Ministers or the HRD Ministry to act against the youth but offered to facilitate talks to restore peace on the campus. CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury, spokesperson of TMC Derek O'Brien and YSR Congress president Y S Jaganmohan Reddy interacted with the students, who have been on warpath demanding justice for 26-year-old Vemula Rohith Chakravarthi who was found hanging in his hostel room on Sunday. Police took into preventive custody some activists of the pro-CPI All India Students Federation (AISF) when they tried to hold a demonstration near the residence of Union Minister of State for Labour and Employment Bandaru Dattatreya, who has been accused of being responsible for the death. Yechury said the incidents in the HCU are part of a larger issue of BJP's alleged "game" of turning the country into a 'Hindu Rashtra' and demanded resignation of HRD Minister Smriti Irani and an "independent inquiry" into the incident. Interview: Some professors in Hyderabad University teach Naxalism, says ABVP leader Susheel Kumar "It is part of the larger issue of intolerance. Intolerance is also part of the larger issue. The larger issue is transform this secular, democratic, republic of India as our Constitution says, into what they want, a rabidly intolerant fascistic Hindu Rashtra. That is the larger game," the CPI(M) leader alleged while talking to reporters. "We are saying let there be an independent inquiry. It could be judicial, non-judicial, but something which is not foisted by the same minister who has through her pressure created this situation and the unfortunate suicide. So let that be there and all those who are part of this conspiracy, I would call, it's a criminal conspiracy, according to the new law we passed in Parliament, they must be tried according to the criminal offence," he said. "The HRD Minister has to go," Yechury said. He also said that his party would represent to the President, who is the visitor of the university, and ask him on what basis the HCU was conferred the best university award by him last year. He said his party MP from Kerala, T N Seema, has written to the President saying that it is not morally tenable for her to continue as a member of the court of the university in the prevailing situation unless the vice chancellor is dismissed by the court. PTI Dalit man in Kerala beaten up by wife's brother allegedly for not converting to Christianity In UP, ex-pradhan thrashes Dalit girl, throws her out of school over uniform In Rajasthan, Dalit man thrashed for using water from pot 'meant' for upper castes Dalit suicide issue: BSP demands legal action against Smriti Irani India oi-PTI Lucknow, Jan 20: BSP chief Mayawati today demanded legal action against Union Ministers Smriti Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya over the alleged suicide of a Dalit research scholar in Hyderabad Central University. She also demanded the same action against the HCU Vice-Chancellor Appa Rao. "The attitude of the ministers against Dalit student Rohith Vemula was grossly condemnable and undemocratic. The party demands strict legal action against two central ministers and the VC, who forced Rohith to commit suicide," Mayawati said in a statement here today. BSP supremo said that after independence such an atmosphere has been created in the country, where BJP ministers were making "mockery of constitutional dignity". The party has also sent a fact finding committee led by Rajya Sabha MP and advocate Vir Singh to Hyderabad. Rohith Vemula, who committed suicide on Sunday night, was among the five research scholars who were suspended by Hyderabad Central University in August last year and also one of the accused in the case of assault on a student leader. They were also kept out of the hostel. Union Labour Minister Dattatreya and HCU Vice Chancellor Rao and three others were named in an FIR lodged on Monday with the Cyberabad police over the suicide of the Dalit student. Fresh protests today rocked the HCU over the suicide even as several politicians headed to the city including YSR Congress leader Y S Jaganmohan Reddy and CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury. The incident has snowballed into a major issue with rivals of the ruling BJP wading into it and demanding removal of Union Ministers Smriti Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya, accusing them of being responsible for the death. Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi had yesterday led the multi-party charge attacking the government and university Vice Chancellor Appa Rao, saying that the youngster was put in so much pain that he had no option but to kill himself. PTI Husband cant claim property, gifted items if wife dies within 7 yrs of marriage: SC India oi-Mukul New Delhi, Jan 20: In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court has said that a man would not be considered heir of properties and dowry items gifted to his wife by her parents, if she dies within seven years of the marriage. The court ruled that husband would not be entitled to claim such properties if wife dies under 'mysterious circumastances' within this span of time. In such condition, their children will be automatic owner of the properties. The order was passed on a dowry plea which was filed by a man whose wife had died under suspicious circumstances within15 months of their marriage. Apparently, court has tried to highlight the dowry menace prevalent in our society. A bench of Chief Justice TS Thakur, justices AK Sikri and R Bhanumathi further said that if couple doesn't have any children, then in that case properties would be handed over to wife's parents. The court clarifies that this condition will not be valid in case of natural death of the wife. In such case, husband and his parents can make a claim of the properties. The court judgment was quoted by the TOI as saying, "The person receiving dowry articles or the person who has dominion over the same, as per Section 6 of the Dowry Prohibition Act, is bound to return the same within three months after the date of marriage to the woman in connection with whose marriage it is given," Judgment further said, "In respect of 'stridhana articles' given to the bride, one has to take into consideration the common practice that these articles are sent along with the bride to her matrimonial house. It is a matter of common knowledge that these articles are kept by the woman in connection with whose marriage it was given and used by her in her matrimonial house". OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Wednesday, January 20, 2016, 15:24 [IST] Interview: Some professors in Hyderabad University teach Naxalism, says ABVP leader Susheel Kumar India oi-Shreyas Hyderabad, Jan 20: After Bandaru Dattatreya leveled serious allegations against the politic of Hyderabad Central University (HCU) terming the varsity 'den of casteist extremist and anti-national politics', the ABVP (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad) leader Susheel Kumar told OneIndia some chunk of professors in the HCU perform educational discourse on 'Naxalism'. In a long telephonic interview Sushil contends that Bandaru Dattatreya's letter does not attach any significance to the suicide of a Dalit PhD scholar Rohith Vemula. "The minister just forwarded the concerns of the ABVP over the manner of protest held by the ASA (Ambedkar Students' Association) against the capital punishment of Yakub Memon. The ABVP leader asked what was the need for the Vemula to commit suicide when the hearing was due the next day (Jan 18) to his suicide (Vemula committed suicide on Jan 17) on the writ petition filed in High Court (HC) by the ASA. Susheel demanding a fair probe into the suicide alleged that left-leaning professors are responsible for Vemula to slip into depression there by forcing him to end life. ABVP and ASA clash Susheel detailing the panning of clash between the ABVP cadre and ASA student activists said the ABVP took strong objection to the manner in which ASA protested against the death sentence of Yakub Memon and decided to hold counter protest at the administration building. Susheel claimed during the conversation "ASA lads performed Namaz inside the campus and I have evidences to prove it. The ASA during the protests raised highly objectionable slogans," he argued. One slogan said Hay Yakub tere khoon se inquilab niklega ( Hey Yakub, revolution will gush out from your blood) Susheel questioned, is this not anti-national? The AVBP committee decided to convene condemnation protest against the nature of resistance exhibited by the ASA and "we pasted posters in the campus". "In one instance in the tense situation I termed ASA people as ASA goons." This enraged the ASA. Susheel further said on the day when ABVP resolved to hold counter-protest, as many as 20-30 ASA student activists stormed into his room in the dark hours, specifically in the mid-night at 1 am. "The ASA people barged into my room dragged me out and they beat me forcing me to write an apology letter for holding protest displaying solidarity with the death sentence and for calling ASA workers as goons." Susheel elaborating the scene claimed that he requested the ASA to provide him five minutes of time span to discuss it with the ABVP committee members on the same. "In the time given to me by the ASA I ringed up number '100', which connected to a local police station, Susheel informed. He added that the police did not arrive at the time, instead the college security landed at the spot and put Susheel into the security vehicle to avoid further altercation. "The ASA people pulled me out of the van and forced me to write an apology letter and only then I had buckled to pressure as I had no option but to write the apology letter." Susheel said he was brutally assaulted and sustained major injuries and admitted to the hospital. Petitions in HC Following the incident, ABVP took the matter to the disciplinary committee ( HCU's statutory body). "Since I was being treated in a hospital after undergoing 'apprentice surgery' I did not able to present at the university during the hearing." The ABVP failed to provide substantial evidence on the episode. The varsity gave a clean chit to five PhD scholars associated with ASA citing lack of evidence. "In the later days after I recovered, I provided evidences to the inquiry committee and the committee decided to take action against Vemula and other research scholars." The ABVP also filed a writ petition in the HC as the action taken by the committee was not satisfactory. The ASA too filed a petition in the HC. The ASA dismayed over the decision of the university demanded fair probe due to which the then Vice-Chancellor R P Sharma again to revisit the episode constituted Prof Sudhakar Reddy committee. After an inquiry it upheld the decision of the disciplinary committee. Susheel argued that the decision to suspend the PhD scholars from entering the hostel was taken on Dec 16, 2015. The ASA did not turn up on the campus to protest till Jan 1. The issue was only raked up after Jan 1. This was because- some professors instigated the ASA to do the same. Susheel pointed that hearing of a petition filed by the ASA was due before Rohith committed suicide. "Can't Rohith wait to attend the hearing? Why he committed suicide?, he remarked. Professors teach Naxalism says Sushil Susheel hurled serious allegations against some professors saying a few professors in the university teach 'naxalism' to the students. "Some professors say naxalism is very good. This particular discourse is what the ABVP is concerned about. Two years back a student named Prithvi was arrested for having links with a top naxal leader", Sushil stressed. Susheel vociferously backed the letter of Bandaru expressing that Bandaru just forwarded the concerns of the ABVP and he or MHRD (Ministry of Human Resource Development) put no pressure on the VC. The suspension was just the outcome of the inquiry and his letter has no significance attached. Susheel emphasized "a few professors who mislead the youths, engaging in the teachings of Maoism are responsibly for abetting the suicide of the Rohith Vemula and not Bandaru." Sushil alleged that some professors demotivated Rohith and his act could be the repercussion of that demotivation. OneIndia News Truth has come out, says Sasikala in reaction to OPS's remark before panel "Jayalalithaa's acquittal can be set aside by correcting just one mathematical error" India oi-Vicky Bengaluru, Jan 20: The Karnataka Government would open its arguments in the appeal filed against the acquittal of Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, J Jayalalithaa by pointing out that it was allowed only a written submission. The Karnataka Government has filed an appeal against the acquittal of Jayalalithaa by the Karnataka High Court. The matter will be heard on a day to day basis by the Supreme Court from February 2 onwards. Represented by the Special Public Prosecutor, B V Acharya, Karnataka would make out a straight forward case on why the order of acquittal should be set aside. We were never given an opportunity of an oral hearing by the Karnataka High Court. At the fag end of the arguments on the appeal before the High Court, we were just permitted to hand out a written submission, Karnataka will contend before the Supreme Court. Just correct one glaring error: The Karnataka government has repeatedly spoken about the arithmetic error made by the High Court as a result of which Jayalalithaa and three others got the benefit of an acquittal. The acquittal can be set aside by correcting one error, Karnataka will also contend in the Supreme Court. The totalling mistake shows that the value of disproportionate assets of the accused comes to Rs. 16.32 crore, that is 76.7 per cent of the income, against the 8.12 per cent arrived at by the High Court. The judgment of acquittal is liable to be converted into one of conviction even as per the purported principle in Krishnanand Agnihotri's case. The 1977 case law which the High Court has relied on holds that an offence was not made out if the value of disproportionate assets was found to be less than 10 per cent of the income. This cannot be relied on here as the disproportionate assets runs into crores of rupees. OneIndia News Astra set to replace BVRAAMs, to be tested from Tejas LCA Tejas to enthrall audience at Bahrain airshow India oi-PTI New Delhi, Jan 20: India's own Light Combat Aircraft Tejas will enthrall the audience at Bahrain International Airshow starting tomorrow as the country hopes to explore potential export opportunities. The two Limited Series Production (LSP) planes will give a flying display through a series of aerobatic manoeuvres such as 8-g pull, vertical loop, slow fly past and barrel roll. "It is important that indigenous aircraft fly outside India in international air shows. HAL is proud to be associated with the design, development and production of Tejas. We have set-up a state-of-the-art, environmentally controlled, dedicated division at Bengaluru for production of LCAs," T Suvarna Raju, CMD of HAL said. Tejas is a single-engine, light-weight, highly agile, multi-role supersonic fighter plane. It is a 4.5 generation aircraft with supersonic capability at all altitudes. Indian Air Force plans to acquire 120 Tejas aircraft, with 100 of them having major modifications to its strike, radar and mid-air refuelling capabilities. Though DRDO has developed a naval version of Tejas, the navy is seeking a more powerful engine, besides other changes. Pakistan has already put its combat aircraft JF 17, built in collaboration with China, in the open market. Sri Lanka had recently denied reports that it had evinced interest in the Pakistani plane. PTI MUDRA scheme aimed at benefitting 7 cr entrepreneurs: Raja India oi-PTI Puducherry, Jan 20: The NDA government's MUDRA Yojana scheme is a game changer, aimed at benefitting seven crore entrepreneurs and more than Rs 1.22 lakh crore had been set apart to provide aid to unemployed youth through banks to take up ventures, BJP National Secretary H Raja said today. "The MUDRA scheme evolved and implemented by Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a game changer aimed at benefitting seven crore entrepreneurs. As much as Rs 1,22,500 crore has been set apart to provide assistance through banks to youth to relieve themselves of the unemployment problem," he said. Raja said the NDA government was implementing the MUDRA Yojana in keeping with its poll promise of generating jobs for not less than one crore persons every year. The BJP leader was speaking after felicitating V Saminathan, who assumed office as Puducherry State Committee President at a function here tonight. Raja said the 'Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana' was a poor man's friendly scheme and hassle-free accounts could be opened in banks. Narendra Modi launches Mudra scheme in Jharkhand As many as 20 crore bank accounts had been opened till date, he said. The Make in India and one on Skill Development' were among 'path breaking programmes' conceptualised by the PM, he said. He said the recently launched programme to encourage start-ups would also be of help for augmenting employment. Raja rubbished the charge by some political parties that the NDA government was pro-corporate, pointing out that the common man could now open bank accounts and draw benefits of various subsidies and benefits under direct benefit transfer system through banks. He also referred to the social security insurance schemes launched last year to enable people to get insurance cover, which he said, were unprecedented and helpful for poor families. "The country is making rapid strides in economic growth, in generating employment, development of skill and training for the youth, which could never be dreamt and visualised during the previous UPA rule," he said. He urged party cadres to explain to the people the various schemes of the NDA government. PTI 26/11 Mumbai attack: US says it stands with India, remains resolute in fight against terrorism Mumbai cops trying to save Headley, frame up innocent: Jundal India oi-PTI Mumbai, Jan 20: Mumbai terror attack accused Abu Jundal has opposed the police's application seeking documents pertaining to David Coleman Headley, the Pakistani-American Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist, from a Delhi court. If the application is allowed, it would result in denial of fair trial to him, Jundal has said. "The application...(is) part of the larger conspiracy to save the real perpetrators, including Headley and his Pakistani associates...thereby making a scapegoat of the innocents like the accused (Jundal)," it says. Police filed the application before special judge G A Sanap last week, seeking a direction to the Registrar of Delhi NIA court to provide the documents. India to renew extradition request of David Headley National Investigation Agency had registered a case against Headley in 2009. On December 10 last year, the Mumbai court made Headley an approver in the 26/11 Mumbai attack case, granting him pardon. Headley, currently undergoing a 35-year sentence in a US jail, is likely to depose via video link on February 8. PTI TS EAMCET 2022 Seat Allotment Result 2022 for round 2 on Oct 16: How to check and more Nitish attacks BJP over dalit student's suicide India oi-PTI Patna, Jan 20: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today attacked BJP government at the Centre over the suicide by a dalit student and said it was caused due to "environment of intolerance developing in the society". "Its a matter of concern for the country that a dalit student is forced to take his life over his unpleasant treatment," Kumar told reporters reacting to the incident at Hyderabad University. "The forces that have emerged in the post-liberalisation phase has created an environment of intolerance in the society which poses a danger to growth in the country," he said in an apparent dig at BJP-led NDA government at the Centre. Expressing grief over dalit scholar Rohith Vemula committing suicide following his suspension, Kumar, a senior JD(U) leader, demanded an impartial inquiry into the incident. Kumar, who in partnership with RJD President Lalu Prasad won a landslide victory for the secular alliance in the Bihar assembly elections, emphasised on the "need for a Bihar-like grouping to fight the present challenge." The Bihar CM also condemned the terrorists attack in a Pakistan's Bacha Khan University today and stressed on fighting terror at the ideological level together. He was talking to reporters after a condolence meeting for veteran CPI leader A B Bardhan, which was attended by RJD President Lalu Prasad too. PTI Pathankot probe in Pakistan turning out to be a damp squib India oi-Vicky New Delhi, Jan 20: When Pakistan commenced the probe into the Pathankot attack, it appeared to be a very promising one. However things have relatively slowed down in Pakistan and indications are that the probe has not made any major progress. India has been seeking documentary evidence of the action taken by Pakistan, but none have been shared as yet. Around 25 persons had been rounded up in Pakistan and questioned based on the evidence shared by India, but no cases have been registered as yet. There is no clarity on the charges that have been filed against these persons. Sources tell OneIndia that it does not appear that any charges have been filed as of now. Detained may be released: At the moment, several persons are under detention in Pakistan. All these detentions had taken place two days after India shared evidence. However all these persons have been questioned, but no charges have been filed. There is nothing to suggest that an FIR too has been filed. This would mean that these persons get the benefit of a release in 60 days. The law states that no person can be kept under detention for over 60 days if charges are not filed. India is hoping that the probe against these persons will continue and the prosecutors in Pakistan will eventually file charges and try them. Pakistan feels that India is not sharing enough evidence with it. The communication between India and Pakistan held on various levels in connection with the probe suggests that the latter is not entirely happy with the evidence that they have been given. Moreover a special investigating team that has been set up by Pakistan has been clearly told that India will not allow it into the Pathankot air force station. This has not gone down too well with Pakistan. Timeline of Pathankot terror attack Indian officials say that they expected this kind of attitude from Pakistan. In Pakistan when it comes to outfits such as the Lashkar-e-Tayiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammad there are limitations. This is primarily because they don the role of proxies and strategic assets to the ISI. OneIndia Vaishali Takkar suicide: Her e-gadgets to be probed; hunt for the harasser is on Man beats up traffic cop when questioned about tinted glass in his car Shocking: Now, a 4-year-old girl raped in moving school bus India oi-Nairita Indore, Jan 20: Four years have passed but the country has not learnt any lesson from the horrific Dec 16 Delhi gangrape case. Protests, debates, dharnas were held across the country over security of women and children in India. However, there's no improvement till now. Now, a 4-year-old girl has been raped in a moving school bus. The incident took place in Ujjain district in Madhya Pradesh on Tuesday, Jan 19. [Details of Dec 16 Delhi Gangrape Case] Madhya Pradesh police arrested the accused who has been identified as Mahesh Baagwaan, the conductor of the school bus. According to police sources, the accused sexually exploited the girl when other students got off the bus. However, role of the bus driver is yet to be probed. After reaching home, the girl narrated the entire incident to her parents who later filed a police complaint against the conductor. The girl was taken to hospital for medical tests. Lately, news about sexual assaults, rapes of school kids inside school premises in different places of the country had surfaced. Children are no longer safe anywhere. In Dec 16 case, a 23-year-old girl was gangraped in a moving bus. She was gangraped by six men and later was thrown out of the moving bus. The incident had shattered the country. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Wednesday, January 20, 2016, 13:00 [IST] TS EAMCET 2022 Seat Allotment Result 2022 for round 2 on Oct 16: How to check and more Student's suicide: "System at Hyderabad Varsity needs to be overhauled" India oi-Vicky Hyderabad, Jan 20: The death of Rohith Vemula, a scholar at the Hyderabad University, has sparked protests and debates across the country. Even as the calls for Union Minister, Bandaru Dattatreya to step down get louder, there is also a demand being made to overhaul the administration at the university. The Civil Liberties Monitoring Committee, a leading NGO at Hyderabad, has accused some members in the university of playing into the hands of communal forces. The general secretary of the committee, Lateed Mohammad Khan in this chat with OneIndia says that there is an urgent need to overhaul the system or else matters will get worse. Overhaul the system at Hyderabad University: The students coming from the marginalized and backward communities have become the target of communal politics, Khan says. Many are against these students from pursuing higher education. Universities should be the centre for the production of intellectuals for the betterment of the society. But the Indian universities have been occupied by communal forces, he also adds. Educational institutions are the targets of communal forces. They want to convert all the higher educational institutions including the universities into haven of communalism. This is clearly visible in the central universities such as English and Foreign Language University (EFLU), University of Hyderabad (UOH), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) etc. The communal minded staff in the administration and students have been given free hands to conspire and made the informers who in turn give each and every minute detail of those whom administration thinks as against them. In fact, the scholars are the pressure group who put a check on the wrong doings of the administration. Students were not guilty: Khan says that In this case of five scholars who were socially boycotted from the campus on the pretext of punishment, were in fact found not guilty by the proctorial committee that conducted an enquiry and their suspension was revoked. But later when the new vice-chancellor was appointed, the BJP minister Bandaru Dattatraya wrote a letter to the MHRD minister Smriti Irani that the university students belonging to the Ambedkar Students Association are castiest, extremist and anti-national', and action should be taken for a change for better'. The HRD minister asked the vice-chancellor to take action against such students and thus these five scholars were suspended from the hostel and public places in the campus. These five scholars were sleeping on the ground in the open place since their suspension, demanding to revoke it. One can imagine the cold in the campus, where the temperature would be generally lower than the other places in this winter season. Under this situation, students lost hope on university administration and one of them felt distressed and thought death is better than this kind of miserable life, Khan also points out. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Wednesday, January 20, 2016, 9:35 [IST] Sunanda Pushkar death probe was 'shoddy', says AIIMS forensic head India oi-IANS By Ians English New Delhi, Jan 20: The head of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) forensic department, Dr Sudhir Gupta, on Tuesday said that Delhi Police investigation into Sunanda Pushkar death case was slipshod and that it had unnecessarily delayed sending of the viscera to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the US. "It has been a shoddy investigation on the part of the police. There have been many errors in the investigation," Dr Gupta told IANS, adding that there had been unnecessary delays in the case. "The delay in sending the viscera samples of Sunanda Pushkar to the FBI led to its degradation," he said. On January 15, Dr Gupta told this correspondent that the FBI had found a few radioactive substances in the viscera, "but due to degraded viscera, they could not read its intensity". This was contrary to what the police had claimed that no radioactive substance had been found in the viscera. On the police claim over the uncertainty about the exact cause of death or lack of `clarity` on the poisonous substance that caused Pushkar`s death, Gupta told IANS on Tuesday: "Delhi Police are lying if they are saying so." Gupta added: "There have been many attempts to dilute the investigation. The previous government and the AIIMS administration even tried to remove me from my post so that they could form a new medical board which would give a `natural death` report. But they did not succeed. I did not compromise with the principles and ethics of my profession." Gupta had earlier alleged that he was asked by AIIMS director M.C. Mishra to prepare a post-mortem examination report of Pushkar, stating her death was `natural`. The AIIMS director had filed an affidavit with the Delhi High Court last year to remove Gupta from his post. Pushkar, 52, wife of senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, was found dead in a south Delhi hotel room on January 17, 2014. Delhi Police Commissioner B.S. Bassi earlier said that they had received a report from AIIMS on the FBI`s finding on the viscera samples of Pushkar. The FBI had endorsed the AIIMS report of poisoning as the cause of Pushkar`s death. Pushkar`s viscera samples were sent to the FBI lab in Washington DC, US, in February last year to determine the poison that may have killed her. The FBI report was received in October 2015. IANS For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Wednesday, January 20, 2016, 11:48 [IST] 5G will take education to next level: PM Modi at the launch of Mission Schools of Excellence in Gujarat Supported Modi due to UPA's 'unjust act': Subhash Chandra India oi-PTI New Delhi, Jan 20: Zee Group promoter Subhash Chandra has said he supported Narendra Modi's prime ministerial bid in response to the UPA government's "unjust act" of lodging a criminal case against him and his company for allegedly seeking bribe from Congress MP Naveen Jindal's steel firm. In his autobiography 'The Z factor; My journey as the wrong man at the right time', which was today released by Prime Minister Modi, Chandra also claimed the FIR was registered because it had the "blessings" of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and her deputy and son Rahul Gandhi. "This was an unjust act by the UPA. In response, I personally supported Narendra Modi's campaign for prime ministership," he writes in the book published by Harper Collins. A case was registered against him and senior journalists of his group in 2012 on the complaint of Jindal's firm that Zee News was trying to "extort" Rs 100 crore from it in lieu of stopping its unfavourable coverage against the company, which was allegedly favoured by the UPA government in coal block allocation. Zee group had denied the charge and insisted that it was doing a sting to record the firm's attempts to bribe it. "I am not sure why the Congress supported Naveen on this issue. Did Naveen donate a large sum running into thousands of crores to Congress? I don't have the answers. "I was equally disappointed with the media houses. All of them turned against me.Instead of seeing the case against Zee as an attack on media, other publications treated this as an exception.The fight between Naveen and me was not a personal fight. It was a fight between a corrupt system and media company," Chandra writes. Releasing the book at his residence, Modi described Chandra as a person "who always cared for the weaker sections of society" as he referred to over 52,000 'Ekal Vidyalaya' run by Chandra's group. He also recounted anecdotes about his earlier interactions with the media mogul. In his speech interspersed with several lighter-hearted remarks, Modi said writing biography was a "risky" affair but taking risk was in Chandra's nature. Union ministers Manohar Parrikar, Suresh Prabhu and Mahesh Sharma, senior Congress leader Sushil Kumar Shinde and Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav were present on the occasion and many of them spoke about their association with Chandra. Many media personalities, including Aroon Purie of India Today and Rajat Sharma of India TV, were also there besides actor Akshay Kumar and Anupam Kher. PTI PTI Temple allows entry to Dalits, women after 400 years India oi-Reetu New Delhi, Jan 20: In the name of tradition, dalits and women, were not allowed to enter the famous Parsuram temple in Garhwal's Jaunsar Bawar region. But as per reports, soon, the 400 year-old tradition will be changed as management of the temple has announced that everyone will be allowed in the temple in future. "This region is on the path of progress. Our literacy rate has gone up and people want scenarios to change," Chairman of the committee was quoted as saying in a TOI report. "Dalits are hesitant to enter the temple premises because of certain beliefs. We want to send them a message that everyone is equal before the Almighty and no one can be stopped from entering a place of worship," Chauhan further added in the added. According to the daily's report, "In the past few months, Dalits of the region had held several protests condemning these strictures. Dalit leaders and activists, said they had been fighting a bitter battle to end this discrimination and also added that a greater war was yet to be won as 339 other temples in the region still have the ban." This announcement comes at a time when debates are already going on about women being stopped from entering Sabarimala temple. The Supreme Court had questioned the age-old tradition of banning entry of women in the menstrual age group in the holy hill shrine dedicated to Lord Ayyappa, saying it cannot be done under the Constitution. "The temple cannot prohibit entry (women), except on the basis of religion. Unless you have a constitutional right, you cannot prohibit entry. Anyway, we will examine it on February 8," a bench of Justices Dipak Misra and N V Ramana had said. The bench said this while hearing a PIL filed by Young Lawyers Association, seeking entry for all women and girls in the Sabarimala temple which, as a practice, does not allow women to enter the premises after attaining puberty. OneIndia News Why India cannot allow Pakistan investigators into Pathankot air base? India oi-Vicky Pathankot, Jan 20: Pakistan may be upset that India has said no to its investigators entering the Pathankot air force station to probe the case. India, however, has every reason to deny the investigators permission to enter into the air base. While India may be in favour of friendly ties with Pakistan, it still needs to tread carefully as there will always be a trust deficit. The Defence Ministry had made it clear that it shall not allow the Special Investigating Team constituted by Pakistan to enter the air force station. Pakistan had indicated that its SIT would visit India to probe the matter. India had welcomed this move, but says that there will be restrictions. Leaking of sensitive information: When it comes to playing spy games, Pakistan has been India's biggest nightmare. Incidents in the recent past have clearly shown that Pakistan's spies are ready to source any information when it comes to India's defence. In such a context it would be highly inappropriate to allow a Pakistan team into the air base which houses sensitive assets and also has crucial information relating to India's air force. India would have taken a similar approach had it been any other country too. Although the Pathankot attack took place, India has said that it has managed to protect the assets and nothing crucial or sensitive has been destroyed or compromised. Allowing persons from other countries into the air force base cannot be permitted as India suspects that under the garb of a probe, other information would be collected as well. It must be recalled that the Pathankot air force station is a favourite striking point for Pakistan. In the previous wars that have been fought, Pakistan has always tried to launch the first attack on the air force station in a bid to cripple the air force. OneIndia News Power cut in Chennai on October 19: These areas will be affected EPS, his supporters detained for trying to hold hunger strike in TN assembly Work with Lanka, render justice to Tamils: TN to Centre India oi-PTI Chennai, Jan 20: Tamil Nadu Governor K Rosaiah on Wednesday, Jan 20 urged the Centre to pursue with Sri Lankan government and ensure that action is taken against those who committed crimes against Tamils there and sought a permanent solution to the problems of the state's fishermen. In his address to the Tamil Nadu Assembly, he reflected the government's position over the issue, seeking the Centre to take note of the various resolutions passed by the House over Sri Lanka vis-a-vis Tamils' issues there. He referred to Sri Lankan government's alleged impunity in "ignoring international sentiments and resolutions relating to reconciliation and accountability for war crimes and genocide" during closing stages of the civil war there. He said Tamil Nadu Assembly passed a resolution urging the Centre to take action to pass a resolution in the UNHRC seeking international inquiry into war crimes and violations of the Geneva Convention by the then Sri Lankan regime. "The Centre should pursue with the current Sri Lankan government the issue of taking action against those who committed such crimes against Tamils and render justice," he said. "I hope the Centre will take note of resolutions passed by this Assembly and take action to persuade the Sri lanka to restore lands to Tamils thus providing equal rights and opportunity to live peacefully with dignity," he said. Citing the continuing arrests of fishermen from Tamil Nadu and impounding of their boats by Sri Lanka and the neighbouring country's reluctance to free the boats, he said it is "causing endless agony among the fishermen." "It is our duty to find a lasting solution to this issue by retrieving Katchatheevu and restoring the traditional rights of our fishermen," he said and hoped the Centre would work with Lanka to find an amicable solution. He reiterated the state's request to the Centre to sanction a comprehensive financial package of Rs 1,520 crore for deep sea fishing and to develop related infrastructure. PTI Amal Clooney offers to help jailed Azerbaijani Journalist International oi-Pallavi New York, Jan 20: Amal Clooney is in news again! But this time, the beauty is fighting for justice. A human rights lawyer, she has offered to fight the case of jailed Azerbaijani journalist Khadija Ismayilova in the European Court of Human Rights. The journalist and her lawyer are said to be considering the proposal. Amal Clooney is the wife of famed Hollywood actor George Clooney and is also a renowned lawyer who is known to have taken prominent cases in Egypt, Armenia, and the Maldives, defending people imprisoned under political influences that are often seen as violation of Human Rights. Ismayilova was sentenced to 7 and half years of prison in September 2015 for writing reports on the family members of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, who are alleged to have links with massive business and real estate holdings OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Wednesday, January 20, 2016, 12:16 [IST] Prosecutions story may be attractive but should be backed by evidence IS assault on Syria city has residents fearing massacres International oi-PTI Damascus, Jan 20: A deadly Islamic State group assault on Deir Ezzor has seen the jihadists tighten their siege on the eastern Syrian city and left residents terrified and fearing the worst. Fierce clashes have relentlessly rocked the city's northern edges after a multi-front offensive on Saturday that cost the lives of dozens of people. IS jihadists overran Al-Baghaliyeh, one of the last areas on the city's outskirts known for the production of food. The extremists now control 60 per cent of Deir Ezzor city, intensifying a siege that had already caused fear and hardship for the roughly 200,000 people still living inside. Around 70 per cent of the city's remaining residents are women and children, according to the United Nations. "People are afraid, the situation is very difficult," said Attiyeh, a resident of Deir Ezzor who spoke by phone from the city. "Food and vegetables are rare, and we're starting to have problems with bread," he added. He referred to reports circulated by state media that IS fighters had killed 300 civilians. "If the city falls there will be a massacre," he said. On Saturday, IS launched a bloody offensive on Deir Ezzor, with dozens of its fighters carrying out suicide bomb attacks as they stormed government positions. ISIS letter threatens to kill Modi, Parrikar The attack and subsequent fighting has killed at least 120 government forces, many of whom were executed by IS, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor. The group also said at least 70 IS fighters had been killed in the assault and clashes, with the jihadists seizing territory inside and outside of the city's northwestern tip. In addition, the Britain-based monitor said the jihadists had killed at least 85 civilians and kidnapped 400 more. Ghaleb al-Haj Hamdo, 23, told AFP he can still hear the boom of clashes nearby, reminding him of the violence wreaked upon his city at the weekend. "I am afraid of a massacre that will repeat itself over and over if Daesh invades our neighbourhood," Hamdo told AFP by phone, using an Arabic acronym for IS. Fearing fresh violence, residents are limiting their activities around the city at night, said the university student, who lives in the central Al-Joura district. AFP Imran Khan makes quite a comeback, wins 6 of 8 bypoll seats A great tragedy say activists after 200 bodies are recovered from roof of Pakistan hospital International news brief: Confident of Pak's commitment, ability to secure its nuclear assets, says US & more From 'dangerous' to 'secure and confident': US makes a u-turn after Biden's comment on Pak Toddler from Pakistan undergoes bone marrow transplant in Bengaluru The persecution of Hindus in Pakistan continues with a Hindu girl forcibly converted and married (Updates) Taliban attack on Pakistan university claims 25 lives; Taliban claims responsibility International oi-Jagriti Islamabad, Jan 20: At least 25 people, including four gunmen, were killed and 50 were injured, when terrorists stormed the Bacha Khan University in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Wednesday, Jan 20. The gunmen opened fire at students and faculty members who had gathered in a school on the varsity campus for a poetry recital to commemorate the anniversary of the activist and leader after whom the school is named. This incident reported a little over a year after Taliban gunmen killed more than 150 people most of them were students in a school in Peshawar. Here are the Live Updates of Bacha Khan University terror attack, claimed by Tehreek-e-Taliban: Candle Light Vigil for #BachaKhanUniversity victims at Jantar Mantar, 6pm today. pic.twitter.com/dPNRxICpJb NSUI (@nsui) January 20, 2016 I'm saddened to be hearing my homeland is suffering again and again #BachaKhanUniversity #thishasgottostop Wasim Akram (@wasimakramlive) January 20, 2016 14.30 pm: PM Nawaz Sharif directs federal ministers Pervaiz Rashid, Abdul Qadir Baloch, Baleeghur Rehman to reach Charsadda. 14.25 pm: Pakistan President Mamnoon Hussain condemns terrorist attack at Bacha Khan University. President Mamnoon Hussain condemns terrorist attack at Bacha Khan University, #Charsadda Radio Pakistan (@RadioPakistan) January 20, 2016 14.20 pm: Prime Minister Narendra Modi condemns the terror attack at Bacha Khan University in Pakistan. Strongly condemn the terror attack at Bacha Khan University in Pakistan. Condolences to families of the deceased. Prayers with the injured. Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) January 20, 2016 14.05 pm: Mastermind of Army Public Sschool Omar Mansoor claims attack on Bacha Khan University. 13.42 pm: Hope this tragedy will sharpen Pak authorities desire to wipe out all sources of violence in their country-S Tharoor on Bacha Khan University attack. Hope this tragedy will sharpen Pak authorities desire to wipe out all sources of violence in their country-S Tharoor pic.twitter.com/6N0Hx9CvNV ANI (@ANI_news) January 20, 2016 13.31 pm: All terrorists who attacked the university premise were between 18 and 25 years old. 13.27 pm: Military says four terrorists have been killed, university premises secure. Gunfire over. 13.17 pm: Noted journalist Najam Sethi prays for students, faculties. Prayers with students/ faculty at #BachaKhanUniversity. Terrible that our children continue to pay in blood for establishment's blunders. Najam Sethi (@najamsethi) January 20, 2016 13.09 pm: Death toll mounts to 21 in Bacha Khan University attack in Charsada. 12.50 pm: Clearance of university block by block continues by Army troops.No firing being heard: Asim Bajwa. Charsadda Update:clearance of university block by block continues by Army troops.No firing being heard AsimBajwa (@AsimBajwaISPR) January 20, 2016 12.45 pm: 15 killed, over 20 injured in Bacha Khan University terror attack in Charsadda: Express Tribune. 12.40 pm: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) chairman Imran Khan to visit terror attack hit Charsadda. 12.36 pm: Around 90 percent of the area has been cleared: Rescue official 12.33 pm: Eight bodies have been pulled out so far from the attack site. 12.32 pm: A team of SSG commandos enters the university as the operation continues: Express Tribune 12.27 pm: Four terrorists killed so far. All buildings and rooftop taken over by Army, says Asim Bajwa: Dawn 12.24 pm: PPP Senator, Sherry Rehman condemned the attack. Strongly condemn attack on #BachaKhanUniversity, praying that we get the campus back and hoping that human fallout is minimised SenatorSherryRehman (@sherryrehman) January 20, 2016 12.20 pm: Seven killed, 12 injured in terror attack carried out by TTP at Bacha Khan University in Charsadda: Express Tribune. 12.15 pm: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif condemns terrorist attack at Bacha Khan University. PM Nawaz Sharif condemns terrorist attack at Bacha Khan University, #Charsadda Radio Pakistan (@RadioPakistan) January 20, 2016 12.06 pm: Those who kill innocent students & civilians have no religion: Pak PM Nawaz Sharif on Bacha Khan University terror attack. 12.05 pm: Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the attack on Bacha Khan University at Charsada. 12.04 pm: Terrorists contained in two blocks within university, operation continues, says Asim Bajwa. 12.02 pm: I saw three attackers engaged in an exchange of fire with security guards, says eyewitness. 12.00 noon: Mass casualties feared in Charsadda university attack. 11.59 am: Eight to 10 terrorists are still inside the premise, reported Dawn citing sources. 11.53 am: University professor, Hamid Hussain, was killed in the terror attack. 11.50 am: The gunmen entered from the back gate of the university. 11.40 am: Two gunmen killed in Pakistan university attack, police say, with reports others still firing. OneIndia News Pathankot Attack: Maulana Masood Azhar will remain in a dossier International oi-Vicky Islamabad, Jan 20: India has said in the past couple of days that it proposes to seek the custody of Maulana Masood Azhar, chief of the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and mastermind of the Pathankot attack. While India does have a legitimate claim on Azhar, it still sounds a bit strange because he was handed over to Pakistan during the Khandahar hijack . The question is -- will asking for Azhar change anything? It will not and the one must remember that Pakistan is not going to hand him over. This would mean he will remain just a name in yet another dossier prepared by India. There will be red corner alerts and interpol notices against him, but that does not change anything as long as he is in Pakistan. India will give another dossier: Indian officials say that they are well aware of what the position in Pakistan is. Pakistan has its own constraints where the likes of Azhar are concerned. He is capable of dishing out sentiments and the ISI or the Pakistan army will tread cautiously while dealing with him. India can do nothing much on this issue. The only thing that India can do it step up pressure on Pakistan to at least keep Azhar quiet, if they cannot act against him. The talk of surgical strikes or covert operations are easier said than done. This would mean that a 2011 dossier that India had prepared will be upgraded following the Pathankot attack. In 2011 there were 50 names in the dossier and now post Pathankot, it has gone up to 60. Whether these dossiers have any impact or not is another question all together. The important aspect is that the matter needs to be debated and these dossiers will also help in stepping up pressure by the international community. Post the Pathankot attack, when a Pakistan minister said that Azhar was in protective custody, it send out a clear picture. India says that they highly doubt if Pakistan would act against Azhar. He is an ideological head of the Jaish-e-Mohammad and in such cases it is very difficult linking him directly to the attack. Pakistan can however clip his wings and reduce his activities on the ground that it was his outfit that carried out the Pathankot strike, Indian officials say. OneIndia News For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Wednesday, January 20, 2016, 9:44 [IST] Sikh, 3 Muslims made to deboard US flight after pilot 'uneasy'; airline sued International oi-PTI New York, Jan 20: A Sikh man and his three Muslim friends, who were asked to deboard an American Airlines flight because their appearance 'made the captain uneasy', are seeking USD 9 million in compensation from the airline. Shan Anand, a Sikh, and his friends - Faimul Alam besides a Bangladeshi Muslim and an Arab Muslim all young US citizens in their 20s, were ordered off the flight 44718 from Toronto to New York last month based upon their perceived race, colour and ethnicity, CNN reported today. The Bangladeshi Muslim and Arab Muslim were identified only by their initials W.H. and M.K. Anand and Alam switched seats with strangers after boarding, so that they could sit next to W.H. and M.K. Several minutes later, a white woman flight attendant asked W.H. to get off the plane, according to the lawsuit, which was filed yesterday in Brooklyn Federal Court. When they asked the flight crew why they were being removed, the flight attendant told them to exit "peacefully" and "demanded" they return to the gate and await further directions, the lawsuit said. "It basically made me feel like a criminal," W.H. said, adding: "It was like I was put on a pedestal where everyone is pointing at you. I was frightened that they were frightened." It was only after the plane took off that an airline agent told the men "they could not board because the crew members, and specifically the captain, felt uneasy and uncomfortable with their presence on the flight and as such, refused to fly unless they were removed from the flight," the report said. The flight took off, leaving the four men behind. "They said it was protocol," said Anand. When the group asked the agent whether their appearance had contributed to their removal, "being that they are dark- skinned and had beards," the agent responded that their appearance "did not help," the lawsuit said. Each of the men are now seeking USD 1 million in compensatory damages and USD 5 million in punitive damages, sayinh the airline "disgracefully engaged in the discrimination... based on their perceived race, color, ethnicity, alienage and/or national origin." PTI For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Wednesday, January 20, 2016, 11:44 [IST] International news brief: Trump rape accuser plans suit under new NY 'survivors' law and more Fact Check: Did Trump thank Musk for welcoming him back to Twitter Trump wins Palin backing; Sanders rising against Clinton International oi-IANS By Ians English Washington, Jan 20: Two weeks before the first nominating contests, Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump picked up his biggest endorsement in Sarah Palin even as Bernie Sanders posed a rising challenge to the Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton. The former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, Palin announced Tuesday she was backing the billionaire real estate mogul while appearing with Trump at a raucous campaign rally in Iowa, where both parties hold their caucuses on Feb 1. On the Democratic side, meanwhile, a new CNN/WMUR poll found self styled Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders' lead over the former secretary of state on the rise in New Hampshire, which holds the first-in-the-nation primary on February 9. The Vermont senator was leading the former secretary of state by 27 points, 60 percent to 33 percent - up from his 50-40 lead in early December-in New Hampshire which will see the first actual primary vote unlike Iowa Caucuses, which are essentially party meetings. Handing Trump his most high-profile endorsement yet in front of thousands of his fans, Palin yelled from the stage, "Heads are spinnin'. Media heads are spinning! This is going to be so much fun!" "Are you ready to make America great again?" she said repeating Trump's campaign slogan in a 20-minute speech filled with Palinisms like "pussy-footin'," "hallelujah" and "you betcha," according to CNN. She hailed Trump as a "compassionate," "refreshing" and "self-made" man who would bring the country back from President Barack Obama's "disastrous tenure." "We are ready for a change," Palin said. "We are ready, and our troops deserve the best." She also slammed "establishment candidates," without naming names, and praised Trump for "going rogue left and right." Trump said he was "honoured" to pick up Palin's backing, calling her a "special" and "amazing" person. "This is a woman that, from Day 1, I said, 'If I ever do this, I have to get her support,' " he said. Palin emerged as a leading voice of the Tea Party movement following the 2008 presidential election and was active during the 2010 midterm campaign, backing dozens of conservative Republican candidates across the country. Meanwhile, a new CNN/WMUR poll mostly conducted before Sunday night's debate, also found 52 percent of New Hampshire Democrats saying they have definitely decided who they will support, up from 36 percent who felt that way in early December. Among those voters, Sanders holds an even broader 64 percent to 35 percent lead. But the Vermont senator's support rests heavily on groups whose participation in New Hampshire primaries is less reliable-notably younger voters and those who aren't registered Democrats, CNN said. Sanders' rise in the poll comes as New Hampshire voters' focus on foreign policy and national security faded from 23 percent to 13 percent and the share of those naming the economy and jobs their top priority climbed from 18 percent to 26 percent. On the economy, New Hampshire voters now clearly give Sanders 57 percent to 33 percent the edge over Clinton as the candidate more trusted to handle it. Sanders also has astonishingly high favorability ratings among New Hampshire's Democratic primary voters, and is broadly seen as the candidate with the "personal characteristics and qualities a president should have." Overall, 91 percent say they have a favourable view of Sanders, while just 2 percent have an unfavourable opinion. Clinton too is viewed positively by 65 percent, but as many as 55 percent, up from 46 percent in December, consider her as the least honest in the field. IANS http://donpolson.blogspot.com/ Bringing you the very best information, analysis and opinion from around the web. NOTE: For videos that don't start--go to article link to view. 2008-2022 One News Page Ltd. All rights reserved. One News is a registered trademark of One News Page Ltd. Komfie Manalo, Opalesque Asia: China is reported to be considering a ban on hedge funds after the latest market crash has shown that the series of regulations the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) and the Peoples Bank of China have introduced to revive the countrys fledgling financial markets have failed. In a report, Value Walk cited data from Shanghai-based event-driven research firm Red Pulse claiming that Chinese regulators might consider banning new investment companies from registering in China. Red Pulse said that investment companies are defined as enterprises registering names containing "investment", "capital", "asset", "fund", "asset management" or "financial leasing". It added that definition includes investment companies involving "equity investment, investment management, investment advisory, capital management, asset management and non-financing guarantee." Registration of these firms in Shanghai and Shenzhen will be suspended starting this year, the report added. The news is a big setback for Chinese hedge funds that are seeing tremendous growth in the country. Data released by the Asset Management Association of China (AMAC) counted 24,625 hedge funds as of December 2015, u...................... To view our full article Click here Irans supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, cautiously welcomed on Tuesday the completion of the nuclear deal and the lifting of economic sanctions last weekend, while at the same time dashing any expectations that the event marked the beginning of a detente with the United States. On Tuesday, in a letter to President Hassan Rouhani published on his website, Khamenei.ir, Ayatollah Khamenei warned the government to guard vigilantly against American deceptions, saying it was time to ensure that Irans opponents honor their part of the deal. Khamenei urged Mr. Rouhani to be on his guard. The comments made by some American politicians in the last two, three days are cause for deep suspicion, he wrote. Lakota Indians and especially the people of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe (CRST), want some answers and action on the death of a young Cheyenne Indian man who was allegedly maced, handcuffed, and hog-tied. Then he was allegedly beaten to death in a jail cell by tribal law enforcement. According to a change.org petition: We the United Urban Warrior Society hosted a rally for the family (of Phillip High Bear) on 10/19/2015. Phillip's mother and I were asked to meet with "Larry Lebeau" acting Chief of Police. After hearing that the officers involved were not suspended until after the FBI Investigation bothered me! We ask that these officers be suspended! A.S.A.P.! - We will not settle for anything less. We will rally again if necessary. ~ James Swan, leader of the United Urban Warrior Society There are varied accounts of police and police administrators of this tribal law-enforcement CRST headquarters being fired after the FBI became involved. Some reports name officers and top brass that have resigned, but conflicting reports leave things up in the air. To say the fallout from Mr. High Bear's death has been nebulous is an understatement. It sounds more like the "he said, she said" talk before and after a Powwow. And it's typical aftereffect of a police cover-up. Phillip High Bear, of Eagle Butte, S.D., was arrested on Sept. 15, 2015, for being intoxicated and was subsequently thrown into the drunk tank, where inmates sleep on cement floors without mattresses and bedding. According to James Magaska Swan, leader of the United Urban Warrior Society, the FBI is investigating this case and it is in limbo. Swan talked about High Bear's murder with this writer on Monday, Jan. 19, and was distressed and angry that nothing has been done by federal law enforcement concerning Mr. High Bear's death for such a trivial crime as being found inebriated by Tribal Law Enforcement. Phillip High Bear was brutally murdered in the drunk tank of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe's jail last September. (Image by James Magaska Swan) Details DMCA It's a repeated story these days. Do people of color like Native Americans, African-Americans, and Hispanics have any rights whatsoever? Especially the young men of these races? There have been so many police-initiated deaths of these young men that a thick Rolodex is now required just to keep the names of these dead victims, most of which, like Mr. High Bear, committed petty criminal offenses and suffered unspeakable horrors before the Angel of Death came to the rescue. Have these poor kids just become targets for the police to practice killing maneuvers upon? Are they mere practice dummies for the big, bad, brawny cops to enjoy plying sadistic torture? A little more than a month ago on OpEdNews.com, a story I wrote was headlined on the front page concerning 26-year-old San Francisco resident Mario Woods, who was walking down a sidewalk during the afternoon of Dec. 3, 2015. A baker's dozen of San Francisco police officers opened fire on Woods in a firing-squad execution. Extreme action for a little guy who was only carrying a small knife. In Woods' case, Mace or Tasering wasn't even considered. Jump immediately to the ultimate sanction and fire a cannonade of high-caliber bullets at the poor fellow. According to Swan and the few media reports that have been published, High Bear's execution was just as grisly, unnecessary and ridiculous as the firing-squad fusillade of lead fired into San Francisco resident Mario Woods. Woods, a young African-American man, seemed rather harmless and probably couldn't hurt a fly. Watch the video and judge for yourself. Wasn't there another way to get that little knife out of his hand? Meantime, back in South Dakota, according to Swan: "We have reports from other inmates in that cell who were yelling at the cops, 'Leave him alone! Leave him alone!'' - and the police just yelled at them, 'Shut the f*cK up or we'll do the same to you!'" Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Reprinted from Consortium News A curious reality about Official Washington is that to have "credibility" you must accept the dominant "group thinks" whether they have any truth to them or not, a rule that applies to both the mainstream news media and the political world, even to people who deviate from the pack on other topics. For instance, Sen. Bernie Sanders may proudly declare himself a "democratic socialist" -- far outside the acceptable Washington norm -- but he will still echo the typical propaganda about Syria, Russia, Iran and other "designated villains." Like other progressives who spend years in Washington, he gets what you might called "Senate-ized," adopting that institution's conventional wisdom about "enemies" even if he may differ on whether to bomb them or not. That pattern goes in spades for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other consciously "centrist" politicians as well as media stars, like NBC's Andrea Mitchell and Lester Holt, who were the moderators of Sunday's Democratic presidential debate . They know what they know based on what "everybody who's important" says, regardless of the evidence or lack thereof. So, you had Mitchell and Holt framing questions based on Official Washington's "group thinks" -- and Sanders and Clinton responding accordingly. Regarding Iran, Sanders may have gone as far as would be considered safe in this political environment, welcoming the implementation of the agreement to restrain Iran's nuclear program but accepting the "group think" about Iran's "terrorism" and hesitant to call for resumption of diplomatic relations. "Understanding that Iran's behavior in so many ways is something that we disagree with; their support of terrorism, the anti-American rhetoric that we're hearing from their leadership is something that is not acceptable," Sanders said. "Can I tell you that we should open an embassy in Tehran tomorrow? No, I don't think we should." Blaming Iran In her response, Clinton settled safely behind the Israeli-preferred position -- to lambaste Iran for supposedly fomenting the trouble in the Middle East, though more objective observers might say that the U.S. government and its "allies" -- including Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey -- have wreaked much more regional havoc than Iran has. "We have to go after them [the Iranians] on a lot of their other bad behavior in the region which is causing enormous problems in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and elsewhere," Clinton said. Yet, how exactly Iran is responsible for "enormous problems" across the region doesn't get explained. Everybody just "knows" it to be true, since the claim is asserted by Israel's right-wing government and repeated by U.S. pols and pundits endlessly. Yet, in Iraq, the chaos was not caused by Iran, but by the U.S. government's invasion in 2003, which then-Sen. Clinton supported (while Sen. Sanders opposed it). In Yemen, it is the Saudis and their Sunni coalition that has created a humanitarian disaster by bombing the impoverished country after wildly exaggerating Iran's support for Houthi rebels. In Syria, the core reason for the bloodshed is not Iran, but decisions of the Bush-43 administration last decade and the Obama administration this decade to seek another "regime change," ousting President Bashar al-Assad. Supported by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Sunni powers, this U.S.-backed "covert" intervention instigated both political unrest and terrorist violence inside Syria, including arming jihadist forces such as Al Qaeda's Nusra Front and its close ally, Ahrar al-Sham and -- to a lesser degree -- Al Qaeda's spinoff, the Islamic State. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Hidden Origins of Syria's Civil War."] The desire of these Sunni powers -- along with Israel and America's neoconservatives -- was to shatter the so-called "Shiite crescent" that they saw reaching from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon. Since Assad is an Alawite, a branch of Shiite Islam, he had to be removed even though he was regarded as the principal protector of Syria's Christian, Shiite and Alawite minorities. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Did Money Seal Saudi-Israeli Alliance?'] However, while Israel and the Sunni powers get a pass for their role in the carnage, Iran is blamed for its assistance to the Syrian military in battling these jihadist groups. Official Washington's version of this tragedy is that the culprits are Assad, the Iranians and now the Russians, who also intervened to help the Syrian government resist the jihadists, both the Islamic State and Al Qaeda's various friends and associates. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Climbing into Bed with Al Qaeda."] Blaming Assad See original here Court rules in favor of David Miranda, detained for nine hours at Heathrow airport in 2013 while transporting journalist documents on NSA revelations In a landmark ruling, a British appeals court on Tuesday found that the UK's terrorism law violates the European Convention on Human Rights -- a decision that came in the case of David Miranda, who was detained and searched at London's Heathrow airport in 2013 while carrying encrypted documents related to U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden. The ruling means government ministers will have to reevaluate a controversial provision in the Terrorism Act, known as Section 7, which gives law enforcement officers the power to stop, question, detain, and search people in airports and certain other transit areas, whether or not they are suspected of terrorism. Individuals who refuse to answer questions or hand over any requested documents or information may be fined, imprisoned up to four months, or both. "If journalists and their sources can have no expectation of confidentiality, they may decide against providing information on sensitive matters of public interest," the ruling states. "The court of appeal ruling rejects the broad definition of terrorism advanced by government lawyers. The correct legal definition of terrorism, the court of appeal has now ruled, requires some intention to cause a serious threat to public safety such as endangering life." The decision was handed down by Lord Dyson, the court's most senior judge. "The stop power, if used in respect of journalistic information or material is incompatible with article 10 [freedom of expression] of the [European convention on human rights] because it is not 'prescribed by law'," Dyson said. Miranda, who is the partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald, was interrogated for nine hours at Heathrow in August 2013 while transporting documents to Greenwald from journalist Laura Poitras, both of whom were reporting on the National Security Agency's (NSA) mass surveillance program. Miranda attempted last year to challenge his detention, but the High Court in London ruled that police had been justified in stopping and searching him. The government argued at the time that Miranda met the definition of a terrorist because he was carrying documents that "would endanger people's lives" if released. Tuesday's decision overturns at least part of that ruling. On Twitter, Miranda said he was "Thrilled with the court ruling! My purpose was to show U.K.'s terrorism law violates press freedoms. And journalism isn't 'terrorism.' We won!" Kate Goold, who represents Miranda, welcomed the decision, stating, "Today's ruling emphasizes the importance of interpreting terrorism with its ordinary natural meaning to ensure that legitimate public interest journalism is not stifled through the use of draconian powers because of the fear of remote consequences. The notion of a journalist becoming an 'accidental terrorist' has been whole-heartedly rejected. We welcome this court's principled and decisive ruling that Schedule 7 needs to come in line with other legislation to ensure that the seizure of journalistic material is protected by judicial safeguards." Goold's colleague John Halford added, "In short, this Court has decided that taking effective action against terrorism involves using instruments that are fit for purpose, rather than those that are so blunt that they inevitably damage the interests of democratic societies based on free speech and the journalists that are their champions." Reprinted from www.worldcantwait.net Protesters across the U.S. and at U.S. embassies in London and Mexico City last week demanded the closure of the U.S. torture camp at Guanta'namo Bay first set up by the Bush regime on January 11, 2002. The camp has operated seven years under Obama, as long as it did under Bush, though Obama promised in 2009 to close it within a year. Guanta'namo forms part of a larger, global network of prisons set up by the United States after 9/11, an integral part of the limitless global "war on terror" necessary to spread the U.S. empire of capitalist-imperialist globalization exploiting billions worldwide. The Bush regime brought 779 Muslim men to the military base. Most were captured in Afghanistan or Pakistan, many sold for $5,000 bounty to the U.S. military. Guanta'namo exists explicitly to avoid the protections of legal process in the U.S. Constitution. Those held are called "unprivileged enemy belligerents," not prisoners of war, so they can be held without benefit of the Geneva Conventions, which give rights to those captured in war. Less than 2 percent (15) of Guanta'namo prisoners have ever been charged with anything. Right now 93 remain, including 34 men who have been "cleared for release" but are not allowed to return to their countries. The largest group remaining are the so-called "forever" prisoners, those the U.S. government claims are "too dangerous" to release but says it does not have enough evidence to charge. Attorneys for the prisoners point out that avoiding trials also avoids releasing evidence of the torture most were subjected to. The prisoners endured years of physical torture and the psychological torture of being isolated and never knowing if they would be released. Among many abuses, prisoners in Guanta'namo suffered waterboarding and other torture techniques approved by the Bush White House; years of solitary confinement; deprivation of family and attorney contact; invasive genital searches and beatings. Their meetings and communication with assigned attorneys were spied on; the CIA recruited members of prisoners' legal teams. The Obama administration opposed legal action in U.S. courts brought by prisoners, including habeas corpus challenges to their confinement. The Pentagon interfered with plans to release prisoners by not providing host countries with medical files, or by just refusing to negotiate the details for years. The ten Yemeni prisoners released on January 14, 2016 had been "cleared" for years, but since the U.S. is backing the Saudi war on Yemen, they were sent to Oman, a U.S. ally. One of those men, Samir Naji al Hassan Moqbel, arrived the day the prison opened. He participated in the prisoner hunger strike of 2013, an action which drew world attention to the brutal force feeding of prisoners by the military. In an op-ed column published in the New York Times, "Gitmo is Killing Me," Moqbel wrote, "When they come to force me into the chair, if I refuse to be tied up, they call the E.R.F. (Extreme Reaction Force) team. So I have a choice. Either I can exercise my right to protest my detention, and be beaten up, or I can submit to painful force-feeding." The Obama administration has indicated it still has plans to close Guanta'namo by moving the "forever" prisoners and those it plans to put on trial to the U.S. mainland, possibly to military prisons. Some attorneys for the prisoners say that holding people without charge or trial within U.S. borders could establish a precedent of indefinite detention within the U.S. Ramzi Kassem, a professor at the CUNY School of Law, who has represented 13 of the prisoners, said last year, "Guanta'namo was never a single prison facility. From the beginning, it was always an idea, an ideology that purportedly liberated the U.S. government from the fetters of domestic and international law.... When people call for Guanta'namo to be closed, it is simply shorthand for a more comprehensive demand to end torture and arbitrary, indefinite imprisonment without trial or fair process." "Guanta'namo is a legal, moral and ethical abomination, and every day it remains open [it] poisons the U.S.'s claims to be a nation that respects the rule of law," said Andy Worthington, a British activist journalist who led the campaign to Stand with Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guanta'namo, and leader of prisoners' resistance efforts. On January 14, Worthington spoke at Revolution Books New York on the successful battle to get Shaker released, after being cleared for release twice, in October 2015. Campaigners made a 14-foot tall "inflatable" Shaker and worked to get over 100 celebrities and politicians to have their photos taken with the inflatable Shaker, demanding his release. Aamer and five men who had also been detained in Guanta'namo protested on January 11 at the U.S. embassy in London, demanding its closure "for everyone, not just for the brothers who are left there." The Marseillaise is universally considered the greatest and best known National Anthem of the world. But few people know that the music was actually already in existence when it was put down on a score, on 25 April 1792 by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle. France at that time was at war with Austria and the mayor of Strasbourg had lamented during a dinner that France had no National Hymn. Rouget de Lisle went back straight to his quarters and during the night he put down the words and the music. The piece was first called "A chant de guerre pour l'Armee du Rhin" that is "A War Song for the Army of the Rhine." The words were and indeed still are moving and charged with strong nationalistic emotions, and blending wonderfully with the music, which Rouget de Lisle added, claiming to have composed it. That melody soon became very popular among the troops and later was transformed into the rallying cry of the French revolutionaries. It became known as "La Marseillaise" only after it was sung on the streets in Marseilles by some volunteers, who later participated to the storming of the Bastille Tuileries Palace in Paris on 10 August 1792. Rouget de Lisle had enlisted into the Royal French army reaching the rank of captain, but in 1793 he refused to join the revolution and in 1793 he was jailed, going very close to having his head cut off on the guillotine. He was freed at the end of the Terror, retiring in the countryside. Napoleon I was not a fan of the Marseillaise and put it aside during the Empire and it was banned outright by King Louis XVIII. With Napoleon III coming to power Marseillaise was not resurrected, because by then the French national hymn was Partant pour la Syrie ("Departing to Syria") which sounds eerily modern in our days. The Marseillaise bounced back during the days of the Paris Commune in 1871 and was then declared France's National Anthem in 1879. Who, then, was the real composer of the music? I think that there are no doubts on this matter. The author was the Italian violinist and composer Giovan Battista Viotti who wrote it in 1781, 11 years before Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle. We don't want to blame Rounget de Lisle - who was a very principled man who had died in great poverty because of his political convictions - but I am afraid that it is not just a casual resemblance: it is exactly the same thing, note after note. It is indeed strange and regrettable that France has never fully recognized and accepted this fact by giving Viotti his due, at least mentioning his name. Here's is what Frederic Frank-David, former director of the Memorial de la Marseillaise, has to say: "There is a certain amount of probability that Rouget had been inspired by Viotti's tune, be it consciously or unconsciously." This is true but it is indeed difficult to think that it was "unconscious". If one compares the two tunes, one will understand that they are the same! Giovanni Battista Viotti was born at Fontaneto Po in 1755 and died in London in 1824. He the director of the King's Theatre in London for a few years , then he moved to Germany for two years (1798-1800); then he returned to London for 20 years, only moving for a couple of those years to Paris, where he was the director of the The- tre des Italiens and of the Opera, before retiring in London. Viotti is considered one of the greatest violinists that ever existed, as well as a great composer. Among several songs and arias written, he was also the author of 29 concerts. www.angeloparatico.com Progressive Content Not Found Sometimes, authors delete their progressive content after publishing. To see if the progressive content was renamed or re-published, please click here. When it comes to recruiting, the DCCC is always attracted to conservative ex-colleagues who have already lost to Republicans. We've talked about how Steve Israel and his crew of incompetents managed to lose the D+5 district centered around Syracuse, New York last cycle by running Republican-lite New Dem Dan Maffei after he had already been beaten in 2010. He road back into office on Obama's strong 2012 coattails, only to be thoroughly thrashed by the voters again in 2014 after 2 years of proving, again, he's not in the least bit progressive. Obama won NY-24 171,502 (57%) to 123,534 (41%) in 2014 while Maffei took 130,969 (48%) to beat Tea Party incumbent Ann Marie Buerkle's 118,578 (44%). Two years later, predictably, Democrats stayed away from the polls in droves and Maffei only managed to get 80,304 votes (40%) and lost to John Katko's 118,474 (60%). This is a blue district and its only the DCCC's ideological, anti-progressive interference that has saddled it with a Republican congressman again. The story in IL-10 is similar-- except this is a D+8 district, the bluest district in the country with a Republican congressman. In 2012 Republican incumbent Mark Kirk gave up the seat to run for the Senate. The Democrats ran a conservative Democrat, Brad Schneider and, like Maffei in NY, he got into office on Obama's coattails. Obama beat Romney there 157,400 (58%) to 112,552 (41%) and Schneider-- after the DCCC helped him defeat progressive champion Ilya Sheyman in a close primary-- beat Bob Dold much more narrowly-- 130,941 (50%) to 128,423 (50%). And of course, again, quite predictably, Democratic voters saw Schneider in action and just didn't show up at the polls in 2014. Dold beat him 95,992 (51%) to 91,136 (49%). So now Schneider wants back in again-- and, of course, the DCCC is trying to help him win, which is very possible since either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders could be expected to do very well in the north Chicagoland district. And, then it would be time for a Republican to beat Schneider again in 2016. Seems silly, huh? In NY-24 the likely nominee is a progressive Eric Kingson, who will break that cycle. I've been worried about IL-10, where the DCCC is making every effort to disadvantage the more progressive primary challenger Nancy Rotering in order to bolster their New Dem loser, Brad Schneider, who used to throw fundraising events at his hold for Mark Kirk. High profile Democrats have been pealing away from Schneider in recent weeks. Jan Schakowsky had endorsed him and withdrew her endorsement after he backed the Republican move to undermine President Obama's deal with Iran. Adlai Stevenson III and Abner Mikva also withdrew their endorsements and then each endorsed Nancy. But yesterday there was an even bigger break in the DCCC pattern of inevitable failure. Illinois' senior senator, Dick Durbin, very publicly announced that he was on team Rotering. "Nancy, a working mom and skilled attorney, has the courage, leadership and determination to return the 10th Congressional District to the Democratic fold," he said. Nancy brings to this race an extraordinary record for a first-time Congressional candidate. As Mayor of Highland Park she successfully confronted ComEd when local families were suffering from unreliable service, balanced the City budget five consecutive years and enacted real reforms. Her most noteworthy achievement gained national attention when she passed one of the nation's first local assault weapons ban and successfully defended the ordinance against an onslaught of gun lobby attacks all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. While the Republican-led Congress refused to respond to the nation's gun violence, Nancy Rotering and her City of Highland Park showed real leadership. Nancy combines fiscal responsibility with true progressive values. The primary is March 15 and Durbin's endorsement must have shocked the DCCC hacks, not enough to make them up from their incompetence or corruption. But enough to discomfort them. This is a race Nancy can win-- both against Schneider and against Dold, two conservatives who shouldn't be presenting an area like IL10. Reprinted from Palestine Chronicle When ISIS militias swept into Mosel, Iraq, in June 2014, Ibrahim Mahmoud plotted his flight, along with his whole family, which included 11 children. Once upon a time, Ibrahim was himself a child escaping another violent campaign carried out by equally angry militias. In his lifetime, Ibrahim became a refugee twice, once when he was nine-years-old living in Haifa, Palestine, and yet again and more recently, in Mosel. Just weeks before Israel declared its independence in 1948, Ibrahim lost his homeland, and fled Haifa, along with tens of thousands of Palestinian Muslims and Christians, after Israeli militias conquered the city in a military operation they called Bi'ur Hametz, or Passover Cleaning. Over 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from or fled the horrors of the militias-instigated war, and those who are still alive along with their descendants, number over five million refugees. Between 1948 and 2014, life was anything but kind to Ibrahim and his family. At first, they sold falafel, and his children left school to join the workforce at a young age. They all had cards that listed them as "Palestinian refugees," and to date know of no other identity. When the Americans invaded Iraq in 2003, they granted their soldiers and the Shia-militias a free hand in that Arab country. The once relatively thriving and peaceful Palestinian community of refugees in Iraq was shattered. Now, according to the UN Refugee's Agency, no more than 3,000 Palestinian refugees are still living in Iraq, many of them in refugee camps. Ibrahim has finally managed to escape Mosel, and now lives in a dirty and crowded refugee camp within Kurdish-controlled territories in the north. Considering his old age and faltering health, his story could possibly, and most likely end there, but certainly not that of his children and grandchildren. Ibrahim's tragedy is not unique within the overall Middle East refugee crisis. Nonetheless, if seen within its painfully protracted historical context, Palestinian exile is almost unprecedented in its complexity and duration. Few other refugee populations had struggled with an exile which defined them, one generation after the other, as Palestinians have. To offer a new perspective on this issue, about a year ago, I led a group of Palestinian researchers with the aim of offering a unique and modern study of Palestinian exile, wherein the 1948 Nakba (or Catastrophe) was examined within a larger context of space and time, not only in Palestine itself, but throughout the region, and the world as well. The stories borne out of this research will appear in a book that is tentatively entitled: Exiled. Since the first refugee was expelled from his land in 1948, international aid workers, politicians, journalists, and eventually, historians, examined the Palestinian experience seemingly from all angles. Exile was then first seen as a political crisis to which the only solution was the return of refugees, as instructed in United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution 194. When that possibility grew dim, other resolutions followed, all expressing the political contexts of each era: in 1950, '74, '82, '83, etc. (An article by Ben Zakkai in Mondoweiss, entitled: "Notes on international law and the right of return" is most insightful in this regard.) Regardless of the nature of the discussion pertaining to Palestinian refugees -- be it legal, political or moral -- the refugees themselves were rarely consulted, except as subjects of selective and sometimes dehumanizing poll questions, which draw their conclusions from refuges voting either "Yes" or "No," or even neither. Many conclusions were drawn from various polls that were often commissioned to reach political conclusions, and each time such results are published, academic, media and political storms often ensue. For Israel, the key concern is for the Palestinians to simply disconnect from their historic homeland. In contrast, for refugee advocates the struggle has always been to demonstrate that the refugees' desire to return remains as strong today as it was nearly 68 years ago. But between Israeli laws aimed at punishing Palestinians for commemorating their Nakba, and efforts to keep the Right of Return central to the debate, an actual disconnect happened between the likes of Ibrahim Mahmoud of Haifa/Mosel, along with millions like him and the rest of us. However, this disconnect was not in keeping with Israeli hopes; instead it was based on a very real, human perspective Reprinted from Paul Craig Roberts Website Like all false flag attacks and assassinations, the 1968 murder of Martin Luther King was covered up. In the King case James Earl Ray was the framed-up patsy, just as Oswald was in the case of President John F. Kennedy and Sirhan Sirhan was in the case of Robert Kennedy. The King family, along with everyone who paid attention to the evidence, knew that they and the public were officially handed a cover-up. After years of effort, the King family managed to bring the evidence to light in a civil case. Confronted with the real evidence, it took the jury one hour to conclude that Martin Luther King was murdered by a conspiracy that included governmental agencies. For more information see here. Martin Luther King, like John F. Kennedy, was a victim of the paranoia of the Washington national security establishment. Kennedy rejected General Lyman Lemnitzer's Northwoods Project for regime change in Cuba, opposed the CIA's invasion plan for Cuba, nixed Lemnitzer's plans for conflict with the Soviet Union over the Cuban missile crisis, removed Lemnitzer as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and negotiated behind the scenes with Khrushchev to tone down the Cold War. Consequently, members of the military/security complex had it in for Kennedy and convinced themselves that Kennedy's softness toward communism made him a security threat to the United States. The Secret Service itself was drawn into the plot. The films of the assassination show that the protective Secret Service personnel were ordered away from the President's car just before the fatal shots. King was only 39 years old and had established himself as a civil rights leader. The FBI convinced itself that King had communist connections and that the movement he led would develop into a national security threat. In those days, emphasis on civil rights implied criticism of America that many confused with communist propaganda. Criticizing America was what communists did, and here was a rising leader pointing out America's shortcomings and beginning to foment opposition to the war in Vietnam. The conflation of justified criticism with treason is always with us. Not long ago Obama appointee Cass Sunstein advocated that the 9/11 truth movement be infiltrated and discredited before Americans could learn that they had been deceived into accepting wars and the loss of civil liberties. Before Janet Napolitano left her post as head of Homeland Security to become chancellor of the University of California, she said that the focus of Homeland Security had shifted from terrorists to "domestic extremists," which included war protesters, environmentalists, and government critics. Throughout history thoughtful people have understood that truth is the enemy of government. Most governments are privatized. They are controlled by small groups who use the government to pursue their private agendas. The notion that government serves the public interest is one of the great deceptions. People who get in the way of these interests are not treated kindly. John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King were murdered. Robert Kennedy was murdered, because he knew who the government operatives were who murdered his brother. Robert Kennedy was well on his way to becoming the next President and implementing his murdered brother's plan to "break the CIA into a thousand pieces." If Robert Kennedy had become president, elements of the national security state would have been indicted and convicted. The Warren Commission understood that Oswald was a fall guy, but the commission also understood that at the height of the Cold War to tell the Americans the truth of the assassination would destroy the public's confidence in the national security state. The commission felt it had no alternative to a coverup. Experts' dissatisfaction with the Warren Commission led to a second inquiry, this time by the Select Committee on Assassinations of the US House of Representatives. This report, released in 1979, 16 years after JFK's assassination, was also a coverup, but the Select Committee could not avoid acknowledging that there had been a conspiracy, more than one gunman, and that "the Warren Commission's and FBI's investigation into the possibility of a conspiracy was seriously flawed." In 1997 the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board released the top secret Northwoods Project submitted to President Kennedy in 1962 by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Pentagon plan was to murder US citizens and to shoot down US airliners in order to blame Castro and create public support for an invasion that would bring regime change to Cuba. President Kennedy rejected the report, a decision that increased the doubts of the national security state that Kennedy had the strength and conviction to stand up against communism. Washington's response to the government's murder of Martin Luther King was to create a national holiday in his name. Honoring the man that elements of the government had murdered was a clever way to bring the controversy to an end and dispose of troublesome questions. At the NW Veterans' Wall (Image by self) Details DMCA Poor Cenk Uygur. One of the very most capable and trusted journalists upon the scene today (on what would be called the "liberal" side, though Uygur transcends that shallow labeling), and a Turkish-American, he is being forced to lay out the provocative and unjust behavior of the nation of his ancestry against the Kurdish people Poor Cenk Uygur. One of the very most capable and trusted journalists upon the scene today (on what would be called the "liberal" side, though Uygur transcends that shallow labeling), and a Turkish-American, he is being forced to lay out the provocative and unjust behavior of the nation of his ancestry against the Kurdish people https://youtu.be/2kTx07UgaP8 , who are citizens of three nations that border each other, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. I deplore the geopolitically crucial misfit between Turkish/Kurdish relations and progress toward peace in the region. As one who traveled in Turkey as President Obama was being elected (I am a professional touring blues musician and geopolitical analyst), I was both impressed by the actuality of free speech in Turkey (or at least as much as I saw in the Daily Zaman English edition), and also, eventually, politely but firmly required by the supervisors of the tour to suppress my thoughts about Kurdish issues at the occasional pressers the acts on this long-running tour were asked to do. Kurds are the largest distinct ethnic group in the world that does not inhabit a nation of their own. I am a patriot, it's the way I was raised. I am also a revolutionary, but the patriotism is the operative factor in my consideration of this sociological fact. A fact like that resonates within me, as an American, and it just sticks in my craw. Now, I don't know any Kurds personally, and as far as I understand it, they are some kind of Muslim, and therefore caught in the bloody sectarian violence that characterizes that region of religious zealots, though as I understand, in Iraq Kurds maintain at least at some degree of remove from direct Sunni-Shia strife. The tragedy is that Turkey will never let its Kurds (and a significant chunk of its territory, like its eastern 15- 20%) unite with their brethren in Syria, and those in Iraq, where the majority of the Kurds live. I played gigs in several Kurdish cities in eastern Turkey. I was a foreign cultural worker, and I noted at least a moderate separation between us kinda-stars and the vast majority of the Turkish population, and a virtually complete separation between us and the traditional Turkish peasant population, and most of the rest, merely because of the language barrier. There were enough Turkish folks who spoke the international language that the tour was seamless, but none of us could say anything but "hello" and "thank you" in Turkish. Diyarbakir, a Kurdish city of several hundred thousand people in eastern Turkey, is as poor and dirty a city as I have seen firsthand since I got a glimpse of Saigon in 1970. Would it be better if it were part of Kurdistan and not of Turkey? At this time in the late-times evolution of globalist capitalism and depletion of natural resources, I don't know that it makes a difference from a human-betterment perspective. But there certainly is an argument on mere grounds of compassionate justice. The eastern 1/5 of Turkey is very barren ground, for the most part, not a lot of stuff to be dug up. The Turks ought to give it to the Kurds, they're not making money on keeping Kurdistan from becoming reality. And the whole region could exhale then. I know Cenk Uygur, a noble humanitarian as I have watched him be in several years of watching "The Young Turks", his syndicated program, feels the pain of all of them: the Kurds, his fellow Turks who oppose the AKP and the Erdogans, and even those who support them through ignorance. I know that it's a beach right now, given the actions on the world stage of the Erdogans, father and son, to be a Turkish man of good will. The hot topic today is why whites are so angry in this country. Why is "the Donald" so popular? How did the Tea Party take over the Congress and statehouses and governorships all over the country? Why are there so many divisions in our society at all? For the point of this discussion Progressives can't get lost in whether or not Tea Party folk and some conservative Republicans are correct in their facts and subsequently their opinions. Nor lay any claim to having all the answers on the Progressive side. Because if we want to understand the unrest, the outrage, the fear in the country today on all sides, we need to simplify the conversation. And understand that there must be equally maddening points about Progressives that conservatives hate and so on. Differences that may be more manufactured by a few interested parties to be seemingly intractable than they are in reality, substantively important to the actual working class person. It's also worth mentioning "they" are right. Things aren't very good for Whites or Blacks or Hispanics or anyone in the middle class in America these days. (Also poor folks have seen better days too.) Another manufactured sticking point always tends to be the definition of middle class. Is $250,000 and below the right number? While I personally disagree with contemporary definitions and it dilutes the point and isn't relevant to the conversation. Because if you are not one of the 20 richest people in the country. You have been Willie Lynched. You have been made a slave. Never heard of Willie Lynch (no relation, thankfully)? He was one of the most detestable humans to ever walk the earth. And a great hero to slave owners from the West Indies to the America's in the late 1600s and early 1700s. Because he had finally refined a system so brutal, physically and physiologically, it finally worked to increase productivity, limit loss and slave uprisings. These uprisings were a constant problem because by the time you had enough slaves to run the plantation, you were handily outnumbered. The larger your plantation, the larger your problems. So if you have ever worked a day in your life building this country or serving in the military or both, if you have ever worried about money and bills, I'm talking to you. Willie Lynch's form of rule is as nuanced as it was overtly brutal. He guaranteed "it will control the slaves for 300 years." His advice was to create divisions amongst the slaves. "I have outlined a number of differences among the slaves, I take these differences and make them bigger. I use fear, distrust and envy for control purposes." Light skinned vs dark, the term "high yellow" refers to this and is still as insult in some African American circles. He made factions by age, experience, indoor and outdoor work, offering small compensations to the favored slaves of that day. This was effective as a means to keep the slaves from standing as one. If anyone stepped out of line they were brutalized. If you were a man you were made an example of. Willie advised that the way to keep all your slaves in line was to have any man who disobeyed in any way, trying to escape, organize others or stand up in any way handled in the following manner. Gather all the slaves together with the man's wife and children, brothers and sisters, parents (if they were still alive). Then tar and feather him, tie him hand and foot to horses, light him on fire and pull him apart, drawn and quartered. He then recommended whipping the remaining men close to death, but not dead, because killing them would ruin your "economics". At this point he would turn his horrible focus on the women. "Keep the body, take the mind." He broke them like they were horses, so they could be ridden comfortably by anyone. He broke them because in their "natural" state they might seek their "customary freedom" and in doing so "might kill you in your sleep." And that wouldn't be good economics either. Besides if you really want to get your plantation under control you have to "keep your eyes and thoughts on the female and the offspring of the horse and the n-----r." "Pay little attention to the generation of original breaking but concentrate on future generations." Therefore "if you break the female mother, she will break the offspring" and "when the offspring is old enough to work, she will deliver it up to you, for their normal female protective tendencies will have been lost." Repeat as necessary. Why am I telling you this? Because this has happened to you. It's happened to us all. Not in all its violent physical evil but the outcome has been the same, psychologically in its own diabolical way. How does this apply to angry whites, well frankly they hadn't realized they are the neo-slaves in the latest incarnation of our US economy, but are now pretty sure "someone" is stealing everything from them. But a sadder state of affairs is most other white people haven't realized it yet. Now I apologize for using the term slave in relation to whites as we more often filled the other role. I don't want to in any way diminish the suffering of black people in America or the suffering of any minority. A more accurate historical comparison might be indentured servitude. A position whites thought was behind them, but it doesn't have the emotional impact in today's parlance and I don't think it's accurate. The unimaginably wealthy have gained such control of our nation's wealth as to have staked out plantations within the US (and the world's) economy. Making them our economic Lords and Ladies, Kings and Queens, and we their serfs and servants. And I make no assertions that they have elected a "supreme leader". I'm not asserting there is a great plot. What I'm saying is that these plantation owners have agreed on "the best management practices" and that recognizes the factions among slaves on their individual plantations must be maintained at all cost. A more contemporary term than plantation might be financials arenas but then that would make us gladiators. And slaves are what have been made of us. Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). As the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) verified over the weekend that Iran has completed the measures necessary to comply with the nuclear deal reached last July with the P5+1 governments, the New York Times Editorial Board proclaimed "the world is now safer for this." They lauded the deal as a "testament to patient diplomacy" and President Barack Obama's "visionary determination to pursue a negotiated solution to the nuclear threat." The Editorial Board takes for granted that Iran presents a threat. Iran has always maintained it has never intended to build nuclear weapons, and that it's nuclear program was strictly meant to use nuclear technology as a source of energy production. In fact, in 1957 the United States government itself provided Iran with its first nuclear reactor while the country was ruled by U.S. ally - and murderous dictator - Shah Reza Pahlavi. Iran would later sign the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) in 1968 and ratify it two years later. Several years ago Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared that "(w)e believe that nuclear weapons (in the world) must be obliterated, and we do not intend to make nuclear weapons." Previously he had said making nuclear weapons was a "sin." But regardless of their professed intentions, the New York Times is skeptical the Iranian government can be trusted. They claim that there still exist "daunting challenges ahead" as the other parties to the agreement need to ensure "the deal is strictly adhered to." The New York Times's skepticism is unsurprising. While the Times certainly will not repeat George W. Bush's "Axis of Evil" language, they internalize the same ideological framework. While there are many mediocre State governors in America, the current pair deserving the title of The Two Worst Governors in the United States are indubitably Republicans Chris Christie of New Jersey and Rick Snyder of Michigan. Consider the clear and overwhelming evidence: Chris Christie, from the campaign trail of his fruitless presidential run, pocket vetoed two vital pieces of gun legislation which would surely have saved innocent lives in his home state. One bill would have required New Jersey gun dealers to sell at least one "smart gun" which can only be fired by authorized users, as soon as that technology is proven totally effective. The second bill, which passed both houses of the New Jersey legislature without a single NO vote, would have banned the sale of guns to convicted carjackers, gang criminals, and those who make terroristic threats. Both laws are eminently sensible, and in no way inhibit so-called Second Amendment gun rights. Both laws would have saved lives in New Jersey -- and elsewhere, since guns tend to have a good deal of mobility. Both laws, however, might have interfered with Gov. Christie's endless courting of the gun lobby, and for that reason alone displeased him. Of course, these pocket vetoes were not surprising, given Chris Christie's recent comments to Fox News that President Barack Obama was a "petulant child" for his support of sensible gun legislation. This, from the governor who literally embraced the President in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy a few years ago, thanking Barack Obama profusely for his leadership and support in the restoration of New Jersey after that disastrous storm. But that was then, when Christie was not yet running for president -- and this is now, when he is desperately trying to be relevant in a presidential race where he is among the lowest tier of Republican candidates. Hey, why should he have any principles -- this is the governor who advocates a massive public works program to rebuild the crumbling bridges in his state, perhaps so that he can again be responsible for closing those same bridges to punish his political enemies. Turning to Governor Rick Snyder of Michigan: here is a man who should be charged with slow murder of the good folks in Flint, Michigan, whose water supply he allowed to be poisoned by his own appointed emergency managers. It seems that the former water supply for Flint was considered too costly for a city comprised mainly of low-income and minority residents, so Governor Snyder allowed the water supply to be switched over to the polluted Flint River. It was obvious from the start that this water was undrinkable and mainly unusable, being a nice brown in color and containing sediment. Even after it became apparent, from both in-state and independent tests of the polluted water, that its lead content was way above safe levels, Governor Snyder looked the other way as people, particularly children, began to display a host of signs of toxic lead poisoning -- which, tragically, tends to be irreversible. Far too late, after this criminal misconduct became public knowledge through the courageous reporting of Rachel Maddow of MSNBC and some journalists in Michigan, the governor reversed his refusal to seek Federal assistance. In fact, he spent much of his annual State of the State message bemoaning the situation in Flint, Michigan -- a situation which ultimately he created, by both action and inaction for several years. Governor Rick Snyder has all the style of Syrian President Bashar Assad, another poisoner of his own people by banned chemical weapons, except that in Snyder's case it was less intentional than in Assad's. Still, the awful results may be similar -- just slower -- in Flint. If there were an Academy Award for the category of Worst Governor in America, Chris Christie and Rick Snyder would both undoubtedly be the nominees. Instead, though, their proper awards are rapid defeat in the presidential race for New Jersey Governor Christie, and a prison cell for "depraved indifference" for Michigan Governor Rick Snyder. May they both receive these well-earned awards, the sooner the better.